Zelda pulled into the dark parking lot that she would soon become familiar with. The snow was a bit a heavier today and she cursed herself for wearing the red heels to match her cardigan rather than snow boots. It would have been smarter to just change inside. The dull lighting of Skyview made everything seem gray. It wasn't a pleasing atmosphere but Zelda knew she would have to get used to it.

Malon sat at her usual place, her cardigan drooping off of her as she furiously typed away at her keyboard. Zelda wondered what she could be doing. Based on what she knew of the place, the doctors didn't care about the patients so there shouldn't be too much paperwork to be filing. She tapped on the desk as she walked by to get the girl's attention.

Malon smiled sheepishly, "evening, Zelda. Ready for a long night?"

"That I am. You know, someone could easily slip in here past you. What in the world are you doing on there?" Zelda asked, swinging her purse from arm to arm.

"You're going to knock things off the desk like that," Malon playfully glared, "and it's top secret. Maybe I'll tell you eventually."

Rolling her eyes, Zelda turned around to head towards the employee lounge to only almost run into the doctor. As she looked up at him, she noticed that he was quite scary looking. He was big boned and heavy set at that. His tall stature and wide shoulders gave him a menacing feel. His doctors coat was slightly dirty from the lack of upkeep with it. He had a clipboard in hand and was glaring down at Zelda.

"You must be the new nurse," he said, slamming the clipboard on the front desk. Malon scrambled to take it and began entering the information into the computer.

Already from his tone, she knew that she would not get along well with this man. He was trying to instill fear in her already but she was not going to have any of it. She stood up straight and held her bag close to her, looking him dead in the eye.

"I am. My name is Zelda Nohansen."

The doctor a sinister smile and Zelda could hear Malon shift uncomfortably in her chair. He held out his hand for Zelda to take and she accepted with, shaking with a firm grasp.

"You may call me Doctor Ganondorf," he told her before painfully releasing her hand and heading over to take his coat and hat off the hanger near the door. "Now, I trust you will follow all my instructions on the paper faithfully. We have a strict system around here and I can't have you coming in and screwing everything I worked for up. These patients need the care that I provide for them and only the way that I provide for them otherwise they will not get better, understand?"

The words came out taunting, almost as if he was talking to someone that couldn't understand the same language as him or was a toddler. Zelda clenched her jaw together so she didn't say something that would get her fired on the first day.

"Understood," was all she said as he nodded to the both of them before disappearing into the night, leaving Malon and Zelda to care for the place until dawn.

"He scares me," Malon muttered as she slid the clipboard into the filling cabinet behind her.

Zelda gave her a smile. "Don't let him. That's how he is getting what he wants. You don't need to risk your job or anything but don't let him manipulate you."

Malon gave a weak smile to that and Zelda returned it before heading to the employee lounge to place her stuff in a locker and grab a cup off coffee. She was already in a bad mood thanks to Ganondorf. He had an air of cruelty to him that Zelda had never encountered before. It felt like pure evil. She made a mental note to remember that he was an expert manipulator. She could tell that right off the bat. Reading him wasn't that hard.

Tossing the empty cup in the trash, Zelda fixed her uniform before grabbing her keycard and heading back out into the lobby.

"I just have to do one run through every hour, correct?" Zelda made sure she understood her duties.

Malon rested her chin on her palm and nodded. "That's right. The first hour is lights out, so you have to make sure everyone gets ready for bed and the lights are off. Every hour after that you just have to make sure no one is messing around or awake. The next shift wakes everyone up."

"Got it," she said before heading off to the double doors that sealed off Ward D.

It was too quiet for comfort, Zelda thought. It was not how she pictured it. Once the doors shut behind her she felt like she was in a different world. Some place unknown and unsafe. She knew she was alright because the security guard was watching everything through the cameras, but that didn't ease her nerves. The dull, florescent lights just made everything seem more gray. The thick iron doors that lined the walls were menacing.

Taking a deep breath, Zelda walked to the first door on her left. She stood on her tiptoes to look inside and she could make out a figure sitting on the bed, huddled into the corner of the wall. He was rocking slightly but nothing other than that. She unlocked the door via her keycard and slowly opened the door to not startle the man inside.

"Hello," she said as sweet as she could, clasping her hands in front of her.

The man looked up and she immediately knew it was Tingle. He was the oldest of the patients here so it wasn't hard to pick him out.

"W-Who are you?" he asked quietly.

Zelda smiled, taking a seat on the edge of his bed, but not too close as she didn't want to invade his space.

"My name is Zelda. I'm here to take care of you."

He adjusted his whole body to face her then, a huge grin glossing over his face. He looked like a kid on Christmas, ready to open his presents.

"The fairies must have sent you, I know it! They sent you to protect me!" he cheered.

Zelda shushed him, needing him to lower his voice as he didn't startle anyone else in the ward.

"Protect you?" she asked then once he had quieted down.

"It's scary here and people don't believe me and my fairies. Well, everyone besides Mr. Link. He's always encouraging. He protects me from the Evil King."

Zelda assumed that the Evil King was Ganondorf and she resisted the urge to shake Tingle for answers right then and there.

"Well, Tingle, you are right about one thing: I am here to protect you. If anything is troubling you, please tell me. But for now, I need you to go to sleep."

Tingle nodded his head furiously, quickly covering himself under the blankets. He smiled up at Zelda as she stood from the bed, making sure everything in the room was in order.

"Thank you Miss Zelda! I knew the fairies listened to my call!"

