Please let me know if there are any grammatical errors! I'm only human, so there's bound to be some.

Thanks again to KieraPSI for the grammatical help!

Jareth heaved a deep sigh as he stared into the crystal that held the image of Sarah. "Obsessing over her isn't going to make her stop hating you, you know."

"Mother, you startled me," Jareth whispered as his mother stepped out from the shadows of his study and walked over to her son.

"I apologize; it was not my intention to do so."

"And I wasn't obsessing over her," Jareth protested softly. "I was just checking up on her. I've been working hard to research this, and I needed a break." Amael gave her youngest son a droll look. "Okay, maybe I'm obsessing over her a little. Never before have I been so close to my goal of having Sarah and yet so far!"

"It has not escaped my notice whatsoever that you've installed Sarah in your personal chambers," Amael said after a moment. "Have you slept at all since you've brought her here?"

"I fell asleep at my desk a couple hours ago," Jareth said sheepishly. He motioned to his ornate writing desk, which had previously been in first his apartment, and then where it normally sat in his bed chambers. He'd only moved it to his study after Sarah had made it clear that she didn't want to see him.

"You aren't going to help Sarah if you can't even take care of yourself, honey," Amael said as she reached over and brushed a strand of hair out of Jareth's eyes.

"I'll get some sleep in a bit, I promise," Jareth said earnestly. He grabbed the papers on his desk, tapped them against the wooden surface to get them straightened, and then handed them to his mother. "Will you please give this to Sarah?"

"Why? What is it?"

"She'll know what it is," Jareth said softly as he turned away from Amael. She raised her eyebrow but didn't comment, then she looked down at what Jareth had given her.

"Is this your latest novel?"

"Yes."

"You haven't even let me read it yet."

"Because it's for Sarah, not you. Honestly, mother. If Sarah didn't completely hate my guts right now, I'd go and deliver it to her myself."

"Sometimes, I have to remind myself that you're over 2 thousand years old, rather than the fourteen year old brat that you sometimes act like. I wish that I'd been more strict with you, but you're my baby." She moved to brush the hair out of Jareth's face, but he moved away.

"Mother! Are you going to deliver it to Sarah or will I have to find somebody else to do it instead?"

With an annoyed scowl, Amael teleported from Jareth's study and reappeared in his bedroom, where Sarah had been installed for the past two days following her seizure. The young woman in question looked up from her seat by one of the many windows in the room. "I'm really starting to grow out of my mind with boredom, being locked in here all day long," Sarah said with a scowl of her own. "I'm feeling very alright, really! Can I please leave?"

"I'll ask the healer about it, but in the meantime, this is for you," Amael said as she handed over the papers. Sarah took them, looked over the one that was on top, and then gave Amael a questioning look.

"This is from Jareth?"

"It is," Amael agreed. Sarah's scowl deepened, and for a moment, Amael was afraid that Sarah would reject the draft. But instead, Sarah settled back into her chair and started to read. "I'll just go ask the healer if he thinks that it's alright for you to leave the room."

Sarah trailed her fingers down the page that she'd just turned to— it was all warped, like it had been wet, and then allowed to dry, although the ink was not smeared at all. Although, Sarah mused, that if they lived in a world where people could put massive blocks on people's memories, then having waterproof ink probably wasn't too much of a question. Although why they didn't have waterproof paper was a whole other question.

She was so intent on her observation of the page that she didn't notice that Amael had returned until the older woman cleared her throat loudly. "I'm sorry, I was…" She trailed off and held the page up for Amael to look at. "What happened here? It looks like it got wet, but none of the other pages are like this."

"Jareth did say that he'd fallen asleep at his desk," Amael said with a faint smirk. "He probably drooled all over it."

"What? Jared does not drool in his sleep," Sarah said with a quiet laugh.

"Maybe you weren't paying enough attention to him while he slept then," Amael said. "When he was a boy, he would often crawl into the bed of his next older brother, Ikhael. Oh, Ikhael would always complain about how Jareth drooled all over the place. There would be massive pools all over the pillows and sheets."

"I just find it a little hard to imagine a grown man drooling this much," Sarah said as she shook the sheet of paper.

"No, you're probably right," Amael said with a faint smile. "He probably knocked over a glass of water or something. You've seen how he just… throws the finished pages where ever. Some things never change." Sarah put the pages down on the window sill and stood to face Amael properly.

"I'm sorry," she said as she absently smoothed out the skirt that the older woman had brought for her to wear. "Did you talk to the healer?"

