where doesn't matter

Meg wakes up one night, winter wind battering against the house (batten down the hatches, they say on ships, don't they?). This is when the thought crosses her mind, not in something as crude as words or limited has as images, but just the concept, the truth, the truth she's been told so many times but has never really sunk in:

Where doesn't matter.

It's summer. It's not as though Meg enjoys school (for that reason, the freedom is quite welcome) but the main problem is that Calvin's just graduated high school. The Murrys happily throw a graduation party for him, and while they're all making merry, both Charles Wallace and Calvin can see the dark mood hanging over her. The good thing is that Calvin can get away, from his family, from the stifling space of the high school. The big fish leaving the small pond. The bad thing is that Calvin can, at long last, get away from her.

What is she going to do without Calvin?

"You're stewing," Charles Wallace says mildly to her.

Meg starts; she hadn't realized he'd moved beside her. "You should be getting to bed, shouldn't you?"

"Meg," he says. He sighs, a sigh too big for a little boy, as always. "You're not thinking clearly."

It stings her. "I know," she says, crossly. "You think I don't know that?"

"This is an easy problem to solve." He nods to Calvin, across the room, who is looking askance at them, probably at Meg herself. She looks away. It's harder to accidentally kythe, or nearly, when you're all closed off. "You need to talk to him."

"Later," Meg excuses.

Charles Wallace looks at her plainly. "I will bring him over here."

"Don't," she entreats him immediately, in a whisper, and pulls him into a hug. "I'm scared," she murmurs into his ear.

"I know." He holds onto her. "But this can't be scarier than saving the universe."

Meg flushes an impatient red. "I'm still not sure that - "

"Do you think Blajeny lied to us?" Charles presses.

Meg scowls at him. "You're being difficult."

He smiles at her, in his kind, wise way. "So are you."

It's hard for her to be angry at him. She kisses the top of his head and releases him, only then going to Calvin's side.

Calvin greets her instantly, a hand on the small of her back, then he withdraws it awkwardly and it's as though she imagined it all. She worries, at first, but then she sees the blush edging his pale freckled cheeks, and her face grows warmer still. "I'm sorry that I let them talk your ear off," she says, nodding to the twins, who are now busily discussing news from the town with their mother.

"Don't be. They're great." Calvin turns to her. "Now, Meg - "

This is what she's been dreading. "Please don't. Don't." The words rush out of her mouth. "I can't bear it, I can't. If you're going to leave, please just leave, don't tell me where you're going. Don't tell me you're going to keep in touch, that everything will be fine, because it won't."

Calvin's hands are on her arms, even though she tries to resist his touch. "Meg - " he starts again.

"You're going to go off on a basketball scholarship and everything else and you'll find - " Someone better than me, she nearly says, and falters. "You'll find a new life. Without us. And that's fine. Just don't tell me that it's going to be the same as it was and turn around and walk away."

"Meg!" She finally looks up at Calvin, who is unmistakably appalled, in his concerned way. He nods to Mrs. Murry and leads Meg into the kitchen, seating Meg in a chair before he sank into one very close. "Are you going to listen to me now?"

"Of course," she says, thickly. "If you're not going to lie to me." This could be what it's like to start to feel like nothing inside, Meg thinks. Because anyone would choose taking things from others if it meant they didn't care about the things they loved being taken away from them. Echthroi. Greek for "enemy," the disturbing, endless cycle of evil perpetrated by irrational beings that shouldn't be.

She might understand it, now. It hurts to be fair, to love, to care, to give away.

Calvin isn't talking, she realizes. He's listening, he's kything, with her, his hand lightly on her hand resting on the table. He's watching her intently. He knows.

"I name you Meg Murry," he says, his finger curling around hers, and she looks back at him, her eyes wet with the start of tears. "And I love you for being you, Meg. I always will."

"Oh, Calvin." She flings herself at him and hugs herself close to him, breathing in the scent of the soap in his hair and aftershave. "I love you, too. I have ever since, oh, you know when."

There's a moment where he kisses her on the lips, just briefly, and she starts to smile again, and she doesn't feel alone at all. She feels surrounded, warm, with colors and inexplicable breezes flashing in her peripheral vision, and -

"Calvin," she repeats, and stays still, with Calvin and this feeling. "Do you - "

"Maybe." He knows. He feels it, too, whatever it is. And then, it's gone. He watches her face fall. "Meg," he starts.

"You know I…" She bites her lip.

"Meg," he says, again, with a touch of impatience. Then he touches the back of her neck and she melts to him, and they kiss once more. "Do you remember the bean plants?"

She blinks at him, then it dawns on her. "Oh."

