The Villain and the King

Ch 3- The Game

by: Jack Hawksmoor

Sarah fought with her beaded top for a moment, before Jareth reached down and helped her get it over her head. It was fitted enough that she hadn't bothered with a bra, and Jareth's eyes went wide with obvious delight.

"My, I do like this ensemble," Jareth said appreciatively. He dipped his head and licked a line right up between her breasts, pausing to press his lips over her heart. His soft hair brushed over her skin, and he continued up, his mouth pausing at the dip between her clavicles, just as the base of her neck. He pressed his tongue there, a wet flick of heat. Sarah jerked and gasped, feeling like she'd just gotten a minor electric shock.

She pushed her fingers underneath the collar of his open-chested shirt, slipping her hands over his shoulders. Deliberately, she dragged her fingernails up his back.

Jareth made a harsh sound and started biting his way up her neck.

The press of his teeth made Sarah shivery and impatient. She shifted her hips, squirming a little until she could get a thigh between his legs. He was hard and warm and felt delicious pressing against her through the softness of her silk skirt. She pushed herself up against him, making Jareth hiss in shocked pleasure. She thought that was delightful, so she repeated the motion, giving him a little more friction, wanting to pull more sounds out of him.

Jared caught the movement of her hips smoothly and rocked against her, pinning her against the desk with a soft "oh" on his lips. Sarah would have normally smiled, would have normally been loving how perfectly they moved together. She was distracted from that particularly satisfying truth about their relationship, because when Jareth pressed her against the desk something pointy that had been in her pocket dug into the meat of her thigh.

Her stomach clenched in the worst way imaginable, and she froze. Oh, no. She was probably in one of the top five situations to be in when a girl absolutely did not want to throw up.

Jareth was regrettably sharp to her reactions at that particular moment and stopped, pulling back enough to get a look at her face. She caught the concerned frown he was wearing, and fixed her eyes on the ceiling, humiliated. Sarah swallowed thickly, fighting the queasiness down. She was never eating Indian food again for as long as she lived.

"Sarah?" he said cautiously. He was breathing in deeply, testing the air. She knew he could pick up a lot about someone that way; The way they were feeling, the things they longed for and dreamed about. The Goblin King's position was wrapped and draped in dreamstuff, and he was as perfectly adapted to his work as a tiger's stripes were for blending in with the jungle. It had the side effect of occasionally giving him a bit of an unfair advantage in a relationship, emotionally speaking.

"Look at me," Jareth said. He sounded tense and uneasy. It was odd; She would have expected him to be amused, or maybe frustrated, given how the evening had been going.

Something was still digging into her skin, and she tried to reach down to get at whatever-it-was. Jareth caught her hand, surprising her enough to look up at him. She turned away immediately, feeling a weird impulse to avoid eye contact.

To her utter shock Jareth let go of her hand, grabbed the point of her chin, and made her look at him.

"What are you doing?" Sarah tried to recoil, her eyes shying away from his, feeling deeply confused about nearly everything that was happening. If she threw up in his face she supposed it would serve him right, she thought unenthusiastically.

"Let me see your eyes, Sarah," Jareth demanded. "Let me see!" His voice cracked, and she realized with a start that he was afraid.

She looked up into his eyes, searching for the reason, a surge of concern for him smashing her weird reluctance to pieces.

Jareth jerked back from her with an expression of horror. He went bone white, like someone had sliced him open and all the color had gushed out of him onto the floor.

"Sarah, I need to tell you something." His hands were out in a 'don't panic' gesture. He looked panicked. "I need to tell you right now."

"You're the one who wanted to wait," Sarah said, pushing herself up on her elbows. Her stomach lurched in a way that signaled things had just become inevitable. Uh-oh. "Actually," she said, covering her mouth, "I don't think this is the best time-"

.

Sarah was standing at the foot of Jareth's bed. It wasn't where she was expecting to find herself. Sarah frowned, recoiling a little, blinking around in confusion. She felt fine; Pretty great, in fact. There was a strange, pleasant tartness in her mouth. The taste was brightly sweet, and rather lovely.

She honestly couldn't remember how she'd gotten to where she was standing.

