LABYRINTH 2015: NINE ½ WEEKS IN L.A. (American Idol S7 RPF), [Cook/Archuleta], [NC-17] - EPILOGUE
EPILOGUE: AS THE WORLD FALLS DOWN
(AS THE WORLD FALLS DOWN) I’LL BE THERE FOR YOU
As the pain sweeps through
Makes no sense for you
Every thrill has gone
Wasn't too much fun at all
But I'll be there for you
David Cook is wearing his Labyrinth hair and the silver-embroidered cloak belonging to King Jareth. It's a mantle he's donned so often he feels it's part of his skin.
Garbed as Jareth, Cook is striding rapidly down a winding road under the gathering dusk.
He's been walking for a long time; the hem of his garment and his pointy-toed boots are caked in the dust of his journey. The evening sky is an unearthly hue, casting purple shadows across his path. In the distance up ahead, he sees a crossroads.
He knows he won't be alone when he reaches the crossroads, and he isn't.
Three slender figures, three women, are waiting for him in the shade of a large oak tree.
Cook might have majored in graphic design in college, but he's familiar with his classics, knows the Three who wait at each crossroads: past, present and future, Maiden, Mother and Crone.
With a start, though, he recognizes the three faces turned to his. There’s Brooke White, his mom Beth, and Sony Zurich's Julia Gravenhorst, arrayed before him in gray like the three oracles of the oldest stories: the Fates, the Furies, capable of rending him limb from limb.
"Welcome," the Three say, more gently than he'd have expected. "It's good of you to stop by."
It's Julia who's speaking the most loudly, her lovely face set in that curious, wry expression she'd worn so many years ago when she'd danced with Cook in a club in Amsterdam and told him that Arch was too good for him. He can't meet her penetrating blue gaze.
"Ladies," Cook responds courteously - it's always a good idea to be polite to the Three. "Just passing through. Oracular services not required." To be honest, he doesn't think he'd survive the truth-telling, or indeed any encounter with the Fates tonight.
"Too late for that, darling," says Beth, and points upwards.
Cook follows her gesture and looks up, sees his own face and body, spread-eagled naked and reversed, hanging in the huge spreading branches of the summer's tree. The eyes of the other-him are closed; it looks as if he already has one mottled foot in the land of the dead.
Cook swallows. "I see you ladies have me at a disadvantage."
The Three look at Cook where he stands in the crossroads, and back at the gray and haggard figure above them.
"You can choose to turn away," says Brooke, her eyes hard as diamonds. "The choice has always been yours, Cook."
Cook realizes this, realizes his path brought him to the Three tonight for a reason, and it's up to him to see if he can determine what that is.
"Okay, then, show me," he says, turning first to the Maiden and bending his head.
Brooke gathers her skirts with one hand, stepping in close, and lays open Cook's cheek with the other. Cook's head rocks back, but he welcomes even this painful contact with her as her nails scrape ribbons from his flesh.
"You bastard," the Eternal Maiden tells Cook. "You deserve to suffer, after all you've done. Death on the tree might be too quick."
"No argument from me there," says Cook, swaying a little on his feet from the pain and the force of her attack. "Sadly, though, I seem to have screwed up the attempt."
He feels her hand close ungently around his wrist.
"You want to court Death? See here, then," she murmurs, and Cook stares into her blue eyes.
*
He sees the past he'd lived, singing that "Til I'm Blue" on the 2010 Heroes Tour, plaster on his face covering the scratches Arch had given him in exactly the same place as where Brooke had just marked him.
He sees himself flying high on blue and red, singing that damn song (Where we be, we've come so far) heartsick and grieving, wondering how it was he'd gone so far astray from Arch.
And then he sees something else: the walls of Gracehaven drug rehab clinic that he's become so familiar with in the past few weeks.
Only this time the calendar says August 2010.
The Kyle Peek Band is on the road without him. On this date, Cook knows exactly where they are: in Spain, the final stop of the Heroes tour. It's evening in Barcelona, and the boys are on stage. Cook fancies he can hear Andy's evocative voice singing "Til I'm Blue", like Neal meant him to, taking center stage like he was always meant to.
The L.A. afternoon sunlight fills his sickroom with bright cheer. In his bones, he feels the ache of substance withdrawal, and a certain inner peace.
After some minutes, there's a knock on the door. An orderly Cook doesn't recognize puts his head around the door and tells him, "Mr. Cook, you have a visitor. Visiting hours are nearly over, you don't have long."
"Who is it?" Cook asks, but the orderly has vanished, to reappear five minutes later to usher David Archuleta into Cook's room.
Arch, whom Cook had last seen in a haze of the red, from that last, terrible fight they'd had those weeks ago in Paris.
"Hey. Hi."
Arch's face is healed, unmarked, though it's more drawn and haggard than Cook has ever seen it. He looks older than his nineteen years, and so beautiful Cook's not sure he can stand it.
