The greatest influence on a person's life often comes not from within themselves but from those around them
MODF: I've been wanting to do Labyrinth fanfiction for god knows how long, because hey-- I read enough of it. Why not? XD
So here it is!
Chapter 1
When she looked into his eyes, she realized there was no hope for a loophole. She would play his game whether she wanted to or not, and it was obvious that he did not intend to lose this time.
But the game is not where this story should begin. This story should begin with Sarah William, height 5'6", weight 140 pounds, not that any of that matters. She has long brown hair, thick and shining and falling gently down to her mid back, deep brown eyes, pale skin, and a smile which she wore more often than not. Again, unimportant, but really, rather nice to know. She lived in a small apartment in the city with a view of a small park with a pond and thousands of flowers. She lived alone.
Her small apartment was situated on the second floor of a small building which she herself owned, and the first floor was occupied by her small children's book shop, almost into its second year in business and slowly rising above the red in her finances. This venture leeched most of Sarah's money, which really explained why her apartment was so much smaller than the book store, no small feat considering the size of the store.
Her life was ordinary, but seemingly fulfilling despite the stress she often felt when opening bills, and her utter lack of a social life, but it was well worth it for her to work with all those children. There was something magical, for her, about a child falling into a storybook.
She rarely went out, and a date on a Friday night was pure myth, making unicorns seem like a possibility in comparison. With only two serious relationships under her belt, both ending in distinerest and yearning for something more on her part, she threw herself headlong into the effort to buy the shop. One of said relationships had, in fact, made it to the engagement stage, but that too had ended, and she felt no desire to pursue anyone else at that time.
On her twenty-fifth birthday she slept until noon, got up, fed her cat, ate some toast, drank some tea, took a shower, got dressed, brushed her teeth, and walked out her front door to wait on the street corner for the 2:30 bus that would take her and her overnight bags back to her hometown. It was family tradition that she spend the week of her birthday at her Father and Step-mother's home, and so she closed the shop for the week and hopped the bus.
The bus ride was not particularly eventful, but then again, the morning hadn't been either. Or the week. Or the month. Or the past few years. She shouldn't have been surprised, really. She should have stopped expecting the fantastic ages ago. When the bus slowed to a halt in a familiar sleepy little town Sarah got off, and had little choice but to walk to her house from the bus stop. On the way she chose to detour through a small park. She glanced around nervously when she thought she saw something white swoop by out of the corner to her eye, but she took it for a trick of the eye and continued walking. She payed attention only to her feet tapping along the cracked sidewalk, so as to keep from stumbling on one of the deep rivets in the cement. Passing over a small bridge she stopped a moment to admire the view, and in the back of her head she heard a small echo. "Through dangers untold and hardships unnumbered..." But of course, she ignored it and kept walking. The park always made her a bit skittish.
The front door to her home was always a place for memories, and as Sarah started up her front steps she had to stop and stare at the polished hardwood door for just a few moments. She remembered the million times she had come home from the park, late, and prepared to face the evil that lay beyond the unfriendly portal. She remembered Karen, her "wicked stepmother", who always awaited to tell her off, and who wouldn't let Merlin inside if he was wet or muddy. She remembered watching Toby while they went out and had fun.
But that was years ago, and Merlin had passed, and Toby was no longer a baby, and Karen seemed much less wicked now that Sarah was all grown up. She sighed and marked that the lacquer that once shone fresh and new had long since faded, and to her the threshold seemed old and tired.
"You can't stall this forever, you know." A little voice in her head remarked snidely. "You'll have to go in eventually."
"Oh, shut up!" She mumbled angrily to herself. Sighing again, she muttered a small, "Oh, all right..." and walked slowly up the front steps. For reasons unknown to anyone she hesitated slightly, which was ridiculous as this was still technically her home, but it happened all the same. Then she grasped the cold door handle and entered without knocking.
