A/N: As always, reviews keep me writing faster! I enjoy knowing your thoughts guys! For those of you who have stuck with me thus far, I'm entirely grateful for your dedication in putting up with my sporadic updates. For you, I will do my best to post faster.
The wind picked up again into another gale, mercilessly screaming and snarling through the labyrinth, tearing the ivy and plants from the crumbling walls. Overhead the sky seemed to encourage it, ever darker clouds swirling and merging until the light became greatly diminished and the smell of ozone permeated the air. The subjects within the stone maze huddled into themselves and sought shelter wherever they could find it, leaving their posts with reckless abandon and their tools and weapons with them.
Thick vines grew around a derelict Cleaner's machine, tying it to the ground in such that it could not hope to be rescued from nature's cruel embrace. Its looming shadow casting a great gloom into the corridor behind it, and it was out of this cavernous darkness that a scraped and harrowed looking girl emerged, clothes ripped and dirty, face smudged with dust and the tracks of old tears. She stumbled, tripping over the roots of the strangling plants, catching her balance against a now dulled blade which still seemed to instil a great panic within her. In her mind she could see the machine moving towards her at alarming speed, the knifes and blades whirling towards her in blinding flashes of light, the sound of another wailing in fear by her side. Yet who the other was, she did not know. Where she was remained a mystery.
Who she was… who was she?
"TOBY?! TOBY…"
Her words were snatched from her mouth by the wind, lost before anyone could hear them. The souring taste of an old peach lingered in her mouth, and as she looked at her hand, she saw that she was indeed holding one. The juices had long since dried on her fingers turning them sticky, the edges of the bite she had taken now a distasteful brown. Yet try as she might she couldn't release her hold. The fruit stayed within her grasp, bruising further as her grip began to tighten against her will. She held her hand out from her and attempted to force her fingers open, began to wring her wrist as if to loosen it from her hand. But nothing changed. Frustration now building, she looked around her helplessly, her previous panic slowly giving way to petulance.
'Itsss not faaair…'
The whisper met her ears, biting at the bare skin as it passed, and she flinched as if she'd been slapped.
'Come insiiiide… meet the missussss.…'
Her hair began to pull away from her face, and the subtle itch of lace slid over her arms, her legs now becoming chilled as her jeans gave way to stockings. She spun, looking behind her for someone to accuse, someone to answer what on Earth was happening to her, but as always, she remained hopelessly alone. The tears came back tenfold to burn down the icy cold of her cheeks, blurring her already distorted vision. The peach's smell permeated all around her, invading her senses, making her heady.
"Stop… stop it… STOP IT… stop…"
Her hand lashed out towards the closest wall, slamming the peach against it and consequently her fingers. A scream left her as the unforgiving brick crunched into her skin, the bones creaking and cracking as the two unyielding forces met. Then the wall began to spit out tiny shards of stone, dust rising into the air as it bit by bit slid and separated from itself. The girl barely stood back in time as the wall came down in a great plume of dust and dirt, throwing her aching arm across her face to shield her eyes and nose from the deafening onslaught.
The noise was still ringing in her ears after the cloud settled, and she slowly drew away from her arm to see what was left. The void she had created had been sizeable and its debris now filled the path in unruly heaps and mounds. But there was no gap in its place. Where before the greying stone had been pockmarked and scarred, there was now a rich sandstone. Moss grew thick and lush where the seams of the bricks met, flowers of an ilk she had never once spied before, growing up it towards the light. Overhead there was a pinprick of a hole in the churning sky, and a beam of sunlight was cast down upon the new wall that she had unveiled. She looked at her hand, still bleeding but no longer painful, and cried when she saw that the peach was no more damaged now than it had been before.
Hands buried in her skirts and she lifted them, shoes sliding and slipping over the rocks as she began to sob and turned to run, far away from where she had come from, far away from the wall. Desperate to be rid of the smell surrounding her and her desolate surroundings, of the impossibility of what she'd unearthed. Visions of a little boy swam back into her mind and she once more called out to him.
