Okay people, this is where it gets complicated. This is a long time after Sarah died. Then, there'll be a big back track to before she died, and she won't die. It will be the she doesn't die version. Like two alternate endings! That's why I changed the name to Nightmares and Dreams. See? No? Oh well, just read any way;) hope you enjoy! And thank you, thank you to all my lovely reviewers! You're the best. Also I think this is it for nasty insane Jareth, possibly, we'll see where the other leg of time takes us, huh?

Chapter 3. Lost and Lonely.

He viewed the world as it faded. Another one lost to the Dark Sid'he. The Mortal Realms and his parents had been the first few to go. It was so much fun being evil, suppressing everything.

He felt as though he was bobbing away, lost at see. Menacing polar ice caps drifting deliberately towards destruction of anything clinging onto life in the vastness of life.

There where so many Realms, so many realities, so many worlds, it would only take forever to destroy and leech them all. What was left of the Underground, what was left anything they hadn't touched was like the innocence of childish dreams.

/Dragons and love/.

Wouldn't last long. The onslaught of adult hood took just mortal seconds to achieve when they attacked. After, any survivors...well, a man needs a hobby. Especially s the other one had rotted away. The blue planet hovered in front of his glowing eyes, reflecting on his blood-marbled crystals. Red glow on red. Just that little glimmer of blue skies...

It wouldn't last long. Not long at all.

***

Arran laughed as he caught her, Denise in his loving embrace. She was some runner, and after making him run up the steepest mountain in sight he was going to have some serious tickling to do here...

She mock screamed and gasped as he tickled. They rolled entwined in each other in the lush mountain greenery that encircled them protectively. A canopied bed with a mattress of spring grass and wild flowers. A Brooke gurgled merrily to the left.

Arran couldn't imagine anyone more beautiful than Denise. Her rich dark hair swept the surroundings, complementing her hazel eyes and peachy skin.

Denise leaned into his blue eyes and blond hair. Their lips hovered over each other...

"What's that!" they chimed in alarm.

They shot up in panic as the warning bells screamed out in the valley below them. If it was a Prince Malignant again then they where dead, with no hiding that could escape dogs and sorceress. They both shot down to the village as fast as their legs could pump, fear billowing around them as the countryside went deathly quiet.

The only sound where the ragged, gasping intakes of their breaths, their heartbeat clawing it's way out of their throat to seal their airways. They reached the ridge, to skid down to safety, and could only stare in horror.

The village was a teeming moving mass of black shadows, yet they where thick like an oil slick. A thick mix of death and moulder destroyed the thin air.

"Well, well. What have we here?" the voice of the man behind them was elegant in a way that simple mountain folk couldn't imitate, had emotion that they couldn't name. Held a threat that they all knew, the cruelty of nature, the force of an earthquake and the tide of a volcano. They could recognise the game of the struggle for survival, but never on these terms.

Arran turned first. It was his duty. If the situation had been so scary he would have laughed. Would have jeered at the strangers outlandish, mad, bizarre appearance. Would have, but dared not.

He screamed, the despairing cry of the plummeting down kind, as his body fell the six hundred feet to the valley floor, where his bones crunched and his brains smashed.

Jareth looked on in glee as his minions; little ogres clustered round and stared fighting, like vultures over the meat. He noted the female, looked so much like his dream... she was just looking down, after the lad.

She would be fun.

He raised his eyebrows to her screaming eyes; "how about we bring him back?" he looked at her pathetically hopeful denying eyes and snapped his hand out above the ledge. The 'boy' flew to hover just in front of him. The girl didn't stop screaming, couldn't stop. The delightful stench of the just dead mingled with the mutated, ghoulish goblins was sweet to Jareths senses. He looked at her face and remembered a little of long ago...

He smirked, a predatory smile. "Sarah? How do you like this dream?"

"What do you mean?" Denise sobbed, retching at the carnage of her Arran... his dead eye's where rolling about on invisible strings and they where soiling his dead, smashed body.

She couldn't find the breath to scream as its bloody red balls carted her away.

As she looked up at his eyes, they where like the crystals that had carried her here, to the black pit. Glowing orbs of red and shattered white, with flimsy pieces of blue showing here, then showing there...

"Well, what shall we do with you then? Sarah." His voice, it held so much menace, and who was Sarah? "Do you know what you want? Sarah?" Denise didn't dare ask to go home, there wasn't a home to go to. The tears streamed down her face in a torrent of inner pain. "I can't hear you..." his voice swayed with singsong rhythm and childish glee.

"Y...y...yes." she managed to stammer out, fear hardening her body into immobility.

The guy smiled, and his eyes where flames of insanity. *I'm going to die, horribly.* was all she could think.