On Having Appetite

Blech. I do not like this story so much, other than it is GanZel. This is the result of finals week and exactly how tired my brain was. If it's not as good as the usual, has strange pacing or characterization I am seriously sorry. If I didn't pump this out then the blah would just fester in my brainpan. I'm posting this as a curiosity to see what people think of a GanZel story written while my brain was shot on gluing census info and statistics data together with earwax and prayers.

--

Ganondorf knew his soul was an ancient one.  He could feel it in his blood, the workings of the essence that made him who he was. So old, that there were no more distinct memories of being. Each him blurred, intertwined, refreshed, and was reborn when he came forth once more into the world. So many hims bled together that while he knew his own basic history he could feel the patterns of the world as they repeated. Sometimes he was resurrected from the dead. Sometimes he awoke, body reborn, to start anew. Still other times, he was born as a child, and when the spirit was mature he would seep through the body and take it, for it had no soul but himself.

But he did not remember too much. That was the way of things-- if he had all of his memories, he would start the cycle, and if he had been wiped clean, a new past written for him, he would start the cycle, too. But there was that in-between gray area where experience, temperance bled through and wised him to the chaos and destruction he would cause.

This instance, he knew, was one by complete rebirth, being sent back by the goddesses. And in this case he walked that dangerous line between knowing enough and knowing too little to become active.

The combination made him weary. True, in nearly half of his lives he had won. But this ability to remember his failures more than his victories wore on him. Made him angry. And so he took the castle anyway, in the wake of a lightningstrike civil war that left Hyrule defenseless.

What tortured him so was that the war had been too quick, too deadly. Courage had somehow found its way into the hands of a young soldier. That soldier had enlisted, fought, and left after the war. Had already found a wife, sired children. And having missed its avenue, Courage had left. The would-be Hero had no desire to fight more after the conflict. And so with the bearer alive and well, the final piece had been lost and he had found a trivial, hollow victory.

Without the possibility of gathering the Triforce, for the Hero had gone on without him, this lifetime was beginning to look bleak indeed. Even if he had won.

Frankly, in this lifetime, Ganondorf was getting sick of it all. Honestly, he had no drive anymore. No zeal. Everything was becoming a horrible, cursed routine, and when the Hero was not there he was nothing. He had nothing to fight against, no one to defeat, to conquer. He had the Princess, and that was all. He had the kingdom. Now what?

He felt old. Perhaps it was the curse of Power. Nothing heated his blood anymore. Nothing was much of a challenge. Nothing interested him. He wanted nothing more than to skip to the next life where perhaps something interesting would happen. Maybe that time he would truly win, and he'd be able to wish his people back. At least for a while, until history began to repeat.

It was in the second week of his occupation that Zelda attempted to escape. It was a very good attempt, involving the Sages and breaking the anti-magic barrier in her room, flying away in the form of a white falcon. Only by chance did he catch her. With a weak charge of lightning energy he shocked her out of the sky, and she fell somewhere in the castle orchard.

When he went to retrieve her, he found not the white falcon but Zelda's true form, unconscious. Not badly hurt, even. She had been protected by magic during the fall, but it had drained her to the point of sleep.

Ganondorf technically could have killed her then. He didn't need her; the complete Holy Force wasn't around in full for him to take. But a half-hearted fancy kept him from ending her. He didn't know why, if she was to be a trophy or a slave or a pet. But he could not find the want to kill her in him. He was too sick of that, too weary of the world to do it.

And so he decided to take her back to her rooms. Gingerly, he scooped her up and held her with two hands, one under her shoulders, the other around her legs.

That was the moment that something began.

In retrospect, Ganondorf would look back and pinpoint that action as the action that started it all. He didn't know it at the time, but events were set in motion that Ganondorf did not have the insight at the time to have resisted.

It began with a single stray thought. She felt... good, in his arms. She fit well there, not quite limp, folded against his breast. That notion wavered in his mind, a muffled suggestion-- fluttering like a moth until if dissipated against his reason entirely.

He placed her in her bed, looked back at her there, and closed the door. And coldly, he began to walk back down the empty halls, heavy boots clanking against the flagstones.

But he contemplated that tiny, whispering warmth that had tricked through his mind. Like a faraway satisfaction. A vague pleasure. So faint, diluted. He marked it as coincidence, as an anomaly, that he was too tired and too weary and too old.

Ganondorf turned back to his affairs, but as he drifted off to sleep that night, he experienced a small, nagging sensation that he could only describe as appetite.

–

Ganondorf related it to a magnetic pull.

In the middle of the morning the next day, Ganondorf rose from the pile of missives at his oaken table and began to walk. It was a few moments before he knew where he was going; he was simply yanked  along by a knot in his stomach, by some invisible tug. Until he realized that his feet were taking him to her tower,  he had been puzzled about the compulsion.

Why? He asked himself, though a thin, soft film had formed over his thoughts. Hazily, he knew a want: unrefined, amorphous. Not a bodily want: want of sleep, want of flesh... Ganondorf struggled to put a word to it. It had no name. Just an... appetite.

He rounded the final turn of the tower stairs, standing before a bolted room that crackled with dark energy. This was where he kept her-- declawed so that she would not escape again.

Ganondorf felt bored.