"What are you doing here?" Cook asks like an idiot. The sudden, urgent rush of emotion is making it so difficult to think; he feels slow and stupid with pain. When he was using, he's not sure he ever felt like this - at least the drugs stopped him from embarrassing himself -
Arch smiles a small half-smile. "Maybe I could sit down for a second?"
"Damn it. Of course, please - " Cook gestures, and Arch drops into the armchair beside Cook's bed. Cook's shivering; he doesn't know where to look. He thinks if he keeps looking at Arch, his heart might explode for real.
"Your mom told mine you'd checked yourself into rehab, and I couldn't not see you," Arch says, by way of explanation.
Cook looks at his hands, anywhere but at Arch, can't speak.
"What happened?" Arch asks gently.
Cook doesn't want to have this conversation, isn't ready to have this conversation. But he owes Arch an explanation. Of course, he owes Arch more than that.
"I made the choice to tell my mom," Cook says, at last. "The guys continued with the tour without me. I figured this was more important, that if I didn't do this now, I'd never get my life back on track."
"It's awesome that you did," Arch murmurs. Cook still isn't strong enough to look at Arch's face, but he thinks he can hear an encouraging tone in Arch's voice.
"Not awesome," Cook mutters. "I, I hurt you, Arch. That I could do that... I clearly had a problem. I'd travelled so far away from myself, I figured I couldn't get back without help."
He feels his eyes prickle with the tears he hadn't managed to shed while he'd been using. He's also shaking so hard he thinks he might actually fall over.
Arch hesitates, and then puts a hand on Cook's. Arch's fingers feel warm and achingly familiar, and they anchor Cook, like they always have.
"I know you weren't yourself when you hurt me. I know that, now. And I kind of made it hard for you myself."
Cook glances quickly at Arch, hardly dares to believe the gentleness he sees in the dark eyes.
The words spill out of him like a storm, the apologies he's wanted to make for the days and weeks he's been in this damn clinic. "Arch, I screwed up. I lied to you, hid this from you, because I was afraid. I thought I could handle the pills; I was wrong. I am so, so sorry."
Damn it, he really shouldn't be crying, because he'll never stop.
He struggles to hold back the tears for a while, and is mostly successful, after a fashion. What do you know, he may actually be stronger than he realizes.
When the crest of emotion recedes, Cook realizes something else: Arch has been holding his hand. Arch isn't saying anything, but he isn't letting go; Cook has no idea what that means. Or rather, he has an idea, but isn't going to let himself hope --
-- Cook says harshly, to cover the emotion, "I know I can't ask you to take me back. But I need... I need to know if you'd forgive me." He'd gone over this for weeks with his therapist, and it had all come back to this one thing. "I'll understand if you can't, because I'm not sure I'll ever forgive myself."
Arch is quiet for a long time. Cook gathers his courage and looks at Arch's face, at the man he still loves and knows he'll always love.
Finally, Arch says, "I think I can give you that."
He squeezes Cook's hand so tightly Cook feels his fingers might fall off, but that small pain is nothing compared to the intense surge of gratitude that fills him from top to toe.
And, ah God, there's hope as well, that threatens to overwhelm him. The sense of his past realigning itself, regaining its proper track, of healing his relationship with Arch even though the label might end his contract and his career. He'd still have the most important thing: his essential self, whole and healthy and drug-free.
Looking down at Arch's fingers interlaced with his, Cook amends this to, possibly the next most important thing, the most important being that he might not lose Arch entirely, or at all.
And when he looks up into Arch's eyes, he can see the future as it should be, as he should have made it, shining in the distance ...
*
...Cook can't weep, can't stand up straight, can't look into those eyes any longer. He returns to the crossroads to find himself clutching Brooke's slender shoulders to stop himself from falling to the ground.
"This could have been yours," is all the Maiden says, and all she needs to say.
Then she shoves him violently away, and Cook would have fallen, if his mother, the Mother, hadn't stretched out her arms to catch him.
"Dave, are you all right? Take a moment."
Cook clings to her. For an instant, he can't get his legs under him, and then he manages to stand on his own.
"I don't think I'll ever be all right," he says, shivering, trying not to throw up, haunted by the image of that path, that past, the world shivering around them.
"No," she agrees, and her simplicity is chilling. "But there are some things you've done that were right, and you should be proud of them."
"Nobody's all bad, Mom, though you might have thought I was, sometimes." Cook lays the uninjured side of his face against her shoulder, and tries to forget the present for an instant.
The Mother allows him one moment of reprieve: she embraces him for a second, then pushes him an arm's length away.
"Now you need to see this," Beth says, and Cook, swaying on his feet, looks into her eyes.
*
He's back in the Labyrinth ballroom, dancing with David Archuleta. Breaking both their hearts, in a next-to-final act of love.
"It's over," Archuleta whispers. "I should have known it sooner. I should have said stop."
Arch should leave now, before Jareth starts counting.
