A/N: Special thanks to Nagia for the prompt over on Tumblr that led to this story. :) For my returning readers, in case it isn't obvious, this does NOT take place in the Talespinner continuity.

Fear Me, Love Me

by Dreamer In Silico

Just let me rule you. Fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave.

...

.

The Steward had seen many mortals enter and leave – or not, as the case sometimes was – the Underground. Her age, by mortal reckoning, would be measured in epochs, but it was not in her nature to accumulate power; only to watch, and watch, she did. She was a dusty shadow in the throne room, another crumbling crenellation on a wall in the great maze, another irregular but utterly unremarkable hedge formation in the garden, the consummate servant who was seen and heard only when her master had need of it.

She had seen many mortals enter and leave, but only one return. For the first time in five hundred years, she felt a whisper of surprise.

…

Mortal beauty was a different thing. The fae, whether pleasant, grotesque, or merely strange, all resonated with a singular idea – it could be a complex idea (and always was, in the case of the great ones), but there was a symmetry to each of them, a wholeness of purpose, that mortals could never match. The Steward had heard them describe her master as achingly beautiful, cold, haughty, regal, dangerous, and a thousand other things; all were both entirely true and entirely insufficient. Jareth had a reality that defied their attempts at description.

Mortals, by contrast, were all at odds with themselves. Those thought to be the loveliest, of which the master's new plaything certainly qualified, had an echo of the fae symmetry, but that was not why the fae themselves found them beautiful. Mortal beauty was all in the transience, the dynamic fragility of their existence. Where some fae might shift constantly, yet always be able to return to the same forms, mortals moved in only one direction, each moment unique before it skittered away and was lost forever. This newcomer was a fragile beacon by the master's side.

The Steward watched her at first because the Steward watched everything; later, the Steward watched her a little more closely.

The ancient servant felt a curiosity toward the mortal woman that in a more passionate creature might have been pity; the mortal's eyes, though more acute than most (they would have to have been, to bring her through the Labyrinth that first time), were dazzled by the shifting illusions around her; she was lost without the guiding hand of the master. The hand was always there, holding her in his orbit, and the servant could see the bewilderment creep in, sometimes, as the master's moods and whims buffeted her about – the mortal was a leaf in a storm within a snowglobe. Sometimes she even seemed aware of it, and that was when the Steward's interest veered closest to pity.

"Come, my nightingale; we are to dine with the Viscount of the Twisted Road and his entourage." His smile was feline, complacent; his hand gentle but intrusive as it pulled her toward their chambers.

Her dark brows pulled together in a slight frown as she tried to place the name. "Have I met…?"

The stormclouds in his eyes were a warning she was by now well-accustomed to, and her bearing wilted slightly. "Of course you have; he was at the masquerade last Eventide."

"Oh." The word was small, apologetic. "How should I greet him? What are the rules for this event? I think I might get the hang of it if you'll explain – "

Jareth laughed, the sound sharp and cutting and terribly beautiful, even still. "Only be with me. You aren't expected to know these things."

The mortal knew better than to protest that. The Steward watched as she put on another sunlight-on-leaves fantasy of a gown and fluttered off in his wake. Jareth had not seen the new, slightly hard glint in those green eyes, but the Steward missed nothing.

…

Mortals were curious creatures, and this one no exception; indeed, to have willingly returned to this paradoxical world of constant shifting and rearranging that never truly changed, but to a mortal would never quite seem the same, this woman's curiosity far outstripped that of most of her race. Jareth had used it, of course, to lure her back here; now that it had served his purpose, he seemed to forget it unless it was in the immediate process of causing him aggravation.

Accordingly, the first time the mortal slipped out of the castle on her own to wander the outer gardens and became lost within them, the king was furious.

"You think yourself immune because you came through the Labyrinth once, do you?" Her noise of dissent was all but lost amidst the muffling hedges. "Understand me very well – you survived that journey because the rules of the rescue attempt protected you. There are no such rules in place for you, now, and this is a perilous place for mortals." There was tenderness in his face, then, all the more hurtful for its sincerity. "Do not make me fear for you, my nightingale. I can't protect you all the time."

The woman – Sarah – followed him obediently, then, and it was not the faint spark of rebellion in her lovely face that drew the Steward's interest so much as the new sharpness in that beauty, or the way she no longer quite looked like one sprinting headlong through Time, but rather strolling unhurriedly.

The next time Sarah visited the gardens, she lost her way three times, and three times found it again.

…

The Steward had not felt shock within the memory of herself or any fae, but she felt it on the day Sarah stopped on her way through the throne room and turned to speak to her.

"You know, this is the first time I've noticed you, but you've been there all along, haven't you?" she asked, cocking her head and spilling impossibly lustrous walnut hair over one shoulder.

The Steward momentarily had to work at remembering how to speak.

Seeming to take her silence for offense, Sarah frowned slightly. "I'm sorry, that was rude of me." (If the Steward had been capable of any more shock than she was already feeling, the apology would have quadrupled it.)

"Not… rude," the Steward rasped out in her crumbling-paper voice, at last, blinking up at the woman. "Only… surprising."

"Oh. Well, I guess I can understand that." Her smile cut as deeply as his did, only there was a sweetness to its edge. "What do you do?"

