"Obsessed by a fairy tale, we spend our lives searching for a magic door and a lost kingdom of peace." – Eugene O'Neill
Chapter Two: The Hospital
"I'm glad you could come, honey," Karen said, kissing Sarah's cheek. "I know I've been asking a lot of you—"
"Of course I'd want to come," Sarah said, waving off Karen's usual words.
"And thank you for watching over Toby."
"Of course, Karen."
"Honey, are you okay? You look tired," Karen said. "Have you been sleeping?"
"Yes," Sarah said. She just hadn't slept very well last night, since a certain Goblin King interrupted her sleep—unless she believed him about it being a dream. Granted, at the end, she had woken up to find the room empty. The visit had been short after Jareth had said why he was there.
"Are you kidding me? I'm not going back to the Underground, Jareth. I've grown up. I have a job. And I need to be here! No, you know what? This is just a dream. This is just a pathetic attempt of my subconscious to bring to my attention that I'm stressed out and not happy about something in my life. Well, big deal. I knew that already. So you can just go off to wherever figments of my imagination go off to."
"Sarah, I assure you, I am quite real. Well, as real as someone who can only appear in dreams can be…"
"I'm not listening, Jareth. I'm rolling over now—see?—and when I count to ten, you had better be gone."
"Sarah—"
"One! Two!..."
"You're infuriating, Precious. But, trust me, I will be back…"
And Sarah had jerked awake, alone, in her own bedroom. But, she hadn't slept well for the rest of the night. Ten years and she hadn't heard from Hoggle, Sir Didymus, or Ludo, let alone the Goblin King, so why suddenly appear to her now?
"I need you to go back to the Underground." Sarah snorted. Well, it was obvious why he had suddenly appeared, right? Because of everything that had happened to her in the last few years. Her subconscious was just making excuses for her to forget the problems in her life.
Sarah blinked and refocused on Karen, who was giving her a slightly worried look. Sarah forced a reassuring smile and said, "How's Dad?"
"Sleeping. He may not wake up, but I thought…just in case…" Karen faltered and her eyes went watery. She looked away with a sigh.
Sarah took pity on the woman, this probably wasn't something she'd signed up for when she'd married Sarah's father. Sarah said, "Go home, Karen. I'll stay a little bit, okay?"
Karen nodded. "Thanks, dear." She slowly walked away, sniffling. Sarah watched her and noticed that Karen's shoulders were hunched; she had aged a few years more quickly than she should have.
When Karen walked around the corner, Sarah sighed and rubbed her hands through her hair before sitting down in the hospital's seat. Her father was just doing his usual round of chemotherapy, but afterwards he would be sick and drowsy; someone had to be there to take him home. Usually, Karen was the one who took care of him after treatments, while Sarah looked after Toby. Sometimes, she would keep Toby for the entire day, even letting him sleep over at her apartment, which sheltered Toby from seeing their father recovering from the cure of his cancer.
But today, Karen had called Sarah desperately muddled and tired. She was nearly crying on the telephone. Sarah couldn't think of a time when Karen had had a tremor in her voice, let alone nearly crying. She hadn't even blinked an eye when Sarah had yelled at her that she wasn't her mother and she never would be. Sarah had been fourteen then; eleven years ago, and this was the first time she'd nearly seen Karen cry.
The bright lights of the hospital and the constant movement in the waiting room—people shifting, groaning, moving back and forth impatiently, nurses coming out and yelling names—gave Sarah a pounding headache. She slouched in the chair until her neck was cushioned on the low back of the chair. After a moment of flipping through a five month old Vanity Fair with boring articles of clothes she couldn't afford—someone had torn out all the leaflets with the perfume samples—she closed her eyes with a sigh.
What am I doing? Sarah wondered. Maybe I should look for another job. I won't be able to ever buy a house on the salary I have now. But then, she wasn't sure where she'd buy her house. Did she want to be in the same city as her parents? There was a standing invitation to move to California, where her birth mother was, but did she want to be there? Right now, of course, she couldn't go anywhere. Her father needed her, Toby needed her, and even Karen needed her.
But, her father would get better. His cancer had a 72% survival rate, after all. As long as it didn't metastasize; that was the risk, it would become worse, and his survival rate would drop to 45%.
Sarah sighed and drew up her knees, perching her feet on the edge of the chair so she could rest her head on the back of her arms. She watched as people painfully—or nervously or fearfully—waited in the lobby. Nurses ran back and forth, occasionally a doctor appeared and briefly talked to a nurse or patients or family members, then disappeared again. The hospital was like a living, breathing organism; the people inside the blood pulsing and running through it. Keeping it alive.
Sarah shivered at the thought and closed her eyes, willing herself to stop thinking. Just stop thinking for five minutes.
"Stop thinking," Sarah murmured, her lips brushing against the back of her hand.
"Stop thinking about what, Precious?" a velvety smooth, annoyingly familiar voice said.
