A/N: This could be viewed as the sequel to Döppelganger with the Sheik/Samus/Zelda action going on, or as a stand alone one-shot. Once again, I'm afraid I've made them out of character, but I needed to have some emotion from Samus and some stupidity from Zelda. I just can't have her being the aloof princess in a new world that's so different from her own, especially when she has (my version of) Sheik destroying everything good she does. She needs to make mistakes for the story to continue. Also, poor gets-no-lovin!Link.
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An Almighty Thud
It's in the way Samus drags her knuckles across the piney table, wiping the dust from its surface like a warlord enforcing the scorched earth policy, that looks like she's done this ten million times with the ten million lives of creatures inferior to her. She inhales deeply, not too deeply- not like a sigh, and heaves out the steady breath into the stuffy atmosphere of the council room. Link scowls at the disturbance, a miniscule muscle tightens at the corner of his mouth.
The others turn for a moment, thinking she has something to say. (She probably does.) Samus remains silent and stares back at them. She makes it easy to turn away.
From across the table, Zelda scribbles notes in her swooping script, but she hardly knows what she's writing as the pen (strange things, pens- not at all like quills, but the script is cleaner, if not as elegant; Zelda might even prefer the cleanliness of them) records tidbits about new rules and time limits. Her parchment crinkles on the dusty table, dirtying her white gloves, and Link watches despondently at her side. Zelda is the only one taking notes.
The Voice (a counterpart of the Hand, perhaps?) tells them that the meeting is adjourned, and the room clears out like a grenade was thrown into it.
Zelda notices too late that she is the only one left at the unclean table. Even Link is gone.
Not that she cares.
"Your gloves are dusty," says Samus in a crackly voice. Zelda lurches at the sound, she had thought she was alone again. Samus has a habit of sneaking up on her. (Her voice hasn't been used in a few days, except for battle cries and once to laugh at her opponent, bleeding on the ground like a stuck pig.) She is portrait-framed in the doorway, arms crossed authoritatively, blonde ponytail dangling slowly behind her neck.
Your hands are dusty, Zelda wants to snap. She would have if it had been Link, but Link doesn't drag his hand in dust just to prove he can eliminate it. (He doesn't kill dust bunnies just because Zelda is watching and knows how it almost bothers her the way some people can be careless with a life, even a not-life like dust.)
Instead she answers diplomatically, "I suppose I'll have to do laundry today."
Samus smirks, and Zelda's stomach drops. She can see that Samus is here to mock her. The damn smirk is the first sign. (It's been this way for two months, after Sheik disappeared back to hell or wherever people like that come from.)
"Get one of your servants to do it," says Samus.
Zelda misses the way Sheik would have torn into a person like Samus. Sheik would have ripped out her throat, lapping greedily at the blood, and breathed hotly into the crook of her neck. Her prey would shudder in fear and satisfaction.
But Zelda is alone now, and Samus is a bully.
With a sharp snap, Zelda smacks the pen on the table. She removes her gloves in one fluid motion and tosses them onto the bounty hunter's folded arms. As she passes she snarls, "See to it then."
The princess (who does not tolerate bullies) does not turn to see her reaction.
After dinner that night, Zelda returns to her room and finds her gloves on her pillow, as pristine white as virgin snow.
(It makes her want to cry or gut a fish or punch a mirror.)
She falls asleep looking at the gloves now folded on her nightstand. In her dreams, the whole world smells like white soap and she is kissed until her lips hurt by a face she recognizes from the battlefield.
Samus is a slave to no one. She is a friend to no one. (Too bad, she thinks. I'm so loyal.) A fearless look protects her from the world like a hero, like a fighter. Sometimes though, Samus feels like she's falling.
When she sits at her bathtub, idly scrubbing white gloves, Samus feels like she's falling.
It's (so so so so sosososososo) stupid how she feels. She's still mean and acerbic, and when they fight, Samus is wicked in her ways (she strives to use bombs and find baseball bats) so Zelda never, ever beats her.
But she's tender with the gloves, gently rubbing all the dirt away, like a servant or washerwoman would. Or like a mother (sister, lover?) would for her child.
She's not sure how Zelda will take this response, but, oh, how Samus laughed when the princess finally bit back at her. It's taken two months for her to rile up the royal ragdoll (she hasn't forgotten the way Zelda's body looks when it's beneath hers), and she's enjoying her fury to the fullest extent. Finally, a reaction from Zelda herself.
