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The world rolled away in a blur of gold and orange and red. Hyrule aflame, gilded and bloody in the waning of the sixth year after it would have begun. Forest and field gave way to sand and rock, and the winding dusty ribbon of the forgotten Termina trade road unfurling far below.Link stumbled when the magic dropped him beside the violently colorful little wooden shrine in the upper east pasture of the dear little farm he once called home . He knelt upon yellowed grass, catching his breath, bleeding from a hundred steel arrows in his skin and a dozen wounds that should have each crippled a mortal man. The power of the divine mask pushed the pain and despair somewhere to the edges of his mind, filling him with emptiness and rage instead. But he dared not remove it to reclaim his own face until he could repair this body.If it could be said any face truly belonged to him anymore.A plume of dust drifted between the distant house and barn. Link didn’t want Ensren to see him like this. Ensren, his brother in so many lives. Ensren, strong and stolid and fearless. Ensren, who in his quiet way was more of a hero than he had ever been.Link knew his wounds were terrible. Had he been the demon they thought he was, he would surely have died. Had he been a man -? It didn’t bear thinking about.He would not go to the great fairies yet, not with the curses of the Hylian Knights still ringing inside his head, not bearing the fresh memory of wild lightning arcing from his torn flesh to destroy holy arrows, not if he still had any red potions left here. Blue would be even better.Except - blue would make him sleep, and sleep meant dreams.Link leaned on the rainbow sword, forcing himself to rise, to duck under the merry little flags stitched with the emblems of the golden goddesses, to face down the eerie whitewashed effigy with its red war paint and blue rune and wilted coneflower and chamomile garlands.“What did you do when your world was burning? Did you ever find the right path?”Neither the primitive statue nor the divine spirit in the mask answered.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Ensren did not say anything about the blood when he came to the shrine. He knelt beside a demigod of war, washing his wounds with cool spring water and sharp distilled wine and honey spiked with poppy oil, speaking of prosaic nothings. The weather. The goats’ mischief. The wild success of his sister’s salt-glazed pottery, and the bounty of wildberry jam from his mother’s garden.Link lay against the altar in the tiny wooden shrine, sipping applejack and trying to be patient and still as his brother bound his wounds in snowy linen. Not that Ensren saw him that way. How could he? The gods did not punish him with the memories of a thousand lives of failures, with the heaviness of a long-ago fragile happiness consumed by storms and demons and his endless mistakes.“Ensren my brother, ” said Link, returning the cork to the plain stoneware jug. As much as he craved the oblivion of drink, he would not waste so much on this body. “ It is as you say. She is not a kind sovereign in this time.”Ensren nodded, fastening another coil of copper wire in the layered bandages. “And the wildwood?”“Strange. Angry. Growing, where it is not aflame on the orders of the crown. To purify the corruption, they say. But for every tree the royal knights burn, a dozen souls join the stal under the Green and many deku baba sprout.”“What’s the real reason they send trained knights to burn a sacred forest? Do they think the guardian stone is a weapon?”Link’s ears stung with rough words from the tongue of his ancient enemy. Anything can be a weapon. “We hear the war is going full tilt again,” said Ensren, calm, matter-of-fact. As if the knowledge that blood watered the green fields of Hyrule was no worse than the wages of a late frost, or a bean blight, or a lost calf.Link nodded, miserable. “She writes very bad laws in this time. I didn’t tell her where it is. I wouldn’t, even if I could. The paths in the Green move with the wind.”“Expensive obsession, divine weapons. ”“One more year,” said Link, looking at the jug in his battered hands. “Ruto has not found the sapphires inside the engagement gift, nor Darunia the ruby inside the painted drum. But Saria is sad and the forest is strange, and I cannot restore the emerald to her. One more year to the last battle in the time of the land dying, when as a man he brings the tower down and rises a demon-”“Once, long ago. Not in this time,” cut in Ensren. “How fare the Sheikah and the Gerudo and the common folk of the provinces?”“It is a hard time, as much as in the first, only it is slower, ” said Link, resting his head against the little altar. In other lives he’d tried to make them take the shrine down. Tried to turn away their blasphemous worship. Tried to explain he was only a man. Frail and mortal and foolish and stumbling under the stones of too many failures. Too cowardly to surrender the weapons that once made people hail him as a hero. “ They are all proud and greedy and violent and blaming everyone for the bad things. I broke some of the prisons, but they begin to hide them with strong shadow magic. I tried to scare the knights away from the Green, but they come back. I tried to go to the temples, but the priests have named me demon, and locked the sacred places against me, and the sages are not awake yet to make them understand. Me! I am the hero!”“People do strange things when they’re afraid,” said Ensren.Link sighed, watching the bright prayer flags sway in the gentle breeze. Blue for the wise judgment of Nayru, Green for the sweet abundance of Farore, Red for the creative passion of Din. “How do I fix it?”“You don’t,” he said with a shrug. “People are going to feel and think and do as they please. You’ve spent ages hunting the fox for getting your prize cucco, and sounds to me your own hound is the one in the coop.”“No,” said Link, sorrow rising in his miserable throat. “It cannot be. It is all some mistake. A misunderstanding. A demon curse. Corruption in the court. Zelda is good and kind and wise and-”“Good leaders don’t send their army to punish starving refugees and burn holy ground in search of power,” said Ensren, implacable.“ Power ,” said Link, emptiness roaring through his bones. If you won’t fix it, I will go get a power that will. I found the secret that makes Hyrule so powerful. It will be capable of manifesting literally anything.
Those toys are too much for you - give them to me.
Without a strong and righteous mind, he couldn’t control the power of the gods. All the tragedy that has befallen Hyrule was my doing - I was so young. I couldn’t comprehend the consequences of trying to control the Sacred Realm.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Link poled the little cypress boat through the glorious afternoon, alone except for the buzz of a hundred hidden insects and the chattering of a hundred thousand memories and the insidious murmur of a hundred million little fears. The shimmering blue-turquoise light of the timeveil ahead held little comfort for him. All it meant - all it could be allowed to mean - was that the bluestone orb was active.
Link paused, letting the mild current of the little marsh stream carry him along. He knelt in the bottom of the little boat, eyes riveted to the familiar jutting wedge of the rusted ship’s hull and lifted applejack to his lips. It stung, and it soothed, and it scoured clean the jagged places inside his chest.
“This time it will be different,” Link told the marsh.
The marsh said nothing.
Link wrapped his hands on the pole again, driving himself onward, one yard at a time, steady as he could manage, thinking only of the work. Of the smooth oiled wood in his hands, of the scent of the sweetgrass and mud. Of the syllabant hiss of water under the lacquered hull, the plonk and splash of each little thrust towards whatever must come next.
He pulled the little boat onto the sandbar in silence. He loosed the weathered cable from the tiny brass anchor and pulled the cargo net down to the wet sand. He lumped baskets and bags of provisions from boat to net, and tried not the think about the unsettling quiet of marsh song rolling through the autumn air uninterrupted.
“No thread means anything until it is woven,” he told the marsh.
The marsh said nothing.
Link climbed the rope-and-bar ladder to the upper deck, telling himself he hurried because he was tired. Because the ache and sting of still-healing wounds cried out for rest. Because a task sooner started is a task sooner finished.
The hens mobbed him as soon as he swung over the verdigris brass railing, begging for food. Link dug in his belt pouch for a few pieces of stray biscuit, skipping them one after the other across gleaming waxed wood until the whole flock abandoned him to fight over his peace offering. He forced himself to walk across the deck - but when he reached the stair he descended two at a time.
The amber lightcrystals flattered the rusty corridors below, softened now by dozens of little wire-and-paper shades. The hall itself was spotless, not a single spiderweb hiding behind the bright tapestries, not a speck of dirt marring the polished cypresswood floor he’d fitted over the unforgiving ancient metal.
“Please,” whispered Link to the silent hallway.
The hallway - moaned?
Link hurried toward the fleeting sound, stretching his ears to catch the softer sigh that followed, firmly telling himself what he heard was real. Wasn’t a nightmare. Wasn’t a memory. Wasn’t a desperate, hopeless dream taunting him from the depths of a raging storm.
The midship hold lay empty. The kitchen lay empty. The richly tented bedroom lay empty, the cheerful blue-and-white striped sheets turned smoothly back, sprigs of memoryleaf and blue leatherflower tucked into an old bottle on the nightstand.
“
Hnnn
,” said the hallway.
Link paused in front of the washroom door, one hand raised to knock, the other hovering at the handle. He didn’t hear water pouring out of the sluicegate, but who could hear anything over the war drums in his chest? Fear glued his boots to the floor, dread froze his limbs.
“Courage,” Link whispered to himself, half prayer, half curse.
He opened the door.
“HaaaaaohgodsdamnitsonofabitchoutoutOUT
GETOUT-!
”
Link closed his eyes and sagged against the cold metal doorframe, relishing the fragrant steam on his face and the furious roar in his ears.
“I said
out
you longeared jackass! Have you stuffed your head full of wax? Why are you standing there like an idiot? Were you raised in a bloody barn? Did you fall out of a godsdamned tree and scatter whatever wits you had left?
Out
I said,” thundered Ganondorf.
“Missed you too,” said Link with a derisive snort. He forced himself to open his eyes, to look up at the furious man striding toward him. His long red hair was still sopping wet, and a thousand glittering droplets shimmered on his dark olive skin, but the heavy towel he’d wound about his hips was almost completely dry.
“Get out of here you mule-stubborn lackwitted moon-faced
fool
,” roared Ganondorf, shooing him away with broad sweeps of his free hand, his golden eyes terrible and bright. “Count your stars I was in the bath and not on the shitter or I swear by the Sands you’d be picking your teeth out of the-”
“Stop,” cut in Link, pushing upright. Blood on his fingertips. Tiny crimson flowers wicking up through heavy terry-weave cotton brought oversea from Labrynna. Pink droplets shining on the dreadful blackened bloodsteel chains circling wrist and arm and waist and throat. Soft coral tarnishing the damp footprints tracking backwards to the bath corner, where a sliver of too-bright steel lay in a puddle of shadow.
“Go,”
growled Ganondorf, grasping the edge of the heavy iron door, threatening to close it on him.
Link stepped closer, planting his hand flat on the sculpted bare expanse of his ancient enemy’s broad chest. “I will go when you stop shouting.”
Ganondorf bared his teeth in a ferocious snarl.
“I’m not afraid of you,” murmured Link, ruthlessly shoving down the sickness curdling his gut. “I’m sorry I startled you. I just wanted to let you know I was home.”
“Fine. You’re back. You made your point. Now
go
,”growled Gan.
Link drew a deep breath, leaning a slow and steady pressure against the larger man. “Not yet. Shhh - just one minute. Please? Just one.”
“Don’t push your luck,” Gan growled, holding his ground.
“I know you think I’m stupid,” began Link softly, clinging desperately to the fractured memory of calm.
Gan groaned. “Really? We’re doing this right now? Shut up while you’re ahead.”
“Shh. Listen,” said Link, brushing his other hand against Gan’s wrist and letting his fingers trail down the back of his hand. “You’re right - I’ve never been smart, I’m not good at words, I don’t read well, and I don’t know much about history or how magic works or any of the hundred thousand million other things you’ve studied. Maybe you’re right, and I
won’t
understand. But I - I wish you’d let me try.”
Gan blew a heavy breath through his nose and narrowed his eyes. “Don’t waste your breath on nonsense.”
“Please,” murmured Link, pressing against Gan’s chest, tucking his other hand under the ledge of Gan’s fist, dismayed by the telltale stickiness of drying blood.
Gan clenched his jaw, averting his gaze. “It’s nothing.”
Link sighed, his eyes drawn against his will back to that shard of deadly light where none should be. “If it - makes you feel better to lie, then - then ok. It’s nothing, and it’s not my business, and I will go upstairs and I will count every second until you’re ready to tell me another lie.”
“For fuck’s sake Link,” groaned Gan, letting go of the door to grasp his wrist and pull him close for a hug. “Don’t be so damn dramatic.”
Link made a rude noise, trying to lighten the mood, but he couldn’t help himself. He wrapped his arms around Gan’s waist and clung to him like a morth, seeking comfort in the steady rhythm of his living heart, the vast warmth of his towering strength.
“Okay then limpet, leggo. I can’t get pants on with you hanging off my hip like this,” grumbled Gan, but his broad hand rested across Link’s back as he said it.
“Eh, pants are overrated. It’s not
that
cold topside,” said Link, wishing vainly that
he
had conjuring magic. Wondering if stealing the razor would make any difference, or if Gan would just find something else to sever the threads of yet another hopeless fate. “Anyways that’s what blankets are for.”
Gan didn’t say anything, just breathed in and out, and stood still as stone.
Link couldn’t find the courage to pull away from him. Couldn’t untangle the words clogging his throat.
Gan coughed and cleared his throat and shifted his feet, turning his hips at an awkward angle. “Please go, ok?”
Link sighed, nodding. He still couldn’t make himself move. He opened his mouth to apologize, but his tongue betrayed him. “Give me the blade first.”
Gan sucked wind through his teeth, jerking away as if Link’s touch burned him.
Link bowed his head, staring at the streak of blood across his left hand. Not that he hadn’t spilled far more than that in a thousand stupid lives before. He tried to tell himself he couldn’t have known back then, but he never believed himself. Not in a long time.
“It’s not - what it looks like,” said Gan at last, his voice strangely rough and thin.
Link nodded, closing his fist.
“No, I mean it. It’s not - what you think. I wouldn’t do that,” said Gan with an uncharacteristic lack of grace.
“Would and have,” murmured Link, pulling his fists to his sorry chest as if anything could ever silence the grief that dwelled in his bones.
“Oh,” said Gan, nonplussed. “Well I - I wouldn’t do it
here
, at least. I wouldn’t want to - leave a mess to be found.”
Link snorted in bitter, morbid humor. “No, you made sure it was a hidden place every time, hell to even approach, where no innocent would ever see, where I would always be too late.”
Gan sighed and moved closer, reaching a strangely tentative hand to brush his hair out of his eyes. “Hey. Those days are over. It’s ok. I’m here now.”
Link nodded, biting his tongue on the despair that dogged every step from that disastrous night he discovered his sweet, sardonic Rajenaya and the future king of evil were one and the same.
“I mean it,” said Gan, tucking a finger under his chin, urging him to meet that impossible golden gaze. “You want me to listen to you? Then you listen to me. It’s not about that. Ok? Look - see my arm? It’s already starting to scab. It’s shallow. It’s nothing. I know what I’m doing.”
Link pulled his lip between his teeth, staring not so much at the thin line of red on Gan’s bicep, but the tangled mess of thin little tan slashes around it. “How long have you been doing this in secret?”
“That’s not important. You weren’t supposed to ever see this, but since you can’t stop poking your stubborn nose in things that don’t concern you, I need you to understand there’s no
possible
way my little vice can kill me. It’s no different than the way you drink. Safer, actually, because
I
can’t lose my head and miscount how much poison I’m pouring down my throat.”
“It
is
important, because it’s
my fault
,” said Link, trailing fingertips down Gan’s arm, feeling stupid and miserable, questioning every faint scar marking his dark skin.
“Sa’ikhusa - Link, don’t be stupid. I learned how to do this long before I ran to Termina,” said Gan with a groan of irritation. “It was part of my training, in medicine and in magic. To focus the will. To conquer the weakness of instinct. To purify-”
“Not like this,” said Link, shaking his head and wrapping both of his hands around Gan’s left. “This isn’t about discipline anymore. Even you just called it a vice.”
“So I misspoke. It’s just a word,” groaned Gan.
“You never say anything by accident,” said Link, refusing to let him pull away. “I can’t help you if you shut me out.”
“I don’t need
help
,” snapped Gan.
“So tell me what you
do
need, and I swear by the Light I will find a way to get it,” said Link, shaking his head at the spreading crimson on the towel. “But
please
let me put red potion on that.”
Gan frowned, and followed his gaze. He groaned in frustration and swore a blistering, blasphemous oath. “If you hadn’t interrupted me-”
“Then you’d have bled down the drain until - what? You pass out? Hiding your pain doesn’t make it go away,” said Link softly. “Show me. Please. I need to make sure you didn’t hit the heart-cord by accident.”
Gan frowned. “The what?”
Link winced and surrendered his grip on Gan’s hand to point to his own hip and thigh, tracing the hidden river of vitality that pulsed between the long muscle and the girdle-valley.
“Oh. The femoral - no. I’m
not
that stupid,” said Gan with a roll of his eyes.
Link folded his arms. “Prove it.”
Gan blinked at him and - his cheeks darkened. A strange warm cast bloomed over his broad chest, and he shifted his weight as if - he was ashamed?
Link waited, wondering if he was wrong to push. Wrestling with the fear that he was making it worse. Again.
Gan took a deep breath and looked away. He set his free hand on the rolled edge of the towel. “Just - promise me you - won’t be stupid about it.”
“Define stupid,” said Link.
Gan winced. He shifted the heavy cloth in his hands. He glanced down at himself, still screening his flesh from Link’s sight. He muttered something - probably an oath - and let the cloth fall from one hand, revealing his naked thigh.
“Oh
Gan
,” breathed Link, holding his grief and horror under tight rein. A dozen bloody slashes marched across his skin, curving from the forward arch of the long muscle towards the soft cushion of his inner thigh.
