Lost strength and bedtime stories....

Sarah rubbed at her eyes viciously. She couldn't believe whom she saw standing before her. Aryanna looked quite pleased with herself.

"I'm going to watch tv now. Bye!" She let go of his hand quickly and rushed from the room, leaving the Goblin King with a desperate look on his face.

He turned back to Sarah who had risen from the chair with a look of disbelief plastered on her face. Her eyes moved over him, with sadness in them. He looked exactly the same as she remembered him. Except his eyes. Instead of mirroring his arrogant stance and appearance, they were full of sorrow. The sorrow of a King who had spent the last 20 years bitter with the fact that he had been left alone.

"Hello Sarah. It's been a long time." He whispered softly. His voice was arrogant and crisp as well but she looked past that. All she could see was the sorrow in his mismatched eyes. They betrayed him by showing her what he actually felt and not what he falsely projected.

"How...why?" She looked utterly confused and that surprised him. He expected anger, insults and threats to come forth from her. She suddenly looked horrified. "Oh no, please tell me that you aren't here for Ary. Please no..."

He shook his head. "I'm not here for your daughter. I'm here for you Sarah." His voice was calm and the arrogance had disappeared.

"I...I don't understand." She stared at him through puffy red eyes. Eyes that had cried too many tears over the past several years.

"Your daughter asked me to come...She wanted me to help you."

"Help me?" He nodded ever so slightly. "Help me with what?"

"Help make you happy again, is what she wished."

Despite herself Sarah smiled. "That's my baby. Always trying to make me happy."

"She is worried about you Sarah.." * and so am I... *

"Yes, she's a little worry wart."

"I can understand why." He paused and allowed his stance to soften. "You have been troubled the last few years."

Sarah sighed and took a seat in a soft looking recliner. She pinched her nose and began to speak as if having the Goblin King standing in her living room was a completely normal thing. "Troubled doesn't nearly cover it." Another headache pounded in her head. She'd stopped taking Tylenol and Advil long ago. They did nothing to help her. Soft leather brushed across her face and the pain was suddenly gone. She opened her eyes to find him standing above her, directly on the side of the chair. He looked worried.

"You've gotten so very thin. And where is your fire and spirit Sarah?" He cocked his head to the side regarding her thoughtfully.

"They burned out a long time ago." She admitted truthfully and bitterly.

"Apparently they have. You've not even shouted at me or insulted me."

"Should I insult you? Should I yell at you? I'm not a child Goblin King. Not any longer. I had to grow up a eventually."

"Jareth." He said softly.

"What?"

"My name is Jareth. It always annoyed me when you called me by title."

"Jareth..." she let the name roll from her tongue. "I remember it now. It feels like so long ago."

"It was..." he whispered softly.

"What have you been doing for the last 20 years? Still snatching unwanted children?"

He nodded. "Very few have run the Labyrinth since you. No one believes anymore. It has been a lonely existence" She noticed the sadness in his voice and she actually felt sorry for him.

"I know how that feels." She admitted to him, not sure why.

"I know..." he whispered. He gently touched her face with one hand, sweeping back the dark hair that still reached well past her shoulders. He noticed a few silver hairs mixed with the dark locks but they did not detract from her beauty. To him she was still the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

"Aryanna.." was all that she said. She closed her eyes and allowed her face to fall into the palm of his hand, not sure why she had done that either.

"Yes...she has brought me up to date." His voice was a whisper.

"Brat.."

"She is a wonderful child and so much like her mother that I thought time had been re altered and it was you I saw standing before me. Her father did not truly understand what he was leaving behind..."

She didn't miss the double meaning in his words. Not only did he mean Aryanna but herself as well. She pulled away from his touch and pulled her knees up to her chin with a heavy sigh. Jareth withdrew giving her the space she obviously wanted. He silently cursed himself for saying too much.

"Why are you here Jareth?" He loved the way she said his name....

'I told you. I'm here to make you happy again."

She rolled her eyes and he sensed that the old Sarah was not lost, but buried deep within. "That's not a reason."

"Oh but it is. It is the reason that I am here. Your daughter said I made you happy once and she believes that I can do it again."

"She obviously made that up. How would she know what makes me happy?"

"Because she read your own words, from long ago."

Sarah's eyes widened. "She found my diary." He nodded. "Oh god, she didn't." He nodded again. "Please tell me that you didn't read it."

He couldn't help but grin devilishly, stringing her along and then he shook his head. "I didn't read it. She tried to get me to and as tempted as I was, I explained to her that she should not have gone snooping. She assures me that it was an accident. It is true?"

"Is what true?" She breathed a sigh of relief that the Goblin King had not read her diary. Her daughter would get a stern talking to later. That much was sure.

He knelt beside the chair, looking up at her. "That I made you happy...that you...that you once loved me." His mismatched eyes focused on her and she couldn't help but notice how handsome he really was. That blond hair framing his pale sculptured face, those eyes, so mesmerizing. His tall slender body a mere foot from her. The pale flesh of his chest exposed for her greedy eyes to take in.

She turned violently away from him, gripping her legs tightly to herself after she felt the warmth of a blush burn her cheeks. "That was a long time ago, Jareth. When I was young, alone and didn't understand what love was." She caught the look of hurt in his eyes.

"And now...Now that you're older?" He licked his lips when after they had suddenly become dry. She had not missed the hope in his voice. No way, he couldn't? He couldn't possibly feel something for her? Could he? That just wasn't possible.

