Author's note: This is my very first time writing fan fiction. I have a really stressful life and writing this has proved weirdly relaxing. Currently rated K, moving on will be M. Things are going to get smutty. What can I say, everyone needs a hobby. Thanks for the comments, could the next person to comment please let me know if paragraph spaces are showing now?

Sarah looked away from the computer screen for a few minutes, stretched and yawned. She'd pressed the button that took her off calls for a few minutes, but it wouldn't last long. These breaks were timed. In a few more moments, she'd have to log herself back in and start taking calls again, or that god awful supervisor of hers would be at her desk asking her what was up.

My goodness I hate that woman, she thought. But if things went her way, this would only be temporary. London was an expensive city, and she'd only be doing this to pay the bills until her acting was steady enough to get a real income flowing. She was already rehearsing for a part in Othello, and tomorrow evening she had an audition for the lead role in a rendition of A Streetcar Named Desire. She's practised so hard for that audition. Just thinking about it made her nervous.

She thought briefly of the path that had led her here. After that night seven years ago, everything had changed. When her parents had come home at half past midnight, apologising, she'd surprised them by falling into their arms, sobbing. "I'm so sorry!" she'd wept, and her stepmother had tried to comfort her. "Sarah, what is it? Tell us what's wrong?"

"Nothing, I'm just sorry for how I behaved. Can't we start over?" she'd asked. Her father had been thrilled. This is what he'd been trying for all this time, and now overnight it seemed to have fallen into his lap.

Since that night, she'd made a dedicated effort to get along better with her stepmother and discovered that she wasn't so bad after all. She'd clung to her that night, crying from her tiredness, crying over the fact that it wasn't her mother holding her, and most of all crying from the ache in her heart.

She'd been no more than a child then, and she hadn't understood the pain she felt, mixed with gratitude. On the one hand she had never felt more relieved than when she beat the Labyrinth and the Goblin King. Despite the magnetic draw the Labyrinth had held over her, rescuing her brother was something she'd never regretted.

But meeting Jareth had changed her forever. In the hours spent in the Labyrinth, he had tormented and tricked her at every turn. He had been cruel, and he had been persistent. Despite her youth, Sarah had sensed however that he had met her as an equal. It wasn't until days later, when she was able to think straight again, that she'd recalled the words he had said to her.

Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave.

Why had he said that? Why that determination to keep her in the Labyrinth. At first she thought that Toby must have been an exceptional child, a child so special that the Goblin King simply couldn't let him go.

It wasn't until she'd grown into a woman that the truth had dawned on her. In the hours spent solving the Labyrinth, she had solved one puzzle but trapped herself in another. No matter how hard she tried, the Goblin King's memory had embedded itself like a splinter deep into her soul. She'd wept that night, almost broken-hearted, because she had come so close to what she wanted, but had been too young to realise it. Her heart until then filled with movie star crushes and characters from novels had no idea what to do with the wave of emotions crashing around her then.

It was when she became a woman that she realised finally that the Goblin King had been her nemesis, and her first love, the one to unfold her intricate dreams like a paper crane and lay them at her feet. Take it or leave it. At every turn in her heart from that day until now, he was still there. Sometimes, she swore she still felt his eyes watching her. Observing. Biding their time. Ready to emerge from the shadows.

"Sarah!" Sarah jumped as she turned to see her supervisor standing to her left. She must have lost track of time, she thought. Again. "I'm sorry, did I go over time again?" she asked with an apologetic smile. "Breaks are five minutes, Sarah." said her supervisor, Amanda, waggling her finger with a fake smile plastered across her face. "You've been off calls for seven minutes and thirty three seconds." she trilled in that irritating voice of hers. "And that's not the first time it's happened."

"I'll be more careful." Sarah smiled. Amanda nodded towards her headset. "Chop chop!" she said, smiling brightly before walking off to her next victim. Sarah's shoulders slumped. Awful woman. She pressed the button and before long, she heard a familiar beep in her ear. "Phoenix computers, Sarah speaking, how can I help?"

The day rumbled on. Angry customers, enquiries, sales calls.

At 5:30 pm, Sarah gratefully took herself off her last call, tidied her desk and left to catch the tube home. What a day, she thought. A light drizzle had begun to fall as she made her way through the rush hour crowds to the grubby, packed carriages of London's underground. A mother stood chatting to her son. No one offered them a seat. Sarah gingerly held on to the grimey yellow bar overhead and found herself wondering what Toby would be doing right now.

