Labyrinth 1. Chapter 1

"_Even if you get the center you'll never get out again…"_

When Sarah woke it was with the impression that someone had just spoken, but her room was empty. A number of her pillows had made their way to the floor and with them a leather book, bright red. Its place beneath her pillows had been disturbed by her restless sleep. She replaced it to its home and stood to dress. Her step-mother had set out an outfit for her, a new habit that had developed between the two of them. Every other weekend they ventured together to the mall and each picked something to buy and something to wish for. Sometimes, when it was something Sarah had really wished for it would appear the following day and Karen would give her an extra kind smile.

That morning the beautiful blue journal that Sarah had seen in an outlandish book store was sitting on her vanity table, ball-point pen tucked in by the spine. Her outfit, selected by Karen was a pair a shorts and a green shirt with bell sleeves and odd embroidery in parallel lines down the front. Sarah dressed, and pulled up her hair. She could not remember when she began taking such care of the way she looked, maybe it came with the age, but she was careful as she braided her dark hair and pinned in a few fake flowers. She and Karen had settled into a happy medium of a relationship: Karen accepted some of Sarah's eccentric tastes and aversion to boys, while Sarah accepted the chore of attempting a relationship with a woman who was not her mother. Though some select pictures of her mother still smiled back to her from behind pretty frames about her room, she had not heard from the woman in at least two years. Her face appeared to her once in a review of the newspaper, a good one all about the publicized romance between the beautiful Linda and her dashing onstage partner. Sarah had eyed her image in the paper and promptly tossed it back onto the kitchen table. No need for bitterness.

So that morning when a dark haired woman was sitting at the same kitchen table across from her anxious looking step-mother Sarah was so aghast that she turned immediately around to run.

"Sarah?" It was too late.

"Damn," She was hushed, but she knew Karen could tell her emotions. She gave her a pleading stare and patted the back of her son, Toby, who sat beside her toying with his cereal. Sarah watched her little brother as she approached the kitchen. When her steps brought her to the edge of the grand doorway the dark-haired woman tuned around.

"Sarah!" Linda stood, her pretty blue stress fluttering when she moved.

She was not as Sarah remembered her. Her hair was still that dark beautiful brown, no hint of grey in sight, but her creamy skin seemed fleshy and sagging. Under her eyes seemed darker than it once was. The skin of her upper arms was flushed when she approached her, outstretched as if to embrace.

Sarah almost considered taking the hug, but initially backed away from her mother whose sweet expression fell flat.

She brushed off the shun and smiled at her daughter, a strain in her eyes that made her look nearer to her actual age.

"I have been looking to get to you for a long time, honey," Linda said. "I had a lot of trouble getting here."

"You used to live here," Sarah said. "It shouldn't have been hard to find."

"It's been a long time..." She dared to look hopeful. "You are so beautiful."

Sarah chewed the inside of her cheek, eyeing her mother and her step-mother both.

"I am going to the park." She said, a little too abruptly. Both Karen and Linda gave a start.

On Sarah's scurry to the door she nearly knocked over her father Robert who had entered the home from walking Merlin through the kitchen door. His mouth was slack at the sight, his daughter breaking for escape while his current wife and young son sat hosting an awkward breakfast to his ex-wife.

Sarah could not imagine the kind of pain he was feeling, she was too focused on making her run. Through the garage and down the street, past the shops of her small town that never seemed to change, she cut through the streets, over a few grassy hills and into the open greenery of the park. She found solitude under a great tree, the bridge in sight with the small lake. The morning was dreary, edging on cloudy with brief patches of rain sprinkling away park-goers. Sarah was alone... But not truly alone.

"Hoggle..." She curled her arms around her arched knees and leaned on the hard tops. "I need you."

The dwarf came from around the tree she was sitting against, blue eyes concerned, wrinkled hands curling and uncurling in worry. He brought with him the simple scents of her younger days, a dusty smell of trees and rain. On his wrist, an elastic string of plastic beads, at his hip a small sack of pretty jewels rested.

