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Chapter Text

A deafening screech yanked Sarah from unconsciousness and made her shoot up, unseeing eyes darting around. At first she stupidly thought a banshee was in her bedroom, but as the noise continued and her mind cleared, it started to sound more like metal scraping against stone. Light spilled into the room and Sarah managed to see a gigantic metal door swing forward before she was forced to slam her eyes shut, yelling out at the pain that seared through them.

Somebody with a broad palm seized her arm and pulled her upright, forcing Sarah to open her eyes a slit. A square-jawed man with a head of spiky violet hair stared down at her, a deep-set scowl etched on his face.

“Who’re you?” Sarah slurred and blinked at him, still groggy.

He ignored her and held up a small, perfectly round crystal ball. Sarah was instantly awake at the sight of it, and with a gasp she tried to yank her arm out of his hold. He let go of her arm, but grabbed her hand instead and held her with an iron grip, forcing her fingers open. He pressed the crystal against her exposed palm, so hard her skin pressed into her bones, and Sarah watched fearfully as it clouded before turning a deep blue color. The man dropped her hand and turned his back on her, blue crystal popping out of existence.

“What did you just do?” she asked.

He ignored her and disappeared through the door, which looked like one from an old-fashioned prison—solid and sans bars, with nothing but a food slot.

“Hey! What did that mean?”

The door slammed shut, and Sarah crouched down so she could look through the food slot and watch his retreating back. Growing angry, she banged her fist against the metal and yelled, “Hey, eggplant! Come back and let me out of here now! I’m talking to you! Hey!”

Eggplant continued to ignore her, getting smaller and smaller the farther he walked. Sarah huffed out a breath, but sucked in another one right after when her head spun from the simple gesture. A throbbing started up in her temple, and she leaned her forehead against the door.

“What the hell did you do to me?” she breathed, much quieter than before.

Did it have something to do with that crystal he tried to force into her skin? Sarah held up her palm to look for anything unusual, and found nothing but her own unblemished hand. Then again, she reasoned, whatever magic he’d just used on her probably wouldn’t leave any physical traces; the roofied peach she’d eaten during her time in the Labyrinth hadn’t. And speaking of the peach… there was no way the Goblin King wasn’t involved in all this. Crystal balls, magic and crazy hair were his forte.

Scowling, Sarah forced herself to stand up and back away from the door, but stopped at once when she felt something tug on her ankle. She found a loose-fitting iron cuff clamped around her leg, and with her eyes she followed the cuff’s long chain to a ring buried firmly in a stone wall.

Groaning, Sarah dug the heels of her hands into her eyes and muttered, “Chains… of course. ‘Cause, y’know, why ruin the moody dungeon atmosphere?”

The faintest of chuckles came from behind Sarah and she whirled around at once, surprised to see someone else in the room. All she could see of the person was a portion of a pair of legs, clearly male and clad in knee-high black boots. A cuff was clipped around his ankle as well and his chain was as long as hers, allowing him freedom to reach her if he wanted to. She immediately backed away.

“Who are you?” Sarah asked, trying to sound fierce and failing when her voice cracked.

“Surely, Sarah, it has not so been so long that you have forgotten me,” he said, in a rich baritone voice.

Sarah flinched, not needing to see the face blanketed by shadows to know he was the Goblin King. Nonetheless…

“Why don’t you come out of the dark so I can actually see if it’s you?” she said, still wary.

There was silence, and Sarah saw one of his boots shift.

“I cannot,” he said, finally.

“Why not?”

“I would rather not move, if it’s all the same.”

Frowning, Sarah considered going over there and investigating, but her better instincts immediately vetoed the decision to go anywhere near the Goblin King, in all his mysterious, shadowed glory.

Throwing up her hands, she said, “All right, fine, whatever.”

Her head gave a low, tell-tale throb and she winced, certain a hell of a headache was coming on.

Jareth apparently saw it, because he suggested, “Sit down and cover your eyes. The light makes it worse.”

She scowled but obliged, sitting down in the corner farthest from him and pressing her hands to her eyes. To her surprise, her dizziness and pain started to subside almost at once.

“So, since you apparently know so much about it, mind telling me what the hell was done to me?” she snarked, keeping her hands in place.

“What do you remember?”

Sarah’s brow furrowed, as she tried to recall what she was doing before all of this happened. It was a regular night in her regular life—she had been walking home from the library after going on a midterm study binge, and took her usual shortcut through one of the back alleys… except this time somebody had grabbed her from behind and pressed a bundle of cloth against her nose. She recalled it had smelled spicy, like some kind of herb. Probably their equivalent of chloroform.

“Somebody drugged me.”

“It was Feylan. Or Eggplant, as you have dubbed him,” said Jareth, with a hint of amusement in his voice.

“And what exactly did Eggplant drug me with?”

“An anesthetic herb. It is one of the few that are compatible with human physiology, although it has some severe side effects, such as your light sensitivity.”

Sarah blew out a breath and tried to stop herself from calling Jareth out. So all of this was premeditated—it had to be, if they’d gone out of their way to get drugs that wouldn’t kill her. The idea that the Goblin King could be behind it had been set aside upon discovering he was sharing the cell with her, but for all she knew this was just another trick. He was good at them, after all… and the fact that he was refusing to leave his shadowy corner wasn’t helping his cause. Best to play dumb and try to probe as discreetly as possible.

“When’s this gonna wear off?” she asked after a few minutes, sticking to the safe questions.

“I believe you should be fine by now.”

Sarah slowly pulled her hands from her eyes and blinked, relaxing when her eyes handled the scene just fine. They had also adjusted to compensate for the dim lighting in the cell, and she could now see the straight stone texture of the walls, with several other chains dangling from rings, as though the cell was meant to hold more people. It was cleaner than she expected a medieval dungeon to be—a bit dusty, but no leftover torture devices or skeletons.

“Where are we?” said Sarah, blinking some more. “Are we in your castle?”

“No,” he responded, after a long moment of silence. “We are in the High King’s castle.”

“Who’s that?”

He took another pause, and Sarah looked towards him, surprised to find that she could now see the Goblin King—no details, just his figure. He was slumped over in the farthest corner, almost like he didn’t have the energy to keep himself upright. Curious…

“The High King is the ultimate ruler of my people, Sarah,” the Goblin King said. She shivered; the last time he’d said her name, he’d been in her face, angry, desperate and threatening. “He and the Council are the ones who keep our kingdoms in order.”

“Are they why you’re here?”

Probe carefully, Williams, she thought.

“They are indeed.”

He didn’t seem like he wanted to continue, but Sarah pressed on.

“Did you… I don’t know, piss them off or something?”

“I most certainly did.”

“But you’re a king,” Sarah said, frowning. “Aren’t you kind of untouchable?”

Jareth chuckled again. “I am only King of the Goblin Kingdom, Sarah. It is the smallest of kingdoms.”

She was stunned by the news, staring wide-eyed at her knees. She’d never even imagined anything outside the Labyrinth existed.

He continued, “And even if it was not, it would be irrelevant. The High Council’s word is law, and if anyone defies their word, they are punished.”

“What did they tell you to do?”

His textureless figure turned, and Sarah could feel his eyes on her.

“They… requested I take part in a ceremony,” he bit out, “and I refused. One does not refuse the Council.”

“Then why’d you do refuse if you knew they wouldn’t take it well? What kind of ceremony was it? What’s so bad about it that you’d refuse?”

“Sarah, do take a breath,” Jareth said dryly, and she scowled in his direction.

“All right,” said Sarah through gritted teeth, “if that’s why you’re here, then why am I here?”

She was getting really sick of his long pauses. Why couldn’t he just tell her, instead of having to think over his answers?

“You… have regretfully been caught in the middle of this dispute,” Jareth said quietly. “You will also be participating in the ceremony.”

“What?” Sarah exclaimed. “I thought you said you’d refused.”

“I also said ‘one does not refuse the Council’.”

“Well sheesh, I don’t want any part of whatever ceremony your people have going on, especially if it’s so bad that you got yourself locked up over it,” said Sarah. “Can’t you just… magic us out, or whatever it is you do?”

“I’m afraid not. I have been temporarily stripped of my power, as punishment for refusing.”

“Temporarily?”

“It will be restored once the ceremony is complete.”

“Will they let me go home after it’s over?”

She heard him exhale a breath.

“They will. But it will take some time.”

“What?” Sarah frowned. “Why not?”

“It is… complicated.”

Sarah let out a dramatic groan and threw up her hands.

“Oh, for God’s sake.” She glared straight at him, looking at his face where she estimated his eyes would be. “If I’m going to be forced to participate in whatever this is, I’m going to need to know what it is and what it means. And I’m going to need you to stop lying to me.”

“I have never lied to you, Sarah.”

His tone was low and upset. She didn’t care, too angry to see straight.

“Fine, whatever, that’s an argument for a time when we’re not in chains,” she growled. “Now tell me what this ceremony is about.”

“I do not think you will enjoy the answer, Sarah,” Jareth snapped, sitting up sharply.

She saw him tense up almost at once and slump back down, letting out a groan of pain. Sarah frowned again.

“Are you okay?”

“I could be better,” he grunted. “Don’t, Sarah,” Jareth added firmly, when Sarah made to crawl over to him.

She paused. “Why not?”

He stayed quiet, so she continued her crawl. She flinched and stopped when her hand met something goopy and sticky in a small puddle on the ground.

“What the…?”

Sarah held her hand up to her face and gasped—it was blood. She immediately looked at Jareth, whose indiscernible figure looked stiff and unmoving.

Fearing the worst, she adopted her softest nurse voice and said, “Here, just let me see.”

His outline relaxed a little, and she used the opportunity to reach towards his arm, grasp it and gently guide him into the light. She flinched a second time at the sight of him; he looked like he’d been put through a wood chipper. His clothes were torn and soaked with blood in places, his skin was dotted with bruises and cuts in varying stages of healing, and swollen ligature marks made hideous circles around his wrists.

“Oh God, what did they do to you?” she said, shocked.

His head had been turned away from her—in shame?—but he laughed wryly at her question and lifted it to rest against the wall, showing off a cut lip and another bruise on his jaw.

“In… urgent situations such as this one,” he said, “the High Court is permitted to provisionally strip a monarch of his title and use whatever force is necessary.”

“They beat you up?” Sarah exclaimed, horrified as she looked him over. “Jesus, Goblin King, is that metal in your arm?”

He made a non-committal noise, now watching her face with hooded eyes. From here, it looked like they’d stabbed him with some kind of dark metal dagger and the tip of it had broken off. She made to touch the wound, but pulled back.

“I need to sterilize my hands—and your wound—before I can get the piece out,” she told him.

“Infection is not something my people fear,” Jareth answered back, in the quietest of voices.

“Are you sure?” He nodded, so she took his arm gently in her hands again. “It would be easier if I had a cloth, or some water.”

Sarah’s eyes immediately fell to the hem of his shirt, which hung almost in ribbons.

He noticed her gesture and said, “Do help yourself, Sarah. I have little use for a tattered shirt, in any case.”

Sarah nodded and leaned down to grasp the hem of his shirt, missing the way Jareth leaned his head down to take a deep inhale of her scent. He replaced himself just in time and allowed Sarah to grasp his arms, lifting them in turn so she could pull his shirt off. Her nose wrinkled and her brows furrowed at the sight of his torso, battered and covered in lash marks, but she silently went about ripping bandages from his shirt.

“Here,” she said, producing several long swaths. Perching herself so her knees were up, she placed his injured arm palm-up on her kneecaps like a pedestal and said regretfully, “This is probably going to hurt like hell.”

Without any more warning than that, she used a cloth to grasp the metal piece’s jagged corner and pulled. He yelled out in pain, but only for a moment, before he bit it back with an eerie amount of self-discipline.

“You okay?” she said, cradling the bloody shard in the cloth.

“I am fine, Sarah,” he said, panting heavily.

She grimaced at his response, but said, “The piece is out, at least. I’m just going to bandage you now, all right?”

He nodded, breaths evening out as he watched her tie the longest cloth around his dripping wound, tossing the metal piece into the corner where they’d couldn’t accidentally step on it.

“You are very knowledgeable in this field, Sarah.”

She shrugged. “I’m in a medical program.”

“You are a physician?”

“Sort of. More like a physician in training.”

Once again, she winced when she finished tying off the bandage and took his left hand, finding that two of his fingernails had been torn off. Unconsciously, she caressed his fingertips with her thumb, leaving his quick inhale unnoticed. She’d never seen him without gloves before.

“It will heal quickly, Sarah,” he said in quiet reassurance, almost like he was comforting her. “My kind is not so fragile as yours.”

Still, she thought to herself. Who in this world thinks it appropriate to beat a king? It seemed horrendously barbaric. Her stomach turned when a brief image of Jareth chained down and screaming as a faceless man tortured him.

“What is so bad about this ceremony that you’d go through this,” she asked, “just to avoid participating?”

“They involved you,” he murmured.

Confused, she looked up at him and was stunned to find his face a lot closer than she’d anticipated, so close she could see every detail from the dried blood on his mouth to the blown pupil of his right eye.

Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave.

Heartbeat stuttering, she hastily drew back a foot and stammered, “I-I don’t understand.”

At her withdrawal, he sighed and leaned back against the wall.

“It is degrading for royalty to be participants in the br—in the ceremony,” he corrected himself abruptly. “Such a duty is usually filled by unwed nobles. Kings are never approached to fill such a role.”

“And yet you were,” she pointed out.

“I know,” Jareth scowled, suddenly looking furious. “Sufficed to say, I was displeased and refused at once. But of course—”

“—one doesn’t refuse the Council,” Sarah finished for him, already getting sick of the concept.

“Precisely. They offered incentives, and then punishment.”

“Are they going to punish me if I also refuse?”

The look on Jareth’s face was Sarah’s answer. She wanted to press her hands to her mouth, but she refrained as they were sticky with Jareth’s blood.

“Just tell me what this ceremony is,” she pleaded with him. “I don’t want to go into this thing blind, Goblin King.”

“You will not like it.”

“I’d rather know.”

He heaved out another sigh, lifting his uninjured hand to run it through his hair.

“My people…” he started, looking pained, “live for a very long time, Sarah, in comparison to humans.” Sarah frowned; what did this have to do with a ceremony? “A consequence of this near-immortality is a serious difficulty conceiving children. As such, to keep from dying out, the Council has implemented the ceremony each decade as a failsafe.”

Sarah waited for him to explain further, but he didn’t.

“I don’t understand. What happens at this ceremony?”

Jareth let out an exasperated breath and snapped out, “They select two people to fuck in front of them, Sarah.”

At first she was just stunned at his sudden anger; when his words properly sank in, Sarah let out a horrified yell and immediately catapulted herself away from him. She’d been chained up in a castle dungeon with the Goblin King, and was expected to have sex with him in front of an audience so that they could keep the child that might come out of it?!

“Oh my God,” Sarah spat out, hiding her flaming face behind her hands. “Oh my God.”

“Indeed,” said Jareth wryly.

“What the hell kind of a ceremony is that?” she snarled at him through her fingers. God, no wonder he’d refused. “Is there anything about your people that isn’t totally barbaric?”

“I beg your pardon?” he replied indignantly.

His response only angered her further.

“I’m sorry—I was kidnapped at four in the morning, drugged and brought here for… that, but you’re the one who’s offended?”

