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: Nearing the end, only one chapter to go. Thank you so much for the reviews everybody!

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Chapter 4

Sarah waited, and the moment before Jareth spoke felt much longer than a normal moment. It was like the entire universe paused before he spoke, acknowledging the gravity of the moment, when more than she realized would be revealed to her.

Were they even in the same universe as everybody else? As anybody else?

Then, he began.

"The game was never meant to be won. A fundamental flaw, really, but then nobody had even come close. Solving the Labyrinth, that was fine. Nobody had before, but it would have not been… the end of the world." His words held an ironic tinge that Sarah tried to comprehend, but could not until he continued talking and things suddenly, awfully came together in her head. "Technically, you see, the moment you stepped into my castle, you won. All that was asked was that you solve the Labyrinth, after all. From that moment, I had to release Toby. But you... you were another story. I had time, and I took it, determined not to let you go."

Sarah's stomach dropped into her feet, and she could not stop a small gasp from escaping her lips.

"Yes. You understand now, don't you?" he asked, voice still holding its bitter edge. "I recklessly forced your hand, and in doing so forced you to say the words that would destroy my kingdom."

Sarah was dizzy from such an overload of information that she was sure that had she vision, it would be swimming. She only remained standing due to Jareth's arms, still supporting her from all sides. "Then… my friends… the city… the goblins…"

"Gone."

No.

No!

It was just too horrible. Her friends were gone—and she had killed them. "But… you're still here."

"I was the force behind all those things. I was never a part of it."

"But then-- you were left--" Realization dawned on Sarah, and she knew what he would say before the words came from around her.

"With you," he confirmed. "An echo of a ghost in your world, seen only by you."

"Then where are we now?" How did he take her here, steal her away, if he had been trapped himself?

"In… an inbetween place. The place where dreams take form. A drawing room, if you will."

Sarah did not quite understand that, but she was not sure she ever would, so she searched for more lucid truths instead.

"Is that why it had to be your name? Not just because the position of Goblin King wasn't specific enough-- but because it didn't exist anymore?"

Pause. "Yes."

"Why couldn't you just tell me?" Sarah demanded, suddenly angry. She pushed against Jareth's chest, squirming to escape his arms, and although she knew he was much stronger than she was she felt his arms fall away yieldingly. He let her back away. "Why did you have to put me through that torture?"

Jareth's voice was steel cold, ice. "It was necessary."

"Necessary!" she screamed at him, wishing she knew where he was well enough to hit him. Which reminded her-- "turn on the damn lights already!"

"I can't."

"What do you mean, you can't? You can see!" Sarah cried accusingly. "I want to stop being blind! You fucking drove me crazy, literally, you bastard, it's the least you can do!"

"I can't!" he finally shouted back at her. Sarah did her best to ignore the pain in his voice. He should feel pain, she thought spitefully. He put me through much worse.

"Why not? What, you could whisper at me nonstop for months, but you can't produce a little light?" She was out of breath, and rasped the last word instead of spitting it out hatefully, as she had intended.

"I'm sorry, Sarah," he said heavily. "Really, I am. But it was necessary."

"Necessary." She said the word dully. Sarah didn't have enough energy left to scream. "Why was it necessary?"

"You couldn't have been reborn to be what you will be from what you were, before."

"What was I?"

"Human," was all he said.

Sarah inhaled sharply. "Aren't I now?"

There was a long pause. "No."

"Then what am I?" Sarah's voice held no emotion. She knew that it should matter more to her, but she didn't seem to have room for anything besides numbness.

There was no answer. She waited for a long time, until it was obvious that Jareth had no intention of telling her. She didn't care enough to argue about her humanity.

So she turned to other matters. "I didn't need to be reborn," she told the Gobl—Jareth.

"My world needed you to be." He sounded indifferent. He'd somehow managed infuse a shrug into his words, and it irritated Sarah, that he would be so dismissive of her life.

"What about my world?" she demanded.

"Your world didn't need you, Sarah."

She pressed her lips together and closed her eyes, although there was no difference in how much she could see. She wished that she could argue with him, and it burned her that she could not. He was right. Nobody had needed her.

She felt terribly bleak as she asked, "Am I going to just be stuck in the dark forever?"

"No."

Sarah waited, expecting him to continue, to explain, but he did not.

"How?"

"What sort of adventure would you have, when you returned to the Labyrinth?"

"This game again? What the hell is your problem? Why are you doing this?" Sarah stamped her foot in frustration.

"Please, Sarah." His voice was soft. "You will understand in time. I promise you this. I-- I thought I had to do it the hard way. I thought I had to pull everything out of you by force, by trickery."

"This is trickery," she insisted, folding her arms petulantly.

