And because Jareth appreciated that kind of selfishness, he couldn't help but love Sarah for it. Being in a place where everything fit but yourself, being asked to watch over something that was your duty, taking certain privileges for granted…She was lovely, and so he loved her. She was the same as he was, in a way. Their fathers had spoiled them, and their mothers didn't want them, and the responsibilities their parents asked of them were too much for their young worlds.
It had been many years since Jareth had felt as lost and overwhelmed as Sarah was, but the deep sting of responsibility at a young age—especially responsibilities he knew were his despite everything—had twinged in him as he offered her the crystal (which she took it for granted, of course. Every time he produced one she could have asked for it and been done with the Labyrinth). He was selfish in that he didn't tell her that he could alleviate all of her "suffering" on a whim, because no one had offered him such a thing.
Her baby brother was as darling a boy as she was lovely—and Jareth wondered if he should just erase Sarah's memory of the Above and keep them both. He would have a woman to love, and a son to cherish—without having to barter for one as his father had. But Toby would have to go. Toby was an even more foreign name than his own, and hearing Sarah constantly yelling it out in the Labyrinth—because he could hear her every word, but was content to let her play out her schemes—made him determined to rename the boy.
The blond baby would not face the same problems Jareth himself had so long ago, with a foreign name—although something vain in Jareth wanted to give the child his own name. Or something lovely in goblin, like Bleen which meant kingly, or Kiffle which meant loved—he couldn't really decide, and put it off. He would name the boy once he won him from Sarah truly.
Sarah. Her concepts of time, and fairness were so very alien to him and he was quite sure the novelty would never wear off. Her assumptions of life, about the Labyrinth were so very colored by the world she had been raised in—her view of him as her villain when all he was trying to do was to give in to every one of her selfish whims. She was an answer to him, but also a problem.
He so desperately wanted to keep her, but he couldn't as she was—he would outlive her by centuries, and that tore at an already ragged hole in his heart. His parents had been far more like her, far more mortal, than he—he was a changeling child, a goblin in the body of an elf, and they had died while he had still been a youth. Sarah would in all likelihood follow their path, and he would be left alone.
As he looked at her steadily making her way through his Labyrinth, he hit upon a solution—it would be an experimental magic at best—if it failed she would go back to her life in the Above still hating her brother, still unruly and selfish. But if it worked she would stay with him, she would be his and would never want for the Above again. So he went into the tiny room where he kept Eternity—where time stood still within those four walls, ceiling, and floor—and devised the spells to keep her with him, to keep her living.
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