Title: Whispers

Disclaimer: They don't belong to me.

Author: Anisky

Summary: He drove her to the brink of madness, until she gave herself to make it stop. Now she's in the darkness and she doesn't understand the game, the rules, or how to win. J/S

A/N: So, I began this a long time ago unsure whether or not to make it a one-shot. Now I'm continuing it, and it's a bit strange (it will be completed, no doubt at all). It diverges a lot from the prologue, both in style and in spirit. If you want to consider the prologue a one-shot, be my guest. But I hope you'll give try out the rest of this story, too. Please, please read and review. Thanks!

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Chapter 1

Sarah awoke, and there was silence.

Silence.

That stunned her and left her baffled for several moments, baffled while waves of relief flooded from the simplistic id part of her mind and washed over her. The relief of silence, the absence of the torturous whispers which had plagued her for weeks months years she didn't even know, they had made time flow together and lengthen and shorten and make no sense at all and drove her to...

What?

Her brain was jumbled, still so stunned by the silence after so long. She embraced the childlike waves of relief telling her that the silence was a good thing, that she was free, that the horrible bad thing that so tortured her was gone, gone, gone, and it was good.

Yet the horrible foreboding feeling and the knot in her stomach reminded Sarah that there was a reason for the whispering that had killed the silence and made her whisper herself in a desperate plea for sanity and life and everything she should have had, some riddle she had not solved, some rhyme she did not reason, that she had bravely endured the whispering, and if it were gone then...

What?

Finally as her swirling battle of relief and worry brushed against her conscious mind, she remembered what had happened.

The Goblin King had taken her away.

Where?

Sarah opened her eyes, and it was dark, so dark, pitch dark, like ink and she, having been driven so close to the void of madness that she had felt the cold frost of its tentacles beginning to grasp her, did not know if she were dead or alive or dreaming or if her entire life had been a dream. She had never seen a dark so dark before, she sat up and found herself surprised that the air itself wasn't thicker, dripping the blackest ink across her face.

Or perhaps it was and she simply could not feel it. Did she have a face?

Sarah reached up with her hand and brought it to where she thought her face ought to be. She felt out two eyes, her nose, her mouth, her hair-- all where they ought to be.

She still couldn't get used to the silence. All she had wanted was for the whispering to stop, but to have been accompanied for (how long how long how long HOW LONG?) she found the quiet the alone discomfiting. If there were somebody else, even if it were Him, then at least she would know she was real.

The rational bit of her mind told her that wasn't right somehow, but it had been so suppressed lately that it could not tell her quite why that was wrong, so it said was swept up in the whirlwind of her confusion and generally ignored.

Next, the rational bit of her mind offered that she could feel what her surroundings were like, and Sarah liked this idea better, as it was much easier to do.

It was a cushion beneath her, quite comfortable actually. She brought her hands down and ran them across the surface of whatever she was sitting on. It was soft, pleasant, but that was all she could figure out. That was enough, for now, and she spent several minutes running her hands along the fabric and enjoying the feel before she decided that she ought to do something else.

She consulted the rational bit of her mind, which was growing stronger with the silence, and it supposed she could call out to see if anybody were there.

It might be Him, of course, so she paused for a few moments and waited to see if something else would happen first. Everything stayed silent and completely dark, so it seemed there was nothing else to do.

"Hello?" she called out. Her voice was still rough from the (how long HOW LONG WHY COULD SHE NOT FIGURE IT OUT!) of whispering constantly. (How long had she been here, asleep?)

For a moment, nothing happened. She felt a sharp fear that she would be here, in this dark silent place forever, and then she thought that after the whispering that would be good, but then there was just more silence and she thought that might drive her crazy too and the whispering would be better, but when there was whispering she had just wanted silence and...

The barely rising panic was briefly settled as she felt small change on whatever it was she was sitting on and she knew that someone had to be there.

It spiked again as she realized that it was probably Him, the Goblin King, but she wanted to know what had happened so...

She regained enough control to take a deep, calming breath, and ventured more softly: "Hello?"

So he responded, in that voice, that... it had been a whisper so long that she did not know what to think when this time it was a voice. It was a mocking honey sly malicious sensual cruel dangerous compelling powerful (could it be all that at once? Sarah thought probably not but she did not have the energy to bother too long) voice, and goosebumps raised across her body in terror, but it was there and so she was real (that wasn't right). "Hello, Sarah."

She swallowed and hugged herself, trying to fight down the horrible thing that was creeping up her stomach into her chest. "Where am I?"

He laughed in that mocking honey sly malicious sens-NO it couldn't be all those things and to think it was would only scare her more and make him seem bigger and she refused to think any more about his laugh except that it was there, which even though that wasn't right was still a comfort and Sarah did not feel she was in any position to refuse a comfort on the mere grounds of logic. Especially since she could not seem to clear her head enough to sort it out.

