WHO: Toby & Sarah Williams, Labyrinth denizens WHERE: the Hyperion WHEN: Tuesday, October 18; late afternoon/very early evening WHAT: An unexpected delivery. RATING: PGish STATUS: log; COMPLETE!
Toby tossed the baseball between his hands as he walked toward the door. He had several things that he wanted to do, but first of all he wanted to check on Sarah. He knew that Peter and the others had saved the world and healed Sarah and all of that, but that didn't stop Toby from being a protective little brother. He liked to check on her from time to time to make sure she hadn't vanished across the country or contracted some odd LA exclusive disease. Deciding that he would check in with her downstairs and then find one of the boys to play baseball with, Toby slammed the door behind him.
He froze. The ball fell out of his hands and rolled away, but Toby didn't care about that anymore. There was a goblin there, and a dwarf too. Toby knew them both because he had watched Labyrinth late one night while Sarah was sick, though he couldn't remember what the old goblin with the bird hat was for or even if he had a name.
"Hoggle?" He asked, bravely stepping forward. "What are you doing here?"
Hoggle eyed Toby suspiciously for a moment before the dwarf realized who he was looking at. The annoyed expression grew a greater edge of anxiety before he stabbed a stubby finger in the direction of the slow-moving old goblin and the bobbing bird-hat atop the long white hair.
"Following him," he grumbled, then peered around the old goblin yet again, trying to see the objected currently held and concealed by multi-layers of fabric and the goblin's beard.
"Ah, ah, ah!" the hat trilled, shaking its head back and forth in clear chastisement. "Not for you!"
Hoggle glared. "Well, if it's for her, you won't be giving it to her!"
"For Sarah?" Toby guessed, knowing that his big sister was likely the only 'her' in the hotel who had had dealings with creatures from the Labyrinth before. He moved closer to the old goblin, trying to see what he was concealing as well. "I don't know, she's not been feeling good lately. Maybe if I saw first..."
He was torn between curiosity and worry. Part of him wanted to know what the interesting looking old goblin was hiding, but part of him was scared. Seeing the movie finally, and what he had nearly become, he wasn't quite sure that he should be talking to these two alone.
"Meaningless... in the wrong hands," the old goblin said, a slowness that seemed immovable, as though his actions and words would come when they did and not before.
The hat, however, seemed to embody the exact opposite.
"For her, for her," it pronounced, uttering a series of clicks before continuing, "not for you or you, muchacho!"
Hoggle moved in front of the old goblin, only to find himself inexorably nudged backward. The goblin didn't look strong, but Hoggle wasn't able to halt the course, just as he hadn't been able to when they'd still been in the Labyrinth and he'd heard the bird trilling about the 'not so young pretty girl'.
Toby frowned at the old goblin. He didn't like this one bit, not the wait for answers, not the way the thing was being so stubborn about not revealing what he had for Sarah...none of it. He cast a wary glance at Hoggle. Sarah trusted the dwarf, and considered him to be a close friend, so Toby hoped he could be trusted.
"Why did you follow him here? Does he have something that's going to hurt Sarah?" Perhaps Hoggle was coming to protect everyone, but the sight of the small dwarf wasn't nearly reassuring enough.
Letting out an exasperated grunt, Hoggle threw up his arms. "I followed 'em because they came here, and if I knew what he had, I wouldn't be tryin' to get it and find out." He didn't know what it was the old fool had and he was trying not to guess either, because guessing only made the dwarf even more anxious about the whole thing.
At the stairs, there was no choice but to move down, or be nudged down the steps and take them all in one tumble, but Hoggle didn't let the ground be gained easily.
Atop the goblin's head, the bird-hat trilled a tune, occasionally bobbing its head low to peer down the staircase.
"No wait!" Toby groaned, darting around them down a few stairs so that he was in between the otherworldly creatures and proceeding further. "It's not fair, you can't just come in here and turn everything upside down!" He glared at the bird hat. "You can't...at least, not until you tell me why, so I know if Sarah will even want to be bothered with you. She's been sick."
Later he would likely feel guilty, because though he was worried about Sarah, his curiosity about the item that even Hoggle didn't know about was certainly the strongest force motivating him. For now though, he didn't care. Toby needed to know.
"Down..." the old goblin began, moving implacably forward, including moving Toby as he had moved Hoggle, "is often times-"
"Up!" the hat chirped.
The goblin rolled his eyes upward and glared at the hat. "Up."