It would be afternoon in Connecticut, and he'd probably be on his lunch break at school. Then he'd take that big yellow school bus back home to his mom, Sarah's stepmom. It all seemed so far away. Coming to London immediately after college had been something she had thought long and hard about. She knew no one in the city, but being here somehow made her feel closer to her own mother, the woman she'd never met, who she could barely get her father to talk about, except when it was already far too late.

After he'd died a year ago, she'd been inconsolable. One day merged into the next as she sat in her room crying, trying desperately to figure out what he had meant. "I need to talk to you about your mother" he'd said the last time she'd visited him in hospital, but seeing his agitation, the doctors had urged Sarah out of the room.

At the funeral, no one had known what he meant. Hardly anyone had even met Sarah's mother. They knew very little of her beyond the small details her own father had told her in drips and drabs. She was flighty, she'd lived in London and before that no one knew where, she was exceptionally talented, she'd vanished without a trace. No explanation even.

What had bothered her the most though was that in her grief, no matter whose arms it was she sat and cried in, there was only one person she could think of who would have lessened her pain just by being there. Tormented by these thoughts, and unable to bear being back in her childhood room any more, the decision to move to London suddenly didn't seem so outlandish. Maybe she'd finally be free of her thoughts of him, she reasoned.

The mother and child disembarked and Sarah realised the next stop was hers. Pushing her way through the crowds, she made it to the exit and took deep breaths of the cold air. She turned left out of the station, the orange street lights dancing off the wet pavements by now, and started the 20 minute walk to her small studio flat.

On the way, she stopped to pick up a few supplies. No one had told her just how expensive London was, she thought, sighing. Now what was it I needed? she wondered. She threw some milk and a packet of cheese into her basket, and then ducked into the toiletries section. Seeing that they were on offer, she threw a few packets on sanitary towels into her basket.

Great, she mused Tomorrow I turn 21, and the highlight of my week is finding sanitary towels on special offer.

Back at her apartment, she dropped the shopping by her feet and immediately went to turn the heating up. These little British houses were so damn cold. She could never get used to it, even though she'd been here a year already. She put her shopping away and opened the fridge to see what to eat for dinner. The rain was really coming down now, and it was making her feel restless. Whenever it rained like this, it reminded her of the night she'd wished Toby away, the icy coldness that had ran through her when she realised he wasn't in his cot any more, the fear mixed with exhilaration as the Goblin King had stood before her.

Since coming to London, she'd made a couple of close friends, but it had been difficult. Making friends had never been that easy for Sarah. She was someone who preferred to live in her own mind most of the time, and others couldn't relate to that. There had always been something about her that people couldn't quite put their finger on. Strangely enough, the entire time throughout her whole childhood and teenage years when she'd felt completely at home was the 13 hours she'd spent lost in the Labyrinth.

She rummaged through the cupboard and set out a plate, fork and glass. Not a single piece of cutlery matched, all relics left behind by the many people that had passed through here. She snorted. She'd left the Labyrinth only to find herself back in a modern oubliette seven years later. This place was so small that she could touch both walls at the same time if she stretched out.

Lightning cracked in the sky, making Sarah glance up from the stove. The rain began beating heavily against the kitchen's window pane, and a strange sensation spread through her body as she heated the pasta sauce she'd made the night before. It was that feeling again, that feeling of being watched. Another spear of lightning pierced the sky. Sarah stared at the rain, mesmerised.

Lightning lit up the sky again and Sarah felt her stomach lurch. In the split second that the electricity flashing through the inky dark had turned everything bone white, she could have sworn she'd seen a white owl sitting outside her window, looking straight at her. She was certain of it, but now that the eery orange of the streetlights had returned, there was nothing there.

She backed away from the stove and grabbed her phone, dialing her friend Rosa's number as quickly as she could. She needed to talk to someone, and she knew Rosa only lived one tube stop away.

"Rosa? Hey, it's Sarah." she said.

"Sarah! What's up gorgeous? Are you ready for that audition tomorrow?"

Sarah could picture Rosa curled on her couch, red hair spilling over the back as she drew on a cigarette.

"I, um."

