It is the Same For Me
AKA Wizard's Wedding(s)

Disclaimer: All belongs to DD, otherwise I would (insert suggestive comment about Prince Unlikely)

A/N: Well, this came out unexpectedly sappy. I started off to write a fic that had to do with a) Dairine explaining Roshaun to ignorant Earth people b) Dairine and Roshaun getting married. And the whole thing was prefferably comedic. But, um, didn't really turn out that way. So prepare for some serious fluffage! Also, slight WAW spoilers. But not enought to stop you from reading it if you haven't read the book, so just ignore me. Oh, and this isn't beta'd. So if someone would like to volunteer...?

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It began with a wedding, and ended with a wedding too.

But that's getting ahead of ourselves.

It would be much more accurate if we said that it began on the day that Dairine turned sixteen, and Nita and Kit announced their engagement.

Dairine was horror stricken. This was for a number of reasons, the main one being a very strong and motherly voice in her that said but you're too young! After getting over the initial shock, she said as much to Nita.

Her sister laughed, which was rather annoying.

"An engagement doesn't mean that we're getting married right away, kidlet," she explained, as if she were talking to a small child.

Dairine's cheeks flared red at the nickname.

"I know that," she muttered, "and I'm not a baby anymore."

Nita smiled knowingly. "'Course not. You're sixteen. But you're my little sister, too. Anyways," she continued, "Kit and I don't plan to get married for a while yet. I mean, we've got college first, but we thought...we thought that weknow each other so well... we're partners. We can tell."

Flushing an even deeper red, Dairine nodded. It was clear that Nita had thought this out, and feeling rather one-upped, she left the room and headed towards the basement.

The pup-tents were long gone, but there was a gate there, as ridiculous as it may have seemed. There was a certain sentimentality to it; besides, they were so used to using the space for transits that the spell was much easier as a result--no need to adapt coordinates or descriptions based on location.

She ran through the diagram and words almost robotically, and soon found herself standing in splendor, winded.

From the corner there was a start, and Dairine peered into the ornate gloom and saw a tall blonde figure jumping to his feet. He was surrounded by the blue glow of the spell that he was working on, but that light dissappeared quickly as he extinguished the glow that was his manual.

"Um," said Roshaun, "hello." Seeing her tired face, he asked her to sit down. She sank gratefully into the shabbiest armchair she could find (it had ordinary silk embroidery, and a comforting lack of gemstones).

He sat across from her, looking concerned and slightly impatient at the same time. His long fingers tapped inaudibly on the shining armrest of his sapphire-studded chair.

Finally, she sighed.

"They're getting married."

He should have been puzzled, but he heard the answer to his unspoken question in her head. My sister and you-know-who. Wryly, The Lovebirds.

Roshaun nodded his elegant head. His hair was pulled back today, but his forelocks hung in his eyes and they flopped with his every movement. Dairine didn't know why she noticed this, but it improved her mood drastically. So she laughed, and her face relaxed into a smile.

"Should have known," she said, shaking her head. "I should have known."

At her sudden gaiety, Roshaun looked at her questioningly.

"It is," he said after a moment, "good news that your sister seeks unionbond with the one she is so fond of. But why were you so distraught, and now so joyful?"

She looked down at her lap. There was a hole in her jeans that she hadn't noticed before. It showed a great deal of scabbed knee.

"I don't really know," she answered, glancing up. His expression was unreadable. "I mean, I know I was upset because, I mean, they'reso young. But I don't think that's all--" she broke off as he interrupted her.

"You wonder why you haven't had that kind of surety yet, if she has so early on in life." His voice was quiet, and from that Dairine knew that he too was feeling a bit... odd. She certainly was.

They sat in silence, both careful to shield their thoughts from each other. What they were thinking was too sensitive to be shared quite yet, not until they themselves understood.

Dairine was the first to speak. "But I think I have, perhaps."

Roshaun looked up sharply. "Have you? With whom?"

She could feel herself turning bright red.

"You."

"Oh," he said, and stood up, looming a bit in the dim reddish light, and sat down on the arm of her chair.

She looked up and met his very shadowed but very green eyes. That was exactly what he wanted her to do, because that gave him the opportunity to put his hands on her face and lean down to kiss her.

Flushing even redder, she kissed him back, tentatively. And that was exactly what she needed. And then it was over, and he said quite softly but quite clearly:

"It is the same for me."

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Four years later, Nita and Kit finished college and got married, just as they'd said. They moved to Manhatten, where Nita wrote a column for the New Yorker and Kit worked at Macintosh hardware development. He was highly successful at this; mostly because he could work out compatability problems like no other. People said he should have been a marriage counselor.

To Dairine, everything was suddenly about the M-word. At her sister's wedding, her father caught the bouquet and was to be married to a rather nice librarian called Marianne. Also, Dairine had brought Roshaun along as her date, and to their great embarrassment, someone had asked if he was her husband. She didn't think the poor woman realized that Dairine was Nita'syounger sister. Perhaps it was because Roshaun looked so much older. Somewhere along the way, she had done the math, and he turned out to be about four years her senior, but looked more like eight. When she brought him places, it could get awkward.

Of course, it was doubly embarrassing if someone chanced to ask her where he was from. With his quite distict looks, an unfortunate multitude of people did ask. Eventually she had to come up with a standard explaination: Robin Neraidu was from California, his father had been half-Japanese, his mother Swedish. He worked for SETI (that particular detail was something of a private joke) as an engineer. This conveniently explained away both his looks and his technical knowledge; it also amused Roshaun to no end.

But anyways. Back to life.

Following her dream to design computers, Dairine lived in Boston and attended MIT with a rather prodigious scholarship. Her life was predictably busy, what with classes, work (she did need food occaisionally, and procured the funds for this working as a secretarial aid) and Roshaun popping in every once in a while, and visa versa. She was struggling with AP Calculus; Roshaun was winning over his people. They hardly had time for each other except on weekends. Dairine found it great fun to take him to parties and watch people stare. Luckily he pretty generally enjoyed this slice of Earth culture. It was all fun, but hurried.

But then sometimes, when he didn't have to rush off to matters of state and she didn't have masses of homework, they'd just lay around in her apartment and watch old movies. Star Wars was, naturally, a favorite. She loved it when they had the time for that. He would stretch out on the couch full-length, and his legs would dangle far over the edge. She'd laugh, and then curling up next to him, she'd feel so warm that she'd even fall asleep during The Empire Strikes Back. And the best part was, he'd know how monumental this was and wrap his long arms around her and kiss the top of her head. Eventually he too would drift off, and they'd both wake the next day feeling extraordinarily content.

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The next two years of Dairine's collegiate experience passed that way, dashing from place to place. And then suddenly it was over, and she was free to leave and find herself a place in the world. Problem was, she wasn't so sure that that place was onthis world. Oh, she certainly looked. Plenty of computer companies wanted her and her excellent credentials, and Kit even went so far as to nearly secure her a prestigious position at Mac. But none of it quite felt right. She was a wizard first and foremost. Nita and Kit and Tom, they were content to live double lives. Dairine didn't think she could do that for her entire existance, constantly hiding.

So she went back to Wellakh after graduation. She said goodbye to her sister in New York on the way, and also, breifly, to her father and his new wife, and then left with Roshaun to finally go home.

"When we return from this excursion..."

He'd said it years ago, and now it had finally come true.

--------Finis--------

2nd A/N: That quoted bit at the end is very loosely from WAW. So, um, yeah, I don't have the book with me right now to get the exact quote, but that's the idea.