A/N: I'm stuck on my chaptered story, Gone Missing, as I seem to have backed myself into a corner. And, having just reread a few of my Young Wizards books, I just felt like writing something about them. And I love Kit, so, well, here's what happened.
Rain. It's raining. Just like in some Grade B Horror movie or a thirties private eye novel. It's raining. Gray, bleak drizzle that seems to speak of just giving up. It's raining. Rain that comes with a thick, damp, choking fog that is surrounding Kit now as he searches.
It seems like he's been searching for hours, though he knows it's only been around fifteen minutes. But every second he doesn't find what he's looking for is a second to long. Every second is a chance lost, a hope crushed, a dream soaked and drowned in this stupid, all encompassing rain.
He's trying to be rational about all this - after all, he's rational Kit, on wizard's business, and he can't afford to let it get out of hand. So he's trying to search methodically, one area at a time. And yet he can't shake the feeling that he's going in circles. Wasting time.
After all, this isn't over yet. Technically, if he was doing this by the book, he ought to be back fighting the Lone Power. By the book. Ha. That's almost laughable. After all, the book changes almost constantly.
But he's letting himself get distracted again, and that won't help. He knows that this is a delay tactic. That he's supposed to search, and search, so that the Lone Power can hit him - and the Earth - from behind. But he doesn't care. He just has to keep looking, even knowing that he's playing right into It's hands. In the end, he tells himself, it won't matter as long as he finds what he's looking for.
He's locater spell blips at him and an outrageous surge of hope courses through him. His eyes widen, as though by doing so they can see through this stupid, blinding fog.
"C'mon Kit. Focus. You're a wizard." He tells himself, and mutters a spell that should dispel the fog. He says the final word, and unleashes the wizardry on the fog, but all it does is illuminate it. Nothing is working as it should. Still, he'll settle for light.
Walking slowly forward, eyes scanning the area all around him as he walks, he silently berates himself for ever letting this happen. There must have been some way he could have avoided this. Stopped it from happening. After all, he's her partner in wizardry, and her best friend. Surely he should have been watching more carefully, surely he should have known better what the Lone Power would do.
He knows, in the rational (and at the moment, buried) part of his mind, that Nita wouldn't want him to think that. She'd tell him that she should have been on the alert, that she should have known. She'd probably tell him to get back to the Lone One, to continue the fight. But he'd ignored her advice plenty of times before.
Kit keeps walking, squinting around him at the dim, gloomy, landscape. He isn't sure where he is anymore, but it doesn't matter. The locater spell is emitting louder and louder noises, and he's sure he's close.
Suddenly, he finds what he's looking for. So suddenly that he hardly realizes it. Suddenly the fog just in front of him is cleared away by his spell and he sees a slumped, broken figure, barely maintaining what could be called a sitting position. The instant he sees it, he knows it's her.
He lets out a string of curses that his mother, and come to think of it, Nita herself, would have admonished him for using, had they been there, or conscious, respectively, to hear him. As it was, there was no one to stop him from using some of the most foul words he knew, in both Spanish and English.
Kneeling down beside her he examines her. The worst part is that as far as he can tell, there are no marks, no wounds of any kind, on her. If there had been, he can at least see how to treat them. But she's just sitting there, eyes vacant and hollow, staring past him. She's alive. But who knows where she really is. This seems to Kit to be just a shell.
Without his permission, or consent, a tear furtively steals its way down his cheek. He shakes his head angrily. Tears won't help. What will help is healing. Tom, Carl, and he, when they put there heads together, can fix this. They will have to. He begins to rig up a transport spell that will take them straight home. Who cares about the Lone Power, or their mission, or whatever. Who cares?
"I should," a stubborn little voice in his head informs him, "I definitely should. I've been a wizard for going on four years now, and I've been on countless missions. I know what my job is."
Kit angrily shoves the little voice aside in favor of home and healing. Nita needs help. This was also part of his job - taking care of others. Right? In life's name... This was life. Life that won't be around much longer if he doesn't take a hand in things.
"Oh come on. You know what the oath means. You may not have known exactly when you took it, but you know now. You can't just interpret it to suit your needs. And you know that."
Kit wavers, Nita still in his arms, halfway lifted up. With just one word, he can take them both home. He can just say it, and they can forget this whole thing, and put Nita back the way she belongs. One little word. That's all it will take. His arms move up, his mouth opens...
And then it closes. His arms lower. He slowly cancels the spell.
It isn't fair. It isn't the way it should be. It makes tears come swimming up his throat and pool beneath his lids at the sheer unfairness of it all. It certainly isn't fair. But it is right.
As he turns away from her silent, crumpled figure, anger thinly veiled under his calm outer shell, he can almost swear he sees a twinkle of approval in her lifeless eyes.
But of course, that can't be right.
Time to go do his job.
In life's name and for life's sake...
A/N: This basically came about because I have a class I need to log typing time for, but as I said, also because of my love for Young Wizards, and Kit. So please, tell me what you thought of it. Review:D