.
Between the Stars – Part 2
.
.
Unable to turn away, Sarah witnessed the suffering of the Goblin King as one observes an event previously unknown to them, yet still intimately connected. Her grand villain, her nightmare rogue, reduced to this? A man suffering from the all too common aliment of misfortune; acutely she felt a mounting sense of guilt. She had caused this, or at least held partial responsibility. The lip biting commenced as her anxiety mounted. Dee looked on with a calculating expression unremarked by Sarah, engrossed by the scene before her.
'
Sarah!' he shouted again, followed by a muffled sob. Still on his hands and knees, his head dipped low until Sarah only saw the back and crown of his head. The once uniquely stunning hair now matted and dull. The Goblin King cried? Over her? Dear God...
"Why...why did you leave me...?" he mumbled so low she barely understood him. "I did everything for you.
Everything!" Jareth spoke the last with vehemence. Sarah watched as he tossed his head back and forth like a pained wild animal, his hair fluffing unevenly.
"If only you had listened. I would've given you such happiness." He began rocking, front to back, tormented, his gloves hands clenching against the flagstone floor. "As soon as you jumped, you won! Your brother was safe! I wouldn't have harmed him!" he shouted, raising his head until she saw the earnestness in his swollen, redden eyes.
Sarah gasped. Toby was already safe? So why that last confrontation? Why his convoluted offer?
Oh, God, she clenched her stomach as it twisted again, doubling over slightly. All her choices since that day spiraled through her mind. What differences in her life if she
had listened? If she had accepted? If she had understood his inexplicable proposal...
"Feeling sick, Sarah?" Dee kindly asked as she paused the TV. Sarah glanced up at an awkward angle at the goddess and grimaced. Dee continued, "It's all the alternate possibilities crashing home once you receive all the information."
"What?"
"Sort of like a mega dose of regret. People make choices at certain, critical points in their life. If you have all or some of the information or a differing perspective sometimes you'll make a different choice."
"You're saying I would've chosen to stay with him?
At 15?" She said skeptically.
"As I said, a possibility, but more likely the both of you would've come together when you were a bit older. That's how I preferred it, how I intended it to occur, but free will is always the wild card."
"Why didn't we? Come together I mean?" The question burned Sarah's tongue as she asked it. Did she want to know the answer? Unlock the puzzle of her childhood villain/soul mate? The one being which haunted her throughout her life, effected her decisions regardless of the lack of his physical presence? She turned from Dee, stood upright as her stomach pain eased, and touched the TV screen. Her fingertips grazed the frozen and tormented face of Jareth, her unlikely other half. Could it be true? Could she trust Aphrodite's word? She knew nothing of the goddess's motives, not really.
Taking a moment to study the small image, she noted that he really looked so very little like Gerard after all. The upswept eyes and brow, the unruly hair, his supernaturally lean yet strong frame; how on earth had she ever thought to compare the two men? Certainly there were striking similarities, but all in all they really looked nothing alike. No more than brothers or close cousins. And now she possessed a fresh image of the Goblin King rather than her memory, she recognized that difference.
She forgot how beautiful Jareth was in his ferocity, his alien passion. How it frightened and stirred her. Perhaps her wishful thinking had gotten the better of her afterall. Remembering Jareth from her past, her subconscious desperately seeking him out, she found his similarity in Gerard. Dee silently watched Sarah amend her opinion of the Goblin King for a few seconds before answering her question.
"You didn't come together because of another god's interference, Sarah. The Goblin King made a terrible choice, one in which he did not fully comprehend the consequences of his actions." Dee restarted the TV with a hand wave. "Watch and learn."
The writhing Jareth continued to moan and wail in such pain that Sarah's nausea returned for a moment, and she pulled her hand from the TV to clutch her stomach again. She wanted to look away, but felt she owed it to Jareth to witness all she wrought; now that she knew his offer, strange as it was, had been genuine.
At first, the rising wind in the Escher room escaped her notice-so intently so observed the Goblin King-but eventually it whipped Jareth's clothing so intensely Sarah realized he had been joined by other being. The Goblin King sat back on his haunches, still kneeling on the floor, his face covered protectively with his arms.
