A/N: It's been a while! I'd just like to say that I don't have a beta reader, so I really am sorry for any mistakes! I do my best to get them all but the length of these chapters means I miss a few :3

This is a shorter chapter than the rest, but I will try and update sooner to make up for it!

There was a sensation of falling, though it was a subtle one. As if the air was pushing up to stop him from falling too fast... but not with enough force to stop him completely. He felt weightless.

His head lifted and his eyes opened from where they had clenched shut, blinking a few times, and as they focused he was able to take in the place that he was falling to. Disjointed, distant music was playing but it was faint, struggling to reach his ears. Walls were steadily rising up to greet him, walls covered in ivy and unfamiliar plants which seemed to become more and more broken and aged the closer he got. The sun was hanging low and swollen along the horizon within a blanket of wispy clouds, giving the appearance that everywhere was made from a shade of orange or gold. And in that moment he realised that he knew this place as well as he knew his bedroom.

Opening his mouth to scream as the ground rushed up to meet him, the sound was stolen from his throat... and his world turned black.

Jareth's head lifted from where it had been bowed over his Uncle's desk, scrawling his elaborate signature in jet black ink across multiple parchments. Eyes narrowed in suspicion, ears straining to hear something out of place, yet... they found nothing and his gaze returned to his task at hand. Scattering some pounce over the sheets, he lifted them and watched the fine sand-like particles slide onto the desk. Tapping them neatly into a pile he then pulled a length of cobalt ribbon towards him and looped it over the sheaf with deft hands, pouring a small puddle of gold wax onto the crux and pressing his family ring into it. It was monotonous. It was repetitive. It was what he had been doing all evening since retiring within the walls of Aurea to rest. A tired sigh left him and he pressed his lips together in a line, dropping the newest pile onto the looming one on the other side of the desk.

For a moment he had almost imagined himself being pulled back to his home, to his Kingdom. By what or whom he couldn't say... but he could almost have sworn to it. Could almost taste the dry, dusty air of his castle... smell the tumbling stones of his Labyrinth.

Finally, he was done. Casting a flippant look at the towering stack of paper, he navigated around the corner of the desk and dismissed it, tossing a crystal over his shoulder which enveloped the stack and disappeared with the sound of a bubble popping.

When he was to deal with papers he preferred to be in his own domain, acting in his own time and by his own bidding. Not in another's study, not from someone else's time, and not because he had been instructed to do so by someone else. It had long since been said that the Goblin King had always had a problem with authority, but then that was why he was the ruler of the realm he held. None else could have taken the forsaken land and brought it into being a place worthy of time and respect like he had. No one else had ever conquered the willful and often spiteful creatures that were goblins like he had managed to, and none had ever done so while holding their respect, love and fear.

But it had seemed at times impossible, especially when he had first taken the post- or at least, been forced into doing so. Meant as a punishment, intended to show him his place, it had become his biggest learning curve and his greatest legacy. He had hated it, loathed it and its occupants. It had been the place where he was supposed to become forgotten, lost. It had been colourless, orderless and chaotic, everything that he had been brought up to hate. And in the beginning it had indeed appeared that he had met his match and that he would perish there without ever hearing from or seeing another Fae. Left to die alone with only the land's wretched dwellers for company. A poetic end to the life he had lived and the choices he had consequently made.

Doors opened and swung shut in his wake, corridors merging into one another and sliding past. Black heeled boots echoed softly against the stone, the only sound in the otherwise silent palace besides his breathing.

Aislinn had left that afternoon instead of returning to her quarters and he found that he had been relieved to hear the news instead of annoyed. It was as if a weight he hadn't known to be there had lifted and in its absence he had clarity. She was very strange, even by standards typically set by Isle dwellers, yet once again he found that he didn't have an explanation as to why. Why he had went from scathing about her presence to fond. Why he had agreed to the betrothal when he had been set upon declining. All he had were questions but no idea of how to voice them. His skin felt a little alien to him, crawling slightly, though he tried to shake the feeling. Torches passed, blowing out with each one he left behind so only his path was illuminated. Smoke swirled up from the blackened wood posts to intwine in the darkness behind him. But all he could focus on was how at odds he suddenly felt even though he was in such familiar territory.

