Disclaimer: I do not own anyone or anything from "Labyrinth". At this point
I am not even sure that I would want to unless relationship counseling was
involved.
Author's Note: Almost all of you are telling me what a clueless jerk Jareth is. Well, okay, yeah, he is. I don't think that centuries of goblin-ruling would be all that great for anyone's interpersonal skills. Don't worry. He's not a lost cause, but hey, nothing good comes easy, right?
Chapter 21
Jareth was certain that his neck would never recover and that he would be known for the rest of his living days as "that king with his head cocked at a funny angle". Slowly, he creaked his body out of the chair he had been uncomfortably wedged into for the past eight hours.
He gazed across the room and flinched at the blazing, emerald eyes that met his. Sarah was sitting on the edge of the bed fully dressed, staring at him like a hawk homing in on a bunny rabbit.
"Good morning, love," he said a trifle uncertainly. He noticed the slant of the light through the windows with surprise. His wife was usually a very early riser. "Did you sleep well? I'm accustomed to finding you long gone and running the kingdom by this hour," he chuckled, using banter to mask his concern.
"Burning my hand off isn't my idea of a brilliant start to the morning," she replied coolly.
Of course! Jareth could have smacked his forehead in frustration. The door! He'd left that locking spell on it so Sarah would have been unable to leave unless he allowed it. How could he have been such an idiot?! Instantly, he waved his hand and removed the spell.
A thought suddenly occurred to him.
"Did you?" he asked. "Burn your hand?"
Irritated, Sarah held up fingers that by now had blistered. She had forgotten all about the spell on the door and had tried to leave the room as soon as she had awakened. The burn had brought tears to her eyes, but she hadn't wanted to wake Jareth up. After last night, burned fingers didn't seem like much compared to dealing with him.
Jareth's face darkened with concern as he took her hand in his own. He put so much magic into his healing spell that Sarah felt her skin instantly clear, her muscles tone and her hair exude extra body and shine.
"Love, why didn't you wake me?" he murmured stroking her dark locks back from her face.
"You planned to keep me trapped in here even if it meant burning me. What point would there be in waking you?" Her quiet tone was far more frightening to him than screaming or bitterness.
"Sarah! You are my wife and my queen! I could never, ever hurt you or allow any harm to come to you! EVER. I truly had forgotten about that spell on the lock and-" Jareth tried to pull her to him as she spoke, but Sarah sidestepped his embrace.
"I suppose being married to you has a few advantages," she replied softly, holding up her engagement ring, which now looked a little charred from the blasts of magic it had endured the night before. With that, she slipped past him and out the door.
Well crap. Would it help things if he banged his head against the wall repeatedly for an hour or two?
Sarah made her way downstairs and followed the enticing aroma of fresh coffee into the kitchen. Karen looked up from where she was sitting skimming over the morning paper. She didn't look as if she had slept at all last night; but even though her eyes had dark circles around them, they were glowing. She looked exhausted and ten years younger all at once.
Sarah wasn't about to ask and prayed that Karen wouldn't tell. There were some things she just didn't want to imagine first thing in the morning.
Karen leapt up to hug Sarah with a radiant smile. "Darling, did you sleep okay? Let me pour you some coffee. Oh-" (her exclamation punctuated with a warm hug) "it's SO good to have you home!"
Sarah returned Karen's hug, but she couldn't quite match her stepmother's radiant expression.
"Sarah - what's wrong? Are you feeling well?"
"I'm fine, Karen, really," Sarah tried to assure her.
Karen narrowed her eyes. "Hmmm. Is that Jareth behaving himself and taking proper care of you?"
"He's still upstairs. I'm sure he'll be down any minute." Sarah said, trying to duck the question and warn Karen at the same time.
Karen glanced sharply in the direction of the staircase and lowered her voice, looking at Sarah intently. "Honey, I'm serious. Are you all right? Did the two of you have an argument or something? You know I think Jareth seems like a very nice man who's madly in love with you, but we still don't know him very well and if he's done anything to hurt you-"
Sarah snorted as soon as the words "madly in love" were out of Karen's mouth.
"So you did have a fight?" said Karen, never missing a detail as usual.
"Yes, we did," Sarah admitted. She wanted so badly to throw herself into her stepmother's arms and tell her everything, but how on earth could she expect Karen to believe her?
"Sarah, it's obvious to me that the two of you love each other, but you did rush into things awfully quickly. Come sit down and tell me about it."
Sarah glanced again toward the stairs. Jareth would be down any minute, but she really did need someone to talk to.
"Karen.I think Jareth and I had different ideas of what our marriage would be like."
"Oh?"
".and it's been.exhausting.to live up to each other's expectations."
"Uh huh? How do you see your expectations as differing?" Karen queried, trying as hard as she could to stay neutral and diplomatic. Jareth may be the most seductively handsome man she had ever encountered, but if he hurt her baby girl, she would throw him out on his ear without even blinking.
"I think Jareth and I are both people who like to 'run the show' and when we have a difference of opinion.well, I guess neither one of us is used to including another person in all of our decisions." Sarah was also struggling to be extremely gentle in her phrasing. Of course she wasn't telling Karen the half of it, but she didn't see how that would help her situation at the moment. She was at odds with Jareth, but leaving her marriage was NOT an option. She had a feeling that he would probably insist on accompanying her on most of her excursions Aboveground and did not want to deal with animosity between her family and her husband every time she visited home.
"Hmmm.what you're talking about is something a lot of married couples go through - especially in the beginning." Karen looked at Sarah for a long moment and then sighed. "Marriage is harder than anyone ever tells you it will be. When you love someone as much as you love Jareth, the pain that always seems to come with a love like that - well, it's just unreal sometimes! Your father and I rarely argue, but whenever we do, it always seems like so much more than an argument - and nothing feels right until we've worked through the problem. I won't tell you that this issue will be an easy one to overcome, but the two of you seem to care for each other so much that I think you'll be able to work through it if you're patient. Have you talked to him about it?"
Sarah wanted to scream. How could she tell Karen that the words "love" and "care" had no place in her relationship with Jareth?
Jareth chose that moment to appear in the doorway, looking tired but sufficiently cheery to pass muster.
He may have seemed relaxed, but his heart was actually in his throat. Thanks to his magic, he had managed to catch at least the second half of the conversation. Karen's words echoed in his mind "when you love someone as much as you love Jareth", "the two of you seem to care for each other so much". Karen was someone who KNEW Sarah, someone who would have spent enough time with her to have a sense of her feelings. His wife hadn't specifically agreed with anything Karen had said, but she hadn't told Karen that she was wrong either.
If there was hope, Jareth planned to cling to it for dear life. Dammit, if he had managed to govern an unruly lot of goblins for over three hundred years, he was certainly capable of making Sarah understand his love for her.
Grinning nonchalantly, he poured two cups of coffee and set one down in front of Sarah, while topping Karen's cup off from the pot.
Karen couldn't resist melting a little under his sunny smile. "Thank you, Jareth," she beamed.
All too aware of the devastating effect one of his smiles could have on the female sex, Jareth flashed another dazzling grin at Karen and asked her if there was anything he could do to help with breakfast.
