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comment_fic prompt of 'nameless city', but as you can see I wandered off from that a bit -_-; A tiny piece of darkling nostalgia, since I've been reading Labyrinth fanfic lately.
Title: Eternity Trembles
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: The Labyrinth (1986)
Characters/Pairings: Sarah Williams, Jareth. Jareth/Sarah
Summary: "When I was a child, I thought like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me." But the loss of childhood is not necessarily the loss of magic, just the knowledge, now, of its prices. Jareth won even as he lost, and as an adult Sarah begins to understand that, and to find joy in it.
Wordcount: 2461
Warnings/Notes: Magic, power exchange, oaths, romance, purple prose, nostalgia -_-;
Disclaimer: Not mine
comment_fic prompt of 'nameless city', but as you can see I wandered off from that a bit -_-; A tiny piece of darkling nostalgia, since I've been reading Labyrinth fanfic lately.Title: Eternity Trembles
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: The Labyrinth (1986)
Characters/Pairings: Sarah Williams, Jareth. Jareth/Sarah
Summary: "When I was a child, I thought like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me." But the loss of childhood is not necessarily the loss of magic, just the knowledge, now, of its prices. Jareth won even as he lost, and as an adult Sarah begins to understand that, and to find joy in it.
Wordcount: 2461
Warnings/Notes: Magic, power exchange, oaths, romance, purple prose, nostalgia -_-;
Disclaimer: Not mine
Eternity Trembles
She stood on a hillside overlooking a distant city. That much, at least, was familiar. That dream was old and well-worn, and she knew it very well. But this dream was not that one, and there the similarities failed.
It wasn't daylight, now. There was no amber sunlight to bathe worn stone and winding passages, no earth and gold laid open before her. Instead, she stood in silvered moonlight and looked down upon a city nameless and pale, shimmering silently in the darkness, a yawning emptiness waiting to be filled. She could feel it call to her, not in challenge as the other had done, but in yearning, in hunger, seeking infinitely more than her courage. This place, this pale and silent strangeness, wanted her.
"... Oh, Sarah," said a voice behind her, soft and oddly bleak. "You don't do things by halves, do you?"
"Jareth," she said, as she turned to him, as she watched him move like feathered silk to her side. "Where am I?" There was an echo in her voice, none of her childish anger, but something hollower and more frail. "What have you done?"
He twitched an eyebrow, gave a smile that was nothing but a dark little curl of his lips. "I?" he wondered, and there was cruelty in it, and pity, and something perhaps like hunger too. "I have done nothing. I'm not the villain this time, I'm afraid. You dreamed a dream, Sarah, and this one is none of mine."
She frowned at him, then looked away, out over the silent shadows. He stayed by her side, calm and still, a liquid, patient presence. He was ... so strangely reassuring to her. Even still. Even despite.
"It's not the Labyrinth?" she asked, because that was what she would have said, once, but she knew the answer already. She could feel it, and so could he.
"Does it look like it?" he asked, light and airy, a contemptuous amusement. Poison over steel. He looked at her like she should already know the answer, like he found her willful blindness at once nostalgic and disappointing. She huffed at him, too bewildered to be annoyed.
"Appearances can be deceiving," was all she said, a bright little needle back against him, a pointed reminder of so many things, and he chuckled darkly because of it. So casually cruel, her Goblin King. Just as he had always been.
"Well at least you've learned that much," he murmured, with a press of his lips like honest pride. "Not much else, perhaps, but that at least. Well done, Sarah." He smirked, ignored her as she scoffed at him, and then sobered. Grew still and eerie, and with that strange flash of pity. "But it won't be the wisdom that saves you this time. This appearance, at least, is not a lie. There are no labyrinths here."
She bit her lip, finding an urge within her, and reached out to touch his arm. He startled, more than he should have done, and looked at her.
