Title: Forever Charmed
Arc: Charmed, season 8
Part: 1 of 1 (COMPLETE)
Fandom: Charmed
Characters: Piper, Phoebe, Paige, Penny, Patty, Coop, (adult) Chris, (adult) Wyatt

AN: Sorry, I just had to do a written version of my favorite scene in all eight seasons of Charmed. Hey, am I the only one that noticed that Chris, despite being the younger and slightly less powerful of the two brothers, is the more domineering personality? I think it's just his way to make up for the differences in power. As Chris said upon finding out his brother had powers from the womb: 'As if I didn't have enough of an inferiority complex with him already!'

The swirls of white lights resolved into two very familiar young men. "Wyatt!" Phoebe exclaimed.

"Chris," Paige echoed. Patty and Penny blinked at the two handsome but utterly unfamiliar men now standing in the foyer.

"What are you two doing here?" Piper asked her grown-up sons.

After a brief hesitation and a glance at his older brother, Chris explained. "Somebody just screwed up our future." Looks with various degrees of shock circulated through the room and Piper frowned in confusion. Chris continued. "We don't know what happened. I mean, everything was fine. One minute, we were kicking demon ass-"

"Actually," Wyatt interrupted, crossing his arms over his chest with a slight smirk, despite the seriousness of the situation. "I was kicking some demon ass."

"Oh, pffsh," Chris scoffed.

"Watch your language," Penny broke in, pointing at Chris, who was still making a face at Wyatt.

"Sorry, Grams," the young brunet replied, shaking his head at his brother's arrogance as he turned his head to offer an apologetic smile to his great-grandmother.

"Wait…Grams?" Wyatt asked Chris softly. "As in…the Grams?"

"Yeah," Chris replied, his expression a patented 'duh' stare. Penny looked pleased as a cat with its paws in the cream.

Patty finally interrupted in confusion, throwing her hands up to halt further conversation until she'd clarified for herself. "All right, I'm confused. Are these my future grandkids…or yours?" she asked her daughters. Piper chuckled to herself.

Phoebe grinned at her confused mother. "No, no, yours."

"Oh!" Patty exclaimed, beaming at the handsome boys. "Hi." Both boys grinned and waved at their long-dead grandmother.

"As you were saying," Piper broke in with an indulgent smile.

Wyatt picked up the narrative. "Suddenly, in the middle of all the fighting, everything changed."

"And the demons started kicking our as- butts. Butts," he corrected himself with a nod at his great-grandmother, who nodded appreciatively in reply. "Just because Wyatt, here, lost his powers." Wyatt looked at Chris and frowned.

"Wait, how did you lose your powers?" Piper asked, concerned. Because if future Wyatt had suddenly lost his powers, it had to be because of something that had just happened…and mucking with time was always dangerous.

"That's the thing," Wyatt replied. "We don't know."

"So we cast a spell to take us back to when they were lost, and it took us…here." Wyatt nodded his agreement of his younger brother's explanation. "To you."

"Maybe we messed up something without realizing it," Patty said thoughtfully, glancing at her mother.

"Mmm. With all the jumping around we've done, it's a wonder everything's not messed up."

"No," Piper spoke up. "It's got to be Billie and Christy. They used the Hollow to steal his powers." Her face hardened slightly. "I'm gonna kill them." Phoebe shook her head in sympathy as Paige added her two cents to the conversation.

"Well, before you do that, we need to get Wyatt's powers back, otherwise, there's, uh, not going to be any future to save." Piper hesitated.

"Well, I think the only way to do that is to go back and…stop them," Phoebe commented.

"How do we know exactly when to go back to," Penny pointed out.

"I'll know," Wyatt offered. "Or, at least, I'm hoping little Wyatt might jog my memory."

"Well, he's at Dad's…I mean, Grandpa's. Um…do you remember how to get there?" she asked Chris, who nodded eagerly.

"Yes. Absolutely."

Patty got immediately excited. "I'll go too," she exclaimed, shooting to her feet.

"But Dad's going to be there," Phoebe pointed out.

"I know," Patty replied. "I miss him. Besides, I'm dying to see what he looks like at this age. Whoo!" Phoebe smiled as Piper explained.

"She, uh, doesn't know." Crossing to her mother's recently-vacated seat, she perched on the arm of the couch with one foot on the floor and one on the couch cushion.

"Apparently, I hadn't chased him away yet," Penny added. Patty started to look anxious.

"What are you talking…what don't I know?" she asked, looking around apprehensively for help.

Paige looked down and away. Phoebe avoided eye contact by looking at her lap while running a hand over the back of her neck. Wyatt and Chris traded a look, and Piper glanced at her sisters. "All right," she finally said. "Everybody go. But just, you know, hurry back if you find anything." She gestured for them to move. Patty smacked her mother's shoulder as she walked past to join her future grandsons.

As she turned to face the room again, a soft red glow appeared by the fireplace, growing and spreading before taking shape and revealing Coop, whose anxiety wasn't even veiled. "Hey," he said, spotting Piper immediately.

Phoebe's head snapped around and she stared at him. His head turned slowly and his eyes widened almost comically. "Phoebe!" he exclaimed, anxiety fading rather obviously in a wash of relief.

"Hi," she said.

Coop glared at Piper chidingly. "Thanks a lot for telling me she's alive!" he exclaimed. Piper grinned while making a face, and thrust his ring at him.

"You're welcome," she retorted snippily, though her lips twitched as they tried to smile at the eagerness in his expression and the longing in Phoebe's.

"Uncle Coop!" Wyatt exclaimed quietly.

Unfortunately, in the quiet room, those two words were incredibly audible. Even as he realized his mistake and pulled his hands out of his pockets to slap them over his mouth, Chris' hand smacked his shoulder- hard- and several heads snapped in his direction to stare. Not the least of which was Coop's himself. Behind his hands, Wyatt was struggling not to laugh at the dumbstruck look on his aunt's face.

"Uncle Coop?" Phoebe repeated while Chris shook his head and shot him a look that told Wyatt exactly how stupid his younger brother thought he was at that moment. Chris' mouthing of 'you moron' helped clarify any lingering doubt.

Coop glanced at Piper's shocked face with a look of confusion- having never met the adult versions of Phoebe's adorable toddler nephews- to which she only rounded on her sons again. Wyatt looked incredibly sheepish while Chris managed to look smugly annoyed at his older brother's mistake. Phoebe made several indecipherable noises of confusion and shock while she turned her eyes back to the cupid she'd fallen in love with somehow.

"All right!" Piper snapped, breaking the moment. "Everybody out! Go!" Chris and Wyatt both grabbed one of their grandmother's arms and the odd trio orbed out of the foyer abruptly.

Phoebe looked at Coop, and he stared back, lifting an eyebrow slightly. Piper cleared her throat. "All right, let's get to the condo and get to the book," she said as she stood and walked over to her sisters.

"Wait for me," insisted Penny, grabbing onto Piper's other arm. The four women disappeared in a cloud of orbs, leaving Coop behind, still reeling from the sudden knowledge and hope he'd received.

AN: This is one of my infrequent one-shots, and in this case, I don't own the characters (a given, considering where we are), but I don't even own the plot or the dialogue. This is, to reiterate, the "novel" version of the scene in the final episode of Charmed, season eight. The episode was titled "Forever Charmed".