Fan Fiction ❯ Hymn to the Night-Mare ❯ Chapter 6 ( Chapter 6 )

Author’s Note:  WHEEE!!!  Its been a hellalong time.  …errr… I’m lazy.  Thank you InuYasha for unwittingly sparking my reinterest in this, months later after I’ve watched History Channel specials on cannibalism and torture and am now getting an education in the Classics so I will be able to make their lives an even worse/interesting than I had already (sorta) planned.   ….and yes, I have played OoT.  …many times.  Duh.  …and I’m pretending that all Zelda games not specifically in the Oot-MM-WW continuum do not exist in this thing’s history.  …mostly because A Link to the Past is royally kicking my ass.  (I don’t know where to go!)  and while I’m rather enthralled with Vaati from The Minish Cap (and Four Swords, though I don’t have three buddies to play that with :pout: ), I gots no clue how that fits in with the above mentioned continuum.  …if it does at all.   ….and I’ve never played the Oracles games.  I guess technically Link’s Awakening could fit… maybe?  It depends on if he goes back to Hyrule or not…  well, that situation could happen.  Hell if I know.  Never got to the end of that one either.  XD   Anywho!   …errr… and  just noticed watching the trailer for the next LoZ game… Link’s a lefty!  ^_^  Because really, who swings their sword and pulls back their bowstring with their weak arm?   …I’m gonna skip all title and other things since this is no longer on a mailing list…  >.>   Disclaimer:  DIE!   -0 –   Chapter 6-   Clonk!   Lady Ira shook her head.  The boys were at it again.  Ever since Link had found out her Sheik really did know how to use his weapons there’d been little peace at the Temple of Farore.  When they weren’t helping her with taking care of the patients (they were such good lads), Sheik was teaching Link how to fight with daggers.  Plural.  It seemed that their visiting warrior, though a master at one-weapon fighting, was miserable with two.   Lady Ira wasn’t fond of violence, though she knew it was sometimes necessary, but it gave the lads something to do.  And boys will be boys.   Thank Farore they were using wooden practice daggers.   =-=-=-=   Link sat down heavily on the ground, exhausted.  Though the potion had healed his wound, it hadn’t replaced his lost blood, halving his stamina.  He also hadn’t been sleeping well, but that was no surprise.   That didn’t mean he wasn’t enjoying his lessons, though.  Quite the opposite.  Link, ironically, had never had the courage to ask Tetra or any of the other pirates how to use knives.  Therefore he’d spent the last three years with a phobia of close combat in confined spaces.  The Biggoron Sword was fine and dandy if you had room to swing it, hell, if you had room to draw it, but, say, in a narrow hall with a low ceiling?  He’d be a sitting duck.  The best he’d be able to do is bash at them with his boomerang, or maybe stab them with an arrow.  Bombs were out of the question.  Hookshot?  HA!  The last thing he’d need is to bring his enemy closer.   Yes, Link was very pleased to be learning how to use daggers.   Sheik sat down beside him.  “Tired already?” he asked good-naturedly.   Link just grunted at him.   Sheik snickered.  “You’re getting better, but you need to remember you can use your dagger as a shield too.”  He demonstrated, turning the wooden dagger so the flat of it was resting along the entire length of his forearm.  “You should try to guard, block, and parry as much as you can.  Leave as little of yourself exposed as possible.  Dodging will just leave you open.”   Link sighed.  “I miss my shield.”  His family’s shield had been lost a year past during a storm.  Not that he could use it anyways with his Biggoron Sword, but it had still been precious to him.    “You’ll get used to it.”   Link stood up, stretching.  “Is it lunchtime yet?”   “No!”   Link’s eyes widened as he turned to stare at the kitchen some yards behind him.   The windows were open, but still, he hadn’t been speaking loudly at all.   “She’s like that.”  Sheik grinned at him and knelt down to pick up his shirt, which he had taken off earlier.  “You should go rest.  It’s only been four days since you came, you have to still be tired.”   “I don’t want to sleep,” Link murmured, almost to himself.  He hadn’t seen his other self or his dark self for the last couple of days but he was certain that wouldn’t last for long.  It had made his sleep restless and tense as he explored the deserted Kokiri village.  He’d jumped at every shadow that moved and every twig that snapped.   “Link,” Sheik said quietly, “I don’t think the Hero of Time will hurt you.”   “I’m not scared of being hurt.”  He took a shuddering breath.  “I’m scared of changing.”  Link held up his hand, staring at the fingerless gloves that he no longer felt comfortable without.  “What if, at the end of this, I’m not me?”   Sheik frowned in thought.  “Maybe you should talk my Lady about it.  She’s gone through something similar, after all.”   Link didn’t know what to think about that.  Link thought he and Tetra were close, but she wasn’t exactly an easy person to talk to.  Also…he hadn’t even thought about what it must have been like for her.  Did she go through this?  Did she just get her memories back all at once?  Hell, Link hadn’t gotten back any memories at all.   But Tetra had changed since herself as Zelda awoke, hadn’t she.  Maybe she would understand.   “I’ll go talk with her.”   =-=-=-=   Tetra was sitting on the beach, taking a break from drawing up plans for a new ship, when Link came looking for her.  He sat down beside her and they spent a while watching the waves crash upon the golden shores in companionable silence.   “Did you need something?”

