Yay! Back to Jareth! Time to see what the ol' guy is thinking these days. It's been a while since we heard from him. I hope you like it! (P.S. the title for this chapter comes from one of my favorite romantic comedies: French Kiss. If you haven't seen it, you should. N-E ways, back to Jareth)

The day Sarah had stormed from the castle was not unlike any other day in the goblin kingdom, at least so far as the goblins were concerned. They still went to the king with their petty squabbles and disputes. They chased and tormented chickens in the throne room. They drank ale and ate sausages, scattering their leftover bits when they shuffled their feet. They bickered with one another and started fights, which escalated into brawls requiring the intervention of a higher power, namely, the Goblin King.

Unaware that their world had been turned upside down, the goblins went on with their silly ways, forcing Jareth to do the same. In fact, he had almost forgotten the whole business with Sarah and Toby by the time he completed his last hearing for the day (a goblin who had accused his neighbor of stealing his helmet, which, in fact, he had misplaced on a patrol the day before). Almost.

When the doors to the throne room closed for the day, Jareth heaved a sigh and slumped in his chair in his usual way when he had something important to think about. He flung his legs over one arm and rested his back against the other arm with his head resting on his hand.

"Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. What am I going to do about you?" he mumbled aloud. "I can't just send you home, it's against the rules. But I can't keep you here; it's too dangerous for us both. And I can't have you traipsing around my labyrinth causing havoc and getting yourself seen by who knows who."

Frustrated, he jerked himself off the chair and began to pace the dais. Feeling the need to hit something, he picked up his riding crop and slashed at the grey robes adorning the throne. He was in a foul mood and no mistake. Unsatisfied with slashing at the robes, he conjured a crystal and threw it at the far wall. A burst of blue flames consumed a section of the wall just above the doors and died out without leaving a mark.

"Arggg. Why can't I seem to control that girl? I didn't ask to have her here; I didn't ask to have her in my life at all. All I wanted was an escape, to see what life was like outside the depths that I grew up in and then I meet her—a beautiful, winsome, slip of a girl and I'm done for. Oh the gods must have laughed when they saw me, wallowing in absolute worship of a human girl, a human. I would have done anything for her then. But she had to go and make that selfish wish. She had to wish her baby brother away to the goblins. And not just that, she had to change her mind. It would have been enough if she had left him to me. I would have been kind to him; he could have been the heir they want me to have.

"But no. She had to change her foolish, selfish mind and get him back. She had to come to my labyrinth. I did everything I could to help her. Oh yes, Jareth you made a right fool of yourself bending over backwards to give her what she wanted. If only you could have said no. In that, you were just as much a fool as she was. And then, you had to go and offer her your heart. You should have known then she was too young to understand, too selfish. A girl self-centered enough to send away her brother just because she was upset with her parents could never have seen what it was you was giving her. I should have known better."

Consumed with bitterness and rage, Jareth resumed his barrage of flaming crystals against the far wall.

"You…crash…couldn't…crash…just…crash…have…crash…told…crash…her…crash…no…crash…could…crash…you? FOOL." Crash. Crash. Crash.

Jareth was panting, his shoulders heaving and his face crimson. His fingers twitched, as if itching to throw another crystal. An unwise goblin, hearing the commotion and curious as to what had aroused the king's wrath, peeked his head out of a hole in the middle of the left-hand wall. Jareth saw the movement and his pale blue mismatched eyes fixed on the lumpy head and beady eyes of the foolish goblin. He looked daggers at the intruder, raised his arm and flung a crystal at the wall. The goblin ducked and the ball of flame barely missed him as he retreated for cover in the hole. He wouldn't be returning to the throne room any time soon and he warned the others to keep away as well. Good riddance, thought Jareth. Sometimes, I don't know why I put up with these idiotic creatures. If only I'd managed to be born a little sooner, then I wouldn't have had to deal with them at all. But I suppose that's what happens when you're born unlucky. I think I must have been cursed when I was born to never have anything go right. First goblins, now Sarah. What am I going to do?

"What am I going to do?" He repeated out loud, resuming his pacing in front of the throne. "I should never have let her leave the castle. But the girl," he stopped himself. Sarah was no longer a girl. She was a woman, a full-grown woman. Though he remained unconvinced that her attitude had substantially changed since he had seen her last—he was a pessimist and his defeat at her hands made him biased against her, to say the least—yet if her looks were any indication, Sarah had grown up.

"Fine. The woman is impossible! She refuses to tell her brother about the labyrinth and when he winds up sending her here," he chuckled to himself; he still found the situation deliciously ironic. "When he sends her here, she has the nerve to get angry at me and demand I treat her like a guest rather than the prisoner she is.

"Then, to top it all off, she takes it into her head to roam around my labyrinth again in search of her friends. And Hoggle! The nerve of that recalcitrant dwarf. I knew I should have sent him to the bog after Sarah left seven years ago. But I was generous, again. See what I get for my generosity? My own subjects rebel against me to take sides with the woman who defeated me—my labyrinth. Well, we'll see what he thinks of the Bog of Eternal Stench now. The fool. I told him once I'd make him prince of the land of stench. Perhaps I'll send Sarah there as well and she can be his princess."

