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. After dinner.
Rites of Passage
Chapter 17
When he reached the last page with photos in it, he was surprised by a picture of the Labyrinth.
"This was taken from my bedroom window," he stated looking at Sarah with an unreadable expression.
She blushed intensely. "Yeah. I took that one with my phone, after we gave you the antidote for the poison. I was alone there, waiting for you to wake up, and I thought that could be my last chance to get a souvenir…"
"I can imagine how worried you were about my health…" he said trying to hide a smirk.
"I was," she emphasized. "I just didn't have anything else to do and I don't like to be idle. I just thought of the pictures; that's all."
"Pictures… What else did you photograph that day?" he asked with an insinuating tone.
Sarah blushed deeper. She shrugged.
"May I see them?" he asked in the same tone and Sarah felt he was commanding her.
She reached for her purse on the coffee table and got her phone out. She searched and found the Labyrinth picture and handed it to him.
He looked at it with a sly smile and pressed the button to see the following one. One after the other, two pictures of his room and three of himself, appeared on the little screen. He looked at Sarah and smiled widely.
"What?" she asked with a little forced indignation. "I didn't think I'd see you again. You looked very peaceful there, much better than before, when you had the high fever and you were so pale... I thought it was a good way to remember you. You know, after ten years, sometimes it was hard to recall all the details," she lied.
Jareth handed her the phone, still smiling.
"I just wish I had some pictures of that first day, especially the dream ball…" she said without thinking while she put her phone back in her bag.
"I could arrange that," he said as if it were an easy task.
Sarah looked at him, intrigued. "You could?" She was very interested. "How?"
He flicked his wrist and created a crystal. He played with it for a few seconds while Sarah followed it with her eyes, fascinated. Then he held it in his hand and offered it to her. "Look into it."
She seemed to wake up. "What? Are you offering me my dreams again?" she said with a little distrust.
"You said you wanted to see the dream you had in the Labyrinth. Look into the crystal and you can see it."
"I'm not going to get drugged again or something?" she still hesitated.
"Sarah…" he warned. "You do not trust me?"
She took a deep breath. "Sure. Let's see." She got closer to his hand and looked into the crystal; she saw herself walking into the ballroom. "Wow… That was a big dress… Just like the one in the music box."
"It came from your imagination and your memories."
"How can I get a picture of it? You said you could arrange it. You meant pictures, right?"
He nodded. "You in the dress?"
"That would be great."
He flicked his wrist again and handed her a piece of paper. It was a photo of her teenage self, dressed in a white fluffy dress, looking as if searching for someone amid chandeliers dripping wax and pearl garlands.
Sarah was speechless. It took her a few seconds to recover. "Thank you. You have no idea how much this means to me." She touched the picture with her fingertips; she slid them above the crystal necklace she had worn.
Jareth took note of that detail. "Any others?"
Sarah nodded enthusiastically. "Sure." She looked again into the crystal and said, "That one. You, with the mask, when I saw you on the dais… And, there, when you took the mask off and smirked… Or, maybe here, when you asked me to dance…" She got distracted by the images of their dance; she had not realized how entranced she looked. He had kept constant eye contact and she had not been able to look away.
When the clock chimed, she closed her eyes and stopped watching. She did not want to see the rest.
Jareth made the crystal disappear and offered her a handful of photos. Sarah looked at them in awe.
"Thank you," was all she could say for a while. Then she added, "I'll make an album just for these. Thank you." She put them on the table and sat back.
"I'm glad I could, too, offer you a present on this anniversary of the day we met," Jareth said with a small smile.
She nodded. "Ten years…"
She suddenly realized that she had been so worried about having the perfect dinner, the perfect conversation, the perfect presents, that she had forgotten why she had invited him there. She looked at her watch and panicked.
"Wow! Nine thirty already. You don't have to go yet, do you?"
"No, not yet."
"Great! I thought maybe you'd like to see some of my albums. I have pictures of Toby and some of my graduation… and-" she was really getting worried. She had not thought about how to bridge the next part of the night.
"It sounds like a great idea", he interrupted.
"Okay. I'll go get them." She rushed to her bedroom and, after collecting the photo albums, she dashed to the bathroom to check every detail of herself. Then she walked back to the living-room as calmly as she could. She had the strong feeling that if she wanted to get pregnant that night, it had to happen before twelve o'clock, before the anniversary day ended. She only had barely more than a couple of hours left. She had to rush things along.
When she got back to the living-room, she put the books on his lap and took her jacket off before sitting back by his side.
Jareth was distracted for a few seconds choosing one album to begin with, but soon looked at her to ask about the first pictures. He was stunned by the view. The top of Sarah's brown dress, now without the spencer jacket, was very, very, very revealing.
