"Time to go now."

Alia opened her heavy eyelids slowly and gazed at the blurry form of a woman sitting in front of her.

"Visiting hours are ending. Time for you to go now," the voice spoke again, unnecessarily loudly, she thought. Her head hurt abominably, and this woman was standing next to her shouting. What sort of drugs had they been giving her for this thing in her head? She had vague memories, impressions of the strangest dreams.

The blurred form in front of her shifted and spoke with Cara's voice, "Just a few more minutes, please. I think she's waking up."

No, Cara was sick in the hospital. That could not be her sitting there. But if Cara was the one who was sick, why was she the one laying in bed? Cara was the one who had been getting the drugs for the thing in her head. So why did her own head hurt so much?

She groaned and raised her hand to her head, but her right hand would not move. She looked at her right hand to see why she could not move it and discovered it was not just a headache. It was a whole body ache.

Her right hand would not move because there was someone holding it. She struggled to focus her eyes on the shape. It was not Cara, she knew that, because Cara's voice came from the shape on her other side. Alia frowned. Who was it?

"Would you like your hand back?" a soft, accented, masculine voice asked gently. It was a nice voice, not as loud as the others had been. She knew it from somewhere, she was sure. She decided to let him keep her hand for a while and smiled at him.

"How do you feel?" Cara's blur asked.

"Hurts," she managed to croak.

The loud voiced woman interrupted them again, "You really must go now. You can see her again in the morning."

Cara's blur surrendered and moved toward the door. The shape holding her hand leaned over her, kissed her on the forehead, and whispered, "I will be back. Do not try to use it."

Confused, Alia watched the nurse escort them out of the room. Use what? She looked at the object he had pressed into her palm as he left. It was a heavy gold and silver pendant, set with a large stone.

"Tieran...," she remembered as tears welled in her eyes.

.….

Alia was awake and waiting for Tieran and Cara when they arrived the next morning. Her vision had cleared some, but she still had a splitting headache and ached all over. A nurse had come in and fussed over her earlier. She found her much more pleasant than the woman from the night before.

"How are you feeling this morning?" Tieran asked as he kissed her on the forehead again.

Alia hugged him as he leaned over her. "Better. I'm so sorry I didn't recognize you last night. I couldn't see clearly, but I had no idea who you were," she said, racked with guilt.

"You had a bad fall and hit your head. That was a side effect."

"But I recognized Cara's voice. I can't believe I didn't recognize your voice. I just knew I liked the sound of it and had heard it before."

"Of course you recognized her voice, you have known her for years. You know who I am now and that is what is important."

"What happened? I don't remember much of that either."

"You and Caereh fell over the rail of the balcony. Between falling on some tables and both Jareth and Tieran catching at you, you weren't seriously hurt," Cara informed her.

"Then why do I ache all over?"

"You did fall on tables," Cara pointed out.

"Part of the ache is the after effects of the magic, as well," Tieran explained. "You had too much magic pulling you in two different directions. That is also why I told you not to use your pendant when I gave it to you. More magic will only make the pain worse."

"So you can't do anything about it?"

He shook his head. "No. You just have to live through it."

"What happened to Caereh?"

"She ended up in the hospital, too," Cara told Alia. "Unfortunately, she wasn't knocked out like you were and has been raving about the Goblin King coming to take her away. Tieran told everyone that she grabbed you and dragged you up the stairs at knife-point and then started talking to someone who wasn't there. If she keeps up, someone's going to take her away, but it won't be Jareth."

"What about Jareth? There was a whole crowd of people there. Didn't anyone see him?"

"If they did, no one has mentioned it," Tieran said. "The rail of the balcony was high enough to hide most of our actions from the people standing below. They were also watching the animation clip, remember."

"So we're safe, then? No one saw anything weird?"

"It seems that way."

"Why didn't Jareth just grab me and go? It seems to me that that would have been easier."

"Jareth is not the one who does the grabbing. The goblins do that, but he had no goblins so no one was taken." Tieran explained.

"But what about the netgoblins?"

"They were busy and they're not trained for that, anyway. I asked," Cara explained.

"So Jareth just shows up to do the gloating and bargaining afterward, while the goblins do the work. Sounds typical. But if the goblins couldn't come, how could he? They were both stored on the disks."

"No, they were not," Tieran disagreed "Jareth was on that screen behind you. His own magic combined with the magic that summons him overpowered whatever it is that the animation does and released him from it. The goblins, still stored on the disks and without their own magic, could not escape."

"Lucky for you," Alia told Tieran. "Otherwise you would have had to get Caereh to come save me and I just don't see that happening. Then you would have had a goblin hunting you down."

Tieran laughed at Alia. "My point in having Caereh wish you away was not to remove you from the action, but to draw Jareth into it. You were never in any danger of becoming a goblin. The line is 'your baby brother will become one of us, forever.' You assume he means a goblin. What if he meant a resident of the Underground in whatever form? Jareth's fan list on the internet has it correctly. Only the children can be turned into goblins. And then only the right sort of children. Adults remain just as they are."

"Caereh would have enjoyed that. That must have been what she was trying to do. Did our plan work?"

"It seems to have been successful."

"But it wouldn't have unless this happened because Jareth wasn't with the rest of the Labyrinth on the disks where he was supposed to be. A silver lining for this headache." Alia sighed. "So we're done? We can get back to a normal life?"

"Except for this thing with Caereh attacking you. The police are bound to want to do something with her for that," Cara pointed out.

Alia stayed in the hospital until the next morning, then went home still sore and bruised. She gave statements to the police, who seemed perfectly willing to believe her account of the incident over Caereh's. Once home, Alia received several visits from Jareth with accompanying commentary from him about acting like a fool and the proper use of stairs, which she returned with remarks about people not being where they were supposed to be.

Cara and Jareth managed to restore the Labyrinth to its proper state, except for a small portion of the Bog of Eternal Stench, which had inexplicably gone missing. Since that was the only thing missing – and no one really missed it – they deemed the operation a success.

The animation company, however, was no longer a success. The theft and replacement of the computer system, all plans for it, and the disks containing most of the animation completed so far made headlines in the papers. Investigators theorized that it was an act of corporate espionage, but how it had been accomplished was still a mystery. In addition, the little fact that the owner of the company had apparently spent too much time with her work and started talking to the main characters discouraged investors.

In another stroke of misfortune, the building's ventilation system developed an unpleasant odor. The building was vacated and eventually condemned and razed after repeated attempts to find the source of the problem failed.

With all of this upheaval, only a few people noticed that Tieran simply did not show up for work again.

Disclaimers, credits, trivia:

Labyrinth, etc. belong to the Jim Henson Company.

That's it, that's all. There is no more. The story is now complete.

There is a sequel to it already written that I plan on posting eventually once it too is edited.

Thank you to all of you that have taken the time to comment and review. And if you read it and didn't post a comment/review – well, if I don't post the sequel consider it your fault. :P