TITLE: my heart did time
FANDOM: the legend of zelda
PAIRING: link/sheik
RATING: +15 for gore
COUNT: 4766 words

SUMMARY: The Cave of Ordeals. Revisited. Who will save you now?


NOTES: exploring a different version of the cave of ordeals. this idea is really supposed to be more fleshed out, but i've tried for a while and i just really can't find it in me to write a long piece. maybe in the future, we'll see. plays around with the idea of a sheik incarnation in twilight princess. you'll see it when it's there, i promise. contains blood and gore, and a lot of UST. the way we like it, right?



Ten rooms. Maybe twenty. Or twenty three. Link wasn't sure, there wasn't a time when he had kept count of them, but it must be in the above twenty section now. He wasn't particularly sure what was down there. Or, that he knew, he'd fought himself through it. But rather, what the point of it was. Especially with the springs. At one point, he took a fairly poignant guess at the tenth room, there was simply a spring. Nothing more than so. He'd furrowed his brow, cautiously stepping towards the water.

"I can't sense anything threatening about it," Midna said. "It's strange though. Do you really think it's such a good idea to step into it?"

Link arched his neck to look into the pool. Its surface rippled calmly.

"A month ago you would've gleefully told me to jump right into it," he remarked wryly. Midna's shadow, mingling with his, bobbed for a second.

"It was time for that one?" she muttered, an once sheepish, but moreso surly. Link chose to not respond, and toed the water. Nothing happened.

"Right..." Link said. Midna poked her head out of his shadow, but her presence was merely a wisp of cold at his side.

"Well," she said, "I wouldn't drink it anyways. Besides, you're stocked up on milk. Use that."

They'd simply passed the room, onwards and into the next, Link keeping her advice close to heart. Another bout of monsters awaited, patrolling the floors or lurching themselves at them when Link hopped down from the higher ledge. There seemed to be a pattern, a degree of difficulty, he noticed after a while. There weren't, so far, any terribly challenging tasks, but he figured they'd increase. After passing a second and a third spring, both similarly alit in kaleidoscopic colors. But once again he did not do anything beyond dipping his boot in it.

Darknuts weren't the most skilled of warriors Link'd had to face, but battling a double at the same time left him with what was probably at least two fractured ribs, a damaged left wrist, and a slim cut above his eyebrow that bled thickly into his eyelashes.

Link collapsed onto one knee between both ragdoll strewn bodies, and clutched his side. Midna's wince of sympathy was welcome, as were her shadowy fingers wrapped around his own. He smiled a little.

"Come on, next room is the fortieth. I bet we'll come upon one of those springs again. At least you can rest for a bit, there."

Link nodded, and got up again, muscles clenching and protesting against the rapid use post exhaustion. He dragged his feet a bit, and stumbled over the dropping steps into the next room. It got noticeably cooler the further they progressed, so it was easy to figure they were descending.

Link sunk to his knees in the water, and hushed Midna's imminent protest. "It's fine, I just need to sit down."

Predictably, she was as sarcastic as ever when she was really worried, but liked to give the notion of pretense that she wasn't. "You couldn't have sat down on the dry side of the pond?"

Link flexed his watery fist on his shadow. Midna gave an affronted yelp, and shifted to where his silhouette took root in his lower back instead.

"What a hero," she mumbled from her hiding spot. Link grinned, stifling a chuckle that would've just been painful to utter. Midna re-emerged again.

"You don't have any red potion on you?"

Link shook his head. "Emptied it in Arbiter's."

They lapsed into silence for a bit. Link uncorked a bottle of milk and emptied half of it. It was a cheap trick that mostly hid some pain. And that at its best. It didn't really do much good otherwise, but it had to do for now and until he could loot a corner for anything more helpful.

"You don't think I should try drinking it? Who knows, it might be a fairy fountain. Something good might happen."

