So Far Down (final chapter 8/30/05)

[taintedshimmer]

Chris is irratated with the older brother, isn't he?

For the record, loving Mira. It's so nice to see a true charmed demon - evil, arragant and loving it, and minions toboot! Loved her calling Piper a 'pistol' and Chris' protectiveness is wonderful to see. True son & mother.

"deliciously conflicted" - describes him perfectly. Can't wait to see what happens next!

[scifi]

“I still say this is a bad idea,” Chris whispered as he and Piper appeared out of their orbs behind the alley’s group of dumpsters. “We need your sisters -- just for a minute,” he added.

“Shh,” Piper returned as she peeked around the rusted edge of the nearest dumpster at her target. Balchus had just stepped out of an alcove of his own, where he had apparently been staking out the flower shop across the street for the woman who was now fumbling with her car keys. Witch, future whitelighter, or generalized innocent -- it didn’t matter what she was. Piper felt a rush of righteous satisfaction that she could both save an innocent and teach this creep a lesson about attacking her family at the same time.

“Hey,” she called as she and Chris moved out from their cover. Balchus turned toward the new arrivals and frowned his confusion.

“What the --” But he didn’t finish the sentence as instinct took over and told him to toss an energy ball in their direction.

Piper dove to the ground while Chris orbed to let the blast pass harmlessly to the wall behind them. When he appeared again, it was to see Balchus fire off another one toward Piper.

“No!” Chris screamed and waved an arm to send the projectile back to its source. But Balchus, taking a page from his own book, shimmered out of the way. A moment later, he stood inches away from where Piper lay huddled on her side, reaching to finish her manually.

Even as the bottom fell out of Chris’s stomach and he started running in blind panic toward his mother, Piper turned on her back and tossed the vanquishing potion into the demon’s face. Chris couldn’t be sure what he felt, admiration or fury, as Balchus when up in flames close enough to Piper to make her cringe from the heat.

“Playing possum!” he yelled. “What were you thinking?”<br>
“Oh, not exactly playing,” Piper answered calmly, then made an awkward attempt to stand with one hand clutching her thigh. Chris rushed to catch her when her leg wouldn’t support her weight, and he lowered her gently back to the ground.

“Let me see it,” he demanded.

“I’m fine -- ow, ow, ow,” she said as he moved her hand away from her thigh and opened the rip in her pants to see the gash from which blood freely poured. He looked around at the surrounding debris for the cause of the wound and closed his eyes briefly at the sight of Piper’s blood on a piece of a broken windowpane.

He forced out an angry sigh and touched her hand again. “Come on. I’ll get you to Leo.”

It took only a few seconds for Leo to respond to their call once they arrived in the Manor’s living room and Chris deposited his mother on the couch. Chris didn’t need to watch Leo’s hands glow over the wound. He’d seen, and felt, their healing power far too many times to either admire it or doubt it. Instead, he paced back and forth past the curio that held the trinkets Piper had collected over the years, a couple of which he could remember breaking as a kid. But the trinkets, and everything else in the room, were the furthest things from his thoughts.

“It’s weird, though,” Piper was saying to Leo as he worked. “He acted like, I don’t know, like he was surprised to see us or something.”<br>
“He just didn’t expect us to figure him out,” Chris said dismissively, and paced some more.

“Chris, you’re going to wear a hole in the floor,” Piper admonished as she sat up, healed and whole. “Don’t worry. I’m fine.”<br>
“Worry? Why should I worry?” he shot back. “You just don’t listen to a word I say. You’re just on an ‘I can do everything by myself’ kick. You just came that close to being killed. I’m not worried at all.”<br>
“Look, Chris, I get the whole ‘I’m a whitelighter, so I’m obliged to lecture’ thing, I really do. But you have to understand --”<br>
“What’s there to understand? I say we need to get your sisters, you say no, and you get hurt in the process --”<br>
“Do not interrupt me --” Piper raise her voice, but Chris kept talking.

“I mean, God forbid we should keep them from getting la--”<br>
“That’s enough!” Piper yelled. “You will not come in here and judge me or my sisters or how we live our lives. Because they’re our lives, Chris, and like it or not, there’s more to them than vanquishing demons. So you can just stop fighting us on this, because you’re going to lose.”<br>
Chris shook his head and stared down at Piper. His voice was quiet when he spoke this time, but no less biting. “I think I’ve lost enough, thank you. I don’t need to lose my…charge, too.”<br>
He retained at least enough presence of mind to realize how close he had come to letting his secret slip, and orbed away before he came any closer. P3 was the most logical place for him to go to cool off, even if the club had been open for half and hour and was beginning to fill in earnest. The door to his tiny back room was already shut to the noise, which came through only as a series of beats and a muffled undercurrent of chatter. Instead of flicking on the light to cross off another day in the pocket calendar he kept hidden in the back of the desk drawer -- the calendar he had been using to track the time until his birthday, in which block he had once written in bold letters “Save Wyatt before today” -- he threw himself, shoes and all, upon the couch that had been serving as his bed for the past months with one arm tucked beneath his head and the other covering his eyes as though shielding them from the bit of light that seeped through the crack in the door.

For a few moments, Chris lay still in this position, concentrating on blocking out the club sounds so he could sleep, since, if he was lucky enough not to dream, sleep would mean he wouldn’t have to think. But another sound broke his concentration, and it took him a second to realize it was the ticking of his watch on the arm beneath his head -- the watch that marked the inexorable march of time toward a deadline that gave a quite literal meaning to the word. In a fit, Chris tore the watch from his arm and threw it into the darkness, where he heard it break against a wall. He pressed his palms into his eyes, saw the streaks of red and the blotches of darkness the pressure created on the inside of his eyelids, and tried not to think of the deaths that would come if he failed to beat the deadline.

Chris opened his eyes again at the sound of orbs in the room, and when the lights came on and he saw Leo standing by the door, he sighed and stared at the ceiling.

“So did you come to yell at me, too?”<br>
“Should I?” Leo asked in that infuriatingly calm tone he used when he was about to lecture. When Chris didn’t answer, but kept his eyes on the ceiling, he continued. “No, Chris, I didn’t come to yell.”<br>
“Then can whatever it is wait ‘til later? I’m really tired, and I’d like to go to sleep before it gets too loud out there.”<br>
“Okay,” Leo answered and nodded, but he pulled a chair over to the couch anyway. “But I want to say a little part of it tonight, because I think it needs to be said, and the sooner the better.”<br>
“What, are you going to tell me what a screw-up of a whitelighter I am?”<br>
“That’s the part that’ll have to wait for later. It could take a while.”<br>
Chris glared at his father, then saw the mischievous light in his eyes -- a light he’d seen so many times before when Leo had teased him to lighten the mood. It was always a precursor to an attempt at breach healing. Chris looked away again. Not this time. Leo wasn’t getting in this time.

“Look, Chris, I know that we haven’t exactly…hit it off. And I guess part of that is my fault.” Yep, here it came -- Leo taking the blame to guilt Chris into spilling his guts, and reforming a bond, and all that father-son crap, only to have Leo run away and rip his heart to shreds yet again. So predictable.

Leo kept talking. “But I think you’re right.” Well, maybe not that predictable. “Piper is just being stubborn, and she does need her sisters -- if not there at the house, then at least at vanquishes. But can I give you a little advice, one whitelighter to another? You can’t win an argument with Piper by yelling. She’ll always be louder.”<br>
Chris couldn’t help but give a grudging smile at that truth. How well he knew it. “Then how do you win?”<br>
“You let her come to it on her own. She will, you know, if she hasn’t already. She’s pretty smart.”<br>
Chris nodded. “So is that it?”<br>
Leo stared at him, apparently needing a moment to decide his answer. “No.” He paused again. “I know that your yelling didn’t just come because you were mad at Piper. She knows it, too.”<br>
Chris turned his gaze back to the ceiling.

“What you’ve lost, Chris… If it had been me and Piper…”

Chris closed his eyes. It would be him and Piper in about fifteen years.

