However, I will NOT violate the rules by posting this with the lyrics. I will give you a link to where you can read it with the lyrics, which is also in my profile. I think the chapter will be lacking without them, but I shall post it and hope to draw you off to my link to fill in the blanks! So pop open another browser window and type www DOT geocities DOT com/jaza0603fanfic/yechap4 DOT html – replacing all DOT with an actual dot or visit my profile for the link.
Disclaimer: I do not own any characters from the movie Labyrinth. The Labyrinth characters and events in the movies belong to Jim Henson, may he rest in peace as his legacy lives on through all of us. I seek to make no profit from this venture and I promise to return everything back the way I found it.
Your Eyes
Story by Jessica Arbuckle (Jessi, Princess of Impatience)
June to possibly August, 2005
Chapter Four, A Song for You…
Sarah entered her room after finally getting Toby to go to sleep. It had taken practically forever to settle him down, which was normal when she first returned from being away. It was long past his bed time when he finally fell asleep.
She glanced at all the unpacked boxes that lay around her room after turning on her besides light. She really didn't want to unpack tonight; she had too much on her mind. She was lost in thought until she felt air brush past her. She looked up to find the window open and a gentle wind blowing the curtains around in a slow dance.
'I didn't leave that open,' she thought, but her thoughts distracted her from continuing to think about the oddity. She walked to the window, pausing for a moment with her hands on her hips to let the breeze play around her. It lifted strands of her hair, stroking it as a lover would. The scent of the breeze, she realized with a start, seemed to be a scent straight from her dreams, a masculine scent tinged with the musky traces of magic. The scent of the breeze made her absently rub a spot on her hipbone through the fabric of her pajamas pants. It was a mostly unconscious gesture she had taken to doing since the day she had chosen to exercise her new found adulthood after her last birthday. She realized she was doing it and stopped. She only did it when thinking of…
'No, I can't think about that, I won't do this to myself,' she thought, 'I just can't.'
The open window forgotten, she walked to her vanity and sank desolately onto the cushion of the chair. She stared at her reflection; the image in the mirror was one she had come to recognize but it still shocked her.
Smoky green eyes, almost hazel in color, looked back at her from a face full of pain. From the dark circles under her eyes to skin far too pale, she looked sick. 'Heartsick,' he mind echoed. She looked so much older than someone about to turn nineteen. She felt even older. The dreams of him and her, the dreams of them together that weren't from her memories of that journey to save her brother, started almost a year ago after the dream that came the night of her eighteenth birthday. The new dreams often left her awake in the middle of the night, unable to sleep as she recalled every moment of each one.
She could still remember, with every detail burned into her mind, the dream from that fateful night. The aftershock it had on her life was enormous. Her days no longer held much joy in ordinary things – going to class, eating out with friends. While she didn't date since the dream, and hadn't done so very often before that, she did have many friends that she used to love to spend time with. Now there was no enjoyment, knowing that she had defeated the man she loved who had once loved her in return. There was even some fear involved for her. She was afraid of hurting anyone else the way she had hurt him, so she had slowly built a wall that few people except her family ever got past.
She simply went through the motions of class and socializing now, but the strain on her heart and her disinterest in most of the things she used to enjoy was starting to show. She loved to learn and her grades had been wonderful throughout high school, even when she had sat longing for him instead of doing her schoolwork at home or paying attention in class. However, her first semester in college had not gone well and the second much worse. Her advisor had recommended that she take a semester off when Sarah explained that personal issues were distracting her from doing well. She had not told her parents when she came home this morning that she was not returning because it would have kept them from going away and it had taken her too long to convince them to go and enjoy a much deserved weekend away now that she was home to take care of Toby.
Toby was her only break from herself. He could make her laugh and sometimes even push back the dark clouds that followed her, if only for a short while. She loved Toby so much, almost as if he was hers, which in a small way he had become since she had rescued him. Her parents loved him – loved them both – but Sarah still felt like she had to protect Toby and take care of him. This semester off would be good for her because she could be close to him, even though he reminded her so much of her lost love.
The only other small joy that came in her days was when her thoughts of that man, her onetime king and forever love, became dreams in the night. The dreams varied often, all situations they had never been in – eating a picnic in an open space surrounded by a gorgeous wooded area, playing a childish game of hide-and-seek in the Labyrinth, reading huge tomes from his library in the castle, riding horseback across a sandy beach and so many more. They all lead up to the promise of all her secret carnal desires involving him finally fulfilled. However, each dream never lasted longer than the first kiss or touch in their lovemaking.
Waking was the hardest part, for it left her with a sense of incredible loss and such a yearning for a way to experience those moments for real. She used to be so willful and strong, always seeking a way to fix a problem, but this was one problem she knew she couldn't fix. Now those traits were becoming slowly buried by her pain. She felt disgust at herself on a regular basis for becoming such an aimless drifter, but she had no desire to do anything about it. This miserable existence was part of her self-imposed punishment.
