Rites of Passage by Betty Bokor
Jareth/Sarah. When Sarah is called to save the King, her life takes a whole new course, again.
Spoilers: The movie, the book, and some of the Return series.
Disclaimer: The Labyrinth original characters belong to The Jim Henson Company and Lucasfilms Ltd. This was written strictly for the purpose of entertainment. No attempt at copyright infringement has been made.

A.N. The King is coming to Sarah's apartment for a short stay.

Rites of Passage

Chapter 6

"Me? Why me? What I am going to do with him?" Sarah asked.

"We're not asking for much."

"You could ask someone else; someone who knows him better or a friend… I don't know."

Shawn looked frustrated. "You don't understand. We don't know who else has been compromised… For heaven's sake! One of our cooks was a traitor!" he exclaimed with evident anger as he walked toward one of the windows, trying to calm down.

"I'm sorry," she said, contrite, and walked towards him. "I understand that, but… He still treats me as if I were fifteen… As when I was fifteen. It was like we had seen each other yesterday, no-"

He took a deep breath. "Sarah," he said with a patronizing tone as he turned to her and grabbed her shoulders gently, "he almost died… He was in pain; he probably didn't know what you were doing there…" He kept to himself the part about what she had meant to him and how hard he had worked to forget her.

"You've known him for a long time, haven't you?" she asked with a little smirk.

"Yes, since we were children."

"And are you in the habit of justifying him or is it part of your job?"

He raised his hands in a gesture of defeat. "Fine. You talk to the High King. Maybe you'll be nicer to him," he finished and left the room.

Sarah sighed. What was she doing there? She looked around. The room seemed like a copy of the King's, but much smaller. Smaller, though definitely not small.

Instead of blue, the main color around was a dark red, almost burgundy, mixed –of course, she thought– with gold.

She walked toward the door to the left of the bed and opened it. It led to a huge walk-in closet, full of everything a woman could need… in the Underground. She walked around, trying to figure out if there were jeans or sneakers anywhere, but she did not find any.

"It figures!" she said out loud and immediately covered her mouth. What was she doing there, again?

She went back to the room. She needed to find a bathroom, soon. She walked to the door to the right of the bed and opened it. No bathroom. Just a room filled with mirrors and comfortable seats. Probably a dressing room, she speculated.

There was a door to the left –almost certainly leading to the closet– plus one to the right and one in the back wall. She went to that last one and opened it. To her right there seemed to be something like a vanity with a sink, all carved in one piece of marble. To her left another door and behind it, thankfully, what probably were a toilet and a bidet, all in dark marble.

Weird, she thought. Modern fae; no electricity, but they have bidets…

There was no flushing handle or anything like it, but she was not going to worry. Magic, she reminded herself. It would all work itself out.

A few minutes later, she was back by the sink, trying to figure out how to get water, when she heard a flushing sound. She smiled. Then, she looked back at the sink. Above it, there was a thin crystal faucet, more like a little pipe bent at the end. She passed her hand above, below, around it, and nothing. She was about to give up, when she realized what to do. She grabbed the soap and lowered her hands inside the sink. A few seconds later, water began to flow. She sighed.

When she was done, she looked at the back of the room, where another door was slightly open. She peeked through it and saw a huge room with a sunken bathtub in, what a surprise, dark marble.

She was going to take a bath in a few minutes, but she needed to figure out if there was anything she could wear afterwards that would help her not feel so out of place there. What she had packed would all look outlandish. She was on her way to the main room, when she saw the door to the right in the dressing room and a sudden thought crossed her mind. She felt almost sick and ran to pull the cord Shawn had told her about earlier.

Soon, a happy-looking female goblin knocked at her door and entered the room.

"I need to talk to Hoggle, immediately," Sarah said before the smiling goblin had a chance to say a word.

The little woman nodded and left in a hurry. Five minutes later, Hoggle was there.

"Are you okay, Sarah? You looks ill," he said as soon as he saw her.

"Tell me, Hoggle," Sarah asked kneeling on the floor and holding his hands. "Those women, the ladies you said lived with the King sometimes, did they stay in this room?"

Hoggle was surprised by the intensity of the emotions he saw in her face. "What makes you think that?" he asked carefully.

Sarah stood and pulled him to the dressing room by the hand.

"Here, look, this door… It leads to his chambers, doesn't it? It has to… The rooms are too close and-" she gestured, "there were no other doors in the hallway."

Hoggle started to understand. He pulled her back to the bedroom with a sigh. He had been right all these years. "No; the ladies never stayed in this room. None of them even stayed on this floor. The guest quarters are one floor below."

"So, whose room is this?" she asked, still agitated.

"The Queen's," he said almost grudgingly.

"The Queen? She doesn't sleep with the High King? Why would they give me her room?"