"Tobyyyyyy? Toby!"
Then another name came back to her as she ran away, and she sucked in a deep lungful of air to expel it as she turned her twisted, teary expression to the sky, which in turn looked upon her bleak prospects in sorrow.
"JARETH!"
A hunched, stumpy figure exited his ramshackle abode as the twin suns began their great ascent, keys jangling at his deformed hips as he came to a premature pause and turned to look up at the foreboding doors before him. So familiar were they now, they were as much a part of his home as the pixies flitting to and forth, though the latter had never changed as he had known them. He spied them as vermin, yet he didn't dispatch them with as much vigour as is predecessor. Gatekeeper. Protector. Loyal subject. Terms that now fell on increasingly deaf ears, for he had never had the opportunity nor necessity to fulfil his duties.
The doors to the Labyrinth had aged somewhat in the past millennia from the gleaming onyx and carved metal giants that had once wrought such fear and trepidation in the hearts of all runners. Now the metal had rusted, spiderwebs and decaying holes filling the voids and valleys that decorated them. They drank light instead of reflecting it, making the stone walls that housed them look all the more decrepit. He sighed, eyeing them with wary fervour. Every morning he looked at them as he did now. So why did they now bring him such ill ease?
For the simplest of reasons; They were not closed. The doors were inverted enough to allow the passage of a single person intent on not being seen and nothing more, a steady breeze blowing the old leaves that decorated their base now entering the dilapidated corridor that had seen no movement for over 1000 years. On the doors themselves there were twin patches on either side that stood out from the rest of the leaning entryway. Not handprints, nay, for no mere mortal could push open doors as heavy set as these. No… the patches spread in a steady radius that faded the further outwards He looked. Gleaming. Clean. New. And the fear that gripped Him held him immobilised in its grasp till nausea built and he finally tore himself away to dry retch against the nearby bracken.
A little while later he straightened, trembling hand running over his keys, and he took a staggering step forward. Then another. And another. Until finally he passed over the threshold and entered the Labyrinth for the first time in seven decades, heading for the thin beacon of light guiding him ever deeper, thoughts of anxiety giving way to that of wonder.
Sarah shifted uncomfortably, barely restraining an ill felt sigh as she blinked away the burning itch building behind her eyes. She hadn't thought to truly ask what Jaque needed for his "project" and now sorely wished that she had. The past week she had been nothing but stressed and tired, trying and failing to fit in time to phone Toby and ask how he was doing after what had transpired when she'd been at home. With the stranger who had turned up in the middle of a bad storm, when there had been glitter turning up all over the house, and his new obsession with her little red book.
The book that she had been so sure she had packed so he couldn't run down the dark road that she had, that she now couldn't find. Honestly, it had been right there next to her car keys. How on earth had she forgotten it, or lost it? It was almost as if it had a mind of its own.
Jaque sat across the room for her, easel on one side of him, table laden with clay and tools to the other, a look of deep concentration on his face meeting her whenever his face appeared around the portrait he had painted of her the week before, or emerged from behind the bust he was carving of her face. Seemingly unconscious of how uncomfortable she was, or at least, he seemed it. Unless he was ignoring it.
He had her dressed in an unusual garb of which she'd never worn. A green slip of a dress with off shoulder straps which adorned the tops of her arms, the neckline woven with stitched leaves of ivy and lily petals alike. No corset, no regimental tapered waistline. It merely sat along her figure as if draped there, as if crafted specifically for her. Lines of silver coursed up from the hems, matching the silver accessories which had been used to pull her hair up and off her face in a regal manner. He had had a friend step in to do that for her on numerous occasions now, always the same dress, always the same make up and accessories. Yet where she would have expected earrings, her ear was ensconced in a cuff. A delicate little thing, yet she hadn't been able to dispel the churning in her gut when she'd spied herself in a nearby mirror and seen that the cuff made her ears look… pointed.
