Author's Note: Sorry I'm taking so long to update but I have assignments and exams scheduled for the next few weeks. That, and the chapters are a little complex for me. So forgive me in advance. I promise to update again by the end of the week.

Translation: iel nín- my daughter

Saes- please (though this is apparently a bastard mutilation of the language and is not at all of the High Elven language; it's possibly grey-evlish, which is a whole other story.)

pen-neth- little one/ young one

mellon nín- my friend

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"Daddy, where are we going?"

Toby looked around and smiled reassuringly, if somewhat absently. "We have to leave, Arra. We have to go somewhere else."

"Is Hoggle coming?" she asked excitedly, picking up a flask and waving it around, "And Ludo?"

"Yes, and Sir Didymus and Ambrosius," he answered wryly. Silently he wished Hoggle had agreed to stay back with the other two; this journey was no place for defenseless little people and if they had stayed, then Arra could have stayed with them. He tugged the flask out of her hand and put it back down on the bed. He went back to the sketchy map Brethiliaur had apologetically given him and traced the marked route with his finger. "We're all going."

"Gwenél too?"

Blue eyes looked up sharply. "No," Toby murmured, looking away, "The elves will stay here. They need to collect stores for winter."

Winter was coming up, and then spring after, when there would be light rainfall. Or was that in summer? Summer would be hot, though with the coverage of mountains and forests, he rather suspected it would stay cool. Toby pondered the balance between carrying what they needed and traveling light.

"Gwenél will not come too?"

"No, Arradine, Gwenél, like the other elves, is staying here. Saes, iel nín, let me finish this."

"I like her."

The mortal winced and finished tracing the route on the map. "I like her too. But she can't come. Would you like to stay here, pen-neth?"

Arradine shook her blond head and trotted around the room, singing to herself as she fiddled with things. As there was not much, she soon got bored. By which point her dad had walked to get something from a drawer and foolishly left it open. There were things in drawers that she wasn't allowed to touch. She knew that. But this was an open drawer and she only wanted to look. All it had, however, were some small blankets and dark hooded cloaks.

She judged it safe to stick her hand into the drawer but frowned when she felt metal. She pulled her hand out and looked again. There were only small blankets and dark hooded cloaks. She put her hand back in and felt around, nudging cloth aside to find the bumps she had touched before.

Childhood-callous fingers found a thin chain and yanked.

"Arra, put that down!"

She dropped it in fright, startled by the yell from behind her. The medallion clattered to the floor and skidded almost under the wooden bureau.

Toby bent down and picked it up, carefully checking for scratches or injuries to the heirloom. The medallion was unharmed. One guarded look at his daughter's face and he knew she would not touch it again without his permission. She was frightened.

"Arradine," he said gently, "This is not a toy. I don't want you playing with it, okay?"

She nodded her head and glared uncertainly at the innocent object in his hands. "What is it?" she finally asked cautiously, "Is pretty."

"Is very pretty," Toby agreed, "It's called the medallion of Office for the Goblin Kingdom. It belonged to your father."

"My Ada?"

"Yeah. When he went to war, he gave it to me to keep safe. I hid it when we ran away so that no one could steal it. You can hold it if you like, but be careful. And don't take it out of this room."

He handed it over and turned his back. His pack was done, so far as he could tell. If it got too heavy he could always ask Ludo to carry it for a while. Ludo was so abominably strong that he would probably not even notice it if it were strapped to his arm or his back. And Arradine- he really worried about taking her anywhere out of this safe place. But he couldn't leave her alone with the three elves. For one thing, because it simply wasn't fair to Gwenél, Brethiliaur or Maegorod; they had put themselves in danger for long enough as it was. Now it was his turn to go ahead and do something.

"Dad, what is the med- medallion for? Is it magic?"

Blue eyes looked so serious that he didn't have the heart to fob her off with something vague. So he sat down and pulled her close, taking the medallion from her to swing on his fingers. "It's not magic. But the King wears it," he began, "It tells everyone else that he is the King and that they have to listen to him."

Arradine seemed to process that thought. "Do I have to listen to him?"

"Yes," Toby said firmly, "You do. He is your father and your King. You have to."

The straight little nose wrinkled. "But what if he wants me to do something I don't like?"

The medallion glowed in the soft autumn light, glittering with its metallic shine in the room filled with elegant woods and earth colours. Toby could almost see the white skin it used to lie against, and without conscious thought he smiled, remembering how he used it to push it away to lay his ear against the beating heart. Dimly he recalled the exact beat, the way it sounded like the slow turning of the earth itself.

"Dad!"

He blinked and looked down. Arradine didn't like being ignored. He laughed and tweaked her nose. "Sorry, sweetheart. I was thinking."

"About what?"

He looked down to the innocent face. And yet, not so innocent- not with those eyes. They were entirely too knowing. Brethiliaur had told him how he had fallen pregnant, had explained the basics of the magic to him and how the child was formed by it. A merger, he called it, when magicks and bodies and auras were forced together so closely that a new life was formed. The child took the characteristics of the most dominant personality of the time. And it was palpably obvious that Arradine was Jareth's daughter. An outcome of extremities. Normal people didn't have to go to extremes to have children, but Toby was aware that nothing in that relationship had been normal. Jareth wasn't normal.

"About finding your father again so we could go home."

She nodded sagely and waited for him to go on.

But how could he describe the former Goblin King to a child of six who had no idea of any world outside of the one she lived in? She had never even seen a goblin! So he summoned a crystal and called upon his memories.

