A/N: This is a repost of an old fic. It's a sequel to "A Desperate Proposition." Also, I have only the first chapter at this time, though I always intended it to be a multi-chapter story. However, updates will likely be very slow for the time being as I work to complete all of my WIPs.

WARNING: Dark Jareth

CHAPTER ONE
Twelve Words

Twelve words to stop the world from turning. Twelve words spoken as a condemnation to make the very molecules pause as if inhaling sharply in anticipation of the end. Of everything. Years of her memories disintegrated into powder like a withering bloom. All her careful planning, running, hiding eviscerated with a brief sentence.

"I wish the goblins would come and take you away, right now!"

Sarah stared down at her would-be stepson, blood pounding in her ears, saturated with fury and horror. With terror. She had been so close to having it all. So close to happiness. To safety. To being ordinary like everyone else.

So close to being forgotten.

She gripped the seven-year-old's slender shoulders with quaking hands. "Where did you learn that?" When he didn't answer, she shook him. Hard. "Where did you learn that, Preston!?"

Thunder crashed outside as if in response to her desperate question. The window panes rattled in their frames, and though Preston's eyes went wide, he didn't look nearly as frightened as he should have been. Voices whispered throughout the house, words just beyond hearing. She drew closer to the boy, but he took a step back, shaking his head.

"He's coming for you," he said in a quiet voice, an unsettling smile playing on his lips. "He's coming for you, and I never have to see you again."

Understanding turned her skin to ice. She retreated from him as if he were a deadly viper. He had already been offered his dreams—the disappearance of his father's fiancé, the woman whose presence dashed his naïve hopes for his mother's return. Sarah's fingers went to the pewter medallion hanging from her neck. How much had she sacrificed for this protection? Her friends. Her family. Her life.

He found a way around that no power thing. She heard Hoggle's frantic voice in her mind in ghostly remembrance. That rat doesn't like losing, Sarah. He's coming for you.

A bubble of manic laughter caught in her throat. He would always come for her, wouldn't he? Until the day she died. For no greater crime than daring to win her brother back.

Pop.

A light bulb in another room shattered.

Pop.

Pop.

Pop.

Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.

The house was thrown into darkness. Sarah's heart pounded thickly in her chest as she inched back toward a dark corner. She reached for Preston as an afterthought, but he shrugged way from her hands. He would be fine, she rationalized. Jareth would have no quarrel with him. She hated herself for choosing her own safety over a little boy's.

The glass crackled in the windows in rasping staccato. Lines fanned out from the center of each pane like creeping insects until they reached the frames. At once they imploded in a spray of glittering shards. Sarah ducked instinctively. In her periphery, Preston remained stock-still, unscathed as the jagged fragments swirled around him and settled to the ground. He turned to Sarah with an unnatural grin, revealing the fathomless hatred of her he had kept hidden in his father's presence.

And then she felt him arrive, chills bathing her skin as if she were attuned to him. The air in the room collapsed inward in a suffocating pulse and then rushed out, sending broken glass and debris into flight again. A shard impaled the wall just above her head with a loud thunk. In the center of the maelstrom rose a dark figure. The man she had never wanted to see again. Breathtaking even in his black armor and wind-whipped cape. A beautiful monster.

As a teenager, she had romanticized him as the misunderstood villain. Lonely. Broken. They had shared a dance once—or hadn't. She was never entirely sure if that had been real. But she had been nearly swayed by his apparent yearning for her. Her, an awkward, friendless teenager who had somehow drawn the eye of a striking immortal king. That had been the fiction. Hoggle had disabused her fantasy by explaining who and what Jareth really was—tales confirmed hesitantly by Sir Didymus.

With a smirk, Jareth scanned the room, his eyes gliding over and past Sarah until they landed on Preston. The silver metal of the pendant dug into her palm as she clutched it in a white-knuckled fist. Irrational hope spooled in fragile threads around her thrumming heart. Perhaps the spell wasn't undone. Perhaps he thought himself coming to answer an ordinary wisher. Perhaps he didn't know who it was he was about to acquire.

"Preston," he said in a familiar baritone that sent tremors through her limbs. Sarah. Don't defy me.

Jareth crouched before the boy. Starlight glinted off the crystal which had appeared on his fingertips. "You did well, child. Would you like your prize?" The oxygen was siphoned from Sarah's lungs.

Preston nodded, reaching for the crystal. What dreams were hidden in its clear center? The reconciliation between his mother and father? Did it matter? As soon as his fingers touched the smooth orb, the house tumbled down in curling dust like her false bedroom had in the junkyard of the labyrinth. Preston faded away to nothingness, leaving Sarah alone with the king of the goblins. Standing, Jareth lifted his arms and gave a casual flick of his wrists. The wreckage blew backward and dissipated into the ether.

He exuded oppressive power, the weight of it making the air too charged to breathe. Years ago, at their first encounter, he must have been merely toying with her out of amusement, never expecting that she would find a way to conquer his game. This time he was making sure she understood the truth of his nature, the depth of his influence.

She rose on shaky legs—there was no point in trying to hide anymore—and took in her surroundings. They were in the throne room that she had seen only once before. Nothing had changed since then; the walls and floor were made of antiquated, ramshackle stones glistening with some kind of dewy substance. The throne on the short dais was the same circular construct made of wood. Laughter and whispers fluttered around her. Mocking. Lecherous.

Goblins were sprawled about the room in a lazy tangle of arms and legs. No. Not goblins. Not completely. Sarah had difficulty focusing on any single creature. They seemed to flicker between grotesque beasts with leathery skin, ruby eyes, razor-like teeth and humans dressed in tattered finery. She blinked to clear her vision, but the images continued to transpose over each other.

"Quiet!"