The foyer was very warm, clean, and filled with the smell of ham and butter and warm cake, which filled her nostrils and warmed the whole of her body. The house seemed very quiet somehow, until--
"SARAH!" Her little brother flew down the stairs and launched himself at her, knocking her bag clean out of her and and pushing her right up against the door. "Sarah, Sarah, Sarah, Sarah, SARAH! Why haven't you been to visit in so long!? I missed you! It's been forever!!"
"Toby, Toby!" She chuckled, wrapping her arms around him, "I just talked to you on the phone yesterday!"
He stepped back and grinned at her, face flushed with excitement. "I know! You always call, but it's not the same!"
"Oh, come on! I'll take this up to my room now. Where's Dad and Karen?"
"Oh!" He gasped a little. "They're in the kitchen! But you can't go in-- Not yet! You have to wait until dinner." He pulled her hand, gently leading her towards the stairs. "C'mon!"
"Haha, alright Toby, I'm coming."
Sarah found that stepping through the door into her bedroom was like stepping into a memory-- She felt so close to her surroundings, and yet somehow everything was so untouchable and surreal-- as though it weren't hers at all. She felt foreign and out of place... Distant.
Many of her old things had been put away, and those that hadn't were taken with her to decourate either the bookstore or the apartment. The walls seemed barren, dry, and cold to her; white faces gleaming evilly at her, naked and cruel. Her shelves, which once held scores of stuffed animals and books were now empty and covered with dust.
In fact, the only thing that remained to break up the cold monotony of the white walls was a single poster-- Escher's "Relativity". Sarah regarded it with a look of solemn, yet somehow wistful, remembrance, and a sick feeling settled itself in the pit of her stomach. She had left it there for a reason. Sarah dumped her bag on her bed just as Toby ran in.
"Here you go, Sarah! So you won't be lonely!" Toby laughed excitedly, holding Lancelot the teddy bear in his outstretched hands.
"Aw, thanks Toby!" She smiled and place Lancelot carefully on her vanity, sitting comfortably next to the mirror. The mirror... She regarded it strangely as she straightened.
"You haven't talked to them at all, Sarah. You said you needed them at some point or another. You said you would call on them, but that only lasted a few months, Sarah.. It's been a long time. Six years, Sarah-- is that your idea of friendship?" The voice prattled on endlessly in her ear, and suddenly the sick feeling emerged as full on illness, to the point that she felt dizzy.
"I haven't even thought of them," She thought dully. "Six years... Has time really passed to quickly? Hoggle, Didymus, Ludo, and..." She stopped herself. His name was burned into her skull, and she refused to carry that buried bit of past out into the open where it might be overheard. "That's quite enough of that!"
"Sarah, are you okay?" Toby's small voice came from behind her, and when she turned he was looking at her worriedly. She smiled reassuringly.
"I'm fine, Toby. Just remembering something, is all. Come on, let's go downstairs to bug Dad and Karen."
The lovely smells of birthday dinner hit her again when she reached the base of the stairs, and the odd sickness was suddenly replaced by hunger. Toby rushed ahead of her into the kitchen, and before she reached the door her father burst out with a wide smile on his face, arms outstretched, Toby smiling behind him.
"My little girl, home again! How are you, Sarah?" He embraced her warmly, keeping his arms on her shoulders when they pulled apart. She smiled and winked.
"Starving!"
Dinner was delicious, as she expected. She reminisced with her father and Karen while Toby laughed at Sarah's "antics" in her younger years. A bottle of champagne and entirely too much home cooking and cake made everyone sleepy, and a very tired Sarah bid her family goodnight and carried a comatose Toby off to bed.
Her room looked different when the moonlight reflected off the pale walls. Once upon a time the sheen of multicolored dolls' eyes and glossy posters filled her room, and the moonlight passed over pretty cloths and dresses in her open closet. There was magic in the place when the moon was full and bright in the sugar crystal plate glass of her floor to ceiling windows.
