Chapter Twenty-One

"What?" Sarah burst out, no longer feeling the sickness that had, only moments prior, laced her belly. She straightened up on the floor and pinned Byron with a disbelieving look. "Tell me you mean that metaphorically!"

He suddenly looked extremely uncomfortable. "Well," the blond teen murmured, avoiding her eyes, "in any circumstance I would say yes, but I'm afraid it's a more immediate case of genetics."

"You have been living under my roof for two months," she growled, inching on her knees to get closer to him, "and in all that time it never crossed your mind to mention that you're the brother of the man we've been looking for?"

"Jareth and I have a very rocky past," he supplied, steadying her when an uneven patch of tile caused her to pitch forward.

"Join the club!" she snapped. "I'm beginning to think that man doesn't have any sort of past that isn't rocky."

Byron let out a sigh as he helped Sarah to her feet and led both of them to a couple of chairs. "You asked me once how I became a goblin," he said quietly, after they had settled into opposite seats. "I hesitated telling you because it's not a history I care to remember. However, in light of what I've just revealed, I imagine you won't let me get away with delaying this tale any further."

She paused, intrigued at how the brother of the Goblin King could end up a goblin himself. Perhaps that aspect of Jareth was a bit on the dangerous side, but the man she had been getting to know didn't strike her as someone who would intentionally cause harm to a loved one. "What does that have to do with you being Jareth's brother?" she finally asked.

"Therein lays the whole story," he replied sadly.

Sarah nervously pulled at the hem of her shirt, feeling guilty for forcing him to recount things that obviously pained him, but fully prepared to nag until she was given an answer if she really had to. For a few moments silence reigned over the small sitting room; she encouraged him to tell his tale by remaining supportively quiet while he visibly steeled his nerves.

"I suppose it would be best to start three hundred years ago," Byron began. "We were both human then, living out in the countryside of England." He paused for a minute, as though deciding where to go from there. "Jareth is my older brother," he continued, the ghost of a smile playing over his lips. "As the youngest son to a pair of titled aristocrats, I really shouldn't have been of any noble consequence. Following the lineage and birth order, Jareth would have inherited the title of Lord Bunbury, but our father broke with tradition. He despised Jareth's predisposition to dream up wonderful fictions, said that he would crumble under the responsibilities of being a Lord. So, instead, the title went to me."

"Did he hate you for it?" she asked. It would be easy to damn someone as petty, but she could remember a time not so long ago when she had hated Toby. The tragedy in all of it was that it was through no fault of the child's; she had simply felt slighted by her parents' constant attention to the baby. Her anger would have been better placed at the source rather than aimed at a convenient target, but it just hadn't worked out that way. It was unfortunate that such things happened, but it was true that the shortsighted actions of a parent could drive siblings apart.

"If he did, he never said so," Byron shrugged. "I'm tempted to think that in those early days, when we were both still children, it really didn't matter to him. We played and laughed and got into all the mischief that brothers often do."

"But?" she asked.

"But, as the years wore on, a rift began to part us." He shook his head. "To this very day I'm still not sure if it began as an intellectual difference or if Jareth finally understood and resented the denial of his birthright. I suspect it was likely a bit of both."

Sarah worried her lower lip, trying to form a picture of this secretly bitter Jareth; she couldn't do it. Even through all of his games and subterfuge, there had been something outright honest about the Goblin King, as though he wove his emotions into the very air that surrounded him. But then, she hadn't known this younger Jareth, hadn't seen what hardships he'd had to live through. Shaking the thought quickly, she asked, "What do you mean, intellectual difference?"

"It's one thing I'll never understand about my father's decision," Byron replied with a frown. "For all his dreaming, all his obsessive love of fantasy, Jareth was always the planner, the schemer; he could have talked circles around a politician with hardly the bat of a lash. I spent years with private tutors learning things that he just seemed to know instinctually."

"You think your father's attention was misplaced?" she questioned.

He gave a gentle nod of his head. "I loved my father dearly, but there were certain things about the man I could never understand. He cut his natural heir off simply because he harbored a dislike for the fantastic, barely even acknowledged the eldest son within his own household. I think he was blind to Jareth's true potential; after all, we both know that he made an effective Goblin King, and I rather doubt that the responsibilities of Lordship could even begin to compare to that."

