Moving the Stars
A/N: because I was not thinking at all, in this story Jeremy & Linda are film actors instead of theatre ones. Oops. The story also doesn't take anything but names from the novelization (because I've never read it).
~L~
Everything that I have done, I've done for you.
The broken stairs of the Escher room floated around him; a space out of time, the very heart of the Labyrinth broken by this small, mortal girl with powers she did not even understand.
He knew that she would not accept his gift. His last chance. Even before she said the words, she faced him with sudden knowing in her eyes, eyes that were cruel, ah, if but she could only see them. The confidence and presence that imbued her marked her truly as his equal; the fact that she had beat the Labyrinth and gained back the child. In this moment the roles were reversed—this was his moment of defeat. He knew it as surely as it had been written. But that did not make his trying any less, or his anguish.
"You have no power over me," she said, wondering, and the truth of the words was in them. Up his hand flew, and the clock struck the thirteenth hour. He had run out of time.
Of course I have no power over you. That is the whole entire point. I am yours; your king, your creation, your defeated.
I can't live within you.
The clock struck twelve, the low notes rolling from the tower with the inexorability of time, and Jeremy woke up in sudden terror from the dream.
Perhaps he had screamed; he didn't know, but the sound of the bell's chiming was more than pain. He sat up in the darkness, looking from the floor to ceiling windows over the city of London, and he saw only the girl, half a world away. His feathers ruffled in the cold breeze as he perched outside her window, watching her call her friends from the mirror and bring them to the world. Why couldn't you have accepted my last gift? The longing in him was sharp and bitter-sweet, and it would last longer than the span of her life. He tried to keep each part of her in his memory: the long fall of her hair, the sound of her laughter and her joy. But he could not see her eyes, for she looked not at him.
At least she was safe, and happy.
And at last, he took flight, soaring up from the houses and away into the moon.
"Jeremy! Jeremy!" Linda's anxious voice broke through—the last bell had ceased chiming. She had him by the shoulders, shaking him wildly. "I swear if you don't answer me I'm going to call 999."
"I'm fine," he said at last. The strange, distorted feeling had gone, and the bells had stopped ringing. "It must have been a dream…"
"A dream?" Now that she was sure he wasn't in immediate danger of having a heart attack, Linda leaned back. "That must have been quite a dream, my dear. I don't think I've ever seen you have a nightmare like that before."
He laughed, shakily, pushing his fingers through his curling blonde hair. "It was. I don't know how to describe it—" (it was as real as sitting next to you right now) "I think it was the most disturbing dream I've ever had."
He stood up and began to pace along the skyline. "I dreamed I was the king of a strange kingdom … it had a rather unique way of keeping people out; a Labyrinth."
"A maze, you mean?" Linda asked, her attention caught by the story. She leaned forward.
"No, it was a Labyrinth." Jeremy was quite clear on this point. The dream hadn't faded at all, the way he would have expected it would upon waking; it was as painfully clear now as it had been minutes ago. It was not only a labyrinth but The Labyrinth. His kingdom.
He shivered. They really needed to turn the heat up. And he had a shoot tomorrow, too early to stand around talking about a dream, no matter how strange.
"Well, that's hardly a way to keep people out," Linda countered. "A labyrinth is meant to keep things in. The hapless victims, and the minotaur at the center."
"Well, I was at the center," Jeremy murmured. Along with the babe, of course—
"So you dreamed you were the minotaur?" Linda frowned. "I'm sure Freud would have something to say here."
"No, I was the king." Although perhaps the difference was slight, if he had been set there by his very own Daedalus, creator of the Labyrinth and all that was within it… "there were other things in the Labyrinth as well. Goblins, mostly. A little girl had wished away her brother to me and then realized she hadn't meant it at all." Without noticing, his voice had taken on a mocking tilt. "But what's said is said. She had to run the Labyrinth, reach the center before the time was up, or she would not get her brother back."
"You know," Linda said, her voice slow and thoughtful, "I've heard that story before."
"You have?"
"Yes. Why would I have? It was something I gave to my daughter once, I think. It was a little red book—funny, I never remembered it until now."
