And then she woke up…
And it was all a dream. Except it wasn't.
It had screwed her up for a long time, coming back. She developed catoptrophobia (fear of mirrors) since she could never be quite certain who would be looking out at her if she were to look in. Sunbeams reflected off a CD or someone's wristwatch were enough like the play of light in a crystal ball to trigger powerful flashbacks. The orange light at sunset made her close her drapes, shivering in her bed, and no matter how hard she scrubbed or how much perfume she wore, she couldn't stop smelling peaches in her skin and hair.
But she had a certain internal toughness, and within a year or two, she got over it.
That hurt him, but he never said anything. Who would he have told?
She gave up a lot of her childish dreams and dreads: not intentionally, more growing tired of them, just as she'd grown tired of playing with her Barbie dolls some years earlier. Others she worked into new dreams, and later (after being thrown out of the house two weeks after her eighteenth birthday by her stepmother) new realities.
That had been hard, too. She'd gone to New York, lied about her age, and moved into an absolute hole of an apartment in Queens. She worked three jobs: one as a waitress (paid the most), one as a stagehand (kept her connected to the theater even when she didn't get parts) and one as an emcee and hostess at Les Papillons, a campy gay nightclub in the Village. That one was just for fun: she would wear tons of eyeliner, wedge herself into something spangly and marabou-feathered, and sing torch songs in a heartbroken voice. And then she'd introduce Scarlett, a four-hundred pound drag queen who was the headliner. It was good times... she never got hit on unless the clientele were drunk enough to mistake her for a transvestite, and they loved her wholeheartedly.
Every now and then, she would still get one of her weird vibes. The clientele ranged from the vanilla to the double-dip rocky road, and every night, the stockbrokers and bankers in their khakis and turtlenecks mingled with the leather daddies and the crossdressers. Some of these last were what would trigger the flashback. Most of them looked fairly false to her, not that they minded, since they were going for camp. A few, usually in pre-op, were perfectly feminine, even beautiful, and could have passed anywhere. And some of them were in the middle: tall, and thin, and too beautiful to be men, but somehow they were definitely not women.
She thought they looked like angels.
Sometimes, when she walked through the audience, one of them would catch her eye: an apparition in glam clothes with pale hair and skin, gliding through the dancing couples. And she would catch her breath, and take a closer look, upon which they would do a shot, or light a cigarette, or start vogueing, and the illusion would vanish. She would smile at herself then, flick on the mike with a practiced hand, and lead the crowd in a singalong of "You Gotta Have Friends" or "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend".
That bothered him. Alone in his castle, he paced, his boots leaving prints on the thick dust that coated the cold stone floors. Everything had fallen apart when she left, and he had only the inclination and strength to recreate his immediate environs. On the other side of the grimy mullioned windows was a void. How, he wondered, could he be cast aside so easily? So swiftly forgotten? She was still the focus of his existence, the nexus of his thoughts... but to her, he was just a half-remembered daydream. A twinge of reminiscence, and then on with the motley, and let's all join in a chorus of "Shadowboxer".
She got a break. It was a little theater, off-Broadway, and a small production with a first-time director, but a break nevertheless. She was going to be Eliza Dolittle in a revival of "My Fair Lady." It surprised the hell out of her that she got the part: she didn't have voice training or any particular musical background. All of those nights crooning "Dream a Little Dream of Me" had paid off, she supposed.
It surprised her even more when the show opened to a packed house, and when she got a standing ovation the first night. Several of the alternative weeklies in town gave her rave reviews, which attracted the NY Times theater critic to a performance in the second week. He was more cautious in his praise, which prompted vitriolic criticisms of his intelligence and ethical conduct in the same throwaway papers.
To her rueful amusement, she had become a gay icon. Not on the level of Judy Garland or Eartha Kitt, but an icon nevertheless. And an icon who was getting parts. She started getting asked to read for movie scripts, to act in television pilots, to do voice work for national commercials. She quit her day jobs and moved out of the absolute hole of an apartment in Queens to a decent rent-controlled place in the Upper West side.
She was a rising young actress with a promising future. He recognized that a girl who never wanted to speak to him when she was impoverished and miserable would certainly have no reason to call on him when she was successful and happy. And he could not resign himself to that. He calculated coldly for a time, knowing that in his weakened state the planned journey might destroy him. At the end of his thoughts, he decided to go anyway. Looking at his darkened, diminished kingdom, he thought that death might be preferable to a solitary eternity here. Drawing together the last threads of his magic, he wove together a faint and fragile mesh of enchantment, and for the last time, stepped through to her world.
The look of shock upon her face as he appeared in her apartment was almost worth everything. It was swiftly fading, and by the time she had gone over to the sink and filled herself a glass of water, it was only a memory. She drained half the glass in one long pull, and wiped her hot face with a towel.
"I just got back from a run," she said, the words meaningless, but all she was prepared to offer at the moment.
