EPILOGUE

Stray beams of sun sneaked past the curtains and warmed her skin, not that she needed any more heat, thanks to the sheets tangled around her body and the man whose chest she was resting upon. He was breathing evenly, as he had for the last two minutes, and not a word had escaped his lips but she knew, somehow, that he was aware of her being awake. She didn't want him to be aware of it – didn't want him to greet her with a hopeful smile and beautiful words and a symbolic, probably important, amulet. But she couldn't pretend to sleep for the rest of the day and really, once they got their tricky good-morning conversation done with, the rest of the day seemed quite promising.

With a heavy sigh, Sarah's eyes flew open – like a Band-Aid, just rip it off – and landed on the amulet sitting on the nightstand next to Jareth's side – funny how quickly it had become his, as had a chair in the kitchen and a small amount of her library – for the fourth morning in a row.

"Good morning, precious," Jareth greeted with a smile in his voice as he reached for the necklace – really, it was more of a medallion, she supposed – scooping it up with his slim fingers as she peeled herself away from him, scooting up against the headboard as she eyed him expectantly. How he kept coming up with touching ways to express his love for her in perfect monologues morning after morning was truly a mystery, and the fact that he did it all with a beautiful smile and glowing eyes was nothing short of baffling.

"G'morning," She mumbled, fighting through the sleepy haze in her mind as she drew her knees to her chest and turned slightly to face him, her eyes urging him to just get it over with as she bit on her lower lip, wondering why she couldn't just give in.

Maybe some part of her was as evil and twisted as the Goblin King half of Jareth and she actually enjoyed tormenting him and letting his insecurity fester inside his heart each day as she turned him down.

If so, then she should probably just give in and say yes. Only a Goblin Queen could get away with such malice and still be loved by her King.

She worried her bottom lip as her mind pondered a dozen thoughts, all related to the question Jareth was about to ask her and the answer she would give him. It had been a firm no for the past three mornings; today she was tempted to give him a maybe.

"Darling Sarah-mine, I've phrased this in every single way romantically possibly and the average woman would have long given in by now, you stubborn child." He reprimanded with a mock scowl before his eyes cleared up and his features softened once more. Sarah rolled her eyes – Jareth's mood swings were ridiculous and legendary in the Underground but she knew this one was an act – and waited for him to go on.

"But you have never been average, precious," Jareth said gently, reaching for her hand. She placed it in his and allowed him to hold on tight, a reassurance in its own little way. "And so maybe, just maybe, I have been going about this in the wrong manner, especially since you so horrifically misunderstood my first proposal."

Sarah wrenched her hand out of his with a frustrated cry and gestured wildly. "How many times have we talked about this, Jareth? I was fifteen and you were all-"

Jareth reclaimed her hand with a firm look, making her pause in the middle of her aggravated defense of her fifteen-year-old self. "Sarah," He said simply, his tone leaving no room for interruption as he commanded her, with a single word, to hear him out. Sarah huffed but did not defy him, wondering just what he had come up with today. The wrong manner, he'd said. Maybe Jareth had decided to change things up; demand that she marry him or else, perhaps.

His eyes bore into hers and any lingering trace of sleep in her green orbs quickly drained away as she became acutely aware of his intense mismatched gaze, looking at her in a way that made her terribly aware of the fact that underneath the sheets, she was as naked as the day she'd been born. In the periphery of her vision, she could clearly see the path of destruction Jareth had carved just the night before, abused clothes and lingerie tracing a path from her art room to their bedroom. Her heart pounded and swelled under his heated look, still conflicted when it came to the intensity and depth of his feelings for her. That probably explained why she'd reacted badly to the following question since the first morning they'd woken up cuddled together, though his proposal had been considerably more eloquent and long-winded then.

"Sarah, precious, I love you and I want you by my side forever as my Queen. Will you please do me the honor of being my wife?"

