Sarah lost her childhood in the Labyrinth. She realized that the world wasn't made of fantasies and glitter when she turned down the Goblin King. She set herself in her ways - as ordinary as they may be - and tried not to think of the day her childhood died, tried not to hear the doleful lament still humming in her soul, mourning the loss of youthful wonder.

Plot: On his sixth birthday, Toby makes a birthday wish to return to the Underground and Jareth allows Sarah one last chance to say goodbye to her brother before Toby takes up permanent residence as the Goblin Prince, and heir to the throne. Sarah still fears Jareth and, after her ordeal five years previous, the Underground itself - but she is determined to save her brother from the web of lies and tarnished promises brought on by the Goblin King before it's too late to turn back again.

Romance? Yes. Jareth/Sarah, though if you're looking for vows of love between them and blind romance, this is not the fic for you. Jareth is angry, Sarah is scared, and both of them are too proud to admit too much.

Disclaimer: I don't know why I bother with this sort of thing, but I don't own Labyrinth. I do, however, own the original characters (NO, THIS IS NOT A JARETH/OC FIC! DON'T WORRY!) that are to come in later chapters.

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Chapter 1

Rain poured and lightning flashed outside the large home of the Williams family. Sarah Williams stood holding a plate with a single cupcake on it in one hand while the other clutched a misshapen object wrapped in newspaper. She pounded on a bedroom door as thunder rumbled in the distance, building itself up before tearing through the house with enough ferocity to drown out Sarah's words as she shouted pleadingly to her brother.

"Toby, will you please come out?"

"No!" Toby's voice was loud and hurt, though muffled through the wooden door of his bedroom. He also sounded like he might've been screaming through a pillow, but it was hard for Sarah to tell. Another clap of thunder muffled more knocks on the bedroom door.

"Come on, Toby. Your candle's melting- it's gonna mess up the cake." And, indeed, the single birthday candle that was placed in the chocolate cupcake was nearly halfway melted. A great glob of green wax rested on the chocolate icing and Sarah wondered if it'd still be alright to eat. In fact, she wondered if they'd be eating it at all.

But Toby would have nothing to do with it, "I don't care!" the little boy screamed. Quieter, he added, "I can't believe they missed my birthday. It's no fair!"

Sarah let out a hopeless sigh as she slid along the doorjamb and onto the carpeted floor. Leaning her head against the door, her voice seemed more desperate and sympathetic than it had before.

"Come on, Toby… Do you know how many birthdays of mine they missed? Of course it isn't fair. And you feel bad for a while, but it isn't the end of the world. I have cake, and a present- we can have your birthday now."

Sarah cast a glance at the clock on the wall, its pendulum swinging and clicking rhythmically as it ticked the seconds away. It read 9:37 PM. The young woman smiled as an idea filtered through her head, "Hey, Toby," she said excitedly, "If you come out in the next five minutes, you'll be able to blow out your birthday candle the exact moment you turn six!"

Toby opened the door to his room and Sarah nearly fell over. The little boy let out a small laugh, "Presents?"

Grinning, Sarah sat up straight again, and just as she moved the candle went out. She shrugged and said that she could light it again later, "I want you to open your present first, anyways," she stated, and pulled a shapeless lump of wrapping paper from behind her back.

Toby took the gift, already having the gist of what it was but still feigning excitement as he tore the paper off of it. When finished, he held a small ceramic statue of a short, stumpy, slightly disfigured looking humanoid.

"Oh! It's Hoggle, from your stories!" he smiled, genuinely liking the gift. It was a bit of a shock, to any onlooker, for a six-year-old boy to like anything like the statue, but Sarah knew it'd bring a smile to Toby's face.

Sarah nodded as she crossed the hall and opened the drawer in the little table that sat underneath the wall clock, the cupcake plate in hand. She removed a little plastic disposable lighter and flicked it to life, re-lighting the candle before tossing the lighter back into the drawer. "I'm sorry about all this, Toby. I really hoped they'd be here this time… But I'm glad I'm here."

Toby inspected the detail on the statue and shrugged nonchalantly. "Hey, when're you going to make me a Jareth statue? I have three goblins, Ludo, Sir Didymus and Ambrosius, and now I've got Hoggle, so when are you going to make Jareth?"

Sarah frowned and sighed as she sat cross-legged in the middle of the hallway, setting the cupcake on the floor between her and her brother. Sometimes she wished she'd never told those stories about the Labyrinth to Toby - he seemed to believe in it all even more than she did, but they always made him feel better, so she thought it was all for the better.

"I have to wait for more time first. I work a lot, you know- I don't always get the spare time I need to make things, and Jareth will probably be the biggest project out of all of them. That'll have to be a really special day."

"What about on Christmas? That's special, right? What about then?"

