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. And he's back...

Rites of Passage

Chapter 15

Sarah stood there, stunned. She desperately wished she could open the door and run to him, ask why, ask for more… But she knew it was not possible. He had to go and she could not interfere.

She closed her eyes and took a few seconds to calm down. She could analyze what had happened later; she would have plenty of time after he was gone, but now she needed to get ready to go downstairs and see him leave. It would be some kind of closure, the reassurance that there was nothing else she could do there, and a reason to force herself to go back to her habitual life.

A few minutes later, while taking a quick bath before getting into her own clothes, she wondered how in a few days she had become so attached to that place. She could see herself living among fairy tale creatures, lacking all her modern life comforts, and away from her family and friends. Her laptop, her iron, her microwave oven… all tools for a certain kind of life, but not life in the Underground.

If only there were a way to keep in touch with the people from aboveground, she would be willing to leave it all behind and move there forever. The problem was that there was no real place for her there. She could not dream of being Jareth's wife; she was not fae and she was pretty certain his society would not welcome a human.

And just because he had kissed her, it did not mean that he would take her as his wife, even if her not yet so thoroughly thought-out plan succeeded. She would be the mother of his child and nothing else. Of course, the child would be fine; she could not imagine –anymore– that they would not accept him because of her. She could see that Jareth had almost reached the point of desperation in the matter and she was quite certain that he would find a way to ensure the right place for his heir. But her case was different. Would they agree on letting her be his –or her– nanny? Would she want that? Would she leave her child with him and go back to her life? She had to think of all of this before she went any further.

She got out of the water and got ready in a short time. Then she went out to the hallway to wait for Sir Didymus. He did not make her wait too long and soon they were at the entrance of the castle, watching the army carefully get into formation. Sarah was surprised by the fact that most of the army consisted of fae and elves. Behind them there was a smaller group of goblins and other creatures she was not yet able to identify.

The fae and the elves rode colorful winged horses and unicorns and the others rode strange animals, some of which she had seen during her labyrinth run.

For Sarah, it was startling to see all the unicorns and winged horses. If she remembered her Greek mythology well, Pegasus was one white winged horse, the son of Zeus and the Gorgon Medusa (or her blood), and he had been transformed into a constellation. Then, thinking more scrupulously about it, that was just a myth and a pretty weird one. There was no way to know how the real story had gone. She had not ever thought there was a real story behind that creature to begin with; she could see that much of her knowledge of that world would be soon challenged.

After a while, Keenan and Shawn joined her with their wives. Many other people she had seen during her stay came to witness the departure and, on the other side of the courtyard, a multitude of goblins started filling a half-moon platform.

Sarah tried to find Jareth among the cavalrymen, but she could not see him. Ruy was riding a white winged horse around the formation and she assumed he was checking it before his commander arrived. While she was watching this, she heard a commotion to her left. She looked in that direction and saw that the High King and his wife had taken their places at a small dais she had not noticed before. A few seconds later Jareth walked into the courtyard dressed in his full armor. Sarah shivered when memories of their first encounter overcame her.

Jareth walked to the dais, hugged his mother and father, and then went back to the yard where a page was holding the reins of his winged horse. The horse was of such a deep black color that it reminded Sarah of a panther.

Jareth rode to the head of the formation, just ahead of Ruy, and the army started its march. Sarah watched in awe.

"I thought only Pegasus could fly, I mean, the winged horses only," she told Sir Didymus as she saw the army gain height in the morning sky.

"You forget, milady, that things aren't always what they seem around here… Thou art not using thy powers…"

Sarah looked again and, to her surprise, saw a magnificent rainbow stretching from under the hooves of Jareth's horse to the point where he had started his ride. Every member of the army followed its path as the rainbow extended toward the horizon.

It was breathtaking and it reinforced Sarah's notion that she was in the right place. She loved everything around her, even if the occasion was a somber one. After years of making very little time for magic and spending most of her life dedicated to science, she was back where she belonged. She felt completely at home amid all those wonders and she could only imagine how boring it would all feel when she went back to her real home.