So she'd reduced him to begging. Some part of her felt horrible. It was the dominant part of her mind, recently hijacked by her heart. A tiny part of her, a voice she quickly blocked, was undeniably smug and satisfied to have turned the tables on him. She hated that tiny voice; it was mainly to blame for the fact that she had yet to snatch the amulet – medallion – whatever – out of Jareth's outstretched fingers and put it on.

Still, that bigger part of her thrilled and flushed and danced about at the mere notion of being Jareth's queen, his wife. In her mind, a miniature Sarah swooned and fainted, falling to the ground as she murmured unintelligibly about how beautiful their children would be.

Finally freed of the silly romantic in her as she hallucinated about life with Jareth in the Underground as a married couple, Sarah leaned forward, falling into Jareth's arms as she wound her own around his middle. She sighed heavily when he stilled, caught by surprise at her reaction, and the sound of her drawn-out exhale prompted him to wrap his own arms around her waist, holding her close.

"I told you things don't work that way, Jareth," Sarah whispered reluctantly into his neck. A girl simply did not go and get engaged to a guy after one or three nights together, even if the guy happened to be a Goblin King who'd loved her for nearly a decade. She pulled back to face Jareth, her fingers absent-mindedly slipping into his hair.

"You don't just get married to someone after sleeping together, no matter how-"

Jareth tensed and she wondered what she'd said this time as he pulled her hands away from him and lowered them. "And is that what you think of us, Sarah-mine? That what we've been doing for the past three days - that the intimacy we've shared - is merely categorized as sleeping together?" His rant had been delivered in a perfectly icy, chilling tone until he spat out the last two words, disapproving and maybe a little disgusted.

"What?" Sarah's eyes widened. "Damn it," She growled, hooking her arms around his neck to draw Jareth closer. "No! I love you, you insufferable man! I'm just saying that we can't just fall into bed one night, wake up and say I love you and then get hitched! Things are different here, Jareth. You flirt and you go on dates and then maybe you move in together, and if you manage to not kill each other after sharing a bathroom and holding a conversation first thing in the morning without any coffee, then you maybe, possibly think about getting married."

He regarded her curiously, the tiniest spark lighting up his blue eyes. "And what, pray tell, have we been doing for the last eleven months, precious?" He sounded reasonable, a little confused and a tiny bit amused, victorious. She was speechless.

Jareth had flirted with her since the very first night he'd returned, so that was a stupid thing to say. And he'd been on countless dates with her ever since she'd first asked him to her showing, although most of them had felt so natural she hadn't even thought of them that way and really, they'd only called them dates jokingly. As for living together… Jareth had his own shelves – yes, shelves – on her bookcase. She thought of the bedroom as their bedroom. He literally proposed to her every morning before the first cup of coffee had been brewed in the apartment and though they got at each other's throats and yelled and insulted, never once had she truly been mad at him and not a single time had he let her provoke him into actual rage.

"Why, Sarah? Why can't you just give in to both of us?" Jareth questioned, drawing her closer with his hold on her waist. Sarah moved her hands so that her palms were pressed up against his chest, allowing her to study him.

"So much would change," She whispered, eyes focused on the pale skin of his chest. Jareth sighed and raised one hand to curl a finger under her chin, bringing her eyes up to his.

"So much already has," He said softly. "And hasn't it been good?"

Sarah smiled despite herself. "Very, very good." She admitted and she wasn't even referring to the nights they now spent together, although that, too, was very, very good. It was the way Jareth held her as they slept, as if he would never let go of her again. It was the way she felt when she woke up, and he was the first person she saw. It was the way they could sit together quietly, for hours, and be as content and comfortable around each other as they were when they were out and about, trading stories and sharing laughs. It was the way Jareth made her feel, for the very first time, as if she finally belonged – somewhere, with someone and not to, because she was his equal now in ways her fifteen-year-old self never could have been.

