A/N: God I'm sorry it took me so long to update. My computer crashed months ago, and I've spent most of the time since then trying to piece back together my original writing. Hopefully now I can actually update in something like a timely manner.
Since Sarah quite obviously didn't want him to follow her, Jareth chose instead to tail the other two, owl-formed.
He wasn't quite sure what to make of either of them. He could hear them bickering in the trees below, while he soared the silvery darkness. Those of his own kind he was used to, even if he didn't much care for them, but this Betelgeuse…creature…was something else entirely. Jareth had him pegged as conniving but very lazy, and had been as surprised as the girl Lydia when he'd offered to help.
That girl. Jareth was too keenly aware of his own weakness to miss it in anyone else. The poltergeist might say - might even believe - he was only doing this to avoid later inconvenience, but Jareth damn well knew better. That girl had him wrapped around her finger as thoroughly - and unwittingly - as Sarah did him. The only difference was that he at least realized it, even if he didn't want to admit it. He hadn't been quite truthful with Sarah; he could have yanked his power back out of her head with far less effort than he'd implied, but it really would destroy her mind, and he would never do it. Never.
What that Betelgeuse had done, though…he'd never seen quite such a thing before, but Jareth was no fool. What the poltergeist had given Lydia was irreversible; he couldn't take it back if he wanted to, and while it gave him immense power over her, it also gave her far more over him than she likely realized. Even Jareth had never bound anyone to himself like that, because such a binding by necessity worked both ways, and until Sarah he'd never even considered yoking himself to someone like that for eternity.
Sarah. She'd grown up, yes, physically and mentally, but there was a hardness, a ruthlessness to her that had only been hinted at when he'd seen her last. That she'd had the audacity to dictate terms to him of all people…he'd taught her well, without realizing it or even meaning to do so. Damn her for having so much power over him, but it was his own fault.
He left the pair when they climbed up through Lydia's window, and soared off to check on Sarah's house. Her light was still on when he got there-she likely wouldn't sleep much tonight.
When they'd climbed back up the trellis, Lydia momentarily disappeared into the hallway, and returned with one of her father's bathrobes.
"You," she said firmly, "need a shower. I don't want you dumping grave-dirt all over my room. And," she added, holding up a finger, "I don't want to hear it. No innuendos, no double-entendres, none of it. You're going to take a shower and I'm going to wash your clothes, and that's the end of it."
Betelgeuse looked at her. There was something almost absurd about being ordered around by a girl nearly a foot shorter than him, but the glint in her dark eyes told him protesting would get him nowhere. Muttering darkly about breathers and their damn hygiene, he took the robe and marched grimly into the bathroom, tossing his filthy suit out a moment later. Lydia gathered it up in a pile of her own clothes and tiptoed to the washing machine-fortunately, doing laundry so late at night wouldn't seem out of the ordinary for her, if her parents even noticed. In it all went, along with a generous dash of detergent, and without regard to the drop in hot water it would make she turned the machine on.
Now that she had time to properly think, she was wondering if she hadn't made a very grave mistake. The cold patch over her heart hadn't gone away, and the full implications of what she'd done were finally settling in in earnest. How the hell was she to explain this to her parents - to the Maitlands? She'd have to sooner or later, though she planned on putting it off as long as she could.,
And then there was this war…thing…whatever. From the sound of it she couldn't keep that a secret forever, either, especially if they all had to go to the Labyrinth or something. She'd have to come up with some excuse for ditching school, for one thing, and it was unlikely she could pull off any long-term lie to the Maitlands. (Her parents were another story - they might well buy anything.)
And meanwhile Betelgeuse seemed determined to stick to her like glue. Lydia was a very private person, and the thought of having that privacy so intruded upon made her shudder. Hopefully now that she had this immortality or whatever it was, he'd leave her alone a little. Though she wasn't holding her breath.
She grabbed an unused toothbrush from the drawer in the main bathroom and went back to her room, where she found a remarkably clean poltergeist lounging in her desk chair, swathed in blue terrycloth. His hair was wild as ever, but he actually seemed to have got rid of all the grime. He still didn't actually look alive, but at least he was clean-well, no, he might have passed for a heroin addict, she thought, he'd grown so emaciated in the last year. She wondered why, but didn't know how to ask.