"Now that I'm older that's all I am older. And tired and sick of all the crap that's been thrown my way. I'm 35 and I feel like I should be 85."

"You don't even look 35." There was that soft leather on her face again, smoothing her dark hair back and brushing it lightly behind her ear. "You look more beautiful now then you did at 15."

Tears clouded her eyes as he continued to caress her hair and face so gently. One escaped down her cheek and he moved to wipe it away. She began to sob softly and that startled him. She was too proud to cry, too strong. He knelt in front of her, taking her hands into his and pulled her toward him. And suddenly she was in his arms, her face buried with in the soft ruffles of his shirt, her arms around his waist, clutching him to her.

Jareth was shocked momentarily by her sudden actions. He had not expected her to break down so quickly and in front of him no less. She was always so strong. It only proved to show that she had been through so much in the last 20 years.

She felt his arms draw her closer to him. He offered her the warmth, the protection that she had been denied for so many years. Adam would never have held her like this. The sobs that escaped her were loud and ugly. They were the sobs of someone so close to mental and physical collapse. Someone on the verge of giving up on the hope of anything good ever happening again. She trembled in his arms as he stroked her hair and placed kisses in the soft locks.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." He whispered into her hair. "I should not have been so selfish, I shouldn't have let you fall so far.."

She clutched him to her even tighter at his words. Her knees buckled as the last of her strength failed her and he caught her gracefully in his arms, cradling her against him like a baby as he moved to the couch, sitting with her in his lap. She sobbed softly against him. He continued to hold her, doing his best to comfort her with gentle touches and soft words. Soon the sobbing subsided and he glanced down to see that she was fast asleep. Jareth sighed grateful that sleep had claimed her. She needed her rest. He didn't know how much time had passed but he was sure that it had grown late.

He heard footsteps and turned to see Aryanna standing in the doorway. He put a finger to his lips. "She's sleeping." He whispered.

"Mommy will be mad if she knew that I was still up. Can you tuck me in?" The little girl stood before him in light blue flannel pajamas with yellow moons and white clouds printed on them. She held a very old, worn and apparently loved teddy bear in her arms.

"What?" He asked. Surely she didn't expect him to..?

"Tuck me into bed. Mommy usually does it but she's sleeping before me." The child did expect him to bring her up to bed. Hardly an appropriate job for the Goblin King, but he nodded to her none the less.

He carefully laid Sarah down on the soft cushions of the couch. He followed the little girl up the blue carpeted stairs and into her bedroom. He smiled seeing stuffed unicorns and books about fairy tales. Like mother, like daughter.

Aryanna jumped on her bed and pulled the covers down. Jareth moved slowly to the side of the bed and pulled the covers up over the little girl, covering both her and the bear with the flannel sheets and soft quilt. "G'night." He told her reaching for the pull chain on the lamp beside her bed.

"Wait, you have to tell me a story. Mommy always tells me a bedtime story." He sighed and nodded. By the bog this child was demanding. Yet he found her irresistible, just like her mother. A bedtime story. What could he tell this child? Certainly not tales of his pathetic goblins?

He sat on the edge of the bed and folded his hands on his lap. "There was once a King who ruled over his land with an iron fist. He didn't tolerate anyone disobeying him. Those who disobeyed were cast out into a swamp that smelled so badly, not even toads, and snails and salamanders would live there. If you touched the waters of the swamp you would smell bad for the rest of your life."

"Eww!" Aryanna cried out.

Jareth grinned. "You see this King was very bitter and commanded domainance, but because he did so he forced everyone away from him. No one truly knew what he was like and over time he became very lonely. He had lived that way for hundreds of years."

"Hundreds of years?" Aryanna echoed.

"Are you going to let me finish the story or are you going to keep interrupting me?" She wanted a story and now she wouldn't let him tell it!

"I'm sorry, but hundreds of years? Can people live that long?" She looked at him with her wide green eyes.

Jareth let out a sigh and the little girl allowed him to continue. "Anyway, the king lived that way for a very long time. He was spoiled and used to getting whatever he wanted. He had everything in his life, but he didn't have love. He didn't know what love was. He had heard about it, but never felt if for anyone else."

"Everyone knows how to love." Jareth flashed her a look. "I'm sorry."

"Well this King didn't know how to love. In fact when love touched him he used all his magic to make it go away. But he couldn't. You see a young girl had entered his kingdom. One who had a will as great as his own. She was very beautiful and smart and the King fell in love with her even though he didn't want to. But it was sad because the King didn't know how to show the girl that he loved her. He tried to win her over but he went about things the wrong way and the girl thought his feelings were part of a game. So the girl never knew what the King truly felt for her."

"That's so sad. Oops..." She hugged her teddy bear and Jareth continued.

"She went far, far away and the King never saw her again. But that didn't mean that he gave up loving her even when many years went by. And he lived only surviving because of his memories of her."

"What's the moral of the story? What's the moral?" she asked jumping up and down on her bed with her knees. "Mommy always tell me the moral."

Jareth tapped one gloved finger against his lips in thought. "I suppose the moral is, never give up because you never know what the future may hold." He reached for the covers pulling them over her again. "Now go to sleep."

"Ok. G'night Goblin King." She rolled over pulling her blankets up to her chin.

"G'night Aryanna. Don't let the goblins bite." He pulled the chain on the lamp and the room was bathed in darkness.

"Goblins bite?"

"G'night Aryanna."