Sarah grinned and looked up at the clock. Thirty seconds left. She pushed the cupcake towards Toby, "Make a wish."

Toby nodded and set the Hoggle statue to the side, it made a light 'thunk' as it hit against the floorboard that lined the hallway. He closed his eyes and focused, then opened them again and blew out the candle with as much relish as if it had ten or twelve brightly burning flames, rather than just a single half-melted and faltering candle. Sarah clapped happily, but her celebration was cut short by a sudden blast of thunder and flash of blue-white light through the hall window. The lights flickered on, then dimmed and shut off again, and a scratching noise was heard outside. A scratching noise that sounded all too familiar to Sarah's ears.

"Toby, what did you wish for?" Sarah asked quietly as an ominous fear clenched her heart.

Toby looked around with the glee of a six-year-old boy caught up in something spectacular, like a ride at Disney Land or a scary movie. "I can't tell you that, or it won't happen!" he said with stubborn belief.

Sarah turned to her brother sharply, "Toby, just, please, tell me what you wished for!" she cried, resting a hand on his shoulder as a fluttering silhouette banged against the distressed glass of the large window.

"I wished the goblins would take me away."

The window burst open and Sarah glanced back for a single moment, hardly a heartbeat. It was still enough time, however, for the feeling of her brother's shoulder beneath her hand to disappear into that of thin air. She swung back around and the hall was empty except for the cupcake and the Hoggle figurine lying forgotten near the wall.

"Not again," she whispered, as a shadow cast over her and a rush of cold air chilled her spine.

Five years, since Sarah had taken her trip through the Labyrinth. She'd thought it nothing more than a dream, a small little fantasy that she had when she wanted to escape from reality. She was a teenager then - she was hotheaded, she thought the world was against her, and she'd had one too many missed birthdays. Then, she blamed it on her brother, but she realized that it wasn't his fault at all, that it was her job to protect him and keep him from feeling that pain of isolation that she'd felt all throughout her teenage years.

He was disappointed at a young age, though, and it seemed that, as he became more and more aware of the world around him, he was getting harder and harder to protect. So she shared her little childish fantasies of the Labyrinth with him. She made him figurines and told him all the twists and turns that the Labyrinth had - all the twists and turns it made in her life. She told them like she believed them to be true, though she long since stopped believing it'd actually happened.

She'd grown up, she thought. She'd left it all behind.

Now, as she stood staring at the silhouette of the figure before her, the reality came rushing back. It was real. She'd lived it, for real. She'd been there, when the Goblin King took her baby brother away, and she was here now, five years later, a grown woman, and he'd done it again. He'd tricked her again.

She was standing up, now, but she was leaning against the wall for support. The lights flickered momentarily and Sarah caught a glimpse of his face.

"You haven't changed a bit," she said with disbelief, her voice a small, insignificant little thing against the roars and rumbles of the thunder outside.

"You have," he replied, his voice the same conceited, cocky voice that she remembered. It sounded a bit angrier than it had then, though - a sharp, razor edge barely detectable by anyone who didn't know what they were looking for. She supposed she was the cause of that. He hadn't been happy the last time they'd seen each other, after all.

Sarah stood up straighter and walked up to him, curiosity glinting in her brown eyes, just as it'd been five years before. She looked up at him, and he looked down at her. The window was still open, so rain spattered the walls as well as Sarah herself. Jareth smirked lightly and blinked, and the windows shut with a snap. The lights flickered again, covering the hallway in a dim, yellowish glow.

"What this time?" Sarah asked, "Another trip through the Labyrinth?"

"Sarah, what could you possibly be talking about?" Jareth said coolly, staring at her with sparkling, icy eyes. His lips turned back in a little half-grin.

"What do you mean?" she said, her voice rising to a hysterical level, "I'm talking about Toby! How do I get Toby back this time? I didn't wish him away - you can't have taken him!"

Jareth chuckled, and it sent shivers down Sarah's spine. Despite having defeated him five years before, the Goblin King still frightened Sarah out of her wits. She still woke up in the middle of the night with nightmares of him haunting her dreams. She'd put off making a Jareth statue for her brother out of fear, not out of pressed time.

She was just a coward, even when she thought it'd all been fantasy.

"You can't get him back," Jareth said bluntly. Contentment was obvious in his voice.

"What do you mean, I can't get him back?!" Sarah advanced on him, her eyes wide, "I have to get him back! You have to let me get him back! You-"

"I don't have to do anything!" Jareth shouted, the aversion that Sarah had been hearing throughout the entire conversation finally bubbling to the surface. His eyes flashed with a red fire in the light, like the reflective eyes of a Siamese cat, only much, much more horrifying. "Toby wished himself away. That means that Toby must get himself back… If he even wants to. You, my dear girl have nothing to do with it!"

