Title: Different Shades of Darkness
By Ash (Hi?)
E-Mail: ash_j66@hotmail.com

Distribution: Anyone who has any of my other work and anyone who wants it and asks. :)

Feedback: Yep. It would be greatly appreciated.

Disclaimer: Things here belong respectively to the Buffy people and Jim Henson.

Dedication: Well, Charibob really, *really* wanted me to do this one for her, so here's the start for her. Happy belated birthday, Charibob, and I hope your week gets better!

Note: This is going to be a crossover with Labyrinth, but I'm going to try and write it so that you don't *need* to have seen the movie to understand what's going on.

Part One

Willow checked her watch for the fifth time in the last ten minutes. < Where are they? >

She shifted uneasily in her chair, glancing around the empty library with growing unease. She usually enjoyed being in libraries - some have said to an unhealthy degree. However, the high ceilings and wide-open space that had made her fall in love with the university library looked different once night fell. Unlike the cozy Sunnydale library, wide stretches of darkness hovered between the sweeping arches of the roof and lurked in dark pools between the bookshelves.

Willow found herself regretting suggesting that they all meet in the new library for an old-fashioned research night. At the time, it had seemed like a good idea. After all, they couldn't research in the dorms, their roommates would be bound to notice. They'd tried having them over at the adult's houses but Xander had spilled coke all over Giles' sofa, and Buffy's mother couldn't stop hovering over the group with plates of brownies and interminable questions... "What's *that*?" "Oh, and what does it do?" "That doesn't sound nice at all!" It had swiftly become apparent that the adult's homes were out of the question.

The library had seemed like the perfect solution. It was always empty at night, and getting in hadn't presented any problems, not for Willow 'Wide Eyed Innocent' Rosenberg. The librarian had been very understanding when Willow had gone to her and explained that she needed a place to hold a late night study group for some of the less academically inclined.

And she'd barely used mind magic at all.

Of course, all that planning and preparing had taken place during the day. With other people around whose presence filled the huge room with a thousand quiet whispers and the sandpaper rustle of pages turning. Now, the silence was a tangible pressure on her skin, the soft sigh of her breath an invitation cast out into the shadows that her imagination had filled with a thousand demons.

This being Sunnydale, she *hoped* it was only her imagination.

She checked her watch again. Another minute had crept by.

< Where are they! Buffy might have been delayed by some beastie, and Xander might be out looking for snacks, but it isn't like Oz or Giles not to be on time! >

Shaking her head, she continued to unpack the research books from her bag. Between the books she'd collected on her own and the ones Giles had retained when he and Buffy split from the council, they had a veritable "Who's who "of demons and supernatural phenomena.

A sound like soft footsteps brought her head up quickly, startled green eyes searching their surroundings with trepidation.

"Buffy?" The sound of her voice echoed in the library before being smothered by the velvet silence.

There was no verbal reply, but if she strained her ears she thought she could hear the soft shuffle of feet moving stealthily across the carpet.

She got to her feet slowly, careful not to make too much noise. Moving mainly by reflex she swung her bag over her shoulder, and gathered up an armful of the books she'd unpacked, hugging them to her chest like literary security blankets. < Okay, what are the choices here? Either it's one of them playing a really *mean* joke, or my mind is playing tricks on me, or there really is something out there... Either way, now seems like a good time to start backing towards the audio-visual room. >

She suited action to thought, keeping a wary eye on the suspiciously empty room as she backed slowly towards the only room in the library with a sturdy door. A shadow flickered in her peripheral vision, the movement gone by the time she turned her head. Willow tried to keep her face blank and unconcerned, fighting down the growing weakness in her knees and the tension in her stomach.

It was seeming less and less likely that her friends were going to jump out of the stacks and shout, "Gotcha!"

