I think I ran out of steam halfway through this. I'm no good with endings.

As with the previous chapters, this has not been proof read, so... blah-blah-blah. You know the drill.

"Jareth!" Sarah whimpered as she sunk onto her knees by the side of the prone figure of the Goblin King.

"What are you doing?" Greg hissed at her as he marched over to her. "I saved you from your captor!" He grabbed her arm and painfully hauled her to her feet.

"Don't fucking touch me!" Sarah screamed. "You just beat my boyfriend over the head with a crow-bar! What the fuck is wrong with you!" She wrenched her arm out from Greg's grip, yanked the crow-bar from his hand. "I swear to god, I will beat you with this until you are nothing but a bloody smear on the pavement."

"But… I saved-" Greg broke off when Sarah punched him in the face. His head snapped back, and he winced in pain— he thought that his nose might be broken.

"If I ever so much as see you again, getting a punch will seem like a trip to Disneyworld in comparison," Sarah hissed.

"Du are crazy," Greg whispered. He gave Sarah a wide-eyed look before he turned tail and ran back to his house across the street. Sarah dropped the crow-bar with a loud clatter onto the ground, and then hurried back over to Jareth's side. He hadn't moved at all during her encounter with Greg.

There was quite a gash on his forehead from where the crow-bar had connected, and it was bleeding like crazy. "Jareth, Jareth. Please. Wake up. Please," Sarah whispered as she tried to wipe the blood away with the hem of her t-shirt in order to see the damage done. "Oh god, oh god. Please wake up. Please."

Her efforts stalled as she broke into tears. She bent over his prone figure and started to cry freely. The tears that had been burning in her eyes since she'd gotten to the hospital with Jareth a few hours earlier broke free.

"Please don't leave me," she whispered as the tears fell from her eyes and splashed onto Jareth's cheek. "Please. I… I love you."

Jareth let out a low groan of pain, and his eyes fluttered open for a brief second.

"Oh my god, Jareth," Sarah whispered. Her hands fluttered uselessly above him, unsure of what she should do.

"Say it again," Jareth croaked.

"What?"

"Say it again, Sarah."

"I… I don't…" Sarah whispered helplessly. Jareth's mismatched eyes opened and looked up at Sarah. "I… I didn't know if you were honestly just trying to mess with me or not, but it was hard not to fall for you. You've been on my mind almost every day for the past five years. Every boy that I met, I seemed to compare them to you, even if I didn't intend to. It was hard for me to…" Jareth raised his hand and Sarah grasped it.

"Not that, precious," Jareth said with a soft smirk, but it was easy to tell how much pain that he was in.

"I love you, you giant jerk! I was really afraid that that creep had seriously hurt you!"

"It was iron," Jareth whispered. "I'm currently in a lot of pain."

"What do I do?" Sarah whispered as she rubbed at her eye with the sleeve of her shirt, since her hands were all bloody.

"You could kiss me?" Jareth asked. Sarah searched his face for the tell-tale smirk, the twinkle of his eye, to let her know that he was joking, but couldn't find any indication that he was.

Jareth slowly ran his thumb over Sarah's knuckles. She absently brushed the hair out of his eyes. Then, she leaned over and gently pressed her lips to the Goblin King's. A jolt of electricity passed through both of them at the simple contact. It wasn't like how it was often described in romance novels, and although the kiss was throughly enjoyable, the feeling was exceptionally bizarre.

Sarah jerked back a second later, and rubbed the hand that wasn't holding Jareth's across her lips in order to make them stop tingling. "Ow, what was that?" she asked.

"I'm sorry, Sarah. I stole a bit of your magic… since you're not using it or anything," Jareth said. He had a cocky grin on his face. "I'm just sorry that we had to have our first kiss under such duress."

"And you couldn't have taken my magic away under any other circumstances?" Sarah asked.

"Yes, but where's the fun in that?"

