Who: Ganon's Puppet Zelda, with J. Harker battling her & Princess Midna using her Fused Shadows What: Zelda wakes up possessed and on the hunt When: During the day today Where: Outside the Rear End somewhere, not too far Rating/Warnings: Vampirism, violence, buildings breaking, Zelda's Ganon-inspired murderous thoughts Status: Complete!
It was a lovely dress, Zelda always thought. Ivory with a layer of purple - the color of royalty, how fitting - with turquoise jewels encrusted in gold, a design that matched the crowning headdress. Pearly gloves covered her arms, a light armor on her shoulders for protection that matched the rapier in her hand; it was vision of a princess that exudes elegance with the ability to hold a blade to your throat if it meant protecting her kingdom.
Well, except for the blood splatters on her royal garb. It wasn’t much, it wasn’t hers, it seemed so harshly out of place on that soft fabric. But it was present, just like the sharp lines that looked more like rotting veins infected by something dark and sinister on that ashen-green skin. And those eyes, typically a gentle blue (sometimes reddish when she was Sheik) were corrupted in a sharp yellow. They glowed in the absence of light.
Silent on the outside, screaming on the inside - because it felt like a disease taking over, like someone was puppeting every single movement and she could see it all unfold without any control to what she was doing. And there were whispers, maddening whispers, sometimes incoherent and sometimes not provoking every action. Zelda knew the voice. It was composed of what nightmares were made of; something evil and foreboding and powerful.
Ganondorf. They’re all against the king of light and shadow, all of them fools, kill them kill them kill them -
Impa had gone down first. A Sage of Shadow in a life she hadn’t dreamt of yet, she wasn’t a fool, she knew how this place worked and something was very visibly wrong but she couldn’t stand a chance. That blood was hers, stricken by Zelda’s weapon and left alone but not dead. An iron will kept her conscious to grab her phone. Midna. A text she’d sent her, full of typos and somewhat incoherent but Impa liked to think she at least got the goddamn message across. zeda. posessd. gone..
Where the fuck to, she didn’t know, but the puppet princess had vanished (warped, actually) elsewhere. To a familiar area close to the Rear End, which had been the intended destination (it was connected to the Twilight Princess, she challenged the king) but she appeared in the open. In broad light with civilians who had no idea what happened, who she was, and with a swift swing of her arm came a force of wind.
It blasted bystanders into buildings and cars. Shattered glasses, made metal crumble under weight, and gave a reason for people to scream.
Midna hadn’t had much time to explain to Jonathan either - she’d gotten the texts from Impa, and knew immediately what had happened. Times like these she wanted to find some physical manifestation of the dreams and wring its scrawny neck - but she couldn’t, she could only deal with the aftermath of seeing those images in this world.
The Triforce of Power was something that, unfortunately, Midna had learned could combat the ancient magic of the Fused Shadow - a large helmet that, when the piece were all connected, unleashed powerful Shadow magic created by the Interlopers; this magic was banished and sealed by the Light Spirits, but it had been enough to break Ganon’s hold on Zelda and return her soul to her body. In this world, it arrived in those separate pieces - but Midna had them all, and she intended to use them.
Once the glowing green portal closed, clouds began to roll in, not just grey tufts, but dark - they were storm clouds, bringing the promise of rain and sleet and, for the moment, stealing the sun. All courtesy of a very precise weather-controlling vampire. He didn’t know what was going on, but this wasn’t right - when Zelda came back to herself, she would be devastated about hurting Impa. Not to mention being the one to cause destruction in the county this time - but alas, the OC came back pretty nicely from most things. Even the end of the world.
Climbing and hurtling over debris, he went against the wind rather than into it. And moved in nothing more than a blur, too quick for any naked human eye to catch. Jonathan paused near her, Midna nowhere in sight - but that was strategic.
“Zelda, stop. You know you won’t find her here, like this.”
What a lovely trick that was, pulling a blanket of darkness to cast away the light - not that this little puppet cared about those rays, there was barely a trace of her own left. “Why, did she send you in her place instead?” It was a smile that crept on her face, a ghost of something wicked that had taken root. An infection of malice. Zelda’s strides to Jonathan were graceful yet slow, with the steel of the sword dragging against the cement. It sparked. “You wouldn’t try to kill me, would you, J?”
Shadow and light, there was an intricate connection there. And the little bit that hadn’t been fully snuffed could feel the tug of it, a trace of twilight. The other side of the coin. Midna was here, how curious. Unseen. Yet Jonathan was right before her eyes.
