They were at the tree. Black snow that glittered in the sick sun was falling. The wind alternated between furnace hot and arctic cold. And they were at a standstill.

Sarah had not been present during the coercion of Hoggle many years ago.

Poor Hoghead. I just noticed your lovely jewels are missing.

But if she had been, she would have been either amused or horrified at Jareth's current posture; leaning one hip against a jutting boulder, a knee raised and staring at her with his head cocked.

I am surprised at you, losing your head over a girl.

"We missed something," he stated. "What is he talking about, 'faces of rock,' there are no faces in these piles anywhere."

She had to agree. Time was running short, she could feel it as if it were a tangible thing. Surely a broken mirror and a cloaking spell were not enough to deter the Goblin King. If they were spotted, she was not sure Jareth was yet up to facing his demon. This was her story but some pages seem to be missing.

That, and based on the stench carried to them in the crazy drafts, they were near the Bog of Eternal Stench. There was one place she had been okay with never seeing, much less smelling again.

She sat down and rested her forehead against her knees with her nose tucked into her shirt. It didn't help much.

They were back in the labyrinth. Things were different here. Her time in the underground had been short but it changed her life. Was still changing her life. And would end her life if they couldn't figure out this fucking riddle. She gritted her teeth.

I didn't mean it. - oh you didn't?

It doesn't look that far - it's further than you think.

It's hopeless. - not if you ask the right questions.

Would you go left or right? -they both look the same.

You take too much for granted.

Who told them to look for faces of rock? Why, the little blue worm.

Little.

Blue worm.

Eyes widening, Sarah looked at the boulder Jareth's was resting on, and at the piles around it. She could sort of see...

Crawling on hands and knees, Sarah moved to where the piles lined up. Ignoring Jareth's inquiry as to if she had lost her mind (of course she had), she stretched out prone against the ground and looked up at the rock piles from the height of the little blue worm.

When the rock piles lined up they brought his features into cohesion. The face of the Goblin king...the old Goblin King that took her baby brother, grinned down at her. And the eyes were very pointedly looking at a tree branch that seemed to be growing out of a wall of rock.

"Gotcha," she muttered, and jumped to her feet. Jareth was looking at her like she was crazy and in more than one way, she knew she was. Oh well. Here's to insanity. Sarah pulled down sharply on the tree branch, expecting to hear a sharp crack as it broke. Instead she heard the groaning of old gears starting to move and clicks as an ancient door joint struggled to open in the rock face.

"Ta da!" She said at Jareth's sharp intake of breath. He was peering in wonderment at the dark opening. "I take it this means you didn't know this was here."

"I have never seen this. How have I never seen this?"

"Everyone has their secrets, Jareth. Even the Labyrinth, apparently," Sarah said, patting his arm. "Shall we?"

Casting a glowing crystal bauble that hovered, waiting, a few feet inside the passage, he slipped his hand into hers. It was cold.

Sarah had a final thought before they passed through the doorway.

Even if you get to the center of the Labyrinth, you'll never get out again.

GO BACK WHILE YOU STILL CAN.

TAKE HEED AND GO NO FURTHER.

BEWARE. BEWARE.

The deep, baritone voices of the False Alarms were now the high pitched wailings of terrified children. Even if Jareth did not know of this place, the Goblin King surely did, for half of the stone faces were pulverized to rubble. The remainder, had they arms, would have been grasping at Jareth and Sarah as they picked their way through the stony remains.

All they had for light was Jareth's one orb that cast a feeble glow. Every time they thought they were through the hidden path, the light fell on the clawed remains of another False Alarm, and the abstract faces of those that were left.

A child's voice drifted brokenly out of a particularly robust looking face.

...will lead you to certain destruction.

The light was poor but it was enough for Jareth to see the tears on Sarah's cheeks, and the firm set of her mouth. She was terrified and brave, merciful and fierce. As they rounded one of the many passageways indicated by a gnarled stone finger pointing, Jareth stopped.

"What?" Sarah whispered.

When Jareth turned she was taken aback for a moment. The look in his eyes was close to what she remembered from his true form. When he spoke, it was quieter than his true nature had ever spoken yet held more direction than she had heard from him since he dropped in her lap four days ago.

