A/N: So things take a turn from suggestive to the full on sexy times in this chapter. Hopefully it's not too terribly awkward.

It was worse than when I'd first acclimated to Dark Turnabout. Then, I'd had a semblance of connection to my own body and Jary's voice to comfort me through the worst of the sensory deprivation and lack of gravitational force. This descent was the exact opposite: too much sensation and instead of floating through a dark ether, I was accelerating downward on a slide of string foil lights that sparked their garish colors often enough to give me a sense of how fast I was moving. They extended longer and longer before blurring entirely or merging into the black space. At first, I screamed, not just from the shock of the fall and having to surrender to the howling unknown, but for the stark opposition of my organs lifting, turning weightless and spongy to my limbs, and because my bones transformed into heavy bricks; the whole physical morphing closing my throat and taking the breath from my lungs. I could do no more than hiccup a breath here and there through my nose and whimper against clamped lips. The speed, like the descent, seemed endless and the more I fell, the more I could swear that the force beyond comprehension dragged at me. I should have blacked out or suffocated from the severe sense of G-force but the colors dragged into frames and shapes that reached and flashed through me like the laser wall of a spy movie. Each time I passed through these lights, my head was rocked back from the press of them and they smarted my inner lenses to see them as something altogether indefinable. Colors that I couldn't name or hardly begin to describe. All I know is that many were majestic and beautiful, and some were frightening, shapeless ghosts I could only cringe into myself to bear witness.

Time had no place in those moments of color shock and swimming consciousness, and my mind was rooted to my immediate terror and confusion. My skin and clothing seemed to be dissolving until I was sure I was one with the unforgiving obscurity and my body was less an unwelcome guest. Less a dead weight to the general, uninterrupted physics disorder than a brink of diversity to the black mass.

Cloaked in my own piece of day-glo galaxy, I slowly began to appreciate the paradox of the extreme speed and blinding proportions. My memories and experiences, the sole entirety of my life on earth and my humanity slowed their frame rate over the projector of my mind's eye.

Me in a pink, fleshy space, warm and content. The closest to Linda I would ever be. I knew with an ancient soul's assurance that she had not been certain she wanted me. Not even when I had been so small and fragile in her womb.

Me sitting atop Richard's lap as he bucked his knees to bounce me and sang about a place way up high where dreamland waited. I could hear his stomach's digestive squeaks at my back and feel the echo of his laughter as it climbed up his chest. I was safe, I was loved, I was about to get a bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream.

Me with one eye open in the dark of my room. I should've been asleep but the best dreams were the ones I could think up wide awake. Mother was at the door, smiling at me with something close to pride. She had been a night owl too I think. She had been stirred from sleep by too many visions of the woman she wanted to become and would become. But in that moment, she felt real love for me.

Me, less happy and cozy. Much less. Tears streamed down my face as I memorized the elegant lines of Linda's back. I could remember every little twigging strand that waved up in the breeze behind her like an unconscious gesture goodbye. Richard's heavy hand squeezed over my right shoulder but he didn't say anything. He knew what I wouldn't let myself realize then - that nothing would bring her back. No words, no pleading, no outstretched hands would stir her from her destiny. That's when I had learned of human heartbreak and that love could be flawed, divided between what one wanted for itself and the needs of others.

This sacred detachment from the loss beached my body to carpet and the screaming noise came to halt. I found myself in a blank house. No special fixtures, or color or nuance to the furnishings, and this may be why I couldn't resist the pull to explore down the long, echoing hallway. The urge to peek in every open door.

The first was a shadowy bed with amber curtains of flesh. Back in Linda's womb again like the rapid galaxy had shown me. I could feel the warm rush of liquid that beat in and out of the opening and into my heart because to look in this doorway, split my soul into the fetus inside as well as my mid-twenties self-hood that gaped from the hall.

