Dreamer

Don't defy me... It was a hiss, and barely anything more, but it wasn't these words that haunted the dreamer. No, oh, no; it was a whole different scene that rang clearly through the dreamer's mind, and a whole different character reciting them...

You have no power over me!

And then, softer than this wrathful snarl, the same voice continued, I don't know why, but every now and again in my life, I need you...

The rest of the words were drowned out by a sudden shrill ring, and the dream shatters as the crystal ballroom did. A hand shot out of the bed to slap lazily at the alarm clock, missing twice before it finally found the stupid button. The hand went limp, as did the arm it was attached to, and it accidentally knocked the alarm clock to the floor. A low oath muttered into a pillow responded to the clatter the clock caused, and the dreamer forced his head up and blinked blearily before reaching over to pick up the fallen timepiece.

He stretched lazily before glancing at the clock one last time. Sarah always laughed at him, for getting up so early when it made him cranky later, but he liked having the house to himself for that precious hour before his parents and brothers woke.

Another glance, this time at the calender Sarah had given him, improved his mood greatly; it was a Monday, true, but the teacher's association had called a mandaory meeting and school was cancelled for the day. Even better, Sarah was meeting him today at a tiny bookstore she'd found last week. Hanging out with Sarah meant that he had someone who didn't laugh at his near-constant sketching and that he had someone to laugh with.

Gliding downstairs (and how often had Sarah remarked on the unfairness of his ability to be graceful at all hours?), he fixed himself a light breakfast with the efficiency of someone used to working in the pre-dawn gloom. Just as stealthily, he eased the door open and carried his meal outside. It was chilly, and the nip woke him much quiker than the tea in his mug, but the bite in the autumn morning was something he'd always enjoyed.

He padded across the porch and into the garden to his favorite bench. It was here that Sarah usually found him when she stopped by to visit. (He didn't know how she did it, but she always seemed to drop in right as he finished whatever piece he was working on. And always before he had time to put it away, so she bullied him into letting her seem whatever it was he'd drawn, and she'd usually flip through his sketchbook to look at some of his previous works, while she was at it.)

From underneath the bench, he pulled out an old, rusted box. The combination lock on it gleamed in contrast to the faded, chipping ebony paint. Entering the combination (one he guarded jealously from his brothers, but one that Sarah had guessed within seconds of holding the lock), he listened to the soft click that told him it was safe to open now. The hinges of the box groaned with age as he lifted the lid and extracted the sketchpad and pencil. He carefully set the plate of food beside him on the bench, tearing off a chunk of the bagel and throwing it to the fox that was hiding behind the liliac bush. It snatched up the food before turning and running into the forest line. (That was one of Sarah's favorite things about his hide-away in the garden-- the way the cultured garden gave way to the wild woods behind the house, stretching on and on for miles... How many times had they gone hiking, making up stories of far-away places and people that they were going to see?)

He flipped open his sketchbook, passing several sketches from the dream--this was the third night, now, that he'd had the dream. It was so wonderfully vivid that he woke with itching fingers, longing for shades to match the colors in his mind's eye; so clear that it seems to be a photograph, not the memory of the past three night's dreams. Although he doesn't have the colors for the tints of the great Labyrinth he dreams of, he has a fair enough hand at drawing the land and its inhabitants. More than a fair hand, really; the creatures look ready to come to life.

He decides, off-handedly, to take his sketchbook and show these dreams-on-paper to Sarah. She'll like them, and he can tell her about the dream, and she won't laugh, because it will make sense to her in a way that it wouldn't to other people. She'll know what to do about it, too. (She doesn't always know what to do, and he knows this because she told him, but even when she doesn't have a clue, Sarah manages to act like she knows what she's doing. Sarah also makes it look like everyone else should know what she's doing, and if they can't figure it out, she won't waste her breath by telling them.) With that planned out, he sets to work.

When his mother yells his name, he is startled out of his trance. Looking to the side, he sees the birds have stolen his food while he was working. It certainly isn't the first time, and he can just hear his brothers laughing when he explains, someday, why he was always so hungry at lunch.

