#gansheik

The first time Zelda saw him in her garden, she was filled with rage.  He had already taken everything from her, and now this too?  Would he rip up the flowers she had planted with her father and Impa as a girl?  The final desecration of the castle that used to be her home.  He’d already changed so much about Hyrule Castle that she found herself getting lost at times when she wandered its halls.

Ganondorf looked up from where he knelt by the ground and promptly got to his feet.  He narrowed his eyes.

“Sheik,” he said.

“My king,” she responded steadily. “I apologize for intruding.”

The first several times he had addressed her, it had filled her with panic.  Does he know? she would ask herself; it would take all of her willpower to prevent herself from trembling.  Does he know that I am Hylian?  Does he know that I am a woman?  Does he know that I am Zelda?

But as the weeks turned to months and nothing happened, she had begun to relax into this role.  Sometimes it felt as though Sheik was real, and Zelda was the lie.

“Do you have news for me?”  Ganondorf asked.

“I have scoured Kakariko Village, my king,” she replied.  “If Princess Zelda or her attendant were ever hiding there, they are there no longer.”

Ganondorf’s eyes flashed with frustration, but he merely sighed.  “Very well,” he said.  “Come see me in the throne room later; I have another task for you.”

“Yes, my king,” she said, then hesitated.  

“Is there something else?”

“No, my king, I was only wondering…”  She swallowed.  “What were you doing when I came in?”

There was silence for a moment as he frowned at her.

“I believe you were dismissed,” he said, and she flushed.

“Apologies,” she said, then fled.

Later, once she was certain he had gone, she snuck back into the garden to find the flower beds intact, watered and weeds freshly pulled.  Ganondorf, she was suddenly certain, had not been ripping them up at all.  He had been tending to them.

***

She continued to sneak into the garden as often as she dared, surprised and confused each time that the plants were so well kept. 

This is ridiculous, she told herself.  You are Sheik, not Zelda.

Sheik did not care for sentimental things like flowers.  He cared only for avenging the royal family that he served, even if that required temporarily following the man he hated more than any other.  He was strong, capable.  He had never been so stupid to have hatched the plan that had led to this.

Zelda had ruined everything.  She was not needed.  And yet, in this garden, it was her that emerged.

Ganondorf had added new plants since she had last been here.  Tall and thin, with small pink flowers growing off the lush green stem.  Pretty, she thought.

“Don’t think that I don’t know about all the time you spend here.”  His voice, as though her thoughts had summoned him.

Zelda startled.  “My king,” she said.

“There is very little that occurs in this castle that I do not know about,” Ganondorf said, stepping into the garden.     

“I apologize, my king, I –”

“It’s fine, Sheik,” said Ganondorf.  He approached her, then looked down at the flowers she was leaning over.  

“I’ve never seen this kind of flower,” Zelda said, tentatively turning to glance at him.  She waited, watching him in silence.

“Warm safflina,” Ganondorf said abruptly.  “They grow only in the desert.”

Zelda blinked, surprised; she had not expected him to answer. “Oh?”

Ganondorf looked away, gritting his teeth.  “Something…  to remind me of home,” he said, so softly she could scarcely hear it.  

She stared, not believing what she was hearing.  He must have been in quite the sentimental mood, to speak of his homeland.   Before she could think twice, she asked a question; one she had been considering for some time now but had not dared speak aloud.

“Why have you not had your people move to Castle Town, my king?”

He frowned.   Zelda smiled, and added, carefully, “Surely you do not enjoy looking out onto rubble every day; perhaps it is time to rebuild.  You have said that the desert is harsh, my king; perhaps –”

“I cannot,” he interrupted.  “Not yet.”

“My king?”

“I cannot,” he said, suddenly fierce.  “Until I know that this won’t be taken from me!”  He whirled on her.   “That is why I need you to find the Princess, Sheik.  Her, and that forest boy!”

