RATING: T
GENRE: Dark-ish, Drama, AU (kinda?)
SUMMARY: The Seelie have come to wipe out humankind, but what no one knew was that the king of the goblins had fallen in love with a mortal girl and had given her certain powers.
WARNING: Some violence, but typical for a PG-13/T rating
A/N: I have no excuse for this other than I felt like it. :P
CERTAIN POWERS
Sarah slings her bow over her shoulder and places her hands on twin gilded doors. She sees the muck caked on her skin, the streaks of reddish-brown. She's no longer bothered by the blood on her hands. Figuratively and literally. Memories of life before the wars have become gauzy—desaturated illusions of Sunday dinners with her parents, visiting the arcade with her brother, cramming into the early hours with her study group at the university. That was all a fantasy. Since the Sidhe emerged from their secret places and descended upon the ignorant mortal world with breathtaking slaughter, grim survival has become the only reality.
She glances behind her at the ragtag band of soldiers commissioned by the king of the goblins. She doesn't know how long it's been since she stood before him in his decaying throne room and demanded his aid. His lips curved up in a mocking grin as his gaze dipped in scabrous appraisal of the fully grown woman before him. How, precisely, was he to help the one who had bested him, he asked in sardonic tones.
I've already given you everything, Precious.
But he hadn't, not yet. She drew the sword strapped at her waist, the metal whispering against the leather scabbard. Lead bullets were worthless against beings who wielded magic. Iron in all its incarnations—including steel—were the only weapons humans had. She pointed the blade at him with a useless threat swelling on her tongue, but he heaved a sigh in resignation before she could let the poisoned words loose.
"As ever, I am your slave."
He led her through a maze of corridors and down a spiral staircase until her legs cried out in protest. Light grew in increments with each step she took until it became a searing brightness. She squinted, threw an arm across her bleached vision when at last the ground leveled out. Jareth was a grey silhouette as he removed his gloves, letting them drop away from him. He turned to her, hands outstretched. A stuttering beat passed and then another before she decided to trust him. She slid the iron rings from her fingers, and they hit the ground with echoing plinks.
His palms were soft, cool to the touch, and his slender fingers curled over hers in a firm grip. He murmured a lyrical incantation in the tongue of his people—Sidhe like the cruel demons Above, but different. She'd learned about the Seelie and the Unseelie. It was the former committing genocide against humans for nature's scars.
"I thought the Seelie were supposed to be good?" her young brother had asked in a terrified whisper sometime after the massacre began. Toby received a hard lesson that day along with the rest of humankind. Light and darkness had nothing to do with good and evil. The Unseelie remained neutral in the conflict; they would aid neither side. In truth, she was surprised that Jareth was helping her at all.
His voice rose in pitch as pain etched lines in his ethereal features. A howl filled the chamber like a gale-force wind, but the air whirling around Sarah merely ruffled her hair, brushed against her skin in a soft kiss. And then she felt it, the vibrations humming through her flesh and bones building to an agonizing crescendo. She tried to wrench her hands away from him, tried to sever the connection that was surely going to tear her to shreds, but he held fast, yelled his chant louder over her screams.
Her knees cracked against the stone floor, and the blinding luminescence winked out. The stillness that followed was so perfect that Sarah thought she might have died. But she gulped a shuddering breath and blinked opened her eyes. Jareth knelt across from her, one palm on the ground, the other pressed against his chest. She stared at the amber glow haloing his slender fingers and wondered briefly if that was the reason he wore gloves.
"I return them all to you, Champion. Do with them what you will," he rasped, drawing her gaze up to his sallow features. "Now, begone." He flung a hand toward her, and a force yanked her backward, wicking the air from her lungs.
She woke in a field, surrounded by men and women in ragged clothing and tattered armor, all eyes on her. Red eyes. When she pushed up onto her feet, they withdrew from her in concert. A hushed whisper rippled through them, and it took her a moment to hear the words. The girl who ate the peach and forgot everything. One by one, they lowered themselves prostrate before her.
Jareth had given her his goblin army, restoring a semblance of their humanity in the exchange.
She remembered them as bumbling idiots during her run of the Labyrinth. Fierce, persistent to a fault, but stupid. Now, though, there was obvious intelligence in their abnormal gazes. She could work with that.
It wasn't until a month or two later when she marched into battle with her motley ranks that she learned of the other gift the Goblin King had given her, what he'd given all of them. She and her army were impervious to magic. The Seelie had to face her hoard with only sword and sinew and wit, and they were ill-prepared for the combat. She watched their masks of casual arrogance fracture with each successful assault she met against them until those masks gave way to dread.
She beat them back, made them pay blood for blood for the lives they'd stolen.
Her fellow humans have taken to calling her by the moniker Jareth gave her—the Champion. Even her stepmother and brother now speak to her with reverence and awe. (Sarah's father succumbed in one of the early assaults, leaving grief festering like an open wound in the hearts of those he left behind.) Her enemies have named her the Harbinger, though what she is supposed to herald changes with each skirmish. Pain, destruction, death.