It was so relaxing there. In there, I was blanketed in just the right amount of solitude and company. Surrounded by love and protected from the needful, loud, dangerous world outside. My thoughts slowed down to unconnected, meaningless, banal images and then turned to a throbbing pulse of blood flow without substance. In there I could just be. No future, no past.

Sarah….Sarah

Leave me alone. I wrapped my tiny, transparent limbs around the soft cord in front of me and dug my head in. He wasn't supposed to bother me here. Nothing was supposed to.

Sarah, I know you want to escape the pain of living. I understand, but there are people who need you still. I need you.

Surprise and anger that was too cumbersome for my fragile form thrust me out of the bed of Linda's womb and back into the hall. "Where the hell are you, Jary? What is this place?"

"Don't worry about that. Just follow my voice out of there."

His voice carried from north of the hall so I followed the same path my feet were hypnotized to and peeked in the next door. What waited in that room stopped me in my tracks again.

A shriveled old woman laid in bed there, surrounded by the stains of old food and the smell of old feces and urine. Without thinking, I pointed to her like she was some sort of freak show spectacle and my tapered index acted as a soul-splitting bridge again. I was the watcher and the watched. The woman in the prime of her youth and the decrepit hag on a death bed. It came as no surprise that I had always been both. Time was a straight line in one lifetime, but the endpoints had existed and waited as soon as there was a beginning. Death and age were the destiny, the cost and unspoken agreement to anyone who wanted to live out the term of a mortal life.

The duvet weighed heavily on my brittle bones, but I was icy cold and sparse underneath them. My digestive system whined and a thick, foul phlegm rose in my throat. I was sick or maybe I was just weary...from something. I couldn't remember what. Surely, my home aid or some such would come check on me a-and then give me my hard butterscotches. My mouth felt like cotton without them!

I shrugged over on my side, facing the left night table and pulled something in my neck. "God damn!" my voice withered out. There had to be some sort of concierge bell or intercom, but all I could see were soaked tissues and empty mugs with cats on them.

Suddenly, the feeling that I was being watched came over me and I struggled to tilt onto my back and get a better view of a young girl watching me. She was beautiful and had a face like unpainted china, but her mouth hung open like I was a monkey in the zoo. A bit stupid or alarmed somehow. I smelled shit though so maybe she had good reason to look so dumbstruck. Maybe she was my home nurse.

"I need…" My lungs deflated quicker than my will to speak. "I need…"

Sarah, you're not letting yourself go senile so soon are you? Twenty five is hardly over the hill and I never would have let you linger in your project that long anyway.

A rush of relief put warmth into my stiff feet. I recognized that voice. I knew it...just at the tip of my tongue.

"You? I need…" My chest seized up like a bad cramp and I clung to it as if that did any good.

You need to wake up and get moving, dear girl. You're not getting off that easy. I need you too much to let you go again. Only humans grow old and die. You're better than that.

The relief spread up from my toes and into my clenched chest muscles, releasing my breath out my body and back into my right one waiting in the hall.

I coughed and hunched over in the doorway, sputtering from the shift of sensation and temporary amnesia, but I made sure not to look back up and into that paper thin face or let myself inhale the scent of slow decomposition and sickness.

That wouldn't be my future. Jary was right. I turned and righted myself in the middle of the hallway. I made my way to the door at the end of the hall this time, not stopping to indulge the pull of the waiting, open rooms on either side.

As the shadows peeled back and details became defined, I realized the wooden door at the end was carved in a maze like pattern that made me shiver. I turned the handle and a light blinded.

The light flared and cleared, leaving me blinking at the dancing, masked figures that appeared all around. Grotesque exaggerations of form, animalistic fangs and furs and ears clashing with clean white grins, powdered wigs and roughed lips. They all swung and petted and made love and gorged on food and wine like it was the second coming of dionysus and there was no tomorrow for man. Debauchery and lust played out against an ethereal ballroom dripping in feathers, crystals, and chandeliers, spun against a melody that crooned at my heart.