Her back thumped against the wall and Willow stifled a scream at the unexpected contact. She edged sideways, her eyes still searching the shadows for any sign of life- or un-life, as the case might be. Her shoulder bumped against the doorjamb and she breathed a sigh of relief, her hand feeling for the door handle. It proved stubbornly elusive, and she was growing steadily more nervous. If anything was out there, it couldn't help but have noticed that its prey was attempting to scuttle to safety. She attempted to look on the bright side. < Maybe it's a book demon! One that only eats books! > This sustained her for a few more seconds of fumbling until another thought struck her. < In which case, I'm carrying enough books to look downright edible... There's no bright side here. >

Her hand finally closed around the cold metal knob. Willow's shoulders slumped in relief as she awkwardly turned it, glancing down to make sure that she was turning it the right way.

When she looked back up, a dark figure was standing less than ten feet away, bordered by two towering bookshelves. The light behind him set his silver hair ablaze in a glittering halo and cast his face into darkness.

As it turns out, that was a particularly fortuitous combination of light and dark. If Willow had recognized him, surprise would have frozen her in place and that hesitation would have been her destruction.

But Willow saw only a faceless angel and no surprise clouded her mind or her reflexes when he began moving towards her with easy strides.

She threw "Grismond's Encyclopedia of Fiends of the Lower Pits" at him.

Even for a tome, Grismond's Encyclopedia was big- about the size of a microwave, and twice as heavy. It wasn't an especially accurate throw, seeing as how she found it hard just to *lift* the darn thing. But then, it didn't have to be.

It landed on his foot with a crack that sounded like tearing pages or breaking bones. Probably both. He bent forward, letting out a sharp expletive.

Willow snatched the opportunity, whirling around and letting herself into the dark room with fingers that trembled. She dropped her armful of books on the floor and quickly closed the door behind her, cutting off her view just as the dark figure picked himself off the floor.

She located the light switch quickly and the fluorescent lights revealed a room filled with televisions, video cameras and sound recording equipment. Willow looked around with only a little of her normally endless curiosity, more interested in finding something to use as a weapon than in learning how to create her own video presentation.

A red light flashed overhead- the soundproofed room's substitute for a doorbell, a precaution against a recording session being ruined by a loud intrusion. < What, am I supposed to answer that? What's he going to say, 'Avon calling'? >

Turning around, she noticed the tiny sliding door that covered a peephole set into the top of the door for the first time. She looked at it for a long time, weighing the pros and cons of opening it. < Pro: Seeing what I'm dealing with. Con: Seeing what I'm dealing with. > She compromised, standing slightly to the side and sliding it open in one quick movement, revealing the silent darkness beyond. Darkness that was swiftly filled by a pair of ice-blue eyes. Silence that was shattered by a voice like liquid threat. "Right. Are you coming out, or am I coming in?"

Part Two

Willow stared back at Spike, eyes widening as she realized exactly *who* she had thrown an Encyclopedia at. < Oh... This is not good. If he threatened to grind a bottle in my face when I was doing him a *favor*, I don't want to know how much less congenial he is after I've broken several bones in his foot! >

Still, it seemed rude not to say anything. "Uh, hi."

"Allo. Now that the pleasantries are done with, would you mind very terribly *opening the bloody door*!"

She took an involuntary step backwards. There was an apologetic note in her voice when she said "No?"

The eyes that were all she could see of the vampire closed in exasperation. When they opened again, an extra edge of resolve gleamed in his icy gaze. "Let's make this quick and relatively painless, right? I've had a long night. I've got the wolf, I've got the idiot, I've even got the watcher. You'll make a complete set of bargaining chits, so why don't you just do us both a favor and come out?"

She swallowed hard. "You've got all the others?"

"Yeah, and the Slayer is off looking for them, so don't expect any help from that direction."

Looking down at the floor, she thought about her options. "Ooh," She looked up, a hopeful smile brightening her face. "Don't you want to tell me your master plan?"

The low, rich sound of his chuckle seeped in through the small opening and filled the empty room. "Nice try, ducks. We super-villains don't tell our master plans until *after* we've captured the hero. Don't you read comic books?"

She glared at him, compressing her lips into a thin line. "It's not funny! And if that's how you feel, you can just stay out there!"

"Oh, I don't think so-" The rest of the sentence was cut off as Willow slid the door closed with a snap.

