Disclaimer: I own nothing of the Labyrinth. Not one thing.

Chapter 1: Run Away

Sarah was a runner. She had always been a runner. When faced with confusion, hurt or uncertainty, her first response was always to try and escape. Her father hadn't understood it when his little girl had suddenly retreated into fantasy when Linda had left him. He didn't understand why she chased after the image of a woman who had hurt them both so very badly.

It was because Sarah was her mother's daughter, and introspection and considering the perspectives of others felt too much like staying still.

So instead she ran. Straight into the arms of fantasy, where she could pretend that she was strong, and brave, and able to stand up for herself. Where she had friends who liked her for being her, strangers met on the journey who joined her, and where her judgement was the only thing standing between her party and failure. She was a knight, a princess, a sorceress. The heroine. She slayed her own dragons, and caught the eyes of powerful, mysterious kings.

Of course, reality had a nasty habit of reasserting itself.

Her father met Karen, and then Sarah had a step-mother, a woman who didn't understand her, and truly didn't understand that she didn't understand her. She just assumed that Sarah was of course a bratty teenager, jealous of her step-mother and then her half-brother taking up room in her father's freshly emptied heart.

Karen wasn't completely wrong, but her exasperation and poorly-aimed suggestions that Sarah go and spend time with her friends, or find a boyfriend were just another thing that made Sarah run all the harder. Especially when Karen started suggesting to her father that they let Sarah babysit Toby. Karen thought that it would teach Sarah responsibility.

Sarah felt the burden of being the one that needed to protect her helpless baby half-brother, and felt despair, as once turned into three times, then twelve, and then almost every weekend.

The few friends that Sarah had started to draw away when Sarah had to keep refusing their increasingly half-hearted invitations to spend time with them, because she needed to stay home on Saturday night and look after the baby.

Once when Sarah protested babysitting duty, Karen had said obliviously, callously, that it wasn't as though Sarah ever had any plans on the weekend anyway.

Karen had immediately felt guilty for those words when she had seen Sarah's face fall, stricken, before it was obscured as Sarah turned and ran, long dark tresses and silly tasselled sleeves streaming behind her as the door slammed.

It didn't get Sarah out of babysitting duty that night, but Karen resolved to try and be a little more careful of what she said. After all, she remembered how much it sucked to be a teenager.

And then, in a moment that was less jealousy and was more pure frustration, Sarah had wished away baby Toby into the arms of the Goblin King.

And then Sarah was a Runner.

This time she was running towards something rather than running away, and the Labyrinth gave her everything that she had ever wished for- adventure, friends, challenges, a romantic dance with a beautiful man.

Well, Fey. But there was a reason why they said be careful what you wish for. The Goblin King was nothing if not both powerful and mysterious. Ethereally handsome, too. Oh, and a nice singing voice. Can't forget that.

And then she had found Toby, chasing him through the Escher room, and then finally leaping to almost certain death for him. Because it wasn't his fault that she felt ill-equipped to look after him. It wasn't his fault he was too young to be self-sufficient. He didn't deserve to suffer for her foolish, selfish words. She hadn't really thought that words were important, that it was even possible that such things as goblins and their king existed. He would not become a goblin for her mistake. She would not allow it, and she would run until she could escape the consequences of her own petulant ignorance.

But then the world had shattered, and then there was her, and the Goblin King Jareth, standing atop a precipice.

And Jareth, who had tempted her by offering her her dreams, had offered her himself.

"Just fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave."

And shown himself to be yet another person to have misread Sarah, because he gave her something to run from, (asking her to stop running, to be enclosed, to be his captive and his master, safe forever and in mortal peril- later he cursed himself for not stopping to think and remember that really, Sarah was only barely not a child, and from a culture that would not encourage her to grow up in the way he was asking her to for a number of years yet) and running was what she was best at.

It wasn't that he had no power over her. She knew that, he knew that. Hell, no being who might have witnessed that scene would have been able to surely state that Sarah's statement was entirely true.

But the words were brave words spoken out of fear, and the Labyrinth and the King could see that escape was her heart's wish and Sarah found herself back in her room, with Toby sleeping safely in his cot.

For the first time, Sarah felt that her running had brought her to an outcome that showed a tangible, permanent victory, and in one sense, she was completely correct. She had saved Toby after all, and made sure that he could grow up as a human. Although she later realised that he had not been entirely unaltered by his time in the Underground, nonetheless, she felt that her choice had ultimately been the right one. Her father and Karen did not deserve to have their child stolen from them, stolen from their memories, because they had put their trust in a petty teenager.

In another sense, she knew that she had left something vital of herself in the Labyrinth, something that she was never going to get back.

Having proven herself to herself, Sarah became more confident, more reckless than she had ever been, even though she had to a large extent finally grown up. She raced through the years from high school to university with a laugh and a smile, flitting past peers that admired her without knowing her, or quite knowing why, beyond the superficial traits of her being witty, and pretty, and vivacious.

Some lusted after her, but Sarah was too fast for them. Few could hold her attention for long, and some bitterly called her fickle, until it became clear that she treated everyone with the same detached friendliness, that was happy to listen and absorb until something new came about and caught her attention. Everything was somehow fascinating, and bright, and sometimes even dream-like around Sarah, as she raced from one distraction to another, as though living on borrowed time.

But then one day, the dreams turned to nightmares.

Sarah had been driving her car along the highway. It was night time. She was travelling quickly, but not above the speed limit. Rain was pouring down in sheets, so that the cars coming from the other direction looked like great twinned nimbuses of light until they were up close.

And then suddenly one of those nimbuses swerved without warning, and skidded into her lane of traffic, moving too quickly for Sarah to do more than reflexively hit the brakes, her vision filled entirely with the too-bright lights, before suddenly there was the impact, and everything went black.

And Stayed That Way.

And then Sarah couldn't run any more.

...

A/N: Because apparently I'm incapable of sticking to one project. Ever. In case you missed the classification, or the chapter content for that matter, this is going to be considerably more serious than most of my other stuff. It will probably also be short. I have the first three or so chapters written out though (very unusual for me I assure you), so updates should be regular-ish.