“What I’m trying to say is… I’m an Elder, Chris, and technically that makes me one of your bosses. But we’re not just there to tell you what to do. We’re there to listen, too. We’re there to help. If you want --”<br>
“Thanks,” Chris cut him off. He meant it -- he was not going to let Leo in again.

On some level, Leo must have taken his meaning, because he stood up. “Get some sleep,” he said, and then orbed out.

[scifi]

But now that Chris had the room to himself again, he couldn’t sleep. Even after he reached with his mind to turn off the lights, he lay there in the dark with his eyes wide open until far enough in the night for the crowd in P3 to dissipate. He’d nearly gotten his mother killed by sending her after a demon who didn’t even know who they were, and his father had all but offered him a reward for it. This had to end, and soon. He wished Mira would hurry up and do whatever she was going to do, but at the same time, he almost wished Balchus back alive so she would have to stay in her arid little hole in the ground. As many times as he told himself that countless lives would be saved at the sacrifice of only one, he knew he’d be causing a pain in Piper and Leo like none they’d ever known. The failure of their marriage -- which he’d also had a hand in this time around -- would be nothing in comparison. But he couldn’t let Wyatt grow up to destroy everything, to torture and kill people, to take away Bianca.

At about four in the morning, Chris finally dozed off, but it was not to a dreamless sleep. It was to a motel room in Singapore where he’d just stepped into a hot shower after a day of tracking and vanquishing a demon who had threatened to expose his operative Matt as an imposter in the Queen’s Collective. He closed his eyes and let the water trickle down from his hair and over his face, felt the steam rise up around his ankles, then turned to let the stream from the shower head wash the dirt out of a cut on his shoulder.

Suddenly, the warmth left him as cold water shot down on his skin, and he jumped to the back of the tub. He saw a hand draw itself back from the faucet, and he ripped the curtain away to see Bianca standing there with her hands on her hips.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she yelled.

“Well, I was trying to take a shower.”<br>
She reached in and turned off the water. “Don’t be cute with me. You know what I’m talking about.”<br>
He sighed and stepped out of the tub to towel off. “Bianca, I’m fine. Don’t worry.”<br>
“Oh, I’m passed worrying. I am pissed off. Oh, Baby, you’re bleeding.”<br>
Chris suppressed a grin at her sudden shift in tone and instead pulled on some boxers and moved to sit on the bed. She followed him, a med kit only just conjured in her hand, and started probing the cut.

“It’s not that bad,” he tried to assure her, but that only seemed to bring back her anger.

“No, but it could have been,” she snapped and tore open an alcohol pad. “Of all the stupid --” she muttered. “How many times do I have to tell you not to go after demons by yourself? You take me with you.” She emphasized her words with a jab of the alcohol pad in the cut.

“Ow! That hurt!”<br>
“Good!” But she blew on the cut to take the sting out anyway. “Trust me to fall in love with a fool. Don’t even tell anybody where you’re going,” she muttered some more. “Don’t stay in one place long enough for me to sense you or scry for you. I have to wait until it’s all over to find you. And here you are with a cut in your shoulder -- your bad shoulder no less. I guess you won’t be satisfied until somebody takes off with the whole arm.” She pressed a bandage over the skin, then sat down beside him with a sigh. He looked over at her expression -- her eyes shut as though in a prayer of thanksgiving that he was okay -- and after a moment she stared back at him. “You take me with you,” she repeated. “Chris…I can’t lose you.”<br>
Chris woke just as his dream self lifted his injured arm to place it around Bianca’s shoulders -- typical that a last touch was denied him even in his dreams.

To be continued...

[wickedwms]

;D Wonderful, (as usual). I love how much like Piper you make Chris. No wonder they never caught on that he was their son. (Who can ever look that closely at themselves?) There are so many wonderful layers to your stories. I love how conflicted Chris is and how seeing him at this emotional nadir, we can empathize with his course of action without hating him. I look forward to seeing how you get him out of his current predictament. I particularly love his scenes with Piper and Leo. I love how they have so much more depth to them then Piper and Leo are aware of. You also have a truly outstanding demon with Mira. (Oh, that the show were capable of making a few of their demons that good!). Oh well. That is why I love good fanfiction. I can enjoy these characters, and the Charmed universe in a much more fulfilling way. You do such a fabulous job writing these characters. so much better than the show ever did. (As soon as I finished that sentence I realized that that is not saying much considering how low Kern and crew set the bar!) Well, instead let me say GREAT JOB! I will try to be patient while waiting for the next installment. (Which is not that easy, considering how good your story is.) Instead I will be grateful for what you have given us so far...or at least I will pretend!!Hee.

[leigh19]

Oh Scifi! I had NO idea you were working on something new! I was so excited when I noticed this post. Wonderful story- but you’re you, so of course it’s wonderful:) Your characterization of Chris is always so in depth and so real., and I love that you’re sticking to the Chris- Bianca relationship established on the show (your Chris/Bianca moments are unbeatable). I wish I could ramble further, but I only slept for three hours and I’m going to stop making sense soon…<br>
Once again; great story- you really do deserve to be published. I wish they’d hired you to write for season six…Chris would have gotten the attention and development he deserved. Update ASAP, I can’t wait!

-Leigh

[scifi]

Four days. Four freaking days, and Mira had not so much as sneezed in Wyatt’s direction. Chris had gone to her on the Saturday after Balchus’s vanquish to ask once again what her plan was and how long it would take. She had only told him she was biding her time, that her plan was brilliant, but that she would need a few more critical pieces to fall into place before she could strike. What those pieces were, she wouldn’t say, but rather had smirked and fixed Chris with a stare that said she knew something he didn’t, and then laughed as he orbed off in a fury. Her lilting giggle still sounded in his ears every time he thought of what they were doing, which was pretty much all the time. It mocked him, made him feel weak, for, in truth, he wasn’t sure how much longer his resolve could hold.

And Piper wasn’t making things any easier. He had determined to keep an eye on her since that night in the alley, to stick close in case Mira conveniently forgot her promise not to harm Piper whenever she did attack. But his mom had been doing what she did best -- trying to make life as normal as possible. This week, that meant a little home improvement to give the neighbors a bit of eye candy when they went by the house. Today, she was repotting flowers out front and experimenting with a new border for the steps and walkway. And since Chris was so incessantly available, she’d asked, or rather, told him to watch Wyatt for the third day in a row. It wasn’t exactly an ideal job.

And it wasn’t like the kid needed anybody to look after him. He’d had a cold for the last couple of days, and typical Piper, after refusing a shot of the Leo-cure, had kept Wyatt so doped up on medicine that he slept half the time. He was asleep now in his playpen, flat on his back with his thumb in his mouth, but that didn’t keep him from putting up his force field every time Chris entered the conservatory.

So Chris sat with his ankle crossed over his knee, and his cheek leaning on his fist, and his eyes rolling in his head every time Piper peeked in from the courtyard to see if everything was all right, as though he’d fall asleep on the job or something. And he watched Wyatt. He watched through the swirl of blue energy as his brother took his thumb from his mouth and rolled over. He watched through smoke as his brother vanquished the vestiges of a rebelling demon faction. He watched through tears as his brother murdered a witch with a mere thought. He watched through the blue haze as his brother kicked out a tiny foot in his dreams. The same foot -- but no, Chris wasn’t going to think about it. It wasn’t going to happen, he reminded himself yet again. Any of it.

He focused instead on the shield surrounding the playpen and wondered how Mira planned to get around that little obstacle. She certainly couldn’t wait until Wyatt outgrew the need for a shield; by then he would be far too powerful for her even to approach. But, he supposed, she’d probably already thought of a way. Getting through people’s defenses was, after all, her specialty. He remembered that all too well.

There was so much that he remembered better than he’d like, more than anybody would like. If there was one thing that he’d been truthful about with the sisters since the time of his arrival, it was that he came from a world of darkness. It was just that sometimes, when he was particularly sick at heart, he wasn’t quite sure how much of that darkness was of his own making.

His friend Matthew might have had a few choice words to add to those doubts if he were around. Of course, he wouldn’t be born for a couple of more years. What a strange concept that a friend could be both dead and not even born yet.