And it scared her shitless, frankly, this sense of belonging, because she could just get lost in it forever and not emerge, just remain in her perfect little bubble with Jareth for the rest of eternity and not once think of her life Aboveground, her family, her career. She sighed again, one hand finding his thumping heart as the other traced his jaw, his cheekbones… she hoped their children would get his bone structure and it gave her a panic attack because it felt so natural to assume they'd have children, someday. Jareth had made a passing reference to little Goblin princes and princesses two days ago and the infamous butterflies had gone crazy in her stomach, their wildly fluttering wings generating so much energy her belly had grown pleasantly warm at the thought of their children. Her hand finally settled on the side of his face as she met his eyes.

"I can't just give everything up, Jareth. It's tempting and whimsical and any other girl would probably call me crazy but I can't just leave this life and be your Queen in a magical world. I have my family and my books and it's boring and so painfully normal but it's mine, this weird little life I've carved out and if I gave it up for you and became someone else… what would that say about me?" She finished her little speech and waited with baited breath for Jareth to react.

He chuckled and released his hold on her waist to frame her face between his warm hands. "Silly, silly girl," He laughed fondly, leaning in to rest his forehead against hers.

"Where in the world did you get the idea that I would make you give up all of this?"

Silence reigned for a blissful seven seconds before Sarah began sputtering. "But I – you – the Underground is-"

"Just a teleportation spell away, dearest." Jareth finished patiently, trying to get her to see some sense. "You – we, in fact – could come back anytime. If you'd like, we could even live here… for now," He was quick to add, no doubt thinking of the much larger bedroom he had in the Castle. No disgruntled neighbors knocking on the wall at two in the morning to make him keep it down. "We'd spend some time in the Kingdom, of course, carrying out our obligations and such, and at the end of each day, we'd return here, Aboveground. On free days you could write and paint and on weekends we could visit your family. We'd go off on vacation once in a while, of course, a Queen should know all of her realm and you missed the very best parts during your last visit-"

"Huh, I wonder why," Sarah cut in, earning herself a disapproving look that was gone as soon as she had spotted it. "So… sounds like you've got this all planned out."

"You gave me a long time to plan," Jareth said softly, not even the slightest trace of accusation in his voice. She was glad – they wouldn't have gotten this far if he'd still held her decision against her, and as much as she'd fretted over it in the past nine years and wondered about what could have been, she knew it had been the right decision to make at fifteen. She hadn't been ready for any of this then, all of this personal stuff with Jareth, let alone to assume the responsibilities of a Queen – speaking of which…

"And what else should a Queen know?" She aimed for casual and ended up sounding nervous. One of Jareth's hands smoothed back wild tendrils of hair, pushing them all away as he offered her a reassuring smile.

"A lot, certainly, but nothing that you can't learn in a century or two." He teased and her mind paused at the sheer impossibility of that sentence. It wasn't the first time Jareth had made references to such a length of time but this time, she would question him. They would hammer out all of the details before she agreed to anything.

"Jareth," She said abruptly, stopping him before he could go on to outline her responsibilities. She wanted to know about those too, of course, but first she had to know how exactly she was going to have a century or two to learn anything.

"Yes, dearest?" Jareth replied curiously, though there was a hint of smugness and triumph in his voice and his eyes now that she was at least considering his proposal.

"I don't have a century or two," She swallowed hard, eyes flitting about her bedroom before Jareth reclaimed her attention. "Not Aboveground, at least." She shrugged. Jareth smiled at her display of nonchalance – even though she'd failed miserably. It was so much harder to fool him now that it had been in the early days of their friendship.

"Sarah, I have turned the world upside down for you before and I am prepared to do it again." Sarah's green eyes shone with curiosity she tried to curb, waiting patiently for Jareth to explain. "In the beginning, I'd planned to simply turn you into an immortal human, the way the lost children are – it wouldn't do to grant Fae parents a child of their own only for time to rip the little one away after a mere eight decades or so."

"But then you won – you conquered the Labyrinth – and Toby wasn't your only prize."

"What?" Sarah asked, wondering why Jareth had never brought this up.

