What Dreams May Come - Chap. 3

I do not own Jareth... or Sarah... or the Labyrinth. However Gregori and Daana are mine. :)

"Tell me about your dreams, Sarah."

Sarah closed her eyes, her mind drifting back across the years.

She took a deep breath and jumped in with both feet. "They started the night I left Underground. Something happened just before I left. I'm not sure how or why. I felt a burst of energy that seemed to envelope me and suddenly I could…" her voice cracked, " feel you. And then I was gone."

She paused for a long drink, trying to calm her nerves.

Jareth just watched her, trying his damnedest not to show any emotion. The last thing he wanted was for her to get angry or upset before he'd heard her tale.

Sarah licked her lips and then continued as she set the bottle back between her legs on the floor. "When I got back it was like nothing happened. We had our party. Hoggle, Ludo, Sir Didymus and the rest left. I went to bed… and then the dreams began."

She laughed softly, yet cynically, to herself as she dropped her eyes down to the floor shaking her head. She brought her eyes back up to meet his, her voice took on a kind of monotonous drone, laced with a deep, aching pain.

"The first thing I see every night when I fall into dream is your face."

Jareth's eyes widened, unable to suppress his shock at her words. Sarah just nodded at his response.

"For two years, you and your life was all I saw every time I closed my gods be damned eyes."

Jareth sat frozen. What exactly was she saying? "Sarah..."

Sarah raised a hand, "Questions later, just let me get through this." She took a deep breath and continued.

"Gradually I leaned to move away from you, to go other places. I daresay I've been all over your Kingdom." She gave him a lopsided smile.

Jareth nodded slowly, that would explain some of the art in the room above.

And then her eyes grew distant. "By the time I turned 17, I lost the ability to call my friends. I'd been forced to grow up too fast, forced to be an adult while I was really still a kid. In desperation, I tried communicating with them in my dreams. It was hard at first, but eventually I came to be able to form a misty kind of me in Underground. I can talk to them, walk with them, but never touch them."

Jareth took a couple of mental notes as he inched forward slowly. She was close to falling apart. Even shielded he could feel her mental strain.

"I tried to fight them, the dreams. I have gone weeks with only three hours sleep a night. I have trained myself to stop dreaming, waking just a dream begins. I've spent whole weeks drunk to the point of passing out to avoid them."

"I tried to get on with life without Underground, dating, going to parties, doing anything except sleeping. But always, just as I thought I'd won, I'd have to lay down. I'd be so completely exhausted and against every fighting fiber of my body, my eyes would drop closed. And there I'd be, in Underground, with you one more time." That last was said with a note of despair.

"Finally, I couldn't just watch anymore. Granny brought me here just before I turned 17. You were rebuilding, trying to get your life back together. I watched you night after night." She closed her eyes against the tears that threatened and took another swig from the bottle.

"I couldn't just watch anymore." She repeated, her voice lowering to a whisper. "I decided to help. So I gave myself completely to the dreams. Every night, you're the first thing I see. I've entered dreams at balls, in your chambers as you made love to different women, as you've sat on your throne watching through a crystal as someone runs the Labyrinth. I see all manner of people and places. I've spent hours with Didymus, Ludo and Hoggle. They've shown me more of your world than you'd believe. I take what I learn from the dreams and use it in my books."

She paused again, squinting at him where he sat across from her. Was it her imagination or had he moved closer.

She smiled a trembling smile. "I was surprised when the first one was so successful, but happy. Its odd, but at the signings for the books, I seem to feed off the children's energy. I come home so full of life, so energetic. When I go to sleep, I pour all of that energy into the Labyrinth to help it heal."

Jareth nodded slowly.

She'd been there with him for six years, watching and helping him. She hadn't left him. She'd never left him. But, he'd left her. She'd watched as he'd lived his life, as he'd attempted time and time again to replace her in his heart. He'd never felt so at odds with himself as he did at this moment. He raised his eyes to find hers looking at him intently. The tears she'd been holding back starting to fall.

"I don't understand, I thought I'd won. But I didn't. I lost… everything. Toby doesn't know I exist. Every dream I've ever had was displaced by this need to fix what I broke. I have nothing. No life, no family, no dreams of my own. My only worth comes from helping a world that no one else believes in thrive. I am nothing more than an illusion anymore. I'm stuck here. My life is there."

