Disclaimer: If I owned them, or if I were making money off of them, this wouldn't be a fanfic, would it?
AN: Takes place a while after the Labyrinth. This is twisted, weird, and downright creepy at times. Jareth and Sarah.
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Funny how, whenever you tried to fight it, it just got harder.
Which wasn't to say it was bad. Not particularly. Different. Strange. But not bad.
Who could call it bad and not be lying?
But then, the lies were pretty things, all gossamer and glitter and illusion. She liked them. Smoke and shadows ruled her world now, and she wouldn't have gone back for all the tea in China.
Sarah liked it that way. She tried to resist it halfheartedly, sometimes more, but it never worked. Sure, she'd succeeded, she'd won, but she came so close sometimes... teetering on the edge of oblivion, coming so close she was certain she would plunge into the abyss - but she never did.
At least, not yet.
Her parents had noticed. It was impossible for them not to. But she didn't care. Caring served no purpose, or at least that was what she liked to tell herself. To shut herself off, she had to start with those closest to her, make sure they never interfered. It wasn't hard. She'd been distant from the start, they hadn't understood, and now just stood by, watching and waiting, their doubt and distrust clear in their eyes.
Toby was the only one she didn't block. He was safe. He was in diapers. No need, then, to shut him away.
The boys were the silly ones. They were all the same, intrigued by her sly smile, enchanted with an allure that had blossomed the day after, all tripping over one another to fling themselves at her feet. She found it amusing. They were like puppies, all begging and fighting for the attention of their beloved mistress. Fights broke out in the hallways she frequented, and she always looked disdainfully away. They had wooed, sang, offered their hearts and their cars, offered all the favors a teenage boy could give, and she had laughed at them all. Silly, silly little children, how could she waste her time on them?
She'd gained a reputation, to be sure, cold and aloof, or beautiful and divine - or so they sang her praises. She sometimes played with them, a diversion that gave them a spark of hope before they were forgotten, insane or crushed in her wake.
The girls feared her or despised her, and she didn't care. The teachers had tried, contacted her parents, offered tutoring sessions, and every time had run into a brick wall. Eventually, they gave up, though she didn't drop out. She went to classes, amused herself toying with the others, and sang off-key to songs nobody had ever heard before.
Except, perhaps, for Toby. She didn't know what he had done while the baby was his, (and Toby was his, as sure as the sun was in the sky), but Toby knew who the songs came from.
That was part of the magic, for there was a song in Toby's eyes, and his presence clung like a shadow to the boy.
Not like it did to her.
To her, he was no shadow, no nightmare and certainly no figment of her imagination. Just because he wasn't there didn't mean she couldn't feel him.
Therein lay the battle, the constant war that she always waged, day or night, waking or in dreams. Therein was her temptation, therein was her soul.
Jareth. He who ruled her inner world, her beloved enemy and cherished rival, her favorite mistake, a twisted nightmare and a fantastic dream all in one.
She didn't dare speak his name - to do so would be to call him to her side, and she knew he would cheat then, slip past her defenses and bring her to her knees. He would revel in it, and she knew she would not fight him if he won.
Ultimate surrender was what the game called for, the ledge she perched precariously on, enchanted by its mirrored surface, an enticement she found nearly impossible to resist.
He was all about temptation, she was to be the innocent heroine who valiantly and nobly resisted his advances before destroying him in her triumph, but she no longer truly fit that role. She didn't want to fit that role. Not anymore.
This game had matured as she did, and she found that rules could be twisted and bent and warped, and used it to her advantage. Why play fair when he did not? The sanctity of their duel, rare and treasured, was something she had to keep at all costs, under lock and key and away from prying eyes.
The consequences she couldn't hide despite all her trying, and were found in the cruel twist of her mouth and the superior glitter in her eyes. Not like him, no, but it was enough to drive the others away, make them trade whispers behind her back, make the boys grovel at her feet, and she rarely noticed when she left others crumbled in the dirt.
They were just casualties of a battle they knew nothing of. But she had learned that not even the civilians were innocent, and so it didn't matter anyway.
Everything around her fell prey to their dance. Her room had been transformed, the walls now draped in shimmering black and silver and the palest gold, the exact shade of his hair. She'd grudgingly admitted it was an excellent touch.
Her hair changed, pulled back and pinned up or loose and wavy, looped with gold or pearls or blood-red jewels, the barest undertone of menace clinging to all of his gifts.
That was the way he fought, sly and deceitful and attentive to her every whim. She spurned him, denied him, accepted his poisoned flirtations and then fled before their lethal venom could fully overtake her. She knew well she could die at his hands, but a death caused by him could only be sweetest ecstasy and agony combined.
Her peers thought she might be suicidal, and they may have been right. She'd taken to a fascination with knives especially, loving their fluid motion and beauty, adoring their savagery. More than once had her horrified parents stumbled upon her with blood dripping from her fingers, her blank eyes fixed with rapture upon the scarlet staining silver and drenching her sleeves.