He was near. I could feel him even if I couldn't see him. His tall, lithe form and blonde hair should have stood out in such a crowd but he had made himself invisible to me.

I pushed through the drunken, laughing couples, many of whom were only half dressed and they only laughed harder at my breathless shock. Jutting my shoulders between the raucous party goers and scrunching my nose in disgust at their orgies did nothing to curtail the thick crowd in my path or shame them into helping me.

My heart began to race and I felt my face flush with irritation.

"Sarai," Jary said at my back.

I swung around to face him and stopped short of yelling or wringing his shoulders when I saw how he had transformed. His blond hair was long and cut in sharp, feathered layers. Eyes and cheeks, contoured and frosted with makeup. He was dressed in a high necked, dark navy frock coat with a white, ruffled undershirt and high cut, black trousers. I took so much notice of the change in him because every element of his new ensemble was a return to a deep, painful knowledge I hadn't wanted to claim for myself.

"Jareth." I had to say it out loud and make it real for myself. Saying it felt like the key to never slipping back into the fog and easy exits.

His lips lifted to one side in a smile. "It feels so good to hear you say it. I've waited too long to hear it play back on your voice."

The joy of recognition for who he was to me and my own true strength surged through me and made me crumple into his arms. "Oh god, I've wasted so much time. Forgive me."

He propped my head up, and sank his fingers into the roots of my hair, ran his thumbs over my jaw, appreciating my face like he might never see it again. "There's nothing to forgive, my master. Just come home to me."

"How?" I felt hot tears run down my cheeks. "I've forgotten."

"Follow me, love. I'll show you." His hand took mine, steered it and tugged it through billowing waves of skirts, tunnels of silk, turned shoulders and backs to a thin tenting of lace. Jareth lifted it to let me through and as soon as it closed over us both, it lost its diaphanous quality and became an opaque cosmos of stars and feathers above a golden nest filled with furs.

Our bed. Our sanctuary of lovemaking and dreams.

All the tension that had pent up in my body and my mind fell away at its return and I let Jareth undo my stays and begin to undress me. He kissed each shoulder as the material loosened downward, drawing goosebumps and a shivering need to surrender to him and his comforts.

I could admit to myself, in my own heart, that a prolonged, unbearable tension had existed between us throughout the jolting journey and now that I knew what it had all been building to and who I really was-who he really was- there was a wash of peace and nostalgia. It wasn't the passion of the hungry, who have a hole in themselves they need to fill and distract themselves from by dragging their nails over naked skin and rutting into eachother's orifices like people possessed, but a serene reunion of trusted souls.

Jareth's lips and fingers followed what his eyes found as each piece of my poufy, ballroom ensemble was stripped away from me and I didn't feel any shame to arch into his touch or sigh at his tongue blooming out to taste the salt of my skin. His growing embrace over me, his gentle directing to a descent into the furs wasn't crushing, unless the ache for his body could count as pain.

He closed his mouth over my breasts, one at a time. Ran his teeth over my collarbone and lifted back up to assess me and watch me assess him. Our eyes locked for some time, saying so much without passing a breath before he broke the wordless affection with, "You're beautiful."

"So are you." I wrapped my arms around his neck. "Can we stay like this?"

"We can do whatever we like now. Anything you want."

I drank in the comfort of his strong body, his musky heat and opened up his shirt more, running my fingertips over the hard ridges of his chest. I wanted to know all of him again. I rolled us over and it was another reminder of my strength. So easily he was under me, pinned between my willowy legs but his eyes were no wider and there was no tension at his mouth. "Stay still now and let me remember you."

A small simper started at his lips in approval. "Of course."

Pulling his shirt over his raised arms and lowering his pants, I didn't let myself miss a muscle or shadow of a vein under his luminescent skin. I buried my face against his throat and smelled the pine in his hair and his distinctive scent that burrowed in between his immortal cells. I felt his breath turn uneven as I ran my hands over his cock and lowered my head to taste the tip. I recognized his taste there just as much as I had his skin and touch and embrace.