“The breeding ceremony has become a well-loved practice, Sarah,” Jareth said. “It is implemented in most kingdoms, and peasants have created their own less official derivatives.”

“Great, so it’s National Screwing Day,” Sarah snapped. He scowled at her, but Sarah was on a rampage. “And all of this craziness is so that I maybe get pregnant? I’m not ready to be a mom! I don’t want to have a kid with you!”

“Do believe me, Sarah, I do not wish to conceive a child with you either.” The shadow in his eyes and the way he refused to look at her made her think there was more behind his words. “That was what Feylan was doing earlier. He was checking to see if you were ovulating.”

She hugged her knees to her stomach, terrifyingly aware that she hadn’t had her period for a while. If she wasn’t ovulating now, she would be soon.

“But why me?” she whispered, near tears.

She had her face buried in her knees, so she missed Jareth throwing her a regretful look in her direction.

“Several reasons,” he said quietly. “Humans are occasionally taken from your world, if the birth rate has been scarce. Fae women are quite often infertile, but human women are not. And you… mingled well with magic, during your time here.”

“In the Labyrinth?” said Sarah, lifting her head up. “I did?”

“Yes, Sarah. Most creatures of magic do not take well to mortals, but you managed to earn their loyalty.”

Sarah hummed in response, trying to remember which ‘creatures of magic’ she’d encountered. All she could think of were the fairies, one of whom had bitten her, and the Fireys, who’d tried to tear off her head. Maybe he meant Ludo? His rock-calling ability could definitely be classified as magic.

“Do believe me, Sarah,” said Jareth fiercely, startling her out of her daydream. “When I learned they had chosen you, I tried to fight them.”

“And that’s why they beat you,” Sarah mumbled, remembering his earlier words of, “They involved you.” Her face burned at the idea of the Goblin King enduring torture for her. “But you said they take humans sometimes. Do they just snatch them up like they did with me?”

“No. Normally, if they are forced to find a human, they take those who are without a partner and do not wish to have children. That way there is no attachment to the babe.” Sarah snorted with disgust. “The human is then returned home, with no memory of what had transpired.”

“Charming,” she said sarcastically. “Nice to know I’m getting the special treatment.”

There was another tense silence, before Jareth asked with clear hesitation, “You… are without a partner, yes?”

Face burning, she scowled at him. “Yes.”

“Are you a maiden?”

“What? Are you asking me if I’m a virgin?” He nodded, eyes blazing, and she blushed crimson and buried her face in her lap. “Yes, okay, I’m a virgin. Why?”

“Perhaps that is your ticket out of here, my dear.”

Sarah heard him shift and grunt, and she lifted her head again to look at him. He was struggling to sit upright, using his uninjured hand to lift himself.

“What are you doing?” asked Sarah with confusion.

“Attempting to stand,” Jareth responded. “I would appreciate some assistance,” he added with a piercing look, and she scrambled back over to his side.

Bracing herself, Sarah managed to support his mangled hand with her forearm, as he held onto the wall with his good hand, unable to stop her face from burning like a small sun. Now that she knew just what she and Jareth were expected to do, everything seemed suggestive—the way his hip pressed into her thigh, the way his head was bowing over her neck, and how he panted and grunted in her ear with the mere act of standing up. She felt a twinge in her abdomen and felt ashamed for it. Here he was, taking debilitating punishment to keep her from having to do this, and all she could do in return was think inappropriate thoughts.

Like all those nights she’d spent touching herself, imagining him flying in through her window and taking her without question. God, if it wasn’t for the fact that they’d have an audience, Sarah wouldn’t be complaining.

“I must speak with Feylan,” Jareth murmured, mouth still right next to her ear.

She shivered and then flushed, praying he hadn’t seen it. “Last I saw Eggplant, he was leaving.”

“He has a post just around the corner.” He quirked an eyebrow at her, and granted her a small smirk. “If I become enough of a nuisance, he’ll come.”

Sarah helped him across the room, both of their chains dragging behind them, a weighty reminder of the seriousness of their plight. Jareth dropped to his knees when he reached the food slot, and Sarah watched as he held his face so close to it, he was almost kissing it.

“Feylan,” Jareth boomed, in the strongest, most regal voice Sarah had ever heard him use. “I demand your attention at once!”

Sarah watched, wringing her hands as Jareth peered through the slot. He gestured at her to help him up again, and she obliged, backing them both up just in time for the door to swing open. Bright light spilled in—nowhere near as piercing and painful as before—and Sarah watched as Eggplant stepped in, still scowling.

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

He spoke in a much softer tone than Sarah had expected for someone so stony-faced. In the light of the doorway Sarah could properly make out Feylan’s face—his eyes were just as purple as his hair, pupils catlike, and Sarah wondered if he was a different race than Jareth.

“You must tell the Council that Sarah cannot participate in the ceremony.”

Eggplant cocked a violet eyebrow in her direction. “And why is that? Is she already with child?”

Sarah wrinkled her nose at him, and Jareth said in an earnest voice, “She is a maiden.”

Eggplant did pause then, staring at Sarah so hard she squirmed.

“I… will relay the news,” he said, before turning on his heel and slamming the door shut behind him again.

Jareth gave her arm a squeeze and told her gently, “Maidens are never selected for the ceremony, Sarah. It is considered an atrocity to have them sullied in such a way.”

“But what about you?” said Sarah. “You’ll still have to go through with it.”

“I will be fine, Sarah,” he answered, and granted her a warm smile that had her heart stuttering. “But I am honored to know you are concerned for me.”

Holy Jesus, was the only response she had the brainpower to think of, so instead she just blushed down at her shoes.

When she’d calmed down enough to think, she whispered, “You’re different.”

“Hm?”

“You’re different,” she repeated, daring to look up at him. He met her eyes with a firm stare, and she had to pull back a bit to stop from getting lost in his gaze. “Last time you were all moody and imposing, and… throwing magic snakes in my face.”

The side of his mouth quirked up. “As I said last time, Sarah, I was merely playing the role you wanted me to play.”

She scrunched up her nose. “Huh?”

“I am the Giver of Dreams, Sarah-mine,” he murmured, “and I’d seen yours long before we met. You wanted a villain to fight, and I gave you one.”

“So nothing you did was really you? You were just doing what I wanted?”

Did that mean ‘fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave’ wasn’t real too? She was torn between hoping it hadn’t been real, and hoping that it had.

“Most of it was not real.”

His deliberate use of the word ‘most’ had Sarah narrowing her eyes.

“Which parts were real?”

He sent her a blazing look that rocked her straight to her core, and she immediately ducked her head to stare at the floor, not sure she wanted an answer anymore. A few moments passed in tense silence before the door opened again. Feylan/Eggplant entered with an impeccably straight posture and a firm expression, and something about it told Sarah she wasn’t going to like his answer.

“The Council has decided to proceed with the ceremony as planned,” he said, and Sarah’s heart dropped into her stomach.

“What?” Jareth hissed. “They cannot! She is a maiden.”

“She is a human,” Feylan sniffed. “Humans do not value their modesty as Fae do. The Council will not make an exception for her.”

Sarah’s breath hitched in fear, and despite normally wanting to put up a brave front, she gripped Jareth’s arm like a child. Despite his wounds, he pushed her behind him as though to protect her from Feylan.

“You cannot do this,” Jareth growled, but Feylan was already disappearing back through the door. “I will not forgive you for this, Feylan!” he added, dropping back down so he could shout through the food slot.

He banged his fist hard on the door and hissed at the self-inflicted pain, realizing he’d used his bad hand. The image of Jareth knelt over the door swam, and a tiny, choked noise escaped her mouth and made him turn. He looked broken when he saw Sarah standing a foot away from him with tears spilling down her face, one hand pressed to her mouth.

“Oh, Sarah,” he breathed, opening his arms in invitation.

She took it at once, falling to her knees and lunging at him so she was half in his lap. Though his ribs likely ached, Jareth drew her as close as possible and gently rocked her, letting her sob against his bare chest.

“I am so very sorry for this, Sarah,” he said with regret.

Sarah clung to him and accepted his comfort. In God knows how long, she’d have to lose her virginity in front of a council of magical perverts. With the Goblin King. She wasn’t sure which part was worse, so she cried for both their sakes. The whole while Sarah cried herself dry Jareth kept busy, holding her tight, fingers slipping into her hair and cradling the back of her head. It helped console her somehow, and after a short while Sarah grew quiet, closing her eyes and just letting Jareth hold her.

Her eyes were heavy and she was tempted to drift off to sleep in his lap, but didn’t want the ceremony to come any quicker than it had to. Instead she thought hard about how to avoid it, cursing the Council for taking away Jareth’s powers. Unfortunately, the only plans Sarah could come up with that didn’t involve magic were ridiculous Mission: Impossible style forays that were probably doomed to fail. She almost burst into tears again; the reason she was a virgin in the first place was because she hadn’t wanted her first time to be some cheap hookup she’d later regret, and the Council was going to steal that from her. It wasn’t fair!

Almost on cue, Jareth let the hand in her hair slacken and drift down to her neck, stroking his thumb right underneath her ear. She tensed a little as a warm wave swept through her from the gesture, and then went totally rigid when it sparked a completely mad yet genius idea. It truly was her best option… but how could she possibly ask him? A violent blush burned her face, and she was glad it was hidden in his chest. God, she didn’t know how she would get over the mortification if he said no.

“Sarah?” She couldn’t help but lift her head to look at him. He looked concerned. “Are you all right?”

Go for it, Williams, she thought to herself. Just do it.

Sarah could taste his shock when their mouths connected.

Careful not to jostle any of his wounds, Sarah turned herself so she was facing him and let one hand drift up, cupping his sharp jaw and leaving no question as to her intentions. He seemed too stunned to do anything, so she let her tongue peek out and slide across his bottom lip, encouraging him to open. Jareth’s tongue darted out to meet hers in an almost curious way, and the moment he got the first taste of her he made a muffled sound and became more than a willing participant, kissing her back so fiercely her head jerked backward for a second. One hand seized her hip and the other wrapped itself in her hair, pressing her close enough to bruise. He coaxed her tongue into his mouth, sucking on it in such a blatantly suggestive way it made her shiver a little.

The man kissed like a last chance.

Underneath her palm, Sarah could feel the almost panicked flutter of Jareth’s heartbeat, and he was panting like he’d just run for miles. She wasn’t sure why, until his hands flew off her to grab ahold of her shoulders and push her away, staring at her. He looked half-terrified, and she was mesmerized for a moment by the depth of his differently shaded eyes.

“Sarah, what are you doing?” he almost growled.

Another blush came to her cheeks under the weight of his stare.

“I-I…” She swallowed hard. “I want you to be my first time,” she whispered, as though somebody was eavesdropping nearby. “Not in front of those people. I don’t want it to be like that.”

Still breathing heavily, Jareth continued to stare at her, looking uncertain; she scooted herself up so she was sitting in his lap and pressed her mouth to his ear.

“I want you, Goblin King,” she hissed, letting her breath wisp over his ear and feeling him tense. “In here, just us. No one else.”

Her own words were turning her on, but the ultimate nail on the head was when she pulled her face back and saw him with his eyes squeezed shut, a look of pure lust on his face. Faces like that should be carved onto marble statues.

“Sarah,” he grunted. “Think about what you are saying.”

“I am thinking,” Sarah insisted, pulling away for a moment. “I’ve had partners before, Goblin King. Do you want to know why I’m still a virgin?” Slowly, he opened his eyes to meet hers, a blazing look on his face. “It’s because I didn’t want to just lose it to someone who just wanted to get laid. I didn’t want to look back on my first time in the future and regret it,” she continued, playing a finger over the sharp edge of his collarbone.

He swallowed hard. “You will regret this.”

“Not if it’s you. Not if it’s just us.”

Jareth scanned her entire face as though searching for dishonesty. Sarah meant her words, but her head was so turned around by the insanity of the whole situation, she wasn’t sure if she would mean them later on. Reverently, he brought a hand up to graze the side of her face.

“Dear Gods, Sarah,” he breathed. “You would allow me?”

He acted like she was offering him the universe on a silver platter, and it made Sarah’s fear all but evaporate. Overwhelmed with a bizarre sense of gratitude, Sarah threw herself at him again with all the shamelessness of a harlot, and this time Jareth met her mouth with equal fervor. Her hands plunged into his unruly hair—she was surprised to find it a lot softer than it looked—and he made a little wanton noise when her fingers scraped a trail over his scalp.

She tasted the smallest amount of blood and her tongue darted out to search for the source, realizing Jareth’s lip had split again. Sarah pulled back, suddenly aware of his injuries and wondering if he was even able to do this at all, but he just seized her hips and yanked her forward again. He redirected his attention to her neck, tipping her head back and brushing a path of gentle kisses down the length of her throat, licking away the spotty trail of blood that was left behind. Sarah melted in his arms at the almost reverent gesture, and Jareth used the opportunity to carefully lower her onto the stone floor.

“What about you?” she breathed out, lightly touching one of the larger bruises on his bare torso.

“I don’t care,” he growled into her neck.

Sarah stilled anyway so she could watch him for any signs of pain, but Jareth, other than holding himself stiffly above her, showed none. He moved his kisses to her shoulder and then over her collarbone, pausing just above the swell of her breasts as though asking permission. Her core throbbed at the mental image of Jareth’s mouth latched around her nipple, and Sarah scrambled to pull off her blouse, almost tearing it in her haste. Jareth smiled against her skin and helped her undo the buttons with his good hand, pushing it off her shoulders and tugging it out from under her once it was off. He gently lifted her up so he could find the clasp of her bra, but after a while of fiddling with it he frowned.

“What the hell?” he said, sounding so bemused and adorable Sarah just had to giggle.

Brushing his hands away, she arched herself and circled her hands around her back to undo it for him. At the last moment Sarah was hit with a wave of insecurity, gripping the loose bra to keep her breasts covered, the usual self-deprecating comments on loop in her mind. What if they didn’t live up to the standards of his race’s women? What if all of her didn’t live up to the standards of his race’s women? She’d never seen one, but if Jareth himself was any indication, she probably couldn’t hold a candle to them.

“Sarah.”

His voice was quiet, but it broke her away from her thoughts. Jareth looked somber and apprehensive, and Sarah was expecting him to tell her to knock it off, she was perfect the way she was, just like in her stepmother’s corny Harlequin novels.

“I will stop, if that is what you want.”

Sarah blinked, realizing he’d taken her embarrassment as withdrawal. Swallowing, she decided it was time to stop playing coy and let go of her bra, ignoring it when it slid onto the floor and left her naked from the waist up. His eyes flicked down to her chest and returned to her face, as though still trying to maintain some sort of professionalism, but Sarah lifted one arm to loop around his neck and tilt his gaze back to her chest.

“I don’t want you to stop,” Sarah told him, and let her free hand trail down his torso and palm the front of his pants.

She didn’t need Jareth’s stuttering breath to know she’d found what she was looking for. She curled her hand around the outline of his cock and felt an odd mix of fierce lust and anxiousness at the solid width of him. How was he possibly going to fit? She remembered after a pause that she was supposed to be doing more than just feeling him, and experimentally rubbed the heel of her hand down his length.

“Good gods, Sarah,” Jareth moaned, seizing her hand with his own and pressing it down harder, showing her how he wanted it.

A slow, steady pulse throbbed between her legs and all she could think was Christ, that’s hot. As lost in lust as he was, she wriggled underneath him and whimpered, “Fuck, touch me.”

