Exchange Fic #15: The Rescue (2/3)
The actual identity of the writer will remain secret until all the submissions are in and posted.
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Title: The Rescue, Part Two
Author: tallulah99
Recipient: wizzcat01
Prompt: Poor Jareth, always the villain of the piece, forever the bad guy, but what if just for once he was the hero in the tale (intentional or reluctant)? After all, good guys always get the girl - right?
Rating: T for some swearing
Plot Summary/Author's Notes: A dozen years has passed since Sarah's first visit to the Labyrinth and this time Sir Didymus has gone and gotten himself into a world of trouble. Unable to save him on her own, Sarah swallows her pride and requests Jareth's aid. Is he willing to set aside past grievances and journey with her across the Underground to confront Didymus' captor? Who is the Borderlands Queen and what is her history with the enigmatic King of the Goblins? Will their quest be successful? And who is it that needs to be rescued really?
Part One
The morning dawned slowly. Color crept furtively into the landscape, gradually transforming the monochromatic world into full on, brightly-painted morning. The wood clung stubbornly to the hushed quiet of night as the sun's early rays explored the day with golden fingers, making everything seem to glow softly from within. A single note from an early-rising bird rang out in the silence and then, as if it had been signal, the rest of the wood exploded into life with the sounds of nature.
Sarah watched the transformation with quiet awe. She could not remember the last sunrise she had seen, but she was sure it had never seemed as glorious or magical as this one. She refused to indulge the insidious little voice that whispered that it might be her last.
In a clump of grass near her shoulder she watched the laborious movements of an ungainly ladybug as it clambered its way over a leaf by her head. She smiled at its dogged effort and wondered that it didn't give up the awkward effort and simply fly away.
Suddenly the figure of a blue-winged fairy zipped up, snatched the ladybug, stuck a tiny tongue out at Sarah and zipped away, the frantic insect wriggling furiously in its grasp.
"I hate this place," she said out loud and sat up. Turning her head she found herself looking directly into Jareth's unfathomable eyes.
"Good morning," he said, with an ironic smile. "Sleep well?"
"Nope. You?" She stood up and stretched, her muscles protesting. She had slept, but little and that poorly. Nightmares had forced her awake more times than she could count and finally she had given up and simply lain awake, quietly in the dark, waiting for the day to begin. She felt, and knew she looked, like she'd been drug backwards through the bog. She wished desperately for a shower, but settled for splashing a bit of her drinking water on her hands and scrubbing her face vigorously. Even that little bit of indulgence made her feel more human. She set to combing her hair out with her fingers and pulled it into a haphazard pony-tail.
Jareth, naturally, looked as if he'd spent the night in a five star hotel. His fair, fly-away hair looked as it always did and there wasn't a single streak of dirt or smudge on him anywhere. Even his eyes were clear and bright. She looked down at her own wrinkled and grubby clothes and thought how unfair the universe could be.
He shook out his cloak and flipped it back over his shoulder with a practiced swirl. "Break your fast and quickly," he said. "The sooner we are on our way, the sooner you can get that fool Didymus back to his bog."
Sarah resisted the urge to scowl at him, but instead reached into her satchel and pulled out the oatcakes Hoggle had carefully wrapped and packed for their breakfast. She handed half to Jareth without comment and then ate hers while she bundled up her gear.
By the time she finished repacking her supplies and stirring the ashes of their fire, Jareth had already moved into the center of a small clearing a few yards away. He stood in the center of the space with his head thrown back and his eyes closed against the glare of the new sun. Sarah watched him through the trees for a moment, wondering once again what possible motivation could have compelled him to come out here with her - to sleep in the dirt and risk his life helping her rescue someone who meant little to nothing to him.
Forcibly she pushed her concerns away and moved to join him in the clearing. She had too much else to worry about today to let her reservations about him cloud her mind. She had chosen to trust him. There was no turning back now, no second guessing and no doubts. Not until Didymus was home safe.
The fear she had refused to indulge through the dark hours of the night came roaring back unchecked in the warm light of day. This was really going to happen. She was really getting ready to go and attempt to rescue Didymus from an insane woman with magical abilities with no one but Jareth by her side. A chill no fire could touch went through her and she shivered.
"Are you ready?" he asked as she approached.
"No," she said, pleased when her voice came out strong and steady. "But what the hell."
He held out a hand and she reached for it, hesitating at the last second. "Why are you helping me?" she asked softly. She wasn't sure what made her ask it now. She expected a flippant answer if any at all and was surprised when he regarded her seriously for a long moment.
"I owe a debt," he said finally.
"To me?" she asked, puzzled.
"No." But he didn't offer further clarification and reached once more for her hand.
She wasn't sure why his answer satisfied her, it raised more questions than it answered, but somehow she felt that it was the only answer she needed. She took his hand, oddly buoyed by the solid pressure of his fingers as they closed around hers.
"I will take us through the Forbidden Forest to the edge of her castle grounds. We'll walk from there."
She nodded and took a deep breath.
He smiled at her, showing his teeth. "One, two…" and then the world dissolved around her.
From her first visit to the Labyrinth when Jareth had pulled her across the barrier between their worlds, to the trips she had taken by herself through the portal in her bedroom mirror, she had crossed into the Underground and back without incident more times than she could count. On every trip she had felt a slight dizziness, as if she had stood too quickly after sitting for too long. This time, it felt like she'd slammed into a wall.
Sarah came back to herself lying on her side in the snow, stunned from a fall she didn't remember taking. She groaned, sucking in a painful breath with oxygen-starved lungs. Everything hurt. With monumental effort she rolled slowly onto her back. She was too preoccupied by her own discomfort to be puzzled by the bare, frost-covered branches that cut across the sky above her or the thick blanket of snow that was slowly seeping into her inadequate clothing beneath her. Nothing seemed to be broken, but every inch of her body felt bruised. She turned her head to the side and saw Jareth lying prone a short distance away, unmoving.
"Oh God, no!" she whispered and pulled herself upright. She staggered to her feet and winced, but her legs held beneath her. She hobbled through drifts, stumbling over hidden obstacles buried in the snow and fell to her knees next to the still figure.
There was no blood, no obvious trauma that she could see, but her hands shook as she rolled him onto his back, praying frantically in wordless terror as she searched him for injuries. His face was pale even against the pure white of the snow, and for a moment she was sure, certain that he was gone. And then there was a slight tremor of movement beneath her hands and she felt an almost sickening flood of relief.
"Thank God, thank God," she whispered over and over. She brushed the snow off of his face and touched his cheek gently, willing his eyes to open. "Come on, Jareth," she said, softly encouraging. "Come on. Wake up!"
His eyes snapped open, reflecting the pale grey sky overhead and then flickered to meet hers. "That was unexpected."
"You don't say," she said with a laugh, feeling mildly giddy from the combination of pain, fear and relief. "Are you alright?"
"I'll be better when you're no longer digging your elbows into my chest," he said, sounding pained.
"Oh! Sorry!" She sat back and gave him room to lever himself into a sitting position. "What the hell was that?" she asked. "And for that matter, where the hell are we?" She looked around, finally taking stock of their surroundings now that the first flush of panic had begun to ebb. "Is this snow? Are we even still in the Underground?"
"In reverse order," he began, climbing slowly to his feet, "yes, yes, exactly where I expected us to be and I cannot be certain, but I can hazard an educated guess."
She gave him a disbelieving look. "Wow. It's amazing. It's like you're on smartass auto-pilot. Can't you maybe, just this once, give me a straight damn answer and tell me how the hell we ended up in fucking Narnia?" She punctuated her question by hurling a handful of snow in his direction, suddenly annoyed that she'd bothered being worried about him.
"We are on the outskirts of Elsbeth's grounds," he said, brushing snow from his cloak with emphasis. "Exactly where I expected us to be.".
"Did you expect this?" she asked a little shrilly, gesturing at their frozen environment. "It was like seventy-five degrees three minutes ago!"
Jareth didn't reply immediately. He turned in a brief circle, absorbed in his examination of the landscape, his brow creased in contemplation.
They were in a shallow wooded valley that sloped up and away from them into a dense copse of leafless trees and tangled underbrush. It was a wild wood, overgrown and untended, but subdued by the thick blanket of snow. The air was heavy, but unnaturally silent. There were no animal sounds, no soughing of wind, no rusting of leaves or distant bird calls, nothing but the crunch of Jareth's boots in the snow and Sarah's own rapid breathing.
"Elsbeth loves the snow," he said, as if such a declaration should have cleared something up for her. "But she could not have…" He shook his head. "Rather, she wasn't capable of this level of control, this range when I saw her last. But clearly…"
"She did this with magic?" She said. "But why? What's the point?"
