Man, I really love the Wind Waker Ganondorf fight. It feels different from other fights in the series in the sense that you aren't fighting to save a kingdom or the princess. Sure, Link went in that tower to get Tetra back and stop Ganondorf, but when the fight happens, that isn't why they are fighting anymore.
Tetra is already there with Link, and Ganondorf had already lost; Daphnes stole his wish. Ganondorf has lost everything, and now the only thing he desires is to take Link and Tetra down with him as the hope for the future he wanted was given to them.
A fight you go into expecting to be one to save a friend and stop the villain became nothing more than a battle of survival. The waters of the great sea are crashing down as it is to kill or be killed.
Throughout the whole journey, Link and Tetra both struggled against Ganondorf. The first visit to the forsaken fortress he throws Link into the sea to drown. The second time, he knocks Link down and is about to strike him down with his blade, Tetra just barely coming in to save Link on time, and even then, they're both not strong enough. Finally, in Ganon's tower, after going through Ganondorf's trials without even getting a chance to fight him, this man straight up beats this small child and steals his triforce. Every confrontation with this man has gone wrong, and yet it's now or ever because if they lose, they will die, and no one is there to save them this time.
The battle theme is intense. It really is two very small children fighting this huge man, but just as they're the hope of the future every once in a while, the great seas theme will play as if there is a gleam of hope. That they can make it out alive.
However, even then when they do win, it isn't a triumphant one. Anytime Link has beaten a boss in the game, he is overjoyed and ecstatic. He is jumping up and down as he slayed the monster. He won.
Yet for Ganondorf, this is his reaction for killing a man.
He looks to be in disbelief, frightened even. Whatever he is feeling, it sure isn't a good one. How could he feel good about this? One thing is for sure is that he is exhausted, and he almost passes out then and there, with Tetra needing to catch him.
I just love everything about this fight. From the music and setting to the aftermath and why you're fighting him. You're not fighting to win or save the day. You're simply fighting to live.
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I have no idea where this came from and where it's going. Probably nowhere. No thoughts, just vibes.
cw: implied past character death (i'll put something more specific in the tags)
The street looks the same as when Daniel had left. Same cracked pavement, same uneven sidewalk, only on the left. Even the washed out weeds, insisting on growing where they shouldn't have, look the same.
The fence on the right is maybe a little less red, a little more broken, but the hedge on the left is still cut in the same strictly rectangular shape, so dense you can't see the garden on the other side. His feet seem to remember just how many steps it takes to go from the intersection to the end of the cul-de-sac, stopping exactly where the old bus stop was.
The gate is different. It's jarring, in the sameness of it all, to see something so starkly changed. It used to be white, with rusted and mossy spots all over, a number of bars Daniel had never bothered to count. Nothing like the tall, solid black gate he's looking at now.
He just wanted to look at the garden, at the path, at the front door. He wanted to see if the hydrangeas had survived all these years, if the grass was overgrown, if the multi-colored window on the side of the door was still intact. If the rosemary, without someone carefully keeping it contained, had escaped its flowerbed and invaded the nearby hibiscus.
He had wanted to see if there was any part of him still clinging to the living room windows, to the sun-warmed bricks.
Now, all he can see are the second store windows, all curtains drawn, and the new solar panels on the garage roof.
He shouldn't have come.
There is an ache eating away at his chest, bacteria freed from a petri dish and given his whole insides to feast on, lid broken and thrown away by the first step he had taken out of the car.
Suddenly, as if yanked from the past he's both begging for and resisting, a child's laughter rings through the hot summer air, followed by a gleeful high pitched scream.
He shouldn't have come.
And yet, his feet are stuck on the pavement, and his mind is stuck in the nowhere place that is half in the present and half in a past that no longer exists.
There's another voice in the garden, too low to make out the words, but clearly belonging to a man. Daniel can hear a sliding door open and then close, the sound discordant against his sliding-door-free memories.
He should go.
The tide is already threatening to fill his lungs. The air smells the same, but somehow turns to rot when it reaches the back of his throat.
There's a high beeping sound, then a click, then the smaller gate to the side, the one they always needed to unstuck in the winter, now replaced too, opens.
Before he can stop himself, Daniel gasps, heart jumping in his throat, hope building like a cursed bubble. He's not quick enough to pop it himself, and it explodes right in front of his face, soapy water stinging his eyes, when the man who steps through it is a complete stranger.