"So what's with this Darkness thing?" she asked instead, sitting cross-legged on her bed. He'd said he didn't know, but he was also a compulsive liar.
"I really honestly have no idea. Nothing connected to the Neitherworld-I'd know if it was. They know about the Goblin King guy, at least, and they're afraid of him. And if he's worried about this Darkness, it has to be bad."
"I still can't believe you offered to help," Lydia said, shaking her head.
He cracked all his knuckles. "Self-interest, Babes. Pure self-interest. Like I said, if anything happens to this world there's no point in me trying to get back to it. Besides, this Darkness guy sounds like an asshole, and I'm King Asshole around here."
That actually made her giggle. "You've got that right," she said. "God, I'm going to be dead tired at school tomorrow."
"You don't really need to sleep anymore," he said. "Though you probably will a while anyway, out of habit. You're only tired because your brain says you should be."
"My brain says I'm exhausted," she said, yawning, though she was also regarding him a little more closely than he was comfortable with. He didn't know that she was truly wondering for the first time how old he'd been when he died. Without all the grime, she'd peg him as somewhere in his mid-thirties or so-if he'd really been dead as long as he'd said he had, he would have been verging on old for that time.
"How did you die?" she asked suddenly. If he'd once been Juno's assistant, it had to have been suicide, but unlike what the Maitlands had said of the rest of the dead, his cause of death wasn't immediately obvious.
He pushed back his sleeves and held out his arms. A long, jagged cut ran up each, from wrist to elbow, and she winced. "Sweating sickness was going around," he said. "Mid-1400's. Nasty way to die, so I figured I'd check out early. Lot of people thought it was the end of the world, so I thought I'd just beat the rush."
"Didn't people think that was a mortal sin, though? I mean, how did you know you wouldn't wind up in hell?"
"Hell couldn't've been worse than the world, at that point. Trust me. 'Course if I'd known where I'd end up, I would have just let the disease get me. Paperwork," he said, shuddering. "I had no idea what that was - couldn't even read when I was alive. Shitty way to have to learn, being Juno's assistant."
Lydia winced. "Where did you live?"
"England. Good old Henry the VIII, who wanted to wreck the country just so he could bone Anne Boleyn."
"You don't sound English," she said dubiously.
"Plenty of time to change your accent when you're dead," he said, with a toothy grin. "I sounded like a twit."
It was so bizarre, thinking of Betelgeuse ever having been alive, but at least now she could picture it. She was intensely curious about what his life had been like, but she didn't want to ask for the whole story at once. Especially since pretty soon she was going to have to shift the laundry. She'd pry more out of him later, when they had time.
Sarah, who was after all still completely human, was more than exhausted, but she wasn't to find sleep right away. Instead she lay long awake, staring at the square of moonlight that splashed across the ceiling.
Lydia wasn't the only one who was going to have some very awkward explaining to do. She knew her parents weren't going to believe her word alone, which meant she was going to have to drag Jareth into it, God help her. While the thought of her stepmother's reaction to the Goblin King was an undeniably amusing one, it didn't make up for how terrible it was sure to be. Her parents would likely only see that some British guy twice her age wanted to kidnap her, and that…was not going to go over well. At all. Even the thought made her twitch.
Like Lydia and Betelgeuse, Sarah didn't know what to make of this Darkness business. The fact that it made Jareth nervous made her nervous, and made her wonder if her insistence at getting involved was such a great idea after all. It had been a knee-jerk reaction, a refusal to be outdone, and something told her she was going to regret it sooner or later.
She really didn't want him back in her life. Oh, she'd thought about him on and off - more than she'd ever admit, even to herself - but that didn't mean she wanted to see him. Things were complicated enough as it was, just now, and the last thing she needed was Jareth tossing even more spanners in the works. Jareth and Lydia's poltergeist - and Sarah couldn't help but think of him as that, as some kind of property of her friend - and this Darkness, whoever or whatever that was. Like it or not, though, it looked like she was stuck, and was simply going to have to find some way of dealing with it. If only she didn't have bloody school to deal with, on top of everything else.