Disgusted, Sarah forced a smile and attempted to rise from her seat, but Jareth gently pushed her back down.
"No, no! You cooked dinner for all of us last night! Give me a chance to impress your family! Let me cook breakfast!"
Sarah's eyes grew enormous. Jareth could COOK?!
Karen's face lit up completely at his suggestion. "Jareth! How incredibly thoughtful of you! Just tell me what kinds of pans you'd like to use and I'll show you where I keep them."
"Hmm.the only kinds of pans I avoid are iron ones. I hate the way iron tinges the flavor of food," Jareth said, authoritatively rummaging through Karen's cupboards.
"Does it?" said Karen, completely fascinated.
Moments later, the delicious aroma of eggs and bacon was wafting through the house. Toby had joined them in the kitchen and was eagerly running the waffle press under Jareth's supervision. Jareth himself felt quite content to be part of the little domestic scene. Most of his previous cooking experience had involved roasting fat rabbits over makeshift spits in the forest whenever he had gone out with a hunting party. However, his nursemaid had insisted that he and Damien learn a few practical skills in an actual kitchen. Ordinarily, he would have scoffed at the idea of preparing a meal himself while he was staying at home (that was, after all, what servants were for), but now he was grateful that he could show Sarah and her family a small measure of how much he cared by cooking for them. Cooking was even.fun. Happily, he started to sing to himself as he flipped the eggs.
Karen smiled in admiration from her seat at the kitchen table. "Jareth, Sarah hadn't told us that you could sing. You have a wonderful voice."
Toby, on the other hand, had gone stock-still and was staring at the Goblin King with a mixture of wonder and disbelief. Jareth looked over to check the progress on the waffle situation and briefly met Toby's eyes. The boy suppressed a gasp and went white as a sheet.
"Toby," Sarah asked, brow furrowed, "are you okay?"
"Um.yeah. Sarah, I actually had something I was working on that I just remembered I wanted to show you. Uh.Jareth.is it okay if I show Sarah my.my.picture, and then come right back?"
The king smiled benevolently at the boy and nodded.
Toby ran over to Sarah and practically dragged her from the room only to hear Jareth's voice call after him, "Why don't you bring your picture down so all of us can see it?"
"Uh - sure! That is, if Sarah thinks it's good enough," Toby called back, heart racing.
"Toby, what on earth is going on? Are you alright?" Sarah hissed as he pulled her up the stairs.
Toby only put his finger to his lips in response and tugged her toward his room. Once they were inside, Toby shut the door and locked it.
Sarah sat down on his bed and looked at him piercingly. "You don't really have a picture to show me do you?" she said softly.
Her brother mutely shook his head and looked down. Sarah was shocked to see him trembling and pulled him into her arms just like she had when he was still a little boy. "Tell me what's going on," she said, even more taken aback when he actually clung to her. Toby had resisted being hugged ever since he turned twelve and decided that he was "too grown up for mushy stuff".
"I don't know how to make you believe me. I don't know if I believe it." His voice was barely a whisper.
Then Sarah knew. Oh god.
"Try me," she said, making an effort to appear calm.
"Remember that dream I told you I had when I was really little - about all the goblins and this weird guy who kept singing to me?"
"Yeah."
"Jareth is the same guy."
"Okay."
"In my dream, you were there."
"I remember you telling me about that."
"Sarah," Toby swallowed. "That wasn't a dream was it?"
Oh god.
"Toby, can you keep a really important secret?"
"Yeah."
"You're right. You weren't dreaming."
It was Toby's turn to think 'oh god' for awhile.
After nearly a minute of silence, Toby looked at Sarah. "You seemed really scared of the man in my dream - well, I mean, wherever that was since I wasn't dreaming."
"I guess I was pretty scared."
"Did he hurt you?"
"No."
"But you were scared."
She nodded, "Yeah."
"Sarah, who is he?"
Oh god (again).
"The King of the Goblins."
"Oh."
Brother and sister sat side-by-side simply holding each other for a few minutes.
"Toby, you have to find a picture to take downstairs." By now, Jareth and Karen would be wondering if they had disappeared.
He raised his head and looked at her with determined eyes. "Only if you tell me everything that's really happened."
"It's a deal," Sarah agreed. Toby obviously recalled enough of his experience in the labyrinth that lying would be pointless. She was a little worried because the last thing she wanted to do was hurt or confuse her younger brother. And if she told him how she had really come to be married to Jareth.
Toby got up and rummaged through a few drawers until he came up with a notebook full of comic book-style sketches, many of which looked like the goblins in Jareth's castle.
Sarah sighed. "I see you do remember quite a bit." Reluctantly, she grinned. She couldn't help but be proud of her brother's artistic abilities. "I'll take you out for pizza this afternoon - just you and me."
"Okay," he flashed her a smile. Toby still looked shaken, but he seemed to have pulled himself together as well as could be expected.
They made their way downstairs to join Jareth and Karen in the kitchen. Richard had followed the scent of Jareth's cooking and was already devouring a stack of waffles while Jareth served Karen a few slices of bacon. The king smiled when he saw Sarah and Toby enter the room and immediately presented them each with a plateful of waffles, eggs, and bacon. Sarah eyed the food with suspicion but couldn't think of a reasonable excuse not to eat it. She took a timid bite of her waffle and was surprised by how delicious it was.
"Mmm!" she exclaimed, bringing another smug smile to Jareth's lips. If Jareth couldn't tell her how he felt, then he would have to show her at every opportunity.
"And where is this picture you'd like to show us, my young man?" asked Jareth, affectionately ruffling Toby's hair.
"It's actually more than one picture," Toby replied, handing Jareth his notebook
When Jareth saw Toby's drawings his eyebrows shot up in surprise. "These are really quite good!" he exclaimed. "Do you mind if I borrow the whole notebook for a little so that I can look at all of your drawings?"
Toby had been watching the Goblin King's reaction intently and nodded his permission. He was still in quiet turmoil from Sarah's revelation that yes, goblins really were real and that somehow the two of them had actually spent time among them. He was dying to learn why she had decided to marry Jareth. Sarah's complete lack of dating life had been a concern of his mother's for some time and he was curious about what would make her change her mind after so many years - especially since he foggily remembered her being so afraid of Jareth before. Ordinarily, he wouldn't have cared much about any of it, but having a real-live Goblin King for a brother-in-law - WOW!
Jareth was also deep in thought. Now that he had seen Toby's drawings, he wished to heaven that he could have listened in on Sarah's conversation with Toby. The boy remembered much more of the thirteen hours he had spent Underground than Jareth had expected. He would have to ask Sarah if Toby believed his memories were real since most humans who had traveled to the Underground remembered the experience as no more than a dream. Not the case with Sarah, but then she was also the first mortal ever to have defeated his labyrinth.
Jareth kept a watchful eye on Sarah, but her expression revealed nothing. In fact, she seemed to be completely absorbed in her breakfast. Jareth puffed up a little in pride at his cooking and decided to ingratiate himself further with Karen by washing all the dishes.
