Notes: Long time no see. It's taken quite some time for me to find my way back, and just as long to decide where to continue this from. I believe I've found it though. I'm glad to have you with me; Adventures are always more fun with friends, aren't they?
p.s If some of the names have changed in this chapter, it is merely because I lost my planning, and I cannot find certain ones.
Bear with me while I try to find my rhythm again 3
Porcelain clinked awkwardly against porcelain as cups were returned to their saucers, clothing rustling in the stretching silence as their owners shuffled in the quiet attempting a show of nonchalance and indifference. The stillness further added to the discomfit of the room, lending a heavier weight to the situation the pair found themselves in. Hands reached for their cups simultaneously only to dance away as if scathed. One cleared their throat. The other continued staring out of the large window to side side.
Outside, the day waned on serenely, ignorant of their tension as it bathed the palace in warm light and its other occupants in the sweet sound of birdsong and the rustling of leaves. The wind had picked up a little today and stirred the petals of differing blooms to detach and carry on the wind. They dancing slowly past the walls and windows, watched intently by the one sat closest to them. The figure sighed, turning with resignation to face the woman which had summoned her here.
Lavanya was studiously fidgeting with a ring on her finger. Spinning it one way, then another. Her lips were pressed together in a thin line as distracted eyes stared down at her hands deep in thought. The crease between her brows only deepened the longer they sat, concern etching itself ever deeper into her features as if it meant to stay there forever, replacing the cold anger which had regarded her companion since they had arrived.
Sarah cleared her throat again, unsure of what to do with herself as she once more twitched at her skirts. The dress, stitched from plush velvet, was of the deepest forest green, its neckline plunging just shy of indecent framing her pale skin. She had never been partial to dresses... not for decades now. Wrested from jeans, she was rather out of her depth. Small heels replaced her trainers, and her toes wriggled about in them in an attempt to stop her to keep her from retreating too far within her own head. Faced with the epitome of Fae royalty, the girl felt like a child playing dress up, and failing miserably at playing her part.
"That's... a beautiful ring."
Her voice finally cut through the suffocating silence, sounding too loud even to her own ears. Her teeth found her lip and drew it into her mouth, worrying it, her eyes resolutely stuck to the jewellery piece so as to avoid the scathing reply she expected to receive.
Yet for another long moment, all remained the way it had been. Quiet. Still. Round and round the ring twisted, watched by two pairs of eyes in its path. Sarah's skin began to itch.
"My late husband had this crafted for me." Her voice was barely above a murmur, Lavanya's head tilting to the side as a sad smile pulled at the corners of her lips. "It was an anniversary present, for Jareth's coming of age celebration. It is..." Her breathing caught, her smile straining a little. "It is the last thing I have to remember him by."
Sarah's stomach dropped sharply at the reply, an acute spike of vertigo shooting through her limbs. The gems in the band glittered at her, forcing her to look away. Unsure of what to do her hand reached out and claimed her cup, only to find it empty. Slowly, she set it back, and nodded. "I'm sorry for your loss," She said softly.
Lavanya looked up then, snatching her gaze in a strong grip. "You did not cause my loss. Not this one. I would rather you took ownership of the one you did perpetrate."
Swallowing, her spine straightened as she gazed across at the Fae. "I still don't know what you're on about," She managed after a minute, trying to keep her tone neutral, "And no one will tell me when I ask. Whatever Jareth is up to, I'm not involved."
The room dimmed as the sun's slid behind a smear of clouds. Lavanya glared across at her with a darkening expression, making her throat constrict. Unbidden, her hand reached to it and trailed her nails across where the previous bruises had resided, before it dropped again. By then Lavanya had busied herself with tapping the table until their cups refilled themselves, taking her own into her hands the minute it was full. The steam only served to further cloud her eyes.
"You misunderstand, Sarah Williams. Not that anyone is surprised, naturally. Although, I do find myself less so than the rest."
