Crack.
"Oh-" The dark-haired woman muttered before cursing an obscenity. Silently doing a Hail Mary for the "discouraging word," Sarah bent over to examine the remains of the shattered bowl.
Many porcelain fragments littered the linoleum tile. The beautiful irises painted on for aesthetic beauty had smashed from flowers to petals. It was her favorite china bowl; one of the few she had salvaged from the castle in it's last days. It was a bittersweet thing, the little china being both a symbol of their early "together" years and the last of Jareth's rule in the Goblin Kingdom. Breaking the bowl brought on a tumult of emotions and Sarah tried to stifle back a sob.
"Well, no use crying over spilled milk." She reconciled herself and opened a closet to take out a dustpan and decent broom.
The kitchen, she realized as she swept up the fragments of the bowl, was her favorite room in the house. Not the bedroom, where they spent many happy hours conceiving their first child, due in a few months. Not the living room, where Sarah loved to see Jareth fascinated with the television and electric lighting. And not the patio, where together they read both literature from the Aboveground and manuscripts that had been saved from the Underground. On the patio, they held hands as they watched the sun set over the rooftops of suburbia. No, Sarah realized, it was the kitchen that had the memories. The kitchen both reflected a world before and a world after. It was not contemporary, but was more a museum of both the past and present.
As she threw a panful of the remains in the garbage, Sarah gazed at the many pictures in frames strung on the wall. When they first moved in, they were the first things to be unpacked. There was a picture of Sarah, shortly after meeting Jareth for the first time. Sarah and Jareth on their first Aboveground date. Jareth laughing as he tries on mortal clothes at a department store downtown. Sarah and Jareth with the rest of the Williams family sitting around a Thanksgiving meal, and everyone looking rather...pleasant. It was an odd sight for a long, blonde-haired Goblin King to be seated among human mortals, but nonetheless it made quite an adorable picture. Toby on his first day of kindergarten, at the bus stop in his new jean shorts and "Spider-Man" t-shirt.
Happy faces peered from times happily remembered. Alas, there were no pictures of Sarah and Jareth on their wedding day; they were destroyed with the flames that consumed the Labyrinth. The fire that raged through Jareth's kingdom nearly took everything they had...their home, their possessions, their lives. And Sarah watched in pain as Jareth sobbed like a broken man in the Aboveground, weeping for the only world he knew lost.
And he had done it all for her.
When the High Council learned of his illicit affair with a mortal, they warned. They threatened. But no amount of danger could deter the King's mind. Their love survived the siege on the city where so many other lives had been lost. And they escaped to Sarah's world, forever banished and stripped of his powers. Including immortality.
And he wept to see his subjects betray him, and those still loyal perish in the battles that raged out and in the Goblin City. Jareth had assigned Ludo and Didymus Sarah's bodyguards, and fought alongside Hoggle to keep the City alive. But the three perished in protection of their queen, their friend.
All for their love, Sarah realized.
Sweeping the linoleum floor bare of the shards of glass, Sarah wiped her hands and tackled the BBQ chicken in the oven.
Not quite done yet, she thought.
Plunging her hands into the bubbly water of the sink and rinsed several dishes before putting them on the dish rack. Memories raced before her mind as she stared into the night, the darkness black out the window, only illuminated with the streetlights.
Jareth had been in the hospital for weeks. During that torturous time, Sarah clung to his hand and wept as human machines kept her king alive. Once such a proud, haughty creature, Jareth had been strapped to IVs and oxygen tanks, his leather robes reduced to mere hospital shifts. How humiliating for him to be bound to a bed and sustained only by mortal advances in medicine. Karen and Sarah's father were states away as Sarah moved west, and they hurried their way to the hospital as soon as they heard. They found their daughter with unkempt hair, clawing at the door to Jareth's room after she had refused both food and sleep for days.
Sarah pulled a dark lock out of her face and behind her ear. I thought he would die, she thought with a sinking feeling.
But he survived. Barely. Everyday held some recovery for the newly-turned mortal. He learned to walk again, if it was just a hobble. He found that no one was at his beck and call anymore; he learned to clean and do his own laundry. With the little possessions he had saved, he and Sarah lived in her apartment. Occasionally, exiled subjects that had been banished years before the Aboveground stopped to visit. But mostly, they ate Chinese takeout alone at night and slept for most of the day.
She could never and would never understand the prejudices that had escalated to hatred. Jareth had warned her that the rest of the Underground would not like a human and the Goblin King in a relationship. She knew the consequences, as did he. And they met in secret, as it was easy for the King to arrange for a portal between a portrait in his bedroom and a mirror in her room.
Days passed into weeks. They had seen each other often. Companionship escalated into love. And when their secret leaked out into rumors and traveled the Underground, resentment grew.
And the High King of the Underground ordered his son to stop seeing "the mortal who had bested him." And when Jareth refused, it was deemed treason. Amassing an army of thousands of soldiers, the Castle, City, and Labyrinth were pillaged and ruined.
They had only hours to escape. Jareth and Sarah had watched on the balcony of his bedroom, hand in hand.