It was Chris’s fault he was dead. There could be no doubts about that, just as there could be no doubt that it was his fault Bianca had put herself in a situation for which there could be no good resolution. There were some days when he wondered if everything was his fault.

Maybe it was the boredom of watching a sleeping baby, or the perpetual exhaustion of depression, or his mind punishing him for the sins of his past, present, and future. Whatever the reason, Chris did exactly what he’d sworn he’d never do -- he fell asleep on the job. And as he had done far too often in the past days, he dreamed a memory, the sort of dream that spared nothing, that made him feel everything over again -- the sort that had blessed and cursed him since his childhood.


He walked through a tunnel in the Underworld, Bianca following a step behind with a practiced sweep of her eyes to assess their surroundings for tactical purposes. But she wasn’t allowed to fight here, and he knew she knew it. The demon who had been their liaison throughout this ordeal had been perfectly clear on that point.

“The Queen wants this to be a fair test of your worth, of course,” the demon had said to him. “Her champion against you. Your witch can come, but if she lifts a finger to help you, all bets are off. Her Majesty will go to Wyatt with your scheme.”

“I’ll kill her before she can even think about it,” Bianca had shot back, but the demon, even taller than Chris and twice as broad, had merely looked down at her with a smirk.

“With a hundred of her servants standing in your way? I think not.”

Bianca had started another reply, but Chris’s hand on her arm had silenced her. “What if I refuse?” he asked.

The demon had shrugged. “If you say no here, then you go your way, the Queen goes hers, and all is forgotten. Or if you die in the test, she’ll say nothing to anyone about all of this. But if you pass the test . . .” The smirk was back. “She’ll help you.”

They’d seemed like fair choices in the light of day, but now as he picked his way through the maze of rock that led to the meeting site, Chris wondered how fair a demon could really be.

“Remember not to do anything, even if I lose,” he told Bianca, though he doubted she’d have an easy time hearing this warning again. “Better me dead than Wyatt knowing about everything.”

When Bianca didn’t answer, he stopped and turned to her. “I mean it. I’ll tell them not to let you in if you don’t promise.”

“You just try it.”

“Bianca, please. Every day, someone we know has the choice of either dying or going to Wyatt. We don’t even have to question what they’ll choose. It’s just this time, it’s our turn. Don’t make us have to question what we’ll choose.”

He took her sigh as acquiescence, but as they approached the doorway to the cavern where his test was to be held, she stopped him again.

“I can’t,” she cried, and before he could ask what she meant, she continued. “I can’t go in there and just watch you die.”

“Well, I was intending to win,” he tried to assure her, but she would have none of it.

“I don’t have to question what I would choose, Chris. If going to Wyatt would keep you alive, then I would choose keeping you alive. I can’t . . .” She held on to him as though she could physically prevent him from taking another step toward the cavern.

“You’ll stay outside, then?” he asked quietly, knowing she had to decide this for herself, no matter what he had threatened.

She stood away from him, her eyes downcast as though she were ashamed of some weakness. But it was strength, the strength that he so loved in her, that made her nod, that made her keep herself away from the test that was his alone.

“Okay,” he said, trying to keep in his a voice a clear and even determination, and succeeding enough to make Bianca glance up at him in a panic to say something before he left her.

“I love you.”

He smiled and brought his hand up to her cheek. He held it there a moment, his thumb tracing her cheekbone, the outline of which he had kissed innumerable times -- but still not enough. He kissed her cheek again, and then her lips.

“Wait for me,” he said to her as he stepped away to join the demon liaison who had just shimmered in at the doorway.

“This is your last chance to walk away,” the demon told him. “Once you enter here, you cannot leave until one of you is defeated. You cannot refuse, you cannot forfeit, you cannot orb away. Whatever witchcraft you possess, whatever strength or wit, you may draw on it. Choose now.”

“As long as we’re being all talkative about it, is there anything you’re not telling me?”

The demon grinned. “I’ve told you all you need to know.”

“Well, I feel so much better now, thanks.” Chris stepped through the doorway despite his sarcasm, and when he glanced back at Bianca standing in the tunnel, the rock wall of the cavern grew together, blocking her from view.

“The room is now sealed. There will be no entry nor exit until it is finished.”

Chris looked around the room as the demon spoke, taking in the number of torches on the walls, calculating the possible weight of the stones on the ground, and trying to work up some spit in his mouth before he choked on its sudden dryness.

“Your opponent.” The demon motioned to the far side of the room summoning a sight that made Chris cry out before he was able to speak. There, half-hidden in shadow, but without any disguise, stood Matt.

“No,” Chris finally said. “He --”

“Belongs to the Queen,” the demon interrupted. Chris just shook his head and stared at his friend. “You didn’t really expect her not to find out, did you? She thought it a bit insulting, really. But she does like a challenge. The boy’s smitten with her now, of course, bound to her by blood. But those first few weeks --”

“I won’t do it.”

“You cannot forfeit --”

“I won’t.”

“Then I will be witness to a supremely boring fight that will end with the first blow.” The demon stood aside as Matt stepped closer, all recognition gone from his face.

“Matt, it’s me,” Chris tried to break through to him. “Remember? It’s Chris.”

Matthew’s steps faltered, and he frowned. “Chris?”

“Yeah, remember? You told me once how you were going to be an actor when all this stuff was over. You said I’d make a fair director, too, with the way I order people around.”

“You’re bossy.”

Chris grinned. “Yeah.”

“Worse than Bianca. At least she’s nice to look at.” Matt took a few more hesitant steps closer.

“Yeah, she is. She’s outside.”

“You’re my friend.” Matt was close enough to touch.

“I am.”

“And you’re really stupid.”

Chris only just caught Matt’s hand as it conjured a dagger and jabbed it toward his gut in one swift move. Matt used the remaining momentum of his thrust to turn himself into a position to fling Chris over his shoulder. Chris landed on his back, all breath gone from his lungs, but he raised a hand to throw his friend across the room. Matt slid down the wall, sat for a moment to catch his breath, and Chris knew that the first of them to stand would live longer.

He made it to his feet a second before Matt did, and an instant later had to use his mind to stop the dagger Matt had thrown and to avert its path harmlessly away. “Please, I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I seriously doubt you can without Bianca here to fight for you.” Matt pulled out a potion vial and drank its contents. Chris had a vague feeling of what it was, and when Matt approximated a shimmer and stood behind him a moment later, his suspicion was confirmed. Chris ducked down to the ground and swept Matt’s feet out from under him, but Matt shimmered before he fell. While on the ground, Chris reached for a good-sized rock, the closest thing to a weapon he could get. Of course, there was one other thing he could try.

Matt appeared again a few feet away, but this time Chris attacked. He struck out his free hand as though scooping something into it, then tightened his fist. Matt’s stumble was genuine this time, and he grabbed at his chest.

“You’re going to listen to me, Matt,” Chris spoke quickly as he stood up, for he could feel Matt’s heart straining. “You’re going to stop, and we’re going to leave here together, and we’re going to help you.”

Matt gasped a couple of times, then nodded desperately. Chris released his hold and let out a sigh before turning to the demon.

“Let us out.”

“But --”

“Now!” Chris demanded, but even as the word left his mouth, he saw Matt charge one last time, and without thinking, he brought the rock in his left hand up to connect with his friend’s temple with a sickening crack. Matt fell without preamble and lay motionless at his feet. Chris backed away from what he had done.

Their demon observer crossed the room then, eyeing Chris with an approving smile, and transformed before reaching Matt. Instead of a hulking man, a beautiful raven-haired woman knelt by his side.

“Mira,” Matt whispered, and she turned her gaze on the boy.

“Here, my love.”

He groped to find her hand, and Chris could tell that the blow had blinded him.

“I failed you, my Queen,” Matt sobbed, and Chris dropped the stone into the dust.

“No, no, you did well,” Mira crooned, even as she grinned at the expression on Chris’s face. Matt shuddered beneath her, his breaths becoming ragged. “Your reward, dear one,” Mira said, and kissed Matt’s lips until he was dead.