"There doesn't need to be a point," he said. "She can do it, so why not?" He frowned and then snapped his head around, tilted as if listening.
"What are you…?"
"Shhh!" he hissed.
And then she heard it. Distantly, a rhythmic, percussive sound carried through the trees. She looked wide-eyed at Jareth and saw understanding cross his features. "Damn," he said softly. "Her power has grown." He looked around the valley again, this time almost wistfully. His eyes came to rest on Sarah, beginning to shiver in the cold she had not anticipated or prepared for. "She warded the grounds," he said, finally, in explanation. "And we hit the barrier created by the ward. We could have walked through it without even realizing, but since we were using magic, it stopped us cold." He turned in the direction of the noises, growing perceptibly closer. "I had thought to evade her notice until we arrived at the castle gates…but she knows we're here."
The distant, reverberating sounds had gotten louder and Sarah realized suddenly, unpleasantly, that what she was hearing was at least two sets of sounds, very like the rhythmic cadence of marching feet. "Footsteps," she said, nearly choking on the word.
He nodded his head grimly. "I'm afraid so. Her guards are designed to respond to intruders automatically. I imagine that's how Didymus got caught." His eyes flicked back to her. "And how we're going to get caught too."
"Designed?" she said, bewildered. She looked up to the ridge at the top of the valley. The measured thud of unseen feet had grown closer and was joined now by the crashing of underbrush and the crack of snapping branches that echoed like gunshots in the valley. Some of the distant treetops were beginning to sway; marking the impossibly rapid passage of something large. "Jareth, what the hell is that?"
"Elsbeth's guards," he replied just as the tree line above them exploded. Two massive things barreled down the ridge toward them, splintering trees and flattening brush effortlessly in their single-minded charge.
Sarah opened her mouth, but the scream stuck in her throat.
She had never seen anything like these creatures. Nothing in her experience or imagination could have conceived of such horrific abominations as the two enormous, hulking nightmares that were hurtling towards her at a speed that should have been impossible given their size. They were covered in mottled tan and black fur with stumpy ill-defined legs that churned across the landscape in an awkward, lumbering gait that belied their speed. At easily three times her own height, they were broad across the shoulders and heavy, each pounding step they took sent shocks through the valley that Sarah could feel through the soles of her boots.
Terrifying as they were in form, it was the faces that had frozen her into place as though rooted to the spot.
They didn't have any.
Their heads, if the amorphous lump on top of their torsos could be termed as such, sat low between their shoulders with nothing like the rigid contours of a skull. There were no facial features - no hole or slit or fold or irregularity of surface of any kind that could indicate a nose or mouth or eyes. Blindly, deafly, mutely, they plummeted down the slope and into the valley, thundering relentlessly onward.
"Jesus, God," Sarah said hoarsely and realized she was clutching Jareth's arm hard enough to leave bruises. She wanted to run, wanted to at least try to escape the grotesque figures bearing down on them even as she acknowledged the futility. Her mind screamed at her to run, to do something to save herself. But there was nothing to be done.
"Get behind me." Jareth's voice was imperious and commanding, the tone of a man accustomed to obedience. There was no sign in his bearing of the shock and terror that ran through her veins like ice water. It was a relief to let him step in front of her.
He stood with his cloak thrown back and his legs spread, boots digging into the snow, braced as if for impact. As the creatures hit level ground and started across the valley floor, he brought his hands up in a forceful gesture that Sarah felt sure should have stopped the beasts in their tracks, if not annihilated them altogether.
Expectation made the moment seem to hang breathlessly in time. It took a beat longer than it should have for Sarah to realize nothing had happened and one more for it to sink in that nothing was going to. It hadn't worked.
"No!" gasped Jareth, that one word filled with such stark disbelief that Sarah wanted to reach out to him even as the beasts were upon them.
The thick arms of the guard closed around her waist and yanked her off her feet, barely changing its stride as it hauled her in. A panicked scream tore from her throat as she fought backwards, cut off abruptly as her head cracked against a passing tree and darkness took her.
She regained consciousness some time later still wrapped in the massive arms of the guard with no concept of how much time may have passed, but they were still moving rapidly through the wood. She could see little, buried in the heavy fur of the creature as she was, but she could still hear the reverberating thud of solid footfalls and the snap of branches and foliage as they plowed through the trees. She realized suddenly that her hearing was completely unimpeded by any sounds whatsoever coming from her captor. There was no huff of heavy breathing or grunt of pain as yet another pole-sized tree snapped off on violent impact. This thing, whatever it was, did not breath.
As strange and horrifying as everything had been up to this point, this was the thing that sent her over the edge. Panic sang through her body, and she struggled desperately to escape the iron grip of the creature that held her. It was useless, of course. She would have had as much effect beating her hands against a boulder, but she couldn't not fight. She screamed her frustration, gasping for breath as tears streamed down her cheeks and into the mottled fur under her cheek.
Distantly, through the fog of her terror, she heard her name being called. It might have come from another world altogether. It was the forceful tone of the voice that finally worked its way into her consciousness and pulled her back to the present.
"Sarah! Damnation girl, answer me! Sarah!"
She couldn't see him, but she could tell that he was close and that fact alone bolstered her courage. She was even able to manage mild amusement that it should be his presence that evoked a sufficient sense of normalcy to be reassuring. She took a few shuddering breaths and called out in reply. "I'm here! I'm okay!"
The steady pounding of the creature's footsteps slowed and Sarah felt rather than saw the change as they plunged from the bright, cold air of the outdoors into the musty, closed-in atmosphere of neglected habitation. Before the realization that they had reached the castle of the Borderlands Queen had fully sunk in, Sarah found herself dumped unceremoniously in a heap on the cold, cobbled floor.
They were in a cavernous, stone-walled anteroom that looked exactly like what the entrance to an ancient castle should look like if one were touring its ruins. Two wide marble staircases with open balustrades curved up to a deep-set terrace on the next level. There was no apparent light source, but the high windows above them spilled wan sunlight across the landing so that the stairs shone yellow as aged bone against the shadows. Corridors led off of the main entryway like the spokes of a wagon wheel and disappeared off into the gloomy depths of the castle. At one time the cold cobbled floors had been thoughtfully lined with plush, intricately patterned runners, but those had been worn down to threads through heavy usage and bleached by the passage of time. It must have been a breathtaking sight at one time, but now it was little more than a dank ruin with rotted tapestries on the walls and gilded furnishings that glowed only faintly through layers of tarnish and grime.
Sarah rolled to her knees and wondered if she was going to live long enough to appreciate the impressive bruises she was collecting. A few yards away, Jareth was climbing slowly to his feet looking reassuringly pissed off. He glanced briefly in her direction, but his attention was almost immediately caught by some movement at the top of the stairs. Feeling sick with apprehension, Sarah followed his eyes upwards to the gallery above.
A sweet voice rang out in the dark. "Jareth, you have come at last to visit me!"
The queen of the Borderlands padded silently to the balcony at the top of the stairs on bare and dirty feet with two more of her silent hulking guardians trailing after her like a pair of docile lapdogs. She wore a wretched gown, which may have once been white, but now hung in ruined tatters around her filthy legs. A golden circlet set with colorful stones rested atop the tangled black nest of her hair and glinted in the dim light as she descended the stairs with a light, skipping step. She was slim and dainty with delicate, nearly elfin features. 'Child-like' wasn't the word for it, she was a child, at least in form. Full, rosy cheeks and a sweetly upturned nose showed the promising lines of a future beauty that she would never attain. She was nothing like the imposing figure Sarah had been anticipating, the top of her head would barely have reached Sarah's shoulder had she been standing close enough for comparison. Sarah was absurdly thankful that she was not.
"I have, Elsbeth," Jareth replied. His voice echoed gravely in the cavernous room. Sarah gave him a searching look. His face was expressionless, carefully blank as he watched the girl traipse down the curving stone staircase.
The diminutive Elsbeth, however, fairly glowed with fervor. Her eyes were wide and overly bright in the dim light that filtered into the hall through the grimy windows. "You have brought me a gift?" she asked, breathily, turning her disconcerting gaze on Sarah.
Sarah repressed a shudder and tried to resist the urge to hide behind Jareth.
"Rather the opposite, I'm afraid," he said, conversationally. He strolled a few steps, stopping as if to admire a distorted, but vaguely human-looking statue that dominated the entryway. It didn't pass Sarah's notice that his sudden interest in psychotic artwork placed him directly in between her and the certifiably insane infant across the room.
"Who is she?" Elsbeth asked. She cocked her head to the side, regarding Sarah with unblinking curiosity.