"Not her," Hoggle interrupted; "the High King and Lady Anwen have a room on the other wing, on this floor. They're not guests."

"So?" she asked confused.

He sighed again. "Nobody ever sleeps here; nobody is allowed. This is the room the wife of that rat" he pointed to the right wall, "will have whenever he finds a woman blind enough to marry him," he said with contempt.

Sarah was more confused. "Then why-"

"I suppose they needed you close to him, you being his doctor and all now…" Hoggle fibbed.

"Oh… Yeah. That sounds logical." She seemed to calm down. "Okay, okay."

"I think you needs some rest," he said looking at her sideways. "I'll see you later."

She agreed and he left. She found a plain dress in the closet and walked to the bathtub. It was filled now, ready for a bubble bath.

She closed her eyes and shook her head. She would not get used to this anytime soon.

She got into the water, reclined her head against the back, and thought about what had happened since Hoggle had gone to get her Friday night. None of it had really surprised her, not after her first experience in the Labyrinth, but she was stunned by one thing: her own emotions.

Seeing the King again had been revealing, to say the least. For starters, the first time she had looked at him, lying there in his bed, she had suddenly seen in the back of her mind the short row of boyfriends she had had since she was sixteen. She had been shocked that she had not seen the pattern before. Thin, tall men, with long, light blonde hair; blue eyes; pale skin… Even the lips. She had been searching for look-alikes. No wonder her mother had been bewitched by Jeremy; he did look a bit like the King. That reinforced in her mind the idea that her mother had to have met him sometime.

Then, there were all those other feelings, when she was standing quietly by his side as he looked out the window. Since the exact moment she had touched his arm, her body had started reacting to him. She had wanted him, in a way she had not really wanted anyone before. Yes, she had been attracted to her boyfriends, all three of them, but was it because of them or because they looked like him?

Well, she had to admit that it was not the first time. She had already felt something for him while she was running through the Labyrinth, especially during her dream-dance, but she had not had time to analyze those sensations then and, afterwards, there had not been a reason to do so.

At fifteen she had not been the naïve little girl her stepmother thought she was. She did not have any real experience yet, but her friend Alice had found a book in her mother's library –Mrs. Watson was a nurse– that had taught them everything there was to know about the human body. The mechanics of sex, on the other hand, were still a mystery, one that her close group of friends endeavored to imagine every time they had a chance to talk about it away from the sight of their parents. The truth was that talking about it with a handful of girls that had as little idea as she had, had not helped much, but the way she had felt whenever the King had been close to her had been her first lesson in real life.

Why did she feel that way about him? It was like magnetism. Almost ten years had passed and the feeling was still there. Much stronger, apparently. Was it only physical? Why had she, then, been so senselessly jealous of the women Hoggle had talked about? The worst part was that there was nothing she could do about it. He was not going to stop seeing her like a little girl and fall crazily in love with her just because she wanted him…

She covered her eyes. She did not want to think about it. Shawn was going to come get her soon and she was not even out of the water. She had forgotten to turn on the alarm in her watch, so she was not sure of when he would be there either.

She got out of the water, dried herself, and got dressed. Then, she lay in bed while she waited for Shawn.

To have the King for herself for a few days… It was going to be fabulous and painful at the same time. A little window on what it could be to have him forever and a reminder that that would never happen.

In any case, she tried to convince herself, it was not like she was in love with him. She was simply attracted to him.


Three hours later, Sarah was back in her apartment. She was getting her room ready for the King. She had agreed to keep him in her house at least until Wednesday night, depending on what was found out about the enemies who had infiltrated the castle. The High King wanted a vulnerable Jareth, still in constant pain and weakened by his recent experience, away from home until they were certain the threat had been thwarted. Sarah's home was a very advantageous place to let him recuperate, because she was not a known person in the Underground and also because she was a doctor. He could not be in better hands.

It seemed that Jareth had strongly objected to the arrangement, but his parents' will had prevailed.

She finished changing the sheets in the bed and took some of her clothes to the guest room. She liked calling it that way, but it would have been a closet if it weren't for the small window on the back wall. She could not let him sleep there, especially if he was still recovering.

When everything was fixed, she looked at herself in the mirror. She had been cleaning the apartment when Shawn had taken her back, wearing an old pair of jeans and a large unattractive t-shirt with the logo of her college basketball team. She had not gotten a chance to change her clothes, so that was how the King had seen her when he woke up. The dress from the Queen's closet had not been much better; she had felt odd wearing a long dress with a pair of white snickers.

Now, she had changed into a more flattering dress, simple but elegant. She wanted him to have a better impression of the grown-up Sarah.

She was putting the things from the top of her dresser into a drawer, when the clock chimed seven o'clock. She expected to see the image of the King behind the mirror soon.