"Sarah?" She snatched him into a hug and finally let tears she was holding fall. On his bony shoulder she cried until she was spent of sorrows and her heart had turned from sadness to anger.

"What does she mean to come back now?" Sarah fumed. Hoggle watched her from his spot on the grass. He had given her a little handkerchief to wipe her swollen eyes. "It has been years since she even called. I mean, years! I was thirteen the last time I heard from her, and now I'm turning eighteen in less than a month!"

Hoggle looked as if he was about to speak but the raging girl kept going.

"Four years of my life! Four years, the most significant years, I think. I am no longer going to be a child; she can't expect to drop in on my life whenever she wants to." Her head dropped into her hands. "It's been so lonely. I'm still not sure what the Labyrinth was meant to teach me. I gave up on some things, tried to make friends... But god," Sarah knew she wasn't making sense. "Why did she have to come back here?" She looked up.

She was alone.

"Damn."

"Sarah?"

Sarah's heavy head lurched to the side to see her mother, kneeling beside her.

"Did you hear what I said?" She spat. Linda flinched, but kept her ground.

"Please listen to me, Sarah-dear. I need you to come with me..."

"Why?"

"It's different."

"No, it's not." Sarah grumbled. "And I'm not your Sarah-dear."

"You are acting a little immature." Linda's voice was low, her attempt Sarah thought, at seeming motherly

The time for disciplining was over for Sarah, graduated from high-school and college loomed brightly on her horizon. A scholarship for her skills in creative writing promised low debts when her education was complete. She was ready. Comfortable in her life here, heading toward her dreams, she did not feel the need to allow Linda in her life.

"You are just acting," Sarah answered. "You never wanted to be _just_ my mom."

"I had dreams, Sarah. But I should not have taken them. I have come back for you! I have given up everything I had to find you... You need to come with me."

Sarah finally looked her mother in the eyes, mirrors to her own, coated in left over wetness from her tears. She disliked how similar the two of them were.

"You have no power over my life anymore, Mom." She said. She stood, limbs aching from sitting hunched and shook her head down at her mother.

"Damnit Sarah!" Linda's arms went up in frustration. "I'll never get you out of here now!"

"What?" Sarah caught sight of something pale and gold floating down from the sky. A great cloud of tan cloth, encircled by strips of shining material and there stood her old adversary. His face broke out into a crooked smile, sharp teeth glinting.

"Hello Sarah," He said.

The young girl's heart beat in her ears.

His odd eyes moved to her mother, still on her knees reaching for her daughter.

"You have been given a chance. You have lost, Linda." He said. "It was pretty pathetic."

"You only gave me an hour!" Sarah's mother pleaded. She caught hold of Sarah's leg and used it to hoist herself up. She took Sarah into her arms. "Please, let me take her home."

"She has eaten fae food, lived in our world and grown into custom with our air." Jareth seemed a little sad when his eyes took Sarah's, but she could see the glow of happiness that rested there as well. "She would die if she were to return."

"I have fought my way to find her. Why of all others must I remember her?" Linda's touch felt wooden, her words were making Sarah worry.

"It is your punishment." Jareth held out his hand. "You may reclaim your career and lover, which you gave up for her."

In his hands a familiar crystal sat.

Sarah felt her mother's hands drop away from her. She was not surprised. And when Linda claimed the crystal and gave Sarah one last awkward glance Sarah was not surprised that it was silent.

"You hardly tried!" Sarah screamed.

Jareth touched Linda's shoulder and the woman vanished.

With her fell away the illusion Sarah had known for four years. Around her a great darkness, filled with scattered fragments of he illusion: her clothes, a book, a doll's hand, torn at the wrist.

She faced the Goblin King. He smiled at her, his eyes slowly becoming the only thing she could see as the world began to fade.


