A.N.: Sorry, guys; my family emergency continues, but hopefully I'll be back on track soon. Your patience and continued support is much appreciated.

She was younger than they and with considerably less training, yet Miss Williams seemed far less perturbed about the situation than the federal agents in her company. Scully was still gently rubbing at her partner's throat, scowling at the dark red marks – in the shape of fingers – that were appearing on the skin there. Sarah turned to them and smiled; brightly, a smile that reached her eyes, without hesitation. "Well – are you two ready?"

The pair exchanged brief glances. "As ready as is possible."

"Then let's go! Come on, Hoggle." She took her friend's large hand, gently pulling him from around Mulder and started down the hill, not caring when the sand ran into her shoes or she threatened to trip on loose stones. "There's nothing to be afraid of."

"Sarah, you're plum out of your senses! It ain't too late t'go back, ya know-"

"Hoggle," she scolded gently while the special agents followed in her wake. "We know the senator is here. How can we just leave him?"

"Very easily," the dwarf muttered, guiding his treasured friend around an algae-choked gazing pool. Scully's blue eyes were wide, the pupils small, and she registered everything around them. Huge stone walls, equally dusted with glitter, that reached toward the sky; brambles, some with leaves and some without, clinging to the sides; clouds of what she assumed to be flies filling the air in shimmering clumps. Hoggle swatted at these with a snarl and mentioned something about spray. One thing she noticed did disturb her – there isn't any door in this wall.

They walked along the wall for several paces, Dana wondering all the while how it was they were to get in, when they seemed to find their destination, wherever that was: Hoggle had taken them to a rose garden, blooms of every sort in neat rows as beautiful as an English country garden – but in colors that could never have been seen in nature. There were, of course, deep reds and buttery yellows, but also one rose blue as the ocean, and another that was emerald green. Scully spotted one far away covered in polka dots, another striped with all the colors of the rainbow, and one that looked like it had been hammered from solid silver. This would have been enough to catch her breath, but it was hardly the strangest sight there.

She could see a feather, upright and bobbing between the rows – up and down, up and down, as though in a trot – until it turned a corner, and the hat it was attached to came into view. Only the hat was being worn by...a fox. A fox with an eye-patch astride a great big sheepdog. The federal agent gripped the bridge of her nose. "Mulder, you don't have that bottle of gin on you, by chance?"

"I wish."

Sarah, however, was not at all perturbed. "Sir Didymus!"

"My lady!" Sprightly as a...well, as a fox, the creature (the talking, clothes-wearing, anthropomorphic creature) hopped from his mount, sweeping his feathered hat low to the ground before the young woman. "We are ever heartened by your presence!"

"Shut yer trap, Didymus, Sarah shouldn't be here t'all, don't encourage her none."

"Someone please explain what is going on, before I conclude I've gone completely psychotic."

"It's okay, Dana," Sarah beamed at her as Didymus gallantly kissed her hand. "This is Sir Didymus, he's my-"

"Sawah back!"

"Oof!" Some giant, furry thing had appeared from the rose garden as well, and swept the girl up in a seemingly-crushing hug. At least with Didymus (Sir Didymus? Who was knighting the animals of this psycho-Narnia?), Scully could identify him as fox-like. For this thing, she had no such categories. The closest she could come up with a cross between a walking carpet and a bear. All the same, Sarah smiled, voice a little hoarse from the air being knocked out of her. "This is Ludo..."

"Sawah fwend..."

Dana managed a very meager smile while her partner walked around the Ludo with the notepad out of his jacket pocket, excitedly scribbling. "Nice to, um...meet you."

The Ludo's long, floppy ears perked up at seeing Scully, his wide mouth opened slightly. "Huh?" His large tail swept the earth and knocked into Fox's leg, and he turned and examined this new being as well. "Oh...Sawah?" There was the slightest of whines to his low, grumbly voice, and Scully was smiling in spite of herself; alright, not a bear. A cross between a walking carpet and a very dense hound.

"It's alright, Ludo," the young woman reassured, patting his huge, three-fingered hand. "This is Dana Scully and-" Mulder was holding one of Ludo's ears out to examine it more closely, nearly at an eye-level with the creature. The beast growled slightly and shook his head loose. Sarah sighed a little. "That's Fox Mulder. They're friends, too."

"Oh..."

"Say," Mulder smiled charmingly at Sarah – and to Scully's shock, the young lady actually colored. The Goblin King had practically been trying to put his tongue down her throat, but one of Mulder's manipulative smiles made her blush. There was just no telling the weaknesses of some people. "Could you get him to open his mouth? I'd love to know more about his dentition."

"Um..."

"Man and lady fwends?"

Scully awkwardly dried her palm against her pant leg and extended it toward the creature. "That's right, Ludo. Friends."

