Sarah woke up sore and stiff. A testimony that the Labyrinth had been real, and not just a wishful dream. It was amazing that all that had been done. She had braved dangers untold, hardships un-numbered to take- but he hadn't stolen the child. She had wished it. She had wanted it and willed it.

A sobering experience. A lesson well learned.

She would never take anything forgranted. She would never assume things and she would think before she acted. Then she laughed.

How long did her New Year resolutions last? How long did her vow never to eat any of Karen's cooking when she pissed her off last?

A day at the best. But she would try, that's all a person could do. Smiling she went down to breakfast.

Karen almost fainted when Sarah smiled at her. she managed a sickly smile back, on the basis of if Sarah could try then so could she but she couldn't help but wonder if the body snatchers had been.

"How are you?" Sarah asked.

"Fine. You?"

"The same. I'm just going down the park okay? Need me for anything?"

"No..." Karen was to shocked to protest.

Sarah cooed to Toby and ran out the door. "Come on Merlin!"

For some reason, as her run slowed to a jog, then to a walk she felt happy as Merlin panted at her heels. She was filled with a bubbling joy that spilled out in laughter and gleaming eyes. She was a heroine! Magic was real! And the look on Karen's face... maybe I should do a different personality a day Sarah mussed. To practice her acting skills naturally.

She was still grinning like a fool as she waited for Merlin to do his business and gently strolled around the rich green of the park. After the dark storm of yesterday everything was fresh. The sky was a sturdy, endless blue. The benches and the trees where washed of the cities grime and pollution.

Like nearly loosing your brother to be a goblin made things clearer to view. You never know what could happen, or why.

She sat on a bench, almost instantly getting a wet ass. A frown marred her forehead. Why had he done all that in her name? Why did he nearly cry at the end? Was he just playing The Game or was he true, in his own way?

She had solved the Labyrinth, but never would she solve its King.

"And I've done it all for you!"

Lost in thought she let her mind drift as it recalled and unanalysed her experiences. She jerked in alarm as Merlin barked a sharp warning.

It was him. He was walking towards her. He was wearing black. Black trousers, black, flat boots with square toes and a black, sleek shirt and would have been neck high if it hadn't been open to his navel. His hair was flat and tamed in a low ponytail. His expression was weary.

With wide, shocked eyes Sarah watched him stop in front of her bench. She forced her eyes to stay on his face that was now cold stone and waited for him to speak. Birds twittered, trees rustled. Merlin growled and gave up. Cars drove past beyond the trees in a hurry. His eyes bored into hers.

She dropped her gaze to his lips. "Jareth." She saw the corners of his mouth curl upwards as she acknowledged him.

"Sarah." She voice was flat. No tone, no anything.

"What are you doing here?"

"I have come..." there was a hint of something in his voice, followed by a meaningful pause, "to greet the Goblin Queen."

Sarah could recognise the tone now. It was bitterness, filled with the smell and sweetness of decay and the dying of fading beauty. With a dreadful certainty Sarah knew he wasn't proposing.

"How...?" she couldn't get more words out. Her mouth was a dry cavity, nothing more.

"You beat me. The Labyrinth rejected me and chooses you. You will be the Goblin Queen."

"How...?"

"How is that possible?" the laughter at her was back.

Sarah shook her head dumbly. "I didn't mean..."

"What's said is said!" Jareth snapped sharply.

"But..."

"But..." Jareth mimicked cruelly.

"I just wanted my brother back and I can't!" Sarah cried.

"You can and you will." Jareths tone was hard and unyielding. "You have no choice. Just as I have no choice." Bitterness was back. "Oh run as far as you wish little girl, but the Labyrinth won't let you escape!"

Sarah couldn't get her mouth to close nor could she stop staring at him. She had come to the park to think and digest her little adventure and Jareth, but if had bit her in the ass. "That wasn't in the book." Was all she could think of to say.

"Oh what a comeback." Jareth sneered. He held out his pendant. Sarah started at that incomprehensibly. "Take it." Jareth ordered curtly.

Sarah shook her head, not knowing what to feel. "It's yours."

"It is the Goblin Monarchs." Neutral voice and tone.

"And I am not the-"

"I'll have to come back another day." Jareth gave her a disgusted look. "But know this: each day you leave us undefended against the Wild Magic of the Underground is one day closer to The Labyrinth running wild. If you as the Goblin Queen can not or will not control the Wild Magic and the Labyrinths defences then we will suffer a fate worse than death."

"How am I to control...?"

"I will teach you."

Sarah looked at him uncertainly. "Why do you want to help me? After all I did... in ignorance!" she hastily inserted, she didn't want him to think her weak. "Why? Is this revenge?"

Jareths expression grew thunderous. "You won and the Labyrinth chose it's next ruler and how the next generation is born."

"I don't understand..."

"You won't." Jareth stated blandly. "But you will have to learn control or it will destroy you and control you." Jareths indifferent mask slipped and he looked haggard.

The Labyrinth controls Jareth. If I controlled the Labyrinth then I would control Jareth... Sarah realised. "I- I- I-" Sarah stuttered, trying to think beyond the whirling of her brain, "I need to think!" with a desperate turn of speed Sarah sprinted for her bedroom. Her sanctuary and sanity in all the confusion.

