Thanks for reading! Here, Jareth finally shows his hand.

Two years ago

Sarah stood on a lone small hill, overlooking the valley spread out below her. The red earth essence that seemed to permeate the ground, the air, and everything around her remained, as vibrant before her eyes as it had been in her memories. Jareth hovered just behind her, like an owl on a branch, watching her reaction carefully. An unshakeable awe struck her silent. It was just as it had been, but it was nothing like before.

There in the distance, the palace she knew so well, the finish line she had once worked so hard to cross, surrounded by a blue, cloudless, sunny sky. But spread out below it and around it- cities. Townships. Villages. Green rolling hills crisscrossed with farms and fields. Paths and roads that ribboned and twisted through the serene-looking landscape.

And people. Though they were far enough away that Sarah couldn't make out distinct features, she could tell they were human-like in height and shape. Like her. Like Jareth. No sign of the walls and mazes that had confounded and challenger her on her previous visit. No sign of goblins. The sound of the people going about their daily lives drifted up to the hill where they stood. Carts clacking on cobblestone streets, the neighs and winnies from the horses drawing them cutting through the air. Shouts. Laughter. Somewhere in the far distance, a bell tolled. Sarah turned to face Jareth, a look of incredulity etched on her face. Jareth couldn't meet her gaze, focusing on the town below them instead.

"Jareth," Sarah breathed, "what is this place? I thought you were taking me back to the Labyrinth? To say goodbye to Hoggle?" Breaking the seal of her silence, questions tumbled from her mouth, one after the other. Jareth remained silent, his stare unfocused, somewhere faraway in his mind. Sarah continued with her questions, each more forceful than the last. Where was the maze? The walls? The goblins? The architecture of the place that had haunted her childhood dreams and followed her into adult nightmares was utterly unrecognizable. Jareth remained quiet. It pissed Sarah off.

"ANSWER ME!" she finally bellowed.

The force and volume of her shout, distinctly accusatory in tone, finally broke his unsettled quiet.

"Sarah," he started softly, his eyes still on the distant horizon, "this is the Labyrinth."

"No it's not!" Sarah shouted back, fists clenched at her sides, a hard realization growing in the pit of her stomach, hardening further with certainty with each passing second. "Why does it look like this?! Why doesn't it look the same?!" Jareth finally met her gaze directly, and the pain in his face tampered her outrage for the moment.

"I have brought you where you traveled before. We're even standing on the same hill where I warned you to turn back. But, what you see now," he gestured behind her, "is what it always was."

Sarah was both supremely confused by and resigned to the reality of the situation. She had known as a child that Jareth couldn't be trusted, had never really believed in her heart that what she had faced on her previous visit was real. It had been the stuff of an imagination run wild, fevered and bright and explosive. Like the imagination of a girl who loved to play dress up in the park. Like the imagination of a woman-child on the cusp of discovery, discovery of secrets within her and around her, buried just beneath the surface, itching to reach the light day. Like-

"Did you make it that way for me?" Sarah asked softly, though she already knew the answer. A small smile lifted the corner of his mouth, softening the pain still there on his face.

"Yes, Sarah," he whispered back, "for you."

Sarah's breath caught in her throat. A million questions raced through her mind, each vying for her attention, but one above all others made its way from her mouth. "Why?"

Jareth chuckled softly. He reached his hand, bare now, the glove gone at some point, and gently teased her cheek with his fingertips.

"I told you I had a gift for you." His other hand came up to her face to join its partner in caressing her skin, his eyes boring into hers, pain replaced by some deep emotion Sarah couldn't immediately identify. Longing? Regret? "I must say, it was some of my finest work."

Sarah's hand came up to cover the backs of his, pushing his palms flush against face, enveloping her in his warm hold. She laced her fingers with his. More. That was what she had wanted as a child. More of what, she didn't have the words for at the time. Now, after everything that had happened as she had grown from a child into a woman in her world, she had the words to describe exactly what "more" meant to her. In her frivolous youth, she would have tried to describe it as a great adventure or a fairytale in a faraway land. Now, to her "more" meant an escape from the draining march forward each and every day as she struggled to survive. Escape from the uncertainty of not knowing if she would make it to the next payday before the bills came due. Relief from the never-ending anxiety of trying to make ends meet. Safety. Predictability. A thought occurred to her.

"I was never in any real danger when I was here, was I?" Sarah said, her head tilting up to face him fully as he stepped closer to her body, giving his hands the opportunity to cover more of her skin. His fingers drifted into her hairline, and Sarah couldn't stop herself as she leaned into his touch.

"Never." Jareth said with finality. "I never would have allowed harm to come to you." Another small smile. "Another of my gifts to you."

Sarah didn't try to stop the small smile that she gave him in reply. Another thought.

"And Sir Didymus? Hoggle? Were they real? Or just another-" she struggled to find a word to describe them accurately, "dream?"

Jareth laughed softly. "Dream?" he questioned her. "I didn't think you would have described it so."

