As Sarah lay curled on the cushioned bench near the staircase and the effects that she had come to think of as "mirror lag" wore off, Jareth kept up a running commentary on the family pictures that lined the walls.

"Young Toby looks thin. If only he'd remained in my kingdom, he'd likely have enjoyed a much richer diet. And fresher air."

Sarah tried to snap back something about the fact that Toby would also have been turned into a goblin, and that Jareth didn't seem to be overly fond of goblins, but her words were barely intelligible.

"Happy to hear that you agree with me, precious. The less contrary side of you reveals itself so infrequently." He moved on to another picture. "Ah, and this one may truly be a miracle, an image of young Sarah, and she is smiling, looking for all the world like she is not planning to unleash a torrent of vitriol onto whoever might cross her path…"

Sarah pulled herself into a sitting position. "My parents told me we could get ice cream afterward if I smiled in the family photo," she croaked.

"Ice cream! Clearly what I should have offered you, instead of dreams."

"In exchange for my brother? Sorry, not much of a trade."

"That would depend on the ice cream."

She rolled her eyes at him and managed to stand up, steadying herself against the wall with one hand. The entryway of her home looked much as it always had, with only a few off-kilter details—the photos seemed to hang slightly crooked on the walls, the rug floated a bit above the floor, and through the windows Sarah could see only blackness outside. This time the gateway appeared to be the large mirror that hung across from the staircase (maybe, just maybe he'll let me walk through that one instead of being thrown, she thought idly). There was no smell of smoke, though, and no grime.

"Why are we here instead of in my childhood bedroom?"

Jareth gave an elaborate shrug. "You're shaping these spaces to fit your needs, Sarah. Mortals do love to deal in symbols, and if I were to wager a guess, I would say that the memories you're currently preoccupied with represent a sort of limbo between childhood and independence. A time when you still clung to home, but you also couldn't wait to escape it. Hence the entryway—still home, but with one foot in the adult realm."

Sarah stared at him. "That's…wow. That's quite deep."

He raised an eyebrow, clearly pleased. "I've had quite a few lifetimes to think about these things. Sadly, the goblins don't really have the attention span for my long-winded pontifications on mortal symbolism."

She smiled. "That's a shame."

"Quite."

Silence stretched between them, not unfriendly. Sarah knew what she needed to do, but that didn't make it any easier.

"I believe you…have a crystal for me."

Instead of producing it, he examined another one of the photos lining the staircase, running a gloved finger along the frame. "Is this really what you need, Sarah?"

She nodded, though a large part of her wanted him to convince her otherwise. "Yes."

He produced a crystal from the air and wove it back and forth between his hands. "Perhaps my interpretive abilities are less advanced than I presumed, because…this caused you great pain the first time you experienced it. And yet you want to experience it again?"

"What I did to Hoggle, Ludo, and Didymus was painful, too. But seeing it again helped me."

"Yes, but…" Jareth looked for all the world as if he were trying to solve a particularly vexing mathematical equation. "In that case you were responsible for something, and you owned that responsibility. With this…there was no responsibility on your part."

"I know." She found herself speaking more to herself than to him. "I just…I need to stop running from this. I need to remember things as they really were."

He breathed in deeply when she spoke of need, and more color returned to his face, more substance to his limbs. And then he grimaced again.

"It is true that I relish your need, Sarah, but…" He met her eyes, and his expression was surprisingly fierce. "I take no pleasure in your pain."

She nodded and reached out slowly to touch the crystal, her hand resting over his. "I need this. I need to go back…to move forward."

He closed his eyes, and she felt the tingling energy travel between them. He released the crystal into her hand and turned away.

She saw herself get off the train at Grand Central Station, her long hair arranged neatly on top of her head, wearing clothes that she knew were meant to make her seem older than her almost-sixteen years: a blouse, a skirt, low heels, pearl earrings that she'd "borrowed" from Karen. She'd taken a lot of time to choose every piece.