"Oh..." Ludo looked from Scully's hand (much smaller than his own) to her face – and promptly wrapped her in a huge embrace. The woman squeaked to be smothered in all that red fur; but he didn't smell as bad as she thought he might have. Less like a dog, more like powdered cinnamon. "People and Ludo fwends."

"Ludo likes having friends..."

"I can see that..."

"Urgh!" Hoggle was stamping his booted foot again. "If we're going, we oughtta go! Standing 'round here waitin' for Jareth's only gonna get us into more trouble!"

"Friend Hoggle is cor-r-r-rect," Sir Didymus concurred, rolling his Rs. He slid a paw between the shiny buttons of his striped doublet and pulled out a roll of parchment. "And in aid of this most noble quest, I have brought for thee, my dearest lady, a map." Didymus bowed before Sarah, his paws outstretched in offering.

Sarah smiled and took it. "Thanks, Didymus..."

Scully managed to extricate herself from Ludo's warm and fuzzy grip and looked over the girl's shoulder. "Wait a minute – you said the Labyrinth changes all the time."

"It does," she sighed. "So I'm not actually sure if this will help us or not."

"It changes?" Scully was unsure whether Mulder sounded disappointed or elated. "So we can't just take the route you used last time?"

"Well, maybe," the young woman murmured in reply, her tongue working the corner of her mouth. "But it wasn't exactly straight or logical. We could start out sorta the same way, but I don't know how long it would last. And this isn't the same entrance I used – I don't know if it's because we came through the mirror at a different point, or if that's just the way it is."

"Darned foolish this is!" Hoggle was insisting, yanking the piece of paper from their hands and flattening it on the ground. "Be much smarter to go straight back home."

"We can't do that," Mulder dismissed, kneeling in the dirt in his suit trousers. "But I think this could work for us after all."

"What'dya mean?"

"Well, look. These are the walls of the Labyrinth, right?" He indicated several brown lines on the map that were constantly shifting beneath his finger. "And that over there, that's the Fiery Forest?" Silvery lettering above a dark green splotch indicated this was so.

"So?"

"The pathways move, but the parts that make up the Labyrinth stay the same."

Scully leaned against her partner's arm to get a closer look. "Which means as long as we know what section we're in, we should be able to navigate toward the Castle."

"Argh!" Hoggle batted away Mulder's hands. "He was right t'call ya babes in the wood; dumb as a bunch of babies you are."

"Okay." Mulder settled back on his haunches. "What don't you like about that plan."

"You think it's right simple, just walk one bit to the next. Well, it ain't. If the Labyrinth wants to keep you loopin' in a circle over and over, it will!"

"Well," Scully offered, the voice of calm reason as ever. "How do you navigate it?"

"I don't; I stay right where I'm put and I don't go wanderin' cause I've got a lick of sense."

"But you've done it before. Clearly it's not impossible."

Hoggle was not in the mood to be helpful or positive, however, and the argument continued; Sir Didymus wagged his staff and insisted that they must not abandon this most sacred quest; Ludo keened as he often did when his friends argued; Mulder and Scully continued to brainstorm the best way to find the senator, with or without fairytale assistance, and did their best to block out the noise, talking amongst themselves.

Sarah, however, was ignoring the whole mess of it. It could have been that she was simply used to the ruckus of her otherworldly friends, or her attention had been completely taken elsewhere. It was possibly a combination of the two, but she had turned away from the group, ostensibly to see if she couldn't find the Labyrinth's entrance this time – and then to examine the roses a little more closely. They really were beautiful, Sarah considered, a riot of colors and scents. She touched one that was milky white, and it was cool and like crystal to touch, crisp and sharp. The young woman sighed; it made sense the Goblin King would have roses like that in his gardens. Sarah touched another. So red it was almost black, it felt like velvet against her fingertips, and the girl couldn't help herself. Mindful of the thorns, she pulled the blossom to her nose, inhaling deeply.

"And the Tony goes to...Sarah Williams!"

There was a roar of applause. Sarah startled, looking around at the packed auditorium. It was strange, but she could smell roses, and her mind must have been wandering because she felt like she'd been awakened out of a dream. Her manager was elbowing her, a grin as wide as the Hudson slapped on his face. "Sarah!" he hissed. "Go, girl, go! It's you!"

