Author's note

I've been keeping this story for myself for awhile now. I've got 3 chapters written, and I honestly wasn't going to upload this quite yet. But the passing of the great David Bowie sort of pushed me to do it. We will all miss him, but I think Jareth will keep him alive in our hearts. Never stop writing, Labyrinth fans.

Much love, Kacey

Chapter 1

Sarah has always felt like there was something missing in her life. Ever since she was fifteen she's struggled with a void inside her. That's when all the trouble started.

Through all of the therapy sessions, medication, and even fortune telling, she could never fill the void in her life. In her heart.

As warm water hit her back, Sarah looked down at her feet as water pooled around them. The warm water caressed her like a warm hug she desperately needed but could never have. As she stood there in the shower, she contemplated her life up to that point.

She started getting the nightmares when she was fifteen. They were so bad that she would start screaming in the middle of the night. She would even be afraid to sleep some nights, forcing herself to stay awake just so she wouldn't have to go through a night of terrifying slumber. Visions of goblins would dance in her head and the fear of losing her baby brother Toby haunted her. The dreams were vaguely different each time, but one thing always remained constant: the recurring image of a man with long blonde hair, twirling crystals in his hands, smirking at her with mismatched eyes. The man gave her a feeling of unease, yet at the same time she felt comforted when she met him in her dreams.

Her parents were very worried about her. Sarah wasn't getting any sleep, and with her nightly screams, neither were they. They sent her to therapy sessions to help her find the root of her night terrors, to maybe find some relief. But when Sarah tried to tell her therapist of her adventure in the labyrinth and the Goblin King, he dismissed it as "just a dream" due to an event in her past. After being told this many times she started to believe it.

A year later, Sarah was falling into a state of depression. Acting ceased to give her pleasure and she couldn't find the energy to play with Toby or Merlin anymore. The once hard-headed, confident, adventurous girl was now an empty husk of the former, scaring her loved ones around her.

Her psychiatrist started prescribing her medication for her depression at the young age of seventeen. But her loneliness only increased as the memories of that fateful night started to slip from her mind. How rough Hoggle's voice was, the softness of Ludo's fur, the sharp bark of Sir Didymus. Even the cruel, handsome face of her Goblin King was starting to fade as she attended more therapy sessions and took more and more pills. Until finally the labyrinth was but a faint memory in the back of her mind.

For seven years she's felt so lonely, sad, and just numb. No amount of Zoloft could fill the dark, empty hole in her heart.

So, Sarah stood there in her steaming shower, staring at her tub floor, water falling over her head, which was racing, trying with all of her might to retrieve missing memories of those thirteen hours of adventure and conquest. Because for some reason, whenever she tried to think of them, she didn't feel so alone for once.

And suddenly at that very moment those words were on the tip of her tongue, and if she were to not speak them right away she would explode. She trembled as she spoke, the words coming to her as if she were reading them right from that little red book she would rehearse from.

Her hand wiped the water from her forehead and kept it there, as if trapping the words in her mind, as she parted her lips to recite.

"I can bare it no longer..." she whispered, the sound of the shower almost drowning her out. "Goblin King, Goblin King, wherever you may be..." She threw her head back, closing her eyes and letting the water soak her hair. She paused then, thinking of what else to say.

What was she doing? Who was she calling out for? And why? To put some magic back in my life, she thought. She found her right words forming in her head. It's silly, she chastised herself. But if a silly thought could help me escape from this life, even just for the amount of time these words pass my lips, it would be worth it.

"Take me far away from this life of loneliness, anti-depression pills, and utter sadness." Sarah didn't even notice the hot tears bubbling from her closed eyes and running down her already damp face. "If you are real," she whispered, trying to choke down tears. "I just need the magic back in my life."

As she stood there in the steaminess, she waited for something, anything to happen. She stood there a few minutes, until she realized how hopeless she really was. "Figures," she sighed, turning the shower off.

Sarah wiped her cheeks with her towel trying to rid herself of her tears that reminded her just how sad she was. She stepped out of the shower, towel wrapped around her torso, and wrung her hair out over the sink. She glided her hand over the mirror, clearing the fog from it and revealing Sarah's reflection.