Her younger self stood in the middle of the station and tried to look calm, but Sarah remembered vividly how terrified she had been. No one knew she was here. She could easily vanish into the city, spirited away by the sort of monster that her parents and teachers had always warned her about, and no one would ever find her.

She consulted a small piece of paper and followed a crowd heading into the subway, where she boarded a crowded train, and then a second one. A man in the train leered at her and asked her where she was from, and when she pretended not to hear him he called her an ugly word and stalked off. Her hand gripped the subway strap tightly, and Sarah remembered how hard she had been trying not to cry.

She watched it from a distance but felt everything as it happened, the shape of the heels and their click on the pavement, the smell of car exhaust and exotic foods, the shade from the tall buildings that blotted out the sky. The expression on her face moved rapidly between fear and exhilaration. She could almost hear the voice in her head. This is dangerous. This is amazing, I feel so free. This is going to get me in so much trouble.

She remembered how she'd been riding a crest of post-labyrinth-defeating confidence, feeling that she could truly do anything.

Her younger self finally reached her destination, a five-story walk-up with a Chinese restaurant on the first floor. She looked at the address on the piece of paper, then at the building, then at the address again.

She walked up the staircase to the third floor. The building was dark and the paint was peeling. When she came to the door at the end of the hall she hesitated, and Sarah remembered that hesitation so well…

She knocked.

There was no answer. She knocked again. Still no answer.

Sarah turned her face away from the crystal and shut her eyes, but it was no use, she couldn't look away for long. She heard the sound of chain latches and then the door opened.

As a teenager, Sarah had had so many memories of her mother. In her mind's eye her mother had radiated warmth and beauty, with her perfectly white teeth and her raven-black hair, her arms that always seemed to hug freely and unselfishly, her ready laugh, her playful spirit. It was a memory that matched the pictures on her vanity mirror, the professional headshots and clippings from plays, alone or with Jeremy. It didn't matter that her mother had been absent from her day-to-day life since she was thirteen—her presence loomed large enough that Sarah had never felt too far away from her. She sent letters. She called. She saw her when she could, sometimes alone and sometimes with Jeremy, and those times were magical, even if they were brief.

The woman who opened the door bore no resemblance to those memories.

Sarah stared into the crystal. Her mother didn't look like a monster, she just looked…frail. Ordinary. And the expression on her face…

What were you expecting? Sarah's inner voice was furious. You show up out of the blue, with no warning—

"She's my mother," Sarah whispered. "I should have been able to show up out of the blue. At least once."

Her mother stood in the doorway, the door still not all the way open, staring at Sarah with a mixture of confusion and annoyance. "Sarah? What happened? What are you doing here?"

It was the middle of the day, but she was wearing clothes that looked like pajamas. Her hair hung limp around her shoulders and looked as if it hadn't been washed in a while. Gazing beyond her into the apartment, Sarah could see that it was small and dark, and there was a strong mix of musty smells that included tobacco and mold.

Sarah watched herself in the crystal and remembered the way that so many of her dreams and memories had seemed to shift in that moment, how all the dream-like days spent with her mother and Jeremy took on a different cast. Her younger self took only a few seconds to regain her composure. "Nothing happened, Mom. I just wanted to see you, and I've never been to your apartment. Can I come in?"

Her mother put on a tight smile and pushed her hair back from her face. "Sweetie, it's really not a good time."

"I won't stay long, I just missed you, and—"

"Who's at the door?"

The voice was male and unfamiliar. Her mother closed her eyes and called back in a fake-sweet voice. "No one, just—"

"Is that Sarah?" The man who emerged from the dark apartment was definitely not Jeremy—his face was more lined and slightly haggard, with unkempt blond hair and a three-day beard. Like her mother, he seemed to have just rolled out of bed, wearing only an undershirt and a pair of boxers. He reeked of alcohol.

He smiled and held out his hand. "Hi, Sarah. Heard so much about you. I'm Mike, I guess your mother's mentioned me?"

