Taming the Tiger
Chapter 2
First off, let me apologize for the incredibly long wait on this. I just hit a big roadblock with this story. I didn't know where to go with it or what to do next without seeming repetitive. I wrote and rewrote, and I'm still not fully happy with the results. Still, I knew I had to get this up even if it means taking it down and revising it later. Anyways, I hope you enjoy it. The Legend of Zelda is not mine. There I said it.
Over the next few nights, he slept fitfully and dreamed of her. They were always half forgotten and vague. They were phantoms in the small hours of the day with no real substance or resolution, a bit like the woman who occupied them. Sometimes he ran after her through a black garden, only catching a fleeting glimpse of the hem of her dress. Other times she was a statue in front of him that the moment he touched her cracked and crumbled beneath his fingers. He thought back on his sisters and aunts' teachings on the meaning of dreams and found no solace in the lessons. He would take the bones from his latest meal and throw them on the fire to see how they cracked. He could make nothing of their lines and fractures. And for some reason, it frightened him that the dreams held no deeper meaning than what might lurk in his heart.
She came in the evenings after her meetings with the Council and often with pressing news of the King of Holodrum's proposal. He could tell from the lines that knit her brows together and the crinkles of her lids that it troubled her. The information combined with ominous tidings of his dreams stirred unease in his dark heart. He could not place why though. His lessons and instincts told him that he should be concerned, that he should take delight in her discomfort. He could very well be witnessing the fall of Hyrule before his very eyes, have a hand in his enemy's undoing, but he could find no joy in it. Instead of contemplating these things, he turned his mind to the task at hand. He had promised her he would teach her the subtle arts of flirting and he intended to do so.
"Lower your eyelids," he instructed, his voice even and patient as she sat across the table from him. "No, too low. You look like you're falling asleep. You must seem interested in what I'm saying."
"I am," she labored a sigh. "However, how exactly should I lower my lids without seeming to fall asleep all the while seeming interested?"
He thought on how to explain it to her. This was something that was learned naturally without thorough explanation like learning to walk. You simply guided the child along and she followed suit. He had assumed this would be the same. "Imagine you're trying to look at something without being noticed, out of the corner of your eye."
She squinted at him.
He stopped a laugh. He knew her sense of pride was tender when it came to things like this. The less he laughed at her the more cooperative she would be. "Alright," he breathed, "pretend that I'm a man you find comely. You want to look at me, but you don't want me to know it."
He watched the delicate skin of her lids flutter for a moment as she imagined the scenario in her head. Then they dropped until only a slit of her eyes could be seen. He watched her irises warm to the color of dark amethysts.
"How is this?" she asked, her expression never wavering from the come-hither look she had achieved.
"Perfect," he murmured over his knuckles, finding himself unexpectedly caught in her gaze. For a heart beat, he falsely believed it was him she was interested in.
"Good," she said with relief, shattering the mood. Her face relaxed into its previous troubled expression.
They continued on for some time that evening discussing what topics to approach and to avoid. Matters of state were off limits while hobbies and activities were too be talked about in detail.
"But make sure you try and steer the conversation back towards him. Men of power like to discuss themselves above all else," Ganondorf stated sincerely.
"I'm sure you're well acquainted with that," Zelda teased as she stood to leave.
"Till our next lesson then," he said with a false bow.
She smiled in a way that warmed him and left the room.
The weeks passed and he continued to instruct her in the ways of courting. He taught her how to purse her lips in a way that suggested a kiss without actually leading to one. He watched her with growing fascination come into the woman she had never been. He found his fingers lingering on her cheek, brushing errant strands of hair out of her face. The whole time he convinced himself that she was just a student and he just a teacher. He was only trying to prevent another man from capturing the prize he himself had been trying to reach for. No one would take the sweetness of Hyrule's fall from his lips. No man would taste that wine but him.
"What do you know of dancing?" Ganondorf asked as he eyed his student across the table while sipping at his wine.
She shrugged carelessly, eyebrows raised as she looked at him over the rim of her chalice. "Enough to get me by at a ball or banquet. I'll admit I'm no prodigy, but I manage."
