Chapter Two:

The Place Where I Belong

The last day of Sarah's stay at her childhood home hadn't been particularly eventful, and although she loved her family she had become comfortable living by herself. Sure, a roommate was alright in Freshman year but now she enjoyed having a part of her day that was just hers. It all seemed very temporary to Sarah, places she lived- not really homes, at least it didn't really feel that way. She knew she didn't want to go.. not really. But she must. She didn't expect the things that would happen that day to happen.

Unpacking is easy. It's packing things up again that always seems harder. You always feel as if there is one more thing that you're missing, even if you did check over and over and over, marking off every little thing. Unpacking the idea that the crystal had all been some wild dream - that her 'overactive imagination' was the culprit - had been the easiest thing for her to do that week.

Finding the crystal, the crystal that her imagination hadn't made up after all, underneath her old bed next to a dusty journal had been the hard part. She could still try in vain to pretend that what had happened was a dream, even though she didn't know why she would even have the crystal now.

Surely, it had to be some sort of a joke, right? But who would know about the crystals... Of all the stories she told, she never mentioned the crystal, the crystal that would let her see her dreams whenever she wished. It was unsettling. She decided to ignore it and stuff it in her bag, packing away the idea of all things being true until later.

"Here's a little going away present sweetie.' Sarah's dad said handing her a long covered tube when they reached the airport. She assumed it would be a poster and thanked him, giving him another hug, and she wondered vaguely when the next music-filled car ride with her father would be. Toby hadn't been able to come with them because he was trying out for football, but he mentioned in passing to Sarah that he also wanted to learn more about theater which had made her beam.

"Thanks for giving me a ride." Sarah said, shifting a bit. She knew that he had to get to work.

"Do me a favor and don't open it until you get home." Her dad smiled, and she nodded. He handed her some extra batteries. She gave him a hug and tried not to think about homes.

"I can remember (I remember)

Standing, by the wall (by the wall)

And the guns, shot above our heads (over our heads)

And we kissed, as though nothing could fall (nothing could fall)"

The sky was full of clouds and rays of sunlight. This time Sarah had been lucky and gotten a window seat. Something about flying cleared her head. She thought about kisses for a moment, or rather a lack of them. It was never something she focused on much, not that she never considered it. Outside of auditions and acting, she was waiting for the right person it seemed.

A tawny owl followed closely, on the other side of the plane, but she couldn't see.

And darkness followed the owl, but it could not see either.

It wasn't late when Sarah got back to her apartment, but she felt like she had been up for hours. All she wanted to do was order takeout, get changed into comfy clothes, and sleep.

Looking at her bag and remembering what was inside she sighed, knowing that sleeping wouldn't be an option while she was still worried about the crystal. And that journal... had it been hers? She couldn't remember ever really keeping a journal as a child, but that wasn't to say that it wasn't hers. And after all, it was in her room. She called her favorite Chinese restaurant and ordered her usual fare before settling down with her bag and beginning to unpack. She had popped out the mixtape and went to put it into her boombox, reveling in the fact that she could finally listen to music out in the open again rather than having to hear her stepmother complain that she would disturb their neighbors.

She unpacked her clothes first, pretty much everything going straight into the laundry hamper. Next came her little toiletries like her hairbrush and toothbrush, and finally at the bottom of the bag was the journal and the crystal. She placed the crystal gently on her bedside and vaguely wondered if this were one of the same crystals that he had turned into a snake. As she was about to open up the journal the doorbell rang and she got up to go pay for her food, acutely aware of the tawny owl landing on her balcony looking inside. She came back, grabbing some napkins and a fork- she never quite got the hang of chopsticks- and sat back down.

Darkness grew and crept through the stepstones of the Labyrinth. Merlin knew that they needed to get the plan moving forward as quickly as possible. His dearest friend paced back and forth waiting for their king to return from the human realm. If only there were anything but whispers of whimpers he could use to reassure his friends, to let them know that this was permeating the above ground as well.

A storm was beginning to move in over the Labyrinth, and the tang of electricity filled the air around them. Now was not a good time for their protector to be gone, but it was necessary. Thunder rolled.

She flipped open the dusty journal and saw it hadn't been written in, at least not in the first few pages. She flipped through the book to see if there was anything that might give her a clue as to why it had been under her bed until she found it.

'Just for one day. Please.'