"How did he end up the Goblin King?" Sarah asked with a frown. "I mean, if you were both born human…" her words trailed off as the impact of that simple sentence finally dawned on her. They had both been born human, and yet one brother had ended up the Goblin King, and the other a goblin. "Oh god," she breathed, suddenly understanding why this was something Byron didn't like to reminisce over, "he wished you away, didn't he?"

The quiet melancholy that had always been lurking behind Byron's hazel eyes finally came out in full force. "It was a hard year on everyone," he explained. "Our parents had both died in a carriage accident, leaving me to inherit Lordship at sixteen and Jareth to become my caretaker at the ripe age of twenty, a time when he should have begun living his bachelorhood to its very fullest. Tensions ran high and, whether from grief or nerves, we both managed to irritate and anger one another; the servants did their best to keep us out of each other's way, but it wasn't always possible."

It sounded awful, Sarah thought. Two brothers, who had once been as close as brothers could be, driven apart by their father's prejudices and then further separated from each other in a time of grief when they likely could have used the comfort. She had a very good idea of where the tale was heading, and didn't like it one bit.

"It was just such an occasion when he said The Right Words. I had been complaining about some function or another than I didn't want to attend—and I'll never be sure if it was because of the unspoken reminder that, by right of birth, it should have been him attending rather than me, or if it was simply because he was just irritable that day—but suddenly he was glowering at me like I was the most annoying beast on the planet and saying that he wished the goblins would come and take me away."

She swallowed dryly. As someone who had carelessly wished her own little brother away, it was rather hard to hear Byron talk about what it had been like from the other end of the story. "Did he run the Labyrinth?" If he hadn't there were going to be some serious words once she found him again, something along the lines of 'heartless prick', possibly emphasized by projectile kitchenware.

Byron looked surprised, "Of course he ran!" The surprise quickly dropped into a frown. "But he wasn't as lucky as you, Sarah, and there was no one to help him along the way. He didn't even come close to making it to the center of the Labyrinth."

"So you were turned into a goblin," it was a simple statement. Thinking back on her own experience in the Underground, Sarah knew that she never would have been able to come to Toby's rescue if it hadn't been for the continued help of her friends. She could almost picture the younger, frustrated Jareth taking one wrong turn after another, never getting any closer to the Goblin City or the castle it protected. For all of her blond writer's cunning, without any help the Labyrinth truly was an insurmountable challenge.

"Yes," Byron agreed. "And since Jareth didn't win, it wasn't within his rights to make any demands, but he had noticed how much the Wise Man hated serving as the Goblin King. He offered the ancient one a trade: in exchange for the throne of the Goblin Kingdom and all the powers that inherently came with the title, Jareth would allow his entire existence to ride on the outcome of every 13 hour run within the Labyrinth; if a runner ever won, his life would be forfeit and it would be the runner's right to renegotiate the contract." He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. "Well, of course, the Wise Man simply loved the idea. It was the ultimate gamble, pitting Jareth's skill against the determination of those who entered the Labyrinth."

"Why?" Sarah gasped, a frown furrowing her brows. "Why would he strike such a bargain?"

"I think," Byron began hesitantly, "that it was his intention to make amends, to find a way to make me human again. He never could though, so he spent most of those early years simply helping me retain my humanity, suspended somewhere between goblin and boy. But I felt betrayed, wounded more than I could ever express, and after a few years I moved as far from him as I could get."

"So the two of you never made amends?" The idea made her heartsick.

Byron folded up on himself, and it wasn't until Sarah noticed the tears shining in his eyes that she realized how young he looked; barely at the edge of manhood, no longer a child and yet not quite an adult either. He was a boy who had suffered the loss of his parents and his brother in silence, who had never understood why Jareth had done the things he had and been haunted by possibilities for centuries. "I wanted to!" he wailed. "But by the time I missed my brother more than I hated him, I felt it was too late. It had already been centuries; what if he didn't care anymore?"

She stood from her seat, and quickly crossed over to him. "Oh, honey," she whispered, taking him into her arms, "he gave up the world so that you wouldn't be alone; he'd probably give it up all over again just to have you back." If only he would remember that he had a brother, she thought sadly.

Sarah stared up at him in frightened amazement.

