STARTED: March 25, 2000
Here it is, folks, my first Labyrinth fanfic! Part One. (My first fanfic ever!) Enjoy, enjoy... e-mails at 2shy@teenagewildlife.com. Constructive criticism, death threats, and *gasp, can it be?* praise? will be accepted and cherished for the rest of my life. Feel free to archive this anywhere as long as this little blurb stays with the story.
Category: Labyrinth, Romance, Adventure, Mystery Rated: PG-13 for angst, language, and some "dramatic" stuff.
Summary: Sarah falls into the Labyrinth against her will, and Jareth has been overthrown. What is going on here???
Disclaimer: Jareth's not mine ( oh, damn), Sarah's not mine. The songs don't belong to me. If you want to sue me, go ahead. It's not like you'll get anything except maybe my goldfish.
Story dedicated to all of my friends who helped my greatly with my plot and helped me stay sane through it all. Kristy, Esther, Dawn, Denise, anybody else I missed... Thanks a bunch.
An Untitled Love Story Part One
PROLOGUE
Nobody said it was going to be easy
Nobody gives you guarantees
Because a heart can always be broken
And there can be no loving without tears
Run away to a place where nobody knows
Run away gotta let this feeling go
Run away if I can't find love
I'm gonna run away
Nobody's looking for perfection
How could they give it in return?
But I told my heart to believe you
And you just gave your love to anyone
Run away to a place where nobody knows
Run away gotta let this feeling go
Run away and I don't want to hurt anyone
Though my heart is always searching
If I can't find love, I'm gonna run away
(Cher)
CHAPTER ONE
When I was little, I used to call the house on the end of Madison and Kearny the "ghost house". It had been there for as long as I remembered, a broken down, unfinished two story building that always looked as if it was going to fall down any moment. And it was not until I was eight that my mother told me that the house had been started around ten years ago, but some workmen inside had died from falling timbers, so they abandoned the project shortly before I was born. The story was not to scare me, merely to inform me of what really happened. That was what I loved about my mother. She didn't scare or use lies to persuade me into doing anything, and she had told me to believe anything that I wanted to.
So when my mother, the person who I was planning to spend the rest of my life with, walked out on me, I didn't know what to believe. I was shattered, confused, and I told myself that she would return soon. But it was a whole three years later before another woman walked into our family. She wasn't my mother, but another person I had never seen before. And without giving me any chance to talk, you married her. Soon, little Toby came into my life, and not long after, the news of my mother dying in a car crash with her boyfriend. All these unwanted presents you have given me! I don't want them, and I am full and sick of them. Nobody tells me to believe what I want anymore, and the truth in my life is gone. For three years I have lived like this, but I can't stand it, really I can't. So I'm going to move on. Not to another new apartment, or a new state. I have an apartment half a city away from where I used to live, but you are still holding me back. I'm going to move on to where nobody can follow me, and where I will be free at last.
~ Sarah.
She took the handwritten letter in her trembling hands, read it over once or twice.
Probably the best thing I've written before.
Sarah wiped the tears away from her eyes, and folded the letter. It was dark inside the "ghost house", and her flashlight that had been placed on a disintegrating table was beginning to flicker.
It had to be now.
She put the note into her jacket pocket, and grabbed the thick coil of rope next to the flashlight.
Why wasn't she nervous?
She felt strangely detached, as if she was looking out of somebody else's eyes. It was as if somebody else was doing it, somebody else climbing onto the table and wrapping and knotting the rope tightly around an overhead beam.
I can't believe myself.
Sarah pulled on the rope once or twice. It was firmly in place, and the noose that hung over the edge was the perfect shape and size.
Sarah grabbed the noose and sighed loudly. This was it, there was no turning back. All that she meant to say was written in the note, and the note was safely tucked away in her pocket where it would be found as soon as they found her.
Basically, the message is that I can't stand my crummy life.
