Chapter Twelve
For a moment Sarah felt herself falling back into the role of the strong-willed teen
she had been. She lifted herself tall, squared her shoulders and tilted her head upright just
enough so that he could see the defiant set of her jaw. Her lips quivered just a bit as she
let a steady expression train itself on her face.
"I believe we've been through this already," Gabriel settled as he cupped his hands
together. His face was very pale as he slipped out of the jacket and set her with his gaze.
"That was before you turned into an owl," Sarah remarked, whole-heartedly
believing that what she had seen had been the complete truth. Gabriel acknowledged her a
moment with a crooked grin and then swept past her as secretly as a cat.
"Oh did I?" he inquired, glancing back at her as he approached the fireplace, which
hadn't blazed that night yet. The woodstove had stoked up enough heat for the living
room. Gabriel reached down and retrieved one long-stemmed match from a bunch and
held it carefully in one hand.
Sarah sauntered after him, wondering if he would see her through her bluff. She
came as close to him as she dared and then, snatching the match from his hands, leaned
against the brick of the fireplace. She crossed her arms over her chest and waited,
expecting with her entire being that this man would suddenly break down and confess his
true identity.
Oh yeah, I think I must have forgotten. You see, I am this King of the Goblins
and I needed a vacation from all the mess. When you left, Sarah, the place really fell
apart. I decided, what the Hell, I'll go and stalk you some more and follow you around
until we wound up like this... and that really the whole story...
"I've heard you had these episodes before, Sarah, but we're too old for
make-believe now, aren't we?" he asked, the sinister grin on his face telling a completely
different story than what he had just claimed.
Sarah snapped the match and tossed it into the fireplace, landing atop the kindling
Mimi had left in there to be ready should the power snap off suddenly in the storm.
Perhaps she had expected the Snowblind, even though she had seemed surprised to see it
so soon. But just as it hit the wood a brilliant blazing flame erupted, sending sparks out
almost to the very spot where Sarah stood. She leapt back, the fire dancing behind her
dark eyes as she looked incredulously towards Gabriel.
"Odd how things just happen sometimes," he muttered, watching her a beat too
long and then turned to approach the easy chair.
"Goddamnit Jareth! Are you trying to make me feel crazy? Everyone else thinks
so... so I guess that it doesn't make much of difference then," Sarah was surprised when
her voice cracked and she tossed her hands in the air, completely at ends with the
situation, "You already ruined me once."
Gabriel seemed to lift his head slightly with her statement, and watched her
walking back towards the fire, her slim figure highlighted with the reds, yellows and
dancing oranges. They licked her skin like a lover, and touched the tears on her cheeks
the way he had once envisioned. It had changed since then, though. She had destroyed
him since then.
"How, Sarah, could I have ruined you?" he asked, not acknowledging the fact that
he had just admitted to her first accusation. Gabriel merely watched her shuddering near
the fire, breathing deeply her emotions.
"You ruined my life, you bastard," she bit out and glared at him through the tears,
"You fucking ruined my LIFE!" she screamed and then, looking upstairs, clapped her
hand over her trembling lips.
"Did I?" he asked, taking a single slow step towards her, debating his actions with
each passing moment. He could hear the clock's ticking amplified, sticking out in the
moment like her heartbeat. He could hear that too.
Sarah grasped the vase from the mantle atop the fireplace and held it, shaking,
between her hands. Then, looking long and hard at Gabriel, shattered it against the bricks.
He paused abruptly and she merely tilted her head back in frenzied laughter. Upstairs he
could hear Mimi stirring and felt out to her.
The boy needs you now, He thought, and Mimi remained away, for the time being.
Instinct outweighed the power of suggestion any day.
Sarah was looking at one piece of glass that glinted like fire and she reached down
to take the large piece into her hands. "I thought I loved you when I was younger. But
you left me! How could you leave me?" Sarah demanded, turning the blade-like weapon
around in her hands as she finally looked at Gabriel.