A moment later, she heard the thud of his shoulder against the door. It held, but jerked slightly in its frame. Looking around the room frantically for anything to use to blockade the door, she finally settled for a rack stacked with a king's ransom in stereo equipment. She shoved it into position with an effort, the cold metal edges raising angry red lines on her hands.

There was another thud. She could see the door buckling, see the locking mechanism as it started to warp. < What can I do? >

Every instinct in her body was telling her not to turn her back on the shaking door (and, incidentally, the angry vampire) but she forced herself, gathering up the magic books she'd dropped and taking them to the table.

There, she started unpacking her book bag again, drawing mystic tome after mystic tome out of the overstuffed container. She pulled up a chair, resting her elbows on the metal table as she tried to concentrate on finding something she could use. She focused her attention only on the books, blocking out the rest of the world. Only her involuntary shudders showed her awareness of the angry pounding that resonated through the quiet room like the beats of a drum.

< Love magic... no, never again! Categorization manuals- I already know what I'm dealing with... Spells of banishment- all right! >

She leafed quickly through the thin book, noticing with dismay how many of the spells inscribed there required mystic ingredients or days of preparation.

She was barely skimming now, her eyes passing quickly over diagrams, ingredients, rituals... < Wait! >

It was almost at the end of the book, a spell written on one page. It was only text, no etched pictures or sketched diagrams detracting from the slanting simplicity of the inked phrases that marched in black strokes across the white paper.

She looked at the title. < 'For banishing a person to the Puzzle realm'. Well, as long as the Puzzle realm isn't Sunnydale, this is looking like my best option. >

Taking a deep breath, Willow pushed herself up to a standing position and turned to face the door. She noticed with alarm that the lock was almost all the way out of the wall now, the door opening a crack wider with every blow. Closing her eyes, she pushed her fear to the back of her mind and focused on Spike as she repeated the ritual phrases.

"Too long have I wished that you were gone, I don't care where you go, but it's time to move on, But you seem to think that it's your right to stay, I wish that the goblins would come and take you away!"

Nothing happened.

She glanced around, and then flipped the page over. The end of the spell jumped out at her, two words written in huge capital letters that took up almost half of the next page.

"Right now!"

The banging stopped. The silence flowed in to take its place, almost suffocating Willow with its thickness.

She moved toward the door, reaching over the rack to slide open the small peephole. Only darkness stared back at her. But there were sounds... peculiar scuttling sounds that surely could never come from Spike. Surely Spike would never giggle like that, never scratch against the bottom of the door with talon-like fingernails or dart with sprightly steps along the corridors between the bookshelves.

< Come to think of it, didn't I leave some lights on out there? > There was no sign of them now; the blackness outside her sanctuary was untouched by any of the colors that light lends to the world.

And then the lights went out in her room. And the alchemy of darkness transformed her hiding place into a trap, an unbearably confined well of shadows. It suddenly seemed very urgent that she should get out into a broader space. Even if Spike was waiting out there for her, even if this was all part of his plan, she couldn't stay in there. Not with the shadows, and the silence, and the even worse moments when small sounds ripped through the silence, sounding like they were there, right next to her. Not when the blockaded door had stopped being a wall keeping him out and had started being an obstacle keeping her in.

She scrabbled at the metal rack, moving it out of the way with difficulty as she struggled to ignore the half-felt movements of something around her ankles. Her hand had barely touched the doorknob when she felt it move under her fingers. The knob was turning, and far too smoothly considering that the door was still locked.

Stepping back, she watched the opening door warily. It swung itself open, revealing an empty doorway leading to the darkened library beyond. A cool breeze wafted through and brushed gently against her skin, bringing with it the scents of dust and rain.

Despite the nagging voice in the back of her mind that was telling her that doors that spontaneously open might as well have 'Trap' engraved on their hinges, she couldn't resist the overwhelming need to get out of that room. Especially when she heard the chittering behind her, a muted amalgamation of voices raised in encouragement or anger.

She stepped through the doorway.

And into a library that was very different than the one she'd left.

She couldn't put her finger on it, but everything about it seemed subtly wrong. Despite the lack of light, there were more shadows than before, and they seemed to be moving, flowing down the bookcases and sliding across the floor like ghostly shades. The air caught what little light there was and magnified it, outlining every curve and angle of the room with pale, shimmering outlines that flickered in Willow's peripheral vision and disappeared when looked at directly.