Jeremy swallowed, suddenly glad he had decided to get out of bed, despite the cold. He stood by the window, watching his reflection suspiciously. The reflection stared suspiciously back with mismatched eyes. "Your daughter… Sarah?"
"Yes, of course. You've met." Linda frowned again. "It was so long ago, she must have been hardly older than ten. I need to invite her here again. Her father and that woman are so demanding on her time, you know," she said, a hint of petulance in her voice, and while on any other night he would roll his eyes good naturedly at his lover's complete self-unawareness, now it grated. He found himself looking at her as the Goblin King might. She had wished away a child just as much as her daughter had, if not by any magical means, and she did not have enough desire or fortitude to bring her back. The Labyrinth would have torn her apart.
He felt a sudden queasy, sick disgust at himself for his own thoughts. It was just a dream, he had no call to judge Linda so harshly for something that had nothing to do with him. And as for her daughter…
God. The girl in his dreams was so painfully, obviously Linda's daughter. He didn't know what that said about him. He didn't want to know. Sarah Williams… of course she remembered her. Ten years old, eyes full of wonder at the high life, the lavish clothes and parties that were so far from her own existence, and so painfully in awe of her mother, full of hero-worship that could not even admit there might be resentment underneath. Half of the time, spinning stories to tell, stories Linda took in stride with a charming unbelief without chiding her at all. Wild flights of fancy—not unlike her mother in that. The other times, her nose buried in a book; he quite clearly remembered the argument the two had gotten into when Linda realized she had hardly any clothes in her bags because they were filled with books instead. She started haranguing Robert and Karen to the ends of the earth for not providing for their daughter, Sarah tearfully protesting that she had packed her case herself and she wanted books and not clothes! And yet when they had gone shopping later that day she came back twirling, in awe over the dresses her mother had bought, solemnly informing him that she was a fairy princess.
She had been intimidated by him, perhaps. He'd thought she might hate him for stealing her mother away; the small guilt ate at him when he looked at her, though he knew that Linda would never have been the mother this girl needed. Yet she hadn't hated him. She hardly spoke to him, but in the way you might not speak to a schoolgirl crush. One eventful day when Linda had been called away for reshoots, leaving the two of them at loose ends, had turned into a Scrabble marathon and food ordered to the penthouse from a nearby restaurant. At nine o'clock, when Jeremy had finally tucked the protesting girl into bed, promising to send her mother in with a kiss when she got home, she had looked up at him and said with perfect, matter of fact innocence, "I'm glad you and mommy are together. You make her laugh and you're very nice and you're as pretty as she is. I know that's important."
Jeremy had laughed incredulously. "I'm as pretty as she is? I don't know if that's all that important, love."
"It is," she insisted. "Mommy likes to look nice in pictures. Daddy never wanted to be in the fancy pictures with her. It's why she had to leave."
He had found himself chocked up, filled with sudden admiration for this girl's beautiful spirit. "All right, sweetie," he said. "Thank you for telling me. I'll remember that."
She nodded back at him as he turned off the light, and when he left the room he'd had to remind himself why he didn't want a daughter.
In the dream, though, his intentions toward her had been… entirely different.
"Jeremy? Come on, get back to bed," Linda said. "You'll be up early tomorrow and complaining the whole time if you don't sleep. And I'm not going to put up with that."
"I know," Jeremy answered, with something that might approximate a smile, in the dark. "I'm just a little shaken; I think I might take a walk, make myself something to drink."
"…All right," Linda said at last. "It's your morning. I'll come back after twelve to make sure you aren't dead," she added, with soft flirtatiousness. He watched her slip back off under the covers and fall easily into sleep. Something happened then, in those few minutes he stood frozen by the window. He was watching her, her slow breathing, and then with the sudden deepening of her sleep he could feel the dreams creep in. A sudden curiosity gripped him, and in another moment, there he was, within the dream itself. Seeing her dreams.
Linda was auditioning for the next big part and it went without a hitch; everybody loved her. She got the part, of course. She spent the rest of the dream chatting with friends and acquaintances about the movies they'd like to be in. For a moment or two, the space next to her was filled with her daughter, dressed to match. She smiled, looking stunningly gorgeous, and Linda noticed her for a moment. The life we could have had… it seemed to whisper through her mind.
