A/N: This story comes from the lack of...como se dice, originality currently in the Smash Bros Fandom, which I usually write for. I love Zelda (avid nerd, just finished a three-week painting of Ganondorf, took forever) and am very impressed by the fandom (not to say SSB is bad, of course it isn't...just lately) and the fics I've seen. I read a great Ganondorf/Zelda fic, and was very inspired to do one. That fic was called Guileless, by Morna, and it was incredible, so if you liked this, it was inspired by that one, check it out. Thanks for reading!
Human
For many years, the King of Darkness had slept.
For many years, the land's Demise had been silently, slowly waiting.
For many years, the Demon Thief watched as centuries rolled on, thinking, thinking, pondering and reliving his various lives.
Memory was quite a persistent thing.
He was never truly gone. His physical body resided in the ground, or rather, his various bodies were one with the soil and plants by now. But what did it matter? He would never be gone.
Never before had Ganondorf thought his quest fruitless. He learned something each time he lived a new life, wore a new face, met a new Princess of Destiny and a new Hero. They were always so young, so ready. So beautiful and divine.
Never before had Ganondorf thought his quest fruitless, but the face of the beautiful Princess, or at least one version of her spirit, still haunted him.
Time moves slow.
Despite his many years waiting and watching, waiting and hoping, waiting and thinking, he was never able to get used to the pain of the years. They didn't eventually blend together - they stayed with him, each one embedding itself into his skin like an irritating grain of sand he just couldn't get rid of. And now, there was a grain in his eye.
Were they really all locked in this endless cycle? Were they really such prisoners to the goddesses? What was it all for?
Eyes locked in a space that didn't exist, the Evil Thief stared on, gaze ever moving and never moving, mind always swirling like stars in and out of existence.
He supposed, if he wanted to look at the glass half-full, as the Princess might say, he could be grateful for the opportunity - all the time in the world - to ponder the completeness, scarcity, and abomination of human existence, but the fact of the matter was that considering it made him feel rather small, despite his place in the glass between worlds.
He wasn't big, trapped in the goddesses' window. He was merely a mind, a meaningless, useless being held for torture. Oh, yes, it was torture watching everything swim by, so cold and perfect. It was torture to see the goddesses playing with the humans like perfect little machines.
And what was it all for?
The constant struggle between good and evil - what did it really mean? Who was he really? Was he Ganondorf, the Usurper King? Was he Ganon, the Demon Beast? Was he simply the Thief of the Desert, was he a swindler and swine, was he even a being of worth due to his status of not only being a human, but also his blessed - cursed - divine quality of immortality?
Who was he?
-AL-
He had felt whole once. Once in one of his many, many lives, he had felt whole.
He couldn't feel the power, the unearthly, ungodly power that thundered through his veins and lungs; he couldn't feel the mental disconnect that murdering offered him; he couldn't feel the thin, gossamer strand linking him to the goddesses, the afterlife, the meaningless, drifting existence he felt once the Hero won. He couldn't feel any of those things.
The only thing he could feel...was being human.
He felt the outlandish, unfamiliar sensation of pain.
The tears dripping down the Princess's beautiful, pearly skin nearly tore him apart, nearly melted him into the floor where he stood. Her cry of anguish at the deaths of so many of her people nearly broke him to the point of surrender.
He felt the strange, unusual sensation of joy.
It was rare, in his times on Hyrule, but he could feel it. It was so different, so confusing compared to the ruthless, blind lust for power he was programmed for. He had only felt it once or twice, but when he had, it had been so overwhelming he hadn't understood quite what it was, or why his hands shook with something that wasn't rage.
And he had felt the weirdest, most irrational feeling of them all: love.
-AL-
"I'm sorry, Princess, I truly am," he said, his voice positively bleeding with sarcasm. "But you refused to stand down."
Her fading spirit roused her corpse-like body. "I will never bow to you." Her voice was hazy, racked by coughs, and sounded as though it had come from a million miles away.
He looked at her pitifully, and then she met his eyes with the fieriest glare he had ever encountered.
