Sarah stepped back into the bedroom and stared at Jareth. The baby, for his part, seemed too mesmerized by his surroundings to make a fuss.
"You can fix this. You have to. There has to be a way."
She saw a flicker of something that looked like indignation pass across his face. "Sarah…don't you think I would, if I could?"
"I don't know." She could feel an unfamiliar rage building inside her. "Maybe you still like to feel powerful occasionally."
His eyes narrowed. He cleared his throat and moved toward her, and she instinctively stepped back.
"I was wrong," he said. His voice had an oddly hollow ring to it, as if he were reciting words that someone else had written. "I care not for the ancient laws of this place and the responsibilities that bind me to it."
Sarah felt the floor begin to vibrate beneath her feet. Jareth moved to take the baby from her, and the vibration intensified to the point where she had to lean against the wall to keep from falling.
Jareth kept his eyes locked on hers as he took the baby, who was now clearly showing signs of distress. "I will take this child and return him to—"
The child screamed as the shaking became unbearably strong. Sarah began to genuinely fear that the castle might fall down around them.
And then Jareth suddenly doubled over in pain, and his body seemed to shimmer and twist in a horrible, strange way that bore some resemblance to the way that he would vanish when he moved between worlds, but different, more…tangible. His flesh rippled and shifted. He clutched his throat and seemed to be gasping for air. Horrified, she saw splotches of red blooming on his arms and chest.
"Stop!" Sarah didn't know who she was shouting at. The child in her arms gave a full-throated scream. "He didn't mean it! STOP!"
Jareth continued to gasp. In desperation, Sarah held up the baby like an offering.
"Goddammit, the baby is still here! He didn't do anything! The baby's not going anywhere!"
The shaking gradually subsided. Jareth's body slowly regained its shape, and his breathing returned to normal, though the red stains on his shirt were still quite visible. His eyes looked wild and feral. He sat down on the edge of the bed, gripping the blankets and closing his eyes.
Sarah felt a tug at the bottom of her shirt and looked down to see a lightly-armored goblin looking up at her. It didn't speak. It just held out its arms for the baby. A few other goblins stood in the open doorway, intently watching the proceedings.
"Give them the baby, Sarah." Jareth's voice was hoarse. "You know they won't hurt it. They may be stupid, but they never did any harm to Toby."
The child was still crying. Sarah took a moment to calm him down, jogging him gently against her, and then, fighting every urge that told her not to, she very gently handed him to the goblin.
"I'll come check on you in a bit," she whispered, kissing the child's forehead. "Be good."
The goblin took the baby in surprisingly confident arms. Sarah thought the other goblins looked relieved as they shuffled back toward the throne room.
Sarah stared after them. "Will he…be turned into a goblin?"
Jareth's gasping breaths gradually slowed behind her. "In thirteen hours, yes."
"I could run the labyrinth in her place—"
"No. She refused. If she'd expressed a desire to get the child back, someone else could run the labyrinth for her. But she didn't want to get him back."
When Sarah was silent for a long time, Jareth continued. "Sarah, would you rather she had abandoned him? Neglected him? Your world is full of such children."
Sarah clenched her fists. "She is a child. She said some random words and had no idea what they meant, and now she has to deal with the consequences for the rest of her life."
"She won't remember."
Sarah turned to look at him. "What?"
"She won't remember him. No one will. It will be as if he were never born. It would have been the same with Toby, if you'd failed to retrieve him, or if you hadn't wanted to run the labyrinth to get him back."
Sarah's mouth fell open. "Are you seriously arguing that that makes it okay?"
"No." He sighed, and she wondered if he'd had this conversation before, with himself or with someone else. "But can you seriously argue that this isn't the outcome she wanted?"
Sarah felt a litany of abuse pooling in her mind, ready to be unleashed…but she said nothing.
Because, though she hated to admit it, he was partly right.
What teenage girl with a baby she'd likely never wanted wouldn't love an outcome like this—not only to be free of the baby, but to have no memory of it?