She wondered if it had to take this much to convince her stepmother and father to listen to her. It was too late to change her mind now, she had decided on this for weeks. She automatically looped the noose around her neck, and felt the rope scratch against her skin. She placed her feet at the edge of the table, and prepared to jump.
It was going to be over in such a short time. She had read about hangings in books, and none of them lasted over ten minutes. Besides, she had suffered much more pain in her life. The pain of her mother dying, the pain her stepmother had caused. All this was going to be over so soon. If she was lucky, her neck would break and she wouldn't even have to endure ten minutes.
Sarah clenched her hands, closed her eyes.
She bent her knees, feeling the rope tense around her throat. She was going to count to three. Then she was going to-
No. Sarah couldn't bring herself to do it. She found that she was trembling, crying, hyperventilating. No. She wasn't going jump now, she couldn't. She opened her eyes, took a step back from the edge of the table, and took a shuddering sigh.
And it was then, without warning, that the tabletop crushed under her with a crisp snap. Sarah's scream was cut short by the vicious yank of the rope around her neck as she fell.
No!!! No!!
This was it, it was over. The irony of it all. She could feel a numbing pain at her throat, and she couldn't breathe or move and she knew was going to die.
Help me somebody! Help!
She instantly didn't want to die, not now. The sound of her heart pounded in her ears, and through the red haze she was in, she thought she heard a distant cracking noise from overhead.
But it didn't matter anymore. She was dying. And strangely, it didn't feel too bad. Why, it almost felt as if she was... falling.
CHAPTER TWO
Sarah had always thought the dead couldn't feel pain, but she knew that she was wrong. Her neck hurt like hell. She was probably in Hell right now, from the feeling of it. It was hot and humid, and she was on some sort of hard surface.
Sarah opened her eyes. And gasped.
She was inside a room.
Did she-?
Was she-?
No. She was alive, and she was surprisingly fine.
Sarah's hand flew to her neck and touched her throat. She felt a painful welt that stretched from her left jaw to her right. So she did try to hang herself after all. It almost seemed as if the night in the "ghost house" was a nightmare.
Never again. Never am I ever, ever going to get any more suicidal thoughts.
Sarah dusted herself off and stood to her feet. She was in some sort of stone room, sparsely furnished with a simple table and chair. The one window carved into the wall showed that it was nearly completely dark outside. The rope, the "ghost house", even the damn flashlight was gone.
Sarah took the note out of her pocket, ripped it up, and scattered the pieces over the stone ground.
One thing that I don't need.
She noticed a wooden door that was slightly ajar on the far side of the room, and walked over to it. She opened it, the rusty hinges creaking. Outside was a stone hallway, with flaming torches lighting along the walls. It looked strangely familiar, where had she seen this place before? Sarah walked into the hallway, following the rows of torches. Her tennis shoes padded softly along the polished stone floor. Wherever this was, she must have fallen here. This was probably an underground room or something.
Underground.
Sarah stopped walking as a thought hit her head. Labyrinth. She was inside the castle of the Labyrinth. The memories suddenly flooded back into her, as the familiarity of her surroundings dawned upon her.
But Jareth, the king, had been turned into an owl. Then why is this place so well tended?
Sarah found herself breaking into a run down the hall. Somebody lived inside this castle, and it most certainly was Jareth. Maybe he was the one who brought her down here, even saved her.
The hall took a left turn, and Sarah could begin to hear noisy shouting and cackling at the end of the passageway. It had to be the goblins. She was nearing the throne room of the castle, where those goblins gathered every day.
As the circular throne room came into view, Sarah slowed down her running. About a hundred or so goblins were frolicking about, drunken and stupid. Sarah hid by the edge of the hall, hoping that she hadn't been seen. Even if she had, the goblins were probably too drunk and wrapped up in their foolishness to notice, anyway. Her eyes scanned the room for any sign of Jareth.
And then she saw the simple gray throne toward the side of the throne room, standing out regally above the mass of teeming goblins. Somebody was sitting in it.
