Bestow to the Victor
Author's note: I originally began writing this story like 13 years ago, posting only the first two chapters. I got deterred with-ya know, life and growing up, so I thought I'd retry it after an absence from ffn. So here it is again.
Disclaimer: The motion picture, "Labyrinth" is an original idea created by Jim Henson. It does not belong to me, nor will it ever. So there.
Chapter 1: A War Hero
Home. How oddly comforting that simple, enigmatic word seemed to her as she walked among the autumn-strewn leaves that lined the streets of her New England hometown. Home is where she would be greeted by an intuitive familiarity; it is where she could once again fall right into step, regardless of how long she was away. Home is where she would be greeted by the sights and sounds that evoke a euphoric rush in one's mind, like a mind-bending drug, stimulating a moment of pure ecstasy in recollection, and then curbing the appetite for anything else in the world.
"Only minutes away from home," she thought, grabbing her valise more securely as she prodded away from the tiny train station that housed a set of trains that ran daily to the airport. And in all her weariness, Sarah smiled for the remaining draining blocks.
With the last of her bags finally unpacked, Sarah gave a sigh of relief and standing, hands upon hips, looked around her bedroom in satisfaction. She was exhausted from traveling, but she would not let that be her barrier. "For once, I'm glad to be back home," she whispered almost inaudibly to herself before collapsing on the bed in front of her to catch her second wind.
She stared up at the ceiling above her and reminisced for a few moments over the past few days. Real life proved to be a hard-hitting obstacle to conquer, nothing like Sarah had expected. Finding a grown-up job, as her father so aptly called it in numerous emails over the past few months, seemed to her such a petty chore, disgusting and below her.
"Have you thought about going to nursing school?" she read aloud from her laptop just last week at a tiny al fresco cafe in Rome.
Really, dad? Sarah remembered stumbling through her college biology class with barely a "C". Snorting quite unladylike at the thought, she mumbled a quick obscenity just as a tall and rather tan Roman waiter with a chiseled face and aquiline nose put down Sarah's cup of espresso. His locks of dark hair curled just below his ears and his eyes held something of a raw salacious look that Sarah could only picture mingled between sweaty bed sheets.
"Scusa?" He interrupted, cocking up one dark eyebrow and letting the tiniest smirk play on one corner of his mouth as if he had understood Sarah's appalling use of English perfectly well.
She laughed a little then, turning her prettiest smile upon him. "Sorry," she said, wondering if this perfect Roman specimen spoke enough broken English to escort her back to her rented flat with a bit of friendly conversation. "Thanks for this-grazie."
Yes, the real world was arduous, but traveling around the world? A piece of cake.
Sarah smiled at the memory of the Roman cafe, reminiscing about all of her travels over the past two years. She felt exhilarated, free, edified, mature...and safe. Almost as if nothing could chase her to Europe, although she could never figure out why this feeling might exist.
Her days were filled with mesmerizing self-propelled excursions where she'd lose herself among the ancient cobblestone paths of whatever city she was in...Rome, Vienna, Loches. Climbing over statues that beheld the steely scowl of some Ottoman emperor. Laughing and running to peer behind moss-covered stone doors held up by a perfect keystone, gazing wide-eyed and curious, like a little lost child in a supermarket, into the dark areas where no person has ventured for centuries. Always searching, always searching.
But never finding.
But searching for what? She didn't want to think.
And it wasn't as if she wasn't making a living, like her parents accused. She paid her way doing the only thing she knew best: telling stories. Travel writing was something Sarah briefly explored during college, but now, her talent was put to such good use. Her words scrawled onto almost every English publication on the main continent, bespeaking her tales of good food, fine wine, and luxurious company. Yes, her days could be quite wonderful.
But at night, night was the time when all memories of the day had vanished and she was left alone with her thoughts.
Sometimes, when her head was dizzy from too much champagne and the vibrant glow of the moon crept in her veranda window, clothing her bed with its soft blush, she lay awake thinking about them..about him. And so she tossed and turned on her pillow, as if trying to rub the memory from her brain, disturbing (on occasion) her bedmate for the evening, who would groggily try to pacify her tumultuous flails by smoothing her wild mass of silky black tresses with his lips. She relented, for a moment, listening until her foreign companion's breathing slowed into muted snores and she turned towards the moon to cry the silent breathy tears of a little girl just awake from an awful nightmare of goblins and ghouls. Only then would she let sleep take over her.
But it wasn't until her stay in Rome when she finally gave in and decided to return home. It was another tearful night of tossing and turning and trying to forget. Fabrizio, her chiseled Roman waiter, awoke and turned soft brown eyes upon her.