"You," he said in a low voice that Sarah refused to describe more than that, "are in my Kingdom."

Information, but not very useful. Still, it told her that she was not dead, or a dream, nonexistant, an illusion.

Actually, she could be imagining this voice just as much as she could be--

NO, NO, STOP, she was not going to think her way out of existence. She was here and there was something else and she was not going to make herself into an illusion.

"I think," Sarah informed the Goblin King, "I'm a bit insane."

Another laugh, but though Sarah waited that was all.

"Are you real?" she asked him curiously.

Suddenly, she felt something against her arm, and she flinched, startled. It was a hand, too smooth to be a real hand (he wore gloves, she remembered suddenly), wrapping around her arm. Her heart thumped for a few moments, and then he replied:

"Oh, yes, dear Sarah, I assure you, I am very real."

She frowned, since she knew that her imagination would probably say that, but she didn't think that the Goblin King would like to hear that.

"Why did you make me say your name?" she asked next. His hand was still on her arm. She tried to pull away but it just tightened. She thought that he would probably give another vague answer, but to her surprise--

"Goblin King is my title," he murmured. It was not a whisper but it was close enough to one to make her flinch in memory. His mouth was close to her ear and she could feel the warmth of his breath upon it, and she wanted to move away but was frozen in her unsureness. "It refers to my position. If there were another Goblin King, it would refer to him. To simply say it without an attached wish is simply invoking a position, which is meaningless. A position cannot do anything."

It wasn't an answer, yet, but he kept speaking.

"My name, on the other hand," (even though she had promised herself before that she would not attach emotions to his voice because she chose so many that they could not all make sense, she thought that his voice was mostly amused right now or no actually that was not quite right it was smug), "invokes me. I, personally, can do plenty."

Sarah furrowed her brow as she tried to make sense of this. Her rational mind was hopping around in what could only be described as frantic excitement, and she decided that since it was so very enthusiastic about this piece of information, and she herself could not make heads or tails of it, she should let it take over. This resulted in her blurting out, "The forces of magic only allow one referent per sense!"

His laugh was almost entirely amused now and there was only a hint of cruel malicious sly honey sensual NO, STOP! She sat and listened to it, drawing comfort from the first sound she had heard in a long time that was more genuine than calculated.

"I believe that were you in full control of your faculties," he eventually spoke in the wake of her silence, "that after you spent quite a large amount of time cursing at me, screaming at me that I was not being fair, and demanding that I take you back home, you would ask why I wished for you to invoke me."

Yes, that was a good question. She was currently, however, more preoccupied with a different question. "Why is it so dark in here?" she asked instead.

"I keep all my cells dark."

Sarah frowned. Was she in a cell then? "Do all of your cells have such soft beds?" She ran her fingers along the soft material again.

"No," the Goblin King responded. "You aren't in a cell."

Sarah's fingers, as they ran along the bed (at least, that's what she supposed it was), accidently brushed against the Goblin King's leg. She pulled away quickly, but he gave a deep chuckle low in his throat. His hand stopped gripping her arm and began to stroke it.

She knew there was a logical flaw in his answer. It frustrated her that it was so much more difficult to think than it should be. It was like her mind was wrapped in cotton then separated into many little bits. "Then why is it dark?"

"Habit, I suppose, with new captives," he told her. "Not to mention that you were sleeping for quite some time."

"How long?" she asked.

"Time works differently in the Underground, even if I told you it would mean little to you."

Okay. "Why didn't you turn on lights when you arrived?"

"I have no trouble seeing in this room."

Oh. Sarah shivered again, realizing that he could see her every reaction, her every move, while she was completely blind. It wasn't fair. It was odd that she knew not to say that when she was crazy. Or was she not crazy anymore? Wouldn't it take longer than this to recover from madness? Or perhaps things worked differently in the Labyrinth.

Or, of course, this all could be an illusion dream imagination death.

She wondered for a few moments if he would turn on lights if she asked nicely, and then realized that she might as well just try it and see. "Could you turn on the lights, please?" she asked.

He laughed again. "You are quite amusing when you are mad," he informed her casually, removing his hand from her arm and reaching up to stroke her hair. She pulled away but he continued. "So very distractible. You keep worrying about the little questions and dart from this to that without pursuing what matters. But you do seem to be recovering quickly. I am glad it won't last. It is endearing in a childlike way, but I believe I would come to find your insanity tiresome after a while. Though it makes you delightfully mellow right now."

She didn't know what to say in response to his speech. The feeling of his gloved fingers stroking her hair felt quite nice, and she knew that this whole thing was wrong and she should be struggling against him, somehow, have a mission and be fighting like last time, but she didn't know what. To just push him away didn't seem like it would do any good since she didn't know where she was or if there were a Labyrinth or if any of the rules were the same at all. So she let his hands feel good.