Chapter Text
Jareth, the Goblin King, sat on his throne in the room that the goblins that resided in the castle they regarded as their own. He lounged more than he sat with one leg thrown over the arm of his large circular chair. The king stared off into space, oblivious to the movement of goblins and chickens around him, as he idly tapped one end of the riding crop he held in his hand against the bottom of his black leather boot.
Suddenly, a loud crash snapped the king to immediate attention. His booted feet hit the floor with a thump, and he launched to his feet. With his riding crop hanging from his hand, his hawkish eyes shot around the room, looking for whatever had made that sound.
He did not have to look long, for the cause of the crash was obvious. Several goblins were attempting to hull a large pine tree into the room. While the large circular room was open and sparsely furnished, due to the goblins’ destructive tendencies, there was a large circular pit in the center of the room. As the goblins, brought in the top of the tree, concentrating on pulling it into the room, they did not look where they were going and fell into the pit, taking the tree and the other goblins that were pushing the other end into the pit.
“What in the seven hells is going on?” the king roared, unhappy that his brooding was interrupted.
“Sorry, Kingy,” called one only to be elbowed by another.
“Kingy doesn’t wanna be called Kingy, remember,” hissed the goblin attached to the elbow. “Call him Maj-jest-tee.” The little goblin smiled proud that he remembered the word the king wanted to be called, and it only took five trips to the bog too.
“Oh, yeah, sorry for callin' ya Kingy, Maj-jes-tee,” said the goblin, hoping that the correction would keep him out of the bog this time.
Jareth pinched his nose with his left hand and closed his eyes and wondered not for the first time how he had become the leader of this band of misfits. It was just another reason that he was shutting himself off from the world. If he cared more, he would be driven crazy by these lunatics.
“Answer my question, one of you…any of you.” Jareth knew he would not like the reason that the goblins were bringing a forest into his castle, but he felt he needed to know the answer anyway.
“It is Yule,” said a goblin, looking at Jareth with a puzzled expression.
“Yule?” the Goblin King asked in disbelief. “Yule?” he repeated, and all the goblins began nodding their heads.
“Why do you care that it is Yule? And what does that have to do with a tree?” Jareth said disdainfully.
While he had enjoyed the season and all its trappings when he was younger, as he aged, he found that the celebration was silly and had no real purpose except to encourage his subjects to work less, party more, and leave his castle and kingdom in shambles. Over the years, he had strongly discouraged most of the traditions that came with Yule celebrations and had forbidden them in the castle itself. Looking at everyone being so cheerful only made him feel worse; he just wanted each day to be like the last, predictable and monotonous.
“Well, Yule, like Christmas, and Christmas has a tree,” one of the goblins piped up as another hit him over the head.
“NO SAY CHRISTMAS. KINGY GET MAD!” he said in a shouting stage whisper.
“Christmas?” the king asked in an overly soft voice that sent some of the goblins running for cover, what little cover there was, that resulted in most of them trying to hide behind each other.
“Where would you be learning about Christmas?” the Goblin King continued and then answered his own question. “Since Christmas is not celebrated anywhere here in the Underground, the only place that you could have learned of it was…THE ABOVE!” he roared the last two words.
“Um…well…you…see.” The goblins were falling over themselves to either distance themselves from the ones with the tree, or to quickly think of some explanation that would not get them bogged.
“It is forbidden for anyone from the Goblin Kingdom to have any contact with anyone or anything in the Above unless it relates to collecting a wished-away.” Jareth was furious that the goblins were still going there, even after he had ordered them not to. He should not have been surprised, most of them were directionally deficient, but to disregard a direct order… vexed him to no end.
“I told you not to say it,” one goblin said, trying to win points with the king.
Jareth looked down at the self-satisfied look on the goblin's face, and with a snap, the goblin disappeared. Everyone in the room knew that the goblin was at this moment landing in the Bog of Eternal Stench, not to be seen for quite some time.
