All publicly recognized characters are not mine. I don't pretend to lay claim to any of them. That right belongs to Jim Henson, Brian Froud, Tristar and wherever else the copyright can claim. Everything else is mine. So no touchy.

Here is my first attempt at Labyrinth fanfiction! I hope you enjoy it!

xXx

Maybe being a foster kid wouldn't have been so bad if Madeline couldn't remember her parents. It would have been better if her brain made them not exist. But their faces haunted her. They were there, laughing and smiling, and she was happy. Then she was in darkness and when she opened her eyes, she was no longer in the brightness of a room that was quickly slipping from her memory but in a shadowed dorm with rows of beds. Some of the bodies under the blankets were coughing. Madeline wasn't, but she pulled the blankets up to her chin anyway to keep it all out.

Sure those memories of happiness faded over time but the smiling faces were still seared into Madeline's brain. Yes. It would have been easier if they weren't there at all.

Number Five wasn't as bad as the others. At least she wasn't being beaten or starved or locked in closets. She was too old to be pushed around like that now but it was a different story when she was seven. Even now, the story was still somewhat the same – Number Five didn't have pain, but it had loneliness. They all did.

Madeline glanced over her shoulder at the tattered red book on her nightstand. Her rock. The Labyrinth was her escape, her security blanket from the first time she'd opened her eyes in the orphanage. There it was, right next to her bed all those years ago, and there it still sat. When the pain of it all got to be too much, she'd curl into a cocoon on whatever bed she had and lose herself in The Labyrinth. She always felt safe there, even if it was just all in her mind.

He kept her safe no matter where she was.

At some point between Foster Two and Three, Madeline was the one coughing in the orphanage this time around and when she went to crack open her salvation, something fell into her lap. When she picked it up, the shine of the small crystal pendant nearly blinded her. In the shape of an over-curved boomerang, it looked like the symbol at the head of one of the chapters in her book. The Goblin King's symbol. She held it up in front of her and its pendulum swing entranced her. But Madeline was afraid to handle it too much. It was so delicate. The chain the pendant clung to was spun of such fine silver, it might as well been made of wisps of smoke.

Madeline fastened it around her neck that day in the orphanage and it never came off. She looked at it in the mirror now and it glimmered back at her as brilliantly as the day it tumbled out of her book. It never needed to be cleaned and whenever her life turned to turmoil, as it so often did, it filled her heart with the notion of home.

Madeline's only home existed in the fantasy land in her mind. She sighed as she touched her fingers to the dainty pendant. She wished she could be as happy in her waking life as she was in her sleeping one.

The pendant came when she was twelve. He started coming when she was sixteen. At least Madeline thought it was him, the Goblin King. There were no pictures of him in her book so he could only be what her mind wanted him to be. He always looked the same in every dream he made his way into. A handsome unrivaled by any man she'd seen. His mane of blonde hair whipped across his face when they stood on wind-swept hills overlooking his labyrinth kingdom. He glimmered like her pendant and wore a matching one, much larger and grander, that fell to the center of his chest. She'd touched it a few times and even in her dreams she could feel the weight of it in her hand. His clothes were of pure fantasy – leggings and boots, all manner of elaborate capes that fluttered around her when she was close, loose-fitting shirts or high-buttonsed collars that denoted where they were going that night.

He would look at her with a longing that was otherwise inappropriate for a man like him to be looking at a girl like her. But he was safe. He was home. She could feel his fingertips on her cheeks when she woke up. The warmth of his body wrapped around her like a blanket even though she was the only one in her bed. Often she would wake up crying for what she'd lost when she opened her eyes. Waking was painful and she was tired of doing it.

Madeline sighed again and smoothed out her dress for the hundredth time. The emerald fabric made her eyes stand out brilliantly against her dark features. Her hair, night against her pale skin, was tousled on top of her head, leaving her shoulders bare in the strapless dress. She wanted her pendant to shine, not be hidden by her nest of hair. The dress fit her body to the top of her hips and puffed out to just brush her knees. The heels she wore thinned her legs under the flare of her dress and completed the look of someone far older than eighteen.

At least in a few days.

The image that reflected back at her belied happiness, having it together. What it really should have reflected was the despair of losing the fosters for good, even if most of them were crap. Foster Number Five was by far the best but they made it abundantly clear that she was no longer their responsibility when she turned eighteen. Days left. No longer could Madeline curl up into The Labyrinth in her mind to escape it all. That would get her nowhere but in a box on the street. Her mind may have been in fantasy but her head remained in reality. In a few days she'd be truly, utterly alone in a desolate studio downtown that she'd rented for next to nothing. She didn't care what the kids at school would say about that. She never did anymore. Madeline had long ago become impervious to their harsh words. It came with the territory of bouncing from home to home her entire life. Or most of it at least.

But right now was a time for celebration! At least that's what Number Five told her. To celebrate her birthday they were taking her to one of their museum galas. How stuffy. She'd be the youngest one there for sure and she'd be bored completely out of her mind. So much . . . fun?

Pounding on her bedroom door rattled Madeline out of her daze and her eyes darted to the wood shaking in its hinges.

"C'mon, Reject. Mom and Dad want you downstairs now."

Feet thudded down the hallway and Madeline pressed her fingertips to her temple. Unreal Sibling number whatever. He were Foster Number Five's real son. He didn't like Madeline's competition. Not that she ever put up much of a fight. He just never made her forget that she'd never be part of their family.

Just before Madeline turned to grab her clutch off the bed, she caught the corner of her comforter fluttering in the mirror. Her window was open but there wasn't a breeze. She turned slowly and a dark something peeked out from under her bed, invading the corner of her eye. Madeline jerked her head to look but the comforter was still and there was nothing there.

Madeline sighed again, yanked her clutch off the bed and started walking out of her room. Every step she made sounded like a cackle, like something was laughing at her. She stood still and her room was so filled with silence that her ears rang. She twitched her leg, faking a step and the cackle sounded again but it stopped short, as if it just realized it missed its cue. Madeline tapped her heel against the wood floor but that was all she heard. The floor creaked under her weight as she moved closer to the door. The clicks of her heels added to the noise and Madeline figured that had to have been what she was hearing. It didn't sound so much like a cackle anymore.

She held onto the banister as she made her way down the stairs. The last thing she wanted to do was break her leg now but the shoes were working against her. When she emerged in the foyer, her foster mother squealed and clapped her hands together at the sight of a dressed-up Madeline. Madeline offered her a half smile while she tried to keep the blood from her cheeks.

"Still looks like a reject to me," the foster brother intoned.

Foster Father smacked his son's head and assured Madeline that she looked beautiful. Madeline just kept the awkward half smile on her face. She'd long lost her drive to bite back.

Foster Mother and Father quickly ushered her out the door as they were already running late. The warmth of the late summer night clung to her skin as she walked closer to the idling limousine. Foster Number Five were not as rich as they liked to pretend to be but they had to play the part for their friends. How shamed they would be to arrive at the gala in the family's Camry.

Madeline's hand touched the handle of the door when a hoot carried over to her on the wind. Just off behind her, on a branch mere feet away, sat a snow-white owl. Her owl. Another constant in her life for no matter where she went, that owl was sure to follow. It stared at her with an intensity that seemed to penetrate her soul. She wanted to reach out and run her fingers over its feathers but the driver stepped in her way and opened the door for her.

Madeline climbed into the car and made sure her dress was nowhere near the door when it closed. Even through the tint of the window and the darkness outside, she could see the branch bob where the owl no longer was. The chatter of her foster parents refocused Madeline's attention and the limo started to pull away.

xXx

Reviews are always appreciated.