Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Well, it was many years ago now—long before even I was born, if your pretty young head can even imagine that far back,” grins Methusala, her wizened face puckering as her eyes become nothing more than slits beneath the folding mounds of her eyelids.

“Jareth himself was little more than a lad, about the height of the Hill of Hilarity on a good day, with all the grandeur and peacock princeliness you might expect of a young fae lord…”

“Naturally, his father Titus was High King in those days, and the two realms united,” she sniffs, her snout-like nose releasing a puff of steam on the exhale that brings a flushed heat to Sarah’s cheek. “And in tooth and truth, the Underground was the stronger for it.”

She raises a mottled green hand, gnarled like tree roots, yellow talons combing through her stringy white hair.

“Jareth, as the second born, was naturally offered much more freedom than Oberon. The fairy kingdom thrives on convention, culture, charm… the Goblin realm is best doused in chaos… challenge… cruelty…”

“And chickens?” Sarah offers helpfully, feigned indifference catching Methusala’s eye through the reflection.

At this moment Ambrosius chooses to crash painfully into Sarah’s thigh, almost knocking her off the stool of her vanity. Her pale-pink lipstick falls from her hand and clatters onto the floor.

“Halt, thou ungallant, wavering steed!” Sir Didymus cries indignantly. “Thy quivering paints thee as undeserving of servitude to such a fair maiden, though it verily pains me to utter it!”

Ambrosius—who had spotted one of Toby’s errant school socks under Sarah’s dresser—reappears from a mound of her discarded clothes, a selection from her floordrobe, with said sock dangling unrepentantly from his mouth, tail wagging with all the triumph of a hunting dog sporting its spoil.

The sock was presumably coated in the full bouquet of scents one might expect from a child only just settled in kindergarten. Sarah dreaded to think.

“That too,” Methusala sighs, her gleaming chestnut eyes dulling for a moment—though whether shrouded in the sorrows of the past or merely lost in them, Sarah cannot tell. “Jareth was more than comfortable in the latter.”

Resisting the urge to ask if the Goblin King had a particular fondness for poultry, or if he just really liked eggs instead, Sarah picked up her mascara wand and applied a deeply unnecessary third coat.

Seemingly not sensing Sarah’s discomfort with the topic, or choosing to ignore it, Methusala continues, voice turning mistier still.

“Though for all his wildness next to Oberon’s smooth charm, my mother told me he was the fondest dream of many a young courtier, from scullery maid to Elven lady. It was said even in his youth he could charm the Naiads to land with the promise of his affection, and set the nymphs upon drowning their sorrows in the frozen waters of the river Nin when he withdrew it.”

Darkness clouds Methusala’s thoughtful face. “The young prince held the warmth of three suns, the depth of the black sea, and the volatility of Odin’s own thunderstorm… mercurial as the moon, and just as full of shadow. Yes, Jareth could be cruel. But he could be generous too. He knew love—and he was generous with that as well. And of course, loved deeply and truly in return.”

A pregnant pause in which Sarah tries valiantly to appear disinterested.

“I’m surprised to hear that,” she lilts, false sweetness burning a bitter tang in her mouth.

Satisfied that her green eyes were now heightened by the inky frame of her darkened lashes—sharp enough to match the roaring green monster inside her—she ducks her head, hiding her too-expressive face (“your face has subtitles, Sarah,” she can practically hear Karen half-scolding, half-laughing) from the ever-observant Methusala.

“…Ow!” she exclaims, still fishing blindly for her lipstick wherever it had rolled and banging her head on the hard wooden dresser in the process.

In the distance, she could’ve sworn she heard Jareth’s laugh, cold and clear as a church bell on a winter’s night.

“Hmmm,” murmurs Methusala, snowy white eyebrows furrowing, “I think he just might’ve heard that.”

A loaded pause in which Sarah’s heart rate hitches to an alarming speed, her ears thundering.

“Sharp tongue, sharper ears,” mutters Methusala, almost to herself.

She lifts a thick, wizened finger and—perching on the arm of Sarah’s chair—leans in, lifting a lock of Sarah’s thick brown hair, whispering furiously into her ear…

“But let it be known, child… particularly by you, Sarah… cutting and cruel as he was… he truly loved her. My grandmother swore it was a love matched not even by Étain and Midir.”

Sharp brown eyes pierce into Sarah’s green ones, as if almost daring her to disagree.

“And you really do look the spit of her. I said to Hoggle the minute I saw you stomping toward that castle… ‘why, that chit of a girl’s closer than a CHANGELING, Hoggle,’ I said…”

Sarah has heard enough. Heart thudding and jealousy coursing through her veins like poison.

“If Jareth has ever truly loved anything apart from his own reflection and possibly overly tight trousers, then buckle me up and source me a brood of chickens… because to hell with it, I might just be the Queen of the Goblins!”

