Chapter One: Helping Hands and Hardened Hearts
The Goblin King sat slumped on his throne in the empty room. No one bothered him, not very often anyway. Very few dared to do so. Though the friends of his love tried to persuade him to at least try and become his normal ruthless self again. That would never happen unless Sarah came back to him. Unfortunately that was about as likely as a fish breathing out of water in the Upperground.
As he sat, Jareth toyed with a crystal. A crystal which held her image. It was his happiest memory, yet it brought him almost unbearable pain. Both of them were in the crystal, dressed in their fine ballroom clothes. Sarah looked so beautiful; his heart ached at the sight of her. Her dark, silky, brown hair pinned back with silver vines, almost no makeup, her pale pink lips slightly curved into a smile and her grey-green eyes shining with a subtle joy. He could almost remember nothing from before this girl stole his heart. And perhaps that was a good thing, as his memories held more horrors than imaginable.
He had paid close attention to her as she read and re-read the book her mother had given her. Not realising that it was her own story, told in a tongue as old as the immortal Underground. A prophesy told by his sister centuries ago. That a mortal of the Upperground, but with a heart from the Underground, would breathe life to the cold stone heart of the Goblin King, then snatch it away. Not really being a believer in prophesies, Jareth had shrugged off the Oracles warning. Despite said Oracle being his sister.
He sighed heavily. No matter what he did he could not escape the sound of her name or the image of her face. Everyone was still talking about how a young woman had beaten the Goblin King. She had gained celebrity status in his Labyrinth andall through the Underground. A simple, imaginative, mortal from the Upperground had conquered his vast maze and broken his heart of stone.
It had been just over a month since he had seen her for real. Why had she rejected him? He had offered to make her dreams a reality, to give her his kingdom. Did that mean nothing to her? He had even shown her the briefest moments of his emotions, somethingvery few othershad ever seen.
He heard footsteps approach the throne room, roughly three approached. Did they know nothing of his mood? Or were these Sarah's friends, once again come to bravely pester him? Jareth gently set the crystal on the floor, just in case he became tempted to throw something at them again. He had destroyed one of his favourite crystals that way, and he had missed, which had not helped his mood.
Sir Didymus climbed from Ambrosias' back and landed on the cold stone floor. "Why do we continue to do this? I have only just finished picking the shards of crystal from my steeds' fur." Asked the agitated fox knight.
"Ludo miss Sarah." Moaned his beast brother in arms. The dwarf, Hoggle shook his head.
"We all does. That's why we be doin' this. When the little lady's older Jareth migh' be able to bring her back home."
"It's a good job I am a brave and noble knight, sir, or the task at hand would seem daunting."
"It was your idea!"
Grumbling, the defeated knight proudly made his way to the throne room. The impressive, yet un-amused, figure of the Goblin King was slouched in a manor that could hardly be described as regal, impatiently watching his every move. "Majesty-"
"What do you want?" Snapped Jareth, before Sir Didymus had any chance to speak. Forcing down a frown and a growl, the small knight began to explain himself. "I may have an idea which could help bring the fair maiden back into the realm in which she belongs."
"Not another one of your harebrained schemes. I've had all I can stomach when it comes to those." Now the fox did frown and growl. The least that Jareth could do was hear him out.
The Goblin King raised his eyebrow at the behaviour of Sir Didymus; it was unlike him to loose his composure in such a way. "I believe that she may be too young to understand such matters. She is, after all, only sixteen. Perhaps it was experience that she lacked, not love." Spoke the knight with the small rumble in his throat of a suppressed growl.
"What are you proposing?" Asked Jareth dully. It seemed as though he were only half listening, just in case something interesting was said.
"Well……………"
Sarah sat on her bed in her tiny bedroom, in her tiny apartment. Life had not gone particularly well after her trip into the Labyrinth. Two years after that her little brother, her step mother and her father had died in a car crash. She had somehow survived it, but had no idea how. She had failed to get any qualifications good enough to get into college because of her grief, and now, five years after that, Sarah worked as barmaid and occasional singer in a bar to support her writing.
Despite her imagination and talent, she never seemed to be able to get anything published. She slaved over her manuscripts, which every one of her few friends had said were brilliant. But no matter how hard she worked, no publishers ever accepted her work. They all said that her work was too dark and foreboding, and that to sell she had to have a certain amount of light and happiness in them.
Happiness. Ha! What motive did she have to be happy, or write about happy things? Her spirit had been devoid of any such emotion for so long that she could barely remember them. Her life was a miserable mess and she had no one she cared about or who cared about her. At least not outside of the Underground. No. Her books would not become sickeningly nice and cheery simply so she could make a few bucks. They would stay dark and dismal.
