A/N: I hope you enjoy my personal take on Jareth. I tried to bring out his mischievous, playful side.

"Sarah?" My name trilled back and forth in a vacuum of endless black space. "Sarah?"

If there was somewhere I had to be or anything significant I was supposed to know, I couldn't seem to reach far enough to grasp it. My eyes were too heavy to open, my throat too dry to moan a response. At some point in my life I had gone to bed a young woman, but now I was a mummy getting dusted off from a thousand year repose.

A warm, firm hand jerked my isolation tank body so that red, green, and yellow stars danced in the darkness and warmth flowed up my legs and into my chest. "Sarah, you really need to get up. I know it's early but you can't be late on your first day."

First day? Am I in school again? I attempted to trace backward in my mind for definitive answers. Recent visuals, conversations, thoughts of note, but the memory banks weren't just dry, they were down for maintenance. Whoever was giving me a shakedown was the last buoy I could take hold of in a sea of confusion.

I parted my lips, tearing dead skin in the process. "Hu-"

Ice cold water hit my face, neck and chest like a slap and I sat upright. My mind screamed, flickered with white light, but all that came out was shock-induced gasping and sputtering.

"I'm sorry, Sarah, but I had to do it. You only have twenty minutes! I don't want you to get sent back."

Initially, overnight discharge and the dumped water kept the face in front of me blurred and featureless, but a few less than gentle rubs at my lids and green eyes and blonde hair made their way to the forefront. Toby. I was home. Home...I was there because...I needed to be at work! I was screwing up my first tread on free ground.

"Damn!" I croaked, throwing the covers off like they burned. I rose, pushing Toby out of the way with a tender hand, and limped my folded over clothes I had set out the night before. "What time is it?"

"Nine am."

"Shit, shit, shit!" I couldn't recall anything about last night past putting on my oversized sleep shirt and slipping under the covers. It had to be the lack of meds. Afterall, my brain chemistry had to have become accustomed to the slowed time and the drowsy haze of sedatives in my ten years at the institute. Cold turkey was no joke.

With the clothes folded under one arm I stumbled out into the hallway for the bathroom. There was no time to make use of the little hair and makeup stock I had. It was down to the bare bones essentials: a multitask brushing in the shower and a quick blowout. There was no smiling back at the reflection that couldn't decide between clean cut and tired.

"Sarah, I've breakfast for you downstairs!" So many emotions and intentions sampled in that snippet of Irene's voice. Eager, annoyed, with a paradoxical undercurrent of satisfaction. She must feel a little pleased that I had already met her underestimated opinion of me. The deadbeat, mentally ill stepdaughter late for her first opportunity outside of a padded room. It wasn't a cute look.

I followed the smell of bacon and coffee to the dining room. Toby sat at one end of the table there feeding his fried strips to Merlin and Irene stood at the entrance to the kitchen with a frying pan full of scrambled eggs. The frilled apron and maternal stance was right out of a Norman Rockwell painting, but she didn't hide the pinched look on her face. Domestic goddess wasn't her style.

"I poured you some coffee. Robert says you take it black."

"Yes. Thanks." The coffee was nice and bitter, but had sat out long enough to go lukewarm. I threw it back like a shot and pecked at a strip of bacon so I could have something in my stomach to cushion the caffeine fall. Without asking, Irene came around behind and shoveled a mushy lump of scrambled eggs straight from the pan. They looked and smelled like curdled milk.

When she didn't step away or say anything, I looked up with a raised brow. She loomed above me as it was, yet I detected her head was more than a little tilted upward,and her thin mouth lifted to one side in a sly sneer.

"You must have really needed the sleep."

Ah, the passive aggressive Irene was already coming out to play. A serpent's tongue capable of laser precision nastiness against any woman with half an instinct, but unassuming to malleable, weak men like Robert. Bless us all.

"It keeps me pretty." My smile was derisive.

I could feel Toby's side eyeing me from across the table, but Irene didn't get a chance to use whatever back stock of passive aggressive ammo she had waiting for me. The jangle of Robert's keys at the opening to the front hall turned all our heads.

"I hate to cut breakfast short, princess, but there's not much time before you need to be dropped off and my work is on the other side of town."