Gan refused to look at him.
“You - cut
far
too close this time,” whispered Link. “Stay - please - let me get potions from the kitchen. Don’t move ok?”
Gan gestured for him to go and shrugged like he didn’t care, like his skin wasn’t sodden with every evidence that he
cared very much
about
something
.
Link swallowed his misgivings and sprinted down the hall, formless prayers tumbling from his aching heart.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Perfect, gentle, sticky snow drifted down from the heavens, layering more white serenity on Clocktown. The snow muted the noise of solstice revelry filling every street and square in town, and elevated the huddled little houses from shabby to quaint. Link dragged Gan from one bright booth to another, pouring ancient rupee from his pockets for every sweet Gan looked at for more than half a second, every ribbon he touched, every game that brought a twitch of amusement to those broad lips.It wasn’t enough - but it was a beginning.“Seven years,” he said with a brittle smile, raising another cup of steaming, potent cider.“Hn,” said Gan, humoring him long enough to bump their mugs together. “You don’t count so good, little hero.”Link laughed, and burned his tongue on the spiced concoction. “Ok, twenty. Whatever. But it’s the seven that make it even better. We’ve won, Gan. You should celebrate.”Gan rolled his eyes and gestured with his mug at the noisy crowd in the tavern.“No I mean, really celebrate. Not just follow me around and make fun of the festi- oh hey, the chocolate’s here,” said Link, hurrying to dig out a bright purple rupee for the apple-cheeked serving girl.Gan merely grunted, and applied himself to his cider.“She’s pretty,” said Link, jerking his thumb to indicate the retreating maid.Gan shrugged. “I don’t know how you can tell when she’s red as a voltfruit.”“So she’s shy around a handsome stranger. So are most people,” said Link casually, tipping his tall chair back to watch the dancing at the other end of the room. There still weren’t any Gerudo ladies in town, but there were a few taller women from Vosterkun and Ikana and far Holodrum. Maybe one of them would interest him. “Anyways the kitchen’s probably hot.”“Yeah,” mumbled Gan, picking at a splinter in the table.“There’s lots of pretty girls at this festival,” said Link after a minute, wondering if he’d pushed Gan too hard today. The chains stole so much of his strength, and if traipsing across half the city to see all the little markets had tired him out, he’d surely never admit it. “I bet that tall, soft one by herself with all the roses in her hair would like to dance.”“So go dance,” said Gan with a shrug, scanning the crowd with a subtle frown.Link made a rude noise, trying to keep the mood light. “As if. I only ever learned one dance and it wasn’t this kind. You should go ask her.”“I’m sure she’d rather you asked her yourself.”“Alright then, if you’re afraid of a village miss, I’ll go ask her for you,” teased Link, rolling his eyes and letting his chair fall back down with a resounding thump. “Which name should I give her for you? Dinauru? Raje-”“Wait what-? No - sit down - what are you, crazy? I don’t want to dance with some stranger,” hissed Gan, scrambling to catch his arm.Link laughed at him, prodding his stomach. “Worried she’ll think you’re dessert and eat you up? You’ll be fine . She looks nice. And she won’t be a stranger once you talk to her.”“I don’t care to talk to her - if you like her so much, you go dance with her. I’m not leaving this table,” growled Gan, and his voice held a brittle edge that Link didn’t really want to test.“Oh fine, if you wonna be boring ,” said Link casually, rolling his eyes. “It’s a festival. You’re supposed to be like, festive. Do fun stuff. Like a birthday but bigger.”“Sit down, the girl’s back with the next round.”Link groaned, mostly for the form of the thing. As long as Gan believed he was just being frivolous and childish, he wouldn’t get truly angry. Probably. He didn’t really want to annoy his friend either, but annoyance was at least something . Link would bear a hundred thousand million grumps and insults if Gan would just - not be so cold and silent.He pointed out every unpartnered woman in sight, but none elicited more than a grunt and a brief glance.Link tried to remember which of the market sellers had been wearing wedding jewelry.“Look, you want to go find a pretty girl to smile at you and step on your toes, go. Me not dancing shouldn’t mean anything for you,” said Gan with another infuriatingly indifferent shrug, scooping up the last of the cream from his cup of chocolate trifle and sucking it off his finger.Link made a rude noise. “Nah. I just want - look, seven years . We made it. We won. We should celebrate.”Gan gestured to encompass the drinks, the bar, the whole bright festival.Link laughed lightly, waving the girl over for another round - distilled spirits in hot creamed chocolate this time. He didn’t know what else to do. At least Gan never met a dessert he didn’t like.When the dregs of the second cup of that decadent poison stared back at them, and Link was sure his stomach would burst if he drank another, Gan interrupted whatever forgettable trifle they were talking about so suddenly he almost dropped his mug.“Did you ever have a - girl you danced with in the befores? Someone you miss?”“I guess,” said Link with a deliberately casual shrug. Gan had never asked him about that before. “Not the dancing really, but I was engaged a few times.”Gan said nothing.Link decided the weight of those unreadable golden eyes was worse than his aching stomach. He ordered a third cup.“Kindof a funny story,” he said once the serving girl left again. He rubbed his sweaty palms on his trousers and wondered if he dared ask after the washroom. He knew he was babbling, but he couldn’t stop. “Talon bet I couldn’t catch cucco, and he was so mad I kept winning even when he made the game harder, he even wagered Malon. She thought it was pretty funny. We were friends, sorta. She helped me free Epona. I miss her, but it wouldn’t be fair to make her live in a swamp.”“People can get used to a lot of things,” said Gan without inflection.“Horses can’t though,” pointed out Link. What a ridiculous idea. Epona in the marsh! She’d get hoof-fevers inside of a week unless he kept her confined to the ship, and she’d kick him through a wall if he tried that . “She’s happier at the ranch than she’d ever be on our ship.”“Oh,” said Gan.Link wrestled his frustration down and mentally sat on it. “Hey, I gotta piss, ok? Snag us some of that fried sugar bread if the girl comes back first, ok?”“Glutton,” grumped Gan.“Pot, kettle,” teased Link.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Link wasn’t surprised to find Gan sulking over his boozy chocolate on his return. Over a year since he’d come back from the last fruitless trip into Hyrule, and he could count on his fingers how many times he’d seen a real smile brighten Gan’s face.He tried not to think about that day. He tried not to remember hundreds of scars under his fingers as he painted precious healing potions on his ancient enemy’s broken skin. He tried not to count the minutes every time Gan took a bath. He tried not to hunt through the laundry to check for bloodstains on Gan’s clothing. He tried not to wonder why Gan believed blood was the only answer to the secret weight on his troubled heart.Link almost fell out of his chair again when Gan broke the fragile silence between them. “Well do you - think about going back? Marrying?”Link shook his head. “I try not to go to the Zora domain either. Princess Ruto’s crazy. She bit me once when I told her I needed to leave, so I had to sneak out.”Gan raised a brow. “So you’ve got lots of girlfriends then.”Link made a rude noise. What a strange question from a man destined to bear a crown that would have given him a great deal more than girlfriends . Nabooru had teased him once about the Gerudo habit of stealing Hylian lovers, but he wasn’t a naive child anymore. The hope of the Golden People was expected to bring rain to the desert in more ways than one. “Nah. I had friends who were girls, that’s all.”“Did you ever - ok, you said you don’t know how to dance, but did you ever do - other things with them?”“Sure,” said Link with a shrug, pretending to be interested in his chocolate. “We had all kinds of adventures in the befores. Exploring stuff, racing, climbing, hunting monsters - ok that one was with Ruto. Malon and Saria don’t fight.”“No, I mean - did you ever do sweetheart things with those girls? Like - kissing and poetry and stuff?”Link pasted a dumb look on his face to veil his rising anxiety. “What’s poetry?”“Nevermind.” Gan stood back from the tall table and signaled the serving girl.Link punched his arm teasingly, trying to fake his way into nonchalance. “I was kidding. Don’t be like that. I couldn’t kiss Saria , she’s my friend . That would be weird . Ruto - eiyugh, fish breath! Her teeth are wicked sharp too. The fairies kinda tickle though.”“What,” said Gan, flat and cold.Link swallowed the ice on his tongue. He hadn’t really meant to mention the fairies. Maybe it was a mistake to have cut back on the drinking, if a few cups of festival nonsense would affect him like this. “Not little ones. The Great Fairies. Kissing and stuff makes their magic work better.”“Uh,” said Gan, expression utterly unreadable.Link cursed himself for a fool and shrugged, laughing off the slip. “They always want me to stay with them, like Ruto. But I don’t think they marry? I dunno. They’ve never wanted that kind of promise.”“Just kissing and stuff,” said Gan, flat.“Yeah. There’s probably fancy book words for it, but they always just call it kisses. They tickle - not with fingers, or not just with fingers I guess. But their magic makes it hot and ticklish inside when they heal me,” said Link, struggling with a strange and unfamiliar rush of shame under the intensity of those golden eyes. He felt stupid and clumsy, but he couldn’t wrap words around why . He’d never talked about the Great Fairies to anyone but another fairy before, and he felt unsteady as his own words echoed inside his head. Kissing and stuff. Like he was twelve years old again and he’d never so much as overheard lewd talk before.Gan pressed on, his rumbly voice dark and smooth and somehow buzzing under his skin, making him wish vainly that he could unravel the whole conversation and start over. “Did you - like it? Do you like avadha and fairies the way they like you?”“I dunno. I didn’t really think about it much in the befores. It was just kindof part of - doing other things. Restoring shrines and trying to save people and stuff,” said Link, resting his chin in the cup of his hand and trying to calm his racing pulse. It was ridiculous, feeling like he’d just sprinted across town for talking about something so common and stupid. “The people I lived with in the before of the first, they didn’t do any of that. I never thought about it seriously, you know? Getting married. Living with some weird girl all the time. What about you? Did you have a girlfriend when you-”“I left home at six,” snapped Gan.Link winced, his chest so tight he could barely breathe. He hated himself for letting something so completely horrible fall from his tongue. “Sorry. I forgot. It gets tangled sometimes. Which things happened when. Things I never asked when I should have. I look at you and I - sometimes I forget that you - can’t remember - and I-”“It’s ok,” said Gan, catching his other hand gently. “Maybe I did. Someone nice. Who wouldn’t want presents from a king, right?”Link forced himself to laugh, pressing his hand. He told himself it was only a minor stupidity. That hearing it couldn’t have hurt Gan as deeply as it hurt him to have said it by accident. Gan didn’t remember those lives to regret them.But - for the first time, Link wondered if there were screams of grief on the desert wind when word of the bandit king’s death came home. If anyone wept over his corpse in the times that the blessed sword and the sages and the distant gods left a body to mourn. If the ruthless king of demons had ever loved anyone but himself. If he had ever treasured anything more than raw power.If the notes hidden away with the other morbid mementos of his failures weren’t cunning, manipulative intrigues after all but had been written from the truth of his heart.Link pulled away, accepting the next drink from the terrified serving girl. He poured it over his dry tongue at once and prayed for oblivion.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Link fell into the rude little bed in their rented room, too dizzy with drink to be ashamed that he’d needed Gan’s help to make it that far. His head seemed to be full of seawater, and his empty gut gnawed at his spine, but he didn’t dare put anything else inside this skin.Gan cursed him softly, fumbling to peel him out of his boots and sweater, his massive warm hands none too steady. He’d matched Link glass for glass all night, but even with the bloodiron chains he outweighed Link at least double. Ensren said that mattered with drink, and Link believed him. Ensren was wise about many things - not in the way Zelda knew prophecies and gods and ancient secrets, but about the things that mattered to normal people.Link caught Gan’s hand when he knelt on the edge of the little bed to curse over the buttons of his long vest. “Hey.”“Stoppit, stubborn knifeears. Mmtryin to keep you from rippin stuff,” slurred Gan.“Don care,” said Link with a giggle as a stray wave in his skull tickled his ear. “Cmere. Need to - to tell you.”“So tell me. I can hear finne ,” grumbled Gan, untangling another silver button from the twisted loops.“I - I wonna be normal,” said Link, smothering giggles. Gan would never believe him if he couldn’t stop. “Les be normal . No magic . No destiny . Just us.”Gan made a rude noise. “Like you even know what normal is , heroboy.”“Sure I do. Issa opposite of - of this. Jus gotta turn it - upside down. Find the key.”“You’re drunk,” grumped Gan. “Comeon, roll, no the other way. Arm. Almost - there. Halfway done.”“Mnot drunk. I’m shitfaced ,” giggled Link.Gan snorted, rolling him the other way and trying to wrestle the vest out from under him. “Very good, you learned a big word. Now lift your ass.”Link tried to wriggle his hips off the heavy woolen cloth, but the moment he tried, the ocean in his head became a tempest and threatened to make him sick again. By the time it passed, he was drenched in sweat and Gan had given up on him to strip his own coat off. “Hey.”“Shh. Is sleepy time, not talking time.”“Five more minutes,” said Link, scrubbing a hand over his sweaty face.“You’re an idiot. Drink to drown a fish and now you wonna talk gibberish,” grumbled Gan, hanging his sweater on the clothes peg and checking the bolt on the door.“Not gibberish,” siad Link, but his tongue wanted to giggle again and he couldn’t seem to stop it. “Jus a lil tangled. Stuff I shoulda - known better. Stupid hero.”“You’re right, you really are shitfaced this time. Move over.”“Nuh. Make me,” giggled Link.Gan just groaned and shoved at his shoulder and hip until he’d made enough space to sit down. “You’re not stupid, Link. Nobody stupid could dance the river of time the way you do an come out less than completely crazy.”“Ungh. No more dancing,” groaned Link, winding his fist in Gan’s shirt as an anchor against another wave of nausea. “No more. You stay right here. I win.”Gan snorted, turning to ruffle his hair. “Sure. Not like I can move through time anyway.”“Nuh. Promise,” insisted Link.Gan groaned and cursed him softly, scrubbing a hand over his face.“Promise,” said Link again, struggling to speak past the knot in his throat and the sharp sting in his eyes.Gan sighed, leaning over him to kiss his forehead. “Ok. I promise. Now will you sleep?”“Kay,” sniffed Link, letting go of Gan’s shirt so he could lay down. His head probably sloshed too. At least a little.Gan said nothing else, only pulled the patchwork blankets up from the foot of the bed and lay down beside him in the dark.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Winter lingered over Termina in the twenty-second year of peace in this time. Not that the season was particularly harsh - they’d seen far colder and more hazardous winters than this. Day after day, the sun couldn’t shine enough to melt much of anything, and then it would snow just enough to undo the warmth of the day before.Three weeks to equinox, Link decided to hang the new canopy anyway. The sooner they got the midship deck under cover, the sooner they could move the table back to the hold and make sure Gan saw more than two hours of sunlight in a day.“Come on already. I need you to help me get the cables run,” he called below.“I don’t see why we have to do this now, ” grumbled Gan, stomping up every step. “The weather is shit and I’m pretty sure the rigging’s still iced over.”“I’ve gloves on. Anyways if the weather were fine we wouldn’t need a canopy,” countered Link, hefting a coil of rope.Gan rolled his eyes and groaned. “You shouldn’t climb with the full weight of that. Give it here.”Link made a face, but handed over the main coil, keeping a few loops for himself. “You just want an excuse to stand under the ratlines and say I’m gonna slip.”“Better you crack a rib for me when I break your fall than you break your neck because you’re too stubborn to wait until thaw,” grumbled Gan.“Don’t be such a worrywort. There - pulley’s threaded. I’m gonna fix it here so we have plenty of slack on the other end, and we can haul it tight after. Wait, where are you going? It crosses longways.”“We didn’t buy enough sail or grommets for a pavilion-style quadrangle,” said Gan with a frown. “I don’t want it to catch puddles and rot like our first canopies.”Link rolled his eyes, hopping down from the rail. “We’re not running any sideways.”“Athwart,” corrected Gan.“Whatever, bookworm. I want to get two sets up along the rail before we run a pair for the peak, and if it stays dry today, let’s try for the sail too.”Gan squinted at the pulleys Link had spent a whole day securing. “That’s a clumsy design. The canopy should slope fore and aft so we can fill the waterbutt-”Link caught his hand mid-gesture, amused that once again something so small interrupted him so effectively. “Twenty years, and you still think in the way of the desert. We don’t need to catch every raindrop. Even if I’m away Outside, between the cistern and the fish pond, you have as much fresh water as you could ever need, without even leaving the ship. If those aren’t pure enough, there’s a spring in the deserted shrine.”“Twenty-two,” rumbled Gan.Link laughed, pointing to the pulley he wanted to thread next. “Let’s build something my way for once. Wait till it’s done before you set yourself on hating it.”
