Disclaimer: Lucasfilms, Henson Studios, et al. own The Labyrinth.

EDIT: Hokay. I was continuing with the scent of the blanket to point up its link to the life she's left and to show that, no, I hadn't forgotten something of which I'd made a bit of a deal earlier. But since it was clearly distracting more than one person, I played it down a bit. That's the only concession this chapter.


Dinner had been simple open-faced sandwiches and a warm soup that had been little more than a flavorful broth with mushrooms floating in it. It had taken fifteen minutes for Jareth to convince Sarah that the food was safe. That conversation had been fun, in its own insane way. That Jareth frightened her was getting harder to recall, and Sarah had to forcibly remind herself of the fact. Hadn't she just promised to give him a proper chance only six hours ago? That implied mistrust. That kind of mistrust didn't go away in a day! And certainly not if her pride had anything to say about it!

The peace they'd found in the study had indeed only lasted about halfway through the meal. And to be fair, Sarah had started it; she'd reminded Jareth that she didn't intend to stay all that long. While he didn't start shouting, he hadn't reacted all that well.

"No, Sarah," he said in the patient tone one reserves for contrary children. "You made it through the Labyrinth, won back the child, and have become the new ruler." He was careful while setting down a short, undecorated silver tumbler of water. Had Sarah been a little less aggravated, she'd have noticed that he moved with the exaggerated air of someone who wanted to slam his drink onto the table but was too dignified to do so. "That's how it is."

"Why?" Her voice was tightly controlled. It didn't seem like such a bad idea, the one she'd had back Aboveground. She'd set Jareth down at the gate, he'd go through the Labyrinth; since the expectations of the runner shaped the world while he was there, Jareth would carefully avoid expecting Sarah to challenge him. Hell, it wouldn't be too hard to expect her not to hinder him while he was in the Labyrinth; it served her purpose to leave him alone. He'd go through without any trouble, solve it, and regain his throne. It seemed appallingly simple to Sarah. She said as much through clenched teeth.

"That's not how it works." That was another phrase Sarah was beginning to hate. Jareth leaned back in his high-backed wooden chair and deliberately folded his hands across his stomach. "The challenger has to have wished something important and valuable away."

"A child?"

"Usually. It's traditional. And they are very valuable here in the Underground."

Sarah unconsciously leaned forward a bit. "Valuable?"

"Oh, yes." Jareth smiled, back in indulgent-teacher mode. "Being long-lived as we are, Nature made it difficult for us to conceive and for our women to carry to term. If we bred like humans, there would be serious population problems." The teacher look went away, replaced by the less wide-eyed, more knowing smug expression he more normally wore. "We did an especially brisk trade in changelings in the Middle Ages."

"Changelings?" Sarah breathed. Then, she jerked back and leveled a finger at Jareth, eyes narrowed to slits. "Don't change the subject," she snapped. If Jareth was disappointed that she'd resisted her own curiosity, he didn't show it. "Do you have a child? Does it have to be a child? You said 'something important and valuable'."

The former king rolled those fascinating mismatched eyes, and Sarah found it momentarily easier to forget that he was attractive and thus focus on her goal. "In order: no, no, and yes, I did say that."

"Well, do you have something to wish away?" Sarah didn't examine too closely the relief she felt at his answers. If she did, she'd pinpoint which answer relieved her, and she did not want to think of that now, if at all. Instead, she focused on a spot on the wall just to the right of Jareth's head.

"My estate, but it would be… disrespectful to wish that away." Jareth drew her gaze again by flashing a brilliant, sharp grin and drawling, "My parents, in particular, wouldn't enjoy coming out of their front door to find that they'd landed in the middle of the Goblin Castle. And the castle wouldn't take it kindly to be forced to rearrange itself to encompass a country estate."

Sarah glowered at Jareth, muttering, "I thought you said the castle wasn't sentient."

"I also said that the Labyrinth might have given it ideas."

"Everything here is so literal." This she muttered into her own water tumbler before taking a sip. Almost sullenly, she thumped the tumbler back onto the table. "Well, is there anything else you can wish to me? Really, I promise that I won't get in the way, and you'll get it back."

At that, Jareth looked uncomfortable. "That's not –"

"- how it works," she finished for him, deadpan. Their supper sat half-finished and forgotten between them. With a wrinkled nose, Sarah asked, "How does it work this time, then?"