Now it was Gabriel's turn to express his anger. The blinds all snapped closed over
the glass of the windows, and the drapes slid into place. The fire roared higher, the heat
pressing against Sarah and forcing her to move further away. In the moment he was
anything but a typical man. For a moment his clothes flashed away and he burned
brilliantly before her.
"How do you show love, Sarah?" he growled, having regressed from the godlike
beauty back to something which Sarah could look at without cringing in horror. Gabriel
wasn't standing in front of her anymore. He needn't affirm her belief in words, his
appearance did it for her. He had completely undergone transformation into something
other, into the King... Jareth. "HOW!"
Sarah cringed backwards, moving towards the kitchen carefully as she watched
Jareth's movements, calculated, like a panther. His sweater was silky black against his
skin, suddenly, and his jeans melding into riding pants so tight that they seemed painted
against his supple legs. It was as if he was becoming the panther that Sarah had just
envisioned. Perhaps that was how it was.
"How dare you ask me!" Sarah retaliated, but still recoiled as he came nearer,
"You made my life Hell throughout the Labyrinth! I could've lost Toby!"
"You learned nothing!" Jareth hissed as he lunged towards her and drove her
through the swinging doors which led into the kitchen. Inside the lights were off and he
followed her struggled breaths through the darkness. "You said you loved me, Sarah.
Look at what you did to me! Look at my kingdom, my subjects..."
Suddenly a flashlight popped on and Jareth stared into blinding white light, until
his eyes adjusted. He peered through the beam and saw Sarah's ashy face in the dark, like
a moon through the night. He looked downwards, his clothing so black and soft, and then
smirked towards her. "I never meant..."
"Of course not," Jareth relented, and suddenly the king seemed very ragged and
old as he leaned against the wall furthest from Sarah. "How do you know, Sarah, that I
never loved you? I was your pawn, and you... you were my Queen. We were one, you
and I. So much a part of the other that it stung to be away. To put you through Hell put
me through the same. I suffered the slings of your misfortune, Sarah. Why, after all that,
would I return to the key of such pain?! Why, other than love?"
"You can't love!" Sarah spat out viciously, completely unmoved from his
declaration of truth. Jareth breathed deeply as he stood there, looking at her and her light.
Then, clenching his jaw, he moved towards her with such speed that she had only just
realized that he had moved when he pinned her violently against another wall.
"Can't I?" he asked, running his fingers against the skin of her face, making bright
red lines where the pressure dug into her flesh. Sarah moved her face away from him, the
flashlight jerking out of her hand and rolling across the ground. It finally settled near his
feet, the light beaming towards the door which they had both used as an entrance moments
earlier.
He pinned her with his body, breathing harshly through his mouth and then placed
his slender hands on either side of her beautiful face. Sarah ran her hands along the wall as
he looked into her eyes, locked. She felt herself falling into captivation as her hands
continued to search for a way out. For a moment he looked downwards and she felt
something within him reach out for her.
"You terrified me," she whispered, her voice trembling like her muscles.
A heavy bout of wind bulldozed into the farmhouse and Sarah shrieked as the
walls shook beneath the torturous weather. Jareth seemed unfazed as he leaned in closer
and ran his face alongside hers. Stopping so that his mouth rested near her ear and his
breath tingled the hairs on the nape of her neck. Sarah wanted to pull him closer, but she
had found Mimi's china and gripped one plate tightly in her hand.
"There is nothing pure in this world, even love. Rage and Sex are one," Jareth
whispered, and Sarah felt her body's urge to give in.
Sarah turned so that her lips were only a breath from his. She swallowed
nervously, smelling his sweet scent of divine magic and promises and childhood, and let
him move closer. For a moment she could feel the touch of his lip against hers, and she
closed her eyes as she lifted her arm.
He moved his hands up to her face again, touched her lips with his thumb and then
leant in to press his lips to hers. But it never happened. Sarah brought the plate down in a
determined arc, and it struck the King's head bluntly, shattering into ceramic pieces all
over the linoleum. Jareth struggled backwards, toppling the chair and landed sprawled
against the large table.
"How dare you!" Sarah spat as she cried to herself and sobbed, feeling a horrible
sense of deja vu for the situation and her anger, and her triumph. But where could she run
now? There was nowhere else to go.