"Sarah…"

Startled by his voice, she turned around and saw him standing in the middle of her room, all dressed in black.

"I thought…" she said pointing to the mirror.

"I was invited here;" he said with a little dose of displeasure, "I don't need anything else." He turned away from her and glanced around the room.

"You didn't bring any luggage?" she asked looking for anything new in the room.

"I have everything I need," he said as he untied his cloak, before passing it to her.

She grabbed the cape and walked toward the closet. "I made some space for your stuff in here," she explained. She hung the cloak on a wooden hunger and struggled to fit it inside the narrow closet.

He smirked at her.

"I hope you're not too uncomfortable; I know you're used to-"

"I'll be perfectly fine."

"Okay; if you need anything else, just tell me. I think you should rest for a while. I haven't started dinner; Shawn said you're used to eating late, so-"

"Interesting bed," he said approaching the large piece of furniture.

Sarah looked at her brass canopy bed. She had saved for months to get it. She had not dressed it yet –that would take several more months of saving– but she was proud of it.

"What about… light green silks and…" He flicked his wrist and a crystal appeared in his hand. He threw it against the bed and the canopy was completely dressed.

Sarah approached the bed and touched the soft fabrics. She looked down and realized that her linens were gone, replaced by matching ones. "What did you do with my-?"

With a subtle gesture he signaled to a neatly folded pile of linens on a chair in a corner of the room. "You can get it back the way you like it after I'm gone."

"No… I like it," she said softly. She walked backwards and admired the whole ensemble. It looked exactly like what she would have chosen and matched perfectly the rest of the room. She sighed; this was going to be… a new experience. "Okay!" she finally said. "Anything else you need to change?"

He was looking around again. "Can you light a fire in this fireplace? It doesn't look like it's been used much."

"Well, yeah, we could, but I'd have to go buy some wood to burn and- You know, it's kind of a hassle, so…" He was looking attentively at her and she could not figure out what he was thinking. "I know it's winter here and it was summer in your place, but the central heating is on-"

He flicked his wrist, produced a crystal, threw it, and a fire roared in the fireplace.

She sighed again. "Okay. I'll be in the kitchen." She walked out of the room thinking how long it would take for her to get used to him, or if she ever would.

She had not even reached the kitchen when she heard him behind her.

"Sarah, why are you doing this?" he asked in a gentle tone that surprised her.

She stopped. Why did he have to ask so many questions? She took a deep breath. "I owe you," she said in an almost inaudible voice.

He could not help but laugh, softly. "You shouldn't forget, precious, that we, fae, also can hear better than humans."

She turned to face him. "Fine! I owe you! Happy now?"

He looked at her with his usual smirk on his lips. "And why is that?"

She turned again and walked away from him. "That whole thing, the Labyrinth, the challenge, you… everything… it changed me. I think it changed me for the better."

He was surprised. That was a revelation he was not expecting.

"It was frightening and exasperating and fantastic at the same time, but it changed me." She looked at him. "Anyway, these days I feel more at peace with the whole affair. I've finally come to accept it as a necessary step on the way to my personal growth. It completely modified my outlook on many aspects of my life. It even altered the way I related to my family and my friends. It let me discover truths that would have otherwise remained hidden from me."

Two weeks shy of her sixteenth birthday her whole world had been turned upside down and she had changed for it. As she liked to think of it by then, it had certainly beena rite of passage and she had gone through it successfully.

"So, this is my way of saying thank you."

He remained quiet for a few seconds and then nodded, almost imperceptibly. "You've certainly matured since I last saw you."

"Thanks, I hope so; and now I need to start cooking or we'll never eat." She hurried to the kitchen and left him behind. She suddenly was terrified that he would want to talk about the very last time he had seen her ten years ago.

Thankfully he did not follow her.

Dinner was quiet and then he retired to her room.

Though she was quite tired, Sarah had trouble falling asleep. The last couple of days had turned her world upside down again and she was not sure how this would affect her this time. The idea that the King of the Goblins was sleeping on her bed, with only one wall between them, was unsettling, not in a bad way, but unsettling nonetheless. The two worlds she knew were colliding again and, now that she was not a child, she could foresee there would be consequences; especially for her.

In spite of the bad night, Sunday was a relaxed day. She shared with him some of her favorite music and books and discovered that he already knew many of them. Some books he could quote from memory; about others, he could tell interesting anecdotes, mostly because he had met the author personally or because he had first hand knowledge of the events depicted in them. Sarah guessed that being more than fifteen hundred years old had its advantages.

She also discovered that when he was not feeling superior and smug, he was quite a good companion. She imagined the pain and the meds made him more sedated than normal.

On Monday she left very early for a twelve hour shift at the hospital and came back shortly after five in the afternoon. He was sitting in the living-room, playing with the TV remote control.