All of her seemed a little off. So, she had turned away from it, refused any copies of any photographs taken, and sat where she was asked as quietly as she could as often as asked, until Jaque called it a day. She hated that when she was dressed like this, she fit in with the tapestries and statuettes around the University. Like Jaque and Aliannah seemed to, even though they neither dressed like nor acted like it. It was all very odd. All the same, it terrified her. That little part of her which had fallen in love with the Labyrinth and its world was giddy that she almost looked pretty like this, womanlier than she ever felt. A part of her that she thought had died. That she had killed.
Unbeknownst to her, Jaque was in his own world of turmoil from his vantage point across from her. His hands were shaking as he shaped the clay and carved away at it, eyes dancing away from it to the portrait, then to the living specimen before him. Wanting to put down his tools, thank her for her time, and high tail it back to Terauramulis and the safety of the walls of Aurea without a backwards glance. What he was doing was close to treason- when these were finished, he'd have to take them back home, but if he was caught with them then he could be in more than a little trouble with their High King and Queen. And Jareth. And Choilleach. And Xavior. Yet they couldn't stay here! Could they? Would they let him?
He could destroy the bust when it was done, right? Burn the portrait, so no one knew? Holy Fade, he didn't know what he was doing or what he had done.
He had had to substitute the designated peach for this occasion with a ruby red apple, because Sarah had visibly balked and protested under claims of nauseating childhood memories surrounding the fruit and had picked up the apple instead before stalking away to her appointed seat. He didn't know what her problem with peaches was, he had only chosen it since it was a symbol of the fae for fertility and prosperity, all things that they celebrated their females for. Apples were for wisdom and knowledge and were typically reserved for scholars and physicians, or renowned leaders.
All he did know right now was that the person sitting across from him was not Sarah Williams, mortal girl, mere whimsical fleeting fancy and problem for the Crown. Or at least, the girl who had walked in here today was not the woman now sitting cross-ankled, hands folded demurely in her lap, expression fierce and power wielding as she stared into the top of his head and the wall behind him.
No mortal that he had ever seen had precious gemstones in their eyes, with iris' that swelled when she grew emotional. Such pale and flawless skin that appeared to glow in the sunlight that he had sat her beside, so that it cast upon her at an angle and lit up her features while casting others into shadow. He had chosen the one room that doubled as an indoor courtyard- the ground underfoot was grass, the roof could be removed at will, and he had her bare feet resting upon it. It had been when that contact was made, plus that of the pure walnut wood of her hand carved chair when it had touched her bare skin of her arms and back.
The very essence of nature was flowing through her, and where he had meant for it to be a fun setting that would win her round to seeing that there was beauty in the lore of the University, he had made a very unconscious and accidental potential discovery that could endanger not only her, but everyone here in the school, and back in Terauramulis.
He shook his head slightly to dispel the thought, his messily gathered ponytail sliding across his back and tickling the raised hairs on his neck. It was just a trick of the scene, fae had been achieving this type of intangible magic for eons. Making things appear as they weren't. No one was in danger here, naught but his sanity. Maybe the fumes of the clay were getting to his head.
"How is it going?"
Her voice rang out melodically in the otherwise silent room, and his tool nearly dug into the clay around her eyes in fright. Barely catching himself in time, he brought it up on the off stroke and found that he had gotten the shape he'd been after for the past hour or so. Huh. Maybe he needed more interruptions, rather than less.
"The best work cannot be rushed. Patience is its own reward," he intoned thoughtfully, critically eyeing the features he had carved, nodding to himself. At any rate, he wouldn't be keeping this after it was done. It would be a tad too strange even for him. Baran's wife was a fan of sculptures however... perhaps he could pawn it off on her next time they met.
He caught her sigh almost before she made it, the inflection rather spoiling his crafted visage for a second, and he took the brief interruption to sit back and pick up his goblet of water that was twinkling merrily up at him where it caught the light. Not as good as wine, but easier to explain.
"Now now, dearest, you're doing absolutely splendidly. Don't spoil it with one of your endearing frowns, if you please," he gently chastised, tutting at her with a wicked smile as he peered over the rim of his drink, "Take a moment to relax- have a drink, stretch your legs. Enjoy the atmosphere. This is one of my favourite rooms in the cas- University."
