Jareth drifted in that place between awake and asleep. He was aware of Sarah, naked and wrapped around him like a piece of ivy, and of the slight dampness of their sweat that clung to the sheets beneath them. But his mind was stretched out much further than their little haven on the bed, it stretched past the sunlight filtering in through the windows, past the clouds, and into a memory.

He was walking through the Labyrinth, his boot heels clicking against the cobblestones in the hedge maze. The Labyrinth was a second home to him next to the Goblin City, but for some reason every turn he made, every corner he rounded led him to a dead end, forcing him to backtrack. Frustration growing, he began to run, making choices at random, feet pounding so hard against the stones that the brownie caretakers dared to shake their tiny fists at him.

He flew around a corner and ran headlong into a body, falling down with an audible 'oof!' Before the stars receded from his vision, he heard a loud squawking.

"Woo-woo! Look who's so high and mighty he doesn't need to watch where he's going!"

Jareth, the King of the Goblins, rubbed his head and winced at the chalkboard screech of the voice. He squinted up and found the head of a bird peering at him from two inches away.

"He's fine," the bird cawed in Jareth's face, and the ugly sight receded. Two strong hands helped Jareth to his feet.

"Well well well! What have we here, the Gobling King running his own maze?"

Oh. Its you, Jareth thought, cocking his head and regarding the old man with the talking hat with some reservation. The man, nameless to all inhabitants of the Labyrinth, had walked the maze as long as anyone could remember. Truth be told, he made Jareth a little nervous. And that hat, well…the hat was just annoying.

"What are you running from, young man?"

Jareth's eyebrow rose at the insolence in the old man's informal address, but decided to let it pass. For now.

"I need to get back to my castle. Do you know the way?"

Outside of the memory, lying in bed with Sarah, Jareth remembered the distaste of reducing himself to asking for directions; it felt like having his teeth pulled out with a pair of rusty pliers. Startled to harbor such an ugly thought, he pulled Sarah closer to him and she murmured against his chest in a way that woke up parts of him even while his mind half-slept. Desperate to see what else there was to see in his memory/dream, he firmly shut down his baser instincts and fell back into his semi trance.

"I know lots of ways," the old man said with a twinkle in his eye. "For a price."

"Chump." The hat added his two cents.

"You would dare charge me? I could have you suspended headfirst into the Bog of Eternal Stench. BOTH of you," he added as an afterthought, glaring at the bird hat.

The old man waited quietly, patiently. His hat decided to honk his way through the opening bars of Tocatta en Fugue very loudly and very off-key. Finally Jareth had enough.

"So be it! What is your charge?"

"A wish."

Jareth's eyebrow shot up again. "A wish," he repeated. "Any particular wish in mind?"

"Your wish."

"I wish to know the way to my castle."

The frizzy white hair drifted back and forth as the elder shook his head. "You have been at the mercy of other's wishes for an eternity. I want to know, if you could wish for anything, what would it be?"

Jareth opened his mouth, ready to brush the old man's request off with a simple wish of having a clean throne room for once, when something inside of him called out.

Wait.

Six years ago your kingdom was destroyed by a girl. Ever since then, you have been unable to spend more than five minutes without thinking about her, about what you could have said differently…different pleas uttered to change the way she brutally ripped the fabric of the Underground apart at the seams. The way she left you behind. What would you really wish for, if you could wish for anything? What keeps you up at nights? What haunts your days? What would make you happy?

Love.

Revenge.

Both thoughts came to him at once, intertwining into a single wish.

"You shall have your wish," the old man agreed.

Before Jareth could ask him what that meant, when he hadn't voiced his wish, the old man clapped three times, the sharp reports echoing down the leafy corridors.

The hat hissed at Jareth. "Sucker."

Before Jareth could retaliate, the old man raised his bony hand, pointing down a corridor with a gnarled finger that was tipped with a yellowing fingernail.

"Your castle lies that way."

Feeling disturbed about the entire encounter, Jareth turned and started down the correct path. Something made him glance over his shoulder one last time. The old man was smiling kindly at him and waved good-bye from within the ancient folds of his robes. His hat stuck out its tongue.

"Have fun," they both called, and then it was like a rope was tied around his waist; he was yanked rudely down the path, his heels digging fruitlessly into the stone tiles.

Then.

He was in his bed in the castle.

Then.

The man in black was on top of him, ripping and tearing and howling.

Jareth jerked awake, mind and body accounted for in the here and now. He was alarmed for all of a microsecond before everything snapped into place and he turned his head to find Sarah watching him with a half-smile on her face.

His heartbeat slowed under her stare. A lifetime passed between them in the moments they spent looking at each other.

