FINALLY beat Master Quest, so I've been on a bit of a Zelda hype. Thus, this oneshot - because there are so not enough GanondorfXZelda fics out there. I am ashamed to say I did not break free of the cliche scenario that seems to dominate those fics: the dreaded "Zelda and Ganondorf get bored waiting for Link to show up" scene. I took a bit more of a serious approach though. Alright, Disclaimers: I don't own this, I don't own that, I don't own much, and I in no way endorse pedophilia. Just to clear that up. Enjoy the fic.

UPDATE: Due to suggestions in the reviews (yes, reviews matter to me!) I have rewritten certain parts in this story, hoping it helps clear up a few things that I had in mind, and helps the pacing and Zelda's decision at the end seem more plausible. Thanks for all the suggestions, peeps! I hope this is an improvement! Oh, and I fixed most of the typos while I was at it - yay spellcheck!

They're both waiting for him, like they have been for seven years and probably will continue to for quite some time. It's getting closer, though, their great reunion, and although they've seen each other – all been together – before now, there's something big in the apprehension of this next meeting, a knowledge that somehow, this time is different – this time will be special.

For her, it means the end. Finally, resolution. She had complete faith in him. He'll come, he'll fight, he'll win, and he'll save her. He'll save them all. She's never doubted it, only fought for it, careful to act to shape the future in a way so as to strengthen him, to push him ever towards his destiny. Her eyes are shining and, even though he sees the fear in her, he knows she's thinking of nothing but him. She always has. She always will. And, for some reason, that will never stop bothering him.

It gives him a sharp sort of pain in his chest, a small, slow pulsing that nags at him and never stops, never gives him a moment's peace. He'd thought he could stop it with other things, like power and the throne, or even kidnapping her as he's done. But nothing's helped. He still watches her, aching inside, and she doesn't even notice, her mind far off, supporting him without even being physically there at his side. And yet, he's right here in the room with her. Why must she be so far away?

She's always been far away, though, hasn't she? When he'd first laid eyes on her, he barely out of his teens and she an elegant and dignified child, mature and wise beyond her years but still very much a naive believer in goodness and peace and right and wrong. She never could see a shade of gray in her black and white world.

A man of the desert, surrounded by powerful and dark women, he'd seen her frail body, with it's pale skin, her golden hair and her ocean eyes, and he'd thought he'd never seen anything so exotic. Where she'd looked in his eyes and saw evil and plots, a yearning for what he'd never known, never seen and never experienced, burned through him. Maybe his eyes hadn't been pure, but they hadn't been so blind to nothing but conquest as she'd thought.

She was so different from the women he'd grown up around – yes, women. The Gerudo raised their children away from the fortress, kept them out of the way while they grew and trained and learned. Ganondorf had never even seen a child before coming to Hyrule. How was he to know it was so wrong to see beauty in someone so small?

Maybe it was the fact that she was so different that had drawn him to her. Golden hair instead of red, porcelain skin instead of copper, smooth frame instead of hard muscle, long ears instead of round, and those blue eyes instead of Gerudo's browns and tans...The fire in her deep blue eyes made him want to stir so many other emotions in her – but the Gerudo were a female race, with only one man born so rarely, and they'd taught him nothing of love and attraction and romance and what such things meant. Instead, any emotion provoked from her fed his elation at her presence, and he took to teasing her, testing her, torturing her with his words and actions. Setting her on edge, provoking her anger, sealing himself as the devil in her eyes.

And maybe he was the devil. She was a child. That meant nothing to him, he didn't know, but he had to have known, somewhere inside him. New and forbidden – of course he'd be curious, be driven, want and take like he'd been taught, a king of his people and obeyed beyond reason. He'd enjoyed provoking her, enjoyed the chase they'd run for most her life and they way he drew so much out of her that no one else did – she hated no one like she hated him, she feared no one like she feared him.

