Sarah staggered under the sudden weight, dragging him up ungracefully by his armpits. The Goblin King felt exceedingly, alarmingly warm in her arms and he was heavy. Sarah wondered what to do, she wondered how her life had suddenly come to this – five years of peace and suddenly in her twentieth year, she was stuck in the basement of her university, trying not to drop an unconscious Goblin King on his head. Treacherously, a soft, sweet little thought at the back of her head urged her to simply drop him here and leave him; it tried to tell her that he simply wasn't her problem, that she didn't have to deal this…

Well, too bad, thought Sarah grimly, hooking her arms around as much of Jareth as she could possibly handle. It's just not right to leave him here.

Bit by slow, agonizing bit, she hauled Jareth along the floor. It wasn't the least bit romantic, it was even a little funny – and Sarah dearly hoped that he would forgive her for what she was doing to his pants as a trail of glitter marked the floor. But any urges to giggle hysterically were always choked when she panted down at her burden whose face was so cold and pale and more vulnerable than she had ever seen it before. Every few minutes or so, Sarah had to stop and rest and then it never seemed right to just leave Jareth lying on the floor so she would haul his head onto her lap. Experimentally, she slapped his face lightly and was rewarded by… nothing. He seemed disinclined to do anything but lay there, with that same terrifying slackness about his face, breathing shallow, and that scared her more than anything.

The Goblin King was a dangerous near-stranger but he was also hurt and alone in a strange world that he knew nothing of and Sarah could relate.

Groaning with frustration, Sarah stood up and reassumed her dragging. By this time, her face was a very unbecoming shade of magenta and her hair was plastered to her skull by sweat. And there was still the stairs to navigate. Sarah nearly cried out of sheer frustration and was tempted to smash her head repeatedly against a stone wall. Her head, alarmed at the damage about to be inflicted upon its tender self, hastily threw out an idea. Sarah grabbed onto it like a drowning man, unceremoniously dropping Jareth onto the floor (though, being hardly strong enough to carry him, there wasn't a great deal of distance to go), and hauled out her cell phone – a big, black affair that really deserved its own set of wheels but would do the trick.

The basement got no cell phone reception.

Sarah threw back her head, howled a little, and did a dance of sheer temper. Then with a stern and unneeded, "Don't go anywhere," to a prone Jareth, she vaulted up several flights of stairs and nearly cried again – this time with pure relief – when someone picked up.

"Can you get to the school right now?"

"Holy willikers! You sound horrible! You're all gasp-y."

"I wish you'd stop saying that. Just – just get here, alright? I need help."

Toby hung up, with a sense of dread curdling in his belly. His big sister was competent, brisk and capable of reducing a grown man to tears if he even had the temerity to flash her. She had never asked for his help before. He hurtled out of the apartment, blond curls flying.

**

Jareth slowly eased his eyes open. It was an infinitesimal movement that sent shocks of pain vibrating through his head, the clanging in his brain intensified to a fever pitch as if a dozen of his goblins had got hold of a hundred gongs. It was a mental image that made him whimper aloud and then he didn't recognize that thoroughly pathetic sound that had issued from his lips. Jareth, King of Goblins!, did not whimper. He growled, he purred, he snarled and smirked and sneered and under certain strenuous activities, he might groan a little but that parched wee noise that didn't even have the strength to be a whine had no place in his mouth.

"He's awake!" yelped an awestruck voice.

When Jareth finally had the mental and physical strength necessary to prop open an eyelid, he was rewarded by the sight of a young man with magnificent cheekbones, a permanently red flush to his cheeks and a bounceful of Botticelli curls. The eyes were round and blue, the mouth almost too wide; a strange, fascinatingly familiar face. Jareth zoned into default mode as he tried to figure this out. And naturally, Jareth's default mode was:

"Am I in heaven?" he breathed, in a voice like raw silk.

Sarah appeared then, like an avenging angel, her eyes snapping furiously. Her dark hair was loose all about her oval face, her thick, arched eyebrows drawn ferociously downwards. Jareth hurriedly closed his eyes.

"Or maybe not," he muttered.

"Go get me a glass of water," Sarah said, in a tone that implied she wasn't entirely averse to some growling either.

"You've got some right there-" protested the young man – barely more than a boy really, Jareth would have noted if thoughts of more than a few syllables didn't make him feel like throwing up.

"Now," she said, in a tone of voice that made Jareth wonder if she wasn't in running to be the next Satan. The boy dragged his feet but he went, and Jareth heard suspicious clattering in another room. He could still feel Sarah burning by his side, her body heat warming him, her scent – of apples and sweat; sunlight dried grass and old books – dizzying him with its proximity.

He felt her arm snaked under his neck, propping him up. Even though this brief movement sent a quiver full of nausea through him, Jareth felt his insides spinning in a way no jaded Goblin King with any sort of self respect would admit to. A glass of water was held to his lips, "Drink." The order was sharp and annoyed.