"That's what they were, right? Dreams?" she questioned.

Jareth trailed his fingertips down her face, over her neck, chastely down the sides of her chest, and settled on her hips. Sarah let her arms hang at her side.

"Not entirely." Jareth replied. "What you saw here, what you experienced, was a world of my own making. But it was informed entirely by your life at the time. The creatures in it, the mazes, the adventures, even my own part in the plot- that of the evil goblin king- could be found in the landscape of your toys and childhood fantasies." Sarah thought for a moment. She thought over time that her beloved friends had morphed into stuffed animals and dolls, as her physical need to interact with them faded to an emotional attachment as she grew older; the bookends that looked like Hoggle (which held her mother's well-worn copy of "The Labyrinth" book), the stuffed animals of Sir Didymus and Ludo, a music box ballerina wearing her dress from the masquerade, and even a lifelike doll of the king himself- they became like touchstones that kept her centered, when later her life began falling apart. Bittersweet reminders of a happier time. But there had been a time before that?

"I don't remember a time before the Labyrinth." Sarah voiced her thought aloud.

"That's because we remember what we want to remember." Jareth replied matter-of-factly. "The maze? Your confusion. The characters who helped you navigate it? The tokens of a child needing external reassurance that she is right." Here, a rueful smirk lit up his features. "But they fell to the side, didn't they, when it came time came to make a choice?" Jareth's hands gripped her hips a bit more tightly, as if he was about to lose her again.

Still in control. That's what he was. Sarah realized that she had never had a choice in her last adventure with this man. He had been holding all the pieces, playing all the angles, pulling all the strings. But then…

"What about the dance?" Sarah questioned.

Here, a frown etched in Jareth's mouth. He held her gaze a bit longer, then released her hips and moved further to the edge of the hill, gazing back down at the scenery below. His back was to her. He spoke in careful, measure tones.

"The dance. I had everything, everything, set perfectly. You looked so," here he struggled to find the right word.

"Beautiful?" Sarah volunteered. The dress had been beyond even her own imagination's capability, it's memory still stunning her to this day. She watched as a wry chuckle lifted his shoulders.

"Yes, that too. But I was going to say," he turned to face her. "Ready."

"Ready?" Sarah's mind began to recoil. "Ready for what?"

His face turned deadly serious. "Not that." Mild annoyance crept into his expression. "Good Gods, Sarah, you were a child." Sarah relaxed a bit at the declaration.

"I mean ready," he swept his arms out and behind him, turning once again to face the valley teeming with life, "for this."

Sarah walked forward carefully to the edge to join him, taking in what lay below her in more detail. An orchard of trees topped the hills on the opposite side of the valley. To their right, the hills sloped, giving way to a sparkling body of water that flowed nearly to the horizon before ending in another stretch of land, too far away to discern more detail. Roads traveled up and over the crest of the hills which encased the other sides of the valley, leading, presumably, to more towns. More people. More.

"And what is this, exactly, that I was ready for, even though I was a child?" Sarah said, with mild sarcasm.

Jareth ignored her tone. He puffed out his chest, gathering his height. "My kingdom," he said with deep resonance, his voice laced with obvious pride.

Sarah was silent for a moment, taking in the new developments. She tried to find the words to capture her thoughts, her questions, but Jareth continued with prompting.

"After facing your fears to save your friends from the bog-"

"Which was disgusting, by the way," Sarah interrupted. He grinned mischievously here, a full laugh that lit up his face as he turned to her.

"As I said before, it was informed entirely by your childhood," he teased, "though I will admit to some artistic license with certain elements."

Sarah glared at him. His grin widened, and he turned back to the valley.

"After the disgusting bog, seeing how, when push came to shove, you could overcome your fears, especially for those you cared for, I knew then. You didn't let anyone, not even I, intimidate you nor dissuade you from your task. I knew then that you would be great." He expression softened. "As I know it now. You were exactly what I needed."

"What is it that you needed?" Sarah questioned, truly at a loss for his real intentions this time.

He turned once again to face her, though with his full body this time. He walked the few steps to close the distance between them, and placed his hands once again on her shoulders, but more firmly this time, with more decisiveness.

"Sarah, my dear, you were no ordinary girl then, and now no ordinary woman now. I tried to spare you what I thought would be too overwhelming in the hopes of not scaring you off." Regret shaded his features. "Though in the end, I realized I had miscalculated the value of truth. I lost you anyway," a smirk, "though it only strengthened my opinion that you would someday become a woman of strength, a force to be reckoned with."

Sarah smiled. "Really?"

Jareth smiled back warmly. "Really."

"I won't be scared off now. The truth doesn't scare me anymore." And that was the whole truth, Sarah thought bitterly. The truth was something she would rather face, even if it was ugly. At least then, she would know where she stood. Sarah had scars to prove what blissful ignorance would earn you in the end.

Jareth's smile faded, his features becoming gravely serious. "Sarah," he dropped his arms from her shoulders to grasp her hands tightly in his,

" I need a queen."