"Sarah, bella," he whispered in a raspy voice that Sarah could tell was reserved only for pillow talk. He raised a gentle, tanned finger to her cheek stained pink with wetness. He drew back his finger, looking at it with tender sorrow and kissed away the tear there. "Che l'e? Why are you not asleep?" She looked beautiful in the moonlight-even in her tears-star-kissed and flushed, her shiny black hair hanging in a mess of wavy tendrils that wrapped around her shoulders and fell below her white eyelet-clad breasts. Her eyes shone a brilliant emerald, welling up with water, and she turned them on Fabrizio, who was suddenly just a friendly foreign stranger, with the aching emptiness of a lost little girl.
"Please leave me...leave me alone," she murmured in a tiny voice, turning her head into her pillow with a muffled sob.
She couldn't run away anymore.
And so she was home. Starting a job as a freelancer for a local magazine. Coming back to reality at the age of twenty-five. Her lips twitched at the thought of herself in such a domestic role after years of running free. Maybe she needed this, a tiny dose of real life. "And this really is real life," she thought as she closed her eyes and took in an exuberant inhalation of the sweet smell of her old Tinkerbelle perfume, the smell of her dreams. Sarah smiled at the familiar scent, softly humming a tune that had carved out a little niche in the back of her mind, although she could not quite place its melody.
The sound of someone shouting followed by short bouts of laughter brought her out of her reverie. Toby and her father must be helping Karen make dinner tonight. Sarah offered the world a small grin of contentment and snuggled her head deeper into the pillow. Maybe it would be best to catch a little shuteye before joining her family for a most welcome meal.
She had no idea how much time had passed in her respite, but Sarah awoke with a start. It took her a moment to adjust her eyes to the dim lighting of the room and she cautiously took in her surroundings.
What had woken her? "Hunger," Sarah thought indisputably. But her silent stomach seemed to disagree with her assessment. She swallowed hard and closed her eyes once more.
It was...something. Something had been the culprit in the disturbance of her grateful slumber. It was something, and it was this something that made the back of her neck grow cold and her stomach flip over. But what was it?
A soft scuffle on the carpet resonating with the facsimile of someone's footsteps across the floor caused Sarah's ears to perk up and she squeezed her eyes shut tight.
Toby? her voice cracked in a strange sound that divulged her weariness and her fear at the same time. Please be Toby, please be Toby, please be Toby, her heart seemed to beat in perfect meter.
What are you so afraid of, stupid?
Another scuffle. It sounded like someone was wrenching their hand across a glass window. This time, Sarah did open her eyes, glancing from corner to corner, finally allowing her eyes to settle on the window. She stuck the tip of her thumbnail in her mouth, chewing absent-mindedly in a nervous tic, and narrowed her eyes until they shone like two glowing emeralds in the darkness. She squinted, peering at the window, hesitating to get up.
"There's nothing there," she said aloud to no one, as if the words would convince herself otherwise. "I have jet lag and I'm dreaming."
But her nerves didn't seem to believe what her voice was telling her. There was a tiny bit of buried knowledge coming from somewhere deep inside her, rising up like a bubble before bursting right in her throat.
Pop!
"The mirror," she murmured. The words came out in a ghost of whisper, barely passing over dry, cracked lips and settling on her own ears in a girlish whimper that surprised Sarah.
Sarah slammed her eyelids shut again, squeezing so tightly that little white stars appeared in the darkness of her mind. She had made it a point not to look into her vanity mirror when arriving back home. She hadn't looked into it any time she returned home...not since, well, Sarah didn't like to think back that far.
After two years of visiting with her friends from the Labyrinth, chatting with them into late hours of the night, laughing with them as Hoggle entertained her with stories of late-night goblin tipping, and clapping at Didymus and Ludo's tall tales of chivalry, Sarah was leaving for college.
I'll come home all the time, she tried to explain excitedly, stuffing clothes into her bags. Weekends, holidays, and don't forget summer vacation. But something in Didymus's eyes and the way Hoggle cast his head down gave her the lie, for she didn't call on them again, spending her summer breaks traveling and then leaving for good after graduation.
Is this what you've been running from?
Maybe it's time to face the music.
Sarah sighed and slowly opened one eye, letting it peer rapidly around the room, but the mirror seemed to call to her. Both eyes opened beneath veiled eyelids, two narrow green slits that settled on her own reflection in the foggy haze of her vanity mirror. For a moment, she locked eyes with herself, taking in the all of the fear, all of the sorrow, all of the loneliness that looked back at her. Sarah laughed a little at her reflection, but it was not a pretty laugh.
