Okay, before anything, I'd just like to give a little shout-out to FaeriesMidwife because she's been incredibly supportive of me. I urge you all to go read her Labyrinth fics and review excessively.

And on another note, I'm very, very glad that many of you like my version of Jareth. I never liked the fics where he's nice because, I mean, he wasn't nice in the first place - why would he be nice after he totally got DENIED?

Anyways, I hope you enjoy this one. AND REVIEW. Tell friends, family, co-workers, random strangers on the street, FEED MY EGO.

;D

P.S: I know it's not Friday, but.. you know.. close enough.

Chapter 4

Dark stone, black and polished finely like obsidian glass, crystals and silver touches here and there embellished ebony wood – a door, and a mirror built right into the wall. A circular court, a circular room in the highest tower of the New Castle. An oval window, distressed and warped due to the glass being hand-manufactured, looked over the great city below. It was still being rebuilt. Jareth could see little figures moving about, lugging large stones that had been displaced five years before when Sarah and her friends had torn through the villages without a thought other than to save precious Toby. Beyond that city, however, was the famed Labyrinth… That was the first to be rebuilt – even before the Castle itself – and Jareth was the only one who rebuilt it.

Jareth had fashioned the Labyrinth the same way he had before. He projected his powers into it. He gave it a life of its own – a life that only he knew how to rein, and the Labyrinth was even stronger and more difficult than it had been previously. Ever-changing, forever alive, eternally impossible… Somehow, Sarah was going to find her way back into that Labyrinth. Jareth could feel it. He knew that she would try anything to escape this world and take Toby with her, but Jareth wasn't going to allow it.

The Goblin King sat on his throne in a casual position, one leg thrown over the opposite armrest as he leaned his head against the winged back and gazed out the distressed window. He didn't know why he found it so fascinating to watch the City, but ever since they'd started rebuilding he found himself in that room, staring out that window more and more often. He loved to watch the sun set, to watch it send glorious flashes of light over the knots and divots in the glass as the horizon was set in a blaze of red and orange. He loved to watch the Labyrinth as is moved, breathed, shifted and formed to make itself all the more difficult. There was always a path in that structure that never changed – one that led directly to the Castle gates – and Jareth was the only one who knew that path.

Slowly, Jareth stood up from his throne, edging so close to the window that his breath sent little circles of condensation over the glass. He looked at that Labyrinth, at the impossibility of it, and smiled.

Sarah had completed the Labyrinth previously. It hadn't mattered how many distractions he made for her, she still made it through… That was why he'd wanted her to be his queen. He knew she could succeed at anything he threw at her… though she hadn't done so with such a stoic bravery as she did now, under her current circumstances. He hadn't heard a complaint from her since she'd been made into a servant, and he'd expected her to fuss and whine as much as she had five years ago. Perhaps she'd changed more than he'd thought?

But, no – she hadn't changed that much. She still had the headstrong naivety that he'd loved about her then.

Jareth stopped for a moment, pressing a gloved hand against the warped glass of the window as he gazed unseeingly into the dusty horizon. Love. Did he love Sarah Williams? Did he think about her? Yes, he did. Did he care about her, in any form at all? Yes, he supposed he did – it was vague, but he did.

But also, she fascinated him. Like an experiment, like an object of study. He found wonder in the way she thought about things, about how, even as a teenager, she believed heartily in magic and goblins. She'd been devoted to the story of the Labyrinth, enthralled by its myth and… had she been in love with its creator? Had she loved the Goblin King?

That question would have to wait for another time as a tentative hand knocked on the large, dark-stained door of the room. If it hadn't been for the complete silence in the throne room, the knock probably wouldn't have been heard at all.

"You may enter," Jareth said as he moved around to the other side of the room and sat back down on the dark throne. He took on a more professional posture than he'd used before, but he continued to focus on the scenes outside the window.

A servant girl, the one who shared sleeping quarters with Sarah, entered the room. She was a goblin – but, judging by her lack of crudity and quiet impishness, she was a Changeling – one of the children stolen from human communities like Sarah's and turned into a goblin servant.

Changelings had long, sharply pointed ears, large earth-toned eyes, and white, feathery hair. They were always small and thin, and had waxy white-green skin; many outsiders would think them weak and frail creatures, but Changelings were perfectly capable of defensive magic and could easily lift things well past their own body weight. Changlings generally held a slightly higher rank than the regular Goblin population, and they were only found in the castle. No Changeling was allowed to leave the castle gates.

"I-I'm sorry to disturb you, K-King J-J-Ja-Jareth," the servant-Changeling sputtered. Jareth usually made a note to remember the names of all the Changelings in the castle, but at the moment this girl's name was evading him. Tholly? Thistle?

"The acceptance of that apology depends on why it is that you disturb me," Jareth said without looking at her. He studied his hands for a moment, then returned to watching the rebuilding of the Goblin City.

"Uh-uhm.. right. Sir. Your Majesty. King," she continued earnestly. Jareth cast a brief glance at her and noticed that she just couldn't stand still. She picked at her long, thin fingers and twisted the little bits of white hair that had escaped her dingy bandana, her bare feet spinning and swinging as she did anything to avoid looking at the Goblin King. "Uh… um… T-the new girl. Sarah? S-sh-she wants to speak with you. I told her that it couldn't happen – that you only s-spoke with the Upper-servants, but she insisted, only she didn't know where you could be found and no matter how many times I gave her the instructions her she kept getting lost, and so I came here instead to deliver the message and maybe if you could let her speak to you, maybe you could give her a little time?"

Her last words came out in such a quick, breathless pace that Jareth took a few moments to decipher what she'd said. Thistle or Tholly, whichever it may have been, bit her lip with the bright, pure-white teeth that were consistent with all Changelings, and wrung her apron in her hands as she stared at the stone floor.

So... Sarah wished to speak with him? Jareth found mild amusement at the thought. They hadn't spoken – or, even, seen – one another since the day he'd kept his promise to Toby and 'allowed' her to stay in the castle, about two weeks ago. So what was it that she wished to talk to him about? Her freedom and Toby's as well, no doubt…

"Very well," Jareth said slowly. The Changeling-girl looked at him for the first time with wide, dark brown eyes of disbelief. "I will allow Sarah to speak with me. You may bring her here just before sunset."

Without another word, the servant girl bowed out of the room and closed the door behind her with a hollow thud that reverberated in the silence of the throne room. Jareth stared out the window at the falling sun and tilted his head. He'd never answered his own question earlier… Did he love Sarah Williams?

No, he decided. Probably not.