"Oh, Robert! I've started serving her. She hasn't taken more than a few bird bites," Irene whined, wearing her favorite mask of perpetual victim.

There was no way I was going to let that act settle so I shot up from my chair and swung my handbag over my shoulder with more noise than necessary. "I'm the one who should be apologizing. I didn't intend to put you out." Robert's eyes lit up with my turn for the docile and it was enough, along with the ruckus of my crossing the room, to distract him from even registering Irene. I wasn't above being a petty bitch, but in my defense it was a Monday and I was comatose hangover level exhausted. It didn't help either that I hadn't the faintest idea what to look forward to.

Robert wrapped one arm over my shoulder as I crossed into the hall and I repressed the urge to shrug it off. I heard a "good luck" murmur from Toby at my back and threw him a quick wave around the corner. I made a mental note to properly thank him later for the determined rude awakening. Irene would have let me rot in that bed past noon if I hadn't had him looking out for me. Toby was proving to be a kindred spirit and with so much unsure for me, I needed at least one family member I could trust.

"You've got first day nerves is all," Robert forced an amiable chuckle. "I'd be more worried if you didn't make a couple of flukes."

It was an ingratiating statement that was likely only half sincere. Not all that different from anything else Robert said, but deep down I prayed that sleeping in too late would be the last mistake I would make that day. Futures were built on first impressions.

I hadn't held any clear expectations in mind for the location where I would be working the next god-knows-how-many months. Robert's motor mouthing about the last Boston Celtics game he attended to fill dead silences didn't give me time to clear my head, but when Robert pulled up to a simple cube of a building I almost scoffed. It looked like a refurbished post office. I glanced between the beige colored bricks and the lawn full of crab grass and weeds that wrapped around the building. No answers came. It didn't stand to reason that Jary King had enough money to throw grants around and yet stoop to managing an office that feeble. A heavy internal wind that had the potential to become a full rainstorm said that this "job skills" program might be a ruse for underpaid clerical slave labor. Visions of staple packet piles, file drawer shuffling and hours of dead eyed data entry spun in my head. It might be that I was trading the bowels of hospitalized neglect for white collar exploitation.

"I'll be back to pick you up at five." Robert had rolled his window down when I stepped out of the car without a word."Have a good first day!"

I nodded and turned for the walkway up to the door, lost and slowed down in the new wave of pessimism that tingled down my limbs. It wasn't until I was about five feet out from the entrance that I had reason to freeze in my tracks. The sun's sharp reflection against the front of the building had obscured the large silvered metal letters while I was in the car. Above the front glass door they read "Labyrinth Games Co."

"Labyrinth" gave me a vague deja vu that could have been anything from a misplaced song I had heard to a clothing brand I had outgrown but the "games" title made more of an immediate impression. Board games? Video games? Casino games? I was on board to have a little enthusiasm for the end product I would be a part of, even if I did end up becoming a glorified file clerk.

The door opened with a malt drugstore jingle that added to the list of inconsistencies and a wave of A/C blew my hair off my shoulders.

A spectacled man behind the front desk beyond looked up from his desktop and stared at me like an apparition.

My belly fluttered when I got a better look at the receptionist up close. For a face that belonged on the cover of magazines, the glasses were a costume contrivance. His blonde hair framed a jawline that could double as a knife, hollowed and high set cheeks, and full lips. His eyes were a story all their own. Icy blue on the left, with the pupil stretched on the right till the blue there was dulled and obscured. It gave me the uncomfortable impression that he was looking at me and through me all at once.

He dazzled a white smile. "How can I help you?"

I cleared my throat to make sure I didn't choke on my own words. Like an avalanche, my brain rolled over without warning of the awful dream from last night. I didn't remember while getting ready because I hadn't wanted to remember. That nightmare...the receptionist's deep, british accent...It made me want to walk out and call up the institute. "I'm Sarah Willaims. I'm supposed to meet Jary King for the Amherst job skills program."

"Sarah?" He frowned and swished his chair closer to the computer monitor, cross-checking something there. "Sarah Williams you say?"

