[The Legend of Zelda] And Because It Is My Heart

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Title: And Because It Is My Heart
Fandom: The Legend of Zelda
Pairing: Ganondorf/Link/Zelda
Rating: T
Summary: Many years ago, a child was born in the desert.
Notes: An exchange gift written for highadrenalineexchange 2023. It features a new timeline (and a half) and has a lot to do with exploring Ganondorf's gender identity. Title from the poem In The Desert by Stephen Crane.
AO3 Link: Here.

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The roof was collapsing over them, rubble falling off in big chunks, the sounds of it crashing against the floor resonating throughout the ruins. Bent over the young hylian's body, her hands trying and failing to contain the spread of the dark red spot marking his chest, Zelda held her head down, her face a pale mask of weariness and grief.

"Link," she said, her voice hoarse from screaming and crying and pleading in vain for them to stop. When the sword had fallen upon him, she hadn't made a sound, simply hurried over, draping herself over his body as if she could protect him from harm. She leaned further in, her blond braids spilling down, and smeared some of his blood on the front of her dress. "Link..."

Nobody answered her prayer. The hylian's eyes remained closed, his lips slightly parted.

Across from them, half-hidden in the shadows, Ganondorf found that his grip on the hilt of his scimitar was slipping.

The hylian's sword had proven mightier than he'd expected. He'd hit Ganondorf hard enough in the chest that he'd nearly toppled over. It hadn't been easy to take advantage of that one split second when Link was so surprised by his own success he'd let his guard down, his eyes lit up in wonder – but then Ganondorf's arm had come down, slicing through him with only the slightest hint of hesitation.

He, too, hadn't made a sound, not even a groan of pain. He'd blinked, his mouth curving into a downward line, and then crumpled to the floor.

A rock fell so close to the princess that she flinched despite herself, pulling Link's motionless body closer, until she was almost hugging him, indifferent to the fact that she was soiling her beautiful attire. She looked up, her blue eyes wet with tears. Where Ganondorf thought he would see anger or hatred, he saw only the exhaustion of a long-suffering soul.

"Please," she said, her bloodied hand clutching the soaked-in fabric of the hero's tunic. "I don't want us to keep doing this anymore."

The fire in Ganondorf's mind, that made the hair on his arms stand on end, that made his heart sing, that made the mark on the back of his hand glow all the more fiercely, that holy fire given to him by the Goddess... flickered.

He let his face fall. In his hand, his scimitar felt less like a weapon and more like the end of a heavy chain someone had forced him to pick up and carry around.

"Then," he said, pulling against his binds for the first time in a long time, "let's not."

Many years ago, a child was born in the desert.

Of course, children were – and are – birthed in the desert all the time. This was not, in itself, significant.

The child, then, was born from Zikorah, who'd just settled in with her wife. She'd been itching to start a family, incensed by the sight of her fellow gerudos and all the joy motherhood seemed to provide them with. The actual process had not been one she'd enjoyed much; reduced movement, soreness and pain, and the sort of fatigue she'd only ever felt when she was sick. Still, she'd powered on, believing the result to be worth it.

As soon as the midwife let her hold her newly born baby against her chest, she realized something was not quite as she'd planned. Her child was so very small – she'd seen fruits much bigger at the stalls whenever she visited the market – and blinked at her with bright golden eyes.

Zikorah had known many gerudo children in her life; she'd been an aunt, and a sister, and even a mother, even if not by blood. Yet she'd never seen one quite like this before. Perhaps, she thought, this was how you felt about your child after you'd spent so long making it.

When Junoo joined her in the tent to finally meet the baby they were going to raise together, she, too, seemed perplexed. She ran the pad of her thumb over the child's forehead and frowned.

"Zikorah," she said, with an edge to her low, rumbling voice, "you've gone and gifted us something very special."

In response, the child babbled something incomprehensible. The tense expression on Junoo's face softened, the corners of her mouth twitching into half a smile.

"We can talk about it with the chief tomorrow," Zikorah said, her last word cut short by a jaw-stretching yawn. "I'm too tired."

Seemingly in agreement, the child rubbed against the top part of her breasts, before surrendering to the urge to sleep. The two mothers watched, full of all kinds of brand-new emotions, as the child's breathing quieted into a slow, steady rhythm.

There was no quiet to be found the next day, when the child awoke from atop Zikorah's chest and proceeded to scream louder than any creature she'd ever heard roaming in the desert or elsewhere.

And so motherhood truly began.

Erial, the chief who'd looked after the village for longer than either Junoo or Zikorah had been born, took one look at the bundled-up baby that was brought to her home and let out a booming laugh, not unlike the roar of an angered lynel. Her hair, too, a great big mane circling her face, was reminiscent of those fierce beasts that Zikorah hadn't had too many unfortunate encounters with. Then, she shook her head, the intricate golden earrings adorning her ears rattling in time, and joined her fingers together.

"Have you named her?" she asked, suddenly so serious that Zikorah couldn't help but clutch her child closer to her bosom.

"Not yet," Junoo replied, and she too seemed much more alert. "We thought–"

She closed her mouth without finishing, her jaw held tight, and shot her wife a wary look. Zikorah squared her shoulders, her long braid hitting the back of her legs.

"We thought there was something different about her," Zikorah admitted. Erial's gaze weighed heavily over her, but she held it, if only for her child's sake.

"You think you birthed a king?" Erial said. She smacked her lips together. "You want to give her a kingly name? Worthy of her?"

There was no mockery in the chief's voice, Zikorah thought. Her words rang closer to pity. Perhaps birthing a king was something pitiful rather than noble, as she'd been taught to believe.

"I'll let her choose a kingly name for herself if she wants to," Zikorah said. Junoo held her by the shoulder, a small measure of comfort. "For now, I thought we could call her Mira."

Erial snorted, her chest heaving with the force of her held-back laughter. "Very well! We shall see how kingly Mira is!"

The child – Mira – made a sharp little sound that reminded Zikorah of a desert snake, hiding under the safety of the dunes. She brought Mira up to rest against her shoulder, listened to the telltale relaxed breathing that presaged sleep, and found herself relaxing as well.

Mira grew quickly as big as the rocks that lined up the village walls and found just as quickly that there was something wrong with the way she was being talked about. There was a disconnect there, she thought, watching the way her body looked in Junoo's full-length mirror. There was a disconnect even in the way she thought of herself. In the language, first, which seemed like the easiest thing to fix, until she brought it up to her mothers, and they couldn't understand what she meant.

Zikorah had told her, as soon as she could listen, about her future as a king. She'd liked the word – king – though even that had seemed to miss the mark. In the end, it was Erial, tall and terrifying even as she sat on her throne, who gave her some guidance on the subject.

"Gerudos are vai," she said, pausing to take a long drag on her long pipe. With her face half-shrouded in smoke, Mira could only see her thick mane of dark red hair. "But kings, in the world of hylians or gorons or zoras, are voe."

Mira frowned. "I'm voe?"

The chief shrugged at that, jiggling the gold decorating her ears. The smoke finished dissipating to reveal the grave look on her face.

"Maybe," she said. "If that's what feels right for you. You could be king. You could be voe."

It felt absurd in its simplicity. Mira turned the words inside her brain over and over, thinking about being king – about being voe – and found it brought her closer to what she supposed was the truth.

"There are legends," Erial went on, her tone still solemn. "About gerudos birthing children who are voe, and about those children becoming kings. I'm sure your mothers have told you all about it."

Mira nodded, cautious. In the stories, the king was an almost ethereal figure, a warrior sent down by the Goddesses to free the gerudo people from tyranny and injustice. This was a lot to imagine for a child who could barely lift a scimitar with two hands. She wasn't even entirely sure what "tyranny" meant.

"It hasn't happened for as long as I or my mother or her mother or her mother's mother could remember, though. Don't let it go to your head." Erial punctuated her words with one strong knock of her pipe against the side of her throne, trying to get rid of some of the tobacco clogging it up. "You can ask Borak, the librarian. I'm sure she'd love to tell you what she knows."

She gestured for one of her guards to bring her something to fill and light her pipe with, and Mira took it as her hint that she was being dismissed. She bowed her head down, moving to leave, but Erial called out to her one last time.

"If you're voe," she said, a tight little smirk tugging at the corner of her lips, "you'll need a new name."

The thought of having to shed the protection granted by the name her mothers had given her made Mira's stomach tie into knots tighter than the braids Zikorah favored the most. Still, she nodded again. If that was what it took to be a king, it could be a fair sacrifice.

To say Borak was excited to tell her about the legends and stories of their kings was an understatement. She climbed up the ladders between the long, tight rows of the library, and took out all the books and papers that she thought could be relevant. By the time she was satisfied, the table she'd made Mira sit at was so covered that from above you could barely tell there was a table there at all.

Borak was one of the shortest gerudos in the village, barely a head taller than Mira – whose mother had promised her she'd be one of the tallest soon enough. She wore her hair short, cut at the shoulders, and tied golden ribbons through her thick curls. Her eyes were big, and her eyebrows were bigger. On her meaner days, she reminded Mira strikingly of a desert scarab.

"See?" Borak said, pressing the tip of her forefinger on one of the illustrated pages of a large book. "This is from the legends the hylians believe."

The artwork was in a style Mira had never seen, with thick black lines and muted, almost earthy colors. On it, she could see two figures: one was small enough to be a child and wore a green hat and a green attire as well as what looked to be a sword; the other, tall and broad enough to fill nearly the rest of the page, looked closer to a beast, sporting a mane like liquid fire and long, pointy horns. In the background, in a yellow so faded it was barely visible, was a strange shape made out of three triangles. Mira squinted at it.

"This is the Triforce," Borak added, in a tone of voice that made it clear this was supposed to be exciting. "The relic gifted to us by the Goddesses. It grants its blessing to three heroes..."

"That's great," Mira said, to try and cut her off. "But I want to know about the king. What do we call her? What words do we use?"

Borak blinked. Mira thought that surprise made her look more like a desert owl than any sort of insect.

Her tone, this time, was careful and measured when she spoke, playing with the hem of her lightweight dress. "Well, we do have words for voes..." She hesitated, pressing her thin lips together. "For the king. Not 'her'."

Mira's heart was racing, though she couldn't tell why.

"Not 'her'?" she echoed, trying and failing to restrain her agitation. In the silence of the library, populated at this hour mostly by books and not much else, her voice seemed louder than it was.

