Chapter Three: White Rabbit
"I don't believe this!" Meghan leaned back across from Sarah, brow furrowed, her expression one that hovered between anger and confusion. "Honestly, who on earth would buy something this ridiculous? It's so…so…" She trailed off, unable to complete the sentence, voice choked off by frustration.
Sarah sighed, washing down more of Meghan's supply of caffeine pills with another swig of coffee. "I told you that all the websites on fairies were written by twelve-year-old girls, but you wouldn't believe me." She set her mug down on the coffee table, which was rapidly developing into a miniature industrial wasteland, and walked around to sit beside Meghan on their very battered couch. "Don't throw the computer again, either. It might not survive another close encounter with the closet door."
Meghan rolled her eyes skyward and thrust the computer into Sarah's lap, jumping to her feet and pacing around the room. "I'm sorry, it's just, how am I supposed to help you if the most reliable source I have is Wikipedia? I can't keep the evil mind-invading fairies away from you if we don't know what kind of evil mind-invading fairies we're dealing with, now can I?" Groaning, she lowered her face to her knees.
"Do you have even the slightest idea how strange that sounds when you say it out loud?" Sarah tilted her head slightly, attempting to fathom how any of their current conversation was possible. Normal human beings did not sit there quietly, listening to their friend recount how she was sucked out of reality by the magic-wielding, possibly imaginary Goblin King, forced to travel through an enchanted labyrinth, and alternately confused, turned around, and imprisoned in her own head so that she could rescue her infant brother from becoming a goblin. Normal human beings did things like ask if you were on any interesting drugs or had forgotten to take a medication this morning. With that eliminated, most normal human beings would hold you down and call the men in white coats to have your sanity reassessed.
Meghan, on the other hand, reached for the nearest laptop and started trying to do research. Their current topic of discussion was who or what exactly the Goblin King was. So far, they had determined that he was not a selkie, a kelpie, or any kind of mythological shapeshifter, and were now attempting to work through fairies. Unfortunately, every source available to them was either written by harebrained, wing-wearing young girls who called everything a 'fae', or ran together with other myths and had to be dissected before it made any kind of sense. There was, in other words, a decided lack of source material available to them, and of that, there was so far exactly nothing that was useful.
"Here's something…" Sarah entered a promising link, and was immediately relieved to discover the page she'd stumbled onto did not have flickering butterflies for a cursor or play irritating, bouncy music about magic. The people running it had even worked out how to spell, and had (mostly) worked out the art of the apostrophe. "Aon sí, called the Sidhe, out of Celtic folklore and kind of like elves….hmm, a lot of people stick them together with the Scottish ones, Seelie and Unseelie, but a lot of people think they have wings…they're supposed to be either stunningly beautiful or hideously ugly."
Meghan's expression lit up, and she slid back down obediently beside her. "That could work, let me see." Without waiting for an answer, she snatched the sleek black contraption back and started searching. "They live in courts, outside of our reality, but you're supposed to get there through hills or trees, so I don't know." More frantic clicking, and her face fell. "There's a zillion different kinds, and some of them are really weird, like dogs or banshees, so unless he's actually a spirit escaped from Hell we're out of luck. Man, I hate the internet." She paused in her ramblings long enough to stare thoughtfully off into space, and then lit up once again as the next wave of ideas struck.
"Maybe he's just a really sexy goblin? I mean, some of them are supposed to be tall, and not all of them have to be ugly." Meghan grinned at the thought, typing frantically once more and scrolling past several pages written in glittery pink font that made Sarah's eyes bleed. "But I don't think they hang out with humans, or turn into owls. The only part that fits is stealing your brother; they're notorious for running off with children." Suddenly, as if electrified, she jumped up from her perch and lurched in the direction of her book collection. Rapidly scanning along the shelves, she came up with a thin, brightly colored children's story held aloft.
"Outside Over There is a classic, Sar, and I think it might actually help." She sat back down, flipping through the pages. "Let's see if I remember the story right…A young girl has her baby sibling stolen, and has to go off into another world to rescue them, before they get turned into a goblin and go away forever…any of that sound familiar to you?" Meghan handed over the book to Sarah, who took it from her gingerly, eyes scanning the pages. The illustrations did look very familiar, though these goblins had far less variety than the ones in real life. She had to choke down a laugh, however, at the notion that, of all the resources at their disposal, the one that was most helpful was a fairy tale.
"Although, if you go by this version, they usually want to marry the kid off to one of their own, not use them to get you to marry them." Meghan shook her head, exhaling a sigh of frustration. "This is just going in circles, Sar, and I don't know how long we can keep you awake through coffee." She stood again, pacing back and forth across the floor. "Do goblins even have marriage?" she mused softly, expression faraway. "Maybe they just throw orgies? Since they can't have kids, according to the books at least." She shook her head, and slammed a hand against the wall. "I just wish we knew what on earth these dreams have to do with anything! I mean, why would he be doing something like this? It just has no point!"
