who by fire [ch 10]
Title: Who By Fire (Ch10 - "Doppelganger")
Characters: Link, Zelda, Ghirahim
Rating: PG
Summary: She had heard, once, that the touch of a demon will linger, for ages and ages.
A/N: AU exploring the idea of Zelda being captured, too late for Link to save her - of Zelda, facing Ghirahim herself.
Thanks to impa for betaing this chapter!
Previous chapter.
“Every life is a march from innocence, through temptation, to virtue or vice.”- Lyman Abbott
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He smiles -
-and she can't breathe, the walls choking inward -
He smiles, tearing the blade from his flesh, a raw gritty noise, turning its edge upon her -
Zelda screams and -
She wakes.
It feels as if someone has laid burning coals on her bed, her skin is so feverish. Zelda finds herself in her bedroom, the light of dawn pushing beneath her eyelids. Her hair falls in furious tangles down her back, a few strands sticking to her neck.
-his hair shines whiter than moonlight as she falls before him, helpless -
Zelda groans, holding her head. There is no longer blood upon her clothes, the copper-sour taste of fear gone from her lips. As if it was all a dream -
-she feels him take her in his arms, his face blurred with the dregs of unconsciousness. Where her head meets his chest, she can hear no heartbeat.
“Silly thing. I must applaud your bravery, however useless.”
-she failed.
Her head feels like cottonfluff, arms and legs flooded with ice so cold it burns. She watches him through her eyelashes, the darkness deepening as he carries her farther down the hall.
He's taking her to her bedroom - her bedroom! Zelda struggles to regain control, but her body remains unresponsive to her fear.
She's laid against the bed, and - ‘oh Goddess, what will he do?’ Ghirahim leans forward to brush her bangs aside, her skin burning where he touches it.
His voice bleaches the walls of her mind.
“There is only one weapon in the whole universe than can harm me, sweet bluebird. You can no more destroy me than I can freeze time. Keep that in mind. I will not be so forgiving should you try again.”
He vanishes into darkness.
Zelda bites the insides of her cheeks, bites until blood pours warm and bitter onto her tongue. She stumbles, stiff-legged, out of bed, into the washroom. There is a grand, steel bathtub, large enough to spread her limbs in, and deep enough to submerge her entire body. The bathwater is perpetually warm, and never dirties no matter how many times she washes. It's only another trick, to fool her into believing this cage has no bars.
She plunges into the water, clothes and all, submerging her entire body beneath its surface.
She failed.
Zelda opens her eyes.
There is no distinguishable end to the ceiling, her breath escaping as useless bubbles in the water. Around her face swirls her own golden hair, glowing with sunlight. The water surges into her dress, suspending it up and away from her body.
Time freezes, just long enough for her to close her eyes.
She’s tumbling down, down a hill of grass which slips between her toes -
-and into Link's embrace, his tunic stained with the black blood of a demon, alive and well -
Zelda emerges, choking, throwing both arms over one side of the tub. Water drips into her eyes and mouth, sopping locks of hair trailing to the floor. She breathes deeply, coughing at intervals, until the fog clears from her head.
Rising from the tub, she claws out of her dress, letting it fall with a wet squelch to the floor. Her footprints leave small puddles on her bedroom floor, as she stands before the vanity mirror, naked and dripping.
Again, someone speaks from within its depths.
“. . .I do not know. If my plans fail, we leave our fate to greater hands. My power can only stretch so far.”
Zelda shudders, gazing harder into her reflection. The voice which speaks now is different, familiar in a strange way.
“. . .Understood, Your Grace. May the Goddesses strike me down should I fail you.”
Something within her explodes, into a thousand brilliant pieces, thunderous pain shooting into her head. Zelda crashes to the floor, kneecaps slamming into the tile, bent over. There is too much pain for her to even breathe, she’ll simply die if it continues -
The pain stops.
Zelda kneels on the floor, shaking and sobbing, raking her fingernails down her arms. She spits her hair from her lips, tearing her bangs away from her forehead with one hand. She remembers his gloved fingers brushing her hair away only hours ago, his skin no longer cold, but fiery hot like coals.
Or was it my own?
She shakes the thought away. Carefully, she stands again to face the mirror. It no longer echoes with voices, finding within it the same reflection, silent. Her skin is unmarked from his hands, no bruises or burns from where his body touched hers as he carried her. She had heard, once, that the touch of a demon will linger, for ages and ages.
Zelda places her palm against the mirror. Her doppelganger smiles back.
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Skyloft remains unchanged.
Link takes comfort in it, knowing he has at least one place to trust, where he can trust nothing else. The houses are the same, unchanged as the first day he was born. He wanders the familiar nooks, around beaten trails worn by many feet.