"What is it, then?" she asked him. Holding his gaze, trapping his eyes with hers. There was a wildness in him, almost a fear, and something hollow and shining beneath it. Something that looked almost exultant. "Where have I come to, Goblin King?"
He turned to her. Settled himself against her, his back to the moonlit city, the shadows falling across his eyes. He tilted his head, curious as the owl he could become, and stared at her as if to see the world within her. To see the dreams beneath her skin.
"To a will as strong as mine," he started softly, a hum of power like silk across his words, dripping down her spine with a slow seep of horror, of joy, of exhilaration. Her breath hitched, and she knew. "To a kingdom as great, and to a power ... that is no longer mine."
"... Mine?" she breathed. Standing back from him, falling back a step, and feeling the emptiness beyond him yawn open all the wider, reaching towards her, feeding from her. She felt the city open its arms, empty stone on a moonlit hillside, and welcome her home. "This ... this is what I have inside me? This is what I am?"
His eyes gleamed, mismatched gems in an alabaster face, and suddenly he was fey, he was wild, he was dark and deep and a far more adult thing than her childish mind had once dreamed. Something else, something none of hers, something always hers. Something she had grown past, grown beyond, and circled to now again.
"When I was a child," he said, low and thoughtful, his gloved hands laced around each other, held trapped so as not to touch. "When I was a child, I talked like a child. I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me." He tipped his head, his voice chiming like hollow bells, shining with a desperate grace. "You are no more a child, Sarah. Your dreams have depth, and darkness, and grace. They have power. It was mine once, something I gave to you, something I had to offer. No more. You have them now by your own merit. You may do with them as you will."
With them, he said. With her dreams. But something more, something thin and dark and joyous, something longing. Something that yearned for her as the city behind him yearned for her. He had trapped his hands, he had pressed them low to keep from reaching for her, and there were no crystals now to offer falsities. No baubles, no pride. The hour had struck long ago, the words and the world had crumbled between them, and this was no longer the Labyrinth they stood beside. This was something new, and something wholly hers.
This was something she might have. And she wondered, suddenly, she wondered with a sharp and shocking hunger, if maybe so was he.
"It's mine," she said, her eyes wide and dark, some echo of his chiming in her voice. She looked beyond him, she moved past him with a strange, liquid grace that she had never had before, and she felt him shiver beside her as she passed him by. He did not move. He didn't turn his head to watch her stand before her new city, her nameless dream that beckoned her. But he shuddered as she passed, and she didn't think it was from fear. "I can do what I want? I can have what I want?"
"... Our realms are ours to keep," he said, to the darkness on the edge of her realm beyond which, perhaps, lay his own. "They are ours to shape, ours to fill, ours to use as we desire. Our power within them is forever. And so ... is its price."
That struck a note. That halted her, a resonance to that statement that caught against her, tugged at something beneath her breastbone. A memory, maybe. A knowledge. What's said is said. What's done is done. Because that is the way you must do it.
Her lips parted, not quite shock but knowledge, yes. A knowing, an understanding. Not childish dreams. Not infinite possibilities. Because there were prices, now. That's what power meant. That's what growing up meant. Wasn't it.
"It's forever, isn't it?" she asked, and maybe it might have been gentle. He was looking away still, when she glanced at him. He was stiff and calm and silent, looking away at a distant Labyrinth, a king without his kingdom, looking oddly small. "What I do now. What I choose. Whatever it is, it's forever. This is where the rules are made."
He tipped his head back, looked up at the alien sky with its alien moon, its alien stars. She couldn't see his face, couldn't see his eyes, but there was something laughing in his voice. Something that sang of pain and of triumph, of loss and of joy. Her Goblin King, who had no power over her. Her Goblin King, whose rules no longer bound her.
