A/N – Chapter Three, and we come to the main gist of the story. I have tried not to make Jareth too altruistic/idealistic; if anything, Bran is the more romantic of the two.

Disclaimer – I don't own the Labyrinth. Don't sue. I have also borrowed (from Prof. Tolkien) a family of innkeepers named Butterbur, because I couldn't resist.

Chapter Three

It was a small, dark, filthy way house, no higher than two stories; the thatch was grey with age, and the whitewashed walls blackened with smoke and mud and dirt. Jareth eyed it dubiously, but Bran flicked him a sidelong, challenging look.

"Well? Are you coming in?"

"I thought you said this was the best inn in the area."

Bran smiled. "It is. Or rather, I should say, it is the only inn in the area – there are not so many such meeting places in the Fringes, Jareth. When villages and settlements are more than a week's ride apart, then you learn to appreciate what you can."

"It looks old."

"Hm." Bran dismounted, and tied his horse to a rail. "There has always been an inn here, in this spot, and a Butterbur has always been the inn-keeper."

He went in, and so Jareth, with great reluctance, followed. Although the afternoon sun shone brightly, it was dark inside, the smoke from the fire coiling visibly through the common room. Jareth looked about, fascinated – fae, of all kinds, sat and ate or drank at heavy, thick wooden tables, all of them grimly minding their own business, or talking in low, serious voices.

In the taverns and inns of his reckless youth, when it had been fashionable to embark on swaggering progresses through the less respectable parts of the city, he had encountered many different common rooms. However, none had ever been as patently unwelcoming as this one. He could feel eyes on him, watching him, evaluating him, and he felt uncomfortable, as he had never done as a self-assured, foolish young noble, even in the worst slums.

"You're a new face," Bran said to him as they sat down at a spare table with two tankards. "They don't like strangers out here."

"Should I be wary?"

"No. You came in with me – and I am not a stranger. They'll reserve their judgment."

Jareth grunted. He took a cautious sip of the house brew, and then another, larger one. "I've noticed that," he said quietly. "You're not a stranger. Everywhere we go, on the road, even this far into the Fringes – you're well known."

Bran said nothing. One of the first things Jareth had learned on the road was that no one ever asked or answered questions about their past.

"Why did you allow me to come with you?" he asked instead.

Bran looked at him. "Why did you ask to come with me? Truth, Jareth."

Jareth opened his mouth to speak, but hesitated. There were many reasons why he had asked Bran to take him with him. Most of them were true, to an extent: he felt he owed a debt of gratitude to the man for sheltering him; he sought someone who could teach him how to survive in his new world; he found Bran's presence reassuring and wished to continue traveling with him.

"You know the roads. You know the exiles. And they know you – and trust you." He paused again, took another sip of ale, and wondered if he dared reveal the full truth of his dream to a man he had known for barely six months. But Bran's eyes were steady and calm – once his allegiance was given, it would be forever. With this man at his side, with his strength, he could do anything…

"I want to unite the exiles," Jareth answered finally, "and build a kingdom."

There was silence between them now. He could not see what Bran was thinking.

"You said that your father had influence enough to ban you from all the Courts of Summer," Bran said slowly. "And yet that you are not of the Blood Royal. What is your father's name, Jareth?"

Jareth's eyes flicked up to meet Bran's; his odd, distinctive, mismatched eyes – his father's eyes. He could see the recognition in Bran's, wondered how long the other had known. "Aethan. Aethan, the Grey Lord in the shadows behind the Summer King – but you already knew that. You have known it for a long time, haven't you?"

"Since the first night on the road." Bran smiled, razor sharp and bitter. "Your eyes…" He shrugged. "I asked you on the first night, before I recognized you, and I ask you again: why did you fail in your bid for power, before you were exiled?"

Jareth stiffened. He remembered little of that first night, other than Bran's smooth amusement, and his own voice, rambling. Intoxicated, he was always extravagant – what had he revealed?

But there was no room for half-truth and evasion now. "Of my father's three sons, I am the youngest, and the most like him," he began. "But there is little scope for the youngest son – he taught me his craft, but gave me no outlet for it. So I tried my hand, and failing, created an incident that was blown up into an excuse for war."

