A Normal Life

[scifi]

Other stories:

In the "original" timeline:
The Witch and the Assassin thecharmedcafe.proboards40.com/index.cgi?board=FanFictions&action=display&thread=1106335309

"The Ties That Bind" thecharmedcafe.proboards40.com/index.cgi?board=FanFictions&action=display&thread=1106515210

"So Far Down" thecharmedcafe.proboards40.com/index.cgi?board=FanFictions&action=display&thread=1106517821



I wrote this story in late March 2004 when, in my naiveté, I assumed the show would keep a popular character in one of the best storylines in ages around for quite a while instead of unceremoniously dropping both. Nevertheless, I always knew Chris would have to leave eventually, and this is the way I envisioned it.


Disclaimer: I don’t own anything Charmed.


Basic Premise: What happens when Chris successfully completes his mission.

Background: It had been a nightmarish year for the Halliwells, and we enter this story at the tail end of a battle with the Big Bad of all big bads, whoever that may be; it‘s the reader‘s choice. In the course of the battle, the girls and Leo had been tossed around the attic and, though conscious, were essentially out of commission. Only Chris stood between Big Bad and the two children, Wyatt and baby Chris. It was a completely unequal match-up; Chris should have been dead from the beginning of the fight. But there was something about him that Big Bad couldn’t defeat -- his heart. Big Bad was somehow vanquished (and if you like, baby Wyatt may have helped), but, ultimately, that was not the most important event of the day. Through this ordeal, Wyatt, even at this young age, learned a lesson: he had been instilled with the notion that power was not the most important thing in the world -- it was the love of family. And it was simply that lesson which made all the difference . . .



Piper watched as Chris collapsed to his knees in front of the babies. His breathing was ragged; she could hear the rattle in his lungs from across the room. He leaned forward to rest his weight on his hands, so that Piper got a brief impression of his younger self trying to crawl.

"Leo!" She motioned frantically for him to heal their son.

Leo rushed to his side as quickly as he could, considering he was still shaking off the effects of the battle.

"He'll be okay," Phoebe said as she limped across the attic to Piper.

Paige lay flat on her back a couple of feet away by the remains of the old sofa, not daring to move lest in doing so she should find that she had yet another broken bone.

"Yep, he's always okay," she forced out a sentence. "Hurry up Leo; share the wealth over here."

Piper ignored Paige's brave attempt at levity. She ignored the pain radiating through her body from her broken leg. She ignored everything in the room and stared at Chris as if her life depended on it. Without knowing why, she felt suddenly on the verge of panic.

But then Chris brought his eyes up off the floor below him and returned her gaze. Piper could see no fear in him, and as inexplicably as her panic had begun, it faded. She watched Chris's face, the cuts and bruises vanishing from it like they had never existed. Illuminated by the glow of his father's hand, Chris smiled at her, and she understood.

Just like that, he was gone.

Leo fell back from the sudden emptiness beneath his hands. He moved again only after he noticed Piper struggling unsuccessfully to get up, and his healing instincts took over.

Her leg repaired, Piper walked over to the spot where Chris had been while Leo moved on to heal Paige. She stood attentively, as if trying to memorize his exact position, his exact features, so as never to lose them.

Phoebe was the first to find her voice. "What just happened?"

Piper didn't answer, but just looked down at her babies sitting, ironically enough, right beside the Book of Shadows, which had fallen to the floor during the fight. Wyatt's shield was still up, enveloping him and his little brother, and he was holding onto Chris like the one-year-old was a favorite doll.

"Piper," Phoebe was saying. "People don't just glow orange and vanish."

"He did it," Piper said softly. She kneeled down and held her arms out to her children. Wyatt's shield came down, and she pulled the boys in close. "It's over."

Piper squeezed them both, resting her cheek in the fine, baby-soft hair of little Chris's head, and wept.

[scifi]

Days passed in eerie quiet. Piper didn’t confine herself to her room or anything, nor did she cry when she and Leo cleared Chris’s possessions out of the office at P3. Nevertheless, Phoebe and Paige walked softly around her, for the pain of mother-loss hung in the air. However strange it had felt to care for a grown man who shared everything from his name to his birthmarks with a baby barely able to walk, he was still her son.

