The sounds of music, voices and laughter floated up on the night air to where Jane sat alone, atop the castle's highest tower.

She had her back to the rampart, knees drawn up and chin resting on top of them, staring sightlessly across the tower-top at the star-strewn sky beyond. She'd been cold at first, but by now she just felt... numb. Not only physically, but on every level of her being.

Gunther was leaving.

Gunther was LEAVING.

Try as she might, she really couldn't wrap her mind around it; couldn't absorb it, couldn't even begin to... accept it.

Leaving. He is leaving. She shook her head. That couldn't really happen, could it? He wouldn't really go...?

Would he?

The castle was his home, and he was... was...

The One. I thought he was the One.

Well, she'd thought wrong. Obviously.

God. I love him. She was still reeling from the force of this revelation. She loved him and she'd thought - for just a while there, she'd really thought -

We were close to something.

She was sure of it. She could still hear his voice echoing in her head, the words he'd spoken as he'd held her on her bedroom floor - what was left for me here if I lost you, Jane, WHAT?

They had been so close in that moment, right on the verge of really opening up to each other, she'd been sure of it, so sure.

We were. I know we were. We were close to... something GOOD.

And then everything had gone all to hell, so fast, so fast -

Gunther had just... shut down.

So had she been imagining it after all? Reading more into his actions and words than had really been there? Seeing what she'd wanted to see, instead of seeing the truth?

She must have been. He'd seemed sincere in that moment, but... but then he'd gone and shut himself off from her, just completely stonewalled her, had barely spoken to her since, and now he was leaving, leaving...

Leaving to look for an appropriate match.

The first sob that ripped through her took her by surprise, because Jane was not normally a crying sort of girl and hadn't even fully recognized what was building up inside of her.

Half a minute later she was folded over herself with her face nearly pressed to the stone surface on which she sat, crying as she never had in her life; deep, gusty, wrenching sobs that were practically shaking her apart.

And there were many contributing factors to her sudden surrender to tears; the nightmare ordeal of Edgar's camp, the loss of Sir Ivon in the battle, the frustration of not recovering from her own wounds as quickly as she wanted, the unprecedented chill that had entered her relationship with Dragon due to his refusal to take her with him, when he'd flown out daily to check on Gunther and his men while Jane had been recovering... but mostly, mostly it was all down to Gunther.

Leaving. Leaving. Leaving.

She didn't even hear the footsteps ascending the tower steps - never registered his presence at all until she heard his voice, completely unexpected and alarmingly nearby.

"Jane? I thought I might find you up here; you always did - Jane! What the HELL -!"

He took the last few steps two at a time and virtually hurled himself down beside her; her first real, immediate awareness of him came when he clasped her by the shoulders.

"Jane, what has happened! What are -"

"Gunther!" Her head whipped up, revealing a flushed, tear-sticky face, and an expression of complete and utter horror at being found, like this, by him.

"Oh God," she half-choked, half-screamed, "Get away from me!"

She shoved him backward, hard; taken by surprise, he overbalanced and for a second or two was in very real danger of tumbling back down the steps he'd just come bolting up. in the mean time, Jane shot to her feet and scrambled backward away from him, putting as much distance between them as she possibly could within the confines of the tower-top. It wasn't until her back hit the rampart opposite that she stopped, and her legs gave out, spilling her to her knees.

There, pressed up against the stone wall as far from him as she could get, she dropped her face into her hands, fighting desperately for composure. struggling to rein in her tears. She met with very limited success. She managed, through sheer force of will, to choke off the sobs; but found that as a result, her breathing now began to pile up; coming so short and shallow, so frantic and erratic, that it felt as if she were getting no air at all.

"Jane." Gunther was staying over by the stairs now, giving her some space. "Jane, look at me."

She shook her head without raising it, and the world seemed to spin. Lack of oxygen was making her dizzy.

"Damn it, Jane, will you tell me what is going on!"

"I do not... want to talk... about it, Gunther," she gasped out, still not looking at him. "Should not you be at the ball anyway?"

"I have never in my life," said Gunther with flat emphasis, "felt less like dancing."

Jane struggled for a deeper breath, gulping and swallowing air as if it were water. "Then surely you have preparations to make for your journey."

She virtually spat the word. She wouldn't have thought, a moment ago, that her grief at his impeding departure could possibly have gotten any stronger - and yet with him actually here, just a few scant feet away from her, it was suddenly a hundred times worse.

How much kinder it would have been if she could just have avoided him until he left... as she'd been trying to do. Why, why had he had to come find her? Stupid Gunther, complicating everything, always, always.

