Disclaimer: Not mine, which is possibly a good thing, as I'm mildly proficient at traumatizing both Sarah and the Goblin King. What am I saying? That's totally a public service. Also, King Thranduil may have been abducted (and slightly addled) from his home in Mirkwood for the purposes of this fic.
A/N: I started writing this over a year ago and promptly forgot about it. So, I've dusted it off and finished it up. Enjoy!
"Jareth, you need to take responsibility for your kid," declared Sarah one day, with her abrupt appearance in front of the Goblin King as the only preamble to her absurd declaration.
"Sarah," Jareth started patiently, "You have rebuffed my every advance. We both know that there is no current possibility of a child existing between us."
The young woman he addressed crossed her arms and set her jaw with the stubborn tilt he loved so, ever the picture of defiance.
"Weren't you the one always waxing poetic over the power of dreams?" Sarah reproached.
The king paled and narrowly avoided appearing visibly ill. Jareth turned his attention to the supposed child in question. The 'child' looked on impassively. He was no child at all, but full grown- tall, lean, and fair though with a strong, dark brow. And undeniably Other.
"It can't-"
But 'it' very well could. He knew this; the woman's suggestion of a dream child was improbable. Not impossible.
Jareth began inspecting the man before him. He did not know to what end Sarah would perpetuate such a ruse, though given the nature of their acquaintance, it would not be beyond his expectations of her, either. With such in mind, the Goblin King began to enumerate the ways in which the elfin creature did not resemble him at all.
"He's half a head taller than me, precious."
"Hybrid vigor."
The young man stood tall under the scrutiny, and the King could not help but be reminded of the giant monstrosities that grew from an unfortunate cross pollination event between two- supposedly- genetically far removed bog plants. Point taken.
"His eyebrows are nothing like mine," Jareth sniffed.
"He got those from me," Sarah said, waggling her own distinguished brows for emphasis. The young man in question lifted one of his own, imperiously.
"Hair straight as a board," the king drawled.
Sarah tilted her head full of straight-as-a-board-hair in deadpan challenge.
If he had written it off as nonsensical farce just minutes before, Jareth was genuinely interested in the game, now.
Sarah soundly accounted for every discrepancy he could find, and by the end of it, he half believed her story to be true.
Jareth reeled, falling back from his perch on the edge of his seat to sprawl languidly across the throne. He pinched the bridge of his nose between forefinger and thumb even as Sarah forged onward to the next topic she wished to discuss.
"Now, lets talk custody."
Jareth's 'let's not' was summarily ignored.
"I'm thinking I can take Thursday through Sunday. And you can watch him Monday through Wednesday."
"But he's an adult!" The king petulantly gesticulated at the man before him. "He can watch himself."
"He's only a week old Jareth! And you need to teach him how to use his magic. There have been incidents."
"I absolutely will not!"
At Jareth's outburst, the supposed dream-child spoke for the first time.
"Mother, I tire, and we are obviously unwelcome. Perhaps we should return when father is more amenable."
The man's cadence bore eerie similarity to his own, and the fine hairs on the back of Jareth's neck rose in response to a perceived direct threat. Sarah simply stared at the elf-man with something approaching open adoration before hooking her arm with his. She patted the aforementioned limb in a soothing gesture.
Jareth felt pure, unadulterated jealousy at the attention Sarah was lavishing on the imposter. Witnessing his own child interacting with her would never incite such emotions, he was sure. The king consciously projected an air of relaxed indifference. Jareth did not doubt that the game she was playing would have one or both of them infuriated by the end of it. But he would be damned if he broke first.
"Oh, Thrandy, I'm sorry you father is a completely irresponsible jerk. You're right, let's go get some ice cream."
"Thrandy? No child of mine shall ever be called Thrandy." Jareth felt a twitch forming underneath his right eye. He had not meant to voice his discontent on this particular subject aloud. But it was a truly atrocious name, real child or no, and Jareth made a mental note to reserve the right to veto any ridiculous names the woman may come up with for their true children in the future.
"Why not? I think it's sweet."
"It is not," the king asserted with disdain.
"I must agree with father on this point, mother. It is a gross corruption of my given name."
"See? The boy doesn't like it either."
The 'boy' stiffened ever-so-slightly. No, not a boy at all, but an elf long past boyhood. Jareth wondered at how she had recruited him.
"You're not supposed to gang up on me," the young woman huffed. "On second thought, you can stay here with your father, Thrandy."
"He is not staying here!" Jareth said, with a trifle more vehemence than intended.
"Oh, yes, he is!"