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Not only did they get all the main cables threaded, they managed to raise the whole canopy by mid afternoon and lash it taut as their combined strength could make it. Gan’s idea of lifting the rolled canvas to the center and unfurling it with guide-ropes anchored on himself worked perfectly - but Gan didn’t act happy about it. He kept trying to shrug it off as some simple mechanical principal of pulleys and counterweights.Link poked at his sculpted abs, pretending to be looking for gears and springs until he allowed at least a little snort of amusement. It was so hard to lighten his mood anymore - but at least he didn’t seem to have any fresh scabs this week. At least not anywhere above the waist.Link shoved the anxiousness away and tricked Gan into lifting a grain crate, swearing it was one of the nearly empty ones and he wanted it for storage below. Link wasn’t really surprised when Gan managed to get the thing on his shoulder. The shocking part was that he didn’t seem to notice what he’d done until he set it down next to the hopper above the foreword hold and pried the lid off. He stared at the grain in mute contemplation until Link poked his side.“The word you’re looking for is amazing ,” he teased. “Come on, admit it. You’re strong.”Gan grumbled, dropping the lid back in place. “You lied.”“Just a little. You should be proud of this stuff. Look, stand like this. Good - raise your fists like so - turn your wrist and-”“This is ridiculous,” grumbled Gan, dropping his arms to his sides. “I didn’t ask to be - like this. I didn’t earn being tall and heavy.”“So? You earned those muscles fair and square. Lemme get the key for those arm cuffs so you can really flex-”“These spell chains are not a game Link,” said Gan, catching his wrist. “They’re not pretty , they’re not good , and the whole point is that they should never ever come off.”Link sighed, regretting that he ever promised to bring him the cursed bones that formed the keystone of the enchantment. “I know. I was just thinking - when you flex, it looks like they hurt. And I don’t like that.”Gan only grunted, releasing his wrist and crossing to where he’d left his shirt and sweater when the work had gotten underway in earnest.“That’s not what I meant,” said Link.Gan paused, casting him a sidelong glance.“Hiding your cuts and scrapes and bruises under cloth and pretending nothing happened doesn’t make the hurt go away. It’s not the seeing it that bothers me,” said Link, searching his golden eyes for any sign of understanding. He’d tried to keep his promise and not push, to trust Gan to know his limits, to trust that he would take red potion in with him if he needed to cut more than three little stripes. But looking at him like this, stripped to the waist in the winter sunlight, his dark skin dimpled around the enchanted bloodiron that suppressed his magic and supposedly hid him from other sorcerers and demonkin - Link began to wonder how many of the chains were really about the magic, and how many were about his thirst for pain. “What I mean is - if they hurt when you use your strength, they’re too tight, and they need to come off . At least until we add enough rings that they don’t hurt anymore.”Gan said nothing, his expression completely opaque. He looked away, then at his own arm, twisting and flexing in small experimental movements. He shrugged and shook his head.“Nope. Show me for real.”Gan worked his jaw, his eyes sliding away as he curled his arm, muscles rising into sharp prominence. It seemed at first that the chains dug terribly deep, but now that Link could watch him move, he saw how Gan’s body had changed to accommodate them in the way a ring sculpts grooves around the finger it rests on every day.“It - doesn’t actually hurt. It looks worse than it is,” mumbled Gan.Link whistled in amazement. “Then what are you holding back for? Let’s see you stretch in the sunlight.”Gan averted his eyes again, shuffling his feet like he didn’t feel steady. Almost like was embarrassed to be looked at. Like he was ashamed of his magnificent body.Link set his fist on his hip, circling around as Gan experimented with tentative little stretches. “Does it bother you? Your shape? The same way you hate your whiskers?”Gan shrugged. “It’s complicated.”“Try me. I’m not book smart at all, but I’m not stupid . I do kinda know a lot about living in a skin that doesn’t feel like home,” said Link quietly. “If you don’t like me saying you look good, I’ll stop.”“That - isn’t what I meant. And I don’t hate having a beard either. It’s just - weird. I feel strange when something makes me notice it. How different we are,” mumbled Gan. He never mumbled.“Different isn’t bad. It just is. Look,” said Link, hauling his own sweater over his head and striking an overwrought martial pose. “Huh. My arms were actually bigger when I lived at the farm. I thought climbing around out here would be the same but - oh. Ha, lookit below my elbow though. Like twisted cable.”“Hn. That’s nothing,” said Gan, mirroring his stance exactly.Link laughed, relishing the warmth that bloomed inside him to see a little of the old playful arrogance again. They fooled around posing until they got cold standing topside. Gan didn’t want to move the table yet, so they took turns showering and lazed about with tea and nut cakes in the weaving room until the day’s hard work caught up with them.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Link woke so slowly he wasn’t entirely sure he wasn’t dreaming. He felt warm and comfortable and lazy, and completely disinterested in being awake. His ear felt a little ticklish - and Gan’s breath stirred his hair - and then he shifted, and the cold air snuck between them, and he realized his ear was wet. Which didn’t make any sense for about half a second.Gan nuzzled close and kissed his ear again.Link’s heart stopped.
Not a dream. He’s - that is his tongue. On my neck. Goddess bright. His teeth - his lips tickling my ear. He’s so warm and - gentle?
Gan said nothing - and his breath stayed slow. He moved slowly, like the lazy way he stretched in the mornings, still half asleep.Link’s skin turned taut and prickly and overwarm the way it always did when he startled awake. He tried to calm it, stretching little bit at a time, his mind racing around the intense awareness of Gan’s face pressed against the side of his own. He’d stopped with the kissing - for a moment - maybe it was just an idle dream figment. Nothing at all.Except.When Link tried to shift and tense his core in an effort to relax - he realized his body was tense in other ways. Painfully so. Like he’d been hard for hours.And - even worse - Gan’s heat was pressed against his hip, throbbing and enormous and firm.Noticing it made his insides clench and shiver, and heat surged through his wicked horn in perverse, hateful answer.Link moaned in desperate, smothering grief, his sorry heart twisting in his chest as memory thrust him back through the river of time, stranding him in a tiny kitchen in a tiny house in a working class neighborhood halfway across the world. He could still feel the clammy rag in his hands, the clinging sharp terror as Gan towered over him and thundered at him in unbridled fury, lightning sparking around his fists as he repeated the most vile slander.
How dare you act like everything is fine when the whole town thinks you keep me for sex?
Link bit his cheek until he tasted copper, trading one panic for another. Gan nibbled his ear again, his teeth and tongue softer than any of the Great Fairies had ever kissed him. His hand flexed on Link’s chest, and he realized rather too late that Gan had slipped under Link’s sweater so his fingertips grazed bare skin at the bottom of the shirt placket, and the fine linen offered no barrier against the heat of his massive palm.“Hey. Gan,” murmured Link, terrified by the thrill of pleasure spreading through his skin at the forbidden touch of his ancient enemy.On the third try, Gan breathed a sleepy “Hnn?”“Wake up,” whispered Link, staring sightlessly into the winter shadows.“Nnnuh.”“Gan. You’re dreaming,” sighed Link, more than half to persuade himself.“Hn. Yeah,” he murmured lazily, nuzzling Link’s ear.“Come on. It’s a dream,” whispered Link more urgently, trying vainly to untangle himself before Gan’s lazily wandering hand could discover his shame.
Why do you keep me? Tell me the truth.
“Nuhh. Sgood things,” slurred Gan, clutching him tighter.
Do you even know what the townspeople say?
“Oh Gan - oof - you’re crushing me,” said Link, and meant it. Taut panic wound around his bones and drummed thunder in his ears. He cursed himself for a fool, afire with pleasure and horror in the same moment. Gan’s touch was so good . So sensitive. So consuming. He wondered how many times Gan must have embraced him like this when he dreamed. How many of his own fuzzy dreams of shadowy pleasures in a place that never existed were blurry memories of stealing the innocence from his closest friend and greatest foe. How much of the town gossip was a twisted prophecy of the darkness lurking inside him.“Too bad,” rumbled Gan, hitching his bulk somehow even closer, trapping Link’s legs under his knee. He sighed in apparent contentment.
The king belongs to us, so everything he owns is ours, really. I say you need green more than him - it will make you happy and protect the people. And you’re my friend.
Link held his breath and waited for Gan to drift into deeper sleep.His hand drifted down Link’s chest instead.
How many grown men live alone with a boy?
Link stopped him before he could caress his most wicked flesh - but that didn’t wake him up. He just fumbled to wrap his hand gently around Link’s wrist in turn. Link dragged his hand higher rather than try to sort out untangling him from the sweater just yet.Gan sighed against his ear, like holding hands in the dark brought him some strange satisfaction. There might have been a shadow of a word in his sleepy mumbling, but before Link could fumble after the meaning, Gan released Link’s wrist to press his palm flat to his chest again, a shield over his heart.Link felt certain he would fly to pieces if Gan kept touching him like that. Every gentleness from his ancient enemy was an arrow in his heart. Sealed away from the world without his magic, without the darkness of war over his life, without the demon’s seductive promises in his ear, this could only be his true self.
His name is Rajenaya. It means hope.
Every harsh word, every sarcastic deflection was a mask .
I don’t want to kill you. I just need what you have. Who died and put you in charge of good and ungood anyway? Take your stupid blue magic and go fix your own stupid country.
Under that forbidding iron armor, under the bad decisions and the arrogant swagger, Gan’s heart was good and loving and fiercely passionate in the defense of his home and his family and friends and his vision of how the world should be ordered.
I think this is why I was born so much bigger and stronger than everyone. Will you play one last game with me? I will be strong, and you will be brave, and the Maiden will be clever. You’re going to save the world, Link.
He’d ruined it. All of it. Again.Of course Gan developed strange obsessions and unnatural lusts - Link had cloistered him away from the world with no one else to even talk to. Ensren had warned him - but by then it was too late.
Don’t let your fear of another tragedy destroy the very hope you’re trying to save.
“Gan please,” whispered Link.Gan nuzzled against him, mumbling in a blurry way. “Fin’ light ’thin. Mnn oasis.” “Hold vigil there, and seek the Light within,” recited Link under his breath, misery dripping from his wicked eyes. “Embrace what is good and true and bright, wholly and without reservation, and all will be right in the end and the end and the end.” “M’light,” murmured Gan, his soft lips offering benedictions Link didn’t deserve. Had never deserved. Had stolen from whatever unknown stranger should have loved this impossible force of nature wrapped in mortal flesh.“Gan - stop being stubborn - I have to piss, ok?” Link lied.“Mnnnrf,” grumped Gan.But it worked. Gan let go.Link rolled out of the warm nest of blankets and cushions onto the floor of the weaving room, shivering and sick to his stomach. Gan snuggled into the cushion he’d been laying on, moving against it in lazy arcs. Link watched him, disgusted with himself for the shudder of visceral need that coursed through him at the thought - the suggestion - the horrible and inescapable desire to know what it would be like to be that cushion.Link snuck out of the cabin, his heart torn to bloody shreds by the wretched suspicion that his skin already knew. Snow drifted down from the indifferent heavens as he prayed to any god that might have mercy on such a waste as himself that he’d never forced himself on Gan when dreams rode him in the middle of the night. He paced the deck until he couldn’t feel his fingers anymore, mind racing in useless circuits.“I can’t stay here,” said Link to the snow. “I can’t face him like this. I did this to him - he should hate me for what I’ve done. I don’t know how to make it right. It might be too late. But I can’t - I can’t do it. I can’t watch him die. Not again. Goddesses have mercy - please watch over him. You saved him from the Arbiters once before - save him from me now .”Link stole paper from Gan’s workroom and scrawled a hasty message. He tied a scrap of ribbon through the loop on the ocarina and bound it to the note. He stood in the hallway a long time, debating the best way to make sure he saw it.In the end he couldn’t find the courage to go back into the weaving room and risk waking Gan - or worse. He laid it on the middle of their cold bed along with a little box of buttery honey and nut cakes he’d been saving for a treat, and fled.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Link ran as far as his body would carry him, and when he could not keep his feet under him, he crawled. He lost the days, he lost all sense of direction, of heat, of cold, his lips cracked and split, his eyes burning from weeping.He lay in the dirt and prayed for death to find him - but even in this, the gods mocked him. A faceless stranger stood between him and the punishing sun and poured sweet water past his lips. She babbled nonsense and pried his teeth apart, forcing some soft tasteless stuff onto his tongue. She stroked his throat until he swallowed against his will. He cried out in denial and pain, but his wretched throat strangled his scream into a croaking sob.She laid a soft hand over his evil eyes, and in the darkness he heard the last words of a beloved friend and hated enemy.
Come with me. It’s time to be a hero.
It’s not possible - the Great Evil King Ganondorf - beaten by this kid-?
Link…!
