Hey, people, sorry it took so long to update this. I've had no internet for a while, now, because of some stupid issue with my dad. Yeah. Anyways, this is probably not going to be very good, and might be different than the last chapter. It's probably gonna be short, too, or at least a little bit short. I have no idea what I'm talking about, never mind. Uh... Yeah, so here is this chapter that I'm writing because of boredom.

Chapter 4

Jareth sat in silence, watching a few water bugs skim the top of the pond where he and Paul were living now. He only thought of it that way because even if she had lived here, he hadn't. Or something like that. He was worried. He didn't understand what must be done about his issue. How in the hell was he supposed to calmly tell Paul that he was from another world entirely different from this? A world beneath this one, too. She would think he was insane. Or at least just become confused again. It had been some time since he had met her, about two more days. He was beginning to grow accustomed to the Aboveground, and that couldn't be good. What if he was no longer fit to be king when he returned? Then San would have gotten the throne. Not good.

He continued to watch the bugs fly around. In the distance a dog of some kind howled. It was a coyote, but as he wasn't very good with any of the animals that resided in this world, he didn't know that. He just knew it was a dog. He also knew something else, but it was something that he didn't want to give in to, and so he tried not to think of it. He had been in this world much too long as it were, and if he stayed any longer, the effect it would have on him would be horrid. He could feel it creeping up on him. It wasn't a great feeling, kind of like a feeling that was just out of his reach. Just beyond the point of his being able to sense it fully, but he didn't need to fully sense it to know it was coming. It would be upon him soon, but he couldn't bear to just get up and go back to his own world.

He looked over at the sleeping girl, and found himself smiling slightly as a small raccoon investigated the bundle that was her body beneath a blanket. It didn't do much, just sort of sniffed at her face, crept under the blanket with her, still sniffing profusely, and then it came back up and went away, deciding she was of no particular interest to him. Jareth wondered how on earth she had slept soundly and without movement through that. Perhaps the animals here liked her.

He gazed upward now, staring at the moon. It was very full, very white, and very pretty. He realized suddenly that he had never actually seen the moon before. When he had taken Toby from Sarah and stopped to speak with her by the window there had been a moon, but he hadn't looked at it. He had been focusing on her the entire time. He had thought her attractive, and that was why he hadn't lain a hand on her. There were times when her whining and made him want to, but he never had. He was surprised. He didn't miss her, didn't think on her as often. It was as though she had been there one instant and gone the next and he hadn't even gotten to know her enough to care.

Paul gave a small, half-hearted moan in her sleep , causing him to turn to her and watch her for a bit. It wasn't a provocative type of moan, it was just a moan. The kind you make when speaking in the dream you're having, but not enough to actually speak intelligently outside the dream. But he still looked on.

He was not the kind of person who thought of many things a man would think about a sleeping girl entirely at his mercy. He didn't trouble himself thinking about sex, or anything like that, simply because there was just no reason to think of such things in a land where only ugly little goblins ran about. This was why it struck him as odd that he suddenly remembered the performance she had put on earlier at the club. He never actually watched it after the first night because after seeing her once he didn't care to see it again, although she was very attractive in her own right. The other girls, who he had watched merely out of curiosity hadn't struck him as quite as attractive as Paul, which was strange. He didn't care for women with flat stomachs and tiny features. And he himself was blond, so he had no interest in girls that shared that trait. He actually was not very fond of his hair color, even if he didn't know just why this was.

And so he looked at her, and the thought came, and it surprised him. He blinked, and then quickly erased it from his mind and concentrated once more on the surface of the pond. The insects were gone, now, and there wasn't anything to disturb the natural constant rippling quality the water had, and nothing to see in it besides his own reflection. As he looked at it, he noticed there was something wrong. He seemed to be more pale, and more thin, but only by a tiny bit. It was enough for him to notice though, because he knew what it was. It was the weakness. He was away from his home for far too long and that was the result. The weakness that would eventually kill him if he did not return soon. He shivered and moved away from the pond, curling up under the meager extra blanket Paul had given him for nights and fell into a fitful sleep.

-

As he slept he somehow failed to hear Paul's next moan. It was not the kind it had been before, now. It was the kind when one was beginning to have a nightmare. Or at least something that frightened her while she slept. She would think it silly in the morning, perhaps. Perhaps.