"What has happened to me?" she thought, running her hands through her mass of thick hair and flipping it back over her shoulders in an exaggerated fashion. Her hair still had the length it had when she was 15; although, it grew darker and she wore it in lovely loose curls that seemed to complement the exquisite creaminess of her face and bring out the shining emerald of her eyes.
Her eyes were instantly drawn to a shadowy figure moving clumsily in the far corner of her mirror, fumbling through the haze, dispersing it into liquid smoke that seemed to rise out of the glass and disappear into the twilight of her bedroom. Sarah sank back a little into her cozy fortress, gathering her knees to her chest in almost a defensive movement, never letting her eyes leave the mirror.
This grandiose entrance disposed any arrival her former friends from the Underground held, and for a few fleeting moments, her heart beat faster at the possibility of...someone else surfacing through the haze.
"Is this fear?" Sarah thought as she brought a hand to her chest and flattened it there as if to steady her heartbeat with a push of her fingertips. The pit of her stomach told her that it was something else entirely.
But before she could murmur a word, the figure emerged, stepping into the muted glow of the moonlit window, and spoke in a hushed voice.
"Are you Sarah Williams?" the voice asked, a slight accent lilting his cadence.
Opening her mouth in utter disorientation, Sarah looked the man over in slight peculiarity. He was an elderly man, with a small stature and a plump belly. He had short gray hair with a small cowlick sticking up near the back of his head, and she could see the ends of his hair matted with beads of perspiration forming at his hairline. Sarah could tell he was uncomfortable, for he wrung his hands together in a hurried method, and shuffled from foot to foot nervously while awaiting her reply.
There was something in this man that brought to mind an unnerving memory that she was sure had never existed. It was something in his appearance and enunciation.
The man stood, somewhat slumped, in dark trousers tucked gawkily into his boots. A short black jacket with wide sleeves hung open, revealing a plate of silver armor clinging to his upper chest, yet scarcely concealing his obtruding belly. A crimson cape made of what seemed to be the finest velvet hung crookedly over his hunched shoulders. This man's clothing fit limply and most awkwardly over his body, and Sarah almost laughed at the ungallant picture he made, but sensibility got the best of her, and she thought better of the initiative.
Yet something about the oafishness of this man did nothing to ease that unpleasant recollection she felt in his presence.
She suddenly remembered he had spoken to her. What was it that he had asked?
Oh yes, her name.
"Umm," Sarah started, but couldn't finish for fear her voice would come out in shrill, panicky bursts.
The man leaned forward, his skin shimmering with a luminescence uncharacteristic to his clumsy look and squinted his eyes, searching her face.
"Hmmm. Yes, I can see that you are indeed her," he said. "Sarah Williams. Conqueror of the labyrinth?"
Sarah could feel the blood drain from her cheeks and she let out a soft gasp of surprise. There was that memory again, and this time she was left to deal with it as truth and fact. It was a fictional feat brought out from the dark recesses of her mind into the cruel prying hands of the existent world. It was an open sore licked by the salty tongues of reality.
"Oh. Um. I'm Sarah." She swallowed hard and coughed back her tremor.
Let's try that again.
"Who are you and why are you here?"
The man smiled at her sudden change in voice. A regular little spitfire, she was.
"My darling girl! I bring you no harm! Quite the contrary, actually. But first, allow me to introduce myself." The man had stopped shuffling nervously and the merriment in his eyes relaxed Sarah momentarily. She inhaled sharply with his shift in movement and noticed an earthy aroma in the air. It smelled of a wood-burning fireplace and cinnamon pine cones and a musky spice she couldn't quite place. Was it from the fog in the mirror or the man himself?
"You've probably already guessed that I am indeed from the Underground. He stopped to titter quietly and leaned against the frame of her window. I am the Chief Legislator of the High Council of the Labyrinthine Isles." He cocked his head to one side and thought for a moment. "Sort of a Prime Minister, if you will. I'm not quite part of the royal family, but I'd say I do one hell of a job governing for them!"
He laughed loudly at his own accolade, and in spite of herself, Sarah gave a grudging smile.
"Sir Friedrich von Rennon at your service, my dear," he smiled at her with twinkling eyes, and made a slight gesture that could be seen as a bow. You have no idea how happy I am to finally reach you. I've been trying to contact you for months.
