Sugar We're Going Down

Welcome to my first attempt at a serious Labyrinth fiction. (We're discounting the swearing challenge I'm currently engaged in with the J man himself at 3am in my bedroom, keep an eye out for the next DBCA oneshot challenge for that little piece of the insanity pie). I love Fallout Boy, they just flat do it for me, and within the first few times of hearing this song, I was reminded of Jareth after Sarah. And so after many months and two CD's of procrastination, here is the end result. A typically over clichéd songphic dedicated to JS (huh, that's my brother's initials…odd). Because let's hear it for angst, sexual tension and hope of a happy ending.

Little Sarah, sister to Toby, Master of the Labyrinth, Rejector (some say foolishly) of the Goblin King's realm and heart, part time Starbucks café employee, daydreamer and Sunday's dish washerer, had grown up. No longer the naïve little fifteen year old dreaming in black and white fairytales, three years had passed and now she was eighteen, mysterious, and saw everything in multihued shades of grey, tinged with azure russet and gold. She was a pale beauty, an icy flower, a rose snap frozen under the frost. Her seeming distance unnerved those who knew her. No matter how focused she seemed on you, there was a strange prickle that went down your spine, telling you there was something just behind you that some millionth of her, was paying consideration or homage to instead of you. Something you would just miss as you craned your neck into a pretzel to see what it was. For some reason, Toby was the only one who could ever garner her full attention.

Mademoiselle Sarah saw everything in two ways. The first was the way of the real world, the current world of shallow face value, bright and brilliant and bland. The second was that of the Labyrinth, shadowed, moving and changing, unconquerable and undefined. One's weakness was its vanity, its pride, the other suffered for its heart. And as Sarah would grow, Sarah would change. If she had been a match for the Goblin King at fifteen, she was more than a match for anyone now.

Am I more than you bargained for yet?
I've been dying to tell you
Anything you want to hear
Cause that's just who I am this week

Sometimes she still heard the Goblin King whispering to her in her sleep. Playing the part of the seductive villain. Bound by her childish ideals, yet abysmally more powerful because of them. When she awoke, she never knew whether to smile or sigh. So she retreated further behind her implacable white façade. Returning to her Grimm solace and leatherbound parchment. And woe betide any young man who sought out the fairytale girl after one of these dreams. Sarah might have been a knight protector to Toby's young lordling, but she was also an enchantress with an enchantresses craven dreams. A girl might dream of being rescued by her Prince Charming, but desire is a dark word, and it has dark men to dance with.

Lie in the grass next to mausoleum
I'm just a notch in your bedpost
But you're just a line in a song

Another child, another maze runner, another failure and another creature of the Labyrinth. Jareth lounged in his throne surrounded by screeching goblins. The cycle went onward, the only distraction he felt was a peculiar wrenching jolt when she called one or another of his subjects to her glass. Oh she still called them regularly, once a week if not more. And each time they would come sneaking back, silly grins on their faces like children who had solved the riddle of how to get into the cookie jar without getting caught. They never saw the white owl sitting ghostlike on some empty tree branch, watching them with tawny eyes. He could pretend to ignore her, but she was a Mistress of the Labyrinth. And as he so often repeated, the girl was immaterial, but a Mistress was not. Yet invariably, after each silly-grinned session, his fingers would still conjure up another glass ball, and breaking another vow of indifference, the Goblin King would return to his study of her.

Drop a heart
Break a name
We're always sleeping in and sleeping for the wrong team

Sarah never quite fit in. To be sure she pleased her stepmother to no end by finally going out on dates, caring for Toby (almost a little obsessively) without a fuss. She tried to be part of the crowd, but there was still that otherworldly sense about her. Something deep inside that you just couldn't crack. Admittedly, not so many really knew that inner depth could have a name, and no one knew Sarah's name was Jareth.

We're going down, down in an earlier round
And sugar we're going down swinging
I'll be your number one with a bullet
A loaded God complex cock it and pull it

Who says crime doesn't pay? He thought in satisfaction as Sarah's date for the evening tried and failed again to get his car started. The Goblin King admittedly didn't know much about engines, but apparently pulling a few random wires and loosening a few screws seemed to work well. Besides, she had already been out with the boy twice, a third meeting would have been inexcusable. The boy in question slammed the door shut and kicked the metal beast in frustration, glaring up at the owl that sat watching him with golden eyes, eyes that looked to be laughing. He gave vent to a foul curse as the bird spread its wings and sailed away in the moonlight, in the exact direction the boy himself was supposed to have been taking. That was one evening taken care of.
Jareth watched owlishly as Sarah nodded and spoke into the cream receiver on the phone, his hooked beak gleamed as she put the thing down and wandered back up into her room, calling to her father that she wouldn't be going out that night after all. She glanced curiously at the pale barn owl watching her through the kitchen window as she selected a peach from the fruit bowl and made her way up the stairs. It was always watching her. She shrugged, it was a magnificent creature anyway, and no one can get a court order on an owl for stalking.

Jareth felt a surge of triumph as he drifted away on silent wings. Tampering with a car was nothing. He would still kill for her, even though he'd rather kill himself first. She was too powerful, and didn't know it by half.

Is this more than you bargained for yet?
Oh don't mind me I'm watching
You two from the closet
Wishing to be the friction in your jeans

It was always curious how glass distorted the images he wanted to view. Rounding some parts and shrinking others as the balls slowly revolved around his gloved hands. Sarah at home, Sarah at work, Sarah with Toby. Sarah at parties, shaking her hair and laughing, embracing a boy of her own age, locked intimately in a corner. Jareth scowled clenching his fist, causing the ball to shatter into a cloud of glittery dust. "Sarah."

Isn't it messed up?
How I'm just dying to be him

He didn't see her step away from the boy with a curious smile, and begin dancing to a song no one remembered putting on the stereo. The boy went home alone that night.

I'm just a notch in your bedpost
But you're just a line in a song

The pouting lady waiting on Jareth in the Goblin Castle in hopes of his favour left for the Faerie court that evening as well. A goblin or two stored in her luggage, enjoying the taste of powder creams and dressing themselves in silk rags. Jareth locked himself in the orchestral pit of the ballroom.

Drop a heart
Break a name
We're always sleeping in and sleeping for the wrong team

She called them the very next night, detailing the events of the party, all but the mysterious song that later she hadn't been able to find. There were tales and laughter, and no mention of the haughty fey lady swooning around the King, even when the perfume-drunk silk-dressed goblins came wandering home some time that afternoon, the sight of whom startled the King into (all too rare) laughter.

We're going down, down in an earlier round
And sugar we're going down swinging
I'll be your number one with a bullet
A loaded God complex cock it and pull it

Sarah stared at the mirror as Hoggle and the others faded, still calling promises to see her next time. It had been three years, surely that was long enough? Three years to conquer the darkness in her, to let the desire fade? She shook her head, her mind made up. She reached out her fingers and touched the mirror, tips brushing the glass over her reflected lips, "Jareth…"

Well I hope you enjoyed, and because I am a review whore, please tell me what you thought (Or just make many random fatuous gushy clichés of appreciation that I can turn to in times of need). Written in honour of charmingly voiced snarky men with hair that looks like they've stuck their fingers in an electric socket and let a three year old loose with a pair of scissors. Amen to the Goblin King.