Other Side had always been real, Sarah reminded herself.

She had felt the ground under her feet, had smelled fire from the dragons' mouths. The fading bruises she had now were proof that things that happened there stayed with her after she passed through the mirror.

And oh yes, everything she'd done with Jareth had been very, very real, and certainly a lot more memorable than anything she'd ever done with anyone else on this side of the mirror.

But now, looking at him standing in front of her in this Aboveground realm, she suddenly questioned all of that.

It wasn't that he looked radically different, though he'd pulled his hair back and magicked himself into some quasi-mortal clothing that wouldn't look out of place at a theater—black jeans, a white collared shirt, a leather jacket. He was still tall and ethereally pale, still lean like a gymnast, and still possessed of that delicate, otherworldly beauty that made her heart race.

But he was so much more…here.

She could see the tiny lacings on his leather jacket and the stray strands of hair that brushed his cheeks. She could see slight imperfections in his skin, the shadow of the bones in his neck. When he moved just slightly the sound of his jacket shifting felt uncommonly loud.

It was as if everything in Other Side had been bathed in shadow, and now they were standing in brilliant sunlight.

And then she suddenly felt like an insecure teenager again, because if she was now seeing him in this way, how was he seeing her? Would he still look at her the same way, want her in the same way, when she was so completely revealed?

She must have looked alarmed, because he frowned. "Sarah? Are you all right?"

His voice seemed to echo in the room, lower and more precise than she remembered. She cleared her throat, ran a hand through her hair and cursed herself for not choosing a better outfit. "Yeah." She blinked several times, half-expecting him to not be there when she opened her eyes. "You're just so…real."

He cocked his head at her. "In an unpleasant way?"

"No, no." She shook her head as if to clear it of a fog. "Just different. I guess I must be a little different too."

He smiled. "You smell more strongly of lavender."

Sarah smiled back. This is odd. But maybe it'll become less odd.

She glanced toward the door. "Shall we go?"

He made an appropriately theatrical gesture that indicated she should lead the way. "After you."


No one looked twice at him on the street as they waited for a taxi, which Sarah found strangely annoying. Part of her wanted to shout Do you know who or what this is? Do you know what kind of power I have temporarily unleashed on the mortal world? Also, do you know the stratospheric levels of joy that his ungloved hands can inspire in my body?

For his part, Jareth took in everything around him like a biologist eagerly studying the flora and fauna of a new planet. Waiting on the curb, he noticed a storm drain from which small tufts of steam were escaping and knelt down to inspect it.

"What race of beings lives in the Aboveground's underground?" he asked her.

Sarah laughed. "Er…rats, I suppose? I've heard urban legends about alligators and mole people living down there, but I don't think anyone believes those anymore."

"Alligators. Mole people. Perfect, I'd been looking for an alternative to the Bog as a place of banishment, it's getting rather crowded."

"I don't think there are really alligators or mole people down there."

He smiled a particularly evil smile. "Perhaps not, but what matters is that my subjects believe that there are."

Sarah shook her head just as their cab arrived. Jareth hesitated when she opened the door and stepped inside.

"John Golden, west 45th," Sarah told the driver. She held out her hand to Jareth. "It's safe, I promise," she said in Goblin.

He bent down and stepped inside the car, making a tiny gesture with his hand that caused the door to close on its own. She let out a little gasp and he smiled as the driver stepped on the gas.

"Trust me, he didn't notice. Mortals never do."

"I did."

"You're slightly more intelligent than the average mortal."

Sarah groaned. "Be careful with the public magic. Like, don't go burning down houses."

He laughed a little too heartily at that. "What's so funny?" she asked.

It took him a moment to catch his breath. "Vraezen, not bhraezen. One means "burning down," the other means…something else."

She chuckled and blushed. "Well. Don't do that, either."

He smiled and rested his hand on the seat. Tentatively, and without looking at him, she moved her own hand closer and felt his fingers link with hers.


She could have entered through the stage door but decided she didn't want to make the actors self-conscious, even though the box office staff would probably let them know that she was there. Instead, she led Jareth to the short line in front of the box office window, where he did get a few second looks from people walking by.

"They probably think you're an uber-fan, dressed up like the lead character," she chuckled.

