A/N: And on the day of solstice my author gave to me,
A fan fic that is quite fluffy
Happy Solstice everyone! May this story do some small part of bringing back the sun and a little more light it your lives! Enjoy!
"Yes, Karen," Sarah said, looking at over the kitchen that was still a little messy from making dinner. "I'm sure I'll be fine." Karen was calling (again) to make sure (again) that Sarah would be all right by herself over the holidays. "Actually," Sarah continued, eyeing the small iron amulet she'd picked up a week ago when it became clear she wouldn't be able to make it home this year and the plan had started to form gently in the back of her mind. "I have an old…friend I've invited to stop by. He should be here any minute, so I should really go. Yes. I'll call on Christmas. Yes, Karen. Yes. Alright. Merry Christmas, Karen. Give my love to dad and Toby. Bye." Finally, she was able to hang up.
Sarah picked up the amulet, poked it and watched it swing back and forth. She'd gone on a walk after her first call home, sad knowing she couldn't make it home this year. The amulet had been on display in an antique store and had caught her eye as she walked by. She's recognized symbols for protection engraved on it and had stepped in to look at it more closely. When she'd seen it was iron, she'd grabbed it, payed and left. She found herself looking at it, or stroking it absentmindedly several times over the next couple of days until she finally admitted to herself why she'd picked it up. It was time and past time to bury the past and move on. None of her friends had any idea what she was planning on doing. Her Aboveground friends would never believe her and her Underground ones would try everything they could to stop her. She wouldn't put it past them to start a small revolution just to make sure he was too busy to come and she didn't want to think about how that would end. Or how royally mad he'd be if he found out it was because of her.
No, the time had finally come for her to make the call. All she had to do was put on the amulet and everything would be fine. About a half-hour later, the kitchen was spotless but the amulet still lay untouched on the table. Sarah took a deep breath. 'If I can run the Labyrinth and get back Toby in 10 hours then I can do this.' She grabbed the amulet and slipped it over her neck. 'Right,' she thought, taking another deep breath. 'Now for the hard part.'
She walked into her small—much too small for comfort, given what was about to happen—living room. With one last deep breath, Sarah spoke the seventeenth draft of her speech.
"I wish that this wish be taken in just the sense that I, Sarah Williams, mean it and that the Goblin King would, for the purpose of just speaking unless mutually agreed upon by myself and him, come and talk to me right now." This time, there was no crash of thunder, no lightning, no owls, no blowing open of windows, no goblins popping out and scaring her. Not even his outfit was the same this time. The only thing that was the same was him. He looked exactly as she remembered him: wild blond hair in a cloud around his head, self-assured smirk fixed firmly in place and intense, mismatched blue eyes. Sarah had dreamed of those eyes since she was fifteen years old. She was old enough to understand now the promises they'd held then. No, he hadn't changed at all.
"Sarah," Jareth purred. "To what do I owe this… pleasant surprise?" 'Just like you practised,' she reminded herself.
"Hello Jareth," she started the much-rehearsed speech. "I wanted to talk."
"Yes," Jareth interrupted. Sarah hadn't known it was possible to lounge without anything to lounge on, but somehow Jareth managed it. "I rather got that from the wording of the wish. 'For the purpose of just speaking unless...mutually agreed upon.' And to be honest, Precious, I can think of some very... pleasant things."
"Shut up, Goblin King!" His eyes dared her to make him. "And let me finish what I was saying." Jareth raised a placating hand and gestured for her to continue. "I want to talk about moving on."
His face went shuttered, his eyes turned to chips of ice. "No," he said, as the temperature in the room seemed to drop. "We will not, as you so put it, 'move on'. We will not even speak about it. I'd think you were old enough to know, Princess, that there are consequences to your actions." He took a step towards her and Sarah had to remind herself that he had no power over her and couldn't touch her without her permission. She made herself stay in place. "You do not simply get to cut magic out so that you can move on with your life. I won't allow that to happen." Sarah blinked, realizing that he did not understand what she had been offering and perhaps an 18th draft would have been in order. Oh well, too late now.