The servant had no duty to answer questions of anyone but her master, and perhaps it should have been an affront, but she answered automatically. "I am… the Steward." From what she had seen of this woman before, she expected to be asked to further qualify that statement, but Sarah now seemed to grasp the synchronicity of function and being, and only nodded.

"It is a pleasure to meet you, then."

The Steward laughed, a sound like a tree in autumn sneezing. "No one… has ever said that, before."

Sarah frowned again. "Well, perhaps they should," she muttered, before pausing for long enough that the Steward felt sure she was simply going to walk off again. Then, eyes clear and bright, she asked, "Will you answer some more questions?"

The Steward could have refused, but found she did not want to.

…

The understated grace with which Sarah handled the intricate social niceties at the next state function was such that Jareth did not immediately notice the lack of a need for shepherding her, the no-longer-forgotten servant observed with intense curiosity from the shadows. When Sarah truly had the opportunity to show off the skills she had been quietly studying – for the courtiers had noticed her facility with their game, even if Jareth had not, and there were whispers of who would ask her to dance – the Steward watched almost hungrily for that rare surprise to overtake the king's proud face.

But it did not come. Sarah demurred quietly at the first invitation that came, maintaining her place at Jareth's side, where he placed a protective arm around her waist and smiled his complacent smile. She did the same at the next invitation, emoting subtle uncertainty, and the Steward scratched her ancient head in confusion: Sarah had queried her on the rules of the dance floor for hours on-end.

At the third invitation, she hesitated, looking as if she would refuse again, and instead Jareth pressed her forward, cock-sure in the knowledge that she would be far more comfortable with him. The Steward held her breath, certain that Sarah's nervousness meant she had forgotten too many of the lessons... and then the dance began, and she understood.

When the dance ended, the fae noblewoman swept Sarah a curtsey which Sarah matched to exactly the proper degree, and smiled, leaning to whisper something in the young woman's ear. Sarah inclined her head and they parted, only for Sarah to end up in the arms of another courtier, and from there another.

Jareth's eyes, when she finally returned to him, were full of proud hunger as he took her hands and swirled her to the very center of the dance floor.

…

"The king… notices the number of letters you are receiving, mistress," the Steward said, voice still a whisper, but more accustomed to use, at least, than it once had been.

Sarah nodded, unconcerned. "And does he say anything of it?"

"Some… I believe it pleases him that you are liked by the peers. But… he will not stay pleased for long."

The woman's eyes were glittering emeralds, sharp and perfect as she smiled, and… had they always had that cast of peril to them? "Well enough, then. Thank you, my friend."

Perilous or no, the Steward would do anything she asked, to hear those words again.

…

"You don't know what you're playing with, Sarah!" The king's voice was hard, though brushing the thin, high thread of strain, and the Steward knew that her mistress heard it.

"Oh? Don't I?" she asked, the question somehow carrying mockery within its utter evenness.

"No. You don't." Jareth was giving her the flat, disdainful stare that she had so dreaded in the past, but she met it unflinchingly. "I have been spinning this web for longer than you have been alive, and you cannot possibly comprehend…" He shook his head angrily. "One wrong thread plucked, and everything – everything! – will crumble around us. Do you understand?"

Sarah held her silence and his gaze for long moments, never bending, before answering simply, "I understand."

Jareth seemed to take that for a concession, softening ever so slightly. "Good," he purred, all velvet once more as he took her face in his hands and leaned down to kiss her. The Steward, who had never done such things herself, still fancied she could feel the blaze of it from where she stood, as always in the shadows. Jareth was forceful, demanding, and Sarah bent like a willow to his windstorm, only urging his desire to rage all the more strongly. But where once his storm would have enveloped her, drawn her in and left her pliant in his hands, now she strung him along, and he realized it far too late, breaking the kiss all but panting in need against her quiet strength.

The Steward did not miss the barest hint of fear that flickered across his mismatched eyes then, and neither, she knew, did Sarah.

…

The banquet that night was the grandest the Goblin Court had hosted in quite some time, the final stage Jareth had set mortal decades beforehand for the culmination of this particular turn in the great cycle of noble intrigues. The Steward had only seldom heeded such things, for the castle and the realm would always be there and she would always tend them, but the outcome of this one had her keen interest.

Tension hummed between the royal couple as the festivities began – Jareth not quite trusting the assurance he thought he had wrested from Sarah earlier, Sarah herself scintillating and opaque and utterly self-contained. They both circulated amongst the courtiers, conversing briefly or taking a turn on the dance floor, and the Steward could see his eyes drifting increasingly toward the miniature, emerald sun that was Sarah, counting the number of nobles vying for her notice and to stand in her light. She who had been his servant throughout his reign could see the agitated fury building beneath his smooth façade when no one else could, and smiled.

As the evening spiraled with deceptive laziness toward its close, at last Jareth cast his painstakingly-woven net of influence, in the form of a single question thrown like a gauntlet at the feet of his greatest rival. There was a stopped-heartbeat pause that cut across all the barbed exchanges in the hall, and then the challenged Duke smiled a serpent's smile and spoke… though not to Jareth.

"What say you, my Queen?"

And her Steward smiled.