The title of every chapter will be taken from lyrics to a David Bowie song. Oh, What Have You Done? is from Love Is Lost on The Next Day album.
I do not own anything related to Labyrinth, including the characters, and certainly not Mr David Bowie *sigh* I do own a Magic Dance sweater, lots of DB CDs etc.
Please do let me know your thoughts, and thank you for taking the time to read this fanfic. I don't usually have the time to respond to every review, but I'm always grateful for them. I will always try and answer any questions that arise, so long as they don't involve spoilers for the rest of the plot. Thanks again - Mrs P.
The Wish
Chapter 1
Oh, What Have You Done?
Sarah Williams sat before her vanity mirror brushing the tangles from her long dark brown hair; it was something she had done many times before. She might never do it again, not here at least. In a little over an hour, she would turn twenty-one and then everything would change. She stared hard at her reflection; she was a beautiful young woman, everyone said so. Not that it had ever done her much good. Sarah was no longer the petulant teen who once wished her brother away. The memory of her past folly caused her to laugh bitterly at the irony of her present situation. Draped over her bed was an exquisite white wedding gown cut to accentuate her womanly curves. She glanced over at it and then crumbled into a pit of despair, her head in her hands.
Earlier that day…
"Sarah, what's it like having a famous mommy?" Toby inquired.
Putting the finishing touches to her make up for a rare dinner with her mostly absent mother, she dabbed her nose with powder as she thought how best to answer her brother's question.
"I used to think it was pretty cool," she sighed, "Until I realised I was sharing her with millions of her fans."
Her blond-haired-blue-eyed-not-such-a-baby-anymore brother pouted thoughtfully as he sat on her bed.
"My mom is so boring, all she ever does is cook and clean," he grumbled.
Irene hadn't always been her most favourite person, especially during her mid-teen years. However, Sarah came to appreciate her caring nature and steady hand. They didn't always see eye to eye, and they were never going to be best friends, but her brother's assessment was far too harsh.
"Toby, you're the apple of your mom's eye and she thinks the sun shines out of your butt." She chided him. "You don't know how lucky you are."
He shrugged as he fiddled with a loose thread on the aged owl-patterned comforter on her bed.
"You know that dream I have sometimes, about the Goblin King? I had it again last night," he said.
Sarah froze for a second, her heartbeat increasing, before recovering and blotting her lipstick on a tissue.
"Yeah, well, I dreamt I was married to Garth from Wayne's World. Like that's gonna happen...Not," she snorted.
Toby had a faraway look in his eyes.
"It wasn't real, you know," Sarah assured him. "It was just a story, that's all."
He shook his head in firm denial.
"It was real and he is real," Toby was adamant.
Sarah closed her eyes and there he was, the Goblin King. No matter how hard she tried to forget him, he was always lurking somewhere in her head. Her dreams were testament to the details she could call to mind when she pictured him. Thinking of them made her blush. She got up from her vanity and slipped on the red pumps that matched the fancy gown her mother had bought for her.
"He misses us, I think he's lonely," Toby said.
"How do I look?" Sarah did a little twirl to show off her outfit, ignoring her brother's lament about the Goblin King.
"Wow," he gasped. "You look like a princess, or maybe even a queen," he beamed.
She chuckled to hide her discomfort at his observation and grabbed her purse. "Thanks, kiddo," she smiled, tenderly petting her brother's cheek, "I'd better get going, it wouldn't do to make mommy dearest wait."
"The car is here." Her stepmother called up from the hallway below.
With a deep breath, Sarah made her way downstairs.
"Look at you all grown up." Irene complimented her appearance, bursting with pride at the beautiful graceful young woman her once troublesome step-daughter had grown into.
"You don't think it shows too much cleavage?" Sarah fussed with the thin straps of her gown.
"Honey, don't look a gift horse in the mouth." Her stepmother was always telling her she should be proud of her figure. "It's a shame you're not going out on a date, but trust me, you're good to go," she said.
They shared a smile of genuine warmth as Sarah slipped on her jacket.
"Let's get this show on the road," she muttered to herself as she walked to the waiting car.
A hooded figure watched her leave from the shadows before fading back into them. His whispered vow lingered.
"Soon, my love."
Sarah arrived at the restaurant, unsurprised to find her mother was not yet there. The maître d' escorted her to the best table in the house and, with a snap of his fingers, one of the waiters presented her with a menu. It was the kind of fancy place her mother was used to frequenting. She felt uncomfortable being there alone as some of the other diners kept glancing over at her. Fidgeting with the tableware, she began to get increasingly self-conscious. Her face felt hot and she was sure it must be red enough to match her gown by that point. Contemplating making an unnecessary visit to the ladies room to kill time, Sarah heaved a sigh of relief when she saw her mother sweeping into view.
