(Obviously, I own nothing and have no affiliation with anything and everything Labyrinth, and this is just a little fanfic that popped into my head with which I thought to add here. I hope you like it!)
Chapter One
Sarah had been having such a good time before she saw those mismatched eyes across the dancefloor.
It was the first thing she always noticed about the mysterious, magnetic Goblin King whenever he appeared throughout her life. Whenever he graced the mortal world with his presence and dared to remind her of that other world that existed somewhere between dreams and reality. Usually when Sarah noticed him, it was as an owl perched on a tree branch, or a streetlamp in the early hours of some otherwise unassuming morning. But occasionally—so occasionally that it made her blood cool, and her limbs shake with surprise—he appeared as a man. A human man, at that, without the brilliance and allure of his magic.
His hair was cut short, swept back from his face in a handsome yet not necessarily stylish fashion, and he wore a crisp, dark suit with a tie hanging loose around his neck. He might have been a businessman standing there like that, Sarah thought as she stared at him. Though his faint, smug smile gave him an edge of danger that she rarely saw in most businessmen. That Sarah rarely saw in any man, actually.
The look wasn't quite as magnificent as his appearance all those years ago when Sarah had made her run through the Labyrinth, but it was certainly still hypnotic.
The Goblin King grinned wickedly in her direction as her own green eyes met his blue and brown ones, and her hands immediately dropped from above her head where she'd had them flayed in ecstasy of the dance she had been enjoying only moments earlier.
"Are you okay?"
Sarah had stopped like a statue as the beat pulsed on, and her friend gripped her arm with a concerned expression.
"I'm fine," Sarah dismissed quickly.
He was still watching her while everyone else danced on—a mirrored statue to her state of surprise across the room from him.
People yelled at one another, laughed and drank and sang along to the music while those mismatched eyes continued their assault of Sarah's person, and she flushed bright pink as she averted her gaze from him and back to her friend.
"I'm going to get a drink. The others are here still, yeah?"
Her friend smiled, already bouncing along to the music once more. "Yeah, girl! As long as you're okay?"
"I'm fine," Sarah repeated.
She opened her mouth to say more but decided against it, the feel of that gaze too heavy on her as she spun on her heals and quickly made her way off the dancefloor.
The bar was a few feet away, but Sarah bypassed it, heading instead for the club's exit. She managed to swipe her leather jacket off the seat she had left it on when she passed by, more than a little surprised it was still there, to be honest.
The night beyond the club was cool, still and quiet, though the beat of the music still thrummed in the air. Sarah nodded to the bouncer as she left, twisting into her jacket as she immediately started down the street and avoided the various groups of partiers as they headed into the clubs around her.
A quick check of her watch told her it wasn't yet midnight, though it was close, and she wondered vaguely what had ever persuaded her to venture out, anyway. She hated clubbing. She was too old for it; just shy of thirty. She supposed she'd felt rather dismayed when, earlier that evening, she'd pulled a stray, grey hair from her scalp before meeting her work friends for dinner, and the deflation was perhaps her motivator for agreeing to a night on the town afterwards.
Stupid, silly decisions.
It wasn't fair.
The affects of the wine and cocktails she had been consuming was still evident as she half-jogged towards the late-night coffee shop down the street, her head dizzy from both the alcohol and surprise of seeing the Goblin King in that club. Pausing at the entrance, Sarah allowed herself one final glance over her shoulder to make sure that that man hadn't followed her from the club.
When the coast was clear, she ducked inside.
The café was quiet, a couple of couples sitting in various booths about the dimly lit room, and a bored-looking server watched Sarah expectantly as she approached the counter. She ordered a mocha, hoping it would both assist with her sudden need for sobriety as well as warm her insides after the shock of seeing the Goblin King. Not to mention warm her from the cool evening beyond the café.
Plus… chocolate.
After she paid, she picked a seat in the middle of the room. It faced the entrance so that she could monitor it closely, though it was right by an elderly man whose face was close to drowning in the cup of tea he clasped tightly in his arthritic hands. He had an old rucksack sagging on the floor at his feet, and a heavy coat around his shoulders that practically swallowed him whole.
