Sarah's father sat uncomfortably in the chair that had been set out for him as he looked long and drawn at his broken daughter.

"Oh, sweetheart…."

He sniffed cautiously, attempting to stifle the flood of emotions bearing down on him as he gingerly raised his hand to rest his fingers upon his daughter's.

"They said….they said that you probably wouldn't be able to talk very much. They've only given me five minutes. They won't let me stay since this is ICU."

He looked down and delicately stroked her hand in his. Sarah weakly pressed her lips together as she furrowed her brow and attempted to squeeze his fingers in some sign of comfort.

"Dad…."

"What is it honey?"

"How bad is it?" she asked quietly. "I…they won't raise my bed so I can't see."

Her father sighed and leaned back some in his chair as he looked briefly around the room before looking back at his daughter.

"Oh Sarah, I'm not going to lie to you. I know you hate it when you think I do," he said, smiling slightly. "But you're in pretty bad shape, darling. The doctors don't quite know the extent of it yet."

Sarah tried to nod but was once again thwarted by her neck brace which was quickly raising her stress levels even further due to frustration.

"When do you think they will know?" she asked.

"I'm not sure. Tonight? Probably tomorrow. The nurses said you were stable for now, so that's a good thing. You've got a lot of broken bones, but bones can heal, right?" he said with a wry smile. Sarah couldn't help but smile back.

"Yeah," she replied. Her father squeezed her fingers gently again as the nurse slid the door open.

"I'm sorry, but time's up for now. Mr. Williams, you can visit your daughter again tomorrow afternoon if you like."

"Tomorrow afternoon?" Sarah said in a panic.

Her father looked back and forth from the nurse to his little girl and gave Sarah a reassuring smile. "Don't worry, honey. I'll be there, and I'll be there early. Alright?" He rose to his feet and looked down at her. Hesitating, he slowly bent over and kissed her gingerly on the forehead.

"See you soon," he said softly.

The nurse held the sliding door open for him as he nodded to her and departed. Sarah was beside herself. The tears began to well up again and quickly, with no one there to catch them. The salt fell into some of the more smaller scratches on her face and Sarah hissed to herself as she attempted to choke back the tears. The nurse stepped into the room and looked down at Sarah pitifully and pulled another tissue from the tissue box and began to dab Sarah's face.

"I know it's hard, dear, seeing family after something like this. It's late, though. How about you get some sleep? I'll be right back and bring you something to help you rest, alright?" The nurse disposed of the tissue and left the room, leaving Sarah all alone again.

She sighed and resumed staring at the ceiling. She couldn't think of anything. Her mind kept drawing blanks. What could she do? There was nothing she could do- not like this. She couldn't even move. Couldn't even wipe away her own tears. She'd had to rely on the nurse and…Jareth.

Her eyes began searching the room. Sitting inconspicuously in the corner of the room in a far removed chair was the Goblin King himself, arms folded, and watching Sarah intently.

"You're back," she said, straining her eyes to see far enough in his direction.

"I never left," he said, nonchalantly.

"But my father…he didn't see you."

"He wasn't looking for me, was he? He was looking for you."

Sarah sighed and glanced around the room in an attempt to quell her tears. Jareth leaned back in the metal hospital chair and narrowed his eyes. Sarah sighed again and did her best to get a good look at him but the best she could see was from the shoulders up in her restrained position.

"What?" Sarah asked, put off by his expression.

"She's coming back."

"Huh?" Sarah replied, confused, as the nurse suddenly slid the door open again and noisily set a small glass jar atop Sarah's bedside table.

"Here we are, dear," the nurse said. "Something to help you sleep."

Sarah started to breath heavily as she looked back at the corner of the room and saw Jareth still sitting there with the same expression. He hadn't vanished, and the nurse took no notice of him at all.

"No…no I don't want it, thank you," she said in a mild panic, fighting the drugs already in her system.

"I'm afraid you don't have much of a choice, my dear. You need rest, and this will be the only way for awhile."

"No, I can sleep on my own, I promise. Really!"

"Now, now dear," the nurse cooed, sticking a syringe in the top of the glass jar. She filled the small shot to capacity and began injecting it into Sarah's I.V. bag.

"No, please, really…" Sarah pleaded. The effects of the drug were almost instantaneous and her head began to veritably swim as her vision blurred. "Jareth, please, don't let them do this to me, please…" she tried to say, but her speech came out slurred.

"There, there, dear. Sleep well, alright? Lots of tests in the morning," the nurse said cheerfully. She placed the spent needle in the appropriate receptacle and turned off the lights, closing the door behind her. Sarah was left in almost perfect darkness save for the few shafts of light filtering in through the spaces between the blinds.