“Get that tree, and that holly, and that mistletoe, and that…that…that…,” Jareth was signaling to all the goblins that had different pieces of decorations.
“Toby and Sarah call it garland,” interrupted a goblin helpfully.
With a wave, the goblin disappeared as well. The others shook their heads sadly. They all knew never to mention the names of humans around the king, especially those humans.
“Well? Move!” Jareth commanded icily.
The goblins moved at lightning speed, trying to follow the directive that their king had given. The problem was, the faster they moved, the more clumsy, accident-prone, and destructive they became. Jareth covered his face with one hand, not able to watch the ridiculous scene in front of him, all the while tapping his riding crop against his leg. What did he need to do to have his life the way he wanted it?
When Sarah made her way home from the Labyrinth everything changed. She became closer to her family, especially her brother Toby. She realized that their shared relationship in the Underground gave them a special bond. She felt better when she was with her brother, and even Karen noticed that Sarah could calm Toby when no one else could.
Sarah also kept in touch with the friends she had met when she was in the Underground. When she found herself back in her house and was sure that Toby was safe, her following thoughts were ones of regret that she had to leave those she had come to care about behind.
She found herself sitting at her vanity, thinking of Hoggle, Sir Didymus, and the others she had met. When she found out that the door to their world wasn’t closed, Sarah made it a point to keep in touch with everyone she had met. That included her friends who had helped her, and also those that she had gotten to know better after she came back, like the goblins.
The only one who refused to visit her was Jareth. She realized that the Goblin King was upset that she had beaten him, but she thought that he would get over it after a while. He never seemed to. The problem was, Sarah couldn’t get him out of her head.
Everything about him intrigued her. She was young, but she knew that there was something special about him. Not only was he the best-looking man she had ever seen, but she was simply drawn to him. She tried to contact him through her friends, and even the goblins, but he never came to see her or even sent a note. She had to come to terms that he had forgotten about her, or worse, he just didn’t care.
Life continued as it was for the next few years. Sarah enjoyed the close ties with her family, but she found herself pulling away from other people. She hadn’t had many close friends to begin with. She had always seemed lost in her own imagination, and after her Labyrinth journey, her peers just seemed so childish. How could she take their petty issues seriously when she had faced dangers untold and hardships unnumbered?
She did not miss the interaction with others much, as she had her friends from the Underground with whom she talked regularly and who visited her often. Sarah longed to go back to the Labyrinth to visit her friends there and be surrounded by the magic of the place. When she tried to cross the portal, however, she found it was closed off to her. When she asked Hoggle about it, he eventually told her that Jareth had forbidden her to cross the barrier. Later, he forbade the others to come across as well, but for some reason, the portal never locked. No one knew why, but they felt it best not to mention it to the king and just use it judiciously.
Things were not going as well for Toby. He was growing up changing from toddler to child, but his strong emotional attachments to his family, especially Sarah,, made interacting with others hard for him. Sarah worried that wishing him away was the cause, and she tried to explain to Toby, as young as he was, that he was safe, and no one would take him away. Nothing seemed to help, and the doctors diagnosed him with severe separation anxiety. Toby was also constantly getting mysterious illnesses that kept him inside and sometimes bedridden. He would appear weak and often had a hard time standing for long times or walking. His parents had consulted with several pediatric specialists but no one could find a reason for his ailments.
Sarah worried about going away to school and wanted to go to the local community college and live at home. Her parents would not hear of it and did not want her to hurt her future because of her worries for Toby and them. Finally, they reached a compromise. Sarah agreed to attend classes at a university close by, and her parents agreed to let her live in an apartment between it and their house. That way she was less than an hour's drive away.
Since she was so close, Sarah made it a point to visit often. She stayed most weekends at the house, sleeping in her old bedroom. Sarah also dropped in at other times when her workload was light, or if her dad and Karen needed her to watch Toby while they went out for some reason or other. Sarah had to laugh when she remembered how much she used to resent having to watch Toby, now she looked forward to their times together. This also made it easier for her to keep in touch with her Labyrinth friends, since the open portal was in her bedroom through her vanity mirror.