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Link rose with the dawn and covered his shameful flesh with simple clothing. He stomped his feet into his boots and climbed down from the loft. He fed the cows and the chickens and turned the horses out to the pasture to muck out the stalls. He hauled stones and hammered posts, milked cows and split firewood. He worked the horses and brushed them down, he dug row after row of clean earth for a stranger’s garden, he ate sparingly and spoke less.The stranger sat beside him while he worked sometimes. She offered him every manner of food, trying to draw him out of his silence. She talked to him about the weather, and the animals, and customers that stopped by her little ranch for this or that, or to trade tired horses for fresh ones. She never asked about his past, or where he’d come from, or why he peeled bark from green twigs every evening and took them into the barn loft where he slept.The days grew longer.Link invented more work for himself.The stranger brought him simple meals at midday and at sunset, bread and cheese and roasted vegetables. Never meat, not after the first time. A week before solstice, she brought him a jar of lemonade, and the moment the spices caressed his tongue, he shattered. She knelt beside him in the dirt, rocking him in her arms and singing a tuneless lullaby for hours and hours.She wouldn’t let him go to the barn that night, but dragged him into the little house and made him lie on her bed. He closed his eyes and braced himself for what must follow - but she only pulled his boots off and tucked him under a blanket woven with jagged stripes of cream and sky and rust.In the morning she gave him a new tunic and an old cloak, saying she’d been keeping them for a solstice gift. He tried to give them back, but she made him sit down in her kitchen and watch her blend foreign spices in a stone bowl. She didn’t explain anything, but every time he tried to rise, she caught him, and took him back to his chair without a word. So he watched her make breakfast the way the desert thieves did on feast days.She wrung three bright lemons over a hill of spices at the bottom of a huge unglazed clay pot, and poured pure spring water over that. She dipped a copper ladle into the precious brew to fill his glass, and she held his hand as he wept in the silence.“Go home,” she said.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Link snuck through the timeveil in the gray light of false dawn, walking every inch of the ancient ship in secret. The stone mask hid him from the whole world, even the hens. He watched his beloved enemy sit in the spotless midship hold, hands idle. He watched the sun crawl into the sky, and still Gan barely moved. He watched Gan open a jar of pickled heartradish and eat it with his fingers. Plain. Without even a drop of water to wash it down.He followed Gan to the weaving room, and almost gave himself away when he saw the green tessellated spiral cloth filling the big sourwood loom, stretching out from the golden reed they’d made together so many years ago. He sat in the window seat, making himself feel the fullness of the pain as he watched Gan weave. Hour after hour, without word, without song, without the smallest deviation from his chosen task.When one of the shuttles ran out of thread, Gan slipped the empty bobbin free, and just - sat. Cradling the glossy wooden shuttle in his massive hands. Staring at nothing.The sun tilted towards twilight.Gan laid the empty shuttle in the loom trap and left the room. He scattered grain for the hens, and descended belowdecks. He poured himself a glass of priceless King’s Tears and carried it to the bedroom, where a glorious bright tapestry of an apple tree now hung above the pillows. Link stood in the open door and watched him unfold a little scrap of paper and stare at it, the untouched spirits dangling at a perilous angle in his other hand.The sun set.The lightcrystals woke in the hallway, but Gan did not notice his shadow on the floor. He swallowed the harsh spirits with a grimace and stretched out in the middle of the bed to stare at the ceiling. Link tried to withdraw. Tried to give him the privacy he’d demanded so many times. Told himself what he was doing was wrong from beginning to end.But he was afraid if he moved from that spot, he would fall to temptation, and crawl into bed beside his beloved enemy to visit wickedness on a heart that deserved every happiness the gods had never seen fit to give him.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Somewhere past midnight, Link stood on the empty foredeck and threw the stone mask as far into the marsh as his strength would send it. He stripped off the worn baldric and hung the goron-forged sword from a rusted belaying pin because he wasn’t strong enough to fling that overboard. He had too many uncounted years of war honing his body into an instrument of death for that.He sat on a bunch of feed crates left from some supply run or other, and shredded green cedar branches in his fingers until the sun rose, pink and beautiful. A gentle wind danced across the marsh, fresh with the promise of a cooling rain soon to come. Link turned his face to the wind and wondered if the weather answered Gan’s wish even now, even with the spell chains leashing his magic. He wondered for the first time if the heavens smiled and wept and laughed and raged in their stoic master’s stead. He was born to be the storm, after all.Heavy footsteps broke the peace.Link drew a sharp breath, and willed his pulse to steady itself, to slow.One step, another. Each closer than the last, heavy as forever.Gan laid a trembling hand on his shoulder without a sound.Link tore another sliver of pith from the stick in his hands, and looked up into the haunted golden eyes of his beloved enemy.Gan fell to one knee, dragging Link off the crate and into his strong arms. He crushed Link against his chest, muttering into his hair. “Oh my love, oh my light, my oasis! You returned-! Oh forgive me for ever doubting, oh my love, my light - tell me I am awake or else tell me I may dream forever.”Link drew a shuddering breath, boiling and frozen at once. He couldn’t make his stupid tongue answer him, he couldn’t move. His whole world shrank to that moment, Gan’s warm hands caressing his back. Gan’s soft lips marking his brow, blessing his burning cheeks - his wicked lips -Panic stole his breath.War flooded his veins.He struck, the familiar rush of power moving through his body and into the other man.He stumbled back, staring in horror at his beloved choking on his own wind. Memory dragged him through the rapids, and he saw blood pouring from Gan’s throat, bubbling on his silent lips. Shock and betrayal filled his impossible golden eyes.Link staggered another step back, touching his fingers to his damp lips in disbelief and horror. “How dare you start this-? This is wrong . How can you touch me like that? You walked into the forest to die rather than live with other people saying I kept you in my house for disgusting, perverted-”“Link - shh - it’s ok,” rasped Gan, opening his hands, beckoning him closer. “We aren’t in that time anymore.”“Don’t tell me to shush Rajenaya! You said you were my friend,” shouted Link, fear tearing the words from his wicked heart faster than he could think. He backed away until he fetched up against the crates. “And then you turn into Ganondorf ? The Great King of Evil, the doom of Hyrule? You tricked me - you are my enemy- ”“Link - calm down,” begged Gan. “That was in the before. It’s ok. You’re just getting tangled in your head.”“I loved you as my brother - as my son, ” wailed Link, drowning under the sorrow he’d tried and tried and utterly failed to conquer.“Oh Link . Please. I know the nightmares are terrible. Just - come here. Let me help,” pleaded Gan.“No! Let you trick me again ?”“Why would I trick you? We’re friends remember? We’ve been friends for years,” said Gan, a strange desperate thinness in his words, his broad hands open, artless. “You brought me to this oasis, remember?”“Of course I remember,” cried Link, longing for the comfort of his arms and hating himself for it. “I remember everything you’ve ever done. The wicked, ruthless, greedy bandit king. You killed the only father I ever knew.”“Link. That wasn’t me ,” said Gan softly.“Shut up,” bellowed Link, knowing it wasn’t fair. Knowing it wasn’t right. But he couldn’t stop pouring out the fury he’d been unable to even understand when it all began, ages ago. “You murdered thousands , you raised legions of undead to feast on innocents, you summoned terrible monsters to corrupt every holy shrine. You imprisoned the mountain people to feed them to a dragon. You froze the river, killing so many, plunging the whole fucking country into drought. You leveled the castle to raise your own hideous tower. You imprisoned the princess. You twisted everything -”“Godsdamnit Link listen to me ,” roared Gan, his temper kindling at last. “We aren’t in that time anymore. We’re not kin, and none of that was me . Me in the now , me as I am here , with you, in this life. I walked away from that path. I gave up everything I had for this. For the Light. I sealed my magic so He can never enter the world through me. That is the truth.”“Truth? From you? Ha ,” rejoined Link, cutting the air with the blade of his hand. Almost hoping his enemy would rise and answer the challenge for good.“I’ve never once lied to you about anything important in this life,” snapped Gan. “You promised me the same.”“Fine,” growled Link, curling his hands into fists. “You want the truth? You once asked me how many times I’ve died because of you - as many as you’ve died for me. That is our truth. That is our fate. You are the invader and I am the hero. Beast and hunter. Monster and champion. King of demons and chosen of the blessed sword that unmakes you.”Gan staggered to his feet. “Then why the fuck didn’t you slay me twenty years ago and have done?”Link gestured in helpless frustration. He didn’t understand any of it himself, much less have the words to explain it to his enemy-friend-brother-son-beloved. “ Don’t make it worse, Gan, please.”“Don’t you Gan please me! If that’s all I will ever be to you-”“That’s not what I want! That’s not what I’ve ever wanted,” howled Link, dredging up the darkest truth of all, the truth he’d been forced to drown in blood long before he climbed that dark tower to slay a man with evil eyes. “But the gods didn’t ask me what I wanted when they chose me to stop you .”“To hell with the gods,” bellowed Gan, advancing one long stride. “I don’t give a fuck what they want from me or anyone. This is about us . Here. Now.”“ Don’t touch me ,” cried Link, dancing back. He couldn’t endure it. Not while the war roared in his ears. Not with that forbidden kiss still cooling on his wicked lips. “ How can you do that? How can you touch me like that?”Gan swayed on his feet, as if drunk. “The fuck, Link? What happened to you? We’ve lived under the same roof, slept in the same bed, drank from the same godsforsaken cup for twenty years . And then one night - poof . Gone. It never happened? You leave me with nothing but a vague suggestion that maybe someday if I wait long enough I might find out if you’re still alive in this time. Hour after hour, day after bloody day, asking myself what I did wrong. What piece of my soul I need to carve out to bring you back this time.”Link retreated another step, opening his hands, terrified of the violence in his broken heart even as he grieved for the pain in that beautiful deep voice. “Why can’t you understand-? Every time I touch you I remember . A hundred thousand million times I’ve been forced to kill you to stop the evil that pours into the world because of you .”Gan dropped his hands to his sides, a dangerous coldness smothering the vital flame of his fierce soul. “Fine. I - I won’t touch you. Ever. It will never happen again. I’ll build a new bed in my workroom and sleep with wax in my ears so you can scream your head off without me there to bring you out of the memory. I can braid my own damn hair and cook my own damn food-”“Gan,” Link began, desperately grasping after the words to make him understand.“Or - you know - that’s too much work,” he said, scrubbing a hand over his whole face, his eyes too bright. “I meant to cut it off years ago when Nab’s braids started growing out anyway.”“No,” begged Link, memory hauling him back to a terrible broken morning when a child of the forest threw a fat braided rope of red hair at his feet and cursed him for bringing death to the deathless Green.“What do you care? I’m just the monster that goes bump in the night,” snarled Gan.“Don’t do this,” said Link through his tears, stepping forward. He didn’t have a plan. He didn’t have a weapon. He didn’t even have words, but he couldn’t let it happen again.“Mother of Sands how could I be so stupid ,” Gan mumbled, tipping his face up to the sky as if he would demand an answer from the clouds. “Who could love the chosen of the Great Destroyer anyway?”Link groaned in frustration, scrambling for something, anything Gan would actually hear . “Don’t be so fucking dramatic-” “Dramatic -?” Gan gestured broadly in theatrical disbelief. “I love you so much I can barely breathe when I see a real smile on your face and you dare call me dramatic?”“Gan-”Gan clenched his fists and pivoted to close the distance between them. “I’ll show you dramatic you knife-eared jackass.”Link yelled in warning, dancing out of reach, again and again, trying to stay between his rage and his beloved.Gan matched him move for move, stalking him down the length of the deck. His longer strides nibbled away at the fragile distance - it was inevitable. At last, beside the glowing bluestone orb with which he’d stolen Gan away from the wider world, in the eerie light of the ancient relic that formed the beating heart of their sanctuary, Gan caught him, wrestling him to the boards and pinning him to the aft deck.Link howled and cursed and struggled to no avail whatever. Gan didn’t need to do anything else. His weight leaning into the pin was enough.It was all for nothing. All the timeshifts, all the threads cut and tied and cut again, and it would end here at the edge of the world, Light conquered by Darkness once again. He couldn’t bear it - but the gods refused to strike him down, refused to close Gan’s hands around his throat, refused to slay the wicked longing that even after everything still burned inside his miserable skin.Gan said nothing. Not a curse, not a benediction, nothing. Link wept.Gan released his arm. Brushed his thumb down the damp trail of weakness spilling over his cheek. Released his other arm. Caressed his other cheek with a touch as tender as his lightning had ever been fierce.Link wept, cracking open his aching eyes to the wondrous and mystifying sight of Gan bowing over him, rare silent tears falling unheeded from his long dark lashes. He cupped Link’s face in his trembling hands, and still he uttered not a single sound.Link turned towards the warmth and comfort he’d longed for all his life, hiding his wicked face in the hands of the one man who should never have been any comfort at all. The one man in the whole world who might be able to understand the true horror of destiny and prophecy and living gods walking abroad in the mortal world.Link sniffled and sighed, drinking in the familiar spice of Gan’s skin, the steady thrum of his impossible strength, the senseless, precious tenderness.Gan drew a measured breath, and gently guided him to turn his head again, to look up at his captor.Link stared up at him, utterly powerless to voice the tempest in his heart.Gan’s golden eyes searched his for - something.Link wondered if he wanted Gan to find it.Gan dropped his eyes ever so slightly, and his breath stilled.Link let the wave of fear roll through him, refusing to let it move him.Gan bowed closer, his eyes losing focus.His nose tickled Link’s cheek.A tiny breath caressed Link’s dry lips.Link trembled, waiting in agony for Gan to cross the last, infinitesimal distance dividing them. Waited for him to seize control. Waited for him to finish what he’d begun.Gan started to pull away.Link tipped his head back and leapt across the abyss.He tasted of salt and spices and nectar.He felt like sinking into a hot bath on a cold day.He felt like honey tasted.Gan pulled away, gasping for air. He stared fixedly at his captive, golden eyes wide and panicked.Link stared up at him, licking his wicked lips.Gan rocked back on his heels, shaking his head like he meant to clear the clinging cobwebs of sleep from his mind.“Gan,” whispered Link.Gan winced like he’d been struck. “I - didn’t mean - I - I won’t do it again.”Link caught his hand as Gan tried to rise, pulling him back down.Gan refused to look at him.“I’m sorry,” whispered Link, knowing it wasn’t enough. That nothing would ever be enough.Gan shrugged. Tried to rise again. Lost his balance. Landed heavily at his side.Link ached all the way down to see his beloved trembling and terrified. But he couldn’t make his limbs answer him well enough to rise. He flailed his hand out to catch a fold of Gan’s trousers, as if that would ever stop him doing anything.“Gan,” whispered Link.Gan ignored him.“Rajo.”Gan opened his eyes.“I cursed every god ever woven on the day I found out it was you,” Link murmured. “I did such terrible things to stop you.”Gan snorted. “Not exactly your fault. Evil begets evil.”“No, listen. It has to stop,” begged Link. “ We have to stop it. Now. In this time.”Gan shook his head and stared out across the quiet deck of their ancient shipwreck in the rosy dawn. The hens were just beginning their day, the eldest hopping down from their coop first, milling about with soft little trills as they wandered in search of breakfast.Link gathered every crumb of strength he could find scattered in the chasm of his chest and rolled to his knees. He seized Gan’s hand in both of his, carrying that beloved, scarred strength to his lips.When he looked up again, Gan was staring at him. Silent.“I’m bad at words,” stammered Link helplessly.Gan snorted in derision.Link inched closer, and pressed Gan’s hand to his chest. Willing him to listen. Willing him to understand. “I - ran away because I was afraid of what I would do to you if I stayed.”Gan frowned. “I don’t remember you waking me with a nightmare that day.”Link swallowed, tongue dry as sand. “What do you remember?”Gan frowned harder. “We rigged the damn canopy, stuffed ourselves stupid on sweets, and passed out in the weaving room.”Link’s stomach dropped. “You don’t remember - anything else? No dreams?”Gan’s cheeks darkened and he clenched his jaw for the space of one taut breath. “I have less than no power over my own dreams.”“Oh,” said Link, wishing the floor would open up and swallow him whole.“Look, whatever I said in my sleep, I was asleep . I didn’t mean it, ok? You’re not the only one with - ugly things behind him,” growled Ganondorf. “I should have gone back to sleeping alone ten, twelve years ago. I should have just-”“It wasn’t any ugliness of yours that hurt - it was mine ,” said Link, still clinging to Gan’s hand because he couldn’t dredge up the courage to let go. “I did a bad thing.”Gan blinked at him, and for a moment Link saw a young prince lifting his chin with sharp-edged pride, his hair dressed in ringlets and gold-woven braids, wearing midnight black and lightning-bright topaz like a second skin. The flinty, sardonic mask had cracked and slipped for barely even a second.Kneeling before that raw, haunted, hopeless loneliness, magnified a hundred thousand times by the memory of uncounted slivers of times when the same terrible secret pain clouded those impossible golden eyes, Link’s heart stumbled, forgetful of its task.The moment passed.Gan snorted and shook his head. “No, you didn’t. I’m unfortunately very much still alive this time.”“Don’t say that,” whispered Link. Memory dragged him through the rapids, battering his heart against the jagged shards of all the times his beloved enemy surrendered his last shreds of hopeless purpose and embraced death at the hands of the chosen hero.“I’ll say whatever I damn well please,” snapped Gan. “You call me selfish - well I don’t care . This is for me. The power to speak or not is the one tiny stupid thing I keep for myself alone. Every secret I’ve ever kept under lock and key was for the sake of someone else. To protect my sister, my people, my yearmates from convenient accidents and heavy punishments and deadly curses whose true source I was too stupid to see. For the lives and happiness of strangers who would sooner see a Gerudo hang than bother asking why we steal. For the hundred million unwoven souls destined to feed the endless rage and hunger of the Great Destroyer I am woven to embody. For the one person I was stupid enough to believe might be my friend in spite of the monster I am.”“I am your friend,” pleaded Link, holding Gan’s hand so tight his knuckles ached. “I’m not good at it, and I have done bad things - terrible things - you have every reason in the world to hate me, but please for the love of whatever you hold sacred, don’t shut me out this time. I will bear any torment you can dream of and I promise you not one - not even a hundred - will be half as awful as losing you to the darkness because of my wicked desire.”Gan blinked at him. “What.”Link hung his head in misery and shame, unable to bear the intensity of those golden eyes. “You’ve always been smarter than me. I’m just the hero. I run and ride and hit things. You saw it - you hated me for it - long before I understood how rotten I really am.”“What,” said Gan, flat, and utterly, horribly emotionless.“You - asked me once if I like kissing girls and fairies. Well. Maybe, sortof. I don’t mind it. It can feel nice. But if I never kissed a girl or a fairy ever again, in any life? That would be okay too. No worse than - I don’t know. Giving up wildberries,” stammered Link, struggling to remember to breathe.“What,” said Gan, a weird crack in his voice this time.Link couldn’t find the courage to look at him. “You held the whole world at a distance, even in the first time, never touching or letting anyone touch you. But with your last breath the demon-red left your eyes and you said my name for the first time, and you reached for me - me! The one who cut a bloody path through your armies and felled your sister and your mothers and killed every construct and creature in your lonely tower to slit your throat! And - and if I live to the end of the world I will never, ever forget how I felt when you held my hand.”Gan coughed. “Well. In the case of the Rova I rather think you did me a favor, little hero.”Link curled in on his misery, pressing his forehead against the back of Gan’s warm hand. He wished the spellchains to the nether hells and he wished that Gan would use his magic to look inside his head and see all the horrible truths for himself.“Hey. Leggo for a minute. My arm’s falling asleep,” said Gan.Link sniffed, and sighed, and surrendered, dropping his empty, idle, wicked hands to his lap.Gan cursed softly, and struggled to his feet. The chains stole so much of his natural grace - the gods demanded such a horrible price from him. From all of them.Link squeaked in surprise when Gan scooped him up from the deck and flung him over one broad shoulder. “What are you-”“Come on, stupid. You’re clearly overdue for a nap,” rumbled Gan.