The response was immediate. Way up on the ceiling, Toby's seated figure snapped to attention.

His voice echoed down to her. "Hello? Is someone there?"

"Toby!" she yelled again. "It's me! It's Sarah! Are you all right?"

Even from a good hundred feet above, the misery in his voice was evident. "I don't know… I – I can't find my way out of here!"

Sarah looked around desperately, remembering how difficult it had been to get to Toby the last time she was in here. "Okay," she called back. "Just… stay there, all right? Stay there and I'll come get you!"

"Right!"

And so, despite the fact that she was still breathing hard and aching from her time on both the staircase and in the tunnel, Sarah squared her shoulders, and chose a direction to head. Down a staircase, through an arched door, and she found herself… all the way across the room, but still no closer to Toby. She groaned. This was going to take a while.

No matter how many doorways she strode through, no matter how many stairs she ran up or jumped down, she still couldn't get herself on the same level as Toby. Only now did she remember that she hadn't actually reached him the previous time either; in the end, she'd had to close her eyes and jump, to…

"…take a leap of faith," she muttered breathlessly, a small smile playing around her lips. She finally leaned against a doorway, taking a few seconds to gasp for air.

"Toby?" she called to him. Craning her neck, she saw that he was now seated directly above her, exactly perpendicular, looking down at her with amazement.

"Sarah," he said, his voice amazed. Thankfully, they were no longer so far apart that they needed to yell. Though they were still a dimension away from normal interaction, they could talk and look each other in the face, as long as her neck didn't start to hurt from gazing directly up for so long. "How did you get here? After I… After I saved Anna, that guy said that you were gone, back home."

"I was," she answered. "I'm so sorry it's taken me this long to get here, but I couldn't figure out a way to get back here sooner."

"'This long'?" he quoted. "How long – how long has it been?"

"You don't know?" she replied in shock. "Have you been in here the whole time?" He nodded wordlessly. "It's been…" She bit her lip, hoping that he would take the news calmly. "Um… somewhere in the vicinity of two and a half months?"

"What?" he yelled.

Sarah winced. He wasn't taking it calmly. "I'm really sorry," she said strongly. "I couldn't figure out any way… Jareth – that guy – Um… Well, I didn't leave voluntarily. He kicked me out, and I didn't think I could get back at all."

"He kicked you out?" Toby yelled. "What's going on?"

Covering her ears with her hands, Sarah glared up at him. "I'll explain that all later. Right now, I'm just trying to reach you!"

He frowned down at her. "You stay where you are now. I'll try and come find you."

Sarah nodded, so Toby immediately leapt to his feet and was off like a shot. She pressed her back against the wall and slowly slid down into a seated position, thankful for the brief respite. How was she going to explain this all to him? How was he going to take it if he learned that his big sister had once meanly wished him to be kidnapped and turned into a goblin? Sarah grimaced. She couldn't lie to him, though. Not anymore.

And what was Jareth going to have to say about this? Was he going to be happy that she was taking her brother off of his hands? Would he simply snap his fingers and magic them both back home before she had a chance to say a word? Or would he keep her prisoner because he was sure that she was this close to throwing herself off a cliff again?

"Frankly, none of those sound good to me," she murmured, wrapping her arms around her knees. Though, to be fair, Sarah wasn't sure what she wanted. There were times, moments really, when her mind was firm and completely made up, but the rest of the time, she seemed to be adrift in a sea of "Should I or shouldn't I?" She frowned. She wanted to have her brother back; she was sure of that, at least. But she also wanted Jareth, and as for that one, she didn't know if it was a wish that was even slightly compatible with everything else she wanted, or if they were mutually exclusive. At that, she didn't know if it was a wish that was even possible. "Just like the dog with two bones," she muttered, feeling as though in wanting too much, she was going to wind up with nothing in the end.

"Sarah!" sounded directly in her ear.

Involuntarily, she shrieked in surprise, and swiveled her head around. Now Toby was standing behind her, holding his hands over his ears. "Ouch!" he exclaimed. "Why'd you do that?"

Over her initial surprise, Sarah blinked several times, then threw her arms around Toby, hugging him tightly. "Toby," she whispered. "I was so scared that I'd never see you again."