Jareth's thoughts were swirling out of control. He was trying not to think of Sarah but everything in his life right now centered on her. He was incoherent and he knew it. His thoughts bounced from one thing to the next but they always returned to Sarah. Sarah Williams, the girl who defeated the labyrinth. The girl who had won his heart. The girl who had rejected him. He hated her for rejecting him, but deep down he had wanted her to come back. When she had materialized next to him in the throne room, he had felt a thrill of satisfaction. He told himself it was because he could finally have revenge, but that was a lie and he knew it. Long before Toby had unwittingly wished her there, Jareth had wanted her back. He couldn't help himself. He knew it, and he hated himself for it. I must be a glutton for punishment.

But once she returned, he had been so consumed by her infuriating accusations and demands that he had allowed her to leave the castle. She made him so confused, so angry. She had to go and out she went, out to wander in the labyrinth for as long as he refused to let her go home.

What if she gets out? The thought came unbidden into his mind. He stopped pacing. The thought had never before occurred to him that Sarah would find her way out again, but once he thought of it, he mentally kicked himself for not thinking of it sooner. Fool! Of course she'll be able to find her way out again. Not only has she successfully run the labyrinth before, she understands its ways better because she understands me more than she did when she first came. She's seen my tricks and knows how to avoid them, to see through them. Damn. Why didn't I think of this before now? Why oh why did I ever let her out of my sight?!

"I have to find her. I have to bring her back here. If she gets out, who knows what kind of damage she will do. I can't have her wandering around the underground unsupervised. She might run into the others. She's going to destroy everything I fought so hard to hide from the world. No one must know she exists and above all, no one must know what she's done."

His thoughts were racing wildly again. Jareth knew there had been rumors among the other kingdoms that someone had defeated the labyrinth. Goblins talked too much. However, goblins were also known to exaggerate, so when the 'victor' failed to appear, the rumors were dismissed from the minds of all the other rulers in the underground as 'idle goblin talk.' When asked point blank by the neighboring king if the labyrinth had been defeated, Jareth had merely shrugged and pointed out the fact that no one in the underground claimed victory. No one had even the slightest suspicion that someone from aboveground could have come, defeated the labyrinth and returned. No one knew that Jareth, the Goblin King, had offered his heart to a girl and been rejected. For seven years, Jareth had been safe. But now...Now Sarah has returned and she has the power to undo everything. Worst of all, she doesn't even know it.

"NO!" Screamed Jareth as another crystal went flying into the wall. "I've fought too hard for peace, for secrecy. I can't lose all that I've worked for because a young woman was too blind to see what I was really offering her when I gave her her dreams. I was a generous fool then, but now. Well, I warned Sarah that I could be cruel." So saying, he strode to his chambers to retrieve his jacket before setting off in search of Sarah.

Jareth attempted to pull up a vision of Sarah in one of his crystals, but for some reason, he couldn't get it to respond. All that showed up in his crystal was blackness and though he could vaguely make out a prone form that could possibly have been Sarah's, he did not know where she was. Either Sarah was outside the reach of his magic—which was impossible—or something—someone?—was blocking her from being seen (he could never have guessed she was in a worm's dark hole). Frustrated, he decided to try picking up her trail from where he last knew she had been—just feet away from the trapdoor Hoggle had fallen into.

Every time Jareth used special or additional magic in the labyrinth it was 'tagged.' That way, Jareth could travel to the exact location of the incident without needing to scry with his crystals. Using one of these tags, Jareth magicked himself to the site of Hoggle's presumed disappearance. Immediately recognizing the center of the labyrinth where the garden was planted, Jareth was seized with a sudden fear. He turned swiftly on his heel and entered the garden. His countenance darkened. She's been here. I can sense it. By the gods, she's been here. Here of all places.

"Doomed, I tell you!" Jareth roared, his wild blond hair flying about his face as he approached the figure of himself on the left side of the pool. He stopped, looking up into the tender, adoring eyes. Jareth frowned and his eyes narrowed to slits as he surveyed his likeness in the smooth stone. "What a pity. A pity she didn't slap that moonstruck look of your face when she had the chance. You look positively imbecilic."

He sneered at the heart being held out in his own stone hand and turned to frown even more heavily at the statue across from his own. Looking at her always made him moody. He couldn't bear to see her, offering her own heart in response to his own.

"The gods are mocking you Jareth, Goblin King," he said to the statue above him. Then he looked at the sky, barely visible through the vine-covered canopy. "I understand now. I get it. You're mocking me, aren't you? How dare you. HOW DARE YOU MOCK ME??"

Unable to control himself any longer, Jareth hurled another crystal. This time, he aimed for the female statue across from him. The crystal shattered and blue flame consumed the figure. However, when the smoke cleared, Sarah's visage stood unharmed, still holding forth her own crystal heart.

Jareth collapsed on the green carpet beneath him and wept.

Whew. Man that took a lot out of me. I need to sleep before I attempt anything new. Good night folks. Please R&R if you get a chance!