"Never," she coughed out, then turned away from him, back to the wall, and pulled her covers up over her shoulders, her thin, sharp shoulders.
And in that moment, he felt his heart tremble - no, the heart was a muscle, but what was that feeling? he couldn't understand it as he watched her body shiver, outlined like a cliff under the cover.
He opened his lips to say something, but his tongue felt dry in his mouth. Nothing came out as he watched her, her refusal to look at him, despite knowing he could strike her down at any moment.
Why hadn't he then? And why couldn't he leave?
Frustrated, trying to drown the weird feeling in his chest, he blurted out, "I could kill you, and it would be easier than snapping a pigeon's neck!" rather unceremoniously, and not nearly as mysterious, cool, and collected as he liked to be.
"Why haven't you then?" she asked dryly, voice muffled underneath the blanket.
Um. "Leverage, my dear." He had regained control of his manner, and decided to strike fear into this stupid girl, this girl he would love to wrap his hands around her neck, strangle it until he heard her death gurgle. "Don't think I won't, eventually."
When she denied him any notice that she'd even heard, he turned to leave the room, his boots clacking loudly on the cold stone floor. Under his breath, as he shut the door behind him, he murmured sadly, "I always do."
As he walked down the steps from her tower of isolation, the grey walls seemed to be closing in on him, suffocating him. All he could feel was that weird sensation in his chest as it worked his way up to his throat, restricting the air. He bent down quickly, trying to catch his breath, confused and slightly terrified at the same time.
Wait, terror? He never felt terror.
But the feeling, he realized with eyes wide, was guilt.
It was guilt that tightened his throat, that clutched him around the stomach as he tried to regain his footing. Guilt for what?
Zelda, a voice he didn't recognize whispered in his ear.
Goddesses, what, was he human this time? He laughed off the idea. He never felt these things. Never. And he wasn't going to start now.
But later that night, he left his dark, cold chamber where he usually spent his sleepless nights, staring at the moon like the world's most cliche vampire. The moon was round, soft, its delicate and gentle iridescence bringing to mind the curve of Zelda's cheek was she slept, or when she refused to turn to him, as she usually did. He was fairly certain he'd never actually seen her face for more than a few seconds.
Standing there, that night, in front of the pearly moon, bright and innocent as the Princess he was holding for, essentially, ransom, the feeling wrapped itself around him again, taking hold like a thick, crushing blanket he couldn't worm out of. And there he stood, guilt coursing through him instead of the usual, familiar, deep rumbling of power.
What was it all for?
Gathering the shambled, tattered duvets from his makeshift bed, he gathered his dignity, trying his best to not think and simply do, before he could regain his usual aloofness. This feeling, despite how hurtful and confusing it was, felt so real and different he refused to let it disappear, despite his own intentions. The two halves of his mind were arguing with him, and briefly the non-existent Ganondorf realized that they were his programming, so to speak, and his humanity.
The programming the goddesses gave him, to be nothing but an instrument for lust and power, so they could play their little game of chess; and the humanity they accidentally bestowed upon him to keep their game interesting. What they failed to realize, though, in all their divine wisdom, was that humans tended to be defined by their higher intelligence - the ability to question.
Ganondorf in the memory and the demon Demise in the spaceless void did not feel like the same being, but he knew they were. It was so difficult, even for a mind as vast as his, to quite grasp the concept of who he was. A being of pure evil, being reincarnated, blessed, or put onto Hyrule for whatever the goddesses wished to be amused by. But when he was there, each time it felt different, despite its exhausting, depressing sameness. When he was human, he had always known he wasn't; he had always known a part of him existed elsewhere. And although he didn't have the firmest grasp on what that meant while he was human, he'd always accepted it without thought. He was supposed to be without thought. A machine built for destruction.
It was only after, when he once again resided in the blackness of the void, falling to the same fate as he was cursed to relive again and again, that he realized he'd missed his chance to escape.
But this time, he'd been so especially close, he had tasted it on his tongue - it had lain with him, wrapped in bed with him, so tantalizingly, evilly unattainable.
