Chapter 1 (Sarah): Between The Click Of The Light And The Start Of The Dream
Everyone was counting on her. Sarah could feel herself beginning to crumble under the pressure of it—her whole team just staring at her. Waiting.
"No one knows?" The host teased, their needling voice like a cheese grater on her nerves.
Seconds stretched that felt like hours as Sarah avoided eye contact with everyone around her. They needed her, and she was failing them all.
And then—there it was. Out of the answer-less chasm that had been her mind, it finally came to her.
"Sand," Sarah mumbled triumphantly. "The answer is sand."
"The answer to what, Sarah?" one of her teammates asked, their obtuse amusement needling at Sarah's already tattered patience. Weren't they paying attention? The stakes were high!
Sarah tossed an annoyed look in their direction, but no one stood beside her. She looked around to find herself alone in the bar that had been overwhelmingly full of leering patrons moments before.
She frowned. How odd. And that voice—something about it had made her feel strange, the effect of it lingering as she tried to focus on who had spoken.
Sarah's eyes flew open, and it was only then she realized they had been closed. She blinked at her ceiling as her mind tried to orient itself. She was grasping at a vague memory of someone asking her something when she caught movement in the corner of her eye.
Sleepiness still tugged at her thoughts, and she didn't feel particularly rushed to identify the source of the motion. She was still trying to remember something but couldn't recall what it had been. She gave up with a small huff of frustration and let her head roll to the side.
Her confused frown deepened upon seeing the pile of clean laundry she had abandoned on her reading chair the night before. But it wasn't the evidence of her half-assed adulting that bothered her, urging her from slumber—it was the Goblin King casually sprawled on top of it. His expression was that of someone patiently waiting for a response.
Adrenaline stirred in her body as Jareth came into sharper focus. His eyes were waiting for hers, cool and assessing.
"What?" was all she could manage, the word tumbling from her mouth before her brain had a chance to catch up.
Jareth sighed as though quite bored with her dense response. When he spoke again, it was with forced slowness. "To what question is the answer, 'sand'?"
She stared at him, baffled. "I don't know, Jareth. 'What are very small rocks for three hundred?'"
To her surprise, he laughed. A rich cadence to it that sounded frayed with tension around the edges. "It's not a riddle. Just now, you said, 'The answer is sand.'"
Sarah frowned. Any memory of what she had been saying in her sleep had faded entirely. "I must have been dreaming."
"You must have been," he agreed, examining a gloved hand before locking eyes with her again. "You still are, by the way."
"I see," she said, plopping back on the pillow. "Figures."
Jareth made a soft exhalation, somewhere between a scoff and a chuckle. "And what does that mean?"
"I've been thinking about you." She shrugged and pulled up her covers, tucking herself in. "So now I'm dreaming about you. That's how dreams work." Her explanation held the air of someone breaking down 1+1=2.
Jareth regarded Sarah with the same calm familiarity that had so disarmed her in her youth. The way he stared put a pit in her stomach like she had overshared somehow, somewhere along the way. It was like running into an old friend who, only the night before, had been a stranger in a bar she had spilled all her secrets to.
There was a slight smile curving the corner of his mouth. "You aren't dreaming about me. I am in your dream," he corrected.
She flicked an unconcerned wrist in his direction, snuggling deeper into her blankets. "Semantics," she told him, convinced her overactive imagination was working double-time.
"If you say so," he said blithely, stretching his long legs with the casualness of a cat. A few articles of laundry fell to the floor, and he glanced at them, unconcerned, before meeting Sarah's gaze again.
Sarah squinted at him suspiciously. He sounded like Jareth, he looked like Jareth—all frills and tight pants, but he didn't quite seem like the Goblin King she remembered. Despite his nonchalance, she couldn't help but feel it was forced. And when she took the time to look at him, she realized he appeared more unkempt than before—his hair a little more frantic, his clothing slightly disheveled in a way she was sure he would have found undignified. And there was something about that strange tightness in his voice that permeated through his indifference.
Warning alarms sounded off in her brain, screaming that she would never dream of Jareth like this. "You're…you?" she asked, though she already had accepted the answer.
Jareth sighed and closed his eyes briefly as though pleading with the powers that be for patience. "That is what I have been trying to tell you."
Sarah sat up. "Well, you should have led with that instead of being all"—she broke off, gesturing broadly at him while she thought of the right descriptor—"slippery."
He sent her a wicked smirk. "Slippery, am I?"
Sarah felt her cheeks flush at his sudden, piercing attention as his eyes lingered on her cheeks for a moment too long before breaking away to scan her room.
His gaze halted on an opened cardboard box, and he stared pointedly at it, his smirk stretching into a sharp grin. 'Labyrinth Stuff' was hand-printed on the side in bubble letters. A heart dotted the i.