"Jareth, I wasn't talking about magic. I was talking about us moving on." He opened his mouth to speak and Sarah realized he still didn't understand. Yep. Definitely should have written that 18th draft. "Together." Jareth looked confused and suddenly Sarah didn't feel like she needed a sweater quite as much.
"Pardon?" he asked, looking a lot less frightening. "I'm not quite sure I understand you."
'Right,' Sarah thought to herself. 'Time to make speech 17.2. Now, where was I?' "Over the past six years you are the only person I haven't managed to overcome the past with. I've forgiven Hoggle." Jareth's expression turned darker for some reason when she said the dwarf's name. "I've made peace with the fireys and the door knockers. These days the helping hands are very helpful, even most of the Goblins have forgiven me for what happened to their homes. I think it's time that you and I finally came to terms with what happened between us and move on. Having magic disappear from my life is the last thing I want. Besides, it's Solstice. Time for the rise of the Oak King, right? New beginnings and all that?" Something flickered deep in Jareth's eyes for a moment before he returned to his default haughty expression.
"And how would you suggest we go about 'moving on'?"
"Well," Sarah said, finding a strange sense of normality in this. She'd explained this process many times, after all. "We figure out what our past grievances with each other were and find something we can do to move on. For example, I gave the door knocker some mouthwash and helped him use it. I let the fireys take a hat off my head after getting them to understand the my limbs don't come off—man did that take forever to get through to them—then finding a new game we could play. It ended up being twister." An expression flashed across his face too quickly to properly recognize. Jealousy? Hunger? "Although, I hear they have a weekly game of Scrabble with Sir Didymus now."
"Yes, they do. By far the strangest game of Scrabble I have ever seen and I've seen quite a few," he replied quite dryly. "So, for this… ritual of yours to work, both of our grievances must be aired and addressed with some symbolic action to be completed to signify the moving on past the hurt in our… relationship?"
"Pretty much," Sarah said, glad he understood. This process could take much longer to explain sometimes.
"And as a result of this you want us to become… friends? Bosom companions?" He smiled, as if at some private joke.
"Yep. Well, friends seems like a good place to start." His eyes glittered mischievously and Sarah wondered if it might have been wiser to rephrase that sentence. Oh well, too late now.
"Very well. What are your issues with my conduct in the past."
"Well," Sarah started, ready to run down her mental list. She'd debated which items to keep on and off, what was fair and so on and had narrowed it down to three items. "The Cleaners, the Bog of Eternal Stench and the Roofied Poisoned Peach." Those were the three things that haunted her and that they needed to move past together. Those were the things that he had done to her in the Labyrinth that were personal, more than just messing with any old Runner. "All right. Your turn."
Jareth thought for a moment, taking her in and considering her idea. He decided to match her number of ills. After all, his will was as great as her and he would not be seen to be grovelling. However, he also didn't want to overwhelm her with wrongs as he didn't want to make her back out of this strange forgiveness ritual. No, he had other ideas for what to do with Sarah.
"You calling my Labyrinth a piece of cake, your kissing Hoggle, and your fleeing our dance," he finally decided. Sarah glared at him. She really wasn't sure how she felt about the whole "kissing Hoggle" thing, even if she understood why it had hurt him, and wasn't sure what he'd demand in recompense, but she had started this process determined to move on from the past and she wasn't going to give up at the first hurdle. Not the girl who'd won the Labyrinth.
"Fine," she agreed. "Let's figure out what we could do for that. Hm." Jareth watched her frown in concentration, happy to simply watch this woman who had fascinated him for so long finally before him again. At least, happy to, for now. He had plans for his recompense for the slighted dance later. Sarah looked up, eyes bright and happy. "I know! We'll bake a cake and share it! And that works great for my part of the ritual, I want your help cleaning up my kitchen." The Goblin King's eyebrows went up at this suggestion. As her mind provided her with the image of the imposing King of the Goblins in bright yellow rubber gloves, Sarah had to try very hard to keep a straight face as she said, "After all, they were called the Cleaners." Jareth expression didn't change and Sarah decided to change the topic now before her giggle fit would ruin everything. She highly doubted the Goblin King would be taking being giggled at kindly.
