Author's Note: I am so, so sorry that this took almost a year to continue, but now that I have the summer I fully intend to continue it. This chapter is really more like 1.5, the bridge between last chapter's ending scene and the actual plot. As before, I do not own Jim Henson's intellectual property, and any oddities in Jareth's characterization are, I assure you, entirely deliberate.
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Deep in a book about the intricacies of theater history, which made only slightly more sense than it otherwise might have if it had been written in ancient Greek (and to be fair, it was about the ancient Greeks, but couldn't have the decency to get to the bits on orgiastic rituals quicker), Sarah didn't hear her roommate shouting at first. Propped up on her bed, she blinked as the door to their room flew open. In it stood Jules, panting, braced against the doorway, looking particularly ominous for a girl in sushi-print pajamas.
"Sarah! Turn your music down for once in your life – are you listening to David Bowie again? If I've told you once I've told you a hundred times – anyway. Come, right now, follow me into the bathroom so you can prove that I haven't gone insane and if I have then you can call the men in the white coats for me."
For a moment Sarah considered whether or not her friend had simply gotten into a caffeine-induced state of madness, after all, she was shaking, but then decided swiftly that if her friend had gone mad then she needed to have the coffeemaker taken away from her in very short order and anyway it wouldn't matter so much if she humored her. Snapping the book shut, she slid down to the floor and followed where beckoned, all the while listening to Jules mumble vaguely coherent things which, somehow, still managed to make more sense than the book she had been attempting to study. This exam was going to be an exercise in praying to every deity she could think of and, following her roommate's example, possibly Spongebob as well.
"I was just standing there, trying to brush my teeth, and you know me, brushing my teeth isn't exactly an invitation to show up and drive me crazy," Jules informed her breathlessly, before swinging around behind Sarah and shoving her into the bathroom with both hands flat on her back. "And there he was, looking like a bad imitation of a Twilight vampire, saying Sarah over and over again!"
At first, she saw absolutely nothing. The theory, which stated that precisely like last year at finals when Jules had gone mad after her fifth cup of coffee and invented a new sport involving vending machines, a tennis ball, and campus security, her friend must be seeing things now, was starting to hold enough weight to qualify for an international competition when she saw it. A flicker in the surface of the glass, which rippled until it formed a face. Sharp, proud, pale features, a pair of glittering, almost mismatched eyes, the color of a storm. The wild shock of pale hair, the streaks of color that climbed his features, and more importantly, the voice which spoke from them, were all too familiar.
"Sarah. Come back to me, Sarah…"
The name rose unbidden, as such things often do. Jareth. A face that had haunted her dreams for years, despite her own willingness to decide that it had been nothing more than a childish daydream. The idea that a Goblin King had kidnapped her brother, dragged her to another world, and introduced her to all manner of fantastical beings made even less sense in the real world than her textbook, and that was saying something. (Possibly, it was reciting Shakespeare, which was the next exam.) But there was no denying that she knew who this was, and for a figment of her imagination he was doing a bang-up job of not being imaginary at that very moment.
"I'm not going anywhere with you," she informed the face in the mirror stubbornly, folding her arms. "This isn't real. It's impossible, in fact." Yet whether it was impossible or possible, it continued to happen in utter defiance of the laws of reality. The face in the mirror laughed, a sound that reached out and ran across her skin in a soft ripple of unease. "Come back to you?" Sarah struggled to think of what the ending had been, but it had faded, as memories do, the edges nothing more than smoke. "I won. You let me go."
"Wait, you know the hallucination?" hissed a voice at her elbow.
"It's a long story, I'll tell you later."
"Really? Cause for a hallucination he's kinda ho – ow."
Elbowing her sharply, Sarah looked back up at the face in the mirror, watching as its lips twisted into a catlike grin. "Sarah. Still so defensive." A hand raised behind the glass, and she watched, with a mixture of horror and wonder, as it reached out through the surface, until one gloved set of long fingers reached through toward her. "Why don't we have our little chat alone. So much more intimate, don't you think?" Into its fingertips shimmered the round shape of a crystal, throwing rays as it caught the light through the window.
Sarah threw a hand up over her eyes, unaware that moments later she slid slowly to the floor.