"There's still time, my love," he whispered to her, the only time when Sarah saw him cry as a King. "You can take the portal home, you know. You can go back to your parents, and Toby. Forget about the King."
"Marriage is death until you part, isn't it?" Sarah smiled at him. "And forever isn't very long at all."
He had smiled and held her close as their world raged around them.
They did escape, then. At a horrible cost. They were exiled, bounties on their heads, even in the Aboveground. While she worked a waitress job in the day he found odd jobs in the afternoon, and at night. He walked around like a ghost then, before the rhythmic pattern of being a mortal became secondhand.
As time progressed, he found himself fascinated with the realm Sarah had always known. He stared in a mixture of fright and curiosity at radios, televisions, and stereos. The hum of heaters and air-conditioners made him giggle (yes, giggle! Sarah had to stifle a laugh) and electric lights hurt his eyes for a while (terrible idea to stare at them...). And when they first bought their own home, out of the city and out of the dingy apartment that had suffocated their first years as mortals together, he rang the doorbell, again and again and again. And when he found he could change the ring of the bell with changing a few wires in the electricity box, he nearly electrocuted himself doing it. Running water and toilets he adored and no longer nicked himself with his pocket-knife when Sarah bought him an electric razor.
And, just like Sarah, he wailed when the alarm clock blared their bedroom and shook them both from nightmare-filled slumbers.
And here they were, in a small, one-bedroomed, two-story home where they had an easy commute to work. They had their meals at the tiny kitchen table, filled with mementos of their lives together. And they-
Suddenly Sarah jolted back from a reverie. Wiping her hands clean of soap suds on a nearby dishtowel, she smelled something burning.
And immediately dove for the oven door.
It was late when Jareth returned that night. His jeans hung on his muscular body after a hard day of working on a rich woman's lawn. As he artistically cut the topiaries into mythical creatures, his muscles tightened and tanned in the sun.
He jiggled his key in the lock and struggled to hold open the rusty screen door. Although 57 Southington Street was far from being the elaborate and ancient castle he had once lived in, it had Sarah, and that was all he needed. Of course, they did need money to keep up rent and to put food on the table (was that chicken he smelled?) but Jareth, who never once held a position other than Heir and King in his life, was proud that he could earn an income for their expanding family. Their baby was due in late winter, and Jareth needed to pick up a few more part-time jobs the cut the hospital bill.
Too bad I'm forbidden to contact anyone Underground, Jareth thought sadly. Elven midwives could deliver a safe child in minutes. Alas, this child will never be an heir.
But there was no sense in crying over things that could not be helped, he had learned before. What was done was done. Life is not fair. There was no basis for comparison.
When the lock clicked and he swung the door away, he stepped into the dim-lit kitchen. He would normally use the front door, but that was always hard to budge open and a nuisance to lock. In addition, their home wasn't in the best of neighborhoods, so having a jammed front door was just inviting the neighbors in.
"'Ello?" He called out into the dim room. Sarah was no where to be found. The oven was cracked open a bit, steam rising off the glowing heat rack. Burnt chicken was on the oventop, illuminated by the light of the overhead. The table was cluttered with junk mail, clothes needed to be mended, and dishtowels. Wet dishes still fought for space in the plastic dish rack, and suddy water had sloshed out of the sink and onto the counter.
But where was Sarah?
And then something caught his attention in the hallway. Although it was unusually dim, he could see something slither on the wooden floor. His heart beat faster but his body moved in slow motion as he threw his knapsack down and raced across the kitchen.
And there in a dark recess of the house crouched Sarah, her eyes wide with fear at the approaching creature. It was long, thick, and slimily scaly, slithering along the floor with a deep hiss. It resembled a snake, with thick gray plates protecting it's back with red, diamond-shape markings on it's back. The creature even had two sharp, yellow teeth, glinting in the glow of the kitchen's neon lighting. Currently bared at Sarah, poised and ready to strike.
It was a Conorrh, a creature from the Serpent Kingdom that was widely known to be an assassin. With a single bite, it could paralyze its victim and slowly crunch bones apart until the poor fool died wreathing in agony...Sarah should have heard it approach, the rattling of the bones in its stomach would have given its presence away to Jareth immediately.
But then again, Sarah was never truly attentive to her surroundings. And plus it didn't help that she had never known that the mythical being was indeed, alive and thriving.
Sarah, noticing the crouching Jareth blocking the view from the kitchen, shivered and pressed herself further against the wall. The ingested bones of the creature rattled with an ominous sound of sure and eminent death.
"Harse purvirhn caveat sam'hir," the damnable thing whispered to Jareth, turning his head to the former Goblin King. "Erich sahhan devioni-"
And with no time to lose, Jareth sprang onto his knees as he choked his hand down the creature's windpipe. With a guttural growth and an attempt to bite his hand, the creature resisted fiercely. Although Jareth had been stripped of his powers when he was denied his title, his physical strength had not drained him that much. With an easy swipe, he grasped the roof of the demon's mouth and twisted it backward, the creature crying out in terrific pain.