Jareth, still thrusting against her hand, immediately seized her breast and squeezed tight enough to hurt; she kicked her head back, surprised to find herself loving the pain. With her hand still trapped against his groin, she used her other one to tug at her pants, trying to shimmy them off. He reluctantly released her hand to help her, pulling her jeans and panties down to her ankles as far as the cuff of the chain would allow. For a moment Sarah was pulled back to clear-headed reality, realizing with another wave of mortification that she looked stupid with her pants barely hanging on, feet still clad in sneakers. He didn’t seem to notice, fingers trailing up her bare thighs and gently squeezing the flesh there, having come down a little from whatever frenzy he’d been in now that her hand wasn’t anywhere near his cock.

His fingers drew closer to her center; she sucked in an awaiting breath, unsure if she should spread her legs wider, beg for his touch, or just do as her high school girlfriends had instructed and let the man figure it out for himself. Jareth made the choice for her, gently easing her other knee to the side to make room, spreading her embarrassingly open. She squeezed her eyes shut under his gentle scrutiny, believing if she didn’t she’d spontaneously combust.

Her eyes flew open again and she let out a surprised noise when he slid his index finger into her. It felt a bit like when she touched herself, but his finger was wider than hers and stretched her a little more than she was comfortable with yet.

“You’re not ready yet,” he murmured, echoing her thoughts as he withdrew his hand. He took her knee in his palm again and leaned down to press a trail of kisses down to her mid-thigh, meeting her eyes. “May I?”

Sarah nodded automatically, although she didn’t understand what he was asking—later she would note the bizarreness of the trust she’d displayed. She watched in shock as he lowered himself, his scorching stare only stopping at the last minute, and slipped his tongue into her folds. She let out another startled noise, far louder this time. Her hands whipped towards him—either to push him away or pull him closer, she wasn’t sure yet—but, uncertain of where their boundaries lay, she instead brought them back to her sides and scrabbled for purchase on the dusty stone floor, and holy shit, she thought, the Goblin King is going down on me. She felt him chuckle against her skin, like he’d read her mind (although he was probably laughing at her stunned reaction) before hitching one leg over his shoulder with one hand and tilting her hips up with the other hand on her backside.

The tip of his tongue painted thin, teasing lines up and down her slit, and just from the simple action her core throbbed like her heart had dropped down between her thighs. Her breath stuttered when he passed just over her clit, just enough to graze it, and he used the hand not holding her upright to slip his finger inside her again, pumping it slowly. She burned with each withdrawal and sucked in a breath with every return, and cried out when Jareth switched tactics and dragged the flat of his tongue over her sensitive bud.

Fearful of Feylan or some other guard hearing her, Sarah dragged her now dusty hand up to her face and clapped it over her mouth, letting her moans loose into her palm. Jareth growled and, to her shock, lightly bit down on her clit. She yelped, hips jerking from the sensation, only just catching the end of what Jareth was saying.

“…yourself—talk to me, love, let me listen to you…”

The Goblin King does some fantastic sexy talk, she thought to herself, whimpering a little from his words.

“Wh-what about Eggplant?” she breathed, voice cracking. “What if he comes to check?”

“He knows better than that,” Jareth said huskily, nuzzling the soft skin of her inner thigh with his nose, finger still thrusting inside her. “Just relax, precious… Like you said, it’s just us.”

Just us, Sarah repeated in her mind like a mantra, and nodded—and then immediately kicked her head back again when Jareth picked up right where he left off, flicking his tongue over her sex. She allowed herself to moan at the end of each heaving breath, crying out when he sped up his hand, and even breathed out a sharp, “Fuck,” when Jareth pulled her plump, hard little clit into his mouth, making her realize she’s actually a very loud woman.

He hummed in approval at her curse, prompting Sarah to try and lift her head to watch him. She let out a little whimper at the erotic sight of him buried between her legs, eyes closed like he was in bliss. His back rocked a little, and she raised herself up a bit higher to investigate; she collapsed back down immediately with her loudest groan yet when she found he had slipped his other hand out from underneath her, and was thrusting his still-clothed erection against his palm.

“Oh God!” she moaned, feeling hot and feverish and unbelievably turned on.

She blindly reached out with one trembling hand to rest it on his bare shoulder, moans increasing in pitch every time she felt his arm move to touch himself. Sarah felt herself finally building up, abdomen tightening with pleasure, and she squeezed his shoulder in a fumbling attempt to warn him. Jareth just pulled his hand away from his cock and twined his fingers with hers, continuing his vicious attack on her until suddenly her entire body seized up, breath stolen from her lungs, mouth dropped open in a cry and eyes forced shut against the forceful wave of her orgasm.

Sarah hit the ground with the force of a fifty-foot drop, melting over the stone tiles as she tried to gather her mind back together and catch her breath. Jareth was still bringing her down with little licks that grew lighter, until finally she couldn’t help but flinch away from his mouth, and he resolved to press little kisses to her raised thigh.

She opened her mouth to say something, and to her surprise, what came out was, “Holy fuck.”

She dissolved into embarrassed giggles, and Jareth tossed back his head and laughed as well—a sound she immediately knew she wanted to hear again. They just stared at each other for a moment, smiling like idiots, and Sarah once again opened her mouth talk—tell him something nice, like how incredible that had been, or how she thought his genuine smile suited him better than his usual smirk. Instead, remembering why they were here in the first place, she tugged on their still-entwined hands.

“Come here.”

His smile melted into something softer—she’d call it ‘loving’, if she dared to think the word—and he obliged, lifting himself above her again. Sarah’s hand raised up to caress his bruised jawline, and at the motion he finally kissed her of his own accord, groaning a little when Sarah adventurously darted her tongue out to taste the remnants of herself on his lips.

Figuring he’d been teased enough during this… whatever it was, Sarah pulled away and whispered, “Take this off.”

All of her embarrassment had fled (probably due to having the Goblin King’s tongue buried in her folds) and he seemed to adore it, eyes on fire as he stripped without once breaking their mutual stare. Sarah got a glimpse of him—dark, arched and longer than she’d expected—before he slid between her thighs, lining himself up. His eyes met hers again, full of a warning she understood at once—there was no going back after this. Nodding, Sarah wrapped her arms around his shoulders, a twinge of nervousness in her stomach.

“I’m ready,” she said, taking a deep breath.

Jareth immediately pushed all the way inside her, and an uncomfortable, aching pinch radiated through her insides. She grunted in pain and gripped his shoulders a bit too tight for a moment, legs instinctively trying to close but meeting his hips instead. Her insides clenched around him, but that made it worse, so she tried her best to relax.

Shuddering a bit, Jareth still found the mind to caress her hip and murmured, “There now, love, it’s over.”

“Don’t move yet,” Sarah bit out.

“I won’t.”

They stayed like that for a while, Sarah wincing against the discomfort of being stretched and Jareth trying to soothe her with soft touches and kisses here and there. Eventually it faded into the background, and Sarah let out the breath she’d been holding, loosening her iron-grip on his shoulders and letting her legs relax.

“Okay.”

Jareth’s hips immediately stuttered, like he’d been holding it back for a while; she gasped but, since it didn’t hurt as much, she gave his back a caress with one hand. He exhaled, breath playing across her face, as he gave a few slower, experimental thrusts, carefully watching her face for any signs of discomfort.

“It’s nice,” she assured him, bringing her hand over his jaw again. “You can go how you want to.”

He growled low in his chest and kissed her again, biting down gently on her lip as he picked up the pace a little. Her breath hitched—this was better than nice. His hand slid up her stomach and grasped one of her breasts again, and Sarah moaned against his mouth. Experimentally, she pushed her hips up on Jareth’s next downward thrust and they both let out startled groans. Well now she knew what all the fuss was about, she thought to herself. Madonna sure knew what she was talking about.

“Oh fuck, keep doing that,” Sarah burst out, when Jareth changed the angle so he was grazing her clit with every thrust.

“Yeah? Good?” he panted.

Cocky asshole, he knows it’s good, she thought, but forgave him when he bent over to catch her nipple between his teeth. Her fingers buried in his hair to keep him in place and she met him for each thrust, trying not to close her eyes at the overwhelming pleasure; he was watching her with a gaze so razor-sharp she feared she’d get cut if she looked away, his pace increasing with every flutter of her lashes or breathy sound she made.

To Sarah’s surprise, Jareth was the first one to break away, squeezing his eyes shut with a muttered, “Damn it.”

Sarah whimpered when he suddenly pulled out, her walls clenching and burning at the loss of him. She lifted her head up to see him with his eyes still closed tight, body trembling.

“What…?”

“You’re coming with me.”

Before she could respond, Jareth pushed two fingers inside her and mimicked what he’d been doing earlier with his cock, his thumb swiping over her clit; she jerked at the firmer touch, mouth falling open. Still, she couldn’t help but feel a bit selfish.

“Oh! Y-you already took care of me earlier, you don’t need to—”

“Sarah,” Jareth half-snapped, in that imposing yet ridiculously sexy tone of his.

‘Don’t defy me,’ she supplied in her mind.

“I do not care what sort of meager standards Aboveground men have; you are coming with me,” he demanded—stated, more like it, as though it was concrete fact.

As though to solidify his point, Jareth dove his head between her thighs again and gave her swollen clit a good hard suck, and Sarah was pretty sure the world had crumbled just like all those years ago. It didn’t take long before she was digging her nails into his skin, scrabbling to pull him up and moaning a string of near incoherent words.

“Fuck, come back, I’m close, Jareth, I’m gonna…”

At the accidental drop of his name he moaned like she’d touched his soul, hauling her upright into his lap and impaling himself on her again. She clung to him for dear life as he pounded into her, hands leaving finger-shaped bruises on her hips to match the ones she was making on his shoulders. His name fell from her lips in a litany as she ratcheted higher and higher, and he answered her with an earth-shattering little moan every time. One of his hands fumbled between them to play with her clit again, bringing her closer to the edge, but she was still a step behind him.

Despite his efforts she was able to watch him shatter beautifully underneath her, mouth open like he was stunned at how good it felt. His thrusts stuttered but didn’t stop, even as he spilled inside her, and another firm press to her swollen clit was enough for her to fall after him. The force of her second orgasm knocked the breath out of her—although Sarah could hear herself crying out loud enough to make her own ears ache—and for a moment her mind clouded with unawareness, something like a fainting spell, until she reawakened and found herself being caught and cradled by the Goblin King.

Chapter Text

“Are you all right, Sarah?”

Maybe it was because the breath-stealing orgasm he’d given her was still making her brain fuzzy, but Sarah dissolved into giggles again. “You’re kidding, right?”

She felt him smiling against her bare shoulder, and she only just managed not to jump when she felt him kiss it.

“No, it was a serious question.” He heaved a forlorn sign that played through her hair, and his voice became somber again. “I truly apologize for the circumstances, Sarah. Ordinarily, I would have courted you first… and chosen a different location than a dungeon, naturally.”

She laughed at the word ‘courted’ but when he sent her a serious look she mirrored it. “Believe me, Jareth, I enjoyed it.”

Sarah noticed his nostrils flare and his breath hitch at the sound of his name again. She wasn’t sure where this kink had come from, but then she realized she had never once called him by his name—it had always been ‘Goblin King’.

She opened her mouth to comment on it, but what came out instead was, “Ugh,” when she shifted in his lap and felt a rush of warm, sticky liquid trailing down her thighs.

“Ah,” said Jareth, when he noticed. “Hold on.”

Gently setting her back down on the floor, he reached far over to the side and snatched up the remaining pieces from his destroyed shirt. With a handful of cloth, he carefully cleaned her up; Sarah watched him while chewing on her lip, wondering if this was the part where they would start getting awkward around each other. She had just freely (and wantonly, if she was being frank) given her virginity to a person who, up until a few hours ago, she had assumed probably hated her guts, and he was being an incredible gentleman about it too. It was a bit disconcerting, to be honest—she’d always assumed (fantasized) the Goblin King would be as controlling in bed as he’d appeared during her time in the Labyrinth, all fierce growls and taking her when he wanted against the nearest surface, horizontal or otherwise. She shivered at the thought.

“Cold?”

“A bit,” she said, although it wasn’t the reason she’d shivered.

“We should dress. There should be people returning with dinner.”

Her face burned at the idea of being caught naked with the Goblin King—from Eggplant’s comment, they already found her people to ‘lack modesty’—so she nodded and arched herself so she could pull up her panties and jeans. She spotted him staring at her breasts, pants halfway up his legs, and she couldn’t help but grin a little at his evident approval. Sarah wasn’t sure where her previous shyness had fled to; maybe there was something liberating about watching a gorgeous man struggle not to fall to pieces above her.

“Can you pass me my bra?” she asked, and then laughed when he snatched it up and handed it over with a grudging look at the offending fabric. A sudden question occurred to her. “How are you feeling?”

“Hm?” He looked up, an amused expression on his face. “Surely you are not asking if I enjoyed it?”

“No,” said Sarah, and they grinned like idiots at each other for a moment. “I meant your bruises and stuff. You could barely move before.”

“Your arrival in the cell had woken me from sleep, Sarah,” Jareth told her. “Injuries always feel worse after rest.”

“You get stiff because you aren’t moving,” Sarah finished for him, nodding as she pulled on her blouse. At the mention of the Council’s punishment, she hesitantly pressed into uncomfortable territory again. “What chance do I have of getting pregnant when it’s, y’know, time?”

The amusement left his face, and she wished she hadn’t brought it up.

“About eight percent.”

“What, that’s it?” exclaimed Sarah incredulously.

“Whatever do you mean, ‘that’s it’?” Jareth frowned. “That is a significant chance Sarah—a Fae woman’s chance is less than three percent, and infertility is not a women-only issue.”

“I just mean… well, an average human has about a twenty to thirty percent chance.” At Jareth’s stunned look, she noted, “I guess that does seem pretty crazy from your side. Although a lot of people have trouble sustaining pregnancies, let alone getting pregnant,” she added, remembering a neighbor of hers who’d had seven miscarriages before giving birth to a premature son.

“We are lucky in that regard,” said Jareth. “There are very rarely complications.”

Sarah was about to comment, but an imposing knock sounded on the metal door and nearly made her hit the ceiling.

“That would be dinner,” Jareth assured her, and sure enough the door swung open to reveal Feylan and another servant came in carrying trays. “Set them there.”

Sarah watched as the two set the trays on the ground as far away from her as possible in the cell—that was probably on purpose, judging from the look of death Jareth was sending Feylan’s way.

The two servants bowed. “Your Majesty.”

“Get out,” he snapped.

They bowed and left, Feylan remained stony-faced but the other servant looked a bit shocked, and ordinarily Sarah would feel sorry for them if she didn’t remember they’d probably be watching her and Jareth fuck to get pregnant later on. To get her own jab in, she glared daggers at Eggplant’s back and flipped him off, much to Jareth’s amusement.

“I don’t think Feylan would understand that particular gesture, had he seen it,” Jareth commented with a smirk, before gesturing her over to the trays. “Come and eat, Sarah; surely it’s been a while.”

It actually had, now that she thought about it. She obediently made her way over to the trays and plopped down next to him, staring in amazement at what the servants had delivered: a bowl of unfamiliar fruits, glazed rolls and a tureen of some kind of yellow soup, with two bowls and spoons set aside for them.