	2. Chapter 2

Sarah watched the little trinkets of her life float past her face. Toys and books brushed her cheeks and hair as if they were alive, seeking to comfort her. She sat on her butt in the cool darkness that overcame her world at the absence of her mother. She awoke alone, cold and feeling like she had been crying for ages. Around her the pieces of her world remained, fading in and out of the darkness, touching her and vanishing, reappearing like they flew through an invisible current and crashed against a wall somewhere else in the darkness to come back to her. She could only see their shapes in the dark, as her eyes grew accustomed.

Her mind tried to piece together the events that had occurred. That morning she had woken up normal, by her standards. A ghost, a faraway person had been in her kitchen, invading her world and then everything had come apart. She recalled things she had seen in the past four years, faces that seemed to keep cropping up, the same faces. The Goblin King was not very creative when it came to fabricating her world.

Sophomore year she had kept bumping into a red-haired woman everywhere she went: the mall, the super-market, the park; she was always around. Sarah finally realized where she first saw the woman: the ball. She was one of the dancers in the ball. At the memory her mouth tasted like peach. She tried to recall more hiccups in the fabrication but her head started aching and she gave up.

"I have to get out of here." She mumbled. In the creeping shadows she was able to stand and she toed the ground around her, searching for possible dips. Edging slowly, arms outstretched she was able to find a wall. A little huddle of toys, books and clothes bunched around her ankles, tripping her into the wall. Using the wall to guide her she tripped and tumbled over the toys, eventually giving up and going down on her hands and knees.

_I feel ridiculous_, she thought. She dragged herself around the perimeter of the room, pushing junk out of the way. She almost screamed when her hand came down on a doll's head, real hair made her suddenly imagine her brother's curls. She had to fumble the doll head with her hands to prove to herself that it wasn't Toby, but she was still unnerved when she discarded it.

It was when her crawling returned her to the doll's head that she began to panic. From what she could discern the room had no door, no opening to break through. She sat down and pushed the head away, listening to it roll and settle on the other side of the room.

"Hoggle?" She hoped he had been real. "I need you."

There was a little glow in the dark and then the blackness was even heavier.

"What the… Where am I?" Hoggle's voice was a foot away from Sarah.

"Hoggle!" Sarah crashed into him, misjudging the distance between them. Her dwarf friend made a horrible grumble before he realized where he was.

"The illusion…" He said gently.

"My mother was apparently trying to reach me. I guess I failed the test." Sarah came to sit on her knees before the lump in the dark that was her friend.

"You weren't the one being tested."

The voice made dwarf and girl startle and scramble to grab each other in the dark. A snap was followed by light, blinding Sarah temporarily. She began to make out the figure of the king, leather clad and confidently grinning down at her. Hoggle at her side was rolling his eyes.

"You can't just let us talk?" He snapped, surprising Sarah. The king, it looked, was surprised as well.

"Higgle," He began.

"Hogwart."

"Hoggle!" He gave Sarah a spiteful look, but the girl didn't see it. She was wholly distracted by the light radiating from the door behind the king. It had caught her attention and now diverted her from Jareth and Hoggle. She came back into focus on what the king was saying quickly, aware that he had noticed her wandering eyes.

"… Your mother was the one being tested." He was finishing. "She has failed in her quest to revive you from your entrapment." He said. The same doll head that had disturbed her minutes ago rolled past Jareth's boot and he kicked it away.

"I never left?" Sarah drew her knees in to settle her chin on their tops. Fetal position it seemed was the sitting choice of the day.

The idea still had not really hit her; the four years she had lived were a lie. Her best friends, not real, her relationship with Karen, nothing.

"Toby?" She asked, suddenly twice as nervous.

Jareth shook his head, smiling. "Toby was returned home when you won. You earned his freedom. You never questioned that I sent you home."

"I assumed…" She rubbed sweat from her forehead, her hand quaking slightly.

