"What's this?"
"Oh! Careful, sweetie," Sarah had warned gently, steadying Andie's tiny hands on the familiar, dainty music box with the dancer at its center. "It's a music box." Wide jade eyes had taken in the trinket and the little girl looked it over for how to start it. "Here, hold on." She'd kissed the top of Andie's head and reached around her to turn the key under the base, winding it four times before releasing it and easing it back into the child's grasp. The two watched the dancer turn as notes were gently plucked from the mechanism inside, both observing the heirloom's progress until the music faded. "It was my mother's."
"I want to have it someday!" Colette had interjected as always once she heard that, knowing that was leading up to the "and someday it will be yours" conversation and not wanting to be out anything potentially important.
Before seven-year-old Andie could get huffy, Sarah had laughed in her goodnatured way, faint creases decorating the corners of her eyes from how often she smiled. "Maybe someday. But for now, go help Dad finish with dinner, okay?"
Both girls had gotten up and, while Colette raced to be the first in the kitchen, Andie lingered and continued to peek into the cardboard box. "Who is this?" she asked, a standard 4x6 photo now holding her attention.
Sarah smiled. "Me when I was your age."
Andie looked shocked. "Really?" She studied the picture with renewed interest. "What are you holding?"
Sarah leaned forward and looked at the photo before answering, "Oh, he was a special one. That was my favorite teddy bear, Lancelot."
"Why isn't he in the box?"
"He got lost in transition to my first house with Dad, I'm afraid," Sarah sighed before conspiratorially whispering, "I think he might have been a bit jealous."
Andie laughed and, upon hearing David call them for dinner, ran to the doorway and paused, looking back at her mom as she put away the music box where they'd unearthed it—the small box that remained of her childhood belongings. The one she still had years and years later. "Will Colette get it?" Andie had wondered and Sarah had noted for what would be one amongst a thousand times that her youngest was old in soul. Where Colette would have asked that question with tears beading in her eyes before even having an answer and then given a shrill, "That's not fair!" before storming away, Andie had looked hopeful and asked for the answer Sarah would give, not the answer Andie necessarily wanted.
Sarah had contemplated her daughter silently. Colette was the spitting image of Sarah's younger self in personality and reactiveness. Andie was her spitting image in appearance. How strange it was to look at her baby girl and see herself, but know that her daughter would see the entire world so differently through the jewel-like eyes she had inherited from her mother. In some ways, Sarah counted herself as glad for that.
She'd smiled at last and said, "Maybe. Maybe not. But that's our secret, sweets. Understand?"
Andie grinned, missing two teeth. "Got it," she had whispered before disappearing, too.
"Oh, now there you go, dear, much better in your room, now isn't it? Hmmm?"
Would you shut up…, Andie griped mentally, as for now she needed the strange old woman to think that she had the upper hand. She had no idea what kinds of dangers she might pose, particularly on her turf in enclosed space. Keeping her head, Andie took a good look at the room, trying to surreptitiously locate where she'd seen a golden sheen and just hoping beyond hope that it hadn't been some part of the illusion. "Um, yeah. Awesome."
"Now, let's see here… Ooh, how about some board games, you love your board games, don't you?"
"Whatever, knock yourself out—wait, what the—" Andie had lost control of her words for a moment, but suddenly she felt light thuds smack into her back and, when the weight didn't disappear, she looked over her shoulder. "Are you kidding me?"
"Let's see what else we've got here… Oooh!"
"What is this?" Andie demanded under her breath as she tried to get the box stuck to her back to budge and it did no such thing. She looked at the woman's crumpled, junk-ridden back and got a sickening sensation in her stomach. I have to get the cog and bail.
"Here are your bunny rabbits, too! Ooh, you love your bunnies, dear!" She felt more objects—at least these were lighter—being stacked on her back and she realized that to win the game, she had to play it.