Borak took hold of the chair next to her and slid down on it. She leaned forward as if she was about to bestow Mira with a long-sought secret.

"Not 'her'," she repeated. "'Him'. He is voe, but he is gerudo, as well."

He is gerudo, Mira thought, and found that he liked the sound of that a lot more than he'd expected.

His mothers listened to him ramble on and on about the things he'd read about the gerudo kings with the patience expected of a parent doing their best to support their child. Zikorah affixed intricate jewelry to his long locks of hair, golden laces and circlets that shone in the heavy desert sun. Junoo followed the ancient patterns Borak had dug up to make him an outfit that showed off his chest and kept his legs fully covered. The rest of the village, for their part, remained mostly unfazed. Only Erial, hidden behind the perennial smoke of her pipe, seemed to take the whole matter with poorly contained humor.

"She's afraid you'll take over the village," Borak told him one particularly hot afternoon when Mira pretended to read to seek the shade and avoid the heat. "As the king..."

"I don't want to take over the village," Mira said. "I want to go out into the world."

He stared down at one of the latest illustrations Borak had dug up, showing off the proud silhouette of a broad-shouldered voe with bright red hair and golden eyes like sun rays glistening over the sand. The gerudo king, they'd quickly learned from perusing everything they could find about him, bore many names. So many, in fact, that Mira had begun to wonder if it was worth changing his at all.

"You can have any name you want," Zikorah had said when he'd asked, smiling softly at her from above the basket full of freshly washed clothes she was carrying. "We named you, but that doesn't mean we made the right choice."

Hearing those words – making the right choice – Mira wondered whether there even was any choice to be made. The more legends he read, the less it seemed as if this was anything but a predesigned affair where none of the parties had much to say about it.

He wanted to be king, he thought, it felt right to be king, it felt right to be voe and to hear his friends and his mothers call him such. The rest, truth be told, he didn't want much to do with.

That night, tossing and turning to try and find some respite from the scorching fever of the desert, he had the first dream. He was a dark and cursed thing. He was a king holding a broad and heavy spear. He was a beast with deadly horns and reddened eyes. He was perched atop the largest horse he'd ever seen. He was laughing, his voice a foreign sound, like thunder hitting the trunk of a great big tree and splitting it in half. He stirred in his sleep but did not wake.

That night, far from the unforgiving heat of the desert, a child was born in a castle to a different king. On the back of her right hand, the light caught on something, making her mother gasp.

The dream had long faded when Mira woke. He rose from his bed, narrowly avoiding hitting his foot against the stack of books he'd left on the floor the day before, and froze when he caught his reflection in the small mirror hanging on his bedroom's wall.

Slowly, he balled up his right hand into a fist. There was something there that wasn't there before. He couldn't tell what it was. No matter at which angle he tried looking, the shape couldn't be clearly made out. His first instinct was to show it to his mothers; yet as soon as he opened his mouth to yell after them, he felt something like a great rock drop into the pit of his stomach.

Instead, he rummaged through the clean clothes in a pile next to the books and took out a pair of fingerless gloves. As soon as he'd slipped them on, he felt lighter. He stared at himself in the mirror, running his fingers through his untied hair, and smiled with all of his teeth, the way Zikorah had taught him to cheer himself up.

It didn't work. He felt on edge the rest of the day, so much that, by the end of it, even Junoo, who was often the least perceptive of his mothers, had noticed.

"Is something bothering you?" she asked. When he didn't reply, she went on, a little sheepishly, "If you're worried about your hair..."

Mira looked up at her from where he was sitting on the stairs leading to the house, tilting his head in confusion. "My hair?"

Junoo held up the bottom of her dress to sit next to him, careful not to dirty the shiny fabric she loved so much.

"I've seen hylian voes wear their hair very short," she said. She looked embarrassed, as if she was admitting something shameful. Mira knew that voes were forbidden inside the village because he was the only exception. "When they've come in the past to check out our wares. So I thought maybe you wanted your hair to be short, too."

There were rules to being voe that Mira still wasn't entirely sure he understood. Having certain names, wearing certain clothes, and now keeping your hair a certain length. One of his friends had told him about hair growing on the face, too, but that hadn't happened yet, so maybe it was a lie.

"I don't know," he said after thinking it over for a minute. "I like my hair. But," he added quickly upon seeing Junoo frown, "we could try it! It'll grow back."

If anything else, it served as a distraction from what was happening with his hand. He looked so different with his hair cut close to his scalp; older, he thought, and bigger now that there was no hair framing his body. He wasn't sure whether he liked it until he visited Borak later that week, and she excitedly compared his new appearance to some of her favorite depictions of the gerudo king.

He liked feeling big. He'd been spending his time outside the library training with the children who were aiming to become guards, and though his arms were still too weak to wield a scimitar, he could hold his own well enough with a smaller blade. Training took off some of the edge that clung to him after he'd woken up some mornings, too; a sensation, not unlike that of a simmering rage, like he was sizzling with it, but with seemingly no recipient. He had no one to be angry at, except maybe himself for having been born this way, and being angry at yourself seemed like a waste of time.

In his dreams, he was fighting, too. Against foes he couldn't make out, against great armies, against creatures made out of darkness and nightmares. Sometimes, he was fighting one of the smaller figures from Borak's illustrations. A child dressed in green. A warrior half his size with a bow and arrow. Once, he found himself facing a more feminine figure, a vai in a long, intricate dress and jewelry that reminded him of Erial. She held up her long sword and glared at him, her piercing blue eyes the only things he could see clearly.

The memories of those dreams were always gone by the time he was fully awake, but they left his mark pulsing, a dull throbbing pain that distracted him during training. He was wearing the gloves constantly now, even to sleep, and if his mothers thought it was odd, they didn't bring it up.

It was rare for foreigners to come to the village. Not only were voes barred from entry, but the desert simply wasn't a place many dared to try exploring with no proper preparation. Even gerudos tried to avoid gambling with their lives on days when the desert was not in the mood to be challenged – and that was most days.

Still, in the kinder seasons, when the sand storms were scarcer, hylians would sometimes come to peruse the village's wares. They were voes, more often than not, but occasionally they would bring vais with them, who were allowed to walk through the gates and visit the market. Their companions would wait outside, trying to sneak a peek at what was going on, and some of the gerudos would bring them food, or weapons they could look at and choose to purchase.

The hylian voes were different from Mira. They were taller – because they were older, and he knew for a fact he wasn't done growing yet – but they also had lighter skin and hair, and their ears were shaped differently. They wore thin clothing, not as brightly colored as what Mira was used to, and had short swords hanging off their belts, to fight off against the desert beasts.

He hid at the threshold, observing them with the same curiosity he used to have toward the fauna he'd sometimes spy on when he was younger. They spoke in a language he didn't understand, though he knew some of them could speak his language, too. He wished he could do the same.

Too focused on the objects of his fascination, he only realized that the hylian vais were leaving when one of them called out to him.

"Sav'aaq!" she said, her accent lacking the melodious tone he was used to. "Are you curious? Do you want to talk?"

Mira started. He pressed his palm on the back of his right hand reflexively, as if she could somehow sense what was there.

He was curious; he'd read so much about hylians with Borak, while never having been able to speak with any. Zikorah and Junoo had shared some tales of olden days when they'd gone to visit Castle Town, but hearing a story of how things were years before was different from experiencing it yourself. He turned away, seeking his mothers' eyes, and found Junoo carefully folding fabric the hylians had purchased. She caught his gaze and smiled at him, her thin eyebrows raised questioningly.

"Yes," Mira said. "Do you live... where the castle is?"

The hylian laughed, though it didn't sound mocking. "Yes! We've been traveling all month. My grandmother came to this village when she was a child..."

She was friendly, yet there was something about the way she was looking at him that made Mira uneasy. She kept glancing at his exposed chest and his freshly cut hair – it grew back at a speed that Junoo swore he'd inherited from her – and, where those things usually brought him comfort, they suddenly made him feel self-conscious, hyper-aware that they set him apart from his kin.

"I see," he said, and then all but ran off, as if he'd remembered someplace he had to be.

Later, once the hylians had left and the moon had set over the desert, he finally managed to gather the courage to ask Junoo if she'd take him to Castle Town. Zikorah seemed nervous at the prospect; Junoo agreed immediately, unexpectedly eager. She started going over a list of everything she could find there that she hadn't had the chance to play with in a while – hylian-made fabrics, cosmetics, jewelry forged from goron-acquired ores – but Mira soon lost track of what she was saying, too caught up in his thoughts.

He only noticed he was rubbing his thumb over his glove, where the mark was, when he caught Zikorah staring. She didn't ask, just pressed her lips together and smiled, before moving to run her fingers through his hair and tell him he should go to sleep early.

The next day, as they were about to leave, she kept fidgeting, making sure that his cloak was fitting him right. It made him even more nervous. The desert would be quiet for the few days the trip would take, and yet his mind kept conjuring images of him and Junoo caught in the storm, stranded away from any help, forced to fend off against beasts he still wasn't strong enough for.

He climbed up behind Junoo on the tall horse Erial had let them borrow and clung on to her as tight as he could, his eyes firmly closed. The rhythm of the ride soothed him to sleep. He didn't dream of anything, except riding a horse through the desert.

Castle Town was large and noisy. There were people everywhere – mostly hylians, though they'd run into a band of zoras and one goron napping in the shade – and all of them kept staring at Junoo.

They were right to stare because Junoo was beautiful; one of the taller gerudos Mira knew, with long hair the color of the sun when it had just started rising in the sky, curling at the tip but straighter than Zikorah's even on her best days. She was wearing her nicest dress, one she'd made herself out of semi-transparent layers of shiny satin-like fabric in different colors, and she'd put on her favorite necklace, the bulky one Zikorah had given her the year before to celebrate their anniversary. It was made out of different sizes of golden half-circlets, with a rounded piece on top that Mira knew was meant to represent a solar eclipse. Among the hylians, even those dressed in colorful, expensive outfits, she stood out like a diamond among plain, smooth rocks, and it should have made Mira's heart soar.

Instead, there was something in the way they looked at her that made him want to shield her away. They were murmuring, hushing behind their hands as if they couldn't be seen, as if they weren't pointing at the odd foreigners the way you'd point at an unusual bug that'd come out from under an upturned stone. He could barely focus on what Junoo was saying, her excited chatter buzzing in his ears while he kept his cloak wrapped around him, the hood covering half of his face.