Willow advanced a few steps further, looking around her with wide eyes. The air appeared to be flowing upwards, all the glittering motes coalescing into one spot in the center of the domed roof.

The air solidified and formed into the shape of a pale bird, translucent and shining. It spread ashen wings and dove towards her, ivory beak opening in a silent screech.

Willow screamed, dropping to her knees and protecting her face with her hands, expecting at any moment to feel its claws in her skin.

When nothing happened she lowered her hands slowly, looking up, and up, and up...Into a face hidden in shadow, framed by a halo of white-gold hair that blazed with light.

For the second time that evening, Willow stared up at a faceless angel built from radiance and shadows.

The stranger tilted his head at an angle that made her think he must be smiling down at her. When he spoke, his voice was lightly accented and layered with the sound of distant music, "Hello, Willow."

Part Three

Willow scrambled up, both to regain a little of her dignity and to allow her to back away a few feet. She didn't go too far, wary of running into the creatures that she could feel watching them, their shapes catching at the corner of her eye.

Her eyes were adjusting to the darkness, and more details were becoming visible. This wasn't helping Willow any. It wasn't like it was a grotesque face. It had the right number of eyes, ears, nose, mouth... but that was as far as the resemblance went. His skin was as pale as moonlight, and seemed to emanate the same soft light, providing the rest of his features with an ivory frame. His hair feathered around his face and shoulders in a way that blew past the concept of hairstyle and right into the realm of force of nature.

She was vaguely aware that his clothes would also fit into that category, but she couldn't swear to it. She only got as far as his face before she was trapped by the one thing that made it abundantly obvious that the stranger wasn't human.

His eyes.

They glittered, which would have been less noteworthy if there had been any actual light source to spark those points of brilliance. Hunger was buried inside these eyes, twining around the shining blue with gleaming silver threads of anticipation.

It was the face of a predator, and worse. The face of a predator who'd never had to hide what he was, because he had enough power not to need the element of surprise.

Willow swallowed nervously. His eyes moved to follow the small betrayal of the movement, one corner of his mouth lifting in something like amusement. There was more of a tremor in her voice when she spoke than she would have preferred. "Who are you?"

"You summoned me. " There was a smile hidden underneath the strange harmonics of his voice. "Don't you know?"

She shook her head, mentally running through her memories. They were decidedly light on the summoning, at least non-Slayerette related ones.

He kept his eyes on her. "My name is Jareth."

She had to drop her eyes as she thought, uncomfortable under the sustained weight of that prickling gaze. "No... I'd remember that." She looked up again, frowing. "I *know* I'd remember that! I banished someone, but that was pretty much it for the magic," Her voice trailed off as a sneaking suspicion dawned on her.

"He is banished, right? I didn't make a mistake?" She looked at him hopefully, praying that he wasn't about to tell her that Spike was still sneaking around somewhere out there.

His voice gentled, an almost indulgent smile lightening his eyes to a paler blue. "You didn't make a mistake. He has been taken to my castle."

"Oh. Good." Now that she no longer had to worry about Spike jumping out at her, Willow was seriously starting to wonder about why Jareth was there. She fleetingly considered the idea that he had just came to tell her the spell had worked... a sort of otherworldly receipt?

He seemed to read her thoughts in her eyes. "If you want him back, there's only one way..."

She took a step backwards. "Why would I want him back? I wanted him gone, and now he's gone and- well, that pretty much does it."

Jareth half-turned away from her, his eyes focusing on the distance, as he appeared to 'listen' to something she couldn't hear. Released from the pressure of his eyes, Willow suddenly felt very alone, and very vulnerable. The sounds of the creatures that surrounded her seemed to come closer, as if they had just been waiting for Jareth's attention to waver before they... what?

She didn't have to find out. Jareth turned back to her, looking thoughtful. "Strange, he seems to feel that you'd want to get him back very badly."

"But he's Spike! Why would I want him back?" She was honestly confused.