Sarah's teeth clenched. "What-"
"It is your previous actions I refer to," Lavanya continued smoothly over the top of Sarah's protests, "Your initial entanglement with my son was near catastrophic, you should know. His kingdom, his subjects, his lands and his magic... his life... all of them were thrown into peril with your highly prized departure. I was forced to watch as my son wasted away before my very eyes from your actions."
Her words of retort died on her tongue, her brows furrowing with each word spoken at her. "What do you mean? He was fine. I won, I left, we both went on with our lives."
Suddenly, the smell of the tea before her was nauseating. The air almost too thick to breathe. There was no way that she had caused Jareth any kind of suffering when she left, she refused to believe it. He had let her go. They had followed the script they both knew they were following, had said the words already laid before them. It had gone exactly as it was meant to after she had busted her ass to make sure she got Toby back. That was what she was meant to do. His offers nothing more than a final ruse to waylay her.
"Maybe you were fine, but he was not."
Sarah shook her head, but it went ignored.
"A Fae is only as strong as their will." Lavanya's words were concise to the point of being cutting, and she did little to soften them. "If they lose their will, they lose everything. You single-handedly broke that will when you childishly threw his proposal back at him like a pacifier from a babe's mouth, simply because you wished to win at a game."
"That was not a prop-"
"You might have heard him, Sarah, but you weren't listening. A failing of your species. You get this idea in your little minds that you know better than what is actually happening before you, that you know the best way to handle things. In doing so, you tend to destroy the little things in your path leading you to the truth, for you are blinded to it by your own pride." She snorted. "You take much and more for granted, hm?"
A hot flush climbed from her cheeks down her neck, blotchy patches of pink appearing across her skin across her collarbone and cleavage. Confusion held Sarah's mouth open, dumbfounded. "I was literally a child!"
"You were." Lavanya's smile was anything but warm. "Yet, on the precipice of womanhood. A scant few mortal years from your legal age of adulthood where you can go off into your world and make every mistake you could ever have wanted to. A single year away from being allowed to marry, to drive an automobile, to bear children." Her brows rose. "Old enough to understand, to take a moment to see what was truly being offered. His heart. His soul. Do you not believe he knew how young you were? That his actions throughout your duration in his lands leant to that very realisation?"
"He tried to kill me on numerous occasions." Sarah crossed her arms, scoffing. "He set me up to fail, set his entire kingdom against me. His subjects were terrified of him. He cheated, he lied, he tricked me at every single juncture he could. Which part of that am I supposed to have taken as affection, of consideration?"
"Still a petualnt child, I see."
Sarah bristled. "No. I get what he was trying to do and I have long since accepted it. Because of Jareth, I grew up, and I realised I was selfish. I was spoiled. That Toby was innocent in all of what transpired during my childhood. I took responsibility for my actions and I won fair and square at his game, just like it was laid out in that little book of his, and I took Toby back. I have protected him with my life ever since, I have sacrificed much and more for my brother." Her chest heaved angrily, her fingers knotting in the fabric of her dress. "That was what happened. Nothing more, nothing less."
Lavanya simply sat back in her seat and looked at her, contempt written plainly across her entire body. "Yet, Toby was rather unharmed, was he not? He was happy, he was rested. He was fed, cleaned, socialised. From what I've been led to believe, the child was quite taken with my son, just as was he with your brother. You never stopped to consider the lack of fear and upset in that infant when you found him, did you?"
Her arms slacked in their hold as Sarah thought over her last minutes in her final standoff against Jareth. It was true, Toby was fine. Tired enough that he was sound asleep the minute her feet were treading the carpet of her father's bedroom again instead of the flagstones of the castle she had just conquered. Exhaustion had gripped her as she traipsed back to her own room and sat with relief back at her vanity. Only to be greeted by her friends. Her magic mirror. "I was grateful."
"Were you?" Her words were refuted immediately. "I find it rather humorous, then, how you spoke of it neither verbally nor in your actions towards the one who cared for him after you so callously wished him away. Even still, Jareth is likely unaware you held anything positive in mind towards him at all. Simply scorn, and childish disdain."
"There wasn't time for me to say it." Sarah tried again, wetting her dry lip.
