Chapter 6: First Lesson, Don't Be Rude
Jareth lounges on his throne, long legs draped over the arms as he twirls a bauble over his fingers, a gaggle of goblins crowd in around him. He stills the crystal and bids the image of her to appear. Watching as she walks the long ambling corridors of the Labyrinth.
It thrills him, having her back in his realm. No longer some unattainable conquest, or separated by the confines of a wager. He said he'd wait, and wait he did. Unless called. And only then in dreams. It wasn't enough.
Five years he'd let the goblins watch her through the crystals alongside him. At least, for the innocent moments of her life. Some pieces were just for him. The pieces she'd invited him in to, called his name subconsciously, or out loud during a beautifully torrid dream... those special moments were just for his eyes. He let himself replay them when he was by himself, wearing them thin as he watched and rewatched her writhe against him in her dreams, in her fantasies. Each time he visited her like that it made the ache for her flare.
He could make those dreams more real for her with his presence but it wasn't truly a reality. He wanted the real her, ached to feel the true her pressed against him.
God how much he loved her. She'd forced him to and it bit him. His hand had been forced the first time, her power over him had been too great to suppress, and he could no more undo it than he could turn back time.
Nor could he bend her to his will. Not that way. He had no power over her.
She'd dared to say those words again, on their first meeting after being apart.
Cruel girl...
Five years was nothing, a blink of an eye, and so the humiliation of begging her to stay, begging her to love him back still cut him to the core. Still stung like a fresh wound.
This time though...
He wouldn't let her slip through his fingers this time.
Sarah walks for miles, and it feels like days pass. Nothing changes, just another eternal corridor littered with goblin trash and fallen branches, decorated with cobwebs long and thick enough to stretch the full width of the walls that she ducks underneath as carefully as possible. Huge fat spiders lurk at the edges, and moss with eyes watches her pass.
Her casual gait begins to ramp up to a jog. Then a frantic, panting run.
With each passing minute she can feel her panic rising. What if she never gets out of here? What if she never sees Toby again?
What if Jareth takes them both?
She can hear ticking somewhere, mockingly loud as if the walls were full of 13 hour clocks. Minutes of her precious limited hours draining away.
Subtly the ticking turns into a beat. A doubled tick like a heartbeat, merging into a waltzing tempo that sets her skin thrumming.
Somewhere, almost as if coming from the walls themselves, as if the entire Labyrinth was an instrument, a soft melody starts up over the beat. Haunting and sad. And so deeply ingrained in her memory that it halts her in her tracks.
There's such a sad love-
NO-
She takes a step back, turning away from the music drifting out over the walls. After only a few bars she's already shivering. That dream, that spinning ballroom. It was a nightmare, all those leering faces, strangers pushing and shoving and mauling her.
And amongst it all, rising like a life preserver, was Jareth. Strong arms anchoring her to him through a twirling chaos of his own design. Her tormentor and her rescuer in one.
Those long fingers locked around hers. Those eyes devoured her. She needed no encouragement to relive that moment, and the music twirling through the air makes the memory a fresh hallucination.
As she heads back down the way she came the music warps. Dropping menacingly from a soft soprano melody to a low bass note, like a cello playing a minor chord.
Like a howling beast in the walls.
She freezes.
"...Ludo?"
The sound gets louder. Angry like a kicked hornets nest as she beats a hasty retreat back down the desolate corridor.
"LUDO?!"
The first stone, the size of a large grapefruit, narrowly misses her skull, stopping her in her tracks. Bigger and bigger stones tumble over the walls and she scrambles back, losing her footing. She hits the floor hard and manages to pull her leg back just in time as a boulder crashes down in front of her, followed by a hail of smaller rocks, until eventually there's nothing left of the way she came.
She sucks air down into her lungs, calming herself by inches as she climbs to her feet, still shaking.
"Well that's one way to make a dead end I guess."
"Loud enough, weren't it?"
She spins. Behind her two doors have materialised, and perched on top of one, swinging skinny scabby legs, is Grüempy, toothlessly grinning down.
"Are you following me?!" She growls.
"Only a bit." He pouts, looking down from his stone perch. "Not a lot of enner'tainment round here."
"Get lost!" She hurls a small rock at him and he ducks as it sails over his head.
"Recon you'll be choosin' one of them there doors." He continues, undeterred.
