DISCLAIMER: I don't own anything connected to the Labyrinth and I don't get any money for this story. Please don't sue me…
Please be nice to me, ya'll, this is my first fanfic ever and it just might be terrible. Please review!!! Tell me if it's worth writing more, and if this is too long ( I think it might be for only 1 chapter.) Positive and negative feedback wanted! Thanks ~ mari
Kingdom Keepers
Sarah walked into the busy café juggling her burden of books along with a backpack and headphones. No one even seemed to notice as she walked in—it was the norm at Laura's for college students to drag their studying out of their dorm room and head to this popular spot hoping that the combination of coffee, noise and bright lights would keep them awake and help them learn enough to pass. There was even the hope of finding someone else that had certain notes from a certain history lecture during which a certain freshman had fallen asleep…
Sarah dumped her books onto the corner of the Formica counter that hugged the farthest two walls of the busy café and flopped down onto one of the high-legged chairs set across its length. Then she swiveled around to search the crowds for Jack.
Her friend may put on the act of being a slacker who had barely made it to his junior year, but Sarah knew he was smart enough to put forth that image while still doing incredibly well, especially in the things that interested him. She had met him in Advanced History of Mythology and Early Religion, a class that her counselor had told her not to take as a freshman. He had ended up being the one who had helped her through studying for a plethora of exams doing well enough to prove a point to that same counselor. And to herself.
Sarah had never been one to back down from a challenge.
Besides, she had ulterior motives in choosing that particular class. The curriculum included studies of ancient religions and how so-called "magic" occurrences had helped shape their development and provide a seeming factual basis for religious claims. Many of the phenomenons these religions worshipped weren't much more than things like lightening storms, solar flares and earthquakes. Sarah had trouble admitting to herself that she was hoping for just a shred of something magical that her professor would say he couldn't refute or deny.
When she was younger, she had dreamed that magic was possible. She had been waiting for a white knight, or a friendly fairy to remove her from the everyday world where parent's stopped loving each other, other children made fun of quiet schoolmates, and stepmother's told their stepdaughters that nothing magical was real and dream worlds were silly places to live.
And somehow her dreams had been enough for a magical world to open up to her, and when it did it was beyond anything Sarah could have imagined. However, despite what she had endured, the friends she had made and the courage she had found in herself, her memories of that world were starting to dim.
All but one.
Sometimes, when she was the least ready for it, memories of the person who brought her into the magical world of the goblins and the labyrinth would surface and she would find her heart racing and feel like the world could crumble around her. The power of time past would dull the excitement and the terror of the world of the Labyrinth when she was in class, or at Laura's or with her friends. She controlled her own world when she was awake. But, more and more often, Jareth controlled her dreams.
Sometimes the dreams were of being lost in the dark labyrinth. Sometimes they were happy dreams of the friends she had found there. And sometimes they were dreams of the goblin king, and she was dancing in his arms.
Those were the dreams that scared her the most, because she had convinced herself she shouldn't think of Jareth and his labyrinth. She had always felt detached from the real world, but something deep inside her told her that if she gave in to her dreams about that magical world she would end up there again, or spend her whole life half-fearing and half-wishing she would. Instead she tried to surround herself with the "real" world, which was why she was here at Laura's in the middle of a million conversations and lives just listening and daydreaming and trying to study.
And waiting for Jack.
Jack knew that Sarah had nightmares. She had confided in him after she had fallen asleep during a lecture, exhausted from studying for a Chemistry test, and he had been the one to wake her up. He saw the terror in her eyes before she could hide it, and ever since then he had been trying to protect her from it. All she would tell him was that she had nightmares about something that had happened to her in the past. He knew she was hiding something from him. Sarah was grateful for the way he looked after her now, making sure she went out when she was thinking about school or Jareth too much, swapping notes for classes, giving her tips on professors he had had before her. Sarah didn't know what she would do without Jack, or for that matter, her roommate, Clare.