"Forever's not as long as it sounds," he said. He turned to her, a cloak of feathers falling suddenly around him, a flare of moonlight and shadow, and his smile was full of teeth, full of cruelty, full of longing. "It's not long at all, really. If you're prepared to wait. To hope for a dream more powerful than your own. Dreams can be a cage, Sarah. If you make them that way. Dreams can blind you to what you want, they can keep you from ever having it. You know that. You remember it. But dreams aren't the strongest thing there is. There's always something outside them, if you wait and you hope for long enough. There's always something that can shatter eternity."
Her breath hitched. Her heart yawned open, as wide and as empty as the city behind her, and something rushed to fill it. The world stretched, the world tore, toffee beneath the strength of her desires, and she felt her magic shape itself around him. She felt her dream break open, and be remade.
"... What if I wanted a king?" she whispered, moving towards him with something in her eyes that she thought must be more cruel than he had ever dreamed. She reached up, pressed a hand to his chest, to the warmth of a medallion and the chill of pale flesh beneath it. He leaned into her. He hungered for her. "Not a slave. Someone I don't have power over. Someone I don't win. Someone who comes to me only when he wants, and who welcomes me only when I want him. What if I wanted a man from another realm, waiting on the other side of a looking glass. What if ... What if I wanted that?"
"Do you?" he growled, and oh, he was the villain still. He was the challenger, the tempter, the man with dreams cupped inside his hands, holding them out empty to plead with her. He had no power, he had no hope, and his will was a strong as hers. "Do you want that, Sarah? Do you want to build a dream and yet keep your heart outside it? Do you want to give away your power and trust it to something you can't control? A will and a kingdom as strong as yours. Do you want that?"
Oh. Oh. And she had been a child. And she hadn't understood. But she had fought, and she had won, and he had given her certain powers for a reason. She was no more a childish thing. She didn't dream only childish dreams. And she had power, now, to offer him.
"... I do," she said, and she felt his heart stagger beneath her hand. She felt it falter, felt it beat, and knew it better and stronger than any dream. She looked up at him, met mismatched eyes that were wild and terrible with hope, and she smiled at him for all that he had given her and all that he had entrusted to her. "I want that. I ... I'll be there for you, Goblin King. When your world falls down. If you'll be there for me in turn?"
The sound he made was like the breaking of a world all over again, the sound he should have made when she'd leapt and she'd fallen and all the Labyrinth's power had crumbled around her. He had been silent then, but he wasn't now. Now, it was him who crumbled, and fell to her as once she had fallen to him.
"I will. I'll be there," he said, the words a binding and an oath, and she felt her kingdom reach up to drink them down, felt her magic reach up to wrap around him and bind his world to hers, his will to hers, his strength. Somewhere in spaces between realms, a shudder ripped and moved and tore, and abruptly she felt another kingdom alongside hers, a border suddenly bound, and an amber, sunlit sky kissed gently against her moon and stars. Night and day, thirteen hours apiece, bound by the chime of a clock and the oath of a king. Her city with no name, waiting for its queen, and his Labyrinth that stood forever behind its king.
"Name it, Sarah," he murmured, that held note ringing in his voice, hope and longing and endless challenge. "Name your world and your city. Shape it by its name and give it form. Let it bind and be bound. Give a boundary to your dreams, so that you'll know what lies beyond them. Say the words. If you want this, say its name."
For a moment, there was nothing, a ringing emptiness in her head, as there had been when she had faltered before him, when she had forgotten briefly the words that would set her free and him too alongside her. For a moment, she could think of nothing.
And then, in a bubble of humour and cruel whimsy, the notion came to her.
"Persephone," she said, with maybe a note of laughing to it. "My city's name is Persephone, Goblin King. A kingdom with a queen for only half of forever. A queen whose heart it must share with another world ... and another king."
