Author's Note: This is the second chapter before the end. The next chapter will be final.

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Jareth let go of her hand.

Sarah collapsed onto her bed and felt a little sick for no reason she could discern. She pressed a hand to her roiling stomach and took deep breaths.

Jareth neither moved away nor moved to help her. He only watched with no expression. Just those mismatched eyes fixed intently on her face.

"I don't remember it being this bad before," she said thickly.

"You weren't leaving a part of yourself behind," Jareth told her seriously.

"What part of myself?"

"Pieces of your magic, your mind, your personality. Parts of yourself."

Sarah made a face and got up, brushing past his tall frame to get to the door. She opened it slightly and peeked out, trying to listen for a noise to tell her who was home and who wasn't. The momentary thought of whether it was safe to have a vampire in her house crossed her mind, only to be dismissed again.

Jareth had not given her reason to think he was going to hurt her family.

She turned back and crossed her arms, leaning against the door with a curious desire to see him. In the middle of the evening, with the sun setting outside the window, it was very strange to see Jareth standing in a frilly, little-girl's bedroom. He didn't suit the ruffles and toys.

"Thank you," she said stiffly.

"For?"

"For bringing me home."

"I gave my word I would." He smiled whimsically and tipped his head to the side. He opened his mouth to say something and found himself uncharacteristically closing his mouth.

"What? Spit it out."

"A word of advice, then," he brought out, "Earth isn't the Underground." He left with those words.

Sarah thought it was just like the Goblin King to be so elusive. She snorted and couldn't help thinking it was a relief to be rid of him. He was… fascinating, but ultimately too exhausting.

"Dad," she reminded herself softly, already turning to open the door. Better to get it over with immediately. Knowing her father, he would have called the police in. He was a little oblivious but he tended to worry when he noticed anything changing.

"Dad?" she called, clattering down the stairs deliberately to make some noise, "Dad! Karen?"

Karen was home.

Sarah got the shock of her life when the woman threw her arms around her and exclaimed, "Sarah! Oh, we've been so worried! Are you alright?"

Sarah would have expected Karen to say something along the lines of, "We've been looking everywhere for you. Why didn't you come home?"

"I'm fine," she answered, astonished by the shake in her own voice, "I'm fine. I just woke up in bed. I don't know how… how long it's been."

"Ssh, then. Sit down. How do you feel?"

Karen almost pushed her into the chair, lifting a hand to touch her forehead, staring down at her with wide blue eyes.

Sarah looked around and it was the same cheerful sitting room she remembered. All carpet and couch and Karen's new curtains at the window and the hideous green and yellow rattle some insane old lady had given to Toby for his christening. The hideous green and yellow rattle was lying forgotten on the floor and Toby was asleep on the couch.

"Sarah? Sarah, honey, can you hear me?"

Sarah got the distinct impression that she had never needed to act as well as she needed to right then. Some cynical part of her mind was watching herself with amusement, as she blinked rapidly and stuttered, "I- I c-c-can he-h-h-hear you."

Karen sighed and stroked her hair, hugging her again. "There, there, dear. It's okay. You're home now," the woman crooned, "And all you need to do is relax. Just relax. We'll have a long talk about your habit of coming home after dark, young lady, but that's later. For now, just relax."

Sarah wanted to laugh. How had she never taken Karen dry humour at face-value before? Always convinced the woman was being serious and dismissive. She did giggle, and the objective part of her mind noted that it was quite expertly turned into a gasping whimper muffled against Karen's shoulder.

Robert came home and almost choked Sarah to death, grabbing his baby girl up in a hug. Sarah felt her toes leave the ground for one heart stopping moment.

"It's okay," she said, "I'm okay. He didn't hurt me."

"Who was it?" Robert demanded, "We have to call the police."

"I called Clive," Karen volunteered, "I told him Sarah needed to sleep. That she couldn't talk now. It took a while but I beat him down."

"Karen! She needs to tell them who this guy is. He could be getting away," Robert shouted, "Think about it! They need her description to catch him!"

"And Sarah needs some quiet." Karen's voice went hard and obstinate.

