Chapter Eight: Midnight Waltz, part one.

Sarah backed away from the door, pressing herself more firmly against Jareth's chest. He didn't regret what he'd done to the stuttering fool, Leo's expression had been priceless, but he was a little concerned about why Sarah was shaking and whether that pointed toward another night spent sleeping on the devil-sofa.

Leshia had ample experience with humans, but she found herself falling short with Karen Williams. She had managed to settle the mortal down in a sitting parlor, where they were now drinking a nice hot tea and carefully avoiding eye contact. Karen, at least, had an excuse for this, since she was frightened and didn't know what was going on. Leshia, however, had no idea how to kill the silence and be done with it; for all her knowledge of humans, she had no idea how to broach the subject of why she was there. She took a deep breath, not yet certain what she would say-

And stared in mute fascination as the blonde woman slammed her cup down on the coffee table and snarled, "Stay the hell away from my children."

"You don't even know who I am," Leshia observed calmly.

"Stay away from my children!" Karen repeated loudly, now more angry than panicked.

This was as good a place as any to start, Leshia decided. "You love them very much, then?"

"Of course I do," she snapped indignantly.

"But Sarah is not truly your daughter, and a grown woman on top of that," Leshia pointed out.

Karen narrowed her eyes. "Yes, and she's often a pain in the ass as well, but she's still part of this family."

She regarded the mortal woman before smiling sadly. "Then perhaps you would understand what I am about to tell you, from one mother to another."

The icy eyes stayed narrowed, but the blonde one tightly nodded her head.

"I am Leshia," the green woman sighed tiredly, "wife of Oran; Jareth's mother." Karen's eyes flared with panic, but she didn't give the woman enough time to interrupt. "I thought, perhaps, that you and I could fix things while the boys blunder around with their schemes."

"Fix things?" Karen asked cautiously. "Toby, you mean?"

Leshia shook her head. "My family bears scars, just as yours. For five years I've had to watch my Jareth decline. Every day there seems to be less of him than there was the day before; he's practically insensible now, perhaps even dying. Your boy is stuck hosting a fragment Jareth, and Sarah is likely suffering from more than either of us could ever understand. And I think, as mothers, it's time we put an end to it."

"What are you suggesting?" she asked, sounding as though she understood the importance of the question but still had to rip it from herself.

"Sarah must return Underground. My family has done everything it can to help Jareth, but I think Sarah is the only one with the power to heal him. If she could find a way to get him even half-way steady then healing Toby would only be a matter of time."

Karen became defensive. "You wouldn't harm her?"

Leshia considered the other woman for a moment. She hadn't known Sarah for long, a day at best, but she had gotten the impression that the girl wasn't particularly close to her stepmother. From Karen's end, though, she could tell that even if they didn't get along, the older woman obviously cared for her stepdaughter as fiercely as Sarah would let her.

The question left her mildly indignant, though she conceded that it was a legitimate concern for this woman, and answered, "Oh Stars, no! This was a group effort, my dear; it took both Sarah and Jareth to mess things up so badly. I can't, in good conscience, blame one and not the other, so I choose to blame neither."

"I suppose they aren't as good of a match as I had assumed," Karen murmured to herself, looking faraway.

Leshia snorted, a sound that was rather at odds with her dainty appearance. "Really? I think they're perfect for one another; they're young and bound to ruffle each other's feathers, but they'll work it out eventually. Why, I remember when I met my Oran; granted, it wasn't anywhere near as epic as this, but quite sensational, in its own right."

"You went through the same thing then?"

This time she laughed outright. "Oh, no. I hated Oran very much, and tried quite desperately to put an arrow through his fool head on more than one occasion. But it worked out wonderfully in the end, and the children are already ahead of where we were, since they're both attracted to each other."

Karen looked horrified that such violence seemed to be a part of their family's idea of courtship.

Sarah tried to take another step back from the door, but she was already flush against Jareth so her movement really did her no good. Even so, pressed together as they were, her shoulders shook.

Her mind was having a hard time wrapping around what had just happened. Five minutes ago she had been playing What Part of Jareth Tastes Best? and now she was staring at the door that had been slammed in her neighbor's face. She couldn't quite switch from lust to logic so fast, but she knew that Jareth had definitely been grandstanding. Poor Leo; sure he came on strong, but he was a good conversationalist, a friend even. She had no desire to date him, they didn't know each other nearly well enough for that, but she did appreciate his occasional company. Still…

Her shoulders shook a little more. The image of Leo's face, frozen in the most horrified expression at Jareth's statement , flashed through her mind.

Sarah finally burst out laughing. "I can't believe you just did that!" she wheezed to the man at her back.

Strong arms wrapped around her waist. "He interrupted us," Jareth replied haughtily, nuzzling the back of her neck.

She dissolved into snickers, but still managed to push away from him. "Nice try," she said, matching his tone, "but I've come back to my senses."

Jareth frowned, looking like he was about to test his 'sex solves everything' theory for a second time. "I think I'm offended that you're comparing my seductive skills to temporary insanity," he said in one of his almost-pouts. "You just aim to wound the ego, don't you?"

"When it's yours," she admitted snidely, "yes."

"Now you're just being mean," he pointed out with a raised brow, not looking put-off in the least.