She seemed to notice his turmoil once they'd reached the sprawling marketplace, far removed from what he was used to. He stopped near the first stall, selling what looked to be fine armor, and she looked back to check on him, her brow furrowing slightly.

"Mira? Are you alright?" she said, and the hylian at the stall turned his face toward her, perhaps intrigued by her strange manner of speaking. Mira's heart raced, a loud pounding sound in his ears like a war drum.

He thought about telling her he'd changed his mind, he wanted to go back home, he wanted to be with Borak at the library poring over beautiful drawings, he wanted to be training with his friends under the desert sun, he wanted to nap while riding the horse and listening to the soft sound of hooves hitting the sand, but instead he said, "It's noisy."

Junoo laughed, her eyes narrowing with mirth, and two hylian vais stared at her, alerted by the booming sound.

"Come on," she said, oblivious, "you sound like your mother. I'll show you where the books are."

The books did provide a distraction. There were so many – stalls upon stalls full of them, bright colorful covers and thick dark tomes that were almost frightening in their sizes. Soon, the rest of the market faded into the background, and Mira's anxiety with it. He flipped through pages written in languages he couldn't speak, and lost himself in the contemplation of gorgeous illustrations. There were so many; some, he thought, were generic fiction books, or fairy tales he was unfamiliar with, but in others, he did spy the familiar figures he'd grown used to. It was comforting, somehow, to see proof that they did have this history in common.

He'd just put back one of the books and was about to pick up another when someone grabbed him by the back of his hood, so suddenly that he couldn't keep himself from crying out. It was a hylian voe, towering over him and wearing a helmet, his face scrunched up in disdain and suspicion. He said something in hylian that Mira thought was an admonishment, or perhaps a demand for answers as to what he was doing.

Mira held up his hands, a gesture that he knew, from dealing with monsters and wild animals, signified that you were unharmed and not seeking conflict.

"Looking," he said, his tongue struggling with a language he wasn't used to. Borak had been teaching him so he could try and parse the books, but he was just starting to tell the letters apart. "Just looking." He pointed at the stall without lowering his arms; the guard – because he had to be a guard – was still clutching his cloak. "Books."

The guard shook his head and said something else that promised nothing good. Junoo, who'd left him to go look through the hylian fabrics she'd been looking forward to perusing, was coming back toward them, her arms and bags full of scrolls and other goodies. She was frowning, her pace quickening when she realized something was wrong.

She talked to the guard in hurried whispers, and despite his best efforts, Mira couldn't catch a word of it. All the hylians nearby, including the one manning the stall they were standing in front of, were looking at them. The guard kept hold of Mira's cloak until he finally relented and threw his hand back, making the hood fall and exposing Mira's face to the onlookers.

He pulled it back up as quickly as he could, but it was too late: the sight of a young, short-haired gerudo proved too much for the crowd, and the buzz rose around them, like so many desert scarabs hissing in unison. Mira let Junoo lead him away from the market, her hand on one of his shoulders.

Only once they were back on their horse did she speak, her features drawn in worry and something that Mira, to his horror, thought to be shame.

"I'm sorry, Mira," she said as if it was her fault. As if she'd done anything wrong.

He hadn't done anything wrong either, and yet he heard himself reply, "No, it's my fault. I shouldn't have kept the hood up..."

She sighed but did not deny it. He pretended to sleep again on the way home, his forehead pressed against her back, though he was sure she could tell he wasn't.

The night they came back home, his mothers fought as soon as he'd gone to his bedroom. He listened to them through the wall, staring at his own reflection in the mirror, and wished he could be bigger faster.

In his dream, he was a giant creature, a monster, larger than anything he'd ever seen, with teeth and horns the length of a horse. His eyes burnt like he'd just stared right into the sun. He felt a piercing pain in his chest, and then nothing.

In Kakariko Village, the old musician nearly tripped over a child at the door of the windmill, bundled up inside a basket like a present from the Goddesses themselves. Deep in slumber, the child stirred, the back of his little fist catching the morning light.

Zikorah never let them go back to Castle Town, and Mira couldn't bring himself to blame her.

He threw himself into training, summoning his frustration into fuel he could use to motivate himself toward getting stronger. Soon, he was able not only to wield a decently sized scimitar, but he could lift Zikorah as well, so light in his arms suddenly, her cheerful laughter serving to soothe his aching heart even on his worst days.

His friends, it turned out, hadn't lied about hair growing on the face. It began on his chin, a scarce dusting here on there under his jaw, and then spread out over his cheeks. Junoo showed him how to shave it in the mirror, her gestures sure and quick, and let him decide how he wanted to look.

When he styled it right, he found that he could almost see the gerudo in the drawings he sometimes still glanced at in the library. Borak had proved to be a diligent teacher, and with her help, he could now decipher a larger range of books. He read them in-between training and play-fighting, or helping his mothers with the house, or taking care of the animals. He'd grown attached to the horse Erial had lent them, a black stallion that he'd taken several years to overtop. Being near him was comforting; they were voes among vais, though they were different species.

He didn't feel lonely, exactly. It was closer to yearning – a word he'd read in a book once, and that had slotted itself neatly into the vacant space in his mind he went to whenever his mark was bothering him. Some days it itched; others it hurt like he'd been hit directly, all the way down to his bones.

His mothers wouldn't ask about it, but Erial did, one evening when she came to check on him as he finished tending to the horse. It had been sweltering all day, and he was only wearing the thinnest loincloth he could find, and his gloves, a new pair Junoo had fashioned for him once the old one had started to get too tight around his knuckles. She watched him give the horse a tap on his nostrils, smiling knowingly. Her hair, as long and thick as it always had been, was steadily going grey at the root.

"You've been hard at work," she said. She seemed pleased, her expression friendly, but he knew better than to lower his guard. Her eyes darted toward his hand when he rubbed it, despite his best judgment. "It's a bit hot for gloves, don't you think?"

The mark wasn't really a secret; he wasn't hiding it from others. He was hiding it from himself, because it scared him, the same way you'd ignore an illness in case it turned out to be deadly. Too often, when he tightened his fist around his weapons too hard, it would pulse almost like a vein, and he'd nearly lose his balance. He knew he was being foolish, acting like the child he'd long grown past being.

He shook his head. "I'll show it to you," he said, "but please don't tell my mothers."

The glove came off like a second skin. Underneath it, the mark had faded, as if it was a scar that'd long healed over. The top part of the triangle had gone pale, contrasting with the rest of his body, and when Erial brushed the pad of her thumb over it, he felt nearly nauseous from the sensation. He withdrew his hand so brusquely she shot him a look, a strange glint in her eyes.

"So you are our king," she said. Her tone was matter-of-fact, yet it still sounded like an accusation.

"I don't care about being king," he protested. It was a lie, he thought, though not in the way she meant it. "I don't want to be in charge of the village."

Erial's smile, this time, reflected no mockery. She looked tired, beyond her years, her eyelids heavy, her gaze cast downward, toward the hand Mira was clutching close to his body, away from her.

"Well," she mumbled. "I'm afraid you don't have much of a choice."

She let him hurry past her without stopping him; she didn't even turn around. He walked home, forgetting even to put his glove back on before entering, and went straight to his room.

It took him so long to settle down to sleep that by the time he did, he'd reached an odd state of half-consciousness, stuck between awake and asleep. Someone was calling out to him from far, far away. It was a voice he didn't recognize, and yet he did as if he'd known it his whole life. At first, it was gentle, a soothing sound, like a lullaby, and then, slowly, it morphed into a scream, of anger, and then of despair, a plea, a last-ditch attempt to bargain, a call for mercy.

"Ganondorf—!"

He woke up with a start, his fist clenched so tightly his fingers hurt, his nails digging into his palm, wet with freshly shed blood. His mark felt like it had been set alight. He lay perfectly still until his breathing had slowed down, and gave up on getting any sleep.

"Ganondorf does appear in some writings," Borak said, two days later.

He'd scared his mothers awake, too. They'd rushed into his room, and he'd said something about a nightmare, feeling pathetic at his age. That it was the truth made it feel worse, somehow. Zikorah had held him against her until there'd been no air left in his lungs and told him that they'd always look after him, no matter how old and jaded he was. Junoo had cleaned up his wound, and he'd had to finally open up about the mark.

They'd known who he was from the start, of course, yet seeing it seared into his skin was different. It didn't hurt when they touched him, but he'd still put his gloves back on. He felt naked without them, too vulnerable. This was for him and him alone to bear, in the end.

"Well... There's also this," Borak went on when he didn't reply. She pulled up a huge book and opened it right at the middle point. There, he could see a spread depicting a huge boar, its head tilted toward the viewer. The sight instantly sent Mira's heart racing, hammering against his chest like it was trying to get out. "Sometimes, Ganondorf is a monster..."

"I don't want to hear any more of this," he said and stood up to go. He narrowly tipped the table over, and when his gaze met Borak's, she looked frightened, as if she was staring at a stranger instead of a friend, a child she'd watched grow up.

If he was a monster–

He bowed his head on his way out. The door frame seemed smaller, suddenly, unrecognizable. When had he grown so big? His childhood felt like sand slipping between his fingers.

If he was a monster, then, he could be Ganondorf. If it came to this, if this was the way things had been planned since he'd been born, since he'd been voe instead of vai like the rest of them–

He felt as if he'd been struck with a feverish sort of madness. His mark was throbbing, pulsing and pumping like a second heart. He recalled the disdain of the Castle Town guard, the whispers of the hylians, the fear on Borak's face, the worry in his mothers' eyes, the screams and shouts in his dreams; he recalled the rage, the fire inside of him, when he fought, when he grew frustrated, when he was alone and couldn't distract himself.

Staring down at his reflection in the stable's trough – he didn't even remember walking there – he thought back on the dreams.

In the dreams, he was the king. In the dreams, he was the beast. But the king and the beast were one and the same. Together, they were Ganondorf.

He was Ganondorf. The king and the beast. He could shoulder this. He could no longer shoulder Mira, who was a child, uncertain of his own identity and place in the world.

Erial's expression held no surprise when he came to her to claim the village as his own. She smirked, showing off some of her teeth, but yielded with no resistance, as he knew she would. She was old, and he was voe; this was his birthright.