It hurt, yes, but it was such a delicious hurt that she simply couldn't stop. And he loved it too, whispering to her, his rich voice low and sultry as he purred her name and promised her delights beyond imagining. She knew if he had been at her side she would accept. After every time, she dreamed of him there with her, her blood on his lips and his hands on her body, an overwhelmingly rich sweetness that he pressed on her in exchange for what he saw as seduction on her part. It may well have been, for their game had as many facets and nuances as there were stars in the sky.
She would destroy everything owl-shaped she saw, and in return would find herself dancing in her underwear in the rain while nervous neighbors peeked out their windows in awe and fear. She would curse him until she was blue in the face and then find her windows shattered. She would laugh openly at his offers and find her parents quaking in fear from some horrible accident. She would dream of him broken and humiliated and he would send her dreams that were so unpleasant she awoke screaming aloud. She would burn books of fairytales and he would murmur things into her hair that made her whole body seem devoured by flame.
Eternal enemies, yes, but they both liked it that way.
He fascinated her. To her enthralled eyes, he was the most perfect creature in existence, and he knew it. He took advantage of it ruthlessly, spoke in velvet tones that were cultivated for sin, tempted and teased and flirted until she was almost crazy with desire - and then he ran.
It was an endless game of tag, both of them racing around, sometimes the hunter and sometimes the prey, both always aware of the other. He was always watching, and she deliberately provoked him. She was always aware of him, and he taunted and laughed and tormented her.
She had her own personal demon, and she felt privileged. Most mere mortals had only their deepest fears and humiliations to haunt them on endless nights. She had royalty.
Observation had never been her strong point, but now she stood on the fringes of society and watched the personal crises of her peers with amusement. The boys who approached her were either pushed away or drawn in and drained before being discarded, tossed back into the masses as if they had never gone to her like a worshiper seeking his god. Normal lives were so little, so easily shattered and torn, that it often made her laugh to herself and others think that she was completely mad.
She wasn't mad. She was as sane as the next person.
The next person was Jareth.
She didn't think about it much. Their duel had to be attended to at all times, lest he gain an unfair advantage. But during those rare moments of crystal clarity she wondered if perhaps she was a little too obsessed, if perhaps she went a little too far, if perhaps it was as twisted as it sometimes seemed. As the war raged on, those moments became rarer and rarer to the point that she could hardly remember them anymore.
She was growing up. Sixteen only physically now, and probably not even that. It was his doing, of course, her figure fuller and the baby fat gone, but she wasn't complaining.
If he liked her like that, she was more than happy to stay that way. She didn't know if it was just the fey appreciation for beauty, his desire for an adult to challenge him, or if he lusted after her, but she was glad. Now more beautiful than ever, but more unapproachable than ever, and the boys went crazy. Some of those she had broken she had toyed with, playing with their hormones and their lovestruck inexperience, tainting them with her particular brand of destructive desire.
She had made them bleed before, seen their desire changed to horror as she licked her lips, tossed her hair, threw herself upon them and raked her nails through their hair with malicious intent. She'd tied them down in their own beds, left them desperate and wanting as she'd sauntered out of the room, his songs on her lips. She'd been given roses and had pressed thorns into the suitor's flesh until they screamed or fled in fright. Others she just manipulated until their spirits were demolished. Either way pleased her.
She did it to make him jealous, to satiate this need without losing a skirmish, to prove that she could do whatever she wanted. It wasn't like the boys mattered. They weren't for her, boring, drab little things that she could forget as well as she could breathe.
He was everything. His beauty, his cruelty, they were the same to her. His glamor and allure and wickedness were exquisitely painful to behold. Oh, he was beautiful as the moon and the stars, graceful and playful and menacing, her every desire made flesh. She admired everything about him, his haughty pride, his smile, his mocking sneer, and the sound of his voice could turn her into a puddle. He radiated heaven and hell and sex and sin, fantasy and viciousness, all wrapped up in an elegant being who was the only thing that really existed for her.
On those nights when the little boys had been ripped to shreds, she would dream of him, blood and starlight and a temptation too strong to resist. If he had appeared at her side she would have dragged him into her bed and never let go. But he wouldn't give her that satisfaction, though she knew he wanted her as much as she wanted him.
She loved it. She loved him.
And that was all that mattered.
"Sick."
"Obsessed with things that aren't there."
"Scary as hell."
"Psycho bitch."
"Disturbed."
"Completely fucking crazy."
The labels made her laugh. If only they knew!
But they didn't and that was best of all.
Because he was all hers. Her enemy, her one true love, her other half. Who needed life? She had him instead. She understood him. He understood her. It was either love or obsession or desire or something she had no name for, but whatever it was took over everything, swept her away and drowned those unfortunates who surrounded her. It was her everything.
They would battle until one was beaten bloody into the ground, and both of them would love every moment of it.
And then the real games would begin.
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AN: Twisted relationships are fun. Feedback? Pwease?
email: mjalta@yahoo.com