"You idiot!" Sarah said with a slight laugh. "If Greg hadn't already proved himself to be such a creep before, I would have sworn that you'd planned this entire thing."

"I don't think that I would have chosen to be knocked unconscious and suffer from iron poisoning. It is rather embracing to be flat on my back in your front yard."

"I'm not certain that I could carry you inside," Sarah whispered as she ran her hand through Jareth's hair.

"Kiss me again, precious, only this time, don't pull away," Jareth said, his voice low. Sarah leaned over and kissed him again. Although she jumped a little at the electric shock that ran through them at the contact, she didn't pull away. Jareth lightly nipped at her lower lip, and then ran his tongue almost lazily along where he'd just bitten. Sarah let out a contented sigh, and slightly parted her lips.

A moment later, she realized that she was no longer kneeling on cement, but rather, on something soft, and that it had grown much darker. She opened her eyes and pulled away from Jareth when she realized that they were in what looked like a room in Jareth's castle. Jareth was lying sideways on a massive four-poster that was decorated much in the same way that Sarah's own room in the castle was, and Sarah was still kneeling next to him.

"I thought that it might be best to use what little magic that you had to transport us back to my kingdom, where I can get help from healers who know how to deal with this sort of thing," Jareth explained as he looked up at Sarah.

"R-right," Sarah stammered. She quickly climbed off the bed and ran for the door. Jareth closed his eyes as the last bit of his magic faded from him, which had been the only thing keeping him awake after Sarah had cried on him.

Jareth awoke some time later to somebody gently running their fingers through his hair. There was a bandage wrapped tightly around his forehead, and he felt exceptionally groggy and dizzy.

"Jareth?" Sarah's gentle voice asked from above him. She was sitting next to his bed in a chair, and was running her fingers through his hair absently as she read from a novel. Jareth's head hurt when he tried to focus on the title, so he stopped trying to do so. "How do you feel? Should I go get the healer?"

"No. Please don't leave me," Jareth whispered, his voice hoarse.

"I won't leave you so long as you can look me in the eye and honestly tell me that you're not in any pain," Sarah said.

"It's not as bad as it was earlier. I'm mostly just dizzy. And tired."

"You should get some rest. The healer was assertive that you shouldn't try to over-exert yourself."

"Alright," Jareth agreed with a slight sigh. He closed his eyes, and was asleep again in minutes.

When Jareth awoke some time later, he felt much better, although still a little bit groggy. "Good morning, Jareth," said a soothing voice to his left. He looked over— his mother was sitting in the same chair that Sarah had occupied earlier. Much like Sarah, Amael was also reading a book.

"Mother?" Jareth asked with an air of confusion. "When did you get here?"

"A little bit after you came back," Amael replied. "Sarah wrote to me, said it was urgent."

"Sarah? Where is she?" Jareth asked. Amael simply pointed with her book to the other side of Jareth. He turned his head, and saw that she was curled up on top of the blankets on the bed next to him.

"I don't think that she'd gotten any sleep since you were injured. She told me that she didn't want to leave your side, because she was worried that if you woke up and that she wasn't there, that you'd panic and injure yourself further." Jareth turned his attention back to his mother. "We settled for a compromise." Amael frowned at her youngest son. "I know that you've been pining away for her since-"

"Mother," Jareth groaned.

"No, you listen to me, Jareth. You might be the Goblin King, but I raised you and your siblings, so I think that I know a thing or two about relationships by now. You're my youngest, my baby, and I want nothing more than to see you happy," Amael said sharply, her voice low so that she wouldn't wake Sarah. "That being said, I can't exactly say that I approve of how you've tricked Sarah. Yes," Amael said when Jareth opened his mouth to protest. "Sarah told me everything. I was there for you during the aftermath of her beating the Labyrinth, even though you wouldn't tell me what had you so upset. But after I got the final pieces of the puzzle from Sarah, everything makes sense."

