She curls up on the bed, pulling the covers around her as she forms into a ball on her preferred side of the bed. The loud voices and music are easily heard from the common room, as she just tightens up in her curled state, trying to ignore it. She hates it when they do this. They being her so called college roommates. They always had to have the music blaring, and did not understand the concept of someone wanting to sleep instead of taking part in their little get together. With an annoyed sigh she sits up, grabbing a book off her nightstand. Flipping the table light on she starts paging through the familiar red leather bound book. A small sad smile grazes her features as she recalls the story, and the time she spent there.
A loud rapping noise on her door forces her to snap from her reverie.
"SARAH!"
Sarah flinches when she hears her name so brutally called, shouted more like, from the other side of her locked door.
"SARAH! Come on! Why is your door locked? Come on out and PARTY! Stop lockin' yourself in your room so much, and guess what, there is a guy out here who I know is dying to meet yo-"
"GO AWAY!" Sarah yells back through the door, "When I tell you I do NOT do parties, especially the ones you throw, I mean it! Stop bugging me every time you have one! Go dance your ass off with whoever that so called guy is and do whatever the hell you want with him cause I am NOT coming out of my room with your little entourage in the other room!"
"...what's an entourage?"
"GO AWAY!"
"FINE! Your loss!"
"No, I would call it my reward staying in here." Sarah mumbles under her breath. She sighs as she hears the music get even louder than before. She was surprised that they had not gotten any complaints about the level of noise at such an obscene time of the day. Returning from the door, she carefully sits back on her bed and gingerly picks up her well-loved book.
She once again starts to turn the pages, remembering every minute she spent there. She pauses when she finally reaches the final scene between Jareth, The Goblin King, and herself, the runner who bested his Labyrinth and who the Goblin King himself fell in love with. Her sad smile returns as she recalls the look on his face when those fateful, spell binding words found themselves in her voice, 'you have no power over me'.
He had looked so broken, so distraught when she uttered those words. Back then, she only saw it as a face of defeat. Now she sees it for what it was, a face of sorrow and pain of the one thing he truly cared about banishing him with six simple words. A single tear falls slowly down Sarah's face.
If only back then when she was fifteen she knew what she knows now. All the encounters and banter she shared with him she had taken as playing his game. But now she sees how he was answering every wish, desire, and want she had 'shown' in the Labyrinth. She saw the affection he had subliminally showed to her. She also put the pieces together of her own feelings.
When she ran the Labyrinth, she viewed Jareth as the enemy and thought she had treated him as such. She never realized how much she had unconsciously taunted and teased him. Those emotions did not exist in her fifteen year old heart. Now that she was older, she understood how she had felt for him. His offer to stay with him had tempted her, but in a deep part of herself she had not found yet and had not understood. Over her years of growing up, she had come to know how much he meant to her.
In the area of boyfriends, she never could find one that she really wanted to stay with or go out with. No one could walk the line of the light and dark like he did. No one could bend and twist that line to serve their own purposes so they were always themselves and never stepping too far over the line one way or the other. No one in this world was Jareth, and no one ever would be.
Closing the small book, Sarah puts it back in its' place on her shelf. She sits on the edge of her bed, too awake now to even contemplate sleeping. Looking up she sees her mirror and her sad smile returns to her face once more.
She had not called on her friends for a very long time, and she felt guilty about letting it drop. Standing up she walks across her room and places her hands on her full size dressing mirror. She leans her forehead to the glass, contemplating if it was even worth trying to call upon them now for it had been so long...and the party would drown out any noise coming from her room so no one would think she was talking to herself.
While she was still thinking about possibly calling on them, her mirror started to shimmer. Startled, Sarah jumps away from her mirror. Slowly a familiar figure emerges from the mirror.
Hoggle looks at Sarah in pure astonishment as if he was not sure something was going to work.
"I don't believe that it really worked!"
"That what worked Hoggle?"
"Awegh, Sarah, there is no time for that now! Hurry, you gotta come with me! Hoggle will explain on the way!" Hoggle exclaims as he ushers Sarah with him, back through the mirror.
"Come with you where Hoggle?" She barely gets out before he has her going through her still shimmering mirror.
"The Labryinth Sarah, the Underground! Where else?"