fleets: let's pretend I spent a lot of time and care on thinking of a chapter title and that I didn't just pick 10 dozen random adjectives and picked one that sounded cool. Anyways I'm fuzzy I'm gonna go a lie down.
Chapter 11: Convergence
The void was very much a cage, despite its infinite nature. At least, that's what Vaati had always assumed in his years trapped within the Four Sword. It wasn't as though he could explore it, for it was more like floating in an endless expanse, unable to affect it or be affected by it. He assumed it was dark, like closing your eyes and drifting in and out of semi-consciousness, but some memories insisted that it had been a vast nothing of white. Sometimes he remembered being able to move his arms, a panicked flail in a brief lapse of lucidity, but other times he felt like he hadn't even been in a body at that point… more like drifting away as simply consciousness without form. The passage of time had been impossible to tell; a mercy, perhaps, for if he'd had any sense of time it surely would have broken his mind. Assuming… that it hadn't done so already. Would a broken mind recognize its own condition?
The first few hours (or, perhaps it was days? Years? The passage of time had been impossible to tell) after imprisonment was almost always followed by blinding rage. Rage, generally, at the fact that he'd been foiled, but subsequent imprisonments went beyond that. On some level he knew, knew that he'd always made the same mistakes which led him to the same outcomes; the same mistakes that trapped him in the torturous cycle. He would vow in the early hours of imprisonment that next time, next time, he would not make the mistake of not finishing the goddesses' chosen ones alive, and to immediately destroy them the first chance he had.
Eventually the fire burned itself out to embers. Of course the wrath was ever present and always there, something that was an emotion of comfortable familiarity while the void threatened to steal away his sanity. However, no fires burn bright forever, and as fire became embers he would sometimes feel the cold weight of…
Loneliness?
He would never admit it, of course. He disliked people. Disliked socializing. Everything he'd ever accomplished he'd done on his own, and people were more often obstacles than things that enhanced his life. Tools, surely, but nothing he sought out as comfort. However, on some level, he could recognize the cold hand of isolation reaching for him through the darkness, wrapping its fingers around his neck while he gasped for air. Silly imagery, to be quite honest, since he wasn't even sure if he'd ever taken a breath within the void of the sword.
And so, he blamed this cold hand that snuffed out the fire for his continued mistakes. He would be the last to say that loneliness was the reason why he'd never killed the princess and the hero at the start, even if he'd had opportunities to do so. At the same time, if he could be honest with himself for just a few minutes, he wouldn't be able to deny it to be the reason either. Beneath his misanthropy there was a spark of excitement to see them react to him. There was a certain kind of rush at being able to, for the first time in centuries after being freed from the sword, to have something, someone, see him and respond to his pokes and prods. And more so, as much as he despised those favored by the goddesses, he couldn't deny that they were the one thing that was familiar to him despite the years he'd missed.
Even now, Zelda was the one link to the past, the one thing in this unfamiliar world that remained familiar to him. She was familiar, and yet… different. There were many things he'd assumed about her, thinking her to be the same as her prior incarnations, but still she managed to surprise him. Small things, like sending him small messages daily even when he'd made no effort to converse, or those times when she would leave him at peace to his own thoughts in Asphodel, but knew when to keep him on his toes with small witty jabs of her own. When she would challenge him at his most cynical, and almost convince him with her optimism - an optimism which he'd once had himself, though he'd forgotten it after years of imprisonment.
He found himself… talking with her, as opposed to at her. He disliked people, but it was strangely refreshing. No doubt the feeling was just an artifact of having been trapped in isolation for years. At least, that was how he rationalized it.
And in a different yet similar way in how he found Zelda familiar, he found the same in Veran. Of course he considered her infuriating and wanted nothing more than to destroy her for what she had done to himself and Zelda, but during their conversations he'd found himself listening, despite everything. She was someone like him, a person from the past, displaced in time; punished and imprisoned for trying to mold an unsatisfactory world with her own power.
What had perhaps struck him the most was how, behind the image of a strong, confident sorceress, was someone worn and tired. It was a story that he was intimately acquainted with - that where she'd once been ambitious (and on some level still was), in truth she now only sought some semblance of stability. Like him, she wanted only security that she would not be ensnared in another thousand year cycle of imprisonment.
He didn't put it past her to be plotting something greater, but he knew truth when she'd looked at him with that knowing smile full of fatigue. Not even the best manipulator could have faked that smile.
