"Please…" Jareth said the word so softly it almost didn’t reach her ears. He stood in the doorframe, watching her actually pack a bag. It was even more surreal than his world usually was, and he felt a kind of hopelessness washing over him. He couldn’t take his eyes off her still. She was leaving him, and even as he watched her packing he couldn’t help but love her, couldn’t help but stare at the way her hair tossed and her eyes blazed, couldn’t help but be proud of her.

Sarah didn’t bother to look at him. "I’m not staying."

"Sarah, you’ll kill him if you go," Oberon said. It was his turn at bat. He and Titania and Stephan were doing their best, their very best to make her stay. Jareth loved them for that, too. But he knew…he knew that everything he had thought was his had really been only an illusion—his greatest—created for himself. Sarah was going to say goodbye.

She turned to Oberon, the fury in her hazel eyes shocking. "Good. He should have thought of that before he slept with my best friend and changed my memory."

Jareth inhaled sharply, her words hurting him. And he couldn’t fight back. Aeris had stung him a few times, to her credit, but he had always been ready to turn words against her. But Sarah…

Stephan shook his head and walked over to her, taking her hands, forcing her to stop. "Sarah! You know how it happened! You’ve been here a year now, you know that it meant nothing with them, can’t you see?"

Stephan, the one who’d tricked her into eating her forget spell. She gave him a look that accused him more pointedly than words could ever have done. "It meant everything, Stephan. My trust for him. My love for him. Knowing the circumstances didn’t change my hurt then. And it doesn’t now!" she shouted at Jareth, hating the way he only looked back. Part of her wanted him to fight, wanted him to be angry and shout with her and have it out so she could leave in a fury and never think twice. But he wasn’t going to make this easy. Of course, she thought bitterly, when did he ever make anything easy? She turned back to Stephan. "But that was my right. The pain. The anger. I had earned the right to those things. My memories of what happened, my feelings…" Her voice caught, choked a little on a sob. She refused to cry, cleared her throat. "You all took those things from me. You just decided I didn’t need them, so everything could go on like it was and we could all live happily ever after. And if you had left me alone, let me go, I wouldn’t have been happy. But I wouldn’t have been living a lie. I don’t need illusions. Jareth was the one who taught me that."

She was done. She was ready.

"Sarah…where are you going to go?" Titania asked gently.

"I’m not sure," she said honestly.

"Don’t you want to know what’s happened to Aeris?"

"Not really."

"She could be dead, and while I’m sure you’d think that was just wonderful, it would be a very bad thing for this place," Stephan said, glaring at her.

"If she is, I don’t want to know. That’s something I don’t want to deal with. I’ll just assume she made it." She didn’t wait for his answer. Now they were just stalling. She looked at Jareth.

For an awful moment his mind slipped back again, and she was fifteen, reciting the words, words she had only just understood. "You have no power over me…"

But what she said was simply, "Goodbye."

The clock on the wall chimed. She jumped. Jareth closed his eyes, letting his head fall back against the doorframe. No, he thought over and over, please no…

She vanished.

She’d been there for a week, recovering slowly.

Lucas was like a combination of Oberon and Stephan and Jareth all at once, and while that should have been making her miserable, Sarah wasn’t. She enjoyed Oberon’s fatherly, gentle manner, Stephan’s charming humor, Jareth’s intelligent intensity…not to mention his face.

That was where Lucas saw a glimmer of hope, a single ember in a dying fire. He didn’t dare fan it. Couldn’t. It would have been too cruel. He was not above meddling for the good of his son, but this time…he just couldn’t bring himself to try. It was too wrong. If Sarah wanted Jareth, she was going to have to admit it on her own.

In the meantime, he wasn’t rushing her to get out into the big brave world. He genuinely liked having the pretty young woman in his apartment, because he genuinely liked Sarah. But he had to admit, she did worry him sometimes.

She would clean obsessively. Just room to room, wall to wall cleaning. The maid had come in, taken a look around, shrugged at Lucas. Lucas shrugged back and she left. Sarah had even polished the silver. And she ate. Gods, she ate like tomorrow wasn’t ever coming. She went out for groceries and came back with five or six big bags. She cooked for him, too, although he’d become more than totally capable of doing so in the years he’d been living his independently-wealthy-bachelor’s life in the Aboveground. Gourmet meals. She was a wizard behind the stove. An obsessed wizard, trying desperately to forget about something, but definitely the Asteroth of cooking.