"Me, dressing up as a fan of myself. The philosophical implications are fascinating."

After they'd collected their tickets Sarah led Jareth into the lobby, where he was content to stare fascinated at everything around him. It WAS a magnificent lobby—her first Broadway lobby after years of basement theaters and modest off-broadway venues, and it still impressed her every time she walked through the doors. The rich red color of the carpet, the delicate chandeliers in the very high ceilings, the large staircase leading up to the second floor.

Jareth, however, immediately had eyes for only one area.

"Gods above and below, Sarah, are they selling clothing with my likeness on it?"

Sarah glanced over at the merchandising section where indeed, posters and T-shirts with the play poster's stylized design of Jareth's face against the spires of a castle were being sold.

"Yeah. Don't get too excited, though, every Broadway show has merchandise."

Jareth's eyes drank in the shirts, mugs, posters, and other items on the merch table, almost all of it bearing that same drawing that looked like his face and hair. "Sorry, precious, I won't let you downplay this one. Mortals are worshiping me, and I'm going to revel in it."

"They are not worshiping you. They're buying a souvenir of a play that happens to feature a character based on you."

"Of course, just as followers of any religion buy tangible tokens to keep themselves closer to God."

"Jareth, if you seriously start thinking of yourself as God, I don't know what I'm—"

"Ho. Ly. Shit."

Sarah swallowed hard as she turned to face an open-mouthed Miguel, ticket in hand.

Probably should have planned this a little better.

She smiled and put on her best nonchalant voice, which had never convinced anyone, regardless of how much theater training she'd had. "Hi! Packed house, huh?"

Her voice sounded close to a shriek. For Christ's sake, you're better off just not trying.

Jareth, for his part, gave a low bow. "Good evening, Miguel," he said. "As you can see, Sarah is in perfect health."

Miguel raised an eyebrow. "For now." He was wearing a suit and tie with a white collared shirt that set off his dark skin perfectly, his hair freshly cut and styled. Sarah had a feeling that Jareth was wishing he'd worn a cape.

"Never thought I'd see you on this side of the mirror, Your Majesty."

Jareth smiled. "Miracles do occur. Or if not miracles, Sarah asking me out on a date, which is close enough."

Miguel's mouth fell open. Sarah blushed and moved their tickets back and forth in her hands, while Jareth's smile became a smirk (damn him) when he sensed her discomfort.

"If you'll excuse me for a moment, I really must see how accurate this artist's rendering is," Jareth drawled, kissing Sarah on the cheek before sauntering over to the merchandising area.

Sarah watched him go and then turned back to a still-gawking Miguel. "Well," she said, glancing at the staircase, "curtain's in a few minutes, you should probably—"

"Oh, nooooo, no, no, you are not getting out of this one without the third degree," Miguel interrupted, his face gleaming with pure delight.

Sarah shrugged in a way that she knew was entirely unconvincing. "You heard him. I asked him to come. Thought he might want to see the show, given that he inspired it." She cleared her throat. "And yeah, I may have used the word 'date,' but it's not really a date."

"Uh huh." Miguel's smirk was threatening to crack his face. "Gonna take him to meet the parents next?"

"God no!" Sarah blushed at the volume of her own voiced and glanced over to make sure Jareth was still out of earshot. "This is nothing, it's just—"

"It is most certainly not nothing, and you know it." He rolled his eyes as the ushers began gently pushing people toward their seats. "But we're clearly going to have to have a more detailed conversation about this another time, when Fancy is back on his side of the mirror and I've gotten you suitably intoxicated."

Sarah gritted her teeth. "We're just. Watching. The play."

"Sure, sure. I'd better get seated." He turned toward the staircase.

"What the hell am I doing?"

She'd said it so quietly that she wasn't sure he could hear her, but he turned quickly, his face slightly concerned. He smiled and squeezed her shoulder.

"I don't know," he said. "But you look happy."

Sarah lowered her eyes. "Do I?"

"Lots of things make you happy, though, so it's not like he should feel special."

She glanced over to where Jareth was holding up a T-shirt with his image on it. Sensing their gaze, he met Sarah's eyes, pointed to the shirt, and mouthed I am God.

