Author: Meltha
Rating: very low-key swearing
Feedback: Yes, thank you. Meltha
Spoilers: Through the movie Labyrinth
Distribution: Fanfiction.net and the Bunny Warren. If you're interested, please let me know.
Summary:
Disclaimer: All characters are owned by the Jim Henson Company. No copyright infringement or monetary gain intended.
Author's Note: Written in response to a challenge to write a fic based around Livejournal icons. This one was chosen by Bunny.

Just Mortal Enemies

Eternity, as Jareth had found out long ago, could be a bloody damn long time. There was nothing he hadn’t seen, done, heard, smelled, tasted, touched, experienced, conquered, lost, retaken, and become bored with. Perhaps that was why he enjoyed watching humans in their drab, humdrum little world that they seemed to think was the center of the universe. Unlike the Fae, they were mortal, and time meant everything to them, whether they knew it or not. Every day they were racing full tilt towards a precipice, and while the majority still didn’t do even a tenth of what they could squeeze into their shockingly short time, a very few seemed to realize the particularly precious quality of the moments in their lives, reveling in them with a zest the tired and blasé immortals could only imitate.

Of course, the other Fae called Jareth’s penchant for amusing himself with the human species vulgar and crass. He also found he didn’t care a jot what they thought as his kinsfolk tended to be intensely boring to him. But then, very little wasn’t.

When he first saw Sarah in the park, he’d tilted his feathered head in mild interest. She was, as any fool with eyes could see, pretty, and if Jareth was anything he was most definitely a man. An early bud of May, granted, and not yet a full-blown rose, but the makings were most definitely there. She was poised at that delicate balance in a human’s lifetime when she could look forward to a future of growing more lovely, not less, in the years to come. Only a few years more, and the descent would inevitably begin, as it always did, and in the time he would consider a mere day she would be old, but for now, in that quivering moment, she was better than perfection. She was perfection waiting to unfold.

She was also being slobbered on by a particularly large and hairy dog.

The scene played itself for months before he had the slightest chance to act, and when at last the fateful day arrived when she wished her little brother away, he found himself more delighted than he had been in centuries. At last he would have the chance to ensnare her in his little game. It had, of course, nothing to do with the child. He had more than enough goblins and to spare. No, his game was far more cruel. She was innocence and purity, and he would tempt her with riches, with power, with the easy excuse of fear, and that rose would shatter into a thousand pieces as though it had been made of glass.

He didn’t choose to think too long about why he felt such a need to break her to bits, why she consumed his thoughts, and why he essentially wanted to disprove his own admiration of her stubborn, self-centered, exquisite self. The possibilities were entirely inappropriate to his station.

But to his mounting displeasure and not a small amount of alarm, he saw her passing hurdles that should have made her stumble. At almost every turning of the maze she seemed to make the right choice, not about going left or right, for the labyrinth was not about that at all. She overcame fear, despair, confusion, false appearances, everything he could throw in her path until at last there was only one thing left that might dissuade her from her goal: himself.

He’d known precisely what would happen when she bit into his peach. No Snow White apple of death, it held exactly what he’d promised her it would hold: her dreams. With every possible delight dangled before her in iridescent rainbows or crystal and pearl and feathers and silk and velvets and satin, with the sweetness of music and the soft, hazy light of a thousand candles, he laid before her a fantasy world of utter perfection, and he had known she would make him part of it.

The music played, and she came to him of her volition, searching him out, and he looked utterly unperturbed, lazy to the point of catlike indolence, and he tried very hard not to ask himself why he was having such a difficult time maintaining that façade, or why when at last she took his outstretched hand, his own trembled ever so slightly. He traced the steps of the dance that he led but she was actually choreographing, for it was still her dance, her dream, her wishes, and he was merely following what she wanted. He repeated that to himself again and again: what she wanted, what she wanted, not what he wanted, what she wanted. What he wanted, he reminded himself, was to corrupt her, destroy her, break her, even if she was so utterly beautiful that she made the Fae beauties surrounding them look like over-worn doxies. Dear heaven, she was light in his arms.

Then the clock chimed, and Cinderella ran from the ball, not because the charm was fading but because she wanted it to fade. As she pulled herself from his arms and fled, his hands fell to his sides, useless. At long last, Jareth the Goblin King, Immortal Fae, Ruler of the Underground, had experienced something entirely new. For the first time, he knew defeat.

And if his heart felt as though it shattered along with the crystal ballroom, well, that was only the uncomfortable sensation of not having his way. If it meant any more than that, he refused to consider it.