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Sarah frowned as she watched her best friend pace back and forth in front of the school steps. Caitlyn was saying something, something she thought was important but Sara couldn't quite hear her.
Or focus on her for that matter. Every few seconds Caitlyn became a moving, muffled blur.
Distantly she thought of the peach she had eaten in the Underground.
"Are you even paying attention?!" Cailtyn huffed, her short blonde hair slightly wild from running her fingers through it in frustration.
"I'm trying to." Sarah shook her head and looked up into Caitlyn's big blue eyes, "I must be getting a head cold or something. My eyes and ears and just my whole head feels weird.
She hadn't eaten a peach but the feel was almost the same. This all felt distinctly of magic.
Frowning Caitlyn walked over and placed her hand on Sarah's head, "You're not running a fever but you're cool to the touch. Almost cold. Maybe you should go to the nurse."
When all Sarah did was stare blankly up her Caitlyn took her dark haired friend by the arm and led her to the school doors.
"If you keep acting like this the nurse will surely send you home."
Sarah shook her head again, hoping to get rid of the sudden buzzing that had filled her ears. She wasn't sure but she thought Caitlyn had just called her a 'surly whore', which couldn't be right. Caitlyn, while firey and wild had never even used the word whore before in the entire time Sarah had known her.
Maybe she'd ask Caitlyn to take her to the nurse. The buzzing was getting worse.
"I'll talk to the nurse for you." Caitlyn offered as they came to the nurse's office, "You don't even look like you know what's going on around you."
Sarah hadn't wanted to go home but she didn't realy have a choice when she couldn't even talk to the nurse. The woman had repeatedly tested Sarah's reflexes and taken her temperature.
Each time her expression became darker and darker.
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Jareth stood on the balconey looking over the eastern part of the labyrinth.
Something was there that wasn't suppose to be.
The Labyrinth was more than capable of taking care of it's self so Jareth felt worried that it had alerted him to an intruder.
No one came into the Labyrinth on some whim.
Some one screamed and in a heartbeat Jareth was standing in the middle of the section he had just been overlooking, a clump of dead faries at his feet. In the middle of the faries lay a small nymph.
Nymphs and faries, cousins somewhere along the line, were always living in the twisting paths of the Labyrinth. This wasn't what had been bothering the Maze.
Small spatterings of pale silver blood showed where the attacker had gone. It seemed that the Faeries and Nymph hadn't gone down without a fight.
The Goblin King sent the bodies away before following the trail of blood around the next corner.
The Labyrinth, more aware of what was going on than most gave it credit for cleared a path for him. He was able to follow the blood all the way to a wall where the thing had grown desperate and tried to climb over the vines.
Well that ended that.
Jareth frowned at the large clump of vines nearest him as they tightened around their prize.
Whatever it had been it was now food for the plants.
"What was it?" he asked outloud and saw the plants pull in tighter, "Show me." he ordered and a small blurry picture entered his mind, "That's all you saw?" when the image stayed he shook his head and walked away.
A white-ish blur. No details or colors.
Who ever sent it in deffinitely didn't want it seen to have gone to so much trouble to cloak it in such a way.
Growling under his breath, Jareth walked back to his palace and set up guards around the inner walls of the Labyrinth.
Ever since Sarah had beaten him 3 years ago everyone seemed to think that the Goblin King had grown soft and that his land would be easy to take. They all planned to take it once he was dead. The only problem was that none of them ever found their way through the Maze to kill him.
They never even got close.
Jareth was still as strong as ever and still as cruel as ever aswell. It had taken a few deaths early on to show the would be overthrowers that he wasn't as weak as they thought.
He wasn't about to give up the Labyrinth just because some brat beat him and gave those idiots the idea that he was ready to step down. Of course, no king was ever ready to step down and his resistance seemed to just fuel the attemps on his throne.
And on his life.
One of these days he'd go pay a visit to Sarah and tell her just how much a thorn in his side she had been. Even with her gone he was always reminded about his defeat. He had lost to a child. A human child had found her way through and tested her will against his.
And won.
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Sarah was no longer sure what was happening around her. More than once she had thought she saw a large dog following her father's car as he drove her home.