"Well, now that you know where you are…" The king kneeled down to be in level with her. His wild eyes looked darker than she remembered. "Shall you leave your prison? Your company is much desired by the Labyrinth folk."

She searched for malice in his voice and found only gentleness. He seemed to be a brighter Jareth then his past persona. Dark as his eyes might be, she was calm.

"Sarah, snap out of it!" Hoggle gave the back of her head such a hard smack the girl surged forward and knocked into the Goblin King. His nose knocked into her cheekbone and the pain of it re-awoke in her the suspicion of him.

"What…" She shook her head. "You were making me forget again!" She yelled.

The Goblin King was rubbing his nose, and her words made his dark eyes glint as though embers glowed inside of them.

"You were learning to trust me." He said and smiled sheepishly. She had never known the king to look sheepish. The façade was irritating.

"Sarah, don't mind this bastard." Hoggle said.

"I need some things explained to me!" Sarah was trying not to shout but speaking calmly didn't feel like an option. She knew her shrill shrieking was making both dwarf and king flinch but she was on the edge of a nervous breakdown. She was grasping sanity fiercely but she was not sure of how long her grip might last.

"Might we leave this filthy chamber?" The king stood. Sarah eyed his leather clad back when he turned to leave. She took Hoggle's wrinkling hand and followed.

She had anticipated walking out into one of the underground labyrinth tunnels, similar to the first time she exited an oubliette, but she was met with the stairs she had taken four years ago to enter the Escher room. The king led her and Hoggle down these stairs and into the empty throne room. Sarah glanced back behind into the dark chamber where a doll's head, a book and a bundle of yarn sat by the frame. They sank back into the darkness as Sarah walked away. She squeezed Hoggle's hand in her unease.

The king took a seat in his throne, looking as grand and ridiculous as he always did. He smiled at her and Sarah unflinching gave him a sarcastic smile back.

"Are you going to tell me what you've done?" Hoggle let go of her hand as she spoke and moved back a few cautious steps.

"I have done nothing," The king said, still grinning. "You never left the Labyrinth."

"You made it seem like I did!" She yelled. "I thought I was home, but it was just like that fake world you made." She was referencing the peach-induced ballroom, but Jareth looked confused.

She realized too late after offering him a sympathetic eye that he was mocking her. His eye twitched and a devious smile broke out.

"I hate you." She said. Her heart was beating with the coming wave of terrified emotions. She was coming to the realization again that her entire life was a lie.

"You do not hate me." He said, pretending to look hurt.

"I wanted to tell you," Hoggle's voice behind her was weak. "But I was a coward again…"

"Yes, coward!" The king laughed. "At least she was alive, Hogbrain. Had she gone home she would have suffocated. It was her mother who ruined the entire deal."

"She tried." Hoggle offered.

Sarah reached to wipe tears off of her face. They fell now in plentiful streams. She was exhausted and growing warm. Her head was bleary and she barely registered the next words of the Goblin King.

"Regardless," He said. "It was the best way to cage my queen until she was of a proper age."

Sarah coughed and it was half a laugh. "Queen…" She spat. "You are kidding yourself."

"Sarah, I never kid anyone." He smiled and the girl felt small. Hoggle cringed and took her hand.

"I'm sorry, friend." He said. "I'm sorry."


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3:

Sarah had gathered herself enough to recall what had happened. She felt meek in a chamber, a dark place Hoggle had dragged her to when her body went into some bizarre form of shock. She had only opened her eyes a little, enough to watch Hoggle descend away into the darkness before she fumbled to the bed. The place seemed familiar but she supposed the angles of the walls and frame of the bed were just so _Labyrinth_ that she convinced herself that that was the only quality of familiarity. The bed was built with a square frame and a canopy for a princess. It bore the same colors of her childhood room, but the shapes were out of place and crude. Still the creak of the mattress when she collapsed on the soft blankets was not a haunting groan. It seemed to echo the sigh of a lover upon embrace. She spent an undiscernible amount of time laying there; face down wringing the blankets in her fingers. When she finally pulled herself up from the bed, hair damp and tangled, eyes bleary from tears she looked around the room.

