Disclaimer: Helena, the quote, and the whole of the Young Wizards universe belongs soley to Diane Duane. The idea for the plot of this fic belongs half to me and half to my insomnia.
Wizardry does not live in the unwilling soul.
Helena walked into the coffee shop and ordered her usual. She sat down at the nearest free table and took her first sip. Oh, sweet warmth…for a few, blissful seconds. Then it was over. She sighed. Nothing worked permanently for this…this…well, to be perfectly honest, funk she was in. Maybe all college students felt this way. They must. They were all in the same boat, after all. Unfulfilled, having yet to find there niche, feeling as if something were missing to give their life worth…It would be different once she had finished college and established her career. If not then, when she settled down, had a family…family…the word elicited another sigh and she took second sip of her coffee.
Kit…maybe she had been hard on him…he wasn't the sort of person that would make deals with the devil, but…something about that wizardry had felt so horribly wrong. It hurt to look at, to hear about, how come none of the rest of her family had noticed? It was horrible…it was like it opened this great wound inside her and soiled it, and kept doing it again and again no matter how much she writhed and screamed…It had to somehow be evil. Or not real. But she could have sworn…he'd shown her, shown them all…maybe she'd been imagining…dreaming…it could have been a trick, a prank, he could have just been pulling their legs somehow. If the shows on TV were anything to go by you could just almost anything with the right amount of mirrors…
She took another long draft of coffee.
And maybe she'd be able to convince herself it all hadn't been real if it hadn't been so painful, that pain had definitely been real. If it was really as good as he said why did it make her feel so horrible? If he was really fighting the good fight…against death, entropy…
And how could he really go up against something so huge, anyway? Especially if it, like he said, had a conscious embodiment. A Power, he'd called it, the Lone Power. How could her kid brother go up against something like that? She certainly couldn't…she wouldn't want to…all that responsibility…and what if you failed? What if something went wrong, even just once? How could you live with yourself? With the disappointment of every wizard, of every living thing? And, if Kit was right, then there wasn't anything that wasn't living…so you'd have no escape, no wait out. And didn't you take some Oath to become a wizard? Wasn't that what Kit had said? So there really was no way out, no matter how desperately you didn't want to be a wizard anymore…
She took another sip.
No. No way. She could never do it, and if she couldn't Kit certainly couldn't. Her kid brother…No. It was just Kit, I mean, he couldn't defend himself against bullies, how could he…?
Only he could, now. Defend himself against bullies, that is. They didn't seem to want to touch him. He had this…this…aura about him. She remembered the first day he'd gotten it, too, and how it had made her shiver…And he was just her kid brother…and he had always hated being bullied so much…if he had been offered some way to make it stop happening, no matter who offered she was sure he'd be tempted…and he might not know better than to…
She shook herself and drank some more of her coffee. No. Kit wouldn't. She should never have said he would. She wasn't sure where this paranoia of deals with the devil had come from, anyway, she had never been especially religious, but lately it was almost like a nightmare she hadn't consciously known she was having. The kind she would forget upon waking but then, when similar things started happening in reality, all the horrific images came back. And it had all started with Kit…with that ache…something wrong...something missing...and it had been there before, but she'd pushed it to the side thinking it'll be satisfied when I get into a good college, but then…
She didn't know what had happened then. But ever since Kit had said the thing about his wizardry it had gotten unbearably worse. It was like this hole in her, or worse, in her life, and she didn't know how to fill it…
She lifted the cup to her lips to take another sip only to find she'd already drained it of all it's contents. It was empty. Empty.
Empty.
She tossed the paper cup into the trash and left the café, cursing whatever cruel, sadistic person came up with such a terrible word.
AN: This came to me late at night when I was trying to go to sleep. I was afraid I'd forget it but fortunately I didn't. It's probably not really why Helena is so weird about Kit's wizardry, but it's possible…Please tell me what you think! Absolutely any comment that crosses your mind I'd love to hear! Thankies.