I assumed it was rhetorical since he swished immediately back to the center of his U-shaped desk and dove under, still muttering to himself. "Sarah...Sarah Williams...of Amherst….job skills program…"

"Um, I was told that I should be here at nine a-"

A massive pile of papers slammed onto the desktop, cutting off my fumbling to help things along. "Sarah, Sarah, Sarah…" His eyes cut back and forth across the top of the pile and when I leaned over to catch a glimpse of context, he dove down and came up with a whole new stack to pile on. All the while still muttering my name like he was conjuring my record. This continued until the pile was taller than myself at standing. He had to use a crude plastic step to look over the top of that last file.

"...Couldn't you switch out and replace the files instead of heaping them like that? It might make it easier to check…"

If the ridiculously attractive, absurd concierge heard me, he gave no indication of it. He stepped onto the desk, nearly straddling the pile and placed his face flesh with the paper itself to zero in on the small font.

I didn't know whether to laugh or turn and run for the hills. Dr. Meyers had to be wrong. I wasn't client zero of this Amherst transitional grant. This poor man might have been in a gown not too long ago himself.

"Sarah...Sarah Williams...Sarah of….yes, yes indeed. YES!" He nodded his head rapidly and jumped down from the top of the desk, knocking the document colossus to the ground. "We've been expecting you." Paper flew this way and that, some hovering like white doves mid-flight, with the majority slapping to the left of the desk.

He didn't move to recoup the mess or acknowledge it so I did him the service of averting my eyes too.

"Thank you for your patience! I had to be certain since I misplaced the sign-in sheet Jary usually has me use." He held the door behind the desk open enough that a small bit of sunlight from a window inside peeped in. "If you'll excuse me, I'll go get Mr. King for you."

"Okay, thank you." As soon as he disappeared from sight, I let out a breath I didn't realize I was holding in. If he was the face of the company, I wasn't sure if I was ready for Jary King's authoritative presence.

When the door behind the front desk opened again, my mind raced, searching for answers. It was the exact same man, no question about it. Specs and the general aura of ineptitude removed and the clothing switched out. Now he was wearing a navy prosper cut overcoat layered over a gunmetal colored tweed jacket and white khaki pants. The hint of a chocolate brown tie peeked under the cream oxford collar. Hanging from his lip was a lit cigarette.

"Miss Willaims?"

I backed a short distance away from him, instinctually needing space to settle the confusion of the situation. All thought was frozen past the main question. "...You're Mr. King?"

He leaned into the door behind him with a smirk, opening it wider for my potential entrance. "Who else is it going to be, love?"

I pressed my lips together and dropped into the chair he indicated ahead. It might have been amusing if there wasn't so much riding on this job and so many misgivings since my late start, but if this was going to be his management style, I had to learn to roll with it. This was the gritty, outside world now. No one was going to shield my feelings anymore or slip me happy pills at the first sign of distress. It was time to put my big girl pants on and stiff neck whatever Jary King was prepared to throw at me.

He shuffled three papers into an even line and I could see the encircled triangle of serenity through the top one. Amherst Institute's logomark. Between the morning grogginess and the general slow uptake on my life's sudden transition, I hadn't considered what Dr. Meyers would include in his profile of me. My snapshot might clinically set off my origins as "enrolled for developmental delays in social behavior and communication" or give dry, productive stats like "ten year resident with full privileges for good behavior". My family history, mental health conditions, relationships summarized on three sheets for Jary to eye over. I had trouble holding eye contact with him when he spoke up again.

"So, Sarah, Sarah Williams, tell me about yourself."

I swallowed. Didn't he already know? Didn't he realize he was in the rare, and unfairly privileged position of knowing more about me than I might know about myself? I wasn't schooled on job interview questions or what that opening might be subtextually testing.

My go-to was shallow, direct waters. "I'm twenty five years old and I have no job history to speak of..." I eyed up from the pages he was holding to his eyes with deliberate intent. "As you probably already know…" He didn't cut in and refused to shift his penetrating stare.

"...Education-wise, I've got the equivalent of a GED telecommuting from ACC. I haven't figured out whether I want to go to college or not. I guess if I did, I would pursue writing."

"Fiction or non-fiction?" His burning eyes continued to hold me still.

"Fiction."

