The Curse (and Blessing) of the Goblin King (Labyrinth)

[apachefirecat]

Title: The Curse (and Blessing) of the Goblin King
Author: [personal profile] ApacheFirecat
Fandom: Labyrinth
Pairings: Jareth/Sarah, Hoggle/Trely
Word Count: 23,156
Rating: PG/K+
Warnings: Future Fic, Alternate Universe, (could be considered) Tragedy, Also largely (only made it half way with work) unbetaed
Summary: The time for the succession of the Goblin King is upon us.
Author's Note: Many readers may not care for the Big Decision Jareth and Sarah make within.






"Sarah," he asked sorrowfully, his entire demeanor changing as swiftly as his outfits so often did. Jareth had but to think of anything he wanted done, and it was always instantly his way. But something was suddenly very, very greatly dismaying her husband. Sarah could tell all this without turning to face him where she stood, quietly folding their son's clothes.

A chill swept through her as she was suddenly reminded of the fateful night she had come so near to making the greatest mistake of her life. She had turned him away that night, and their separation had very nearly killed the both of them. It had been no less than a miracle, she still firmly believed, that she had managed to fight her way back here to him, and even more so that he had allowed himself to (eventually) welcome her back and embrace her, to accept that she had always loved him, even long before she had understood what love truly was.

A King could not show any weakness, after all, and Jareth seemed, to the worlds around them and the kingdom within, to have no such weaknesses or fears. She knew that was not true, but what, she wondered as she smoothed down the striped cloth in her hands, was eating away at him now?

"Will you still love me when I am old and gray?"

His words stopped her cold. She turned around, her brown eyes opening wide and blinking fiercely. "I -- I thought -- " she stammered. She knew immediately that it was not the answer he was seeking, but she was so stunned she could think of nothing more to say, "I thought you couldn't die?!" The last word came out in a squeak. Sarah could feel her hands beginning to shake and her face turning ashen, but her husband did not even look at her. He simply leaped out the window.

She knew she had angered him. He always had a quick and volatile temper, but his unexpected question had startled her so much that, uncharacteristically, Sarah rushed to the window and peered over the ledge. Already, however, he had transformed into his owl form and was soaring away. "Jareth?" she called. "JARETH!" But as always, too enraptured in his own thoughts and emotions, her husband did not turn back.

Sarah sighed, her shoulders slumping. As she watched him fly away as normal, however, she began to relax. For a moment, she had been terrified by the idea of ever losing him again, but there was no one that would dare to defy the Goblin King. No Sorcerer or Fae could match his power, or his wits (not to mention his looks!). She smirked at that unbidden thought. She didn't know what was worrying him so, but she'd kiss it out of him tonight. He could never tell her no, and once they had made love and lay together in one another's arms, he would tell her whatever was troubling him so. He always did, Sarah knew.

Her teeth caught her bottom lip as she considered how she would advise him. She had counseled him through many things throughout their centuries of marriage. It was no longer even unusual for him to turn to her about the kingdom's political affairs, and being a woman, she could often find other ways to assuage potential conflicts. He'd once romanced every female leader in the neighboring kingdoms, but that was no longer the way they solved their issues. They solved their issues, Sarah thought, returning to folding the pajamas in her hands, together, and whatever was troubling him this time, they would solve that dilemma, as well, together.

Smiling, Sarah crossed back across the room and settled back into folding their baby's clothes. Their baby was surely happier than any of the Goblin babies, and not because he was of superior breeding. His parents were happy (generally, at least), and that, Sarah knew, made for a happy home, something she'd had for only the first few years of her life until she had managed to work her way back to her King. They would solve whatever monster was berating her husband together. Together was always best. She began to hum as she continued her task.






As his wife engaged in labor fit not for a Queen but for a meager housewife, Jareth soared across his kingdom. All was pleasantly quiet for a change. His jealous servants had not yet found his pet, Ludo, and no girls had recently called him away. Activities had begun to settle over the last several weeks. His life was becoming... somewhat... routine, he thought, the curve of his beak reflecting his displeasure. The thought would not worry most men, let alone many Kings, but he found it rather unsettling for what it might lead to, or for what might yet be hiding, thus far unnoticed by him. The breeze rippled through his snowy white feathers as he began to lower himself, having found the one servant amongst them all with whom he would prefer to have a chat.

He did not finish his transformation where any could see. Instead, he simply appeared before the Gatekeeper, the one everyone else in the Labyrinth save the two of them, mistook as being merely a Dwarf. The old man's opinion should not matter to him, but he was the only one who could truly understand Jareth's current predicament. He jumped, as he always did, whenever Jareth appeared, and the King cocked a grin at him. Teasing the poor wretch was often fun, something he once, before Sarah, could have spent hours or even days doing and still derived pleasure, but not today.

Today, even the clouds above the Labyrinth were growing dark and swollen with Jareth's mood, and there was a distant rumble of thunder as he smirked. Earlier, the skies had been blue and bright, but that had been before Sarah had brought the laundry into their royal bed chamber. The eyes in the walls slithered; the wyrms sought cover as well. A storm was brewing, and none wanted to be caught out in it. Even Sir Didymus closed his hut's opening, settling in for the night. All this Jareth could see in his mind as he peered down at the Dwarf, smirking.

"Y-Your Majesty!" Hoggle cried, jumping a good ten inches backwards. He swept quickly into a bow. "Do -- To what do I owe this pleasure, Your Highness?"

"Oh, can the poppycock, Hogwart!" Jareth snapped. "I'm in no mood for games."

"I -- Of course not, Your Majesty." They could both hear the Dwarf's knobby knees knocking together in fright. He bowed again, even lower this time, and stayed obediently bent on one knee before his King. "How can I serve you?" he asked, getting right to the point as there were no girls in sight, or others for whom they had to lie.

"Something bothers me," Jareth snapped, and as fast as he could snap his royal fingers together, had he endeavored, they were gone. They trod through dark forests, then Jareth's favorite rosebed, then a jungle fresh and lush with fauna and floral of all types. They heard beasts roar and dragons breathe fire. Hawks, macaws, and seagulls alike rang out, but they kept moving, kept walking, the scenery around them and their very locations changing as swiftly as the thoughts passed through Jareth's mind. Of all the animals they heard, none frightened Hoggle like the beast before him. He kept carefully, obediently ten steps behind the King at all times, his head bowed and wrinkled hands clasped together behind his back.

Kingdom after kingdom flashed around them, both above ground and below. As they passed through the Fieries' forest, one of the ball players grabbed hold of Hoggle's head. Jareth actually did snap his fingers at that point, and the Fiery fell apart, arms scattering one way, legs another, and his head bouncing back into the opposite team. They kept moving. Sickness swirled in Hoggle's stomach. He finally moved one hand, to cover his mouth to keep from retching. HIs knees shook harder. He tremored and fell to the leaf-covered ground when Jareth finally stopped teleporting them.

He could barely make sense of where they were, but it didn't matter. He tried hard, in his shaking, folded form, to think of what in all the Kingdoms he could have possibly done to earn the King's wrath, but could think of nothing. No girl had even come to the labyrinth in many moons now! There had been a time -- months? years? decades? time held little distinction to many within the Labyrinth -- when he would have suspected that that was what had made His Majesty irate, but Jareth was happy with Sarah. All the kingdoms knew and had learned to respect that, except for hers.

He was missing nothing in the bedroom! The lands had been in peace! So what -- What -- ? Hoggle turned his head, and promptly sprayed vomit across a forest carpet with leaves of every possible color. Yet there was something about the ground that seemed familiar. He lifted his head. The trees glistened before him. Suddenly, Hoggle knew where he was as time fell away and he remembered another time, another body, another life...

Shock stunned him silent. He forgot the spittle hanging from his mouth and even to be afraid. He had not visited this particular grove, so dark, dank, and rich with timeless magic since the current King had been a boy himself. Since Hoggle himself had worn the very form now adorning Jareth, as well as his title and even his name. There had only ever been one Jareth, but none of the other Kingdoms, or even the other subjects, had ever understood what happened when the throne passed hands. Nor would they. For what everyone else in existence would ever know, Jareth was a truly timeless being.

And Hoggle was going to die. He hit his knees, but for once, he did not wail. The current Jareth glanced down at him, a single, dark brow raised. "I take it you know why we are here?" Hoggle trembled from head to foot, his leather cap that he'd once worn as a baby nearly falling from his scraggly head. "It's happening," the words were an omnipresent whisper that resounded in the thunder and dragons roaring elsewhere in the Labyrinth.

Suddenly, Hoggle had not only forgotten to be afraid, but he was truly no longer afraid, at least not of Jareth. He watched the King pass through the dark, majestic forest, but it was only a mirage. There was a boy there instead, a boy whom, despite all of the wisdom, power, and knowledge Hoggle had once possessed, he had once come to love. A boy who was terrified, but whose fear presented, as it always had, in fury. He glided amongst the trees, passing through leaves and shrubbery like a ghost, until he decided to touch something.

He could no longer deny the truth! Sarah's behavior over the last several moons had been a causing for growing concern for the King. Having played over every event in their peaceful life over the last while, he could no longer deny that something was brewing. And as all the worst spells did, it was building during a seemingly quiet time of peace, with the silent and deadly intent to spring into being when they all least expected its arrival -- or, at least, when Jareth and Hoggle, the only two who had and would ever know of it would expect it.

But he saw it, and he could no longer deny. "DAMN IT ALL!" Jareth roared, his hand slapping onto the bark of a tree whose life had lasted longer than both of theirs combined. There was a scream somewhere, neither present with them nor away from them, and the tree's bark turned to a darker black than Jareth's leather boots and then shattered into soot. "DAMN IT ALL! IT'S HAPPENING!"

Jareth -- the man, the boy, the King who held all the other kingdoms at his beck and call, so filled with fear of him were they all -- was close to weeping. The clouds opened over the Labyrinth, and a torrential rain began. Ludo howled, but not for his rocks; he cried, instead, with a misery the lumbering, shaggy beast could not understand. Sir Didymus gazed out his doorway made of vines and twigs and allowed long tears to drip down his furry mustache as his best friend trembled at his booted feet. Sarah stopped folding clothes and stared out the window of the bedroom she had shared for centuries now with her husband, mesmerized by the falling rain and wondering when she had last seen the weather be anything but ideal in the Labyrinth. Her baby cried, but for once, his mother did not hear him and go rushing to his rescue.

The realization of what Jareth was speaking, of what they had both forever dreaded and tried once, feebly, impossibly, to fight against suddenly hit Hoggle. The Gatekeeper fell to his knees in the dirt behind the King who was not a King. All these years, all these centuries... and it was almost over! His life was almost over! It was not that it was a particularly good life -- it had been when he'd been King, but that had been quite nearly another endless lifetime ago. But the thought of what was to come next terrified Hoggle more than anything else he had ever encountered. He would rather reek with the Bog of Eternal Stench for the rest of existence than forget all he had ever known.

His knobby knees banged together as he fell, and he did not attempt to get up or to quiet the piercing wail that bolted from his mouth. Big, fat tears rolled down his wrinkled face as the current King wailed and roared ahead of him. Jareth's black leather coat shot out, becoming giant, leathery wings, as he transformed into a dragon as dark as night and lit the forest ablaze. Neither cared if it would ever grow again. Who knew what this next King would do to the Labyrinth, especially being that he was part mortal? Mortals did not care the way the Fae did. Jareth had come to him young enough that he had never known anything of the mortal world above until his twilight years, when it had been becoming necessary for him to try to find a successor.

Jareth had bent the rules. He had shattered the rulebook honestly. They had been lucky, so far, not to have a child, but what good had it done him? Now that the new Tobias was born, Jareth had maybe, another twenty years at best. Sarah was a remarkable woman, but she was still a human woman who fell prey to everything known to bewitch the weaker sex. It had even taken travelling back to her own world before she had at last realized all the riches being offered to her.

And now her son was to inherit it all! There were whispers, Hoggle knew, of deceit and betrayal, of a plan to usurp the new King, but Jareth himself would stand in the way until his replacement wore his crown and wielded his power. There would be no stopping this boy, especially with the actual Goblin King's blood and power already flowing in the tyke's veins. That was another thing unheard of: Always before the boy who usurped the King, the boy who replaced the King, had been a baby thrust upon the Goblin King, no matter how greatly both did not want the tyke in the Labyrinth.

It didn't matter what level of sorcery those who would have his seat now might throw at him -- they would stand no better chance at beating him now or later than they had at defeating Jareth himself. It was always, Hoggle knew, the boy to whom the Goblin King's heart went, no matter how hard he strove against allowing such to happen, against allowing genuine emotions to cloud his judgments, who would take his place. Thus it had always been with the Goblin King lineage, and thus, Hoggle and Jareth both knew, it would always be.

