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It's been months since his death.
Months since he held his frail, fading body in his undeserving arms.
Months since they tried to merge back together, but the sheer tenacity of his grief, the whirlwind of conflicting emotions, tore them apart once again. He'll never forget their faces as they stared at him, sapphire horror or crimson confusion or malachite pity or a strange ammolite mixture of it all. Red's watery eyes and Blue's set jaw and Green's furrowed brow will always be permanently etched in his memory.
He often wonders how well they remember his thistle misery.
They had tried to talk to him about it. To get him to talk to them about it. He had given them only the necessary details, after all. No words had been spoken about how, exactly, Vio had obtained his trust in a matter of weeks when it should've taken months. Not a word was uttered about the midnight conversations, the room they shared, the secret smiles and prolonged eye contact and the touches, the lo-
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
It wasn't necessary, after all.
Just as it wasn't necessary for them to know the real reason as to why Shadow approached him in that forest in the first place.
They had discovered pretty early on that they had their own abilities surrounding the elements they appeared to symbolise. Apparently, embodying facets of Link's personality wasn't enough to distinguish them. Green had been the first to discover this, after accidentally blowing Blue into a bush with a gust of wind during an argument. Blue had been next when he'd dropped a cup of water, only for the water to float instead of falling with the cup and drenching the tavern's floorboards. Red, at some point, fell into their lit campfire only to find he was slightly warm but otherwise unharmed, despite the flames licking at his skin.
They were all relatively small, instinctive things. Vio himself had discovered his affinity for the earth in a situation of similar gravity. He'd fallen from a tree, and instead of hitting hard, sunbaked earth, was cushioned by a soft pile of dirt and soil.
The difference was that the others left it at that.
Vio hadn’t. The others claimed that using that sort of magic was too close to Shadow's trickery, and they were too dead-set on being Link to embrace a gift the original hero had never had.
Vio, naturally, thought that was all bullshit.
Instead of ignoring his fascinating newfound talent, he gathered all the books he'd managed to find about the element of the earth and practised in secret. Whenever he was alone, when everyone was asleep, or when he went out on patrol. He learnt to move the sands, to change stone and rock, to alter the shape of the very land they stood on. He learnt about the processes of decomposition and renewal, of how the old had to break down to nourish the new, and how to accelerate and decelerate those processes. His thirst for knowledge had never felt so quenched. The ecstasy of using the magic flowing through his veins and the world around them filled him in ways that felt so natural he wondered how he had ever managed before. It was pure, clean, innate, elemental magic. Something he was born to wield.
But then he found the book.
It was the day before they attempted to traverse the river and wound up separated. The day before everything went awry. He'd discovered the book in the market, all about the earth element and the things it encompassed. But upon further inspection, it covered something no other book in his collection had even mentioned. The reversing of natural processes. How, if you connected yourself to the hivemind of the land and the ley lines, you could reverse decomposition, reform rock and stone, reverse the renewal of the world itself. It was a relatively harmless book to the curious scholar, to the ungifted everyman. But in the hands of someone skilled at decoding the structures of the earth with only his hands? That person could learn to eventually do terrible, terrible things.
In other words, a real hero would've destroyed it.
Vio kept it.
He's still not quite sure what that says about him.
So when the canoe crashed, and Vio found himself alone in a forest? Surrounded by his dear element? He couldn't resist. He had to at least attempt it. The forest had been peaceful when he'd opened the book and began trying to reverse the decomposition of a rotting flower he'd found on the forest floor.
He'd known if the others saw him doing this, they would be horrified. They'd call it dark magic, or unnatural, or the beginnings of necromancy.
It was ridiculous.
What he was practising was hardly dark magic
And it had felt too...instinctive to be unnatural.
So he'd continued his attempts at revitalising this unfortunate, decayed flower. Had taken the knowledge he'd had with the wisdom of his new book and used his own intelligence to find the pathway to the ley lines, to the hivemind of the earth. He very clearly remembers unfurling his fingers into the soft soil, eyes closed and searching for a connection. He remembers finding it, the feeling of euphoria and power that flowed through every vein, every fibre of his being as he touched the web of energies and magic that held together the land. How it felt akin to finding the place you were destined to fit into. It was like unlocking a piece of himself he'd never known was hidden there in the first place.
It was pure.
It was freeing.
It felt right.
And then the monsters came.
Vio had been brutally torn away from the sacred connection by a rough punch to the face. He'd been lucky the monster wasn't armed and had only its fists. By the time he'd grabbed the four sword and killed the bastard, he was surrounded. Strange, considering the forest had been desolate at first, but seeing as he was currently in a life or death situation, he would ponder that later. Acting on a split-second decision, he pulled off a spin attack, siphoning off the remaining energy from the ley lines, slashed at the nearest moblin, and ran in a random direction. He was lucky that connecting to the hivemind had been energising rather than draining, otherwise he'd never have been able to outrun them.
After hours of fending off monsters and sustaining various injuries - miraculously none that prevented him from moving at a good pace through the forest in an attempt to find shelter - he'd found himself in a clearing, finally able to catch his breath and think about what the fuck had happened.
He'd gone through the most eye-opening experience of his and Link's life combined, and out of the blue, a horde of monsters found him. There had to be some sort of correlation there. They had only appeared once he'd achieved the connection, after all. Perhaps they sensed magic? But then they would've found them on all of those nights when Vio would sneak off to practice.
He remembers thinking that there had to be something about this type of magic in particular, something that the monsters would've been able to detect, or perhaps something that called to them. And then - and he recalls this as clearly as if it'd been yesterday - a voice called from above him.
"I can hear you thinking from all the way up here."
