AN: Context? Who needs context? Presumably occurs right at the very end of Twilight Princess, shortly before Link shows up in the throne room of Hyrule Castle to whoop Ganondorf's ass.

Inspired by It's Time, Princess (tavington, deviantART)
art/It-s-Time-Princess-194643256

Inspired by Sleep, Princess (kiesu, deviantART)
 art/Sleep-Princess-408657930

"We are bound, Zelda. You know this."

"To what, Ganondorf? Bound to what? To the Triforce? To Destiny? … No, you are bound to yourself. To your insistence that you are deserving of a thousand deaths for something you did not control. To your belief that you can't be a better man."

"Oh, Zelda…" he murmured. "Truly, you are wise. Too wise."

"Then I am right." Her eyes pleaded with him, wide and filled with the blue of the desert sky. "Let go, Ganondorf."

"… I can't."

She looked down, closing her eyes against the heat that jumped behind them. Her skin twitched at the feel of a gentle hand curving around her cheek.

He couldn't. He wouldn't.

But she kept her lips closed against the feelings that she wanted to voice. Even if he changed his mindset now, it would be too late. He had set his path months ago, when he first stole into the heart of Hyrule in the cloak of Twilight and staged his quiet coup.

They took a step nearer to one another, simultaneously drawing closer as if pulled by a force of its own. She could feel their Triforces chime in harmony, awakening one another with their presence and the energy of their bearers. Link would feel it, too, as he drew nearer and nearer to the throne room; the gentle prickle on the back of his hand that resonated soundly in his core. For all of their power and all of her faith, she could not change the Dark Lord's shattered heart.

She couldn't. He wouldn't.

But she would try.

"You could bow," she begged, her voice no more than a murmur. Ganondorf's death was nearing, and he rose to face it as if he were completely unaware. "Kneel to me when the Hero arrives. Throw down your sword and stop this gruesome bid for penance." She was a proud ruler. She refused to cry. "You are a good man, Ganondorf."

She could almost feel it in the shift of the aura of the room. He was doing it again, bricking closed the chamber that stored his heart. His emotion. His conscience.

"I am glad to have your vote of confidence, Zelda," he rumbled in reply. His hand slipped backward, letting his fingertips brush the crown of her head.

In a sudden, violent movement, he grasped her head in his hand.

"But I'm not."

Pain, pain. All she could feel was pain as her consciousness was ripped free from the strings of her body and forced deep into the recesses of her mind. Zelda gasped and looked up, her eyes crying out what her mouth could not do. She was panicking, she was hurting.

Why? Why?

Her pain, her heart torn to pieces as he refused to let her save him. His pain, the invasive force bearing down on her and threatening to crush her. She was being wiped from existence, permeated and replaced by him, only him. His past and his present, the future he already saw far clearer than she saw her own. His hopes and his desires, crushed and wasted, rotten as they waited for him to resurrect them from the depths of his heart. His sisters, their bones stripped bare by the harsh wind and sand of the desert and bleached by the sun. Crumbling to dust as he tried to caress them one last time, spewing lies from his lips about doing it for them.

She could see his intentions to use her against Link. So much hate. So much rage. Such a bitter sense of humor to use her body to destroy her world. She could feel his hope for victory, an addictive tang against her tongue even as her senses faded from weak to nothing. Even as the last two spots in her vision, two rings of burning amber, faded into nothingness. Even as his last words echoed in her heart, words that she knew would haunt her every existence.

"I am a bad man."