Midna looked at him narrowly, one yellow eye protruding from the black of her cheeks. "I don't know, Link. There hasn't been much that didn't want to kill you in this cave. This could be an illusionary trick, for all we know."

"But you haven't sensed anything," he pointed out.

"If it's illusionary I hardly could."

"Really? You couldn't?" Link squinted at her, raising an eyebrow. Midna rolled her eyes, but Link sensed the satisfactory feeling the praise had given her.

"I could have, in most cases. We know nothing about what could be behind this, though."

Link hitched his shirt up, and peeled the chain mail underneath over a knee. He prodded the area blackening around the injured rib, wincing but forcing himself through it, assessing the damage.

"I'll live," he concluded.

Midna tapped her fingers on his shoulder, he decided it was encouragement. And they continued on.

Getting through the first few rooms, Link decided against putting effort into what he did. Nothing came with flourish. Raising the bow and stringing it with arrows was a hard fought task enough, when they came upon a room which immediately had two Bulbin archers putting flames to their bows. He groaned with effort, and ducked for an arrow with a gritted jaw and a stagger.

"The wolf would probably help you," Midna suggested by his ear. But Link had noticed the pull and tug it took to constantly change between the two of human and canine. He shook his head.

"I wouldn't make it much longer. The crystal drains a lot of energy."

Midna made a small sound, and Link dropped to the lower floor. Luckily, mayhaps, he'd more or less misfired while shooting down the Bulbins, and taken out the purple Chu. Lesser luck came then, though. And Link was sure he'd had far worse, but banged up like this, it didn't feel as if he had. Simultaneously, he'd managed to awaken five ReDead Knights, heaps of bones and bandaging strewn in heaps across the floor. He swore, and shoved his fingers into his pocket, closing a fist around the crystal just as the cartilage hiccuped to life.

Growing into the wolf's body was a heartbeat and over, but to great cost. He stumbled to his paws, disoriented and injured. The skulls and bones were hopping and shaping that of a body, but he couldn't quite figure out why. The wolf mind, a simplified, less moral driven and moreso instinctly, needed some time to catch up with Link's train of thought.

He didn't get that time. The piercing shriek, right behind him. He couldn't move, even though Midna, now a factual weight on his back, kicked his sides raw and shouted shrilly. She wasn't hitting the damaged ribs, but was close enough. A whimper escaped his throat, but stuck jangling around his teeth. He couldn't so much as utter a sound.

The sound far outweighed the immediate result of the Knight bringing his dull sword down on Link's flank and paw, ripping the fur to the flesh. A full body shudder raced through him, and he howled when he could finally move out of the paralysis, stumbling back on his hindpaws, only feeling painpainpain.

"Link, hurry, you still have to take them out!"

Link knew Midna's urgent voice meant he was supposed to--he couldn't wrap his mind around the thought. The room was stripped of smells, of things to act on, but he knew the Knights reeked of danger. He limped out to the corner quickly, circling, baring his teeth. The pain throbbed. He stepped out of the closest Knight's reach, gathered his body up underneath him, and attacked its back.

It shook and stuttered violently, but he refused to give in, sticking his teeth into the bandages and tearing from its back and neck. It shrieked, half disembodied arms swinging its large sword. Link hung with desperation to it, clawing and tearing and finally - it collapsed again, void of life.

The rush of having killed. A primal instinct. There was no pain. He growled, the wolf's psyche bleeding over. There was no thought, he simply did. He came out of the four remaining with no wounds to show. Midna held the crystal out to him, wordlessly. He touched his paw to it, reluctantly.

Coming down in limbo between wolf and human, having your bones and your flesh regrown to fit your body, it were mere moment, but he must've screamed - howled, the thing in-between noises - because Midna puffed him down to sit with a firm wrap of her shadow around his waist. He thumped down none too gently.

"I thought we agreed on no injuries, hero," she snapped. Link moved his weight to his right side, gulped down large breaths until it ached too much, and said nothing in response.