Never mind that the Sarah in her dream was nothing like the Sarah he knew, either from Jeremy's memories or his own. She was pleasant, yes. Beautiful, of course. A perfect complement to show off Linda's shining star.
With something like a slam, Jeremy was at the window, leaning back against the cold glass as if he was trying to escape. What had he just done? Beside him, Linda slept on, oblivious.
He couldn't have just looked into her dreams. That was not possible. He was not the Goblin King. It was a story. Just a story.
Quietly, Jeremy slipped into his own side of the suite and closed the door on his dressing room, picking out something at random. He had to get some air. Perhaps that would help clear his mind.
He took the lift down from the penthouse into streets that were cold and grey. There was a pea-soup fog that must have started sometime on the way down, and it had crept its way up to the lighted buildings, thicker than he had ever seen it. He stared out a moment, uncertain. Then he pulled his coat tighter around him and stepped in.
All at once, sound was muffled. Buildings seemed to float eerily adrift on an uncertain sea, parked cars and benches loomed up suddenly like stones. And from the corner of his eye were other things…
Jeremy stuck his hands in his pockets and tried to look only at his feet and not the shadows beneath them. A shape some yards beyond him was two figures, arguing under the streetlamp. He couldn't hear what they said, but the argument was heated. Arms were raised, and something jumped about. He wondered if he should break it up; coming closer, the altercation was between a man and an old beggar woman with a shopping cart piled full, past overflowing, with the pieces of her life. He turned his head and in the corner of his eye he saw something else—twin red eyes stared with unblinking interest from faces that weren't anything like human.
He stopped short, facing them straight on and staring for longer than was polite, but all he saw was an old woman and a man. They had now escalated to screams, and if curses were money the old woman wouldn't have any problem making a living. At that thought, he laughed, and the woman, flummoxed, put her hand to her mouth as instead of curses, round, shining coins fell from her mouth.
He stopped laughing abruptly, staring in horror at the gold pieces that fell into her palm, jumped into the cart, went rolling down the street. She turned her attention away from the man to glare at him, waving her arms and dragging her cart behind her, coins falling with soft, clear clinks to the ground, her mouth flapping. He couldn't look away, and stumbled back to realize a wall was behind him. She had gained on him quicker than a woman with such a big cart should be able to, and he heard the rattling, bumping jolts of its wheels over the cobblestones. He closed his eyes.
I'm going to be killed by a beggar with a cart, he thought fatalistically. Then, noticing the sudden silence, he opened his eyes to find himself somewhere else.
It was only for a moment, the somewhere else, and he wasn't quite sure what he saw, or didn't see, but quite abruptly, he was standing in the lobby of the penthouse, shivering in his coat, covered with soft droplets of water from the fog. He looked out into the night. It was thicker than he'd ever seen it…
Jeremy stepped back.
He'd taken enough of a walk, he decided, going over to the elevator and turning the key below the button to their floor. Perhaps if went to sleep now, tomorrow would be… better. A late night hallucination, that was all. He just wasn't properly awake.
Instead of risking waking Linda as he slipped in chilled from the night air's touch, he went to the bed in his own side of the suite and slipped under the covers, closing his eyes.
He shouldn't have thought it could be so easy. He slept that night, but the dreams were not his own, that he knew for certain. A dizzying mix of dreams that seemed to come from every corner of the earth, snippets patched together like an ill-fitting quilt, and he slipped within the squares, passing something like sparkling sand from his hands to their eyes to let them sleep easy. At last he paused on the one mortal in the world with whom he wanted to stay more than an instant. Sarah…
She heard him, of course. A rather mundane dream about school (though perhaps no human school had quite so many goblins and strange carnivorous plants) wavered, and with a detached sort of surprise, he was sitting in the dream with her. Truly in the dream. This was more than his own powers could do. She had to have brought him in.
"What are you doing here, Jareth?" she asked, with only minimal suspicion. It was a relief to deal with her dream-image—it was a softer view, less inclined to sharp remarks and hating the very sight of him. Of course, his own dream image was perhaps equally softened, so it was not a surprise. Dreams were a place for both illusion and honesty. One could have no pretense in a dream, when a dream is one's very heart.
