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~ A Different Kind of Fairy Tale Ending ~
When Sarah confronted Jareth at the heart of the labyrinth and he told her that he was exhausted from trying to live up to her expectations of him, the part of her storybook that sprang to her mind was not the line that she always forgot, but rather the part that said the Goblin King had fallen in love with the girl.
And with that in mind, she threw herself against him and wrapped her arms around his waist. Jareth did not react for the brief moment that it took for him to understand that he was being hugged rather than attacked, and once that split second passed, he enfolded Sarah in a tender embrace.
A small eternity passed as the two simply stood there holding each other. Jareth began to wonder if time would remain frozen on this moment forever, the happily ever after to their fairy tale...
Sarah was still pressed against the Goblin King, her arms around him, her head on his chest, when she spoke up - shattering Jareth's illusion that their story ended here.
"I'll make a deal with you," she said. "Give Toby back to me, and I'll promise you my firstborn child."
Jareth had no doubt that she was thinking of such bargains from stories, although as far as he recalled those firstborn children were usually promised away to witches or fairies, not goblins. He was, however, intrigued by the concept of trading Sarah's existing brother for her future child.
After thinking it over for a moment, he replied, "You have a deal, then."
When Jareth decided it was time to collect the child he was owed, he returned to the human world a full decade since the last time he'd been there.
Sarah was still living at home with her family, despite having graduated from college with a degree in literature and becoming a moderately successful writer of children's books. (All of which he was already aware of from spying on her with his crystals.)
Jareth walked up to the porch and raised his hand to knock on the door, but paused as he heard shouting from inside the house.
Sarah's stepmother was nagging her about how she needed to find a boyfriend so she could get married and move out of the house already if she hated it here so much.
"She does have a boyfriend!" piped up a voice that Jareth did not recognize.
The stepmother let out a deep sigh and said, "Not this again, Toby," as her son continued on, heedless of his mother's exasperation: "He's the Goblin King! He kidnapped me when I was a baby and he's coming back for Sarah."
"That's just a story Sarah told you when you were little. It's not real."
The front door was abruptly jerked open. Jareth still had not actually knocked and was standing there with his hand raised when Sarah stormed out of the house in a rage and ran slap-bang into him.
He stumbled backward a step from the force with which she'd barrelled into him, but caught his balance quickly and laid his hands on Sarah's shoulders to steady her.
She looked up at him and the anger drained from her expression as she realized exactly who she was looking at.
"I was starting to wonder how long it would take you to show up," she said.
Inside the house, Toby was yelling, "That's him! The Goblin King!"
"Sarah, is that really your boyfriend? Why haven't you ever introduced him to me and your father?" the stepmother called out.
Sarah scowled but otherwise ignored her family as she said in an undertone to Jareth, "Let's go somewhere else."
She took him by the hand to lead him into the nearby woods, where she had often played her fairy tale games when she was younger.
Once they were alone, Jareth got to the point immediately.
"Now, about the child you promised me... I see that one hasn't been born yet."
"Well, of course not," Sarah replied, looping her arm through his as they wandered idly through the woods. "This is the first time I've seen you in ten years."
Jareth frowned, unsure what that had to do with anything.
When Sarah saw his expression, she said, "You do know how babies are made, don't you?"
"Of course."
"And not some magic way that happens in Goblin Land that isn't possible here!"
"I'll have you know that mating is also required for goblins to produce offspring."
"Then you understand why I couldn't have had one without you."
While they had seemed to be talking at cross purposes for most of this conversation, it finally dawned on Jareth that he'd misunderstood something about the promise that Sarah had offered him in the heart of the labyrinth. When she had offered to give him her future child, Jareth assumed she meant that she would give up the child to be raised in Goblin Land, the way that similar bargains played out in fairy tales.
What she had actually meant, however, was that she would bear his child.
Sarah's stepmother was not amused when Sarah disappeared without a trace for several months, only to turn up again out of the blue with that weird guy who was supposedly her boyfriend.
When the stepmother started in on her nagging, Sarah told her, "I'm just here to get my things. I'm moving out like you wanted."
"Who is this man, anyway?"
The stepmother was very much not amused when Sarah introduced him as "my husband, Jareth, the Goblin King."
~end~