Zelda politely shushed him once again and he mimicked the gesture before rolling over to get into bed. Flipping the switch off, she made sure the door was locked behind her before peering into the other rooms. Most of the lights were off in the rest of the ward.

All but two.

Zelda headed for the first door since the second one was all the way near the exit doors. She peered inside through the glass window and knew instantly by the small form that this was Agitha's room. Exhaling a bit, she scanned her keycard and slowly opened the door. The young girl turned to face the opening door, as if no one had ever done this before.

"Who are you?" her small voice said.

"I'm Zelda," she said, walking around and observing the room. "I'm your new nurse."

Agitha just looked at Zelda for a few moments before turning around and going back to doing whatever she was doing in the corner. From what Zelda could tell, she was malnourished. There was the ignorant thought that children couldn't form eating disorders, or any disorder for that matter, but it was a bold faced lie. Zelda would have known something was wrong even if she had never read the girl's file.

"I came to tell you that it's time for light's out now."

Agitha narrowed her eyes and didn't turn to look back at Zelda. "I can't. They need me."

Zelda walked a bit closer, though not too close for comfort, and crouched down to Agitha's level.

"Who needs you?"

"The bugs. I have to take care of them. They wake up at night."

Zelda smiled to herself. Her file was not kidding when they said she truly believed she could be one with them. Her reaction wasn't that much of a surprise to Zelda.

"But if you are tired, you can't take care of them well, now can you?"

As Agitha turned around to look at Zelda through the corner of her eye, Zelda could tell that she didn't care for a word that was coming out of her mouth. Agitha was going to do what she believed she needed to do and she wasn't going to listen to some nurse.

That had nothing to do with her mental issue, she was just a child.

Standing from her spot, she stomped over to her bed and tucked herself in, irritably looking at Zelda to turn the lights off and leave. Unfazed by her tantrum, Zelda wished her goodnight and quietly closed the door behind her. She knew very well that Agitha wasn't going to bed. She also knew that her stand-off behavior wasn't her true personality.

She would be like that too so someone telling her what to do.

Sighing to herself and glancing at her watch, it had been close to a half an hour that she started this round. She wanted to finish this up so she had some break time before her next round. She knew she would have to put Agitha back to bed again.

There was no movement in the last room, yet the light was on. Zelda assumed that the person had fallen asleep with the lights on. Logically, Zelda figured that there would be a light switch outside the rooms so they didn't have to wake the patients coming in and out. Zelda assumed the lack of that was because the doctor wanted to bother the patients as much as possible.

Cracking the door open, Zelda shuffled her way in, her heels making more noise than she had anticipated. Zelda gritted her teeth. She didn't want to wake the poor person up if they were already in bed. She crossed the room as silently as possible as she headed for the light-switch.

"You're not being quiet at all, you know," a deep voice rang out.

Zelda squeaked a tad, not expecting the person to be awake. She turned around with a gentle smile on her face as usual to meet the gaze of a young blond man. He was propped up in bed, looking at her with interest.

"I've never seen you before."

"I'm the new nurse Zelda. Sorry if I woke you. I was trying to be as quiet as possible." She relaxed a bit now after being startled and racked her brain for who this was. "You're Link, right?"

"Yes ma'am," he said with a smirk, though it didn't come across as cocky in any way. It was sort of playful.

"Well, it's nice to meet you. I'll be here from now on at this time, not that we have time to socialize. It's lights out now."

Link sat up completely in bed now, focusing his attention on her. "So it's going to be you who is here from now on all the time? Not the nurse from before?"

Zelda shook her head, "no just me. Why?"

Link shrugged, falling back into bed again, limbs flailing as he relaxed. "Nothing important. I just didn't like him. He was an asshole. It was like he was always pushing my buttons on purpose."

Zelda noted that as well. She hadn't even been here a few hours and she already had a list of things that she could tell was wrong with this place.

"I see. Well you don't have to worry. I'm not like that." She smiled again at the young man on the bed before resting her hand on the light switch to turn it off. "It is lights out time, so we can talk more next time when I have an earlier shift."

"Sure," was all he said in reply before turning over in bed.

Zelda clicked the light off before heading out the door and closing it behind her. She took a deep breath before going out the main doors and taking a seat behind the desk with Malon.

"It was only making sure they were asleep and you're already exhausted?" Malon asked, noting Zelda's posture.

"No, it's not that. It's just...I didn't interact with all the patients, but the ones that I did, well, either they trusted me way too much or not at all. That really gives me suspicion about how they were treated before hand. It might be difficult to build relationships."

Malon stopped clicking away at her keyboard and gave Zelda a reassuring smile.

"I've got a good feeling about you. Try taking up some shifts during the day on the weekends when you don't have class. The patients don't really like to be told to go to bed because it's the only time they got peace before. They might associate you with bad things if you are only there at night, I don't know. It might be easy to build relationships then if you are here during the day."

Zelda puffed out her lip, "I guess your right."

"Besides, I'm planning on having a Christmas Party for the patients in a week or so. I just have to get it approved. I'd appreciate your help with it."

"Hey," Zelda said, giving her a sly smirk, "Christmas parties are my specialty."

I'm so sorry for the wait everyone. And it's not even long or good!

I wanted to get this up before I went to Tokyo two weeks ago but it didn't happen and then things got super busy here in Japan. I'm going home to America in two weeks so I should be able to write faster and better though my next update won't be till I'm back in the states.

It won't be a long story, per say. Maybe 12 chapters or so? I hope you liked it, even though it wasn't the best chapter.