"Answering a summons," Jareth replied gallantly. "My lady asked for me, and here I am."
"I didn't call for you," Sarah said, but she looked uncertain. "You can't come here. You have no power over me. I defeated you."
Jareth frowned. Would she never tire of bringing that up? "That's quite right. I have no power over you; hence, I am only in this dream because you wished me to be."
"Oh," Sarah answered, worrying her lip. "I guess that makes sense."
Jareth almost rolled his eyes.
"Hey, no fair looking at me like that," Sarah defended herself. "I was just making sure. It's not a lot that the heroine keeps contact with the villain after she defeats him. I mean, that's not the way it's done, is it?" As she spoke, the dream wavered, and Jareth found himself being tugged rather unpleasantly. She was writing the story again.
"Well, that depends on the story, doesn't it?" he asked quickly. "Haven't you ever heard of the kind where the monster is really a prince in disguise?"
The wavering stopped as she thought, and Jareth sighed in relief.
"I suppose so," she said. "But in those stories the girl usually ends up brought somewhere against her will, and given everything she desired, only there's one thing she must never do. She always does it though."
"And if the girl is brave and clever enough, she manages to break the curse and take back the life, this time knowing everything," Jareth finished.
Sarah nodded. "But, you see, there are also stories where the prince is a monster in disguise. How do I know which one you are?"
The harsh buzzing of the school bell rang through the corridors, and the alarm went off entirely too early for Jeremy's tastes. He opened his eyes to sunlight streaming in the room from shades he'd forgotten to pull down. That's right, he hadn't meant to sleep in this room at all—and oh, the infernal sound would continue—he dragged himself out of the covers with difficulty to press the button to turn it off, swearing quietly. He could remember the dreams just as clear as he had the last one… the first one… about the Labyrinth. Perhaps the interlude in between really had been a dream as well, despite the coat still strewn across a nearby chair.
Whatever the meaning, he had work to be going to, and—he slipped his watch on while checking it—he was going to be late if he kept standing around. Jeremy dashed into his dressing room to pick out the clothes he'd laid aside yesterday—why did that feel so long ago?—and walked down the hall to the kitchen, where he found a mug of coffee freshly made, and Linda nowhere in sight, as she had promised. He spared a grin as he drank and got out the door just in time to meet the car, sliding into the back seat and resting his head against cool leather. He felt wrung out, not a physical tiredness but something far deeper, and for one moment he entertained the thought of sleeping in the car…
Best not.
Instead, he went over his lines for the day.
Despite his half-fears, the shoot went by without anything stranger than might happen on any other day. At last his part was over and he slipped out to meet Linda at the café they usually met at. When he stepped in the door she was already there, half through her food, and reading a magazine.
He slipped into the seat across from her and smiled, watching her twirling a strand of dark hair around her fingers, her mouth moving silently as she read.
"I missed you," he said, and she looked up to quirk an eyebrow at him.
"Flattery will get you nowhere, handsome," she drawled, and he laughed.
"You can't blame a man for trying," he replied.
"Mmm. If you really want to try…" she batted her lashes exaggeratedly, badly imitating the innocent expression of a silent movie star, and he laughed even harder. When the waitress passed by he called her over.
"The usual?"
"Coming up," she said.
When it came time to give the tip he reached into his pocket, realized with a jolt that he was wearing the wrong coat and had left his wallet in the other one. He was about to ask Linda if she had money when he realized his pocket wasn't empty after all. He lifted his hand and stared at the euros it. The exact amount he needed. Newly minted too. They shone slightly dazzlingly in the light, slightly strange. He noticed Linda staring at the coins in his hand with an expression of open, hungry greed and closed his fist around the money to capture the glow. The expression was gone as if it had never been. He looked at the approaching waitress uncomfortably, staring at her as she reached the table before handing her the money as quickly as possible. When he did, her eyes lit up; she handled the coins like they were gold.
Jeremy had the sudden uncomfortable feeling that he had not had those euros lying in his coat pocket.