He nodded having expected as much. The king had not groomed her as his heir so he had not seen much use in providing her with a well rounded education. The outcast Gerudo eyed her rigid back and braced shoulders. There was potential there. He could see it in the sway of her step as she moved across a room, the way her feet always glided and never shuffled. She had a natural fluidity to her movements that was chained by her own restrained sense of pride. He would have to break her of that. He would have to show her that her own fear was her greatest enemy
The disgraced king stood and offered her his hand. Her eyes scanned the appendage for a moment before she looked up at him beneath the veil of her lashes. "You expect me to dance with you?" She asked, voice incredulous and bordering on nervous laughter.
"I am your teacher. This is one of your lessons."
"But why?" She rested her chin elegantly against one knuckle, cocking her head to the side.
"That is part of the lesson as well."
She considered him for a moment before accepting his hand. He felt the smooth pads of her long fingers brush against the calluses of his palm. He could tell where the lines on the front of her hand separated and braided together like rivers, and he began to read their patterns without a thought. His hand slipped over and onto hers like a glove as he pulled her gently to her feet. Hers fit so easily into his own, and it reminded him of the first time he'd held the reins of a horse or gripped the wood of his bow. It felt good and natural like the first drink of rain water after the long dry season. The revelation stunned and frightened him that he should find something so menial and unexpected so pleasant. Yet did not the Desert rejoice when her lover the Storm rolled back over her to cover her in his darkness despite their great differences.
The Queen of Hyrule stood before the former Gerudo King with arms akimbo and her hand resting uneasily in his. His free hand rested lightly on her hip, his touch hesitant and nervous. He could feel beneath his fingers the muscles of her lower back grow as taut as the strings of a sitar.
"Relax," he ordered as he stepped into the circle of her arms.
She forced herself not to take a step back. He moved her available hand to his shoulder and started the lesson.
"Your carriage is too stiff," he reprimanded as he forced her to drop her elbow.
"And you're too tall," she replied, her face crinkling into a mask of displeasure.
He growled. "My height cannot be accounted for. Your terrible posture can."
He thought she would sulk before she lowered her shoulders and allowed herself to lean into his hold.
"Good," he crooned as they started to move again to the pace he set.
He nodded the beats out, trying to get her to feel the rhythm in time with the movements. It had seemed impossible at first. She had moved her feet awkwardly, trying to keep what she thought a respectable distance between them and frequently stepping on his booted toes.
He'd had to bite his tongue numerous times to keep from cursing her for her clumsiness. Ganondorf had never been a patient instructor, and this pupil in particular infuriated him. Now, he could tell a slight difference in her. She seemed more at ease around him, seemed to almost be enjoying it. She had found a niche of comfort in this contact with him at last.
He stopped a smile from flitting across his face. He imagined trying to teach her a Gerudo dance. It would have affronted every sense of propriety she had. He could hardly think of the regal and unbending queen of the Hylians putting on a skirt made of silk scarves and whirling around in the wild circles that marked Gerudo dances. At times, he thought of her as a corpse, pale and bloodless, but her body was surprisingly warm to his touch. It seemed even this woman had a heart in her that pumped blood as red as his.
After some time, he became satisfied enough with her progress to allow them to sit down at the small table. She lowered herself smoothly into the chair opposite his and took a slice of cheese from a platter near her left wrist. "I still do not see what the purpose in that lesson was other than to point out my shortcomings."
"Dance is important in any culture," he remarked, drumming his fingers on the table, thinking of a better way to express what he was trying to say to her. "It has its own meanings and nuisances. It uses its own language."
She stopped mid bite, lips quirking into a smug grin. "Really and what language would that be?" she asked, lowering the piece of food back onto the dish.
"Touch," he whispered as he leaned across the table towards his pupil, "is a very important language. It can convey things that words leave out. Things that we are too afraid to say."
"I see," she murmured back to him as he placed a hand gently on her shoulder.
"You see my hand," he said as he moved from her shoulder to cup the side of her neck, "it conveys more than words can. It displays my intentions, my emotions, any possibility that is held between us."
"I see," she repeated, her lids falling heavily over her eyes, her lashes lying like lace against the skin.
"You try."
"Try what?" Questioned the Queen of Hyrule.
"Try to tell me something without using words." He lowered his head towards her, his face drawing in closer against his will.