His mothers were another story. They wouldn't let go of him – of Mira. He didn't want to let go of them, either, not really, yet he did anyway, leaving behind his childhood bedroom with the small mirror and the pile of books and the forgotten dreams. It was better this way.

Ganondorf sat on his throne and wondered where his kingdom was.

There was a kingdom that wasn't his – yet. He didn't actually care much for it. It only made it even more grievous when he received news that "the princess" was after him.

He didn't know who the princess was, nor did he want to. He had a desert he could rule over. The hylians could keep their castles and their contempt for those they didn't understand.

The first courier who came with a missive they didn't even let into the village, even though they'd had the foresight to send out a vai. They ignored her demands to enter and, when she stayed at the door for several days, refusing to leave, threatened to send one of the nearby lizalfos after her. The second came armed and with a few guards, though she argued their intentions were nothing but peaceful. They set camp close to the village and stayed for a week and a half before their supplies ran out, and they had to admit defeat.

He'd made Borak his advisor, selfishly, because he wanted to make it up to her. She'd accepted without reserve, but she wouldn't look him in the eyes. He told himself it didn't matter.

His hair grew longer. He no longer bothered to trim it, remembering Erial's great mane of hair and how much more intimidating it had made her seem when he was smaller. The previous chief, who'd taken her dismissal for the advisory position gracefully, mostly spent her time tending to the smaller livestock they kept within the walls, unlikely to cause her much trouble. She'd stopped smoking the pipe and had even offered her most favored one to him, citing that it was a welcoming gift.

He didn't like to smoke. Whenever he did, he felt more on edge, constantly looking for a fight, and his dreams became much more vivid. One in particular, where he was carrying the corpse of a short hylian child, his tunic splattered with dark blood, left him so shaken that he bowed down to Zikorah and agreed to reunite with his mothers for dinner.

The third courier was a zora, taller than the few he'd seen before in his life, her pale green scales attracting so much light that they sparkled. He let her in, wondering if the princess could have known his curiosity would be too great, and offered her all the luxuries they could afford. He didn't read her letter, nor did he let her talk about its contents. Still, she seemed to appreciate the hospitality, which was all that mattered to him.

Months later, he was in the process of setting up a new perimeter for the village's expansion, when the fourth courier came, and with her an entire escort.

Princess Zelda, it turned out, was quite the stubborn sort.

Had he not been out of the bounds of the village, he would have refused her entry, but since she'd managed to catch him when he couldn't get away, he decided to humor her. She was taller than the hylian vais he'd seen, despite appearing younger, and wore her hair tied back in a pattern of small, intricate braids. Her eyes were the color of the morning sky, somewhere between green and blue, and he found them difficult to look away from.

She bowed at him in respect, which surprised him. He bowed back and offered to lead her to his home. She was wearing lighter attire than he figured was worthy of a princess, but was surely more appropriate for traveling through the desert. Though she'd made sure to wear a cloak, he caught a glance at the skin of her legs and arms and saw that it had gone pink, worn down by the sun. He smiled to himself, and she didn't notice the reason for his humor.

The gerudos welcomed the hylian party with their usual hospitality, as he thought they would. Erial eyed him curiously as he escorted Zelda inside; he ignored her.

His mark was throbbing, making his fingers twitch uncontrollably. The princess, too, was wearing gloves despite the heat, long ones that covered up to her wrists. He tried not to let his gaze linger.

"King Ganondorf," she said, and though he knew she would know his name, hearing her say it made his heartbeat pound between his ears. "Thank you for the warm welcome."

A few hylians were still somewhat frequent visitors to the village, and though he'd never done anything to dissuade their presence until she'd come banging at his doors, he'd never attempted to attract more attention than was necessary. Better for them to think of the desert and its inhabitants as a tourist attraction than to believe them capable of anything that they could perceive as a threat – not as long as they could not, in fact, be a threat to them. He'd thought the news of his presence would spread, but seeing the princess so determined to meet him was making him wary. He scratched the back of his right hand, feigning nonchalance.

"I admire your obstinacy," he said, gesturing for her to sit with him at the stone table at the center of the main room. She complied without averting her eyes from him. "We have been playing this little game for months. If you're willing to brave the desert for me, I might as well offer you the dignity of hearing you out."

"How kind of you," she replied, her lips stretching into a bitter smile. "I've heard rumors about you."

He raised his eyebrows. "Such as?"

"You are a male gerudo. There are... expectations." As she spoke, she pressed the palm of her left hand over her right, and Ganondorf's mark burst into a kind of pain he'd never felt before.

"Expectations?" he echoed through gritted teeth, though he was still smiling. "Do you expect me to be your enemy, then?"

She blinked, breaking eye contact momentarily. He should have felt triumphant, to be able to perturb her, yet it only served to further aggravate him.

"My mother..." she started. He shook his head.

"We've offered you our hospitality," he said, struggling to control the volume of his voice, "thinking you were here as potential allies. If this is a declaration of war–"

"Of course not," she protested. She frowned, uncertain, her face more youthful in that state, betraying her actual age. "I apologize. I was merely curious." She paused before adding, "I misjudged you."

Ganondorf nodded, once. "Well. I appreciate your willingness to admit your mistakes. Befitting a leader such as you."

Her lips twitched. She didn't exactly smile, but it was close. He stood up to let her be taken care of and put an end to their conversation. Though her brow furrowed further at that, she didn't try to dissuade him from leaving.

He stayed in his room until dinner, rubbing his thumbnail against where he knew his mark was under the glove as if he could scratch it off. His head throbbed like he'd been overtaken by a great illness.

She was young; she wasn't like the hylians he'd grown wary of. Her insistence to meet him was a good thing, after all, if what she wanted was to know more about them. They could work something out that would benefit them both. Allow him to have the kingdom he deserved.

The beast inside him roared. His mark ached. He closed his eyes and willed himself to ignore it.

Zelda was perfectly pleasant as they shared a meal. She complimented every dish, sampling them without hiding her curiosity and gratitude. He watched her, hunched over the large banquet table they'd prepared for the occasion, his face half-hidden behind his wide cup. She spent most of the time she wasn't eating discussing the current state of things in Hyrule with Borak, who seemed beyond delighted to be able to gather all this fresh information she had no way to get outside the few occasions when they'd get visitors.

Even now, gerudos who left the village rarely came back. The world beyond the desert had an appeal that Ganondorf figured he would never understand. Zelda laughed at something Borak said, her ears twitching, and he looked away.

His head hurt. He thought about his scimitar, safely stored with the rest of his weapons and armors. What was the princess like in battle? Could she even fight? If he took out his weapon and pressed it against her throat–

He slammed his cup on the table so heavily that all the conversations died out at once. Dozens of heads turned to stare at him. He bared his teeth and got up.

"I've lost my appetite," he said, and forced his grimace into what he hoped passed for a polite smile. "Please, entertain yourselves. I'm done for the night."

Zikorah took his hand in hers when he stepped away, looking up at him with concern in her eyes. He shook his head and left to go back to his room.

He was plagued, he thought, with an insidious disease he was powerless against. He should have asked her about the mark – she had to have it also, he could feel it on her, hear it in her heartbeat – but he was, to his greatest dismay, afraid. Afraid of the anger brewing in his mind that wasn't his own, afraid of the way he felt pulled toward her, afraid that acknowledging it would break down the last barrier that kept the beast inside him at bay.

There was no bravery in it; he was a coward. He wasn't the king from the legends. That king wasn't who he wanted to be.

He'd stayed prostrated at the edge of his bed for so long it was almost as if he'd gone to sleep. He started when someone knocked at the door, three soft taps on the wooden panel.

"What is it?" he groaned. If it was Borak, or one of the gerudos who helped around the house, he wasn't in the mood to see them. If it was his mothers–

"Ganondorf," Zelda said, and he felt his heart sink. "You don't have to open the door. I just came to thank you for the meal."

Of course she would. He was reeling, rubbing at the back of his hand to the point of hurting. "It was my pleasure. You're my guest. I hope the food was to your liking."

He could hear her hesitate, though he couldn't see her. A light ruffling of fabric, the sound of her feet tapping on the stone floor tiles.

"It was delicious," she said. The door creaked; she must have been leaning against it. "I'd like it if we could have a talk tomorrow."

"Very well." He closed his eyes. "I'll look forward to it."

"Good night, then," Zelda said.

She didn't move away, so he reluctantly replied, "Good night, Princess."

Only then did her footsteps finally retreat. He sighed until all the air in his lungs had left his body, and scratched at his scalp with both hands. Surely this was a good thing. They could talk about the marks; they could talk about their kingdoms. Together, maybe they could even find a way to escape the fate that might have been designed for them.

Instead, in the early hours of the morning, Ganondorf was woken up by a great clamor, and by the time he'd gotten up and hastily put on his clothes and grabbed his weapons from where he'd stored them, someone was banging at his door with an urgency that presaged nothing good. He slammed the door open and found Borak, his mothers, and Erial at the very back of the group, looking from slightly uneasy to absolutely terrified.

"There are hylian soldiers outside our walls," Borak said once she could speak. She was shaking, holding on to the door frame as if she was about to collapse at any moment. "Mira–"

"Stay here," he cut her off, without bothering to correct her. Zikorah opened her mouth to protest, but he held up his hand. "I won't fight them. I just want you to stay safe."

"We could say the same," Junoo retorted, though she seemed resigned. "There's a whole army out there. Don't underestimate them."

He nodded.

The village was eerily quiet at that hour. He could see eyes peeking out of the windows, and once he'd reached the plaza, he found that some of the gerudo guards and skilled warriors had come out with weapons, awaiting his arrival and orders in silence, trained for discretion. He gestured for them to wait, sheathed his scimitar, and walked to the entrance.

Princess Zelda was standing at the door, her clothes clearly having been thrown onto her body hastily, in an intense conversation through the slit they used to check on visitors. She was speaking hylian at a speed and with a rage that made it too hard for him to understand. Her face was red, and even her shoulders had flushed from aggravation. He averted his eyes.

"Princess," he called out, and she stopped speaking, letting the hatch fall back down, probably to signify to whoever she was talking to that they were done for now. "What is the meaning of this?"

She pursed her lips, looking down at the sand at their feet, and then sighed.

"I'm here against my father's orders," she said, and Ganondorf gritted his teeth to conceal his annoyance. Of course she was. A disobedient child playing at being a princess. "I didn't think he'd send out a whole rescue party like this. This is ridiculous. I'm old enough–"

"You're old enough to start a war," Ganondorf said, which shut her up. She had the decency to look contrite, at least. "You need to leave. I can't have you risking the lives of my people."

