Technical Support
In which Sarah hates her computer, but not as much as she hates His Nibs…
So, this is my first fic in…many, many years. It's also my first Labyrinth attempt.
Inspired by the fabulous Pika la Cynique and page 25 of her glorious work on dA, Girls Next Door. Yes, I steal the initial set up and some of the dialogue from her. The ending is one that's along the lines of something that's been floating around in my head for a while now…
Disclaimer: Gods, I hate these things. Does it occur to anyone that if I owned the glory that is Labyrinth, a) I wouldn't be here of all places and b) there would have been a sequel where Connelly wasn't so whiney (and was old enough to get it on with He of the Incredibly Hot Pants)?
BANG BANG SLAM CRASH!
"Blast this stupid thing! Com'on! WORK!"
More crashing.
"Ow! Dammit!"
"Really, Sarah, such language."
"Grrrrr…Go AWAY, Jareth," the rather enraged girl returned to attempting to get her stubborn PC (its will was as strong as hers, apparently) to work properly by issuing threats upon its very life. And those of its parents. And siblings. And extended family. And pets. And…
"What has you so troubled this evening, precious?" Jareth came to stand behind her desk chair.
"…back off, Your Majesty," Sarah bit out, staring straight ahead at the frozen screen.
"Oh?" he leaned down to murmur in her ear. "Do I make you…nervous, my sweet?"
"No. You're getting glitter in the keyboard," Sarah leaned away from him, flicking said glitter away as she did so.
VRRRRMMmmmmm…Wait! Was there hope? Could she finally finish her term paper and get some sleep…?
KRSH.
"Gods damn this ancient piece of $%*!*$..."
No such luck.
"…^#&!+#$*&-mmmph!"
"Pet, you really should consider editing your language. It's not seemly," Jareth kept his gloved fingers wrapped firmly around her mouth, despite her struggles.
This battle continued for quite some time. At one point Sarah managed to wrench her face away from his grasp for long enough to get off some choice insults (something involving the blissfully ignorant machine's parents, hamsters, elderberries, and fraggin' aardvarks…) before turning on him and attempting to scratch his pretty face off. He got her in a much more secure hold after that.
Jareth smirked down at the peeved, delightfully silent young woman in his arms.
She glared at him over his hand.
The ensuing staring contest would have made any cat weep in shame.
Jareth pursed his lips in aggravation. "Sarah, I will release you…"
The way her eyes lit up happily nearly did him in.
"…IF you promise to behave yourself."
She was less pleased about that. With a suspicious narrowing of hazel eyes, Sarah nodded in acceptance of the Goblin King's conditions.
"Excellent!" he chirped joyfully.
She nearly fell over. He can chirp?
The hell!
Sarah took a deep breath to refrain from letting her "right words" for the situation slip out. Instead, she turned sharply on her heal and slumped back down at her (now apparently dead) computer.
Jareth raised his eyebrow questioningly. "Now, my dear, what has you so upset? Is it this device?" he gestured to the odd, now black, box on her desk. "Shall I Bog it for you?"
Sarah let out a heavy sigh and let her forehead meet the desk's wood rather intimately. Why, hello there! And who are you? /Oh, just an abused section of cranium. In for a visit. Yourself?/ Oh, I live here. /Ah, I see. It must be nice./ It is. Beautiful weather we're having, wouldn't you say? /Oh, indeed!/
Sarah snorted in a most unlady-like way.
"No, don't bother. It'll start up again eventually."
A certain Goblin King lowered his hand slowly and sulked.
Actually, this just in.
Kings do not sulk, apparently. They glower ominously.
Sure. Whatever you say.
(He was sulking.)
"And what, pray tell, did it do to so insult you?" he leaned backward against the wall that was so conveniently placed to allow him to stand cockily and sufficiently kingly…
Sarah let out another heavy sigh (her head was still glued to the table top, apparently, so it was slightly muffled). "I was trying to finish my term paper – which is worth 35% of the grade, mind you – when my blasted PC decided to die…ugh, I need a new computer."
Jareth blinked. "And this…Peecee stole your paper? Which killed it?"
Sarah looked up, her faced scrunched up cutely in confusion. "What? Gods, no!" He didn't look enlightened yet. "Ummm, how do I explain this? Eerrr…the PC – personal computer – holds the information to my paper in it. Like a library, just hidden in the computer."
"Sooo…you must break into the computer to get the paper back? Aren't you good at such things…?" he seemed to be remembering certain pulverized elements of his kingdom. He liked that trippy Escher room, dammit…
"No," Sarah sat back up properly only to slouch in her chair until she was practically laying on it. "I have to get the computer to wake back up so that I can access its records of what I've written so far. None of the information is physical, Jareth. Just…" Sigh. "Nevermind…it's too complicated."
She closed her eyes in exhaustion.
Jareth tilted his head ever so slightly and frowned in his continued confusion. He was unaccustomed to such feelings. He decided he didn't like it. Maybe he'd banish it… A few moments of staring at her tense form silently and then, quietly, "You know, you could always use 'I wish'…"
Her eyes did not deign to open, though her mouth twisted into a grimace. "No, thank you."
After a time, Jareth was wondering why, for Puck's sake, he was still here when it was clear that this was outside of anything he could fix. Well, he could, theoretically, if she would just cooperate and use her Certain Powers.
Sarah did decide that pouting in her chair wasn't getting her anywhere though, so she got up and paced. No progress in the getting-anywhere bit, but at least she felt more productive this way…
Jareth, of course, just lounged against the wall and watched her walk. Hey, if she wasn't inclined throw him out, then he wasn't going anywhere…
Besides, he recalled an old friend of his once saying that there were only two reasons for women to pace: (1) to plot something or (2) to show off their figures more effectively. Both of which would be quite ruined if he interfered. And he rather liked the view.