Fuzzy as her mind was she kept seeing the dog. In all truth she had thought it to be bear becasue of it's size but the build, what she could see of it, was all wrong. The legs were too thin and the feet too small to be a bear. Not to mention the way it lopped along after the car in a very unbearlike fashion.
She was deffinitely going to give Jareth a piece of her mind.
That is, once she knew just where the rest of her mind was.
Thinking was getting harder and harder and she was fairly certain her father was taking her to the hospitol now that he had seen for himself how hard it was for her to even respond.
She didn't blame him realy, even though she wasn't fond of doctors. She'd be scared too if someone she loved was acting the way she was.
Sarah leaned her head back against the seat as her father squeezed her hand and spoke to her.
She couldn't hear him but she knew he was trying to tell her that everything would be all right.
Again the dark shape the size of a bear was following the car.
Sarah could see it out of the corner of her eye but everytime she looked at it straight on there was nothing there. She was trying to blame it on whatever it was that was wrong with her thought process and sight but there was something deffinitely wrong about that dog.
More wrong than what was happening to her.
It made her uneasy and want to curl up and hide, a feeling she hadn't gotten in years. And even then it had always been horror movies that had that effect on her.
Carefull to only use her sidevision Sarah saw that the dog thing was closer.
"Jareth, by the Gods, what have you done?" Sarah whispered as the thing steadily caught up with her father's car.
The damn thing was staring right at her.
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Jareth's head jerked around when he heard Sarah's voice say his name.
Never had she ever called him by his first name.
What occassion would cause her to do so.
Pulling a crystal out of the air Jareth froze when he saw what it was Sarah was seeing. Even from the other side of the crystal he could feel her confused and fuddled mind.
Only magic could do that so completely to a human mind.
The Graua was gaining on the human vehicle.
"I think not, my tricky friend." Jareth growled and left out a breath on the crystal's surface and in a blink the Graua was gone.
Frowning, Jareth watched as Sarah relaxed and tried to remember where it was she going. When a large white building appeared before her Jareth tensed.
That wasn't her home.
Where would they take someone who's mind has been meddled with by magical means? Did they even have such a place?
No, they didn't. He could tell at once that the people who were bringing Sarah into the building were not magical in anyway. They wouldn't know where to begin to help Sarah. Nor would they even see the Graua if it were to return.
"Child, you have been nothing but trouble since I first laid eyes on you." Jareth said to the small image of Sarah laying in a too white room in a skiny bed with thin blankets around her.
He had no choice. He had to talk with her.
Jareth wrinkled his nose at the thought but with a deep breathe that came out as an annoyed sigh he vanished from the Goblin castle.
And reappeared at the foot of Sarah's bed.
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She saw him.
Clearly.
He was the only thing in the entire room that wasn't twisting and moving out of place.
"Why?" she asked, her throat hurting as if she had screamed the word.
"Because you have beaten me." Jareth just stood there looking at her as the people in the room didn't even spare him a glance.
"So you punish me?" she whispered, feeling her eyes well up.
"This is not my doing, young Sarah. Nor is it the doing of just one being. There are many magics apon you. Each trying to drag you in a different direction."
"Will you fix it?" Sarah asked, seeing her father walk into the room with Toby in his arms.
"And why should I?" Jareth sneared.
At his words Toby turned to look directly at the Goblin King.
"I see he hasn't quite forgotten me." Jareth smirked as he walked towards the boy, "Hello, almost Goblin Prince."
"I need you to help me." Sarah pleaded, "I feel like my mind isn't my own. There's so much inside my head. Voices, commands, words I don't even know!"
Jareth spun around, hearing what it was Sarah was hearing. And this time it wasn't in her mind alone.
The Graua had returned and with no less than five of his friends.
Jareth stood at Sarah's bed side as the creatures came through the walls.
"They are real." Sarah whispered, bringing the blankets up to her chin like a child.
"Yes, unfortunately they are also a menace to the Underground." he addressed the creatures standing before him, "And what bussiness do you have here, outside of your domain?"
"We want the girl. She is ours."
Sarah didn't know how but the words made sense when just moments before she couldn't understand them.
