AN: Sorry for the long AN at the end. It includes some additional info for clarification and better understanding.

Two Hearts One Body

Sarah was born alone.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. Her parents were there of course, and the doctors. But from the first moment she opened her eyes, she was met with profound loneliness. Something was missing. Something important.

She couldn't articulate it, of course. She was a baby after all.

As she grew, the feeling stayed. She could be surrounded by people, and still... the loneliness stayed the same. It made her seek solitude intentionally, because then at least she could justify the feeling.

She tried to combat the loneliness by burying herself in fantasy and playing pretend, but it always returned.

Soon an imaginary friend joined her games. He was precisely her age, although a little bit taller than her, and had wild blond hair. He looked strangely like a younger version of her mother's new husband. It was odd, perhaps, but Sarah never questioned it. He was her friend, and that was the most important thing.

Whenever her friend was there, she wasn't quite as lonely. It helped that they did everything together. They shared many long summer days together exploring, and many cold winter nights huddled under blankets reading books.

While the loneliness was still present, this time in Sarah's life was happy… until it wasn't.

Her father remarried eventually, and her step mother insisted that she was too old for an imaginary friend. Karen pushed her to make "real" friends, and punished her for talking to herself.

All too soon, her imaginary friend disappeared from her life, and her loneliness returned tenfold. The friends her step mother approved of left her feeling alone, even when they were together. Not long after that, Sarah left the group in favor of solitude again.

For a while she remembered her friend, but eventually the memories began to slip away. She remembered that she had an imaginary friend, and how he made her feel, but she struggled to remember what he looked like, or his voice, and she forgot many of the fond, precious memories she had with him.

When she was about 14, her parents told her that they would be having a baby boy. Sarah was so excited that for a while she forgot the loneliness, because she had always wanted a brother.

When the brother came though, it was not as she had imagined. The age gap was too large for them to have the relationship she had always dreamed of, and she soon resented the baby and returned to her imagination, her books, and her plays.

One day as she was watching the baby, she was overwhelmed and called out for goblins to take him away. As if he had been waiting for her call, a figure appeared. A familiar figure. A figure that tugged something at her mind, tall with wild blond hair.

He bantered with her, and bartered. He threw a snake at her, but strangely she felt no animosity in the action. Perhaps a small bit of resentment. When they had an accord, that she would run the labyrinth for her brother, he left her at the entrance.

It wasn't until the moment that the loneliness crushed her again that she realized that it had disappeared the moment he'd entered the window. She didn't have time to dwell on it though, because she had a time limit.

Through the labyrinth she went, and as she traveled she began to heal.

In the tunnels, the Goblin king asked for her basis of comparison, and he looked at her as if she had greatly wronged him. Maybe she had. Maybe she just didn't remember.

In the hedge maze, she learned to make friends without conditions, or unrealistic expectations. She learned how to give a little of herself without losing who she was in the process.

In the peach dream, Sarah sought for Jareth. Not out of some romantic notion, but as a safe presence in a strange environment. As they danced, they may have cut a romantic figure, but all Sarah felt was a sisterly affection.

In the junkyard, Sarah learned that she held onto things and had a fear of letting go, and that letting go was OK.

In the city, Sarah learned that she didn't have to carry the burden alone.

Finally, in the Castle Beyond the Goblin City, she faced Jareth one last time. He sang sadly of not being able to live within her, and she knew that it was true. She had to save Toby, but she also had to let go of Jareth. Not as Karen had made her… no, she wasn't going to repress him this time, but she couldn't allow her grief to rule her life any more either.

And so she stood there, as he begged her to stay with him, wanting to stay more than anything, but knowing that she had to go. She had to live for both of them. "You have no power over me."

The next morning Sarah called her mother. "We need to talk about my brother."

"Did something happen to Toby?"

"No… my other brother."

"Oh…" Linda sighed. "I see. Did your father tell you?"

"No. I finally put the pieces together myself. Can we get coffee?"

That afternoon, all the secrets were out. Jareth had been Sarah's unnamed twin brother. He had been stillborn, and her parents had decided not to tell her. They had thought that without the knowledge of her brother that she would be able to have a normal life without the grief that would come with knowing.

His existence was also what had caused their parent's eventual divorce. Despite being twins, Jareth was only Sarah's half brother. Her mother had been cheating on her father, and it came out when Jareth was born. DNA testing had confirmed it, and the marriage fell apart from grief and mistrust.

All through the meeting Sarah couldn't hold back her tears. Neither could her mother. It felt good to let out all the years of pent up pain. Even so, she had finally begun to heal.

After coffee, her mother took her to the cemetery where her brother was buried in a grave marked only with his last name, and a single date. Their birthday, also the day he died.

"Hey mom?"

"Yes, dear?"

"Can we fix the stone? His name is Jareth."

Her mother looked confused, but nodded in agreement.

Sarah's loneliness never fully went away, but after the labyrinth she learned how to allow other people in. And when it got too much for her, you could find her at her brother's grave telling him all the secret things in her heart that no one else could understand, watched over by a snowy owl.

AN: I haven't proofread this as many times as I normally do, so sorry for that. This idea has been begging to be written for a little while now, and it needed to be let out. In this, Sarah is a womb twin survivor, and the labyrinth is her subconscious attempt to heal from that trauma. Lessons she learns there are less about growing up, and more about functioning through her unspoken grief. This grief is something most, if not all, womb twin survivors experience, whether they are aware of their loss or not. There are a number of things about canon Sarah that could be understood differently if she is a womb twin survivor. Such as her broken relationship with her step mother. Womb twins often have a vivid imagination and rich fantasy life, trouble with personal relationships, trouble handling anger, and many of them formed an imaginary friend after their twin. If Karen wasn't told about the situation, it makes the tension make a lot of sense. She would think Sarah's fantasy life was immature, instead of an attempt to deal with her grief. Even if she did know the situation, given the time frame the movie is set in, most people didn't see this type of loss as an issue. There wouldn't have been much in the way of therapy available for this type of loss either. The prevailing theory was that a loss so early would not leave any lasting trauma. This understanding is slowly being overturned as we come to understand many of the mental and physical health side effects. Some brief statistics in closing: the exact number is unknown, but it is suspected that womb twin survivors make up 10% of the population, if not more. For comparison, that is almost twice the percentage of the population diagnosed with cancer in the US. Given the numbers, about 90% of pregnancies that begin as twins or other multiples lose one or more of the babies.