The fall was short, but brutal. Sarah had the impression that half a ton of rock and soil was falling on her, then everything stopped. Sarah spat out the dirt she swallowed during her fall and crawled out, praying not to start a new avalanche. The faint light of day that came from the hole caused by the monster provided just enough light to allow her to distinguish a passage or at least a hollowed space. She crawled under it and stayed there, pretty sure the ceiling wouldn't collapse. Once she was sure she didn't break anything, Sarah left her shelter to start looking for Jareth.
He had been less fortunate in his fall. Sarah only found him because of the bloody, twisted hand which protruded from the underground. She was surprised by the cold of his hand. Each time Jareth had touched her, he had felt hot. But, much to her relief, she felt a weak pulse. Sarah did not dare to pull his hand to release him. She could cause a new ground collapse or worsen his condition. Just seeing that hand made her want to throw up.

Carefully, she released Jareth's arm and then his shoulder. Dirt and mud still threatened to bury the still-lifeless King of the Goblins, even if she did nothing. Time was of the essence, so, Sarah grabbed him with both hands around his shoulder. Then, she pulled with all her might. He was heavy, but she managed to drag him into her refuge. Just in time. The earth collapsed one last time, blocking all hope of retreat. Sarah tried to stay positive. From now on, there was no way they were some sprites who wanted them dead could follow. On the other hand, they might have been trapped into a dead-end with a slow and excruciating death in the darkness as the only way out.
Sarah couldn't panic. With four hours left to succeed, she just didn't have the time. She put two fingers on Jareth's neck. The weakly pulse she still felt reassured her briefly, but his prolonged unconsciousness worried her. Under her hand, Jareth's forehead was sticky with blood or sweat. She couldn't tell in the dark. Sarah undid the silk cloth he had wrapped around her head wound, then did her best to wrap his shoulder with it. Fortunately, the fabric was long enough to go around his chest, and she was able to tie it and carefully slide his injured hand inside.

"That's just like him, letting me do all the work", sighed Sarah before sh thought about the fact that he was hurt only because he wanted to protect her.

She called him a coward. And her? She only had enough bravery to jump after him. When it happened, it hadn't even occurred to her to try to disarm one of the sprites to help him. She had been so scared. Now remembering she had picked up his sword before the jump, Sarah fumbled about until she fond it and put it on her belt. Finally ready, she grabbed Jareth under his shoulders and pulled.
Their progress was difficult. Jareth was lighter than she would have thought, but it was a big challenge to pull an unconscious man while she tried to move backwards and crouching. It was even harder because she had to go very slowly, not to widen his wounds. Holding him by the legs might have been easier, but the tunnel was too narrow to turn him over easily. After a moment, Sarah began to make out the contours of Jareth's face. Something faintly shone behind Sarah. It did wonders for her spirits. She grabbed her companion more firmly and pulled harder.

The tunnel ended in a cave so big it could have contained Sarah's room. On the walls, some mushrooms emitted a soft green light. Carefully, Sarah slid Jareth's body down the slope that led to the cave. She had to hold him by the feet this time. The ridiculousness of the situation would have made her laugh if the circumstances were less dramatic. No one should ever know what had happened. If people learned that she had to hold the Goblin King by the feet so that he wouldn't fall like a heap of rag at the bottom of a slope, he would never forgive her for this indignity.

"And now, we are even", she whispered, installing him as comfortably as possible against a wall.

A quick glance showed her that Jareth's unconsciousness was not related to a head injury. Sweat stuck to his face, not blood. With his sickly complexion, it looked like he would die soon. Sarah still had some water left. She used it to mop his forehead and refresh his temples. Contact with this cool water was enough to make him regain consciousness. He opened his eyes, groaned and stared at Sarah in confusion.

"How do you feel?"

"Terribly bad," he admitted, trying in vain to straighten his head. "But I'm already feeling better. How could I not, if I can feel your lovely hands on me?"

Obviously, the compliment was more of a reflex than anything else. Jareth followed every of Sarah's move with feverish eyes, and his breath was more like a rattle. He didn't even comment when Sarah opened his doublet and shirt to examine his injured shoulder. It was less severe and less profound than Sarah feared, but it was infected. Almost purulent, in fact.

"Poisoned?", asked Jareth who seamed to already knew the answer. "Obviously. They wanted to weaken me."

"Are you sure? I thought they targeted me."

Jareth repelled her intervention with an annoyed gesture and straightened up, more successfully this time.

