Anam Cara

The Champion Makes a Promise

The world around them stood still. The crackle of the fire muted, its warmth extinguished. Sunshine breaking over the horizon dulled the colors surrounding them. The room once more felt shrouded in darkness.

Sarah's mouth went lax, her lips parting as she processed the words Jareth had just spoken, comprehension lagging as his words repeated in her mind. Dying?

"No." Her back went rigid. "You can't be–I won't–There has to be a mistake." Sarah searched Jareth's face for any sign of a sick joke or flat-out lie but the truth was apparent even in his pitiful state.

His heart softened at the desperation furrowing her brow. Would anyone else care? "There is no mistake. I've known for the better part of two centuries what my fate would be."

"Two centuries? But that was when you met..." Her words trailed off as she concentrated on the towel she pressed to his hand. The bleeding seemed to have slowed.

"That was when I met Brigid. Yes." His voice was quiet, the deep timbre laced with regret and shame.

Her curiosity overrode her own hesitations and fears. "Jareth, what did you do?" she asked.

His eyes sought the horizon outside. Anything to avoid the green eyes watching him with ardent scrutiny. "I wanted her the first moment I saw her. I'd never met a mortal like her. She was generous and kind. And surprisingly impervious to my advances. She was secretive and difficult to draw out at times."

Unwilling. Her heart seized as she listened to Jareth. Did she want to know? It didn't matter now. She had to know.

"The night of the grand ball, I sought her out determined to make her mine. I can't picture her face clearly. Only glimmers of her, really. A dress like ambered-honey flowing over her skin. I was able to sequester ourselves for a moment, long enough to perform a soulmate bond."

He winced as she withdrew the soiled towel from his fist. Blood no longer flowed but his knuckles were red and raw where the skin split. The pain dulled by either her ministrations or overshadowed by the affliction of his own splintered memories.

Her fingers wrung nervously in the towel now stained with streaks of Jareth's blood. "Without her knowing?" she asked.

"She may not have stayed if given the choice." He glimpsed the distaste in her gaze. "But the spell would not have taken had she not felt the same. Nevertheless, she ran." His dreams of flashes of skirts in hallways just always out of reach resurfaced momentarily making his breath hitch as he groaned. "She slipped away from me. Disappeared.

"I searched and scoured the world for decades. Had spies in other kingdoms for a century or more. Not a trace was ever found."

Sarah's eyes welled with tears as she thought of all the years he spent trying to find the woman he loved. How could she have run from him? Her jealousy was now tainted with contempt for the woman that would treat him that way. She knew her feelings were wrong, that he should not have done what he did, but she understood his desperation after being rejected by everyone else.

Thoughts of her mother leaving, abandoning her, had left Sarah in the pits of brooding childhood despair. She had rejected all of Karen's attempts to befriend her because of her mother's rejection. It had stunted her desire to have friends or boyfriends. She shut out everyone in her efforts to protect herself as a child only to throw herself at the mercy of show business jackals that would routinely tear her down based on everything or nothing as an adult.

But that was her choice. She couldn't imagine being shunned and exiled by an entire society. Told he was undeserving and cruel. And yet he was still capable of love. Still craved it.