At least Leo showed his sorrow. Out of all the family, he had been the hardest on Chris when they’d first known him. And when Leo had finally learned the truth, that this brash young whitelighter whom he had beaten both physically and emotionally -- that Chris was his son born out of the undeniability of his love for Piper -- he had struggled with the greatest difficulty of first breaking through his own dislike of Chris’s reckless nature, and second, breaking through Chris’s distrust and resentment of the father Leo had never had the chance to be. And now to lose him, just as Leo had proven he was not the man Chris had learned to hate in the future -- it was too much. Phoebe and Paige found him on the couch a couple of nights after Chris vanished, fingering a Valkyrie pendant in one hand and shielding his tears with the other. They sat on either side of him and held him like he was an extension of Piper.

“I’ve got him! I’ve got him!” Phoebe called one night while running up the stairs at the sound of Chris’s frightened crying.

“No, I’ve got him!” Paige said as she pushed her way past her sister.

But when they reached the nursery, the crying had stopped because Piper had already picked him up and was coming out into the hall.

“I’ve got him,” she said, and walked calmly back to her bedroom. “You’re all right. Did you have a bad dream?” She pushed the door almost closed.

“Okay, now that’s not right,” Phoebe said.

“Tell me about it.”<br>
Phoebe pulled her sister in to the empty nursery. “I can’t hold him for more than ten minutes without tearing up, and she’s acting like nothing happened. There is some major repression going on here.”<br>
“What do you suggest we do?” Paige asked. “Go in there and say, ‘Hey, Piper, we think you should cry more?’”

“Well, we gotta do something.” She grabbed Paige’s hand. “Come on.”<br>
Phoebe was about to knock on Piper’s door when they heard their big sister’s voice from inside. “Come in.”<br>
The room was dark except for the light from Piper’s bedside lamp, and the bed was full. Leo was leaning back against the headboard, and Piper had nestled her head into the hollow of his shoulder. She held Chris to her chest, where her gentle strokes along his back had already put him well on his way back to sleep. Even Wyatt had found a spot down around Leo’s leg, his baby snores muffled somewhat in the folds of his dad’s pajama bottoms.

“How did you know we were going to knock?” Paige asked.

Piper pointed to the receiver on her nightstand. “The baby monitor’s still on.”<br>
Phoebe and Paige glanced at each other, embarrassed.

“It’s okay. I know how you guys worry.”<br>
“It’s just -- It’s not healthy to keep stuff in,” Phoebe said as she and Paige pulled up chairs to sit beside Piper.

“Yeah,” Paige agreed. “I mean, I know it’s not like we’re never going to see him again and all, but --”<br>
“We won’t see him again,” Piper interrupted.

“What?”<br>
Leo sighed and pushed a strand of hair behind Piper’s ear. “The Chris we knew grew up in a different world,” he said. “Different experiences shaped him.”<br>
“When the baby grows up, he may look like him and sound like him, but he won’t be him,” Piper finished.

It took a minute for her sisters to absorb this information. Finally, Phoebe spoke.

“He should know what the other Chris did -- what he would have been capable of --”<br>
“Neither of my boys is to hear one word about it,” Piper said firmly. “Can you imaging growing up knowing that in some alternate timeline you were supposed to be evil? Or that you basically gave your life to save your brother? They don’t need that hanging over their heads.” Piper made an attempt at a smile. “With a family like us, they’ll already be screwed-up enough, thank you very much.”<br>
When her sisters didn’t buy her sarcasm, Piper sighed. “I want him back; you don‘t know how much.” She shook her head and wiped away the beginnings of some tears. “But I would never wish that life on him.” She nodded to the child in her arms. Leo kissed her hair as she tried to swallow the knot in her throat. “I just . . . It’s just going to take some time,” she whispered.

[scifi]

A baby’s cry filled the bedroom in his little apartment, and Chris opened his eyes to a clock which told him it was only a little after two in the morning. He scrunched his eyes and then opened them extra wide to wake himself up good. “I’m coming,” he muttered as he got out of bed and pulled on a t-shirt.

