A/N: Thanks to everyone who follows and reviews and favorites this story. Sorry this chapter is so short but it really needed to end where it ends.
Four Months Later – The Underground
They said they'd always be there for her, whenever she needed them. They said it, they meant it…and yet, after the first few months of human-time passed, Sarah stopped calling on them, stopping speaking to them either through the looking-glass in her bed chamber or by summoning them to join her on her side of the portal that was theirs alone to use.
It was worrisome, no mistake on that. Sir Didymus didn't like to be worried; by nature he was a happy-go-lucky creature, fearsome in battle, brave unto death, but living life in the moment at hand at every chance. Even so, he was the first to notice her sudden distance, the gardener being too taken with his work on the castle grounds and Ludo being Ludo, as he always was and ever would be; caller of stone and as stolid as the Earth herself and untroubled by any sense of time whatsoever.
"Huh, yer right," Hoggle grunted when Didymus raised the issue with his two boon companions. Ambrosias, his steady steed and other boon companion — was ever a creature blessed with such an abundance of boon companions as he, Sir Didymus? — barked his own agreement. Or perhaps at the fairies buzzing around them, ignored for once by the dwarf and taking advantage of his distraction, cheeky things. "Guess I sorter lost track a'time for a while. Blame him," he added, jerking his head in the direction of the Goblin King's castle.
Their villainous overlord had vanished for a time after Sarah's triumph over him, no doubt sulking in his winter palace like the great child he was, but had returned mere days after Sarah's triumph, restoring the Goblin Castle to its former, er, glory in the blink of an eye and demanding that all his servants return to their at once to their duties.
Even Hoggle, whom he'd once sworn to exile to the farthest reaches of the kingdom, along with Didymus and Ludo and Ambrosias and any other who so much as crossed the fair maiden's path. Unfair, but the Goblin King was e'er a capricious thing, overflowing with whims and tempers even for one of the Fae.
"Didymus!" The dwarf's angry shout brought the self-proclaimed knight back to himself with a start. "Didja even hear me? I said, when was the last time ya tried to call her through the mirror?"
The fox-goblins ears drooped, showing how shamed he was that he'd allowed himself to become distracted by musings on the Goblin King when the Fair Sarah required his full attention. "Twas only yestereve, good Gardener," he replied. Ambrosias barked confirmation — or at the fairies that were tweaking his tail and causing him great annoyance — and Didymus nodded more firmly. "Yes, yestereve. I am certain." His ears and tail drooped even further. "She did not respond, though I saw here within her chamber." His eyes grew dreamy at the memory. "She was there, lying on her bed, her gentle hands resting on the great mound of her belly…"
Even Ludo's ears pricked at that description, although Didymus wasn't sure why it brought such a strangled gasp from Hoggle's lips. "What? Did I say something wrong? Is something amiss?"
Hoggle groaned and slapped his hand across his face. "Is something…Didymus, do ya have shit for brains? Dontcha know a pregnant girl when ya see one?!" He glowered at the other three and lowered his voice as he added, "And I think we all know who the daddy is!"
Aboveground
Oh God, it hurt so much, she'd never felt anything like the excruciating pain of trying to push a living human being out of her body. She squeezed the nurse's hand desperately, clinging to the human contact even as another contraction rippled across her abdomen. She cried out, barely hearing the soothing murmur of the nurse's voice, coaxing her to open her eyes and focus on something outside her own body, to help keep the pain from overwhelming her.
Too late for that. Another cry tore itself from Sarah's throat as the doctor said something about her cervix and dilating that probably was important but right now was just words without meaning. The only thing she understood clearly, hours or seconds or minutes or days later was when he told her it was time to push, just a few good pushes and it would be over, she could rest, the baby would be born and she could go to sleep…
Her head and shoulders raised up from the exam table, muscles clenching as she strained to do as the doctor was urging her to do, the nurse still holding her hand although the woman's fingers must be squashed to two dimensions by now. Then there was the sensation of something moving, slithering between her legs, leaving her body and making its way into the doctor's waiting hands, and the pain subsided as suddenly as it had begun earlier that night.
She fell back on the pillows with a gasp, unclenching her hands and releasing the nurse, who offered a comforting pat on her shoulder before hurrying down to join the doctor and the other nurse in examining her baby.
"Congratulations, Sarah! It's a boy."
Dimly she heard the baby wailing in protest at the violence of its arrival in the outside world – no, his arrival, they'd said it was a boy, right? Sarah managed a smile as she levered herself back up on her elbows. "Can I…can I hold him?" she whispered, knowing it would be the only time she'd be able to do so, since the adoptive parents were waiting with Karen and Dad in the other room, waiting to take their new son away with them, as they'd all agreed, papers signed and lawyers fees paid. It was for the best, she kept telling herself that even as she strained for a good look at her son.
Her son, and Jareth's.
"Just as soon as we clean him up a bit," the doctor promised, turning away and taking the still-crying infant with him. Sarah caught a glimpse of golden hair and slimy red skin – nothing weird about that, all babies looked like slimy aliens when they were born, so Karen had assured her – and rested her head on the pillows once more, closing her eyes as the nurse returned to fuss over her, helping to raise the head of the bed so Sarah could more easily hold her son once the clean-up and weighing and measuring had been finished.
Her son. A flash of panic overcame her; how could she call him that, even in her own mind, when she'd already signed him away to a pair of strangers who had no idea of their new baby's unusual heritage? Her panic abated only when the smiling nurse brought the still fussing bundle over to her, carefully placing Sarah's son in her arms.
One look told her everything she needed to know, settled her into an accepting calm.
He was perfect.
He was her son.
And there was no way she was letting the Gendries take him away from her.
It was at that very moment, her moment of certainty, as love for her newborn son filled her heart and she opened her mouth to tell the doctor that she'd changed her mind, that the world ended.