Notes: I do apologize for the lapse between the last chapter and this one. Great numbers of family descended for the holidays. I want to thank everyone who has read, favourited, and reviewed this story. I plotted it and dreamt it for months before finally writing it, and am glad that I was able to finish it. I sincerely hope you've enjoyed it.

16. An Ending Not Unlike a Beginning

George said goodnight to David and closed the door to his flat. Behind him, he could hear Sandra grunt as she heaved Baby Joe up from the floor, where David had left him after his nightly tales of goblins, elves, and fairies.

"Seemed a bit down, didn'e?" George said, clearing away dinner plates.

Sandra joined her hands underneath Baby Joe's tummy, back bent as she negotiated all of his weight. The poor baby resembled a sack of potatoes, his eyes uncomprehending and vague as his mother carried him off to bed. "David?" she said. "He looked a bit glum, yeah. Guess he misses that band of yours more than he lets on."

Perhaps. George did not have much time to dwell on it in the days that followed. His cousin Robert, born in the States and as Yankee as Doodle, dropped out of the hills of New Hampshire and landed at George's English doorstep one fine afternoon, his wife and daughter in tow.

"Hello, George," he said, all flat, wide, American consonants and vowels. "Long time no see, buddy." He stayed for a drink and a chat and then mentioned, casually, as he rummaged in the fridge for one more beer, that he and the wife were actually expected at a party later that night. "Important stuff, George," he said. "Linda might get a part in a West End play. If it does well and moves to Broadway, she is in the money."

Linda looked apologetic and very, very pretty. Black hair in waves down past her shoulders, sharp blues eyes, a complexion so fair it all but glowed. Made for the stage, George had no doubt. "This is all very last minute, you see," she said. "Robert made it seem as if he had cleared this with you before we arrived and, well…" She looped a strand of hair behind her ear. "Sarah's a really sweet child. Well behaved. She won't be any trouble, and it's only for tonight."

"We'll have to put 'er in the lounge. On a couch, see? She mind that?"

Sarah, decked out in a frilly, cream party dress, rainbow knee socks, and Converse sneakers, seemed delighted with the mere idea of the couch. She dropped into it with a squeal and looked for all the world as if she had known her Cousin George all of her short life. George had certainly never seen her. "I got married," said Robert's last postcard. That had been eight years ago. Now he had a six year old girl bouncing on his couch, cream skirt flouncing up and down to reveal purple shorts with little white stars on them.

"Aye, fine then," George said. "Good luck at the party, Linda. Robs, good to see ye again. Don't be a stranger."

They left in an apologetic flurry of waves and kisses, Linda hugging Sarah to her by the door before she disappeared into the night with Robert.

As it turned out, George became Sarah's unofficial babysitter for a few more nights after that. Greasing the wheels of West End casting machinery took considerably more than one party. Robert and Linda did not have much money, and a hotel was deemed an expense they would prefer to avoid. They bought a cheap, inflatable mattress and—with many humble gestures and murmurs of imposition—set themselves up in George's living room, Sarah still quite happy to camp out on the couch. Sandra grumbled at all the extra bodies and the mess they entailed, and Baby Joe kept trying to gnaw through Sarah's shoes every spare second, but, at heart, George was a family man. If his cousin and his wife and their daughter needed a place to sleep for a few weeks, then so be it.

It was only by the second week of tucking Sarah in before kissing Baby Joe good night that it struck George that he had not seen David in all that while.

King Jareth stood at the heart of an alley in Kent. The place was barely recognizable as the alley he had walked as David Jones. It was no longer even the alley from the night when David had wished himself into The Labyrinth. Hopelessly serpentine masses of twisted rock, staircases, doors and arches piled upon each other. The alley's original tenements and businesses had been pushed away, reconfigured in such a way that none of the residents even noticed that the alley had grown and that it was certainly not even one passageway anymore. Most people seemed to not even realize it was even there.

It took pride in its work, the alley. And it had done a marvellous job. However, its work had been done, and none of its flourishes were needed anymore. Jareth waved one hand in a lazy, dismissive gesture, and the alley zipped back to its original shape with barely the whisper of a brick sliding back into place.

A voice formed at the back of Jareth's head, old and distant. "Is that what he wishes?"

