Aaaaaand here's Part 2. The long-postponed Jareth entrance... though you may find a couple of surprises.

Disclaimer: Sarah, Jareth, the Labyrinth, and its other characters are owned by the Jim Henson Company.

Talespinner

Chapter 4: lt Will Show You Your Dreams (Part 2)

"Laurel? Could I… if you're not busy, mind if I come over? I need to get away from here," Sarah asked, knowing that her voice must sound unsteady even over the phone.

"Of course, I was just killing time." A pause. "You okay?"

Sarah sighed. "It's… it's… well, I ended it."

"Oh! Get your butt over here – you didn't even have to ask, you know that!" Laurel's exasperated voice squawked at her.

"Alright, thanks. I'm on my way."

Sarah smiled faintly at Laurel's muttered "it's about bloody time" as she hung up. She knew that her friend wasn't referring to her last statement, but the one before it.

Laurel had moved to a small studio apartment just across the street from campus a few weeks ago, saying that she was sick of the dorms and didn't want to spend her senior year in the same building as a gaggle of new freshmen. Sarah had considered doing the same, but decided that the extra expense wasn't worth it. If she kept her spending down for this last year of school, she would have saved enough by graduation for the new car she sorely needed, thanks to the money she had been making at her library and tutoring jobs over the years. Her father and Karen had called her a few weeks after she had thrown down the gauntlet in her second semester and told her that they would continue to send her money for school, on the condition that she kept working hard and saved what she earned for expenses after college.

"Door's unlocked!" Sarah heard through the door in answer to her knock. Somewhat winded from the four-story climb to Laurel's apartment, she had no chance to catch her breath; no sooner than she had stepped into the room and put her backpack down, Laurel met her with a rib-cracking hug that Sarah would have sworn could never have come from someone so small.

Sarah made a noise that was part strangled giggle, part sob, and hugged her back.

When Laurel finally let go, she shooed Sarah toward the one comfortable chair in the apartment, an only-slightly-shabby find from the Salvation Army that was almost as ugly as it was comfortable. ("Hey, it's a thirty-dollar easy chair. It could be upholstered in Ewok print and I'd still buy it!" Sarah had giggled and agreed.) She collected two beers from the refrigerator, handed Sarah the lighter one, and sat in the desk chair nearby.

"Alright. Do you want to talk about it, or do you want to get drunk and play Scrabble?"

Sarah laughed weakly and took a tentative sip of the beer. "Well, if this is what you have to get drunk on, I think I'd better talk."

Laurel snorted a laugh. "Hey, I'd agree with you if I bought crappy beer, but that's Harp! S'not my fault you're a snobby wine-drinker. I'd offer you my Guinness, but I doubt you'd like that better."

Sarah smiled, a bit more relaxed, and took another, longer swallow. It actually wasn't half-bad, she decided.

"Kidding, at least this has flavor – and thanks. I think I needed a drink."

"I kinda figured." Laurel waited, and at length, Sarah sighed and spoke again.

"Like I told you a few times, it felt like the relationship was spiraling downhill all summer." Laurel nodded. They had spent a lot of time on the phone, often with Sarah very upset.

"Well," she continued, "there were a lot of things wrong, but… you'll probably find this funny, and yes, you can laugh… the final straw was that he accused me of cheating on him."

Laurel raised her eyebrows over her beer glass, not finding this particularly remarkable or funny.

"With you."

Guinness sprayed out of her nose, and she doubled over, laughing and swearing as she tried to avoid sloshing the glass and losing more of it.

"Seriously?!" she asked, wiping her face with a tissue, and blowing her nose.

"Seriously."

"That idiot. Good fucking riddance," she said, shaking her head in disgust. "Even if Jen wouldn't eviscerate me, that would still be a beyond stupid thing to say. I meant it before, and I mean it even more now – you're better off without him."

Sarah nodded, slowly, her amusement from Laurel's Guinness mishap fading as the sad frustration showed through again. "I know. I've known it for a long time, I guess. It still hurts like crazy, though. I miss the feeling that first semester had, working on Midsummer with you guys. I really felt like, then, there was something special happening."

Laurel nodded, sympathetic. "I know. It always starts like that. It looked to me like you fell for the faerie king character he was playing, and then the play was over, and David was just… "

" 'Another vain jackass who thinks I'll look good on his arm and better in his bed?' " Sarah finished for her, quoting one of her friend's favorite epithets wryly.

"…right. That. You know me too well." Laurel made a face.

"You talk a lot," she countered, finally smiling. "You were right, I know. It was hard to see, though, at first – it really seemed like he was interested in me, and my goals, and in being my friend."

"He probably was, you know? Even I didn't think he was all bad at first. Short attention-span for people, though, I think." She grinned wickedly, adding, "and you didn't fawn over his glorious manliness like all the baby freshmen all the time, either."

Sarah snorted. "If that's what it takes to keep a guy happy, I'll be an old maid with a dozen cats instead."

"Or you could always switch teams!" Laurel pointed out, helpfully.