What first caught her eye was the ceiling, which vanished up and away from her in a cluster of glowing crystals. It was these crystals which lit the room, and they pulsed like a heart, their light growing stronger and softer with every beat. Sarah clambered to the edge of the bed to get a better view at them, hidden as she had been under the canopy of her bed. She realized that someone had changed her into a pink ridiculous nightgown, magically, she assumed, while she was crying maniacally on the bed. She lamented the abundance of lace and returned to her observation of the room after using the bottom of the gown to wipe her dripping nose. Dark as it was, the light of the beautiful crystals was enough to show her a delicate looking vanity covered in bottles and combs and ornaments. To the left of this were a wardrobe and a small table set with chairs. On this table was a tiny painted tea set. The other side of the room bore no evidence of the door she didn't remember using, but to her chagrin there was a disturbing piece of furniture rocking in the dark. Sarah inhaled shakily She moved to approach it.

"Oh god…" She croaked. It was an infant's cradle.

Her head felt numb and her hard heart rumbled in a disheveled pulse. She had only just registered the difference between reality and dreams, and now she was hit with an onslaught of whatever the hell this room was supposed to mean. She moved out of the bed, stepping delicately under the glow of the crystals to reach the cradle. Within it lay a remnant of her own childhood; a tattered blanket. Hands shaking she reached into the little bed and grasped the material, the springy soft fabric of the knitted memory cool to her touch. Her eyes caught something at the corner of her eye: a crystal falling slowly. She dropped her blanket back into the cradle to take the levitating orb in her hands.

"I wish…" At first it sounded like her own voice but the image in the crystal was someone different, sporting hair as dark as her own.

Sarah had the horrible sensation that she was falling when the crystal slipped free of her hands and she was spiraling forward. She crashed into the floor and let out a loud displeased groan. Her nose burned and she rubbed it furiously as she pulled herself up from the soft carpet. She had been transported.

The world was dim, lit by a soft lamp on a bedside table behind her. To her right a bed, blankets mussed and pillows slept on. The room was familiar, her mother's old bedroom in the home she had lived in after leaving her father. Sarah's own cradle rested on the other side of the room, that soft blanket sitting on the floor in a crumpled heap. The girl moved forward slightly, but stopped when a child's wail made her freeze.

"Sarah!" Her mother came into view, still young; long hair in a disheveled ponytail, thin, muscled arms protruding from a baggy stained t-shirt.

"Mom…" Sarah was cut off by the hand of the Goblin King, hard against her shoulder. She looked up and met his angry frown with confused eyes. Her mother at the other side of the room took a wailing child out from the cradle.

"Get up." The king commanded. Sarah was already on her way to stand, using the bed to hoist herself up on her wobbly legs.

"Whose memory is this?" Sarah whispered. "What's…?"

The king ignored her and stepped briskly toward Linda. As soon as he stepped away from Sarah his appearance changed, his dark leathers turned to bright blues, his hair was shorter, his voice younger when he spoke:

"The beginning of a wish I heard. From none other than spoiled little Linda." His voice was ice, but a smile was set in a smug line on his face.

"Oh," Linda sighed, a relieved smile on her face. "Thank God it's you! I'm glad you heard." She thrust the dark haired baby in her arms toward him, which signaled cries of protest from the little girl. Sarah winced in her place on the other side of the room.

"Take her please!"

Linda gave the king no time to protest and handed over the child like a sack of potatoes, a grunt of relief when the exchanged was made.

"What is this?" He fumbled with the tiny thrashing creature in his arms. When the little girl noticed who she was now in the arms of she stilled, a frown furrowing the soft skin between her brows. Her green eyes were fierce and she stared at him, as if to say _you are not Mommy_.

"Sarah." Linda said, rubbing her arms and settling down in the rocking chair near the cradle.