Her eyelids finally became too heavy to keep open, and despite fighting it, she slipped easily into unconsciousness. A shadowy figure got up from his seat, passed the foot of her bed, slid open the door, and left.

Sarah awoke to the lights already on and a nurse in blue scrubs checking her charts. She felt groggy and drugged and not entirely sure of where she was. When she tried to roll over, thinking she'd check her alarm clock, she found she couldn't, and was rudely reminded that most of her body was in a cast and sighed. The nurse saw her move and smiled.

"Good morning, Miss Williams! How are you feeling this morning?"

Sarah mumbled in reply.

"Still a little drowsy from the sleep meds? It'll take a little while to wear off completely. You've got a pretty busy day today. Some tests, x-rays, and a couple of examinations to do before the doctors can give you a full diagnosis. When you arrived last night, we were only able to address your initial injuries and get you stable. Today's the day for the grunt work, I'm afraid," the nurse grinned. She flipped through a few more pages of Sarah's chart, made a note on one page, and hung it back on the foot of the hospital bed.

"Breakfast?" Sarah managed to croak out in reply. The nurse laughed.

"Are you hungry? I'll be sure to check your I.V. to make sure everything's working properly, otherwise you don't need any food."

Sarah's eyes widened as she tried to glance at the fluids bag that had to be needled into her body somewhere but couldn't look that far. The nurse ducked briefly out of Sarah's sight and began checking the instruments at her bedside.

"I'll tone down some of the other medications they put you on last night. If you start to feel any serious pain or stress, however, just buzz us and we'll come to help," she said as she adjusted a couple of plastic sliders. "There. That'll help you to chipper up a little more soon. We'll come to get you in a few minutes for the first round of exams, so I'll leave you for a little while to wake up some more before it begins, ok?"

The nurse smiled to Sarah as she slid open the door and left. As the drugs began to dissipate gradually, she found she could hold thoughts again. She thought about how many tiles were on the ceiling, and about the new batch of nurses at the nurses' station just outside her door. She thought about the sick and injured people being rushed up and down the hall, just as she had probably been, but never once did she think about the accident itself. About ten minutes later, the nurse returned with two of her more buff colleagues and she was wheeled down the hall and onto the elevator.

Her first stop was for a full body CAT scan. Unbeknownst to her, all of her new encasements were either entirely plaster or plastic, no metal screws and latches required. It wasn't hard lying still for the machine. It was all she could do. Afterwards she was wheeled into a room, still lying down, and examined by doctor after doctor. They examined her external injuries, her eyes, her ears, her lungs, they tried to examine her muscular and skeletal damage but it was difficult with the casts. Sarah lost track of what was going on after the fourth doctor. Eventually she blocked the entire process out and found her mind floating away, answering questions by reflex, and off to somewhere else entirely. At some point it occurred to her that she was late for work, but later dismissed the worry as impossible to be concerned over. She remembered that tomorrow was the day to pay all of her utility bills, and that the fish needed to be fed. Sarah sighed. Her father would take care of that for her, she supposed.

"Everything alright, Miss Williams? I'm not hurting you, am I?" the latest doctor asked.

"Oh, no," she replied. "Sorry, I've lost count of the doctors I've seen today," she said half-heartedly. "I suppose I zoned out for a bit."

The doctor frowned. "Zoned out? Hmmm…" He stood up, and one by one shined a small flashlight into each of Sarah's eyes to check her pupils, and did it twice. "Well, I'll have to put that in my notes, Miss Williams. Sorry to say, but in your condition, every detail must be accounted for. I'm done here. I'll call the nurse to take you back to your room now."

Sarah gave the doctor an obligatory 'thank you' as he left the room and she waited to be taken away again, hearing the door click shut behind him.

"So what do you think they're going to find, dear Sarah?"

Sarah jumped at the sudden voice at her ear, causing a ripple of pain to shoot through her body at the reflexive jolt. She heard something behind her step to the other side of the bed, still out of sight.

"Will they find everything to be roses and sunshine? Just a few cuts and bruises and a handful of broken bones?" he said again, this time at her other ear.

"Stop it. Why are you doing this? Come out where I can see you," Sarah said, frustrated. There was a pause, and Jareth stepped out from behind Sarah's hospital bed slowly, arms crossed in front of him as he glared at Sarah from the corner of his eye.

"Why are you doing this? Why of all times are you here now? I didn't call you. You're-you're not even supposed to be real!" Sarah's voice cracked.

The Goblin King's eyes widened in feral disbelief. "Not real? Not real? And did you simply conjure up these injuries up as well?" he said in a raised voice and poked Sarah hard on her exposed foot. She tried to cringe.

