Title: All The Mistakes We Make
Author: Mizzy
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by Diane Duane, and various publishers. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Summary: Nita/Kit. Kit knows the lesson, and Nita's about to learn it. Nobody's perfect -- until you fall in love with them.
Irritation blazed across her face like a spark of fire in a field of dry grass, igniting and flaming up almost instantaneously. She dropped her bag to the ground and plonked herself in a heap on the grass, ignoring the muffled squeaking of the thin blades in her ears.
"I am sick and tired of all of this."
The girl waved her arms around in the air fractiously, and slid her glasses off; putting them into a glasses case in her pocket. Looking upwards, she shielded her stormy grey eyes from the sun with her hand and waited for a response from the boy leaning against the tree.
The boy stepped forwards, and moved round to sit in a crouching position near her, and she looked at him intently, with her head cocked to one side, her mousy-brown hair spilling in a tangle to her shoulder. She looked at him furiously, noting his troubled dark expression and the way his tangled black hair looked as if it hadn't been combed for a week.
"Sick and tired of what?" He eventually asked, looking confused.
The girl sighed, resting her head on the tree trunk. "Of people saying what they do."
"Well, that's pretty clear," the boy said, his voice laced with sarcasm. "Come on, Neets, what's bothering you?"
The girl, 'Neets', sighed again. "It's just, well, Dad's sending me off to summer camp for the holidays."
"I see," the boy said, clearly not seeing the exact problem at hand.
"Because he still doesn't believe that you and I aren't…" The girl made some gesture with his hands, and the boy shuffled awkwardly, his already darkish skin tingeing red awkwardly. "And it's not like the kids at school help either. They're all saying the same thing!"
"Well we do spend a lot of time together," the boy hazarded. "We know it's because of our job, but they don't."
The girl frowned. "I guess, but it's just so irritating. I don't really know where they get the idea that we…" She giggled, making the same gesture again. "I mean it's so ludicrous! I mean, I don't feel that way, and you don't, so…"
The boy shifted, uncomfortable, getting to his feet and rubbing dead leaves off his dark navy slacks. "Just leave it alone," he suggested, turning his head away and looking fractious and awkward.
"Kit?" The girl's expression suddenly changed, from one of irritation to complete disbelief. "You… do just think of me as a friend, right?"
Kit turned to her, face pale and body trembling. "I'm sorry, Nita. I don't know if I can."
"Huh?" Nita blinked, still almost clueless. "Can what?"
"Pretend that the rumours don't have any foundation for existence." Kit started to walk away, and turned, arms folded and a darkened expression in his eyes which Nita had never seen before. "It's all one sided. I can deal. It's whether you can or not which makes this a problem."
With that, the lanky Hispanic looking boy turned again and strode off into the distance, and the girl called Nita could only stare in muted surprise as he disappeared amidst the undergrowth.
"I can't believe him." The voice sounded in surprise.
"That's not the half of it," she sounded back, taking up the narrative once again.
"Kit's in love with me."
She tried the words out, bouncing them around her own head, the phrase not feeling so hollow as she might have imagined. In the seat across from her, a reserved redheaded girl, three years Nita's junior, stared back defiantly and none-too-ruffled by the revelation.
"And…?" The redhead prompted.
Nita stared, her mouth slightly open, her entire poise completely dishevelled. "Dairine? You… knew?"
Dairine shrugged demurely. "Everyone knows that, Nita. Please don't tell me you've only just figured it out."
"I…" Nita's jaw hung open slackly. "No, I… I didn't know."
Dairine rolled her eyes to the ceiling. "So, what did you say to him when he told you? Let me guess, you just gaped like a goldfish and let him get away."
"I…" Nita felt she was completely losing control of the situation, that is, if she ever had any to begin with.
"You are such an idiot," Dairine added.
"Excuse me?" Horrified, Nita stared at her younger sister.
"You've been in love with him for, well, forever. It's not my fault you've been denying it."
"Oh no I haven't!" Nita panicked, pushing herself away from the table and getting to her feet. "It's… you're all crazy!"
Nita moved to leave the room quickly, but was stopped by a hand gripping her wrist tightly. She turned, mouth dry with fear and nerves, to see Dairine looking at her intently, all fire and brimstone and ash.
"Just think about it, Nita," Dairine said firmly.
"Thinking about it… I should have done that, I should have…" Panic, terrible, slipping out, while Nita trembled, hugging her knees to her body and rocking back and forth back and forth. A lanky boy stared back, hair tumbling to his shoulders in an unkempt manner, and expression one of sorrow.
"You came onto me, sought me out, because you were trying to deny you were in love with Kit?" Disgusted, Ronan pushed himself to his feet, staring down at the Earth from their position on Copernicus. "When was this?"
"Kit told me… three months ago…" Nita mumbled to her feet. "And that was the first time Dairine outright warned me. She kept on doing it every day, for the first month or so, until…"
"Until what?"
