Disclaimer: I don't own the Labyrinth, David Bowie, Lou Reed, Jennifer Connely, or Joan or Melissa Rivers Thank God!
Jade sighed as Jareth rushed to catch Sarah before she hit the floor. "Smashing, Jareth." She huffed. "Just bloody brilliant! Your people, our people, are dying and you scare the only hope we have to save them out of her bloody wits!"
Jareth scowled at his sister. "I didn't know she would faint." He said, hefting Sarah up and walking toward the bedroom. "Now let's get her comfortable somewhere and bring her round so we can fix this whole mess."
"The mess you caused, you mean?" Jade jibed.
"Oh just you shut up." Jareth growled and Sarah moaned in his arms. He looked at her and then back at his sister, his eyebrow raised. "There, see what you did!" Jade huffed but said nothing. They entered Sarah's bedroom and as Jareth made his way to lay its owner upon her bed, Jade stopped at the doorway and gaped at her surroundings.
"Oh, Jareth, what have you done to this girl?" she asked.
Jareth lifted his chin smugly. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean."
Jade lifted her arms and gestured wildly at the room. "This, Jareth, this is what I mean!" She ranted, pointing at the large mahogany four poster bed covered in soft black sheets. "And this!" This time she gestured toward a full length mirror that took up much of the far wall. "And those!" She pointed to a row of black pillar candles of varying heights that adorned the marble mantelpiece of the huge fireplace at the foot of the bed, and the rich leather chair that sat in front of it.
Again Jareth did his best to look innocent as he arranged Sarah comfortably on the bed. "I granted her certain…gifts….when she left our world." He told her. "Gifts she chooses to use on an almost daily basis. Because they are infused with my magic and my essence, they keep me in her thoughts and tend to exert portions of my personality on her. It manifests itself in strange places."
"Such as a compulsion to create an almost exact replica of your bedroom?" Jade asked in disbelief.
"Such as." Jareth said, innocently picking non existent dust particles off of the top of Sarah's head for want of anything else to busy himself with while he dodged his sister's annoying questions. Jade rolled her eyes and moved to the bed, taking Sarah's hand in hers.
"Sarah!" she called softly. "Sarah, wake up now, please." Sarah stubbornly remained passed out and Jade growled. She began to shake the girl gently. "Sarah! Come on now, we need you to wake up and write! This is no time to sleep, damn it!" Still Sarah was motionless. "By the Gods, Jareth." She sighed, exasperated.
Jareth pushed her not too gently out of the way. "Let me try." He said. Leaning close over Sarah he began to purr in her ear. "Come now, Sarah. Wake up!" He whispered, stroking her hair softly as he did so. His soft voice swam into her mind and pulled her towards it, towards him. Deep in her unconscious thoughts Sarah responded to this voice as she did nothing else, and she slowly followed its seductive timbre towards consciousness. She opened her eyes dreamily to find the Goblin King watching her with hooded lids. The smile she gave him was so enchanting that he never saw her hand coming until it had left its mark upon his cheek. He yelped in pain and jumped away from her. "What the hell…?"
Sarah sat up angrily in the bed. "That was for stealing my brother, and making me run your stupid Labyrinth, and the cleaners, and the bog, and everything else you did to me.
"Don't you mean for you, Sarah?" Jareth scowled and Sarah shot him and evil look.
"I'm not even going into that again!" she spat. Jade had been laughing hysterically until she noticed Sarah's attention was now directed at her. "And you!" She barked.
Jade jumped behind Jareth, peeking over his shoulder. "Me?" She said meekly.
"How dare you pretend to be a fan, pretend to be a friend, just so you can spy on me for him." Sarah shouted. At these words Jade's face twisted in righteous indignation and she stepped from behind her brother.
"I wasn't spying on you for him!" She said with a huff, pointing in Jareth's direction. "I assure you he's quite capable of spying on you all on his own. I really was a fan of your stories! They are quite lovely stories about my home, even if you did leave me out of all of them! Besides, I had to make sure you kept writing in order to safeguard the Underground."