But…
"But it's different." Sarah's voice grew steadily louder as she spoke. "Because this baby is going to be turned into a goblin. And this girl…and other girls…didn't make a conscious choice to give their babies up. They just said some words that they didn't mean."
"The labyrinth doesn't care whether you mean the words," Jareth said.
She folded her arms. "But you understand the difference. Don't you?"
"I have come to see that mortals do not always mean what they say, yes. Not that how I see things matters."
She was unnerved by the hollow quality in his voice, thinking either that she'd never heard it before or that he'd kept it well hidden. "It matters to me."
He smiled sadly. "I'll be sure to let the labyrinth know that the next time it decides to discipline me."
Sarah's mind was racing, but one thought stood out among all the others, one question that she'd always known she should ask but hadn't, because some part of her had known the answer.
She clenched her fists. So be it.
"How many?" she finally asked.
He looked up at her from where he sat on the bed, his eyes wide. "What?"
"How many have there been, since I ran the labyrinth?"
Jareth winced. "Sarah, there's no point in—"
"There is absolutely a fucking point." She took a deep breath and lowered her voice. "You can't hide this from me anymore."
He snarled and stood up, his face inches from hers. "I hid nothing, Sarah. It was you who didn't want to know."
He's got you there. She gritted her teeth. "I thought it was mostly animals and inanimate objects," she muttered.
"It has been, comparatively speaking. I knew the details would be unpleasant for you, so I never spoke of them."
"I want the details now." She took a deep breath. "How many?"
Jareth sighed and went to stand by the window. She thought he might just refuse to answer, but then he spoke.
"Twenty-three."
The number hit her like a slap. She wasn't sure if she had expected a smaller one or a larger one. Now that there was one, though, an actual number…
"Did any of them get the children back?"
He flinched. "No. Seven chose to run the labyrinth. None of them succeeded."
"Were they…" She cleared her throat, forcing her voice to be firm. "Were they all sons or daughters? Were any of them brothers, cousins, the neighbor's kid?"
His voice had grown quieter. "Four sons. Seven daughters. Six brothers, three sisters, three…no relation."
Sarah felt ill. Her body alternated between an urge to vomit, cry, and throw something at Jareth. Unable to decide between those options, she simply leaned against one of the posters of the bed, hyper-aware of the sound of her own breathing and the faint noise of the goblins down the hall.
You knew. In the back of your mind, you knew. You just didn't want to think about it.
Yeah, well, now you know a lot more and you've got a lot more to think about.
Eventually Jareth turned and looked at her, and the sneering expression on his face was both alien and familiar. She hadn't seen it for years, since he'd first come back into her life.
"If you're quite finished with this interrogation, Sarah, would you be so kind as to venture back to your Aboveground world, where your mortal sensibilities are much less likely to be offended by my existence?"
She stared at him. "I just…why didn't you do anything to stop it? How could you…how could you let it go on, all these years?"
He threw up his hands. "I'm sorry, do you need another physical demonstration?"
"There has to be a way…you're magic, there has to be something…"
"Yes, of course." The sneer was back. "How silly of me, only spending the first several hundred years of my existence in this role that I did not choose trying to figure out some way out of my ridiculous obligations, which resulted in quite a few creative bodily and spiritual mutilations, I assure you, when I could have simply listened to the indignant voice of a mortal girl who's not yet seen a hundred summers. A voice that told me to just do something."
His words dripped venom, and for a moment he seemed to relish the shock on Sarah's face. He gave a somewhat theatrical bow. "Please, wise one. Please tell me your plan for defying the forces that have made it quite clear that there is no defying them."
She looked down. "I don't know how to—"
"Oh, you don't?" His voice was mocking, and it hurt more than she wanted to admit. "Forgive me, this is an aspect of mortality that I haven't quite grasped yet, this condemnation and judgment of others' actions when you don't have the first hint of a better fucking idea."
