Part Two: Stuck In The Middle With You
Sarah gaped at the apparition standing before her, then jumped up as she realized he was swaying on his feet. She just managed to catch him before his eyes rolled up in his head and he crumpled to the ground, folding her arms around him and doing her best to cushion his fall, since there was no way she was keeping the two of them upright without his conscious cooperation.
"Oof!" she grunted as her backside hit the uneven pavement. The stupid Labyrinth had been lined with flagstones the last time, why the uncomfortable little bumps now?
Still, she had other things to worry about at the moment. Namely, an unconscious—or, God, forbid, worse—Goblin King sprawled across her lap, his head resting against her chest in a rather intimate manner. Not that it mattered, not with him out of commission or, or…she reached down with trembling fingers to check the pulse in his neck.
It was beating steadily, just as his chest was rising and falling steadily. Good. So he was just unconscious and not dead. She was surprised at the wave of relief that flashed over her at that thought, then told herself that of course she was relieved; how else was she going to get out of this mess if the Goblin King was dead?
She rolled him onto his back and groped behind her for her jacket. She wadded it up and laid it beneath his head before letting him go and sliding her body out from beneath his. Oh sure, she'd had fantasies about the two of them, but this wasn't exactly how she'd ever pictured herself underneath him.
For one, thing they'd both been wearing a lot less in the way of clothing; for another, he was declaring his undying passion and fully conscious and…and…Reality! Get back to it! she ordered herself sternly as her thoughts threatened to go galloping off in all directions again. Nothing would be accomplished by giving in to panic. Or lust.
Still, she was seriously tempted to kiss him and see if that would wake him up. It worked in fairy tales, didn't it? And right now her life resembled a fairy tale more than anything else.
Just as she bent her head down to his, she saw his eyelids flutter and open. She jerked her head back as if someone had grabbed her ponytail and yanked. Hard. Which was just as well, since the Goblin King was glaring at her as if she were responsible for his predicament.
His next words proved that hunch beyond the shadow of doubt as he levered himself into a sitting position and snarled: "What is the meaning of this outrage?"
If she wasn't sure he recognized her, that doubt was erased as swiftly as it arose. "Well? Say something, Sarah Williams. How have you forced me here?"
"Um, don't you think the better question might be who forced us both here?" she shot back, annoyed by his assumption that this was somehow her fault when it was obviously his. "What kind of magic do you think I have, anyway? Do I look like I want to be stuck in this cozy little prison you've cooked up? Cooked," she added sarcastically, "being the operative word. You could at least turn down the heat a little." There! That would show him she wasn't scared, not of him or the situation in which they currently found themselves.
Well, she hoped it would convince him better than it was convincing her, anyway. However, she suspected her defiance looked to him exactly like what it was: bravado masking a desperate fear.
Mostly it had been a fear that he was behind all this and had something horrible planned for her, but now that fear was rapidly being shoved aside by the newer, more insistent fear that he wasn't behind it after all, in which case they were both in deep doo-doo.
She watched with a sinking sensation as his glare turned to a sardonic smirk. "That's the Sarah Williams I remember," he said, his smile deepening into something dark and seductive and highly unsettling to someone who'd just been trying not to picture him naked. "So defiant, so certain that I'm behind all your troubles." He leaned closer, and she instinctively moved her head back before forcing herself to stop and meet his unwavering gaze with her own. "So wrong," he whispered before pulling back and rising smoothly to his feet.
"And that's the Goblin King I remember," she snapped as she, too scrambled to her feet with far less grace and lot more exasperation. "Self-satisfied and mocking and, and…just plain mean!" she finished, wincing at the slight whine she could hear in her voice. But really, it was too much, all of this was just way too much. "So if I didn't bring us here—and I can guarantee it wasn't me—and you didn't bring us here, then who did? And why the hell would they bother?"
"For many reasons," he replied, surprising her; she hadn't expected any response at all as he gazed searchingly at the sky and the stone walls surrounding them. He bent his head to examine the cobblestone pavement beneath their feet before once again raising his eyes to meet hers. "I have enemies, you have enemies…"
"Me?" Sarah squeaked in alarm. "No way, I don't have enemies…" Well, Janine was still pissed that Sarah had received a promotion and pay hike ahead of her, but that dumpy little mouse was more likely to put salt in Sarah's coffee than whisk her off to the Labyrinth in a fit of jealous spite. And there was Larissa in payroll who still thought Sarah had stolen her boyfriend when Brian had asked Sarah out after dumping Larissa because she was a royal bitch…"Not the kind that could send me here," she amended as Jareth's eyebrows raised themselves in an expression of polite disbelief.
"I don't believe it's an enemy that's done this," he finally said after a long, painful silence, during which Sarah dropped her eyes and took a few steps toward the wall behind her, ostentatiously leaning against it and crossing her arms to show she was just in the mood to lean and not, heaven forbid, making sure no one could jump her from behind.