Sarah gave him a disbelieving look. "I'm sure the view you got of my panties more than makes up for this."

He smiled wickedly. "Yes, about that sinfully red-"

"I'm not having this conversation," she interrupted him, moving back to the dinner table where she began to clean things up.

"I don't see why not," he complained, leaning against the doorframe to the kitchen. "I wouldn't mind, if our roles where reversed."

"That's because you're not a woman, and you're probably not wearing any," she answered absently.

"Well, thank the Stars for that," he quipped, "I think we'd have a serious mechanical problem if we were both women." He waited until she tried to enter the kitchen, trapping her in the doorway with him. "So, you've thought about my underwear, have you?"

She ducked under his restraining arm and began to set the dirty dishes into the dishwasher. "This conversation isn't helping your case any," she warned.

Jareth shrugged, his easy capitulation rather suspicious to her eyes. "All right, who was that twit at the door then?"

"Leo?" Sarah asked, deciding to do the cooking-pots by hand rather than let the machine handle them.

"No, the other twit at the door," he retorted sarcastically. "Yes, Leo." He watched her for a moment, then said calmly, "You know, I can't help but think that you're using domestic chores to hide from me."

She was midway through rinsing a pan out when the dishes simply disappeared and the washer turned itself on. Her hands floundered for a moment, her back stiffening. He wasn't all that far off the mark, really, she thought. She was using the brainless routine of dishwashing so that she wouldn't have to face him until she'd calmed down a bit. There was nothing even mildly erotic about doing the dishes, but Jareth had called her on it and taken away her nice, safe distraction.

Sarah took a calming breath before turning to face him, then backed up against the sink when he turned out to be closer than she had thought. "Leo," she finally replied, "is a friend of mine."

She thought, for a split second, that something very much like jealousy flared in his eyes at the word 'friend', but it was gone so quickly that she wondered if she'd really seen it at all.

Karen sat back and finally conceded that there was something about Leshia that put her at ease. Perhaps it was the woman's inherent calmness or the fact that she was staring at Toby with blatant affection in her eyes. She'd wanted to choke when her son had popped into the parlor. He'd frozen at the first sight of Leshia—so out of place in their ordinary room, her gentle green coloring and exotic features making everything else seem drab by comparison—but she had beamed at the boy as though he were a favored nephew. Now they sat huddled together, her boy who was growing up much too fast and their visitor from beyond the wells of imagination, and Karen couldn't find it within herself to be distressed. She was worried about the overall situation, there was no doubt in that—her family had not survived their first encounter so well—but the other woman's manner seemed to give her hope. Maybe there was a way to fix all of this if they put their heads together; that was, after all, a mother's duty.

"And this one?" Leshia asked interestedly, pointing to a pale scar on Toby's elbow.

He grinned from ear to ear. "Sarah wouldn't teach me how to climb trees, so I taught myself," there was pride in his voice, the pride of any lesson finally learned. "It didn't go so well at first, though."

Leshia splayed his hand on top of her own, palm up, for inspection. "What of these?" she asked. "There are an awful lot of these," the fingers of her other hand trailed over a faded network of scars that crossed over the boy's palm. They danced over his skin in quick arcs and didn't look very deep.

His smile faded into a confused look. "I don't know," Toby finally admitted. "I remember snow and some drunk blue guy."

"Drunk blue guy," she repeated slowly.

Karen stared at her son's hands as though seeing them for the first time. She was a strong woman and she had shouldered a lot in the past five years, but right then she felt like crying. She had never noticed the scars before, and she should have; in five years she had bathed him, washed his hands, played games, but the scars simply hadn't been there until now.

Leshia stood up and ruffled his hair before moving over to Karen. "We'll fix this," she murmured quietly. "I have to talk to my fool husband first but, I promise you, we will fix this."

Oran stood between worlds, able to view both the Aboveground and the Underground, and yet was in neither. He searched restlessly for his wayward Twins, but found his wife instead.

Jareth watched Sarah's jaw clench as she looked at the bed.

She hadn't said very much about Leo and he had stopped asking; the name had started to leave a foul taste in his mouth. They'd talked rather aimlessly after that, both backing away from each other; she was nervous, and he was… angry. Irrational jealousy had flooded through him when she'd pronounced that the mortal was her friend. That word didn't sit well with him; he hated the sound of it and loathed the idea that anyone might be closer to Sarah than he was. Anger had followed close on the heels of jealousy, but it had been anger at himself. He'd been jealous of a dwarf and now a man, and yet he was the one who had nearly had sex with her on a dinner table. If friendship excluded such events then he certainly didn't want to be friends. Bed-friends, though... that was another matter.

He hadn't thought to push her on it, but Sarah had eventually broached the subject of sleeping arrangements. The simple thought of not have to wage war against the fuchsia beast-couch for another night was enough to make him giddy. But to share a bed with Sarah? Now that made him downright euphoric, even after her growled warning, "You try any funny business at all and I will cut your dangly bits off, understand?"

He felt like purring.

A/N: Huzzah for chapter 8! I didn't think I was going to make it before the weekend. Normally I take weekends off to do my own thing anyway, but this weekend is my birthday so my father is taking me to see Les Miserables.

Sorry this chapter is so short everyone!

Please Review!

Disclaimer: Labyrinth and all its associated characters do not belong to me.