"Is he your paramour?" Jareth asked when the inside of his mouth no longer felt as dry as goblin skin and he was confident that his favorite multisyllabic words wouldn't make him retch.

Sarah's "What?" was encouraging. "No!" she continued, in tones of high outrage. "He is definitely not! After everything you put us through, I'm surprised you didn't recognize him. That was Toby. My brother."

The world was wrong. Jareth stared up at her and she stared down at him, mismatched eyes meeting her dark ones with a world of certainty in them. "How old is he now?" Jareth asked at last.

"He's eighteen now. Two years younger than I am," said Sarah, puzzled. He should know this. Unless, of course, Toby was just one of the countless children he spirited away and Sarah just another of many enraged guardians setting forth with guilt and a grudge burning – it might be easy to lose track then. How many girls had he said those words to then? Those words that haunted her most sleepless nights: "How you turn my world, you precious thing."

"He was a baby when I took him. Human time is fast, but it can't have been all that long ago," said Jareth.

Five years, Sarah could have told him. Five years of peace and quiet and frenzied dreams and twisted longings, when her heart seemed to turn over in her breast at the thought of seeing him again. "He was thirteen when you took him," she said sharply. "He remembers every minute of it. You must have mixed us up with someone else."

The look in Jareth's eyes went right through her heart, pooling in a warm tickle deep in her stomach. "No," he said simply. "No, I could never have."

Toby burst through the kitchen door then, arms akimbo with a great variety of things that made Sarah's eyebrows fly right up. "I thought he'd need more than water to keep up his strength," he declared cheerily, setting down a variety of bright colored, crackling plastic bags.

"Potato chips are not what you eat to keep up your strength, Toby."

"Sez you. "

Jareth stared at him. This tall boy still reminded him of that baby, the one he had dandled on his knee and planned to make his successor – the same bright mannerisms, trusting disposition. Even the same whiny temperament, it seemed, that had made his sister wish him so fervently away though both he and Sarah knew that it was two parts temper and one part selfishness that had really made her do it. Toby was really an impressive whiner; it had to be admitted as Jareth watched the two siblings wrangle in front of him. He had an uncanny ability of stretching words of only one syllable to a degree that made you want to stab him.

"You're both giving me a headache," drawled Jareth finally. "Stop it."

He felt a little burst of smug pride when they shut up and both wheeled to face him. Sarah's face was angry and anxious, wary and watching; Toby's was curious and a little cautious, but he couldn't help betraying the sheer joy he took in uncanny, extraordinary situations – yes, Jareth remembered that trait of his well. It was disconcerting and he knew he was not senile.

"You've grown," Jareth said, because he had to say something.

"You haven't," said Toby. "What are you doing here?" Instinctively, he knew Sarah had flinched and he reached out for his sister's shoulder and he could feel how tense she was, her tendons bunched tight.

"I'm here because your sister called me," said Jareth, glancing at Sarah and noting the way she blushed, the clenching of her jaw. Had she or hadn't she? The sound of her voice in his ears after so long was burned into his memories, he hadn't imagined it – he couldn't have! But here Sarah was, shaking her head, meeting his eyes steadily. And Toby was looking at her with hurt and a little fear, as if he remembered – but that was impossible! He had been but a babe then – Jareth closed his eyes tightly. "And when I tried to go back, I found that - I can't go back," he said, in a new and horrible tone of voice that made Sarah start towards him involuntarily. "I'm trapped here, in your kingdom, Sarah and nothing is the way I remember it."

Sarah's hand was holding his tightly then, her head dipping downwards and her hair brushing across his hot face like a waterfall of silk. "You rest first," she said gently – had Sarah's voice ever been gentle towards him? Defiant, daring, frightened, pleading, yes, but never like this… "Come on now, get up. You'll fall off the couch. We'll talk later, alright?"

"I am exhausted," murmured Jareth, barely conscious of two pairs of strong young arms supporting him towards a bedroom.

"Don't live up to my expectations, don't do anything right now," murmured Sarah as Toby left to find more blankets. Aware of the stupidity of doing so, she brushed a strand of spiky hair away from his angled face and felt her heartbeat speed up dangerously. "I promise you, I'll try to make it all okay."

But Jareth was asleep. Toby entered silently and laid a duvet by his side. The siblings looked at each other in consternation then, but Sarah put a finger to her lips and led the way out of the room. The door shut softly behind them.

**

The goblins were careening around the throne room as usual, not without the unusual feeling that something was wrong. The throne was empty – but Jareth was often away from days on end and as for the huge mirror that now hung directly behind it – well, their king was very vain. They wouldn't have been surprised if he had conjured it in the night when no one was around.

Someone, somewhere, watched everything and smiled.