Jareth's roars echoed throughout the Labyrinth. Goblins, rocks, and even some of the Fieries rushed to douse the flames, but as they clanked literal heads together, the torrent of water pouring from the sky, echoing their King's tears, did far more to drench the flames. But those flames, Hoggle knew, could be doused. This could be stopped. Time could not. The succession of the Goblin King, and all it entailed, could not.

He wept until he had no tears left. He wept until everything he had was spent in the grieving. It was then that he found himself face-planted in the leaves. He thought of so much he had endured over the centuries -- not just the battles and the girls but the dances and pageantry as well. He thought of his girl, his Queen, and then of the boy who had replaced them all. Slowly, mustering all his strength, pulling on reserves he'd not known he had left but came from his longing for that life before, Hoggle managed to lift his head.

His bushy, gray brows rose, knitting together on his craggy face, as he stared at Jareth. The lad looked thinner than he had ever seen him, which was considerably notable as he'd come to them from a mother who had never cared for her child in the first place. The boy had been barely more than a bit of flesh on bones when Hoggle had first carried him into this world. He remembered that babe well, and he remembered the pride he had felt in watching Jareth grow. Jareth would surely feel the same as he watched his son transform before their very eyes into the next leader of their world.

But then Jareth himself would become as Hoggle had, shriveling down in size and might, losing all his power, and having only his memories to keep him company. The jewelry on Hoggle's belt jingled in the smoky air, reminding him of his prized jewels -- except, of course, his real prizes had never been the trinkets on his belt. It was another secret that only he and Jareth kept. Hoggle's hand went instinctively to his jewels, as it always did when he sought comfort, and he thought of each woman who had gifted him a piece of jewelry. His gnarled fingers twisted around a set of rings on his belt, and he shut his eyes against the pain that welled freshly in him.

He was trembling again when Jareth finally spoke, his sorrowful words cutting through the evening air. Time, like everything else in the Labyrinth, was at the beck and call of the King alone. Mirroring his frame of mind, twilight had once more settled over the Labyrinth. "It is done," he whispered. "You warned me, Hoggle."

The former King, still on his knees in the dirt, barely noticed that his successor called his name correctly. Jareth had always known Hoggle's name, from as soon as he'd been able to speak properly. Choosing to twist it into any number of derivatives had simply been another power he had wielded over Hoggle, a subtle reminder, with each new girl who had passed through the Labyrinth, bringing their paths together again, that he forever had the upper hand between them now. He could have stopped him, Hoggle thought, reflecting over memories he'd tried so hard to bury. He'd come so close so many times to killing the boy who was to become King after him, but in the end, he'd never possessed the heart to complete the deed.

It was the cruel irony the Fates had always placed over the ruling family of the Labyrinth, Hoggle thought, grimacing. The Kings were to be the monsters, the greatest, most powerful monsters in the lands. They had but one weakness, and that was the desire to love and be loved. A very human, mortal desire that one, that not all of the Fae possessed, but no matter how hard they tried not to, the Goblin Kings, for as long as their history had been passed down from one millenia to the next, had forever sought being loved. And their sons would always end their reigns.

He gripped the rings in his hand, still sobbing openly though he was quieter now. There was one kindness afforded to a fallen King, and that was not that his life continued but that his memories continued. He could no longer wield the power or knowledge of his former position, but he could still cling to the memories of all he had had, including the Queen who had reigned, for however long or short, beside him. He'd known Sarah had been that one, and had been secretly so thankful when she had first left the Kingdom without a ring on her hand.

He'd begged the King not to return to her, though again that had been a secret only they had known. He had taken his life in his hands, even going so far as to allow himself to be hurled time and again at the Bog for daring to show the impudence to speak to his King with concerns he had no right to voice. Now he wondered what to say.

What was there left to say? Jareth knew how he felt. He loved the boy, despite everything, which, of course, again, had been his downfall. He certainly could not tell him to kill his son for, as painful as it had been to try to kill Jareth when he'd been a boy, he had not been his actual flesh and blood. Jareth had been the most powerful and longest reigning of all the Goblin Kings, but his son, his very own child, would end his reign. There was no one who could stop it.

His own, beloved wife had tried, Hoggle recalled, his tears surging again. When she had discovered the prophecies of how each Goblin King was to fall, she had tried to kill Jareth herself. She had done everything she could to stop him from taking Hoggle's place, not because the power mattered but because she had not wanted to lose her husband or her memories. The yearning ache in Hoggle's heart renewed as he thought of Trely. She had once been so beautiful, a stately woman with long, dark hair and a smile that had possessed the power to warm the coldest nights, but now...

Now she did not even recall him. Some might consider the fallen Queens to be the lucky ones for they lived on forever, but they had no memory left of their former lives beyond their childhoods, long before they had become Queens, or of any kingdom beyond the local "garbage dump", as Queen Sarah had coined it. Each Queen would spend the rest of her days toiling in the dump, collecting and carrying the precious items from her girlhood from one spot to the next, only to evetually lose them again and risk life and limb to track them back down every single time. They would all also always try to derail the girls who came through their lands in search of the Kings and the babies they had "stolen"; thus was their miserable parts in the never-ending circle of quests to and, if the girls were incredibly lucky, through the Goblin City. Everyone had to play their parts.

Except, of course, the children were never actually stolen. They were always offered up to the Goblins, or to the Fae. Not a single child had actually been taken, in the entire course of existence, without first being asked to be taken. Even Sarah had asked for the original Toby to be taken, and had only realized her mistake in turning against Jareth when she had come to in her own world. His was a land of magic and freedom, but more than that, he had offered the girl love. He'd actually fallen in love with that one, but there was always one, always one girl who would earn her way successfully through the maze and with whom the current King would fall madly in love.

He had been mad about Trely, and she had certainly returned his affections. Like Sarah, she had sacrificed her every hope at a better life to be able to save her baby brother, but then she had turned around and fought her way back to him. They had been happy for many, many years, but it had not been enough. It was never enough, could never be enough, but then who did not want an eternity spent freely loving the One who was made for them?

"I-I'd like to see Trely," Hoggle said, pushing himself to a standing position. Jareth arched a single, graceful eyebrow at the mud covering Hoggle's knees and the dirt on his hands. Hoggle harrumphed, but dusted his hands as best he could.

Jareth surveyed the former King's efforts to clean himself before speaking, "Of course you would." He reached out and, for the first time since he'd been a mere scrap of a lad, took Hoggle's hand. Smooth, porcelain fingers entwined with gnarled knobs that passed for digits, and they were off.

The Goblin King had always been able to control everything in his land but the damsels who ventured through it with mere thought, but it was a struggle for Jareth to think clearly enough on this night to quench the fires and stop the rain. Yet he managed it, and the sky was full of stars when they landed in the dumps.

Jareth released his hand, and Hoggle hobbled forward. "Would... Would you like me to stay?"

He glanced behind him and was startled at the change in the King's demeanor. Already, things were changing far too swiftly. Jareth seemed to have lost a foot at least in height, and the ends of his blonde hair were curling and splitting. What stopped the Dwarf in his tracks, however, was the deep sorrow reflected in the ruler's heterochromia eyes. He could see the tears glittering therein as well but knew better than to mention them.

There had been times when he had regretted not killing Jareth when he had had the chance. Yet now, gazing at the boy who had been the closest thing to a son Hoggle had ever had, feeling the years slip away and pull them closer, he did not regret a single thing that had transgressed to bring them to this spot in their journeys. "No, Your Majesty," he whispered and turned away, a single tear streaking quietly down a cheek already soaked by so many others.

It did not take Hoggle long to find Trely for Jareth had carried him almost to her. The King was able to watch them through the mound of items that separated him from them visually, seeing right through the debris of dolls, bears, jewelry, and other items that little girls loved so dearly. There had never been anything, Jareth knew, that Trely or Hoggle had loved more than each other, just as there was now nothing in any of the worlds that could come close to matching his love for his own wife. And just how, he thought, feeling feathers beginning to inch down his arms, was he going to tell her what he must?

How was he going to tell her they were going to die, but the fate that awaited her was worse than death? At least he would remember. He would remember her. He would remember Toby. He would remember every act that had occurred to bring them here. He would remember every kiss, every caress, every sweet word whispered by him to his wife or from her to him. He would not forget her for many, many centuries yet to come -- that was, of course, if Toby did his job half as well as he himself had ruled, but the boy was his son. He would make his father proud.

Not that he cared for making his father proud, of course. Jareth himself certainly didn't care what Hoggle thought of him, but he'd seen the pain in the old man's eyes when he looked at him just now. It was to Hoggle's credit, he thought, that he did not show any of the emotions he felt as he climbed over the trash heap. But they were both hit with sharp, stabbing pains as Trely looked at Hoggle and knew him not.

Hoggle rarely came to these hills any longer. Indeed, he had not been this way, when not trying to lure a girl away from the correct path to the castle, in decades, and even on those excursions when he had to venture this way, he had never dallied in the dumps. He could not bear the pain that was wrought in his chest every time his beloved wife looked at him with those hollow eyes. Eyes were supposed to be the window to the soul, but if Trely's eyes were to be believed, there was no longer a soul within her old, withered body.

It was painful enough to look upon her current form and know the great beauty she had been. Her skin had not been green nor her hair long and scraggly. Some of his fondest memories still to this night were being caressed by her loving arms and wrapped in the silky folds of her hair. Each King was allowed to save one girl, and that girl was the woman he was to wed. Sarah had been Jareth's; Trely had been Hoggle's.

Hoggle could hear his own mother rooting in the trash not too far from him now, calling out, "Who is the fairest in the land?", as she paused to gawk into whatever material she could find to reflect her visage. It certainly was no longer her, but his mum was not the reason he had come here. She had turned out to be a disappointing Queen -- Hoggle had barely known her even as a babe --, but his Trely had been a Queen of whom he had been very proud. She had ruled their subjects with as much kindness as Queen Sarah did now, and far more kindness and gentility than either King had learned throughout their reigns.

His gaze shifted back to his wife, and he longed for her to show some recognition of him, any little sign that there was still some shred of the woman he had loved within her. Other Goblin women, all former Queens, moved around them. Some were as dark and dank now as the piles of the debris around them. Others were lost in their own pretend worlds, playing games of makeup and dollies. None had their minds. None, even his beloved Trely, remembered anything of the lives that had been taken from them when their Kings had been replaced.

Hoggle knew this was the rule. He had always known, since he had been a babe dancing in his adopted father's arms. He had been adopted. Unlike Jareth's successor, he had been chosen of all the children to come through the labyrinth during his predecessor's time to stay and become the next King. He had never understood what the old man had seen in him, nor had he ever been able to ask. He and Jareth had more honest conversations about their feelings than he and his dad had had, and that was sorrowful indeed! He was far more likely to feel Jareth's boot in his gut, kicking him face-forward into the Bog, than he was to ever have the King admit any of his genuine feelings -- except his love for Sarah.

It had never been supposed to be like this, and yet it had always been supposed to be like this. Each King, no matter how hard they tried, would fall in love, and that love would be their doom. The Queen would eventually want a child, and the King was strictly forbidden from telling her that that child would always be their downfall. The Queens lost their memories and came here, to spend the rest of their days trying to trick the next girls in line, while the Kings became the actual stones whose expressions they had worn so often in life. They may have centuries to rule and wield all sorts of powers, to battle or celebrate within the Fae circles as they saw fit, but always, always, their ends would be like this.

Pain and sorrow gripped Hoggle's heart as he thought of what was to come. So lost in the realization of what was about to occur, Hoggle forgot to watch his footing and slipped down a pile of dresses. They were not the real ballgowns they wore when attending the Fae dances, of course, but rather the slim and meager frocks that peasant girls would don in imagining greater times that most would never see. It was the years that had made them so soft, damp, and downright slimy. Hoggle fell onto his face in the mud, and even that did not phase his wife. She simply turned from him, setting about her tasks of protecting her own childhood items until the next girl arrived.

But there would not be another girl, Hoggle understood now. Not for a very long time. Not until the new King had taken his place as ruler. Not until Jareth was reduced to the form Hoggle wore now and Hoggle himself was placed into the stones underneath the Labyrinth. He might remember bits and pieces of his life when the next girl came through, but all he would be able to say was the words commanded to him. He would never move again, other than his lips and eyes. He would never be free. He would never see his wife again --

"TRELY!" he cried out desperately. "TRELY, PLEASE STOP! MIJN LIEFDE!"