For a moment Sarah was confused. Was it Jareth? Jareth didn't look like that. No, it wasn't Jareth, it was a female, a girl by the looks of it. She sat upon the large throne, clad in a beige colored silk dress that billowed softly when she moved.
Sarah edged closer to the room, hoping to get a glimpse of her face, and deciding whether she should introduce herself to the stranger. She might be Jareth's wife or daughter. But either of the two choices seemed unlikely, since the girl looked no bigger than a schoolgirl, and she had heavy black tresses that bore no resemblance to Jareth's wispy blond hair.
And she did not look like she belonged in a throne room surrounded by rambunctious little goblins at all. No, there was something about her, something totally out of place about her that sent question marks reeling inside Sarah's head.
She could be dangerous. Sarah gasped at her own sudden thought, feeling an unexpected coldness in her stomach.
She hadn't yet asked herself how this girl had gotten here, in Jareth's throne.
And where is Jareth anyway?
Sarah instinctively took a few steps back. It was safe just to stay here for a while, to see what the girl (or whatever she was) was up to before presenting herself.
Almost immediately she got her answer as one drunken goblin holding a goblet of dark wine wandered too close to her and spilled the maroon colored liquid onto her dress.
The girl lashed out with her hand and grabbed the squealing goblin by the neck before Sarah had time to blink.
And then as she watched, growing more horrified by the second, the girl squeezed the goblin's throat until the harsh cracking of bone reached Sarah's ears.
The noise in the throne room had fallen deathly quiet.
"This is what you get for ruining my dress, do you hear me?" The girl shrieked to the huddled and frightened goblins. She flung the body roughly to the ground beside her. "Now clean this filth away from me."
Sarah didn't care for seeing the girl's face anymore. She suppressed a scream that threatened to escape her lips and stumbled blindly backwards, back into the hallway. But her worn out tennis shoes slipped on the polished stones paving the ground, sending her feet into the air. She tried to regain her balance... too late. She reached out with a hand to stop her fall but her arm twisted under her... and she landed violently upon her wrist.
It felt as if her hand had been snapped away from her body. Sarah gritted her teeth, did not dare herself to whimper, as she slowly lifted herself from the ground. The piercing pain in her wrist vibrated up and down her arm and hands. It had been sprained, obviously.
"Well! What do we have here?"
Sarah lifted her eyes in alarm. And choked on a gasp. Because the girl in the beige colored dress had discovered her and was now standing in front of her. She was beautiful. No human girl can look that beautiful. Her skin was milky pale and smooth, without a blemish, and her green eyes glittered like emeralds. A beautiful silver crescent moon design had been carefully drawn on her forehead, and a strand of black hair fell across her face, caressing her delicate lips and dainty chin.
She raised a slim eyebrow at Sarah. "Hmm? Who are you?" she asked curtly, her voice sounding like icicles shattering on a frozen river.
Sarah stuttered, didn't know what to answer as she stood in front of the girl, clutching her hurt wrist. Next to her she felt like a sack of potatoes, heavy and clumsy.
The girl looked up at Sarah expectantly, and held her hands to her narrow waist. She was not even grazing five feet tall, yet she did not seem the least bit childish. In fact, her eyes were cruel and contempt, radiating ancient evils.
No, Sarah decided. She can't be a just normal girl.
"I, uh-"
"Never mind." The girl snapped her fingers once, and immediately five or six goblins in full battle armor appeared behind her. "Take this girl," she commanded coldly, "and kill her."
Without a word the goblins crowded around Sarah, and seized her roughly by her arms and legs. A fresh jolt of pain came from her wrist as a goblin snatched it in his gnarled hands. But she barely noticed the hurt as she tried to comprehend what the girl had just ordered the goblins to do.
Kill her.
"Wait! No!" Sarah struggled against the tight grip of the goblins. "Look, you don't understand, I didn't want to come here!"
"Take her away to the dungeon and kill her." The girl motioned to the goblins. "She knows that commoners like herself can't come inside the castle."