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Morning quieted the amber lightcrystals until they barely even glowed at all, casting just enough light through their paper shades to navigate the ancient rusty corridor.Shadows lay even thicker in the forward bedroom, where Gan had long since encased the strange enchanted stones in iron shutters that opened and closed at the tug of a cord. He’d designed filigree brass lanterns for the riotously colorful midship room they’d come to share, but for this room - Gan’s room, though he never slept in it anymore - he’d remade or repainted every furnishing and fixture in midnight black, stitched or wove every textile in tone-on-tone white.The only color that ever softened the austerity of this room bloomed on the vanishingly rare occasions Gan left his clothing strewn about or opened the black wooden shutters that protected the jewel-bright windows he’d made from chipped rupee and shards of colored glass.Link bit his tongue to hold back the questions burning his sorry throat as Gan carried him into that strange room and laid him into the enormous Gerudo-style platform bed with complete disregard for the probable filth on his boots. Gan didn’t say anything either, but merely shook out a soft white blanket, draped it along the platform in easy reach, and turned to leave.“Wait,” said Link, propping himself up on one elbow and hoping he wasn’t completely ruining the pristine sheets.Gan paused at the threshold, one shadow among many. He seemed to glance over his shoulder, but in the darkness Link couldn’t be sure. He still said nothing.“Stop. Please.”Gan said nothing.“Where are you going to be-?”For a long moment, Link was afraid he wouldn’t answer that either. He spoke so quietly Link could barely make out the words hiding in that low rumble. “I don’t know.”“But you always have plans,” said Link. “Plans inside of other plans, plans for every possible bearable and eleventeen im possible ones.”“Variable,” corrected Gan.“Why are you shutting me out?”Gan shrugged, bloodiron chains rattling softly. “Plans take time. Maybe I need to scribe a diagram or twelve and chart out the most auspicious times to stare at the empty horizon and calculate a more efficient schedule of what to do with myself before I wake up tomorrow morning alone, with only half a sorry excuse for a note to cling to for the next desolate stretch of forever until it amuses you to come twist the knife again.”“You don’t understand,” began Link, gesturing helplessly in the dark. As if that would do any good for anyone.“So tell me again in smaller words,” rumbled Gan.“I didn’t know what else to do,” stammered Link.Gan snorted.“No, listen. I - I’m not the creature of Light you think I am. Everyone thinks I’m brave because I do stuff other people won’t. They don’t ask why I have time to run from one end of the world to the other with a letter, a gift, a mask, a sword. Why I go where the monsters are and leave the places they aren’t. Why I never wager on horses but can , will , and have gambled every last rupee on a cage fight on the condition I get to be the challenger. I’m not the good guy . I’m the war .”“And I,” rumbled Gan, “am the storm.”“Someone a lot smarter than me taught me once that storms aren’t good or bad - they just are .” Link drew his knees to his chest and knotted his limbs together to keep himself from tumbling out of the bed to pull Gan back into the room. “You bring change into the world. That’s scary. And hard. And some of it really isn’t good, but maybe some of it was an accident, and maybe I should have asked myself why you used your share of power to lock yourself away in a prison of stone and fire. If nothing ever changes, nothing ever grows, either.”Gan turned, and the blackened cypresswood floor creaked under him. “My share.”Link winced. In a thousand lives, he’d kept that secret closer than anything, and now of all times, when there was no possible way to laugh it off or deflect or lie, he slipped. Because of course he did. “The oldest law your people sing is-”“Free will,” said Gan, advancing another step. “The Golden Three giving us magic to equal to the gods, freeing us from mindless obedience to our creators.”Link nodded, grateful the shadows would hide his abject terror of what he was about to do. “Hyrule isn’t the center of the world by accident. The ancient magic, the divine relic is real , it is powerful beyond anything you can imagine, and only mortals can touch it. ”“I can imagine a lot,” said Gan, moving closer, the intensity of his spirit burning through the choking miasma of the spell-chains.“I can’t give it to you though,” said Link, rubbing at the barren emptiness on the back of his left hand. “Even if I could reach all the keys, the place where we sealed the pieces away just gives the Dark more weapons. The only way to make it whole and make it do good things is if all three of us wish for the same thing. And Zelda is not a good queen in this time.”“The Hylian army wears blue. Nayru’s color. The Hylian kings proclaim themselves the absolute infallible arbiters of order and law, received directly from the gods themselves through the Sacred Maiden of the motherline of Zeldas,” murmured Gan, so close now Link felt certain he stood beside the bed. So close he imagined he could see faint sparks of light in his golden eyes. “Nayru. Farore. Din. Law. War. Change. Wisdom. Courage. Power. ”“Yeah,” breathed Link, petrified.The sparks winked out.A freak gust of wind rushed through the corridor outside and slammed the heavy metal door shut. Iron shrieked and screeched against itself and ground against blackened bone with a sickening dry crunch and Gan heaved a great shuddering breath.Rusty gears and brittle springs hidden in the walls of the ancient shipwreck screamed in agony as bolts and tumblers hammered home, sealing the little room away from the world.Gan panted and growled in the formless pitch black.Tortured metal snapped and pinged in ominous tattoo, and with a great rushing chime and clatter, the miasma-forged spell chains shattered .Blinding golden light tore the world apart, swallowed in turn by mottled black and violet. Gan stood at the heart of it all, the axis, the lightning rod, the fathomless void sculpted into a mountain of a man.Ganondorf opened his glowing golden eyes as the lightning flared, a hundred thousand threads of light spinning out from the nothingness to coil around his body in a raging tempest of pure magic.Thunder crushed the fractured shards of the world in its fist.Ganondorf closed his eyes.Purple followed gold followed purple.Ganondorf collapsed like a vast invisible hand had reached into his body and snatched away the vital essence animating his flesh.His sudden weight shuddered and cracked the sleeping platform as if Link had tacked it together in a folly of brittle ochroma sapwood instead of dovetailing kiln-hardened black rock maple from Vosterkun. “No-!” Link cried, scrambling across the endless purple-black wasteland between them. He clawed desperately at Gan’s shoulder, dragging his beloved enemy into his lap, smoothing back his mass of wild red hair. “Not again! Don’t listen to the shadows. Please - I’ll do anything. I’m sorry, ok? I didn’t mean to - it was an accident! Too many times, too many storms, I was tangled, I’m sorry. Stay with me - hold onto the light, to hope. It’s not too late. We can still fix it.”Gan groaned, shuddering in his arms. In the depths of empurpled shadows, a faint golden glow began to emerge, a vague, shimmering, three-sided blur, shifting and pulsing in time with his own stumbling heart.“Oh no. She touched it, ” moaned Link, reaching towards that terrible light. He grasped Gan’s right hand in his own, vainly trying to cover the emerging mark of the chosen. It shone through his flesh, shifting the light to rose-pink. “ Zelda broke it. I warned her, and she broke it anyway. Again. Oh Rajo - I’m so sorry . I tried to be good. I was trying to help. I did a bad thing and I made it worse and I’m sorry. I promised you truth and I tried to keep my promise, I really did, but I couldn’t tell you about the triforce. I knew the temptation would be too much. I was only trying to protect you - but she broke it anyway and it’s all horrible and I’m sorry and you have every reason to be angry - but please , I beg you - don’t listen to the Dark.”Gan groaned again, rolling onto his side and catching his hand in an iron grip. “Oh shut up Link. I cannot with the babble right now.”Link clenched his jaw so tight it ached all the way into his ear, but he couldn’t stop the keening whine in his throat, and he couldn’t make himself let go, and he couldn’t think for the grief.Gan swore at him, and pulled him off balance, trapping him in a crushing pin. “I said, hush. I’m fine. Have a fucker of a headache, but that’s all. Ok? Don’t be so godsbedamned dramatic.”“But,” wheezed Link, before he could stop himself.“Backlash. Happens when a spell overloads. It’s fine.”“Is not fine. The triforce-”“Probably created an arc fault in the glyph matrix, or grounded out the resist loop, or maybe burned right through the breakpoint reservoirs. I’ll fix it later.”“How can you talk about machines when you just almost died? Look! Your hand , Gan. It’s starting. Again. Everything we’ve done and it’s all in pieces because she just had to expand her empire into the sacred realm again.”Gan snorted. “Not all of it. Hadn’t thought of a spell matrix being a machine but I don't see why not.”“ Not all of it?!? Gan-”“Triforce. I know. Heard you the first time. The power I covet will destroy me,” grumbled Gan, rolling onto his back and dragging Link up onto his burning chest. “But a divine warrior promised me once that if I embraced something good and bright and true, everything would work out in the end.”“I’m sorry,” sobbed Link, winding his fists in Gan’s shirt. “I’m not any of that. Not anymore. Maybe not ever.”“Hn,” said Gan, and with a whisper of oiled wood and polished brass, the black wooden shutters folded back by magic, flooding the room with every color of light ever woven, and at least three that weren’t. “And yet you kindle it wherever you go, my quicksilver beloved.”Link sobbed harder, shattering under the terrible weight of that undeserved regard. “I ruined it. I just wanted to give you one happy life. They said I couldn’t do it, that your destiny was written forever ago, that it was the will of the gods that the witches torture a child until they give themselves over to malice to make it stop, but that’s wrong. Nothing in any world makes that ok. I tried to help but then I did worse and I can’t fix it and-”“Hush. You’re tangled and delirious and you’re going to make yourself sick. This is why you need a nap,” rumbled Gan, stroking his hair and back like he was a cat.Link shivered and wept and felt rotten. “You don’t understand.”“So tell me again in smaller words,” rumbled Gan softly, his whole body radiating heat.“I did a bad thing,” said Link.“Hn,” said Gan with a snort. “ Slightly larger than that.”Link cringed, hiding his miserable face in Gan’s chest as if that would ever do any good except fill his entire awareness with heat and spice. “I don’t want to lose this warmth. I want to stay here forever. But you - should know the truth about me. I was afraid of coming home, but I couldn’t bear to be away anymore.”“Okay,” said Gan softly, his hands going very still.“You startled me, with the words and the kissing ,” whispered Link. “The bad things from all the befores boiled inside my head and I didn’t mean to hurt you, but I did, and then I was afraid if you touched me again I would do it again. You caught me anyway and you looked so sad , and it hurt , but somehow I thought you were going to kiss me, and I was afraid, but you stopped - and I couldn’t bear that either. And then I was kissing you and - and I didn’t want to stop.”“Uh,” said Gan.“The night I ran - you were dreaming. Sweetheart dreams. Kissing dreams,” began Link.“Oh no,” whispered Gan, and his whole body just stopped . No breath, no pulse for six whole horrible beats.“No listen,” begged Link, tugging on Gan’s shirt as if that would ever move him. He poured out the miserable confession as fast as he could, before his corruption could stop him, his face mashed against Gan’s chest. “I woke up, but slow. Like it wasn’t the first time or the third time or even the hundredth time you held me that soft way. And - I was afraid. But not because of you. Because of me. Because it’s my fault you dream those things. Because I knew in that awful moment I wanted more. Because I know you would never have willingly touched me if I hadn’t already been doing bad things to you forever. Because I know you would rather die than anybody even think that we - that I - used you for that. ”“Don’t be stupid,” stammered Gan.“No - it’s evil what I’ve done to you,” sobbed Link. “I’m so sorry and I don’t know how to fix it and-”“Hey,” cut in Gan, seizing his shoulders and forcing him upright. It was strange looking down at him, especially in the jewelbox rainbow of light streaming through those artful windows. “Dunno if you noticed but I’m kinda the king of demons. I know what evil looks like. You? Are not. Evil. Ok?”“But-” Link began.“No,” said Gan, shaking him hard, his golden eyes flaring bright. “Look at me. You couldn’t steal bread if you were starving. You’re the purest goddamn heart I ever saw.”“That’s different,” stammered Link, shivering and helpless in the hands of his beloved enemy. He couldn’t endure the intensity of his regard, but he couldn’t hide either. “I stole you away and - you called me brother, called me uncle, called me father, and I remember it and I remember you when you were small and - I lied. To you , to everyone . I told myself it was ok to sleep next to you because that was all in the befores and it’s forgotten, but I lied . I thought it would be ok to hug you and braid your hair and I thought I was just being your friend but I lied, Rajo. I know it’s wrong and wicked but I can’t stop wanting the feeling that comes when you touch me.”“Link. Calm down. You tell me not to listen to the shadows. Now I’m telling you,” rumbled Gan, stern and dispassionate once again. Gan made him kneel in square beside him. He kept one hand locked fast around his arm - there was no slipping free without doing harm. “You’ve never forced yourself on me. Ok? I’m pretty good at being wicked all on my own.”“But you’ve never felt that way about me in the befores-”“You had spirit eyes in those times? Mind magic? Then you don’t know that for sure,” said Gan in that hard voice he used whenever he decided he was done listening to anything and would absolutely make sure he got his own way. “There’s plenty of other reasons I might have avoided touching you in the befores, starting with magic, and my past, and my rank, and I dunno, maybe in those other lives I was just better at hiding the fact that I loved you. That I craved your good opinion so deeply it hurts. That I dreamed hopelessly of what it would be like to explore sweetheart things with you.”“But you walked into the forest-”“Whatever my actual reason, I can assure you it wasn’t because of any damn rumor,” cut in Gan. He huffed in frustration and grumbled as he sat upright. He wrapped his massive hands around Link’s shoulders, looking down at him with a strange kind of taut reserve. “You obsess over that one.”Link winced and plucked at the edge of his maroon tunic. “It was the last one, before this. We were so close, but everything fell apart and you-”“We’ll talk about it later then. I’m good at riddles remember? Maybe if you tell me the whole story, I can help you understand why it was necessary. Maybe it will help. But not right now,” rumbled Gan, his hands tense and still, like he was expecting Link to fight him. “How many years did you see between that and going back up the river to meet me in this time?”“Maybe a week? After I found you too late I went to punish the thunder demon and he said I would lose you forever in all the times unless I stopped,” stammered Link. “So I went to the farm because Ensren is smart, and might know if he was lying, and because it would hurt them all worse if they never knew why they would never see us again. But I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t bear it.”“Ah,” said Gan, nodding once, closing his bright eyes. “That’s why it all feels like one life to you. You don’t take time to grieve before you throw yourself into the river, so it all twists together in your head like strands in a cable. It is five years from the year it began, simple, you said once. So when I was fifteen, to you it was more like all of the years you knew me at fifteen, all at once.”“Except I said that three summers ago. I never knew you at twenty-five in any other time, and I was never seventeen before. Only probably-twelve, or one of the three summers after she sent me away, or seven years after it began. We’ve never made it this far before,” said Link, gazing up at him and wondering what his real face was like behind all his careful masks.Gan drew a deep breath, holding it for three long beats. He didn’t open his eyes. “Link. Your son Jojo died twenty-two years ago. I am not your son. I am Ganondorf Dinauru Rajenaya Dragmire Chalut, in three days I will be twenty-eight, and I have loved you as my dearest friend for twenty years without the smallest hope that you could ever love me in return.”“No-” began Link, his voice weak and cracked. He tried to reach for Gan, but his grip was too strong.“I cannot name the day I began to long for you in wicked ways, but when you danced with the moon and returned to me not even an hour later as a warrior of fifteen or sixteen summers, I knew. ”“Gan-”“No. It is important you understand that a man of twenty who absolutely knew better looked at a pure-hearted youth and said to himself, aha, his body ripens after all, you no longer need starve yourself on a diet of childish nonsense and hugs and braids and shared blankets and secret fantasies of masked strangers. I thought I could master it, that I could hide it from you and pretend my touch was as chaste as yours until I could carve out or at least cage that evil for good. You must not torture yourself for your body reacting to the lust I have apparently visited on you in the middle of however many stupid nights since then.”His low words seemed to shiver in that jewelbox room, and the morning sunlight danced in rainbow elegance over his handsome olive skin.“Carve,” whispered Link.Gan winced, turning his face away.“That’s why you started hiding in the bath. You cut when you touch yourself,” whispered Link in horror, remembering too well how after the battle for the moon Gan had grown ever more intensely body-shy. How when Link caught him hurting himself, he kept the bloody towel over his center and tried to cover his thigh again the moment Link dabbed even a little bit of potion on his wounds. He cursed himself for not understanding sooner, feeling a hundred senseless fragments of memory click together into one dazzling crystalline puzzle, jagged and dangerous but inexpressibly beautiful.Gan said nothing.“Can I hug you? Please?”“That - is not a good idea,” rasped Gan, a faint trembling rolling through his body for three long beats.“I want to anyway,” said Link, leaning against his grasp, trying again to reach for him. “I’m not a child anymore either. Not in a long, long time. I thought if I wore that mask hard enough I could go home in the end and everything would be ok. But I never belonged in the forest. It was just a place I lived. It wasn’t home.”“I am not a good person,” rumbled Gan with a shake of his head, pushing him back as he let go. He started to pull away, to gather himself to rise.Link caught his arm and threw his weight against him. Gan cursed him and tried to throw him off, but he was still weakened from the violence of his magic rushing back, and probably from not eating nearly enough to support his massive frame. Link wrestled him back and pinned him to the bed. Stealing him for even one more moment.Gan bared his teeth and glared, tensing to throw him off again.Link bowed over him and nuzzled against his cheek. Stealing a comfort he didn’t deserve but couldn’t stop craving.Gan drew a hissing breath.Link breathed in his beloved, familiar spice, tucking his face into the soft, warm curve of Gan’s neck. A pleasant electric shiver bloomed under his skin, and his cheeks burned with mingled shame and pleasure.Gan made a very strange sound. Small. High. Almost like - a whimper?“Stay,” murmured Link against his neck.Gan shivered, though his body was warm as the Sands at midday, and his breath grew swift and shallow.“Stay with me.”Gan shivered again, uttering that strange small sound, so foreign to all his experience of the man. A tiny, warm wetness rolled against his cheek.Gan never cried.Link’s stomach lurched with guilt. He released Gan’s hands with every intention of tumbling off of him and letting him go.Gan clutched him tight to his chest before the intention could become action.Link wound his hands in Gan’s hair and buried his face in the hollow of his shoulder, holding him and being held as Gan wept so quietly Link would never have known if he hadn’t felt the tears on his own skin.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Afternoon blurred the rainbow brilliance of the little forward bedroom and bathed everything in sultry heat. The cooling rain had yet to break, but the sheer heaviness of the air promised soon, soon. Link watched the colors dance with a languid sort of detachment, riding the gentle rise and fall of his beloved’s breath. He didn’t remember falling asleep any more than he remembered waking, and for once, he didn’t remember dreaming either.Gan sighed in his sleep, and for half a beat, his embrace tightened.Link smiled at the dust motes dancing in the light, studying the strange windows Gan had designed so many years ago. He’d never seen anything like them anywhere in the world, in any time. Most people made no-color windows if they could afford it, or regular patterns in two or three colors. Shrines had colored glass more often, but always in regular patterns or pictures of saints. These were something entirely different, a swirling maelstrom of color and shape bound together in filigree copper and gold.Link still couldn’t find any order in the chaos of it. Gan never did or made or said anything without logic and purpose, whether he bothered explaining it to anyone or not. If he just kept looking at the design, maybe he would solve the puzzle someday. Link was ok with it taking a while. He didn’t really want to move anyway.Sleeping in the arms of his beloved enemy eased something inside of him he’d never known existed until his mistakes ripped it away. In another life, he would have thanked the gods for this glimpse of peace. Here at the edge of the world, in a hidden sanctuary of light and shadow, Link understood that he could never again worship gods that would damn a soul to misery and defeat before he was even born, all for the sake of completing some stupid prophecy.Nor could he forgive any god cruel enough to save him from the Arbiter’s Blade - only to let the cowards cast him into the void immediately after.It didn’t make any sense.The warmth encircling him made sense.The rise and fall and steady thrumming vitality of the man under him made sense.The sudden clench and shiver of want underneath his navel made somewhat less sense, but rocking his hips a little sorted that right out.Link enjoyed puzzles he could actually solve .