Blizzaga Saga: My reasons for discontinuing this fic way back when were complicated. A few people wouldn't stop bothering me about what I "had" to write, I didn't like where the plot was going, and I didn't want to write lemons for the story anymore. I was struggling with depression and various other things, and when certain "fans" started telling me that I should kill myself for not updating more often, I took it harder than a mentally healthy me would have. Also, I let someone push the idea of including Midna onto me even though I didn't want to, and by the time I came to my senses, it was too late to take back what I'd written and I didn't want to rewrite it. (She was the unnamed person running around Castle Town in chapter thirteen, so pretend it was Dark Link.) Finally, I'm rather pessimistic. The longer one of my fics gets, the more inevitable it seems to me that I will somehow ruin it, so this seemed about the right place to stop.

I still have no intention of finishing this, and RyoshiMorino is still writing his continuation, but I decided to clean up and post some of what was on my computer for those curious about where the fic was going before I canned it. This is the first such installment, with more possibly coming as I sift through my abandoned works. If you've read this far, I hope you enjoy the rest.

EDIT: RyoshiMorino is more productive with this story than I ever was, lol. I've decided to give him my notes instead of posting them here. He might use them or he might not, but regardless I'm happy that Release has a talented and dedicated author.

"You made our queen trust you! You made me trust you!"

Samiyah's words echoed in his head, but otherwise Link's mind wasn't in the present. Every quest he completed and place he traveled to came to him in a nauseating rush, and then he found himself standing on clouds high above the world.

Three golden figures—the creation goddesses, he realized—appeared before him, and somehow he knew without looking at himself that he was in the body of the Fierce Deity as he'd been while fighting Majora. He barely had time to wonder if this was the moment described in Ganondorf's journal when the goddesses betrayed Oni before the air stopped supporting him. Din, Nayru, and Farore extended their arms and pushed him, and he fell.

As the earth pulled him downward and tore a scream from him, he saw the Gerudo Desert miles below rising to meet him. He braced for impact, but just before he hit the sand, pain in his shoulder brought him back to reality.

"Did you think wearing a darker tunic would fool us?" asked the hard, angry voice of Samiyah.

Link cried out when the red placed her foot on his back and viciously pulled the arrow she'd impaled him with from his flesh, deliberately causing as much pain as possible. She silenced his protest by holding a scimitar to his neck, and as Gerudo surrounded him with raised spears, he was too confused and in too much agony to ask what had happened during the last few hours he'd spent by himself.

Samiyah didn't seem to be in the mood to answer questions, but he couldn't help weakly muttering, "Why?"

"You should know that the wound you inflicted on Aveil is nonlethal. Whatever your mission, you failed, and now you will die for nothing."

He blinked, blood loss already slowing his reactions. "I didn't attack Aveil. I can barely move."

Footsteps of someone running sounded behind him, and when they stopped he heard Nabooru's voice. "Stop this! Link is innocent. I sensed dark magic just before the attack."

"I did as well," Link recalled.

"Of course you did," Samia said sarcastically before addressing the Spirit Sage. "And your input holds no water here. Do you think I haven't heard that you two bathed together and kissed at the oasis?"

Link didn't have the energy to be angry or embarrassed, as her comment normally would have made him. Had the prophecy he read of already begun? Was the Gerudo race in danger?

"If someone attacked Aveil, he must be hiding somewhere."

His words only enraged his captor. "Don't think you can pin this on someone else. Even if you had an accomplice, I will still make you pay. Abia, take him to a holding cell. There's nothing in the desert to hide behind. If someone else is here, we'll find him in minutes."

Surprised that Abia was present, he wondered why she hadn't said anything. Two women lifted him by his underarms and carried him, his legs dragging across the ground without protest, and a third pulled his hat off and lifted him painfully by his hair so he could see Abia. Her back was to him as she led them, her slim figure standing tall as the shorter woman could make it. Stupefied, he let his eyes fall briefly to her thin waist and rear before noticing that she hid her leg injury in front of the others.

They dropped him onto the floor in one of the cells he remembered rescuing a carpenter from in the other timeline, and iron bars fell from the ceiling behind him. The pain that turning around to face his captors caused finally shook him from his daze, and he found Abia's face inches from his own on the other side of the bars. She seemed to be studying him, searching for something, and unlike all the other times she looked at him, her expression held no anger or contempt.

"Is Aveil okay?" he asked.

"She was stabbed, but her life isn't in danger."

"You don't think I hurt her, do you?"

