Work Text:
She can’t do this.
The Gorons are throwing a party and Yunobo looks just like Daruk and everybody is asking her how it felt to fight the Calamity and Link is having issues of his own and her power is steadily building in her chest like it had when they left Zora’s Domain-
Zelda finds herself out of breath at the Goron Hot Springs, where the sounds of celebration are just a distant buzz in the air that’s getting easier and easier to ignore.
She gives Link five minutes to find her and ask what’s wrong, because he’s so very good at reading her emotions and watches her like a hawk on these ‘Bad Days’. However, he’s having one of his own, so maybe she’ll give him seven minutes. Ten, at the most.
(Ten minutes for her to figure out how to calm herself down without his help.)
“I hear these waters are meant to relieve stress.”
The Phantom Calamity is sitting at the edge of one of the springs, dipping its fingertips into the water, which is undisturbed by its touch. Its skin is dry when it takes its hand out and wipes it on its pants.
(It's not a sleep-deprived hallucination; she slept fine last night. It's something else. She needs to figure out what.)
“Are you going to appear whenever you want?” Zelda asks, voice shaking.
(Despite everything, she's still a scientist.)
“Yes,” It answers simply, looking up at her. Its yellow eyes glitter, its red hair matching the embers floating in the breeze, and she wonders if it’s bothered by the heat in its leather, armor, and cape. “Would you rather I not?”
“Of course I would.”
(Asking questions is the first step in making a good hypothesis.)
It hums, turning its attention to the night sky. The moonlight makes its green skin look gray. “You like to look at the stars, don't you, Your Highness?”
Zelda blinks, heart stuttering in her chest. “What?”
“The stars, Princess Zelda. Where did you like to watch them from, Before?”
‘Before’? It knows what she and Link call their time a hundred years ago?
“I know a lot of things. I’m also not an ‘it’, by the way.”
She asks, “What are you?”
He responds with, “Answer my question and I’ll answer yours. The stars.”
"I..." she swallows, throat dry. The last thing she drank was that fireproof elixir. "Gerudo Town, from the chief's quarters. Or Hyrule Field, just off the edge of the castle."
"Under that tree, right? Where you asked your Hero to eat a frog."
“What are you?"
(Maybe it's a brain tumor. Can prolonged exposure to malice give someone a form of cancer?)
"Not cancer," he looks at her again, smiling the slightest bit. For the first time, there's no evil behind it. "My name is Ganondorf."
(He's...tamer than he was at Foothill Stable last night, more like when he appeared at the Spring of Wisdom. And Ganondorf? She’s never heard that name, before.)
Ganondorf rises to his feet, approaching her until she has to crane her neck to meet his eyes.
Her power surges in her chest and her hand burns-
The hot springs boil, giving off steam, and Ganondorf’s smile fades. To Zelda’s surprise, he takes a few steps back.
Her power settles, and the hot springs return to their warm simmer.
“Look at you,” he whispers, all amusement gone. “All of that raw, destructive power, and you have absolutely no control.”
“ "What are you?!" Zelda finally shouts, holding her hand up to his face. The Triforce blazes on her knuckles, her power flaring-
Death Mountain rumbles, the ground vibrating beneath her feet.
“My name is Ganondorf,” Ganondorf calmly repeats. “If you don’t want to be responsible for the death of the Goron civilization, I suggest you calm down. Fear may be your master, but rage bends to your will like any good servant.”
“Answer me,” she hisses, her power an inferno in her chest. “Stop talking in fucking circles-”
“My name is-”
Divine light crackles on her fingertips-
He steps forward and grabs her wrist, squeezing so hard something cracks. Zelda cries out, hand going slack, and her power extinguishes in an instant, leaving her out of breath and empty.
(Death Mountain stops.)
“You are nothing but an insolent child playing at being a goddess,” he snarls. “No wonder anyone who ever believed in you ended up dead.”
Tears spring into her eyes-
“I am not a sickness to be cured,” he continues. “And I am not a figment of your traumatized imagination meant to help you get over whatever issues you may have as a result of the choices you made a century ago.”
She chokes, “What -”
“ My name is Ganondorf . ” Fissures appear in a nearby rock, cracking it in two. “ I am what the Calamity destroyed to exist ."
Zelda blinks and he’s gone. Where his hand was on her wrist, the vice grip he had, is her other hand. She’s gripping her own forearm so hard that her nails dig into her skin, and when she lets go there are deep, half-moons of blood.
She lowers her hands, shaking, her breaths coming out of her mouth in short, gasping bursts.
“Zelda?!”
She looks back over her shoulder and sees Link standing at the edge of the hot springs. The Master Sword is drawn, illuminating his face in the dark, and he holds it tightly in his hand. He’s panting, his face flushed, and he wipes his forehead with the back of his free hand.
(Has it really only been ten minutes?)
“I heard you scream,” he hurries up to her, dropping the sword to the ground and taking her face in his hands, checking her over. “Are you okay?”
Yes, she wants to lie, even as the knot in her chest loosens and she's able to take deeper, slower breaths. Everything is fine.
But she made him a promise in Hateno, in that house on the hill where she slowly came back to life.
No more running.
(Besides, she can't get away with lying to him. Not anymore.)
“No,” she whispers, wrapping her fingers around his wrists and gently tugging his hands from her cheeks. “Something is… very wrong with my power.”
He nods. “We already knew that.”
“I know, but…” she meets his eyes. “Have you ever heard the name Ganondorf?”
The Master Sword buzzes on the ground and Link winces.
“Fi told me that was what the Phantom Calamity was,” he says.
Zelda frowns. Where has she heard that name, before? “Fi?”
“Oh, right,” he weakly smiles. “I, uh, forgot to tell you. The voice in the sword? Her name is Fi.”
(The voice never told her it- she -had a name when they traveled together Before.)
“Why?” Link continues. “You saw the phantom? It told you its name is Ganondorf?”
“He’s not an it,” she finds herself correcting. “He’s…a spirit, I think, but I don’t know where he comes from. He told me before you arrived that he’s ‘what the Calamity destroyed to exist’.”
Again, the Master Sword-Fi? Does she refer to it as Fi, now?-buzzes on the ground, this time with more intensity.
“Fi says…” Link falters, frowning. “She says our best chance for learning about him is in Hyrule Castle's archives."
The mere mention of the castle makes Zelda feel sick. "And our second best chance?"
He waits, then, "Gerudo Town. Though they might not know anything."
Zelda nods. "So we'll look at Rudania tomorrow, and when we're done we leave for the desert. We can circle back for Rito Village and Medoh."
"You're sure about this?" he takes her hand. "Like I said the other night, we don't have to rush."
"I'm sure." she lets go of him, stepping around and bending down to reach for the Master Sword. "Here, it probably shouldn't be on the ground like this-"
Her fingers close around the hilt, and she yelps as it sizzles against her skin, recoiling and holding her stinging hand to her chest.
"What the-" Link stares at her with wide eyes. "Did it just-"
"Burn me?" Zelda gasps. "Yes, I think it did."