"No, stop!" she cried, trying to master the pain without breathing too hard.

"So if I'm not real, girl, then neither is what those doctors of yours are discussing this very moment," he snapped.

Sarah's eyes widened as she tried desperately to get comfortable again.

"Yes, I can see you sense it," he said, and held out both his hands palm up in front of him. "Will it be good?" he said, raising up one palm, "Or will it be bad?" he said again, lowering another.

"I want you…to go," Sarah said, struggling. "I didn't call you here. You've no business here. You need to go."

Jareth stood still for a moment, as if slightly thrown off, before regaining his composure again.

"Let me tell you one thing, dearest Sarah, just one thing," he continued, wagging his finger at her briefly before placing his arms on either side of her bed rails. He paused and looked her dead in the eye. Sarah was too tired to be afraid or have any more response. She merely looked at him in silence.

"No, you didn't call me here, at least not in any way that you're aware of, but there may come a time….." he said emphatically, pausing. "There may come a time when you will desire to call me by name, and when that time comes…" he said, leaning back away from her bed. He smiled smugly as he crossed his arms over his chest once more and looked down at her bemusedly. Sarah looked up at him and tried to laugh but only ended up coughing for several long seconds.

"You'll what?" she said, gaining control of her coughing. "You'll pester me until I do? Hang around and gloat superiorly thinking it has any effect? You're making me laugh, and laugh with broken ribs no less," she chuckled half heartedly.

"Oh, on the contrary. You won't need any 'pestering' from me, as you put it," Jareth said through a tight smile.

"And why is that? I'm not 14 anymore, you know. Whatever childish prank you're thinking of pulling won't work on me."

Jareth's eyes grew serious and his face cold as he looked at Sarah. "No, you're not," he replied, in a voice that Sarah noted was a drastic contrast from the one he'd been using up till now. She stared back at him in silence, half waiting for him to continue when the door to her exam room opened and a new nurse with new grunts walked in and began to wheel her out of the room, never noticing the man who stood off to the side, glowering.

Sarah was taken to a new room she'd never been in before in a calmer part of the hospital. When she arrived, her father and step-mother were both there. It should've made her happy, but something about this gathering seemed to usher in an air of foreboding for Sarah. Her father immediately took a seat next to her once she had been settled in by the nurses and Karen took to standing concerned yet nervous at the foot of her bed trying not to pace. As the nurses began to file out, a doctor who didn't look much older than 30 stepped into her new room and began shaking hands before taking hold of a clip board he'd brought in with him and started flipping through the pages.

"Glad to see you with company, Miss Williams. It's good to have support at moments like these. We've gotten the test results back, and-"

"Please, doctor," her father interrupted. "Just cut to the chase. We've all been through so much, especially Sarah. Just tell us- is she going to be ok?"

The doctor looked up at him and quietly cleared his throat before flipping to another page on his clipboard and examining it carefully.

"Well, the thing is, Mr. and Mrs. Williams, that I and the other doctors who have examined Sarah today are somewhat in disagreement about the results. I suppose you could say that our findings are at the moment inconclusive," the doctor said, scratching the side of his face with his pen.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Sarah asked, concerned, as she struggled to look farther forward. As she did so, she caught a glimpse of familiar, serious eyes watching her from the other side of the window looking into her room. She stared into them for a moment before shifting her attention back to the doctor who watched her and raised his eyebrows before moving to raise the back of Sarah's bed up just slightly so that she could see things better.

"Thank you so much for that," she said, focusing back on her surroundings. "I asked the nurses earlier to raise me up but they wouldn't do it."

The doctor nodded. "Yes, they were worried about spinal damage, and rightly so. For now, from what we've found, you should be alright as long as you're only propped up this high."

Sarah nodded to the doctor who nodded back and went back to his notes. Sara glanced back out her window and did her best to ignore the man on the other side.

"As I was saying," the doctor continued. Sarah's eyes snapped back to the physician. "We are not exactly in agreement over the extent of Miss Williams's injuries. For the most part, the examinations and diagnoses made on the night she came in are still the same, however, in order to placate one of the doctors who had some concerns over some dizziness and lack of focus that she seems to be having, we're ordering a full CT scan first thing tomorrow morning, just to make sure there's no serious brain damage. Miss Williams sustained a concussion in the car accident which would account for the disorientation but this doctor still has some concerns so we're going to check it out just to be safe."

Sarah's father turned to her with a look of deep concern and nodded comfortingly. Sarah sighed and looked up at him and then at the doctor, wanting to ask questions but not knowing where to start.

