Chapter Ten: Misplaced Trust.
Imm warily regarded Leo Knight, suddenly unsure that he and his brother had chosen such a wonderful subject. It had started out wonderfully enough—the man's behavior was fairly consistent and their interference would only magnify it a little—but last night…
It had become very clear last night, as Leo whispered into the darkness, to voices that no one else could hear, that the man was several cards short of a full deck.
"Do you think it's still safe?" Imm asked his brother.
Laim considered their squirrelly little human for a minute. "I don't know, but the potential for disaster is certainly there. Did we create a monster?"
"The psychosis was already there," Imm shook his head, "but I'm sure our meddling agitated his obsessive nature." He sighed in frustration. "We were doing so well, brother-mine, but I think this plays too close to the edge of danger for us to continue."
"Agreed," Laim replied slowly, "but I think the damage is already done."
They both spared a nervous glance at the jittery human.
"The amulet-Jareth would be in little danger; it's not as though magic can be harmed," Laim continued.
"But Sarah can," Imm finished for him.
The Twins grimaced.
"We finally have ourselves a sister," Laim said with a measure of self-disgust, "and our first major order of business as older brothers is to sic a psychopathic stalker on her."
A lump rose in Sarah's throat, tears trying to flood her eyes. She was in the kitchen, snuffling quietly over her habitual breakfast of coffee and toast. In her heart she had been hoping that routine would take her mind off her dreams as well as what had greeted her upon awakening, but her mechanical movements had only given her more time to think.
She had awakened on her side, swathed in warm blankets and wrapped in an embrace that mirrored what she had only just felt in her dream. The princely Jareth's strong arms banded her waist, one hand placed soothingly to her back, while her face rested against his chest. It was both comforting to know that they hurt together and heartbreaking to remember why they hurt. A chasm stretched between her and the Goblin King, a gaping hole that they had both created but neither knew how to fill. She had driven the man insane, but he had betrayed her; they both knew they couldn't trust the other, yet they were drawn together like magnets. They were an odd couple, perhaps even a bad couple, but a couple all the same; Fate seemed to have marked them for each other, and there was little they could do to change that.
Sarah sniffled and wiped at a few escaping tears as she stared blankly at her breakfast. She could no longer ignore a very simple fact that had been staring at her quite plainly for the past day: the Jareth in her apartment wasn't the Jareth she wanted. His company was genial, when he wasn't going out of his way to frustrate her, and she certainly found him attractive; he even had many of the same mannerisms, but he wasn't the otherworldly king that she had glimpsed those five years ago. When she had woken up he hadn't mentioned anything about the dream, hadn't seemed effected by it at all and she'd come to the conclusion that he simply wasn't enough of Jareth to have shared in it. The Twins had made him look and act like a young Jareth, but at heart he was nothing more than pure magic, a part of the Goblin King but not truly the King himself; the man she really wanted was Underground.
It was a sobering thought. She could play and love with the young prince, but he was really nothing more than a very cunning, self-aware illusion; he had thoughts and feelings, but he was only a small fraction of the overall man, given a form he hadn't been meant to take.
Something big was about to happen today, Sarah thought as she idly shredded her toast. The air felt charged with an anxious tension and an uneasy hush that was waiting for the perfect moment to break into action. It wasn't just her riotous thoughts, or even the unease and the melancholy that her dreams had brought on; something had the hair at the back of her neck standing on end. The feeling made her nervous, like those eerily quiet moments before a hellish storm. Clouds were looming in her future, but she had no idea where they would come from.
Leshia had finally finished lambasting him over his fondness for brandy and had wandered off to do whatever it was she did when she thought her husband wasn't looking. Oran was grateful for the reprieve, but only marginally.
He often liked to think that he'd been a wise and benevolent king, but the truth was that every monarch made mistakes and bad decisions over the course of their reign. Oran had been no more immune to controversy than any other king. Once upon a time, he hadn't been all that different from Jareth; he had learned manipulation at his father's knee, and so Jareth had learned it at his. Oran, too, had been prone to selfish and hedonistic actions, prone to leading himself down paths that he regretted every moment thereafter.
There were two things he regretted above all others, and both were currently sitting before him. Jareth rested, pale and immobile, in a sea of blankets, and Oran regretted that he hadn't taught his son to be more cautious, to have more respect for the sensibilities and unspoken rights of others. His own father had never bothered to teach him those lessons—a king was answerable to no one—but Oran had learned them over time. Perhaps that was the problem; by the time he had understood those principles himself, he had already begun to enter his twilight years. Jareth was only just entering the prime of his life but, if he lived through this ordeal, his children would undoubtedly get some important lectures on the subject.