A breeze blew in from the window, sending the gauzy orange sashes of her sari dancing. She glanced outside, and froze. The moon was visible through the window. It shouldn't have been. Sarah took two big steps around Jareth's bed and leaned out, staring up at the sky with a chilling sense of deja vu. The stars were wrong. The moon was wrong. It should be later than it seemed, it should be much later-

Slowly, nightmarishly, Sarah turned her head and looked over at the bed. In the dark, she saw the slightest shine of moonlight reflected from Jareth's eyes. He wasn't asleep. Not this time.

Sarah took a large step back. Something like horror was clawing its way up from her heart and making its way to her mouth.

Jareth pushed himself up, his eyes glittering. There was absolutely nothing human about the motion. If she had grown up as a more ordinary person she would have run screaming from the room.

"What have you done?" she asked, and was startled by her own voice. It was thick and raw; Her 'just been crying' voice. She reached up to touch her face, realizing that her cheeks were wet, but not having the slightest idea why. Sarah meant to wipe her face clear of tears, but she was holding something in her right hand. She was holding-

Sarah hissed in a breath, reeling with a stab of genuine betrayal. "What have you done?" she demanded, nearly shouting.

She was holding a half-eaten pomegranate in her hand. Sarah still had the taste of it in her mouth, and that meant something. That had meaning she didn't want to look at so badly she was tempted to throw it out the window.

"Everything," Jareth said, and the tone of his voice slapped her temper right out of her hands.

He'd been crying, too. She could hear it.

He had to stop and take a breath as his voice failed him. "I've done everything you asked of me," he continued, and with a horrified jolt Sarah realized she'd been mistaken. He hadn't been crying, past tense. He was still crying.

She dropped the pomegranate on the ground like so much trash and scrambled onto the bed, reaching for him like he was in danger of falling somewhere she couldn't follow.

Jareth threw his arms around her with a wounded sound and Sarah cursed herself for being 47 different kinds of fool.

They held onto each other for a long moment. It was a deeply creepy sensation to feel like she desperately needed to be comforted and not know why. It felt like someone had a fist around her heart.

"I shouldn't be upset," she said finally, her voice a little muffled by his shirt. "I asked you to wind back the whole night." She shouldn't be upset, but she was. She'd asked Jareth to turn the night back if things went badly (and by the state of both of them it had gone really, really badly), but how it felt now that he'd done it was beyond even her level of 'acceptably unfair'. She was hoping like she'd never hoped before that she was dead wrong about what had happened and the universe had just played a funny little trick on them both.

Jareth pulled back and gave her a grim expression. "I adore you, no matter where or when you are." Jareth sounded weary. "But I'll admit, you haven't exactly made this easy on me."

The universe had a shitty idea of what was funny.

Sarah sighed, and wiped at her face. "You know, I'm going to need to know something about what happened."

Jareth passed his hand over his eyes. "You have one problem," he said heavily, "and you need one answer." It was a strange way to phrase things.

He gestured for her to sit beside him. It was an unthinkingly arrogant gesture, a sort of aristocratic 'you may be seated', as though it wouldn't be permitted if he didn't make the effort to allow it. Any other day, Sarah would have been irritated.

Today Jareth had tears on his face, and Sarah had never hated the sight of anything so much in her life. She settled herself onto the covers without a word.

Her mind was churning with the implications. She'd been right; The time between her visits was longer that she'd been led to believe. That had to be at least part of it. She had to have broken some kind of rule...or Jareth had. What could they have done?

What answer could be so bad that I need to forget it?

"That's not the problem. And it's not the answer you're looking for," Jareth replied, startling her. Belatedly, she realized she'd said the last part out loud.

She was starting to wonder about his sudden unusual parlance, but was distracted by the equally unusual way he was shifting himself on the bed. He sat so that they were squarely facing each other, in a way that reminded her of someone sitting down across from a friend with a chess set between them. There was something about the quality of the movement in combination with the words that was vaguely formal.

Jareth folded his legs, and sort of settled in place.

Maybe he was about to give her the official introduction to the 'so-I've-erased-a-few-hours-of-your-life' manual?

She considered a moment, and then rearranged her own position on the bed. She mirrored him, sitting cross-legged. As soon as she was settled, Jareth held out both hands and gave her an expectant look.