The appetite whined insistently, faint as it was. Why here of all places, Ganondorf wondered? Interest glinted dully out of eyes long gone dark. He knew this place. There was nothing here. He kept the princess only because with Courage already gone, two of three was better than nothing. And he had not yet mustered the patience to gather fragments if Wisdom shattered as he would eventually pull it out of her.

He approached the door, silencing his footstep. The cold stone ate sound, and it was when he was almost opening the door that he heard something.

A sob.

Ganondorf almost couldn't comprehend it. The coldest maiden, face of stone-- shed tears? It should not have seemed so surprising. Any other girl, woman, man, would have long broken. But for all the iterations of Zelda, she had never cried. Or he could not remember her doing so. And why should she have, when his occupation had been so swift and clean?

Clean because the King had ended himself, rather than face execution. Swift because Hyrule had lost the war before he intervened, he thought.

She did not bawl. But the sound, hot angry tears. She spoke, cursing circumstances that the Hero was gone. She struck out at his barriers. Frustrated, she wept. Oh gods-- the sound.

And within the man, a twitch. A twist. A clench. A wrench. Memories trickled up through a dense, unfinished jumble. Screams, those of women and children.

Some of whom he had killed.

No other tears stirred him. But for the first instance in lifetimes, he was stirred. Violently. He placed a heavy hand on the door, but whether to reach closer to the source or hold himself up, Ganondorf did not know.

Do not do this, he told himself. You cannot do this. You are Lord of Darkness. You are not to be moved.

And he vanished himself back to his quarters, where he crushed a small crater into the wall. But the tiny, faint sound still fueled his frustrations. She wasn't meant for crying; she did not cry. Not to him, not ever.

But in private? Perhaps she did.

Ganondorf saw much of what he had done in his many lives. He had ruined what he coveted. Slain his own people-- though indirectly. But he saw their faces on women and children he had felled by sword.

And what had he done in this lifetime? Accomplished nothing: not change, not assembling the Triforce. Not gained even satisfaction. Just made a young woman weep ragefully behind closed doors, where she thought the world could not hear her, and where she was held unable to dispel her frustrations other than to weep.

Gazing back on the past,  he squirmed with a black dissatisfaction. In his many lifetimes, Ganondorf could not remember ever being fulfilled. He looked back on it all, and did not approve as much as he thought he did.

But strangely in the wake of this revelation, he felt sated. Sated with something foul-tasting and bitter, but his appetite of sorts had died down. The thirst had been quenched not with water but with strong medicine.

By the end of it, he no longer felt quite the same.

–

In the aftermath of his painful epiphany, Ganondorf noticed something odd about his own behavior. He had become antsy. To put it mildly. If he wanted to plumb the depths of the phenomenon, he would have compared it to having hot oil thudding in his veins.

He could not sit still anymore. Oh, he craved activity. To do. Without the Hero to thwart, he languished. The endless hours confirming conquest, seeing to his country, tortured him. His thoughts always, always: trained on attaining the country. Never keeping it. He knew what to do with it, of course. But he cried out for something, anything to occupy his time. To stave off boredom. To challenge him.

He entrenched himself in the most complex and meticulous of sorcery, but there was nothing more he could learn. Not without dipping into things that even he did not want to plumb. If he wished, he could topple mountains. Dry lakes. Bind the spirits of earth and wind. Tame the most fell of beasts with will alone. Summon demons to do his bidding. Devour magic essence itself, cannibalizing the power to augment his own. Though half of those things were tedious, required preparation, or simply were a bother to do. Magic no longer satisfied him.

Swordplay, surely would fare better. But no man he could find was his better with the blade. And any construct he created was nowhere near sophisticated enough to provide a challenge. He had taken to calling forth fiends to test his might. He crushed them all easily.

That was the maddening thing about greed, he supposed. Nothing is ever good enough, and until one has everything they desire, the want never abates. Only, this time he really had taken everything, or at least everything he possibly could take in this particular damned iteration.

One night he even found his way outside the home of the would-be Hero, seeking a challenge. But he did not interrupt the meal the new family took. It would be wrong, he supposed. There would be no satisfaction in killing the boy. He was not the Hero. He was just could have been the Hero, if things had gone differently. The fight would be quick, for Courage wasn't awake, and what then?

Ganondorf retreated back to his castle that he held, the potent magic hanging in the air. The kingdom had been befuddled; he had woven a net of confusion enchantments this time. The castle and people had forgotten about Zelda, accepted him of their own will as if he always had been on the throne. But in the end, that was not enough for him. It was never enough for him.

And by gods, the appetite would not go away. If only I knew, he thought, what in the hells I wanted!

That was why he found himself at that door once again. Why? Why not? Why tear down the walls keeping her in? Why not? Nothing really mattered anymore, of course. Why shouldn't he? It could be interesting. Entertaining.

He unlocked the door and stepped within. It was dark; there was no fire in the fireplace. The one that had been there had burnt down to white ash. Every curtain was closed, and the bed was made as if nobody had slept in it for days.

Ganondorf blocked the knife that came at him from behind, twisting the wrist that held it. Zelda cried out and, just as he pulled her into his line of sight, filled his face with a cracking discharge of magic. Ganondorf did let go, though he threw her onto the neat bed. There she lay, panting heavily for a moment before springing up to meet him again.

He conjured a barrier that engulfed her. Against Wisdom, he couldn't do much else. Though why not just kill her, he asked himself? Why keep her when the game this time was over and he had won? There was no purpose to keeping her, other than for vanity.