Sarah didn't take the man's hand, looking to her mother for answers. She heard her mother mumble something that sounded like "it never came up."

Mike looked slightly abashed. "Well…good to meet you now, anyway. Why don't you come in for a cup of coffee?"

"Actually, Sarah was just leaving." Her mother's voice was businesslike. "Maybe next time."

"Leaving? But she just got—"

"Mike, could you leave us alone for a minute?"

Mike obeyed like a guilty puppy, but not before whispering something in her mother's ear that he apparently thought Sarah couldn't hear.

"Did she bring the money?"

"Not now."

"But it's been six months since the last—"

She actually shoved him. "Go back to bed."

Mike looked momentarily hurt, though he shot Sarah's younger self a bleary grin before retreating into the cave of the apartment. Sarah's mother smiled winningly, and as always, Sarah was amazed at how dazzling her mother could be—even in sloppy pajamas with unwashed hair, she could still make you feel, momentarily, like you were in the presence of a movie star.

She reached out to ruffle the younger Sarah's hair. "I'm really sorry, darling. I just wasn't expecting you, and—"

"Was Dad sending you money?"

The dazzling smile faltered. "Oh, it was just…you know, when we saw each other I wanted you to have a good time, and I couldn't always do that on my own, so he just…it was just a little extra." Her eyes suddenly narrowed. "But then he had to get particular about how I was spending it, so he hasn't sent any for quite a while, and—"

"He sent you money so that you'd spend time with me?"

"Oh no, darling, nothing like that, I'd spend time with you regardless—"

"But you haven't. Not for six months."

"I know, but I've just been a little overwhelmed with everything, and I was waiting for just a little more money to arrive…I meant to get in touch with you, I really did…"

Sarah watched the crystal intently, remembering that series of feelings that had washed over her as she watched her mother ramble in a way that she never had before. Wanting desperately to believe what her mother was saying. The cold, sick feeling in her stomach when she knew that she couldn't.

Her mother finally smiled and made a half-hearted effort to smooth her clothes. "Anyway, I'm really sorry you came all this way, sweetie. We'll get together again soon, all right? Maybe just…ask your father to send a little more money? He'll listen to you, I know he will."

Sarah winced at the cloying, carefully disguised desperation in that voice. I would have done anything for her…and she knew it.

An awkward silence stretched between them until Sarah finally spoke. "I should go."

The relief on her mother's face hurt even more than what had come before. "I'm really sorry, sweetie. Do you want me to walk you back to the station? I can get dressed—"

"No." That cold, hollow quality in her own voice. Sarah gripped the crystal tighter. "I'll be okay on my own."

I'll be okay on my own. I'll be okay on my own.

She barely noticed the crystal darken.

She remembered the angry confrontation with her father and Karen, who ultimately relented and said that yes, they'd sent her mother money so that she'd "be more involved," but they'd stopped when it was clear she wasn't spending the money on Sarah, and Sarah had called them both liars and refused to speak to them for weeks, and demanded that they never send her mother money again, and then she'd called Rachel and gotten rid of all her old toys and all remnants of what she thought of as a past life where her mother and the world she represented were the only things that mattered.

She hadn't seen her mother in person since then.

She leaned against the wall, the crystal still gripped in her hand, feeling all the rage that she'd had so much trouble controlling in recent years bubbling to the surface. Rage at her mother for being an illusion, rage at her father and Karen (misdirected, you know that) for maintaining that illusion, but mostly rage at herself for buying into it. The hand holding the crystal shook, and something inside it seemed to glow hotter.

She was dimly aware of Jareth moving closer to her. "Sarah…"

Her eyes suddenly came to rest on a photo on the wall by the staircase, taken when she was thirteen. She and her mother were standing side by side and posing dramatically for the camera, both their faces lit up in brilliant smiles. They looked alike. Sarah remembered how the photographer had flirted with her mother, saying she looked young enough to be Sarah's sister.

