Okay, so to those of you who reviewed: THANK YOU SO MUCH! I know there aren't that many of you so far, but seeing as how I just started this a few days ago, I'm not expecting too many just yet. But there are a few of you, and it's because of you that I keep writing. But anyway, I guess it's about time for another disclaimer. Hope you like this chapter!

Oh, yeah, I just thought I'd warn you, this chapter may get just a little bit higher rating than the ones before it.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Labyrinth – sadly – or any of its original characters. I do however, own Melissa and her friends.

And now, without further ado, I give you:

A Mother's Will and Her Daughter's Wish

By noon that day, Melissa had been released from the hospital. Her grandparents had come to pick her up and drive her to their house, where she could kill some time until five o' clock, when she was supposed to meet with her mother's attorney for the reading of her will. At some point along the drive to their house, Karen offered to let her granddaughter stay with them. "No thanks. Jareth told me I could stay with him for a while," she responded politely to the question.

Her stepmother looked shocked. "You mean that oddly dressed buffoon your mother married?!" she asked quite shocked.

"Well, I don't know about the buffoon part, but yeah, that's the one. I mean, he is my father after all, so why shouldn't I stay with him for a while," she told Karen nonchalantly. "Besides, mom obviously loved him, and she always was a good judge of character." She added that last part mainly in remembrance of how her mother had disapproved of Allan, telling her that he could not be trusted.

Her grandmother still wasn't convinced. "Well, sweetheart, I know he's your parent, but you only just met him. Just because his blood runs in your veins doesn't mean he should be considered your father," she told her skeptically.

"Look grandma," she began to tell her grandmother a bit forcefully. "He is my dad. Mom loved him, and she trusted him, and I loved and trusted her and her judgment."

Jonathan chose this moment to speak up. "Karen, I think she's old enough to know who she wants to stay with. If she doesn't like living with him, she can always come stay with us."

Karen just sighed and said, "Oh, alright. But if you do change your mind about living with him Melissa, you are always welcome to come stay with us."

Melissa nodded. "I will," she said. "Oh, aren't Toby and Alice coming to stay with you guys today?" She asked, trying to change the subject from her father, whom Karen obviously disliked.

Karen nodded. "Yes he is. Oh, that reminds me, they were wondering if you would mind – I mean if you don't want to that is just fine – but they were hoping you might consider – now, only if you feel up to it – possibly..."

Melissa interrupted her babbling. "Spit it out already. They were wondering if I could what?" she asked, a bit too rudely.

Jonathan sighed. "They were wondering if you would be willing to baby sit the twins tomorrow afternoon," he said calmly, giving his wife a disapproving look from the driver's seat.

Melissa's expression turned to one of complete shock. "What? I just got out of the hospital and they want me to baby sit two toddlers?!" she asked, her disbelief dripping off every word.

Karen nodded. "Well, yes," she said a bit guiltily. Then she added quickly, "But you don't have to if you don't want to. They can always hire someone else. You are under no pressure what so ev-"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, back up. You mean I'd be getting paid this time?" Melissa cut her off again.

Karen looked startled and a little frustrated at having been interrupted again. "Yes, you'd be getting paid. Toby and Alice would be gone for no more than three hours. He didn't say how much he'd be paying you, but it didn't sound as though they would leave you with anything less than, oh, I'd say around thirty dollars – but that's just my guess. He sounded a bit guilty about having to ask you after what happened."

Melissa stared at the back of her grandmother's chair in awe. That was more money that anyone had been willing to pay her for babysitting for just three hours. "I'll do it," she said after thinking about the ten bucks an hour she could charge them and not feel guilty.

The rest of the way to her grandparent's house was driven in almost complete silence, which Melissa was perfectly fine with. She was lost in her own thoughts. She thought about Rachel and her other friends; she thought about Allan. She thought a lot about Allan. How could he do this?! Two years. We were together for two years, and he just goes off and starts making out with Lila Korkowski at a graduation party while my mother and me are lying in a ditch somewhere! She couldn't believe that he had cheated on her with Lila Korkowski, of ALL people. She had quite a reputation for being somewhat less respectable then Melissa and her acquaintances. Of all people, he chose that slut! Geeze, I'll bet he wasn't the only one she got to in that night alone! She wanted to scream.