“If who?” asks a particularly stupid-looking goblin called Twiggle, head popping out of the laundry basket. “Has ever loved anythin’?”

“The Goblin King,” replies Sarah, rolling her eyes and turning to look at him. Gaze meeting Twiggle’s non-plussed stare. “Jareth, of course.”

At this moment, Hoggle chooses to appear, his weathered but kindly face illuminated under the sharpness of Sarah’s lightbulb-gilded vanity mirror.

“Yous’ have been gossipin’ about Jareth…” he accuses, pale blue eyes boring indignantly into Sarah’s. “Gnomes in the garden is shakin’… an’ those blasted damn fairies ’av been spittin’ in my tea! Even Ludo ain’t himself… been followin’ me all mornin’, he ’as… Jareth ain’t happy about yous gossipin’… an’ I’ve got work to be doin’ this aftern’n an’ all!”

“Yes,” says Sarah, jutting her chin and glaring back at him defiantly through the mirror. “And I don’t see why I shouldn’t think about him—I MEAN—talk about him. There’s no law against talking about him, is there?!”

“Well…” tries Didymus, clearing his throat and valiantly pushing his spectacles up his snout… but Sarah is on a roll now.

“In FACT,” exclaims Sarah triumphantly, “seeing as I beat his damn Labyrinth three—no, four—years ago… and he’s still blatantly such a sore loser… I think JARETH should just GET OVER IT and set the record straight if he’s so damn worried about us ‘gossiping,’ don’t you?”

The otherwise sunny June day turns dark.
Thunder rolls. Lightning crashes.
Ambrosius whines pitifully, tail wedged between his legs.

With the next crash of thunder—at a pitch only magical denizens of the Underground can hear—Methusala, Hoggle, Didymus, his noble steed, and any errant goblins… or indeed, chickens… vanish as readily as if they had never been there.

Not unusually, Sarah questions her sanity.

“You called, Sarah?”

A voice smooth as a blade wrapped in velvet.

Sarah’s arm erupts in goosebumps, a good thrill thrumming through her as she cranes her neck—he is still taller, these years later—much taller than she… and her own voice is traitorously tremulous and cracking despite herself.

“…Hi.”

A pause.

She is staring firmly at his shining black boots. Fine leather, presumably—she can hear Didymus informing her: elven-made.

“I actually didn’t,” she says, bravely lifting her gaze to a spot centered around his strong jaw. “Um. Call.”

Strong fingers encased in butter-soft leather enclose her chin, thumb and forefinger lifting until her gaze is forced to meet his.

Flint-cold, mismatched eyes, dilated in the hunter’s perverse pleasure, meet hers.

“I beg to differ,” Jareth murmurs. “You certainly did. Three times, in fact. By name.”

His gaze—too intense, always, cloyingly, soul-achingly, heartbreakingly so.

“Do you believe in fate, Sarah? In a love so star-cross’d that neither the angels above nor monsters below might have the power to smite it?”

And, as ever, he asks for an answer Sarah cannot give him.

When she still doesn’t answer, those eyes—those arctic, beautiful eyes—bore into her own clear, intelligent green ones. Sarah feels a hole being drilled straight through her skull. Leather-clad fingers close even tighter over her chin, bruisingly hard.

He lowers his face close to hers, warm breath tickling her chin, and unconsciously Sarah’s tongue darts out to wet her suddenly Sahara-dry lips.

“Yes,” breathes Jareth, and every cell in Sarah’s body responds, singing.

For the briefest moment, Jareth’s eyes drop to watch her do so, his gaze darkening, eyes feral.
A wolf in a king’s clothing.

“Yes,” he repeats, rich voice echoing in aching loneliness through her bedroom.

Swiftly—as though burned—he straightens, drops the hand cupping Sarah’s jaw, and turns to the window facing out onto her family’s small, unassuming backyard. His back to her, Sarah lifts a hand softly to her own chin, as if to soothe the ache of its sudden absence.

“I think you might.”

He turns his head then, cold afternoon light sharpening the already vulpine planes of his face. He is the brightest thing in the room. Sarah feels simultaneously hypnotized and blinded by him, resisting the urge to shield her eyes as though staring into an eclipse.

“Or you could,” he corrects himself—teeth bared in frustration rather than pleasure—more wolf than man, sharp canines gleaming, shrouded in the halo of his own regal magnetism. “If only you weren’t so bloody stubborn. I’d know those cruel eyes anywhere.”

Sarah swallows, shaking her head to clear it as though pixies were pulling at her hair.

He raises an elegant hand. A silver crescent moon is embroidered on the cuff of his velvet jacket, a trio of diamond stars sewn beside it.

A crystal ball forms.

“If you look at it this way, it’ll show you your dreams…”

Even the ones you had chosen to forget.

