Two Sides # 3

Disclaimer: I don't own anything Zelda aside from my own warped fanfics and the freaking awesomeness of my Sheikah costume that I hand made. Other than that, leave me alone for my weird crap.

Author's Note: So everyone knows, this is the original second part I wrote that got turned into the third part. I changed the beginning a little bit and- boom- it ended up sounding better than I originally thought it did. Unfortunately I couldn't find the fic (or the author) I mentioned in my last author's note- My apologies! Still, many kudos to the genius that thought up the 'Link as a potter' thing. This one actually makes it sound like Sheik and Zelda have been writing back and forth to each other… It's weird. Then again the entire Two Sides series is weird. And yes, this is another "Sheik/Zelda/whoever is musing" chapter/one-shot fic. Anyway, I'm kind of batting around an idea for a fourth part, one that will actually have them interacting in the Twilight Princess setting… Maybe with Sheik actually deciding to pursue his interest in Link? Finally? Review and tell me what you think. Who knows, you might give me a couple ideas.

P.S. To Kiafen and Toyax, thanks for the reviews.

P.P.S. Toyax brought up a point that I didn't make too clear in the last one, for which I apologize. The overall idea is that Twilight Princess occurs centuries after OoT, and that during OoT (which I'm sure everyone has figured out by now) Sheik and Zelda were one person. Since things are technically in whatever age Twilight Princess takes in, that means that what this (and the last two one-shots) were just them thinking about how things used to be. I didn't intend for it to come off as they were suddenly back in just one form; thus I apologize for that confusion. As for why Zelda remembered when Sheik thought she didn't… They're two halves of the same whole; so in that aspect why should one remember when the other doesn't?

WARNING: This one-shot, like the last two, contains hints of a guy crushing on another guy, (blah, blah, blah, blah-dy frickin' blah). If you don't like it, don't read it or come bawling to me.

So you do remember… of course I forgive you, for as you've said, "I can do no less for my other self". Yet, dearest Zelda, allow me to ponder over our peculiar former existence a while longer. While I remember our past as well as you do, I can't help looking back and realizing how bizarre that life was. I confess that I'm surprised that we muddled through as well as we did. I am… ultimately amazed that we managed to keep our sanity rather than tearing each other apart. I digress. Perhaps this final bout of musing should start at the beginning, our beginning?

Being one person made things difficult for the both of us. Not just in everyday interaction, as with our father or with Impa in those early days, but in other ways as well. Goddesses above Zelda, we were trapped! I think we only became aware of our 'wrongness' when we were six. Even so… six was far too young to have such a weight rest on our shoulders. Back then our… problem… wasn't fully realized. Of course our distraction cost us. I couldn't stop daydreaming when Impa was trying to teach you, and that rampant wanderlust prevented you from soaking in anything you truly needed to learn. When she first realized that we needed an outlet, that I needed an outlet though no hint was given of our opposing wills, and started giving us combat training and teaching us music; I was enthralled.

Our father was dubious about the idea of training a princess to fight. Playing an ocarina or whatever musical instrument that came to hand however… he didn't see such a problem with that. Thankfully Impa didn't leave the decision of our training to our father. Instead she left it to us. When she asked us that question so long ago, I believe that was the first time I ever truly spoke up, adamantly, about anything. It was a joy that made me beam like the sun had just come out. When Father saw that determined and overjoyed look in our eyes, that was there due entirely to me, he apparently decided that it was best not to stand in our way. You had a certain amount of disinterest in fighting of course, but you learned enough to be able to handle yourself without my help; odd though it sounds.

After all, we were the same person, so how could I not help you if it came to training? How could you have a fighting level that was less than mine? That is something that I myself continue to puzzle over. Not that it really applies now, separate as we are, but it is a peculiarity that I think of from time to time. Though we didn't fully realize it at the time, you leaned on me for guidance in combat training, to learn how to protect and defend. You weren't interested in fighting yourself, but you recognized the necessity of it for a ruler-to-be. Then again, you always have been the more practical and predictive one. Where I saw an enjoyable pastime, you saw a way of survival that would at some point be needed. I would be lying if I said that your foresight didn't annoy me at times.