Scolding her brought him no satisfaction, but it didn't trigger the fire inside him either, which was a relief. She took a deep breath, opened her mouth as if to say something, and then gave up, nodding instead.

"If we met somewhere else," she started when they began walking back so she could gather her entourage, who'd stayed inside, steering clear of trouble. "There's a village in the nearby region, close to the desert..."

Ganondorf rolled his eyes. "You really are stubborn."

"Don't act like you're not curious as well," she said with a fierce look in her bright blue eyes. He blinked at her. "You know what I'm talking about. I've seen you touching it." She paused, turning away to stare into the distance. "My mother told me I shouldn't trust men who come from the desert."

"And yet, you heard there was a man in the desert and came running in."

She flushed slightly, the barest hint of pink left on her cheeks. "You know what I'm talking about," she repeated.

He did. He helped her gather her things, and when they opened the doors to let her and her people out, the hylian soldiers followed his every movement warily, their gazes suspicious under the shade of their helmets. He glared back at them, knowing fully well that he was by that point much taller and broader, wearing a minimalist outfit that showed off his chest and his powerful muscles, with his weapon at his side. If they felt threatened, that was for the best. He didn't want to see them ever again.

The princess turned toward him one last time as her horse was led away with her on it. She'd put her cloak back on, and wearing it, she looked smaller than she really was. He waved once at her before walking away.

They hadn't exactly come up with a time for them to meet again; Ganondorf expected that she'd find some way to contact him, maybe – until weeks and then months went by and he still hadn't heard from her.

Junoo told him that Kakariko Village was indeed close to the desert's outer perimeter. It was a small, unassuming town where a few hylians lived, with occasional visitors and temporary non-hylian residents. Gorons, apparently, enjoyed the village's proximity to the mountainous and rockier areas where they usually dwelled, as a compromise for those who were seeking something new and different. Ganondorf tried to imagine a goron living among hylians and found the mental image somewhat entertaining.

It was a shorter trip than the one he'd taken to Castle Town when he was a child. He wore a hooded cloak this time, too, and let a kind voe with a round face and big hands lead his horse to the stable instead of leaving it at the entrance. Somehow, he didn't feel worried or in danger.

The village was quiet. A few houses here and there, spread over a hill, with a windmill at the top, looking down at the rest of them like some kind of divine protector. He rubbed the back of his hand as he thought. The princess wouldn't be there, of course; still, it was a good idea to get familiar with the terrain beforehand. Just in case.

He was also, plain and simple, curious. He'd spent all of his life in the desert. His mothers had gone out to see the rest of the world occasionally, but they had mostly kept to their home as well. It was just the way things were. Gerudos stayed in the desert. Sometimes, some of them went out to find hylian voes to wed or to give them children; and sometimes they never came back.

His mark pulsed, just once, which wasn't out of the ordinary – and then someone half his size ran into him, head first and at full speed. They bounced off from him with an "oomph" of both confusion and pain and fell into the grass.

"Don't they teach you hylians to look at where you're going?" he groaned. "Are you alright?"

The hylian breathed in through their clenched teeth, rubbing at their dirty blond hair. It'd been tied into a thin ponytail, showing off their long ears.

"Fine," they said. They didn't move.

Resisting the urge to roll his eyes, Ganondorf held up his hand for them to take. They looked up at him, pale blue eyes squinting in either confusion or suspicion, and then took it.

It was as if he'd been struck by an electric current; his heart jumped like he'd been hit straight in the chest, and his whole body trembled. His vision went black. He could see himself the way he would in his dreams: from far away, vaguely, more of an impression than a real person. The impression of him was a red blur, pulsing in a rapid rhythm that followed his heartbeat. The impression of the hylian was green, bright like a shooting star piercing through the night sky.

In that instant, which could have lasted a few seconds or a whole century, he was the beast, and he was looking death right in the face. He was in a fight for his life against his enemy. He was on the verge of triumphing against the eternal harbinger of his cosmic defeat.

He was–

The hylian let go of his hand. They stared at each other.

"Huh," the hylian said. Their face was slim and soft, but from up close, Ganondorf thought they were voe. It seemed rude to ask, though perhaps it was worse to assume. "Did you see that?"

Though every single cell of his body was begging him to lie, the fire in his mind pleading for him to turn away and never speak of this again, Ganondorf nodded.

"Link!" someone called out before he could open his mouth to speak. "There you are. Oh, I hope he wasn't bothering you. He's a handful, but he's never meant to hurt anyone..."

The speaker was an old hylian voe, holding up a worn-out cap between his hands and fiddling with it nervously. He was wearing some kind of device on his back that Ganondorf thought had to be a musical instrument of some sort. He looked much too old to be the younger hylian's father, though Ganondorf knew that didn't mean much.

He also, most worryingly, looked terrified. Which Ganondorf figured he couldn't really blame him for; he was standing before a much bigger and larger cloaked figure whom he had no reason to trust and who was very close to someone much smaller whom he cared about. Ganondorf stepped away slightly. Link was still looking up at him curiously.

"There's nothing to worry about," Ganondorf said. He held up his hands, more as a reflex than anything else. "It was an accident. It happens."

The old hylian, after introducing himself as Garou, insisted that he simply had to buy him drinks as an apology. It turned out that Link wasn't his son, nor his grandson, but closer to a ward – though there was no denying that they bickered just like a parent and their child would. They were apparently well-known in the village, as several patrons of the bar came to greet them as soon as they'd entered.

It was a different sort of atmosphere than he was used to, yet it was similar enough to his home village that Ganondorf allowed himself to relax more and more as they spent time discussing various topics, mostly relating to the state of the current hyrulean kingdom. Garou drank the most, guzzling ale until he was barely coherent, to Link's obvious embarrassment. He just sipped his own mug slowly, only piping up to hum in agreement or grumble something intelligible to signify that he wanted another round of fried savory pastries.

He wore bandages over his left hand, but his right hand was bare of both coverings and marks. Ganondorf didn't dare to speak of it, for fear of attracting unwanted scrutiny.

Once Garou had clearly had more than his fill, halfway to falling asleep over the table, Link gently coaxed him into getting up so they could pay and leave. Ganondorf offered a few of the rubies he'd taken with him to pay for a room and his horse to be taken care of, but both of his hosts shook their heads almost in time.

Link pushed Garou out of the door before turning toward Ganondorf to say, keeping his voice low so only he could hear it over the chatter, "Meet me at the stable tomorrow at noon."

Ganondorf nodded once, rubbing his thumb over the back of his hand.

Hylian beds were, as he'd guessed as soon as he'd been presented with one, much too small for him. He missed the comfort of his large bed in the desert.

He found Link sitting at the edge of the trough, petting one of the mares while she drank. He was wearing the same clothes as he had the day before, a light tunic that had probably been a vibrant green at some point but had gone paler from being washed too often, and sandals that also had seen better days. His hair was untied, falling on his shoulders. Ganondorf found himself oddly unsettled.

Link smiled when he saw him approach. The mare held up her head to look him over and then went back to drinking.

"Gan!" Link greeted him. Ganondorf frowned.

"That's not my name," he said. He stopped next to him and stayed standing, as he had no desire to sit on or next to a dirty stable trough.

Saying the words, he couldn't help but think that Ganondorf wasn't really his name, either. It was a name he'd deciphered in an old book and decided to take for himself. And yet.

Link shrugged one shoulder, rocking over the edge with the practiced slowness of someone used to falling off. "It's shorter." He paused, looking up at Ganondorf who was still standing very straight next to him. "Can I see?"

Ganondorf tilted his face toward him.

"Your hand," Link added, holding up his left hand to demonstrate.

He'd taken off the bandages covering it, and now Ganondorf could see it plain as day: the mark, catching the light of the early afternoon sun, its shape both there and not. His mouth dry, he nodded, sliding his thumb under the glove to take it off.

The difference in the size of their hands was almost laughable, Link's fitting in his palm as well as Zelda's had – but their marks were nearly identical. The only noticeable difference was that where Ganondorf's skin was paler under the upper triangle, Link's pale spot was under the right triangle. There was no doubt, then, as to which triangle belonged to Zelda.

"Wow," Link let out. He was grinning, pressing the side of his palm against Ganondorf's. "It's the same!"

"Be careful," Ganondorf hissed, the contact making his skin bristle.

Link hummed, suddenly thoughtful, though he was still smiling.

"You're not hylian," he said as if he'd just noticed. Ganondorf was still wearing his hood up; he'd only lowered it when paying for the room. Showing his face to the person who was hosting him had seemed fair enough. The hylian vai had not reacted to his appearance beyond a short nod acknowledging it.

"I'm from the desert."

"Gerudo?" Link tilted his head nearly all the way, eerily reminiscent of the stray cats Ganondorf had spotted around the village. "But you're– hmm."

He squinted again, narrowing his eyes into two thin slits. Ganondorf let down his hood so he could see the color of his skin and hair, and the shape of his face. Link mumbled to himself, scratching at the back of his scalp, near his nape.

Ganondorf knew that his long hair didn't make him stand out from the other gerudos. He'd grown to enjoy the look and the feel of it as he ran his hands through the strands. It didn't particularly matter to him whether people could tell he was voe or not; those were worries and insecurities he'd left behind as he'd grown. Mira had struggled with being voe, but Ganondorf had been voe for so long now that the way he was perceived by others no longer came into account when he conceptualized it to himself.

"You're not a girl," Link finally said.

Despite himself, Ganondorf chuckled. "How could you tell?"

"It's obvious." The hylian didn't roll his eyes, though Ganondorf thought he looked like he wanted to. "Garou tells me I have an eye for things."

It was the longest sentence Ganondorf had heard him say since they'd met. It made him laugh, a strange booming sound that erupted from his chest almost against his will. He couldn't remember the last time he'd laughed like this; it freed something within him that was less of the beast and more of himself, the gerudo voe, the fated king. Less Ganondorf and more Mira.

"You've been to Hyrule?" he asked Link once he'd calmed down. He crouched to his level, still unwilling to sit.

Link shook his head. From here, he looked younger than Zelda had, though not by much. Mostly, he seemed so far away from everything that had plagued the other two bearers of his mark. It felt almost cruel to have to tell him.