As she kept watching Jareth lead his men, Sarah started thinking about the kind of man –or fae– Jareth was. She wondered about his gesture before departing. Most leaders aboveground would have refrained from such a personal show of affection as hugging their parents, but he had done it in front of all his subjects and the whole army, not fearing that they would think less of him for that.

She liked that.

She was startled out of her reflections, when Sir Didymus pulled her sleeve.

"It's time to go, my fair lady."

She gave one last look at the black dots disappearing in the clear sky and agreed to follow the fox-terrier. Before being sent home, she arranged a schedule for Didymus to help her learn to control whatever powers she had been given. A few seconds later, she was standing back in her bedroom.

It was still Tuesday night and there was no power –or heat– yet. She was about to leave the room to get some candles, when she saw a small piece of parchment illuminated by the moon on top of her comforter.

She retrieved the object and walked toward the window to try to read it in the moon light.

"Close your eyes and remember the warmth of the flames in the fireplace. They are still there, waiting for you to call their name."

There was no signature, but she was certain that was Jareth's stylized handwriting.

She closed her eyes and unhurriedly recalled the comfort the fire had given her the day before. In a few seconds, she began feeling some heat coming toward her, but when she heard the unmistakable noise of burning logs, she opened her eyes and witnessed the magic. Was it his magic, still around, or was it part of her powers? It did not matter. She slowly undressed and got into bed.

She wanted to be in bed, even though she was not sleepy. She wanted to find some trace of him in there, between the sheets and the covers.

She curled up in bed and took a deep breath. She immediately felt his distinctive scent coming from the pillows and it soothed her. It was proof. He had been there. It was not a dream.

She stretched a hand outside her sheets to pull the covers up and discovered that his feather cloak was still –or just then– there. She smiled; she was suddenly feeling sleepy. He was ruling her, even now, from another world…


Sarah woke up with the resolve to do things –not sure quite yet what things– but to do whatever was necessary to get ready. Ready for him.

She started the morning with a healthy breakfast. She generally ate well; but now she had a purpose. She promised herself she would go back to drinking milk and added more fresh vegetables and fruit than usual to her shopping list.

Later on, as she stood in her bedroom trying to decide where to begin, she felt a strong –strange– urge. Nesting. She knew everything about the nesting instinct. She had studied it in medical school, but she was sure it was something that pregnant women felt, normally after the fifth month of pregnancy or close to their date of delivery. Nonetheless, she was feeling it right then and cleaning and organizing her house for when the baby came was not a bad idea. At least, it was a beginning.

She began by fixing the living-room. Her main goal became to decide what items in her home were important enough for her to warrant being taken underground if she ever needed to move there. She carefully collected any meaningful object and took all her treasures to her bedroom.

At the end of the day, she discovered that very few things were significant to her. Among them were handmade presents from Toby, such as frames, coasters, and other simple things he had learned to do in school, but that carried special meaning for Sarah. She also separated singular gifts from her family and friends and some keepsakes she had brought home from her travels. Then, she collected all the pictures, postcards, and letters she had saved and put them in a box. Finally, she included scrapbooking materials in her shopping list.

When she added her mother's labyrinthian toys to her treasures, she was done.

Over the next few days –while working as many extra hours as she could in order to earn leave time for when she needed it– she bought prenatal vitamins and mineral supplements, such as calcium and iron, with an extra bottle of folic acid (B9) tablets to ensure the future health of her baby. She began using the gym in the basement of her apartment complex and followed her healthy diet plan.

On Saturday, Sir Didymus gave her the first lesson on how to manage the powers Jareth had given her. Sarah was surprised by the amount of small feats she could accomplish. Of course, she could not fly or create crystals like Jareth, but she could definitely get potatoes peeled.

The following Tuesday, sure that she had started her fertile period, she called Hoggle to find out if he had any news about Jareth. To her disappointment, there were none at all. Still hoping for a miracle, she spent that weekend at her father's home and celebrated Christmas with his family, but Hoggle never called.