And now, the only emotion that filled his void was pure, raw, paralyzing regret.
But the memory was back, with a persistance he was unable to fight.
-AL-
He had carried the blankets, carefully folded, through the castle, travelling through it in the dark of night. He was unafraid of being seen by anybody - there were few in the castle but terrible, disgusting little hell-spawn for his purposes. They would not bother him, nor would he be embarrassed by a thing so lowly and pathetic.
He arrived at his destination, and hesitated before opening the door. He looked into the small window, where the amber twilit night brushed into the room, and pushed in.
He went in as quietly as he could, and when he didn't hear her stir, he set the blankets down by the bed, surprisingly nimble on his big feet.
Her window was much wider than the other one, offering a much more expansive view of Hyrule doused in twilight. He didn't mind it. He thought it was nice to have a subtle solution to light and dark, but as he watched a monstrous bird cry into the deep horizon, an unfamiliar feeling settled into his chest yet again.
"A cruel and beautiful world," he murmured to himself, growing disheartened as he turned back to Zelda. He hated the sound of his gravelly voice, so distanced and so ugly, and pressed his lips together tight to avoid hearing it again.
He stepped back to the bed, wincing as a pebble skirted across the floor. She seemed peaceful though, at least as peaceful as she could be, so he bent over quietly to shake a blanket from its folds, and placed it over her as gently as he could.
She shivered.
Even more quietly, he took the next blanket, despite its tatters, and laid it quickly over her shoulders, even pausing to gingerly tuck it around them. It wasn't much, but she had stopped trembling, at which he smiled softly.
Smiled? What was this other new feeling, blossoming in his stomach like a poisonous flower? Oh, gods.
He turned to go, feeling his heart start to stammer at his uncharacteristic turn of events, but hesitated one more time to catch another glimpse of her face.
She was so beautiful, so quiet and yet so passionate. Every time he knew her, that fire had always been there, concealed by her calm, political demeanor; but, he mused, he knew her better than anybody, didn't he? He and he alone had known since her very conception. He knew who she was, what she believed in, how she reacted, and more importantly, that intense, undying faith for her cause.
He had known her in every life, but in this one, she seemed so much more able to adapt to his corruption, his disgusting corruption. Light and dark, existing in one endless, torturous cycle for the rest of eternity, with no chance of escape.
He sighed, crouching down to see her face more clearly. He couldn't seem to pull himself away, magnetized to the goddess-like beauty gracing her features. Someone so fair surely shouldn't have to be so close to someone as horrendous as himself.
He felt a hand rising, then struck it down at the betraying thought. No. No, this was not his mission, and he couldn't afford to get sidetracked.
And even if he could...it was nothing but a thoughtless, implausible fantasy anyway.
But he did it anyway. He let his hand rise, his scarred, rough hand, and let it hover so carefully, so cautiously above her moon-skinned cheek. He noticed, with little surprise at this point, that his fingers were quivering like feathers in the wind. But he controlled them, so strong was this new lust building up in his stomach, and let his fingers to her skin so very delicately.
In a flash he wondered if, in another life, were they not who they were, they could ever be together.
His trembling fingertips brushed skin so soft it must have been made of pure down and the whisper of the wind.
He watched in awe as the three golden triangles on his right hand, once faded, glowed with a pale light, illuminating with a pulsing, throbbing motion. It died away slowly, and just barely he saw a dim light from underneath her thin blankets.
And slowly he backed away and left as quietly as he came, unaware of the look of shock resting in Zelda's wide eyes.
-AL-
He had taken to watching her at nights.
He realized the strangeness of it, the chilling factor it would've seemed to anybody on the outside, but at this point, with the entirety of Hyrule in his hands, he didn't really care if it was strange.
But, yes, he tried to stay away, trying to convince himself that it was invasive and totally inappropriate, and yes, of course it was, but he simply couldn't do it. He tried to lock himself in his room, but there was nothing to do, no more books to read to distract him, no moon to stare at without being reminded of the damned Princess. He couldn't sleep, and had begun rejecting his meals, unable to comprehend this new phenomena, despite the many ways he analyzed it. It was surreal, and sometimes, as he sat in the throne room, bored and confused, he wished, against his will, that she would emerge from the stairs and glide as smoothly as a ghost next to him, only if for a night.