"Is everything alright, chick?"

"Well, look, I'm safe, nothing bad's happened. I'm just feeling a bit weirded out. Are you doing anything tonight? Can you come over?"

"Bloody hell, you want me to come out in this weather? Alright, but you owe me girl!" chuckled Rosa. "I'll be there in a bit."

Thank God for Rosa, thought Sarah. She drew the curtains and waited.

Many hours later, when Rosa had left, Sarah sat up in bed with a start. The rain had stopped, and somewhere in the distance, she was sure she heard a bell chime. How come she'd never heard that before? She sat up in bed, listening and counting. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve. "Happy birthday, Sarah" she whispered to herself. Thirteen. Wait a second. Thirteen chimes? That couldn't be. She shook her head. I'm dreaming. I'm just tired. I had too much wine with Rosa. I counted wrong. She lay back in bed, squeezing her eyes shut.

The next morning, Sarah was woken up by her phone ringing. She grabbed it, half falling out of bed. "Phoenix computers, Sarah speaking" she mumbled. "Happy birthday Saraaaah!" Sang the voices on the other end. It was Toby and her stepmother. Sarah smiled. What a great way to wake up on your birthday. She decided it would be a good day.

On the way to work, squeezed once more against her fellow passengers, she was pushed up against a couple. They were obviously very in love, and very into each other. The girl was whispering in the boy's ear, but pushed so close together, Sarah could hear everything.

"And then, I want you to push me down on the bed and…" she described in lurid detail what she wanted her boyfriend to do to her, and Sarah felt herself blushing.

She wasn't a prude, she'd had her share of experience, but the fact remained that she was still a virgin, not through lack of trying. From her own self discovery of the things her body could do, to fooling around with various boyfriends, she'd come close, but something always went wrong. Once, just as things were about to get started, someone who had the wrong address began banging on the door and shouting obscenities. Another time, a leak in the apartment above had collapsed through the ceiling at the crucial moment. But by far the strangest thing of all had been the time she'd stared up her boyfriend's face, eyes clouded with desire, readying herself for him to enter her. Eyes half closed, she'd stared up and seen the smirking face of Jareth looking back.

She'd screamed, leapt off the sofa and terrified her boyfriend in the process. "Did I do something wrong? Did I hurt you?" The poor guy had felt terrible, he'd become convinced some awful memory from the past, some sort of abuse had resurfaced, and when Sarah wouldn't tell him what had happened, he'd grown angry and left. Sarah had kicked the door in fury and screamed "Why can't you just leave me alone! Get out of my head! You're not real!"

Another day, another round of calls and timed breaks. Today was particularly rough. So many irate customers had called in. This really was a terrible company, and Sarah could do nothing but stick to her call script. What she really wanted to say was yeah, this company sucks. I wouldn't buy a computer from them either if I were you. But she knew if she did that, she'd get fired. Nothing could deviate from the script.

The day rolled torturously by, and at 5.25pm, Sarah had just taken what she hoped would be her last call when her headset beeped again and she groaned.

"Phoenix computers, Sarah speaking, how may I help?" she said automatically, forcing a bit of cheer into her weary voice.

"Hello Sarah," the voice drawled on the other end.

It took a couple of seconds for Sarah to run through her mind and place the voice, the impossibility of it. When it dawned on her, she froze. Her eyes widened and her heart started pounding. The room seemed to be spinning. The air around her turned liquid and it felt like time had suddenly stopped. It's him she thought. But it can't be! This is crazy! This isn't real!

"Happy birthday" the voice said.

It simply wasn't possible. She tried again. "Phoenix computers, Sarah speaking?"

"You would not believe how long I've waited to hear your voice," said the caller. And there was no doubt. Not any more. This wasn't a coincidence.

"I...is this.. who is this?" Sarah was way off script, but her hands were sweating, and she didn't dare believe what was going on. She looked around her. Other staff members were chatting into their headsets, one of them who was expecting a baby any day now was running through sales options with a customer while knitting a blue baby blanket. Someone else laughed loudly near the kitchen. Someone would surely notice the state she was getting into. Her face was burning. This just couldn't be. It just couldn't be happening.

It was him. Cold tendrils of this realisation crept through her chest.

"What's the matter, Sarah? Aren't you going to say hello to your old friend Jareth?"