"I think I'll give men a few more chances – I'm not exactly old yet," Sarah retorted.

Laurel raised her half-empty glass in salute. "Well, then, a toast to good friends, good beer, and tilting at windmills."

Sarah laughed, and clinked her glass against Laurel's. "I'll drink to that."

…

The sounds were the first thing she became aware of.

A lively flute threaded its imperative melody over and through a din of conversation and rustling clothing. Drums so low that each measured beat seemed to reverberate through Sarah's body and keep time with her heart underlaid all the noise in the room, a sound felt more than heard. A duo… no, trio of stringed instruments that she could not name wove between the drums and flute in a complicated harmony, somehow heard above every other sound in the room without competing against them.

Gradually, the flashes of light and dark that Sarah was seeing resolved into a ballroom with a dance in full swing, with the dancers a riot of swirling, colorful attire and grotesque masks.

She looked down, expecting to see the frothy confection of a princess's ballgown that she had been wearing in another dream years before. The fabric that sheathed her body was indeed still silver-on-white, and it was a dress, but that was where the resemblance ended. Smoothly tailored silk flowed like water down her body, hugging her figure until halfway down her thighs, where it grudgingly loosened into a graceful, slightly flared skirt that nearly brushed the marble floor. The bodice was lightly boned, and pricked with understated mother-of-pearl beading; cool air on her back informed her that there was lacing there, but little else. Her shoulders were bare, but tight, sheer white sleeves flowed out of the bodice to cover the length of her arms. Exploring her face with careful fingers revealed that she also wore a mask, though hers had the smooth outline of a simple domino rather than any of the more fanciful and complicated shapes she saw on the other revelers.

Well, this is different. I almost feel like I belong, rather than like some hunted game bird.

Sarah heard a tinkling sound nearby, and turned to see a woman accepting a pair of champagne flutes from a masked waiter in dark livery. The peacock-colored woman floated off to find whoever she had collected the second drink for, and the waiter approached Sarah.

"One for you, my lady?" he asked, inclining his head courteously.

"Ah, no, thank you. I was just about to join the dance," she answered as politely as she could, and the waiter moved on. Wonderful as the golden liquid looked and smelled, her instincts against accepting food or drink were hard to ignore, given the circumstances.

I bet it's peach nectar, she thought, sardonically. That would be just too perfect.

"Pardon me, but did I hear you express interest in dancing?" A low, masculine voice cut through every bit of noise in the room, from a few paces to her left. "Or were you planning on doing so without a partner?" He added, his words rich with amusement, and what sounded like challenge.

Sarah froze.

So here we are.

Another heartbeat, and she was turning to face him. A wave of self-consciousness passed over her as she remembered how revealing her dress was, but it swept away almost as quickly as she focused on the man who was awaiting her answer.

He was dressed from head to toe in a dark, shimmering emerald that reminded Sarah of dewfall on leaves in a moonlit forest, and his intricate leather mask was the Green Man. Pale hair framed the mask and feathered his shoulders, accentuating the sharp lines of his face that the mask did not quite hide. His thin lips were quirked slightly upward, an expression that could have been friendly or dangerous, or easily both. The barest suggestion of a frown creased Sarah's brow as she half-recognized his attire, which seemed familiar to her in a way she could not place. But he stood with the easy, predator's confidence that none save he had ever possessed, to her eyes, and she remembered that she had still not spoken.

Fluidly, she swept a belated curtsey, and as the fabric of her gown slithered from her fingers, she greeted him. "You did, and I was not. I would be glad to partner you, my lord."

He smiled at that, revealing pointed teeth as he took her hand in his gloved one and stepped with her onto the dance floor.

Though the floor was crowded, there always seemed to be space for them to move as gaps unerringly opened in the press of revelers just as they shifted directions. Sarah had the sense of a great deal of time passing, as the music shifted in tempo and mood over and over again, but there was no fatigue, and no reason to stop.

She knew her feet were tracing a complicated step beneath her, but the only feeling she was aware of was the firm, but feather-light connection to her partner. His hands were flames, muffled by the soft leather of his gloves, and she could not help but wonder what they would feel like bare.

As if in response to her thought, his lips parted in a wicked grin, and he bent his head to speak to her for the first time since the dance began.

"Then, my queen, in silence sad, trip we after the night's shade:

We the globe can compass soon, swifter than the wandering moon."

The hand he had been resting on her waist slid around to the small of her back, pulling her close to him, and the ballroom melted away.

…

She was lying on soft, pale fabric, and at first she thought that it must be her dress beneath her.

The realization came quickly: the dress was nowhere in evidence (certainly not on her body), and the cool cloth under her hip and side was a satin sheet. Nearly every inch of skin not against the sheet was in burning, singing contact with the lithe man beside her – and the hands that skated all across her body were as bare as the rest of him.

Sarah opened her mouth to say his name, but the word was left unspoken as he kissed her.

…

She awoke with a light film of sweat on her skin, twisted between her cotton sheets, and wondering how her pajamas had ended up on the floor.

…

It was four in the morning, and Sarah had not slept.