"Me?" She really must be in shock, clambering to her feet and trying to think of how to walk, trying to remember the words of her speech she'd practiced, just in case, in case this happened. All the lines she could memorize, and now she couldn't remember a single syllable from her acceptance speech. Her ankles were about to give out beneath her, these damn shoes-

Sarah gasped, blinking back sunlight. Sunlight, and not stage lighting. Her head was swimming. She looked around her briefly, but the group was still arguing. Agent Mulder was insisting something to Hoggle ("-no one said you had to come anyway!" "You think I'd trust Sarah alone wit' you!") and she simply sighed. Wow. An out of body of experience, a waking dream, something intense and pleasurable. She felt a tingle down to her toes and smiled, releasing the rose from her grip. Magic. Magic, oh, she'd missed the Underground. Costumes and beautiful words on a stage was the closest Miss Williams had come to real magic in eight years, but this was a far more palpable, a more intense experience. She wondered – did all of the roses do the same thing? Hungry, her fingers fixed on another stem, this one with petals each a different shade. Sarah's tongue wet her lips and she did not hesitate to take a long, satisfying sniff at the blossom.

"I've got salt and I've got tabs."

"Are you screwing with me? Last week you had the good shit."

"I'm not givin' you nothin' till I see the cash."

Sarah was blinking in the dark, a cough rattling in her lungs, and she wondered where she was. She had a feeling it was a question she asked herself often. Money was exchanging hands, fairly thick wads of bills an angry-looking man was thumbing through. He didn't seem angry for any particular reason, more just a symptom of his own disease. Her ankles still felt like they were about to give way beneath her, only now it was because her shoes were much too small for her feet, and she could feel water creeping in through a hole in the bottom. God, she hoped it was water.

Her irate gentleman companion seemed satisfied. "Okay, fine. What do you want, a brick? Williams." She perked up slightly at her name. "He wants a brick."

Sarah nodded, but was otherwise silent, lest her cough try to escape through her open mouth. It was so damn cold. Her fingers were stiff with chill as she fumbled with a black, plastic garbage sack. She could feel the eyes of the other man upon her, but this was nothing particularly new. "Where the hell'd you get her? She looks good."

"She's new."

"Hey, you sharing?"

"I only share with my good friends."

"How much do your good friends usually give you? Where did she come from anyway?"

"Williams was going to act," the more familiar of the two men sneered at her, and her instinct was to crouch low to the ground and attempt invisibility. Instead, she just handed over the powder-filled sandwich bag to her supposed-employer. "Still does a bit."

"Hey, I don't need to make no women act."

"You wanna ask her yourself? I don't mind loaning her out for-"

Sarah dropped the flower, breath ragged. A thorn must have pricked her, because she felt like her hands were burning and tears were springing to her eyes. What was that? What in the hell was that? It wasn't true – whatever it was, it wasn't true, and she rubbed at her pained, green eyes with the back of her wrist. Her career was going quite well, and – whatever, that wasn't the point, she'd never – and her father wouldn't have ever stood for her standing on a street corner with- Sarah looked around briefly. It was like no time had passed at all, Mulder and Scully were still pouring over the map. With desperate, shaking fingers, she grabbed at another rose and yanked it from its branch, this one as deep and purple as night. It wasn't real, it wasn't true, this flower would prove it, she was so certain. It smelled like musk and music, and darkness and dreams, and she felt it flooding through her system just like with the first rose; all pleasure, but all much deeper, a heady thrum that was quickly overwhelming her senses.

She was safe. For perhaps the first time in her life she was well and truly safe, and Sarah sank into the feeling, let it envelop her like a cloud, let it wrap around her shoulders. Any memories of safety from her past – snuggled in bed with her parents as a child, clutching Launcelot in thunderstorms – was an illusion compared to this. She was safe because someone would never let a thing harm her, and because she herself was too powerful to be hurt.

The air still had that particular scent to it, that musky sweetness that nearly put her in a swoon, and Sarah breathed it deeply, let it sigh across her lips. Whatever this moment was, it must be real, because she was looking out over the Labyrinth, and she felt like she had been doing that before. The view was a little changed, though: from here, the Goblin City was closest, and the winding halls of the Labyrinth far away...She was looking from the center outwards.

She hadn't heard the steps behind her, but she didn't startle when the pair of lithe hands fitted themselves at her hips. She melted slightly under the touch and looked down – black, leather gloves against her long, white dress. It was silky and sparkly and absolutely beautiful. She was absolutely beautiful. "Are you looking out over your kingdom, my sweet?"

Sarah smiled, a hand drifting to cover the leather-clad ones. "Is it mine?"

"We are one flesh now...What is mine is yours and yours is mine." She felt herself stifling a moan as a hot mouth fit to the crook of her throat, the tongue laving at her reddening skin. "But I would gladly give it all to you, my Queen."

"Jareth..." Jareth? Jareth? Sarah's breathing came a little heavier. Something was and was not right. She turned slightly to face him, and – yes, the Goblin King took her arm and wrapped it around his neck, looking at her with...with...God, she couldn't think of the words to describe it. It was endless and amazing, the look that hung in his blue eyes. Why had she been stifling any noises he made her produce anyway? Sarah couldn't remember. Instead, his mouth crushed hers and she opened under it like a flower (like a flower, like a rose?), invited him in and reveled in how close they were. It wasn't enough, it wasn't enough. Her hands swept under his thick, blue jacket and began trying to push it off his shoulders.

