A/N: Well, folks, this is it! The end of my first chaptered fanfiction work. As far as endings go, I think it's a pretty good one—not necessarily typical of a romance fic, but I think it turns out realistically. Thanks to all of my reviewers, and to those of you who review this chapter, I'd especially like to know what you think of this as an ending point. If I write any more on this, it'll be an epilogue concerning how exactly the Powers might end up punishing Dairine. Then again, I've been writing these characters for a while now, and they're still running through my head, so I'll probably have a random bout of insanity and write some sort of sequel. Until then, thanks for reading—and for being patient with me while I worked on getting this last chapter up!

Chapter 12: Eyes Wide Shut

Turmoil. Nita spun in and out of space and time, being torn in more directions than she should have been. It's just a simple transit spell! she thought in protest. What could have gone wrong? The blackness had no answer for her but to heave disconcertingly. Being stuck between here and there was not something Nita had experienced in the past, and now she knew it was not something she wanted to experience again. At times, she could almost see her destination, but it was as though a thick cloth had been draped over her eyes.

Then it hit her. My name! This was the first spell she had done with her new name, and the spell was resisting, trying to reject the change. That's not how it's supposed to be! Nita screamed silently at the universe. This isn't who I am! The other name is the right one!

The universe did not respond in quite the way she had hoped for. She felt an unknown pressure from all sides, pushing her onward and inward and forward and back until she wasn't sure which way was the right way anymore. A spell always works! she told herself sternly, focusing her will, forcing it in a calculated strike through the pressing darkness—

The chaos burst, dissolving off into thousands of tiny pieces, and Nita found herself standing on the moon again and feeling more glad to be there than any other time she'd come, except for perhaps her first visit. She had barely regained her bearings when she saw Kit, who was rising from his seat on a nearby rock and hurrying towards her, his expression worried.

He barely paused, letting their air bubbles merge, before saying, "Are you all right? What just happened? It felt like you were here, but you weren't…" He trailed off.

It was Nita's turn to calm down Kit, and she took great pleasure in finally being the one who had all the answers. Her struggle to keep the spell from rejecting the old version of her name (or new, depending on how you looked at it) had unnerved her, but she was feeling confidently herself again, and wasn't going to spend too much time worrying about how she had gotten that way. "Yeah, I'm fine," she said, taking a deep breath.

"As in, completely fine?" Kit asked cautiously. "You fixed your…problem?"

"Looks like it," Nita said. "As far as I can tell, I'm back to normal."

Kit let out a small sigh of what Nita thought was relief, but couldn't be sure. "That's great!" he said. Then, gesturing back at the boulder he'd been sitting on, said, "Care to explain it? Or do I get to play Twenty Questions?"

Nita chuckled, so pleased to have her relationship with Kit back on good terms—at least, terms she was used to. "I don't know; I always liked Twenty Questions," she said as she walked over and sat down.

The odd tension of the past few days gone, Nita comfortably related the whole story to Kit. Well, most of it—she left out exactly what Dairine had done to her name; she wasn't quite sure what she thought about those feelings yet, and whether or not she could reconcile her current self with them. She certainly didn't want to explain all of that to Kit. He probably had had enough of her mixed up feelings to last him for quite a while.

When Nita was done with her explanation, Kit let out a sigh. "Wow. Your sister really is too conniving for her own good."

"Tell me about it," Nita replied. "I'm still amazed that she succeeded with her tampering in the first place."

"I agree," Kit said, a perplexed look on his face. "I mean, look at what the Powers did when she signed you up for that cultural exchange program—and that was just for not telling you or your dad about it! You'd think that messing with another wizard's name would call for some discipline. Like, oh, the wizardly equivalent of drawing and quartering."

"Kit!" Nita said in mock horror. "Would you really do that to Dairine?"

"You wouldn't?"

"As much as I'm inclined to quite often," Nita grimaced, "I am under Oath to 'guard growth and ease pain.' Somehow, I don't think drawing and quartering would be conducive to character growth, and it would most certainly violate the pain part."

Kit laughed. "Wasn't really thinking of it that way. You're right." They lapsed into silence, but not a tense one like there had been between them before. Now, everything was out in the open and back to normal—as normal as it ever got if you were a wizard.

After a while, Kit spoke, breaking the silence. "Nita?"

"Yeah?"

"You know what you said in the cafeteria today? To Katherine?"

Nita's face went white. "She told you?" she asked incredulously.

"I kind of overheard," Kit said, turning away. "I just thought you should know I had. And that I know it wasn't really you talking," he said, forestalling anything Nita might have said.

There was a short silence, then, "Thanks," she said bashfully. "Really, thank you. I think you're probably the only person who would understand—" She was cut off as Kit jumped to his feet, his manual falling off of his lap. "What's up?" she asked, concerned.

In answer, Kit picked up his manual and dusted it off, then turned to the messaging section at the back. "From Tom," he said. " 'Tried to reach you at home first. Something important has come up. If you and Nita can come over, we'll brief you on it.' "

Nita smiled and shook her head, then got her own manual, its covers also buzzing, out of her jacket pocket. However, instead of flipping to the messaging section, she turned to the directory that listed all of the wizards in the New York area. She skimmed down the list for her name, eventually finding it:

CALLAHAN, Juanita L.
243 E. Clinton Avenue
Hempstead, NY 11575
(516) 555-6786
power rating: 6.79 /- 0.4
On active status

She scanned through the directory to Kit's entry, finding his status to be the same as hers. Nita closed her manual and turned to Kit.

"On active?" he asked.

"Both of us," she replied.

Kit's face now wore a wry smile to match Nita's own. "Well, then, let's see what the universe has decided to throw at us this time."

With an ease born of practice, together they drew up the transit spell that would take them to Tom and Carl's house. They began to recite the spell, racing to see who could speak the words of the Speech faster, each outguessing the other so that they sped up in unison. And as Nita marveled inwardly at that perfect harmony their voices always seemed to form, she was overwhelmingly glad to have Kit as her solid, dependable partner, in wizardry and in life, now and always.