"Elban?"
"What."
Beran sighed and dropped the pebble he'd been playing with for the past who-knew-how-many hours. "Can we not talk civilly?"
"You never could," Elban returned acerbically, "And you dared to insult a dear friend of mine. I do not take that lightly."
"You have done so often enough."
"That is different! I'm allowed to. I grew up with him. If anyone knows Jareth, it is I and not you. You speak from ignorance and rumour; I speak from fact. And that's all there is to it. Certain things I will allow, but completely without morals? No! That was going too far!"
Beran studied the bewitching combination of spirit and anger drift across his lover's face and wondered momentarily if he would be chastised for finding it adorable. It always happened; Elban always got into a towering upset where his best friend was concerned. Beran was never sure why; Jareth never had needed anyone to protect him. He said as much, dreading the answer.
Elban sighed irritably and didn't say a word.
They sat on their opposite sides of the oubliette they shared, thinking their private thoughts. Beran fidgeted and Elban stayed perfectly still.
"He will come back for us," the forest sprite said unexpectedly, "He'll not leave us here."
Beran couldn't think of anything to say in return. He considered the Goblin King perfectly capable of leaving them there. But he wouldn't say so. There lay trouble.
So they sat. In the dark. For a long time.
"Elban…"
"Don't say it!"
"I was going to apologize," Beran sighed. He scratched his head in embarrassment. "I apologize."
The change was so startling it almost gave him whiplash. "You do? Oh, thank you, thank you!" Elban flung his arms around his stunned companion and laughed aloud in his ear. "I was praying and hoping and hoping and praying and you did it! Thank you!"
Beran lost his breath when a pair of warm, sweet lips found his. His exclamation of shock was lost to a demanding tongue. But he managed a questing 'hmmph'.
"I couldn't back down, Beran, you know that," Elban explained, pulling away and smiling delightedly, "I wanted to, so much. I am sorry I shouted."
"You- you could not back down?"
"Yes. If I had, it would have seemed as if Jareth really were those things, but he isn't and I could not let you think you had won on that. Anyway, let's just forget him."
Beran blinked and let another kiss be stolen.
"I pray you won't forget me."
The two jumped apart as if they were burnt.
Jareth favoured them with a tight smile and beckoned. "Come along, you two. Your time here is at an end. Your bedroom will be more comfortable."
"You menace," Elban began spiritedly.
"Leave it be, Elban. I am not in the mood to listen to you whine." The scarce light in the oubliette told the two not to argue with a fairly enraged Goblin King. "Hands." They gave them.
A whisk of light and dark submerged them for a moment and then they were in the Castle.
Jareth dropped their hands and turned away, dusting off his coat as if to rid it of dust and dirt. Not, in itself, a very complimentary thing for him to do to his guests, deliberately imprisoning them aside, but he did have some right on his part. The both of them had never dressed luxuriously for what they had anticipated would be a journey of the unexpected, but their clothing was now covered in dust and mud. There was even a slimy muck on the knee of Elban's trousers.
"Through there," the Goblin King instructed quietly, pointing to the door, "Out. Send Toby Williams in, please."
Elban tossed a confused look at the turned back, but the black sequined jacket barely moved. "As you wish," he said.
Beran was already holding the door open, nodding to the mortal waiting outside to enter. Elban didn't fail to notice that Toby seemed perfectly mystified and wary. That would never do. If Jareth were going to scream at someone, the least that he demanded was that they know what he was screaming at them for.
Elban tugged on a sleeve and blue eyes looked down at him. "If the world begins to fragment," the forest sprite warned, "Get to the door and leave. He won't tell you so, but I think you might need to know that."
"Elban, leave."
Elban left. Leaving two people breathing very quietly in the small room that was the Goblin King's study, two clocks ticking disharmoniously out of time with each other. Papers and ledgers and far too much tension.
"You sent for me, Your Majesty?" Toby finally prompted.
An armplainly flexed, but that was about all the change. "What do you think you were doing, standing around in the Labyrinth and conversing with illusions?"
