Sometimes the pain woke her up, and sometimes it was the nightmares.

It didn't help that she was sleeping in her childhood bedroom, which had long since been turned into a guest room, but still contained that very small bed and the built-in shelves where Lancelot and other stuffed animals had once watched over her. It meant that she was even more disoriented than usual when she woke up, thinking for a brief moment that she was in some sort of labyrinth-inspired recreation of her childhood memories.

Which would likely never happen again, she always remembered.

At the hospital she'd immediately contacted Hoggle through the bathroom mirror and had been shocked to discover that, while she could still see him, her hand met only a hard surface when she tried to push through the glass. She'd tried again repeatedly over the past few days, with the same results.

"Just get yerself well, and then we'll figure things out," Hoggle had told her.

"But they're hurting him…we have to…"

"He's older than you know, Sarah, and this ain't the first time they've shown him who's boss. If he really is still alive, he'll be all right."

Moaning softly under her duvet, she glanced at the clock on her bedside table, which showed that it was just before five in the morning. She reached for the orange pill bottle and the glass of water on her bedside table, remembered that she wasn't supposed to take the painkillers on an empty stomach, and grudgingly got up in search of food, tucking the pill bottle into her pajama pants pocket.

She tiptoed down the stairs and saw that a light was on in the kitchen. She found Karen seated at the kitchen table reading a newspaper and drinking coffee.

"Morning," Sarah said, rubbing her eyes.

Karen jumped. "Ah, Sarah, are you all right? Do you want some coffee?"

"No, just need to get some food to take my pills with—are you always up this early?"

Karen folded the paper and smoothed her hair, which looked carefully coiffed even at five in the morning. "I like a bit of quiet before your father and Toby wake up," she said. "You'll also find as you get older that sleeping through the night isn't always guaranteed."

"Great." Sarah rummaged in a cabinet and pulled out a box of crackers. "More things to look forward to."

When she struggled to open the package Karen took it from her and opened it herself, glancing at the splint on Sarah's left hand. "How're you feeling?"

She shrugged, sitting down to eat her crackers. "Hurts like hell."

"Like I said, it's an open-and-shut case, the theater should compensate you," she said. "Your father would know the details. Crazy to let someone use a power saw without proper training."

"Yeah, Miguel's on it," Sarah lied, having trouble remembering the exact details of the story Miguel and Lori had concocted to explain her missing fingers. "Right now I'm just in pain and frustrated."

"So it would seem." Karen folded her arms over her soft pink bathrobe and regarded her stepdaughter with an appraising eye that Sarah knew all too well. "You've been crying in your sleep. Last night it was apparently so bad that Toby asked about me about it, and that child barely speaks to us these days."

Sarah grimaced. "I'm sorry."

"That wasn't what I meant." She reached out and squeezed Sarah's good hand. "Did something else happen, maybe? With James?"

"James?"

"Yes, James. Your writing partner who was obviously more than a writing partner."

Sarah blushed, remembering how not so long ago one of her greatest fears had been the thought of a dinner with Jareth and her family. "No," she said. "I mean…James is…James might be in trouble, and I don't know how to help him. And it's kind of my fault."

Karen took a sip of coffee. "I doubt that."

Sarah shook her head. "Did you ever…" She cleared her throat. "Did you ever try really, really hard to do the right thing, and it just ended up making everything worse?"

"Many times," Karen answered quickly. "Especially when it came to you and your brother."

"So why even bother?" she said. "Doing the right thing, I mean."

Karen smiled. "Because doing the right thing isn't supposed to be easy. Or rewarding. At least not all the time." She squeezed Sarah's hand again. "And you never know, sometimes there are good consequences, they just don't show up for a while."

Sarah laughed and pulled the pill bottle out of her pocket. "Very deep."

Karen opened the bottle and poured Sarah a glass of water. "You're not the only deep thinker in the family."

We got a glowing review in Backstage! Miguel texted her later.

Congrats! Not that Im surprised, u know.