Pulling back her hair she rushed from the kitchen, trying not to hear Jareth's noises
as he clamored from the table. And then, just as she gripped the heavy bookcase on the
other side of the living room, a dull snap covered the farmhouse and the lights vanished.
It was like a wave of black that overtook the place, as Sarah watched, and she secretly
wished she had remembered to grab the flashlight.
Panting and moaning to herself she struggled the bookshelf over so that it partly
blocked the doors. Jareth could still get through, since they swung both ways, but she
hoped to have hindered him enough so as to find Mimi and Toby and run far away from
the King who haunted her.
But she couldn't find them, not quite yet. Sarah rolled the TV stand and TV itself
out in front of the bookshelf and then, panting from the exertion and the heavy dose of
adrenaline that was pumping through her body, she leaned against the barrier and broke
down. She buried her face against the smooth wood, beating her fists against them with
her last remnants of strength as she let the walls break down that guarded her emotions.
"God!" Sarah cried out in horror and fear and everything she had been too worried
to feel since being to the Labyrinth. A place they had said had been in her mind. A place
where the King... the imaginary King... had traversed to reach her here, in her aunt's
home.
Then there were rough arms around her, and a hand across her mouth, gagging her
attempts to scream. Jareth's face was beside hers and his mouth was curved into a
seductive, and terrifyingly sinister smile. Strange how things could be so different and
labeling the same thing. Sarah's eyes rolled to the side to see him, and she kicked out
violently with her legs.
"Shhh," he calmed and then threw her brutally atop the sofa, which springs dug
painfully into her back. Sarah cried out, sobbing, but found that she couldn't scream to
save her life. Instead she stared with wide eyes at the man looming over her, silken black
and horrible... but intoxicatingly undeniable.
"Mimi'll hear you," Sarah whispered, grasping for anything to stop him.
Jareth merely chuckled to himself. "If I wish her not to hear, do you think she'll
appear down here of her own free will, Sarah? Do you think I'd allow that sort of petty
interference?" he asked and then began to diligently circle the sofa, upon which she laid
frantically watching him move around her, fearful of the inevitable pounce.
"What do you want!?" Sarah demanded, fearing the answer more so than the void
of question she had since then sustained life within.
Jareth paused and then leaned down close to her so that she could see his two
strikingly different colored eyes. They sparked with brilliant white flames as he looked at
her and glanced towards the closed window. "Oh, very little," he assured and once more
laughed.
"Leave me the FUCK alone!" Sarah begged, getting up on her knees as she
waited, noting how he paused and looked down at her from the front of the sofa. His shirt
had drifted open, revealing skin like alabaster, and a slender chest that was molded from
china. Sarah swallowed deeply and shuddered again despite her internal warmth that had
been strewn into flames.
"Such vulgar language," he taunted and then moved in with lightening-quick
reflexes to grip her slender wrists and pin her arms on either side of her writhing body.
Jareth looked over her form, and how much she had changed. He licked his lips and then
returned his eyes to her face. "But not for long."
"Just tell me, Sarah. Would you say you love me, that... if you loved me and I you
I would release you...," Jareth trailed off, watching her eyes as he moved in nearer until
they were so near that she felt almost crushed beneath a weight that was not atop her. He
moved so that he straddled her on the couch, still pinning her carefully to prevent another
attack.
"Fuck you," Sarah sobbed with vehemence.
"That's my girl," Jareth remarked and then, again coming down on her so quickly
Sarah couldn't react, he kissed her. Her lips were crushed against her teeth... bruised. He
moved back, looked down at her again and then moved down and bite into her neck.
Sarah hissed in breath and arched against him, as his tongue ran along her flesh.
Tendrils of hot and cold devoured her skin as he crushed the bones in her wrist and
she rolled her head back. The pain of his teeth was as erotic as if a vampire had been the
one lusting after her, drawing life's blood from her neck. She licked her lips, arching
against him again and then, as he turned his eyes to gaze into hers Sarah moved her head
upwards...
And seared the moment as she deepened a kiss and probed his mouth with her
tongue.
