Author's note: Thank you for the reads and reviews! I've got a bit of a map for this thing in my head, but who knows what detours it might take. Hoping to finish it in around a dozen chapters, though. Rated T for the time being, though that may change.

I own none of the original Labyrinth characters and gain no profit from this work, unless the occasional burst of giddy, fangirlish joy counts as profit.

Chapter 2

Three days earlier, Sarah hadn't known about mirror work. That had been a happier time.

"I can tell you're not thrilled about this."

She gave herself a mental slap for letting her smile-mask slip so easily. Then again, what her therapist was suggesting sounded like torture.

She tried to bring the color back into her cheeks. "I'm open to anything."

The woman in front of her smiled. Sarah had come to know that smile well over the past few weeks—it was the one that said she knew Sarah was lying, but also that calling her out on the lying wouldn't help.

"I'm glad to hear that," she said.

Her therapist's name was Rebecca, which had immediately made Sarah think of Gothic romances and well-dressed, pale women sequestered in mansions, but this Rebecca was nothing like that. She wore little glasses and had a short, boyish haircut. She was fit and dressed in clothes that were plain without being drab. Her office bookshelves were lined with the usual go-to therapy staples—books by Freud and Jung and others with titles like The Dance of Anger and How to Speak Your Spouse's Language, but also a nice collection of fiction and history, which Sarah had immediately noticed. She was sincere, but she also wasn't above sarcasm.

By the end of their first session Sarah was horrified to discover that she liked Rebecca. Those warm feelings were currently being tested, though.

"Uh, just one question." Sarah cleared her throat and tried to sound nonchalant. "Does it have to be mirrors?"

Rebecca cocked her head slightly. "As opposed to…?"

"Like…couldn't I just talk to myself, in my bedroom or something? Do I actually have to look into a mirror?

"Sarah, do you have a problem with mirrors?"

Oh, boy.

"I just…" Be honest, she'll respond to that. "I guess I'm kind of self-conscious. Sure, I look in mirrors all the time to fix my hair and do make-up and stuff, but I don't like the idea of staring at my own reflection. You know, 'staring too long into the abyss' and all that."

Rebecca's mouth twitched. "You think of your own reflection as a Nietzschean abyss?"

"No." Shit. "Just…have you ever stared into your own eyes for a really long time? It's a little freaky."

"Yes, it is." Rebecca leaned back and linked her fingers together. "Sarah, I understand your hesitation, but mirror work is supposed to be a little scary. It forces you to confront the things you keep hidden, say aloud the things you might be afraid to say. There's no hiding from a mirror."

Tell me about it.

"And yes, the mirror is kind of necessary. You can try to do the work without it, but I just don't think it'll have the same effect. I've been doing this for a long time, and it gets results, so I'm a little wary of tampering with the formula." She shrugged her shoulders almost apologetically. "Can I just ask you to try it for a week? If it's genuinely upsetting for you then of course we won't continue. But I really think it would help…with everything we've been covering."

Sarah sighed. It was very, very hard to say no to this woman. Which must be one of the reasons Karen had practically dragged Sarah into her office.

"Right. I'll try to be a good student." Sarah forced herself to smile.

Rebecca smiled back. Damn, she was likeable. "Write whatever responses come up in your journal. Even things like 'this is bullshit and I hate it.'"

You know me too well.

_

A few hours after the incident with her bathroom mirror, Sarah was crouched on stage under a man in a very realistic-looking rhino costume. The actor, Joshua, was hanging about six feet off the ground, suspended from wires rigged (safely, Sarah prayed, though you never knew with these basement theaters) through exposed pipes in the ceiling.

Sarah was surrounded by four other actors in black shirts and trousers. They all held large arrows in their hands. Priya lay on her back, Lena was doing an almost-split, Miguel was on his knees like Sarah, and Alec was squatting.

"Let's take it from cue 32," came the director's voice, somewhere in the house.

"From 32," came the stage manager's voice.

Miguel mouthed "Kill me" at Sarah, and she was about to mouth back "happy to oblige," but then the sound cues began, a series of theremin-like noises, each a few seconds apart. As each sound cue finished each one of the actors reached up with an arrow and mock-stabbed the man in the suspended rhino costume. When it was Sarah's turn a drop of sweat fell out of the costume and landed on her forehead, and she gritted her teeth to keep her position and not wipe it away.

