At first, it was just a faint voice on the ether. "Live." The fae crowded around a glowing ember of two universes and breathed and shaped it into a small fire, which grew to a huge inferno. Sarah could hear voices, could see faces, could sense that her ancestors, her brethren were near. She knew who she was, who she had been. She could see everyone that ever was. She could see the threads that tied her to everyone, but specifically to a very special few. She could see the shape of her worlds emerging from the light and shadow anew. They looked the same, yet different.

On either side of her stood the fae sisters. Laiste to her left and Dorcha to her right.

"You did it," Laiste whispered in her ear. "Now everyone has learned."

"What have we learned?" she asked, truly uncertain that anything good had come of the journey.

"The journey is the answer, not the conclusion," Dorcha answered, her voice raspy, almost like the soft neighing of a horse.

"Will it be back the way it was?" Sarah asked.

"What you are really asking is whether or not you are responsible for unbearable sacrifices," Dorcha answered. "But this we cannot answer for you."

"I'm afraid... I'm afraid it was all for nothing. Jareth is gone." She looked at them with great sadness in her eyes. "I don't want to go back. I have nothing to return to."

Laiste smiled. "You know better than that. Besides, we have a gift for you. So it can't have been all for nothing."

Together the two sisters bent forward and laid a kiss upon her cheek. She felt a warmth spread from her face, down her neck, through her stomach and out of her feet. Life. Regeneration. Youth. Her blood morphed inside of her, new information incorporated and added until what remained was not human, but fae blood.

The gift they had given her was eternal life.

"You'll need this as you keep guard over the dreams," Laiste whispered in one ear.

"Now it's time to go back," Dorcha whispered in the other.

As the worlds solidified and took their final shapes, Sarah felt the scene fading from her, like a dream dissolving on the edge of wakefulness. The last thing she heard the fae sisters say was, "Dream, Sarah. And Love."

All Sarah could think was how useless eternal life would be to her now that she had no one she wished to share it with. There could be no one else like the Goblin King in all the two worlds. She would have been content to dissolve into nothingness, forgotten by everyone... to never have existed.

##

Light crept past her crusted eyelids, orange colors dancing across her retinas to finally be greeted by sunshine. Sarah looked up into the bright sun, then back down to herself—dressed in a gray poet's blouse and a pair of jeans.

She was alone.

She remembered what had happened just before her slumber, and a great sinking feeling filled her stomach. She opened her hand, where Jareth's amulet lay. The mirrored symbol on its surface was now made of amethyst. She fondled its contours and could immediately sense that the darkness had completely left the stone. It was no only filled with a soft, pulsing sense of love and peace.

"Jareth," she said, tears welling up in her eyes.

She got up from the concrete and took stock of the scene. There was no sight of Toby or Jareth—or, more accurately, Jareth's body—and everything looked the way one might expect it to look on the top of a skyscraper in New York on a summer's day. Sarah approached the edge of the building and looked out, putting the amulet in her pocket on the way.

It was indeed New York. The REAL New York. And she seemed to be standing at the top of the Times Building.

Sarah took it all in. She wasn't just absorbing the new set of circumstances, she was feeling what it meant to be whole again. At home with her anger, frustration, hope, and joy. And her memories. So many memories, once happy, now forever to be tinged with sadness.

She looked over the edge of the building, briefly thinking of throwing herself over. Yet she dismissed the thought almost as quickly as it came to mind. "No," she said aloud to herself. "I will face the consequences. I will find a reason to live. He would have wanted that."

Before she had enough time to really digest the newness, the feeling of sun and wind on her skin again, the roof door of the building—which had once been nonexistent in the combined worlds—opened suddenly to reveal a security guard with his baton at the ready.

He seemed surprised, but she could sense his surprise was not because she was up there, but that she was not what he had expected. "What are you doing up here?" he blurted.

Sarah looked calmly over at him. "You'd never believe me if I told you."