Sarah stared at her, bewildered. "Huh?" she asked.
"Allow me to explain." Jareth said, sitting at the edge of the bed as Sarah pulled in her legs to make room for him. "Our world is build on magic, and magic is created in the imagination of humans. If humans stop believing, the magic dies, and so does The Underground, myself and Jade included. For a very long time you were the only human left that believed enough to infuse my world with the magic it needed to survive."
Sarah narrowed her eyes. "So what you're saying is I'm imagining you both."
Jareth shook his soft blond head. "No, no. We are quite real, but we can't live without your imagination. Just as you can't live without air."
"Ah." Sarah said, still completely clueless. "Well, since I obviously still believe in you, what is the problem?"
"The problem, Sarah, is that somewhere along the line you inexplicably picked up the idea that my world can't exist without music." Jareth said, shooting his sister a warning glare at the word inexplicably. "And now that you've removed the music from your stories, in your mind you have removed it from our world. And since you have imagined it as part of our life force, you've taken away part of our life force."
Sarah continued to stare at him blankly. "Let me put it another way." Jade continued, turning Sarah to face her. "You took out the music, and now everything in the Underground is dying."
"Dying?" Sarah gasped, understanding finally flaring behind her eyes.
"Yes." Jareth nodded sadly. "We've already lost all of the Fierys and most of the younger goblins. Even the Labyrinth's walls are beginning to crumble."
Sarah's eyes widened. "Oh, no! I did all that?" She asked.
Jareth took her hand. "You didn't mean to, Sarah. You didn't know." He said, wiping a stray tear from her eye. It meant a lot to him that he cared enough for his people to cry over them.
"What do I need to do to fix it." She asked, her face resolved.
"Put the music back in the stories." Jade said. "Make the Underground whole again, and you can stop the damage."
Without another word or thought Sarah jumped from the bed and headed back toward her study. Sitting down at the computer she began to pull the stories up, one by one adding the music back in. When she was done, she uploaded each one, songs and all, back to Fafinet. "What are you doing?" Jade asked. "I thought they had banned music?"
Sarah looked up at her, a mischievous twinkle in her eye. "The rule actually says complete song lyrics, so I left out a line here and there." She grinned. "Besides, the more people read this, the faster we fix the problem, right?"
Jade grinned. "I suppose." She said. As Sarah uploaded the last of the stories, Jareth reappeared, causing the two women to realize for the first time that he had left in the first place.
"It worked." He said, beaming, and Sarah jumped up happily, giving him an unexpected hug before regaining her composure.
"So its all fixed? The Fierys and baby goblins and everything are back?" She asked.
Jareth frowned. "Well no…not as such." He told her. "But the music's back, and the destruction has been halted."
Sarah looked at him sadly. "But they're all still dead?" she asked.
"Well, yes I'm afraid so Sarah." He said. "Death is pretty permanent. It would take more magic than even your vivid imagination can provide to reverse it."
Sarah slumped back in her chair, unshed tears threatening to spill over the rim of her eyes. Jareth knelt next to her, turning her hands over and kissing the palm of her hands gently. "You fixed the problem, Sarah. Nothing else will die. You should be happy." He told her.
"But I want to fix them all." She said quietly, more to herself than to him. They sat in silence for a long moment before Sarah spoke again. "Why did you grant me my dreams anyway?" She asked, and Jareth looked up at her confused.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"You offered me my dreams if I would agree to your terms, but I refused. You gave them to me anyway. Why?"
Jareth blushed. "Oh, I don't know." He said, standing, acutely aware that his sister was just as interested in his answer as Sarah was. "I suppose I realized that you were too young to understand what I was asking for. And I wanted to see you happy. You're very pretty when you smile."
"And you love her." Jade added and Jareth spoke before he realized what he was saying.
"Oh yes, there was that…oh wait a minute!" He caught himself too late, and turned to see a slightly awed expression on Sarah's face. Turning back to Jade he seethed impotently. "You tricked me!" He said, and was greeted with delighted laughter from his sister.