"I dream for sometimes 20 hours a day. When I'm not sleeping, I'm working on the next book, trying to give each drawing that extra something that brings the story to life. I don't eat more than one meal a day. I'm a borderline alcoholic. I have nothing more than the next dream to live for. " She broke down completely.

Jareth closed the distance between them, giving in to the part of himself that wanted to hold her and protect her. He pulled her into his arms slowly, giving her the time to pull away if she chose to do so. "Sarah, sweet Sarah. Come now… sssshhhhh, you'll make yourself sick." He drew her across his legs cradling her against his chest. While he'd been able to sense that she was distressed earlier, now he could fully feel what she was feeling. He would never have believed that his Sarah could be so heartbroken and lost.

"Sarah, if you learned to communicate, why didn't you talk to me as well. Maybe…somehow.. we could have…"

He let his words trail off, his voice full of unspoken emotion, not even sure of what he wanted to say. Was it we could have stopped the dreams, or we could have found one another again.?

"I almost did once. You were in your study when I came in that night." She sniffled, her voice shaking as she spoke.

"I walked over to where you stood at the window overlooking the Labyrinth. I looked over your shoulder to see what you were watching so intently." She sighed. "You were looking at me, as I slept in one of you're crystals. Just as I started pulling together my mist form, you threw the crystal against the wall, with a violence I've only seen from you a handful of times over the years. I woke up screaming."

She attempted to push off him, knowing that he was most likely only comforting her because it's what a gentleman does for a lady, not because he wanted to, but to her surprise he resisted her. She gave in, reveling in the sensation of his arms around her and not caring at this moment what he would think of her in the morning.

"By the time I settled down enough to get back to sleep, you'd managed to find a bed partner."

She looked up at him. "I want you to know that I don't spy on you. I barely spend any time at all around you other than that initial appearing I do wherever you are. Knowing that you hate me that much, even though I can't blame you for that, I just can't…" He never found out what it was she couldn't do. She cried into his chest for several long minutes, and then she spoke again.

"I have tried to end this entire charade."

She raised an arm, pulling the shirt's sleeve up over her elbow, to the moonlight pouring through the window, knowing he'd be able to see clearly what she could only barely see in the light. Jareth cringed as he looked at her arm and the pair of jagged scars going from wrist to elbow. One of the pair was old, it's line thin. The other though, was recent, no more than a few months old if he were to judge.

"I tried to leave this wretched life of mine twice, once when I was 16, the second time not so long ago. When I woke up, the wounds were healed. I guess it doesn't matter if my life means anything; your Labyrinth won't let me die. It's going to punish me for as long as it can."

The tears returned. Sarah was too far gone to care. All that she knew was that for the first time ever she was able to tell one person the whole truth and that person wasn't pushing her away or calling her crazy or walking out the door.

Jareth felt her go limp in his arms, the terrible torrent of tears came to an abrupt halt as he ran a hand soothingly through her hair. He pulled her tighter to him, staring at the white lines on her forearm that seemed to stand out in silent accusation.

He'd listened to her story, his heart aching as she told it. She'd been so close to him all this time, yet he'd never known. Through the violence of one careless act, he'd pushed her away, never knowing she'd been there to push.

He thought back over the years since her visit to Underground. Though they only numbered six years, it seemed they'd been the longest in his long life. He pulled her closer to him still, burying his face in her hair. How had he missed her in his realm? Long forgotten coincidences he'd dismissed and conversations he'd over heard between her three comrades came to him, finally making sense.

There'd been a rumor among the inhabitants of the Labyrinth about her. He'd heard from a variety of creatures that while she'd defeated the Labyrinth, she'd lost her soul. She'd been seen regularly in the labyrinth in her mist form it would seem. He'd never believed the rumors. He had thought at the time that his people were creating stories to make her victory hollow, especially once the Labyrinth had begun healing.

He shook his head as he slowly stood, lifting her with his ascent. He'd have to make the Labyrinth release her when he got back. She had more than earned her freedom from a world she'd given too much for.