Venom ran down Jareth's hand and stained his shirt, likely never to come out. Ripping the mouth apart and hurredly shoving the writhing carcass away, he turned his attention to his terrored bride. Sarah was shaking and shuddering with a crazy force inside her, the whites of her eyes showing as her head fell back.
"Sarah-" Jareth yelled hoarsely as he scrambled to hold her. "Sarah, listen...SARAH."
But Sarah's body went limp in his arms and she slumped over onto his shoulder.
It seemed like time stood still for minutes, although Jareth knew there were precious moments to lose. If she was bitten, the venom would be circulating throughout her bloodstream and shutting off her vital organs...while an antidote had been concocted Underground, they were even denied the medical care the Underground had...
"Sarah, if you're there, please, please listen..." Jareth pleaded as he shook her violently. Seeing that the stimuli did not rouse her, the only thing he could do was call human paramedics. Without dropping her, he fumbled to the telephone, nearly tripping over the body of the Conorrh as he did so. Grasping the phone firmly, he pressed it to his ear to hear the reassuring hum of the line.
"Sarah, please hold on," Jareth sobbed as he hurriedly punched the buttons to call for help. Sarah had taught him the number. On normal occasions, he had been fascinated with the glowing digits and eagerly punched them to hear the whine of the call going through.
"Operator, operator, I need assistance," he roared into the receiver as the 911 personnel picked up. "Please, just- come quick." He gave the address and slammed the phone back down on its cradle.
Sarah's body still was lifeless. There was not much to do than pray and check the body for bite marks, to see where she had been attacked and see if it was healable. Although human medicine was laughable compared to what the Healers in the Underground could do, and certainly they could not treat a Conorrh's bite, it was what he could do...aside from whisper a few incantation prayers, which would be futile anyway...
"Mmrmph."
Just as Jareth was stumbling along a Hail Mary or some other human prayer, Sarah moaned deep in her throat. Did she moan? Or was that a fragment of Jareth's imagination? Oh God, she can't die, she can't die, please, whatever great deity is up there, although I always believed me to be handsomer than you, please, please...
"Nrrrrrrrrmum."
Oh God, there is a God...never again will I compare my beauty to yours... "Sarah, SARAH CATHERINE WILLIAMS."
"Umph."
Sarah's body began to stir. Her eyelids fluttered open gradually as her fingers shook and flexed. "Jar-"
"Shhhhh," Jareth hissed. "It's alright...wake up, wake up, darling." He smoothed back her sweaty hair and propped her up on his arm.
"I had a horrible dream about burning dinner and then being attacked by a giant, fatass of a snake...Jareth, what the hell?" Sarah demanded as she looked over his shoulder at the still form of the Conorrh.
He would explain when she was feeling stronger. Now, relief flooded through his veins like melted molasses that his wife had not been bitten- only targeted. And they would continue to be targeted for days, maybe months and years to come. But she was alive, and that was the only thing that mattered. It warmed his bones and he gently shook his wife. "Sarah," he stifled a life, "Never let us get an exotic pet again."
Sarah stared. "I thought the landlord said no pets in here? We had a boa? If this is some funny trick of yours, mister, letting me faint like that..."
Jareth through back his head and laughed in relief and happiness.
A few minutes later, Jareth had dragged her to the secondhand couch and deposited her on the fluffy pillows. Carrying a steaming cup of tea in hand, he handed it to Sarah, who gulped the contents gratefully.
"Jareth?" Sarah asked. "Do you ever regret coming here? You know...leaving the Underground?"
And leaving the Underground to die in your wake, Sarah mentally added.
Jareth smiled, showing his fabulous white canines. "Sarah, dearest, no. I do not." He held her close and rocked her back and forth before asking, "What gives you that ridiculous notion?"
"It just would have been easier for you. Had you forgot about the girl, and the Aboveground..."
"Didn't I tell you once to forget about the baby?"
"Har de har har, mister."
"It seems your good humor is back to par."
"No, but Jareth...you gave up your title, your land, your people, for this," Sarah motioned around the tiny, ramshackle apartment.
"So? And you think the Throne Room of the Goblin Castle was any cleaner?"
"And having ourselves be the targets of assassination attempts?"
"Life needs to be dangerous to be a little interesting. I'm sure you'll agree, pet."
"And that I burned your chicken?"
"You think I won't eat it?" Jareth laughed. "You think I can cook any better? Sarah, I love you."
"I love you, too."
"That's good, because we need to explain to the Emergency Services when they show up here in a few minutes what the hell a giant snake is doing on our hallway floor."
"Oh, hell, Jareth..."
A/N: I would like to thank everyone who has read and reviewed my other fics lately, "In Glass Crystals," and "What the King Doth Know." You provided some of the momentum of getting this fic out, and without your views, I'd have zip inspiration to write. ) I hope to continue this fic as a series with a few more chapters in Jareth and Sarah's happy mortal home life, although I'm not sure to leave it the way it is or expand on it. Give me some input and review! Thank you and much love! --Tea and Cakes.