So much for the idea that two heads were better than one. They'd been at this for the better part of an hour, and so far the only thing they'd determined was that Sarah was getting more sleep-deprived by the moment, and had no idea why. No matter what answer they came up with, there was simply no thread of myth or magic or even logic that would connect who she'd known Jareth to be, and the idea that he would be trying to overrun her mind with debilitating nightmares, thereby pulling her out of reality. It just didn't make sense, and the longer they both tried to work it out, the more turned around and confused they became. There was just something missing from their calculations.
As she sat in silence, waiting for the next brilliant idea to strike, Sarah lifted her head to stare out the open doorway into the hall outside. She felt her concentration slipping and instinctively downed more of the rapidly cooling coffee in her hands, just in time to catch that flash again – a glimpse of pale fabric and movement in the corner of her eyes, just outside the view of the doorway. Setting the mug down, she stood, her mind racing. Surely he couldn't be following her here?
It rolled smoothly down the hallway, almost leisurely, the reflective surface sparking with the light as it went by – a crystal, moving of its own accord, away from the room, in the direction of the staircase. Without thinking, Sarah took off after it, following the path it left, getting the eerie sense that she was drawing closer to someone who watched her with every step. There was only one person who did things like this, only one person capable of striking such a powerful sense of déjà vu into her every movement, and in her current state of mind she would have loved nothing more than to throw something large and heavy at his head.
It wasn't until she stepped outside, blinking as stars and imprints danced across her vision, that Sarah realized how long she had spent indoors. Her roommate was a self-professed creature of the night, prone to keeping the shades down at all times so that it was impossible to tell what time of day it was without a clock. From the looks of it, it was now the brightest part of the early afternoon, and the sun was currently aiming most of its efforts down onto her. The cool air rushed around her, almost welcoming, a relief from the stifling air of indoors. As she lifted a hand to shade her eyes, the crystal vanished. Forcibly, as if against her will, she found her gaze being drawn upwards.
Choking back a scream, Sarah stumbled, staring.
Standing on the edge of the dorm's roof, practically on air, was the Goblin King himself, in all his dark glory, outlined against the pale sky. His pale eyes were bright with ill intent, his smirk both familiar and chilling. A wave of involuntary fear swept through her, developing into a sense of absolute horror when she caught sight of what he was actually doing so far off the ground. In one hand, he clutched the familiar crystal, and in the other he held the throat of a young man, whom he had suspended in midair, thrashing against him weakly, utterly helpless.
Hazel eyes wide with fear, Kyle extended one hand out towards her in a silent plea for help, trying to pry himself from Jareth's iron grip with the other. His face was pale, and though his mouth opened and closed, no sound escaped him other than a choked gasp. Not only was he clearly suffering from vertigo and fear at the prospect of an imminent, painful death, he was slowly suffocating. Sarah felt static threaten to overwhelm her vision, yanking at the edges of her composure, causing her to tremble. Yet with it came anger, the edge of old defiance forcing her to remain steady, upright, outwardly calm. How dare he.
"There you are, Sarah," Jareth purred, his voice soft with malevolence. "You're just in time for the show." Slowly, deliberately, he removed a finger from Kyle's windpipe, allowing him to let out a noise halfway between a snarl and a sob. It sounded suspiciously like a half-formed version of Sarah. "But I wouldn't let him fall," he crooned, mocking tone deliberately throwing her words back at her, forcing her to regret her actions.
In a single moment, it came to her. The memories of the games he'd woven, the strange and infuriating things he'd said, how he'd hurt her inside of her head and then thrown her back out of it again, unknowing. Most clearly of all, she recalled their last little dream-conversation, during which she'd jumped off a ridiculously high castle wall in order to prove the point that he didn't want to see her dead. Now, with a sense of mounting dread that would likely turn into paralyzing terror the moment she started being sane again, Sarah realized that this was his response. Jareth had stepped out of her mind altogether, into the plane of the very real and dangerous, in order to prove to her that he had absolutely no qualms about the death of other, innocent people.
Especially not when it came to the boy he viewed as his competition. This thought sent more anger running through her, that all of this was being done not out of any sense of any scheme or master-plan that she could see, but out of sheer male idiocy. The Goblin King was apparently not immune to jealousy, possessiveness, or being delusional about a woman's feelings when it suited him. Her feelings towards him were about as tender as a punch in the face, and actually, what her true desires were at the moment had nothing to do with begging, pleading, or submitting; what Sarah really felt the need to do was borrow a pair of steel-toed boots and kick him as hard as she possibly could in a place that would deliver a lifetime's worth of pain.