"Then who?" she demanded, watching him from the corner of her eye as he began pacing restlessly, back and forth, ten steps one way and ten steps another, turn, repeat, turn, repeat.
"The Labyrinth," he finally replied after another long, uncomfortable silence, biting off the words as if it pained him to say them.
Sarah took a few minutes to process that terse response. The Labyrinth. He thought the Labyrinth itself had trapped them here? But why? And how?
Before she could voice either question, another one popped into her mind and out of her mouth. "Why are we still here, anyway?" Even if she didn't have any magic, the Goblin King certainly did, and to spare. "Why haven't you just magicked us away?" Or at least himself. It wouldn't surprise her at all if he left her here to rot.
The scowl he sent her way was even fiercer than the one he'd first worn upon awakening. "Because I can't," he ground out. "Something's blocking my magic."
"Seriously? You can't just…" Sarah wriggled her figures in a "do some magic" gesture. "You really can't just call up a crystal ball and…sparkle your way out of here?"
"Woman!" he roared, his face darkening with a combination of fury and frustration. "Do you truly believe I would leave myself in such a bind did I not have magic at my command to free myself?" Then he added in a sulky voice: "Besides, I don't…" he wriggled his fingers in imitation of her earlier motion and glared before spitting out the word: "Sparkle."
Sarah couldn't help the giggle that forced its way free of her lips, but she wisely clamped down on it as Jareth cast a murderous eye her way. "Right, of course you don't," she gasped out when she felt herself able to speak without the laughter bursting free. "I mean, of course you wouldn't stay here if you could just…" she considered her next words carefully, but some devil prompted her to say: "poof your way out of this mess."
It wasn't funny, but it was. They were trapped, seriously trapped, not only in the Labyrinth, but by the Labyrinth as well, if what Jareth was staying was true. Trapped for an unknown purpose, at least, unknown to her. She had a feeling, unsubstantiated but deep in her gut, that the Goblin King knew exactly what was going on. Whether he would deign to fill her in on it or not remained to be seen.
"We are stuck here," Jareth said through gritted teeth, "until the Labyrinth decides to release us." He glared at her as if this was her fault, but she glared right back at him.
"I'm not a stupid teenager anymore," she snapped. "So you can stop trying to intimidate me. Especially if you don't have any magic to back it up."
He moved so quickly it might as well have been magic, and was on her before she could do more than squeak her alarm, his hands grasping her upper arms hard enough to leave bruises, his body pressed tightly against hers, his face inches away from her own. If she'd thought his glare deadly before, she knew now just how wrong she'd been. Suddenly the situation wasn't even remotely funny.
"Even without my magic, Sarah, I am still more than capable of handling you, no matter how many kick-boxing classes you've taken."
That little bombshell distracted her from her possibly even more dire predicament; she stared up at him, outraged. "You've been—spying on me?" she spluttered.
"Sometimes," he admitted without a hint of apology in either expression or tone. He leaned his head even closer to whisper tauntingly in her ear: "Sometimes I've watched you in your apartment. In your bedroom. In the shower. You've certainly…developed…quite nicely."
She struggled furiously in his hold, trying to kick at his legs, shouting at him to let her go, but he simply tightened his grip until she gasped in pain and gave up, glaring at him. "You bastard," she said between clenched teeth. "Let me go."
"Gladly." Suddenly he released her and stepped back, but only a single step. "As long as we understand one another."
"I've never understood you," she spat back, rubbing her arms and maintaining her glare.
Unexpectedly he sighed and turned away. "And that has always been our problem," she thought she heard him murmur as he moved to the opposite wall and rested his back against it, arms folded across his chest and yet another scowl on his impossibly handsome face.
Yikes, girl, get a grip, she warned herself. Remember he basically just threatened you and you're going to have some lovely bruises to remind you if you start to forget. He's the Goblin King, and even without magic—if he's telling the truth about all that—he's still dangerous.
Yeah, another part of her mind purred happily. Dangerously attractive.
"All right, so how and why did the Labyrinth trap us here?" Sarah asked when it became clear that she would have to be the first to break this latest silence between them. She'd already spent more than enough time brooding on her predicament and now was the time to be practical. "And how can a gigantic maze 'do' anything in the first place?"
"Because the Labyrinth isn't just a 'gigantic maze,'" Jareth replied with an angry glance at the wall just above Sarah's head. At least this time his anger wasn't directed at her. "It's a magical construction, an immensely complex magical construction, that has been in existence for literal millennia. It was created long before I was born and will remain long after I die." He pierced her with his gaze and added: "Long before we both die, I should say. Once something so infused with magic has existed for so long a period of time, it begins to take on a life of its own, becomes more than its creators intended."