As he had predicted, Karen was thrilled at his little show of domesticity. Her next remarks caught him unaware.
"Jareth, since you are a new member of our little family, I thought you might enjoy looking at some of our family photos. You and Sarah probably haven't had the chance to go over our family history much and so I've brought a few old picture albums down from the attic in case you were interested."
Jareth WAS interested. While he had watched a great deal of Sarah's activities through his crystals ever since she had escaped his power and returned Aboveground, he knew little of what her life had been like before she had turned fifteen. Plus photographs were an invention that was foreign to the Underground. Jareth never ceased to be amazed by how REAL they looked. These mortals might be powerless and short-lived, but they certainly weren't stupid.
Sarah groaned, "Kar-en! Don't make him look at all that stuff. You'll only bore him to tears!"
"Not at all!" Jareth interjected. "Show me EVERYTHING you've got!
Deliriously happy to have such a willing victim, Karen trotted out nearly six boxes full of photo albums.
Sarah was only too happy to have an excuse to leave. "Karen, I actually promised Toby I'd take him to the mall today. We thought we'd stop there and have pizza for lunch." Karen looked at Sarah with a sigh that was only mildly disappointed. She loved having her stepdaughter at home, but she would be able to tell Jareth much more embarrassing stories about Sarah's childhood if Sarah wasn't there to protest.
Jareth was torn. After the events of last night, he was loathe to allow Sarah out of his sight for even so much as a second and he would be unable to watch her in one of his crystals if he was conversing with Karen over the family photo books. That said, he knew that Karen would hold nothing back from him as long as Sarah wasn't there to keep her stories in check. Reluctantly, he decided not to object to the afternoon outing. If she wasn't back at the Williams' home by three o'clock, he would find her himself and bring her back by any means necessary.
"All right then," said Karen. "I suppose you and Toby haven't had much time to visit with each other. Can you pick up a few things for me while you're out?"
"Sure!" Sarah readily agreed.
Within twenty minutes, she and Toby were driving down the road toward the community mall.
"Sarah, do we have to go the mall? I want to go somewhere we can talk." Toby looked at her with pleading eyes.
"Mmm.good point. We could always go to the park. It's large enough that we could probably find a nice spot to ourselves."
Sarah pulled the car into the park and after a few minutes of walking, she and Toby found a spot under some trees, very near the place she had once loved to rehearse her lines in her dress-up costumes.
"Sarah, what happened - when I was little? I really want to know everything. I thought all that goblin stuff was a dream, but now I KNOW it's not. I don't want you to skip over anything. Promise?"
Sarah looked at him sadly. She didn't want to lie to Toby, but the things she had to say were so painful.
"I promise. Toby, please understand that I am truly, deeply ashamed of what I'm about to tell you and that I love you no matter what."
Toby's eyes widened and she knew she had his full attention. With a deep sigh, she started at the beginning. They sat under the trees talking quietly for more than an hour. Sarah related her entire adventure in the labyrinth. She tried to be as fair as she could be to Jareth since the king was now her husband, but she left nothing out. She had promised to tell Toby the truth and wanted to live up to his trust in her. Toby listened with rapt wonder, only interrupting once in awhile to ask a question. By the time Sarah had finished, the sun was high in the sky. She supposed it was close to lunchtime, but neither she nor Toby felt very hungry.
Toby reached out to her and wrapped her up in a giant bear hug. "You don't have anything to be ashamed of, Sarah. You were mad. You had no idea those words would do anything. You risked your life to come and get me. I couldn't ask for a better big sister." He looked up when he felt something fall on his head and was shocked to see Sarah crying. "Sarah, don't cry! It's okay! I'm here! I'm NOT a goblin and that's all because of you!"
"Toby," she sniffled, "I'm just so sorry. I love you so much !"
Toby looked down, a little embarrassed. Any second he was going to cry too and he didn't want to be a big sissy in front of his sister.
"So you still haven't told me everything," he prodded. If you beat Jareth and got me home safely, then how did the two of you end up getting married? Did you love him the whole time?"
THAT was an interesting question. Sarah bravely decided to dodge it.
"I accidentally wished myself back under Jareth's power and he took me to the Underground."
"How did you do THAT?" asked Toby, incredulous. The Sarah he knew was not a careless person. In fact, she was so organized that most people even thought she was a little weird.
"I guess I was talking in my sleep and I said something stupid, but I SAID it and so Jareth had the power to take me back to the Underground with him."
"Did you want to go?" Toby's brow furrowed remembering how the police had told the family that her apartment looked like it had been torn apart in some kind of struggle.
"Not really."
"Then how did he get you to marry him?"
"That gets kind of complicated and it's story I should tell you on another day. I want you to be VERY nice to Jareth now. He doesn't know how much you remember and it's really important to me that we not upset Dad and Karen. Jareth and I are going to be coming back here a lot to visit you guys and I don't want there to be any problems - OKAY?"
Toby nodded. The last thing he needed was his mom packing him off to the looney bin or sending him to the guidance counselor or something. He was still worried about his sister though.
"Sarah.are you still scared of Jareth?"
"Of course not!" She wasn't really. Well, maybe a little.
"I mean, he's nice to you now, right?"
Jareth had a few lessons in humility coming his way, but she thought that he had tried to treat her well - at least to the best of his ability and understanding.
"Yeah, Toby. He's not so bad."
"So you're QUEEN of the goblins now, right?"
She had to chuckle at that. "I guess so," she purred, sounding 'oh-so- casual' and bored.
"So I get to visit you, right?"
No. Oh no. Jareth was NOT pulling Toby into the Underground if she had any say in the matter. Who knew if he would release her brother once he was under his power?
"Well.we'll see. Give it a little time. Jareth and I are still settling in."
"Okay."
Fine. Then he would have to ask Jareth if he could visit instead.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Meanwhile, Jareth, Karen, and Richard were pouring over the family photographs together. Sarah's parents liked Jareth more and more as their hours together wore on. He was intensely interested in their family, doted on their daughter and wanted to know every detail about her childhood.
Karen passed Jareth an older looking album with a photo on the cover of a very young Sarah in the arms of a beautiful dark-haired woman.
"And who is this?" asked Jareth, confused. The woman clearly wasn't Karen, but was still holding Sarah the way a mother would hold her child.
"Ah," said Richard. "That's Linda, Sarah's biological mother. I would say that everything about my marriage to her was a mistake except that, thanks to my relationship with her, I have Sarah as a daughter, so I would never want to take anything back. She left our family when Sarah was ten."
Jareth frowned. How anyone could abandon that gorgeous child was incomprehensible to him. He might turn children into goblins, but in their goblin state, they retained many of their childlike characteristics. Jareth was what he was, but essentially, he loved children. A person had to love children if that person planned to deal with goblins on a regular basis. They were, after all, startlingly similar.
"She didn't tell you about Linda?" Richard asked, surprised.
