I'd appreciate it if somebody could point out any grammatical errors! Please and thank you!
"I'm sorry; I have to go," Sarah exclaimed as she ran downstairs.
"Sarah, wa…" Irene started as her step-daughter flew past her on her way to the door. "Where's Jared? Is he still asleep?"
"Jared's gone," Sarah whispered as she paused briefly by the front door. Then, she opened the door, ran outside, got into her car, and peeled away from her childhood home.
After she'd driven a couple of miles on the freeway, she pulled off, pulled into the first parking lot she saw, and completely broke down.
"God. Fucking. DAMMIT!" Jareth swore loudly as he paced around his throne room. He kicked a goblin that didn't move away from the Fae's way fast enough, and then kicked at a chicken just for good measure. "I was this close!" He held his index finger and thumb a breadth away from one another. "This fucking close! And then she just had to break whatever memory spell was over her and remember everything! At the most inopportune time ever!"
He heaved an annoyed sigh as he sunk down onto his throne and buried his head in his hands. "There's no way that she's ever going to make a wish now. I've completely fucked everything up this time."
Ashley knocked hesitantly on Sarah's door, and then knocked harder after she received no response. "Oh, hello, Ms. Pace," Mrs. Kelley said as she poked her head out from her own apartment. "I'm very glad that you came quickly."
"Yes. The message that you left me was… exceptionally worrying," Ashley said.
"I've never seen Sarah like this before. Wait there for a second, would you? I have a spare key that Sarah gave me." The elderly lady vanished back into her apartment for a moment, and Ashley tried knocking again on Sarah's door. Then, Mrs. Kelley returned with a key, and Ashley let herself in. "You can just keep the key for now, dear," she said when Ashley tried to return the key.
"Alright, thanks," Ashley said. She slipped it into her pocket as she stepped inside her friend's apartment. "Sarah? Are you home?" The apartment was dark, the blinds drawn tightly against the late-afternoon sun. Ashley quickly realized that Sarah was not in the living room/kitchen area, so she navigated around the furniture to Sarah's bedroom. "Sarah?" Ashley paused on the threshold into the other room.
"Go away Ashley," Sarah moaned from the bed.
"Come on, babe; tell me what happened."
"Jare…" Sarah trailed off, uncertain of how to even finish the simple name.
"Do you need me to cut his balls off and feed them to the cheating bastard?"
"He didn't cheat on me."
"Of course he didn't; the guy would have to be completely blind to cheat on you," Ashley said. She walked into the room and flopped face-first onto the end of Sarah's bed. Then, she wriggled up the bed until she came into contact with her friend. "Now then, are you going to tell me what the douche did to you or am I going to have to force feed you Ben and Jerry's until you squeal like a pig?"
"I… I honestly don't know," Sarah whispered.
"So, the two of you got into a fight over… nothing?"
"No! It's really complicated and I… I don't fucking remember, but I know that he's nothing but a lying, manipulative scum-bucket who… who…"
"Deserves to have his balls cut off and then fed to him?"
"No…" Sarah said with a slight giggle. She sniffled loudly.
"Well, why don't you start off with what you can tell me," Ashley said.
"His name isn't Jared Garfield, for starters."
"Ooh, ouch."
"A-and… And I've met him before."
"Okay. Does it have something to do with the name that he assumed?"
"Um, sort of. I guess. I don't really know; I'm not a mind reader, Ash!"
"Okay. Does the fact that you two met before have anything to do with this?"
"Yes, but again, I don't really know why." Sarah let out a low moan and clutched her head between her hands. "Can we stop talking about this? Or anything, really? I've had such a major migraine since I woke up this morning."
"Yes, of course. Do you need anything? Some water or asprin, maybe?" Ashley asked as she slid off Sarah's bed.
"I took some Tylenol shortly after I got home this morning, and then I shut all of the curtains and turned off the lights and tried to get some sleep, but it hasn't really helped."
"Have you eaten anything? You know how my mom gets those really bad headaches when she hasn't eaten for a couple of hours."
"No, but I'm not really hungry."
"You should eat something. I'll go to that cafe on the other side of town that you like and get you some of those-"
"I don't think that I could really stomach anything heavy right now. Maybe just some Ben and Jerry's."
"Okay! I'll be back in a little bit, then!" Ashley quickly left Sarah's apartment and softly shut the door behind her.