Jareth almost did a double take as he read over the passage that he had written earlier that morning. Never, in his entire career as a writer, had he mixed up the names of the characters he was using, not even when he'd been a green amateur.

God, the last twenty-four hours had been maddening! First, he'd lost the brass key and had had to turn his apartment upside-down looking for it. Then, out of absolutely nowhere, he'd suddenly remembered that he had a cat, one who had apparently been missing for eight weeks. Now, damn it all, some woman named Sarah was invading his writing. Everything seemed to stretch back to two months ago. It was the last time he remembered having seen Ludo; it was when he had found the key and the clothing that wasn't his; it was when he had noticed that there was about a week of time that he couldn't remember anything of; it was when his horrible restlessness had increased and, most bizarre of all, it was when Hoggleston had started acting downright curious.

Something was wrong, there was no denying it at this point; the question was what? Amnesia, mental breakdown? Or was it something more… fantastic?

He'd had a dream the night before, and it had given Jareth the chills. There had been two of him, one the writer and the other some kind of wild creature. The wild one had had some kind of warning, some sort of news that he desperately wanted to convey but Jareth hadn't been able to understand him, and the dream had ended in a sense of frustrated confusion. As a man of the twentieth century he knew that it meant nothing but, as a writer, he gave a lot of credence to dreams. Some part of him knew exactly what was wrong, it was just that it was too difficult to explain in terms of logic and reason.

Still…

He glanced over his writing again.

…Who the hell was Sarah?

"So how do Hoggle, Ludo, and Didymus fit into the story?" Sarah asked once Byron had calmed down.

"They really were once known as Dr. Ciren Didymus and Silas Hoggleston; Hoggle was our gardener and Didymus was something of a glorified butler. Ludo, as you've probably guessed, really was just a cat once," he answered. "After Jareth became the Goblin King, he went back to the mortal realm to tell them what had happened and… well, you know that they're like. They demanded to come with, and have been living Underground ever since."

"Until now," she interjected. " What is it that they're doing? I mean, based on what you've told me, it should be my right to decide what happens to Jareth since I'm the one who made it through the Labyrinth!"

He nodded. "It still is your right," Byron said solemnly, "you just have to find the Wise Man. I wouldn't recommend facing him alone though; I know he doesn't look like much, but the old one is dangerous. First, however, I'm going to go find Didymus."

So they were back to that. "It's just a waist of time if he's not going to help us," Sarah sighed.

He poked her belly. "I already told you, Sarah: you are not having this child alone," Byron told her obstinately. "As another man of the seventeenth century, and one who holds to honor very dearly, I'm positive Didymus will agree with me. You said yourself that it was likely he's no longer working with Hoggle; if that's truly the case then I think he'll not only tell us what's going on, he'll probably take us to Jareth himself."

In that moment Byron looked like his brother, she realized. He had his feet splayed apart and his hands on his hips, a fiery look in his eyes and a stubborn set to his jaw. She almost pitied Didymus, who was about to become the focus of all that determination; hopefully the old fox would be easy to persuade because she wasn't sure what depths her houseguest would sink to in order to have his way.

Perhaps he was simply being paranoid, Jareth thought to himself, but he had noticed that every time he mention his unsettling thoughts and experiences around his portly neighbor, Hoggleston had a tendency to get defensive. The only reason Jareth could think of for such a reaction was that, somehow, Hoggleston was involved with the cause of those strange events. Eager to test the theory, he corned the old gent out in the hall that stretched between their apartments.

After a completely mechanical and banal exchange of pleasantries, Jareth leaned against his front door and said, "I have a cat."

Hoggleston dismissed the strangely blunt statement. "Of course you do," he grunted, "you always have."

"The funny thing about that though," the blond one mused darkly, "is that I didn't know it until just this morning." Jareth kept his eyes glued to the old man, radiating a knowing air for maximum discomfort. It was a subtle tipping of his hand really; 'I know that you know what's going on, and I'm going to make you damn uncomfortable until you confess' was the message that his eyes conveyed. His neighbor looked shifty, but remained silent. "He's been missing for months and I didn't remember him enough to realize that. I wonder why that is?" he asked in a way that was only pleasant on the surface.

