DISCLAIMER - I don't own Sarah or Jareth or the Labyrinth (unfortunately) they belong to Jim Henson & Co, and I'm definitely not making a profit from this. (Bummer) All other NPC's are a figment of my own imagination.
Chapter 8 – Waking
"Come Sarah." Jareth said quietly, turning and holding his gloved hand out to her as she sat in a daze on her chair. "Isenith."
"Yes My King." Isenith said as he appeared behind Jareth. "Return to the castle and have the Blue Room prepared for our guest."
"As you command." Isenith disappeared whilst Sarah still sat there and looked up at Jareth.
"Are you going to walk or do I have to carry you, again?" He asked glaring at her with impatience. She shook her head dumbly and got up, her legs nearly giving way beneath her until he placed a firm hand underneath her elbow to hold her steady. He knew that she was in shock, but he couldn't help her, not yet, in front of the ever-curious Fae community who were loitering still in the galleries above them.
"Jareth." Lucia said quietly as they turned to face her. "Take care of her. If you ruin my work, you will have me to deal with." She said before disappearing in a small flash of light. They walked as quickly as Sarah's legs would go into a large antechamber where there were many Fae gathered, watching them.
"Lets go home." Jareth sighed as he walked them between the veils and away back to his castle. They entered a long corridor lit by candles and at the end a set of beautifully carved wooden doors. Jareth stopped and let go of Sarah in order to open the doors up, he turned and watched her in the flickering light.
"Did I do it right?" She asked him, as a glazed look crossed her eyes. He nodded. "Oh good." She said and promptly fainted. Jareth swore, catching her before she hit the floor and carrying her once more into the Blue Room. He quickly laid her on the bed and changed her torn dress for a soft cotton nightgown of voluminous proportions with his magic before placing her under the covers.
Jareth sighed and felt his way through the twists and turns of his Labyrinth, touching the things that she had changed and altered in her time there as he sank down onto the bottom of the bed. He was he had to admit, rather impressed. Even the chessboard maze was new, something he had not really come across in the Aboveground, and he noted to himself that he must investigate the reasoning behind this memory. The forest and the meadows he had felt her create, but only the hedge maze and the bog was complete, taken from his own magic. The others lacked definition, and beyond the path that she had walked the ways were hazy and incomplete, fading back into the wasteland. No wonder she felt ill and exhausted, she had used more magical energy in the 13 hours she had spent in the Labyrinth than she had ever done before, however unwittingly. It would take her some time to recover enough so that he would be able to begin her education.
"Time will no longer be your master Sarah. Only I may command you now." He whispered standing up and stretching. Leaving her to sleep, he left the room, ordering Isenith to watch for her.
"My King." Isenith said, making Jareth pause as he moved to walk away down the candlelit corridor.
"I owe you more than my life My King."
"You owe me nothing Isenith. You have more than repaid any debt you may have owed me in your loyalty and service through the years." Jareth nodded to the Darkling.
"I will not disappoint you My King." Isenith whispered bowing as Jareth turned and walked away.
His study was dark as he entered it, but once he had moved the heavy drapes away from the windows, it was bathed in the milky luminescence of the moons. Opening the door to the large balcony Jareth mentally prepared himself, and began to re-grow the Labyrinth, gazing out into the night with blank eyes. The innate magic of the Labyrinth, reinforced with the power that Jareth was pouring into it made the sky glow with blue and purple highlights, weaving out from the castle, and wrapping everything in its tendrils. The goblins returned, and the creatures that inhabited the Labyrinth appeared once more to walk its dark ways. Jareth left the black and white chessboard section, making it complete in its own special way, including several nasty traps and pitfalls that Sarah had conveniently missed out of its creation. The other things she had created however, he blithely removed, until only the stubborn stream and a single giant redwood tree remained where she had stumbled and touched the tree before she knelt to drink from the streams waters. He sighed and muttered a curse, weaving the rest of the Labyrinth around them until they were sealed off from the ways by high walls. Only she would ever be able to get to that place should she so desire, and only if he chose to let her. He could see the tree from his balcony, soaring above the rest of the Labyrinth, like a beacon, drawing the unwary towards it, and away from their goal.
Jareth smiled to himself. He was complete again, the Labyrinth was fixed, and it was obeying his every command now that it could feel her heart beating in its very centre. Letting the magic flux die, he retired to his private quarters as the moons sunk below the horizon.