He remembers chasing Zelda along these same paths, two children playing games to pass the time. She had fallen and skinned her knees, once, neither crying nor complaining, so unlike himself. As a child, Link was the one who cried at such things, and it was Zelda who comforted him, more than anyone.
Link chuckles to himself. He stops before the training hall, filled with shouts and the clang of swords. He misses the sound of her voice in the din, cheering for him on the sidelines, sometimes sparring against him herself.
No matter ardently he tries to remember, he finds Zelda’s image blotting away, as distant to him as the sky.
Link looks to the dirt, frowning so deeply it creates winkles at the edges of his mouth.
“Enough of this.”
Spinning on his heels, he trudges away from the Academy, past the houses and noise, to kneel at the bank of a pond at the edge of Skyloft. The spring water tastes, feels and smells the same - it smells like the sky looks, and tastes even better. Link splashes it onto his face, the jolt of coldness clearing his mind.
Cupping the water in his hands, he stares into it, past his own reflection.
He's already forgetting her, and that fills him with more fright than anything he's seen or felt. It's a brumal frost stuck someplace between his heart and breastbone, hissing, this fear that he'll someday forget her.
Or, worse, lose her.
Another reflection joins his in the water. Turning back, Link cranes his neck as far as it will go, to gaze up at Gaepora, standing behind him. The old man grins.
“Glad to see you back, Link. I hope you don’t mind my interruption.”
The boy shakes water from his fingers, returning an uneasy smile. “No, of course not.”
Gaepora laughs a belly-deep rumble, coming to sit beside him on the grass. “Wonderful. It’s been a while since we last talked.”
Link has to tilt his head upwards to gaze at the man’s face, aged but not weary. There is less of a spark in his eyes since all this began, but Link finds reassurance in it nonetheless.
“Headmaster Gaepora, I --”
Gaepora jabs his elbow into Link’s arm. “None of that. I didn’t come here to hear your apologies, you have none to make. Do something else for me, will you?”
Link nods without hesitation.
Gaepora points one thick finger up. “Look to the sky for a moment.”
Link raises his head toward the sunlight, the same sun that shone yesterday, the day before that, the moment he opened his eyes as a newborn. Constant, glowing with a light so saturated it burns everything yellow-orange.
“We should all be more like the sun, don't you think?”
Link cranes his head in question.
“Ah,” Gaepora pats his gut, “I meant to say that we should all be as fearless as the sun. Think of it, Link; the sun has no hesitance about the day before it. It rises even if the events ahead of it seem daunting. What would we do without it, boy? No crops, no warmth.”
Link blinks, nods, shuffles his feet in the dirt. He knows the allusion Gaepora makes. He looks to the side, out across the sky spanning its great arms all around them.
He breathes in, lips wanting to form words, terrible words of confession not even his mind will utter.
Gaepora thumps one large hand against Link’s shoulder. The boy looks up, startled and a little guilty. His smile is only halfway-there.
“I won't ask what has happened, Link. You've enough on your mind as it is. This self-doubt of yours doesn't suit you.”
Link swallows, licks his lips, dipping his head in slow agreement. The wind carries the laughter of someone from across the water.
A frown pulls at Link’s lips. He's almost angry at them for it, their ability to laugh at such times, but he's thankful more than angry - that laughter can still exist, even if he doesn't feel it.
Groaning slightly, Gaepora stands, crimson robes waving in the breeze. He points one thick finger toward the sky, and Link follows the line up, up, past the clouds and the blue, then finally to the sun, radiant.
When he looks down again, Gaepora is gone. Link smiles.
“. . .Take her if you wish, Skychild! But know that she will always belong to me. Did I not tell you she would change?”
Link leaps to his feet, ready to draw his sword at - nothing.
Cautiously, he looks around, but the voice has come from nowhere. His brow furrows. His hand comes to rest at his side once more.
“. . . think that. She may have changed, but she will never be yours. I won’t allow it. . .”
“No matter what,” Link mumbles. He blinks, startled.
What in Hylia’s name…?
He sits back down, holding his head in one hand. Closing his eyes, he breathes deep, letting the springwater air cool his face.
“Master Link, are you well?”
The sensation of Fi’s voice trickling into his skull makes him squirm, oddly ticklish.
His tongue is dry like sand, and moves thickly in his mouth. Link swallows with effort.
“I don’t know, Fi. I guess I should lie down. I’m probably just tired. Thank - I, well. Yes, I’m probably just tired.”
Her voice remains unchanged.
“Is there anything you need of me? I suggest you drink a health potion as soon as you acquire one.”
Link opens his eyes to the burning sunlight, reflected off the water.
“No, that’s all.”
Above him, the sun shines, as bright as ever.
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Ghirahim feels almost sorry for her.