"Well… it was an illusion. I judged it safe…"
"Nothing is safe." Gloved hands rose slowly to grasp the stone edging either side of the window. "The Labyrinth is never safe! How long have you lived here and known that?"
"I am sorry," Toby settled.
A wave of unease swept through him as leather-coated fingertips suddenly dug into the stone, almost as if paused in the instant before scraping down in a claw-swipe. "All you had to do was wish, Toby," Jareth's voice remained as light as before, "I would have been there to get you out. You could have continued your journey without a problem. But you forgot the danger."
"Your Majesty, I think you are overreacting…"
"Do not tell me what I am doing!" It was strange how Jareth never needed to shout to let the full force of his anger out. It fairly rippled through him, through the air around him, crackled off the ends of his hair and off his clothes. "You are not to go near that place ever again."
"I was hardly going to return," Toby said reasonably.
"You never will." Jareth turned finally. Not a hair out of place, nothing more than the tension in his gloved hands ever betraying that he was speaking of something apparently so important to him. He raked his eyes up and down his 'ward', his lip curling mockingly. "And what of your decision? I need an answer."
Toby broke eye contact, looking away as he rubbed the back of his neck. Clearly awkward. "There is no one I trust," he explained, "No… true friend."
"Really, Toby, in all your time here?" Jareth purred, edging closer, around his desk, around the photo with his dead love, "And not so much as one person catches your eye? Never tell me Luka was the only one you desired."
The mortal took a discrete step back. "No. But I tend to need more than a liking for someone's looks," he snapped, "I like the way the Lady Pandora looks, but I am hardly attracted to her."
"I should hope not. I don't want to think about what Freud would say to that. Mother Complex, possibly?"
Toby clenched his fists. There was no point lashing out. Jareth was just baiting him, deliberately punishing him or the both of them for something. And the only something he could think of was the encounter with Sarah's supposed spirit in the Labyrinth. Had it meant so much to see her again?
His eyes fell on the photo and a brief flash of recognition flashed before him. It disappeared as suddenly as it had come. But looking back up, he wondered if he was imagining the anger in those eyes. Strange, as Merilin had said, to think the cool, composed, superior Goblin King was capable of making a fool of himself over a young mortal girl.
"What about Elban?" he asked, latching onto the first name he thought of.
Jareth frowned in distaste and shook his head. "Not allowed. No married males, and no unmarried females. Everything else is fair sport. I was going to suggest Voltaire, an acquaintance of a friend of mine. He seems your type."
"Type?"
"The vocal, shallow, expressive type," Jareth returned, unmoved by the warning, "I have not spoken with him. I thought you could observe him tonight at dinner. If you agree, I hear he is worth living with for a year."
Toby sighed and digested that slowly. "Must I really go through with this?" he asked.
"Yes. Either this, or return. I wonder if I should just return you regardless?" Jareth tilted his head as if to regard him from a different angle. "However you wish," he decided, "Take a look at him and tell me tonight."
So Toby left the room, somehow convinced that he was lucky to have escaped without the world fragmenting- as Elban had warned- around him. It was simple enough, really. If the Labyrinth was chaos magic trapped in a system of order, then Jareth's magic was in a very delicate balance. When too much chaos broke out, the order in the world would fall apart. The powerstone around Jareth's slender neck was the only way to release all that trapped chaos magic.
Even then, Toby took one look at the centaur in question and shook his head with comical haste. "Not in four lifetimes," he said fervently.
Jareth looked up at him, seemingly in a better humour than the earlier interview and simply raised a questioning eyebrow.
"His shirt," Toby defended, "No one should wear purple!"
The Goblin King stifled a laugh behind his hand. Which left him with two last problems. Jervohl was refusing to return to Lady's Pandora's palace, listless and moody for some obscure reason she would not speak of. Jareth's attempts to persuade her to the contrary not only made her bite his head off, but reply that as he himself had no steady companion, she would bravely sacrifice her wants to fulfil that role. The thought left Jareth in a cold fear that had nothing to do with the dreams that continued to plague him. And Toby was still without an educator.
An idea began to form, one that would rid him of both problems.
