A/N: The other day, I was listening to "A Children's Crusade on Acid" by Margot & the Nuclear So-and-Sos (music, aside, maybe the best song title/band name combo ever?). And maybe it was the fact that I'd been on a hardcore Laby-fic bender or the fact that this was the first non-Bowie album I'd listened to in two months, but I started making all these connections. First I noticed that the protagonist is named Sarah. From there it snowballed: "Woken from a dream? Abandoned by your mother? … The children lose their minds? … Satan? Satan's TROUSERS?!"

Without going full-on conspiracy nut (they're an American band, so why would they talk about trousers instead of pants unless they're referencing the infamously tight trousers worn by Jareth who is played by David Bowie who is British?!) it was clear to me that there was a story here, a story about disaffected teenage Sarah trying to make sense of a world half-magic and half-madness and the spectacularly be-trousered demi-Satanic tempter who is after her soul. This is that story, after a fashion. It will be heavily influenced by the MNSS album Not Animal as well as (of course) the music of David Bowie, among other things. You'll never have to listen to the songs to understand the story, but if you're curious, it might help establish the mood. Relevant songs will be cited at the end of each chapter.

Anyway, good job wading through all that authorish twaddle. I'm proud of you and you deserve a reward. Just a quick

TW: (s), (as), (aw) [see profile for key]

first, and then a

DISCLAIMER: I own nothing. I barely even own the laptop I'm writing, much less the characters of Labyrinth. Except for the stuff I do own, like the scenarios and sentences and OCs. But I'll share if you ask nicely.

and off we go!

EDIT (6/29/16): Chapter updated to incorporate suggestions from my beta, syntheticaesthetic. Check out her work-she's favourited on my profile!

Part I: Quaaludes and Red Wine

Chapter 1

Here Are We

Here are we, one magical moment
Such is the stuff from where dreams are woven.
Bending sound…

"Station to Station," David Bowie.

Sarah is lost. She has known this for several minutes, though not continuously, because it's hard to know anything for very long when her vision is smoke and slashes of colored light and the music shudders through her body like the voice of God. Nevertheless, by starts and jumps she becomes increasingly aware that the gleaming, gyrating, ecstatic bodies around her are not the right gleaming, gyrating, ecstatic bodies. Or, at the least, not her right gleaming, gyrating, ecstatic bodies. Which is wrong but she can't remember how or what to do about it and the effort of thinking is killing her high something awful, so she gives it up for lost and throws herself back into the dance.

And maybe it's the drugs, but she never knew dancing could feel like this, never knew anything could feel like this. The past is darkness and darkness stretches ahead but as long as she doesn't stop, as long as she keeps moving, remains part of this wild, wriggling, many-limbed animal this moment will last forever and she'll never fall. Because now she's soaring high above the crowd, above the ocean of hands and faces and bright clothing. Forget, says the music, forget, and yes and yes and it swells before her and breaks and as she is swept under there is the moment where the noise of the crowd and the music meet in a rush of white noise almost like silence, and in that silence she hears her name.

Sarah.

Suddenly, she remembers that she is lost and alone and higher than a kite, and that doesn't seem like such a good thing any more. She turns, blindly, and stumbles into the crowd.

Crack.

A white burst of pain on her forehead. Her vision goes funny and she lurches to one side, losing her purchase. She begins to fall, only to be caught by the arms and held. She stays like that for a second, pitched forward, a dead weight as she pieces it all together—her throbbing forehead, the sudden fall. She must have collided with something—someone? And then—

She focuses on the hands still supporting her. At least, she thinks they're hands from the way they curl around her arms, although the texture is wrong somehow, both too smooth and too clinging. From the maybe-hands she tracks her gaze to a pair of probably-arms and finally fixes upon the face in front of her. She sees: eyes like black pits in a ghost-white mask, topped with a bloody crown.

She blinks, and the face resolves itself into round, dark glasses, a pale face, and a head of spiky, implausibly red hair.

She steadies herself, and the maybe-hands relax their grip and fall away. One of them rises again, gingerly touching the mouth of the boy in front of her. The hand is preternaturally white, even against the paleness of his face. He stares at the fingertips, then smiles and turns them around to show her.

She focuses on the hand and understands. "Gloves!" she exclaims.

Whether or not he can hear her over the music and the crowd is doubtful, but he seems to find her response satisfactory. He grins and shrugs a little and moves his lips: No harm done, perhaps? He gestures from himself to her and mouths a question: What about you?

She starts to nod and is rewarded with another flash of pain. His smile slips a little and he raises his hand to her forehead. She flinches from the touch, but the pain is gone.

"I'm all right," she says, flashing a weak smile and giving him a slightly shaky thumbs up. "Thanks—and sorry!"

