Disclaimer: I don't own The Legend of Zelda in any way, shape, or form. No copyright infringement is intended.
I come not, friends, to steal away your hearts...
- Julius Caesar, Act 3.
. . .
Zelda had time to think of light, and darkness.
She knew much of darkness. There was the dark in the silent grief of a widow's bedchamber, the dark of hopelessness, the dark of years passing with startling quickness, the dark that claimed her as she donned her mask over and over...the dark of her crystal prison, a darkness that was eternal unless Lord Ganondorf Dragmire decided otherwise. There was the darkness inside her. That particular dark was a hungry dark that helped itself to pieces of her soul unless she pushed it down. That was the kind of traitorous dark that dictated her motives, her actions; that forced her to go along with a destiny she didn't believe in scarcely until that day...when? Time didn't matter in here. But the dark -- it dulled her senses and beloved smells were not quite so sweet, and colors were not as vivid (when they were allowed in here at all). Not even the pleasure of control seemed to move her as much as it had in her youth; the manipulation and the thrill of victory against those who had wronged her and her kingdom...it seemed to disappear in time, in this dark.
But the light! There were so many types of light. There were the kind that his eyes captured; golden sunlight, warm to the touch, like the taste of candied cucco against the tongue. There was moonlight: silvery, like fine liquid sliding across pale flesh, comforting. There was torchlight. Unsatisfying, to Zelda, but very real. And then...then there was the light she couldn't see, light that some held close to their hearts; a vital quality, such people said, and a life was contemptible and incomplete without it -- without this invisible light that shone brighter than even her honey-blonde hair under summer's passionate sun.
In her darkness, such light existed. In her dark, barren cell, hope gleamed against the crystal. The outside was oblivious to this light, thankfully, this faltering spark of want. (Oh goddess, he was coming to her, wasn't he? She could feel her pulse tap-tapping away in the wrist of the hand pressed against one solid wall of her prison.) But there was one man yet to bask in its glory.
Princess Zelda, rendered speechless by the Lord Ganondorf's vehement spells woven in anger, stood in her makeshift holding-cell. She watched the dark carefully, serenely; she's been here some time. And suddenly her veil lifted, the walls of the crystal became as transparent to her as they surely were to passersby, and her intelligent eyes swept around her surroundings quickly -- the Lord's bedchamber. Why here? Her frozen face tried to crease in a frown as she took in the thick ebon curtains, the large bed, the self-glorifying portraits hung arrogantly along this wall and that.
The door, adjacent to her position against one graying wall, opened stealthily and gently -- there was no creak, but a weary resignation to it (so it seemed to her eyes and hands that sensed magic) that spoke of ages. The thought of who it surely was made her cold, cold like her eyes, and nervous -- nervous like the part of her lips at the sight of a tall silhouette against the bright of the room beyond. A thick, black boot kicked its way arrogantly across the threshold, the other followed. The dusky man's face was barely visible as her sight dimmed again, but his eyes were two bright, orange, otherworldly irises.
Zelda tried to tilt her head, the coldness spreading from her eyes and throughout her entire body, want for another man dripping from her lips and tears of frustrated helplessness trickling down her face, jawbone, upon the pallid hem of her skirts. Her eyes focused quickly now; the man was almost upon her. He was standing fully dressed, his eyes cold, contemptuous, mocking; her eyes flicked quickly down his thick leather armor, settled onto the glimmering boots.
"Look at me."
Princess Zelda looked down at Lord Ganondorf Dragmire.
And with total derision.
. . .
This had not always been the case. Lord Ganondorf Dragmire and the Princess Zelda had, a long time ago, been able to sit in the same room at court and exchange trivial pleasantries. But there were ingredients that made up this current brew: loneliness, heartache, starvation, conquest, repetition...and the ever present, damnable, darkness.
The first thing Zelda remembered was waking up sore, heavy-eyed, altered, and with the Triforce mark of Wisdom shining brilliantly back of her hand. She remembered, albeit fuzzily, revealing herself in the Temple of Time in spite of what she had been told, remembered being caught in the warlord's powerful and ingenious trap, remembered being transported by some vile, pagan magic to his crude stone castle. Foul magic seemed to crawl in almost visible lines all across her chest and stomach and face. Unstoppable shivers ran along the length of her entire body -- she tried to move, and could not. She felt terribly vulnerable and degraded.
The feeling stayed with her for days. Nothing happened in these days in which she would stay awake for an hour or two at most. Whole hours would be lost on her, when she would fall into dreamlike states of sleep. She was neither nourished nor malnourished. The static charge of the old magic gradually faded (or perhaps she just became used to it) and slowly, very slowly, she began to feel somewhat...normal.
Her long periods of blackness ceased, and with her eyes opened and the spell of artificial darkness lifted, she could see her captor. Ganondorf Dragmire. She could have guessed. Zelda was not shocked, not fearful -- not really -- just angry and sour. She screamed and yelled and threatened violently. Sometimes she noticed that he slept in that bed, that he bathed in a neighboring room, would dress. She looked away every time he did this and almost wished for the darkness then. She could not stand the man.
It was only after screaming -- for days, perhaps -- that Zelda discovered that Ganondorf was not acknowledging her in the slightest. It was not that she began to panic. A dozen different ideas about what she could do raced through her mind, each one more wild than the last, but she dismissed them each contemptuously. She had given up -- and waited with never-faltering hope for her Champion. But now, her eyes followed the movements of Ganondorf Dragmire between the increasingly long periods of darkness. She hoped at first for some kind of weakness to exploit -- for some flaw in his insipid design -- and then...then out of a mixture of curiosity and disgust.
The dark had claimed her in times she could scarcely remember -- and she had fought bravely against so as to continue her duty. But there were times when it was all over, when there was nothing she could do, when...
...Some shining things caught her attention...