The cop looked at her oddly a moment. He was a younger guy, probably mid-twenties with a stylish frock of brown hair. He didn't seem like the burly cop sort she had been used to seeing in movies. "Don't I know you? You're a big star, right?"

"I'm... well, I seem to have gotten lost," she answered. She still wasn't sure if he really recognized her, and she wasn't even sure where things stood in this new world. She was afraid that anything she said might be a misstep.

"Huh, well, I am sure I know you. Look, you shouldn't be up here. You're not some suicide attempt, are you?"

"Oh, no, of course not," she answered, thinking sheepishly on her moment of weakness just before he had discovered her.

His walkie-talkie started to make a fizzling noise and he picked it up from his belt.

Or was it a walkie-talkie? Sarah squinted to get a closer look at it and could swear it was embedded with a crystal face from which the person speaking could be seen on the other end. "Just a lost tourist," the cop answered. "I've got it under control."

"Ten-four," the person on the other replied.

"Thanks for not getting me into trouble," Sarah said, not even sure if it was the right thing to say. She just wanted to get out of there as soon as possible and try to find Toby and the others, to see if everyone was alright.

The cop put the odd-looking walkie-talkie away and walked toward her. "Hey, no problem. It's easy to get lost around here. Lots of secret portals and passageways in this place. You know how it is in New York. Hub of mystical activity." He motioned toward the door. "After you," he said.

She swallowed hard as she passed him, thinking about his comment with some heaviness. So things weren't back to normal, after all.

She nodded and followed him toward the door and down the winding staircase that led to the top floor of the building. He hadn't been kidding—she could sense magic in some of the walls, ripples of energy much like the secret passageways that were built into the Labyrinth. Part of her wanted to see where they led, but most of her was consumed with worry over what else she would find as she ventured further into this new world.

They walked on quietly for a bit before she finally spoke. "Could you tell me... what is the date?"

"That's an odd question," he said with a smile. "Umm, lemme think... April tenth."

She tried to recall the date when all of this had started. It couldn't be that far after the day she had first cast the spell that joined the worlds.

A hope fluttered in her stomach. Maybe time had reversed. Maybe, just maybe, no one had died.

"So, not famous, huh?" he winked. "Okay then, I'll pretend to buy it. But I am sure I saw you in a movie or something. Maybe you were with that film crew that was here earlier today?" He led her to the elevator and pressed the button. "I tell you what. I will show you the way out if you promise to give me your autograph before you leave."

She smiled wanly. "If you insist. But you'll be disappointed. I'm not a star, just someone who got lost for awhile."

"Whatever you say." The doors of the elevator opened to reveal a lone woman standing inside, holding a folder of paperwork and a PDA at her side. She looked up at them as they stepped in.

Sarah instantly recognized her. Lenore.

They stepped inside. The cop looked at Lenore and smiled. "Not getting off on this floor?"

"Oh, I just accidentally hit the wrong button. I was actually heading for the floor just below."

"Ah."

Sarah looked over at the woman, butterflies in her stomach, wondering if she recognized her. Lenore watched her quietly out of the corner of her eye. She was definitely suspicious, but there was no solid recognition in her demeanor.

As they went down one floor and the doors opened, Lenore started to walk away. Sarah was about to say something after her when she noticed the woman was not walking to the receptionist's desk as she had originally assumed, but was instead walking into the big office just on the other side of the elevator. As the doors to the elevator closed, she could see Lenore through the glass walls of the office as she sat down behind a huge mahogany desk. On the door of the office in vinyl letters it said, "Lenore Osprey, CEO."

Good for you Lenore, she thought.

The cop must have noticed her smiling. "Someone you know?"

"You could say that. I just... I admire a woman who can work her way to the top."

"She's a damn good CEO by the way I hear it," the cop answered. "Nice as can be."

Finally they made it to the fifth floor. "We gotta get off here and go down the hall to the other elevator, this one doesn't go all the way to the bottom. Keeps the riffraff out."