Course not. Missed you. Think u can come next week?

Hope so. Follow up appt tomorrow. Hurts a lot but its getting better.

Any word from the other side?

Sarah sighed. Nothing new. Still cant get through the mirror, Hoggle's still annoyed that the goblins have decided he's the new king and are making him wear a crown. Oh, and painkillers r amazing, really gonna miss them.

We love you. Lori sends a virtual hug, aka the only kind u can get from her.

Did u tell her Im sorry again. Not just about Jaye, about the bloodstains on her carpet.

Yeah, and she says shut the fuck up already, u lost fingers & Jareth basically offed himself to get her kid back, so yr kinda even.

Fine, fine. Still gonna keep apologizing. And I imagine Jareth will too, when I find him.

There was a pause long enough that Sarah was about to put her phone away, but then another text appeared. U know I really hope you find him again, but u realize u might not, right?

Her hand seemed to twinge in empathy with the other sort of pain she was feeling. Yeah. She forced herself to smile. Still u never know. He could just poof into the living room at any moment.

True. Anythings possible.

At the hospital the next day the doctor confirmed that everything was healing normally, told her to keep her hand clean and dry, and to come back again the following week.

"Can I, uh, look into getting new fingers at some point? Like a prosthesis?"

"Of course," the doctor said absently, typing notes quickly into her computer. "You've got a lot more options these days—gloves, realistic-looking fingers. I hear they can even 3D print some glittery prostheses, you know, for kids."

Sarah chuckled. Glittery. He'd love that.

That night she dreamt that she was falling endlessly, tossed around in an eternal void as she imagined Jareth must have been, and when she finally came back to her own body she could feel that she was in a cold sweat, her heart pounding. She curled in on herself, her terror raw and fresh…

…and then she felt warm arms wrapping around her, strong and certain, and a hand stroking her hair. A voice shushed her gently, and she could feel warm breath on her neck…

And then she woke up for real, and of course there was no one else there.

"Cruel," she muttered, wrapping her arms around herself again. "Too cruel."

The next morning she told Karen and her father that she was going home, despite Karen's protests.

"You're still on painkillers, you need help opening jars, I'm terrified to think of you alone in that place…"

Which is why I will never, EVER tell you how I really lost my fingers, Sarah thought. "I'll call you every day with an update," she said. "And Miguel or Lori will come by to check on me. I just need to be at home, start getting back to normal."

Karen relented eventually, sending her home with plastic containers full of food, which Sarah was grateful for.

Her apartment felt different, though she imagined that the entire world felt different after everything she'd been through. She heated up some of the food Karen had sent home with her, winced when she noticed that she only had two painkillers left, and texted Miguel and Lori to wish them good show.

She took one of the pills and crawled into bed early. When an unusual noise echoed through her living room a few minutes later and the entire apartment seemed to rattle slightly, she was too deeply asleep to notice.

The nightmare she had that night was the worst one so far.

The labyrinth-woman's mouth grew larger and larger until it threatened to swallow her whole body, not just her hand. She felt that piercing pain again and again. And then she was surrounded by things with sharp teeth, or knives for teeth, and she could hear them snapping at her, trying to take more fingers and limbs.

She woke up screaming, or thought she woke up, but yet again she must have still been in the dream, because warm arms wrapped around her and hushed her, and she remembered that time long ago when she'd imagined and dreamed terrifying things and had awakened wrapped in the warmth of Jareth's cloak, and how even then she'd known, somewhere in the back of her mind, that she never wanted to be far away from him.

In the dream she gripped the arms that encircled her waist, settling her body into the crook of the body behind her that was so familiar, and she prayed that she wouldn't wake anytime soon, because her real world was a mess at the moment and this dream was all she wanted.

Just a little longer. Please.

She turned over in the darkness and pulled him closer to her, her right hand reveling in the smooth, firm feel of his skin, the pulse of his heartbeat against her palm, the softness of his hair. She kissed him, gently at first and then hungrily, and he seemed to freeze against her for a moment but then responded in kind, pressing his body into hers.

