A/N: Hi. Wow. I cannot thank you enough for all the reviews and favorites! I was incredibly sick this last week with bronchitis and could barely keep my eyes open to type coherent review replies, and your reviews and favorites cheered me to no end. Thank you!
As for this chapter…it is another prologue of sorts. A transition chapter if you will. It sets the stage for where we will actually be in this story. I am not going to apologize though because I actually like this chapter. I hope you enjoy it as well.
Please let me know what you think! I'm still not 100% healthy—reviews are like chicken noodle soup you know!
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**Dream Girl**
One thousand years is a long time to wait for a heroine to come in and save you. And when your job requires that you stand at the entrance of the Labyrinth, refusing admittance to all who are unworthy, you don't have much of an opportunity to look on your own. Hoggle had given up.
Oh, when Jareth first banished him to his new life, Hoggle fought it. He hiked his way to his father's kingdom and begged admittance. But no one recognized him. Even his voice had changed—gone was the melodious baritone of his cultured upbringing, in its place was a gravelly grumble that forever sounded like he was congested. So when Hoggle came to the door claiming to be Prince Rameth, the guards threw him out on his rear, chastising him for telling such a bold-faced lie when the king was grieving the loss of his only son. The same happened as he attempted to visit friend after friend. No one would see a vagabond dwarf.
Friendless, dejected, and nursing a bruised tailbone, Hoggle limped his way back to the gatehouse. At least he had a warm place to sleep and eat.
As the years went on, Hoggle grew more and more detached from society. No one outside of the runners would speak to him, and the runners were degrading more often than not. His speech grew rougher, his posture frailer, and his manners coarser out of disuse. He became comfortable in his new skin until even he forgot Prince Rameth. His only joy was the bag of jewels he carried at his waist—a gift from the king. Perhaps it had been given out of spite, but Hoggle treasured them as a reminder that he wasn't always a penniless gatekeeper. Of his former life he remembered little, but he knew that he was more than what he seemed.
Even if no one else did.
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Need.
Love.
When speaking about relationships, the two are synonymous…aren't they?
Sarah said she needed him. Hoggle. By name. 'I need you, Hoggle,' she said. She had hugged him—multiple times—and kissed him. What greater proof of her love did Jareth need?
That rat was probably looking for a loophole to get out of lifting his curse! Going to make her actually say the words, "I love you, Hoggle." Well, that wasn't the deal! The deal was that she needed to love him, not that she needed to say she loved him. And she did love him. Didn't she?
Hoggle pondered these thoughts and more as he sat in the corner observing the goblin "victory" party in full swing. Somehow Jareth had left open the portal between the Underground and Above so that Sarah's friends could pass through and communicate with her. Hoggle had never heard of him doing that before. But then again, Sarah was the first runner to make it to the castle so she set the precedence. And she had caught the Goblin King's attention.
"Hoggle, what are you doing over here by yourself? It's a party! Come dance with me," Sarah requested, dragging Hoggle to his feet and forcing him out of his self-imposed pity party. Grabbing his hands, she pulled him to the center of the rug in her bedroom, oblivious to the confused glances the other goblins were sending her way—especially from those who normally littered Jareth's throne room floor. Hoggle noticed and he wanted to stick his tongue out at them. They were just jealous was all.
Sarah and Hoggle's height difference made dancing awkward, but her radiant smile melted his heart and he found himself smiling back shyly. Sarah swayed with him as if he were a child, stretching his arms out alternately in mockery of the dance style known as "the twist" and occasionally turning herself. It could have been deemed emasculating had Sarah not carried an aura of innocence around her like a cloak. Instead, Hoggle focused on her hands in his. She was strong and brave, yet he would do anything to protect her. All that mattered was that she had sought him out of the crowd of "friends". She had chosen Hoggle. Obviously, she loved him.
No matter what that rat, Jareth tried to pull, Hoggle was ready. There was one thing for which Hoggle was certain: Sarah Williams was worth fighting for.
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"He can't have her," Jareth fumed in his avian form as he flew off into the distant moon, the light cloaking his transition back to the Underground. "Now more than ever."
He materialized in the center of his throne room, his clothes changing from the white of his owl cloak to the midnight black of his battle armor in an instant. If Hoggle wanted a fight, Jareth would give him one.
Sarah had been his vision since he first learned of her nearly 10 years earlier. She was a Dreamer—one of those rare individuals who could cross over to his world in her sleep. Most Dreamers went to one of the other kingdoms to visit the more exotic lands of the Underground, only crossing into his realm during a "nightmare". Jareth knew of all their visits—as keeper of the portal, he sensed their passing—but rarely did he bother following them. In their dreamstates they were harmless and not worth the effort.
But Sarah was different. Five year old Sarah dreamed herself into the throne room of the Goblin King.
And smiled.
It was the first genuine smile Jareth had seen in nearly a thousand years and he was immediately infatuated with the child. How could she look pleased in the face of such monsters?
..
'Hello,' he had whispered cautiously, almost afraid he was imagining the dark haired vision.