An hourglass also sat before him. It was small and unobtrusive, made of ebony wood, clear glass, and bright silver sand. It looked absolutely unextraordinary in all ways but one: the sand was frozen in place, despite the fact that a large portion of it remained in the top-most bulb. For centuries Oran had avoided this hourglass, had cursed himself for creating it. It had been dark back in those days, however, and in a moment of torturous uncertainty he had given in to the impulse. Jareth had been but a babe, a bright ray of hope for him and Leshia, but Oran had already lost two before him; he'd been crazed with grief and cynicism, wanting to hope and yet not knowing if his heart could stand to lose any more. The hourglass had sprung to his fingertips, a devilish creation that let him see what sort of time his boy's future held. At first it had been an unparalleled relief but, as the centuries went past and he began to realize that the sand slowed down a bit with every year, it had become more of a worry than a blessing. He'd been a damned fool for making the hourglass, and a doubly damned fool for not helping his son when he'd been given all the warnings. The problem was that he hadn't known what the danger was going to be. What could slow the march of Jareth's life without killing him? That question had tortured him for ages.
Now he knew.
It was with great trepidation and embarrassment that Sarah slunk into the library that day. She had tried to sneak out of the apartment on her own, hopes high for success since Jareth had been strangely insightful and given her space to think, but the moment she had approached the door he had appeared at her side. A black, collared shirt graced his form, the sleeves rolled up and the tails untucked; human clothes for a human world. She hadn't bothered to argue with him, he'd had a glint in his eye that suggested trying would be nothing short of futile, but she knew what the picture they painted looked like to her co-workers. Yesterday morning she had been a frigid bookworm; by the afternoon she had become a good girl with a bad secret. Now she was returning to work, her 'boyfriend' in tow. If she had had any hopes of downplaying the gossip that had begun the day before, Jareth had destroyed any chance of that simply by accompanying her.
It was kind of sad that the man only had to show up in her general vicinity to make her co-workers curious. He would do more than that though, because he had already proven that he loved to cause trouble; she had no doubt that he would use the shield of 'boyfriend' to get away with as much mischief as possible.
"Why couldn't you just stay home?" she hissed quietly, ducking into the stacks to get away from speculative stares.
"I already told you," Jareth replied calmly, following her at an easy pace, "you can't survive being out of my presence for too long. The magic within you demands sustenance; without it, the magic will burn up the energy in your body until there's nothing left."
She didn't want to believe him, he wasn't exactly a trustworthy person, but something in his words rang true. She had heard the real Jareth say something like that before, hadn't she?
"Besides," he continued, tone turning dark, "I don't like the idea of you alone where that Leo creep could show up."
Sarah snorted, laughing for the first time that day. "Jealous, Jareth?" she asked sweetly.
He gave her a chillingly blank stare. Something nasty was lurking behind those bright blue eyes, but he was hiding it from her.
"I'll grant that Leo can be kind of intense," she finally said, "but he's not dangerous. Like I said, he's my friend; I trust him."
Jareth's eyes remained strangely emotionless, but he bowed his head ever so slightly in acknowledgment. He never stopped following her though.
Oran had consigned himself to spend the rest of the morning next to Jareth, lost in the shadows of the past, but fate had finally smiled upon him. He'd heard the Twins arguing together in the corridor and had managed to pull his dear sons into the room with him. They wouldn't be going back Above unless he dropped dead on the spot.
"You don't understand," Imm continued to argue, frustration clearly coloring his voice.
"I understand well enough," Oran cut him off. "You're meddling in things that are none of your business."
"Family," Laim said quietly, "is always our business. You taught us that."
Oran rubbed a hand over his eyes. "These are tricky days, my boys," he stated on a sigh. "I understand how painful it is to do nothing, but we cannot violate Jareth's contract without severe consequences."
"We aren't violating anything," Imm replied with a shrug.
"We checked," Laim added. "But we've met with an unexpected complication that demands immediate action. If you don't let us go back now, father, there will be trouble."
Oran shook his head. "I stand firm. If you really wanted to fix this problem, you shouldn't have come back Underground. Now that you're here, I suggest we spend a riveting morning glowering at each other."
Sarah's fingers flew over the keyboard, typing as rapidly as she could. She was sitting at a computer behind one of the smaller help desks, Jareth not quite in sight but she could hear the quiet murmur of the conversation that he was entrenched in with one of her fellow librarians; she was torn between being thankful his focus was elsewhere and being worried about what he might be saying. Still, the moment to herself was appreciated.
It didn't last long, though.
A shadow fell over her keyboard, startling Sarah out of her work. Glancing up, she had to stifle a gasp. Leo was regarding her quietly, which was not unusual, but he looked an absolute mess; his hair was disheveled, his clothes were wrinkled, and his face was pale and a bit pinched. She couldn't help but think that he looked like he was coming down with a cold or something.