Something flared in his eyes, one blue and one brown, the eyes of a halfway thing forever caught between two worlds, and then he snatched her close against him. Then he pulled her close, his cloak like wings mantled around her, and maybe he caught her mouth with his or maybe she caught his with hers, but suddenly his magic thundered inside her, suddenly hers rushed up and flooded him, suddenly there was teeth and love and yearning tangled between them both, and a strange heart beating beside her own. She breathed against his mouth, caught herself tangled in his kiss, and between two beats of their hearts he was hers, and she his. Her life within him, and his within her. Two wills, two dreams, two kingdoms and two hearts, eternally separate and forever entwined.
"Sarah," he breathed, a name for a smaller and braver thing than queens, and she smiled and answered back in kind, for the part of him that was no longer just the Goblin King.
"Jareth," she said, and matched his longing, now and always, with her own.
We have no power over that we love, but neither are we its slave. There is freedom in that which is not our own, and joy in that which stands in all its strength beside us.
And against such joy, eternity trembles, and is not so long at all.
She stood on a hillside overlooking a distant city. That much, at least, was familiar. That dream was old and well-worn, and she knew it very well. But this dream was not that one, and there the similarities failed.
It wasn't daylight, now. There was no amber sunlight to bathe worn stone and winding passages, no earth and gold laid open before her. Instead, she stood in silvered moonlight and looked down upon a city nameless and pale, shimmering silently in the darkness, a yawning emptiness waiting to be filled. She could feel it call to her, not in challenge as the other had done, but in yearning, in hunger, seeking infinitely more than her courage. This place, this pale and silent strangeness, wanted her.
"... Oh, Sarah," said a voice behind her, soft and oddly bleak. "You don't do things by halves, do you?"
"Jareth," she said, as she turned to him, as she watched him move like feathered silk to her side. "Where am I?" There was an echo in her voice, none of her childish anger, but something hollower and more frail. "What have you done?"
He twitched an eyebrow, gave a smile that was nothing but a dark little curl of his lips. "I?" he wondered, and there was cruelty in it, and pity, and something perhaps like hunger too. "I have done nothing. I'm not the villain this time, I'm afraid. You dreamed a dream, Sarah, and this one is none of mine."
She frowned at him, then looked away, out over the silent shadows. He stayed by her side, calm and still, a liquid, patient presence. He was ... so strangely reassuring to her. Even still. Even despite.
"It's not the Labyrinth?" she asked, because that was what she would have said, once, but she knew the answer already. She could feel it, and so could he.
"Does it look like it?" he asked, light and airy, a contemptuous amusement. Poison over steel. He looked at her like she should already know the answer, like he found her willful blindness at once nostalgic and disappointing. She huffed at him, too bewildered to be annoyed.
"Appearances can be deceiving," was all she said, a bright little needle back against him, a pointed reminder of so many things, and he chuckled darkly because of it. So casually cruel, her Goblin King. Just as he had always been.
"Well at least you've learned that much," he murmured, with a press of his lips like honest pride. "Not much else, perhaps, but that at least. Well done, Sarah." He smirked, ignored her as she scoffed at him, and then sobered. Grew still and eerie, and with that strange flash of pity. "But it won't be the wisdom that saves you this time. This appearance, at least, is not a lie. There are no labyrinths here."
She bit her lip, finding an urge within her, and reached out to touch his arm. He startled, more than he should have done, and looked at her.
"What is it, then?" she asked him. Holding his gaze, trapping his eyes with hers. There was a wildness in him, almost a fear, and something hollow and shining beneath it. Something that looked almost exultant. "Where have I come to, Goblin King?"
He turned to her. Settled himself against her, his back to the moonlit city, the shadows falling across his eyes. He tilted his head, curious as the owl he could become, and stared at her as if to see the world within her. To see the dreams beneath her skin.
"To a will as strong as mine," he started softly, a hum of power like silk across his words, dripping down her spine with a slow seep of horror, of joy, of exhilaration. Her breath hitched, and she knew. "To a kingdom as great, and to a power ... that is no longer mine."
