AND IF YOU DO LOSE YOURSELF

"I have done nothing," he said curtly. "This was you."

Sarah surveyed what used to be the Labyrinth. Instead of the jagged geometrics of a thousand thousand paths, walls had collapsed into each other to form some simulacrum of a city, if it could have been remotely habitable. Sarah was reminded of pictures of postwar Vienna: exquisite architectural flourishes gasping under mountains of rubble. Except it wasn't the aftermath of warfare. Things hadn't been destroyed—they were broken and, it seemed, bleeding into one another.

Some parts of it looked curiously…familiar, although, as Sarah reminded herself, she had been here before.

As a girl, when Jareth had confronted her with something frightening, she would have countered him with defensive bluster. She would have pulled away and folded her arms and complained. As an adult, she held on to him—it was his place, his place too, and he must be as devastated as she was unsettled. If nothing else, the thin tense warmth of him was something to hold on to and something to be held by.

"I don't understand," Sarah said, not looking up at him. "How have I done this? I haven't been here for ten years."

Jareth pulled away from her, crossing his arms. His appearance had changed somewhat—his hair was shorter and tamer, and his clothing, while the only word Sarah could think to describe them was still "fetishy," he could conceivably be seen in public without undue attention.

"Not physically here, no," he said. "But you took my kingdom with you. You wrote it down and put it on display and let it bleed into ten thousand other heads. And you did so without the barest thought of what it might do to me."

The words were petulant, but real hate and real pain chilled his voice. Sarah looked up sharply. She had never heard his voice so bare before.

Sarah gave a short, cold laugh. "How could I have possible known writing some stupid play would do this?"

"I don't care," he admitted frankly. "But what's done, is done." He waved his long white hand over the terrain. "And as monarch I must do everything within my power to preserve my kingdom from its enemies. Including you."

"I'm not—" she stopped. "You just could have shown me this first," she said quietly.

"I could have," he said. But I didn't." The thought had obviously not occurred to him, but he smiled anyway like it had.

He paused. "Since you have been here the rate of decay has slowed. When I left, we perhaps had a week left. Now, I would estimate a year, before everything collapses and is destroyed."

Sarah took a deep breath, folding her arms to keep the cold wind from cutting too deep. "So you're saying that by me writing that play I've, what, let the real world into the Labyrinth? How is that even possible."

He turned to face her, away from his ruined kingdom. "Obviously, you remember your first journey. Did you think that almost everything you encountered just, out of coincidence, looked exactly how you imagined? That I looked exactly as you imagined?" He stretched out his arms, inviting her to look him over.

She blushed. "Not exactly. And you look different now," she said, immediately regretting it since, if anything, he was more to her taste than before.

He smiled, still unkind. "Yes, well, you're no longer a young girl impressed by long hair and leather trousers."

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," she said without thinking, and to cover it up hastened to add, "how bad is it?"

Jareth gestured down to the gate. "Why don't you look."

Sarah rushed down the hill, halfway down before she thought to ask if it was safe. Of course it wasn't safe, she realized. High on the ridge to the west was the castle. The jutting sunrays threw it silhouette against the sky.

As she approached the gate, a quote from an old book came to her, unbidden: and if you do lose yourself at least take solace in the absolute certainty that you will perish.

At the threshold she looked back. Jareth was still on the hill, walking down after her. The gate was as she remembered, although the walls on either side had collapsed in rocky waves of debris. She reached out tentatively, to touch the stone of the gate.

That, at least, was exactly how she remembered.

She stepped through the gate—it wasn't hard, like last time. As soon as she thought last time, she realized that maybe she hadn't defeated anything at all. Just postponed it.

It was colder, and the stone was paler than she remembered—more limestone than the golden brown-thorned hues of her previous adventure. The vines were alive, in slippery greens, and some of them even flowered little spits of bruise-color. There was a strange subtle glitter to the walls, and they were cold to the touch. At least there was something familiar-ahead were the same initial stretched out walls she remembered.

She went left.

While it was unsettling, and she stumbled a few times, all Sarah could think was that it sure was nice to be out of that stupid room and actually indulging in some physical activity.

The rubble and destroyed parts looked even more of a desperate wound close up. She quickly sidestepped into what she thought was a pathway.

It turned out to be a very disturbing room.

The space almost looked almost like—but it couldn't be, obviously—the stage her production had first ran in. A little theater in Connecticut. The effect was positively uncanny in every sense of the word. Instead of the wood and tattered carpet and too old light fixtures, everything was in stone and metal and vine, all lit by candlelight. The chairs were gnarled dead tree stumps and branches draped in fabric. The stage was stone. Upon the stage were two figures; both unnaturally tall, also in draped fabrics that hung off shoulders and angles sharp as hangers. Their slimness and strange grace seemed to suggest female; their height and bearing suggested male. Only when she looked at their faces did she realize it was a mostly moot point—they were not even human. Their mouths were far, far too wide and full of teeth.

