*Peeks out from behind the fourth wall*
Sorry for taking so long to update… of course, just when the story is getting to the most awesome parts, Things Other Than Writing decide to intrude in my life. I mean, they are mostly good intrusions… I have a new baby nephew! Oh, if only there was a word for some sort of good thing that disrupts writing.
Saying that, I'd like to thank everybody who left a review… Before this chapter, reviews had mostly been about giving me confidence as a new writer, but I really understand how powerful they are as motivators now.
Ok, on with the story…
*Hides behind the wall again, and bricks it up firmly so that it won't break during the story*
Chapter Eight: Makes No Sense to Fall
Through the door, every passing moment was fresh pain.
But, to the King, it did not matter that his body was torn; bruised and bleeding. It did not matter that he could barely breathe. Everything was insignificant except that he was falling over the threshold of the door; falling back to her. His desire for the girl was his guiding star, the fixed point around which every other constellation in his universe revolved.
He passed through the door in a badly controlled stumble. Behind him, the door moved with a life of its own, slamming shut and sealing him in his new present. In spite of the pounding ache behind one of his eyes, Jareth tilted his head to the side to study the door with a detached curiosity. Although he had just moved through it, the door was now at an inexplicable distance from him, and it remained there, standing in the same spot, even after it had closed. It never had been before.
But, slowly, the red of the door seeped from its frame and it melted into a very different shape, ornate and wooden. It had changed into the door that belonged to this moment—it was the door to his bedchamber.
This was it. This was the moment in time he had strived for; fought for.
But within this new present, there was a new pain. It physically hurt, after knowing the freedom of being stretched over all time and space, to compress himself into the limitations of a single moment. His arms felt heavy and useless, and his legs could barely walk any distance at all. After being free of all the normal rules, reducing his body to one reality always felt like a small death.
He could still feel the spreading coldness in his chest as though the fingers were still digging there, worming their way through him in tendrils of ice. For one superstitious instant, he was not sure that they had in fact gone. After all, the Guardians were formless creatures—perhaps they had ripped out the part of him that they wanted, and left their invisible fingers behind.
His insides churned, rebelling at the invasion. They had torn him. Taken from him. And he could feel the loss as surely as though they had taken flesh and bone, even as he had no clue as to what was missing.
In the space of a second, his jacket was thrown to the ground and he yanked roughly at the collar of his shirt, splitting the material down the front. Smooth skin. Outwardly, they had left no sign; no indication of their assault. The only thing they had left was an empty feeling in his chest, where before he was whole.
Struck with a sudden thought, he pressed his bandaged hand against his naked chest. No, it was not that. His heart was still there; still beating strongly, thudding under his ribs. He released a heavy breath.
But it was not much of a relief—he was not accustomed to being unknowing, and he found that he disliked the feeling. Until he discovered exactly which part had been cut out of him, he knew that he would not have a moment of peace. The mystery of what used to fill the gaping cavity would torment him.
Perhaps they had taken memories. He scanned through his mind, trying to find any errors, or obvious gaps in his recollections. It did not seem that anything important was missing, but then, how could he be sure?
Or maybe they had taken his pride. Would he kneel before her and beg?
It could have been his courage. Perhaps he would be too weak now to even approach her; too afraid to open his mouth in case he said the wrong thing. Or maybe…
"Sarah," he said, low and quiet. They had not taken his voice.
With a shake of his head, he tried to push the questioning thoughts into the deepest recesses of his mind. Surely the missing part was not what was important now—not now that he was so close.
He blinked, trying to see clearly with the weak and tunnelled vision that two eyes provided. From a distance, he could see that the moment was all laid out before him like an unmoving play; and in this scene, two figures were pressed up against the door in a tangle of limbs.
The man closest to him… was himself. It was his own self from the past, as he had existed in that moment.
From his experience of moving through moments, Jareth knew that time would only start moving again once he made physical contact with that other King, who had been frozen in the act of kissing Sarah, joined so closely that they appeared to be carved into a single statue. Their arms were woven around each other, both trying to pull the other closer.
It was frustrating. From where he was standing, he could scarcely see the girl—his view was blocked by his own body; the one from the past.
With an effort, Jareth forced his mind into the present, and concentrated on the mechanics of making his feet work. After existing outside of time, the weight of gravity and the struggle to move against it made it seem as though he was dragging himself through drying cement. But he put one foot after the other; trying to get closer to her, to see past himself to her.
As he approached the tableau, he wondered at the unfamiliar hot and barbed emotion that unfolded itself somewhere in his stomach. But there it was, even though it made little sense—for the first time, he knew what it was to be jealous.
The past King was holding her with such a tender fierceness, pressed so firmly to her body that he was effectively caging her against the door with his entire body. But that was not the reason why he could taste bile. Rather, it was how clearly he could see that, in that moment, he had been… almost happy. The fool had been completely content to become lost in her, knowing that he needed nothing else.
He urged his feet to move more quickly now, sick of the sight of himself. That King was a stranger—a man who knew with an unjustified certainty that he had found happiness after a heartbreak, while all the time, blissfully unaware of the depths to which true suffering could sink a soul. Still heavy with an ancient sensation of disuse, he dragged his sluggish feet closer to the entwined lovers.
