I felt I should post now in the time that I have between working and studying my ass off for finals. Sigh.

The storm raged outside in a seething torrent. The wind howled beyond the double doors, the glass panes rattled and shook as they were pounded by wind and rain. Sarah didn't need to look outside to feel the lightning split the sky in brilliant flashes of light, could almost smell the ozone released with each quick strike. Thunder ripped through the sky, rumbling and growling as it chased after the lightning.

Sarah lay in her bed, hands resting on her stomach. Her eyes were wide and unseeing, the shadows swaying across the ceiling in a parody of a dance she remembered from long ago. She knew that the twisting shadows were created by the light from the street lamp outside and the swaying branches outside her window as they fought the storm, but that didn't stop her from remembering.

The sun had long ago descended beneath the horizon, and her family had been asleep for hours now, but not her. Sarah remained awake, not daring to sleep, not when she knew what was waiting for her in her dreams.

Looking back, she supposed that she should have known better than to think it was over. After all she had endured in her journey through the Labyrinth, she should have been suspicious.

She didn't understand why she hadn't seen it. Had she really been so naïve? She had made her way through the Labyrinth, had been locked in the oubliette, had nearly had her head pulled from her shoulders, had had to rip her way out of a dream, something that still haunted her. And all it had taken to get Toby was to deny the Goblin King with words?

In that crucial moment, she had forgotten that this story was no fairytale come to life. It was something so much more fantastic, something that held the terrible, knife edge of reality. And like knives, it cut both ways.

Sarah closed her eyes, wanting to cry as she remembered how simple the world had been back then. She had been the heroine, the one to save her baby brother and vanquish the evil Goblin King. But she hadn't understood, not like she did now.

She should have seen. She had never stopped to consider why Hoggle would be so frightened of Jareth, what had caused her friend to betray her. It had never occurred to her what it would take for a man like Jareth to be King of the Goblins. The goblins had been fierce, nasty creatures, and she had never once stopped to consider what that meant about their king. The one to rule them.

It was a week after her journey through the Labyrinth that she knew Jareth had been playing with her. The truth had left her cold and shaking in her dreams, Jareth's laughter as bold as a pair of hands skimming over her sides. He had then served to enlighten her. Everything she'd done, the words of 'power' that she had spoken had been nothing but a game to him. A game that he had allowed her to win.

He had played her game, and now she was expected to play his. Only this time it wasn't her brother that was at stake, it was Sarah herself.

Sarah closed her lips against the sob that lingered in the back of her throat, her eyes burning from lack of sleep. She was so tired, but she wouldn't, couldn't sleep. Not when Jareth was waiting for her where reality ended and dreams began.

This fight was nothing like the last. Before she had been fighting for her brother, had been filled with a sense of purpose and knowing. The goal had been clear, and the consequences unbearable. The battle she now endured had none of the certainty, and she found herself up against a foe that was far more dangerous than anything the Labyrinth could throw at her. Jareth alone had been daunting, and faced with her own desires as well, her defenses were crumbling. It was so much easier to persevere against an outside force, to push back. Caught up in the battle against her self as much as Jareth, Sarah was floundering.

Jareth's game was complex, with rules that she could never hope to understand or learn. He came with sly smiles and gleaming crystal gifts, and magic lingered in the air after he left. There was something in his eyes, something dark that repelled her, even as it drew her in. She was a fly caught in his spider's web, only the web was made of finest crystal, and his game for her was not the simple one of prey and predator.

"Sarah, beware. I have been generous up until now, and I can be cruel."

His words from that fateful confrontation continued to haunt her, echoing through her mind with newfound clarity. She would be honest with herself and say that he had warned her, couching it in abstract words and hidden meaning. In his own way, he had offered her a way out. Allow him this win, and she would escape the second, deeper game he was planning. She hadn't understood, and even if she had, her brother would always be too high of a price to pay. Not even her dreams were worth her brother's life as a human.

"You have no power over me."

Her whisper fell flat in the darkness, nearly swallowed by the storm that continued to rage just outside. What had happened, when had everything changed? Why had she been able to defy him? Jareth twisted his words, and proclaimed that he had allowed her to win, but she had remembered the frustration in his eyes as she said those words. If nothing else had been real, she believed for that one moment, he truly had no power over her.

"What changed?" Her voice was thin. Exhaustion was creeping up on her, sinking tempting fingers of oblivion into her tired mind.

You are no longer a child, my dear. His voice flitted through her mind, reaching her as she dangled on the cusp of sleep. Now you are something more.

A single tear slid down her cheek and landed on her pillow. She remembered the promises her friends had given her in the throne room before facing off with Jareth. They had promised to come if she called. She wanted to call them, but there was nothing they could do for her. She was beyond their reach now, and it hurt. But Jareth could still reach her, after all, he was the Goblin King.

Don't fight me, Sarah. It will change nothing.

Sleep was beckoning, and Sarah was powerless to fight it. Turning on to her side, her eyes slid shut as they proved unable to carry the burden of her exhaustion. Her mind growing fuzzier by the second, she whispered, "This isn't fair."

That depends on your basis for comparison. His laugh followed his words, echoing through her mind to meld with the warm darkness growing stronger behind her eyes.

Then Sarah was asleep, and her dreams began.

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