What a sight it was, Castle Town at night. The stars were high in the sky, moon casting a whitish-yellow glow on the cobbled streets and brick architecture while the remaining stragglers and vendors found themselves ready to move along for the night. Link was on guard duty. While he had been appointed the royal guard of Princess Zelda, he also tended to other parts of Hyrule when the princess was secure in her castle.
With his hands rested behind his head in a lazy manner and his eyes cast toward the sky, he's almost startled by the heavy footsteps of another being.
"Sav'saaba."
Link shivers.
It's a voice like velvet, so smooth and yet so rare that he finds himself looking toward the sound almost as if his neck had snapped in his direction subconsciously. Link takes note of the softness to it, the way it sounds vulnerable and feminine with a depth that indicated masculinity. He recognizes the greeting but is confused when he finally finds the person the language had come from.
His skin was the color of the deep forests, hair the color of fire, and despite being built like the walls that surrounded them, his features were soft. The man was wearing simple robes of a dark red and yellow, no jewels dressed his person, and his feet seemed to be bare against the stone. Even in his state of dress, Link could tell that he was from the desert.
The knight hums his acknowledgment.
"May I sit?"
Link's hand outstretches toward the spot beside him and he nods. Somehow, it was like the man beside him understood that his affinity for silence wasn't personal. Most would scoff, make comments, but not him; he seemed to be made comfortable by it.
Seldom was he one to speak up, to make comments, or voice his concerns. Link only spoke when spoken to or asked a question that he believed was relevant. An observer at heart, he cared not for the meaningless conversation of the day but intelligent conversation only brought on by the shade of night. He believed that a Hyrulian brain was most intellectual at night when the noise of the day had fizzled out and the silence of night blanketed it with security.
Tomorrow, in the late afternoon, he would meet the man set to marry her, Princess Zelda. He was said to be a man of great intelligence, withholding the same power within himself that her highness also held.
The Triforce.
Or so it was said.
Link wasn't convinced. Any signs of the Calamity were null, no monsters set camps, no forces moved on the castle. Everything was silent in the fields. Normally, it would make him suspicious and yet nothing in his gut irked and pulled at him to listen to reason. If Demise wished to return, there would be signs.
He turns his attention from the fields to the Gerudo man, finally letting his eyes see him with detail.
This man looked much like the women of his race. Dark skin, red hair, tall and muscular. However, it seemed more pronounced on him, as if he was the epitome of what a Gerudo should look like. Even with it though, Link's eyes could tell by the way he watched the moon that his soul was good. He'd admit to having bias against them. They were known in Hyrule for centuries as thieves, their mistreatment by Kings prior had only fueled their affinity for crime, and despite that slowly wavering, Link knew that stereotypes and injustice remained within and without of the castle walls.
Demise was said to have been bred there, in the desert. He wondered if it played a role.
"It is said that in a land far from here, the moon has a face." Ganondorf says, his gaze still on the moon, trickling toward him in the seconds after his words hit the air. It was only a legend, part of one that he had learned about as a child, in a book that his mother had in her possession. Perhaps he shouldn't have read it but he was glad that he had. He wouldn't have come to understand his own fate, if not.
Being born male in the desert was a rarity. He almost wished the stories within that book held any truth at all. Instead, falsities crowded the pages of it; being male made him King but it did not make him favored. Not anymore.
Instead, The Gerudo feared him and the malicious power that he was said to bear. Briefly, he wonders what his mother would think of him now that he was able to speak for himself.
"Father told me stories."
His voice pulls him out of his own mind, eyes drinking in a gaze that resembled water. Link gives him a soft smile, his eyes crinkling in a youthful manner that makes the other man smile along with him. The knight was youthful. Perhaps not as young in years as the shine of his eyes made him seem but young enough that his skin shone much like them. He had a friendly face, Ganon thought. No judgement raged within him, no hatred, no boredom, his soul felt pure in a way that he'd never found in a Hylian who gazed upon him. Even the king's eyes very rarely met his own. When they did, he could feel his discomfort.
"You sound fond of him, your father."
Link remains silent, his nod delayed as if his mind had been processing something else. Oh. Ganondorf hums condolences and their eyes meet the horizon once more. However, the king moves his gaze toward his expression, finding himself at ease with his silent response; he'd grieved for him already.