“Unnh,” mumbled Gan, his hands twitching.“I’m here,” murmured Link.“Nnnn,” whined Gan, his breath quickening.Link lifted his ear from Gan’s chest, dismayed to see a frown spoiling his striking features. He combed his fingers through Gan’s wild hair, soft and careful.Gan whimpered. “Ligh’ oh m’lii. Mmmback mmback m’light.”“It’s ok. I’m with you. It’s alright,” murmured Link, throat tight. Gan would hate it if he knew anyone ever saw him need anything. “Everything will be ok this time. You’re not dreaming anymore. You’re not alone. I’m here .”“Nnnf. Nnuh. Bad,” mumbled Gan, shifting under him like he was trying to burrow down into the bed. “Be good b’good fin’a light.”Link sighed, hitching himself up Gan’s massive chest. He stretched to nuzzle against his face, murmuring the same little encouragements, over and over, but nothing seemed to ease Gan’s distress. He twitched and tried - ineffectively - to jerk away when Link’s leg slid across his own, but at the same time wrapped his arms tighter. Link tried to be patient with whatever dream held him, feeling guilty for all the unnumbered nights he’d surely kept Gan from rest with his own nightmares.“Can’t. Can’t do’t. Bad bad s’m fault lef’rever. Be good be good,” moaned Gan, his whole body tensing as if he braced to absorb a blow.Link started to sit upright, his thigh sliding across Gan’s center.Gan whimpered and moved towards the pressure. “Nnn. bad.”Link felt a rush of heat in his cheeks - and in his own center. His body reminded him that it had been four days since he attended that particular physical need, and memory reminded him all too intensely the visceral impression he’d tormented himself with last time he touched himself.“Why? Why does it have to be bad?” Link asked the rainbow light.Gan moaned and bit his lip, mumbling something about light again.Link swore under his breath and rocked forward to kiss Gan’s cheek, trying to think of how to wake him without startling him.Gan mumbled something incoherent, turning towards his touch.Link’s heart stumbled.He pressed his lips against the edge of that sleepy frown, hoping he was being gentle enough.“Hn-?” Gan twitched, blinking blearily up at nothing.Link couldn’t remember how to words. He offered another tiny kiss instead.Gan sighed, his eyes sliding shut again. His hands relaxed on Link’s back, and his staff throbbed against Link’s thigh, and a little of the tension smoothed from his features.Link licked his lips and leaned in to kiss his beloved enemy in earnest.He still felt like honey tasted.Gan kissed him back with the softest of sighs, spreading his hands and sliding them over tunic and trews. He shifted his weight, pulling Link closer, draping him astride and lifting his own knees to make a ledge of his thighs.He felt like creamed chocolate with spicebark and erisfruit dust on top.Link rode the thrill of pleasure and fear, teasing his tongue past the other man’s lips, tentatively rocking his seat against the firm heat beneath him. One of the fairies liked to do that to him once, and he remembered that feeling nice.Gan moaned and parted his lips, beckoning Link’s tongue with his own.Link followed his invitation, trying a little pulsing taste that somehow sparked a thread of lightning down his spine and directly into his own root. Memory flared, distracting him from the kissing he was actually doing to remind his skin how the desert fairy liked him to kiss between her thighs, and one of the mountain fairies never wanted to kiss his lips, but only his body. He wondered if Gan would like those kinds of kisses, and shivered all the way into his bones.“Hnnn,” said Gan when he pulled back, licking his lips sleepily.Link grinned and kissed the tip of his nose.“Nuh?” Gan startled awake at that, blinking fast.Link bit his lip, bracing for his temper to flare.“Hn. Strange dream,” he rumbled softly, staring up at him.Link shook his head.Gan frowned.“Not a dream. Real, ” murmured Link, caressing his neck.Gan’s golden eyes opened wide, his pupils pinned, and he scrambled to touch his own wrists and arms and neck, looking for chains that weren’t there anymore.Link rocked back, bracing his hands on the other man’s chest and trying not to think too hard about the delightful stiffness under him. It didn’t work very well, and he was sure if Gan so much as glanced down, he would be upset by Link’s rudely throbbing distraction.“Oh no,” breathed Gan, fingers clawed at the hollow of his bare throat. “What have I done? It shouldn’t be possible-”“It’s ok. The miasma of the cursed dead loses power where the Light shines,” said Link softly, rubbing his left hand in tiny circles at the center of Gan’s chest. The mark of the chosen had faded while the other man slept, leaving only a faint glimmer on the back of his right hand, like a tattoo pricked in liquid gold. “The ancient demon who brought the red plague and the miasma into the world may still live in our time, but he can’t get you anymore. You’re safe.”Gan frowned up at him. “Nightmare? The fireflower will tear the wall now? Lizal strike?”“You haven’t been sleeping much, have you? You’re awake my love. I’m here with you. I’m real, and you’re real, and-”“Hn. Now I know I’m dreaming,” grumbled Gan, scrubbing his hands over his face. He heaved a great sigh, and rocked himself upright with complete disregard for dumping Link off balance in his lap.Link cursed him and clung to Gan’s somewhat bedraggled white linen shirt, scrambling to right himself astride again.Gan frowned down at him like he was a troublesome equation. “You’re wearing the wrong color.”Link groaned and sat back to haul the maroon tunic over his head. He flung it across the room, perversely satisfied when it knocked over a raku fired pot to shatter on the floor. He planted his fists on his hips, daring Gan to complain about it.“Hn,” said Gan, ruffling his hair and averting his gaze. “Hate the ones where I dream that I wake up. Hope you’re sleeping better than I am, but I doubt it. You looked a wreck, like you’ve been having the screaming, falling terror for weeks on end.”Link sighed. “It’s worse when we’re apart.”“I can’t risk breaking my promise,” said Gan, shaking his head. “It’s better this way. I need to train myself out of responding to your cries, and sooner begun is sooner mastered. One more slip and you might not come back next time.”“I will always come home,” said Link, embracing him as much as his annoyingly small stature would allow.Gan snorted in derision. “Yeah, dream you always says that. So where’d you hide the chains in this one? Let’s get on with it so the shadows will show their teeth and I can actually wake up.”“It’s ok. You don’t need them anymore.” Link strained to lock his hands together around him, to no avail whatever. He might be able to circle Gan’s waist, but even with how thin he was in this life, his chest remained impossibly broad.Gan made a rude noise. “Great, we’re going to revisit all the tired old trials this morning. One would think the version of you that lives in my head would partake of my own reason, but no, you’re always just as ignorant and stubborn.”Link thunked his back, his ears burning in embarrassment. “Yeah, thanks, love you too. Not everyone got to grow up in a damn library.”Gan tensed under him. “That’s not what I meant.”“No, you’ve always thought of anyone who didn’t know basically everything you do as stupid. Zelda is smart and good with books - but you called even her foolish.” Link sighed, resting his weight against his chest and wondering what would persuade him this was real. He decided Gan’s dreams must be as visceral as his own, or maybe his magic made them even more so, to not believe the evidence of his senses at all. “Which is probably fair, because she is not being a good queen this time. If it’s stupid that I don’t know big words, that I’m not good with books or inventing machines, and that I only know your language because you taught me, then yeah. I’m stupid. Just because the things I do know aren’t important to you- ”“That’s not true,” said Gan, but for once he wasn’t snappish about countering something. He actually unbent enough to offer a gentle hug too. “Beauty pours from your hands so easily when you spin and carve and build, you can coax any and every growing thing to flourish, you charm every beast you lay hands on, and you are always so patient and kind and hardworking. And that’s without counting your fearsome excellence with literally every weapon ever made. If I lived a thousand years I could never master half the arts you have. No one can master everything . Not even gods.”Link felt weirdly hot and squirmy inside to hear praise from him. “You never say that.”“Don’t be stupid. I say it in a million ways every day. Do I not warp my looms with your threads? Do I not treasure every tool and furnishing you’ve ever made for me? Do I not clothe you and your house in the softest cloth and most sublime patterns I can design? Do I not devour every feast you offer and design ever more intricate marquetry and machines to satisfy your love of puzzles, and translate every storybook I can get my hands on to amuse you? Do I not forge elegant chisels and spindles and shovels and blades to honor your skill and make pleasant your work?”“Oh,” whispered Link.“I understood long ago you’re uncomfortable with words, and speech is the most fragile and fickle of patterns anyway,” said Gan with a shrug. “So why would I give you something you have no use for and do not trust?”“But words are important to you, ” murmured Link.Gan snorted. “Who gives gifts that pleases themself steals thrice their worth.”“What if - I don’t know how to give you the things you like?”“The master who prefers to drink from a jeweled goblet of their own design over the pinched clay cup of an apprentice holds no love for either,” said Gan.Link sighed, nuzzling his face against Gan’s shirt. He’d always thought Gan chose to make his own clothes mostly from bumpier plain cloth out of preference or maybe because of sheer quantity of yardage he needed.He’d been wrong about so many things. He saw now that dancing the patterns he learned under the Green, in Hyrule, through all the failed times when he thought he understood his ancient enemy only carried him in circles and kept him from understanding anything about his beloved friend.He wriggled up Gan’s lap, thinking somehow that pressing more of his body into the hug would make it stronger, the way putting more wind into words made them louder. It did feel very nice. It just also meant that his tender places rubbed against Gan’s heat and reminded him that his body wanted other kinds of touching very badly.“Maybe I want to hear your words anyway,” murmured Link, half distracted by the mad urge to rub their bodies together on purpose. “Maybe I want to learn how to make jewels for you.”“Unf,” said Gan, flexing his thighs and tilting his hips in some kind of way that made pleasant lightning dance inside his center. “It’s going to be that kind of dream now is it?”“Maybe,” said Link, pulling his lip between his teeth and trying to echo his movement. Gan slid his hands down , spanning the small of his back and the curve of his seat, pulling him into the strange little rocking pattern. It was wicked, and it was delicious, and he knew he ought to stop, at least until Gan realized he wasn’t actually dreaming.Link did not stop.He planted his knees against the sleeping platform and stretched up to beg a kiss, frustrated that he couldn’t manage to have both forbidden treats at once.“Mmmnn hope I locked the workroom door,” mumbled Gan, tugging Link’s shirt up out of the way so he could slide his hand against his bared back.“Who cares,” said Link, fumbling to unthread the laces of Gan’s deep shirt placket. He wanted to kiss his throat where the hateful bloodiron miasma chains had bound him far too long.“Hn. Reckless little hero,” teased Gan, adjusting his seat to the edge of the platform. “And what if you should awaken and catch me dreaming of you with spear in hand again?”Link hummed in fuzzy thought, savoring the wicked pleasure of stealing under the gaping placket to kiss his beloved enemy’s bare chest. He tried to think of an answer, but most of his mind was busy wondering if Gan’s nipple would feel nice on his tongue or if that was something particular to Great Fairies, and if Gan would like kisses there.“Oh,” said Gan, his voice lilting high in surprise. “That - is a new one. Oh no. Why did I ever think of such a thing?”Link giggled. Maybe he did know secrets Gan didn’t, after all.Gan’s stomach growled ferociously, interrupting his efforts to mirror the kisses on the other side.“Oh, not yet,” moaned Gan, skimming his hand up the back of his neck and threading his fingers under his loose queue to cradle the back of his head and hold him in place.Link’s stomach rumbled in echo. He ignored it and sucked Gan’s taut nipple between his teeth.“Oh my Light five more minutes,” breathed Gan, barely audible over his angry stomach.Link released him with a wet little pop, wickedly pleased when Gan loosed a startled, squeaky moan. “Yeah, we should make lunch. Eventually.”“Hnnn,” said Gan, pulling him to the other nipple, wordlessly begging for him to mirror that . “Just five minutes. Is a good dream. Won’t mind the mess. Did the wash yesterday. Oh I ache for you.”“Hmmmnnyeah,” said Link, giving him everything he’d asked for. “Kisses, then lunch?”“Yeah,” agreed Gan, over the objections of their stomachs.“Mmm lay down?” Link kissed the center of his chest one more time and sat back. “Wait. Shirt first, then lay down.”“Hnn?” Gan tipped his head in artless confusion, even as he let go of Link to humor his suggestion.“Wonna try something,” said Link, guiding the larger man to lay back with the lightest pressure of fingertips spread against his chest.“Okay-? This is - new? Did I pass out and hit my head on the bench?” Gan rubbed at his own forehead like he truly expected to find a bruise.Link giggled, sweeping his hands over Gan’s bare chest, meandering towards his waist and the taut edge of his side-button trousers. “Don’t like?”“Oh, no. Like this wild thread too much,” said Gan, breath shallow and fast. “Hadn’t thought of this arrangement. Oh I’m never going to be able to sleep next to you now that I’ve this in my head.”Link tipped his head and brought his seat forward to align firm and tender again. “This?”“ Haaah - ok, that either. Sa’ikhusa what is wrong with me? You literally just screamed at me for kissing you by accident two hours ago and here I am dreaming of tumbling with you and stealing pleasure on your tongue?”“Oh,” said Link, feeling hot and fluttery and dizzy all over in spite of his inconvenient hunger. “So you would like it if I kissed you there?”Gan covered his face with his hands and moaned.“You can tell me to stop,” said Link, sitting back to lift his pressure from Gan’s throbbing staff under him.“I can’t, I can’t. I tried, sa’ikhusa I’ve tried to stop wanting you,” moaned Gan, digging his fingers into his skin like he would tear the thoughts from his head. “Please, take me quickly - finish it for good or ill - I can’t bear the thought of your rage if you find me like this.”Link ached with guilt and shame to see him so vulnerable and so hopeless. “What if I’m not angry? What if I’ve wanted you in secret too? So secret I couldn’t even tell myself the truth?”Their stomachs roared in unison, spoiling the tremulous silence.Gan sighed, and let his arms fall to his sides. “That would be a beautiful, terrible dream. But I think my stupid appetite’s about to banish you, love.”“It’s not a dream,” murmured Link, petting his bare stomach. “You’re not alone anymore. I am with you. I don’t know how to help you believe me if you still can’t believe this.”Gan blinked at him, and his lips moved, but no sound came out.“Maybe I can kiss you while you think about it?”Gan gestured helplessly in vague assent, still speechless.Link grinned down at him, toying with the buttons of his trousers, making the polished horn discs pop through the crisp linen one by one.“Um,” Gan rasped.Link bowed to kiss his chest.The tender hollow where his ribs met his smooth, firm stomach.Wriggled down Gan’s lap to lick a mischievous spiral around his navel.Gan drew a hissing breath, winding his fists in the mudstained white sheets.Link teased his thumbs under the waistband of his trousers, easing the cloth down. He watched Gan’s face for guidance, but he was wearing his opaque mask again, and Link could not be at all sure his opinion. His spear on the other hand throbbed mightily, and leapt into the open as soon as it was able.“Oh,” whispered Link, staring in wonder. His cheeks actually hurt from blushing, and he told himself he should have expected Gan to be enormous in every respect, that he should have known already from rubbing against him and sitting astride his lap, but he’d never looked at another man so close before.“Uh oh,” rasped Gan, his muscles tensing and his pulse swift with panic.Link met his eye, licking his lips in mischief like a wolfos.“I am not lunch-?” Gan stammered, lilting and high and uncertain.Link laughed, and kissed him.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
The rain broke as they drowsed in sweaty lassitude, pattering soft and light against the dim rainbow windows. Hunger gnawed at him, carving a hollow against his spine, but he couldn’t persuade himself to move. He snuggled against Gan’s side, and wondered what provisions might remain in the cold room, or if they would need to eat eggs and fish and plan a trip to Clocktown.Gan’s stomach roared, startling him awake.Link held his breath, laying very still and praying to - not the gods, but perhaps to the idea of Light - that this time Gan would believe himself truly awake from the first.Gan groaned. “Sa’ikhusa, my head . This is your fault, little hero. Up - up with you, and get your pale ass down to the kitchen before I start sparking.”Link sighed, rolling away and heaving himself upright. His legs didn’t seem terribly interested in obeying him. “Green potion-?”“Eeyugh. Probably? And any sugar you can find,” grumbled Gan, rolling onto his side and curling himself in stone position with his face in his hands.Link gazed down at him, grateful for the moment that the dim jewelbox room hid the webwork of sorrowful scars marring his smooth olive skin. Hard enough knowing they existed at all, worse still feeling the delicate ridges under his fingers. “Do you want me to fetch cake from town?”Gan just grunted.Link sighed and knelt on the sleeping platform again, prying at his fingers. “Well if you want cake you’ll have to give me the flute. And more kisses before I go.”Gan swore, glaring up at him. “Food. Now.”“Kiss?”Gan growled and hauled himself upright. He grabbed Link’s shoulder and pulled him off the bed, marching him to the door with a muttered string of oaths.Link sighed, lingering in the open door, torn between his own hunger and the pull of laziness, his desire to see Gan happy and his nagging worry about Gan’s possible intentions for his absence.Gan decided for him, shoving him the rest of the way through with no gentleness whatever. “Yours the mischief, yours the physick. Go cook something. Like maybe an entire ox.”“But-” Link began.Gan slammed the door, stranding him naked in the dim hallway.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Gan’s temper improved after an entire bottle of green restorative potion, three vast bowls of spicy seared beef in savory mushroom broth, and a heaping plate of honeyed pumpkin mash. Kettle bread and mint-laced chiva steamed away atop the tiny midship hold stove, and Link brought a sack of stonenuts to the table to linger in Gan’s company while he chopped the rich nutmeat for his favorite cake.“You don’t have to do that,” rumbled Gan without looking up from his second plate of pumpkin.Link shrugged. “I like you to be happy. Sometimes I go to the border fortress to steal better cakes from a famous Kharish for you, but it takes a few days even with the flute or she’ll get in trouble with the Exalted Sun’s Heart. Also I would miss your birthday.”Gan paused with his spoon halfway to his mouth. He set it back down, working his jaw like he needed to chew his words before he said them. “Who is she?”“Nabooru,” said Link softly, watching his face. “She took lead of the council and the army five years ago.”“Hn,” said Gan, raising his golden eyes, his expression blank. “The Rova would never have allowed that unless they were certain their puppet spells were perfectly solid.”Link swallowed hard, setting down the knife. He breathed deeply, striving for peace. Whatever happened next, would happen. He didn’t want to lie anymore. “A powerful sorcerer taught me once that the spell can’t outlive the caster.”Gan sat bolt upright, palms flat on the table. His expression did not change.“I killed them in cold blood five years ago. I’m sorry.”For a moment, Gan said nothing. He didn’t look away though, and his breath remained steady. “And their gem?”“I don’t know which one you mean, because they always had lots of jewels,” said Link, holding the edge of the table so hard his knuckles ached. “I took what was left of them and everything from their workrooms and dropped it all in lava inside Death Mountain. I’m sorry if you wanted any of it. I don’t know if that actually destroys magic things, but it’s definitely harder to get back.”Gan shook his head. “No. I - will consider forging a memento after my own design. I want nothing of theirs.”Link nodded, and looked away. He wasn’t sure how to feel, now that the truth lay between them like a naked sword. Not that Gan didn’t know he’d killed to defend their home, and to keep the moon in the sky, and in the befores, but now that he’d confessed, this seemed different somehow.Gan stood, his - clean! - soft linen trousers whispering as he stalked around the sturdy horseapple-wood table with its cheerful gold-and-orange tablecloth.Link couldn’t find the courage to look up.Gan sat on the bench next to him, making the innocent wood scream in protest. Heat rolled off his skin, and lightning pricked the inside of his own as it had so many years ago after the disastrous lizal battle when he lost his hand for a while.“I couldn’t get to them until after the solstice blood moon in the year it began. I tried in the befores, many times. Something very old and strong and dark helped them, and every time I got close they retreated to their true lair deep in the Sands, behind a miasma so deep I couldn’t survive crossing it no matter what face I wore or how many potions I carried.”Gan grunted. “How did you lure them out?”Link forced himself to peel his hands off the table. He stretched and flexed his aching bones, struggling to assemble the words in a less horrible order. He laced his fingers together and surrendered. “I pretended to be you.”