Apparently, her grandfather had noticed the scowl that her face now held, since while Melissa was thinking about that piece of lying scum – as she now referred to him – since he asked her. "Mel, is something bothering you? You look upset." There was concern etched in his voice.

His question had snapped her out of her thoughts. "Hmm? Oh. No, I'm fine. I was just thinking," she told him, trying to sound indifferent.

He wasn't ready to drop the subject just yet however. "What'cha thinking about?"

She shook her head. "Nothing important," she responded, almost defensively. And he took that as his sign to stay quiet on the matter. Melissa then returned to her thoughts, trying to push any thing even close to Allan-related to the back of her mind, which surprisingly enough, worked. She was able to concentrate on what courses she would take in college, what her dad's home would be like, what not living with her mom would be like. She basically just thought about what her future would hold for her.

They reached her grandparents house about half an hour later. Time seemed to fly when she was so engrossed in her thoughts. She hadn't even noticed that they were there until Arthur – her grandparent's dog – came bounding up to the car and started running around in circles, waiting for them to get out of the car. When she saw Arthur, she remembered her mother telling her about Merlin, Arthur's father, and how she had played with him and taken him to the park a few blocks away when she was younger. Sadly though, Merlin had died shortly after Sarah herself had graduated.

Seeing Arthur bounding around, Melissa immediately jumped out of the car and began petting him and scratching him behind the ear. He licked her hands after this gesture since he couldn't reach her face. "Good boy Arthur," she murmured in that almost baby-talk voice that she generally used when talking to animals. "Yes you are! Here, you wanna fetch?" she picked up a stick lying on the ground nearby and threw it for him to chase after. "Go get it boy!"

She then turned her attention to her grandpa, now retrieving her bag from the trunk. She offered to take it from him, and when she did he responded by saying, "Nonsense! You're a guest here. I can handle it. Have some faith in your old grandpa!" She just smiled and let him take the bag. It wasn't too heavy.

When she turned around, she saw Arthur sitting there with the stick in his mouth, his eyes begging her to throw it again. She smiled and took it from him to throw it once more before following Jonathan into the house. It was just as it always had been. It was nicely decorated and completely spotless. Karen had turned out to be a cleaning addict. Whenever she was stressed out she cleaned, and wouldn't let anyone else help her because they could never get anything done the way she wanted it. But that had turned out to be fine with everyone. No family clean up times for them.

Her grandfather turned to her and smiled as she took in the familiar scent that was all around her. It couldn't quite be described, it was just pleasantly familiar. She'd never really appreciated that smell until now. Jonathan broke the silence that had grown all around them since they had entered the house. "You can stay in your mother's old room," he told her. "I believe you remember where it is."

She nodded. "Yeah, I remember. I'm gonna go unpack now," she said as she took the bag from her reluctant grandfather and went up to her temporary room. It had been decided at the hospital that Jareth would pick her up sometime tomorrow afternoon. That way she could still spend some time with her other relatives before moving into her new home.

As she opened the door to her mother's old room, she was overwhelmed by a sense of remembrance. Her mother had brought her here and let her stay in this room so many times when she was little. They would always go to the park a few blocks away and pretend that they were solving the Labyrinth from her mother's stories or that they were on some other wild adventure. But eventually, the trips to her grandparent's house became fewer and fewer each year. The stories became less exciting as they slowly faded into the back of her mind. She remembered them now though. She remembered every character from every story her mother had ever told her. She remembered that Sarah and she had always used three of the same characters in every adventure they ever played out: Hoggle, the indignant goblin man who was always a great help in solving the Labyrinth, Sir Didymus, the valiant dog knight who always treated them as princesses, and Ludo, the giant creature with flaming red fur covering his massive form. She remembered even once having a dream about her mother really introducing her to them. She was very little, about five or six, and they had been standing in a huge room when they came in. Her mother introduced her as Princess Melissa, and she had played with them until her mother had told her it was time to go.