Arradine gasped at the picture of the two males dancing together. The smaller one looked like her dad, with his thin energy and his wide smile. She couldn't see his face so she didn't know. But the other one... oh, the other one was the most interesting: a tall, graceful male with sharp, sculpted features and long-legged grace, dressed in elaborate black clothes that showed off the lean curves she was too young to appreciate. But he did look handsome, even to her eyes, and something lurked in his face that seemed so familiar.

"That tall one is your father," Toby said gently. "That's me," he added as an afterthought, pointing to how he had been.

Arradine touched the crystal and it popped, vanishing away into thin air with a quiet hiss. She made a tiny sound of displeasure but knew better than to ask for another crystal. "He looks nice," she remarked cautiously.

"He looks very nice," Toby agreed sympathetically, "He looks even better in real life."

"Will he like me?"

"He'll love you. You're rather loveable, sweetheart."

She giggled as her dad tickled her and squirmed on the bed, bouncing away to sit in the middle where he couldn't reach her unless he crawled to her. And since he didn't seem in the mood to play, she wanted to have the conversation continue. For obvious reasons she had never heard very much about her father beyond the basics. Something told her that her dad hurt where her father was concerned.

"Tell me more," she begged.

"Well, his eyes are two different colours."

"No, they're not!"

"Yes, they are," he replied in kind, mimicking her high-pitched squeak, "One is blue and one is brown. He has blond hair like yours, too. Did you know that? In fact, you look a lot like him." He always fell back on that one, finding it hard to think of things she might be interested in.

"He looks like me?"

"No, it's the other way around, Arra. He's older than you and he's your father. So you look like him."

She looked confused.

"Never mind." Toby fiddled with some of the other items on his bed. "He's very smart. And he likes to read. What else? Oh, he has a deep voice that sounds like this." He did his best imitation of his husband, attempting to capture the pleasant tenor and its rich, ragged ends.

Arradine giggled and he stopped, smiling along with her. She was such a picture, her leggings patched around the knees and the pins falling out of her hair. Her feet were leaving dust trails on the sheets because she always did forget to put her shoes on in the burrow.

She liked Gwenél, came the unbidden thought, and Gwenél was a mother-figure of a sort. Toby liked Gwenél too, and it would be easy to stay. Neither Brethiliaur or Maegorod would interfere in their affairs and even Sir Didymus thought he was a little insane to go jumping into another mad escapade with a six-year-old in tow. They wouldn't have to lie to each other or pretend to be in love. She was helping to raise Arra in any case and it might work out for a few more years. Once Arradine was old enough Toby could look to go off on his own to find Jareth, or Jareth might come back, or there might be some news somewhere of what the situation was.

"Dad, is Ada human too?"

"No, he's a half-goblin," he said thoughtlessly.

"What does a goblin look like?"

He absently gave her another crystal. This one he put into her hands so she could hold it and stare for as long as she liked while he thought a few morbid thoughts out.

There was silence for ten seconds before she came back to him, gave him back the crystal, closed his fingers over it quite firmly and said, "They look ugly," in a scornful voice.

"Arra!"

"They do."

"Don't you let me hear that from you again," he warned, banishing the crystal, "You've no right to call anyone ugly. The goblins just don't look like you and me, that's all. That's not ugly. Are we clear?"

"Yes. But Dad, why doesn't Ada look like them if he's a goblin?"

Toby looked at her and shrugged. "I don't think you'll understand," he admitted, "He's also a half-fairy. His mother was a fairy; his father was a goblin. That's enough of a story for now. I have work to do. Go find Ludo and play with him."

"But- but what does Ada like? Does he laugh? Can he use a sword like Maegorod? Can he sing like Brethiliaur? And why did he go away?"

Oh. The million-dollar question. Toby had asked himself that question every night for a long time now. Why had he left? Why didn't he come back? Why had he left his family in danger? "He was captured, Arradine, during the war. We're going to rescue him now."

"We are?" She seemed positively delighted. "An adventure!"

"Don't look so excited. I should leave you here," Toby interrupted wryly. The flooding cries of 'no' and 'please, dad' and he was forced to cede. "Very well, then, yes. We'll have an adventure. But you have to promise me to be very quiet and listen to everything I say."

"I promise," she agreed happily, proceeding to bounce on the bed until Toby saved the poor piece of furniture by threatening to make her eat a pear. It effectively stopped her since she ran away squeaking, clattering down the twisting corridors in all good faith. Toby watched her vanish with a small smile, unable to find it in himself to seriously be angry. She was just a six-year-old; she wasn't meant to be sensible.

The smile vanished just a little at the word. 'Sensible'. How sensible was he being on this mad quest? From the look of the Castle, Jareth seemed to be living in relative comfort, reading books and lazing around while his people were oppressed and his family had a price on their heads. Why had he never returned? It didn't look like he was particularly uncomfortable and the magic that blocked Toby from reaching him felt frighteningly like Jareth's own, poor though Toby's intuitions still were.

Yes, perhaps sensible was the wrong word. 'Mad', maybe, he decided, or 'blindly optimistic', but not sensible. After all, if he were sensible, he wouldn't find himself outside Gwenél's bedroom every night, silent and stiff until she allowed him into her bed. No, and he wouldn't forget everything as he lay on top of her and kissed her mouth as she soothed him. And he wouldn't do something like that if he loved his husband enough to go to him come hell or high water.

But then Maegorod said something very interesting- "You have grown, mellon nín. I find you much changed since you came."

The world began to make a bit more sense.