A/N: I apologize for not updating Let the World Smile when I said that I would. But I haven't abandoned it (I'm a bit too invested at the moment to do that). I wrote this while writing, and deleting, various drafts of LtWS's chapter 9.
oOo
Drink me down, Gerudo lord, like water in the desert—like warm, spiced wine—drink me. You need not ask. I have already said yes.
A hundred times I have thought of you: the scent of you in the hollows of my body, the musk of you in my mouth. A hundred times I have died whispering your name and woken to the gold in your eyes. A hundred times I have done this and still, each time is no different from the first. I die. I wake. And when I wake, in the bright, still realm of death, I find you waiting for me.
In death, we are immortal. No hero's sword cuts you down. No blessed arrow pierces your heart. Power does not poison your blood, no more than wisdom sours mine. In death, we do not belong to the goddesses. In death, we belong to no one but ourselves.
Always, the hero accompanies us in the bright, still realm—small-boned and dreamy, a child with his bare feet in the river. If he catches sight of us, walking along the bank, he smiles, as he never smiled in life (when he was a knight in my service, scarred and hollow-eyed, broken in ways no one can fix, all for the sake of my sweet, damned Hyrule).
But for him, death has robbed us all of significance. He watches you and me pass along the river, but when I look back, he has already turned away. He flops down among the wildflowers, eyes shut, smiling, drinking up the sun.
Waiting to return to Hyrule. Waiting, as you wait. As I wait.
I am afraid.
You return first, Gerudo lord, one blue, wet dawn. I do not expect it; I am too drunk upon the taste of your skin. That night, we had lain in a forest grove upon your cloak, your hands on my body and my sleepy kisses trailing down your neck. You had stroked slow fingers along my hip and I went loose with pleasure, with sleep.
When I awoke, you were gone.
My chest clenches, so hard that I choke.
I look for you, stumbling as the meadow turns to rock beneath my feet, as if a curse oozes from my footsteps and blights the earth. I call for you. But wisdom is bleeding back into me, as the hunger for power has bled back into you. I know my search is futile. I will not find you in this realm. You have gone back to Hyrule.
The hero finds me searching for you on the edge of death. He is still a child, but his face is drawn, his eyelids swollen with exhaustion. Blood crusts his nails. A piece of Triforce glistens on his skin, grisly as an abscess. He carries a sword. He will not be reborn bearing that sword. But the blade brands him; he will never forget that it is his birthright.
Just as I will never forget that the kingdom of Hyrule is my birthright.
A Triforce scorches my hand. I think of your hands and wonder why I did not smell your flesh burning, as the goddesses seared their curse into you. I wonder why I did not feel you rise, in the blue, wet dawn, why I did not hear you follow the goddesses back to Hyrule, hungry for damnation, as hungry as I have ever been for you.
The way I hunger for you still.
My hunger for you draws me from death back into life, but Hyrule, too, calls me. The voice of my kingdom is a sweet melody of water and wind, lyre and ocarinas. I know that Hyrule calls to you as well. Do not deny it. Once, as we lay on the edge of sleep, you mouthed the word Hyrule against the back of my neck, and I breathed yes, yes, yes.
I return to my kingdom. The way back is easy. A Hylian queen dreams of having a baby as her husband takes her into his arms—
(As you once took me, Gerudo lord. But the memory leaks through my fingers like water. Gods, I am forgetting the bright, still realm of death already, the scent of your skin, the taste of your lips, the gold in your eyes, the sound of your voice.)
—and I slip down inside of her, like some god of old.
The hero follows me, as faithful as a dog. His mother births him in peasant filth; he lives on the edge of things, while I am raised in the heart of the kingdom, wise, lovely, goddess-touched girl, who dreams of gods and speaks in prophecies.
And when we are of age, the hero and I, he returns to me, with a sword and a shield, steady and courageous and far too good for this world.
I cut out his heart, his tongue. I savage him, until he is mine.
It is not enough that the hero is steady, courageous, and good.
Hyrule demands a sacrifice.
Hyrule is hungry.