"And? Tell me the rest."

Jareth's smile was twisted. "There is little I can say to excuse it. As you so often say, I am high court sidhe. I play cruel games with others' lives and emotions, I am extravagant in my joys and my hatreds, and if I am thwarted, then out of sheer spite I will go to any lengths to achieve my goals. My brothers, through sheer accidental luck, thwarted my first plan, so I plotted to kill them and take their money, land and power for myself." He looked down, remembering a dark haired, laughing woman, who had loved her husband and sons impartially, even the quicksilver youngest. "We have never been close. But I could not go through with it, in the end."

"You are a harsh judge," Bran said, after a moment. "It has been – what, two years since then? Are you still so extravagant?"

Jareth looked up, surprised at his calm, even tone. He'd thought Bran would be disgusted. "No. No, I don't think… The road discourages that sort of extravagance. Just as you wouldn't let me steal the horse, games are for the Courts."

"You have learned discipline." It was a statement, not a question. Then Bran smiled again, that razor sharp, bitter smile. "Your father is unparalleled, Jareth."

"I'm sorry?"

"Forgive me. An irrelevance." He dismissed it with a wave of the hand. "You asked me why I let you come with me – I will tell you why. Because you pulled back. Your father, if faced with a similar choice, would not have – but not because he had not yet learned discipline."

Instinctive denial rushed to Jareth's tongue, instantly stifled. He loved his father, had idolized him, once, but he could not deny the truth of Bran's words. "You know him."

"Oh, young fool, everyone knows the Grey Lord. He destroyed everything I have ever loved, once, simply because we were an obstacle to one of his schemes. I have spent a thousand years dreaming of revenge – and then Aethan's son fell into my hands, and I thought I had found it."

Jareth drew back, shocked by the vehemence in those cool, steady eyes.

"Then why didn't you take it?"

"After a thousand years, even hatred cools. And you are not your father."

The patrons of the inn were unusually sensitive to trouble and danger. Thieves, murderers, fugitives and criminals, hermits and hunters and foresters, they made their home beyond the ragged edges of civilization, in the wild, empty, forgotten places of the Underground – and they knew trouble when they saw it. So when Bran, whom they knew and recognized, entered with an unknown newcomer who could provoke him to a reaction…

"Well, gentlemen, can I get you anything else?" Butterbur – incurably nosy, in this notoriously closemouthed region – took the initiative. The patrons watched as the fair stranger looked up, spooked by the question, but Bran put a hand on his arm, calming him.

"No," he said curtly. "Nothing, thank you Butterbur." The stranger echoed him, his voice low and courteous, and Butterbur trailed away, disappointed.

The patrons continued to watch them from the corners of their eyes. They could see the stranger's back grow taut, see him grow more and more uneasy as they continued to whisper, and comment, and stare. Finally, the stranger stood up and turned to face them, his eyes furious. "Well? Have you looked your fill? Is there something you wish to say to me?"

Bran made a swift, checked gesture, as if to silence him, but then held his peace. The damage was done. Having thrown the question out, the patrons gave up any pretence of discretion and watched avidly as the confrontation unfolded.

"Who are you?" Cullum Four-fingered asked, taking the first step. "We haven't seen you around here before."

"He looks like gentry," another hissed, his fingers twitching with hatred and rage. "There's no place for gentry out here."

There was a general growl of agreement, and the mood in the common room darkened. A good number of the creatures in this place owed their exile to the whims and fancies of Court fae; the gulf between Court and commons was immense, with hatred on one side and contempt and absolute indifference on the other.

"Tell us your name, pretty sidhe lord," crooned a ragged, filthy old woman. She reached out gnarled, dirt-encrusted fingers as if to touch the stranger's arm, to come close to his white, white skin and his bright shining face –

Bran reached out, grabbed her wrist, and twisted. She screamed, collapsed to her knees sobbing in pain, but there was no mercy in Bran's eyes.

"Enough," he hissed. "You will not touch him –"

But this time, the stranger put his hand on Bran's arm. "My name," he announced to the common room at large, his voice strong and authoritative, "is Jareth. My father is Aethan, the Grey Lord."