The air is shimmering with heat, cicadas' screams swelling, and for a second Daniel thinks: it's not real.
Then the stranger fully exits the gate, square jaw set and eyebrows furrowed, and closes it behind him with a clank.
"Can I ask you who you are and what you are doing in front of my house?" No hellos.
There's an accent there, a rasp cutting through some words, a lisp making itself known into others. A frosty threat thickly slathered on top, icing on an uncut cake, knife into Daniel's hand to slice the tension in the air with.
His brain, still clawing its way back to the present, offers his tongue no words, half open mouth empty. The man raises his eyebrows, crosses his arms. Daniel knows with crystal clear certainty he's going to have the cops called on him very soon, or he's going to be punched. He thinks of the kid laughing and can't find any blame in either option.
"Sorry," he finally manages, stiff vocal cords striding together. The man doesn't look impressed.
Daniel forcefully pulls his brain together, connecting neurons like he's jump starting a car, stuffing memory boxes closed.
"I used to live here, years ago." He tears his eyes away, wishing once again he could see the hydrangeas. His mom had loved the hydrangeas, even when she cursed them every year for being needy fuckers. "When I was a kid."
When he looks back, the man doesn't look quite as tense, something absurdly like recognition in his blue eyes.
"I was in the area, and thought I would check it out," he offers lamely. Just sort of a lie, but he doesn't owe his bleeding soul to this stranger.
"I bought it four months ago," the man says, and Daniel feels weirdly chastised, as if he should have come by sooner.
"I know. I signed the deal." And then spent one whole day in bed, cradling ghosts in his arms underneath the blankets.
The man tilts his head appraisingly, lips slightly pursed. Daniel doesn't know what he's being considered for, but tries his best not too look to lost, or too insane, or too dangerous. He doesn't even know why. Maybe just to avoid the cops.
"There was a picture, in the living room," the man slowly says. Daniel immediately wishes he would stop talking, but his brain is gone again, unable to give words, too busy looking in his memories for the framed photograph he knows the man is talking about. There were four people in the picture, and Daniel had mourned it for years, forgotten on the shelf of the emptied dish cupboard.
Suddenly, fierce protectiveness surges inside him, hands twitching with the need to go back, to hide it from stranger's eyes, to cradle it to his chest so hard he can carve a space for it between his ribs.
"I know you are saying the truth, because you are in it. Smaller." The stranger's lips curve up a bit at his own little joke, but Daniel's don't.
Yeah, of course he had been in it, smiling his still-crooked smile, flash glinting on his braces, curls squished under a baseball cap. His dad's hand on his shoulder.
His insides, all eaten by the fugitive bacteria, are burning, poison seeping from his bloodstream.
"Yeah." He refuses to elaborate. He shouldn't have come. "I'll be going."
He doesn't want to go. He shouldn't have come, but now that he has, he doesn't want to go. Walking away once again feels like something that could kill him.
"You could come back, tomorrow morning, when my daughter isn't here."
Daniel doesn't know what his face is doing, too many feelings slamming into him all at once. He hopes the only one the other man can see is surprise.
"Why?" He shouldn't ask. He should just say okay. He should just say no. He should turn around and walk away, and keep walking and walking until his legs hurt as much as the traitorous hope biting at him again.
"For the picture. And to see the house, if you want." The man says it as if this whole conversation is a test, and Daniel is on the verge of failing. As always, he doesn't know the correct answer. And yet, he knows there's only one he can give.
"Okay." He nods, feeling like he's jumping off the boat without checking for sharks first. Then belatedly, "thank you."
"10 am. If you are a serial killer, I know how to box." The man smiles, as if it was a joke. Daniel doesn't need his full brain capacities to know he's one hundred percent serious.
"I'm not." He almost adds which is exactly what a serial killer would say, but now that the stranger has offered, he does want to come back, doesn't want to ruin his chance with a dumb joke.
"Good."
The man doesn't say goodbye before turning around and pulling a bunch of keys out of his shorts pocket, opening the small gate and walking through, closing it behind himself without a second glance towards Daniel.
As if broken out of a spell, his feet can move again, and he finds himself walking away before he can even make the conscious decision to, his body wanting to hurry along the hours, to shorten the time between now and tomorrow, 10 am.
He barely looks at the road, at the cracked pavement and uneven sidewalk. Impressed on his retinas, the flutter of a curtain on the second floor, and the new name on the doorbell.
Max Verstappen.
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