(Her scarred hands rub the pinky of the gloves, soap bubbling at the friction.) Her bangs fall into her eyes, and she wipes them back, soap trailing her finger's touch. The contact makes her eyes water. They do not stop watering.
(She hurts everything she touches: all movements are a war dance, all contact is painful, all people are enemies. It's a chant, it's a prayer, it's her life.)
After an hour Samus is still sitting in the cold water, idly scrubbing white gloves, with puffy, red eyes.
Two days later, Marth stabs Zelda with his blade, slicing through the tender skin of her neck.
She drops, bloodying her knees on the pavement, and her tiara skids across the ground in front of her before she erupts in a plume of light.
Samus screams.
Her voice echoes through her suit, bouncing back into her ears, and she blasts Marth off the map with a colossal cannon burst, ravaging the field and all of its competitors.
As she dashes, she shoots, bodies crushing and disintegrating before her eyes. (The quicker she kills them, the quicker she can go to the infirmary.) It has not registered with her that no one can die on this battlefield. Part of the rules. No death. How no death? Doesn't everyone want to live forever? Zelda is dead.
Logic holds no sway. Her cannon (canon?) makes sense.
They say the medics had trouble reconfiguring Marth's body.
Princess, Zelda hears. Princess, are you awake?
She sees a blurry Link holding flowers by her bedside. Little yellow daisies like the kind she could grow in her window box in Hyrule. Zelda stares at them emptily, but she does not lift her hand to take them.
Link puts them on her nightstand, where she can't miss their presence.
Her blue eyes close and she hears, Sleep well, Princess.
No more Princess, please, she tells the voice.
Link rolls up his green sleeves, staring pointedly at Samus, who seems to have no other position in life but standing in doorways. (Easier to run from the exit.) She is taller than him by an inch, and it makes his stomach turn that she knows it.
"Here to apologize to Marth?"
His voice is raspy.
(He's handsome, Samus notices for the first time. Lucky Hylians.) The points of his ears stick out from beneath his cap, peeking out from his blonde hair. Samus looks past him to the flowers on Zelda's table. They look delicate.
"No," she breathes. (Sounds like a sigh to Link.)
In a movement that leaves Samus uncomfortable and slightly afraid (she fears nothing, doesn't she?) Link lays his hand on her shoulder. She screams internally, Let go! But makes no move to shrug him off.
Quietly, he murmurs, "I'll kill you if you hurt her."
Her eyes narrow in an instant, immediately offended by his threat. Anger, wrath, Samus wakes up.
She immediately pins him to the wall, thrusting her face against his like a rabid dog. "I could say the same to you," she seethes. (No fear on his face, only sadness. She can feel him breathing.) Her knuckles are white, as if covered in dust.
He puts his heavy hands on her arms, lightly pushing her away, diffusing the tension with his sorrow. Samus steps back, confused. (Questions plow through her mind. She hates what's happening.) Human emotions are everywhere and she doesn't understand.
Link walks into the infirmary, his back open for an attack from Samus (she won't hit him when he isn't looking, she's more honorable than that) as he retrieves his little flowers from the table. He hands them to Samus.
For the second time in a week, someone throws something onto her that she doesn't want. The flowers sit in her arms, cradled like a baby, and Link looks down at them, begging for a movement.
Unlike Zelda, he waits for a reaction from Samus. (What does he want? Why did he give me these? Are these still for her? I've never been given flowers.) He receives none from her statue-still form, so he leaves the hospital with empty hands.
Samus stands in the doorway.
(Doubt has never played an active role in her life.)
Zelda watches wide-eyed from her bed.
There is no grace in her step on the way to the bedside, no panther-like fluidity or unbelievable speed. Samus practically shuffles like a drunk, clutching the flowers in a vice-grip.
She sets them on Zelda's stomach and says, "These are from Link."
Why did he give them to you?
I don't know… so I could give them to you?
They don't say anything aloud. Samus goes back to her room.
The mage dreams again that night, twitching in her sleep like a dog. She feels her royal demeanor slipping through her mind, barriers falling the longer she's alone.
Sheik is grinning at her, face covered by the storm-colored scarf she wears.
The red eyes frighten Zelda, but she stands up straight like a bounty hunter. (She does not tolerate bullies, even internal ones.) "I thought I was rid of you," Zelda says.
Sheik is unmoving. "You can't be," she answers.
(Blood and magic pulse through the earth, through their veins.)
"I won't let you out again."
In a flash, Sheik holds the sides of Zelda's face. She breathes, "Let me fix your problems. She understands me. She understands how to communicate like I do." The scarf hides sharp teeth.
