Hello everyone,

I'm very sorry that I took so long to get this out to you. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to follow and or favourite this story since my last update.

Special thanks to La'ienth, Gotta Dance 88, ariella21, BasiaM82, A Pirate By Any Other Name, windsongspringheart, kapkeyknudols, Enchanted Peach Dreams, pgoodrichdogs, VioletzDreamz, SarahlousieDodge, BT, Guest and Anonymous, Guest 2, and Me (chapter 3, 4, 9) for their lovely reviews.

BT: Thank you, I'm glad you're enjoying this and, if you're still reading this I hope you enjoy what I have up my sleeve for this story.

Guest: Thank you for your suggestion m'dear

Anonymous: Thank you, I hope, if you're still reading, that Christine's explanation of the situation Sarah has found herself in will satisfy you. I'm so glad you like the Phantom of the crossover. As for apologising for the F-bomb, I wished to cover my bases, as I received a comment from an upset reviewer. Once again m'dear thank you for your kind words and I hope you enjoy what is to come :)

Guest (2): Thank you, I hope you will enjoy it when it does come, and I'll try not to keep you waiting too long. Thank you once again and I am just about to publish the first chapter.

Me: Yes I am drawing from Phantom of the Opera, I adore Phantom in almost all of its forms. Thank you, is this soon enough for you m'dear :)

Chapter Ten: Time and Time and Time Again

There was a man in the dormitory.

He was the oddest looking fellow that Christine had ever seen, even at the cirque that she had been to once before Papa died. He had a mane of wild dark hair which fell past his shoulders, and dressed in a way which reminded Christine of the black knight from Le Morte d'Arthur which she had read as a girl. The man wasn't handsome but he was striking.

Christine swallowed.

"W-who are you, monsieur?" she asked, voice wavering slightly.

The man smirked. "Do you not know?" His voice wasn't unkind and the timbre of it reminded her oddly of her Angel's. "You did call upon my services."

Christine's eyes widened. "Y-you… no, that cannot be, you cannot be the Goblin King?"

The man bowed. "Jareth,"

Christine had the strangest urge to curtsey, but she resisted, instead she asked. "What have you done with Meg?"

"Nothing more than you have asked, Christine," Her name was spoken like a caress, only once before had she heard her name sound like that, then a teasing: "Why? Do you think I should?"

Jareth despised fairies. He had done since his early childhood when a game of rolling down a hill had ended in tears after he had landed in a nest of the buggers. Looking at them now made Jareth's skin crawl and he clenched his fists, fighting the urge to scratch at imaginary bites. As soon as he was king he would be hiring someone to rid his kingdom of the blood things.

Skin still crawling, Jareth shrugged off his jacket- glad that he had chosen the dragon hide- and put it over his head and bolted past the nest of giggling vermin.

Meanwhile up at the castle, Christine and Sarah sat in a solar which, even now, the latter was surprised to find in the castle beyond the Goblin City.

"What is it?" Sarah asked, as the queen looked into the crystal in her fingers her brow furrowed slightly in concern. In answer Christine brought the orb around so Sarah could see.

"What is he hiding from?" Sarah asked, as Jareth hid his head under the beautiful jacket he had been wearing.

"Fairies," was the reply. "Fortunately this phobia of his is under control now, for the most part."

"I don't like them either," Sarah said, looking down at her finger which still bore the scars left behind from her first encounter with a fairy. Phobia Christine had said, and while Sarah itched to ask about that, she refrained though, thinking that it might be better to wait for Jareth to reveal the fact himself- there'd be time for that later. "So, uh, you still haven't told me why Jareth wished me away."

"Ah oui, of course," The older woman banished the crystal and gave a rueful chuckle. "No mortal, as I'm sure you know; may enter the Labyrinth without wishing someone away, or being wished away. The curse requires that Jareth challenge the Labyrinth as a true runner, therefore he had to wish someone away. Every goblin king must do this; it's an interesting magical clause, one which Jareth was not allowed to know before hand, or else the test would be biased."

Sarah frowned. "I don't understand."

At this point Christine put one finger over her lips as a goblin entered the solar wheeling a trolley laden with tea and cakes and as he, for male the goblin was, set about setting the refreshments on the table between the two ladies. Then he bowed and took the trolley back the way he came.