He nods, and mouths another word, holding up a finger. Wait. He starts to speak again, then cuts himself off with a wry shake of the head. He leans forward and whispers in her ear, and there's something so oddly familiar about his voice and its closeness and his hot breath on her neck that he's already bent down and risen up again by the time she manages to process his words:

"I think you dropped something."

He raises his white-gloved hand before her. In it is something round and translucent and glinting with many-colored lights like—like a soap bubble or… The feeling of déjà vu increases. Something is stirring at the back of her mind but she can't quite seem to—

She steps back, treading on the heel of the dancer behind her. "That's not mine," she says.

He quirks a curiously slanted eyebrow at her. The next question she understands perfectly: "You're sure?"

She says nothing.

He shrugs lightly. "My mistake." She blinks. His hand is empty. His lips curve upward in a strange smile and he leans forward. "Dance with me," he breathes.

The fluttering of memory increases. She furrows her brow, trying to focus. The effort of thinking and of staying still so long makes her breath catch and her vision swim. The boy dissolves into a series of discrete images. She sees: a white column of throat. The glint of an earring. The sharp jut of a cheekbone. The strangely sensual mouth bent into a smile that makes her pulse race and her stomach queasy. There is something wrong about all of this but she can't quite… Above and behind his dark spectacles, his gaze is unwavering.

She tries to speak. Has her mouth always been this dry? She raises a hand to her head. There had been a question, hadn't there?

And still that fixed gaze—that queer, unsettling smile. His lips part:

"Sarah."

How does he— But he's lifted his head, looking behind her now as the voice comes again, high enough and loud enough to cut through the fog of noise, and unmistakably female.

His mouth turns down suddenly, then relaxes into a half-smile. He straightens, turns to go, and then, as if on impulse, leans forward again and blows something straight into her face.

She coughs, her vision filled with a thousand glittering points of light.

And suddenly the noise and the heat of the crowded warehouse come roaring back—when had they gone?—and someone has grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her roughly around and she's being half-throttled by a pair of skinny arms and the mingled scent of sweat, perfume, and cheap liquor. Alisse.

"Oh my god, Sarah, we've been looking for you everywhere. Where were you?" Alisse pulls back a little, peering over Sarah's shoulder. "And who was that?" She giggles and then stares into Sarah's flushed face and shell-shocked expression. "Good stuff, isn't it? Strong. Told you Kyle DeLuca knows his shit." She giggles again, then gives a start and begins fishing around in her handbag. She thrusts a bottle into Sarah's unresisting hands.

"Drink this. It'll clear your head." And frowns. "Why is your face all sparkly?"

The bottle, as it turns out, is water, lukewarm but glorious, and it does clear her head—perhaps too much.

"Isn't this fun?" Alisse screeches into her ear twenty minutes later.

Sarah winces. "Yeah," she says, "really fun."

Alisse pushes her back and stares into her face. "Whassamatter?" she demands.

It's a good thing she's given up on that whole acting shtick, Sarah thinks wryly, if she can't even fool someone as totally off her tits as Alisse.

"Nothing!" she yells back.

Alisse gives her a shake. "What is it?"

Sarah caves. "Doesn't last long, does it? This— whatever the hell you got off of Kyle DeLuca. Strong though," she adds, conciliatory.

Alisse stares at her wide-eyed, then claps her hand to her mouth. "Oh my god, you mean you're coming down?"

"Kind of, yeah." The understatement of the decade.

Alisse shakes her head vigorously. "No, no, no—we've got to fix that. Kyle? Has anyone seen that asshole Kyle DeLuca?"

"It's cool—" Sarah starts, but Alisse has already pounced.

"Kyle! Hey, Kyle! Got any more of that K?"

Kyle DeLuca unwraps himself from the girl he'd been dancing with. Sarah can't but notice that the girl slips off the minute he turns his back. "Yeah, sure," he says, patting his pockets. "What, coming down already?"

"Not me. Sarah."

Kyle's head jerks up. "Sarah?" His eyes meet Sarah's and his face splits into a mad grin. "Come to think of it, I've got something better than this. Just hang on a second." And he's off, pushing his way through the crowd.

Alisse pulls an impressed face. "Pulling out all the stops for you! Anything I should know about?" She elbows Sarah conspiratorially.

Sarah stares at the spot where Kyle disappeared. She hadn't liked Kyle's smile. Then again, she hadn't liked glove-boy's smile either. Maybe she just doesn't like smiles in general. She stares down at Alisse, trying to put the theory to the test, but Alisse's mouth droops into a frown to mirror Sarah's own.

"What?"

Sarah shakes her head. "Nothing. I'm just—I'm just going to grab a smoke first."