The way he smiled in response annoyed her. His expression was indulgent and amused, as though she were a precocious child. Hardly appropriate, then, Sarah thought sourly, if he's supposedly enamored of me.

"The spell requires that you have to want to wish it away. The motivation is the yearning to get rid of what you're wishing away."

"And with you still being here, wishing it to me wouldn't really be getting rid of it, anyway, would it?"

He blinked. "Yes. That, too." Another smile flashed, but this time it stayed, and it was decidedly more brilliant than the last. He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table and lacing his fingers together. If he leaned in any further or tilted his head a degree lower, he'd be gazing at her through his lashes. "Clever girl. I had not thought of that."

Resist the allure, Sarah, she ordered herself, averting her eyes. Suddenly, the sparse, spiky green design on the black soup bowl was fascinating, and the way it looped in on itself served as a way to focus her fresh outrage. After six years, he invades your home and interrupts dinner, and here he is, six hours later, trying to charm you into bed! Well. Maybe it wasn't quite as drastic as all that. He was charming her, certainly, but if his aim were bed, Sarah was fairly sure that he'd be trying a little harder. Maybe… maybe that was just an actual compliment, she thought, finally lifting her gaze to his.

It was clear from the smug, amused, knowing look on Jareth's face that he'd been able to read Sarah's entire argument with herself on her face. Her brows snapped together in a glower, and Jareth's smug look widened into a smug half-smile that showed a few teeth.

Sarah's fingers curled into loose fists; they itched to smack that look off of his face. She willed him not to say anything, because asking him not to would just prompt him to demand an explanation. She could just imagine it:

'Don't say a word.'

'I beg your pardon? I wasn't intending to speak. Is something wrong?'

'Nothing!'

'Oh?' Even in her imagination, he was insufferable! 'Clearly not. What could've prompted such an outburst? What did you expect me to say?'

'…'

'Sarah?'

"Sarah."

"Sarah."

She started. He was actually speaking! "What?" she answered, not quite snapping.

Gone was the smugness, replaced entirely by amusement. Simultaneously, Sarah was relieved and annoyed. The relief was because while Jareth was as attractive as before, simple amusement rendered him friendly. The annoyance was because he was laughing at her.

"We're getting nothing else done tonight, that much is clear," Jareth drawled. "I suggest we retire. A bath and bed will do us both good."

Her eyes narrowed. "I'm going to need my own room. It didn't look like you'd had time to move out." Sarah instinctively crossed her arms, and her eyes narrowed to slits. "We can't both have the royal suite."

"Ah, you suspicious thing!" he cried, half-laughing. The former king leaned back. Resting one ankle on the opposite knee, he lifted both hands, palm-out, to shoulder height. "You wouldn't trust a rock, would you?"

With one twirled finger, which indicated everything, Sarah retorted, "The Underground."

The easy grin Jareth offered in response was still simply an entertained one. "You've learned some lessons well," he admitted. With a scrape, he pushed back his chair and rose fluidly to his feet. "But not quite well enough," he continued, waggling a finger. "I'll show you."

Sarah frowned at the hand he extended to her. Then she relented, and he helped her to her feet. With his free hand, Jareth made a quick, flashing gesture, and the world around them spun halfway around. When it stilled, they stood in the white-and-gold bedroom that Jareth had brought Sarah to that afternoon. She couldn't resist gaping.

Gone were the tapestries that had adorned the walls; these were replaced by blank white panels. The headboard of the bed was still set against one wall, but the wall it was on had changed; the footboard and its accompanying plain trunk faced the door to the anteroom. Where elaborately embroidered drapes had hung around the bed now hung three layers of thin, fine material. The detailed carpet, to which Sarah hadn't paid much attention to begin with, was gone as well. The gray stone tile floor was cool even through her sneakers. Only a single, wide, thickly-piled off-white rug stretched between the bed and one of the doors set into the wall to her left. On the far side of the bed stood a chest of drawers made from a honey-colored wood and topped with a slab of marble. On top stood a plain white pitcher and bowl.

The only thing that stood out was her neatly folded blue-and-green blanket from home. Halfheartedly, she hoped that the thing hadn't been laundered in her absence.

"You'd forgotten magic," Jareth said over her shoulder in a chiding tone, making her jump slightly.

Recovering and taking two steps away, she retorted dryly, "And I'd forgotten I'd given you permission to use it freely."

