Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters who showed up in Labyrinth. Any and all references to real people in my story are totally fake.
Chapter 2: Everyone says 'Hi'
Sarah was an emotional mess after her sixteenth birthday. Part of her felt abandoned by her own childhood, and the other half berated her for being so ridiculous. Sure, her inner voice had reminded her embarrassed self, she'd had plenty of crushes on older men (Mr. Thompson, the dreamy math teacher from Scotland, for example), but all of them had, at the very least, been real.
Fortunately, sixteen year old girls never were designed for true love. Months passed, hormones kicked in, and by the time the spring show rolled around, Sarah's extended dream had been relegated to the back of her mind, flitting through her mind only during the coldest and loneliest of nights.
Tears welled in Sir Alexander's eyes as he gazed tenderly upon his betrothed, who lay feebly in his strong arms. A blood-stained tear on the side of her lavish gown revealed the source of Lady Victoria's exhaustion. She had been struck by what must had been a stray arrow, and Sir Alexander's gaze hardened as he contemplated the foul fate he would ensure befell the man who dared injure his love. But Lady Victoria's rapidly weakening breath revived the gentleness deep within his heart, and his eyes softened as he sought to reassure his love.
"My lady, even in this dark hour your radiant beauty shines like the light from a million stars."
Lady Victoria gazed dreamily into Sir Alexander's beautiful gray eyes before succumbing to a coughing fit.
"Pray, stay with me a moment longer," she murmured after the coughs had subsided. "Stay, until the darkness envelopes my world and I am no more."
Sir Alexander frowned as he brushed aside a stray lock of her luxurious brown hair. "My beautiful love, have we not fought friend and foe alike, traveled halfway across the countryside, left that which is familiar and comforting to us only so that we may stay together a while longer? I'll not lose you to the dark specter of death now. See how the healer approaches! You will be well in no time, and when you have rested, then we may resume our quest against the wicked king. You and I. Together, for now, and for eternity."
And with those words, Sir Alexander bent down and captured Lady Victoria's mouth in a soft, yet insistent kiss that would surely be the stuff of legends for generations to come.
Sarah's eyes widened in shock as Ivan's lips came towards hers and the audience applauded. Their kiss, entirely unscripted, lasted well after the curtains fell for the intermission. She was relieved; before now, part of her had been convinced that Ivan's interest in her had been a well-constructed fabrication based off weak evidence on her end, born out of sheer desperation.
Handsome looks aside, Ivan's tenacity in seeking her out had been what had attracted Sarah most to the nervously grinning senior before her. He was always so happy to strike up a conversation with her in months past, even as she sat in a dark corner of the auditorium, munching on her pen cap, scowling at her Physics Honors homework, and generally ignoring him. When she was feeling under the weather, he was always ready with a bar of chocolate and a hug that perhaps lasted a tad longer than necessary.
Yet part of Sarah, still hurt by her previous (and embarrassingly imaginary) crush, had convinced herself that Ivan batted for the other team, and given the thespian society at her high school, such an assumption wasn't exactly unwarranted. Ivan had always been too happy to quote lines from their corny play, adding unnecessarily flowery embellishments that, Sarah had assumed, no straight teenage boy would have been willing to include.
Fortunately, Ivan Lebedev obviously was no ordinary boy. Sarah smiled to herself as Ivan surreptitiously (in his opinion, anyways) placed an arm around her and led her towards the back of the stage for. Life was good.
Theirs was a lovely romance. To be sure, Ivan wasn't Sarah's first boyfriend (choir camp, seventh grade, long story), but he was certainly one of the more memorable ones, and definitely the most romantic. There were extended walks in nearby parks under starry summer skies, flowers, passionate make out sessions behind the rocks by the beach. There were whispered promises of the future and houses with stilts on the mountains, where one would be able to live for a second longer. And most importantly, there was love.
But as Sandy and Danny from Grease would be more than happy to attest to, summer loving, while happening so fast, really was never meant to last. Ivan had already graduated, and despite all talks of years to come, by the time late August rolled around and Sarah waved goodbye as he headed to NYU with all his worldly possessions piled into his car, she knew, deep down, that she would never see him again.