Sighing, she reached for her radio and turned it on, a song filling the air.
/lyric/
As the song began, her heart wrenched, for she recognized the tune. It was one that frequently spoke to her heart when she heard it, reminding her of all she had lost. This time a woman, not the original artist, was singing the song. The voice played against her ears in a strangely familiar way and she began to sing softly to herself.
/lyric/
Sarah thought back to last night's dream, a dream that had once again put her in the place she defeated him. Her dreams hadn't taken her to that place since the night of her birthday. Unlike her birthday dream, everything had played out exactly as it had really gone and she had uttered the words that haunted her, the fateful phrase she had dared not even think, due to the pain it caused her. The only thing that made the dream different from her memory was that once again she realized she was dreaming and she desperately hadn't wanted to say the words, but they had come from her anyways.
Sarah did not realize a male voice had replaced the female voice in the song on the radio. She was too consumed by the desire to make everything different, even though she knew she couldn't change the past. She desperately wanted to call for him so many times, but didn't, because she was sure he probably hated her for what she had done to him. She remembered those last moments she had looked upon him and recalled the look on his face as he spoke to her.
'Fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave'
So much was in his eyes that she had not understood at the time. His eyes had told her, but she had been too young to see it, too young to understand it.
The voice on the radio drew her from her thoughts. She listened intently to the words and the voice.
/lyric/
"How could you," she said, the words coming unbidden from her mouth, "Even I didn't know."
/lyric/
"Yes I would," Sarah said breathlessly. 'Stop it,' she thought, 'you are talking to yourself like a crazy person.' Then she shivered involuntarily as she realized she was talking to the radio because…
"That voice," she whispered to herself, as she focused on it and lost herself in the sultry, soft tones that surrounded her, as the silky voice on the radio merged with distinctly different fragments of a song in her mind.
/lyric/
"It's not him, it can't be him," she said aloud, swearing she heard the whisper of a small sound of amusement from near her. She turned right and left, but there was nothing there, nothing except the strange breeze blowing through the room.
Her thoughts again returned to last night's dream. Many emotions had been there in his eyes. 'Oh, how they had been there' her mind whispered sadly. The usual teasing, taunting gleam replaced with desire, desperation… love. Glowing hotly from those mismatched crystalline eyes that never wavered in their focus on her, until she had uttered the words and watched a look of crushing despair reflect across his face and dim the sparkle in his eyes before he had turned into the owl.
Sadness filled her at the memory of his look as the female voice resumed the song. Sarah began to pay more attention to the song. 'What an odd duet,' she thought. She had never thought of the song as one that should be a duet, but in that form it spoke to her as it never had before. In that form it told the story of her and him, a way it should not have been doing. 'It's just a song, after all,' she thought. She listened for a few phrases and then joined in softly.
/lyric/
Sarah realized that the phrase she had sung was the unspoken wish that lay foremost in her thoughts. "How I wish there was," she murmured and continued to sing, her voice perfectly matching the voice of the woman on the radio.
/lyric/
Sarah felt the breeze pick up again, the scent of him impossibly mixed in it. The male voice joined the woman's as they sang.
/lyric/
"I will wait forever – it will never fade," she cried out, tears forming in her eyes as she lay her head upon the vanity. Although tears fell, she was unable to truly let her emotions free and grieve for her lost love, as the pain clung to her insides like a firmly rooted part of her being. The breeze surrounded her as that unnatural feeling of a lover's touch came back, delicately tousling the dark strands stuck to her cheek from the damp glue of her tears as the instrumental interlude played on the radio.
Sarah's tears continued to fall silently, her body shaking with unreleased sobs as the male voice sang on the radio. Impossibly, she felt like the duet was her and him. Never mind the sheer ludicrousness of thinking that the radio could play a song sung by them that they had never sang together, there was no way he could still love her after she had uttered those words, especially since three years had passed since that time. It was far too long for the love to still be there.
/lyric/
"You were never wrong," she whispered brokenly, interrupting the song, "You were the only one who was right."
Unnoticed by Sarah, the song suddenly paused. She whispered her plea to the heavens as her eyes blindly looked into her mirror. "Oh, Jareth," she cried out loud, as she had longed to do so many times and never had, "please come back to me, right now!"
/lyric/
The song began to play again, but it was no longer coming from the radio. It was coming from the mouth of the man in the mirror, situated a few feet behind her back in the image. Mismatched eyes in all their glory, burning bright with love as his song ended, glittered back at her as he smiled gently.
a/n: So, I hope you were able to get the full version for your read through, as it fills in the blanks in some parts. One more chapter, a bit of a shortie, in this day's upload, so proceed!
As always, please R/R, I would just adore it!