apachefirecat

Just warning now: I'm not planning on making this a new series or whatever. This is just ONE of TWO scenes I plan to write for a land comm challenge. HOWEVER, if the Muses decide to blow me that way, they blow me...





She was tired. She was so very, very tired of living this lie. Yet it seemed like her whole life had been a lie, ever since that night when she'd been only fifteen years-old. This wasn't the world where she belonged. This wasn't where she was meant to be, or the life that should have been hers. But she had given all that up for the very man beside her -- the very stupid man beside her.

"I know it's none of my business, Toby, but your big sister just wants you to be happy! We haven't come all this way! I haven't done everything I've done, given everything I have, just to watch you throw your life away!"

"I'M NOT THROWING MY LIFE AWAY, SARAH!" When his big sister whirled on him, ferocity dancing in her dark eyes, Toby slunk back. He didn't know what he expected her to do, but he could never be too sure when she was this angry. In a softer voice, he continued to insist, "I'm not throwing my life away!"

Sarah looked quickly around them, but nobody seemed to have heard him. People were walking briskly by them, but no one was actually observing them, no one, that was, but the orphan kid on the edge of the sidewalk. Sarah felt a pang of remorse for she hadn't brought anything with her this night, and she knew the peaches and apples she tossed to the kid as she walked by her were her primary source of nutrition. Everyone else, her own brother included, always acted like they didn't even see the child. They had just eaten very well too; she should have saved her a piece of her steak, or at least a roll or two.

But she hadn't, and that was that, and she couldn't save the whole damn world anyway. Besides, this world wasn't the land where she belonged. She had never felt at home in London despite being born here. There was a place she did feel at home, a place none of these normals, as she preferred to call them behind their backs and behind closed doors, even knew existed. And she'd given up that wonderful, magical kingdom for this unsupportive, naive, bullheaded -- Her eyes flashed back up at Toby as she demanded, hissing, "Do you even love her?"

"What?"

"Do. You. Love. Her?"

"Sarah," Toby shook his head. "Sarah, not everything is about love."

She turned her back on him. "You shouldn't marry if it's not for love."

"Not everybody has that privilege."

"I fought for yours! I fought so that you could grow up free -- "

Toby rolled his eyes. Not that this again! he thought forlornly. At least any passers-by would think that she had simply served in the military, from the way his crazy magpie was cawing.

" -- free to make your own decisions, to live your own life, and to marry who you want!"

"But I do want to marry her!"

Sarah threw up her hands, her bracelets jangling. "Not for the right reasons!"

"Do we have to do this here?" Toby asked with an exasperated sigh. He didn't want to make a scene, although it was for entirely different reasons than those for which she had shushed him earlier. Sarah saw a world full of people waiting to take an opportunity from them, but he only saw a street filled with people who would mock, laugh, and point at his sister, just as they had throughout most of his childhood. Toby had grown up feeling the need to fight his sister's battles, and now with himself pushing thirty and she pushing forty, he had grown beyond weary of fighting her and fighting for her.

She was a cop. She was one of the best detectives on her force; some would even argue that she was the best. She could certainly fight her own battles! Yet here she was as a grown adult carrying a badge and a weapon, still complaining about fairy tale nonsense! "Look, I'm sorry you think I cost you the opportunity of your life -- "

Sarah's bracelets rattled fiercely as she turned so swiftly that her nose was suddenly almost touching his. "I don't think," she hissed, whispering. Her eyes cut furious daggers into him. "I can't help it that you don't remember! I wish you did! I wish -- " She wished, with all her heart, that Jareth and his creatures would come after her again, that they would take them away from this awful place.

She stomped her foot. She wouldn't say the words again! She had said them so many times as she had finished growing up! She had said them. She had cried them. She had yelled them. She had screamed them. She had even cut them into her flesh, a fact she'd hidden so well that even her brother had never known.

"I loved him, Toby!" she whispered furiously, tears beginning to stream down her face. She really did need to take a day off work. She was truly beyond tired and could usually rein in her emotions. Years of her stepmother's so-called "help" had taught her to hide her true self away from this horrid world. Thunder rumbled in the nearby distance, but she couldn't hear it. She no longer heard the normals' shouts, car horns' blaring, or any of the other sounds around them in the busy, normal, mundane city. Oh, how she hated this place!

