allahrakhii-deactivated20210317:

A light, flickering.

Accustomed to children not his own squealing and playing tricks at night, Ganon does not rouse at first.

But then something inherently magic brushes against him, the long dark fingers of bad omens, the sparkle of magic tricks, the soft hand of prophetic reassurance, and he shifts awake to face the source of this intrusion.

Zelda is sitting up next to him, as lithe and agile as a cat. No matter how much she shifts in their bed, he never wakes up.

She giggles a little when she notices his golden eyes reflected in the pool of water cupped between her palms. 

“Do you like it?” she whispers, as if quietness is a necessity with the sun below the horizon. No one would hear her even if she screamed this.

Ganon has never known the meaning of drowsiness. When he’s awake, he’s alert, and when he sleeps, not even the castle crumbling could ever disturb him.

As such, Zelda is slightly concerned when he doesn’t reply immediately. But she just snorts a giggle when his arms reach around her folded knees and drag her closer to him. He buries his face into her shalwar and mutters something that sounds suspiciously like, “I love you.”

Zelda just giggles louder in response. She takes that as a yes.  

Ganon doesn’t mean to drift off. He wants to compliment her skill, ask her what she did, what she can do, if the water in her hands reflects the fairest in Hyrule and tease her that it couldn’t possibly be so with her face apparent in it. She would have smacked him playfully, cried fake tears about how, if he thought her dark skin was so unappealing he should just marry a sweet, fair little maiden instead. 

There are so few things Ganon regrets in his life, but not staying up with Zelda that night is one of them. He tries to pin it on her, sometimes. That her lap was just so soft and comfortable that it wasn’t his fault.

The memory is still so warm. Despite the frigid air that bites his hands, despite the hollow howl of the battlefield, he shivers from that warmth.

Even behind castle walls separating their respective forces, he can’t help but admire her grace in war. Bloodshed is not something either of them particularly enjoy, but Zelda makes it look fanciful. She eases through his soldiers as if spinning through the steps of a dance. 

Sometimes he even sees that icy blue stare in between bouts, focused and furrowed in his direction.

That makes him shiver more than any cold of Hyrule’s winter. 

Zelda springs across the battlefield and onto the the walls of her once castle. With that same agility that kept her husband asleep, Zelda vaults up to where Ganondorf stands.

He edges back, drawing his scimitar, though he knows how this rebellion will likely end.

Ganon, despite his own strengths in battle, could never outmatch Zelda’s speed. She draws a knife, twists on the balls of her feet and before he can even understand what has happened, she has him pinned on his back. 

“Kill me, then,” he spits. 

She doesn’t answer him and instead removes the veil from over her mouth and nose. The scarf drops and Ganon finds himself strangely occupied with the way it falls and folds on itself.

Perhaps because he just can’t bring himself to meet her face.

When he finally looks up, he ignores the frown over her face, the way her eyebrows are scrunched up in agony. He can only stare at her eyes, so blue, he used to say, you can almost see clouds drifting through them. 

The only thing he can see drifting through them now are tears. 

She blinks, and Ganon flinches as one hits his cheek. 

“I thought you cared about me.” Her voice is not weepy, but strained, holding anger on its edge. “I helped you when my father turned you away, but you can’t even answer a simple request from my people?”

“Zelda.” Ganon automatically tries to move to sitting, forgetting that his wife has him pinned. “They’re using you. You think war criminals and assassins care about the less fortunate of the Sheikah? They just want to kill me and take control.”

He expects her grip over him to tighten, for her lips to purse, for violence to bleed through an ice-cold stare. But nothing of the sort happens. 

“Do you think I don’t know?” Zelda lets out an almost-snort, but there is no amusement in her tone. “Do you think I was afforded the Triforce of Wisdom for sitting and smiling prettily at strangers? I know what they want.” Ganon suddenly feels the heat of her face at his neck and her body slacken against him. As such, he is no longer glued to the stone of the wall walk and shifts to face her. 

Before he can say anything, he hears her voice, soft and tender, “I’ve missed you.” 

He wants to hold her for longer, but before he can even think to pull her closer, a voice cuts across the air.

“I knew she couldn’t do it.”

Both of them startle and stand from the voice. Sharper than the knives a Sheikah carries, laced with venom and utter disgust in every syllable. A voice that always hangs about death.

“Azar,” Zelda hisses, her arm springing across Ganon’s chest. She edges her husband back, both their weapons at the ready, eyes scanning for other assailants. She knows they must be hiding in a shadow somewhere. 

Four bodies vault from the ground and Zelda’s magic immediately forms a barrier around them. A short-term solution to their murderous problem. 

“The barrier won’t hold for long,” Ganon says, turning to her for a solution no doubt already prepared in her mind.

What he doesn’t expect to see is what he saw so many nights ago. A pool of water between her hands, overflowing and spilling drops of liquid nothing, evaporating before it can hit the stone. 

“You finally get to find out what this is,” Zelda giggles that same girlish twitter that she always gave him on garden walks and in the middle of the night. For a minute, his heart swells hearing that easy laugh after so many months. 

“And so do I,” she goes on, smiling up at him.

Ganon gives her a curious look.

“It’s only half-cast. It needs your magic to finish.”

Ganon doesn’t question her. He hardly ever does, trusting her instinct and her bright, curious intellect, never over his own, but with the way their lives have always been entwined, he’s never found himself in a situation where Zelda’s ideals conflict with his own. 

He places his hand over hers. Violet and cerulean swirl together for a moment, and neither of them have any idea what this substance or this magic is. It just looks like the dark apex of the sky. 

I can see clouds drifting through it sometimes. 

And what poetic nonsense shall I fabricate for your eyes? The sun dawning across a horizon? The mid-morning sunlight shining through the clouds in my eyes?

I’m glad you think of me as the sun in your skies, Zelda.

They both snort with laughter at the memory, forgetting how they ended up with their foreheads touching, but unmindful of it. 

He has always been her warmth, the assurance of a hearth bringing vitality back to sore fingertips. Likewise, she has always been the cool dousing of rainfall during a desert drought to him. They cling to each other like children in fear. 

The barrier has long-faded. The five Sheikah are instead dumbstruck by the magic conjured by their king and queen, frightened by the sheer power with which it burns, spilling over like a river overflowing during a storm. 

“Do you think you could destroy this so easily?” Zelda sounds as smug as she looks, a wide grin spreading across one side of her face. 

Ganon can’t tell whether it’s him or her controlling their river of magic, but regardless, it goes in the directions he wants, splits into five tributaries.

And with a flick of such little energy, they’re all dead.

The wall of magic drops like buckets of water splashing to the floor, but it makes no sound and evaporates into fireflies drifting across the castle walls.

“I can’t tell if I’m embarrassed that we just defeated our enemy with the power of love or if I should be proud.” The queen turns a healthy shade of pink at these words. Trying to focus on anything but him, she doesn’t expect for her husband to pick her up and spin her around in his arms and screams when he does. 

Ganon is laughing for the first time in a long while, and Zelda can’t help but melt into giggles with him.

“Don’t get too excited,” he chides, slowing to a stop and pressing a kiss to her cheek. “Our powerful love still needs to fix up this entire kingdom.”

Zelda laughs and buries her face into his chest.