"I'll see what I can do, but this form isn't much worth." Midna began chanting under her breath, and he could imagine her small hands going over the wound.

He felt sluggish, but perhaps a bit lighter, as her voice grew in strength.

"There," she said, after some time. "It's only temporary, we really have to figure a way out soon. Even Red Potion won't help you with that grotesque thing, you need a doctor."

He mumbled a thanks, raising a hand to indicate that he was fine. Groggily, but he hoped Midna wouldn't notice.

"Idiot," she said. "I'm your shadow. Do you still have milk?"

"Mm..."

"Then drink it. Now."

He fumbled for the bottle, tugging the cork free with his teeth. The bottle lasted for approximately five seconds. So did the second one. He wiped his mouth, putting the empty bottles away again. The effect kicked in, mercifully.

"What room are we on?" he asked, using the wall as a helper.

"Forty five, I think. So we should have five more rooms until we reach another spring."

She didn't say it, neither of them did, but given the situation, in room fifty they'd have to make or break an escape route. It didn't matter what it was, Link knew he wouldn't be able to continue beyond the bare five rooms remaining until the fifth decennary.




The forty eighth room had definitely provided a larger challenge than the forty ninth. For one, the two Aeralfoses circling the room from above required repeated use of the Clawshot, a great amount of upper body strength Link did not any longer have, not to mention swift turns. That a Darknut awaited the moment he jumped the level down certainly didn't help.

The forty ninth, however, after coming away from there, showcased three Darknuts. Which, accounting the damage he'd taken in the fight with the two on the thirtieth floor, should have proven a hard fought victory.

"Don't rush," Midna reminded him. Link huffed.

"I've fought enough of these to remember a simple fighting pattern. There's not much to the armored, three types of offense, and the unarmored relies on his agility and speed. I'll handle this."

While the slap with the unarmored warrior's flat sword on his already injured wrist certainly helped to strengthen the amount of pain he carried, Link thanked the Three for coming out of the final fight with only fatigue and old wounds. He savored the milk's last supply of strength until the very last moment, and then fought on a surge of adrenaline. It shouldn't have taken as long as it did, but he would take shaky knees over damage to all of his left side ribcage.

He braced the awaited fall to his knees with his uninjured palm, gasping for breath. Midna's shadow flickered worriedly around him in the stark light from the wall torch.

"Come on Link, it's the fiftieth room--it looks...Different, from here."

The entrance, emerging from the wall as plainly as if it'd been there the entire time, gave way for a muddy red shine. But Link had to agree, the light wasn't from any other of the springs they'd so far encountered. He pushed up from the ground, but only managed to topple backwards.

"I'll take a peek, stay here."

Link saluted her. "You won't see me taking a step."

Her shadow sighed, but parted with his, skittering across the room and into the next. Link dropped the Master Sword convulsively, flexing his fingers. He couldn't see Midna in the ruddy light of the cave, and frowned. A flash of pain jolted him to reality again. He undid his glove and brace and peeled them carefully off. He winced, the skin bruised and purple over the protruding bone and tendons.

"Link!"

He startled. "Yes?"

Midna darted back into his shadow. "Come! It's alright!" She prodded at him urgently.

"Did you find a spring at the end of the tunnel?" Link said dryly.

"Shut up, will you? There's help in there." She prodded him again, impatient and excited all the same. Link raised an eyebrow. He wouldn't know what could've gotten his partner so up in arms, but he figured it best to humor her. Unsteadily he got to his feet, pulling the Master Sword after himself before sheathing it.

The final room wasn't a drop from a ledge to the floor, but a wide staircase, wet with condense and dirt. It was cool, but Link found the source of the grit red light being an odd, large fire in the center of the cave. There appeared to be nobody there, however.

"We're getting warm food for dinner?" he snarked tiredly. Midna hushed him irritatedly.

