Pizza Trumps Silver
by Selah Ex Animo
Disclaimer:The following contains characters and concepts not owned by the author, but are the property of Nintendo and their associates. Hence, fanfic, :]
Warnings: Mild language.
Summary: Preserving the family silver is nothing compared to having pizza for dinner. Zelda tries to convince Ganondorf of this truth. Ganondorf remains a stubborn disbeliever.
Author's Note:"G" (as in 10G) stands for "gilts", the most referred to currency in this fic.
ooo
"So. Ganondorf. We have twenty extra gilts in food allowance," Zelda said one day from beneath the bed, as she shoved a cardboard box into the open. "Do you want pizza for dinner?"
Ganondorf Dragmire had not expected this.
He had expected ingratitude (Zelda, glaring at him from under the bed: "Decided to shift your lazy ass and help me clear out your inheritance, hmm?"), had hoped for thanks (Zelda, smiling at him from under the bed: "Oh—are you going to help me catalogue everything your inherited from your grandmothers? Thank you ever so much; honey, I know it's been hard—"). He had expected anything, in a word, besides the question of "pizza".
"Pizza?" he said, stepping from the doorway toward the bed.
"Why not? We can order from that place in the Diamond District; you know, the one Peach was saying people should support, because it's family friendly, farm fresh, something like that? Mona Pizza, I think? Local over restaurant chains?"
"I'd much rather finish last night's leftovers and hold on to what extra coin we've got," Ganondorf retorted, slipping a foot around the box, prodding it to the center of the bedroom. He had to hop a little, for he was not pushing with any great conviction; the box was heavy, and its contents clanked dully, solidly; he wondered if these were candlesticks, stolen by his grandmother Koume off Hylian missionaries when she was only a girl and already more quick-fingered than the captain of the guards herself. He smiled to himself, as he knelt to see if he could catch a glimpse of Zelda. "That the last?" he called.
"You hold on to everything," she mumbled. He pretended he did not hear her.
He listened, for a moment, to her wallowing about, the swish of her fingers over the cardboard boxes. He wiped the back of his hand along the sweat coating his neck, caught a drop dribbling towards the collar of his undershirt. Despite the battery-powered fan whirring away on the dresser, the air was stuffy, heavy like a blanket, and through the bedroom window, light spilled and crept across the floor. He leaned away from it into what remained of the bedroom shadows.
A crackling roar sounded from the front room; he titled his head back, toward the din of a TV audience, the voice of a commentator gabbling through the hiss of static.
"That tennis?" came Zelda's voice, muffled and close to the wall against which the headboard was pressed.
"Table tennis, yeah," he said, glancing lazily at the bed, back again toward the doorway.
"It isn't Waluigi versus Amy Rose again, is it?"
Ganondorf considered. "Must be," he said at last. "Commentator's nagging like a bitch."
"Didn't they show that yesterday?" Zelda's voice drifted out like summer haze vanishing; he barely heard it above the TV.
"'Course they showed it yesterday." He stretched his arms over his head. "What else do you expect from channel three? Zelda, is that the last?"
She answered with a thump—fist on cardboard, he thought, and oh could he guess the contents of the box she was punching—and called, "That's why you're in here helping me with these boxes, isn't it? They keep showing reruns of the Olympics?"
He shrugged. "If you want to believe that, sure. I mean, surely your Ganondorf has never been capable of altruism, hmm?"
She snickered, said, "I've never known him to be, yes," then paused. "Farore be good." She gave a whooping sigh. "I am cooking down here. Close the window, would you? The light is making an oven of this room."
"Try stripping," Ganondorf said, and moved to obey. She laughed.
The window overlooked the vista of a city trembling with the heat: a city squat and gray, its buildings flattened into the gunmetal-gray streets, outlined in the sketchy, gray-green lines of traffic islands. Very little of the city stood level with Ganondorf and Zelda's apartment, and they liked to tell themselves and anyone who asked that they had chosen this room solely for the view.