Yet, Ganondorf couldn't imagine keeping it to himself. Zelda would want to meet him, too. She'd be furious if he lied.

"Garou goes," Link explained. He raised his eyebrows, his exaggerated expression making him look even younger. "Sometimes. I don't."

"What do you do?"

"Oh! I play." He reached into the pockets of his tunic, frowning in concentration as he searched through them, and took out an oddly shaped instrument. It looked to be a flute but its shape was closer to an egg than to the long tubes Ganondorf was used to. "It was with me. When Garou found me."

Garou had told Ganondorf the night before that he'd found Link abandoned near the windmill when he was a baby. Nobody seemed to know where this strange child with a mark on his hand was from, nor did they appear to care. Ganondorf wondered if whoever had birthed him had any idea about the things he could be destined for.

"I know someone else with a mark like this," Ganondorf said. Link, who'd brought the instrument to his lips and had begun softly blowing into it, stopped to stare at him. "She's a princess."

"A princess?" Link blinked at him, his face flushing. "I've been having dreams of a princess... Together, we'd walk through the forests or the valleys and hold hands..." His blush spread up to his ears. Ganondorf smiled, though he refrained from mockery. "I was protecting her."

"Well. I'm sure she'll be delighted to meet you."

Before he could even finish his sentence, Link was springing up, back on his feet, his whole face lighting up with excitement.

"We're going to go see her?"

Ganondorf shook his head. He didn't bother to straighten himself up; at least like this they were closer to eye level.

"I don't think it's a good idea for me to go see her," he said.

Link threw his arms up in the air. "I want to go!"

"You can go. I can't."

He suddenly felt ridiculous, and exhausted, crouching near a noisy stable with a young voe he'd just met. Couldn't have his life been devoid of any mark so he could stay in the desert away from this whole mess?

"Why not?" Link's naivety should have been irritating, surely, yet he couldn't help but find it endearing. He groaned.

"Male gerudos come with expectations," Ganondorf said, remembering Zelda's words. "I doubt I'd be welcome at the castle."

"I'll convince them," Link argued, with an inordinate amount of confidence.

Ganondorf sighed.

He and Link left three days later, after the hylian managed to convince his guardian that he had to go to Hyrule. Garou looked skeptical but surrendered faster than Ganondorf had expected. While Link busied himself with packing a few of his belongings for the trip, the old voe confessed that he'd never seen him talk as much as he had since Ganondorf had arrived.

It made his mark grow hot, though not in the way he was used to. There was no simmering anger there; it was closer to the warmth he felt when he thought of his mothers, or when he reminisced about his childhood under the desert sun. Familiarity.

There was another word for it that he didn't dare to acknowledge, even within the safety of his mind. It wasn't worth lingering on.

They traveled on Ganondorf's horse, Link barely grabbing on to him despite the long fall that awaited him were he to be thrown off. Instead, he spent the whole time they were riding fawning over their surroundings and keeping a running commentary of what he could see. After an hour or so, he'd switch to making random noises: shouts, hums, and, occasionally, attempts at imitating animal cries. Then he'd take out his instrument – which he'd informed Ganondorf on the second night was called an ocarina – and play quiet tunes following his current mood.

It was far more pleasant than Ganondorf had expected, and he was in fact dreading having to let Link go. He'd been having the dreams again, of great battles and greater defeats, and now he could see that in all of them he was their enemy, a dark figure clad in shadows, his mark that of a tyrant instead of a hero.

On the last night before they reached Castle Town, Link shook him awake. He'd reluctantly agreed to wear leather gloves that Garou had bought him before they'd left, yet they still avoided touching each other more than necessary. Neither of them liked the visions, overwhelming as they often were, and whatever comfort they got from the contact was eclipsed by it every time.

Ganondorf opened his eyes to find two blue pupils looking down at him in the darkness. They'd stopped in a clearing, away from the main road, because he didn't trust hylians not to attack them – not to mention the various creatures that lurked nearby.

He groaned. "What is it?"

Link opened his mouth, closed it, and then did that thing where he tilted his head one way and the other, slowly, like he was literally turning his thoughts around inside his skull.

"Are you afraid?" he asked after a few minutes.

Ganondorf, who was about to tell him he should go back to sleep, frowned.

Was he afraid? The question was too vague to be answered, surely, and yet, when he thought about it...

He hoisted himself up until he was sitting cross-legged. Link stayed as he was, kneeling in the grass, watching him think.

"Afraid of what?"

Link huffed out one of these sounds that Ganondorf had slowly begun to entangle. This one, he thought, was mostly frustration.

"In my dreams, we're fighting," he said. He held up his hand, reaching toward Ganondorf's. When he didn't pull away, he pressed his fingertips where he knew the upper part of his mark was, under the glove. "We're killing each other."

"That's what the stories say, yes."

The touch was light, and it was through the glove, but his skin was still reacting, prickling like he was being stung with very fine needles.

Link pressed his lips together and shook his head, clearly done with speaking. He laid back down with his head resting on Ganondorf's shoulders, reminding him strikingly of a pet. He yawned, once, and fell back asleep.

They didn't talk at all on the last stretch toward their objective. From time to time, Link would let out a cry and point at something in the distance: an animal, a creature, another traveler. Mostly, he stayed sitting behind Ganondorf with his back turned, his shoulder blades pressed against him, and played the ocarina or ate some of the savory pastries they had left.

When they finally reached the gates to Castle Town, there were two guards there, vigilant, holding up long spears that Ganondorf had no interest in seeing up close. He stopped his horse away from view, and considered for a moment the possibility of going in.

He knew it was a bad idea, just like he knew Link would have no trouble at all – as odd as he was, from the time they'd spent together, he was very much capable. Yet, he felt compelled to protect him, which ran contrary to what the part of him that roared and crackled like fire was telling him.

Link slid off the horse in one swift and practiced gesture before grabbing the bag and short sword he'd prepared. He looked up at Ganondorf, unmoving as he sat atop his horse, deep in thought. "Are you coming?"

"I told you I can't. You can tell the princess I sent you as my emissary."

The hylian frowned. His nose twitched, a display of annoyance so reminiscent of a small animal that Ganondorf couldn't stop himself from smiling.

"We'll convince them," Link said, but his shoulders sagged with resignation. He crossed his arms and puffed up his chest as if suddenly struck by an idea. "If you're evil, it's better to have you there to keep an eye on you."

Ganondorf snorted. "Sure. That'll convince them."

He stayed behind to watch and make sure Link was let into the town. The guards didn't look at him twice, opening the gates for him with no fuss at all. Only once Link had disappeared and the doors were shut once more did Ganondorf spur his horse into turning back and taking him home.

Being head of his village at least provided a distraction from his concerns. The expansion, especially, was taking so much of his energy and focus that he only thought back to Link and Zelda at night, in his dreams and nightmares.

He was the beast more often than not. Sometimes, Link would ride on his back. In a few of the dreams, it was to subdue and defeat him, looking for the opportune moment to strike and bury his sword into his side; but, in most, he was riding him the way you'd ride a horse, gentle and careful, making quiet noises and telling Ganondorf about all the things they could do together. Whenever he woke up, he felt vaguely ashamed, even though they always left him feeling refreshed and safe.

In a few of the nightmares, he was chasing Zelda while perched on his horse, a cruel thing, worse even than the beast, his blood boiling with the desire to destroy and subjugate. He hated those even more than the ones where he died at either of their hands; at least in those they were successful, and spared from the madness he carried inside him.

He'd asked Borak to look through all the legends they'd pored over to try and find one with a happy outcome for all three parties, but she'd come back empty-handed. Perhaps, he told himself without really believing it, tales of peace and cohabitation weren't exciting enough to be recorded in books.

His morose disposition was obvious to everyone in the village, though he was doing his best to not let it affect his behavior. He was cordial, even friendly, overseeing parties and unions and encouraging the gerudos who were working on renovating and expanding. He'd join in on casual brawls and tournaments, to motivate those who were in training, and to alleviate some of his loneliness. His mothers were attentive, making him so much food he ended up giving most of it away, and the fact that his people's concern brought him so little comfort left him feeling ungrateful.

The mark on the back of his hand hurt all the time, no matter how much he massaged it or how much ointment he tried to slather on it. That, too, was a painful reminder of what he was missing.

Months later – he'd stopped counting the days – a group of hylians who'd traveled through the desert to trade and buy gerudo wares brought with them the most unfortunate news: the king of Hyrule had passed, leaving his only daughter to reign over the kingdom. Ganondorf offered the expected condolences, attempting to ignore the way his heartbeat picked up.

If the king was dead...

It only took a few more weeks for a more familiar figure to be at their doors. Link looked taller, somehow, sitting with his back very straight on the mare Ganondorf recognized from Kakariko Village. He was once again wearing his hair in a ponytail, though it seemed even longer. His deep green cloak reminded Ganondorf of the hylian from his dreams. The hero liberating Hyrule.

His face brightened up when their eyes met. His cheeks, already reddened by the hot weather, flushed further, colored by happiness and pleasure.

"Gan!" he said, and Ganondorf felt his heart burst with an indescribable sense of belonging.

He couldn't be let in, of course; even the king wasn't going to be making exceptions for the voe he liked. Ganondorf came out instead, offering his hand for Link to step down from his horse as if he needed his help.

As soon as his feet were touching the ground, Link jumped up to catch Ganondorf into a hug, throwing his free arm behind his neck. The only thing preventing them from falling over was Ganondorf's size and the soft yield of the sand under them.

"It's good to see you," Ganondorf said, his voice hoarse. "I see the castle's been treating you well."

"Zelda sent me to get you," Link mumbled into the crook of his neck, his face half-buried in thick red hair.

He'd looked taller, but pressed against him like this, he seemed smaller even than when they'd met. Ganondorf held him with both hands, so big around him that it felt ridiculous.

"I still don't think this is a good idea," he said. He could feel Link smile against him, which said more than enough about what he thought of that.

The soldiers were staring at him the whole time it took them to get inside the castle. It, and all the annoyance and anxiety it brought him, faded into the background as soon as Zelda saw him and her whole face lit up.

"Gan!" she said, which was a whole other issue. She opened her arms and Link all but pushed him toward her so she could hold him – not exactly a hug, her hands around his wrist and some distance still kept between them, but the contact was already soothing.

"You've been discussing me, I see," Ganondorf mumbled.