"Listen to me!" Sarah protested as the goblins began to tug her toward the direction of the dungeons. "I'm not a commoner and I didn't want to come here in the first place. I fell through a crack in the ground and I ended up here!"
The girl suddenly jerked as if she'd been shot. "What did you say?" she whispered, gazing at Sarah with feverish green eyes.
"I- I fell here. I can't explain it, I was inside this old beat up house and I fell through the ground and-"
"Shut up!" The girl screamed, but this time she was grinning. "You're a human aren't you? You're a human! You're a human!"
"I'm-"
"Aha!"
What was going on? The girl seemed to have undergone a complete transformation in the matter of seconds.
"Well, human. I should have known from the moment I saw you. Oh, Goddess, look at you!" The girl jeered at Sarah, an impish smile playing on her lips as she quickly studied Sarah up and down. "Well, never mind. I'll still have to keep you in the dungeon before I decide what I should do with you. Guards? Take this human to the dungeon, and don't you dare kill her."
With that, the army wordlessly yanked Sarah after them as they continued on their way to the dungeon.
Sarah bit her lip, trying to block out the terrible pain in her wrist, and trying to understand what had just happened. At least she was going to live... for now anyway.
The last thing she heard the girl say before she was led out of sight was, "Don't worry, human, you'll have some company!"
CHAPTER THREE
She was thrown brutally inside the dungeon, onto the damp and muddy ground. Her wrist felt ready to explode as it came into contact with the dirt, and she moaned in agony.
The iron door behind her creaked and slammed shut, the sound echoing in the silence. She turned her head around, but the goblins were gone. She was all alone.
The dungeon was dark, and a torch the size of a candle flickered wildly on the wall. Water dripped from the ceiling, threatening to put out the precious light and to leave her in total blackness.
Sarah felt unwanted tears come to her eyes as she struggled to a sitting position on the dirt ground. She was better off dead, she really was. Wasn't that the reason she walked to the abandoned house in the first place? To hang herself. After all, her mother had died. Her father didn't care about her, and there was no question that her stepmother had no feeling for her.
And Toby? Toby was a sweet boy at times, but he was only four years old, and he didn't offer much comfort to her.
She had wondered sometimes what would have happened if she had stayed in the Labyrinth three years ago. What if she had taken Jareth's offer? What is she had feared him, loved him, and did what he said? What if Jareth-
Jareth.
She realized that she hadn't really thought of him in such a long time, weeks and weeks, maybe months.
Well...
No, that wasn't exactly true. You couldn't forget a person like Jareth, no matter how hard you tried. Jareth was always there in a special place in the back of her mind. And sometimes in her dreams, she would find his intense eyes staring into hers...
Oh, honestly, Sarah, just stop. You wanted to stay in the Labyrinth? Well, here you are, back inside the Labyrinth again.
Sarah laughed bitterly to herself. Life could be so ironic and sarcastic to her. Almost always she would-
Somebody coughed, and Sarah nearly jumped out of her skin.
"Who's there?" Her heart speeded in her chest as she turned her head to the sound. She remembered the girl saying to her as she got led to the dungeon, "You'll have some company!"
She forgot to mention who... or what was company.
"Hello?" She called again, her voice wavering. "Who are you?"
"Who are you?" The voice coming from the shadows was thick, raspy, but Sarah had no trouble identifying it after three years.
"Jareth?"
There was a pause. Then, "We meet again, Sarah."
Sarah felt the corners of her mouth lift into a smile as a wave of relief washed over her. She scrambled up and headed over to his direction.
As the weak light shone down on his sitting figure, Sarah couldn't help but gasp. He looked dreadful. His face had an angry red slash extending from his ear to the bottom of his chin, and blood matted his hair. His shirt was ripped in too many places to count, and Sarah could see the blood on his bare chest.
It took Sarah a few tries to get the words out. "What happened?"
The light had passed over Jareth's face, and all she could see was his dark silhouette again.
"Aberanne." He spat the word out.