And a fine view it was, if one was of a character to ignore the vast and terrible head of a raccoon looming with all the solemnity of a father god in the center of it.
The sun gleamed fuzzily white on the latex of the balloon, white on the cords that tethered it to the flat roof of Tom Nook's Sundries and Grocery. From this height, there was nothing to be seen of Tom Nook's store outside the blasphemous behemoth of a balloon marking its location. Down below, however, the sidewalks within a twelve-mile radius were lined with advertisement posters: Nook and his everyday low prices; Nook and his fresh produce and fine meats; Nook and his warehouse of baubles, knicknacks, household items, and collectibles. Nook and his willingness to take anything and everything off your hands for a fair price.
Ganondorf had once visited Tom Nook's Sundries and Grocery a year ago, not too long after the balloon had gone up, and brochures depicting a raccoon in a blue apron, standing at smug attention beneath the florescent lights of a grocery store, had started flooding the mail. Ganondorf had noted what passed for "baubles", for "sundries", for pretty, petty, household items in Nook's store: gold Kinstones to hang on the walls, fairies' tears in a bottle, a caged Luma, a bona fide Bowser doll (though the product display had stressed that it was not "a" but "the" bona fide Bowser doll).
The whole display had been gruesomely fascinating, a kind of morbid farce. These were things that had meant something to someone once upon a time, he had thought, going for an everyday low price of 19.99G.
He pulled the window blind shut, hard enough to knock the slats against the glass.
"If you still insist on keeping these ridiculous boxes of armour, then everything we need to work with is on the floor right now," Zelda mumbled, when Ganondorf returned to the bed.
"I do insist." He knelt, flicking aside an overhanging bedsheet to catch a glimpse of her. It was only nine in the morning and her face was already bright with sweat, flushed across the forehead and nose. Wisps of hair were plastered to her temples, the side of her mouth. He reached out and grasped her beneath the elbows, feeling the slickness of her skin, the squelch of his fingers on her arms.
"I don't throw out your books and Ocarina, you don't throw out my armour and sword," he said, and dragged her from beneath the bed.
She scrambled to her feet, clenching Ganondorf's arms in a grip that was unnecessarily tight. "I still read my books," she said, releasing him, and clawing back damp tendrils of hair. "I haven't seen you in that armour or wearing that sword since we moved here."
"To hell with that, woman; I wear the armour when I'm brawlin'."
She twisted her mouth at him. "Scheduled brawlin'. Which doesn't come around too often now does it?"
He refrained from argument. Some comments did not deserve replies.
"And anyway," Zelda was saying, settling herself on the bed and pulling loose the twist ties of a trash bag, "no one's throwing anything out; we're selling this stuff."
"It isn't stuff," he said.
She rolled her eyes at him. "Your armour would fetch a good price at Tom Nook's, I bet."
He flinched. She giggled, smothered it, and looked apologetic.
"Didn't mean to laugh, honey," she said, and opened her eyes wide with waif-like innocence.
"Don't lay it on too thick," he retorted. She had the grace to look momentarily ashamed.
"Your books would fetch three times any price Nook offered me, anyway," Ganondorf continued—gods knew he was not to be outdone by her giggling. He turned from the suddenly sly look she was giving him and seating himself on a campstool, pried open the lid of a cardboard box beside his foot. "Hell, they're the history of Hyrule, real time, in six volumes. Diary form. Written in the hand of a godsdamned sage." He peered back at her, and made a face. "You wanna sell those, by any chance?"
He waited for her to snort, "Oh course not." But she never did, rather, contemplated the trash bag, head titled to the side, a small smile curling her mouth. It disturbed him that she said nothing, and so he glanced away and down at the box he has opened.
It contained candlesticks, just as he had thought, big, silver ones in which Ganondorf's face dulled to a shadow. He gently took one from its bedding of newspaper, turned it around and around searching for dents, tarnish, warpings in the design. He expected to find none, and indeed, there was nothing to be found. But one could expect nothing less from the possessions of a Dragmire. His mother had never once settled for anything less; neither had his grandmothers. They had taken for themselves only that which would last into eternity, these women. They had given to their children—the queens among their daughters, the consort among their sons—only that which eternity had proved, and would prove time and time again.