She grew up to be even more beautiful, he'd had no idea. He'd thought the child fair and elegant, but the woman she'd become...Her same mind, an adult's mind, had been trapped always in a child's body, in a container no one had ever taken seriously except him. But seeing her there, for the first time in ages, in that temple, finally in a body that matched her mind, tall and sinewy and divine, had driven his emotions wild. And he'd taken her, captured her, finally she was here, in his presence, at his mercy, absolutely and undeniably HIS – and she was thinking of him.

He was so like her in so many ways – the pale skin, the blond hair, the blue eyes, and the pointed ears. Why was she drawn to him so, when all he wanted was what was so different from himself? Didn't she see the appeal in the unknown, in the exotic and unobtainable like he did? Why did she stand and wait and pray in that crystal (he'd made it pink, her color – she always looked so good in that shade) and think only of him?

He'd waited so long for the three of them to be together, to finally settle the score. He would have all three pieces of the Triforce, and he would have Princess Zelda, and he'd finally be rid of that wretched Link. And yet, he kept putting obstacles in Link's way, blocking him, delaying him, cutting him off. He wanted to settle things, wanted to end things, and yet, at the same time, he didn't want to see her face when he stepped into the room. The light that would shine, the hope she would feel, the affection she would show and the worry for his safety...

Emotion he had never been able to provoke from her eyes for himself. Why could he only draw the negative out of her, when he got all the positive? Did he even realize the way she looked at him, how she thought of him, how she had waited and waited and waited?

Again. Again and again and again, he was denied what he wanted. Take over Hyrule? Hadn't been much to it, wasn't much left of it. A disappointment all around. Take the Triforce for himself and rule from the other realm? Only got one piece, my bad so sorry come back next time have a nice day. Get rid of the brat? He'd practically turned him into the Hero of Time himself! Have Zelda? Here she was, with him and trapped by him and most definitely his, and yet her thoughts, her mind, her heart – they were all with that pesky kid and not giving him a thought except maybe of his defeat.

"Tch." Jamming his fingers down on the keys, he sent a horrible burst of sound from his organ bouncing around the room. It hurt his ears, but floating above him in her pink cage, Zelda didn't even glance his way, paying no mind to the disturbance. She was still with him.

Had he really done everything so wrong? Why was it like this?

For all her ultimate 'wisdom' and greatness, how could she not see him? How could she have such tunnel vision that she saw nothing of what was in his heart, of how he felt, of how he wanted her at his side, his queen, his bride, his life...?

Why was what he felt so wrong? It was love, wasn't it? He'd grown up enough now to know it, to recognize it, so why was it wrong and dark and evil in her eyes? Why couldn't she see that he had the same emotions as everyone else, and his love, while not conventional, was still love, his own love, and as pure as he could get?

The world wouldn't have to be like this if she could only see...!

"...Link..."

She whispered the name, her lips pressed to her clasped hands, eyes tight shut and brow furrowed in concentration. And Ganondorf stared up at her with wide eyes, broken.

He would destroy it. He would destroy her. He would destroy everything.

He turned back to his organ, hatred pulsing through his being, shoving down down down deep inside him all the remnants of his shattered heart.

Far off in the Sacred Realm, the Goddesses held their heads low, seeing the only hope for a lost and desperate man fade out. The Goddesses had sworn not to interfere, to let the fate of the world they'd created play out naturally, but it tore at their very essences the see everything fall apart.

Farore had already turned her eyes from the suffering of her people, no longer able to bear the sight, the sounds, the utter destruction. She wanted to believe, so badly, in the life she had brought forth, but all hope was abandoning her as Ganondorf continued down his lonely path.

When Farore saw Ganondorf, she didn't see evil. She saw one of her own children, one born of her own being, misguided and suffering, taking out his pain in the only way he knew how – to make the world suffer with him. She pitied him, agonized over him, but their laws forbid them from doing anything to help the innocent people of their beautiful Hyrule, let alone the one who terrorized it. She could only stand back and will her Courage to her avatar, her warrior, and pray he could do what she could not.