But her boyfriend was still being held off the edge of a roof by a psychopath, and said psychopath probably wasn't going to be persuaded by the suggestion that they let Kyle get on with his life unharmed (and in one piece) and go talk about this in the nearest café over a good cup of coffee. So, instead of doing any of the violent or idiotic things that came to mind, Sarah drew on the one weapon she still had left in her arsenal. Very deliberately, she let the panic that pulled on the edges of her vision take over, flickering past the edges of her self-control as it flooded in. The adrenaline shot through her, deepening the tremors that ran through her. She felt tears forming in her eyes, her lower lip trembling in the picture of submission.
"Please," she gasped out softly, noting the triumphant look on Jareth's face, "please, don't hurt him." Her gaze fixed on Kyle, drawing on every ounce of affection she'd ever felt for him. She forced it out through her gaze, letting it cover her expression. The smirk, borne no doubt from the belief that he had broken her, slid slowly off the Goblin King's face. "I…I love him. Just let him go. I'll do anything, just…let him go." The tears rolled down her face, and her knees nearly gave beneath her.
From the sudden, almost shell-shocked look she received, Sarah knew he was buying it. Either he would take her at her word, and demand the 'anything' part of it, or he would take his anger out on her in some other ruthless way, but Sarah failed at that particular moment to care. From her little performance, he would believe now that if he harmed Kyle, it would cement her hatred by breaking her heart. Predicting the man was about as easy to do as rearranging a storm and telling it to follow orders, but if he was anything like the Jareth she'd known, this would work. It had to.
Jareth's expression was frozen now, a pale mask of indifference through which a look of pure malice shone through. "You love him, do you?" His voice was harsh, the velvet of self-control all but gone, and unconsciously Sarah flinched. Perhaps she'd underestimated just how far over the edge of sanity he'd gone. His grip tightened on Kyle's throat, causing him to emit an even softer, more pained gasp, his face going ashen. "Let him go? Is that what you want?" His smirk took on another edge, poisonous. "All you had to do was ask." His expression utterly glacial, vindictive, he released Kyle, sending him plunging to the ground.
The real scream that had been building tore from Sarah then, a sound that vaguely resembled Kyle's name but was too ragged to be actual syllables. She lunged forward, the faint thought in her mind that if he landed on her, then he might live. From a distance, she heard something like an echo, crying out her name, but all of her attention was focused on Kyle, the universe slowing to the pace of molasses before her eyes. She was unable to move, frozen in place by her own traitorous muscles, full of the knowledge that she was going to be too late. Barely ten feet from him, she halted, eyes wide. He was crashing to the ground, with the most sickening noise, the crunch of a body breaking across concrete, his head seeming to splinter before her eyes…static swam across her vision, blackness threatening to follow…
"SARAH!"
Her eyelids fluttered open, the outline of an unfamiliar ceiling swimming in her hazy vision. A moment later, that view was invaded by a much more welcome one, warm brown eyes framed by black horn-rimmed glasses, and the worried half-frown that managed to be both comforting and alien. "Sarah? Are you all right?" Meghan had one arm wrapped around her back, her limp form sprawled across the battered couch, her head throbbing wildly.
The panic rose quickly as Sarah remembered, jerking out of Meghan's grip, her eyes wide. "Kyle! Oh my God, Kyle…" She raised a hand to her mouth, a wave of nausea causing her head to spin, and for a moment the world tilted slightly sideways. "We have to call the police, or an ambulance, or something…oh God…" She could feel the tears rolling down her face, vision blurring with liquid, sobs choking off her words as the grief and terror truly sank in.
Meghan frowned again, an expression that scrunched her nose oddly, and pulled Sarah up against her, moving them both down on to the couch. She paid no heed to the fact that Sarah was now crying all over her shirt, instead peeling her off and bracing her hands on her shoulders, forcing her to pay attention. "Sarah, it's all right now, you're awake again, and…" The metaphoric lightbulb burst into life above her head. "You remember! Oh, this is great, you remember! But what happened, why are you crying?"
Sarah stared at her, arms crossed over her chest, eyes wide. "What are you talking about? How can you not know? How can you be so…so calm?! Kyle's dead!" It came out as nearly a scream, and again she lunged forward, trying to get to her feet. Again, Meghan held her patiently down, looking at her as though she were a misbehaving child who simply hadn't realized what the lesson of the story was yet. "And Jareth…that son-of-a-bitch…"
"Sarah, calm down. Much as it pains me to say this, Kyle's fine." Meghan spoke slowly, softly, as if afraid to startle her. "He called while you were…out…to check in with you, said he might come by later." Her dark eyes flickered back and forth over Sarah's expression, the rapid breathing, the adrenaline pounding through her veins, in the most maternal glance she'd ever managed.
