"You have to focus, Sarah! You'll never get anywhere if you let your frustrations cloud your concentration."

Sarah grits her teeth and stares at her hand, willing it to create a crystal. Two weeks have gone by and she has yet to accomplish any kind of intentional magic. Of course, it isn't great for her concentration when Jareth flip flops between being outrageously flirty, aggravatingly irritating, and oddly distant. She can never predict which Jareth is going to show up in lessons and it's making it impossible for her to get any kind of grip on her magic. At least, that's what she tells herself. The tiny fear is creeping into her mind that this is taking so long because she's not meant to have this power. She never meant to be queen after all, and it could be that the magic is rejecting her. Jareth never offers much encouragement, just the occasional, "How do you expect to get any better when the slightest noise or bird in the window distracts that simple mind of yours?" Then she would glare at him and put everything she had into concentrating on producing some kind of magic so maybe she could wipe that cruel grin off his face.

Ever since that first night in their bedroom when Jareth had comforted her after her nightmare, he's been uncommonly cold, only speaking to her during their lessons and when some issue arises in the kingdom. Other than their lessons and when they go to sleep, he's conspicuously absent from her company. She never knows where he goes, but for hours when she's out in the city or in the library, Jareth is nowhere to be found. She never expected them to become close companions, but she never thought he would be so distant. Sarah knows she was rude after she told him her dream, but she couldn't forget how inhuman he had been. Just send Hoggle away because she had a bad dream about him? That took her completely off guard because, once again, she'd assumed Jareth would handle the situation like a human. The morning after, he'd begun this whole routine of ignoring her whenever possible and then turning his emotions on overload during the lessons. Sarah can't make sense of it. She never would have thought he'd be one to just back down, so she has to assume that he has some kind of purpose behind his behavior. Unless he's a spoiled brat who's just out of his element said Sarah's bitter half.

Despite their tumultuous relationship, the kingdom is doing better with the two of them working together. Jareth insisted on a weekly census of the goblin population and there's been a steady increase since his return. Hoggle, who has become a sort of personal assistant to the queen, remarked that it's a good thing goblins breed faster than they kill each other. Sarah smiles when she remembers how Hoggle reacted to seeing Jareth emerge from her bedroom that first morning when he came to wake her. Once he got over the shock and fear of seeing his king in the first place, it took a giant amount of convincing to make him understand that they were in the same room out of a twisted necessity and nothing more. Jareth just leaned against the doorframe and smiled at Hoggle with an evil glint in his eye. Hoggle met his glare with one of his own once Sarah told him Jareth did not have the ability to send him to the Bog.

Even with the goblins themselves thriving, however, the kingdom is far from healthy. The Labyrinth is growing worse by the day and goblins are actually reporting sections of walls falling, doing their best to crush whatever poor goblin got too close. Sarah took Jareth to see the Labyrinth that first day like he asked, and once he stood at the entrance and saw the white mist he went deathly still and stared at it for a long time. Sarah asked him if he'd ever seen anything like it before. He slowly shook his head. He told her that before a fae makes a bid for the goblin throne they train for years in magical theory, readying themselves to control the power of the Labyrinth and the ability to travel between worlds, an ability that only the goblin king or queen possesses. He'd never heard of a sovereign being crowned without fae magic already within them. A question nagged at the back of Sarah's mind, but she stomped it out in her panic at hearing how long it would take her to be able to control her magic. She insisted they begin her training immediately, and they did.

They're in a large empty room that was some sort of dining hall at one time. Now, it's a long chamber with windows lining each side and a long table pushed against the west wall with chairs scattered along the walls. Today, like every day since they started, Sarah was trying to conjure a crystal. Jareth says it's the most basic manifestation of the magic, but Sarah hasn't produced one since that day a man wished away his daughter, and that hadn't been intentional. Jareth is hard on her, offering her no encouragement and little direction. He tells her that if she concentrates on feeling a crystal in her hand, that one will appear. She's simply not trying hard enough. Sarah stares at her hands and then squeezes her eyes shut in the drive to concentrate, but no matter what she does, her hand remains stubbornly empty.

