A/N: Is this killing you?! Because it's killing me! Squeeeeeee!

Instincts

I woke to the cool sensation of moss under my cheek and the telltale crackling of a nearby fire. I didn't move, trying to assemble my bearings. My failure in the field was still too crisp, like a dream I couldn't quite wake from. But it was real. My body still burned with the afterglow of the now-dormant goddess. It throbbed like sunburn.

Which could only mean the Calamity was still nearby.

I strained, listening for traces of him beyond the fire: breathing, or weight shifting against bracken. For a long time, there was nothing. Then his knuckles gently brushed against my cheek, as though trying to coax me out of that lingering dream, and all at once my blood froze in my veins.

My eyes snapped open in tandem with the goddess's, and with a cry I let her power burst out of me in a deadly reflex. The fire beside us went out from the force of it, rippling away from me in a shockwave. He grabbed my branded wrist again, trying to contain the power breathing to life there; my power was splashing light on trees and stone as I twisted desperately in his grip, trying to break free and tangled up in him in the darkness. He found my other wrist and wrenched me around with a growl, pinning my hands under my throat and pulling me back against his chest. I went very still, half expecting him to break me in half where I stood. We were both panting; I must have caught him by surprise.

"Don't do that again," he warned me darkly, his breath heavy on my ear. His proximity made my skin crawl; his touch was too alien, too godless, so cold and so warm, as though ice and fire mingled together under his skin. But instead of tearing me asunder he released me so quickly I stumbled to my knees. I glared back at him carefully; he lit the fire again with his arts, moving to sit beside it without sparing me a glance.

He looked familiar somehow in the firelight. A trick of the shadows, maybe, or a trick of his own design. He wore a simple tunic, fitted with leather belts, bracers, and gauntlets. The tailoring and the style of his equipment were beyond old-fashioned. He was like something out of an illustration in the library's history books, or threaded by ancient hands onto an antique tapestry. He was like something out of time.

I frowned at his prolonged silence and mustered the courage to speak.

"What do you want with me?" I demanded. My voice came out quieter than I would've liked; it was as though his presence commanded silence. But he didn't look at me. He seemed determined to ignore me, in fact. I steeled myself to try again. "I won't cooperate."

He frowned at that, his already disgruntled expression deepening. At least he acknowledged my existence.

"I'll accomplish what I set out to do alone, if I must," he growled, "though it would be easier with a second set of hands."

For a moment I only stared, derailed by the swerve of his logic. "I don't—"

"Is the Sword in the Great Hyrule Forest?" he interrupted, and my stomach dropped.

"What?"

"The Sword. The Blade of Evil's Bane. Does it still rest in the Lost Woods?"

I swallowed down fear, trying not to imagine the chaos it could mean if he ever found it. Trying to imagine what I could possibly do to stop him. "You wish to destroy it."

"I don't know that such a thing is even possible," he mused. It was not a question when he spoke next. "It has no wielder."

"No," I admitted bitterly. Surely he knew that all the legends said a hero wielding that blade would ensure his destruction. We searched far and wide for someone worthy of it; it made the fact that Calamity arrived before anyone could claim it that much more disheartening. "You didn't leave us a choice."

His mouth twisted, unexpectedly, into a wry smirk. "I suppose not."

I frowned deeper. He was awful, and terrifying, and the upturn of his lips made the goddess in me writhe. But I was his counterpart. I was born to oppose him. I couldn't be weak.

"You still haven't answered me," I insisted. "I demand to know why you've brought me here."

"You're hardly in a position to be making demands, Your Highness," he said, and I clenched my jaw. I could hardly argue that point. He stood before I could try anyway and moved closer, crouching so that we were nearly eye level, and I couldn't quite stop my heart from leaping into my throat. The firelight was playing tantalizingly on half his face, lighting up a single blue eye coiled in orange filament. "If you do as I say, you will destroy me. With any luck, the pall of the Calamity will never fall over Hyrule again. That's what you want, isn't it?"