Sarah puzzled through that for a long time, unconsciously pacing the same patch of ground Jareth had trod not too long before. "So," she finally said, eyes still on the ground but unfocused, "that means the Labyrinth is kind of a living creature with a will of its own? But I thought you controlled it?" She turned her puzzled gaze on the Goblin King.
He offered an elaborate shrug in response. "As long as my purpose and its purpose remained the same, as long as there was no conflict of wills, only a sort of cooperation between like minds, if you will, it allowed me and my predecessors some measure of control."
He sounded sulky, as if he didn't want to explain even this much to her, but Sarah chose to overlook his tone and focus on what he'd told her.
"So what changed?" she wondered aloud, once again resuming her pacing. "Why is the Labyrinth suddenly forcing us together like this? Is it because I beat it, and what, now its pride is wounded? It wants to punish me for that? And punish you because you let it happen, maybe?" She was groping in the dark, and grumpily wished that Jareth would just help her out. "Am I close? In the ballpark, or totally off base?" She suspected he might not get the baseball metaphors but the gist of what she was asking should be clear enough.
She really, truly didn't think he was going to answer her this time, even though she stopped directly in front of him and waited as patiently as she could manage for him to speak. Meanwhile the sun continued to beat down on them and sweat continued to pour from her body and her clothes continued to wilt and stick to her body while the Goblin King looked as cool and calm as ever.
Even if he'd lost control of his ability to cast spells, she thought grumpily, obviously he still had some kind of control over whether or not he sweated like a pig. It just wasn't fair.
That thought brought her up short; she wasn't about to start acting like her teenaged self just because she was back in the Underground, was she? God, she certainly hoped not, since she'd been such a selfish brat back then. Saving Toby was the best thing she'd ever done in her life, and having to do so had probably saved her from becoming as self-absorbed as her mother.
Wow, that was kind of a life-shattering realization, but before she could ponder it further, Jareth finally spoke, and what he said was so unexpected all unpleasant thoughts of her emotionally and physically absent mother deserted her.
"It's not punishing you," he said, his voice low, as if the words were being forced out of him against his will. "It's punishing me." He raised his eyes to meet hers, mismatched blue and hazel meeting brown.
She gaped at him, open mouthed, as if just waiting for Mary Poppins to show up and snap: "Close your mouth! We are not a codfish!" When she was able to speak, all she could gasp out was a disbelieving: "What? Why?" then return to staring at the Goblin King as if her wits had completely deserted her.
Which they certainly felt like they had, especially when she saw Jareth drop his eyes and actually look uncomfortable. "It doesn't resent that you bested it, that you bested me, it actually seems to appreciate that you did," he finally mumbled.
"So it shows its appreciation by trapping me here? With you?" Sarah's tone might have been termed "politely disbelieving". Or perhaps "mildly sarcastic." Or better yet, "scoffing".
Jareth shrugged, still looking discomfited, still sounding as if every word were being forced out of him at gunpoint. "If I had to guess, I'd say the Labyrinth thinks it's rewarding you by bringing you back here. You made a wish, didn't you?" he asked shrewdly.
She tried a noncommittal shrug. "Maybe. I might have. In passing. But this isn't exactly what I was wishing for. I mean, great, it brought me back, but I still don't get why it trapped us together if you're the one it's punishing. Which," she interrupted herself to add, " I don't get, either. Why punish you if you were both 'of like minds,' as you put it?"
The Goblin King let forth a long-suffering sigh before answering. "Because I let you leave when it clearly wanted you to stay. Because I failed to convince you to that I really did want you to stay and become my queen."
In a day of mind-blowing revelations, that one about took the top of her head off. "You mean you actually meant that, all that stuff you said when I was here before?"
Jareth offered a half shrug in response. "I realized after you'd returned home and I'd had time to allow my temper to cool that you were woefully unprepared for such an honor at the time. You were too young." A slight sneer lifted the corner of his lip. "I intended to approach you on your 25th birthday, give you ten years of boring mundanity, ten years of missing the Underground. Apparently the Labyrinth decided I was taking too long and took matters into its own hands, so to speak."
Sarah's head was whirling. "So," she said slowly, her eyes studying the pavement at Jareth's feet. "This is, what? The Labyrinth's version of…matchmaking?"
She waited for Jareth to scoff at her, to tell her she was misunderstanding what he was telling her…and another long silence told her that no, her interpretation of things was correct.
When he did finally speak, the words were almost incidental, although they cemented her certainties. "I intended to show you exactly what I had to offer you, Sarah, both my kingdom and my humble self. To make you want to be with me, to stay with me." A husky whisper: "To love me."
Which left Sarah wondering how she felt about having her deepest, darkest fantasies come true. If Jareth was telling the truth, if he really did want her "that way", as her high school friends would have put it, then where did that leave her?