"Sarah Williams?" he said, invitingly.

Sarah had a knack for recognizing Rules and Situations, even from fairy tales she'd never read; It was a necessary skill in her line of work. For certain given values of 'work', she supposed. She could tell something was going on. The air felt anticipatory.

Then Jareth raised his eyebrows and wiggled his fingers encouragingly, which somewhat cut into the gravitas of the moment. She took his hands. Sarah felt a brief breath of heated air, as if she'd opened an oven door to check on something cooking. He squeezed her fingers slightly, then released her.

She glanced around. Nothing was different. "So, whatever that was, I don't think it worked."

"Don't be so sure." Jareth said. He folded his arms. "If you're going to win this game you'll have to get a move on."

"Game." Sarah raised her eyebrows. Are you kidding me?

Jareth sighed. "You have one problem, and you're looking for one answer. And if my castle was where I was keeping the answer you're looking for, then you'd still be standing in your bedroom and wouldn't have even wished anyone away yet." He tilted his chin up, looking down at her. "I thought you were good at this kind of thing."

Sarah's jaw dropped. "You..." she sputtered. "I can't do this with you. Whatever game this is, I don't know the rules."

"I can't tell you the rules." Jareth tilted his head at her, birdlike.

Sarah's voice was sharp. "That's not-" She stopped. Fair, she thought silently. "Ugh," she said instead. "Can't you just...explain what you can about what happened? Do we have to do this?" She was not in the mood to play games.

"Believe me, if there was a better way, I would take it." Jareth's voice was dry. "I don't particularly look like I'm having fun, do I?"

She actually looked, which surprised him. She reached up and brushed a few strands of hair back off his face. It was hard to tell in this light, but she suspected he'd gone all pale and feathery. He looked like he was hurting, and she hated it.

"No, you don't," she said softly, brushing her thumb over his cheek. He caught her hand and turned his head, kissing her on the inside of her wrist. The gesture was familiar, and reassuring. This was Jareth; Whatever weirdness was happening, they were in it together.

She went over her next words in her head, looking at the facts she knew from different angles. Games were like little worlds of their own, in some ways. Particularly magical games. They all had rules. The start of this game felt formal, so the rules were probably formal. And it was apparently the only way she was going to get any answers about what had happened.

"My forgetting isn't the problem, you said. So, tell me the problem." She was careful not to phrase it as a question. He didn't seem to be able to answer them. Not directly, anyway.

Jareth blinked at her, looking startled, and then smiled like she'd just done something that reminded him exactly how much he adored her. He relaxed, and she suspected she'd just lifted his mood considerably.

"Backwards and forwards and sideways, Sarah is always Sarah, and barrels right through." His voice was admiring. "But figure out one thing at a time." He leaned toward her a little. "You've always been clever. What do you imagine the problem is?" Infuriatingly, he reached out and tapped her between the eyes with his finger. "Think," he said, like she was five.

Sarah scowled at him, and rubbed her forehead.

"I think that you're incredibly irritating sometimes."

Jareth put his elbow on his knee and rested his chin in his hand with a slight smile on his face. The expression was a vast improvement over tears, Sarah thought, and decided he could be as irritating as he liked.

"You turned back time to when I first arrived," Sarah said slowly, and glanced at him. He lifted his eyebrows slightly, as if to say 'yes, proceed'.

Sarah continued. "But I remember later into the night, so you wanted me to notice. You wanted me to remember finding that book, so I would know what questions I was asking." Sarah checked his expression.

"Very nearly right," Jareth said, encouragingly.

Sarah frowned at him.

Silently, he pointed at her. He didn't say anything, so she supposed it didn't count as cheating.

After a moment, Sarah's eyes widened a little. "I wanted me to notice."

Jareth smiled a very pointy smile and leaned back on his hands, openly admiring her. "No one knows you better than you," he said, and it sounded like he was quoting someone.

Me, Sarah thought. I said that. She didn't know how she knew it, but she was sure. Sarah stared at the floor for a moment, thinking. No one knows me better than me.

He couldn't tell her what had happened, but Sarah was the one who'd made the decisions. So what would I do, if I knew I would have questions Jareth couldn't answer? It was an easy enough question. Leave clues and trust I could work them out.