Link started at the sudden break in silence.  “Er, yes.  There was something I wanted to talk to you about,” he said softly.  “I’ve been having strange dreams for a while.  Months- nearly a year, I think.”   Tetra felt her ears perk.   “In them I wander through Old Hyrule.  It looks like what I saw when I went to get the Master Sword, so I think its Old Hyrule.  Up until this week, all I’d been doing was wondering.  I’d just wake up some place and set off from there.  But, for some reason, I’ve never gone into any towns.   “But, right after we arrived here, I met him.”   “Sheik?” Tetra asked.   Link shook his head.  “No.  Me.  I met myself.  And, and he’s-“ a pause, a breath, “-I think he’s trying to turn me into him.  I don’t know what to do.”  He looked down towards the sand and dug out a shell with his fingers.  “I’m scared,” he said, brushing damp sand from the shell’s ridges.  “What if I get changed into someone who’s not me?  I don’t want to change.  I want to stay me.  I don’t want to disappear.”   Link tossed his shell into the sea and hugged his knees.   Tetra sighed and tugged at Link until he was lying on the sand with his head in her lap.  She slipped the green bandanna off his head and stroked his hair.  “It’s not so bad,” she said quietly.  “It was hard reconciling everything, telling myself, for example, that when I was eight I was attending etiquette lessons as well as being taught by Mother the way to slit someone’s throat without making them scream.  That was the only trouble I had, though.  Our personalities merged flawlessly.”  She scratched behind his ear thoughtfully.  “Probably because we would have lived eachother’s life the same way.”  Snort.  “It doesn’t help you.  I got everything at once.  He’s…” she trailed off.   “Trying to turn me into him?” Link supplied helpfully, leaning into her hand.   “Hush.”  Tetra flicked his ear.  “Link wasn’t like that.  He was a Hero, too.  A less troublesome one.  Quieter too.”  Tetra sighed and gazed at the sea.  “Far too solemn for his age.”   Link shifted so he could look up at her, watch her expressive face change as she remembered things fond, worrisome, distasteful.  Her face could be read so easily when her guard wasn’t up, as if she was trying to make up for the times she couldn’t show what she felt.   She turned her dark blue eyes back down to Link, certainty glinting in them.  “He’s trying to protect you.  He thinks if he gives you himself in small doses, you’ll handle it better.”  Tetra smiled, “I apparently thought I’d do just fine getting a few more of me at once.  Most likely there just wasn’t enough time to do things gently.”  Her eyes unfocused as she returned to her mind and memories.  “You’re lucky.”   “Hm?”   When Tetra didn’t answer, Link reached up and tugged on a couple of her braids.   She blinked and shook her head a little.  “You get to talk to him.  I only saw him a few times after Ganon was defeated.  The last was when he came to the castle to tell me he was going North to find out what real mountains were like.”  Tetra smiled bitterly, sadly.  “For a few years I got letters from him.  Then they stopped.”  She closed her eyes tightly.  “It took a few more years for the news to filter down to us that he was dead.  By that time no one knew the truth how.  Or, really, if he had died.  Some said he had walked into the Sacred Realm, or the Golden Land as the storyteller called it.  Some said he’d died of a disease.  Some said he drowned at sea.  You get the picture.”   Link nodded.  “Maybe I can find out what happened.”   Tetra smiled.  “I’d like that.  It would be good to know.  It wouldn’t change anything, but it’d be good to know.”  She ran a fingertip down the length of his nose.   He wrinkled his nose and fought back a sneeze.    Tetra ran her hand to cup his cheek.  She squeezed her eyes shut to imprint him in her memory.   -=-=-=-   AN:  Eh.  Short.  I’M TRYING.