Chapter One, in which we catch up with our heroine.
Disclaimer: The characters contained within aren't mine. I didn't create them, I don't own them. If, however, anyone has a spare Jareth running about, I'd be glad to take delivery.
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The thing about entering the Goblin Kingdom is that it enters you in return. It seeps in to your bones, in to your soul. It's the kind of stain that no amount of scrubbing will remove; no matter how long and how hard you try.
God knows, Sarah had tried.
Toby hadn't seemed to suffer any ill affects; possibly because he'd been so very young when he'd been taken. Maybe the true magic and mystery of the place had seemed commonplace to such a young child. Whatever the reason, he professed to remember nothing about the experience on the few times that Sarah and carefully broached the subject with him.
"You can't remember anything odd happening to you when you were small?" she'd coaxed, not wanting to blurt out what she was thinking.
"I think I jammed a lego brick up my nose, once." He'd replied, small features screwed up in thought. He was only ten and had yet to lose all of his baby fat. The newest addition to the family, Alice, cooed contentedly from her crib.
"That was a few months ago, weirdo." Sarah had said affectionately, ruffling his blond curls.
Toby had looked sheepish and Sarah had dropped the subject. Maybe he really couldn't remember, or maybe he just didn't want to talk about it. Whatever the reason, she wasn't going to push it. In the nine years since she'd conquered the Labyrinth and returned back safely, she'd called on Hoggle and her friends no less than fifteen times; whenever she'd felt down or lonely or scared. The one person that never made an appearance was the one person that she really wanted to see. Jareth.
The god-damned King of the Goblins.
She mocked herself for that, knowing full well that wanting to see him again was a self-destructive wish that could quite probably spell her own annihilation. Knowing that something's bad for you and never doing it, however, are completely different things. Who hasn't reached for that one last chocolate knowing that it will quite probably make you sick and yet doing it anyway? Some things are too addictive to even contemplate giving up. A man who had promised you the world in return for the complete subordination of self was as intriguing a prospect as it was horrifying.
Nine years since the Labyrinth. Nine years. Nine years which had seen her complete her college education and get a mediocre job at a printing company, proof-reading other people's documents and reflecting that nothing that came out of the authors' brains matched the reality of what she herself had gone through. She'd had boyfriends, but none of the sexual experiences she'd had compared favourably to the few minutes she'd spent waltzing in Jareth's arms during the peach dream. How many times had she wished she'd accepted his offer? How many times had she looked at Toby and been glad that she hadn't?
Commonplace things reminded her of the Labyrinth as she went about her daily business. As she caught her bus to work one morning she watched a golden-bright butterfly flit against the window and was reminded of the snapping fairies that she'd caught Hoggle exterminating at the entrance. She stared, entranced, as the tiny creature battered itself in vain against the glass, wasting its energy and its life on an endeavour that it couldn't accomplish.
Just the way she'd felt when running the Labyrinth.