Then Archuleta's gone, and there's nothing more: no more masks, no more Labyrinth, no more weeks or time.
Arch, I didn't mean it. Would you please come back, if I counted to fifty? One.
Arch doesn't hear him, of course. He can't.
Cook counts: the colors, the pills, sliding down his throat. Tasting of nothing at all.
And then there are the sirens, screwing up his final act of love.
*
The world tilts on its edge, veering its side, on the verge of smashing and falling forever: another path, another present.
Cook is leaning on the white wall of the men's room. He's holding a bottle of pills, shaking them out into his hand, the colors like little universes against his lined, shaking palm.
Love line, fate line, life line - the pills cross and obscure each of them. No more love, no more fate, no more life even: everything ends here, with Cook counting.
Arch, I didn't mean it. Would you please come back, if I counted to fifty? One.
Cook doesn't know what the count has reached; he doesn't think it's very high, which is why he's surprised when a vision of David Archuleta confronts him in the whiteness of the men's room.
Arch is wearing the exact same Armani tuxedo he was wearing when he'd walked out of Cook's life that evening. His face is swimming in and out of focus, his mouth is moving, but at first Cook can't hear what he's saying.
Then Arch is holding him by the upper arms, and the pills have scattered on the floor, and Cook realizes it's no vision. Arch's fingers dig bruises into his arms, and Arch is shouting in his ear: "Cook, how many, how many did you take?"
Not that many, Cook thinks hazily. It didn't take you that long, Arch, I don't think I got anywhere near fifty.
What he says, though, weakly, fatally, is, "I'm so sorry. I don't know why I said that to you. Roy, Grant, there was nothing with either of them. There's nobody but you."
He tilts his head back to look at Arch's face, and finally sees the tears Arch hadn't shed all night. Arch is racked with sobs, can't hold Cook up any more.
They end up folding to the floor in each other's arms, and Cook is saying, "It's you I love, you I've always loved. If you leave me, I don't know how I'll go on living."
"I'll never leave," Arch murmurs.
Cook tells himself it'll be different this time, he'll really go to a clinic, and Arch is going to help him, everything will be fine, Arch'll see...
*
...Behind them, Beth bows her bright head, clasps her hands around her midsection, as if she regrets bringing Cook into the world.
Cook covers his face with his hands.
*
When he takes his hands away, Arch is gone, of course. Cook's standing at the crossroads at midnight, under his hanged self on the summer's tree, and the Crone is holding his wrists in her slender fingers.
Julia Gravenhorst: truth-teller, her fierce blue eyes more terrifying and transparent than Cook has ever seen them.
"David. You need to pay attention," the Crone says, and Cook looks into her ageless face.
*
Cook sees himself lying in his familiar, tapestried bed in his house in Hollywood Hills. The room is cold, some future winter chilling the windowframes.
Beside him, Arch's haggard, older face; Arch's body, dressed carelessly in a silk robe Cook doesn't recognize. Around them are colorful spheres, scattered like jewels of great worth across the bedspread.
Arch's eyes are shut. His lush, red mouth which had been hot even in a thunderstorm is now cold to the touch. In one hand, loosely curled, are three blue pills, three sapphires, the genuine article this time.
Cook runs a hand across Arch's face, strokes Arch's thighs, cool and still. Takes Arch's cold hand, and can't weep, even now.
The pills are gem-hard when they go down his throat. He's so cold. Everything's cold for real this time: the months and years of colors and white have become an eternal winter from which neither of them could escape.
The ground beneath them opens and swallows them whole, and the world, the world falls down.
Amid the crashing, the screams that precede the final silence, there's the voice of the Crone, Julia's voice: "Next time, David, you won't screw up."
*
Cook is on his knees in the dirt of the crossroads. His Jareth cloak is torn and discarded, and he's hurling the contents of his stomach into the road.
Julia's kneeling beside him; he sees he's besmirched the bottom of her robe with his vomit, but he's powerless to stop, caught in the vision of that fatal future.
When he's done, he rolls onto his back. Above him, Cook sees the hanged man's skin is gray as death. He sees his own limbs have now adopted the same spread-eagled position in the path below.
"God --" Cook tries to speak again; his throat's on fire, he's fighting back nausea, but he has to know, "-- Julia, please -- that doesn't happen, it can't, I sent him away --"
Gently, the Crone strokes his mauled cheek with her cool fingers.
"It's not for me to say. It could have happened. Maybe it could still happen, who knows?"
Her eyes are wide and endless as the sky as she continues: "And so could this."
*
There are blue skies and sunshine, church bells tolling in the distance.
A perfect summer day. He sees friends and family: Brooke, blonde and lovely and smiling like forgiveness, Beth wearing a beautiful pillbox hat and looking so proud he thought his heart might break.
There's a canopy of leaves overhead, a minister in front of them, and David Archuleta at his side.
Many waters cannot quench love, says Arch's sister, and Cook's brother says, Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is as strong as death, and burns like a mighty flame.
