To Serve Fate

She was the first one to reach the castle, but she still didn’t win. They never won. He was just too good at the game, had an eternity to learn about mortality and all of its flaws. And he chose to needle them in. It was disgusting, but it was also easy to think that he was just too good. Maybe, just maybe, she was just too bad. But it wasn’t too bad it was inexcusable.

She stared out at the glass reflection pond, the skimming spiders like gravel burnished by twilight. The grass whispered against her ankles and for once she did not dip her toes until the warm numbing water. She had stopped drinking it long ago. In the distance the beginnings of a 13th of the moon sharpened into view behind pulpy clouds.

She smoothed her pants, the pair of blue jeans she had worn when she had wished herself away to him. Intentions of destruction were too volatile and her jeans were ripped in all the places to exemplify this. Her shirt was flowy and of this world unlike the jeans.

“Hello Sarah,” his voice was serrated with that constant cruelty. She thought it would dull against her brain but it never did. Maybe she was his sharpener.

Her toe yearned towards the pool, twisting and flexing. “No,” she said reluctantly.

He strode towards her from between the once-weeped willows, who now stood straight and strong. “You don’t sound as sure as usual.”

“I am tired of this game Jareth, you have to let me go.” She turned around to look for him to plead with him even, but he was not there. Was this really over so quickly.

She felt the tickling of velvet against her neck. He was touching her, really touching her. His hand moved against the grain and she leaned into his touch. She did not feel guilty for wanting him. Her lips moistened, and her neck uncrooked into an almost architectural line.

His finger lifted off her skin and was not replaced by lips. “I will not make love to you again Sarah.”

“Such a pity.” She barely restrained herself from giggling madly, but it became easy once his pendent gleamed in the light. “You know,” she says thoughtfully her voice smoothing with the swinging of the pendent, “I could just end it right now.”

“I know,” he said gravely, and then added forcefully but quietly, “do it then.”

“I don’t want to delete you Jareth, I love you.” She approached him and her hand trailed to his pendant. His eyes hardened and he stared straight ahead. Her fingers traced the edge straying away from the small jewels inlayed farther inward. She felt him stiffen and his breathing accelerate. She leaned in and it was her that pressed the first kiss to a neck like a pillar of alabaster.

“I cannot accept your fate Jareth, to steal children. You stole my child.” Her teeth sunk into his skin farther than they had ever before, but there still was no blood.

He opened his mouth and decided against commenting on technicalities, instead leaning into her touch no matter how harsh. She smoothed out the two red dots from her dull canines with quick almost platonic kisses. “I have come back to your kingdom Goblin King to take back that which you have stolen. You have no power over me.” The words were so jumbled in-between kisses and the slickness of them that he didn’t hear them.

Nothing happened. He smiled and it almost wasn’t sad. “Unlike you Sarah, I have accepted my fate.”

Her arms encircled him fiercely until she could smell the coolness upon him. The clothing ripped almost as prettily as it hung, she noticed, as her fingers pried out glitter and silk away from his icey skin. “What,” her fingers trailed down to his stomach and then halted at his waistband, “is my fate.”

“To serve me.” He said plainly, though there was an almost growl buried in his throat.

“Oh your majesty?” Her fingers tangled themselves in his hair until she had singed every strand with the burning on her fingertips. His ear quivered as she breathed into it, so slowly, eeking up onto him until she spoke. “And how are you enjoying your service Jareth.”

Her turned upon her and cupped her face in his hands. She struggled valiantly, but finally succumbed to his embrace. “Fate is as hard for me as you Sarah, but at least I recognize it. Love me, fear me, rule by my side.” He snarled into her lips which had now twisted into his. “Or do it from my feet.”

She let out a whimper at the rough coldness of his lips. Sometime later she emerged for a breath. He bit his lip and smiled, but it was not any smile she had ever seen from him before, it was sad and real. He laughed shortly and pushed her down onto the ground. “I care not.”

The air shimmered three times, from red, to purple to pearl. A child had been wished away. “Go,” she said, “ the games begin a gain.”

“Sarah always remember I do not care where you serve me.”

And for then the unspoken message that he cared deeply that she did at all was enough to stem her hatred at Jareth. The Goblin King, well he would be her nemesis for eternity, it was fate.