The slave ducked as another ornament flew across the room, shattering against a priceless painting. She sighed, mending the tear in the painting and began to gather up the broken porcelain from off the floor piece by piece. Her mistress continued to scream on, destroying her most treasured possessions with wanton destruction. Eventually as dawn approached Elindah cooled down and began to plot anew, summoning her own private horde of spies and assassins to her side.
"I don't care how you do it, so long as she is killed, and he is broken. The Labyrinth will be mine, and he will be my dog, kept on a leash at my side as I rule." She sniggered as she waved the assassins away. "He will not defy me again, and my father will do as I wish. I will not wait out the rest of my life before getting what I want. I will be High Queen, but I will rule all the kingdoms, even if it means killing my own father in the process. I want that Labyrinth!" She screamed, reaching again for another ornament.
Sarah woke, warm, hungry, and completely unable to figure out where the hell she was, and what she was doing wearing some kind of medieval white sack in bed, no wonder she was sweating beneath the thick covers. She groaned and closed her eyes against the glaring sunlight flooding into the room from the matching windows in the west wall. Must be after dinner then she mused crawling out from under the covers. She tried to count how many meals she had missed since the accident and gave up after a couple of dozen. Climbing down from the stupidly high mattress she searched for clothes and somewhere to relieve her most important need. Fortunately the second door she tried in the large room revealed a bathroom.
"Well at least I'm not peeing into a bucket and throwing it out the window." She said perching on the cold seat and shivering as goose bumps spread across her exposed ass.
Finishing the call of nature, and washing her face and hands in the basin she returned to her investigation of her immediate surroundings. The main bedroom was a beautifully decorated medieval and gothic renaissance masterpiece in dark blue and gold, from the tapestries lining the walls and the silk wallpaper to the gloriously painted ceiling. The bathroom was somewhat more basic, and looked as though somebody had been browsing through a restoration catalogue and decided to borrow a few ideas that had never really worked together. The next room must serve as a dressing room.
"Or at least it would if I had anything else to wear." Sarah said scowling as she shut the door and for the umpteenth time tripped over the hem of her nightgown. She sighed and walked across to the other side of the room. She held her breath as she finally opened the large carved doors, not sure what to expect on the other side. She was however pleasantly surprised to find a small sitting room, the blue and gold theme again making an appearance, and an identical set of carved doors at the far end. Having nothing else to do, and no secret doors to investigate, well she had checked just in case, Sarah gathered the long nightgown around her and opened the doors.
The corridor went on forever. She stared at it for several minutes before she even noticed the Fae standing next to her, having stood up from where he was sitting on the floor. She stared at him with just as much curiosity as he returned the favour. She eventually remembered her manners and held her hand out to him.
"I'm Sarah." She said politely. Isenith looked at her hand as though she had 7 fingers on it and politely bowed.
"I am Isenith." He replied walking away down the corridor. Sarah stared after him and then, finding that he was not waiting for her ran to catch up, her feet getting cold on the tiled floor. She tried to walk by his side and engage him in conversation but he simply nodded and sped up so that she had to jog almost to keep up. By the time they reached wherever it was he was taking her, she was so out of breath it was all she could do not to collapse in the ornate chair outside the big black doors whilst her guide knocked and entered. She heard muffled noises inside and then Isenith turned and motioned her into the room.
She couldn't help but hike her eyebrow up in amazement. It felt as though she was swimming in a blood bath. Every single surface was red, or dark red, or black. Even his desk was the darkest mahogany colour she had ever seen. He was lounging in a black leather throne like chair reading through some documents, turned away from the door towards the open balcony. She watched him for a moment, his brow furrowed in concentration as he muttered to himself. Her attention was swayed, a breeze crept in through the open doors and she just had to walk out onto the sunlit balcony to gaze over the labyrinth in wonder, forgetting that she was in his study, and that she wore nothing more than a nightgown.
"Do you intend to spend all afternoon watching the labyrinth?" He asked from directly behind her, making her jump. Sarah turned and watched a smirk flicker across his lips as he watched her watching him.
"It's fixed." She said tearing her gaze away from him again to look out over her new home.
"No thanks to you." He growled walking back to his desk. Sarah turned and glared at him in amazement.
"You ungrateful bastard." She whispered walking closer to him. "If it hadn't been for me, you'd be rotting in the darkest, smelliest dungeon that court of idiots could find!"
"No. I would be dead, and you would have been claimed by the Labyrinth as its Queen." He rolled his eyes at the shocked look on her face and turned back to his papers.
"Why would they have killed you? You're a King! Couldn't you have pulled rank on them or something?"
"For a remarkably intelligent young woman Sarah, you are completely dumb at times." Jareth said without looking up from his papers.