Sarah moved in front of him. "I said I don't know what to do now. Now doesn't mean never. There has to be something, some way to change it…"
Jareth sighed wearily. "Toward what end, Sarah? Why waste so much of your mortal energy on a task that will likely prove fruitless?"
Her jaw dropped. "Because this is wrong!" She felt tears welling in her eyes again as she reached out a hand to touch his hair. "Because you're not cruel, not like that, not…you were, but you've changed." She stared at him and felt the strangeness of her own words. "At least I thought you had."
He winced at that. "Some things are harder to change, Sarah. This is what I was made for. It's who I am."
"But you're more than that. I know you don't want to just…"
Her voice trailed off as she suddenly flashed to memories of being pressed up against a wall, his hand around her throat, or kneeling in front of him, the picture of obedience, and the look of contentment on his face…
She felt cold. "You still like it, don't you? Being the monster. Being the one who manipulates all the pieces on the game board while a pitiful little mortal tries to beat the odds and get to the center."
He said nothing.
She shook her head. "Jesus, everything we did…I've probably been making you want that feeling of power more."
"I've always wanted it, Sarah, with or without you. Just like I feed off of mortal need. The latter never seemed to bother you. Do you really care so much whether I enjoy what I do? Would you be more forgiving if it made me miserable?"
"It's not—" She threw her hands up in the air and paced the room. "It does matter how you feel about it. I don't want you to be miserable, but if you enjoy tormenting random mortals it makes you cruel, and I know you're not cruel, or I thought you weren't, I thought you'd become better—"
He raised an eyebrow. "Better?" His gaze was piercing. "Better like who, Sarah? You?"
She stopped pacing. "That's not what I meant, I'm not—"
"Oh, but I do think we've just come to the crux of it, precious." The way he said the last word made her skin crawl. "In your mind you're better than me, regardless of the fact that you've never been tied down by the chains that bind me, and you have no way of knowing what you'd do in my position."
Sarah glared at him. "I would do something."
His laugh was hollow. "That's a lovely pedestal you've built for yourself. A shame it isn't so high, though. Why don't we talk about what really makes you sick about all of this, Sarah? The real reason you've never wanted to know what still happens on this side of the mirror?"
The chill she'd felt seemed to spread. "I don't know what you're talking about."
He moved quickly, backing her against the frame of the open window. "You think you've been coming back to me all these years because of my conversational skills? Or even the way my hands can do amazing things to your sensitive parts?"
He ran a finger down the front of her throat and she smacked him away. Undaunted, he did it again.
"No, you keep coming back because you like fucking the villain. You like knowing that you're good and I'm not, and as long as you keep enough distance between us you tell yourself that you're not complicit in what I do."
His hand paused around her throat. He smiled, and it was unnerving. "It still makes you tingle, doesn't it? The thought…the possibility…that you're gambling with your own life every time you pass through the mirror. Or maybe…" his hand squeezed slightly "…that I'm gambling with someone else's life."
She forced herself to meet his eyes. "Just because I like to play power games when we fuck does not mean that I condone everything you've been doing."
"Oh, but I think it does, rather. Because clearly you've known this day was coming—the day when you'd know the whole truth, and you'd have to make a clean break. You just needed to…" he pushed her hand between his legs "…milk me for everything I was worth until then."
She pulled her hand away. "And I suppose you got nothing out of that arrangement, selfless fucking saint that you are," she growled. "Poor Jareth, gifted with a need-fountain that never runs dry. Don't you talk to me about milking."
He laughed. "Very well. We both gained something from this arrangement. But you let things get out of hand, didn't you?" His expression was a mix of pity and fondness, and it enraged her. "You could forgive yourself if it was just fun and fucking, but…it wasn't a slip of the tongue that night, was it? Silly girl, you went and fell in l—"
She slapped him, and he slapped her back, hard. Something wild and uncontrollable stirred in her.