"I'm sorry about that," Christine smiled once the goblin was gone. "Jones is a strange little goblin, he is frightened of speech, and I have never been able to understand why, or ascertain a way to relieve him of this fear."

"Oh, the poor thing," said Sarah softly, shaking her head. She had little experience of Goblins yet, but she had been under the impression that they were a noisy race.

"Indeed," Christine nodded. "But we were speaking of your present situation, were we not?"

Sarah nodded.

"Well, I must confess that it is my fault that you are here," she offered Sarah an apologetic smile. "You see, I had to put the words into his mouth, though if I had known that he was with you at that point I might have held off until you were out of the firing line. Jareth had no idea that it was coming I assure you."

"I believe you," Sarah said and found that she did. Jareth had looked as surprised as she'd felt in the moment between his wish and the goblins answering it.

The Labyrinth was real.

Christine could hardly believe that she wasn't dreaming even as she wandered through a twisting turning passageway looking for a way out of it. It was the ache in her feet that told her that this glittering fairyland was indeed real for no dream had ever raised painful blisters on a person's feet. Her shoes, which were barely more substantial than ballet slippers, were not designed for traipsing through mythical landscapes. She lifted one foot and flexed it, rubbing at the sore patches, then repeated the process with the other.

Christine wished that the Angel was with her. He had promised her that he would never leave her when their voice lessons began, but she had been unable to sense his presence since she had first laid eyes on the Goblin King. She amused herself by wondering how he would react to learning of her adventures when she returned.

"Don't be silly Christine," she chided herself. "You know you cannot tell him abou…"

At this moment the ground beneath her feet gave way and she tumbled down, down, down into a gaping black abyss.

Jareth felt like he was making good time. He had passed about an hour if the position of the sun was any indication- but who knew as the Labyrinth was a place of illusion, and as he was its challenger he was as susceptible to its tricks as any mortal runner. Still, he had reached the hedge maze and somewhere about he would find the old wise man and his equally addled sentient hat.

And, speak of the devil, there was the very chap moving to sit in his great stone chair.

"Hello Wiseman," he greeted the old man. "Hat."

"Prince Jareth?" the Wiseman blinked at him. "Does your mother require…"

"No you eediot," the hat put in. "Da Prince is running da labyrinth."

"Are you really?" the old man asked. "Well then Your Highness, am I to assume that you come to me for a point in the right direction, hmm?"

"No thank y…" Jareth began; certain that he knew the way from here, but the Wiseman cut him off.

"Quite often young man, you might think you aren't getting anywhere when in fact…"

"We are!" the hat put in and received a glare from his wearer.

"We are," the Wiseman finished gruffly. "And sometimes it is better to reach out and take that which we want despite the shadows gathering in the distant future."

"What?" Jareth demanded. This was the first taste of the old man's apparent wisdom that Jareth had ever got, despite spending half of his life in this place. "Wiseman, please…"

But the old man had fallen asleep.

"And I theenk that's' your lot," the hat remarked and the arm that the pair shared rose up, clutching the box. "Please, leave a…"

Jareth dug his hands into his pockets and pulled out a silver coin which he dropped into the contribution box before striding away in the direction of the castle.

Christine landed in a heap and a cloud of dust. It was dark wherever she was and she could hear something moving in the shadows. She could see it- them for there were many of them, whatever they were- all around her. It was only when one of the somethings scuttled across her foot that Christine realized what they were.

Spiders.

There must be thousands of the damned things.

Christine kicked out reflexively in disgust. She hated spiders, disgusting little creatures. She sent the spider flying across the dark space and she heard something shatter like glass.

Had it been the spider?

The thought that the spiders might be as fragile as glasswork gave her courage. If they dared to touch her, then she could break them as she had the first. Buoyed by this discovery, Christine began to pick her way through the hoard of the awful eight-legged abominations, shrieking and kicking out at the slightest flash of movement or brush of long glass leg. When she reached the opposite wall she was rewarded with the appearance of a doorway which had seemingly been hidden in plain sight.

Well, that charming little worm had said that the labyrinth was full of openings. She smiled and hurried through and followed it up to ground level once more.