Farore's grief was mirrored by Din. Ganondorf was a Gerudo, and the Gerudo, while not of Din's creation, were still her people. They worshiped her, their Goddess of the Sand, more than any other in the land, and their independent lifestyle, their quest for power, had reflected her own virtues, even if they had twisted them. Din wanted to weep for the damage Ganondorf had done to her people, for, in meaning to lead them to the power they so greatly desired, he'd turned them against each other and had their culture, their very lifestyle, falling apart as they struggled with the changes their supposed king had wrought in the world.

While Farore's head was turned away, facing the sky while she fought her grief, Din watched Hyrule burn beneath her, shaking her head, hope lost.

Nayru let tears slip down her face, not fighting them as her sisters did. In a sense, Nayru wasn't suffering as much as they were, for it was in her nature to learn from every experience, to see tragedy as a lesson in the course of history. Wisdom grew in the face of life's horrors. But that didn't mean it didn't hurt her, for she was the governor of law, and the world was in chaos. When the essence of their beings, the creations they brought into the world below, fell into ruin, the Golden Goddesses bore physical pain for a time, a rare experience to them, and never a welcome one. They hurt for their creations, and Nayru felt ill at the loss of law in the world.

Law had been created to be obeyed, to put order to the jumble of emotions that came with life. Wisdom was the experience of the these emotions, and to Nayru, emotions were also a part of her responsibility. So Ganondorf's suffering, his pain...

To Nayru, it felt like a personal failure.

Farore had only created life, and life would continue no matter the state of good or evil. What the people were doing now was not a reflection of her powers, of what she had designed. She had no control over what life did once it sprung forth.

Din had created the plains themselves, the land that Farore had coated in vegetation. She had not created it to do anything, much like Farore hadn't given any direction to her peoples. Din's earth was made to exist, and the fact that the fires of Death Mountain threatened the land below had nothing to do with the way Din had made it, but of the influence life had had on it.

The influence of life, something Nayru's law had been made to govern.

Yes, it was Nayru's law that had failed, nothing else.

She's set about to fix it. The one who bore her power, the avatar of the Triforce of Wisdom, had set into motion the events that would save Hyrule and all that was left of its inhabitants. Din's Power was being abused, and Farore's Courage, directed by Nayru's Wisdom, would bring that abuse to an end.

But at what cost? Nayru wondered. For it was, in fact, the self-righteousness of her own little prophetess and the misguided affections of a spoiled and abused man that had been the catalyst for all of this. The child princess and her complete and utter trust in her visions, visions Nayru's abilities had granted, had made her condemn a man whose own ambitions were directed by others, who would have freed himself from the strings the sorceresses Twinrova used to make him dance to their whims eventually, had he not seen, and desired, something that he should never have seen.

Had Zelda not had her visions, she would not have spied on him. Had she not spied on him, Ganondorf would never have become curious about the king's only child. He would never have loved her, she would never have hated him, and none of this would have ever happened.

How had Nayru's wisdom, something meant to bring life together in harmony, set two people against each other on such painful destinies?

What if, just once, Zelda's wisdom had come through the way Nayru had originally intended it to – to be open to every new experience, to see all the shades of life without judgement, but with discernment and understanding? Then what would have been the world's fate?

Slowly, Nayru raised her hand.

Her mind was made up. Even though she herself was the creator and patron of law, she was going to break one of the rules she had agreed to establish in the Sacred Realm. She was going to give the world just one last glimmer of hope.

Din watched Nayru's hand for a moment, knowing instinctively what could be the only reason for her movement, and knowing, according to their agreement, she should stop her. Instead, she only watched, curious, wondering what her sister could possibly be doing defying her own nature, what she deemed so important to bring herself more pain.

Farore, catching Nayru's movement out of the corner of her eye, shifted slightly, just enough to see the blue glow begin around Nayru's fingers. Farore, too, made no move to stop the Goddess of Time, Creator of Law, Bringer of Wisdom as she broke their agreement not to interfere with Hyrule from the Sacred Realm.

As quietly, as softly as she could, Nayru willed one single, tiny piece of knowledge from herself to her prophetess. The smallest interference the governor of law could allow herself passed into the world as her tears fell.

