Sarah sits down on the park bench, just out of view of the security cameras trained on the square. A little girl crawls behind a tree, where her father and the camera cannot see her.

She crawls back out a few seconds later, returning to her father. She is not captured, or wished or spirited away. Later that evening, the entire family goes out for pizza and hot fudge sundaes to celebrate the little girl's third birthday. Sarah watches them leave the park that afternoon and knows the little girl will have a charmed life. All those blessed by the Summer Queen do; in this case, she also has the protection of the Winter King.

"I want to see more," she tells the king as she stands, arms crossed. She doesn't look him in the eyes as he nods, but they both step away and out of the park, and into a nursery.

The infant's mother kisses it goodnight and shuts off the light. The entire family sleeps soundly through the night, unbothered by nightmares of goblins. There is no magic to steal the babe away, there is to missing queen to lure back. There is nothing but the quiet of the night and the steady breathing of sleep.

The pair walks through other people's lives silently and unnoticed, filling in the missing pieces where they can, softening the edges where they can't. The effects of the missing queen fill in slowly, under her watch.

The stars spin slowly backwards. Sarah sits at the foot of a small grave, freshly covered. The funeral party left hours ago, and the owl that had watched her all those months ago floats down to sit by her side as a man.

"He is not there."

"I know," she says, wiping her streaming eyes. "I know." He had never really been there, and he never really would be; she was making sure of that. Toby is one of the last holes she has to fill. She cannot leave her parents without a child.

"If I go home right now, will anybody be there? I would like to be able to say goodbye."

He inclines his head silently. "They will be asleep. I can ensure it."

Sarah looks at him, green eyes glittering in the moonlight. She's full of unshed tears, and she doesn't think that she will ever be empty. But this is a start.

"I would like that," she tells him as she stands, brushing loose, damp dirt off her legs. She knows her way home from the cemetery, and a long walk in the cool night air will do her some good. Sarah has her decision to think about, and even here in the Aboveground, she can feel the magic calling out to take her back. The bones of the earth shift under her feet, trying to readjust to being clothed in flesh, and Sarah can feel it shuddering back into wakefulness.

Her house looks unchanged. Almost.

There is now a tall picket fence around the yard with a locked fence towards the front. Sarah reaches over the gate, standing on her tip-toes, and unlocks it silently. There is a tee ball set at the far end of the yard. Somebody has left a little plastic ball in the grass and Sarah bends to pick it up. It is coated with the first breaths of the morning dew, but time will wait for Sarah to be done. She feels as out of place as the little plastic ball; mislaid, somehow, forgotten as the world moved on around her. But that was her price.

At one point, she belonged here, Sarah thinks, ignoring the lump in her throat. At one point, she had a mother and a father, and her place as Sarah Williams, human, was secure. Fairy tales were just stories—her playmates—before they were true, before they were her whole life. But now the cacophony of the life of Sarah Williams, human, rushes on around her like fresh meltwater around the remaining vestiges of the frost. Soon what is left of her will melt away, to be remade into something new. Or old.

The back door is unlocked, and Sarah tiptoes through it into the kitchen. There are stick figure drawings and splattered water colored paintings hung with care on the fridge doors. The magnet that a nine year old Sarah picked up on a family vacation to Arizona is nowhere to be seen. The simplified plastic rendition of the Grand Canyon had never been purchased to appease one of her famous mood swings.

Sarah taps one of the paintings and bites her lip. She wonders if it will remain intact if she takes it with her for a moment before she slides it out from underneath the plastic magnet holding it up. It disappears, folded, into the top of her boot and she moves on through the kitchen, looking at life without her for the Williams family.

They are asleep upstairs, but she does not want to see them yet. It is too soon, for her, and she will wait until she can't.

Outside, time ticks backwards. Inside, time remains frozen as Sarah steps on the plush carpet of the living room. Photographs line walls, some lined up perfectly on shelves. Sarah smiles lightly and picks one up; Karen will never know if it is out of place the next morning, because when the sun rises nothing will be the same.

This photograph holds Sarah and Toby captive on the swing set in the park. Toby sits on the ground in the grass while Sarah stands, knobby-kneed, on the seat of the swing. It wasn't taken all that long ago, but as Sarah watches, it fades and shudders. She smiles and wipes the beginning of a tear out of her eyes with the back of her sleeve, and when she returns to the photo, Toby sits alone in front of an empty swing. Sarah puts it back down on the shelf and avoids looking at her most recent school photograph, three feet away on the wall. She does not watch as she fades from view and is replaced with a photo of Toby in his bassinet, fresh from the hospital.

She doesn't mind as she slowly disappears from staged holiday photographs, though she does lightly kiss the most recent one. Karen holds a squirmy Toby as Sarah stares defiantly into the camera. Her father rests his hand on her shoulder and is clearly trying not to mind the hideous, bright red sweaters Karen had forced them all into. The glass is smudged from her lips, but only for a second before the condensations fades.

But there is one memory Sarah wants to save; she hopes it hasn't already been touched by her decision. It is on the eleventh page of the photo album Karen frantically put together one day while home alone and it is Sarah's favorite photo of the family.

