He lingered in the empty hallways of the Labyrinth's palace a spectre of his former self. White blond tresses lay flat against startlingly prominent features, now sunken and lifeless where mischief and confidence once resided. Previously billowing yet fitted poet shirts hung from his skeletal frame as if suspended from a coat rack, gloves that looked comically too big draped from his hands. So very much alone, so removed from his subjects and kin, the King floated down another corridor and turned the corner without making a sound.

The black Queen festered in his former solar in unbridled sadistic glee over his pathetic state, watching through a crystal orb on the desk as Jareth barely made it another few paces before sinking back down onto another sill to catch his breath. His magic bled from him in droves. It leached from everything he'd ever built and made. Not so fast as to kill him immediately, not like with Deirdre, Aislinn had learned quickly that prolonging the process meant for a more bountiful crop.

He stood again, weak determination etched into the stony expression of his face, and he moved off again. Aislinn discarded the vision in the bauble and tumbled it into an open drawer of the desk she sat at, pulling more parchment towards her and pouring over them before it had even slid shut again. Her plaything had begun to bore her. He'd stopped fighting back weeks ago. All he was good for now was a morale boost- no one could look worse than him, so her own appearance looked ever more flawless beside him.

Sagging as the weight of being observed pulled away from his shoulders, Jareth picked up his pace towards an open bay window nearby. His gloves fell from him as he dipped his hands without him needing to remove them, allowing him to bury his fingers into the earth outside the building where a crop of flowers bloomed in a small box. The heads leaned into him as he pressed deeper, pushing his magic through them into their roots where they connected with the rest of the Labyrinth.

Exhaustion cloyed at his resolve and sank him into the seat here too, yet this time he didn't fight it. He merged himself with the pulsing of life running under his hands, his pulse running in tandem with the beat of the magic seeping back into his land in a drip feed. He could only do this when she didn't watch. She'd have sequestered him in the dungeons if she had even the smallest of inklings of what he was up to. Part of him hadn't given up yet and it was that part which sought to fight her even if it killed him.

His magic stuttered. Eyes now clenched shut in concentration, he was helpless to the tendrils of sleep that ensnared him, pulling him down and away from the window, away from consciousness, to the only place she had yet to penetrate.

The babbling of a small brook danced along the peripheral of his senses, rousing him into opening his eyes and taking in his surroundings. Sunlight beat down on him a forgotten memory borne anew, calling warmth back into his frozen limbs and prompting him into standing. Trees of rich, velvet green ensconced him. Birdsong filled his ears. When was the last time he had heard such life thrumming through him? How had he forgotten such peace?

He spun in place, drinking it all in with greedy eyes. Not a cloud blemished the sky, no overbearing shadows weighed at his shoulders. He raised a hand to one of the nearest trees, enthralled, gloves touching thick sap as it dripped down their leaves and through his fingers. A flash of something caught his eyes and forced him to look up. Laden with fruit, the higher branches boughed towards him. Apples. The Labyrinth hadn't produced apples in millennia. The fruits glowed in swathes of ruby and gold, perfect spheres, and after a moment, he reached up an arm, and one detached gently into his palm. Heavy. Perfectly ripe. Untouched.

A stream of light sprang from it like a ribbon. It stretched off beyond his vision, tethered to something else. His gaze transfixed, it suddenly grew taut, tugging at the fruit in his hand so he was barely able to close his fingers around it in time before it was pulled free.

It led him through this new forest for a long while. Along the way, he lost his boots where they slipped from too narrow feet, left behind as the line stretching from the fruit refused to relent and allow him to recover them. Where he stepped, new life sprang from between the flagstones to meet him, tangling with itself and the trees until it was impossible to see the stones underfoot. More than once he nearly dropped the line in his tiredness, scrambling to catch it fully at the sacrifice of skinning his knees and bruising his ribs where he fell in his earnest, panic jolting him awake, only to be tugged back into motion before he'd fully found his feet.