Aberanne. "That's her name? It's her, right? The girl in your throne room? That's her?"
Jareth chuckled softly. "She's not a girl, Sarah. She's a wyan. She's over eight thousand years old."
A wyan, so that's what she was... whatever a wyan was. She knew Aberanne couldn't be human. She was just a bit too small, her skin was too pale, and her eyes were too big.
Sarah sat down beside him and rested her back against the wall.
"What did she do, Jareth?"
"She wanted control over my kingdom. I didn't let her. So we had a war. Her army of other wyans against my army of goblins."
"She defeated you?" Sarah bit her tongue as soon as the words were out of her mouth. Not the right thing to say.
Jareth exhaled. "Wyans are more powerful than humans. They're many times stronger, a bit smarter. Yes, she defeated me. She-" Jareth stopped, as if searching for the right words to say.
"What did she do?"
"She had the most wonderful plan of defeating me," he said at last in a voice dripping with sarcasm.
"Yes?"
"She had her army seduce my army and had them turn against me," he said. Sarah stared at him, even though she all she could see was a blob of his outline.
"She did what?"
"You are laughing at me."
"No I'm not. She what?"
"She seduced my army," he said dispassionately, as if delivering a history session to a class of sleepy freshmen. "Wyans are known for their powers of seduction. They are unnaturally beautiful to other species. Humans, goblins, elves, gnomes, even vampires feel attracted to a wyan." He shook his head. "My army was pathetic. They never resisted to Aberanne's army at all."
Sarah didn't know what to say. She stayed quiet, but a single question burned inside her head.
"Sarah, I know what you're going to ask me. Go ahead."
"Well..." Sometimes she could swear he read minds. "How did you not get...?" Her voice trailed off. "You know, 'seduced'?"
"You see, other wyans aren't unnaturally attracted to their own kind. Since I am half wyan, Aberanne has not affected me."
"Oh." Sarah's heart skipped a beat. So that explained him. There had always been that something about him that was not quite human. His was so ethereal, his mismatched eyes and enigmatic smile unlike anything Sarah had ever seen. And the way that her body reacted when...
There you go again. Just stop it.
Jareth laughed softly. "Naturally Aberanne tried to seduce me. But I would rather jump into the Bog of Eternal Stench than to lay a finger on her."
"Oh."
There was a long silence, and Sarah fidgeted uncomfortably.
"So was your mother wyan?" She asked suddenly, breaking the tension that hung in the air.
"No, my father was. He was the prince of the goblins at the time, and on one day he stood on the balcony of the castle that overlooked the commoner's marketplace, and he saw the most beautiful human woman he had ever seen. My mother."
"Then what?" Sarah was intrigued. Never had she thought of Jareth's parents. In fact, she hadn't been sure that he had any parents at all.
"She got invited to the castle to work as a servant, and as time went by, they fell in love. Married."
"Then what?"
"The other wyans killed her," he said without a trace of emotion. "They didn't approve of my father marrying a common human woman like my mother, least of all my grandfather. And then the humans revolted against the wyans for killing my mother, and they had a bloody war, but the wyans won out in the end. My father and grandfather died in the midst of the war, along with the thousands of wyans and all of the humans. I was seven at that time, and I survived with some of the goblins."
"I'm... sorry," Sarah stuttered, not knowing the right words to say. "You must have been so scared back then."
"I don't remember. Why am I telling you all this?"
"That was terrible, you must have been scared!"
"It's none of your business."
"But you just-" Sarah sighed loudly. She would never understand him.
"I was mostly angry. I hated the humans, I hated wyans, and I hated myself.
I- Never mind."
"That's sad."
"It is."
"Yes... Ah!" Sarah cried out as she accidentally brushed him with her wrist.
"Is anything wrong?"
"Yes... No, everything's fine."
"Let me see your hand."
"Look, it's fine."
"Let me see."
Jareth reached out swiftly and trapped her wrist gently in his hands. "It's sprained. You said nothing was wrong."