"Right," she said, moving toward the kitchen. "I know a pretty simple recipe for cake..." she started moving around her kitchen pulling out ingredients. "Damn, I'm low on sugar and Jerry's out of town..."
"Jerry?"asked Jareth, leaning in the door with a casual stance that was somehow menacing. "Who, might I ask, is Jerry?"
"He lives down the hall," Sarah said as she went through her options and kept an eye on Jareth. "Normally I could ask him for some, but he's out of town visiting his girlfriend's family." Jareth seemed to relax at that as Sarah realized she really should have prepared better for this. Now she'd have to go out and buy some sugar, and some eggs, now that she was thinking about it. And she was low on milk as well... Damn. She eyed Jareth. Could she get him to leave and call him when she got back? If she'd bothered to spare a thought for what she was going to do once he got here instead of purely focusing on how to get him here safely, er, her safe with him here...
"Look, Jareth, I need to go pick up some ingredients. Do you want to meet me back here in, say, an hour? I can do my shopping and be back by then." Jareth considered it.
"Would you not prefer some company?" he offered. Sarah considered him in his poet's shirt and tight—very tight—pants. In fact, she probably spent just a little too long considering his pants as, when she looked back up, he was smirking. Sarah blushed but forced herself to speak.
"It's not that I wouldn't appreciate the company but you don't quite fit in, Goblin King."
Jareth's smirk didn't waver as the rest of him seemed to blur in her vision. When he came back into focus, he was wearing a white button-down and black dress pants and his hair was close cut. Sarah took a moment to consider his new look. 'Well,' she thought, 'he doesn't stick out quite as much anymore, but I like the other look better.' He didn't look quite right looking so... mundane. Not that anything Jareth wore would even consider being anything so banal as mundane.
"Um, a coat? It's supposed to snow tonight..." He pushed off from the door to her kitchen and started walking down the hall. Sarah quickly put her remaining milk and eggs back in the fridge and followed him. He was pulling on a full length midnight blue coat that Sarah knew hadn't come from anywhere in her apartment. Him and his friggin magic getting coats to appear out of nowhere. Sarah reached past him and grabbed her old green jacket, shoved her wallet and keys into her pocket and started heading towards the staircase.
The wind was cold and biting and Sarah really wished she'd thought to grab her scarf and gloves as she'd left. She huddled down in the collar of her jacket wishing it would start snowing already. If it was snowing, it wouldn't be so damn cold. The grocery store was only five blocks away, but it was still plenty far enough make her cheeks red with the cold and her breath freeze. She had no doubt that the Goblin King was nice and warm in his fancy, flattering coat. She grumbled under her breath and picked up the pace.
"Sarah, wait." Jareth called out from behind her. She stopped and turned to face him. He was far closer than she had thought and his arms were moving towards her. She didn't have time to register what was going on, or even to flinch before—"You'll catch cold." His expression was cool and distant, but his eyes were soft, as an equally soft wool scarf settled around her neck. "And I refuse to spend my evening with you blowing your nose the entire time or trying to infect me with some vile disease." Sarah pulled the scarf more closely around her neck, touched.
"Jareth," she breathed. He pulled back a step, and gestured her forward. Reminded, Sarah shoved her hands back in her pockets (couldn't he have made some gloves while he was at it?) and continued the trek towards the grocery store and potential cake.
When they got there, the store was warm and filled with Christmas music and good-smelling food. Sarah grabbed a cart and she and the King of the Goblins started grocery shopping. It was a strange experience, walking next to a mythical monarch and comparing prices on sugar.
"I've always thought it amusing," Jareth said as he tilted his head and listened to "Deck the Halls" playing over the PA, "the amount of Pagan symbolism that has managed to make its way into what is supposed to be a monotheistic celebration."
"Well, you've got Constantine to blame for that," Sarah said, making her selection and putting the sugar in her basket before she started to make her way over towards the eggs. "Besides, both celebrations are about pretty much the same thing: light coming into the world. They just celebrate them differently. And besides, I love the smell of the pine tree, the fire, the look of the holly and the ivy strewn around."