Zelda's eyes fluttered open, her constant prayers for Link's safety and speed slipping, foggy, from her mind as something tugged at her consciousness. Her hand, the Triforce of Wisdom within it, glowed warmly, prickling her senses. A slow, silent knowledge began to grow inside her and, with it, a dawning.

Zelda thought back, saw her own memories, and with one new thought guiding them, she saw them as she never had before. In the place of a beast in a man's skin, a dark being whose only purpose could be evil in her eyes, she saw a Gerudo, and then, a person. Instead of only one path made of destruction laid out before him, she saw possibilities – possibilities she had ignored and stomped underfoot as she had plowed forward with the single minded determination to rid the world of this man without ever considering there might be more to him than what she'd seen, that what her visions had foretold.

Time almost seemed to bring her back to that time when she was a child, when she met Ganondorf officially, for the first time. And she saw in his eyes that small flicker there that she'd always missed as he brought his gaze to hers.

Instead of an evil villain who deserved only death, Zelda's eyes finally turned to look down on a sad, twisted man – a man she'd helped to twist beyond reason.

And she couldn't hate him anymore.

Quietly, almost in a whisper, she let his name slip from her lips. "...Ganon...dorf?"

He didn't hear her, raging away on the organ keys, venting all his pent up frustrations on the ivory. His shoulders shook with the effort. He played with a passion that the notes didn't seem to match, the contrast of the almost sad, dark tones with his flurry of turmoil.

Her shocked expression softening, she continued to gaze down at him, watching. She'd never known his emotions had run so deep, and his pain touched her. Slightly louder, stronger, she said again, "Ganondorf."

His playing stopped abruptly, the last note echoing bleakly off the walls and fading off into a deafening silence. He hadn't expected her to talk to him, hadn't thought he'd hear his name pronounced from her tongue. He was shocked into stillness, frozen above the keyboard, hunched over with hands poised and fingers resting on the smooth white keys. Slowly, he turned his eyes to crane his neck at her, a glare fixed on her and all her goodness, her justice, her peace and wisdom and ignorance-

-and then he saw the softness there, the gentle flow of tranquil waters in her eyes of blue. A look he'd never seen directed his way, never directed at him. She raised her right hand to the magic barrier around her, settled her palm on it's smooth surface, she stared down at him as though she'd never seen him before.

Indeed, she hadn't.

If she had, how would she have missed it?

The way he was looking at her now, the growing shock, the fear, the swirl of a dependent need so strong it went way past the desire of two bodies and was instead a wish for the strongest of bonds to tie them together – a mother and child, siblings, twins, even being the same person, one together inside so as to never be apart, anything more tangible than a mere feeling that had drove him for years yet gone completely unnoticed by the outside world.

How had she not noticed?

It was like he was starved for love, yet it was spilling out his being. A deep, twisted, strange love that she couldn't begin to understand – but she found that she wanted to.

Did the wisdom that embodied her compel her to seek out the unknown and try to unravel it's mysteries? Was that why her Triforce piece, her connection to the goddess Nayru, give her this new understanding of Ganondorf's inner storm that she'd always been so blind to before?

...if so, then why did that thought bother her?

Link was simple, a strait forward, honest, and hard working man. There was nothing complicated about him, for he was a hero to the bone, courageous and self sacrificing with not an ounce of darkness in his heart. Link was pure, Link was light.

Link was rather...boring.

A good man, yes. One she could trust with the future of her country, her people, to take control of the future and lead Hyrule back to it's former glory. Even if the ultimate battle they had been waiting for never took place, Link would still be the Hero of Time, and the people would still rally under him, would still follow him completely as his courage and strength inspired people to put the past behind them and rise up to rebuild their home.

A good man, but a simple one. Link's thoughts, his actions, were pure and uncomplicated. It didn't take the wisdom of Zelda to see into his heart, his mind. She was a damsel in distress to him, his princess to be rescued. The world was burning, he would save it. Link's driving motivation was almost a Messiah complex.