"I did, and we had a lengthy conversation with Jareth about if it would be wise for you to go out," Amael said slowly. "While the healer believes that you have properly recovered from your earlier seizure, we're all worried about your risk for another one. Which is why we had to talk to Jareth, since he's the only one who knows anything about your time spent here. He had a bunch of off-limit places that might trigger another seizure. He also stipulated that you should not just wander around the castle, in case something happens."

"I'm alright with both of those conditions, assuming that I don't have to see Jareth," Sarah said.

"I thought that you might," Amael said with a small smile. She offered Sarah her arm. "Would you like to walk through the gardens a little bit? I think that some fresh air might do wonders for you."

"Yes, alright," Sarah agreed as she accepted Amael's arm. They walked to the other side of the room, where the main door was. For the duration of Sarah's two-day stay, she'd tried multiple times to open the door, but it had always been locked. The only other place that Sarah could go aside from the bedroom was to the connected bathroom. But now, the door opened before Amael could so much as touch the wood or the golden door handle.

The room did not open up onto a hallway like Sarah had expected for it to, but rather, out into a lush and beautiful garden. "Wha…" Sarah gasped. She looked behind her as they left the bedroom— she could still see into the room, but it looked like the room didn't quite fit into the exterior of the castle.

Then, the door slammed closed and simply vanished completely, leaving behind nothing but smooth, grey stone and a large stained-glass window where it had been. "What?" Sarah gasped.

"Oh, I forgot to tell you this, but this castle— this entire kingdom that Jareth created for himself— is completely magic. It senses the needs, wants, and desires of anybody in the kingdom, and does its best to see to them. So, when we both had the desire to leave the bedroom and go to the gardens, the door opened out onto the gardens. Oh sure, we could have gone down the hall, downstairs, and out one of the doors, but that would have taken at least fifteen minutes."

"Well, that's handy," Sarah said blankly as she looked around the garden more intently now that she wasn't so surprised over the vanishing bedroom. "I sometimes wish that things worked like that… um… ever." Amael laughed softly at that.

"Yes, it does come in handy sometimes, but you will probably soon find out that there are some downsides to it as well."

"Like what?" Sarah asked as she looked up at the older woman.

"Well," Amael said slowly; she dragged the word out for at least three syllables as she stalled for time in order to come up with an example. "Oh! When you were in the room, and you wanted out, were you able to leave?"

"No; the door was always locked."

"Well, that's not to say that Jareth or I used a key in order to lock it," Amael said with a small smile. "We simply desired for you to not leave the room, so the door didn't open for you."

"But, I wanted to leave the room."

"Yes, but the castle overrode your desires for what Jareth and I both wanted. Jareth is, after all, the master of the castle, in more ways than one."

"Well, maybe that makes sense in this one case, because not even I want to have another seizure… even if I don't remember having the first one," Sarah said hesitantly after thinking this over. "But that doesn't exactly seem overly fair."

"As I said, there is some downside to it," Amael said with an absent shrug. They'd been walking absently along the twisting, turning, dividing and rejoining path while they talked, but then they paused when they got to a small, stone fountain that sat in what appeared to be a dead-end of the garden. "Even in the garden, it would appear that the kingdom is twisting around us at all times," Amael said as she shook her head.

"Why, where are we?"

"Look around us," Amael said simply. "We're no where." Sarah looked around, and eventually spotted a tower of the castle in the distance.

"We couldn't have been walking for more than two minutes," Sarah said with a look of complete shock on her face.

"As I said, the very kingdom has a way of doing this as well," Amael said. "I know that I wasn't thinking of coming to this particular place, and you wouldn't even know about it to want to come here in the first place."

"We can just go back," Sarah said as she turned to face the castle again. They continued walking, and, after a couple of minutes, the castle loomed large and directly in front of them like it had when they'd first stepped out into the gardens. "This has been… overly exciting. I think that I'm just going to go back and finish reading what Jareth gave me." A door popped up at the wall, although it didn't open. "Oh, do you think that Jareth would handle constructive criticism on his works well?"

"He… isn't exactly known for keeping a cool head to anything negative that anybody has to say about him," Amael said hesitantly. "But, I think that if you were to approach him and tell him your issues with his works yourself, he might take it more favorably."

Sarah paused to consider this for a moment; she bit her lip before she looked up at Amael again. "Okay," she finally said. The door opened, and Sarah walked back into Jareth's bedroom.

"I… have other things that I need to attend to," Amael said; she didn't follow Sarah into the room. "I will most likely be back to bring you your supper."

"Alright," Sarah said as she looked down at the loose papers that sat on the windowsill, exactly like she'd left them. She heard the door shut, and looked up, a little startled— she was alone in the room. She took the papers over to one of the chairs by the fire, and curled up in it.

