Title: Green Eyes and Gasoline

Summary: It's been so long… Inspired by a specific Bowie song. Can you guess it?

Disclaimer: All recognizable themes, names, places, etc… belong to Jim and Brian Henson, George Lucas, and Brian Froud. This work is for enjoyment, no profit.

A/N: At three in the morning, while doing the dishes and listening to my Bowie collection, this song wrote itself in a matter of four minutes, nine seconds. (Which is exactly how long the song lasts.) I know I won't sleep unless I write this out…

It was the day both thought would never come.

The room they found themselves in this time was pitch black, which made every sense, seeing as though it was the middle of the night Above, and humans typically had an aversion to sleeping with the lights on.

She couldn't see in the dark, but then again, she didn't need to. There was a heaviness in the air that pressed down on her chest and made her suck in deep breaths of air through her teeth. There was no mistaking that feeling, that presence that make itself known so regally. There were no words, no movement, just the encroaching silence. She measured the time with beats of her heart, which was pounding heavily in her chest. It seemed to say go, go, go, now, go, go…

The part of her that had once made her ancestors climb trees to get away from the predators, the human blood that raced around her body, it begged her to run, to back away, oh God, to close her eyes and maybe she might wake up from this demented fantasy.

The other part of her, that swirling blackness of something inside that drove her to a feral smile, taking on the mantle of the hunter, smiled in a feline satisfaction. After everything life had thrown at her, in the back of her mind, she'd expected this. That cruel woman she alternately suppressed and embraced cackled in delight now.

He was here, and oh, it had been so long that she wasn't sure if she really wanted to run away or towards.

He didn't need light to see the room he'd been called to, and he didn't need to look at her to see those green eyes he'd once pledged to place the sky into. Those lunar orbs had always called to him, like an invisible string connecting them, greater than time or age or dimension. He could spend an entire millennium staring at those eyes and never learn their secrets.

It had been positively ages since he'd been in her presence, but he felt the burn just the same as before. It started at his fingertips, the hot tingling sensation he both loathed and loved. The consuming inferno was like a drug he hadn't indulged in for many years, but he remembered every wave of heat and the pulsing it left behind. It was a fire of many passions, love, and yes, hate. The call had been just a spark, and he was ravaged once again in the burning.

It had been what could be considered a normal day in the Underground. The goblins were still goblins, and their king was still their king, so when the summons came, their job remained the same. The voice that had called out to him rang with teenage satisfaction, with a sense of smugness that had echoed around the throne room, calling every goblin to arms. He knew there would be no runner in the Labyrinth tonight.

He'd taken to the sky, as per his normal modus operandi, literally winging it to the barrier between worlds and crossing the mists as if they were no more than inconsequential vapor. When he'd come out of the fog, a vague sense of recognition imparted itself on him, but it took a few moments to place the feeling. Passing such an infamous little park had made him drop suddenly in the air, shocked at seeing the obelisk after so many years.

He hadn't needed the pull of magic to guide him to the white Victorian two-story house on the hill. The déjà vu was reaching unimaginable heights now, as he blew through the veranda doors into the master bedroom and transformed.

After the girl had defeated the labyrinth, not to mention turned down his very generous offer, he'd made an oath to never look upon her again. It had been a torture, to know that he could see her whenever he took the whim, but he wasn't going to allow some slip of a girl distract and torment him any more than she had already done. He was closing the book on her little fairy tale.

Standing there, less than ten feet from the woman who had been the girl who stayed home with a crying baby, was like trying to put out those fires by pouring gasoline on them.

They could burn the house down with the heat that arced between them, and neither had uttered a single word yet.

Four years after Sarah Williams had run the Labyrinth, tragedy struck their little family.

She hadn't had time to lament the loss of her youth, or even the loss of her parents, as Toby had just turned five years old and was supposed to be starting school. Instead, they both spent a week alone in what was now their house, fending off a wave of sympathetic adults eager to graciously adopt the Williams children. The little boy had a hard enough time accepting that his mother and father were gone to him forever, and she'd be damned if these mysterious new relatives would get to him and his trust fund.

Sarah spent months sequestered in various rooms, fighting tooth, nail, and the legal system for custody of her brother. It took calling in every debt her father had been owed, including that of his partners at the practice, but after four months of being shuffled from aunt to cousin to who knows where else, Toby Williams finally came home.

That night, Sarah sat in the middle of the master bedroom and plotted. The tears were gone for good, and a new, hardened woman emerged.

She became a fierce protector of Toby, even more so than after her lessons in the Underground. Even that hadn't prepared her to be a mother, but she took the mantle with the enthusiasm and ferociousness of a lioness. The world, she knew, was a cruel place, and in order to win this time she had to be just as cruel to it.

Jobs came and went for Sarah, each serving their purpose. When Toby was young, she had stay-at-home jobs so that she could care for him. She worked hard, taking the jobs others found mundane and monotonous because it had to be done, and why shouldn't she be the one to do it? It paid, and that's all that mattered.