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Hoggle paced in the common area of the small one-bedroom apartment shared by Sarah and her brother Toby. Sarah had been the first real friend that he ever had. Through his visits with her, he had met and gotten to know and had become friends with her brother as well as he grew up. Over the years, they had become more than friends; they had come to think of each other as family. He didn’t care what the rat said about forbidding anyone to visit the Aboveground. He knew that what Jareth meant was that he didn’t want anyone staying in touch with Sarah and Toby. He would continue to visit his friends, because they needed him. This was especially true after the tragedy.
Sarah was in college and was asleep in her apartment when it happened. There was a knock on the door and on her doorstep were two police officers. She knew that the police never gave good news in the middle of the night. As she stood there, the police broke the news to her that there had been a fire and her father and stepmother had died. The firemen were able to locate her little brother and got him out. He was in the hospital being treated for smoke inhalation. Everyone told her it was a miracle that he survived.
Her brain refused to work, and Sarah was running on instinct only. She got dressed and grabbed her bag, and the officers drove her to the hospital where her brother was recovering in the children’s ward. There she met with the doctor who was treating Toby.
Sarah was relieved to find that, while Toby had been stuck in bed, he was too weak to get up and try to get out of the house; there were no burns anywhere on his body. In fact, the doctor told her that it was nothing short of a miracle and that all that had happened was that he breathed in some smoke from the air. The nurses had lightly sedated him, because he had been hysterical when they brought him in, calling for Sarah and his parents. Except for his unexplained muscle weakness and his separation anxiety, there was absolutely nothing medically wrong with him, and Sarah could take him home in the morning.
Sarah had taken him to her small apartment, as the house was a total loss. The insurance though barely handled the family’s debts, paid off the house that was destroyed, and buried her dad and stepmother. This here is very confusing. Who paid the debt? Her? The insurance company? She had to scrape to get enough things for Toby to start over, since most of his things were destroyed by the smoke.
She managed to keep them together and to survive. Sarah found that it was impossible to finish school, so she ended up working two jobs to keep the apartment, put food on the table, and handle all of Toby’s doctor appointments. She had managed to save her vanity, which was placed in the small bedroom they shared. Sarah and Hoggle were both surprised and thrilled that the portal was still usable through the mirror, even with it not being in her original bedroom.
Life was hard, but Sarah with the help of Hoggle and others from the Labyrinth made things work. Toby’s health continued to suffer, but the visits from Hoggle and the goblins seemed to perk him up, and he seemed stronger afterward. Sarah was grateful that they were willing to defy their king to be there for her and her brother.
Hoggle knew this, but he also knew something that no one else knew: he knew, or thought he knew, what really was wrong with Toby. The problem was he did not have a clue what to do about it. He could tell Sarah, but she couldn’t do anything about it either. Which would be worse; not knowing what was wrong with her brother and searching in vain for a treatment that would never be found, or knowing what was wrong and how to treat it and watching him waste away not being able to help him?
Hoggle looked at the clock. Sarah wasn’t due home from her shift at the diner for another hour. Flashing lights drew his attention to the small, thin artificial tree in the corner of the room. He had helped Sarah and Toby decorate it with paper chains and ornaments that he had made himself. He knew that Sarah tried to make Christmas special and merry for her brother, but he knew that she felt bad that she did not have the resources to do more. Hoggle slowly made his way across the room and opened the bedroom door. He squinted to see the sleeping boy in the bed. He was sweet and brave, much like his older sister, and Hoggle made a decision.
