AN: There is some phonetic spelling in here, 'ye' and the like. There is also swearing and reasonable sex and rape scenes. If you don't like, don't read. :/ On the other hand, if you do like, REVIEW! Please! Pretty please. Or say why you don't like. And as to timing, the first part is just after Sarah 'defeated' Jareth and the next bit (after the *) is just before Jareths' birth and then it jumps forward again. So yes, a little Jareth history. :)

Dark Lady.

How it started.

"That was an amazing thing you just did, Jareth." His wife said softly. You just gave her a meaning in her life."

"Thank you dear." He responded automatically. Inside he was dead. How could she, Sarah stay with him? He already had a loving wife and five children...

"Don't brood love." She smiled at him mischievously. "I could give you a reward." She lowered her eyelashes at him coyly.

Jareth forced a smile. "A reward? For me? Oh, what could it possibly be?"

"Shut your eyes..." His wife's soft sweat voice took on a predatory huskiness. Jareth shut his eyes, wondering if his- if Sarah would be like this after he had taken her virginity. He gasped as he felt the cold night air around his growing erection, his trousers pooled around his boots. "Now what should we do with this?" Jareth moaned and cried out as his wife's smooth, capable hands encircled him with cool fingers and he lost himself to her.

It was natural to think of others after a marriage of one hundred years. But it didn't mean he loved his wife any less. Or their children which Jasmine had borne without ravages upon her figure. It was the Labyrinths gift to their union.

No, he still loved his wife dearly and would never wish to hurt in anyway what so ever. That is why his fascination with this girl would have to remain a hidden secret. A very hidden secret.

The Labyrinth didn't give its blessing just to anyone. Oh no. It gave it only to the Goblin King, who was in turn bound to the Labyrinth by blood when he was first born. Jareths birth, now that had been complicated and in extreme circumstances so that only the Labyrinths blessing had allowed him to reign...

*

"You can not keep doing this!" The voice was quick with ending patience.

"Why not?" This voice was slow, insolent and spoiled.

"Because as King of the Underground you have the responsibility-"

"Oh, responsibility! Don't you tell me about that! No one cares! It doesn't matter! As for the fortifications around the land they'll hold and no human could dream of stumbling through..."

"You know not what they are capable of!" The first voice sighed as he talked to thin, empty air that vibrated from the slammed, heavy oak door. Had the advisor known what was to come he would have fled. Instead he retired to his room and attempted to do some bookwork for his holding in the Upper Regions of the Underground.

He shook his head. How had he, Lord Darien fallen to this? To have to take that shit off that little pipsqueak that wasn't even a hundredth of the King that the past imbecile had been before. Centuries of peace and quiet had made them complacent. Only the ones that where millennia's old could remember what happened to he who took things foregranted...

He would have to do something about it. But what? He mussed on it in the night, figures and money forgotten for the moment.

"You little slut! You bitch! How dare you keep that from me!" The terrified girl started to cry and screamed as he hit her. The blow sent her spinning into the armour display. She squeezed her eyes shut on petrified tears and tried started to hyperventilate. Her ragged breathing coming faster and faster. She could only manage a squeak as he ripped her last pair of underwear from beneath her maids' uniform and pawed her with his animal, meaty hands.

He had opened her up when he had first rapped her slender form, but he was still huge inside of her, grunting and pounding inside of her. He was making her so sick with his bull neck and hair blanketed body.

She shut her eyes and out of pride controlled herself.

And what no one knew was the Goblin King was in love with a girl... No! Not that one. The fuckin' Goblin King was no one to be mooned over.

It took her back to the pain. The blood she could feel seeping between her legs from her womanhood as he plundered it. He groped her breasts and squeezed them so hard. The tears she hadn't let fall since her parents' death came in floods.

As he came, with vile grunts and heavy breathing he sneered at her. "Oh don't be such a little lying whore. We both know you wanted it. And, you weren't half bad. We'll just have to deal with the brat that you're carrying..." That arrogant, sophisticated voice that went with such an animal.