“This is… fancier than I expected,” Sarah said.

“Hm?” Jareth answered, busy ladling soup into one of the bowls. “What do you mean?”

“Well we’re prisoners,” she pointed out. “I mean, I was kind of expecting the whole bread and water treatment.”

Jareth snorted, handing her the bowl of soup. “I am still technically a king, Sarah, not a common thief. Bread and water would be unacceptable even if I had bludgeoned the High King to death.”

She smirked at his joke, but it abruptly dropped off when she realized that yes, he still technically was a king. I slept with a king, she thought, stifling a giggle. Wait ‘til the girls hear about this.

He quirked an eyebrow at her expression, so she turned her attention to the soup he’d given her.

“What is this, anyway? Chicken?”

“No, it is elk,” Jareth said. “If we prepared chickens for meals, the goblins would surely revolt.”

“What?” said Sarah with a frown, as she tasted her soup. Not bad. “Why?”

“Well to make a comparison, it would be the same as preparing dogs in the Aboveground.”

“Okay, yuck,” Sarah grimaced into her soup. “So chickens are pets. Noted.”

“Not so much pets as things to poke with sticks or shoot peas at,” Jareth corrected, a strange cross between amusement and exasperation on his face.

Sarah snorted, as she dipped a roll in her soup.

“When I was a kid, I used to tie up Merlin’s fur with my hair ribbons. It’s the same principle.”

The two grinned at the antics of eleven-year-old Sarah, and she set her empty soup bowl down and leaned over to explore the fruits.

“What is this, a grape?” Sarah asked, picking up a red-skinned fruit a little too round to be a grape.

“An Underground offshoot of one, yes,” Jareth replied, setting his own bowl down to watch her.

She tentatively tried it, jumping when it made something of a high-pitched squeak when she bit into it.

“What the heck?” Sarah swatted at his arm when Jareth laughed like she’d just done something hilarious. “It isn’t funny. What was that?”

She almost wished he wouldn’t answer—his laugh was gorgeous and so was his expression.

“It’s merely a chemical reaction, Sarah.”

“Karen would freak if something like this was served at the dinner table,” she said with a grin, as she bit into another one and heard it squeal too.

He laughed again and replied, “This is not something served while dining in polite company. Who wants to have conversation interrupted every ten seconds with a fruit’s protests?”

“That’s true,” Sarah giggled, before picking out another fruit. “Hey, I know this one—it’s a ‘peasant peach’, right?”

Hoggle, Ludo and Didymus had brought the tiny apricot-looking fruits over years ago, back when she’d still been living with her parents. Didymus had told her that these were the lesser cousins of peaches, which were an Underground delicacy and only served to the upper class.

“Yes it is,” Jareth said, sounding confused. “How did you know that?”

She paused for a moment, realizing her mistake.

“Um…” She really didn’t want to lie to him, not after everything he’d done for her. “Sir Didymus brought me some,” she said finally. “He and the others visit me Aboveground. And… well, sometimes a stray goblin. Although they don’t seem to need the mirror like the others do—I keep finding them stealing my potatoes.”

“I know, Sarah,” Jareth told her quietly, shocking her out of her ramblings. “Do not worry.”

“You know?” He nodded, and she relaxed, smiling warmly at him. “Oh good. How are they?”

“Just fine,” he assured her. “Don’t you know?”

“No, it’s been a while,” Sarah shrugged, playing with the peasant’s peach. “I moved to the city when I started school and couldn’t take the mirror with me—it didn’t fit in my apartment. I only see them when I visit my parents.”

“How often is that?”

She wrinkled her nose as she pondered.

“Once every two or three weeks, I guess.”

He hummed thoughtfully in response, and Sarah, a bit forlorn with the topic, turned her attention back to exploring the Underground fruits, not noticing that Jareth’s eyes never left her face the entire time.

“Under no circumstances are you to wake her, Feylan,” Sarah heard Jareth snap.

She grimaced, still in the in-between place of sleep and wake, and lifted her head groggily to tell Jareth to shut up, she was sleeping. Instead, a large hand seized her arm and pulled it up at an awkward angle, causing her to cry out in pain. She yanked it back, instantly alert.

“What the hell?” she demanded, glaring hard at a scowling Feylan hovering above her. “What’s your problem, Eggplant?”

“I am Feylan,” he told her in his weird, soft voice, though he still looked angry. “I need to test you.”

“You could try asking, instead of pulling me all over the goddamn place,” Sarah snapped.

“Give me your hand,” he said instead.

“I didn’t hear a question mark at the end of that sentence, but it’s a start,” she grumbled, holding out her hand.

Her grumpiness evaporated immediately when Feylan pressed the crystal to her palm and, inside the globe, a vibrant violet color blossomed in lieu of the dark blue from before. Oh God, please let that mean something else—

“You are ready,” Feylan said tersely, and the ground fell away. He bent down and undid the shackle around her leg. “You will come with me to prepare for the ceremony.”

“I don’t want to come with you,” Sarah gasped, her heart nearly flying out of her mouth in fear. He grabbed ahold of her wrist and started pulling—again with the pulling—but she yanked right back, eyes desperately seeking out a devastated-looking Goblin King, already unshackled. “Jareth!”

Jareth snapped into action at once, shoving Feylan’s hand away as easily as swatting at a fly.

“We will go, but you will not manhandle her,” he commended, and Sarah was sure if looks could kill, they would already be attending Eggplant’s funeral.

Feylan inclined his head and beckoned them to follow him through the open door. Jareth, somber-faced and apologies in his eyes, placed a hand on the small of her back to lead her out. Sarah wished she could stay in the comfort of her cell, but Feylan glanced behind him to make sure they were following and frowned when he saw her frozen in the doorway. Inhaling, Sarah summoned up the bullheaded courage her child self used to have—she hadn’t strolled into a giant magical maze without it—and followed Feylan.

So focused was she on trying to appear calm, she nearly jumped into the ceiling when Jareth leaned down and murmured in her ear, “Listen carefully; they will be separating us soon so I wish to inform you of what is ahead.” Sarah swallowed hard—they were going to be separated? “They are going to offer you a potion. Be sure to accept it. It will make things… easier for you.”

“What kind of a potion?” she whispered back.

Jareth paused, and Sarah turned to look at him. It was at this moment that she was able to get a good look at him, split lip already healed without a trace to suggest it had ever been there, bruises already yellowed or gone entirely. He wasn’t kidding when he’d said he healed quickly, she thought to herself.

From the look on his face, though, he was clearly holding back some key information, unwilling to divulge it in case she got upset, just like he had many times back in the cell. It was infuriating, she thought with a glare in his direction. They didn’t have time for contemplative pauses.

“It is a strong aphrodisiac, Sarah,” he said finally, and Sarah’s mouth dropped open in shock. “It is normally given to the two Fae participating in the ceremony.”

“You want me to take an aphrodisiac?” she hissed at him. “Are you out of your mind?”

“It will help,” he insisted. “You will be very… focused. It will make it far easier to forget that we have an audience.”

“Are you gonna take it?” Jareth’s half-cross half-stunned expression gave it away. “You’re not gonna take it, but you want me to?”

“If I took it, I would likely hurt you. It will help,” Jareth repeated.

“I’m not taking it,” Sarah told him flatly.

“Why not?”

There were a dozen reasons Sarah could think of—the fact that she didn’t want a crowd of people watching her lose her mind and behave like a harlot because of some hocus pocus mixture of chemicals, and the fact that it would cheapen this thing further than having an audience already had (although she could see the irony in that). However before she could hiss all that at him, Feylan led them around the corner into a hallway, where two men stood to one side and two women stood on the other side.

As Feylan addressed them, Sarah instead chose to lean in as close as she could to Jareth’s ear, and breathed into it, “I didn’t need an aphrodisiac in the cell, did I?”

When she pulled away, Jareth had now-familiar fire in his eyes again, and the kind of expression that said ‘I want to fuck you against the nearest wall’. Her eyes, which were probably alight with their own heat judging from the twinge in her womb, were only torn away from his when she felt two pairs of hands on her—those of the women.

“Come,” said one of them, nudging her to an open door, gathering behind her so she had no choice but to walk.

It didn’t stop her from craning her head as far as it could go, watching Jareth, his gaze intense and painfully gorgeous, until they were both led out of each other’s lines of vision. Sarah morosely turned her head back, anxiety returning with the force of a crashing plane now that she was by herself with unfamiliar people who wanted to do her harm. She flinched when two sets of hands grabbed parts of her clothing—the waist of her jeans, the hem of her blouse—and she shoved them away.

The women frowned, and the shortest of them, hair a bright autumn color, told her firmly, “We need to bathe you.”

“I can undress on my own, thanks,” she said, trying to appear just as firm but just sounding meek.

The women glanced at each other, before the short one nodded. “Very well.”

“Are you gonna watch?” she snapped, when they didn’t show any indication of leaving.

“We are going to see you anyway,” said the taller one. “We need to bathe you.”

Sarah huffed and muttered, “Of course you do, ‘cause creepy ritual stuff,” and, glad that she hadn’t gotten the two men to attend to her instead, pulled her blouse over her head.

They seemed surprised with her bra, but didn’t comment. Once she was done undressing, hands crisscrossed over her breasts in an attempt to preserve some modesty, they led her into an adjoining bathroom. A gold-lined tub was filled with steaming water, and the tall one pinned up her hair with a thin clip and pushed her towards the tub so vehemently that Sarah stumbled getting in.

She huddled into the warm water as much as she could, letting them scrub and soap and rinse with little to no complaint. She allowed herself the barest, most secret of smiles when she noticed a set of finger-shaped bruises on her hips; she covered them with her palms as best she could, unwilling to share it with the other women. When she was done, they patted her dry with a towel and the auburn-haired one handed her a mass of sprig green silk cloth.

“What is this?” Sarah said, frowning.

“You will change into that.” When Sarah continued to frown at it, thinking it looked more like a tent than an outfit, the woman asked, “Do you need help dressing?”

She wanted to snap ‘no’ and toss them out on their butts; instead she nodded, knowing she could never figure out how to put on the pile of silk. They hopped to it immediately, straightening it this way and that before pulling it over her head. It fluttered down and settled over her body, and Sarah found it to be some sort of dress a bit like a toga. There were slits down the sides where the fabric crisscrossed, just peeking at the skin of her waist, and the hem of it lengthened in the back like a sort of train. And it was very loose—Sarah was afraid that if she shifted too far to one side, her breasts would show through the side-slits.

“Here, drink this,” said the short one, tearing her attention away from the dress.

She scowled at the bottle the girl was offering her and asked, although she already knew the answer, “What is that?”

“It will help you through the ceremony.”

“That’s the aphrodisiac, right?” Sarah snorted at their shocked expressions. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

With that, she snatched the bottle out of the woman’s hand and poured its contents into the still-full bathtub, eyes never leaving the women as if daring them to stop her.

The shorter one sighed. “Very well, if that is how you wish to proceed.”

Sarah was led out of the bathroom, and she heard the tall woman whisper to her companion, “Humans are so peculiar.”

With no other words spoken, Sarah was directed back out into the hallway, where the women bowed and departed. She was left alone with Feylan, who was still looking like he’d rather be dead than here.

“Through there,” Feylan said, directing her to the door behind him.

When all this is over, I’m asking Jareth to fire you, Sarah snarled at him in her mind. In reality, she simply scowled and stalked into the room.

Her courage vanished like a breath on the wind. The room was something like a bedroom, with the bed (four-poster, also draped in green silk) sitting in the very center like an altar. On either side of the room nearest to the high ceiling were two opera-like balconies, seating what had to be half a dozen people in each one. Their eyes all swiveled down to stare at her. She stared back, too nervous to run, feeling like a rat in a lab experiment. It wasn’t the Roman gladiator-type arena she’d been imagining, but it was a small relief.

“Sarah,” came Jareth’s voice from the other side of the room.

She snapped her head down to see him, also wearing one of those bizarre green outfits (though his showed a lot more chest and less leg). Still mindful of the Council watching, she resisted the urge to toss herself into his arms and instead power-walked to meet him. He was the one to take the initiative, drawing her in close and humming when she hugged him as tight as she could.

“You didn’t take the potion,” he said, with mild disapproval and a whole lot more pride.

“Neither did you,” Sarah guessed, and his sigh confirmed it.

Her cheek pressed against his warm chest and she could hear his heartbeat. It sounded almost musical. They spent a minute just holding each other and swaying, until a sharp voice barked out in the echoing chamber, causing Sarah to jump.

“You will begin.”

She shivered a little under the weight of dozens of stares, and kept her head down despite being tempted to seek out the source of the voice. Looking for courage, she tilted her head up to look at Jareth and found it in the soft stare of his unequal eyes and the shadowed panes of his precisely cut face. He was impossibly beautiful. Unbidden, her mind went back to seeing this stunning face contort in ecstasy, and her breath hitched as a throb started up in her gut. Maybe she would be able to do this.

“Sarah,” he murmured, and she heard an apology underneath her name.

She unashamedly tilted her head up to kiss him, because she wanted to. Jareth’s somewhat defeated sigh played across her lips as he surrendered to it. He was almost passive in his reciprocation, making no move to deepen the kiss or move it anywhere past a sweet meeting of lips. Painfully aware they’d need to speed things up, lest the Council grow impatient and just make things worse, Sarah blindly sought out his hand. Jareth’s fingers curled around hers in a semi-tight grip, like he was grasping something fragile but worthy of worship, and Sarah took the slight distraction from their horrifying situation as an opportunity. Pulling her mouth away slowly, as if daring him to chase after her, Sarah met his hooded gaze with her own and used their clasped hands to back him towards the bed. He followed her without resistance but looked like his mind was elsewhere, eyes searching her face like he was trying to memorize it. Sarah nervously bit her lip, and his eyes dropped down to stare at it.

Thinking on her feet, Sarah schooled her gaze into a (hopefully) come-hither expression, pressed her mouth to his ear and murmured, “I’m here, Jareth.”

He sighed again, allowing her to coax him onto the bed. He pulled her on top of him as he laid back on the pillows, his wispy gold hair a vibrant contrast to the grass-green silk. Sarah was relieved to find the bed’s canopy allowed them the smallest bit of privacy—not enough to conceal their bodies but at least their heads—but she suppressed any signs of relief, unwilling to break the spell. It was much easier to believe they were alone now, unable to see the dozens of eyes on her. She slid on top of him in what she hoped was a seductive fashion, doing an accidental on purpose little grind as she seated herself in his lap, being careful of his bruises. Jareth watched her with his unwavering gaze, eyes half-closed and mouth open.

“Sarah,” he whispered, bringing her hand up to his mouth to kiss their entwined fingers.

Her breath hitched and her eyes stung, and she immediately knew which parts of her adventure in the Labyrinth hadn’t been fake. She crushed their mouths together, desperate to distract herself before she burst into tears. Jareth answered with a fervor of his own, tongue sliding across hers just like it had in the dungeon. She made a noise as the thought of what they’d done in the dungeon caused another throb between her thighs, pressing herself down in his lap a little. They could do this, she thought to herself.

Their little bubble of sweet seclusion was popped by the sound of one of the Council members absently clearing their throat. They both froze; Sarah was instantly aware again of their audience, watching her writhe like a harlot in the lap of one of their kings, waiting for them to… She swallowed hard, her throat closing and her ears ringing with the deafening ambience of the room, her skin suddenly too hot.