"I didn't mean to fall in love with her," Jareth whispered as he turned his attention to the sleeping woman next to him. "But she's just so kind, head-strong…"

"It doesn't exactly take a Fae to figure out why you fell for her, honey," Amael said gently. "Ever since you first took your kingdom Underground, you haven't exactly been the most pleasant person to be around. I think that when Sarah ran your Labyrinth, you found the spark that you've been missing. If you'll excuse my language for a moment, you found somebody who not only wouldn't take your shit, but also stood up to you." Amael smiled fondly at her son. "I came here, completely prepared to tell you to let the poor girl go home. But after seeing how she acted around you when you were injured, I knew. Now then, how do you feel?"

"Like I've been lying in this bed for about a week now. I'm tired of having iron poisoning, but my head feels much better."

"The healers say that it's almost healed, although it'll be a while before you're running at full speed again. Might I suggest not pissing off humans in the future?" Amael asked with a slight laugh.

"That guy was completely mad," Jareth insisted. "I do hope that Sarah told you about him."

"She did," Amael said simply as Sarah stirred next to Jareth. "I'll leave you two alone." Amael vanished. Jareth turned his attention to Sarah, who was just starting to wake up.

"Good morning," Jareth said smoothly. He reached over to her and gently ran his fingers through her hair, which was slightly greasy from a lack of washing.

"I feel like I should still be angry at you for being there when I woke up," Sarah murmured. "But then I remembered that I fell asleep in your bed."

"If it was up to me, you'd never leave my bed," Jareth said with a cocky smile.

"Well, you must be feeling better if you're making lewd jokes," Sarah said as she pushed herself up.

"Why did you invite my mother here?"

"I didn't invite her per-say," Sarah said carefully. "I simply wrote her a note that you'd been badly injured, and told the goblins that it was urgent. And then she showed up. I mean, if it was me, I'd want my mom to know. …Well, Irene would show up, but my own mother probably wouldn't even get the message until a month later." Sarah looked sad for a moment before she pressed on. "And when she showed up, who was I to tell her to leave?"

"How about something to eat then? What time is it?" Jareth asked. He frowned a little when he couldn't even manage to squeeze a single drop of magic out of himself, let alone conjure up a clock.

"I don't know. I'll go ask somebody to bring us some food and ask them what time it is." Sarah pushed herself out of bed and walked calmly over to the door. Jareth watched her go, watched the way that the muscles moved under her blue denim pants. Sarah opened the door and he heard her briefly talking to somebody outside his room, and then she shut the door and walked back over to him. She sat in the chair that his mother had vacated moments earlier, and picked up the book that Amael had put down on the night stand. "It's a bit after 8 AM," Sarah told him as she absently flipped through the book. She didn't seem overly interested in finding her spot, but rather, the action spoke of hands that needed to be doing something, anything.

After a moment of awkward silence that seemed to stretch on and on, somebody knocked on the door. "Enter," Jareth commanded, and two goblins came into the room with trays of food. They quickly delivered the food to Jareth and Sarah, and then left the room.

"It's not like I didn't date after I ran the Labyrinth," Sarah started slowly as soon as the door had closed behind the two goblins. "But, I always somehow managed to find something wrong with them. My friends said that I was being too picky, and that they were perfectly acceptable guys. But, I just never really liked any of them all that much. I really tried to like them, honestly. They were nice enough guys. And when I was in college, I told myself that if I stayed in the relationship, that my feelings would change. That if I had sex with them, that my feelings would change. But… I…"

"You said that you'd been holding all other guys up to the impossible standard that is myself," Jareth said with a cocky grin.

"I didn't even really realize it until after I'd said it," Sarah whispered. "But I did a lot of thinking after we came back. And I talked about it with Amael. Even though we really only had a couple of face-to-face encounters while I was here five years ago, I think that you really made an impression on me. Subconsciously, at least. And it's not like there was really anything wrong with any of those men that I dated. But I was just waiting for something, even if I didn't know what it was at the time." She licked her lips, and Jareth watched the movement carefully.