"My name is Sarah." She wasn't going to stand there and let the tiny psychopath pretend she wasn't in the room. Jareth scowled at her and she pointedly ignored him.
"Oh! But you are human?" The girl twirled in a happy little circle as if unable to contain her excitement. "But it has been ages since I've seen another human!" She strode forward, brushing past Jareth without a glance, and seized Sarah's hand with an unexpectedly firm grasp. "We shall have so much to talk about!"
Her small hands felt unpleasantly warm, nearly feverish, and made Sarah's skin crawl.
"We're, uh, looking for our friend," she managed. She moved her body as far away from her trapped hand as she could without attempting to pull it away. She didn't actively try to free her hand, mostly out of the fear that she wouldn't be able to. At least this way she could pretend that she wasn't being held hostage by a four foot tall child.
"A retainer of mine," Jareth added. He approached with both hands extended in greeting and, as propriety demand, Elsbeth dropped her iron clad grip on Sarah's hand to accept Jareth's formal greeting with obvious pleasure. He took both of her hands in his and kissed them graciously and then repeated the exercise on each of her dirt-smudged cheeks. "I hate to be a bother Elsbeth, but Didymus is forever getting himself into some little scrape or another. I had heard that he was seen in your wood and had hoped that he might have found his way here somehow." He stepped back, very decidedly placing himself as a barrier between her and Sarah.
"Did-he-mas?" The girl's eyes narrowed slightly, giving her a sweetly baffled expression and then she lit up, animation charging through her like an electric current. Even her pallid cheeks flushed pink in enthusiasm. "Oh yes! The puppy!" And then almost immediately she sobered, her bow-like lips pursed outward into a dramatic pout. "He was very naughty. He should not have been here."
Sarah felt the blood drain from her face. "Wha- What happened to him? Where is he?"
The girl was frenzied again, hopping in place like a maniacal rabbit. "Oh! Oh! Can we play a game? I know lots of good games!"
"Didymus, Elsbeth," Jareth said lightly stressing the name. "We have come for Didymus."
The dim entryway flared suddenly into light. Hundreds of candles of every shape and size burst into radiant flame from every horizontal surface. A massive chandelier that had hung lost in the empty darkness above them was a small incandescent sun that cast a ring of shadows around their feet.
Sarah winced against the sudden burst of light.
"You have grown more powerful," Jareth commented. His voice was mild, but his face was pinched and pale, the yellow candlelight leaving dark hollows beneath his eyes.
She nodded dreamily without looking at him. "I have had time to practice." She did meet his eyes then, her expression serious. "You'll never get good at anything unless you practice, you know." She executed an awkward pirouette, humming lightly to herself. "How long has it been, my Jareth? How many hundreds of years since we last spoke? I seem to have lost my watch so I haven't the time." She seemed to be distracted by something across the room and slowly started to wander away.
Soundlessly, her huge guards shambled behind her.
"Wait!" Sarah choked. "Please! My friend, is he okay? Is he here?"
Elsbeth gave her a puzzled look. "Who? No one is here." She gestured at their empty, sepulchral surroundings. "It is only me and my bears here today. We have no guests."
"We're looking for Sir Didymus," Jareth repeated gently. "We know he is here."
The little girl's expression went from calm puzzlement to red-faced fury in an instant. "No, no, no!" She stamped her bare feet soundlessly on the stone floor, her voice rising to a shriek. "He was naughty! He should not have been here! You should not be here! This is my kingdom! I am the queen! You have no power here, Jareth! Kneel! I want you both to Kneel!"
Unseen force pressed down on Sarah until she collapsed to her knees. She gasped against the pain that pushed her down, bowing her head until it was nearly on the floor. Out of the corner of her watering eyes she saw Jareth brought down in a similar fashion.
"Take them!" she screamed to the guards. "Take them to the dungeons! Put them in a cell and lock the door! Return to me when you are done."
The crushing pressure disappeared and Sarah found herself hefted like a rag doll once more. She struggled in the creature's grasp, trying at the very least to see something of her surroundings, but she quickly lost all sense of direction as she was jogged down one lightless passage after another. Twists and turns and bone-rattling flights of steps ran together into one endless blur until she was almost looking forward to whatever was on the other end. And then she was once again dropped gracelessly onto the floor, this time into a pile of musty smelling straw. She had barely managed to figure out which way was up when a heavy set of iron doors slammed shut with a resounding boom, inches in front of her face.
She scrabbled belatedly backwards and coughed against the cloud of dust and straw stirred up by her movements. A series of tiny slit windows up near the ceiling let in enough light to see by, but there was little worth seeing. The cell was surrounded on three sides by narrowly spaced iron bars and on the fourth by stone, presumably part of the outer wall of the castle itself. None of the other cells seemed to be occupied. Many of the iron doors hung open and the air smelled stale with disuse. She tried to wrap her brain around the realization that she was now locked in an actual dungeon and then decided to deal with it later.
There was a rustling sound from the dim corner of her cell and fear leapt up her throat. "Jareth?" she croaked, with desperate hope.
"Yes," he said, wheezing a bit himself. "It's me."
"Oh thank God. The intensity of the relief that coursed through her was absurd in contrast with the dire nature of their situation, but she was unspeakably grateful that they had ended up in the same cell. She crawled in his direction and groped until she found his hand and clasped it in both of hers like a lifeline. He seemed startled for a moment, but then closed his fingers firmly around hers. His grip was reassuringly steady.
"Are you okay?" he asked. "Are you hurt?"
"No, I don't think so. I'm going to be covered in bruises, but I'm alright. What about you? Did they drop you like a sack of potatoes too?"
He chuckled, a warm rumble that she felt through their joined hands. It was an oddly comforting sound. "Yes, but nothing seems permanently damaged. Elsbeth's guards are not well known for their tender care."
"What the hell are those things, Jareth? I've never seen anything like them." She shuddered at the memory of the grotesque figures.
"I would imagine not," he said. "They're golems."
"Gollums?" she said. "Like the thing in The Hobbit?"
"And you an English teacher too," he chided softly, but with a slight smile. "A golem is a kind of artificial life, creatures formed and controlled by magic. They're usually made of earth - I suspect Elsbeth's are clay beneath all that fur. At least that used to be her preferred medium. Magic is not capable of creating life or maintaining it, but golems are not really 'alive' in the strictest sense of the word. They are inorganic matter animated and sustained through the magical will of their creator."
"She…made them?"
He nodded. "Yes. She was always very good at that particular kind of magic. She seemed to prefer the company of her creations to that of the goblins, which I suppose I can understand to a certain extent. Golems are placid and silent creatures, whereas the goblins are anything but. She came here from a situation of such violent chaos; the calm simplicity of the golem's presence must have seemed a soothing alternative."
"Calm and soothing are not the first adjectives that come to mind when I think of those things," Sarah said wryly.
"They are though, at least as they are created. She made them big and they are very strong physically, but not at all intelligent. They will do exactly as they are commanded and absolutely nothing more or less. They have no capacity to think or choose and are painfully literal. She must have a care how she speaks to them."
Sarah snorted. "Well that's a bit terrifying." And then she had a thought. "Is that why people go missing? She tells her guards to 'throw them in the dungeon' and they actually throw them in the dungeon?"
"Some, no doubt. The golems are really nothing more than tools and any tool wielded improperly can yield disastrous results." Jareth lifted his eyes to meet hers and pursed his lips as if he were debating whether or not to continue. "Others however…" he went on slowly, almost grudgingly, "well, she is curious."
"Curious? Curious like how?" Sarah asked carefully. Reluctance was etched into every line of his body and he seemed weighted down by a sadness she was sure he had never given free reign before now. He had decided to let her in, but it meant delving into memories he preferred buried deep and forgotten.
"It's the reason she was banished, why I finally gave up on her." He had gently pulled his hand from her grasp and twisted his bare fingers into a ratty, moth-eaten blanket so tightly that his knuckles turned white. "I distanced myself from her after a time. Once it became clear that her madness was absolute and I was sure her mind was unreachable, I found myself making excuses, finding reasons to stay away for days and weeks, months even." He closed his eyes, his handsome face twisted in remembered grief. "I am ashamed of it now, horrified by the neglect I perpetrated upon a troubled girl who needed the guidance and care I could have…should have given her. I thought I had done what I could, what was expected of me, but I resented her for her helplessness, for feeling trapped by an obligation of my own devising."
His eyes opened, but he was no longer seeing Sarah or the filthy dungeon. She doubted he even remembered that he was speaking to her.
