Dancing on the Sky

Part One - "Grid of Misery"

Chapter Four - "Show Me

Author: Mizzy

E-mail: PG-13

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: Grief can be a hard thing to come to terms with, sorrow can be a recalcitrant adversary, and hope is the hardest thing to find in the middle of a storm when all you can do is dance on the sky and hope for the best.

This chapter dedicated to: Heather.

-----

Nita got the distinct impression that she was missing something. Something big. Something huge. Something that could have an ultimately devastating change on her life . . . Frowning, she bit her lip and stared at her folded hands.

"Neets?"

No-one had spoken much, and the silence hung in the air like a smothering blanket. The temperature didn't help either - this fall had been an Indian summer, stiflingly hot and still. Nita looked up to see Kit looking at her, worried, and she shrugged faintly.

"I'm getting the feeling I've forgotten something important," Nita said, spreading her arms in a general sign of confusion. "Probably nothing."

"Hm."

Dairine shifted on one of the kitchen chairs, feeling uncomfortable and lethargic as she stared at Spot's screen. Her laptop lay open on the table, but she couldn't muster any energy to do anything with it. "Nothing . . . What I learn in Computing . . ." Dairine said slowly, pulling a face. "Nothing they tell me is anything new, anyway."

"Dari, are you all right?" Kit raised his eyebrows and Dairine blinked at him owlishly before pulling a cynical face.

"Sorry, I'm ranting about nothing again," Dairine apologized, with that tiny smirk on her face when she'd cracked some kind of joke which all the rest were too stupid to understand or pick up on.

"School!" Nita flushed as everyone looked at her, gazes scrutinizing and brows furrowed with confusion. "It's a school day," she added, feeling slightly uncomfortable.

"I almost forgot about that," Ronan faintly admitted, looking more pleased than probably should have done considering the circumstances. He checked the clock on the kitchen, gaze darkened as he calculated the difference, and came up with something that darkened his mood. "It's two pm there. I'm missing English."

"But… we're supposed to be at school," Nita continued, feeling fairly stupid.

Annie chuckled out loud. "Don't worry, I made your father call in to the school, tell them that you and Dairine are grieving over someone close you've lost. They're giving you today and tomorrow off, which leaves us four days free, considering tomorrow's Friday."

"Mom got me off school too," Kit said helpfully, "same reason. It's not lying, because it's a close friend we've lost."

"More like misplaced," Dairine muttered sourly.

"No one ever really expects me to be in every day anyway," Ronan said, his voice slightly tenser than before, betraying his slight discomfiture again. Then he frowned. "Oh you can't be serious."

"I beg your pardon!" Annie said, sounding astonished. "Serious about what?"

"What do you mean two days . . . that's so incredibly . . . Autumn equinox . . . Bloody hell . . ."

Annie, Nita, Dairine and Kit exchanged worried glances as Ronan apparently kept up a one sided conversation with himself. His face had suddenly gone blank, and had the situation not been so serious Dairine would have quipped 'the light's are on but nobody's home."

Unbeknownst to Dairine, Nita was thinking vaguely the same thing, and was a little disturbed at Ronan's expression. "It's like his body's working but he's gone on a vacation or something . . ."

Suddenly he snapped out of it, blinking furiously and slumping his head into his arms.

"What just happened?" Annie asked, sounding concerned, her grey eyes clouding over in worry.

Ronan lifted his head, hair clouding his eyes and he brushed it away furiously. "He wanted a word with me. Seems we only have two days to do this. We have to get this done by midnight, September 21st, our time. Greenwich Mean Time, that is."

"He?" Dairine showed an unusual lack of understanding for a second, before her face colored, and she shifted uncomfortably again. "Oh. St. Michael."

Ronan nodded, looking more than a little shaken and miserable. "He usually stays quiet. Promised over the summer not to overtake my consciousness and go gallivanting all over the country trying to right wrongs and triumph over evil . . . Pokes his nosy highness in when he needs to tell us stuff." He paused, thoughtfully. "Inconsiderate bastard," he added, his tone darkened.

"Today's September 19th . . ." Kit looked worried. "We have a day and a half?"

