Author's Note : Hello everyone, it's nice to (meet?) you! I'm new on here, at least on this specific account, and although I have written fanfictions before, I'm kind of rusty, so please forgive any grammar mistakes, etc. Also, I am currently looking for a beta reader, so if anyone's got the time and is willing to do it, I'd love to talk about it and see what we can sort out. I'm also hiring myself out as a beta reader as well, so, again, we can talk about it. ^^

Anyways, this is my first fanfiction on this new account, and I'm super excited to get started and see what you guys think of it! Now, I know that, recently, a lot of tribute has been paid to David Bowie (R.I.P., you're awesome!) due to his recent death, and I just thought that I could contribute as well for my first fanfiction. Now, usually, I support the "weirder" couples, especially non-canon ones, and will be writing about those, but, for this story, I'll do an almost canon couple that was actually implied (several times).

Now, before anyone gets any ideas about the title of the story implying angst and whatnot, it actually doesn't—or, at least not chiefly. The words are just the very first ones in David Bowie's song, "As the World Falls Down", from the original Labyrinth. It's my favourite song of David Bowie's, so I decided to pay homage to it as well.

The romance, as I'm sure you've definitely guessed, will be between Jareth and Sarah, but I make it a point never to make romance the main focus of my stories. It will be present and prominent, yes, but please remember that it's not everything.

Also, and this is very important, I think I should explain that my timeline for the story will be a little different than that in the original film. Essentially, I'm going to use the "it was all a dream" angle, and just have Sarah wake up the next morning with no memory of what happened. The story will start a week after Sarah experienced everything she did in the movie.

Well, with all the (prolonged but necessary) introductions out of the way, let's get started!

Chapter 1 – The Return of Hoggle

There were many things that a teenager like Sarah Williams could choose to be doing on a rainy Saturday in April while staying indoors. Most of these things, hopefully, involved Sarah minding her own business and not causing anybody any trouble. Unfortunately though, trouble had a way of finding Sarah.

Once seated on the window seat of her parents' living room, cozy with a mug of hot cocoa and a copy of her favourite book of all time, The Labyrinth, she was just preparing to delve into the first chapter yet again, having finished it the previous week and eager to read it again. For some reason or other, the book kept drawing her to it, almost as though she was supposed to memorize its very lines. She had, at some point, memorized the climactic ending of the novel, in which the heroine bravely defied the Goblin King in order to escape his castle, but still couldn't remember the precise lines. This bothered her, and so she was determined to get all of the lines done right.

Perhaps, she thought, what I'm lacking is knowledge of detail.

"Sarah!" Irene Williams, Sarah's "evil stepmother" called out from the kitchen.

Groaning, Sarah shut her book, propping it up on her knees. "What?"

"I need you to come help me with something! Do you think you could whip up the icing for the cake?"

"'Do you think you could whip up the icing for the cake?'" Sarah mimicked, carefully setting her book aside as she stood up, leaving her comfortable and poetic position behind. Stomping over to the kitchen, she made clear her disapproval of being interrupted, but her stepmother didn't even seem to notice.

"The ingredients are over there by the sink. Oh, hurry, Sarah! We've only got three hours until the Millers get here, and I still need to wash my hair!"

"Why don't you give it to me? I'll wash it for you," Sarah offered, heading towards the large bowl.

Irene glared at Sarah out of the corner of her eye, but otherwise didn't say anything. If Sarah had even an inkling of love or respect for her stepmother, she would have felt sorry when, just about three days ago, when Irene and Sarah's father, Robert, went out to dinner at the Graham's, six-year-old twins Betty and Grady Graham had thought to play a brilliant joke and stuck gum piece after gum piece after gum piece in Irene's hair while she was sitting down to dinner and didn't notice. By the time that Roger, the twins' older brother, actually noticed them sniggering behind Irene's chair, it was too late to do anything about it, and Irene had to get a severely short haircut. Now, more or less, her real hair resembled a buzz cut, and she'd had to purchase a real-hair wig to resemble her own hair so that no one would notice the difference. Sarah had thought that it was hilarious at the time, grinning boldly, but couldn't help wondering at the irony of the whole thing. Just earlier that day, when she had yet again to babysit her baby half-brother, Toby, she had gotten mad at Irene and wished in her mind that something bad to happen to her to prevent her from ever going out and leaving Sarah alone with the baby ever again. And then, something had happened, and for two whole days until getting the wig, Irene hadn't left the house.