And so Vio had reacted immediately, pulling out his sword, barely wincing as it pulled at his wounds, looked up, and saw him.
Shadow.
He was perched in a tree up high, the wind toying with the branches while he stayed eerily still despite it. Ambiguous and obscure as ever, simply observing Vio, a strange look on his face. At the time, Vio hadn't been able to read it, unfamiliar with the concept of a creature born of darkness having complex feelings, or, to be honest, any feelings detached from evil motives at all.
He knows better now.
Now that it's too late.
But that's besides the point. Because Shadow then floated down to the ground and had the audacity to look like nothing was wrong, even with Vio's sword pointed right at his face. He had the nerve to scoff and nudge it aside coolly, garnet eyes never leaving Vio's own, despite everything about their current situation. So calm and ethereal in the way his body would blend into his namesake, the lines of his form bleeding into the darkness before reforming anew. Constantly in motion, yet unnaturally immobile.
"What do you want, Shadow?"
Upfront, strong, collected. Giving no indication of weakness.
Shadow ignores his question.
"You think so loud, little Violet. Your eyes alone give away your thoughts."
"Don't call me that."
"You Links are so predictable. Let me guess, you were thinking 'Oh Hylia, how did the monsters find me? Everything was fine before I tried dark magic!'"
And that- well, there were two things about that statement that bothered him.
"It wasn't dark magic! And I do not sound like that!"
Even now, he cringes at the memory of his response.
Shadow had simply laughed at him, impudent and loud, the ebony sound echoing through the night. Had said
"And here I thought you were the clever one."
Vio had narrowed his eyes. "It can't have been dark magic. I felt it firsthand, I'm sure I would know. It was too..."
"Too...what, exactly? Too pure?" Shadow's tongue dripped with condescension, burning his skin.
"Did it feel powerful?”
He took a step forward.
“Did it feel euphoric?
Another step.
“Did it feel...desirable?
Little by little, he had inched closer, gently taking Vio's wrist as he'd stood, frozen, as Shadow stripped him bare. Closer and closer until he was close enough for Vio to notice the slope of his cheekbone, the curve of his jawline and the piercing look in his eyes that was cutting right down to his core.
"Did it feel divine?" he'd whispered, breath brushing against Vio's ear, words piercing and knowing.
"How did you…?”
"Oh Vio, haven’t you realised?”
He huffed a small laugh.
“If there’s one thing I’m well acquainted with, it’s the dark arts.”
His smirk was soft around the edges, as if in attempt to soothe the blow that was the truth. Vio had been, by all rights and purposes… practising dark magic. Not only that, but the violet hero had revelled in it.
And that begged the question. What kind of hero was he? He remembers thinking that the others would cast him out, surely. They might’ve let him off, saying he didn’t know what he was doing, but that would be a moot point if they knew how he’d felt like everything clicked into place in that moment. He would be shunned. Cast aside with the creatures of darkness and monsters and Shadow—
Then a hand cradled his face gently, wiping a tear he hadn’t realised had fallen.
"They wouldn’t understand. The others would leave you, they wouldn’t listen. They could never understand, because at the end of the day, it’s them. Small minded idiots who think they know everything.”
His voice had turned sweet and saccharine, gentle and dripping with understanding and sympathy.
Vio had known what he was doing, known he had been trying to turn him against the others, but everything he had said was undeniably true.
"Only you can see the bigger picture, Violet. The good and the bad. They can’t.” He laughed. “And they never will! The others won’t listen, they don’t want to think and question everything like you do.
"I want to know what you think. I’ll listen to it all. You can tell me anything, and I’ll hear it. I won’t judge you. I won’t cast you out. I’ll welcome you, Violet. You’ll never feel tossed aside again.”
Vio will always remember how the thick, sugary sweetness in Shadow’s voice had faded at the end. The sincerity that overtook him as he promised everything Vio had ever wanted. And as he had already proven, Vio was only human.
He crumbled.
What more could he do?
Vio decided to hear him out. Had gone with him. He’s never quite managed to regret that.
Not even all these months later.
He remembers the weeks after that had simultaneously flown by and stretched out. Shadow had brought him to the fire temple after convincing Vaati that Vio wasn't going to betray them. Remembers how, the day after Vio had been inducted into their ranks, the first thing Shadow did was simply to show him the library.
Not to make Vio begin training for mastery of dark magic, not to rope him straight into the blood and gore, not to prove himself with unspeakable acts. There was barely a mention of evil.
Shadow simply opened a door into a dusty room full of books and grinned in a way that bared his teeth, said, "Thought you'd appreciate this, since you're the only one here who can read well." and left Vio to his own devices.
That wasn't to say Vio had been left unsupervised, he'd found out later that Shadow could sense his rough location whenever he was in the dark world, as he could with the rest of the colours. An uncanny connection to his origins, Vio supposes. A stained glass window tinted black and grey.
The next two days had been spent in not-quite-regrettable self indulgence. A haze of piles of books and wells of information Vio couldn’t have accessed anywhere else. Books of all sorts, from tomes heavy with the inherent weight of dust that comes with time to stories with fairytales and intricate pictures full of colour, to volumes of books that had been declared as banned for eons for their content.
But above all, books on magic.
Dark magic.
And Vio hadn't stood a chance. He'd collapsed, folding under the weight of his curiosity and the temptation of opportunities he would never find anywhere else. He remembers the feeling of guilt sinking in his gut as he'd reached for a book he'd be thrown in the dungeons for even touching, shame curling around his insides as he thought that this was the beginning of a pathway he'd never come back from.
He was right for the most part. The book had gripped him, piquing his interest and satiating his curiosity. He'd been found by Shadow completely engrossed, with piles of books surrounding him.