Being what he is, however, such an emotion is impossible.
He presides, once again, in the void of darkness, alone. Through a rip in its fabric he watches her. The dress she wears is still damp, faded from lovely blue to dull white. Her head is bent over a book, the same one she has undoubtedly read cover to cover by now. He finds it pitiful, but he watches her nonetheless.
She is nothing like him. None of them are.
Casually, he examines one bare hand, the palm free of calluses, fingernails trimmed to just the right length. Ghirahim smiles to himself; perfect, as always. No flaws or blemishes, nothing to mark him as human.
He looks back to Zelda, small and frail and so very flawed. It would take him more effort to blink than to kill her; strangle her in her sleep, or to drown her in the bathtub.
But he needs her. She is too important to waste on a thrill, a passing moment of entertainment.
Ghirahim licks his lips in a contemplative way. He imagines her wreathed in a gown of midnight, her innocence gone, soul to do with as he pleased.
Nothing would satisfy him more, than to take this purity of hers and quash it, send her soul to the depths of hell, to burn this world to the ground.
Ghirahim clenches his jaw so hard it creaks, an electric rush of anger fizzling up his arms.
“Damn that Sheikah witch for botching my magic! The things I would be doing to you!”
Tossing his head, he laughs gleefully. “She will be so very disappointed when it comes back, and I take Zelda as my own to sacrifice. My Master need not wait much longer, nor myself.”
Closing his eyes, Ghirahim pictures it in his mind; Zelda lifeless in his arms, her flaxen hair tangled in his fingers. By his feet Link lies sprawled, bloodied and broken, no longer a hindrance.
He breathes in the darkness, letting its murk wash into his lungs. Exhaling, Ghirahim opens his eyes, gazing down at Zelda once more.
“How wonderful it is, to have my plans fall into place. The brunt of my magic is slowly returning. As powerful as that Sheikah’s spell was, mine is greater still.”
Zelda looks up from the book just then, casting her gaze around the room, as if she has heard him speak. From this angle he can clearly see the slope of her nape, her hair pushed over one shoulder - and what a lovely neck she has, just the right size to wrap his hands around it - Ghirahim shudders.
Slowly, she goes back to reading, the afternoon light shining past her and onto the withered flowers on the vanity.
He watches her trace the page with a few fingers, before closing it once more. She looks somewhere beyond his field of vision, the sunlight illuminating her face, and she looks more a Goddess now than he has ever seen her.
“Soon enough,” Ghirahim smiles.
He watches. He watches.
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Link screams in pain as a Bokoblin slices his shoulder with its blade, blood wetting the ground.
He ducks and rolls to the side, whirling upwards to rend his sword into the creature’s belly. Its foul blood splashes his wrists and neck, turning the collar of his tunic a muddy green. Link twists to avoid another Bokoblin, parrying violently.
Dodge, counter, parry, stroke - he kills the other in one swift strike.
Link has found himself to be very good at killing things, now.
He hates it.
Eldin volcano looms up, an earthen giant bleeding lava. The heat of the air has caused Link to sweat through his tunic, dampening his hair. It does nothing to mask the smell of sacred magic on his clothing, hours after he has left the Silent Realm.
Wincing, Link retrieves a potion from the pouch at his waist, downing the concoction in one swallow. Pulling up the sleeve of his tunic, he watches his skin weft together again, the pain vanishing.
Casting one last glance to the dead Bokoblin’s at his feet, Link proceeds up the trail, leading him deeper into the volcano.
Fi speaks to him from deep within the blade.
“Master Link, do not feel remorse for those creatures. Had you not killed them, they would have surely killed you. They are nothing but servants to Lord Ghirahim. There is a less than one-percent chance they would have spared you.”
Link stops, staring blankly ahead.
“Is that how all monsters are, Fi? Merciless creatures?”
Fi emerges from the sword, somersaulting gracefully in midair. From her springs the smell of fresh water. Link breathes deeply of it, nodding for her to continue.
“I have no definite answer to your question. However, I can surmise that your evaluation of them is correct. Creatures like Bokoblins and Lord Ghirahim exist only to destroy, Master Link.”
Link feels something boiling red surge within him - something like anger, something he is not used to feeling - his voice is heavy in his own ears.
“But why?”
Fi tilts her head.
“I cannot answer that question for you. I apologize. Master Link, I am not human, so I therefore am unable to…contemplate such matters. I am a weapon, nothing more.”
Link grits his teeth, jerking his head away. “Right. That’s all I wanted.”
Wordlessly, she disappears into the sword again.
Alone, Link treks farther up the trail, feeling that he is somehow being pulled along by puppet strings, with each step he takes.
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My beta has written a lovely fan-tribute to this, so I highly encourage you to read it as well.