Had we ever talked in our life I wouldn't have been surprised if we would have argued incessantly. We had a vague feeling of affection for each other in later years, even if we didn't fully comprehend it, but it was there, so we didn't outright hate each other either. To hate each other would have been to hate ourself, and that was an idea so complex and bizarre that we couldn't grasp it. Not even you with your uncanny wisdom could grasp it; but such was life. Your wisdom and your foresight proved to be a mixed blessing before Ganon's takeover. When we met Link that first time… when you told him of your dream… I was bewildered. I had caught no hint of the dream. How was it that part of us knew it and the other didn't? Were we somehow possessed? You were calm as you told that forest child all; and once I came out of my confused stupor I couldn't help but study the strange boy.

By that point I had an unarticulated feeling of 'male-ness', but I hadn't truly understood it as you, my other side, the other me, was fully female. I hadn't thought about it before, hadn't even wasted a single second to think on the unusual paradox we were. Link was what brought about my questioning of ourself, and what we were. Simply put he was what first planted the hint that we were somehow more different from others than we thought; and I wanted to know how.

My questioning, no, our questioning, was put on hold when we had to evacuate with Impa. The death of our father… it was a horrible blow. We swore revenge, revenge on Ganondorf for tearing away our happy world. Goddesses; what a fool we were. Giving Link the ocarina however, that was an inspired bit of genius on both our parts. You knew that he needed it to get to the Sacred Realm; I knew that he could use it against the monster that had destroyed our home and family. We had no qualms about giving him that ocarina; we were in agreement as to that, though Impa chided us for being so careless later. Once again when she spoke to us I came to the fore, stating that it had to be done. This switching back and forth created confusion in us, as I realized you did things I didn't want to do, and you found out that I did things you wouldn't do. Regardless, we had no concept of separation, just frustration as our two sides pulled in different ways.

When Impa took us to the Sheikah tribe however, and adopted us, that was when we got the truest stroke of genius. The two of us had both been working on the idea of how to stay safe, and together we came up with the idea that we would be sheikah. Not just sheikah, we would be male. Not just any typical sheikah boy, we would be an orphan that had lost his parents before being named- with a name denoting such, one that could wield magic. We talked to Impa, told her of the idea, and she agreed. Learning that transformation magic was a labor of love in my case; once again for you, it was a matter of survival. That first transformation was euphoric for me. I felt every inch of our skin tingling pleasantly as our skin darkened, our ears rounded, our hair brightened, and our eyes turned red. The transformation from female to male was automatic and comfortable; an unusual rarity as Impa told us. Most who did such a transformation had to think about it and concentrate on the magic to forge their body without any deadly mistakes; as they were quite comfortable with what they had originally been.

For me it was almost like being born… a breath-taking realization of all that I was and a feeling of unbridled purity and freedom. I finally understood that there was a side of us that was purely hylian, and there was a side that was purely sheikah. We were shocked to know it. We were shocked at the revelation that we were so divided though we fully knew we weren't two people in one skin. I remember after the transformation was complete how the air rattled in and out of our lungs… the ecstatic joy that roared through us due to me that was all too easily interpreted as anxiety. The awe as we took in the sun-kissed skin and the shining gold-blond hair… I could have laughed or cried or done a million other things out of sheer joy.

It was strange in those first few moments. It was like you stepped back and said, "Go ahead. This is your body, not mine. Go ahead and be who you are." I shivered. It was a first for me. We now had an idea. I was the sheikah. You were the princess. We would try to keep that strict division and put our oddities down to acting. That would be easiest, wouldn't it? So I looked at Impa, bare-faced as a sheikah is only to their parents, rare friends, and lovers. When I spoke, it was with a sheikah's accent. I didn't even realize I did it, but you did. I spoke and knew how I sounded because of you. "I… am Sheik. Not Zelda… Sheik. Impa…" She smiled, from what she told us later on she thought we had picked up the accent with her. It was entirely possible, but we never told her that it felt more natural in my form. She became our adoptive mother, and the tribe was left to accept us as Sheik, the orphan boy that had been lost and wandered until Impa found us and took us in.

For seven years we lived like that, with me primarily in control. We trained, we learned. For the lessons we had to endure on history and everything you had to study to be a good ruler, control was yours. We learned everything necessary. We learned things that weren't strictly necessary, but were important to me as a sheikah. While you learned politics and history, I learned everything I could about sheikah culture, history, and beliefs. The split of princess-sheikah became more deliberately pronounced. Our 'acting' improved. Though it was dangerous to wander out of the deserts and into Hyrule, we did so on a variety of occasions; mostly at my goading. We spied. We learned. We finally came to understand that our 'wrongness' wasn't because we were actually hylian. Our wrongness was something foreign even to our native culture.