But she didn't, and so he was forced to come to her. Or so he told himself.
He never visited her when she was awake. And when she was asleep, he sat quietly in the window-seat towards the front of her bed, a knee drawn up under his chin, other leg swinging off like a teenage boy. He didn't do anything sinister or malicious, he assured himself. He simply observed in peace, trying to figure out what it was about this incarnation of Zelda that made her so different. He would sit, the light of the twilit moon lighting up her graceful face like a beacon, and simply watch, mind betraying his statue-like pose. It floundered here and there, snapping back to Zelda the second she would move gently in her sleep. He was constantly on eggshells, never knowing if she was going to wake up and see him there. He didn't know what he would do if he saw that serene, almost content? face change so rapidly to one of terror.
He used to remember her screaming in the nights, waking him from across the castle, her shrieks ringing like a demon in the dark. But since he'd broken, as he'd taken to calling it, she had slept quite calmly.
Playing with the light that had begun to constantly emanate from his right hand, he'd taken to speaking softly into the air, perhaps thinking that if he reasoned aloud it would all make sense to him. So far, though, it hadn't. Nothing did.
"I'm different," he muttered. "I'm not like the other versions before me. But why?" He ran a hand through shaggy orange locks, ignoring the tangles he felt there. "I'm going to be punished for it, I know...I can't leave the pattern, can I? I can't leave this cycle..." He pushed his forehead into his hands, feeling the heat of the Triforce close to his eyes. "I'm a prisoner."
The epiphany shook him so thoroughly he forgot all about the sleeping Princess in front of him, and his clandestine practice of watching her. He forgot his voice, his body as the revelation tore through him. He was a prisoner.
"I'm as much as prisoner as you, Zelda!" he cried, dropping to his knees, totally oblivious to the volume of his voice, "Don't hate me for what I am forced to become!
"Don't judge me for what they made me for," he whispered, broken, hands clutched to his shocks of hair, almost ripping them from his skull. "Don't see me as they made me...they forgot that I am human too.
"They forgot I can feel."
"I know they did," a voice said as meekly as a mouse, and he jerked his head up in utter fear.
There sat Zelda, huddled up in the ratty bed, frail back leaned against the cold, unforgiving wall. Her eyes were wide and wary in her skeletal face, and their magnificent indigo irises gleamed out of the pale moon of her skin. They stared at him, timidly, yet that fire was undeniable.
He stared back, unsure what to do, how to act, what to say. He should have stayed away, should have controlled himself. Of course, if the Demon King had self-control, Hyrule would have been peaceful for eons.
She kept looking at him, and he saw that she was searching his face. For what, he didn't know, but he had a guilty inkling that it was for her own safety.
Her fingers, so slim and long, twisted one of the ripped blankets he had given her. It was still around her shoulders, he noticed with that poisonous feeling in his stomach again.
"I know they did," she repeated deliberately, knuckles white as she wrung the blanket.
"You heard me," was all he could think to say, unsure what to feel with the hurricane of emotions ripping through his newly human mind.
She nodded, her stringy, yet beautiful brown tresses going unkempt across her face. She didn't bother to move them as she said, her voice breaking, "and I've been hearing you."
His mouth dropped slightly, and he gnawed his lips in mortification.
"Everything?"
She just nodded again.
Slowly, he gathered himself up from the floor, taking care to not lose her gaze to prove he wasn't dangerous. He wouldn't bite. He brought himself back up to the window-seat, resuming his statue-like position of knee tucked under chin. Although he felt that it wasn't intimidating enough for her to see, he figured she'd already seen his naked fears and thoughts, so there wasn't much left to lose.
He refused to meet her eyes now, staring at the floor like a sulky child.
He heard the fear in her rough voice. "I've been awake every night."
When he still wouldn't meet her gaze, her voice grew a little stronger. "I was curious to what you had to say, what you were thinking about...I wanted to know why."