"Your cries woke me from my slumber, immortal Child of Danu, what pains you?" a booming voice spoke. The image panned to show a large, disembodied head floating in the blackness above Jareth. Salt and pepper hair with a matching beard soften the fierceness of the head's appearance. He looked like someone's grandfather or Santa Claus, assuming the spirit of Christmas floated around in damaged Escher rooms speaking to heartbroken Goblin Kings.
"A god of the old world!" Jareth exclaimed. Sarah heard his voice tremble. Who was this god to inspire such fear and respect in the Goblin King? She spared a quick glance at Dee who remained blank and nodded back to the screen.
"Yes, I am Zeus, the god of gods, master of all. Tell me of your distress, that I may help you." He sounded kind, sweet even. Knowing something eventually went wrong according to Dee, Sarah hated him already.
"A broken dream, Old One, a shattered world," Jareth answered flatly. "I am without hope, without love." His arms fell to his sides in dejection.
Sarah gasped again. Did Jareth say love? Had he loved her then? How? Why?
Zeus closed his eyes for a second, "I see you conquered at the hands of a mortal woman-child. She bested you at your own game when you thought yourself cleverer, immortal."
"She did." Jareth agreed without preamble, his heading bowed, "I fell in love with her warrior spirit and offered myself to her, body and soul, in honorable defeat."
"Even now I see her seared upon your soul. You seek revenge upon the mortal?" Sarah heard eagerness in Zeus's voice and gritted her teeth; apparently so had Jareth because he responded with haste.
"
No! No, I desire another path, Old One." Jareth beseeched with both arms outstretched, but his eyes lowered respectfully. Again Sarah gasped, surprised, Jareth didn't seek vengeance upon her? Another assumption destroyed; perhaps he really did love her.
"Name it, Child of Danu." Sarah thought she heard a note of exasperation in the god's voice.
"I tire of loneliness; an eternity of life without love. My kind are faded and gone. I am the last. Sarah showed me there is another way. I
burn with love for her." Sarah observed Jareth as he finally met Zeus's gaze directly. "I wish to become mortal."
"This can be done, but you must give a sacrifice."
"
Anything, Old One."
"You must renounce the mortal girl, Sarah Williams. You cannot have her in this life or the next. If you touch her in any manner you shall be punished, Goblin King, only in this way can you truly be free." Sarah looked at Dee again. Zeus demanded Jareth give her up? After he already fell in love with her? How cruel! Dee's expression said she'd explain further afterwards.
"She
rejected me!" Jareth said viciously, his weary eyes suddenly fiery, the pain pouring from his lips like rancid wine. Hands fisted, his punched the stones, "She bares me no love, she sees me only as an enemy, a battle to be won. She rejoices with her friends over my defeat! She will not see me as a man! I cannot live within her dreams!"
His head bowed again, his arms dropped, and his voice softened, "Too long have I lived as a fae without the love of an equal...to live as a mortal...I may yet find another love, to experience true happiness." A logical enough choice, why then did he grimace as he lifted his head. A sharp pain lanced in Sarah's chest at his mien. At that moment she swore he looked exactly like he did when she refused his offer. All these years she considered him the tempting enemy, but what unknown damage had she fashioned against the Goblin King in her youthful ignorance and eagerness to trounce him?
"Will you make this sacrifice?" Zeus asked.
"If I accept your gift, if I renounce her, will you erase all my memories of my previous immortal existence? Take all that I was, who I was, and free me of the burden of loving Sarah Williams?"
"Done, Child of Danu."
"So be it." Jareth's head rose proudly, his lips a thin line of determination, "I accept, Old One." A tempest of winds and thunder filled the broken Escher room. It battered at the kneeling Goblin King who accepted the onslaught without complaint or bending. Within seconds a bolt of lightning struck Jareth and the screen flickered to static.
.
.
"What? No! What happened? Is he dead?" Sarah lunged at the screen, her hands smacking flat to the panel. "Dee, tell me!" She asked, frantically turning to face the goddess.
"Zeus fulfilled his agreement," she answered calmly.
Head sagging, Sarah searched for another seat to compose herself. She should probably stay seated throughout her sojourn with Dee cause these revelations were hell on her nerves.
"He really became mortal because I rejected him?" Sarah's mind refused to accept the Goblin King's love for her, but her heart argued for him. Between logic and emotion, her confusion bloomed. "But I was only fifteen. I didn't understand what he offered, not really, not then! How could I know he loved me? He never even said it! He only taunted me!"
"Yet your rejection broke his heart, he loved you so."