Sarah could have kissed her stepmother. She couldn't agree with her; her Dad was right. No kidnapper was going to hang around town when he'd just brought his victim back alive and lucid. But Karen was giving her the perfect opportunity to savour her return before the headache of creating evasive lies began.

Sarah found the lies to be very easy. "Dad? Dad, I couldn't see him," she pleaded, "He put me somewhere dark and wore a mask when he came in."

"Honey, you wouldn't even realize some of the things you picked up," he soothed, "The police can tell you if you didn't see anything."

"Dad…" her voice wavered and broke, tears in her eyes and her skin so cold, "Dad, I really don't want to remember. I don't. It was so horrible. I couldn't sleep and I didn't… please, I just want to sleep tonight."

What was any father to do when his daughter burst into a storm of weeping like that?

Sarah had worked herself up to sheer fright. She thought of the vampires and the demon that had attacked them on her first few hours there and she thought of her first trip to the Labyrinth and how close she had come to death without realizing it. How close Toby had come to a kind of death! She thought of the flames in Jareth's eyes and the way he had thrown open the curtains to taunt her, standing in sunlight like the devil himself.

All of it!

And she had slept in his bed. Eaten at his table. He had put his hands on her. The same hands that must have accounted for the blood on his shirt.

Sarah sobbed and sobbed in fright because she hadn't realized just how frightening it all was until she was away from it. Looking at it in the cold light of earthly reason.

She flexed her fingers in bed, late at night, poking at the bruises on her arms. She didn't feel any different. She couldn't feel anything in herself that hadn't been there before. Nothing was missing either. But she had power. More power than she knew what to do with, and though it confused her, it excited her as well. Some odd thrill ran down her back at the thought of it.

Sarah didn't realize until many days later that Jareth had been right- the Earth was not the Underground. And her power was in the Underground.

She stared at her reflection in the mirror, annoyed at how she was changing. She was growing thin and pale. 'Interesting', her grandmother called it disparagingly, as though interesting was synonymous with ugly. Her lips were thinning as her temper frayed and she was struggling to keep it under control. Her eyes were growing darker.

She leaned closer to the mirror, and through the metal and the reflection of herself and her room, she could see a vague smoky vision. A hazy glimpse of the ruins of the Labyrinth.

She blinked and the vision disappeared. It felt as though it had never been there in the first place.

Her mother came to see her, too, frantic at how close her daughter had come to vanishing forever. Linda had no custody rights; Robert could have forbidden the meeting. Sarah asked and he saw no reason to keep a mother from her daughter. Linda assured him it was only to see if Sarah was alright.

Sarah was almost sixteen. Almost grown-up. She hadn't seen her mother since she was eight. The newspapers and tabloids were all she had.

Linda didn't bring her lover or husband or significant other. Sarah didn't know if she was married, living in sin, or moved on from the one she'd had the last time Sarah had seen her pictures in the papers. Linda did bring presents, though. Flowers and photographs, books and a pair of earrings.

"I haven't pierced my ears," Sarah apologized, "But they're beautiful."

Linda put an arm around her shoulders awkwardly, afraid that Sarah would push her away.

Sarah didn't hate her mother. She didn't mind Linda putting an arm around her shoulders. It was gratifying that her mother still loved her enough to come down. Sarah thought of Jareth's scathing mockery of the poor woman and felt a twinge of guilt that perhaps he had hit upon a weak spot of hers. Sarah couldn't fault her mother for having a dream, and she couldn't fault her for living her life in any way that made her happy. But Sarah could wish that her mother didn't sleep around, and that her mother had tried to be a better mother than she was.

"I've missed you so much, fairy," Linda told her.

Fairy. Like she was six years old again and making believe.

Sarah grinned, taken with sudden irony of that. "More like goblin now," she laughed ruefully, though she expected Linda to take it as a joke instead of fact. "I'm glad you came."

"When Robert told me you were gone, I wanted to come down straight away but…" Linda bit her lip, "Do you hate me?"

"No, Mom. I don't hate you." Sarah rolled her eyes and kept the tone light. "I love you. You're a smart woman; you know that."

Linda laughed, enchanted with this mischievous, irreverent version of her little fairy. "I have to ask you, Sarah, did you run away? I won't tell, I promise. And I won't make trouble. But I see so many girls your age run away and I'm only happy you came back safe. But I need to know- did you?"