"I know." Sarah sulked.
Jareth let go of her hand. "I'll see what I can do."
"What are you-" Sarah protested.
He ignored her, took off his shirt and ripped a couple of thick pieces from it. "Give me your wrist."
For the second time in the hour, Sarah felt tears sting her eyes. What was the matter with her? She wanted to slap herself, to stop the roller coaster of emotions that ran through her. You've had a hell of a day, you're just tired and stressed out. She wordlessly held out her arm.
His slim fingers were warm and comforting as they expertly wrapped the bandages around her wrist, firmly, but not too tightly. He stroked her hand once, after he was done, then gave it back to her. "Be more careful."
"So should you, you have a cut on your face. That's to put it lightly," Sarah said, feeling the lump in her throat grow.
"The wyans heal quickly."
"But you're only half."
He ignored the comment. "How did you get here?"
"I-" Sarah hesitated. "I accidentally fell through a hole in the ground of house... and I fell in your castle."
"You did not."
Sarah blanched at his surprised tone of voice. "Why? What's so wrong?"
"It's- Aberanne wanted to take over the kingdom for a different reason. She not only wanted the goblin kingdom... She wanted yours. She wanted to take revenge on the humans for killing off so many of her kind."
Sarah felt a cold knot tie in her stomach.
"Up until now only the experienced ones who knew how to travel between the worlds could do so," Jareth continued. "Aberanne is a dark witch. She had studied spellcraft for some time and she has thinned out the veil between the two worlds: yours and ours. She's obviously pierced it completely, because you fell through it. And then the gap is going to grow, and she's going to step to your world and take over your race in a matter of months."
"No. You're joking."
"Trust me on this one."
"But-"
So that was why Aberanne had been so happy when she found out Sarah was human and that she had fallen through some sort of portal from her world. "We have to stop her! I can't let her do that!"
"It's most likely too late. Once she knows she's going to get straight to work." He sighed and lowered his head.
"Jareth. Please." She reached out and touched his hair with her good hand. It was surprisingly soft and silky under her fingers. "I know you won't give up. You never give up. Help me, I can't do it alone."
Jareth lifted his head, simply looked at her.
"Let go of our past, Jareth. If we don't work together now, both of our worlds are going to be destroyed."
"It's going to be another war if we interfere with Aberanne. I do not want to see my kingdom destroyed and the people I love dead."
Sarah took her hand away from his hair. What did he mean by, the people I love?
Don't think about that now, you have more important things. "If we don't interfere, your kingdom is going to be destroyed anyway and a lot more people will die."
For a long time he remained silent. "All right," he whispered at last. "But now, you and I will need to get some rest. With luck, some of my power will be restored by tomorrow. Then we get out of this wretched dungeon."
Sarah smiled broadly at him through the dark. "All right," she agreed.
CHAPTER FOUR
"Sarah, you'll need to wake up."
"Can it, okay? Leave me alone."
"Sarah." The voice was firm, and a bit amused. "It's nearly noon."
"So what? Let me sleep..." And then as a small pulse of pain came from her wrist, Sarah remembered where she was.
She was lying on the ground, curled up into a little ball, her head resting on something soft.
Oh man... Jareth.
Instantly, she scrambled to her feet, her eyes flying open and all trace of sleep vanishing.
"Sorry, Jareth. I just..."
She felt herself blush. Last night she had just planned on taking a little nap, but she had obviously underestimated how fatigued she was. The last thing she remembered before slipping off into a thirteen-hour slumber was lying her head down on Jareth's thigh and using it as a pillow.
"It's all right." A brief smile flickered across his lips.
Sarah blinked a couple of times, adjusting to the bright light. Sunlight was streaming through a small barred window above her head. She hadn't noticed the window yesterday in the dark night.
"Sleep well, Sarah?"
"Yeah- Ow!" She growled. "My damn wrist."
"Be careful with it," Jareth warned.