It clicked for her. Her free hand rose, a rippling wave of energy harnessed. “No, of course. You’re just here to look pretty. And to distract.”
Force unleashed, it was more like a telekinetic wave that burst from her palm to blast him off elsewhere. Magic versus a vampire, she looked forward to seeing how this would go. Jonathan might not want to kill her, but alas.
The feeling was not mutual.
“Of course not,” Jonathan responded honestly. “I wouldn’t try to kill Zelda - but you’re not Zelda, are you? She’s still in there, with you - “
The blast of magic did its job, and it wasn’t gentle in the slightest - he could feel his bones rattling when the brick of a building stopped him from going further, but fingers flexed and uncurled, gripped onto the side and he dug in. Crawling along the edge in that reptilian way, a skittering of limbs before he jumped. Not exactly a feat of teleportation but almost quick enough to be one, then he landed behind her. Ensnared her with an arm, around the waist, tugged to him in a friendly embrace.
“You’re just lucky you’re using her body.” This close and he was cold enough to practically make snow angels on, sleek fangs bared - he could hear her heartbeat, the center of everything, all those valves opening and closing. Blood was ricocheting out of that heart, flowing through her veins. “Though maybe I could stop once I’ve started. Do you want to find out?”
Was she, or what she not Zelda? Up for debate. That voice was certainly hers, the memories were clearly there - she knew who this man was, knew the relationship between her and the Princess of Twilight, what Impa meant to her, but there was no empathy or sympathy. In the inside of her mind she heard her voice scream in retaliation but it was overcome by another presence, obsessively muttering and breathing over and over to kill. It drowned all other reason or purpose, all other sense of everything.
“You’re making this so cozy,” she chuckled lowly, trapped in arms that felt like glaciers instead but her skin lacked its usual heat - there wasn’t an absence of it like the he had, and there was a trace of warmth in there. “Did you always want a little nibble, or am I just looking particularly delectable today? You don’t have that much confidence in your control, J, let’s be honest here.” How sweet, she sounded playful. Like this was merely just another conversation they would be having, maybe over plum wine or sushi. Sans the garlic, of course, that’d be horrible for her friend.
Balancing on her feet, she stood on her toes and then up, off the ground they went into the air. Because in reality he was some irritating bug she was piggy-back riding around with and since he clearly needed to be reacquainted with the bricks of buildings again, that’s what she did - she practically flew into one in the way that he’d be a buffer for the impact.
Sans the garlic, yes, but Jonathan would argue that bashing him into a building also wasn’t the best thing - still, irritating bug he may be, but his hold did not break. The slam into something hard left dust and brick dust crumbling, along with an imprint of a distinct lawyer-shaped vampire, and yet. He continued to lock his very best friend in that cozy grip - gravity kicked in, and after the rather painful flight, that meant falling forward again.
“Particularly delectable,” he responded with a wheeze, and under normal circumstances he wouldn’t have done this. At all. But the situation they were in now wasn’t normal, and Zelda needed to be stopped - what kind of friends would he and Midna be if they just let her rampage the county, against her will, when she clearly wouldn’t have wanted to, because they were too soft to do what was necessary?
He was a better friend than that. And he needed to get her to stay still, to be weakened, so Midna could do what she needed to do.
That was why he pinned her pulse with his teeth, sinking them into the princess’s neck, into flesh that gave way like slicing through tissue paper - both arms locked around her now, and it wasn’t as if he was very hungry. But actions such as these, every time he took a bite from someone, it awakened the beast within who wanted that - it became less about satisfying that hunger, and more about taking control away from him and putting it into the hands of a monster who demanded the kill, demanded to take. It was something that a vampire battled with for a very long time, figuring out how to keep control and not surrender to that demon within.
Unless you drank from blood bags, anyway.
She’d be fine though. He could stop. He could. And as long as Zelda didn’t ingest his blood, then she was safe from potential transition.
There was a part of Zelda who knew he’d do it - who knew he’d do anything and everything to stop her from furthering this path of catastrophe she didn’t want to be responsible for. Impa was hurt, she hurt innocent people, she wanted nothing of this and that little flame of light that stubbornly flickered in that sickly green body she had no control over cheered when his teeth sank in, breaking skin.
On the outside, she screamed.