He tried to cover his near mishap with a faked hiccup, having the decency to look shocked at himself as he once more shook his head. She merely nodded her head and moved, hands falling daintily to her sides as she gracefully stood up and made her way over to one of arched windows.
Indeed, this room reminded him of one of his rooms in Aurea... or at least, the guest quarters since he did not permanently live there. Not that anyone really thought that anymore since he had not travelled home in some time. He preferred his family in the Capital, his counterparts and companions. There was always far more going on.
Terauramulis would rather suit Miss Williams, he thought, if not the other way round. She looked quite striking the way she currently stood, ensconced by the sunlight which had lit her in a golden aura, chin tilted upwards into the warmth and gaze averted. One foot was tucked behind the other, arch to heel, toes peeking out of the folding and rippling hem of her dress. Picturesque and calm, unlike she usually was, wrapped in her righteous fury of her surroundings. Honestly, if she hated the University for what it was so steeped in, then why choose to enroll here in the first place?
Oh, but he knew that already, didn't he? They all did. She couldn't stay away if she tried, and oh hadn't she. Yet in the end, she always came back...
The tension slowly eased from his shoulders and he finally smiled, selecting a new tool and continuing with his work. Knowing that Sarah was too lost in her thoughts to realise that he didn't actually still need her in costume for what he was doing. Not with the portrait for reference. He just liked her company and was a glutton for punishment.
Sarah cleared her throat after a long while, long after Jaque had once more settled into his rhythm and all but forgotten that she was in here with him. The sun had lowered a little in the sky belying the time that had waned, and he halted long enough to realise had had been about to set his mucky tool into his water goblet rather than onto his rag.
"Jaque... why do you like this university so much?"
Blanching, Jaque stared at her for a long moment before sucking in a deep breath... pausing... and blowing out his cheeks. How to answer this without lying.
"I am fascinated in human myth, fantasy, history, and folklore. I'm aesthetically driven, and I believe you can agree with me that this building is quite beautiful in its architecture and design. Its many depicted murals and tapestries. In short, I am especially driven towards tales of beings like the Fae, or Faeries as some call them. This place offers it all, alongside typical subjects. I don't have to choose."
She nodded. "Yet you don't find it unsettling that it lays on borderline obsessive?"
He tilted his head, considering. "I wouldn't say obsessive... I'd say it was dedicated. Have you ever ready up on the history of this school, Sarah?"
She scoffed. "You mean the large tales of how "no one knows who originally founded it, it seemed to simply spring into beng"? Yeah. I have."
She turned to look at him finally, brow arched sceptically, hand holding the apple tucking it into the crook of her arm. She sighed, shrugging her shoulders almost defeatedly. "I do admire it. The school, that is. It's... it's beautiful. But it's too whimsical and intangible."
"But not all of you believes that, does it now, Sarah?"
Her eyes flickered, dancing away from him and back to the floor.
He pressed on, "In fact, you quite like how it's laid out. How each floor tells a different story, how each wing holds different tales. Even if the statuettes both terrify and intrigue you evenly."
"What would you know? What makes you think that?" She bit back defensively, arms now wrapping around herself protectively as if to ward him off.
Jaque smiled again, this time a little sadly. "All to much, really. That's how I met you, remember? Little miss jitters..." he trailed off, tucking some of his hair behind his ear, "You walk around as if you've the weight of a world on your shoulders. The air of a princess, or forgotten Queen, separated from her land."
He waggled his brows at her as if to dispel how serious that had sounded, wiggling his fingers too in a playful magical manner. Careful that no sparks or such leapt from his fingers.
"You're hilarious."
She rolled her eyes, finally stalking back to her seat.
"I know," he said cheekily, flashing her a grin.
Seated once more, she let the pads of her feet skiff over the blades of grass for a minute or so, forgetting herself and sinking her teeth into her apple. "Were the bare feet really necessary? You're only sculpting a bust, surely I could have kept some shoes on?"