Arriving at his rooms, he paused with his hand on the handles of the great carved doors and frowned, nostrils flaring a little as he thought things over. Then his hands retracted and he turned to walk down the adjacent hall instead.

Yennifer had claimed there were two choices for his betrothed, yet one hadn't shown. Such a thing was unheard of. To ignore a summons from Terauramulis was the very act of giving up your title and your lands, and that didn't sit right with him either.

When his eyes opened again, it was to find that he had been running. Whether to or from something, he couldn't tell, only that his feet were telling him to keep going. Blue eyes searched fervently for someone who could tell him what was going on but he saw no one. Heard nothing. Only the sound of his pounding footsteps as he took off again through the maze looking for the way out. Someone was yelling somewhere far off but he couldn't make out what they were saying. Why did they sound so upset? Did he know them?

His head turned from looking over his shoulder as he tripped, just in time to see a flash of white and blue disappear around a corner ahead of him. "Hello?" the words bounced off the crumbling brick and disappeared, leaving him to growl in frustration and begin picking up his pace to catch up with whoever it had been. At the next junction he saw them again and he paused, taking in the long almost-black hair that quickly whipped out of sight as the other runner chose to go left, and he followed, calling out to them again.

As he got to where they'd been, he turned to look behind him and started in shock. The colour was fading from where they'd come. The plants were dying. Something resembling a worm but with bright blue hair and a red scarf fell from the bricks tp the ground and stayed there, curling in on itself. But as he tried to turn back to see if it was alright he felt a pair of hands grab him by the shoulders and turn him round again, willing him on. The voice sounded again and this time he could have sworn he had heard his name.

"...TOBY?"

The inside of his Uncle and Aunt's shared chambers was a vast contrast from Jareth's own, and he was surprised it hadn't changed from when his parents had had the rooms. Everything was still in shades of ivory with a few slight flashes of colour spotted around, though it was clear that personal touches like the family crest was gone. As was the painting of Terauramulis above the mantle, which had been replaced with a portrait of the two residents now living there. Eanraig was absent though it was clear the older Fae had left only moments before as his Aunt still stood by his high-backed chair staring at the door he'd departed through when Jareth knocked and stepped in.

She stirred, breathing in deeply as she turned her head and met his gaze with her own tired one.

"Ahh, Jareth darling... I wasn't expecting to see you so late. Please excuse your Uncle... some business has just come up that he has to take care of," she greeted him, a delicate hand gesturing toward the door before she clasped it within the other. Her eyes roamed over his features as if seeing him for the first time that day and he noted that the corner of her mouth dipped as she masked a frown, "He will return soon, so as always you are welcome to wait here for him if it's important..."

"Actually, I was hoping to catch a minute of your time instead, if I may."

She nodded and finally smiled, although it was small compared to the ones he usually received from her. Picking up her skirts slightly, she drifted past him in a soft wave of violets and headed into the next room where the Queen's personal study was. He followed her through, jaw tightening as he felt the pull from earlier again, and settled into the chair across from the couch she chose to perch on. For a moment nothing but silence reigned as they both turned to look into the fireplace and for the first time in his life Jareth was concerned to find that the atmosphere was a little tense, if not slightly awkward. Would he have given for his Uncle to return to interrupt things if only to break up the mood.

"It's the matter of my betrothal to Princess Aislinn LeTrommluí," he finally said, "I have a few questions."

"...Princess?" His Aunt asked distantly, still staring into the flames, "I had been led to believe she was a Lady, rather than of royalty. Pardon my naivety."

Jareth frowned, "It isn't like you to make a mistake like that. Admittedly, I find myself a little questioning over how it came to pass."

She pulled a face, blinking finally and looking to him for the barest of seconds before her gaze started sliding away again, "I cannot rightly say. My herald must have gotten it wrong... I will have Xavior question him on the morrow."

"Something is bothering you, dear Aunt. I would know what it is."