"I have no doubt that your death would not have saddened them, but you're wrong. I was the one targeted. They attacked you to press me into making a mistake. I know the rules, so I had no excuses. My role was not to defend you, just to guide you. They had already warned me twice. I chose to ignore it."

"Twice?" Exclaimed Sarah. "Unless you count this ambush as a warning..."

Her gaze then moved to Jareth's right leg. There was a growing pool of blood around it. Earlier, she noticed his limp but she hadn't understood.

"You know me, Sarah," he smiled with a mixture of pride and unexpected self-mockery. I hate to play fair, even with those of my kind."

"How long have you been injured? Since the illusion of the lake? The one with the trees trying to swallow me? The castle?"

His gaze betrayed him.

"You've been injured for hours and haven't said anything about it," she reproached him, her heart suddenly heavy.

He could have told her a hundred times, ask for help or reminded her how her debt to him was growing. A hundred times, he had stayed quiet. He shrugged and examined his wound to see its gravity.

"I already told you that I belong to you, Sarah," he noted in a disillusioned tone. "Did you think I was going to hesitate before I risk my life for you?"

Yes, she believed it. She had called Jareth a coward, multiple times, even though he had wounds which told the opposite. He loved to make her grand declarations of allegiance, but they all left Sarah more or less indifferent. Yes, one part of her could not help being touched by his words. The other saw the cold machination under it. She trusted him to serve his own interests only. Finally, she sighed and looked away from his feverish and pleading face.

"Why do you make yourself as difficult to love as to hate? You say you want me to love you, but most of the time, you just make yourself detestable."

"I'm just trying to make you love me, Sarah, and I succeeded. After all, you swore you'll belong to me."

"Loving someone and belong to someone is not the same thing."

"For your race, maybe. For my people and me, it's the same thing. In affairs of love, we are unable to understand or accept everything that does not touch the absolute. I'm already your slave, I'm just waiting for you to be mine in return."

Sarah looked away.

"I'm not sure I can love that way. Or that I would want it."

He feverishly grabbed her hand and brought it to his burning lips.

"I won't demand anything from you, I don't want you like that anymore, but eventually, you will have to give me something in return. Isn't it enough for you that I abase myself, do I have to crawl at your feet? Ah, Sarah, Sarah, for someone who is not of my race, you often show the same cruel indifference."

Sarah snatched her hand from his. She didn't know what hurt her most, his despair or that terrible comparison. Realizing that there was nothing more she could do for her injuries anyway, she sat up to examine the walls and ceiling of the cave for a way out. She was determined to ignore Jareth. She couldn't.

"Even your attraction to me is incomprehensible. You have centuries, millennia maybe more of experience that I don't have. I just don't understand what you can find in a fifteen-year-old girl or even in a twenty-two-year-old girl. I beat you, and I know that you do not like to admit defeat and that you wanted your revenge, but that is all that is remarkable in me."

"Do you really believe that? The only prism you have to discover yourself is indeed the gaze of those of your race. And humans are notoriously blind. You shine Sarah, of potential, of energy, of liveliness, like few people in all the worlds. Let them all underestimate you, fairies, goblins, sprites, humans ... I see the queen in you. I would be crazy not wanting to own you, whether you defeated me or not. That's the truth, Sarah, and here's another one: you want me as much as I want you. So why are you still refusing to give yourself to me?"

Before she answered, Sarah took the time to really look at him for the first time. His beauty was undeniable, with all its unreal strangeness, captivating and terrifying at the same time. Sarah had noticed it the first time, unconsciously, and it had been the subject of her first adolescent emotions. He was, in turn, cruel, indifferent, passionate. If he were human, his character would have scared Sarah away, but he was not human, indeed. When she saw him, even thus collapsed on the ground and struggling against poison and blood loss, Sarah could not deny her desire for the absolute without compromises or concessions that he promised her.

Only...

She sighed and turned around.

"Time is running out. I doubt that we will be left alone for very long. Are you ready to go?"

"Ruthless," he commented, straightening up.

He was livid, bloody and trembling, but he was standing. More than ever, he looked like a king. Sarah came to stand beside him to let him lean on her shoulder. They started walking. Jareth retrieved his sword and turned it into a staff from which came a dim light that allowed them to see where to go. The passage Sarah had found was just high enough for a human to walk. If he hadn't been, Jareth would never have had the strength to drag himself through it. Sarah moved forward easily. He was so bent over in pain that he was not likely to bump into the ceiling. Their progress was slow. The further they went, the more Sarah felt Jareth sag next to her, struggling against unconsciousness. She had to keep him awake.