She shivered as she sat upright. “I love that sensation. You can just feel them as they go.” She stood up and wiped the dust from her hands, then addressed Chris. “Do you want the body, or --” she stopped and looked on indulgently as Chris gazed at the friend he’d killed. “Right.” She took that gaze as his answer. “Well,” she continued unconcernedly, “A deal’s a deal. So, partner,” she said it with a smile, “I’ll be in touch.”

The cavern entrance cleared when she shimmered, and Bianca ran headlong to Chris.

“You’re all right.” She felt at his chest as though to prove his existence, then stopped and stared where he stared.

“You warned me,” Chris muttered. “You said he’d get too close . . .”

She tried to turn him so he wasn’t facing Matt, but failed; he could be immovable when he chose. So she just held him, though he didn’t hold her back, and they stared for another minute before she spoke.

“Chris, we can fix it. You can fix it.”

“How?” he whispered, not really even expecting an answer.

“What we talked about.”

“That was just grasping --”

“It could work. I know it could.”

“But the spell --”

“Will be in the Book of Shadows. I know it will. Wyatt may have taken over, and taken all our spells, but they had to go somewhere. If it was in my grimiore, it’ll be in his Book. We just have to get it away from him.”

Chris closed his eyes, but Bianca forced him to look at her. “Baby, you can change all this. You can change everything.”


A baby’s whimpers roused Chris from sleep then, and it took him a second to register that he wasn’t in the Underworld, about to agree to the plan that brought him to the past, but was rather sitting in a patch of sunlight in front of a kid who’d himself awoken in a fussy mood.

“What’s the matter with you?” Chris asked roughly, but Wyatt simply stared back at him with his lower lip puckering out even further, like he knew somehow that every heartache Chris had went back to him.

The phone rang and startled Wyatt into a somewhat more forceful cry, which Chris decided to ignore in favor of answering the call.

“Chris, is that you?” Phoebe asked from Hong Kong.

“Yeah.”

“Since when do you answer phones?”

“Since I became Piper’s errand boy.”

“Is she around?”

“She’s outside. I can get her.”

“No, that’s okay.” Phoebe paused for a moment. “So, how are you doing?”

“Fine.”

“Really.”

“I’m fine.”

Phoebe was silent again -- never a good sign.

“Listen, Chris, I’m just an advice columnist, I know, but I’ve read a lot about this stuff. And to be honest you’ve got me worried. Is that Wyatt crying?”

Chris paced into the living room to pick up one of his brother’s toys. “Yeah, he just woke up.”

“Is he wet or --”

“How should I know?” Chris danced the toy around in the air a couple of times to get Wyatt’s attention, then tossed it toward the shield when the attempt failed.

“See, that’s what I’m talking about. You bite my head off at a simple question, but you keep saying you’re fine.”

“I am.”

Phoebe groaned at the other end. “Listen, I know you’re grieving. I know what that’s like. There are stages everybody has to go through.” Chris pressed the bridge of his nose as Wyatt advanced to full-fledged wailing and Phoebe continued with her psychobabble. “You seem to be stuck between denial and anger. It’s nothing to be ashamed of if you need to get some help --”

“Then I’ll be sure to write you a letter.”

“Chris --”

“I’ll let Piper know you called,” he said over the noise, and then hung up on his aunt. He stood breathing heavily, as though the conversation had been an exertion, and longed for silence as he’d seldom longed for anything.

“Will you shut up!” he screamed at the baby and threw the phone so that it bounced off the force field.

“Hey, what’s going on in here!” Piper ran in from the courtyard and lifted Wyatt into her arms, her eyes alight with anger she generally reserved for demons. “You are never to yell at him again.”

“Then you tell me how to shut him up --”

“Did it ever occur to you that maybe he’s hungry, or thirsty? That maybe you could fix him a bottle?”

“Oh, yeah, and I’m supposed to get it through that stupid shield how, exactly?”

“You could have left it outside his playpen so he could orb it. You could have at least tried to do something productive instead of scaring him.”

“I didn’t come to the past to be your babysitter.”

“And I didn’t ask you to come to the past. For whatever reason, you did that on your own. And I’m sure we’d all be a lot happier if you hadn’t, but now we’re stuck with it. So deal.”

Piper took a deep breath to calm herself, having already said more than she meant to say. “Look, I know this is hard on you. I know it hurts, and I know that you might not have lost so much if you weren’t here protecting Wyatt. But you can’t take it all out on my son. It’s not his fault.”

Chris didn’t make a reply. He didn’t yell at her, or come back with a smart remark. He didn’t do anything Piper might have expected him to do before he orbed out. He just stared at her and laughed.

To be continued...

[anglomaltese]

Loving this fic...great update scifi, keep it coming!

[DrewFullerFan4Life]

WOW great story!!! Cannot wait till there is more.

[scifi]

The laughter that rose from Chris’s throat like a sob transformed into a low raging roar as he orbed into his P3 hideaway to slam his fist into his locker. Piper had no clue what she was talking about. She had the audacity to tell him to deal when he’d done nothing but deal since the minute he was born. And the vast majority of that dealing was because of the kid she swore was an innocent little angel. She had no idea.

He sat down on the couch with his head in his hands. Everything might have been Wyatt’s fault, but throwing a tantrum wouldn’t help anything. What Chris needed now was clear, rational thinking. He needed focus, something to wrap his mind around, a single, solitary thing to hone in on.

He reached into his pocket to pull out the ring that had not left his possession since he’d been in the past -- save for the brief time when Bianca held onto the sign of their love after he’d thrown it away. He swallowed the urge to berate himself yet again for ever doubting her. That wasn’t what the ring was for. “This will remind you of why we're doing this, what's waiting for you here,” she’d said. He knew very well what that was -- a life with her -- and what it would mean to achieve it -- a life without Wyatt.

But without Wyatt, would Chris even be holding this ring? He’d picked it out, after all, reading his brother’s taste perfectly. Chris huffed at the idea. He’d just have to pick out his own ring this time.

As Chris leaned back to stare more leisurely at the way the diamond captured the light, he couldn’t help but replay that day in his mind, the day Wyatt had orbed into the little Midwest jewelry shop Chris had chosen because it was so far from the violence of larger cities. He’d wanted Bianca’s ring to come from somewhere in the world that could still appear to be a decent place. But even here, admiration of Wyatt was accompanied by fear.

“What are you up to, little brother?” Wyatt had stepped up to the case he’d been examining, and everyone, including the salesman, backed away from them in awe. Wyatt glanced at the selection and smiled. “I think I know.”

“Is it a problem?”

Wyatt’s smile widened. “No, not at all. It’s just . . . weird. I never pegged you as the marrying type. Or her.”

Chris shrugged. “Things change.”

“Yeah.” Wyatt had a finger to his chin, contemplating the rings in the case. Deciding on one, he orbed it to himself and held it up to Chris. It was beautiful, garnet encircled with diamonds, but Chris shook his head.

“I want something . . . simple.” Oh, the weight that word carried. If only anything could be simple. “And she doesn’t like yellow gold.”

Wyatt orbed the ring back neatly into position and continued inspecting the choices. Chris pretended to do the same, but the process wasn’t going nearly as he’d imagined.

“I think it’s a good thing,” Wyatt said. “A perfect thing, really. I know she’d die for you, and you’d die for her, and if that’s not love, I don’t know what is.” Wyatt’s smile was gone, and Chris looked on at the strangeness of the scene before him. Could it be that Wyatt was actually serious, that he could actually know anything of love, even now?

Wyatt knelt down to get a closer look at something. “Would you die for me, Chris?”

Chris could only stare at him openmouthed. Though his brother had that imperturbably indifferent look on his face, as though he’d thrown the question out as part of a casual conversation, Chris had heard something like fear in his voice, fear like that of a child asking if he were loved -- fear that Chris would say no.

Wyatt orbed another ring out of the case and held it up for Chris to take. “What do you think of that one?”

Chris gazed at the ring in his hand, unadorned except for a solitary diamond. It would probably fit Bianca’s finger without even needing to be resized.

It’s good,” he managed.