She stopped. She actually stopped, and for a moment, Hoggle's gray, shaggy brows shot up. His mouth parted, but he found his words sticking in his throat. Above and behind him, Jareth slipped a little down the mound of garbage, his own heart giving an unexpected leap of hope. "Mother?" he whispered, the years seeming to fall away as he again felt as desperate as he had the day his succession, which he had been unable to stop, had stolen his adopted mother's memories from her. This was a woman who had cared for him when no other would have him, and the one girl in all the Kingdoms whom he had been powerless to help, to save --

He turned away, his nose shifting into an owl's beak. The feathers were rippling all along his skin now, and he could feel the air beckoning to him. He wanted to fly. He wanted to flee. But this was the one thing from which he could not escape, no matter the power at his command. All the power in all the Kingdoms would not free him of this curse.

"STOP YELLING AT ME, OLD MAN!"

Hoggle had just pushed himself to his feet when Trely yelled back at him. There was anger in her dull eyes now, so at least she could still feel, but she clearly did not remember him at all. All the years they had spent, the family and kingdom they had raised, the battles they had fought side by side, the love and family they had shared -- She remembered none of it.

Hoggle wiped the dirt from his trembling hands onto his breeches. "You don't remember me," he muttered. Looking away, he thought he saw Jareth gazing down at them with tears in his eyes, but it had to be a trick of the firelight, especially since the Dwarf thought he saw the King's nose as a beak. It was a cruel trick on his eyes, nothing more, just as that momentary hope that he might actually be able to have his love remember him was nothing more than a cruel trick on his heart.

But he had not come here solely to have her remember him. That was what he ached for more than anything else in all of existence, but he knew -- He had spent several hundred years trying in vain to restore her memories. He knew it was a pointless cause. If all the Goblin King's magic could not restore her mind, there was nothing that could.

There was another reason he had come here this night, though, as the end was drawing near. There was one piece of himself that he could not take when he became the next Great Talking Head in the Labyrinth. Well, there were many things he could not take with him. There was nothing of his current or former selves to which he could still hold when he moved into the final chapter of his own, miserable existence. And he was miserable now! For all the wealth, might, power, and virility of a King, he had been miserable for the last several centuries, and would spend the rest of eternity even more miserable!

But all the items he held to, he knew, would crumple to dust before him when his next and final transmogrification took place. He could at least honor the woman he loved one final time, even if she knew him not.

Trely puffed at the scraggly bangs that hung into her eyes and adjusted the heavy pack on her back as she glowered at Hoggle. She didn't know what the Dwarf wanted this time. He was always annoying. She'd heard no rumors of any new girls traipsing through the Labyrinth, and the King was up on the hill in one of his extremely rare visits. She should likely bow down to him, but then her belongings would roll off her back and she'd have to chase them down again. One of these days, she was going to find a little house, and she and her things would settle peacefully within its muddy walls. But first, she had to get rid of this Dwarf. "What do you want, Dwarf?" she demanded and thought she heard a sad chuckle on the night wind.

"To..." Hoggle patted down his pants, but his jewels had fallen as they so often did. He picked them up and then discovered that the rings were still off of the assortment. He fell again to his knees as he scrambled in the dirt for them.

Trely tisked and was just turning round from the Dwarf who had clearly gone as insane as the other women who huddled in the hills when he cried out. She turned back, and her eyes widened, underneath her light green hair, at the rings he picked up from the ground. With almost fevered strokes, he swiped the dirt and mud from them and held them up in the light of the torches Trely always felt but never actually saw. A stray moonbeam caught on the golden bands.

For a moment, Trely stood still, watching the gold gleam through wide, awed eyes. Looking at her, for the first time in nearly a millennium, Hoggle thought he did not see the green wrinkles that currently twisted his love's face. For just a second, in that moment where they both stood still, their wedding rings twirling and gleaming between them, Hoggle thought he saw Trely for herself again. But then she snorted, started to turn away once more, and the mirage was shattered.

"Wait!" he cried out. "I have something for you!"

He scrambled toward her. She turned back, glowering at him and the offered rings. "I'm not trading you anything!" she snapped.

"I'm not asking you to," he said, once more falling to his knees.

Jareth sniffed disdainfully from the hill above them. The old man stayed more on his knees these nights than in any other position. It had taken him a long time to be willing to go down on his knees to Sarah, but he still would not bow to any other. Of course, very soon, that would no longer be a prerogative for he would have to bow to his own son. He shivered, feeling the cold for the first time since he had been a babe himself. Again, he tore his eyes away from the former royal couple and once more denied the moisture in his own eyes.

"I want to give them to you," he said. "These," he clarified, holding her rings out to her. His gnarled fingers curled around the jewels he had placed back onto his belt, but then he removed the string of jewels again and offered them all to her. "And these." Each small jewel was a memento of a rare and courageous friend he had had throughout his extraordinarily long lifetime. (Though he would never know for certain, Hoggle believed, because of the incredible length of Jareth's reign, that he had been the longest living of all the Goblin Kings.) These baubles, as Sarah still liked to call them, having no clue as to their origins, were all he had left in this world. But he could not take them where he was going.

"Please take them," he asked as Trely stared, batting one eye. Her other eye was covered again by her shaggy bangs, but her good eye shut tightly and then reopened, glaring just as hard at the jewels.

"What's the catch?" she finally asked.

"You must keep them," he pleaded, "forever." The words, To remember me by, were on the tip of his tongue, but he could not speak them. They would anger her and drive her further away, and he needed to know his wife at least had their rings to remember him by, even if she would never recall him.

She moved to swipe them from his hands as fast as a thief in the market, but as their ancient fingers touched around the rings, she paused. Both were held still for a moment in which Hoggle's big ears could hear both their hearts thundering. For the first time in centuries, he felt her sweet kiss. Relief washed over him, and his knees felt a weakness they had not felt in over a millennium.

"Hoggle."

He heard her speak his name, but then she turned immediately away, murmuring something. "TRELY!" he cried out, grasping her bony arm.

"HEY!" she said, shaking herself free from him almost instantly. "You told me I could have them! Free! Free! FREE!"

He lifted his hand, and forced himself to let her go. She scrambled over the hills, making a mad dash to escape him. Her shrill giggles floated back to him on the night wind. "Free! FREE! FREE!"

They would never be free again, Hoggle thought glumly as he forced himself to turn back to the King, the closest thing he'd ever have to a son. He did a doubletake when he saw that Jareth had slunk down into the mud himself, sitting on a mound of lost childhood items with his chin plunked into his gloved hands. He was crying, Hoggle realized, and trembled from head to foot as he made his way back to him. He should run -- he was very likely now to spend what little time he had left in the Bog of Eternal Stench --, but instead, seeing the manchild so sorrow-stricken, he found himself powerless to do anything but go forward to him. He knew the desires overtaking him now had nothing to do with Jareth's power, or any other magic in the land, but he still could do nothing but close the distance between them and try to find a way to console him.

Hoggle leapt with fear when he stroked Jareth's knee. Jareth wailed, sobs breaking forth from him the likes of which Hoggle had not heard since the lad had been a babe left behind by his own mother who had cared nothing for him. Oh, she had tried to beat the Labyrinth, as they all did, but her intentions had been far from pure. She had wanted to bed and wed the current King and take his riches, name, and power for herself. None of the girls who entered with those intentions ever triumphed. They were the first to become the Fae who flittered here and to, within the Labyrinth's walls until they met with the Gatekeeper's gun.

"There, there -- " he murmured, but he knew there was nothing he could really say or do to stop this new sorrow that was engulfing them both. They were powerless. There was nothing that could be done. There had never been, and never would be, a way to stop the succession of the Goblin Kings.

"I HAVE TO TELL HER!"

"You mustn't!"

"I cannot bear the pain I just saw you endure! I cannot bear for her to forget me! No matter what becomes of me, I must tell her!"

"You mustn't! Or have you so soon forgotten the legends?"

"Legends, pish posh! Who's to say they're nothing but storybooks?" He waved a graceful hand at their surroundings. "We are nothing but storybooks in Sarah's world!"

"Do you really want to risk you both turning to dust? What of the rest of us? The entire kingdom will be made vulnerable!"

"DO NOT DARE TO TELL ME WHAT I MUST DO NOW, HOGWART!" Jareth hissed through suddenly clenched teeth.

Hoggle sighed and shook his head. "I'M NOT TRYING TO TELL YOU WHAT TO DO!" he cried out in frustration, forgetting his place for the first time in centuries. "DO YOU NOT THINK I WANTED TO TELL YOUR MOTHER, THAT I DO NOT STILL ACHE TO DO SO?!" He waved a hand at the hill beyond which Trely had disappeared. "I WANTED NOTHING MORE THAN TO BE ABLE TO STAY WITH HER, THAN TO AT LEAST HAVE HER FOCKING REMEMBER ME! BUT I COULD NOT BEAR THE THOUGHT OF HER TURNING TO DUST! DID NOT CARE -- I don't care," he tried to boast, "what happens to me, but I couldn't do that to her! At least this way she's alive!"

"She's alive," Jareth whispered, having witnessed the same aching hollowness in the former Queen's eyes, "but she's half as real."

"Half as real is better than no real!"

"There must be an answer! If I can tell Sarah -- "

"You can not without losing her! You know they feel the pains of the transmogrifications! They feel everything we would feel when our bodies change if not for our powers!"

Jareth stopped, sat bolt upright, and glowered down at Hoggle. He arched a single eyebrow at the Dwarf who snorted and threw his hands up into the air. "YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!" he dared to yell. "GO AHEAD! THROW ME IN THE BOG! IT'S NOT LIKE IT'S GOING TO MATTER ANYWAY! WE'RE AT THE END HERE, BOY! THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO ME THAT'S WORSE THAN WHAT I'M ALREADY FACING! I DON'T WANT TO FORGET EVERYTHING! IT'S BAD ENOUGH SHE DOESN'T REMEMBER ME!"

"You tell her," Jareth suddenly whispered, realization dawning.

"I CAN'T FOCKING TELL HER!" Hoggle again threw up his arms. "YOU KNOW DAMN WELL SHE WON'T BELIEVE A WORD OF IT!"

"No." An uncharacteristic quiet calmness had settled over the King. His gloved fingers stroked his regal chin with renewed patience. "You tell Sarah. And then we'll find a way to help Mother."

Hoggle stopped shouting. His hands dropped to his sides. He stared at Jareth.

Jareth piqued an eyebrow once again. Hope, excitement, and something more to which Hoggle could not place a name but which he had not witnessed in many moons glittered in the King's eyes again. "You tell her." A sly smile began to lift his lips, and his fangs glittered just underneath his smooth, upper lip. "It's not been done before, has it?"

"No," grunted Hoggle. He paused, rubbing his own, wrinkled chin in mighty consideration. Slowly, he shook his head. "I can't say it has."

Jareth thoughtfully tapped his chin with two fingers. "What's the worst that can be done?"

"We all turn to dust?" Hoggle suggested and grunted yet again as he gazed once more over the hills. Not remembering anything at all, ceasing completely to exist and more importantly to think or feel, would be a welcome relief. He nodded. "I'll do it," he agreed.

Jareth nodded, standing and placing a hand firmly on the little hat that Hoggle wore atop his head, the same little strap of leather he'd worn when he'd first been whisked into the Labyrinth all those many, many centuries ago. "Of course, you will, Hogwart."

"Hoggle."

"Dad."

Hoggle's mouth dropped open. He stared. And then, suddenly, they were in the throne room.

"SARAH!" Jareth bellowed out, whirling in a swirl of long capes that seemed both dark as night and glittering of different, sparkling shades of ebony. That particular set had always reminded Hoggle of the night sky, filled with all its different stars. He had secretly liked it but worn it very seldom. At the time, such fashion had been frowned deeply upon by the courts, but Jareth had never cared what the courts thought and had certainly never once in his Immortal lifetime listened to anyone else's fashion sense.

He harrumphed as the Goblins scattered, fleeing this way and that. Jareth was still spinning, bellowing out his wife's name. Sarah was no Trely, but the girl did the King well. She had proven herself first in the Labyrinth itself and then, after freeing Toby, had fought to return to them all. She had never truly mistreated him, unlike -- well, unlike anyone really except for his Trely. His thick, gray eyebrows bushed up as he began to fret over how long she was taking to answer when she at last appeared, coming into the throne room from the passageway that led to the Royal Chambers.

Hoggle frowned, trying to make out what she was doing with her hands, and realized what she was about just a split moment before her husband knocked the knitting from her hands. Sarah cried out in shock as the thread, needle, and fabric went sailing across the room. "JARETH! WHAT HAS GOTTEN INTO YOU?!"

"WHAT HAS GOTTEN INTO YOU?!" he demanded heatedly. Hoggle could hear Jareth's feathers bristling. It wasn't a good sign, he knew, that the King's owl feathers were persisting in his current, human form. The end was coming faster than he had thought! He realized, with sudden clarity, that they had to act soon!