"Let's start at the beginning then," Sarah said.

"At the beginning, I made you a promise," Jareth commented.

Sarah straightened in surprise. "That's right. You were going to tell me everything, even before I gave you an out. The book, the reason why you lied, you promised me," she said thoughtfully, pointing her finger at him and tapping absently at the air. "So I can safely know about it. You said you wanted 'one last night to lie to yourself'." Sarah nodded to herself. "So it's personal, between you and me. Maybe not nice or fun, but safe to know."

Jareth straightened. He was no longer smiling. He'd started doing something with his hands that she couldn't clearly see. The motion was familiar; He usually only did it when he had a crystal, but this time it looked like his hands were empty. Like he was nervous and needed to keep himself busy.

"Go on," he said tightly, when she hesitated.

Sarah braced herself. She didn't like this idea. "Did something happen when I found out? Something related to it, but...not safe?"

Just barely, Jareth flinched.

Yes to that, then.

"Did you expect it to happen?" Sarah asked.

"If I had expected it, do you think I would have waited until you offered the reset button as a safety measure?" Jareth was still fiddling with something. It glittered in his hands, following the eye-catching movement of his fingers.

"What is that?" Sarah asked, distracted.

Jareth held it up, the object gleaming in the moonlight. He let it drop to the end of a thin chain he had hooked over his fingertip. With a jolt, Sarah recognized it. It was her pendant. The pendant he'd made for her.

Silently, he extended his hand, offering it to her.

She glanced down at her own chest in confusion. It should be...she always wore...wait.

"Oh," She said, her thoughts feeling strangely thick. "That's right, I forgot. The chain broke, and I..." Sarah hesitated, disturbed. What had she done with it? "Thank you," she said instead, giving herself a little shake.

She started to reach out for it, but hesitated.

The look in Jareth's eyes was strange. "Take it."

Sarah frowned. She reached for it, but somehow she couldn't quite manage to get there. Jareth snatched her hand roughly, startling her. He turned her hand palm up, staring intently into her eyes.

"What are you-"

Jareth dropped the necklace into her hand.

Her stomach clenched with a pain so sharp it felt like she'd been stabbed.

Sarah bent double with a hiss of pain, dropping the necklace onto the bed. The moment it stopped touching her, the pain eased.

The necklace gleamed innocently up at her. She stared at it, her eyes huge. The necklace was for protection, against all kinds of nasty trouble. The kind of trouble a girl could get into when she liked to wander into crooked worlds that were unhappy letting mortals remain mortal, and started leaving her coffee mugs lying around and hanging out there on the weekends. If she couldn't touch it...

She thought suddenly, horribly, of the last time she couldn't stand to touch a protective charm like that. A night when her necklace had flamed like a star and eaten into her skin; The night when her humanity had screamed and withered and died.

If she couldn't touch it, that meant protection was far too late to do any good.

"You tell me, right now, what's going on," Sarah demanded.

Jareth's expression shoved ice down her spine. "Rules are rules," he said, making her want to scream in frustration.

She gritted her teeth. "I can still guess," Sarah ground out stubbornly.

Jareth gestured gracefully at the bed and the space between them, as if just the way they were sitting had some kind of meaning. For an instant, Sarah would have sworn she saw the faintest flicker of light dart around them in a circle. Like they were sitting in the center of a metal ring and someone had tilted it back and forth just slightly, so the light from the window could show the shape of it.

Huh.

"I can tell you that you've found your problem." Jareth glanced meaningfully down at the necklace still laying on the bed. "And I can tell you that if your answer was hiding in my castle, you'd have made it past the main gates to your first turn."

She made a face at him. "So, is this half of the game some kind of, I don't know, magical version of 'hot or cold'?"

Jareth squinted, raised his hand, and tilted it back and forth at the wrist in a 'meh, kinda' gesture.

Sarah huffed out a breath, stamping down on her frustration. If this was how things were done, then this was the way she would have to do it. "All right, then." She could handle this.

Sarah was silent for a moment. What clues did she leave herself?

"You gave me a pomegranate," she said slowly, thoughtfully. "And I ate it. I brought it with me, so I'd know I ate it."

"Look at that, we're at the hedge maze already," Jareth said approvingly.