“Good,” Wyatt said, then motioned the salesman over. “He’ll take this one.”

After the man took the ring into his shaking fingers, Chris turned to where Wyatt stood gazing absently -- or at least trying to give the appearance of absence -- at some necklaces. Chris hadn’t known why he had to say it, had cursed himself, even, for thinking it. After everything Wyatt had done, everything he had destroyed -- but it had come to Chris’s lips anyway, and what had bothered him most was that it was true. “Wyatt,” he’d called, and when his brother faced him, he’d answered the question Wyatt had feared. “I would.”

And so would Piper, he thought now in his room in her club. Of course she’d die for him; he was her son. So how could Chris have expected her not to retaliate on behalf of her child? She was only being a good mother. The best.

He blew out a breath. Against the grain though it was, he supposed he ought to apologize to her. It was the least he could do, given what he had planned for her baby. He rolled his eyes. Sure, an advance apology would do wonders for his conscience. Nevertheless, he orbed home to try to say he was sorry.

But he never made it to face his mother, for when he touched down in the foyer, he heard another voice coming from the living room -- his father’s voice. However much he wanted to make things right with Piper, he was sure Leo would try to continue their talk of the other night, and the last thing he was in the mood for was another lecture. So he flattened himself against the wall, settling for eavesdropping until Leo left again, as he undoubtedly would. He was good at that.

The beep of the phone shutting off alerted him that Piper must have been coming back.

“That was Phoebe,” she told her ex-husband, and Chris risked peeking into the doorway to watch her. “She wants me to send her the earrings Jason got her last month; he’s been asking about them.” She paused. “Do you think you could . . .”

Leo smiled from his seat on the floor and shifted Wyatt a bit on his knee. “Sure.” He waved a hand, and Chris could imagine the jewelry orbing from a box in the attic and into Phoebe’s pocket in Hong Kong.

“That’s a nifty little power you’ve picked up,” Piper said.

“Yeah,” Leo muttered and looked at the top of Wyatt’s head a bit guiltily, as though there had been some reproach in Piper’s statement. Knowing her, there probably had been.

The phone rang again, and Piper groaned. “That’s probably her calling to say she got them.” She left the room again, and Leo held a toy up for Wyatt to grab. The baby sneezed instead, and Leo frowned. With a surreptitious glance to make sure Piper was out of the room, he held a glowing hand up to his son’s head. “Shh,” he whispered. “Don’t tell Mommy.”

Piper returned in a few seconds. “I was right.” She sat down next to Leo and ran a hand over Wyatt’s hair. “We just have to live with the fact that your aunt’s neurotic. Hey, his fever’s down.” She took Wyatt into her arms and did a double check of his cheeks and forehead before looking at Leo. “See? If we just leave these things to Western medicine, he can live through a cold.”

“Okay, okay.” Leo grinned, and Chris was forced to grin with him. “Listen, I’d better be going.” He probably knew Piper would get suspicious if he gave her time to think about it.

“Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait. Before you go, I want to show you something.” Piper stood up and planted herself a few feet away with Wyatt. “Okay, you know how he’s been pulling himself up to stand in his playpen and at the coffee table?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, watch this.” She set Wyatt down on his feet and let his fingers curl around hers. “Show Daddy, Wyatt.” She prompted him ahead, and one of his baby feet kicked out in front of the other and came tentatively to the ground. Again he stepped, and again.

“Hey, buddy, you’re doing it!” Leo beamed and glanced up to Piper. “How long’s he been doing it?”

“A couple of days.” Piper’s own pride was clear on her face. “Let’s try this.” Ever so slowly, she eased her fingers away from Wyatt’s and he took one more step before he realized he had no support. His legs buckled, and he would have fallen onto his padded behind if Leo hadn’t scooped him up.

“That’s my boy.”

Chris couldn’t breathe. He could barely think. All he could do was turn away from his family, this tiny knot of happy normalcy that shook him so hard that his orbing came almost by instinct.

He stood back in his room at P3, staring around him at a complete loss for what he should do, until his door opened and Billy the bartender stopped short of entering.

“Chris, man, sorry. I didn’t see you come in.”

Chris mumbled something barely coherent in response and brushed past him in the direction of the men’s bathroom. A “Wet Floor” sign was set up just outside it, and so far the only staff he’d seen were Billy and a waitress named Tara, so he could be reasonably certain he’d be alone in there, standing before the farthest sink.

He splashed some cold water on his face and watched in the mirror as the droplets ran down his cheeks. He closed his eyes and saw Wyatt taking his first steps again, and he knew he had to get that image out of his head if he was ever going to be of use to his future. He tried to think of what he was saving by destroying Wyatt, the innocent lives he was preserving. But the laughter in Leo’s face was all he could see. Why should he give a flying flip about taking that joy away from his father? But then Leo would take Wyatt up in a hug and say “That’s my boy,” and Piper would look on that scene, that one brief instant when life seemed the way she’d always hoped it would. He couldn’t think of it. He had to think of something else. He cast about for anything to convince himself that it was worth it to wreck his parents’ lives. He needed a memory of the horrors Wyatt had forced on the world. He needed a reminder of what he would lose if that baby every grew up. He needed Bianca.

And at her name his mind took him back to their last night together, there in the basement, where he lay resting on his back, Bianca’s arm flung across his chest to hold him, her head leaning in the space between his chin and his shoulder. He’d closed his eyes and let his hand run over her shoulder and down her outstretched arm; it was cold, and he pulled the ragged old bedspread closer around them. They could both tell that the moon had risen higher in the sky, and the sounds of the museum’s operation had long since died out.

“It’s almost time,” Bianca whispered into his chest. He simply took her hand from his side and pressed it to his heart.

“I wish I could go with you,” she continued.

“I know.”

“I would go with you,” she said hurriedly, “But someone has to stay and --”

“Bianca, I know.” He felt a tear fall from her face onto his chest as he felt his own sting his eyes. “Let’s not talk about it now. Not yet.”

He felt her sigh against him, collecting herself, and he knew she would shed no more tears. He envied her.

“Tell me how it’ll be,” she said after a moment, “When everything changes.”

Just like her, to try to strengthen him with thoughts of what awaited them when he succeeded. Not if, but when. He smiled. “It’ll be like this. Us, together. Just not in a basement. Not hiding.”

“Well, maybe occasionally in a basement. It’s kind of kinky.”

He laughed and tried to think of what a normal life would be like. “Oh, God, and we’ll have bills, and jobs, and obnoxious bosses that we’ll come home and complain about over dinner.” She had raised herself on her elbows to watch him as he spoke, and he pushed her hair behind her ears. “But then we’ll make love and forget about all that stuff. And in the morning we’ll rush off with a danish and coffee to start the whole thing over again. And you’ll drop the kids off at school, and --”

“You want kids?”

He grinned mischievously. “A couple dozen, maybe.”

“Oh, so you’re going to have a harem, are you?”

“Not a bad idea.”

She thumped his earlobe, then kissed him and lay her head back on his chest. “I want two or three. With your eyes.”

“And your skin.” Chris kissed the palm of her hand.

After another moment, Bianca spoke again. “I want them to orb.”

She hadn’t said, “And not shimmer,” but she didn’t have to. Chris took her meaning plainly.

“Hey,” he stroked her hair until she faced him again. “They’ll be whatever you want them to be.” He leaned up to kiss her. “And you’ll be whatever you want to be.” He kissed her again, and then let that mischievous grin sneak back onto his face. “And I’ll be whatever you want me to be.”

The smile and kiss she’d given him in exchange for his joke served now only to tear at his soul as he stood before the bathroom sink, gripping its sides like it was the edge of a cliff and staring at the stranger he saw in the mirror. That’s what he would be to Bianca, this man who was so intent on killing a baby, his own brother. She wouldn’t love him; she wouldn’t even know him. He wanted her there beside him to take his face in her hands and tell him he wasn’t so far gone, that she understood him, that she’d help him. But she wasn’t there. She was dead in his future, and here she was only a little girl playing with her dolls, just as Wyatt was playing with his blocks. His Bianca was dead. Oh, God. She was dead.

