A/N: OK, folks, here is where the story starts to get very, very dark. Bad Things will happen to Sarah (but anyone who's read even one of my stories knows I always, always have a happy ending, it's not in me to leave things in a bad place, ever).
Everything went black, as if the power had suddenly gone out. Sarah heard someone cursing and the crash of an instrument tray being knocked into, then silence joined the blackness and she felt her skin prickling.
Something was very, very wrong.
"Hello?" she called out warily as her arms tightened protectively around her son. Even he'd fallen silent, stopped crying, the instant that suspicious darkness fell. "Can someone tell me what happened?" She waited for an answer, for the emergency generators to kick on, for something to happen.
Nothing did. Continued silence met her question, and she half-raised herself on her elbows, not sure what she was going to do, when a voice froze her in place. A familiar, unexpected voice, speaking in low tones and coming from near the foot of the bed. "Hello, Sarah. I've come for what's mine."
Lights sprang into existence as he finished speaking, but not the overhead glare of fluorescent; instead, the room was lit by a dancing fairy light that only outlined the Goblin King's lean figure, leaving his face in shadow but clearly showing the blanketed form he held cradled in his arms.
Her eyes flew down as she gasped in shock; her own arms were empty, cradling nothing.
Jareth, the Goblin King, had her son.
"Jareth, please, give him to me," she said, trying to keep her voice calm and steady. "I promise I'll take care of him…"
He interrupted her with a bark of disbelieving laughter. "Truly? And how will you do that, when you've already wished him away to the care of strangers?"
"Give him back!" she cried, raising herself from the birthing bed and reaching out for her baby, physical and emotional pain choking further words from her lips.
Jareth half-turned his body, shielding the boy from her reach and gaze. In spite of the darkness hiding his features she felt the intensity of his eyes on hers, and she shivered. "Oh no, Sarah. He's an unwanted child, wished away by his ungrateful mother, and now he's mine to raise. My heir." He looked down at the baby, and Sarah imagined she could see the hard angles of his face softening, a smile curving his lips as his voice lost its edge. "My son," he whispered, his voice gone from accusing and hateful to loving and filled with wonder in the blink of an eye.
Then he turned his attention back to Sarah, and all softness fled. "You didn't want him," he snarled as she tried once again to protest, cutting off her words, striking her dumb with the sheer vehemence of his anger. "But I do." He took a step back. "Goodbye, Sarah."
As Jareth and the baby vanished, she screamed, then the world tilted and she fell into darkness.
oOo
"Dad? Karen? What happened?"
Sarah's voice sounded weak, raspy, as if she hadn't used it in a long time. Or as if she'd been screaming…which, she remembered suddenly, she had. First at the unbelievable pain of giving birth, then when Jareth had shown up…
She sat up, looking around wildly as terror clogged her throat, threatening to cut off her breath. "Where is he?"
"Where's who, honey?" her dad asked, reaching out a soothing hand and placing it over hers. He tried to ease her back down onto the pillows, but she fought him as best she could when her body felt as weak as her voice.
"My baby," she whispered, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. Jareth had taken him…her child, her son. Never mind that she'd agreed to give him up for adoption; one look at the bawling, red-faced little bundle the nurse had presented to her and she'd fallen instantly, hopelessly in love with her son. She'd tried to tell Jareth that, but of course the stubborn ass wouldn't listen. "Where's my baby? He took him, didn't he."
She fell back against the pillow as her dad and Karen exchanged nervous looks. "It's OK, you can tell me," she said, stifling a sob.
"Sweetie, we're not sure what you're talking about," her father said, perching uneasily on the edge of the bed and taking her hand in his. "What baby?"
Sarah stared up at her father, horror squeezing her heart in her chest. "My baby, Dad. The baby I just had. A little boy. I was going to give him up, the Gendries were going to adopt him, but I can't, I love him too much." She was babbling, fighting not to recognize the blank expression in her father and step-mother's eyes…trying not to understand that they had no idea what she was talking about.
That they had no memories of her pregnancy, no memories that she'd just given birth to a healthy baby (half-Fey) boy.
Her father's next words only confirmed that unwanted, terrifying suspicion. "Sarah," he said, his voice cautiously soothing, "there's no baby. You were in a car accident, don't you remember? You've been unconscious for a couple of days, but you're going to be all right…"
"No I won't," she contradicted him, turning her face away from his and allowing the tears she'd been choking back to fall.
oOo
She heard them, later, when they thought she'd fallen back asleep. The doctor, so solid and reassuring, relating her injuries and how well she was recovering from them (oh Jareth, he'd even changed her body when he altered reality, a head injury to explain her confusion and abdominal injuries requiring surgery to explain her other pains, so thorough she could just scream). The doctor continued speaking, telling her father and Karen in a low, soothing voice that sometimes people who'd been in a coma had especially vivid dreams, dreams they'd awakened from believing them to be real. But she knew the truth; she'd had a baby, and Jareth had used the fact that she was planning to give it up for adoption as the excuse he needed to steal him from her. Yes, he was the father, but she was the mother, and she was the one her baby needed.