He reached down into the bassinet at the foot of the bed and lifted the newborn out. “You’re all right,” he whispered. “You hungry?”<br>
He tiptoed to the fridge and pulled out a bottle prepared the night before. In the few minutes it took the bottle to warm, he rested the baby’s head on his shoulder and stepped around the table a few times in an exaggerated dance, a move that had worked before in quieting the cries. But it wasn’t working now, and Chris was getting desperate. “Nora, Nora, you’re the one I adore-a,” he crooned softly. He sang and danced until a nipple in the baby’s mouth stopped what his questionable talents could not.

Careful to keep his daughter’s head propped up at a correct angle, Chris sat down slowly on the couch and, holding onto the bottle with three fingers and a thumb, used the magic in his pinkie to flip on the TV. The holographic image flickered into an old-fashioned Western shoot-out.

“Cartoons,” he commanded, and the image changed to one of an animated circus bear balancing on a ball.

“Look at the bear,” he whispered. “Do you see the bear?”<br>
He felt a hand run over the back of his head, and he glanced behind to see his wife standing bleary-eyed.

“So now you get up,” he teased.

Bianca plopped down beside him and covered his and her legs with a throw she’d pulled from the back of a chair. “I have complete confidence in your abilities.” She snuggled against his arm and looked down at Nora. “Raise the bottle a little; you don’t want her to swallow air.”<br>
Chris did so, and Nora raised one hand to the bottle as though guiding it herself. Chris smiled, but let it fall a bit as he watched Bianca run her finger meditatively over the tiny bird-shaped birthmark on Nora’s wrist.

“Are you worried about the wiccaning tomorrow?” he asked.

“No. I cut all ties with my family. They won’t try anything.”<br>
“Then what is it?”<br>
“I don’t know. I just got this odd feeling all of a sudden; it made me sad, like it might feel if we never had all this.”<br>
“That’s funny. I just had this feeling like we’d done something really, really good.”<br>
Bianca played with a tuft of Nora’s dark hair. “We did.”<br>
“Yeah.” Chris watched his little girl close her eyes and suck softly on the bottle. “We did that.”

[scifi]

The Manor was alive with sound when Chris orbed into the foyer with Bianca and the baby shimmering in close behind. From the living room, he heard his uncles cheering on their football team on the TV, and then even their masculine yells were outdone by the unmistakable victory scream of his cousin Kit, whose ordinarily bookish demeanor gave way to a competitive fervor when football was involved -- so much so that she had been know to “accidentally” levitate slightly when jumping over opponents who tried to tackle her. At least her footwork, as the scouts called it, had earned her a college scholarship for next year.

Bianca elbowed his attention and pointed at the stairs just past the first landing. There, partially hidden by the railing, Phoebe’s younger daughter, Cassie, was with a boy, doing things that they shouldn’t have been doing at a wiccaning. Chris saw her stiffen suddenly in the middle of a lip-lock, and then pull out of the kiss in a panic. “My mom’s coming!” she whispered. “Go!”<br>
The boy disappeared in a golden glow, and they realized Cassie had been making out with his astral projection.

“I saw that, young lady!” Phoebe called from another room. She strode through the dining room with her hands on her hips and stopped at the foot of the stairs, where Cassie stood with an innocent look on her face. Phoebe narrowed her eyes. “Premonition of your premonition -- I see all and know all,” she said mystically. “Sit in there with your father and sister, and don’t leave that couch until I tell you.”<br>
Phoebe’s expression changed when she turned to her nephew and his wife. “Ooh, you put her in what I bought!” She reached to take Nora without even asking. “I can’t wait to rub Paige’s nose in it.” She cradled the baby in one arm and played with the fringe of the garishly bright green and orange dress. “She said the colors clash, but I told her it’s all the rage in Paris.” Phoebe dabbled her fingers under the baby’s chin. “She’s just a little Florida orange, yes she is. I could just squeeze the juice out of you and suck you all up.” Phoebe put her nose down to Nora’s bottom. “Speaking of juicy, I think she is. Do you mind?”<br>
Bianca handed over the diaper bag. “Knock yourself out.”<br>
The young parents gave their best fake smiles until Phoebe had left earshot.

“Okay, she’s seen Nora wear it. Now can we toss it?” Bianca begged.

“Oh yeah,” Chris answered enthusiastically.

They walked past the living room sports frenzy and into the kitchen, where the best action in this house usually took place.

“Is this a wiccaning or a coronation?” Bianca said when they saw the spread of food that filled the kitchen island.