"Dreams," the rhino said, his voice muffled by the costume. "I watch the red chromosomes behind my eyes. Life goes on…and I'm dying."

Jaunty music played, and the rhino danced a little—as much as he was able to, being suspended by wires in a giant costume.

"Right, thank you, moving on to the opening of the next scene."

Sarah collapsed on the floor and massaged her numb calves before wiping the drop of sweat off her forehead. There were quite a few more drops on the floor. Poor Joshua, stuck in that damn costume all evening.

She headed back to the theater's closet-sized green room with the rest of the ensemble, knowing that they likely wouldn't be needed for at least another half-hour. Lena grabbed one of the sagging sofa seats and Alec grabbed the other. Priya massaged her shoulders and neck while Sarah sat next to Miguel on the floor.

"He is totally making this up as he goes along," Miguel whispered, though there was no covering up sound in that tiny room.

Sarah laughed and then regretted it when she saw Lena's expression. She could feel Miguel roll his eyes next to her.

"Just because he doesn't have a script doesn't mean he's making it up as he goes along," Lena said, her too-pretty face staring Miguel down like knives.

"Actually, I think that's the definition of 'making it up as you go along,'" Miguel countered, pulling a granola bar out of his pocket.

Lena's breathing quickened, and Sarah covered her mouth to keep from laughing. "It's all in his mind. It's impossible to put it on paper, it has to take form on stage first. He's brilliant, he knows what he's doing." She pulled a book of monologues out of her bag, opened it, and stared fiercely at the page. "And you're not supposed to eat in here. You know there's a rat problem."

"Yeah, but there'll be an angry human problem if I don't eat something." Miguel polished off his granola bar in two bites and stuffed the wrapper in his trouser pocket. He smiled at Sarah. "Keep me company while I smoke?"

She smiled back. "I don't smoke."

"I know. Just trying to be a bad influence."

"You succeeded at that a long time ago."

Miguel pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes and headed for the rickety metal stairs that led to the aboveground world. Lena looked up from her monologue book.

"We're supposed to stay in the green room during—"

"Five minutes, Lena, for God's sake. It's at least another half hour of monkey-rhino conversations before they need us again."

Lena opened her mouth to protest but for once thought better of it, letting her brown ringlets fall in front of her face as she turned her focus back to her book.

Priya was snoozing and Alec was doing a very claustrophobic version of tai chi. Sarah tried to be productive during rehearsal down time, but this green room—and the play itself, she had to admit—had a way of sucking all the motivation out of her. She pulled a script out of her bag—she had a Law & Order audition later that week, this time for an actual living, breathing role instead of the usual opening scene corpse.

She could feel her head nodding over the script almost as soon as she began to read. As she drifted in and out of consciousness she noticed the green room's dingy mirror with its border of caked-on grime, her tired face reflected in the bottom, knees drawn up to her chest. She looked tiny and frail.

I really want to learn to love you, Sarah.

She laughed out loud at the thought of babbling all those affirmations into the mirror here, in front of Priya and Alec and Lena. Actually Lena would probably eat it up, would love to give Sarah all kinds of advice about mindfulness and self-love.

Her eyelids grew heavier, and she heard her own voice saying those dumb words. I really want to learn to love you, Sarah. I really want to learn to love you, Sarah.

The voice changed, becoming lower and strangely familiar.

We really want to learn…Sarah…really…you…you…

The voice was soothing, even as the words ceased to make sense. Sarah slept.

—

She woke up alone. The single bulb in the ceiling seemed dimmer than usual.

Fuck, I've missed the cue, why didn't these jerks wake me up, where's Miguel—

Sarah paused. Something wasn't right. The sofa cushions, shabby to begin with, looked positively ancient in the dim light. Her clothes—another tank top and a loose peasant skirt—seemed to be floating slightly, as if she were suspended in water. When she moved her hand across her field of vision it left a little trail of stars.

Right, dreaming. Why can't I dream of something more interesting than this dumpy green r—

She looked at the mirror and let out a tiny scream.

"Still enjoying underground universes, I see."

He was lying on the mirror-sofa, which looked much grander than the one in the actual green room, his legs propped up on the arm, hair spilling over the cushions. He was holding Lena's monologue book aloft and flipping through the pages.