Encouraged by his eager, gentle urging of his hips, I took the rest of his length into me and let the salty, pungent flavor of his pre-cum wash over my palette. It filled me with a feverish arousal to know his pleasure in such a direct way and the right angles, pressure and pulls became second nature in the drive to inspire more of his labored breathing, and more feral, guttural moans.

"Sarah, sarah" he groaned. "God."

My name spoken with such pleading from him made a deeper, warmer feeling of lust steal over me and I wrapped my hand around the base of his cock and let his member choke into the back of my throat. Seconds later he came in a rush of thick, hot cream that I swallowed without hesitation.

He was pink from his chest upwards and he seemed to want more breath than his lungs could keep up with. Yet still I wasn't done or ready to let up. I had only measured his member's shape and erotic nuances with my mouth, but not my womanhood. The girlhood Sarah needed to be shed once and for all, so that I could fully embrace the timeless, ethereal womanhood of Sarai that I had hidden away. I felt in my gut, by the base logic of my flesh that finding my release in total connection to Jareth would be the way.

So I straddled him close, rubbed him between my hands into a harder point and slowly, cautiously sheathed my wet warmth over his length. As my inner walls cramped in anticipation, I became bolder, insistent to create a new energy of movement that would take and give of both ourselves. I rotated my hips in slow circles around his cock inside me and Jareth squeezed his eyes shut with feeling, arching his hips up to meet me thrust for grind, beginning to create a dance of urgency that we had been partners to many times before. A warmth, a draw toward a euphoric crest came from inside. I could feel it in my core, tightening my inner walls around him, readying my channel to embrace him in the most intimate way possible.

His breath reached from beneath me, quickening, highlighting to myself my own racing heart. The separation of woman and man, mortal and immortal, young and mature, dominance and submission, memory and fantasy began to dissolve in our gnashing, quick kisses and roaming touch.

Jareth's hands explored the soft lines of my hips, back and waist as my posture lengthened and bowed, as my abdomen and core tightened in the last throes before final climax. It was torturously teasing, the restraint and the promise of more, but it might have only been a short passage of time or time might have stopped all together

"Jareth!" I whimpered aloud like an injured animal, stealing from my stony thighs on either side of him. I had to grit my teeth as wave after wave of crashing light and ecstasy washed over me.

He groaned thickly and I felt his shooting release flood inside, warming and coating me with his essence. Would that keep him close inside even if we parted? Did his semen have special powers that might energize me or otherwise embolden my senses and functioning? Did he plant the seed of a child in my empty womb? The questions walked through my mind, pure curiosities without alarm or a compulsion to speak them aloud. The only answer I could be sure of and maybe the only one that ever mattered was that I was always evolving and Jareth was a controlled variable in that. I was the god of my destiny and his. What would be, would be and it would ultimately be my doing.

I fell forward and buried my face in the crook of his neck while his arms rose to surround me in a cushioning embrace. We rested like that without speaking for a spell, letting our heavy exhales dissipate and our sweat cool on our naked skin.

Jareth's lips pressed against mine, then gently worked open my mouth to take in his sweet tongue. A slow, drugging kiss that could have gone on forever, but he raised his mouth from mine to speak, gazing into my eyes with adoration.

"Come home with me, Sarah."

"Isn't his home?"

"No one place is home. We can go anywhere as quick as you could think of it. I meant let us rest and be together from now on. You know who you are, who I am and where you belong, right? There's nothing else to keep you living in mortal suburbia eating dry toast."

The promise of love and mystery in his eyes beckoned to me irresistibly. Dark Turnabout was never about a game. I had doubts that the pods had ever been hooked up to anything useful or plugged into an outlet. It had all been a lure, nothing more or less than that and I knew now where my powers stood and that Jareth was my closest ally, my past and future. But there was still a loose end that itched at the back of my mind.