There was a moment of stunned silence. But something very, very dangerous simmered underneath…

"I am an exile," he continued, "like every one of you here." Catcalls began a rumbling of discontent, a wave of resentment that this shining one would so class himself with the rest of them. He ignored them. "And I have a proposal for you."

"Get out, Oathbreaker's son," someone shouted. "Get out before we kill you!" There was a roar of agreement. Someone threw a tankard, but it fell short.

"I have a proposal for you all," he shouted over the din. "Do you want to spend the rest of your life hunted like dogs in the Fringes?"

This time, the tankard made the distance, but the stranger flicked a hand and diverted it away. Another tankard came, and then another, and then a knife – and through all of this, Bran sat calmly at the table, his hand hidden in his cloak.

"Do you want to spend the rest of your life hiding from the Courts?" he shouted again, but was drowned out by the shouting, howling hatred of the mob. But he stood against it, a slim, white, shining figure – until someone smashed one of the lamps, and the burning oil fell onto the rushes. Unchanged for months, they were disastrously flammable; the fire grew and spread immediately, interrupting the screeching and shouting, turning the angry mob into a fearful one pushing and shoving their way to the door.

Bran took hold of Jareth's arm, dragging him towards the kitchens, down a flight of stairs that led into the inn's cellar. While the mob was trying to force their way through the front door, he and Jareth exited out the back. Behind them, they could hear Butterbur, his wife and the two serving girls, and so they hurriedly put up the hoods of their cloaks, hiding their faces, and melted into the surrounding forest.

Sometime later they rested by the bank of a small stream, Jareth stretched out casually on his back, Bran with his back against a tree, arms crossed over his drawn up knees. In the distance, they could still see the glow of the fire against the night sky.

"I thought," Bran said pleasantly, "that you wanted to unite the exiles."

Jareth laughed. "Don't sound so disapproving, Bran. I do. And I will."

"You've certainly chosen an odd way to go about it. Surely you know how much your father is hated?"

"Yes, I know. Everyone hates him – even you, the most patient of men."

This time Bran laughed. "Patient? I would not say so. But don't try to lead me astray, Aethan's son. What were you thinking, to introduce yourself so? I could have prepared the way for you, and you would have been accepted without question."

"That wasn't what I wanted, Bran. I don't want to be an exile."

"None of us do. But that doesn't change anything."

"No. If I am to rule over exiles, to command them, I can't be one of them – I need to be more, there must be a distance between us. I need to catch their imagination as well as their loyalty…"

"You've certainly caught their attention."

"And now they will come seeking me, rather than the other way around." He sat up, stared at Bran in the darkness. "I can't do this without you, Bran. You know all of them, their names, their thoughts, and their beliefs – will you help me forge the exiles into an army?"

"Your kingdom of exiles, in the farthermost west?"

"Yes! A place where they – we – will no longer be hunted and despised, where we can hold our heads high again, take a chance to regain our honour. We can be safe, Bran, safe enough that no one will ever touch us, ever again."

The moonlight shone on him as he spoke, illuminating his countenance, the shining skin, the beautiful, dangerous face. The bright, burning ambition, strong enough to set the whole world on fire –

But he had held back, once, out of love. He knew dreams from reality and after eighteen months on the road had an idea of what life was like outside the courts.

He was not his father.

"Once you bring this idea into existence," Bran said, very softly, "it can never be destroyed. Do you understand? This idea of the despised, united, will echo throughout the future of the Underground for the rest of time. Are you sure that you can control this force you will unleash?"

"I am." There was utter conviction in his voice, and Bran could not help but believe him. "If you help me, I can control it."

A place of their own. A kingdom where all the exiles of the Underground could find asylum, walk with their heads held high without fear of reprisal.

It was a good dream.

Bran had lived under the stark shadow of reality for so terribly long that he had almost forgotten how to dream. Now the son of his most hated enemy came to him, offering him a chance to create something extraordinary…

Jareth had never learned the true, grinding tyranny of necessity.

"Yes," he said finally. And then, "yes, and yes. I will help you create your dream."

A/N – Feedback is always greatly appreciated. Thank you to all my wonderful reviewers.