Disclaimer: I don't own Charmed.
Visions of Death
"Are you okay?" questioned Coop as he followed his new girlfriend into her loft. "You've been kind of quiet all night and you didn't eat much."
"I'm fine," Phoebe Halliwell said, shutting the door behind Coop. "It's just I've had this feeling all day that I can't shake."
"A feeling? Like what?"
Phoebe led Coop into her living room and they sat on the couch beside one another. "It's kind of like a premonition, but it won't finish. I'm not actually seeing any pictures."
"Is that normal?" Coop asked. While he knew about the premonition power she'd received years earlier when becoming a witch, as a Cupid, the technicalities of it weren't in his area of expertise.
"Not really," Phoebe shrugged. "And it's not a big deal. I mean, if it had to do with an innocent I had to protect, I'm sure it would have completed. It's just a little annoying because it's tugging at my mind and I can't figure out what it's trying to tell me."
"Well, has it ever happened before?"
"Not until a couple days ago. After the fight with Billie and Christy, I had this same feeling. I shrugged it off, wanting to focus on my sisters and us. Plus, we'd just won against the Ultimate Power; I kind of wanted to think of the victory. But, then, today it came back."
"That is kind of strange. What's the feeling? Is it happy, sad, what?"
"Happy. Definitely happy. And, I'm thinking it's personal. Piper said Paige and I died in that last battle, but she used your ring to go back in time and fix it. So what if I'm remembering my afterlife?"
"That never happened though, Phoebe. You said it yourself, Piper fixed it. She changed the timeline. You didn't die."
"My powers are precognitive. Maybe my mind is trying to show me what almost was."
"And you want to know? You want to know where you went after you... died?"
"Coop, when I say it's a happy feeling, I mean really happy. Happier than I think I've been in a long time. I barely recognize the feeling. I want to know why I'm feeling that." She caught the hurt look on Coop's face and hurried to continue. "I mean I'm so happy now, with you, and I've been happy with my family over the years. I can't exactly explain it. It's certainly not like I want to die or anything like that. I love my life. But, that felling, after death... what if I saw Prue again, finally? What if I was with Mom and Grams again? I want to remember that, Coop. I want to remember if I was with my lost family. Especially since I have no plans to join them any time soon."
Coop wrapped an arm around her shoulder and pulled her close as he reclined against the back of the sofa. "If you're meant to find out, you will. Let's just relax, now. Maybe if you're not trying so hard to make the premonition happen it will just come to you."
Phoebe shuddered as she watched her big sister mourning over her lifeless body.
Glancing around she wondered why she still appeared to be on Earth. When she died, Phoebe had expected to be taken 'up there' with her deceased mother, grandmother, and sister.
For a second, Phoebe toyed with the idea that maybe she wasn't dead, just having some kind of out- of- body experience. But, then she remembered a black robed figure and the Angel of Death escorting her through a vortex of white smoke. But I haven't moved. I'm just a few feet away from Piper.
Pushing aside her puzzled musings, Phoebe focused on Piper. She longed to reach out to her, to comfort her, and let her know that she was okay, wherever she was. Phoebe took a step forward; she saw the rubble too late and threw her hands out in front of her, preparing to brace her fall, before she realized that she'd gone right through the debris.
Maybe I have unfinished business and became a ghost? She moved directly in front of Piper and was disappointed to realize that the older brunette couldn't see her. She obviously wasn't a ghost, since she and her sisters were able to communicate with them because of their supernatural gifts.
Phoebe stared sadly at the land of the living that she so clearly was no longer a part of. She folded her arms across her chest, confused to realize, as she looked at herself, that she still had her body, though obviously not the one Piper was crying over. She looked the same as that body though, minus the wounds. Phoebe guessed her spirit had recreated her body once it had arrived in her new plane of existence. She still couldn't determine where that plane was, though.
Phoebe jumped when the scene before her disappeared and she was surrounded by white. White all over, never seeming to end. Just a big, empty space of nothing. Phoebe felt alone. She spun around, hoping there was something more than the feeling of utter loneliness somewhere behind her. There was, she found out, as she was engulfed in familiar warmth. If her heart had still been functioning, Phoebe knew it would have skipped a beat.
Gasping, Phoebe sprung from Coop's arms. She took in the surroundings of her loft.
Her sudden movement had awakened Coop. "Phoebe?"
"I'm okay," she assured him. "We must have fallen asleep. I think I just had part of that premonition."
"Really? What made you get that feeling?"
Phoebe hesitated. She recognized the feeling her spirit had at the end of the premonition. But, the reason she'd always gotten it before was no longer a possible cause. "I wasn't with my family. I was watching Piper mourning me and I was cold. Then, everything was just white and I was lonely. The premonition didn't finish, though, I don't know what happened next," she said frustrated.
"You'll probably get it again," Coop said helpfully.