"No, she didn't, and from what you've mentioned about that situation, I can see how she might not wish to think about it." Jareth was still disturbed. He HADN'T known about Linda. If he didn't know about Sarah's real mother, what else was she hiding from him? Now that he knew how little she must have meant to her mother, he could see why she might not realize just how much she meant to him. He hoped that he could convince Sarah to trust him, to tell him about her life. More than ever, he wanted to understand the woman he had married.
Speaking of the woman he had married, where was she? He surreptitiously glanced at the clock over the mantle and noticed that the time was already 2:30. He would find an excuse to leave the house and fetch her back immediately if she didn't return soon.
Just then, the door opened and Sarah and Toby entered the room.
"You're STILL looking at those pictures?" Sarah gasped incredulously.
Jareth grinned. "I think this one would have to one of my favorites," he said, holding up a picture of a six-year-old Sarah in an oversize tutu with a makeshift crown fashioned out of tinfoil on her head. She had "borrowed" some of her mother's lipstick and her mouth was smeared with a sloppy red mess that made her look like she had been eating pizza or playing "vampire" with her dolls.
Sarah dropped her head into her hands. Clearly she would not be left with even so much as a scrap of her dignity.
Jareth laughed warmly and drew her into his arms for a hug. "You made a lovely queen then and an even lovelier one now," he murmured against her hair.
"Queen?" asked Richard.
"Of my heart, of course!" Jareth caught himself. How could he ever have been so careless as to let that slip? This "regular Aboveground couple" charade might be more difficult to pull off than he had first thought.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Toby smiling knowingly. Had Sarah told that lad the truth about their marriage? He was about to find an excuse to drag Sarah into another room and wring the truth from her when Toby interrupted his thoughts.
"So how'd you like my drawings, Uncle Jar?"
Uncle Jar. The king supposed he should be offended, but he rather liked the new title.
"I like them very much, Toby. Do you have any more drawings that you would like to show me?"
"Sure! Come up to my room. I have a ton of them!" Toby dragged Jareth by the wrist until they were inside his bedroom. Checking into the hallway, Toby whispered to Jareth "I'll show you my drawings, but I want you to promise me that you'll take me back to the Underground with you."
So Sarah had told him everything.
"Toby-" Jareth was just about to say 'let me discuss this with your sister' but he was interrupted by Sarah's icy voice from the doorway.
"Jareth, we need to talk for a minute."
Jareth cast Toby a mocking smile. "I'm sure I can grant your wish," he said, before sweeping out of the room with Sarah.
As soon as Jareth and Sarah were behind the closed guest room door, she unleashed the fury that she had been holding in check.
"Jareth, if you think for even one instant that you are spiriting my brother back to the Underground, I'll-"
"You'll what?" Jareth interrupted in a bored tone that belied his seething anger. As king, he had no intention of tolerating threats of any kind.
"Let's just say that there will be hell to pay for it, your MAJESTY," she bit out. "I may be no more than a political pawn to you, but if you even so much as THINK about dragging my family into your little games -"
Jareth's sudden grip on her shoulders was so tight that she was left momentarily breathless. If the strength of his hands hadn't squeezed the breath out of her, the look on his face certainly would have. He looked pale and stricken. He opened his mouth and for a moment, no words came out. Sarah stared at him in wonder. She had never seen her husband at such a loss.
Finally Jareth found his voice, "Sarah.love.is that truly what you think?"
"That you would draw my family into your political games? Jareth, what else can I think? You certainly didn't hesitate to kidnap me!" Finding her strength, she tried to twist away from him, but he only closed his arms around her tightly, ruthlessly quelling any attempts on her part to escape.
"That wasn't what I asked you, Sarah. Do you truly believe that you are no more than a pawn?"
She stopped struggling and turned her head up so that she could see his eyes. "Jareth, you explained my position in your life to me in detail only last night. I may be trapped under your power forever, but I will do ANYTHING to keep my family out of this - do you understand?"
Trapped under his power? No more than a pawn? Jareth supposed that he shouldn't be surprised after everything he had told her the night before. He had told her the truth - sort of. There were all kinds of political advantages to their marriage, but he never could have married her, never would have acted so desperately in abducting her, if she hadn't owned him heart and soul.
"Sarah," he breathed, "last night your questions took me by surprise. I had thought my reasons for wanting you by my side had been obvious from the start and so I merely pointed out the ones that you might not already have been aware of." A little voice in his mind was calling him a complete coward for not flatly telling her his feelings. He mentally dropped the little voice into the Bog and buried his face in Sarah's hair.
Sarah was once again utterly confused. Only last night, Jareth had calmly reasoned away any possibility that he might harbor some emotion for her and then today he was holding her so tightly she could hardly breathe and acting shocked that she had thought he considered her no more than a political trophy. And if he did see her as more than a possession, why did he insist on controlling her at every turn? Why didn't he embrace her as his love and his equal? Why, oh why, did she have to care so much?
Sarah lifted her face again so that she could look at him. For one second, she thought she saw tears gleaming in the corners of Jareth's eyes, but he closed them and covered her mouth with his before she could be certain. She wanted to argue, but he slipped his tongue between her lips, suppressing any protest she might have made. As he explored her sweetness with his lips, she felt herself yielding to him and melting as he held her. Gradually, Jareth's arms eased from a restraint into an embrace and Sarah's hands tangled in his soft, golden hair as she returned his kisses with passion. Her better judgment screamed against it, but she could listen to her better judgment later.
Just then a voice piped up from the doorway, "Does this mean I get to go back with you?"
Sarah shoved away from Jareth with a gasp. "Toby! What are you doing here? How long have you been spying on us?"
Toby's instant blush was her answer.
"No! You most certainly will NOT be coming back with us." Sarah's words must have come out a little more forcefully than she had intended because her little brother looked completely crushed.
"Now, darling," cooed Jareth from a few feet away, "why be so hasty? Toby clearly remembers enough of his previous visit to the Underground that he'd like to come back and stay with us for a little - wouldn't you Toby?" Jareth smiled disarmingly and was gratified by an eager nod from the boy in front of him.
"Jareth - NO!!" Sarah threw herself between Jareth and her younger brother. "He doesn't know what he's saying!"
"I think he does, love," purred the king, "besides, I'm certain that your parents would approve of a well-supervised visit to .ah.'New York City'."
Sarah was furious with herself for her own stupidity. Jareth had only started kissing her to convince her to let him take Toby. NEVER would she allow that.
"Very well," said Jareth, "I'll discuss it with your parents and you can come with us when we leave tomorrow morning."
Toby let out a whoop and ran from the doorway to find Karen.
When Jareth turned back to Sarah, it was plain that she was contemplating murder.
"Now, darling," the king cajoled, "don't be so upset. He obviously remembers everything so what harm can a brief visit do? Wouldn't you like him to see the palace and how radiant you are as my queen?"
"Jareth. I may not be able to escape from you, but I will NEVER let you keep Toby."
Jareth took a step back, considering her for a moment before making his reply. In an instant, Sarah found herself beneath him, locked between his body and the pillows on the bed. He pinned her arms above her with one hand and lowered his face to hers until their lips were almost touching.
"Sarah," he said, weaving a lock of her hair through the fingers of his free hand, "I never wanted to keep Toby."