"... Mine?" she breathed. Standing back from him, falling back a step, and feeling the emptiness beyond him yawn open all the wider, reaching towards her, feeding from her. She felt the city open its arms, empty stone on a moonlit hillside, and welcome her home. "This ... this is what I have inside me? This is what I am?"
His eyes gleamed, mismatched gems in an alabaster face, and suddenly he was fey, he was wild, he was dark and deep and a far more adult thing than her childish mind had once dreamed. Something else, something none of hers, something always hers. Something she had grown past, grown beyond, and circled to now again.
"When I was a child," he said, low and thoughtful, his gloved hands laced around each other, held trapped so as not to touch. "When I was a child, I talked like a child. I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me." He tipped his head, his voice chiming like hollow bells, shining with a desperate grace. "You are no more a child, Sarah. Your dreams have depth, and darkness, and grace. They have power. It was mine once, something I gave to you, something I had to offer. No more. You have them now by your own merit. You may do with them as you will."
With them, he said. With her dreams. But something more, something thin and dark and joyous, something longing. Something that yearned for her as the city behind him yearned for her. He had trapped his hands, he had pressed them low to keep from reaching for her, and there were no crystals now to offer falsities. No baubles, no pride. The hour had struck long ago, the words and the world had crumbled between them, and this was no longer the Labyrinth they stood beside. This was something new, and something wholly hers.
This was something she might have. And she wondered, suddenly, she wondered with a sharp and shocking hunger, if maybe so was he.
"It's mine," she said, her eyes wide and dark, some echo of his chiming in her voice. She looked beyond him, she moved past him with a strange, liquid grace that she had never had before, and she felt him shiver beside her as she passed him by. He did not move. He didn't turn his head to watch her stand before her new city, her nameless dream that beckoned her. But he shuddered as she passed, and she didn't think it was from fear. "I can do what I want? I can have what I want?"
"... Our realms are ours to keep," he said, to the darkness on the edge of her realm beyond which, perhaps, lay his own. "They are ours to shape, ours to fill, ours to use as we desire. Our power within them is forever. And so ... is its price."
That struck a note. That halted her, a resonance to that statement that caught against her, tugged at something beneath her breastbone. A memory, maybe. A knowledge. What's said is said. What's done is done. Because that is the way you must do it.
Her lips parted, not quite shock but knowledge, yes. A knowing, an understanding. Not childish dreams. Not infinite possibilities. Because there were prices, now. That's what power meant. That's what growing up meant. Wasn't it.
"It's forever, isn't it?" she asked, and maybe it might have been gentle. He was looking away still, when she glanced at him. He was stiff and calm and silent, looking away at a distant Labyrinth, a king without his kingdom, looking oddly small. "What I do now. What I choose. Whatever it is, it's forever. This is where the rules are made."
He tipped his head back, looked up at the alien sky with its alien moon, its alien stars. She couldn't see his face, couldn't see his eyes, but there was something laughing in his voice. Something that sang of pain and of triumph, of loss and of joy. Her Goblin King, who had no power over her. Her Goblin King, whose rules no longer bound her.
"Forever's not as long as it sounds," he said. He turned to her, a cloak of feathers falling suddenly around him, a flare of moonlight and shadow, and his smile was full of teeth, full of cruelty, full of longing. "It's not long at all, really. If you're prepared to wait. To hope for a dream more powerful than your own. Dreams can be a cage, Sarah. If you make them that way. Dreams can blind you to what you want, they can keep you from ever having it. You know that. You remember it. But dreams aren't the strongest thing there is. There's always something outside them, if you wait and you hope for long enough. There's always something that can shatter eternity."
Her breath hitched. Her heart yawned open, as wide and as empty as the city behind her, and something rushed to fill it. The world stretched, the world tore, toffee beneath the strength of her desires, and she felt her magic shape itself around him. She felt her dream break open, and be remade.