"I hope so," she said. I must be confused, because it's not possible for me to have felt that. "I think I'm gonna get some sleep, see if it comes to me in my dreams again."
"OK," Coop stood to leave. "I need to get back to work, anyway."
"Cupids have strange hours." Phoebe looked at the clock on her wall. It read 10: 30 p.m.
"Love happens at all times." He leaned down and pecked Phoebe on the lips. After his ring had lit up and Coop had vanished in a heart, Phoebe moved to her bedroom, intent on seeing the rest of her premonition.
"It doesn't help to watch; believe me I know."
Phoebe was face to face with her dead demonic- ex husband. He was looking at her sadly. Phoebe's voice wouldn't work; she could only gape at him in a stunned silence.
Cole Turner frowned, his blue eyes filled with despair. He hadn't been sure if he really wanted to face Phoebe when she'd come to his plane. They hadn't left things on good terms and her final words, that she felt nothing for him, still rang in his ears. But, seeing her hurting herself by watching a world she didn't belong to anymore squashed his doubts about appearing to her. Looking at Phoebe staring at him, stuck in his solitary plane, caused him great pain. Phoebe was dead. She was dead and in this miserable place. This wasn't what he'd wanted for her. Phoebe claimed to no longer love him, but she would always be the love of Cole's life. The previous year, he'd even helped her sister, Piper, believe in her own love with her husband, just in the hopes that Phoebe wouldn't give up. He didn't want her soul to be lost, and end up in Limbo someday. And, he certainly hadn't expected someday to be so soon.
"But, she found love, with the Cupid, right? So if she's not lost anymore, why is she here?" Cole pondered aloud.
"Oh my... Coop."
"What?" said Cole confused, hurt at Phoebe's first spoken words. She hadn't seen him in years and now that she was before him again, she could only think of her new love.
"Nothing." She said quickly, realizing she hadn't just thought her Cupid's name; she'd spoken it, too. But, Cole had surprised her out of her thoughts with that sentence. And, she'd guiltily realized that, when thinking of all the loved ones she'd left behind, Coop was not among them. Then, she'd seen Cole and it was as if the expressions of love she and Coop had exchanged only a few short days before had never happened. Only thoughts of her ex occupied her mind. His voice, his touch, his love, everything about Cole that Phoebe hadn't allowed herself to think of in four years, since their divorce, came flooding back when he stood before her in her apparent afterlife.
"I'm sorry I bothered you," Cole said, turning to leave. "But, it only makes it hurt worse if you watch. I learned that the hard way. So, I'll be going now. Help yourself to Limbo."
"Limbo?"
Cole masked the pain, and love, he was sure still showed in his eyes, as he faced her again. "That's where we are. It's where lost souls go. I'm here as punishment for my past and because neither side wanted me anymore, but I can't figure out why you've come here."
"I must be lost, right?"
He shook his head. "But you have family and friends; you have a purpose in life and you love helping people- innocents you protect from evil, the readers of your advice column; and you have... love, now, too. You're not lost. Your being here makes no sense."
Phoebe removed herself from his gaze, not liking the discovery that he still sent shivers up and down her spine. "Well, I am stuck here. So, um, what do we do?"
"Maybe you're not stuck; maybe this is just a temporary stop before you move on."
"The Angel of Death brought me here. It's not like I'm waiting for him to get me."
"You don't belong here, Phoebe."
She shivered again, hearing her name cross his lips. "Apparently I do. You've been here all this time? Do you just wonder around this awful space? That must be miserable, Cole."
He shrugged, ignoring the concerned tone of her voice, thinking he imagined it. "I still have my powers from the Wasteland, so if I'm really bored I conjure up a vase and burn it. My aim's better than ever."
"That's how you spend your time? Target practice?"
"I check in on the real world every once in awhile, but like I told you, it doesn't help, especially with some of the things I hear," Cole said, thinking of his witnessing the confession of her feelings for a Cupid not long before. "so I don't do it very often. I've visited the living plane a couple times, since I've figured out how to materialize there for short amounts of time. Mostly, I just go to follow up on some of the lost souls I try to help here. That's the main thing I do, try to prevent others from having this existence when they pass."
"Oh, that's... good."
"Yeah, funny thing," Cole said, some of his old resentment toward her rejection of their love bubbling up. "Without the Halliwells constantly telling me how evil I am, I can actually here my own un-beating heart say it wants to be good."
Phoebe stepped back at the harshness of his voice, unused to that tone directed at her. Now that she thought about it, the reality that a lot of what happened in the months before she and hers sisters vanquished Cole was really her fault, hit her hard in the face. He'd tried to protect her, getting possessed by the Source of All Evil as a result. She hadn't saved him then, but he'd come back after his vanquish then because he believed in their love. But, she'd rejected him in the wake of her own pain and he'd gone mad, reverting back to the evil heritage he'd given up for her. Phoebe gasped and looked into his blue eyes, the hurt clearly showing. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I never realized, I never wanted to realize, how I hurt you. You were good, Cole. I know you have a good soul; I've always known it. I was just in denial about that. And about our love."
