"Just when you think the time is right, it's always too late."
When she woke, Sarah found herself, waking to the same little stone room. She missed about 19 hours of the day. Leaving her little more than an hour. She got out of bed quickly and rushed to the window. It appeared the same to her, but had she seen it from a bird's perspective, she would've noticed how much it decreased in size. It was no bigger than a Hawaiian island. A deserted piece of memory with skies of grey and a forgotten king to rule over it all.
Sarah ran up the steps to Jareth's room to find it empty. She ran down to the throne room to see Jareth and Loki standing, watching the land. Jareth and Loki turned back to see Sarah standing in the doorway.
Loki looked at Jareth and whispered "Hearts will never be practical until they are made unbreakable." With that bit of wisdom, he left Jareth's side and went about lighting the castle's numerous candles.
Sarah ran into Jareth's arms crying. Jareth thought it was time to confess. The pain was getting worse. He could barely think straight.
She searched all night through her heart to see what lied in the core. All she saw in the maze of her mind was his face, kissed by the pale moonlight, emblazoned by the light in her soul that he helped add kenneling to in small amounts.
She loved him.
When the hug was broken, Jareth fell to his knees coughing again. Sarah padded his back, hoping to help.
Sarah called for Loki. There was no answer. Sarah called again. Jareth's coughing stopped. Nothing else sounded in the castle. Nothing that would betray someone else's presence.
Jareth caught his breath. "Sarah, it's no use. Loki's gone." Sarah looked helplessly to the floor. Jareth hugged her and held her hand. "I have something I have to say too. I'm going to die." He spoke quickly to her, for now, every second counted.
"I didn't want to force you to believe in me. You had to do it yourself." Jareth held his side and grimaced as he blinked in and out of existence. Sarah held onto him.
"But I love you! I believe in you!" She shouted out to no one in particular. Jareth continued to hurt, as Sarah fell to her knees crying "I believe. I believe." Her voice shook as she said it.
Jareth and Sarah sat together for a few moments, unsure of what to do. Jareth would live till sun down, then he would disappear. Everything else would come back, but he would never return again.
Sarah weakly smiled at the thought of seeing everyone again. But it wouldn't be the same without Jareth. He was being noble, sacrificing himself for the good of his kingdom.
"Don't be sad, Sarah. Fantasies are supposed to be happy things. Besides, I like to think I played my role of 'Evil Monarch' quite well. You're the heroine of the story. You're supposed to go riding into the sunset and live happily ever after." Jareth tried to put a smile on her face. But, to no avail.
Sarah sighed "I wish I had my radio and my Jim Croce tapes." Jareth clenched his fist and in the middle of the room, Sarah's black radio with cassette tapes next to it. Sarah blinked unbelievingly, then put on one tape and turned the volume up. Jareth forced himself up and danced with her to the sounds of the guitar.
Sarah sang lowly to him "Well, I know it's kinda late. I hope I didn't wake you, but what I gotta say can't wait. I knew you'd understand. Everytime I try to tell you, the words just came out wrong, so I have to say "I love you" in a song." Jareth smiled at the irony.
As the song ended, Jareth sat on the floor leaning against the wall as Sarah walked over to the radio and turned it off.
"You know, for so many years, I thought there was really nothing out there. But when I was growing up, I thought magic was all around us." She shook her head. "But as I grew into my late teens and especially when I met Adam, I knew, there was no magic out there." Sarah hugged him.
Jareth hugged her back and measured how much time he had left by how low the sun hung in the sky. "Sometimes you just have to let go." Jareth said as he let out a soft sigh.
Sarah's eyes teared up again "Then, I guess I'm lucky I had something that made saying goodbye so hard." She wiped her tear-stained cheeks "Any regrets?"
Jareth thought for a moment and began to speak. "Yes, actually. My only regret is not taking the opportunity to spill my heart out to you. And every second of everyday I ask myself why I didn't say something and the only answer I have is that words couldn't and still can't describe what I would have had to tell you." He smiled softly at her and she blushed. "How about you, Sarah?"
Sarah's mind flashed back to the last time she faced the goblin king. The last time she spoke to him, he was offering her love that she mistook for lust.
She sighed "I think I'll look back on all this one day and know love was staring me in the face and exclaiming it was finally here, and I walked away from it."
Jareth whispered in her ear "Remember - just because someone doesn't love you the way you want them too, doesn't mean they don't love you with everything they've got.
His face turned into a grimace as the pain once again took control of him. Slowly, he began to turn transparent. A sky blue hue formed around his being as the sun began to sink lower and lower beyond, what seemed to be, all existence. Fading from sight and life, seeming to take Jareth's slow and heavy breaths along with it. Sarah held him on her knees and sobbed.
"Why isn't it working?" She asked him. She did all she could. She believed in him, she admitted it, and nothing seemed to work.
Jareth looked up at her with teary eyes. He didn't understand himself, overtaken with pain. "Maybe it's not enough." He suggested, going numb, disappearing more and more each second. When in truth, he was part right. It wasn't enough, not anymore. Once the Labyrinth had half-way disappeared, it was already over her head. That, and the fact now, it was too late.
Sarah sobbed as Jareth finally disappeared. She pounded her fists on the stone floor that echoed throughout the entire castle.
"I believe, God damn it! I. Believe. In. Him!" She pounded the words out with her fists on the floor. After a few moments, she realized he wasn't coming back. She felt cold and utterly alone. She slowly picked herself up and glanced around the empty room and walked to the open window. The stars were back and the land seemed to slowly come back to life as the hedge mazes grew back quickly. The walls rebuilt themselves.
Slowly, the kingdom filled with voices. Questions filled the air of "What happened?"
"Where did we all go?"
"What happened to our king?"
Sarah reunited herself with Ludo, Sir Diddymus, Hoggle, and the rest of her friends. She told them of all that happened, regailed them the story of the evil monarch who she stood up against, and how in the end, he wasn't so evil after all.
Sarah woke up the next morning, to find her son screaming. Her husband, Adam, still dead. She shushed her son and put him back to sleep. In the early sun light, she went to her electric typewriter, sat down and wrote a story. A story titled "The Labyrinth". The tale of one woman's triumphs against evil to get her little brother back. She sat back to think about the first sentence and something important Loki told her just before she left,
"Our lives are shaped by those who love us and those who refuse to love us."
Author's Note: THIS IS NOT THE LAST CHAPTER! This is the second to last chapter. There is one more to go on how this story really ends. STAY TUNED and review! Lol.