"What are those plastic things you were holding?!" They all knew what it was, Hoggle thought, and the girl's reaction was considerably overboard. She was staring at her husband in shock, recoiling slightly. Her hands trembled faintly as she held them together.

"I was knitting our son a onesie for this Winter! Why on Earth would you react that way?! What is wrong with you?!"

"DO NOT TOUCH THOSE DREADED THINGS!" Jareth roared as Sarah moved towards the nearest needle.

She paused, dark eyes wide, confused, and more than a little scared. Jareth had never mistreated her. He had played his necessary role when she had called him to take her baby brother to his people. He had played the role the Goblin Kings had always been forced to play when called upon by humanity. But he had never actually harmed her. Everything he had done had been part of the role demanded by him, and both he and Hoggle had always known the girl would escape through each endeavor as long as her motives remained pure. And for the first time in over a thousand years, Sarah had indeed persisted with Toby's best intentions first in her heart.

How long had she and Jareth now been together? Hoggle tried to remember, and found he could not. It had taken them so many centuries to have a child. They'd come to think Sarah was to be barren, but just as she herself did not age, her reproductive system had also not aged a day in their world. When it had come to be known that she was with child at long last, the news had been celebrated throughout the kingdom. At first, even Jareth had been happy, but after the child had been born, and he had grown older and Sarah more doting, he had come to see more and more that his son would indeed replace him. It was inevitable --

Or was it? The boy -- the King was right, Hoggle decided, gathering his courage and firmly stepping up. They had one chance left. In all the annals of their history, a King and his successor had never joined forces against the curse. They had never stood together to try to save their Queens or even their own memories. The powers couldn't be saved, of course, but damn the powers! They weren't what mattered. Immortality was tiresome after all these many centuries, but love --

Hoggle again thought of how Trely had looked at him back in the dumps. There had been no light, life, or joy left in her dark eyes. He had never seen such empty eyes except in the eyes of the other, older Queens. There was no hope left for them, but he had prevailed until today, thinking, hoping, somehow, some way, something would happen to Jareth or Sarah and he would regain his power. He would regain his power, but more importantly, he would regain his Queen. Staring at the younger couple now, he realized this meager hope had been in the recesses of his soul this entire time. His mind had known it impossible, but his heart had still hoped.

But now -- Seeing her today -- Witnessing those eyes, once so filled with beauty and love for him, so achingly, frighteningly hollow -- He could hold out hope no longer, if what Jareth had proposed did not work. He had become lost to the conversation between the two until, suddenly, he heard a wailing. He realized, a moment after the caterwauling, banshee-like sound had begun, that it was coming from him! He quickly clasped both his wrinkled hands over his mouth, but he still could not stop the tears that were rolling in big, fat drops down his face.

"HOGGLE! What on Earth?!" Sarah's eyes darted between her husband and the Dwarf. She had never known Jareth to act this way! He had never once struck her, and to react so furiously because she was making something for their child was completely absurd! It was out of character too, she knew, but hurting Hoggle was not. "What have you done to him?!"

"I HAVE DONE NOTHING!" Jareth cried, flinging a regal wrist out as if to emphasize his words. "MY ENTIRE EXISTENCE, I HAVE DONE NOTHING BUT WHAT WAS ASKED OF ME!"

"THAT'S A LIE!"

He paused, pursing his lips together for a moment. For just one fleeting second, Sarah thought she could see his flesh lips becoming a beak in the shadows that were growing steadily all around them, but then the impression was gone. "Perhaps it is an exaggeration -- "

"HA! YOU WALTZ IN HERE -- "

"IT'S MY PALACE!"

"IT'S MY HOME! YOU'RE MY HUSBAND! WHAT SENSE DOES IT MAKE THAT YOU'RE SO PISSED THAT I'M MAKING SOMETHING FOR OUR BABY?! NOT TO MENTION NOW YOU'VE GOT POOR HOGGLE -- "

Toby wailed. Sarah turned on her heels. "I'm coming, Toby!"

"NO!" Jareth grabbed her arm; she wrested away from him and glared furiously up at him.

"WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!"

"I -- I -- " He had grasped her wrist again, and to Sarah's shock, she could feel him trembling. Suddenly, she realized that he was not just angry. He was afraid! As he turned his handsome, haunted face away from her, Sarah caught sight of tears. The dark shades of his clothes were fading too, turning to white.

Her mind flashed back over the centuries to the moment she'd feared would be their last. She had had no choice that night. She had hated hurting him. She had not intended to fall in love with him of course, but she had, just as he had fallen in love with her. She'd later learned that every girl who entered the labyrinth did fall into a deep fascination with the King, but he never felt the same admiration for them. Sarah had been different. She had been, as one of the Fae Queens from one of the neighboring villages had put it, the diamond in the rough, the one girl in a million, the one who had gotten away.

Only she'd never wanted to get away. She had ached for Jareth with a yearning she had been too young, at the time, to truly understand, but she had done what she should for Toby. When the friends she had made in the labyrinth had reappeared in her old world, Sarah had pleaded with them to reach out to him, but none of them would. It had been Sir Didymus who had finally confessed to her, with a strange sorrow tone to his voice, that they were not allowed to ferry messages between the worlds and that, if she truly wanted to reach the King again, she would have to endeavor upon her quest alone. They were forbidden from helping her, but he would not explain why.

Thus, it had been that Sarah had set to work. She had dug through every bit of legend she could find on the Goblins and the Labyrinth and had eventually found a way back to him, offering a child that no one else had wanted as bait. It had been an uncanny stroke of luck that she had happened across the newborn infant who had been left out in the freezing cold in the trash. She could not fathom any mother ever throwing away her offspring like that, but the child, umbilical cord still attached, had clearly been left for dead.

She had hurried home with the infant clutched to her chest, underneath her sweater and jacket, his cries seeming to resonate almost within her very heart. She had considered, for a moment, taking it to the nearest hospital, but the poor thing had already been so far gone she had doubted science could do anything to help him. When she had called upon the Goblins, they had come right away. He had come right away, and he had been furious! She'd quickly had to explain how she'd happened across the babe, and she had seen, firsthand, his rage at her turn into fury at her species and then melt away in concern and fear over the child. He had transformed the crying, dying baby into a Goblin that very night, and Sarah had been with them both ever since.

She had not witnessed such rage as had just been displayed by her husband since that fateful night. Now she stood, her own fury melting away into worry and fear for them all, as Hoggle and her own child cried and Jareth, he who could bring whole kingdoms down in a single action, trembled before her. "What is it?" she whispered, her words so soft she could barely hear them herself. She stepped closer, closing the distance between them, and placed her hand on his cheek. Gently, she turned his head to face her, and her heart ached at the tears she saw welling in his eyes. "What is it? Jareth, tell me -- "

He turned away again, releasing her. In the next second, he was an owl soaring through the throne room. Before she could call to him, Hoggle spoke, "He cannot." His voice sounded especially craggy and oddly old. The tone of his words reminded Sarah of the rocks that were deliberately placed in the underpath winding away from the oubilette to purposefully lead the girls who attempted the Labyrinth, after first having sacrificed their brothers or even their own sons to the Goblins. A chill ran down Sarah's spine as she recalled whispers that they were the Kings of old, of a time long before Jareth had been brought here himself by one such girl, back when another King had ruled whose cruelty had been nothing compared to Jareth's. Sarah gulped; the only difference in Hoggle's tone and the tone of the Speaking Rocks was he was not shouting. He was whispering, murmuring, almost as though he was afraid to say whatever he was about to say next.

Which was absurd, she realized, anger flashing in her dark eyes as she whipped about to face him. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE CAN'T?!" she demanded. "I'M HIS WIFE! HE CAN TELL ME ANYTHING!"

"No, he cannot, because to tell you this would kill you both."

"I CAN HANDLE IT!" Sarah snapped, but then she stared at Hoggle, open-mouthed, as he dropped to her one knee obediently before her.

"It is not, dear Queen," he said, lowering his head, "that you cannot face it, but rather that you would not be allowed to face it." He had pulled the little, leather cap which he never without from his balding head and now wrung it in his small hands. "It is time," he continued, choosing his words with great care, "that you were told the rest of the legend, of the curse of the Goblin King."

Sarah stared, slack-jawed. This was the moment that she had once, early on in her marriage and Queendom, wanted to come. Whatever Hoggle was about to convey to her would surely affect the entire kingdom, and it was something, for the first time in the entire time she had known him, that her husband could not face. Her head leaned unconsciously to the side as she stared down at Hoggle. "Speak," she whispered.

"Are you sure," he asked, looking up at her from underneath his bushy brows, "that your Ladyship would not rather sit first?"

He reminded her, when he was like this, of Sir Didymus. Again, she thought back to the stormy night when the Labyrinth's most loyal Knight had whispered to her that, as much as they all regretted it, they could not help her find the King nor even carry a message to her for him. It had been strictly forbidden. Didymus had never told her why. He had been sworn to secrecy at the time, and she had not thought to ask him again, once she had found her way back into the Labyrinth and Jareth's arms, until this very moment.

Over the years, as with any marriage, Sarah had learned many things from Jareth. She had also picked up some of his traits as he had her own. Now she found herself growing impatient, her own mental and spiritual alarms that something was greatly, greatly amiss, screaming at her to demand knowledge. She could not hope to fix whatever it was without first knowing what the danger was! "OUT WITH IT!" she demanded. Catching herself, she wet her suddenly-dried lips and dropped her voice many decibels until she was once more whispering, "Please."

She glanced over her shoulder up at the roof where Jareth had been flying but found, just as she'd expected, that her husband was nowhere to be seen. Over the centuries they'd shared together, she had come to have almost a sixth sense about his presence. He could never hide in any disguise now and actually surprise her. She always knew when he was near, but what she felt between them right now seemed like a dangerously growing chasm. She swallowed hard, and her eyes were wide and sparked with fear when Hoggle's ominous, craggly voice brought her questing gaze sweeping back to him. Was it her imagination -- the fear creeping into her mind and heart -- or was the Dwarf actually seeming to age before her very eyes?

"He cannot tell you, Queen Sarah, for to divulge the full truth and extent of his curse will instantly kill both of you."

Sarah stared at him. As Jareth had moments before, she began to tremble as fear etched its way more deeply into her, filling her, nearly consuming her -- Her skin turned ashen. She could no longer hear her child crying, but her other child, her oldest as she oft thought of him, was suddenly there along with several of the other, stronger Goblins. Sarah had long ago stopped asking where the Goblins found things, and did not even consider from whence the new, plush chair appeared as they hurriedly shoved it under her. She dropped backwards into it, and the babe she'd taken in all those years ago, the very one whose life she had witnessed her husband's magic save, scooted closer to her. He tenderly clasped his green hands around her right hand as another, his best friend and most loyal companion, shoved his head underneath her left hand, not unlike a warm, friendly, and ultimately reassuring puppy.

Sarah stared, aghast, at Hoggle. "What do you mean it would kill us?" She could barely hear her own words, yet her whisper echoed in the cavernous throne room. The Labyrinth and all the buildings within it always seemed to have a way of growing and reshaping themselves to meet the emotions, if not the thoughts, of its leading couple.

"I mean you would drop dead, both of you, instantaneously."

Sarah suddenly understood why Hoggle had suggested she sit. She had seen so much since coming into this world the first time, even more since returning to it. She had ridden dragons and enormous owls and fought alongside her husband in wars against Fae, Elves, and the undead. She had even tasted the ability of creating magic herself, on the rare occasions when Jareth had chosen to share sprinkles of his power with her. She had thought nothing could surprise her. She had thought her husband especially unbeatable. No girl would best the Labyrinth, especially not now that he had his Queen. Of the many things Sarah had accused her husband of over their centuries together, disloyalty had never entered either of their minds.

But this -- What Hoggle was speaking now -- Whatever Jareth had done to the poor Dwarf this time had clearly made him take complete leave of his senses! But she remembered the way her husband had looked before he'd literally flown away from her. He had been unable to bear a moment more of arguing with her, of keeping this pain silent and hidden, and had been equally unable to face her, Sarah realized, when Hoggle had told her the news he'd carried. Jareth -- her Jareth who seemed nigh omnipotent, all their King, the King who all the other realms, or at least those who knew of his legacy and greatness, was afraid. And it was not only her rejection which he feared this time.

He knew he had her. His fear had had nothing to do with her. It clearly laid with the story Hoggle carried. But how much of it was truth? What could possibly be so terrible, so potent, that it could not even be discussed without them dying? Surely such words were impossible! She wet her lips, tried to stop her hands from shaking, and found herself whispering again, almost as though she was afraid some force -- some creature with powers even stronger than her husband's? -- might overhear their conversation, "Surely no speech has such power."