Sarah blinked, and found the Goblin King staring at her with a gaze as hard as stone, his bruised jaw locked in a grimace. Under her palm, she could feel his pulse beating wildly—he was just as horrified by this as she was. The realization grounded her somehow. Never mind her anxiety—Jareth had to actually… perform. She inhaled deeply, trying to gather herself back together.

“Remember the dungeon,” she said, because that’s what was helping her.

She watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed.

“The dungeon?” he whispered, so quietly she barely heard it.

Sarah nodded. “It’s just like the dungeon. It’s just us, like it was before.”

Her words sounded hollow to her own ears, so to make it more real she lifted herself up on her knees and gripped the hem of her outfit. Nobody was here but them, she repeated in her mind as she arched to pull the green silk over her head. It didn’t matter if she was naked—nobody was here, so it was all for him. It was easier to believe when Jareth had trouble keeping his eyes off her jutting breasts, reminding her of his fight to remove her bra, the way his long fingers squeezed and played with her nipples. From the slack look on his face, Jareth was thinking of something similar. She subtly breathed a sigh of relief when she felt him slowly hardening against her thigh.

Confident now that she’d gotten them into a better mindset, Sarah mimicked her earlier actions in the dungeon and slipped her hand up his thigh under the silk, boldly grasping his naked cock. His hips jerked and his eyes slammed shut as Sarah explored with inexperienced fingers, loosely gripping around his width, palming the base and trailing her fingertips around the head.

“Fuck, Sarah,” he grunted, hand shooting down to cover hers again.

He closed his fingers around hers to tighten her grip, guiding her into a gentle glide up and down his length. Sarah never thought she’d get this turned on from just touching someone, but Jareth’s face was contorted into that fucking gorgeous expression again and it made her skin hot for a whole new reason. The thought of bending down and taking him in her mouth burst into her mind, but despite desperately wishing to see what kind of face he’d make if she did it, that was going to be for a time when she truly had him all to herself.

Jareth let go of her hand and allowed her to set the pace, reaching out to touch her in return. One of his hands curled over her bottom and guided her down to his level so he could catch her bottom lip between his, the other hand roughly gripping her breast in the way he knew would drive her wild. She gave a little moan just for him, tightening her grip on his cock and rocking her hips against his thigh.

He pulled away from their hard kiss to ask, “Are you sore at all?”

“A little,” she panted, licking his taste off her lips. “I’m fine.”

Another cough sounded from above them, but before it could jar either of them back to reality again, Sarah let go of his cock to grab Jareth’s hand off her ass, guiding his fingers between her legs. If the cool feeling on her thighs and Jareth’s razor-sharp stare were any indication, she was just as wet as when he’d had his tongue inside her. She breathed out another moan at the memory, and then did it again when he easily slipped a finger inside her, the soreness barely a shadow compared to the pleasure.

More noises from their audience made Jareth close his eyes like he was trying to ground himself again, hand still inside her.

“We’re not here,” Sarah murmured soothingly, grinding herself on his hand.

His eyes opened again and the side of his mouth lifted, moving his fingers in a slow thrust. He looked at her in awe, basking in the sight of her seated on top of him.

“Where are we?”

Sarah thought back to one of her teenage fantasies, one she had dreamed on a humid summer night that had been so outrageously naughty she’d woken up sweaty and aching, and got herself off in minutes. She bit her lip, wondering if she’d be crossing some kind of boundary between them if she bared herself to him like that. She almost laughed—there were no boundaries with them anymore, not now.

“On your throne,” she finally said.

“On my throne,” he repeated on a breathy chuckle. Her face burned with embarrassment, but Jareth was grinning like the thought was more intoxicating than amusing. “And how would we go about that?”

She paused like she was thinking, but it was mostly for show—the vivid images from that dream were burned into her eyes.

“You’re under me,” she began, “and I’m sitting in your lap, just like this.” She punctuated her words with a little grind on his hand, gasping when her own movement made his knuckle slip over her clit. “Ah—your hands are tied to the armrests.”

“You’re riding me,” Jareth guessed, his voice low and full of wonder. “Like a queen.” Her stomach swooped at his words, but he pressed on. “Can I still touch you?”

“No, you can’t touch me,” she half-snapped, reveling in his fascinated stare. She had no idea where this newfound boldness or this talent for dirty talk was coming from, but now that she’d started she found herself unable to stop the words from spilling out. “I know you want to, but you’re not allowed. All you get to do is watch me. You like watching me fuck you, watching my tits bounce. You want to touch them so bad but you know you can’t. That makes you hot, doesn’t it Jareth?”

“Fuck, Sarah.”

They shared a moan when he seized her hips and pulled her closer, his cock sliding between her damp folds. She instinctively angled herself so his tip rested at her entrance, and with a press of her hips she sank down on him, both of them letting out startled groans. Sarah winced when he pushed past her sore entrance and she took a pause, thighs trembling as she rested above him. She squeezed around him, trying to get used to the still-new feeling of having him inside her. Jareth grunted, his hands pushing at her hips again, trying to coax her into moving. She wriggled experimentally, encouraging another sound from the Goblin King’s mouth, and pushed herself up with her hands splayed on his chest. With a sigh of relief, Jareth’s hands slipped down to her bottom again, guiding her into a slow rhythm.

Just like in the dungeon, he locked her gaze with his own, imprisoning her in a world where only his eyes and body existed. Her mouth dropped open, just as amazed by the pleasure as she was the first time, reveling in the slick glide and the burning looks. His hand slipped up the damp skin of her back and circled around to play with her breast again, rolling her nipple under his thumb. She breathed out a little moan, wishing she could kiss him, but her rocking motions prevented a kiss from being sustainable.

As though he’d read her mind, Jareth turned his head and pressed a kiss to the soft skin of her wrist, groaning as he darted his tongue out to taste her. From his searing hot stare and the deliberate movements of his tongue, Sarah could tell he was remembering the time he had his mouth buried in her folds, her clit caught between his lips, and she moaned loud enough for the sound to echo a little in the cavernous room.

“I loved feeling your tongue inside me,” she breathed with no shame, crying out at the sharp upward thrust her words spurred from him, amazed at her own audacity.

“Sarah,” Jareth hissed in warning, but as his fingers slipped over her clit he growled back, “And I loved watching you come.”

Her mouth dropped open as his words sparked her into quickening the pace. Her thighs and arms burned with the effort but she ignored it, breath coming out in sharp pants. When she came it was a surprise, pleasure suddenly crashing over her, every muscle in her body seizing up at the sheer intensity of it. Head tossed back and mouth agape, she barely registered it when Jareth seized her hips in a vice-like grip and swept her underneath him. She moaned as she collapsed onto the pillows, and held onto his shoulders for dear life as he began pounding into her, chasing his own release now.

“Oh Jareth,” she breathed out as she calmed, and that was what did it for him. He gripped her hips hard enough to hurt, pressing his face into her neck to muffle his groans.

And then all was still.

They both panted from exertion, Jareth still draped over her body, but suddenly the room was ice cold and pitch dark. Sarah could hear the shuffling and quiet murmurs of people leaving the room, every footfall or swish of clothing now deafening. Jareth’s warm body suddenly lifted off her, leaving her alone. Her throat closed and she couldn’t breathe.

“Sarah,” she heard Jareth’s voice coming from somewhere in the darkness, imposing and a little bit scared. “Look at me, love. You’re so brave. Just breathe. No, get away.”

A hand too large and rough to be Jareth’s seized her upper arm and yanked her off the bed. Her ankle twisted on the cold stone and she cried out in pain, feeling the crumpled silk of her dress being roughly wrapped around her body like a blanket. Realizing she was being taken, Sarah sucked in a breath and her vision returned, just in time to see Jareth being pulled through the door he’d entered through by Feylan and another person.

“No,” she whimpered, trying to reach for him, but the faceless person dragging her out of the room grabbed her other arm and locked her wrists together in one inhumanly strong hand. “Jareth!”

She fought like hell the whole way down the hall, to absolutely no avail. She shouted for Jareth the whole way, only silenced when her captor shoved her into a featureless room and slammed the door shut behind her, leaving her to suffocate in total darkness.

Chapter Text

It had been an incalculable amount of time since Sarah had been shut into the dark room, but Sarah suspected around four days. This was, of course, assuming they were delivering her three meals per day, but who really knew with these people? The room remained as unlit as when she’d arrived, forcing her to grow used to fumbling around in the dark. The only people she’d seen any sign of were those who delivered her meals, and even they seemed determined to be invisible. Her meals were delivered on a through a dual-ended box set in what felt like an unpolished wooden door, and by the time Sarah opened her side to receive it, the other side was tightly sealed. Half-starved to talk to someone—anyone, even her captors—she tried numerous times to engage the person in conversation, asking them what their name was, when could she be let out, and could she please just speak to Jareth?

Sarah hadn’t seen him since the ceremony, and she wasn’t totally sure whether or not she should be worried for his sake or furious at him.

When they’d first tossed her in the room, for several moments all that had existed was the sound of Sarah’s rapid, stuttering breaths and the feeling of soft carpet under her naked thighs. She knelt in place and blinked rapidly, waiting for the darkness to subside like before, but it remained. The room seemed to be totally unlit, with no windows and the door tightly sealed. Was this another part of the ceremony? She wracked her brains for what little information Jareth had told her—he’d said they’d allow her to go home, but ‘not for a while’.

Before she could discern what that meant, a wave of cold horror swept over her skin at the remembrance of the Goblin King. Faced with the reality of what had just occurred, Sarah found herself trembling uncontrollably, stomach churning with the realization that those people had been watching them—these… intruders had just witnessed every expression Jareth made, heard every word they’d shared. And she’d just… forgotten they were there. For a brief moment, but nonetheless. Sarah had been forced to have sex with her childhood villain in front of dozens of strangers, and she’d forgotten they were there. What would her friends and family think of her if they knew?

She instinctively curled herself up to cover up her nudity, unable to shake off the phantom sensation of thousands of eyes watching her, feeling a piece of her innocence die off. She could just imagine what her stepmother’s reaction would be, heard her voice shouting “You’re a harlot! A disgusting little whore!” inside the walls of her skull. She stupidly tried blocking her ears with her palms, her shuddering turning into terrified, ungraceful sobs until the carpet underneath her head was soaked with tears. Her breath came out in stuttering pants, sounding too loud in the empty void. She wished for a brief second, with all her heart, that Jareth was with her.

This gave her pause. Why wouldn’t Jareth be in here with her? Why was she the only one being held captive? The Council had chained them up in the same cell together, so why not this room as well?

What if all of this really had been a trick? Sarah’s panicking mind began to warp her memories of her time with Jareth, scanning every moment in a desperate search for anything to prove it. She squeezed her eyes shut and took a deep breath when her mind found absolutely nothing but sincerity in Jareth’s behavior. The way he’d gazed at her had rattled her soul, and still did. She had been the one to initiate sex with him in the dungeon; she had been the one to coax him through the ceremony.

Another murmur of, “Whore,” arose from her thoughts but she pushed it aside, swallowing hard, somehow fortified. Pushing herself up slowly with trembling arms, she swept her arms out in search of anything that she might run into and, finding nothing, set out to explore. Her hands first met the door through which she’d entered, wincing at the bark-rough texture of the wood and pulling her hand away before she got a splinter. She shuffled to the side, keeping her hands on the smooth stone walls for balance and grounding.

Her knee knocked into something hard and she grunted, pulling her hands away to feel out the culprit. It was a thick mattress set into a wooden bedframe, and was draped in some kind of soft duvet that felt like animal fur. She crawled on top of it to gauge its width—it was massive, surprisingly—and her foot unexpectedly caught on the familiar fabric of her denim jeans.

Sarah cried out in delight as a quick feel around the bed produced all of her missing clothes, and she fumbled to yank them on properly. Feeling a little safer with her pants on, Sarah slipped off the bed and continued her search. A bit more exploring found a small adjacent room without a door, which contained a bathroom with a working sink, toilet and bathtub. Sarah almost sobbed with relief when she sat down to pee for the first time in over a day.

Since then, it had been an endless cycle of sleeping, eating, waiting, crying, repeat. Sarah had far too much time to think, worrying herself physically sick over what they may be doing to Jareth, wondering if he was also locked up somewhere or if he was just too ashamed of what they’d done to see her. Involuntarily, she started thinking about what it would feel like to have life growing inside her—Jareth’s child, no less—and she disgusted herself with the days when she wasn’t sure if she wanted to protect it or claw it out of her.

Sometimes she could hear people’s footsteps bustling outside the door, the chatter of idle conversation, the swish of someone’s robes against stone. Sarah had pressed every possible inch of herself to the door when two people stopped to have a conversation outside of the door—servants, it had to have been, since they’d been talking about some lord’s robes getting lost in the laundry and how they worried for their positions. Her mind raced as her brain processed the first stimulus in too long, and she’d actually cried when their inane conversation was shooed away by another person scolding them for being idle. She was terrifyingly sure that the minor noises from outside were the only thing keeping her sane.

Sarah was drifting off to sleep after another monotonous day of nothingness, when the faint creak of an opening door and then a second, much louder creak rang through the emptiness. She bolted upright, wide awake at once. Had they finally come for her?

“Who’s there?” she said, voice cracking after being unused for so long.

“Sarah.”

Jareth’s desperate call through the darkness triggered a fresh wave of tears, this time of relief. She shoved the duvet covers off her legs and stumbled onto the floor in search of him.

“Jareth!”

Arms outstretched in a now-natural position, she swung them around in frantic search of him, whimpering in relief when her hand grazed the silky fabric of a shirt. She unashamedly tossed herself onto him, pressing herself as close to him as possible until she could feel the hard planes of his chest against hers. His heart beat frantically underneath her ear, and she was so wrapped up in the relief that he was finally here with her, she didn’t register he was speaking to her until he repeated her name with slight panic.

“What?” she said, pulling her head away and realizing he’d also been running his hands all over her body.

“I asked if you were all right,” he said, now cupping her face and feeling for broken skin with his fingers. “Are you injured anywhere?”

“No, they just locked me in here,” she assured him, closing her eyes to enjoy the feeling of his hands. God, it was so nice to be touched by another person. “How long have I been in here?”

“Half a week,” Jareth murmured. He sounded regretful. “I’ve been trying to get in here since the cere—since they took you away.”

“Why did they put me in a room with no lights?”

“It’s a ridiculous after-ritual for human participants,” he explained, a tremor of rage in his voice. “They believe secluding them in a room without light or any interaction with people decreases the chances of complications caused by magical interference. That is why they wouldn’t let me see you, Sarah. No one is allowed to interact with you until after they’ve determined your… state.”

She scowled, even knowing he couldn’t see. She hated it when he tiptoed around the subject for fear he’d set her off.

“Why did they let you in here, then?”

“I was permitted to enter only if I agreed to keep my power suppressed.”

She suppressed the little thrill at the thought of the Goblin King choosing her over his power. “How much longer do I have to stay here?”

“Not much longer, I believe—a day or two, perhaps.”

“Praise the Lord,” Sarah groaned, imagining the day when they’d open the door and reintroduce her to light.

“What the hell did they furnish this room with?” Jareth said, and Sarah imagined his nose wrinkling.

“I think just the bed—I stopped exploring after the tenth time I walked into a wall.” She paused. “Wait, can you see in here?”

