The Truth of a Lie
a/n: I do not own Labyrinth. There is a lot of angst in this chapter, and a lot of dream scenes. Also, NCS, and the scenes in the dream sequences may be jumbled. They are not meant to be completely sane or in chronological order. I do not own the quotes from Shakespeare. Beta-ed by AngelaScarlet.
Chapter Twelve – Still of Night
"Sarah? Sarah? Are you out here? Sarah?" he called her name as he walked through the hazy morning wood. The sun had just risen, and Sarah was nowhere to be found. Toby knew that she sometimes went walking in the mornings, out to the lake, where it was peaceful. Toby felt the leaves crunching beneath his feet, and hear the bird song in the air. He walked towards her spot, and froze.
"SARRRRAAAAHH!" Toby shrieked as he ran to the crumpled figure on the ground. Dressed like the dead, with a pool of blood around her. Toby turned her onto her back, and saw it then, her throat was slit, and her skin was ashen.
Sarah was dead.
Toby sat up in bed, soaked with sweat. Tears ran out of his eyes, and he was forced to remind himself that Sarah was not dead.
"Sarah is not dead, Sarah is not dead!" he repeated to himself, his fists clenched and his eyes shut tight. He felt rather than heard his door open, and then Jareth was there.
"Another nightmare?" he asked as he handed Toby a glass of water.
"Yes, the same one," Toby sighed as he drank.
Toby had been the one to find her that morning. She had not succeeded in completely slitting her throat. She had only managed to get one side slit before passing out. It has been the most terrifying thing he had ever seen, and not because of the blood. It has been that ashen look to her face. He had seriously thought the only person he had ever cared about was dead.
It has been a month since that day, and he was still having nightmares. Sarah was only one room over, still unconscious. That morning he had been forced to run back and grab everyone who was awake to come and help him carry Sarah back to the estate. Jareth had arrived later that day to find a healer already working on her. He had summoned even more healers, and had spared no expense in getting Sarah better.
And she was better. Her skin was healing, and she had more color. But she was still unconscious, no matter what the healers did to help.
"Are you going to try what we were talking about?" Toby asked Jareth as he got out of bed.
"Yes, I am. Aren't you going back to sleep?" Jareth asked.
"Can't sleep now. I will go sit with Sarah. Are you going in first thing in the morning?" Toby asked.
"You are still a child Toby, and children need their sleep," Jareth chided. Toby sighed.
"You know I will just lay here awake," Toby told him knowingly.
"Yes, maybe. But I'm the king, and I say you are going back to bed," Jareth tucked the boy back in and left the room. He opened the door to Sarah's bedchamber and walked in. A soft candle glowed, and Jareth sat down on the soft chair next to the bed.
He had not slept much since he arrived. Toby had been in shock, and had needed someone to take care of him, and Sarah…
"Oh, Sarah, why won't you wake up?" Jareth mumbled quietly to her still form.
She had looked so dead, like some morbid doll. He still had no idea why she had done what she had done, but he was determined to find out why, and fix it. He could not have a Duchess of his kingdom compromised like this.
'Liar. She's more than a duchess. She always has been more than that to you,' his mind told him. He did not argue. She was more than a duchess. She was a warrior, a queen, a woman, a lady; she was everything he could ever want. And yet here she was, completely untouchable.
"Why did you do this to yourself?" he asked her. Of course, she did not respond.
Toby had been ushered out of the room while the first healers had taken Sarah out of her black clothing. When Jareth had arrived, they had shown him the damage done to her body. She was skeletal, evidence of the fact that she had not been eating. Her body was covered in scars; small white lines all over her body, where she had obviously been cutting herself. Her skin had no color, and her lips were the same. Her hair did not shine, and was dry and breaking. The healers told Jareth that this was all evidence that Sarah had been slowly killing herself over a period of time. She had done it all to herself. Jareth prided himself on being strong, but even he had to leave the room and collect himself after hearing that news. Ever since, he had slept every night in the very chair he sat in now, hoping she would wake.
Jareth had told Toby that he could exercise his unique ability to get into people's dreams on Sarah. He hoped to find out the source of her problems, and maybe talk her subconscious into doing something, anything. Right now he was desperate for Sarah to wake up. He had told Toby that he would do it in the morning, but he preferred to do it now; in the still of night, where no one would bother him.