This time it was Jaque's turn to roll his eyes. "When was the last time you let your hair down and took a walk on some grass in your bare feet? Really?"
She thought, munchind idly on her mouthful. He narrowed his eyes at her scoldingly, lips pursing in contempt, but she ignored him. "About ten years ago, give or take. When I was still a kid. You kinda grow out of that sort of thing when you grow up, y'know."
"Ah ah ah- growing old is unavoidable, but growing up is optional. I'm doing you a favour you know. Helping you reclaim your passing youth, or something like that."
They fell back into companionable silence, Sarah making short work of her apple and having the decency to grab another of the same ilk to hold before Jaque could have a chance to actively scold her.
Eyes now finished, nose standing proud, he began on her mouth- yet another feature he had been anxious about. He did this for a living at home, so why was this causing him so much aggravation and nervousness now?
Glancing up at her, her attention diverted from him once again, he carefully broached their last conversation again.
"So... why do you hate the University so much? You seem to have this... this loathing for the fae, like a personal vendetta. Scorn me for being so direct, yet it's so obvious to anyone around you..."
She flinched, pulling away from him with a sharp intake of breath... then she sighed. Rubbed at her forehead and tried to smile at him apologetically. "Sorry for shitting on what you love."
"Oh, it's not a slight on my part, I don't take it personally like some others around here. I just find it ardently curious is all. You being seemingly at war with yourself, yet wholly unwilling to be alone around one of our many guardians which stand vigil in our various wings despite that fascination."
She shrugged again. "It was er… a childhood trauma, of sorts. Kinda hard to explain. Long story short, my imagination landed me in quite some trouble, I had to get some serious help. Nothing too interesting."
He sat forward. "Oh, but it is very interesting, my dear. What kind of trouble could love of the Fae have brought to a youngling?"
The word slipped out as second nature and her attention seemed to focus on it for a moment, before disregarding it. He was an eccentric guy… his choice of language was just another facet of that.
"You'll find me more than a little mad if I say, honestly, and I'd rather not have that following me around here if I can help it."
"Better mad than some other things, I daresay. What is madness but a rebellion of society's regimental construct of normalcy?"
"Very philosophical."
"Indeed."
He stayed silent, yet when she seemed unwilling to come forth with anything else, he pressed once more. "So, what happened? How young are we talking, to embarrass you so even still?"
His tone was sympathetic as was his expression, but he moved away from his art station to give her his undivided attention.
She laughed self-deprecatingly, head swinging to the side and hiding under her hair, "Would you believe I was 15? Ridiculous, I know."
"The brink of womanhood, it could very well be argued. Certainly for… well, our kind."
The words sat strange on his tongue, flashing painfully as if he'd come close to lying. Real lies were impossible, not just avoided. Physically could not be done. But white lies were different… and for the younger ones, sometimes quite dangerous.
She nodded. "Well, my mum left me a book when I was really little- The only thing I have of her, my dad never spoke of her, so I don't know where she went or if she's still alive. Don't remember her, either. But I grew up with the book and slowly it… it took over my life," her hands fell to her lap again with a small slap, fingers digging into the thin material of her dress, "It was a period of my life where things were a little trying and I was too immature to deal with my own issues. Couple that with an over active imagination and well… you get a disaster like me."
Jaque's brows were climbing, now anxious that he may be close to gleaning some priceless information. Hell, if she said the right thing, he could be back in Terauramulis tonight! Though… as he looked at her… he thought he'd rather miss his new friend's company if he did take his leave. Not to mention his innate distrust of her other companion… of whom he was yet to see a healer due to. He didn't quite feel comfortable with leaving her alone with her for too long.
"Oh come now, surely you're being dramatic? What did you do, stick plasticine to your ears and get it stuck in your hair? Upset a boy or two?" He grinned cheerfully, sitting back and kicking up his booted feet. His head ducked forward a little, and once more she was reminded of his striking resemblance to another figment of her imagination as his pale blond hair fell in his face.