"I did not avoid her absolutely. When I was home, which had, admittedly, become an infrequent occurrence; I visited her before bed as a matter of course. I would check with her nurse and then see her for a few minutes. She spoke little sense and her moods were often mercurial and violent. It was a visit I little relished, but I looked at as my duty and her due. On that last night, I had not been gone so very long - a week or two perhaps and I arrived home very late. I considered skipping my visit, I never bothered to advise anyone of my arrival so she would not have been expecting me in any case, but instead I left my chambers and made my way to the wing of the castle that I had given her for her own. Her nurse was not in her rooms, and I remember thinking that boded poorly as it meant Elsbeth was likely being more of a handful than usual."
He swallowed convulsively. "I knew the moment I entered her chamber. The smell of death was overwhelming. She greeted me pleasantly, genteelly even, though she was covered from head to toe in blood and gore. She was calm, I would even go so far as to say happy. She had no regret, no horror at what she had done. She no longer had the capacity for those things. When I asked her, when I cried 'what have you done?!' she shrugged and said they were just playing." He gave a humorless chuckle. "She couldn't even understand why I was angry. She was lost…just lost."
He shuddered, but went on resolutely. "There were three of them. Two were castle guards on night duty. The other was the nurse I had assigned to take care of her when she first came to live at the castle. Pheera had been by her side, caring for her non-stop, every day for hundreds of years. She had dressed her, played with her, fed her…loved her." He stopped and turned his face away, pressing it hard against the bars of their cage. When he went on his voice was choked. "She tore them apart; eviscerated them one at a time. There were pieces everywhere. Her chamber was painted with blood." He turned back, his face filled with anguish, his eyes wet. "I banished her then. Brought her here to the edge of the world, put her in this castle and gave her a kingdom to play with. Then I put up the forest as a barrier and a warning and forbade that anyone should come this far. I tried to visit occasionally at first, brought her gifts, tried to reach her in some way, but there seemed nothing left of her mind and I finally realized that my presence only agitated her and so I stopped altogether." He trailed off into silence and then added quietly, "It has been many lifetimes since I last saw her."
For a long time they sat in silence. Jareth seemed lost in his own thoughts, his gaze distant and unfocused. Sarah was unsure of how she should feel. Pity, horror, sadness and fear all warred for dominance, but in the end she just went with her first inclination and even surprised herself.
She turned to him and put her arms around his slumped shoulders, resting her cheek against his back. He stiffened under her embrace, but didn't pull away. "You did your best," she said softly. "You did all you could for her. Remember how you told me that Didymus getting taken wasn't my fault? Well it isn't yours either. She isn't your fault. Her parents are responsible for what happened to her, not you. You did more than you had to, more than anyone, in my world or yours, would have expected of you. You have to forgive yourself, Jareth."
Hesitantly, he reached up and covered her hand with one of his own and then brought it to his lips and gently kissed her palm. "Thank you, Sarah," he said softly. He turned abruptly then and cupped her face between his hands. "We will get Didymus back," he said fiercely. "I always keep my promises and, given enough time, I correct my mistakes. This isn't over yet."
"Do you think he's here? Do you think he's still…"
"Yes," he said emphatically, his eyes narrowed as if daring her to disagree with him.
She smiled. "Thank you. I needed to hear that."
Jareth got up and prowled around the perimeter of their cell, pausing to try the bars periodically, but aged as they were, they held firm.
"You built her a castle and put in a dungeon." Sarah shook her head in disbelief. "Seriously, Jareth, what were you thinking?"
"It seemed like a good idea at the time," he said with a shrug.
"And now?"
"Not such a good idea."
"I should think not." Sarah crossed her arms and gave him a pointed look.
They slid easily back into the familiar pattern of their usual banter, but some of the ice had been chipped away and Sarah knew she'd never feel quite the same way about him again. It was more than just the shared danger and close quarters that had smoothed away the rough edges. He had proved himself capable of both pity and remorse, and perhaps most surprisingly of all, self-doubt. He'd hate to hear her say it, but he'd done a good job of humanizing himself today.
"Wait a second," she said, sitting up straight as a thought lodged in her mind. "How did you know I was an English teacher?"
A slow smiled spread across his face. "Shelves," he said, "libraries full of things I'm not telling you."
She rolled her eyes and made a disgusted sound. "Okay fine, tell me this instead - why doesn't your magic work? That's what happened when Heckle and Jeckle picked us up in the valley, isn't it? Adult male magical dysfunction?"
It was his turn to give her a withering look. "It's the ward Elsbeth put up. It's suppressing my magic. As long as they're up, I am powerless here." He shook his head. "She's strong. Stronger than I ever would have imagined she could become."
"How does she even know how to do any of this stuff? You said she's human, right? I would have thought you'd have to be -" She gestured vaguely in his direction. "Whatever you are."
"I taught her," he said from between his teeth. "I thought it would do her some good to have a purpose, to learn a skill few ever have the chance to master. She had been powerless her whole life. I wanted her to know what it was like to have control over her world."
Sarah looked up at the row of icicles that studded the tiny window overhead. "Well, she's certainly figured that part out."
"Still think I should forgive myself?" he asked wryly.
"Yes," she said, stressing the word. "Why should you keep punishing yourself for trying to help? Your intentions were good."
He quirked an eyebrow at her. "And what is it they say is paved with those?"
She waved a dismissive hand. "It makes for a good adage, but the road to hell is paved with all kinds of things. Showing sympathy for a lonely, abused little girl doesn't even rate." She leaned back against the rough stone wall and crossed her legs in front of her, shivering slightly against the frigid air coming from the narrow opening above them. She doubted it was cold enough in the dungeon to actually freeze to death yet, but once the sun went down it was anybody's guess. Idly she wondered if they were going to end up starving to death or if exposure would get them first and then shook herself irritably, hating the ease with which her thoughts wandered into such morbid territory.
Jareth gave her a questioning look, which she ignored. She didn't much want to discuss her fears or misgivings with him, mostly because the thing she feared the most was that he would agree with her and tell her he had been mistaken and that it really was hopeless after all. They could really only afford for one of them to hit rock bottom at a time.
Wordlessly, Jareth crossed the cell and sat down on the ledge next to her. Using his index finger he drew a set of parallel lines in the dirt and then drew another perpendicular set directly on top and sat back, looking at her expectantly.
She gave him a puzzled look and he rolled his eyes, exasperated. He reached out and drew an 'x' in the middle square of the grid he had drawn.
She laughed out loud. "This day has been so bizarre," she said but went ahead and placed an 'o' in a corner square.
For the next hour, to stave off both mind-numbing boredom and soul-crushing fear, she and the king of the goblins engaged in a cut-throat, no-holds-barred tic-tac-toe tournament for the ages.
Eventually, they began to talk. They spoke mostly of inconsequential things - Sarah's tenth grade English students, the goblin's annual chicken races, Toby's first year of high school, and the castle gardens where Jareth went to escape the chaos of the castle. They stayed clear of any reference to their current situation, to Elsbeth or even Didymus.
Even after they had abandoned their game, they kept on talking. As the afternoon passed away, they discussed books they had both read, music that touched their souls and the best way to get roses to grow in shade. Sarah described her first, and most decidedly last, attempt at college theater and Jareth laughed appreciatively in all the right places. He regaled her with endless stories about the antics of the goblins that left her nearly breathless with laughter.
Gradually the sun began to sink below the level of the windows and the yellow light that illuminated their cell turned slowly orange and then a dull, rusty red. Mealtimes came and went and the rumbling of their bellies, much like the passing of the time, went unacknowledged by either of them. Eventually, the sun sank below the level of the horizon and night set in. The dungeon was plunged into complete darkness and plummeting temperatures, and still they talked.
Without discussing it, they had ended up side by side back on the ledge, their hands intertwined once more. Sarah thought how very odd it was that this should seem so normal to her now. She couldn't decide if the camaraderie of a single day could bring her to this level of comfort or if she was merely unable to distinguish the absurd from the usual anymore. His hand was warm in hers, a solid reminder that she was not alone in the darkness, that theirs was a burdened halved by the sharing of it. She was grateful for his presence by her side and for the gentle burr of his voice as he told her yet another story, this time about the wise men from the north who wore the most foolish hats…
"Jareth?" she interrupted sleepily, her voice barely a whisper.
"Yes, love?"
"Would you have come anyway, if I hadn't asked you? Would you have come after Didymus on your own?" It was an easy question to ask in the dark when she didn't have to look him in the eye.
It was an easier question to answer in the dark as well, though it was several long minutes before he did so.
"No," he said at last. His voice was tinged with sadness. "But I would have regretted it for the rest of my life." He leaned over and kissed the top of her head, an act that was also easier to perform in the darkness. "Rest your head, Sarah. We'll figure out what to do in the morning. I have no intention of dying in a dungeon I built myself. Sleep now."