"You left before I could tell you," Jareth responded to the unspoken question. "And after that, it was never the right time to tell you. Sarah, pass me the remote, would you? Oh, and by the way, when are you coming back to claim your rightful place as Lady of the Labyrinth and Goblin Queen?" He mimicked a daily conversation, tacking on the last bit of information with a grin.

"Oh." Her mind raced but still it didn't exactly answer her question.

"I wasn't the only one to grant you certain powers, Sarah. Should you return, the Labyrinth will make sure that you are up to the task of guarding it – magical gifts and all."

After twenty-five years spent Aboveground and a good half of those years cursing her normal life, wishing to escape, craving magic in her existence – Jareth was offering her all that on top of himself, for eternity.

Her mind couldn't process all of this.

"Come on, Your Highness, let's go have breakfast," She pulled away from his touch, swinging her legs over her side of the bed to touch the ground. "I can't keep up with any of this without coffee."

Jareth laughed and followed suite, meeting her by the foot of the bed after returning the amulet to its place on the nightstand. He knew that this was Sarah's way of saying she needed a break and after all that they had covered – so much more productive than a vehement no – he wasn't going to push her any further.

"Anything my Queen desires," He said, drawing one hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to Sarah's knuckles. "I'll get started on the coffee, then, shall I?"

"Yeah, that'd be great." Sarah smiled, disappearing into the bathroom once he'd released her hand. Jareth went ahead and true to his word, when Sarah emerged from her morning routine in the bathroom, she found two cups of coffee sitting on the breakfast table. Jareth had left the cooking to her, though, possessing enough common sense and grace to simply concede defeat when it came to the stove and leave that part to her.

She asked him, casually, to outline the responsibilities she would have as Queen with her back turned to him, concentrating on the eggs she was making for them and he subtly promised, wordlessly picking up on her apprehension, that Goblin Queens did not have the same responsibilities as Goblin Kings. There was no mention of wished-aways in his extensive list of duties he had neglected to tend to in the absence of a Queen that Sarah would need to see to.

They ate their breakfast and moved to the living room, discussing living arrangements as Sarah channel-surfed and Jareth tried to keep up with the programs as they flew by.

"But if there's so much to do," Her brows furrowed. "How did you manage to spend so much time with me?"

"I have trusted advisors, Sarah," Jareth had explained patiently before giving into her pointed look. "And perhaps the few hours we spent apart in the Aboveground were much longer than that in my realm."

"You re-ordered time?" She asked incredulously, mind latching onto a line he'd spoken once before.

"I couldn't very well disappear for days at a time, now could I?"

She observed him in silence for a while after that, wondering just how much Jareth had actually done to be with her.

There wasn't much to discuss after and Sarah asked him for one last normal day, promising to return with him to the Underground tomorrow – just for a day, she warned. Just to see how things were and how they would be. He agreed and asked if she'd like to meet her friends. Sarah stilled and Jareth took this as his chance to finally ask her something he'd been wondering about for a long time.

"Sarah, precious – why did you stop calling on them in the first place?"

With a heavy sigh, Sarah leaned into him, sprawled out across the couch, and took a moment to gather her thoughts. "I had to grow up, but I didn't want to, not with them around. They were my best friends and the only ones who knew everything about me, and after a while, they were the only friends I'd bothered to keep. Throughout high school, everyone said I became more withdrawn. I didn't talk much, didn't do much, just spent most of my time in my room. No one knew I was talking to knights and partying with goblins, of course, so they were worried. Not that the truth would have been any less worrying for them," She thought out loud and Jareth grinned.

"Eventually, though, I had to leave for college. It was time to grow up, really grow up, and I knew that I couldn't as long as I kept that big a part of my childhood with me. They understood, though, Sir Didymus and Hoggle and Ludo. They knew why I had to say goodbye."

He allowed her a brief pause before going on. "And when I came back? Why not ask to see them then?"

Sarah laughed, short and a little bitter. He hadn't ever heard that sound from her. "I was scared. So scared to face them that I chose to stay away and hide." She purposely kept her eyes focused on the screen, embarrassed to meet Jareth's probing gaze. Jareth sighed and dropped a kiss on the top of her head.