"Don't you know curiosity killed the cat?" he said distantly, far away in his mind, trying to recall everything he said and everything he let slip in what he thought was private.
And for some reason, that struck Zelda as funny, and his head lurched up to watch her give a small, glorious laugh, as hypnotizing as a melody, like a lullaby he had heard once in a lifetime long, long ago.
"Are you going to kill me?" she asked him curiously, as though it was as simple as asking about the weather, the smile still dancing on her delicate lips.
"No," he answered blatantly, truthfully. That lullaby laugh was still echoing in his brain, making it quite hard to think. "Though I really should, shouldn't I? Might get rid of all these troublesome moral dilemmas."
A dazzling, wry grin stretched across her thin face. "Probably," she noted, eyes dancing with inquisitiveness, almost entirely erasing the fright. "But forgive me if I'm wrong, I was under the impression that you were a creature of evil, unable to feel."
He saw the instant she realized she may have overstepped the tentative friendship that was being established. "I mean - that's what they - I just -"
The unusual sight of the collected princess stuttering caused an askew smile to appear on Ganondorf's face. A chuckle escaped with it.
"I thought I was too, Princess," he sighed, that sardonic smile growing. "I thought I was. But then I started to feel, and I learned. I sat and mused, I thought, I pondered, I questioned. I did exactly what the goddesses counted on me never doing. And so, despite the knowledge that I am enslaved to our constant reincarnations, to fight the same battle over and over, I am so close to freedom because of that knowledge...I suppose it's a lot to take in from your captor, isn't it?" He turned his cynical gaze on Zelda's eager face.
She shook her head intently, excited as a child. He felt that feeling in his stomach as she took in his eyes with that excitement.
He continued when she didn't speak, looking out at the moon. "I've always been a mindless brute. I still am, somewhere far away from where those wretched goddesses resign. I'll go there once your hero comes, as usual. But I'll come back, as always..."
"Do you have to?" she inquired, her voice filled with concern.
He glanced back at her, looking so small in her little nest of thin blankets. A horrible sense of guilt pitted in the bottom of his stomach at the sad, knowing look in her wise eyes. She knew the answer. And she knew the answer was the same for her.
Maybe they weren't so different after all.
He didn't bother answering, instead feeling that attraction, strong as magnets, pulling him toward her. He came to the bed, kneeling down next to it, his huge stature putting him to her eye-level.
She stared back, fiery eyes betraying no fear. They were so wise, he felt like a servant grovelling in front of a god as he looked at her.
"You're a lot like me, you know," she said, her voice dropping quietly. It sounded just as melodic up close, but now he could feel her breaths, and his sensitive ears heard her pulse start to soar.
And his heart tripped over itself in response.
"Really?" he said, bringing himself to sit on the bed near her. "The Prince of Darkness and the Princess of Destiny? Sounds like a winning combination."
A warped smile accompanied her musical giggle. "Quite. I bet we'd make a great team, no?"
"The best. The lion and the lamb," he joked, feeling another new sensation bubbling up near his neck. "The worlds we could conquer, ever enslaved in an endless cycle!"
She leaned closer, seemingly enraptured. The look she was giving him, so dotingly, so...different, it made him feel weightless. Was this happening? The Demon Thief and the Princess of Light?
"You and I," he sighed, feeling resigned as the airiness settled in. "Fighting our goddess captors?" A strange feeling of hope soared through him. Would she? The goddesses she had always, in all her lives, been so loyal to?
She seemed to hear his note of questioning. She turned away for a second, considering. Then she sprung up, delight in her face and voice.
"I will! I'll rebel against the creators!" she cried, falling back on the bed with a full-fledged laugh.
Despite the tingling sensation her laugh sent all over his body, the wonderful sense of surreality was beginning to break. She didn't mean any of it, did she? Hallucinating, sick, or dying, she was ill, and all of this had simply been the rantings of a fevered mind. He'd been such a fool to believe something like that was real.
He grew stony, feeling stubborn as a small child, and she noticed it, still lying on her back on the bed.