"I love you," Jareth said simply.

Sarah's heart tightened as if he had put his hand through her chest and squeezed on it. It wasn't possible to be this happy, it wasn't, and even if it was it wouldn't last. But for now, it was everything she had ever wanted and by all that was holy, she was going to relish every second.

Say your right words, the goblins said.

This time she remembered her line.

"I love you too," she whispered.

Jareth gathered her into his arms and pulled her under him, and for a long time after, there was no need for words, right or wrong.

Something as mediocre as slicing an apple was an adventure when Jareth was standing naked right behind her, doing wonderful and impudent things to her breasts. His palms lightly grazed the skin there, and she had to focus intensely on the cut of the knife.

"You'd think the robe I put on was an indicator that it was time for food," Sarah quipped at the apple, with a sly sideways glance at the grinning man behind her.

Jareth's hands slid out from the gap in the front of her robe and moved instead to the precariously loose bow tied at her waist and pulled. The look on his face was a very deliberate innocence. "I have no idea what you are talking about," he said seriously. With another tug, the belt fell loose.

Sarah shrugged her shoulders with exaggerated chagrin, and the robe slid down her arms and fell in a pool of silk at her feet. "I can be confusing sometimes," she agreed. When Jareth skimmed his hands up her bare back to her neck, rubbing and kneading gently, Sarah put the paring knife down and let her head fall forward under his ministrations.

He turned her so she was facing him, and she saw he was more than ready. Even though she now knew what it was like to kiss the goblin king, it was still an unexpected pleasure.

Right here, right now, she thought as his fingers played between her legs.

Jareth nodded resolutely. "Agreed."

As he lifted her in his arms, he swept the cutting board with the apple slices to the side and set her gently on the counter.

"Is it really fair to have a lover who can read your mind?" Sarah gasped as he entered her.

"That is right, it is not fair," he agreed again.

"Okay, for real this time," Sarah said half an hour later. Her hair was as tousled as an albatross nest, she hadn't bothered with the robe this time, but dammit; she was going to finish cutting the apples for her fruit and cheese plate even if he produced a diamond ring and a minister with a twist of his wrist.

It didn't matter if Jareth was real or a figment of her imagination; he made her knees turn to jell-o. But in the best way possible.

Jareth was behaving himself, reclining on the couch with a content smile on his face.

Sarah brought the tray of artfully placed sliced fruit and three kinds of cheese over and set it on the end table, and then perched next to him on a cushion. She'd never been one for excessive nudity but his casual attitude was contagious; clothes seemed a burden.

"Have I ever told you how wise you are?" he asked through a mouthful of fruit.

She reached for a piece of cheddar and an apple slice. "No." The combination of sharp cheddar and sweet red apple was heaven in her mouth.

"Have I ever told you how generous you are?"

She swallowed, smiled, and reached for a piece of sliced peach. Heedless of the mess it might make, she squeezed the juice on his groin and, keeping her gaze locked with his, smiling a bit at his genuinely shocked intake of breath, leaned over and began to lick it off.

Jareth's voice became choked. "Have I ever told you how cruel you are?"

Sarah never thought that, if presented with the opportunity to shower with the Goblin King, she would be too tired to do anything but stand in his arms and let the water wash over them. But here she was.

He looked different in the shower. The softness his hair lent to his profile was gone, slicked back under the spray so his jaw line and high cheekbones made him angular. It gave him an edge that reminded her of his original incarnation.

Water changed his texture, and she was happy to just stand in the shower with him and watch the vein in his neck pulse in time with his heartbeat. She stood closer, it pulsed more. She backed up, it settled down. His knees bumped hers. The Goblin King had knees and they bumped hers as they shifted to take turns under the warm water.

She knew he was watching her too, and it made her feel like the most beautiful girl in the world. How could she feel so beautiful when all he did was look at her?

Their appetites, once unleashed, led to a long exploration that lasted throughout the morning and well into late afternoon. Love, followed by light dozing, followed by more love continued until reality set in and she realized she was one hundred and twenty percent satiated, and her body was telling her explicitly that it needed a break.

So…shower. And watching him in the shower.

Her cheek against the wet skin of his chest, Sarah was content now to listen to his heartbeat. Somehow she'd managed to shut off that part of her brain that was pre-mourning the time when he would leave her.

Until he opened his mouth.

"I dreamt of the Labyrinth last night," he said.

She could hear the reluctance in his voice at breaking the seal of their time constrained haven. He was the one with the ability to read her mind, but she knew instinctively that he needed her to be strong, to be able to let him go when it was time to go. She could be strong. Focused.

And then after…she'd burn that bridge when she came to it.

Sarah pulled back from him enough to look in his eyes.