"Months? Well, I've been away..." Sarah's voice drifted off as she mumbled, not really wanting to explain her absence to this stranger. For the first time in a long time, Sarah let the memories of one fantastical night as a teenager come flooding back to her. She bit the corner of her lower mouth in confusion before starting up again. "But I don't understand. You needed to contact me? There isn't anything wrong with one my friends, is there?"
Sarah felt a sudden pang of guilt creep into her stomach and nauseate her. It's all your fault, idiot. You left your friends without even a good-bye and now they're all dead. Her brow furrowed and she let her frightened eyes gaze up into kind, frosty blue ones.
"Friends?" He sounded surprised and his eyes widened a little bit in devout curiosity as he cocked his head to the side and waited for Sarah to continue.
"I used to talk to a few of my friends from the Labyrinth-Hoggle, Sir Didymus, and Ludo-but I haven't been around..."
"Ah," the man interrupted and a slight smile crept onto his lips. "You outgrew your imagination." His eyes bored into her as if he understood her completely, but to Sarah, they were quite accusatory.
Shit. There's that nauseating guilt again.
"No, Sarah. I'm not here on behalf of your friends. I suppose that's something you'll have to rectify yourself." He stopped suddenly as if he could read all the doubt of the logic of this situation clearly on her face. The man stepped forward toward the bed, tapped Sarah's arm in a rather paternal gesture and said softly in his exquisite English, "I can assure you, child, I am most definitely real. You can never grow too old to forget your voyage to our world."
Sarah looked up into his blue eyes that were satiated with such concern and was touched by his understanding. Offering him a half smile, she exhaled a long, satisfying sigh, and shrugged her shoulders.
"I'm sorry... sir von Rennon, was it? Please continue."
He smiled with his eyes.
"You may call me 'Fritz', my lovely," he said, winking. Then, clearing his throat, he began once more, "Right, right. Oh, bloody hell. What was I saying?" He withdrew from Sarah and pacing in front of the window, he mumbled blurrily to himself while flicking carelessly at his cowlick.
"Oh yes. I'm making you a proposition." Fritz's bearing had abruptly changed and there was a low note in his tone that Sarah could recognize as the onset of a serious topic.
"I'm going to make this frank and short. There is an open position as sovereign in one of the provinces of the Labyrinth." Fritz waited for Sarah's expression to change, but when didn't open her mouth, he continued. "As victor of the labyrinth, you are given priority over the position. I have been sent by the rest of the Council to offer this to you." Fritz stopped short to collect his breath before continuing. "Quite frankly, Sarah, you are seen as a war hero."
She shook her head in disbelief and stood up to face him. Sarah towered over Fritz by a good three inches, but something about his stature still exuded a distinct magical power that made Sarah a little apprehensive.
"A sovereign? I don't even know what that is. And more importantly," Sarah said as she took a step closer to him, gaining a bit of courage. "Why are you offering this now? Shouldn't I have received this when I won the game?"
"Ah-ah," Fritz said quietly, looking at her beneath lowered lids and very slowly, he angled a finger at Sarah, rocking it back and forth in front of her face, as if she were a very naughty child that needed to be chastised. "This is not a prize. I believe you graciously refused your spoils," he said, his voice hitting a low note that made Sarah feel like she had just been rebuked for some heinous crime.
Her spoils? Sarah cast her eyes down in embarrassment, thinking of her last moments in the castle beyond the Goblin City.
Look, Sarah. Look at what I'm offering you-your dreams. Just let me rule you and you can have everything you want.
Throwing up her hands in exasperation, Sarah threw Fritz an irritated glower. "Some prize," she snorted, her voice thick with sarcasm. "Spend an eternity in the same place where I had just spent the most dangerous 13 hours of my life? With goblins? And their king? Sick."
She let her head fall into her palms, and soothed away the building tension in her forehead with her fingertips. This was just getting too weird. This isn't really happening. It's just the stress from traveling.
Fritz tightened his jaw at her last words, but did not move from his stance against the window. "We won't quibble over the wording," he said casually, arms crossed over his armor. His skin shimmered beneath the moonlight, a glossy gossamer that seemed to radiate onto his silver hair. For the first time, Sarah noticed the choppy lines of light blue that traveled up from the outer corners of his eyes and tapered into the arched crevice of his triangular brows. The feature was much too familiar and Sarah shuddered at the slightest memory of seeing eyes like Fritz's once before.
"The fact of the matter is, as victor of the Labyrinth, you do have some pull in the Underground and we are offering you this position..." Fritz's voice trailed off for a moment and he tapped a finger on his chin as if lost in deep thought. "...as sort of an added bonus for a job well-done. To the victor go the spoils, you know? As I've already told you, you possess all the qualities of a war hero, just as candidates in your world are elected into office. By defeating the labyrinth, you have proved strength and mentality, important decision-making skills, tenacity, and most important to any political leader, charm."
