Candidate quote (from Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing by David Bowie)
I'm having so much fun with the poisonous people
Spreading rumors and lies and stories they made up
"You. Of course it was you."
Jareth leaned against the wall, mocking me with his smooth indifference. His tailored Canali double-breasted suit contoured to his lean frame in inappropriately sumptuous ways, and his lopsided smile did nothing to dispel the impression of sin held just out of reach. "I told you there'd be repercussions to refusing my offer."
I closed my eyes briefly. "Jareth. We've been through this. There's no way on earth you could plausibly be my running mate in this campaign."
"Convenient that I'm not from earth, then."
"Exactly the problem! But you couldn't let it go, could you? You just had to go dropping your juicy little tidbits to my opposition."
He shrugged. "You need to toughen up that skin if you want to go into politics."
I gritted my teeth. "Hard to get into politics if you shoot me down first with those ridiculous rumors and lies."
"They shouldn't be that hard to overcome if there's no truth at all to them." His eyes gleamed.
I felt my cheeks burn.
He smiled. "Ah. And there's the rub, hmmm?"
I bit down scathing retorts and converged on something painfully direct. "Are you never going to forgive me for leaving my apprenticeship with you?" The words shimmered between us like heat ghosts.
The lines of his face suddenly compressed with weariness and a whisper of despair. "Did it never occur to you that just because you stopped listening, that doesn't mean I stopped teaching?"