Not for the first time, Sarah found herself wishing that she had never left the Labyrinth. That she had never solved it. Toby would have become a goblin, but at least he would still be alive. At least she would not have had to go through the pain of loosing everything and everyone she cared about.
On her way home from work, walking down a practically deserted street, lined with closed shops, Sarah saw something very unusual. What was such a small and old book shop doing open past midnight? The sign was rusty and most of the paint had flaked off, but she could still read it. "Labyrinth Volumes". Could it be? Or was the name simply a coincidence?
Biting her bottom lip, a mental war waged within her mind. Should she go in or not? If it was simply a coincidence she would only be disappointed, and if it was not. . . Sarah had no idea how she would react if this book shop was ran by one of the Undergrounds inhabitants. Oh now she was being silly. Of course it was just a coincidence, only Jareth could move freely between the Upper and Under worlds, and he was not exactly going to waste his time running a tiny book shop in a town that no one had ever heard of. But still . . . There was always a chance that some link tied this place to the Goblin Kings domain.
Shaking her head at her own foolishness, Sarah pushed the shop door open and walked in, ringing the small bell on the inside of the door. The musky scent of books hit her like physical force. Thankfully, it was a smell she was quite fond of. The shop itself was far larger than the front, and the interior of the other shops on this street, would have allowed her tobelieve. It was fairly dark, lit by bare low watt bulbs dangling from the ceiling, but it was still light enough to read in, and shelves crowded the floor, turning it into somewhat of an obstacle course. Or a maze, she thought dully. It was what decorated the walls which held her attention though.
Crystals with tiny figures in them, tapestries which were finely stitched and paintings that seemed too life like to be on canvas. Almost all of which showed her as she was when she had entered the Labyrinth. Some were familiar scenes, such as dancing with the Goblin King, being surrounded by the fieryies and helping Ludo to his feet, but some she had never seen before, even though her age was the same. These included some very bizarre creatures she had never met, such as a large crocodile standing on its hind legs and wearing the finery of gentlemen from Victorian Briton, shielding her from a burst water pipe, and that was the least strange painting.
Finally her eyes fell on the counter and the man who sat behind it. He was very attractive, if not eerily familiar. His long blonde hair was tied back in a neat pony tail, his skin was a little pale and he wore immaculate black clothing. For some reason he also wore make up on his eyelids which reached to just above his brow on the outer sides. It would have been seen as fairly normal, if it were still the eighties. Unfortunately it was 1993 and most men did not still wear make up. Though she had to admit, he suited it and it seemed to make him look even more attractive. The other noticeable thing that he wore was a pair of thin rimmed glasses which seemed to be irritating him, or perhaps it was the script he sat reading that brought that look of mild disgust to his well formed face, giving his lip a small almost unnoticeable sneer and his brow a slight furrow.
Shaking her head once again for being overly analytical, a writers curse was to pick out the detail in everything, Sarah headed over to one of the shelves near the back of the shop, though her ulterior motive for this was that it was also near the counter. She could not shake away the feeling that she had seen this man before. Were she writing of this she would have said that she was drawn to the man, who sat listlessly reading at the counter, by an indescribable feeling of familiarity. But she was not writing so she simply stuck with feeling weird.
Struggling to keep her mind away from the stores other occupant, Sarah scanned the books which crowded the shelf she stood at. All of them seemed to be fantasy and they were bound in the same manner, with a tough tan or black leather. From the lack of any other materials used for the covers, she guessed that they were hand made.
A short, disgusted, derisive, laugh caught her attention and she turned to see the stores attendant leaning back in his chair staring at the mound of paper before him with nothing short of contempt as he began to grumble to himself. "A monkey could write a better story if you shoved the pen up its-" He stopped abruptly when he realised that he was not alone and gave an embarrassed cough, closely followed by a nervous half smile and then disbelief. He looked to Sarah, then to the painting to her right, and back again several times. A deep frown furrowed his brow as he stared at her and the painting of the girl sat on the floor, talking to worm.
"Did you-" He stammered, "I mean, do you know the artist of all of this?" Sarah smiled politely, even if it was a little cold, but all of her smiles were now cold. This did not seem to discourage him from slowly taking in her appearance through appreciative blue eyes. Actually, now she looked, they were both different colours. The left blue, and the right brown.
"No. It's just a coincidence I'm afraid." She answered somewhat warily. She was not used to people she did not know talking to her outside of the bar she worked in.
He slowly climbed to his feet and made his way to her side to hold his hand out to her. "My name's Jareth." Hesitantly she took his hand. It was just another coincidence . . . She hoped. Unfortunately, his tall frame and attractive appearance were against her on that matter.
"Sarah." She mumbled shyly, taking her hand back as soon as possible. If this was the Goblin King, she had no idea what he was doing pretending not to know her, or wearing glasses for that matter, but she would play along . . . For now. If only for lack of anything better to do.