She's trapped, and she feels it in every sense of the word.
The doors look menacing in their immovability. Thick dark wood, set in carved stone that spans the width of the corridor. Within the carvings perfectly rendered goblin faces leer out, watching her choose. Each one unique and, most distressingly, lifelike.
"Where do they go?"
"'Ow should I know?" Grüempy says, kicking his heels against the stone of the arched door frame. "This one's makin' some noise though."
Sarah leans her head against the door on the left, underneath Grüempy's feet, pressing her ear to the wood.
Seeping through like a trickle of water through a dam about to burst is the same melody, soft and tinkling, a dreamy soprano waltz. Slow but insistent, calling her in.
"I s'pose you're meant to wear that." Grüempy nods and Sarah turns. The box containing her birthday dress is propped up casually against the heap of boulders.
She shivers.
I'll never get used to the way things appear out of nowhere in this place...
On his throne, Jareth leans in ever so slightly, watching the torrent of emotions flit across Sarah's face inside the crystal, a knot curling in his stomach.
Choose me, Sarah. Just once...
Please, just once...
"And the other?" She asks, turning away from the box. It feels far too much like it's watching her, begging to be opened. She balls her hands into fists. Her fingers are itching to open the box. With each passing hour she can feel her resolve against the Labyrinth slipping further.
"Not a clue," says Grüempy. "No music comin' off've this one though."
But the wood feels cold to the touch. Freezing even.
He doesn't want me to take this one...
"Settled, then." She says.
She steals herself, biting her cheek. Pushing back against the memory of dancing with Jareth. Her anger is starting to fracture, the brief moments near him are starting to become a little too intoxicating.
A little too addictive.
I don't have time to be distracted... I have to save Toby. I can't just give in to him.
No matter how much I want it.
She pulls the door open. Behind is another dusty disused corridor of stone, dark and dingy, littered with leaves, and owl feathers. A smell of cold, wet stone floods out. The gloom inside feels tangible. Rather than the never ending sunset the sky over the stone walls is overcast, thick black clouds boiling as before a storm.
The whole place feels vaguely menacing. As if the air itself was suffused in malcontent.
She takes a step inside, and the door slams shut behind her with a deafening bang.
It takes a while for her to regain her composure, steeling herself against the burdening sense of grudges being renewed.
"Ok... fine..." she ducks underneath an enormous cobweb, the sticky strands adorn her hair like a mockery of the silvery piece she'd worn in Jareth's ballroom.
"Oh God." She claws the cobweb out with her nails. "No fine, I'm fine. This-" she leans her hand against the wall, and it comes away covered in slimy green mould- "this is ARGH-" a spider the size of a kitten scurries over her boots and she barrels forward, clenching her jaw. "This is a piece of cake-"
A tile in the floor suddenly lurches open, and her boot steps forward into nothing as she tumbles down into the pit.
Hands.
Everywhere.
"Ugh, God!" Sarah yanks her wrist out of a hand and suddenly slips further down the pit as all the hands let go, catching her up again a couple of feet down.
"I forgot about the helping hands..." she moans in disgust.
"Oh these ones aren't particularly helpful." Jareth's silky smirking voice echoes down to her from above.
He's silhouetted at the mouth of the hole, and she glares as he sits down on the edge. He's shed his goblin armour and billowing cloak, no longer twirling the cane in his hand. He reclines against the lip of the pit, casually dressed in a soft loose white shirt tucked into skin tight grey trousers. One boot dangles down into the pit as he peers down to watch her, leaning so far over as if gravity meant nothing to him
The hands supporting her hips dig in minutely, but it's enough to make her swallow a moan. There's so much movement around her, beneath her, and she catches her breath as a set of fingers intertwine with hers. Despite the frankly excessive amount of touching, this one pair feels infinitely more intimate.
"What is this place Jareth?!" She struggles, and the hands around her thighs, cupping her calves, tighten.
He grins down at her, showing teeth far sharper than they were seconds ago. Crooked, yes, but not human. Not quite. Something just off-stage of human, like something wearing a human face as a masquerade mask.
"A storage closet, poppet. If you like to think of it as such."
"Storage?!"
"Magic takes an awful toll. Didn't you know you can't get something for nothing?" He bites down on the end of his gloved finger, holding her gaze as he loosens the leather.