"I am preparing for my journey," Gunther said softly. "I did not want to leave without..." he trailed off for a moment; sighed. "I wanted to say goodbye, Jane."

"Well, maybe I do not! Go if you are going; get out of here! I have nothing to say to you at all, Gunther, and I came up here to be alone!"

"You are certainly not making this easy." His voice was so quiet this time that Jane barely caught the words; he might have been speaking to himself. Then she heard him stand - but instead of starting back down the steps, in the next instant he was crossing toward her with a quick, determined stride.

"You have got to be freezing," he said, as she finally raised her face again, in plain disbelief that he would stay, that he would actually approach her, even after she'd made it perfectly clear that she wanted nothing more to do with him. "Here, take this."

He'd been unclasping his cloak as he walked and now dropped it across her shoulders; the warm, heavy weight of it settling down around her so naturally, just as if it truly belonged there. It felt so good; such a relief, so blessedly warm - which only served to make her angrier than ever. She tried to shrug it off, but then Gunther was down on one knee, now, in front of her; grabbing her by the shoulders and holding on, keeping the cloak in place. "Jane, stop. Please stop. Jane! Will you just listen to me -"

"I do not want to listen to you!" She was on the verge of hysterics. "I listened to you before, I believed you, I came back for you!" Oh God, it was all coming out and she'd never meant to tell him this, never, never, but the floodgates were open now and God help her, she couldn't stop herself.

Gunther was staring at her in sheer perplexity. "Jane, what are you -"

"I was halfway there!" she cried. "I could see it ahead of me, I could see the light! And it was so bright, Gunther, and warm, and... welcoming... and I just wanted to be in that light, I wanted it so badly, I knew it meant rest and I was tired, I was so tired and everything hurt and... and... and then I heard you."

A sick comprehension was dawning across his face. He'd known that he had come close to losing her, but he'd never fully realized - never allowed himself to fully realize - just how close.

"You told me that... you loved me..." she literally choked on the word, both of her hands now fisted in the coppery hair at her temples in an unconscious gesture of distress nearly beyond endurance. "And suddenly that seemed more important than the light, or the warmth, or the promise of rest and so I came back, and I had to fight, Gunther; you would not believe how hard I had to fight to get back because it had already started and it did not want to let me go -" a horrified shudder ripped through him at those words and he gripped her harder - "but I... I..." she trailed off and shook her head. Silence descended for a moment, except for their harsh, jagged breathing.

"And it was all a lie!" she half-screamed, half-sobbed, wrenching herself free of him at last. "It must have been, right? It cannot have been the truth because you are leaving! And I just... do not understand... why you would lie to me about something like that, why you would call me back, only to leave yourself... why... Gunther, WHY?"

"Jane... I..." he was virtually speechless.

"And it took... took me so long... to realize -" (she'd said this much, she might as well say it all, even though by now she'd started crying again, making it more difficult than ever to force the words out) - "I never even... understood that I... that I... was yours until Edgar, he... oh God, Gunther, it was meant for you! It was always meant for you and I only realized it after... after..."

"Jane. Oh, Jane." His voice was wounded; it sounded as if he were in actual, physical pain.

"And you were all... I thought about... that whole... day long, you... were my lifeline, how I kept myself strong and... sane and I... I... I am sorry, Gunther, so sorry, I let him take what was yours, but Pepper... he said if I did not, he would go after Pepper... instead... and... and..."

"Oh my... God, Jane." The words sounded wrenched out of him as if by force, and with good reason. Gunther was reeling. What Jane had just revealed to him - that Edgar had actually forced her cooperation by threatening her friend - this was worse than anything he'd even imagined. And she was apologizing to him - still apologizing, in fact, with her face now buried in her knees, words muffled to near incoherency, but there was one he could make out clearly enough - "sorry... sorry... so, so sorry!"

This was torture. This was shredding him.

"Jane, stop - Jane, Jane, oh God please, Jane, please stop."

She'd shoved him away a moment ago and he didn't know what kind of reaction he'd get now, but it hardly mattered anymore; he needed to be holding her, needed it like he'd never needed anything before, needed it like he needed food, and light, and the feel of his sword in his hand; needed it like he needed to breathe.

"Jane," he croaked again, and then he was leaning forward, gathering her into his arms, and she resisted for a moment, stiffening against him, but he was having none of it and a second later she simply collapsed into him, burying her face in his chest and weeping like a child.

Without any real conscious awareness of what he was doing, he rocked her back and forth, one arm wrapped tightly round her waist, holding her to him, the other hand stroking through her tangled mass of fiery hair. "Shhh," he was murmuring over and over again, "shhh, Jane, shhh."