It was very rare that he had to look after an adult and Jareth had quickly come to the decision that he preferred it when the wished away was rather more… portable. The smaller they were, the easier to control they tended to be. Marguerite Giry, the woman whom Christine had wished away to him, had not stopped screaming since she had entered his kingdom… well, not until he had resorted to putting her to sleep and banishing her to one of the seldom used guest chambers.

Jareth had returned to his throne and had just summoned a crystal to look in on his Champion's progress when…

"Jareth!"

Jareth almost leapt out of his skin at the sound of his name in a voice he had long since come to believe that he would never hear again.

"Erik?" he gasped. No, it couldn't possibly be… Erik had faded some fifty years ago.

"Oh damn it all," the voice came again. "I wish that the Goblin King would appear before me, right now."

Jareth leapt to his feet and allowed the wish to carry him into the wisher's presence. He was Aboveground, in Paris. He was in a subterranean chamber, on the banks of a lake and facing an impossible form- identifiable even with the ridiculous black mask stretched across his face.

"The world must truly be smaller than I believed," Jareth quipped. "My Lady Champion, and my dearest friend in the same city. You are a sight for sore eyes Erik."

"Where is she?" Erik demanded, without preamble.

"Who Erik?" Jareth asked. "Mlle Marguerite, or Lady Christine?"

"Christine," was the answer, his tone bordering on desperation. "Please Jareth, tell me she is alright."

Jareth blinked. "Of course she's alright my friend- you know as well as I that pain only comes to those who deserve it."

"Where is she?" he demanded again, now sounding every inch the High King he was. "Show her to me, quickly!"

"As you wish, Your Majesty," the Goblin King bowed, dispensing with the informality of their long friendship for the moment. He produced a crystal and bid it show them Christine. Erik took one look at the maiden and cried out in anguish.

"Get her out of there Jareth!" he commanded. "Christine fears spiders, and know that if one of those glasswork monstrosities bites her you will not have to wait for the curse to claim you."

Stunned, Jareth lifted his gaze to stare at his companion, puzzled by the distress in the other man's voice and in every line of his body. "But they are harmless, Erik, you know that."

"To you and I maybe," Erik retorted. "Even with the state I am in right now- but to Christine, a fragile mortal… Erik dreads to think…"

'Oh gods,' Jareth thought. This explained why Erik had been gone for so long- Jareth could barely feel his friend's magic, and the fact that he had just referred to himself in the third person: he had been subject to the worst form of torture imaginable to Fae kind. His body and magic would recover- aside from the point at which the torture was implemented- but his mind…

Erik would never be the same man that Jareth once knew.

"Of course," Jareth nodded and waved a hand over the crystal and allowed a small archway to form in the otherwise smooth cave wall, and promptly sealed it behind her once Christine had passed through.

As a child Jareth had believed that Rodents of Unusual Size were extinct- but it was rather hard to maintain that belief after narrowly escaping having three of the bloody things ripping chunks out of your flesh. His boots would need to be burned too as the only way he had managed to escape the rats had been to run through the Bog of Eternal Stench; although he would thank every god and goddess he had ever heard of until the day he breathed his last that dragon-hide did not let anything pass through from the outside in.

A good thing too or else Sarah would not touch him with a ten foot pole.

Breathing hard, Jareth leaned against one of the trees which now surrounded him. Yes time was short- judging by the sun he had five hours left- but damn he was tired. He had long known that the Labyrinth would try him, but…

But this grove was just so pleasant, and flowers made the air smell so sweet. He would go on in a few moments, but…

Jareth yawned.

Sarah was in no danger for the time being. He would just rest his eyes a few moments. He rather felt he had earned it, what with the… the…

The Goblin Prince slid to the floor and succumbed to the perfume of the poppies which surrounded him on all sides.

~v~

Next Time: Jareth's run through the Labyrinth continues and Sarah gets a little private revenge on her once and future adversary.

Note for Harry Potter and crossover story fans; I am about to post a pseudo sequel, a rewritten version of an old story called 'It's a Kind of Magic.'- look out for 'Rise From the Ashes,' and don't worry there won't be any major spoilers ;).

Until next time my friends- please leave a contribution in the little box.