"I don't understand these reality programs; I haven't been able to tolerate more than a minute of any of them. They don't seem to portray reality in a very realistic manner," he complained.

She smiled. "Did you find anything you liked?" she asked as she accepted a cup of coffee he was offering. "Thanks. I really needed something warm. It's freezing out there."

"I watched some very interesting documentaries… And a few other shows."

She was about to ask about the shows, when someone knocked at her front door.

"Oh… I don't know who that could be. Maybe a neighbor. Why don't you get back into the bedroom? I'll open the door."

He agreed and left. She opened the door and thought she would faint. Her whole family was there. Her father, Karen, Toby, Emily, and Lucy, all the Williamses were there.

"Wow, guys! What are you doing here? I didn't know you'd be in town."

"May we come in?" Karen asked with a brilliant smile.

"Sure, come in, come in."

The small girls ran first and sat in front of the TV. Toby hugged Sarah and walked after them. Her father and Karen stayed behind.

"You haven't forgotten, Sarah, have you?" Karen asked.

Sarah was dumbfounded. She had no idea what she was talking about and her face showed it.

"It's been a year, Sarah." Her father said. "A year since you started your residency, remember? A year ago we said we would all get together to celebrate this occasion."

"Yeah, yeah, I remember," she said, straining to recall such a pact.

"Your mother and Jeremy will join us at the restaurant. We invited the two boys and the girl down the hall, too," Karen added. "That nice girl got us a reservation at that restaurant where she works."

"Hey, Sarah," Toby yelled from the living-room. "Who was having coffee with you? There are two cups here," he said in a playful tone.

Sarah felt caught. She had to think of something fast. "A friend from England is visiting. Actually, he's staying here while he recovers; he was in a car accident and he's not ready for a long trip yet."

"Well, we should invite him to dinner then," deadpanned Karen. The boys down the hallway or the English guest, anyone was fair game when she was on the hunt for a boyfriend for Sarah.

"I don't know. He's been in a lot of pain…"

"Why don't you ask him, dear?" her father interrupted. "Maybe he'll want to be out of the house for a while."

"Fine," she gave in. "I'll go get something to get changed and I'll ask him. Why don't you guys sit down for a while? I'll be back in a minute."

She left her family in the living-room and went straight to her bedroom. Couldn't they have come a couple of days later? She knocked at the door and Jareth called her in. She explained the situation to him as fast as she could and offered to take her family out of there as soon as possible.

"Oh, my, Sarah! Are you afraid of your family seeing me? Don't you think I should at least go out there and introduce myself? That would placate any concerns they could have about you having a stranger in your house."

She looked appalled and he smiled broadly, He flicked his wrist and created a crystal. He smiled even more when he confirmed the strange attraction crystals had on her. Every time he spun one in his hands she could not help but follow it with her eyes.

He raised the crystal above himself and it dissolved in thousands of glittery sparkles. When they vanished, his appearance had changed noticeably. His hair was short, almost curly; his eye marks had disappeared and his eyebrows looked less conspicuous. He was wearing a gray suit that looked perfectly tailored for him and he looked incredibly elegant.

He approached Sarah. There was an implicit question in his look.

She was speechless for a few seconds. "Oh… hm… That looks fine; my dad is wearing a suit, too, but my friends… They're more likely wearing jeans."

"Well, I don't," he said with conviction.

"Okay… Okay, you can come. I need to choose something from the closet and I'll go change."

He walked ahead of her and opened the closet. He looked inside, trying to find something suitable.

"I'd say you and I need to go shopping before I go back home," he said as he closed the closet doors.

"What?" She was about to complain, but he stopped her with a gesture of his hands.

He walked a little backwards, as if assessing her, while he spun a newly created crystal in his hands.

Sarah was again mesmerized by the crystal sphere long enough for him to decide what to do. When he threw the crystal towards her she covered her face with her hands with a soft cry. But nothing hit her.

She took her hands away from her face and realized she was not wearing the same clothes as before. "What did you do?"

"You said that your family and friends are waiting. I had to take care of the problem."

She walked to the mirror and looked at herself. She was wearing a beautiful green dress that complemented her eyes and her dark hair. "Thank you," she whispered. She shook her head, unsure of what they were going to do. "How should I introduce you?"

"I once used the name Jareth Quinn. I was playing an actor," he said with a smile that troubled her.

"No actors. Jeremy and mom are enough."

"Then, I'll be a musician."

"Fine, Jareth Quinn, a musician from London."

He bowed to her. A dark long coat appeared on the armchair by the bed; he picked it up and below there was a coat that matched her dress. When he offered to help her with the coat, she could not hide her surprise.

"What? You said it was cold outside."

She put on the coat, took a deep breath and opened the door.