She was running along a very long corridor, in a building of some kind. It gave her the impression of a castle at some points, and a dirt tunnel at others, and two walls on either side of her at still others. There was light, but the light had no source. Something hurt her, and her strength began to give way. Still more pains troubled her, and still more strength left her, and she knew she was being pursued by whatever it was that was causing them. She began to run faster, and faster still. Her surroundings began to go faster than she could run. They were passing in a blur, when she could barely run any longer. She was calling, but to whom she didn't know. She was cold, then, so horribly cold that it seeped into her bones and weakened her all the more. Finally, she couldn't even move any longer, and she fell, and where there had been a solid stone floor only seconds before, there was nothing, and she kept falling for a long, long time until she landed in a garden surrounded by many walls, forming what looked to her like some kind of frightening maze. But it was strange here, the sky was a sickly yellowish orange color, and the trees had no leaves. Winter, it was winter, a voice in her head told her. But she didn't have time to think about it, no time, no time at all, because there were the birds. Or she thought they were birds. They had to be birds, huge great black crows and ravens and they attacked her, swooped down on her from all directions, and she couldn't fight them off because, somehow, she had begun to bleed. The blood poured from her wounds, and she didn't know where they were. It made dark red pools around her that turned into black rivers, and she couldn't see, her sight was fading... But then she saw something. A flash of white among the sea of black feathers, a flash of white and brown, a light among the rest. She couldn't see what it was, but she called to it, reached out to it to help her, save her, stop the blood, make the birds leave... Stop the blood... It wanted to help her. It wanted to come to her, whatever it was, and it tried, it tried so hard. But it was pushed away by the birds, and the wind... The sudden wind that was there as though it had been all the time. Paul flailed her arms at the attackers, ran toward the light, but it was pushed further and further away until it was gone, had fallen to the ground, landed in the river of blood. And she fought and fought but she couldn't. She couldn't, and she turned around and one of the birds dove toward her chest. A searing pain erupted where it had hit, and everything went black.

It was her scream that woke Jareth. It wasn't a small scream, the kind of scream you make when woken with a start, but a real scream, loud and piercing. He didn't think, but went to her immediately, only to find her waking up from a nightmare, soaked in sweat and breathing very hard. He tried to hold onto her shoulders and get her to look at him, but it was hard, she was still fighting off the effects of what she had seen. "No! Let go! It's not— It's not... It..." This was what she kept yelling until her voice faded and she realized that there were no crows, there were no ravens, or even any birds of any kind there, and that she wasn't bleeding, she was all right. It was dark, but there was nothing here that would harm her, it was just night, that was all. She stared at Jareth in confusion as though she didn't recognize him.

"Look at me. Look at me," he said as she stopped her yelling and stared at him. He stared back, unsure of what to do. He understood what had happened, he understood that it had been a bad dream, a very bad dream. He knew what bad dreams were, he had had many in his long life. They were all the same, though, never different. But he couldn't look back on what they were now. She was frightened, and even if he had never learned how to comfort, he knew he must try.

Paul stared at him with wide eyes, shaking slightly and gripping the tops of his arms tightly in her hands. She still continued to breathe hard, as though she had nearly had a heart attack. Perhaps she had, he didn't know. "It was a dream," he said. "That's all it was, it was a dream. It isn't real." He said the things he had heard the first time he had dreamt it, the first time he had run to the old man's room and rushed into his arms, sobbing. That was what he had said, that all it was all just a dream, and that it wouldn't hurt him. "It won't hurt you. It's done now. It's done." These were the words that the old man had said, the exact words, he remembered, and it was strange to hear them coming from his own mouth. He didn't want to remember the dream now, he couldn't. So he repeated what he had first said once more. She stared at him, and then tears came, and without thinking, she buried her face in shoulder and sobbed.

Jareth had never had anyone to hold before, for any reason. Not since the old man had gone. He wasn't quite sure he knew how to do it, and for a moment he did nothing, just sat and allowed her to cry. Then he slowly found his arms were circling her gently, and once he knew what to do, he held her. He neither said nor did anything more, but held her. And he did it for a long time, because she cried for a long time, and she trembled when she was done. They sat in the dark, under the trees and her sniffles were soon the only sound to be heard.

Strangely enough, though, they had both failed to notice something very important. The pendant on the chain she wore around her neck had burned it's image into her chest, and the light it had suddenly erupted with when in her dream the crow had plunged it's talons into the exact same spot was still slowly fading.

A/N: Well, there you have it. Different from the style of my other chapters, yes, but I was reading a book that was written in a similar way right before I wrote this. Hope you enjoyed it, and want to know what happens next and all that, and thank you very much for reading!