"Have you figured out what you want yet? Aside from the impossible standards lying in front of you, that is."

"I… It's hard to put it into words," Sarah said hesitantly.

"Try."

"W-when I was with other men, I would sometimes think of how… completely juvenile that they were."

"They were boys, not men," Jareth interrupted.

"Yes, exactly. I mean, with Greg, the first time that I met him it was the day that we moved into the house. And I was going back to the moving truck to get something else to take inside, and he just walked up to me. Introduced himself. Said he lived in the house directly across from ours. Then, without hesitation from his introduction, he asked if I wanted to grab a bite to eat with him sometime, maybe catch a movie. The only thing that we knew about one another were each other's names and where we lived. And just like that… he asked me out."

"Forgive me if I'm wrong, but is not the idea of dating to get to know one another?" Jareth asked slowly.

"Yes, but who accepts a date from somebody who is quite literally a complete stranger?"

"What you were looking for was somebody who would woo you," Jareth said, his voice low. "Somebody who would offer to show you your dreams, who would offer to move the stars for you." With that, Sarah burst into tears. "Precious?" Jareth asked. He put his breakfast tray to the side and half-got out of bed to get closer to the crying woman.

"I'm sorry," Sarah whispered as she rubbed at her eyes with the heel of her hand. "It's just, when Greg hit you, and you were lying on the ground, I couldn't help but think to myself that I was really worried about you. You, of all people! You'd kidnapped Toby, forced me to run your stupid Labyrinth in order to get him back, and then you threatened to kidnap my dad, and ended up taking me hostage instead! And when you were lying, unmoving, on the ground, instead of thinking about the horrible man who'd drugged me, I thought that I would be really sad if you…" Sarah swallowed hard. "If anything happened to you."

Jareth wordlessly grabbed the tray that Sarah had balanced across her lap, put it on the nightstand, and then pulled Sarah closer to him. She curled up on his lap, tucked her head under his chin, and tightly clutched at his shirt as a fresh wave of tears hit her.

After a while, Sarah calmed down and pulled away from Jareth to wipe her nose off on her sleeve. "Sorry," Sarah whispered as she finally looked up at Jareth.

"Precious, you have nothing to be sorry for." He gently pressed his lips to her forehead.

"You'd think that I would have gotten over the need to cry since you're better now, but…"

"Did it occur to you that maybe you're crying for a different reason?"

"What do you mean?" Sarah asked carefully.

"Maybe you're upset with the realization that you wasted five years fooling around with boys when you could have been with a king?"

"S-shut up," Sarah said with a slight laugh. "And I was only fifteen when I ran the Labyrinth. Even if I did think for a second that you were serous about what you offered me, I wasn't emotionally ready for that kind of a relationship." She started to get up from Jareth's lap, but he held her fast.

"And where exactly do you think that you're going? I've been scheming to get you into this position for over five years now, so why do you think that I'm just going to let you leave now where I've got you right where I want you?"

"Jareth, I haven't bathed since before the ball. And that was over two days ago," Sarah said dryly. Jareth paused for a moment, and Sarah tried again to get up.

"I find that I don't particularly care, precious," Jareth whispered as he pushed Sarah onto her back; he knelt over her, pinned her wrists to the bed with one hand, and gave her a devious smile. "Shoot," he said a moment later as he released her to pick up the glass of orange juice that had tipped over with the abrupt movement of the mattress.

Sarah took his distraction, rolled off the bed, and gathered her breakfast tray. "Well, since you're obviously feeling better, I no longer have any obligation to sit by your bedside any longer." She marched towards the door and quickly left the room.

Jareth shook his head and chuckled slightly as he stood with the half-empty cup of juice in his hand. He had overcome one massive obstacle with Sarah, but now it seemed as though another one had taken its place.

Jareth later found Sarah curled up on her favorite reading chair in the library, reading the same book she'd had earlier. Her hair was slightly damp, and she'd changed her clothes as well. "Good afternoon, precious," Jareth said as he presented her with a red rose.