She examined herself. At age twenty-two, she was definitely not the same fifteen year old girl that ran the labyrinth and won. No, she was not the sparkling green doe-eyed girl with confidence that could slay any king. The reflection that stared back at her lacked sleep and happiness. Dark circles formed around her dull green eyes that were once full of life, now also puffy and red rimmed from sobbing.

Her hair was now a little below shoulder length, due to one of her panicked breakdowns during freshman year of college when she realized she was not the courageous girl she thought she was, to be able to go away for college alone. She cut off most of her hair in a jagged, panicked way that left it in a chopped up disarray. She had it fixed soon after that, but she was sent home after her episode. Her dorm RA claimed her to be dangerous to the other girls, frightening everyone when she ran out of her room with scissors in her hand, sobbing uncontrollably, and yelling "I am not the champion I used to be!"

Sarah kept to herself even more after being sent home. She enrolled at the university in her hometown where her family could keep an eye on her and help her with her condition. Nobody knew what she meant by "champion", but assumed it was just some of her crazy talk, like labyrinths, goblins, and kings. But Sarah was perfectly sane and knew what she was doing. The Sarah that was cunning and courageous, that beat the Goblin King, was not the Sarah she saw in the mirror. So, she fixed it.

Now the Sarah that looked back at her matched the Sarah she felt like on the inside.

After brushing both her teeth and wet hair, Sarah walked out of the warm steaminess of her bathroom and into the chilled apartment hallway. Towel still around her torso, she padded down the hall to the only bedroom door in the tiny apartment.

Looking down, she made her way to her vanity dresser and slid open the first drawer. She picked up some plain black panties, closing the drawer and looking up into the mirror. What she saw in the reflection behind her made her shriek.

A man with long blonde hair wearing lavish, sparkling clothes sat upon her bed, eyeing her with a smirk. Those mismatched eyes…she could spot those a mile away.

Knees shaking, she whirled around to face him. "Y-You..." she stuttered, trying to take a step back but instead bumping into her dresser, index finger pointing at the man. "It's you! They thought I was crazy! Unless..." she trailed off, looking down, her finger lowering. "Unless this is just a hallucination, like they said." She looked back up at him, his mismatched eyes that were filled with mischief before now filled with pity and his smirk now replaced with a frown. Sarah shook her head. "No, you can't be real. You're not real! Magic and goblins do not exist!" Her voice started to raise, but when she noticed she quickly stopped talking. She didn't want another mishap with her neighbors about noise.

"Sarah," the man finally spoke, sitting on the edge of the bed. "I'm as real as you are. And as real as the memories you try to repress."

Sarah's eye widened at his words. "If you're real, then..." she whispered to herself. "No!" She shouted. "You're out of luck, because Toby isn't here, so you can't have him! You can't take him again."

The blonde haired man laughed a hearty laugh, throwing his head back. "Oh Sarah, now why would I take your baby brother when nobody has wished him away? No, I'm here to take something far more precious to me." A familiar sparkle in his eye made Sarah's heart jump.

Sarah slowly looked him in the eye. Those familiar mismatched orbs that felt so threatening yet more comforting than her dog's. "What is that?"

"You are the one that called upon me, Sarah, but moments ago. I am only here to grant your wish." He stood, towering over her.

Sarah gulped down a lump forming in her throat and tightened her hands around her towel. "What?" she said almost breathlessly. And then it hit her. She did call upon him. In her moment of weakness and utter loneliness, she called upon her villain to kidnap her. "Oh shit," she said in realization, sliding to the floor, her back against the cold dresser.

"I didn't mean it," she tried to convince him.

"Sarah, what's said is said," he said to her in a teasing voice, folding his arms in front of him.

She looked up at him with frightened green eyes. "What will happen to me? I can't run the Labyrinth for myself, can I?"

The man shook his head. "No, you cannot Sarah. No defense against yourself, that sort of thing. You wished yourself away, now it's time to reap what you sow."