"Hmm, well. . ." Her voice trailed off, soft and dark as fine velvet that rubbed against the inside of his mind. She narrowed the distance between them until her forehead rested against his. Her breath tickled his cheek and smelled faintly of red wine and sharp cheese. She let them stay that way for a moment in perfect peace with only the crackling of flames to break the shroud of quiet and blackness around them. "What do you think I am trying to say?"
He gulped, tongue darting out to moisten suddenly parched lips. "I am afraid to answer," he said finally.
"And I was afraid to ask." Her voice was frail as she spoke, the words seeming to come like cracking ice, sharp and unsure as the change of seasons.
"At least, I inspire some kind of fear in you, even if it is not as your enemy." He could feel his heart thumping against his ribcage, and he was suddenly fifteen again on the verge of becoming a man with the first woman he'd ever held in front of him.
She turned away from him. The contact and the moment were broken. "We are still enemies. I am still queen, and you are still my captive. I think it is time we end this lesson." She stood up and gave him her back. Without another word, she strode swiftly to the door and left.
"So we are," he whispered to the shadows as the echo of the slamming door rang in his ears.
Zelda did not return for several days after that, and Ganondorf found himself sorry for the absence of her company. For despite all things, he was growing fond of her presence. There were times when the Queen of Hyrule was so cold she seemed to burn with it, and yet there were others when he almost saw softness seeping through. It was like watching a dam slowly give way under the pressure of the river it had held back for years. She was a strange woman this Hylian queen. She had been nothing like he had expected her to be, and he was quietly thrilled by her despite his reluctance to admit it.
A week passed and he began to fear that she had frightened herself away. What if her own emotions and self restraint had gotten the better of her? What if she was creeping back into that old, hard shell of hers? If that happened he would lose any opportunity for freedom or revenge he had. He couldn't lose his one chance. She would come again. She had to so that he might seek his own brand justice. These were the lies he fed himself.
She came in unexpectedly one day, bright joy and triumph ringing in her steps. She tried her best to hide the mischievous smile on her face by tucking a strand of hair behind one pointed ear. He read the signals all the same though. When it came to this endeavor she was as transparent as crystal.
"May I ask what has you in such a good mood?" He questioned from his seat on the couch.
The smile flared to life again. "You may."
"Well?" He raised his brows for emphasis, already guessing what the answer was before she spoke.
"It's working," she replied cryptically.
The former King of Thieves nodded his head in understanding. There was no more that needed to be said. It was written in the happy features of her face and the arrogant sway to her stance. It was an air he had often seen his young sisters wear when they had conquered an opponent or courted a man they had been pursuing for months. Who ever would have suspected Zelda the Great being capable of such a girlish demeanor? Certainly not him.
"So?" He felt bile rising in his throat. His plan was succeeding for better or worse and that meant that she might no longer have a use for him. If he could no longer teach her lessons in the art of flirtation she might withdraw her company from him or worse yet, separate his head from his neck.
"So, he has asked me to dinner," she took a seat across from him, crossing one leg over the other and lacing her fingers across her knees.
He nodded to her in false satisfaction, something tickled in his stomach like a sleeping bird fluttering its wings. "That is all good and well, but the real question is what will you do now?"
A sharp smile creased her face. "That is why I am here. I am torn between accepting and rejecting both have their advantages and their weaknesses. If I accept I seem too eager, too willing to traipse after him, and if I reject he may be discouraged and the effects could be . . ." she grasped for a word to encompass the direness of her situation, "unpleasant."
"You make valid points. It is a fine line you are walking, and you must strike a delicate balance."
"So what do you suggest I do?" Her arched brows shot towards her hairline, and he suddenly found the whole situation very funny. Never in a hundred lifetimes would he have thought that he would have this conversation with Queen Zelda.
"Decline," he said too quickly. The word slipped over his tongue and out of his lips before he even paused to think about it.
She frowned at his answer. "But it seems to me the consequences of declining him are far greater than those of accepting his offer."
He held up a finger to pause her speech, backpedaling desperately in his mind for some excuse or logical thinking behind his response. "I said decline not reject," he started. "Be polite and courteous. Offer him another opportunity. Create a reason."
"In other words, lie," she said drolly.
"Is this not what the entire situation is built upon? Lies?"