"I'll leave you be, Zelda," he began. "I shouldn't have-"
A warm touch on his arm stopped him like a wall.
"No."
When he looked down at her, lying next to him, she gazed up at him steadily, and her beauty was such that he almost succumbed and -
"I'm glad you did," she said, voice quiet now, collected and calm like her usual self.
He felt that hope bring up his entire being, as though Demise, far far away in some existentialism void was turning slightly human.
"You would fight?"
Zelda blinked, once again oblivious to the strands of hair across her face. "Of course."
The surprise was evident on his face, and he watched in joy - yes, that sensation was joy - as she smiled back at him.
"I want to be free just as much as you do, Ganondorf."
His name, his disgusting, abhorrent name, sounded like an orchestra as it passed her lips. She must have enjoyed it too, as she caught his eyes again, and amber gazed intently into indigo.
"Ganondorf," she whispered, as though he was no longer the beast he was supposed to be. He was human.
Thoughtless, floating on unfamiliar joy, he reached out and tenderly swept the lock of hair from her face, allowing his clumsy, ugly hands to dwell on the shimmery brunette strands. He studied them, so absolutely fascinated. And she grinned at him.
"I've always felt trapped. I hate it like you do, Ganondorf...but I haven't let my anger overcome my soul."
He froze. She went on, though, slowly and quietly.
"That doesn't mean it didn't try...you were just..." He watched, with slight amusement as she struggled to find the word for it. "...had more predisposition to it. Like you said, you were made for it.
"So I forgive you," she finished, and her beautiful moon-white palm was resting on his leathery skin. "Even if that's not what you are asking, or if your pride is too great, I forgive you. Because you are more than what you are supposed to be. You are Ganondorf."
He stared at her in amazement, pure awe, hope, bewilderment, and joy flooding him like a baptism, metamorphosing him into what he should be, who he really was: a human.
"And I am Zelda," she was saying, her voice so quiet, he leaned closer to her, over her to hear her. "I just want to be Zelda. I want to be human like you."
And before he knew it, before he could understand what was happening, her silky hand slid around his neck, and suddenly he was leaning over her, one hand holding him up, the other caressing her delicious downy skin as she pressed her lips into his fiercely. He couldn't understand, couldn't think, could only feel, yes, like a human, and he felt such an incredible feeling: love. He felt it pushing him into holding her, he felt it radiating out of him as he kissed her deeper and deeper, he felt it like a flower sprouting out of his whole being as he slid under the covers with her, so forbidden and so inherently wrong, and he relished in it. So wrong, so unintentional of the goddesses, but just as they were drawn together as enemies by fate, so were they as humans by that same fate, and all the glorious, racking emotions that came with it. Joy and love pursed though his being in a blindingly smart way he'd never experienced before; and he took her for all he was worth, as he knew he'd likely never do it again.
He loved her that night, and for that night, he was just a human, and she was just a human, and in their own little way, they were finally fighting the goddesses.
-AL
Now, centuries upon centuries later, he still remembered, and he could still feel twinges of that emotion, that feeling when he woke up the next morning, Zelda, the beautiful Princess of Destiny, lying next to him, her captivating naked skin laid out for him to touch.
He hadn't yet forgotten the union so utterly evil to the goddesses, yet so perfect to Ganondorf and Zelda.
He hadn't yet forgotten the feeling of love.
And maybe, just maybe, he would be able to hold on to that yet the next time he and Zelda met.
A/N: Thank you so much for reading, and I really hope you enjoyed. I would love some concrit and just reviews in general, as the traffic stats (for SBB, anyway) show that a lot of people are reading my new stuff, but not reviewing...so, I promise I'll answer to every review. If you're on your phone or just don't have time to write a long one, I totally understand, but I would love a little support if you guys liked it. If anyone has cool ideas for fics, concrit, or maybe you just wanna say you hate me, feel free to message me, I'm up for anything. I'm looking forward to re-immersing myself in the FF community, after a pretty long hiatus, so please feel free to talk to me! Thanks so much and sorry for all the notes! Please review! :)
~Araceli L