"No… no, I went a lot further than that. Look, it's honestly not as interesting as you're making it out to be-"
"Call me a fanatic for stories! I love hearing snippets of other people's lives! Allow me to grant you a memory from my own, let me see…" he trailed off and drummed his gloved hands against his chin, eyes upcast, "When I was…. Oooh, I'd say about 12? Give or take- anyway, semantics – I became convinced I could fly! Totally convinced, after watching one too many movies. Well, I stood atop a balcony in full view of my entire family, crowing about my latest trick, and promptly stepped off it into thin air believing I would sprout wings!"
Sarah's hands flew to her mouth in horror, her eyes diverting to his legs then back to his face, "Jaque! How reckless could you- you could have died! Dear lord, man, what were you thinking?!" She demanded, "What happened?!"
He lifted a shoulder, popping a grape into his mouth from his earlier stash, "Nothing much, got a bit hurt, got in a lot of trouble, became the butt of a few jokes for a few years. But here I am, now I know I cannot merely sprout wings from my back, and I'm all the wiser."
He threw up another grape and tipped back his mouth to catch it. "So, assuming you didn't jump off a roof, what's so bad about what you did?"
Slowly, very slowly, Sarah pulled her hands away from her face. Still very much shocked by what he'd said, yet now feeling slightly more pliant. "Well, the book I told you about? It was a tale of a Fae king who fell in love with a human girl, after she wished away her sibling due to feelings of hardship. She goes on a huge journey to recover the child, all the while he is trying to thwart her, and finally wrests back power from him after winning the child and returns home."
Jaque nodded, "Sounds like a Fae tale, in the general sense of the word. What about the book?"
"I… I grew utterly obsessed with it. It was a play, so I was teaching myself to perform it, learning the words by heart in my free time when I wasn't at school to recite in my spare time. I hated my Stepmother at the time, hated how I was always left with my baby brother who was always crying every weekend and most weeknights while they went out. Then after a particularly hard day, I was late home, she had a go at me and my Dad basically gave up on speaking to me, my brother was screaming… and I… I tried to wish him away."
Jaque choked on his grape, sitting forward quickly to dislodge it from his throat and reaching for his goblet of water. Sarah took it as him laughing at her and she grinned, nodding her head.
"Yes, I know, I was ridiculous. At any rate, my imagination took over during a thunderstorm which plunged us into a power cut- and it was really late at night, y'know? And I… Somehow, I imagined that I had become the girl from the book and I had to live out her ordeal in a slightly different capacity."
He wheezed, pressing hard on his chest, then hunched forward so she couldn't see and moved the obstruction with a bit of magic. Feeling air rushing back into his chest, he looked back up at her blearily with a weak smile. "Did anything particularly exciting happen?"
"I had to run the Goblin King's Labyrinth. This big, fuck-off stone maze filled with unhelpful creatures and riddles, on a time limit, to get my brother back. Made some friends, made some enemies, there was a dwarf called Hoggle who was terrified of the King and kept trying to derail my journey."
"What was a dwarf doing in the Labyrinth? Surely he didn't… live there?"
Caught up with how interested Jaque was becoming, she sat forward in her seat too and grinned. "Nope, he lived outside it. He was spraying pixies, killing them, when I came running up and struggled with the doors. In some ways, he let me in. I think he was the caretaker."
"And he tried to stop you getting your brother?"
"Yeah… yeah. Well, he gave me something, we wound up near this horrific smelling bog with our other friend Ludo, who was a stone calling troll. I saved him earlier on. By this point, I'd made many wrong decisions, been wound up by a talking worm, ended up in an oubliette, nearly cut into shreds by a metallic contraption called The Cleaner, then met a talking dog who rode a different dog. Then Hoggle… gave me a peach."
At this point, Jaque's eyes widened exponentially, and he dribbled the water from his goblet down his shirt. "Where did he get the peach?"
"From Ja- From the King. It was tainted."
Jaque hissed, letting out a low whistle to cover up his swear. "Tainted how?"