"You have helped the King lead our kingdom through wars before, Your Majesty," Hoggle spoke, and as he did, Sarah realized she was not imagining his aging. There were hairs falling from his scalp. One of the younger Goblins leapt on the stray hairs, like a cat after a bird's feather. It batted away, and a game of chase ensued amongst the youngest creatures.

But Sarah no attention left for such trivialities, nor did Hoggle. "You've witnessed magic, both the good and the bad. You've borne witness to entire kingdoms being slain with curses. This curse is no different, and it is one of the oldest of them all. It is, as I said, the curse of the Goblin King. You know part of it."

Sarah nodded mutely, feeling the presence of not just her son now but several other Goblin children all pressing close around her. A few of them whispered only to have older Goblins snatch them up and cover their mouths with their hands. There was always a hushed feeling that fell over the Goblins whenever a new girl was about to call upon them, whenever a new babe was about to be offered up. The sensation whispering through them now was somewhat of a mixture between the calling moments and the moments when they all wanted to hide and cower because her husband was having one of his infamous temper tantrums -- and something beyond as well.

Sarah realized she was holding her breath, but surely whatever it was could not be all that bad. But then -- She'd never seen Jareth afraid before. "He's cursed to remain here underground where supposedly no one would ever love him, take every child that's offered to him, run the girls through the trials, and then send them back, thinking they've defeated him, to a world that can never be his." Hoggle nodded slowly. "But we broke that! Our love broke that curse!"

"No." Hoggle direly shook his head. "You broke but part of it. You know the Fairies. Not the ones from the other kingdoms, but the ones I have to rid the Labyrinth of."

"Yes, of course, the girls who were so black of heart that they deliberately sacrificed their brothers -- or their children," Sarah added at the pointed look Hoggle gave her, one bushy, whitened brow arching, "for whatever they thought staying with the Goblin King would give them." It truly was a good thing she had fought so hard to return her brother to their world. She had thought she was only sacrificing the things she wanted, the life, the romance for which she had yearned, but sacrificing Toby instead would have spelled her own doom as well as his for surrendering him to Jareth would have meant that the world above was too cruel and undeserving a place for him.

"You know the Talking Heads."

"You mean the rocks?"

Hoggle grunted. "Is that what people are calling them these days? Just rocks?"

Sarah shrugged. The look she gave him made him remember how innocent and naive the Queen had been when he had first met her. She had had a way about her back then that had truly reached all of them. Of course, he and the others all had their parts to play in the Labyrinth, but he had felt the strings of his old heart actually being pulled on by this lass. She'd been brave, and yet foolishly trusting and giving all at the same time. His hand lowered instinctively to his collection of jewels, which had always been a comfort zone for him, but of course, they were gone. He'd given them to his Queen, hoping they might at least remind her of him as he now was no matter what else happened to them. He could have led with the Garbage Ladies, as well, as she called them, but he did not know if he could yet speak the words to tell her of their truths, their part in the curse.

"Hoggle," Sarah's questioning gaze had followed his gesture, "where are your jewels?"

She'd been one of the few people to ever give him something freely. "Did you ever ask yourself why those jewels mattered so greatly to me, Your Highness?"

She shrugged. "Not really. They looked like a bunch of -- "

"Cheap things in your world, I know. You told me once. But no matter their actual monetary value, each piece of my collection is a treasure to me." He took in a deep breath, held it a moment, and then let it slowly whistle out of his ancient lungs. "Sarah -- "

"Hoggle?" She was truly afraid now. She almost expected him to drop dead in front of her, or to disappear completely, and all these centuries to have been nothing more than a dream. Was this, she wondered, how Lewis Carroll's Alice had felt? Or what of Dorothy Gale in the Wizard of Oz books? There were later stories in that series that suggested that Dorothy had ended up undergoing shock therapy to rid her mind of the memories the whole above world had thought to be lies or a poor, little girl's sick and twisted imagination.

But this wasn't a dream, Sarah knew, and she wasn't going to fall back into that web of lies! She knew her husband, Hoggle, everything and everyone in this world, was real! She had not been dreaming this entire time! Besides, Hoggle had never said anything about waking up, had he? He'd said she would drop dead.

If Jareth told her.

But Jareth was not the one speaking. She wondered, suddenly, if they should wait until her husband was present just so that she could make certain he was all with whatever acknowledge Hoggle was about to announce.

"I was the last King."

"WHAT?!"

"I was the last King," Hoggle repeated again, suddenly showing an air of patience and wisdom that Sarah had never before witnessed in him. "The rocks -- the Talking Heads -- are all old Kings, but they do not remember their former lives, only the roles they are cursed to play now in the Labyrinth."

Sarah stared. She had no words. A Goblin squealed. Another fell backwards and did not rise again. Others fled the room. Still more began to cry. Her son trembled, but held his mother's hand steadfastly. She knew it was impossible for him to remember anything from the night he had been born into the cruel world above, but there were other Goblins, she knew, and Sir Didymus, too, who had told him the truth of how he had come to be a Goblin. Sir Didymus had wanted to train him as a Knight, but although Jareth had at last chosen to allow some training, he was insistent that their son stay here in the castle and not out in the wilds around the castle or, worse, the Bog where Sir Didymus had chosen to make his home.

They'd tried to get Didymus to move into the castle a few times over the centuries, but that never worked either. The Knight was so intent upon his duties that he insisted on staying close to the Bog, and besides, as he'd pointed out time and again, when another kingdom was foolish enough to attack the Goblin King and his people, they often came from the way of the Bog, foolishly thinking that such an odorous route might better enable them to take him by surprise. They were always the ones who ended up being surprised, by the ferocity, loyalty, and skill of Jareth's top Knight.

Sarah wondered how Didymus worked into all of this. Was Ludo just Jareth's pet, or was he, too, under a curse of some form and of which she'd never been told prior? But then -- She licked her lips again. This all sounded so absurd! Hoggle had been a King?!

"Don't look at me so incredulously," the Dwarf snapped, startling Sarah. She jumped. Gawking at him, she was uncertain which surprised her more -- that he knew such language, or that he'd dared to actually speak up to her.

"You need to hear this, and I have to be the one to tell you, because only Jareth and I are left with our memories of the previous rule intact! If you doubt me, you can ask him later -- but right now, milady, you need to listen!"

"Why now?" she asked, truly puzzled. Her dark head cocked inquisitively to the side as she studied him. Hoggle was actually a terrible liar, and she knew he was not lying. But she and Jareth had been together now literally for centuries. Sarah jumped again at the sudden sound of fabric being ripped.

She and Hoggle both turned to find a group of the most ancient Goblins, those who were amongst the number of beings who had long ago lost the ability of speech, ripping asunder the onesie she had been knitting for her Prince. Cold dread pulled in the pit of Sarah's stomach as she watched the Goblins ripping at the fabric until all her work was undone. She jumped again when one of her needles was slung hard against the solid rock wall of the throne room. Another Goblin managed to send the other needle sailing out the single window in the room. His companions jumped up and down in the air, silently lifting their tiny fists in triumphant.

Sarah's big, dark eyes swung back to Hoggle. The Dwarf grunted, watching the ancient Goblins. "They were old when I was King," he admitted. "I suppose we can't be too sure what they know and what they don't, since they've never spoken to any of us. But they're right. The reason this is of such importance now," he said, his eyes solemnly locking with Sarah's, "is because you are raising Jareth's successor. If that baby of yours lives to be an adult, he will surpass the current Goblin King. He will strip him of not just his title and power but of his very form. Jareth will be reduced to this," he waved at his own short, wrinkled body in disgust, "and I will be made into what you so callously call a rock."

"NO!" Sarah wailed, tears flooding her eyes. "I WON'T LET HIM!"

"You can't stop him. He cannot even stop himself. Jareth..." Hoggle looked away, and Sarah watched as a mixture of emotions stormed darkly over the Dwarf's ancient, cragged face. "Jareth tried to stop the curse. He could not. And over the centuries, it made him very angry with me. We both thought he hated me for some time, especially because I could not stop him. I could not stop the curse, and I could not stop what happened to his mother."

"Trely," Sarah whispered breathlessly. She had seen the way Hoggle looked at the little Goblin, had even caught him, on a few occasions, crying as he watched her endless tirade of work in the Rubbish Hills. Sarah felt another shiver crawl down her spine. She had always thought she'd come close to becoming one of the Garbage Women, forever searching out the items she'd thought meant so much to her from her life in the world above. In truth, no matter what they were, in this world, they meant nothing. They could mean nothing, if she truly wanted to build a life in this world, for they belonged to her old world and her old life. She'd always thought those Goblin women were the saddest of all the creatures in the Labyrinth, although now she had to wonder if they truly were when she reconsidered the apparent past Kings.

"They're the former Queens," she found herself whispering, realization dawning, "and they don't remember either."

He grunted. "You always were a smart one."

She raised sad, luminous eyes back up to search his wizened face. "That's why you're always so sad when you're around her. She doesn't remember you."

For once, Hoggle did not try to deny his emotions. "Yes."

"We have to stop this!"

"We cannot."

This time, the answer did not come from the Dwarf in front of her but from a rich and elegant voice she knew as well as she knew the sound of her own voice. She leapt to her feet and raced to her husband. She had never seen him look so weary, not even after the worst of the wars, not even on that one fateful night when, as he'd admitted to her over a century later, on their first hundredth wedding anniversary, he'd believed in all certainty that his sole answer to save his soul, and to allow him to come and go as he chose from the above world, to break his curse or so he'd claimed, was leaving him forever. She'd never seen him look so old, so weak, so pale -- Her love for him had not wanted to shout from her lips so loudly in centuries.

Sarah embraced her King, her husband, her One True Love, and held him tight as she wept into his feather-clad shoulder. "I won't let him," she whimpered. "I won't let him kill you!" It was true that Jareth would not be killed when Toby took the throne. No, from what Hoggle had just described, his -- and hers -- would both be fates worse than death. Sure, it would be horrible to have Jareth reduced to Hoggle's form, but then after whatever time he spent as the Dwarf -- to become a rock, a Talking Head as Hoggle called them? A former Head, Sarah realized, of the Kingdom. Those poor Heads were not even men! They did not possess anything more than eyes, noses, and mouths, and knew nothing of the lives or people they had been before!

"This is horrible!" she cried as Jareth held her strongly against him. His touch had always been so comforting, but in this moment, she felt no comfort. "I won't let him kill you!" she sobbed again. She herself would not become a Garbage Goblin, and she would certainly never forget her husband! She'd not allow anyone or anything to steal her memories from her!

Jareth tenderly stroke her long, dark hair and let his beloved Queen cry. After a long while, once her tears had finally begun to quiet, he spoke softly, "We succeeded."

"In telling her," Hoggle grunted behind her.

Sarah turned, still clinging to Jareth more tightly than she had since she had first returned to the Labyrinth and fought her way back to his side, to peer pleadingly down at the Dwarf. She sniffled, but did not even attempt to dab her eyes. Doing so would mean she had to release a hand from her husband, and she was determined both hands grabbing tightly a hold of him lest he suddenly be spirited away from her and transformed into a talking rock. "What do we do now? How do we stop it?"

Hoggle grunted and shook his head, "They always said it couldn't be stopped."

"They also always said," Jareth murmured lowly, "that the story could never be spoken. There must be a way."

Hoggle again shook his head.

"You must have thought of something before," ventured Jareth, "back when I was a lad -- "

"The only thing I could think of was to send you away, and you always found your way back."

"Mother always seemed to have a claw in that."

"She did not know the fullness of the curse."

"No."

"So it was true!" Still clinging to Jareth, her fingernails biting through his soft, faded white satin and silk, Sarah dipped into a curtsy. "Your Majesty," she acknowledged.

Hoggle cried, his hands shooting up as though to block his head. "NO! DON'T!"

"He's not going to turn you into the Prince of the Bog of Eternal Stench," Sarah started, but then side-eyed Jareth who did not look in the least amused.

"Do not," he ordered sternly, "do not that ever again, or I will! But you're right. We need the old man. There must be a way."

"Send him away, you said?" Sarah asked, clearly puzzling over something.

"What are you thinking, dearest wife?" queried softly. Sarah's brilliant mind had often taken him by surprise over the centuries, but it was the first time in a long time that he found himself without the slightest notion as to what she was considering.

Still safe in his arm's, her hands holding tightly to him, Sarah turned to face her oldest son, who stood with just enough space to grant the royal trio a respectful distance. Their eyes met, and as they often had since the fateful night his mother had called his father to save him, the child, the actual, eldest Goblin Prince, nodded.