"Where doesn't matter. I'll always know. No matter where I am. And so will you."

Meg nods, and leans against his shoulder, enjoying the moment until someone interrupts them in the noisy house. There will be universities and scholarships and lonely times in high school without Calvin, but all that can wait for tomorrow, or next week, or next month. For tonight, it's not her and Calvin against the world, the wonderful, terrible world that always has beauty and evil to endanger her family and her life as she knows. It's just her, and Calvin, and Charles Wallace.

"All right. I should go to sleep. I'm studying tonight, I promise. Thank you." She whispers the next. "Thank you. I love you." She smiles when he echoes her on the other end of the phone. "Good night, Calvin."

She sets the phone on the receiver and hurries up to the attic. It's a matter of a month before she gets to visit him. It's completely worth saving all of her pocket money for, even if Mother isn't entirely sure about it, the point is that she'll get to see his face again, no matter how close they still are in kythe.

Sometimes it's hard to believe it's been so long since everything happened with Charles Wallace. Sometimes it's hard to believe that nothing's happened since. She's starting to wonder if anything else will happen. At least, nothing will happen to her. Charles Wallace is the one they were worried about.

No Mrs W's. No mysterious strangers. No cherubim, no snakes, no Teachers, only life, boring, direct, irritating life. If this is all she has left, what has she got left to do to become a Namer? What does she have to do to keep doing good things, to keep the balance in favor of the Light rather than the Echthroi, the shadows?

"That's fairly obvious, Meg," she says to herself as she ascends the stairs, and looks forlornly at the pile of books waiting for her. Senior year shouldn't be as difficult as it has been for someone as bright as she apparently is, but English has been an awful, unforgiving subject, even moreso than usual.

As she sits on her bed, something changes. All at once she's kything (she knows the sensation, the clarity, the way her anxiety vanishes like flash steam) but not with Calvin. It's not Charles Wallace, who she can feel sleeping downstairs.

It's not words, or images. It's not human kything. She wonders who it is, faintly, beyond the encroaching peace. "Hello," she whispers aloud, and whatever's hanging in the air around her, it's palpable, though nothing is there. "Is it you?"

She's not even sure who she means, but somewhere deep in the well of her stomach, she does know, and she knows she's right. Then she wonders if she's the one thinking that at all. "I - I know it's you. Let me see you," she whispers.

You don't need to shout.

Her breath stops in her chest, her heart fumbling to get back to rhythm, and a smile crosses her face before she even registers the truth. "Progo."

He's there. He seems to nod, to agree, but then, in something less violent than tearing away and more like the sudden start of a dial tone on a telephone, he's gone.

It doesn't matter where he is.

Where doesn't matter.

He's not gone. Meg's thought about it. She's rambled at length to Calvin over the phone in whispers. She understands now. Nature abhors a vacuum. Farandolae and cherubim and stars can all throw themselves at living darkness and burn them with the glory of creation, such is the power of life and love and good. But it was physics class that reminded her, and the twins, and everybody else.

"Mrs Whatsit was a star," she tells Calvin, frantically writing away in her diary to get it all down in case she forgets or has to look it over again. She can usually trust her head, but this is important, so, so important. "Remember? She was a star, she liked being a star, but then she chose to stop being a star, she defeated the shadow over a planet, but she wasn't dead! She just wasn't - she wasn't - " Words have always been her downfall. "Material!" she declares finally. "She wasn't material."

"Right, Meg." Calvin is definitely listening, but even she's not sure why. "But she was - "

"Not really! She could take material form, but remember how much trouble it was for Mrs Which to materialize? I think it has to do with the laws of thermodynamics. Once you've become energy it's harder to become mass - maybe - we've never known of sentient energy before, have we? It's not exactly something that's - this isn't the point!" She's so excited she can barely keep her voice down. "Xing isn't the end. It never is. It's a new beginning. And maybe I don't know where those farandolae are or Progo or anyone else, but it doesn't matter, Cal, it really doesn't!"

"Yeah." She can hear Calvin's smile over the phone. "You know what? I love you, you dope."

Meg laughs, holds onto the phone, and lets the pen drop. No. She won't forget this. She won't forget any of them. And the fight's not over. Just because she's not in the fray, right now, doesn't mean that every day isn't a chance to support and love and give to all creation to encourage the best of them. It just means she's got more people to meet - more chances to love - more chances to change, and better, both herself and others.

Progo is there. He's at her wedding, he's at the birth of her first child. He watches over her as she studies physics, works equations, gets her PhDs. Whatever you might call him, this form, he's still there. It's still him. It's love. And that's all anyone can ask for.