That was it. 'Just for one day'. What was that? 'Please.' She couldn't tell if it was her handwriting or not but that was all that was written within the journal. She closed the book with a snap and leaned back, opening up a fortune cookie.

'If you can imagine it, you can achieve it. If you can dream it, you can become it.'

Man, there was something crazy going on with her life right now. The journal, the crystal, the fortune cookie... Okay, maybe not the fortune cookie, she was pretty sure she had actually gotten that fortune before.

"But why?" Sarah asked aloud. Not to anyone, other than herself. Actually, if someone did answer she would probably have screamed and run out of her apartment. There was something familiar about the phrase 'Just for one day'. She tried to think of things that had lasted only a day, or less. Solar eclipses, days at the beach, little adventures through towns she visited once, tech marathons, none of these made sense to Sarah but-

"Though nothing will drove them away,

We could be heroes,

Just for one day.

We can be us, just for one day.."

Sarah nearly screamed aloud when the connection clicked and she was brought back to memories of the Labyrinth, to saving Toby, to that single day. Getting up, she went and got the poster her dad had given her as a present, trying to give herself any reason at all the ignore all the signs pointing to the fact that her life was being taken over again by the Labyrinth.

She looked for a clear spot on the wall and tacked up the top then rolled down the poster, revealing one light eye and one dark. All too familiar to her. The poster read 'David Bowie', an advertisement for some sort of tour- Outside 1996, with Nine Inch Nails-

But it was Jareth.

Sarah felt stupid for jumping to conclusions. There was no possible way that Jareth could be David Bowie- other than those eyes she couldn't see that much connection between the two. The stylized performance photo showed a young human man and that was that, no other connection than just so happening to look exactly like the Goblin King that had kidnapped her brother and made her go through a Labyrinth.

She knew very well that people had doppelgangers, going to her first auditions had let her know that was true enough. How many girls with long brown hair and bright eyes and slight figures had she met and chatted with at auditions, blurring into each other as that feeling of not being special slowly sinks into her bones… Every audition she had made her think that getting more into writing wouldn't be such a bad thing. Use that English degree a bit more…

Things her mother had gone through too- auditions and the Labyrinth as she had seen in her dreams from the crystal. Glancing at it now she wondered if she could see the dreams again. And so what if she did? Wasn't the purpose of being able to see her dreams to be able to see the ones she had wanted when she was younger-

Dreams of becoming an actress, like her mother, and getting out of the house. Of getting to live on her own and not having to always, always babysit her little brother.

She realized now that the reason she couldn't see those dreams was because she was living her dreams. Her experience in the Labyrinth had pushed her to go and get those dreams in an attempt to forget about the Labyrinth and she almost had managed to do it until now. So why was everything from her past coming forward now- why 'just for one day, please'? What for one day? She reached over to grab the crystal and shifted a bit, trying to mimic Jareth's movements from the night he appeared in her room. "I wish I knew what this all meant." She mumbled aloud.

"Other way." Came from behind her. Sarah turned and this time she really did scream at the sudden appearance of Jareth, dropping the crystal onto her bed and reaching for the journal, prepared to throw it at him.

"Now now, Sarah, I waited for your call." Jareth said, picking up the crystal and extending his hand to give it to her and narrowly avoiding the journal as it flew past his hair."Your dreams have been calling out, too. Don't you remember?" She realized in a fleeting moment, that he looked like hell warmed over.

Sarah shifted a bit, not sure how to respond. She took it carefully while still holding the journal defensively. "What do you mean..." she asked. He grabbed the crystal and helped her turn it, allowing her to look into her recent dreams, and she resisted the urge to recoil from him, from the things he had done in the past even though the past few days had made her more and more confused.

The ballroom, the dance, the running. It was her going through the Labyrinth again. Something felt off, almost, as she watched herself walking through the palace. Fully exploring the gardens. It had been such a shame to be so focused on the task at hand to be unable to appreciate the beauty of the Labyrinth. Behind some of that, a sense of unease, something darker than what she could see as she stepped away to give herself some room to breathe, to figure out what she was doing.

"Have they been calling to the Labyrinth, or has the Labyrinth been calling to me?" Sarah asked uncertainly, though still rather surprised to feel the stir of memories of her dreams now that they were presented to her. She'd never been particularly good at remembering her dreams. She looked to Jareth and wondered at why he was being so silent.