He hummed inside her mouth, broke the kiss to her whining protests and obligingly slipped out of the coat. "You are eager to consummate the union, aren't you, precious thing?" Sarah couldn't quite answer, her breath coming in heavy puffs and the tip of her tongue dabbing at her lower lip. "You don't have to worry..." His thumb brushed that lip, briefly connected with her tongue, and Sarah's green eyes were black and half-closed with want. "I feel the same as you."

He turned away from her then, his hands going to the buttons of his silk shirt, and Sarah gasped as it was pulled from off his shoulders. Her hands acted before her mind could, fingers reaching out and brushing her husband's left shoulder. "Jareth, you-" He hissed beneath her touch and arched his back slightly, and her arm quickly wrapped around his torso to steady him. "I'm sorry, have I hurt you?"

"Not you, precious thing. Never you."

"But there's a mark...here." Her fingers traced the jagged line that bisected his left shoulder blade. There was a deep, round scar, like a horrible puncture, and then it tore, downwards. Like someone had tried to rip through him. "Oh, my poor Jareth, you poor thing..." She found herself kissing the blemish with rapt attention, tender and focused. "Who would want to hurt you."

Her King turned and caught her up in his lithe, bare arms, and Sarah relished in his heat, his scent (was it musky, like the rose? Which rose was that?), the feel of him against her. "Yes, Sarah, pity me." His sharp nose nuzzled at her cheek bone and they were caught up with damp, preoccupying kisses for the next several heartbeats. "Kiss it all better, my sweet."

"I would – I will. Who did this to you?"

"Oh, a very bad girl...Nothing at all like you, Sarah." His arm was fitting behind her knee, he was bending to scoop her into his arms. Her fingers latched onto the back of his neck instinctively and her heart began to pound. Oh God, what she'd been dreaming of since she was fifteen- "Let me show you how very good you are, precious thing..."

"Yes, Jareth, I-"

"What in the bleeding hell d'you think yer doin'!"

Sarah gasped, her heart pounding like she was about to have an attack. Hoggle had dashed the rose from her fingers and was stomping it into the dirt. "Hoggle!" Sarah protested, but her throat was so dry.

"Ain't you got a lick of sense!" The poor gardener seemed fearful beneath his anger. "You ought to know better than takin' strange things from the Labyrinth!"

"I-It was just a flower!" Mulder and Scully were looking at her, eyes wide, lips slightly parted. They each held a side of the map and had apparently been studying it before this outburst. Instead, they were studying her, and the young woman was blushing fiercely.

"Nothing in the Labyrinth is just anything! Nothin' is as it seems! Did you go forgettin' that already?"

Didymus was considerably softer than the rampaging dwarf, and his furry paw patted at Sarah's hand with marked gentleness. "Are you alright, my lady?"

"I'm fine. I was just smelling the rose-"

"What you were doin'," her friend cursed, spitting on the flower that was reduced to pulp in the dust. "Was sniffin' at the Garden of What May Be."

"...the what?"

"It ain't no pretty rose garden what for just lookin' at. It's an Underground flower, it's full of magic."

Scully cleared her throat. "Well, what does it do?"

Hoggle flicked his eyes in her direction, huffing with ire. "It shows you what may be, obviously. Things that could happen."

Sarah was taking a long, full sip of the water from her bottle, hoping no one noticed the way her hands were shaking. She wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand and asked, "Might happen? Or will happen."

"Might. A body can get so wrapped up in seein' all the different futures they never leave!"

"Hey," Mulder was grinning affably again, and Sarah visibly relaxed. "Does it show lottery numbers?"

"Think you're so clever," Hoggle was grumbling, and he stomped away from the flowers. "Well, I got you to the door, didn't I? And you got yer map. So are we leavin', or ain't we?"

Scully sighed, releasing the parchment and letting Mulder carefully fold it and tuck it into his jacket pocket. "We are." Sarah nodded and began striding for the door carved into the Labyrinth's walls – a door Scully would have sworn had not been there when they first approached the garden. Didymus had mounted his steed and was riding toward the open gate, but Scully hesitated next to the younger girl. "Miss Williams." Sarah paused, looking at her with slightly watery green eyes. "Are you sure you're alright?"

Sarah managed a smile, but it seemed to Scully that it was thinner than the smiles that came before it. "I'm fine – and please, call me Sarah."

Dana nodded. "Sarah."

"Come on," she assured with a somewhat fuller smile. "There's a lot of Labyrinth to get through." And she turned and strode through the gate.