"Thirty-four hours," Dairine calculated. She brought up her knees and perched unsteadily on the chair, Spot growing his spidery legs and crawling over to balance on her legs and the edge of the table. The fiery redhead bent her head closer to the screen, and started to type away furiously.

"I guess we have no choice," Nita said, her face pale but her tone determined and resolute. "We go up to the moon at noon, and see what these Calur'tee want with Carl."

Kit nodded, knowing Nita had identified the alien. She did have the better knowledge of the extra-terrestrial. While his knowledge of the strange and alien was increasing, his affinity with machines and the inanimate made his focus more on the ships, the transports of the aliens. "But he may just be the messenger," Kit added, his tone trembling more than Nita's but his face reflected the resolution in her tone. "We have to be prepared that Carl's kidnapper is of another species. Or is Him."

"Always the optimist, aren't you Rodriguez?" Ronan asked, his tone openly scathing this time.

"Better than being unprepared," Kit retorted, almost openly predatory to the boy two years his senior.

"Are you saying I'm unprepared?" Ronan looked almost amused, but the dancing light in his eyes reminded Nita too much of the blood wrath in his eyes during the terrible battle, and she shivered.

"Maybe you don't know as much as you'd like to think," Kit retorted defensively, folding his arms.

"Boys, can you stop your libido getting in the way of things here and get to the matter at hand?" Dairine lowered the lid of her laptop, and peered menacingly over the top. Her diminutive physical presence wasn't so scary, but her will and projected presence was scarier than most. "You can be territorial over my sister later, right now, we need to find Carl and stop bickering like five year olds!"

Dairine slammed the slid of her laptop fully closed, and slid it under her arms before jumping to her feet. "I am going to go do some more research in the living room, since I am not on active status," she said. "My status is now at Available/Restricted, so if you decide you eventually need my help you know where to find me." With one furious glance at Ronan, and a chiding one directed at Kit, Dairine flounced out of the room.

"That's the second time in two days," Kit said, slightly subdued, and he directed his gaze to the closed door. "I'm worried about how's she taking this. She seems almost as bad as Tom." A brief image of Tom, crumpled and destroyed as they'd last seen him, flashed in his mind and his face hardened again. "We'll find him again, Tom, I promise . . ."

"I guess we can just prepare for your trip up to Copernicus," Annie said, dusting her hands and pushing herself away from the table. "I'm going to go out and talk to some of the local wizards. Kit, could you come with me? I might have use of your manual after a while."

Kit nodded, ashen-faced, and stood up. "I'll be back before twelve," he said, picking up his jacket where he'd discarded it on the back of one of the chairs and heading out of the room. Annie looked at the door, then at Nita, for a long second.

"You two be careful," Annie said, looking through into the living room where she could hear Kit and Dairine exchanging a few words. "See you in a bit."

Annie disappeared through the door, closing it gently behind her, her demeanor comforting and supportive. Nita pondered over her Aunt's closing words for a while.

"Be careful… what does she mean?"

"This is a little bit over my head."

Nita turned to see Ronan looking tense, like a tiger crouched to pounce, and smiled reassuringly at him. "It doesn't get any easier, trust me."

Ronan snorted in dry amusement. "I don't doubt that."

"So . . ." Nita drew out the word, feeling a slight twinge as the front door slammed shut. Someone wasn't so in control of their emotions, and from the churning in her stomach which Nita realized wasn't to do with her nerves at all, she realized it was Kit. "This is all unnerving him more than usual . . . Maybe it's a boy thing . . ."

Looking at Ronan worriedly, and gingerly putting her manual on the tabletop, Nita tapped her fingers on the table and was about to try and start a polite conversation about school, home, the weather, when Ronan looked at her confused.

"Libido?"

Nita frowned until she realized Ronan didn't know the meaning of the word. She started to blush furiously.

Ronan stared at her for a second, before irately wishing he wasn't so dumb. "Oh. That. Sorry."

Nita noticed he didn't sound too apologetic, but shrugged anyway. "It's just Dairine. She gets histrionic when she's angry. Don't give any more thought to it." She slid off the chair and moved over to the fridge, pulling a container of orange juice out of the fridge and feeling abruptly glad that she didn't have to deal with school on top of all of this. She doubted she would be able to handle it. Actually, things were going a lot more smoothly than usual . . . "Ronan?"

