Author's Note: I was quite surprised at the response to my little sex scene in the previous chapter. Naughty people! So happy to see Jareth take off those 'damnable breeches'? Glad you lot liked it. Unfortunately, as my regulars from the 'Bond of...' series know, there can be no PWP without some serious drama and/or twist occuring. Wonder what it will be this time?
"You seem happy this morning," the Lady Pandora remarked, looking at her son as he actually decided to eat. Oh, glory of glories!
Jareth grinned at her and sat down, stretching his long legs out under the table and slouching comfortably back in his seat. He picked up the jug of milk and added some to the peculiar mixture of fruit and mixed nuts. Apparently one of the cooks had taken the idea of a 'cereal' from one of his recent Aboveground acquisitions and decided to experiment. Jarethquite likedtrying new things.
"What is that?" Pandora asked, staring at the bowl in front of him.
"This? Not a clue." Jareth cheerfully picked up a spoon and began to eat, not even noticing the slightly acrid taste of one of the more tangy fruits combining badly with the sweet milk. The sun glowed in at the windows and picked out the delicate blue paint on the china dishes. Pure, snowy white dishes filled with food either piping hot or pleasantly cool.
Jareth was very happy with the world.
His mother noticed. She smiled slightly at the ease with which her son moved, aware of the dark bruise very visible just below his collarbone. A bruise, she decided, that looked as if someone had bitten him hard. She barely restrained a giggle when he began to hum a new song.
Toby wandered in some minutes later, looking quite pleased with himself. He wished his adopted mother a good morning, picked up a peach and sat down at the table.
"Are you not hungry?" Pandora demanded, lips twitching.
Toby shook his head and studiously began to eat the peach. "Not really," he murmured.
"Do you feel ill?" She didn't think Toby was, but illness was still difficult for the mortal, being… well, mortal.
Toby grinned and shook his head again. "Not at all. Just not hungry."
Pandora nodded and looked down at her own plate. But she looked up fast enough to catch Jareth's half-smile at the mortal- returned she might add- before the two looked innocently at her. Jareth even went so far as to raise an enquiring eyebrow in that perpetual habit he had.
Pandora sighed and smiled at the both of them. "I take it you both had a very good night," she remarked.
Toby blushed a little but Jareth just laughed. "A very eventful night," the Goblin King agreed.
"Well, I suppose you could have exchanged eating habits while you were exchanging… other things."
"My Lady, were you doing anything this morning," Toby broke in desperately, trying not to laugh nervously. It was really too embarrassing to discuss his sex life with the lady that was essentially his mother. And the mother of his partner. Damn! His good mood faltered and he looked uncertainly at Jareth.
Jareth saw it and frowned slightly in concern. What had happened now? The night before had been very entertaining. The morning had been bright and appealing. He had thought they were passed the worst of the situation now that Toby was prepared to really meet him halfway. Yet there was his ward looking just as distant as before.
The Goblin King pushed his bowl away, appetite forgotten as he leaned forward. "Is there something wrong, Toby?"
He probably didn't even realize that his voice had dropped to a low husky whisper, too intimate. Toby drew back and darted a look at the other person in their midst. She was looking at him as well, a surprised look on her face. "Nothing," he replied coolly, "I am a little hungry, I believe."
He stood up and went to serve himself something. Jareth's frown deepened and he felt annoyed. It had been a beautiful day and Toby had had to ruin it. Again. He looked to his mother and she shrugged apologetically, signing that she had no idea.
Jareth said nothing until the mortal came back to the table and then he reached out and placed a soothing hand on Toby's. "What is the matter?" he asked again.
"I'm a little tired," Toby evaded, offering a cool smile.
"How flattering for me. Be honest."
"I am very honest with you."
"No.I am not stupid and you are lying. You can tell me now, or you can let it fester. But if this was about last night, then you might as well tell me now before you interrupt my night with a long, rather pointlessly emotional talk." Jareth's voice was growing harder with each syllable, and by the time he had finished his hand had slipped away and was pressed far too relentlessly against the wood of the table.
Toby knew better than to keep provoking him. But this was a private matter and he did not want the Lady Pandora involved. He could handle Jareth's tantrums and his long rages. But he could not handle any one else's pitying looks. And he would not. So he took his hand away and began to eat steadily.
Pandora cleared her throat and glared at Jareth, telling him wordlessly that he was pushing too hard.