"What?" Sarah stared at Jareth in shock, "Then why are you even here? Why didn't you take him and just leave?"

The smile returned to the Goblin King's face as he composed himself, leaning against the wall as he balanced one of the infamous crystal orbs on his left hand, the right one tucked casually across his chest.

"Come now, Sarah," he said with a mocking laugh, "you can't have expected me to drop by without saying 'hello' to the girl who nearly ruined everything for me, now could you? I mean, we had such a fantastic connection, you and I, I thought you'd be ecstatic to see me again!"

"What do you mean, 'nearly ruined everything'?"

"Oh, that." Jareth shrugged and tossed the crystal into the air, catching it with one hand and making it disappear instantly with a flick of the wrist as he paced across the width of the hallway. "Well, when you did that whole trick with the words, I was a little down for a while. The goblins were set free, the spell was broken, but, you see, I had myself a way back up. I am the King, you know, and you can't just get that sort of position out of luck or circumstances... I have my own powers, and I used them to rebuild. For, as you probably know, no great ruler is really great unless he can take nothing and make something."

Jareth stopped in front of the window and smiled proudly to himself, "And, if I do say so myself, I think I've made quite a something - even better than before, in fact. And I've been waiting all this time, for you."

"For me?"

Sarah stared. It was all she really could do. Her voice sounded foreign to her, her mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton. All she could think about was Toby. Poor Toby, lost in that world again.

"So that I could show it all off," Jareth said cheerfully, matter-of-factly. "So that I could show you, just once, where your little brother will be living and, hopefully, ruling later on in life." Jareth grinned and walked to the other side of the hall, "Because, after all, it'll be the last time you ever see him. I figure it'd be chivalrous for you to say goodbye."

Sarah blinked, tears brimming her eyes at the thought of never seeing Toby again. "Why? Why Toby? Why me? There are so many other people out there, why did you choose us?"

Anger glinted in Jareth's eyes again, red and flashing like a fire that's gone out of control. Another rumble of thunder, menacing when coupled with the look on the Goblin King's face, "I gave you a chance, Sarah, to live in the world of your dreams forever. You threw it away like the spoiled brat you are, in exchange for what? A normal life, working at the theatre as a stagehand, dreaming of the day you'll make it big like your dear mother? A life of disappointment, of disgrace, of sadness: you traded all I offered for this?

"I'd never offered any of that to anyone before. But you were special, Sarah. You had the imagination, the yearning for something more in your life, and, of course, you had Toby. Toby isn't just a normal child. He's destined for great things, and I wanted those great things to be an asset to my kingdom…" He paused, "And, I wanted you to be my queen… But I suppose you can't always get what you want, now can you?"

"I was fifteen," Sarah cried. "You can't have expected me to make that sort of choice when I was just a teenager!"

Jareth laughed coldly. It was amazing how he could go from fire and brimstone to icy callousness so quickly. "You were old enough to wish your brother away with enough desperation to call on me, Sarah… That's a lot harder than you think."

Sarah moved forward so that she was only a foot or so away from the Goblin King. "I was angry. I – I didn't mean it, not really! You just caught me at a bad time… You caught Toby at a bad time… That's it – he didn't really mean it either. He was just angry, like I was."

"I know," Jareth said with a knowing smile as he looked at Sarah, who had suddenly been reduced from beautiful, strong young woman to a fear-filled teenager in mere moments.

"I know, because I watched. I waited, Sarah, until the most opportune moment, and then I took young Toby away. I waited until he was so angry at his parents that he made the same mistake you did five years ago. He believed in what he said."

"What do you mean… you watched?"

Jareth leaned in close, so that Sarah could feel his breath on her neck as he spoke, and it caused goosebumps to sprout up all over her skin.

"What a lovely dress you wore that day, Sarah," he said slowly, softly, almost threateningly. "What a pity it got ruined in the rain."

Sarah's eyes opened wide as she remembered that day. She remembered the day she finally called on the goblins to take her brother away. The day in the park as she rehearsed with her dog Merlin… She'd spent hours getting ready, styling her hair and perfecting her makeup. She remembered the park – how, one moment, it was a beautiful, clear day, and the next it began to rain… She remembered an owl, perched on a tall statue and staring at her with such intensity as she said her lines that she thought, at one point, it could have been human.

But it hadn't been human at all…

It'd been him.

Sarah backed up quickly and nearly fell. Fast as lightning, the Goblin King's gloved hand caught Sarah by her wrist and suddenly it felt like her entire body was submerged in icy water - in the sort of cold that seemed to numb you and burn you simultaneously.

He pulled her up to him so he could whisper in her ear, "It's time to say good-bye, Sarah."

And then, darkness.