"Are you feeling all right, Leo?" she asked with a little frown. "You look a bit… under the weather."
He swayed on the spot a little, his eyes unfocused, before he shook his head. "Honestly, I don't feel so great," he replied, a strange note in his voice. "I had a bad night."
"You should have stayed home then," she chastised. Sometimes it seemed as though he had all the sense of a child.
"I didn't want to miss out on our daily conversations," he swayed some more, "but now I'm thinking it wasn't such a great idea."
She watched him as he rocked from side to side, looking like a man fight a fierce wind. In the back of her mind she admitted that Leo was one of those clingy friends that she liked but sometimes didn't want to be around; still, he looked ill and that concerned her. "You need to go home," she said, standing up from her desk. "Come on, let me help you to your car. Do you think you'll be okay to drive, or should we call you a cab?" she asked, linking her arm through his as she steered him toward the exit.
His eyes were unfocused again, but he managed to mumble out, "I can drive," so she let the issue drop.
Something strange happened as they weaved their way further and further from the stacks. Her skin seemed to prickle and the hair at the back of her neck stood on end, as though the moment she could no longer hear the low rumble of Jareth's voice her entire body went on alert. Leo was acting strange, not at all like the thoughtful companion that he usually was, and something about that suddenly seemed sinister. She tried to tell herself that nothing was wrong, that she was just feeling edgy because it had been a strange morning, but the feeling persisted. The longer she held onto Leo, the more it felt as though he was the one holding onto her, that there was a bit of steeliness to his grip belying his supposed illness.
Or he was so dizzy that he needed her help to stay upright.
Sarah kept telling herself that, repeating it like a mantra, right up to the point that Leo pushed her up against the side of his car. He still looked pale and unfocused, but now he was angry too, his hands pinned roughly around her forearms.
"How could you choose that blond playboy over me, Sarah?" Leo asked shrilly. "What can he give you that I can't?"
"What?" she asked in blank horror, flinching when his fingers tightened cruelly around her arms.
"I though we were friends, Sarah," he continued as though she hadn't spoken, "I thought we really understood each other."
"So did I," she murmured, astonished. He had obviously lost his ever-loving mind. She had thought that Jareth had just been acting jealous, but maybe he had disliked Leo for a more immediate reason: the man was insane. How could she have missed that? Was she really that bad a judge of character?
"Well, obviously we don't," Leo snapped, leaning in until he was whispering into her ear. "Who is he, Sarah?" he asked with gentle hatred. When she didn't answer he let go of one arm and fumbled for something in his coat pocket.
Sarah hadn't struggled in that whole time because some part of her had kind of been hoping that the whole ordeal had been a horribly misguided joke, but the knife she saw flashing in his hand changed that. She jerked, using her free hand to scratch at his throat while she kicked out at his shins. But Leo didn't flinch, and his eyes looked so hazy that she had to wonder if he even felt the pain at all.
Why wasn't anyone coming to help her? It wasn't like they were in a dark alley or somewhere extremely out of the way; the library parking lot sat along the side of a busy road in the middle of town.
She started to breathe in deep to let out the mother of all screams, but his hand clapped over her mouth before she could muster enough air. His face loomed in close to hers, the knife waving in front of her eyes threateningly, and he whispered, "What makes that blond bastard better than me?"
"Well, for one, I've never pulled a knife on the lady," Jareth's voice floated out on the wind.
Sarah had a brief moment in which to be relieved at her rescue; then the world went black. At first she thought she'd been knocked out, or possibly even stabbed, but when vivid lightning ripped open the sky she understood that the world really had gone dark. The wind began to pick up as another bolt of lightning sizzled across the heavens, slapping the world with light before plunging it back into the preternatural darkness. Fallen leaves skittered past her feet, chittering along the ground like goblins. That thought froze the air in her lungs, made her remember; she had seen a storm like this before. Not five years ago, but ten.
Jareth rose up out of the darkness like a vengeful god. From head to toe he was drenched in black: black boots, black pants, black armored breastplate, black horned shoulder-guards, black gloves, black cloak. It gave off the disturbing impression that, between the frequent flashes of lightning, only his pale head existed, the rest of him nothing more than an ominous shadow. He looked older as well; no longer her princely houseguest, but not yet the Goblin King she knew, either. His anger vibrated in the air around them, and Sarah was suddenly struck with the thought that this was not Jareth who had led her through the Labyrinth, but the Jareth who had created the Labyrinth.
Anger, so much anger.
