Mercury
By silvermisery
Disclaimer: Kit and Nita are not mine. For one thing, I think they will get together someday (I've only read up to a Wizard's Dilemma so far, so don't spoil me for it if they have). This is just a might-have-been-could-have-been alternate universe.
A/N: Normally I write Harry Potter fanfics, but I like cases of friends falling in love. And I just had to write it. Kit made me do it. He likes the idea of Nita pining away for him—gods, he's such a guy, I know, Nita, sorry.
He'll never know, will he?
You stare at his dark skin and darker eyes, with his floppy black hair that you want to push back and straighten for him. Smarter and more mature than you ever will be, but still younger and in some ways, just a little boy.
"Nita? You're not falling asleep now, are you? Because that would be real silly."
His atrocious grammar a case in point.
"Na, just thinking." He feigns shock, and you roll over and punch him. He snorts laughter and tries to punch back, but you evade deftly, giggling at him. He almost got you then. Soon he will. Already he's quite a bit taller than you, becoming cuter—he was always cute—becoming taller—more popular—
Joanne giggling and fluttering her long eyelashes at him and tossing that Juicy Couture purse that probably cost my whole year's allowance
And people—girls—are starting to notice him—
Sometimes you want to scream, scream long and loud and high without stopping, frozen in stasis like Dairine's little glass turtles wanted to do to all human kind and sometimes you wish they had because it would be so much more peaceful if you didn't have to think
Or burst into tears like the crybaby you are at heart and then have to watch Kit look at you with that slight disdain you know he has to have for you, after all he's smarter—he's always right—even though he's younger than you, gods, sometimes you wonder if he's even a better wizard, more powerful than you.
Maybe you'll just go mad. That would be easier.
"Nita?" he rolls on his stomach, leans on his elbows, staring over at you, black eyes piercing and probing in a way that makes your heart flutter. "I think you are falling asleep!" he proclaims triumphantly.
"Am not." But the contradiction is half-hearted at best, and he frowns.
"Seriously, Neets, what's wrong? You've been dopy all day."
A smile doesn't seem to fit on your face somehow. As though your face was like one of those papier-mâché masks, strips of white paper that dry so stiff and unbendable, a smile not fitting the parameters for your design. You try one on and almost break your face, the muscles refusing to cooperate.
Kit is staring now, his brows furrowed in worry. "Neets?"
Your heart aches at the sight of him worried, and hurriedly, with no finesse or care for the pain it causes you, you shove it on, breaking, crumbling, destroying precious bits of the soul inside to make sure it fits. A slap-dash job, hastily patched with some glue and wet flour-paste. It feels loose, so you exert one last bit of strength and force it down, screwing it in, and as you do so, something cracks inside of you. Something you can feel instinctively is irreparable, irretrievable, irreplaceable.
You smile. "Nothing, just tired out from homework. God, it sucks."
The concern on his face smoothes itself out, and you hurt for a second that all you're worth is five seconds of worry—that his fears are so easily soothed. A voice inside of you whispers that it wouldn't be so easy to alleviate his fears if it was Joanne who was half-dead of ache.
"Geez, Neets, you had me going there for a while!"
You propel some laughter up and out your throat, almost choking on the unfamiliar taste.
I love you, Kit.
For one heart-stopping second, you think he has heard you, sharing your thoughts the way he used to. His face crinkles up slightly, but in the next second, it is gone, and the moment is lost—dissolving in a wisp of smoke, ashes gone with the wind that leave a sour taste in your mouth.
Happiness is like mercury. Swift and elusive, you have only one chance to grasp it, and too often it falls through your fingers in a quicksilver flash. Tom told this to you once, in an uncharacteristic moment of articulation.
You have the bitter feeling that you have lost your chance—or that maybe you never had it to begin with. But anyway, what good would it do a girl with a useless heart?