He walked to her room and laid her gently down on the bed, leaning over her as he brushed a few stray hairs from her face. Yes, he'd have to have the Labyrinth let her go. It was only right. But, why then, did it hurt so much?

He brushed a soft kiss across her forehead, knowing that she'd never know he'd done it and walked back out the door closing it tightly behind him.

Gregori watched as Daanna inscribed the complex lines of the runes, glowing dimly in his vision, over the bloodstains where Jareth had fallen. She wore a look of intense concentration, her full lips moving slightly as the spoke the words of the Tracing spell she was casting. There was a bright flare of light as she set the spell loose, its web-like strands pulsing with a light that would be visible even to an untalented mortal.

Gregori's eyes moved to the scrying bowl that sat in the center of the circle. He watched as the strands filtered through their world into the space between. With luck, they'd find Jareth there, his corpse floating in the mists.

The strands moved through the mists seeking, searching, almost frantic in their pace, and then as suddenly as they had started their quest they stopped, as if bouncing off a wall. They'd come to the edge of the Mortal Realm. He looked at Daanna knowing she had not put enough power behind the spell to break through the wall that separated them from the Mortals.

Daanna raised her eyes to him, nodding slowly, knowing that he knew what she needed. She Reached for him with both a hand and her magick. He gave her his own and readied himself.

It started slowly at first, just a trickle of his own energies being put behind the spell and then she opened the channel wider. There was a long moment where he felt as if he were being forced through a sieve and then the tension broke and the strands moved on still seeking their prey.

He heard Daanna's gasp as Jareth came into view standing shrouded in darkness in a forest. He wore bandages over the parts of his body that were visible, their stark whiteness visible against the gloom surrounding him. Apparently, his wounds had been tended. He was alive, damn the man! Daanna started chanting again, this time more loudly, setting a Marker on Jareth's location.

Gregori's eyes widened as he watched Jareth tense through the bowl as the last words of Daanna's spell were spoken and the spell was loosed. Jareth looked around as if warned by something where he was. He should not have felt anything. For the first time, he began to wonder if possibly they had underestimated the Goblin King.

Daanna ended the Tracing spell once the Marking spell had been laid and Jareth had gone back to staring across the waters of the pond he stood at, resuming his thoughts on whatever he had been thinking. She narrowed her eyes at his form just as she picked up the scrying bowl and ran a finger over it's runes to deactivate it. While she was a bit worried about the Goblin King's seeming good health, she knew that they could deal with that easily now that he'd been found.

Daanna turned to Gregori, once the last spell had been broken. She lifted her hands and he took them, pulling her up to her feet gently. Once she was fully on her feet, she raised her eyes to his. Gregori smiled at the cross of anger and wicked humor that he saw within their depths.

"Call the Wild Hunt, my Lord. Both he and the mortal that is aiding him will be dealt with. The Gods are on our side in this. Tomorrow night the wall between our worlds will be near non existent. All Hallows eve in the Mortal Realms will give us victory."

Daanna smiled at Gregori, the wickedness implicit in that smile, heating his blood. Daanna circled his neck with her arms, tugging him toward her and taking his lips in a deep passionate kiss. When the two parted, she spoke again. "The very thought of what the Hunt will do to them excites me." Her eyes darkened as she spoke, her eyes focusing on his lips. "Their pain invigorates me." Daanna drew Gregori to her again, this time her kiss rougher, more heated. "I want you my love, here, now, on the place where Jareth's blood will lie beneath us." She lifted a hand from behind him, and drew her fingernails down his neck, just scraping the surface and then tiptoed up to lick the blood that she'd brought to the surface.

Gregori didn't hesitate as he lifted her off her feet and then knelt laying her with care on the stone of the blood colored floor. He answered her kiss with one of his own, reveling in the harsh passion that the feel of his skin being broken by her nails brought him. He ripped open the bodice of her dress. Daanna moaned loudly. "That's it beloved, make me feel," she whispered to him. "Make me feel alive."

She closed her eyes and spoke three words under her breath. She could feel the energies being brought about from their passions already starting to pool into her reserves. While she did enjoy Gregori's attentions, she had no intention of letting the fruits of their mating go unused. It was then that Gregori's finger tips found her inner lips and she could think of nothing but him.