"Sometimes I forget you're too young to understand that silence is as golden as courage."

Link humph'd, but quietened, concentrating on safely getting down the slippery steps without breaking something else.

"The Hero of Time, you have been called."

Link twisted around, the voice seemingly behind him. Nothing. He gripped the handle of the Master Sword, more as an assuring gesture than anything else.

"I don't remember we ever carried any animosity towards one other. My memory would not betray me of you."

Link squinted into the fire, now warmly red, and stepped closer as if pulled in a hook and chain. The flames licked each other, flickering. A picture, maybe, or an illusion. It flickered again. And then a figure stepped out from behind the fire.

Awash with an odd feeling of, was it nostalgia? He stepped forward, not against his own will, but without controlling what he did. He knew him, no matter form, he realized with a start and a twist of the gut. The golden wolf, the Hero's Shade, the guide, the Sheikah warrior.

Sheik closed the distance between them, clasping Link's uninjured hand, studying his face with a crease between his eyebrows. Link's first impression was an overwhelming sense of that something in his face was misplaced, or simply missing. He opened his mouth to speak, but Sheik shook his head.

"It's not been within my ability to help you beyond self defense so far, so let me tend to your wounds now."

Too busy trying to fathom the situation, Link hadn't given Midna a thought. But looking around, he now saw her materialized by the fire.

"A source of rekindling for her spirit," Sheik said, but strayed not beyond the cryptic words, letting Link's hand go but gesturing for him to sit on a large rug in the far corner. An assemble of pots and bottles were lined along the wall, and Link peered at them curiously as he sat. He felt no suspicion, and the tension in his shoulders dissipated the longer he spent by the Sheikah. It was odd, however he felt strongly that everything was starting to go together.

"There is something different," Link tried to explain. Sheik cocked his head to the side. "About your face - I can't explain it. I don't think I remember it..."

"Oh!" Sheik chuckled, a hint of a tone in there that Link couldn't quite discern. Sorrow, but not quite. He brushed a finger over his own chin.

"The cowl. Indeed, there is no need for me to wear it in here," he said.

"I don't remember your face, exactly, but I know you've been guiding me."

Sheik nodded. "Yes, through -- other means." He grasped Link's injured wrist, studying it with his head bowed. Thick, blonde hair fell forward. The golden wolf, indeed. His rasp of a voice reminded Link of the wolf's howl, too. Like Midna, Link felt there were perhaps so much as hundreds of years between them.

"I don't understand though. The Hero's Shade, the skeleton warrior, and the wolf. And you're down here..."

Sheik was smearing thickly with salve over Link's darkened wrist. Once again, he chuckled. "The last time we met, I wouldn't answer the many questions you posed. I suppose I cannot run from them now."

Link didn't respond. He hadn't an answer, to be honest. What would he say of something he couldn't remember? Another incarnation of himself, in this moment he didn't doubt the possibility, but there was certainly nothing he could remember of it.

Sheik continued before long, however. "Would I sound wry if I said I have always been the Hero's Shade? I was the Princess Zelda's guardian of old, but as the war broke out, my mentor assigned me the guide of the Hero of Time." Sheik looked up at him briefly. "You, Link. Not this you, but in another time." He uncurled his fingers around Link's wrist, moving to tip his chin to view the cut that had clogged with blood above his eyebrow.

"It was easier to communicate with you as the wolf, it was a simple disguise and a trademark for what I wanted to teach you. In the forgotten religions of this world, the wolf with blue eyes is viewed as divine, full of courage. But you don't see it as such, do you?"

Link smiled sardonically. "It was the result of a curse Zant cast upon me. I hardly view myself as a divine creature."

Sheik wet an angular piece of cloth in a sharply smelling flask, and raised it to dab at the wound. Link hissed, restricting himself so to not slap the cloth away.

"I did not think so. Thus, the golden wolf."

"It is more of a divine color," Link agreed. Sheik was silent.