Apparently she'd worked with Ganondorf for some time. That was as much as she would say about him, aside from a small comment about how she thought him a fool. A lie, Vaati had judged, from the way she'd almost spoken the word with pity. And this, too, he could almost sympathize with. He knew Ganondorf briefly, and knew exactly why she'd used the word she did, with that particular poignancy. The man had been a fool, fruitlessly fighting a fight with all of the odds stacked against him. It had almost been like watching a more reckless image of himself, if that were even possible.
They were all just so very tired…
According to Veran, Ganondorf was here, too. Lingering in Asphodel, perhaps, though Vaati had yet to see him. Veran herself had no plans of meeting him yet, and waved a dismissive hand when he'd asked her why. Vaati thought he knew, however. If her past was anything like his, there was undoubtedly some resentment in her relationship with the gerudo. Ganondorf had been explosive and unpredictable, a man with the overwhelming force of a desert boar but the cunning of a hunting wolf. Vaati never once counted on loyalty from the man, and there had been an almost mutual understanding that they would betray each other if it ever came down to it. It was an honesty that had been refreshing, in a way, during the brief time they had forged something of an alliance. As he was sure was the case with Veran, whatever resentment he had for Ganondorf wasn't necessarily… negative. It was more like a grudging annoyance paired with respect. He would never let his gaze leave the demon king too long lest he be stabbed in the back, but he respected the man.
That was more than he could say for most.
And he respected Veran on some level, too, especially when she'd told him of her plans to rid the god, Caph. She didn't know much more about them from that which Vaati already knew, and she had the workings of a vague plan to get rid of them. Her motivations for wanting them gone were simple: she didn't like them. At this, Vaati had managed a laugh.
Four days had passed since the conversation in Asphodel's alpha space. He was currently surrounded in darkness, his SS thrown into a combination safe and plugged into a charger. He wasn't entirely sure why Veran hadn't simply allowed his SS to be drained of battery. Mercy, he wondered? Only those who were like them could understand what it was like to be returned to the void once again.
Though the conversation with Veran had been surprisingly, for lack of a better term, cordial, it had ended with a mutual acknowledgement that they would eventually destroy each other. Neither of them liked to lose, and at some point one would have to rid the other for no bigger reason than the fact that their pride as sorcerers demanded it. There had been no hatred by the end, no. Instead it had been a silent agreement between two rivals.
It was… strange. The first time he'd woken in this era, trapped in some kind of machine without any of his former powers left, he'd been convinced that this time… this time was the worst iteration yet. On the surface, this was still true: he was furious about what he had been reduced to, and words didn't do justice to the frustration of his own limitations that gnawed at him every day. But as much as he had lost, there was something new that he hadn't experienced since… well, never.
This time, it was not a fight against the champion of the goddesses, and so he was not so blinded by his own wrath. It was perhaps more appropriate to call it an elaborate game of Jongma, a game of wits and strategy that had been popular with the Gerudo long ago, with several formidable players maneuvering their pieces to win above all others. There was something about it that was more compelling than simply lashing out at the world he despised.
He was going to win, there was no other outcome. Of course, his situation now was rather… troublesome. As loathe as he was to admit it, Veran had him outmatched, mostly because of her ability with Sonya (something he still couldn't figure out). He wasn't exactly helpless right now, absolutely not, but he still needed someone from the outside to help him get to Veran herself. He'd mulled over the concept of asking for 'help' for hours before he'd (grudgingly) admitted that this was not a situation he could fix on his own.
He… needed Zelda. The fact that he needed to rely on someone made bile rise in his metaphorical throat, but he forced the feeling down. Veran was using Sonya, and so he justified that it wasn't so much that he needed Zelda's help but that he was… going to use every advantage he could. It had taken him at least two full days to get up the nerve to send messages to Zelda's friend, Hilda, in the hopes that Zelda would receive the message containing Sonya's full name. It was the most he could learn of Veran's partner, but Zelda was resourceful. At the very least, that was something all of her incarnations seemed to have in common.
She would come help, wouldn't she?
Would she?
In the darkness of the locked safe, the status light flickered a nervous yellow before it gradually dimmed. Uncertainty chipped away at his usual confidence, and he found his thoughts stilled when an emotion he'd buried away from those damned days as a Minish resurfaced: Insecurity. For once he found himself in a situation where his outcome depended entirely on the action of another person. There was nothing he could except to sit and wait, and… and trust someone.