And Arch says: With this ring, I thee wed.
Then, there's a circle of gold on his finger, and Cook stands under a shower of confetti, holding Arch by the hand, tears in his eyes at last.
*
David Cook fights past layers of white sheets, packing cotton, finally surfaces slowly to himself in the waking world.
He opens his eyes to see his window at the rehab clinic Gracehaven, the early winter light limning it like a vision. He feels the sickness of his withdrawal in his bones. August 2015.
His visions of the Three, of alternate pasts and presents and futures, are already fading like a dream in the thready dawn.
He sits up stiffly, and with a start realizes his mom's there, sitting quietly at the side of his bed.
He shakes himself to rid himself of the vision that there's three of her, of other features laid over hers like a palimpsest (Brooke, Julia). He touches his head, warily: what a trip, a cracked out dream that had been - clearly, the psychotropins haven't totally made their way out of his system.
Of course, maybe it wasn't just a dream. He really doesn't want to think about that possibility, doesn't want to think about his hanged other-self, upside down and dying on the tree of sacrifice, and of knowledge.
He touches his face, too. Of course his skin is whole, although he flinches at the touch, remembering the pain of Brooke's nails breaking the flesh.
"Dave, are you okay?" His mom reaches over, puts the back of her hand to his forehead, like she'd done since he was a boy.
The simple gesture makes the tears well up: he has so much to make restitution for, so many miles to travel before he finally returns to himself.
The alternative futures stretch ahead of him, bleak and full of shattering happiness, and Cook is almost too afraid to think about either. He remembers lying in the dirt in his own vomit; remembers standing under a shower of confetti and the sun.
Death or life: he'll always wonder if the steps he takes from now on will take him, and Arch, toward the one or the other.
The one thing he knows is that there will be steps. He'd finally reached out to rehab, to healing his life, to living in the world. He's made the decision to walk the path, to shed his Jareth garb and not to climb and hang himself from the summer tree at the crossroads.
"I will be," he tells his mom.
His world might have fallen down, but Arch is still living his life in it, and that's good enough for Cook.
[end intermission]
Master Post : Part One : Part Two : Cut Scene (Warnings) : Part Three : Epilogue
===================================================
EXTENDED DISCLAIMER & AUTHOR’S NOTES
Disclaimer: The characters of David Cook, David Archuleta, Dakota Fanning and David Bowie as portrayed herein reference real people, who belong solely to themselves. Lucasfilm, Columbia TriStar Motion Pictures, RCA and A&M are existing corporate entities and owned by their respective shareholders.
The original Labyrinth 1986 screenplay copyright Dennis Lee, Jim Henson and Terry Jones; production rights owned by Henson Associates and Lucasfilm; original song "As the World Falls Down" copyright David Robert Jones. The original Nine and a Half Weeks screenplay copyright Patricia Knop, Zalman King, Sarah Kernochan, source material credit novelist Elizabeth McNeil (all credits derived from www.imdb.com). Fair use thereof asserted.
This story and the situations depicted are fictional, and no libel is intended in respect of any of the real persons or corporate entities referenced. No profit is made from this story. Will remove in whole or in part without prejudice if a cease and desist notice is issued. The original plot is the property of the author, who asserts the moral right to be associated therewith. All rights reserved.
A/N: This is a stand-alone outtake from 2015 in decade-spanning futurefic All I Really Need Is You, which was too lengthy to include there.
Up to this point (spoilers): Cook and Arch embark on a passionate romance after their Manila concert, but part ways in 2010 after an incident of drug-related violence when Cook is on tour in Europe. Cook starts an acting career and a dating as well as downward substance abuse spiral; in 2012 Arch gets married to Isabel and they have a son in December 2013. In 2014, Cook starts work on the Labyrinth remake, and Arch and Isabel’s marriage breaks up.
As is obvious, the plot of the movie Labyrinth 1986 provides many key points of reference in all the Archuleta sections, and Cook's section in Part Three. The sexual situations, and references to "Cook wants to play a game" in Part II, are derived from the movie Nine 1/2 Weeks, as does Arch's line, "It's over...I should have known it sooner. I should have said stop," many of the italicized lines, and the counting motif in Part Three. (The cut scene in Part Two of this story includes a reference to the famous pill-swallowing scene that's cut from the final Nine 1/2 Weeks screenplay, allegedly for being too controversial.)
Lyrics quoted at the beginning of each chapter from “As the World Falls Down”, copyright David Bowie from the original Labyrinth soundtrack, “Slave to Love”, copyright Bryan Ferry from the original Nine ½ Weeks soundtrack, and “The Ground Beneath Her Feet”, copyright D Evans; S Rushdie; P Hewson; A Clayton; L Mullen Jr. Fair use asserted.
Acknowledgements: A huge debt of gratitude to all my consultants, pre-readers and beta: Frack, Cinco, Maria, Cristie, Ana. Thank you for taking on and contributing to this difficult story. I am also indebted to fantastic talented artists Kerstie and Chris, and Ana’s unexpected but gratefully accepted work. Thank you again so much.