“Barely. There is a very small amount of light coming from the cracks in the stone.”

Sarah frowned, having never once noticed any light coming from anywhere. Oh God, she probably looked like a dirty mess, being camped out in the dark (and a dungeon) for so long. She’d given up on untangling the knots from her hair ages ago—could he see that too?

“Oh my God, stop looking at me, I look like death,” Sarah groaned, feeling her way up his face to press a hand against his eyes, one hand on his chest to steady herself.

He took her hand away from his eyes and laughed, and Sarah wished desperately to see it.

“You look lovely as ever, my Sarah,” he said gently, voice rumbling in his chest against her palm.

The absolute warmth in his voice was too much for her emotionally fragile state, and she ducked her head when tears and a vicious blush burned her eyes and face. She hoped he couldn’t see it, but from the way he swept his head down to brush a kiss over the warmth in her cheeks, she knew this wasn’t the case.

“How long do you get to stay?” Sarah asked on a whisper, hiding her face against his chest.

“I’ve already told them I’ll be staying until it’s over,” Jareth murmured, his now gloved fingers slipping up her neck into her hair. “I shall stay for as long as you want me, Sarah.”

“The whole time? Until they come back?”

“Of course.”

He led her with a hand on her waist towards the bed, lowering her gently onto the rumpled duvet. Pushing aside some pillows with her arms, Sarah made room for him and shivered at the feeling of the mattress dipping as he lay his weight across it and curled against her. What would happen, Sarah thought as she tucked her head under his chin, when the Council returned in a few days to get her? If she was pregnant, would she get to stay with Jareth until it was born, only to have it torn away and given to a family of strangers? What if she wasn’t pregnant—would they let her and Jareth say a last goodbye? Did she want to say goodbye?

She didn’t voice her thoughts, but she didn’t need to—they were both thinking it.

Time went much faster with Jareth at her side, and if Sarah wasn’t so goddamn sick of the dark she would have said it was too fast. Jareth was trying his absolute best to keep her entertained and it showed—he told her about his kingdom at first, and some of the beautiful places he’d like to take her (neither mentioned she would probably never get to see them, in what was perhaps the best of the two bad situations). She oohed appropriately, envisioning the splendor as he described a garden in the forests, where the fruit blossoms were in constant fall and a river flowed up the mountain rather than down.

“I’ve also met with your friends in the time since,” Jareth had said, while they shared Sarah’s meal of unknown finger foods on the carpeted floor (Sarah had refused to risk losing any food in the bed, since they wouldn’t find it until one of them sat on it).

“They know I’m here?” Sarah frowned around a mouthful of seedless raspberry-tasting fruit.

“I’ve left the reason why to tell them at your discretion,” Jareth replied, a little hesitantly. “It is likely they… suspect, however—I had them summoned to the High King’s castle after news of my participation reached my kingdom.”

He absolutely spat the word, sounding so upset Sarah scooched herself a little closer to his side.

“If anyone would understand, it’s them,” Sarah said, glad she had friends genuine enough that she could say something like that and know it to be true.

His answer had been to tuck a mussed lock of hair behind her ear, in a wordless gesture of gratitude. The solemnity of the moment had soon devolved into joviality as they decided to play a game of ‘guess what food this is’, which had devolved further into Sarah tossing what she had dubbed a blueberry with the texture of a snow pea in Jareth’s general direction. He was able to see it, the smug jerk, and managed to toss it back at her in a perfectly aimed shot at her chest.

“Jareth!” Sarah exclaimed, laughing as it bounced off her collarbone and into her cleavage.

It was on both their minds to suggest Jareth go get it himself, but both refrained—there was too much uncertainty about where they stood anymore. Was it even appropriate to talk about it, considering what had happened? They were at an impasse at this new level of intimacy, always close together and enjoying each other’s company; they had both clung to each other for dear life the first night they’d slept in the darkness, and it wasn’t awkward for even a moment, but they never went any further. While the thought was always there, in the back of her mind, Sarah was just trying to savor his presence. He seemed to want to do the same.

“Dance with me,” he said on the third day, taking her fingers in his palm with a heartbreaking amount of gentleness.

“In the dark?” Sarah said curiously, allowing him to guide her into the empty darkness of the room.

“I have no light source to give you, Sarah, so yes, the darkness will have to suffice,” said Jareth cheekily, interlocking his fingers with hers and guiding her hand to his shoulder.

With likely little room to truly sweep her into a dance as he had in the ballroom, the two waltzed in small circles, bodies close. Sarah had titled her face up to where his likely was, feeling his breath play across her face, wishing she could see him staring into her eyes with his endless, entrapping gaze. He hummed a gentle, fantastical tune to their rhythm and she dropped her head to lay it on his shoulder, enjoying the vibrations in his chest against her cheek. Sarah closed her eyes as their dance became more of a rhythmic swaying, his head dropping down to rest on hers. She would miss this so, so much when things were over; miss the kindness of this strange and wonderful man, miss his warmth, his hands, and his painfully beautiful face. A lump rose in her throat the more she thought, but she stubbornly swallowed it down, refusing to ruin the moment.

The choice was taken from her when the telltale creak of the door made them both freeze in place, heads whipping towards the source of the noise. This time the first door wasn’t closed, the door in her room opening to spill obscenely bright light into the room. The two yelped, Sarah especially as the first light she’d seen in a week seared fire into her eyes. She gripped Jareth’s shoulder tightly with one hand, the other shielding her face.

“It is time,” said Eggplant’s weird, whisper-soft voice.

“Give us a moment,” snapped Jareth, lowering his own arm from his eyes and squinting daggers at the other man.

Sarah rubbed at her watering eyes with her free hand, determined to at least see the outcome. A few moments of careful squinting and blinking made the light dim considerably, and it didn’t take long before Sarah was able to see the source—a glaring, firelit torch on the wall behind Feylan’s scowl, that was far dimmer than her untested eyes had thought before. She could finally see Jareth too, and almost teared up at the sight of him, his already unruly hair in an unfairly sexy mess from days in darkness.

“Are you ready now?” said Feylan impatiently, holding out a crystal in his stocky fingers.

“No,” Sarah muttered, but extended her hand before he had the chance to grab hold of it.

She winced at the crystal was pressed deeply against her palm, so hard she could feel the crystal’s glassy hardness against the thin bones in her hand. She blinked when nothing happened—it didn’t change color like last time, but rather sat there uselessly, reflecting an inverted image of Eggplant’s waistcoat. She wondered if they had to wait longer, but Eggplant pulled away the crystal without further delay.

“Wait, nothing happened,” Sarah said. “What does that mean? Why didn’t it change color?”

She looked to Jareth for answers, but he simply stared at the crystal with his mouth pressed in a hard line, expression indistinguishable. Sarah looked back at Eggplant, who was just as impassive. Without answering, the other man simply tossed the crystal at her; she dropped her hold on Jareth to catch it, only to have it pop between her fingers like a fragile little soap bubble, like the crystal filled with dreams after the castle fell apart.

When Sarah blinked next, there was dewy gravel underneath her palms, scuffing her skin as she found herself stumbling down to the ground. Her head snapped up, taking in the muted roar of a nearby highway, the humid April air and the cool breeze of early morning wafting through her hair. Her book bag lay in a crumpled heap where she’d dropped it, her notebooks dampened by the humidity. Pushing herself up and wiping her dirtied hands on her jeans, Sarah lurched out of the alley she’d been taken from and leaned against the cracked redbrick, watching the burnt oranges of sunrise play across the cityscape horizon. It could only be a few hours since she’d been taken, a week gone by with only two or three missing hours here to show for it.

They didn’t even let her say goodbye. She’ll never see him again, and they didn’t even have the decency to let her stay for the thirty seconds it would have taken to say goodbye and ask him to come see her sometime, maybe. The rush of blood roared in her ears as she turned away from the rising sun, snatched up her book bag and made her way home, eyes burning, shoulders squared.

“So I’m pretty sure I got like at least a B+ on that bio chem midterm,” Sarah’s friend Lisa was saying through a mouthful of her mom’s chicken parm. “I had that TA supervising, you know the one with the weird eyes that looks kinda like Jack Nicholson from The Shining? He really likes it when I wear the blue cotton shirt, if you know what I mean.”

“The one that makes your tits look bigger?” Sarah said, only half-listening as she absently chewed on a grape and watched other students mull around campus.

“Yes! I don’t know what it is about those thick-material shirts but they’re like magic.” Never noticing Sarah’s expression growing downcast, Lisa added, “Anyway, he’s a perv but if I get a decent grade on the bio chem it’ll make up for how disastrously I did on that pharmacology test. Why the hell did I let Tim talk me into pre-drinks and bar-hopping the night before? He’s such a prick, right?”

“Mhm,” said Sarah noncommittally, picking at her nails with a deep-set frown.

Lisa cocked a pierced eyebrow, but continued, “And I could tell that TA had a thing for me since that first time I handed him back the pop quiz after the Valentine’s Day kissing booth, remember that?”

“Yep.”

“Yeah, I totally saw him hovering after that. And after Mr. Wiley’s lecture last Tuesday, when we were in line to ask questions for the midterm, the TA grabbed me and pulled me into the supply closet, and made me go down on him for a better grade.”

“Hmm.”

“Sarah,” Lisa said sharply, making her jump and lift her eyes up from the grass. “Did you even hear what I just said? Don’t answer,” she scoffed when Sarah opened her mouth, “I know you didn’t, ‘cause the Sarah Williams I know would have been grabbing the TA by his balls if you’d heard.”

“Wait, what happened with the TA?”

“You tell me. Not what happened with the TA, what happened with you. You’ve been walking around like a soulless corpse since Tuesday.”

“Thanks, I’ve always been told my complexion has a nice deathly pale glow to it,” said Sarah sarcastically, stuffing her food back into her bag with more force than necessary.

“I’m serious,” Lisa said, hand around her arm before she could storm off.

Sarah flinched and yanked her arm away, still a little sore from when Eggplant had grabbed her.

“See, this is what I’m talking about! You’ve barely said anything all week, you’re not eating. You’re acting like a trauma victim—it’s like your head’s in another world whenever I talk to you now.” Watching with concern as Sarah’s expression crashed into something heart-wrenchingly desolate, Lisa sat the other girl down with a gentle hand on hers and asked, “Are you okay?”

Sarah opened her mouth—whether to tell her friend she was fine, or to somehow explain something, anything about the outrageous bullshit that had just happened to her, she didn’t know—but her words stuttered in her throat when a pair of large hands clamped over her eyes. She shrieked, jumping out of her seat and shoving the person off her.

“Sarah, it’s me, relax!” shouted Tim as he stumbled backward, hands up in surrender. “Man, I didn’t mean to scare you like that.”

“Christ, Tim, what’s wrong with you? She’s shaking!” Lisa snapped, hopping over the picnic table. With comforting hands around Sarah’s trembling shoulders, she said, “Sarah, did something happen to you?”

Her voice was so maddeningly soft and sweet, the textbook way to talk to a patient, as they’d both been taught. It was a little infuriating, but Sarah tried to refrain from glaring at her, knowing her concern was genuine. Even if her voice sounds fake as fuck right now, she thought.

“I’m fine, Lise,” Sarah said, brushing her off and sending her glare at Tim instead.

Lisa caught the look and shooed Tim away with an annoyed hand gesture and a mouthed ‘wait for me’. He had the grace to listen without complaint, giving Sarah’s shoulder an apologetic squeeze before heading over to meander by some trees. Sarah blew out a huffed sigh and was about to repeat her reassurance until Lisa interrupted.

“What’s that on your arm?” her friend said in horror, turning over Sarah’s arm to see the faint yellow-purple bruising from Feylan’s harsh grip. When Sarah struggled to find an answer, Lisa looked up at her with teary eyes. “Sarah, were you assaulted?”

“No, no, don’t worry,” Sarah assured her, although it was a little bit true. “He just… caught me the wrong way, that’s—”

“Who is ‘he’?” she interrupted, looking even more horrified. “Were you ra—”

“It was not rape, and it wasn’t him that grabbed me,” Sarah half-shouted before she could dare finish the word, her whole body flushing cold for some reason.

Lisa didn’t look convinced and took on that stupid fake nurse voice. “You know, it doesn’t always hit you until later that that’s what it was. Like, remember that time at Beth’s house party when Craig Fulcher waited ‘til I was completely plastered and then came onto me really strong, and I just kinda went with it? Maybe it wasn’t rape but it wasn’t, like, right of him, you know?”

“But it wasn’t like that,” she whispered, really, really not wanting to think about it. “I came onto him both times. I wasn’t drunk. The first time he asked if-if I was really sure. It wasn’t like that.”

“Then why are you so worked up about it?” asked Lisa.

“I just… it’s not about that. I think I’m getting sick, or something. Felt like shit all week, but I didn’t want to miss midterms.”

It was a total copout, and Lisa clearly didn’t believe her, but conceded, “Yeah, maybe it’s that flu that was going around last week. You should go home, I’ll page you if there’s a quiz or something you need to get a note for, okay?”

“Thanks,” Sarah said, with true gratitude.

Sarah parted ways with her friend with a quick hug and left campus with her hands shoved into her pockets, shoulders slumped. God, she needed to deal with what happened and just move on—she could barely concentrate on any of her midterms, the medical jargon present on every test suddenly seeming like nonsense. Her mind kept going to Jareth—what he was doing, if he had his powers back yet, if he was using them to murder whoever made the two of them go through with the ceremony (and/or exile Eggplant).

If he was missing her.

Her eyes burned for the hundredth time at the thought, and she angrily blinked them back as she powerwalked to her apartment. If they’d just been able to talk before she’d been dumped back home, discarded like an item that had outlived its purpose, things wouldn’t be so bad. There was so much left unsaid, and that just made everything ten times harder—especially since Sarah couldn’t tell anyone. She’d thought about telling her friends dozens of times, or even a counselor, but the thought was almost instantly shut down when she envisioned how that conversation would go. ‘Hey Lisa and/or licensed professional, don’t think I’m crazy or anything, but I was kidnapped and forced to have sex in front of a crowd of people with my childhood ex-villain, who happens to be a fucking gorgeous king of a magical world, so they could take the baby that might have come from it, and then I was dumped back into the real world like a used tissue.’ That would earn her a psych visit if she was lucky.

And why hadn’t she seen Jareth once while back in her world—in any form, owl or human(oid)? Sarah knew he had the ability to travel here, at least for a little while, otherwise the barn owl she’d spotted meandering in the park during her declamations wouldn’t have also burst through her window and turned into a smirking king the moment she’d made her wish. Did the Council or the High King or whatever shitty Underground power forbid him from visiting her ever again? These thoughts had been running on loop in her head since she’d dragged herself home from the alley and collapsed into bed, shaking with tears and sleeping with all the lights on because she could. And she was just so tired of the endless loop, never getting any answers, just finding more questions to obsess over.

Sarah trudged up the stairs of her modest 2 ½ and shut the paint-peeled door behind her, tossing her keys onto the counter and pressing her fingers to her closed eyes. At least she’d (somewhat) made it through midterms. She’d been studying for weeks before that last night when she’d been grabbed.

Sighing, Sarah tossed her bag wherever and sank down onto the couch, covering her eyes with her forearm and letting her other arm dangle off the couch. Maybe she’d just take a quick nap, fight off the mental exhaustion for a little while. She wondered if Jareth was half as wrecked as she was. She hoped not—he did have a kingdom to run, even if it was a kingdom of goblins. Come to think of it, who had been running it while she and Jareth were in the dungeon…?