And now he was to repay them with insults. Sell their treasure—their eternity—to a godsdamned raccoon in a blue apron. His fist convulsed about the candlestick.
Zelda said, "Ganondorf, how much do you think those history books would fetch?"
He flinched again. "I thought you said we were keeping some things," he said, not looking at her.
"Humour me. How much?"
He didn't want to humour her, not about this. "I wouldn't know."
"Sixty gilts, ten gilts per book?"
"I'd clobber the man who gave you ten gilts for one of your books," he said, pointing the candlestick at her.
She laughed. "Ah, see, you do have some idea. Tell me." She smirked at him, in that smoldering way he found fascinating and disturbing, her eyes hooded and the mischief in her glance almost tangible.
He shrugged, uncomfortable, and busied himself again with the candlestick. "One book would fetch a silver rupee or five in Hyrule, if anyone'd dare buy it from you," he muttered, and breathed on the silver, ran a finger over the mist. He left a line a sweat where he massaged.
She plunged her hands into the trash bag and pulled out a heavy square of linen. He recognized it as a window drape, a gift from his mother; he turned away and glowered at the candlesticks. "Someone would dare buy it," Zelda said, chuckling. "There's always someone willing to violate the sacred, and there's nothing sacred in this city anyway. Five silver rupees in Hyrule, you think?"
"I should hope so." He spat the word "hope".
She glanced at him, an eyebrow raised, took a slight breath as though she meant to speak. But then she paused, shrugged, and glanced away. "Nook deals only in bells, doesn't he?" Her voice was cool, determinedly casual, as if she had not heard his emphasis. "I wonder what five silver translates to in bell—oh, Ganondorf, that was what I meant to ask you. What's the exchange rate from bells to gilts?" She smiled, this time, when she glanced up, a smile bright and clear, as if she were forgiving him for the tone of voice he was taken with her.
It was a shame to disappoint that smile. He shrugged. "Wouldn't know."
Her hands faltered on the sheet; she turned her head fully in his direction, the smile sliding from her face. "I asked you to look that up yesterday," she said.
"Well I didn't; Marth had the damn computer tied up all day yesterday."
"You could've asked Dedede. He's got Wi—"
Ganondorf snorted. "Dedede King. Oh really, Zelda, really."
Her mouth pinched; he saw this before she ducked her head back over the linen. "If you can't handle Dedede, you could've gone to the library," she muttered. And in the softness of her voice, there was a terrible precision and clarity to the clip of her words. The sting of her meaning.
"Woman," he said, "A man don't have time to look up exchange rates."
Her hands stilled. She didn't turn around.
"And you can't buy a pack of gum in this city with ten gilts, anyway," he continued. "Why the hell would you let Tom Nook buy your books—your Hylian history —for only that much?"
She twisted around, and there was a flicker of disdain—maybe disgust or maybe pity or maybe guilt—in her eyes. "I wouldn't," she snapped, and there was something too quick, too insincere, in her voice. He settled for guilt.
"Then why—?"
"Humour me," she said loudly, turning back to the trash bag. "We're not selling my books, we're not selling your amour, we're selling the stuff in these boxes and I was just—just wondering. Just wondering about exchange rates and how much we can get for this stuff and why we even have to damn sell it off to begin with and just—" She gestured, one-handed, at nothing in particular. "Just just just." She dropped her hand, slumped a little. He felt her frustration thrumming through the room.
Her agitation bothered him, humiliated him, and he didn't speak right away; he listened for a moment to the fan whirring on the dresser, the strains of a commercial in the front room.
"I… I'm just looking forward to finishing this," he said, gesturing at the boxes and bags, and hoped his words were concession enough.
She didn't look at him for a moment, but then, slowly, she relented; she glanced at him, gave him a lopsided smile. "Yeah," she said.
