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The trick to being a good liar is to have everyone convinced you’re bad at it. Have them thinking they know your tells. So you give a few away, ones that don’t matter in the long run. You make a few novice mistakes – overplay the sincerity, overly avoid eye contact – and have the proper reaction to being “caught.” And when people think they’re seeing the truth, they won’t notice anything else.
Now, you don’t have to trick yourself into thinking that lie is true to get others to believe it. That’s bull. If you’re good, you know every lie for what it is. Intimately. Just project confidence, sincerity. Don’t be fooled, sarcasm can be a great way to convince someone that you’re sincere. It throws people off guard.
Never break from the mask you make. Put your personality into the lies. Don’t make them more than they need to be. Don’t correct them mid-way. The basics.
Spare no one.
Not even those you love.
Lie to them the most.
This is what I was taught.
***
Sometimes, I think lying to Link was the easiest thing in the world. Sure, it left something horrible and ugly inside, but that was later. When it had all started, it was a moot point, it was a job and what did I care what I said and what was true? In the end, even though I had already made my choice, should someone have been in the position to ask, I would have said it was “for his protection.” Protection from what, I’m not sure. Probably me (though I wasn’t supposed to be his biggest enemy.) He’s the kind of person you never want to hurt, to deliver bad news to, to add burden to. So you lie, omit truths, more than you had been.
Like he’s something fragile… and not the Hero of Time.
Yet, he is fragile, just not in the way you would expect.
I would lie to him. Little things he was meant to see through, some jokes. “No, you don’t look tired.” “The hat makes your look rakish.” “I did not pilfer your cleaning kit. What use would I have of it?” The cover-ups that earned me the title of a bad liar, where he thought he learned my tells.
The big ones, the real lies, he never doubted ‘til the end. “I’m here to help you on your quest to defeat Ganon.” “I was sent by the princess.”
“I love you.”
…I’m not sure that last one is a lie. If I had truly loved him, I shouldn’t have been able to do the things I did to him, right? Is that not the way it works? Or is what the Sheikah teach true? Loving him made it that much easier to do those things…
It didn’t matter in the end. I’d stood next to my Lord on top of that castle and Link learned who had been giving me orders. He knocked him down, and in the time it took Ganondorf to rise, before the castle crumbled, Link dealt with me. He was so angry, and a half-dozen other emotions, I’m sure. I didn’t put up much of a fight, there was no point; I know Ganon was done for and I was a traitor twice over.
I had served the Dark King for years, almost longer than I could remember, and yet had convinced Link that I sent from the castle. However, if things had ended differently, I wouldn’t have been able to return to Him. I had consorted with the enemy, actually started to help Link save Hyrule like I had been claiming to all along. There were none I could call ally.
Link hesitated at the end, so it wasn’t a quick death. I was able to get in my last words, like some noble casualty.
“I’m sorry,” even though I wasn’t, not for everything and he wanted to know why, “I’m a liar,” and then I said those words that confused even me.
“I love you.”
I think he believed me about as much as I believed myself.
Sheik hated Hyrule. Hated the desert, his home, and its dryness. Hated the women who taunted him as he moved about the fortress. The pretentious Zora, who thought they owned all the water, even that which came from the sky. Who denied Sheik the opportunity to quench the thirst that plagued him.
He hated the Gorons and their simple pleasures. The Hylians and their ease. Their assurances, their comfort, their existence.
And when he joined Ganon, he hoped his Dark King would destroy it all.
Raze it to the ground.
Obliterate it.