Finally, Yennifer sighed and splayed her long, elegant fingers across her lap. Her fingernails dug slightly into the velvet of her gown and she bit her lip, taking her time in choosing her words. It took some time, enough that Jareth began to wonder whether or not she would deign to answer- or if she had even heard him- but eventually her small lips parted and she paused again for a moment before she spoke.

"It is the matter of your other match who failed to show this morn. Lady Deirdre, also from the Isles..." she said softly, her expression shuttering. Her fingers knotted and smoothed and she looked up at him with glistening eyes, "You see, we are not the first to notice her absence. I sent word to her father after you left but it... it would... it seems that..." she took in a breath, looking away again as if searching the very walls for an answer. Jareth's gaze narrowed once more, taking in the quivering bottom lip, and he leaned forwards in his chair to encourage her to continue.

"...Jareth, no one has seen or heard from the Lady Deirdre in days!" The Fae suddenly cried, hands springing free of the cloth to splay in the air between them, "She has apparently vanished from the face of Albion! Gone! She left the same day I sent word of potentially making a match with the two of you to come here but her carriage has since disappeared without a trace! We fear the worst has befallen her and her travelling party."

The blonde reclined in his seat, gloved hand covering his mouth and chin as he thought it over. "You believe that she is dead."

His Aunt flinched violently but nodded, a hand lifting to hold the side of her face.

"Has a search party been assembled?" he pressed.

"They left an hour ago to join with her father's men. They are confident that they'll have some form of an answer within the next 13."

"Perhaps I could contact a few people too. But first I will need some details... What does she look like?"

The fear on his Aunt's face changed to something a little guilty, and she dropped her gaze to her knee. "I know, dear, I know..." eyes shot towards the door as if she expected Eanraig to appear and stop her, then they flicked back to meet his own, "...Now, I don't want you growing upset with me over this-"

"What does she look like, Aunt Yennifer."

The Queen stood, stepping away a little so part of her fell in the shadow of the dimly lit room. The guilt, now contrasted by the dark behind her and the light dancing out from the fire's flames inm front, became more pronounced... and soon a sense of dread began to form and settle in his stomach.

"Tell me you didn't try-"

"I was willing to try anything, Jareth! So I went with what I knew! Dark hair, pale skin, bright blue eyes and a strong sense of tenacity-"

"Green! They were green! I can't believe I am hearing this! From you of all people, who should have known-"

"Known what, Jareth?!" she snapped, turning to him finally with wide eyes, "You have dismissed every single match I have made for you because you always compared them to that... that mortal who ran your damned maze and stole away with your heart in the process! What was I to do? I already found her polar opposite in Aislinn, yet somehow I get the feeling you're about to renege on that one too!"

Jareth rose finally in a silent, fluid motion and curled his lip in a snarl. "I came here to tell you that I had accepted her to become my future wife. My only concern was the well being of the one you mentioned that didn't turn up. Now? Now I am glad not to have met her, though I still wish her to be in fair health. That mortal, as you so eloquently put it, now remains in my past. I have let her go. Because my Kingdom depends on it and apparently so does my place here in this city. She has no place in my heart! She has no power over me!"

The walls trembled suddenly, a booming clap of thunder sounding overhead. Dust rose as stone and plant suddenly fell around him and he had to run in a zigzag pattern just to prevent any of it from hitting his mark. The wind picked up and was pushing against him to inhibit his progress, bringing smells to his senses that he knew he shouldn't recognise but did nonetheless. The girl had stopped up ahead, shoulders heaving as her hands rose to her hair. She wasn't much older than him he realised, three years max if that at all. And somehow nothing was hitting her while she stood there. Though the wind tore at her hair and ripped at her clothes she stood there unmoved, though after a moment he noticed she was pulling things from her hair. Silver vines and leaves, a coil, gems. And she was throwing them at her feet where they smashed like crystals, each one shrieking in a way that set his teeth on edge.

"No... No..."