“I am trying, my king,” she said.  “I’ve been to the forest, and there is no –”

“Then try harder!” he snarled, chest heaving.  He closed his eyes, clenching his right hand into a fist.  “It isn’t enough,” he muttered, more to himself than to her, she thought.  “I need to be stronger, to be better, to…”   

He raised his head to look at her again, and Zelda felt that familiar fear rear up in her.  He knows.  He knows that I am Zelda; he knows that I have Wisdom; he knows –

“Leave, Sheik,” he said.

She should not leave him in this state.  If there was one thing she had learned about him, it was that Ganondorf alone with his thoughts was a dangerous thing indeed.

“My king,” she started, but he shook his head.

“Leave,” he repeated, nearly begging, and it was that which caused her to flee again.

***

The more time passed, the more erratic and paranoid Ganondorf’s behaviour became.  She found herself in the position of advisor as much as spy, spending much of her time talking him down from whatever insane plot he’d hatched to keep Hyrule in his clutches.  (“Let me speak with Darunia,” she’d begged only the past week.  “I will make him see reason, my king; this dragon plan goes too far!”)  He sunk deeper and deeper into his obsession with power and the Triforce, convinced he would lose Hyrule without it (he’d never said that word to her, but she knew what he wanted).

She often wondered why he seemed to listen to her, of all people, when she came to a realization: He has no one else.

He was a man alone, holed up in a castle surrounded by wreckage and monsters.  She did not think he had spoken to any of the Gerudo in months; he had mentioned once something about mothers, but she had never seen them here.  He was falling apart, and Zelda was desperately trying to hold him and her kingdom together until the hero returned.  And yet more and more she found herself thinking of the hero’s return with dread.

Ganondorf would learn, then, that his only confidant was a lie, and she worried it would break him completely.

Now she returned to the castle after a long stint in Zora’s Domain, and the first place she went was her garden – his garden, now.  He was there already, staring down at the soil with a defeated look in his eyes.  She followed his gaze.

The warm safflina were at his feet.  Brown and wilted.

“They are dead,” he said dully as she moved to stand beside him.

“I’m sorry, my king,” Zelda offered.  “It’s the climate; it is too humid here for desert flowers.”

“You think I don’t know that?” he snapped, then let out a long breath.

“Sheik,” he said.  “Why do you follow me?”

She frowned, confused by the change of subject.

“The Royal Family of Hyrule have treated my people as slaves for generations,” she said.  “I would serve anyone who puts a stop to it.”

It was a rehearsed answer, fed to her by Impa (and so easily that Zelda had to wonder if her attendant saw truth in it).

Ganondorf let out a short laugh.  “And I am better?” he said shortly.  “You think that I do not consider snapping your neck every time that you come to me and tell me that you still have not found Princess Zelda?”

“Yet you have not,” Zelda said lightly.  “And so I must consider that to be an empty threat.”

He laughed again; his eyes were taking on a crazed gleam.  “I have ruined this kingdom,” he said, voice raising.  “The Gorons riot; the Zora are on the verge.  The capital is a broken shell.  The people live in fear.  And my people carry on without me.  They’ve never needed me.”

“My king, you–”

She cut herself off as he looked to her, giving her a savage smile.  “Shall I destroy you next, Sheik?”

Without waiting for an answer, he looked back at the dead flowers, the anger draining from him as quickly as it had appeared.   

“I just wanted,” he said quietly, “something that does not break with my touch.”

She took a step towards him.  He shook his head.

“Leave me,” he said.

Sheik would have obeyed.  He would consider this conversation evidence that Ganondorf was mad and needed to be deposed as soon as possible.

Zelda stayed.  She took another step to him, and rested a hand on his arm.  He looked down at her in surprise.

“I am here,” she said.  “Ganondorf.”

Neither of them said anything more.  But he did not move away.

Tomorrow, she thought, he would hate that he had shown her this weakness, would rage at her, or send her on a task that sent her far away.  And she would become Sheik once again, and hate him, and wish for the day the hero reappeared.