From the look in her eyes, she must have known, too. She pounded the walls of the glass-conjured cage. Wide cracks appeared in the magic, she spent so much energy in breaking free.

Vanity it would have to be, he thought. Because if he did slay her here, his victory would truly be complete. And the ache in his limbs, for some kind of opposition, tortured him.

"I thought that we might speak," said he. "If you are feeling civil enough for it."

Zelda laughed bitterly. "Civil? So says the Evil One," she bit back. "I have nothing to say to you. I have lost. Let me keep my dignity."

"No one here means to take it," he replied. "I merely wish to speak to you."

She was tight-lipped, staring defiantly from the restricting cage he held her in. As if she could not believe what she was hearing.

Ganondorf began, "You are right. I have won. This country is mine. With illusions I can make the people believe whatever I want them to believe. They believe that I have been named king, and that you have fled in shame... if I wish them to believe you were born at all. Nothing you say or do will dissuade them of your treachery, unless I so wish it. They will look over you as if you were never there, for I have told them you are not. They are mine to sway, and in this way they are not a danger to me, nor to you."

When she did not reply, he continued.

"To be frank, Princess, it is rather dull for me, having won. I don't find the endless affairs of state satisfying in the least, when my true goal is so irritatingly lost to me. I never meant to achieve victory without the Triforce. Truth be told, I am growing tired of it all."

"You are a conceited man," she hissed. "You're toying with me."

"In a sense, yes-- but that is the fault of circumstances, not intent." Ganondorf paused. "I have taken your castle, your people with little bloodshed in the wake of your bloody wars. Your people have not even noticed yet that something is awry, though they know I've won. This time, I have not conquered your kingdom. I've stolen it out from under you. Truly, I am a master-thief. Conceited? Perhaps, but I believe that in this case it's justified. Never have I been so artful."

She was staring at him in bewilderment. He merely looked back.

"Perhaps too artful," he said.

"Then, be concise," Zelda said. "Have you come to boast, then? What is it you want with me?"

Ganondorf cleared his throat. "I have come to make you a challenge, princess."

She raised one doubting eyebrow and grasped at the smooth barrier in her way.

"I will let you free, under the situation I've already described to you. That is the stage," he said. "The game? Steal this kingdom from me."

"Why?"

"Because as I said, I am growing weary of this pointless standstill," he said. "And it benefits you, for you're no longer captive. Who knows? Perhaps you may even take your kingdom back."

Zelda narrowed her eyes. They were cloudy smears of blue behind the fogged glass.

"What's the catch?"

"Only one. No blood, no riots, none of that," he smiled. "After all, if I can manage it, so can you.  regardless of who rules it, Hyrule won't be able to stand another conflict in this year, perhaps for many years. And you know this very well."

She contemplated this, and after a few tense moments she did seem to set her shoulders within the glass. "I accept you challenge, Lord of Darkness. Now let me down."

"As you desire."

And he did, leaving her to catch herself on the thick carpet. Her dress fluttered around her, plainer than her usual gowns that took servants to help put on. When she looked up at him her face was the same resolute marble as it ever had been.

"How much time will you give me?"

Ganondorf smiled grimly. "As much as you need."

Because, for anything, he did not want this distraction to end too soon. And he did not want to admit that somewhere, in the back of his mind, letting her run free pleased him.

–

In between the endless annoyances of politics, he watched her try. She walked as a ghost among her people; they did not even acknowledge she existed, so complete was his curse. He almost did not have to set his one condition-- he knew she could not incite her people, in the same way he wielded nothing over them until he took Hyrule for himself, every single time.

Perhaps, he thought, this way she could see from his eyes for once.

And so the days passed, with her pulling every avenue of attack she could possibly call forth. She worked with a tireless, enraged fervor that surprised even him. She called on the stars to smite him. She redirected the river. She tried every poison and shadowy curse she could manage. But her magic was unsuited to the tasks she tried. She could not summon forth demons to dethrone him, possess a proxy to face him, call Death down upon him. And so each time, she failed. But some attempts were close, very close.

Ganondorf reveled in it, rejoicing of the sweet, sweet occupation that could distract him from what had been a hollow victory. He could almost feel a rush, feel conquest again. Each time he pushed her down, he could nearly grasp something like satisfaction.

Almost. After a few times, the game began to take a sour aftertaste to him, too. What was he accomplishing, making this young woman run into a wall over and over again? Just as she almost seemed to win, he would throw her back to where she started again. She was not discouraged, and she went after him again and again. Although not in the way she wanted to, Zelda was beginning to wear him down.

He grew angry at himself. What? Is this not enough? What do you want? Is it so hard to simply know?

Yet he tried to ignore a growing patch that had wiped over some part of his mind. Tried to ignore the heaviness that came with thoughts of her repeated failure. Gods, her hopelessness should have been humorous. But where he would have once laughed heaving even a meager chuckle set a blunt, dull pain into his stomach. What he looked at and what he saw begin to diverge. What he once looked upon as a foolish, futile struggle was slowly becoming depressing. He looked out to Hyrule and was beginning to see not his land but just a land. The same as the desert, but coated in a glamor of green and beauty. But in his mind, gods, in his mind it had grown barren.