"Well one minute I was so happy with this peach because it was the first thing I had eaten in about ten hours, then I took a huge bite out of it. My vision started spinning, these bubbles started appearing with dancing people in them, and twinkling music started playing from somewhere. Then suddenly I wasn't in the Labyrinth anymore. I was in a ballroom."
"You were in a court."
Sarah nodded, not paying attention to the new and very serious tone Jaque had adapted, "I suppose you could call it that. All decked out in a silver dress and heels, hair pinned back and up elaborately. I forgot everything, everything about who I was and what I was supposed to be doing. The king had already taunted me during my run, but now I was searching for him. Searching amid this terrifying masked crowd, with the most beautiful music playing, and when I found Him I suddenly felt like I had come… home…"
She stopped speaking, seemingly lost in memory, and Jaque was glad. Because he was shaking. With anger, fear, and the dire need to speak to someone who was definitely not human.
"What… what happened then?"
"He sang to me? I was just so lost in him. He was the only one without a mask other than me, and he had the most fascinating eyes. Different colours and sizes, these makeups marking… highlighting his features so strikingly."
"He sang to you."
"Yeah! But then this clock started chiming and I felt wrong. I had to escape, to leave, and he was struggling to hold onto me with the most heart stricken and worried look, so close to kissing me, and I just knew that if I didn't get away that I was never going to."
"So you managed to leave?"
"I smashed some form of bulbous mirror with a chair, ended up in a scrap heap, and I met some more goblins. I remembered who I was and what I was doing, I stormed his city, then I confronted him."
"What happened to the peach?"
"Oh, I threw that away," she pulled a face, "It was covered in maggots and at any rate, I'd already had one hell of a trip and didn't want another one."
"What happened when you confronted him?"
Sarah paused, narrowing her eyes at him suspiciously. "Wow, why so nosy"
Jaque grinned, "It's a truly riveting tale! I'm excited is all, go on, tell me what happened next!"
She smiled, "I jumped from a staircase in an escher room after he sang to me again, telling me what he'd done for me, to get to my brother. Instead he appeared in another outfit, tried to reason with me, tried to get me to give up on Toby for my dreams."
"What a catch, a man literally offering you your very dreams."
She snorted. "Oh, completely. It was sorely tempting… I was rather self involved up until that night."
"You? You're the most selfless person I know!"
"But I wasn't always. Anyway, he gave me an ultimatum. Something like… what was it…"
"Leave or I'll kill you?"
Sarah laughed loudly, clapping her hands together before covering her mouth and shaking her head. "Nooo, no no, silly! No! He had already tried intimidating me, dominating me, herding me… this time he made a request. To fear him, love him, do as he said, and he would be my slave."
A high pitched, strangled sound emitted from Jaque's throat, his eyes now about popping out of his head, and he struggled to not. "Mhhmm…" he tried, forcibly clearing his throat, "And…?"
"And I said he had no power over me."
She stopped paying attention to Jaque, who was about having an aneurysm across from her, and shrugged. The light left her eyes and she stared down at her knees.
"Well, it worked. I went home, Toby was in his crib sound asleep. My friends showed up in my mirror and then everyone I had met in that journey wound up in my room. I can't remember when they left or when I woke up, but I tried to tell everyone about it. I was so excited to tell them of how I had bested a Fae, how I had saved Toby, and they sent me to a shrink. Then another, and another, and another. I had to change schools because I became mercilessly bullied by both my teachers and my peers, fell into a deep depression, and I had to come to the realisation that it never happened. It was all in my head. And now… now the Fae terrify me, because I while I know they're not real, I know what they could be capable of."
Suddenly jumping out of her seat as the clock in the courtyard began to chime, she ran towards her stuff at the back of the room. "Shit! I'm so sorry, Jaque, but I really have to go, I said I'd join Aliannah for dinner then I need to phone my family. Catch up soon, yeah?"
She turned and ran out of the room, the door slowly spanning shut behind her, and at the back of the room Jaque uttered a faint farewell and passed out.
They were screwed. He was screwed. He was so, so, so screwed.