(Such a logical argument. The princess feels her resolve dissolve.)
Zelda steps backwards, "You'll never let me return."
They are holding hands (not lovers, but a guard and prisoner) and Sheik says, "She put me down last time, she can do it again."
And just like that, Zelda is gone.
The first place Sheik goes is Zelda's closet. A white nightgown, see-through lace panties, and everything else sheer (innocent little whore) are pulled carelessly from the hangers and shelves.
Her weapon of choice is the pair of gloves. (Sheik knows what Zelda knows, feels what she feels. Sheik knows all about the gloves and Samus and uncertainty, but Sheik knows more than her counterpart. Sheik knows how Samus will become her bitch out of turmoil and desperation.)
In an act out of character, Sheik stops by a mirror to brush out Zelda's golden hair, laying it delicately on her chest. The faint glow of her irises catches her attention and she thinks the distinct color of them may spoil her ploy, but then she remembers why she won't fail. It will be dark and Samus won't see her red eyes- she'll be looking elsewhere.
Sheik licks her lips.
She'll have to restrain herself though, or this ruse won't work. (Too bad, she thinks. I'm so hungry.)
In the darkness of her bedroom, it takes Samus a full minute to realize she is not alone. (She's rusty for leaving her guard down.) On impulse she strikes out, catching what feels like a neck in her hands.
"Please, don't," says a soft voice.
(Immediate release.)
"What the hell are you doing here?" she asks.
The voice, the princess, says, "Take me." Long fingers in clean, white gloves graze her arms.
Samus unflinchingly obliges.
It begins well.
But by the end Samus feels she had done something wrong. She feels dominated by the smaller woman, pressed into her pillow like a rape victim. It feels good (so good, so good, oh god!) but it isn't like she imagined.
It feels like a dream. Sticky and wet, air full of muffled cries of pleasure. There are teeth marks undelivered by Samus, and bruises on her body that perplex her previous notions of Zelda. She is being so rough.
It is wrong almost. (Doubt resurfaces. It's everywhere now, including sex.) Samus isn't sure she wants to do it again.
(With the dawn comes the princess. Sheik's business is done.)
The instantaneous recognition of her duality, her deception, drowns her in a world of tears. Zelda's crying at what she's done, at what she's loosed on another human being, even one from a different world. The sheets wrap around her body, covering what Samus has already seen, disturbing the sleeping bounty hunter.
She can't hide what she's done.
Zelda grabs her naked shoulder, "Please, Samus, help me. Sheik, she did this-" her eyes flick downward on instinct, "She wouldn't let me… I'm so sorry. It wasn't me." Her velvety voice is not smooth anymore.
(She's taken her fall from grace without any grace, and Zelda is willing to atone. She's already hit the ground harder than she believed possible, and thrown her kingdom away like a whorish child.) Expecting a backhand from Samus, Zelda flinches when the taller woman rises from the bed, staring down at the princess with her empty icicle eyes.
Her body is perfect, Zelda cannot help but notice. She has lines of muscle and scars and soft, sinewy shadows run down her form. Samus' eyebrows knit together in a look of confusion, anger, and repulsion (hatred of these human emotions, even the good ones.)
In a move that stuns Zelda to the core, Samus simply asks, "Why?"
She feels tears pouring out of her eyes, more than she's cried since Hyrule was destroyed by Ganon and rescued by Link, more than she's cried since her mother died. Zelda pulls a blanket over herself, clenching the material like a lifeline.
"I don't understand you," Zelda says, fingers shaking.
Staring down at her bed, Samus pulls Zelda's blanket (her blanket) away to take it with her. Zelda leans back against the headboard, gazing at the ivory walls across the room with watery eyes, naked body pressed as far from the other woman as it is possible to press.
"So this is how you deal with me?" asks Samus, wrapping her blanket around her nude form. Her face is a steel trap. So you send Sheik to fuck me? The unanswered question is obvious in her tone.
(The whole ordeal feels unclean, or like dirt hidden beneath the surface of a painting.)
Zelda cannot form more words, so Samus marches out of her room, hair frenzied, shoulders and breasts marked by feline teeth, wearing only the thin blanket provided for the fighters in the league. She passes groups in the halls but pays them no attention, stalking as far from her room as swiftly as she can.
She finds herself on the roof of their quarters, open to the sky and to the street below her.
An air vent provides a back-rest as she sits in silence (no screaming, no more crying.) Samus wipes the dust from the vent and lets the pain wash over her, relishing the renewed hardness of her heart.
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