#gansheik

[imagineaspen]

Thinking about gansheik and I always used to think if I were to ever try and write a longer fic with them it would just be them being miserable 24/7 but these two are so ridiculous that I think it too would ultimately become a comedy. Zelda's here in the thinnest disguise ever (couldn't even be bothered to dye her hair) and Ganondorf doesn't even notice cause his mind is too preoccupied with the logistics of filling Hyrule Castle's moat with lava

[ro-blaze]

“What have I done, chadakalu, to upset you? Your king is listening." Sheik stares at him with her large purple eyes full of warmth and tenderness and gentle exasperations, and lightly taps the tips of her fingers against the warm stone. Up here she is of height with him, close enough that he can count the tiny hairs that make up her lashes, taste the sweetness of her breath on his lips. Sweeter than summer wine, and all the more intoxicating. He prides himself on his patience, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to resist the temptation of her mouth. “Tell me, Ganondorf,” she says, in that honeyed voice that knows no equal, lush with beauty and life and power, “how is it that I am the last person in this entire city to learn that I am being courted?”

In The House of the Sun, Chapter 7 out of 7:

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Written for Zelgan Week 2025, Day 6 — Persuasion / Home and Belonging

[inspiteofganon]

I'm not really a "shipper" per se but I will admit that the utter lack of gansheik stuff anywhere is a real surprise to me. You can't hardly even find platonic stuff of them having a dynamic despite all the fuel that the manga gives for tension and potential interactions.

[imagineaspen]

Another prompt fill: Secret Garden

This is basically a 'Sheik works for Ganondorf like in the manga' OOT AU

The first time Zelda saw him in her garden, she was filled with rage.  He had already taken everything from her, and now this too?  Would he rip up the flowers she had planted with her father and Impa as a girl?  The final desecration of the castle that used to be her home.  He’d already changed so much about Hyrule Castle that she found herself getting lost at times when she wandered its halls.

Ganondorf looked up from where he knelt by the ground and promptly got to his feet.  He narrowed his eyes.

“Sheik,” he said.

“My king,” she responded steadily. “I apologize for intruding.”

The first several times he had addressed her, it had filled her with panic.  Does he know? she would ask herself; it would take all of her willpower to prevent herself from trembling.  Does he know that I am Hylian?  Does he know that I am a woman?  Does he know that I am Zelda?

But as the weeks turned to months and nothing happened, she had begun to relax into this role.  Sometimes it felt as though Sheik was real, and Zelda was the lie.

“Do you have news for me?”  Ganondorf asked.

“I have scoured Kakariko Village, my king,” she replied.  “If Princess Zelda or her attendant were ever hiding there, they are there no longer.”

Ganondorf’s eyes flashed with frustration, but he merely sighed.  “Very well,” he said.  “Come see me in the throne room later; I have another task for you.”

“Yes, my king,” she said, then hesitated.  

“Is there something else?”

“No, my king, I was only wondering…”  She swallowed.  “What were you doing when I came in?”

There was silence for a moment as he frowned at her.

“I believe you were dismissed,” he said, and she flushed.

“Apologies,” she said, then fled.

Later, once she was certain he had gone, she snuck back into the garden to find the flower beds intact, watered and weeds freshly pulled.  Ganondorf, she was suddenly certain, had not been ripping them up at all.  He had been tending to them.

***

She continued to sneak into the garden as often as she dared, surprised and confused each time that the plants were so well kept. 

This is ridiculous, she told herself.  You are Sheik, not Zelda.

Sheik did not care for sentimental things like flowers.  He cared only for avenging the royal family that he served, even if that required temporarily following the man he hated more than any other.  He was strong, capable.  He had never been so stupid to have hatched the plan that had led to this.

Zelda had ruined everything.  She was not needed.  And yet, in this garden, it was her that emerged.

Ganondorf had added new plants since she had last been here.  Tall and thin, with small pink flowers growing off the lush green stem.  Pretty, she thought.

“Don’t think that I don’t know about all the time you spend here.”  His voice, as though her thoughts had summoned him.

Zelda startled.  “My king,” she said.

“There is very little that occurs in this castle that I do not know about,” Ganondorf said, stepping into the garden.     

“I apologize, my king, I –”

“It’s fine, Sheik,” said Ganondorf.  He approached her, then looked down at the flowers she was leaning over.  