He seemed to shimmer in the mirror, though he was very much there, more so than everything else in this dream. He wore some version of what he had always been wearing: tight trousers (had they always been that tight?), ruffly shirt, that lethal-looking pendant, boots, a cape that spilled over the edge of the sofa. She recalled how ancient and massive he'd seemed to her ten years ago, where now he looked…still impressive, she had to admit, but…smaller. More human.

He hadn't aged. Of course he hasn't aged, you idiot. He's not…well, he looks human, but he was never exactly real. Or at least not real in the manner of being born and living and aging and dying.

"These speeches are terrible, by the way." Jareth crossed and uncrossed his legs as he flipped through Lena's book. "I hope you aren't using this volume, though it might explain why you've had so little success with your auditions."

Sarah gave a short laugh that sounded like she was choking on something. The Goblin King is in the green room…and he's negging me.

That shook her out of her stupor. "You. You were in my bathroom mirror."

Jareth closed the book and sat up, fixing her with flashing eyes and an amused smile. "Not in, Sarah. Mirrors aren't like a genie's lamp for my kind, I can't live in them. But you could say I was passing through when I heard…what was it, exactly?" He stood up and walked toward her, placing one hand on the surface of the mirror as she had done. "'I really want to learn to love you—"

"Don't." She turned away from the mirror and clenched her fists. You're not fifteen anymore. You don't get embarrassed by everything under the sun.

He laughed. Damn, she remembered that laugh. "It broke my heart a little, really. Or it might have, if such things could happen. Do you really not love yourself, Sarah?"

She whirled around and marched up to the mirror so that her face was inches from his. "None of this is real. It's all a dream, you're not really here, and I don't have to explain my bullshit life to you."

He shook his head. "Tsk, tsk. Language, Sarah. Good to see that the 'will is as strong as yours' part is still true, though." He tapped his fingers against the glass. "And yes, this may all be a dream…but your dreams have always been a trifle too real."

The mirror blurred where his fingers touched it, and as Sarah watched the surface parted like water. His black-gloved hand reached through the glass, trailing little flecks of light as it moved, and reached out to grip her chin before she could jump away.

"Dreams aren't so distant from the real, precious." He smiled as she tried to pull away, but his grip held firm. "Even the ones you've tried very, very hard to forget."

He pushed his face through the mirror and kissed her.

It wasn't a kiss like any she'd ever experienced, not that she could call herself experienced. It was a flood of emotions and memories and sensations rushing through her lips and along her veins and into her head and the tips of her fingers and toes, a tingling cascade of pieces of her short history that alternately filled her with longing, rage, grief, lust, disdain, and ecstasy. Her mother's first approving words about a performance. The day she came home to find that her mother had moved out and left her a note. The day her father introduced her to Karen. Joking with Miguel and his husband in their tiny apartment. The taste of a peach and Hoggle's haunted expression. Seeing Toby's empty crib. Her bags packed, standing on the doorstep of her home. Mediocre sex her freshman year of college with a boy she didn't really like, and then mind-blowing sex with one she did, but who never called again. The day that Hoggle, Ludo, and Didymus stopped appearing in her mirror. Toby staring up at her with a love that made her heart feel like it would burst.

She felt dizzy and drunk. How long…how long since I've felt anything this deeply?

Jareth moved his lips to her cheek, and Sarah heard herself whimper as the sensations vanished abruptly, ripped away like a bandage on a raw wound. "Indeed, precious," he whispered. "How long?"

She felt the room begin to blur, felt the substantialness of his lips and fingers become air and the tugging weight of her own body on the floor in that distant, real-world room.

"Why now?" Her voice sounded fractured and faint. "Why are you here now?"

He smiled as his face seemed to crack and disintegrate in front of her. "Sometimes mirrors listen."

"I don't…you…"

"Hush. Your mysteries always sort themselves out. Now get back to work, if that's what you call this." His last words sounded shouted through a rushing wind. "And for the love of Goblindom, acquire some better audition material if you wish to be paid for performing."

When she opened her eyes Miguel was coming down the stairs into the green room, Priya was awake, Lena was still reading her book, and Alec was napping.

"Hey, Sleeping Beauty." Miguel's smile faltered when he saw her face. "You okay? You're paler than usual."

Sarah forced herself to smile. Her lips were still tingling. "I'm fine."

Miguel reached down to ruffle her hair. Mom used to do that. "You sure?"

"Yeah." She stood up and made a show of stretching her limbs. The memories were already fading, but they left a sweet aftertaste that she definitely wanted more of. "Just a few ghosts."