Landslide

There's Always Timeheart
Featuring Landslide by Stevie Nicks

The day was bright. Brighter than usual, which was very bright indeed, seeing as it was the middle of April. The sun shone down with unusual strength. Nita felt as if it was doing this just to spite her, but she'd spoken to the sun once, and it wasn't spiteful. It was very kind in fact.

So why did it have to be so disagreeable today?

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I took my love, I took it down
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Nita leaned over against Kit. He was still just a bit shorter than she was. Just a bit younger. Somehow, just a bit stronger as well.

He put his arm around her, letting her cry into the little space somewhere in between his shoulder and neck that she'd found was a very good place to cry over the past few months, although it was quite a bit harder while he was wearing a suit.

Still, being there brought her some comfort, however small in the midst of what she was facing.

"Shh," he whispered softly, stroking her hair. "Neets, you're shaking."

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Climbed a mountain and I turned around
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"I'm sorry," she whispered back, although it was more a whimper than a whisper.

"You have nothing to be sorry for." Kit placed a gentle hand on her cheek and pushed away a few tears. "Nothing at all. You've done your best, that's all anyone can ask."

"But in the end, it wasn't enough, was it?"

For that, Kit had no answer.

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I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills
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They were outside in the beautiful sunshine. Yet, the beauty was lost upon so many of those milling around the church grounds. All Nita could see as she sat under the tree on the church grounds, was the image permanently burned into her mind. That of her mother on a hospital bed as the machines measuring her life, scanning her brain and pulsing with her heart, slowly ran out of things to measure. The image of her father, breaking out in tears, and for one of those rare moments, revealing to his daughters that he wasn't Superman.

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Till the landslide brought me down
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Or maybe he was. Maybe this was Superman when he realized that, for once, he couldn't save Lois just in the nick of time. Maybe this was Superman when he had to get up every morning and go to work in a florist shop, and tell his little girls that everything would be okay, even though he knew it wouldn't be.

Maybe, in that moment, crying by his wife's death bed, Harry Callahan was more Superman than Clark Kent could ever be. Maybe, he had the strength of more than just a thousand men, simply because he loved so deeply and purely, and from that love, he could draw the willpower to face something worse than Lex Luther.

No criminal mastermind's evil plot could be worse than life without Betty, the woman who's fading body held the other half of his soul.

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Oh, mirror in sky what is love?
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Dairine was the baby of the family—far to small to lose her mother … But small wasn't really the word. She was big on the outside. Tall and tough, and hard to miss with her brilliant red hair, so much like her mother's. She was gorgeous, smart, she knew it, and she wouldn't let you forget it.

But when she began to lose her power as a wizard, and began to lose her mother to cancer, she began to lose herself. She began to lose the gleam in her eyes, and the fire in her heart, and the spirited (if cocky) spark, that had made her Dairine.

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Can the child within my heart rise above
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She wasn't a child anymore, in so many ways. One look and her body told you that much. But deep inside, there was a little girl with tear filled gray eyes, who was slowly rising to the surface of Dairine's being, and she was slowly becoming the weak, easily hurt child she had been a decade ago.

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Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
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Kit had changed too. It had been a few years ago at that time, when Nita found Kit trying to work a spell in the middle of a highway interchange, and doing a good job of very little other than angering a tree. His wizardry had improved since then. He began to look more like the man he would one day be, and less like the child he had been.

But some things never change He was always so in control, even when he was angry. He never lost his cool. That was one of the hardest parts about fighting with him: When she was about to burst out screaming, he was calm, collected, and always able to think things through rationally.

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Can I handle the seasons of my life?
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There had been only a few times when Kit had lost it entirely; lost the sharp edge, the quick wit, and let his mask drop, showing what he was on the inside. Nita would often see, when she thought of Kit, the look of complete innocence and embarrassment on his face when she had told him how much she cared for him. A few times, when they were at the beach that first summer, after he found out that she would have to die for The Song of Twelve, she was sure she had seen a few tears trace paths down his face when he thought she wasn't looking.

But, never the less, he had always been the tough one.

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I don't know.
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Now, one of those rare drops of water ran down his still child-like brown cheek. For the first time in a very long time ... maybe as long as a year, Nita overheard his thoughts.

Stop crying you idiot! If you start crying, you'll never get Neets calm! You're suppose to be the one who keeps his head! You're suppose to have all the answers!

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Well, I've been afraid of changing
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Nita sniffled slightly in a way that sounded something like a light, not fully felt, laugh. "You sound like Dairine." She smiled slightly.

"What?" He looked at her, and blinked a few times in a puzzled manner.