"Why thank you Your Majesty for that barbed compliment." Sarah said sarcastically, curtseying to him before stalking back out onto the balcony.
"You have a nerve to call me ungrateful after everything I have done for you."
"There's no way I'm going to have that conversation all over again. If you tell me you're tired of trying to live up to my expectations, I'm going to throw something at you."
"My, aren't we feeling feisty this afternoon." He said looking up at her with a straight face.
"Probably something to do with the company I'm keeping these days."
"What would you like me to do Sarah, get down on my knees and beg that you forgive me, and accept my humble thanks for you getting me out of a situation that you put me in?" Jareth asked, putting his feet up on his desk and relaxing back into his throne.
"Well it would be a start." He shook his head, incredulous.
"You are the most irritating and ungrateful mortal I have ever had the misfortune to meet twice in my long and eventful lifetime. Not once yet have you said thank you to me for taking you away from your rather cosy hospital bed. Not once a thank you for the work my sister did to save you from your impending death. Not a single thanks for releasing you from your sworn bond of slavery, or for not throwing you in an oubliette, or for the hospitality I have given you. When will it be my turn Sarah?"
"It's your job to take wished away people and bring them back here. I didn't ask for you to stop me from dying, or to give me this new body, or to release me from your slavery. I didn't want to live. I have nothing left, and the only thing I wanted was to know if I had dreamt it all or not. Now I'm stuck here, with you, and you don't even want me with that crazy woman threatening me, and I'm having to remember every single thing that ever happened to me. Every moment I'm awake I can see their faces looking at me, like I did something wrong! It was my fault that Toby had learning difficulties, it was my fault that my mom split when I was a baby, it was my fault Karen didn't like me, it was my fault he raped me, it was my fault the car got wrecked, and that you had to go to court and now that woman hates me. It's always my fault!" She didn't even realise that she was crying, or that she had fallen to the floor or that he was there, holding her, stroking her hair gently.
"Its my fault no body wants me, and that I'm dirty and used and alone. Just a cheap whore." She clung to him, wanting him to take away all her memories so that she wouldn't ever have to remember what she was ever again.
"There are people who want you Sarah. There are many people who care about you, and want to know that you are safe and happy. You are not alone."
Exhausted from her storm of weeping Sarah never heard his last words as she had fallen asleep, her head buried in his chest. He carefully picked her up and lay her down on the blood red chaise longe and covered her with a warm blanket.
"She is weak." Jareth said as Lucia nodded, standing up from where she had been sat watching from Jareth's throne.
"It is to be expected. The whole of the Underground felt the magic pouring through the Labyrinth last night, she will have been drained too, from being so close to you and linked to the Labyrinth. There will be repercussions in the Aboveground no doubt as well."
"They are always complaining that there are never enough wished away children Lucia. They will never be happy." Jareth replied walking past his sister to reclaim his seat.
"I came to warn you Jareth, Elindah has sent out her assassins. There was one caught last night at my home." Lucia said watching the sleeping mortal and admiring her handy work.
"Then I request that you return here until she is dealt with. Your rooms are still as you left them." Lucia turned to look at him and saw the concern in his eyes.
"Perhaps I shall stay for a few days." Jareth nodded, relived that his sister and only remaining relative would be safe, for the time being. He looked over at Sarah and hoped that she would be strong enough to endure the reality of the Underground.
ItsACrystalNothingMore - this story is awesome! Please update soon! Tez
A/N - 2 new chapters for you! Hope you like!
Ladyofthedragons1 - good music to write to... actually to study to also as the irony is that's what I'm listening too great story are you bringing James back at all?
A/N - Yep, James is going to make another appearance, but I'm not giving anything away yet! Hehehehe
Theshadowcat - Good chapter. Now we get to see how easy (HAH) it is to train Sarah. And of course Elindah will be there to disrupt the whole thing. I see much fun and aggravation ahead. Update soon please
A/N - Depending entirely on how long she can shut up for…heheh Thanks for staying with me!
Solea - I agree - James should not have Sarah as a partner, but he was still a wonderful friend:)
Another great chapter and it made me happy to see Elindah get her comeuppance. I've never been a fan of the whole jealous OC thing and I'm always glad to see those characters get told what.
Good work with the court and even better work having Jareth free both Sarah and Isenith from slavery. Their relationship has real potential if they are on even footing:)
A/N – hehehehe, equal footing according to whom? James is returning in a few chapters, and I guess I shall just have to wait to see what your reaction is to the plot… . I'm also pleased that you thought my court scene went ok. I had a few issues with it in the beginning…