Jareth arrived in the room just in time to hear my mother screaming at the midwife.

"You help her or I will personally dig your grave and put you in it-" she was saying, chasing the midwife back into the bedroom where I was. Jareth quickly waved the woman away and introduced me to his mother.

"Mother, this is my wife, Sarah. Sarah, this is my mother, Darya."

I tried to smile but I couldn't. Jareth moaned. "Oh, darling. I'm so sorry."

I closed my eyes. Darya reached for my hand. "Oh!" she exclaimed in surprise. "I forgot I had that gift. When I'm in the goblin realm and I feel bad for someone I can actually feel their pain," she explained. "You poor thing. You're in so much pain, and you're terrified to boot." She turned to Jareth. "What happened to her?" she asked.

Jareth shrugged. "I don't know. We were in the human world when it started. I brought her here so she could have the baby in his own world. I had no idea who to call on as a midwife, so I asked around a little. Trizzle was the only one anyone knew. Sarah's pains only got worse and Trizzle just sat staring at her for the longest time and I'm getting scared," Jareth added the last part softly. Darya sighed.

"Don't worry, sweethearts. Your baby will be here before long. Jareth, are you going to stay in here or leave?"

"I'm staying."

"And you?" Darya asked, turning to Toby.

Toby kissed my forehead and said, "I'm leaving."

As soon as Toby was gone Darya began to look me over. She asked me all sorts of things, but I couldn't answer most of the questions. I found out from Jareth that it had been several human days since I had first gone into labor. While in the goblin world not enough time had passed for the others to even feel, I had been in labor for the equivalent of four human days and felt every moment of it in pain.

Under Darya's care my body began to relax and let nature take its course. My pain was still unbearable, but with Darya's soft voice coaxing me and Jareth's cool hand on my brow I somehow got through it. As time got closer, Darya went to work. She kept telling me that I was doing good, and to push when she told me to. Finally I heard my son's first cry.

Just before my son came forth Darya had Jareth take her place to catch the baby. I'll never forget the look on his face when he saw his child slip out into his arms, still covered in birth fluids and blood. He turned to Darya for instructions but she merely smiled.

"Clean him up, Jareth. You've got a son. You'll have to get used to cleaning him sooner or later, and it's best that you do sooner. I have to take care of Sarah."

Darya cleaned me up and gave me some medication she brought with her. I had begun to feel spacey by the time Jareth brought my baby boy to me.

I had never seen Jareth cry before that moment. As he handed the screaming infant to me, he had tears streaming down his face. Soon he had begun sobbing.

"Sarah, he's so beautiful. He's so wonderfully beautiful," he managed between sobs. I made room on the edge of the bed for him to sit down while he regained his composure.

"A boy," I said softly. I smiled up at Jareth and accepted his kiss. Not even ten minutes later I fell into an exhausted sleep.

"Jareth, wake up," I whispered. Jareth had fallen asleep in a chair next to the bed. It was dark outside so I assumed we'd been asleep for a quite a long time; Jareth had a kingdom to tend to and I had a son to get to know.

A few moments after he heard his name my husband's beautiful blue eyes opened and stared at me. When he realized I had woke him up he began to fret.

"Are you comfortable? You're not in any pain, are you? Sarah, are you okay? Do you-"

"Jareth, darling, I'm fine."

"Are you sure? I can go get my mother-"

"I'm okay, love. How's the baby?"

He smiled. "Last I saw of him, our mothers had him, ooing and awing over him. Sarah, I've never been happier in all of my life," Jareth said in my ear.

I smiled at my husband and moved over on the bed. "Come and sleep up here. Your back will be hurting before long."

He sat next to me. "Are you sure you have enough room?"

"I'm positive. Now come up here."

He lay down and put his arm around me. His breathing grew steady, and finally I knew he was asleep.

I lay awake for hours after that, thinking about us. I had never seen such fear in Jareth's eyes as I did during my labor, and he had never acted so concerned about me as he had during that time. I realized that it was things like that that made me love him so much.

While I lay awake Jareth's mother looked in on us. When she realized I was awake still she came in to talk.

"You've got a beautiful little boy, Sarah. He's a darling."

I couldn't help but smile. "Your little boy is beautiful and darling too, Lady Darya."

She chuckled. "I always thought so, but then again, I'm biased. I was worried about him for a while. He just... well, let's just say he took after his father's brother there for a little while. Byron wasn't exactly my first choice of a man for my son to take after."

I sat up. "Who was Byron? Jareth's never mentioned him."

She sat in the chair by my bed. "Byron was Jareth's uncle, the younger brother of his father. Byron was a good boy, when he was younger, but as he got older he grew rebellious. He resented the fact that Damon was the Goblin King. So, he showed himself. He did everything within his power to make life miserable for Damon. It was because of Byron that my marriage to Damon finally fell apart."

"What happened?"

Darya reached for my left hand and played with the wedding band Jareth had placed there. She brought my hand to her lips and kissed it before going on. "Like I said, Byron made Damon's life miserable. Damon would go into fits of rage. That's what finally made me leave, was the tantrums he'd throw. I knew he was angry with his brother, and not at me, but I got tired of being in the way when he'd get mad. Finally, I had enough. I told him I was going to live with his sister, and I did. I was happy with her, although I missed Damon."

I glanced down at my husband, suddenly glad he was there beside me. My heart broke for Darya and for Jareth, who had suffered the loss of his beloved mother because of his uncle.

"Darya, what happened to Byron? Where is he now?"

She smiled to herself. "Eventually Damon did something he should have done sooner. He exiled Byron to your world. There, Byron discovered sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. He buried himself in them, let them take over what life he had left. They were really all he was suited for from the beginning, now that I think about it. He died of an overdose just before Jareth began searching for a wife, in what you'd call 'the early 80s'. I wish things had turned out differently for him, but they didn't." She rubbed her thumb over the back of my hand gently. I sighed softly.

"What about Jareth? Weren't you worried that his father would hurt him?"

She laughed softly again. "That's one thing I could say for Damon. Even though I got in the way sometimes, he never once let his anger come between him and his love for his son. He never, even in his worst fits, hurt Jareth. It was his fear of hurting his son that made him leave. He went into the forests, to a place I'd been to only once. He lives there now, with one servant."

"Why didn't you go back to him?"

"I tried. He said he was sorry that he hurt me and that he'd frightened me away. He said I was the best thing that ever happened to him, and that he couldn't take the chance of hurting me again. When I argued he told me he wanted me gone by morning. I left, and I haven't been back."

I nodded. Jareth stirred, so I laid back down beside him. In his sleep he threw an arm around me and snuggled close. Darya kissed our foreheads and whispered to me, "Go back to sleep, dearest. We'll have more time to talk in the morning. For now, bask in the presence of the man you love. Good night."

"Good night," I whispered back. It was still a while before I fell asleep, but now I thought about how much I appreciated Jareth and his family. I also determined I was going to go find his father and bring him home.