She had come back to her room the previous evening after her last final exam, and resolved to write until the graduation ceremonies a week off, if she had to, to finish her novel. Marie, who had been her roommate all throughout college, had gone home that morning with plans to return with her family for commencement, and Sarah was grateful that she did not have to worry about keeping her lights dim and her music on headphones. It was easier to stay awake that way.

A thrice-refilled tea mug sat cooling near her mousepad, and the words on the bright computer screen were starting to swim before her eyes, but she could not stop. She was too close to the end. The last chapter had practically written itself, as Janet and Tam Lin finally escaped from the wrathful faerie Queen, and now Sarah's fingers flew across the keyboard as the epilogue took shape.

The couple did not return to the lands of Janet's father in Sarah's tale, but claimed the forest of Carterhaugh as their own domain, both having acquired a measure of power in their own right from their contact with the Fae. They ruled it long and well, as Sarah had intended from the beginning of the story, but a final flash of inspiration prompted her to add an extra, last scene.

"Many years later, on a crisp autumn morning, a young boy became separated from his father's hunting party. He had dismounted to stretch his legs and dallied by a stream, and was accidentally left behind. When he realized he was alone, his frightened cries startled a sleeping owl, whose angry screech spooked his horse into bolting. Even more worried without his mount, he stumbled deeper into the woods after it, not realizing that more than birds had heard his calling."

A slow smile spread across her face as she typed the last sentence.

Let them wonder what the new Lord and Lady of that forest will do.

Sarah stretched, her joints crackling in protest at the long hours spent in her desk chair. She rose, thinking to finally fall asleep happy, when the lamplight caught and flashed in the depths of the crystal that was still ensconced on her nightstand.

Fatigue fled before a sudden rush of heady impulse. The night seemed too perfect to ignore it.

I wonder if… he would come if I asked. I feel like I need to thank him for the dreams, at the very least – they kept feeling like I had one foot into the Underground all these four years.

…Right, Sarah, you just tell yourself that that's the only reason. As Laurel would probably say, whether you do it for the wrong reasons or the right ones, you're gonna do it anyway. She snorted, amused, and gently cupped the crystal in both hands.

The doubts kept her lips sealed for long moments, as she struggled with fear, and anxiety, and a dozen other emotions she would have been hard-pressed to put a name to. Just keeping the crystal near her had seemed like risk enough, when it had first appeared on her dresser. Surely she must be insane now to consider actively inviting him, in the flesh, into her home again. He was capricious and powerful and dangerous, and she needed to treat things a bit more seriously than some children's fairytale and yet…

…What about the last time she saw him? Sarah blushed at the thought.

How much will you regret it, if you never take the chance and try?

That settled it.

A whole new anxiety took hold, then – that she would call, and he wouldn't answer. At that moment, that seemed like a worse outcome than any of the others her mind had concocted.

Nothing to do but try.

Looking down, into the crystal she held in her palms, she took a deep breath, and whispered, "I wish the Goblin King would come here to talk with me, right now."

The silence stretched into what felt like an eternity, and much to her consternation, Sarah felt tears well up in her eyes. He wasn't coming.

Sadly, she moved to put the crystal back down, but froze as she remembered.

Wait. The feather.

Quickly, she transferred the crystal to her left hand and turned to her dresser. The feather had stayed in its jewelry-box home since the day it had appeared, and when she drew it out, it was as soft and supple in her hand as it had been the last time she'd held it.

Sarah's hands shook slightly as she held the crystal and feather together, and tried again, in a louder, more imperatively clear voice.

"I wish the Goblin King – Jareth – would come here to talk with me, right now."

A rush of displaced air ruffled her loose, dark hair, followed almost immediately by a soft, rasping chuckle from across the room.

Her heart pounding, Sarah raised her eyes to meet the piercing, mismatched stare of the Goblin King, who leaned insouciantly against the wall as if he had been waiting there all night for her to notice.

In a voice that was a lion's purr cut by a razor, he spoke.

"Well, well, Sarah. I was beginning to wonder if you'd ever think to call. It has been an awfully long time."

A/N: The line that Jareth quotes in the dream scene is from A Midsummer Night's Dream, as you probably guessed. It's from a bit near the end of the play, where Oberon is addressing Titania.

I took several leaps of time in this chapter - though I did my best to make the jumps easy to follow, here's a recap: Part 1 starts in the second semester of Sarah's freshman year, right after winter break (and roughly a month after the end of Chapter 2). The last segment of Part 1 is in the fall of Sarah and Laurel's sophomore year. Part 2 begins in the first semester of Sarah's senior year, and ends right before she graduates. Each dream scene occurs within a few nights of the scene preceding it.

There was a very specific reason for all the time-hopping: I wanted Sarah to have done some more growing-up before she finally met Jareth again, have a boyfriend, and the full experience of college. And I showed a lot of that rather than just skipping to, say, her senior year, because it was important to me to set up the background so that the story will make more sense later. That said, it did make for a very long chapter, and I'm glad to finally have His Nibs in the picture. :)