(AS THE WORLD FALLS DOWN) I’LL BE THERE FOR YOU
As the pain sweeps through
Makes no sense for you
Every thrill has gone
Wasn't too much fun at all
But I'll be there for you
David Cook is wearing his Labyrinth hair and the silver-embroidered cloak belonging to King Jareth. It's a mantle he's donned so often he feels it's part of his skin.
Garbed as Jareth, Cook is striding rapidly down a winding road under the gathering dusk.
He's been walking for a long time; the hem of his garment and his pointy-toed boots are caked in the dust of his journey. The evening sky is an unearthly hue, casting purple shadows across his path. In the distance up ahead, he sees a crossroads.
He knows he won't be alone when he reaches the crossroads, and he isn't.
Three slender figures, three women, are waiting for him in the shade of a large oak tree.
Cook might have majored in graphic design in college, but he's familiar with his classics, knows the Three who wait at each crossroads: past, present and future, Maiden, Mother and Crone.
With a start, though, he recognizes the three faces turned to his. There’s Brooke White, his mom Beth, and Sony Zurich's Julia Gravenhorst, arrayed before him in gray like the three oracles of the oldest stories: the Fates, the Furies, capable of rending him limb from limb.
"Welcome," the Three say, more gently than he'd have expected. "It's good of you to stop by."
It's Julia who's speaking the most loudly, her lovely face set in that curious, wry expression she'd worn so many years ago when she'd danced with Cook in a club in Amsterdam and told him that Arch was too good for him. He can't meet her penetrating blue gaze.
"Ladies," Cook responds courteously - it's always a good idea to be polite to the Three. "Just passing through. Oracular services not required." To be honest, he doesn't think he'd survive the truth-telling, or indeed any encounter with the Fates tonight.
"Too late for that, darling," says Beth, and points upwards.
Cook follows her gesture and looks up, sees his own face and body, spread-eagled naked and reversed, hanging in the huge spreading branches of the summer's tree. The eyes of the other-him are closed; it looks as if he already has one mottled foot in the land of the dead.
Cook swallows. "I see you ladies have me at a disadvantage."
The Three look at Cook where he stands in the crossroads, and back at the gray and haggard figure above them.
"You can choose to turn away," says Brooke, her eyes hard as diamonds. "The choice has always been yours, Cook."
Cook realizes this, realizes his path brought him to the Three tonight for a reason, and it's up to him to see if he can determine what that is.
"Okay, then, show me," he says, turning first to the Maiden and bending his head.
Brooke gathers her skirts with one hand, stepping in close, and lays open Cook's cheek with the other. Cook's head rocks back, but he welcomes even this painful contact with her as her nails scrape ribbons from his flesh.
"You bastard," the Eternal Maiden tells Cook. "You deserve to suffer, after all you've done. Death on the tree might be too quick."
"No argument from me there," says Cook, swaying a little on his feet from the pain and the force of her attack. "Sadly, though, I seem to have screwed up the attempt."
He feels her hand close ungently around his wrist.
"You want to court Death? See here, then," she murmurs, and Cook stares into her blue eyes.
*
He sees the past he'd lived, singing that "Til I'm Blue" on the 2010 Heroes Tour, plaster on his face covering the scratches Arch had given him in exactly the same place as where Brooke had just marked him.
He sees himself flying high on blue and red, singing that damn song (Where we be, we've come so far) heartsick and grieving, wondering how it was he'd gone so far astray from Arch.
And then he sees something else: the walls of Gracehaven drug rehab clinic that he's become so familiar with in the past few weeks.
Only this time the calendar says August 2010.
The Kyle Peek Band is on the road without him. On this date, Cook knows exactly where they are: in Spain, the final stop of the Heroes tour. It's evening in Barcelona, and the boys are on stage. Cook fancies he can hear Andy's evocative voice singing "Til I'm Blue", like Neal meant him to, taking center stage like he was always meant to.
The L.A. afternoon sunlight fills his sickroom with bright cheer. In his bones, he feels the ache of substance withdrawal, and a certain inner peace.
After some minutes, there's a knock on the door. An orderly Cook doesn't recognize puts his head around the door and tells him, "Mr. Cook, you have a visitor. Visiting hours are nearly over, you don't have long."
"Who is it?" Cook asks, but the orderly has vanished, to reappear five minutes later to usher David Archuleta into Cook's room.
Arch, whom Cook had last seen in a haze of the red, from that last, terrible fight they'd had those weeks ago in Paris.
"Hey. Hi."
Arch's face is healed, unmarked, though it's more drawn and haggard than Cook has ever seen it. He looks older than his nineteen years, and so beautiful Cook's not sure he can stand it.