Part Three
****
Title: The Rescue, Part Two
Author: tallulah99
Recipient: wizzcat01
Prompt: Poor Jareth, always the villain of the piece, forever the bad guy, but what if just for once he was the hero in the tale (intentional or reluctant)? After all, good guys always get the girl - right?
Rating: T for some swearing
Plot Summary/Author's Notes: A dozen years has passed since Sarah's first visit to the Labyrinth and this time Sir Didymus has gone and gotten himself into a world of trouble. Unable to save him on her own, Sarah swallows her pride and requests Jareth's aid. Is he willing to set aside past grievances and journey with her across the Underground to confront Didymus' captor? Who is the Borderlands Queen and what is her history with the enigmatic King of the Goblins? Will their quest be successful? And who is it that needs to be rescued really?
Part One
The morning dawned slowly. Color crept furtively into the landscape, gradually transforming the monochromatic world into full on, brightly-painted morning. The wood clung stubbornly to the hushed quiet of night as the sun's early rays explored the day with golden fingers, making everything seem to glow softly from within. A single note from an early-rising bird rang out in the silence and then, as if it had been signal, the rest of the wood exploded into life with the sounds of nature.
Sarah watched the transformation with quiet awe. She could not remember the last sunrise she had seen, but she was sure it had never seemed as glorious or magical as this one. She refused to indulge the insidious little voice that whispered that it might be her last.
In a clump of grass near her shoulder she watched the laborious movements of an ungainly ladybug as it clambered its way over a leaf by her head. She smiled at its dogged effort and wondered that it didn't give up the awkward effort and simply fly away.
Suddenly the figure of a blue-winged fairy zipped up, snatched the ladybug, stuck a tiny tongue out at Sarah and zipped away, the frantic insect wriggling furiously in its grasp.
"I hate this place," she said out loud and sat up. Turning her head she found herself looking directly into Jareth's unfathomable eyes.
"Good morning," he said, with an ironic smile. "Sleep well?"
"Nope. You?" She stood up and stretched, her muscles protesting. She had slept, but little and that poorly. Nightmares had forced her awake more times than she could count and finally she had given up and simply lain awake, quietly in the dark, waiting for the day to begin. She felt, and knew she looked, like she'd been drug backwards through the bog. She wished desperately for a shower, but settled for splashing a bit of her drinking water on her hands and scrubbing her face vigorously. Even that little bit of indulgence made her feel more human. She set to combing her hair out with her fingers and pulled it into a haphazard pony-tail.
Jareth, naturally, looked as if he'd spent the night in a five star hotel. His fair, fly-away hair looked as it always did and there wasn't a single streak of dirt or smudge on him anywhere. Even his eyes were clear and bright. She looked down at her own wrinkled and grubby clothes and thought how unfair the universe could be.
He shook out his cloak and flipped it back over his shoulder with a practiced swirl. "Break your fast and quickly," he said. "The sooner we are on our way, the sooner you can get that fool Didymus back to his bog."
Sarah resisted the urge to scowl at him, but instead reached into her satchel and pulled out the oatcakes Hoggle had carefully wrapped and packed for their breakfast. She handed half to Jareth without comment and then ate hers while she bundled up her gear.
By the time she finished repacking her supplies and stirring the ashes of their fire, Jareth had already moved into the center of a small clearing a few yards away. He stood in the center of the space with his head thrown back and his eyes closed against the glare of the new sun. Sarah watched him through the trees for a moment, wondering once again what possible motivation could have compelled him to come out here with her - to sleep in the dirt and risk his life helping her rescue someone who meant little to nothing to him.
Forcibly she pushed her concerns away and moved to join him in the clearing. She had too much else to worry about today to let her reservations about him cloud her mind. She had chosen to trust him. There was no turning back now, no second guessing and no doubts. Not until Didymus was home safe.
The fear she had refused to indulge through the dark hours of the night came roaring back unchecked in the warm light of day. This was really going to happen. She was really getting ready to go and attempt to rescue Didymus from an insane woman with magical abilities with no one but Jareth by her side. A chill no fire could touch went through her and she shivered.
"Are you ready?" he asked as she approached.
"No," she said, pleased when her voice came out strong and steady. "But what the hell."
He held out a hand and she reached for it, hesitating at the last second. "Why are you helping me?" she asked softly. She wasn't sure what made her ask it now. She expected a flippant answer if any at all and was surprised when he regarded her seriously for a long moment.
"I owe a debt," he said finally.
"To me?" she asked, puzzled.
"No." But he didn't offer further clarification and reached once more for her hand.
She wasn't sure why his answer satisfied her, it raised more questions than it answered, but somehow she felt that it was the only answer she needed. She took his hand, oddly buoyed by the solid pressure of his fingers as they closed around hers.
"I will take us through the Forbidden Forest to the edge of her castle grounds. We'll walk from there."
She nodded and took a deep breath.
He smiled at her, showing his teeth. "One, two…" and then the world dissolved around her.
From her first visit to the Labyrinth when Jareth had pulled her across the barrier between their worlds, to the trips she had taken by herself through the portal in her bedroom mirror, she had crossed into the Underground and back without incident more times than she could count. On every trip she had felt a slight dizziness, as if she had stood too quickly after sitting for too long. This time, it felt like she'd slammed into a wall.
Sarah came back to herself lying on her side in the snow, stunned from a fall she didn't remember taking. She groaned, sucking in a painful breath with oxygen-starved lungs. Everything hurt. With monumental effort she rolled slowly onto her back. She was too preoccupied by her own discomfort to be puzzled by the bare, frost-covered branches that cut across the sky above her or the thick blanket of snow that was slowly seeping into her inadequate clothing beneath her. Nothing seemed to be broken, but every inch of her body felt bruised. She turned her head to the side and saw Jareth lying prone a short distance away, unmoving.
"Oh God, no!" she whispered and pulled herself upright. She staggered to her feet and winced, but her legs held beneath her. She hobbled through drifts, stumbling over hidden obstacles buried in the snow and fell to her knees next to the still figure.
There was no blood, no obvious trauma that she could see, but her hands shook as she rolled him onto his back, praying frantically in wordless terror as she searched him for injuries. His face was pale even against the pure white of the snow, and for a moment she was sure, certain that he was gone. And then there was a slight tremor of movement beneath her hands and she felt an almost sickening flood of relief.
"Thank God, thank God," she whispered over and over. She brushed the snow off of his face and touched his cheek gently, willing his eyes to open. "Come on, Jareth," she said, softly encouraging. "Come on. Wake up!"
His eyes snapped open, reflecting the pale grey sky overhead and then flickered to meet hers. "That was unexpected."
"You don't say," she said with a laugh, feeling mildly giddy from the combination of pain, fear and relief. "Are you alright?"
"I'll be better when you're no longer digging your elbows into my chest," he said, sounding pained.
"Oh! Sorry!" She sat back and gave him room to lever himself into a sitting position. "What the hell was that?" she asked. "And for that matter, where the hell are we?" She looked around, finally taking stock of their surroundings now that the first flush of panic had begun to ebb. "Is this snow? Are we even still in the Underground?"
"In reverse order," he began, climbing slowly to his feet, "yes, yes, exactly where I expected us to be and I cannot be certain, but I can hazard an educated guess."
She gave him a disbelieving look. "Wow. It's amazing. It's like you're on smartass auto-pilot. Can't you maybe, just this once, give me a straight damn answer and tell me how the hell we ended up in fucking Narnia?" She punctuated her question by hurling a handful of snow in his direction, suddenly annoyed that she'd bothered being worried about him.
"We are on the outskirts of Elsbeth's grounds," he said, brushing snow from his cloak with emphasis. "Exactly where I expected us to be.".
"Did you expect this?" she asked a little shrilly, gesturing at their frozen environment. "It was like seventy-five degrees three minutes ago!"
Jareth didn't reply immediately. He turned in a brief circle, absorbed in his examination of the landscape, his brow creased in contemplation.
They were in a shallow wooded valley that sloped up and away from them into a dense copse of leafless trees and tangled underbrush. It was a wild wood, overgrown and untended, but subdued by the thick blanket of snow. The air was heavy, but unnaturally silent. There were no animal sounds, no soughing of wind, no rusting of leaves or distant bird calls, nothing but the crunch of Jareth's boots in the snow and Sarah's own rapid breathing.
"Elsbeth loves the snow," he said, as if such a declaration should have cleared something up for her. "But she could not have…" He shook his head. "Rather, she wasn't capable of this level of control, this range when I saw her last. But clearly…"
"She did this with magic?" She said. "But why? What's the point?"
