Title: Where The Rivers Flow
Author: miss_peg
Rating: PG
Summary: Phoebe's surprised to find a river in the Underworld.
Disclaimer: Charmed isn't mine, unfortunately.
Notes: Written for a holiday fic challenge on LJ. For catnipfield's prompt Where the rivers flowabout Phoebe and Cole from Charmed. I've never really written much for Charmed, so apologies.
The rivers flowed underground.
That was something she didn't realise before, before she felt the grasp of darkness burning inside her womb.
She didn't think that life could thrive in a world plagued with darkness and destruction; a world where demon's lived in order to avoid the dangerous clutch of a witch's spell.
What did demon's need water for anyway?
Then she saw it, the 'water' flowing in the Underworld. It wasn't what she'd expected when she first went down there, as the Queen. She'd been there before but somehow seeing it with her newfound evil eye was different. The disgusting witch-like perception she had grown up with was gone and she was left instead with a desire to take in every rock, every cave and every demon waiting in the wings.
She'd imagined it to be some form of reality created by demons to emulate the world she was born into, the real world, some might say. She knew there were bars where alcohol flowed freely and demons battled for each other's powers.
Then she rested a hand under the gentle flow of a waterfall and she realised that the water was laced with thick, red blood. It was a flow of destruction, a flow of pain and suffering that the Underworld was known for.
The stench was stronger than she'd realised in the beginning. When she knew, it became apparent that the blood was rotting in its horrific flow.
It was enough to make her want to return to her sister's house, to the real world, where demons only frequented when they sought out someone or something to kill.
Almost.
But not quite.
After all, the baby growing inside her womb was desperate for her to sit by that river daily, like it craved the scent of rotting blood to course through her veins like the blood pumping from her heart.
And what the heir to the Underworld wanted, the heir to the Underworld got. Whether she liked it or not.
End