"The woman that I called mother shared no blood with me...but, much like you. I found myself fond of her courage." She had been the strongest woman that he'd known. The village shared their unadulterated opinions of her choice to raise him, to build him up as the king that she always seemed to know that he would become. She rarely cried, rarely raised her voice, sometimes he wondered if the woman held any capability for emotion at all. She had shown him emotion as a teenager, when he was appointed king and she felt that he was old enough to know about the woman who gave him life.
Something in his gut twists when Link's eyes find his own for the third time that night. Emotion sweeps him, takes his mind somewhere that it hadn't been allowed for some time, and a swallow moves his throat there in the fight for control. This man felt familiar. Like he'd known him in moments far before this one, as if their souls were connected and reborn together, time and time again, but how could that be?
If he admitted his belief in the legend, in the prophets who only furthered his belief, that would be admitting to what he feared most about himself. If this boy was the knight who would seal the darkness, this boy was then, the boy who would slay him once the darkness had taken him.
No. Something else pulled him in his direction.
One of two truths that he wished were much like the pages of that book.
Link rises from his spot, brushing off the legs of his grieves, marveling in the shuffling clink of chain-mail and armor.
"Come" He says softly. "Whenever I'm restless, I walk the town."
The king is taken back by the younger man's empathy. Not trusting himself to speak, Ganondorf merely nods, raising his own body from the ground before a gentle chuckle escapes his chest. If he were to be bested by a man who stood no taller than a sandseal, that would be a fate worse than what he already faced.
Link has to stop his mouth from hanging open when they stand side-by-side. He was taller than he'd looked from the ground, as impossible as it sounded to him. He motions his head but his feet stick to the tower floor for a moment before he finally convinces himself to move.
The knight wondered what his mind had been on when his energy had changed. While looking at the moon, while in conversation, he'd felt genuine and warm but in the silence that had grown for a moment, he'd felt cold and distant. His eyes had looked nervous, his mouth curled into something that resembled the beginning of a scream that never came, and his hands had wrung together in what he'd thought was a conscious manner but now believed to not be.
"What business do you have in the castle?" Link asks, watching the other man. Ganon meets his eyes once more.
"Your king would believe, none." He doesn't mean for it to come out in such a manner as it does, however it comes out far too quickly for his throat to catch it. Link bows his head. From their place at his sides, hands come up to sign an apology for offense before they rest across his chest when they come to a halt.
"I have relocated here from the deserts. I am...set to marry a woman that I have never met, one that I do not wish to marry, and her father wished that I integrated."
"Why then, have you agreed to marry her? If not for love?"
"My people have been integrating into the kingdom's high society for centuries. There are not many of us who are not half Hylian or more. I believe that it is time to...settle the bad blood between our races. The future of our children depends on it."
"Nobility." Link says, his gaze meeting the cobblestone, warmth on his cheeks and yet something that resembled anger flashing in his eyes.
"Far from it, I'm afraid..."
"I apologize on behalf of the older generations. Their ignorance should have no place here." A heavy hand comes down on the knight's shoulder and he has to stop himself from shivering again.
"Little by little, their voices will be drowned out by those who speak kindness instead of hatred. It is not your burden to carry, Voe." Ganondorf squeezes his shoulder.
"Do you believe that?"
"No." The king chuckles.
"But I hold hope that one day I will feel safe enough to believe it."
One day soon, the fields, the towns, the far settlements, they would take him as their king. And he would willingly give as much for them as he would his own people.
"First, I must get through this marriage. Any advice?" Link snorts a laugh, out of character but no less beautiful than Ganondorf had expected it to be. The king laughs softly to himself but he forgets how to breathe when Link speaks again.
"I have never been drawn to women...not for their lack of beauty but for my own lack of warmth toward them. I find...I carry warmth for men more often."
"Me too." Ganondorf finds himself whispering, swallowing the lump in his throat.
"And yet you will wed a woman?"
"Yes."
It flashes again, Ganondorf notices, the look of anger in the knight's eyes. Somehow, he understood it; he believed it to be unfair too.
He simply had no other choice.