here's the deal, ouroboros: bite down, or let go

[sagesurvivor]

Who: Sheik('s noctaere) + You!
Which: (Mostly) Open log
Where: Around Reverein + within Sheik's dreamscape
What: Sheik finally breaks and goes noctaere. This causes some weirdness in Songerein, and perhaps some secrets to be revealed within his dreamscape if his defenses can be broken through...
Warnings: It's a noctaere plot. Violence is inevitable, but should be contained mostly to a specific (closed) thread.

When the nostilium finally overtakes Sheik, there is no explosive burst of violence and terror. One day, he is as he has been since he passed out during the world fragment crisis: sleeping, silent and still. The next, he's gone, vanished into the ether without a trace. It wouldn't be unreasonable to think perhaps he's awakened and returned to the Hyrule he was so desperate to protect.

But then some strange things start happening...

[Please note that characters do not need to have had prior cr with Sheik to participate!]

Comments

[multidisciplinary]

[ She doesn't expect Sheik to be happy to see her. Things have been tense between them for weeks now-- and even though she's now realizing that might be due in part to the amount of nostilium he has been infected with, a part of it is because of her. Her actions in the wake of Link's departure were selfish and she has been so wrapped up in her own misery that she hasn't realized the way she's been hurting her friends.

Zelda winces at the accusation he levies against her. They're words prompted by the influence of nostilium, spoken intentionally to hurt her, but she suspects that there's some truth to them. Nightmares don't typically spawn out of nothingness-- sometimes, their roots are pain that has been festering in the heart for a long time.

For a year now probably, ever since he found her choking on her secret stone when she first returned. ]

That is not true. Every time I've tried to return home to complete my duty has been difficult. [ Her expression is somber as she regards him, catching from the periphery of her vision the nostilium rippling beneath his feet. ] You know the burden of duty.

[ Then a pause, as something occurs to her, ] Is that how you lost your princess? To her duty?

[ Zelda has no idea what happened to the princess of Sheik's Hyrule, the one he so adamantly insisted Zelda could not be the night they first met. (Really, she doesn't even know for sure that he directly served his era's princess; it's an assumption Zelda made based on his fierce loyalty to her.) ]

[sagesurvivor]

[Not difficult enough to spare any of them a second thought, he thinks to say, the unfair words sharp and acrid on his tongue. At least Impa had told him where she was going that day she set off for the Shadow Temple. At least the Princess of Destiny will apologize for her actions before she bids the Hero of Time her final goodbye. He does know the burden of duty, and he knows all too well how sharply it can cut any and all who draw near.

But her question catches him before he can breathe a word, his eyes widening in bemusement before—]

... Ha.

[Even he is surprised by the bark of a noise that escapes him (it's not a laugh, not really; it's too flat, too angry and bitter to be one), lifting a hand to brush his bangs away from his face as he recovers his composure. The shift in his disposition that follows is subtle, but likely still noticeable to one who has spent as much time in his presence as Zelda. While perhaps there had been some truth to the resentment he had regarded her with a moment prior, there was still an artifice to it—an act he had been playing to fulfill his goal of getting her to leave. They are not the whole of his feelings towards her, and she knows as much.

But now? As the conversation shifts to the princess they rarely speak so directly about?]

"My" princess is a craven weakling who cannot even show her face to the ones cleaning up after her.

[The complete and utter contempt that infuses his every word rivals that which he holds for the Demon King himself. It may even exceed it, perhaps.

His head cants back, eyes settling on the crystal floating above them, though at Zelda's distance it may seem as though he's only looking to the heavens for whatever answers or absolution they can offer. The clouds outside only grow darker.]

There is... no duty that she is capable of fulfilling. [Then, a sigh, the remorse he had greeted Zelda with once again overtaking him for just a moment.] ... Hyrule would be better served by you in her place.

[Has that not been proven? In all the ways their legends align, is there a single point where she has not been stronger, wiser, more capable than him in every way? Even in the times she cannot succeed, she at least manages to mitigate the damage to her people somehow. What can he say he's done, really, in comparison?]

[multidisciplinary]

[ Zelda's expression darkens as she hears Sheik call his princess a "craven weakling." The contempt in his voice is not something she ever expected to hear like this. For as long as she's known him, Zelda has always had the impression that Sheik has the utmost respect and devotion to his princess. After all, he was openly offended when Zelda introduced herself as the Princess of Hyrule when the two first met. Sheik epitomizes the loyal Sheikah warrior, a shadow of the Royal Family. Hearing him denounce his princess is not only difficult to hear, it's difficult to believe.

Zelda follows his gaze up to the floating crystal. She can't properly make out the figure trapped inside it, but the way Sheik regards it, Zelda is willing to guess his princess is inside it. Or, at least, that the crystal and its figure represent his princess in some way.

And it reminds Zelda of the last time that Hyrule seeped into the dream world and threatened to poison it. At the apex of the crisis, the princess and her champion both became trapped in crystals much like these-- crystals guarded by Blights that had to be defeated before they could be freed. Sheik faced one of those Blights, come to think of it.

Her brows furrow as she looks between Sheik and the crystal, weighing his words, sensing how the nostilium in the air shifts and grows. Is she here to save Sheik, or is he the Blight that must be defeated to save whoever is within that crystal? ]

Before the Calamity, many in Hyrule who would disagree with you. 'Heir to a throne of nothing,' they called me, when I could not fulfill my duty to awaken my sealing power. I often thought Hyrule would be better served by any one of my ancestors, that I was the greatest failure of our line.

[ Zelda takes a few cautious steps towards Sheik. ]

But I was wrong. And so are you.

[sagesurvivor]

You speak so confidently for one who knows nothing.

[Because he's told her nothing. Every time the princess of his era has come up, he's dodged and deferred and changed the subject, even when she asked him to do something as simple, innocent, and utterly impossible as welcoming her eventual return with open and understanding arms. How could a princess who fled her people and allowed them to suffer for so many years ever have a right to such a thing?

The face of a girl with blazing red hair contorted in disgust flashes across his mind's eye. His brow furrows as though pained, and the sparks of static that dance around him grow in intensity with each step forward Zelda takes. Why can't she just leave well enough alone...?!]

What has she left for you that makes you think so? In what scant legends remain of the Hero of Time, is there any mention of a Princess fighting at his side?

[He knows there isn't. Despite it not yet coming to pass, he knows that a hundred years after the Hero of Time defeats the Demon King, the Six Sages, immortalized in stained glass, will surround the Master Sword's sacred resting place beneath the rebuilt Hyrule Castle, and not a single image of Princess Zelda will be among them. He knows this, with just as much certainty as a young girl who knew the man from the desert wished for nothing more than to destroy the world as she knew it.

His gaze drops back to Zelda, and the look in his eyes is... strange as he looks down at her from his elevated position. Like there's something some part of him hopes she'll understand, even as he tells her that there's no way she possibly can.]

... Or, now knowing full well the cruelty of the flow of time, can't you see that perhaps there's a reason she hasn't shown herself?