Jareth conjured a crystal and placed it in Sarah's hand. He leaned back and got comfortable. He did not need to be asleep to do this, but he closed his eyes anyway. He felt himself sink, and then he placed himself in Sarah's world, where things would be a puzzle to him. He only hoped he could put the puzzle together before it was too late.
The calliope music played through the air. It was summer, and the air was humid. The wail of a baby could be heard. Jareth saw an infant swaddled in a fleece blanket, lying on the ground. A man clothed in black ran towards the child and unwrapped the blanket. He lifted the baby's nightgown and then nodded. Satisfied, he swaddled the infant once again and picked it up. Looking to see if anyone was around, he ran into the night once again.
- shift –
"Foundling Sarah! Duck this time, do not just stand there like a stupid fucking idiot! You are a warrior, and assassin, a weapon! You will duck, or it will be the strap for you once again!"
Jareth saw a little Sarah, hardly older than Toby, with a wooden sword in hand. An older Foundling swung at her, and she blocked instead of ducking. She screamed as she was backhanded, and then drug by her hair out of the room.
"Nonononononononononono!" she screamed.
- shift –
"Spread your legs for me Sarah, there you go. Now, this will hurt, but you have got to get used to that. Stop crying! Stop it! Keep your legs open!"
"No, please! Founder, no! Please, noooooooooooooo!"
"You will grow to like it Sarah. You will grow to like having men fuck you and use you. That is what women are best at, splitting their legs for men like me"
Jareth threw a punch that went right through the man raping Sarah, and he could do was shield his eyes as her eyes began to glaze over with a mix of desperation, fear, and grief.
- shift –
"Foundling Sarah, you will now be going under. This is your test. Nothing in the place you are going to is real, except for the man who rules the place where you are going. You are in no real danger. You will not be Foundling Sarah when you go in. You will be Sarah Williams. You will not remember being a Foundling or anything of this world"
"I am ready," Sarah said, as she laid down on a slightly padded table.
- shift –
"I wish the goblins would take you away. Right now"
- shift –
"I've brought you a gift"
"What is it?"
"It's a crystal, nothing more. But if you turn it this way and look into it, it will show you your dreams. But this is not a gift for an ordinary girl who takes care of a screaming baby"
- shift –
"I'll paint you mornings of gold; I'll spin you valentine evenings. Though we're strangers till now we're choosing the path between the stars. I'll leave my love between the stars"
- shift –
"Give me the child. Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the Goblin City to take back the child that you have stolen, for my will is as strong as yours, and my kingdom is as great. You have no power over me"
- shift –
"Noooooooo! No! Nononono!"
"'Congratulations, Sarah, you passed the test. You are ready to begin your training to be a Found"
"That was the test? Hoggle? Sir Didymus? Ludo?"
"They were all real, as was the precious Goblin King"
"I can never see them again?" Sarah's face looked beyond sad, almost heartbroken.
"I do not think you will ever see them again. You are now Sarah, Found. Your training will begin immediately. In one hour's time you will report to Founder Gabriel to start your instruction in advanced archery. Good luck Sarah, you certainly never disappoint," the man who had been there when she had woken up left the room.
"He was real. They were real. It was real!" Jareth watched as Saran buried her face in her hands and wept.
- shift –
Jareth saw Sarah as she had been when he had seen her again. Calm, cool, collected: a warrior, and a woman to be reckoned with. She sat there in her red leather and fondled the file in front of her, "Does His Majesty know?"
"Know what, Found?"
"Does he know who I am? Does he know it was a test?" Sarah's voice was tight with tension.
"Found, he knows nothing of it. He still believes you to be Sarah Williams, mortal girl personified, the only one to ever beat his Labyrinth. It was a task to deceive him, for he is very powerful. But he has no clue that you were a Foundling"
"'Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive'. Is there no one else?"
"Found, even if there were someone else, you were the one chosen for this task. We all have out crosses to bear"
Jareth watched as she left the room, the heels of her boots clicking, and her braid brushing her ass seductively.