Malignant thoughts began to surface, and the device itself lost all of its glow to the point that an onlooker would not have known that it was powered on.
She wouldn't come to help, would she…
She had no reason to. She'd called him a 'friend,' but those words were simple to say, and no doubt empty promises from someone with that naïve optimism he so despised. There was nothing she would gain from putting herself in harm's way to come for him, and it wasn't as though he had ever shown her such affection that she would misinterpret him of being fond of her in any way.
No. No, she would not come for him. It would be foolish of her to do so, and thus it was foolish of him to assume she would help him. He was but a glorified navigation program in this era, and easily replaceable. She wasn't a friend, she wasn't his anything.
Of course. Of course it had been misguided of him to think that this time things would be different. It would never be different. He had always achieved goals with his own power, for there was no one he could depend on more than himself. He felt like an idiot for having sent the messages of plea to Hilda, for what more would they achieve other than to make himself look worthy of pity?
What could he do? What could he do?
Red light flared up again as anger resurfaced.
Caph.
Dare he do it?
He hated nothing more than the idea of giving in to a god's whims, but what they had offered him had been everything sensible. He would have a real body, and all of his full abilities at his disposal. In addition, he would have the one power that had alluded him for so long: a piece of the Triforce. If he took Caph's offer, he may very well become the most powerful he'd ever been…
He wavered for a few seconds, his resolve breaking when the memory of Zelda, smiling bashfully as she hurriedly fumbled over her words after her declaration of friendship, surfaced in his mind. He remembered the autumn wind brushing her side-swept bangs, the hint of a blush through both the air's nip and embarrassment rising along her cheeks, and the small tug of her jacket's collar in an attempt to hide her face much like her habit with Sheik in Asphodel. And then darkness clouded daylight, locking her away in the depths of the void much like him.
The image shattered as his resolve steeled. He was nothing to her. She was nothing to him. He would not repeat the mistakes of the past again. Not this time. Not ever.
"Caph," he spoke aloud. Then, he repeated more sharply, "Caph!"
Light.
Bright light filled the safe where his SS was kept, and for a brief moment Vaati was startled. Though he had asked for the god, a part of him hadn't actually believed that simply calling for them out loud would be enough to summon them. His view was jostled as someone reached for the SS and wrenched it off of its charger.
And then his processes slowed.
"You're…"
The one holding his device was not Caph, but the half-gerudo woman who'd been with Veran. Sonya looked nothing like her composed, confident self that she'd been when she'd cornered Vaati and Zelda a few days ago. Instead, her hair was pushed behind her in a mess, and her yellow eyes wandered in a panic. Fear.
But of what?
"Sonya! Calm down, I can't use my powers if you're panicking-"
"Veran, who… what is that thing?"
What thing?
There was a frustrating struggle for Vaati to try and see what it was that Sonya was talking about. She was sprinting as fast as she could out of the office where he'd been kept, and his view was blurred from her swinging his SS through the air as she ran. Just as she made it out the door, he caught sight of a silhouette he recognized: a shadow of a youthful god, wired and augmented with enough contraptions that it was almost difficult to tell that they'd once been anything other than a machine.
It was Caph.
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Zelda wasn't too fond of the city at night. It wasn't that it was unsafe - the city was one of the safest in the region, boasting a low crime rate. It was more that it seemed to come alive, like a nocturnal creature that roared awake as soon as the sun set. Some people came to the city for this very reason, but for her, the bustle was overwhelming. The constant ambient bustle almost seemed to tell her to hurry, though she was never sure what she was supposed to hurry to.
And tonight, the florescent lights and the buzz of people making their way to the inner city to enjoy the night life compounded her anxiety. She needed to hurry. For once, she knew where she needed to hurry to, but the city seemed only to tell her that no matter how fast she ran she would not be fast enough.
The soft 'ding' of the SpeedRail brought her out of her repeated rehearsal of what they were about to do. She felt a small bead of sweat roll off her nose, dropping onto the white bandana that was wrapped around her neck. She tugged at her baseball cap a little more over her eyes, as though the people busy in conversation next to her would somehow recognize her as a crook. She'd never done anything illegal in her life until this past week, and the idea of coming to a head with law enforcement in a few hours should things go wrong was, well, nerve wracking.