“I told you they go all out,” Chris laughed and left her side to join Wyatt, who was nosing around in the fridge. “What do we got?” he asked, and peeked under the arm Wyatt was using to hold open the door.

“Four meringues. I’m guessing lemon and chocolate.”<br>
“Dibs on the lemon.”<br>
“You sure? She’s got a coconut cake under glass over there.”<br>
“Dibs on that, too.”<br>
“I am not saying this spell,” a voice grew louder as it approached.

“Come on, Grams, join the modern world.”<br>
Paige followed Grams into the kitchen and paused in her petitioning long enough to give Blanca a peck on the cheek. “Hi, sweetie.”<br>
“What’s going on?” Chris asked.

Grams sat down at the table and flourished a slip of paper in the air. “Your aunt wants me to change a summoning spell that has worked just fine for generations.”<br>
“Oh, yeah, like you never changed it before,” Paige retorted.

“The name, dear, only the name.”<br>
“It’s sexist. I just figure since we have male witches in the family, and the line is passing on through a male, we ought to acknowledge it in the spell.”<br>
Grams waved a frustrated hand toward her great-grandsons. “They’re not dead yet! Why do I need a new summoning spell to acknowledge dead male witches when there are none to show up?”<br>
“It sets a precedent.”<br>
Grams gave every indication of a headache coming on.

“Seriously,” Paige continued. “We’re studying gender bias in historically female lines at school, and how am I supposed to tell my daughter and all her classmates how wrong it is if we have it in our own family?”<br>
“What is she teaching?” Chris muttered to Wyatt.

“Magical Ethics,” he muttered back.

“Our kids need to see how those matriarchal myths about magic corrupting men are way off base . . .” Paige said.

“She’s gonna want you as an exhibit again,” Chris whispered to his brother. “Run.”<br>
“Speaking of which, Wyatt, you want to come to school and --” She cut herself off when she realized she was talking to a departing orb cloud. “Well, fine. How about you, Chris? Want to show some ten-year-olds just how good a son of a Charmed One can be?”<br>
Bianca stifled a laugh at Chris’s dilemma, but he was saved from having to answer by another orb cloud materializing into two figures in the middle of the kitchen: a little girl and an old man.

“I did it myself, Mom!” Helen ran to Paige. “I didn’t get lost or anything.”<br>
“I knew you wouldn’t.” Paige gave her a squeeze.

“I’m gonna tell Dad.”<br>
Grams honestly tried to keep a sour look off her face as she acknowledged the old man. “Victor.”<br>
“Penny,” Victor replied and then turned to Chris and Bianca.

“Hey, Grandpa,” Chris said as he shook his hand and hugged him.

“Hi, Chris. Where’s the baby?”<br>
“Phoebe,” Bianca said.

“Oh.” Victor nodded knowingly. “I’ll go see if I can pry her away.”<br>
“So are we good on the spell?” Paige asked Grams.

“I don’t like the wording. ‘Siblings?’ It sounds so impersonal.”<br>
“It’ll work, won’t it?”<br>
“Of course it would work -- it can’t not work if I’m saying it.”<br>
“I’m sorry the meeting ran so long,” they all heard Leo’s voice say before he actually appeared. Piper stood beside him.

“It’s okay. At least you finally got them to let witches sit in on your little pow-wows. And look, the freeze held, so nothing spoiled. I probably ought to refresh it though.” She flicked her hands toward the food to release the molecules trapped in time and then just as quickly put the freeze back on them. The few scent molecules that escaped drifted through the air and made Chris’s stomach growl.

Piper turned around and held her arms out to the young couple. “Hi!” She kissed both their cheeks. “Is everybody here?”<br>
“Yeah, Helen brought Grandpa, and --” Chris stared at Leo. “What did you do to your hair?”<br>
Leo touched his new gray streaks. “Is it too much?”<br>
“No, no.” Chris lied. “It makes you look . . .” He searched for a word.

“Distinguished,” Bianca finished.

“It makes him look old,” Piper contradicted. She took Bianca’s arm and led her through the dining room. “I wish he’d stop with the glamoring thing. I like strangers to think I can keep a hot young boy toy. It makes the other old ladies jealous.”<br>
“You’re not old,” Leo and Chris said together.

Piper smiled. “I’ve trained them well.”