Dream-Jareth appeared to be wearing a T-shirt and a pair of loose-fitting trousers. She chuckled. Dream-brain, you do weird things sometimes.

She buried her face in his hair and was about to start kissing him again when she heard his voice.

"In the interest of abiding by the moral codes that mean so much to you, precious, I don't think we should be doing this while you seem to be….not quite yourself."

She pulled back and turned on the bedside table lamp. Jareth was lying in her bed, very un-dreamlike, wearing one of her old t-shirts and a pair of her trousers.

I'm warm and I don't hurt…the painkillers haven't worn off…am I hallucinating? Still dreaming?

She jumped out of the bed and backed away, wondering if this was some cruel trick on the part of the labyrinth, to send her a golem that looked like him but most definitely wasn't him.

His eyes took her in and then widened. "Gods, Sarah, what happened to your hand?"

She pointed at him with her good hand. "What the hell are you?"

He swung his legs off the bed and stood up. She backed further away. "I'm the former Goblin King," he said.

"How the hell do I know that?" she said, her voice barely a whisper. "Tell me something only he would know, about me. About us."

"Sarah, my mind isn't exactly—"

"Something. Anything. Please, I just need to know that you're you."

He threw up his hands. "You once screamed 'You're a god' repeatedly when you climaxed and then denied later that you'd ever said such a thing, even though we both knew that you did."

Her mouth fell open. When she didn't speak for a long time he looked defensive.

"It was the first thing that came to mind."

At that point she started shouting.

"Sarah, you're going to hurt yourself—"

"Don't talk to me like I'm a child." She threw another pillow at him, and he easily dodged it. "If I weren't high as a fucking albatross right now, I swear—"

"Sarah, listen—"

"No, you listen, your royal asshat-ness." She pointed an unsteady finger at him. "I watched you effectively off yourself. And we could have discussed it, we could have been a team, but no, you had to go into king mode and make that decision entirely on your own—"

"You know that options and time were limited."

"That is NOT the point." Her head spinning slightly, Sarah sat down in the chair in front of her vanity mirror. "You don't make decisions like that alone, all right? If you care about someone you consult. You work together." She stared at him, still trying to process the fact that he was in her bedroom. She shook her head. "Do you know what that was like? Watching you die?"

He looked down. "No. But I can imagine."

"Good." She took a deep breath. "And then you show up here because, I don't know, the labyrinth just loves to fuck with my head—"

"I can explain that, actually—"

"—and you just, what, change into my clothes and climb into bed with me like everything's—" She noticed a strangely familiar smell and moved closer to him, grabbing a handful of his hair. "And did you take a fucking shower first?"

He cleared his throat. "I'd been tumbling in the ether for quite a while. I did not care for you to see me at my worst."

"It's one thing to not want me to see you at your worst. It's another to take the time to blow dry."

"If you'd seen what I looked like when I was unceremoniously deposited on your living room floor you might understand."

"On my…they literally dumped you on the floor?"

His expression showed that he'd rather not be reminded of the fact. "A final assault on what remains of my dignity, perhaps."

They sat in silence for a moment. "What happened to your hand?" he eventually asked again.

Sarah snorted. "What do you think happened?"

Jareth sighed, his head falling into his hands. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, well, I guess it could have been worse. Anyway, we're getting away from the main topic here, which is how…why…this is your place of exile? New York?"

Jareth walked around to the other side of the bed and reached underneath it to produce a scroll that Sarah immediately recognized. "I imagine they didn't let you read this before you signed it," he said.

Sarah sighed. "I couldn't read it, it's in…some language that isn't Goblin. And I didn't exactly sign it so much as bleed all over it." She folded her arms. "Care to enlighten me?"

He cleared his throat and opened the scroll. Sarah noted absently that the painkillers were starting to wear off, or maybe the shock of Jareth being in her apartment had weakened their potency. Her left hand throbbed with a steadiness that gradually grew more intense.