But this man before her, though, he had destroyed the world for her, literally. A twisted devotion, yes, but a love stronger than any she'd ever seen or even heard of. One she wanted to know better, to dig deeper into to see what she'd find there.

Link didn't love her, he only wanted to help her, protect her and save her, like a true Hylian with the heart of a soldier. What future did she see with a man who harbored such basic feelings for her? For Link was her future, she couldn't deny it. The Hero of Time, savior of Hyrule - they would marry when this was all over, of that she had no doubt. It was just...expected. Her only option, really, as she would be ascending the throne. What kind of life was that?

She'd rather have one evil man's twisted devotion.

She felt ashamed to think it, but her heart was speeding up. Staring down at him, gazes locked on each other, something new and scary and wrong and exhilarating was beginning to course through her body. She wanted to know him, know this horrible and evil man, to understand him and his heart and this overpowering feeling of need that was trapped in his painful eyes.

Like a confused child, hurt and so, so afraid to let any hope seep in, because disappointment was all he'd ever been met with in the past. Ganondorf was the child she'd never been able to be, and he'd followed a dark path through life that had warped everything precious inside him.

She wanted to help him.

Was that love? She didn't think so. But he loved her, she could read it in every fiber of his being now, and she hated herself so much for never having let herself look at him before. She never wanted to be so heartless again as to turn her back on the pain of the bad, no matter their deeds. She wanted to change. And she wanted to be with him.

Was that enough? Would she get his hopes up, try to love him, and never be able to achieve that new emotion in his regard? It would push him so far over the edge he'd have only death as an alternative, she knew that. And yet, she couldn't get herself to turn around, to look away. Maybe that was even why she couldn't. This man's very life rested on her shoulders, his entire existence dependent on her. What did Hyrule need her for? To help lead the masses who couldn't care for themselves? To restore her kingdom to glory? Anyone with enough charisma could do that. It didn't have to be her. But for Ganondorf, it could be no one else. He needed her, only her.

His complex soul, his raw emotions, everything that made him him, drew her in like a tornado. It captivated her.

Wasn't his death what she'd been hoping for from the start, though? This was her one chance to save him, and if she didn't take it, he'd die, anyway. What did it matter whether or not she loved him now, if there was even the smallest possibility she could love him? Could save him? Save the soul who had torn Hyrule apart, who was in everyone's mind the pure embodiment of evil? For now, wasn't her fascination, her captivation, enough if there was that chance?

...for now.

And suddenly she was struck with an obvious realization: she wanted to. She wanted to forget Link, she wanted to throw aside the responsibilities that had chained her for years, she wanted to run away and never look back, and she wanted to be with Ganondorf. She wanted to love him.

Softly, Princess Zelda whispered his name. "Ganondorf."

The staircase was ominously quiet as the Hero of Time made his way up, up, up towards his ultimate adversary – and his precious princess. It had taken a lot longer than he had anticipated to reach this point (dumb barrier, dumb sage rooms, dumb hidden light switch) but he knew what was waiting: Ganondorf, his grotesque and cocky smile, Zelda, trapped in that pink crystal barrier. The final battle, the end of it all.

He was ready.

He was shocked to open up that last door and find nothing. A large, empty room, a huge, grand organ, and no one. No floating pink crystal, no evil overlord bent on battle, no other doors, no other stairs. Nothing.

Nothing.

Empty.

Link searched the castle again and again. He consulted the sages, traveled through time, scoured all of Hyrule. No one knew, no one had seen. And as time went on and Hyrule started to rebuild itself, when life started to begin to resemble what it had once been, still only rumor ever spoke a word of the missing princess and the vanished evil king. When the dark days of Ganondorf's rule finally passed, when the almost-hero was crowned king and he finally had his own life and had almost put the past behind him, he'd still not answered the baffling question that plagued him at night.

Where was his enemy? Would he strike again?

Where was his princess? Was she alive, was she safe?

No matter what he did, where he went, who he asked, or how he searched, Link never found them.

The two lovers had three goddesses on their side.

And they didn't want to be found.