"Cats!" Hoggleston burst out. "You know how they are!" he said in an overly loud voice with a dramatic roll of his eyes, then, with a hurried nod of his head, spun around and ducked into the safety of his own apartment.

Jareth's eyes narrowed, watching until his neighbor had disappeared into the apartment next door. Well, he thought to himself, that certainly seemed to prove his theory, didn't it?

Byron had left the house for less than ten minutes before he returned with Dr. Ciren in line. Didymus had barely taken a look at her before pronouncing that she was definitely pregnant, and had spent that last hour fussing and cosseting over her. It was right around when he started trying to coax her into having lunch that Sarah lost her patience. "Right now, I need Jareth more than I need a sandwich," she snapped.

Didymus looked taken aback, then sighed. "Yes, of course, you're right."

"We know he's in Boston, Ciren, but where?" Byron asked.

"And what's happened to him?" Sarah added.

Didymus ran a hand over his neck, moustache twitching, and replied, "Perhaps it would be best to hear this from Hoggle. I have a plan on how to fix things, but we will need to confront the dwarf before we can face the Wise Man."

With that, the walls began to melt away.

Hoggle leaned against his door, heart pounding. Jareth hadn't been able to fit back into his life as easily the second time around; he was much more restless and volatile. Despite that, they'd been making some progress; he hadn't set a single foot outside of Boston and had seemed to be getting back into his writing. Today, though, had been downright spooky. He's stood in the hallway, the very picture of casual grace, with a predatory light shining through his eyes and an unspoken accusation flavoring the air. No matter how human the ex-Goblin King became, there always seemed to be something within him that knew about the otherworldly events surrounding his life. That part had been closer to the surface today; maybe Jareth didn't know what was going on, but he did know who was causing it.

Dangerous, Hoggle decided, things were getting dangerous. Jareth was beginning to distrust him, wasn't likely to listen to his advice anymore, and the dwarf knew that he couldn't deflect some of the responsibility of the plan off to Didymus because the old fox had up and disappeared. The entire situation was riding on a single pair of shoulders, and Hoggle was beginning to suspect that he couldn't do it alone, not when Jareth was second-guessing his intentions.

With a weary shake of his head, Hoggle limped to the kitchen. Stupid cat, he cursed while setting a kettle to boil; he'd finally managed to get that damned brass key away from the boy and now the remembrance of that mangy orange beast was stirring up things that could render their last two months of progress completely pointless! 'What would Sarah do?' he wondered. The answer came faster than he would have liked: 'Beat you with a stick. She may have forgiven a betrayal once, but she won't do it again.'

As though his thoughts had been a self-fulfilling prophecy, the air around him began to ripple. Hoggle scuttled sideways out of the kitchen as the air thickened and became a lazy mist. He almost ran straight for the door when Didymus, Byron, and Sarah emerged from the fog.

Didymus looked oddly grim-faced and determined when he said, "I believe it is time for a little talk, my brother. The plan has changed."

Jareth shivered right down to the marrow of his bones, his senses sharpened, and a fierce hunger flared within him.

Hoggle had spent several minutes making lame evasions before everyone finally settled into his living room for an explanation. Sarah had him pinned with an expectant look and, while he was absolutely thrilled that she didn't seem to be overtly hating him, he felt defeated by the knowledge that Didymus was right: things had changed. The air around Sarah was charged, a quiet magic slowly wrapping itself around her, nourishing and protecting her. It wasn't the sort of magic that was often used, except for in the case of pregnancies. Innocent little Sarah was with child, and that magic was undoubtedly Jareth's so there wasn't much of a question as to who the father was.

"It wasn't malicious or nothing," he began in a quiet voice. "At first, we weren't sure how you would want to deal with Jareth, so we got to the Wise Man before he could get to you."

"We struck a deal," Didymus continued for him, "and the Wise Man agreed to give Jareth back his mortal life starting from the moment it had bee taken from him. The magic and memories that made him the Goblin King, however, were not things that could be taken away if he was to live, and we were told that it would take eleven years before the seal on them would fully solidify; after that, he was guaranteed a normal life, but until then it was our duty to watch over the boy to make sure nothing brought out the side of him."

Sarah tried to piece it all together in her mind, everything she had learned from Byron and everything she was hearing now. "But why?" she asked. "I just don't understand why you wanted to do this."

