Summary: Five years after solving the Labyrinth, Sarah is finally beginning to settle into life as an adult after experiencing a sudden, unexplainable depression months before; however, a strange discovery gives her cause to believe that perhaps the depression wasn't quite as unexplainable as she previously thought, and she's willing to bet that it all comes down to one Goblin King.
Prologue
What's broken is broken. No matter how you place the pieces, no matter how similar it is to the old, it will never be whole again. Not truly. The cracks will remain, perhaps painted over, but there, nonetheless. It will never be as solid, as secure. Even the slightest wind could manipulate the fractures, make it quaver, send it tumbling to the ground in fragments. Broken once more.
A fitting description of Sarah's life.
The world was dull and vacuous. A bottomless lake, its water stagnant and obscure; the forgotten wishes of children grown and dreamers who realized reality sank slowly through the sluggish water, motionless and lifeless in their never-ending descent.
Before the Labyrinth she had simply drifted with the current, eyes closed, oblivious to the waves of horrific blandness that enveloped her. Oh, she had had imagination, perhaps a bit more than others, but that was all it was. A daydream here, a fantasy there, but nothing concrete, nothing real. She had never been satisfied with the lack of magic, of adventure, in her life, but she had accepted it. She had longed for it, hoped for it, but hadn't truly believed in it.
It was the Labyrinth the had snapped her eyes open, made her struggle against the water as it attempted to overwhelm her, conquer her, make her complacent once more. She had clamped her dreams tightly against her chest, using them as a life vest, though they only served to hamper her, to weigh her down. She had kicked furiously, gasping for air as her every muscle burned in her attempt to stay above the surface. She was becoming exhausted, tired of fighting against something so large, when she was so small. She just wanted to loose her grip, let her dreams sink, so she could finally rest.
Yet how could she, now that she knew it wasn't a fantasy? It existed, as surely as she did, as surely as the monotonous world she lived in. Of course, she hadn't realized it was quite so colorless before. How could she? It was as if ever since birth she had been surrounded by varying shades of gray, never realizing or even suspecting that other colors existed. How could a blind woman know what color looks like if she has never seen it? Entering Jareth's kingdom enabled her to see every existing color, to see what she had always imagined was there, a world in which everything really was possible.
Ignorance was bliss. Now returned to her realm of gray, she continued to fixate on what could have been.
A vision of mismatched eyes and wild blond hair appeared briefly before she shook her head violently, hoping to rid herself of both the memory and the melancholic stab in her abdomen that threatened to spill tears down her cheeks.
She had done the right thing.
The thought she had intended to be reassuring did nothing to stave off the uncertainty; that whispering, slithering voice that both questioned and denied.
'Are you certain?' it inquired mockingly.
'He didn't love me, he didn't care for me! Why should I have stayed?' She snapped at it, fruitless in her efforts to quiet the oily words that seemed to leak from the dam she had placed in her mind to hold back the thoughts she refused to explore.
'Yet you pine away for him, anyways. How many times have you bitten your tongue to keep yourself from calling to him? How many times have you awoken, joyful from dreams of being in his arms, only to break into tears once you discovered it was only your wishful mind playing tricks on you?'
Sarah worried her lip between her teeth, disturbed by truth in the words. When she had first returned from the Labyrinth, she had been ecstatic. She had defeated the evil (if devastatingly handsome) Goblin King and discovered the world of magic she had always imagined. Yet as the months wore on, and she was faced with the unimaginative existence in which she was forced to live, she withdrew within herself. Why speak to people who scoffed at her imagination, however child-like it may be? Why should she associate with people who looked down on her with disdain for believing in things as foolish as goblins? It was they who deserved to be laughed at, they deserved her scorn for not having faith something as certain as the ground they walked on, albeit it may be a bit more difficult to find.
Two years after Sarah left the Labyrinth the inevitable occurred, and she finally grew up. Finally able to see things from a mature point of view, she found herself constantly replaying her time with the Goblin King within her mind. The words she had previously felt mere confusion at caused her stomach to flutter with implied meaning. The moments she recalled experiencing victory, she began to think of with regret. Her emotions toward the Goblin King began to transform from fear and dislike into fascination and longing. Soon she began to refer to him as Jareth, excluding his title altogether. Dreams of reunions with Hoggle, Ludo, and Sir Didymus morphed into fantasies of the embrace of the Goblin King, of sweet whispered words, of happiness bubbling within the depths of her stomach and outward to her lips, stretching a euphoric grin upon her lips in both reality and reverie.
She unconsciously brought her fingers to her mouth as if in remembrance of actions yearned for but never committed. His name lingered on her lips, her tongue threatened to form the vowels, and even as her mind screamed in warning and fear, the word spilled out and echoed in her ears before she registered what had occurred.
Sarah sensed his presence behind her before he spoke. The hairs on her arms stood on end and the back of her neck prickled with alertness. The air in her room seemed to thicken, charged with an energy she hadn't noticed before but now recognized as a sensation that always accompanied Jareth. Her hands began to tremble in apprehension as her heart beat quickened to an unnatural pace; her limbs were incapable of movement, locked in place as adrenaline rushed through her veins.
"Sarah."
His voice manipulated the fractures in her worn body and mind, made her knees quaver, sent her tumbling to the ground. Broken once more.
I love and cherish all reviews, so please do so.