With that, he vanished, leaving Sarah alone to think on his words.
Author's Note: Almost all of you are telling me what a clueless jerk Jareth is. Well, okay, yeah, he is. I don't think that centuries of goblin-ruling would be all that great for anyone's interpersonal skills. Don't worry. He's not a lost cause, but hey, nothing good comes easy, right?
Chapter 21
Jareth was certain that his neck would never recover and that he would be known for the rest of his living days as "that king with his head cocked at a funny angle". Slowly, he creaked his body out of the chair he had been uncomfortably wedged into for the past eight hours.
He gazed across the room and flinched at the blazing, emerald eyes that met his. Sarah was sitting on the edge of the bed fully dressed, staring at him like a hawk homing in on a bunny rabbit.
"Good morning, love," he said a trifle uncertainly. He noticed the slant of the light through the windows with surprise. His wife was usually a very early riser. "Did you sleep well? I'm accustomed to finding you long gone and running the kingdom by this hour," he chuckled, using banter to mask his concern.
"Burning my hand off isn't my idea of a brilliant start to the morning," she replied coolly.
Of course! Jareth could have smacked his forehead in frustration. The door! He'd left that locking spell on it so Sarah would have been unable to leave unless he allowed it. How could he have been such an idiot?! Instantly, he waved his hand and removed the spell.
A thought suddenly occurred to him.
"Did you?" he asked. "Burn your hand?"
Irritated, Sarah held up fingers that by now had blistered. She had forgotten all about the spell on the door and had tried to leave the room as soon as she had awakened. The burn had brought tears to her eyes, but she hadn't wanted to wake Jareth up. After last night, burned fingers didn't seem like much compared to dealing with him.
Jareth's face darkened with concern as he took her hand in his own. He put so much magic into his healing spell that Sarah felt her skin instantly clear, her muscles tone and her hair exude extra body and shine.
"Love, why didn't you wake me?" he murmured stroking her dark locks back from her face.
"You planned to keep me trapped in here even if it meant burning me. What point would there be in waking you?" Her quiet tone was far more frightening to him than screaming or bitterness.
"Sarah! You are my wife and my queen! I could never, ever hurt you or allow any harm to come to you! EVER. I truly had forgotten about that spell on the lock and-" Jareth tried to pull her to him as she spoke, but Sarah sidestepped his embrace.
"I suppose being married to you has a few advantages," she replied softly, holding up her engagement ring, which now looked a little charred from the blasts of magic it had endured the night before. With that, she slipped past him and out the door.
Well crap. Would it help things if he banged his head against the wall repeatedly for an hour or two?
Sarah made her way downstairs and followed the enticing aroma of fresh coffee into the kitchen. Karen looked up from where she was sitting skimming over the morning paper. She didn't look as if she had slept at all last night; but even though her eyes had dark circles around them, they were glowing. She looked exhausted and ten years younger all at once.
Sarah wasn't about to ask and prayed that Karen wouldn't tell. There were some things she just didn't want to imagine first thing in the morning.
Karen leapt up to hug Sarah with a radiant smile. "Darling, did you sleep okay? Let me pour you some coffee. Oh-" (her exclamation punctuated with a warm hug) "it's SO good to have you home!"
Sarah returned Karen's hug, but she couldn't quite match her stepmother's radiant expression.
"Sarah - what's wrong? Are you feeling well?"
"I'm fine, Karen, really," Sarah tried to assure her.
Karen narrowed her eyes. "Hmmm. Is that Jareth behaving himself and taking proper care of you?"
"He's still upstairs. I'm sure he'll be down any minute." Sarah said, trying to duck the question and warn Karen at the same time.
Karen glanced sharply in the direction of the staircase and lowered her voice, looking at Sarah intently. "Honey, I'm serious. Are you all right? Did the two of you have an argument or something? You know I think Jareth seems like a very nice man who's madly in love with you, but we still don't know him very well and if he's done anything to hurt you-"
Sarah snorted as soon as the words "madly in love" were out of Karen's mouth.
"So you did have a fight?" said Karen, never missing a detail as usual.
"Yes, we did," Sarah admitted. She wanted so badly to throw herself into her stepmother's arms and tell her everything, but how on earth could she expect Karen to believe her?
"Sarah, it's obvious to me that the two of you love each other, but you did rush into things awfully quickly. Come sit down and tell me about it."
Sarah glanced again toward the stairs. Jareth would be down any minute, but she really did need someone to talk to.
"Karen.I think Jareth and I had different ideas of what our marriage would be like."
"Oh?"
".and it's been.exhausting.to live up to each other's expectations."
"Uh huh? How do you see your expectations as differing?" Karen queried, trying as hard as she could to stay neutral and diplomatic. Jareth may be the most seductively handsome man she had ever encountered, but if he hurt her baby girl, she would throw him out on his ear without even blinking.
"I think Jareth and I are both people who like to 'run the show' and when we have a difference of opinion.well, I guess neither one of us is used to including another person in all of our decisions." Sarah was also struggling to be extremely gentle in her phrasing. Of course she wasn't telling Karen the half of it, but she didn't see how that would help her situation at the moment. She was at odds with Jareth, but leaving her marriage was NOT an option. She had a feeling that he would probably insist on accompanying her on most of her excursions Aboveground and did not want to deal with animosity between her family and her husband every time she visited home.
"Hmmm.what you're talking about is something a lot of married couples go through - especially in the beginning." Karen looked at Sarah for a long moment and then sighed. "Marriage is harder than anyone ever tells you it will be. When you love someone as much as you love Jareth, the pain that always seems to come with a love like that - well, it's just unreal sometimes! Your father and I rarely argue, but whenever we do, it always seems like so much more than an argument - and nothing feels right until we've worked through the problem. I won't tell you that this issue will be an easy one to overcome, but the two of you seem to care for each other so much that I think you'll be able to work through it if you're patient. Have you talked to him about it?"
Sarah wanted to scream. How could she tell Karen that the words "love" and "care" had no place in her relationship with Jareth?
Jareth chose that moment to appear in the doorway, looking tired but sufficiently cheery to pass muster.
He may have seemed relaxed, but his heart was actually in his throat. Thanks to his magic, he had managed to catch at least the second half of the conversation. Karen's words echoed in his mind "when you love someone as much as you love Jareth", "the two of you seem to care for each other so much". Karen was someone who KNEW Sarah, someone who would have spent enough time with her to have a sense of her feelings. His wife hadn't specifically agreed with anything Karen had said, but she hadn't told Karen that she was wrong either.
If there was hope, Jareth planned to cling to it for dear life. Dammit, if he had managed to govern an unruly lot of goblins for over three hundred years, he was certainly capable of making Sarah understand his love for her.
Grinning nonchalantly, he poured two cups of coffee and set one down in front of Sarah, while topping Karen's cup off from the pot.
Karen couldn't resist melting a little under his sunny smile. "Thank you, Jareth," she beamed.
All too aware of the devastating effect one of his smiles could have on the female sex, Jareth flashed another dazzling grin at Karen and asked her if there was anything he could do to help with breakfast.