To be honest, before the first time we slipped back into Hyrule, I had started to forget what it was like to be among hylians. I had forgotten a good portion of the culture. What little grasp I had of it was courtesy of what you held on to. Otherwise the culture of Hyrule would have been as foreign to me as the sheikah culture was foreign to you. Odd isn't it? That I had so thoroughly wrapped myself in our adopted culture that I was forgetting our native one when you were not? And that we still knew we were one person that felt as two within the same skin? We tried not to think about it. Trying to puzzle out the wrongness of ourself only ever resulted in a headache and no answers; so we attempted to ignore it rather than curl up alone in our tent late at night with a screaming migraine.

The oddity of our existence was bad enough, but puberty was its own hell once it hit. We had our curiosity and our interests, but we were both quite firm in the fact that no one should know of our 'wrongness'. Added on top of that was the knowledge of what we went through as a man, and knowing what would happen should we switch to being a woman… even you contemplated that thought with a certain level of trepidation. Growing up male, we got comfortable with having the body of one. The idea of certain uncontrollable feminine bodily functions made you a bit uncomfortable, but it made me want to be downright queasy. That of course was not the worst of it. The worst were the crushes we formed on others.

These were tendencies we fought not to act on, impulses we struggled to keep down. We were agreed in our liking for men, but our tastes were quite different. We both agreed that the men we found attractive had to have a certain level of beauty and inner strength, but that was where our agreement on the subject ended. I wanted warriors, fighters with an artistic core and a strong sense of honor, beautiful men that were well honed and slender. Your interests however, focused more on tall, broad-shouldered men with barrel chests; much like our old friend Veras. You liked hefty bruisers and melee fighters that had a gentle side; a true knight in other words. As the old saying goes, your ideals of male beauty were based off of our father. Unlike you I didn't like the idea of being with a man that towered over me. I liked witty archers and swordsmen that were closer to my height. We had our interests, those that we crushed on and admired, those that we'd pause in what we were doing just to watch them go by, but we never acted on any of it.

To act on it would have been disastrous. To act on those heart-crushing daydreams you had of being kissed senseless by someone like Veras, or for me to entertain the thought of pinning someone to a boulder like creative and mischievous Raji for just a single kiss… We both ached for such an idea at times, though admittedly for different people, in the way of such young crushes; but we knew it could never happen. Better for us to remain aloof and removed to a certain degree than to get ourself into a dangerous situation that we couldn't back out of. Better to be prepared to take the throne when the time came, without such attachments, than have someone know of our wrongness and doubt our right to rule.

I hated it. I know you hated it. Of course we never let on to anyone else, our 'act' was too good to do that. Yet again, it was one of those things that we'd only express our frustration over in the privacy of our tent. I remember how we stared into our mirror on our sixteenth birthday, crying tears of aggravation from my red, red eyes with my face completely bare. You saw our sheikah reflection and felt something akin to homesickness. I saw our reflection and felt unmitigated pride at the warrior we had become. At the same time we felt anger, frustration, and a desperate need to have the continuous tug-of-war in our mind stopped. Looking back on it now I can't help but wonder if we somehow communicated wordlessly to each other as we stared at ourself in the mirror. Goddesses above know that we certainly eyed our reflection frequently enough for it! Whatever and however we did it, we eventually came to an agreement, a compromise, and things began to go much more smoothly for us.

That proved to be a fortunate thing when our mission finally came up due to Link finally awakening. We did our best to aid him and speed him toward that time in his life when he could defeat Ganondorf, knowing as we did from past experience that we could not defeat the Gerudo king alone, no matter how much we wanted it. For you Link was a means to an end; a way to strike back at our father's killer and end Ganondorf's tyranny. I wasn't so set on Link playing his part. No, instead I remembered the forest child that had caught my curiosity when we were little; and I was curious to know what he had become. I was more curious about Link as a person, than as the Hero of Time, if that makes sense. Thankfully my curiosity reminded you of the old friendship; else you might have been less sympathetic of his plight.