- shift –
"I think we had best get a move on Jareth. I want to make it to the lake before sunset. I desperately need to bathe. If it is any consolation Jareth, I cared too"
- shift –
Sarah stood in front of him, naked.
"What? Why are you staring at me? Why, Your Majesty, do you wish to inspect me closer?"
"If you have seen one female body, you have seen them all. You do not have anything I have not seen before, Sarah"
Jareth watched the him that lived in the memory admire Sarah as she swam in the lake.
- shift –
"Sarah, when did you lose your virginity?"
"Right after my test. I was fifteen when Founder Corsair brought me to the ritual room and deflowered me in front of the other Founders"
- shift –
Jareth watched as Sarah conjured a crystal sphere out of the air. She smashed it against the side of the bathtub, and grabbed a sharp shard of it.
"' O comfortable friar! where is my lord? I do remember well where I should be, and there I am. Where is my Romeo? Yea, noise? Then I'll be brief. O happy dagger! This is thy sheath; there rust, and let me die'"
Jareth watched as Sarah drew the shard across her skin, and watched the blood swell up into beads.
- shift –
"Toby, will you excuse me for a moment?" Sarah put down her napkin and got out of her chair. She walked down the hall, and into a bathroom. Jareth watched as she threw up everything she had ingested. She patted her face with a wet washcloth and stared at herself in the mirror.
"Mirror mirror on the wall, who's the most worthy of them all?" Sarah looked like she would punch the mirror, but she stilled her fist and started to cry instead, "Worthy of nothing. Forgive me for throwing a pity party, but I get the distinct feeling that no one wants me or needs me. Not even the man who was once in love with me wants me. Of course, how could he? A king has to marry someone who is pure and all these wonderful things I can never be. I never have been pure. I sure as hell have no noble blood! Ah, what the hell am I talking about?"
Sarah left the bathroom looking as if she could drop dead at any moment.
Jareth knew he would have to escape this endless loop of memories if he ever hoped to reach Sarah, wherever she was in this abyss. He concentrated further, seeking a way out, as the scene shifted again. He did not pay attention to it, however. An invisible door appeared to him, and he walked through it, and into a single dark room.
Or what was more properly known as an oubliette: the place of forgetting. Jareth looked around in the darkness and saw no light. He conjured a sphere that would radiate light, and looked around once more.
"Sarah?" he asked the crumpled figure in the corner. She was dressed in the white gown she had been wearing in the park, but it was now stained with blood and dirt. Jareth walked to her, and touched her on the shoulder.
"Please, don't touch me," her small voice came to him. This was not the warrior in her. This was the lady in her, the girl who had been led so astray.
"Sarah? What are you doing here? There are people waiting for you to wake up. Come with me, above all this, and wake up," Jareth urged.
"Do you know what an oubliette is, Jareth?" Sarah asked sadly.
"A place of forgetting. And as soon as we come out of this I am doing away with all of them," Jareth said emphatically.
"Exactly, a place of forgetting. I want all of you to forget. I never wanted you to know, Jareth. You meant more to that fifteen year old than you will ever know. You were dark, dangerous, and yet you showed her what it meant to live. She never forgot you. She hoped you had forgotten her. Sometimes, late at night, she would lie in bed thinking of you. Of your hair, and your eyes, and she would weep. She always had a might-have-been. Her might-have-been was you. She wants you to go, and let her pass. One day she will pass. She meant to die" Sarah said.
"I will not. I refuse to let her go. I never forgot her, even if I wished I could. When she came back into my life, I was appalled by what her life had been made out to be. It was a mockery. They had made a mockery out of her life. They needed to pay for what they did, and they never did. They took something from her, and she can never get that back. Where is she? At least give me the opportunity to speak with her, to try and convince her," Jareth pleaded.
"She will not like it," Sarah said doubtfully.
"She does not have to. Will you go with me when we come back?" Jareth asked.
"If I must. But I warn you, you may lose your mind in there," Sarah said with a serious glare.
"Sarah, it is her mind to have. I lost everything else to her long ago. Please show me?"
"Through there," Sarah pointed at an archway that had not been there before. Mist shrouded the entrance, and Jareth took the steps forward.
May the Lord and Lady forgive him if he never returned.