Ganondorf was sure he was coming down with some sort of mind-altering sickness. Never before had he thought this way. Every superficial thing he had won turned to sand in his grasp. Just sand. All he had ever had to begin with. He had to be ill, to think such horrific thoughts. He had to be.

That was why when she approached him after two bitter months of trying, he felt some seizing in his breast. He was ill. That was the only explanation.

"You win, Ganondorf. You win. I can't do this any longer."

Maybe it was the way she looked. So crushed, so defeated. It did more than bother him. She should not have looked that way, she should have had life to her, determination. That lovely (and she was lovely to him, the more he looked) white marble face should have been a statue of bravery, not this grim stone monument to failure. In his mind, he carried everything he knew she was: cold, unattainable, beautiful, like the light of a distant star. But her eyes made him ache. He was unfamiliar with the feeling.

He had to be ill.

It could not have been guilt.

He was ill.

"Are you sure you are ready to give up so soon, Princess?" he asked idly of her. "Are you truly that spent?"

"I won't dance for your amusement any longer," she said stubbornly "You can kill me now. I'm ready to face my end this time."

But no, that patch whispered, delicate like threads of spun glass. You can't kill her. You won't kill her. You want her. You need her. You will go mad here, all alone...

Ganondorf wanted to crush the strange growth that had taken up residence in the black depth of his thoughts. But its fragility stayed his hand. He could smash it forever without effort. But it was a sharp spindly thing, spun out of ash and dust and far too much pride. And it was new, intriguing. And very, very hungry.

"Zelda."

He tried to find words to express what he meant to relate, but there were none he could pull. He was not even sure what he had expected to say to her in the first place.

"There's no need to be a sore loser. It isn't becoming of you," he said. "No, I won't kill you. There would be little point to."

Her face did not change.

"If you were so set on dying, you would simply do it yourself. Which you will not, for you are not so cowardly as that. And I still prefer you alive."

"I don't understand. I don't serve any purpose to you, do I?"

"You would serve even less dead."

"Then tell me what twisted thing you still need me for!" she cried, eyes wild.

Ganondorf paused. "I will tell you when I decide."

"So it is conceit."

He rose from his throne, towering over her. "You may be a sore loser, but I am not so bad a winner. It was a good game, and you did entertain me for a while. So I shall let you live."

"Evil King, I am not your toy! Please; you have won! Get it over with! There's no need to drag this mockery out. What you mean to gain? Do you mean to crush me?"

A flicker of anger slipped over Ganondorf's eyes. "You test my patience, Princess. If you find this arrangement unsatisfactory, I remind you that I am the winner and you are the loser. If it appealed to you, our positions would be reversed."

But the hatred in her sharp eyes hurt. Somehow. Ganondorf could not believe it. It hurt. Nothing had hurt him, not in so long. It was those angry tears behind the door all over again, and he caught himself before he began to slump. She whirled around in a blur of skirts and began to sweep out of the hall-- he had to stop her, fix it somehow, do something, something...

"Princess Zelda."

She stopped for him one last time, frozen in her tracks.

"The game's not over," he said with a voice that some part of him hoped was at least a little soothing. "if you wish to try again at any time... I would welcome it."

But if that was any consolation, he could not tell. Zelda simply left, as stormy as ever. Alone once more, he slumped upon his throne in his empty castle. So empty. And he resisted the urge to yell at himself. What had he been thinking? Why was he so concerned with her at all?

He was ill. He had to be. Ill and half mad. His own reasoning escaped him. He felt... strange, with that film that coated his thoughts like sugar syrup. Thinking no less sharply, just, through an odd lens. Strangely. Not unpleasant. Even good. But strange.

Strange because for some reason, the look of absolute hurt in her eyes bothered him. It did more than bother him, actually, but that was all he was willing to admit. Anything to make that stop. He hated it. He hated that he had done it. The Great King of Evil, reduced to being only the torturer of a woman. It struck his pride. It also struck something else he could not identify.

Ganondorf began not to care so much about the why of it. He of all people knew that the insides of people were irritating, delicate things. He supposed his own counted: infinitely complex from an ancient soul,  still the same in that regard.

And, he guessed, that was good to know.

–

Once again, Zelda spent much time in her room. Having nowhere else to go but the castle, it was there she stayed. What she did there, Ganondorf had no reason to pry.

And he was not surprised when he began to see her around the halls. After all, there was no one in the town to her-- their eyes slid over Zelda as if she was not there. And the empty castle was just that: empty.

To her, Ganondorf was the only one with the power to speak. To even mark her existence. She did not talk to him, but after a few days she began to respond when he idly asked her simple questions. At first, hatefully. Then, as her hurt seemed to cool she regained a serenity in the face of him.

It could have been worse, Zelda said to him one day. Even if she had lost, at the least her country was safe. Hyrule had come out worse for wear in the past. She had been angry for a specific reason: that Courage was not around to aid her, and that she had been fearful of what he might do with her country.

He had not done anything awful yet, she admitted to him, and because of that she granted him at least a little grace.

It was then that he realized that speaking to her was nice, when she wasn't avoiding him. It was very nice, in fact. He should not have been so surprised that she wielded a fierce intellect. She was the bearer of Wisdom, after all. And all of a sudden, he had occupation again, less physical than the last but for some reason more substantial. More wholesome: in a way, nourishing. It satisfied him for longer, quieted that nagging appetite for something he could not place.