The doors of the train slid open, and there was a jostle of shoulders as people pushed their way towards them or tried to make way for more people coming inside. Zelda felt a tug on her hand, and she saw Hilda shoot her a small look that seemed to warn her not to look so guilty, followed by a flash of a smile that Zelda had seen so often when they were about to raid a high level dungeon that was clearly a death sentence. Zelda chuckled, both out of nerves and comfort in familiarity, and out of habit she returned a flat frown she so often did whenever Sheik went along with Hilda's bad ideas.
They left the station, following the navigation marker on Hilda's SS: a small custom rabit-shaped dot indicating their location relative to their destination on the map. The ambient noise of the city gradually stilled to a distant murmur as they approached the more commercial part of the city where Nindoten was located. Busy during the daylight hours on the weekdays, it was fairly quiet on this side of the city during the weekend night. Compared to the earlier roar that seemed to yell at her to hurry, the stillness of the city here was like the pause following a held breath.
Hilda and Zelda slowed as the imposing skyscraper of Nindoten came into view. The main tower was surrounded by a fairly wide lot of neatly trimmed grass with trees planted with careful landscaping, which in turn was closed off by a tall white wall. Most of the lights were off, save for the dim glow of the security lights. Before they got too close, Hilda signaled Zelda to slow down and then pulled up her bandana over her nose while signaling Zelda to do the same. She held out a fist. "Ready?" she giggled.
Zelda took a deep breath. Honestly, no. No, she wasn't. But she had to be. "Ready," she said, and bumped fists before approaching the building's perimeter.
They'd vaguely planned it through, and they'd already scoped out the outside of the building the day before to be somewhat familiar with what they would be dealing with tonight. Wordlessly they made their way around the perimeter, moving quickly while looking over their shoulders from time to time to make sure no one was going to catch them by surprise. Eventually they came across a young maple growing next to the wall: a tree that had somehow escaped the landscaper.
Hilda took a few minutes studying the tree's branches, checking the distance between its branches and the wall. Then, she stretched her arms briefly, rolled up the sleeves of her black baggy sweatshirt, and with surprising nimbleness like she'd done this dozens of times before, scampered up the tree and leapt onto the wall.
Zelda raised a brow, surprised and impressed, while Hilda simply winked back at her and disappeared down the other side. Not a while longer, a thick rope was tossed over its side for Zelda to climb up it. When Zelda dropped down to join Hilda on the other side, she gave her a questioning glance, to which Hilda chuckled.
"I got grounded a lot," she explained, "So I used to sneak out my window. Got real good at jumping into trees from my window and making my way up and down 'em." Hilda quickly wrapped the rope back into a loop and stuffed it in her backpack. "Pretty useful skill whenever I locked myself out of places, too. Don't really have to do that anymore since I know how to pick locks now," she laughed.
Zelda, a little less nervous now that she'd come to terms with the fact that they'd come too far to turn back, strode briskly past Hilda to speed her up towards the building. Though the premises appeared to be fairly empty, now was not the time to dawdle with idle conversation. "The security cameras would have most likely seen us," she said, "we should move quick-"
Zelda froze, Hilda nearly bumping into her from her sudden stop. Her sharp eyes had caught sight of a silhouette in the corner of her vision, and she immediately yanked Hilda forward and dove behind a nearby bush. She urgently hushed Hilda who'd let out a small yelp in surprise, and then cautiously peered through the leaves to take a better look at what she'd seen.
A person. Most likely a guard, at this hour. Zelda and Hilda held their breaths as they watched the guard about thirty feet away, waiting for them to move out of sight so that they could leave their hiding spot. They waited there for ten minutes, before Zelda began to suspect that not all was as it seemed with the guard. The guard hadn't moved an inch during the entire time they were waiting for them to move out of sight, and their stillness almost seemed… unnatural. Even if the guard were standing still and not making rounds, there should have been some kind of indication of life: a subtle shift in weight, clothes being ruffled by the breeze. Zelda squinted at the silhouette of the guard for another five minutes, before she finally took a deep breath, and quietly stepped out of the safety of the bushes. She ignored Hilda's hisses asking her what she was doing, and she tiptoed towards the strangely lifeless guard while she kept close to the walls. Her eyes widened, and she quickened her pace when she realized what it was that she was looking at. "He's… frozen?"
Indeed the guard appeared to be mid-step, but he was no longer moving. It was as though time had completely stopped for him, and every part of him, including pieces of hair that should have fallen with gravity and the open eyes that remained unblinking, was static.
"What in Din," Hilda whispered as she came running to join her.