She shrugged carelessly. "Fine, you have a point, but are you sure this will not drive him away? The man is temperamental at best, and I will not risk my kingdom on your hunches."
"I am certain," he said softly. He let his eyes roam over her face, recalling the shadows that had been cast on it the last time he'd seen her. He remembered how her lips had been stained red with dark wine. He wished it was not day then. He wished the sun was not slanting down in narrow beams through his one window. He wished for the mask of night and firelight that would shroud them from one another, concealing their identities. "If he wants you, truly wants you, then this one thing will not deter him. If anything it will make his appetite for you stronger like a starving man having a meal set before him that he cannot touch."
"Or like a man who sees a crown that he cannot place upon his own head." She leveled her gaze at him. Her pupils widened with a predatory cunning, and he knew she was studying him inside and out, trying to decipher him like those treaties she must pour over in her study. He only feared that she might see deeper than he wanted her to. She might see through the tough leather of his skin and the blade of his greed to that strange thing that caused the stirring in his belly.
"Or a queen who would see others imprisoned because she cannot break out of her own," he retorted without a thought. He watched her stiffen, spine suddenly straight as an arrow, mouth and eyes growing tight as she fought her own anger down.
They stared at each other. They were two creatures in perfect understanding of the other. He could see her weaknesses, and she could see his. The only difference was that he could accept that, and it seemed she had not come to that point yet.
She stood and smoothed the skirts of her dress. Her face was harsh and cold and bleak. It seemed as sterile and lifeless as a porcelain doll's, like the death masks he had seen placed on some Hylian Kings' tombs. "Be careful not to overstep your boundaries, Gerudo. Do not mistake my tolerance for stupidity."
As was her custom, Zelda did not return to his room for some time after he had angered her. This time he did not fret or worry over it. He spent the days thinking and studying everything he had learned about her. He looked the information over from different angles, trying to formulate some sort of plan of escape. Still, he could find nothing. At times, he would search within himself to find some trace of magic or sorcery. He would try and tap the lines of energy he felt rushing in the stones beneath the heels of his boots, but all the attempts were in vain. He could press his face as hard against the glass as he wanted, but it would never crack for him. He did not know whether the power was merely laying dormant like flowers slumbering beneath snow, or if it had been completely taken along with the Triforce of Power. Perhaps the most disturbing thing of all was when he realized how little it bothered him.
He should have been raging, plotting, and scheming. He should have been fantasizing of ways to blast himself out of the castle and ripping the crown from Zelda's hands; instead, he found himself sitting in front of his platter of half-eaten food wondering how she would look when he saw her again. He still hated being cooped up in one set of rooms that seemed to grow smaller by the day, and he still hungered for a power that was no longer his. It was just that somehow these things were more bearable with the knowledge that at any moment she might sweep into his chamber.
When she did show up again, it was with a clear air of agitation about her. He could almost see the air vibrating around her like a hive of angry wasps. The moment she crossed the threshold of his chambers she ordered the guards away. Thankfully, none of them protested the request, seeming to take their monarch's strange visits in stride. He wondered if they attributed it to being the carrier of the Triforce.
She took a seat across from him and let out a shaky breath. Her wrists and ankles fidgeted as she tried to find a comfortable position. Finally, she settled for curling up against the arm rest, and she seemed impossibly small to him then. Uncertainty was etched into her, and he could see it as clearly as the indigo veins that branched at her wrists.
He did not ask her any questions though curiosity burned in him but waited for her to speak first instead.
"I do not know what to do," she said at last.
"Then tell me and perhaps I can offer you some counsel on the matter," he stated, leaning forward on his knees and placing his hands flat on the table between them.
She lifted her head up and laughed. "Your advice is what got me into this matter in the first place."
"Well then it may be my advice that will get you out of it," he responded acerbically.
She shook her head irritably. "He asked me to dinner once. I politely declined like you suggested. I lied through my teeth so well my father would have been proud of me for once. He asked again later. I dared not refuse him twice. So he stayed at the castle, and we had dinner in my solar. We then went for a walk through the garden, and he tried to. . .to kiss me." She pressed a gloved hand to her brow, disgust written on her features.
Ganondorf was careful to check his expression and not let his eyebrows knit together or his mouth curl down into a frown. He wasn't jealous. What right did he have to be? It was part of a game that had to be played, and his was a small and dwindling part. "And you did what?"