As Toby grew, and Sarah got older, men began to take interest in her. Some were genuinely nice, but some were sharks sniffing blood in the water, only after the sizable house and bank account the Williams children had inherited. She was at first wary, and then as more and more of the latter type of suitor showed their greedy faces and sharp teeth, she grew bitter and cold.

Sarah Williams gained a reputation, and it didn't bother her in the least. A man had to be brave to even approach her these days, and was more likely to come away having been laughed at than attacked. Still, there were a select few who were gifted with the cruel light of her eyes. Behind the jade, all she saw was red, like a jungle fire that consumed everything in its path.

Men were both drawn to and repulsed by her aloof iciness. Women hated her because their men wanted her. They could hide behind their window blinds, pretending they weren't watching her walk down the street, she didn't mind. She didn't have any delusions of grandeur like them. She knew how harsh reality could be.

Those stuck-up, nouveau riche housewives whispered behind their hands at the supermarket, hissing words like tramp and harlot, and Sarah laughed at them all. She sure as hell wasn't going to correct their assumptions.

But it had been so long since she'd felt anything near attraction to a man, and even then… well. If he had been anything at all, he'd been a man, she was absolutely convinced.

The Goblin King had always been an intimidating sight, cloaked in armor and lightning. However, after losing at his own game to nothing more than a silly girl, he had become determined to double his efforts. He was cruel as always, but his demeanor took on a stinging bite that rivaled any pixie. When he was summoned to the Above, there was no more playful condescension in his words, no parlor tricks to scare the little mortals. The goblins that accompanied him weren't cute and mischievous anymore, but menacing little nightmares with wild, glowing red eyes.

He'd been the Guardian of Dreams to those foolish wishers, and look where it had led him. Embarrassing defeat at the hands of a fifteen year-old girl. Beaten by a dreamer in the land of dreams. It just wouldn't do.

The Keeper of Nightmares decided to try his hand. As soon as the mortals saw him, the thing terrors have nightmares about, they wilted in fear. In the last fifteen years there had been a total of 20 runners to challenge the Labyrinth

Only 3 had ever made it past the outer wall.

There was still only one Champion of the Labyrinth, and it had been so long.

That Champion stood absolutely still in the dark, feeling the blood pulsing at her throat, that damnable heartbeat pounding steadily onwards heedless of what lay ahead. Just like before, she was sitting on the sharp point of indecision. To be fearful? Or excited? Nervous, definitely, but anticipation spiced the air. What would happen? What was next?

He just looked at her in the dark, the night that seemed to undulate around them, a living thing that swirled and pulsed while they stood very still together. Just like the Goblin King statuette from her adolescence, he seemed to be frozen just for her, head slightly cocked to one side with an intense look in his blue eyes.

That was all it took for Sarah, after almost ten years of celibacy. That intense fire in his blue eyes leapt from him, across the suddenly superheated room, and ignited something that lay sleeping deep inside her. Like a drug, it filled her limbs with liquid fire and set her heart to a rapid tattoo.

Fifteen years ago she'd thrown dirt on that fire, tried to tamper it as much as possible in light of everything else reality demanded of her. She hadn't been ready for the heat in his gaze. The foolish little girl didn't know what to do with the little bursts of white-hot flame his eyes left in their wake, so she ignored it. It had burned all these years, like a candle burned in effigy.

One look into his strange, blue eyes, and Sarah pulled that candle to her, throwing gasoline onto the flame.

He refused to speak, to even move in her presence.

Jareth wasn't sure why he'd been summoned here, to this of all places. There was no baby here. There was nothing to distract from her. She filled his sight; her scent suffocated his common sense. He tried to grasp the tail-end of his resolve to never give in to her memory, but it took much longer than usual to recall the sting of her rejection, the cutting blade of her cruel eyes. She had no power over him.

He'd never shed a blue tear over her callous behavior. He didn't collapse into broken-heartedness at her impulsive words. He didn't rail at the unfairness of it all. She'd said the words, and she'd passed her judgment on him. Her will was as strong as his, and neither would bend.

She'd invoked the magic he'd given her, and it was so ironic. If she didn't want the broken pieces of him or his castle, then he wouldn't want her, either. He'd lived with a shattered heart for longer than she could comprehend, and he would remain steady without her.

But still, those damnable eyes called to him. After all these years, all the changes they'd gone through, her eyes were the same. They still burned him, encouraged him to hurt her, to push her until she pushed back. They danced with seductive prowess, calling him a little closer, to play a little game. The Champion's eyes called him to challenge her, to challenge himself against her.

He wanted to possess her, to own those eyes. He never wanted her to look at anyone else with that vicious green fire. He'd rather burn alive in her fire than live in cold moonlight any longer.

It had been so long.

He took a step forward.

His lips curved into a frightening, exciting smile, and she gave it back to him. She wasn't a soft-hearted maiden any longer; she could be a predator when the mood struck.

He'd been so long, but he was finally before her, holding a can of gasoline.

She met him in the middle, and they disappeared into flame, for the last time.

Yeah, well, that came out different than I thought it would! Like it? Hate it? Not understand it? Let me know!