"Well," he said happily, clapping his hands together enthusiastically, "how can I help you? Are you interested in buying, or do wish to see if I will print something you have written?" Sarah gave another coy but cold smile and mumbled her answer.
"I didn't know that you printed peoples work."
"If it's anything like that one," he replied, harshly gesturing to what she now knew was another writer's manuscript, "I don't. However, if they have been rejected from publishing for no good reason, say . . . it isn't something that the public particularly wish to hear, but it has a good story line and is well written, then I see it as my gain at the publishers' loss." His voice was as entrancing as his appearance, soft and gentle, but she could easily tell that it could turn venomous and hard in an instant, even if she had never met him before and was not judging from previous experience. Which she was. Though to be fair it was hard not to.
She thought for a moment, pushing away all notions of this Jareth and the King of the Labyrinth being one and the same. All she really wanted now was to see the work she slaved over take its rightful place on the shelf of a book store. "If I brought one of my manuscripts in tomorrow, what would you do with it?" He took in a deep breath and looked to the side of her in order to recall exactly what he would do.
"Obviously I'd read through it. Once I'd done that, if it were good enough, I would then contact someone to design the illustration for the inside cover and print it. You would get fifty percent of the profit I make from selling it, which, I'm afraid, is a pathetically small amount since I have neither the time nor the resources to sell more than a few copies."
"Money doesn't matter to me." She replied firmly. "All that maters is my writing. I don't really care about anything else anymore." All signs of amusement, or happiness fell from Jareth's face. Most would have said that his expression was blank, but Sarah, who could easily pick out the most minute of details and use up a page to describe it, saw the faintest glimmer of worry shimmer deep within his mismatched eyes.
"You should not live solely to write. There most be something else you enjoy." He probed softly. Sarah simply shook her head slowly, with a truly empty expression.
Jareth almost could not believe what he was hearing. His love had lost all but one reason for living. Had she no friends? Family? Any thing? An idea struck him. She was obviously simply following his lead in ignoring their past, thankfully, so perhaps she would agree. "How about we go for coffee in stead of you bringing your writing here?" The object of his desires and affections simply raised an unimpressed eyebrow at his proposition.
"I doubt that I could provide any conversation for you." She answered icily. "I'm not a particularly social creature and I'm more than just a little out of practice."
"That's fine." He replied with a smile, she was not going to get out of it that easily. "I would more than make up for your lack of speech. It's incredibly difficult to shut me up." Sarah gave yet another slight but cold smile, seeming genuinely amused, if not to any grand scale.
"I don't know." She finally answered, though she seemed mistrustful of him, which given their history was understandable, she still appeared to be considering his suggestion.
With a smile that he desperately hoped was sweet, he looked over the top of his glasses in the direction of the blur that was Sarah. It really irritated him that he needed glasses if he fully entered this realm. "Please. Don't make me take the glasses off and do the puppy dog eyes." He warned seriously. Not that he'd be able to see her if did.
For the first time he heard her laugh, and it was not cold and unfeeling, it was genuinely amused and entertained. She had no doubt just had one of the most bizarre mental pictures of her life. The Goblin King, as she remembered him, standing over her dauntingly, with big round sad eyes and a pet lip.
"Somehow, I can't really imagine you doing that." She laughed as Jareth looked at her through the lenses of his hated glasses once again. He found her with a wide and warm grin spread across her face.
"To spend a little time with such a beautiful creature as yourself, milady, I would gladly humiliate myself." She considered for just over a second before giving her answer.
"Since you're so desperate, good sir, how can I refuse?"
After much bickering about the time and place of their meeting, it seemed that their working hours were most awkward when setting up a meeting such as they were attempting, they finally found an appropriate time and place. He made sure to flatter her throughout their short conversation, but he never saw another warm smile or heard a real laugh. She did, however, blush quite frequently. It seemed that she was not accustomed to receiving complements. He wondered briefly how much social interaction she took part in outside of work. From her lack of prowess at conversation, he guessed that it was very little. When they finally found a time that they could agree on, Sarah left quickly and with a shy smile, which was no different from all of her others. It seemed that spending time with someone was an intimidating experience for her.
"Hoggle." The Dwarf who had once been so much more than a Dwarf came through the door behind the counter which led back into the Underground. "What has happened to Sarah over the years to leave her heart so hardened?" Her friend simply gave a heavy sigh.
"She be all alone in the world now. 'Er parents and little brother were killed by one of them cars."
"Has she never called on you or one of the others?" he asked with concern flooding his voice.
The dwarf shook his head then sighed. "Not very of'en Sire. She throws 'erself into her writing. I think she's scared of caring about someone in case they die."
The Goblin King frowned and rubbed the bridge of his nose, sore from his wretched glasses. "That is something I shall have to remedy, though I believe it may take some time."
A/N Please review.