Finally, Sarah stopped trying to wear a hole through the floor with her angry circles, ran a hand through her hair and turned to him. He raised his eyebrows. "I'm going to make tea. Don't follow me."
Jareth pursed his lips at her retreating back. Who was she to order him about? His head tilted back as though of its own accord and he looked down his long nose at the doorframe she had just exited through.
Oh wait, that's right… "her kingdom is as great" and all that rubbish…ugh, why did he agree to let the scribes put that in the book? Why?
Crossing his arms, he turned his head back to the…thing that was so troubling his Sarah.
Huff. If it would just do what it was supposed to, Sarah would be a better mood and he could get her to pay more attention to him and maybe even…
Wait.
That's it!
And it was bloody brilliant if he did say so himself.
A troublingly wide grin stretched its way across his face…
Wwwwweeeeeeeeeee-shhhhhhhh…
Sarah poured the hot water from the pot into two mugs. Plopping a bag of chamomile into hers, but not really knowing what her guest would want, she grabbed a couple bags of the different teas she had, and managed to carefully balance them as she walked back to her room. Hopefully, she'd be able to get her computer working long enough to finish that paper and get to bed…
What met her at the door to her room was so far from her hopes, or even what she'd expected, that she nearly spilt boiling water all over herself…
All he'd wanted to do was make her happy! Honest! How was he to know that these things were so bloody complicated? Whatever limey made these things was going to be strung up over the Bog by their nose hairs in the very, very near future…
Now, I usually hate to break the fourth wall in narratives, but I think I will make an exception in this extreme case. Allow me to take a step back here and describe what's going on. I'd leave it to our favorite duo, but it seems that one is quite without coherent mental function and the other is currently too deeply entrenched in plotting to be of any help.
You can decide which one is which.
Try to imagine the scene, as it is the one which has brought our heroine into great peril at the hands of hot beverages and our King into great peril for his immortal life.
In the 10 minutes it took Sarah to boil the water for the tea, Jareth had removed the computer from the desk and set it down in the middle of the floor. He, himself, sat in a slightly (only slightly) less grand version of his throne in the self-same center of the self-same room. What was once a monitor had been completely stripped of all dignity and lay in pieces surrounding the throne, looking very much like someone had wrenched it open, torn out little pieces to see what they were, decided they were of no interest, and tossed them haphazardly about the room. A similar fate had met each and every one of the letters and symbols from the keyboard (which did indeed have an alarming amount of glitter in it).
As though hoping to be of help, scraps of white down floated aimlessly in the air to settle in corners. Shards of what appeared to have once been crystals lay similarly against the walls, as though someone had thrown them to punish the innocent structures for the cause of the thrower's frustration.
All of this was heavily coated in copious amounts of glitter.
And, la pièce de résistance, was the Lord of the Labyrinth himself, lounging in his summoned throne at the center of the maze of catastrophe and chaos, the tower of the scrap that was once her computer resting in his lap. His tongue poked out in effort as he tried to pry the chassis off the tower.
I think her reaction is appropriate. Now that the stage is set, shall we continue? Excellent…
She did the only thing any sane person would do.
She screamed.
His Nibs promptly leapt to his feet nimbly, the tower crashing to the floor.
Her look of unadulterated rage made even one such as he take a step backward in horror…
"Now, Sarah, dear, you know that I was only trying to help, and-"
"Help?" she screeched. "HELP! HELP, tra lala! Oh, HELP, he says. 'Help' like when you took Toby away? Oh, really helpful, Goblin King!"
Jareth, for once, was without retort. He thought it might be safer to let Sarah's destructiveness work its way out of her system before he tried to reason with her…
~~40 minutes later~~
Sarah's ranting had finally stopped. While she bellowed at him over the state of her room and computer and – in many ways – made the mess worse, he silently tried to keep her from killing either himself or herself. He couldn't always tell which was her intended victim.
Her hysterics finally settled down a little when Jareth started poofing some of his mess away (it would show up in his throne room but the feathers and crystal shards and glitter would not be out of place there) leaving only his throne and her computer parts.
He watched as she collapsed onto the floor, picking up keys and cradling them to her lovingly.
"Sarah…" he said quietly, hoping not to start her up again. When she merely looked up at him, seeming somewhat lost, he deemed it safe to continue. Maintaining what he hoped was a soothing tone, "You know, I really was trying to help…"
She snorted but said nothing, breaking eye contact to stare at the parts she held in her hands.
"I thought that, maybe, if I could figure out why the machine was so uncooperative, I could get it to start behaving for you…then you wouldn't have to be so upset with it…" he got a little bolder as his explanation continued.
"Right. Sure, Jareth. Well, you've botched this up right well, haven't you?" The acid in her tone cut him deeply. He wavered slightly.
Sarah let out another deep, world-weary sigh. "I'm sorry. I know you were trying to help. At least you didn't get to the memory banks…"
At Jareth's confused and anxious, but hopeful, expression, Sarah let out a weak, strained smile, "Hopefully, I'll be able to get someone to retrieve the memory so I can finish the paper on another computer. And hey, maybe I can get a new one now?" Sarah desperately tried to find a silver lining.
"So…I helped?" Jareth asked, uncharacteristically nervous.
Sarah's smile got a little more genuine at the hope in his face. "Sure, Jareth. You helped."
Not quite as it played itself out in my head, but close enough!
So, I think Jareth was a little OOC…
Pie to anyone who can spot the Pika la Cynique, Pride and Prejudice, and Monty Python references!
Remember, I'm returning from a LONG dry spell, so let me know how I did! ^_^