Amusement crept into those hunter's eyes. "It's rather hard to make out. But there seems to be an underlying theme of some people you love dying from hunger and thirst if you leave him with me." He looked at her steadily, seemingly totally unconcerned with her choice. Only the curious intensity of his gaze and the renewed clamor of the hidden creatures in the shadows cast doubt on his indifference.

The mention of her friends hit Willow like a blow to the solar plexus, momentarily driving all the breath from her lungs. She'd had an idealized image lurking somewhere in the back of her mind. She'd find Buffy, and then *somehow* they'd find the others. Brought to the front of her mind, the plan appeared to have a few holes in it. In fact, there were more holes than plan. < I can't take the chance that we won't find them in time. I'd never forgive myself. >

Straightening her chin, she fixed an expression of intensely irritated resignation on the watching entity. "All right. What do I have to do to get him back? < And then I'll be right back where I started. Except Spike will be even angrier. Oh, this spell worked out just *great*. >

Jareth's half-smile revealed slightly pointed canines, the satisfaction in the grin making Willow wonder exactly what she'd just agreed to. "You have only to reach him, and you may have him back."

< Sounds simple enough... Except that I haven't seen any castles in Sunnydale lately. > "He's in your castle, you said? Where's that?"

"It's there." He pointed over her shoulder, extending a hand gloved in supple black leather that seemed to absorb what little light there was.

Her head turned of its own volition, following the path indicated. She could feel her vision blurring as the semi-familiar shapes of the library faded away and new patterns emerged. Her eyes refocused and she sucked in her breath, drawing in a breath of air heavy with dust and heated by a burning sun.

A new world lay spread out before her: a landscape forged out of bitter red dust and a sky that blazed with colors never found on earth. But all that was just a frame, a backdrop for the maze.

A maze like nothing she'd ever seen, like nothing she'd ever heard of. A convoluted thing that twisted in upon itself like a stone python, it sprawled across the landscape with arrogant possession. Her eyes couldn't focus on it, it slid away under her gaze, walls squirming against each other as she watched. She had to look away.

She moved her gaze to the far horizon and the castle, suppressing a shudder. It stood in the center of the maze, its twisted black turrets spiking menacingly into the sky. Willow couldn't help but recognize the inherent wrongness in trying to get to a place that looked like that. < It looks like the kind of place specifically designed for people to try to *escape* from. > If she'd been strictly honest, she would have appended the words 'and fail.'

"Of course, you can always turn back now." Jareth's voice was studiously casual, its intrusion an unwelcome reminder of who and what was standing behind her.

She spun back to face him, not really surprised to see that the library behind her had also melted away and left Jareth silhouetted against the burning sky.

It was strange... as much as the darkness had suited him, as much as he had seemed to be the definition of 'a creature of darkness', the brightness of this world seemed to enhance the feeling of coiled power that radiated from him. < This could have something to do with the fact that it's his world. Better keep that in mind. >

She didn't answer him.

He eyed her speculatively. "If you did, I might even be prepared to offer an incentive." He stepped towards her. It was the first time she'd seen him move. If she'd seen it before she agreed, she might have reconsidered the whole thing. All the hunger wrapped up in his eyes showed itself now, stamped its mark on every move he made. He walked in graceful strides, ones made for running something- or someone - down to ground.

He stopped only a few inches in front of her, close enough to make her nerves jump. "Do you have dreams, Willow?" The emphasis he put on the words made it clear that he wasn't talking about the dreams she had at night, the ones where naked test-taking and talking billy goats played a large part. On his lips, the word whispered of honey-sweet fantasies and forgotten longings.

She waffled, unwilling to face his meaning. "Everyone has dreams."

He shook his head slowly, still watching her with those appraising eyes. "No. Some people don't. But I think you do." His hand twisted, seeming to curve in on itself. A round crystal formed out of the air, perching itself on his gloved fingertips with surprising stability. It was a pure white, pulsing slowly with a call that less seen than felt. Willow's eyes fixed on it, lips half-parting in a smile of child-like wonder. Something inside her remembered her dreams, knew what he was offering and craved it with a depth of need that scared her.