Warm, Sarah translated. "Ok," she said gamely. She leaned back on her hands and looked thoughtfully at the ceiling.

"Persephone ate pomegranate seeds," she said, testing.

"You've passed Sir Didymous' ridiculous excuse for a bridge," Jareth commented. Warmer.

Sarah flashed him a smile.

There were lots of different versions of the tale of Persephone and Hades. Everyone agreed she ate pomegranate seeds, and that was what bound her to the underworld. In many of the stories he tricked her. But in some stories she grew to love him, and to love the underworld he ruled, and ate the seeds herself with full knowledge of what it meant.

It was an old story. A powerful story. Not the story you'd want to pick to anchor yourself to unless you really, really meant it. The Labyrinth was an underworld where stories mattered.

Suddenly, she thought of Randhir's ancient eyes, slitted and snake-like, looking at her sadly out of a young face. 'You need to stay, Sarah, or you don't have a future.'

"Persephone only had to spend half the year in the underworld with Hades." Sarah felt like she was making an excuse to someone. Her thoughts were taking her somewhere she didn't like. She loved the Labyrinth, it felt more like home than anywhere else, but she couldn't stand to be trapped there. She wouldn't do that to herself, she was sure she wouldn't...

"Queen Persephone," Jareth corrected. He raised his eyebrows aristocratically. "Once a queen of the underworld, always a queen of the underworld. Titles are a matter of respect, to the land and the people."

The statement was ridiculous enough that it knocked her right out of her worries.

"Respect to the people?" Sarah gave him a look. "Goblin King, I've seen you kick a goblin out the window so you could steal his iced latte. That I bought him."

"Kings don't steal. They royally annex," Jareth said with a careless shrug. "The point stands."

Sarah was struck by a thought. Royally annex. "You know what, you're right." She glanced over at the pomegranate she'd dropped by the window, then back at Jareth. "Persephone could leave Hades six months out of the year, but she was always 'from the underworld' after she ate that pomegranate. She was always Queen Persephone."

"At the Goblin City, headed for my front door," Jareth said. Scorching hot, she translated.

Sarah straightened, getting excited. It made sense. "That's why I ate the pomegranate. For some reason that I can't remember, THIS has to be my home now, officially. At least, in every way anyone could look at it. I've been annexed. I can't be 'Sarah Williams of earth', I need to be 'Sarah Williams of the Labyrin-'."

"Queen," Jareth interrupted, sternly.

Sarah huffed out a breath in frustration. She was going to remind him...again...that they weren't married, so she couldn't possibly be the Goblin Queen, but he never seemed to understand why it had any bearing on the subject. She suspected there was some kind of translation issue, since no one else in the Labyrinth seemed to understand her on that point either. When she'd tried explaining it, even Hoggle had asked her point-blank why she was talking gibberish.

She did some minor calculations on effort vs. likely outcome, and decided not to push it.

Sarah exhaled through her nose, gritting her teeth. "Queen Sarah," she amended. Jareth preened a little. Sarah ignored him.

"I am right, though," Sarah prodded.

Jareth smiled faintly, lifted his hands, and started lightly clapping. Bravo, he didn't say.

She reached out, grabbed a pillow off the bed, and smacked him in the face with it. "This is serious!" she hissed.

Jareth let himself fall to one side, as if the pillow had belatedly knocked him onto the bed. "I know," he sighed, making her feel a bit bad.

She scooted over and put her hand on the bed, leaning over and looking down at him. "Can you tell me anything else?" she asked, her voice more gentle. She smiled slightly. "Please?" she added, just in case politeness helped in whatever rules he had to play by.

Jareth looked up at her for a moment. He reached up and touched a bit of her hair that had fallen forward over her shoulder. "Do you know what's interesting about this game?" he said, running her hair through his fingers.

"I certainly hope you're gonna tell me," Sarah replied, her voice dry.

"The game is old enough that the spell for it has a 'no-cheating' clause built right in. No one can see, no one can hear. Only the secret-keeper, and the named opponent. No one else." Jareth met her eyes, and there was something very grim in his expression. "It's been around so long, the thing is almost bulletproof. It's good enough that people don't just use it as a game, even though you can't ever say exactly what you mean while you're playing."