"So," Jareth said, steepling his fingers. "You have been thinking of me."
Her ears burned with embarrassment. She'd wanted to do this on her terms, and here he was, stepping all over her plans. "I thought I was dreaming when I said that," she grumbled.
"You were dreaming, and you still are," he reminded her unhelpfully.
Sarah huffed and crossed her arms over her chest. She had so many questions but wasn't sure where to start. She opted to glare at him for a long, tense moment before asking the most obvious one. "What are you doing here?"
Jareth's tight expression loosened—something like regret softening the hard lines around his mouth and eyes. "I've come to ask a favor of you," he told her.
She blinked at him before a nervous laugh bubbled up from her throat. "Seriously?" she said. "I don't even get a cursory greeting, like"—her voice lowered and took on a lyrical inflection that loosely resembled Jareth's baritone—"''Good to see you, Sarah, after all this time. I see you're a twenty-eight-year-old entire adult now. Well done. You'll notice I haven't changed in the slightest.'"
Jareth sneered, and Sarah couldn't tell if it was out of mock offense or true vexation. "I do not sound like that," he defended.
"You do," Sarah assured him, though she knew he didn't. She was well aware that her impressions were tragic. When he didn't argue, she continued. "You chose the thirteenth"—she stopped herself from saying 'anniversary' with a cringe she hoped he hadn't noticed"—year marker of my Labyrinth run to come here and…strike a deal with me?"
He leaned forward, his elbows finding his knees as he rested his chin in his palms. "No, not a deal. A favor," he clarified. His gaze searched her face, and Sarah was sure that there was a current of sadness in the way he was appraising her. "One I cannot repay."
It felt different, somehow, the way he was speaking to her now. A shift, both in his tone and his body language, something like defeat. There was a thread of desperation creeping into his voice, she thought, as she watched the brackets around his mouth deepen.
The sense of wrongness clinging to him had her on edge, and a pang of genuine concern clenched at her heart. Her next words were out of her mouth before she could decide if uttering them was in her best interest. "Tell me what's wrong."
Jareth held her worried eyes for a long stretch of time as if considering what to say. His voice was heavy with regret when he finally said, "I suspect you were hoping for a different set of circumstances to reunite under." His fingers tightened around his chin as though in an attempt to offer himself some comfort. "For that and for so many things, I am deeply sorry, Sarah."
Mistrust conflicted with what she knew were her irrationally empathetic tendencies. She sensed the danger, but this didn't feel like a trap. Not exactly. It felt very much like something else, something ineffable and undefined.
"Jareth," Sarah said, her voice clear and resolute. "Tell me."
"I will not lie to you, but I cannot tell you everything," he told her.
Sarah rolled her eyes. "Off to an astounding start," she said with a sigh.
"I don't disagree that it is unfair, Sarah," he offered. "But I do not have the luxury of choice in the matter. I will ask a lot of you, and perhaps the hardest of all is to trust me."
Sarah made a small, choked sound of surprise before a manic smile slipped across her face. She couldn't help it. His request was absurd. "You want me to trust you? That's quite an ask, Goblin King."
"I know I haven't earned it," Jareth continued quickly. "You don't owe it to me." Suddenly, he was sliding to the floor, his knees hitting the ground near the edge of her bed. "I am asking for it anyway. I will beg for it."
That caught her attention. She didn't know him well, but she thought she knew him well enough to be certain that Jareth was much too vain to resort to begging if this was a trick. The desperation she had felt rolling off of him earlier swallowed her then, thick and smothering.
Her stomach clenched with dread as she took a deep, steadying breath. "Tell me what you need me to do."
Jareth conjured a crystal and gazed into it, the look on his face empty and deadened, before holding it out to Sarah. Her eyes dropped to the orb balancing on his outstretched fingertips. As she watched, opaque, iridescent swirls faded to reveal a monochrome image of a face.
A child, Sarah realized, with light hair cut short in a frenetic pixie cut. Although the face was mostly in profile, Sarah couldn't miss the arched eyebrow and mischievous upturn of lips.
Her heart squeezed as her brain automatically attempted to calculate the age of what was surely Jareth's offspring. Something like betrayal ached in her chest, but she quickly pushed that irrational reaction away before looking back up at him expectantly.
"She is in danger, and I need your help to find her," Jareth said, his voice rough with loss. "I cannot tell you more than that."
Sarah nodded slowly as the crystal disappeared. "Will you return me here? Unharmed?"
His eyes flickered with an emotion Sarah couldn't name. "I will do everything in my power to ensure that happens."
"That isn't exactly a 'yes,'" she pointed out.
"No, it isn't," he admitted, sounding like he wished it could be. "I risk everything by involving you. I wouldn't do so if I had another option."
