Sarah gazed at the crystal Jareth held, her crystal of trapped grief. She knew Howl required an answer, but this was personal, damn it, why did her personal emotions have to become a lesson in magic?
"What is there to do about that?" she asked in resignation. "I'm sad. I'm angry. I love my mother and want to hate her for leaving but can't. I should hate Jeremy, but he makes my mother so happy that I can't! I hate Karen because my father and I were a team and she broke us apart. I was left alone. Everyone had someone, but me."
"What of Merlin?" Jareth asked his eyes distant as if he were reviewing her family.
Sarah gasped as her breath hitched, even years later she bitterly missed him.
"He's a dog and he died!"
"Ah," Howl declared with too much understanding for her comfort. "You're afraid of being left behind. This grief is the panic and terror that you'd be alone, or worse, that you'd do just that to another."
"I will!" Sarah gasped and grabbed Jareth's arm and shook him, before he neatly twisted out of her grasp. "He's going to live for centuries! I've got what, eighty years, I can't help it. Then what, he's going to be stuck like I was? It's not fair!"
She was crying again and Howl just awkwardly fidgeted with the ring on his finger.
"I do believe," Jareth cut in snidely, "that we've had this conversation before."
Sarah sniffed and dashed her hand across her face.
"Don't you give me that now! Not when I've told you every painful truth! Don't you dare sweep it aside as if it is nothing!"
"I hardly said that, precious thing," he leaned in and growled at her. "I do still wonder what your basis for comparison is."
"You! You fuzzy haired fairy king! You're immortal! I'm mortal! How is that fair?"
"It isn't," he said.
"Hah!"
"That is," he continued over her, "because it is not done to compare apples to oranges."
"But I'll die," she sniffed, "and where will that leave you?"
"With eighty years of the most wondrous time of my life."
Sarah stared up at him, her eyes filling with tears again.
"You're not allowed to be so nice. You're not allowed to just dismiss it!"
"And just what am I allowed? To ignore your pain? To ignore your light and joy? I count myself wealthier beyond the plains and all within for having spent just an hour in your presence. Can you imagine what eighty years can grant?"
"Sixty, I'm twenty soon," she hiccuped.
"Sixty," Jareth snarled.
She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and sniffed.
She didn't see the wretched conflicted expression that Jareth struggled to hide. Howl handed her a handkerchief. She used it briefly then tucked it into her pocket when he gestured for her to keep it.
She stood not wanting to look at Jareth, yet at the same time wanted to hug him senseless. She shuffled over and leaned against him. He just leaned into her and curled over to rest his head on hers. He brought up the crystal and held it out to her.
"You need to deal with this."
She could feel his jaw move against her hair.
She took the crystal. It felt just like any other crystal of his that she had ever held, smooth, cool like glass to the touch. He planted a kiss on the top of her head and stepped back.
She grasped it with both hands and after a moment shook it. She tried looking in it, but there was no dream inside it to see. She turned to Jareth questioningly.
"What do I do with it?"
"You trapped it, you will be the one to release it," he explained.
She smiled as she realised she just had to speak the words.
"Release!" She called as she bounced the globe up above her palm.
A blast of crackling fury and light crashed into her and flung her almost ten feet across the lawn. Jareth, who had been closer was picked up and tumbled across the remains of the house foundations. Howl slammed into the neighbour's fence with a hefty thump, knocking that section of slats flat. Sarah scrambled dizzily to her feet. Her back and elbows were bruised where she landed and she was mostly winded. She coughed, half crying half choking for air as she staggered across to Jareth.
Car alarms went off and the neighbours put on all the lights and a man dressed in what must have been his wife's pink dressing gown stumbled outside with a shotgun.
He saw Howl struggling to get out of his fence, all flickering glowing blue light.
"What the hell are you neighbourhood kids at!" he brawled at them as Sarah stumbled past the orb had once been. It now fizzed brilliant white like a flare in the middle of the yard.
"I'm calling the police!" he roared. "That is private property you're trespassing on!"
"That would be mine!" Howl croaked and finally got free of the fence.
"Jareth?" Sarah scrambled up onto the foundation and pulled him up into a sitting position. He was awkwardly heavy, but helped when he realised what she wanted. He gave her a fuzzy cross-eyed stare. "Ugh, you're concussed. Come on, get up! We can't be here when the cops arrive!"
She dragged him to his feet and almost fell over as he leaned too heavily against her. Howl yelled something in Welsh, cussed in the same language then staggered across to the flaming globe.