By now, Gerudo lord, you have conquered me, razed my palace and sent me into hiding. The land festers with your monsters. I plot your downfall. The hero slaughters in my name. I have long forgotten the bright, still realm. I do not remember the hero's sweet smile beside the river; I do not remember you, the way your touch melted me down. I am Princess Zelda—no more, no less—charged with the protection of Hyrule. I am the messiah.
And that is all that matters.
When the hero and I meet you in final battle, upon the ramparts of your tower, I do not recognize you as the man I loved in the bright, still realm. Power has ruined you; you are all hard lines and bone-deep scars; your voice rasps with ceaseless want. You snarl and rage with a desperation that hardens my resolve; when first you are a slavering boar, and finally a man—wrapping a slender cord of magic around my throat and flinging me and my light arrows to the ground—there is no room in my mind for any thought but that you are evil.
I drag myself through the fallen columns, tasting blood; I crouch, steadying myself with shaking hands, watching the hero weave in and out of your glittering blades. As I raise my light arrows, I pray the goddesses will guide my shot.
And when the hero lifts the Master Sword over your stunned body for the final time, I pray he will strike true.
For you see, I am still hungry, Gerudo lord. For your blood, for your death. Ravenous.
When it is over (the hero's blade sheathed in your heart, your eyes rolling back, your lips going slack, as if in prayer), the knot inside of me releases. I touch my head to the ground, unable to look any longer upon your corpse; I weep, deep sobs that grate up from my stomach, because you are dead, the hero and I are alive, and Hyrule is safe.
That is the last time I feel so alive. Seventy-seven more years of this existence, of this Hyrule, and that is the last time I feel alive: hunkered upon the ramparts of your tower, blood in my mouth, weeping beside your dead body.
It is exhausting, to live without an enemy as all-consuming as you were, Gerudo lord. By the time that I am stretched out on my deathbed—my children trying not to breathe in my dying stink, my ministers obsessed with the question of wills and succession, my hero a block of flesh-and-blood marble in the corner of the room (still carrying that sword, gray haired and dying, so good, so faithful)—my mind unhinges. The past clouds my brain. I close my eyes and I am back on the roof of your tower, the bow and light arrows in my sweating hands, the hero a flicker of green and steel at the corner of my eye. You regard us. You look me over, long and slow. My body roils beneath the sweep of your yellow eyes.
(Not yellow. Gold. I wake to your golden eyes, again and again and again.)
"Your father's seed is corrupt, Princess," you say. "It will destroy this land. I do this for Hyrule."
A part of me thinks, it is you, not me, who will destroy this land, wicked king. But another part of me thinks, always for Hyrule. Everything for Hyrule.
"Yes," I say. "Yes. Yes."
(Hyrule, you once whispered, into the back of my neck. And I, almost asleep in the silence of the bright, still realm, replied: yes, yes, yes.)
I am ninety-four years old, dying, and you, Ganondorf Dragmire, King of Evil, have been gone for seventy-seven years. And all I can think of is those golden eyes, the shape of your whisper on the back of my neck, yes, yes, yes.
My spirit wrenches free of the broken body lying on its deathbed. I claw my way up, away from Hyrule, away from her melodic whispers. I catch sight of the hero, in the moment before I tear clear of the room. He tilts his head, his eyes fixed on me.
He smiles.
I think of him, small-boned and dreamy, a boy with his feet in a river, lying on his back. Smiling into the sun.
He is going home.
I am going home.
I am going back to you.
oOo
Gerudo lord, what must you think of me? What must you think of yourself? Of the way we tore at one another, playing a goddesses' game? How between us, we tore a kingdom and boy hero to pieces, and will do so again, and again, and again?
We lay together in the bright, still realm. You are half asleep, your lips curled back into a lazy smile. I watch you, looking for the hard lines and bone-deep scars of power. I find nothing. But I know that they are there.
Our death and our time in this bright, still realm will not last for much longer. Already, I feel the tug of wisdom in my blood. Already, I see your restlessness, how you look toward the horizon, listening for Hyrule's call.
Do not answer her just yet, Gerudo lord. Ganondorf.
Take me first, drink me, swallow me down, before we are reborn.
Before I forget.