The command drew her gaze back to Jareth as the room fell silent. He was solid unlike his subjects. Entirely too real with piercing eyes locked on hers. He took a step in her direction and winked out of existence, only to appear directly in front of her in the next footfall. Without a word, he pried the medallion from her fingers and examined it, turning it over in his hand.

"Clever girl," he muttered. "But not clever enough." He yanked it hard, the chain gouging painfully into the back of her neck before the clasp finally gave.

Agony lanced through her body as if the flesh had been flayed from her bones. Her knees hit the floor with a jarring crack; she screamed and screamed until her throat was as raw as the nerves beneath her skin. The witch had warned her about the cost of wearing the talisman for so long, but Sarah hadn't cared. She hadn't believed Jareth would find her.

The pain subsided in lazy waves, attenuating a layer at a time until she could prop herself up on trembling arms. As her dark hair fell back from her face, hushed gasps rang out from the goblin-human courtiers. The girl. The girl who ate the peach and forgot everything. Reverence tinged their murmured voices. Reverence and foreboding. She hastily glanced up at Jareth, fearing his reaction, but his expression was inscrutable as he returned her gaze. There was no anger in his eyes, no amusement. No pity.

He stretched a gloved hand toward her and she hesitated several heartbeats before taking it. The smooth leather was warm beneath her palm as he helped her to her feet. Her knees protested, the ache of her earlier collapse stabbing down her legs. She winced. Something akin to concern flashed across Jareth's brow as he released her hand.

"Are you hurt?" he asked, cocking his head, studying her.

She expected vengeance, but this… this kindness was disorienting. "No." She shook her head.

He glanced at her knees, at the grimy scuff marks on her jeans, and leaned forward. "Liar," he said in a low voice. Knowing, but not menacing.

His scent was overwhelming, masculine, virile, and ancient like old parchment. It awakened the long repressed girl in her who had fallen in love with the fairytale. She closed her eyes against the flutters that danced across her middle and thought instead of Michael, her fiancé. The man she loved who told dumb jokes and laughed at them. Who was steady. Safe. Human. Who wouldn't remember her now if the Goblin King had truly given Preston everything he wanted. A sob tightened her throat and she choked it down to deny Jareth any satisfaction over the true pain he had caused her.

Too late. Her eyes flew open when his fingers brushed against her cheek, capturing a tear that had escaped despite her efforts. He rubbed it between his forefinger and thumb with singular interest, as if it was the key to everything. "This one is mine!" His voice suddenly boomed, making her jump. He fixed his subjects with a merciless glare. "You cannot begin to understand the meaning of endless torment if any of you dare to lay a finger on her. Send word to the others. The girl belongs to me!"

Red but not red eyes turned to her, wide and fearful. When no one stirred, Jareth raised his brows. "Well?" The soft question was somehow more frightening than his threat.

The throne room came to life abruptly as the not-goblins scrambled for the exits like a herd of startled gazelle. They pushed at one another as they fled, climbed over the fallen until the hall was devoid of anything but the refuse strewn in the corners and nooks. Absolute silence replaced the pandemonium and real terror seized Sarah with skeletal hands as Jareth returned his attention to her.

His lips parted as his unearthly gaze ambled lower, perusing every contour of her figure as if etching it into his memory before meeting her eyes again. "Sarah," he murmured. She hated that the shape of her name in his deep, British-esque timber curled in her abdomen with salacious anticipation.

She had only an opaque breath before he knotted his hands in her hair with a savage smile and crushed his lips over hers. A firebolt shot through her veins, electrifying every cell in her body with unfettered hunger. The tangle of desire and horror in her middle flared sharply, making her alternate between wanting to arch into his unforgiving kiss and wanting to claw at him.

Somewhere beneath the haze, she realized he must be using magic to elicit any kind of cooperation from her. Anger burned in her sinews, and she shoved at his breastplate with all the force she could muster, wiping the cinnamon taste of him from her mouth with a shaky hand. He laughed as if it had all been a great entertainment.

"Never!" she spat at him, backing away. Her eyes darted to the sole exit in the room.

"Never is a very long time," he said with an amused voice. He made no move to interrupt her retreat. "Nearly as long as forever."

The ominous undercurrent in his words sank into her skin like poisonous lead. Time was always going to be his ally and her foe. She almost crumpled under the staggering hopelessness, but surely that was what he wanted—her weeping at his feet, begging for his mercy. For his generosity.

Never.

She straightened, steeled by resolve. He could do his worst, but she would never break for him. She had defeated him once, escaped his clutches unscathed, and she would find a way to do it again.

The change in her demeanor had not gone unnoticed by Jareth. He raised a brow, that damnable smile still carved into his face. "Oh, I very much like this. The challenge." He turned, and did his step-vanish walk, appearing again on his throne. His slender legs stretched idly over the armrests as he gestured toward her. "Well, run."

Sarah blinked in confusion, not daring to believe he actually meant for her to flee.

He sat up, his grin twisting into something more sinister. "I said run."

Her legs moved of their own volition, and she sprinted for the stone archway, heart careening against her ribcage. Behind her, Jareth's laughter thundered off the stone walls.

"Run, run, run as fast as you can!" he shouted with mad delight. "I'll always catch you. I'm a very determined man!"

Darkness veiled the edges of her vision, drawing across her sight as her limbs felt suddenly heavy, unwieldy. She tripped, crashing hard against the ground. Digging her nails into the rocky floor, she tried desperately to stay conscious, but the lethargy was inexorable.

Jareth stood over her, his expression cold and inhuman. "Shall we play some more?"

They were the last words she heard before slipping into oblivion.

A/N: Thank you so much for reading! If you have a moment, I'd love to hear your thoughts!