Authors Note: This is my first fanfiction so please bear with me! All reviews and comments very welcome,I am a great believer in constructive criticism! Apologies in advance for any mistakes! I have rated this T incase further chapters may require a higher rating.
Complete Summary: Sarah has had 7 years to forget about the Labyrinth, she has had plenty of other things to keep her mind busy. Yet she could never let the memories leave her and now that her family is in ruins and her life is in tatters, she calls on old friends in the hopes of finding a place in the universe again...the Underground was never meant to be ruled by Jareth alone.
Disclaimer: I do not own the Labyrinth or any of the songs, characters or ideas.
Chapter 1 – I Still Need You
He watched her intently through the open window. Exquisite though she was, there was a coldness about her which saddened him. She no longer exuded the confidence or playful arrogance of a sort, which he remembered her to have. Was it he who had killed her internal fire, the feisty young ideals which she appeared to have discarded? He knew her mind was plagued by the memory of him still and he felt guilt. Such guilt which forced him to be there. At her window. Night after night.
Should she need him.
She wouldn't though, he was sure of it. Her life was just as perfect as she needed it to be and the Labyrinth was just a long ago journey in her distant memories. He never gave up hope however. He had seen her various suitors come and go, he had seen the disappointment in her eyes when they were never quite good enough. Never quite matching the perfection she strived for…even once had the opportunity to have.
Sarah needed perfection but he was not it, not a man who insisted upon giving her her dreams…but only those that would be better off in her head. This man had tricked her, tormented her, thrust her into a race against time which she would always despise him for. But her hatred was all on the surface, deep inside she knew very well what he had done for her. Taking Toby was, to him, the most generous thing he could do, but only for such a short time it was not worth the effort. Sarah knew that to forget about the baby would have been like trying to forget those who loved you. Once you knew they were there, they were irreplaceable. And for all her air head ideas and childish fantasies, at 15 she had known very well what was right and wrong. Known very well that to wish your brother away was not acceptable at all.
Jareth had never seen life like she did or lived in a society with her rules; he couldn't understand the need to put dreams second to reality because his reality was his dreams. His pure, childish, selfishness had alienated the only person he wanted to please, yet they both knew he wasn't selfish. Just forever hers, for whatever she needed him for. Consequence was no issue.
Sarah stared long and hard into the mirror. The reflection was wrong. It showed a stranger, the stranger inside whom she was trapped. Her exterior was hardened; a look of snobbery and propriety wrapped itself possessively around her features, ageing her far beyond her 21 years. She knew the problem, to her it was as plain as day. She had grown up far to fast; her experiences with her brother on the night that changed her life had forced her to re-evaluate her world. Maturity had never been her forte and to force it upon herself that night had confused every part of her, had scarred every pore, every thought, and every breath. She had always been such a wonderful actress and had convinced herself she needed to put away the books, the toys and the trinkets, not stopping the performance long enough to see the damage, the need to slow down. She had been young and beautiful; a certain amount of immaturity had been her prerogative. She denied herself her last guilty pleasures, growing up so fast to punish herself for an accidental slip, the words she had spoken in a moment of anger…I wish the goblins would come and take you away…right now…
Little had she known the wrong she had incurred while speaking those words was instantly righted the moment she gave up his offer of her dreams and compounded at the moment she had resisted him, seconds before the 13 hours were finished. She hadn't known what she was giving up then, the man of her dreams maybe? Had he been the one she would always compare others to?
If he came to her now would she want him?
She shook her head violently and knew that she was being ridiculous. She had done the right thing, the only thing she could do. It shook her to her core to think of her father and Karen, coming home to find both beds empty, their children gone without a trace. To stay in the Underground, to give into to Jareth…it had never been an option.
A cold hand tugged at her heart as she thought about Jareth. She could barely remember his face, yet the memory of his mannerisms, arrogance and blood chilling presence would always remain etched somewhere inside. With great bewilderment it had occurred to her somewhere along the way it hadn't mattered what he looked like, it wasn't his features she looked for in men in the Aboveground. It was the presence, the arrogance, the way he had spoken to her…just everything that made him…him. Made him great – made him a king – that was what she was looking for. With a heavy heart she had realized she would never find that up here. Jareth was one of a kind.
She often wished he would return to her, she had tried wishing various things to him on many occasions; the Underground was a place she felt she needed to see again. Just one last time. She needed those friends, the friends that had each given her a piece of themselves during their quest which she had hoped she would hold onto eternally, yet as the years had passed, the faces faded and she could no longer remember their voices. Sarah had called to each of them in turn, puzzled as to why they didn't answer her as she still lived in her father's home – even though no one was there – and could still call them through the very same mirror she had used once before to tell them how much she needed them and would need them through out her years.
Three years after her experience within the Labyrinth, her father had be killed on his way home from a family meal, Karen was in the front seat next to him and was lucky to have survived, although no one could have wished upon her the pain she had gone through in return for that luck - losing her husband, her site and her ability to walk or even communicate as she had done before - the only light within the black expanse of the tragedy had been Toby. Although he was not entirely unharmed, he was alive and still himself. He had shattered his right arm and was lucky to have kept it, but had lost both parents, literally and figuratively.
Sarah looked away form the mirror and stood. Her bedroom looked bare, the home comforts long gone. This was a room for her grown self, all childhood trinkets packed lovingly but firmly in boxes in the attic. She glanced at her bed and the little red book lying sedately, almost forlornly, on her quilt. The Labyrinth. She couldn't bear to look at it. She had tried to give it to Toby, but remembering little of his encounters with its characters threw it carelessly into a draw where it had remained until he had left the house for school. He had moved to a private boarding school only two months earlier as Sarah couldn't care for him sufficiently, she wasn't his mother and he hated her for it. He had become such a nasty, depressed little scab, as much as she hated to admit it. It was all she could do not to slap him one minute and scoop him up in such a huge hug he would never escape her the next.
The decision had come to find a way to get him out of the town which constantly reminded him of what he had lost, when Toby had come home one day and asked Sarah to end it all and set him free. He had spoken of how the places they had gone as a family, the shops Karen had dragged him to, the parks they had laughed and played in…the road they had been broken on…the people who constantly asked Sarah in his presence – 'How is he?'- reminded him continually of what he had lost and after 4 years he had had enough of not being allowed to let go. His 8 year old brain was so mature; he had broken Sarah's heart all over again.
'I need you Hoggle, I need all of you…please…' Once more, she told herself as the words came as a whisper from her mouth, I'll call just one more time.