The Goblin King took her advice and stormed out, not stopping to apologize to his sister as he pushed passed her on the stairs. Indeed, when she uttered a small sound of protest, he snarled at her and continued on his way.
Jervohl made it to the breakfast room just as Toby was coming out. The mortal was tight-lipped and pale. He held the door open and nodded at her 'good morning' but said nothing to her.
Jervohl blinked at her mother as she sat down. "Were they arguing again?"
"Worse."
"Never tell me it almost escalated into a physical fight?" Jervohl sipped at her glass and let her worry show.
"No. But if I did not know better, I would think it a lover's tiff."
Jervohl's eyes dropped instantly, her mind caught up enough by that indirect reference to even notice that the names included in such a statement were not ones she would ever have thought were possible.
Pandora sighed and put her head in her hands for a minute. She was old, dammit! She shouldn't, at her age, still have to play mother to two children. Unfortunately, would she ever stop playing mother to someone? And since she had no grandchildren to occupy her attention, she would have to content herself with her children. "Jervohl?"
"Hmmm?"
"Jervohl, when will you stop this nonsense?" The older lady smoothed a hand over the younger one lying limply on the table. "Why pretend?"
"I don't know what you're talking about, Mother."
"Dear, if you love someone, tell them."
Pandora was tired of always saying this. Her stupid family, she mused, they were the only ones who refused to say anything when they fell head over heels. Jareth had decided to play some convoluted game in which he couldn't decide whether he wanted to kiss his darling senseless or get her as far from him as was humanly possible. Jervohl had already made the mistake of being so distant with her former fiancé that she had lost him to her own brother, simply because Crase thought she had no real interest in him. And Dieter… well, Dieter would never have to torture himself with the sight of the woman he loved married to someone else, now, would he?
"Mother, it is not as simple as all that."
"Why not? Gildred is a nice boy."
"Mother! He is not a boy! He is only five years younger than Jareth."
"Yes, but that says nothing. Your brother's soul is about four centuries old. Sometimes I wonder if he is not as old as I am mentally."
"Not possible. He is too juvenile."
The two smiled at each other, albeit one of the smiles was weak and accompanied with slightly wet eyes.
Pandora tugged her daughter's hand until Jervohl reluctantly came around to her side of the table and sat down awkwardly on the floor beside her chair. She laid her head in her mother's lap and let the blue-veined hands stroke over her hair with a soothing touch.
"What happened, Jervohl?"
Wet green eyes closed. "He gave someone else the job, Mother. I worked so hard to prove that I was worthy. I did everything I could to show my loyalty. And then he selected Madigh."
"Did you tell him?"
"I confronted him that night and screamed at him for a good few minutes," Jervohl replied ruefully, "I'm so embarrassed! After so long of being so controlled, of trying to be subtle, suddenly it did not matter that I was behaving like a child of eight again."
"What did he say?" Pandora had expected this, but it still worried her.
"Nothing. I didn't give him the chance. I told him that my time was up and that I was leaving. I left before he could say anything more. I didn't even wait for an escort. I move better when I travel alone."
"You have had to learn a number of hard lessons, it seems."
"Yes. But after a while, I enjoyed them. I was not expected to sit at home and have children. Even the females learn how to shoot a bow in the Outlawed Lands, Mother. And I know it sounds like treason, for me to- to feel this, but if you had ever lived there you would see that they are not as terrible as people say. They are not uncivilized, or racist, or savage, and they do not practise secret rituals to dark spirits."
Pandora giggled- she could not help it- her daughter sounded so indignant. "Of course, not, my dear. No one really believes that."
"I could not tell Jareth. After all the times Gildred has tried to take the Kingdom or have him deposed, I didn't think he would appreciate it."
"I know. And he might be upset at first, but you know your brother. He will bluster and growl his way through the first week or so, and then he will see reason."
"This is Jareth. Reason has no chance."
"Come, now, Jervohl. He is not that bad."
"I repeat- this is Jareth."
"True. He can be a blockhead. Suffice it to say, I will beat it into his head that he is not to be nasty about it."
Jervohl gave her a weak laugh and nodded, lifting her head. "I feel such a fool. In love with the enemy and bursting into tears about it! Is there anything more ridiculous?"