Jareth watched her closely, moving the crystal slowly in front of her, letting it catch the light of the blazing sky and reflect it back in a thousand crystalline sunbursts. "I'll give you your dreams, Willow." His voice was serious now, the underlying music muted. "All you have to do is forget about your friend."

She could feel her heartbeat speeding up. Her dreams... "No." The word came out with certainty behind it, despite the voice inside her that cried out against the decision with anger and pain.

He took a step back, face falling into a stern mask. "You have twenty-four hours to solve my labyrinth."

She tried to clamp her mouth shut, but the words escaped anyway. "And...if I can't?"

One aristocratic eyebrow arched, lips parting to reveal a feline smile. "Why, then Spike will become one of us. And you," He looked down at her with something that she couldn't identify. "You can mourn your friends for the rest of your life."

She turned away from him, fighting the prickle of tears at the back of her eyes. "I guess I better get started then." She started to walk down the hill, fighting the urge to look back.

His voice followed her, seeming to come from all around her and echoing inside her mind with resonant clarity. "Your dreams, Willow... The offer stands."

To give her credit, her pause was almost unnoticeable.

Almost.

Part Four

The tiny image of Willow inside the crystal ball faded away, leaving Spike staring at a distorted reflection of his own face.

"Bloody hell!" He shook the recalcitrant ball violently and slammed it down on an arm of the huge stone chair at the center of the room. The term chair is probably a bit misleading, though. Although it had very little of the 'tapestry and gilt' motif that usually characterizes its species, it was unmistakably a throne. The crudely carved stone seemed to emanate raw power, though some of its cachet might stem from the total lack of any other furniture.

The entire room was made out of the same stone as the chair- dark gray rock, smoothed to silken smoothness by the passage of time and people. It wasn't hard to believe that the entire room had been hollowed out of one huge boulder, with only the chair left as a carved protrusion of the original rock.

The torches burned brightly on the walls, providing a soft amber light and gifting every object in the room with a trembling shadow. They were necessary to ward off the incredible darkness outside, a gloom so deep that the windows set into the wall might as well have been black velvet paintings done entirely with black fabric paint. (Coal Goblin at night, Inside of a Goblin, Jareth's leather collection, etc.)

Not that it mattered. Windows couldn't show Spike what he wanted to see. Growling under his breath, he picked up the malfunctioning crystal and started to bang it rhythmically against the side of the throne.

"I'm afraid that won't work."

Spinning around, Spike located the source of the voice. Jareth stood in the entranceway, his lithe form almost merging with the darkness beyond. Spike's mouth settled into a grim smile as he moved towards the other man with gliding steps. "Right. Don't know what your game is, mate, but I want out of this place *now*!"

Jareth took a step into the room, appearing totally unconcerned by the rather obvious threat. Gloved fingers pushed a stray strand of pale hair back from his face, crystalline eyes appraising Spike coolly. He gave Spike a smile that might have been innocent if it had come from anyone else. "What kind of game would it be without a prize?"

A low growl tore itself from Spike's throat as the bones of his face reshaped themselves under his pale skin. "You want a prize? How about your intestines tied up with a bow?"

Jareth shook his head in mock-incredulity. "I suppose that being a demon explains your violent attitude, even after all I've done for you."

"Oh? And what have you done?" He didn't apologize, but neither did he lunge at Jareth and attempt to perform an appendectomy using only his teeth. For Spike, it was a concession.

One eyebrow arched delicately. "Why, I turned off the sun just for you." Jareth gestured at the windows that ringed the walls, hand inscribing a graceful arc in the air.

Moving warily, Spike stepped to one of the windows and looked out.

There was an infinity of blackness beyond, the landscape of the labyrinth faintly etched in the different hues of midnight. < The ponce is talking through his hat. It's nighttime, that's all. > Spike started to turn away, but was drawn back to the window by a strange sense of unease. < It's so dark... > That was it. Demonic eyes should have seen every curve and angle clearly but even when he strained the outside world was no more than a soft illusion.

