AN: Okay, so this is my first fic for the Laby fandom—well, the first one that I'm actually publishing on here, anyway—and I got the idea for it from an OTP writing prompt blog that I follow on Tumblr. I would like to thank my wonderful friend Billy Jay for helping me brainstorm and giving me constructive criticism on this, etc., etc. Um...Jareth is going to use a word that most of you probably will not recognize or know the meaning of, and don't worry, I am going to explain it at the end of the chapter. I'm already working on the next chapter, so...yeah. This one is just to kind of give an idea of what everyone's lives are like in this AU that I came up with, and...yeah. Also, specific years for everything will be given at the end of the chapter. Okay, that's all. :)

Disclaimer: If you recognize something/someone, then chances are, I have no claim to ownership over said thing/character.


"Mom, you seriously need a boyfriend," she said one day as she went into the room where Sarah was folding laundry.
"We've been over this before, Rory," Sarah replied. "I don't have time for a boyfriend right now, I've got too much going on in my life."

"Like what?" Rory demanded.
"Besides being your mom?" Sarah retorted. "Well, let's see, there's that acting class I'm teaching, the show that I'm stage managing right now...I could go on."

Rory sighed and plopped down in aAN chair. "No, I get it," she said. "What's your deal with guys, anyway? I mean, I know Brandon was a prick, but—"
"Yeah, he was, the only good thing I got out of that relationship was you," Sarah interrupted as she folded a pair of Rory's jeans and put them in the laundry basket.

"But," Rory continued, "there are plenty who are better than him."
"I know that," Sarah said. "But...Look, it's...it's complicated, alright?"

"Okay...well...is there anyone you would consider dating?"
"Do Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise count?" Sarah asked sarcastically.

"Mom, I'm serious!" Rory cried.

Sarah sighed and shook her head tiredly. "No," she said, "not really. Well, I mean, I guess there is one guy, but..."

Rory quirked an eyebrow curiously. "But...?" she prompted.
"But I haven't seen him in years, and I have no idea where he is or how to get in contact with him," Sarah finished.

"What's his name?"
"Jareth. Jareth King."
"How'd you know him?"

"We went to school together. He was a couple grades ahead of me, but he had to repeat one of his Spanish classes, so that's how we met. I was...fourteen when we met, fifteen when we started dating, and he was...sixteen or seventeen, I think." She let out a somewhat strained laugh. "He, um...He was quite the sight. He was the type of kid that...even if people didn't know him, they still knew him, you know what I mean? He had a very unique, very distinct look that was entirely his own, which was perfect, because his personality was exactly the same way."

"What do you mean? What'd he look like?"
"Well, first of all, he had this rare genetic condition that made his eyes two different colors, so one was brown and the other was blue. And then...he had this blond hair that just...it was insane. It was sort of...spiked out a little at the top, and then...I guess you could call it a mullet, in a way, but not like you probably are thinking of. Actually, hang on, let me get my yearbook and see if I can find a picture of him."

She abandoned the laundry and went over to the bookshelf, running her finger along the spines until she found what she was looking for and pulled it down from the shelf. She opened it up and went to the index in the back, and once she found what she was looking for, she flipped through until she came to the right page, then handed the book to Rory and perched herself on the arm of the chair that the thirteen-year-old was in, pointing at a picture on the lefthand page. "Right there," she said. "He was sitting on a windowsill in the cafeteria, and a friend of ours who was on the yearbook team snapped this photo of him."

Just as Sarah had said, the young man in the photo had mismatched eyes and wild blond hair. He was dressed in worn black combat boots, faded gray jeans with a hole in one of the knees and a chain on his belt, a white V-neck t-shirt, and fingerless leather biker style gloves. He had a silver chain around his neck with a guitar pick hanging from it, and there was an open guitar case on he floor at his feet, the guitar itself, a darkly colored acoustic, in his hands, the strap slung across his body. He was staring into the camera with a look of bored indifference on his face.

"He never did care much about getting his picture taken for the yearbook," Sarah commented. "To him, the yearbook was just another stupid, meaningless ritual. Said there was no point to it because it wasn't as if you ever stay in contact with any of the people in it, so what was the big deal about having a book full of their pictures and names? Just so you could go back years later and look at the face of the kid who bullied you every day for two years? He never was big on what he called 'mainstream high school shit,' which, in his mind, included the yearbook."

"What happened to him?"
"His dad got a new job and they had to move."

Sarah let out a sigh. "Saying goodbye to him was probably the hardest thing I've ever done," she said, her voice thick with emotion. "I loved him so, so much, more than I've ever loved any of my other boyfriends."

"So why don't you try to find him?" Rory asked.

Sarah laughed humorlessly and shook her head. "It's been fifteen years since we saw each other," she said. "I doubt he would even remember me. And even if he did, he's probably married by now, or at least has a girlfriend."