They were in the courtyard, and though the soldiers were staying away and he doubted they would go against her orders, their gazes still made him uneasy.

"Link told me about his plan," Zelda said with a small smile. Now that he could see her in her full royal garb, her long flowing dress decorated with intricate patterns and depictions of the Triforce, he couldn't stop looking at her. Resplendent was the word for how she looked.

"His plan?"

She squeezed him once, chastising.

"Keeping an eye on you!" she exclaimed as if that was obvious. Ganondorf thought he remembered something about that, vaguely. "See, Link is in charge of protecting me, and you're in charge of protecting him."

Ganondorf raised one eyebrow. "Then who's in charge of protecting me?"

Without missing a beat – though with an eye roll that was definitely unbefitting of a queen – Zelda replied, "Me. Who else?"

"Oh, of course. How silly of me." His lips twitched into a smirk that he couldn't contain. Link hummed happily.

The guards kept staring as Ganondorf let himself be escorted away. The castle was much bigger than any place, let alone any building, he'd ever visited before. It was even larger than the town attached to it, corridors after corridors of dark blue stones clad in tapestries and paintings depicting Hyrule and its legends. Members of the royal court they passed stopped in their tracks and conversations to watch them go, and, not for the first time, Ganondorf was grateful for his hooded cloak. With it on, he could look ahead and ignore everything else.

He stayed behind, following dutifully while Zelda explained everything that had gone down since they'd last seen each other. Her father had been so upset about her little expedition that he'd forbidden her from leaving the castle or sending any new messages out into the world, even to Kakariko. When Link had shown up, however, everyone at the castle had been overjoyed. If Ganondorf was the dark shadow over the story, Link could be the hero who would save them all no matter what. His understanding of what that entailed upon arrival had been minimal; thankfully, Zelda had been more than happy to give him all the information he needed.

Her mother, she went on to expound, had been obsessed with the legends surrounding the Triforce even before she was born, and so when she'd seen the mark on her daughter's hand she'd been beside herself with joy and excitement. Her father, on the other hand, had been much more cautious, anxious about what this meant for their future.

She didn't say what had befallen them, but Ganondorf could read some of it between the lines of the tale she was weaving: her mother had gotten ill, refused to rest until she was better, and once she'd succumbed her father had been so caught up in his grief he'd become consumed with the fear of losing his daughter as well. She paused to take Link's hand, perhaps to ground herself, and he looked at her like she was the sun rising in the morning.

It would stand to reason that the hero and the princess – or queen, as it were – would be destined for each other. That they'd decided to include him in the equation was the real enigma.

In some ways, Link's "plan" wasn't completely unreasonable. If there was danger brewing inside Ganondorf, if there was a risk that the fire inside him would ignite and turn him into the beast from his dreams, perhaps it was for the best that he'd be by their side already so they could deal with him before he could wreak irremediable havoc. It didn't make him less afraid of what would happen then.

Not to him – if he'd surrendered to the beast, there would be nothing left of him to be afraid for. To them, though... The vague images he remembered from his dreams, now that they stuck to his mind even after waking, were always so full of blood and despair. He couldn't bear the thought of losing himself and bringing them down with him.

Zelda led them to her chambers, a wide room containing a wide bed and so many books it could easily compete against the Gerudo Village's library. Ganondorf wondered idly what Borak was up to while he was gone. He'd left her in charge of the village, with his mothers as potential advisors. Erial had grown much too old for all that had to do with leadership or, Goddesses forbid, politics. She spent most of her time sleeping with her favorite baby goat.

He'd been standing at the foot of the bed for several minutes, lost in thoughts, when he realized Link and Zelda had sat on top of it and were observing him, whispering to each other.

"What are you two plotting?" he asked.

The bond they had made him feel strange, him who'd had friends and family but never really connected with people in more meaningful ways. His status as the only voe had made him an outsider from the start, and now that he was with people he had something in common with – even if that thing was a mark and a bond forced upon them by Fate – he wasn't sure how he was supposed to behave. The fact that the role he was destined to play in their three-way relationship was that of the adversary, the enemy, did nothing to help his discomfort.

"Are you going to take off your cloak?" Zelda asked in return. She was sitting right up against Link, their thighs touching, her arm wrapped around his shoulder. It was a marvel how close they seemed to have gotten, like they were already perfectly attuned to each other. It made sense, but it also made Ganondorf's stomach go tight with what he figured was envy, and something else buried under it that he didn't want to think about.

Link nodded, the gesture making the earrings he'd acquired at some point since they'd last met shine under the candles' light. Ganondorf frowned.

He pulled off the hood of his cloak and then proceeded to undress, revealing his usual gerudo attire – bare chest, light pants, jewelry – though he'd made sure to wear a thin robe over it, as he knew his outfit wasn't customary to hylians' eyes. He discarded the cloak on the rack that he'd seen Link drape his own over upon entering and tilted his head at his two companions.

Link whispered something in Zelda's ear that made her giggle, covering her mouth with both hands. She no longer wore gloves, leaving her mark visible to all who chose to look, and seeing it inexplicably made Ganondorf's face and mark grow hot.

"Well?" he prompted. He could hear the annoyance in his own voice.

"You're so tall, gerudo king," Zelda said, her eyes narrowed, and this time it was Link's turn to giggle. "Why don't you join us on the bed?"

Ganondorf squinted at her. "What?"

"Come on, Gan," Link said. They broke apart, leaving space between them, and he gave the now free spot a tap as if he thought Ganondorf hadn't understood what they were suggesting.

Still, if this was some kind of test, he wasn't one to bow down to a challenge. He breached the distance between him and the bed in three wide steps and sat, the mattress dipping under his weight with a creak.

As soon as he did, the two hylians pressed themselves close to his sides, Zelda's hand climbing up to caress his hair and then the back of his neck while Link's lay on top of his knee.

"There you go," Zelda murmured, leaning against him. "We've got to stay close together if we're supposed to be watching over you, don't you think?"

Link squeezed his knee to express his approval, and Ganondorf found himself at a loss for words. His mark was beating as fast as his heart, though there was no anger or even fear in it. A fire of a different kind stirred in his guts, making his throat tighten too much for him to speak.

"Good," Zelda went on, her fingers scratching his nape the way you'd soothe a frightened horse.

The beast inside of him raised its head, and then, to Ganondorf's astonishment, began to purr.

Sleeping stuck between two people seemed to be the cure to his nightmares. He didn't even dream anymore, and woke up always well-rested, even after Link made him stay up much too late to spar or Zelda insisted on showing them all the rooms of the castle. There wasn't much time to think about anything except for them and the way their presence made everything that had plagued him for so long obsolete.

They hadn't told him what they expected from him that first night, if they expected anything; Zelda just kept petting him while Link played with his hand, tracing the mark on the back with his fingertips, tickling the inside of his palm. The beast had let itself be tamed, and then he had succumbed to slumber, as swiftly as when he was a child and the rhythm of the sounds of the desert was enough to lull him.

The only thing tainting their new daily life was the other hylians' reactions to seeing him around. He was tolerated, but that was all he was getting, judging by the stares if not outright glares he found himself constantly at the receiving end of. When he sparred with Link in the yard, or in the training grounds, the soldiers always seemed on edge, as if they expected him to lose himself and kill him on the spot.

Zelda would reprimand them when she caught them in the act, though most of the time their only crime was being withdrawn and aloof. A few members of her staff had warmed up to him after a few weeks, but the soldiers remained wary, unwilling to let their guard down.

He didn't blame them, really, as much as he hated how it made him feel, bringing him back to the one incident in his youth. He was a stranger the king had explicitly forbidden his daughter from reaching out to, and he was much bigger than all of them, even those who were old enough to have been under the king's service for longer than Zelda had been alive.

The whole situation came to a head when, on a late evening when Zelda had to leave the castle on queenly duties, he was ambushed by the higher-ranking members of the royal guard on his way back from the yard. He hated the hyrulean evenings; they were cold and damp, the wind itself slightly humid, nothing like even the iciest desert nights. He'd only stayed out late because he was bored without his two companions to distract him.

"Get on your knees," the oldest soldier, presumably their self-proclaimed leader, said, his voice flat. He was holding one of the long swords that Link liked so much; it would have been easy to disarm him. He was used to parrying and dodging hits from that particular weapon.

Instead, he bowed his head down and kept walking. His mark throbbed, safely hidden under his glove. The soldier stepped in his way, bringing his sword up in front of him, and the rest of his group closed in behind him.

"I don't know what kind of sorcery you've used on the queen," the soldier spat, his stern face distorted in anger, "but we won't let you keep parading throughout the castle."

Ganondorf stopped to sigh without bothering to turn around. "She's not going to be very pleased with you once she gets back."

The soldier spat on the ground. Two of the bigger recruits broke from the group to try and grab him; he let them, for fear of causing them unnecessary harm.

"You'll be dead once she gets back, and she'll be freed from whatever curse you put on her." Ganondorf glanced at him, and he sneered. "That's how it goes with your people. We should have razed your village when you compelled her to you the first time." He stomped his boot down, hard. "Now get on your knees."

Ganondorf closed his eyes. The darker fire, that had gone quiet in his chest since he'd arrived, was waking up again, attempting to engulf everything else. His mark burnt, and one of the hylians holding him let go, as if suddenly frightened by something. The other, to his credit, gripped him tighter in response.

"I won't fight you," Ganondorf said. In the distance, he thought he could hear a horse. "So if you're here to kill me–"

An arrow flew through the air and landed at the first soldier's feet, making him jump.

"Gan!"

Epona, Link's trusty mare, ran into the yard, whinnying loudly at the group of soldiers, who all stepped back nearly in the same motion. Ganondorf stayed put, even as they let go of him in a hurry.

"Go away," Link hissed, glaring down at them from atop his mount. The hylian who'd instigated the whole thing opened his mouth to protest, then gave up as soon as Link turned toward him. They fled the scene like a bunch of scared bokoblins.

Link climbed down to throw himself at Ganondorf the way he'd grown to like, grabbing on to him as if he was a tree he wanted to scale. Ganondorf let him, if only to soothe his obvious discomfort and worry.

"Zelda sent me," he said, rubbing their cheeks together like he was an animal scenting another. "We thought you were in danger."

"You left her?" Ganondorf couldn't help but sound anxious at that. Link huffed, his breath warm against his neck.

"She's strong."

He was right, of course, yet...

"I'm strong," Ganondorf said.