"You're right, there isn't any more reason to stay behind and play pretend at being human, but that's exactly what bothers me. Why did I go through the trouble? What was it all for?"

Jareth's lips pressed together for a moment in a slight grimace before returning to composure. "Even gods have their disappointments. You couldn't stand to see your child-worlds implode into war, environmental irresponsibility, strife and hate anymore. The majority self destructed through violence or atmospheric negligence before they ever had a chance to really evolve or find spiritual relevance in you. That's why you elected me, a relic of the oldest generation of your indirect progeny to act as an ambassador and reconnaissance for all humanoid galaxies. You grew fond of my presence and insights enough to raise me to your permanent right hand, but still your offspring faltered." His eyes dropped from mine. "That's when you convinced yourself you had to go it alone. Despite my begging, pleading, and loving, you cast off a thin, curd of your sovereignty to reincarnate as Sarah. "

The vivid, surrealistic dream I had came back to me with new context and implications. It wasn't so much a random firing of neurons from an active subconscious after all, but a lucid memory. Everything in it happened. I was sure of that now. All the pain I had felt, the loss...those had felt too real even when I wasn't convinced of where it was all coming from and whether it had any significance at all. But feelings were only real so long as the moment held them. I was having trouble reconciling the rapid epiphany of facts with the amnesia remaining in my heart. As much as I was finding myself, I was also realizing the immense gap between the past entity of foreknowledge and benevolence I must have been and the conflicted, emotionally stunted person I still felt myself to be. Could there ever be a hope of feeling whole again?

"So I set out to empathize in the most direct way with the human condition and it ended up being too effective. I forgot everything….who I am, what I was there for, who you are….everything."

Jareth's fingers traced the line of my cheekbone and jaw, a hint of gloom in his regard."Yes, my goddess. It was up to me to remind you and lure you back into your full powers. For your entire earthly life I've watched over you and tried to implant myself in your blinded path. I've failed more times than I've succeeded, though I did come close ten years past."

Ten years. That lined up exactly with my registration into the Amherst Institute, but obviously he was referring to whatever behavior of mine had preceded it. The remaining blank space and possible trauma leftover to tackle. I needed to remember. I needed to think back.

I felt my brows pull together and my neck cord, but those physical indicators couldn't have been enough for Jareth to immediately know my specific distress and yet he did have some idea. I wanted his help and I could feel the incorporeal matter of my mind softening for him to permeate. If I wanted, he could merge completely with the ocean of my thoughts, the current of my aura and spirit, but to do so required something more.

Jareth lowered his mouth to the pulsing vein at the side of my neck. His hot breath, the tease of his soft lips made my skin tighten around the area and raise goosebumps. "With your permission…" he whispered.

Yes, I recollected with a kind of relief, he would need to take his fill of my blood, my living essence and life, to see and feel what I saw and felt with 100% accuracy. He also needed my power to repair what the earth's radicalized, toxic atmosphere had wrought on his form and functioning. He needed to be whole like I needed to be whole.

"Yes, of course," I licensed with a sigh and felt a mild prick, hardly enough to call a sting, and felt all my circulation pull and flourish to the point where his mouth sucked and lapped hungrily. It was a ticklish experience, bordering on the exhilarating and arousing, and after a couple of minutes I began to feel light-headed and desensitized from the world. Like a drunken state without the foggy reasoning or numbed judgement. A bout of euphoria keened up and down from the point of contact and made me moan. It felt natural to give generously of myself in this way.

Whether from Jareth's greed turning the prick point into a full on wound or from letting the exchange carry on too long, my blood began to purge past what Jareth could suckle up in one go and dripped down onto my naked chest.

It was at this point that my consciousness expanded and I had what could be termed an out of body experience. I saw myself prostrate on the furs, naked, and covered in a not insubstantial amount of my own blood from the bottom of my left ear to underneath both breasts and yet I was also looking up into Jareth's changed gaze.

He took me in too, and the room, assessing the new state of mind just as I was, because we were one mind and spirit then.