"Hmm-mm?"

Nita slammed the door closed, and leant against it, trying to pull open the cardboard container as she did. "Doesn't this all seem so convenient to you?"

"Actually it seems more inconvenient to me," Ronan replied with a laugh, as he got up and took the orange out of her hands. Nita felt vaguely annoyed, although she couldn't pinpoint the exact reason why, as Ronan jerked the top and the orange opened; splashing onto the floor a little below. He reached up the cupboard for three glasses and carefully poured out the juice before passing the container back to Nita. She closed the flap and moved to slide it back into the fridge, before taking one of the glasses offered to her and following Ronan into the living room.

Nita took one of the seats near the large bay window in their sitting room. Dairine was curled up in their father's favorite armchair, next to the television, and the bowl of chips she'd poured out yesterday were being consumed almost absently as she scrolled fiercely through records on her manual. She watched as Ronan crossed the room and put the glass of orange juice by her sister, and suppressed a sudden giggle as Dairine didn't even acknowledge him; merely taking the glass and taking a sip out of it before putting it down next to the chips and continuing her fierce scrutiny of the records.

"She really doesn't like me all that much," Ronan commented as he crossed the room and sat on the seat next to the one Nita was on. He wrapped his hands around the tall glass tumbler, contemplating the color of the juice and smell, but not actually drinking any of it.

Nita shrugged. "You'll get through to her eventually."

Ronan laughed at that, out loud, but even that wasn't enough to make Dairine look up from Spot. "Yeah. So, I guess, you should maybe put some spells aside if you'll need any on Copernishumishicus," he said, finally taking a drink from the glass.

"Copernicus," Nita corrected with a smile, swallowing the orange without actually tasting it.

"Whatever." Ronan seemed unconcerned, and Nita reflected he was a little like Dairine in that respect. You could only tell they were concerned when it was a big thing that was wrong, and by that time you knew you were in big doo-doo.

Nita gulped down some more of the juice, setting it to one side and getting to her feet. "I guess I do have to prepare some. I'll be in the garden in you need me."

Ronan watched as Nita moved into the kitchen to pick up her manual again, before hearing the light footsteps and a click which meant Nita had gone outside. Looking down at his glass, he looked across at the fierce determination on Dairine's face, and wondered yet again what he was doing there. He was obviously needed for some reason - nothing was done without a purpose, of course - but what that could be even if was baffled. Even St. Amazing Michael was confused. Ronan inwardly smirked at the power in his head, and felt a brief tingle of resentment.

"Hey, you wanted to share my head with me," Ronan challenged silently.

"I didn't know you were as stubborn as I was…" a voice answered, so softly Ronan almost thought he had imagined it, but for the fact the thought was not his own.

That was the difference between those wizards who had manuals, and those, like Ronan and Annie, and the cat wizards that patrolled and maintained the gate systems on Earth, who listened to the Whisperer. They had the added difficulty of forever wondering whether they were insane - hearing voices and such - while they got books. Books were never crazy and insane. Ronan smirked suddenly, and knew he would prefer hearing the Whispers than flicking through a manual like that, and he knew a computer would drive him crazy. Of course he knew enough about computers to be able to send an e-mail, and use IM programs, but that was about his limit.

He looked up and tried not to show his shock that Dairine was quietly watching him over the top of her laptop.

"You don't like me. Why?"

Dairine blinked at the direct question, but stared straight back at Ronan with a challenging glare which might have been amusing under different circumstances but now, in that time and in that place, looked fiercer than a lion. The petite girl shifted in her seat, while glaring back at him defiantly.

"It's not that I don't like you. I don't know you. I don't know what's going on in your head, and, I imagine, I don't know any more than you do either," Dairine explained, with a brief shrug. "You don't like me either."

Ronan shrugged. "I suppose I don't know you either," he said, neither affirming nor denying her statement. Dairine suspected it was from the danger of lying in any language - they spent way too much time trying not to trip up on the huge errands the Powers gave them to trip up on the smallest error from being overly confident - and felt even more nervous than before. "And you have a hell of a lot of power."