Nita smiled bitterly.
"I'm sorry, Nita, Kit can't come to the phone. He's out with… what's-her-name… ah, the girl of the week, Michelle Swanson. Pretty, blonde, in the same grade as him…" Carmela sounded positively tickled down the phone line.
"G-girl of the week?" Nita stuttered down the phone line, head swimming.
"Yeah. Comes home with a new girlfriend every week. Quite the laydees man, really. I did confront him about it, honestly, I figured you two were going out but he said you were just friends, and maybe not even that any more. Pity, you two were really sweet together, and Kit was dead set on you for… forever, I guess."
Nita felt her knees going as she held onto the phone. Kit with other girls. "I… Can you pass on a message?" Clinging onto the receiver, Nita barely heard the affirmative grunt from the other end of the line. "Can you tell Kit I won't be able to meet him for our weekly wizardry practise, I… have a date."
A grunt of surprise this time. "Oh… sure. I'll tell him you can't make it."
"Thank you. Bye." Without even waiting for a response, Nita slammed the receiver down into the cradle, legs giving out as she crumbled into a heap near the phone and not even glaring back at Dairine as her younger sister glared down at her reprovingly.
"That was when you called me out of the blue," Ronan said, sinking to the ground as everything clicked into place. "Oh god, I knew it… I knew there was something else you weren't saying, I…"
"You what?"
Ronan turned to Nita, his shoulders lumped and eyes darkened. "I should have said no to you then. I knew… I knew from the moment I met you there was someone else, but I… how could I have turned you away? You're… everything I ever wanted… and it's my fault, I tore you away from him forever…"
"What?" Nita's head snapped up as if she couldn't comprehend what he was saying. "You…"
"I… When you came to your Aunt's for a fortnight last Christmas, a letter came for you on Christmas Eve morning, and I was waiting for you in… the kitchen, and… I… I didn't give it to you." He slumped further into a heap, hands over his face. "I… knew almost instinctively what it would say, that it would say he wanted you still, and I knew you would run straight into his arms. I… I couldn't… You would have done the same thing in my position!" Desperate now. He couldn't even look at Nita. "I'm sorry…"
Trembling, Nita got to her feet. "I…"
Ronan fumbled in his jacket, pulled out a crumpled envelope, and pressed it into her hands. "I'm sorry, Nita," he whispered again, eyes bright with tears and shoulders slumped as he focussed for a few moments on nothing and then disappeared with a small pop! Nita felt a pounding in her ears and with shaking hands tore open the envelope gingerly.
Kit frowned as he bit the end of the pen, wondering how to phrase it. When he'd come back home, he'd been startled on the doorstep by Carmela opening the door and telling him Nita had called. He remembered the faint light of disappointment in… Michelle's? Amy's? Mandy's?… He'd lost count of the names a long time ago… eyes, and he remembered the stinging pain of the hand across his cheek as he pulled his hands out of her hair to move inside immediately.
"I knew that there was something with you and that Callahan good-for-nothing!"
Kit lowered his head, spilling tears onto the creamy writing paper on the desk and feeling utterly useless. "Something." Huh. Something that made him hollow, made him tremble, made him want to sing and cry and laugh and die until the world came crashing down around his ears.
"Neets," he wrote eventually, the ink blotting in some places where his tears had dampened the paper. "I know I haven't been the best of friends to you in a long time, and I wish I could say that I didn't feel anything for you and that we could go back to the way things were. However I think you know, and I know, all too well, that things rarely ever stay the same however much you wish for it. I was happy as your friend. I was happy loving you from afar. I guess I just figured you'd been denying it all the time, and that eventually there'd be a happy ending, just you and me, forever. You know, Timeheart on Earth. Silly, huh?"
Kit paused to wipe the tears away again, feeling useless and lost, and a hopeless case. He bit the end of the pen again and continued to write.
"I love you, Nita. I love you. Somewhere in the whole cosmic scheme of things I always hoped that that would be enough, but perhaps it isn't. I think I need you, I feel like I'll die without you, all those corny things we laughed at in the movies well, guess what, it isn't all that corny at the moment.
"Most of all, I miss you. I miss you so much it hurts. If you could even, for a moment, forget that I don't feel for you the same you feel for me, and we could be friends again, I think it might just be enough.
"Love, Kit."
He stared down at the words, sounding so cliché in his own head and hoping… hoping they would be enough.
Lifting her head up from the letter, her face a mess with moon dust and dirt and tears all mixed up together, her hair dusty and clothes dusty and everything around her was a confusion of disorder and chaos and dirt. Scrambling to her feet, and shaking uncontrollably, Nita felt her insides seize up and her legs turn to instant jelly. Her heart was pounding, and it felt like she was falling backwards, sinking into herself and at the same time exploding in a mass of fragmentary feelings and hollow surges of emotion, and she knew.