Gan brushed his hair out of his eyes, leaning close. He tucked his hand under Link’s chin and made him lift his face. His golden eyes were so incredibly, achingly bright.
Link sighed, savoring the gentle intensity of his touch,
trying
not to wonder if it would be the last.
“I know you’ve been fighting to change our stars for centuries, and I’m only twenty-eight. But I’m not a child. I have a right to choose my path and pattern. You
must
stop trying to protect me from the truth.”
Link nodded, feeling every inch of his shame.
Gan bowed to press a chaste kiss on his forehead. “You don’t have to be the lone hero anymore. I can’t carry the memories for you, but I’m
relatively
confident the most powerful sorcerer in the world
might
be of some use to you in the coming battle.”
“What battle?” Link echoed, cold with dread and completely lost. “We won. Seven years. It’s over.”
“Don’t be stupid,” rumbled Gan with a smirk. “You said yourself the triforce has shattered. So. It’s time the savior of Hyrule has a few words with her wayward monarch.”
“Oh,” said Link.
“Hn,” said Gan, bringing that sardonic grin closer - closer - teasing his cheek with the tip of his nose - so close Link could taste his spice-laden breath. “But first.”
Link trembled.
“Kisses,” purred Gan.
Link melted.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Spring in the thornbriar gardens hummed with life. Birds flirted by above the nets and glittering lacewings darted through the dappled light. Link sat on the worn stone bench next to the blurry statue of Farore under the ancient apple tree, drowning in the beloved, painful scent of berries ripening in the summer sun, and the soothing fragrance of flowering memoryleaf. He clung to yet another cup of applejack, listening to the drowsy sound of honeybees getting drunk in the sage, and angelwings singing to one another under the squash vines.He knew he should be happy in the soft summer twilight, exactly as he always remembered it, before the demon mask, before the forest fire, before he had to leave the farm in sorrow. He knew he should be at peace to watch the blue milkweed dance merrily in a gentle breeze, and lazy young cucco wander the pea gravel paths, hunting for a bedtime snack. He knew he should be heartened to know that every dream and thought and yearning for comfort and peace evoked this exact, vibrantly real place because his beloved son made it so, leashing memory and a conjured perfection woven from a thousand other memories onto every lever in his head that could possibly connect to the idea of happiness. He knew he should be grateful for such a gift, for this magic that sought only to make joy attainable. Solid. Known. Real. Once, long ago, Idrea’s garden had seemed like paradise, an oasis of hope and light and life. Once, he thought he could unmake the prophecy if he just ran far enough, worked hard enough. But in the thirteenth year after it began, surrounded by the echoes of beauty that seeded over the course of so many failures, he could not see anything but shadows.“I’m not smart, Jojo. I don’t understand why you did this. Why you would paint this inside my head so faithfully, and then leave me. I still miss you,” said Link to the garden, to the ghost of his beloved son. “I see so much of you in him. The man you should have grown up to be. The man I knew you could be, if only you would have faith in the Light. In yourself. I couldn’t be the father you wanted, because I didn’t know how. I never had one. I don’t know what the love of a father is like . And I still wanted my Rajenaya back. I thought I could hide how the memories tangled if I said you were my brother’s son. I’m trying to learn to separate you in my head, but sometimes I still can’t, and I hurt him because I'm seeing you . Sometimes all of the yous. And now he wants me to go to war. Beauty in one hand and death in the other. Why does it always end in blood, Jojo?”“Because that’s how life works,” said Ensren, ambling up the path from the house. “It starts bloody and ends bloody. It’s what you do with the middle part that matters.”“Ensren my brother,” said Link. “Tell me Da Corfo talked them out of it.”“Given there’s still a small army camped in the south hayfield, I’m going to say no.”“I should never have brought him here,” said Link, shaking his head. “I will try to protect them on the field, but I-”“Roan is a commissioned officer of thirty-three and master of his own destiny. You said yourself he was top of his class in the academy in his last life, a competent fighter and a sharp tactician. This is the kind of noble cause he’s longed for since he was a boy. I suspect if you’d marched around us, he’d have followed the rumor of you inside of a week,” said Ensren.“Nothing about war is noble,” said Link, shaking his head.“No. But standing up for those who can’t is. When I stepped out he was making a battlefield model on the table and explaining how he would counter a division of heavy horse without losing half your fighters. I don’t want my baby brother going to war either, but I think he’s got more than a fair chance of saving a lot of lives if he does.”Link sighed, and drank more of his applejack, and tried not to think about how Roan died in the time Gan found the demon mask. “But, Taedra.”Ensren grunted, and stuffed his hands in his pockets, and stood before the fat weathered stone statue of Farore. He said nothing for a long time.Taedra was nearly thirty, with two children of her blood, and three others from her two wives. Link hadn’t managed to learn their names or ages or even their professions, much less untangled how their quintet actually worked . He agreed with her that the children would be well cared for in her absence, but he could not understand how she could leave her home and her beloveds to fight beside strangers in a foreign war.Link would never have left the Green if the war had not taken it from him. He would have happily stayed a child at the farm forever if the mask-demon hadn’t lured Gan to his doom. He would have gladly lived out his days in obscurity as a simple mason and carpenter if only his Jojo could have been happy in that life.Even now, he followed his beloved into a perilous future that terrified him in every possible way, to fight a war he’d spent twenty-seven years trying to stop in this time alone, mostly because he could not bear to be parted from him again.Gan believed in his purpose so fiercely, and already hundreds of fighters left their homes and their work to add their strength to this cause. The cause of Hyrule. Not her monarchy this time, but her people. The cause of wresting the most powerful weapon in the world from the hands of the little girl inside the Queen, who in the end would destroy everything she loved best because she was terrified of the dark.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
The climb to the far east pasture felt like forever. Peaceful green slopes dotted with hundreds of different kinds of wildflowers, all of which his adopted brother had once loved to collect amd catalogue and cultivate and draw in crisp black ink in journal after journal.His beloved enemy was not a naturalist in this life. Nor the brilliant engineer and architect the best schools in the world could have trained him to be. Not that his machines and puzzles weren’t still beautiful and elegant, but he wasn’t driven to excel in those arts in this life.Link glanced to his left, his heart aching to see his beloved arrayed in black chainmail and an elegant raven’s wing coat embroidered with every shade of gold, his mass of hair bound up in golden ribbons, a deceptively plain winged topaz ornament gracing his brow. He carried twin swords now, with golden hilts and bright orange tassels, and every time he danced with them in practice bouts, his blades wove elegant nets of lightning in the air.In this life, he chose to set aside his weaving and his books and every other art to become a warlord.For Hyrule, he said.For the People, he said.Link tried to believe him.Five years now he’d carried the mark of Power on his hand, and grown stronger every day. In muscle, in magic, in martial grace. He was magnificent and terrifying and his spirit blazed like the sun.“You’re doing the thing,” Gan rumbled, without turning to meet his eye.“I was admiring your handsome face,” said Link.“Liar,” said Gan.“Ok, I was also thinking about how much I don’t want you doing any of the fighting or even anywhere near the battle.”“I may not be the swordsman you are, but I’m not that bad,” said Gan with a sardonic grin and a sidelong glance.“You know what I meant,” grumbled Link, kicking at a clump of duckgrass, and trudging onward.“Hn,” said Gan. They’d talked about it a hundred thousand times already. Argued about it until Gan stormed off to brood at the horizon and Link wept over a cup of spirits while lightning itched under his skin.Gan still believed the enchantment lingering in his blood was his fault, a kind of magical scar from a disastrous lizal raid some nineteen years ago. Link wasn’t so sure anymore. It had taken him two years and several trips to the secret desert grotto for Jojo’s many notebooks to stumble his way through the story of that life. Gan envied the depth of occult knowledge and sorcerous finesse those precious journals suggested, but he learned more actual magic from the much older books he’d written in the time of the first disaster of the demon mask. He said the garden dream was most certainly a spell, and that the voice in the fog dream was probably a distorted memory of it being cast. That he’d probably woven it to try to mitigate Link’s nightmares, especially since all of his old journals suggested he’d been much stronger in mind and spirit magics in his other lives.Link wasn’t so sure of that either. He didn’t remember having any falling-in-fog dreams before Jojo walked into the forest. He agreed with Gan that the first part of the dream, the searching and the fear, was mostly a fuzzy memory of trying to follow Jojo and getting trapped in the mists of the Lost Woods. Only the pure of heart could navigate the sacred mists. It was the rules. Link tried anyway. He didn’t actually remember most of it, and he didn’t remember how he’d ended up in the Beedle wagon.Neither had the Beedle, really. He said he’s seen a traveler beside the road. A stranger kneeling beside an injured man. He stopped to help. When he recognized Link, he poured potion down his throat and wrapped him up in bandages until he could reach Corfo and Idrea’s farm.Not a doctor.The farm .Two months away.The Beedle didn’t know what happened to the stranger. Didn’t know his name or remember him leaving. Said he was too distracted by the work of doctoring Link and his lamed mule to think about it.But he’d woken up wearing the enchanted snake gems, with topaz jewelry piled atop his left hand.Gan said blood magic was amazingly powerful. That someone with strong spirit eyes could not only look inside another person, but change things. That it was dangerous to do, for both the seer and their target, because their spirits could get tangled. Because doing too much could damage one or both irreparably.But in this time, whenever Link most needed rest or comfort, the visceral memory of Idrea’s garden filled him.When he was afraid, lightning danced under his skin.When the other nightmares came for him, the voice in the fog sang and shouted, drawing him away from whatever ghosts pursued him until he fell awake.When he took a grievous blow, or suffered the touch of any enchanted weapon, lightning sizzled in his blood and arced from his wounds to strike his enemy.And in this life, Gan had never been able to see his spirit or read his thoughts.“You said you wanted to talk, but we’ve been walking out to the middle of nowhere for the last hour and you’ve said exactly forty-six words,” rumbled Gan, though he continued to follow at a leisurely pace. “So a dozen of those were an outright lie.”“We’re almost there,” said Link.“Where? The top of yet another hill that’s exactly the same as the last seven? Whatever you need to say, just say it.”Link shook his head. “This one is different. Patience.”Gan just grunted, hooked his thumbs in his belt, and followed. He didn’t allow any hint of reaction to show when the little shrine peeked into view. Nor did he say a word, though he paused to examine one of the pale river stones Ensren - or somebody - arranged in a circle six long paces out from the brightly painted shrine in every direction.He looked at the tiny building.He walked around behind it, golden eyes narrowed in thought.Link stood just under the eve, prayer flags fluttering above his head with the soft chime of tiny copper bells, and waited for him.Gan said nothing, just came around to the front of the shrine and propped a heeled boot on the edge of the porch, deceptively casual. His eyes darted from one thing to another, studying every detail. He surely noticed the unusual height of the otherwise tiny wooden building - even he would have to stretch to touch the joists. His attention lingered over Link’s head for some time, no doubt taking in the glittering mosaic covering the back wall, and the simple wooden effigy before it.Link waited until Gan was ready to meet his eye. He drew a deep breath, intensely aware of the lightning gathering inside him, ready to strike down whatever threat kindled his fear. “I do not know the name of this god, if he ever had one. I don’t know who decided to make the idol, or in which life. This shrine has slipped sideways in time, touching many places in the river, like the ship and the ruin.”Gan tipped his head slightly to one side, gazing down at him with that detached, sardonic smirk he wore so often, like he found something amusing even in the worst circumstances. “There is something like a timeveil sphere - but thinner, with random fractals instead of glyphs - which reaches to the stone border. None of them contain bluestone ore though, just traces of lumen crystal.”“It’s different than the ocarina or the ship’s orb or the big shard I keep in the Sands. I can’t see the magic here or control it. I didn’t even know it had slipped sideways until Ensren told me things were appearing on the altar that no one in this time put there.”Gan raised a brow. “Have you tried using one of your songs inside this veil?”“I don’t think it changes the way the sun dances for me,” confessed Link, entering the little shrine to grab the bottle of tiny bluestone shards. “But other people don’t know any different when I move through the river. So maybe these are a different kind of magic stone.”Gan took the bottle and poured a few shards into his palm. He turned them over, frowning at the glowing stones. He closed his fist sharply, making them click together. The edges cut his palm a little, but the bloody stones kept glowing. Like the magic in them couldn’t be turned off. He handed the bottle back, gesturing impatiently. “The flute.”Link sighed, and pulled the precious ocarina from his belt-pouch.Gan held the shards one by one next to the flute, studying them with a frighteningly intense focus. He didn’t seem to notice the mark of the chosen glowing through his black kidskin gloves. “The glyphs match.”“Ok,” said Link with a shrug. He’d never really understood how the magic worked. It just - did.“No, I mean they match . Perfectly. The thickness is right. The curve is right. The weight is right. This is your flute. ”Link frowned. “That’s not possible. Nothing can break bluestone. The shard I have in the desert is one smooth piece, just kinda plain.”Gan looked up. “The triforce is capable of anything . You said the entire glyph manifested briefly in the time the Hylian arbiters caught me. So it - or the powers behind it - have at least some rudimentary independence of will with respect to its bearers. The river of time has split in many places. In at least one of them, one of us wanted this flute obliterated very badly , the branches of time severed.”Ice and lightning coiled around his spine, his heart. “I would never - she would never - I don’t remember any time like that.”Gan gave the flute back, still toying with the shards in his other hand. “I suspect that’s for the best.”“Well - that’s not why I needed to bring you here.”“I know,” said Gan.Link frowned, annoyed by his casual arrogance. He wasn’t sure if that habit was actually getting worse or if his dread of the uncertain future just made it seem worse. “You don’t.”Gan said nothing, but he gave the shards back.He also didn’t say anything as Link took all the offerings and incense and the black silk velvet cloth from the altar.He didn’t say anything or offer to help as Link heaved the massive oak slab up to reveal the hollow space inside.Beside the coiled red braid Saria threw at him, beside the little curved pruning knife he’d found not even twenty feet from Jojo’s shattered body, beside the bag of snake jewels and topaz baubles, the most terrible weapon he possessed stared back at him with blank white eyes.“Don’t look,” he said without turning. “It will make you sick.”Gan merely grunted.“It is necessary,” he said to the mask in his hands. To the lightning inside him already buzzing with fury. The enchantment in his blood would fight the divine spirit in the mask. It would hurt.The mask would win.Ensren said he screamed when he changed form. Link believed him.He stood, eye-to-eye with the eight-foot tall blasphemous idol. The power of a dead war god coursed through his flesh. The weight of Biggoron’s knife on his back became the eternal dread might of the spiral-forged rainbow sword.“I lied,” he said, softly as this body was able.“Hn,” said Gan from behind him. “You done being dramatic yet, heroboy?”Link turned. It was always strange to be even a little taller than his ancient enemy, but the strength of a god - even a minor, defeated god - could never be content in a frail mortal skin. “ How long have you known?”“I’m not stupid,” said Gan with a snort. Which wasn’t really an answer, but he was too proud to admit he’d ever believed the ruse at all. “I’m more interested in the question of which one is your true face.”“It is not so simple, ” said Link with a sigh. “ I was a hero once, long ago. I became the hopes and dreams of the hundred thousand million lives that balance upon this blade. In the name of the Light which must not perish, I am bound to eternal battle against hatred and fear and cruelty so long as blood is spilled in the name of Darkness.”“Hn. And what of the blood spilled in the name of Light? How are the hopes and dreams of those souls less deserving of a divine guardian?”“What mercy must be deserved, what help must have reasons , is neither loving nor good. ” Link held out his hand, and under all the raw power of the war god, his heart hurt when Gan would not take it. “Answer this riddle, Chosen of Power. Why does the King of Evil weep? It is a rock that disturbs the river of time. You do bad things. You break the rules. You lie. You lust for power. You embrace darkness and violence. And yet you aid a stranger. Hunger for justice. Spare an enemy. Love the wretch with your blood on his hands. Why? ”“I told you long ago I would one day have the secrets of the stars and the reins of the wind and the power of a god. I told you I would become the most powerful Rova ever known,” said Gan, stepping up into the shrine. “I exist to wield both shuttle and blade, Link. You cannot love only one part of me and slay the other. King isn’t a title. It’s who I am. It is my nature to do what others can’t, to create what needs to exist and destroy what should not. This is why the actual Demon King accepted my mothers’ offering - though He must have seen that I would fight him, He surely also knew that He could use my ruthless Will to restore balance to our world as leverage to destroy the seals binding Him.”“He has already won so many times,” said Link, shaking his head sadly.Gan snorted, completely fearless before a god of death. “Why else do you think I ever needed the power of the Triforce? We are different in many ways, but our purpose is the same. If it is Evil to strike down a bigoted tyrant and challenge the prophecy of unjust gods and refuse the claim of my mothers’ dark master, then I proudly raise my banner as the greatest king of evil ever to reign. I weep because I am human. I weep because prophecy leaves no room for love. I weep because I know the value of every smallest, most insignificant thread, and because I know the Great Pattern requires that some be cut that others may begin.”Link drew the divine sword, carefully turning it hilt foreword, and took a knee before his beloved enemy. “Then where you go, I shall go. Where you stand, I shall stand. Your people shall be my people, your enemies my enemies, and your purpose my purpose. Where you die I shall die, and there will it end in the end of the end of all things.”“Hn,” said Gan, ignoring the sword and laying his right hand gently upon Link’s head. “I will admit, however, that I never imagined I would marry a god.”Link tipped his head in confusion. “I only wear this face to be strong enough for what must become.”Gan shrugged, caressing his cheek and grinning down at him. “Same difference. Set that shiny stick aside and kiss me you melodramatic jackass.”
