A/N: If you don't remember every single detail from what happened years ago, we met Fado a little bit in chapters 1 and 2.
Chapter 25
No one seemed to care what Zelda did. They gave her a sleeping mat and pointed her to a barracks room where the Hylian children slept.
She met Fado first, a bouncy pig-tailed girl whose smile seemed to come more from habit than joy.
"You here to rescue us, Your Highness?" she asked, first thing.
Zelda paused. She could not raise hope too early. "No. I am a prisoner like you. We'll make it through together."
There were nine Hylians altogether, all of them girls. She was afraid to ask what had happened to the boys.
Every morning, a middle-aged Gerudo with graying hair roused the children before dawn and herded them outside. The first day, Zelda tried to follow, but the woman struck her across the chest with a thick rod and glowered at her until she backed down.
She spent her days meandering the fortress, her stomach never quite full, her thirst never quite quenched. There was not a sign of Link. The Gerudo who would talk to her at all closed up as soon as she hinted at him.
One day, she stepped outside the fortress, just to see if she could. No one stopped her, or even seemed to be watching. She walked until the fortress vanished behind a sand dune and waited. Nothing happened.
But of course, where would she go? The desert was confinement enough. She had no hope of making it to Kasuto on her own. She sighed and returned to the fortress.
"Enjoy your walk?" a Gerudo said as she entered. Zelda couldn't tell if she was being pleasant or sardonic.
She found being a prisoner at the Gerudo Fortress more monotonous than uncomfortable. Her only stimulation came at the close of day when the Hylian girls trudged back to their shared room. Most were too tired to do anything but kick off their boots and flop on their sleeping mats, but Fado never seemed to run out of energy or charm.
"They started teaching us swords today," Fado was saying. "I don't want to have to use a sword. Link might have liked it, though. He always used to play hero games and stuff."
Zelda sat up. "Did you say Link?"
"Yeah. Quiet guy, from the orphanage. Really cool. He'd always make sure the little ones were okay. That no one was picking on 'em or anything. Some purple-haired guy snatched him up."
"He's here," Zelda said. The words escaped before she could think. Did Fado really need to know? Well too late, in any case. In for a green, in for a silver. "I believe him to be the Hero reborn."
Fado stared at her. "That is a very bad joke."
"It's true. He was adopted at my command, so I could start preparing him-"
"For what? The war hadn't even started then."
"I foresaw it and failed to stop it. The point is, he is here, a prisoner of the Gerudo. I swear on-" she extended her hand, meaning to show the Triforce of Wisdom. But Ganondorf held it now. "I swear by the Triforce of Wisdom," she amended.
Fado stared at the ground, breathing heavily. "So… what?"
"If you find any clue to where they're holding him, I need to know."
Fado nodded. "I think I need to think a little bit," she said, then stood up and walked away.
Zelda watched her go. She had seen the confusing clearly on the girl's creased brow. She was thinking hard, and all too soon she would conclude that it was Zelda's fault Link was a prisoner. Maybe even her fault that Fado and the other children were prisoners.
She could live with the accusation, especially since it was true. The question was: would Fado help her in spite of that? Zelda thought she could convince her to do so. And if not… well, she would find a way anyway.
The worst thing about prison, Link decided, is that he was not even allowed to fail.
He lived in a square room with six sandstone sides. A team of five Gerudo brought him food scraps every morning, enough to keep him healthy, but hungry. That was his best opportunity for escape, but he knew he had no hope of defeating five of them at once. So he could not even try. Just languish.
He was not truly isolated, however. He felt everything though his bond with Zelda, and the power of the Triforce. When Ganondorf had seized Wisdom, it was as if Link had been in the same room. Together, the two shards let out a cry that pierced into his brain like a sword of light. Even now, he could feel them twining together as Ganondorf paced in his throne room.
Bereft of Wisdom, Zelda had filled with sentiment. He almost wrote her off as too emotional to be useful, but even with his new memories, she knew more of the legends than he. She would be a dear sacrifice, if it came to that.
The door opened. It was an unusual time, but he had been expecting it. Locked away, there was little to do but refine his hearing. He had heard them approach and stop at his door, a Gerudo warrior and a child.
Nabooru entered. Link leaped up. "You are brave to come here alone," he said.
"I have a present. Shut up," she said, then shoved the child into the cell and slammed the door.
Link looked down at the girl. She dressed as a Gerudo, but had skin pale as the moon and blonde hair.
"Fado?" Nothing made sense. Why would she be here?
But she looked up, wearing the same grin he had known from the orphanage, and even before, centuries past, when she had worn the green dress of the Kokiri. Did nothing in the world ever change?
"Link! Princess Zelda told me you were here, but I didn't believe it." She ran forward and flung herself at him in a tight hug. "I'm so happy you're okay!"
He stepped back, holding her off with a thoughtless hand. "Why would she do that?" he muttered, mostly to himself. It didn't make sense. His best idea was that she was attempted some obscure form of psychological warfare.
"What did she tell you?" he demanded.
"What? I dunno. Jeez, is this really how you greet an old friend?"
"What did she tell you? Why did she bring you here?"
"Oh, come on! Are you really quizzing me right now? I thought you'd be happy-"
He shook her gently by the shoulders. "This is important. Nabooru is the most cunning woman I know. This plays somehow to her ends, and I need to work out what they are."
Fado crossed her arms. "Well fine!" Her shrill voice made her anger all the more unpleasant. "If you must know, she didn't tell me a thing. She was just all "You, come!" and suddenly we're marching all across the compound. I'm not a Gerudo, am I? How should I know? Aren't we supposed to be friends?"
He turned from her and began to pace about the cell. "This makes no sense. Would that we still had the relic of Wisdom!"
"Link?"
Most importantly, for Nabooru to continue meddling with him, meant that she feared he had some avenue of attack, of which Link was unaware. How Fado was relevant, he could not guess, but it gave him ideas to work with, and locked away he had nothing to do save think on them. He smiled. Whatever Nabooru's machinations were, they had worked against her.
"I'll just go, then…"
The girl left. Good. She was a distraction, if anything. He had a problem to solve.