Her next extended relationship was with Dexter, an overweight, cigarette smoking, foul-mouthed, yet incredibly intelligent classmate who Nikki had introduced to her on a double blind date. Sarah had been initially repulsed, but had warmed up throughout the night as he listened attentively to her impromptu speech concerning the urgent necessity of preserving the creative spark in growing children and alarmingly decreasing literacy rates nationwide. By the time he finished outlining the major steps Sarah would need to take in order to start a local organization to address these issues on some napkins, she was hooked.
Dexter was the very antithesis of Ivan, down to earth and none too fond of flowers and sunsets. The couple spent most of their days working out the kinks to their Sunshine Society and studying for the SAT's, which was just fine with Sarah, whose academic prospects were looking increasingly rosier by the day.
And despite all appearances, as Sarah would soon learn, Dexter's prowess in the bedroom surely rivaled that of Mr. Giacomo Casanova himself. Losing her virginity to Dexter was an event that came completely natural to Sarah, and she had no regrets. For months to come, their study sessions often devolved into extended bouts of lovemaking, a development which satisfied Sarah to no end.
But alas, all good things must come to an end. On the eve of Dexter's birthday, Sarah snuck over to Dexter's bedroom window, intent on giving him an early birthday gift, if you will, only to find some skinny cheerleader from the rival high school busy giving him a present of her own. And Dexter, by the looks of it, seemed all too happy to receive. As Sarah left, she took her keys to Dexter's car tires, and that was the end of their relationship.
Brian wasn't so much a boyfriend as a means for Sarah to console her bruised ego and heart. She'd gotten to know him while dating Dexter, as Karen had taken to hiring him as Toby's babysitter when Sarah was out on Friday nights. Brian was a relatively shy boy, but had been one of the several who had repeatedly attempted to ask her out despite continual rejection during what she now dubbed the Dark Ages of sophomore year, before she turned sixteen. As such, she'd always found it easier to minimize interacting with him when she returned from her dates and took over the nontrivial task of Toby-sitting.
All of that changed one night, however, shortly after her dramatic breakup with Dexter, when she returned from her community service night at the local homeless shelter to find Brian sprawled across the bed in Toby and her parents' room, laughing at Toby's antics. Toby, it appeared, was busy constructing haphazard castles with some wooden blocks before toddling to his feet, roaring as only a two year old can, and toppling the entire mess.
Perhaps it was the fact that his glasses had fallen, affording Sarah a good look at his sparking blue eyes, which she had never noticed in the past. Perhaps it was fortuitous timing. Either way, Toby's increasingly architecturally unsound structures (and their subsequent destruction) went unnoticed as Brian and Sarah spent the remainder of the night making out on her parents' bed (oh my).
Among all boyfriends thus far, Brian turned out to be Karen's favorite. He was studious, soft-spoken, and polite, the perfect boy, Karen thought, for her excitable stepdaughter. Her husband agreed, but for different reasons; Sarah was Brian's first girlfriend, so he was confident Brian would sully Sarah's pristine virtue.
But of course, we all know better. Sarah relished the experience of being the Dexter to her Brian, and allowed feelings of vindication to sweep over her time and time again as she introduced Brian to the joys of no longer being a virgin.
After Brian came George, a young, up-and-coming director who recognized true beauty when he saw it and landed Sarah her first part in a car commercial. And after George was Edward Stanton the Third, a happy boy and aspiring lawyer she'd met when her work for the Sunshine Society found her in Tennessee over spring break. Her last relationship before graduating from high school was with Devin, a smooth talking future Senator who she'd met over Yale's admit weekend. Sarah had thoroughly enjoyed breaking his heart when she'd moved to California for college instead.
The swirl of men (and occasionally, women) waiting to enter Sarah's life only increased as time went on. There were classmates, angry one night stands as she was rejected from Broadway audition after audition, finally coming to terms with the fact that she simply hadn't been genetically blessed with her mother's voice. There were doctors and engineers, genuinely charmed by Sarah's intelligence as well as her beauty. There were beautiful people, future actors and models, who, like Sarah, were waiting to find their niche in the industry.
And every so often, Sarah would turn down all dates and girls' nights out for the weekend, and simply curl up in bed with a book, swept up in tales of romance, adventure, and the supernatural. She'd gaze at the stars outside, the outline of trees in the dark, and wonder what it would be like, what sort of kingdom she could rule, if magic really existed. And then she'd turn in early, drifting off into a dream world of elves and fairies, dancing and singing with no care in the world.