"Linda, last night you said you recognized that dream I told you." They were buttoning their coats; she shook her hair free of the collar and slid a scarf around her neck. "It was some sort of book, you said. I think I must have read it once, but I don't remember what it was called, or who wrote it. Do you?"
Linda was already halfway into work mode, thinking about the trip she would take later that day to her next movie, but she looked at him when he spoke. "What it was called? Oh, something obvious like 'The Labyrinth'. I couldn't tell you who it was by."
She beckoned him over. "Hey, are you going to let me go without a kiss?"
"Of course not." Jeremy smiled and gave her a quick peck on the cheek.
She frowned. "Well if that's all…"
"This more like it?" Jeremy murmured, pulling her forward, and giving anyone who might at that moment have opened the door to the cloakroom an indecent display. Linda moaned.
"Definitely." Then she let her lips leave his, slowly, lingeringly, as if they hated to part. But she was checking the time a moment later. "Oh, gotta be going—see you!" she slipped out.
The Labyrinth. It wasn't a terribly helpful title. In fact, he could have guessed it himself.
He had seen the book in the dream.
As he had nothing set up for the rest of the day, Jeremy poked into the nearest bookstore to pester the clerk. "Are you sure you couldn't give me any more information?" the woman asked at last, after Jeremy had given not only the title but the entire plot. "Author, date of publication—even publishing house, if you remember it."
"No," Jeremy said. "Nothing like that." He left the bookstore unsatisfied.
After that it turned into something of a quest. He went through the phone book, asking at every bookstore on the list if they had heard of The Labyrinth. None of them had. At last, watching the sky move from grey to even darker grey, he decided it was never going to happen, and wandered outside once more. He didn't know quite when he got turned around to find himself in the little alley-street with buildings crammed so close that a single car could hardly make its way through, but he noticed the bookstore at once. There was a sign outside the shop, without any letters on it, but the tilting, almost toppling pile of books could mean nothing else. He stepped inside, and the little copper bell above the door chimed cheerfully on the way in, and seemed to echo for longer than was quite possible into the depths of the store.
At the sound, from what looked to be a mass of books piled just as the sign suggested, popped a little man, and Jeremy realized that there was a desk further back, and he pushed his way through shelves and piles upon piles to the desk, where the man pushed a monocle to his eye and stared at him piercingly, turning his head first one way, then the other, so first the monocled and then the uncovered eye stared at him sideways.
"Ah," the man said at last. "Welcome to my store, traveler."
"And well met to you," Jeremy said, frowning at the words his tongue spoke. He cleared his throat in embarrassment and stuck his hands in his pockets. "I'm looking for a book, actually—nowhere else seemed to have heard of it, but—"
"Doesn't matter," the man cut in. "Tell me anyway. This place has a lot of things that fall through the cracks."
Jeremy couldn't help glancing at the precarious piles jumbled so high they reached almost to the ceiling and took up all the floor space. "Well. I can see that."
"So?" the man demanded. "The book you want to find. What is it?"
"It's called The Labyrinth—"
A sudden silence seemed to fill the entire space, and Jeremy had the strangest and most unsettling sensation that the books were waiting, and listening. He shook away the feeling with difficulty and looked back at the small man.
"The Labyrinth, you say?" the man said. "Now, I haven't heard that name in a long time." He reached under the desk and brought out a catalogue, with rich, glossy pages, and flipped through it. Though it was not a large catalogue, he seemed to flip for some time before he reached the spot he was looking for and turned it to Jeremy.
"This the book?"
Jeremy couldn't help but reach forward. "Yes, it's that one!"
With a long, dusty slam the man closed the catalogue and placed his hand on top of it. "Out of stock, sorry," he said. "It must be in use." He peered forward curiously. "You haven't got… caught up in it, have you?"
"What do you mean, out of stock?" Jeremy demanded, his temper fraying by the second. "It's in your catalogue."
"So's a lot of things," the man answered.
Jeremy stared forward for a long moment before his shoulders slumped. He could tell when he'd reached a dead end. But as he turned to go, the man surprised him.
"The book is out of stock, but I could always tell you something about it. If you want to know, that is."
Jeremy turned around. "Yes," he said. "What about it?"