Jareth began to read. "For repeated defiance and dereliction of duty, you, Jareth the Goblin King, are hereby rendered mortal—"

Sarah leaped up from her chair and immediately regretted it, sitting down when dizziness overtook her. "Mortal?" She shook her head. "You're, they—they made you mortal?"

Jareth raised an eyebrow very slowly at her. "Might I continue, please?"

She rolled her eyes. "Fine. That seemed kind of important."

"…hereby rendered mortal and exiled for the duration of your mortal existence to the realm which, after careful consideration, we believe will inspire the most terror and result in the most torturous existence, this being the Aboveground realm, and more specifically an Aboveground existence that places you in close proximity to a particular mortal, one Sarah Williams, former labyrinth champion, former in-betweener (Sarah winced at that part, she feared it hadn't just been a fluke), and one who we believe has the potential to cause you more pain and suffering than we could ever manage, simply by virtue of being a mortal that you love." Jareth glanced up at her and read one more line. "Enjoy your torment."

Sarah's head was swimming. She massaged her temples, letting Jareth's words sink in.

"Me?" she finally said. "The person who has the most potential to cause you pain and suffering is me?"

Jareth shrugged. "According to ancient and not entirely sound labyrinth logic, at least."

She shook her head. "So the labyrinth could have sent you to, I don't know, anywhere—the bottom of the bog, the realm of acid-spitting leeches—

Jareth rolled his eyes. "You could try not to give them new ideas, Sarah."

"Sorry." She took the scroll from him, though the words were every bit as indecipherable as they'd been before. "But they could have sent you anywhere, and they decided that the worst place they could send you was…to me?"

Jareth smirked. "You could say that the labyrinth has a very limited understanding of nuance."

"Yeah, I'm beginning to understand that." She wrapped her arms around herself. The pain in her hand was becoming harder to ignore. "Still, bit of a low blow, the idea that I'm the person most fit to torture you. Like, I believe we've established that I'm not a saint, but I'm not a sadist."

He raised an eyebrow. "Only when you insist on flaunting your crystal ball manipulation abilities at me," he said.

She glared at him and pointed at her left hand. "Probably not gonna be an issue anymore."

He sighed. "Of course you're not a sadist, Sarah." He moved to the edge of the bed, closer to her. "But surely you can imagine how…to an outside observer of mortal customs…pair bonding beyond the function of procreation must seem like a uniquely cruel practice."

She sighed. "Well, I was never much of a romantic, but I never saw relationships as TORTURE. Unless you count one of my college boyfriends."

"Your philosophers and poets seem to think there's pain aplenty. But the pain…makes the bliss stronger, perhaps?" He chuckled. "Luckily for us the labyrinth doesn't seem to grasp that."

Sarah laughed. "Or maybe it's smarter than both of us."

"I prefer to take the optimistic view that I've been very, very lucky."

"Well, you're gonna have to give me some pointers on the torture thing, unless we're starting from the premise that relationships are always torture, which, yeah, kinda not on board with that."

"I'm sure you'll get the hang of it," he said drily. His voice shifted slightly. "You'll eventually die, for one thing. That will be painful."

She looked at him. "So will you."

He considered this. "True. I suppose that changes things." His eyes drifted. "Perhaps I can finally make that dramatic exit I've always wanted to make."

Sarah slumped in her chair. "This is…a lot."

"As ever the queen of understatement."

She noticed for the first time that there were bruises and scrapes on his arms. Slowly, she stood up and went to sit beside him on the bed. She touched one of his bruises, and he flinched.

"Did they hurt you?" she said

He placed his hand over hers and pressed it harder against his arm. "I believe there were other things floating around in the ether with me. Some of them might have been sharp."

Without thinking, she leaned down and kissed the discolored markings on his arms. She felt no heat, none of her former desire to peel his clothes off and taste every part of him, only the instinct to somehow confirm that he was here, real, and whole.