It wouldn't do her any good to argue with her dad or Karen or the doctor; none of them would remember anything about her pregnancy, and she had no doubt that her obstetrician would have no memory of her being his patient, either. All she could do was go along with whatever they told her to do, speed up her recovery as best she could from this fictional car accident, and get to a mirror so she could ask Hoggle, Ludo and Sir Didymus to help her get her baby back.
Her chance came a few days later, when she was finally steady enough on her feet to take herself to the small bathroom attached to her private hospital room. She'd been chafing with impatience for the all-clear, not willing to risk trying to do it herself and setting her recovery back one minute longer than she had to. She'd taken the doctor's warnings about not getting out of bed without help until now very seriously, and was rewarded by his permission to try it the night before — with a nurse's aide standing by, just in case.
Success had made her giddy, and she'd almost wanted to sneak out in the middle of the night, but even taking those few steps on her own exhausted her so much that instead she'd allowed herself to fall asleep, with the promise of the morning in the forefront of her mind.
Morning had come, the nurse had looked in on her, watched her get out of bed, then allowed her the privacy of the bathroom after reminding her about the emergency call button and promising to check in on her in a half-hour, regardless.
The bathroom door didn't lock, since the hospital staff needed to be able to come to a patient's aid if they fell or couldn't get themselves off the pot or something, but Sarah closed the door and ran the water as if she were going to take the shower she'd been given permission to indulge in. The noise would help cover her voice as she called to her friends. "Hoggle! Sir Didymus! Ludo! Can you hear me? I need your help!"
The mirror clouded up instantly, as if they'd been waiting for her, and she stood facing it, heart pounding in her chest as she waited for it to clear and show her the beloved faces she so desperately wanted to see. They would help her get her baby back, she knew they would. All they had to do was get her through the mirror-portal and back to the Underground, then she'd make her way to the castle and get her son away from Jareth.
She was so busy making plans that it took her a moment to realize that the glass had cleared, and that it was no longer showing her her own reflection. It took her another moment to realize that it was Jareth who confronted her, his expression cool and amused as she gaped at him.
When she found her voice, it came out shrill with anger and hurt and terror and above all, a bone-deep need. "Give me back my baby!"
He smirked at her, and suddenly a blanketed bundle appeared in his arms. He looked down, his expression unreadable, before looking up at her, his eyes chips of flint, of ice, of everything cold and unyielding that had ever existed. There was winter in his voice when he spoke again. "No."
"Jareth, please!" she cried, slamming her hands against the ungiving glass. When he made as if to leave, she backed off, her voice pleading: "Give him back to me! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to give him up, I tried to tell you I changed my mind…"
The Goblin King ignored her demands, the entreaty in her eyes and form, peering down with what looked remarkably like a tender smile at the small form nestled in his embrace. When he looked back up, however, the smile vanished like sea spray on a windless day. "Give him back? When you wished him away? I don't think so, Sarah."
"I never…" she started to say, then swallowed nervously. She might not have used the formula of "I wish the goblins would take you away right now" but she'd signed the adoption papers. She'd wished her own son away, not with a magic spell but with the help of an attorney and legal forms. How could she have been so stupid?
"Please," she whispered, hating the whimper in her voice but willing to do anything, say anything, to make him believe her. "Please, Jareth. Give him back. I changed my mind. I changed my mind the second I saw him, the moment they put him in my arms. I want him. I love him."
"Too late." The cruel triumph in Jareth's eyes vanished, to be replaced with what she could only call a combination of hurt and fury and, perhaps, disappointment. "You gave him over to the care of strangers before ever he'd breathed his first breath. He is my son, and he will be raised by me." He lifted the tiny form and turned it, just enough for Sarah to see the sleeping baby's face with its wisp of golden hair and delicate features. "Say goodbye, Sarah. You wished him away, and this is the last you'll ever see of him."
The forms in the mirror blurred and vanished, replaced by Sarah's wild-eyed reflection. "Jareth?" she called out, reaching with trembling fingers to stroke the solid glass of the mirror. "Jareth?" she said, louder this time, then screamed his name a third time. "Jareth! Give me back my baby!"
Her hands fisted themselves into ineffectual weapons and she pounded them against the glass, still screaming for Jareth to give her back her son. The glass shattered and cut her hands, dozens of slivers imbedding themselves in her skin, but still she pounded the broken mirror, continuing to scream even as a pair of nurses appeared and tried to pull her away.
In the end, it took a doctor with a sedative to calm the wild animal she'd transformed into, the needle piercing flesh and forcing a false calm upon her soul.
The last thing she saw was the cracked and shattered mirror, red with her blood, reflecting nothing but darkness that no one else saw, too busy with her to look at the damaged glass behind them.
And in the darkness, a pair of mismatched eyes seemed to watch balefully as she faded into unconsciousness.