A.N.: This is just me being artsy-fartsy and gender politicky again.
"Kiss me, and you will see how important I am." – Sylvia Plath
The Goblin King prefers his partners willowy and tall, lithe of limb and graceful, with hair of spun silver and gold, much like his own. Eyes should be pale as the sunlit sea. He enjoys them cold as winter and just as passionate, rulers worthy of him – and all with that unmistakable certainty of womanhood.
The girl who stumbles her way through the Labyrinth is slender in that childlike way of one not yet grown, cheeks round with baby fat. She certainly is not graceful, when she falls and scrapes her hands against the walls or bruises her knees on the stone steps. Her hair is dark and brown, and that is it, with eyes that are only green. She's not a ruler, not a conqueror, just a silly, mortal child – and not at all a woman. She is shy and unsure as she fumbles her way along, but he watches her more closely than most because she keeps getting so much farther than most – so that the King finds he notices each strand of her hair as she goes, each thread of her shirt, the imprint of each step. He watches, and watches, and cannot stop, and his mouth goes dry, and by some magic greater than his own, forgets the tall women with the precious-metal hair, and sees her eyes are like fresh sage.
And then she wins.
Great kings should have great things; beautiful rulers beautiful ones. Jareth, the Goblin King, is both.
The realm of Faerie is not so unlike the realm of Men, in that everything begins again, winter into spring, the circle into itself. So when the Labyrinth's Champion knocked things down, they can always be put right again so long as the magic is right.
The garden is most particular when it comes to being fixed, because plants of course are living, and everything that is alive is fragile. The hardest bear is just as susceptible to a thorn in his paw, the smallest flower the crush of a foot. It regrows in its own fashion with time, but Jareth finds he no longer takes pleasure in it.
He finds himself a new space, over a hill, and covers it over with a roof of oak limbs that let the sunlight fall only in soft, dappled waves. He makes the grass soft and dry and fragrant. A brook springs up in one corner, a thorn bush grows to protect a nest of birds. At first he selects only flowers that he likes, herbs he'll enjoy the taste of – then he rips all these out, plants half a lot only with sage, another third with thyme and mint; places one peach tree in a corner. Then he only takes half as many flowers as before, and threads them through with yellow roses and marks the edges of pea gravel paths with paperwhites.
But the garden misses one thing, and so he builds a throne like a pedestal, all in granite, with a flowering hazel dripping over it, and ivy vines and star jasmine, and wrapped all in a thorny rose. And that is where he places Sarah.
She's still just the girl she was before, round cheeked and wide eyed. She looks around in her dream world, when the rest of her is fast asleep in bed, and her knees draw up to her chest in nervousness and wonder.
Jareth smiles and leans over her. "Hello, again. And how are you, my precious thing?"
"What's going on? What are you doing?" Sarah tucks her hair behind her ear; she's not in her pajamas as she is in her own world, but what Jareth has deemed appropriate for her: a gown of green, wrapped in ivy. She's as much a part of the garden as a visitor to it. "Where are my friends? Hoggle!"
His lips curl in distaste. "Hush now, none of that. I'm not inviting anyone else." A couch of greenery rises to seat His Majesty, and he folds his hands, gloved in leather, along his knee, back to smiling. "There. Just the addition I needed."
Her head swivels a full circle on her neck. "This isn't the Labyrinth. What is this place?"
"My garden. Do you like it?" She doesn't say yes and she doesn't say no. Sarah just drinks it all in. Jareth finds he likes to look at her. "It's much better this way, isn't it?"
"What way?"
"You're my centerpiece."
Sarah's first response is confusion, her brow furrows. The dripping branch of hazel and willow tickles her brow and she brushes it away. "Why me?"
After a time, Jareth finds he has no suitable answer for that, and changes the subject. "I've made it perfectly. You can have no complaints about it."
Sarah slides off the pedestal and walks barefoot over the grass. Jareth follows her. There will be no dirt between the toes, no splinters, no too-hot stones. It is, as he said, perfectly made, and is comfortable to touch and smell and look upon in almost every way – almost, because that pedestal only pleases him and not her.
She stops at the paperwhites and bends down, the brook babbling not far away. Jareth stands behind her. "But why is there nobody here?"
"It's my private, personal garden."