Rory looked at the picture again. "He liked music, didn't he," she said.
"He loved music. We went to all sorts of concerts together, and he wanted to be a proffessional musician, start his own band. It was his dream to live in California one day. I asked him once why California, and he just sort of shrugged and said that he didn't really know, it just sort of seemed like a musician-y type of place for some reason. Los Angeles, that's where he wanted to live. He'd lived in small towns all his life, and the idea of living in a big city appealed to him."

She sighed heavily, glancing around the room. When she noticed the clock, she blinked. "Is it that late already?" she wondered out loud. "Come on, Rory, we need to get you in bed."

"But Mom—"
"No buts, young lady, you were up way too late last night. Come on, let's go."

Rory let out a groan of protest as she handed the yearbook to Sarah, then got up and headed for her room to get changed for bed.

Sarah Williams was a thirty-year-old single mother living in a small Virginia town and struggling to make ends meet. She'd had her daughter when she was only seventeen, and when Sarah had told him she was pregnant, her then-boyfriend, Rory's father, had broken up with her and left her to deal with the situation on her own. Thankfully, Sarah didn't have to see him anymore, because he had moved away shortly before Rory was born. Rory (whose name was actually Victoria) was now thirteen years old and looked just like her mother, but with hazel eyes instead of green, and also like Sarah, she was very imaginative. She was also very strong-willed and could be quite stubborn at times, which tended to drive her mother crazy. Sarah had tried dating other guys after Rory's father, but it never seemed to work out for some reason, so she had decided to just focus on other things for the time being and maybe, if it felt right at some point, try to get back in the dating game later on, but right now, it just wasn't in the cards for her.

Unfortunately for Sarah, Rory apparently had other ideas on the subject.

Sarah took her daughter's place in the chair and laid the yearbook in her lap, her eyes landing on the picture of Jareth King with his guitar, her gaze turning wistful as her thoughts wandered through memories of him, and she began to wonder where he was and what he was doing right then.


Jareth ran his hands through his hair and gripped it by the roots, clenching his jaw in frustration. He let out a sharp exhalation through his nostrils as he snatched up the notebook that was sitting on the coffee table in front of him and pulled the pencil out from behind his ear, scribbling over what he had written and using so much pressure that the pencil snapped right in half. He let out a growl and tossed it aside—straight into the pile of broken pencils that was growing increasingly larger by the hour. He was currently sitting on the couch in his apartment wearing nothing but a pair of low-slung jeans, a leather cuff bracelet with metal stars on it, a couple of rings, and the same guitar pick he'd had around his neck since junior high. The trash can over in the corner was overflowing with wadded up sheets of notebook paper covered in angry scribbles and scratched-out attempts at song lyrics, and his guitar was on its stand over by the wall.

"Son of a fucking bitch!" he shouted.
"What's wrong now?" a voice asked in a bored tone.

Jareth inhaled through his nostrils, trying not to lose his cool. The last thing he needed right then was a confrontation.

"Nothing," he said tersely.
"Good," Peyton replied, "then you won't mind taking me to the mall."

He rolled his eyes. "Why?" he said. "So you can spend even more money that neither of us has to spare?"
"Hey, I let you do your stupid musician shit, so why the hell can't I have a shopping spree from time to time?"

"Because we have no fucking money, you stupid bitch!"
"Oh, hell no, you did not just say what I think you said!"

Jareth threw his notebook down and stood up, eyes blazing. "Read my lips," he said. "You are nothing but a shallow, air-headed, material-obsessed, self-centered, childish little bitch with tan lines who wears too much cheap perfume, dresses like a slut, and has absolutely no love or appreciation for anything that actually matters in life! All you care about is yourself, you don't give a shit about anything or anyone else!"

"Oh, please, like you're any better with your freakshow eyes and wannabe punk rocker bullshit! You can't even write one half-decent song, you talentless dumbass!"

"Yeah, well, at least I don't have to buy tube after tube of hair dye to keep my blond color!"

Peyton gasped, then scowled and slapped him. He lifted a hand to touch the afflicted spot, then burst into laughter.
"You think this is funny?!" she demanded. "You know what? Fuck you, you rotten son of a bitch!"

"Back atchya, roiderbanks!"
"The fuck did you just call me?!"

He threw his head back and laughed again.

"You know what? Fuck this shit. We are over, King, do you hear me?! Over!"
"Oh, thank God, I was beginning to think we'd never agree on anything, now get the fuck out of my apartment!"

"You know, I think I will!"
"Fantastic! Go on and leave, then!"

"Fine! I'll be back for my clothes and shit later!"
"Don't even fucking bother, they won't be here!"

"Goodbye, Jareth!"
"Good riddance, bitch!"