She went back to her trash bag, he to his candlesticks, and when he had finally emptied the box, he began to carefully repack it. Twenty candlesticks, all in good repair; he wondered what Tom Nook would give for twenty untarnished candlesticks that had been made before Ganondorf's great-grandmother was born, before Tom Nook, this city, had even existed. The candlesticks were made with real silver; they had once lined the bedside table of a Gerudo princess. Ganondorf would show Nook the hard end of one if he offered less than fifty gilts. He had thought to show Nook the hard end of one anyway, rather than suffer him buy anything, but Zelda was insisting they go about pawning his ancestors' material legacies as peacefully as possible.
"I wonder how much Nook would give for this," Zelda said suddenly. He turned to look at her, resigned to finding her with yet another window drape, but when he saw what she held, his jaw dropped.
She was dragging a sheet from the black trash bag, shaking its lustrous, plum-red splendor out like so many rags for the clothesline. She glanced over at him and saw him gaping; she raised an eyebrow and showed him the sheet. "You want to tell me about this one?" she asked. "From the look on your face, it has a history." She rubbed the side of her nose with a thumb as she said this, and history in the form of sheets from a queen's marriage bed passed too near the sweat of her skin, as though history were nothing but a common Kleenex.
"That's my—our—we can't sell that!" Ganondorf gasped, leaping to his feet, knocking over the campstool. "Zelda—" He pointed a candlestick at her, wagged it too and fro like a reproving finger. "You will put that back. Put it back. Now."
She stared, lips parted, eyes bewildered. "But I thought we'd discussed—you said it was all—why? I thought you were okay with this. What're you protesting for?"
He shook his head, took a lumbering step forward, and knocked his feet against the boxes piled before the bed like a fortress wall. He swiped at the sheet despite the barrier, but she rolled to her knees, leaned away from him. "Ganondorf, what is it?"
"That was from my—my—" He coughed, gestured. Hoped she would take his meaning without his saying it aloud.
"It was from your what?" she said.
"It was from my—" He spoke the last word as a sigh, and looked toward the ceiling as if toward a goddess for help. "A gift from my grandmother. For my… marriage portion."
Both her eyebrows rose an inch. "Marriage portion?"
He grimaced at her. "Yes. A marriage gift."
Her eyebrows rose even higher, and her mouth twitched—the hint of a smile, gone as quickly as it had materialized. "You're married?"
He narrowed his eyes. "I wouldn't know. Are you?"
For a moment, her face softened into humour; she smiled a little past his shoulder and said, "According to Daddy I'm not, and I won't be—not to you, anyway—while he's still breathing." She smirked, and glanced directly at him. "And what does your mother say on the issue?"
"Hylians are all insane; run, my son, and save yourself while you can." He gestured at the sheet. "But you have evidence what other relatives of mine have said."
"A blessing in the shape of a bed sheet." She ran the fabric between her fingers. "This silk?"
"No, it's not silk. You confuse 'blessing' with 'practical joke'."
She hadn't heard him. "Why didn't you ever take it out?" she was saying. "Put it on the bed? I swear, Ganondorf, I thought this was all your grandmothers'… mother's… stuff, that we could get rid—sell off. They have too much stuff, you have too much stuff, you said so yourself, and you—" She halted, suddenly, and shot him a suspicious look. "Did you say practical joke?" she demanded.
"In that this isn't a… not really a… ah… sleeping sheet." He shrugged.
"Not really a sleeping sheet? Do tell."
He snatched again for the sheet and she slid from reach. "Tell me, darling—is it scandalous?" The smile flickered across her mouth again. "Everything Gerudo is a scandal one way or another, even the hair pins, and this is a bed sheet."
"I wouldn't know," he snapped. Anything to stop her chattering.
"Ganondorf Dragmire, historian? He doesn't know?" Her astonishment was as thick as it was false. Her sarcasm wormed its way beneath his skin.