"Of course I want you," she confessed, and she felt all his attention focusing on her. "But that does not mean that I will give myself to you or that I would accept to have you by my side."

"Do you have any respect for me, for lack of affection?", He asked in a weak voice.

"None. Not after what you did to Toby."

"I didn't do anything to him that you didn't want me to do."

"I've already heard this," retorted Sarah. She felt the anger that had been brewing in her for the last two days growing, "But you're lying. You promised to return him to me intact, but he's not. His mind is not alright."

She had almost whispered those last words, but Jareth heard it clearly. She felt him sneer and straighten up by her side.

"Of course, he isn't. What did you think?"

Sarah pushed him away in horror. Jareth had to lean on the wall. Without that help, he would have fallen.

"What did you do to him?"

"Me? Nothing," Jareth laughed before his laughter turned into a groan of pain. "He was going to be a goblin, why would I do anything to him?"

"I saw Toby just before he disappeared. He's different. Changed."

The look Jareth gave her betrayed his wrath, despite the fever that overwhelmed him.
"I would have thought you smarter than all these peasants and brainless people with whom I generally deal. Who are the children I take away?"

"Unhappy children whom you tear from their families for a moment of carelessness and to whom you do not offer an ounce of love."

"I have never ruled by love, but by fear. It is the only way to do that my race can conceive. I don't know anyone who could love a Hoggle, beside you. As for the reasons, you confuse your particular case with generality. Indeed, I happen to take brave children that their sisters or their mothers are willing to give for a few seconds of silence. Although it's not the case with the majority of my goblins. They are the mouths in excess, the girls abandoned because the father wanted a boy, the children already condemned by war or disease. And then there are those like your brother, the children who look into the void with big eyes but cannot laugh or cry too much. The rejected, the abnormal, the simple-minded, those who have done no wrong but were born different. And you know what the funniest thing is? These in general, their families don't give them to me. No, they beg me to take the child back. They accuse me of having stolen the real baby."

"The changelings"

That idea had come to Sarah mind, more than once.

"I have not deprived you of the brother that you wanted Sarah. Fate took care of it long before I intervened. And sooner or later, you or your parents, you would have called me to get rid of it and would not have sought to recover it. The families of these children always end up doing that. Maybe that's what your mother and father did, in the end."

Sarah couldn't bear it any longer and burst into tears. She didn't know what she was crying about, herself, Toby, what she couldn't change or what she didn't want to change. When she had no more tears, she turned to Jareth.

"You're wrong. I would still have come to get Toby back. I gave him away because I thoughted he took my father's affection from me and deprive me of my moments of freedom. Still, I came, and I would have come in any circumstances because he didn't have to pay the price for my selfishness, my fear or my indifference."

"It doesn't matter. In the end, it would have been better if you hadn't saved your brother. You condemned him to undergo the looks of pity and contempt of humankind. He would have been happier living as one of my goblins. I take care of them. I'm the one who does that when everyone else upstairs had abandoned them."

Sarah was so mad she couldn't even reply. She grabbed Jareth's arm to place it on her shoulder and force him to move on again. Her walk was too fast for him to follow her without tripping. It hurt him, but it was of no importance to her. He was wrong. She knew he was wrong. The choice she had made, she would do it over and over again. It was indecent to see him dare to present himself as the saviour of these children.

Okay, for some of them it may have been the best alternative. If she starved to death or was beaten by her parents, Sarah might have preferred to become a goblin. However, Toby had no choice. None of these children had a choice. They were not lost children but children torn from families who may have ended up loving them or whose situation would have improved in the end. Even if the parents of these children were monsters, they may have sisters, brothers, aunts, who could have taken care of them.

"How many children are you given per year?"

"Between one hundred and two hundred."

"How many are immediately claimed, early enough for the person to face the labyrinth?"

"About thirty are claimed. Maybe ten do it in time."