"Sarah, you were dreaming. You fell over while I was being all broody, and hit your head on the table. At first I thought I'd better let you sleep, that you'd come out of it, but you were shaking and moaning and maybe even crying, and I have to tell you it was one of the scariest things I'd ever seen once you actually started screaming. You were yelling Kyle's name, and something about Jareth." Meghan released her, satisfied that she wasn't going to run wild-eyed up the street like a schizophrenic, and retreated to the armchair across from her. "I'm guessing from the panic attack that it was a nightmare."
Sarah nodded slowly, feeling the terror subside as the knowledge sank in, the flow of tears slowing but not yet ended. She had been dreaming, and hadn't even known it. The ache in her chest did not belong there, was not real. When she had lapsed into silence, she had fallen asleep without realizing, and had simply believed she was in reality until Meghan had the sense to try and wake her up. The crystal, the roof, the sight of Kyle's body shattered on the ground, all of it…had just been a nightmare. There was no death, no pain, no grief…just a dream. An alarmingly vivid, eerily real one, that still sent images flashing through her thoughts and caused her to wince, a sob halting in her throat.
Instinctively, Sarah reached for the coffee mug she'd left behind, and drained the rest of its contents in an attempt to sober herself up. Her body still trembled, but with the knowledge that it wasn't real came anger, reviving her sense of reason. "I remember now, Meghan. I remember all of them, the dreams, I mean. And this last one was so real I didn't even know I was dreaming." She got to her feet, brushing the sodden hair across her forehead out of her eyes. "It's getting worse, it's…it's like I can't tell the difference between being here and in my mind any more. It's like he's trying to take over me completely." Her gaze hardened, and lifted to meet Meghan's. "I'm not going to let that happen."
Meghan nodded, immediately back on-track with the discussion, her expression brightly thoughtful once again. "There has to be something we're missing here, something we haven't picked up on. Otherwise this just makes no sense. Hmm…" She trailed off, biting her lip. "Your dreams are pulling you further and further into your own head, probably so that you end up not knowing which reality is his and which is this one. But why?" She rose as well, pacing back and forth as she thought aloud. "If he already knew he could yank you into his freakish Alternaworld when he wanted, then why would he break into this reality and hack into your brain? It just doesn't make sense."
She went to sink back down, and then the nonexistent lightbulb came on again behind her expression. "Wait a minute…" She moved towards Sarah, grasping hold of her arms. "What if this isn't about you? If it's not about seducing you, or stealing you, or playing with you…what if it's about distracting you? Keeping you locked inside your head?" Meghan's expression was slightly wild, as she came to an obvious conclusion behind her eyes. "What could he possibly want that you would keep him from taking?"
The sense of dread was absolute as it settled over Sarah's already-frazzled body. She knew, instinctively, exactly what Meghan was getting at, and it terrified her more, somehow, than even the thought of Kyle's gruesome death. She had the innate sense that the question that was coming, however rhetorical, was going to be the worst one yet. She had been locked inside her own mind before with him, and then it had been for one very specific reason: to stop her. She refused to follow the thought through to conclusion, but if he wanted to keep her away from something… then suddenly it would all fall into place.
Jareth had been known to play all kinds of tricks in the hopes of keeping her from the prize, and his idea of fair would give a roomful of lawyers conniptions. All of that was four years in the past, four years buried in her memory, and it had all been about something, no, someone that she had won the right to keep even then. But if it was true, if the Goblin King was cheating at his own game, then she knew. She knew exactly what Jareth could want, that she – and only she – had the power to take away from him.
"It's not about me," she half-whispered, frozen. "It's about Toby."
In half a heartbeat, she lunged for the door, snatching up her keys along the way. It didn't matter that she was sleep-deprived and currently fueled only by caffeine, which was ebbing from her system. It didn't matter that she was dazed and still half-convinced that her boyfriend was a bloody smear on the concrete; nothing mattered half so much as the image of her little brother, frightened and alone, wailing at the feet of the Goblin King. She'd stop this if she had to run through the whole damn Labryinth all over again.
"Where do you think you're going?" Meghan's hand clamped down on her wrist. "You are not driving anywhere, narcolepsy-girl." She snatched the keys, caught their glint in the light, and grinned. Seizing the bottle of caffeine pills off the bookcase, she caught Sarah by the arm, and began hauling her forcibly up the hallway. "Don't worry, Sar – you can have shotgun."
xxxxx
(Author's Note: To anyone who happens to be concerned by my characterization of Jareth, let me reassure you: it's all very deliberate, and there is a perfectly logical explanation for why he's being such a bastard.)