"It is," Jareth said. "You've done a commendable job. I feared for a moment that that fool Sankrėl had corrupted you as well, Singer."

"He may recall that he instructed me to aid him in his return."

"I did. But then you wouldn't grant my wish, to be taken to the centre of The Labyrinth, of my Labyrinth."

Jareth turned, eyes narrowed, to gaze coldly at the blue circle glowing faintly on the ground. What had seemed like incomprehensible runes and random bolts of light to David were now undeniably a cluster of shimmering, star-like matter, weaving into myriad shapes. One of the shapes was not unlike an elk. It gazed back at Jareth with an unperturbed, ageless patience.

"He was kept away from the centre of The Labyrinth. He speaks true."

"I never instructed you to do that."

The shape pulsed, tendrils of blue light rising like fine smoke from the ground. "He was also King Jareth," its voice said. "While Sankrėl was alive, he was still master of The Labyrinth, as much as he who is now King Jareth once more. His wishes may have been granted."

This did not please Jareth, but he knew better than to think he could merely dismiss a Singer as easily as he could dismiss a goblin. Singers were part of the very fabric that had been shaped into The Labyrinth, and were older than any creature under Jareth's rule. That they were loyal to the Kings Jareth regardless of their age and power was nothing to be trifled with, least of all insulted.

"You performed your duties well," Jareth said at length, not without a hint of reluctance.

With the ghostly whisper of cold winds caressing his cheeks, the Singer disappeared.

Then, in a shower of powdered glass, Jareth also disappeared. He had one very important person to see that night.

The doorbell rang as Sandra dipped her hands into sudsy dish water. "Why does this always happen?" she muttered. "George, doorbell!" she called. A series of heavy thumps and a grunt were all the indication she got that George had deigned to tear himself away from whatever, suds-free thing he had been doing in order to unlock the door.

There was a pause, then George's voice rose in a strangled noise that sounded like, "Dayha-ha-day-vud!" This was followed by an excited, "By God, man, where 'ave you been? It's been, wot, three bloody weeks? You fall down a well or somethin'? Sandra! Sandra, look, it's Davey! Come look at Davey!"

So it was. That beanpole David was standing in the middle of the living room, same as usual, hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, feet in dirty, tatty boots. He was grinning, a lopsided, jaunty thing that made Sandra wonder. Had David ever smiled like that? Come to think of it, had David's hair always gone down to his shoulders? She frowned, then had to laugh at herself. How silly. His hair was as short as ever. And so what if he looked happy? About time the silly fool smiled.

"Oh, look, mate," George said, "sorry for all the mess. Got me cousin Robert and his old lady over." George picked up socks and shoes as he made his way around the living room, tossing them into a pile by the radiator. "Got me cousin's daughter sleeping on the couch." He bundled up her covers and tossed them at one corner of the room in order to make space for David on the couch.

David looked around him as if he had never seen George's living room in his life. Something about it, however, made him smile in a very strange, secretive way. He turned his mismatched eyes on George and said, "How's Baby Joe?"

George had the strange feeling that something had been bothering him about the way David had been looking at his living room, but now he could no longer even remember being anything but happy to see David again. "Baby Joe's asleep," he said. "At last. Missed your bedtime stories, 'e did."

"Did he?" David picked up a blue and green striped sock, then dropped it in an absentminded way. "How's he coming along? Still big? Strong? He's going to grow up into a regular powerhouse, that little blob."

From the kitchen, David heard Sandra sigh in annoyance. "Please, don't call him a blob." Water splashed as she rinsed a dish, more dishes rattling as she placed it on a rack to dry. "Joe's just big. He'll grow out of it."

"Oh, I don't doubt he will," David said cheerfully. He poked his head into the kitchen and gave Sandra a dazzling smile and a wink. He left her blinking in disconcerted surprise as he sauntered back out into the living room, where George looked as if he could not make up his mind whether to look pleased or perplexed at David's presence and attitude.

At one point, he could have sworn he saw bits of something powdery and shiny on the carpet, snaking along the living room, following David.

Trick of the light, of course. Nothing there but dirt and Sarah's socks.

She chose that night to be uncharacteristically anti-social. When George introduced her to David, she outright glared up at him. This made David's eyebrows rise in mock outrage.

