Finally, this part is done! I had it mentally plotted out yesterday and almost lost it, since I made myself write my paper before doing this. I didn't finish till 5am, and by that time I was attempting to rewrite the 50s "Zorro" theme along the lines of "Jareth, the King so cunning and cruel." If you know what I'm talking about, you'll know my state of mind. My computer froze while I was typing tonight, and I lost a small section again! Grr... But I really do like it. Anywho, I'll write more tomorrow and hopefully get to some more explanation. Musical Theme: "Eternal Chain" by Akino Arai.
Ladymage ;)
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To the Victor Go the Spoils
Part 11 ~ Eternal Chain
"You don't know where she is?" Jareth was, to put it mildly, nonplussed. "Wh--" Before he could finish, he felt a familiar twinge in his chest. Oh, no. . .
"Sarah," he said urgently. "Reinstate me."
"What?" Sarah was, as expected, somewhat baffled by the change in subject.
"Just do it!" he shouted at her. "Make it temporary, make it eternal, I don't care! Just make me the Goblin King again! Do it, Sarah! Now!" His hands tightened as he struggled to maintain control.
With a near-terrified glance at him, Sarah spoke the words. "Jareth is the Goblin King for the next twenty-four hours." As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Jareth plunged his hand into the dimensional pocket, grabbed the crystal key, and was gone.
He arrived in the Underground just as the first pain took him. Falling to his knees, he curled into a ball as it spread throughout his being, sharp and dull, steady and throbbing. The world no longer existed; neither the concept of the Under or Above worlds, of Sarah or himself intruded upon his conscious. Pain was his conscious.
His fingers dug into his thighs, drawing blood. His jaw clenched hard enough so that, were it possible to feel additional pain, his head would ache. But that was the one thing that kept him sane. He knew he would never cry out. Never.
As the pain slowly receded, Jareth's brain and body began to function once more. Had it been minutes or years, hours or decades? He would never truly know, only discover later it had probably been somewhere around twelve hours. He collapsed backward, his body reacting to the universal constriction it had been forced into. Jareth found himself sitting with his back to a tree , his head between his knees.
For more than an hour, Jareth tried to stand, to walk, to move, but neither his body nor his mind would answer. He felt as though he was a tiny being trapped inside a large immobile cage, screaming to be let out. Weak. So damnably weak. He didin't even possess the power to control his emotions or to control his own physical form. Damn her. Damn himself for letting this happen. Damn whatever Power had made him this way.
But Jareth had been made this way, and for dancing-- for letting his anger and fear rise-- he had to pay the fiddler. A pale shadow of his usual smirk appeared on his face, the muscles too tired to do much more than let his lips twitch slightly. And a damned expensive fiddler it was. Yet the two were bound together eternally by bloodied chains.
Staring at the ground, the man renewed the promise he had made the first time he had let his emotions --the first time, it had been joy-- arise and take him. He would never let anyone, not even God Himself, if he could, see him like this. No one, not a Fae, not a human, not an animal, would see him like this, a helpless, pathetic, stupid weakling.
He would never let anyone pity him.
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For Sarah, the next forty-eight hours were not quite Hell, but she imagined they were getting close. Immediately after Jareth's departure, she had developed a low-grade headache, which stubbornly remained through all the Tylenol she downed. Jareth's words haunted her for some reason, and she couldn't quite say why. She had cast a spell, he had told her, using magic she must have had from somewhere else. But she had never had magic. She would have loved it if she had. Abuela would have known that; she would have told Sarah if either of them had magic. Since she hadn't, Sarah was certain she didn't have any. Jareth was probably looking for a way to trick her again. Perhaps . . . Perhaps he wanted to find someone else he could use to manipulate her again! Toby was in the clear, Sarah assumed, and her parents certainly didn't have the same influence. Perhaps her father had, once, but that had died a long time ago. The only other person she truly knew and loved was her grandmother. So it was entirely possible this was all some sort of elaborate set-up.
But his words replayed in her head over and over. "I have never lied to you, Sarah." He had bullied, deceived, trapped, and nearly killed her. But, try as she might, she couldn't remember a time when he had out and out lied to her. She didn't know if that was a good thing or not.
And so her thoughts chased each other in circles, alternating between the idea of her knowing magic and Jareth lying to her face.
She somehow made it through the day, but as the sun went down, Karen's commonplace self-centeredness and her father's amiable absentmindedness returned, as well as Sarah's resentment for the night before. The situation only got worse, and Sarah ended up spending the entire evening in her room, wishing she could control whatever magic she possessed so she could at least conjure up some food. She might even eat that damned peach again. She fell asleep angry, confused, upset, and most of all, hungry.
Sarah had school the next day, so she was up early. Her entire day was spent rerunning the weekend through her mind and waiting for Jareth to reappear. He didn't and as his twenty-four hours came to a close, Sarah became more and more certain he had intimida-- tricked her into giving him back his full powers and wouldn't be back. She wasn't sure if she was glad or sorry, but she kept looking over her shoulder, waiting. And he never came. She went to bed early that night, pleading her headache, but sleep was long in coming.