There was one person that could help Toby. Hell, he could not just help Toby, he could save Toby. Not only that, but he had the power to give Sarah everything that she had always wanted, much like he had promised, as he had offered so years ago. Hoggle didn’t want to confront the Goblin King; he was a coward after all, and Jareth was his king and employer. He could close down the portal and keep him from Sarah and Toby. He could make Hoggle’s life a living hell, and he could even bog him. But Toby and Sarah were his family, and he needed to do what he could to take care of them.
Once Hoggle had made his decision, he wanted Sarah to get home, so that he would not have time to rethink and back out. He continued to pace the length of the room until he heard her key in the lock. The door opened, and an exhausted Sarah limped into the room. She managed a smile for Hoggle after she locked the door behind her.
“Hey, Hoggle,” she said and collapsed on the couch. “Was everything ok tonight?”
“Ok…uh sure Sarah, everythin' is great. Um…I have ta go. The king has me working on some stuff fer Yule I have a long day tomorrow too,” he said, moving toward the door to the bedroom where the vanity mirror and its portal was located.
“He is making you work on Christmas?” Sarah asked incredulously. “What a Scrooge,”
“What’s a Scrooge?” Hoggle asked, confused. “Never mind, I bet it is one of those Aboveground things,” he dismissed the comment. “Oh, and remember, we don’t celebrate Christmas in the Underground,” Hoggle reminded her. “We have Yule, but it is a multi-day celebration, and not everyone can party the whole time,” he added. Hoggle then remembered something, and he realized why Sarah looked so upset and hurt. “Don’t worry, I will still be here for yer special dinner,” he promised her.
Sarah’s tired smile returned. “I’m glad Hoggle. I don’t have enough for a big dinner, but I did manage to scrape up enough for a chicken, so don’t bring any of the goblins. They might be traumatized,” she told him.
Sarah knew she needed to tell him more. Had to tell him what had to happen after Christmas. She did tearfully, and Hoggle listened with concern and pain on his face. After a few tears and a little more conversation, Hoggle made an excuse to leave.
The two friends said farewell, and Sarah gave him a hug. Hoggle slipped quietly into the bedroom to not wake up Toby and used the mirror to return to the Underground.
Hoggle walked into the common throne room, noticing that it looked much like it always had. Goblins were milling about, less so it seemed every time he came here, and chickens strutting and clucking to and fro. Then he noticed something new littering the stone floor. What was a bunch of pine needles doing here? He asked himself. Hoggle shrugged; he had stopped trying to understand anything about Jareth anymore.
Looking around, he spied the king lounging on his throne, much as he expected. Looking at the rat doing that infuriated Hoggle. "How dare he sit there, relaxin' like he doesn’t have a care in the world, when Sarah, and especially Toby, are sufferin' so," he thought. It just made him more determined to get the Goblin King to help his friends.
Hoggle was making a beeline for the throne when Jareth spied him. The Goblin King rolled his eyes. "This is all I need right now," he thought. "I have lazy goblins, and a throne room full of chickens, and now I need to deal with this ingrate."
Jareth did not move from his relaxed posture but did turn his head to look at the dwarf heading his way. “And what do I owe this pleasure to?” he asked. When Hoggle looked blank, he said, “What is it, Hogshead?”
“Yer Majesty,” Hoggle began and executed a bow, ignoring the mispronunciation of his name. He was used to it and hardly mentioned it anymore. “I have just come back from visitin' Sarah and Toby,” Hoggle said.
“You were what?” the Goblin King roared, his feet hitting the floor with a bang.
Hoggle froze and backed up a step, his cowardly nature telling him to run away.
“I was visitin' Sarah,” Hoggle began again.
“Hogwit, you know that I have forbidden anyone from my kingdom to go Above without my expressed permission,” Jareth interrupted him.
“I know, yer Majesty, but I gotta tell ya about,” Hoggle tried again.
“No, Hoggle, I will not listen to anything that has to do with either of the Williams siblings,” Jareth interrupted again.
“But Yer Majesty, ya gotta help.” Hoggle was desperate to get through to the Goblin King, but Jareth wouldn’t listen.