He decided to put effort in, and she soon became almost relieved to see him when he stumbled upon her. Ganondorf, who had mastered men in his lifetime, suddenly spent energy looking for that rare light in her eyes that lit the sun behind her to him. And gently, he did his best to coax it out. To kindle it, to draw it forth. And he succeeded, for after two months she spoke freely and easily to him. He knew she had been convinced that The King of Evil was a wicked, cruel man. Ganondorf found himself subverting that, and with the healing mark of time and the grace that he had managed a silent and bloodless coup with no atrocity, her heavy hatred evaporated into a guarded, neutral mask of courtesy.

But she never smiled, never laughed.

Eventually, the contact of curt speech was no longer good enough for him, either.

–

He caught her in his study one day, reading through his missives. Tampering with them. Initially he was angry, but as he blocked the door by barrier Zelda stubbornly submitted to watching as he leafed through what she had changed.

Ganondorf expected sabotage. He was pleasantly surprised.

"You have learned to forge my signature," he said, somewhat impressed. "When did you do that, I wonder?"

"It's not as if I have much else to do." She fidgeted. "I will be heard, Ganondorf-- whether you play games with me or not."

"This is cheating," he said bluntly. "You have not stolen anything but a copy of my name."

Zelda crossed her arms stubbornly. "I'm dealing with a Thief Lord. Why bother with rules at all?"

"Why indeed?" He mused as he looked over what she had done. "Remarkable. I expected different from you, Princess. This is actually a rather amusing move."

Zelda set her jaw, hiding any true emotions. From the orders she had set in his words, all she had done was approve a festival, adjust the tax rates, and review post-war expenses. Ganondorf's eyes glowed.

"Very clever with the money matters. The farmers are devastated, aren't they? This slows the recovery, but it will keep the people satisfied, I suppose." Ganondorf squinted at her. "I would think you would take the time to make a fool of me, not make your own people approve of my rule."

"Using laws to make the people rise against you would hurt them more than it would hurt you," said Zelda. "Besides. You have the most awful, hamfisted way with peacetime affairs I have ever seen. It is my duty as Princess to make sure my people are happy with their lives, not paying war tax in a year of recovery."

Ganondorf could only describe it as stars bubbling up the height of his spine, bursting something light in his brain. His shoulders squared, something hot and warm churning in his breast. Amusement, he concluded, but strong. The illness was festering, getting worse, he told himself. The guilt or whatever it was was fermenting with this strange pleasure. He had to keep it in, lest he be contagious. He shoved the brightness down back into the pit of his stomach, where it glowed like stifled coals.

"And the festival?" he asked, dry with interest.

"There is always a festival at this time of year," Zelda said cleanly. "The summer solstice-- it marks Din's Day. Anyone who wishes to attend is invited-- it's a day of peace. We're all the earth's children. Every year on the hot solstice, there is a festival of unity."

"I know of it," said Ganondorf. "And that my kind has been excluded for centuries."

"I'm sorry for that. I believe in the past my ancestors were scared of abductions of men, and maybe also a rise in pickpockets," Zelda explained. "If I had my way, the gates would have been open to your people. But that's not for princesses to command, sadly."

Ganondorf tightened his hold on himself. To appear ill in front of her would raise strange questions that he did not want to try and explain, for he had trouble fathoming the answers himself. But she was sorry? Her first two words echoed in his mind. When was the last time, in any life, anybody had apologized to him? When? He couldn't remember.

And why was she in the first place? True, she had gotten more positive, even amiable. But she still clamped down on herself every time she seemed she might laugh or smile.

"Anyhow, it's your festival to direct now. It has to be approved of by the royal family's hand, and seeing as you're not related to me, I helped myself."

He grunted, looking at the flawless reproduction of his signature. "In hand, but not in name," he said.

"That's the funny thing about rules," she said nonchalantly. "One can always dodge them somehow. It doesn't matter who's said at the bottom, only that I am the one to actually sign it. Not that the commonfolk know. The royal blood must preside over many things, lest the goddesses become angry.  Especially concerning holy days. We're their stewards, no more."

"A festival in a fortnight. I can manage," Ganondorf assured, putting down the paperwork.. "I thank you for your consideration, Princess. You are a valuable help."

Her  words sounded weird and surprised. "You're welcome. I suppose." And as she turned to leave, the glowing liquid-iron heat in his gut burst loose. He had to have more. He had to. He would go stir-crazy. This taste of civility whetted the already-insatiable appetite, and he found that although he had not noticed before in a sense he was emaciated, wilted, crying for some visceral indulgence to set him right as he hadn't been in a long time...

"Princess?" he asked very suddenly. And as she always did, she stopped.

"Yes, Dark One?"

"Join me for dinner."

It was not so much a request as a command. She surely noticed. But if she noted the desperation in his words, she said nothing.

"Very well," she said.

And later, he almost felt bad for slipping a potion of attraction into her drink. Almost.

–

It had been a small dose, he knew. Small enough to remain undetected. The effect would be a lightening of spirits, a relaxing around him. If only to make her easier to speak to, to remove a few of her inhibitions and muddle her contempt. He did not know if she enjoyed his company as much as he craved hers, and the dose was to skip that issue entirely. Under the influence, she would smile, would be drawn to him, would not gaze with such defensive eyes.