He led her down convoluted hallways. They walked past news studios, where anchors gave reports of the weather. Instead of green screens, they seemed to be projecting maps and imagery through the use of magical, three-dimensional displays that resembled holographs.

Sarah and the cop walked past desks, where people sat over black phones and gray computers, taking calls and tending to work. It would have seemed like any normal workplace if it hadn't been for the fact that the computers were a mingled mass of plastic, stones and runes and some ran on voice command.

In fact, the more Sarah watched the people, trying to dissect them as her first clues to how things had unfolded, she saw most of them instinctively looking up at her. Some smiled, and some grimaced, but not with any sort of obvious deliberation.

Finally the she and the cop made it to the other elevator, down to the first floor, through the large entryway, and out onto the New York sidewalk.

She suddenly felt jittery, out in the real world again, watching people bustling down the sidewalk, passing her on the way to their various destinations—like any usual New Yorkers.

Real life. Time to go back. Time to find everyone, to pick up the pieces of her life. Would she go back Underground? Could she bare to face her kingdom again, now that she had done so many unspeakable things as queen of the combined worlds? Sure, it had been only half of her, but it was half of her that she was still responsible for.

"Hey, you wouldn't have heard anything about where a man... a man with long blonde hair might have gone?"

"Huh, not ringing a bell."

"Okay. Thanks." She headed toward the curb, her heart heavy as she reached in her pocket to make sure she had some cash—conveniently, she had her old wallet and a few twenties. She didn't have to even raise her hand—a cab squealed its brakes in front of her immediately.

"Hey!" he called after her. "What about the autograph?"

"I promise you, I'm no one special!" she shouted back at him as she entered the cab.

She settled into the leather seat, leaning forward to speak to the cabbie, who was human. "To the magic shop on tenth and Broadway," she said.

##

Sarah had never been so anxious in her life. The midday traffic was unbearable as always and it took them almost an hour to get to the shop. When they finally arrived at the shop, she hurriedly handed the cabbie the money and swiftly walked over to the door.

The display in the front windows was ornate, rich fabrics and high-priced magical iconography of a variety of mystical figures standing on pedestals behind the glass. She had never been to Marlena's shop, but had heard about it from Toby and had seen it in her scrying of the previous weeks, and did not remember it to be quite so ostentatious. However, in this new New York, business must have been booming, for the inside of the store was decked to the nines.

Unfortunately, no one was inside. A sign on the door said, "Closed for remodeling until May." Sarah peered through the glass—there was no sign of construction of any kind.

She looked around her. People passed, every once-in-awhile someone glancing at her oddly, then continuing on their way. She put her hand on the handle of the door and sent a small jolt of energy into it, undoing the lock with ease. She pushed the door open and went inside.

It was deathly quiet. She walked around the shelves, past the sitting couches in the middle of the room that had once been the place the witches had met to convene and plan their strategy against her other half. She could feel their energy—they had been here at one time, but she could not tell if this was before or after the re-transformation of the worlds.

If no one was here, there was nowhere else she knew to go Aboveground to find her comrades. She would have to try to return Underground and see what she could discover in her usual haunts.

She was about to give up hope when she noticed a note on the counter by the doorway. She picked it up and read the words that had been written in black sharpie.

SARAH - Come to Mt. Sinai hospital. We will find you there. — Marlena

P.S. You can get there quicker if you go into the kitchen.

She wished Marlena had left her more to go on. The short note gave her no sense of how everyone was doing, what had happened after the change. But the handwriting was sloppy, and since Marlena had not struck her as the untidy sort, she had to assume there was some crisis that had forced her to keep it brief. The thought did not give her much comfort, not to mention the fact that they wished her to meet them at the hospital.

Still, Lenore had been alright, and now she knew that Marlena and others had survived the experience. She could only hope that whoever was at the hospital was on the mend. She still wondered where Toby could have gone to after the change, and she tried to push aside the thought that something might have happened to her little brother.

She started to walk toward the kitchen, then thought better of it. She stopped at the phone behind the checkout stand and dialed her parents' number.

