Determination

By: WickedGame

a/n: I do not own Labyrinth. This is a gift fic for AmethystLainey, for her birthday. Happy birthday Lainey-chan! Beta-ed by AngelaScarlet.

Warnings: one-shot

I don't know how it started. Before I went to the Labyrinth, I was just a girl obsessed with puzzles and fantasies. I wanted to be an actress like my mother, famous and beloved by all around her. Sounds melodramatic, doesn't it? Well, that's not the point anyway.

After I got back, it was like some switch had been flipped in me. I got less obsessed with being an actress, and became more obsessed with the Underground and all its inhabitants.

You heard me right, all its' inhabitants.

It was no secret that I had a little crush on the man who tried to take my brother away. Well, wouldn't you? That long hair, those eyes, that body, and certainly other things that girls do not speak of in polite company; they all added up to one virile male. Plus, he was Fae. Any good research session on any number of mediums would tell you that the Fae were not called "The Fair Folk" for nothing. I did not even know he was Fae until I started trying to identify him.

Wouldn't you know it, there was on obscure reference to him in a book at the local college library? In the back stacks, where horny college kids could be found making out or just going at it like rabbits in heat, there was a dusty volume about the Fae and magical creatures in general.

So I researched, and I drew pictures. I showed a rough sketch of the Goblin King to my friend Elaine, and I shit you not, her jaw dropped.

"Sarah, no wonder you have such a difficult time finding men. Your ideal guy is the stuff dreams are literally made of," she told me with a shake of her head.

Of course, Elaine did not even know that the Goblin King existed. I kept that a secret from everyone but my friends from the Underground.

The little buttheads would not tell me anything about their world, or about the Goblin King. They told me that they were instructed not to. And you know Sir Didymus, he will keep his word no matter what. And all Hoggle would tell me was something about having to swim in the bog. Ludo, well he's a monosyllabic kind of guy, you know? They are all sweethearts though.

It had been three years since the night I went to the Labyrinth. Well, a little more than three years. I had become an adult, and was past the fear that Toby could send me there himself. I still read him an edited version of the story, careful to leave out key words. At four years old, he was one smart puppy. I sometimes wondered, when I looked into his eyes, if Jareth did something to him, made him smarter or something. Toby is some kind of genius, I'm telling you.

So, anyways, where was I?

Oh yes, I was talking about being obsessed with a man hundreds or thousands of years old that had the power to control dreams and make girls fall in love with one dance. Well, I was thinking as I was sitting there, wasn't it about time I tried to contact him? Wasn't it about time that I tried to at least get to know the man whom I know was probably misunderstood?

I stood in front of my mirror, and said his name, only once.

"Jareth"

And, to my surprise, nothing happened. No mist, no smoke, no glitter, no wind, no stupid barn owl, no nothing.

Well, huh.

I went to bed that night totally confused, and not really understanding what I needed to do to talk to the Goblin King. And that night, as I lay there in my flannel pajamas, I had the first dream.

It was not much. I seem to remember him, dressed in black velvet, and me, gowned much the same. We were dancing in a large ballroom, decorated with these large and elaborate ice sculptures; it was truly gorgeous. We waltzed in the empty ballroom, saying nothing. We stopped dancing and he kissed the back of my hand; that was it. I woke up with tingles up and down my spine.

"What the hell just happened?" I asked myself.

Would you believe that this happened again and again until I was nineteen? I dreamed the same recurring dream at least twice a week. On my nineteenth birthday, the dream changed.

I'm not stupid. When that happened, I knew something was up. He was in my dreams. I knew how he had gotten there; that was one of his powers. But how did he come to even want to be in my dreams? He did not come when I called after all … oh.

OOOOHHHHH.

I all of a sudden got it. He heard me, but was not able to come to me through the mirror. He came in through my dreams instead.

Heh, well, two could play at that game.

I started studying dreams and brainwaves and all of that jazz, trying to learn how to control my dreams. I learned to meditate and do astral projection. I researched and practiced every chance I got. It was about six months after my nineteenth birthday that I finally managed to gain control of some of the dream.

The meadow we had been visiting quietly for some time all of a sudden became a beach, and you should have seen the look on Jareth's face.

'What the bloody hell is going on?' he asked me.

'Jareth, you aren't the only one who can control dreams anymore,' I told him with a smirk.

'I gave you more power than I should have Sarah,' he said with a finger wagging at me.

'When can I see you for real?' I asked him in the dream, asking the question that had been burning inside of me.

'When I think you are ready,' he told me. Then he dismissed me for the night.

Ready came later, when I turned twenty-one. It had become a lot easier to see him, since I had moved out and was living on my own in a tiny apartment. I could sleep anytime I wanted, when I was not at school or working. We walked together in the dreamscape one night, and he turned to me.

"Love, I have one last bit of power to give you," he told me.

"I thought you said you had given me too much power," I teased.

"I can give you one last bit of power. Together, we can make a portal especially for you. Your mirror, you will be able to come through it just like your friends do. You can come here physically," Jareth's normally cynical voice sounded almost happy, and it made me laugh.

"All right," I said, and Jareth grabbed my hands. I felt a tingle, and then it seemed like a door opened in my mind, "Wow"

"Wow indeed Sarah," Jareth kissed me softly then. We had never kissed before, and I woke up with the kiss tingling on my lips.

Well, I am sure you can guess what I did as soon as I woke up, right? I promptly got dressed and walked over to my mirror. I touched the mirror, and it felt like liquid metal on my fingers. I crawled through the mirror and found myself in an empty chamber somewhere inside the Castle Beyond the Goblin City. A tall and gilded mirror stood behind me, propped against the wall.

"Well, what do you know; I got the hang of it after all! Now why can't my mirror be that tall?" I smiled and walked to the wooden door. I opened it by pulling on a heavy metal ring and set about finding Jareth.

Eventually a goblin directed me to His Majesty's bedchamber. I walked up to the double doors and knocked. When there was no answer, I took it upon myself to open the door.

"Jareth?" I asked, but there was no answer. Perplexed, I walked into the dark room. I could not really see anything in front of me, and I turned to leave. I figured I could wait for him somewhere else in the castle. Just as I turned to walk out the door, it shut suddenly.

"Come now Sarah, leaving so soon?" his purring voice said.

"Ah, I was just going to wait for you somewhere else," I said humbly as I backed up. I could feel him approaching me. I stopped when my legs hit the massive bed. My hands kind of did this windmill thing because I lost my balance, and then his hands were gripping my forearms.

"No you're not," he said as he pulled me close. His lips found mine, and I kind of forget everything that happened after that.

So, it turns out that my little crush was kind of reciprocated after all. And my little obsession wasn't pointless after all. I had the love of the man of my dreams, and the power to move between worlds. All that time was not wasted, and I had gotten what I wanted in the end.

Who the hell wants to be some silly actress anyways?