He looked so different from before. The over-extravagant outfit he had worn before was replaced by clothes that actually matched her world. Jeans, a plain disheveled black shirt and jacket, and a tiredness behind mismatched eyes, worry, that seemed to be pleading with her silently as she tried to read him like one of her books.

"It needs your help Sarah." I need your help Sarah, she substituted with the smallest of flutters to her still calming heart from her initial spook of seeing him again. Her shoulders softened slightly and she realized her music was still playing and numbly she went to shut off her boom box and picked up the thrown journal.

"You left this?" She asked and he nodded slightly. There were so many questions that she had. She decided on one for now. "Is-"

"Yes." Jareth replied, looking at her with the slightest sign of hope.

"Just for one day." Sarah said slowly, watching his face for any indication of if this were some sort of trick he was playing on her. She didn't see any.

"Please." Jareth finished for her, eyes searching hers with a sort of desperation she didn't recognize in him. Like there was so much, too much to try to explain… Perhaps that was why he'd left the crystal, the journal.

With a resigned sigh, she nodded and knew that she would be seeing the Labyrinth again.

Sometimes people forget falling asleep. They might get caught up in their dreams, fall asleep after an exhausting day. Sarah had never felt that she had that problem. She could always remember falling asleep- getting into her own bed and curling up in the dark surrounded by the familiarity of her own room.

It was waking in a new room, one she had never been in before that had confused her. The room was spacious, though not particularly large, with warm, leaf-green walls. The bed she was in was far softer than the one from her own home, with many pillows surrounding her as well as a flowy canopy held up by large, dark wood posts. There was a small balcony it seemed, as well as a desk and what looked like a closet. The room was simple, but distinctly not hers.

The air had a strange scent, as though the Labyrinth had recently been covered in rain, but she could not remember if she had noticed any storm. A look to the cloudless, orange sky gave her new clues to why it would be so, although beyond the range of her sight clouds gathered in the east.

Trying to remember what had happened the last night she thought about the conversation with Jareth.

"Why is the Labyrinth calling to me, or me to it, or- whatever?" She had asked. "Do I need to go through it again? What's the point?"

"It- it's difficult to explain right now. My powers are very limited here, especially outside of specific circumstances. It's why I needed you to wish, so that I could sort of twist the rules a bit to even get here." Jareth said and she could remember seeing how distraught he seemed. "It's important because you help it, but you don't need to run it again. At least- you shouldn't need to."

"So tomorrow then." She had decided she would save her questions. At least she wouldn't need to wish her brother away for this. Herself, however… that felt much more uncertain.

Jareth had nodded, looking distinctly relieved as she agreed. "Tomorrow."

There was a knock on the door. Sarah glanced around and spotted a robe draped over a chair near the bed. Grabbing it she put it on and went to answer the door, surprised and yet entirely unsurprised to see Jareth standing before her. Who else?

"Good morning, Sarah." Jareth said standing in the doorway looking down at her. "I trust you slept well." Sarah shot him a somewhat suspicious glance and allowed him to come into the room, walking toward the balcony doors and opening them to let in morning air and light. He was out of the more normal clothes he had put on yesterday and back into the dramatic style that he had worn before, looking like the essence of magic again, black feathered cape and all.

"Yes, I suppose so. I didn't realize that you were going to completely shift my life around." Sarah said, glancing out the doors. The Labyrinth's gardens were glowing with the light of the sunrise, causing her breath to catch slightly at the realization she was really back. Jereth just chuckled slightly at her.

"Do you want to go see it or have breakfast?" Jareth questioned her. "There are many things to discuss but- all with time."

"Goblin Kings eat? I thought maybe you just sucked the life out of scared people who fail the labyrinth." Sarah joked, causing an amused growl that did something curious to her stomach and she just grinned.

"Breakfast it is then." Jareth said and with a snap of his fingers she was in a dress and flats and this time she was the one who growled, causing him to chuckle. He snapped his fingers again and she was in a much more familiar outfit to her- jeans, loose sweater, flats- it could've been something she pulled from her own closet at home. Actually- it might just have been.

"I'm keeping an eye on you, Mr. Magic-Abusing-Goblin-King." Sarah said crossing her arms and perhaps it was her tone or the look on her face but Jareth was chuckling again.

"Come on, we don't want to waste any of the day. Especially seeing as I've only managed to convince you to give me one day."