A/N: Little drabbles about the inter-connectedness of the Triforce's "chosen three". This was the first one. I have never written for LoZ, so if you like, let me know!

The water pounds all around me and I cannot stand any more. It is finished. The moisture in the air makes my escaping blood scarlet and runny, spreading every which way, so copious that I do not know how my heart still beats.

I am a reincarnation of hatred.

Knowing this is not something I learned, not at any point. But I feel it with a certainty borne of having lived it a thousand times.

You see, I am only minutes from mortal death now. I have been defeated again. But I remember. I remember more than they do—perhaps because it is always my decision that prompts them to action. They sit unawares until I force them to move—to save their world and everyone in it. And I remember on an almost-conscious level.

I need only look at their faces.

There they are—just a boy, no matter how talented with his mythical blade; just a girl, no matter how noble her birth, or how far her wisdom extends beyond her years. Mere children that are delivered by the same thing that I am—the power of this relic.

There they are, sopping wet and panting, watching as their chests tremble with human breath. It is so deceiving when you know how much more they are…how much more I am. We've lived many lifetimes and we are chosen by the goddesses, blessed by the goddesses. At least, that is what is embellished in Hyrulian history (though I am classified as some 'divine trick'. But here, I know the truth: this fate is no blessing.

My lot has been won through my own greed and ambition; I can acknowledge that. I could argue that I was created and driven by something so dark that who is to say that this was a path of my own choosing? ...but I will not. Because when you're dying, the world does not seem the same place. And ironically enough, it matters not whether it is fair.

But these two others—the princess and the boy (the boy without a fairy, the boy without a friend, the boy without a sister…) How can the goddesses justify their fate? Because to say that this is anything other than punishment is too much to be believed.

The Triforce has doomed them for an eternity to repeat the same cycle. And they suffer. Oh, how they suffer. The thought makes me smile.

It is terribly obvious what the boy has been through. Each and every time, he bleeds and cries out and sinks to the ground in exhaustion. He takes cut after cut and fights unspeakable monsters. He is prompted by different reasons—something is taken from him, usually. And I goad him. I capture her, I mock him with it. I come at him with a ferocity I have not given to any other man or beast. But he is essentially good, and he does not hate or take his revenge the way I would in his position. He does not know how. He is a pathetic fool. Every damned time, whether he is a hapless child or a man grown, he is a fool. Because that is what it is to be a puppet that doesn't realize their strings are being plucked.

And ultimately, those strings aren't even being plucked by me—or the goddesses, though such a thing could be argued. There is something else, a kind of twisted pattern in place, and it set itself into motion before I ever vowed to take their precious, Triforce-sworn lives. Like my hatred, that is something that I can feel. I can recognize an urge more ancient than my own existence, borne with my predecessors.

He fights for her. His pathetic hero's heart is driven by that princess. That woman. Though he could fight for so much more.

Now, I look at her, golden hair damp and strung in long waves, her eyes shining through her weariness. She is a child, but her soul has lived hundreds of years, and she has no concept of it. She doesn't know just how many times that simple youth next to her has given his blood, his time, and his life for her. And she is just what she always is—a girl who manipulates a devotion that was cultivated millennia ago. A fallen goddess who you can look upon and marvel at nothing more than her precociousness and a beauty that isn't quite ethereal.

But she has suffered in less visible ways. In every lifetime. Her guilt is what she bears most prominently—mistakes she makes because she no longer has the means to choose the way a goddess would—she is not omniscient. And I will exploit that at every turn. I revel in it.

The warrior-boy can move across time to protect her, even when he doesn't know why. But I will always be there, just as he is.

I will always return.

I look at their faces side-by-side as I take my temporary leave of this earth. I know it for what it is, because I see them—no, not them. The dripping, battle-worn Link and Zelda fade, and past them, between them, are distorted echoes. It is another time, another place. It is an older time, and their faces are sharper and more discerning.

They peer through the white window like twins with their jewel-blue gazes—Zelda in a veil, and the boy in his dirty, green tunic. I see them out of the corner of my eye and I know…I know, that we are back—back to the first time the golden-green boy ever set eyes upon me, when I had set out to collect three stones. It was the beginning of everything, when our fates intertwined inextricably and a cycle set its course.

And these divine little spectres stare at me from behind the glass, wise to me already. They know what I am…but they've no idea how much trouble they will reap by my hand.

So I turn to look at them…and I smile.