Dairine smiled, a sad remnant of the perpetual cocky smile that used to grace her expression and now only occasionally shone through. "You know, you might be all right. Just . . ."

"Just… what?" Ronan asked, cocking his head to one side.

"Don't mess with things that don't belong to you," Dairine said softly.

Ronan stopped himself from rising to that translucent order to keep away from her sister, and bit his lip while he thought of a more diplomatic thing to say. As usual, diplomacy didn't quite rise to the occasion. "I happen to be very fond of Nita."

The reply startled Dairine a little, and Ronan felt a small inappropriate surge of glee that he'd got one over on the intelligent wizard (even though he was by years her senior), and Dairine frowned slightly. Ronan could tell it was taking all her concentration not to say something rash and stupid. Thanks to the Oath, Dairine knew he was a wizard and he wouldn't lie. It didn't guarantee he would tell the whole truth, though.

"If you hurt her, I will kick your ass," Dairine said, almost without intending to say it.

Ronan spread his arms. "Feel free to do so. I don't intend on hurting her."

"Intentional or not . . . If you make her choose when she's not ready, you will hurt her. And if you decide for her . . . Well, that's even worse . . ."

"Choose what?"

"I think you know what I mean," Dairine responded, and she didn't say anything more. She concentrated on her work at hand, and didn't even acknowledge his confusion or even his presence in the room.

Ronan paused thoughtfully. He supposed he did know what she meant, and the true meaning of her statement hit him like a jackhammer on the back of his skull. Feeling mentally winded, he took a thoughtful sip of the orange juice and just hoped. Hoped for a happy ending and all loose ends tied off neatly.

"Like that's ever going to happen," Michael sniggered in the tiny corner of his mind he always seemed to hang around in.

More than a little miffed with the situation, Ronan narrowed his eyes. "Oh shut up." There was instant silence in his mind, and Ronan began to feel a little unnerved again. It seemed all the clichés were right - you couldn't have it all at once.

The garden at the back was a shimmering gold, and a sullenly high temperature matched the warm hues of colors. Nita shut the door behind her with a click, leaning back against the door and pressing one side of her face to its cool surface. Despite her choice of summer clothing, it was still that temperature where everything tends to cling to you and make you constantly sweaty. Looking around the garden, Nita stepped forwards, crunching over the leaves and feeling glad for a blissful moment that she didn't have to go to school.

Then the million and one reasons why she wasn't at school came crashing down on her and she scowled for a moment.

"Don't scowl, little one, it makes you look like a hobgoblin."

Her head lurching up in surprise, Nita's gaze settled on the Rowan tree in their backyard, shimmering silver from the sunlight and the leaves carpeting the branches and the ground around.

"Dai, Liused," Nita greeted, stepping up to the tree and leaning against the cool surface of the trunk.

"You have a lot on your mind . . . You barely have time for me any more."

Nita felt the chiding tone in the tree's thoughts, and patted its bark comfortingly. "I'm sorry, Liused. After mom . . . left . . . I haven't been much company for anyone."

"I sensed that grief from you even from this far. . . You must let it all go, Nita. Clinging to your own sorrow is a destructive thing . . ."

"I know. I just don't know how. The manual, the specialists, my friends . . . They all say what I should do, but I don't know how."

Liused chuckled, the deep throaty kind of laugh associated with rowans. "Child. . . Sometimes you think too much instead of just being . . . I think you get so hung up on saving the world that you become mechanical and forget about yourself . . ."

Nita made an indifferent sound from the back of her throat. "I guess . . ."

"I've been around a lot longer than you, Nita, and I've been here while you've grieved before. This one's a little different, I know, but the concept is the same. Let her go, Nita."

"I have."

"If you have, as you protest, then you would not be stuck backwards while everyone else is going forwards . . . Think on it, child, while you get some spells in order for noon . . ."

"I will, Liused. Dai-stihó."

"Dai-stihó, Nita."

Nita pulled away from the rowan, and moved to the other side of the garden. Sitting down cross-legged, Nita almost lost herself for the two or so hours she had left, knotting circles, half-preparing transit spells from the moon, to other worlds . . . Defensive spells . . . Offensive spells . . . Translation spells if necessary for writing . . .