The first thing that went through Sarah's mind as soon as she'd sat down was that the chair smelt like Jareth. The smell that had assaulted her nose when she'd woken up the other morning only to realize that her lover was not who she'd thought he was. It was a completely awful smell, it was just different than what Jared smelt like. Sarah pressed her nose into the corner of the chair, where the back met one of the "wings", and inhaled deeply.

No, it was actually quite nice, in its own way. Although Sarah had no words to describe the smell itself, it brought forth memories of happier times.

Sarah frowned as she pulled her nose away, a little embarrassed that she'd practically stuffed it into the chair. The rest of Jareth's room did not carry much of a scent, and she would know, because she'd spent most of her time lying in the bed.

She then toed off the soft slippers that Amael had given her to wear, and tucked her feet under her. Sarah then tapped the papers against the arm of the chair before she started to read where she'd left off when Amael had come to her.

Jareth stood near the door of his personal bedroom and watched Sarah. He enjoyed the way that the fire lit up the natural highlights in her hair, and made her eyes glisten. She was completely focused on the couple of chapters that he'd given her earlier, and had no idea that he was even in the room, let alone watching her.

He thought that maybe it would be a bad idea to approach her like this, but when his mother had told him of Sarah's wish to discuss his novel, he just couldn't help himself— he had to be in her presence again. Even if she rejected him, it would somehow be worth it.

Throughout Jareth's years, he had studied humans and the Aboveworld closely. Even though humans were the reason why his kingdom— and the rest of the Fae— now resided in a different realm than the humans, he was still completely fascinated by them. While Fae were the kind of creatures who would often remain static for long periods of time, due to their near-immortal life-spans, humans were constantly looking for ways that they could change, not only themselves, but the world around them.

It was how he'd been able to maintain his cover as Jared Garfield— because he knew about practically everything that humans did, from Monica and Bill to Rachel and Ross. (1)

"Good evening, precious," Jareth whispered as he stepped out from the shadows.

"Oh," Sarah exclaimed as he drew closer to where she sat. He'd expected screaming, harsh words, for her to jump from the chair, and throw his draft every which way. He had not been anticipating for her to look up at him with an expectant look.

"What?" he finally asked her. "Where's your ranting and raving? Where's that inflamed rage that you had the other morning for me?"

"I don't…" Sarah shook her head. "I barely even remember you. You kidnapped Toby, and that's pretty much it. And I'm not even certain if that's one of my own memories or some side effect of…" She made a motion towards her head. "Or if it's just something that I dreamt up after the story that Toby told me." She looked down at the papers in her hands. "I think that most of my anger was more about how you lied to me. I mean, what's real about you? Is any of this?" She gestured around her.

"This is real, I can assure you, precious," Jareth told her gently as he grasped her hand between his own. "As is my love for you."

"I feel like I should tell you that you can't possibly love me because you've only known me for a couple of weeks now," Sarah whispered as she pulled her hand free; Jareth let her. "But I also get the feeling that there's way more to the two of us than just a chance encounter in an elevator one morning." She chuckled slightly. "But I guess that it probably wasn't as much of a chance encounter though, was it?"

"I might have caused a bit of a black-out in the apartment building," Jareth said as he sat down in the other chair. "But it's a rather unfortunate side-effect of using my magic in your world. But, you didn't not appear overly angry at me for making you late to work that evening."

"No, I wasn't late," Sarah said with an absent shake of her head.

"I'm glad. I know how important your career is to you, even if you often feel under appreciated. Also, I don't want you to worry about your job while you're here, which is why I called the school and told them that you had a family emergency, and would likely be gone for some time."

Sarah stared absently into the fire for a long time. Jareth was content to let her remain silent, so long as she wasn't overly mad at him anymore. "What would have happened to me if you'd never come back?"

"It's likely that you would have lived the rest of your life without ever once remembering," Jareth whispered. "Without anything to trigger the break of the spell, you probably wouldn't have even realized that your memories were missing in the first place. After all, you seemed perfectly happy without them." Sarah's frown deepened.

"Would I have been okay with carrying out my mediocre life the way that it was going?" Sarah whispered, more to herself than to Jareth. "To continue on in what's pretty much a dead-end job, to eventually settle for that dull man who works part-time at the library, just so that I wouldn't be alone anymore?"

"I heard you, you know," Jareth whispered. "The Friday before we met. You'd been to the bar with Ashley and you said-"

"I wish that I could find the one," Sarah finished. "Yes, I remember." She looked over to Jareth sharply. "Is that why you came? Because you're my soul mate?"