Eventually, around one in the morning, sleep managed to find her, and she drifted on uneasy dreams.
Both girls were obviously exhausted the next day - Sarah rather more so than Lydia, who more often than not had some level of shadow under her eyes. She was no paler than usual, but Sarah's complexion was so ashen even Mrs. Scarpello thought she should go see the nurse, and Mrs. Scarpello was not the kind of teacher to make that kind of decision lightly.
"I'm fine," Sarah insisted, stifling a yawn. And she was, more or less, though she wouldn't have left the class alone with those books for anything short of lockjaw. She didn't care what Jareth said; she wasn't nearly stupid enough to trust his word entirely.
Lydia, on the other hand, was on some level thrumming with energy in spite of her weariness. Watching the sunrise had been an experience unlike anything she'd ever seen, but she'd scrambled to eat and get out of the house as fast as she could, wanting to evade the Maitlands for now - Adam and Barbara would almost certainly be able to tell something had happened to her, even if they might not know what.
The change in her vision was… even more amazing during the day, subtle yet all-encompassing. Even in daylight she could see the subtle shimmer of heat-waves rising from all the students around her, pick up each and every detail of her scarred desk, but it was more than just that. Her entire awareness was still shifting, her spatial sense extended around her like a tangible aura, and when Claire lobbed a pencil at her her hand shot out and caught it without her needing to look up from her book. Nor did she have to look to send it flying back to its owner with such accuracy it stuck in Claire's frizzy perm.
Sarah snorted beside her before she could help herself, hastily turning the noise into a hacking cough as Mrs. Scarpello turned to her. Lydia, still ostensibly absorbed by her book, only smiled, a strange and incredibly unsettling smile that made the girl on her other side edge away.
They made it through English without any further incident, and at lunch both Lydia and Sarah took up residence on the fence between their school and the boys', joined by Bertha and Prudence. Both girls eyed Lydia almost uneasily, though neither said a thing, and she wondered if they could somehow sense whatever weird difference the thing Betelgeuse had given her wrought in her. It wouldn't at all surprise her.
She was halfway through her sandwich when a clearly irate Claire approached, flanked by a whole herd of her minions. Lydia fought a sigh, though she took a certain vindictive satisfaction in noticing just how many split ends Claire had - the sight made her smile again, a smile even creepier than before, and Tiffany, who was by far the brightest of Claire's herd, faltered uncertainly.
"You think you're hot shit, don't you, Deetz?" Claire snapped, halting about two feet from Lydia. As usual she had on far too much makeup, heavy on the eyeliner with hot pink lipstick, gold chandelier earrings tinkling every time she moved her head. The school had fairly strict rules against modifying uniforms, but Claire had pushed that rule as far as she could, replacing the plain white buttons of her blouse with ones that were faintly iridescent (Sarah had to privately admit she actually kind of liked those) and had a heavy gold necklace that reminded Sarah so sharply of Mr. T that it was all she could do to choke back a laugh.
"I don't think I'm feces of any temperature," Lydia said dryly, and Sarah did laugh then, unable to help herself. Claire glared at her, then swiveled that glare to Tiffany when she giggled, too.
"Funny," Claire snapped, and both Lydia and Sarah were willing to bet she didn't even know what feces meant. "You're pushing it, Deetz."
Lydia set aside her apple and fixed Claire with a Look fully deserving of a capital L. It wasn't threatening - merely impassive, but that was somehow worse, and the force of it pierced even Claire's obliviousness. "What are you going to do about it?" she said, quite calm. "It's not like you'd be willing to break a nail to hit me. Go fix your lipstick or something."
Even Bertha and Prudence, who normally tried to stay as far under Claire's radar as they could, giggled at that, and her eyes narrowed. Before any of them could blink, her (naturally perfectly manicured) hand shot out and grabbed a handful of Lydia's black hair, but before she could so much as tug Lydia slapped her so hard it literally knocked her off her feet, surprise breaking her grip. One of her herd let out a surprised squeak, but Claire stared at her, momentarily too shocked that the little freak had dared laid a hand on her to move. After a few moments her brain caught up with events and she leapt to her feet, but the expression in Lydia's dark eyes momentarily halted her.