"Well," the man said. "I can't tell you much of a plot, for it doesn't have one. It has a Labyrinth, of course, and a king. It has a wisher and a wished-away. The rest is up to the storyteller."
"What do you mean?" Jeremy demanded. "I've heard it, it does have a plot—there's a girl, and a king of the goblins, who is the king of dreams."
"Oh, you're right about the dreams, at least," the man said. "That's what this book is. Hopes and dreams. Whoever owns it creates the Labyrinth in their image. You could say the book is the place, if you wanted…"
Jeremy scoffed. "You're talking like the story is real," he said.
The man gave him a piercing look. "Isn't it?"
Jeremy fell silent.
"Tell me, traveler, how'd you hear about this book?"
"I had a dream," Jeremy said.
"Ah."
There was a long silence, broken at last when Jeremy turned to leave once more. But then the man called him back. "Would you like to know what I see when I look at you through the glass?" he asked, and Jeremy watched him holding the monocle between two fingers. "Something other than when I look at ye without it." His hand closed over the monocle and he stared straight at Jeremy. "You're hovering between, traveler. Who knows where you'll settle?"
Jeremy smiled thinly. "Thank you for your… help," he said. He walked as quickly as he could out of the shop and closed the door firmly behind him, and made to look around to find where he had gotten himself. But he was not in an alley after all. He was on the edge of quite a normal road, and people were walking by, heads hunched under their umbrellas. When he checked the street sign, it was a street he knew.
~L~
Mindful of the strange words the bookseller had left him with, Jeremy continued his life, just as usual, but making sure to avoid wandering the city alone. That seemed to cut down on the weirdness measurably. Perhaps, eventually, it would all fade away…
He might have been more hopeful if it weren't for the dreams. He never dreamed his own dreams anymore, but always slipped through the patchwork dreams of others, sprinkling sand in their eyes. It wasn't as if he particularly disliked slipping through others' dreams, and perhaps that was the problem. He felt that he was doing some good, and the glimpses of countless lives, so different from his own, was always alluring. But he could not deny that the rejuvenation sleep used to have for him didn't seem to work anymore. Oh, his body was as healthy as ever, but something in him was always tired. He had no contact with his own dreams, and it left him feeling slightly off-kilter. Surely this wasn't the way things were supposed to go.
And then there was Sarah. If he hesitated by her dreams, even for a moment, he would get pulled inside, and Jareth had none of the modern-day compunctions that Jeremy did. He loved her, violently, obsessively, and completely, as was his nature, and he would do anything for her.
Even if that included something like… this.
Jareth looked around as Sarah stood to cut the highest rosebush. As her shears went flying, down the roses fell, somehow always managing to fall into the cauldron.
"A love potion, really?" he asked.
"I just want him to notice me," Sarah said, cutting away. The hedge was several feet shorter now than it had been.
Of course, the boy of her dreams. He sat by the fountain, staring off into the distance, looking as handsome as a dream-image could. Jareth considered turning him into a lizard. A tiny one.
Very nobly, he refrained.
"Well why don't you just talk to him, then?" Jareth asked, shaking hedge-clippings from his hair and staring up at Sarah in annoyance.
She blushed. "Oh, no, he's one of the popular kids, you know, and I couldn't possibly—"
"Am I hearing what I think I'm hearing?" Jareth snapped. "The Champion of the Labyrinth, the only one to ever defeat me, is afraid of a little schoolboy?"
Sarah dropped her shears in indignation. Somehow they landed squarely on Jareth's head. "It's not that!" she protested hotly, blushing.
"Well then, pray tell," Jareth continued silkily, with obvious mockery. "I'm all ears."
"I—" Sarah sputtered. "You know what? I don't want to talk to you right now. Go away." Jareth crossed his arms as she pushed him out of the dream, keeping his composure in the face of her frustration.
So he might like trying to rile her.
Just a bit.
And especially when she was trying to court someone so clearly inferior.
Jeremy woke up with a groan. Really, Sarah, you could do better than him… the lingering though persisted. He sat up and walked into the bathroom to splash cold water into his face before any more thoughts came through, and stared at himself in the mirror.