"What? But he's coming right back!"

"I won't be long. I just need the air." It's as if she'd spoken the words into being, because suddenly she does need air, madly, desperately—air and space and quiet and solitude.

Alisse bites her lip. "Want me to come with?"

"No!" Sarah says, too quickly. "No, it's cool. Just don't move around too much. I'll come find you in a few."

The alleyway outside the warehouse is fairly dotted with slumped and exhausted ravers, but Sarah finds, rounding the corner, that the back is all but deserted. She slips into an alcove and allows herself to collapse, pressing her face into the wall and relishing the roughness of the bricks on her skin. After a moment, she straightens, fetches out her rolling papers and tobacco and sets to work. It's soothing, the ritual of it, here in the relative peace of the back lot, under the untaxing glow of a gibbous moon. She can still hear the music, but it's distant now, the deep bass of the music muffled by brick and concrete, and apart from a few snatches of laughter and conversation carrying from the alley, it's quiet. She breathes deeply and sticks a hand into her pocket for her lighter.

And then into her other pocket.

"Shit."

Someone is rounding the corner.

"Hey, you got a light?"

The figure pauses, backlit in the light from the alley. Sarah squints, struggling to make out it out.

The reply is unhurried, amused. "Depends. What will you give me for it?"

The figure comes forward, into the moonlight. Glove-boy. Sarah stares at him, studying him more closely now, gauging a potential threat. He's not particularly tall—she knows that from before—but slender enough to appear so from a distance. As he approaches, she can see that the red of his hair is just dye now—the overgrown roots are pale blond. He's dressed appropriately enough—Doc Martins, baggy jeans, a black leather vest over a pale chest and glowing neon bracelets on his wrists. Yet there's something… off about him. The boots are too polished, catching the moonlight. She's seen dozens of pairs of white gloves tonight, but never ones of perfectly fitted leather. And the pendent around his neck— where has she seen that symbol before?

"I'm sorry?" she says slowly.

"Are you?" His teeth flash, looking strangely pointed in the moonlight, and she may not know how she feels about smiles in general but she knows they don't usually make her feel like this, hot and restless and breathless and twitchy. "What for?"

Something else she notices: he stands wrong. Too relaxed, too poised, too arrogantly confident in his own skin. Boys in Doc Martins don't hold themselves like dissolute eighteenth century aristocrats. His dark glasses are gone. He shifts slightly and she catches a glimpse of his eyes for the first time, not long enough even to tell their color but long enough for a frisson of fear to creep down her spine. Something here is not right.

"I meant," she says carefully, pulling away from the wall and putting a pace between them. "I don't understand what you're asking me." The memory is almost free now, thrashing and cawing and beating its wings against the weakening bars of its cage.

"Oh, a trifle for a trifle. You want something that I have. I'm willing to trade for it. What will you offer me? A lock of hair, perhaps? An hour of your life?" He pauses. "A dream?"

She snorts and turns away. "Look, dude, I don't want it that—" She stops as her ears catch up with her. "What did you—"

She turns and doesn't need to see the crystal rolling idly across his fingertips to know, because suddenly she's seeing double. On the surface, a cocky teenager with a bad dye-job, dressed in upmarket rave-chic. But underneath—it's like looking at a reflection in a still pool and seeing movement below. A face beneath a face. As she watches, it swims to the surface—an older face—a man's face, though not a human one—with a narrow, aquiline nose and a shock of gloriously ragged blond hair, complete with—yes, it was all there: gloves, pendant, leather riding boots, and the most unambiguous trousers Sarah has ever seen.

"Surprise," he says softly, fondly, maliciously.

And Sarah's mind—unlike her suddenly useless legs—is racing, racing and getting nowhere because this isn't supposed to happen. He isn't supposed to be here, and certainly not like this. That isn't how the story goes. He's gone off script. Shit. Shit.

"Goblin King," she says, not a greeting—naming him.

He inclines his head. "Just so. Now, I believe there was a small matter of a barter?"

A/N: Man, remember drugs? I miss drugs. But also not at all. Don't do drugs, kids.

History note: I was alive when this chapter takes place (1990) but barely. I've done a little research into late 80s/early 90s youth culture, but probably not enough, so if you lived/were a youth in that period, sorry for any glaring anachronisms and feel free to correct me!

Songs in my head and while writing this chapter:

"Station to Station," by David Bowie.

"A Children's Crusade on Acid," by Margot and the Nuclear So & Sos.

"Broadripple is Burning," by Margot and the Nuclear So & Sos.

If you're enjoying this and want me to keep writing it, please do drop me a line and let me know because I have absolutely no way of knowing otherwise. You are beautiful enablers and I love you all.

XO

Silks