"The last question stands," Link continued, stubborn. He realized he was perhaps nagging, but the whole of his journey was made up of questions he knew not the answers to. Some clarification he deserved, he thought.

"Hold this," Sheik said quietly. Link pressed the cloth to the cut with two fingers. Sitting quite close, Sheik once again looked at him. Red eyes, light brows. A sharply cut nose and lips. He did resemble Impaz. Sheik was motionless for a while, but just as Link was to shift his weight and move, he trailed two fingers down Link's temple. Tracing small pecks of scars, curving around his jaw. Link's breathing stocked, and he regained the sense that moving closer was an irresistible urge that came from deeply within.

"Sheik?" Midna said. Link started, and the Sheikah quickly removed his fingers.

"Indeed, Midna?" he said. Link glanced at his partner, who was moving towards them, but with a troubled frown on her face. She didn't appear to have noticed their exchange.

"This fire. I was excited to see it, at first, because I recognized its essence. But it has also left me wondering--" she paused, "not even Impaz could conjure the magic of old. I could see that."

"Impaz -- she is alive?" Sheik said in a gust of breath. There was no telling his tone, once again. Link bristled, uneasy with not being able to read him.

Midna inclined her head. "She lives in the old Sheikah village, protecting it to this day."

Sheik stilled. And for that moment, Link doubted their safety. The walls were rounded, earthy and solid. Being as far down as he predicted them to be, however, digging would cause the entirety of the cave to come down upon them. Perhaps Midna could warp in here. He drew his left knee toward himself, a bit protectively.

Sheik cast a glance at Link, his hand going to the knee. Link thought he was going to put his palm over it, but it merely hovered, uncertainly. He gradually relaxed, making an effort to appear as the ethereal hero he was supposedly pictured as. Sheik withdrew his hand.

"I apologize. This news took me by surprise. The village of old... It was my birthplace. It saddens me that I will not be able to return, now that it has been rediscovered. But for your question, Midna, it is a complicated matter, but I will attempt to explain."

He sat back, and Midna took to hovering above Link's shoulder, legs and arms crossed.

"To be able to execute the plan we had founded to aid the Hero of Time's quest in defeating Ganon, I became one of his informant and assassins. A disguise given effectiveness as I stayed in his service for years following his initial claiming Hyrule's throne from the young heir, Zelda. But I knew the hero would awaken, given time, in the Temple of Time. Thus, when the time was right, i went to aid the hero, betraying the trust placed in me by the usurper. Our initiative was successful, but I failed, in the end. I was recaptured by the Shadow Temple, and sealed in this Cave of Ordeals in the desert. I cannot tell when the seal will weaken enough for me to exit, or perish. I am forbidden to either."

Sheik looked at Link. He thought that perhaps he was beginning to understand that there indeed was an element of sorrow to what the Sheikah did. To how he had become.

"How did you tell that, I mean, that it had been so long?" Link wasn't sure as to what words he should use. He studied Sheik.

The warrior, the guide, the teacher, the old friend of centuries. He smiled. Now, it was truly a saddened grimace.

"It seems my purest instincts regarding you won't lie, either," he said, and touched his palm agains Link's knee.

Of what he had experienced, it was perhaps the most significant touch he had received. The flat of his hand was cool to the skin underneath the ripped garment, but it was such a familiar touch. Link could count the lines on the skin, the texture of the scar straight through his palm an achingly real memory. Touch memory of the kind that reaped shudders in Link.

"If someone of your skill can't break from the stronghold in this cave..." Midna trailed.

Sheik shook his head. "It is not quite such an imprisonment. It holds only me, the seal does not react to you as such. Neither does it hold my spiritual presence captured, otherwise I would not have been able to come to you, Link." He thumbed Link's kneecap, seemingly in thought. "You will be able to leave, when the time comes," he said.

"But--shouldn't we be able to get you out?" Link attempted. It wasn't as though he did not already know the answer.