"What are you doing here?" Cook asks like an idiot. The sudden, urgent rush of emotion is making it so difficult to think; he feels slow and stupid with pain. When he was using, he's not sure he ever felt like this - at least the drugs stopped him from embarrassing himself -
Arch smiles a small half-smile. "Maybe I could sit down for a second?"
"Damn it. Of course, please - " Cook gestures, and Arch drops into the armchair beside Cook's bed. Cook's shivering; he doesn't know where to look. He thinks if he keeps looking at Arch, his heart might explode for real.
"Your mom told mine you'd checked yourself into rehab, and I couldn't not see you," Arch says, by way of explanation.
Cook looks at his hands, anywhere but at Arch, can't speak.
"What happened?" Arch asks gently.
Cook doesn't want to have this conversation, isn't ready to have this conversation. But he owes Arch an explanation. Of course, he owes Arch more than that.
"I made the choice to tell my mom," Cook says, at last. "The guys continued with the tour without me. I figured this was more important, that if I didn't do this now, I'd never get my life back on track."
"It's awesome that you did," Arch murmurs. Cook still isn't strong enough to look at Arch's face, but he thinks he can hear an encouraging tone in Arch's voice.
"Not awesome," Cook mutters. "I, I hurt you, Arch. That I could do that... I clearly had a problem. I'd travelled so far away from myself, I figured I couldn't get back without help."
He feels his eyes prickle with the tears he hadn't managed to shed while he'd been using. He's also shaking so hard he thinks he might actually fall over.
Arch hesitates, and then puts a hand on Cook's. Arch's fingers feel warm and achingly familiar, and they anchor Cook, like they always have.
"I know you weren't yourself when you hurt me. I know that, now. And I kind of made it hard for you myself."
Cook glances quickly at Arch, hardly dares to believe the gentleness he sees in the dark eyes.
The words spill out of him like a storm, the apologies he's wanted to make for the days and weeks he's been in this damn clinic. "Arch, I screwed up. I lied to you, hid this from you, because I was afraid. I thought I could handle the pills; I was wrong. I am so, so sorry."
Damn it, he really shouldn't be crying, because he'll never stop.
He struggles to hold back the tears for a while, and is mostly successful, after a fashion. What do you know, he may actually be stronger than he realizes.
When the crest of emotion recedes, Cook realizes something else: Arch has been holding his hand. Arch isn't saying anything, but he isn't letting go; Cook has no idea what that means. Or rather, he has an idea, but isn't going to let himself hope --
-- Cook says harshly, to cover the emotion, "I know I can't ask you to take me back. But I need... I need to know if you'd forgive me." He'd gone over this for weeks with his therapist, and it had all come back to this one thing. "I'll understand if you can't, because I'm not sure I'll ever forgive myself."
Arch is quiet for a long time. Cook gathers his courage and looks at Arch's face, at the man he still loves and knows he'll always love.
Finally, Arch says, "I think I can give you that."
He squeezes Cook's hand so tightly Cook feels his fingers might fall off, but that small pain is nothing compared to the intense surge of gratitude that fills him from top to toe.
And, ah God, there's hope as well, that threatens to overwhelm him. The sense of his past realigning itself, regaining its proper track, of healing his relationship with Arch even though the label might end his contract and his career. He'd still have the most important thing: his essential self, whole and healthy and drug-free.
Looking down at Arch's fingers interlaced with his, Cook amends this to, possibly the next most important thing, the most important being that he might not lose Arch entirely, or at all.
And when he looks up into Arch's eyes, he can see the future as it should be, as he should have made it, shining in the distance ...
*
...Cook can't weep, can't stand up straight, can't look into those eyes any longer. He returns to the crossroads to find himself clutching Brooke's slender shoulders to stop himself from falling to the ground.
"This could have been yours," is all the Maiden says, and all she needs to say.
Then she shoves him violently away, and Cook would have fallen, if his mother, the Mother, hadn't stretched out her arms to catch him.
"Dave, are you all right? Take a moment."
Cook clings to her. For an instant, he can't get his legs under him, and then he manages to stand on his own.
"I don't think I'll ever be all right," he says, shivering, trying not to throw up, haunted by the image of that path, that past, the world shivering around them.
"No," she agrees, and her simplicity is chilling. "But there are some things you've done that were right, and you should be proud of them."
"Nobody's all bad, Mom, though you might have thought I was, sometimes." Cook lays the uninjured side of his face against her shoulder, and tries to forget the present for an instant.
The Mother allows him one moment of reprieve: she embraces him for a second, then pushes him an arm's length away.
"Now you need to see this," Beth says, and Cook, swaying on his feet, looks into her eyes.
*
He's back in the Labyrinth ballroom, dancing with David Archuleta. Breaking both their hearts, in a next-to-final act of love.
"It's over," Archuleta whispers. "I should have known it sooner. I should have said stop."
Arch should leave now, before Jareth starts counting.
Then Archuleta's gone, and there's nothing more: no more masks, no more Labyrinth, no more weeks or time.
Arch, I didn't mean it. Would you please come back, if I counted to fifty? One.