He had imagined a smile many times before he could stop himself. But when he reached this point, he was no longer ashamed, was ill of, the affinity he felt. So many parts of him that had long gone bored and weak were working, and she excited him in a way nothing else seemed to anymore. The old fire in his blood, it was back with force and he welcomed it greedily. In those moments in between her bitterness, he truly liked her company. He meant to remove her trepidation, such as it was.

Though as he readied himself for sleep that night, he heard a light click as his lock worked open, and a tiny grind of hinges. The brief draft announced that someone had been let into his room. His mind flew to assassins, to a coup, and he kept magic at the ready--

But it was only Zelda, in her dressing-gown. But why she was there, Ganondorf couldn't fathom. She had gone to bed shortly after dinner, hours ago. What was she doing?

"Ganondorf, I've been thinking."

His name. She said his name, he thought. He'd wanted it for some time, but for some reason it was a cause for suspicion rather than relief. "You should be asleep," he said warningly.

"But I've been thinking," she said softly. Oh, that was a good tone for her, a part of his mind hissed. Pray she speaks again, make her speak...

She stepped closer, bare feet on the thick rug. And suddenly, in his mind, he was hyperaware of her. Of everything about her. Of how the fabric fell from her shoulders, over full breasts, down to sweep below her belly. How the curve of her figure was so delightfully drawn against the wooden door. How her hips moved, gentle circles...

He was staring, he knew. But the film over his brain had grown thick and sticky and saccharine, and his mind reeled. Stop, stop, stop, he insisted. But for a moment of weakness, he could not.

"I've wanted to say it for a long time," she whispered rawly, "But you're... magnificent."

And suddenly she was close enough to touch. And she did, so lightly. She lay against his hard stomach, slipping the satin of his clothes through her fingers. He stood in confusion, in shock. His mind was moving too slowly to keep up with his eyes, rendered oddly sluggish. He shouldn't have, he knew his way around a woman, but the fact that it was her and not a victim of necessity... His tongue knotted in his mouth. His understanding was baffled, but his body was not. Base interest moved to the front of his mind, suddenly painful against the silk of his breeches.

"Magnificent..."

Her hands tugged at the opening of his robes, and slowly she slipped them down from his massive shoulders. There she placed her touch first, feeling their broadness. And down she went, over his wide chest, the wire of his back, the rolling tightness of his stomach, to rest upon his hips. And she hooked one leg over him, pressing herself against his body, digging him into her. Her dressing gown slipped open and ohGodsshewasperfectthiswasgoodgoodhewantedithewantedherforhoursforeverhewantedherwantedwantedwanted...

Her eyes gazed up at him, and in them he could see her lust, her desire...

But not Zelda. Zelda was not in those eyes. Ganondorf was hit by an icy whiplash. He experienced the fastest waning of arousal he had ever felt, replaced by a sickened, disgusted feeling. His guts churned. His flesh against hers went cold.

There was a unhealthy glow from her hand, and immediately he knew what had happened. Wisdom acted as much as an amplifier of magic as it did a source. What had been a tiny dose for any other woman had been a strong one for her. It was not so much Zelda behind her actions as a strange, lizardish thing of base reasoning that resided in the pit of any mind: tricked into seeing him as an overpowering goal. She was unable to fight back, and so succumbed to a simple burst of magic that knocked her out. Instantly he was thankful that potion of attraction in strong doses sent a being's recollection to sleep, and so she was likely not to recall any of this horror in the morning. Just to be safe, he wiped the last few hours from her mind. He had no skill to modify memories, but he could strip the details until all she would ever know would be a vague, dreamlike jumble, which she could take for just that: a dream and nothing more.

He sent her back to her room to sleep the rest of the dose off. Then, when he was done, he buried his fingers in his hair and collapsed on his bed, desperately wishing that he was able to stab himself through and be done with it all until the next disastrous lifetime.

Did he really believe that he could manipulate her in that way? This happened every time, he thought. Every single time, with every little thing he tried to do. This ruin haunted his steps. Over and over again. He never learned, because he never remembered until it was too late.

He would take action, seize things for himself. Try to bend them to his will. To fix something, to correct, to improve. And he would ruin what he wanted, pervert it. Destroy it, and everything he touched. And then the anger, the hate. And he would hate so strongly he would wish to destroy, put his hand of doom to use.

He turned over, staring at the dark ceiling. Oh, there were few things he wanted more than her. The Triforce. His people. But she was drawing close in his mind, and those things were impossible in this life to attain. She was an immediate: in his reach. Almost an instant satisfaction: new to him and fair, so fair...

Pity that his reach blighted all within its spread. What had almost happened... it made him sick. What would she have thought, had she been awake? Had she known he had slipped something controlling into her drink? She would have hated him all the more for taking away her will.

He wondered what had changed within him, for these weak, futile thoughts to come so easily, so naturally. There was a time when he would have not stopped himself, when he would have taken her then and there-- Zelda or not. Used her, broken her, and kept her for himself. All of that, the taste that kind of pleasure left, had turned into bitter lye in his mouth. He washed himself of those thoughts.

The keeping was still toothsome to him. But not with chains, or with a cage. And what sort of man could trust something so wild unbound, and yet still keep it and call it his own? Not even he, master of monsters, could contrive a way to hold her by his side without something hanging over her.

And so he decided, with a bitter heart.