"Mom, I didn't run away."

Her mother, the actress, took her at face value.

Sarah gave the earrings to Karen to keep for her and pressed the flowers as a remembrance. Linda was talking about asking Robert if she could have Sarah for a few days in New York. She was offering to take her to a Broadway play. Sarah got the impression her Dad would say 'yes' eventually.

She looked at herself in the mirror again and her eyes were cynical. She smiled and she could see the secrets trapped in the stretch of her lips.

She went back to school and most of her class knew what had happened to her and people were always asking. Her school councillor was extra officious and wanting to talk to her and Sarah had to growl before the man backed off. Her friends got used to it and there were all those jokes about Stockholm Syndrome.

Sarah hadn't known anything about Stockholm Syndrome at the time. She'd read it up in a library. After which, she fluctuated between amusement, irony and disgust.

"Me and Jareth?" she told her reflection, "That would be weird."

But she thought about it and it dawned on her that she didn't need to be in love with the vampire, she just had to be sympathetic to his perspective. She was. Very sympathetic.

She had thought him arrogant and self-centred. He was that. But he was powerful. Sarah had a tithe of his power and she felt her ego expand insufferably. She found herself indulging the whims of others simply because she liked to think she knew better than them. She found herself believing that she knew more than them.

Sarah had hated the Goblin King for his games and his half-lies. Never full lies, just the half of one. Going through the Labyrinth was all very well but Sarah could never have brought Toby back if she hadn't conquered Jareth. Hadn't taken everything he'd created, including himself, and thrown it away with perfect indifference. That was a lie- that she could win if she was lucky. It wasn't luck. It was skill. Jareth had lied about that, but never actually lied.

Sarah felt it was easier to play the games now. How else could she divert suspicion? She had seen things, felt them. 'Going back is sometimes the way forward' and yet everyone wanted to forge ahead as though the past didn't matter. It did. The past was so important it was almost impossible to forget.

Sarah turned sixteen and her Dad let her have a drink even though she was still under age.

"Just be careful," he warned her sternly, "No more than one!"

She laughed and agreed just to keep him happy.

Toby got a little sister and the two-year-old had no clue what he was up against. He blinked at the new baby with blue eyes and asked Sarah what it was.

One day, just as she expected, Jareth returned.

"How have you enjoyed Earth?" he asked.

"It's home," she said, challenging him to mock her, "I wish I could do magic, though."

He smirked and conjured up a crystal. "The price to pay for conquering the land and not the ability," he said smugly, "But I have other business. I have news for you."

"News?" She realized he could still surprise her. And scare her. "Is it Hoggle? Has something happened?"

"The Castle," Jareth sighed, "Has been completed. Would you like to see it?"

"Why should I?" she countered, "It's not my castle."

He said nothing at first, just watching her with his mouth curling up at the corners. "So disheartening suspicious," he finally commented, "Sarah, it is very much your Castle. You created it."

"I did what?"

"Created it."

"I didn't. I haven't been to the Underground in ages."

He tipped his head to the side and put his hands on his hips, clearly amused by her denials. "I should say restored, shouldn't I? Very well. You have restored the Castle in the Underground."

"Oh." She thought that over. "Why?"

"How should I know?"

"I mean, why did I restore your Castle? Why not make my own?"

He laughed, then, sitting down fluidly on her bed and leaned backwards on his braced hands. "You're learning, Sarah," he complimented, "Ask why instead of what. How instead of who."

"And why not instead of no?" She could laugh at him too. And she did. Even if it was only to break the awkwardness she felt around him. He made her feel awkward. She couldn't tell what he was thinking. And he was still a vampire. In her house.

"I suppose so. The Castle?"

"I'm not interested," she replied coolly.

His jaw tightened temporarily but he rose to his feet instantly, looking her up and down. "As to your decision," he began.

"I don't own you," she interrupted.

The barest flicker of fire lurked in those extraordinary eyes. He looked almost annoyed and almost sad. "It doesn't work that way, Sarah. Keep trying."

Sarah couldn't understand it herself.