Lots of television. She would watch the box in his living room for hours and hours on end, much the way he had when he’d first gotten it. She read newspapers almost front to back, her hazel eyes scanning columns. She had to ask questions repeatedly over it, demanding to know what incident this article was referring to, or asking him to explain political cartoons.

Mostly they talked and laughed and from the time she had appeared on his doorstep and told him what happened, he hadn’t mentioned either his sons or the Herald, and even kept all mention of the Underground to a minimum. He had slipped one night and suggested with a short laugh that a certain political situation could best be solved by dipping the offender in the BOES, and that had startled her into laughing…but that night, up late as usual and flipping channels (and wishing he’d had the foresight to buy a couch that was better to sleep on), he heard her awake in his bedroom, her voice saying Jareth’s name. And then crying, bitter, pained tears.

Well, it was Saturday. And no matter how unhappy she was, no matter how worried about Jareth and Aeris he was, they were both going to have a good time. He came in from shopping with a large, wrapped package in a shopping bag bearing the name of an uptown store that specialized in ladies’ apparel, and she frowned curiously. "You know, I never thought to ask, do you have a girlfriend?"

"Three, and they’re all furious with me for not bringing any of them home or seeing them this week. They’re not quite buying the whole "My niece is in town" bit."

She giggled, knowing full well he was joking.

"But this isn’t for them, I got this for you, Sarah." He smiled Jareth’s smile at her, that indulgent, quiet smile, and he walked over to the couch and handed it to her.

She uncurled and sat up, taking it, and pulled the red string it was tied with. She pulled open the top.

"Lucas. It’s a dress."

He clapped. "You really are just a female Sherlock Holmes, Sarah."

She turned to him, ignoring the comment. "Why?"

"Because you aren’t staying home and watching television or eating chocolate chip cookie dough. You are coming with me. And we are going dancing."

"I don’t dance."

"Yes you do."

"Not anymore."

"Sarah!" he thundered. She blinked. "You are coming with me, and I’m not taking no for an answer."

"No."

"Oh, do be reasonable. I’m going whether you do or not. Would you like to be alone here all night?"

"You’re the devil. I knew it."

He smiled.

She went to start getting ready.

His smile turned into a grin as he heard the bath start running, and he moved around the apartment, dancing, singing to himself.

A couple of hours later she was sitting in the club, watching Lucas dance with some bubble-headed blonde (he was obviously still furious with her for refusing his repeated invitation to take the floor; she knew that smirk). She watched the people in the room with the smoke and lights and wherever her eyes turned, there was invariably a couple. She sighed, getting more and more irritated with Lucas as the night dragged on.

There was a solution. Give in and dance.

She scowled, still beautiful even when she scowled, and slid off her seat and got out onto the floor.

Lucas immediately thanked the blonde and turned to Sarah. The blonde walked off in a huff. Sarah was getting up her nerve to begin moving, and suddenly, the song died.

"It’s not meant to be," she told Lucas simply, smiling.

The band launched into a slow tune, a little up-tempo, but still a tune for slow dancing.

Lucas took her hand. "Yes, it is." He pulled her up to him, his hand on hers, his arm around her waist. He took a few steps. She had to follow. He turned her. She became slowly more comfortable.

And she remembered.

Dancing with Aeris and Oberon in the big, open main entrance. Rather, being taught how to dance. The two of them absolutely refused to dance with one another, for what reason Sarah couldn’t guess. But they weren’t above giving lessons. She’d been too frozen with nerves to dance at her engagement party, and so she had asked Aeris the next month before the wedding…could she please teach her to dance? To dance well enough so that she’d have some reasonable amount of confidence for the wedding?

Aeris’ eyes had shone brightly, her agreement immediate. So she’d met her and Oberon the next day in the main entrance, and they’d danced until they were bone weary with it. Sarah had bonded with them that day, become more than a familiar stranger. But there was more to this memory, more as Lucas held her and they turned together under the darkness and lights.

Jareth had been watching. For how long she didn’t know, but when Oberon and Aeris had left, she’d stayed, dancing around by herself for a moment. Then Jareth had come into the circle of her arms, had taken her hands, and they’d danced, slowly and seriously without music in the fading afternoon light, revolving around the worn tile floor she would replace in three more months, beneath where she would hang the near-disastrous chandelier that Aeris would save her from, their reflections dim in worn mirrors that would later be replaced with new, shining glass.