"I didn't know I was reaping anything, Jareth-" she gasped at the sound of that name coming from her voice. She didn't even know she remembered it. She looked up at him with wide green eyes. Suddenly a flood of memories came to her. She remembered Hoggle saying his name only once to her, but her entire time in the Labyrinth she had only called him 'Goblin King'. "How?"

Jareth raised an eyebrow. "How what, Sarah?"

"How do I now suddenly remember things from that day?"

Jareth smirked, kneeling down to her on the floor. "Come with me and you'll find out." He held out his gloved hand, clad in black leather.

Sarah eyed his hand suspiciously and weighed the pros and cons. Think, Sarah. Don't get roped into something you can't get out of. What if he takes you and you never get to come back? Sarah sighed. But...why would I want to come back? Sure there's Toby, but besides him there's no reason at all for me to live this life. There's school...but it gives me no joy whatsoever. Nothing in my life gives me joy at all. I'm so alone here, so what's the problem with just leaving everything behind? Sarah steeled herself, furrowing her eyebrows.

"I need a promise, Goblin King," she said with valor.

"And here I thought we were on a first name basis." Jareth muttered. "What is your proposition, Sarah?"

"You can take me, but I stay by my terms. I wished myself away, I should have say on when I can leave." Sarah suddenly realized what she was saying. Are you mad?! Speaking to a magical goblin king like that? He could dump you into the Bog of Eternal Stench! Or worse, have your limbs torn off by goblins. She looked him in the eyes. She didn't know why, but she felt trust and comfort in them. Like she had known him all her life. And what's so wrong with mad? I've been treated like a mad woman for eight years now, I've earned the right to be just a little mad as everyone claims me to be.

So, Sarah scrambled to her feet, towel still clutched tightly around her. Jareth did the same, looking down at her. "What do you say to that, Jareth?"

Jareth stroked his chin, contemplating. Just who does she think she is? Telling me, a Fae king, what to do. She is lucky she's my champion, or I'd throw her straight into the Bog of Eternal Stench. "Agreed. But only if you do as I say when we arrive. You will be staying in my castle, after all." He smirked, holding out his hand once again.

Sarah glanced at his hand once more and back into his intimidating yet reassuring eyes. For some reason she felt attached to him, very more so than the first time they met. He was supposed to be the bad guy, yet why did she feel so attracted to him? And trusting! She trusted him way more than the therapist she had known since she was fifteen. For some reason she felt like she could talk to him about anything.

Sarah took a deep breath in and steeled herself. "Agreed," she stopped herself from saying anything more when she realized that she was still in only a towel, hair dripping wet. "But could you wait here while I get dressed?"

Jareth chuckled and folded his arms in front of him once again. "I'll be waiting, Sarah."

Sarah tucked her underwear under her arm and grabbed a t-shirt and shorts from her drawers and ducked back into her bathroom. Once she was in the safety of her bathroom once more, she locked the door and melted to the floor.

Her bare butt plopped onto the cold, hard tile floor. She looked down, her head spinning. What the hell am I doing? She asked herself, still in shock over the events that just occurred in her bedroom. Let's see, I'm letting my old childhood villain who has been haunting my dreams take me back to his castle where he held captive my baby brother while I desperately tried to get him back, all while maneuvering an ever changing labyrinth with goblins and other creatures trying to sabotage me the entire way, plus being poisoned by a rotten magical peach that made me trip the fuck out.

Still, Sarah mustered up the strength to pull herself up off the floor. She turned to look at herself in the mirror once again. She squared her shoulders and furrowed her brow. And for a moment, she looked like her former self. All the confidence of a young girl with a big mouth and a plucky attitude.

"This is your chance, Williams," she told her reflection. "To flee this dull and miserable life already." With that in mind, she dropped her towel and pulled her R.E.M. band t-shirt on and old gym shorts from high school, now maybe a bit too short for her.

She stepped out of the bathroom finally, after ten minutes of trying to convince herself to go through with her decision. But she had made a deal with the Goblin King, and there was no way she was going to get away so easily if she were to just change her mind. No, there was no getting out of this no matter what.

Don't forget to review! I won't update until I know that this story will be successful!