Breathe: A Cinderellic Labyrinth
A Note to the Reader
First off, I want to be completely honest here. I am not a die-hard Labyrinth fan. I mean, I love Labyrinth and I always enjoy watching the movie, but I'm not absolutely nuts over it. My true love is "The Phantom of the Opera". It always has been, and it always will be. But recently I watched Labyrinth again for the heck of it, and an idea for a story hit me. This is that idea brought to life.
This is just a fic I'm writing for fun, and I promise, I will stay as true to the story as I possibly can. Yet I like going for originality too, so don't expect everything to be perfectly right to a T. As the title mentions, this story is a Cinderella crossover in a way… kind of. There are elements in here that are like Cinderella, but there are no fairy godmothers, glass slippers, magical mice, or a clock striking midnight. There is only an abused girl who is forced to live in the unfinished basement of her home, and Jareth, the Goblin King and powerful Fae.
This story won't be heavy on description, because I want people to understand that the abuse that happens in this story could happen anywhere. And I want this tale to be universal, and for everyone to have their own picture of where this is taking place.
There will be language in here, scenes of abuse, and 'passion' scenes… but nothing horribly graphic. This will have a T rating, but I hope it appeals to all audiences
So dear reader, this is for you. I hope you enjoy it.
~Diana
PS- the first chapter is short because of this introductory note. I promise, the rest of the installments shall be longer, and I will only be updating one chapter a day (sorry)!
Chapter One: A Girl Named Elegance
Ellie let out a scream as she fell down the stairs, her life flashing before her eyes. She prayed silently that this time, her father would accidentally do it, and she would hit her head and fall into the oblivion that is death. If any adult in her life had dared to look at her body closer, oh, the stories it told. If scars were a map of life, those on her arms, legs, and stomach could illustrate every landmark of hurt, pain, and suffering she had gone through. And then there was the bruising…
But no one dared to look at her close enough, to realize how bruised she was underneath the makeup. No one looked at the pain in her eyes. No, not in West Compton Missouri. Being a poor neighborhood, people had too many problems in their own home to care about an abused girl, who was beaten by her father almost every single night. No one cared that her mother had died when she was only five years old, and that she had been abused twelve years since then. No one cared… No one cared…
"Let me end my life now." She prayed silently, hoping that her father's push down the stairs would lead to her splitting her head open against the wall. "Take me, God! Take me!"
But of course, she kept rolling to the bottom, and the journey ended with her back hitting the wall painfully. The breath was knocked out of her, and her waist long black hair flew across her face. Her dark emerald eyes filled with tears, and she forced her small, thin body to stand, and run to her basement room… before her father could come after her again.
She heard him clomp downstairs, and before she could register anything else, she ran to her room only three feet away, locked the door, and slid onto the concrete floor. There she crawled over to her single mattress on the floor, with it's thinning blankets, and curled up onto it. Nearby in three boxes were her clothes, separated by under things, shirts, and jeans. In a small wooden box next to all of that was her minimal jewelry, hairbrush with hairpins and ties, and, the only thing her father bought her—makeup to hide her bruises.
She kicked off her worn white tennis shoes, and did the only thing that was left in her tired body to do. She stood, walked over to two large plastic tubs filled with books, and pulled one out. It was the only thing left of her mother's, those books. And now Ellie had them, and read them, and cherished the stories that filled the pages and her head. After all, when a seventeen year old had nothing else, what stopped her from getting lost in the world of fairies and chaste, fairytale like love.
The book Ellie had picked out was a condensed version of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream". Again falling onto the mattress, she began reading and whispering the words of the fairy queen, Tatiana.
"I want to be beautiful and wise like her." Elegance DeNoon softly wished. "I want a man like Oberon to love me." She fell forward a bit, and began to close her eyes. The pain she had been fighting was now too much, and she wanted to simply give in. "I want anyone… to love me for what I am. Scars, past, and all."
At last she fell into darkness, her last refuge from her bruised ribs that she didn't even know were injured.