Sarah's eyes popped open and she sat up so quickly she almost slid out of the chair. Sitting in the seat next to her was Jareth. She looked around, as if someone could confirm what she was seeing with her own eyes, but everyone continued doing their work oblivious to the glittery, tight-panted man suddenly amongst them. In fact, no one seemed to be looking in her direction in such an obvious way that Sarah felt a prickle of unease jump up her spine.
"Am I dreaming?" Sarah whispered. "But my dreams get so much more…vivid…when you poof into them."
She realized how that sounded and looked away, hiding the flush that dusted her cheeks.
Jareth only grinned, which embarrassed her further, and the emotion turned into annoyance. Why was he doing this to her? Why was her subconscious doing this to her? After ten years, she shouldn't be having dreams like this—it just wasn't fair.
Sarah sighed. "Why am I dreaming about you again? Why am I dreaming about you lately? And yes, I know the theory—because my life is really stressful right now, I'm retreating to a time when I was in charge of my own destiny—but, really, I don't need this."
Jareth clicked his tongue, making a tsk-tsk noise. "Really, Sarah, since when did you become a non-believer?"
"Um, since my friends stopped coming to the window for a chat, which was right after I left the Labyrinth, I might add," Sarah answered. "It was pretty easy to convince myself that those whole thirteen-or-whatever hours was just an elaborate dream. My subconscious once again creating things to help me cope with a stressful situation, only then it was…" She turned to Jareth, but the words faded when she caught his expression. His lips were pressed firmly in a grim line and he looked surprisingly bleak as he stared off into the distance. His thoughts were a mystery, and despite Sarah still firmly believing he was a figment of her dream mind, she really wanted to know what he was thinking.
"Would it do you any good if I said they did not stop visiting you of their own accord?" Jareth said.
Sarah frowned. "What? Did you tell them to stop?" She felt anger blossom in her heart.
Jareth sighed. "I am responsible, yes."
Sarah gritted her teeth and took a hissing, deep intake of breath to keep her anger at bay. She wondered about Jareth's game; admitting something like that wouldn't endear him to her. She turned away, looking back at the hospital.
Jareth glanced around as well, and from the corner of Sarah's eye, she saw him stiffen. He said, "This is a hospital."
"Yes, they have them where you're from?" she said, then winced. She hadn't meant her tone to be so snippy.
"Why are you here?" Jareth asked. "Are you well?"
Sarah nodded, glancing back at him. He was staring at her with slightly widened eyes, and she wondered, briefly, if he was worried about her. "I'm fine."
"Then why are you here?"
Is this some psychology trick of my subconscious? Sarah wondered, with a sigh. "Let's get Sarah to talk about it"?
Okay, she'd play along for now. A dream meant nothing, in the long run. She watched a nurse at the desk. She seemed to be having a particularly unhappy phone call. Her body language was stiff and angry. "My father is here."
"Why?"
"Cancer."
"Precious, I'm sorry."
Sarah jerked, as if Jareth had hit her. She whirled around in the seat and saw compassion in his gaze—and for some reason that made her angry. The Goblin King felt sorry for her? Sarah said, "Keep your pity for someone who cares!"
"It isn't pity, it's kindness," Jareth said. "Has life been so difficult that you've forgotten the difference?"
"Since when is the Goblin King kind?"
"I've always been generous, remember Sarah?"
Sarah snorted. "What I remember is that our definition of 'generous' was very different."
Jareth shrugged.
"If you're trying to butter me up so I agree to help you—"
"Of course not, Sarah. You'll either help me or not."
Sarah decided it was time to focus on what Jareth was asking, so they wouldn't talk about her life. She was surprised by the anger simmering under her skin. It wasn't Jareth's fault if she was unhappy, stressed, anxious.
"I have something that might convince you to help me," Jareth said. He crossed his ankles and threaded his fingers together over his stomach. He looked almost companionable, as if they were sitting in a park watching the birds instead of sitting in a hospital in a dream. "Helping me would help your friends."
"What do you mean?"
"You remember them, surely? The ones from the Labyrinth? The dwarf, the dog, and the…rock singer."
"I know. What I mean is how does helping you help them?"
"Well, you see," Jareth said, "I'm trapped. And without their king, the Labyrinth has…fallen."
"Fallen?" She was getting really sick of the half-answers.
"You'll see," Jareth said. "The way forward is often the way back. The first step is to return to the Labyrinth."
Sarah's heart began to pound. "What do you mean?"
Jareth leaned over and cupped her cheek. Sarah shivered. She could feel the soft leather of his glove against her skin. For a dream, it was very real. He said, "You need to go back to the Labyrinth, Sarah Williams."
"Why?" Sarah murmured.
"The trail starts there. Find me, Sarah. I've lost my way."
Sarah leaned back, and Jareth let her go, settling back into his seat with ankles crossed and fingers threaded.