"But...how? He didn't even know me!"
"Sarah," Aphrodite took her by the shoulders as she gazed down at her, "While Jareth didn't fully understand the reason, he was far older and fae. He accepted his immediate love for you as real. You were too young to comprehend such emotion, but you would have...given time. It was my design that you were destined to be soul mates, Sarah Williams."
"Why? Why would you do this to us?" Sarah heard the stridency in her voice, tried to control her anxiety.
"You need each other, hon. And Jareth's world needs your love for him and your belief in magic. That's why I picked you, out of every other mortal female, to be his soul mate." Dee stroked her cheek gently, reminding Sarah of her stepmother.
"But what about Gerard? How does he fit into all this?"
"Gerard...oh my, complications," Dee paced for a moment then faced Sarah again, her expression set, "for the lack of a better phrase, Gerard is the mortal reincarnation of Jareth's soul."
"So he
is Jareth!" Sarah jumped to her feet, "I knew it!"
"No, allow me to be quite clear, Sarah." Hands raised to ward off Sarah's accusation, Dee continued forcefully, "Gerard is NOT Jareth. He is a mortal man, born from a mortal woman; he grew to adulthood, with his own memories and personality, as a mortal knowing nothing of his soul's previous existence and so he would have continued but for meeting you. Knowing you has...unleashed the Jareth within him-according to Zeus's punishment,
but he is not Jareth."
"Oh, God...," Sarah gagged and dry heaved, leaning forward, "I've destroyed him again, haven't I?" She managed to speak between bouts, "Cassie's right. Gerard's sick because of me." She sank back to her chair, deflated. "How'd she know?" Jareth, Gerard: both men destroyed by their love of her. Look up the definition of a man-eater and one would find her name in bold print.
"A lucky guess from a frustrated, jealous woman," Dee replied, conjuring another chair and patting Sarah's hand. "Cassie's no one you need concern yourself about."
"But it is my fault."
"Oh, dear, not you personally, but it has awakened the dormant portion of his soul. It's rather like having two personalities battling for dominance, and it's driving poor Gerard insane."
"But Zeus said he'd erase his memories!"
"Obviously, he lied."
"Why?" Sarah asked, aghast.
"Because he's a mean old bastard who likes to torment other beings; that's why the rest of us forced him into slumber eons ago, but Jareth's pain woke him. By the requirement of Zeus's sacrifice, the reincarnated Jareth was never see or know of you, another additional torture just because he knew how much pain it would cause both of you."
"He saw my soul mate imprint as soon as he met Jareth, must have decided separating soul mates would generate a lot of agony for him to feed on, especially a fae soul." Shaking her head sadly, Dee added, "I'd forgotten that the pain of an immortal is a delicacy to Zeus. I should have taken more care when I linked the two of you. For that I apologize, Sarah."
Taken aback by an apology from a goddess, Sarah gaped until Dee continued.
"There's something else, in order to give Jareth his mortality, Zeus had to tamper with his soul mate destiny thereby perverting it. Zeus may think he's all powerful, but love and soul mates are
my domain and only I can create or destroy those ties. Gerard was never meant to exist or be your soul mate. It was always Jareth."
"But if Gerard and I aren't soul mates then why did I fall in love with him? Why does being with him feel so perfect? So calming?" She pleaded with Dee, desperate to understand.
"Because Gerard's soul is really Jareth's immortal fae soul, and as such, a shred of Jareth's true destiny remains, an echo of what should have been. This is what drew you both together, with a lot of maneuvering from the Fates and I. We had to do a lot of tampering with the time line to get Gerard reborn in the right year. Couldn't have him be too young or you too old, and I sort of finagled his looks a bit to be more like Jareth." Dee smiled sheepishly at Sarah's glare, "What you feel is soul mate resonance."
"You what? You've been manipulating us for years?" Dee nodded, cringed slightly at Sarah's rising anger. "How long? I only ran the labyrinth fifteen years ago!"
"Well, about that...I may have messed with the timeline here and there to get things just right."
"The timeline?" Sarah blinked then blinked again.
"Sarah, I discovered Jareth's decision after the fact. I can't undo Zeus's damage, but I can work around it, find loopholes and create nudges to reset the timeline where it was supposed to be."