"And the mistletoe," Jareth took up the theme, eyes hooded.
"Which pretty much looks like holly so it's not like we need much of that around." She hurried on, trying to get away from the look he was giving her.
"Need? no," he said, eyes going darker and doing strange things to her stomach. "Desire? Well..."
'M'aider! M'aider!' Sarah's brain started to warn her. 'This goes on much longer and you will be making out publicly with the King of the Goblins'
'So?' asked another part of her.
'PUBLICLY,' emphasized the first part.
'Ah, I see your point. Hurry with the shopping, get home and get horizontal that's what I say.'
'But most importantly,' Sarah thought firmly, shutting the other factions up. Damn it this was a dictatorship NOT a democracy. At least he wasn't wearing his normal pants. 'Get away from this and do the damn shopping!'
"Anyway!" Sarah said to Jareth, still a little flustered. "So we can get started, can you go grab four litres of milk, the red cartons, and meet me by the cash?" She pointed towards the back of the store, opposite to the where she'd grab her things, grabbed a carton of eggs, trusting that none were broken and fled.
'Right,' she thought to herself as she took refuge by the potatoes. There really wasn't anything seductive about potatoes. They were safe territory. 'I better grab something here or Jareth will know that I was fleeing.'
'I'm pretty sure he already knows that.'
'Shut up!'
Sarah scanned the isles of produce, looking for something to buy. She had enough bananas for the week. Maybe some oranges? That was when she spotted them. They were strangely perfect for this season: soft, plump and juicy looking. Sarah picked one up, considering it.
"Do I dare to eat a peach?" Sarah wondered, inspecting it for any flaw. Finally, she decided that after all this time, she did. She put it in her basket, grabbed another, inspected it and, adding it as well, made her way towards the cash. On the way there, she noticed some scented candles were on sale. She grabbed a set of vanilla and, checking their smell, once more made her way towards the cash. There she met Jareth, carrying two cartons of milk. It was late and the store was nearly empty, so they payed quickly and left. Jareth had raised his eyebrows at the peaches, but made no comment, for which Sarah was very grateful. Sarah adjusted her new scarf for maximum warmth, grabbed the grocery bags and headed outside.
It had started to snow while they'd been collecting supplies. It fell slow and thick from the sky, coming down in giant flakes, coating the cars, the sidewalks, the streetlights. It blurred out the sharp edges, made the world a softer, gentler place. Simply put, it looked like magic. Sarah glanced back and Jareth, trying to see if he had any part in this. He just stood there, holding the two bags he had taken, looking up at the sky. A gentle smile played about his lips and his eyes were as soft as she'd ever seen them. His expression struck something in her. It was not as loud as joyful, or even as bright as happy. He looked simply content. The snow settled in his too-short hair and started to melt. Quietly, so as not to disturb his peaceful look, Sarah transferred the groceries to one hand and carefully reached out to take his.
He looked at her when he felt her touch and blinked at her owlishly for a moment before smiling with bright eyes. Taking her hand more firmly, he walked with her as she started heading home.
A/N: A few things about this chapter.
The first: Iron is a common folkloric repellant for the supernatural, including the Fae. In fact, it is one of the few things that can hurt them, as far as I have gathered. If you know of other things that can, aside from iron and salt, please message me.
The second: I am aware that the whole pagan symbolism in Christianity is WAY more complicated than "Well, you have Constantine to blame for that" but I felt like writing a fluffy fic, not a history lesson. Also, I'm writing this, not my sister. Who is a wonderful beta that I love.
And Third: In some pagan practices Solstice marks the time where the Oak King triumphs over the Holly king. The Oak come into full growth and majesty with the spring and summer, as the light comes back, whereas the holly stays bright even when other trees have started to fade in the fall. In some practices it is said that the Holly King rules from Summer Solstice to Winter Solstice whereas the Oak King rules from Winter Solstice to Summer Solstice.
Now that I've explained some stuff, on to me begging for your thoughts. So, did you enjoy the chapter? Looking forward to more? Want to print and burn it? Wish that you didn't have to wait till Christmas for the next update? Please let me know! Your reviews keep me going!
Happy Solstice!