Linda Williams always had to make a spectacular entrance wherever she went, and this was no exception. She was dressed fit for an awards ceremony in a flowing gown with a long red fox fur coat and matching hat. The look was completed with a pair of 1950s style wide-framed Ray-Bans.
"Hello, mom," Sarah stood up to greet her and received a double air kiss for her trouble.
Linda removed her coat, hat, and sunglasses, and handed them to her harried assistant before taking her seat.
"Wait in the car." She barked at the timid looking young woman who promptly scurried away.
Sarah saw that almost all of the diners were now openly gawping in their direction. Her mother pretended not to notice and barely glanced at the menu before ordering a simple salad. She frowned on her daughter's higher calorie choices, at least as much as her latest facelift would allow. Sarah's attempts to engage her mother in conversation were met with either one word answers or silence. Linda could usually be relied upon to wax lyrical about her latest starring role, or the fabulous parties she'd attended. But tonight, nothing could entice her. Sarah began talking about the play she was writing in her spare time from college. Her dream was to be a successful playwright, after she realised words (not acting) were her passion. A realisation that came to her right around the time her application to The Juilliard School of Dance, Drama and Music, was rejected.
"For Christ's sake, mother," Sarah eventually blurted out, not caring if she was making a scene. "If you didn't want to be here, why bother setting this whole thing up?" Her hurt feelings over Linda's cold indifference got the better of her. It was obvious she would rather be somewhere else.
"I needed to see you." Her mother unapologetically replied as she picked at her salad.
Linda exercised strict control over every aspect of her life, and she found her present situation intolerable. Reaching for her water glass, her hand was shaking so badly it caused her to upset it, spilling the contents all over the table. Sarah had never seen her in such a nervous state, and it was unsettling.
A waiter came over to mop up the spillage and Linda jumped up from the table.
"I can't do this," she shrieked and hurried out of the restaurant without a backwards glance.
Her bewildered daughter ran after her, not knowing what to make of her strange behaviour.
"Mom, wait," she begged, to no avail.
Her mother reached the limousine and her assistant jumped out to attend to her. The young woman was instructed to go and pay the restaurant bill.
"Get in," Linda brusquely ordered her daughter. "I'll take you home and then go straight back to the airport. I should never have come here."
Sarah flopped down on the plush leather seat. "What the hell's going on? Why didn't you just sent me something expensive and impersonal for my birthday, like you usually do?" She sneered.
Her mother had grown increasingly distant from her over the years, and she never understood why. It hurt more than she let on. In the past, she'd been pathetically grateful for any scrap of attention she could get from her.
Linda fumbled around in her purse and pulled out a pillbox. Taking out a brightly coloured capsule, she placed it on her tongue and swallowed it with the aid of a big gulp of brandy. She irritably brushed her long dark brown hair away from her green eyes. Her daughter might have inherited her looks, but the similarities stopped there.
"I felt I owed it to you to come here in person and explain everything face to face," she said. "I thought about writing it all down in a letter, but I couldn't do it." She took another gulp of brandy.
Sarah began to worry her mother might be ill; she was looking thin, even for her, and then there was the pill popping.
"Oh God, you don't have cancer or something, do you?" She inquired her voice shrill with panic.
Linda shook her head.
"Tomorrow, as you know, is your twenty first birthday, and I have a story I must relate to you before midnight strikes," she said, noting the fear creeping into her daughter's eyes.
Sarah didn't like the sound of that deadline. It was like something out of a fairy tale, and that thought made a chill run down her spine. Her mother took a deep breath and began her story.
"As you know, I was only a little older than you are now when I gave birth to you, and my acting career was going nowhere fast. I was stuck at home with a new baby, reading scripts for parts I knew I'd never get. It was soul destroying and I hated what my life had become. I just wasn't cut out for being a wife and mother and nothing else," Linda bluntly explained.
She lit a cigarette and took a long drag before blowing out the smoke. Sarah noted her mother didn't offer to wind down the window, or offer her a drink.
"One day, after yet another failed audition, I got home to find your father in a rage because I'd left you with a neighbour. You were fine by the way. Mrs Avery had four kids of her own and so she knew what she was doing, probably more than I ever did." She let out a regretful sigh. "Your jackass of a father demanded that I give up on my dreams and devote myself to being a housewife and mother. I felt as if I was going crazy, stuck in that house with a screaming baby, and then one day I couldn't stand it any longer. I left you with Mrs Avery again and I went to see my agent. I begged him to find me a job, any job. I was desperate and I didn't care what the part was, I just needed something. He laughed in my face, can you imagine?" She took another drag on her cigarette. "His office was at the top of this old ten story building, and I was so upset I ran right out of there. The elevator door was open and I didn't even notice the man who was already inside, until he asked if I was okay. I guess I just blurted out all of my frustrations without thinking about what I was saying. We were headed for the ground floor when the power cut out and I started to panic. You know me and my claustrophobia, right? Anyway, the guy took my hand and told me everything was going to be okay. He had the most charming British accent and I felt calmer almost immediately."