Sarah nodded. Only in the daylight could she get a good look at him. He still seemed in pretty bad shape, but the gash across his face was visibly smaller, and the cuts on his naked chest were healing. But, surprisingly, he looked every bit as handsome as when Sarah had first seen him. Sarah found herself staring at his lithe body, and turned away, embarrassed.
"So, do you think you can get us out of here?" Sarah asked, flustered.
"I think so. My powers are back." He stood up and stretched, reminding Sarah of a white tiger.
Even battered as he was, Jareth still managed to look beautiful. Sarah wasn't so sure about herself. She self-consciously smoothed back her hair and straightened out her rumpled clothes.
"So, what's your idea of getting us out?" she asked.
"Nothing much." With a dramatic flourish that Sarah was sure was unneeded, he summoned a crystal ball into his hand. "With this. Stand clear." Sarah obeyed, taking a few steps back as he flung the crystal ball with all his strength at the barred windows above them. The crystal flew through the air, catching the sunlight and scattering rainbow colors into the dungeon cell. With a surprisingly muffled sound, it came into contact with the window bars, and exploded soundlessly. Sarah had to shield her eyes away from the short eruption of bright white light, and when she looked back, the whole upper section of rock wall had been melted cleanly away. White magic.
"I'm impressed." She grinned. He shrugged as if it was nothing and pushed himself effortlessly up and over the wall. Sarah heard him land on the other side, and a moment later his blond head peered over the hole.
"Do you think you can make it, or do you want me to blast away some more of the wall?"
"Um, that's okay. I think I can make it over if you help a little," Sarah said before she knew it.
"Of course."
He reached through the hole and she grabbed his hand with her good one. She used her feet to climb up the section of wall as Jareth pulled her to the top.
"Now, jump," Jareth instructed her, letting go of her hand.
Sarah was sitting awkwardly on top of the wall, unsure of what to do. The grassy ground on the outside was rather far down, about five and a half feet. If she jumped...
"Don't worry, I'll catch you."
Excuse me?
"Who's worrying?" she demanded, feigning courage. Then without thinking, she let herself jump away from the wall. And collided roughly into Jareth. He staggered for a second, then fell to the grass, Sarah on top of him.
"Jareth-!"
"I caught you, didn't I?" He whispered to her, smiling mysteriously.
"In a way," she said.
She had felt him give way to her rather quickly, and she wondered if he had fallen on purpose.
Come on. Why would he do that?
"Did I hurt you?"
"No," Sarah said, and she realized neither of them had moved. She immediately clambered to her feet, feeling her face flush red, and managed a small, "I'm sorry."
Jareth stood up, smiling, and dusted the grass pieces clinging to his shoulders.
"I should have caught you."
"You did."
"No, I let you fall on me."
"Well, that's..."
"That's beyond the point, isn't it?"
"What? Oh, yes."
"Yes."
They looked at each other.
"So, Jareth, what do we do now?" Sarah asked. She averted her gaze to the landscape around her. They were at the foot of the castle, in a large, grassy meadow. Ahead of them was a dense forest, which spread as far as she could see.
"What do we do?" he echoed.
Sarah blinked. "I mean, now that you've got us out of the dungeon, don't you have a plan of where we're going?"
"No."
"No?"
"No, I was sure you did. You seemed so enthusiastic about the idea of us defeating Aberanne that I was sure you had a plan."
"A plan?" Sarah squeaked. "I don't have a plan."
"Then what was your idea, pray tell? How shall we kill Aberanne, send you back to your world, and restore peace to the kingdom?"
Sarah's mouth dropped open a couple of millimeters. "My idea? I... well... I figured you had an idea."
"My idea? Aberanne is planning on killing me today. If my powers hadn't returned this morning, we would have still been inside that wretched cell." He gestured to the castle. "I hadn't been thinking of anything else, much less a battle strategy."
"Oh. Wonderful. Very good, 'Your Highness'."
"I saved you, Sarah. I rescued you out of the dungeon and this is all the gratitude I receive?"
