For Life's Sake (Kit/Nita)

[storypaint]

Comm: none
Words: 623
Title: For Life's Sake
Fandom: Young Wizards
Pairing: Kit/Nita, Roshaun/Dairine
Rating: G, mentions of character death
Spoilers: For "Wizards At War"
Disclaimer: The Young Wizards series belongs to Diane Duane. This fanfic is a derivative of canon material that is not my property. I do not profit from these writings. The opinions and actions expressed in these stories are not necessarily the views and beliefs of the original author or me.

Excerpt: She is twenty-five when they get married and take their honeymoon in Mexico. No one is surprised when they get an urgent summons from the local wizards and they spend most of their vacation trying to convince a volcano not to erupt. Just your usual wizard's holiday.

She is nineteen the first time she kisses him, and she is still taller than him, bending down and capturing his lips gently. It isn't after a wizardry, it isn't after they've both almost died. Nita knows that it has to feel different than that. Kit tastes like the popsicles they've been eating on his front step.

It only takes a couple of days to make everything new, but the changes to her name in the Speech make her smile. He's linked to her even closer now.

Kit was the only one, oddly enough, who hadn't expected it.

*

She is twenty-five when they get married and take their honeymoon in Mexico. No one is surprised when they get an urgent summons from the local wizards and they spend most of their vacation trying to convince a volcano not to erupt. The effort is successful, of course, and they don't manage to lose anyone this time, even. Just your usual wizard's holiday.

They come home without any big projects at hand, just a few on the back-burner, but Nita has been dreaming about the sun lately and when she answers the door, she looks unsurprised to see Roshaun, young as ever, eyes forlorn.

"She's really angry," he says, and Nita laughs, inviting him in.

*

Dairine can't stay mad for long, but she makes Roshaun promise that she can redecorate his home to her own taste and that he'll let her know in case he decides to suddenly disappear again.

Nita is her maid of honor, her belly large and her eyes satisfied. She'd won quite a bet from Kit over this one.

*

She is twenty-seven when she gets pregnant. "Giving birth will be nothing compared to what we've done," Nita says, squeezing Kit's hand when they are pushing her into the operating world, but he can feel the pain on several different levels anyway. He isn't good at healing wizardries, so he gets the doctors to give Nita an epidural.

His daughter has bright red Callahan hair. She has her Ordeal at age nine and comes back with a stray dog that acts like he knows Kit already.

*

Nita is thirty-three when Tom dies in service to the Art, and when the grieving is done, she finds herself with a phonebook-sized manual and an alien resembling a coatrack on her doorstep.

She helps the coatrack find the proper worldgate home and thanks it for its service to her planet. It's business as usual.

*

Nita is thirty-five when there's a horribly familiar sun problem rebuilding on Roshaun's planet, and her daughter, fresh from her Ordeal and full of power, goes to help her aunt and uncle deal with the problem. At the moment of no hope, the Hester makes her presence known in the child, and the Lone One is forced to slink away again.

Nita tries to get used to calling her daughter by dual pronouns, but it's kind of hard, especially since she sometimes wants to call her Memeki.

*

Nita is forty when there is an intervention on Mars, and she spends another night dreaming of Timeheart.

"I'll be here when you're ready," Kit says, all of the premature gray gone from his hair, and all she can do is nod.

*

Nita is forty-five when she joins him, still too young, she thinks, for their daughter to lose her mom, but she cannot deny the Art and its service.

She is glad to see Kit again, and Fred and Ed and Tom and her mother and all of the others she loved. The world is bright and colorful and perfect.

Strangely enough, she lives. This is the place beyond death, not death itself, and she lives.