Chapter Thirteen: Puzzles.
"To what, exactly are you referring?" Jareth asked, rubbing his arm. "Losing control, omitting information, protecting you from a crazed stalker, messing with your little brother's head, or the arguing?" He stretched cautiously, then put his hands under his head. "It was the arguing, wasn't it?"
Sarah punched him again, slightly worried when he just laughed in response. "Are you okay?" she asked quietly.
His blue eyes focused on her, their depths reflecting something that she had only seen once before: madness. And a certain, troubling, sense of disconnectedness. "Okay?" he smiled. "No, probably not, but infinitely better than I have been." One of his hands caught her by the shoulder and pulled her close, but he didn't say anything, just studied her face as though he had forgotten what she looked like.
As the silence, punctuated here and there by a not-so-quiet whisper from his family in the other room, stretched into uncomfortable lengths, she asked, "What happened to the Prince?"
He smiled and lowered his hand to tap against the amulet that rested over her shirt. "When you were attacked I was able to use the fierceness of his emotions to establish a connection between the two bodies, but his form was only a cunning illusion created by the Twins and the energy that maintained it was burnt up. Part of him returned back to the amulet, the part that always lived within it, and the rest of him returned to me." Jareth tapped his forehead. "He's here now… somewhere."
His answer spoke volumes; so much of him was within easy reach, and yet somehow lost. The power that had been housed within the amulet had gone back to where it was supposed to be, and yet Jareth didn't seem much better for it. "What happened?" she asked, her mind going back through the years. "Tell me what went wrong so that I'll know how we can fix it."
"Fractured, shattered, call it what you will, but know that there were too many pieces and not enough of anything to hold them together." His smile turned sharp and he began to stroke her cheek. "I've been heading to this end for centuries, you were just the luckless woman that pushed me over the edge." Jareth's strokes ran a bit higher, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "Tell me, Sarah, are you any good at puzzles?"
She shivered, becoming uncomfortable; his touches weren't suggestive, but they lacked any of the warmth and familiarity that had once been present. It was as though he were simply touching her for the sake of sensation. "I solved your Labyrinth, didn't I?" she replied, pulling away from him.
His eyes turned suddenly cloudy. "Labyrinth?" he repeated, tasting the word as if he had never heard it before. Jareth's gaze turned inward. "It was a hard decision, but it had to made. They wanted to destroy us, to take our lands, all under the pretext of looking for some lost boy. I needed a defense, a way to wage war that wouldn't allow for many casualties on our side. A Labyrinth was perfect. And why not, after all it's easier to spring a trap when no one knows what's around the next corner. It was a sweet, two-fold danger, both mental and physical."
A hand landed on Sarah's shoulder from behind. "Has he been like this the whole time?" she asked quietly over Jareth's continued ramblings. "Lucid one moment then wandering through memories the next?"
"This is the first he's woken in nearly a year," Leshia answered gently, sorrow plain in voice. "He's disconnected, Sarah, from reality and himself, and none of us know how to help him."
"He asked me if I was any good at puzzles," Sarah said. "He didn't look completely sane at the time, but maybe it was a hint."
"But the real question is not how do we put him back together," Leshia answered, sitting down next to Sarah, "it's how do we keep him together."
The Labyrinth, and ultimately the Underground as well, had been an exercise in Jareth's power and sheer force of will. By all rights, he shouldn't have been able to do it; the strength that he had been forced to wield for their creation had proven beyond anyone's doubt that the young King had more magic at his fingertips than anyone ever had throughout their long history. More magic than safe, wise, or sane. And he had suffered for it. People had become afraid of him, afraid of what he could do; for a time he had seen that mistrust and unease in even his father's eyes. That had been the damning blow, the one thing that had truly made him close away his heart from the world. He had lived for duty after that, for entertainment as well, but never for love. But people had noticed that too, and had accused him on more than one occasion of being heartless.
Jareth had spent the past five years soul-searching, looking for answers as he wandered through memories. He had only tried to do what was best for his kingdom, but his best had always terrified them. Sarah had cured his resulting heartlessness, but he had messed that up as well. In all the years he had spent trapped within himself he hadn't found any answers. He didn't know how to be himself and not scare anyone; he was who he was, and little could change that.
But, for the first time in centuries, he wanted to try; he was too brutal, too amoral, too self-contained. And maybe nothing could be changed, but he wouldn't know unless he tried.
He could feel his thoughts closer to the surface than they had been in five long years, closer to Sarah. Maybe she was ready to try again, too; maybe this time they could work together to a positive end. The future was uncertain but, for once, Jareth found himself craving it more than anything else.
Leshia had hugged her before leaving to have a word with Oran. The move had surprised Sarah more than she wanted to admit; her family had never been overly affectionate and she had spent the past couple of years actively avoiding contact with people. It hadn't been the brief embrace of a polite acquaintance, or even the gentle reassurance of an old friend; it had been the hug of a mother glad to see one of her children back. She'd never been on the receiving end of many hugs like that seeing as she'd never had a stable maternal figure in her life. And Leshia seemed to know it, too, as though she sensed the lonely little girl within and decided to take her as Leshia's own. There was something about the other woman that screamed devoted mother in a way that Karen and Linda never had.
For the first time in twenty-four years Sarah thought she might cry because someone had touched her. Of course, she was already emotionally overwrought from the whole Leo fiasco and having faced Jareth, as well. Maybe she had just reached her emotional limit and was being fanciful… or maybe she had finally found a family that was in tune with who she was and what she wanted out of life.