Jareth pretended to weigh his options while idly wondering how far Sarah would go for her wildly concocted tale. He would turn this to his advantage. If she was going to commit herself to this farce, Jareth would as well.
"Very well, the boy may stay on the condition that you remain along with him. I will not have my child growing up in a broken home."
"Um…"
"Come, now, Sarah, we already share a child," the Goblin King cajoled "It is time we shared a household."
Turn about was fair play, after all.
"You shall take the queen's quarters adjacent to mine, though you likely will not spend much time there, and-"
"Whoa, wait up. Stop."
"Ah, my own quarters, then," the king conceded, as if it made all the sense in the world that her quibble was over too distant sleeping arrangements.
"No. No no no no no. There will be no sleepovers, okay? He's not ours. It was a joke. I'm sorry, and we'll be going now, thanks," Sarah said in a rush, abandoning the ruse completely.
Jareth's answering grin could not have been described as nice.
"Am I to believe that, love? You've been attempting to convince me otherwise for the better part of an hour. I scarcely know what to believe."
Sarah grumbled something the Goblin King didn't quite catch. The elf replied to the woman in an equally low tone. Well, that would not do at all. Their not-dream-child-audience would just have to go.
"You have fulfilled your duty, elf, and are free to return from whence you came," Jareth directed, with no small amount of compulsion behind his words, "but I believe that I shall see you home, myself, dear Sarah."
The not-really-a-dream-child-elf-king disappeared in an ostentatious flourish before Jareth had even finished his sentence. Sarah's face dropped at having her co-conspirator desert her so easily.
"Asshole. I knew I should have gotten his son to do it instead."
The king descended the dais and offered his arm. The woman took it, albeit reluctantly, and he led her in the direction of a favored balcony. Jareth would return her once she sated his curiosity as to her intentions.
"Now, now, Sarah, you cannot blame Thrandy for escaping at the first opportunity." Or being forcibly ejected from his kingdom, but who was he to fuss over the details? "I'm far more interested in learning how you managed to get the elf to agree to such an act. They are a dramatic breed, yes, but rarely given to mischief or tomfoolery."
"He owed me a really big favor. I thought this would be a funny way to spend it," Sarah shrugged.
Jareth scrutinized the woman before him. "I'm not sure that I condone your meddling in other realms."
"Oh, come on. I don't meddle, really. At least nothing that would get me into trouble I couldn't handle. And you believed me for a whole two minutes. It was totally worth it."
"Indeed." Reaching his intended destination, Jareth released his hold on her.
"But why did you feel compelled to concoct such a story, in the first place?" The king asked, pretending to survey his Labyrinth.
"It's April first," Sarah stated, as if her intentions should be obvious.
"Yes," Jareth stated in an equally obvious fashion. The 'and?' was implied need not be said.
The woman sighed.
"It's April Fools' Day. You're supposed to come up with jokes and benign hoaxes to fool your friends. I've been playing pranks on you for years. Haven't you noticed?"
It explained why his hair had been a magic resistant, shocking, pink the previous year, and why the axis of gravity had shifted to the left wall in his private study the year before that. Jareth had noticed. He had just never attached a particular date to the woman's bouts of mischief.
"And this year, you decided to bring your ruse to me directly and pretend we shared a child," the hurt coloring his voice was not entirely feigned.
"It may have been funnier in theory," Sarah admitted, biting her lower lip.
Ah, this particular cruelty had not been of malicious intent. And she claimed to have dreamt of them together. Whether part of her shenanigans or not, the thought had at least crossed Sarah's mind. Perhaps he had not been quite as rebuffed as he once thought. It would be an angle to explore later.
Sarah was contrite upon her return home from her failed April Fools' prank. Even as an adult, she sometimes ran ahead with a plan without complete thought to the ramifications of that plan. And having an indebted elf that looked like he could be the offspring of she and the Goblin King had not aided in forethought beyond how funny it would be to convince Jareth that he was. Then she had to go and actually do it and mess up their tenuous friendship and plant thoughts in both their heads.
Sarah felt that she may have even deserved the inconvenience of the goblins misplacing every piece of media, be it VHS or book, throughout her home. She even decided that she was going to be nice and not the least bit snarky the next time she saw Jareth. Maybe they could, if not start over, at least be on the same page.
It was a very different story when Sarah Williams frantically broke into the Goblin King's sleeping chambers one week later while clutching a wailing infant to her chest.
One blue eye slitted open to appraise the source of the sudden racket. Recognizing his frantic visitor though not the equally distressed child, Jareth did not endeavor to hold back his mirth.
"Well, that must have been some dream," Jareth quipped, with a yawn.