Author's note: a few months ago a friend mentioned that most J/S fanfictions are quite fluffy and not so true to character. This is the response my brain gave. I don't know where it's headed or how dark it's going to get, only that I'm trying my best to keep true to the actual characters and not who we all wish they could be.
PROLOGUE
Sarah Willams did not have friends. She did not go out on dates. She had lived in a single room since the second semester of freshman year and hadn't really gotten along with her roommate those first few months. In fact, as far as anyone could tell, the only people she ever spent any time with were her family, whom she visited on holidays. Had anyone worked up enough courage to speak to the girl they would have found her to be a very pleasant, if somewhat odd, but the truth is no one cared enough to bother. Sarah was a boringly normal person: normal grades, normal looks, normal everything… Except that, if one actually noticed her enough to look, Sarah Willams spoke to people who weren't there.
In the back of the campus library she could be found quietly chiding a pile of books that had just fallen over. If someone lost their pen, or notes, or something else that they just had, Sarah made tsking sounds at the corner, and lo! there the missing item was. In the middle of class Sarah would give her shoes a stern look and their laces never became untied. Now all of these things are a bit eccentric, but nothing completely insane. No. What kept regular, average, non-goblin-seeing people away from Sarah is the fact that she had an imaginary friend.
He hadn't always been there, smirking at her from across classrooms or lounging easily beside her reflection in mirrors. Sarah could vaguely remember a time when her life had been devoid of her own personal poltergeist. In fact, the night he had first appeared, glittering yet terrifying in the middle of her parent's bedroom, was forever burned in her memory. A waking dream, a stolen child, promises and oaths that should never been made. She had beaten the Labyrinth and won back her brother, but even after the physical signs of the hardships she had faced faded away, the Goblin King remained.
He didn't come right away. It had been nearly a month since she returned when she spotted him, sprawled on a bench, mismatched eyes following her as she played with Toby in the local park. It was only a glimpse, a quick blink and he was gone, but not before the sharp scream had left her lips.
The year after that was filled with appointments. Doctors, therapists, councilors, even a hypnotist: They all had theories on why the fairy-tale villain of her nightmares had started to haunt her days as well. "Things such as this are very common among children faced with sudden changes." one had explained. "A new baby after all those years of being an only child may be causing her to feel displaced. Give her some time to adjust and her visions will fade." But they didn't. Not time, not the hours spent in counseling, not the numerous brightly colored pills they had her take. Nothing stopped him from coming.
16 passed, and 17. Semesters and summers, graduation and acceptance letters: all gone. He still was there, popping in and out of her life like particularly stubborn pest. Sometimes he wouldn't visit for weeks at a time- just long enough for her to hope that he was gone for good- and then he'd return, with his chiding remarks and soft, cold laugh. After a while, Sarah simply stopped reacting. Her father and step-mother stopped worrying, the never-ending trips to specialists ceased, and her life moved on. A natural actress like her mother before, the game of being normal became an easy one. Still, others could sense that there was something off about her.
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