Melissa smiled in recollection of the dream that at one point she had even thought was reality. I was no naïve. She remembered fondly. She stepped fully into the room and closed the door behind her. Her mother told her once that when she was fifteen she had given her room a "much needed makeover" and she had taken down everything from her walls and repainted. Her mother had given all of her stuffed animals and her toys to Toby. According to her mother, the only thing that remained the same was her vanity and her bed. Everything else had been redecorated.

She sat her things down on her bed and pulled out some of the extra objects that she had brought along, mainly a bottle of deep blue nail polish and the book entitled "Labyrinth". And so she sat down at the vanity and began to paint her fingernails, humming the tune to a song that she did not know. As she finished the first hand, she brought it up and inspected her handiwork. "Perfect," she commented before returning to the other one. But as she was painting and humming, she thought she saw something in the mirror caught her eye. She raised her head to look into it, and saw the form of a goblin man sitting on her bed, watching her intently.

"Hello Melissa," he said to her in an almost raspy, yet friendly voice.

"Who are you?" she asked without thinking.

An emotion somewhere between offense and hurt crossed his face. "I'm Hoggle. You don't remember me?"

She silently shook her head. After a moment she found her voice as she turned around to face him. "Should I remember you? And what are you doing in my..." as she turned around, she saw no one on the bed before her, only the comforter and her bag resting on top of it. "That's weird. I could have sworn – No. It's just this room. I am just imagining that I saw someone. All those stories are getting to me," she told herself firmly, partially because she believed it, and partially because she didn't.

A few hours later, they were on their way to Mr. Callahan's office. Once they arrived, Sarah's lawyer greeted them with a friendly smile and led them to his office. There were enough chairs in the room to fit twice as many people as were present. There was only Melissa, Jareth, Karen, Jonathan, Toby, Alice, and the twins – who spent most of their time asleep on the chairs – making a grand total of eight while there were enough chairs for almost twenty people. Melissa sat between Toby and Jareth, with Alice and the twins on Toby's right, and Karen and Jonathan on Jareth's left.

"Well, should we begin?" Mr. Callahan asked. When they all nodded, he started. "Well, you all know why you're here, so, let's get this will read, since I have another appointment in about half an hour. Let's see, were did I sit that package?" he asked himself as he looked for the will.

Mr. Callahan looked to be in his late twenties or early thirties. He wasn't a bad looking guy, but he wasn't really good looking either. His hair was an almost yellowy blond color, and his face wasn't bad, but when Melissa looked at him, she could see the greed in him blatantly. He looked up to her when while he was looking through the papers scattered across his desk and winked at her, a gesture that made Melissa feel quite uncomfortable.

Jareth sighed after about a minute had gone by during the man's search. "Were you not prepared at all for us?" he asked impatiently.

Mr. Callahan looked up to Jareth and scowled. "I am a busy man. I have a very important job to do here which takes up most of my time, so excuse me if I don't have time to clean my desk out every day!" he replied indignantly. "But obviously you would not know about important jobs now would you?"

Jareth's face lit up with fury. He stood and marched over to the man's desk and pounded a fist onto the table. "How would you know if I have an important job or not?" He hissed at the man who was now looking up at Jareth in terror. "You were my wife's attorney, not mine! Personally, I would never have chosen a rat like you to handle my legal affairs, seeing as how you look to be having enough trouble handling your own well being, let alone someone else's. Now, I suggest you stop wasting all of our time and make this quick." Mr. Callahan simply nodded in response and continued searching across the many papers on his desk about twice as vigorously as before.

Jareth came to take his seat once again next to Melissa, who stared at him in awe. Mr. Callahan was usually very intimidating, and now he was completely and utterly intimidated. "Nice work," she complimented him. He just smiled a one-sided smile back at her in response.

