#chirophobia

They were on the island above the temple at Lake Hylia. After an hour or so the shivering stopped, his body finally something akin to warm—so warm, in fact, that he asked Sheik to help him stumble to the shade of the desiccated tree overlooking the water—but the cold, the deep cold, still lingered like a lump of scar tissue in his abdomen. Sheik cradled his neck and helped him drink—water, mostly, and a little potion to help him along. When Navi finally woke, she burrowed under his chin, her tiny arms reaching around him as far as they could go, and wept and wept. He tried to shush her, tried to tell her it was all right, but his throat was raw, and the feeling of her tiny hands pressed into the sides of his throat was making his skin crawl.

Sheik stayed with him, nursing him back to health, for two days. It was unusual; he and the bard were allies, certainly, but their relationship was transient at best. They had fought monsters side-by-side, worked together to put out the flames in Kakariko, rescued Gorons and Zoras in distress alike—the Sheikah seemed to have a penchant for appearing from the shadows when he needed him most—but he never stuck around.

Which is why it really should have come as no surprise that as soon as he was sure all of his limbs were in working order, he disappeared again.

“I don’t know how long it will be before your strength returns,” he had murmured, frowning. “I’ve… never seen anyone survive this before.”

“Probably because they didn’t have a Sheikah to watch their back,” Link had said, wearing a weak half-smile as the bard drifted imperceptibly toward the shadows. “Thanks for rescuing me.”

“If you ever need anything… well.” His crimson eyes glittered a bit. “I’ll know.”

Link spent the rest of his recovery in Kakariko, downing blue potions when he plateaued, when he began to suspect that the Dead Head had been gorging itself on some kind of spiritual energy along with everything else it took from him. It didn’t help much.

The villagers were kind to him—especially the older women, always clucking over him like a gaggle of mother hens, ensuring he had enough to eat and a comfortable place to spend the night. Always gasping and doting on him when they would see the welts all over his front that just wouldn’t fade. But despite their kind intentions, he inevitably found himself craving Sheik’s meticulous caretaking. They were eager and loving and warm, but he had been observant. He had noticed the way Link had begun to flinch at the slightest touch, the way the muscles in his face would jump when his hand would drift too close. The way his nightmares were always the same: hands and hands and hands, reaching for him in the dark. The women in town seemed oblivious.

He decided it best to leave when, while he had been eating a kindly offered bowl of stew, one of his mother hens reached out with a pudgy thumb to wipe a smudge from the corner of his mouth, and he grabbed her wrist in a snap reflex and stood so quickly he knocked the food over.

Navi had noticed long before then, keeping to herself unless he invited her to alight on his shoulder or slip into his pocket. Even then she kept her hands folded at her breast, fluttering her wings instead of reaching out when she needed to steady herself. He appreciated the gesture, of course. But mostly it just made him feel broken.

He wandered Hyrule, still disinclined to brave the trials of the Shadow Temple. But the longer he drifted, the worse his affliction seemed to get. Everywhere he went, he was hounded by ungentle reminders: the massive, leathery hands of the Gorons, so strong they could crush bone; the slender, silken fingers of the Zoras, that slipped so easily over Hylian skin; the tiny, fleshy palms of the Kokiri children, always grabbing at his legs or his hair or rummaging through his pockets. Things finally came to a head when, sparring at the Gerudo training grounds, he threw his opponent to the ground in a panic when her hand found his throat and nearly dismembered her at the wrist.

His travels took him back to Lake Hylia—as far from civilization (or the Shadow Temple) as he could reasonably get. He went back to the island and peeled off his tunic, and laid on the hot stone under the sun, trying to warm up that lingering cold spot, still knotted beneath the welts. When a shadow fell over his face, he didn’t startle. He had almost expected it.

“So, you’ve given up, then?”

Link breathed deep, deep enough to stretch his ribs, to test how far the heat had penetrated. The cold scar in his gut pulled unpleasantly.

He whispered, “Maybe.”

“Impa needs you.”

“I know.”

“The princess is counting on you.”

“I know.”

He sat up, frustrated, and watched the wind churn the surface of the lake. Sheik was always quick to tell him what he needed to hear, and much slower to tell him what he wished he would. What kind of a companion did that make him?

I’m not your companion. I’m your counselor, he had told him once. Gods help me.

“Whatever that thing did to me,” his said, his voice husky with memory and his hand lingering over the spot that wouldn’t warm, “it isn’t healing. There’s something here, like a scar. It’s always cold.”

“I know,” the bard sighed, finally moving to sit beside him in the grass. “I’ve seen the way you cradle it. Like it’s something worth protecting.”

Link bristled. “If you came here to say something, then get on with it.”