"I was drunk," she said. The coldness in her own voice shocked her. "Do you know how many people I've said 'I love you' to when I was drunk? Shit, I might've said it to a random guy who catcalled me on the way home from a bar once." She smiled, that wild feeling making her slightly dizzy. "Sorry if you thought you were special."
She saw the change in his face, in his whole body, the way his bravado seemed to drop away. And then the wild feeling was gone, replaced with the sickening knowledge that she had hurt him, really hurt him, and she had done it for her own pleasure.
Jareth saw the realization hit her, and the bravado was back. He shook his head and made a tsk-ing sound. "Really, Sarah. Don't play the cruelty game if you don't have the stomach for it."
His hand shot out and gripped her throat, and she flashed back to Miguel telling her that that was definitely NOT okay, and then his hand squeezed and she felt genuinely frightened.
"Besides," he leaned close to whisper in her ear, "I've had a lot more practice."
He let go and she gasped, and then he thrust his tongue between her lips before she'd caught her breath. She pushed against him with little effect, realizing too late that whatever they'd done in the past, he'd never truly let himself overpower her.
He pulled back and easily caught her wrists in his hands. "Yes, Sarah. You know that everything we've done has been remarkably…safe, up until this moment. Don't you wonder what it would be like now, knowing the whole truth?" He pushed one hand down the front of her jeans. "Knowing what I really am?"
His fingers moved between her legs and he kissed her throat roughly. "Fuck you," she rasped.
He laughed and licked her neck, his teeth and tongue moving over all the exposed skin he could reach. "In due time, precious." His other hand went under her shirt. "Gods, I can smell how much you want this," he growled at her, burying his face in her hair. "How much you need this, need to be fucked to within an inch of your life by something dark…"
He ripped at her shirt and clawed at her jeans as he wrestled her back to the bed. She writhed under him, her nails scratching at his chest.
But she never said no.
He smirked at the look on her face, which she knew must have been a mix of horror and desire. He ran a hand over her cheeks. "Look at that rage, precious. I could drink you, it's almost better than your need…"
He kissed her hard. She slapped him again and he pulled back and snarled, a faint red gleam in his eyes.
"You're not even angry at me," he whispered. His face twisted into a sneer. "You're angry at yourself because you still want me, even knowing the things you wish you didn't know." He pulled her jeans off and quickly removed his own pants and shirt, slipping a finger inside her.
He laughed again, a horrible, hollow sound without any warmth. "You're still wet for me, you, the good one, the decent one." He pushed his fingers in deeper and she cried out. "That's right, precious, you love this, I think you love it even more n—"
She kissed him hard and bit his lip, tasting blood in her mouth. He pinned her wrists against the bed with both hands, his body hovering over hers, and the she wrapped her legs around him and pulled him inside her, so hard and fast that she cried out in pain, but then she did it again, letting the pain consume her, gritting her teeth and and moaning at the inevitable pleasure that it also brought.
It was a blur after that, a mess of hands and teeth and pain and ecstasy mixed with revulsion that left her feeling drunk and disconnected from the world.
Tell him no, her addled mind begged at some point as he took her from behind, one hand around her neck and the other gripping her hair. Tell him no and he'll stop, you know he will. There are some lines even he won't cross.
But she didn't, and she never knew for certain if it was because she didn't want him to stop, or because she was afraid that he wouldn't.
They were on the bed, then on the floor, and then he slammed her up against one of the bedposts and thrust viciously inside her while she cried out, tears streaming down her face, and there was a moment when his mask dropped completely and she saw a look of utter horror in his eyes at what he was doing to her. She wondered if he was about to caress her, comfort her, do something that he would have done before everything changed…
…so she kissed him and bit his lip again, yanking his hair, and he growled and kept thrusting into her until he came.
Afterward she lay curled in a ball, aching but numb, and he lay beside her, silent except for the sound of his breath. At some point she felt him start to move toward her, maybe to wrap himself around her like he had before, but he didn't.
Sometime later she stood up and wrapped herself in the tattered remains of her clothes and stepped through the mirror without looking back.
He didn't try to stop her.