"You are not going to harm Tobias -- "

"Of course not!" Sarah exclaimed. "But I do have an idea. Do you remember when I was grieving for my brother, and you decided to show me his new life in his current form?" Humans, in the above world, were a strange species. She could admit that even though she was, technically, still one herself. Somehow -- Jareth had never been quite certain as to how, and as he did not know, Sarah certainly had had no means of discovering how -- they would sometimes return in new forms, especially when their lives had ended dissatisfactorily. Toby -- the original Toby, her baby brother -- had taken an especially long time to return, but he had returned. He was beginning to become what the humans considered an old man again. Once more, he was happily married, but this time, he had no children of his own.

Sarah searched her husband's eyes. "My brother," she stated confidently, "in this lifetime or any other, would make a wonderful father."

"We send our son to him?"

"Yes." Sarah, her confidence growing, slipped out of Jareth's embrace and walked to the eldest boy, the child whose life they'd saved so many centuries ago when his own mother, wretched and vile creature that she'd undoubtedly been, had not wanted him. "But we don't send him alone."

"This what Sir Didymus train me for."

"Yes," Sarah agreed with a note of pride in her voice, "it is." She stroked her son's head and then cupped his face in her hands. As a child, she had always thought the Goblins were ugly, nasty, little creatures. Since her time here following her return, especially caring for them as both Queen and the closest thing many of them would ever know to a maternal figure, just as Jareth reigned over them both as King and father, Sarah had come to no longer disregard them. She cared for each of them, even the ones whose names she could never recall, and their appearances no longer bothered her.

With this one child in particular, however, she had always thought him so beautiful. Now, with fresh tears springing to her dark eyes, the Goblin Queen recalled the crying face of the human child her eldest son had been, of the child she had found tossed away in the garbage because some woman had birthed him and decided she didn't want him, had decided that his life, innocent and precious, was worth nothing more than trash. Jareth had hunted the woman down centuries ago. Sarah had never once asked him as to their encounter, but she knew her husband wrought a hard vengeance and was certain the woman had gotten nothing more than what she deserved. But if she had not thrown him away, Sarah would have never known the bright, sweet soul that was her baby boy -- and he would always be her baby boy, flesh or not, Goblin or human.

"You cannot send him as a Goblin," she stated. The rules of the Labyrinth had left them with no choice during his stay here, but there was no way he would be able to stay close to his brother or live amongst humans in this form. Mother and child turned together to look at their father.

Jareth was clearly pained, but he had known his entire reign the choice he would one day have to make. He had been secretly relieved when Sarah, year after year, century after century, had remained barren. Despite himself, despite knowing what the child would bring to them both, he had been shockingly joy-filled to learn of his blood son's existence when his wife had finally become pregnant. But no child was worth losing the woman he loved.

To be forced to lose both his children had never occurred to him, however. For once, he did not try to shy away from the sorrow that filled his piercing gaze as he strode over to the two beings who meant more to him than any other. As he walked, he also contemplated. Was there no other way? He knew to let his son live would mean his doom. He had always known that, and though it was a fate he had begun to think he could suffer, he could not bear the thought of losing Sarah, especially not after witnessing Hoggle and Trely in the Dumplands.

But to lose both?? "Sarah," he asked softly, gazing into her beautiful eyes, "have you truly thought about this? Must we send both? Do you really want to sacrifice your son?" Sir Didymus had read him poetry as a lad. He still had several favored poems, but one of the lines that had always remained with him, since those very early days, had been that the eyes were the windows to the soul. There were women, he knew from experience, and men as well who could lie with their eyes, but his Sarah had never been amongst their cruel and deceitful number.

He cupped her face in his hands and softly drew a gloved thumb across her cheek. His glove vanished, leaving his bare fingers to trace the contours of her sweet mouth. He drank in her beauty again, trying desperately to commit every single line, even the vague traces of wrinkles he could see beginning to transform her ancient, smooth skin, to a memory that could not be stopped. But that was just the thing, he knew. There was only one way to stop himself from losing even the memory of her, not to mention her love and her presence in his life: The Goblin King was strictly forbidden from ever being completed as a man. He could never have both wife and son, not and keep them. He had to sacrifice one or, eventually, both; there was no other way.

But she had given up so much to stay here with him, to even fight her way back to him all those centuries ago in the beginning. This was not a decision he could make for her. It was not something he should have asked of her. But she'd always had the right to know. He just could not tell her himself. At least, she knew. Unlike all the other Queens before her, at least she knew what was to come. It was her decision if they stopped it, and how.

Jareth ached in a way he had never known. It was deeper than any physical part of him, even his heart. It was an echo of the night she'd left him, only so very much deeper. Did they really have to send the son they'd had all this time with their actual, blood child? As a Goblin, he could never be a threat to Jareth's throne. He was innocent! Jareth, too, remembered the dying babe Sarah had brought to him on the night she had returned to him. He had been furious, thinking she had born the lad just to have a chance to return to steal his riches and power for herself.

He remembered, too, how she had cried that night, begged and pleaded for the child's life. She'd been honest with him. He'd witnessed the honesty in her eyes, heard it in her cries, and seen through to the truths in her very heart. She had been as horrified as he at what some hapless, careless, black-hearted woman had done with her own flesh and blood. He shouldn't have been surprised, he thought now as he'd thought then. After all, was he himself not a product of a woman who had never wanted to be labored with having to give life to someone new?

Just as he had done that night, before, and so many times since, Jareth could again see into Sarah's very heart from her eyes. It was that brave, pure heart with which he had first fallen in love with his Queen, all that time ago when he had first held her in his arms and swirled her across a dance floor he had shared with so many before and since. That dance was all a part of the Grand Goblin Scheme. He had to dance with every one of the girls who made it to that point in the Labyrinth. But he'd never once fallen in love with any other.

As selfish as Sarah had seemed then, as selfish as she had honestly been, there had been a pureness still deep inside of her. Her selfishness against her baby brother had been caused by pain wrought by her own mother's deceit. Her mother had left her behind, abandoned her child, and supposed best friend as well, to flee to another part of the world with a man who could offer her far more fame and fortune than Sarah's father or Sarah herself ever could have granted the woman. She'd been selfish, and Sarah and her father both had been hurt in the ordeal. Sarah's father had moved on, which was where the elder Tobias had come into life, and Sarah, in her youthful blindness and loyal obedience to her mother, had shifted her feelings and blame from her mum to her father.

There was still a small spark of selfishness left in his beloved Sarah, Jareth thought, moving his hand to comfortingly thread his elegant fingers through her long, dark hair. She wanted, as any good mother would, to keep both her husband and her sons, but she understood that they, even with all of Jareth's powers, stood no chance of being able to do so. Far more than that little speck of selfishness that remained, however, was a layer of selflessness that awed Jareth, reminding him again of why he had fallen in love with her in the first place.

No matter what she wanted, she wanted more what was best for her family. She could send her children to a place she knew would be safe for them both, and she could keep her husband. No one had to be forgotten, or worse turned into something that was a fate far worse than dying. She hoped they would find a way to visit, and perhaps such was even possible. He was able to visit the world above, after all; he was just not allowed to stay.

But what was more was that she saw a way to give their sons lives they could never give them here. Jareth had been lost, for a time, to madness and a thirst for power. In his angry, adolescent years, he had somehow turned from loving his adopted family to having heard the whispers of the legend and being eager to replace Hoggle. He did not regret having done the old man harm. They had simply followed the curse, after all; neither of them could have stopped it.

But Trely -- He thought again of the soulless, blackened eyes of the only woman before Sarah who had ever loved him. It was no wonder he'd been drawn to Sarah's beauty when she'd first called upon him for her looks echoed so much of Trely's human form, with her big, dark eyes and long, dark hair. That was where the similarities ended, of course, but he could not help reminiscing upon the common traits their forms shared. Trely had been considerably taller than his cherished Sarah, far skinnier, and a lady from a time long before even his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather had been considered, let alone Sarah's people.

Both ladies had taken in babes that had not been born to them, and who had no one else in the world to care for them. Sarah had known trying to take the boy to the hospital would have ended up dooming them both. None of humanity's science could have saved the baby at the point at which she had found him. Jareth himself had barely managed to resuscitate him in time, and he'd been drawing his last breath when the Goblin King had arrived. They truly had had no choice in how to save him.

But now -- Now they could give him a chance, Sarah saw, that they never could have given him before. They could send him to the world above, to a man who they both knew, in all honesty, would keep their children safe. And before they left them, Jareth could turn David human. Jareth turned his eyes to his son, and then knelt before him. He lifted his hands to cup his boy's green, scaly face. "Is this," he asked, "what you want?"

He smiled through his tears as his son stood tall and straight, as Sir Didymus had trained him to do. "Yes, my Liege."

Jareth tilted his head ever so slightly, one dark brow arching upward.

"Yes, Father," David said and bowed his head.

His child, Jareth knew, the flow of his tears increasing, did not even realize yet that becoming human again was a possibility. He did not want to leave his mother, or Jareth, -- but he did want to keep his brother safe and wanted his parents to live. He did not understand everything of which they had just discussed, but he did understand that they realized that sending his brother to live with the humans was the only way they would survive. He was crying inwardly. Jareth could see moisture gathering in his son's eyes, but the little boy, fighting so hard to be a Knight and make his parents proud, was refusing to let a single teardrop fall.

It was then that Jareth's tears began to spill, fast and hot, right there before all gathered. Some of the elder Goblins had witnessed the King cry before, but not since he had become King. Some of them still held vague memories of him as a child, although they did not recall Hoggle having been King before him. Although, Jareth reconsidered somewhere in the recesses of his mind, the way they had attacked Sarah's knitting was testament that they surely did understand things more than they allowed their leaders to believe. Maybe they did understand that the boy who would be King would destroy his parents, who had ruled over them more kindly and generously than any royal couple before.

Jareth reached out and clasped his son to him. "It's okay to cry," he whispered into his long, pointy ear, "here with your mother and I."

"Sir Didymus says Knights don't cry. Davy Knight." Jareth could hear his child's tears in his voice as he struggled between not wanting to allow himself to cry and wanting to wail at the idea of having to leave the only family and home he'd ever known. "Toby need David."

Jareth nodded. David himself would do well in the world above, especially with the right thoughts and memories planted into his new parents' minds. He knew Toby and his wife wanted children, just as he and Sarah would have wanted kids in any other life. They would care for them greatly with lots of love and affection, just as Toby had in his last life. He knew the elder Toby was calling himself something different in this timeline but could not quite recall what and also did not care to do so much. He was still the same soul, after all.

Jareth pulled himself away from his son just enough that he could gaze directly into his eyes, just as he had done moments before with his mother. "Are you certain, David? Once this is done, it cannot be undone."

David pursed his little, Goblin lips together. He was just about to speak when Toby wailed. His baby's cry was so sudden, near, and loud that Jareth nearly jumped. David and Sarah both reflected in just that way, but Jareth himself managed to keep his composure, although just barely. David's sorrowful eyes looked from where Hoggle now cradled the royal child back up into his father's eyes. "Toby must go?"

Jareth gently gripped Davy's skinny, green shoulders as he raised his own eyes up to Sarah. Sarah was also crying as she accepted the sweet bundle from Hoggle, who grunted matter-of-factly. "Kid's gotta go if you don't want to forget."

She had fought so hard and so long to keep from forgetting what everybody around her, including her brother for whom she had thought she had made the greatest sacrifice of her life, had insisted on telling her was only make believe. She truly had thought that leaving Jareth behind and denying her feelings for him, even though she'd only been fifteen at the time, would be the hardest thing she'd ever have to do, but there had been no other way to save her little brother from a fate she herself had called upon him. Now there was no other way to save her husband -- or herself -- from fates worse than death.

And honestly, what kind of a mother would she be to decree that her son must replace his father? Jareth had remembered what he'd done, and she knew already that her husband felt some degree of guilt over his role in fulfilling the curse from Hoggle and Trely. Hundreds of thoughts were rushing through Sarah's mind at once, amongst them questions as to what kind of parents the Dwarf and Goblin had been -- what kind of people? She'd assumed, from what she had been told thus far, that he had not been a Dwarf when he'd been the King, and clearly Trely had not been a Goblin. What kind of a mother had she been to Jareth? Sarah had witnessed her husband watched the bag lady with sad eyes, and now she understood why. Regardless of his feelings toward his own father, or his adopted father, he still clearly hurt over what had become of his adopted mother.

She found herself, too, thinking back to her own parents. It had taken her so long to forgive her father for his role in her parents' divorce. She'd blamed him for her mother leaving, but as an adult looking back, Sarah had come to realize that the mistakes, the truly big mistakes at least, lay with her mother. Her mother had been the one who had had such a thirst for fame that she would have done anything to keep her star life alive. She had been the one to grow close to her co-star and then leave her father to travel the world with that same co-star. As a grown up, Sarah had been unable to deny that her mother had likely been having an affair with that same actor long before she had actually filed the papers on her father.