I studied him, breathless, heart pounding, caught between fear and a blind, baseless hope. If only it were that simple. If only every nerve in my body didn't scream at me to run the other way. I whispered, "I can't trust you."

"I'm not asking for your trust," he scoffed. "Only your obedience."

"But if I don't trust you—"

He reached out suddenly, his fingers brushing my lips, startling me into silence. He traced my jawline, my cheekbone, and I trembled, the sensation of his touch slithering through me like a foul, bitter wind.

"Does this feel like the touch of someone you can trust?" he murmured. "That icy, numbing sensation of evil trapped in this skin, grating on your nerves and pulling the warmth from your body and putting knots in your stomach, that urge to recoil that you can't quite obey—that is the warning from the gods. You cannot trust me."

He stopped, mercifully, and my eyes fell shut as I recovered, a breath I had held too long finally escaping in a pitiful shudder. I dug my fingers into the grass and bit down on nothing, desperate to fight off the rest: the sudden rush tears building in my throat, the painful clench of my stomach that made me want to cry aloud. But I couldn't be that weak. I couldn't. Even if he was hate and evil incarnate. Even if it was taking every ounce of strength I could muster not to turn and be sick in the grass. I forced myself to breathe, forced myself to stay rather than flee into the woods screaming. He left me while I pulled myself together to sit at the edge of the fire again, and I swallowed bile and pried my eyes open again.

"I'm asking as a courtesy," he said curtly, once he thought I was calm enough to listen. "I could draw the answer out of your mind, instead, and it would be very unpleasant. So tell me plainly: is the Sword in the Lost Woods?"

I trembled again, the last of my adrenaline finally draining. It was true that there was no warning concerning the destruction of the Sword by the hands of evil that I had ever heard, and I could hardly keep the answer from him if he could truly go inside my mind. I whispered, "Yes."

"Then that is where we must go."

The monster stared, preoccupied, into the fire. I briefly entertained the idea of running away again, but to what end? Even if I could escape, it was clear that his power was matched to the goddess's. I had no reason to believe the Champions were still alive to aid me, either, and even if they were, man-made weapons and simple elemental magic were nothing next to his abilities. If running and fighting were both out of the question, that just left one grim, unpalatable option.

I knew better than to believe that he was telling the truth about letting me destroy him, of course, but staying alive was something of a priority.

I scanned my surroundings in the soft glow of the firelight. It was unfamiliar, especially on a moonless night. "Where are we?"

"A forest beside the river to the east," he murmured, still staring intently at the flames. "It was called Applean once, but these things shift with time."

"It's still called Applean," I said, my voice nearly a whisper. My body still felt weak, drained by his very presence; or perhaps he was employing some dark magic to render me less volatile. I took a deep breath, trying to reinforce my defenses as I made to challenge him again. "If I agree to help you, what reassurance do I have that you won't kill me?"

"None."

"But—"

"We've established that you can't trust me. I've already told you that I'll be destroyed, which should preclude the possibility that I'll be able to harm you afterwards, but since you don't believe me that will be of little comfort. My only other recourse is to swear to you, but I doubt the word of a demon will mean much."

I pursed my lips, absently wrapping my arms around myself against the chill of the night. I was just outside the warmth of the fire, but the idea of moving any closer to him was too awful to contemplate. "Given the alternative, I would rather have your word than none at all."

"Then you have it."

I shivered, and not because of him. The cold was starting to get the better of me. "Legend says your powers transcend time and space. Can't you just snap your fingers and take us there?"

"The Deku Tree prevents it," he answered with mild distaste. Then he tilted his head towards the fire, considering. "And I would like to see Hyrule one last time."

"You aren't at all like I expected," I sighed. My teeth chattered.

"No?" He eyed me from across the flames, and then stood, wandering in an arc into the woods, until I couldn't make him out in the shadows. Not seeing him was nearly worse than having him nearby; my heart thudded whenever I thought I spied him between the trees and my body tensed, anticipating danger. I half expected him to lunge out of the darkness transformed into some kind of hideous beast with a maw full of a hundred sharp, crooked teeth. Eventually he emerged from the dark, splashed in firelight and shadows. I turned to face him, inching back as he slowly stalked forward. But then he stopped, just as I felt the heat of the fire cascade over my back, crouching to watch me with a glint in his eyes that belied the darkness. "And what were you expecting, then?"