"Not. Here," Toby hissed and, snatching her by the elbows, yanked her into the nearest alley. "Not. Here!" he repeated. With his sister now held in his arms, Toby examined her face in the mixture of neon streetlights and what little moonlight actually reached them in the busy city. Deep lines furrowed her once smooth forehead. Bags circled underneath her shimmering, tear-filled eyes. Either her hair had started turning gray recently or she had stopped dying it. "Sarah. Sarah, look at yourself!"

"Look at me for that matter!" he cried. "Look, maybe I don't love Jessica, okay? But we're getting old! We're no longer children, and I can't spend my entire life cleaning up after you! I wish the doctors had been able to fix you, but -- "

"Fix me?!" she cried in horror, jerking away from him as she repeated his cruel words. "FIX ME!?!"

Lightning struck something nearby. In that bright, white flash of light, for just a moment, the Williams siblings could not see. As their vision cleared, Sarah felt something small and round roll underneath her foot. She heard something, as the thunder died away, that she'd lost hope of ever hearing again. Maybe, she thought disenheartedly, maybe the hallucinations were starting again.

She had not dreamed her journey through the labyrinth. Her mind had not simply created the tall, gorgeous, sensual, and powerful man with whom she had fallen in love or her friends, the precious few she had ever had. She had not imagined that journey, and no doctor, or stupid, little brother, could convince her otherwise. But she had had hallucinations since then. She had dreamed so many times that they were coming back to her. That was what had finally prompted her father to agree to her stepmother's demands that she see psychiatrists, but no matter what they had done to her, she had refused to tell the truths they wanted to hear. The Labyrinth and all its wonderful beings were not illusions of her imagination!

But then they had begun to discuss institutionalizing her for the rest of her life and when Sarah had heard that, she had quickly realized two things. For one, she would not be able to be there for Toby. The second, far more horrible thing, was that she would never stand a chance of finding her King again, of finding the beings to whom she should have been born instead of these awful, boring humans! And so, at last, she had begun to lie her butt off and tell them everything they'd been pressuring her to say for years. Even the electromagnetic therapy had not worked, but the horrible reality that she would never find her way back into the labyrinth had quickly made her start conning her way not only out of the laboratories and doctor's offices but beyond that, into attaining actual proof that the Labyrinth and its citizens did exist, that magic and all the other things that all these normals believed did not exist actually did.

For years, she had believed that if she could attain enough proof that the Labyrinth was real, she could deduce her way back into it. Then she could find Jareth, apologize to him, try to explain yet again that he had left her with no other choice for it not only been her life and future on the line when she had had to hurt him and break both their hearts but her baby brother's. If it had not been for Toby, she would have stayed. She would have stayed!!

Sarah sniffled. She had to be imagining things. She bent slowly down and lifted the small ball that had hit her boot. It wasn't a crystal ball. Maybe she wasn't imagining things after all. As she brought the ball into the light, though, she realized that it was a peach, a peach with a single bite taken out of it. She gasped and dropped the peach. As it hit the wet cement, she again heard snicking laughter in the shadows further in the alley.

She whirled toward the sounds. It couldn't be! Could it? She had waited so very long! She raced toward the sounds. Her brother shouted her name, then followed. Sarah's tears began to fall rapidly the moment she made out the first form in the shadows. "Hoggle!"

"Sarah!" His stubby arms were held out, but then he stopped and looked taken aback in surprise. His white, bushy eyebrows shot up. "You remembered my name!"

Sarah stopped. A myriad of emotions were flooding her. She felt like she could barely breathe. But here was the first chance to apologize for which she had been waiting so very long. "I'm sorry I never got it right before," she spoke quickly lest everything around her dissolve into just another dream that felt too real to deny. "I'm sorry I mistreated you like he did. I have something for you."

She lifted her hand and moved to slip a bracelet off of her wrist, but the one she had chosen years ago at a RenFaire, the very one she had kept for years for the friend who has finally come back into her life, is gone! She couldn't have lost it! She looked around her, twirling in the alley, and then, behind her brother, beginning to melt back into the shadows, she saw the girl. The same girl from the streets who she had fed so many days. The same girl who she had felt sorry for only a little bit ago, surely less than a hour, probably less even than just ten minutes.