Her father had been far from innocent, of course, but he'd had a right to his own life, just as she and Jareth had a right to theirs. Of course, it was one thing to go through a divorce and keep your child -- or even leave the child behind and never even so much as write a letter back to her. It was another thing entirely to have to sacrifice your own children. But she wasn't sacrificing her children! She was sending her beloved boys to the one person outside of Jareth and herself whom she could trust to raise them. She was also not sending them alone. Toby would be protected, and not just by his new father, and by going with him, David would finally have a chance at the life he had been denied by his own cruel, sick mother.

If she kept them here... She would become a bag lady herself, desperately seeking after any trace she had left of her life before. Her husband would be resorted to Hoggle's role when Toby took the throne -- and he would take it, Sarah sensed in the pit of her stomach, no matter how hard anyone fought to keep him from doing so -- and then to worse. She again thought of those poor, pitiful Kings down in the very depths of the Labyrinth, below even the oubliette. They did not know anything of their lives before, not even who they themselves had been! She could not do that to her husband, or to herself!

And beyond that, if she kept them here, they would never have a chance at a life outside the Labyrinth. David would have to remain forever more a Goblin while this way he could at last be granted his humanity. Her little Toby -- What kind of a life would it be to become a King only to have to destroy his own parents to have to do so? Was there any other choice? Killing him certainly was certainly out of the question!

"Sarah?"

Her husband was calling to her. Sarah blinked rapidly through the flow of her tears.

"Mummy?"

Her heart ached. She reached out and gently touched David's green cheek. It was so rare that he called her that, feeling he did not have the right because she was -- in his words, "oh so pretty", and he was nothing more than a Goblin. How many times had she tried to tell him how beautiful he was? How many times had he asked her how his father was a Goblin but his skin was white and pure?

A loud sob broke from her, sending confused Goblins scurrying. They were running from one side of the throne room to the next, keeping as much in the shadows as they could, but, a part of her noted, even now they did not actually leave the room, as they did when Jareth was having a tantrum or they were fighting as they so rarely did these days. It was clear they wanted to stay nearby. Then she witnessed the very ones who had come to her baby brother's room that night leave the safety of the shadows and begin to walk toward Hoggle.

Jareth's, David's, and Hoggle's focus were entirely upon her. Only Sarah saw the Goblins move. She looked down at Hoggle. "Is there no other way?"

He grunted, lowered his head, and slowly shook it. Behind him, unnoticed by the others, a line of the eldest Goblins in the castle also solemnly shook their heads. That was why, she suddenly understood, they had attacked her knitting so. They had been trying to make her understand she was choosing her child over her husband. She could not, Sarah knew, and at least this way, they all stood a chance at actually having their lives, including her little Davy having a life she'd long ago given up hope he ever would. She turned to look into his beady but beautiful eyes again, touched his cheek, and gently squeezed. Then she nodded with far more bravery than she felt and placed his baby brother into the little boy's scaley arms.

"You'll take care of him, of course," she whispered, still crying. "And when he gets older," she said, dabbing the tears from David's eyes, "he'll take care of you too."

There was a sob released from behind her, and Sarah realized that all five of them were crying now. Then she felt, rather than saw, the room around them shift as Jareth weaved his magic around them. She did not have to look up to know where they were. Time, in the mortal realm, had a funny way of repeating itself. In his new life, her brother had ended up retiring in the same home where they had lived as children, although he had bought their father's old house from the person he'd sold it to in later years, someone neither of them had ever known before.

Vaguely, she heard a clock chime thirteen times. She did not move. She was hugging her boys, Toby's little head against her breast, and her arms tightly around David. She did not move when Jareth touched her shoulder, nor when he touched David's, nor even when she heard a man's voice calling out. She would not have recognized the sound of her brother's voice in this new life of his if she had not looked in on him so many times from her husband's crystal balls.

"Sarah," Jareth urgently whispered, "we must go."

Sarah gulped and forced herself to release her children. She rocked back on her heels and gasped softly. She had not even realized when David's green scales had been turned to white flesh. He was a handsome, if lean, little boy. She thought one eye looked a little darker than its match, but she was still stricken. "You're beautiful," she said, again caressing his cheek. She cupped his face in both hands, trying so hard to commit his image to her eternal memory. "You always have been." She leaned forward, kissed David's forehead, then kissed Toby's, and was just kissing David's again when Jareth gripped her shoulder and made them both vanish.

"What on Earth?! Children?! Where'd you boys come from?!"

The old man, pushing now into his sixties and never having had children, could not believe his eyes. Somehow, in the middle of the night, two little boys had walked into his living room! Or rather, a little boy who looked like he had never seen a good meal in his life and wore clothes that barely hung on him had carried a baby into his living room! "Where'd you come from?!" he asked again, stunned. "Where are your parents?!"

"Gone."

He scratched his head, shook his head, checked the doors, and found them locked. He checked the children for bruises or marks of any kind, still shaking his head in disbelief. "Where'd you come from?!"

"Sarah."

"Who?!"

Sarah could not stop crying, but her brother could not see her. Nor could her children or her brother's wife when she rushed into their family room, following her husband's distressed cries. Jareth shook his head, held a finger to his nose, and touched her brother's head. Toby -- or whatever he was calling himself these days -- did not seem to feel Jareth's touch at all, but suddenly he settled. His questions stopped. Instead, he asked, "Are you boys hungry?"

"Of course, they are, darling!" his wife exclaimed as the King of the Goblins lifted his hand from her gray head. "We'll whip you up some eggs and bacon and have you boys fed in no time."

Jareth stopped before his children again. They were both scared and confused, but David stood boldly, holding his little brother close to his tiny chest with his head held as high as any Knight. Pride swelled in his father's chest as he watched him. He wished there had been another way, but there had not been for him and at least this was better than what would have been his own fate. He touched his children one last time, weaving a spell over them both to bless them for the rest of their mortal lives, before turning, taking Sarah back into his arms, and promptly leaving the mortal realm behind.

Alone in their bed chambers once more, Jareth held Sarah as they both wept.







Time was a very funny thing. In the mortal world, it seemed to be constantly on a rotating wheel, and there was never enough of it. Yet down here in the Underground, it was endless, and if it was not for the changing of the stars and light in the sky, it would be near impossible to tell when day passed into night, or night faded away into another day. Trying to keep track of the actual hours was near impossible, and certainly pointless. Sarah had no idea how long they had been standing there, until she suddenly felt a presence.

She did not move from her beloved husband's arms as he cried as she had never known him to cry before. Jareth cried very rarely, but there had been times when she had held him in the past, often after they had made up from some disaster that he'd thought certain to send her away again. The revelation that he had been a small child growing up in the Labyrinth had not really been a surprising one. She'd always known her beloved was emotionally damaged, scarred deeper than anyone but herself would ever see far beneath his handsome visage. None other than those closest to them would believe that the Goblin King cried at all.

It was one of those rare individuals who stood in their doorway now. Hoggle's craggy face was etched in deep sorrow, and as she gazed at him from over Jareth's trembling shoulder, for the first time, Sarah saw the centuries in his lines and wondered just how long ago it had been that he had last been mortal himself. Of course, it was not until today that she had ever thought of the Dwarf as being mortal. She felt a shiver creep down her spine as she considered that her beloved Jareth had almost been reduced to the form of the very Dwarf before her now.

It seemed almost impossible, but nothing was ever as it appeared in the Labyrinth and anything was possible. She had learned that long, long ago. If her own brown hair could keep from turning silver over centuries, and Goblins could become any matter of animals, what was there to say that a man even as strong and sexy as her Jareth could not be reduced to the form of Hogwart? She knew his proper name was, of course, Hoggle, but it was also very, very clear why Jareth had nicknamed him such. What had Hoggle himself looked like, she wondered, if he had once been King? What she saw now was not his true form. She knew he could not have possibly have compared to Jareth, but -- if they could trade the form of Hoggle, and he would next go to join the Talking Heads, losing almost all traces of his own human or Dwarfish features, what was there to say that he could not once have looked just as stunning as her husband now did?

There were so many questions. Every day down here seemed to bring a hundred more. But right now, she could tell there was only one question on Hoggle's mind. What she did not see, however, was any trace of the fear he normally held for Jareth. It was other emotions that betrayed his inner thoughts instead. He was hurting, deeply, emotionally, and he longed to have his wife restored to him. But he was hurting for more reasons than that alone. She realized, watching Hoggle, that he truly had been like a father to Jareth at one time for it was with a father's concerned gaze that he now carefully watched them. He pressed his hands together, squeezing his wrinkled hands tightly into a joined ball, but did not speak a word. She saw tears shimmering in his deep, dark eyes and knew they were for more than just himself and his own Queen.

What had Hoggle been like before the curse had reduced him? It was no wonder he'd never told her before today, about his true story -- after all, just look at what had happened to Trely! They had another wrong to right, Sarah decided, and she certainly felt as though they had been standing here, crying for a very long time. Her children were safe, though her heart would always cry out for them. Her brother, in this or any life, would take very good care of them. If any harm were to befall them, she and Jareth would know, and she was certain her husband would find a way to make it right.

But right now, they had another broken heart to try to mend. Right now, they had another loved one -- and Hoggle was a dearly beloved friend, regardless of whatever his previous relationship with Jareth had been -- desperately needing their help, needing them, she remembered, to keep their promise to him. Refocusing her attention on her husband first, Sarah stepped back and cupped her beloved's face gently in her loving hands. She willed him to feel every amount of that love in her soft touch.

Jareth blinked owlishly through his tears. "That was a sacrifice I could never have asked of you," he whimpered.

"You did not. I gave it freely. Whatever power first cursed this land left us with no choice, for to lose you would be the greatest price of all. That, I could not bear," she said, shaking her head simply. She stroked his hair with loving, soothing fingers. "We did the only thing we could to stay as we belong, together. And besides, it's honestly more than just us who have something to lose here. What of the kingdom? What kind of King would either of our boys have been?" She'd like to have believed they would be merciful, good leaders, but she knew, though she had tried her best, Davy had no self-confidence. Toby had been just a baby of course, but if he was to be anything like the men in their family lines, his temper tantrums were going to be horrendous. Besides, it had taken her to gentle Jareth, and them both to lead the Kingdom into the prosperity and peace it now enjoyed. "What would become of our subjects if we were to abandon them?"

She spoke like a true Queen, but Jareth was having none of it. It was not, after all, as if he'd asked to be brought into this kingdom all those years ago, or to be born to a mother and sister who had never cared anything for him. "I care not!" He vowed, "If there was any other way -- "

She stroked his face, patiently, tenderly. "But there is not, beloved. Or it would have been found before now. We at last will break the curse."

He gently but deftly grabbed her hands and kissed the backs of both simultaneously. "Because of you, my Queen, my love. You have made the greatest sacrifice of us all." He'd known how badly she had wanted children when she had come back to him at last. Her desires to have a genuine family was what had kept him from feeding her herbs to begin with to keep her barren, and thereby prevent the curse without ever having to risk speaking of it. But she had made the sacrifice herself willingly, and he knew she would not hesitate to take the herbs when he told her of them.

She had chosen him. Since that first initial mistake when she had still been a naive girl child of only fifteen, she had persistently always chosen him. Yet she had never once curbed her good soul to keep from berating him when she knew he was in the wrong. It had taken over a century for him to ever admit being wrong once in his existence, but she had taught him how to accept those times now with grace and, where needed and appropriate, mercy. She had made him a better man, a better King, and she was handling all of this with the grace, wisdom, and love that befit a truly powerful Queen.

He kissed her hands again and laid his cheek against her hands. "Sarah, my Sarah," he crooned, rubbing his flesh against her hands and gazing lovingly into her eyes, "you consistently give so much to me." He had told her so very, very long ago that he would be her slave if she would just allow him to love her and rule over her. It was that silly speech he had to give every one of the girls who made it that far, but before Sarah, he had never meant a word of it. Losing Sarah had almost cost him his very soul, and his mind.

He had been in such a dark, wretched place until he had learned she had been searching for a way back to him, but though he'd ached to, he'd not been able to assist her in her quest. It was in the traditional rules that the Queen had to fight her way back to the King to be by his side again and be allowed to stay without sacrificing a baby. The baby she had eventually brought to him had not been a sacrifice but rather a desperate plea for a rescue he had barely been able to provide. Now their eldest boy would at last have a chance to the life that had been denied to his father and, up until now, himself. Jareth would keep very careful watch over both of their sons, and he would make sure that they had wonderful childhoods now, regardless of anything Sarah's mortal brother did or did not. He did think the boy would prove to be a good father -- he had in his lives before --, but he was taking no chances.