"What's a Sarah?" The king shifted the baby awkwardly and frowned back at her.

"I am done; I just can't do it anymore!" She whined. She rubbed her arms and stared at the floor.

"What do you want me to do?" The king's mouth was curled in a grotesque line, his eyes darting back and forth between Linda and the child.

"Take her, she yours." She spat. Try as the king might she would not receive his dark stare.

"You will regret this," He shifted the baby in his arms, and she grabbed a little skull ornament on his coat and tried to pull it free.

Linda rolled her eyes, but they sparkled wetly.

"Fine." Her arms, two sticks, came shooting out to take her back, but hung empty in the air.

"Linda…" The Goblin King refused release of her child. "Only take her if you want her."

"You know I don't," Her arms looked ready to drop.

"Is there anywhere else she can go?" He sounded impatient. The little Sarah in his arms abandoned the skull brooch in his coat in favor of the pendant around his neck. She grasped in firmly in her round hands.

"Nowhere." Linda said. Her hands finally fell away, fingers curling into tight fists and landing in her lap. "So, just take her."

The baby made the king startle slightly, an inward startle accompanied by a frown, when she placed a hand on his cheek.

"At least she likes you," The woman laughed bitterly. "Figures."

"You know I must give something in return for this exchange." The baby smacked playfully at his face. "Hush," He said to her.

His word was swollen with a little pinch of magic and it blew gently onto the baby's face.

Sarah, the elder, frozen in her place, invisible to all that were there could feel that breath of magic from his word. Hush, like a wave of gentle water blossoming across her face. It smelled like peaches

Sarah, the baby, let her eyelids droop and she sagged against the king's chest.

"What do you want, Linda?" His gaze never left the sleeping child. There was a tension around his eyes, something warm and dark.

Linda's peel of laughter made this look grow cold and he turned his face back to her.

"I want to be a famous actress," She joked, her voice raw. "I want a wonderfully handsome husband to act with me. And no children." Her voice wavered near the end, and she looked up at her sleeping daughter.

"Done." Jareth turned away.

"Wait…" She laughed nervously. "I didn't mean it!"

Sarah realized her mother was not calling for want of her daughter, but for want of a different wish. She had only been joking.

The image faded away in time for Sarah to watch the king vanish with the smaller version of herself in his hands.

The crystal fell from her hands and the room was dark again. She watched the small orb tumble downward and crash against the hard ground, splitting into a thousand pieces.

"Well, hello there." Jareth's voice was littered with ice. But when Sarah found him lounging on the bed there was a smile on his face, one she knew well. She pulled herself up, using the cradle to support her aching legs.

"Nothing makes sense." She muttered. He nodded with understanding, but the look on his face made her feel like he was disappointed in her.

Though she had just stood she collapsed again to the floor, thoroughly exhausted.

"How shall I tell you?" He said. His voice was compelling, something like dream, a voice familiar as her own. She wanted to move closer, to take the comfort he might give. But his wickedness kept her rooted to the ground. After all, she remembered, she had been prisoner for four years.

Was it longer? How much of her life was illusion?

"As bluntly as possible." She wanted the truth. She rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands, drawing wetness.

"Yes, well your mother grew to like her payment for you. But while raising you was extraordinarily enjoyable for me…"

Sarah snorted.

"I realized that your mother lied to me." He sat up in the bed and gave the room a dazed look. "Your father of course wanted you. Having no knowledge of him I had not wiped his memory."

Sarah gazed at the cradle.

"Since someone had a claim on you, a blood relation, I had to return you."

"Oh," She could not hide her relief that her life was mostly reality.

"You were with me only for a short time, but I grew to enjoy your company. I took liberties. I sought out your future and saw how well you would grow. I had a great deal in mind for your upbringing." He almost looked kind. Sarah imagined how the room might have looked lit by daylight, filled with child's laughter. Had he slept here during her stay? Vigilant over her cradle watching her future in a crystal?