A few days later, fertility monitor in hand, she mourned the loss of a chance. However, she did not give up and started planning for the next month.

Now that she had had time to think of it more thoroughly, seducing Jareth seemed a very hard task to accomplish. Yes, he had kissed her, and, yes, he probably wanted her –his body did not lie– but that was not enough. He had not made any attempts to seduce her and the highly charged talk of their first day back together had quickly been toned down. He was stopping himself and she blamed it on the war.

How was she going to pull down that wall? After days of pondering about it, she came up with the best argument she could think of; she would have to try it and hope for the best. The worst part was that she was going to lie to him. Actually, more like mislead him, because she was not going to reveal that one of her two main goals would be to get pregnant. She could tell the truth about the other one nevertheless.

She knew he desperately wanted a child, but perhaps he would have misgivings about fathering him with a human or about defying the High Court or maybe even his parents, but once the baby was there, he would accept him. She had no doubt of that.

She also thought that being under pressure to father a child was counterproductive to his efforts. She had studied the effects of such pressure in human couples, especially women, and how it could hinder the results. She had to make certain he felt free of that.

In addition to that, she had to make sure that people around her did not get too shocked when she revealed she was pregnant, in case it really happened. For years she had been mostly alone and she had not been dating anyone lately either, so suddenly seeing her with child could be surprising for some of her friends or coworkers. Thankfully, her family and neighbors had met Jareth and she would have less trouble telling them he was the child's father. Explaining why he did not marry her would be a completely different matter, a far more difficult one for them to understand, but she would worry about that when the time came.

With all that in mind, she started mentioning her friend Jareth here and there during her conversations at work, she named him often on the phone when talking to her family, and, a few days before New Year's Eve, she met for lunch with her high school friend Alice.

Alice had taken the brunt of Sarah's post-labyrinth transformation, so she had no trouble remembering how obsessed Sarah had been during her senior year about a book character named "the King of the Goblins." Though Alice had never read the little red book herself, she could recall many passages she had heard Sarah repeat, over and over again. She also had a very clear idea of how the King looked in Sarah's imagination, because she had seen a multitude of sketches her classmate had done about her imaginary idol. Fortunately, she was the only one who had ever seen those drawings and the only one who had listened to her when Sarah talked about the book.

For that reason, and since she did not want Alice to be startled if she ever got to meet Jareth, Sarah timidly revealed to her that she had started dating an old friend who somehow reminded her of the man in those drawings. Alice blamed the attraction on the resemblance and Sarah reluctantly accepted the possibility.

Two days later, before joining her mother and Jeremy for the New Year's Eve party, she invited her friends from the apartment building to lunch with Jareth and her.

After apologizing for Jareth's absence, due to his work, and while working in the kitchen as she talked to her friends, she noticed that Laura and Mike were standing a little too close and were smiling a lot more than usual. With little effort she got them to confess to having started dating.

"We're just trying to figure out if it can work out," Mike said with a happy smile.

"Lots of trying… or working out," Pete complained and earned Laura's disapproval –elbow to the ribs– and Mike's head to toe blush.

Sarah just smiled. It made her happy.

"It just started with a little lip gravity, like my boss, Paul says," Laura revealed.

"Lip gravity? What's that?" Sarah asked, curious.

"It's when you turn or stand up or something, and suddenly you're too close to someone you like, and your lips keep getting closer and closer and… well, you know the rest," she explained with her own dose of blush.

Sarah found it very interesting. For days afterwards, she imagined many different scenarios where lip gravity would help her with her seduction of Jareth, but she could not concentrate on that because she still had much to do to get ready for that occasion.

Continuing with her preparations, right after New Year, she went to a book store and bought a couple of books about sexual education, hoping that they would give her ideas about how to make sure her seduction scheme worked out. She was surprised by what she could learn.

On Saturday, Didymus disclosed that Jareth had been to the castle four days prior to then, but that he had already gone back to his army. Sarah felt relieved to know that he was alive, but she did not dwell on it, since she had not been fertile that week and any attempt to call him would have been useless.