Zelda could tell just what Hilda was thinking as they looked at the petrified man in confused horror. Magic. Zelda had somewhat come to terms with it after her encounter with Veran, but this was the first time Hilda had happened upon anything like this. She could almost see her friend's head shake slightly like she was trying to convince herself that what she was seeing wasn't real.
"You think Veran did this?" Hilda said between her teeth. She didn't keep her eyes off of the guard, fearful that he would jump back to life in any given moment. "What happened to him?"
Zelda shook her head. Veran was the only person she knew who would be able to do something like this, but why would she freeze the very guards that patrolled her place? But if it were someone other than Veran who'd done this…
Who could it be?
She blinked, her gaze landing on the key ring hanging from the guard's belt. Cards with access codes dangled from the ring. Her expression hardened, and the last hints of nervous uncertainty completely vanished from her face as she reached forward for the guard's key ring.
"Zel?!" Hilda gasped, raising her hand, worried that the guard would wake if they touched him or, worse, that her friend would also become frozen. However, neither of those things happened, and Zelda stood determined with the card keys in her hands. Hilda's breath caught in her throat when Zelda, no, Sheik, gazed back with that same fearless expression she'd seen so many times in Asphodel.
"Let's go," Zelda said quietly, words cutting through the air with sharp precision. With firm strides she moved purposely forward to the main gates leading inside the skyscraper, the access keys tight in her grip.
This was bad. The guard petrified with magic indicated that whatever awaited them inside the Nindoten headquarters was going to be bad, but she was all the more determined to push forward because of it. She somehow had the feeling that Vaati was somewhere inside, and that they were on the right track. She was going to save him. She had to.
I said I'll be there for you. Let me show you what I meant by it.
She made it to the tall glass doors of the headquarters, her steps bold and confident. She flipped quickly through the card keys, trying each one on the identity scanner until she finally came across the right one. The light blinked green, and there was a short hiss as the locks released from the door.
Wait for me Vaati. Please.
fleets: I really need sleep so I'm just gonna leave this here and skedaddle but I hope you liked! This chapter was nothing I planned it to be originally - the grape mage got kind of unexpectedly rambly here ha.
Serpent Tailed Angel: Neko Atsume totally should have had a messenger feature and the ability to trade cat butt photos. Asphodel-verse fixed this grievous oversight.
Midna: Mmm, well I feel like Zelda does a lot in canon, actually. Don't really want to get in a long discussion about that but! Definitely definitely this Zel isn't going to sit at home, give up, and cry. Youuu might be onto me hehe. Stuff's definitely about to go down :3
Guest: Nohansen is an important character to showcase Zelda's relationship with people who are important to her - I wouldn't exactly call that nothing :(. TMI but it's also a personal thing for me, what I'm writing with Zelda and Nohansen. As for Ganondorf, yes, yes I can imagine him sitting in the background and not actively trying a takeover. More on that later in the fic, but I've always found cookie cutter villain archtypes like that to not be all that interesting to me? I hope to take it beyond that this time.
AquilaMage: First of all ahhhh how dare you melt me into a puddle with all those comments! Thank you so much, I loved reading the live-commentary-like responses ;u;
I'm laughing at Vaati being a long-term renewable resource hahaha
Hilda's very resourceful. Girl's real good, and she's got a few more tricks to show off :) And absolutely Bad is waiting. It's godshaped and their name starts with C.
Grey Noise: AHHH that's such a good idea I'm sad I didn't go that direction hahaha. Hilda would definitely try that lol
Meta-Akira: Haha that's a good way to describe Hilda. She's a little reckless, especially to take care of her friends - I kind of see her that way in canon ALBW as well (though less cheery because of, well, the state of her kingdom at that point).
Thank you as always :D !
Ai Star: Vaati uh. He's not having good thoughts this chapter whoops. (and ahh sorry but I would prefer to answer personal questions via PM! Either ff PM or tumblr) :)
Apocalypse-Mage: Ahh glad you like Hilda! She doesn't have super ultra magic powers, but she's definitely not one to be underestimated! Not too much of the breaking and entering since Vaati decided to take the pen away from me and inner monologue instead but… grape is always fun to write haha
Thank you so much! :D Always such a joy to read your comments ahh
FandomTrash4Life: That music is so good. Might need it for the next chapter too haha :)
I do! I was so surprised and stoked and shocked when I saw that years ago, I think Rend and Tainted are the recommended fics? I'm super happy people liked reading my stories enough to rec them ;u;
