Title: A Box of Thirty-Two

Author: MAC/Undead Euro-Trash

Feedback: WULLF (at) yahoo (dot) com

Disclaimer: so not mine

Rating: dunno, don't do ratings... R?

Summary: Smiling bitterly, the girl can't help but notice how her life has suddenly taken on the form of the match between her fingers - flickering and alive one moment, black and dead the next...

Spoilers: Labyrinth, The Movie.

A/N This is what too many happy endings does to a person...

A flame hisses into life; and with a sharp flick of a feminine wrist, it is extinguished. This action is repeated again and again, until a small pile of spent matches accumulates and the smell of sulfur rises in the air.

Smiling bitterly, the girl can't help but notice how her life has suddenly taken on the form of the match between her fingers - flickering and alive one moment, black and dead the next.

At first, she hadn't believed the doctors, adamant and vocal in her denial; but then, they showed her the X-rays, and she vaguely remembers how her father's comforting hands had tightened, almost painfully, on her shoulders.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, Mr. Williams. I'm very sorry."

In the aftermath, she can't find the energy to cry. If only she could, crying would prove that she still had enough humanity to feel (even if that feeling was nothing more than stifling hopelessness); but she doesn't. All she can feel is the cold of the floor under her, and the heat of the flame as it travels up the match towards her fingers.

"It's alright, sweetheart. We'll find another doctor." A watery smile, and a firm hug. "Just you wait and see, it'll all work out for the best." The smile falters as tears fall; and the hug becomes less firm and more desperate. "I promise, baby, I'll find a way to fix this. I promise."

Listening to her father crying in the next room, she wants to tell him that he shouldn't make promises that he can't keep. She can hear him venting his grief, his hoarse screams mingling with gasping sobs as he clings to his wife. Her father can cry, he is alive enough to feel his pain; his daughter on the other hand, is not. Right now, she is too numb to feel anything at all.

"Your father loves you very much." The words are softly spoken and hesitant, making the girl raise her head from the box of rapidly vanishing matches to the damp eyes of her stepmother.

"I've known that for a while now, Karen," she smiles mockingly. "But, if you were to say that you did," the smile cruelly cracks upwards, "Now that would be news."

A gasp, a sputter, thrown together with wide, scandalized eyes. "Sarah!"

"Well what am I supposed to think, Karen?" Sarah dully asks, returning her attention to the matchbox in her hand. "You haven't ever said it to me, not once. Not when you first married my dad, and certainly not now. So," she looks up, somewhat amused by Karen's pale, indignant stare, "Do you love me?"

Silence. Sarah nods; yes, silence is exactly what she expected.

"I'm sick of having to battle with you over dad's attention, Karen," she tiredly says. "So, let's make it official: You win. In a few months, he'll be all yours - no nasty little stepdaughter as a constant reminder that he wasn't yours first." Slowly standing, Sarah slides the small box of thirty-two, now down to six, shut, slipping it into her pocket as she heads towards the staircase.

"I'm sorry Sarah," Karen brokenly whispers, "If there's anything I can do- -"

"Don't ask me to sit Toby anymore," the girl interrupts in an even softer voice. "And stay out of my room."

With that, Sarah drifts up the stairs, a cold draft trailing after her.

Karen watches as her stepdaughter disappears into her room; silently despairing at how one dark smudge on an X-ray, can forecast so much heartbreak and suffering.