Didymus told her as well that the following day it would be Jareth's birthday. 1,628, Sarah wrote in her calendar.

On Friday, she left work not to return for ten days. She wanted to be free every day of her fertility period and she also needed to prepare. She was strangely confident that something would happen that week. She was exactly eight days away from the tenth anniversary of her first trip to the Underground and she sensed that that was going to be a significant day. She had made Hoggle promise that he would tell her as soon as he heard from Jareth so that she could put her plan in motion.

To get ready, she chose a nice enamel color for her nails and had a manicure, a pedicure, and also a waxing done. She also took extra care of her hair and bought all the ingredients to fix a great dinner, plus candles and champagne.

Finally, she bought black lace panties and a gauzy dark brown dress. She was all set.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, all passed without any news and Sarah started panicking. Fortunately, on Thursday night, Hoggle visited her to tell her Jareth was back at the castle. However, Sarah felt that if anything were to happen, it would have to be on Saturday, on the day of the anniversary.

She asked Hoggle to tell the King that she needed to see him on Saturday and patiently awaited for the response. Around midday on Friday, Hoggle returned with an answer that was not what she had expected.

"He said what?"

"His Majesty says that, since the war isn't over, he's not available for talking," Hoggle repeated.

"Seriously?"

"Does it look like I'm joking?" the dwarf seemed offended.

"I can't believe it!" she exclaimed, annoyed. "Coward," she whispered so that Hoggle would not hear. Then she came up with an idea. "You know what, I'm not taking no for an answer. Go back and tell him that it's just dinner, no talking included. Just a break, to get away from all the war worries. Tell him I already bought everything and it'd be a pity to throw the food away, but if he's that busy, I can ask Ruy to join me. Ruy is back, too, right?" she checked.

Hoggle nodded and, in a few minutes, he was back in the castle with his new mission. Jareth did not take the message well and the dwarf narrowly escaped being sent to the Bog of Eternal Stench. He had heard several goblins had already taken that route that morning and he decided to make himself scarce for the rest of the day, unless the King was ready with an answer.

Lady Anwen found Jareth in his study, looking furious. For a while, she tried to figure out the reason for his anger, but he was not ready to talk. After having discussed the last events of the war, the recent wished away, the needs of the army, and many other pressing matters, he finally told her about Sarah's invitation.

"And you cannot join her for dinner because…?" his mother pressed.

"I'm too busy. Besides, what would the rest of my people think if I take another vacation aboveground?"

"First of all, that was not a vacation, Jareth; you were convalescing. You had been poisoned; you almost died," she argued and Jareth noticed the slight tremor in her voice when she mentioned what had happened to him.

"Mother," he tried to stop her.

"Besides, since when do you care about what others think? And you don't have to tell anyone where you're going. You need to get away from all this, even if it's just to have one meal with a friend. I'll just say you're retiring to your room and don't wish to be bothered until the morning."

"Remember, Mother; time passes differently aboveground. That wouldn't give me much time there," he explained as he started feeling a little hope.

"Let's say that you're taking a couple of days on your own, away from the army and the castle, to reflect on the next steps of the war and the future of your kingdom, before you go back out there."

"I really wouldn't like to lie to them," he objected.

"A couple of days is plenty of time; wouldn't you spare an hour to think about all those matters?"

He smiled. He liked the plan. He discussed it further with his mother and they agreed on what to do. Then Jareth called Hoggle and explained to him that, since he would be away for a couple of days, he would not be sending a reply to Sarah, but that his mother would talk to her personally so as not to offend her.

Lady Anwen did call Sarah to the mirror. Sarah was shocked when she saw the High Queen talking to her from the other side.

Jareth's message was brief. He agreed to a formal dinner on Saturday, at eight o'clock in the evening.

Sarah had trouble breathing calmly ever again until that time. Around eight on Saturday, after everything was ready, she sat in front of her mirror to wait for him.

"So, Sarah, what is it about this dinner that's so important to you?"

The voice coming from behind her almost made her jump. She should have known better by then. She stood and turned slowly, and found the King of the Goblins looking at her as beautiful as ever.