Jareth's Return

Jareth (23)

Dead.

Dead.

She's dead.

He had seen her collapse, after the end of the battle, the head of his worst enemy rolling away like a forgotten ball. The pale pallor of her skin, the red stains and injuries all over her body, and the lifeless loll of her head all painted towards the worst case scenario. The screaming denial had made it's way out of his throat before he knew what happened. Then he was beside Henry, taking her body into his arms, frantically ripping off his gloves to feel for a pulse.

It was weak, so weak, but by the Bog, there was one.

Jareth didn't know how, but the next thing he was aware of was Xander shooing him out of the Healers' Wing to go "do anything else, anywhere else." So he sat on the floor in the hallway, staring at the blood on his hands. His hands were covered in black and red. That is until Nanciel found him.

"Oh dear." She wrung her hands for a moment. "Well, this won't do. Up you get, Your Highness; we're going to wash those hands." Nan lead him to the closest bathroom and turned on the hot water.

Moving on autopilot, Jareth scrubbed his hands with the scrub brush, pushing his sleeves up to his elbows. No matter how hard he seemed to clean them, the red remained there.

Stuck. He couldn't get Theodora's blood off of his hands.

There was so much red. Get off. Off. OFF.

Nan's cold hands stilled his own. "Now, there's no need to hurt yourself more. Perfectly clean, you are. You see?" She ran the water cold to soothe his irritated skin and told him to breathe deep. Once he was relatively calm, she dried his arms and lead him outside into the cool air.

The bodies were slowly being picked up. Jareth felt the need to pipe up, so he grabbed the nearest person to him and thought for a moment. "If any of our deceased are infected, I want them cleansed. Take the Marked and pile them on a pyre deep in the bog and burn them all. Save any and all crystals used and give them to Nanciel, she'll know what to do with them."

Jareth hugged Nan tightly, and then ambled off to help with the clean up. His mind was firmly not on his possibly dying fiancée.

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The next two weeks passed with excruciating slowness. All the bodies had been cleansed and a mass burial was held two days before. Sally was almost fully healed from having her arm regrown. It had been crushed after being caught in a wall that had been toppled over.

Jareth was also healed of the minor injuries he'd sustained. He had just finished signing the last of the death certificates, and was looking over the reports of how the rebuilding was going.

This would be much faster if Theodora were here to help.

He derailed that train of thought almost as soon as it appeared. He didn't want to think about her; about how she should have woken up by now.

For the first week after the battle, Xander had kept her in a healing coma. Theodora came out of battle with a few fractured ribs, a puncture in her large and small intestines, a severe loss of blood, as well as both physical and magical exhaustion. She was far too close to death for anyone's liking.

Jareth shivered and his heart clenched as he remembered Xander's words on her condition. "I am honestly surprised she did not collapse before making it back. If the Consciousness had not been feeding her magic through the link they share, I'm quite positive she would have died alone out in the middle of the maze."