She touches one soft petal. "And you wanted me in it." Behind her, he says nothing. "I'm the centerpiece?" Sarah turns and stands and looks at him – and her eyes are unafraid, which shouldn't surprise the King, but it does. "What does that mean?" He doesn't answer and she steps forward, so he steps back. "What does that mean, Jareth?" When still he won't say a word, she walks past him, back to the throne, touches one granite arm. "This is crazy…Am I beautiful to you, is that it? Should I be flattered?"
"It means what it is."
She snorts and blows a lock of brown hair from her eyes. "That's all I ever got from everybody here, just more nonsense answers…" Her fingers curl around the arm now, and she turns to look at him with clear eyes as green as the rest of the garden. "I'm not a stained glass window or a work of art, to be hung up so you can look at me when it interests you." If he scowls, it's only because the notion seemed so charming to him. When the Goblin King says nothing else at all, the Champion collects her breath and says, "You have no power over me."
Nothing falls down or breaks apart, because this is no longer an earth shattering revelation. But neither does the King return to his near-perfect garden; the leaves go brown and fall away.
And then she's a little older, and it's a little clearer, the games boys and girls, men and women, all the combinations thereof play. Friends and acquaintances, callow girls with bottle blonde hair, find themselves in the arms of would-be paramours, mouths colliding on the landing of the school stairwell. Sarah stares after all this as much as she ever did anything in the Labyrinth, because it's just as new to her. Everyone looks at her, it's impossible not to, but no one has the courage to approach her. She's fairy touched, and the glow of the unobtainable hangs about her like the scent of a fruit. She wanders the halls and wonders when her turn is coming.
And the Goblin King watches now in ways he never did before, because if she's fae touched, he's the only man, it stands to reason, who could have her.
But only if she lets him.
He ignores this little detail, spins crystal dreams of beautiful fantasies that grow more elaborate the more he dwells on her. Sarah's skin is now like ivory, and her dark hair is no longer merely brown, but silk. Her lips are meant to be tasted, the entirety of her devoured, and all for him. Her eyes are still fresh sage. That will probably never change – just like the Goblin King.
She's not quite a woman yet, but there's something he likes about that, that youthful innocence that he can shape as he likes, as they like together – but mostly the former. But just as she's not quite a woman, neither is she just a little girl. Jareth is the King of Dreams, it's his purview to watch the mortals that toe the line at his kingdom, and especially when they invite him in specifically…
Sarah does not do this, not quite. But her dreams have grown sultrier of late, long, languid kisses, stroking hands. Most of the time they're the meaningless firing of synapses: she dreams of a teacher and laughs about it with her friends the next day. But when one shadowy figure appears in her bedroom, she never mentions it, never laughs. That's when Jareth makes his move.
He doesn't waste time, either. When Sarah awakens in her dreaming state, it's under his sheets, bare and warm to the touch. Jareth leans over her, pale hair brushing her forehead the way the hazel did in the garden. She doesn't startle, because who does in a dream? – but she stretches herself slowly and keeps beneath the white sheet, which hugs her lovely form like water. He has no qualms in feeling her with bare palms, though he'd love to make way with the singular obstruction.
"What are you doing?" Her voice is not quite sleepy, a tired whisper, but unsurprised.
"Very little. I could do much more."
Sarah shakes her head, the fingers of one hand gripping him at the wrist, but she has not stopped him – yet. "This is just a dream. You were just a fairy story."
Ah, no wonder she no longer calls for her little friends – though in his bedroom, it would be quite inappropriate. He feels a touch of irritation; to be so marked and try to forget him? It's not flattering to the King's ego. "Am I?" She nods. "Then nothing we do here matters…" He leans in, lips just parted, but Sarah turns her face away.
"Stop. What are you trying to do with me this time?"
There is a slight hint of annoyance to his voice, but it's mollified when he can press his nose into her hair and breathe her in. Sarah still has the faerie scent about her, a bit of starlight…The mortal flavor makes his mouth water, because it's her. "You're old enough to know that."
She sits up, which presses him back a little, but is careful to keep the sheet wrapped around her torso. "Pretend I'm not, explain it to me."