He grinned. "And don't think I'm going to offer to relinquish it. What's said is said." There he was, finally – the predator, the part of him that wouldn't bow to anyone, no matter what or who. Sarah'd wondered where that part of him had retreated to, and she was surprised to find herself relieved that it was not permanently gone.

"Oh? And if I command it?" she ventured. Surprising herself again, Sarah found that she was only half-serious. She couldn't keep the half-smile off her face.

An echoing smirk spread across Jareth's face. Even as the smile lines deepened and added a few crows' feet at the corner of his left eye, Sarah reflected that he still didn't seem old. An absent part of her mind wondered what his age was.

"You wouldn't cripple your teacher, now would you, Sarah?" he asked in a teasing lilt. One long fingered hand came up to rest on his hip, just above the hem of his black jerkin. The other began to wave back and forth, toying with a crystal ball that suddenly was there. "Crystal magic is a specialty known only to monarchs, and who among your new peers would teach their rival something so exceptional?" This last came out more seriously, and with a final wave, the crystal sphere was gone.

Trying to keep the tone light, for she had no more energy for arguments or politics, Sarah sighed gustily and conceded, "Okay, fine." She waved a finger. "But there'd better not be any surprises in here. No listening spells, no watching spells, nothing."

To her relief, Jareth seemed as reluctant as she to return to solemnity. He loudly sighed, too, and said, "Now, why would you think that of me?" His tone was comically petulant. "Don't you trust me?" Dark lashes fluttered over the mismatched eyes, and Sarah had to snort.

A pause followed where they looked quietly at each other. After only a few moments, Sarah's nerves quailed.

"Promise me," she said, unwillingly serious, unhappy that the command made him shut himself back behind the bland mask he'd adopted. Before he could reply, she hurried to say, "I trust you to be a man of your word." Jareth blinked, startled out from behind the mask, if only for a moment; he seemed as stunned as she to discover that she meant it. "I just need your word."

Sarah almost missed the look of sadness that crossed his face before he smiled gently at her. "You have it. This room is bare of anything to do with me. It is magically dead. It will remain so until you learn enough to make it otherwise." He took a step backward from her and bowed from the waist. "I promise."

Just a moment before he teleported away, she whispered, "Thank you." Then she was left standing in the middle of a room bare of magic and nearly bare of anything that spoke of who might have ever lived there. It left Sarah feeling chilled and restless.

In a flash, her annoyance returned when she realized that she had nothing to wear to bed, that she had nothing fresh to wear tomorrow, and she didn't want to relocate Jareth just to remedy that situation. And even though she took him at his word that there was no watching spell, Sarah wished heartily not to sleep in the nude. Not here. Not so soon. A few hurried steps brought her to the knee-high, flat-topped wooden trunk at the foot of the roughly queen-sized bed. It was fitted with unobtrusive brass studs and bands, and it seemed to be made of beech wood. She slowly lifted the deceptively heavy lid to find the trunk full of blankets and one fluffy duvet. All were shades of white, gold, and dove-gray.

"Useful," she murmured. It was midnight or so – or it would've been had she been back Aboveground – and she could feel the chill of night settling into her bones. Castles were made of stone and not much else, and there was virtually nothing to insulate against the temperatures. Sarah pulled out the dove-gray duvet, gathered it clumsily in her arms, and tossed it onto the bed, just past the blue-and-green blanket. Then she moved to the chest of drawers.

The topmost drawer, she found, was split into two narrower drawers set side-by-side. The left-hand drawer held washcloths; the right held hand towels. The second drawer down held four white cotton shifts. Sarah recognized their make from her costume classes in university. These were undergarments worn by both genders for about as long as humans figured out that they should layer clothing for warmth and hygiene. They were still in use by men until long underwear became far more popular; women used them yet longer. Most importantly, they were slept in, and they were about the size and shape of a good, old-fashioned nightshirt. If Sarah put one on, it would likely go to at least her knees.

She took one out and didn't even open the bottom drawer. She'd found what she needed. She followed the white carpet to the door across the room; inside were something resembling a nineteenth-century pull-chain toilet and a huge tub with hot- and cold-water taps. A quick look around revealed a cupboard full of fluffy gray towels, and at the end of the hour she spent there, Sarah came out and collapsed onto the bed. She barely took the time to spread her (comfortably unlaundered) blanket on top of the white bedclothes and gray duvet before she fell asleep.