AN: Mega short intro/prologue, to give a taste. First chapter will follow soon. This fic will really just be an experiment of sorts for my own free time, so we'll see how it goes! Obviously, my other stories are pretty much done and dead. Fanfiction is pretty hard to keep up with now that I'm pretty much a full-fledged adult...or so I'm told. In any case, it's hard to stay away from and I always find myself coming back, like visiting an old friend.

Disclaimer: I do not own Labyrinth.

Time and Space, Collapse

Prologue

Evolution

The smoke furls upward into the dreary New England sky. It pulls and coils and stretches itself thin before seemingly evaporating into nothingness. The process starts itself over as another drag is pulled from the cigarette held loosely between slender, long fingers.

Jareth contemplates the wisps of smoke, noticing how they almost seem to dance in the air, tantalizingly so. If he stares long enough, he can almost see tendrils of dark brown hair dancing, seducing him as they move.

And if he stares longer yet, he will lose himself in emerald eyes that aren't there.

But, Jareth doesn't have to rely on his imagination. All he has to do is turn his glance sideways, across the street, and there she is.

She appears young, carefree, so untouched by the world and all its troubles. Her jewel-toned eyes he knows are there are currently hidden as she laughs with mirth at something the young man seated across from her must have said.

She is younger than he remembers her, this time around. It isn't that he was ever unaware of her youth, but in times like these, little snippets that seem bewilderingly intimate despite their public setting, she suddenly seems so much more youthful. There is no touch of sadness, no air of hidden mysteries.

It is foreign to see her like this, but in a way, it is all the more intriguing.

He has been following her for an eternity, and even to this day, she is still surprising him, catching him off guard.

Hiding his face behind a newspaper, his eyes rove the black and white text with little interest.

He contemplates what it would be like to rush over to her, to grab her in his arms, to feel like fate had finally been on his side, to take her then and there, wildly.

Jareth nearly laughs, recalling a simpler time...the first time. The first time they ever met, the first time they encountered each other and began this unending cycle. Fate was determined to repeat itself, Jareth reckons.

And each time Jareth finds her in the next life, she is always a little more different. It is subtle, much like the way the seasons gradually fade into another, before becoming something else entirely. Her hair, once a dark chocolate, has lightened somewhat. Her eyes, once a murky hazel, have crystallized into the mesmerizing emerald they are now. Some lifetimes, her hair is neat and straight as a pin, others it is wild and windswept.

Like a force of nature herself, Sarah is always evolving.

Suddenly, the girl across the street seems to have taken note of the unearthly being sitting at the patio table and chairs, smoking his cigarette with ease.

Jareth makes eye contact with her, and her lips part slightly, as if in recognition.

His heart is electrified, his mind reeling back to the past, to the beginning.

In which a devil encounters a young girl…