Power
She ran one hand through her hair – caked with filth, marred with crusted blood – and slumped to her knees.
Her dress was tattered, her breaths ragged as they heaved her body, as shuddering sobs forced their way past cracked lips.
She heard movement, something other than the fires that splintered the air, or the empty, billowing wind that she so wished could just wipe the slate clean, erase the crimson skies, wash away the ruptured ground.
Drained of the will to fight, already little more than a rag doll sewn together from the feeblest semblances of life, she turned and saw him.
His face was solemn, and she could detect the traces of pain pushing against his eyes, almost no less piercing than hers.
Her gaze swept the field now, and there was nothing, nothing, noth-
"You," her voice was swallowed by the barren gusts.
She clutched at her strands of dirty brown – indistinguishable from the grime – and realization struck her as she looked at him.
"You, you, YOU," she screamed, somehow mustering the strength to scrabble towards him. "It's all your fault! Everything is gone, everything is gone and it's all because of you!"
She dug her nails into his shoulders, and he didn't wince when she drew blood.
"If only..." she seethed, hatred fanning out as breath and wafting in his face. "If only you'd never been born."
"I want to help," he told her quietly. "Please let me."
"Help!" she screeched, a derisive laughter echoing across the expanse of unraveled corpses. "Help, help, you want to help?"
She shoved him, still laughing, tears running down her cheeks, cleaving paths through dirt.
"I despise you," she stared at his eyes, sunken with sorrow. "If it meant your death, I would kill myself right now if I could."
Dark lips pressed into a thin line, and power stretched from end to end.
"Understandable," he said. "But you don't want this to continue. I…"
He paused. Bent to one knee.
"Use me at your leisure. I am at your mercy."
She spat in his face. Stood tall above him with the sun's red glare – seeped through dreary clouds – at her back.
Fists clenched, she spoke after a length.
"You will live at the castle with me. You will not leave my sight or I will have you thrown in the dungeons without a second thought and I won't look back."
True to her word, she turned her back and didn't, as she held herself up and walked.
"We need them," Zelda placed a hand on his shoulder.
His fingers feathered their touch on hers.
"I know."
She sighed and kissed him.
"They won't take kindly to you, perhaps, but we have no choice."
"We're powerless," Ganondorf agreed.
The sun set, casting shadows across them both, across the ruined land all the way to the horizon, but they stood and watched it together.
Author's Note: So this time I actually have an excuse, however feeble. My computer blew up, and it makes sense, it has been like six years since I got it, but it was a bummer. Imagine my surprise when it actually turned on again and started working two days ago so I could get this chapter out. Needless to say, however, its time is at an end, and my new computer ships in about six-ish days. Oh boy!