DISCLAIMER: I do not own the Labyrinth or the characters within. I only own my original characters.
Thanks to Bluebaby3296 and kzal for beta reading the beginning context, providing needed corrections and for inspiration. You are truly great!
Morpheus Rising
He crouched, his head bent. Broken.
One balled fist held him steady on the cobblestone flooring, misshapen all around him. The other pummeled his chest, his heart. It throbbed.
Around him draped a grayish-white feathered cape, his legs in gray leggings and tall boots that touched his knees. His shirt unfastened to midchest flowed out over his pale wrists. It should have been his wedding attire. Instead, it was more like a death shroud.
The hurt of abandonment—no, rejection, pixelated and encapsulated the air around him. Glitter fell like rubbish, mere garnishment, at his feet. He had lost her.
Jareth slowly lifted his eyes, blackened dark with dilation. His breath came in staggered exhalation. With each pound of his fist to his heart, he felt his power come to a semblance of restoration.
Injured, but not lost, the king viewed his opportunity. He hadn't completely damaged himself. He would recover, and go on to face her again. But...
He couldn't let her touch that part of him again. He had been weak, longing for her. Letting her get inside him.
Who was she, Sarah, a mere mortal? He stumbled to his feet, eyes direct and cold as steely ice. The tatters of him shifted, fell.
Her kingdom as great…
She had taken so much, not knowing the cost. His heart still burned but he ignored the pain, letting it settle back in its place.
He would have her, at one price or another. This time she would not refuse him.
"Take your medicine like a good girl, Sarah."
She opened her mouth obediently. The white paper cup touched her lips, tasting like straw, dry and dusty.
She swallowed, the check made to see she did so. It wasn't so bad. Not if you complied. And Sarah had learned over the years to always comply.
For her, the medicine meant less thinking. She wouldn't miss a single dose, especially since they made her dreams less potent.
Thirty-five months, twenty-nine days and thirteen hours: the Oshall Mental Institution had kept her, unwilling and bound. But in less than half a day she turned eighteen and could legally sign herself out, imprisoned no longer.
Maybe she was crazy. Certainly, no one else in her family had seen her friends, though they crowded her room and danced around, almost in their eyesight—for just one lonely night.
Nothing had stayed the same after that.
Nothing. Not even her will remained her own anymore. Being in the psych unit did that to a person. She heard his strange and lonely voice calling her. She willed that it was not real.
Sarah. Demanding.
Sar-ah. Beseeching.
Sss-arraah. Imploring.
The voice ran with discombobulation over her nerves. Sibilant, mesmerizing and full of want.
She held her hands over her ears. No! No, no, NO!
Sarah squeezed her eyes closed tight. It was happening again, not just this once but many times over the past three years.
With absentmindedness, she rubbed at the small reminder of her past through her pajamas: an owl's feather, tattooed on her stomach by her left hipbone. It ached. She hadn't been rational to get such a mark, and the reminder of her folly would exist all her days. Now she would never forget Him.
Pervasively, she dreamed dreams. Nightmares. He would be in them—soothing and seductive, swaying her around in a macabre crystal ballroom where nothing was as it seemed. Except it was real and had happened. She would never touch a peach to this day, and the menu was jammed with them: fresh, baked and cobbled. The taunt he gave didn't miss her.
Eat this and you will forget everything.
She didn't want to forget. Not him, anyway. The Labyrinth she traversed was so haunting, she thought about it nightly.
Sarah. The voice called out, sexy, plaintive. Redemptive.
She pressed her eyes shut tighter. Go away!
She never dares say the words out loud. To do so would admit to craziness.
If only the man that caused her torture could remove her entrapment. Time and again, he caused her to sink further into herself, her body willing. Her mind not.
Come back, Sarah. The voice commanded with a seductive insistance. Come back before it's too late.
His siren song whispered to her. She ignored the plaintive call. The seductiveness rubbed her raw, but she turned her mind away from the deep and disturbing haunt.
"Sarah!"
She sighed, dreamy and still thinking deep in her head. "Eddie."
He was a large man in his early to middle twenties, heavily muscled and quietly handsome with dark hair and topaz eyes. Post-traumatic Stress had placed him in the facility after years of serving on the battlefield. He was her cornerstone, the one that kept her calm.
"Are you alright, Sarah," Eddie said as he poked his head into the room. She put down her well-read book, Wuthering Heights. Eddie smiled when he saw she was re-reading it for the hundredth time.
She heard the voice call to her again—Sss-aarrah. He infected her mind, plagued her thoughts.
Outside the barred window came the plaintive hoot of a smallish owl, resting on the tree branches out of her view. She knew it was there, had been there watching every moment, every single day. His presence, just as he threatened.
Eddie looked out the window. "That stupid bird. It's like it follows you or something."
"Or something," Sarah said.
Rat-a-tat. Tat.
The beckoning grew insistent, and sounded like a whirring and beating across the panes. Tap. Tap.
The owl with wings of tinted silver hovered and instigated entrance. The feathery tips that played golden, brushed her barred window. No entrance. She wanted to laugh. Even the Goblin King couldn't get past the barriers of a madhouse.
"So you leave me, huh?" Eddie said, still standing in the doorway, his voice soft, and his handsome face pleased for her. That's what she liked about him. He never pressured her and he seemed to want the best for her.
"It's time. It's been too long."
"You are all that mattered in this place, Sarah." He flushed. She accepted and denied his deeper feelings at the same time. It was easier to pretend to be aloof.
"I'll be out of here soon, also. Check in with me, will you?" He continued as if her quiet had been a response. "You know you'll always have a home with me."
She nodded, still deep in her thoughts, on the three-hour ride home she still had to face. The hospital was the only mental facility in upper state New York, and her unannounced arrival at her family's house wouldn't be appreciated.
Eddie reached out as if to touch her hair, hovering over it. He rested his hand before he drew too near. "Promise you will come if you need to?"
"Yes. I promise."
He touched her cheek, after much hesitation. "Should you need me..."
Should you need me. Just call.
He left, reluctant. She leaned heavily on the door he had walked out of and eased it shut, wanting to be left alone with her thoughts.
She laid on the bed again, ignoring the owl that demanded attention, lavishing his lovely feathers in a vain plea. She picked up where she had left off in her book, but she found quickly that concentration eluded her.
She felt her eyes drift closed, her body relaxing, deep and penetrable. She lay in a limbo of half-awake. Lilting and enchanting music started to play, the laughter from the dancing attendants filtered into her brain. He was there—in the shimmery and false ballroom, where she had once forgotten almost everything. Intrusive, his actions lay like a weight on her restless body. He watched, though he wasn't there.
She was no longer fifteen. She knew the promise that lay beyond the laughter. Bodies mounded in lascivious overplay, kissing and touching and full of magical brew that never satiated them.
She searched, seeing him in momentary glances. His Majesty. She heard him singing his siren song. It was a betrayal on her nerves.
She spied him in the corner of her dream world, behind a black half mask with a clawed handle. He laughed at her, his sardonic grin breeding lust. No, she was no longer fifteen. The promise that had hinted so many years ago, revealed itself. He swayed forward, words on his lips.
He stood close enough to reach and touch him. His eyes beckoned. His hands snaked out to grab her. To make her his.
Sarah snapped open her eyes. Her body was tight, and her forehead sweaty. He almost had her. And she had almost wanted him to take her.