Disgusted, Sarah forced a smile and attempted to rise from her seat, but Jareth gently pushed her back down.
"No, no! You cooked dinner for all of us last night! Give me a chance to impress your family! Let me cook breakfast!"
Sarah's eyes grew enormous. Jareth could COOK?!
Karen's face lit up completely at his suggestion. "Jareth! How incredibly thoughtful of you! Just tell me what kinds of pans you'd like to use and I'll show you where I keep them."
"Hmm.the only kinds of pans I avoid are iron ones. I hate the way iron tinges the flavor of food," Jareth said, authoritatively rummaging through Karen's cupboards.
"Does it?" said Karen, completely fascinated.
Moments later, the delicious aroma of eggs and bacon was wafting through the house. Toby had joined them in the kitchen and was eagerly running the waffle press under Jareth's supervision. Jareth himself felt quite content to be part of the little domestic scene. Most of his previous cooking experience had involved roasting fat rabbits over makeshift spits in the forest whenever he had gone out with a hunting party. However, his nursemaid had insisted that he and Damien learn a few practical skills in an actual kitchen. Ordinarily, he would have scoffed at the idea of preparing a meal himself while he was staying at home (that was, after all, what servants were for), but now he was grateful that he could show Sarah and her family a small measure of how much he cared by cooking for them. Cooking was even.fun. Happily, he started to sing to himself as he flipped the eggs.
Karen smiled in admiration from her seat at the kitchen table. "Jareth, Sarah hadn't told us that you could sing. You have a wonderful voice."
Toby, on the other hand, had gone stock-still and was staring at the Goblin King with a mixture of wonder and disbelief. Jareth looked over to check the progress on the waffle situation and briefly met Toby's eyes. The boy suppressed a gasp and went white as a sheet.
"Toby," Sarah asked, brow furrowed, "are you okay?"
"Um.yeah. Sarah, I actually had something I was working on that I just remembered I wanted to show you. Uh.Jareth.is it okay if I show Sarah my.my.picture, and then come right back?"
The king smiled benevolently at the boy and nodded.
Toby ran over to Sarah and practically dragged her from the room only to hear Jareth's voice call after him, "Why don't you bring your picture down so all of us can see it?"
"Uh - sure! That is, if Sarah thinks it's good enough," Toby called back, heart racing.
"Toby, what on earth is going on? Are you alright?" Sarah hissed as he pulled her up the stairs.
Toby only put his finger to his lips in response and tugged her toward his room. Once they were inside, Toby shut the door and locked it.
Sarah sat down on his bed and looked at him piercingly. "You don't really have a picture to show me do you?" she said softly.
Her brother mutely shook his head and looked down. Sarah was shocked to see him trembling and pulled him into her arms just like she had when he was still a little boy. "Tell me what's going on," she said, even more taken aback when he actually clung to her. Toby had resisted being hugged ever since he turned twelve and decided that he was "too grown up for mushy stuff".
"I don't know how to make you believe me. I don't know if I believe it." His voice was barely a whisper.
Then Sarah knew. Oh god.
"Try me," she said, making an effort to appear calm.
"Remember that dream I told you I had when I was really little - about all the goblins and this weird guy who kept singing to me?"
"Yeah."
"Jareth is the same guy."
"Okay."
"In my dream, you were there."
"I remember you telling me about that."
"Sarah," Toby swallowed. "That wasn't a dream was it?"
Oh god.
"Toby, can you keep a really important secret?"
"Yeah."
"You're right. You weren't dreaming."
It was Toby's turn to think 'oh god' for awhile.
After nearly a minute of silence, Toby looked at Sarah. "You seemed really scared of the man in my dream - well, I mean, wherever that was since I wasn't dreaming."
"I guess I was pretty scared."
"Did he hurt you?"
"No."
"But you were scared."
She nodded, "Yeah."
"Sarah, who is he?"
Oh god (again).
"The King of the Goblins."
"Oh."
Brother and sister sat side-by-side simply holding each other for a few minutes.
"Toby, you have to find a picture to take downstairs." By now, Jareth and Karen would be wondering if they had disappeared.
He raised his head and looked at her with determined eyes. "Only if you tell me everything that's really happened."
"It's a deal," Sarah agreed. Toby obviously recalled enough of his experience in the labyrinth that lying would be pointless. She was a little worried because the last thing she wanted to do was hurt or confuse her younger brother. And if she told him how she had really come to be married to Jareth.
Toby got up and rummaged through a few drawers until he came up with a notebook full of comic book-style sketches, many of which looked like the goblins in Jareth's castle.
Sarah sighed. "I see you do remember quite a bit." Reluctantly, she grinned. She couldn't help but be proud of her brother's artistic abilities. "I'll take you out for pizza this afternoon - just you and me."
"Okay," he flashed her a smile. Toby still looked shaken, but he seemed to have pulled himself together as well as could be expected.
They made their way downstairs to join Jareth and Karen in the kitchen. Richard had followed the scent of Jareth's cooking and was already devouring a stack of waffles while Jareth served Karen a few slices of bacon. The king smiled when he saw Sarah and Toby enter the room and immediately presented them each with a plateful of waffles, eggs, and bacon. Sarah eyed the food with suspicion but couldn't think of a reasonable excuse not to eat it. She took a timid bite of her waffle and was surprised by how delicious it was.
"Mmm!" she exclaimed, bringing another smug smile to Jareth's lips. If Jareth couldn't tell her how he felt, then he would have to show her at every opportunity.
"And where is this picture you'd like to show us, my young man?" asked Jareth, affectionately ruffling Toby's hair.
"It's actually more than one picture," Toby replied, handing Jareth his notebook
When Jareth saw Toby's drawings his eyebrows shot up in surprise. "These are really quite good!" he exclaimed. "Do you mind if I borrow the whole notebook for a little so that I can look at all of your drawings?"
Toby had been watching the Goblin King's reaction intently and nodded his permission. He was still in quiet turmoil from Sarah's revelation that yes, goblins really were real and that somehow the two of them had actually spent time among them. He was dying to learn why she had decided to marry Jareth. Sarah's complete lack of dating life had been a concern of his mother's for some time and he was curious about what would make her change her mind after so many years - especially since he foggily remembered her being so afraid of Jareth before. Ordinarily, he wouldn't have cared much about any of it, but having a real-live Goblin King for a brother-in-law - WOW!
Jareth was also deep in thought. Now that he had seen Toby's drawings, he wished to heaven that he could have listened in on Sarah's conversation with Toby. The boy remembered much more of the thirteen hours he had spent Underground than Jareth had expected. He would have to ask Sarah if Toby believed his memories were real since most humans who had traveled to the Underground remembered the experience as no more than a dream. Not the case with Sarah, but then she was also the first mortal ever to have defeated his labyrinth.
Jareth kept a watchful eye on Sarah, but her expression revealed nothing. In fact, she seemed to be completely absorbed in her breakfast. Jareth puffed up a little in pride at his cooking and decided to ingratiate himself further with Karen by washing all the dishes.