"I rebuffed him, gently of course." She slowly shook her head again.
"May I ask why it bothers you so? There have been many men who have made fools of themselves in this way, and the world saw another sunrise. Why did this rattle you?" Yes, rattle was the perfect word. She seemed shaken, lost in a storm of her own thoughts and the possible paths she saw splitting out before her.
"He did not take my rejection kindly. I think had I been anyone else he would not have stopped." She swallowed and seemed to gather her strength for a moment. "You must understand, Ganondorf, I am a queen, but I am a woman as well. I have seen what happens to women in war. I have seen my own soldiers raping your warriors. I have seen a person's very own body used against them as a weapon."
He closed his eyes at the mention of his people, trying to hold back the memories that would inevitably spring up. He had tried to forget that part of the war. Bile still rose in his throat at the thought after all these months. Suddenly, he was very angry again and ashamed. He had been their king, and it had been his duty, his birthright to protect them from such atrocities. Rape among the Gerudo was worse than murder, and the sentence for it was worse than death.
He let out a deep breath and forced his eyes open. He looked at Zelda, and his old hatred for her flared to life again. The Hylian soldiers were under her command. She should have stopped it and prevented it. For the first time, he found that he could have wrapped his fingers around her neck and squeezed the life from her until her face turned red and then blue. No one would ever call him a virtuous man. He had lied, stolen, and killed when the need suited him, but he had never forced himself upon a woman.
Then she looked at him, and he saw the same fear in her eyes that his sisters might have felt. The feeling evaporated inside of him. He had no right to blame her for the individual actions of her men. It had been war, and it was a simple and cruel truth that those things happened in wars even when you tried your best to prevent them.
He saw her then not as his enemy or even as a queen but as simply a frightened woman. There was a proverb among the Gerudo, "We are all sisters of the same mother." Something inside of him broke and gave ground to a far more tender feeling. He knew what he wanted what to do, but he was not sure if that was what she wanted. He knew only that it was what she needed.
He stood, moved around the table, and placed himself beside her on the divan. She remained curled against the arm rest. He listened to her breathing slow and steadily. Cautiously he reached out his arm and rested his hand lightly on her shoulder like he would have done with a skittish horse. She didn't flinch or curse at him like he expected her. She lifted her head from her forearm and fixed a weary look at him and laughed. It was a short and bitter sound.
"Goddesses, what has the world come to? I am taking advice and comfort from a man who would have wrecked my kingdom like a ship on sharp rocks."
"As you said yourself, you are a queen but also a woman. I am a disgraced king, a thief, a murderer, and your enemy, but I am also a son and a brother."
She pinched the bridge of her nose in exasperation. She reached her hands out helplessly in front of her as if searching the air for something. "I wish. . . I wish I had . . . ," she shook her head in defeat. "No, never mind. It's a stupid and girlish thing."
He quirked a brow at her and felt the dark mood lift for a moment. "What? If I am to help you in this venture anything could be of assistance."
She smiled in embarrassment at him, seeming not to mind that his hand was still on her shoulder with the ends of his fingers brushing the side of her neck. "My harp."
He did not bother to keep the surprised look from reaching his face. "You play?"
She nodded. "Oh yes, it is one of the few arts that I have a passing interest and talent for. It soothes me. As a girl, I would lock myself in my room and play to calm my mind. My mother encouraged it, and my father overlooked it."
He paused for a moment in hesitance of what he was about to say. "I would love to hear you play."
"Really?" she asked, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. She sat up fully, and his hand drifted off of her shoulder.
"Yes, I would," he said sincerely, and her eyes lit up.
"That is one request I shall grant then," she responded.
Really, this chapter didn't live up to the first one in my opinion. It's kind of just a filler chapter to establish their ongoing relationship. I tried to introduce a softer side to both characters. Well, I hope you at least enjoyed it, even if it wasn't worth the wait. Let me know what you thought.
P.S.-You'll notice the time lapses. That's because well there's nothing much else for Ganondorf to do in his rooms besides talk to Zelda. Plus, I don't plan on this being as long as The Brightside of Darkness.
P.P.S.-I still hate the title, suggestions would be nice.