"How is she?" Mrs. Kelley asked.
"She's… I don't know. She's upset over something that Jared did, but I couldn't get much out of her," Ashley said softly.
"She seemed so happy yesterday; she and Jared were going to go visit her family," Mrs. Kelley said with a touch of sorrow in her voice.
"Well, I'm going to go make an emergency ice-cream run," Ashley said with a cocky smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Nothing mends a broken heart quite like my two main men: Ben and Jerry!"
Ashley was at the store for maybe about fifteen minutes, but she returned with four cartons of ice-cream. "Sarah? I'm back!" Ashley called out softly as she opened the door using the spare key Mrs. Kelley had given her earlier. Sarah was sitting on the sofa in the dark, and was holding up the crystal that Jareth had tossed at her before he'd vanished. "Hey, what's that?" Ashley asked as she put the bag down on the counter.
"I… I don't know," Sarah said hesitantly. "Jare… d… gave it to me before he left." She stumbled a little over if she should call him Jared or Jareth, but reverted back to his "human" name. Ashley grabbed a carton of ice-cream, put the rest into Sarah's freezer, grabbed two spoons from the dish drainer, and hopped onto the couch next to her friend.
"Can I see?" Ashley said as best as she could with a spoon in her mouth. Sarah exchanged the crystal for the carton of ice-cream, which she opened with ease while Ashley turned the crystal this way and that. "What is it?"
"I don't know. It doesn't appear to be anything," Sarah said as she dug into the frosty treat.
"If it wasn't a sphere, I'd say that it's some sort of paperweight," Ashley said as she helped herself to some of the frozen dessert as well. "And it looks like it would be super fragile, but at the same time, it feels super sturdy."
"It is," Sarah agreed. "I've already dropped it several times since he gave it to me, and once in the bathroom. I think that it did more damage to the linoleum than the floor did to it!" Ashley turned it every which way as she absently licked off her spoon. "I just wish that Jared had explained what this was before he'd left."
In a heartbeat, the crystal completely fogged over before an image filled the sphere. It was of Jareth, as he had been ten years ago when Sarah had last seen him. He was alone, and sitting on a stone windowsill. He had a crystal like the one that Ashley held now in his hands and was using it to spy on Sarah as she made her way through the Labyrinth.
"Wow, Sarah! I think you said the-" Ashley started, but broke off when she realized that Sarah was not paying attention to the image inside the crystal. "Sarah?" Sarah's head slumped forward listlessly. Ashley hesitantly reached a hand out to touch her friend's shoulder, but at the briefest touch, Sarah started to convulse erratically. "Oh my god! Sarah!"
"Do not touch her," a cool voice spoke from behind Ashley. She looked startled over her shoulder at Jared; he was wearing exceptionally tight pants, a billowy shirt, and boots.
Ashley briefly thought for a moment that he looked like he'd just been about to preform Shakespeare, but quickly replaced the thought with, "Where in the world did you come from?"
"That's not important right now," Jared said coolly as he marched past Ashley and quickly knelt down by Sarah's side. She was still having her weird seizure. "There's something very wrong with Sarah, and I don't plan to just sit by and do nothing while she mentally deteriorates into a babbling lunatic." He pressed his hand to Sarah's forehead; Sarah slid forward and would have fallen onto her coffee table had Jared not caught her.
"S-stop! What are you doing?!" Ashley exclaimed as Jared quickly picked Sarah up and stood.
"I'm taking her to a place where she can get help," Jared said simply.
"She's really fucking pissed at you, you know."
"I'm angry at myself as well."
And then Jared vanished; Ashley was left with some ice-cream and only about a million questions.
"How is she?" Jareth asked as his best healer stepped out from his personal bed chambers.
"I've managed to stabilize her for the time being, but I don't know what returning here here will do, or what might set her off again," the healer said. "Although I must warn you that I'm not a mental doctor; my spells mainly deal with the physical healing, not the mental. I was able to stabilize her by fortifying the block in her mind, but I don't know how long that it's going to last. If you ask me, just being back here might trigger another seizure."
"I've already asked my mother to come and look at Sarah," Jareth said quickly. "She should be here soon."
"Good, I'm glad," the healer said. The corners of his mouth twitched, but he stopped himself from smiling, as if remembering that this was a very serious situation.
