Jareth
Author's Note/Disclaimer Same as last time, kids. Please, please, please review.
I have always been the final word in my kingdom.
Always, without fail, I have been a king of kings. My subjects are happy - disgustingly so. They live the existence that befits them, an existence that they love in a way they could no other. I am a hard man, a cruel man, but I am a just man and a good king, even if I seem needlessly callous. And so, in it's own way, my kingdom flourishes. One would think a king would be pleased with this.
In truth, the only consolation from my misery is sleep. Dreams, actually - for only when I dream, may I truly live. In the night, surrounded by the high castle walls, her face dances in front of my eyes. Her body is by my side. Her voice argues with me fiercely. How many times have I dreamt we danced? How many times did she move to me, never backing away, moving to meet my lips?
Countless.
When she ate the peach and dreamt, I truly rejoiced. For it was not my dream, not my wish - but her own.
I sat with the child, her brother, in my arms through that day. A delight, a dream in himself, the child. Thoughts of him are inevitable, and thoughts of her are simply my being. It was not my intent to turn him into a goblin, in all honesty. An heir will some day be a necessity - I will live for a hundred times the duration of an Abovegrounder, but I will some day die - and both the baby and Sarah were pulled from loveless parents. A fool to think I would make their lives better. A fool to forget my dear Sarah was so strong-willed, so persistent. Deep in her mind she knew all along that I wished to have what could not be possessed.
I desired the child for my country. I desired Sarah for my own sad being.
I held her in my arms as we danced in her fantasy, the ball I created for her. She was warm, so lovely. Her beautiful, cruel eyes bore into my own, and for that moment, Sarah was mine, just as I have always been hers. Oh, that she hadn't shattered it. It would have been a loss, in her mind.
And still, mine is the final choice. I forced her to play by my rules. I twisted time, I moved space. I did not allow her to slide through my labyrinth as if it were a game. And still, I wished for her to win. I lied to her in the relativity room. I promised her I would be her slave if she would fear me, love me, do as I said - when in truth, I have always been her slave. Oh, had she defied in another way then she did! If only she had denied me, demanded that I do all of those things for her! Though I was as defiant as she, I would have crumbled.
Her will is strong as mine.
And on that day, it was stronger.
Seventeen years ago, on the day of her birth, I was gazing Aboveground. I watched as her lovely being slipped into the mortal world. As her mother died in a timeless act of love, childbirth. As she willfully defied her father when he brought Karen home for the first time. As Toby was born, as she wept when her father seemed to forget her. As she holed herself in her room every night, reading, as she grew old alone, comforted only by her books and writing. I watched her mortal life end, quietly in the night.
Oh, it must seem so strange that I saw all of this in a moment, a single fragment of time. Never in my long life had something so sensational happened as I gazed, and I knew immediately that destiny was demanding I take action. Cruel destiny shattered my cold heart, and in that moment I fell in love with a woman who wouldn't truly exist for nearly another two decades.
Sweet, cruel, defiant Sarah. The most hurtful part of this affair is that it is her defiance, her cruelty, her intelligence, her utter humanity that makes me love her. This, however, is parallel only to the knowledge that she loves me in return.
I thought I could change her life. I thought I could give her peace, and I knew I could give her love. I was a fool to bring her to me at such a young age. I could have gently moved her to me, years in the future, instead of attempting to seize her in her youth. I could have intervened in her life years later, when she had been sculpted by the world Aboveground. So selfish! I thought I could force her here, make her prematurely grow into the woman I loved.
But I am a fool.
And so, my loneliness consumes me. She was perfectly right, in the end - I have no power over her.
Because, you see, I lost before the game started.