She heaves a frustrated sigh and Jareth moves to sit in one of the chairs against the wall. He leans his head to rest against the back of the chair and stretches his legs out to cross at the ankles. "Do you even want this, Sarah?" he asks.

She whips her head towards him. "Of course, I want this! Why the hell else would I stay in this room for hours with you if I didn't want to learn? Maybe if you were a better teacher, I'd be a little further on than when I started!"

She has an outburst like this at least once during their lessons. Jareth would either scream at her, storm out, or chuckle. Luckily, she gets amused Jareth today and he laughs at her. "I've told you everything you need to know. Concentrate, block everything else out of your mind, and you will feel your magic and be able to control it. Don't blame me for your weak mind," he finishes with a smile.

Sarah has had enough. She screams in frustration and storms toward him where he sits relaxed and amused. "You know what? I've had enough lessons for today, you arrogant bastard!"

"Careful, Sarah. One might think you're unladylike."

She turns on her heel and transports herself to the Goblin City. She had to get away from him or she might kill him. She has never met anyone in her life who was so damn irritating! Her breaths came in huffs of anger as goblins bustled about in the city. Each one who saw her would bow and offer her a drink or some food or their arm, anything they thought might please the queen. She loves them, but she needs to be alone to cool off. Her feet take her in the direction of the Labyrinth. She could just poof there, but she wanted the walk. She's so frustrated and as much as she wants to blame Jareth for her problems, she's frustrated mainly with herself. Maybe she never meant to be a queen, but she didn't stop the goblins from declaring her one. Now she has to live up to the title, and she isn't doing a good job of it. It isn't like she's not trying, but intentions don't mean a thing if there are no results.

It takes her a long time, but she finally finds herself at the North entrance of the Labyrinth. She stares into it, hoping for answers or some kind of epiphany. She doesn't enter, remembering what happened the last time she came into contact with that white mist. She sighs and turns right, walking along the outer wall. She walks for a long time, until the red sun starts to sink below the horizon. Just as she's about to take herself back to the castle, she spots a rose bush growing right at the edge. They look just like the roses from the Above, and she walks towards them in wonder. They're deep red and all of them are fully bloomed so that the red outweighs the green. Beautiful. Sarah reaches out to pick one of the roses, thinking how pretty it would look on the nightstand next to the bed. As her fingers close around the stem, she feels a sharp pain in her finger. She jerks it back, expecting to see blood from the thorn. Instead, she sees a thick purple gel seeping from her thumb. She collapses.

""""

Sarah disappears from the room and Jareth's smile drops from his face. He brings his hand up to pinch the bridge of his nose. This is becoming harder by the day to keep up. He just has to stall her until he can figure out a way to take his magic back. He can't afford her to have any more of these outbursts, but he can't afford her to think clearly, either. In a fit of rage, she could bring the castle down. However, the alternative is making her too strong to defeat. He's walking a fine line between destroying her and giving her the power to completely destroy him. He tells her to concentrate and control her emotions while doing everything he can to sabotage her. What else can he do?

Jareth rises from his seat to make his way to the dungeons once again. He doubts anyone has been down there in centuries. Sarah never had a need, he doubts she even knows about them, and no goblin would go down there willingly. Jareth hadn't been down in the dark rooms since the last challenge to his throne. He lights a torch before descending into the darkness behind the throne room. At the bottom of the stairs, he turns left down a narrow corridor and walks thirty paces before turning right into a seemingly solid stone wall. He emerges into the scroll room. The dungeons are beneath the part of the castle that collapsed, but thankfully this room survived. It holds the knowledge that each goblin king and queen has collected over the millennia. There is no set system to the scrolls, they seem to be organized by reign, not topic. As a result, Jareth has been painstakingly combing through each shelf of scrolls, spending hours down here. No one but the reigning sovereign knows of this room, and Jareth has been scouring it ever since he returned for any clue of how to regain his magic without killing the current monarch. He hasn't found anything, every time a king or queen had been named to the throne it had been by killing the previous one. The magic went to the victor. His face twists in pain as the truth seeps into him. It's his magic or Sarah. He can't have both. He slams his fist on the table. No. He hasn't even been through one tenth of this room, there has to be something. Nothing is absolute when it comes to magic.