She paused, unable to dance any longer, her heart somewhere else completely. She looked up at Lucas. "I want to go home. I want to go home." She buried her head against his careful suit, almost positively smearing him with the make up she’d hesitantly applied, tears making her throat ache and her eyes burn.

He wrapped his arms around her and held her. "I know. Come on."

He led her out of the club and into the car, and she’d wept into her hands as he drove through the dark city streets, back to the apartment. He helped her up the stairs of the building, past the curious doorman, up the elevator to the apartment, frowning deeply, the lines of his face evident in a way even the magic that kept him young-looking would never be able to hide.

She sat down on the couch, tissue crumpled in her hand, looking straight ahead, composed. "I’m sorry."

"Why are you apologizing?" he asked, pouring a glass of water.

"Because…I ruined your night."

He laughed, loud and long, and offered her an aspirin with the water. She shook her head and took the water anyway. "Sarah, don’t be silly. I just wanted you to get out and enjoy yourself. Just a little. I’m sorry. It was too soon."

"No, no. It was just…me. I didn’t mean home here, Lucas. I meant home. I want to go home."

He stopped, and knelt in front of her, touching her face. "Then go, Sarah. It’s that simple."

"I can’t…I can’t, I can’t, I still hate them. Look what they did to me. How can I go back to them after they did that?"

"They weren’t trying to hurt you. Not Aeris or Jareth, and certainly not Oberon or ‘Tania or Stephan. They love you so much, Sarah. Believe me."

"Then why did they do that?"

"Because they were selfish and they wanted to keep you and make you happy again."

She looked at him, her hazel eyes suddenly gorgeous and unguarded. "Did Aeris make it?" She looked down, ashamed she had let herself ask the question.

"Yes, she did. She’s at the Ivory Tower."

She sobbed in relief, putting the tissue to her face.

"Shhh..."

"It hurt to ask that."

"Your pride hurt to ask that," he corrected. "You didn’t stop loving them, and as long as you let yourself continue to love them, your pride is going to hurt. But it hurts not to ask, too, doesn’t it?"

"Yes!"

"Sarah, you’ve got to leave us behind you for good. Get away from me. You’ve been using me to bridge the gap, instead of trying to get over it. And I’ve let you do it because I don’t want you to get over us, and I’m sorry I did that. I’ve been selfish too."

"I don’t…want…"

"I don’t want you to either, but you’re never going to move on with me here. I remind you, and you like it. I’m the halfway point. You’re not going back to them, but you’re not exactly forgetting about them either. And I can’t be that. It’s hurting you more than it is helping you. You’ll never be strong again if you don’t leave."

"And go where?" she cried.

"Anywhere but here. You still have family, you could even strike out on your own if you wanted. I’d help you, but I couldn’t do much. I’ve done too much as it is." He stood up, and walked out to the big windows, looking down on the city and the tiny lights.

"Of course," he said quietly, "you could go home." He turned back a bit, smiling over his shoulder at her. "Pride says you can’t and love says you must. Sarah…" He looked back out the window. "You get older. You regret things you did out of anger and pride. You never regret things you did out of love."

"Lucas?"

"Yes, Sarah," he said, turning all the way back. She still sat on the couch, her hands in her lap, tearing at the tissue.

"I could leave you. I know I can. And I’d probably enroll at the university and get a job and muddle through the rest of my life and try to forget. And I can see it, Lucas. I can see my life."

"Then you’ve made your decision."

"Yes."

"I’ll help you start finding a place tomorrow, if you want. For now get some sleep."

"That won’t be necessary." She stood up and walked over to him, hugged him. "Thank you, Lucas. For everything."

"Oh, well…" He hugged her back, smiling sadly. "You’re welcome. Very welcome."

And Sarah squeezed him once tighter, and sighed softly. "All I wanted to know was I could. I can do it."

"Yes you can."

And then she said it, the magic of the words exploding invisibly around them. "I wish my husband would come and take me home."

He blinked, looking down at her, and then she vanished.

He laughed in the apartment, his relief echoing against the glass as he leaned on the window, looking down at the city.

In the Castle Beyond the Goblin City, Jareth felt Sarah’s arms around his neck again, felt her whisper in his ear.

"I forgive you."

She did not forget, but she would forgive, and he could spend the rest of his life in proving himself once more.