Andie let herself relax and wandered over toward the bookshelf over the bed, pulling off a couple of books and putting them on the rest of the stuff accumulating on her back and shoulders. Books, of course, you just had to go with books, heaviest freaking things in the freaking room! She continued to move over her mother's old possessions in a stoic, zombielike way, earning delighted crowing ooh's from the woman alongside some commentary over what she was choosing, making it incredibly clear that the woman was watching her progress and closely.
She continued to pull books and sort through some of the stuffed animals lying about, unable to avoid noticing in her search what belongings had survived the moves Sarah had made from her father's house to the homes she'd had after getting married. Andie could see the music box out of the corner of her eye and remembered finding it as a child and also how it managed to soothe her ailing mother now. Her heartstrings pulled; all this time in the Labyrinth and she'd hardly given thought to her mother's condition. Though it wasn't terminal and she was doing better, she was still in a state of confusion and Andie was sure that, no matter how much time had passed in the real world, Colette had managed to put her foot in her mouth at least three times since her departure. Give her some credit, Andie, at least she's started to really try.
"Oooh, look what I've found!" Andie looked over and saw the woman eying up the glistening scepter still in her hand. "That's a lovely thing, no? Don't you want to add that to your collection?" Andie debated internally, trying to think of a good excuse to keep it in her hand while she pawed through the room, but while she hesitated, the Junk Lady advanced. "That would look very nice on my back, don't you think so…"
"It's mine," Andie said firmly, startling the woman. "And I'm saving it for last. For the very top."
"Oooh… A good idea, my dear," the Junk Lady said, but only half-convincingly. She still eyed the scepter like a hungry vulture, but she backed away at the solidity of Andie's resolve, going off to look through another part of the room. When she continued with her cooing, Andie continued to look. Finally, on the wall shelf, she saw the glittering again in a more concentrated area. Without seeming too suspicious, Andie maneuvered her way over to the shelves of displayed toys and looked for the source, finally seeing a golden cog wedged into a crack at the back of one of the cubbies. Thank goodness this wasn't for nothing, my back will ache for days, she thought dismally as she reached in and plucked it out, wondering how it had ended up there in the first place.
Tucking the gear into her palm, Andie heard the Junk Lady shuffle in behind her, attempting to add more things to her back, but she'd found what she wanted now. No more games.
With that, Andie straightened and dumped the entire hoard of stuff she'd accumulated onto the woman once she'd gotten close enough and, while the Junk Lady screeched from underneath the pile, Andie looked for a way out. She spotted one and took one step across the bed toward it, but hesitated, looking back at the shelves for a reason she couldn't quite place. As soon as she took another look, she knew why; sitting in one of the center cubbies—a place of honor, she was sure—was a teddybear she'd seen in a picture a long time ago. Lancelot.
Without hesitating any longer, she took the bear off the shelf and hurdled over the struggling gremlin and the piles of junk littering the floor. In a split-second decision, Andie grabbed a blue backpack off the floor, tossed it over her shoulder and then started to climb up the peeling, disintegrated wall at the far side of the room, using broken bits of the wall and trash that had fallen through for leverage.
After twice nearly falling back in when the trash heaps shifted, she finally made her way out, still hearing the Junk Lady shouting for her to come back behind her. Andie stood straight and took a deep breath once she was free, which was a horrid idea as she was still in a junkyard. She wrinkled her nose and opted to go through the backpack after discarding the bandages around her torso, which had made her climb harder than it had needed to be. As she cut the bandages off with her dagger, she figured that if the Junk Lady actually came after her while she got herself sorted, she could totally take her as long as she didn't have some crazy hidden power she wasn't aware of.
"She would've used it back there," Andie decided aloud before dropping the bandages at her feet and unzipping the bag, looking inside. It was more or less empty apart from a notebook, a pack of pens, a petite drawstring bag, and a dusty costume store flower crown. When Andie touched the crown and a few of the petals fell off, she tossed the whole thing out of the bag to make space, but kept the writing implements because maybe she would need them? She placed the teddybear inside and took a look at the drawstring pouch, which ended up containing little more than plastic gems. She opened it and instead of dumping out the worthless "jewels," she saved them for Hoggle's amusement and just put the cog inside with them, pulling the strings tightly before putting the bag over her shoulders and juggling the scepter back into her hand from where she'd pinned it beneath her arm.