"Good evening," he said without looking up as Sarah took her seat.
"Hi," Sarah managed, placing her table number on the surface in front of her.
She crossed her legs and stared at the closed front door of the café, ready to run if the Goblin King appeared again.
Sarah supposed in all her years of spotting the King, she had never actually interacted with him. On more than one occasion her wits had got the better of her, and she had made to approach him only to be rejected by a turn of his back or a flap of his wings as he launched into the sky. Ever since, she made sure to make a swift exit from the vicinity if he appeared to her—certain, in fact, that he did it only to make her uncomfortable. To remind her, perhaps, of that other world she had never managed to get back to.
Of the friends and the adventure and the… well, of everything that the Underground brought with it.
Sarah had assumed long ago that her stint as a teenager in the Labyrinth was the last she would ever see of it. Her friends had stopped visiting not long after her fight against the Goblin King, and the goblins who she sometimes heard snickering under her bed or behind doors she wasn't brave enough to open had vanished before her eighteen birthday.
"Good night to be in bed, isn't it?"
The croaky voice was unexpected, and Sarah's head snapped towards the little old man as he continued to stare at his beverage. "Excuse me?" Sarah asked quietly.
The man chuckled a laugh that was half a cough, and finally, his head turned to look over at Sarah, his eyes milky with age and beanie low over his forehead. He shrugged. "Just sayin', it's late for a young lady to be out."
Sarah felt her shoulders relax ever-so-slightly, quite sure that this man was simply a harmless, elderly person who was probably rather lonely. "Oh. I'm actually about to head home."
"Fair enough," he replied as he raised his tea to his cracked lips.
It was sort of like watching a tortoise, Sarah thought. His actions were so slow, so calculated and precise, that she almost felt sorry for his ailments as she watched him slurp a small gulp of his tea.
She almost jumped as her own coffee—or should it have been classified as a fancy hot chocolate?—was placed in front of her by the bored server. "Thanks," she muttered as her fingers curled around the warm cup.
Not a hint of the Goblin King or glitter or goblins entered the café, and a couple nearby gaggled loudly with one another as they made to leave and likely start their own nights on the town. Sarah watched them warily as she sipped her drink, relishing in the heat and sweetness and caffeine as it ran down her throat.
She hoped her work friends wouldn't worry about her disappearance.
Beside her, she almost hadn't noticed the man start to fumble with his rucksack, his shaking fingers slowly diving into its depths as he searched her something. Sarah almost leaned across to hold his tea for him, sure that it would likely get knocked over as he continued his rummaging, but as soon as she felt convinced of the decision to do just that, the man shot upright again. He gave a little cry of success as he waved something above his head, then plopped it onto the table beside his tea.
Sarah's blood ran colder than when she had spied the Goblin King on the dancefloor when she stared down at the man's object on the table, and she immediately looked back to the entrance out of fear of what she may see there. But there was no one. Nothing but the dark street beyond the café.
The man beside her was humming some faintly familiar song to himself as he tapped his bony fingers over the book now lying beside his tea.
"You know this one, love?" he asked innocently.
"Ah," Sarah started, unsure whether he mean the song he hummed or the book he possessed.
She wanted to run. Wanted to chug her mocha for some heat and caffeine, then run the five or so blocks back to her flat and pretend this night had never happened.
"Well?" he prompted.
Sarah looked back down at the table across from her, and the book beneath the man's palm.
And she couldn't help that tug of nostalgia from stretching her insides, the thrum of her heartbeat at the prospect of going back to that world she had left behind long ago. She stared, wide eyed, at that little red book partly-hidden beneath the man's hand, and wondered vaguely what her friends were doing. What the goblins, the chickens and the fairies were doing. What he was doing (when he wasn't stopping by the freak her out).
"It's a good little story, this."
Sarah stared at the man's copy of the Labyrinth, her limbs shaking as she licked her lips to finally respond.
"Of course," he said before she could. "It's not really a story, though, is it?"
That shocked Sarah enough for her to speak, and she cleared her throat as her brow dipped low enough to touch her long lashes. "What?"
"It's not a story," he grinned wickedly, taking his time to twist his neck to look back at Sarah. "It's history, isn't it?"