"There doesn't need to be a point," he said. "She can do it, so why not?" He frowned and then snapped his head around, tilted as if listening.
"What are you…?"
"Shhh!" he hissed.
And then she heard it. Distantly, a rhythmic, percussive sound carried through the trees. She looked wide-eyed at Jareth and saw understanding cross his features. "Damn," he said softly. "Her power has grown." He looked around the valley again, this time almost wistfully. His eyes came to rest on Sarah, beginning to shiver in the cold she had not anticipated or prepared for. "She warded the grounds," he said, finally, in explanation. "And we hit the barrier created by the ward. We could have walked through it without even realizing, but since we were using magic, it stopped us cold." He turned in the direction of the noises, growing perceptibly closer. "I had thought to evade her notice until we arrived at the castle gates…but she knows we're here."
The distant, reverberating sounds had gotten louder and Sarah realized suddenly, unpleasantly, that what she was hearing was at least two sets of sounds, very like the rhythmic cadence of marching feet. "Footsteps," she said, nearly choking on the word.
He nodded his head grimly. "I'm afraid so. Her guards are designed to respond to intruders automatically. I imagine that's how Didymus got caught." His eyes flicked back to her. "And how we're going to get caught too."
"Designed?" she said, bewildered. She looked up to the ridge at the top of the valley. The measured thud of unseen feet had grown closer and was joined now by the crashing of underbrush and the crack of snapping branches that echoed like gunshots in the valley. Some of the distant treetops were beginning to sway; marking the impossibly rapid passage of something large. "Jareth, what the hell is that?"
"Elsbeth's guards," he replied just as the tree line above them exploded. Two massive things barreled down the ridge toward them, splintering trees and flattening brush effortlessly in their single-minded charge.
Sarah opened her mouth, but the scream stuck in her throat.
She had never seen anything like these creatures. Nothing in her experience or imagination could have conceived of such horrific abominations as the two enormous, hulking nightmares that were hurtling towards her at a speed that should have been impossible given their size. They were covered in mottled tan and black fur with stumpy ill-defined legs that churned across the landscape in an awkward, lumbering gait that belied their speed. At easily three times her own height, they were broad across the shoulders and heavy, each pounding step they took sent shocks through the valley that Sarah could feel through the soles of her boots.
Terrifying as they were in form, it was the faces that had frozen her into place as though rooted to the spot.
They didn't have any.
Their heads, if the amorphous lump on top of their torsos could be termed as such, sat low between their shoulders with nothing like the rigid contours of a skull. There were no facial features - no hole or slit or fold or irregularity of surface of any kind that could indicate a nose or mouth or eyes. Blindly, deafly, mutely, they plummeted down the slope and into the valley, thundering relentlessly onward.
"Jesus, God," Sarah said hoarsely and realized she was clutching Jareth's arm hard enough to leave bruises. She wanted to run, wanted to at least try to escape the grotesque figures bearing down on them even as she acknowledged the futility. Her mind screamed at her to run, to do something to save herself. But there was nothing to be done.
"Get behind me." Jareth's voice was imperious and commanding, the tone of a man accustomed to obedience. There was no sign in his bearing of the shock and terror that ran through her veins like ice water. It was a relief to let him step in front of her.
He stood with his cloak thrown back and his legs spread, boots digging into the snow, braced as if for impact. As the creatures hit level ground and started across the valley floor, he brought his hands up in a forceful gesture that Sarah felt sure should have stopped the beasts in their tracks, if not annihilated them altogether.
Expectation made the moment seem to hang breathlessly in time. It took a beat longer than it should have for Sarah to realize nothing had happened and one more for it to sink in that nothing was going to. It hadn't worked.
"No!" gasped Jareth, that one word filled with such stark disbelief that Sarah wanted to reach out to him even as the beasts were upon them.
The thick arms of the guard closed around her waist and yanked her off her feet, barely changing its stride as it hauled her in. A panicked scream tore from her throat as she fought backwards, cut off abruptly as her head cracked against a passing tree and darkness took her.
She regained consciousness some time later still wrapped in the massive arms of the guard with no concept of how much time may have passed, but they were still moving rapidly through the wood. She could see little, buried in the heavy fur of the creature as she was, but she could still hear the reverberating thud of solid footfalls and the snap of branches and foliage as they plowed through the trees. She realized suddenly that her hearing was completely unimpeded by any sounds whatsoever coming from her captor. There was no huff of heavy breathing or grunt of pain as yet another pole-sized tree snapped off on violent impact. This thing, whatever it was, did not breath.
As strange and horrifying as everything had been up to this point, this was the thing that sent her over the edge. Panic sang through her body, and she struggled desperately to escape the iron grip of the creature that held her. It was useless, of course. She would have had as much effect beating her hands against a boulder, but she couldn't not fight. She screamed her frustration, gasping for breath as tears streamed down her cheeks and into the mottled fur under her cheek.
Distantly, through the fog of her terror, she heard her name being called. It might have come from another world altogether. It was the forceful tone of the voice that finally worked its way into her consciousness and pulled her back to the present.
"Sarah! Damnation girl, answer me! Sarah!"
She couldn't see him, but she could tell that he was close and that fact alone bolstered her courage. She was even able to manage mild amusement that it should be his presence that evoked a sufficient sense of normalcy to be reassuring. She took a few shuddering breaths and called out in reply. "I'm here! I'm okay!"
The steady pounding of the creature's footsteps slowed and Sarah felt rather than saw the change as they plunged from the bright, cold air of the outdoors into the musty, closed-in atmosphere of neglected habitation. Before the realization that they had reached the castle of the Borderlands Queen had fully sunk in, Sarah found herself dumped unceremoniously in a heap on the cold, cobbled floor.
They were in a cavernous, stone-walled anteroom that looked exactly like what the entrance to an ancient castle should look like if one were touring its ruins. Two wide marble staircases with open balustrades curved up to a deep-set terrace on the next level. There was no apparent light source, but the high windows above them spilled wan sunlight across the landing so that the stairs shone yellow as aged bone against the shadows. Corridors led off of the main entryway like the spokes of a wagon wheel and disappeared off into the gloomy depths of the castle. At one time the cold cobbled floors had been thoughtfully lined with plush, intricately patterned runners, but those had been worn down to threads through heavy usage and bleached by the passage of time. It must have been a breathtaking sight at one time, but now it was little more than a dank ruin with rotted tapestries on the walls and gilded furnishings that glowed only faintly through layers of tarnish and grime.
Sarah rolled to her knees and wondered if she was going to live long enough to appreciate the impressive bruises she was collecting. A few yards away, Jareth was climbing slowly to his feet looking reassuringly pissed off. He glanced briefly in her direction, but his attention was almost immediately caught by some movement at the top of the stairs. Feeling sick with apprehension, Sarah followed his eyes upwards to the gallery above.
A sweet voice rang out in the dark. "Jareth, you have come at last to visit me!"
The queen of the Borderlands padded silently to the balcony at the top of the stairs on bare and dirty feet with two more of her silent hulking guardians trailing after her like a pair of docile lapdogs. She wore a wretched gown, which may have once been white, but now hung in ruined tatters around her filthy legs. A golden circlet set with colorful stones rested atop the tangled black nest of her hair and glinted in the dim light as she descended the stairs with a light, skipping step. She was slim and dainty with delicate, nearly elfin features. 'Child-like' wasn't the word for it, she was a child, at least in form. Full, rosy cheeks and a sweetly upturned nose showed the promising lines of a future beauty that she would never attain. She was nothing like the imposing figure Sarah had been anticipating, the top of her head would barely have reached Sarah's shoulder had she been standing close enough for comparison. Sarah was absurdly thankful that she was not.
"I have, Elsbeth," Jareth replied. His voice echoed gravely in the cavernous room. Sarah gave him a searching look. His face was expressionless, carefully blank as he watched the girl traipse down the curving stone staircase.
The diminutive Elsbeth, however, fairly glowed with fervor. Her eyes were wide and overly bright in the dim light that filtered into the hall through the grimy windows. "You have brought me a gift?" she asked, breathily, turning her disconcerting gaze on Sarah.
Sarah repressed a shudder and tried to resist the urge to hide behind Jareth.
"Rather the opposite, I'm afraid," he said, conversationally. He strolled a few steps, stopping as if to admire a distorted, but vaguely human-looking statue that dominated the entryway. It didn't pass Sarah's notice that his sudden interest in psychotic artwork placed him directly in between her and the certifiably insane infant across the room.
"Who is she?" Elsbeth asked. She cocked her head to the side, regarding Sarah with unblinking curiosity.
