Almost five days had passed by now. Five days in which Sarah had not woken up. Five days in which Jareth had almost gone mad with worry about her. He wanted nothing more than for her to finally wake up and for him to be able to hold her in his arms.
Every day he sat by her bed. He had put a chair, that had actually been under the window, next to her bed and sat there. Day in, day out. Sometimes he just looked at her, sometimes he read and sometimes he slept. But most of the time he stared at her.
Up until now everything was as usual. But suddenly Sarah made a noise and Jareth shot up from his chair.
"Sarah?" he asked cautiously and got a "Hmmmm?" in response. His heart was doing somersaults and he tried not to freak out.
"You're awake," he said and sat down on the edge of the bed. "How are you feeling?"
Sarah opened her eyes and their gazes met. She opened them wide and was suddenly wide awake. She looked around, startled.
"Where am I?" she asked with an uncertainty and scepticism in her voice that pierced Jareth's heart. He flinched.
He took a deep breath. "In my castle. I don't know if you still remember what happened."
Sarah looked at him with evil, sparkling eyes. "Yes. I still remember that. Some parts are blurry, but I know that I almost became a damn Junkyard woman!" Her voice was loud and full of accusations.
Jareth looked at her in silence.
"You said I was safe here!" Sarah said. She almost screamed.
Jareth looked at her and noticed that she was looking at the floor. "You are, my dear," he tried to calm her down. "I promised you that I would protect you. And I did."
Sarah looked up and Jareth winced at the anger in her eyes. "I was kidnapped!" she screamed. "I was thrown into an Oubliette! And this time no Hoggle came along to get me out!"
"I saved you, didn't I?" he said quietly and with sad eyes.
"If you had protected me then this wouldn't have happened in the first place!" Sarah's eyes filled with tears.
Jareth looked at her and said: "Listen. There are things I have no control over. But I will always protect you and find you, wherever you are."
He put his hand on her shoulder. "I would do anything for you, Sarah."
"Then take me back to my world." Sarah looked him straight in the eyes and was amazed at what she saw.
A tear had made its way out of Jareth's eye and was now rolling down his cheek. He blinked briefly.
"I can't do that," he said and turned away from her. "Don't you understand?"
He turned back to her and saw that she looked confused.
His gaze softened and he moved a little closer to her, as far as the edge of the bed would allow.
"I didn't invite you here just to let you go again." He took a deep breath and added: "To lose you again."
Sarah looked at him questioningly. "To lose me again? Have you lost me before?".
"Don't you remember? It was the worst day of my life. I offered you everything. But above all one thing: My heart. '...and I will be your slave'. Please tell me you haven't forgotten that." He looked at her with desperation in his eyes.
He saw her thinking. "You just wanted to make me one of your subjects. You wanted to control and dominate me." She looked at him steadfastly, he tilted his head and smiled slightly.
"You were cruel, Jareth."
"Then you didn't understand, my dear. I would have given you everything. And I was only cruel because you expected me to be like that. You wanted to fear me. You wanted an opponent against whom you had to assert yourself. Or maybe you needed it. To grow and find yourself. In truth, I just wanted you to stay with me."
"But then I would have abandoned my brother. That's what you wanted!", Sarah said, firmly convinced that this was the only truth.
"Sarah, my dear Sarah. He was already safe by then." Jareth looked at her for a long time and realized that she must have been too young at the time to have understood all of that. He looked at her and explained: "You had reached him. Before the clock struck 13 you were with him. He was already safely back home in his little bed. You had won. Beaten me at my own game. All I wanted, at this point, was for you to stay with me." He had to blink because he noticed that tears were welling up in his eyes again. He lowered his head so she couldn't see.
Sarah looked at him with wide eyes.
"Toby was already safe?!" she asked in disbelief. She thought that she could have had a completely different life if she had given in to his request and mentally slapped herself. She had been 16 years old at the time and had not understood what Jareth wanted from her. For her, it was all just her fantasy and he was her enemy that she had to defeat.
From the corner of her eye she could see Jareth looking at her the whole time. He did not take his eyes off her for a second.
Sarah noticed that her heart was beating faster. She was confused and unsure. What was going on inside her? Had she not sworn to hate him forever? He had been a conceited, selfish man who only cared about getting what he wanted. But now he was completely different. Had she been wrong about him? He had said that he was only cruel because she wanted to fear him. What would he have been like if she had wanted to love him? She felt that she had frowned and relaxed it.
Sarah raised her head and looked into Jareth's face. He had a slight smile on his lips and his eyes radiated a warmth she had never seen in him before.