"Well I'm pleased to meet you, Sarah," he said.

He tried to take up her hand and kiss it, but she backed away from him. Before Sandra or George could call her back, she had whirled away into the bathroom in a blur of rainbow socks. The door shut with the click of a lock sliding home.

"What's gotten into her?" Sandra murmured. She thought about checking in on her, making her apologize to David, but the thought was replaced by an urgent need to dry and put away the dishes. No sense leaving them to dry in a rack. She wandered into the kitchen with the distracted notion that she felt oddly muddled that night, as if she had been drinking too much wine. She had barely touched a glass of water.

David clasped his hands behind his back and rocked on his heels. "So," he said. "George. Been keeping well?"

"Tolerably," George said. "Posters didn't set the world on fire, but I got some gigs as a session musician. Nothin' fancy, mind you, but it's a paycheque, right? How's Moliere?"

"Dead," David said.

"Really? That was quick. Usually a new pub hangs on for at least a month before it shuts down. You on the dole again, then?"

The Moliere Pub. Of course. How bothersome of him to have forgotten. Rather out of character for someone like George to ask about 17th century French playwrights. He nodded his head and George prattled on placidly about how David was still employed at Moliere, doing splendidly well and quite chuffed with the owners' decision to dress everyone in what looked like blue and purple lame.

He kept the conversation up for a few more minutes before he sent George off in search of a board game buried deep within piles of laundry in the bedroom. With Sandra compelled to stay in the kitchen, wiping down the counters, and that little girl, Sarah, locked into the bathroom in a fit of unpleasantness, the path to Baby Joe's room was blessedly clear. Moonlight clung to the walls and the wooden bars of his crib as he walked in.

Baby Joe looked up at him in a daze as he lay on his crib, one chubby arm up by its head. If he had any opinions on long haired men dressed in dark purple silk and trailing powdered glass bending over him, he saw no need to share this opinion.

"Hello," Jareth said. His lips drew back over his teeth as Baby Joe gurgled out what could have been a laugh. "Oh, yes, you can smile, little blob. This is a good thing." He reached out one hand and tickled the fleshy bunch of skin that should have been Baby Joe's chin. The baby kicked one leg and smiled in a vague, surprised way. "That's a good boy," Jareth cooed. "Such a good boy."

Baby Joe made no further sounds as Jareth bent down to scoop him up from the crib.

"Ooph," Jareth said. "My but that you're quite the heavy little thing, aren't you?"

He straightened up, Baby Joe cradled in his arms, only to discover someone had stepped into the room. He readied the magic to change back into his human guise, to turn everything into a trick from a wishful eye, but stopped as he saw who it was: George's rude little cousin once removed. Sarah stood at the doorway to Baby Joe's room in her cream party dress and rainbow socks.

"What are you doing?" she said.

With a careful, lazy gesture, Jareth lifted up and drew back one side of his silk coat. He placed Baby Joe inside, cooing softly to him even as Baby Joe remained chubby and oblivious, staring in uncomprehending bewilderment at the dark folds around him. From within the folds, several somethings winked on and off, almost like stars. Jareth waved at Baby Joe with the fingers of his free hand, then drew his coat closed.

Baby Joe disappeared.

Jareth took one step towards Sarah, hands clasped behind his back. "Well now," he said.

Sarah remained at the door. Her fingers tightened around the doorframe, but she kept her eyes on Jareth. "You don't scare me," she said.

"Nobody's trying to scare you, you sorry little girl." He looked down at Sarah's left hand and saw that she carried a book. Before she could react, he bent down and plucked it from her fingers. He turned the cover towards the moonlight. A Child's Book of Faeries. "How charming." He shook out the book, so that its cloth bound cover rippled and shook out from egg blue to deep red. He held out the book to Sarah.

She opened her mouth. "I'm not sca—"

"Yes, we've covered your lack of fear." He held out the book once more. Sarah took it with the frown of the stubborn brave. Jareth smiled indulgently at her, like a doting father on Christmas morning. "Good girl. Read that instead of all that faerie doggerel. You might learn a thing or two about the proper way to behave when in our presence."

