Running (FOUR SWORDS FANFICTION!)

Vio's Point of View

Shadow was leaned up against a tree, and next to him, Aki was leaned against his shoulder. Only one of them was asleep, though.

"Hey, Shadow." I always felt like I should greet him some other way, but no greeting came to mind.

He barely looked up at me. "Hi, Vio."

Aki squirmed next to him and he turned his head to make sure she was okay. Everything was so silent.

Shadow fiddled with his hands. "There's something I need to talk to you about," he said quietly.

"What is it?"

Aki moved some more. Shadow took off his hat and gently lowered her to the ground. After that, she didn't stir. Shadow grabbed me y the wrist and dragged me away from her. We stopped walking about ten yards away from her, which I could tell was too far for Shadow because he kept glancing at her direction.

"What is it?" I asked again.

He looked unwilling to share what it was.

"Shadow..." I moved closer to him. He finally met my eyes.

They were red.

He might have noticed my flinch. "They've been like this for a while, Aki pointed it out earlier."

I could tell he was expecting me to move away from him, to show some sort of disgust towards him for his eyes. Last time I saw him with red eyes, I had narrowly escaped the execution he ordered and I had helped kill him in return. Maybe he had been revived via the Dark Mirror, but I still killed him, make no mistake.

I cupped his face and started stroking his cheeks with my thumbs. I saw no anger in the irises. I just saw fear, and it looked much more obvious then than it did before. "When you aren't angry, they're beautiful."

He blushed, even more, when I kissed him on the nose. But he looked away from me.

"That girl...Aki..." He exhaled slowly. "She saw...That village I set on fire, the one you saw me set on fire, she watched it. Her friends died."

I sucked in a breath. I felt somewhat responsible for it, to be honest. I had known I could convince Shadow to help us stop Vaati and Ganon, not only did I fail to do that, I didn't try and convince him to not burn down that village, instead, I stood next to him and watched. I could have talked him out of following that specific order, out of all of his orders, I would have saved lives, I could have saved him.

"That's...awful."

He nodded. "I don't think I've ever felt so guilty before. It's all my fault."

I hesitated. "When we get you out of here, you can..."

"I can what, Vi?"

"Help us protect Hyrule. Prevent stuff like that from happening, protect a bunch of innocent children from ever witnessing anything like that. You can be a hero...with us."

His eyes slowly met mine...and he smiled. "That sounds pretty great."

"It'll be pretty great. We can all be happy." 

There was silence between the two of us, but I wanted to say something, I wanted to say several things. I decided one might be more important than the other.

"What are you going to do about Aki?"

He sighed. "Get her out of this damn forest, first of all."

"And after that?"

"I'm just focused on getting out of here."

I shook my head, tried to tell him he needed to start thinking about what would happen after that, but all that came out was, "you can't exit these woods, can you?"

He paused, frowned. "I'm not sure what will happen if I try, but I'm pretty sure it won't be good." He swallowed.

"Go to the edge of the forest, the trees will start thinning out. Maybe we can find Aki when we do the whole ritual thing." It felt more like wishful thinking, chances were, they'd get there before us, and if we tried to find them, we'd wander around for quite a while trying to find what edge of the forest they were located. And...I wasn't sure if they should stay put for too long. Someone was trying to hurt them...wasn't there some sort of danger?

He nodded, deep in thought.

"Shadow?" he turned to look at me.

"What?"

"You know...when you aren't being a douche...you're a good guy, Blue." I smiled but I could feel it slip off my face.

He sighed and sat next to me, slipping an arm around my shoulders. "You say 'good guy' but I know you really mean the 'goodest guy.'"

I rubbed at my eyes. "That's grammatically incorrect."

"You're grammatically incorrect."

I sighed.

"It'll be okay, Vio."

I nodded, trying just to believe him. I turned to face him. Had we originally been that close? And why were we moving even closer?

All of a sudden, my mouth was pressed against his. And I didn't pull away, I leaned in.

And we were right on his bed! This was Shadow's bed! I was kissing Blue on Shadow's bed, Shadow would be pissed But I wasn't thinking about that, no, I was thinking about how Blue would be in bed.

Absolutely pissed.

"I'm sorry," I said to him. He didn't know what I was sorry about, he just assumed it was that obvious.

"You did the right thing," he said. "Don't be sorry, be proud."

"...I love you."

Shadow grinned at me. "I love you too."