Hoggle pinned her with his watery blue eyes. "Have you ever seen three hundred years catch up to a man in a single instant?" he asked seriously.

She shook her head.

"Neither have I," he answered, "and I never want to. But, if the Wise Man completely released Jareth from his contract, that's exactly what would happen. I reckon he'd go from an arrogant bastard to a pile of bones faster than you could blink."

The thought made her completely sick, but what Hoggle was trying to say was not lost on her. "You've been trying to save him this whole time?"

"Well what did you think we were doing?" he asked in his customarily grumpy manner.

"Frankly, the two of us weren't sure what the hell you were up to and, you'll have to forgive us, we were rather inclined to believe it was of a nefarious nature," Byron cut in from his seat on an ottoman. "You could have asked for our help, or told us what was going on at the very least," he added with an angry frown.

"Ah," Didymus replied heavily, "unfortunately, that was part of the deal we struck with the Wise Man. In exchange for his help we were to keep Sarah completely out of the proceedings. He's afraid of her, you see; Jareth he had a leash on, by virtue of the terms of the contract, but Sarah was a wild card in the game." He shook his head, "If we had told you, Byron, you would have told Sarah."

"It's a moot point now," she interjected, "but why didn't you ask for my help? I understand why you didn't at first—I probably wouldn't have been kind to Jareth at all—but when we were all in Maine, I thought it was pretty clear that I would to anything I could to help him."

"Because you want to help him become the Goblin King again," Hoggle defended. "We're just trying to give him a shot at a normal life and-"

"He gets stuck in his ways," Didymus apologized to Sarah, cutting off Hoggle's tirade before it could start. "At first he was too worried to ask for your help, and then he was just too proud to. I wanted to see the boy get another chance at life," he stated, "but the further along with the plan we got, the more I began to feel that we weren't doing the right thing. Once you were involved I was absolutely certain that there had to be another way and, now that you're pregnant, we haven't much choice other than to break faith with the Wise Man."

Byron shifted on his ottoman. "You said you have a plan?"

The wiry, foxish man nodded.

"Good," Sarah spoke before he could explain, "but first, I have a question." She turned her attention back to Hoggle. "What the hell did you do two months ago?"

He looked resigned to failure and yet, at the same time, relieved to no longer be the one in charge. "Sent him back about a week or two," he replied, "to some time just before he ran back into you."

"The Wise Man can't do that," Byron stated in confusion.

"No, he can't," Didymus agreed. "It was a power that Jareth developed wholly on his own, which was why we couldn't send him back to his original time in the first place. When the ancient one says he's sending things back in time, what he really means is that he is replicating the conditions that it would have been in at that time."

Hoggle nodded. "Locked away the memories that hadn't been there before he'd met you again, moved everything in his cottage back to Boston, and tried to strengthen the cracking seals that were keeping the magic trapped." He sighed. "It wasn't a very good job, though. There were things in Jareth's house that belonged to you and they got poofed back to Boston with everything else; I swear he's been holding on to that stupid door key like it's a lifeline. He's been getting more restless too; something in him knows that things aren't right, that there's something he can't remember, and it looks like the Wise Man didn't put much effort into repairing those seals, because he was looking pretty Goblin Kingish when I saw him half an hour ago."

Jareth paced the length of his sitting room, energy flooding through him. Something was about to happen, something big; he could practically taste it. The brass key had often given him a feeling like this—as though someone important was just out of reach, waiting on the shadowed peripheries—but this was mush more intense. Where the key had given him a feeling akin to the nervous rush of caffeine, what he was experiencing right now was more like the electric and eerie silence that descended in the calm before the storm.

A determined knock beat against the door and he quickly moved to open it. Crowded around the narrow opening were four people, but he only took notice of the woman who had knocked. She was curvy and petite—probably fit perfectly under his chin—with pale skin and a light dusting of freckles. Her hair was long, flowing down her back like a curtain of melted chocolate, and her eyes were a vibrant emerald green—sparkling, challenging, accusing, knowing eyes. The sight of her caused everything in him to tighten, to awaken and hunger. It was her scent, though, that brought him to painful awareness; a gentle hint of gardenia and lush woman, the very scent that had permeated the clothing he'd found, the scent that he had lusted after and been tortured by for the past two months.

