Disclaimer: I own nothing except for the plot. The characters are merely being borrowed for my own sense of delight.

A/n: I took a liking to Ike instantly. I mean, who couldn’t? He’s such a hunk, and I’m such a sucker for the loner, bad-boy types! I’ve heard of him prior to Brawl’s release but never actually played any of his games, so if my characterization of him is off I’m very sorry.

Anyway, I have a pretty good idea where this’ll be going, and I can assure you that it’s going to involve a very sexy, brooding Ike, a very confused but fascinated Zelda, much arguing on both their parts, and a lot of gut-wrenching, hair-pulling moments. At least I hope so. :D

- - -

The Flames
Chapter One:

The Beginning

- - -

Ike was a man that certainly left impressions. She remembered rather well the first time they had been partnered together, which had been, incidentally enough, also the first time she had actually seen him in battle—the first time she had met him eye to eye.

He had said no words, only because Ike was a man for whom words were pointless. He merely glimpsed at her, perhaps to acknowledge the existence of his co-fighter, but that one look had been enough to freeze her momentary pre-battle preparations as if he had just slugged her with a Freezie instead, for Ike was a man who, with a glance, stripped you of your confidence in the span it took to blink—to breathe.

His eyes had said it all: I don’t tolerate losing.

She would have been offended (nothing aggravated her more than being underestimated), would have uttered something to assure him that she didn’t tolerate losing either, but he had turned around and their opponents had arrived and the courage fled her, drowned in the loud, nearly deafening music.

The fight commenced. He sped off, and she was left wondering acutely whether or not he was quite possibly the most pompous man she had ever met. No, she remembered thinking while aiming a quick spell in Kirby’s direction, Ganondorf and Wario clearly own that title.

But Ike, she vehemently decided as the fire ball imploded nearby its target, would definitely be up there on the list.

Kirby, burned but wholly undeterred, twirled towards her, hammer extended. She bit her lip for merely an instant to consider her choices, before gathering her hands together and thrusting her palms out. A spark ignited between her fingers and zapped her pink, round opponent with a torrent of condensed lightning.

Kirby flew off from the impact of her assault within a satisfying minute of the battle. Pleased, Zelda began smoothing out the wrinkles out of her dress (breathing deeply to calm her excited heart and speculating if rubbing her K.O. in Ike’s face would be a sign of poor sportsmanship on her part) when she suddenly heard an almost inhuman roar from the other side of the stage and felt the ground shake and groan bellow her boots. Shocked, curious, and almost even a bit frightened, she turned to glance behind her.

Ike was a man of immeasurable strength. He held a double-edged, two-handed sword with merely one, swung it around as if it weighed no more than a wooden ruler, and growled as if it genuinely infuriated him that his opponent existed.

The whole sight of him rendered Zelda oddly speechless.

Ike clutched the hilt of his heavy blade tightly, letting out another yell—raw, angry, unconquerable—that chilled her to the bone before plunging his weapon forward. The atmosphere hissed and bellowed. Fox, his opponent, dodged his sword with some fancy footwork, but the attack had been close and slit through one of his sleeves in passing. Fox scowled, briefly glancing at the ruined shirt, and then looked back up where he suddenly noticed Zelda...

...standing alone and unoccupied and wholly distracted.

The perfect target.

Before she knew it, before she could throw back up her guard, Fox spun past Ike and began heading in her direction with speed and determination. She silently cursed herself for being so easily enraptured, trying in the two seconds she had before he was in front of her to transform into Sheik...

It was too late. Fox’s foot connected with her abdomen, and Zelda gasped as the air rushed out of her lungs.

Ike might have yelled her name—or perhaps it had been the crowd; she couldn’t remember too clearly—as she flew in the air, higher and higher until the sun scorched her and she felt the tears of frustration burn her eyes. A familiar light encompassed her, and then abruptly, the battle was over.

When she returned to the stage to meet back with her partner—who had been subsequently knocked out right after her—she wasn’t sure what to expect, but the blatant animosity burning in his eyes clearly hadn’t been quite it. He blamed her for the loss. She felt both furious and hurt.

“You should’ve blocked,” he grit out.

Goddesses above, she had just met the man for the first time that day and already she wanted to never see him again! Kneading her temple with her fingers (and resisting the temptation of socking him in the jaw) she sighed and offered in reply all that she could. “I tried.”

“No,” he scoffed, eyes narrowed. “Trying implies that you had a desire to win, when, clearly, you did no—”

She gasped in indignation. Questioning her will as a fighter was the last straw! “Do not,” she hissed, taking a step closer and jabbing him with an accusing finger square in the chest, “take me to be such a lightweight, sir! Perhaps it should be you whose authenticity we should question seeing how you so easily let him slip past you.”