"I would never have turned him into a goblin, Sarah. I couldn't have brought myself to do that. You would have been too sad and would have hated me for the rest of your life," he said and felt the need to stroke her cheek with his hand. But he didn't, for fear of another rejection from her. His heart skipped a beat and he had to clear his throat to clear his mind. "That would have only broken my heart more than it already was."
"Your heart was broken?" Sarah wanted to know and actually she already knew the answer.
Jareth had to take another deep breath. He was so nervous. The fact that he was sitting so close to her didn't help at that moment either. He had been nervous back then too, but he was able to cover it up and lie to himself that he was just imagining it all. But now everything was different. His beloved Sarah was with him.
"You broke my heart," he said in a louder voice than he had planned and saw Sarah flinch.
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be loud." He looked at her desperately and put his hand on hers. The feeling that ran through his body was new to him and he shuddered. It was as if lightning was shooting through his veins.
Sarah pulled her hand out from under his and looked at the floor.
"Sarah," he said quietly and tried to take her hand again, but Sarah didn't let him. He was confused. They had danced together and he had held her hand there too. But that was probably something different. That's what you do when you dance.
"Please," he said in a slightly pleading voice and thought of everything he had done to her back then. He hated himself for it. Hated himself for always doing what others expected of him. Why couldn't he just be different than she expected this one time?
He got up from the edge of the bed and looked at Sarah sitting in bed like a little heap of misery. He knew he had confused her and he was so sorry, but he had carried it all around with him for so long and had never been able to talk to anyone about it. Now everything had been said and he couldn't take it back.
Sarah sat up straight and looked up at him. "This is all very confusing to me," she said and he nodded understandingly. "Are you trying to tell me that you fell in love with me back then? I was 16!" Her eyes darkened and her gaze hardened.
"I know." Jareth looked at her guiltily. He sat down next to her again. "I hadn't planned it at first either. When I was at your house before you came to the labyrinth, I wanted to teach you a lesson. But during your time in the labyrinth, I had a lot of time to observe you and..." He stopped in the middle of the sentence, sighed and looked Sarah deep in the eyes.
"I didn't see it coming and I certainly didn't plan it. Please believe me."
He gathered all his courage and took her hand in his again. Sarah was about to pull her back again, but this time she relaxed and allowed Jareth to run his index finger over the back of her hand. Her heart threatened to jump out of her chest, but she tried not to let it show how much it stirred her up deep inside her.
Jareth brought her hand to his mouth and gave her a fleeting kiss. He looked at her and she looked away. Inside, he almost died. His feelings swirled around, overturned and he no longer knew which way was up and which way was down.
He sat down on the bed next to her, slid a little closer to her and looked into her eyes more deeply than ever before. He loved her big, green eyes. They were the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen. He took his hand, put it on Sarah's cheek and noticed how she shivered almost imperceptibly under his touch. Jareth smiled at her.
"Sarah. You are the most important thing to me. In my life, in my world. In everything. I want you to stay with me. Please stay here. Don't ask me to bring you back."
Sarah looked at his face. How beautiful he was. She had thought that back then. His smile made her heart jump a little back then, but she never knew why.
He seemed so sincere and honest now. And so real. Had the Jareth of back then never been the real Jareth? Was it all just some kind of facade? A masquerade? Her thoughts wandered to the dream he had drilled into her through the poisoned peach. The ballroom, her in that beautiful white dress and him watching her through the present guests. Did he already have feelings for her at that point, or was the whole dream just a trap to distract her from her actual mission?
Her thoughts found their way back to the present and she saw that Jareth had put his face in his hands and was staring at her again.
He noticed that she was there again and sat up straight, embarrassed.
Sarah giggled sheepishly.
"What's so funny, my dear Sarah?" He looked at her amused.
"Nothing at all," Sarah replied a little too quickly and looked away.
She felt caught. Why had she suddenly been so embarrassed? Her emotional world was turned upside down.
6 years had passed since her triumph over Jareth and his labyrinth. She was now 22 years old. As grown up as you could be at 22. She had already had a boyfriend. But now that she thought about it, she had always compared him to Jareth. He lived rent-free in her head and in her dreams. Whenever she dreamed of him, she asked herself if he knew.
Was he just a projection in her dream or was he himself? Because he could obviously enter dreams.
Jareth sat quietly next to Sarah and watched her as she racked her beautiful little brain.
"What are you thinking about?" he asked and immediately scolded himself for it. He had said it out loud even though he really only wanted to think it.