"... What if I wanted a king?" she whispered, moving towards him with something in her eyes that she thought must be more cruel than he had ever dreamed. She reached up, pressed a hand to his chest, to the warmth of a medallion and the chill of pale flesh beneath it. He leaned into her. He hungered for her. "Not a slave. Someone I don't have power over. Someone I don't win. Someone who comes to me only when he wants, and who welcomes me only when I want him. What if I wanted a man from another realm, waiting on the other side of a looking glass. What if ... What if I wanted that?"
"Do you?" he growled, and oh, he was the villain still. He was the challenger, the tempter, the man with dreams cupped inside his hands, holding them out empty to plead with her. He had no power, he had no hope, and his will was a strong as hers. "Do you want that, Sarah? Do you want to build a dream and yet keep your heart outside it? Do you want to give away your power and trust it to something you can't control? A will and a kingdom as strong as yours. Do you want that?"
Oh. Oh. And she had been a child. And she hadn't understood. But she had fought, and she had won, and he had given her certain powers for a reason. She was no more a childish thing. She didn't dream only childish dreams. And she had power, now, to offer him.
"... I do," she said, and she felt his heart stagger beneath her hand. She felt it falter, felt it beat, and knew it better and stronger than any dream. She looked up at him, met mismatched eyes that were wild and terrible with hope, and she smiled at him for all that he had given her and all that he had entrusted to her. "I want that. I ... I'll be there for you, Goblin King. When your world falls down. If you'll be there for me in turn?"
The sound he made was like the breaking of a world all over again, the sound he should have made when she'd leapt and she'd fallen and all the Labyrinth's power had crumbled around her. He had been silent then, but he wasn't now. Now, it was him who crumbled, and fell to her as once she had fallen to him.
"I will. I'll be there," he said, the words a binding and an oath, and she felt her kingdom reach up to drink them down, felt her magic reach up to wrap around him and bind his world to hers, his will to hers, his strength. Somewhere in spaces between realms, a shudder ripped and moved and tore, and abruptly she felt another kingdom alongside hers, a border suddenly bound, and an amber, sunlit sky kissed gently against her moon and stars. Night and day, thirteen hours apiece, bound by the chime of a clock and the oath of a king. Her city with no name, waiting for its queen, and his Labyrinth that stood forever behind its king.
"Name it, Sarah," he murmured, that held note ringing in his voice, hope and longing and endless challenge. "Name your world and your city. Shape it by its name and give it form. Let it bind and be bound. Give a boundary to your dreams, so that you'll know what lies beyond them. Say the words. If you want this, say its name."
For a moment, there was nothing, a ringing emptiness in her head, as there had been when she had faltered before him, when she had forgotten briefly the words that would set her free and him too alongside her. For a moment, she could think of nothing.
And then, in a bubble of humour and cruel whimsy, the notion came to her.
"Persephone," she said, with maybe a note of laughing to it. "My city's name is Persephone, Goblin King. A kingdom with a queen for only half of forever. A queen whose heart it must share with another world ... and another king."
Something flared in his eyes, one blue and one brown, the eyes of a halfway thing forever caught between two worlds, and then he snatched her close against him. Then he pulled her close, his cloak like wings mantled around her, and maybe he caught her mouth with his or maybe she caught his with hers, but suddenly his magic thundered inside her, suddenly hers rushed up and flooded him, suddenly there was teeth and love and yearning tangled between them both, and a strange heart beating beside her own. She breathed against his mouth, caught herself tangled in his kiss, and between two beats of their hearts he was hers, and she his. Her life within him, and his within her. Two wills, two dreams, two kingdoms and two hearts, eternally separate and forever entwined.
"Sarah," he breathed, a name for a smaller and braver thing than queens, and she smiled and answered back in kind, for the part of him that was no longer just the Goblin King.
"Jareth," she said, and matched his longing, now and always, with her own.
We have no power over that we love, but neither are we its slave. There is freedom in that which is not our own, and joy in that which stands in all its strength beside us.
And against such joy, eternity trembles, and is not so long at all.