I was surprised by the omniscient shift of perspective, but even more by the fact that it didn't alarm me or cause me any great shock. Just a soft sort of curiosity and underneath it, a peaceful homecoming. We had done this before.

Jareth. My address didn't need to be spoken. We could go beyond human speech this close.

My words reverberated back in a whispered, lower frequency because he knew and thought the same thing at the same time. The immediacy was quick, but I could feel his gears turning. I was seeing the turning of a page of communication that was so efficient it took my breath away.

I've had to do this while you've been unconscious. It was very difficult to do some nights when you were particularly restless. He thought, we thought.

And I knew, and felt and saw his memories of me and felt his guilt and distress and agitation at having to wait for this kind of connection and sustenance. Our connection, my ability to be myself and outside myself in the perfect empathy of Jareth's point of view gave me the odd feeling of frustration with myself. I was sorry for putting him through so much.

Don't feel sorry, love. He thought, we thought. You did what you felt you needed to do and you had good intentions at heart as always. Besides, I'm unworthy to so much as see your face while you, on the other hand, are worth all the trouble in the world.

I felt his sincerity and it became my own and meshed with my heart's outpouring of affection for him. We were caught up in the highest euphoria and purposeful connection one can make in true love and when he lowered himself to kiss me I wanted it because he wanted it and I knew I would have wanted it anyway. The excitement at the strong hardness of his lips, his shivers of desire at exploring the inside of my mouth with his tongue boomeranged back and forth between us, making our hearts and pulses climb, and our erotic stimulation deepen to dizzying levels. I felt his urge to lap up the blood from my breasts and felt an odd sense of sexual desire for myself and for him, making my core throb with dual anticipation.

I arched my breasts up into his tongue's delicious, nipple pebbling lashings and I knew he felt the invisible tether from my breast's sensitive tips to my clitoris in himself. It was indicated in the lift of his head, and he closed his eyes and groaned. A primal sound of satisfaction for my wanting him, my eroticism that gave him endless pride and fulfillment, as well as at his own senses merging with my feminine arousal. He saw my mind's eye of him lower his lashings to the moist area between my legs and followed my heart's desire there with equal glee.

There couldn't have been a more perfect oral exchange in the universe. He knew past normal intuition where to direct his tongue in my folds, the perfect amount of pressure, the variation between long licks and teasing flicks just as I knew what my every groan did to pull the seed upward from his storehouse of manhood and into his engorged cock, edging over and over again into the territory of coming undone.

Our feminine and masculine erogenous possessions intermingled with our indulgent delight in each other's pleasure and the power we had over one another in equal measure to conjure it. He could feel each wave of tortuous good tension cramp low from my belly and I could feel the wonderful pressure pile up in his groin. We were the key to each other's release and one body of tension and pleasure and need.

Mutually desiring a shared climax, we focused eachother's pleasure to its highest peak and grappled to embrace one another's perspired, flushed figure.

Our bodies shuddered, blasted by bombs of supernatural pleasure that made us cry out.

Afterwards, when I extricated myself from his hot embrace, my body felt like jelly.

"Connecting this way could be dangerous for productivity," I sighed.

"Yes, if you would believe it, you and I have spent a couple decades distracted by mutual, building needs like that. Well, decades by a superficial, mortal measure of time."

I felt the contented smile I wore melt away. That sounded like a dangerous cycle for immortal, god-like creatures to get distracted by.

Jareth read the anxious concern and beat me to speaking aloud. "Don't worry. We had to voluntarily perform consecutive exchanges of your blood to carry on that long. Your blood will be diluted by my own soon enough, which is why we need to focus now. You need to look into my memories."

I nodded, closing my eyes. The dark screen on the other side of my eyelids turned into a rapid succession of images. They were fleeting recollections like the aftermath of emotion you feel waking too quickly from a dream. Meaningful to my heart, but a puzzle to my head. As if reading into my frustration and confusion, the frames of the film being played slowed down and expanded, sweeping my consciousness into them fully.

