Blinding Darkness - Zelda X Ganondorf

Chapter 8

     A few days slipped quietly by.

     Slowly, the Castle had gotten, rather reluctantly, somewhat used to Ganondorf's presence. At least they didn't stop everything they were doing and turn to stare with their mouths half open when he walked by. 

     But that counted for nothing. Nothing. Because the more time he spent at the Castle, the more Ganondorf sensed hate brewing within its halls. 

     At some point, they would retaliate, this white-hot, searing hatred their collective blade. They would fight back, for their own "safety". When they were the biggest threat to their own Kingdom.

     If Ganondorf's plan was to take over Hyrule, like it should have been, then this situation would have been perfect. When they attacked -- when, not if -- it wouldn't even be his own fault to wage war. And it would put Zelda in a very difficult position, with her own people technically at fault, but obliged to fight him for them. Which was what he should have wanted.

     What did he want anymore?

     Wasn't this a question he had asked himself too many times before?

     His hands tightened on the papers littering his desk, the pencil in his other hand stabbing through the fancy parchment.

     On all of them were carefully sketched diagrams, drawings of all of Hyrule Castle's exits, its armory, and the secret entrances that nobody bothered to guard.

     He crumpled them all in barely suppressed rage and was about to dump them all into the garbage bin, but stopped himself at last moment and smoothed them out again, gazing at them, but not really seeing his days of accumulated work, the plans he had made when he wasn't himself, but the curse slowly unfurling its tendrils into his mind.

     Ganondorf sighed and folded them up carefully, then shoved them into his drawer and stood up.

     But before he could do anything, there was a sharp knock at his door.

     Frowning, he opened it, and the most unlikely of visitors stood, somehow intimidating despite her tiny size, and looked up to his mildly surprised face with her eyes narrowed to slits.

     "Aria?" 

     She strode in boldly and proceeded to sit in his chair, her feet swinging idly. He wasn't sure to make her get off or not, so he followed in and sat on his bed, so that they were at eye level. 

     Ganondorf suddenly realized that he hadn't seen this girl for a while, despite his former burning interest in her character, trying to crack her silence. He found that rather interesting.

     What was going on here?

     "Are you going to talk to me now?" He prompted, as usual, but making her talk was far from the main thing on his churning mind. 

     She shook her head again and held up a notebook and a dull stump of a pencil.

     "Okay, so to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?"

     She threw him a glance sharp as a sword and began to scribble. Then she pushed the notebook into Ganondorf's hands and waited.

     I hardly ever see Zelda anymore. She's always with you, whenever I'm free, and doesn't even drop by anymore, claiming she's "busy". Don't get me wrong, I'm not jealous or clingy or anything. I just want to know why.

     Ganondorf looked up from her sloppy handwriting to her stubbornly set face, watching his every movement. 

     "So you've noticed as well?" He set the notebook aside onto his table. "She's kept me busy. She insisted that I attend some of her court meetings, and I went out on some of her field surveys as well. I wonder... She said that she's trying to keep me away from the Castle, but I don't think that's the case, somehow. She would have no reason to care."