Edge of Loss

Canon: Charmed

Disclaimer: I do not own Charmed. Duh!

Genre: Drama/Angst

Characters: Chris, Bianca, Wyatt, etc…

Pairing: Chris/Bianca,

Timeline: Chris-Crossed spoilers and then some.

Summary: With someone waiting back at home he had a reason to fight. But after Bianca dies, Chris begins to loose his edge.
Notes: I've done a lot of these lately. I'm just on a roll. I'll get back to my other things when my muse randomly lands on them. I'm sorry for those who are annoyed with me but… I can't help it either.

Chris doesn't remember much after his mother's eyes go empty on his fourteenth birthday. All he can see today is waking up months later with a thousand demons dead at his feet, and a beautiful girl under his latest tool about to be killed. And then he wakes up and looks at her and takes it away. She's not a demon like the others were.

The rest of the demonic population were either disappeared into nowhere or coming out to other mystical factions and looking for help. He knows those that disappeared were with his brother-starting the regime that should not exist. But he doesn't think about all the things that were going on around him. The mortal world was still in shock about the outbreak and unveiling of the magic that had always been part of the world to care about one boy whose mother and Aunts and family was dead.

He'd relied on Grandpa and Darryl for information for a while, but Darryl was shrinking under the weight of hiding what he knew and being a good cop and Grandpa Victor was dying of lung cancer thanks to all the cigarettes he had let sizzle in his mouth for years. And finally he let his Grandpa concentrate on his health while he went out and earned what little he could on vague jobs and things.

And then Grandpa died two months after Victor lost his hair to chemo and left him what little he had left. Chris disappeared into the world where cops couldn't chase after him and social services would gawk at.

And then he'd met her again and asked her why she wore red leather at fifteen and didn't have to shirk the blood off of her clothes. In her he found a spirit so like his own and he didn't have to kill his enemies alone anymore.

Seventeen years after he was born, he could dream that magic was still a thing of legend, and yet now it was a household fear. Those little secreted housing districts for those with magic were widespread and he could take a nap when he stopped fighting, stopped learning, stopped researching the next big thing.

Besides the clothes on his back, the only thing he had left was a light satchel with his Family Book hidden away and a few items to hide his presence. He had some idea of what mischief his brother was causing and though he loved Wyatt, Christopher did not agree with it. Maybe the blonde could pinpoint his location to a county, but Chris could travel the world in the blink of an eye thanks to his newer powers passed on by his dying mother and aunts and cousins.

So when Bianca found out she was pregnant, Chris went into shock because it wasn't just about him and a weekly meeting with a her, a pretty girl. Now there was another mouth, another heart, another person to wear the Halliwell name and he stepped off the tugboat of fighting for himself and did the rest of growing up that he'd had to do. Both of them feared being parents in the world they were in but Bianca still made herself scarce to her usual hobby.

Still, when there were attacks you had to fight back and, barely showing, she lost the baby to an energy ball and Chris got a grip on her body before she fell and yanked them both away. He loved his brother but hated the demons and still he could feel the crimson drops of life blood coursing on his hands and he was the victor over his enemies. But he was still that would-be father of a life-less unborn child.

His brother called him out a few weeks later. Why don't you join me? We can rule. But Chris wasn't interested in ultimate power. He just wanted a life where he could be happy with everyone else and for this he never forgave his brother the temptation. But he knew what necromancy could do and he'd dodge the offers.

In retaliation he'd made a plan and pulled all of those little housing projects and all of the little semi-organized factions and created it into a joined government and tossed a few key wards around it so that even though Wyatt probably could find it, no one not on the list could get in. And then Bianca voiced her own want of vengeance and though he didn't want to lose her he let her go because she was her own woman and he loved her and didn't own her.

Touché, brother.

And she killed and passed on information and remained loyal to only Chris. She knew what the Resistance did when not on the job and they were almost as bad as Wyatt had become. And when she stood beneath a low energy ball in torture she did not begin because once upon a time she had felt the butterfly in her belly and the chance of new life and it had been taken from her from the forces of this man, this evil brother of the man she loved.

That was about the time that little idea began to form in his mind, Chris unaware of what he was gong to lead to. Bianca had supported him all the way but had warned him to be cautious because they weren't the people that he had killed for and remembered.

So he goes to the past before he was born and reminds himself that these people are not his family yet. But still he has to keep himself from flinching when Piper turns to him and sees nothing. And that always makes him dream of the empty eyes his mother had the last time he saw her. He doesn't remember the after-dreams of blood on his hands and demons dying under him and a pretty girl with similarity within her waking him up.