"I love you, Kit," she murmured, crushing the letter to her chest, closing her eyes and feeling the hot pressure of tears pressing at her eyes again. "I love you."
Her vision blurred, she opened up her claudication in space, took out the necessary string of variables, and appeared suddenly in a swirl of dust and dirt in a deserted back alley.
Brushing tears away from her face angrily, her sleeve caked with the dirt and tears, Nita found herself wandering to Kit's house. Her heart thudded painfully in her ribs, sounding a heavy beat in her ears, and shaking her so much that she could barely breathe. Even as she walked up the path to Kit's front door she was still trying to catch her breath; steadying herself as much as she could while she gulped down air.
Lifting up her hand, she pressed the doorbell and heard it ring in the darkened hallway once. A brief spattering of voices echoed out, just enough to alert Nita that there was someone in at least, and the door clicked open; a dark head appearing in the doorway. Nita looked up, blinded a little by the glaring hallway light, to see Kit there, suddenly looking smaller against the frame of the door.
"Kit," she whispered eventually, after a moment of stricken silence. Kit just stared at her impassively, using his foot to slide a piece of wood to his left and wedge the door open so he didn't have to hold it.
"I…" Nita trailed off, and she fumbled with her hands before lifting up the envelope and letter. Kit stared at her dully, then at the letter, and back again. "Ronan gave me this today. He… he… he brought us the post some mornings, and didn't… Didn't give it to me… He should have… He…" Nita trailed off, slumping and gripping the letter so tightly her knuckles were turning white.
"And?" Kit's voice was masked, his face was a mask of shadows and darkness, and Nita felt herself slipping and sliding into oblivion under his dark stare.
"And I came to say that first, I'm sorry. This all seems to be my fault, if only I could have not been so… so dumb, and seen, but…" Nita trailed off.
"We all make mistakes, Nita," Kit replied levelly, his voice hitching on the last word.
"I think I'm the culprit of the bigger mistakes. I trusted him to help me get over you, and all he did was make me realise more what I did… What I never said…" Nita clenched her fists and lowered her gaze to the floor, tears spilling over the step and onto the mud below.
"What you never said?" Kit's voice sounded slightly more hopeful, and Nita jerked her gaze upwards again only to meet with the stern and unchanging heavy expression. Kit's family were now huddled in the hallway behind him, against the stairs, but neither Kit nor Nita noticed their arrival or how they listened intently to the conversation.
"I…" Steeling herself, Nita looked away and then forced herself to look at him squarely in the eyes. "I love you."
The slight change in his position wasn't what Nita expected at all, and she watched slowly as Kit folded his arms and leant against the door. He seemed that much taller, that much more grown up, and Nita felt her heart thud down to the pit of her stomach.
"I suppose you think that coming here and saying that changes something," Kit responded eventually, his voice flat and unbelieving.
"Well no," Nita protested feebly, finding it hard to dredge up words, and feeling them stick in her heart and in her throat. "I just thought you should know. Everyone should know if someone loves them or not, and I… I love you. I love you." Slightly easier the second time, but still painful. "I know I shouldn't have just disbelieved what you'd said out of hand, Kit, but in all honesty I was scared out of my wits. I was scared I would… I was scared I would love you too much, like always on the brink of falling, I was scared I would need you, love you, too much and then one day you wouldn't be there any more like… like mom." A heavy thud in her chest, reminding her on the on-going grief and pain and anguish going on without her mother there. "I didn't know if I could stand losing you."
She didn't know how he did it later on, when she thought back on it, but suddenly Kit was there, his arms around her waist and his head against hers. He was whispering quietly into her hair, gripping onto her while she clung onto him desperately, as if when she let go he would just fly away. She remember noticing idly he had grown, and was now taller than her, and was murmuring "I love you… I love you…" into her ear desperately, as if that was all that was left in the world. He pulled pack eventually, keeping her at arms length and looking different somehow. More real, as if that could be possible.
"You pushed me away because you thought I'd leave you…" He sounded astonished, more confused and awed and destroyed and repaired than ever before. "Nita, I… I'll never leave you, you have to know that. Even… even if I died, I'd… I'd be there in Timeheart, waiting for you, I…" His grip tightened, one arm around her waist and one hand tangled in her hair. "I love you."
Nita felt her chest tighten, but not with fear this time. "I love you too, Kit." Kit pulled her against him again, and then there was the kiss, gentle at first but then taken up with a fiery passion as they clung to each other on the path outside the house, pressing into each other, lips glued together and hands wild as they tried in vain to become one person right there on the doorstep. They had to pull away eventually, eyes shining, and even though his eyes were red and hair messed up, and maybe he had more than a few spots from hormones playing up, and his nose was a little crooked, Nita didn't care. He was there, he was real, he was hers, and she was his, and in some weird way that she couldn't exactly put her finger on, but was there in the distance, fluttering away like a bird in captivity, she always had been.