As he had predicted, Karen was thrilled at his little show of domesticity. Her next remarks caught him unaware.
"Jareth, since you are a new member of our little family, I thought you might enjoy looking at some of our family photos. You and Sarah probably haven't had the chance to go over our family history much and so I've brought a few old picture albums down from the attic in case you were interested."
Jareth WAS interested. While he had watched a great deal of Sarah's activities through his crystals ever since she had escaped his power and returned Aboveground, he knew little of what her life had been like before she had turned fifteen. Plus photographs were an invention that was foreign to the Underground. Jareth never ceased to be amazed by how REAL they looked. These mortals might be powerless and short-lived, but they certainly weren't stupid.
Sarah groaned, "Kar-en! Don't make him look at all that stuff. You'll only bore him to tears!"
"Not at all!" Jareth interjected. "Show me EVERYTHING you've got!
Deliriously happy to have such a willing victim, Karen trotted out nearly six boxes full of photo albums.
Sarah was only too happy to have an excuse to leave. "Karen, I actually promised Toby I'd take him to the mall today. We thought we'd stop there and have pizza for lunch." Karen looked at Sarah with a sigh that was only mildly disappointed. She loved having her stepdaughter at home, but she would be able to tell Jareth much more embarrassing stories about Sarah's childhood if Sarah wasn't there to protest.
Jareth was torn. After the events of last night, he was loathe to allow Sarah out of his sight for even so much as a second and he would be unable to watch her in one of his crystals if he was conversing with Karen over the family photo books. That said, he knew that Karen would hold nothing back from him as long as Sarah wasn't there to keep her stories in check. Reluctantly, he decided not to object to the afternoon outing. If she wasn't back at the Williams' home by three o'clock, he would find her himself and bring her back by any means necessary.
"All right then," said Karen. "I suppose you and Toby haven't had much time to visit with each other. Can you pick up a few things for me while you're out?"
"Sure!" Sarah readily agreed.
Within twenty minutes, she and Toby were driving down the road toward the community mall.
"Sarah, do we have to go the mall? I want to go somewhere we can talk." Toby looked at her with pleading eyes.
"Mmm.good point. We could always go to the park. It's large enough that we could probably find a nice spot to ourselves."
Sarah pulled the car into the park and after a few minutes of walking, she and Toby found a spot under some trees, very near the place she had once loved to rehearse her lines in her dress-up costumes.
"Sarah, what happened - when I was little? I really want to know everything. I thought all that goblin stuff was a dream, but now I KNOW it's not. I don't want you to skip over anything. Promise?"
Sarah looked at him sadly. She didn't want to lie to Toby, but the things she had to say were so painful.
"I promise. Toby, please understand that I am truly, deeply ashamed of what I'm about to tell you and that I love you no matter what."
Toby's eyes widened and she knew she had his full attention. With a deep sigh, she started at the beginning. They sat under the trees talking quietly for more than an hour. Sarah related her entire adventure in the labyrinth. She tried to be as fair as she could be to Jareth since the king was now her husband, but she left nothing out. She had promised to tell Toby the truth and wanted to live up to his trust in her. Toby listened with rapt wonder, only interrupting once in awhile to ask a question. By the time Sarah had finished, the sun was high in the sky. She supposed it was close to lunchtime, but neither she nor Toby felt very hungry.
Toby reached out to her and wrapped her up in a giant bear hug. "You don't have anything to be ashamed of, Sarah. You were mad. You had no idea those words would do anything. You risked your life to come and get me. I couldn't ask for a better big sister." He looked up when he felt something fall on his head and was shocked to see Sarah crying. "Sarah, don't cry! It's okay! I'm here! I'm NOT a goblin and that's all because of you!"
"Toby," she sniffled, "I'm just so sorry. I love you so much !"
Toby looked down, a little embarrassed. Any second he was going to cry too and he didn't want to be a big sissy in front of his sister.
"So you still haven't told me everything," he prodded. If you beat Jareth and got me home safely, then how did the two of you end up getting married? Did you love him the whole time?"
THAT was an interesting question. Sarah bravely decided to dodge it.
"I accidentally wished myself back under Jareth's power and he took me to the Underground."
"How did you do THAT?" asked Toby, incredulous. The Sarah he knew was not a careless person. In fact, she was so organized that most people even thought she was a little weird.
"I guess I was talking in my sleep and I said something stupid, but I SAID it and so Jareth had the power to take me back to the Underground with him."
"Did you want to go?" Toby's brow furrowed remembering how the police had told the family that her apartment looked like it had been torn apart in some kind of struggle.
"Not really."
"Then how did he get you to marry him?"
"That gets kind of complicated and it's story I should tell you on another day. I want you to be VERY nice to Jareth now. He doesn't know how much you remember and it's really important to me that we not upset Dad and Karen. Jareth and I are going to be coming back here a lot to visit you guys and I don't want there to be any problems - OKAY?"
Toby nodded. The last thing he needed was his mom packing him off to the looney bin or sending him to the guidance counselor or something. He was still worried about his sister though.
"Sarah.are you still scared of Jareth?"
"Of course not!" She wasn't really. Well, maybe a little.
"I mean, he's nice to you now, right?"
Jareth had a few lessons in humility coming his way, but she thought that he had tried to treat her well - at least to the best of his ability and understanding.
"Yeah, Toby. He's not so bad."
"So you're QUEEN of the goblins now, right?"
She had to chuckle at that. "I guess so," she purred, sounding 'oh-so- casual' and bored.
"So I get to visit you, right?"
No. Oh no. Jareth was NOT pulling Toby into the Underground if she had any say in the matter. Who knew if he would release her brother once he was under his power?
"Well.we'll see. Give it a little time. Jareth and I are still settling in."
"Okay."
Fine. Then he would have to ask Jareth if he could visit instead.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Meanwhile, Jareth, Karen, and Richard were pouring over the family photographs together. Sarah's parents liked Jareth more and more as their hours together wore on. He was intensely interested in their family, doted on their daughter and wanted to know every detail about her childhood.
Karen passed Jareth an older looking album with a photo on the cover of a very young Sarah in the arms of a beautiful dark-haired woman.
"And who is this?" asked Jareth, confused. The woman clearly wasn't Karen, but was still holding Sarah the way a mother would hold her child.
"Ah," said Richard. "That's Linda, Sarah's biological mother. I would say that everything about my marriage to her was a mistake except that, thanks to my relationship with her, I have Sarah as a daughter, so I would never want to take anything back. She left our family when Sarah was ten."
Jareth frowned. How anyone could abandon that gorgeous child was incomprehensible to him. He might turn children into goblins, but in their goblin state, they retained many of their childlike characteristics. Jareth was what he was, but essentially, he loved children. A person had to love children if that person planned to deal with goblins on a regular basis. They were, after all, startlingly similar.
"She didn't tell you about Linda?" Richard asked, surprised.
"No, she didn't, and from what you've mentioned about that situation, I can see how she might not wish to think about it." Jareth was still disturbed. He HADN'T known about Linda. If he didn't know about Sarah's real mother, what else was she hiding from him? Now that he knew how little she must have meant to her mother, he could see why she might not realize just how much she meant to him. He hoped that he could convince Sarah to trust him, to tell him about her life. More than ever, he wanted to understand the woman he had married.