"Although I'm not quite sure what she'll be able to do. I've already had several conversations with her about this, and she's just as much at a loss as I am."
"Sarah is resting now, and it would probably be in her best interest if she continued to do so," the healer said. He scowled even more as he looked at the Goblin King. "No strenuous activities, and keep her meals light."
"Yes, of course," Jareth agreed.
"You know where I am if you need me for anything else, sire," the healer said. He gave a slight bow to Jareth before he vanished.
Sarah didn't want to wake up. She was warm and in the most comfortable bed that she'd ever been in her entire life. Except…
Except for the fact that Sarah had no memory of how she had gotten into bed, or even where she was. The last thing that she remembered was talking with Ashley about the thing that Jared/Jareth had given her.
She opened her eyes slowly, as if even her eyelids were protesting Sarah being awake, and then looked around her with confusion. She was lying in an overly large, four-poster bed with heavy, red velvet drapes and a matching bed spread. The room was gigantic, and Sarah couldn't even see most of it from her prone position in bed, but over to her right, there was a roaring fire in a massive, overly-ornate fireplace, and two red, wing-backed chairs were sitting in front of it.
"Hello, Sarah," a gentle voice said, which interrupted Sarah's observation of the room she was in. A middle-aged, blonde woman walked over to the bedside, and sat down on a chair that appeared out of nowhere.
"Who are you?"
"My name is Amael, but you might best know me as-"
"Amanda," Sarah whispered.
Amael offered Sarah a small smile. "Yes, that's right. I'm Jareth's mother."
Sarah wanted to ask her if she'd been in on Jareth's ruse, but bit her lip to stop herself. "Where am I?"
"Before you say anything, I must please ask you to hear me out," Amael started gently.
"Where am I?" Sarah asked with a bit of a bite to her words.
"You're in Jareth's kingdom," Amael said gently. "Please, hear me out. My son has discovered that somebody has placed a very serious mental block on your memories of him and your time here."
"My time… When I was here before?" Sarah asked with confusion.
"You were here about ten years ago. If I remember what my son said correctly, you came here with your younger brother?"
"T-toby?" Sarah said slowly. "I-I didn't even remember Jared… Jareth… until this morning. I just thought that I'd seen him somewhere before, like on the subway or something. But then I… I just woke up and I remembered that he was the Goblin King, and that I completely hated him with every fiber of my being. And I thought, even though I didn't know why, that he'd only come to me because he… he wanted to trick me again." Sarah's fingers scrunched up the soft velvet bedspread before they aimlessly smoothed it out again.
"Jareth thinks that some part of the mental block chipped away after your brother told you about why he disliked the man that you brought home," Amael said.
"I thought that Toby was being silly," Sarah said. "I used to tell him all sorts of silly stories when I still lived at home. But then I woke up, and there was Jareth…" She looked up at Amael, who her son took after in the looks department. "What is this mental block? Why can't Jareth just snap his fingers and make me remember?"
"Don't you think that if he could have, he would have done so already?" Amael said with a sigh. "Sarah, I have been alive for over 5 thousand years, and I've spent a great portion of that time studying anything that I could about magic. So believe me when I say that I've never seen anything quite like this before."
"Why did Jareth bring me here?"
"You had a massive seizure, honey," Amael told her softly. The older woman grabbed Sarah's hand and rubbed her thumb over Sarah's knuckles. "He thought that it would be for the best to bring you here to try and figure out what is wrong with you. After all, magic was the cause of your problems, so magic will probably be the solution to them as well." Sarah frowned and stared blankly at an overly large and ornate tapestry that hung on the wall on the other side of the room. The only sound in the room was the occasional pop and hiss from the fire; Amael continued to run her thumb over Sarah's knuckles.
"Where is he? Jareth, I mean."
"I am not certain, but I can find him if you-"
"No," Sarah said sternly. "Tell him that he's an ass and that I still hate him."
"I'll carry your message, and warn him not to bother you while you're resting," Amael said with a slight smile. "We aren't quite certain what triggered your seizure earlier, so Jareth's healer warned against strenuous activities. And right now, I think that just seeing Jareth would stress you out too much and cause you to have another seizure." Amael released Sarah's hand and stood; her chair vanished in the instant that she started to move her legs. "Are you hungry? Thirsty?"