Perhaps feeling the same urge, he gingerly lifted her left hand to his mouth and kissed her bandaged wrist. "Much as I am loathe to admit it, I believe I find myself in your debt," he said.

She laughed. "You owe me? For what? Practically destroying your life?"

"You risked your own life to save mine," he said. "They could have sent me anywhere, done anything to me, but because of you I'm here." He smiled. "You wrote me an ending. Again."

She smiled back, weakly. "Huh. I did, didn't I."

He smirked. "Don't let it go to your head."

"Oh, I most definitely will let it go to my head." She shook her maimed hand in front of his face, wincing as she did so. "Because yeah, you owe me."

He laughed and removed one of his gloves to touch her hand—then, perhaps remembering that those abilities were lost to him, he glanced at the pill bottle on the bedside table. "You're in pain again—you should take some more of those…potion-capsules."

"Yeah, in a bit. I kinda wanna be sober for this next part."

He cocked his head at her. "What part is that?"

She studied her knees, and then the vanity mirror, and then finally forced herself to look into his mismatched eyes, her heart pounding a deafening rhythm in her ears. "The part where I tell you that I love you, and it's not an accident or a mistake or something I can blame on wine or potion-capsules."

Those eyes widened, and his mouth opened slightly. He shouldn't be shocked, she told herself, we went over this, but still…

She reached across him for the pill bottle. "And now, yes, I'd really like some—"

He touched a finger to her lips, and his piercing gaze made her face flush. When she stared at the floor he cupped her chin in his hands and tilted it upward.

"I love you too, you impossible, baffling creature," he whispered.

He kissed her then, and it was almost enough to make her forget about the pain.

"So, like, never? That's it?"

Sarah tried to keep her face solemn, which was difficult when Hoggle was still wearing the makeshift crown that the goblins had forced onto his head (which appeared to be made from discarded vegetable parts). Apparently they went silent and staring when he took it off and tried to claim that he wasn't king, which Hoggle said he found much more annoying than their usual antics.

"Never is a long time," she said gently to the image in her vanity mirror, "but I suppose it makes sense. The labyrinth's version of torture and exile wouldn't be very effective if either of us could just jump back into the Underground." She sighed. The fact that she couldn't go back to the other side of the mirror anymore hadn't really sunk in yet. "At least we can still talk."

Hoggle grunted. "And what does His Highness say about all this? Where is he, anyway, finding a bog to throw people in Aboveground?"

"He's, er…" The words caught in her throat because she knew they sounded ridiculous. "He's making me toast."

Hoggle's mouth fell open. "He…what?" His eyes suddenly lit up. "Is that part o' the torture? He's gotta be yer servant or somethin'?"

"No, I just have to take this medicine with food, and he—"

At that moment Jareth came into the bedroom bearing a small plate of only slightly-singed toast covered in what looked like a mix of butter and jam. She'd wanted to make her own food, or at least show him how to use a toaster, but he'd insisted on doing it himself, muttering something about not wanting to be dependent on her for mundane activities.

He set the toast on her vanity table as casually as possible. "I wasn't certain of your condiment preference, though I seem to recall that you enjoy jam," he said, glancing toward the mirror. "Hello, Hoggle."

Hoggle's mouth dropped open even further. "What'd you just call me?"

Jareth shrugged. "Your name?"

Hoggle backed away from the mirror, shaking his head. "This ain't right. None of it."

Sarah chuckled. "Anyway, he's alive, we're alive. I'll check in again soon."

Hoggle rolled his eyes. "Oh, that's good of ye. Maybe ye could tell these goblins that I ain't their damn king."

"I'm not sure." She could feel Jareth smirking behind her. "The crown looks rather fetching."

Hoggle threw up his hands and walked away as the mirror faded back to its usual reflective surface.

Sarah quickly devoured her toast. "They never made you wear a crown," she said.

"Not surprising. My kingliness was always evident."