"Do you honestly believe in any of that stuff?" Jareth asked; he was trying overly hard to keep from laughing.

"I don't know; you live in a magical castle with goblins for servants. You tell me if soul mates exist," Sarah said with a frown. Jareth simply raised his eyebrows at her. "They don't?"

"No. It's just foolish nonsense dreamt up by silly humans in an attempt to alleviate their everlasting loneliness."

"Oh," Sarah said blankly. "So you just thought that I was hot and decided to follow me around? Is that it?"

"Well," Jareth started, but then broke off. Although he wouldn't have put it so bluntly, that was pretty much it.

But, as he thought on the issue, he realized that Sarah's beauty wasn't even one of the reasons why he'd started to give her more than a passing glance as she'd run through the Labyrinth. It was her stubborn nature and her crafty ability to think along the lines of a Fae that had made him start to pull out all of the stops.

"No. There's more to you than your beauty," Jareth said. "After all, if the only thing that I was interested in was a woman's beauty, I likely would have been married a long time ago."

"Oh," Sarah said, but she seemed overly happy by this answer, even if she didn't exactly put her joy into words. Jareth stood then and offered Sarah his hand.

"Shall we go down to dinner now, precious?" he asked. Sarah accepted his hand without hesitation, and stood. She paused for a moment to pull her shoes back on, before she allowed Jareth to lead her out of the room. Instead of the door opening to the dining room, it instead opened up into a hall; a grand, curved staircase lead down to the beautiful, if not a bit dusty, formal dining room.

"Why didn't we just go directly to the dining room?" Sarah asked as they started down the stairs.

"Oh, don't be silly, Sarah," Amael said from the table. "My son always likes to make a bit of an entrance."

"Of course, but you know that you wouldn't have it any other way," Jareth said. They reached the bottom of the stairs and Jareth pulled out a chair for Sarah, across from his mother, before he sat down at the head of the table. The table was laden with every type of food imaginable, and then some.

"Why is there so much food? The three of us can't possibly be expected to eat all of this?" Sarah asked as she helped herself to a bit of everything within reach.

"No, but once again, it wouldn't be my Jareth if he didn't try to show off."

"Show off for who?" Sarah asked. She looked over to Jareth, who only gave her a coy smile before he offered her a bowl of fruit.

"Grapes?"

"I now have quite the list of people who I believe to be both powerful and vengeful enough to want to do something like this to Sarah," Amael said slowly after a moment of silence.

"And let me guess…" Jareth muttered under his breath.

"So I think that the best way to get all of them together would be to throw a ball!" Amael exclaimed with a look of pure glee on her face.

"Called it," Jareth muttered with a sarcastic roll of his eyes. Sarah giggled slightly.

"But how will that help? Wouldn't they just be angry to see me?" Sarah asked.

"Oh, that is my plan," Amael said with a coy smile that was exactly the same as her son's had been a moment earlier. "After all, only the person who did this to you will be exceptionally angry after Jareth announces his engagement."

Sarah started to cough on the bite of turkey that she'd just put into her mouth. "I'm sorry… did you just say his engagement?"

"Yes, of course. It's all a part of my ingenious plan." Amael started to ramble on about the preparations that she had to make even before she could send out the invitations, but Sarah was just flat-out glaring at the older woman. A second later, she jumped slightly as Jareth grabbed her hand under the table.

"Do not mind my mother, precious," Jareth whispered to her. "My mother gets carried away in her thoughts of throwing lavish balls, and doesn't really listen to the things that she says. Besides, it's just a ruse to lure out whoever did this to you."

"Yes, I know," Sarah whispered sadly as she looked down at her plate. "I think that I'm finished now, anyway." Jareth stood, and offered Sarah his hand, which she took.

"Sarah is tired, so I'll escort her back to her room now, mother," Jareth said as they started to leave the dining room. Once they could no longer see the lights from the crystal chandler, Jareth spun Sarah around and kissed her soundly.

"Jareth, wha-"

"Shh, my dear. I do believe that we've just become engaged," Jareth whispered as he pressed his hand gently to Sarah's cheek.

"I don't want to be engaged," Sarah said with a scowl.

"Is it really that bad to be engaged to me?"

"No, but I don't want to be engaged, full stop."

"I will give you all of the time that you need, precious. So long as you love me, fear me, do as I say, then I will…" Sarah collapsed, and started to shake violently. "Sarah!"

1) I think that it's maybe a couple of years early for the Monica Lewinsky scandal, but whatever.