[scifi]

Phoebe had taken the liberty of changing Nora into her wiccaning gown, so all that remained was for the family to pack into the attic. Once everyone was in place, Chris and Bianca stepped forward, and he presented the baby to Grams. But before the high priestess could speak, Phoebe was hit with a premonition.

“Incoming,” she called and pointed to the far wall. A second later, three low level demons shimmered in. Wyatt raised his hand and pinned two to the wall, and Chris lifted the other into the air. This one fought the hold and reached for an athame in his belt, but Paige simply held out a hand, orbed the athame away, and scattered the orbs into oblivion.

“What are you, insane?” Piper asked the demons. “There are, like, twelve witches and an Elder here.” She crossed her arms. “Look, I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say I would be more than happy to vanquish you. But can we do this another time?”<br>
“Yeah, I can pencil you in tomorrow,” Phoebe added.

The demons surveyed the room, taking in first the men who held them so effortlessly, and then the Halliwell women standing in various permutations of Piper’s attitude, and finally Bianca, who held an energy ball so like their own, they knew exactly how much it would hurt. They looked at each other sheepishly and shimmered out.

“Where were we?” Piper said.

Bianca extinguished the energy ball. “You’re not remotely upset that demons attacked during your grand-daughter’s wiccaning?”<br>
Piper waved it off. “Eh, apparently in this family, it’s tradition. Who am I to knock it?” She nodded for her grandmother to continue. “Grams.”<br>
“I call forth from space and time
Matriarchs of the --”<br>
She was interrupted by Paige clearing her throat loudly.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Grams huffed.

“I call forth from space and time
All that is good of the Halliwell line,
Mothers, fathers, siblings, friends,
Our family’s spirit without end,
To gather now in this sacred place
And help us bring this child to grace.”<br>
Piper closed her eyes and felt the good will of her entire family surround her, a feeling so much more powerful than she had felt at other wiccanings. When she opened her eyes, she saw more than just the matriarchs; she saw every good witch her family had ever produced -- so many, the group extended out of the room and onto the attic stairs. She smiled at Prue and her mother standing near the door, and they waved their love back to her.

As Grams began the blessing, Piper ran an eye over the rest of her ancestors and then turned to the living members of the assembly. Her father was by the window, having long since realized that he didn’t need to understand everything that went on in their magical world, so long as he could trust in their goodness and love. Paige held her daughter’s hand, knowing somehow that this awe-inspiring event could be a little scary for a kid. Phoebe and her family stood near the Book which she had found and used to set them on this path nearly thirty years before, and, as always, at Piper’s side, Leo put his hand on her back as though joining in her contentment. Wyatt stood out front near his brother, ever on the lookout to be of help, ever happy, ever well-adjusted to the enormity of the power he possessed. And then there was Chris. It had been twenty-three years to the day since the son from another timeline had vanished from their lives -- part of the reason that she had insisted that the wiccaning be today. If she remembered correctly, he looked exactly the same, down to the haircut. It couldn’t have been coincidence. Despite what she had said so many years before, it was as if she had a piece of that mysterious whitelighter back. He was a reminder to her that nothing ever really dies.

“Welcome to the family, Piper Leonora Halliwell.” Grams handed Nora back to Chris and stepped across the line that separated the living from the dead. “Blessed be.”<br>
“Blessed be,” everyone repeated, and the wiccaning was over.

Piper stepped forward, took Chris’s face in her hands, and let a kiss linger on his cheek for a long moment.

“What was that for?”

Piper looked up to keep any tears from falling and smiled. She shot her sisters a mischievous smile and glanced back to her son. “I can’t tell you that.”<br>
“What do you mean?” he asked, but Piper was already heading for the stairs. He turned to his aunts. “What does she mean?”<br>
Paige just grinned and shrugged, but Phoebe ignored the question, as she was rushing after her sister. “Piper, that is not fair! I’ve been waiting twenty years to use that line on him!”<br>
Chris was starting to get annoyed like he always did when they pulled that sister thing, so he handed Nora off to Bianca and followed. “What does that mean? Mom?”<br>
THE END

[traci26]

Hey SciFi, this story was so wonderful. I truly enjoyed reading it. It had me laughing and crying at the same time. I really wish that this is the way that his (Chris) story would have played out before his adult character was taken off the show.

This story was so good.