Dreams of Dust by Lady Cailin
Authors Note: Originally I had only intended for this to be a very short one piece from Jareth's POV, but after the second day of reviews/out right flattery asking for more I decided I may as well put off plotting that big series for a few minutes and send out another short fic since everyone seemed to like the last one so much (although as always, in retrospect I probably could have done better). Another warning, this is a quickie as I'm writing this after getting home from work and before going to bed. I'm not really sure if I got the dream sequence confusion in exactly as I wanted it, but there you have it.
Disclaimer: Jareth/Sarah/Labyrinth copyrighted by the Jim Henson Company. I take no financial benefit from the following fanfiction which was writen without the creator's consent.
Sarah pulled out the leather bound sketch book to stare accusingly at the drawing hidden between it's folds. The dark eyes of the Goblin King stared back at her in the silence. With a low growl of frustration she snapped the book shut and threw it into a corner of her closet.
She hated art anyway.
It had been three long years since she had last seen those mismatched eyes and she had hoped to never see them again, waiting for the day they would no longer greet her dreams each night. She had almost convinced herself he was forgotten, banished back to his labyrinth when she had forced out those last words. The night of her return she had forced him out of her mind, out of her thoughts and life, forever.
Apparently she had forgotten to search the region of her heart before she had closed the door of her life on the Goblin King. She'd been sitting in art when the teacher had put them through an exercise designed to allow them to draw from within rather than with their eyes.
Close your eyes, put pen to paper, and draw what you see. It had actually been quiet calming, allowing nothing to enter her mind but the feel of the paper and that silky, rough sound of her pencil caressing the paper. When she opened her eyes, there he'd been, wild hair and seductive eyes mocking her efforts to push him aside as the folly of a child. Her art teacher had been delighted.
She had vowed never to close her eyes again.
Her palms itched to retrieve the book and rip the accursed drawing from it's folds, to banish his image one more time, and she was dying to say it just once more: It wasn't fair. It just wasn't fair that after all this time, after all she had done to try and forget him, he could appear without appearing and ruin her life once more. She'd done everything right, she hadn't talked about Jareth even once when she called to Hoggle and Ludo, had even changed the subject when Sir Didymus brought up the subject of his king. She'd banished 'The Book' to the cold recesses of the basement. She'd resolutely pushed away thoughts of glittering ballrooms when they managed to creep into her thoughts. Sarah had forced normalcy into every aspect of her once fanciful life. Her grades had never been better, her room never cleaner and her social life was more successful than most teenagers came to expect. She had even picked out a boring, studious college for next year. Yet she still dreamed about a man with wild ivory hair and the cry of the night in his voice.
She sighed, feeling tired all of the sudden. She had been on edge ever since that art class, scared that somehow he was watching, had seen this sudden betrayal of her heart. Scared that it was really her heart that had controlled her hand, and not magic or memory. Scared that after doing everything right to keep from falling in love with the Goblin King, she had failed.
She was terrified that she might have lost after all.
With soft groan she laid back into the comforting warmth of pillows on her bed. She just needed to sleep once without that dream haunting her. Without the masks of the ballroom dancing around her and without Jareth offering her dreams one last time, a yearning in his mismatched eyes that always plagued her when she awoke. She just needed to stop the dreams. Then she wouldn't flinch with guilt every time a date tried to kiss her and her heart wouldn't pull tight in her chest when she caught site of a pail head of hair in a crowd.
Then she would be normal.
It was with that final thought that she drifted to sleep.
They danced and the laughed, crystals and flames glittering overhead. Sarah pushed her way through, watching as the strangely costumed dancers cackled at her delicate appearance. Something was wrong, terribly wrong. She knew it as she knew that Jareth was among the dancers, watching her, always watching her. She had to go to him, it was a need calling to her stronger than even her desire to breath. She had to reach him, touch him, or . . .or. . .
Or he would die.
She pushed through the dancers as the laughed harder, louder, the sound pounding in her head. She had to reach Jareth. Jareth. . .
There! She pushed ahead as the crowd opened momentarily, allowing her the glimpse of a man with pail hair standing among them, his head lowered to hide his face from her. Jareth. . .
Suddenly the crowd melted away, and only they where left in the wide expanse of the ballroom, the music and the laughter fading into shadows. Jareth. . .lover. . .tormentor. . . Goblin King. . .
Slowly, he held up a crystal to her, as he had the last time they met, but he never looked to her eyes, his own lowered and giving no clue to the emotions going on behind the lovely facade.
The offer, be his, love him, need him, be one with him. . .just take the crystal. . .
She hesitated, her heart begging her to take that one step and hold tightly to what he offered, and her mind whispering all those other things.
Tormentor. . .monster. . .Goblin King. . .
He looked up suddenly, his eyes meeting hers.
Longing, love, dejection, pain. . .so much pain in those eyes. . .
She stepped out and reached for him, but as she did so he crumbled, falling into a pile of glittering dust at her feet. She cried, stooping to bury her hands in the fine sand. Jareth, gone.
It was all her fault.
Sarah sobbed loudly, curling her body into a tight ball as the feeling of loss overwhelmed her and her soul cried out with it. Without another thought to tomorrow, to the consequences, to normalcy, she whispered into the night.
"Jareth. . ."