Arch doesn't hear him, of course. He can't.
Cook counts: the colors, the pills, sliding down his throat. Tasting of nothing at all.
And then there are the sirens, screwing up his final act of love.
*
The world tilts on its edge, veering its side, on the verge of smashing and falling forever: another path, another present.
Cook is leaning on the white wall of the men's room. He's holding a bottle of pills, shaking them out into his hand, the colors like little universes against his lined, shaking palm.
Love line, fate line, life line - the pills cross and obscure each of them. No more love, no more fate, no more life even: everything ends here, with Cook counting.
Arch, I didn't mean it. Would you please come back, if I counted to fifty? One.
Cook doesn't know what the count has reached; he doesn't think it's very high, which is why he's surprised when a vision of David Archuleta confronts him in the whiteness of the men's room.
Arch is wearing the exact same Armani tuxedo he was wearing when he'd walked out of Cook's life that evening. His face is swimming in and out of focus, his mouth is moving, but at first Cook can't hear what he's saying.
Then Arch is holding him by the upper arms, and the pills have scattered on the floor, and Cook realizes it's no vision. Arch's fingers dig bruises into his arms, and Arch is shouting in his ear: "Cook, how many, how many did you take?"
Not that many, Cook thinks hazily. It didn't take you that long, Arch, I don't think I got anywhere near fifty.
What he says, though, weakly, fatally, is, "I'm so sorry. I don't know why I said that to you. Roy, Grant, there was nothing with either of them. There's nobody but you."
He tilts his head back to look at Arch's face, and finally sees the tears Arch hadn't shed all night. Arch is racked with sobs, can't hold Cook up any more.
They end up folding to the floor in each other's arms, and Cook is saying, "It's you I love, you I've always loved. If you leave me, I don't know how I'll go on living."
"I'll never leave," Arch murmurs.
Cook tells himself it'll be different this time, he'll really go to a clinic, and Arch is going to help him, everything will be fine, Arch'll see...
*
...Behind them, Beth bows her bright head, clasps her hands around her midsection, as if she regrets bringing Cook into the world.
Cook covers his face with his hands.
*
When he takes his hands away, Arch is gone, of course. Cook's standing at the crossroads at midnight, under his hanged self on the summer's tree, and the Crone is holding his wrists in her slender fingers.
Julia Gravenhorst: truth-teller, her fierce blue eyes more terrifying and transparent than Cook has ever seen them.
"David. You need to pay attention," the Crone says, and Cook looks into her ageless face.
*
Cook sees himself lying in his familiar, tapestried bed in his house in Hollywood Hills. The room is cold, some future winter chilling the windowframes.
Beside him, Arch's haggard, older face; Arch's body, dressed carelessly in a silk robe Cook doesn't recognize. Around them are colorful spheres, scattered like jewels of great worth across the bedspread.
Arch's eyes are shut. His lush, red mouth which had been hot even in a thunderstorm is now cold to the touch. In one hand, loosely curled, are three blue pills, three sapphires, the genuine article this time.
Cook runs a hand across Arch's face, strokes Arch's thighs, cool and still. Takes Arch's cold hand, and can't weep, even now.
The pills are gem-hard when they go down his throat. He's so cold. Everything's cold for real this time: the months and years of colors and white have become an eternal winter from which neither of them could escape.
The ground beneath them opens and swallows them whole, and the world, the world falls down.
Amid the crashing, the screams that precede the final silence, there's the voice of the Crone, Julia's voice: "Next time, David, you won't screw up."
*
Cook is on his knees in the dirt of the crossroads. His Jareth cloak is torn and discarded, and he's hurling the contents of his stomach into the road.
Julia's kneeling beside him; he sees he's besmirched the bottom of her robe with his vomit, but he's powerless to stop, caught in the vision of that fatal future.
When he's done, he rolls onto his back. Above him, Cook sees the hanged man's skin is gray as death. He sees his own limbs have now adopted the same spread-eagled position in the path below.
"God --" Cook tries to speak again; his throat's on fire, he's fighting back nausea, but he has to know, "-- Julia, please -- that doesn't happen, it can't, I sent him away --"
Gently, the Crone strokes his mauled cheek with her cool fingers.
"It's not for me to say. It could have happened. Maybe it could still happen, who knows?"
Her eyes are wide and endless as the sky as she continues: "And so could this."
*
There are blue skies and sunshine, church bells tolling in the distance.
A perfect summer day. He sees friends and family: Brooke, blonde and lovely and smiling like forgiveness, Beth wearing a beautiful pillbox hat and looking so proud he thought his heart might break.
There's a canopy of leaves overhead, a minister in front of them, and David Archuleta at his side.
Many waters cannot quench love, says Arch's sister, and Cook's brother says, Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is as strong as death, and burns like a mighty flame.
And Arch says: With this ring, I thee wed.
Then, there's a circle of gold on his finger, and Cook stands under a shower of confetti, holding Arch by the hand, tears in his eyes at last.