"A lot of nonsense, like aways," Hoggle said, then eyed Toby. "Sarah still sick?" Sarah hadn't been seen in longer than Hoggle would have liked, but he hadn't been too worried, as Sarah hadn't made the illness out to be something to worry about. Yet the kid kept bringing it up.
"WHAT?" Toby all but shrieked when he began moving forward. He had been so focused on holding his ground, yet somehow the goblin got his way. The creature looked old and ragged, but he did have a way of getting his way. "What are you doing? Down isn't up! Down is down and up is up."
He stopped arguing with the goblin for a moment to give Hoggle a small smile. "She's better now, but she's still not ready for some huge explosion from Jareth's world." The word 'Jareth' was said with surprising vehemence for a boy who could not remember the frightening hours he had spent in the Goblin King's presence.
The bird-hat chuckled. "Not when down is up and up is down, muchacho."
"Oh, shut up," Hoggle growled, swatting futilely at the hat. "We don't need both of you making no sense at all. And nothing's exploding," he continued severely, though given how his attention was on the old goblin, the feeling was clearly aimed at the others, not Toby.
Toby settled down a little when Hoggle said that nothing was going to explode. Well that was a start. Still, the fact that nothing was going to explode wasn't enough of a reassurance for Toby.
"So why are you here?" He demanded of the bird hat. It at least seemed to be the more verbal of the two. "What are you going to do, drop off some present and then go?" He paused, eying the creature suspiciously. "Or are you here because of some sort of last wish from Jareth?"
"Present? Hmm," the old goblin murmured. "Yes. The gift... and the curse are two sides-"
"Of the same coin!" the hat said, blinking at Toby.
Hoggle came to a halt at the bottom of the stairs. "Last wish of Jareth's? Whaddya mean by that?"
"Good question. But the better one is - what's going on?"
Behind Hoggle was Sarah, looking at the dwarf, the old goblin and Toby with a mixture of confusion and worry. She'd been on her way to the kitchen when she'd heard the commotion on the stairs, more than one familiar voice raised in agitation. That residents of the Labyrinth were in the hotel without her having summoned them on top of their obvious agitation was a cause for concern.
"Sarah..." Toby groaned, torn between relief and concern. He knew that it was incredibly foolish for him to be talking to these two creatures without a 'grown up' present, but he didn't want to worry Sarah with it either if this was a bad thing. He had half been hoping that Peter would be around to make the goblin tell him and Hoggle in plain English what he was talking about...but Sarah was here instead.
"I tried to ask them." He said quietly. "But Hoggle doesn't know and this thing..." he jabbed his finger in the general direction of the bird hat "keeps going on and on about up being down and gifts that are curses."
Neither Hoggle or the old goblin were a threat in her book, especially not the former, but Sarah reached out and drew Toby close to her as she studied the hat, which trilled happily at her.
"That's generally what they do, say things that make no sense but are really just very cryptic advice or warnings," she explained, not knowing Toby had actually watched the movie and thus would have seen this in action before, in a vaguely related way.
"Mostly, they don't make no sense at all," Hoggle grumbled, striving to at least keep the old goblin from reaching Sarah. He was unsuccessful, but the goblin did stop, right as the hat spoke again.
"Something for you, pretty girl," the hat announced, just as the old goblin chuckled and withdrew what he had been concealing.
It was a box - large enough the old goblin held it in both hands, made of a dark, lightly polish wood. And it had her first name etched into the top in ridiculously ornate silver and gold letters.
In a way, it made some sense. If they believed the reason Jareth was gone - and not coming back, but even if she hadn't confirmed it, perhaps they hadn't needed the confirmation - was her, Sarah having not told Hoggle who had killed Jareth, then this must be some thank you gift.
But then the old goblin and the hat did the most perplexing thing Sarah could ever imagine them doing.
They bowed.
Toby frowned, not sure just what had happened. It wasn't Sarah's birthday, was it? Was it the anniversary of the day when she first ventured to the Labyrinth, or something else? And why was the old goblin bowing?
He drew even closer to Sarah, trying to see the box. Her name was clear on it, but that didn't make the urge for him to open it go away. "What's inside?" he asked, knowing she would know no more than he did. "Open it, Sarah!"
"No, don't!" Hoggle said, moving to stand in front of Sarah. "Don't know what it is, but whatever it is, you don't want it!"
Sarah reached out and squeezed his shoulder, his vehemence adding to her growing unease. Then she turned and addressed both the old goblin and his hat.
"Really, you don't have to give me anything. You don't have to give anyone anything. Jareth's gone - he's really dead," she said, squeezing Hoggle's shoulder again, "and no one needs a reward for that. Just live your lives now however you want. You're all free from being ruled."
