A/N: Hey it's me again. I hope you guys aren't minding the small break we are taking from Sarah and Jareth. It won't be too much longer before the main event, I assure you. In fact, after this one, there will be only one more pre-ball chapter. So, get ready, because things are winding up nicely.

Disclaimer: I disclaim the Labyrinth movie, and any characters from it.

Chapter Twenty: Training Wheels

Arcadia was nothing before.

Well, technically she was something, but legally she was nothing. A servant, born to serve. She could leave at any time, of course. The High Court thought slaves beneath them. But her mother had been lower class, living and dying in poverty. If she left she would be a commoner, a poor peasant, destined to live and die that same way.

Servitude was better than that, at least. Arcadia had always believed so.

She was a pretty thing, so pretty that the brothels had shown interest long before she was even old enough to process what they did. Of course, they didn't attempt to gain her favor then, as she was young, and the king would not tolerate such depravity.

When she was older though, still a teenager in the eyes of her kind, they propositioned her. She responded with a level of disgust uncommon for those of her position. (That is not to say they accepted, but the money was good and they were treated kindly by the owners, so most at least considered it.)

She was not even important enough to work in the palace, at the time. She worked for some cruel lord, a twisted man who often beat his servants mercilessly. Eventually he would be put to death for killing one of his maids, and Arcadia would be picked up by the castle.

Her first days at the castle were dull. She did the same chores she would have done for the lord, minus the occasional beatings. She hardly got on with the other maids, who had worked in the castle far longer than her. They whispered that she had only been hired because of her pretty face, and that that was all there was to her.

Many of them were very pretty, but it was the same dull beauty that every faerie girl had.

Arcadia was borne of and elf and a higher fey. That in itself was not wholly unusual. Mixed breeds happened. Those sired by lesser fey were lesser. Those sired by commoners were commoners. They were accepted into society by most, and treated as normally as any other fey.

Arcadia was not like other mixed breeds.

Her mother had been an elf servant to a fey lord, and had been released from her position when she became pregnant with his child. The lord himself was married, and his wife demanded Arcadia's mother be fired and forced into the streets. She survived the birth, barely, and raised her odd little thing, so pretty and different, up on the streets. When her mother died of some illness or another, Arcadia took up any work available.

But her oddity lied in her looks. Most half-breeds favor either one race or another, but Arcadia seemed the perfect blend. Her eyes were black as coal, like an elf's, but they held the glittering markings of the faeries, hers showing up smoky and sheer. Her skin was pale, her ears high points. Her cheekbones were sharp, even when she was young and healthy.

Her hair was like black silk, and her fingers had an extra joint.

She was an oddity. It only made sense that she caught the eye of the young prince Jareth.

He caught her eye too.

But then, he caught most girls' eyes, that Jareth. And quite a few boys'. He was the perfect specimen of fey royalty, with his wild blonde hair and piercing, mismatched eyes.

Then there was the wild magic he'd gained over the years, so different from the controlled magic of his mother and father. He was destined for great things, it was clear to all who looked upon him.

But at the time, he was young and stupid. He liked to toy with the hearts that pined for him. He never allowed things to become serious, because he was not searching for a bride or groom. He searched only for the occasional bed-mate, like many other noble youth before him.

Arcadia had been young and stupid in a different way. She saw Jareth's ways, saw him explain again and again that he would not stay. Saw those who thought like her suffer when he left.

She thought she could change his ways, make him fall for her. She thought that she could make him grow up faster.

She could not, of course, because things do not work like that even in the Underground.

She used her beauty to try and ensnare him. And to be fair, it worked for a bit. He was enraptured by her loveliness. They lay together often. So often that she started to forget her servant status, growing comfortable in his arms and in his bed.

People talked, of course, because that is what people do. She was his longest fling, but in the end that was all it was to him.

She misunderstood his intentions. He'd never lied to any of the people he bedded, he let them know he was not a romantic.

When he moved on to someone new, finally tiring of Arcadia's unique beauty, she was heartbroken. She lay in bed for three days before the threat of dismissal forced her up. She did try to move on, but every time she saw him her heart tore again.

Arcadia had never been like any other woman. Arcadia had always had a tiny twist of something dark in her, or else she would not have done as she did. None of Jareth's other flings ever did such terrible things.

Arcadia fled the castle one night, shortly after Jareth left to explore the world outside his parents' kingdom. Both were still so young, children nearly, and yet both were grown.

She moved to the elves' kingdom, sleeping in the streets for days, but eventually she moved on from even there. She moved out into the wild lands, past all safety.

She was in the most twisted, evil part of the lands, where nothing grew and nothing lived, when she came across a shock.

A small grove of dead trees, surrounding a crystal clear lake.

She stepped through the trees, shaking slightly and yelping when the branches caught her dress.