There. Perhaps those who were not claimed were better off being goblins in the Labyrinth. The rest should have been returned to their families immediately. Regrets should be enough. No, Sarah was wrong. She remembered the teenager she had been. When she entered the Labyrinth, she certainly did not deserve to save Toby, any more than during most of his journey. She was a whiny girl, selfish and full of herself. In some ways, she hadn't changed, but she was aware of it and struggled every day to become a better person. She had entered the Labyrinth because she was ashamed and afraid of the consequences. She came out relieved, not because she was free of it, but because Toby was fine. The Labyrinth had become a way to face and overcome her faults. That was why she had earned the right to bring back her brother, but it was not the reason why she had won.
She had won only by chance and because she had made unwitting friends along the way. She had realized, or decided, that she would not obey the laws and rules enacted by Jareth. And she was the only one to have won against the Goblins King because she was the only one to have understood, among hundreds of desperate people, that when the game was rigged, you simply had to refuse to play or become a player rather than staying a chess piece.

The maze had a purpose that she understood, but that was not how it should work. The Labyrinth should be the place where the participants fought themselves and not Jareth. To win, the goal should not be to reach the centre, but to defeat yourself and find some love for the kidnapped child and accept responsibility. With this in mind, the game did not need to be fair. It did not have to be, for the victory to be deserved.

This conclusion led to another. Jareth was a monster, but one with good intentions. He wanted to save these children for good reasons. It was just that he was doing it wrong and making more victims than happy people because he did not understand how Humans thought and loved. He did not reward those who learned from their mistakes, did not ask their children for their opinion. He behaved like a real bastard with all his interlocutors, including goblins. Not out of spite, because it was his nature. Because he didn't know other ways. That was how he behaved with Sarah herself. When she wasn't blinded by her anger towards him, Sarah had to admit his clumsiness towards her was almost touching. He knew that he wasn't doing it right, that she expected something else from a suitor, but he still misunderstood her and fail. Hence he only became more brittle to hide his frustration.
Sarah felt like she was hit by three or four epiphanies at the same time. It was not a pleasant feeling.

Jareth's voice finally pulled her from her thoughts and put her on alert.

"I think we're going to have company."

He hadn't warned her a second too soon. The ground shook around them, as if pounded by dozens of feet. Jareth made them stand with their backs to the wall to cover their backs and retrieved the staff that lit their surroundings. He turned it into a torch and brandished it like a sword, visibly ready to burn and disfigure any adversary approaching too closely. Sarah could do nothing but support him and protect his right side. She hoped she was ready this time.

A horde of sprites and other creatures swarmed over them from both sides of the tunnel, screaming. Sarah knew nothing about the art of combat but did not need to. Their adversaries were as messy and clumsy as the goblins she faced with her friends. They weren't dangerous because of their skill but because of their number. Sarah knew that the battle was already lost. Only a supreme effort of will kept Jareth standing. When their attackers came within range, large reels of his improvised weapon kept them at bay. Sarah worried. They were waiting for something.

Suddenly, the walls, the ceiling, the floor, the whole passage shooked like under the passage of a great wave that made everything vibrate and destabilized all those inside the tunnel. Most of the sprites fell to the ground. Sarah managed to stand, but Jareth let go of her and fell to his knees. It was the opportunity their opponents were waiting for. The wall behind Sarah curved back for a few seconds before dozens of stone hands emerged. They seized Jareth. Sarah tried to react, but when she attempted to catch him, the wall had already swallowed him. The sprites
shouted with joy, tapping themselves violently on the shoulder without worrying about Sarah. They ignored her entirely and were already starting to leave, indicating how insignificant she seemed to them. Sarah could only agree with them. The last two attacks showed how weak she was.

No. Sarah was wrong.

They ignored her too deliberately, some giving her furtive looks as they left. She was stupid. She made the same mistakes as in the labyrinth, showed the same arrogance and incredible stupidity. She knew how she had overcome the Labyrinth and Jareth: she ceased to play the game. So why should she conform to the rules of the Underworld here?

"Wait!" She cried. The goblins froze. "I've been patient enough, take me to your masters."

They looked at each other and started whispering to each other. Their bulging eyes, their tails and ears which turned in all directions betrayed their discomfort. They weren't used to hearing orders from a human's mouth, just pleas. Sarah took care to keep the same commanding air during all their discussions. She even successfully copied Jareth's imperious look. A simple raised eyebrow made them tremble. Eventually, one of them approached Sarah cautiously.

"And why would we do that?"

"Because I told you to do it, of course."

"It's against all the rules!"

The sprite's voice was now reduced to a strangled squeak. Sarah almost felt sorry for him.

"The rules are for plebeian. Your masters invited me when they kidnapped my brother to play with me. I had a lot of fun, but now your duty is to lead their guest to your masters."

He bowed low and returned to his comrades. There was sweat on his forehead.

Sarah could only hope it worked.