"And mine's supposed to be with Jareth? Only I was too young to understand it the first time, right? Was that why all the weird things happened around Gerard and I? All the references to the labyrinth?" So much to absorb! Sarah felt her emotions teeter between anger, frustration, and confusion.
"You got it. Hon, I've been trying to get your attention back on Jareth for a long time. It took me nearly as long to push Gerard into finding you, but he fell fast once he did. Sort of his ill- fated destiny to love you," Dee said a little sadly. "Anyhow, it's finally brought us to the crux of the problem."
"Oh, man, so now what? More manipulation?" She snarked at the goddess who only sighed.
"Now you it's time for your big decision." Dee helped Sarah stand on her wobbly feet and led her to another door, this one plain and rather nondescript. The type of door one tends to overlook and later forget exists.
"Sarah, this door leads to a place of in between. Everything is real and unreal and all choices are final so be cautioned in your thinking, yet time is precious. There is more to be learned and your decision will alter worlds."
"Thanks, Dee. Way to lighten the pressure on a girl."
"Sorry, just wanted you to be fully informed."
"Right, got it, fully informed."
The door dematerialized with a swap of Dee's hand revealing a black void beyond. Holding her breath, Sarah grabbed Dee's hand and reluctantly allowed herself to be led through the opening.
.
.
jsjsjsjsjsjsj
.
.
Feeling more powerful and refreshed than he had in centuries, Zeus finally released the obedient woman and her unconscious man in far poorer physical condition than earlier. Yet he knew their belief in the god of gods burned bright, that belief would sustain him for many more years. Having chosen that particular woman for her unusual open-mindedness towards the occult, he found her initial reluctance to believe in his obvious godliness astounding. Her mocking laughter at his golden shower stung his pride, particularly after she referenced another type of shower.
Mortals deserved to show Zeus their faith and devotion. He allowed her such obsequious once she learned to accept his superior nature in all ways. Humming, he exited the woman's domicile dressed in mimicry of the mortals' attire. The world's appearance changed drastically since his enforced slumber. It unsettled and excited him; time for many adjustments to his new position in this technologically advanced mortal world.
His powers nearing revitalization, he would locate and destroy his jailers after dealing with that nagging at the back of his consciousness. It called from somewhere on the opposite side of the globe. The travel would drain him a bit, but best to finish this business and move on to more pleasant pursuits. Calling up a bit of lightning to speed his path, Zeus took to the skies in a flash of light and ozone.
.
.
jsjsjsjsjsjsj
.
.
By the third hour of Sarah's disappearance, desperation necessitated her family contact hospital security who initiated a search of the hospital grounds in earnest. They immediately discovered Cassie hiding in plain sight near her brother's bed side, her nursing experiencing gaining her a reprieve with the ICU staff until the security guards came calling. Not knowing Gerard well, the Williams family felt reluctant to intrude as visitors without either Cassie or Sarah.
Kathy and Todd got their wish when they finally met the infamous Cassie. They instantly disliked each other and made sure to sit at a great distance apart in the waiting room. Sarah's family, having heard bits of the story, did nothing to smooth the edges of that relationship. Karen, being ever the caretaker, did approach Cassie asking how she was holding up and for an update of Gerard's condition.
Cassie's tears broke Karen's heart. Gerard's sister may be abrasive and petty, but to Karen, it was evident she loved her brother a great deal, perhaps too much. Cassie explained everything to Karen who allowed the younger woman to literally cry on her shoulder. Gradually, Karen discovered Gerard's poor prognosis and even the reason why Sarah ran from the hospital. Tempted to slap Cassie for her immature and cruel behavior, instead Karen hugged her tighter and counted to ten.
She knew Sarah to be strong; obviously stronger than the girl currently in her arms. Her stepdaughter could take care of herself and would return when she chose to and not a moment sooner. When at last Cassie regained her emotions, Karen released her, and returned to her family and friends to share the terrible news.
.
A/N: Now that you've read this chapter I think you'll see more why I've split it up. Too much information! I hope it answers more questions without too much confusion. G/J's story is not finished! And Sarah has so much to deal with!
And thanks to Autumn and futrCSI for dropping by this morning and leaving awesome reviews for me at Fiction press .com for the second chapter of my original work "Dreams of the Queen". For those interested in the story, I have it posted on this site as well. Thanks for reading! And I hope you're enjoying it and not being too confused, lol! I always love hearing from everyone!
Jinx
:o)