He stood up and walked away, leaving her on the floor in the blood and body fluids amongst the scattered amour. Maria turned her face sideways and starred at a distorted image of her face. The entire side of her face was bruising black, stark against the paleness of her white skin.

She would have been better off ugly, with pock marked red features like the rest of the damned castle; nobles included. Then this would never have happened to her.

Deal with that brat you're carrying. Over her dead body would that good for nothing fucking cunt touch her child, half-breed though it was.

Maria had been beaten almost as soon as she could walk. There where bumps and mounds of reunited bone under her porcelain skin. She had grown to expect to be beaten and lived in fear of the threat. It had kept her submissive and downtrodden. She was after all, worthless. But her baby...

Her baby would have the blood of noble kings tempered with the blood of the ordinary people of the Underground. They would not kill her baby for that; even it was poisoned by the legacy of his father...

She would have to flee. Now.

She felt strangely calm as she walked, exaggerating her hurt. It was death at least for run away servants.

"So. You let him get you again!" The Head Maid demanded, thin-lipped at the prospect of having another girl off sick.

She hung her head.

The Head Maid sighed. "Get some rest girl." She was all right really, the Head Maid Rachel. Not kind, but not unnecessarily cruel either.

Repressing the memory she walked on and past the quarters she shared with fifty other scrawny girls. Itching her lice, with her heart thudding in dread she walked down to the City. Servants weren't allowed in the City without leave. She tried to breathe calmly when all she wanted to do was run in blind panic.

Her feet where still taking her down the worn cobbled road, with the rest of the people. The guards on the gate only, to her relief whistled to her and yelled suggestive comments for if she needed say, a bed to sleep in, or someone to show her what a man could do. She tried to close her mind to the memories that brought up and stared in complete terror at the solider blocking her way. He'd hit her. He was sure to hit her. Please, only hit me. She couldn't take anymore of that, the shame and the humiliation. The pain and the memories...

"What's up kid?" He asked, winking at her, "I wasn't going to hurt ye." She started up at him. "Well, are you going to move on?"

She fled. Four months pregnancy couldn't slow her down just yet. Soon she had to slow to a walk, and she walked and she walked and she walked.

She walked till the cobbled road became a mud road. She went on as the roan got narrower with disuse and she walked in fear of them coming after her until she was stumbling between large trees that held berries. Maria was too hungry to care if they where poisoned or not, baby or no baby. She was after all just fifteen. Food was something you eat before it was stolen from you.

After she had eaten, she stumbled on as the sun spread it's brilliant flag across the sky before the moon came up lighting the Labyrinth in its dying light. When the moon was up it was a different, cold world. She had not stopped for a blanket or anything. But the moon seemed to speak in tongues to her. All the stories she had been told all the happy endings and all the hope she that she had once contained. Just the hope of being loved and wanted.

But who could want me?

Except as a bed warmer. And even then she had never even had the chance to sleep in a bed.

"You speak in tongues to me, oh sister moon. Hear me. Please let my baby live." And try as she might, she couldn't understand what the moon was telling her. It leeched the colour from the land, giving it it's crystalline, silver beauty. Soothing for the eyes after the harshness of day.

And it is said that the great King, the one that will liberate us from all of this will be a halfling. He will have one eye of the Earth, the ordinary peoples of the Underground and Aboveground and one ice blue eye of the High Fae. He will have the platinum locks of an elf and will release us all from this misery and liberate us...

Maria was so caught up in reciting the prophecy, to occupy her wilful mind she didn't realise she wasn't walking alone. She noticed the black figure of a man beside her and screamed. The figure started, he wasn't quite expecting that reaction but he caught Maria as she fainted, pitching towards the leaf litter that buried the earth from wicked sight.

He shrugged and slung her over his shoulder. He couldn't after all leave her in the Fire Forest. Not even a gamekeeper could do that to an unknown girl. There where dangers here that where not of human or Fae making...

Maria blinked and eased her good eye open. She was warm, in an incredibly soft blanket. Her swollen eye didn't feel too bad. Maybe it was the cold making her numb.