The dresses were gone now. The posters and the dolls were gone too. Now all that was left was Relativity, glaring at her in the light of the toy plastic moon. The plate glass gleamed coldly, all the magic and fantasy gone.
Sarah lay beneath the cool sheets of her soft white bed, staring at the ceiling. Sleep evaded her as soon as she hit the pillow, and it seemed to her like she was there forever waiting to slip away.
"It's only forever," a voice whispered to her softly in her head. "Not long at all..."
"Oh, be quiet." She said aloud. The voice stopped, but the words had banished all thoughts of sleep from her mind. She got up from her bed and sat on the small chair in front of her vanity. Sarah stared wistfully into her mirror, and her eyes began to droop as she stared at her quiet reflection in the looking glass. Sleep weighing down her brain, her heavy head rested on her hands, her mouth moved without warning and without consulting her conscious mind.
"I wish I could bring that magic back in my life..." Sarah yawned quietly and closed her eyes, until her dreamlike state crashed down all around her. Wide awake, she whipped around, wide-eyed and staring in fear at that pane glass. It looked vaguely like sugar crystals in the moonlight. She want to cry.
Without warning the windows blew open, bringing in a cloud of sparkling dust... and the Goblin King, in all or possibly more of his former glory, stood in the effulgence of the high moon.
"Tut, tut, Sarah. I thought you had learned by now not to speak without first considering the consequences of your words. How quickly you've returned to taking things for granted. Did my Labyrinth teach you nothing?" He smirked madly, mismatched eyes gleaming wildly at her.
"What are you doing here, Jareth? I didn't wish Toby away, and I certainly didn't ask for you to come into my house. What do you want?" Her voice was steady, but her knees buckled. She could feel her body shaking uncontrollably.
"Why Sarah, don't you remember? You made a wish Sarah. You may as well have extended a formal invitation." "But--"
"No buts. Now, Sarah, we're going to play a little game. You are going to run my Labyrinth a second time. Thirteen hours, Sarah. You want magic? I will turn the world upside-down for you, again. You will have magic, whether you want it or not"
When she looked into his eyes, she realized there was no hope for a loophole. She would play his game whether she wanted to or not, and it was obvious that he did not intend to lose this time.
Sarah could only stand frozen with horror as a hight hot wind overtook her room. The walls disappeared around her and suddenly she was faced with a horrifying view. There was death in that wind. The warm, wet smell of the Labyrinth was gone leaving only the heavy scent of deep decay. The walls, she could see, were crumbling and as black as the clouds blanketing a heavy grey sky above her. The sand beneath her was black and no grass grew. The sparse shrubs that once littered that familiar hill were reduced to sticks in the ground.
"What happened here, Jareth? What's happened to the Labyrinth? It looks--"
"It looks dead," Jareth interrupted sharply. "The Labyrinth is dying. Most of its former spirit is gone now. You want magic, Sarah? Here you are. You will run my Labyrinth a second time. Only now it won't be so easy."
"Easy!?" Sarah shouted angrily. "There was nothing easy about running the Labyrinth! This isn't--" She clapped her hand over her mouth and went silent. Jareth raised an eyebrow at her and smirked.
"Isn't what, dear girl?" He said to her. The smirk disappeared, leaving only angry eyes. "Isn't fair? Sometime soon we shall have a long discussion about fair." Sarah closed her eyes, sick and dizzy and searching herself for a reply. She said the only thing she could think of.
"You...You have no power over me!" She said defiantly, face twisted into a look of disgust. "You have no power over me!"
"Oh, I don't? It seems to me you're still here, Sarah. Your silly trick won't work again, and I have total power over you." Jareth's voice was quiet but full of venomous spite. Sarah was frightened-- And with good reason.
A weather clock appeared beside her, the hands set to 13 o'clock, and when she turned to face her captor she realized he had disappeared. Her voice was hardly a sigh as she spoke aloud to herself.
"C'mon, feet. Let the games begin..."
MODF: Well? Reviews are lovely, so I know what you think. More to come soon!