"Ah ha!" Mr. Callahan stated triumphantly as he held up a large yellow envelope. "I found it. Now let's see what our dearly departed Sarah Williams left behind, shall we?"

He looked up to see if there was a reaction from anyone at this half statement/half question remark, but if he wanted one, he was disappointed. "Alright, 'I, Sarah Williams, hereby leave my possessions to the following. To my daughter, Melissa, I leave you my house and all of its contents. I also leave you half of everything in my bank accounts – which amounts too around fifty thousand dollars. To my husband, I leave you nothing but my undying love and affection and I can only pray that you will take care of our daughter now that I am no longer able to. To my parents, Jonathan and Karen, my step brother, Toby, and his entire family, I leave you the other half of my bank account to be divided evenly among you. I hope that my parting has not caused any of you too much distress, for I am in a better place now. I leave you all my love and my best wishes.'"

Everyone sat in silence for a moment. Melissa couldn't believe she hadn't left Jareth anything. He had been her husband! Then a thought occurred to her. Maybe she didn't leave him anything because he doesn't need anything. At that very moment, Jareth stood up from his chair and turned to leave, Melissa getting up and following close behind him. "Wait up," she called out to him as he began to take much faster and longer strides as he exited the attorney's office. He turned around to watch her trying to keep pace with him as he stood in the hallway.

"Is there something you needed Melissa?" he asked her once she was standing in front of him.

She nodded. "Yeah. Are you mad that mom didn't leave you anything?" she asked bluntly. She could have kicked herself. Great. Now he's going to think mom raised me to be rude!

But to her surprise, he just chuckled at her question. "No, I'm not mad. I don't need anything from her. I'm quite well off on my own." So he is loaded .I wonder what his house looks like.

"Oh, I was just wondering," she said as another thought occurred to her. "What time are you going to pick me up tomorrow?" she asked him.

A look of comprehension dawned across his face. "Ah, yes. Well, what time would you like me to pick you up? I heard you were babysitting."

She nodded once. "Yeah, only 'cause I'm getting paid thirty bucks to do it though, not that I need it after what mom left me. But I should be done around two," she told him.

"I'll see you at two thirty then. You'll have time to say your goodbye's and get your things together that way," he told her with a one shouldered shrug.

"Okay. See you later then."

Jereth nodded once before continuing down the hallway as Melissa turned around to see Mr. Callahan leading her family behind him. She didn't like the way Mr. Callahan was looking at her. In fact it was more like he was leering at her instead of looking at her. He licked his lips as he noticed her looking at him. The sight made her shudder. As they approached her along the hall, he came up to her and put his arm around her waist and pulled her close to him in some form of a hug – a very uncomfortable hug. She managed to shrug him off and give him a not-on-your-life look. He didn't give her any form of acknowledgement, but did manage to keep his arm wrapped about her waist. He then looked at the rest of her family, who were all waiting for him to move away from the girl, and said, "I am terribly sorry for your loss. I wish each of you the best of luck with getting over this awful experience." However, the way he said it sounded more like he just wanted everyone to leave. "Now, if you don't mind, I would like to have a word with Melissa here alone. It won't take long." He threw them a cheesy smile before they walked down the hall past them, Jonathan and Toby glaring at the man until it hurt their heads to continue looking.

Once they all turned the corner, Mr. Callahan turned back to Melissa and put both of his hands on Melissa's shoulders. "Now, Melissa, I understand that you must be going through a very strenuous time right now, and I just wanted to let you know that, if you need any comfort, you know, a shoulder to cry on, I'm here for you, in any way that you need me." He winked after saying this and Melissa felt like she could throw up then and there.

"Ah, that's alright, but, I've already got people who are willing to comfort me," she said disgustedly, hoping he would get the hint. But he obviously didn't.

He shrugged and asked, "Well, how about a date then?"

She wanted to burst out laughing when he said this, until she realized he was serious. "Ah, no thanks Mr. Callahan."

He cupped the side of her face in her hand, something that nearly made her sick. "Oh, now you don't have to call me Mr. Callahan. For someone as pretty as you, it's just Peter."

