Chapter Text
When he first wakes thousands of years in the future, Dragmire Ganondorf’s first impulses are consumed by a such hunger he’s almost certain his desiccated body will collapse into itself under its desire alone. But, the thought of Rauru getting his wish, that the Demon King will never take his first steps out of his personal purgatory, is what keeps him whole, and he slaps the mummified hand from his chest, perhaps a little too gleefully. Despairingly, the single movement is enough to bring him to his knees, and being brought to his knees, he finds, is now another layer of agony as he becomes shockingly aware of every single tight and underused muscle and tendon in his body all at once.
He decides to wait for his magic to come to him before he moves again. Anyone who knows him is dead and his body is deep underground; he is allowed one moment of weakness in the darkness and anonymity of his awakening. On the cold stone, Ganondorf thinks, plots, as the hunger echoes through the husk of a man he once was.
An unknown amount of time later, when moving does not feel like pushing boulders up to the Highlands’ peaks from sun up to sun down, he begins to make good on his escape plan. He needs weapons. With stilted, decisive movements, he moves to unearths a shield left behind by one of the Sages apparently in their flight from his chamber after Rauru’s death.
The thought of their fear is enough to make him chuckle, but his appearance in its reflection is enough to kill the sound as quickly as it escaped. He is hornless, fangless, and decidedly...normal looking. Even his hair, though undone and clinging to his back in dirty, matted tangles, no longer goes deeper than his shoulder blade. He is stupidly, inexplicably, earthly Gerudo. The discovery is enough to rip a broken, dry, mortal, roar from his throat that immediately devolves into a series of pathetic coughs and a single minute of dry heaving. He does not deign to think about the ungraceful sound he makes when the shield slips from his slackened grasp and cracks into the top of his bare right foot. He is allowed a second moment of weakness, and he lets the moment go longer than he probably should, hunched into himself like a petulant child scolded for staying out past curfew. He is also allowed the right to, briefly, not care. About anything.
Finally, with a steadying breath, inhaling the stale air, and quietly admitting how deeply unpleasant it is and would be still even if he were the Demon King, he takes stock of himself. At least he is...whole. He does not look like a gibdo anymore. He is alive. He can move. He did not break his foot. He has acquired a well-made and sturdy shield. And, he even found a small ruby in the pocket of his trousers. He is a veritable success, all things considered and not counting his losses. The half-hearted joke reminds him of Nabooru, which reminds him of all his people left behind and long dead, which reminds him that he, as he has been for some time, is alone.
Ganondorf decides to reorder his plan, make a few changes to his new rise to power, add in a few new considerations, a few earthly desires here and there, like a bath and a meal. The list still includes killing Link, a name he will not forget, will never forget, even if he were to die a horrid, mind-numbing death, but there are stepping stones that must be crossed before he can eliminate that particular item.
He needs information.