Her stepmother answered on the other end. Sarah let out one sigh of relief. "Mom."

"Sarah! It's been awhile. How are you doing, Honey?"

It amazed Sarah just how comforting it was to hear her stepmother's voice. She paused a moment, wondering what she should say. Would it worry her mom unnecessarily to ask about Toby? The woman didn't sound anxious. In fact, she sounded much more relaxed than she could ever remember her sounding. Then again, it had been years since she had talked to her stepmother. Leah had been playing the role of big sister for awhile, now. "I'm okay. I just— I wanted to know how you guys and Toby were doing. How has he been?"

"Oh, he's doing just fine. He's sleeping in this morning. Want me to get him up so you can chat?"

All the muscles in her body relaxed. "Oh, no, that's fine," she answered awkwardly. She hadn't thought past the part of finding out where Toby was at. "So you looked in on him, right?"

"You sound different, Sweetie," her stepmother observed in a worried tone. "You sure everything is alright?"

"Well, truth be told, I had a strange dream last night, something that scared me... and I just wanted to make sure he was okay," she lied.

"Oh, I see," her stepmother answered. "Well, I did just check on him, and he's snug in his bed. You sure you don't want me to wake him? He'll be so disappointed he missed your call."

"I have to rush off, Mom," Sarah answered. "Give him a big hug for me. I will come and visit soon, I promise."

"You'd better! Your dad and I miss you."

"I miss you too, Mom. I'll come see you after I wrap up my business in New York."

"Yeah, yeah, busy as always, I know. Well, you just take care of yourself."

Sarah hung up the phone gently and stood for a moment, absorbing her relief fully. Still, there remained her doubts about everyone else, her lingering sadness over the loss of Jareth. But at least Toby was alright.

She walked into the kitchen and the air rippled around her. Suddenly she was standing in the middle of a bustling emergency room at Mt. Sinai hospital.

No one seemed disturbed by her sudden appearance. In fact, other people were rippling in and out, a majority of which were paramedics arriving with people on stretchers. Many of them seemed to be bleeding from wounds that looked suspiciously like sword and stab wounds.

She walked up to the line at the receptionist's desk. A woman in front of her looked at her oddly then said, "Oh, why don't you go ahead of me?"

"You were first," Sarah answered in surprise.

"Well, yes, but I can tell you are in a rush... I just need to fill out some paperwork."

"Thanks," Sarah answered with a short smile, moving up to face the back of an overweight man hunched over a stretcher. He too looked behind and saw her, letting her go forward. She wasn't sure if she was unconsciously willing them to let her go forward, or if this was another aftereffect of the change, this strange understanding that people seemed to possess that she was once someone elevated in their world.

Once at the front of the long line, she looked awkwardly up at the nurse. "Hello, I'm— Well, I'm here because some friends of mine told me to come. A woman named Marlena, with red hair—"

The nurse behind the desk was an unattractive, surly-looking woman with wiry hair. She put a hand up to silence her. "Yes, been expecting you, don't need to say another word." She tapped at the keyboard on her desk and read the screen, finally barking, "Fifth floor, room 313."

"You can't tell me who is there, can you? Marlena just told me to come, she didn't say who was being treated."

The woman shook her head. "They don't have it down here. Just told me to wait for you. A John Doe. Something here about a stab wound. That's all I know. Elevators are to your right. Next!"

She could sense that the woman could find out who she was seeing, but was not feeling generous enough to go to the trouble.

"Could you just look—"

"Ma'am, we are having a record day for stabbing victims, don't ask me where they all come from, but I have more important things to do."

Sarah was instantly silenced by her words, not because she was afraid of the woman, but because she was getting her first confirmation that not all that remained of the change was without the sacrifice of life.

She decided not to argue with her and made her way to the elevators.

A small hope fluttered in her chest as she walked, despite what she had learned of those who had suffered wounds from the last battle... despite her worry that there were still others who had not survived.