*
David Cook fights past layers of white sheets, packing cotton, finally surfaces slowly to himself in the waking world.
He opens his eyes to see his window at the rehab clinic Gracehaven, the early winter light limning it like a vision. He feels the sickness of his withdrawal in his bones. August 2015.
His visions of the Three, of alternate pasts and presents and futures, are already fading like a dream in the thready dawn.
He sits up stiffly, and with a start realizes his mom's there, sitting quietly at the side of his bed.
He shakes himself to rid himself of the vision that there's three of her, of other features laid over hers like a palimpsest (Brooke, Julia). He touches his head, warily: what a trip, a cracked out dream that had been - clearly, the psychotropins haven't totally made their way out of his system.
Of course, maybe it wasn't just a dream. He really doesn't want to think about that possibility, doesn't want to think about his hanged other-self, upside down and dying on the tree of sacrifice, and of knowledge.
He touches his face, too. Of course his skin is whole, although he flinches at the touch, remembering the pain of Brooke's nails breaking the flesh.
"Dave, are you okay?" His mom reaches over, puts the back of her hand to his forehead, like she'd done since he was a boy.
The simple gesture makes the tears well up: he has so much to make restitution for, so many miles to travel before he finally returns to himself.
The alternative futures stretch ahead of him, bleak and full of shattering happiness, and Cook is almost too afraid to think about either. He remembers lying in the dirt in his own vomit; remembers standing under a shower of confetti and the sun.
Death or life: he'll always wonder if the steps he takes from now on will take him, and Arch, toward the one or the other.
The one thing he knows is that there will be steps. He'd finally reached out to rehab, to healing his life, to living in the world. He's made the decision to walk the path, to shed his Jareth garb and not to climb and hang himself from the summer tree at the crossroads.
"I will be," he tells his mom.
His world might have fallen down, but Arch is still living his life in it, and that's good enough for Cook.
[end intermission]
Master Post : Part One : Part Two : Cut Scene (Warnings) : Part Three : Epilogue
===================================================
EXTENDED DISCLAIMER & AUTHOR’S NOTES
Disclaimer: The characters of David Cook, David Archuleta, Dakota Fanning and David Bowie as portrayed herein reference real people, who belong solely to themselves. Lucasfilm, Columbia TriStar Motion Pictures, RCA and A&M are existing corporate entities and owned by their respective shareholders.
The original Labyrinth 1986 screenplay copyright Dennis Lee, Jim Henson and Terry Jones; production rights owned by Henson Associates and Lucasfilm; original song "As the World Falls Down" copyright David Robert Jones. The original Nine and a Half Weeks screenplay copyright Patricia Knop, Zalman King, Sarah Kernochan, source material credit novelist Elizabeth McNeil (all credits derived from www.imdb.com). Fair use thereof asserted.
This story and the situations depicted are fictional, and no libel is intended in respect of any of the real persons or corporate entities referenced. No profit is made from this story. Will remove in whole or in part without prejudice if a cease and desist notice is issued. The original plot is the property of the author, who asserts the moral right to be associated therewith. All rights reserved.
A/N: This is a stand-alone outtake from 2015 in decade-spanning futurefic All I Really Need Is You, which was too lengthy to include there.
Up to this point (spoilers): Cook and Arch embark on a passionate romance after their Manila concert, but part ways in 2010 after an incident of drug-related violence when Cook is on tour in Europe. Cook starts an acting career and a dating as well as downward substance abuse spiral; in 2012 Arch gets married to Isabel and they have a son in December 2013. In 2014, Cook starts work on the Labyrinth remake, and Arch and Isabel’s marriage breaks up.
As is obvious, the plot of the movie Labyrinth 1986 provides many key points of reference in all the Archuleta sections, and Cook's section in Part Three. The sexual situations, and references to "Cook wants to play a game" in Part II, are derived from the movie Nine 1/2 Weeks, as does Arch's line, "It's over...I should have known it sooner. I should have said stop," many of the italicized lines, and the counting motif in Part Three. (The cut scene in Part Two of this story includes a reference to the famous pill-swallowing scene that's cut from the final Nine 1/2 Weeks screenplay, allegedly for being too controversial.)
Lyrics quoted at the beginning of each chapter from “As the World Falls Down”, copyright David Bowie from the original Labyrinth soundtrack, “Slave to Love”, copyright Bryan Ferry from the original Nine ½ Weeks soundtrack, and “The Ground Beneath Her Feet”, copyright D Evans; S Rushdie; P Hewson; A Clayton; L Mullen Jr. Fair use asserted.
Acknowledgements: A huge debt of gratitude to all my consultants, pre-readers and beta: Frack, Cinco, Maria, Cristie, Ana. Thank you for taking on and contributing to this difficult story. I am also indebted to fantastic talented artists Kerstie and Chris, and Ana’s unexpected but gratefully accepted work. Thank you again so much.