"Wards have fallen?" he said muzzily then saw the flaming orb and almost ran directly off the foundations. Sarah yanked them across to the steps just in time and it was all she could do to keep him upright in his flight. Jareth reached the flaring orb just before Howl. He stamped on it with his foot, killing the light, grabbed Howl by the scruff of his neck and all around them reality fell away like rain washing a chalk drawing from a wall.
.
They all crashed down into pitch darkness onto a cold sandy floor.
Howl pushed them away, cussing in Welsh. Jareth fell to his knees and groaned in a language she had never heard, but it made eerie slips of purple light like that of an aurora flicker around him for a moment then vanish.
"Sarah, where is it?" Howl barked at her. He was somewhere in front of her in the pitch darkness. Jareth was somewhere to her right.
"What?" She called back.
"Your orb of pent up magic! What were you thinking? Oh, don't answer that, you clearly weren't!"
"Well excuse me for having rubbish teachers!" she spat back, furious.
"Where is it!" Howl snapped.
"I don't know! Jareth stood on it!"
"Leave it!" Jareth hissed hoarsely as if in pain.
She didn't blame him with the concussion he had.
"It's going to explode on us if we don't diffuse it!" Howl growled at him.
"Not," Jareth said blearily. "Is Oubliette."
"What's an Oubliette?" Howl asked his voice going sharp with panic.
"A place to forget about a person. There are hundreds in the Labyrinth," Sarah said, realising what Jareth had done.
"The Labyrinth!" Howl yelped. "We're in the Labyrinth! You idiot why did you bring us here! No wonder my magic is all haywire." There was a scuff of sand as Howl scrambled about in the darkness. "You! Goblin King! Quit with the magic suppression!"
"Tha's wha' 'e Oubliette's for!" Jareth slurred. "Drains magic to Lab'rinth. Make it 'er own."
"Hoggle said they were for –"
"And Hogeth knows anything 'bout magicaa, magial," Jareth lapsed into another language in frustration.
"Be silent!" Howl barked and to her surprised struck a light, he held up a burning match and they found that they were in a circular stone room with a pale sandy floor. There were the remains of a ladder some fifteen feet above their heads. Various crates were lying where they had fallen from the opening in the ceiling some twenty feet above them. They could see stars in the night sky and felt the cool summer air drift in.
Sarah saw blood dripping down her sleeve and grimaced at the nasty graze on her elbow. She hissed as it suddenly doubled its burning pain now that she'd seen it. Howl's clothes were singed and torn and he had a fairly nasty head wound if the blood matting his hair was anything to go by. It was Jareth that concerned them the most. He lay curled on his side, twitching slightly, his eyes glassy and unfocused and strange pale blood soaking his shirt.
"Jareth!" Sarah whispered and immediately came to his side.
"Don't touch him!" Howl snapped, and hastily leaned close.
"Goblin King can you hear me?" Howl asked in a voice that demanded a response.
Jareth turned to him.
"'emon mage."
"Yes, that's me," Howl sounded relieved. "How do we get out of here? Where is a safe place for you while injured?"
"'as'le."
"Castle, beyond the goblin city," Sarah explained. "You have to run the Labyrinth to get there though!"
"Anywhere nearer?" Howl panicked. "How far is this omelette thing we're in to the castle?"
"'oo, 'iles."
"Two miles? That's going to take forever with us having to lug you! Any friends nearby?" Howl asked.
"Sa'a."
"Yes, Sarah. Anyone else?"
There was silence as Jareth's eyes rolled back in his head.
Howl let out several vile cusses in Welsh then took a sharp shuddering breath to focus. The flame on the match stick burned steadily lower.
"Sarah, go and grab a splinter of wood for this flame!" he ordered and she scrambled dizzily to her feet. She couldn't find a splinter, so kicked the crate to pieces and took a jagged edge of wood. Howl carefully lit the edge of the long piece and coaxed it a moment with what little magic he could command. He leaned away from them and jammed it into the sand of the floor.
He then sank back where he sat, shaking. Abruptly, he turned and was sick on the floor behind him. Sarah almost lost her own supper right there. She clamped a hand over her mouth and nose and closed her eyes.
Howl retched a few times then groaned. There was a scuff of sand.
"I've buried it; you can open your eyes. Sorry," he grumbled, "must have hit my head harder than I thought."
Sarah swallowed hard. Howl had a sheen of sweat over his pale face which she didn't like. Not to mention Jareth's state, she had never thought fae could be so affected by magic. She hated how ill he looked.
They were trapped, but Oubliettes usually had hidden doors, she had but to find one.