The old goblin smiled. "A kingdom's subjects... are always-"
"Ruled!" the hat said.
Hoggle only looked more anxious.
After a silent debate as to the merits of touching anything unknown from the Labyrinth as weighed against the concern the old goblin wouldn't leave until she'd at least taken the box, Sarah reached out to lightly touch the lid and then drew her hand back quickly. When nothing happened, she moved close and bent over the box, her hair falling over her shoulder and momentarily shielding the box from view as she opened it.
And then promptly slammed it shut.
"No," she said as she straightened, shaking her head vehemently at the old goblin. "This isn't mine."
The hat chortled and then seemed to wink. "Ah, ah. It is!"
Toby wanted to see what was going on, and the fact that he couldn't was driving him crazy. He frowned at the hat, not liking the way that it winked and seemed so happy about something that Sarah obviously wasn't happy about. Was this a gift from Jareth after all? Maybe he had somehow managed to go somewhere in the Labyrinth and only this weird crazy goblin knew about it.
But he's dead Toby reminded himself. That's impossible.
Standing on his tip-toes, Toby tried to get a better look at the now closed box.
"Oh, no. I don't know what those things are, but they're not mine," Sarah said, reaching out to herd Toby back with one arm to keep him away from the box. It wasn't entirely accurate, as she did recognize what both objects were, but acknowledging that meant acknowledging the differences as well.
This was some kind of twisted joke, it had to be.
And then the old goblin said the most coherent thing to date - without the hat helping him finish the words.
"It chose you."
Coherent, but it didn't make a blessed bit of sense to Sarah despite that, not the 'it' or the part where she'd be 'chosen'. She asked her next question, not even certain she wanted the answer.
"It? What it?"
Hoggle spoke up then, surprisingly quiet before this and even the tone he used now somewhat hushed. The anxiety had given way to understanding, an understanding which showed in relief on the dwarf's face.
"It, Sarah. The magic. The Labyrinth. He's - was - King of the Goblins, but he made the Labyrinth what it was with his magic."
The hat chortled. "Almost right!"
Hoggle glared. "I don't see you explaining it!"
Sarah's eyes widened as she looked down at Hoggle. "That's insane. It's a maze, not a sentient being!"
"I know," Hoggle growled. "S'not what I'm sayin'. It's magic. I don't understand it all, I'm just telling you what I knows. And I knows that he made all those places you saw, and all the ones you've never seen. I don't know if he made it all, it's been a long time, but it was things he did."
Toby frowned, not sure what anyone was saying, and drew back from the box a little even before Sarah tried to get him away from it. He wasn't sure that he believed in magic even after everything that he had seen in LA, and magic that chose his sister sounded silly. And dangerous.
"We don't want it." He said, answering for Sarah because he knew how much she disliked Jareth for all the things he had tried to do to everyone. He nodded at the box, and then at the bird hat because he considered it to be the more intelligent half of the old goblin. "You can take it back."
Sarah was almost appalled by what she was hearing, from the means to the greater weight of what was trying to spell itself out to her. She was afraid to think the words for fear she'd make it so.
"What you're telling me is the magic - Jareth's magic - chose me? Why? Because he wanted me to take this? So this is all because he wanted it? No, no. This is insane and I-"
"Sarah, wait."
The words were eerily familiar, especially now when all thought was focused on Labyrinthian things. But this was Hoggle, not Jareth, and the pleading in her friend's voice stopped Sarah short. She looked down at Hoggle to find something she had so rarely seen on his face.
Hope.
It was because Hoggle couldn't hide that hope, even though he realized what he would say next would burden Sarah further. "Someone has to have the magic, or it'll fall apart. Might've-"
"Already started!" the bird-hat finished, then trilled, amused, when Hoggle glared at it.
"Time moves everywhere, even when it moves differently," the old goblin said.
Sarah ran her hands through her hair. What Hoggle - what all of them were saying, really, wasn't something she could ignore, not that combined with the hope and the earlier relief. Hoggle wanted her to take this and if it was all explained accurately, someone needed to take it soon.
"Jareth's gone, what does it matter what he wanted? You take it or Sir Didymus or even him," she said, pointing at the old goblin, "you know the kind of kingdom you want to live in, you could all do this. There's a choice here."
"Not all choices... have two paths, and this," the box was raised, "is-"
"Only yours, not his or theirs!" the hat said, bobbing in Hoggle's direction.
"Dammit, choices always have two paths, otherwise they're not choices!" Sarah growled, far beyond frustrated at this point, as it was slipping into the territory of 'alarming and overwhelming'.