For a moment he sounded like the old mocking sly honey malice he'd been before. "Do you want to be suddenly dropped into chaos, Sarah? Do you want to turn everything around again? I've told you before, I've been generous with you. I can just as easily be cruel. I do not wish to go back to attacking you, to nurturing your insanity, to squeezing what I need from you by making you too terrified of me to think of doing anything but warding off my anger, or too in awe of me to imagine you can refuse." His voice was darkly, deadly serious. It made Sarah's heart flutter in fear and she was forced to admit to herself that it would be all too easy for him to throw her back into the emotional turmoil of-- she didn't even know how long anymore.

He did have power over her. She hated it but she could not deny it. In the midst of her twisting thoughts, Sarah found herself suddenly bewildered that the great Goblin King-- no, he was not that any longer-- that Jareth, who had such control over her feelings and emotions and world, even in the lack of his own, was leaving behind his advantage to be honest with her.

It might not be true. This might be another ploy, more trickery. She had no way of knowing that he was sincere. But, though she wasn't she why, she found that she believed he was.

So she let out a deep, whooshing breath that left her empty. She drew in another breath and, she wasn't quite sure why, did what he asked. She delved into her imagination and spoke. "The Labyrinth is in danger. Something dark has been happening to it. So-- yes, my friends call on me to help."

"Why do I not protect my kingdom?" Jareth was prompting her, not arguing.

"Because-- because at first, you don't care," she said wildly. "Or-- you don't even notice. At first everybody just thought that it was becoming overgrown, because-- because you haven't been paying attention to your Kingdom like you should have. You've been withdrawing from it."

"Because of you," he supplied when she stopped speaking. "Because I can't stop thinking of you."

She had been afraid to say it, but now that he had she left it there, though she refused to dwell on it long enough to consider what it might mean. "Um. Yes. But that's not what's causing it, at least, not directly. A King-- no, a Prince-- from another kingdom, has decided that since you appear to be weakened, he can take your kingdom by force. But first, since he knows that the Labyrinth is the best defense you have-- how could you march an army through that thing?-- he's starting by turning your own defenses against you."

"Do you stay in the Labyrinth during this quest?"

"No… I go to other lands too, like I said before. My friends and I have to confront him before he gets to the Labyrinth." She was leaving Jareth out. She didn't know what he'd be doing during all of this, when she came back, but she knew she couldn't keep a story she was spinning on the fly completely without holes, so she ignored it.

"What other creatures are there?"

"Oh-- there are more dwarfs, like Hoggle. He left them because he-- no, his father betrayed them. He was banished as well. That's why he was so bitter and said he didn't need friends. Oh, dragons, too," Sarah breathed, imagining them. "Huge, green and blue, with shining scales. I only see them from afar, though. They're vicious if they think you're endangering their young, but they don't attack if you leave them alone." She paused, lost in thought, considering the possibilities. "You don't know I've returned, at first. Hoggle brought me back secretly. He stole one of your crystals. It should have just disappeared but you weren't paying attention like you used to, and your magic was leaking. But you find out I'm back-- oh, sometime very dramatic."

So Sarah spun her tale, going on, speaking into the darkness as Jareth sat, listening, occasionally prompting her with new questions whenever she faltered. In the complete dark, with the edges of madness yet to recede from her entirely, her imagination was let completely free and she felt like she could almost see the scenes happening, as she described them.

She spoke for a very, very long time. She knew that at one point, Jareth lifted her up and put her back into bed. She fell asleep and dreamt fantastically vivid dreams and woke up in the darkness sometime later and he was there, and she kept telling her story until she fell asleep again, greeted with dreams of her words until she woke up and continued.

It went that way for long, long, so much time that Sarah lost track again and again. Only this time she lost track of everything-- of life, of time of the idea of time, of the fact that there had ever been anything else besides darkness and her words and Him.

Then, one day, she woke up slowly, feeling warmth on her face. She opened her eyes and had to squint as her eyes beheld sunlight, streaming through a window high on the wall.

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A/N: A great big thank you to my amazing amazing reviewers: Lake of Fire- oooh… one part of your review made me grin very, very evilly. You'll almost definitely know why in the last chapter (the next one), White Rose Withering, Rai Medvedsky-yes, we certainly do, marajade179, Anij- sorry! hides I guess if I tell you that I had the whole thing written in advance and decided chapter endings pretty arbitrarily based most only page number, you'd be more upset, not less, right? …ok then, never mind, GreyKing, EmpressofUnderbed, Forevermore33- nope, I think she's becoming a lot saner, I just hope that the more sensical writing style that goes with that doesn't take away from this story, crystal13moon, Masako Moonshade- wow, you definitely have me blushing! Thank you! People tend to be a bit unhappy because I don't like writing sex scenes—not really a moral thing, just not usually my taste—so it's nice to know that some people actually like that, dawn1, Lady Kiren- don't worry, it's all written, but just one chapter to go…