"What time will the CT scan be, doctor?" she asked instead.

"We've got you down for the first slot in the morning, so it'll be at about 7:30am. We'll give you something to help you sleep once you're finished visiting with your parents so you'll be fresh for tomorrow."

The doctor made a few notes on Sarah's chart, scribed a few notes on his own clipboard, and nodded to Sarah and her family before departing.

"Where's Toby?" she asked.

"Oh," Karen began hesitatingly. "Well, you know, he's still a kid. We wanted to come see how you were doing first before we brought him over, you know?" Her step-mother tried to smile reassuringly to Sarah.

"You mean I'm so mangled that you don't want Toby to have nightmares for weeks after seeing me, right?" Sarah grinned and tried to laugh.

"Never, sweetheart," her father broke in. "He's your brother. He's family, and he loves you. We just don't want to overwhelm you with small children just yet."

Sarah smiled and nodded, squeezing his hand with her free fingers.

"Sorry we're only seeing you now, dear," Karen said. "We've actually been here for hours but they kept you so long for tests that we didn't get to see you until now."

"That's alright," Sarah said. "Do you have to go?"

"No, no, we've got a little bit of time," her father said, smiling.

They talked for about 20 minutes before a nurse wielding an additional I.V. bag stepped into her room and began making the preparations to help Sarah to sleep.

"Not as strong as what they gave you last night, Miss Williams, but I hope you're a little more acclimated now."

Sarah said nothing but continued to look at her father as he smiled down at her. At the urging of the nurse, they soon had to say goodbye, and after they left, Sarah and the nurse were left alone. She hung the bag alongside Sarah's main one and began making the appropriate adjustments.

"There you go, Miss Williams. You should be able to fall asleep more naturally tonight. This will just give you a little push," she said with a smile. "If you need anything, just give us a buzz."

Sarah smiled and nodded to the nurse as she left and yawned to herself. She let out a deep sigh, and as her eyes swept back across the room, she happened upon Jareth who had seated himself down and was flipping dispassionately through a random magazine that had been left on the seat. Sarah felt the great urge to cock her head to the side, if she even could.

"So is this it?" Sarah said quietly. Jareth continued to turn pages. "You're just going to stalk me through the hospital until I call on you? And for what? To save me? All this will heal."

Jareth paused mid page-turn and stared down at the magazine. He sighed silently and closed it, placing it down on his lap without raising his eyes. "You seem so certain, Sarah," he said, amicably, looking up.

Sarah smiled emptily at him. "Because I am. This is a hospital. This is where they heal people. Where human people are healed- so why don't you tell me what you really want, hmm?" Sarah's voice became gradually louder as she delicately arched her brow. Jareth dropped the magazine to the floor and rose to his feet as he approached the foot of Sarah's hospital bed.

"Are you really that dim? Or do you just remember nothing of our little encounter nearly 12 years ago?" he said, crossing his arms once more, which was quickly annoying Sarah. She looked up at him defiantly with a questioning expression.

"The hands on the clock I presented you with held how many hours? Thirteen, did it not?" Jareth replied as he stepped slowly away from her bed. He stopped short of the door and paused, looking at Sarah's eyes with his mismatched ones. Sarah's composure wavered slightly and prayed he didn't sense it. The slow drip the nurse had added was beginning to disrupt her thoughts as she fought back a yawn. "So?" she prompted slowly. His gaze stayed steady upon hers. "There are only 26 hours in a day, Sarah."

Sarah frowned and looked away confused as Jareth turned back towards the door and slowly turned the nob to leave. Sarah's frown deepend, and as he opened the door wider, Sarah gasped. "What day is it?" Jareth paused in place as she struggled to try and look at him from her ridged position. "Today. What day is it today?" Sarah sighed in exasperation over her lack of mobility, even risking pain to try and shift herself as Jareth turned his face to the side without looking at her. "It is September 25th, two days…." Jareth paused and looked up for a moment, as if in waiting, before lowering his head again. "One day, now, before your 26th birthday."

Sarah let out a heavy breath, and then another, and another, as Jareth stepped out of the room, closing the door behind him.

Thanks for sticking it out to chapter 2, guys! This chapter was REALLY hard for me to write, which might be apparent in the styling. It took me multiple days to write, which isn't how I do things. Please let me know how you think it went, but please also know that there's only one more chapter of setup after this and then we're off and running! So, please bear with me as the setup continues. I also want to give a special thank you to jinx1764 for volunteering to be my on-set medical adviser and making sure I get things vaguely right medically, haha. Thanks again, and see you all at chapter three! -KS xo (don't forget to review!)