There's something that has always been lovely about being in Sarah's presence. It was true in the garden, it's true here, even if the deep sensuality did not color it – it would still be the same. The Goblin King lolls beside her, a bit like an exotic animal waiting to be stroked. "It's not so very complicated. You can stay here, like this." Sarah stares at him. "Oh, after a time, if you grow a little bored, I'll make it nicer still. Lovely gowns, splendid parties – but always the delightful return to form." He strokes his hand down her long, long leg, and still she doesn't move away from him. It's difficult to tell if that's from pleasure or sheer confusion. "Pleasure is good, you'll find. I'll always make it so."
"And you?" He raises a brow at her question. "What is it you'll be doing?"
What a question. "…all the things I do."
"Ah." She almost smirks with those red lips of hers, a look she could have gotten from him in the scenario he spins. "So you get to be the great, mighty whatever…and I'm the courtesan you keep waiting for you."
His irritation is growing. "What is so very wrong with that?"
"You really don't know, either." Sarah laughs. "I'm more than the pair of legs you lie between and the mouth you get to kiss."
The darker parts of him are visible when he looms over her, fingers digging into her arms, pressing her into his mattress. "You are exactly what I make of you."
But Sarah isn't afraid, still smiling. If anything, she's almost excited. "You're not the one who gets to decide that." Without a blink, she murmurs to him, "You have no power over me."
Jareth leans in to claim her lips, to taste her once. He's a hair away from just one kiss – when she leaves only air beneath him.
Dreams always end at the best parts.
And one day she's a woman.
At least of a sort. Sarah's a girl who is perpetually young at heart, all the trappings of adulthood, all the wide-eyed splendor of the girl who spun the fable of the Goblin King in love. What she is not is one of those cold, imperial beauties whom His Majesty once thought he preferred.
He loathes her, his one true love. Everyone sometimes turns, thinking they hear their names in an empty house. Sarah stops minding, for it is always Jareth calling her, cursing her and pleading ceaseless devotion. The sheet she had once curled beneath is a sacred relic that only holds the vestiges of her perfume from considerable magic worked upon it. Anyone who has ever been alone and far away from home imagines they see the face of a friend in a crowd where they could not possibly be. Sarah smiles at certain handsome strangers, even blows them kisses in her sassier moments, for she knows exactly who it is.
And in her dreams she sometimes invites him in, as if to further torture him. They have tea, they roll onto beds as deep as the ocean, but they never quite make love, he never reaches that moment of satisfaction. Oh, Sarah does, in some laughing way, as if her pleasure is taken in denying him. She doesn't worry about if he's real or imagined any longer, her fairy story, for she knows exactly how the tale ends, and certain narrators speak with confidences.
But she's not surrounded by those callow youths anymore. There are braver men, ones that make her laugh, that are not too afraid to speak with a dazzling young woman and hope to charm her. And they might succeed.
The Goblin King panics.
The Throne Room is dark, and why shouldn't it be, at night, in a dream? There's a dusty glow from the stars outside the window, but otherwise it's quiet and still. Motes and specks float easily in the air when Sarah stands in the center, and Jareth beside her. His mouth is a dark, cold scowl, for he won't bend the knee, not yet. How can he love her if she makes him debase himself for her? And how can he stand to lose this chance if he does not?
"I did not pick you, Sarah," he growls, and she looks at him over her shoulder, green eyes still sage, gaze easy and calm. "You've left me little choice."
"Well, that was kind of the idea." Her hands rest easily at the hips as she surveys this inner sanctum she hasn't set foot in in ten years. It might have all been a dream – but that does not mean it wasn't real.
"Understand this – you'll belong to me, or you'll suffer the consequences." He looms over her now, trying to intimidate her with his dark cloak, his burning eyes, his height, his magic, his every atomic particle. Sarah just smiles gently, looking up at him, not backing down an inch – which is nice, because it brings their lips in closer again, and he can almost taste her like this…
"What are the consequences, Goblin King?" Her tongue darts to her bottom lip, and he follows the movement – but he rolls one crystal over his fingers, lets it drop to the ground and bounce toward the throne on the raised dais…It stops, it spins, it acts like a lantern for the throne – which now curves so that the ivory makes two seats, both wrapped in gold and draped in purple. A tangle of a crown sits on one, to the left, and Jareth taps his booted foot, refuses to shift uncomfortably behind her. Sarah smiles again, considering the scene. "Well, now you're finally making things interesting."