And if Sarah had taken the chance of sacrificing Toby in the first place, Jareth realized, she would not be the woman she was now. She would not be the mother or Queen she had become, and Toby himself would be trapped here as a Goblin, for he'd certainly not have replaced Jareth, and unable to provide a home for Jareth's children in his world. No, all had happened as it must, as painful as that realization would have been once upon a time. But once upon a time, Jareth had not thought he would ever be loved for his own self in his own heart and soul, heedless of his powers, magic, or his own good looks. "Tell me," he said, softly brushing his lips across her knuckles and never breaking eye contact with her, "could you have loved me in Hogwart's form?"

Her stomach churned, admittedly, at the mere idea, but she'd not tell him that. "I would love you no matter how you look, my King," she said, turning her hands to catch his and squeezing them, urging him to feel all the love she would always hold for him. "That was not why I made the sacrifice," she continued, shaking her head. "But from what you and Hoggle have explained to me this night -- " Hoggle's clearing of his throat told her that night was actually long over with, "I would not have remembered you. I fought my way back to you, my King, my love, my husband, and I will never allow any power to part us again." She stepped closer and kissed him, long and deep.

Jareth released her hands, freeing her to run her fingers up into his blonde, spiky locks while his own strong arms encircled her waist. In the recesses of his mind, he knew he had to gather those herbs with utmost quickness and care. But right now, it was enough just to kiss her, to hold her, and to love her. His Queen truly had been magnificently made, and he was so blessed --

Sudden clarity dawning on him, he broke their kiss to tell her something of great importance. His forehead pressed softly against hers, his own breath playing over her parted lips with genuinely fairy-light touches as he told her, "I have always known the Curse of the Goblin King." Perhaps it had not been always, but it had certainly felt like it had been always! He'd never thought he would ever be able to genuinely have an eternity with the one woman with whom he'd fall in love and actually have love him back. "But I have never known until this day what a true blessing you are, my wife. You, Sarah Williams," he vowed, cupping her face again and gazing directly into her beautiful eyes, "are the Blessing of the Goblin King. You truly have broken the curse, unlike any of the Queens before you, and there will be none after you." They would rule together, he realized, eternally now, and forever be able to revel in the love they shared.

She had no words to answer him even as his made her heart soar. She'd done right, she knew, as painful as it was by giving her boys to her brother. After all, now Davy could finally have the life his own mother had so cruelly deprived him of, and her own son could grow up in her world without ever having to risk being forced into replacing his father. He could have his own life, and build it the way he wanted, with complete freedom. "I love you," she was whispering as Hoggle, still in their doorway, loudly cleared his throat.

Sarah kissed Jareth again, and as they kissed this time, she brought her hands around her back to join with his. Gently, she pulled him from her waist and pulled his hands back around. Her fingers were still gently entwined with his when she broke their kiss. "There is nothing I would like more, my King, than to spend some quality time alone with you right now, but we are needed."

"They can -- "

Sarah gave him a pointed look, one dark eyebrow arched in indignation. "From what I understand," she spoke plainly, "the former King and Queen have waited too long in the curse already."

Her eyes did not move from his, and it was Jareth who eventually dropped his head. "I suppose," he murmured, but she saw the smile that chased over his handsome, haunted face. Seeing his expression, she had to wonder just what kind of parents Hoggle and Trely had been, but if good fortune would simply stay with them, and it should with the sacrifice they had just made, she would soon enough be able to learn for herself what kind of parents they had been, and would be yet, for her husband.

Sarah let Jareth lead her, his head still tucked slightly and their hands still clasped, to where Hoggle waited, with growing impatience, in their doorway. Jareth purposefully raised his beautiful, proud head as they neared the former King, but for once, the only time Sarah could ever recall, Hoggle did not cringe but stood steadfastly in the door. Without any pomp or circumstance, the moment they reached him, Jareth brought his head down on top of Hoggle's little, leather cap, the same cap, Jareth and Hoggle knew, they had each worn as babies in the labyrinth, and the same cap that every King before them had worn, both as the babe with the power and the former, Dwarfish shadow of their previous selves.

Jareth had just a split second to reflect on how thankful he was he would never have to wear that wretched form, or, far worse, forget Sarah and be stuck as a talking rock in the depths of the labyrinth whose sole purpose was to help steer the better girls away from the true pathways before he teleported them from the palace. With his eyes closed, his wife's hand held in one hand and the old man's head in the other, Jareth made swift timing right to the spot where Trely had just picked her favorite dolly up out of the muck and mud of the garbage dumps, as Sarah called this part of the land, for the umpteenth time.

"Why do you keep running away, Dolly, heh?" Trely muttered. Jareth felt Hoggle tense even as he felt a stabbing pain in his own, so oft untouched heart. That voice! He could forget who these eldest of the female Goblins was every time until he heard her speak. But that voice was the same voice that had first soothed his nightmares, the voice who had sang countless lullabies to him when no human had wanted to be a mother to him. He had never been anything but a ticket to fame and fortune for both his mother and his sister.

But Trely... Trely, who had been barren naturally (and not through any herbs), had wanted him. She had yearned for a son. He had fulfilled the role readily, and Hoggle... Hoggle, for all the old man's faults, he had let him be the son his wife had never been able to have. He had allowed him to grow and flourish in her loving care, though always knowing that he would come to replace him. No wonder there had been such anger between them! But nonetheless, he had allowed Jareth to have a truly loving and caring mum.

Jareth stared down at Hoggle, whose skin, so darkened by centuries spent in the sunlight they did have here in the Labyrinth, had turned pale. The Dwarf, the former King, the only thing he'd ever known as a Father was fighting back both fear and tears as he glowered up at Jareth. "What?" he grunted.

"Don't be cruel, darling," Sarah urged in a soft whisper.

Their voices made Trely jump and spin around, placing her doll behind her. "You can't have my dolly! Can't have her! Nope! Won't share her! No way! You can't make me!"

Jareth glanced at her, shoving his tongue against his cheek for once to keep from saying something very cruel. Sarah squeezed his hand. This trash Goblin was his mother, Jareth understood, and the Dwarf beside him was the one of only three males he'd ever had to learn from in his life. Sir Didymus had been but a pup back then, so he'd hardly been a formative figure. Wyrm had been a dear, loyal best, but again... Hoggle was his father, Jareth thought, as much, perhaps even more so now, as he would ever be Davy's father. He had given up everything so that his wife could have and keep a child. "You truly did love her, didn't you?"

There was a depth of pain in Hoggle's eyes as Jareth questioned him. Trely, despite their nearness, could not hear him. "Heh?" she asked, leaning forward and cupping a hand around her green ear. She knew the man was her King, and she should be cowering on the ground before him, but she quickly tucked her dollie behind her back, lest he try again to take her. "What are you two saying?"

"I did. I do. I love her as much as you love Lady Sarah." He gulped before daring to venture, "I loved you too, kid."

Jareth arched a brow and looked down his beaklike nose at him. There were still parts of him that doubted Hoggle, but for the most part, he felt the truth of the old man's words deep in his heart. Rather than speak again, risk voicing emotions to which he did not care to admit, the Goblin King decided the time for questions was over. He knew how to fix this issue, now that his own curse was absolved. He would keep the blessing of his wife, whose hand he now realized after another gentle squeeze, for the rest of eternity. Surely, he could grant these two, without whom he would not be here now, the thing they most treasured, yearned for, and deserved. He knew how; after all, every creature in this realm bent to his will. Evey living and nonliving thing was his to command.

Jareth's hand had left Hoggle's head, but now he deftly knocked the cap from his head and then clasped his actual skull, with its very little hair. With his other hand, he reached out and grasped Trely's bony, green shoulder. He yanked them together, using both might and as much gentility he could still grant while making certain what needed to be done did take place. He placed them before each other, scarcely a breath between. His hands dropped to their chests, his palms cupping the place over their now pounding hearts, and spoke over them words from one of the lullabies that had been repeated to him so many times over his childhood, as crazed as it had been by humans' and even some other species' standards. He understood, now, those coded lines from the most ancient of Elven tongues.

When a pure, white light washed over both the small people, he knew the spell was setting to work. He pushed them together, clicking out, "Now," to Hoggle. Hoggle grabbed Trely and kissed her, not daring if she slapped him yet again. She started to squirm, but only for a moment. Jareth could see nothing but the light, but his wife's soft, startled gasp told him the changes must be beginning. When the light finally began to fade, Jareth could see Hoggle had not changed at all, but Trely had. Where the old, withered Goblin had hunched now stood an elegant, Elven woman with long, dark hair that was not unlike that of Jareth's own Queen.

Emotions stuck in his throat as she looked, with realization and sudden understanding, onto her husband. "Hoggle!" She threw her arms around him and began covering him with passionate kisses, as Jareth turned and walked stiffly away.

"It is done," he said to Sarah, taking her, with a single thought, back to their Royal Bedchambers.

Sarah smiled at him in the endearing way she had when she thought he was being "adorable", as she had called it previously -- not a word he would normally like to hear spoken in the vicinity of his name. She had almost always been able to see right through him, although it had taken her decades to learn how to identify his true emotions. Right now, she knew he was feeling so much more than words could ever actually voice. The time would come when he would get a chance to voice them, and it would come soon, but it would take Trely and Hoggle more than a couple days to journey back to the castle.

His eyes sparkled, reminding Sarah of a recognition she'd nearly completely forgotten. She rushed to him, erasing the small distance that had remained between them, and touched the side of his face with a loving hand. Her mind flashed back to the night before, when she had noticed how her child, in his newly human form, had had one brown eye and one blue. "You gave him your eyes," she breathed in wonder, gazing up into her husband's emotional eyes.

He nodded, struggling to force down the thick wad of emotion clogging his throat. "I did." He caressed her face and hair as he explained, "Any time he looks into a reflection, he will see his eyes, and be reminded of his dad's, and if he remembers me, he'll surely remember you." His lips tenderly brushed her forehead.

He was surprised at the sob that broke from her, even more so because she was smiling through her tears. "We can look in on them anytime," he added quickly.

"Oh, I would like that! I would like that very much!" He lifted a hand, and three crystal balls materialized in between his fingers. He began to spin them, elegantly and with increasing swiftness, as he thought of his own children. Soon enough, their images appeared in the balls. It was a new day in the world above, and David's new mum was discussing taking him to enroll in school while Sarah's brother deftly cleaned baby Tobias' chin. They were clearly already a happy little family of four, only in part due to the spells he had woven around them all, a strong magic that would never be able to be broken by anything or one in the mortal realm.

He opened the arm attached to his free hand, silently inviting Sarah to wrap herself in him, which she quickly did though her eyes never left the balls for long. She was just silently beginning to wonder if Davy could have forgotten them already when he went to wash his hands, at his new mother's soft instructions, and looked into the mirror above the sink. "Love you, Mommy," he whispered. "Love you too, Daddy." He blinked those eyes that looked so much like his father's, as fresh tears sprang to both Sarah's and Jareth's eyes.

"I did tell him not to call me that, you know."

"It's no wonder you did, with the Curse and all, but you also know you love it!"

Jareth's fang-filled grin did not dispel Sarah's theory. "They seem to be in good hands," Sarah said. "Let's let them be -- "

"One moment," Jareth said, his grin turning cocky. He brought the twirling, glittering crystal balls closer and spoke just above them, so close his lips almost touched them, "I love you too, David."

Then he looked pointedly at Sarah, who tilted her head questioningly at him. His eyes gestured toward the balls. She hesitated only a moment longer before she leaned in to them as he was doing and spoke, "Mommy loves you too, darling."

His parents watched as Davy jumped up and down with excitement. His parents had not forgotten him and still loved him! Why, of course they had -- after all, had he not always wanted to be a real human boy? And now he was, and still complete with a family in the world from which he and his mother had been banished centuries ago! He was finally going to have the opportunities he'd never thought he would have, while spending all that time in his Goblin form! "Yeah, yeah, yeah!" he shouted excitedly, still jumping up and down.

"I'm glad you're that excited by school," his new mum's voice called, and all three, David, Jareth, and Sarah, smiled coyly.

"We'll be watching," Jareth whispered into the balls and, thus, to his boy. "Should you ever need us, for any reason at all, just call, and we shall be there." Then he tossed the balls into the air, took his wife into his arms, dipped her, and kissed her long and deep. It was time to celebrate for, clearly, his plan had worked! They would be able to have the best of both worlds after all! They would be able to still care for their children, watch them grow old and have families of their own, and would never suffer from losing one another as every royal couple in the Labyrinth had done so before! He would not lose his greatest blessings, Sarah and her love, but they would actually live happily ever after after all! He heard the Fieries and Goblins all begin to sing throughout the castle as he twirled his wife, lifted her into his arms, and continued to passionately kiss her, his entire heart and soul singing for joy.



The End