A John Doe could be anyone. It could be Jareth. Still, she did not want to hold out too much hope. She still remembered the sensation of his cooling skin as he lie dead in her arms.

She blocked the thought almost as quickly as it entered her mind. She couldn't think of that now. She needed to just take things a day at a time, a step at a time. There would be time for healing later.

As she rode up the elevator and made her way down the halls of the fifth floor, she grew more and more anxious, heavy with the weight of the changes she had set in motion. She didn't know who would be waiting for her on the other side of the door of room 313, where she now stood, staring at the wood surface. She found herself frozen in place. Perhaps what awaited her was a worse reminder of what she had done, a close friend on the verge of death. Maybe Marlena's letter had been so curt out of anger, and the suspense was a deliberate punishment for Sarah's transgressions.

Sarah put her hand on the doorknob and turned it slowly. On the other side a curtain curved around one half of the room, where it hung from a steel groove. There was no one else in the room, so the person she was meant to see must be on the other side. She walked around the fabric, unable to help the feeling that she was slowly pulling back the shroud on a dead body.

When she saw who waited for her on the other other side, joy flooded her veins. It was Jareth. Skin paler than his usual, an IV of fluids attached to his wrist via a tube. His hair was drawn back in a ponytail, revealing a dark purple bruise on the right side of his brow. A thick layer of bandages were wrapped about his chest, still red with blood. She sat on the stool at his side and gently took his hand. She felt his pulse, soft and slow and reassuring.

"You're alive," she breathed. Tears welled up in her eyes, her whole body awash in a feeling of gratitude. She didn't know how it was possible, she was just thankful that it was as it was.

His eyes fluttered open softly, sleepily. "Oh, it's you. I thought it was that ravishing nurse in the short skirt."

A laugh escaped her, unbidden, as tears dripped from her eyelashes. "You're an awful man. First you make me think you're dead, and now you crack terrible jokes."

"What do you expect from a man who has returned from the dead?" he said, smirking weakly. "I can't help myself. You should be more forgiving, considering the circumstance."

She squeezed his hand. "I'm just glad to see you."

"I can't tell from this distance. Perhaps you should get a bit closer."

She leaned over him and kissed him softly. He sent a little shiver of magical energy from his lips to hers.

She pulled back, a shocked expression on her face. "You're—"

"Well, I'm not a complete invalid. I still have some power at my disposal to help me heal."

"What happened, Jareth? I know you were dead," she said quietly. "I sensed... You were gone."

"I was. But I am a stubborn bastard, I was holding on by a thread. When you—well, you know—killed Crouch, then I was free to hold on again."

She looked at the tubes, noticed in addition to the IV a bag of blood was also connected to him. "How can you receive blood? I seriously doubt you are any blood type they have heard of."

"It's a brave new world you have created here, my dear. I don't know how it's possible—but it seems they have what I need."

She nodded. "When will you be out of here?"

"Soon. They are caring for my most basic needs. I will be able to see to the rest myself. I just need time to gather my strength."

Sarah remembered something and reached into her pocket. She pulled out the amulet and laid it in his palm—the purple amethyst stone at the center glowing as she passed it from her hand to his. "You'll need this," she said, wrapping his fingers around it.

He sat up, stiffly and with some difficulty. She put a pillow behind his back to help him. He lifted his free hand and motioned for her to come closer. She did as bid. He wrapped his arms about her as he kissed her. For a moment he finally pulled back, his eyes intensely focused upon her.

"I am not letting you get away again, Sarah Williams. Not one bit of you."

"I have no problem with that," she laughed softly. "Can we just have a nice, quiet couple of years, now?"

"We can try, though I suspect you will get bored very quickly. Trust me, quiet has its charms, but when you have two worlds at your fingertips, and adventures abound, it is very hard to sit still. I was a young man, once," he winked.

She laughed, thinking about the age difference between the two of them for the first time in awhile. But her experiences of late had aged her a great deal, and she felt less intimidated by the difference than she had in the past.