His face was void of a reaction, and so for a short-lived moment, they merely stared at each other, lost in some subliminal contest of the wills. She realized, then (when everyone but them was gone and the stage was deathly silent), how close they truly were. Her breath lodged itself in her throat; in their proximity, Zelda could see the blues of his eyes and the contour of his frowning lips and the very slight stubble on his chin. When she inhaled finally, she also noticed something else that took her by mild surprise:

Ike was a man that smelled vaguely of apples.

She had to remind herself quickly that she was supposed to be angry—angry at his haughty attitude and his rather hard chest (because now her finger hurt from poking him).

Finally, after seemingly eons ticked away around them, his scowl deepened, and he turned. “Whatever. If you were nearly half the warrior you claim to be, you wouldn’t have been standing there dumbstruck anyway.”

Ike was gone in a matter of seconds, but his words still lingered, snaking around her and constricting painfully until she was choking back a desire to rip his cape off and happily stuff it in his mouth. The fact that he smelled like her favorite fruit did nothing to saturate her fury.

But I won’t, she thought, because I am a princess, and such actions are unbecoming of me, and I will not allow a man to affect me so easily.

No, she wouldn’t, even if he was a prick who deserved suffocating on his own flashy wardrobe.

- - -

How she managed to avoid Ike for the remainder of the week, she couldn’t say, but thanked the Goddesses for her luck anyway. It wasn’t until several days later however—her rage thoroughly reduced by then and as she was walking to her room from a pleasant luncheon with Link—that Zelda realized somberly the loss had been, in fact, her fault. Had she not been ogling—

No, she firmly told herself suddenly, not ogling.

It hadn’t been ogling (Had it?). Ogling suggested she had seen something she liked and there was absolutely nothing about Ike that she liked, so it must have been something else, something else in its entirety. She may have been admiring how nicely his sword caught the light (because it had been a nice sword when she thought about it really) or how the muscles in his arms bulged every time he swung or how sometimes his scowl deepened whenever his hair fell into his eyes (because it had been hard to miss certain things like that), but that had been admiring not ogling.

No, she swallowed as she reached the mahogany door of her room, somehow her reassurances falling short, not ogling at all.

Turning the golden knob and consequently entering the premises revealed Peach, her roommate and moreover best friend, sitting by the window sipping her afternoon tea. Zelda’s spirits rose instantly. A talk with Peach, who was assured to agree that she had not been ogling, was just the thing she needed to finally put herself at ease.

After several minutes of explaining her argument of ogling versus admiring, Peach finally put her porcelain cup down in its proper tea plate, dabbed a napkin gently to her lips, and then patted Zelda on the cheek with the utmost affection and perhaps a tad bit of amusement as well.

“Zelda, my dear,” Peach’s voice rang, and the Hylian Princess practically felt better already, “you were definitely ogling.”

“I was not!” So much for putting her at ease.

“You most obviously were. But don’t worry; I think all of us were ogling him at one point or another.”

Zelda bit her lip, playing with the tip of the braid that ran along her back but was currently flung over her shoulder. “Link will dislike me for this,” she said after a moment.

Peach laughed. “Zelda, for goodness’ sake, you were just looking! There’s no crime in that. It’s not as if you were thinking about taking his pants of.” There was a pause. “You weren’t, right?”

“Of course not!” Zelda sputtered in embarrassment. “I would never—”

“Good. I can’t say the same about Samus, and I’m sure you can imagine what a fit Captain Falcon was having, but I’ll tell you more about that later.”

Zelda smiled. Trust Peach to know the latest gossip and spread it like the wind.

“For now, however,” Peach continued, gathering her friend’s hand in her own and scooting her chair closer, before leaning forward with such curiosity that her face nearly sparkled with it, “tell me something: Is it true that if you stand near enough, and peer long enough, you can see the fire in his eyes?”

Zelda didn’t need the name to know who Peach was talking about. She closed her eyes briefly and thought back to when she and Ike had first locked gazes and felt an indescribable blaze flutter in her gut, mostly from righteous anger but a tinge of something else she couldn’t name.

When her lids fluttered back open, she grinned if only slightly. “Oh, the flames are there all right.”

- - -

A/n: I don’t know why, but for an avid Zelda/Link shipper, I’m having a hell of an easy time writing this Zelda/Ike fanfic. The inspiration keeps on coming. xD

Some important things to note: Zelda and Link are involved. That’s inevitable, the fan that I am of him and all.

Also, if you haven’t figured out already, I’m going to be taking some creative liberties with the game, especially where the fighting is involved, so if something occurs that is impossible in Brawl, don’t point it out, because believe me, I know.

Anyway, thanks for giving this fanfic a chance! Please review and tell me what you think!

Next Chapter: Chapter Two – The Cape

His scaly paw made a wild grasp for her, caught the hem of her skirt, and then pressed her violently towards the ground. With his unbearable weight on her body, he pulled her arm back, and she both heard and felt the loud crack of bone.