He flashed a smile. "Did you create stories to escape the Amherst Institute?"

"What?" A brick might as well have dropped into my stomach. "Is that relevant?"

He slapped the pages down on the desk and straightened up in his leather back chair to the fullest potential of his height. "I'm your boss now, Sarah. I know contributing in 9- to-5 desk jockey society is a new experience for you, but when you're on the clock, you will consider everything I do or say as relevant." The cigarette in his mouth twitched. "You will consider everything I ask of you as relevant."

A fair enough rule if it hadn't come out of the mouth of the man who just moments ago had pretended to be his own receptionist. I took hold of my elbows and wet my lips to address his original question. "Yes, I am drawn to writing fiction as an escape, but I also have so many ideas and stories locked into myself that I need to put on paper and see play out. It's natural for me."

"Creativity is the spirit of the highest self and commendable for a pursuit. Labyrinth Games Co. couldn't very well meet the expectations of its market without creative writing and the courage to design worlds where everything seems possible." I was ready to get clarity on what kind of games his company made, but he was onto the next question with a cynical bend to his smile. "Everyone wants to live out their fantasies and escape the grind. Gamers, readers, actors. What's your fantasy, Sarah? Getting even with your remiss father? Linda giving up Hollywood and D-lister fame for you?"

My stomach knot that didn't get a chance to unwind before a new tension bomb took hold of my limbs. A stoniness crept into my voice and I blinked. There was playful irreverence and then there was getting a rise out of someone to watch them squirm. "Exactly how much personal information about me did Dr. Myers share with you?"

Mr. King's chair rollers shrieked with the upright force, and then he was reaching over the cherry wood desk, fingers clamped over my trembling chin. "There are no secrets between green palm grantors and desperate grantees, particularly when one's-" His voice shaded with jeering ceremony, "- holistic mental health facility isn't breaking even anymore and its drug regime has been confirmed to be less than wholesome by an unannounced investigation from The Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse. Doctor Myers would have sold out your very soul had that been the asking price."

I pushed back from Mr. King's hold and stood, propelled by the heat blazing under my skin. A honeycomb of separate images tied together in my mind's eye. Loose, representative interpretations of what Richard, Dr. Meyers, Mr. King and Irene might have looked like hunched over papers that signed away my freedom and my care. Therapy and a job handout shaped like cages to reel me in, bait me for self interest and then forget about me. "I guess we're done here then."

My ears were deaf to Jary King's calls after me when I stormed out of his office, past the reception lobby and out of the door of the building. My eyes were on the late morning sun and my angry circulation was its own beat and presence to carry my feet on the sidewalk to nowhere. It didn't matter that I had nowhere to go or any idea of what to do. It seemed that there must be a point far enough past the horizon that no more scheming, old white people would find me. A place with real jobs and responsibilities and the expected strings attached of hard work.

Two blocks from the Little Beans Cafe that neighbored Labyrinth Games, I suddenly found myself being spun around. An electrifying shudder reverated through me at Jary King's fierce grip on my upper arms.

"We aren't finished!" There was an almost imperceptible note of pleading in his face. "Not by a long shot."

I attempted to shake off his hold, but his strength held me immobile and flushed. "Let go of me."

"I can't do that, Sarah, and not because of any contractual agreement. You're just the sort of mind to pick for the game I'm creating. It's going to be beyond any experience VR can touch. My debut game, Dark Turnabout, will allow every player to live out the story in their heart and become what they really are inside. Someone with such rich, betrayed feelings like yourself would stir up all kinds of interesting bugs and code errors for me to wrangle before the beta testing phase."

"You want a damaged guinea pig." My laughter had a sharp edge.

"What I want is for you to give my game a chance. I can show you the extent of what my technology can do back at my office and then if you still feel like walking out, I won't stop you or give Dr. Meyer's a bad report. You'll be a free woman. That's what he was going to give you upon completion of this program, right?"

My gaze fell from the strange, faintly eager look flashing in his eyes. He could have saved a lot of pain if he had laid out his needs and the prospects of his in-development game right away instead of toying with me, but he was also saying I could walk away on a rejecting whim. The unprecedented range of technology he was hinting at did pique my curiosity. Would there be any real harm in one trial run?