"You can't be strong for everyone, all the time. And you don't always have to have the answers. Sometimes, it's okay not to know." I would like to not know that I could have saved her.

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Cause I've built my life around you
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"It's nice to hear you think again. I've missed that. Although, it would be nice if I could hear you think happy thoughts once in a while."

Nita went a little red. She always did when he heard thoughts like that one. No matter how well they knew each other, there would always be surprise, mystery, and yes ... embarrassment.

"It makes me feel useless to know that, even after all I went through to become a wizard, and all the horrible things I've face, in the end, I couldn't do anything when it really mattered."

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But time makes you bolder
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"It sounds wrong ... it feels wrong ... just saying this when it's about your mother but—" he paused for a moment. "Neets, whether we realized it or not," he continued, "when we agreed to be wizards, and use our powers to do good ... when we took the Oath ... Neets, it was all about putting ourselves aside, and doing things for the greater good. You've done so much ... and there's still so much to do! Saying that you've done nothing is trivializing the importance of dozens of dimensions, and millions of lives."

"I know." She sighed. "But the one life that meant the most was the one I couldn't save."

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Children get older
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"Neets, I loved your mother too. I'm going to miss her. But we've always faced the music together, and that's not going to change just because the music got louder and harder. We're in this together."

"I didn't face the music. When I was about to make that deal with The Lone One, I let you and Mom face the music for me. That wasn't fair of me."

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I'm getting older too
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Kit stood up and dusted himself off. "Neets, we all make mistakes. Let's make the rest of them together." He put out a hand for her.

"We shook on it. We said we were friends forever." She grabbed his hand and let him pull her up.

"I've lost a lot being a wizard. I'm not going to lose you. When I though I had, that day inside your mother ... that was the scariest moment of my life."

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So, take this love, take it down
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"Just because I lose the Art, doesn't mean I'm entirely lost."

"You know it does." There was silence for a moment. Not even a bird could be heard in the stillness.

"I'll still be here." Nita's voice was quiet, and even timid. "No matter what; even if I lose the Art. Friendship is forever, wizards or not."

"If you ever gave up the Art, you'd be ... you'd be one of them. You'd think I was just as weird as they all do. You'd slowly stop remembering why you ever spent time with me, and then you'd leave me with no one but Richie Sussman and his friends, who don't like me anyway. I'd be a freak again." Kit looked away.

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Oh, Climb a mountain and turn around
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"Will you promise me something, Kit?" Nita asked.

"What?"

"That if something happens, and I do forget wizardry, you won't let me forget you."

"And if something happens, and I can't do anything about it?" Kit looked back. "What if you forget, and wont listen to me anymore. What if you forget that we promised at all."

"A wise beyond his years thirteen year old boy once told me, 'Something always happens. You still have to promise stuff anyway. If you have to work to make the promises true ... " She shrugged.

Kit smiled im a embarrassed sort of way. There's that embarrassment again. "I promise."

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If you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
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They walked around the church grounds. The service had been boring, not at all a tribute to the life of an active and brilliant ballet dancer. A service like that wouldn't be a tribute to anyone, much less someone with so much energy and ... life. Now everyone was gathered outside, and were standing around the coffin. Nita refused to go over there. She didn't want to see her mother's body.

"I can't believe she's gone," she said softly. "For most of my life, she was the only one who understood what it was like to be me."

"Nita, she'll never really be gone. All things that are loved live forever. There's no doubt that Betty Callahan was loved. There's always Timeheart," Kit whispered in her ear.

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Well the landslide will bring it down.
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Nita stopped short. There was something she needed to do. She turned to Kit, who had stopped just a few steps ahead of her. "I love you," she said to him, and threw her arms around his neck.

"I know." Kit gave her a quick hug as she pulled away, and ran off across the lawn, her hair streaming behind her.

She ran until she reached Dairine. "Shrimp, there's something I need to tell you."

Dairine turned her tear stained face. "What?" she demanded.

"I love you," Nita told her.

Dairine looked shocked for a moment, and then smiled at her sister's retreating back.

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Well, well the landslide will bring it down.
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Nita walked up to her father, standing beside the now closed coffin. "Daddy, I love you," she said softly.

"I love you too Sweetie." He put his arm around her and held her close as if she were still a little girl.

One more thing.

Nita looked at the lid of her mother's coffin. "I love you."

Kit's words echoed in her mind. There's always Timeheart. Nita let her mouth curve into a small smile for the first time in the last few weeks. She let a few tears fall, but, for once, they weren't tears of grief. There's always Timeheart.