Her once-goblins call her Queen. That, too, is catching on among the mortals.
At night, after the maps are rolled up and her generals have retired to their tents, she sinks her weary bones onto her simple cot. Sometimes she cries—though not as often as before. She mourns the loss of the carefree girl she'd been before she could stick a blade in another living being without flinching. She wishes she could unsee what she's seen, undo the terrible acts she's had to do to save her people from extinction.
Jareth has come to her in her dreams—not always, but enough to make her question his presence as more than a simple manifestation of her troubled subconscious. He collects a tear from her cheek and, with head tipped to the side, asks her why she weeps. There are other, less tame nighttime encounters where he makes her forget the gritty apocalyptic world she lives in. She wakes from those with gasping breath, sweat glistening on her skin.
Each morning, she steps back into her role of indomitable warrior. There's more than a baby brother at stake in this neverending gambit.
On the brink of defeat, the Seelie have finally discovered the origin of Sarah's power. They think they can exact retribution against her. She's come to prove them wrong.
At the grim nods of her loyal officers, she turns back to the doors that span up several feet above her head and shoves them open. Inside is a magnificent hall of redwood trees lining a path toward the throne. The vaulted ceiling is a canopy of branches woven together, leaves spinning languidly in golds and reds. Sunlight filters into the gallery in soft amber, and it's a jarring contrast to her world of violence.
Sidhe stand on either side of the walkway, uncanny gazes laced with disquiet, with loathing as she and her companions pass. Sarah rolls her shoulders back, tips her chin up in defiance, intent on the raised dais ahead. A pair of thrones, shaped from the same redwood, sit on the pinnacle, but only one is occupied. She keeps her eyes on the Seelie king, ignoring the chained figure bent prostrate at the base.
She doesn't bow and Egon doesn't rise, only wears a caustic grin on his striking face. She might have called him beautiful once, but now she considers impossibly symmetrical features like his monstrous.
"Ah, the Harbinger—or is it the 'Champion'?" he asks, his baritone deceptively mild. "Or perhaps you prefer to be addressed as 'queen' now. One hears so many things, it's difficult to discern the truth of them."
Sarah holds her tongue, refusing to be baited by him.
"To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?" He holds up a finger. "Wait, let me guess. You've come to see my latest trophy." He gestures toward the man kneeling at his feet.
Sarah finally looks, and Jareth lifts his head to meet her gaze. He's stripped to his breeches, iron manacles circling his wrists and ankles, his neck. Where metal touches flesh, his skin is cracked and papery, a brilliant crimson against his otherwise jaundiced pallor. His expression is devoid of emotion, a mirror to her own, but she doesn't miss the ragged movement of his chest.
"When the Unseelie learned of his treachery," Egon says, "they were eager to offer him up as payment for his crimes against us. I was going to put his head on a pike, but I think I'll keep him as a pet a while longer." He leans forward, grabs the silver rings attached to the end of Jareth's chains and yanks.
Jareth hisses, muscles pulling taut as he arches his back with a grimace. There's shuffling behind Sarah, low growls, and she holds a hand out near her thigh, palm facing backward. She glances over her shoulder, gives a slight shake of her head. The goblins will have their revenge soon enough.
"I wonder if they'll still obey you after I stop his heart."
Sarah turns back to Egon, the movement slow, measured. "Give the Goblin King to me," she commands quietly.
Egon raises his brows at her audacity. "You expect me to simply give him to you?" he asks. "No pleading? No bargains? I'd have thought you understood our ways better than that."
Sarah tilts her head, studies the creature who had rained terror down on her people. She's not afraid, though Egon is doing his best to intimidate her. She glances at Jareth, and he returns her gaze, lips curling in fervid anticipation—not of what the Unseelie King will do, but of what Sarah is capable of. Her middle flutters from the unwavering faith in his eyes, and she sees beyond the former enemy turned grudging ally. She sees a truth that she's been resolutely blind to until now.
What no one knew was that the king of the goblins had fallen in love with the girl…
"You want a bargain?" she asks Egon. "Give him to me, and I'll let you live. Those are my terms."
"Did you hear that?" Egon says to his court with derision. "How very generous the Harbinger is!" He lets out a loud, brittle laugh, and the other Seelie join him.
Sarah shares another look with the imprisoned Goblin King, returning the faint grin he wears. She waits until the laughter dies off—until tense silence weighs heavy in the great hall once more.
"Beware," she warns, "I've been generous until now." She hears a voice in her mind, a murmured memory from another life. But I can be cruel.
"Oh, have you?" Egon sneers at her, rising from his throne at last. "How have you been generous? Was it when you burned through acres of rainforest? When you filled the sky with your poisoned smoke? When you hunted animals to the point of extinction?"
She's unmoved by his accusations. These are not her crimes, and she tells him as much.
"No?" Egon says with sour disbelief. "Only willing to take credit for the butcher of the sovereign keepers of this world, then?"