“I’ve never seen this kind of flower,” Zelda said, tentatively turning to glance at him.  She waited, watching him in silence.

“Warm safflina,” Ganondorf said abruptly.  “They grow only in the desert.”

Zelda blinked, surprised; she had not expected him to answer. “Oh?”

Ganondorf looked away, gritting his teeth.  “Something…  to remind me of home,” he said, so softly she could scarcely hear it.  

She stared, not believing what she was hearing.  He must have been in quite the sentimental mood, to speak of his homeland.   Before she could think twice, she asked a question; one she had been considering for some time now but had not dared speak aloud.

“Why have you not had your people move to Castle Town, my king?”

He frowned.   Zelda smiled, and added, carefully, “Surely you do not enjoy looking out onto rubble every day; perhaps it is time to rebuild.  You have said that the desert is harsh, my king; perhaps –”

“I cannot,” he interrupted.  “Not yet.”

“My king?”

“I cannot,” he said, suddenly fierce.  “Until I know that this won’t be taken from me!”  He whirled on her.   “That is why I need you to find the Princess, Sheik.  Her, and that forest boy!”

“I am trying, my king,” she said.  “I’ve been to the forest, and there is no –”

“Then try harder!” he snarled, chest heaving.  He closed his eyes, clenching his right hand into a fist.  “It isn’t enough,” he muttered, more to himself than to her, she thought.  “I need to be stronger, to be better, to…”   

He raised his head to look at her again, and Zelda felt that familiar fear rear up in her.  He knows.  He knows that I am Zelda; he knows that I have Wisdom; he knows –

“Leave, Sheik,” he said.

She should not leave him in this state.  If there was one thing she had learned about him, it was that Ganondorf alone with his thoughts was a dangerous thing indeed.

“My king,” she started, but he shook his head.

“Leave,” he repeated, nearly begging, and it was that which caused her to flee again.

***

The more time passed, the more erratic and paranoid Ganondorf’s behaviour became.  She found herself in the position of advisor as much as spy, spending much of her time talking him down from whatever insane plot he’d hatched to keep Hyrule in his clutches.  (“Let me speak with Darunia,” she’d begged only the past week.  “I will make him see reason, my king; this dragon plan goes too far!”)  He sunk deeper and deeper into his obsession with power and the Triforce, convinced he would lose Hyrule without it (he’d never said that word to her, but she knew what he wanted).

She often wondered why he seemed to listen to her, of all people, when she came to a realization: He has no one else.

He was a man alone, holed up in a castle surrounded by wreckage and monsters.  She did not think he had spoken to any of the Gerudo in months; he had mentioned once something about mothers, but she had never seen them here.  He was falling apart, and Zelda was desperately trying to hold him and her kingdom together until the hero returned.  And yet more and more she found herself thinking of the hero’s return with dread.

Ganondorf would learn, then, that his only confidant was a lie, and she worried it would break him completely.

Now she returned to the castle after a long stint in Zora’s Domain, and the first place she went was her garden – his garden, now.  He was there already, staring down at the soil with a defeated look in his eyes.  She followed his gaze.

The warm safflina were at his feet.  Brown and wilted.

“They are dead,” he said dully as she moved to stand beside him.

“I’m sorry, my king,” Zelda offered.  “It’s the climate; it is too humid here for desert flowers.”

“You think I don’t know that?” he snapped, then let out a long breath.

“Sheik,” he said.  “Why do you follow me?”

She frowned, confused by the change of subject.

“The Royal Family of Hyrule have treated my people as slaves for generations,” she said.  “I would serve anyone who puts a stop to it.”

It was a rehearsed answer, fed to her by Impa (and so easily that Zelda had to wonder if her attendant saw truth in it).

Ganondorf let out a short laugh.  “And I am better?” he said shortly.  “You think that I do not consider snapping your neck every time that you come to me and tell me that you still have not found Princess Zelda?”

“Yet you have not,” Zelda said lightly.  “And so I must consider that to be an empty threat.”

He laughed again; his eyes were taking on a crazed gleam.  “I have ruined this kingdom,” he said, voice raising.  “The Gorons riot; the Zora are on the verge.  The capital is a broken shell.  The people live in fear.  And my people carry on without me.  They’ve never needed me.”