"I don't know," I whispered. "Something else. Something with talons and fangs, mindless and bloodthirsty, with a body of fire and eyes like blood."

"A pig snout, perhaps?" he mused, his eyes glinting with dark humor.

Many accounts had claimed he would have one. I watched him pensively, lulled by the fire and the fact that he hadn't come any closer for a few seconds. If it hadn't been for his inhuman touch, the power that radiated off him and the orange threads spooled around his placid blue eyes, I might never have known what he was. His features were pleasant, handsome even, framed in a curtain of hair the color of sun-ripened corn. His coloring was paler than it ought to have been, but in the firelight it wasn't so apparent. Perhaps that was part of the deception, part of what made him so deadly. Still, it seemed odd that the writings never mentioned it, always shrouding him in convoluted metaphor.

I thought of the tales of his ruthlessness, of his lack of control, of how he would burn everything he touched and turn castles to rubble and towns to ruins mere moments after his birth. He was evil, certainly—every instinct and reflex in my body told me so—but not the embodiment of frenzied hate I had thought he would be.

"Tell me," he murmured impassively, pulling me from my reverie, "what do you know of the last Rise of the Calamity?"

"It was eons ago," I murmured. "Legend says a princess housing a sacred power and a Hero wielding the holy blade came up against the Calamity with an army beyond reckoning. They fell to your power, but not before you were sealed for another ten thousand years."

"Both of them?"

For a moment I held my breath, caught off guard by the threatening edge in his voice, and forced a nod. "According to legend."

He sighed, an unexpectedly human sound. "It was foolish to hope it would be remembered differently, I suppose."

"What do you mean?" I asked, comprehension slowly dawning. "What really happened, ten thousand years ago?"

His eyes slid to mine, darkening. He murmured, "Go to sleep, princess."

With a wave of his hand he drew darkness my mind like a heavy curtain, and I slipped quickly, peacefully, into something dreamless, and knew no more.

It was morning when I stirred again.

The remnants of our fire were blackened and gray with cold. The hair on the back of my neck rose, and I knew he was close. I checked cautiously over my shoulder; the Calamity was sitting against a tree, only a few feet away. The sunlight was trickling through the leaves over his head, dappling his face in soft, tremulous shadow.

I sat up slowly, stretching a little against the soreness in my back from sleeping on the ground. I hadn't exactly had a chance to get comfortable before he forced me under. But waking up at all was something of a pleasant surprise. He didn't deign to acknowledge me, though he must've been aware that I was awake by now. I pulled my hair to one side and ran my fingers through it, mulling over my predicament, and scowled drowsily as my eyes fell to the mark etched on my hand. Never would I have guessed that the same power that was supposed to be our salvation would also fuel the evil that was now my captor.

The sound of him biting into an apple made me start. I looked at him again, and he was staring at the apple, frowning.

"Typical," he muttered, chucking it over his shoulder.

Then he turned his clashing, ribboned eyes on me. He scanned me briefly, calculatingly, looking for something, and I had to fight the urge to shrink out from under his scrutiny. He finally stood, frowning again, and tossed me a second apple.

I caught it with surprise. "What's this?"

"Breakfast," he growled.

I stood in his cold silence, enduring his stare with what little wherewithal I had left. My nerves were still unsettled, set on edge by his presence; I could feel the evil wafting off him like a cool breeze, prickling against my skin like fever. I honestly wasn't sure I would be able to keep anything down. "I'm not hungry."

"Eat," he demanded, his frown deepening.

"But I—"

"Eat," he said again inflexibly, crossing the distance impatiently and drawing the hand holding the apple closer to my mouth by the wrist. I suppressed another shiver at the strangeness of his touch, staring unwillingly at the fruit. "We have a long road ahead of us and you need the energy. Now eat, before I set a field ablaze or cast a pestilence into a village."