He sank then to his knees, and he wept. He wept for Wyatt, and for Bianca, and for the man he’d let himself become -- a man lost, and scared, and alone, and facing a steep climb up a road he didn’t know if he had the strength to travel, the road back into the light.


To be continued...

[DrewFullerFan4Life]

Gosh this story is so emotional

I love it ! ;D

The way your getting Chris's side of the story is amazing he's so sad and heart broken with the family moment with Leo,Piper and Wyatt I was like o my god poor Chris i felt such pitty for him. It's funny how you get thrown into these emotions on these characters and feel things for them lol even though they are such characters written on paper... or on the computer lol.

Excellent chapter though i will be watchin for your next chapter! this is such a good story

[scifi]

Chris was not so much a fool as to go straight to Mira with his eyes bloodshot from tears and his voice hoarse from sobs. Instead, he waited until morning when the only sign of his crying himself to sleep was a bit of sinus trouble. His decision had to appear to her as a rational change of mind rather than an emotional change of heart, for to a demon with little understanding of real feelings, remorse would mean weakness, an assumption that could very get him and his family killed.

Dispassionate as his voice and demeanor were, however, he wasted no time getting to the point when he orbed to Mira’s hideaway, where she was addressing a group of her minions.

“Deal’s off, Mira,” he called to her back.

She turned to face him. “I beg your pardon.”

“You’re off the hook. I don’t need you to go after Wyatt anymore. There are other ways to accomplish my goals.”

“Which are?”

“None of your business.”

“Chris,” she drew his name out in a pout. “You held up your end of the bargain so marvelously. Balchus is gone, and I’m free to go where I please --”

“Except around the Halliwells.”

“But after such a fine piece of work, I feel somehow obliged to repay you.” She smiled.

“You can repay me by staying away from that family. Do whatever you want, just not around me, and not around them. As far as they’re concerned, you don’t exist, and I’m willing to keep it that way. You live your life, and we’ll live ours.” He paused for effect. “But if you come near any of them, I’ll vanquish you and all your little boyfriends myself.” He returned Mira’s smirk and drove the expression from her face.

“Very well,” she said after a long moment. It was a vague and noncommittal answer, but try as he might to stare something more concrete out of her, Mira added nothing. Chris nodded, more to himself than to her, and, knowing what he’d have to do, orbed out.

Perhaps, since he knew what a hazy answer from Mira might mean, it wasn’t such a bad thing that Chris didn’t hear the exchange that followed his departure.

“What was that about?” Petir asked on behalf of the other demons and darklighters.

A smile came back to Mira’s face as she looked fondly in the direction Chris’s orb cloud had taken. “That, gentlemen, was the last piece falling into place.”


*** *** *** ***


“Did somebody vanquish a skunk in my house? What is that smell?” Piper waved her hands in front of her face as she plodded up the attic stairs, and then stopped short once she was through the door. Chris was there at the potion table, staring up at her with that look on his face -- the one that, for whatever reason, always reminded her of the time Phoebe was caught trying to steal Grams’s car. “What are you doing?”

“It’s nothing. It’s just… It’s just in case. Just something I have to take care of. But I got it,” he interrupted her before she could get a word out. “I can handle it.”

“With our supplies,” she said flatly and walked over to survey the assortment of ingredients he had spread out on the table, and the bubbling orange stew he had cooking in the cauldron. A slip of paper lay on the table, weighed down by a bottle of rose oil. She picked it up and turned to keep it out of Chris’s reach when he went for it. “What’s this?” She read through the words, then narrowed her eyes. “A vanquishing spell? Who are we after this time?”

“We’re not after anybody. I am.” He tried for the paper again, but she held it away from him.

“Where did you get this? It’s not in the Book--”

“It’s out of my head.”

“You made this up?” She’d never really thought of him as the poetic type.

“No, somebody else did. But I know it.” He finally succeeded in snatching the spell from her and stuffed it into his pocket.

“Chris, come on. This is getting ridiculous. You can’t just come in here and whip up potions and go vanquish the world’s demons all by yourself.”

“Look who’s talking.” He had that maddening lecturer look on his face now. “Piper, I’m a witch. Vanquishing is what witches do.”

“No. As long as your under my roof, you’re a whitelighter, and vanquishing’s what I do.”

Chris sighed as he filled a vial with the potion. “I really don’t want to argue with you again.”

“Good. Then it’s settled.” She could tell by the way he jammed the cork into the vial that his patience was running thin. That was just as well, because so was hers.

“Piper, I don’t have time to discuss the finer points of what exactly I am. I have to do this alone, and then when I’m done, I’ll go back to being a good little whitelighter --” Piper snorted at that -- “Whatever, a lousy whitelighter, and I’ll let you do all the witch stuff. But for now, I think you should just stay out of it, let me handle it, and --”

A piercing cry from downstairs cut him off, and Piper felt rather than saw Chris pass her to bound down the stairs, propelling off the walls in places to gain momentum. Half a second behind him, she thought nothing of jumping the last two steps, nor of the hallway they had to pass through. Her bedroom and Wyatt’s nursery were the only things in her view, and as she burst in through the doorway, she took in the scene in less than a heartbeat. Wyatt was still safe, his protective shield blurring his scrunched and tearstained face, but a demon stood before the crib.

“Look out!” she yelled to Chris as the demon sent an energy ball toward him, and, ramming her shoulder into his side, she took him down with her out of its path. In the next instant, her hands shot up in the demon’s direction, and it blew apart in a nice, fiery explosion.

“Ah, geez,” she groaned as a pain went through her shoulder and made her catch her breath. She held her hand over the pain and looked over at the young whitelighter on the floor beside her. “You okay?”

“Yeah. You?” He stood and reached out to pull her up.

“Been better.” She gave him the hand of her good arm, and once on her feet, put the hand back to her shoulder. He owed her one big time. She glanced to where Wyatt was still crying inside his shield, and to where the demon had stood. “So much for handling things by yourself.” She moved past him to lift her baby from the crib, and when she turned again to face Chris, she watched him blow out his breath and gaze down to the potion vial in his hand.

“Chris?”

His grip on the vial tightened, and with a last look at her, he orbed.

To be continued...

[scifi]

“Leo!”

He came as soon as he heard her -- it was an in-crisis call, mixed with hints of an angry call, neither of which was it ever a good idea to ignore.

“You’re an Elder. Can you track Chris in the Underworld?” Piper asked without preamble.

Leo frowned his confusion, but answered anyway. “I can trace him up to a point, but if he’s in the Underworld, I can only get in the general vicinity. It gets fuzzy down there, you know.”

“Fine. Send me after him.”

“Piper, what’s going --”

“Just do it. And stay here with Wyatt.” She passed their son to him, then stood back and waved her hands in that impatient get-on-with-it way she did so often.

Leo sighed and did as she asked, then stared down at his son as she disappeared in orbs, wishing that Wyatt could speak and tell him why exactly he’d had to send one of his two favorite people after one of his least favorite.

*** *** *** ***

Mira had switched locations. Chris thought he might know why -- she might have been counting on his coming after her if her demon failed in its mission. Which of the three had been the target, though? She surely must have known that puny underling couldn’t have gotten through Wyatt’s shield. It must have been Piper or himself, then. She must have wanted to pick off the grown-ups so she’d have a clear shot at the baby.

It didn’t matter now, in any case, he figured. She may have expected him back at her old hideout, but she couldn’t have realized hat he’d know about this other favorite haunt. After all, the first time he’d been here was over twenty years in the future. His fingers slid along the damp surface of the tunnel wall, and up ahead, he could hear the sounds of the demons congregated in the cavern Mira would one day use as her testing ground. The dank smell and twisting passageways were the same in this time, and though she was not here, Chris could almost feel Bianca beside him again, briefing him on what he should expect. There was something in those cavern walls to prevent orbing and shimmering, so he’d have to make the first shot count. If he couldn’t vanquish Mira first thing, and with her all her minions bound to her fate by blood, there would be no escape for him. They surely would block the doorway out of the cavern, and the sheer numbers Mira had collected, even in this time, would be too many for him to handle. So none of that calling for Mira to face him that might have satisfied some instinct for fair play. “Take the shot however you can get it,” Bianca had once taught him, “Because if you don’t, they most certainly will.”