Patting her on the back, Toby awkwardly disengaged from her embrace. "I'm really glad to see you, Sarah. I was scared too." He looked her up and down. "Um… You've changed a little bit."

She almost laughed, but she was too close to crying to laugh. "Oh, that's not me. I just borrowed these clothes from… Well, I needed something to wear!"

"…Why?"

"Because I all had was my nightgown."

"Your what…?" Toby now looked distinctly uncomfortable.

Sarah had to remind herself that he was now thirteen years old. "Nothing weird, Toby, I promise." She linked her hands behind her back to keep herself from hugging him or doing anything that he would deem too embarrassing.

He nodded suspiciously. "How do we get out of here?"

Sarah paused for a moment, not wanting to tell him that she really wasn't sure. "Well, as soon as Jareth sees that we're both here, he'll do something about that, I expect."

"Jareth? The guy who – who did all this? You're on first name basis?" He crossed his skinny arms and raised an eyebrow.

"Well… Sort of…" With an effort, she managed to keep herself from squirming. "Toby, I—"

"—are planning on telling me exactly what's going on right now, right?"

She sighed, knowing she couldn't put it off for any longer. "Fine. To make a, uh, long story short, Jareth and I met twelve years ago – as you may have already guessed. I was kind of a brat, I guess you could say, and I'd had a really bad day – it's no excuse for what I did, but I didn't mean any harm, I promise."

"What did you do?" he slowly prompted.

"I – I wished that the goblins would come and take you away." She cringed, awaiting his reaction. And he didn't disappoint.

"What?" he yelled. "You did what? I can't believe you did that!"

"I know it was bad," she said quickly, "and believe me, within seconds I hated myself for it. That's why I decided to try to get through the Labyrinth, Toby. Because I had to get my brother back."

"Why would you have done that?" He didn't stop yelling, not pacified in the least by her hasty words.

"It was – " she sighed unhappily. "I'd been yelled at by Ruth, and I felt like I was being ignored, and then I was told that I'd have to take care of you, and you wouldn't stop screaming and crying… I said it out of frustration. I didn't think that anything would actually happen! I mean, people wish bad things upon their siblings all the time, but no one even expects goblins to actually show up, right?"

"Because I was crying?" he stared at her, and she fancied that she could almost see his admiration for his big sister crumbling down around him. "You wanted me to be kidnapped because I was a crying baby?"

"You're not listening," she snapped, frustration starting to replace her agony at Toby's reaction. "They were idle words, designed to relieve my stress. Odds were that you'd fall asleep eventually, everything would be fine, and no one would be the wiser as to a hollow wish made by an unhappy fourteen year-old!"

"And you're not listening to me," he snapped back, not to be outdone, his chin taking on a familiar mulish set. "You believed in goblins, Sarah. I've heard stories about you when you were young, from Mom and from Dad and from you, so don't tell me that you didn't believe in goblins!" He shook his head. "I still can't believe you did that!"

"Do you know how many times I almost got killed on the way to the castle? How many times they tried to get me to turn around and forget it all? But I kept going, you got that? I kept going because I had to save you!"

"Yeah, because Mom and Dad would have been very unhappy if they got home and I wasn't there."

"Because I realized – " She broke off, realizing that her efforts right now were in vain. 'Look, Toby, you're my baby brother and I love you, and that's why I went through the Labyrinth the first time, and that's why I got thrown out this last time, and that's why I jumped off a damn cliff to get back here now. So you can either believe me, or you can decide that I'm a selfish, horrible person." She folded her arms stubbornly.

"Jumped off a cliff," he said incredulously. "Sure. Right."

Before she could frame a response, the room around them began to blur and its colors and shapes ran into each other. In no more time then it took to draw in a startled breath, she and Toby were standing in Jareth's throne room, still nose-to-nose.

Both she and Toby turned, looking confused, and found themselves staring at Jareth, who was, as usual, lounging in his throne, and who was currently applauding sarcastically.

"Wonderful. Lovely," he said, his words belied by the dryness of his tone. "Brother and sister reunited. How sweet and touching it is to see the tenderness with which they converse."