Then she raised her face to the sky as the first of the raindrops fell and splashed upon her skin, and she fell to her knees. The ground around her crumbled as if the very earth was crying and he could hear snatches of apology to nothing yet everything leaving her. Her hands pulled at the ground she rested on as it began to shake more fervently and he started forward again in haste as he saw cracks and fissures begin to form around her, with her in the center. He tried to yell to her as the ground split but if there was any noise the gale stole it, and he could only watch as the dirt around the fissures crumbled and fell, and the ground supporting her swiftly dropped and took her with it.

The flight was perilous by day, but by night it became a thing of death to even attempt. Still, an owl launched itself from the highest steps of Aurea in the sole objective of doing just that, braving the merciless terrain hidden below the serene sea of cloud to journey South. There was a strange feeling that spurred him on, not of anger or of joy. It was like the silence granted after wishing for the noise to cease, when the noise was necessary to keep you grounded. It was like the success achieved after trying hard to gain something that you knew was never supposed to be within your grasp. It felt wrong. But it was right. It didn't fit, yet it had a place. And he knew that he couldn't take back what had caused it for he of all people knew that words held power, and what was said... was said.

He hadn't meant it.

He could hear his thoughts mocking him as his wings beat harder to gain purchase against the stormy winds swooping in to meet him and waylay his progress, trying to drive him back to where he had departed. Oh, he hadn't? Then why did he say it?

Because it had needed to be said. Because it was time to let her go and move on, just like she had done of him. Because he should have done it years ago before he had let himself get to this point where he hadn't believed he'd wanted saved anymore.

"You have always lived with your heart rather than your mind, regardless of what you'd rather have us all believe. These games of yours have harmed more than they have helped. Words hold power over us all, of this we are all sure, yet you chose to teach that to a human girl who hadn't the capacity to hear what you told her. And look where it has left you."

Broken. Scarred. Cynical and scathing. Lost.

"You are not a child anymore, Jareth. No longer a young man stumbling his way to success through sheer brute force and sharp cunning, with the inability to take no as an answer. Your orders are not challenges now nor have they ever been. You have a duty to this council whether you choose to accept that or not."

Yet wasn't that what had always fueled him these past few years? Spite, borne of ignoring his superiors to find the same achievement by his own means by whichever road he so desired? He was so used to being alone now. How was he to find his place among the many instead of the few?

"I hope you will come to see things are they really are, and soon. We can't sit here and watch you throw your existence way any longer. Your mother can no more bear to see her son wasting away on the idea of a girl that was never his, to watch his kingdom die alongside him with each passing day. If not for yourself, do it for her. Do it for the memory of your father. Lest you squander the last of what you have on a dream, and give up on living entirely."

Yennifer had shown him out with a monarch's mask, unable to meet his gaze and see the warring desolation now residing there. The anger that was bleeding out of him and leaving behind a weariness that made him wonder if his wings would truly manage to take him home.

Home. The desolate wasteland that had once been his nightmare was now his paradise and his haven, in a true tale of irony. It had shaped him into who he now was. A figure of success and respect. Foreboding and intimidating, yet alluring and mysterious.

He'd grown into his looks in the last few centuries so he was no longer the lanky youth he once was, and his features and markings were now far more striking and handsome. Yet he was still lithe, and a vast contrast of his Uncle, who was broadset and stocky. He took pride in how he looked in an almost lazy fashion. Knowing that he no longer had to work for his looks... they were there, and were present even when he was lazing in his throne.

And for all of that... he now found that he no longer cared.

What were appearances, when he hadn't courted in a millenia? He was set to marry, and it was for his title and his duties, rather than for love. That chance had been taken from him- No... He had readily given it away on a gamble of a thousand lifetimes, pinning it all on a single human girl. The biggest challenge he had ever faced. Because she had been everything he had been warned against in his time, everything he shouldn't want. And Jareth had craved the danger that had come riding with it. And his looks had not helped him on that day.

Mortals had always been the downfall of Fae. It was why they lived in separate realms, worlds separated by a wall of magic and a weave of time. They had such fleeting lives, and in the time they lived they were virulent. Beautiful in their destruction, as unpredictable as a storm. So naive. So ignorant. Of everything that surrounded them, of what lay just out of reach. With a scarce few every century or so who broke those rules and managed to bridge the gap with the most deadly and breathtaking of things; A thing called Imagination.