Sarah feels herself holding in a breath as he pulls it free. His hand is white, and lithe underneath. Long digits. Almost impossibly long, and strangely beautiful. Mesmerising, and as he flexes his fingers a shimmer crackles across his fingertips. Magic dancing across his skin.
And then with the other hand he grips his wrist lightly, and pulls the hand free of his arm. Sarah chokes down a scream. I won't give him the satisfaction. But she can tell he sees the horror in her eyes. He seems pleased by her lack of reaction, at the poker face she's struggling to keep in place.
"They get rather worn out after a while. I replace them every century or so."
He fits the hand back into place, waggles the fingers, and Sarah swallows as a mirroring echo of movement ripple in the hands all around her, the ones holding her up dancing over her skin.
Memories of wild eyed monsters in a dark wood flood in. Eyes rolling into the back of their heads as they detached legs and arms. Tossed them around like toys. Heads rolling and flapping. Laughing grotesquely. Hellish images she'd tried to forget.
"You can take them off? Like the... like the Firey's?"
"No, precious. They can take theirs off, like me. There's a bit of my magic in every creature here." He lets his loose glove dangle precariously over the edge of the pit from his bare hand. "Your troll friend isn't the only one who can summon the rocks, you know."
Ice fills her blood.
"You blocked the path?"
"Obviously."
"That's cheating." She spat. "That's not fair!"
"Still as petulant as ever." Despite his words he seems to savour her indignant outrage. Revelling in it.
He swings his leg up out of the hole, reclining against the wall of the tunnel.
"Why a closet of hands?! This is..." she struggles further and the hands latch tight, "disgusting."
"Manners, Sarah. It would hardly do to have loose hands wondering around all over the place." He curls the fingers of his ungloved hand towards him, and every hand in the pit curls in mimicry, winding round her legs tighter, digging into hips, arms, lacing through her fingers. One pair slips from around her ribcage just slightly higher... "Would it?"
He unfurls his fingers and the hands relax their grip just enough for Sarah to catch her breath.
Their eyes meet, and Sarah refuses to pull her gaze away, refuses to give in as the hands, his hands, hold her, touch her, slip over her skin, into her hair, round her wrists and ankles. He meets her steely glare with his own. But his smirk seems hollow, a thin cover for something else. Disappointment maybe.
"Would one dance with me really have been such an ordeal?"
Sarah manages to swallow a gasp as the hands holding hers stroke her fingers in a gesture that is excessively tender.
"I'd rather walk into the bog." She growls.
Jareth tsks.
"I could arrange that." The hands tighten harder, grinding the delicate bones in her wrists. "Rule number two, lovely Sarah; Don't be rude."
A hand wraps around her hair, pulling down, exposing her throat. Sarah tries to pull her head free but the hand is unrelenting.
"I'll be as rude as I want, you son of a bitch." Her voice sounds braver than she feels, as his eyes seem to glow. He grins, as if she's done exactly what he hoped she would.
"I'm sure of that. You've always been careless."
"Careless?"
"I might not have all my power over you, sweet naive thing, but this world has rules. And breaking them has consequences."
Stuck tight as she is she watches as a spiral of hands turn over and flatten themselves, making a staircase. Jareth pushes himself off the wall, walking down to her over the outstretched hands until he's face to face with her. Hungry eyes looking back into hers.
"If you want to be so callous towards your host, you have to pay the price."
"What price?"
He smiles wickedly. "Whatever I deem fitting. Until you're forgiven, at the very least."
"You don't seem particularly hurt, Jareth." Sarah sneers. His face changes, from his usual untouchable smugness to a surprising look of vulnerability that doesn't suit him at all.
"You don't know how deeply you cut me, Sarah." He leans down, soft thin lips tickling the shell of her ear. "Letting you go... do you know how much I regretted it?"
She feels a hand curl round her thigh, up underneath the ragged tear in her jeans. Caressing her skin directly. Long soft fingerpads trailing up the inside of her leg. Despite the anger in her throat she's still riding the high from the moment by the wall and the feeling of the hands around her is oddly intoxicating. Resisting him is becoming exhausting.
"Then why did you?" She wonders aloud and cringes at the slight breathless quality to her tone.
"Because I don't kidnap little girls playing make believe," his eyes travel the length of her and the look on his face isn't just lust. There's pure starvation in his mismatched eyes. "You were worth the wait. Truly."