Was this the Labyrinth? Jareth wasn't so certain, as the foliage grew ever thicker on his journey. Where were the stone walls that always trapped him in his dreams, making him endure the screams of a tortured young woman he could never find nor save from her horrors? Where was the echoing yells of a young boy also seeking her out?

The blazingly warm, clear skies perturbed him too. No more was it the rolling turmoil of thunder clouds which weighed on him as he walked, Aislinn's oppressive magic leeching even the smallest of fond feelings from him alongside his magic as he slept. He was so

tired. He just wanted to rest. To sit, for a moment, and just take some time to recuperate.

At that, the tethered apple gave a particularly violent tug and drew his thoughts back to the present as if able to read his thoughts. Perhaps it

was the Labyrinth then. Even now it tried to protect him from her though it too was growing weaker. It hadn't let him stop either, though differently from his wife. It sought to keep his willpower in check and fighting. The sooner he stopped, the sooner he'd Fade.

His shirt, now midway down his arms and chest, caught a sudden buffet of wind and tore. It joined the wayside and he continued on without a backwards glance.

Finally after hours of walking Jareth entered a small courtyard with a stone table in its centre, atop a crumbling dais. Thorns wrapped around it, choking it, and he halted in his tracks as he saw what leaked from them to the ground. Blood. Tiny rivulets of blood ran down the stems, dripping from the thorns and the petals of the dark purple flowers. Some of it had dried in place where shackles might have been, holding someone against their will. He moved towards it.

Something about this scene was familiar to him, called to him. Misery permeated the air around it from salty tears now long gone and it was a taste he recognised. He knew the person who had been here. He knew them. It was… it was…

The apple nearly shot from his hands and he hissed, locked his fingers together around it as it hauled him away from the table and down another corridor, yanking him from his feet to his knees in a sharp skid.

"Cease your incessant tugging!" he snarled weakly, pulling back on the restraint in an attempt to hold his arms closer to himself. Sweat adorned his brow, plastering his hairs to his face where they tickled the droplets collecting at his chin. Pain lanced through him from where his knees had hit unyielding stone through the plants, his breath catching, but he refused to stay there on the ground. A king never knelt for anyone. And he was still yet the ruler of this land. Nostrils flaring, he did his best to straighten, but as if sensing he'd caught his breath back, the urging returned, and he was forced back to his feet. "Where do you lead me, that I must see such beauty yet feel such sorrow? Whom is it who refuses to allow me to rest?"

The wind whipped past him again nearing a scream, but no answer came. Throwing a last look over his bare shoulder towards the courtyard he'd left, he found nought but a new wall now facing him and sighed, turning his head back to the front. Things were rarely as they seemed. Especially here. He should have known that by now-

He was the one who had built the Labyrinth per its instructions, who had ruled here for millennia. He had just merely forgotten for a moment. Just like he was forgetting most things. Nothing new to despair over.

In silence he traipsed, for what felt like forever. The sun beat overhead for most of it, only descending towards the horizon when he felt he could bear it no longer, when his knees were prepared to give out on him. In his exhaustion fuelled stupor he all but fell into a clearing which suddenly dropped off at a cliff edge and collapsed ungracefully to the ground. Grass embraced his perspiring form as he sank into it, grateful and spent, the apple finally slipping from his hands. It hit the ground with a sound of hard glass.

TING.

TING.

TING TING.

Drooping eyes lifted to follow its path. The apple bounced deceptively well for something so heavy. Faster. It rolled as it went, tumbling over itself. Closer and closer to the edge.

Eyes flying open in realisation, Jareth lunged forwards with an outstretched arm to stop it. "NO! STOP! STOP!"

TING TING TING-

It disappeared over the edge and disappeared with a faint ringing that echoed out into the Wastes.

A snarl ripped out of him as he scrambled forwards on all fours, gripping the sharp, broken edge of the cliff face and pulled half of himself over, flattening himself and searching desperately for it through the pearlescent vapour, angrily swiping at it to dispel it from his vision. To no avail.