"Yes," Pandora said dryly, "The sight of the aloof Goblin King smiling softly at the man he has just spent a very pleasurable night with over breakfast, even though his mother is sitting two chairs away."
Jervohl shuddered. "Poor Toby. I do not know how he puts up with him."
"Toby smiled back."
"They deserve each other."
"Yes, but there is trouble is paradise. Toby suddenly seemed to get some maggot into his head and killed the mood quite remarkably quick. I will have to have a talk with that man. He is too repressed for his own good. I have always said so, but you think he listens to me? Oh, no! What can an old lady such as myself know?" She sounded thoroughly disgruntled.
"Mother, do you not think you should stay out of this?"
"If I did, my dear, I would never have agreed to raise Toby at all. Especially since I suspected that he was Jareth's offspring at the time."
Jervohl wrinkled her nose in disgust. "That is morally wrong. Even worse than the many jokes about Jareth bedding both brother and sister."
Pandora looked upset. She knew the stories, but this one was new. And she didn't like it. No matter what she thought of her own son, the stories never failed to upset her. "He never would have," she declared hotly, "Not Sarah. Not as she was then. No one who knew him would ever have suspected the person he was then to harm the air around her let alone a hair on her head."
Jervohl looked puzzled.
"He was changed, Jervohl. You should have seen him. It was not that he was less selfish, it was that he extended that selfishness to include another living being. His face would soften when he watched her in his crystals. He did things that he thought she might like, only because he wanted her approval. No one will tell you."
"It sounds as if he really loved her. But how was it even possible? He barely knew her. And she disliked him."
"She disliked what she thought he was, and hated herself for loving him anyway." Pandora stood up. "Wretched girl ruined him. I don't wish her dead, but if she had to die she should never have asked him to watch."
Jervohl shuddered again, this time in sympathy. She knew all the times that she had felt physically ill knowing Gildred was in danger, or knowing that he was hurt. She knew how terrible it had been to have no way to make him feel better through any of the day-to-day problems that he faced, no matter how small they were. "If I had ever had to see Gildred die… if I ever live to hear of his death, I would die too."
"No." Pandora knew about death. "You will live. And you will be sad. But then something will happen to take that hate away and you will see sense again."
"You sound like Gildred- "Nothing will ever disturb the continuation of life". One would imagine he was a machine!"
Pandora laughed and released her daughter, lifting up the left hand to adjust the ribbon weaving around the fingers. "Jervohl, is there any truth to the rumours? That Gildred is of the Sky spirits?"
"He believes it. I am not so sure. His skills are those of practise and intelligence. It may be possible that he has aerial blood in him, but I doubt it. He takes such pride in it that I never thought to discuss it."
"Come, then. It seems you have twenty years of suppressed passion to tell me of. Unless there are things a mother should not be told?" Blue eyes directed a look of fierce sternness at green.
Jervohl blushed a little but shook her head. "I wish," she remarked fervently, "But no. We're never close enough. That promotion- if he had had any regard for me he would have given it to me. He knew how much I wanted it. But no! Madigh had to get it. Bah! Of all the useless fools!"
"That bad?"
"He almost tortured a child to make him reveal the whereabouts of his father," Jervohl spat. "Do not talk to me of bad."
"He sounds unpleasant."
The younger fae stayed silent as they made their way from the room, going out to the garden. She did not even look surprised when Toby melted out of the shadows with an apologetic smile and began a conversation with her mother. Her mind was caught with the unpleasantness of many of those she had met. And how, in the end, it had been balanced by the shocking justice of just one person.
Justice.
She had never thought she would ever use that word to Gildred, but he was just. Ruthlessly, terribly just. In his land of chaos, he had to create order. The opposite of the Underground in so many ways. In more ways than people realized, at least. And those in the Outlaw Lands were capable of so much less sympathy than those in the Underground, so much less understanding. Because if one has been chased and exiled from one's own country, one is bound to grow bitter and morose.
Jervohl could not help wondering if Gildred were roaming his lands again, personally checking every village and town in disguise, with none but his lieutenants to protect him. She wished she were there to help him. To protect him. To see him smile when he saw all was well. She wished it out loud, under her breath, looking irritably out at the Goblin City.
It was lucky, in that way, that she lived in the Wishing Lands, and had the personal favour of the Goblin King himself. Jareth was most conveniently in the mood to listen to her wish, and assist her in achieving it. It would, as he exalted, get her out of his hair.