"I wouldn't, Claire," Lydia said, almost mildly. "I really, really wouldn't. I wouldn't snitch, either, if I were you. You know what they say - 'snitches get stitches'."
Claire's glare could have blistered paint, but the mark of Lydia's hand stood so red on her face that it was surely going to bruise later, and it seemed even she was bright enough to concede it - temporarily, at least. "I'll see you after school, Deetz," she snapped, before turning on her heel and stalking off.
"I'm sure you will," Lydia muttered, as the rest of Claire's retinue followed her. Only Tiffany hesitated, casting Lydia a look more uneasy than ever before leaving herself. Lydia thought she knew why, too - she'd never hit anyone in her life, and given how small she was she simply shouldn't have been able to hit Claire that hard. Claire had a good six inches and probably fifteen pounds on her, but she'd gone sprawling nonetheless.
"You think she'll rat you out?" Sarah asked, watching the girls retreat. Bertha and Prudence both looked somewhat appalled, but Sarah could only grin.
Lydia shook her head. "She'll just try to get someone to jump me after school, I bet," she said. "If she can find anybody willing to risk their makeup. She's so vain I don't think she'd ever try to really go after me herself. Just watch - she'll cake her foundation on so thick you won't be able to tell I slapped her."
"I can't believe you did that," Prudence giggled nervously.
"It was that or let her yank out half my hair," Lydia said, shaking her head again. "Claire needs to learn she's not in charge just because she's popular." The scorn she infused in that last word practically defied description. "She's only popular because she's rich - I don't think even her so-called friends actually like her."
"Tiffany seems different from the rest of them," Sarah observed. "She's not so…vapid."
"She's only been here a year," Bertha said. "She didn't grow up around Claire. She's pretty rich, so of course Claire wanted her in her group, but you're right - she's not so vapid. Perfect description for Claire."
"If Claire's not careful, I think something really nasty's going to happen to her sooner or later," Sarah said thoughtfully, and even Lydia looked at her a little strangely. "What? I'm not going to do it, but karma has a way of catching up to people."
The bell rang before anyone could question that, and they four trudged through the drifts of crunchy leaves, headed for Science. Lydia wasn't that fond of Science, especially since the teacher had never quite forgiven her for refusing to dissect a frog, but at least today it offered the entertainment value of watching Claire fume. It seemed she really hadn't snitched, for no teacher pulled Lydia aside to lecture her, and Claire had indeed caked on her foundation to the point that her face looked more like a mask than anything human. She probably really would send someone after Lydia after school - someone from the boys' school, if she couldn't get any of the girls to do it - but Lydia really doubted any of the boys would take her up on that offer, even if Claire probably had made out with half of them. Some of them could be real assholes, but Lydia doubted any would actually hit a girl. Which was almost a pity; she wasn't even remotely a violent person, but some morbid part of her half wanted to see what would happen now if she did hit someone again.
She shook her head as she took out her book - she'd been around Betelgeuse too long already. She'd really have to be careful not to let him become too negative an influence on her, not in the ways that really mattered to her. Her principles were her principles, and letting go of them would be…bad. Even at seventeen she was far more aware of that than most adults. While she was still fascinated by the gruesome, she didn't want to become the kind of person who created gruesome things, because if she did she wouldn't be Lydia anymore. She might not be properly human now, but she'd be damned if she'd let that change who she was.
Lydia had been right - Claire did indeed try to waylay her leaving school. Sarah wasn't at all surprised, either; having gone to a much larger high school, she'd seen more than one grudge of the sort Claire held against her small friend. Anger had twisted the girl's normally pretty face into something downright ugly, anger almost more at being embarrassed than physically struck. She was trying to save face now, which meant she might well try acts of stupidity she normally wouldn't - even if it did mean breaking a nail. Most of her herd was with her, but Sarah also wasn't surprised to see that Tiffany wasn't among their number, and she wondered what excuse the girl had given to beg off from this one.