The same girl whose mouth was open to scream. Toby, standing before her, had not seen what the child had seen. Hands shot out of the alley wall and wrapped tightly around the frightened girl's mouth but did not harm her. They were, after all, Sarah remembered, with a big grin, helping hands, even if they did have a tendency to pinch.

She looked back to Hoggle. "She has the bracelet I have for you," she told him.

"THIEF!" Hoggle shouted immediately. He still could scarcely believe that the girl who should have been their Queen had thought so much of him to have gotten him a present, let alone one she'd clearly been carrying with no idea that she would actually see him ever again. But perhaps, just as Jareth had pined for her, Sarah had pined for him. Maybe they could still bring peace and harmony to the kingdom. Maybe there was hope for them all after all. Maybe --

Hoggle grunted. He was getting sentimental in his old age! And a thief had his bracelet! "Nasty, lousy thief!"

"Easy, Hoglet -- I'm sorry, I mean, Hoggle," Sarah quickly corrected herself. "She's not going anywhere," she observed, indicating the Helping Hands with a meaningful glance of her eyes. "But..." She paused, a thoughtful expression settling over her beautiful, if aged, face. "Not that I'm not grateful, but why are you here now?"

"Dear Lord," Toby exclaimed, throwing up his hands, "she's talking to herself again! Not just talking but carrying on whole conversations!" He had missed everything happening behind him with the small, dark-skinned girl.

Now the skittering and snickering laughter grew louder in the back of the alley, so loud that even Toby had to pause and look toward it with his eyebrows raised and dark eyes widening. "What -- " he started to ask, but before he could form the question, a dog started yipping with loud, defiant cries.

Toby fell back for it was no ordinary dog that leaped from the shadows but a dog riding another dog and carrying a lance, a lance that was pointed straight at his heart! "How dare thee offend the maiden Sarah's honor!"

Toby fell back, his mouth dropping white open and his flesh turning a pale white. He screamed. The hands were waiting and quickly grabbed him. The dog kept his lance penned on him, and Toby's scream turned to yelling his sister's name for help as the Helping Hands covered his mouth.

But Sarah wasn't studying her baby brother. She was far too consumed with fear as she witnessed the sorrow fall over Hoggle's craggy face. She had never seen the Dwarf look so sad, or so scared. He wasn't shaking with fear this time, but she knew immediately that it was a different kind of fear. He couldn't run from whatever was or had happened. Nor could he barter or plead or beg his way out.

"Hoggle," she spoke softly, not wanting to say the words but not having a choice, "where's Jareth?" Her heart in her throat, she waited for his answer.

He could no longer meet her eyes. He knew he should have come sooner. He should have found a way to make these two reconnect. Both of their lives afterward, he had a strong gut feeling, had been utterly miserable without the other's presence. They were two halves of one whole, and without their other half, they had always been doomed. Doomed to heartache, to loneliness, to sorrow, such great sorrow... He had never once seen Jareth when it had not been about this girl, this girl who really had loved him but had known no other way, all those years ago, to save her baby brother who was not whimpering and crying like a yellow-bellied coward, the same kind of coward he had been when it had come to Jareth or, at least, the same kind of coward he had acted as. He had been terrified of Jareth, but Jareth had been a good, loyal friend and cared for him, the other Dwarves, and the other beings who called the Labyrinth their home like no other before him and no other after him would. No one else cared about them. No one else cared at all. Fat tears rolled down his cheeks and splashed down to his knobby knees.

"Hoggle," Sarah was almost whimpering now, "where's Jareth?"

It was Sir Didymus who answered her as all the color drained from Hoggle's wizened, deeply tanned face. As the Dwarf's knees knocked together and the Goblins scurried with a sound that sounded far more akin to crying than laughter, the bold Knight faced the woman who should have been their Queen. He faced her, a tear falling from beneath his eye patch, and he spoke the hardest words he'd ever had to speak. "We don't know, fair maiden."



And for the word count at the end of the month, this is 2654 words.