"Everything and nothing," Sarah answered. She didn't dare tell him about it. He would immediately see that there was a huge chaos inside her at the moment and then he would put 11 together. Was she just excited because he was so close to her. Or had she really developed feelings for him? Were these feelings perhaps always there or did they only come over time?
"You know that you can talk to me about anything?" asked Jareth.
Sarah took a deep breath and said: "Did you know when I dreamed about you?" It just bubbled out of her.
Jareth was astonished by this question, but not surprised. He had to laugh. "Yes."
Sarah buried her face in her hands.
"Well, great. Really, really great. Did you just know, or were you always in my dreams? Like in my dream in the ballroom."
"Don't worry, Sarah. Most of the time it was just a projection of your subconscious. But sometimes I couldn't help it. Then I visited you in your dreams."
Jareth thought of a dream that had stuck in his mind in particular.
It wasn't that long ago. Maybe half a year. Sarah had dreamed that she was in the labyrinth. Jareth had felt the need to see her and visited her there.
He watched her as she walked through the halls and took everything in. He loved just watching her without her noticing. But he had been inattentive and had made a noise that had drawn Sarah's attention to him.
He had come out of his hiding place and stood in front of her. He put his hands on his hips, tilted his head to the side and smiled at her.
She didn't know that he was really there, so in the end he could do whatever he wanted. And the only thing he wanted at that moment was to spend time with Sarah.
So they had travelled through his country, eaten together, listened to music, read and laughed.
For him it was the best time of his life. He was happy. But he knew that for her it was just a dream. But at that moment he didn't care. He could spend time with his beloved Sarah.
"Did you ever have the feeling that I was really there?" he asked Sarah and looked at her.
She nodded and told him: "Not so long ago I had a dream that felt so unbelievably real. I was in the labyrinth and was walking around when you suddenly appeared. You were standing there like that evening in my brother's room, when we saw each other for the first time. And then we spent a lot of time together."
Jareth looked at her, lost in thought. "I thought about the dream, too. Yes. I was there. And I was happier than I had been in a long time. I wanted your dream to never end and was devastated when it did and you woke up."
"That's probably why it felt so real," Sarah thought out loud and looked briefly to the side.
Jareth sat there on the mattress and leaned against the wall. His eyes were resting on Sarah the whole time. He could see how upset she looked. There must be a lot of turmoil inside her. 'Just like me,' he thought, smiling and sat up straight again.
He raised a hand and smoothed Sarah's hair. She flinched and backed away a little.
"Sarah. I'll gladly tell you again. You don't have to be afraid. I won't hurt you. And I certainly won't manipulate you. That's really not my intention. Everything I say and do, I mean it. The way you see me now is who I really am. That's a big part of my true personality."
He continued to comb through her hair with his fingers and Sarah felt a gentle tremor spread through her. She closed her eyes for a moment, endured the touch and thought about everything that had happened in the last few days. Her thoughts swirled around.
Sarah calmed down a little. "What is the other part of your personality?" she wanted to know.
"Hm," Jareth whispered, thinking about how he wanted to tell her. "Actually, you've already met this part." Back then. But I can tell you that this was more of an exaggeration. I can be cruel when I want and need to be. And unpredictable. But this part is actually reserved only for my enemies. Not for those I love," he broke off and looked at his hands.
Her thoughts drifted to what he had just said. "Those I love." These words echoed in her mind, but there was still this quiet uncertainty that was hiding inside her. What did these words really mean? What would it mean for both of them if she agreed to them? If she believed him, if she dared to allow something new?
'Was he really the way he appears now?' she asked herself, as the memory of the Goblin King she once hated slowly faded. The man in front of her, who now looked at her with so much affection, had changed – and she had changed too. What was left of the old reservations that she had always had against him?
Her heart beat faster when she felt Jareth's gaze. She raised her head and looked him straight in the eyes. The warmth in his gaze was unmistakable, but she too could not deny how much she was still fighting with herself inside.
'What happens if I open up?' she thought. 'If I really give him that closeness?'
The thought of giving herself to him, of drawing her to him, was frightening and liberating at the same time. She was afraid of what she felt. But when he pulled away from her so as not to overwhelm her, she saw the hesitation in his eyes. He was not the old, dominant Jareth she had known. This was a man who caused her pain, and yet struggled with a vulnerability she had never expected.
And then came the moment. The transition that changed everything.
"I love you, Sarah."
The words fell like a gentle breath, almost as if he himself was surprised by his own revelation. It was a whispered confession that changed the air between them. Sarah could not help but show a trembling smile. Her mind was racing, but deep down she knew one thing: there was no turning back.