He would let her free. There was little he could do to ruin her if she was away. And he did not know if he could face her again to begin with. Not after seeing what he had almost done to her in his selfishness. He left a note for her. He proclaimed the game was over.

She was gone by the morning, but she wrote back.

It will never be over. You know that more than anyone.

–

Ganondorf remembered why he was the King of Evil.

Evil was a single-minded thing. It was concerned only with the self. There were no difficult decisions to be made if one was Evil, and everything was done in the present. As he saw fit, in the moment. He did not need to look forward or look back: the glory of the moment is what Evil revolved around. His glory, at the expense of all others.

And he wondered how in all hells anybody on the other side ever got anything done, if the churning in his gut was a taste of what it was like for them. He barely could recall it, but yes-- that was remorse. And shame. And perhaps a little bit of fear. How was it possible to feel so alive, yet so wholly miserable?

The days passed at a crawl, and his ennui had gotten just as bad as it had been before. Worse even, for there was an ache in his veins and it hurt to deny it. The selfish want for contact, appetite, worsened into a legitimate need. He felt himself going mad, needing a face to talk to in his barren castle. But he willed himself to stay where he was, not to seek Zelda. Seeing her would just be worse. He would ruin it all over again, he thought, and he liked to think of her as she was supposed to be, not of what he could force her to be.

He wondered if she truly hated him, or if it was some sort of royal mask she wore: the mark of that passive, resolute stone thing he knew in other tales. Zelda fought Ganondorf, and the Hero killed Ganondorf, and Ganondorf hated them both. That was how it was supposed to go, happened in so many lifetimes. But he had a nagging suspicion there were other tales he could not recall that still lived on in him.

And so this Zelda was different to him than all of the other Zeldas, for he could not remember the others as clearly as he knew his own iteration. She did cry, but then she fought fiercely and well, and did not lose hope or call for a Hero to save her when she knew Courage was at rest. And she felt so good in his arms, how it had all began.

She seemed to have enjoyed his character in passing, at least a few times. She had even been kind and gracious at his one and only meal with her. Before he had rewarded her with an attempt to take her mind, that was.

Two weeks, and it still plagued his thoughts. He never had dwelt so long on anything before. And if this was not what Evil did, he mused on what he had become. He could not place any change in him. He was no different than he ever had been, save the growing patch in the back of his mind that wiped over his thoughts with film at times. And the ache in his breast. It was ache, the ache remade him. Ate away at things, nibbled them to death like a plague of rats and ants marching. Leaving empty parts in its wake.

He did not admit that there was a vast, murmuring something at the bottom of those voids. Something he never had thought of facing before. The origin of the appetite, engorged but still snapping and gnashing its teeth for more.

But at the end of those two weeks, he felt his legs move of their own accord again, the compulsion to drop what work he had and go to his chambers. And to change clothes into something finer that suited him. And to cloak himself in the same curse of unremarkability as he had done to Zelda.

The festival was on, in the castle town far below.

He walked through the festivities-- the masses only with the vaguest suggestion in their minds that something was even there, that they should avoid the few feet where he stood and not crash into him as they ran through the streets. And so Ganondorf observed this festival for the first time in all of his lives, able to witness it instead of being barred from the gates like the rest of his people in the past.

The harvest had been poor, and it showed. The shadow of the war was still heavy on the castle town in the bare supplies, but what they had was readily laid out. Initially, Ganondorf thought it was a waste. Why spend all supplies on this one day when it would take so much time to accumulate more?

Meager fare or not, the town put up all its banners and hung all of its colors and lights. Every door was left open, and he wondered why no one simply wandered in and took all they wanted. Men wandered in and out of houses, making merry, yet not a single item of value was stolen.

Morning quietness crescendoed into a high noon bustle, and stayed there for hours and into the midsummer evening. The paper-wrapped lanterns and spiced candles glittered against the angular stone  buildings, and magelights glowed in the fountain to brighten the square, where a great crowd of men and women danced to low pipes and singing fiddles.

It was there, on the edge of the great fountain, where she sat. No eyes saw her, but she looked to the flickering glow of the lights and the current of her happy people. And for the first time Ganondorf had known, she seemed to be at peace.

He hated to disturb her. And he half wanted to leave and force her from his mind, never think about her again. He wasn't supposed to be this way.

But he was. And, a shadow among the crowd, he sat with her by the stone fountain and watched the people go by, all oblivious to their princess and their usurper king right in front of them. Zelda noticed, got up to leave, but Ganondorf caught her shoulder.

"Sit," he said. And having no choice, she did.

She frowned and did not look at him, but folded her hands in her lap in an anxious manner, as if she was ready to fly away in a second's notice. But after he did not speak, did not even move, she opened her mouth for a single question. "Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why did you do it?" Zelda whispered, just barely audible over the laughter of the crowd.

The pit of his stomach churned uncomfortably. It was an alien feeling to Ganondorf, yet powerful. He fought the strong urge to flee, or even to strike her into silence. To escape from it, eating him inside-out.  "You know, then?"

"Wisdom shows me the Truth," Zelda said mechanically. "Why did you slip that into my wine?"

When he was silent, she continued. She did not sound angry as completely flat, with an objective tone that was somehow more terrible than hate.

"Did you want my flesh?  For your victory to be complete? Or perhaps a blood heir born of me?"

His throat was dry, and he knew there was no use in fighting her. This was not so much a battle as catharsis. "No," he said, even if it sounded lame to his ear. Because, in a way, the idea of those things excited a perversion in him.