"You," Toby snarled, and would have made a mad dash at the throne then if Sarah hadn't grabbed his upper arm in a death grip.

"Don't," she said in a low voice. "He's very powerful."

The side of Jareth's mouth tipped upward in a cruel grin. "How true. Now then, how shall I deal with this nuisance?" He looked keenly at Sarah, and she was sure that his sharp eyes noted how she tried her level best to look calmly back at him.

"Send us home," Toby said firmly, but with a hint of boyish nervousness. He really had grown up during his ordeal. "If we're a nuisance, then let us go home and we won't bother you again."

Sarah closed her eyes briefly, desperately wondering what, if anything, she should say.

"Us. Really." Jareth's strange smile got wider. "From what I was hearing, it sounded a good deal like you two are not fond of each other right now. Boy, are you quite sure that you don't wish to leave your sister here?"

Toby's eyes widened. "I would never wish my sibling away. Ever." His pointed words were quite sufficient without the glower in Sarah's direction.

"You're sure of that?" Jareth asked quietly. "After all, she did abandon you for two whole months…"

Sarah's mouth fell open in outrage. Not giving Toby a chance to even consider the idea, she marched up the steps leading to Jareth's throne and glared down at him. "You liar," she snarled. "You know damn well that you didn't intend for me to ever be able to come back, and that you were the one who wanted to leave him in that room for all eternity. Or are you just annoyed that I found a way to come back anyway? That I tricked you?"

A single eyebrow raised. "Tricked? Do tell. I love a good fable."

She had played her card too early and she knew it, but she couldn't stop. "I jumped off of the cliff on purpose," she said, her words low and heated.

"Of course you did. Very few people dramatically leap off of cliffs by accident."

"You actually – she actually jumped off a cliff?" Toby asked in amazement, but neither Jareth nor Sarah was paying attention to him at this point.

"I wasn't trying to kill myself," she countered, noting with smug satisfaction that he actually looked surprised. "I knew that you wouldn't just let me come back here, not after what… what happened." She shook off a lingering image of Didymus's broken body and continued. "So I knew that I had to take a chance if I ever wanted to see my brother again. I would have to risk everything, not knowing if you would still be watching me or if you were, whether you would even bother to save my life. I gambled with my life, and I won, Jareth, so don't you dare say that I abandoned him. I—" She paused, suddenly struck by inspiration. "I fulfilled my duty, and you would have expected nothing less."

Somewhere in the middle of her impassioned speech, Jareth had taken his eyes from her face and was now gazing at the ceiling. When she spat out the word "duty," he actually winced.

"Well-played," he said, so quietly that she could only just hear him, and Toby had no doubt heard nothing at all. "So," Jareth continued, his voice louder again, but darker than usual, "You both just want to run home to Mommy and Daddy, is it?"

Sarah turned her head to look at Toby. He still looked quite cross with her, but met her gaze and nodded, mouthing, "Yes." She turned to look back at Jareth, who was looking right back at her. She didn't know what it was exactly… There was nothing in his face that showed any emotion about her leaving one way or the other, but still, there was something…

After all, he had been watching her and had saved her life. He had come and danced with her of his own free will. And there was the ugly sound in his voice when he asked if they both wanted to leave.

Whatever the case, she realized, she couldn't come this far and back down now. She wasn't done gambling yet. And it was time to roll the dice.

"I want you to send my brother home," she said to Jareth, her voice sounding strong and decisive. "But without me."

Toby's reaction was immediate. His pique with his sister apparently forgotten, he rushed up to her and grabbed her hand. "What?" he asked. "You can't be serious, Sarah! Don't – don't you want to go home? You can't stay here."

She turned to face her little brother. "Toby, it's not that I don't love home. Or you. But – I have unfinished business here. I can't explain it to you right now, but I can't go home with you. Not now, anyway," she added, wanting to comfort him.

"But—"

"Listen to your sister, boy," Jareth said sternly, but Sarah could have sworn that she saw a hint of a smile – a real smile – lurking around his lips. "No harm will come to her unless she does something incredibly stupid."

Toby glared at him. "If you think I'm leaving my sister here, you're crazy."

"You aren't leaving her here. You're just leaving here… without her."