"I would die before I let the Goblin King run loose one more day in my kingdom."

Her heart was trying to decide whether it wanted to burrow into her stomach, claw out of her chest, or both. "It won't come to that."

"Will it not?" He traced his fingers down her cheek, desire uncurling at the way she tilted into his touch. "If I cannot rejoin with him, either I will kill him or die trying. Be certain of that."

Now her hands were shaking, running up his arms to set her fingertips against his pulse on the side of his neck. She was starting to look wild under his order.

"Sarah." Less of an endearment, more like a snap of the fingers to get her attention. She focused.

"If he wins. Run like hell. Hide. Wish yourself home. Do whatever you have to do to get away. Forget this place. Live your life."

"What's left of it, you asshole." Now she was openly crying and shaking harder, like her spine had been plugged into a 10 volt battery.

His gut and heart wrenching in tandem, Jareth continued. "If I win and he is dead...take over the Labyrinth. Be our Queen."

The shaking instantly stopped. Everything stopped.

'...no...' was barely a whisper as Sarah tried to catch her breath. She couldn't tear her eyes off the little patch of stone behind his right ear. She felt like she was in shock.

"Think. The Underground can only exist in balance. If he is gone, I will forever be one-sided. Control would be lost."

"no."

"Sarah, you have the power within you. You know it. You have always known it."

"No."

"It is your nature. You were the damsel in distress and the heroine. You are legend and science. You are anger and understanding. You can do this."

Apparently, despite being in a magical realm with a mythical king, nay a legend who she had also showered with and declared her love to, all while his evil dark half was out for blood, Sarah did have a line in the sand. And this was it.

"NO!" she yelled, finally snapping her eyes to meet his. "NO NO NO! I don't want to be the Queen! I don't want all of this shit dumped on me! I want to go home! I can't handle this. I can't...I can't..." Sarah pushed him away from her and pointed a rude finger in his face. "Just...win, okay?"

With that, she stomped off down the crumbling corridor, mindless of the fading light the further she got from Jareth's orb. If her boots hit a rock she kicked it. If she felt like punching a wall she did. Except it hurt terribly so after that she made do with slapping her uninjured hand against damp stones every few feet. Finally she stopped and paced back and forth, waiting for Jareth to catch up.

"Be the Goblin Queen, be the Goblin Queen. One thing's for fucking sure, I'm not gonna be the Goblin Queen," she muttered, sounding too much like Toby in one of his tantrums for her liking.

How screwed up was this? To turn down an offering of this magnitude not once but twice? The last time it wasn't necessarily that she was being offered the crown, no, back then it was 'just let me rule you and you can have everything' crap. What was worse: a realm under siege from pure evil, or getting exactly what you once asked for, only to not want it anymore?

Of course the first one was worse, but the irony of the latter made Sarah laugh and wipe more tears away at the same time.

No, she could not rule a kingdom. She couldn't even rule a classroom. Too much empathy, too much selfishness. Sarah always knew that her biggest downfall was that she wanted what she wanted under her own terms and there was no reasoning with her. And then, once she learned to actually care about people other than herself; her capacity for empathy knew no bounds. It even got her into this situation; feeling bad for a poor, helpless Goblin King who fell out of the sky one day.

And then she fell in love.

A scraping noise drew Sarah out of her reverie and she realized she was in almost complete darkness. She could see the fuzzy outline of the walls and her hand if she held it a few inches in front of her face, but that was about it. Had Jareth not followed her, even in her snitfit? He should have caught up by now.

Again, a noise.

"Who's there?" Sarah said sharply, trying not to sound afraid.

"Me," came back his lilted voice, and she sagged against the wall in relief.

"I'm sorry I got angry. I wasn't expecting you to ask me that."

She held out her hand as a sign of parley and felt his hand slide against her palm slowly, threading his fingers with hers.

"What happened to the light?"

A muted whisper of his voice, the slight pulse of magic against her skin as the spell completed, and a newly cast orb began to glow.

And illuminated the hollow, rotting visage of the Goblin King. He grinned from within kissing distance and clamped his claw as tight as a vise.

"Hello," it said in Jareth's voice, as Sarah began to scream.