'Hello,' she answered brightly, her voice ringing like an angel's wings through the unusually silent throne room. Her smile increased in her excitement. 'You're him, aren't you? You're the Goblin King.'
Jareth's eyebrows rose in surprise of her knowledge—she not only smiled when facing goblins, but she actually dreamt herself there on purpose! However he had gathered his wits about him by that time and was able to school his expression to hide his fascination. His voice was full of authority when he responded to her inquiry. 'I am. And you are…?'
'Sarah,' she said simply, finally opting to take in her surroundings. Jareth snapped his whip scepter at a few of the goblins who reached in to touch this oddity, already feeling possessive of the child. His subjects took the hint and scattered to the walls, peering down at her from ledge outcroppings, but maintaining their unnatural silence.
Sarah looked back at the king, the wonderment on her face never ceasing. 'You're my favorite, you know. Mommy says you're the bad guy, but I don't believe her. Bad guys don't turn the world upside down for the princesses—they just take 'em and lock 'em up in dungeons.'
Jareth, of course, had no idea what she was talking about, but he listened with an attentive ear anyway until her dream ended and she disappeared, leaving him enchanted and, if he was honest with himself, terrified that she would never come back.
..
Yet she had come back. She visited often in her sleep through the years. Eventually Jareth came to understand that a book had been passed down through mother to daughter for centuries, detailing a young girl's journey through the Labyrinth and battling the Goblin King. Although Sarah loved to play the part of the heroine when acting out her little fantasies in the park, her subconscious was fascinated by the kingdom and its king. Too bad the subconscious and the conscious mind didn't speak.
Sarah didn't know him. The little girl whom he'd spent years getting acquainted with was hidden somewhere within that young woman's body. Intellectually he knew dream Sarah and waking Sarah were the same. He'd watched her often enough Above to know that dream Sarah was very similar to how she was awake. But she didn't know him! Oh, she recognized him from that damn book, but waking Sarah wasn't aware of their friendship. She had no idea that she had spent nearly every night with him for over ten years. That he had watched her grow from an angelic child into a young lady on the verge of womanhood. And she most definitely wasn't aware of his plans to bring her to him indefinitely when the time was right.
He should have paid closer attention to that book. Until Sarah had wished away Toby, Jareth had assumed it had merely been written by one of the very unlucky visitors to the Labyrinth that actually retained enough fragments of her memory to make an adventure story of it. Fairytales of goblins were abundant, he hadn't worried that this was the first he'd seen mention their king. And even after Sarah called on the goblins, he wasn't overly concerned, however inconvenient it may have been. She was not the first to wish away a child, nor would she be the last.
It wasn't until she spoke the spell that sent her home that he began to worry. All he knew for certain was that only the person to whom he gave his heart could have spoken that spell. No other runner could have opened the gates to the Above—of course, no other runner would have been taken to the portal between worlds. Only a Dreamer could enter there in bodily form and Sarah was the only Dreamer to have challenged the Labyrinth.
Damn that book!
He needed to know how that story came into her family's possession. How did the person who wrote the book know that the Goblin King would fall in love with the girl? Who wrote the spell that made her into another key? And what did they intend do with her now that she had unlocked the portal?
Jareth paced his throne room, the depression that normally accompanied his time in the once resplendent hall magnified tenfold. Did he give his heart to Sarah because she was in possession of that book, or was she given the book because the Fates had already determined he would give her his heart? A man could go crazy chasing those circles!
He kicked a nearby goblin in frustration, though it did little to ease his concern. He didn't consider the action a cruelty. These weren't his citizens, these were shadows of the glorious beings that had been drawn to dwell in his lands. His people had once been the mighty defenders of the Underground, now they were the laughingstocks. There was nothing left within them to remind him of what they once were. His subjects would have been able to protect Sarah from the unknown danger waiting for her. These goblins were incompetent fools.
Damn goblins!
He kicked a little spiky one with bug eyes and watched as it flew through the center of the room…right past Sarah.
He stopped midstride and stared. His Sarah had returned, wearing the billowy white gown from her induced dream. It was the one time during her run that Jareth was able to bring Sarah's subconscious mind to the forefront. For those few minutes, Sarah knew him—or at least, knew that she should know him. And that dream had stuck with her, passing to her subconscious as a pleasant memory.
Sarah smiled as the goblin landed behind her, her eyes twinkling with mirth at the Goblin King's tantrum. With that smile, Jareth's mind calmed. She had returned. That was what he had most feared—should waking Sarah have limitless contact with his subjects, would she still need to come in her dreams? The answer was yes. To see him.
Jareth's battle armor melted away to the suit he wore in the ballroom. The goblins disappeared as their king moved closer to his dream girl, drinking in the emerald jewels of her eyes. She didn't look nervous as she had earlier. She knew him. She welcomed his approach as an equal. Dream Sarah was far older than her years. Jareth held her gaze as he began circling her, melting into the dance effortlessly without a word being uttered. They moved in abject silence twirling through an endless waltz, dancing between the stars.
Sarah's waking self may need the coward, but the Goblin King held her heart.
And he was not going to give it up.
