Boredom strikes in random fandom writing. Unless stated otherwise, none of these are connected. They are from multiple fandoms (books, movies, etc.) and are just ideas that hit me. They probably won't turn into anything serious.
Author: Lutair!
Rating: T
Fandom: Labyrinth AU
Summary: "Ask for the future and you shall receive only that which is uncertain, child."
Disclaim. (Syndthyrn is mine.)
A/N: Longer than I planned.
x
There are no windows.
There are no doors.
There are no entrances or exits.
There are only wishes.
x
The air is choking him, swaths of opium, like cobwebs and disease, wrapping intoxicating tendrils around his lungs, squeezing, squeezing just so. There are other-life memories in these sensations, genetics that create and flower inside him. He is their product, their design, and his forefather's forefather's are laughing at him.
He can feel it.
The room is almost too dark to see into, and the ostentatious clutter of the place doesn't help him find his destination any quicker. He scuffs his knees and shins on what he thinks are boxes, stacks of books, crates, cages, furniture items, all the while feeling and not feeling tiny, furry animal bodies running over his boots. He jams an elbow into what he hopes is something unbreakable, something cheap, but... this is not the place for those things. He's going to owe her.
A candle lights on a table covered precariously with glass jars of murky liquid and bits of beings he doesn't want to contemplate. The glow, a wavering yellow-purple, casts unfriendly shadows on shelves of things - hands, teeth, skulls, beaded fingers, jars, jars, books, scrolls, and eyes, always - that glare back at him in the gloom.
She is sitting, lounging, draped across a wingback chair so old the leather looks paper thin and spider-silk soft. Elaborate robes cover her from neck to ankles, layers and layers of silk and lace and age, the hem and sleeves so long that they disappear into the shadows beyond her fragile light. Her eyes flicker, just fractionally, behind her eyelids, and he can see a delicate cover of dust resting on her skin.
He is her first customer in almost four hundred years.
And she cannot move without someone there to wish.
"Syndthrn." His voice is a shout in the ancient, sentient, knowing silence of the room.
There is no welcome in her reply, because she knows, deep down, in the same place he does, that what will come of his desire will be only pain, longing, and exhaustion.
"Jareth."
A stool pushes against his knees, making him sit and release a cloud of dust into the stagnant air. She leans forward slowly, and he watches the long, black-ink strands of her hair shift and shudder, thousands of single hairs connected to the dimension. A binding web.
"You know of what I want to ask, Syndthyrn. Tell me it can be done, and I will go."
He is wary, a tight coil in his spine. There is a wisper of laughter in the shadows by her feet. Her reply is slow in coming, slow in deliverance, and deceptively ignorant.
"... And what is it... that you think I know?"
He is terse. The air is getting to him. "What I want. The Wishing. I want it back."
Her sigh is something akin to the flipping of old book pages in the sun. Her eyes close, and she leans back. "You want the future. You want to wish for a stable path to follow, so that you will not err as you have done so many times before. And will no doubt do again."
He lashes out with the Quickening before he can think about replying, sparks of anger igniting in the air to form needle-fine streaks of fire. For a moment, the shelves, so high and daunting, are lit up, and hundreds of inanimate faces glare and snarl at him, their essences angered by the light.
Just as quickly, it is gone, and there is anger in the room. A deep-seeded, ancient sort of anger. The stool shivers beneath him.
"I have given you enough," her eyes are the fire he threw at her, burning, quick-silver and alive, "and you have abused it, used it recklessly. I have given you the Gifts I have seen fit for no other, the ones destined to be yours, and now, I wonder, if I read the signs wrong." The candle's flame leaps, turning an electric blue, the soul of his fire being released into it. The light in her eyes dies in time with the flame returning to it's in-between state.
"I have seen every path you should follow, every step you have taken since the Gkiin brought you to me for the Begining, and you have always, always taken the worst turns." She is silent for a long time, face turned towards the light, eyes narrowed, thoughtful and contemplating.
"I do not know if I should be relieved, because you took paths that I had seen Before, or disappointed, that you never asked for the way back." Her eyes alone turn to him, a deep-set amber in the oppressing dark.
The stool scoots him closer, and the heat of her anger is no longer smothering, but warm, enough to make his muscles relax and let him loose some of his anger. His breath rasps in his throat, and he is aware that his time in this place is almost up.
"I have always Wished, Syndthyrn. Since before you gave me the Wishing itself, I have wished. I want to wish for someone, not something, before the time is too late." His eyes, dark to her in the creeping shadows, are down turned, ashamed and embarassed.
"Ask for the future and you shall receive only that which is uncertain, child." Thousands of possibilities float in her minds eye, too quick to focus on, but she doesn't want to see. Not this time.
"But asking is the essence, and Wishing is the grant."
He snaps his attention back to her face so quickly he almost thinks he sees - what? - something other than disinterest or anger on her face. Mild... amusement, maybe. Or pain. It is the most likely, and only because he knows that Giving a Gift hurts her more than the receiver.
There is a light, so blinding not even the shadows can move to escape it, and a hissing, burning pain in his eyes, his hands, his chest... and then it is gone.
"Wish wisely, Goblin King, or the Gift will give you something more than you desire.
x
There are no windows.
There are no doors.
There are no entrances or exits.
There are only wishes.
x
He wakes to stone and furs, and the power of Want.