Jareth was soaked with sweat by the time he had closed the distance between them, but the effort was worth it. He was standing in front of the door, so close that he could reach out and touch her. Finally, at the end of a weary journey, he had made it back to her.
But something was not right. A part of him tried to block it out, to un-notice the detail, but it was too late. Even though she was trapped in the moment of passionately kissing the other King, her bright eyes were open, and she was looking past him. If eyes were the window to the soul, they told him everything he needed to know.
It changed nothing. Not really. But all the same, it was such a stark reminder—no matter how far he chased her; no matter how close he got to her; or how much he risked to reach her, he already knew how easily she could give it all up. How quickly she would walk away from him.
The poison in his stomach curdled. He had starved and sacrificed just for the chance to stand here, but it meant nothing to her. She did not deserve the happiness that she so thoughtlessly denied him. The venom spread through his body, building layers of anger upon anger. Clean, crisp fury. Before he even had time to process the thought, his hand punched out savagely at the heavy bedroom door with a blow that blasted it off its hinges.
The two figures stayed frozen in exactly the same spot. Without the support of the door, they should have fallen. It seemed wrong that they remained in precisely the same pose, with nothing but the air to hold them up.
Time had not yet restarted, but with one impulsive action, he had already started to change the direction of events from the original timeline. As soon as the world started moving again, she would fall.
Jareth looked down at his hand as though it was a foreign entity. The dirty bandage that she had gifted him with was beginning to unravel. The wound had been reopened and bleeding freely; a pulpy mess. She had done this, all of it. Almost with a will of its own, his bleeding hand moved past the King, towards the girl's throat.
Even in his darkest hour, he had never dreamed of hurting her. She was his best desire—the light that gave him the means to illuminate the shadows in himself. But now here was his damaged hand ghosting the skin of her neck, itching with an unknown energy. It would be so easy to break her fragile body, to bend it to his will. And there she was, stuck in a moment… she would never even know that he had done it. She would never be able to accuse him with those eyes.
His hand trembled, straining with the effort of remaining unclosed over her throat, and his fingers brushed against her skin. Against his icy hand, she was so warm and soft. She was heat, and beauty, and life. He took a deep breath and pulled his hand back to fall by his side, useless. He would be more than an animal.
Panting, he moved closer, attempting to position himself in the line of her unblinking vision. He tried to catch her eye; to pretend that she was truly looking at him. But they remained fixed past him on some other point, never quite focusing on the man who stood before her.
What was it about her eyes? Her face, her body, and her smell were all constantly running through his mind, reproduced and recycled until they were all he thought about; but, try as he might, he could never replicate that elusive spark in her eyes. It was something that not even his imagination could capture.
But he had time now. This moment would be frozen for as long he wanted. His mouth set in a grim line of determination. If he just looked at her for long enough, studied her from every angle, he would certainly be able to define what it was; the part of her that always managed to escape him.
He moved his face in front of her, first to the left, then to the right as though he was slowly hypnotising her. Her features were caught in a moment of half-light, partly shadowed by both of his bodies, and partly lit by the firelight. She was so excruciatingly lovely.
Moving was no effort now. He passed through the space where the door had been and walked around the two, never taking his gaze from her. Completing the circle, he came as close as he could to her side, leaning in as though her body was whispering the secret he needed to know. From there, it was just a few extra inches, and he was softly brushing his lips against her cheek.
When he opened his eyes again, he stood still; as frozen as the statues beside him. Strings. Stretching out in every possible direction from where he stood with Sarah, like a million points of a compass, were strings of various thicknesses and colours. He did not move, except to turn his head and stare at the threads in wonder.
He had seen something like this only once before, but that one time, there had only been a single string. Now there were more than he could count. The strings must be all the possible threads reaching into the future; the million different ways that this single moment could fracture. As soon as he made his choice, he would follow that single thread through to the next moment and all others would be cut.
He would have given anything to know which thread would lead to the brightest future, but he had no way of knowing. He could not see where the strings led past this moment.
The King was… strangely uncertain. He had always had confidence in his ability to follow her anywhere, find her anyplace. It had become the cornerstone of his existence. But what if she rejected him again? What if this was his last chance? What if there was nothing he could do that would make a difference? Maybe every thread would lead to her leaving him.
Before he had walked through the door, everything had been so simple. Hunt, pursue, and have. Everything had been so… clear.
And it was then that the King knew what they had taken from him.
He took a step away from her, and then moved in close one more time. It would take a stronger will, or a weaker desire than he possessed to stop him from touching her again, knowing that it may be the last time he ever got the chance.
Careful to distance himself from the other King, he touched his lips to her skin. He touched her feathery brow, her cheekbone, the freckle just above her ear. He breathed her in and feasted on the scent, over and over again.
There. That was enough.
He slowly pulled away from her and nodded his head once. He had made up his mind.
He reached out to touch his past body. As soon as his fingers touched that familiar stranger, he was sucked into the moment; swept into the present by a powerful current. Time stuttered to a new start and moved once again.
This was his chance to change everything.
Blinking heck, this is turning into a novel.
I promise that I'll have the next chapter published much more quickly (yay long weekend!)—and we'll find out what the Guardians took, and the ways that Jareth will try to rewrite history. I think that there's only two chapters left.
But I have to leave things there for the moment—my younger brother is bringing a girl home to meet the family, and I have a lot of planning to do if I want to make it as awkward as possible. You understand.