Unwillingly—helplessly—she gazes into its infinite depths. Droplets of color reveal themselves, pooling into rivers of gold, midnight blue, star-spun silver… jet-black ink spattered on parchment…

The sounds of an orchestra, but no orchestra Sarah had heard in this life—unearthly, too high-pitched, too dissonant…

“Remember…”

A flute playing in the distance. Violins soaring.
The heat of a midsummer’s day—Beltane—mead popping over rims of crystal flutes…
Faeries drifting in lazy circles like fireflies in the sky both betwixt and between day and night…
A crystal moon hanging low over a velvet horizon embroidered with stars, drifting nebulae spilling ribbons of light across the world.

And clearest, brightest of all… her guiding star.

Jareth holds her close, a firm hand circling the small of her back in quiet possession. Her long skirts—silk spun from the royal white spiders—pool and shimmer around her, thousands of laboriously sewn crystals throwing fractured rainbows from the chandelier. Fireflies drift toward them, drawn to the undeniable heat between their bodies. They are dancing.
Everything is dancing.

“You forgot,” he says simply, thin lips twisting with displeasure. Displeasure, Sarah wonders—or perhaps regret?

“Or chose to.”

He locks her into an iron gaze.

“Perhaps it is time to reacquaint yourself with the truth of your own past, Sarah.”

“So utterly typical of you to absolve yourself of your own sins and tar everyone else with the brush of villainy. Same as it ever has been. Dear Saint Sarah, the eternal martyr of her own making.”

Bitterness curdles the last word like venom, and Jareth’s face tightens as though the words themselves proved sour.

When Sarah remains speechless, Jareth’s sharp grin returns—tricky as broken glass disguised in moonlight frost.

“No matter. Let me enlighten you, Sarah. Once upon a time, in a kingdom so old it was once a dandelion seed in Titania’s dream, lived a human handmaiden who went by the name of Ailsa Walmshir…”

A wind rises.
Not a breeze, but a remembering.
A mist shrouds Sarah’s ankles as the name whispers through the echoes of the past.

Her sharp eyes flick up to meet Jareth’s. Older than he remembers. Wiser, perhaps?

His brow furrows for half a second, perhaps responding to the sight of his own pain mirrored in hers, before he schools his expression back into cold impassivity.

“That world never belonged to me,” she whispers, words dropping like stones past her barely parted lips. “Even then, I was only a child playing pretend…”

She sighs with the weariness of someone suddenly much, much older. Even her eyes mist, clouded by the pain of centuries past.

“No matter how many times I kissed the prince.”

Perhaps not.

Stubborn to a fault. He would know those cruel eyes anywhere.

Something in Jareth’s expression fractures—frustration, hurt, and all the vicious determination of a wild animal with its hind legs snapped in a clawed trap flitting across his face—enough emotions for a lifetime—before his features harden with dangerous resolve and he lets out a sound halfway between a snarl and the smug satisfaction of being proved right.

Closing the distance between them in one purposeful stride, he crushes his lips to hers for the thousandth time.

Sarah makes a sound that lands somewhere between a squeak of indignation and—mortifyingly quickly—a fevered moan of soul-deep recognition as the shape of her body remembers this. The kiss is a whirling mass of contradictions, and even in her half-befuddled state Sarah recognizes that it holds more force—and more familiarity—than a first kiss that truly was the first ever could.

“Impressive,” thinks that final, blissed-out spark of rational Sarah’s consciousness, “that we can even turn kissing into a power play,” as she steps unrepentantly on those fine leather boots to gain better leverage, winding her arms around Jareth’s pale neck to crush his lips more forcefully to her own.

Indeed—soft as summer rain one moment, and the next containing all the thrumming promise of a sky before thunder—Jareth’s hands are everywhere, cupping her jaw, caressing her throat before peppering kisses along that elegant line, his thumb skimming over her hardened nipples, making her shudder before stopping her trembling in its tracks as he crushes her to him, an iron grasp against his lithe, warm body.

If the ferocity with which she returns the kiss surprises anyone other than Sarah herself, the Goblin King does not let himself be distracted long enough to show it.

Matching his force—and at times determined to double it—she winds her fingers through his feathered hair, teeth gently grazing his lower lip, bucking her hips into his.

He breaks away just a fraction, gazing down at her, both eyes so dilated with dark desire that they give the illusion of symmetry in their singular intent to devour.

“I’m glad I recalled correctly,” he murmurs huskily. “Doing that seems to be the quickest—and most effective—way to get you to stop… talking. Do you remember?”

A kaleidoscope of memories, visions, sensations collide across Sarah’s consciousness, vying for her attention. At the moment, she has room for only one thought.

“Remind me again?” she grins, eyes glittering with all the rightful radiance of a girl who has been reminded she was truly—and never would be—ordinary.

Please consider leaving a review.