"Where is everyone?" she asked. "The others... Sage, Leah, Hoggle..."

"Marlena sent me a message soon after she realized I was here. Many wanted to see how everything was going Underground, others are tending to personal matters."

"How could they leave you here alone?"

"I insisted they not stand here fretting over me. They are all better put to use investigating the changes. Besides, I knew you'd arrive soon enough." He smiled softly.

"Jareth, do you think everything will be alright? There were people in stretchers coming in as I arrived—"

He put his hand on hers and squeezed. "Remember, dear Sarah... You set this in motion, but they all made their choice. Besides, I don't think it is fixed. I saw many die on the battlefield, yet some of those same faces I see wandering about this very hospital. I think you have to remember, with fae magic, that things fall into their proper places, no matter how desperate the consequences."

"How can you be so calm about it?" she asked quietly.

"Trust me, I have come to understand the nature of penance a great deal in my time." His face was heavy with experience. "But I hope that the future holds brighter things."

His words settled into her and a great well of emotion grew inside of her. Sarah's body trembled and she suddenly broke down into sobbing, her tears wetting his hospital gown as she leaned into him and accepted his comforting embrace.

Her thoughts overwhelmed him as she let down her barriers. You're alive. I've caused so much suffering. I have seen so much. I am frightened. I am hopeful. I want this to all be right. I want to be happy again.

She thought them all at once, and they clamored in his mind in a muddy mixture. He wanted so much to comfort her, but he knew that all he could do was be there for her as she unwound the experiences of the last weeks and made sense of it all for herself.

At least they had each other.

She pulled back and dried her eyes with her sleeve, jolted out of the last rumblings of her sobs as she remembered something. "Jareth." Her eyes were fixed on the IV of blood hanging by his head. He couldn't tell what she was working out, and just followed her eyes. "What is it?"

"I remember something now, about the time before I came back, before the changes were fixed."

Amazement spread across her face as she thought, I have fae blood, like you. The sisters... They gave me eternal life.

Jareth looked at her, stunned. It took a moment for her words, and their accompanying joy and astonishment, to truly sink in. No longer was Sarah the only one in tears. His eyes welled up as he looked at her.

"This is a great gift," he whispered, a wry smile forming on his face. "My dear... what things we shall see together. And to think I once had such a distaste for eternal life."

##

Things were good. Jareth could feel his flesh restitching itself, his blood regenerating. Sarah helped him with her own magic and within a couple of hours his wounds were completely healed.

Better than his regained health, he knew that Crouch would no longer be secretly plaguing him. Kaleb also seemed to be officially gone and also out of torment's reach—his shadow had done nothing out of the ordinary since the confrontation with Crouch. As he and Sarah watched the news reports on the terrible Aboveground television they could see that things were not quite back to normal, but the apocalypse they had been expecting had been avoided. He recognized faces of fallen comrades in the staff around him, on the screen, and on the sidewalk as they finally left the hospital.

But there was something different. A sparkle in people's eyes. A renewed magic.

Maybe it hadn't been for nothing.

As Sarah held Jareth's arm, steadying him as she helped him into a cab, he looked up at her, filled with renewed respect. She was also a different woman. She had lived a hundred years in her battle, and she was more his equal than ever. She met his eyes and smiled, as if she knew what he was thinking. There was great strength and wisdom in her eyes. For a moment, he was lost in them, purple and blue colors subtly shifting and roiling like miniature galaxies.

As he sat back, a great relief washed over him. He was finally free. And they would do great things together, without constraint. They would travel across worlds together without boundaries, finally paid for all their suffering with glorious, beautiful adventures.

Sarah entered the cab from the door next to him and gave him a knowing look.

"Jareth, I do believe you are having hopeful, boyish thoughts."

"How can you tell?"

"Just by the look on your face." She smiled and squeezed his hand, then gave the cab driver the directions to an alley he had visited once as a younger man, where he knew a portal to Underground would await them.