Zelda looked at him. "Of course not. For you just would have taken me then and had all of that in an instant. Yet you did not." She seemed confused. "Why?"

"I cannot say," Ganondorf said. And he could not, truly. It enraged him, this inability to explain himself. This had never happened before. Not when he stood before the Hylian King for the first time those lifetimes ago. Not when Impa stole the first Zelda away from him. Not when he confronted the boy hero. Not ever. And yet now his mind twisted and cried out, trying to understand himself and failing.

"This is a day of truth-telling, Evil One. I won't settle for anything less. Why?"

And why should I speak at all? This is my kingdom, and I will do what I wish. For as long as you remain here, you are mine, and why should I justify what I do to things that are my own?

But those words did not come out. Instead, his throat coughed up something else that felt like it had been forced through a hole that was too small for it. "It was not you," he said. "You would not have been willing, no matter what you said or did that night. It would not have been right to do so."

"And why would it matter to you? And if you did not want to take advantage of that night, why did you poison my glass in the first place?"

"I do not have to explain myself to you," he said angrily. "And honestly, I am tired of all of this nonsense of Dark and Light and such garbage. It makes you look at me with such hateful eyes, and I resent it. I had hoped to cure that, and that alone. But it seems that's not to be."

He leapt up to leave, fire burning in his skin. He should not have sat, should not have even thought about it. It had been foolish. And he did not want to confront the weak, insubstantial things that she made him face.

"Ganondorf."

He had managed two strides before she caught his wrist. She would not have needed to, for the sound of his name in between the music and the merriment was enough to halt him. In her voice, unadulterated, so soft. Almost drowned out by the world. But in that instant, even if he had enchanted himself to be ignored by the passers-by, he no longer felt so bitingly isolated.

Zelda had stood. Her grip was surprisingly strong, and she closed the distance. Once again, that sugary haze had settled over him, and he had a hard time understanding exactly what she was doing as she neared.

"You're right. It is meaningless to explain at this point," she said. "So I won't."

She was very close, he noted sluggishly. Too close. No, not too close-- just right. No, not close enough, but she fixed that quickly. And she reached up, onto tiptoe. And further, as far as she could reach. He was too tall for her; her lips barely brushed his and hung there as if she was working on maybe the barest of prayers.

Her body did not fit against his quite correctly, but that did not stop the contact from feeling right to him. His heart thudded against his breast, all thinking capacity fled, protesting all the way with hows and whys and nos. Ganondorf found that for the same reason he no longer cared about his role, he no longer cared about the shoulds and should-nots. And her breath pulled him in until he closed over her, experience knowing exactly what to do next but pride hesitant to budge.

But this, he realized, this is what the appetite wants. And he decided to give. A tremor ran through him as she responded, and it only stoked a deep excitement. He deepened, he hungered, he kissed her so languorously slow as the unsuspecting crowd swirled around them. By the end of it he had lifted her off her feet, and she had tangled fingers in his hair and when they broke he held her nearly a foot from the ground. And she met his eyes stare to stare for the first time in a long time.

She was astonished.

"That was a test," she said quietly. "I think I understand now."

With her taste fading from his mouth, Ganondorf thought he was beginning to, too.

"Fine," he said flatly. "I do desire you, damned woman. Why, I don't particularly care. If it offends you..."

"No, no," she hushed. "You do more than desire me, and you know it. That is why you were such a gentleman on the night of your mistake, despite temptation. I suspected it before, but..."

He was silent.

"You have so much more in your heart than I thought. You've just proved it."

"Are you satisfied with that now?" said Ganondorf. "That you know the one you hate has such weak-minded desires in the face of you?"

Zelda had not broken his stare, and he found it mesmerizing. In that she was in those eyes, in her own touch. Yet it did not have that bite he resented.

"I said I would not explain," she said. "I'll only say that I have won your game, and you know it.

He nearly dropped her.

"Stop that; was I really that formidable a liar? It wasn't appropriate for me to say anything, and so I kept it to myself for weeks. Romancing you was simply not done. It was inappropriate as I thought it was then. Besides, I was sure you were going to use me if I mentioned it. Maybe I should have thought better of you." she blushed. "Now I know better. And I suppose I will forgive you for taking away at first the entirely wrong impression. Whatever change happened in you, I thank the gods for it."

It sunk in. Oh gods, this is what the appetite wanted. She felt so good in his arms, and she seemed to know it. He needed no more words; he held her close and kissed her again. Felt a thrill rise in his blood like no other, something long-forgotten that somehow made this existence worth his half-loss. And never, not even in the heat of battle, had he ever felt so overpoweringly alive

"No, you are quite mistaken," he whispered to her. "I have not lost yet... perhaps we should settle this somewhere a bit more private?"

Zelda looked to the oblivious crowd and stifled a laugh, blushing slightly. "Yes, please."

And as Ganondorf carried her through his tunnel of darkness back to his (their) castle, he asked one more question.

"Zelda. I hope you know exactly what you've done."

"Yes, but hang the rules. You're the King of Thieves; I think I can afford to break some, if you're not as monstrous as memory would serve. Not that I remember much of any other yous."

"And how do you judge the worth of your change of heart?"

"Your kiss was both earnest and excellent," she said, alarmingly honest. "Your beard tickles."

--