"Like a child, you still throw out excuses instead of taking responsibility for your actions, small as they were." The fae sighed, unimpressed. "Think, then, of the words in that little book you speak of. The rest of us are quite unaware of its contents nor of the details of your run in the labyrinth which sprawls the Wastes... yet, something aided you when you were there. No other mortal got half as fast as you did. The land wouldn't let them."
But what no one knew is that the king of the goblins had fallen in love with the the girl, and he had given her certain powers.
The wind began to batter against the window beside Sarah, the sconces on the walls around the room flickering to life as the sky continued to dim. They had just been words, just a story, hadn't they? A play script for her in her spare time to wile away the hours that her father had found in a thrift fair by chance. A play she knew so well that she followed it to the letter during her run. When speaking to him.
"You were never in danger, Sarah. I believe you know that quite well beneath your pride and your stubbornness. Take a moment. Think about it, properly."
Sarah mirrored her posture and sat back, staring down at her knees as she tried to do as Lavanya had directed. Trying to ignore the judgement directed at her, and her irritation at being scolded and lectured at her age. It was ridiculous, really, that she was sitting here being ridiculed by Jareth's mother of all people, after they had kidnapped her. After they had made sure to persuade Toby to wish her away. It was blatantly ironic.
Closing her eyes, Sarah summoned her memories of her time in the Labyrinth as best she could, into some semblance of order for her to dissect. To assign meaning to.
The worm turned up when she was about to give up, barely ten minutes into her run, and gave her the means to comprehend the labyrinth. In doing so, she had learned that not everything was as it seemed. That sometimes you had to take a moment to look at things from a different angle.
The oubliette had been her first real obstacle, and Hoggle had found her and led her out. The dwarf she had initially disliked had become a friend, where before she had written him off. The helping hands had followed her decision, making her realise that her choices held consequences.
Ludo had appeared when she had lost her way and didn't know how to continue, had given her the tools to help him. To be brave. She had learned not to judge others before she knew them.
She had given up her ring to the wise man, although she hadn't initially understood his words. Words which had followed her into her every day life.
Hoggle kept running away, but would turn up again when she needed him. She learned to accept people for the way they were, and to encourage them to do better.
Sir Diddimus had taught her to think and approach things with respect. She hadn't done so in a long time, since Karen had appeared. it had been humbling.
"He was just as childish as I was." Sarah protested after a moment, as unwanted visions of Jareth kept coming to mind. The way he had caged her into the wall almost seductively, impressed at her progress although he was irritated by the Dwarf. How he had asked her indulgently how she found his labyrinth, the creation he was clearly proud of. How badly he had taken her spiteful retort. "Just because I stood up to him, he sent a barbaric metal torture device after me!"
Surprisingly, Lavanya seemed to have learned that for the first time. "He sent a cleaner after you, did he?" Sarah saw amusement where she would have preferred to see something more sheepish, more understanding, and it annoyed her further even as the woman kept talking. "I have never denied that Jareth can be partial to childish moments. He's not as old as he makes himself appear. Yet still, you weren't harmed, were you?"
"No, but only because Hoggle and I broke a wall down to get away from it!"
Under Lavanya's scrutinising gaze, that didn't seem quite true either. The wall had not wanted to truly budge until the cleaner had literally been upon them, then it had given way at the last moment. Almost as if he was teaching her a lesson. She refused to give him all the credit for it, though. They had saved themselves. That had to have been her determination to survive his taunts and continue.
"Then, he tried to poison me with a peach. Blackmailed Hoggle into giving me it."
The Fae didn't react to that either, leaving Sarah to scowl and reluctantly think on that too. The peach hadn't harmed her. Sure, she had been incapacitated and spirited away- which was enough to her, already, to be taken as an attack. Although, Sarah still wasn't sure if what she had experienced had been a dream or reality. The strange melodic music which had rung out in the forest along strange bubbles or floating baubles, the way it had pulled together into a song which had followed her into that damned ball where she hadn't known who she was, what she was doing, or where she was. He had stolen her memory. All she knew was just that she was searching for something fervently. Stopped at every turn by masked dancers which had leered and jeered at her, as his voice had rung out and sang to her, stopping her from panicking.