“It isn’t the scar in your body that’s holding you back. It’s the one in your mind. You’re afraid of facing it again.”

“And you fault me for that?”

“No. Only a fool wouldn’t fear a Dead Hand. I fault you for letting your fear get the better of you.”

“You’re one to talk about fear,” Link scowled, blood heating. “Always hiding behind that mask. Always hiding in the shadows while I throw myself down the throat of temples and dungeons at your bidding.”

“If it was my place to challenge the temples,” he murmured, an unfamiliar bite in his voice, “don’t you think I would have done so long ago?”

Link narrowed his eyes at him. “You never even tried, did you? And you say I’m the coward.”

“Don’t you think I would have rather risked my life than be idle for seven years, watching Ganondorf burn Hyrule to the ground?” he snapped, crimson eyes sparking livid. “Don’t you think I want to help Impa? That I can’t stand the thought of her rotting down there? That I—”

He clenched and unclenched his fists, his jaw, grasping at silence. Grasping at control. Link waited, watching him simmer. It was so unlike him to be anything but impassive. It was bizarre. It was a harsh reminder that he really didn’t know him at all.

“Then come with me.”

“I can’t.”

He swallowed disappointment and directionless anger. The truth was he just wanted someone to blame. And he didn’t want to be angry with the princess, who had begged for his help so long ago, or the gods, who might withdraw their blessing if he seemed ungrateful. Sheik on the other hand… he was easy to hate when he wanted. He embodied of all the ugliest parts of his destiny.

“You came in after me,” he pointed out anyway.

The Sheikah frowned beneath his mask. “I had no choice. If you had died in that temple… I had to take the risk.”

“Who’s to say I won’t die in the next one?”

“I have faith that you won’t.”

Link scoffed. “Then the gods might disappoint you.”

Sheik shook his head, staring back over the water. Watching the lake glitter like there were answers in it.

“I meant faith in you.”

Link looked over the lake too, frowning. “Then I might disappoint you,” he amended.

“We’re all afraid of something, Link,” he said. “We all have terrible fears no one else could understand, even if they tried.”

“Even you?”

“Especially me.”

He snorted. “Like what?”

“Besides losing this war and watching Hyrule wither away at the hands of a tyrant?” He stopped for a moment, thinking. Imagining it. Then, “The look on your face when I tell you the truth.”

Link waited, studying him. The Sheikah shadow. The bard. The guide. The stranger.

He asked, “The truth about what?”

“I can’t tell you,” he said quietly, slowly sliding his lyre from its place on his back. “Not yet. But soon.”

Sheik settled the instrument between his hands, stroked the strings softly, like he was feeling for the beginnings of a song. He plucked a note, and the string trembled and hummed under his curled finger. Link imagined his spine vibrating like a harpstring, stroked and pulled on and plucked by intangible fingertips, and looked away.

“Close your eyes if it bothers you to see,” he murmured. “Just listen.”

Sometimes it was disconcerting how much he knew, how much he saw. But Sheikah supposedly always saw the truth. Maybe that was why they were so good at concealing it.

The song was nice. It was thoughtful and bittersweet, deceptive in the happy sounds of the melody. There was sadness in it, lingering in the discordant thrum of the sustain beneath. It didn’t match the setting at all, with its sunshine and glittering water. But it matched their mood.

“I won’t lie to you in this,” he said, arpeggiating a slow series of refrains, “if you go back to the temple, what awaits you is nothing less than an embodiment of your nightmares.”

He frowned, trying not to picture that penetrating darkness, trying not to hear the clang of the guillotine blades striking a steady rhythm like hands on a clock. Trying not to feel something more precious than his life draining from his body. He said, “The Dead Hand.”

“No. Something worse.” Sheik’s hands stilled on the harpstrings, and the song faded, incomplete. “But if you will not brave the trials again, then Ganondorf has as good as won. There will be no one left to challenge him. He will eventually flush the princess out of hiding, and the kingdom will be lost.”

“I could protect her,” he hedged quietly, futilely, selfishly.

“Not from him. Not forever.”

The wind whisked across the surface of the lake, making the water purl and Sheik’s harpstrings drone, and Link sighed into it. He was right, about everything. As usual. He really hated that.

“I know. I just wish…” He trailed off. “Well. There’s no point in wishing.”

Sheik propped the lyre up again, sensing his acquiescence and satisfied by it. He left the old song behind, plucking something new. It was lovely and slow, swaying and swelling into the high strings and then falling back down, gentle as an autumn leaf. It sounded like something that ought to be sung. It reminded him of a woman’s voice.

“Do you know where she is?” he asked. “Is she safe?”