He gritted his teeth. "Thirty-fourth century. Property of the Kedaress Aveil of Gerudo Valley; the sateen was a gift from Clock Town. Didn't meet with… scandal—what you Hylians know as scandal—until the thirty-sixth century, when her great-granddaughter—some say her name was Jolene, and others are not so sure; the story has sort of… passed into legend—more or less killed her lover on it, punishment for not being a—for flouting Gerudo culture."
Zelda rolled upright, her eyes fixed on his, her expression curiously blank. "Don't tell me," she said. "Her lover was Hylian."
He shrugged, said, "More or less," and fleetingly wondered after the wisdom of bringing the subject up.
A wan smile touched her mouth. "Tell me."
A corner of his mouth drew back in a smirk. "You couldn't handle it."
It was now her turn to narrow her eyes, to lean forward, to fix him with a baleful glance. She said, "Tell me."
He took her challenge, a thrill lancing through his chest as he did. "This great-granddaughter, this—we'll call her Kedaress Jolene—once ganged up with her lover and a band of Bublin mercenaries to steal her late father's marriage portion from a grandmother who had denied it to him. The girl took the treasure, as is custom, and gifted her lover with one or two things—this was not custom. It has been speculated that Jolene was of a habit of flouting her culture when it came to her Hylian men—or Hylian man; mentions of her lovers evaporate after this episode, and no other men outside the one with whom we are concerned were ever mentioned before the incident.
"When she parceled out the loot, she took for herself the sheets, the silver, the candlesticks, the cutlery, the fingerrings. She gave him the decorated prayer books and asked, 'My love, are you happy with these fine things?'
"A Gerudo man, according to Gerudo philosophy, is not supposed to have the capacity for jealousy or malice or greed. He is thus no trouble to his female family; he would thus have been honoured to have received Jolene's generosity. Unfortunately, this girl's lover was not Gerudo but… Hylian."
"Tainted," he thought, was what his grandmothers might have said.
"This lover—history does not record his name—flung her gifts from him and spat at the kedaress's feet. 'Gerudo witch!" he cried, "how can a man be happy with the scraps you see fit to give him? This is generosity? Hag, I do not want your generosity; I want my fair share of what we have taken. These are my soldiers—' gesturing to the Bublins—'I found them when you told me, "Find me an army to carry home what my grandmother stole". I did this thing; I told myself, "I am content!" For I thought this was but temporary, your parceling out of orders, your parceling out of tasks. But ah! I see I was mistaken, and even in triumph you must play my queen. You are no queen of mine, Gerudo harridan; I will submit to none of your kind; I will have my fair share! Give me now the rings and plate. Half the silver. I will take these things and your prayers books, and I shall be repaid.'
"His speech shocked Jolene, and in that instant, she saw him for what he was: too hot of blood, too imbalanced of humour, too stupid to understand what he had asked. Rings and plate and silver—these things are precious to a Gerudo, for they are our history, if we are but wise enough to remember the stories they tell us. She told him, 'No! These things you cannot have,' and she tried to reason with him, to explain why she could not give these things. But he would not listen, and instead raised a great cry, and stepping forward he struck her across the face and shouted, 'Witch! I shall have what is mine!'
"And so Jolene said to him, 'Then have the fingerrings, the plate,' and she called in the Bublins, told them, 'This man is penniless, dependent upon my good will for the very green rupees in his pockets. I will pay you for your earlier services, and will pay you twice your first price once you have done one last thing for me.' She ordered them to twist several of the stolen sheets into a makeshift rope, to tie the rope about his ankles, and hang him from the beams of the ceiling. They did this, and they filled nine large sacks with the silver and plate, and made him hold these sacks in his hands."
Ganondorf paused, realizing, suddenly, that Zelda's silence was not that of enthrallment. She was no longer seated with her back straight against the bedroom wall, but curled forward a bit, watching him from beneath her eyelashes like something wild, something feral, tense and poised to spring. To flee.
"I would ask how in hell they became lovers to begin with," she said, very quietly, her voice flat and toneless. "But really, it's a fairy tale. They never make any kind of sense, fairy tales."