"You rescued me out of the frying pan and into the fire. I bet Aberanne is going to scour the whole kingdom for us once she finds us missing!"
"And staying inside a jail cell is better? Do you think that she won't kill you afterwards? She can, Sarah, and she will. You would not have a chance at living if you stayed in there."
"I-"
"We are working together, Sarah," he said with exaggerated patience. "Remember this. It will be no good if we bicker all day."
"Working? I don't even trust you!"
"You learn to trust me."
Sarah snorted. "After poisoning me with that peach last time? After you frightened Hoggle out of his wits and forced him to give the peach to me?"
"I was doing you a favor."
"That was not a favor."
"It wasn't?" Jareth asked, his voice soft.
"You made me forget about everything else..." Sarah breathed. Their faces were centimeters apart, they had been moving closer and closer to each other without even knowing it. Jareth's green and blue eyes locked with her soft brown ones.
"You still remembered your brother."
"You wanted me to forget. You-" Sarah's breath caught in her throat as Jareth brought two fingers under her chin and tilted her head upwards. "You didn't want me to take my brother back."
"Your brother holds no interest for me." Jareth blinked slowly, his eyelashes dark against his pale skin.
"Then why did you trap me in the ballroom?"
"Because I wanted to do this." He bent his head down, moving his mouth closer and closer to hers.
He's going to kiss me he's going to kiss me he's going to kiss me...
And yet Sarah made no move to turn away, to push him back. This kiss... it was inevitable. She felt herself lean closer, melting in his arms...
"Aaaahh!!!"
The piercing scream hit her ears and made her jump back in surprise. "What was that?"
Jareth hissed. "It's-"
The screaming figure of Aberanne appeared from behind the castle. "Jareth, you escaped!" She howled, her eyes burning with emerald fire. "I'll get both of you!!"
Immediately, Jareth reacted. He grabbed Sarah by the arm and pulled her after him as he ran toward the direction of the forest.
"Run, Sarah, as fast as you can," he said through gritted teeth.
"Okay..." She looked frantically back at their pursuer. And she gasped. Because Aberanne was flying after them, her toes a foot above the grass and she was slicing through the air with her light beige dress flapping behind her.
"She's going to catch up!" Sarah yelled at Jareth.
"Keep running!"
"I can't go any faster!"
"Stop talking!"
Sarah looked back at Aberanne again. She was only about twenty feet behind them, and she grinned demonically as her eyes met Sarah's.
"You die, human!"
Sarah knew that it was true. Jareth hadn't exaggerated when he said that the wyans were so much more powerful than humans. And he hadn't lied when he told her that they were not going to defeat her.
She screamed. Aberanne was right on her back, and she reached out with her hands to claw at her neck.
And Jareth gave Sarah a vicious yank, which pulled her away from Aberanne's sharp nails.
But no, it wasn't enough. Aberanne grabbed onto Sarah's arm, and Sarah could feel herself getting pulled towards certain death...
Then Sarah's feet suddenly couldn't touch the ground anymore as she felt herself falling with Jareth.
INTERMISSION
As I sit with the sun falling over the hayfields by the river
A little hand reached out and touched me and stole my heart away
And I followed into a labyrinth of gold and rose red color
And then I heard such beautiful voices calling out to me to go
Floating down, floating down
Floating down to Agenais
And we'll go floating down, floating down
Floating down to Agenais
And there it was lit by a blue flame a gold and crystal palace
And they were dancing in long silver veils and white lilies in their hair
And we rose above in the moonlight to watch the city sleeping
And this beautiful, magical place I no longer want to leave
We'll go floating down, floating down
Floating down to Agenais
And we'll go floating down, floating down
Floating down to Agenais
Leaving it all behind promises of the wild
They say come little sister, come with us
And let's fly
We'll go floating down, floating down
Floating down to Agenais
And we'll go floating down, floating down
Floating, floating away
And I'm floating, floating, floating, floating away...
(Donna Lewis)