In front of her, Leo shivered violently, bleating out nonsense like a scared child, but he still kept his heavy hold on her arm, his grip not hindered in the slightest by the sudden, drenching rain.
The lightning stopped, the world held permanently in its blindness, but the thunder continued, great booming noises that came from nowhere. Above the monstrous roaring, though, she could still hear the sure footfalls of booted feet, still felt Leo's body wrenched away from her own, still heard the distinctive hollow-clanking of a metal blade hitting pavement.
As if the whole world had been waiting for that single sound, the thunder receded and the light came back, but the wind still whipped around angrily and the rain continued to fall. Jareth stood before her; his face was emotionless, but his eyes burned with a cold rage. He was one provocation away from becoming truly bestial, and that thought scared her.
Leo was nowhere to be seen, but his knife lay—cracked in half—at her feet. "What did you do with him?" she asked quietly.
"Do you really want to know?" Jareth asked, merciless eyes watching her carefully.
She didn't answer because, truthfully, she wasn't sure if she wanted to know. They stood silent in the pouring rain, regarding each other carefully.
"Enough of this," he snarled, frustration clearly evident in his voice.
And just like that they were out of the rain and back in the semi-cozy confines of her apartment.
Sarah sank into a boneless heap on her sofa, her attention focused on the pacing Jareth. His clothes had seemed intimidating before—and to an extent they still did, what with his midnight cloak flaring dramatically behind him—but now they seemed ridiculously out of place in her mundane home.
"What if I hadn't been there?" he finally growled, turning to face her.
"He wouldn't have flipped out in the first place," she answered snidely, irritated that her fear of his intense reactions to danger was still lingering.
"I'm being serious," he snapped.
She bared her teeth in a growl of her own. "So am I."
"It didn't have to me to set him off, but your damn lucky it was because he looked about ready to," he cut himself off, clenching his jaw over whichever colorful way had been about to say 'stab you'.
Sarah stood up, forcing herself closer to him, close enough to lay a hand against his pale cheek. "What did you do with him, Jareth?" she asked again, curiosity overriding common sense.
Jareth's eyes flashed and a deep-chested growl rumbled through him. "You trusted him," he accused, "and he betrayed that."
"It's nothing you haven't done before," she replied sadly. "Maybe I'm just an awful judge of character.
He jerked away from her, hurt and acknowledgment glittering in his eyes. "I've never threatened you with a weapon before."
"No," she agreed, "just with the well-being of those I love."
Something in him snapped at the world 'love' and came screaming violently to the surface. The cold rage and determination blazed in his narrowed eyes once more, and he slowly pulled further away from her, stopping only once he reached her low coffee table. The hourglass sat serenely on the table, its black sand frozen in time. Gently, he picked it up and studied it. "Seven hours and thirty-eight minutes left," he said at length, continuing to study the trinket. "Oran froze it in place, but I wonder if he ever fully understood the spells that I wove around this little treasure."
Time spun out in slow motion as Sarah watched Jareth open his hand and let the hourglass tumble from his grasp. She watched it plummet gracefully, end over end, until it hit the solid flooring. The wooden frame splintered, the glass of the bottom bulb exploded outward in a spray of tiny shards, and the broken timepiece bled black sand at Jareth's feet.
"Oops," he said in a voice that was a potent mixture of anger, sarcasm, and spite.
And, for the second time that day, her world went black, only this time she really had fainted.
A/N: References from Dramatic Orchestrations- the silver sand hourglass is from the beginning of chapter forty-one. Jareth's violent years (the years in which he created and perfected the Labyrinth) spanned from the end of chapter three to the beginning of chapter nine.
Sorry for the massive delay on this chapter, guys! It went a little something like this: The Never Series, writers' block, epic amounts of laundry and grocery shopping, two papers, two tests, a third paper, midterms, and a very strange waffling cold that won't go away.
So I guess I owe everyone an apology about my note from last chapter. Please understand: I was not chastising! I was just very concerned that the noticeable drop in reviews was due to something that I had done, or hadn't done. Believe me, I understand that life is hectic and things have a way of springing up at the last moment (as evidenced above). I wasn't asking for an explanation of absence, merely if there was something in the writing that wasn't appealing. I'm very sorry if I offended anyone (and I know I did, seeing as how defensive some reviewers got); all the same, some of you took that opportunity to lash out at me and my work for a question that I posed in genuine curiosity. I deeply regret that I may have hurt some feelings, but let's not turn this into a war of retaliation.
Please Review!
Disclaimer: I own a myriad of side-characters, but nothing recognizable as having come from Labyrinth. I give nods to Terry Pratchett's Diskworld Series, because my hourglasses are starting to rip-off his lifetimers (though it's not exactly an original idea… still).