"It's not a fairy tale," he said, his eyes narrowing.
"Really?" She met the granite of his stare. "Tell me why not."
"She finally ordered him cut down," Ganondorf said, at last. "She told her Bublins, 'Hold the finest sheet, the plum-red, beneath him, that this man who desires wealth may have it in abundance.'"
He paused. Zelda had shut her mouth on her breathing; her jaw was stiff, her face tight with concentration.
He continued, "They… four Bublins heldthe sheet beneath him, and the sheets about his ankles were loosened. He fell. The outstretched sheet was useless; he and his sacks of treasure brought the Bublins down, and he cracked his head open on the stone and bled his brains out all over the sheet. The… kedaress—Jolene—Jolene was quite… regretful that he died."
"No she wasn't," said Zelda, smiling. "She was Gerudo. What's there for her to regret?"
And he thought, you, for one.
ooo
"And the morale of this tale," Koume had once said, when the story was finished and the fire dying and little Ganondorf was pawing at the plum-red sheet spread across her bed, looking for the bloodstains the wicked Hylian had left, "is to watch your Hylians. They are crazy—your mother tells you this, and she has the right of it; they are all mad. They claim they hear the gods, with those misshapen ears of theirs, and so they say they are better than us, more sensible, more practical. But you know this? They cannot begin to do as we do, my little prince; they cannot begin to feel as we feel. They cannot grasp our customs and the things we adore; there is no Gerudo blood or Gerudo humours flowing through their brains. They have no sense of the sacred, not as we do. Watch your Hylians, my sweet little prince. Watch them, and know they will betray you. This thing betrayal—that is all they know."
And Ganondorf turned to her, the sheet clasped in plump fists, and said, "Did they wash out all the brains?"
She said to him, smiling her strange, pinched, mischievous smile as she did, "You look hard enough, and maybe you see that they couldn't."
ooo
They ordered from Mona Pizza that evening.
They ate their pizza seated on the floor, amid the cardboard boxes and plastic bags they had still not unpacked and sorted through since that afternoon, their paper plates balanced on their knees, oil pooling through their fingers.
He hadn't wanted pizza, but the way Zelda seemed to have frozen after he'd finished telling that damn story had convinced him of her necessity above his wishes.
He'd thought she'd liven up a bit when he said, "That pizza you mentioned earlier—we can order it; I'd like some. Eh… family fresh farm friendly whatever, huh?" But she'd only glanced at him and shrugged, then looked away as though humiliated.
He'd snapped, "It's not like it's some kind of extravagance."
"We have leftovers, like you said," she mumbled.
"Gods, I'm not asking for leftovers, I'm asking for pizza."
She flinched when he said this, and he winced and wondered what had possessed him.
The delivery koopa had knocked a quarter 'til six; she'd flinched again and gone to get the twenty extra gilts to pay him with. She'd glanced at Ganondorf when she opened the door, kept looking obsessively back at him as she stuffed the gilts into the koopa's hand, as though the money burned and ate away at her skin, as though it was shameful to touch and hold, as though with every glance, she was saying sorry for a crime.
Her only crime, he thought, was that she took everything that she was not too seriously. She took the fact he was Gerudo and clung to trinkets for the sake of their history, and the fact she was Hylian and could sell anything for a night's dinner, too hard. They lived as one and should have acted as one; there was not supposed to be Gerudo and Hylian where there should have been Ganondorf and Zelda. That was all.
That was what he wanted to believe.
But he did not tell her this.
ooo
A/N: This started out as a fwuffy-sugary-romantic ficlet and morphed into something completely unrecognizable. I still don't know where the fluff went, x3 The "Aveil" and "Jolene" in this fic have nothing in common with their Legend of Zelda namesakes except (possibly, on Jolene's part) the fact that they are Gerudo. "Pizza Trumps Silver" was originally part one of a series of SSBB oneshots. I've transferred the series over to an Archive of Our Own; there's a link to my A03 account in my profile.
Thanks for reading. Comments are loved!