Link shook his head. "You'd let them kill you."

There was no denying that, so Ganondorf didn't try. Instead, he brought his hands up to hold Link's back, spreading his fingers to feel the warmth of his body. Link sighed, rubbing his nose somewhere near Ganondorf's ear, and then, taking the gerudo by surprise, kissed the corner of his mouth.

They said nothing for what must have been several minutes. Ganondorf could feel that Link's face had gone red from how hot it was, pressed against his. The hylian's breathing sounded a bit ragged.

"Sorry," he said, and pulled away.

He didn't try to leave Ganondorf's arms, and so, rather than try to put him down and dislodge him, he carried him inside the castle, trusting that Epona would know how to find her way to the stable. They still hadn't said anything else by the time he'd brought them to the royal bedroom, and Link didn't complain when Ganondorf deposited him on the large bed.

"Zelda'll be here tomorrow," Link mumbled. He'd buried his face in the sheets, but from above, Ganondorf could see that his ears had flushed hot pink.

"Tomorrow," Ganondorf said with a nod – and ran away.

Sleep did not come to him until the night was well underway. He tossed and turned, thinking about Link's body against his, and wondered what the hell he was going to tell Zelda.

"He kissed you?" Zelda asked, her expression thoughtful, though attentive.

She'd spent the entire morning admonishing the soldiers who'd tried to restrain if not kill him – though they'd denied it when questioned. Because it could be interpreted as a coup attempt, she'd dismissed the first soldier who'd instigated it and promised to the others that there'd be no second chances.

For their part, the rest of the castle's residents seemed to have been sobered up by the whole incident. The fact that Ganondorf hadn't fought back or even resisted had had an undeniable effect on the way he was being perceived, if the few hushes and whispers he'd been hearing were to be believed.

Link, meanwhile, had decided to spend the night and day with Epona at the stable. Which said more than enough.

"Not exactly," Ganondorf said.

Zelda hummed in a manner so reminiscent of Link that Ganondorf glanced at the entrance of the courtyard, half-expecting him to be standing there.

"Well, the solution to this problem seems obvious to me," she said, uncrossing her arms and squaring her shoulders. "Come here."

Trying not to frown in confusion, Ganondorf stepped closer to her until they were right in front of each other. The top of her finely braided hair stood about level with the middle of his chest. She looked up.

"You'll have to lean forward," she went on. This time, he did frown but still complied with her demand. She gestured for him to lean further and further in, until–

She planted a kiss right on his pursed lips, lifting herself on the tip of her toes to breach the rest of the space between them. He pulled back instinctively, but she gripped his right hand with hers, and his mark burst, nearly blinding him with the intensity of it.

"You," he croaked when she squeezed him once, allowing him to straighten himself up. "What?"

"I can't believe he couldn't wait for me to get back," she said. He could see she was fighting back a smile. "He must have been really scared."

"I don't understand," Ganondorf said.

Zelda allowed her face to relax into a grin, her cheeks slightly flushed. It made her look even more radiant. She was still holding his hand.

"Why don't we go get Link from where he's sulking and talk about this in the bedroom?"

His mark felt like it was melting into hers. He thought he could almost hear her heartbeat inside his chest. He nodded.

In the bedroom, Link refused to look at him. His ears were red again. Zelda was watching him without bothering to conceal her endeared amusement.

"I don't understand," Ganondorf said, again, because he wasn't sure where else to start.

He stood next to the bed, where Zelda was sitting after having given up on convincing him to join her. Link was at the window, pretending to be caught up in contemplating the early afternoon skies.

Zelda brought her hands to her hair and began unbraiding it, slowly, her eyes narrowed. When she was focused like this, she really did look like a queen, even in her simpler dress and without all of her finery.

"You're very handsome," she said after a brief moment of silence. Link coughed.

Ganondorf's vision felt like it was swaying, like he was getting seasick despite having never been on a boat. "You..."

"Always showing off, too," she went on. She put down the ribbons she was taking out of her hair on her lap. "Isn't that right, Link?"

Link made an uncertain noise, rubbing his face with his left hand, his mark catching the light from the open window. Ganondorf felt exposed, suddenly, pushing his robe closed in front of his bare chest.

"My apologies," he said, and Zelda laughed. He snapped his head to stare at her, his body growing hot.

"We really like you," she said, her voice unexpectedly tender. It made his head spin even more. "We thought you might feel the same."

He didn't even know what to say to that. Link finally turned around, putting his fists on his hips and puffing up his chest as if to gather courage.

"I told you we'll keep an eye on you," he said.

"Oh, he's been keeping an eye on you alright," Zelda let out before Ganondorf could reply. They both looked at her, and she threw her hands up, her unbraided hair spilling over her shoulders. "It's true!"

Ganondorf let himself fall on the bed next to her, the sudden added weight making her body jump up a little. She giggled.

"I don't think," he started, but Zelda shook her head.

"I'll tell you the same thing I told Link." As she spoke, Link came to join them on the bed, sitting on Ganondorf's other side, their knees touching. "My mother told me so many stories about the heroes, the princesses, the beasts, and the ties linking them together... But when I saw you, I knew we were destined for a different fate. You're not a monster."

"Not yet," Ganondorf said before he could stop himself. The beast inside him could rise at any moment.

But Zelda shook her head once more, her brow furrowed not in anger or annoyance but in determination. "You'll never be a monster. Not as long as we're together."

Ganondorf closed his eyes.

In the darkness behind his eyelids, he thought he could see it, the marks of the Triforce linking them together. Link's cheek was resting on his arm, and Zelda's fingertips were tracing his thigh, a gentle gesture made to soothe, sending shivers up his spine.

"Are you afraid you'll hurt me?" she asked. "You'll hurt us?"

"No," Ganondorf lied, at the same time as Link said, "Yes."

He opened one eye to glare at the hylian who merely grinned at him.

"We'll never allow you to hurt us," Zelda went on. Her fingers were moving further up, her nails scraping his inner thigh, getting dangerously close. "I know you know that."

Link rubbed against him the way he liked to do, and Ganondorf felt his composure falter. He sighed, slow and deep through his nose, hunching forward.

"Don't think this means I'll let myself be trampled over," he hissed through his teeth, as though he wasn't letting his legs part, his robe slipping open.

Zelda laughed, close to his ear, and pinched his thigh through the loose fabric of his pants. He started.

"I'd never underestimate you, gerudo king," she murmured. Link made a sound like a purr, vibrating against his side, his hand suddenly on Ganondorf's stomach.

There wasn't much need for words after that. As Link and Zelda would explain, later, once they were spent and all Ganondorf could do was lie on his side and let himself be cuddled into submission, they'd been planning this for much longer than he could ever have guessed. Link kept kissing him long after they were done, rubbing against his cheeks and the back of his neck and mumbling things that neither of the other two could understand.

The beast inside him shook its great big nose, snorted, and settled down to sleep between its hero and its queen for the first time in so long that nobody had yet been able to recall the tale.

Borak wore spectacles when he next visited. She looked so much like his mental image of a desert owl with them on, that Ganondorf couldn't help but laugh, his unbridled mirth causing her great confusion.

"You look happier," she said with a little smile, which was the very same thing his mothers had told him as soon as they'd spotted him. "There's something I wanted to show you."

She brought him deeper into the library. It had been rebuilt, made to store even more books from all over the world; written by hylians, by zoras, even thick tomes carved in stone authored by gorons. At the very back stood the table he remembered sitting at when he was a child, paging through drawings and legends about the monster he feared he was fated to be.

The book opened at the table was large enough to cover it nearly entirely. The pages had gone yellow with age, but you could still see the pictures perfectly, their bright pigments barely faded.

"I'm not sure where this one is from," Borak said. She adjusted her glasses on her nose. "It's written in some kind of hylian dialect that I've found no trace of in more modern texts."

Ganondorf leaned in to see better. The picture was of a giant boar, its silhouette ever-so-familiar. It stood, alert, its big ears raised, and on its back, two small figures, one dressed in green and one wearing what looked like a dress, were sitting idly, the way you'd sit on a well-acquainted horse.

He snorted. "That's what you wanted to show me?"

Borak turned the page to reveal the next illustration: now the two figures were sitting at a campfire, with a third, much larger figure between them, clad in the same colors as the boar. They seemed to be sharing a meal. Under it, the Triforce was drawn, each triangle marked with different colors.

"It's the only one I've found where they're not fighting," she admitted, a little sheepish, "but it's something. I thought you'd appreciate it."

He nodded.

"I've been thinking about it," she continued, tracing the flames of the campfire with her nail. "If the goal of the one who holds the Triforce of Power is to reunite all pieces, wouldn't that be the most efficient way?"

Ganondorf stared at the tallest figure on the drawing. "I don't think that's how it works."

"Seems to be working fine to me."

He opened his mouth to protest, argue that, for all the power he held in his current position, the radical sort of change that was needed in the world did, in the abstract, seem simpler to fix by seizing absolute dominion over everything else, but was interrupted by footsteps behind them.

"Gan!" he heard Link exclaim. Borak raised her eyebrows, mouthing "Gan?" at him, but he ignored her.

"What is it?" he asked, turning around to face his hylian companion.

Link crossed his arms and tilted his head, his favorite position for deep thinking.

"Is it true your name was Mira?"

Ganondorf blinked. Borak hid a laugh in a cough, her fist pressed against her mouth. He resisted the urge to glare at her.

"Ah," he said. "It's a long story."

Link's breathing was ragged, but he was breathing, despite all the blood that covered both his and Zelda's clothes. Ganondorf tipped his head to pour more medicine inside his mouth.

"I won't forgive you for this," Zelda said under her breath, checking the bandages she'd just applied with his help. "Even if he lives. I'll never forgive you."

"I know," Ganondorf said. "You can kill me, after. If it pleases you."

She glared at him, the light from the fire casting terrifying shadows on her pale face. It seemed like a small price to pay.

They stayed silent for a long time, the crackling of the fire remaining the only sound echoing through the cave.

"We won't kill you," Zelda said. She was looking down at where Link was lying, his chest moving up and down, the only thing signifying he was still alive. "You'll make up for this. All of it."

"As long as you make up for your mistakes as well."

He expected her to glare, or shoot back that his crimes were much greater, but instead, Zelda nodded.

"It's a promise," she said.

On the back of her hand, the mark of the Triforce diffused a warm, comforting glow.