Suddenly, a hand clamped down on her shoulder.
Sarah started out of her thoughts and whirled around in her chair, knocking one of her books onto the floor.
"Dreaming again?" Jack asked lightly. He looked concerned, despite his joking tone.
"Just thinking about the exam and Professor Parks lecture."
Jack looked at her, and then shrugged, as if deciding to believe her. He set down a sheaf of notes in his messy, masculine, but, as Sarah had found, readable handwriting, and reached down to pick up the book that had fallen.
"Thanks, Jack. I have got to stop falling asleep during lectures. Parks is sure to notice someday and he'll probably start talking about my pitiful essays until I wake up or something. Anyways, I don't think I can strand studying much longer, and these are all I have left to go over…" Sarah trailed off, realizing that Jack wasn't listening. "Jack?"
He was sitting in the chair next to her, looking intently through the book that had fallen on the floor. Sarah studied him quietly, noting his careless good looks and commanding manner. She loved Jack for the friend he was to her, but didn't feel it was fair to try to have a relationship with him while she still thought of Jareth so much no matter how hard she tried not to. Then Sarah caught a glimpse of the books cover and had to keep herself from shouting at him.
She quickly reached out and slid the book from his hands. Shutting it tightly she tried to look careless as she tucked it out of sight beneath some papers.
"I don't think anything in there is going to be on the test, Sare." He said, giving her an odd look. "It's fiction, for one thing. Where did you even find it? It's not a library book."
Fiction. Sure.
Sarah didn't look at him as she answered. "I thought it might have some information in it on something Professor Parks mentioned. I was wrong." How could she explain that the little red book had captured her attention days before when she had left home after visiting for the weekend and she had been carrying it in her backpack ever since?
"Sarah, if you don't pass the exam with all this studying, you're not going to pass it. Read over those notes, and come out with me tonight. You'll do better if you stop worrying about everything. Besides, I want to spend time with you alone, when you're not thinking about studying or your family or whatever the hell it is you daydream about all the damn time."
"Jack, I can't." Sarah answered shortly.
Jack's smile faded, and he stood up abruptly. "Fine."
Sarah watched as he walked away.
************************************************************************
The phone was ringing when Sarah pushed open the door of her dorm room. There was no sign of Clare, though the clothes strewn across the room suggested she had gone out after changing her mind several times about what she should wear. Sarah had decided to let the machine pick up, when she remember that Clare had broken it that morning when she reached out to turn off her alarm clock and knocked it to the floor. She dumped her books on the bed, and grabbed in the direction of the blinking light that indicated the ringing phone, cursing herself for not turning on the light, but worried that whoever it was would hang up.
"Hello?" she finally managed into the phone, flopping onto the bed.
"Umm…Can I please talk to Sarah?" said a child's voice hesitantly.
"It's me. Who's this…Toby? Toby, is that you?"
"I learned how to use the phone." Toby answered her proudly.
"Toby! Is Daddy there with you?"
"Yup. Daddy told the numbers and I pressed them and then I have to talk to the phone and I can talk to you. I miss you, Sari!"
"I miss you, Toby. What have you been up to?"
"I played soccer today."
"Really…" Sarah listened then as four-year-old Toby chattered on about his first soccer practice (he kicked the ball), his new toy train (red, and big enough for him to ride) and the peanut butter and jelly sandwich (no crusts, too much jelly) he had eaten for lunch. Sarah had grown to adore her little brother in the two years before she left for college. If the Labyrinth was the darkest, most secret part of her life, Toby was the best thing to come out of it and she didn't have to hide the fact that the experience had made her love him when she hadn't thought she ever would. After all, it wasn't his fault he had Karen for a mother any more than it was her fault that Dad had married her.
"and Daddy says it's his turn to talk to you now and can I please stop talking for two seconds and let you say goodbye to me…can I call you again tomorrow I am taking good care of Lancelot and Merlin and…"
Toby's voice was cut off and her father's voice could be heard over the line.
