AN: Hey everyone! I just want to say thanks for reading "The Cardinal Rule" (for those of you that did) and having the kindness to click this fic. (Hey! That rhymed!) Anywho, this is the first magic fic I've done (aside from the crap ones I wrote just starting) so, please, bear with me. This is also a pretty dark fic, so for those of you who cant take that, turn away. Now. Now. NOW! Okay, now we can get started.

Prologue

"Every man has his own destiny: The only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him."

—Henry Miller

Spring, 1999

Piper reached out tentatively and touched her hand to the shimmering, electrical wall within the crystal cage. She immediately pulled it back when it gave her a sharp shock throughout her system. Biting her lip, Piper started to cry. Nothing like this had ever happened to The Charmed Ones before. They'd been outwitted, outthought, Shax had been one step ahead. Instead of taking their powers or forcing them to bind them, he'd reversed the magic so that the sister who used it, used it on herself and her sisters, threefold. There was nothing like taking a whamming against the wall—Prue—or hell, being frozen. They'd been forced to stop using their magic, if only to save one another. Then, he'd taken the very pregnant Piper and secluded her within the crystal cage and it hurt to know that her sister and her fiancée, Leo, were downstairs, fighting for their lives and hers.

Piper's sobs racked her body as she touched her stomach. She wasn't going to make it out of this alive. Leo wasn't going to make it out of this alive. The baby wasn't going to make it out of this alive. Suddenly, she had a bright sense of hope. She knew exactly what to do. Being stuck in the cage, the magic inside would be concentrated. Closing her eyes, she murmured a fast spell.

Protective forces far near,

Bring your safety senses here,

Come to here, this place I dwell,

Please protect this Halliwell.

A bright white light filled the cage and swam around her in a heavenly glow, which rapidly intensified to three times its normal protectiveness. Piper prayed her plan would work. Murmuring fierce words of consoling to herself and her child, she flung out her hands and felt the pulses of when she began to blow something up. The energy bounced grew against the walls of the cage before shattering the cage and crystals in small beads of electricity. She took a deep shuddering breath and tore through the attic and down the stairs. She bounded across shards of broken glass, pieces of a broken vase, a photo of her and her sisters, ruined. "Where is he?" she snapped, "Where'd he go?" But there was no one to answer her question. She ran to the kitchen, and her breath caught at the sight. Prue was lying on the floor in a pool of her own blood, Phoebe kneeling beside her.

"Leo!" Phoebe called. But Prue was losing life, fast, and maybe, even if Leo did get there a light speed, maybe she would be lost anyway.

"I love you guys." And Prue was gone.

Leo orbed in from another part of the house at exactly that moment, but it was too late. Piper gazed down at her sister's dead body, unable to cry, to scream. "What?" that was the only thing to be said. What?

Leo looked at his fiancée. "She's gone."

Piper's eyes bulged. "I—" She collapsed forward on her knees with Shax's knife buried deep in her back, all the way to the hilt. It was at that moment, Leo disappeared.

88888888

"…home invasion…"

"…the fiancée…disappeared."

"The baby…poor thing…gone…"

Piper listened groggily to two nurses speaking outside her door as consciousness returned. She was barely aware of her own body, let alone what had happened. Piper strained her ears and heard the beginning strands of a song. "Hallelujah".

Piper nearly broke into sobs. Oh God, that was the song that she used to sing to the baby. It was so beautiful, bring closure to the world, solving everything, spinning beauty in the words and the melodies. She knew her baby was gone, she'd lost her child. Hallelujah couldn't fix this. Piper looked up as her sister entered the room, wearing a sad looking gray jacket which hung off of her limp and drab. Phoebe looked lost and alone, afraid. "Prue's gone." She recited lifelessly. "She's dead. And Leo's disappeared." Her body shook with self-control. "And Piper you—" Phoebe's voice cracked and broke as she chocked on a sob, shaking now, not with self-control, but with tears. "You lost the baby."

Piper hadn't needed her sister to tell her, but it made it sadly real and devastatingly true to hear the words aloud. Piper remained emotionless as Phoebe continued to cry beside her, shaking and screaming. Piper couldn't cry, but she didn't try. She didn't know what to do. But she knew she had to do something. She didn't know if she could go on like this. For so long…for so long, she'd believed that everything happened for a reason. That the Powers That Be guided them through the bad to get to the good. That for all the bad that would happen, something equally good would shine on them.

She just didn't know if that was true anymore.

Whatever life held, whatever it held for her, it wouldn't be the same. And she wasn't sure she would face it.

AN: Okay, I know this isn't making a whole lot of sense right now, and that was pretty crappy, but we'll get to the good stuff soon, and clarity will come. ;-D

Thanks,

Gemini