DISCLAIMER: I DON'T OWN ANY OF THESE CHARACTERS.

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The diary was written in 1352 by an aristocratic young woman named Margaret Levesque.

Muddling through the printed off pages, and a Middle English dictionary, Sarah had pieced together the story.

In an angry fit, the woman had wished away her two children, a newborn and another of nineteen months. Her wish had been granted. She had been given a chance to retrieve them of course, but she had never made it through the land, where "true paths layeth not." She found herself back in her house without her children, at which point she had recorded this in her diary, or shortly after.

Subsequent visits to the library found that Margaret Levesque was indeed a real person. She was documented in several town ordinances and monastery records, having been committed to a convent when she went insane. It was her husband who committed her, after having supposed that she drowned the children herself, because she was forever searching and wailing in the bog lands past their house.

Sarah was sure that she had found it. This of course wasn't the first telling of stolen children, or even what began old wives' tales, but it was most definitely the inspiration for the later play. It had to be. Obviously the play had been changed, to suit the needs of an audience, for there were no happy endings here.

Sarah felt satisfied with one thing, but not with another. The woman's diary made no mention of Jareth. A Goblin King yes, Jareth no.

The thought never entered Sarah's mind that it was some other king, or that it wasn't Jareth in these stories. What bothered her was that none of them told his name.

But if you turn it this way, and look into it, it'll show you your dreams... But this is not a gift for an ordinary girl... Do you want it?

Look what I'm offering you--your dreams.

Had he said those words before to someone else? She couldn't know. However, Sarah was becoming increasingly certain that no one who had remained in this world after any encounter with the Goblin King had ever learned his name.

Now she searched and poured over ancient poems and stories in any language that she could find, if only even to catch a glimpse of that one word--Jareth. She found none. It was not the name of a myth, a being, even a person. But it was his name.

That meant something, though she wasn't sure what. But why should she have his name when others didn't? Because she had solved the Labyrinth? But she had had it before that. It had to mean something. Surely not that--

Of course, she had taken and twisted the play to her own needs when she had been ranting to Toby. There was nothing about the Goblin King being in love with the girl, or giving her powers. It was obvious now that he took any child wished away, no matter by whom. But he had given her his name.

True, he hadn't told it to her, Hoggle had. But was perhaps Hoggle to tell her, whether he knew it or not? The more that Sarah delved into mythology and the old stories, the more powerful things seemed to become. Names in particular had a special power.

And to be undone with a simple sentence such as, "You have no power over me," seemed...odd, in the least. Everything she had read said the exact opposite--that rulers of other realms had absolute power, especially over others within them. "You have no power over me," was also conveniently how the Goblin King had been undone in the (awful) play that she had so loved at the time.

In fact, the more she looked back on it, the easier the Labyrinth seemed. It was almost--almost as if it had all been a play itself. There had been few real dangers, it seemed to her now, especially after reading a true account of another who had been in the Labyrinth less successfully. The Labyrinth the play was obviously unrealistic, something coughed up for the stage, yet Sarah's experience had concluded in exactly the same way, the same lines, though nothing else had been similar, save for the abducted child. Odd.

Sarah remembered what he had said at the end, as clearly as if it were yesterday, as he interrupted her carefully memorized lines.

Just let me rule you, and you can have everything that you want... Just fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave...

He hadn't particularly sounded like someone who was really about to lose everything, now that she thought about it. He had sounded more like someone who was trying to get her to open her eyes.

Indeed, the more Sarah thought about it, the more it seemed that what had happened next happened because she had wanted it to happen, not because it should have happened.

Everything that you wanted I have done....

It couldn't be that simple.

But if it was...?

Did she want it? She had never forgotten it.

There was always something about the Goblin King that Sarah couldn't get out of her head. He was the one that she was really angry at when no one would answer her. He was the one she thought of first when she thought of the Labyrinth.

She wasn't pining away for lost love, but there was something inevitable about him that drew her, like an invisible chain in her mind. Her most vivid memories of the Labyrinth centered on her encounters with him--from the beginning, to the end, to the dream-like bubble where they danced.

That characterized it almost perfectly. She had wandered, searching among the dancers for something that she couldn't identify or remember. Only when she had seen him had Sarah felt like she knew where she was. For a fleeting moment she had felt that everything was complete.

Someone that could offer her the stars themselves had been before her. Suddenly, Sarah's forgotten dreams and fantasies flew back into her mind and slammed the door on her present life.

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It was past midnight, dark, and quiet. Everyone else in her house was undoubtedly asleep. But Sarah was still dressed, wandering aimlessly around her room, always ending up by the window.

Looking out over the night sky and the sloping yard below, Sarah realized that she wanted to talk to him. Needed to talk to him. She knew the Labyrinth was real, that he was real, but she had to know if what she remembered was real, or if she was completely deluded. She couldn't move on until she knew, either way.

But it was questionable. There was no way that she knew to call him except one, and she couldn't do that.

Abruptly, Sarah realized that she had never said his name. There was no time like the present, she decided.

"Jareth."