Chapter Fifteen: Light

"Jeremy?" Linda's voice called from the front door.

Jeremy blinked at his dark bedroom. Brian squirmed in his arms. Jeremy looked down at the sleeping baby.

"Oh, my Brian!" Tiffany swooped into the room and collected her little boy from his uncle's arms. "He's so sound asleep! Oh I hope he wasn't too much trouble!"

"No," Jeremy answered a little breathlessly, "no trouble at all."

"Thank you so much for watching him," Linda wrapped her arms around his waist and pecked him on the lips. "We had a really fantastic time today."

"Yeah, thank you so much, Jeremy!" Tiffany kissed him on the cheek and then grabbed her still-packed-up baby bag.

"Uh, do you want help with that?" Jeremy removed himself from his wife and took the bag from his sister. "Lemme get the doors for you." He smiled and walked her out of the apartment and down to her car.

When he got back, Linda was sitting on the bed in her nightgown, waiting for him.

***

Sarah marched across the throne room and met the Lady of Night in the middle. "You got the prophecy wrong."

"Sarah," Jareth stood uncertainly behind her, "what are you doing?"

"She's getting herself killed is what she's doing." The Lady of Night raised her arms and the room was filled with shadows, darting back and forth, trembling, swaying, crawling.

The Goblin Queen raised her own arms and closed her eyes. Okay, Labyrinth. A whole lot of light would be really good right about now.

"Sarah!"

"Stay back!" Sarah commanded her fiance as light began to fill the spaces between the shadows. "I realized something in that dream I had just now. The line in the prophecy that goes 'love to break and light to burn'." A golden glow surrounded everything the room, forcing the shadows to shrink and fall apart. "It means that love will break the darkness and light will burn the shadows. Jeremy broke your power with his love for his nephew, and I'm burning your shadows with the light of the Labyrinth."

"Don't fool yourself!" The Lady of Night growled. "I am the most powerful thing in this Labyrinth!" She screeched and forced the shadows forward one more time.

Sarah closed her eyes and relaxed, allowing the light and warmth of the Labyrinth to fill her. "No," she replied calmly, "you're not." The Goblin Queen opened her eyes then and watched as the Lady of Night was surrounded by nothing but gold light.

"No!" The Lady of Night was swallowed up by the light, which wrapped itself around her and shrank slowly down into a sphere that gradually became a point and then vanished entirely.

Sarah swayed on her feet before Jareth put his arms around her. "Sarah," he said quietly but firmly, "where did that come from?"

"Where did what come from?" She touched a hand to her pounding temple.

"That power." He led her over to the silver throne and helped her sit down. "The Labyrinth would never give anything like that away for free."

Sarah smiled. "I told it you knew it well."

Jareth's eyebrows drew together. "You spoke to the Labyrinth."

Sarah nodded, the smile fading quickly.

"What did you promise it?" He tried to keep his voice calm, but didn't quite manage it.

She studied his face for a moment, the blue smudges, the healing cuts and gashes, his disheveled yellow hair, his pleading eyes, his thin, pressed lips. Sarah took a deep breath. "It said it needs a voice, and a body, someone who can do its will and make its will known to others."

"And you promised it you would do this?" He took her hands in his and held them over his heart.

"No." Sarah shook her head and squeezed his hands. "I promised it that our future son would."

Jareth's eyes widened and he dropped her hands. He stood and turned away from her. Sarah leaned back in the throne, noticing the afternoon light that drifted through the window. How long had she been without sleep? Besides the nightmares, she thought to herself. Those were just as exhausting as being awake.

"You promised it," Jareth whispered, "our son." He whirled on her then. "But you're not...we're not going to have..."

"No." Sarah shook her head again. "You've been very understanding about respecting the boundaries I asked you to. But once we've gotten married, there won't be any boundaries." She watched him stare at her. "What else could I do, Jareth?" She asked wearily. "Let her take the Labyrinth?"

He shook his head and went back to pacing. "You never should have broken the rule in the first place," he muttered. "If you had just listened to me."

"I know." Sarah murmured. "I'm so sorry, Jareth."

The Goblin King stopped pacing again and looked at his wife, at the dark rings above her cheeks, at the ghosts of the horrifying nightmares in her expression, at her wrinkled dress, her tangled hair, her pain-filled gray eyes. The anger that was trying to fester drained out of him. He went and knelt before her, "what will we do?" He whispered.

Sarah shrugged and leaned toward him, taking his face in her hands. "Love our son, and love each other. The Labyrinth said he would never come to harm, and that he could leave this world for short periods of time, but he would never be able to stay away very long. It said he could live with us here in the castle. I don't know how the power of the Labyrinth will show itself in him, but the Labyrinth told me that everyone who is of the Labyrinth will know him."

"But what does that mean?"

"I don't know." Sarah whispered back, rubbing her thumb across his cheek. "But I do know that both of us need a good bath and a long sleep."

Jareth nodded, covering her hands with his. "The Labyrinth knows what it's doing. We'll just have to trust it."

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Author's Note: So what do you guys think so far? Just to let you know, I'm only about halfway to two-thirds done with the plotline of this story, and there really IS going to be a wedding in the Labyrinth. I just wondered what you think about the Lady of Night and how I've developed the different characters. Is there anyone you haven't seen that you would like to see more of? I've got the major plot sorted out, but the details can still change. From here on out, I'll be really getting away from the original Labyrinth characters and doing more with things that are more just from my own head.