Sarah groaned, face burning at the memories of the dungeon, the same ones that she’d used to help Jareth get off during the ceremony, when they’d been in a sweet secluded bubble of just them and his tongue had flicked rapid licks over her clit while he touched himself, his pleasure taken from the noises he brought out of her. Her core throbbed at the remembrance of the absolutely gorgeous face he made when she’d just used a sweet utterance of his name to make him fall to pieces, permanently seared into her brain and ruining her for anyone else.

She let out an angry shout that she buried into a cushion, resisting the urge to slip her hand downward. Would there ever be anyone else? She didn’t think she even wanted anyone else, instantly hating the vision of any future man she might encounter. God, how did it come to this? She almost wished she still had the angry, forceful idea of the Goblin King as an absolute truth in her head—it was a lot easier to live without him before she knew he was someone she’d probably fall in love with, if she wasn’t already kind of there.

“What the hell am I gonna do?” she whispered, the tears she’d been holding back finally spilling over.

She pressed the cushion into her face and let out a choked sob, only to scream when she felt a little tug on the sleeve of her dangling arm. The cushion dropped into her lap as she shot upright, staring through reddened eyes at a wide-eyed little goblin holding a potato half as big as he was.

“Here ya go, lady,” he (it?) said in a scratchy voice, holding out the potato with a mottled green hand. “Make ya feel better.”

She took the potato blankly, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Thanks,” she said, sniffling as she patted his head, somehow actually feeling a little bit better. At least the goblins understood, in their weird, potato-y sort of way.

“’Tatoes always cheer me up,” it said with a toothy smile. “King don’t like ‘em. Gets mad when we leave ‘em on his fancy throne.”

Her stomach dropped at the mention of Jareth. “D-do you know where he is?”

“Doing king things in the castle, I ‘magine,” said the goblin unhelpfully.

“I mean, have you seen him? Recently?”

“No, he’s been gone awhiles. We’re leavin’ a nice ‘tatoe pile on his throne for when he gets back.”

“I thought you said he got mad when you did that?”

It thought for a moment and shrugged. “Maybe he’ll like it this time.”

Well that was unhelpful, she thought, sinking down a little more in the couch. Her only connection to the Underground and it was this sweet but addle-minded creature.

She gasped, dropping the potato into her lap as her eyes blew wide. She was an idiot—this little goblin wasn’t her only connection to the Underground. Jareth had said Hoggle and the others knew a little bit about what happened, knew she had been in the Underground. If anyone knew what Jareth was doing, it’d be them. Why didn’t she think of this before?

“You’re a genius, little guy,” Sarah exclaimed, smiling for the first time in days.

“Whazzat mean?” he frowned through an already gnarled mouth.

“It means that you can help yourself to all the potatoes you can carry,” Sarah told the goblin, watching as he swelled with excitement.

“Y’mean it? The onions too?”

“Go for it.”

He whooped, hopping into the kitchen and clicking his heels together while Sarah hastened to her landline. While the phone rang, Sarah absently grabbed her pager off the counter and let Lisa know she’d be out sick for a few days.

“Karen, hi, it’s Sarah,” she said, when her stepmother’s voice rang through the speaker.

“Sarah! Is everything all right? You don’t usually call this early,” Karen replied with concern.

“Yeah, everything’s fine. I just… do you think it’d be okay if I came home for a few days? I know it’s a little earlier than usual, but I really need some downtime.”

“Of course, I’ll have your room tidied up for you,” the women replied, with a warmth in her voice that teen Sarah had never picked up on. “I hope you won’t be missing school—I thought you were taking exams this week?”

“Yeah, I just finished,” Sarah said, watching as the goblin dug his way gleefully through her cupboard and stuffed vegetables into his patchy coat. “Don’t have anything else ‘til after the weekend, so I have a few free days.”

“Well that’s great! I’ll let Toby know, he’ll be so excited,” her stepmother exclaimed, making Sarah smile. “He just got a gold star for being teacher’s helper today. Pretend it’s a surprise when he shows you.”

“Will do,” said Sarah through her smile, hanging up the phone and hurrying to pack a go-bag.

She waved the goblin goodbye with an order to stay out of the rest of the pantry, and hurried to the bus stop, waiting for the bus with foot-tapping impatience. Lisa paged her back to acknowledge her message and wish her good health when Sarah clambered onto the bus and dropped into the nearest seat. The usual forty-five minute ride was agonizingly long, and the whole while Sarah wondered what to say to them. How were they going to react when she told them she’d been forced to sleep with Jareth for the ceremony (and one time slept with him of her own volition)? Hoggle would probably have a fit just from the mention of Jareth’s name. Although, hadn’t that been a lie, since Jareth had hid his true character to mold her adventure into something she’d wanted? All the conversations they’d had post-adventure in the Labyrinth had held no mention of the Goblin King.

She ended up so lost in thought she almost missed her bus stop, only noticing when the bus was just starting to pull away from it. With a shout she got the bus driver to stop, earning herself a slight glare as she bolted through the doors down Castle Heights avenue.

“Well, you’re here awfully quick,” Karen said, as she opened the door to find a slightly out-of-breath Sarah holding her things.

“Wanted to see Toby’s gold star, what can I say?” Sarah joked, allowing herself to be ushered in by the women.

She let Karen taken her coat and set it on the rack, itching to get alone and upstairs but figuring it would be rude if she just disappeared. Her plans were impeded by a blond streak hurling itself through the doorway and clamping onto her legs hard enough to make her stumble.

“Sarah! Momma said you’d be here! Why are you here on a Wednesday? Guess what happened in kindergarten today!”

“Toby, take a breath,” Karen exclaimed, while Sarah laughed and set her things down to hug her brother.

“Where’s Dad?” she asked, letting Toby slip his sticky hand into hers while the other made its way up his nose.

“Still at work, he’s caught up in some deal with Bannock & Lieberman,” Karen said, leading the two into the kitchen where a pot of chili was bubbling. “You hungry? Dinner’ll be a little later than usual since your father won’t be home ‘til seven, but I can make you something quick.”

“Sarah, look at my gold star,” Toby said, wiping his hand on his corduroys and grabbing a crumpled sheet of paper from the kitchen table.

“I’m good, thanks Karen,” Sarah said, giving Toby a pat on the head and a whispered ‘good job kiddo!’ to placate him. “If it’s all right I’m just gonna wind down in my room? It’s been a rough couple of weeks.”

“Of course honey,” said Karen, taking Toby’s hand so he wouldn’t follow her. “Let’s let your sister rest for a little bit, okay?”

“But I wanna show her what I drawed in arts ‘n’ crafts.”

“I’ll look at it later, Tobes, I promise,” said Sarah absently, already halfway out the room.

She snatched up her bag and hurried up the stairs. Her door was already ajar, and it looked as though Karen had given the floors a quick vacuum. Dumping her things on her bed, Sarah shut her door and sank down into her vanity chair, heart pounding, eyes wide and sunk into her face. She grimaced, trying to tidy herself up a bit, before taking a deep breath.

“Hoggle, I need you.”

She almost cried when Hoggle’s gnarled face almost immediately rippled into view, buggy eyes wide with shock.

“Sarah? What’re you doin’ back up there? Jareth told us you were in the Underground!”

“Oh Hoggle, you have no idea what I’ve been through,” she breathed out, trying not to cry and failing just a little bit.

“What happened? Er, hang on a mo’.”

Sarah turned away from the mirror to find him standing by her bedside. She threw herself down to give the little dwarf a giant hug, sniffling and finding an absurd amount of comfort in the little pats he gave on her back. It was almost like a return to normalcy… except it was the opposite.

“Now tell ol’ Hoggle what’s goin’ on,” he said, once they were sat with their backs against her bedside.

Sarah inhaled deeply, her head resting on her palms. How the hell could she put this into actual words?

“Well, you heard what happened with Jareth? And the ce-ceremony?” He nodded, frowning, and she took another deep breath. “Well… they took me too.”

“WHAT?!” he roared, instantly on his feet, and Sarah flinched and shushed him, hoping her family wouldn’t hear. “Sarah, yeh had to… yeh were… with the King?!”

“Yeah!” Sarah found herself shouting as well. “Those fucking assholes kidnapped me in the middle of an alley and chained the two of us in a dungeon.”

“But yer here, that means yer not…” he trailed off, eyes trailing down to her stomach.

“I’m not pregnant, Hoggle,” Sarah said bitterly, drawing her knees up to her chest and hugging them. “They kept me in a dark room for a week after the ceremony and then dumped me back on the street when they found out. Didn’t even get to say goodbye to Jareth. It was horrible.”

“Gawd, Sarah,” her little friend exclaimed, head in his own hands. “I don’t believe it! Did he hurt yeh at all? That potion can—”

“Jareth was a perfect gentleman about it, Hoggle,” Sarah interrupted sharply. “And he didn’t take the potion.”

They just sat there in silence for a few moments, Sarah watching through the corner of her eye while Hoggle’s dumbfounded expression shifted the more he thought.

“He told me that time in Labyrinth was an act,” she said, continuing to watch him intently. “Is that true?”

“Toldja that, did he? Well, thankfully Jareth ain’t a no-good rat, that’s fer sure,” Hoggle chuckled, giving her knee a pat. “Not normally, anyhow. He was playin’ yer villain—but we wasn’t playin’ your friends,” he added sharply, and Sarah smiled.

“I know,” she said, before hesitating. “What… I mean… did you see him?”

“Not since I talked to him right after the ceremony. I’ll let yeh know though, if yeh like?” Hoggle added, noticing her crestfallen expression.

She nodded, and the two friends hugged with Hoggle’s promise to greet Didymus and Ludo on her behalf as well. She watched him disappear into the mirror again with a sigh, sinking down onto her bed, feeling a little less dead inside. Hoggle would see Jareth soon and bring her news, whether he was as upset as she was or utterly indifferent. With a sudden urge to reminisce, Sarah jumped to her feet again and began digging through her drawers, pulling out the little red book with care and longing. A quiet tapping on her door that could only come from Toby’s tiny hands stole her attention.

“Come in, Tobes,” Sarah said, opening the door for him.

“Momma said not to bother you, but I heard you talking to somebody,” Toby said, waddling in and looking around. “I don’t see a phone though. It’s not fair that you get a phone in your room and I don’t.”

“It might not be fair, but that’s the way it is,” Sarah said with a smile, sinking down onto the bed and patting the space next to her.

With little grunts and breaths Toby hoisted himself up, immediately wrapping his hand around the ear of a stuffed animal as he examined her.

“What’s that? It looks old.”

“It’s a book from when I was younger,” Sarah said, showing it to him. “Careful now,” she added, when he snatched at it with careless, stubby fingers. “It’s actually a true story.”

“What’s it about?”

“Well,” she said, sitting up, “a young girl wishes her baby brother away to the King of the Goblins, and runs a magical labyrinth to get him back.”

“Hmm.” He sat on her bed, absently sucking on his thumb as he processed her words. “Can we go to the park after supper?”

Sarah laughed, setting the book down. “I just told you a tale of magic is a true story, and that’s your answer?”

“Well, I don’t know what that thing you said is!” Toby half-shouted, pouting at her laughter.

“Don’t worry about it, kid. Tell Karen I’ll be down for dinner in a bit, then I’ll take you to the park if she says it’s okay. Sound good?”

He nodded, wriggling his way off the bed and bumbling out of the room, her kidnapped stuffy still in his hand. Shaking her head, she leaned over to shut the door with her foot before settling herself back against the pillows, little red book in hand. Sarah ran her fingers over the gold lettering and the bumpy red leather, before flicking through the pages. Things hadn’t quite turned out like the book—Sarah certainly hadn’t been a Cinderella-type, do-all housekeeper, no matter how hard she wanted to believe it—but her heart still clenched at the familiar words. She sat up abruptly, heart stuttering as her eyes fell upon a specific passage.

But what no one knew was that the King of the Goblins had fallen in love with the girl, and he had given her certain powers.

God, how much truth was there in this? Memories of blazing looks, desperate pleas, fingers kissed and ‘you look lovely as ever, my Sarah’s made her breath hitch, tears burning yet again. When the heck did that even happen? Back in the Labyrinth? It had to have gone earlier—he’d told her he was the King of Dreams (or whatever the actual words were) and fashioned his whole self to what he believed she wanted most. And after it was all over, he’d still begged for her love, and stupid, innocent child-Sarah had thrown it in his face, thinking it was a trick, and told him—

“He has no power over me!” she burst out, sitting up so sharply the book flew off her lap and landed on the floor. “Oh my God, that’s why he hasn’t come—he can’t come!”

And he gave her certain powers.

She groaned at the same time a giant grin began to grow on her face—God, how could she be so stupid? Tossing herself off the bed, fists clenched, Sarah squeezed her eyes shut and shouted, “I wish the goblins would come take me away. Right now!”

When next she opened her eyes, a plethora of muttering goblins, varying in size, shape and wild hairstyle, had scattered themselves around her bedroom. They all watched with wide, curious eyes as she extended her hand to them, heart pounding in her ears.

“Please,” Sarah said, an excited smile on her face. “Take me to your king.”

Chapter Text

Sarah blinked, and she wasn’t in her bedroom anymore.

The stony mess of a throne room greeted her instead (though with a lot less chickens this time), along with a hundred yellow goblin eyes watching her, waiting for her to do something. She whirled around, heart practically in her throat, but it plopped right back down when she found the throne room empty of its king. The throne sat in the background surrounded by tiny goblin bodies, looking sharp and imposing with its bone backing and cloth draperies… or it would, if not for the tiny pile of potatoes on the seat and a single onion topping it like a star on a Christmas tree. She couldn’t help but laugh at the sight despite her disappointment.

“Where’s Jareth?” she asked the room, when they just kept staring.

“Dunno,” several of them barked, their answers scattered and out of sync. A few just looked at each other and, when confirming the other one didn’t know either, shrugged.

Sarah’s shoulders sank impatiently. “I asked you to take me to the king.”

“He’s usually here,” said one goblin nearest to her ankle.

“But you don’t know where he is now?”

Collective heads all shook ‘no’. Sarah resisted the urge to slap her hand to her forehead—how did anything get done with these guys around?

“I’m going to go look for him, then,” she said shortly, turning on her heel and making her way over to the arched exit.

She wasn’t even a step out of the throne room before she collided with a tall, wiry body barreling full speed towards her. Gloved hands abruptly gripped her hips before she could collapse backward onto the stone as Sarah fisted her hands in the silky material of a billowing overcoat to prevent the same. She let out a stuttering gasp at the impact but went completely breathless as she looked up to find the familiar, bewildered eyes of her king. His hair was more flyaway than normal, like he’d sprinted all the way up here, and his face, lacking any trace of his former injuries, was all sharp angles and perfect mouth gaping at her like he’d never seen anything like her before, and her heart seized, he was beautiful.

“Hi,” she said blankly, instead of any of that.

“Hi,” he repeated just as tonelessly, and she almost hoped his brain was short-circuiting like hers was right now.

Sarah startled in his arms when a few of the goblins contributed scattered, ‘hi’s of their own, and she would have laughed at the absurdity if she still had the breath to do so.

Jareth let out a little huff and, letting go of her painfully quickly, told their would-be audience with a quirked eyebrow, “You are all excused.”