“Big mistake,” she snarled, the sound rumbling from the depths of her throat utterly inhuman - like he had triggered another beast, the lingering remnants of the King of Thieves that had been using her as his personal marionette. Her hands grabbed at his hands, wrists, forearm, whatever part of him that was readily available to even drag her nails against and touch. Palms began to heat, the summoning of Din’s fire taking place. Quickly, before it faded - “You will burn.”
He hurt her, she’d hurt him, until both of them couldn’t do it to each other any more.
The scream was sobering, not anything that Jonathan wanted to elicit from the likes of Zelda - ever. Nor would he have wished for puncture wounds on her neck, blood trickling down, all on his lips and chin and staining that pretty dress of hers - the scars would be there for awhile, probably, unless there was a way to fully heal them.
If it were most anyone else, he’d have torn their throat out right away - but he wouldn’t now. Couldn’t. He suffered for it too, he did burn - it didn’t feel like a pleasant frolic in sunshine. More like how it felt he’d been staked. Granted, he didn’t feel much as he dreamed it since it was a swift and merciful death. But it was a pain that was all-encompassing, yet throughout it all he didn’t let go.
That’s when Midna appeared, quite literally out of nowhere - from a nearby building, phasing through it, the brick remaining intact. With her she had all the Fused Shadow pieces - one she wore as a helmet, the other three circling her as she was bathed in a bright light. Those beams, columns of that light, they shot forward and cocooned Zelda - everything lit up like a beacon for a few moments, setting the dark sky ablaze, before the magic was reeled back in.
Finally, Jonathan’s grip slackened and fangs retracted - he still didn’t release Zelda though, in case she needed to be held upright. Bloodstained with the nightmarish crimson eyes she’d seen in her vision before, he was still there.
Jonathan’s grip felt like iron bars on a cage, nearly impossible to break free from them and the likeliness decreased the more the blood he drained - and the spot was particularly crippling, good job there, asshole. Pain flared, but so did the heat in her hands with the attempts to amp it up. To make him burn as promised, scorch that frigid skin to ash and have him be nothing but dust in the wind. Kill him, kill him too, he’s just in the way so kill him -
Then came the illumination. It ignited every single part of her with magic, powerful magic, the kind that seared whatever vile toxin that crept into her skin, ensnared her soul and strung it with black strings to be puppeted like a finely dressed doll. A cleansing that brought back some color to her skin (some, considering Jonathan had been drinking from her like a fountain), removed those serrated lines from her skin - marks that resembled something from the Twilight - and after those eyes closed to reopen, that yellow staining her eyes receded. Back to that pale shade of blue.
Midna was there; she didn’t have to look to sense her presence, but she came face to face with someone who had a hint of savagery and red on his lips. Zelda’s hands no longer burned and with the hold they had on each other, it kept her from swaying to the side and hitting the concrete ungracefully.
“I’m sorry,” she choked out, a knee-jerk response to everything that had just happened. It wasn’t her fault, logically she’d known that, but they stood surrounded by damaged buildings and flipped cars and bystanders in the shadows with blood on them. The puncture wounds on her neck ached, still even bled, though it felt like a dull throb compared to the weight of reality.
The Shadow pieces were drawn to the main component, that helmet - and they snapped back in securely, but Midna took the opportunity to remove the (now larger) headpiece entirely, shaking her hair out. “Man, that guy is a dillweed,” she huffed, talking about Ganondorf. All his big bad talk about how weak her people and their magic was - well, fuck that. He got his ass kicked in the end and she was grateful for it. “Easy does it, Z, it’s been a long day.”
Right, because it was still daytime, after all.
Jonathan sported battle wounds too - vampires did scar (just ask Dracula, who had a nice on the forehead after being bashed with a shovel thanks to Meeeeester Harker), so he had the burn marks on his forearms. They still hurt too, and yet it wasn’t that important in the scheme of things. “We’ll call for backup to help out here, but we really should get you home,” he said, hand covering the neck wounds on her to help staunch the bleeding. They were thin, and small, since back in the Victorian times of his dreamworld being bitten by a bloodsucker meant that those wounds could easily be mistaken for an accidental puncture while fastening a cloak - sort of like a pinprick, from two sharp fangs.