She finds it, sitting on the overly plush armchair, and puts a finger on the plastic covering it. A younger Sarah stares up from the photograph, holding a red Toby while Karen rests on the hospital bed, smiling at the photographer through her exhaustion. Her father stands nervously behind Sarah, clasping Karen's right hand while his other rests on Sarah's head. This was more real than the holiday portraits, or the staged swing set photography. This holds memories that cannot be wiped away, not even by Sarah herself. She slides it out of its plastic covering and it joins the watercolor artwork in her boot.

There is one thing left to do, as Sarah's old life grinds to a halt around her. She climbs the staircase of her childhood home one last time, savoring every step. On the landing there is a mirror, which she avoids; she is not ready to go yet.

The first stop Sarah makes is to her old room. It is still fluffy and pale, and Sarah does not want to see what it turns into when she leaves. From her mirror, she takes the clippings of her mother's performances. She leaves the lipsticks and toys where they are, abandoned on her desk and floor; the little dolls will disappear when she does.

The little, ragged teddy bear, which in a forward (but past) time would have been with Toby in his grave, rests silently on the shelf above her head. She reaches up and pulls it towards her, pressing her face into its plush fur and breathing deeply. It smells of herself and Toby; the little bear had once spent an equal measure of time between the two siblings, but no longer.

Sarah breathes out and clutches Lancelot to her chest. This time, it will come with her.

The landing is still dark as Sarah makes her way to her parents' room. Although she doesn't have to try to be quiet, she inches the door open and leaves the light off. Toby rests quietly in his crib, as silent as she has ever seen him—except for once, which now she supposes has never happened. She leans over his crib and kisses him lightly on his forehead, tugging the blanket up higher to his chest. She will not cry over this.

Her father and Karen sleep in a huddled mass, as if they can't bear to be parted. Sarah smiles at them and smooths some of Karen's wild red hair away from her face.

"Goodnight," she whispers to her stepmother, knowing that the woman cannot, will never hear her.

"Goodbye," she whispers to her father, squeezing his hand. He doesn't feel Sarah's touch, and never will.

Sarah steps back to the wide window and flings it open. This time, neither wind nor magic rush forward to greet her.

"I'm ready, now." Sarah says, louder, to the waiting dark. She clutches Lancelot tighter to her chest with one hand, and with the other she reaches out to grab her king's extended hand. Together, they step back through the window.

Toby grows up an only child.

He loves fairytales, and baseball and soccer, and a sweetheart from high school that he later marries. Their first child is a daughter, born with a shock of curly brown hair. Melinda, his wife, likes the name Alisha, while he favors the name Rebecca. They settle on naming her Sarah.

Little Sarah's grandparents never remember the daughter that they almost had, or had once, but whose story was rewritten. The spare room in their house remains empty; if asked, neither would know why.

The queen left once, but now is returned. Old hurts are mended, for the most part. Occasionally, somebody will remember something that did not happen. Time is a funny thing, that way.

The door at the top of the stair is bricked up because neither the queen nor the king can stand to look at it. They both know that one day, however, they will pass through it hand in hand. That day will be long in coming.

The land does not forget; the land remembers, and heals. In the center of the labyrinth, magic blooms with a fury nobody has quite seen before. The returned queen often goes to quiet it, when it gets too intense. She returns often with petals in her hair, a memory of a crown once worn. She does not forget, either.

In her room, under their bed, she keeps old newspaper clippings that didn't happen as written (the starlet has no daughter, though the print states otherwise), a painting, and a photograph that was never taken. The king knows this, and remembers as well. It is not something that they speak of often, except in those quiet hours between the dark of night and the still of dawn. Sometimes they sit together, just breathing, both remembering.

Sarah remains Sarah. The queen-that-had-been is now just a memory, soothed by the passing of time. She still rules Summer, but some still whisper Conqueror, Conqueror Queen, as she passes. Though the goblins are long gone, Jareth is still known to some as the Goblin King; these are titles that neither no longer minds. They are as they have been shaped.

Their reign will be long. The land flourishes under them as it never had before. The little red books disappear completely, their job completed. The past has been rewritten, but not forgotten.

Together, they will meet the future.

A/N:

Here it is, folks. It took literally forever (and I wrote entire original fiction books in between starting this and finishing it, OOPS) but it has come to an end.

This is also the end of my journey into fanfiction, I think. I realize that this really needs to be edited, but I don't think I have the time to devote to it as of now. I might not generate any new fanfiction, but I might return to edit this mess someday.

If you think I'm an alright person, time management skills aside, shoot me a message and I'll give you the link to my tumblr and we can chat over there.

Also, about then thousand years ago, I mentioned a playlist of songs I associated with this piece (how presumptuous, right?) It is as follows:

Beside You, by Phildel; Brightest Hour by The Submarines; Winter Song by The Head and the Heart; Marble House by The Knife; Drought by Vienna Teng; The Same Deep Waters as You by The Cure; For Everything a Reason by Carina Round; Love Letters by Paper Route; Speed the Collapse by Metric; Peaches by In the Valley Below; Rabbit Heart by Florence + the Machine; No Light, No Light by Florence + the Machine; Afraid of the Dark by Phildel; Winter Bones by Stars; Lean by Oh Land; Breathe, It's Over by Blue October; Saturn by Sleeping at Last