Lydia made no attempt to outrun them on her bike, so Sarah didn't, either - this was something that simply had to be got out of the way, she knew, and if she had to weigh in herself, she would. A lot of adults operated on the mistaken belief that girls didn't fight, not physically, but Claire and her cronies practically looked out for blood.
As she'd suspected they would, most of the girls ignored her as they closed in on Lydia - their first mistake, Sarah thought; you never ignored your target's companions, however few of them there might be. Apparently Claire thought there was safety in numbers, for she had five others with her. Probably thinks there's less chance of breaking a nail if she's got minions, Sarah thought, and snorted before she could help it.
Lydia glanced at her, and her thoughts must have been running along the same vein, for she smiled, and Claire's glare intensified.
"What's so fucking funny?" she demanded, halting a few feet away.
"You," Lydia returned. "God, you're dumb." Her dark eyes danced with amusement in her white face, and Sarah watched the exchange with a little more curiosity than was entirely warranted. "I'd rather not have to fight you, Claire."
Claire apparently mistook that for cowardice, for she sneered. "You hit me first," she said, probably unaware how childish she sounded. "Nobody fucks with me, Deetz."
"Not if you ask the guys," Lydia muttered, and Sarah snorted again, earning a glare of her own. "Doesn't it ever bother you, being a total slut?"
Claire's face went white under all the caked layers of her makeup - not with shock, but with complete rage. "At least I'm not a lesbian," she shot back, shooting another glare at Sarah, and now it was Lydia who snorted.
"Seriously? Is that really the best you can do?" she asked, leaning forward on her handlebars. "Probably the best I can expect from someone with only three brain cells, I guess."
The other girls were watching with somewhat horrified fascination, and Sarah would bet her left shoe nobody had ever dared talk to Queen Claire like that before. This was bound to be entertaining, whatever else it was, and sure enough Claire launched herself at Lydia with a screech, concern for hair and nails apparently forgotten. This time Lydia didn't hit her, though - she just stuck out one booted foot and let Claire trip herself. Her expression was so like Betelgeuse's rather fey dangerous look that even Sarah had to fight a shudder and more than one of the other girls backed away, unwilling to get tangled up in this one. Deetz was a weirdo, but just now she was flat-out creepy in a way none of them could have articulated.
Lydia hopped off her bike and put one booted foot on Claire's chest before the other girl could get up - not hard enough to hurt, but enough to make her stay put. "Here's the deal, Claire," she said, her expression now dreadfully impassive. "You're going to leave me alone. You're going to leave my friends alone, or I won't be responsible for what happens to you." She paused. "Well, yeah, actually I probably will, but if you don't want to wind up extremely miserable, I'd back off and go find someone else to torment."
Betelgeuse, Sarah thought - she could only imagine what the poltergeist might do, if Lydia let him. Or even if she didn't, if he somehow found a way to detach himself long enough to go after Claire. Sarah had wondered all day just where he was, if he was lurking in the house or - far more likely - following Lydia unseen. It was a creepy thought, but then it was the kind of thing Jareth was capable of, too, which really didn't help. Hopefully he was too busy with getting ready for whatever was to come to bother spying on her much. On them much.
Lydia stepped back, letting Claire get up - her boot had left a nice muddy print all over the front of Claire's blouse, and that huge perm was now full of leaves and twigs. She looked ready to choke Lydia, but it seemed even Claire Brewster had some sense of self-preservation, for all she did was glare.
"This isn't over, Deetz," she snarled, turning away and stalking off, her twittering followers in tow.
"Yes it is," Lydia said, and the simple frankness of her tone was somehow worse than viciousness would have been. Sarah could only shake her head as Lydia picked up her bike. Unpleasant as that had been, it was nothing to what awaited them at the Deetz house - part of why she was going with Lydia was because they were going to have to get some awful explanations out of the way, and she'd figured it would be easier if she was around to back Lydia up.
Great, she thought. There was absolutely no way this could possibly end well.
A/N: Next chapter sees the dreaded Explanation, first to the Deetzes and then the Williams, God help them all, aided and abetted by our favorite poltergeist and goblin king. Sarah's very right - this really isn't going to end well. XD