"I guess that I could eat something; I don't think that I've eaten all day, but I'm not overly hungry," Sarah said as she pushed herself up onto her elbows.
"Please, stay in bed and rest," Amael told her gently but firmly. "I will bring you something." She vanished, and Sarah took the opportunity to finish looking around the room. All of the windows were covered with the same, heavy, red velvet fabric that was also on the bed— it was nearly impossible to tell the time of day from them. In a corner over to Sarah's left, there was the same heavy writing desk that had been in Jared's apartment. His typewriter was even sitting on it, and it was covered with papers, just like the last time Sarah had seen it.
Sarah scowled as she pieced this information together. If Jared's writing desk was here, than there were some pretty heavy implications that this was his personal bedchamber. It was totally just like the creep to put her in his bed, especially when she was in an overly vulnerable state as she was in now.
Even though Sarah's head still hurt, it was nothing at all like what it had been earlier. Sarah suspected that this was the "hungry headache" that Ashley had been talking about. As if just mentioning food had unleashed some hidden trigger inside of Sarah, she found that she was more hungry than she'd first thought.
Amael came back a moment later with a tray; on it was a bowl of soup, some toast, a cup of water, and a cup of orange juice. "Is that it?" Sarah asked with a frown as she sat up in bed.
"Healer's orders," Amael said as she sat the tray down over Sarah's lap. "But if you finish this and you're still hungry, there's plenty more where this came from." The chair from before appeared once more and the older woman sat down. Sarah began to eat.
"Did Jareth tell you what he was doing? I mean, with me."
"Some of it, yes," Amael said with a small smile. "After all, why do you think that he wanted for the two of us to talk?"
"I don't know anymore," Sarah said absently.
"When he first asked me to talk with you, it was only in the way that a son would ask his mother about a girl that he likes," Amael said after a brief pause. Sarah looked up to Amael.
"How do you know? Did he tell you?"
"Sweetie, I'm over 5 thousand years old, and Jareth is the youngest of 12," Amael said dryly. "I know a thing or two about romances and when a boy likes a girl."
"Oh. …Right."
"But after Jareth discovered the block on your memories, he wanted for me to look into things. It was a bit difficult to do magic through the… um… communication device, but I was able to get a sense of what he meant."
"But now you know more, right? You can fix me?"
"Much like my son, if I knew how to fix you, honey, I would have."
"Is it really that serious?"
"Yes." Amael heaved a deep sigh. "But now that I've got more information to go off of, it should narrow down the search just a little bit more." She paused for a moment. "Although, I think that Jareth is more concerned now with figuring out who did this, and why."
"Well…" Sarah started, and then paused. Amael gave her an expectant look until the younger woman continued. "If Jareth can figure out who did it, then can't he just demand that they remove the spell from me?"
"I think that that's probably what Jareth is thinking as well," Amael said with a small smile. "Although, if somebody was strong enough to put this kind of a spell on you in the first place, I don't think that they're going to be taken down so easily as my son seems to think."
"I don't know anything about what sort of magic that you use here, but you're probably right."
"Are you finished? Do you want anything more?"
"Um, no, I'm alright," Sarah said. "I'm actually pretty tired right now, so I'd like to get some rest."
"Yes, of course, honey," Amael said as she grabbed the tray— Sarah had finished everything. "If you need anything, I'll post a goblin outside the door. Just give a shout, and then they'll come and get me."
Amael vanished, and Sarah restlessly kicked back the blankets on the bed. She wasn't as tired as she'd implied to Amael, but she had wanted to be alone to think through all of what she had just been told.
Sarah still couldn't remember what Jareth had done to her in the past, only just that she didn't trust him. She didn't even know where Jareth's "kingdom" was, or why a goblin would be stationed outside of the door.
On some level, Sarah wished that she hadn't remembered who Jared really was, because she still found him completely irresistible. Sarah blushed and let out a low moan as she remembered exactly how he'd made her feel the night before she'd remembered who he was. She sunk down low in the bed and pulled the blankets over her mouth and nose in complete mortification— she only hoped that Jareth wasn't listening in on her, because then he'd probably start to get cocky.
But, even though Sarah still had no real reason beyond her hate and general distrust of Jareth, she knew that it would likely only be a matter of time until she got her memories back. And something inside of her warned her that Jareth would likely not survive that when the time came.
Thank you for reading! Reviews loved!