"No," she answered more quickly than he expected, her stare faltering. "I've seen you fight. I know what type of man you are. You...You fight for others," she said, repeating what she'd told Gelbooru earlier. "Besides, even when fully healed, you are too weak to harm our queen."

It wasn't serious, nor was it a joke—just an attempt at restoring normality to a situation she didn't know how to handle. Nevertheless, Link laughed, winced when it hurt his ribs, and then laughed bitterly some more at the absurdity of being attacked and under suspicion yet again. The short-haired woman said nothing, but her expression resembled the guilty one she wore after he yelled at her in the Spirit Temple.

They waited in silence. When footsteps signaled a new arrival, he was dismayed to see that Samiyah appeared no less angry than before.

"We found no one, but you already knew we wouldn't."

At her command, the bars withdrew, and Gerudo once more dragged Link away. The night air chilled his blood-soaked tunic when they emerged from the fortress, but that didn't unnerve him as much as the crowd that met them outside.

Nearly the entire desert population had gathered. The able-bodied women stood at the front, creating a barrier between him and the older or weak ones, and they all faced his direction. "Let Oni go!" some whites cried, but beyond that he couldn't hear the individual voices in the din. They quieted, however, when Samiyah spoke.

"You will be an example to your race of what happens when you harm a Gerudo. Stand, Hylian."

Those holding him lifted him to his feet, and Link tried to keep from collapsing when they let go, unable to lift his arms to balance himself.

"See the price for hurting one of us. You will run by everyone holding a weapon. If you refuse or take too long, I will kill you."

Link had heard of this punishment. Making criminals "run the gauntlet" was outlawed in Hyrule due to its cruelty, and a twinge of fear made it easier to ignore his ailing body as Samiyah held the bow she'd already shot him with once.

"Let him go! Run, Link!"

He recognized Gelbooru's voice and wondered how she thought he could run when he could barely stay upright. She had no way of knowing he could teleport. Nevertheless, he did have that option. Even while injured, he could cast magic, and though they'd surely tasked someone with guarding Epona, he could use Farore's Wind to hide somewhere until he came up with a plan.

It seemed his most viable option as he observed the dozens of purples in front of him. Though some appeared conflicted, he didn't doubt that fleeing was the only way to avoid being beaten even closer to death. Both the frightened and rational parts of his mind told him there was no reason to stay. He'd done enough for these people, and they clearly didn't want his help.

But fleeing wouldn't be right when he could save them. "Before I do," Link said loudly, "you should know two things. First, I had nothing to do with what happened to Aveil. Second, before you found me, I read Ganondorf's journal. He wrote that one day, the Gerudo will face a choice that will either save them or destroy them."

"Ganondorf made no such claim. Quit stalling."

"It's in his journal. He wrote it in ancient Hylian."

"So the only ones who can verify your story are your Hylian allies? How convenient."

Link still didn't know how he gained the ability to sense murderous intent, but he knew that Samiyah would allow no more words, so he took a shaky step on the muscles he'd destroyed carrying Abia and Nabooru. The first Gerudo he reached shoved him, and he stumbled but remained standing, thankful that she didn't use her full strength. The crowd erupted again.

"Hit him harder!"

"Leave him alone!"

The next one punched his wound, and pain echoed through his body, making him freeze and grit his teeth. Reminding himself that he'd suffered worse, Link kept going, only to have a glaive cut through his tunic. Before he had time to process the new hurt, the pommel of a scimitar slammed into his head, sending him to the ground. His now bleeding temple throbbed, and his fingers sank into the sand as his body failed to react to the landing.

"What are you doing?" Abia whispered urgently, and he lifted his head to see that she was the next purple he had to walk in front of. The same horror he'd seen on her face at the Spirit Temple when he refused to fight Nabooru showed now, and the same frightened words she'd uttered then passed her lips: "Fight back!"

Her request seemed reasonable, and his anger from Twinrova's spell returned. How many times would he have to go through this? Being hated, proving himself, being hated again... As usual, he had someone to save, and no one was going to save him.

But he knew that if he ran or fought, the Gerudo would take his warning for a lie, and making sure they survived was more important than his feelings. The back of his left hand burned.

"No. I won't fight you."

Abia's eyes widened, and the woman known for lashing out at him froze. "Abia!" Samiyah snapped, obviously wanting her to continue his punishment, but Abia seemed paralyzed.

Samyiah opened her mouth to bark out another order, only for someone to cut her off. "Stop this at once! Link is innocent!"

