(no subject)

[persephone_kore]

"I think this is it. Look right to you?"

"Yes," Kit said in a mildly amused tone, "but if you want me to look at it through my eyes instead of yours, you're gonna have to move a little."

Nita made a face at him and scooted back as best she could, maneuvering around a tangle of thin metallic-pink tubes until she could lean against the curved wall and try to find a comfortable position for her legs.

Kit moved in and hunkered over the spell; Nita watched him for a moment and then let her head flop back -- or possibly arched her neck against the wall; gravity was currently somewhat subjective in terms of direction. Nita felt as if she were sitting in an Escher painting. A really cramped one.

They were going to have to remember all the words this time, because while they had just barely managed to write the circle large enough that they could both fit inside it, there would definitely not be room to turn around once they were there. The structure of it was a little unusual, at that -- Nita was quite sure that it was supposed to be the usual circle, tied shut with the wizard's knot, but she was drowsy with the heat and closeness and whenever her eyes went just a little unfocused, which was often, the graceful string of symbols seemed to float above the floor and twist itself half over without really moving into a wizard's knot itself.

The cramped, pastel-flooded little bubble-chamber they were sitting in was an access to something that was not, strictly speaking, an extinguished star. It was a fusion-driven mechanism for providing usable energy to a constructed habitat floating through space -- an artificial one. Incredible technology, brilliant work by a brilliant race -- but examining the implementation had given her chills; under the unpredicted stress levels of long-term use, parts had started to wear out, and the inhabitants were just lucky that the first thing to give way had been fuel transfer rather than containment. Containment had held, had kicked in and squeezed down and choked off all access until the reactor burned out the remaining fuel.

Now they'd made the physical repairs; it was just necessary to reinforce the parts of the structure that consisted of wizardry (much of containment, for instance, depended on talking the materials around to a state that _might_ have been duplicated without the Speech, but not by any technology Nita was familiar with) and then rekindle the fire. Nita marveled again at the design -- it really hadn't been irresponsibility that left the habitat dependent on a reactor that might fail; the system had fulfilled its original purpose (a voyage -- the reactor "exhausted" in a single direction, outside the habitat, and pushed it along), outlasting the wizards who'd created it, and they would probably have been rather surprised that it was still in use.

"Looks good," Kit said at last. "I'm too beat to do it all by memory, though -- workspace in the Manual?"

"Oh. Right." Nita shook her head. She should have thought of that. Trying too hard not to use props, maybe -- well, that wasn't _entirely_ fair, since they were using sugar cubes again the way they had for their first timeslide-activation, as a tiny extra energy-boost, and the entire material structure of the device had been shaped as much for its spell-enhancing properties as for the actual physical necessities. Still.

She and Kit knelt carefully back-to-back -- the ceiling was too low to stand -- in the circle, the soles of their feet touching. Nita flipped her Manual open on her lap; a page turned lazily to reveal a blank sheet, then duplicated the spell-circle for her in miniature with the beginning magnified to be read easily.

The hot, still air grew stiller yet as they began to Speak, but felt less oppressive; it was suddenly easier to draw breath when she had to, and they matched cadence easily again, and it was very good.

And yet... as the spell went on, the diagram in the Manual rotating before her, Nita began feeling more and more that there was something not quite right. The sense only grew stronger as her head cleared, but she couldn't pinpoint it. Kit's mind nudged at hers, felt it too, and was just as perplexed.

Nita frowned a little over it, then forgot for a second and smiled at one of the symbols. It was the circle with an arrow leading up and out -- they were making their work as stable as they could, but this time had added a better set of maintenance options so that there was another way to stop, besides having the fuel run out at the destination or waiting for emergency measures to kick in. The same one that, in another context, had given the Lone Power and thus the worlds a way out of destruction and --

Horror froze her mind; she nearly choked on the next words of the spell, and Kit looked around at her in alarm at both her reaction and the croak she forced out of her throat.

_Neets? What is it?_

_A way out. We forgot it._ She turned to look over her own shoulder, still speaking the words of the spell automatically. Her stomach was churning, but she had to keep going; this wasn't something they could stop in the middle. Not even if they'd just realized that in their exhaustion, they'd put the repairs -- which did have to be done from here -- and the rekindling -- which didn't -- all in one spell and _they were still inside the containment fields_.