"Maybe we'll be here again," he says and his hair and voice are ragged and he tries to keep the tears from falling but fails when she sees; her right eye is watering and that her left is slightly bloody.

"Maybe," she replies and he can hear the blood in her lungs and coming to her throat. So he kisses her hard and tries to tell himself that he did not taste the blood and is going to save his brother and that she will be waiting. Because he can't look back and see her dying and not hold her hand.

He says the spell from the book that was taken from him so long ago and tears at the page before jumping through the portal. He can feel the sting of the energy ball behind him but he stands up and looks his will-be family in the eye. He has trouble talking and it has nothing to do with magic. It's more to do with the fact that he knows he is on his own now and there is nothing for him in the future.

My brother will kill me, Chris knows.

The Resistance will call him a traitor, and then kill him, because this was his plan and he told no one and they would have been against it if they knew.

Bianca is dead now. Chris cannot even feel this mission anymore.

All he can do is hear blood in Bianca's throat, see the empty blank eyes of his mother, and here the squelching of blood beneath him and covering his fingers.

Piper, the Charmed One have, thrown him, Chris Perry, out of Halliwell Manor. Piper Halliwell has told him to leave the Charmed Ones' Manor because he is a liar and untrustworthy.

His mother has thrown him out of his own house.

He tries not to think about it and succeeds because he can honestly not give a shit what Piper thinks. His mission is just to make sure that she becomes his mother before he can look at her only to have her gaze go empty in death. His job is to save Wyatt, to keep him from becoming the thing he has become. His job it is to…

Christopher Halliwell lays back on the cot with a animalistic sound in the back of his throat. He's all alone and at the edge. He cannot grieve.

Chris doesn't remember much after his mother's eyes go empty on his fourteenth birthday. Chris also doesn't remember much after he tastes the blood in Bianca's mouth and runs away from the future he won't believe has to exist.

All he can see today is waking up months later with a thousand demons dead at his feet, and a beautiful girl under his latest tool-his hands-about to be killed. All he remembers now is suddenly looking up to find that Piper knows he is her son and everyone around him treating him differently.

I wonder why I never remember the slides. But he doesn't wonder that for too long because he has a mission that he has to complete no matter what Moth-Piper says because she is not yet his mother and he will disobey her if it means he does not have to look into his mother's eyes and see nothing but death.

His eyes are always red and his fingertips are numb. He feels as if he is on the run all over again because his reserves are depleting fast and he isn't sure he's as sane as he once was, however long ago that was. But he refuses to think about that because then he will think about all of the whys that he is as crazy as his Evil Brother had become-has become-will become-whatever. Because then he will have to remember all of the tragedies he's been through. Chris refuses to think about his sanity because then he will remember all of the events in his life where he has had to throw out some rope and come out wanting.

If his mother could see him now, she would force him into a chair and feed him. And then she would insist on a hair cut until he let her around his hair with some proper scissors. But Mommy isn't here, only Piper who thinks she is Mommy. And Chris can't accept that either.

In a vague way, he often wonders why he has to be the one that all of this is forced onto. Because he knows Wyatt was never meant to Evil. Nowadays, Chris is still shook up that he sometimes forgets where he is and what he is doing. He wants to go Home and sit at the table where Mommy will feed him and try to stuff him like a Thanksgiving turkey. Sometimes he is about to do that, but he sees baby Wyatt and hears something babyish and remembers his unborn murdered child and thinks, Bianca why did you leave me alone? and then he remembers trying to ignore the blood in her throat and blood squelching on his hands until he forgets, again.

"You save Wyatt, you save me," he tells the man that is about to be his father. And Leo nods and runs off as Chris told him to do, leaving the dying man alone in the attic.

"You save Wyatt, you save me," he says to himself and yeah, Christopher Halliwell is going to be saved. But what about Chris Perry?

He's going to die, he knows this and realizes this because two souls of one person cannot coexist. With the future Chris there, the new Chris will have no chance to breathe and be happy and have little Halliwells eighteen years from now with a pretty girl would-be-Phoenix.

He starts to feel the blood in his throat about the time his will-be father returns to his side and tries to tell him that he will be fine. But he doesn't know… Chris thinks. He doesn't know that if I stay, he will not have a second son. So he does not let his father heal him, pretending that the dagger spell is still in effect.

As he passes on he hopes the blood in his throat isn't visible. He turns his head so that his father doesn't look him in the eyes and blood dripping from his mouth. He prays to whoever is listening that there is not a body to mourn. This day is to celebrate his new life, and not the future that will no longer exist. And as he disappears, he knows it was worth it.

Chris knows that he does not have to learn to grieve, and revels in the surety of something.

End.