He could never tell, when he looked, if there was some difference. On the one hand, he looked just as he always had. And yet there was some difference, something subtle, that seemed to be growing with every passing day. When he walked by on the street, every gaze would be following him. He had gone to the grocery the day before to buy a carton of milk and when he met the girl's eyes he had a sudden image of her dreams—not her sleep-dreams, but her this-very-moment hopes and wishes, and she wanted to ravish him.
It was quite disconcerting.
And today was the day Linda would be flying in from the last day of shooting. Jeremy leaned forward and groaned, tangling his fingers in his hair. He didn't know if he could face her. How could he tell her that her daughter—what? Owned a magic book? Owned a magic land? And had somehow created a character… well, she was an actress. Perhaps she'd understand…
Jeremy tried to imagine how that conversation would go. It never quite got farther than, "You've been dreaming what about my daughter?"
On a sudden hunch, he turned his head sideways to look at himself from the corner of his eye, and there it was. Jareth, staring back at him, with a mocking little smile.
"Stop that," Jeremy said, alarmed, as the reflection's smile grew wider. "What are you doing?"
"Nothing," the Jareth in the mirror said. "I'm just your imagination."
"Really."
"I promise," the reflection said. "I'm no more real than your own thoughts."
"And how real are my own thoughts?" Jeremy asked.
Jareth beamed. "The right question; good. They are as real as you wish them to be. After all, you're the king of wishes. Isn't that how she wrote you?"
"I'm not Jareth," Jeremy protested. "I only play him, when she wants me too." It sounded weak even to his own ears; Jareth gave him a scathing look.
"Oh really."
"I'm trying to get my life back," Jeremy continued. "I haven't been doing any strange things at all."
With a sudden motion, a crystal appeared in Jareth's hand. Turning it this way and that for a moment, he watched it, then threw it through the mirror to Jeremy, who caught it without thinking and continued to juggle it in his hand.
"Not me? But we are one and the same, aren't we, my dear Jeremy. Her hopes and dreams made flesh."
Jeremy shook his head. "You wouldn't understand. She's just a kid; she had a fantasy based on me and dragged me into it."
"And you've dragged yourself all the way back out, I see," Jareth answered, looking at the crystal flashing in Jeremy's hand. He stopped it short.
"Look into the crystal," Jareth continued, "It'll show you your dreams…" He was fading out. There was nothing left in the mirror but his own ordinary reflection, holding the crystal. He could hear Linda's shoes tapping through the penthouse.
"Jeremy?" she called. "You there?"
He threw the crystal toward the bin. When it reached overhead, it seemed to pause a moment before turning to a shower of glitter and disappeared.
"I'm here," Jeremy answered, stepping out of the bathroom. Linda looked as lovely and self-absorbed as ever.
"So you wouldn't believe what happened this week," Linda started, and Jeremy smiled and nodded along with her story, relieved that he didn't have to speak. But eventually even Linda could find nothing else to say about the week-long shoot and really looked at him. She stared for a moment, puzzled.
"Did you cut your hair?"
Jeremy laughed. "No," he said.
"Funny," she said. "I could've sworn you'd cut your hair." She stared at him a moment longer as though looking for what had changed and not finding it. Then, with a shrug, she turned away. "I was thinking of staying in tonight," she called over her shoulder. "I'm just exhausted from the plane ride, I didn't get a wink of sleep," she continued.
"I'm sorry," Jeremy said. She waved a hand. "Well, that's what home is for," she said. "But maybe in a few hours you'd like to go out?"
Jeremy managed a smile. "Of course," he said. "I'll set something up. Don't worry about it." And when Linda still stared at him, with a strange look in her eyes, like part of her realized how much he didn't mean the smile, he stepped forward to kiss her hand, sending reassurance until she blinked up at him, the puzzlement gone. It was easy enough to do. One of her dreams was that he loved her. "We could always postpone sleep and do a real welcome home," she said.
Jeremy laughed softly. "Later. Go to sleep; you need it."
When she left through the door to her own side of the penthouse he sagged. He sat down on his favourite couch and stared forward blankly. He had just enchanted his lover. It wouldn't last for long, and it was harmless enough magic, but the fact that he had to—and that he would—was more than disquieting.
It was frankly terrifying.