It was too late to improvise, and there wouldn't be time for a transit. Stupid mistake -- but they'd made it together, and at least the habitat would have its artificial sun again. _I guess this is it,_ Kit thought softly to her, and then they spoke the last word.

The spell circle vanished. The reactor roared joyously back to life. Kit and Nita squirmed desperately around and hung onto each other as they were blasted with radiation that as wizards they could _feel_ doing its damage, even if they hadn't been able to feel the heat and pain.

_Feels like... Ireland._

_Ireland?!_ Kit's thought was incredulous.

Nita forced her own into marginally greater coherence. _Like Balor's eye...._ It did. The only other thing that came to mind, oddly, was Spock dying in the second Star Trek movie. _The good of the many..._ but it was all to everyone's good, really. Except that she didn't want to die yet, and it _hurt_, she was burned and blinded all at once and this was nothing like the brilliance of Timeheart, unless it was like trying to get away from it, but somehow she didn't think staring into this light would so much as bring her there any sooner, and she couldn't make herself do it. There was no one else here to help this time, though she begged irrationally that someone might snatch them away....

Then all at once, instead of the searing light, darkness wrapped them. Nita gasped as if she had been smothered and then offered clean air, gulped as if the darkness were water, and it soothed her burnt lungs and throat and skin as if it were both.

Something burned here too, but she was floating in relief from pain and couldn't concentrate on it properly. She did notice that they did not seem to be in nothingness; the dark was touching her in an almost solid sort of way, though she could move and breathe easily. And it was _alive_... or was it? Were they?

As the words crossed her mind, Kit asked rather tentatively, "Are we dead?"

"I don't know...." She took another breath of the dark and wondered why the pain seemed so distant. Being dead might explain that. So might having had her nerves burned away. Perhaps she had lost all sensory input and was hallucinating all this, with Kit's thoughts sounding like his voice.... They'd taken enough damage that it still ought to hurt. "This isn't Timeheart," she concluded after a moment.

"Nobody's yelling at us," he said teasingly. Nita thought about swatting at him, then remembered she might not have a body.

"I suppose I _could_," the burning inside the darkness said in amusement, "but why? And you're not dead, though if your state were described literally and taken metaphorically, someone could get that impression. I doubt you'll have to _ask_, when you are."

"Uh," Nita said intelligently. Her eyes went very wide, which should have accomplished absolutely nothing in the pitch dark, and all of a sudden she could see -- much as she had been able to see in that other, twisted New York when there had been no sun and no lamps and the rowan wand had been hidden. She could see Kit, anyway, and she could see a young and impossibly handsome man whom she recognized from that place and quite a few others by now. But why would the Lone Power have rescued them? "Fairest and --" She stopped and gaped. This One was dark and fierce indeed, and proud still, but looked neither weary nor cruel. That was it, He _wasn't_ Fallen.... "Friend," she finished rather weakly.

She might have thought she'd imagined the flicker of surprise and pleasure on the Power's face if she hadn't overheard Kit noticing it too as he summoned the presence of mind to add, "Thank you. Uh... where _are_ we?"

"In my grasp." A slight smile. "Thus the possible confusion. I don't know why you'd worry, though; you've spent enough time being nowhere."

"Well," Kit said reasonably enough, "I wondered where I was at first when I was nowhere, too."

"Fair enough."

"What are you doing?" Nita blurted in confusion. "I mean -- I appreciate it. A lot. But I didn't think You -- the Bright Powers in general -- made a habit of bailing people out... you know... directly."

He shrugged. "You have had my attention bent on you less favorably more often than was wonted; you renamed me against my own binding; you were there when I was freed; and, "there was that hint of humor again, "I know something of how that sort of situation feels, only it was hardly doing you the good it did to me."

"But that radiation wasn't like the other light...."

"No. But I was like that radiation, at the time, you might say."

"Was that really enough, though?" Kit asked doubtfully.

"I'm here, am I not?"

"Yes, but...."

"You did ask, as well. After a fashion. Both of you did. And I... volunteered; shadow is of use, now and again." He smiled again. "And if you're trying _not_ to ask if my turning up was approved, I did consult this time. You still have things to do, and lives to lead and Lead.... Go well."

And they were home, after all.

*****

-Might add to/reconstruct some of the dialogue at the end at some point. By the time I got where I'd been trying to go I was tired.