Andie looked over the distance between herself and the Goblin City gates, frowning a bit before deciding she had no choice but to hike through about a mile of trash. She could only hope that there weren't any more traps to be found. She did notice movement here and there and realized soon enough that those movements were from others like the Junk Lady and Andie wondered how many had fallen for her grandmotherly charade and had remained here after failing to get wherever they were going.
She shook off the thoughts; she couldn't think about that. Instead, Andie trudged forward through the junkyard, trying to hurry and get herself as far from this place as she could.
After trekking through mounds of clutter and muttering that the first thing she was going to do upon her return home was clean her apartment top to bottom—though it was, thankfully, not even close to resembling this ridiculous place—Andie stepped off the last heap, almost tottering when the ground didn't move beneath her weight. Regaining her balance, she adjusted the backpack on her shoulders and lightly tapped the end of the scepter against her leg as she walked, an absent-minded action that somehow helped her focus.
Andie moved past the gates she'd seen her comrades disappear through, scrutinizing at the crumbled city before her. Some of the damage looked like the rest of the Labyrinth's state of disarray, but some of the houses and walls looked like they'd been hit with things, small circular craters that could have been from cannonballs decorating the sand-colored stone. As she walked deeper into the city, she started to call out names, giving up on searching for them when they may be long gone. "Jareth? Hoggle? Nyle? Anybody?"
She frowned as she reached what was likely the center of the Goblin City and inhaled deeply to try one more time when an unpleasantly familiar, grating voice intercepted hers. "Well, well, look who it is!" crowed the goblin from the wall, sitting on a nearby stoop.
"Piss off," she muttered in its general direction, starting to walk again.
"No chance of you getting out of here this time, you know," it said smugly.
"Whatever, leave me alone."
"Ready?" She turned to say something more colorful when it shouted, "Now!" Suddenly armored goblins were coming at her this way and that with all manners of weapons including swords too big for them to comfortably handle, tiny cannons, and weird toothy monsters on sticks. Shit, she thought to herself as she backed away from the oncoming hoards, soon finding herself surrounded and opting to take higher ground by standing atop the well at the middle of the courtyard.
"What the hell do you want from me?!" she demanded, wielding the scepter before her as a clear threat.
"Get her! Charge!" the goblins all squealed in a collaboration of noise as they ambushed her. When she heard one of them in the back yell, "Fire!" she had the good sense to look up just in time to wield the scepter like a bat and swing, knocking away the cannonball flying toward her, its legs flailing as it sailed back toward its source. She was haphazardly knocking the goblins back, fending them off until a massive boulder tumbled through the courtyard, sending a good two thirds of the goblins toppling under or away from its mass.
Andie looked over toward where the boulder had come from and saw that her traveling party had come back and were fighting off the goblins hellbent on attacking her, likely as payback for the last time she'd nearly been carried off by them and had escaped. But, really, who knew the motives of goblins?
As she was looking over toward her friends, one of the goblins jumped her, nearly knocking them both back into the well. However, Andie grabbed the wrought iron arch over the well opening and hung on, smacking the goblin with the scepter until it slipped off of her and dazedly fell down the hole with a splash. She kicked her legs and swung herself back onto the edge of the well, stepping down now that she was able to with Didymus and Leona leading the fight against the goblins, Nyle and Jareth more or less helping for their own amusement as Ludo continued to manipulate the rocks and Hoggle, well, hid nearby. A goblin sneaking up behind Jareth caught her eye and she shouted at him before tossing the scepter toward him, which he caught before finally getting the hint and turning around to face the mutinous creature behind him, who quickly cowered under his king's wrath.
Soon enough, the courtyard had cleared and they were all left in the dusty city, scuffed and newly exhausted. "I can't believe you're alive," Nyle finally noted after a long silence amongst them. "What happened?"
"Uh, I fell… Ended up in the castle… Went through another void when I couldn't find a different way out," Andie said as she caught her breath from the unexpected brawl. "And then I hiked through a junkyard to get here when I saw you guys come through the gates."