"Hi," she said hesitantly. She first looked up at him, then down to the flower. "Is your magic back?"

"No, not yet," Jareth said with a frown. "The healers said that it should come back hopefully within 24 hours."

"Good, because I was thinking that Greg would probably like to be crowned a prince."

"What are you thinking, my dear?" Jareth asked her sharply.

"Oh, you know, the thing that Hoggle told me about your little threat to crown him the Prince of Eternal Stench," Sarah said with a quiet giggle.

"I don't think that prince is good enough for him, though," Jareth said with all seriousness. "He should be crowned the Holy Emperor."

"I think that it's a title that's befitting Greg's massive ego," Sarah said. "But I wonder how anybody will ever be able to find a crown that's big enough for his massive head?"

"Why don't you come and read to me, precious?"

"Alright, but we never did pick out another book to start reading after we finished 'The Mud Children'."

"You can just read to me from the book that you're reading right now," Jareth said with an absent air and dismissive wave of his hand. Sarah looked contemplatively at the book in her hands.

"I honestly haven't really been reading it. I don't think that I could tell you what's been going on at all," she said after a moment of hesitation.

"Then we'll both be equally lost."

"Can you read it to me?" Sarah asked with a sly glint in her eye.

"Of course," Jareth said as he accepted the book and pressed the rose into Sarah's hand at the same time. "Come over to the sofa over here, though." Sarah got up and followed Jareth over to the mentioned sofa, where she sat down and put her feet in his lap.

"What? You put your head in my lap all the time," Sarah said sweetly. Jareth didn't say anything, just opened the book to the marked page, and read the page over silently. He absently flipped the page, and then the next.

"This is… really graphic," Jareth said with a slight laugh. "I thought that you didn't enjoy reading these types of books."

"I don't," Sarah said with a hint of venom in her voice. "I keep randomly grabbing books off the shelf in here, and they're all romance."

"Why don't you put this back and pick something else then?" Jareth said as he handed the book back to Sarah. "Focus on what you want to read other than just something to read." Sarah got up and went over to the nearest shelf, where she put the book down before she grabbed something else and came back.

"Beauty and the Beast," she whispered. "It's oddly fitting isn't it?"

"What do you mean? The old human fairy tale?"

"The cold-hearted prince tucked the beautiful heroine into his castle after her father plucked a single flower from the prince's garden. You seriously can't tell me that you weren't inspired by the story."

"Maybe a little," Jareth said with a mischievious glint in his eye. "But I'm also old enough that maybe I wasn't inspired by the story."

"If my mythology classes were any indication, the original Beauty and the Beast story originated from a much older, Greek story called Cupid and Psyche."

"Alright, maybe not that old," Jareth said with a slight roll of his eyes. "So, precious," Jareth started as he pulled Sarah onto his lap. "Do you love me?"

"No."

"I lo… Wait, what? What happened to all of that by my dead-bed confession of love?"

"You were lying on my driveway, and you were only out for a minute or two," Sarah said with a roll of her eyes. "And, I've seriously only been with you for two weeks now. I think that the beauty was with the beast for a couple of months."

"Months? Sarah, I think that I'm going to take a page out from Cupid's playbook and just bed you instead. But, the beauty of the matter would be that, since you already know what my face looks like, I would not cast you out for wanting to gaze upon me."

"Are you out of your fucking mind?" Sarah snapped at him as she struggled to get free from Jareth's grasp. Jareth kissed Sarah's temple and then moved her so that she was sitting on the cushion next to him, and put her feet back on his lap.

"'Once upon a time, in a far off land lived a ship merchant with three, beautiful daughters…'"

Greggory Cameron tossed and turned in his bed, unable to find a position that was comfortable. Something knocked gently at his window, and he turned his back to it with a little bit of trepidation. But the knocking persisted, and became more and more frantic the longer Greg ignored it.