Though I never said anything of it, the first time I met Link while my form was out was a thrill that has never since been repeated. You didn't feel such an instant fascination; but then again in a way you had known him longer than I had. To you Link was a friend, trusted confidant, and at the time, was destined to be a great hero when we had first met him. I however, I was fascinated. I wanted, no, needed to know more about the boy that would be the Hero of Time. I suppose you could say that I had a bit of a puppy crush on him long before we learned the magic to give me my own form. To have my own form, to say of my own volition "I am Sheik of the Sheikah" was something that made my part of our soul sing. Even if that peculiar division of my fascination against your sense of duty (not to mention lack of interest) made us question our sanity, I didn't particularly care. You weren't repressed, really, but in most of the times we interacted with Link I was at the fore; running the risks and facing the danger that at times made you recoil in fright.

Getting to know the hero again… I had found my ideal of male beauty. I had found my ideal man in all aspects. I was smitten. You were completely bewildered by my occasional pining and daydreaming over Link. For you it boiled down to: yes, he was our friend, but he was the only way to bring down Ganondorf. The sooner the better. Nothing could have been more confusing for you than those rare moments when we weren't fighting or going from temple to temple and we were alone. It would start off innocently enough: you would be considering tactics, what information or help should be given to Link at what time; and then I would interrupt your careful thoughts with daydreams of Link seizing hold of us, pulling down the mask, and kissing us senseless moments after having taught him another melody. To say that you got frustrated at me would have been a serious understatement.

The fact that he wasn't anywhere near your type didn't help in the slightest. It was a good thing that you did the planning and thinking during that time, because I'm quite certain I would have been an utter failure at it what with my fantasizing. Paradoxically, I knew that had you to lean on for such a necessity; so I have to wonder if I would have controlled my wandering thoughts more readily if we were separate then as we are now. I suppose in some ways I've become more disciplined since our separation. Were I as undisciplined as I was when we were still one, I'm quite certain I wouldn't have survived as long as I have. In a way, you rubbed off on me Zelda. Still, that is beside the point.

With every obstacle passed, with each enemy faced, with every moment that we came face-to-face with Link, I grew more and more smitten. We recognized the dangerous level my fascination was getting to, and we knew we had to destroy any chance that I might act on it. We knew it, and I was heart broken. Just thinking on how coldly you analyzed and knew what had to be done made me want to cry and rage against the brutal fact that it could not be. You weren't unsympathetic to my feelings, but you used your greater reasoning power (when it came to the topic of the hero) to remind me of the cold hard truth.

It was your wisdom that led us to reveal that 'Sheik' was 'Zelda' in the end. It was that one swift act that crushed me, and made me scream in our mind against you. That was the one, and only, time that we ever actually fought for control. It wouldn't be exactly right to say that I gave in right away; but it wouldn't be right to say that you completely overpowered me either. You were calm, confidant, sure in what you had to do no matter how much sympathy you felt for the other part of you. I was angry, upset, and in broken-down tears because no matter how I wanted to place the blame on the other half of me, I knew it was right.

Ganondorf was defeated, we ascended the throne, and Link became our friend and a 'wandering-knight'. However, in the years and decades of your rule, you were the one to interact with him. I hung back because we knew I would not have been able to hold back that look of longing. He continued his exploration and heroics while we kept the throne. He was, in my eyes, akin to a god. Link was perfect, but I knew in that life that I could never have a chance to even touch him. As I've said before, when our time came to die, I was glad; because the Goddesses would fix our 'wrongness' and we would be free. Free from ourself, from our wrongness, and from each other. We would finally be free… and able to follow our hearts.

I'd be lying if I said that wasn't what I intend to do this time. After all, the worst he could tell me after I get to know him again is 'no'. Hearing 'no' from him is far more livable than having no chance at all. I think you'd agree. So wish me luck Zelda, I might never get another hopeful chance like this. In the case of the possibility that he does say no; at least I know who to turn to- and many thanks for that… my other self.

There's the third part of the Two Sides series, and the last part of their 'private musing over the past'. If you'd like to see this series continue (this time with Sheik and Zelda actually interacting, maybe even throwing in Link, etc.) then please review. Throw ideas at me if you like. It would be greatly appreciated. As ever and always, reviews make the Sheik cosplayer happy.