I didn't know how seriously to take that threat, and wasn't willing to find out. I forced myself to take a small bite, trying to placate him, and chewed it thoroughly into oblivion before I swallowed. Satisfied, he turned north, clearly expecting me to follow. I looked longingly in the other direction. I couldn't possibly leave him to his own devices, but my simple Hylian instincts quailed at the idea of getting any closer to him than I already was. But I knew what I had to do; he seemed to know that I did, too, for he didn't turn back to see whether or not I followed, confidently heading towards the distant bend in the river. I took a steadying breath, and then took another bite as I fell in step several paces behind him.

We walked in silence while I finished my breakfast, my gaze fixed solidly on the back of his head. I let the apple core drop onto the forest floor, trying to conjure a plan. My thoughts veered constantly back to the others, who could still be strewn about Hyrule Field for all I knew, and to my people, who were in very real danger. I took a breath and marshaled my courage, beating down the instinct to flee as I purposefully closed the distance between us.

"You didn't answer my question last night," I demanded, and he glanced back, sneering, affording me a glimpse of his profile.

"And if you don't want to be unconscious for the rest of this trip, you won't ask again."

I quelled the goddess inside me—the bitter retort that bubbled to my lips, the tremor of fear as she remembered battling him too many times to count, the flare of frustration at his impudence—calling upon the calm of my prayerful meditations, which I knew so well by now.

"Fine," I breathed. "What questions am I allowed?"

"Try asking a few and you'll find out."

It sounded more like a threat than an invitation, but I chose to press on. I certainly wasn't going to trail him in submissive silence the entire way. "We're going to the Great Hyrule Forest?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"That's where the Sword rests," he droned, as though I were being unusually dense.

"I know that," I bit back. He rattled me so easily, poking and prodding until my anger could override my fear of him, which I am not ashamed to say was great. It was astonishing, actually. "But why do we need the Sword?"

"To destroy me."

"I have the power of the gods," I offered grimly. "If you would stop resisting, I could destroy you now."

He scoffed once, bitterly. "Sealing me away would not destroy me."

"But the legends—"

"Forget the legends," he interrupted. Again. I puffed a quiet sigh. "If legend held the key to destroying me, don't you think I would have been done away with long ago? It isn't that simple. I am a curse; part of a cycle, unending, that started before Hyrule was."

"Then teach me how I should destroy you," I suggested, going so far as to wear a convincing smile. "I would be a more than willing student."

"No doubt," he sighed. "But I'm afraid you just don't have the power."

We reached the edge of the forest. The Castle Town Watchtower and the city walls, and the spires of Hyrule Castle beyond it, rose up in the west. It looked so peaceful; I braced myself, wondering if the farce would suddenly end, the Calamity beside me would turn into a snarling, raging beast, and the Castle would spontaneously burst into flames. But the morning kept on, unchanged, bathed in warm sunlight and distant birdsong.

I realized I was staring and turned my attention back to him; he was staring at me. An expression crossed his eyes, something like disappointment, and he scowled, moving towards the road again.

"Come on," he growled.

I followed, frowning a little at his sudden change of mood. He had seemed almost amicable when we were talking about his own destruction.

"I have more questions," I ventured, and he sighed in a dramatic display of his long-suffering.

"I don't doubt it."

"Why are you doing this? Why would you voluntarily destroy yourself?" He gave me a deadpan look, eyes darkening, and I grimaced. "I'm not allowed to ask that one."

"No," he confirmed, "you're not."

We fell into a spell of silence as we crossed the last greenbelt of Romani Plains to the road. Then he turned, moving towards Orsedd Bridge, and I blinked, scanning the north road. "We're taking the road beneath Crenel Peak? Isn't it faster to—"

"We head east," he insisted gruffly.

I trotted up to him as he began to leave me behind, still confused by his choice to take the longer route. He was already under the archway that heralded the gateway to Hyrule Field when traveling in the other direction. "But—"

"I know we're both in a hurry to see me dead," he growled, "but the north road would keep us in the shadow of the Castle until we could cross the river."