"He tried to trap me." Her voice drifted off, sure of it. Dancing with a Fae, caught up in his song. That had to be magic.
"Perhaps."
By removing all of her responsibilities from the situation, she supposed it was possible he was simply observing her, and how she fared in his world. It had clearly been a Fae court she had been brought to, in her puffy dress, her ornately crafted hair and makeup. Where had it come from? Who had styled it for her? She had never found out. She had simply followed her gut instinct, to find the one person in the room she needed to get to. Following where her heart was tugging her, where the sung words came from.
She still remembered the awe and relief she had felt when her eyes had finally spied him between the dancers. Two woman draped over him, laughing at her in a way that sparked something akin to jealousy, yet also to loss. She had known she wasn't supposed to be there. That she didn't fit. The others clearly mocked her for her innocence, but he hadn't. The only one like her who wasn't adorned with a mask. The way her heart had raced in her ears when he had left them immediately, stalking towards her slowly as if she might spook and run away. How Jareth had caught up her hands and led her away to a space where she could breathe. She had always wanted to go to a ball. Especially a masquerade. He had afforded her that opportunity as if he had known it was one of her wishes.
The words of that song had been in her head ever since. Always, until now, she had thought he was mocking her for forgetting as well. Now, though... now they sounded entirely different in her ears.
His expression when she had remembered, as the clock chimed, had been pained. Concerned. His hands enveloping her own had grown tighter as he fought to keep her in his embrace. How quickly he had stood back and let her leave when he realised she wouldn't stay. A look of resignation and hurt all that remained as she had smashed the mirror and escaped.
She had always imagined that he had regretted that clock being there. Stealing away his opportunity to make her lose.
Maybe it was because it had cost him the loss instead.
Every single time Jareth had turned up in front of her, whether annoyed or not, he hadn't stopped her from continuing. At any one of those opportunities, he could have put her back at the beginning. Shut the doors in her face. Broken the ladders. Sequestered away the ones which might have aided her. But that wouldn't have been fair, would it?
'You say that so often... I wonder what your basis for comparison is.'
In the Escher room, he had sang again. Different words. A different song, more direct, more serious. Outlining things for her from a different viewpoint- his viewpoint- and again, she had taken him to be a sore loser. An afterthought to her goal to get to Toby.
Facing him at the end, he had indeed offered everything. Everything she could have ever wanted or asked for.
Sullenly, Sarah continued to mull it over. Maybe his "Just let me rule you..." had simply been because he was a King, and she'd have been in his lands. Rather than taking away her free will.
'And I will be your slave.'
Finally, it dawned on her that it was entirely possible she had been naïve. Maybe, just maybe, she hadn't been paying him attention the way she should have, given the circumstances. Nothing that day had been black and white, a myriad of grey hues. Hues she had tried to force to be black and white. Clear cut. She had not seen him true, not as he was, simply considering him as her opponent in the game they played opposite sides on. Yet, an opponent would have made things impossible for her... and he had helped her out a few times.
I had reordered time, I have turned my world upside down, and I have done it all for you. Isn't that generous?
"I..." Suddenly, she was lost. Lost as to what to do with her realisations, the way Lavanya had put things to her. If she had been wrong... well, at its simplest, it was mortifying. She had tried to act so mature, yet she had indeed been single minded like a child. Only considering a single outcome and reality. At fifteen, what was she to have done with a marriage proposal? If not that, a laden confession of love, interlaced with a request for her to stay by his side. What she had felt, she had always thought on as a crush. He had made her blush, given her the fiercest of butterflies. Her heart was pounded around him. Her thoughts on him during her entire run, and for years afterward. Imagining the what ifs and what could have been's. Jareth was simply her first ever crush and she had been infatuated. To have believed he held anything for her would have been madness. "We only knew each other for thirteen hours, though. That makes no sense."
