They say that the Lady Irene, Duchess of Batons, was a rare beauty in her day. They say that she was a rose among thistles, a delicate and fragile flower that must be protected, for it could never be preserved. Many young gentlemen courted her, wanting to possess or protect that fleeting beauty. But what the young gentlemen courting her perhaps failed to notice was that she knew how fleeting her own beauty was. She knew by the age of seventeen that she couldn't always rely on her looks to get her ahead, and so, within the space of ten short years, the Lady Irene went from innocent young girl to calculating, power-hungry young woman.

She was most definitely a woman, in both body and mind, when she sought shelter with the Duke of Batons one rainy night and it's almost definite that she was calculating as well. Stories tells us that her hair was quite loose and dishevelled, although personal experiences tell that this was probably a one-off and the rain had likely loosened it from its customary beehive-of-sorts. It is said that she was wearing an off-the-shoulder dress. At any rate, the Duke of Batons, who was not much older than the Lady Irene (she was about thirty-three at that point, and had buried two husbands already), was by all accounts a bit of a soft touch and took her in. Probably he gave her a towel and, being that he was who he was, a warm, dry, sensible dress with two shoulders that would stay up.

The Duke's name was Robert. He was a very solid, dependable, kind-hearted and noble man, which meant that in a kingdom of Fair Folk, he had approximately the same life expectancy as a particularly gooey meringue on a sunny day in Hell. However, to widespread astonishment, he had done quite well for himself, gaining a lovely wife from the nobility, and a duchy and daughter in the process. Robert doted on his daughter, a rather skinny and silent dark-haired girl by the name of Sarah. It had been five years since the first Duchess of Batons had gone, according to some, wooed from her home and husband by a mortal man. Since then, Robert had been both parents to his daughter, who seemed none the worse for it. Still, he felt that Sarah was missing something by not having a feminine influence in her life.

It was hard to imagine a more peculiar match than the Lady Irene and the Duke of Batons, but each had something the other wanted – the Duke had the power that the Lady craved, and the Lady would provide female companionship and a firm, guiding hand for the Duke's daughter. All things considered, the marriage was more like a business transaction than anything else.

Sarah had only been six when her mother left them, too young to realise just how the parent she idolized had betrayed her. But now she was eleven, and old enough to see that, like fairy gold, the Lady Irene's beauty and kindness would wear off and leave nothing but a pile of junk.

She never once dreamed, however, that things would go the way they did.

It's been said, probably by the same people who said that the Lady Irene was once a great beauty (because there is, after all, an upper limit to the number of gossips a kingdom can contain, even if it is the same as the number of people in the kingdom), that once the Lady Irene had the duchy and had a son, she saw no further need of a husband. There are those who argue that had that been the case, the new Duchess of Batons would have had her inconvenient stepdaughter disposed of as well. To which the first gossips would usually reply, darkly: well, someone's got to take care of the baby.

At any rate, the Duke of Batons went out riding on the same day that Sarah turned fourteen; He did not return. The official story was that he had heard news of his first wife's whereabouts, and had set out to find her. You know very well what the gossips say though (although there were those who said that Robert got tired of Irene at about the same time as she lost her figure and face). At any rate, it wasn't questioned. This was, after all, the Underground. Political intrigue was practically a matter of rote.

The Lady Irene settled quite comfortably into her duchy, and set about bringing up her son (or, that is, instructing her stepdaughter to bring up her son) to be a spoilt little snot. Sarah did her best to keep the boy from this fate, but her actions were closely watched by her stepmother. This approach did not go over well with the servants, who left, one by one, leaving Sarah to pick up the slack. As she was only one person, and already busy with the duchess' and her son's constant demands, the household chores began to fall by the wayside and the duchy began to fall into ruin. With each new insult, Sarah withdrew into herself, waiting for the day when she would be free of her stepmother's tyranny and able to go on with her life. But not today. Not today. Not today...

And so passed a year.

AN: This is a collab I'm doing with my friend Chloe, whose deviantART page can be found here: http: // the- chloe. deviantart. com/ Just paste the link into the bar at the top of the page and remove the spaces. We decided we'd rewrite Labyrinth as Cinderella, or Cinderella as Labyrinth, however you want to say it. Just for the lulz. Hopefully it'll be good.

There's also a family portrait of the Underground version of the Williams family, which can be found here: http: // fictionalboyfriend. deviantart. com/ art/ Family- Portrait- 111330393