Link was surprised—not by the voice, but by the fact that the Gerudo listened. Aveil stood before them with a bloodied cloth wrapped around her midsection, and immediately he understood why everyone was out for blood. Two attendants fretted over her but didn't touch her, afraid of making her injury worse.

"My queen, please, you must not be up!"

Aveil ignored them in favor of her second-in-command, the gash in her stomach making the normally flirtatious woman irritable. "I told you already that Link didn't attack me!"

"I will not risk your life by taking foolish chances," Samiyah stated, just as angry. "This will be a message to everyone who wishes us harm."

"Link has helped us again and again! He didn't have to gather water with us, or scare away Twinrova, or save our sisters at the Temple!" The queen addressed the crowd, standing straight and proud despite her obvious pain. "We are the strongest race in the world, and one reason for that is our ability to judge the worth of men. Have you not seen that he is good?"

Silence followed, or at least it seemed quiet to Link as his head swam and his consciousness dimmed. At length one sister muttered, "We thought Ganondorf was good too."

His eyes widened as though seeing the Gerudo for the first time. They had been wronged again and again, by Hyrule and even their own king. It made perfect sense that they would suspect him of any crime that occurred, he realized, and his resentment vanished.

"What is happening? Get his glove off!" Samiyah commanded, but Link saved them time by removing it himself. The Triforce of Courage glowed, a beacon of hope and understanding in the mass confusion. It bathed everyone nearby in golden light as it had at the oasis, and the Gerudo looked at him in awe.

"Oni..."

He astonished them further when, through sheer effort and willpower, he managed to stand. Abia took a step back, eyes still wide. "I'll fight, Abia. But it will be for everyone." He spoke more loudly, addressing all the Gerudo. "I'm not trying to get you to lower your guard. I'm telling you to keep it up. I don't know what, but something bad is going to happen. The Gerudo are in danger, and not just from moblins and assassins. I want to help, if you'll let me." Letting his words sink in, he turned to the queen. "Aveil, what happened?"

She smirked but had more difficulty maintaining an air of seduction than Nabooru had while injured. "A man in dark clothing attacked me. I'm ashamed to say that I...let him near me because I thought he was you, but when he struck I killed him. He turned into a black mist that disappeared without a trace."

Her description of the perpetrator sounded like Dark Link, but that was impossible in this timeline with Ganondorf trapped in the Twilight Realm. Between the moblins at the Spirit Temple whose source even Twinrova didn't know, his strange dreams, Ganondorf's writings, and now this, Link couldn't make sense of it all, but apparently Aveil didn't want him to.

"My queen, you mustn't walk on your own!"

Aveil ignored her attendant and sauntered toward Link. He watched, amazed that she still showed affection through physical movement even though it hurt her. "I am glad you are still alive. Link...Oni...save your strength. Everything's okay. We will gain strength from your love for us."

Putting a hand on his cheek, she kissed him. It was more assuring than romantic and made him recall the story of the Goddess of the Sand welcoming the Fierce Deity into her heart. Save his strength? Let someone else help? No one had ever said such things to him. Too tired to think, he accepted her words, feeling like he was being saved for the first time. The Triforce stopped glowing, and his eyes closed.

"I have two potions at Lon Lon Ranch we can use," he muttered drowsily.

"I will send someone to get them," offered Samiyah.

"Sending a Gerudo into Hyrule without a Hylian escort would look like an act of aggression. Link can ride his horse with you. That way, he can drink the potion as soon as you get it."

"And give him a chance to escape if he really is the culprit?" Link didn't see how Aveil responded, but she must have done something, because after a moment Samiyah added, "Fine. I'll pick a small group to leave with him at first light."

His strength gave, and soldiers took him away again. This time, however, they held him with respect, not letting his limbs drag across the ground. He thought maybe someone cleaned and wrapped his shoulder, and then he felt a soft bed beneath him.

"Be strong, my love," someone whispered, and his heart swelled. No one had ever cared about him like this. The heat left with the day, but he felt warm and safe, especially when two women pressed against either side of him beneath a blanket. "We are here for you."

His mind briefly rebelled, telling him to think about Zelda rather than these women, but when he tried to remember the last time he and the princess shared an emotional moment, he realized that she would give him no comfort in person or in memory. Thus he let the women he cared for here provide it. For once, someone else's love for him relieved the tension he constantly held inside from being a hero, and he fell asleep with his head cradled against the bosom of the Gerudo.