That still didn't keep her from actually hosting parties now that she had the wig on though, so it didn't matter in the end, and Sarah still had to help out whether she wanted to or not.

About ten minutes later, after Sarah's unkind comment, the teenage girl was finally done whipping the whipped cream, and ready to get back to her novel. Just then though, Irene called out after her, reluctantly handing Sarah her wig, as though it were a precious treasure.

"Well, since you offered," she said smugly, a reply to Sarah's earlier comment.

Biting her tongue to keep from saying anything back, knowing that it would only get her into deeper trouble and more chores, Sarah stomped upstairs and into her parents' bathroom, there turning on the sink and taking out the special shampoo that the wig required.

"This is awful!" she moaned, talking her to herself, as had become a habit. "A princess like me shouldn't have to be doing awful chores like this! It's that stepmother that's to blame, that evil stepmother! She's afraid that I'll do something bad, isn't she, that I'm more beautiful than she is, and more perfect? Ha! I bet she's going to give me a poisoned apple next, and poison me for a hundred years!...And then, I will only be able to wake up with a kiss from my true love, and then we'll live happily ever after!" Sighing romantically, Sarah tried her best to picture herself adorned with a beautiful gown and lying down on a bed of roses instead of dressed in casual attire in her parents' bathroom, scrubbing away at that horrid wig.

"It's not fair! It's just not fair!" she whined over and over again, scrubbing harder than necessary and taking out a few hairs of the original netting in the process. But she didn't care; she was angry. After all, when the Millers came over, them and their stuck-up daughter, Angela, she'd have to stay downstairs and make "polite conversation" instead of being where she really wanted to be, reading her book. That would be even worse than having to clean out the cinders from the fireplace or something, because then, at least she'd be doing something romantic, like Cinderella! But no, for poor, ordinary Sarah Williams, normal, dull, and boring were the only options.

"Sometimes I wish I could just run away. Yes…that's it. I wish I could run away from home!" she cried out, her cheeks puffed out with indignation. Then, coming upon inspiration, yet again from that book, she felt a small tingle in her spine and threw her head back, yelling: "Goblin King, Goblin King, listen, hear my call! I want to run away from home, and never come back at all!"

There was a flash of lightning and then a clap of thunder outside, and suddenly the lights went out all through the house. The bathroom window burst open and rain poured in, but luckily only wet the floor a little before Sarah stumbled over and closed it. Brushing herself off, she waited until the noises of her parents downstairs (and Toby's crying) subsided, and then went back to the sink to wait until the lights came back on. When they finally did a few minutes later, she heard her father call up to see if she was alright.

No, I'm horrible because my horrible stepmother is making me wash her horrible wig and do other horrible chores, Sarah wanted to respond, but instead she said, "Yeah, I'm okay!"

Closing the door to the bathroom and locking it, because she wanted to be alone, Sarah ignored the wig and went over to sit on the edge of the bathtub, wanting nothing more than to ignore the rest of her current life and circumstances, to be elsewhere.

She was just preparing to climb into the bathtub and fall asleep or something, when suddenly, strangely, she felt a lump already there, where she was almost certain it shouldn't be.

"Hey, watch it, will you?!" grunted a grumpy voice.

Sarah gasped and sprang up from her seat, slipping on the slipper tile floor and bumping her head against the sink. "Ow!" she cried out, already beginning to feel a lump form at the back of her head. Her attention was elsewhere though as she noticed, from inside the bathtub, holding onto the curtains to steady himself, stood a small, dwarf like person, quite dirty, and wearing a leather cap, white blouse, vest, patched trousers, and black shoes. Once on his feet, he stared out at her through steely blue eyes, his face quite ugly and wrinkled. "Well, what're you staring at?!" he demanded, as though it was quite rude to do so.

"W-who are you?" Sarah asked, scared by also curious.

"The name's Hoggle, as if you didn't already know," the dwarf replied rather indignantly.

"Uh…no."

He raised a bushy brown eyebrow. "What? Are you serious? Barely a week has passed!"

"I'm…sorry, but I have no idea who…or what you are," Sarah replied.

Hoggle sighed heavily. "I'm Hoggle, a dwarf! And you're Sarah, but you don't remember me?"

"No, sorry." Sarah wasn't sure what exactly had happened, but she did know that there were better things she could have dreamed up, if this was truly a dream. Standing up, she found that Hoggle was actually quite shorter than he was, although if the height difference bothered him, he didn't mention it.

"You're very short, aren't you?" Sarah asked.