"For someone who's lost, you're surprisingly calm."
"I've been lost for a while."
"I didn't think the Goblin King would admit to being lost."
"After a while, being lost gets very boring."
"Why ask for my help?" Sarah was more pleased with this line of questioning. Question-answer, question-answer; they quickly fired back and forth.
"Because you're the Champion." Before Sarah could ask the obvious next question, Jareth added, "The Champion of the Labyrinth. The only one to complete it."
"Really?" Sarah couldn't help but feel a little pleased by that. "I'm the only one?"
"The only one," Jareth said, and he met her eye. She fidgeted under the seriousness of his gaze and finally broke the stare, looking away.
"I don't know if that's such a good thing," Sarah said, with a self-mocking laugh. "I've become one of those pathetic people who think their life peaked before it really began. At fifteen. I was so alive in the Labyrinth—in control, in charge. You threw curveballs and I hit each one out of the park."
"A baseball analogy," Jareth said, amused.
"You can thank my father for that. He loves baseball." Her voice snagged on the last word and she looked away, blinking the angry tears that rose in her eyes. She took a shaky breath and was surprised when she felt Jareth's soft leather against her hand. She wasn't sure she was ready to take the comfort he offered, so she shifted and pulled her hand away. Instead, she resorted to her usual defense.
A good defense meant a good offense.
"So, does this mean I'm to rescue you?" Sarah asked.
"You get to do exactly what you did before, Sarah," Jareth answered, shifting back in his seat. "You'll be in control—as much as possible on a journey."
"I don't know, Jareth…"
"Sarah, I would think you'd jump at this chance to be what you love to be," Jareth said, calmly, uncrossing his legs and leaning forward. "You'll be the heroine again."
"Right," Sarah said, sarcastically. "It'll just be like old times, except you'll be—what? The damsel in distress?"
Jareth smirked, but before he could say anything, Sarah realized something and frowned. "Wait, if you're not the villain this time…then who is?"
"Ah, that is the question, isn't it?" Jareth murmured.
Suddenly, the hospital rumbled as if hit by an earthquake. Sarah made a choking, surprised noise and grabbed her seat even as it vibrated violently, as if trying to throw her to the floor. She looked at Jareth with wild, frightened eyes.
"But—this is a dream! What's happening?"
"You're waking up, so I'll be brief." Jareth moved quickly, elegantly. One moment he was in his seat, the next moment he was kneeling in front of her, his hands gripping the chair to keep it still, and staring intensely into her eyes. The earthquake had no effect on him. He didn't seem to lose his footing.
"Sarah Williams?"
"Do you hear that?" Sarah asked, looking around. "Someone called my name."
"Sarah, look at me," Jareth said, urgently, and the tone of his voice made her look into his mismatched gaze. He was serious, grim, holding her steady when the world around her rumbled and roared.
"Come back to the Labyrinth, at least see it with your own eyes before you make any choices—"
"How?"
Jareth shook his head, as if waving aside the interruption. He tapped the pendant around her neck, causing her to shiver. She'd forgotten about the necklace. "This is the key. Say your right words and you'll be back."
"And then?"
"Then…you'll have to make a choice."
And suddenly, everything disappeared.
"Sarah? Sarah Williams?" Someone was shaking her gently and she opened her eyes to see a nurse standing over her. The nurse was a matronly woman, short and squat with a round body. She gave Sarah a kind smile and said, "Your father is ready, dear."
"Thanks." Sarah rubbed her forehead tiredly.
"You were asleep very deeply," the nurse said as Sarah stood and followed her back. "I had to shake you for a bit before you finally woke up."
"Oh…" Sarah gave a small smile. "I was having a very strange dream."
Author's Notes: I know, right? Two updates in two weeks. I'm really trying to keep writing semi-regularly, despite my busy schedule. So I'm trying to pump out a new chapter every week or other week. So, Jareth sheds some more light on what's going on while still remaining fairly mysterious. What do YOU think is happening, readers? What do you think awaits Sarah in the Labyrinth? The plot is thickening and next chapter, Sarah goes back...to go forward. :)
Please review! I love hearing from all of you, it is the encouragement that keeps me going. All feedback is appreciated (as long as it's constructive). Reviews/questions/suggestions, I try and answer it all. :)
A few shout-outs:
Cybernetic Mango: I aim to please. ;)
tu: I will try my best. I admit I have a lot of WIPs, but I do intend to finish them all.
LadyGrey69: I'm glad you enjoy my writing. It's always a wonderful thing to hear.
And thank you to all the wonderful compliments and reviews. I love hearing from all of you! :)
Disclaimer: As always, I own nothing of the Labyrinth characters (not even Jareth *sniffle*), however, I do own my own original characters. This fanfiction was created for non-profit enjoyment and amusement. Please do not alter, copy, or post it anywhere else without my permission beforehand. Thank you.