Imm stared at her from across Jareth's bed. "Are you crying?" he asked suspiciously, as Laim shifted uneasily.
"No," Sarah sniffled stubbornly.
"Things will get better," Laim soothed, then added under his breath, "after all, I doubt they could get any worse."
Imm elbowed him. "You're here now, that's all that matters."
She nodded, then shook her head. "Maybe he seems better to you already, but what good will me being here do if I don't know how to fix him?"
"Perhaps we're all looking at this the wrong way," Laim mused, "we keep thinking that there's something we need to discover, some answer that we haven't stumbled across yet, but Jareth doesn't work that way. He's always laid everything you need out in plain sight."
"We must already have the answer," Imm ran a hand through his buttery locks, "we just haven't recognized it yet."
Sarah sighed. "Even when his sanity depends on it, Jareth has to do things the hard way."
"Would you love him even half as much if he weren't so maddening?" Laim smiled knowingly.
Sarah paused, mulling over the word, then shook her head and smiled. Ten years of denial and mistrust had gotten her nowhere; maybe it was time to be honest with herself. Jareth had touched something inside her in ways that she knew no one else ever could or would. "Perhaps not," she finally answered, the smile still playing around her lips, "but he would be infinitely easier to live with."
"I resent that," Jareth sing-songed quietly.
As one, Sarah and the Twins turned to look at him. His eyes had cleared and they all suddenly realized that he had stopped babbling ages ago.
"Are you always going to do that? Flash in and out of awareness with no warning?" Imm asked with narrowed eyes. "Because it's going to be a bugger on private conversations if you are."
"Be nice to your older brother," Jareth warned, "or he might have to hang both of you upside-down from one of the chandeliers."
"Notice how he never answered the question," Laim said to Sarah.
"Chandeliers," Jareth threatened again, a smile tugging at his lips.
"You know, that stopped being an effective tool of coercion after you taught us the subtleties of knot tying," Imm replied.
"But you know," Laim mused, "not many people can say that they've been strung up by a king and lived to tell the tale. Might be worth it, just for the prestige."
Jareth ignored them, turning his attention to Sarah. "You've never just played, have you?" he asked quietly.
She felt lost, like she was out in the cold, looking through a window at a bright world that she wasn't a part of. "I never had anyone to play with," she answered with all the envy of someone who had mostly grown up an only child.
"You do now," the three brothers replied firmly.
"We should tell her family," Oran sighed, sitting down heavily on a sofa.
Leshia settled at his side, laying her head against his shoulder. "We should bring them here," she amended.
He shook his head, absently running a hand through her hair. "It did us no good last time."
"Things are different now," she replied, catching his hand and linking their fingers together, "we've all come into this with our eyes open. There are no surprises this time."
"Then what difference does it make?" he asked. "We've already put them through so much, Leshia."
"Let there be no cause for worry, that worked against us last time. Let them be here for Sarah, I daresay she might need their support more than our own every once in a while," she said, though the tiniest hint of doubt colored her voice. "They are her family, after all."
"So are we," Oran responded stubbornly.
"Don't make the girl choose, husband-mine," Leshia warned softly. "Don't make Jareth's mistakes. You can love her like a father without taking Robert's place; love her as he can't, or won't. Be there for her, just in different ways."
He sighed again, laying his own head atop hers. "You make too much sense sometimes," he accused.
"We're possessive by nature," she replied, "but caging someone like Sarah will only alienate her. Be a true father, and give her what she needs."
"You tell me not to make mistakes, and yet want me to repeat the one that led us here in the first place?" he whispered. "We've only just gotten a shred of Jareth back, why endanger that?"
"It wasn't their fault, Oran," she said firmly.
"Yes, it was," his words came out slowly, almost painfully, "in the same way that it was my fault, and Sarah's and Jareth's fault. We did this together."
"Then shouldn't we all be here to fix it?" Leshia coaxed. "And besides, if we're ever to truly undo what has been done, we'll need Toby."
He brought their linked hands up to press a kiss to her knuckles. "I'll do it for you, my sweet demon, not because I think it's right or even wise, but because I trust you."
Karen had spent the past hour in a state of morbid fascination. Toby and Linda had been going toe-to-toe in a clever battle of words, disguised as civil conversation, and Karen hadn't been able to pull herself away from the spectacle enough to make them stop. She was somewhere between being proud of Toby and being embarrassed on Linda's behalf. It wasn't until the doorbell sounded that she found the strength to leave the room at all.
Had her mind not been elsewhere she might have felt the sense of déjà vu creeping up, might have recognized the tall figure behind the warped glass of the front door.
A blue man with silver hair was waiting patiently on the other side, looking no happier to see her than she was to see him.
A/N: Despite my euphoria at the ending of the fall semester, I was hit by a stubborn case of writer's block, which was only compounded by traveling, spending time with my family for the holidays, and the start of the new semester. I decided to just take a few weeks as a bit of a sabbatical to clear my mind, but I'm finally starting to feel creative again, so I'm back! Happy (extremely belated) New Years, everybody; may this one be more productive than the last one.
This chapter is dedicated to my friend Emily, in the hopes that she will recover from her sniffly illness soon.
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Disclaimer: I do not own Labyrinth or any of its characters.