Sarah wiped crumbs off her mouth and downed her very last pill. "I suppose the goblins will be all right as long as they've got someone to worship. Or, you know, cower in front of. Though I'm sure they'll miss you," she added quickly, taking his silence for sadness.

"Their memories are quite short. I wouldn't be surprised if they'd completely forgotten about me in another week."

She sat next to him on the edge of her bed. "Are you missing it yet?"

"Missing what?"

"The world that you can't go back to. Immortality. All those magical powers."

He lay back on the bed and she followed suit, stretching her hands up above her head. "It's difficult to miss a place that you were tethered to," he said. "Though it occasionally had its charms. As for my newly acquired mortality…that will obviously require adjustment, but you've known for a long time that I had no desire to live forever."

He raised one hand upward and linked his fingers with hers. "Not having magic is a nuisance, of course. I could have made toast much more easily."

Sarah smiled. "Your non-magical toast was fine."

His fingers idly stroked her wrist. "I can tell you one aspect of my old life that I don't miss."

"What?"

His fingers stroked further down her arm. "The hunger for human need. It was like a drum in my head, every moment, every day. Insatiable. And now it's simply…gone."

Intrigued, she turned on her side. "I need you to kiss me," she said.

He obeyed, planting a rather chaste kiss on her cheek. She searched for that feeling that she had sometimes felt emanating from him in those moments, when he seemed to be feeding off of her needs. There was nothing.

He smiled at the conflicting emotions on her face. "Still quite pleasurable to hear, I assure you, just perhaps not in the same way. I suppose you could say that I want now more than I need."

Sarah smiled. "That's…good, I suppose?"

He laughed and snaked an arm around her waist. "Are you so disappointed that I won't wither away without you needing me, precious?"

She pushed against him playfully. "Of course not. Just, you know, feeling out the new shape of things."

He smirked and let one hand slide up over her chest toward her neck. The painkiller was kicking in, and the pleasant warmth that surrounded her body mixed nicely with the different sort of warmth that his touches were inspiring…

…and then he winced and pulled his hand away from her neck.

She blinked. "What's wrong?"

He shook his head. "I…the last time we…"

Memories washed over her suddenly, along with that familiar, confusing mix of shame and arousal. She ran her fingers over her neck, where not long ago he'd left bruises.

She reached up to touch his cheek. "There's a lot that's different. We don't have to do this now."

"I'd like to, only…" He looked away. "I don't know what I am yet, which pieces of my original self will remain and fit together to make something new. I only know that I don't wish to…overpower you right now, though I know this is something we both enjoyed."

Sarah stroked his cheek. "Yeah, I think I've had enough of feeling powerless for the time being. Though I might want to feel that way again someday, with you. When you're up for it."

He nodded. "This is odd for me, but…" He cleared his throat, the words obviously not coming naturally. "May I take your clothes off?"

She smiled and waved her left hand at him. "Yeah, I could use some help with that, actually."

He slowly pulled her loose-fitting shirt over her head, being careful of her hand, and then slid her trousers down around her ankles and off. It was, she realized, the first time this sort of activity hadn't happened in something akin to a frenzy of desire, which in a strange way made it all the more intimate.

"Can I take your clothes off?" she asked.

He nodded. "You might have noticed that I, er, got a bit banged up on my way here."

She laughed and gestured to her hand again. "Think I've got you beat on that one, but yeah, point taken."

She slowly pulled the T-shirt over his head, revealing more fresh-looking bruises and mostly-healed scratches. When she removed his trousers she saw more, and the sight of him so battered made her ache.

He grimaced. "These will heal eventually, correct?"

She ran a hand very gently over some of the bruises on his chest. "Yeah. And hey, if some of them don't, scars make a person more interesting."

Jareth laughed. "An easy thing to say for someone who has none."

Sarah rolled her eyes and held up her left hand. "Again, I've got you beat." She groaned. "I am really, really bummed that I won't be able to one-up you at crystal contact juggling again. Like, that's more annoying that not being able to type fast."