My brow furrowed. Surely he wasn't worried about being spotted, was he? What could the Castle guards possibly hope to do to him? "What does that matter?"

He pressed his hand tentatively, gently, against the stone of the archway, watching the contact with an intensity I didn't understand. He ran his fingers over it slowly, deliberately, in a gesture that was almost longing.

"It's so tempting," he whispered, something animal and dark in his tone that made my blood chill. "You have your instincts. I have mine. It would be so easy… to just reach out…"

He closed his eyes, laying his forehead against the stone, and took a shuddering breath. I watched him, stomach knotting, knowing I should be afraid but not yet knowing why. When he opened his eyes again, the orange threads in them were glowing bright amidst the blue, and the breath stole right out of my chest.

"To just reach out and destroy it."

The stone under his hand shattered with a sound like thunder, the archway blowing apart above our heads. The force of it sent rubble and dust and splinters of stone heaving in all directions, raining over the field like an inescapable hailstorm. The evil ebbed out of him, snarling, yearning for release, for destruction, smothering me with its darkness. It coiled around me, so much stronger than it had been when he came out of the fissure, promising decay and ruin and pain, swirling behind my eyes and dripping on my tongue and striking the purest kind of fear deep into my heart.

And without thinking, I ran.

I called upon the goddess, throwing myself across Hyrule, as far from him as I could possibly get. Fields and hills rushed past in a blur; I weaved, half-blind, driven by instinct, through forests, through water; and at the edge of my consciousness, awakening with a snarl of rage, I felt him pursuing.

The Calamity rushed after me with speed that defied logic, darkening my mind as he drew closer like a shadow. I drank deep of panic, feeding off the adrenaline, but the shadow only grew, and grew, and grew. Finally his hand clamped down on my wrist and I screamed.

I thrashed against his hold, light blazing from me desperately as I tried to break free, as the battle between us transcended our physical forms, escalating to a war of light. With the same suddenness, the same severity of our first battle, he stamped out my light, trapping me in a painful grip against his chest. I felt his hot, furious breath against my cheek, the burning, icy sensation of his arms holding me tight, rendering me helpless. The primal, ancient fear of him buried deep within me writhed to life, and another screamed tore out of me, a long, awful sound that grated against my own ears as tears slid hot trails down my cheeks.

His voice was a roar, deafening and enraged, his grip tightening as he shouted in a punishment that efficiently killed my will to struggle. "Do not run from me! I will reduce this world to rubble and ash if you run again! Do you understand?"

I gasped between sobs, trying to breathe through fear. Finally, I nodded weakly, unable to manage much else besides the soft, pathetic sounds leaving me with every breath. He dropped me and I collapsed to my hands and knees, an exhausted, frightened mess. I held myself tight, stealing a glance in his direction as I tried to pull myself together. He seemed to be doing the same, his breath shuddering out of him as he worked to be calm.

We gave each other a moment, and I let myself hiccup a few more times before I tried to speak again. My voice was a sad warble. "I didn't mean to run. You frightened me."

He sighed, running a hand tersely through his hair. He turned and knelt in front of me, taking my shoulders in his hands that were so warm and so cold at once. His voice was controlled, but his grip betrayed his tension. "You have to fight your instincts, Zelda, just like I have to fight mine. You can't run from me again. You're the only thing keeping me from burning everything I touch, do you understand? If you leave me, there will be no one to stop me when I—"

He paused, the muscles jumping in his face, and he stood again, turning his back on me.

I sniffled, holding myself tighter. I didn't even know where we were; our merry chase seemed to have taken us far, though, with a chill in the air I hadn't felt on the plains. I croaked, "How do you know my name?"

"What?"

He had turned, and we were staring dumbly at each other in the sun. A wind carried over the wilds, tangling my hair, and I absently brushed it away. His eyes were glued to mine, a war of blue and orange lit by the daylight.

"You called me Zelda," I clarified in a tiny voice.

He stared at me until neither of us could take it anymore. He looked away, sighing quietly, so imperceptibly it could've been the wind.

"You're always Zelda," he said.

And that was the end of that.