The crystal glowed warmer in her hand and seemed to give off a faint vibration. She heard Jareth's voice, distant but low with warning. "Sarah, don't—"

She hurled the crystal as hard as she could at the photo.

Sarah expected the crystal to shatter, or even for a hole to appear in the wall, given how hard she'd thrown it. But instead it moved as if through water, and when it hit the photo it dissolved slowly into a pool of black liquid, spidery veins moving slowly out from the center, consuming the photo and spreading up and down the wall.

Jareth snarled and grabbed her shoulders. "For the love of Goblindom, Sarah, could you perhaps listen to me for once?"

She shook her head as if waking from a dream. The black substance was inching across the ceiling and the floor. "What…what did I…"

"Never mind, you've got to get out of here—" He made to throw her through the mirror but cursed when he saw tendrils of blackness snaking around the edges. "Too late."

The tendrils were hissing, and she thought she could hear overlapping whispers within them. The room smelled alternately sweet and putrid. "What is this?"

Jareth raised one hand toward the blackness and shut his eyes, then leaped back, cradling his palm. He scanned the room rapidly—she realized she had never seen him look alarmed before, and it was terrifying. "You do love your damned symbols, Sarah. It's your rage."

Sarah stared in horror at the blackness that had now almost completely covered the ceiling. She looked down and saw that tiny veins were snaking up her legs. They were cold, so cold that they burned. "This is…mine? All of it?"

"Yes, congratulations, you never do anything in half-measures, do you?" There was a brittle quality to his voice's usual sarcasm. His eyes suddenly focused on the pictures on the wall, some of which had miraculously escaped being consumed by the blackness. "That picture. Of you and Toby. Grab it."

She strained toward the wall, but the blackness was like quicksand. "I can't, I'm not strong enough—"

"Curse you to every hell imaginable, Sarah, you defeated my fucking labyrinth when you were fifteen years old. Reach…the damn…photo."

Sarah drew on every ounce of mental and physical strength within herself and stretched her body toward the wall, fingers grasping at the photo, finally yanking it away. Bits of blackness clung to it and snaked around her fingers. So cold.

"Good." Jareth's breathing sounded shallow, the blackness had reached his waist, moving up both of their bodies like a slow-motion cascade of paint in reverse. "Now look at it."

Sarah was beginning to feel dizzy, but she did as she was told, though the picture shook in her half-frozen hands. "Just look at it?"

"Yes, look at it and feel what it makes you feel. And I mean really, really feel it, Sarah, if you have any desire to be cast in dreadful plays ever again."

She stared intently at the picture of herself kneeling on the ground in front of Toby, her face lit up in a brilliant smile, Toby's mouth wide open and his hands raised as if he were cheering. It had been taken not long after she'd returned from the labyrinth. She remembered vividly the love and protectiveness she'd felt for Toby in that moment, and she felt a warmth spreading from her chest into her face and down through her arms and legs, and the all-consuming blackness that had been tightening around her slowly softened its grip.

She lost track of time, and the picture began to blur in front of her. The blackness seemed to recede with agonizing slowness. Finally the tendrils had shrunk into a sort of ghastly-looking flower centered over the photo of Sarah and her mother, and as she watched they finally coalesced into an orb. A black crystal hung in the air for a moment, then dropped to the ground, clear and empty.

Jareth leaned against the railing of the staircase, catching his breath. The air around them both seemed to hum slightly.

Sarah's breathing was ragged, and her body felt as if it had been dipped in a vat of ice. She shook everywhere.

Jareth glanced at the mirror. "I think we should get you home, precious."

She nodded numbly and realized that her body was shaking. The room started to spin.

"I need to…get warm…"

She felt herself falling and heard Jareth say something colorful about the fragility of mortal bodies before the world went black.

Author's note: Thanks as always for the reads, reviews, and follows! I've noticed a few continuity / punctuation issues so will be updating some previous chapters just to fix those.