The Key

Sarah coughed and cleared her throat, pushing the now-emptied cart back to the library workroom. Just two hours before, books of all varieties lay double-stacked, just waiting for the most inconvenient moment to topple to the floor. She didn't typically cough anywhere other than work, shelving the books all day, some of which boasted crisp ivory pages and battle scars on the leather-bound covers. But she had chosen an older college for that reason. The dust causing her to cough may have been only in her mind, but she stifled another cough crossing into the workroom.

Two more full carts awaited her. Without another page working with her this evening, she wouldn't be able to take care of both before closing. Only one librarian and two clerks were on duty for the night.

"Sarah, phone!" Ruby called to her from the clerk's desk.

"Got it!" she yelled back. She often considered being a clerk, checking out people's books rather than putting them away when they were done with them. But she chose the library as her work study for the sole purpose of access to books, intimate access to books she could skim within the safety of the shelves that towered over her.

"Hello?"

"Sarah."

Her already fair face paled.

"Sarah? Are you there?"

"Mom?" Hundreds of movie-goers would have shrieked knowing Danielle Williams, well, Danielle Watson if one didn't bother to research her actual name, called them.

"Hi, sweetheart."

It was the same voice that called her down to breakfast ten years ago, the same voice that always laughed about picking up and taking her talents elsewhere, to a place where the masses could appreciate them.

"What do you want?"

"Look, honey, I know it's been a long time, but your dad told me I could reach you here."

That must have been an invigorating conversation, she thought.

"I need you to come to my hotel room. I'm in town."

Years ago, Sarah received postcards from a wide array of locales, mostly just mentioning the off-Broadway shows Danielle had bit parts in, no room to ask how school or friends or how Sarah's own progress in the school plays were going.

"Why?"

"Please. I need to see you in person. Your, your dad knows where you'll be. Call him if you don't believe me."

"I've never believed you," Sarah growled, every fiber of the rational, adult half of her mind urging her to hang up the phone and take one of the two carts out.

"Sarah," the voice on the other end uttered with defeat, "this is too delicate a matter. Please. I'm at the Inn down on Maple."

"Hold on." Sarah placed the phone on the desk. Only a handful of reasons ever entered her mind to leave work early. Her research…and her own personal pleasure, depended on the library. She walked over to the librarian's desk.

"Meredith, I need to go home. My…Karen says it's an emergency."

"Guess I wouldn't hear the end of it if I said no," Meredith said with pursed lips. Every time they butted heads on anything, Sarah remembered, those dry lips that folded in like a toad's pursed out, waiting for a gullible princess to kiss them.

"Thanks. I'll take more hours next week." Without waiting for the fare-thee-well she knew would never be uttered, she ran back into the workroom for her jacket and latest piles of texts helping her translate ancient Celtic into English. Her mind, the childlike one, formed all the delicate matters her mother would want to discuss. "Sarah, I'm getting married." Sarah, I need you to hang onto this gun for me until the police stop looking. Sarah, while finally clawing my way up to Ballerina Number 4 in The Phantom of the Opera, I was fired and want you to help me borrow some money from Toby's savings bond."

Outside while she drove, the purple mistiness of evening began to give sway to the blackness that the sun slowly but surely hid from. The snow white purity of the exterior of the inn seemed inappropriate to Sarah, at least with the great Danielle Watson, the up-and-coming Cinderella story of Broadway and Hollywood, inside. None of the Williams family watched her movies, all three of them, which Sarah sometimes regretted because two of them looked appealing.

She knocked on 363 and waited. A typical answer would be no one there. But her mother seemed so desperate. Surely she would be here.

"Sarah!" Danielle threw her long, tan arms around her. "Come inside!"

Bags lay scattered about the suite, a few emptied bottles that once held vodka sat on top of the dresser.

"If it's so important, why isn't anyone else here? Why isn't Dad here?"

"Well," she coughed, sitting on the bed. "Sit down. It involves only you. You're an adult now, college. Double English and…"

"History."

"History. Parties. Boys. You must be used to not telling your dad things."

"I'm not really one for girl talk." Sarah rose, but sat back down upon seeing the face next to her.

"You've gotten so pretty, but you've always been pretty." Danielle fingered a lock of thick jet black hair Sarah grew to her mid-back. "I wanted to tell you in person. Your real mother is here."

A/N: Thank you. I do not own the original Labyrinth characters or plot, but there are some original characters in this fic. Please review after reading. And maybe someone will be able to guess what will happen far into the future of this fic...it is Labyrinth. Anything can happen.