Sarah thought over his words and realized smugly that she did, in fact, use all of those traits during her trip through the Labyrinth. But didn't everybody?
And as if reading her thoughts, "You'd be surprised at home many people give up when they can't find the entrance to the maze," Fritz replied in a soft voice that dripped with some sort of emotion that Sarah could only place as pity. You will be given proper instruction from myself and other members of the Council. And as for the terminology, sovereign is just a fancy word for gate-keeper. This position is only as lord protector over one providence of the kingdom-keeping things in check. All matters are reported to His Majesty, King Jareth."
Jareth?
Jareth. The name rang a tiny alarm in Sarah's mind and she instantly knew why. Another memory emerged from the cobwebs of her mind.
"The Goblin King," she said simply, without emotion. At her voice, Fritz looked vigilantly over her face. A vague expression, unbeknownst to him, passed quickly over her face, and then was gone.
Sarah focused her attention beyond Fritz, narrowing her eyes on the soft pink curtains lining the windows. Then, turning her concentration back to the man front of her, she gave her reply to his proposal apologetically, as if knowing the answer from the beginning. "I can't go back."
"Jareth has asked for you." Fritz blurted it out hurriedly, as if rushing the fact might make her change her mind. It was a lie, but Sarah wouldn't know. In fact, Jareth had done just the opposite, bellowing never to bring that girl back to his kingdom and threatening the Council members to a lovely retirement in the Bog of Eternal Stench if they should ever defy his authority. He had acted quite childish when making his point, throwing vanishing crystals at the poor, stupid goblins that were attempting to dress a chicken in a suit of goblin armor.
Fritz knew it wasn't contempt behind Jareth's rationale. He saw something deeper when he looked into his eyes-conflicting emotions bordering upon pain and bitterness, but he also knew Jareth was too proud to ever confide in him. He was a shrewd and astonishingly clever ruler, but stubborn as a mule. It had taken an entire afternoon and well into early dusk for the Council to convince Jareth that the kingdom needed her in this dire situation. With a looming war, the members knew that Sarah was the key.
"How do I know this isn't some dirty trick in an attempt to lure me back so that he can do something horrible? As I recall, the Goblin King and I did not see eye to eye."
Sarah's suspicion pushed aside any flattery she felt earlier and she crossed her arms over her chest to let her point be made.
"Of course it isn't a trick, but I can't prove it to you. Come, come, child. Tell me your decision. I haven't all day, and there are others that the king has in line for the position." He lied again. There were no others. As the last victor of the Labyrinth, Sarah was needed to return before the kingdom fell into complete civil war.
But she didn't need to know that.
At least not yet.
"I'm not here to force you into anything," he said more softly. "Take it or leave it, although I'm sure your friends would be overjoyed to see you once more." This time, Fritz spoke with a coaxing lilt at the end of his sentence, as if he was dangling a treat in front of a skittish cat in an attempt to lure it back into the house.
At the thought of making up for lost time with her old friends, Sarah's eyebrows rushed together, forming high angles over flickering green eyes. She looked like a cat in the dark. A cat ready to pounce.
Seeing her friends-and the Underground-again reignited Sarah's sense of wanderlust, the very wanderlust she thought was lost when she returned home.
But somehow, this was different, and she couldn't quite figure out why.
Or at least she didn't want to figure out why.
And without thinking, she answered readily, all traces of anger and disappointment blotted out from her voice.
"I'll take it."
Oh God, what had she just done? Signed her life away? Maybe this was a huge mistake.
Just take it back, Sarah.
But her words would not come, and she stood there, rooted, waiting for Fritz to respond.
For a moment, the Chief Legislator looked as if he had not heard her properly, and then a slow smile spread across his gleaming face.
"Very well, I shall return within 26 hours. That will give me adequate time to prepare your arrival, get the paperwork ready, meet with the officials... you know the routine."
He walked toward the mirror hastily, and she could see his presence begin to wane. Swiftly, Sarah fell backwards onto the bed, and squeezing her eyes shut, she tried with all her might to block out the odd pang in her stomach. She was going. Going away from the safe haven of her house, of her life, perhaps forever. Isn't this what she thrived on, though? Travel? Adventure? Somehow Sarah knew that as worldly as she had become in the last few years, her experience would now be completely irrelevant in a completely different world.
With a heavy heart, Sarah sat up, and prepared to meet her family for dinner.
"I guess I'm leaving home for a while," she said.