A/N: This is my first Labyrinth fanfiction. If I'm safe in my writing, tell me, please. If I'm not... Oh, well.
Disclaimer: This belongs to everyone who made/thought up the movie. I'm just borrowing their characters for (nonprofit) fun.
When the labyrinth was built, it had a specific design and purpose, although there was only one person on the face of the earth who knew either of those things in the beginning. It was almost simple in its arduous appearance, twists and turns where people least expected them -- not to mention the magic, which had a wonderful combination of effects. The switching of passageways, structural repetition that both confused and frustrated the individual trying to make his way through.
It was marvelous.
The man who had created it, through drafts and blueprints of all kind, considered it pure genius. He had always leant towards vanity and pride, of course (he could hardly help it, with his family being who they were), but Jareth Tyme had really outdone himself with the construction of his precious labyrinth. It had the ability, as he happily explained to everyone who was willing to listen, to pull apart from itself like a puzzle and be reconstructed into something entirely different. Still a maze, of course. Still without boundaries where levels of perplexity and mental anarchy were concerned. But the architecture, and the course from the entrance to his castle, could be anything in the world.
Jareth hadn't organized this structure out of necessity, although it might have appeared so. It was not a defense mechanism to keep Fae and other Underground armies away from the Goblin City -- it was merely a small distraction from the somewhat tedious occupation of ruling goblins. They never really did much, as a people. They lacked initiative; there were no rebellions. They were lazy; there wasn't a single attempted assasination. It was very much to his benefit that he had so much free time.
He didn't know, when he began his little pet project, that it would eventually come in handy -- only to be destroyed by the words of an innocent little girl.
The truth was, Sarah Williams had been the first person to walk the labyrinth. The first and only person, much to his chagrin... And she defeated it. She defeated him, and all because of six little words that had been printed in a silly little book. "You have no power over me" -- what rubbish. He was the Goblin King, eldest Tyme child and held a high position in the Underground Parliament. The mortal girl had no idea what she was dealing with, or what he had tried to do for her.
His wrath could be swift and terrible.
But those damned words did something to Jareth, and to his labyrinth. They both imploded, in a way. Pieces and passages of stone flew into all regions of his kingdom. His heart withered, his soul evaporated, and his mind could comprehend nothing but large blue eyes.
He spent six months contemplating how easily the work of thousands of years had been destroyed, thinking of everything that had been shattered by the presence of a mortal child. Her naive manner and idealistic recitations were not supposed to have saved her. She was supposed to be tempted, bend to his will. She was supposed to be his.
It was just as she had said, in angered tones and words her brother did not understand: "...what no one knew was that the king of the goblins had fallen in love with the the girl."
For some reason, it seemed that everything she said in her stories came to pass.