" 'One-up' is a very strong phrase."

"Nope, just an accurate one."

He smiled. Mixed in with all the shocks, uncertainties, and newness of the past week, she could feel that familiar electricity returning.

She let her gaze travel over his body and then reached out to trace certain details with her fingers—the slightly protruding angles of his collarbone, the lean muscles of his arms. His eyes followed her hand.

"Do I feel different?" he asked.

"No." She moved closer and ran a hand through his hair. "I saw you vanish. I think I just need to make sure that you're really here."

He wrapped his legs around her and pulled her close, and she sighed contentedly at the feeling of small gaps and spaces in their bodies filling and fitting perfectly together. "I'd love to prove that I'm all here," he whispered, reaching across her to turn off the light.

Their touches were slow and careful, as though they feared the other might break, but gradually they relaxed. He traced every contour of her body with his mouth and hands, his tongue softly flickering over her neck and her breasts until she was feverish with need. When he moved her arms above her head and pinned her to the bed, careful not to hurt her left hand, she enjoyed the weight of him above her, and when he slipped his fingers between her legs she moaned and smiled up at him.

His eyes stayed locked on hers. "Tell me things that you like, precious," he whispered.

"What?" she gasped.

"Tell me things that you like. That I do to you, that please you."

She smiled, the enjoyable sensations below her waist making the words come a bit more awkwardly than usual. "I like the feel of you inside me," she said, and felt his grip on her right wrist tighten. "I like to listen to your breath get faster when you're about to climax." She ran a finger over his lips. "I like to taste myself on your mouth after you've very generously licked me."

He moaned and pulled one of her legs around his waist. "I like the way that you bite my shoulders," he whispered into her ear. "I like to…to feel powerful, with you under me, begging." He kissed her roughly. "But only because I know it gives you pleasure."

She kissed him back, letting her lips and teeth scrape along his neck. "Please," she whispered.

He gripped a handful of her hair. "Please what?"

She looked into his eyes and was surprised to see a hint of tears mixed in with his heavy-lidded look of raw desire. "Please fill me up," she whispered, her throat catching. "Fill me up and don't ever vanish again."

He pushed himself inside her with agonizing slowness, and she cried out, pulling him in deeper, and then he moved steadily faster, and when her release came he followed soon after and fell panting on top of her, his hair splayed across her face.

His breath tickled her neck. "That was…rather quicker than I would have liked."

Sarah laughed. "More lessons in mortality."

"I'll have to imagine scantily dressed goblins to give myself more staying power."

"Dear God please no, anything but that."

She ran her good hand through his hair as she felt his heartbeat—more regular now—thrumming against her chest. "So," she whispered, "how'm I doing at this torture thing?"

He chuckled, kissing her neck and gazing down at her. "Happy to report that you're dreadful at it."

She could see his eyes twinkling in the darkness, open adoration on his face, that look that had always made her giddy and also frightened her with its intensity. And for the first time, she realized, she didn't want to look away.

Author's note: Whew! This one took a while (it's maybe the longest chapter I've ever written). Thought of breaking it into two, but nah, I like it all together.

Like its characters, this story has been a messy experience. I've written chapters, revised them, lain awake thinking about inconsistencies, revised again, scrapped them completely, rewritten them. I realize there are plot holes aplenty (Sarah's doctor would probably be horrified to know that she was having sex so soon after a fairly serious injury), and more than a few loose ends (what happened to Vinh? is the labyrinth actually going to become a repository for misplaced socks?). Still, I can at least say that I'm no longer lying awake agonizing about this story. I'd like to think it's true to this version of the characters and the universe they inhabit. Sure, the ending is contrived, but dooming Jareth to torture and exile in some distant realm would have meant "punishing" Sarah far too harshly for her bravery and risk-taking (which I think Pika and I both agreed wasn't cool, see her Ao3 comments on chapter 12).

There's a fluffy epilogue coming. It involves zucchini.