She thought of Toby, around this child's age, give or take a few years. She would do anything to protect him, and somehow, she intuitively knew that if the roles were reversed, he would help her. Considering their past, it was a strange thought, but she could feel it in the way he was looking at her now, bereft and despairing.
Before Sarah knew what she was doing, her hand found his shoulder and squeezed. She held him there, in her hold, for a moment before she swung her legs over the edge of her bed and stood. "Get up," she told him. "I'll help."
Jareth got to his feet and watched her as she walked to her closet and began rifling through items. She dumped an armful of pants and sweaters into an already half-packed duffle bag on her desk that she hoped he wouldn't ask about.
He raised an eyebrow at her. "Were you planning a trip?"
Sarah froze before turning to him, a pair of water shoes in one hand and a utility flashlight in the other. "Um, yes, actually. I was planning an…adventure."
"I see," he drawled, that teasing note back in his tone. "Reminiscing and planning an adventure, hmm?" He toed the Labyrinth box with his boot. "How remarkably coincidental."
"Your timing is both suspicious and annoying," she groused. "But as there is apparently a child that needs saving, maybe this isn't the opportune time to comment on my travel plans."
Don't make this more awkward, her eyes begged him. Just let me play the hero, here.
"You can't take anything with you, Sarah."Jareth eyed her water shoes with distaste. "Even if you could, I would never allow those."
Sarah leveled him with a stormy look. She wanted to ask him just why exactly she should let him spirit her away without a single provision or belonging but remembered he had asked for her trust. Her eyes narrowed, and her hand found her hip as she said, "Let's set a few things straight."
He sighed and motioned for her to continue. "I'm listening."
"Am I to be some sort of sacrifice?" she blurted. "A blood offering or something equally awful?"
Jareth looked mildly surprised. "No." He feigned deep consideration. "Why didn't I think of that?"
Sarah exhaled through her nose in an impatient huff before asking, "Are you stealing me away to be your bride, then?"
He laughed outright at that. "I am not stealing you away. Don't you think I could resort to more nefarious tactics other than beseeching you for assistance if that were my intention?"
She stared at him, unmoved. "You're evading my question."
"No, Sarah," he said after another dramatic sigh. "I am not stealing you away to make you my bride."
Sarah relaxed a little, choosing for some unfathomable reason to believe him. "When do we leave?"
Jareth looked her over, that sadness she had seen before ebbing back into his expression. "Tonight." He took a step closer to her, and she felt her back stiffen. "There is one more thing, and I'm afraid you won't like this bit."
She grimaced, trepidation swirling in every cell of her body. "What?"
He pulled a length of silky black material from his sleeve. "I will need to blindfold you."
Sarah found herself stepping back on instinct, her hands spreading between them defensively. "Buy a girl a drink first!"
Jareth chuckled indulgently, though he didn't look like he liked the idea any more than she did. "I realize I am testing the limits of your trust already," he told her. "It will only be necessary for the few moments it will take to travel."
"I didn't wear one before," she pointed out. "Why do I need to now?"
His lips were a grim line as he looked at her, but he said nothing.
"Right," she said on the back of a laugh she had hoped would seem casual but sounded anxious to her own ears. "You can't tell me."
Jareth gave a single shake of his head—just a slight turn of his chin to the left and back to center.
She eyed him suspiciously but reached for the silk.
"Not yet," he said, holding it out of her reach. "You are still dreaming. You will need to wake up wearing it."
Sarah felt her eyes widen. "You want to put that thing on me while I'm asleep?"
"No," Jareth said, his voice uneven with what sounded like regret. "But I will, to keep you safe."
Her stomach twisted, and she felt bile creeping up her throat. That feeling of wrongness was overpowering, but nothing about Jareth felt malevolent or particularly devious. She gave him one last searching look. All she saw was a ghost from her past in his darkest hour, and if she could help him, she would.
She took a hesitant step closer and released a breath of surrender. "What now?"
Jareth smiled, but it didn't brighten his hollow eyes. "Wake up, Sarah."
We know a place where no planes go
We know a place where no ships go
We know a place no spaceships go
We know a place where no subs go
Between the click of the light and the start of the dream
'No Cars Go' by Arcade Fire
Thank you, Geliot99, for beta reading! 3
Please don't get too frustrated yet if you have unanswered questions. You're supposed to!
Most of this fic is Sarah's POV. However, due to the twisty-turny nature of this story, I will still include the POV at the beginning of each chapter.
I'd absolutely love to hear your thoughts.
You can also reach me at foxfaceinthewindow on Tumblr :) I plan to include song lyrics or quotes at the end of every chapter. I'll make a playlist and share it on Tumblr.