"Sarah, there's nothing for you to be scared of. Your friends miss you, even that selfish little dwarf." She'd yet to ask him about his relationship with Hoggle – contrary to what she had thought, Jareth actually got along with most of his subjects, with the very noticeable exception of one royal gardener. But that was a story for another day.

"They told you so?" She asked hopefully.

"They came to me regularly, asking for word about you. All they wanted to know was that you were alright. They really do understand why you said goodbye, dearest, and no one could hold it against you."

They sat in silence as Sarah contemplated this recent discovery and eventually she asked, in a very small voice, for Jareth to bring her to her friends tomorrow. He promised her the stars, the moon and her ragtag band of misfits.

And that was that. Jareth and Sarah sat, curled up together like it was any other rainy day. She asked for stories about the goblins and he asked her about her plans for life in the Aboveground. She worried over meeting his parents and he told her his mother loved her already. She talked about rallying the Castle goblins together for AA meetings and after having the concept explained to him, Jareth laughed and said she was a great Queen already.

Much, much later, as the sun set and the news came on, Sarah suddenly got to her feet and walked out of the living room. Jareth's eyes followed her for a moment before figuring that she must've gone to the bathroom and he focused on the evening news, having gotten into the habit of keeping up with Aboveground happenings.

The local news station's report on the apprehension of a long-wanted criminal was quickly forgotten when Sarah returned to the room, house phone in one hand and amulet in the other.

Jareth's throat constricted and his mouth felt disturbingly dry as Sarah settled in next to him, sitting cross-legged on the other end of the couch instead of resuming her former curled up position. She caught his eye, prompting him to turn slightly to face her, and with one beautiful smile, she punched in a set of numbers and held the phone to her ear, maintaining eye contact with Jareth the whole time.

"Hey, Karen?" She spoke after a few rings. "Yeah, it's Sarah. How's everyone?" She took advantage of Karen's distraction as she rattled off the events of the past few days to her, slipping the amulet over her head and down her neck, feeling it settle a few inches further down from her collarbone. Never once did her eyes break away from Jareth's, even when his shone so brightly with joy she thought she was going to cry right then and hurl herself into his arms. She settled for reaching out her free hand and lacing her fingers together with Jareth's as Karen's summary came to an end.

"So, Karen, I was wondering if we could drop by tomorrow." She smiled then, an answering smile every bit as brilliant as Jareth's.

"Jareth and I have some news."

THE END

Okay, first and foremost: there were totally cordless house phones by then. Google tells me they were introduced in 1994 (well, a quick skim through an article I found on Google, anyway) and I've set this in 1995, so there.

Well… that's that, folks. First things first – if you're still in the mood for more, the original first chapter of what was supposed to be the second part – from back when I was going to skip eleven months ahead without snippets in-between – can be found on my blog. The link to that can, in turn, be found on my profile. Check it out if you'd like, just keep in mind that it's completely irrelevant to the storyline now.

And now that even the last bit of extra material has been shared with you guys, I suppose it's really the end… for now. Thank you all for joining me on my maiden voyage through the Labyrinth as I navigated its twists and turns and got inside a Goblin King's head and a Champion's heart. It's truly been the most wonderful experience and reading your reviews makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, not unlike the way I feel after reading some good Jareth/Sarah fluff. I'm glad to have coaxed smiles and provided laughs, for entertaining and amusing you lot, and hopefully we'll continue this soon – as soon as I sort through all of the ideas in my mind and settle on one. In the meantime, I'll be spending the weekend getting back to you guys while I take a short break from writing, and I look forward to thanking each of you personally and getting to know all of you.

For the last time, why not share your thoughts on Try A Little Tenderness and maybe wave goodbye to this version of Jareth and Sarah? I have a feeling we won't be seeing them for a while… if ever again. They'll be too busy living out their happily-ever-after, you see.

E Salvatore,

April 2013.