The book was slight and slim, and looked older than anything Cousin George owned. "The Labyrinth," Sarah read out. She made as if to open the book, then dropped it to the floor. "I want my old book back."

"Such a spoiled, sorry little girl," Jareth said. He stretched out one hand and placed the tip of his index finger against Sarah's forehead. "You're a silly child. Why don't you forget you ever saw me, and go right back to playing with your dresses and your toys, hm?" He drew back his hand, now barely an outline. "You can keep the book."

Sarah saw him fade away to nothing, but soon her eyes passed from childish defiance to blank disorientation. She had no idea why she had come into Baby Joe's room, or why she was staring so intently at empty space. Perhaps she had been sent to fetch something, but she could not remember what. And she must have been fantastically scatterbrained about it, because she had even dropped her book. She picked it up, dusted it off, and wandered back into the living room. She would have to ask Cousin George what he had sent her to fetch again.

Jareth watched her go.

"Hey, Sarah," George said, his voice light and cheery, coming from the kitchen. "Have you seen me mate, Davey? I introduced you to 'im, right? He must be pullin' some invisibility trick. One minute he's 'ere, and me with me Parcheesi board all ready, an' next minute he disappears on me." He laughed. "Let's put some chips out. That'll bring him running."

He sounds different, a wistful voice within Jareth said. Happier. More at ease. It'll be a terrible blow when—

"David," Jareth said. "I will not tolerate these lapses any longer. I had thought to let you say goodbye to these humans, but I do believe I have changed my mind."

Jareth raised his right arm. He flicked his index finger, barely a twitch, and the room was empty of him.

A goblin, Pam, came officiously towards him as he solidified within his castle throne room. "Sire, you'll be glad to know that the human child has completed its journey over safe and sound. He looks, if I may say so, your majesty, most promising."

"He is, isn't he?" he said absently. "He had good parents."

"Sire…?"

Jareth frowned. He waved his hand and, with barely time to yelp, Pam dropped away through the floor and down into the kitchens. Jareth moved his still outstretched arm within his eyesight and curled his fingers, as if he were crushing an invisible object, strangling the empty air. It took him a while, his features trembling with the effort. Finally, his fingers tightened into a fist, and his face smoothed itself out. A few creases that had been worrying him—tension, some misplaced melancholy and useless regrets—disappeared completely.

"You were warned, David," he said.

He opened his fist, and a few shards of crushed brown glass scattered in a summoned wind. If he thought anything as they dispersed, it did not show on his face, and he barely acknowledged it.

Pam found himself being pulled up from the kitchens and through the throne room floor with a pop in his ears. It disconcerted him a great deal, but he tried his best to look as if this sort of thing happened to him all the time. "Your majesty?" he said with a slight bow.

"There's a dwarf working with the Maintenance Detail," Jareth said. "Honkle, or something like that. It occurs to me that he was quite rude to me recently. Put him in for a pay cut." Pam nodded. "And hire at least fifty goblins to clean the castle. It's a disgrace."

"Yes, my lord."

"And I need a new throne. This horrid leather thing is an embarrassment. Hire a stone mason. A good one. Pay him more money than he's ever seen in his life. I want a new throne by tomorrow night." He snapped his fingers at a lanky goblin shuffling past on his way to the lower floors. "And you, do something about furniture. You can't all sit on the floor."

The goblin looked equal parts terrified and mystified. "U-us, your majesty?"

"Yes," Jareth said impatiently. "Us. We. Myself and any goblin chosen as part of castle staff. You're my new interior decorator." He clapped twice, and the goblin—Somsuch, who had been aimlessly trespassing and had not counted on anyone noticing him—found himself dressed in gold and black, an insignia pinned to his smart new vest. "Go and buy new chairs and recliners and tables and all that," Jareth said.

Pam and Somsuch stood there, somewhat dumbfounded.

Jareth tapped his foot in irritation, hand on his hip. "Well?"

And the goblins scrambled and scampered away to do King Jareth's bidding. They have been doing so to this very day, and life has been altogether tolerable within Goblin City and The Labyrinth.

There are some goblins who whisper that, once, the king became fascinated by a mortal girl, and that his heart was irrevocably broken. But that is another story, and one should never believe a goblin's tale anyway.

This much is true: he was the last King Jareth.

FINI