"Closer to eighteen, from what my sources gathered. He messed with time so that you might have more of a chance to succeed, so you could accomplish your goal." Lavanya had the grace to look somewhat compassionate now, since Sarah had begun to let her guard down again. "What he offered you, was everything he had to offer. Fae... our kind... we are not known for being generous. Altruistic. We are self-centred and selfish more often than not but our quarrels are far greater and for better purpose than that of a young mortal. Jareth's always been different in that regard. When it came to you, he was willing to give up and sacrifice absolutely everything, just to make you happy."
The taste of iron swept across her tongue as Sarah realised she had been chewing her cheek, unwilling to hear the truth from his side. It reminded her of that strange dream she had had of him, the last time she had glimpsed him in any regard, when he had accused her of just this and then bid his goodbyes. How broken he had looked, ill. His skin flat and pasty where it had once been smooth, glowing. His eyes sunken in his face.
The edges of the dream had never come into focus. Shafts of shadow had broken any details and smoothed them out of sight, lending a gloom to where the two had mingled. Yet he had been in startling clarity, his voice as lilting and sultry as it had always been, just strained. Their garb had been reminiscent of that masquerade. Penetrating light had come from somewhere, permeating the dimly lit space, alighting on the filigree details of their clothes and accessories. A flash of gold from him, a glinting shot of silver when she moved. The entire time, the both of them realising something wasn't quite right. Wasn't the same as the rest of their dreams, of the time they had spent together. His tired, callous manner towards her as if she had personally tortured him. Now she understood why.
"Is... is that why he's not here? Because he's avoiding me for the choice I made?" Sarah asked quietly. Her voice sounded meek to her. Childlike. It was concern and embarrassment which caused the questions this time rather than petulance and her hot temper. It made perfect sense for him to want nothing to do with her now. He had no obligation to her anymore. Nor did she have any right to expect him to visit her, just because they had a history. Clearly, he had long since moved on from her and whatever pain she had caused him. She was nothing. A mere blip in his life that he had been forced to overcome.
She had almost ruined him, and the entire time, she had been at home professing him a dream akin to a nightmare. A mere hallucination of her overactive imagination. If any of what his mother said was true, how awful must she have appeared? "Is Jareth's absence because of me?"
Lavanya's body suddenly tensed and flinched as if she had been struck, and the sconces flickered dramatically. That brought Sarah out of her thoughts with alarm, looking around her for the threat which had made the older woman react that way. A fire had leapt into the grate of the fireplace, warming the room. Otherwise, she could see no change, and had to consider that her questions had caused that reaction. "I- I didn't mean-"
The older woman waved her hand at her until she fell silent again, then pressed the palm to her breast as her wide eyes stared into the flames flickering and spitting not so far away. The silence from before swept back in to claim the room. The desire to leave or apologise rose like bile in Sarah's throat. Where was he, that could make his mother react like this? She had been so angry a moment ago. Angry with Sarah for what she'd done.
Now... now she looked scared.
Desperately, Sarah looked around the room for inspiration of how to fix whatever she had just done. Around her were intricately, painstakingly crafted tapestries, portraits, plants she couldn't begin to identify which crept along the walls and hung from the ceiling. In the other rooms, she knew there would be a bedroom with a large bed, a polished bathroom, a wardrobe that no doubt dwarfed her own. One of the pictures was of someone who looked strikingly like Jareth, but older. His father, most likely. This wasn't Lavanya's home, though. That much she did know. Lavanya lived outwith the palace.
"I didn't bring you here just to lecture you."
The voice didn't sound like it had come from her companion. It was too high, too thin, from the one before. Her pallor looked sickly pale in the warm light, the rose gold gown she wore dissolved into a flat, bloated pink. Her fingers had taken back to twisting the ring from earlier, almost feverishly running over the inlaid stones Sarah didn't recognise.
"It's okay, it looks like I deserved it," Sarah forced a laugh, but it clashed horribly with the quiet and she swallowed it quickly. "I'm sorry if I said something wrong, Lavanya. I wasn't trying to upset you, I just thought... because of what you were saying, about what I did, and how he was after it, I thought you were saying this was my fault too."