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The wind followed the little army towards the rising sun, and every league, every week, every month brought another soul, another ten souls, another hundred to increase their strength. Gan embroidered a standard for him, a white wolf against stripes of red and black, under the blue rune of a dead god. He made another for himself - not blazoned with the emblem of his people, as Link expected - but instead a gold and orange boar on a field of storm gray. He said that an exile was forbidden to use the sign of the ancestors, and would not hear argument.Link felt rotten for stealing that from him, for he continued to refuse even after the Exalted Sun’s Heart met them at the western border and welcomed her lost brother with open arms. The army stayed in the desert for months, training beside warriors of the Golden Legion. Many tried to push Gan to travel into the Sands to seek the Trial of the Eight and claim his rightful crown, but again, he would hear no argument.Link spent every day in the saddle or trying to solve the puzzle of how to teach other people the things he knew about how to fight impossible odds and survive whole enough to fight the next fight, and the next after that.He sought comfort every night in the strong arms of his beloved.The day came that Hyrule sent a division of light infantry through Dragon’s Maw Pass to rain fire arrows into the box-canyon training grounds the People called the Lady’s Quiver. Link wasn’t fast enough to counter all of them, even with the rainbow sword, and Gan’s shields weren’t big enough to stop the rest. None of the trespassers made it back to report what they’d seen to their own camp or country, but vengeance never yet unraveled a death.The war, and the cause, and the stakes became very real to everyone after that.Some went home.Most of the army avoided Link afterwards, looking at him with fear and awe. He tried to tell them he was only a man. People started painting the blue rune and four red stripes on their shields anyway.Word spread.More joined their ranks.Not all of them were human.Gan answered the rumors of objections by going from campfire to campfire for two weeks straight, reading lists of Hylian laws and atrocities. He read to his armies of unequal fines and land seized, of bespelled dungeons and of magic that made people into weapons. He read to them of the so-called Interloper’s War and of the Silver War before that. He read of steep tariffs and harsh sumptuary laws, of slums and hierarchies. He read to them the Hylian account of the Sheikah Knight-Mage who betrayed Ambrose Dedrick III and the purge that followed. He read them the names of the Sheikah tribes who vanished forever. He read to them of the Telado Valley graves, and he read to them of haunted ruins in the eastern mountains.On the day the Storm Legions gathered above the swift river dividing the golden highlands from green Hyrule, Link stood beside Roan and Nabooru, the Rocs of the Sands and the ‘blin warchiefs, the Darknut generals and Lizal raidleaders, Goriya elders and Lynel princes, lightning under his skin and war drums in his blood as Ganondorf Dinauru Rajenaya Dragmire Chalut used his magic to read to all of them at once the memoirs of an ancient hero whose goddess betrayed him.The legions answered with one furious roar.Link stepped forward, and the legions fell silent. He trembled and stuttered and fought to shape words for why the sacred jewels must be returned to the holy places, and how the Temple of Time in the heart of Hyrule got its name, and why its inner sanctum was sealed by the power of guardian stones held by three different peoples, none of them Hylian. He whispered to them what Zelda’s knights did to the Green in search of the keys to that door, and he could not make his tongue answer at all when he tried to speak of the sword.Gan laid his left hand on Link’s shoulder, and raised his right. The mark of the chosen blazed with sacred fire. A bridge of light ten rods wide spun from one cliff to another.The Legions followed the Storm into Hyrule.Link crossed last, alone and afoot because his horse could not abide his fear.Gan waited for him, a proud silhouette against a glorious dawn.Link stumbled when he touched Hylian soil in his own mortal body for the first time in thirty-five years. His left hand burned, and lightning spun out from his skin in a brief, deadly tempest.He knelt in the dirt, the colors of Farore staining his once-black tunic, the mark of the Chosen of Courage pulsing bright and furious.Ganondorf took from his saddlebag a wrapped bundle, and knelt beside him to drape a cloak of tessellated spirals of vibrant meadow and deep forest over his shoulders. He laid a chaste kiss on his brow before the gods and everyone, whispering of love for Link’s ears alone.
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War never moves as quickly as anyone wishes it to, nor delays as long as one might hope. Hyrule burned, and blood tainted the rivers. Creatures of darkness - and creatures drawn to darkness - swarmed around both armies. The storm raged and the fairies hid and the land spirits wept. Defenders of Hyrule fell back toward the capital, burning the fields and villages as they went to starve the Beast that pursued them. The people hid in fear.Link stood on a muddy hill in the eerie light of false dawn beside the command center they’d built around and in the shattered Temple. He looked upon the field between the wreck of the town and the charred curtain wall of the Castle, and knew that today it would fall.Ganondorf yawned mightily as he rolled out of his cot in the little canvas pavilion they shared. He yawned again as he strode out into the morning, stretching with a soft chime of fine black chainmail. He even slept in it now. Had since they crossed the border.It was impossible to forget even for a moment what he’d become.“Are we doing the right thing?”“Hn,” said Gan, ruffling his hair and bowing to kiss the top of his head. “You know it’s never been that simple, my little hero. Peace is expensive. ”Link sighed. “I don’t like it.”“I know,” said Gan, pulling him close. “Do not lose faith, beloved. We are so close to victory. As fire cleanses blight from the fields, as the flood brings rich new earth to nurture tender seedlings, we will build a new world from the rubble of this one. Strong and bright and true.”Link shook his head, but let his weight rest a moment on the strength of his ancient enemy. “It is hard to believe, when everything is so dark. In the first befores, everyone agreed what was right.”“The number of voices weaving a word does not determine its truth,” rumbled Gan. “You may ask me a hundred thousand times and my answer will never change. Morality is not handed down by gods and kings and priests, but must be weighed in each heart alone. If the cry of your spirit demands you walk away from this battle, I will not stop you. If it demands that you stand between me and my purpose, I will not fault you for it. But neither will I surrender.”“Nothing defies that sword and lives,” said Link sadly.“Then I will die fighting,” said Gan, calm as if he spoke of the inevitability of rain.“Please don’t,” whispered Link. “I can’t bear to even think about it, but I can’t let you hurt her.”“Hn. If she’s half as clever as she thinks she is, by sunset she will see she has already lost. Have faith, little hero, and perhaps your magic princess will see the wisdom in surrender,” he said, crushing Link against his side with a casually violent fondness.“Arrogant bastard,” grumbled Link. “You must not advance with the rest of us. The spirits gave her sacred light arrows long ago, they are stronger than your magic, and no , you can’t count on me being able to stop them. They all believe that when I wear that mask I am as much a demon as you ever were, and that - makes them hurt. A lot.”Gan laughed. “Aha, so is that the secret behind your delicious lips? A little demon spice?”Link punched at his stomach to little effect except that it made him laugh harder. “How can you make lewd jokes when you could die today?”“Hn. Who fears death is already defeated,” said Gan, raising his golden eyes to the castle ahead. “That’s why we’re going to win. But maybe let’s have you use an actual sword today. I know you know seventeen ways to kill somebody with a green stick, but it’s bad for morale.”Link groaned.“The triforce wants to be whole, Link. I can feel it,” murmured Gan, his eyes as bright as the mark on his hand. He looked fierce and hungry.Link had seen that look before. “Only a strong and righteous mind can control the power of the gods. It will be too much for you.”“Hn,” said Gan, with that sardonic grin that could mean anything or nothing.“Please,” said Link, wrapping both of his hands around his right.Gan glanced down, still grinning. “Mmmyes what matter is one hour when the day will be decided five minutes after we breach the wall? Come.”Link followed him back into the pavilion, knowing that when Gan was fixed on his course nothing would persuade him from it.He tried anyway.Golden light poured from their joined hands, transforming the rude little pavilion into the very heart of the sun as they made love at dawn.
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For all the campaign had stretched from season to season over too many years, they subdued the remaining castle guard by noon. The climb into the central tower proved more difficult, in no small part because the structure itself began to crumble around them. Zelda ripped apart the stairs, the doors, the very walls to make more barriers and weapons.Gan was wrong: she refused to accept defeat, and she absolutely refused to acknowledge any offer of terms.They finally caught her hovering above a gold-inlaid spell circle in the heart of the gilded spire rising from the center of the high holy cella. The tower shivered and groaned around them - Link called to her, but she didn’t even turn.Ganondorf gathered raw Power in his hands, readying a mighty bolt.Link charged at the circle and the magic shields he couldn’t see but knew must be there.It hurt.He fell.But Zelda turned.She held the blessed master sword loosely, its once-bright blade mottled with black and red and purple.Her eyes were baleful yellow and demon red.Link could barely breathe for the pain, but he managed to roll onto his back and rasp the oldest name of their true foe.Ganondorf struck anyway.The world exploded.Zelda fell.Link screamed, and lightning poured from his tongue into the shape of a colossal warrior. In a single step, in less than a blink of the eye, the light-warrior crossed through the circle to catch her.Ganondorf sang a single pure note, his immense voice filling the cella, the spire, the whole world.The light-warrior laid Zelda upon the circle beside Link, gentle as down feathers settling in a still room.Link reached for her - but failed. He couldn’t make his limbs answer him.The light-warrior took the blessed sword from her hand.Turned it around.Thrust it through their own form.Blinding white light.Link fell. Fear no more, said the voice in the light, gentle and low.Link surrendered.His last thought before he hit the ground was how very beautiful the sunlight was when it danced through the apple tree in high summer.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
“Hey, it’s ok, shhh. I’m here,” said a rich voice from the spangled darkness. “Breathe, Link. It’s just a dream.”“No,” rasped Link. He would not accept any such cruelty.“Truly, hero of time. Be at peace. All is well,” said another voice, smooth and soft.“Must stop him,” rasped Link, trying again to rise. They didn’t understand. They couldn’t understand. They hadn’t seen - they wouldn’t know what it meant.“Hush. It’s already over,” said the rich voice as a warm hand cradled his aching face.“No, listen. Demon eyes,” begged Link. “The seal. Stupid hero - the seal. The sword seals.”“He’s delirious,” said the soft voice, and Link heard regret in her words. Or at least he thought it might be a her. Not that it mattered.“Hn. It happens. It will pass,” said the rich, dark voice. “Press my hand, little hero. Hard as you can. Good. Now the other. No, the other . There you go. Harder. You’re not even trying. Aha. Good.”“Nonono,” said Link, struggling to heave himself up. “The sword that seals the demon . I have to - stop him - oh Zelda, you read it backwards. ”A thin laugh. “Yes. Well. We were all young and stupid once, right?”“Hn. Speak for yourself, Princess. I am never less than perfect,” said the rich, dark, rumbly voice.“Arrogant wretch. And if you’re going to be a jerk at least get my title right. I’ve been Queen these twenty years,” said the soft voice, somewhat less gently.Gan snorted. “Whatever. Either way his eyes still aren’t focusing. Hand.”“Using a divine relic to forcibly heal a minor concussion is blasph-”“Don’t care. Hand.”Zelda groaned in frustration and annoyance. Her small hand pressed his other cheek. “You literally just said he has falling fits all the time.”“Focus,” snapped Gan.They fell silent.Link closed his eyes, wondering why his skin didn’t itch. “Can’t stay. Have to tell him. Have to go back. Demon eyes. Royal blood . Wanted her all along.”“Hn. I told you He would have a contingency. But you couldn’t get close enough to her back then could you? Open your eyes, Link. Look at me. It’s not naptime yet,” said Gan.Link opened his aching eyes to a canopy of fat glossy leaves and plump young apples gilded by the dappled summer sunlight. Something was off about it though - when he tried to focus on any one part of it, the green seemed to become a translucent veil over gilt marble columns and stained mosaic ceilings and shattered glass windows and the dear faces of his beloved and his monarch above him, their expressions taut with concern.“Oh brave hero, I’m sorry. All the tragedy that has befallen Hyrule was my doing,” said Zelda softly. “I was so young. No one would listen to the prophecy - I had no one to turn to - I never understood what it truly meant. I couldn’t comprehend the consequences of trying to control the Sacred Realm.”Link frowned at the translucent apple tree, and Zelda in it. Everything was too bright and too strange. But so it had been in the end of the first, when she took the ocarina from him and with it everything he’d fought for. “Don’t do it. Don’t send me back. You killed him. I killed him. Just let me die.”“Oh for fuck’s sake,” groaned Gan, and slapped him. Hard. “Enough. The war is over, nobody is dead, the Calamitous One is back in His prison where He belongs, and I forbid you to ever do anything that stupid again.”Link frowned up at him, admiring the play of green-gold light on his handsome face, wondering how he crawled under the tree with him when it was so short Zelda could bend over top of it. “Just wanted to fix it. Restore peace and light to everyone this time.”Gan smirked at him, combing his hair out of his eyes. “A new Hyrule. Unified. Glorious. Just.”“Yeah,” agreed Link, pressing his hand. The sun seemed so incredibly bright, and the way it caught on his fiery hair looked like a golden crown.Zelda laid her gloved hand over both of theirs. “A new Hyrule, alive and healing the wounds of a bloody past, looking to the future in hope. Together.”“Yeah,” agreed Link, distantly amused how brightly the sun reflected on her pale face and jeweled crown. “A new Hyrule would be nice. We should plant apple trees everywhere .”Ganondorf laughed, rich and resonant and refreshing as a summer rain. ~ ^ ~~ / \ ~~ ^ ^ ~~ / \/ \ ~
Fin.