It was as if there was a heavy curtain in front of his eyes, blocking his sight. He looked suspiciously back at Jareth only to find that his adversary was now lounging in the throne, watching with amusement. Now, vampires are the *kings* of moving silently to creep people out. It's one of their favorite things to do to people, ranking only slightly below draining the life out of a struggling mortal and watching a thousand imagined futures die in their eyes.

< Be damned if I'm going to ask him what's going on! > Spike turned away from the window with simulated nonchalance, leaning back against the frame and crossing his arms over his chest. "So, you turned off the sun. That's. Just. Brilliant." Each word was drawled out and thoroughly coated with sarcasm. This is what's known as writing between the lines in neon pink and then underlining it.

In this case, the subtle message was something approximate to "Yeah, well I live in Sunnyhell *and* I'm a demon, your little tricks are nothing compared to what I see every Wednesday, regular."

The only reaction he got was a slight tightening of Jareth's seemingly inevitable smirk before the entity picked up the discarded crystal ball and held it up. Colors blossomed at the touch of those gloved hands, coiling around each other in a silent ballet before resolving into a picture of Willow, picking her way down to the gates of the labyrinth.

Spike moved closer despite himself, eyes focused on the frail figure. Not only was she his only hope of getting out of here, she was also the first person he'd seen in the sunlight for over a century.

He'd forgotten how many more colors the world held under the sun, how light could dance along hair that seemed all one color at night and turn it into a living river of reds and golds that struck sparks off the air. He'd forgotten what it did to eyes, too. How light forced the pupils to contract and reveal the brilliantly faceted green of irises that it jealously guarded in the darkness.

"I did it for her." Jareth's voice was quiet and resigned, his gaze never leaving the image in the crystal. If emptiness could be honed to a point and stabbed through the soul, if being alone could be sharp enough to slice layers of self away, then there might be a way to describe the echoed pain in those words.

The king snipped the slender thread of emotion ruthlessly, the normal undertone of amused superiority firmly back in place. "Must keep the prize intact until she loses. After that..." His sidelong glance at Spike conjured up images of a number of interesting fates that might await the vampire- all of them fatal... eventually.

Spike ignored the implicit threat, his tone challenging. "What makes you think she's going to lose?"

"They always do." It wasn't a boast. No conqueror's joy rang in the quiet words and his humorless smile was empty of any emotion- let alone self-satisfaction. It was a flat statement of inevitability.

The honest amusement in the vampire's laugh was blasphemously out of place in the quiet room. The throne room was made for the dangerous smoothness of a seductive chuckle, the auditory waterfall of a flirtatious giggle. It was emphatically not a room for people to laugh as though they couldn't help themselves, laugh until they had to stop because it hurt too much to go on.

Particularly not at Jareth.

It was a good thing that the only thing more powerful than Jareth was Jareth's curiosity.

"Does that entertain you?"

Spike got himself under control. "Sorry. Just you sound so much like my Sire. He was another game-player. Always sure that his plans would work out because they always had before. And, just like him," He nodded at the crystal-encased figure now striding briskly towards the gate. "You're underestimating her." He thought fondly about the curse that had changed Angelus from the sadistic over-achiever back to the Nancy-boy that Spike loved to dismember. (Technically, he's only assuming that he'd love it. But it's a fairly safe assumption.)

"Really?" The mismatched eyes were thoughtful as they slid over the deceptive fragility of Willow's frame. "Perhaps I should arrange a few more surprises for her." Jareth unfolded himself from the chair and stood up, idly tossing the crystal ball from hand to hand.

Spike realized that he'd blundered. Badly. < Have to remember that me and the witch are on the same side right now! >

Jareth paused, turning towards Spike as if a thought had just struck him. "I suppose you can watch." He smiled slowly as the otherworldly glitter in his eyes began to blaze. "After all, I do - owe you something for the warning." He tossed the crystal up into the air, the translucent bubble soaring in a wide arc before coming to rest in Spike's hands.

"Hold on-" Spike looked up at the empty throne room, a few motes of air sparkling for a moment before they dwindled back into invisibility.

The crystal ball felt warm to the touch, the image of Willow inside seeming to stare at him with mute accusation. He tried to quash the sinking feeling that he'd just made an impossible task even harder.