"I thought I heard something," Didymus huffed and she guessed he'd attested to that and the others hadn't believed him or something to that effect. "Forgive us, my lady."
"It's okay, I'm just glad it all worked out," Andie said honestly. "What brought you all here?"
"A poor navigator," Nyle said, squinting toward Didymus. "But it wasn't all for naught. We were able to climb up one of the houses and spotted the Wiseman's usual post just a few turns over. Incidentally, being up there was how we saw you, too."
"Glad for it," Andie admitted. "Thanks."
"Any time," Hoggle said firmly and Andie didn't have the heart to point out that he hadn't done a damn thing. "So, should we get going?"
They all agreed to head out and at least get part of the way there before resting up as per usual in one of the pathways. Andie took a moment to get the pouch from her backpack as they walked and got the cogs from Hoggle to keep with the one she'd found, giving him the plastic gems and laughing at the gleam they put in his eyes as he added them to his collection. It occurred to her that the only one who hadn't said a word to her yet was Jareth when she looked over to see him staring at the open bag and the bear inside. He spun the scepter between his fingers and Andie took that as a good diversion. "I found that in the castle when I was looking for a way out. Figured you might want it."
"I can't do much with it without magic, I'm afraid," he said bluntly. "But thank you."
"Sure," she murmured, walking along behind the others and dropping the conversation.
A long few moments stretched in silence between the two of them until Jareth finally sighed. "I daresay I owe you an apology."
"For what?"
He looked almost scandalized. "Are you joking?"
"No, I'm confused, actually."
"Back in the jungle. I asked you to trust me."
"…Yes?" Andie said uncertainly, her tone urging him to expand on that.
"I failed you. And, for that, I am truly sorry." He frowned faintly. "You placed your trust in me and it could have killed you."
"Could have. Didn't," she said, a bit uncomfortable. "Look, it's all right. It wasn't your fault that I fell. Okay?"
"It doesn't matter," Jareth sighed, looking ahead instead of directly at her, which was unusual for him. "I could have… You were nearly lost and it would have been on my hands. Regardless of whose fault it was, the result would have been devastating. Fair enough?"
"Fair enough," Andie said quietly. What did he mean by that?
"Though I do wonder what inspired you to take this along," he noted as he twirled the silver scepter.
"I don't know, really. It looked important," she admitted sheepishly as she watched the object move fluidly under his manipulation.
He smirked and she felt relieved when she saw that, thinking maybe things were coasting back toward normal after the odd tension of their reunion. "As considerate as your actions were, your return was much more important."
Andie wasn't sure how to respond to that, so the two walked in silence until the group stopped to rest, as Nyle had declared they were halfway to where they'd seen the Wiseman earlier on and that he would still be there after they had all rested and regained their strength. Jareth yawned widely and looped his arms loosely around Andie's shoulders, leaning his cheek heavily on the side of her head. "Sleep. A grand notion."
"Could you act your age? For two seconds?"
"Where's the fun in that? Be a dear and snuggle."
"You absolute ass, get off me."
After he'd finished laughing at her—which took a good while longer than she would have liked—they found a spot near the maze wall in their normal proximity to one another. Ambrosius and Didymus fell asleep nearby and Andie heard them snoring almost immediately and it was hilariously in unison. She felt Jareth lean his head on her shoulder and allowed it, relaxing and closing her eyes as the rest of the group quieted, themselves.
Andie had just settled in when she felt something suspicious. "I swear to god, if you just licked my ear…"
"Dear girl, I don't know what you're talking about." He mused about her "dirty mind" for a moment more under his breath and when she didn't retaliate, he finally dozed off. Andie looked down at him, at his peaceful features slackened by sleep, and sighed a bit, a faint smile working across her lips as she shook her head and got comfortable without jarring him, soon losing herself to unconsciousness, too.
Across the pathway, Nyle watched them through one half-open eye, calculating again until his features tightened incrementally with resolve and his lid slid the rest of the way closed.