Sheik grew somber yet more. "The seal is what keeps me from perishing. Outside the boundaries of this cave, I would not exist." He laughed, bitter as the fading day. "Perhaps it is the true curse that has been put over me. You have found me, but I can only see you this once. You cannot stay with me, and I cannot follow you."

It was not their voices that hopped on the walls. It was silence.

"Let me tend to the last of your wounds, the quicker they are seen to, the smaller the scars you will sustain," Sheik murmured. Link nodded mutely, and began undoing the straps of the belts wired around his chest and abdomen. Midna disappeared into the shadows as on cue, but not Link's.

"You may wonder what the flames are to Midna, as what we are to each other," Sheik said, and reached to aid Link. He pulled a breath in, his face warming.

"I didn't give it much thought," he lied. Sheik laughed quietly.

"Perhaps not. We are both of the shadow dwellers. Our magic is most alike the other. I would tell you the story of the interlopers, and the Sheikah, but something tells me it would take a night we do not have, to recall it all."

Link raised his arms above his shoulders, barely shaking, as Sheik pulled his tunic and chain mail over his head, tipping also the cape off in the progress.

"I have heard of the dark interlopers, but I couldn't make out much beyond the basics of the story." Link shuddered at the memory of Lanayru the spirit showing him the alternate universe, and the tidbit of Hyrule and the dark flipend of her long lasting history.

"I thought as much," Sheik replied. He beckoned for Link to raise his right arm gently. Link grimaced, but hitched it up in the air. Sheik trailed his fingers softly over the damaged ribs, whispering a foreign incantation that Link couldn't place. It seemed to have an immediate impact on the injury, as the bruises turned from black to a greenish yellow, and Link felt an odd movement work under his skin. Looking down, Sheik's darker skinned fingers traced marks over Link's skin. It felt compellingly intimate, and he couldn't make out why.

"Can you stand?" The Sheikah asked, still raspy and quiet. Link nodded, and swallowed air.

He got to his feet, steadied on Sheik's forearm, and turned around to expose the large rip of skin on the low of his back. Oddly, it hadn't bothered him, until he gave it thought. And it returned full force. He grunted in pain. Sheik hissed a soothing sound, and put both of his hands around the injury, cold on feverish, Link felt light headed now.

"I underestimated the damage you sustained. I'm sorry Link, I should have seen to this when you reached me. Perhaps I was too selfishly busy with your presence," he mumbled.

Link shook his head. "No," he gritted out, "it's dulled until just recently. I didn't think of it."

"You never have," Sheik said, absently as he could. "Lean on the wall if you feel you cannot stand, this will hurt."

Link wasn't sure what happened, his vision swam in salt, and his thoughts didn't string together until afterwards, when he was dripping in cold sweat, drenching the bandage Sheik had wrapped around his lower back and abdomen.

"It should heal properly, although I fear a scar will be the price to pay."

Link thumped down onto the rug again, rubbing his eyes. "It's more common I pay in scars than rupees," he joked, though there certainly was a large amount of truth in it.

"For the better, I should let you sleep for a few hours to regain your strength," Sheik said.

Link raised an eyebrow. "When I after that have to leave?"

Sheik studied him then intently. Link took note of the twist in his expression, a tear in what he should, or what he should not. Thinking, their relation and situation were both bizarre. Link was not the first him, and Sheik was trapped in a cave which did not see that he aged, died, or escaped the confinement. Link, for all he did not know, felt as though this reality - if it was - was what made sense about his recently tumultuous journey, and was reluctant to even pull away from the aged warrior he had met only once in his own life.

"Will this be the last Link you will meet?" Link asked.

"Time will tell," Sheik replied, but there was a finality of sorts in his face. As though, he would be content with it being the reality of the situation.

"Will it really tell?"

Sheik fitted his palm to Link's neck. "It always does," he said.