"I'm a dwarf; 'course I'm short!" Hoggle exclaimed. "And what about you? How come you don't remember who I am? We're close friends!"

"We are?"

He nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah! Don't you remember that—?" But then, suddenly he stopped, for no reason that Sarah could see, and a misty look came over his eyes, almost as though he wasn't really seeing her at all. After a few moments of silence, in which Sarah considered poking him, just to see if h was real or imaginary, he finally came to again with a little shudder, and regarded her curiously. "Er, what did you call me here for?" he asked.

Sarah stayed rooted to the spot, still very confused. "I…called you? No, I didn't; why would I?"

Hoggle shrugged. "I don't know if you don't know but…say, did you say anything serious before I came here? Just a bit before, maybe?"

Sarah nodded, recalling. "Yes, I said 'Goblin King Goblin King'—"

"Woah, woah, wait a minute! Are you telling me that you called on the Goblin King to help you? After what he—?"

"He what?"

"Er…nevermind that, the point is that you called the Goblin King, right? What did you ask him to do?"

"I asked him to help me run away. I want to run away from home, because my stepmother's being just awful!"

Hoggle sighed heavily. "Oh no, why would you go and do a thing like that for?! And after all you went through to—"

"To what? Hogwart, you're not making any sense," Sarah accused.

"Of course I'm not! And it's Hoggle!" the dwarf exclaimed. "It's all cause of him, cursing me so I can't say a word against him! But oh, I've got plenty of things I'm still thinking though, and that's good enough!"

"Who's 'he'?"

"The Goblin King, of course! Jareth, the Goblin King! Don't you even remember him?"

Sarah shook her head. "Not at all. But wait, what's this about a curse?"

Hoggle grunted. "Like I said he's put a curse on me so I can't speak my own mind if it's against him. Every time I try to say anything to anyone against him, I get cut right off and can't say what I was going to say. It gets very annoying when you're trying to warn someone and all, but oh well, I guess there are worse things he could've done."

"Like what?"

"Oh, like making me go to the Bog of Eternal Stench again, like that time—Well, anyway, there are worse things. As you can see, I'm still ok for now, so don't worry about it."

Sarah shook her head. "How can I not worry about it? If you're under a curse, Hogwart, I think that I could help break it. It's the least I can do to…well, to get away from here, anyway." Because, in a way, whether it was the Goblin King she had called on or not, Sarah found herself strangely companionable with Hoggle, who in her opinion made way better conversation than anyone she knew.

Hoggle shook his head. "It's Hoggle, and no, it wouldn't be right getting you involved. Er…I just still don't know why I was called here in the first place. I'm not Jareth's 'errand dwarf' or anything, am I? Oh well, if that's the way it is…" And in this way he continued mumbling to himself, until Sarah interrupted him by touching his shoulder.

"Look, here's what we can do," she said, crouching down so that they were eye-level. "You can take me away from here for just a while, until we find a way to break your curse, and then once we're done, if you really want, you can bring me back, ok? That way, we'll both get what we want, even if you're not the Goblin King who grants my wishes."

Hoggle blinked. "You'd…do that for me?"

Sarah smiled and nodded.

"N-no, i-it wouldn't be right! After all that's…But wait, maybe Jareth doesn't have to know about this! I know all his tricks and…" Again he proceeded to mumble to himself, finally coming to a stop and glancing at Sarah from underneath thick eyelashes. "Alright," he agreed.

"Really?" Sarah enthused, smiling.

Hoggle nodded. "Yeah, but only so long as you stay quiet and listen to everything I say exactly as I say. If I'm going to bring you back here, I need to keep you safe, right?"

"Right," Sarah nodded, although she wouldn't mind a bit of danger so long as she could overcome it.

"Right. Well then, let's go," Hoggle said.

"Where?"

He looked at her incredulously, and then pointed downwards. "Down the drainpipe, of course!"

Author's Note: Hi, me again! Heehee, I hope you liked the first chapter to my first Labyrinth fanfiction, and I hope that it wasn't anything too boring to get through. I know, I know, David Bowie as Jareth is all that we really want to see, but hopefully we can all be patient enough for him to make a spectacular entrance? ^^'

Anyways, if you liked the story, please review, follow, or even favourite (if you think you like it so much already!)

Oh, and P.S., as for a cover image, I'll try to upload one soon, but the website says I need to wait a bit since I'm a new member and all, so I'll just make sure to let you know when I have one chosen and whatnot. Thank you so much for reading this far!