Miguel laughed. "You should buy him one."

Sarah shook her head. "No way."

"Why not?"

"Because he'd never take it off."


Their seats were near the front of the stage, which Sarah might have felt guilty about if the show was completely sold out every night. She glanced up toward the mezzanine, where Miguel was sitting. He gave a very animated wave and held up his thumbs, which made Sarah shake her head and wave back shyly.

It was then that she realized her hands were shaking. And sweating. She cursed under her breath, and Jareth, who had been taking in the grandeur of the auditorium, looked at her curiously.

"Sarah? You look pale."

She gave him a half-smile and sat down. "Yeah. Just a bit of abject terror."

"Abject terror?" He sat down next to her. "From someone who laughed in the face of giant scorpions not one week past?"

"Scorpions have nothing on garden-variety panic attacks."

He folded his arms and studied her. "What is it you fear, Sarah?"

"I…it's always scary seeing something I created up on stage, but seeing it with you, when you kind of inpired it…" She wiped her hands on her dress. "I just don't want you to hate it, okay? Or worse, be indifferent to it."

Jareth considered this. "Well. Either of those outcomes are indeed possible."

She groaned. "News flash, Goblin King, but this is maybe one of those moments when brutal honesty is not a virtue."

"I said possible, Sarah, not probable." He adjusted his gloves. "I read your play. I did not hate it, nor was I indifferent to it. I may have felt that there were certain…liberties taken with the characterization…but that did not detract from my enjoyment of it." He turned toward the stage. "Of course it's possible that I won't enjoy this performance. But why should you fear my dislike?"

"Because…" She struggled, as always, to articulate feelings that were likely to be beyond him. "Because things I create are like pieces of me, and if you genuinely dislike or are indifferent to them then it feels like you genuinely dislike or are indifferent to me."

He turned to look at her as the lights dimmed. "And knowing this…you still asked me to come here?"

She sighed. "Yeah."

His gaze held hers for a long time before he finally turned back to the stage.


Sarah vividly remembered reading the reviews of the first play she'd ever written, a 90-minute, low-key family drama that Lori had directed in a modest off-broadway theater. The reviews had been mixed, but there'd been some praise, and no one had excoriated her or indicated that she had no business writing. She remembered feeling like a professional for the first time in her life, like she belonged.

The reviews for this play had also been mixed (which Lori said was a good thing, she'd rather be polarizing than bland), but the praise had been a lot more specific and forceful. Some reviewers called the play campy and over-the-top, but others said that it "packed an emotional wallop" and that there was "a lot going on beneath the surface." She also loved the way that critics tended to assign symbolic value to things that she'd never really thought deeply about, though in retrospect they were probably there in the back of her mind all along. One reviewer said that a story of a vain, shallow king who presided over a grand empire of nothingness was a kind of commentary on how modern people are "complicit in their own oppression." Another said that the play was clearly about celebrity culture, especially the human habit of building idols up only to tear them down. Sarah laughed when she read these—she'd never intended her play to be an allegory—but she'd learned enough from her university lit classes to know that authors didn't always have the final say in what their work was about.

Cut off as he was from all that Aboveground context, she wondered what Jareth would see in the play. It took all her willpower not to glance over at him every few seconds to see how he was reacting to it.

She'd wanted to call the play The Fall, but Lori (thankfully) had suggested something more enigmatic. So she'd called it Moon Gems, after a fable that stage-Jareth tells near the end of the first act about the search for a rare kind of life-sustaining jewel that disintegrates under a human gaze, existing only as long as no one looks on it. The image had reminded her of particular dreams and fantasies that she desperately wanted to hold onto, but that slipped away the harder she tried to keep them in her mind.

The play wasn't a re-telling of her time in the labyrinth, though Jareth was at its center and her labyrinth friends played key roles. Rather, it was the story of a king who'd essentially led a meaningless existence presiding over a meaningless kingdom for millennia, quietly longing for purpose and significance but helpless to change his situation. Then, when an opportunity to prove himself presented itself in the form of an invading foreign power, he found that he wasn't up to the challenge. Still, he managed to spirit his subjects away to safety and find some meaning in an honorable death, if not an honorable life.