She was disturbed by the door being pushed open, and a quiet lanky figure standing in the doorway. Nita looked up, still cross-legged and not feeling her knees any more with a long silvery-blue string of variables looped over one hand, to see Ronan looking at her quietly. She blushed again, feeling her cheeks ache almost, and put it away in the small part of space she stored them in.

"It's almost time," Ronan said, quietly. Nita got to her feet, taking a minute to rub her knees and trying to get some feeling into them before she moved again. She'd made that mistake once, when she was nine, of spending too long cross legged. Her feet had 'gone to sleep', and were so numb she couldn't feel them. She remembered walking out of the classroom, and landing sprawled in the middle of the corridor, Joanna looking down and laughing at her. Everyone looking down and laughing at her while she was an inelegant sprawl in the middle of the hallway, surrounding by jeering kids and not knowing where she was or how to get out of it. Her glasses had broken too, and she couldn't see, blood clouding her vision and eventually she was pulled up and away by the school nurse.

For a week, in the school assemblies, the principal read the parable of "The Good Samaritan" every time, and Nita had sat there, squirming, with stitches in her nose where the glass had gone in, knowing it was her they were talking about. Only there had been no good Samaritans for her, only lazy Jews. "No Jews either..." Nita thought with a wry grin, wishing her brain would stop paralleling her life with old stories from an old book.

Brushing dirt off her knees as well, Nita walked unsteadily up to the house, her manual clutched in her hand like a lifeline; her knuckles white with the unconscious amount of pressure she was using to grip it with.

"You okay?" Ronan asked, and Nita opened her mouth to respond with 'Yes, fine' but shut her mouth suddenly. She didn't reply, but Ronan understood that she wasn't feeling okay.

"I probably won't feel okay for a very long time . . ." Nita thought to herself, the thought spinning in her mind and at that moment she had never felt more alone. "With all my friends here and I still feel so alone . . . Why?"

"Because you're pushing us away . . ."

Nita stopped, stunned for a second as she entered the house, and Ronan grabbed her arm, worried. Nita looked at him, wide-eyed, taken aback until she realized Dairine hadn't spoken in her own head. She'd just imagined it. The fact that she was imagining exactly what they were all thinking moved Nita, in her mind as well as physically, and she jerked; moving inside the house like she was being manipulated by a puppeteer. "And I don't even know who's pulling the strings any more . . ."

She let herself be led by Ronan into the sitting room, feeling more numb and bewildered than before, and looked around her slowly. Dairine was sat in the same armchair, only now just getting onto the orange juice and looking at Nita with a weary glance. Annie stood in the doorway with a cardboard container that smelled of cheese and pepperoni and warm bread, and Kit was standing on the other side of the room, exactly opposite Nita, and with an expression on his face that he abruptly tried to cover up when he noticed Nita looking at him. An expression that horrifyingly reflected the grief in his soul.

"Looks like I'm not the only one who has to let go . . ."

Shaking her head to clear her thoughts, Nita managed a weak smile and checked the clock on the wall; a chrome and glass affair her mother had been sent by her pen pal in England.

11:43.

Lifting her head challengingly, she left Ronan's worried grasp, and stepped forwards to face Kit; standing a meter in front of him. Grey eyes met brown in a silent acknowledgement of what was ahead, and Kit faced her stare back exactly.

"Ronan and I are going to update Mr. Swale on what we've got so far," Annie said, watching the two teenagers face each other in a silent confrontation which no one understood but the two hushed combatants. "Dairine is going to stay here, keep a watchful eye over what's going on. Call on her for backup if desperately needed, and you'll know where we are. Kit informed me of the pizza for Tom. Is that settled?"

"Settled," Nita responded, her arms still frozen by her sides as she kept up the quiet assault on Kit. Kit glowered back darkly. Both knew the stakes. This was something they hadn't done for a long time, and was something they needed to do together. Solidly. They needed to move and think and act as a unit again, and they'd been too far apart for too long to expect it all to fall back naturally, and there was only one way for that to happen.