Sarah graciously let the comment go unmentioned…for now. "It's a good thing you did." She said cryptically and Jareth and Jade both spun around to look at her again.
"What?" They asked simultaneously.
"It's a good thing you gave me my dreams." She clarified. "Otherwise, I probably would have convinced myself it was all just my imagination, and eventually would have stopped believing. Or worse, forgotten altogether. But as it was, every time I sang a song or used a sword or rode a horse, I thought of you, and the Underground. I thought about it every day."
Jareth smiled and turned towards Jade, his arrogant smirk plastered to his face. "See." He said. "I saved the day."
Jade scowled. "That was just lucky." She pouted.
Suddenly Sarah had an idea. "Hey, hey! I have an idea!" she said. "If my imagination won't create enough magic to fix the damage, what about the imagination of millions of people?"
Jade smirked. "Sarah, your stories are good, but I don't think millions of people will read them."
"No, no, not Fafinet. I'm so over them." Sarah said. She stood and was waving her arms excitedly. Her creative juices were flowing, and she was relishing the adrenalin rush. "I'll write a screenplay about my trip through the Labyrinth. We'll turn it into a movie!"
Jareth scowled in confusion, but Jade's eyes began to light up as well. "Sarah, that's bloody brilliant!" she breathed. "A movie about the Labyrinth! If we did it right, millions of people would see it! The Underground would have enough magic to fuel it for thousands of years! And certainly enough to repair the damage that was done."
"And bring back the Fierys?" Sarah asked.
"Fierys and all." Jade said. "Do you really think you could get it done?" She continued, ignoring Jareth's confusion.
"Oh, I'm sure I could." Sarah said. "With your help, of course. And I'll ask David Bowie to play Jareth, he'd be perfect."
Jade squealed with unrestrained glee. "Oh, you're right, he would! They even look a lot alike. But do you think he'd do it?"
"I'm going to an art opening with him and Lou Reed next week, I'll talk to him about it then. But I'm sure if I offer to let him write all the music for it he'll jump at the chance. He's a bit of a ham, you know."
Jareth had kept his mouth shut up until now, having no idea what they were talking about, but this caught his attention. "Wait a minute, if anyone is writing music it will be me." He said.
Jade looked down her nose at him as though he were a new species of insect she was not previously aware of. "Are you kidding? When we could have David Bowie? I've heard the stuff you write."
"Some of it was pretty good, actually." Sarah said, and the turned to see her staring dreamily into space. Jareth smirked at his sister and she crossed her arms and turned away from him.
"Fine." She said. "Maybe the two of you can collaborate. I'd love to sit in on that conversation." She snickered a bit at the thought of trying to squeeze those two super egos into the same room, let alone the same song.
Sarah had gathered herself together and was once again all business. She turned to her computer screen and began to type.
Two Years Later:
Joan Rivers stared into the camera as she spoke over the din of screaming fans. "We're here live at Mann's Chinese Theater for the opening of the new Jim Henson film, 'The Labyrinth,' which has received critical acclaim. Here come the film's stars now making their way down the red carpet: David Bowie and the young actress that's taking Hollywood by storm, miss Jennifer Connely."
Melissa Rivers smiled woodenly at her mother. "And here comes the films writer, world renowned actress Sarah Williams, arm in arm with her new husband, Jeremy Kingsly, who as I understand wrote the score for the movie."
"He did indeed, Melissa." Joan said. "And aren't they the cutest couple? But I have to say, that hairstyle of his and those tight pants are definitely a fashion don't."
Meanwhile, Underground, the Fierys danced around a roaring bonfire, their voices raised raucously into the night.
A/N: Okay, well, that's it! I hope you enjoyed it! It was silly, it was short, and now its over. Back to more serious persuits. BTW, I hope everyone understood that Jeremy Kingsly was Jareth. I get so sick of 'Jared King.' Thanks to everyone who reviewed, thanks to everyone who read, and thanks to everyone for being such lovely people!
Please tell me what you thought about the ending.