"My name is Sarah." She wasn't going to stand there and let the tiny psychopath pretend she wasn't in the room. Jareth scowled at her and she pointedly ignored him.
"Oh! But you are human?" The girl twirled in a happy little circle as if unable to contain her excitement. "But it has been ages since I've seen another human!" She strode forward, brushing past Jareth without a glance, and seized Sarah's hand with an unexpectedly firm grasp. "We shall have so much to talk about!"
Her small hands felt unpleasantly warm, nearly feverish, and made Sarah's skin crawl.
"We're, uh, looking for our friend," she managed. She moved her body as far away from her trapped hand as she could without attempting to pull it away. She didn't actively try to free her hand, mostly out of the fear that she wouldn't be able to. At least this way she could pretend that she wasn't being held hostage by a four foot tall child.
"A retainer of mine," Jareth added. He approached with both hands extended in greeting and, as propriety demand, Elsbeth dropped her iron clad grip on Sarah's hand to accept Jareth's formal greeting with obvious pleasure. He took both of her hands in his and kissed them graciously and then repeated the exercise on each of her dirt-smudged cheeks. "I hate to be a bother Elsbeth, but Didymus is forever getting himself into some little scrape or another. I had heard that he was seen in your wood and had hoped that he might have found his way here somehow." He stepped back, very decidedly placing himself as a barrier between her and Sarah.
"Did-he-mas?" The girl's eyes narrowed slightly, giving her a sweetly baffled expression and then she lit up, animation charging through her like an electric current. Even her pallid cheeks flushed pink in enthusiasm. "Oh yes! The puppy!" And then almost immediately she sobered, her bow-like lips pursed outward into a dramatic pout. "He was very naughty. He should not have been here."
Sarah felt the blood drain from her face. "Wha- What happened to him? Where is he?"
The girl was frenzied again, hopping in place like a maniacal rabbit. "Oh! Oh! Can we play a game? I know lots of good games!"
"Didymus, Elsbeth," Jareth said lightly stressing the name. "We have come for Didymus."
The dim entryway flared suddenly into light. Hundreds of candles of every shape and size burst into radiant flame from every horizontal surface. A massive chandelier that had hung lost in the empty darkness above them was a small incandescent sun that cast a ring of shadows around their feet.
Sarah winced against the sudden burst of light.
"You have grown more powerful," Jareth commented. His voice was mild, but his face was pinched and pale, the yellow candlelight leaving dark hollows beneath his eyes.
She nodded dreamily without looking at him. "I have had time to practice." She did meet his eyes then, her expression serious. "You'll never get good at anything unless you practice, you know." She executed an awkward pirouette, humming lightly to herself. "How long has it been, my Jareth? How many hundreds of years since we last spoke? I seem to have lost my watch so I haven't the time." She seemed to be distracted by something across the room and slowly started to wander away.
Soundlessly, her huge guards shambled behind her.
"Wait!" Sarah choked. "Please! My friend, is he okay? Is he here?"
Elsbeth gave her a puzzled look. "Who? No one is here." She gestured at their empty, sepulchral surroundings. "It is only me and my bears here today. We have no guests."
"We're looking for Sir Didymus," Jareth repeated gently. "We know he is here."
The little girl's expression went from calm puzzlement to red-faced fury in an instant. "No, no, no!" She stamped her bare feet soundlessly on the stone floor, her voice rising to a shriek. "He was naughty! He should not have been here! You should not be here! This is my kingdom! I am the queen! You have no power here, Jareth! Kneel! I want you both to Kneel!"
Unseen force pressed down on Sarah until she collapsed to her knees. She gasped against the pain that pushed her down, bowing her head until it was nearly on the floor. Out of the corner of her watering eyes she saw Jareth brought down in a similar fashion.
"Take them!" she screamed to the guards. "Take them to the dungeons! Put them in a cell and lock the door! Return to me when you are done."
The crushing pressure disappeared and Sarah found herself hefted like a rag doll once more. She struggled in the creature's grasp, trying at the very least to see something of her surroundings, but she quickly lost all sense of direction as she was jogged down one lightless passage after another. Twists and turns and bone-rattling flights of steps ran together into one endless blur until she was almost looking forward to whatever was on the other end. And then she was once again dropped gracelessly onto the floor, this time into a pile of musty smelling straw. She had barely managed to figure out which way was up when a heavy set of iron doors slammed shut with a resounding boom, inches in front of her face.
She scrabbled belatedly backwards and coughed against the cloud of dust and straw stirred up by her movements. A series of tiny slit windows up near the ceiling let in enough light to see by, but there was little worth seeing. The cell was surrounded on three sides by narrowly spaced iron bars and on the fourth by stone, presumably part of the outer wall of the castle itself. None of the other cells seemed to be occupied. Many of the iron doors hung open and the air smelled stale with disuse. She tried to wrap her brain around the realization that she was now locked in an actual dungeon and then decided to deal with it later.
There was a rustling sound from the dim corner of her cell and fear leapt up her throat. "Jareth?" she croaked, with desperate hope.
"Yes," he said, wheezing a bit himself. "It's me."
"Oh thank God. The intensity of the relief that coursed through her was absurd in contrast with the dire nature of their situation, but she was unspeakably grateful that they had ended up in the same cell. She crawled in his direction and groped until she found his hand and clasped it in both of hers like a lifeline. He seemed startled for a moment, but then closed his fingers firmly around hers. His grip was reassuringly steady.
"Are you okay?" he asked. "Are you hurt?"
"No, I don't think so. I'm going to be covered in bruises, but I'm alright. What about you? Did they drop you like a sack of potatoes too?"
He chuckled, a warm rumble that she felt through their joined hands. It was an oddly comforting sound. "Yes, but nothing seems permanently damaged. Elsbeth's guards are not well known for their tender care."
"What the hell are those things, Jareth? I've never seen anything like them." She shuddered at the memory of the grotesque figures.
"I would imagine not," he said. "They're golems."
"Gollums?" she said. "Like the thing in The Hobbit?"
"And you an English teacher too," he chided softly, but with a slight smile. "A golem is a kind of artificial life, creatures formed and controlled by magic. They're usually made of earth - I suspect Elsbeth's are clay beneath all that fur. At least that used to be her preferred medium. Magic is not capable of creating life or maintaining it, but golems are not really 'alive' in the strictest sense of the word. They are inorganic matter animated and sustained through the magical will of their creator."
"She…made them?"
He nodded. "Yes. She was always very good at that particular kind of magic. She seemed to prefer the company of her creations to that of the goblins, which I suppose I can understand to a certain extent. Golems are placid and silent creatures, whereas the goblins are anything but. She came here from a situation of such violent chaos; the calm simplicity of the golem's presence must have seemed a soothing alternative."
"Calm and soothing are not the first adjectives that come to mind when I think of those things," Sarah said wryly.
"They are though, at least as they are created. She made them big and they are very strong physically, but not at all intelligent. They will do exactly as they are commanded and absolutely nothing more or less. They have no capacity to think or choose and are painfully literal. She must have a care how she speaks to them."
Sarah snorted. "Well that's a bit terrifying." And then she had a thought. "Is that why people go missing? She tells her guards to 'throw them in the dungeon' and they actually throw them in the dungeon?"
"Some, no doubt. The golems are really nothing more than tools and any tool wielded improperly can yield disastrous results." Jareth lifted his eyes to meet hers and pursed his lips as if he were debating whether or not to continue. "Others however…" he went on slowly, almost grudgingly, "well, she is curious."
"Curious? Curious like how?" Sarah asked carefully. Reluctance was etched into every line of his body and he seemed weighted down by a sadness she was sure he had never given free reign before now. He had decided to let her in, but it meant delving into memories he preferred buried deep and forgotten.
"It's the reason she was banished, why I finally gave up on her." He had gently pulled his hand from her grasp and twisted his bare fingers into a ratty, moth-eaten blanket so tightly that his knuckles turned white. "I distanced myself from her after a time. Once it became clear that her madness was absolute and I was sure her mind was unreachable, I found myself making excuses, finding reasons to stay away for days and weeks, months even." He closed his eyes, his handsome face twisted in remembered grief. "I am ashamed of it now, horrified by the neglect I perpetrated upon a troubled girl who needed the guidance and care I could have…should have given her. I thought I had done what I could, what was expected of me, but I resented her for her helplessness, for feeling trapped by an obligation of my own devising."
His eyes opened, but he was no longer seeing Sarah or the filthy dungeon. She doubted he even remembered that he was speaking to her.
