"Let go of me, Jareth. I'm fine."
Jareth was insistent that she go to bed, right now. Sarah was just as determined that she was not, by God, going anywhere near a bed in her weakened state with Jareth under the same roof. Just because the roof in question happened to contain more than a hundred rooms, not including towers, didn't make it safe. Jareth was not very good at making her feel safe, at least not from him, not when he was standing there glowering at her like he would dearly love to throttle her.
"I realize that you have an extremely low opinion of me, Sarah," Jareth said coolly. "But believe it or not, I'm not about to ravish you when you're hardly able to stand on you own feet by yourself."
"I wouldn't put it past you," Sarah said.
Jareth considered himself to be a patient man. Truly he did. "You can go to bed voluntarily, or I can put you there. It's up to you."
"I don't need to go to bed," Sarah said. "I'm not tired. I'm fine."
Jareth noted with some amusement that she was shaking violently and almost transparently pale as she spoke. "Be that as it may, you are not well—"
"I'm fine," Sarah snapped irritably. Why wouldn't he just leave her alone? "And even if I'm not, I'll live."
"You'll live," he agreed. "Still, you left half your blood in the Aboveground. You're going to be understandably queasy for a while."
As if to prove his point, she swayed and had to brace a hand against the nearest wall to keep upright. That was it; Jareth had had enough of her damn stubborn defiance. Despite her protests, he lifted her into his arms and took the nearby tower stairs three at a time. She was unconscious by the time he pushed the door open, and she did not wake up when he carefully removed her blood soaked clothes, cleaned her skin with a wave of his hand, and slipped a soft cotton chemise over her head.
She stirred a little in her sleep when he tucked a quilt around her, but didn't wake. Jareth stood there for a few minutes, watching the slow rise and fall of her breathing and the rapid flicker of her dreaming eyes, and then he tucked a stray lock of her long dark hair behind her ear and left the room.
When Sarah woke four hours later, Jareth was sitting in a plush wing chair across the room, so when she opened her eyes, he was the first thing she saw. She smiled at him before she could think not to.
The smile faltered a little at the thought that he had been sitting there all day, watching her sleep. It made her think of the dreams she had all the time . . . when she lived in the Aboveground. And thinking of the Aboveground made her remember that she would never see it again, and that made her eyes fill with tears.
Which, of course, made her feel stupid, which only made her cry harder.
Jareth watched her curiously with lifted brows. There was a great deal of misery and despair in the Underground, but not tears. Tears in the Underground were as rare and precious as diamonds. There were very few creatures in the Underground who still remembered what it felt like to cry, and even less who could still do it, so to see Sarah brushing tears from her cheeks as fast as they could fall, had the power to move him in a way that little else did.
Sarah looked up and swiped roughly at her face when he approached the bed. "I'm sorry," she said and turned her face away. "I know it's stupid, but I can't—"
"Shh." Jareth turned her face back to his and pressed a finger to her lips to silence her. "Please . . . don't be sorry. I envy you your ability to weep. Guard your tears closely, Sarah. This place has a way of . . . taking them away from you."
Sarah clutched the quilt closer to her chest and tried to move away from him, but she was already pressed against the headboard. "Don't be nice to me, Jareth, okay?" she said in a small voice. "I don't think I could stand it right now if you were nice to me."
He twined a tress of her chestnut hair around one finger, caressing the silky length of it with his thumb as he let it slip through his hand. "I have a gift for you, Sarah."
She gave a watery laugh at that. It was just so like him to tempt her from her thoughts with little baubles and magic tricks.
Jareth held his hand out to her, and Sarah watched as the air around it seemed to glitter and contract, then he was holding a slim, tapering crystal wand. It glowed softly, as though Jareth had trapped the moon inside it. "Do you want it?"
Sarah reached out and touched it. It was as smooth as it looked, but strangely warm to the touch. "What's the catch?"
"Catch?" Jareth repeated.
"Yeah. What do you want for it? What game are we playing now?"
Jareth smiled. "There is no catch, Sarah. No game."
She narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously, but she took the wand. She gave it an experimental wave and grinned delightedly when it made a swishing sound as is cut the air. "What does it do?"
"Anything you want it to do," Jareth said.
"Can I summon things with it?"
"Anything that exists or that you can imagine."
"Really? Are you sure you want to trust me with that kind of power?" He was crouched beside her next to the bed. Sarah pointed the wand at his throat and smiled humorlessly. "Could I kill something with it?"
Jareth understood the implied threat immediately, as she knew he would. "You think to use my own magic against me?" He laughed and stood up.
Sarah blinked. "What do you mean 'your own magic'?"
He gestured to the wand with a wave of his hand. "That wand answers to me. Knowing precisely how dear I am to your heart, did you really think that I would give you something that you could harm me with?"
"No," Sarah said. She felt foolish. "I'm sorry."
"Sorry that you thought to hurt me, or sorry that I anticipated it?" Jareth snapped. He didn't wait for an answer, but swept out of the room, slamming the door behind him.