"How are you." She screamed, a muted sound from her dry, cracked throat. There was a patient sigh. "I'm not going to hurt you, but I would like to know what you where doing in the Fire Forest." The voice hinted. Her face went pale. The Fire Forest. She had been in the Forest. It would have been better to die by the Goblin Kings hand.

" And why would the Goblin King want to kill you."

She gasped and stared at the man with wide, shocked eyes. My baby.

"And who's your baby? What's so special about him?"

A halfling, her treacherous mind answered him.

The man sat still for so long it was torture. He was going to kill her. Why not do it now?

"No. I'm not going to kill you. That fate awaits another." His sad eyes moved from her stomach to meet her for once unflinching gaze.

I will die in childbirth. The fear set in her heart and chilled her soul, but she never considered getting rid of her baby.

The rain poured from the night sky, deep and overcast. It flowed across the top of the mud that was already flooding the full river and filled in the hole faster than the two men could dig it. Against the odds the hole was dug deep and deep enough and the sack was tossed in. They sloshed the mud back in the already oozing hole and went home to dry off in the warmth of their own homes and lifestyles. One, the taller was married; the other lived practically in the brothel. Both where content with that and where annoyed at the responsibility of having another whelp of a Fae to find a home for.

But above the screaming clouds the moon whispered goodbye to one of her children as she blessed her new child's arrival.

The King of the Underworld sprawled on his thrown in his soiled clothes. "Don't be an idiot man! How can they possibly do that? We are Fae! We are immortal! Mere humans and elves can not overthrow us!"

An iron bolt sang and vibed through the air as it worked it's subtle way to his eye. The iron poisoned his brain when it pierced it. He died in minutes his body slumping further into his seat, no more to breathe.

No one disputed the bastards right to rule. All rejoiced as the one with one brown gaze and one blue eye took the throne. All sang as he turned the greedy Fae into Goblins. All cheered as he let them stay and work for him. All celebrated in a party in his honour. All learned to fear his temper, all learned to jump and keep their mouths shut and take their pay when it was given.

And all breathed a sigh of relief when he fell in love and married his kind mistress who bore him three gifted sons and two gorgeous daughters. He seemed to have settled.

And was well in the Underground for merely centuries to come. And people forgot alarming fast. And when the humans tried to break through, the Great King Jareth, of the Goblin King as he was nicknamed built a Labyrinth of which he controlled completely – keeping his people in, and the humans from Aboveground out.

And more centuries pasted, until the legend was written down, and trapped in a book. Labyrinth was what it was titled.

*

Jareth rolled over and watched Jasmine. Her red hair that fell in fiery waves, her thick brown eyelashes that weighted her lids over blazing green eyes. Like most Fae type creatures she was tall, but in that graceful height she was rounded and curvaceous. Her ample breasts where softly hidden under the rich sheets.

He wondered if Sarah's nipples would be as large and pale as Jasmines. Coming back from his musing he realised his wife's nipples where stiff and erect. She was awake. "Still ogling me after all of these years?"

He grinned at the double meaning. "I still love you after all of these years."

"Oh good!" she cried in mock outrage. Jareth smirked and pounced under the covers as she squealed in surprised pleasure. Her hair was ginger, light all over her body to gather and be foxy. Sarah would be a dark lady...

There was a panicked knock at the door. Jareth raised his mouth reluctantly from his wife. "There better be a good reason for that!"

"I'm sorry Lord- Your- Your – Majesty!" The hapless person stammered, "but you must- should come quick!"

"Why?"

"The Labyrinth it- it- it-!"

Jareth was up and dressed, giving his wife an apologetic kiss on her pouty lips. Something she and Sarah had in common. I have to get over this Sarah thing. He told himself that firmly, as he hurried to repair the Labyrinth. Who knows how fast time is passing Aboveground anyway?

He was so preoccupied it hit him all at once. The deathly silence. The lifeless and the steadiness. The decay of the magic... that means the decay of me. His subjects, his wife and his children. They would be open to invasion.

What had caused it? What could stop it?

Jareth almost laughed. He was cursed with having to see that girl, his dark lady.

AN: So, do I quit while I'm ahead or do you want the next instalment? I have it all waiting to be typed... And apologies for spelling.