"I'll tell Toby you told him goodnight and go to bed. He only listens if we tell him that anyway. You are doing a lovely job of raising him all the way up there at college."
Sarah laughed. She wasn't always on nearly as good terms with her father as with Toby, but Toby's chatter had made her forget her classes and Jack and put her in a good mood. "What would you do without me?" she joked. "How are you?"
"I'm alright, but I really called for Toby. He's really been missing you, not that I don't miss you too. It was good for him to talk to you…Toby?"
Sarah heard a scratching noise as her father's hand covered the mouthpiece of the phone, and strained to make out the muffled words being exchanged between father and son.
"Dad?" she ventured, but the talking continued. Finally, her father returned.
"Sarah, Toby says he forgot to tell you something. He gets two more minutes, and then we'll hang up. So I'll say goodbye now."
"Bye Dad."
"Bye sweetie, we'll call again soon. Here's Toby."
"Sarah? I forgetted to tell you, wanna guess what I saw?"
"What, Toby?"
"I saw a BIG bird." Toby shouted the words, as if to convey just how big the bird really was."
"Really? Did you go to the zoo?"
"No. It came to see me. It's gonna come see you too. I told it where you live."
"Is that so?" Sarah said politely, trying not to make fun of his imaginary encounter. "Does your friend have a name?"
"Its name is Jareth and it's big and white and it has some gray feathers and…"
Toby continued on, trying to make the most of his two minutes while Sarah listened wordlessly, her heart pounding. Her dreams were finding a way to become real in her life, and, even worse, in Toby's.
"Sarah? Sarah?" Sarah heard Toby's little voice as if it were far away. "Daddy says I have to go now. Love you, Sarah, 'night!"
There was a rattling and a click when Toby finally managed to place the phone onto the receiver.
Sarah turned off the phone and flung it in the general direction of the base. It landed on the floor, uttering a loud crack as it hit the cheap wood floor. The darkness that had seemed so friendly with Toby's voice piping at her from miles away, now seemed to be concealing something sinister.
Sarah glanced through the ratty screen of the open window across the room as if something were about to crawl inside. Suddenly, she heard a mocking voice in her head.
To be frightened of shadows and open windows, Sarah! If someone from our world wanted to reach you, mortal boundaries would not stop them.
Suddenly, the voice seemed very real. It wasn't Sarah's own thoughts taunting her, but someone else. Someone close. Sarah quickly sat up and started, as if to run for the light switch, but the dark space between her bed and the door seemed to stretch on forever, stopping her.
Do you even know what it is you should be frightened of, sweet Sarah…
The voice was closer, and suddenly, familiar. Would she remember Jareth's voice after so long, even now when the Labyrinth felt so far away? Somehow, it didn't seem like Jareth. She would know the voice that haunted her dreams, and this wasn't it.
Then, where there had been shadows, there was suddenly something, someone, standing there in the shadows in front of her. A soft voice began to speak, a voice that sounded of excitement and anger, deadly, but calculatingly controlled.
"I tried to make it easy for you, Sarah. I tried to be your friend. You blocked me from doing this any other way. You're important to my plans, to what has to happen in my world, the world of your Labyrinth. I would tell you not to be afraid, but you're smart enough to realize you have every reason to be."
Sarah tried to speak, to shout at the man standing before her, but she found she couldn't speak or move, as if her whole body were under his control. All she could do was stare fearfully with tears coming to her eyes. The man before her may be wearing clothes now more suited for her childhood fairy tales than a college café, but there was no mistaking her best friend, her protector, who she cared for, but could never quite love…
Jack muttered some words, and, moments later, disappeared from the small dorm room, Sarah's limp body in his
arms.
Review, Review, please!! Don't you want to know what happens next, well, I refuse to post anymore before I know if ya'll think it's worth it. Thank you!!!