Speaking of the woman he had married, where was she? He surreptitiously glanced at the clock over the mantle and noticed that the time was already 2:30. He would find an excuse to leave the house and fetch her back immediately if she didn't return soon.
Just then, the door opened and Sarah and Toby entered the room.
"You're STILL looking at those pictures?" Sarah gasped incredulously.
Jareth grinned. "I think this one would have to one of my favorites," he said, holding up a picture of a six-year-old Sarah in an oversize tutu with a makeshift crown fashioned out of tinfoil on her head. She had "borrowed" some of her mother's lipstick and her mouth was smeared with a sloppy red mess that made her look like she had been eating pizza or playing "vampire" with her dolls.
Sarah dropped her head into her hands. Clearly she would not be left with even so much as a scrap of her dignity.
Jareth laughed warmly and drew her into his arms for a hug. "You made a lovely queen then and an even lovelier one now," he murmured against her hair.
"Queen?" asked Richard.
"Of my heart, of course!" Jareth caught himself. How could he ever have been so careless as to let that slip? This "regular Aboveground couple" charade might be more difficult to pull off than he had first thought.
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Toby smiling knowingly. Had Sarah told that lad the truth about their marriage? He was about to find an excuse to drag Sarah into another room and wring the truth from her when Toby interrupted his thoughts.
"So how'd you like my drawings, Uncle Jar?"
Uncle Jar. The king supposed he should be offended, but he rather liked the new title.
"I like them very much, Toby. Do you have any more drawings that you would like to show me?"
"Sure! Come up to my room. I have a ton of them!" Toby dragged Jareth by the wrist until they were inside his bedroom. Checking into the hallway, Toby whispered to Jareth "I'll show you my drawings, but I want you to promise me that you'll take me back to the Underground with you."
So Sarah had told him everything.
"Toby-" Jareth was just about to say 'let me discuss this with your sister' but he was interrupted by Sarah's icy voice from the doorway.
"Jareth, we need to talk for a minute."
Jareth cast Toby a mocking smile. "I'm sure I can grant your wish," he said, before sweeping out of the room with Sarah.
As soon as Jareth and Sarah were behind the closed guest room door, she unleashed the fury that she had been holding in check.
"Jareth, if you think for even one instant that you are spiriting my brother back to the Underground, I'll-"
"You'll what?" Jareth interrupted in a bored tone that belied his seething anger. As king, he had no intention of tolerating threats of any kind.
"Let's just say that there will be hell to pay for it, your MAJESTY," she bit out. "I may be no more than a political pawn to you, but if you even so much as THINK about dragging my family into your little games -"
Jareth's sudden grip on her shoulders was so tight that she was left momentarily breathless. If the strength of his hands hadn't squeezed the breath out of her, the look on his face certainly would have. He looked pale and stricken. He opened his mouth and for a moment, no words came out. Sarah stared at him in wonder. She had never seen her husband at such a loss.
Finally Jareth found his voice, "Sarah.love.is that truly what you think?"
"That you would draw my family into your political games? Jareth, what else can I think? You certainly didn't hesitate to kidnap me!" Finding her strength, she tried to twist away from him, but he only closed his arms around her tightly, ruthlessly quelling any attempts on her part to escape.
"That wasn't what I asked you, Sarah. Do you truly believe that you are no more than a pawn?"
She stopped struggling and turned her head up so that she could see his eyes. "Jareth, you explained my position in your life to me in detail only last night. I may be trapped under your power forever, but I will do ANYTHING to keep my family out of this - do you understand?"
Trapped under his power? No more than a pawn? Jareth supposed that he shouldn't be surprised after everything he had told her the night before. He had told her the truth - sort of. There were all kinds of political advantages to their marriage, but he never could have married her, never would have acted so desperately in abducting her, if she hadn't owned him heart and soul.
"Sarah," he breathed, "last night your questions took me by surprise. I had thought my reasons for wanting you by my side had been obvious from the start and so I merely pointed out the ones that you might not already have been aware of." A little voice in his mind was calling him a complete coward for not flatly telling her his feelings. He mentally dropped the little voice into the Bog and buried his face in Sarah's hair.
Sarah was once again utterly confused. Only last night, Jareth had calmly reasoned away any possibility that he might harbor some emotion for her and then today he was holding her so tightly she could hardly breathe and acting shocked that she had thought he considered her no more than a political trophy. And if he did see her as more than a possession, why did he insist on controlling her at every turn? Why didn't he embrace her as his love and his equal? Why, oh why, did she have to care so much?
Sarah lifted her face again so that she could look at him. For one second, she thought she saw tears gleaming in the corners of Jareth's eyes, but he closed them and covered her mouth with his before she could be certain. She wanted to argue, but he slipped his tongue between her lips, suppressing any protest she might have made. As he explored her sweetness with his lips, she felt herself yielding to him and melting as he held her. Gradually, Jareth's arms eased from a restraint into an embrace and Sarah's hands tangled in his soft, golden hair as she returned his kisses with passion. Her better judgment screamed against it, but she could listen to her better judgment later.
Just then a voice piped up from the doorway, "Does this mean I get to go back with you?"
Sarah shoved away from Jareth with a gasp. "Toby! What are you doing here? How long have you been spying on us?"
Toby's instant blush was her answer.
"No! You most certainly will NOT be coming back with us." Sarah's words must have come out a little more forcefully than she had intended because her little brother looked completely crushed.
"Now, darling," cooed Jareth from a few feet away, "why be so hasty? Toby clearly remembers enough of his previous visit to the Underground that he'd like to come back and stay with us for a little - wouldn't you Toby?" Jareth smiled disarmingly and was gratified by an eager nod from the boy in front of him.
"Jareth - NO!!" Sarah threw herself between Jareth and her younger brother. "He doesn't know what he's saying!"
"I think he does, love," purred the king, "besides, I'm certain that your parents would approve of a well-supervised visit to .ah.'New York City'."
Sarah was furious with herself for her own stupidity. Jareth had only started kissing her to convince her to let him take Toby. NEVER would she allow that.
"Very well," said Jareth, "I'll discuss it with your parents and you can come with us when we leave tomorrow morning."
Toby let out a whoop and ran from the doorway to find Karen.
When Jareth turned back to Sarah, it was plain that she was contemplating murder.
"Now, darling," the king cajoled, "don't be so upset. He obviously remembers everything so what harm can a brief visit do? Wouldn't you like him to see the palace and how radiant you are as my queen?"
"Jareth. I may not be able to escape from you, but I will NEVER let you keep Toby."
Jareth took a step back, considering her for a moment before making his reply. In an instant, Sarah found herself beneath him, locked between his body and the pillows on the bed. He pinned her arms above her with one hand and lowered his face to hers until their lips were almost touching.
"Sarah," he said, weaving a lock of her hair through the fingers of his free hand, "I never wanted to keep Toby."
With that, he vanished, leaving Sarah alone to think on his words.