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Kiki bit her lip. This wasn't going as well as she'd hoped.

"No, I didn't say that," Kiki answered softly. "As for the problem of that contract, I have no idea how to solve it yet. But antagonizing Mr. Crowley and continuing to punish Phoebe for the mistake she made is making the situation worse, not better. I know Phoebe's hurting now; she has been for a while. And I understand - or am starting to - how hurt you are, as well. Why not try to actually work together to solve these problems, rather than against each other?"

"Good luck," Kiki says with soft sincerity. "Let me know if...if it goes really badly, okay?"

"I took that last term," Angela nodded, lookign a little sad to be reminded how soon Geoff was leaving. "He's a good teacher. And a good friend, too. I'll miss him."

Paige smiles at Kiki, "yeah Ill come straight back here if it does, but hopefully it'll be okay. I mean I'm sure Geoff'll know what to say, he usually does."

"Thanks a lot Kiki, I'll catch you later okay?"

"I don't even have to worry about traffic," Kiki grins. "I just go over the roofs! There was some brief talk about getting the fliers together for a game - but I haven't seen Harry around, nor Draco. Pretty much leaves Tonks and myself. Oh, and Draco's girlfriend, if she's still here."

Kiki holds out the broom for him to look at. "It definitely helps to have the witchcraft in your blood, although I somehow managed to get Rogue off the ground a short distance last semester when Harry, Draco and I brought our brooms to Flight Club. I haven't been back to it this semester - too many mechanical gizmos! I invariably crashed all the flight simulators."

"I burned the damn contract, it's a moot point now," Bel said. "Yet she still goes to him. I swear, one more time and it's over between us. She made me make a choice, now I want her to make one, too. It's all about free will, isn't it? She's giving hers up, and that's more of a 'fall from grace' than anything. She's playing right into his hands. And she just won't realize it."

He sighed, putting his face in his hands. "Look. I love her. With all my soul. But she's killing me with her actions. It needs to stop."

Kiki blinked, looking a little blank. "You did? I was in it, too - but then, I was usually so absorbed in the poetry that I never actually paid attention to who else was in class," she added with a rueful smile. "Sorry about that. Mr. Chaucer asked me to take his advanced class and TA for him at the end of last semester. I'm also taking his Western Lit class as independent study."

Kiki sighed a little. "After he goes, my Tuesdays are going to be awfully boring."

Kiki gives Paige a bolstering smile. "Certainly! See you later."

Kiki silently mulled this over, her chin in her hand. "Burning it might not make it physically exist, but to Phoebe's sense of honor, it still does. To Mr. Crowley, it certainly does."

After another moment, something he said nagged at her brain. Raising her head, she looked at Bel curiously. "What choice did she make you make?"

"Between her and my best friend," he said. "Between the human and the demon. I'm gonna get killed for her and my reward is watching her marry someone else."

"You have a terribly pessimistic outlook on life," Kiki observed neutrally. "Is your death so very certain? Is her marriage so very certain? Neither has happened yet, and they're not fixed events. They can be changed. It just requires a little bit of rational thought and planning."

If Bel looked closely, he could probably have seen the gears start turning in Kiki's head.

"Yeah, I think it was Draco's girlfriend who was telling me about it, and I haven't seen her since. Kind of too bad, since she did offer to show me some books about Quidditch, with moving pictures, she said, and I never got around to looking at them."

Anders shoves his hands into his pockets, almost as if he's afraid to touch the broom and maybe mess it up or something, but he does come closer to look at the broom. "I'd probably crash if I tried anyway," he admits. "My girlfriend thinks I'd hurt myself if I tried to play Quidditch. And y'know, I don't think she's been to Flight Club this semester either 'cause there's nothing for her to fix."

"Cally, right?" Kiki asks. "I remember her - I haven't seen her since Flight Club last semester, come to think of it. You can take a closer look at the broom, if you like," Kiki offers. "To most, it really is just an ordinary broom. I made this one myself, so it's most in tune with me, but I can fly just about anything - sweepers, push brooms, mops if there's nothing else. This one, however, has a little of my magic in it, so people who aren't magical themselves can fly it a very little."

Bel shrugged. "Nobody crosses the Source and lives. I don't know why I'd be so special as to get away. Sooner or later...." He sighed. "As for the wedding, she doesn't seem to be doing much to stop it. Nothing she's told me."

Anders nods and grins a little bit. "Yeah, that's her. She's got a thing about me doing things where I might hurt myself, or something," he says, unable to hold back a little chuckle at the thought of a flying mop. He gingerly touches the handle with one finger, almost surprised to find that it really does appear to be a perfectly normal broom. "So norm--non-magical people could kind of fly it, but they couldn't fly it as well as you, right? Was it hard to make?"

"The Source? This Source of All Evil you mentioned before, right? If no one crosses it and lives, then why bother fighting it at all?" Kiki asked in a tone of voice that said it was more a question for Bel to contemplate later, rather than something she didn't actually understand.

"Phoebe does feel, I think, like her hands are pretty much tied. I think she would like it if you did help her figure out a way to help her get out of this marriage that didn't involve her sacrificing herself, her honor, or her Grace as opposed to her feeling condemned on all sides. Also," Kiki added, biting her lip in thought, "getting out of this wedding deal might not be something either of you can accomplish on your own. Or even together."

She took a breath. "I'm going to see if I can't work some of the details about this situation out of Mr. Crowley."

Angela smiled ruefully. "It's okay. I hardly noticed who else was there myself."

"I hope the new English teacher is even half as good."

"Well, Rogue was able to get it off the ground," Kiki nods. "I don't know how well they'd be able to control it, honestly. It took about a day to make - I made one for Tonks back in the fall."

Bel shook his head. "There is no honor in being tricked. There is no Grace in accepting treachery or giving up your free will. That's the point you two are missing."

"Is getting it off the ground more than most people managed?" He scrunches his face up a bit in thought. "Bet it's more than I'd manage. I've got enough trouble with forward, backward, left and right, let alone up and down."

"I guess I get to find that out tomorrow," Kiki said. "I think the replacement is supposed to show up."

Drawing up sharply, Kiki inhaled a long breath of realization. "That's it," she said softly, almost to herself. She looked over at Bel. "It's easier for you to believe that she has been tricked all along and has given up her free will than it is for you to consider that she might be doing this because it is her choice, isn't it?"

Kiki dug her fingers into the cushions of the couch and waited for the fireballs to start flying.

Kiki laughs. "Only a few tried my broom, since I showed up late. Rogue was the only one who managed it, though."

"She didn't know what she was doing!" Bel snarled. "Giving herself over to Crowley? How the fuck is that supposed to protect me? All it's done is hurt me. That's all. So her little "mistake" has backfired, and I'm tired of it. It's her choice to marry Crowley, and if she makes that choice, then there's nothing left between us."

"She didn't know then," Kiki agreed, "But she does now. Which is the real reason why it hurts so much, isn't it? She's made the choice to uphold the contract. Although you see it as one and the same, that is not the same thing as her choosing to marry Mr. Crowley. But," Kiki said with quiet resignation, "if you are so ready to throw away everything you had because of her mistake and her decision to honorably accept the consequences of her mistake, then there really is nothing left between you."

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