Sarah sucked in a sharp breath at the mention of the man's accent, and her heart was pounding. She didn't like the direction her mother's story was taking.
"Mom, is there a point to all this, besides you blaming me for sabotaging your career, I mean? By the way, you seem to be doing pretty well, regardless." She sniped.
Linda drained her glass of brandy and refilled it, again not offering her daughter a drink.
"Yes, there's a point," she snapped. "The guy in the elevator was dressed in a kind of old fashioned way, like a thirties gangster or something. He was wearing a grey pinstriped suit with a matching overcoat and fedora. We stood there in that broken down elevator for what seemed like the longest time, but was probably less than a minute. The guy kept on holding my hand and asked me to tell him more about my dreams. I thought he was just being nice, helping me to forget we were trapped, and so I blurted it all out. I want to be a famous actress, I said. I want fame, fortune, awards, and the whole shebang. He smiled, and the next thing I knew he produced this crystal ball out of nowhere. Look into it, he told me and it would show me my dreams."
The blood drained from Sarah's face. Snatching the glass of brandy out of her mother's hand, she downed it in one.
"This guy, what were his eyes like?" She questioned her voice barely more than a whisper.
Linda frowned with concentration as she tried to settle on the colour.
"Blue, I think, or maybe brown, it was dark and I'm not sure," she pondered. "Why?"
Sarah didn't want to explain. "Finish your story," she said. Not wanting to hear it but needing to know.
Linda tried to recall where she was up to and was annoyed at the interruption.
"I thought the guy was crazy, but I looked into that crystal ball and I saw my future. I saw the movies and the plays; my Tony awards. Everything I wanted so very badly." She glanced over at her daughter, and for once her eyes were filled with genuine emotion.
Sarah had her suspicions over what was coming next. Only she couldn't imagine her mother running the labyrinth and she wasn't a goblin, so maybe she didn't know after all.
"The guy held out the crystal ball to me and said if I wanted my dreams all I had to do was take it. Just like that? I asked, and he grinned. I do want something in return, he said, I want what you were willing to wish away." Linda was red-faced with shame as she repeated his words. "I told you how upset I was when I left my agent's office, right? I didn't know what I was saying." She grasped her daughter's hand, as Sarah's breath caught in her throat. "If I wished you away in a moment of madness, I didn't mean too. I told him I wasn't going to hand my baby over to a strange man for anything. He said he wouldn't come to claim you until you were of age, and then he would take you for his bride. I told myself he was lunatic and I started shouting for help. He held out the crystal ball again and he said, last chance, do you want your dreams or not?" Linda turned her head, unable to hold her daughter's gaze.
"No," Sarah croaked, her mouth was dry as she fought to steady her breathing.
"I wasn't even sure it was real at first. The guy disappeared the minute I agreed to let him take you when you turned twenty one. He left no trace of anything behind, not even the crystal ball. But then, almost right away, my dreams started to come true. I'm so sorry, you must believe that." Her mother said as a single tear streaked down her cheek.
"Sorry?" Sarah exclaimed. "You are the most selfish, vain, pathetic excuse for a human being it's ever been my misfortune to know," she raged. "How could you? Do you even know anything about this guy you promised me to? I've met the Goblin King before, and if he thinks I'm marrying him, he's got another think coming." She was almost hysterical.
Linda was confused.
"He didn't say anything about being the Goblin King, whatever that might be," she said. "He told me his name was Lord Kobalos, and that he would come to claim you at the exact moment you turned twenty one."
Sarah was reeling, was this guy the Goblin King in disguise or not? She knew of no one else who could do the things he could, although she supposed there might be others like him out there. Almost six years had passed since she ran his labyrinth to reclaim Toby and won. If he wanted her why didn't he claim her then, she wondered. He tried, and she'd rejected him, she recalled. He had no power over her then, but had that changed? Sarah closed her eyes and saw him; smiling in his smug way, like the cat that ate the canary. She actually looked down to see if she'd sprouted yellow feathers. The clock was ticking, and there were less than three hours until she turned twenty one.
"Take me home," Sarah commanded.
She wasn't going anywhere else without a fight.