As Sarah entered, they both turned to look at her. She froze.

"Who are you?" one of them hissed.

"No one," Sarah said, after a brief panic. The slightly shorter one started lurching toward her, and before she could think she turned and ran back into the labyrinth halls.

Straight into Jareth. He caught her, steadying her with his hands on her hips.

Sarah didn't think, she just steadied a hand on his chest. "Jareth. Oh my god. This place has gotten extremely creepy."

He gave one of his wounded sneer-smiles. "They're only here because of you."

She pulled from him and walked away without a word, before realizing that her (admittedly enormous) impatience with Jareth was starting to give way to fear. He was rubbing off on her.

She took the next available turn.

Into the same room.

The two figures turned again. "We have been waiting," the taller one said. Its eyes were large and blank.

Sarah didn't react this time, just quickly strode out. Jareth was no longer there.

The third and fourth and fifth room were the same, each time the two figures standing a little closer to the door.

In the fifth room, one reached out a long arm with too many joints, saying something she didn't understand.

Having had enough, she raced out of the room and continued racing back to the entrance. She told herself running was the most efficient way, but in reality she wanted to put as much distance between herself and the rooms as she could.

Jareth was leaning in the gate's archway. He watched her approach. "Had enough?" he asked as she joined him, standing across from him.

Sarah took a deep breath. "I don't remember the labyrinth being so deeply creepy. Or repetitive. Or…broken. Is that room with the figures just repeated endlessly?"

"I have never seen that room before. I am certain it will not be here tomorrow."

Sarah ran her hands through her hair. "That was my theater. The first place my play ran."

"I know," he said dismissively, which irritated her, but she continued.

"Jareth—I don't understand. Why is—I mean like you said there was stuff from my head before. Does it twist and react to every new runner?"

He looked away, at nothing. "To a degree. You shaped and defined this place more than most. You still do." He turned to her, his face solemn. "But you are twisting and altering it beyond my power to control. I need you to stay here."

"You have no—"

"Then go home," he hissed.

They stood in silence.

"I am this land's king," he said finally. "Many of my subjects are dead or missing. Those that remain are looking to me. I must do what I can to ensure the safety and stability of my kingdom. Before you got here, we perhaps had a fortnight before it all collapsed. Now, we have months. But it still…" he trailed off.

Sarah looked up at him. His face was drawn again, and she could see exhaustion and despair slipping through. It stung her. Not that she cared. But she did owe this place—him—quite a bit, she supposed.

"Thank you for showing me," she said. "I guess. I still don't understand why it's me. I still don't even understand what you are."

He laughed. "I know. I saw your play," he said, with a hint of suggestion.

Sarah blushed. The Minos/Minotaur character had been conflated into a monstrous king, and Ariadne had some, well, intimate exchanges with him. "That wasn't—that wasn't you."

He cocked his head. "Really." Jareth reached out his hand to cup her chin, and draw her gaze up to his. His lips were tight; his eyes hooded. He looked contemptuous. "If we in this place—if I—am bound to you, then you are bound to us. And what do you think will happen to you if we disappear?"

She said nothing, but felt suddenly scooped out and cold. "What—what will happen?"

His contempt turned to weariness, and he released her face to stroke her cheek briefly. "Suffice to say that you will be destroyed as well."

Sarah took a deep shuddering breath. She didn't want to believe him. She didn't seem to have any other path.

"Well, what can we do?" she asked. The sharpness in her voice surprised her. "What the hell am I going to do here indefinitely? Don't you have like, fellow fae or goblins or elves or whatever the hell you are that can address this?"

"Elves?"

"Jareth."

He drew himself up defensively, before he stopped and laughed. "Would you like to come to court?"

"Like…your goblin room?"

"No. Court. There's a gathering tonight."

"I don't know what any of those things mean."

"Or I could take you to the castle and you could amuse yourself until I return."

Sarah closed the distance between them and took his arm. "Let's go to court, then."

And with a breath, they were gone from the dusty landscape. In the distance, avalanches of stone and creature groaned, and something screamed, and fell silent.

A/N

YOU GUYS. I watched Labyrinth again a couple weeks ago with one of my besties to help celebrate my thesis being done. It was the first time I had seen it in full in like several years—and then the whole rest of plot for this fic just came to me.

As a teen I had never noticed that Jareth was actually kind of a desperate frightened character. He needs Sarah, for some reason he isn't telling her, because to tell her would give her a real idea of the power she wielded. ANYWAY so that's the premise we're going from.

And since desperate people do potentially desperate things, and since every character is an adult, I can make this darker and dare I say sexier than originally planned.

Expect more soon! Happy holidays!

~~Dollfayce