I was watching me so I knew I couldn't be myself in this new state of consciousness. I was Jareth - not only seeing from his perspective in these memories but feeling what he felt.

I watched young Sarah become surly over rain interrupting a costume performance of Labyrinth in the park. My feathers were getting damp, but I followed her to make sure she would get home safe. Her safety was always paramount.

Me, from a branch outside Irene and Richard's window, watching Sarah become petulant over her newfound responsibility as an older sister to Toby. She was so removed from her own maternal powers that it disturbed me as much as it amused me. I knew then that she would need a reminder of her powers to carry out her mission without being smothered by her petty humanity. It would have to be wrapped in a framing device a child could succumb to, complete with a frankly defined antagonist to defeat and helpful companions as spirit guides. I would have to be creative. I would have to push my own acting skills to the limit.

Sarah and I waltzing to a melancholy ode of my own making. Up until this point, it had all been about her journey and her realization of her own worth and special powers. But this, this was something just for me. I needed her to remember, even if only for a little while, what we had together. It filled me with indescribable peace to see the determined light in her eyes, that spark of anxiety for Toby and her mortal responsibilities, shift into fascination and desire for me. If the clock had never struck when I had timed it to, as much to rein in my own distraction as hers, I know we might have danced forever and she would have been mine to keep.

Floating segments of stairs and stone hallways floated around Sarah and I into the bleary abyss of beautiful colors, shimmer, and limitless opportunity. I was in my final form. A hybrid of glamour rock, my owl form, and the elvish man I had poised myself as throughout her hero's journey. Everything, every fiber of my limited scope of influence had been building to her decision. "You have no power over me!" I threw the crystal ball, a theatrical prop from the beginning behind me and let us fall through the designed set. I was proud.

Outside her room again, covered in feathers and seeing all. Sarah danced among her fantasy companions and spirit guides, absolutely glowing with euphoria it seems and why shouldn't she have? She knows her own strength now and her mission on earth can be restored. Pride reaches a new zenith in my heart and I fly away toward the moon, hopeful for the future and our reunion.

Abruptly, Jareth's memories pulled out from under me and I jerked as if rudely awoken from a deep sleep. The picture show was over and the telepathic connection cut, leaving me gasping.

"It's gone."

Jareth's fingers were cool and smooth as they touched over my hands. "I've absorbed your blood now. I would have to take more to continue, but I think you have seen enough to know the loose ends."

"Yes," I sat up. "So much of your work was reversed by my time at the Amherst Institute and the electric therapy they did. That must have been devastating for you. I can't believe how much time has been wasted."

His fingers paused from their stroking to curl over mine. "Time is no real constraint for us, but I didn't want to fail you as overwatch for your mission. You entrusted me with this greatest of responsibilities and I had to see it through so you didn't waste your life. Reincarnation isn't a painless process."

"You never gave up. That's what matters. We found each other again and I found my focus. What's left to do now is finish what I started. I've learned the pains of humanity from a lost young woman's vantage point, a confused young man, and a defeated older woman, but I still have much to learn from Richard, Linda, and my friends. The picture of what I need to take with me in my creation of the next world can't be complete until I see their pains and psychological intricacies."

Jareth's soft smile wavered and his gaze dropped. "You do what feels right, love. I would be lying if I said I didn't want to take a short cut back to our divine lives, but what matters is that you have ascended your awareness to who you really are. If you want to perform a couple more searches into the subconscious of your mortal loved ones, all you need to do is focus your will."

I squeezed his hand and closed my eyes. The false paradigm of a virtual reality game gone off the rails didn't apply anymore. There would be no more rollercoaster dips and turns into new dimensions. I knew I had it in me to control all the nameless, shadowy things I had been so afraid of. I felt my spirit and Jareth's spirit rise and flow forward, tethered by a beautiful tunnel of light into my friend's deepest heart and soul spectrums. I was unafraid.