Chapter 4

It hurt for longer than a moment.

Sarah opened her eyes and immediately sensed that her body was in a strange position, her limbs stiff and jutting out at odd angles. She could vaguely make out her old bedroom around her and felt that she was on the bed, but when she tried to move her arms and legs resisted, as if they'd been dipped in cement that had hardened. She tried to speak but all that escaped was a low moan.

"Be patient." Jareth's voice was maddeningly nonchalant, almost bored. "It wears off. Try moving your fingers first."

Sarah unleashed a torrent of the foulest curses she could think of—or tried to. The result was just another moan, this one slightly louder and more agitated.

Jareth sighed. "Move your fingers, Sarah."

It was remarkable how strong the desire was to resist him, just out of spite. But if she wasn't able to move soon, she wouldn't be able to strangle him. And maybe leave some scratches on his perfect face.

She moved her fingers and felt a slight, tingly response. She tried again and was able to coax her hand into a fist.

"Now your toes."

Infuriated that she couldn't roll her eyes yet, Sarah obeyed and felt her feet responding. She straightened one leg and gasped at the ache in her joints.

"Keep going. Your voice will be the last thing to recover, by the way." She could practically feel him smirking. "I assure you that's purely a coincidence."

When Sarah was finally able to turn her neck she saw that Jareth was seated at her vanity mirror reading her copy of Outside Over There. She pulled herself up into a seated position on her bed, trying to ignore the shooting pains in almost every single joint in her body. She opened her mouth to speak but found that her throat was still raw.

"I must say, this young lady is a lot more noble than the girls who usually end up in my labyrinth," Jareth said, flipping a page of the book. "She doesn't wish her baby sister away, the poor moppet just gets taken by goblins, which seems highly unfair. There are rules, after all, even I'm allowed to bend them as I see f—"

Sarah launched herself at the Goblin King and knocked him out of the chair onto the floor. Her hands went for his throat, but her movements were still sluggish, and all she succeeded in doing was pawing his neck inelegantly.

He laughed and wrapped his arms around her, kissing her cheek. She shivered in spite of herself. "If you wanted to play, Sarah, you could have just asked. No, I'm sorry, that's not fair, your voice isn't fully recovered yet. Still…" He glanced down at her hands, which were still digging awkwardly at his chest and neck as though they were moving through water. "Your technique could use some polishing."

Her voice was a croak. "What…did you…do to me?"

Jareth casually pushed her off of him and sat her up against her bed. "You needed something from me. It was easier for me to give it to you here. Thus I brought you here. I decided that the unfortunate side effects were a reasonable cost."

"Oh, that's wonderful." Her voice was recovering quickly, possibly helped by anger. "Do you frequently make unilateral decisions about other people's bodies?"

The look he gave her was genuinely surprised. "I am a king, Sarah."

She sighed. "You couldn't have asked? Just a basic, 'Sarah, do you mind if I drag you into an alternate space and time and wreak temporary havoc on your limbs?'"

He considered this. "Yes, I suppose I could have asked. But you have a tendency to overthink everything, Sarah, and then neither of us would have gotten what we wanted."

Sarah groaned and managed to stand up—her limbs were a bit wobbly, but they at least seemed to be working again. "I'm assuming there's a way for me to get back? I've got a play opening tomorrow night, you know—"

"Yes, I'm aware of your creative obligations, and "creative" certainly seems an apt term for that collection of purple prose and ill-formed latex costuming that you're a part of."

Sarah grimaced and then felt ridiculous. Hadn't she just told Julia that the play was terrible?

Jareth adjusted his clothes and hair slightly where they'd been rumpled in the fall. "You'll be home before the stroke of midnight, dearest. Plenty of time to enjoy the ball."

"If you think I'm going anywhere near another one of your peaches—"

"Yes, yes, we've established that you're outraged by my behavior. Outrage…almost as fascinating as guilt, really. Mortals do love to wallow in indignation." Jareth produced a crystal from the air and idly tossed it from hand to hand. "Based on the fact that we're in this room, though, I'd wager you're not so interested in ballroom peach dreams at the moment."

Sarah took in the entirety of the room for the first time and realized that while it was definitely her childhood bedroom, something was…wrong. Not the way that the green room had been wrong in her dream, but just slightly different. Unhomely, her sophomore English lit professor might have called it.