"Do you want her to stay?" Toby replied, horror in his voice. "What's going on? Sarah—"

"Don't worry about me, Toby," she assured him. "This is my choice. Listen, just tell Dad and Ruth that a great opportunity's come up… I have a chance to do some incredible fieldwork… or something. And tell them that I love them and everything." She managed a grin at him, though she felt like she might cry. "Really, Toby, did you expect me to stay near home forever?"

"Being on the other side of the country is one thing," Toby replied frantically, "but I expected you to stay in the same dimension!"

"It's not like you'll never see me again," she said. "Seriously." She hugged him, and this time, he let her.

When all was said and done, though, Jareth was quite ready for Toby to depart. As Sarah released him from the hug, Jareth rose to his feet and Sarah blinked in surprise as her little brother seemed to evaporate in front of her.

And then it was just her and Jareth.

Surreptitiously wiping the tears from her face, Sarah turned around, and she and Jareth stared at each other.

"So," he said.

"So," she agreed.

"Hmm," was his response. "Sometimes I do wonder what goes on in that pretty little head of yours."

"Funny," she replied. "I was about to say the same exact thing to you."

And he laughed. An actual laugh. The richness of his voice and the unexpectedness of that particular response stunned Sarah to utter silence. He turned serious again quickly enough, though.

"Why did you stay?" he asked.

"Why did you let me?"

There was a long moment of silence then. Sarah didn't know what was going on inside Jareth's head, but she was experiencing a mix of complete panic and – other things that she couldn't identify. In fact, the only thing she was absolutely sure of was that she was feeling very, very panicked.

As if sensing how close Sarah was to changing her mind and scuttling off after her brother with her tail between her legs, Jareth said, "Walk with me."

She nodded wordlessly, and together the two of them strolled out of the throne room and down a hall Sarah hadn't noticed before. It was several minutes before Jareth spoke up again.

"You do realize that you didn't have to hurl yourself from a cliff to get my attention, don't you?"

Sarah shrugged, but inside her heart was hammering. "You hated me," she managed. "I figured that it was the only way – that you wouldn't lift a finger for anything less."

"I never hated you." She stared at him disbelievingly, but he merely shrugged. "I was frustrated and disappointed, perhaps, but what do I care about one goblin more or less? The damage you caused to the city, while annoying, was easily repaired. The only permanent losses were those who died, and I, frankly, didn't care about any of them."

"I do." Sarah stared at her feet, remembering her friends.

"Yes, that made for quite a good punishment, I think." Jareth nodded to himself.

She told herself that she wouldn't allow Jareth to irritate her. The last thing she needed right now was to have him walking away from her again. Her only response was a curt, "Well done."

"You are missing the point, Sarah, and I do believe it's purposefully. The point," he continued, "was that I never did hate you." He paused briefly before continuing. "You frustrate me, and you confuse me. I tend to find myself at a loss whenever I try to contemplate which utterly ridiculous action you'll take next. You waltz in my front door by flinging yourself from a precipice, and the next thing I know, you're crawling through servant tunnels and distracting me from my work by singing opera. You are ludicrously single-minded, you have all the patience of a bull being taunted by a red sheet, and a particularly singular talent for annoying me and making me lose my rather formidable temper."

By now, Sarah's face was a dull red and she wanted to curl up and die. He was telling her that she was nothing more than an annoying pest underfoot, and whatever reason he had for agreeing to her continued residence at the castle, it had nothing to do with his heart. If he had one.

"Well," she said, striving for a tone that didn't sound hurt, and utterly failing, "I'm sorry that I've messed up your life so much, but at long as we're categorizing faults here… You are arrogant, mean, manipulative –"

"Guilty as charged," he interrupted, holding up his gloved hand for silence. "However, you are missing my meaning – again. It is true that you are all these things, frustrating, impatient, and so on. But that, I believe…" He paused and tilted her chin up with his hand. "…is why I enjoy your company so much."

Sarah gasped, her cheeks turning even redder, if it were possible. "You… enjoy…" She coughed then, trying to recover at least some of her composure. "I believe that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."

Jareth released her chin and shrugged lightly. "Most likely true. The best I've ever gotten from you, by the by, has been mean, arrogant, and… What was the third one, again? Ah, yes. Manipulative."