Finally, he kicked off his blankets and reached for the lamp on his bedside table; he turned the knob once, twice, three times, but it wouldn't come on. He looked nervously over to his dresser, and was greeted by a blank, black box where his digital alarm clock normally sat. Power outage.

The knocking, which had paused when Greg had kicked his blankets off, started up again. If there had been a tree in the yard, Greg probably would have thought it was that. But, the only thing in the yard was yellowing crab grass.

Greg walked nervously over to the window, and when he was about a foot away, it burst open with a massive gust of wind. "Hello, Greggory."

Greg fell onto the floor with a startled yip. "It's you!" he exclaimed.

"Yes, it is indeed me," Jareth said with a coy but evil smirk. "You grievously injured the Goblin King, and made my fiancee, the future Goblin Queen, cry. A lot."

"Man, you are completely bat-shit crazy," Greg said as he scrambled to his feet.

"Oh, I am?" Jareth asked. He conjured up a crystal and gazed into it. "I talked to Sarah about what we should do with you for a while. I was fairly certain that she'd want me to be lenient on you, but, much to my surprise, the things I had in mind for you seemed tame by what she suggested for you."

"You're crazy! Sarah would never agree to go out with somebody like you, let alone agree to marry you."

"Alas, you are correct, but that is only because I have not asked her quite yet," Jareth said with a wistful sigh. The crystal in his hands turned into a snake, which he then threw at Greg without warning. Greg winced, ducked, and then tripped over something unseen. He stumbled and fell, and used his hands to break his fall, but roughly scrapped them against something.

When he opened his eyes, he looked around him in alarm. A massive labyrinth spread out before him. "I've decided to go with my idea first, because I think that it will greatly amuse Sarah to watch you squirm," Jareth said as he appeared before the young man. Greg looked up at Jareth with sudden fear.

"W-who are you, man?"

"I am Jareth, the Goblin King. At the center of my Labyrinth is my castle." Jareth pointed to the castle off in the distance. "If you can reach the castle in 13 hours, you may return home, to your bed."

"And if I fail?" Greg asked with a hint of complete despair in his voice. Jareth looked down at Greg as if the younger male was something unpleasant that the Goblin King had just stepped in.

"Don't fail," Jareth said simply before he vanished.

A slight noise awoke Sarah. She stretched lazily and ran her fingers along the red, satin bedsheets before she turned to try and find where Jareth had gone. "Precious? Are you awake?" Jareth asked as he came into the room.

"I am now," Sarah said as she sat up in bed.

"I'm pleased to report to you that a new Holy Emperor has been crowned as of five minutes ago," Jareth said as he walked closer to his bed where Sarah was sitting. "And then I sent him home to let him stew in what he's done."

"The only thing I regret is the fact that you unleashed him into the world full of innocent people who did nothing to deserve having to smell him," Sarah said with a quiet laugh.

"I might bring him back to rule over his kingdom. …Eventually." Jareth leaned over Sarah and cupped her face between her hands so that she would look up at him. "So, precious. Do you love me?"

"No."

"What? Why not?"

"I think I need more convincing," Sarah said coyly. Jareth presented her with a red chrysanthemum, which she took, and looked up at him with a questioning look. "You run out of red roses or something?"

"There is more than one flower that speaks of love, precious," Jareth said before he pressed his lips to her. "If you are in need of more convincing, I have only just begun to show you what I am capable of." He kissed her again.

So, I'm certain that many people noticed that this chapter is probably about half as long as the other.

For reasons not even I can explain, I wrote a sex scene, and then decided to upload it separately, mostly because I didn't want to change the rating for this on the last chapter.

It doesn't really add anything to what you just read, so please don't feel obligated to go and read it. It's titled Sarah and the King: Bonus Content.

Thank you all for reading, and if anybody is interested in seeing more of my stuff, I'm currently working on another Labyrinth fic, which will probably be a lot longer than this. With any luck, it should be up in a day or two.

Thank you all so much for reading my humble story!