The whole room smelled vaguely of smoke, as if a fire had just been put out. The books on the shelves were positioned at odd angles. The wallpaper seemed to be peeling. There was a layer of grime covering the pictures of her mother and Jeremy on the vanity mirror. And on the floor…

Sarah cried out. The small figures of Hoggle, Ludo, and Didymus lay at her feet, but they were broken—Hoggle's metal form bent and twisted, Ludo and Didymus's stuffed bodies torn, the white stuffing scattered.

Sarah felt like she was looking at a murder scene. She knelt on the floor and gingerly picked up pieces of cloth, stuffing, and metal, with the faint hope that, given the not-quite-real nature of this place behind the mirror, she could magically fuse the pieces together. And that in doing so the real Hoggle, Ludo, and Didymus would be before her, thrilled to see her again.

But of course that didn't happen, and as she cradled the broken figures she felt a sick weight in her stomach, her mind dancing dangerously close to a memory that she hadn't revisited in a very long time.

Jareth regarded her silently from across the room. Sarah stroked the feather from Didymus's hat.

"They just stopped coming. They were there in the mirror, whenever I needed them, and they were happy to see me. And then one day when I called they weren't there anymore."

She heard Jareth laugh and looked up in anger. "What's so damn funny?"

"Lie to yourself if you must, Sarah, but don't lie to someone who can see inside you."

He produced another crystal, and Sarah could make out movement inside of it. She reached for it and he pulled it away.

"What's in there?"

He spun the crystal around on the tip of his finger. "You need to feel something, precious. I believe this is a good place to start."

He held out the crystal to her, and Sarah was reminded of his other offers that she'd refused years before, refusals she'd known had been right at the time but had wondered about for a long time after. She eyed the crystal warily.

He held it closer to her face. "I'm not offering this one in exchange for your brother, Sarah. Just look."

Sarah looked. The image inside seemed to fill her field of vision like a film screen.

She saw her bedroom in a state of disarray, large bags on the floor, the built-in shelves empty of their stuffed animals. She and Rachel (I always said I would get in touch with her and I never did, why didn't I) were sorting things into different piles. Rachel wore tight jeans and a crop top and had permed hair with large hoop earrings. Sarah's younger self was dressed in a way that she now recognized as having one foot in childhood and one foot in semi-adulthood: hair still long and cascading over her shoulders, dangly bracelets on her wrists, cutoff jean shorts and a v-neck shirt that hugged her curves. Her lips were glossed a light pink, but she wore no other make-up. Rachel wore thick eyeliner, bright red lipstick, and bright red blush.

Rachel was sorting through books. She held up the same copy of Outside Over There that Jareth had been reading earlier.

"Keep, toss, donate?"

The younger Sarah looked at the pile of books. "All of those can go in the donate pile. Actually…" She grabbed her copy of Where the Wild Things Are. "I'll keep this one for Toby."

Rachel laughed. "You give that kid everything."

Younger Sarah didn't meet her friend's gaze. "He's a good kid."

Sarah heard Jareth chuckle and gave him a dirty look. He sighed and went to stand by the window, letting her have the vision to herself, though she knew he'd seen it all before.

Rachel moved to a pile of stuffed animals. Sarah saw Lancelot on top. "I'm guessing these are for him as well?"

"Just the bear." Younger Sarah sorted through them briefly, her fingers resting for a second longer on Didymus, Ludo, and the firey before quickly moving them into a bag.

"This room is going to be so awesome when we're done with it," Rachel said, tossing a tinfoil tiara and a few pieces of worn-looking costume jewelry into a throwaway pile. Sarah chuckled with the knowledge that she'd re-purchase a lot of these things years later, when the desire to be grown-up faded a little. "I know this shop with great batiks, you can hang them on the walls, we can get rid of these curtains on the bed, they make it look sort of like a cradle…"

Sarah watched herself listening with rapt attention to the friend who had always seemed so sophisticated and now seemed, like any teenager viewed by an adult, so very, very young. Everything is ahead of us even though we think everything's behind us.

After all the bags had been filled Rachel hoisted a few of them over her shoulder. "Shall we stop by Goodwill first?"

"Sure. I'll be down in a minute, just need to see if I missed anything."

Rachel nodded and closed the door, and Sarah watched her teenage self change when her friend left the room. Her eyes looked slightly haunted. She sat down on her bed and then stood up again, pacing the room. She pulled several items out of a bag, held them to her chest, and put them back in the bag.

She went and sat in front of the vanity mirror and opened the drawers. Slowly, carefully, she pulled out pictures and clippings of her mother and spread them out on the desk. She ran her fingers over each one. Finally, she reached deep into the back of the side drawer and pulled out the red book.

Sarah ran her fingers over the crystal as if she could reach in and touch the girl inside.