Sarah went cold. Without thinking, she glanced around the empty room, as if someone might be hiding in a corner.

Jareth pushed himself up. His face was very close. "Interesting, isn't it?" he said softly.

Do you understand what I'm telling you?

"Yeah. Interesting." Sarah set her jaw. Someone was watching them. Or would be, as soon as the spell was over. This wasn't just about rules, or a situation they suddenly had to deal with. This was about a person. Jareth was using the game to keep everything they'd been talking about a secret.

They were fighting someone, Sarah thought in sudden outrage, and she didn't even know who to hit. Jareth had to royally annex her to keep her safe, and she didn't even know why.

Sarah made a fist in the bedcovers. This is intolerable.

"I haven't told you anything, and I've broken no promises." Jareth looked a little uneasy, possibly because of whatever he was seeing on her face. "But before we finish the game, you have to make a promise to me. Anything you've figured out on your own can't ever leave this space. Not a whisper, not a hint, nothing. Not even when you're alone."

The last sentence put a chill down the back of Sarah's neck.

She met his eyes, her fists tightening. "We have a plan, don't we? We're going after whoever this is."

Jareth paused, and his expression darkened. "Sarah, you have no idea." His voice was very near a snarl.

Sarah nodded sharply. "Good. Then I promise." She darted in and kissed him once, quickly on the lips. Or at least, she meant to.

He snatched at her before she had the chance to pull away more than half an inch. Something in his expression was slipping toward an emotion she didn't like to see on his face. He looked like he wanted to pull his heart out of his chest, write an apology letter on it, and hand it to her. He looked like he thought he'd let her down. She realized all at once, that no matter how calmly he looked like he was handling this, he was terrifyingly close to fracturing along his fault lines. He had a particularly large one called 'going to unreasonable lengths to keep Sarah safe' that she suddenly suspected wasn't doing well at all.

Sarah let out a breath, long and slow. "I'm all right," she said, "and I'm going to be all right."

Jareth's expression darkened. "You don't know-"

"I'll figure it out," Sarah said firmly, just about as determined as she'd ever been in her life. She lifted her chin. "So don't worry. I'll protect you." She slid her hands down his arms in a vaguely soothing way.

She wasn't joking. But, she was teasing. A little. Jareth let out a breath of laughter, so Sarah chalked it up as a win.

"I know." Jareth sighed around the words. He shook his head. "It's so irritating."

Sarah's mouth dropped open. Before she could say anything, Jareth snapped his fingers, and the spell flashed, complete.

Author's Notes: WELL now. It has been a while, hasn't it? But let's not dwell on the past, let's strap in and finish this thing, shall we? Quarantine is making me absolutely starving to write.

Tiny Jareth, looking smug, hands over a box of pastries, momentarily blinding the author in the reflected light from the jewels on his lapels.

(leaning over) "I said starving to WRITE."

Tiny Jareth flashes his lapels more aggressively, insulted.

(desperately clutching my eyes) "I meant, I LOVE pastries, I'm starving for pastries!"

Tiny Jareth struts off, satisfied.

To everyone who has said lovely things to me over the years about this story, and asked and hoped I would get back to it, I want to thank you. Don't ever think for a second I didn't appreciate every word. I also want to throw out a special little thanks to Pika-la-Cinique, whose fantastic Labyrinth-and-Phantom-of-the-Opera webcomic, Girls Next Door, I just finished reading- and who singlehandedly made me squeal out loud at the page where Jareth finally flat-out tells Sarah he loves her.

J. R. Godwin- as requested :)

Phoenix-Talon- Door is...less lovable than most, but is deeply flattered.

FairWave- Yeah, Sarah isn't a perfect person, but she hasn't evolved into her final form yet, so we'll see :)

wild-filly- just a tiny chance lol

Shadow131- you know, I'm a sucker for a happy ending myself, but no promises-that would be telling.

Willdew- I'm so glad you've enjoyed everything up to this point! I hate to give the same answer twice, but I can't say if you're right- that would also be telling.

Turniptree- never give up hope!

Limn- That's actually my grandmother's souffle recipe- any time I write while I'm making them, they give off clouds of magical fantasy, it gets on everything. My dogs don't come back from Neverland for like a week, they're SO RUDE.