Cole looked at her cautiously, wondering where the sudden apology had come from.
Phoebe suddenly grinned and embraced the feeling he gave her, anticipating the shivers and longing to hear love in his voice again, to feel it in his touch, see it in his eyes. "I really did end up here because I was lost," she confided. "Being in denial about my feelings for you made me blind to real love, the love we have."
"I think I've gone mad again," Cole said in disbelief over her words.
"I'm serious, Cole," said Phoebe, enjoying the way his name rolled off her tongue so perfectly. She stepped closer until she stood only inches from him. She grabbed his hand, placing it over the spot where her heart used to beat. "I love you, Cole."
Phoebe jerked upright in her bed. "It was him," she whispered to the empty room. Sunlight was streaming through the window.
Something jerked at her memory. Limbo... some of the lost souls I try to help...
"Piper! Ooh, I'm going to yell at her. Cole was the 'old friend' that helped her last year when she went into the coma."
Throwing the covers off her, Phoebe quickly changed out of her pajamas and into a comfortable pair of jeans and one of her favorite shirts. Before opening her bedroom door, she paused. What does it matter if Piper told me or not? It's not like I would've cared to know he still exists somewhere or not. She started to turn back to her bed. Except that I do, she admitted. What I told him when I died is true. I love him.
Phoebe was surprised to realize that admitting it after all those years made her angry only at the fact that she missed out on several years with him. Other than that, she was just filled with an overwhelming desire to tell Cole, in this timeline, that she was sorry for trying to throw away what they had, to tell him she loved him. She wanted nothing more than to be in his arms.
That's why I need to yell at Piper, she decided. If she'd told me before, I may have made myself admit this a year ago.
She opened her bedroom door, entered the living room, and abruptly stopped.
"Hi," Coop greeted her. "I got some free time and figured I'd come by and make you breakfast in bed."
Phoebe looked down at the tray of food in his hands and winced. "Um, Coop, do you think we could talk instead?"
"Sure. Did that premonition ever come back?" He placed the tray down on Phoebe's coffee table.
"Yeah, when I was sleeping."
"So, what was the happiness about?"
"Well, after everything went white, I saw someone. That's where the happiness came in," Phoebe explained, dreading the question Coop would obviously ask next. She didn't want to hurt him; she really did care for him. But, it wasn't fair to either of them, or Cole, for her and Coop to be together when her heart belonged to someone else. But, Coop was a Cupid, so she hoped he'd understand.
"Who was it?" Coop urged, realizing Phoebe wasn't continuing her short narrative.
"Cole."
Coop thought for a moment, trying to remember why he knew that name. Phoebe saw the change in his expression when it dawned on him. "Your ex-husband?"
Phoebe slightly nodded.
"And you were so happy to be with him again." Coop stepped away from her.
"I guess I've been in denial about my feelings."
"That's what you wanted to talk to me about, wasn't it? You wanted to tell me it's him you want to be with, not me."
"Coop," she reached for his hand.
"No, you don't need to explain. I can see what's in your heart."
"I'm sorry. I never wanted to hurt you."
"I know," Coop calmed down, a solemn look on his face. "I just wish I'd seen it before. Didn't know Cupids could slip up like that."
He kissed Phoebe's cheek softly. "Be happy."
Phoebe smiled gently as he vanished. "You, too."
Phoebe strode to her front door, ready to confront Piper, and convince her to help her find a way to bring Cole back, when his voice in her head stopped her.
...especially with some of the things I hear...the living plane a couple times, since I've figured out how to materialize there for short amounts of time.
She moved away from the door. I can talk Piper into bringing him back this afternoon. I want to tell him first. "Cole!" she called. "If you're watching, I know you can hear me. And I know you can come here for a little while. Cole, please! I need to see you!"
He emerged in a swirl of tiny white lights some feet away from her. Looking at her questioningly, he raised an eyebrow. "I had a feeling you were thinking about me, so I peeked in, but I must have lost my mind again, because there's now way what that conversation you had with the Cupid a few minutes ago really happ-"
His sentence was cut off as Phoebe cupped his face and pulled it to hers, causing their lips meet in what became a passionate kiss.
Cole stared at her when she finally pulled back.
"I love you, Cole," she breathed.
"Crazy and delusional."
Phoebe smiled, running a finger along his lower lip. "No, you're not. I love you. Always have and always will. I told you that wouldn't ever change."
"I love you, too, Phoebe," Cole promised.
Her heart skipped several beats before it began racing.
"But, I'm so confused," he continued.
"I'll explain later," she said before claiming his lips with her own again.
The End