It happened swiftly, as there wasn't much time, but even if it had been orchestrated to occur in an exact second in an exact time period it couldn't have been brought off so swiftly. Nita and Kit opened their thoughts to each other, a swift barrage of grief and emotions and thoughts and feelings. Nita's legs swam and the room spun dizzyingly for a second, and for a moment she thought she was going to be sick until Kit wrenched off the contact with a final tug. Both recoiled, stepping backwards, Kit scraping his elbow on one of the table.

Nita held her head for a second, but felt the old rhythm back and the old synchronization.

"That was . . . way overdue," Nita sent silently.

"Hell of a kick," Kit added, rubbing his elbow distractedly.

"What just happened?" Annie demanded, concern etched on her face for the two.

Dairine responded, much to Nita's relief. "It's been a long while, too long, since Kit and Nita actually did anything that much together. As you know, wizardry partners can communicate in a silent telepathy from time to time. It tends to drift off over the years if not used too much. They just forced themselves to communicate everything in a few seconds to each other that they would have done over the last few months when they hadn't used the ability . . . It's the only way they can really, truly work as partners again…"

"Wow. You can do that?" Ronan sounded impressed.

"Apparently so." Kit rubbed his elbow again. "Although it's more of a general overall feeling; it's more the abridged version . . ."

"There weren't any exact thoughts," Nita added. She looked up, offering Kit a weak smile. "Well, I'm going to have a headache for month"—("Tell me about it," Kit muttered, his interruption acerbic but sarcastic)—"but let's get on with this."

"Are you going to be okay?"

Dairine looked from one to the other, feeling a small inward smile of satisfaction as the two grinned at each other, and waited for an answer.

"I think," Kit said slowly, "that we might eventually be okay." He swallowed, hard, obviously caught off guard but incomprehensively appreciative of what had just happened. "Eventually. But we will be. And that's all that really matters, right?"

"I think it is," Annie agreed, a smile on her face that reached her eyes as well, and she exchanged a long glance with Ronan. The lanky teenager was a little edgier than he was before, but looking a lot more relieved that Nita was on her way to a recovery of sorts.

"Well what are we waiting for?" Dairine demanded incredulously, getting to her feet and flapping her arms around in a fair approximation of a chicken. "Let's go."

Dairine picked up Spot, not wanting to let him walk on his own after last night, and flounced outside.

"I wish she would just stop with the melodramatic exits," Ronan muttered sourly.

"She'll grow out of it," Nita said confidently, before pausing and wincing as Dairine started yelling for them again.

Kit shot her a look which plainly said "in your dreams," and Nita had to sullenly reflect that, yet again, her wizardry partner was right. "But," Nita thought triumphantly, "I'm not going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that."

Chuckling to herself, and feeling as if the heavy burden she'd been carrying around wasn't exactly gone per se, but closer to being lifted, and she stepped out after Kit ready—for the first time in a long while—to face whatever was ahead.

Author's Notes:

No, it wasn't Gollum making a cameo in chapter three. giggles The alien species Calur'tee are listed in the manual, and if I translate the speech properly it states that "the Calur'tee are not the most intelligent creatures in the universe. Reptilian and with a lisp, they are usually employed as 'muscle' for some of the smarter aliens." Nita discovered them in one of her extended study times with her manual, after realizing during the events of "High Wizardry" that Kit had been swatting up on her topic (alien life/extra terrestrials.) While the Calur'tee are just a plot device, they do have back history, including a period in their history while they abducted humans from earth in mysterious circumstances. Much documentation was lost in the Calur'tee's civil war, 212-EWCT (Eastern Widdershins Calur'tee Time - circa late 20th century on Earth) and all that is left are three names of humans abducted in a two hundred year period: Jack, Agatha and Presley. We can only assume that if left to their own devices the Calur'tee may evolve into what is commonly classed as 'sentient' life. The only huge mention in the manual of the Calur'tee, and what makes them renowned among races with wizards, is that one of their number invited the Lone Power to tea, inadvertently destroying His efforts to destroy their world. However, this is all part of a longer story of the Calur'tee which may never be told, especially not in this story, which is about Nita and Kit. So let's get back to them, 'k?