"I see."
"So. What do you want?"
"You." His soft, seductive voice made the word a caress, and she blushed crimson. Sitting down in one of her overstuffed armchairs, she glared at him as he stood backlit by her window.
"Mm, no. Try again. I'm pretty sure I'm mine and I'm in no rush to give myself away," she said coolly.
"Don't be foolish. I'm offering you what you were too young to accept the last time: dreams, power, love. And what I ask is so little."
"I will not trust you. You always have some tricks up your sleeve. There's some angle to this that I'm not seeing, some secret you're leaving unsaid."
"Sarah..."
Her eyes narrowed at the ragged edge his voice lent to her name. And for the first time since his arrival, she really looked at him. He had changed since she had seen him last: she remembered him as the demon Arlechino, old Harlequin from the commedia del'Arte, dressed in diamonds, dangerous and laughing and seductive. Now, though he was garbed in unadorned black, he reminded her more of Pierrot, the hapless, hopeless lover. He was pale, and looked younger than before, and he had the same old sorrow in his mismatched eyes she remembered from when she denied his power over her.
"What's happened to you, Jareth?"
"You happened, Sarah."
"Me? What did I do?"
"I'm not... real, Sarah," he said, haltingly, as though unreality was an embarassing social disease, "Not the way you are. There was a time, not so long ago, when your rejection would not have troubled me for long. There were others who believed in me, who needed me to be. But time went on, and the old stories about me were forgotten, my old loves died, my small role in the pantheon of human dreams was written out..."
He sighed, and sat on the couch without waiting to be asked, tugging off his gloves as he did so. Staring at his pale hands, he continued, "My kingdom, my subjects, my self... we faded. It happens to my kind. If no one ever thought of you, Sarah, you would continue to exist... though I imagine you would be lonely, as I was. I don't have that sort of luxury. I grew less and less real. And then there was you." He looked up, gazed into her eyes, which she averted quickly. "You... believed more strongly than anyone ever had. I don't know why. You read a cheap Victorian bowdlerization of one of my stories, and that somehow gave you enough faith to make me more alive than I ever had been. You gave me…" He gestured impatiently at his clothes, "This face, this form. They all are yours. You made me in a new image. You made me love you. I didn't want to do it."
She stared down at the carpet between her sneakers as he rose to his feet and began pacing, "Without you, I am nothing." Sarcasm laced his tone, "And I do not mean that in any melodramatic sense, Sarah. Without your thoughts, I will simply cease to exist. My Labyrinth is gone, my castle destroyed... and all this I could make anew, I could make perfect again. If you would just..."
He saw her unconsciously shaking her head "No" before she spoke, and he knew her answer.
"I'm sorry, Jareth. I can't come with you."
"Sarah, consider. I will give you everything... all your dreams."
"I think I can make my own dreams come true..."
"I see. Very well. I do hope that you don't feel guilty about this or anything. The potter doesn't feel bad about breaking the pots she marred in making, after all."
"Jareth..." she softly interrupted his sardonic rant.
"You might, if one could dare to ask, say the words again. I couldn't survive a second rendition. And at least it would be quicker than this."
"Jareth!" she said, loudly, standing up and intercepting his pacing with a palm to the chest.
"Oh, what?"
"You could let me finish. Sheesh. I don't need handouts from you, and I don't want to live in your Labyrinth. I can make my own dreams come true. But just because I can do it alone doesn't necessarily mean I want to." She hesitated, taking a deep breath before continuing, "You could stay here. With me. In the real world."
He looked at her in silence. In a rush, she continued, "You said you love me. Then be with me... but here. I'm offering you your dream, Jareth. I won't do as you say, but I won't make you be my slave, either." She smiled at him, the curve of her peach-hued lips sending daggers through his heart. "I'm too old to believe in Goblin Kings, much less love them, but I can believe in Jareth. Whoever he may be."
For a long moment, he considered.
And then he nodded, once, in agreement.
And then, for the first time, after a life spent in the murky dreams of humanity...
He woke up.
~*~
Author's note:
Hope you liked this: I decided to be nice and do J/S, as compensation for "Illusions". I don't think I directly ripped off anyone in this story, but just to be safe, there may be references to Neil Gaiman's "Harlequin: Valentine", there is an old song titled "You made me love you (I didn't want to do it)", and of course, J and S themselves don't belong to me. This story came to me while reading fics, in the form of the thought: "Hey, why does Sarah always have to leave home and go live in the Labyrinth? Isn't some give-and-take essential for a healthy relationship?" I've been considering using this as a prequel for my next long story, although that's quite a ways in the future. Plus the plotline I have in mind is pretty chintzy at this point: "She's a romantic young actress with a mysterious power. He's the seductive former King of the Goblins. They fight crime!" Or something. Anyway, I lurrve reviews so let me know what you thought of this. Thanks!
C. van A.