"Damn it all! Is nothing ever to stay within my grasp?" he rasped at the empty air. His arms trembled as he struggled to push himself up from his chest, glaring accusingly out at the glowing colours the sun was currently painting upon the sky. "It isn't fai-"

The words died in his throat.

Out in the endless writhing ocean of wispy cloud, there was another island. A visage unlike any he had ever seen before stood sombrely before him, hands shackles in front of her as cold eyes fixed upon him.

Raven black hair tumbled over her shoulder, escaping an elaborate style so alike to that of the Underground. The dress clung to her yet alluded to more than it showed, revealing bare lily white feet standing upon the broken shore she stood upon. The apple reappeared as he watched, suddenly breaking through the shining blanket and into her hands. Jareth watched on as her long fingers wrapped around it, mouth agape as the shackles fell from her wrists and she moved her skirts to step backwards towards the grand staircase behind her. So familiar and yet he couldn't place it.

Not that he could drag his cursed gaze away from Her if he tried.

He blinked, and suddenly the stoned adorning her feet became peaches, the scree small flowers of dizzying colours. She was bringing life to the dead rock around her, bleeding the life from the one he kneeled upon.

The grass underhand began to wither and turn brown, until it was nought but dust that gathered on the wind and blew towards her, becoming petals as they kissed her cheeks on the way past. Despite all of this, she looked positively distraught. Anger tinged her cheeks pink, her feet were bleeding where she stood, and where her eyes had seemed bright in their chill towards him he now spied tears.

Sarah lifted her chin as she looked down at him from her little island, her kingdom building itself behind her. Jareth was urged forwards again, standing precariously on the knife's edge of the cliff face as a whirlwind whipped around him, stealing the little life he had left.

"Sarah?!" he cried desperately, voice cracking from disuse and panic, "Sarah?! Please, you must help me! Cease your conquering, you had my heart, my soul, my lands and my power- I have nothing left! She's taken everything else! I HAVE NOTHING LEFT!"

She merely shook her head at him, grief marring her gorgeous features. Her face began to change as he watched on, screaming to her, her ears elongating into a point, the colour of her iris breaking past their confines to fill the whites of her corneas with emerald green.

"What do I do Sarah?! I gave you everything, what else could you have wanted? I have nothing else to gift..." he was freezing, he realised belatedly, almost blue from the cold of the storm around him. Laid bare before the only person who had ever seen him vulnerable as the last of his clothes were shredded and ripped from him, his proud posture finally abandoned him too and left him without, defeating him, until his shoulders slumped and his head bowed. Kneeling there, he couldn't bring himself to look at what His Love had become.

For the first time since they had said goodbye, the pair shared a moment of loss.

The ground underknee began to crack alarmingly under the storm's onslaught and he lifted his head one last time, to look upon the beauty looking down upon him from her broken pedestal. If this was to be the end, then he'd spend it looking at the only soul he had ever loved. The only thing he had ever wanted for himself. The wind blew his hair back from his face, revealing his sharp features in all their perfect precision. Finally, he spread his arms wide, willing the storm to take him.

"Jareth…"

His eyes snapped open from where he'd shut them.

The apple was glowing fiercely, violently, burning away at the shackles lying near her feet and demanding his attention as she spoke again.

"You must do what must be done, silence them, stop their words from having power over you..."

Stop whom, he did not know. He remained silent.

Sarah tried again.

"Jareth," she wept, voice strained as it struggled to reach him over the rising crescendo that was beginning to tear everything asunder, "Sometimes the way forward… is also the way back."

The words carried as lightly as a crystal being thrown through the air, and landed just as sharply as if it had shattered. Jareth opened his mouth to ask her of her meaning, if she were real, beg for salvation from his fate… his arm reached out towards his perfect vision. Just one last touch. Just one.

Then the ground imploded, ripping the trees from the roots out of the ground and the birds from their branches and carried him with them over the edge and into the hungry darkness.