One last turn before the cavern came into view, and Chris stood in the alcove forcing his breaths to come normally. This would work. He could do this on his own. He was strong enough; Wyatt had said so himself when bragging about his spell-writing and potion-making abilities. He’d been going through a nostalgic phase, there toward the end, when he vanquished demons the old-fashioned way instead of merely willing their deaths. When Mira had, in her arrogance, bypassed Chris’s plan of using her as a distraction and instead tried to get to Wyatt in her own way, his older brother had been amused at her gall. “I mean, really, with a good enough spell and potion, anybody could have taken her,” he’d said after destroying her faction with a spell steeped in his own distinctive brand of hubris.

Well, Chris had that good enough spell and potion now, one of the few things he could thank Wyatt for. It was now or never.

He stepped around the turn and walked inside the cavern. There she was, standing with her back toward the entrance. He threw the potion as the other demons began looking in his direction. The vial smashed on the floor, creating a puddle before her and splashing droplets onto her feet and legs.

“For a simple demon, a simple spell
Will certainly a vanquish bring:
You and all who with you dwell
Now take the shape of nothing.”

He stood waiting for every single demon in the place to go up in flames, or poof out of existence, or at least melt like the Wicked Witch of the West in a rainstorm. But they merely started laughing. Mira turned to face him, that horrible smirk playing at the corners of her lips.

“That’s what I love about your kind.” Her voice came not from the demon in front of him, but from behind him. “You always have to do the right thing.”

Chris stared from the woman blocking the doorway to the woman surrounded by minions -- this one lost the smile, and the hair, and the curves, and shifted its shape to become a stumpy little toad of a demon. Okay, then, he’d just have to make the second shot count. He motioned toward the puddle at the demon’s feet and directed it at the real target. The potion hit its mark, staining Mira’s robes a sickly orange, but even as he opened his mouth to repeat the spell, the toady jumped on his back with his thick hands pressing at Chris’s throat to block his voice and most of his air. A moment more, and two other demons had grabbed his arms and forced him to his knees. Mira looked down upon him.

“I should have them rifle your pockets to cover my dry cleaning, but I suppose, under the circumstances, I can be forgiving.” She knelt down to eye level. “You know, I would have hoped you’d know me better, coming from the future and all. I certainly know you well enough. I took you for a eunuch when we first met, though this daring little escapade goes a long way in disproving that notion, but I never for a moment believed you have the, ah,” she paused, as though searching for a way to phrase it that would not demean her, “Equipment necessary for killing a child. It’s just so disappointing that you never came to know me better. I suppose it never occurred to you that I might figure that you’d back out of the deal, that you would feel obliged to set things right…that if you knew me in the future, you would probably know about this place? It never crossed your mind that I might be waiting for you to come here after my demon drew you out? Rather insulting, don’t you think? But it all works out for the best in the end.”

She smiled and motioned for a darklighter to come to her side. She looked Chris over, almost like an accomplished tailor sizing someone up for a suit. “I wish you’d worn a different shirt; that color is simply atrocious on you.” She waved a hand toward the darklighter, and, in an instant, Chris saw a copy of himself standing there instead. He felt dizzy at the lack of air, but that was nothing compared to the sickness that grew as he had a dm realization of Mira’s plan. She confirmed his suspicion when she waved her hand again and bruises appeared on the imposter’s face and blood seemed to soak through his shirt. Chris tore his eyes away from the darklighter and glared at Mira.

“I had to throw in a little artistic flair.” She grinned. “Now all we need is --”

“Chris!” Piper’s voice carried through the tunnel and echoed in the cavern.

“I just love these people!” Mira effused, then transformed to take the shape of the eldest Charmed One. Chris would never have dreamed that his mother’s smile could make him want to vomit, or that her hand caressing his cheek could make him want to scream.

“Have fun, boys,” Mira said in Piper’s voice to the horde that surrounded them as her hand left the trail it had made on Chris’s face. “But take your time with him. I have a feeling that he’s very much a masochist.”

The last Chris saw of the disguised pair was Mira’s wave to him from just outside the entrance, and then their black orbs were obscured by a demon’s fist colliding with his nose, and all he could register was the taste of blood spilling back into his throat.

*** *** *** ***

Wyatt had refused to stop crying since Piper had left to bail Chris out of whatever trouble he was in this time, and Leo’s back was starting to ache after having packed the child through the house, bouncing occasionally for variation. He kept forgetting how heavy his son was growing to be.

“Okay, you want to fly?” Leo asked as he lay Wyatt belly-down in his arms and rocked him out into the air in approximation of an airplane. Wyatt’s cries were interrupted by a wild giggle, but started up again just as soon as he stopped the motion.

“Leo, where are you?” came Piper’s voice.

“In the conservatory,” he called and placed Wyatt in his playpen. As soon as his ex-wife entered the room with Chris leaning on her shoulder, he knew the young whitelighter had, yet again, been somewhere he shouldn’t have been. His jaw had a large purple bruise beginning, and there was blood on his shirt. Whatever demon Piper had just vanquished -- and she must have vanquished one, since her pants were stained orange down one leg -- must have had a field day with Chris before she’d arrived.

Leo started toward the pair, but even as he took the first step, Wyatt’s shield came up to surround the playpen and take in his father.

“What is it?” he asked his son instinctively.

“Must just be Chris,” Piper said urgently as the kid seemed to collapse further against her. “Hurry up, Leo. He’s getting heavy.”

“Come on, buddy. Let Daddy out to help Chris,” Leo pleaded with Wyatt, but the baby‘s cries only grew louder.

*** *** *** ***

Chris wondered what it was inside that refused to let him fall into a painless unconsciousness. He’d tried until the muscles in his arms ached to lift a hand from the ground to throw the mob off him, but the two burly gorillas were stepping on his hands to keep them down. His eyes had swollen shut early on, so all he could do was writhe his torso one way or another and guess from what direction the next attack would come as the demons took turns hitting, kicking, even occasionally biting him in their bloodlust. Why couldn’t he just die?

Suddenly a voice cried out in the cavern and reminded him why.

“Hey!” Piper called and threw up one hand to freeze whatever would freeze and used the other hand to blow up whatever wouldn’t. There were a couple of the brutes who turned away from the limp whitelighter to take on the witch, and Piper dodged their fireballs even as she directed her explosive power toward the owners. The room now sufficiently still, she ran to where the frozen demons stood in positions of abuse or of cheering and attempted to weave her way through them. They were so thick, however, that she gave it up as a lost cause.

“Hold still, Chris,” she called to him, and flicked her hands to blow up a few of the impediments. She had the decency to limit the destruction only to clearing a path to her whitelighter and eliminating those who actually were making contact with his body.

“Hey,” she said as she knelt at his side. She winced for him when he turned his head toward the sound of her voice and tried unsuccessfully to open his bloody eyes. But she forced her voice to sound more cavalier than she felt. “What have I told you about --”

“Wyatt.” His voice came out in a shadow of a whisper.

“What?”

“Save Wyatt.”

Piper’s breath caught in her throat as the import of what he was saying sank in. She found her voice again only when she saw he was trying desperately to scoot himself on his back toward the doorway. “Can you orb?”

*** *** *** ***

“Leo!”

There was something seriously wrong about this situation -- Wyatt should have known that while his parents were together in the same room, no harm could come to him. What he wouldn’t have given to be able to know what had spooked Wyatt so that he would not bring his shield down. But, for now, Leo simply frowned at how Piper was bowing under the weight of her whitelighter and orbed out of the shield when he could get through in no other way.

When he rematerialized outside the shield, however, Chris was no longer leaning on Piper. He was standing tall, a darklighter bow freshly conjured in his hand.

Leo didn’t have time to think as the arrow sped toward him. But he did register that it never hit him, but instead froze in midair. An instant later, he saw Chris explode, and Piper stare at a point somewhere behind Leo in disbelief.