The actor playing stage-Jareth had a lot of work to do, essentially transforming from a frivolous dandy to a haunted shell of himself in just over two hours. As usual, the lead actor, Colin, did an amazing job, though Sarah could hear Jareth snort-laughing a little too loudly at some of stage-Jareth's more self-important lines.

But there was one moment in the middle of the second act when she heard a sharp intake of breath next to her. It was a conversation between stage-Jareth and stage-Didymus, a moment when they were trying to out-bluster each other with flowery language in the manner of very old friends. But then the weight of their situation dawned on both of them, and they found that they couldn't continue. Frustrated to the point of rage, stage-Jareth finally sputtered, "But we've always been so good at this!"

It was the first moment in the play when stage-Jareth's facade seemed to crack, and it was followed by a long silence broken only by the sound of the two actors' quick breathing.

When she glanced surreptitiously toward Jareth she saw that he was leaning slightly forward, his eyes fixed on the stage. She saw him repeat that line silently.


During the curtain call she caught Colin's eye and he waved at her. His eyes fell on Jareth, and his smile faded slightly, his eyes darting back and forth between the two of them. She glanced over to see Jareth give him a very small nod, and she laughed.

"Please don't give my lead actor an existential crisis," she shouted to him above the sound of the applause.

Jareth smiled, eyes still on Colin. He was still staring thoughtfully at the stage as the actors exited and the applause died down. "It's not all me, is it?" he said. "That character on the stage."

"No." She glanced up at the mezzanine to see Miguel giving her another thumbs up. "It's…pieces of a lot of things, I guess. You're in it, of course. But I couldn't put a perfect copy of you on a stage."

He smiled. "I am relieved that I am not so easily replicated. Though of course I knew that already."

She laughed and looked at the floor. "I won't ask you what you thought of the play, because that never goes well, even if people like it I tend to—"

"Do you want to see it through my eyes?"

She blinked and looked up at him. "What?"

"The play. How I saw it, what I felt." He removed a glove. "I can show you."

Sarah felt lightheaded. This was, she realized, what most people who created things dreamed of—being able to experience their creations as their audiences experienced them (the favorable audiences, anyway). Still…

"I…I don't know if I'm ready for that."

Jareth started to put his glove back on. "Your choice, Sarah. I don't think you'll find the experience unpleasant, though."

Shit. She wrung her hands. You know you're going to regret it if you don't do this.

"All right." She met his eyes. "Show me."

He removed his glove and pressed two fingers gently against her forehead. "Close your eyes."

The images and emotions came slowly at first and then in a rush. She saw images of the script dancing in front of her eyes, particular lines and scenes lingering longer than others. When the lights went down in the theater she felt a sense of anticipation mixed with skepticism, and even, she was surprised to realize, a nervousness similar to what she'd felt herself at the beginning of the play. As images of the play rushed by there were occasional bursts of defensiveness when stage-Jareth became overly bombastic, and feelings of genuine mirth at some of the funny lines.

And then she saw the scene between stage-Jareth and stage-Didymus that she'd noticed him paying special attention to, and what she felt more than anything was that he was moved—riveted by what he was seeing, but also hurting to see how real it was, to know that so much of his existence had been a performance.

That piece of the play, at least, had made him feel real pain.

He hadn't loved everything about the play. He hadn't hated it, or been indifferent to it. But much of it had made him feel something, many things, similar to how he'd made her feel things deeply for the first time in ages when he came back into her life several years before.

He took his hand away and the images receded. When she opened her eyes she half-expected him to not be there, to find herself waking up from one of the many anxiety-induced dreams that creating this play had given her.

But he was still there.

She blinked, feeling slightly dizzy. The raw emotions lingered within her, and she realized that tears were streaming down her cheeks.

He smiled a real smile, not a smirk, and maybe it was the lingering sensitivity that came with exposure to magic, but she could sense a deep happiness in him. A kind of happiness that she understood.

He held out his hand. "Shall we?"

She took it and squeezed tightly. "Yeah."


Author's note for Chapter 2: Chapter 3 coming soon. If I were more of a linguist I might write an analysis of how beginner speakers of Goblin often talk about "f-king the house down" when they mean to say "burning the house down." Who knew Goblin pronunciation could be so tricky?