It's been hours and Jareth hasn't come across anything of note. He sighs and takes his torch from the wall sconce, turning to make his way upstairs. When he emerges into the throne room, he sees that much more time has passed since he went into the scroll room than he thought. The windows are dark and the hall is filled with the flickering light of torches. He places his into a sconce next to the rear window and walks towards the staircase to the royal quarters. Before he can climb the first stair, a gravelly voice shouts rom his right, "Yer majesty! Sarah won't wake up!" Jareth whips his head towards the castle doors to see Sarah's dwarf standing in the opening, panting and gripping his chest, tears running down his cheeks.

"What?" His heart feels cold.

Hoggle scurries towards him and grabs his arm. Jareth is too caught up in what the dwarf has said to tell him to get his filthy hands off his sleeve. "Majesty, we been lookin' everywhere for ya. Sarah was walking along the Labyrinth today and some goblins saw her collapse by the wall. They drug her to the city and a bunch of em picked her up to get her to the castle," Hoggle starts sobbing. "We… we tried to wake her, but she wouldn't. I think… I think she might be…"

He falls to his knees and Jareth grabs a handful of his shirt, lifting him off the ground so that he's looking straight into his eyes when he growls, "Where is she?"

"The bedroom…"

Jareth drops the dwarf and races up the stairs. No, no, no.

He throws open the door to their room to find a horribly pale and still Sarah on their bed surrounded by goblins and one fox dressed as a knight who's crying at the foot of the bed. One goblin is standing on the bed next to her, shaking her arm and whining, "Queenie, queenie, wake up! Come on, ya majesty!"

Another is sitting on the edge of the bed, holding a wet washcloth to her face, tears running down her face. Jareth runs to the bed, scattering goblins as he goes. He shoves the one with the washcloth to the side and reaches out to push the one shaking Sarah's arm clean off the bed. He shrieks and topples out of sight. Jareth looks down at Sarah for a long second, noting the abnormal plum shade of her lips and the harsh darkness under her closed eyelids. He starts to shake. He reaches out to place a hand to her forehead, feeling how cold she is. His jaw clenches as he puts his ear to her chest and hears, very faintly, the beat of her heart. He almost melts with relief. She's alive, but for how much longer he doesn't know. He turns to the goblins and demands, "Which of you knows what happened?"

The goblin that he pushed off the bed popped his head up from the other side of it to shout, "I does! I was just puttin' some gum into the crack on me goblin house when I sees queenie at the wall of the Labyrinth. She was lookin' at a red bush and went to touch a flower thingy and she fells."

"What kind of flower? Tell me exactly."

"Well, it's red with some petals. It bits her or somethin'."

Jareth's stomach drops. He reaches for Sarah's left hand and, seeing it clean, moves to the right. There on her finger, a purple sludge oozes from her skin. He reaches back to her face to pull up her eyelid. Instead of white surrounding the green of her irises, there is a deep purple. Just then, Hoggle bursts into the room. He runs to stand next to Jareth. "Is she… is she…?"

"She's alive, but not for long. I need whoever is fastest to run to the North edge of the Labyrinth and get some of the petals from the red flowers growing there."

Sir Didymus rushes from around the bed to say, "On Ambrosius, it is I who is the fastest. I will do this for Lady Sarah!"

Jareth kneels down to say in a rush, "You must go as quickly as you can and be careful not to touch the thorns. Only the petals. Gather as many as you can."

The knight nods and races form the room, the bark of a dog drifting back to where the queen lay motionless. It's only after the fox leaves and Jareth goes back to stroking Sarah's face that the practical part of his mind speaks up. Is he going to save her? Why? He could let this happen, and it wouldn't be his fault. She would have died by her own hand and the magic would be his… and he would be without her. No, there's another way. There has to be. It won't end like this. He turns to the dwarf.

"I will need a mortar and pestle and warm water."

Things are getting pretty sketchy in the Underground. I need your reviews, guys! Please?