"As willing as you are to take responsibility for the near annihilation of my people," she returns coolly. "Should we have knelt down and stretched our necks for you when you declared war on us?"
"Yes," he says. "You are a blight upon the earth, an infection that needs to be rooted out."
Sarah shakes her head. This is an argument she's heard more than once during this conflict, that humans had to be stopped before they could utterly destroy the lands, the seas. But she's come to know this assertion for what it is: a flimsy justification for a brutal holocaust. This war hasn't been about saving anything. It's about power—the same as every other war in history.
"Then let's end this once and for all," she says with more bravado than confidence, but she's not wrong. This has to end, even if it means her death.
"Here?"
Again, Egon is surprised by her boldness. Again, she catches Jareth's smile in her periphery, and her heart thrums with building adrenalin. No, not adrenalin. Something else entirely, uncoiling inside of her as if from a long sleep. It's a thrill both new and familiar.
"Yes," she answers as cogent understanding sweeps away what's left of her earlier trepidation.
She raises a hand, flicks her wrist, and watches Egon's eyes grow round as a crystal orb appears on her fingertips.
…and he had given her certain powers.
I've already given you everything, Precious.
Sarah flings it at the ground, and an invisible force throws Egon and the other Seelie backwards in a concussive blast. She charges the dais, sword drawn. Behind, her soldiers dash to face the courtiers before they can recover. Egon has barely made it to his feet when Sarah is slashing the blade at him. The sharp edge slices through his waistcoat, but falls short of giving him any real injury. Still she comes, using her momentum to swing the butt of her hilt into his face. He stumbles, and she sweeps the back of his legs with her foot.
She's behind him when he falls, knotting a hand in his long hair to jerk his head up. "You should have taken the bargain," she says to him before her sword bites into his throat.
She leaves his body to crumple to the ground as she scrambles over to Jareth. Her fingertips glow the same brilliant gold his once had, and she hesitates, worried for a second that his iron manacles would now burn her to the touch. But no, she isn't Sidhe, no matter what he'd done to her. His gaze follows her as she tugs at the pins, willing the metal to move for her.
Once free, he grasps her face, pulls her forehead to his. "Sarah," he whispers. "Sarah."
But there's still the clang of blades in the gallery, the feral shouts of her army, the answering yells from the Seelie. She rises, faces the melee.
"Enough!"
Her voice booms, amplified by the magic Jareth had gifted her. All eyes turn to her, swords and daggers falling slack.
"Who is the heir?" she demands. When no one answers, she asks again with power: "Who is it?"
Gazes dart almost in unison to the man beside her. Jareth stands, somehow regal despite his sickly features, his state of undress. He glances at her, a smirk playing on his mouth.
"I suppose I ought to thank you for dispatching my wretched half-brother," he says.
Sarah nearly laughs. Because the years of hell she walked through has somehow culminated into Jareth's victory. But she'd rather him on the throne than another Seelie bent on vengeance.
"Do you surrender?" she asks him.
He bares his teeth in a wide smile. "Long ago, Precious." And then he addresses his new subjects. "Swear fealty to your new king and queen, or suffer death."
Despite the hatred twisting the otherworldly faces of the courtiers, they concede, tossing weapons down, kneeling, murmuring the oaths.
Sarah looks at Jareth, brow raised. "Queen?"
"You didn't think this would end any other way, did you?" Jareth asks, sounding inordinately pleased with himself despite the languor in his gravelly baritone.
She hasn't thought about it before, not since she was an adolescent obsessed with fairy tales. He still unsettles her; he's still so staggeringly inhuman. Then again, she is too.
"Now," he says, drawing her out of reflection, "shall we see to the recreants who thought to trade my life in the name of self-preservation?"
She considers it, considers picking up her sword and fighting on through the exhaustion that now seeps through her flesh. But that isn't her battle, just as her clash with the Seelie wasn't his—not until Egon took him captive.
Instead, she caresses his cheek with glittery fingertips, leans in and presses her lips over his. There is more to this kiss than the magnetic force always pulling them toward one another. There's more than the remembrance of his hands leaving marks on her hips during her fevered dreams—marks that lingered for days on her skin. The hum builds in her bones, and she whispers unfamiliar words against his mouth. He laps each one with a sweep of his tongue.
She wields the spell clumsily, imperfectly, but it's enough. Soon his head is resting on hers as he shares her serrated breath.
"I gave them back," she murmurs, smiling. "Now, begone."
He laughs softly. "As my master commands," he says. "When I'm finished—"
"You're coming for me."
"I'm coming for my queen." He gives her a soft kiss in farewell before vanishing.
She glances at the great hall, empty now save for the bodies of the fallen. She's tempted to collapse onto one of the thrones, to weep until she has no more tears, but she needs to return to what's left of her people. She needs to give them something they haven't had in so long.
Hope.
She leaves the sword behind as she jogs toward the gilded doors. The war is over. The Champion can rest.
~FIN~
A/N: Thank you so much for reading! I'd so very much love to hear your thoughts. Please drop me a review if you have a minute. XD