When she reached the water, she knelt down, staring at her reflection. She was dirty and worn, her skin tight around her face. She'd lost weight, so her beauty was less, though her cheek-bones were sharper, more pronounces in her sunken cheeks.

She was parched from her long walk, so she broke her reflection with cupped palms and drank, and drank.

And then there was pain. Agony, truly. She should have known that even the clearest lake would be deadly if found within the wastes.

She lay on the ground for what could have been hours, writhing, clawing her throat and chest and making the most pitiful noises, like an injured animal.

It hurt far too much for screaming.

And then, there were shadows. Tendrils, caressing her, hissing slightly. They paused at the deep lines she'd clawed into her chest, lapping up the blood that wells there. They wrapped around her, and the pain dulled so that she might hear them when they spoke to her.

"Arcadia." A sharp hissing voice spoke from around and within her, caressing her senses in such a way that her flesh crawled delightfully. "You are dying, now. We come with an offering. A gift."

Arcadia sobbed freely, though she no longer jerked in the dirt,

"We will save you. If you deny us you will feel the brunt of your pain for days, possibly weeks, before it kills you. If you accept our offer, you will live as long as you serve us."

There was a pause in the voice, as though it was allowing Arcadia to process what she was told, before it continued in that same hissing whisper.

"What we want, lovely thing, is a host. We need you to rule us, be our queen. Raise a kingdom here, where this lake stands, and feed us life-magic and life-blood. You must kill for us, sweet thing, to bind the deal. Kill one of the prince's whores, like you always wishes to do in secret. Bring her here and kill her, and you will rule these lands. Do you accept our offer?"

Arcadia had wished death on those girls, but she could never kill. She shook her head violently, and the shadows seemed to sigh in disappointment.

The full brunt of her pain returned as they began to retract, and Arcadia broke. Something in her shattered, never to be whole again.

"I'll do it!" She screamed, tears cutting lines in the dirt on her cheeks. "Just end this! I will do as you ask!"

There was a soft laughter all around her, and then the tendrils were everywhere. They tangled themselves in her legs, wrapped her chest in their dark vines, and slipped around her neck, up her jaw.

"Open." They hissed when they brushed her lips, and she did.

It hurt, at first. Not in the same way the lake water hurt, but there was a pain all the same. It was cold and cutting, like a dagger in her lungs and chest. Her blood chilled, changed to suit the dark things within her. They were twisting, corrupting. They stopped before they reached her brain, but she knew the rest of her was changed for good.

"Now we must fetch ourselves one of His whores." They whispered, and Arcadia shuddered as she sat up, noting the filth clinging to her body.

She was going to have to kill someone in order to live.

Arcadia may have held a spark of something twisted within her before, but she could never have become the thing she was without something tragic happening.

The girl was named something stupid. Gissete? Jezel? Something with a J sound, Arcadia thought. She'd been pretty enough, definitely one of the dimmer girls in the kingdom.

She was the one Jareth left Arcadia for.

She'd fallen quite easily for the line Arcadia fed her about an injured child in the wastes. They journeyed there together, alone, and Arcadia was quite thankful that the foolish young fey had been visiting the elves when Arcadia had gone looking for her. She might have had time to grab a guard or ten if Arcadia had had to travel all the way back to the High Court's kingdom.

When they reached the grove, the girl seemed surprised.

"I thought all was dead here." She mumbled, and Arcadia nodded in agreement, pretending to be just as confused.

"I thought so too, but it turns out we were wrong. Come, you must be thirsty, we have time to break for a sip of the water." At the girl's concerned expression Arcadia continued. "I tasted the water when I last was here, it is safe."

Arcadia led the girl to the lake and watched as she sipped it's evil liquid.

When the poor, daft thing fell down screaming, Arcadia cut her throat.

She convinced herself that it was out of mercy, not desperation, and she looked away when the shadows- her shadows- sprung out and began absorbing the blood. When they brushed her lips moments later, they parted automatically.

She nearly gagged at the taste of the dead girl's blood in her mouth, but then something happened. Something changed.

She changed.

She felt the shadows altering her, physically and not. Inky fog wrapped around her brain, warping all it touched to the point of no return, and then passing that point completely. Arcadia dropped to her knees in the dirt, staring into the lake waters as the shadows twisted her. Changed her.

Her reflection was different now. Her hair was longer, her eyes somehow blacker. What color there had been in her skin was gone, giving her the pallor of death. She seemed to grow thinner as she watched. But at the same time, she seemed to gain a regal look to her features. She looked like a queen.

And as the fog faded from her mind, she felt like one. And she knew the right magic to make her kingdom grow. She knew the right magic to spread fear and gain servants. She would rule the lands she stood on, and Jareth would wish he had loved her.

Arcadia leaned back on the ground, staring at her new kingdom, and then she threw back her head and laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

I actually want to delve into Arcadia's uprising a bit more, but I cannot as this feels like the end of this chapter. Perhaps Jareth and Sarah will discuss it in the next?