For a moment Sarah felt herself falling back into the role of the strong-willed teen
she had been. She lifted herself tall, squared her shoulders and tilted her head upright just
enough so that he could see the defiant set of her jaw. Her lips quivered just a bit as she
let a steady expression train itself on her face.
"I believe we've been through this already," Gabriel settled as he cupped his hands
together. His face was very pale as he slipped out of the jacket and set her with his gaze.
"That was before you turned into an owl," Sarah remarked, whole-heartedly
believing that what she had seen had been the complete truth. Gabriel acknowledged her a
moment with a crooked grin and then swept past her as secretly as a cat.
"Oh did I?" he inquired, glancing back at her as he approached the fireplace, which
hadn't blazed that night yet. The woodstove had stoked up enough heat for the living
room. Gabriel reached down and retrieved one long-stemmed match from a bunch and
held it carefully in one hand.
Sarah sauntered after him, wondering if he would see her through her bluff. She
came as close to him as she dared and then, snatching the match from his hands, leaned
against the brick of the fireplace. She crossed her arms over her chest and waited,
expecting with her entire being that this man would suddenly break down and confess his
true identity.
Oh yeah, I think I must have forgotten. You see, I am this King of the Goblins
and I needed a vacation from all the mess. When you left, Sarah, the place really fell
apart. I decided, what the Hell, I'll go and stalk you some more and follow you around
until we wound up like this... and that really the whole story...
"I've heard you had these episodes before, Sarah, but we're too old for
make-believe now, aren't we?" he asked, the sinister grin on his face telling a completely
different story than what he had just claimed.
Sarah snapped the match and tossed it into the fireplace, landing atop the kindling
Mimi had left in there to be ready should the power snap off suddenly in the storm.
Perhaps she had expected the Snowblind, even though she had seemed surprised to see it
so soon. But just as it hit the wood a brilliant blazing flame erupted, sending sparks out
almost to the very spot where Sarah stood. She leapt back, the fire dancing behind her
dark eyes as she looked incredulously towards Gabriel.
"Odd how things just happen sometimes," he muttered, watching her a beat too
long and then turned to approach the easy chair.
"Goddamnit Jareth! Are you trying to make me feel crazy? Everyone else thinks
so... so I guess that it doesn't make much of difference then," Sarah was surprised when
her voice cracked and she tossed her hands in the air, completely at ends with the
situation, "You already ruined me once."
Gabriel seemed to lift his head slightly with her statement, and watched her
walking back towards the fire, her slim figure highlighted with the reds, yellows and
dancing oranges. They licked her skin like a lover, and touched the tears on her cheeks
the way he had once envisioned. It had changed since then, though. She had destroyed
him since then.
"How, Sarah, could I have ruined you?" he asked, not acknowledging the fact that
he had just admitted to her first accusation. Gabriel merely watched her shuddering near
the fire, breathing deeply her emotions.
"You ruined my life, you bastard," she bit out and glared at him through the tears,
"You fucking ruined my LIFE!" she screamed and then, looking upstairs, clapped her
hand over her trembling lips.
"Did I?" he asked, taking a single slow step towards her, debating his actions with
each passing moment. He could hear the clock's ticking amplified, sticking out in the
moment like her heartbeat. He could hear that too.
Sarah grasped the vase from the mantle atop the fireplace and held it, shaking,
between her hands. Then, looking long and hard at Gabriel, shattered it against the bricks.
He paused abruptly and she merely tilted her head back in frenzied laughter. Upstairs he
could hear Mimi stirring and felt out to her.
The boy needs you now, He thought, and Mimi remained away, for the time being.
Instinct outweighed the power of suggestion any day.
Sarah was looking at one piece of glass that glinted like fire and she reached down
to take the large piece into her hands. "I thought I loved you when I was younger. But
you left me! How could you leave me?" Sarah demanded, turning the blade-like weapon
around in her hands as she finally looked at Gabriel.
Now it was Gabriel's turn to express his anger. The blinds all snapped closed over
the glass of the windows, and the drapes slid into place. The fire roared higher, the heat
pressing against Sarah and forcing her to move further away. In the moment he was
anything but a typical man. For a moment his clothes flashed away and he burned
brilliantly before her.