"I wasn't waiting for you."
"And yet you called for me again and again."
Sarah bites her tongue, knowing the denials rising to her lips will sound weak and contrived.
"Let me go. I don't have time for this."
"And if you did? If we had all the time in the world?" He tilts her head up with his still gloved hand to look at another antique clock dangling over the both of them. 5 hours gone, and as Sarah struggles against the hands once more the ticking from the clock dies. "You could stay here. With me."
His eyes are savage but pleading, and the desperation within his wild uneven pupils halts her battle against the hands holding her and dries her throat.
"And Toby?"
"I have enough goblins." His hand travels down from her chin to her neck, lower to press his fingers over her heart to feel it beating there. "I told you I'm a generous man."
Generous. She's taken aback by how much that word can steal her breath. The feeling of his hand on her, and the look in his eyes, she can feel the blood flooding her cheeks.
He sees the blush, despite the pits gloom, and smirks knowingly at her.
Generous indeed. The word turns sour in her ears. She pulls at her wrists and gasps as more hands encircle her arms and hands. The fist holding her hair holds firm as another hand winds round her neck, the thumb and index finger pushing her jaw up so she can't look away from him.
"I'd still rather walk into the bog, Jareth. Get your punishment over with I have a Labyrinth to run. Again."
He doesn't move at first, simply watches her coldly with a calculating expression.
"As you wish, then."
Movement ripples up and over her skin, all the long digits of every hand suddenly moving over her.
The hands at her back stroke hard up her spine, arching her back and pushing her up into Jareth. The wrists pinned over her head are separated and passed from fist to fist in an arc on each side of her body until they're down by her hips, pulled together until her shoulders buckle, arching her back further. Nothing painful, or unpleasant, but each hand registers a thousand times over as they weave around her, fingers flickering over any exposed skin. Searching up her legs and hips. She swallows and feels the hand at her throat grip slightly tighter, and is appalled at herself for the moan that escapes her lips. Two hands wind round from behind her to grasp around her ribcage and her cheeks flare as they travel higher, over her shirt, cupping her breasts, squeezing and kneading her until she gasps.
The heat of him lessens and she opens her eyes to see he's leaned back away from her. He makes sure he has her full attention before he starts to unbutton his shirt. The long slim plane of his chest is startlingly pale, almost glowing in the gloom of the pit. Knowing it as futile she tries to pull her arms out of the furious grip anyway, more to show him she's no closer to giving in.
The hand at her hair tugs the tie from her ponytail, spilling her long thick tresses over her shoulders.
Jareth un-gloves his other hand, handing off the shirt and the gloves to outstretched fingers, and moves towards her. There's nowhere for her to retreat to as he cups her face in his hands, staring hard into her eyes, moving his fingers up over her temples into the depths of her hair.
Her breathing deepens, eyes dipping half closed as he pulls her hair through his fingers, savouring the silk of it until he reaches the collar of her leather jacket.
Suddenly, brutally, he yanks the jacket down over her shoulders, bruising her skin as he forces it down her arms, each hand holding her close helping in turn until it's off over her wrists.
Still balanced with exceptional poise on the outstretched hands of the pit Jareth slips on the jacket over his own bare shoulders, untucking his wild blond locks from the collar. It fits him perfectly.
Of course it does. Sarah thinks bitterly.
There's an angry hurt written across his sharp features, and Sarah feels her stomach plummet as his gaze falls on her face.
In a flash he wraps an arm under her waist and hauls her off the wall, every hand but his own releasing her suddenly. Her feet dangle as she panics, gripping hard to the collar of her jacket.
"I think I'll be magnanimous and forgive you." He murmurs, the arm around her waist holding her as if she weighed nothing, holding her to him as her legs sway above the abyss below.
She blinks.
"That's it?"
"For now." He's arranged his face to be entirely impassive, haughty and statuesque. "Up or down?"
"What?" Her hands grip tighter as she glances down at the pitch black hole beneath her.
"I said. Up. Or. Down." His voice has turned mean, and she leans as far back away from his face as his grip will allow.
"Jareth, don't-"
"Down it is."
"NO! Wait-"
His arm releases her and she drop like a weight, slipping and clutching uselessly at the outstretched hands, down into the darker depths of the pit until she lands with a thud on the stone floor of the oubliette.