That girl clutched the book and the photos to her chest and crumpled into herself, her body shaking, hair falling in a dark curtain over her face. She seemed to stay in that position for a very long time, though Sarah knew that it couldn't have been very long.

And then the vanity mirror shimmered slightly, and Sarah gasped to see Ludo and Didymus and Hoggle there, their eyes full of concern.

Ludo was the first to speak. "Sarah…need?"

Didymus pushed himself to the front. "Verily, my lady! Your steadfast companions were concerned for your well-being, as we had not been summoned in quite some time."

The younger Sarah's head snapped up like a whip. She backed away from the mirror, dropping the photos and the book on the floor.

Hoggle put his hands on his hips, eyeing her tear-streaked face. "Somebody been hurtin' you, Sarah?"

No. The adult Sarah closed her eyes. You little fool, don't—

"I didn't call you."

The younger Sarah was staring at the mirror with a stony expression. Hoggle and Ludo looked immediately taken aback, but Didymus marched obliviously onward.

"Tis true, my lady, thou didst not use words, but thy need spoke to us from thy heart—"

"I didn't need you." Younger Sarah was clenching her fists. "I don't need you. Any of you."

Didymus's eternally can-do expression seemed to wilt off of his face. Ludo gave a gasp of surprise, and Hoggle crossed his arms.

"Well, it ain't like we got nothin' else to do around here. Just thought you could use some friends right now, what with—"

She turned her back on the mirror, and Sarah saw tears begin to flow freely down her cheeks, though she worked hard to keep her voice neutral. "Go away."

Sarah couldn't bear to look at them, Ludo with his expression of utter confusion, Didymus repeatedly starting to speak but then thinking better of it, Hoggle playing at anger when she knew how hurt he must have been.

"You say them words again, you can't take 'em back."

The girl in the crystal shut her eyes tightly and bit her lip. "I don't need you."

When she turned around to face the mirror, they were gone.

She stood staring at the mirror for a long time, reaching toward it and then backing away, then reaching toward it again, still crying. After a few minutes a car horn honked from down below.

The younger Sarah wiped her eyes quickly and knelt down to gather the photos and the red book that had fallen on the floor. She was about to put them back in the drawer and then paused, glancing between the desk and the bags on her bed.

She closed her eyes, shook her head vigorously, and threw the book and the photos into a garbage bag.

The image in the crystal faded. Sarah realized she was clutching it tightly and her palm was sweating. At some point she'd sunk to the floor next to her bed. Her arms fell limp at her sides, and the crystal rolled across the floor.

"I didn't mean it," she whispered.

Jareth turned to regard her from the window. "Surely you know by now that that doesn't change the consequences, Sarah."

"I was a child. I was stupid. Why didn't they ever come back?"

Jareth sighed. "Because you told the truth, though you could have been much less cruel about it."

"Cruel?" Sarah stood up, feeling her face grow hot. "Are you seriously calling me cruel?"

"Yes. Because you were cruel, in that moment." He smiled in a way that made her skin crawl.

How many times did you watch that little scene, I wonder?

She glared at him. "I was a child."

"You were old enough to know what you were doing."

"I was n—what the hell am I doing? Why am I defending myself to someone who takes pleasure in mortal pain? Sorry to spoil your midnight fantasies, Jareth, but my cruelty was a mistake. A one-off. For you it's a goddamn hobby."

Jareth rolled his eyes. "I don't take pleasure in mortal pain, Sarah. I find amusement in some varieties of it, it's true. But there's little joy in it. You cast me as evil when I'm mostly indifferent."

"Oh, that's much better. That makes you supremely qualified to judge the actions of a teenage girl."

He reached out and touched her cheek, and she felt that tingling sensation again, as if a current were traveling back and forth between them. "It must have felt good, for a moment."

She slapped his hand away. "What?"

"To genuinely believe that you needed no one." He touched her cheek again, and the current felt stronger. "To feel powerful."

His eyes pierced hers and Sarah couldn't look away from them. For once there was no smugness or exasperation in his expression.

Sarah felt sick with the vividness of the memory. It had felt good. And then it had felt horrible, and the momentary sense of being powerful hadn't been worth it at all. The sick feeling spread from her stomach through her limbs and mixed with a deep, deep sadness that made her throat constrict and her eyes well up, and she felt both terrified and exhilarated at the thought of being swallowed by feeling for the first time in ages.

It wouldn't happen, though. She grabbed a pillow from the bed and threw it across the room, then pulled her own hair, then kicked the bed, cried out in pain, and sank down to the floor again. Jareth watched her curiously for a moment and then sat down next to her.