"Those are all true," she mumbled.

A ghost of a grin touched his lips. "Or maybe the best compliment I'm to expect is that you decided to stay here, knowing that you would have to contend with me?"

"I do like yelling at you."

Though he didn't laugh this time, Sarah got the distinct impression that he wanted to. "What a pair we make, the two of us, hmm? I'm fascinated because you keep me on my toes, and you like screaming at me so much that you couldn't bear to leave."

Now she laughed. "You seem to enjoy it when I scream at you."

"It's rare enough that I find someone who keeps me guessing, much less a beautiful woman who does so."

"But you didn't think that two months ago, did you?" she asked softly.

"Two months ago you were utterly predictable, much to my dismay, I assure you." He glanced over at her. "You've changed since then, though. You're more like… Not how you were when you were younger, but someone entirely new."

"And that's…good?" she ventured.

He smiled. It was one of those smiles that showed off his pointed teeth and made Sarah weak in the knees. "Better than I could have expected." This time, she smiled back. "Do you know when I realized it?"

"When?" she asked.

"When you jumped. The fact that you were willing to tell every bit of logic and rationale you have to get stuffed. You had nothing to go on except for your belief, Sarah. And yet, you still did it."

She shrugged sheepishly. "I had to save my brother."

Jareth was silent for a moment. "Your brother. And that, of course, was why you came back."

"He's part of my family, Jareth," she countered. "As unpredictable as you say I am, did you really expect me to abandon him?"

"No." He now looked distinctly smug, and Sarah wasn't sure why. "But you can't pretend that your staying on now has the slightest thing to do with your brother. 'Unfinished business,' I believe you said it was."

"Yes," she replied, fighting back a new wave of humiliation. "I guess you could say that." He arched that eyebrow at her again, and something inside Sarah snapped. She was tired of being so scared, of dancing around the subject. "Okay, Jareth, you want a compliment from me? A real, honest-to-goodness compliment?"

"I am all eagerness."

"You've haunted me for twelve years," she said bluntly. "Ever since I met you, every single man I've met has been viewed through a… a biased lens, because for whatever bizarre reason, you became my ideal of what a man should be. It's very strange, considering that you were my enemy, but there it is. Every man I've dated, every man I've kissed or slept with… They all disappointed me and most of them bored me, simply because they weren't you. And over the years, I had to learn that none of them would ever be you and that I would have to learn to settle for a nice, sweet, sensible man. Then suddenly, there you were again," she punctuated her words by gesturing wildly, "and you were yelling at me and I was yelling back and slapping you and trying to defy your orders, and… it was the most exciting, interesting thing that's ever happened to me, and I wanted more. I couldn't willingly leave with Toby and go back to a normal, boring life without finding out… finding out if…if…" She licked her suddenly dry lips. It had been going well, but then she'd gotten embarrassed again, and now she couldn't finish the most important sentence of her whole speech.

Luckily for her, Jareth saved her from further embarrassment. "Sarah," he asked seriously, "why were you dancing all by yourself this morning?"

"This morning… Um…" She wasn't quite sure how to phrase it. "I was pretending."

"Pretending what?"

"That I wasn't dancing all by myself."

He paused in front of a door and opened it. Somehow Sarah had known that the gleaming ballroom lay behind it.

Slowly, Jareth moved to the middle of the floor and held out his hand to her. "Well, then," he said softly. "I believe we should remedy that right now, shouldn't we?"

It felt like she was floating as she walked over to him, and later on, she wouldn't be able to say with any confidence whether there had been any music playing or not. Whether a whole orchestra had been in the room or whether she and Jareth had danced to nothing more than the rhythm of their beating hearts… It didn't really matter. What mattered was that she was in the arms of the man she loved, looking up into his strange eyes, which, for once, held nothing but peace and contentment.

Author's Note: My goodness. Took them long enough, didn't it? Well, this is the penultimate chapter… Yes, that's right, only one chapter left to go! Took me long enough too, I suppose.

Coming up in the final chapter: Sarah and Jareth have finally come to an understanding, but can it last? Or will their different lives and disparate duties pull them in different directions?