"How do you show love, Sarah?" he growled, having regressed from the godlike
beauty back to something which Sarah could look at without cringing in horror. Gabriel
wasn't standing in front of her anymore. He needn't affirm her belief in words, his
appearance did it for her. He had completely undergone transformation into something
other, into the King... Jareth. "HOW!"
Sarah cringed backwards, moving towards the kitchen carefully as she watched
Jareth's movements, calculated, like a panther. His sweater was silky black against his
skin, suddenly, and his jeans melding into riding pants so tight that they seemed painted
against his supple legs. It was as if he was becoming the panther that Sarah had just
envisioned. Perhaps that was how it was.
"How dare you ask me!" Sarah retaliated, but still recoiled as he came nearer,
"You made my life Hell throughout the Labyrinth! I could've lost Toby!"
"You learned nothing!" Jareth hissed as he lunged towards her and drove her
through the swinging doors which led into the kitchen. Inside the lights were off and he
followed her struggled breaths through the darkness. "You said you loved me, Sarah.
Look at what you did to me! Look at my kingdom, my subjects..."
Suddenly a flashlight popped on and Jareth stared into blinding white light, until
his eyes adjusted. He peered through the beam and saw Sarah's ashy face in the dark, like
a moon through the night. He looked downwards, his clothing so black and soft, and then
smirked towards her. "I never meant..."
"Of course not," Jareth relented, and suddenly the king seemed very ragged and
old as he leaned against the wall furthest from Sarah. "How do you know, Sarah, that I
never loved you? I was your pawn, and you... you were my Queen. We were one, you
and I. So much a part of the other that it stung to be away. To put you through Hell put
me through the same. I suffered the slings of your misfortune, Sarah. Why, after all that,
would I return to the key of such pain?! Why, other than love?"
"You can't love!" Sarah spat out viciously, completely unmoved from his
declaration of truth. Jareth breathed deeply as he stood there, looking at her and her light.
Then, clenching his jaw, he moved towards her with such speed that she had only just
realized that he had moved when he pinned her violently against another wall.
"Can't I?" he asked, running his fingers against the skin of her face, making bright
red lines where the pressure dug into her flesh. Sarah moved her face away from him, the
flashlight jerking out of her hand and rolling across the ground. It finally settled near his
feet, the light beaming towards the door which they had both used as an entrance moments
earlier.
He pinned her with his body, breathing harshly through his mouth and then placed
his slender hands on either side of her beautiful face. Sarah ran her hands along the wall as
he looked into her eyes, locked. She felt herself falling into captivation as her hands
continued to search for a way out. For a moment he looked downwards and she felt
something within him reach out for her.
"You terrified me," she whispered, her voice trembling like her muscles.
A heavy bout of wind bulldozed into the farmhouse and Sarah shrieked as the
walls shook beneath the torturous weather. Jareth seemed unfazed as he leaned in closer
and ran his face alongside hers. Stopping so that his mouth rested near her ear and his
breath tingled the hairs on the nape of her neck. Sarah wanted to pull him closer, but she
had found Mimi's china and gripped one plate tightly in her hand.
"There is nothing pure in this world, even love. Rage and Sex are one," Jareth
whispered, and Sarah felt her body's urge to give in.
Sarah turned so that her lips were only a breath from his. She swallowed
nervously, smelling his sweet scent of divine magic and promises and childhood, and let
him move closer. For a moment she could feel the touch of his lip against hers, and she
closed her eyes as she lifted her arm.
He moved his hands up to her face again, touched her lips with his thumb and then
leant in to press his lips to hers. But it never happened. Sarah brought the plate down in a
determined arc, and it struck the King's head bluntly, shattering into ceramic pieces all
over the linoleum. Jareth struggled backwards, toppling the chair and landed sprawled
against the large table.
"How dare you!" Sarah spat as she cried to herself and sobbed, feeling a horrible
sense of deja vu for the situation and her anger, and her triumph. But where could she run
now? There was nowhere else to go.