Ug! Is he serious?! Gross! He's like thirty or something! The thought alone disgusted her. "Well, Peter, I would appreciate it if you would first, get your hands off of me," as she said this she pulled both of his hands off of her shoulder and cheek. "And second, stop treating me like a piece of ass! Got it?"

He put on a fake pout. "So feisty Melissa. You don't have to play hard to get with me."

A second later Jareth was at her daughter's side, neither of the other two having any clue as to how he'd gotten there. "I believe my daughter said she wasn't interested. Or are you that hard of hearing?" he hissed at the man standing in front of him.

"I...uh...well..." he stuttered nervously. "I do believe she's old enough to make her own decisions pops." He tried to sound macho as he said this, and failed miserably.

Jareth narrowed his eye's at the man, resisting the ever growing desire to strangle him by simply reaching out and grabbing the collar of his clean, black suit and pulling him up so that they were almost eye level, and said to him, "You listen here you little weasel, and don't you forget this: Melissa here, has no interest in you now, and she never will. I'm surprised any woman would think that a scum bag like you to even deserved to be considered a man. So, I suggest that you go back into your little office, and prepare for the poor fools who hired you to make their little visit. Now, is there any part of that that I made unclear to you?" He dropped Mr. Callahan's collar and the man stumbled backwards at this.

After vigorously shaking his head – which made him look like the little coward he actually was – he fixed his collar and quickly paced back to his office. When he had slammed the door behind him, a shocked Melissa turned her gaze upon her father. "Thanks," was all she could manage to say to him after that little display.

He just shrugged. "You didn't seem to be enjoying his company. I thought I'd step in and give you a hand. Not to mention the fact that I'll be damned if my daughter goes out with a rat like that! Especially since you can do so much better than someone like him."

Melissa smiled up at him as they began to walk to the front doors out which the rest of their company were waiting for them. Sure enough, they found everyone there. Karen was waiting in the passenger seat of the car while Jonathan spoke with Toby and Alice was playing Peek-a-Boo with Tori while Tommy slept silently in the back seat of their car. When they stepped out of the car, Karen motioned for Melissa to come in. She just smiled and held up one finger to signal that she would be there in a minute. "So," she started to say to Jareth. "Where is it exactly that you live? Will I be able to visit my friends without going to far?" she asked simply.

He just shrugged once again. "Well, that depends on a few things. It's not far though. I'm sure you'll like it there. Sarah always did."

Melissa nodded and began to walk to the car in which Karen and now Jonathan were waiting for her. "I'll see you tomorrow then."

He nodded and waved goodbye to her as they drove off in the direction of the William's home. After seeing them turn a corner, and making sure no one else was around to see, he vanished and reappeared in the underground.

That night, as Melissa lay in bed, she thought of everything that had happened throughout the past few days, and soon tears began to flow steadily from her mismatched eyes. She had graduated, gotten into a car accident, met her father, found out her boyfriend was cheating on her, her mother died, the sleazy ass lawyer who had handled her mother's accounts tried to hit on her, her dad had scared him off, every time she passed that vanity mirror she could swear that she saw something that wasn't there, and now she was in bed, practically crying her eyes out. "It's not fair!" she sobbed after a while. "It's just not fair!" As a car drove past the house, its headlights shone through the window and caught the glare of some gleaming gold letters on a red covered book. She looked over at the book 'Labyrinth' and sighed as she thought of the story that lay between its pages. "You know," she said to know one in particular. "I wish the Goblin King would come and take me away. Right now." She managed to sob once more before a huge gust of wind blew her window open and a white owl flew through to the other side of her room. Melissa sat up to find Jareth now rising from the place where the owl once stood.

A/N: Okay, so this one's a bit longer, and it might not be as good as I had wanted it to be, but I just got so wrapped up in the story and had to have it end just right. I'll try to update soon, but until then, please review and if there are any stories about the Labyrinth that you're reading or have read, let me know about them, I could always use another good story. Well, until next time,

TTFN-Ta Ta For Now

Sappire925