“For a simple demon, a simple spell
Will certainly a vanquish bring:
You and all who with you dwell
Now take the shape of nothing.”

It was said in Piper’s voice, but how could that be when she was standing horrorstruck in front of him? He turned around to see another version of his ex-wife kneeling beside another version of Chris, and gripping a slip of paper as though she’d just read from it. The first Piper screamed then, and he saw the splash of orange on her pants eat its way through her body until there was nothing left except a pile of ash.

He stared from the pile to the second Piper, who stood and strode toward Wyatt’s playpen. The shield came down, and Wyatt reached for her.

“My baby knows a cheap knock-off when he sees one,” she said as she picked him up to shush his crying. She directed Leo’s attention back to Chris, lying prone and bleeding near the breakfast table. “I’ve got this kid; you get that one.”


To be concluded...

[scifi]

Thank you to all who have read and responded to this story. It's my last Charmed fic, so I've really appreciated it.



Piper and Leo had waited for an explanation of the day’s events when he’d come to consciousness under Leo’s healing influence. But he’d merely stood a little warily and asked when the room would stop spinning. They’d let him sit down, and Piper had lectured him -- just like when he was a kid, he couldn’t help thinking -- and concluded again that she’d do the vanquishing around here, and if he didn’t like it, tough.

He’d sat there, silent, nodding in the right places, but thinking more about what had nearly happened than what she was saying. She’d had to come after him. Leo had nearly been shot. Wyatt had nearly . . .

“Now, Chris,” Piper had sighed and changed her tone at the end of her lecture, bringing his attention back to her words. “I know that I don’t say what I should sometimes about you being here for Wyatt and everything you’ve given up.” She’d paused, as though making a real effort. “But I want you to know that I really do appreci--”

“Don’t thank me,” he’d interrupted bitterly, and he’d been able to see in his parents’ struck faces that they’d taken it wrong, that they thought he was mad at them, or maybe that he was feeling sorry for himself. And maybe they were right about that last part, when he thought about it; he hadn’t known. But he did know that he’d never again be able to accept their thanks, at least not for trying to avert a disaster he’d caused himself.

So another sunset and sunrise had passed, another day on his pocket calendar had been crossed off, and now Chris sat at the bottom of the attic stairs, his elbows bent and jutting into his knees, his fingers interlaced, and his thumbs pressed above his eyelids to nurse a headache like those he’d carried nearly every day for years. Another day, another headache. He wondered if the time would ever come when he wouldn’t wake with the vague expectation that, before the day was out, the dull throb would creep upon him.

He looked up at the sound of a vacuum starting downstairs. It was that day of the week again for his mom to pore over every flooring surface in the house. The clean freak. He gave a slight chuckle at her habits and caught himself at the stitch in his side. His ribs still felt a bit bruised, and he guessed that perhaps Leo had held back a little on his healing the day before, just enough to teach Chris a lesson about doing stupid things.

He stared at his hands. If Leo had had an inkling of how truly stupid Chris had been, he might not have healed him at all.

Chris sighed and forced himself to stand then, and moved into the hall to stare in the direction of the nursery. He leaned against a wall, his hands in his pockets, and it occurred to him how lucky it was that the little guy was still innocent enough to fear anything outside the safety of his family’s arms. Nothing had ever happened to make him realize that they wouldn’t always be there, that there would ever come a time when he couldn’t just barricade himself and wait for Mommy or Daddy to come help him. How Chris wished he could have that kind of innocence back again.

But, whatever the future held, Chris knew that his parents had been there this time to help their son -- both their sons. And that was something. One might have deserved the help, and one might have not, and one was their darling baby, and the other was a nuisance, but when it came down to the essentials, Piper and Leo hadn’t made a distinction. They’d saved both their sons, whether they realized it or not. At least for now.

And maybe, just maybe -- but no, he couldn’t get his hopes up. Still, with Mira and her followers vanquished, they wouldn’t be around in twenty-odd years for Chris to approach for an alliance. She wouldn’t be around to take Matthew Pike’s mind and soul, and Chris wouldn’t be in a position to kill his friend. But then, something else must have happened to convince him to try Bianca’s plan of a surgical strike in the past, right? Though, if it had, wouldn’t he know about it? Or if the whole chain of events was missing a link in one place or another, could he be the same guy who stepped through the portal? How did he even still exist after such an event had changed? From the moment he’d arrived, his very presence in the past had probably thrown the timeline irrevocably in a different direction. He didn’t know why he didn’t just cease to exist at any given moment, but he decided not to think about it just now. After all, he already had the day’s headache.

But he did allow himself the rush of hope that if Matthew could somehow have been saved, then so could Bianca. And so could Wyatt.

He approached the nursery door cautiously in case his brother was asleep; Piper had once said in passing that the sound of a vacuum would put Wyatt out faster than anything. The child was, indeed, lying down in his playpen, his blanket pulled up so that one corner joined his thumb in his mouth. He wasn’t yet asleep, however, and he eyed Chris as the man stood in the doorway. Chris couldn’t meet his eyes just yet, and glanced to the shelf on the wall beside him. He picked up the nearest of the stuffed animals arranged in a row there, a teddy bear, and had the fleeting memory of having a noisy bout of tug-of-war over it with Wyatt on the other end. Piper had come in on their yelling, taken pity on her younger son, and let him take the bear for a while. If he remembered correctly, he’d lost interest in the ratty old thing after only a few minutes and hadn’t complained when Wyatt had come through the house later hugging it to himself like he’d never again let it go. Chris flicked the bear’s ears back and saw the beginnings of that rattiness -- some rough patches made while Wyatt was teething. It brought a smile to his face, and the threat of a couple of tears at the thought of how close he’d come to destroying that chance to fight with his brother over a toy.

His eyes fell again to Wyatt, who had not stopped watching Chris for a moment. One further step into the room was all Chris had to take for the blue barrier to once again surround the playpen. But Chris merely nodded at the distrust. “Fair enough.”

He squatted on his haunches just outside the shield and stared again, first at the bear in his hands, and then longer at his brother. And in his mind, Bianca came to him, not as she had been here in the past, cold and single-minded and fighting with herself and with the choices she’d made, and not as he had known her in the future, loving and devoted but with her goodness always felt in her mind as a poor compensation for the evil she’d done. He saw her instead as she’d dreamed she could be, good not for his sake, but for the sake of being good itself, and happy, and holding to him with a fierceness that had never known a violent outlet. He imagined Wyatt then, tall and strong, using his powers to help people, not to control them, and laughing at a joke Chris had made, or crying because he’d lost an Innocent -- feeling any emotion that had not been twisted into a need to possess anyone or anything on his own terms. He imagined hugging his brother without a façade and without any fear that Wyatt would see through it. And as the two images blurred into each other, Chris knew that he had choices, but that he would never again try to choose between his loves. Saving Wyatt and saving Bianca were inextricably bound together; he would save the future only if he saved Wyatt. This was the choice he was making.

And so he met the baby’s eyes at last. “I’m so sorry.” He swallowed and tried to force the lump out of his throat. Still Wyatt simply studied him.

“I’ll find it,” Chris said after a long moment. “Whatever’s coming after you, I’ll find it.” The child took his thumb from his mouth and continued staring as a couple of tears finally spilled from the man’s eyes. “But if it finds us first -- you gotta help me, man. You gotta fight it.” Chris shook his head as though to impress upon Wyatt the importance of his part in saving the future. “Please, God, you gotta fight it.”

Chris wiped his eyes and nose with one hand, and, before standing to leave, placed the bear on the floor in Wyatt’s view: a poor peace offering, he knew, but it was all he had to give.

For several minutes after Chris left the nursery, Wyatt sucked on his thumb and watched the teddy bear through his shield; anything from Chris had the potential to hurt him. But, finally, he reached his hand toward it, and the toy promptly orbed inside the playpen, where Wyatt snuggled against it and fell asleep.

The End

[anglomaltese]

Brilliant Scifi, great fanfic, nicely wrapped to continue into the actual events of the season Loved all the Chris/Piper interaction! Shame you couldn't have continued and finished the season for us!