Content warning:
This chapter opens with a description of Ganondorf, as a young teenager, being assaulted by a group of slightly older girls, presumably according to the orders of an adult. It is not clear whether this is a "real" memory, but it's nevertheless traumatic. If you need to skip this chapter, the gist of it is that Ganondorf is grappling with his sexuality while alone in his apartment. After confronting his vulnerability, he begins to reclaim his agency. Right as he's reaching a climactic moment, Zelda calls to apologize for what she'd said earlier that evening.
. . . . . . . . . .
Ganondorf stepped out of the Twilight and into his apartment in a storm of bitter frustration. He was so hard it hurt. His groin throbbed with a dull ache, but the thought of touching himself made him sick.
The damned Hylian bitch was right, Demise curse her soul. "Gerudo breeding stock" indeed.
Ganondorf had no memory of who he might have been before he was pulled out of the darkness by Zelda's hateful voice, but lightning-quick flashes of a different life came to him at moments of heightened emotion and arousal.
He had no way of knowing whether any of these visions were memories, or whether they were real in any meaningful sense. Zelda said that the visions she saw in her dreams felt tangible and immediate to her, but his were more like twisted fantasies, phantasmal and contradictory. He would see the same scene multiple times, but in different variations and from different perspectives.
He'd told Zelda that he didn't find enough satisfaction at his own hands to climax, but that wasn't the full truth. It wasn't pleasure that eluded him, but his grasp on reality. When Zelda pushed him away, he caught a glimpse of something that wasn't quite a memory; something he had seen before, but never in as much detail.
In her apartment he'd seen himself as a boy, muscular but as lithe as a lizard, just starting to grow the first patches of hair on his chin. He was physically strong and becoming stronger every day, but he wasn't yet strong enough. He saw himself pushed down onto the stone floor of what must have been a stable. The smell of fresh hay was cloying, and the sun was shining directly in his eyes.
"Is it true, what they say about voe?"
A group of girls had surprised him as he hung a saddle to dry against a rough sandstone wall. Their leader sneered down at him. Her shadow fell over his body but didn't reach his eyes. The sun was too bright, and he couldn't make out her face.
The girls moved quickly and silently to pin him down and prevent him from rising. His mind instinctively reached for his magic, but it slipped from his grasp as one of the girls pushed a dagger into the fork of his legs.
"Voe are just animals, good for nothing but labor," one of the girls commented.
"Let's see if you're worth the feed we give you, animal," their leader said as she sliced away the leather cord at his fly.
In a brief moment of clarity before they descended on him, he knew he had to make a decision. He couldn't physically overpower them without getting hurt, especially not with the cold blade of a dagger pressed between his legs. He could use magic to hurt them instead, and he wanted to, desperately. What was magic for if not to overcome weakness? But his thoughts were scattered and panicked, and the mental precision he needed was beyond him. There would be no warning these girls; if he used magic in his current state of mind, it would overpower him and more than likely result in their deaths.
In that instant he understood that he could and perhaps one day would use his power to kill, but he wasn't yet ready to shoulder the responsibility of taking someone's life. He knew this as well as he knew his own name; and, just as he knew his own name, he knew that this must be a test. It was unthinkable that a group of girls would come together and attack him simply to satiate their curiosity.
They must have been carefully selected. Not a single one of them would be so ignorant as to believe that he was defenseless, but they were loyal enough to whoever had ordered them to test him that they were willing to put themselves in danger. They would be mourned if they were lost, and he would be punished for his lack of control. Ganondorf's last remaining hope of escape deserted him. He closed his eyes and submitted to their hands.
There were other tests, later.
He had seen almost nothing of his initiation into manhood, only that he did what was required, his traitorous cock stiffening under bored and unwilling fingers. He could not recall the details of how any of this came to pass, but neither could he deny the shame and humiliation of these visions.
His lust was a pathetic and miserable thing, tugging at the edges of his consciousness if it went too long without being addressed. He took himself in his own hands, but it brought no relief, only a gradual wilting. He desired men as he desired women, and he considered paying someone for their company – perhaps another Gerudo male like himself – but the thought of using someone else's body as his own may have once been used was repellent.
He would have been content to bide his time and allow this aspect of himself to remain buried until it disappeared. Perhaps, when his memories returned, the issue might resolve itself. Until then, he had his hands full of more important matters than his own dick.
If only he didn't have the damned dreams, always involving that accursed woman. She was beautiful, to be sure. He wasn't immune to her charms, but she was far from the only attractive person he knew, and his appreciation of bodies and faces was largely abstract. He found Zelda's latent power fascinating, but there were many ways to investigate the source of her magic without any need to interact with her at all, much less sleep with her.
Yet her voice stirred something primal within him, something that had woken after what seemed like centuries of oblivion. He might be able to forget her if he stopped finding excuses to visit her, but he couldn't force himself to stay away. He maintained a meticulous level of control over every aspect of his life, but he was powerless to curb the intensity of his desire for her.
