Jareth lounged indolently on his throne, a crystal ball held in his long-fingered hands.  To the casual observer, he was merely a sovereign enjoying some quiet moments alone with his thoughts and a pretty bauble.  The goblins, silly creatures though they were, knew better. 

Staring deep into the crystal's pale face, the King of the Goblins was conjuring.   He paid no attention to the silent throne room around him, the small piles of dirt and trash that the goblins had left from their last party.  He was watching someone in the crystal.  For once, however, it wasn't Sarah.

"I wish you'd stop moping around the house!  It's beginning to be insufferable."

The man shrugged, picked up the newspaper.  His wife continued to scold.  "Honestly!  It's like having a teenager back in the house again!" 

The paper was forcefully slammed down onto the coffee table, and the man looked up at his wife.  "Enough!"   Karen knew she had gone too far with that last comment, but she didn't care.  She was tired of seeing her husband moping around the house because his daughter had gotten into trouble and then run away.

"No, it's not enough.  It's time I said my piece."

"When have you ever not?" he said, but it was a rhetorical question and he didn't even expect an answer.  He folded his arms and sat motionless on the divan, resigned to listen to her speech.  

"I was more than patient with that girl," Karen began.   "Always living in a fantasy world—that's what got her into trouble, you know.  Never knowing truth from fantasy.  That's why she lied to us.  Why she told us she wasn't interested in dating, wasn't seeing any boys." 

"Karen—"

She ignored him.  "What sixteen year old girl goes out to the park to play?  She was probably meeting her boyfriend there the whole time!   This could have been going on for years!" 

"Karen!   She was just a child!   She would take her mother's costumes, the ones left, and play dress-up and make-believe in the park.   I've watched her do it time and time again.  I know you've never really understood Sarah, but she wasn't lying about that."  

"If all she was doing was playing in the park, then how did she end up pregnant at seventeen?" Karen demanded.  Her husband refused to answer.  He knew enough to recognize a baited question when he heard one. 

"Karen, what she did was inexcusable.  I realize that.  But it doesn't stop the fact that I miss my daughter."

"She left willingly."

"She knew there would be no peace in this house while both of you were living in it!"

Soft footsteps were heard on the stairs, and suddenly Toby's five-year-old face peeked through the banister railings.  "Mama?  You fightin' again?" he asked.  "When's Sarah coming home?"

"Sarah is not coming back," Karen snapped.  "Ever.  This is no longer her home, Tobias." 

Toby shrank back and slouched up the stairs again.  Everything in his demeanor shouted that he knew better than to argue when his mother took that tone of voice. 

Sarah's father stood, then, and turned to his wife. "I will not have angry words thrown about this house any longer," he said, sounding both angry and tired.   "No one will speak of Sarah again.   Do you hear me?   Never again.  She's gone—and it's probably better this way.  Let's get on with our lives.  Enough is enough."

Jareth quite agreed.  He banished the image from the crystal and dropped the perfect sphere from his gloved hand.   It smashed into the stone floor and scattered into a million tiny shards of glass. 

For a moment the goblin king merely slouched in his throne and tapped his leg with the riding crop he held in his hand.  "Something's not right," he mumbled to himself, one hand covering his mouth in a thoughtful pose.  He scowled.  "Something doesn't fit here, and I'd bet anything that Sarah knows what it is.   She's no fool.  Rash and headstrong, stubborn as a mule, childish…but not a fool."   He stood up and began to pace, a bad habit but one he engaged in when things weren't going the way he liked.   "No, something does not fit here at all."  He slapped the arm of his throne with the riding crop in frustration and wished he had a couple of goblins to kick around.  There were none to be found at the moment.

"Damn."

There was only one thing he could think of, only one thing that might solve the mystery, and he devoutly didn't want to do that yet.   Talk to Sarah.  She turned his entire world upside down with her furious arguments and her tears.   He wanted so desperately to help her…but he knew there would be little appreciation for his help.   He was trying to give her haven—she thought herself a prisoner.  He had offered his heart—and she had borne the child of a mortal man.  Why and how, Jareth did not know.  He cursed again and whirled around, determined to at least work up a suitable level of irritation before confronting her again.   It helped keep his head level in the long run. 

Turning to pace back toward the windows, Jareth called another crystal to his grasp.  Looking into it, he beheld a vision of Sarah sitting on a couch, wrapped in a blanket as protection against the wind.  She was holding the troublesome little baby in her arms, but paying only fitful attention to it.  He was about to banish the vision when she took a breath and spoke.

"What am I doing here?" she asked, the question directed to nobody in particular.  She sighed and rocked the child a little bit.  "Ever since returning to my home three years ago, I wanted nothing more than to be back here.  Now I am, and it scares me as much as it did when I was racing to get Toby back."   She stared down at the little girl.   "Damn Jareth, too.  I wanted my brother back and I had to struggle to get him.   I didn't want you back, and he hands you to me as if I had merely misplaced you and he was returning you.   Like a good Samaritan and a lost wallet."  She grimaced.   "As if I could call Jareth good."  

The baby burbled, a soft noise, and her little arm jerked as she tried to move it.  Sarah smiled, and that smile warmed the ice around Jareth's heart.  "I don't hate him, little one.  Ever since the first time I saw him, so tall, so fierce, so frightening, I couldn't stop thinking about him.  He stole my brother and nearly killed me when I tried to get him back.   But…" Here she stopped, and Jareth nearly stomped his foot in frustration before curbing the desire to do something so childish.   "What am I saying?" she demanded of herself.  "As he says, I am a…mother…now.  You are mine.   That means I can't be thinking about what I wish could have been.  It can never be any more." 

Jareth sank into his throne, not sure if he was hearing correctly.   Yet that was Sarah, and she was undeniably in his castle, under his care, sitting wrapped in a blanket on one of his balconies.  Her final words confused him again, momentarily taking away the shock of what she had almost confessed.  

"Oh, little one," she said to the tiny baby girl, "I wish I had borne you out of love.  There would be something to be said about that, at least."