Who was this woman?

Her peach-perfect lips parted, a pale tongue nervously darting out to wet them. It was a gesture that he had seen a million times in countless seduction, but the fact that she had meant it as an innocent gesture was perhaps what made it so painfully appealing. She parted her lips again, and Jareth nearly cursed because there was no doubt in his mind that her voice would be as enslaving as a Siren's song. "I'm pregnant."

He blinked and the moment of enchantment broke; he certainly hadn't been expecting to hear that. "Congratulations. Do I know you?" His eyes darted behind her, to a boy that looked frighteningly familiar; surely he wasn't the father, he looked young enough to be in high school!

Something in him cracked and strained to be free.

Her eyes narrowed and the nervousness that had been playing around her vanished. With a straight spine and an angry sigh, she pushed her way into his apartment. "I'm Sarah," she answered firmly.

Jareth's senses ran wild. Sarah, like the woman who had snuck into his writing? What the hell was going on?! The moment he had seen her a beast had opened predatory eyes within him and had been howling for her ever since; it was the same beast that had howled for the woman who belonged to those clothes he had found. The same woman; he was willing to bet that the brass key belonged to her as well. Now she was standing in the middle of his sitting room—a voice within him whispering that she belonged there, deep within his territory—so close he could practically taste her, if it weren't for one thing. Someone else had gotten to her first. His dream woman was barely an arm's length away, pregnant with someone's child.

Another crack, more straining. The beast howled savagely.

"And, yes, you do know me," Sarah continued, interrupting his introspection, "since it's your child that I'm carrying."

He stared at her for a moment, then replied, "I beg to differ, Madame, since less than three minutes ago we were perfect strangers." And yet something at the back of his mind was clicking. While the denying words left his mouth, he was filled with brief images: a flash of dark lace peeking out of a white shirt, a kiss that was as consuming as it was electric, a glimpse of flesh meeting flesh and a sense of intense triumph. My lover, the words echoed from a dim corner of his mind, accompanied by the unsettling knowledge that there was a week of time in his life that was completely unaccounted for. Was it possible that he had known this woman then?

Her eyes narrowed further and she seemed to be considering her words very carefully. "This baby is yours Jareth, whether you remember the moment or not." His mind whirled, another hint of flesh meeting flesh consuming his senses; promises had been made, decisions reached, possessive claims staked. She continued on, heedless of the sudden storm gathering in his mind, "Now get up off your ass and help me raise this baby or, I swear to God, I will marry someone else who will bring the kid up as their own and you will never set eyes on your child!"

Someone else? The thought erupted in his mind furiously. Some else to touch and take of that woman, to raise the baby that was really his? Never.

The cracks spidered out and broke, releasing the strain and freeing the beast. Power flooded his veins, sweet and addicting. Memory after memory wove itself back into his mind, connecting events and filling in gaps that he hadn't even been aware of. Jareth looked out at the world through different eyes, eyes that knew and saw everything. And there she was at the eye of the storm, he thought once his gaze settled on her, his precious Sarah; he couldn't stop the slightly inhuman growl that tore itself from his throat at the sight of her. There would be hell to pay for those who had kept them apart, who had taken away his lover and his unborn child.

The angry, possessive thoughts simmered through him, gratifying in their intensity and coupled with the knowledge that he now had the power to seek revenge. His planning didn't get very far, though, before the small room was plunged into darkness.

A/N: Dialogue heavy… I apologize if that's not your cup of tea (one chapter left!). In other news, I'm sorry for the delay. I really wanted to get this chapter out fast, but I had an essay, finals, move out, and a last minute trip over the weekend to visit my grandparents. Summer decided to start with a bang, I guess.

A new poll is up in my profile (for those of you who haven't already voted) and I'd really love for you guys to cast your opinions, though I have to admit that the question may be posed more out of idle curiosity than any actual intent.

This chapter is dedicated to Shadow D'hampyr, because I literally wrote the scene in question just minutes before you reviewed, making me wonder if you are in fact psychic. I hope this lived up to your expectations!

Please review!

Disclaimer: Anything recognizable as having come from the movie Labyrinth is not mine. Byron, the occasional interloper—Elizabeth Carver, and the baby belong to me, though I can't say the baby makes much of a difference in terms of original characters.