It was the first time that she had used her name, and she wasn't entirely sure if doing so would bring some sort of repercussion upon her. At any rate, the fae didn't react to it in any particular way. She simply shot a small smile at her, without meeting her eyes. "I originally wished to tear you apart for what you did to him. To make you experience hurt akin to what he suffered. For years, I planned such heinous things against you, should you ever appear before him again. I was mourning for my son as I did my husband, while he still breathed. I thought I understood what the utter destruction of a soul looked like." Lavanya head turned then to look at her, then she unfolded until she was leaning forward in earnest to face Sarah directly, and this time she knew for sure that the Fae was not only scared, but terrified. The way only a mother could be.
"Yet now... now, Sarah, you might be our only hope of saving him."
A gloved hand peeled away from the wall outside the room as its owner retreated a few steps to lean against the one adjacent, loosing a large breath through his teeth in a low whistle. Beside him, three heavy set Fae stared down at him with barely restrained impatience. After another minute of Jaque simply staring at the ornately carved door, Baran finally stepped forward and smacked the side of his head with a clip of his hand.
"Ow!" The blond lifted a hand to rub the assaulted area, twisting away from him with disbelief.
"Get on with it," Baran growled, Arlyn and Choilleach a mere half step behind him and peering over his large shoulders. The corridor seemed much too small to house them all in their little huddle, crouched over the youth who stared back up at them with mischievous zeal. The servants bowed their heads and scurried onwards when they happened across them, unwilling to bear witness to whatever was transpiring between the men. Choilleach made sure to lean out to stare them down each time, encouraging their behaviour. The last thing they needed was this going any further.
"Okay, okay, there's no need to hit me Baran. I'm not a source for your stress relief." Jaque smiled cheekily as he straightened again, peeking at the closed door once more, before splaying his hands to them. "I believe Miss Williams just received the most thorough strip down of her life."
Choilleach frowned. "I thought she was in there with Lavanya. Why would she be disrobing her?"
The look Jaque gave him was nothing short of incredulity. Arlyn and Baran simply looked at each other before turning back to the youth with their matching frowns.
"Sometimes, I wonder about you three." He looked skyward, before pressing his splayed hands together with newfound patience. "She just let her have it about the run a millennia past. About how she ruined Jareth. Our esteemed Miss Williams was not entirely receptive."
Arlyn turned to look over his shoulder at the door, "Not receptive? She practically killed him!"
Holding up a placating hand, he tried to quieten them down. "Don't worry, she seems to have come round to the idea that Jareth isn't a monster."
Baran growled in the back of his throat, and Jaque swallowed, trying to hurry up.
"She just brought up his absence again, though. I've lost count on how many times she's asked about him, considering she insists he has no bearing on her life." He gestured over behind them, where the conversation was taking place. "It sounds like Lavanya's about to tell her, though. Her brother as leverage might be a winning card for us to play later, but for now, our darling Jareth seems to be enough on his own."
"I miss Tobias." Choilleach sighed, shaking his head. The others looked at him, but he wasn't looking at them anymore. His focus was on one of the stone sentinels further down the hall which faced them. After a moment, he could have sworn it moved. His eyes narrowed, then he turned back to them, keeping the statue in his peripheral. "For now, we shall have to see what comes of this. We will need to assume our new roles afterward."
Arlyn huffed a quiet laugh. "You mean as her bodyguards? I believe that is your very job, my friend."
Baran's hand ran over his jaw for a moment, considering what was being said. "We will need to learn what we can from her, while we press to see what uses she has. If she has any reactions to his things, his residual magic." He looked at Arlyn with a baleful look at having been dragged into this, then flicked his gaze to Jaque. "You seem to have an idea of what is to come, and what to do about it. For once, your scheming little mind might prove fruitful to us."
Drawing himself up with a sense of importance, Jaque grinned wickedly, his breathy chuckle echoing faintly in the empty corridor. The shadows danced and moved with each flicker of the torches spaced uniformly down the hall, seeming to move with the melodic noise of it as if they agreed.
"I have and I do."