Jareth watched her go, wanting to follow her, wanting to shake her till she knew. She was just so damned stubborn! Like me... He grimaced as he fought the pull of the Labyrinth and the Wild Magic and fought not to show them his pain as they pull increased and abruptly tugged him back.

Doubling up with pain Jareth fell on the bed, laughing. He laughed a broken, splintered sound that wounded the echoes that matched his tears, which could not be held.

If Sarah would not learn then she would end up as he. If she had not defied him so this never would have happened! He wouldn't have used all of his concentration and control on winning her over instead of maintaining the Labyrinth.

The Labyrinth did not like neglect. But still she placed him in the Queens bed. What had been his bed.

Ironic little creature he thought and had to muffle a cry as the Wild Magic rose lose.

But maybe... he could just hold it. Fight it, so it didn't spread...

Sarah lay on her bed, staring vacantly at the ceiling. Her mind a windmill of endless repetitive questions. She didn't understand, that was all it came to. She would have to wring the information out of Jareth...

"Greet the Goblin Queen..."

Maybe I'm just dreaming a further wish? Sarah thought hopefully, or perhaps he is lying...? More high force gales bending the windmills.

But she would have to sort them out later. Now she had to eat lunch with a smile on her face. Poor Karen, she was getting a different Sarah, but not in a daily digest.

"Sarah! Lunch!"

She sighed, so soon would she have to act? "Coming!"

Though out lunch Karen watched Sarah pick at her food under fathers' indifference. As they where cleaning up Karen hovered around Sarah and eventually blurted out "are you all right?" worry showing through.

Touched Sarah smiled wanly at her, "I just feel a bit, you know. I've got cramps."

"Oh dear! You go and rest while I clear up."

"Thank you." Sarah dragged her body back to her room to collapse on her bed. Back to windmills now...

Sarah vaguely hear her father yell for her, to hear Karen telling him to leave her alone and let her rest because of you-know-what. At the mention of woman's pain Robert shut up and let Karen judge. She was to detached to even mentally laugh. She was in a... trance, a peace. Between waking and sleeping. Dreaming and reality.

And she couldn't tell when the scenery changed, for she was far to relaxed to care. She seemed to drift out, through he window, to the world below.

It was somehow bigger, and yet smaller than she had imagined it, this Labyrinth. And now she could see how filled with life it was. How her passing had disturbed everything. And how the Wild Magic was destroying what the Labyrinth was trying to preserve.

That was why it was forcing Jareth. It, she needed Sarah. Someone needs me...

She saw the moon, a crystal in the pitch, extreme sky. She saw Hoggle, other dwarves, other villages, other cities and millions of other inhabitants. She knew them all by name. They where in her world now.

And there was the Castle beyond the Goblin City. And through that wall she floated to see a large, black bed in a room filled with purples and blues with impossible architecture. But drifting closer she could see something in the bed. A lump, human shaped. The person was in pain. The person was Jareth.

And now he was just sitting in the bed staring at her, through her his face and actions wooden like a puppet. "Welcome my daughter." But his voice was high and melodious, like a womans. "But beware the tricksters I harbour. Beware the lies." The bleakness on his face was the blankness she felt. It was the Labyrinth.

Panic gave Sarah life and she dropped to the floor to jerk awake in bed.

She lay there breathing, wiggling her toes under the heavy duvet. Strange, I don't remember going to bed. But maybe the fact she was fully clothed could explain that. But it wasn't as strange as her dream. Beware the lies? What kind of warning is that? At least in books it was more cryptic and... Well, better!

But what could it mean, Sarah mused. Any lie or a lie in particular. She giggled and went to swing her legs out of bed, only to find that the mattress had extended to where the drop to the floor had been. Her stomach knotted. The light was wrong, as in it was absent.

"JARETH!"

"No need to yell precious..." He was right by her! If she had rolled that way... Sarah closed her eyes on the thought.

"What the HELL is going on?"

"The Labyrinth is controlling you." He sounded so bland and so pleased. Yet he was furious. Underneath he was furious. Sarah had shivers down her spine as she thought about what he might do... what he could do...

"I'm in you bed!"

"I'm am in your bed, oh gracious Queen."

"What?!"

"The Labyrinth is dominating you."

Sarah gulped. "What can I do?" Just think she was having to ask Jareth that.

"Learn how to Master it and control yourself."

The silence was heavy, not a sound except the two heartbeats that where out of sync accompanied by strained breathing. Sarah couldn't see the expression on his face, just the outline of him. The darkest shadow of all he seemed to be.

"But you can not live Aboveground." His rich voice spilt the night.

"What!" Sarah ground out.

"You wish to put them in this danger?"

"What danger?" Sarah scoffed.

"Of the Wild Magic whip lashing and at best killing them."

"You're not telling me anything!" Sarah raged, ignoring the unspoken thought of everyone in the Labyrinth is in danger...

"You're not listening, you're taking it...foregranted." his tone was patronising. If Sarah thought that she had done a different mood an hour, then she had nothing on Jareths different, expressive and unreadable moods a second.

She hesitated. "Where do we begin?"

"At the beginning." 

AN: Sorry if it's a long chapter, might make up for the shortness of the prologue. I'm glad all my reviewers liked. :) I hope this is up to scratch. Please review!