I do not own Labyrinth or any of it's characters. The OC's are mine.

It was hot and sultry, having just rained the night before.

The workers dug through the rich wet earth, looking for whatever pieces of the past the could find.

Sarah Williams was one of them. On her knees in the dirt, covered in sweat and grime, she have never felt more wonderful.

At 27, being invited to such an important dig was an archaeologists' dream. To top it off, to be in Northern Ireland, a land she always felt such a kinship with was a bonus.

"Sarah!" She turned at the sound of her name. "Hey Danny." She smiled up at him as he made his way through the portioned off plots of land where various workers were working.

"Professor O'Donnell sent me to assist you. Well I believe his exact words were, "Keep you eyes on that Amercian, don't let her overlook anything." The blond man imitated with a smile.

Sarah laughed. "He certainly has his views on me." She replied as she when back to her gently shifting of the dark brown peat, looking for shards of bone and pottery, pieces of jewelry that might identify who these people were.

Professor O'Donnell had called for help for workers. Danny, who was a transplant from the US to Ireland was his assistant. O'Donnell had recently discovered this cache of ancient graves, and needed hands to help dig them out.

So far, they had found several bodies, but to this point had no idea exactly who they were.

The bones showed them to be a tall, thin people. Tests would have to be run to find out if they were even originally from these lands, or had settled and died here from somewhere else.

At first O'Donnell had protested bringing more Americans in on the project but Danny Lincoln had been a fellow student and friend of Sarah's in grad school.

He knew her to be smart with an excellent work ethic so O'Donnell agreed to give her a shot, so here she was.

She didn't really understand his feelings towards her, since though he had been born in Ireland, he had been educated in the US. It wasn't like he wasn't used to working with Americans.

Danny gingerly stepped over the partition and side by side, the two began working.

As they found little pieces they were set to the side in a long flat tray and would be taken to the examination tents for sorting.

"PROFESSOR!" A scream from a fellow worker came from somewhere nearby. "Somebody get O'Donnell now!"

Danny got up and gave Sarah a shrug. "I"ll be back."

Sarah went back to her work finding a bit of metal here, a piece of bone there.

Suddenly people were running towards the site the scream came from and she stood, craning her neck to see.

"Come on! They found another body!" Someone told her as they ran by. She dusted off her clothes and joined them. She wound her way through the crowd of people to see what was going in.

There was a fairly deep pit, with the professor, Danny and two other workers digging as gently as they could at a fast pace.

She got close enough to see it definitely looked to be another intact body.

Danny looked up and saw her."Come down Sarah. This is incredible. It looks to be a royal burial."

Her interest piqued, she climbed down the small ladder and crouched down with the others, helping to clear dirt and mulch out of the way.

The body was tall and thin, like the others, she could see that. Remains of very light hair was still attached to the thin leathery skin still covering the skulls face.

There were bits of jewelry and clothing, ancient leather and weathered cloth.

As she dug she found the remnants of a scabbard, with bits of a silver dagger encrusted with grime and rust.

Bits of feathers seemed to litter the area.

She could barely make out words engraved on the metal of the silver dagger.

An rí owl Jar et mac

The Owl King Jer et son of...? A shudder when through her. A distant memory coming forth in her mind.

Who was he the son of? The lettering was too worn to read further.

It took another several hours before they got the body clear, and laid it on a sheet of plastic to be lifted out of the pit.

They moved it to the tent that housed the 3 other intact bodies, placing it in a large plastic bag.

"It's late." The professor announced. "I will give him a closer examination in the morning. Fascinating! Now maybe we can get somewhere!"

Sarah had the words on the dagger spinning through her head.

An rí owl Jar et mac.

It could not be. She thought. Even if he was dead, even if I killed him, he would not be buried in a peat bog in Ireland. That is ludicrous.

Everyone else left the tent. She went to the body and unzipped the bag, pulling the plastic aside and staring at the ancient bones.

She had to touch it..him.

She took off her glove and touched the delicate hairs, so blonde they were almost white. For some reason, tears sprang to her eyes and a feeling of terrible grief came over her.

"Jareth..." She murmured.

"You called?" A deep voice came from behind her and she spun around, meeting a pair of amused blue eyes.

The world tilted and everything when black.

Hey all! Yep it's me. Back with a completely new story. I was attacked by a 50 foot plot bunny who was incredibly vicious. I'm going with it and seeing where this takes me. In my head it sounded really interesting so I hope it turns out that way.

Firstly, THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU to all my new readers, followers and reviewers as of late. You are so inspiring! Muah!

Next: In A Time of Winter is still in progress. I am almost done with the next chapter. I am planning on having it out in August.

Thirdly: Holy moly! My muse has been on a roll lately, and I have 2 finished stories on the back burner! This one won't be incredibly long, so I have another entitled "Something Precious" ready for Samhain time. It is really the darkest story I personally have ever written. The other is "His Champion's Journey" and as much as I would like to just put it out there too(I am exceptionally proud of this one, seriously) I am sticking to my plan to not start publishing that one until IATOW is done.

Lastly, I also have a one shot lemon that I am wondering would be too..controversial for FFN. I will not go into detail here, but suffice to say it was something I'd never tackled before and so I tried it. I personally like it but I may make it an AFF or AO3 story only. I'll let you know :)

Let me know what you think of this plot! I just started today having woken up with it screaming at me, so forgive any typos!

PS "An rí owl Jar et mac" really translates as closely as I can get using translate "The Owl King Jer et son of..." in Irish. So please don't scold me if it's not 100% correct. This is fantasy after all..suspend belief a little ;)

(yes I know who he is the son of, but not telling..yet!)

Blessings and Light!