“My king, you–”

She cut herself off as he looked to her, giving her a savage smile.  “Shall I destroy you next, Sheik?”

Without waiting for an answer, he looked back at the dead flowers, the anger draining from him as quickly as it had appeared.   

“I just wanted,” he said quietly, “something that does not break with my touch.”

She took a step towards him.  He shook his head.

“Leave me,” he said.

Sheik would have obeyed.  He would consider this conversation evidence that Ganondorf was mad and needed to be deposed as soon as possible.

Zelda stayed.  She took another step to him, and rested a hand on his arm.  He looked down at her in surprise.

“I am here,” she said.  “Ganondorf.”

Neither of them said anything more.  But he did not move away.

Tomorrow, she thought, he would hate that he had shown her this weakness, would rage at her, or send her on a task that sent her far away.  And she would become Sheik once again, and hate him, and wish for the day the hero reappeared.

But for now, in this garden, she stayed and offered comfort to a man who, she was beginning to realize, loathed himself just as much as Sheik did Zelda.

[ro-blaze]

“I think I would like being married to you. If you keep— keep telling me stories. You have a really nice voice, Ganondorf. You should do this more often…” “Thank you. And I definitely can do that,” Gan immediately agrees. Perhaps she wants to come to Gerudo and see his stars and his moon and his sun as much as he wants to show them to her. He will be a good husband to her too, the best in the world. Much better than any stupid Hylian noble. “Though… I’m afraid I don’t have a barn for your sheep just yet. Do you want me to build one?” “Well, I don’t have any sheep. But I would like some.” “Hm.” He rubs at his chin for a moment. “I could get you some sheep.”

As a young boy, Ganondorf promised the sacred maiden of Hyrule a whole barn full of sheep, if only she would become his wife and he her husband. Many years and tribulations later, his beloved wife remembers that promise and inquires after the sheep she never received — at least not in the way either of them would've expected.

Or, Ganondorf and Sheik watch a sunrise and a moonrise, nearly two decades apart, and talk about love, family, and The Romances of the Sun and the Moon.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Written for Zelgan Week 2025, Day 1 — Sun and Moon

[ro-blaze]

His hands on her hips, on her face, stroking through her hair, pulling it free from the ribbon that stubbornly holds all her wild curls in place. Gan smiles, and it’s not the pointed wild thing of the warlord but the gentleness of the worn soldier and the hunger of the beast and the greed of the king, and it’s beautiful. “Oh, rajela, seven days without your tender touch, without your song — I would not have survived the eighth.” “More poetry. You should’ve become a singer, rajena’v,” she says, and leans into his touch despite herself, because she needs him just as much as he needs her; her heart has never been strong when it came to him. “There is still time to become a singer. I am not so old yet,” he says, and then he kisses her, and the song that he sings into her mouth is sweeter than honey and honeycomb.

Sheik welcomes her husband home after a successful hunt, intent on fussing and fretting over his latest injuries to her heart's content. Ganondorf, overjoyed to be reunited with his darling wife after their brief but painful separation, has other plans for their first night back together. Plans he is very excited to share with her.

Or, two sappy, lovesick fools see each other again after a week apart and cannot keep their hands to themselves.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Written for Zelgan Week 2025, Day 3 — Scars / Memories

[ro-blaze]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Three years after the sudden collapse of the Hyrulean Empire, fate brings Ganondorf, King of the Gerudo and Protector of the People, face to face with an old friend he thought he would never see again. Sheik might be content to spend the rest of her life as a ghost slowly wasting away among the survivors, but Gerudo King will not let that pass — and he is both stubborn and patient enough to find his way past the walls around her heart and teach her how to live.

Written for Zelgan Week 2025, Day 6 — Persuasion / Home & Belonging

thank you very much to @zelgan-week for hosting this event! this story is already written, and will release chapter by chapter over the length of this month. please, join me as we tell the story of Ganondorf and Sheik trying to find their way to each other (even if one of them is digging her heels in the sand about it)

[imagineaspen]

You can find my contribution for @zelgan-week Day 7: Honey and Sweets/Blood here: Honey and Sweets - imagineaspen - The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms [Archive of Our Own]

Summary:

Ganondorf has an excellent idea to handle his Goron troubles. Sheik does not quite agree.

***

“Cookies?” Ganondorf scoffed. “This is no time for cookies, Sheik. You must focus on the dragon.”