"How disappointing." The Demon King's voice was low as he stared down into the bed, his lips imperceptibly moving. His dark robe, cloaking a mountainous shoulder, did not respond to the stirring wind, and the Gerudo golden necklace hung eerily lightless against his chest. It was tempting to believe he wasn't real at all, if it weren't for that calculated, unmistakable voice.
"And yet." He shifted his weight back, giving himself enough breadth to take in the intimate space, which appeared miniature compared to his towering form. A doll's house. His hand raised from the elegant sword at his waist, plucking one framed picture from the low bookcase. It was an image Link had taken only a year before, on the beaches outside of Lurien Village. The place they went when even Hateno became too noisy, when the necks of fashionistas and foodies craned a little too far in their direction. That morning he'd caught her around the back of the hut, plucking a banana snack from a tree.
"YIGA!" He cried out, lifting up the Purah Pad fast enough to catch her befuddled reaction. "Princess Zelda, YIGA! I've got the evidence!" He cried, taking off running toward the water. "I'm sending it straight to the Lucky Clover Gazette!"
She shrieked, tearing after him, the pad shimmering just out of her reach as Link tauntingly kept pace just one second faster. "Give it up!" She cried as he jerked it away.
"Come get it! C'mon, thought you wanted it!" The glint in his eye was new, a shimmering kindled over the years between ruin, flashing in the moments he knew were absolutely and only their own. It reminded her of children she'd seen, never the child she was. Certainly not the child Link was ever allowed to be.
The beach grass scratched at her bare legs and then gave way to sand that sent them both stumbling, falling out of breath with laughter. She crashed into him just inches from the tide. "MINE!" She cried victorious. "By Royal Decree!"
Before she could rise from the surf he had his hands tight around her waist, sending her falling back against him. "Mine," he said simply, drawing her into a sun-soaked, delirious kiss. The photo appeared on her desk a few weeks later, the words HARD EVIDENCE scrawled onto the back.
Ganondorf examined the image with a sneer. "And yet. So predictable. The two most powerful beings in all of Hyrule, playing house and collecting trinkets in the countryside." The frame slipped between his fingers, the glass shattering with a feeble tink! on the plank floor.
The lock of his gaze returned to the two of them and their quilted island refuge, his smile gleaming with self-satisfaction. "Just like every ancestor and incarnation before you, altering the heavens themselves to bring me down but then–always then–" He paused a breath, his bared teeth betraying the rage foaming from his throat. In a blink he swallowed it back, the menacing grin back to taunt them. "You return to the smallness of your insignificant flickers in time, learning nothing of ambition. Content to let your power sink and fade back into the Depths the moment it peaks." His specter drew closer, his voice softer. "You've wasted my eons of suffering."
The Master Sword flickered beneath the Demon King's breath, the blue light pulsating in the dark. "The Sacred Blade, forged by the Goddesses, sent through time to…sit on your nightstand? In this hovel? Of all the pathetic heroes I've endured, you must be the most inept." Zelda could feel Link's muscles tighten; her heart beating so hard within her eardrums, she could scarcely hear him whisper, "you were a weak boy who's become a useless man."
And then those cursed eyes were fixed on her, not simply seeing but staring into her. "You, Princess… Princess? Seven years and you still lack the courage to claim your birthright? What is your feeble heart waiting for, I wonder?" He reached forward, his thumb grazing her quivering lip. "Could it be, a true King?"
That calloused skin scarcely had time to catch the warmth of her short, frenzied breath before Link's body splintered out of her touch, lunging the full force of the glinting blade toward Ganondorf's neck.
The burst of snaking red tendrils burst from the Demon King's head like an explosion of fire in a barren field. His right arm shot forward, knocking the Hero out of the air and into the loft wall. The sound of crumbling plaster mingled with her scream of his name, drowned by Ganondorf's thick laughter.
He's been ready, a note of clarity rang out in her racing, panicked mind. You are not.
He leaned in closer still, so close that the mass of his chest pressed into her own, the gold and jewels of his necklace impressing through her thin cotton nightgown. "How pitiful," he whispered straight into her ear. "You deserve so much more than this." His thumb pressed ever so slightly, just enough to curve her bottom lip. "Haven't you ever dreamed of so much more?"
Reflexively, her right hand flew up against his chest, a pulse of white engulfing her wrist and bursting forward. Ganondorf grunted and stumbled back, collapsing the desk and smashing through the pitiable thin loft rail into the floor below.
She scrambled from the bed to the Hero, crumpled around the Master Sword on the floor. A slick of blood caked his flaxen hair, his blue eyes shaded by heavy eyelids. He pressed his weight against the sword to rise back up, but her hands firmly weighted on his shoulders. The light in her palm flickered now, dulling down into a soft triangular glow that highlighted his face in the shadows. The intense brow still cutting sharp while the cheekbones rounded kindly over the years.
"Where is he?" He asked through a ragged breath.
"The light knocked him back, but we don't have much time. Link. Listen to me. He's too strong for either of us right now." She glanced down at the Triforce brand, quickly fading back into her skin. "I only have a tiny bit of power left." Her hands squeezed his shoulders, impressing the weight of this last possible wish. "You have to get out of here."
The realization lifted his eyelids, suddenly brimming with panic. "Zelda. No. No. You cannot do this."
She choked back a sob, emerging as a croaking laugh. "You know I'm right. I'm always right."
"Zelda–"
"If you die, Hryule goes right along with you," she said. He was quiet now, his mind sinking in the magnitude of this sudden nightmare.
"But what if you die? Haven't you thought about that? Do you ever stop to think about that?!"
She shook her head, resolute. "He won't kill me."
"What makes you say that?"
"Because, he'll need me to get to you."
A darkness crossed his stare, a cloudiness she recognized in the far-off look that crept in when she asked the wrong question, or brought up the memory she hadn't known was meant to fade well into the past. Accidental chasms that emptied the night of its remaining conversation. "Death isn't the only punishment, Zelda."
The lingering moment was elastic, stretching and holding every sacrifice and sorrow they had collected, both a brief lifetime and unfathomable millennia, pushed and pulled in the name of what they could only accomplish together. What they could only do apart.
"You can't come find me," she warned, leaning in close. "Not until you've found the way, do you understand? You will be our last possible hope.
"I'll be okay," she whispered, her final kiss memorizing the meld of his lips, the comfort of his hand cradling her head. With one last glimmer of light, he vanished, replaced by the thick strokes of a rising shadow.
The callouses crushed around her neck. "So be it," he said, his fingers squeezing slowly around her neck. "There will be no agony for his mind to compare with seeing what you'll become." The corners of her vision blurred before slipping into black.