There had been better Fae than he who had met their downfall at the hands of humankind. Some renounced who they were and shed themselves of their immortality to join the ones they loved, only to find that it had never been reciprocated . Some ran headfirst into war to seek a way out of the eternal torment they wrought. And then there were those who wasted away... turning to dust... and finally dissapated into the wind.

Eternity was for those who achieved Paradise while still in the living realm. Jareth had never been in love with the idea of living forever. What was there to live that long for?

Sarah awoke, the tail of a name on her lips as her green eyes sprang open and stared unseeingly into her old room. Her cheeks were wet with tears she had cried in her sleep, the hollow of her throat clammy from where they had pooled. She could hear Toby muttering in his sleep in the next room, hear him thrashing in his bed, but it barely registered as her hands tucked in under her chin.

Her heart was hammering, but not from fear. It wasn't the rapid pattering like a rabbit who had narrowly escaped the fox that had been tracking it for miles. It was the heavy, hard thud that echoed in her ears and rang out in pain. Mental, emotional. Not physical.

An extreme sense of loss held her. Yet she couldn't even say from what it came. But she could hear that she was sobbing, even as her hands tried to muffle it with her duvet, and she could feel a cold chill as if her window were wide open. Like something had suddenly vanished, had been ripped from her. And her heart was breaking within her chest so sharply that she couldn't breathe.

Throwing her covers off her, Sarah sat up and scrambled from the clutches of her mattress to run to her vanity, her bare feet burying into her carpet and making her slide. She had to see her mirror. Even though nothing had seemingly changed and there was still a dust sheet covering it. She had to. Everything in her was screaming at her that something was wrong, and that was the crux of it.

Panicking hands scrambled over the sheet searching for purchase, and finally caught hold of a corner and tugged. Yanking it free of the frame as the table rocked slightly from the force, she threw the sheet to the side without even looking at it, and stood there panting as she finally saw her reflection.

Then her chest seemed to seize and she let out a another heartaching sob into her hand, doubling over in pain and denial at what else she saw.

The glass was cracked. The reflection dull. The photos of her friends were missing from where her younger self had tucked them into the border of the frame. Everything she had become afraid of that had centered here... was gone.

He had given up on her. Jareth had moved on... or had died.

'He isn't real! He was never real! You made him up!'

Hoggle, Ludo, Sir Didimus... they were all gone. She had ignored them, taken them for granted and denied their existence and now they were gone.

'This is what put you into therapy! Pull yourself together! Or do you want to be scared of pictures and stories for the rest of your life?!'

The book... where was the book?!

Sarah bit down on her lower lip to stifle a sound of panic as her hands yanked on the drawers beneath her dressing table, revealing old scraps of paper and lipsticks... but no familiar red-leather book. Then she sat back onto the ornately carved bench and sighed, her breath coming in fits and starts as she scrubbed at the tears still spilling down her face. It was gone too.

It was over. After all these years... after a decade of dreams... it was finally over.

An hour or so passed with her sitting there, the tears slowing down and her breathing returning to normal. Toby had fallen silent some time ago, now lost in more peaceful dreams.

Finally the hiccups ceased too, and her head rose to look into the broken mirror a mere foot or so from her face.

Her green eyes had darkened in colour, almost sparkling back at her against the bloodshot white that surrounded the iris'. Her skin was puffy and red. Her lips almost the colour of blood from where she had nearly bitten them to shreds.

And Sarah couldn't help but draw parallels to the last time she had sat at this very spot and had cried like this. Not much had changed. She looked young and vulnerable once more, the darkness of her bedroom highlighting her cheekbones and soft features.

Her gaze dropped to her right hand, which at some point had fallen to rest with her palm and fingers against the mirror pane. Her index finger stroked the glass slightly as she looked at it, her mouth tugging downwards as she watched. Then she forced herself to meet her own gaze and took in a deep breath, then made herself smile.

This was it then. "...Goodbye, Jareth."

Just down the hall, Toby's body was lying almost deathly still. But inside his own mind, he was screaming.