It was daylight, wasn’t it? Technically. Hard to tell with the blanket of stormclouds veiling the sky. Anyway, the term dillweed was generous in regards to the stain of darkness that shadowed their dreams. A second time around for her - he was literally a nightmare incarnate, with menacing eyes and that skin of evil, ripping out her kingdom from beneath her feet the first time around and then using her as a plaything the second time. He must have enjoyed it, puppeting her around. Causing her to attack Midna and Link there, and here -
Zelda hated him. But it wouldn’t be the last lifetime she’d see of him. It was a never ending cycle of reincarnations. Almost like the goddesses themselves cursed them, bearing the three facets of the sacred relic and dooming them for a reunion every time.
Home sounded like a splendid destination, though. “Impa - is she? She’s not -” No, she couldn’t be, otherwise they wouldn’t have known what had happened, right? “Is she okay?” Her nose sounded awfully clogged but she’d blame it on the cloud of dust from her and Jonathan’s tiff.
No, it wouldn’t be the last any of them would see of Ganondorf, in that dreamworld far, far away - just look what happened here; he was essentially reincarnated into the body of a man who murdered Zelda’s father and tried to take everything from her in turn, but he was behind bars now. Sealed away, like he had been once upon a time - in a sense, anyway. But it simply showed that light and dark always would exist, one not snuffing out the other completely - where you had good, you also had evil, and people who would bring balance to the world. Midna worried about the Triforce of Power - Ganon hadn’t been able to handle it, but could she?
Discussion for another time. She didn’t even have the thing yet, wasn’t sure she wanted it in this world.
“She’s alright,” Midna promised, helping Zelda up and giving her a hand to help steady her. “Probably confused but at home, alive and well. Almost well. Maybe get her a new bong or something, to make up for the trouble,” she grinned impishly. Hey, it was in her nature.
Leave it to Midna to have a grin like that at a time like this. But it was welcome, it really was - it helped Zelda almost feel even somewhat better, the feeling a fleeting thing, and she grabbed the other princess by her face. Knot in her throat swallowed, she kissed the tip of her nose and breathed her in. “We need to stop breaking part of the county,” came out her choked response, meant to mirror her own playfulness but it came out with a quiver.
There was grime on her face. Smudges of dirt from everything around them. The Princess of Light turned her head, crystallized eyes at the best friend she’d gone toe to toe with. “Not how I wanted to show you my rapier.” It was on the ground flat. “Are you - you’re okay too, right? I know I burned you - how bad is it??”
The rapier didn’t stay on the ground for long, because Jonathan picked it up and rescued the weapon - it was nice, it didn’t deserve to be tossed aside or anything. Since it made the journey all the way from that other world. “It’s fine, not bad - don’t worry, alright?” He handed the rapier to Midna and then wrapped an arm around Zelda, to squeeze her gently, reassuringly. That had sort of been a terrifying minute or so - not because Zelda was attacking him (though that was far from pleasant) but because what if he hadn’t been able to stop drinking her blood?
But he had. That was the important thing. She wasn’t a cold, lifeless corpse in his arms.
“We love you, Z,” Midna told her, getting in on the other side to make a Princess of Hyrule sandwich. “Just with me, you get the added bonus of sticking my face between your thighs.”
Jonathan chuckled a little. “Exactly.”
Zelda was warm, alive, generously sandwiched between a singed vampire and a princess of shadows - not a direction she ever predicted her life to go as a little girl (she had dreams of being a figure ice skater, for comparison) but there wasn’t much elsewhere that she’d rather be.
Maybe not in the dead center of a part of town that she may have somewhat obliterated under Ganondorf’s world-transcending next time, however.
Midna’s quip succeeded in yielding a quiet giggle. Of course, couldn’t forget that lovely bonus. “I love you weirdos too,” she replied, key members of their self-proclaimed Geek Squad (because in reality they were total losers who had only some idea of how they were navigating things). Each of one of their arms grabbed, she kept them close. “Let’s get out of here. Before someone decides to videotape this as some kind of publicity stunt.”
She needed to see Impa too. Zelda needed to make sure with her own two eyes that she was actually fine (and then donate some kind of money to help rebuild what she broke) - and hoped for at least this part of the dreams, that kind of vulnerability was the end of it.
Home was definitely sounding superb. Maybe ice cream too - and pot. Yeah, Midna wanted both. Onward, then! To where dessert and the wacky tobaccy awaited them!
As for how they’d get there, it’d be no trouble. They were already bunched together, sharing some semblance of a group hug, so the green portal that split open beneath them wasn’t there for long - just enough time to swirl around them and swallow them up, sending them back to where they belonged. Hell of a lot quicker than waiting for a bus, right?