She provoked him by insulting his virility, and he had foolishly responded by telling her about his dreams – but only ones he could describe with words. Others were savage, bestial; him pounding into her with such force that it seemed he would split her in half, her plunging her fingers into his hair as he sucked and bit the peaks of her breasts, him grazing her neck with the points of his teeth as he took her from behind, her squeezing his head between her trembling thighs as he fucked her with his tongue. There were other dreams he recalled in full detail but didn't tell her – her binding his wrists together, asking him to kneel before her, leading him to the edge of release and making him beg. In his dreams, she expected him to dominate and worship her in turns, forcing him to negotiate a precarious balance with his hands and lips and cock, and he could never get enough of her. He would wake to a delirious burst of sensation as he finished, not entirely sure he wasn't still asleep.
That was enough, usually, until today. He had allowed himself to touch her, to want her, and every moment he spent with her was delicious and intoxicating. He'd had to step through the shadows between worlds immediately after leaving her in order to reach his apartment without embarrassing himself, and he'd thrown himself on his bed as soon as the door was shut behind him. He pulled himself out of his too-tight pants and spit on his palm, remembering the slick wetness between her thighs as he stroked himself. She'd gasped when he touched the smooth and perfect skin of her breast. Would she make the same sweet sound if he slipped his fingers below the band of her underwear? Her nipple had hardened almost instantly when he touched it, and what about the soft pearl of her clit? He imagined her flesh tightening for him as he caressed her, as she looked into his eyes and whispered his name –
But then he saw a young woman with hair as red as his own, the kohl on her eyes leaving a dark trail down the rouged skin of her face as she cried. She was dressed in the mellow gold and vibrant scarlet of a bride, but neither she nor he wanted what had to happen between them. He saw himself reach for her, his own hair pulled up and dressed with elaborate topaz ornaments, but she refused to look at him.
Gerudo breeding stock, Zelda had called him. It was an absurd insult, spoken in anger and juvenile in its pettiness, intended only to hurt him. But what if she was right?
Yet she couldn't be. The woman in nuptial finery who turned away from him, and the group of girls who pushed him down – they all wore clothing so antiquated that they looked like illustrations in an old book. And the dusty stable, and the coarse stone walls, and the curl of the smoke rising from an incense burner – nothing like that existed in the world he knew. None of it could possibly be real. These were someone else's memories, or entirely artificial to begin with, surely they must be. His body had no recollection of what his mind saw, and his visions never once showed him the voice and face that haunted his dreams.
Who was Zelda, and what was his connection with her? Why was she so important to him? Ganondorf understood that it was dangerous to be so fascinated by someone with her lineage, and he knew that it would be even more dangerous to sleep with her. If he could uncover what lay hidden within her, and if he could find the source of her power, he could use it to his advantage, and an emotional attachment could only hinder his progress. It was entirely illogical to pursue her like this.
To make matters worse, he'd felt her pulling away from him as soon as he'd gotten her home. He was aware that she was overwhelmed, and he knew she needed time, but he had been waiting to touch her for so long that he couldn't stop himself until it was too late.
Even now, even after what she'd said and done, he could still taste her on his lips and feel her on his skin. He hated himself for his weakness, and he hated himself for losing control, but from the bleak nihilism of that hatred came a desire so overwhelming that it cast a radiance. He felt reborn in the flames that rose from the kindling of wanting something that was just out of reach but might one day be in his possession. He was transformed into a new creature as he once again tightened his fist. The power he felt growing inside him made him dangerous, perhaps even evil. The pleasure he took from himself was not the submission of shame or defeat, but the certainty that he could and would become the master of his own body. He would leave these cursed visions behind him and emerge into the world to eat his fill of what he chose for himself.
What had happened to his mind was a mystery to him, but his body was his to manipulate, and the hands that set fire to his flesh were his own.
What if Zelda had been ready for him? What if she embraced him and allowed him to take her to bed? Would she have revealed herself to him, divine in her radiant skin? Would she touch him with her delicate fingers, grasp him as she might grasp the hilt of a sword, strong and sure? Would she guide him into her tight little slit, sweet and warm and wet, enclosing him in a silky soft darkness as he took her, as he claimed her, as she kissed his neck and dug her nails into his back and clenched her gorgeous thighs around him as he buried himself inside her and thrust into her again, and again, and –
His phone vibrated on the floor next to him. He stilled his hand and took a deep breath, and then another.
It was Zelda. He had given her number a unique ringtone, one he hadn't heard since he set it. She had never once called him; she barely returned his texts. Something must have happened. He cursed under his breath and took the call.
"Listen, I'm sorry," she said with no preamble. "Can we talk?"
He didn't respond. He couldn't trust himself to speak, and having a conversation with her over the phone was the last thing he wanted. He would talk with her in person or not at all.
"I don't know what came over me, and I understand if – " she began, but he cut her off.
"I have something I need to take care of first," he told her, the words thick on his tongue, "but I'm coming over. Get ready."