A/N: I apologize for the short chapter! This here is in Jareth's point of view and is pretty much a flash back. I may upload another one today to make up for it. But hey, Sarah is in this one! Review please!
When I let her go it had hurt me so badly I wasn't sure I could watch her be happy. I had forced myself to sit outside her window after she checked on Toby. An all too familiar pull on my heart. Why couldn't she have made me her priority? Why could no one love me?
When I was wished away as a baby nobody bothered to rescue me. Seeing Sarah's spirit had awoken something in me half way through her journey. A feeling I had forgotten on purpose. I could have loved her. I could have loved Toby. We could have been a family and one day Toby might have been my heir. He had already started his change.
I was angry for a brief second when I saw her talking to Hoggle in the mirror. I promised him a princely position, and by all power he would get that position. Later.
Her friends took turns comforting the girl. And when she said "all of you," I'd felt hope in my heart. Hope that one day she would be old enough to call on me again. I granted her unspoken wish, and allowed some Goblins, Fieries, and other creatures of my realm to join the party in her room.
I'd watched Sarah grow up and mature in the past 13 hours. I couldn't be angry. One day she would be mine.
I flew off the branch I was loitering on and took off into the sky. My bones felt light, and I laughed. Its only forever. That's not so long.
Oh how wrong was I. I checked on her a few years later. She had yet to call on me and I was growing impatient. She would be twenty one now and I felt her forgetting about me. My heart broke when I saw her go out to dinner with a young man. She was stunning.
Her dark hair was wavy and tumbled down her just past her shoulders. She wore dangly diamond earing and a thing necklace with an opal pendant. Her dress was off white and off the shoulder. Floor length, with a slit up her thigh.
The man she was with had short blonde hair and bright blue eyes. He had a thin bone structure but a dazzling white smile. I wanted to ruin his pretty face with my owl talons. He wore an all black suit and it did look good on him. I was close enough to hear Sarah speak when she took his arm.
"Paul, you look handsome."
"It is you who will take their breath away. Happy birthday sweetheart."
Sarah giggles and kisses him on the lips. It was just a peck but it made my whole body radiate with jealous rage. And then this Paul person did something that almost made me fall out of my tree. He got down on one knee in front of her house and took from his pocket a small black box. Sarah stares down at him, her green eyes going wide and a grin spreads across her face. She tries to hide it with her hand as Paul begins his stomach churning speech.
"Sarah Evangeline Williams. Since the day I met you, you've turned my world upside down."
I studied Sarah's face when he said those words. They were almost exactly what I had said to her a little over 6 years ago. Her face revealed nothing. She really had forgotten me. Paul opened the ring box.
"And there's nothing in the world that could make me regret having met you. It would be my greatest pleasure if you would do me the honor of spending the rest of our lives together. Will you marry me?"
"Oh, Paul! Yes! Of course! Yes!"
Paul grins and puts the small diamond on Sarah's left ring finger. He stands up and kisses her, this time more passionately. I realize now that my talons are gripping so hard to the branch that I was cramping, so I let go. I forced myself to fly home.
I couldn't get her face out of my head. She was so happy. Without me. Just as my mother had been when I had searched her out years before I took over the Labyrinth. My mother had forgotten me. She had a new husband and a new son.
There wasn't even a baby picture of me in their new house. There had even been a kitten. A little black and white fluff ball with a big blue ribbon tied around its neck.
I felt the same kind of ache now as I did then. As I had when I let Sarah go the first time. Though the third time I checked on her it didn't hurt so bad.
It was a year later and Sarah and Paul were married and Sarah had just given birth to a daughter. Her name was Agnes and looked just like her mother. Toby doted on her, excited to be an uncle. Sarah was oddly protective of Toby when he mentioned their stepmother wanted to send him to military school for bad behavior. Apparently our little striped chap was quite the trouble maker.
I still wondered what might have been, but seeing the little family didn't hurt anymore. Being in the mortal world gave me again what it once did.
A sense of freedom.