She started to punch the bedframe and Jareth grabbed her wrist. She punched with her other hand and he grabbed that one too, pinning both arms against the side of her bed. She cried out in frustration.

"What do you care if I punch my knuckles bloody?"

He gripped her wrists more tightly, and she winced. "If it's physical pain that you need, Sarah, say so."

She groaned. It wasn't what she needed at all, and he knew it. She took a deep breath.

"Help me. Please."

Jareth sighed and let go of her arms. "I can't bring them back, Sarah, you said the words—"

"No, not that." She ran a hand through her hair. He would make this difficult. "Look, I don't know exactly how this works, I just know that you need to be needed and grant people's wishes and I need to feel and something about you…touching me makes me able to feel, and if I can't feel anything after watching what I just watched then I might as well be dead, so yes, I'll say the words again, I need you." She heard his sharp intake of breath and felt warmth radiating from him. "I need you to help me feel something other than rage. Please."

Jareth reached for her and then pulled away. "I believe you said something regarding unilateral decisions about mortal bodies—"

"Just fucking kiss me, Jareth."

His lips were on hers before she'd finished saying his name, hungry and forceful, his fingers gripping the sides of her face and twining through her hair. She felt a rush of heat and an ache that was familiar, but also something else, a sense of something opening up and releasing a trickle of feeling that quickly became a flood, and as he kissed her lips and cheeks and throat and his hands took in more of her she felt her vast reserves of anger momentarily overtaken by something else. It was a feeling that hurt, but it was a sweet kind of hurt, like something from childhood that she'd missed and thought she might never feel again, and she could feel how much she'd needed it and feel him drinking in that need, and then she was crying, real tears and real sobs that shook her body, and he let her go and she shook and wept for a long time on the floor.

She didn't know how long she stayed there, but at some point her tears were dry and her throat felt parched, but there was a strange lightness in her limbs that hadn't been there before. She stood up and caught her reflection in the vanity mirror, and for a split second she looked like a teenager again, staring into an empty mirror and regretting the words she'd spoken to Hoggle, Ludo, and Didymus almost as much as she'd regretted wishing Toby away.

She reached out and touched the mirror's surface. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I was cruel. I'm sorry."

Jareth cocked his head at her. "They can't hear you."

Sarah sighed. "Yes, genius, I'm aware of that." She touched the mirror's surface again. "It still helps."

He smiled and shook his head. "Fascinating."

She shrugged. "Lots of people talk to people who aren't there."

"Yes, but you're still—." He looked away and produced another crystal, moving it from hand to hand. "It's still fascinating."

Sarah watched him sitting in the windowsill, moving the crystal deftly through his fingers. He had a slight glow about him, a bit of color in his cheeks, not as much darkness under his eyes. He still radiated aloofness, but he was also pointedly avoiding her gaze.

Can't say he has no power over me…but maybe I have just a little over him.

Sarah could see movement inside the crystal he was playing with. "Do I want to know what's in that one?"

He smiled."Another time, precious. Now I believe we should return you to the other side of the mirror in time for that great theatrical catastrophe that only the mad and your closest relations will be willing to sit through."

Sarah snorted. "It's not that bad."

"I have read goblin poetry and watched fireys perform musical versions of classic tragedies. It is most definitely that bad, Sarah."

"Fine, fine. So how do I get back home? Can I maybe just…carefully crawl through the mirror this time?"

Jareth adjusted his gloves. "I'm afraid not."

Sarah blinked. "What do you—"

He moved with alarming speed, his hands gripping her shoulders and lifting her off the ground, and she screamed as she felt herself hurtling straight for the mirror…

Sarah opened her eyes to find herself yet again curled into a strange position and unable to move. She was in her own bedroom in her own apartment, at least. The clock on her bedside table showed that it was just a few minutes after five pm.

Everything hurt again. She heard herself moan.

You are so dead, Goblin King.

Sarah wiggled her fingers and prayed that Julia wouldn't choose this moment to knock on her door.

Author's note: Thanks as always for the reads, reviews, and follows! To Lylabeth 1, I'll agree that yes, the story has its grim side, but without spoiling the overall direction I will say that I'm not going nihilistic / burn-it-all-down with this. And to the anonymous reviewer, thank you for the comments about therapy being normalized and things being hopeful. Labyrinth has always had a lot of "work through your issues" themes for me, and I was curious to see what would happen if I blended those themes with a bit of JxS. Chapter 5 coming soon!