The goblins abruptly scampered out of every available exit (the window included), some pulling others that weren’t going quickly enough, until the throne room was empty of anyone but the two of them. She turned back around to face Jareth, who had taken several steps back and was looking at her like a bomb that might go off. Her brows drew together as a cold flush swept over her—oh god, was it a mistake to come here? Maybe he was just fine with never speaking again after what happened, maybe—

“Do you,” he said carefully, interrupting her mental panic, “remember what has transpired?”

That was not at all what she was expecting.

Frowning, Sarah exclaimed, “Why the hell wouldn’t I?”

Just like that, the Goblin King’s whole demeanor changed from tense uncertainty into boneless relief, like he was Atlas and her words had just been the heavens’ weight being removed from his shoulders. He reached for her with outstretched hands like he wanted to just collapse into her, but she beat him to it, stumbling forward and throwing herself into his waiting arms. Jareth drew her in like he was trying to merge with her, holding her so tight it left her breathless and near tears alarmingly quickly.

“I didn’t know if you would remember me,” he breathed into her hair, before she could say anything.

“Why wouldn’t I?” she repeated, ear pressed just right on his chest so she could hear his thundering heartbeat.

“Remember what I told you in the dungeon? The Council ordinarily wipes the memories of Aboveground women.”

“Looks like they were gracious enough to leave me with mine,” Sarah mumbled sarcastically.

Jareth pulled away and she followed suit, only to find him looking at her with a bizarre expression she couldn’t quite place, almost like he was trying very hard not to look relieved.

“Sarah, it would be… understandable if you wanted them gone,” he said in a carefully neutral tone.

‘It could still be done,’ was left entirely unsaid, but Sarah still heard it loud and clear. The thought horrified her more, for some reason—how could he think she could just erase all of her memories of him and happily go back to thinking he was an evil trickster, living her normal Aboveground life while he wiled away alone down here?

“No,” tumbled out of her mouth almost on its own. “No, I don’t want that. I don’t want to forget anything about you.”

Her hand reached up of its own accord to trace the lines of the face she wanted branded into her memory, the one that had looked at her like she was a sweet impossibility, the one that blazed like a wildfire when she whispered dirty promises into his ear. Now it melted into gentle, vulnerable relief, eyes shutting under her warm caresses. His hand claimed one of hers to steal it away to his mouth, so he could kiss her fingers in that breath-stealing, reverent way, just like at the ceremony. She found her eyes burning with tears again, but surprisingly not upset at the remembrance of the ceremony, as horrendous as it had been. The whole time she’d been agonizing Aboveground with no answers and no goodbyes, she’d been shocked with herself that it wasn’t the ceremony and its horrific nature that left a bottomless pit in her stomach, but the grueling uncertainty that she’d never get to see those little glimpses of his love for her ever again. Eventually she was going to have to work that out with a counsellor or something, because it was probably concerning she was more hung up over a guy than she was at being forced to go through something like that, but that would be for a later time, she thought.

“Why didn’t you come and see me, or send some kind of message?” Sarah whispered, regretful to break the moment but desperately needing answers. “It’s been over a week since they sent me home.”

“I regret leaving you without word, Sarah, but I truly thought they would have erased your memories,” Jareth said, eyes opening to look at her with repentance. “I’m uncertain as to why they wouldn’t, considering they are in no hurry to do me any favors at the moment.”

“What do you mean?” Sarah frowned.

“They have yet to return my magic,” Jareth said sourly, “despite the ceremony’s completion. It has been months, and—”

“Months?”

What the heck was up with Underground time?

“Yes, and my senior advisor has had to take on the responsibility of running the kingdom since the Council has been refusing to allow me my powers back,” Jareth snarled. “It is impossible to run a kingdom of magic without my own magic to control it. I was returning from petitioning the High Courts, but it appears they are still displeased with me for refusing the supposed honor of participating in the ceremony, and their so-called generous offer.”

Sarah almost smirked at the way he spat out the words ‘generous offer’, reminded of her villain in tattered beige coats demanding she recognize his ‘generosity’, but she frowned instead.

“What offer?”

He paused in his rants and looked ashamed for a moment, taking that long, aggravating pause that Sarah knew all too well. She almost huffed—what the heck could he be hiding now, after everything they’d gone through together?

“They… offered you. As an incentive to participate in the ceremony,” he bit out, like the words were poison.

“What is so bad about this ceremony that you’d go through this, just to avoid participating?”

“They involved you.”

“Wait, I don’t understand,” Sarah said quietly, shaking her head. “Why would they offer me? I thought… you said they hurt you because you found out they took me, that you didn’t want me involved?”

“Of course I did not want you involved, Sarah,” he hissed, gripping her hands like he thought she might run away.

“But they thought you did,” she said breathlessly, watching his face flicker between terror and helplessness as she pieced it all together. “Because… because you love me.”

The statement numbly slipped out, its cold truth spreading from her lips across her face and down to her chest, leaving her unable to breathe. She couldn’t do anything but watch Jareth as his eyes slammed shut, looking like she’d torn him open and pulled out his soul to show to the world, and this time when her eyes burned with tears she found them impossible to swallow back down. God, he really did, it wasn’t a lie or the stupid imaginings of a lonely girl. When his eyes reopened, it was to stare at her questioningly, almost like he was asking how she’d guessed.

“You did put it in the book,” Sarah said, her attempted nonchalance foiled by the hitch in her voice as she felt her tears spill over her cheeks in hot trails.

Jareth looked pained as he wiped them away with gentle care, the fabric of his gloves soaking them up.

“There were a million ways I wished to see you again, Sarah,” he whispered so, so brokenly, “but that was not one of them. I… regret how things happened.”

“I don’t,” she hissed around the lump in her throat, shaking her head between his hands. “This whole week I was so upset, and it was awful, but I realized I was barely thinking about the stupid ceremony. I just wanted to see you, so much, it was like I couldn’t breathe—”

She interrupted herself with a sob, all the exhaustion and grief and uncertainty of the past few weeks finally spilling out in one go. Sarah felt Jareth’s billowy coat caress her ankles as he drew her into another tight embrace, and she gladly buried her face into the collar of his shirt, the lump in her throat receding almost at once.

“They didn’t even let us say goodbye,” she whispered finally, after a moment of the two of them just breathing each other in. He smelled like leather and that sweet, floral scent she sometimes caught during her time in the Labyrinth, like autumn leaves after rain.

“I would have gone to see you if I could,” Jareth murmured regretfully into her hair.

“I know,” Sarah sighed, and she did, she knew now, and the knowledge was calming enough for Sarah to have no qualms about tilting her head up to find his and kissing him.

He kissed back in that special way, just like the first time in the dungeon, like she was an elusive dream that was just about to slip away and he had to take advantage of her kiss now or never. It stole her breath again, and she had to fist her hands in his lapels to stop from crumpling onto the floor with the dizzy pleasure of it. The motion made his jacket slip a little off his shoulder, and Sarah didn’t hesitate to slip one hand underneath his lapel to grasp the warm, smooth skin of his chest. She let out a pleased little mewl when Jareth took the same liberties, his hand sliding up her bare back underneath her shirt, silk gloves gliding against her spine. He answered the noise with one of his own and pulled her a little closer, and Sarah’s whole body absolutely shuddered at the thought of where this was sure to go.

“We still haven’t tried out that throne,” Sarah crooned when she was able to pull herself away.

Fuck, she loved that blazing look in his eyes.

“We have not,” he said in a low voice full of promise, hands sliding unapologetically over her ass.

She grinned and was about to lead him over, wracking her brain for how exactly her promised dream went, when she suddenly blinked in remembrance.

“Oh wait, the goblins left you a present on the seat,” she said blankly.

He had to blink the arousal out of his eyes. “What?”

“Yeah, they put, um, potatoes. And an onion.”

Jareth immediately looked annoyed, one hand leaving her ass to pinch the bridge of his nose. “How many times have I told them?”

She laughed, not even bothered that the mood was totally ruined. “They thought you’d like it this time.”

“I especially do not like it this time, since you were just about to ride my cock like the queen you are.”

Jesus, this man’s words turned to molten liquid in her blood. She stared him down through hooded eyes in a way that had him freezing in place, and if Sarah could see herself she imagined she was sending him a scorching gaze just like the ones he sent.

“Tell you what, Jareth,” she breathed, grinning at the way the utterance of his name had him sucking in a breath, “we can save your throne for another time. For now, you can take me to your royal chambers and fuck me in your bed like the king you are.”

“Sarah,” he hissed through clenched teeth, before looking pained. “I dearly wish I had my magic so we did not have to make the entire fucking trip there.”

Sarah laughed and, grabbing his hand, pulled him in a slight jog towards the hall he’d entered from. “We’d better run, then, shouldn’t we?”

And he followed her, coats billowing and their combined laughter ringing through the halls without a care to who might see them.

Jareth watched her, as he usually did, except this time her head was pillowed on his arm, naked body tangled in his sheets after hours of going at it with wild enthusiasm and a little bit of desperation, if they were being honest.

For the first time he wasn’t an owl resting on a cold branch, watching her through a foggy window, or a bruised man stripped of his title and chained in a dungeon next to her. He had watched her in the dungeon too, after they’d finished eating dinner and he had coaxed her into napping when her yawns started to get more frequent. She had blushed but scooted herself close to him to his surprise, pressing her back against his chest in clear invitation; he had only hesitated the briefest of moments before pulling her close, like she clearly wanted, like he never expected she would ever want.

It was fascinating, he had thought to himself back then—he’d never seen her this close before. He could see everything he hadn’t been able to see through his blurry crystals—the uneven piercings in her ears; the tiny mole on the right side of her stomach, made visible by the shirt she’d hiked up during her nighttime wriggling; the sprinkling of freckles on her shoulders from some long-healed sunburn. Her brow was furrowed, but she didn’t frown, and if the vibrant images and feelings wafting from her were any indication, her dreams were pleasant. Her lower lip was stuck out in something of a pout, and he swallowed hard when he remembered tasting it earlier. He chanced a soft kiss and, when that thankfully didn’t rouse her, he lifted a hand to sweep tendrils of her hair out of her face, lingering on her cheek. Whichever god Above had crafted her, Jareth thanked in his mind—she was exquisite. His breath hitched when she snuggled closer, slipping a leg between his.

She was warm against him, so trusting in her sleep that she’d clamped onto him like a vice, her arm thrown around his chest. She was also drooling on his arm, he noticed with a smirk. It was utterly endearing.

The few who’d witnessed Sarah’s triumph over his Labyrinth couldn’t possibly understand why their King had obsessed over this mortal girl—she was nothing, just another selfish brat, not all that pretty to look at (the servant who’d said the last bit had been exiled, Jareth had made certain of it). And in a way, when he first happened upon her by catching snippets of her vivid and fantastical dreams, he’d thought so as well.

But he fell hard, utterly fascinated at how firmly she believed, at such an age—normally only children believed in things like goblins and magical kings who controlled dreams. Sometimes, just out of curiosity, he would prod her dreams to show more images of himself and his world, and he was interested when she delighted at them. Her favorites had been those where she had someone to rescue from the castle’s towers—a classmate, her parents—and she seemed to enjoy it more when he played the villain rather than the friend or the captive, so he adapted to it, gave her exactly what she wanted. When Sarah had truly made it to the Labyrinth, he composed songs for her, drawing inspiration from her own dreams and his thunderous passions, and she reveled in them. He had played his part as usual, and so had she, but he hadn’t expected it to backfire so spectacularly in the end. Sarah had shoved away her dreams, and subsequently himself, with no remorse, and he forgave her. Of course he did. Though he’d spat it at her, she couldn’t see how hard he’d tried to give her everything she wanted—and how could she? He was just the villain who stole her brother and sicced his goblins on her.

It was easier back then to let her leave. She still believed, still talked to her friends from the Labyrinth, and still dreamed. He let her dreams progress naturally after that, certain his interfering had done some harm. He still caught snippets now and then, but he preferred watching her go about her days in real life as the unseen owl, certain he couldn’t do any harm simply by watching. She later moved to the city, which was too bright and difficult to navigate in his animal form, and he stubbornly took to crystals. She dreamed of him—he knew that, he could feel it, and he always knew she would—but he vehemently kept away from those, unwilling to see what she thought of him.

Jareth had glanced down at her again, watching her breasts rise and fall underneath the thin material of her blouse with each breath. He’d touched her there, sucked on them, watched them bounce as he rode her. He swallowed again, trying to ignore the dull throb that came from his thoughts. Gods, he’d made love to this woman, under her fervent request—and what a stunning, fantasy-fulfilling request it had been. How in the world was he going to forget that? The moment was burned into his mind like a brand, he was sure of it. He was also sure this woman had spoiled him for anybody else; the mere accidental slip of his name from her lips had been enough to spin his head.

Now, Sarah stretched out in her sleep, mumbling pleased little sounds as her hands swept over the bed in search of him and connected almost immediately with his bare chest. She settled right back down, a little huffed breath blowing away a stray strand of hair as she slipped back into sleep. He smiled as he watched her, head propped on his arm as he traced the sprinkling of freckles on her shoulder with his fingertip. He had wanted to when they were in the dungeon, but hadn’t wanted to wake her, nor overstep his boundaries. Jareth almost snorted at the thought—the woman had quite literally thrown herself into his lap and begged him to take her, but he had worried too much about touching her shoulder. Sarah hadn’t stopped surprising him the moment she’d been stolen back into his life.

His expression soured at the thought. The remembrance of the ceremony turned his stomach whenever he thought about it. It was difficult to look the councilmembers in the eyes even to demand his rightful power back, knowing they’d all seen perhaps one of the most private moments of his life. The idea of the breeding ceremony had never bothered him before—he’d all but accepted it in theory, having two common fae, normally unwed individuals, be selected to go through the ceremony for the chance of a child. Hell, sometimes they volunteered. It had been successful in the past, the two participants largely able to leave unscathed and remembering little due to the potion, perhaps even leaving pleased if a child were to come from the event.

It was so… complicated for them. Not for the first time, he cursed the High Council in his mind for their horrendous choice, no matter how overwhelmingly happy he was to have the love of his life sleeping peacefully next to him. Never mind Sarah going on with her life believing he was a villain, or finding herself snatched back Underground without warning—even with their splendorous, dream-fulfilling time in the dungeon just to themselves, she was not something Jareth would have ever wanted to share with anyone else’s eyes, let alone a council of pompous ancients who disliked him for the kingdom he happened to run. On that day Sarah had, too quickly for him to be anything but stunned senseless, fulfilled everything he had ever wanted from her and then some, and he hated that he had to share any part of that with a group of indifferent voyeurs. It was a bittersweet truth they would just have to deal with.

Sighing and running a hand over his face, Jareth settled himself back down next to her but kept a few inches of distance between the two of them, so he could run his fingers up the line of her spine. No matter how it happened, she was here, of her own volition this time, and although she wasn’t his yet, he was able to hope that she might one day be. She knew his heart; he need only wait for hers to catch up.

He let out another sweet sigh and pressed a kiss to the freckled shoulder, whispering a quiet, “I love you,” into the sweet skin of her arm.

“I know,” she murmured back, startling him. Before he could apologize for waking her, she rolled over and smiled so, so sweetly at him. “And if I don't already… I will.”

He kissed her fiercely, sealing that promise.