She slammed the door behind herself, rattling a few things on the walls. Jareth collapsed onto the couch and shoved his face into a cushion, screaming into it at the top of his lungs. After he had screamed himself hoarse, he slowly pulled away from the cushion, suddenly overcome with an inexplicable exhaustion and feeling as if a heavy weight had settled in his chest, making his heart sink. For years now, every single one of his relationships had ended in some sort of disaster. Initially, it seemed like it hadn't really started until he'd moved to L.A., but now that he actually stopped to think about it more in depth, he realized that it had started before that, though the terminations of his pre-L.A. relationships hadn't been quite so drastic as the ones he'd had since coming to the city.

In fact, now that he thought about, the last relationship he'd had that hadn't ended with bad blood was...

"No," he whispered to himself. He frowned. "Was it really that long ago?"

He got up off the couch and went into his bedroom, opening the closet and pulling a stack of shoeboxes down from the shelf up top. He took them over to the bed and sat down, looking at each one until he came across one in particular. There were years scrawled across the top of the lid in thick black Sharpie:

1985—1990

He took the lid off the box and set it aside, then started going through what was inside; old photographs, scraps of paper, keychain charms and other small trinkets that he had gotten at concerts, so on and so forth. Finally, he found what he was looking for and took it out. He turned it over briefly to look at what was written on the back.

Sarah & Jareth, August 1986, ages 15 & 17

Turning it back over, he gazed at the photograph with a sad fondness. It showed him as a teenager wearing his favored attire of faded jeans, combat boots, fingerless biker gloves, and a t-shirt. He was leaning against a tree trunk with a smile on his face, but he wasn't looking at the camera. Instead, he was looking at the girl in his arms. She had long brown hair and beautiful green eyes, and she was dressed in jeans, a loose white blouse with billowy sleeves, and a gold-and-ivory waistcoat.

Sarah Williams.

He had dated her starting in the summer of 1985 and ending partway through the school year of 1986. He hadn't wanted to end things with her. She hadn't, either. They had been forced to when Jareth's father had gotten a new job in another state and his family had to move. Telling Sarah that they couldn't be together anymore and saying goodbye to her had been the hardest things he'd ever done. He remembered the tree that the picture had been taken at. It had sort of been their special tree, in a way. They used to go and hang out at it together all the time, just to talk and be alone, and Jareth had even carved their initials into it at one point. He remembered how he used to play his guitar for her, and she would always smile and tell him that he was going to be famous one day, she just knew it, and when that day came, she would be the one who got to point at his picture and brag that she had been his biggest fan ever since the very beginning.

He looked in the box again to see what else he could find, this time pulling out a woven bracelet with beads. The part that held it closed around a person's wrist had snapped long ago, but he could still look at it all he wanted. Sarah had made it for him for Valentine's Day. It wasn't anything fancy; it was actually pretty plain-looking. But Jareth had always thought it was special, because Sarah had put time and effort into making it just for him, and that meant something to him. She could have just gone and gotten him something from a store, but she hadn't. Instead, she had decided to make something for him by hand, and he appreciated that she cared enough to do something like that.

Jareth sighed heavily as he picked up another photograph, this one of them sitting on the front porch of Sarah's house with her gripping a bottle of Coke by the neck and his arm around her shoulders. At age thirty-two, he had an apartment in Los Angeles, where he had always wanted to live, he had a job at a nearby bar, a band that he performed with that got the occasional gig at a club or something, and a lot of the time, girls all but threw themselves at his feet either just because of the fact that he played guitar in a band, or because they found him attractive in that bad-boy-with-a-mysterious-sort-of-air-and-hard-outer-shell kind of way. He was living the dream, right?

So why, he wondered, did he feel so damn empty inside?


Okay, so first of all, that word that Jareth used. "Roiderbanks" is an archaic term for someone who spends money frivolously. Um...Okay, so the years for everything:

1985-1986: Sarah and Jareth dated
1988: Rory was born

And then, Jareth would've been born in 1969, and the story itself takes place in 2001. ALSO, while I'm thinking about it, I know that Jareth's not Jareth without certain aspects (like the eyes and hair, hence why I kept them the same as always), and one of those, in my opinion, is his pendant, and it occurred to me suddenly that I've basically made it as if the pendant doesn't exist, so here's my solution for that:

The charm on the pendant? He has a tattoo of it on his right bicep.

There, problem solved. :)

Also, I got the idea for the title of this fic from a David Bowie song. In "The Wedding Song," he repeatedly uses the phrase "angel for life," so I basically just stuck an "s" on the end of "angel," and boom, fic title, lol.

Anyway, hope you enjoy it so far, and again, thanks to Billy Jay for helping me out with it, and...yeah, that's basically it for now. Please review and tell me what you think so far!