An hour passed while Sarah sat upon the sofa thinking about days that passed long ago. She thought about all of her encounters with the Goblin King. It was so clear to her now. She had missed it on that beautiful starry night in the ballroom.
"It was Jareth with me that night…" a hush came over her voice, the sentence was but a whisper. "It was Jareth… oh… oh God, what have I done. He only wanted to love me, and I've pushed him away again."
It had been so long, such a long time. She had been so focused on saving Toby from a horrible fate she had missed all the signals.
Sarah arose from her seat
"As well I should have!" she exclaimed, "I was just a teenager!"
She crossed the room, and stood in the doorway, resting her head on the doorframe, she once again raised her hand to her cheek. She could feel the scabbed line, and she traced it with a finger. She could hear his voice, repeating over and over in her head.
"Your eyes can be so cruel... just as I can be so cruel… oh I do believe in you…"
"Oh Jareth… would that I could tell you what I now realize. But… no… no… I can't… regardless of how I am feeling… there's no escaping the Goblin King, he will always be a part of you, and it is he that I defy. Not… not you… Jareth…" Sarah whispered his name with a reverence rarely spoken, and a shiver flew down her spine. She did not know what fate befell Jareth, but she could see clearly now, the difference between her interactions with the power hungry Goblin King, and the love struck Jareth. Toby's danger was a fabrication of the Goblin King's, but that wonderful ballroom was Jareth's attempt to communicate to her. With the fall of the Goblin King's empire, Jareth must be once again gaining strength. But in defying the Goblin King, she defied Jareth.
But why has he returned now? This was a question she knew only one person could answer, but the prospect of facing him again was dreadful, but strangely exhilarating and thrilling at the same time, knowing now what she did not know just hours earlier.
She moved upstairs to her own room, and slowly entered, and crossed to the window. She opened up the curtains, and unfastened the windows, allowing them to swing outward. As a light breeze began to ruffle the curtains, she took a seat at her vanity. She picked up a brush, and as she began to pull it through her long brown hair, she remembered all of her friends coming to visit her in celebration of her victory against the Goblin King. She could see them now, Ludo, Hoggle, Sir Didymus. She could see Him too, but his image was darker, and more blurry than the rest, and even so, it seemed as though his image was in her room at that very moment, more than a mere image from her mind. Sarah turned around.
"Jareth..."