A/N-- So I'm updating a little earlier at the expense of a longer chapter. I think, considering my somewhat impulsive and consistently impatient nature, that this will probably be the norm. Plus, the end was just a good place to pause. I hope that you like it! Your reviews have been great, I've really appreciated them. Please, if you read, take the necessary 20 seconds to leave a review, even if it's only a love it/like it/hate it. Thanks, and happy reading!

Sarah leaned over Jareth, uncertain of what she might need to do to help him. He was still out cold, although his icy skin had warmed considerably, thanks to the electric blanket. She looked at him for another moment, committing to memory every facet of the face that she hadn't seen in ten years; noticing the small lines at the corners of his eyes and his mouth, the high cheekbones, the pale skin that was stretched so taut over his face, even when he was asleep. She ran her fingers across his sharply angled eyebrows, and down the bridge of his nose. He didn't have any of the colors that she remembered from her time Underground, and his face looked more human for it. She remembered the fire that was in his face, the smirking, sly amusement that he always found at her expense. Well, remembering how she had behaved, she couldn't blame him at all. She ran her hands up to his hair, and stopped at the tangles that she could see had formed in the feathery blond strands.

She straightened back from him, and went to fetch a hairbrush from her vanity. Sarah perched on the bed near his head, easing behind the pillows, and then removing them to pull his head onto her lap. She bit her lips before giving in to her smile, imagining what the Goblin King might say to her if he awoke to find them in such an intimate posture. She gently began to run the brush through Jareth's hair, carefully brushing out the many tangles that resulted, apparently, from being thrown into a lake, pulled out by one's boots, and then hauled through a mirror into another land. She stopped at a particularly devious snarl, teasing it out softly.

What was going on? So Jareth was thrown in a lake, by two elves. Elves, apparently, equaled politics. Was Jareth an elf? What kind of elf? Obviously not the stereotypical kind. She pulled his hair back from his ears, which were slightly more pointed than hers, but not very noticeably. Perhaps the mythical Celtic kind? The Fae? Sarah knew a little bit about the myths, but not much. She knew that they were called the Sidhe, that they had their own courts, that time moved differently for them. Well, it had certainly moved differently for her. Her brain began repeating itself… she did not know much. If that was the kind of elf that Hoggle had been talking about in the first place. Maybe it had been slang. Maybe it had meant something completely different than what it meant Aboveground.

Sarah made a face at herself as she tried to theorize without any real information at all. She knew better than that. The brush moved smoothly through Jareth's hair now, and Sarah regretfully laid it down, moving to let Jareth recline on the bed again. She wondered if she should even bother trying to pump Hoggle for more information. Well, if Jareth didn't wake up sometime during the day, then she'd call Hoggle for help, come Hell, high water, or elves.

The goblins were going through the pantry when Sarah went downstairs. She sighed, and wondered what ramifications they would have on everything. Did Jareth even know that they visited her? She sighed again, and decided to get an early start on supper. It would be one less thing to worry about when Karen came home, and she had to tell her that the Goblin King was upstairs in her bedroom. She started chopping vegetables and browning the beef for a stew, wondering what in the world she was going to do. She told herself to stop dithering. There wasn't anything that she could do until Jareth woke up.

What would happen when he woke up? Would he act the same way that he had in the Labyrinth? Flirtatious, angry, daunting throughout. She'd thought long and hard about what Jareth had meant when he said that he had done everything that she had wanted… he had been absolutely right. He had given her the most amazing adventure, and had transformed himself into someone that might be completely different than who he might really be. How would she know, given the limited interaction that she'd had with him to begin with?

Sarah had had ten years to reflect on her experiences with the Goblin King, and she didn't feel good about them. She had been a selfish brat; although she had been threatened with some pretty horrific things in the Labyrinth, like decapitation by Fiery, and being mowed down by the cleaners, she hadn't actually gotten hurt at all… which made her wonder how much of it was meant to hurt her, and how much of it was meant to teach her a lesson. Looking back with the eyes of an adult, if those had been real situations, maiming and death would have been far more typical of confronting wild animals (and throwing away their heads), and of barely running ahead of a steel drill with torturous-looking attachments.

What about the flirting, and the intimidation tactics? How much of what she had seen of him was genuine, and how much of it was the persona that he played up to someone who tried to win through his labyrinth?

She had the stew simmering on the stove and the dishes finished before she thought to glance at the clock, and astonished at how much time had passed. It seemed, despite, or perhaps because of all the chaos, that quite a lot had happened in only a little bit of time, but it was already after one. She wished that she knew what to do… she stilled as she heard a crash from her parents room, and was running up the stairs in a flash.

She paused at the threshold, seeing a very handsome, very nude Goblin King standing unsteadily near the bed. She saw him focus on her blearily, his eyes still sleepy and confused.

"Sarah?" He looked completely, utterly bewildered.

Sarah approached him cautiously, and took his arm, gently leading him back down onto the bed, and beneath the covers.

She spoke softly and clearly, "Hoggle pulled you up from a lake that you'd been tossed in by two elves. He brought you here Aboveground to my house, because he didn't think you'd be safe in the castle." Jareth frowned slightly, remembering, before the lines in his forehead deepened abruptly, and then Sarah jumped, startled by the low, deep growl that had just come from him.

He started to sit up again, but Sarah placed her hand on his shoulder, surprising both of them, the contact between her hand and his bare shoulder electric. She pushed him back down, slightly, and he leaned back, staring at her.

"Your Majesty, before you get up to take care of whatever has happened, I want to make sure that you're healthy. Can you tell me why you've been unconscious so long? Is there anything that I can get for you?"

Jareth continued to stare at her, and there was a little line between his eyes, indicating his puzzlement. Finally, he responded:

"Your Majesty?" he arched his eyebrow. "You never called me that, before."

Sarah blinked, surprised that, of all the ways he could have responded, he had chosen to react to her use of his title.

"Age has taught me respect, I suppose." She smiled a little self deprecatingly. "It was very rude of me to treat you so… harshly, the last time that we met. I'm sorry."

Jareth nodded, still staring, and then sent her a very charming smile. "Apology accepted, Sarah. Please, call me Jareth."

So, the flirting was still on.