A careless motion of his hand brought up a crystal, then two, then three, and without thinking he was watching the smooth movements as they passed, the glints and sparks where the light caught them. He thought about his reflection's words. He'd been trying to tell himself all week that he hadn't really changed. He was still himself. So he'd found out magic was real. That was—surprisingly not as surprising as it should have been. He was still Jeremy, a hundred percent—or at least sixty percent—human. He still loved Linda as he had done for the last four years. Jareth was just another part, albeit one not of his own choosing.
He was not sure any longer if any of that was still true.
At last, he allowed the crystals to slow, blinking out one by one until only a single crystal lay in his palm. He rolled it down his fingers, watching it, and filled the inside with suggestion. Then he looked inside.
He wasn't sure what he would see what he looked at his dreams. He'd had a fairly good grasp on them, for a human, before this all had happened. But he could not believe that they hadn't changed. Some of the things were still there—the dream of an audience to act before, the dream of love that would last (but though a human conception of love was fleeting and parted at death, the new dream lasted much longer…)
It's only forever… Not long at all…
Then there were the dreams of a king, dreams he'd been dreading to see yet was not surprised by. He looked down at himself to find the medallion's weight resting against his chest, and in another instant, the mortal's clothes had gone to be replaced by his normal wear—
Jeremy clawed himself out of the daze, dropping the crystal with a violent motion. The clothing was gone, but the medallion remained, a weight heavier than it looked. He tried to pull it from his neck, halfheartedly hoping it would come away in his hands. It didn't.
Sarah was the creator of the Labyrinth, her kingdom as great as his; and it was fuelled by the strength of her imagination. If he could but get her to stop believing in magic… it was his last chance.
No! The vehemence of his inner voice surprised him. How could I do that to her, when her belief is what sustains her through every hardship? Who would she be without it? His thoughts took shape before him, and the image he saw was unbearable. The girl that was left, without belief, was the image of her mother; vain, self-centered, and shallow. She had kindness, but only as much as it suited her. She had cruelty, but it was a petty cruelty without weight. He thought of the girl he'd met at ten, her head in the clouds, and imagined her no longer able to reach them. He didn't even notice that he wept until he heard the footsteps coming closer and Linda slipped up to him on the couch.
"Jeremy?" she asked. "What's wrong, darling?"
"I have a terrible choice to make," Jeremy said.
For a moment Linda's brow drew down. Then she cast about for a reason she could understand. "Oh, did you get accepted to that part you wanted? I know it conflicts with your next movie but I'm sure we can work something out—"
"It's not that."
Linda sat silent. After a moment, she put an arm around him. "So…" she said. "Not that?"
"What would you do if you had to choose between yourself and someone's happiness? I don't mean their happiness for a day, a week, even a year. Maybe I don't mean happiness at all, but the spark that makes someone who they are."
"What kind of question is this?" Linda asked. "You're not practicing for something, are you?"
"I'm not practicing," Jeremy said. "Answer the question."
Linda drew back, annoyed. "Well you'll have to give me a little more than that. Yourself and a spark? What's that supposed to mean?"
"Would you rather be who you made yourself to be, free and knowing yourself as you are, or give that to someone else? If only one of these people could have themselves, and the other would be lost forever. Who would you choose?"
Linda looked at him skeptically. "I don't know what you've been on while I was away," she said, only half-joking, but she answered him at last. "Myself, of course. It's the only one I've got."
Jeremy watched her face carefully as she spoke, and the truth was in her words.
"Thank you," he said.
"All right?" she asked.
"Now I know what I have to do," he said. For a moment the suspicion flitted across her face once more, and then he sent a dream-crystal toward her. When it touched her forehead, it burst like a bubble, and he brought his fingers carefully over her eyes, covering them with glittering sand. "Wake when I'm gone," he whispered, and laid her carefully on the couch, giving her one last kiss.
~L~
The path to the Underground was easy enough to find, though he'd never tried before. The medallion on his neck still weighed him down, but it weighed him like a promise. And when he entered, and set foot on the soil of the Labyrinth for the first time, it felt like coming home. Jareth looked up at the sun high above and a clock beside him told the time: it was the first hour of morning.
.
.
.