Pulling back her hair she rushed from the kitchen, trying not to hear Jareth's noises
as he clamored from the table. And then, just as she gripped the heavy bookcase on the
other side of the living room, a dull snap covered the farmhouse and the lights vanished.
It was like a wave of black that overtook the place, as Sarah watched, and she secretly
wished she had remembered to grab the flashlight.
Panting and moaning to herself she struggled the bookshelf over so that it partly
blocked the doors. Jareth could still get through, since they swung both ways, but she
hoped to have hindered him enough so as to find Mimi and Toby and run far away from
the King who haunted her.
But she couldn't find them, not quite yet. Sarah rolled the TV stand and TV itself
out in front of the bookshelf and then, panting from the exertion and the heavy dose of
adrenaline that was pumping through her body, she leaned against the barrier and broke
down. She buried her face against the smooth wood, beating her fists against them with
her last remnants of strength as she let the walls break down that guarded her emotions.
"God!" Sarah cried out in horror and fear and everything she had been too worried
to feel since being to the Labyrinth. A place they had said had been in her mind. A place
where the King... the imaginary King... had traversed to reach her here, in her aunt's
home.
Then there were rough arms around her, and a hand across her mouth, gagging her
attempts to scream. Jareth's face was beside hers and his mouth was curved into a
seductive, and terrifyingly sinister smile. Strange how things could be so different and
labeling the same thing. Sarah's eyes rolled to the side to see him, and she kicked out
violently with her legs.
"Shhh," he calmed and then threw her brutally atop the sofa, which springs dug
painfully into her back. Sarah cried out, sobbing, but found that she couldn't scream to
save her life. Instead she stared with wide eyes at the man looming over her, silken black
and horrible... but intoxicatingly undeniable.
"Mimi'll hear you," Sarah whispered, grasping for anything to stop him.
Jareth merely chuckled to himself. "If I wish her not to hear, do you think she'll
appear down here of her own free will, Sarah? Do you think I'd allow that sort of petty
interference?" he asked and then began to diligently circle the sofa, upon which she laid
frantically watching him move around her, fearful of the inevitable pounce.
"What do you want!?" Sarah demanded, fearing the answer more so than the void
of question she had since then sustained life within.
Jareth paused and then leaned down close to her so that she could see his two
strikingly different colored eyes. They sparked with brilliant white flames as he looked at
her and glanced towards the closed window. "Oh, very little," he assured and once more
laughed.
"Leave me the FUCK alone!" Sarah begged, getting up on her knees as she
waited, noting how he paused and looked down at her from the front of the sofa. His shirt
had drifted open, revealing skin like alabaster, and a slender chest that was molded from
china. Sarah swallowed deeply and shuddered again despite her internal warmth that had
been strewn into flames.
"Such vulgar language," he taunted and then moved in with lightening-quick
reflexes to grip her slender wrists and pin her arms on either side of her writhing body.
Jareth looked over her form, and how much she had changed. He licked his lips and then
returned his eyes to her face. "But not for long."
"Just tell me, Sarah. Would you say you love me, that... if you loved me and I you
I would release you...," Jareth trailed off, watching her eyes as he moved in nearer until
they were so near that she felt almost crushed beneath a weight that was not atop her. He
moved so that he straddled her on the couch, still pinning her carefully to prevent another
attack.
"Fuck you," Sarah sobbed with vehemence.
"That's my girl," Jareth remarked and then, again coming down on her so quickly
Sarah couldn't react, he kissed her. Her lips were crushed against her teeth... bruised. He
moved back, looked down at her again and then moved down and bite into her neck.
Sarah hissed in breath and arched against him, as his tongue ran along her flesh.
Tendrils of hot and cold devoured her skin as he crushed the bones in her wrist and
she rolled her head back. The pain of his teeth was as erotic as if a vampire had been the
one lusting after her, drawing life's blood from her neck. She licked her lips, arching
against him again and then, as he turned his eyes to gaze into hers Sarah moved her head
upwards...
And seared the moment as she deepened a kiss and probed his mouth with her
tongue.