"I did not avoid her absolutely. When I was home, which had, admittedly, become an infrequent occurrence; I visited her before bed as a matter of course. I would check with her nurse and then see her for a few minutes. She spoke little sense and her moods were often mercurial and violent. It was a visit I little relished, but I looked at as my duty and her due. On that last night, I had not been gone so very long - a week or two perhaps and I arrived home very late. I considered skipping my visit, I never bothered to advise anyone of my arrival so she would not have been expecting me in any case, but instead I left my chambers and made my way to the wing of the castle that I had given her for her own. Her nurse was not in her rooms, and I remember thinking that boded poorly as it meant Elsbeth was likely being more of a handful than usual."
He swallowed convulsively. "I knew the moment I entered her chamber. The smell of death was overwhelming. She greeted me pleasantly, genteelly even, though she was covered from head to toe in blood and gore. She was calm, I would even go so far as to say happy. She had no regret, no horror at what she had done. She no longer had the capacity for those things. When I asked her, when I cried 'what have you done?!' she shrugged and said they were just playing." He gave a humorless chuckle. "She couldn't even understand why I was angry. She was lost…just lost."
He shuddered, but went on resolutely. "There were three of them. Two were castle guards on night duty. The other was the nurse I had assigned to take care of her when she first came to live at the castle. Pheera had been by her side, caring for her non-stop, every day for hundreds of years. She had dressed her, played with her, fed her…loved her." He stopped and turned his face away, pressing it hard against the bars of their cage. When he went on his voice was choked. "She tore them apart; eviscerated them one at a time. There were pieces everywhere. Her chamber was painted with blood." He turned back, his face filled with anguish, his eyes wet. "I banished her then. Brought her here to the edge of the world, put her in this castle and gave her a kingdom to play with. Then I put up the forest as a barrier and a warning and forbade that anyone should come this far. I tried to visit occasionally at first, brought her gifts, tried to reach her in some way, but there seemed nothing left of her mind and I finally realized that my presence only agitated her and so I stopped altogether." He trailed off into silence and then added quietly, "It has been many lifetimes since I last saw her."
For a long time they sat in silence. Jareth seemed lost in his own thoughts, his gaze distant and unfocused. Sarah was unsure of how she should feel. Pity, horror, sadness and fear all warred for dominance, but in the end she just went with her first inclination and even surprised herself.
She turned to him and put her arms around his slumped shoulders, resting her cheek against his back. He stiffened under her embrace, but didn't pull away. "You did your best," she said softly. "You did all you could for her. Remember how you told me that Didymus getting taken wasn't my fault? Well it isn't yours either. She isn't your fault. Her parents are responsible for what happened to her, not you. You did more than you had to, more than anyone, in my world or yours, would have expected of you. You have to forgive yourself, Jareth."
Hesitantly, he reached up and covered her hand with one of his own and then brought it to his lips and gently kissed her palm. "Thank you, Sarah," he said softly. He turned abruptly then and cupped her face between his hands. "We will get Didymus back," he said fiercely. "I always keep my promises and, given enough time, I correct my mistakes. This isn't over yet."
"Do you think he's here? Do you think he's still…"
"Yes," he said emphatically, his eyes narrowed as if daring her to disagree with him.
She smiled. "Thank you. I needed to hear that."
Jareth got up and prowled around the perimeter of their cell, pausing to try the bars periodically, but aged as they were, they held firm.
"You built her a castle and put in a dungeon." Sarah shook her head in disbelief. "Seriously, Jareth, what were you thinking?"
"It seemed like a good idea at the time," he said with a shrug.
"And now?"
"Not such a good idea."
"I should think not." Sarah crossed her arms and gave him a pointed look.
They slid easily back into the familiar pattern of their usual banter, but some of the ice had been chipped away and Sarah knew she'd never feel quite the same way about him again. It was more than just the shared danger and close quarters that had smoothed away the rough edges. He had proved himself capable of both pity and remorse, and perhaps most surprisingly of all, self-doubt. He'd hate to hear her say it, but he'd done a good job of humanizing himself today.
"Wait a second," she said, sitting up straight as a thought lodged in her mind. "How did you know I was an English teacher?"
A slow smiled spread across his face. "Shelves," he said, "libraries full of things I'm not telling you."
She rolled her eyes and made a disgusted sound. "Okay fine, tell me this instead - why doesn't your magic work? That's what happened when Heckle and Jeckle picked us up in the valley, isn't it? Adult male magical dysfunction?"
It was his turn to give her a withering look. "It's the ward Elsbeth put up. It's suppressing my magic. As long as they're up, I am powerless here." He shook his head. "She's strong. Stronger than I ever would have imagined she could become."
"How does she even know how to do any of this stuff? You said she's human, right? I would have thought you'd have to be -" She gestured vaguely in his direction. "Whatever you are."
"I taught her," he said from between his teeth. "I thought it would do her some good to have a purpose, to learn a skill few ever have the chance to master. She had been powerless her whole life. I wanted her to know what it was like to have control over her world."
Sarah looked up at the row of icicles that studded the tiny window overhead. "Well, she's certainly figured that part out."
"Still think I should forgive myself?" he asked wryly.
"Yes," she said, stressing the word. "Why should you keep punishing yourself for trying to help? Your intentions were good."
He quirked an eyebrow at her. "And what is it they say is paved with those?"
She waved a dismissive hand. "It makes for a good adage, but the road to hell is paved with all kinds of things. Showing sympathy for a lonely, abused little girl doesn't even rate." She leaned back against the rough stone wall and crossed her legs in front of her, shivering slightly against the frigid air coming from the narrow opening above them. She doubted it was cold enough in the dungeon to actually freeze to death yet, but once the sun went down it was anybody's guess. Idly she wondered if they were going to end up starving to death or if exposure would get them first and then shook herself irritably, hating the ease with which her thoughts wandered into such morbid territory.
Jareth gave her a questioning look, which she ignored. She didn't much want to discuss her fears or misgivings with him, mostly because the thing she feared the most was that he would agree with her and tell her he had been mistaken and that it really was hopeless after all. They could really only afford for one of them to hit rock bottom at a time.
Wordlessly, Jareth crossed the cell and sat down on the ledge next to her. Using his index finger he drew a set of parallel lines in the dirt and then drew another perpendicular set directly on top and sat back, looking at her expectantly.
She gave him a puzzled look and he rolled his eyes, exasperated. He reached out and drew an 'x' in the middle square of the grid he had drawn.
She laughed out loud. "This day has been so bizarre," she said but went ahead and placed an 'o' in a corner square.
For the next hour, to stave off both mind-numbing boredom and soul-crushing fear, she and the king of the goblins engaged in a cut-throat, no-holds-barred tic-tac-toe tournament for the ages.
Eventually, they began to talk. They spoke mostly of inconsequential things - Sarah's tenth grade English students, the goblin's annual chicken races, Toby's first year of high school, and the castle gardens where Jareth went to escape the chaos of the castle. They stayed clear of any reference to their current situation, to Elsbeth or even Didymus.
Even after they had abandoned their game, they kept on talking. As the afternoon passed away, they discussed books they had both read, music that touched their souls and the best way to get roses to grow in shade. Sarah described her first, and most decidedly last, attempt at college theater and Jareth laughed appreciatively in all the right places. He regaled her with endless stories about the antics of the goblins that left her nearly breathless with laughter.
Gradually the sun began to sink below the level of the windows and the yellow light that illuminated their cell turned slowly orange and then a dull, rusty red. Mealtimes came and went and the rumbling of their bellies, much like the passing of the time, went unacknowledged by either of them. Eventually, the sun sank below the level of the horizon and night set in. The dungeon was plunged into complete darkness and plummeting temperatures, and still they talked.
Without discussing it, they had ended up side by side back on the ledge, their hands intertwined once more. Sarah thought how very odd it was that this should seem so normal to her now. She couldn't decide if the camaraderie of a single day could bring her to this level of comfort or if she was merely unable to distinguish the absurd from the usual anymore. His hand was warm in hers, a solid reminder that she was not alone in the darkness, that theirs was a burdened halved by the sharing of it. She was grateful for his presence by her side and for the gentle burr of his voice as he told her yet another story, this time about the wise men from the north who wore the most foolish hats…
"Jareth?" she interrupted sleepily, her voice barely a whisper.
"Yes, love?"
"Would you have come anyway, if I hadn't asked you? Would you have come after Didymus on your own?" It was an easy question to ask in the dark when she didn't have to look him in the eye.
It was an easier question to answer in the dark as well, though it was several long minutes before he did so.
"No," he said at last. His voice was tinged with sadness. "But I would have regretted it for the rest of my life." He leaned over and kissed the top of her head, an act that was also easier to perform in the darkness. "Rest your head, Sarah. We'll figure out what to do in the morning. I have no intention of dying in a dungeon I built myself. Sleep now."
Part Three