"Dear Sarah is the one who bested me." Jareth growled out in the same laguage the Graua were using, "If any can lay such a claim it is me!", in one swift movement Jareth removed the gold necklace from within his shirt and placed it around Sarah's neck. The removal of the necklace had been so smooth that if Sarah hadn't felt the weight of it around her neck she would have though she was seeing things.
The Graua lunged but before they even reached the bed they could see that it was empty.
The Golblin King had disappeared with the girl.
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Sarah slowly opened her eyes and was happy to see that everything was holding still and was as clear as ever.
Not that she could realy judge if the things in the room were as clear as they usualy were because she had no idea where she even was. It deffinitely wasn't her own room back home.
But everything had deffinition and details.
So far so good.
Sarah sat up and felt a weight against her chest. Looking down she saw that she wore Jareth's gold pendant.
And now she remembered where she was.
"Jareth!" she yelled, throwing herself out of the bed she'd been laying in.
Sarah bolted for the door, hoping to get out but found that she was locked in.
Turning she saw just how big the room was. She didn't remember it being so big when Jareth had brought her there the night before.
But then again her mind hand't realy been on the room, just on the fact that she didn't feel like she was on some amusement park ride. She'd been so happy that she could see and hear normaly that when Jareth told her she needed to sleep she had turned right around and climbed into the massive bed.
She hadn't asked why. She hadn't even asked how it was that her mind was so clear.
Feeling guilty, Sarah also realized she hadn't asked about her family. How would they react to seeing her just vanish from a hospitol room?
Sarah banged on the door, realizing how odd the room actualy was. The walls were covered in dark drapes and the floor in a thick, almost too soft carpet.
There wasn't so much as one window.
"Jareth!" Sarah turned back to the door and screamed his name again as she pounded on the wooden surface, hoping someone would hear her.
"What is it?' a familliar angry voice asked from behind her and Sarah found Jareth leaning against a desk she hadn't noticed before.
"My family - they must be worried. I have to get back to them!" Sarah spoke quickly.
"You can't go back untill we know what it is those spells were suppose to do to you." Jareth walked over to where Sarah stood and looked down at her as if she were still nothing but a child, "They would use you to beat me. No one beats me. Therefore I have made your family forget you for the time being. You are safer here."
"Forget me?!" Sarah almost tipped over, "But Toby! And my school work! What will happen to dad?"
She forgot to ask about Karen.
"They haven't forgotten you completely so you can stop over reacting." he sounded bored with her already, "When they think of you their thoughts just slide onto other things. They neither miss you nor are they concerned with where you are."
"When can I go home?" Sarah asked, starightening her shoulders.
"When this mess is over." Jareth looked past her to the door and she heard it click open, "You are to stay inside the palace. The goblins will not bother you. More than likely you will not even see them within the palace walls. Do not go outside and do not open any windows."
Jareth walked from the room so quickly Sarah had a feeling he was tried of her company and tired of her questions as well.
She should have argued and yelled about not wanting to be there but what choice did she have? She'd been sure in some part of her mind that she was going to die today and she wasn't ready to return to that helpless feeling.
"Great." Sarah muttered, "I'm the Goblin King's captive. If I run away I die, more than likely, and if I stay I have to endure his temper."
Sara just hoped he didn't expect her to play nice if he started baiting her for a fight because after the day she'd had she was ready to yell at someone- anyone.
In one of the corners od the room Sarah found a trunk of clothing. Some of it was men's clothing, some of it was women's.
"So he didn't plan on this any more than I did." Sarah said to herself as she pulled out a pair of women's riding pants and a men's button up shirt.
While she was stuck in the underground she couldn't very well walk around in the half shirt the hospitol made people wear.
Who in their right mind had thought it would be a good idea to dress sick people in a piece of cothing that didn't even close all the way?
Sarah looked down at the necklace she wore. Why would the Goblin King place such a lovely stone pendant around her neck?
In the light of the few candles burning in the room Sarah could see that the yellow stone held flecks of what looked to be gold.
She could all but see the magic in the stone work.
Sarah hoped this wasn't the only thing Jareth was planning to use in keeping magic out of her mind.
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A/N: I rated this T because I have a tendency to swear even when I'm typing. As of right now this story doesn't have too much of a future. If you want more just send me a review and I'll try to update soon.