He couldn't honestly tell you what he was working on as the sun rose, then climbed steadily into the sky until, at last, his mother starts calling for him. But he hurries inside with the book tucked safely under his arm, and the box hidden underneath the bench, and the plate balanced in one hand until he dumps it in the sink and gets ready to go meet Sarah. He changes quickly, trading the sweatpants and oversized shirt for black jeans and a button-up. He grabs a jacket as he rushes out the door, jogging quickly to the store, the directions Sarah gave him in hand.

When he arrives, he's suprised to find Sarah already waiting for him, holding Toby outside the bookstore. (That had to be one of the few things they ever disagreed on. Sarah liked to maintain that Toby was the spawn of the devil, while he said Toby was a helluva lot better than his brothers. She'd agreed on that, and he agreed that since Karen was the devil, and Toby's mother, then yes, Toby was the devil's child. He insisted the little toddler didn't act like it, though.)

The three of them wander the store, and the store keeper watches them curiously. He's sure they make quite a sight-- a newly-turned sixteen year old girl and a nineteen year old guy carrying a kid barely one year old. He's also sure that he rather likes this picture, and wishes he could draw it with all the finesse such a portait would require.

She is strangely quiet at the moment, and after spending an hour in the store, tossing books to one another and, for kicks, reading aloud random sentances from random books, the three head on over to the coffee shop, where she buys hot cocoa, and he gets tea, and Toby recieves a bottle of chocolate milk, courtesy of Sarah. It's then, sitting down across from her at the round table, Toby beside him, that he realizes why. She's exhausted.

There are faint circles under her eyes, and her shoulders are hunched just that little bit, and her normally quick comebacks are slowed by a second, maybe two at most. The evidence isn't obvious, and anyone else would have missed it.

But more than the tiredness, there's the confusion. She's looking at him like something about him is off by a hair, and trying to figure it out. He doesn't like this, not the tiredness, not the bewilderment; Sarah has always been impervious to the troubles of real life and if something is bothering her it's something in her head which he can't really help her with. In frustration, he decides to tell her about the dream.

And suddenly, only a few paragraphs in, she's adding to his dream. From the other side of it, from the heroine's side of it. And just as he remembers that chilling hiss, spoken in his voice, he remembers the voice of his adversary. It confused him, to think of her as anything but a friend, but he realizes it was her in the dream.

"May I see your drawings?" The words bring him back to reality with a jolt. He nods, and takes out his book, flipping the pages ahead to his first sketch of the Labyrinth before sliding the book across the table to Sarah. She lightly trails her fingers over the drawing, then looks to the next. And the next. And the next... there are nearly fifteen drawings. Thirteen are completed, including this morning's, and two are still just sketchy shapes. Every here and there, she comments under her breath about something.

At last, she reaches the final finished page, the one he drew not an hour and a half ago. A castle dominates the page, and a few misshapen creatures peer around the walls, grinning mischeviously. Through a door, the throne room is visible, and draped across it is a figure in black-- it should be blue, he thinks, again cursing the lack of color-- holding a child in striped pajamas, speaking to a girl entering through the doorway.

It's the three of them, he realizes, and Toby gurgles happily at the drawing before Sarah truly responds.

"Jareth... What on earth is going on?"

"I don't know." It's all he can say, because all he knows is that he doesn't know. Well, no; he knows one thing more.

"But we'll deal with it," he promises her as he scoops Toby up and ushers her out of the coffee shop. And he looks up in time to see an owl look at him from the branches of a tree outside. He smiles at it, a little confused, because for some strange reason, its eyes are eerily familiar...

He pushes the thought out of his head. Right now, it's Sarah, and Toby, and him; dreamers in a world that rejects dreamers. And whatever happens, it'll be Sarah, and Toby, and him...

Oro: Wish I could say this was just blowing off steam, but it didn't turn out to be that nice, funny, short fic that I had planned. I may or may not turn this into a whole story, but for now... (shrugs) It's a oneshot until I have time to do more with it.

Quill: She doesn't own anything.

Oro: Well, that was rather lazy... Please review!