The only solution was that she needed space and time to sort this out and think, to herself and out loud. The out loud thinking would be to Peter, and that was a certainty that didn't come because of burdens and powers he'd been given, but because she needed him. He was the person who understood her best and the person she trusted most to give her advice.
"I need to think. All of you need to go back," she said, waving to the old goblin, his hat and Hoggle, then pointing toward the stairs, "while I think this through."
Toby wasn't sure that he understood the old goblin or the hat at all. Time moving at different times, choices, paths, it was all so confusing. Hoggle didn't make things any more clear, either, and the way he looked so hopeful actually tugged at Toby's heartstrings, which was even more confusing. He wasn't supposed to feel bad for an old dwarf who had tried to lead Sarah astray at more than one point in her journey through the labyrinth...at least, he didn't think he was.
"You heard her!" Toby said, pointing determinedly up the stairs. "Time to go..." He'd be Sarah's little bodyguard if need be, because he was fully prepared to use the things Peter taught him in the spirit of self protection to keep Sarah safe and happy as well. He'd pick up the old dwarf and carry him himself if need be...somehow.
The old goblin, chuckling to himself once more, though over what no one would be quite certain, placed the box on the ground and then slowly turned and made his way back the path he had followed, just as slow and purposeful as before.
The bird-hat remained facing the other two for several steps more, head turned around at a near impossible angle.
"Adios, pretty lady, muchacho!"
Hoggle, however, hesitated. This hadn't been what he'd expected at all, though if he'd thought about it, he might have predicted this would be what had happened. He'd simply been too glad of Jareth likely being gone to think ahead. There was guilt there, for not doing so and preparing her, for not letting her know sooner, but there was also the fear of what her answer would be and if he'd influenced it wrongly by telling her the truth. Even after all these years, it was difficult to think of others.
"Sarah-"
Sarah let out a breath and then bent to hug her friend. "Hoggle, I know." Or she was beginning to understand what this was, what it meant and how conflicted she already was. "Just please go back for now. I'll call you soon, I promise."
Toby watched with a curious eye as the old goblin and his hat left. The goblin was crazy, that was for certain. Hoggle...well Hoggle Toby really wasn't sure about. He'd have to have another talk with Sarah after they were gone, and confess that he had watched the movie. That part he wasn't looking forward to at all.
He moved to stand behind Sarah, wanting her to know that he was still there, that he'd help her with this strange gift if she wanted him to.
When they were alone in the lobby, Sarah ran her hands through her hair and circled the box once before coming to a stop next to Toby. She didn't hesitate to pull him to her and hug him, resting her head atop his with that familiar faint disbelief that he was still growing taller.
"Anything you want me to explain if I can, squirt?" she asked quietly. It was a momentary reprieve before she sent him off to do something while she figured out what the hell she was supposed to do next.
Toby hugged Sarah back hard. "Why did they come?" He asked, even though he knew the obvious answer that they were came to give Sarah the box. He was wondering why creatures from Jareth's world were here to begin with, why they hadn't just vanished with the dead Goblin King. It wasn't that he thought Sarah would want Hoggle or Ludo or any of the rest to vanish, just that he wasn't sure what to think when they showed up like this and brought up surprises.
He broke away from Sarah a little, looking up at her with wide eyes. "Are you moving there? To the Labyrinth?"
"Absolutely not," Sarah said, the answer immediate and vehement. Her life was finally how she wanted it, she had finally found a place to belong, rather than feel always outside. True, she had never dreamed any of this would be her future, but she wouldn't change any of it. She couldn't leave any of this life or any of the people here. She simply couldn't.
No, no thinking yet. Just answering questions, then sending him off to play with Simon and Monty.
"As for why? They had to come here and tell me this because it's very serious, for them and for me. Jareth dying changed things and now that has to be fixed somehow."
"You have to fix it?" Toby asked, wondering why Sarah had to be the one to clean up another one of Jareth's messes. It was like even now that he was dead he was messing things up, and it made Toby want to shout at him, or, worse, to punch him.
"So what do they want you to do then?" Toby asked, not sure that he knew exactly what the two strange creatures were after. The corners of his lips turned up. "Do they want you to be their Goblin Queen?"
Sarah closed her eyes, the answer taking a long time to come, because she hadn't wanted to even think the words 'Goblin Queen' and now he'd said them out loud. If she were more superstitious, she would already be searching for salt to throw over her shoulder or something. As it was, the words were knotting her gut in a way that couldn't be healed or medicated.
Finally, Sarah let out a breath and opened her eyes. "Yes, they do."