It took a lot of self control not to show any outward reactions to the change, but his body began a revolution. Its response to her was almost overwhelming.
He tried to counteract the physical effect she had on him with light conversation about what he saw in the albums, but Sarah got closer to him with every answer and soon her face was only millimeters away from his. Her lips were so close to his and he wanted so much to kiss her, that it was actually painful to resist the temptation. A second later, she kissed him.
First, he responded as fast as she had done it when he kissed her in the dressing room. Then, he came to his senses and stopped her. He stood up and asked, "What are you doing?"
She could see that he was as affected as she was and she could not understand why he was depriving them of what both obviously wanted. "You did it before and I didn't stop you," she reminded him.
"That was different. I had to leave. Nothing else could come out of it."
"And?"
"Now, there's nothing stopping us."
"Great! Let's get back to it, then." She stood close, facing him, and he had a hard time keeping his thoughts in order.
"No. You must understand, Sarah. I came here only to share one last evening. I won't come back from my next mission. This is the last time we'll see each other."
She suddenly felt like crying. That could not be true… But she had a mission of her own and she had to keep on going. "That's even a better reason to do it. You don't have to worry about anything. You don't have to keep me in your bed for the next six months; you don't have to introduce me to your family and friends as your possible girlfriend, you don't have to worry about getting me pregnant… I took care of that myself. I've been taking my pills," she finished, knowing he would misinterpret what pills she was talking about right then.
It was difficult for Jareth to find a good reason to deny her what she wanted, but he still thought that it was not right to make love to her one night and to disappear from her life the next. "Sarah; don't do this. I'm sure you can find someone else much worthier of you than me. I'm as good as dead."
"Don't say that, I told you," she begged. She got closer to him and looked into his eyes. "I've thought a lot about this and I'm sure it has to be you," she confided.
"It has to be me what?" he asked, confused.
She could not look at him and say it, so she looked down and turned away from him. "You have to be the first."
"The first?" he was stunned.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "It's a rite of passage. Like many others, but an important one." She turned to him and dared to look at him again. "I've really thought about it. You guided me when I went from spoiled teenager to young woman. I've told you that. That whole experience changed me… And now, I need to cross another boundary, it's time, and I want you to be there and take me by the hand… And I'm pretty sure your body won't complain as much about it as your head."
He was still shocked. He made an effort to reply. "You're twenty-five years old, Sarah. In this society you're living on, that threshold is usually way back in the past by now. Are you really telling me that you've never made love to anyone before today? You told me you've had several boyfriends, didn't you?"
She shrugged. "I did, but, when I was in high school, the idea of risking having a Toby of my own scared me to death. I'd have done if I had to, but why risk it? Then, I thought I'd wait until I got married, but that never happened, and I thought maybe if I got engaged… Never either. So I kept postponing it, thinking I'd find the right person someday."
He paid attention, but remained quiet.
"And, lately, I can't stop thinking that it has to be you. I really care about you –I never thought I would care this much– and I think you care about me, too. And our bodies seem to want the same… It's just one more rite of passage, by your hand… Please, don't tell me no." She watched him carefully, trying to figure out what he was thinking. She had not used the word love because she had thought it would really alarm him, but the rest was all true. Was he disappointed in her? Did he see her differently now that he knew?
He watched her for a few seconds in silence. His heart was beating rapidly and he had trouble keeping calm. "You'd like me to be honest, right?" he finally asked.
She nodded softly, scared of what would come next.
"I'm truly surprised by what you're asking of me and I'm worried that if I were to accept such a gift, I'd do it for the most selfish reasons. At this moment, I want to make love to you. I want you as I have not wanted anyone before and it's frightening that I'm not truly thinking of what you want or why you want this, because all I can think of is how much I want it. Do you understand?"
"I don't care. I want it, too. No matter what the reasons, the result is the same."
"I don't want to hurt you. I care very much about you, but I can't offer anything beyond this night."
"I'm not asking for anything else. Give me this night. Give me until midnight if you can't give me more. Just say yes."
He closed his eyes, still fighting with himself. "You do know that I'm so much older than you, in so many ways. You do know that I've done this-"
"It doesn't matter. Tonight it's you and me… as is, like they say. No promises, no reproaches, no past, no future. Just the present."
He looked at her and nodded slowly. "It'd be an honour, but we need to go to the Underground."
She was ready to jump for joy, but she had to ask. "Why?"
"I can only give you one night here. There, we'd have almost two days." He carefully stretched his hand toward her. She still had a chance to change her mind.
"It's a deal," she said as she held his hand.
One second later, they were gone.