“I don’t have to do anything,” Jareth said icily. “And I will not do anything to help anyone in the Above, especially not Miss Sarah Williams or her brother.”
Hoggle began to open his mouth again, and Jareth cut him off before he could begin. “Hoggle, if you say anything else about Sarah or Tobias Williams, I will tip you head first into the Bog of External Stench before their names are out of your mouth. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, Yer Majesty,” Hoggle said sulkily.
“Now get out Hogshead,” Jareth said with a dismissive wave of his hand.
Hoggle was desperate to try to get Jareth to listen, but he knew it was of no use. Hoggle left the throne room and made his way to the gardener's shed to get his sprayer. He was angry at Jareth and intended to take his anger out on those in the fairy swarm that was foolish enough to cross his path today.
Holding his sprayer in his hand, Hoggle made his way past the junkyard, opting to go the long way through the Labyrinth, to the hedge maze where he was supposed to spray for fairies, when he reached what was considered one of the prettier areas in the Labyrinth with its dark green leaves and dotted with colorful groups of flowers. He could not help but think that Sarah would enjoy spending time here if she was not racing the clock to get to the castle. He could see her curled up with a book, sitting with her back against one of the hedge walls, or simply collecting wildflowers. The thoughts were to no avail, however. Jareth would never allow Sarah or her brother to come back. No matter how much she would want to, or how much Toby needed to.
Hoggle slumped against one of those hedge walls himself, and he let the tears he had been holding back flow. He cried for Toby, whom he wanted to help, but couldn’t. He cried for Sarah, who was watching her beloved brother slip away day by day. And he cried for himself and his inability to make Jareth listen to him.
So mired in his grief was Hoggle that he did not notice the voice that was calling to him. “Hoggle…Hoggle…Hoggle listen to me!” The voice increased in volume until it was a shout.
Hoggle, finally hearing the voice, looked around. “Hoggle, what is wrong?” the voice asked again, and Hoggle shook his head as if to clear it. He knew now who was speaking to him, and he knew that trying to ignore the voice or lie to it would be fruitless. He wiped his eyes on a handkerchief he took from his pocket and prepared to talk with the Labyrinth.
“It’s the rat…er I mean the king. He could help someone I care about saving his life, really,” Hoggle explained. “But he won’t; he won’t even listen to the problem."
“Who can the king save, and why would he refuse to help?” the Labyrinth asked.
“It’s Toby, ya know Sarah’s brother,” Hoggle said, knowing that the Labyrinth would know whom he was talking about. The Labyrinth knew all passed runners and wished-aways. “Jareth won’t have anything to do with either of them.”
“What is wrong with Tobias?” the Labyrinth asked, concern in its voice.
“He is suffering, dying really,” Hoggle began. “He is weak and is getting weaker. And the reason has something to do with the time he spent here as a baby. I think he needs something from here to live.”
The Labyrinth was quiet for a moment, and Hoggle wondered if it was done talking to him. “You are right, Hoggle,” it said at last. “I fear young Tobias was influenced by something in the castle. Possibly given something to eat or drink that tied him to here. It made him dependent on the magic of this place.”
“Well, can you do anything for him?” Hoggle asked.
“I am sorry, Hoggle, I cannot bring either Toby or his sister here. I have done a lot forcing the portal that King Jareth wants to close to stay open,” the Labyrinth said.
“Oh,” Hoggle said, disappointed.
After a minute, the Labyrinth spoke again, “There is one thing that I can do. I can use the king’s own power over dreams to connect him with Sarah in the Above. With your help and that of some of the others, who are friends of the Champion, we might be able to get through to the Goblin King.”
“What do ya want us ta do?” Hoggle asked, volunteering himself and any of the others who knew and loved Sarah. He knew that they would want to help.
“Listen closely, Hoggle. This is what we are going to do,” the Labyrinth said, detailing a plan to the dwarf...