"You're disgusting." She said.

"There was magic enough in you to become an Immortal. You were to be my companion. I might have let you be queen. I had planned to make you so much more than you are now." Bitterness hung in the air like a sour smell.

Sarah was fighting the urge to laugh, everything was sounding as ridiculous as a fever dream. She had never been drunk, but she was guessing it might feel like this; disjointed and silly.

Jareth continued, "I returned you to your father under the guise of a social worker. Then once you were safe with him… You cried for me bitterly… But I went to your mother. Her punishment for lying would be that she would never forget you. Your loss from her would always follow her."

"Worthy punishment." Sarah recalled phone calls from Linda, pleading for assurances that she was happy. Her visits were brief and cold, as if she was being timed. Sarah thought that Jareth may have been the master behind the internal clock her mother ran by, always ticking and warning her.

"I felt the loss." He said. He stood, his clothes were uncharacteristically baggy dark robes, and they sagged to the floor around him.

His hands, she saw, were bare and the skin was blue in the glow of the crystals.

"What do you mean?" She looked again about the room, searching in her mind for the memories. She came up with nothing but blurred thoughts and hopes that she could know what she once was a part of.

"You were perfect. Spirit and wit. Magic from old blood that has carried in your family for many years. You may be watered down my mortality, but I could see the possibilities of you…"

She was standing before he could speak another word and running to him where he stood. She knew somewhere in the back of her mind that she had finally lost it all. This sick twisted man… Of all things this had to be her life!

She was twisted herself, as gnarled as he was in her own human way. Her fists fell down on him in a fury, but the air was all she touched. She stumbled forward with her own force, smashing herself into the mattress of the bed.

"I finally found a way to keep you." His voice was everywhere.

She grew warm with fear when his breath came hot on her neck. Ripping herself free of the bed she spun violently to search the room with her fists, swinging wildly.

There was no royal nose to punch.

Calmed by her own fatigue she stilled, a rumpled mess in the middle of the room. He came up behind her, his warmth overpowering and making her dizzy. He never touched her but she could feel him, a ghost moving behind her, pressing her boundaries but never indulging in her skin. His hand came forward, around her head, holding a crystal. It was a distraction from her anger, she knew, but still like the fire to a moth, she was drawn to it. Her finger came forward and touch it.

Slowly it took a new shape, the curves replaced by hard lines, folding out to produce a new object entirely: a small music box.

"Remember." He commanded. The little box was blue, shining golden flowers to decorate it sat in well placed patterns. He flipped it open with his thumb, and soft music spilled free, a gentle melody. Her lullaby. His spare arm wrapped around her to find her hand, a fist, and brought it to hold the box. His hand only touched her sleeve, flesh never met flesh.

"I played the role of caregiver, villain. I did everything for you that you needed. You were meant to be mine."  
"I wasn't meant for anything."

"Perhaps I am too far in love to know better." He said back, his voice dangerously low.

Sarah snapped herself out of her daze.

"You? Love?" She smirked and flipped the music box closed. "You would only ever know how to love yourself.

He laughed.

"Won't you give me a chance to set myself free?" She begged. Try as she might to face him, he was one set ahead and always out of her sight. "Please?"

The whine in her voice was so evident that she blushed in embarrassment.

"Do you really want to leave?" He asked. For once he sounded serious.

She hesitated. Hadn't he said something before that she would not survive the human world anymore?

"Where could I go?" She said. Looking down at the music box she pondered her future, once a happy dream, now wasted and full of questions.

"You're asking the King of Dreams." He said. "I could take you anywhere."

"Except where I wish to be most." She said, more to herself. "What has happened since I left?"

"A great deal, but it is mostly trivial." The king sounded bored.

"Show me."

Finally his face came into view, the glow of the crystals setting his eyes aflame with blue light. One pupil, engorged, pulsed while the other, small, was focused and unmoving.

"Say your right words."


End file.

Labyrinth, Romance