This was written for the 2011 Springfest challenge in the labyfic livejournal community.

A Dialogue Between

Part 1: Endings

The smell of the periwinkles came to her, drifting and delicate. Sarah saw those small purple flowers so often on her rambles through the garden walkways, along the bike paths, sometimes even right by the road edges. Such bright spots of color among the springy green leaves, surreptitiously taking over any available areas, irrepressible. If they talked like the flowers in Through the Looking Glass, she was sure they would have mischievous words and gleams in their eyes as they plotted world domination.

But her own eyes were closed at the moment, as she lay still and silent, listening. The raucous caws of crows echoed around her, a counterpoint to the rhythmic rumblings of the sky, reverberating through her chest. So very many crows with their incessant chattering – she wondered briefly where they had all come from. There weren't usually so many around.

The storm seemed to be passing. Perhaps that had something to do with the crows. She could smell the remnants of the rain in the air – she could even taste it as a fragile mist on her tongue.

A ghost of a smile drifted through her mind. The periwinkles could surely use the gathered water to further their clever plots.

His eyes opened to the image of strangely devious five-petaled purple flowers, his ears ringing with the cawing of crows, tongue moist with a phantom mist. Jareth drew breath, stretching thoughts her-wards. It had been some time since she had called and named him, given him form.

He felt a wicked little smile curl his lips, his mind and will flowing into comfortable predatory courses. "Where are you, little dreamer…"

He would find her, of course. He could feel the wavering of her thoughts – they would be on far more equal footing this time.

He paused, his newly formed breath catching. Something wasn't right there – there was something fragmented, something dispersing…

He blinked out between one thought and the next.

Moments later, he blinked back into existence, formed again and named – but he felt a sick nebulousness at his center, a dissipation.

Before he could blink out again, he moved fast as thought to her.

It was growing lighter and lighter behind her eyelids, the previous rhythm of the heavens fading away from her ears and her chest. The storm was definitely dissipating, a memory of what it had been, completing its seasonal cycle.

Seasons don't fear the reaper…the lyrics drifted to her, unbidden. A good song…how did the rest of the lyrics go again…?

As she delved for the fog-edged words in her mind, it was almost as if she could hear the barest whisper of words in the crows' cawing – something that sounded strangely like "heart stopped".

He reached where she was, noting the gathering crowd, the desperation and resignation tracing the features of the paramedics. She lay sprawled out among a veritable bower of those purple five-petaled flowers, her eyes staring sightlessly ahead, insensible to the mist on her face from the nearby sprinklers.

That obscene sense of dissolution was claiming his center again, numbing oblivion spreading through. There was so little time…

He inhaled a deep breath of the springtime air, then gathered his remaining self and forcefully projected himself into her waning consciousness.

He appeared before her, his blazing winter king beauty touched with an unsettling seriousness. After a moment, her brain caught up with events and she realized that both of them were sitting together on Escherian steps going to nowhere, light streaming and circling around them.

Her eyebrows raised. "Alright, this is unexpected. Care to explain?"

Her lack of bemusement surprised a wry smile from him. "Where exactly do you think we are, Sarah?"

She glanced around pointedly at the winding staircases that were defying gravitational laws. "Somewhere of your making, I assume."

His smile turned bittersweet. "Yes and no – 'our making' would be more accurate. We're in a place that's being formed by me inserting myself into your consciousness as your brain is dying."

She stared at him.

He held her gaze. "Believe me, it was unpleasantly shocking to me as well. But I'm not lying to you, Sarah. We haven't the time for that."

She swallowed forcefully, eyes darting all around. "It's so light here, so bright…is it getting brighter?"

His voice was low, deliberately neutral, and he looked down. "That's your visual cortex shutting down, I think. As the pathways fire, cycling their waning energy, I believe your mind is doing its best to construct a perception from it. Many of your other areas have already...darkened."

"Oh," she said, her voice very small. Then softly, "Why are you here, Jareth?"

His eyes raised to hers. "I can only assume your memory of me was stimulated by the other neural firings of your brain. I consider myself extremely fortunate actually. "

"That makes one of us, at least," she said with a small ironic smile, before it dropped away into stillness. "So, do you know how long I have left?"

He glanced up and around them, giving a graceful shrug. "Time is a funny thing here, at the edge."

"You sound like you know a lot about this."

It was his turn to smile, a puckish twisting edged with sadness. "You gave me dominion over time, if you recall. I learned a few things."

She sighed, and closed her eyes, trying to feel the rhythms of a body that wasn't really there anymore. "Have you been with many people as they've died?"

"Not so many, but enough."

Bitterness flashed through her, and she opened her eyes again. "Must be nice to watch from a safe distance."

Abject pain flickered over his features. "Not so safe this time."

Her lips quirked in a skeptical half-smile. "What, you're going to die along with me, faerie king? Can't live without me?"

Silence billowed around them both as he looked at her, that crystalline gaze she remembered so well cracking beneath a deepening despair.

The realization pounded into her. "My God, Jareth, why?"

His voice was soft as snow falling. "We need…I need dreamers. True dreamers. Or we cannot be. Not anymore."

She waved a hand impatiently. "So tie yourself to another dreamer – surely there are plenty of them around."

He shook his head gently, reaching to catch the errant hand in his. "No, there aren't…not like you. You were the last I could find with her spark in you."

"Her?"

"Doesn't matter – the power's bled away through the ages, back to where it came from. You are unique in this time, Sarah. You are the last." He reached to touch her face with his other hand, running the back of his fingers along her cheek as he whispered, "I need you."

"Flatterer," she said quietly, feeling the growing numbness inside her. She knew his touch should be electrifying, but she could sense nothing, just as she hadn't felt anything when he caught her hand in his. It was an image of a dream of a memory of a touch, and it was then that she really believed what he had told her. That she – that they were dying.

She moved close to him then, letting him fill her sight, a familiar darkness against the brilliant white surrounding them. "Will you stay with me until the end?"

"Of course," he said simply, drawing her against him. "Where else could I go?"

A periwinkle blossom appeared between his fingers then, the delicate purple so beautiful in the ever-brightening light. He held it so both of them could see the color of its five petals.

And then, with a sudden rushing sensation, the dazzling circling whiteness overtook them both.

The paramedic closed her eyes out of respect before he stepped through the periwinkles to get to the ambulance and retrieve a body bag.

Author's Note: The title is a reference to the Emily Dickinson poem "Death is a Dialogue Between".