Title: Watching My Little Boy
Author: Claddagh Ring
AN: Spoilers for It's a Bad, Bad, Bad, Bad World. This has been in the back of my mind for awhile but I just now got to writing it down. Kind of a tribute to Chris from Leo. I'm pretty sure this will be a short one-shot, one-chapter fic but since I don't do many of those, you never know. And also, this is my first Charmed fanfic, so please be easy on me. It's Leo POV.
Chris...
There is no emotion as raw as the pain of watching your son die right in front of you; fading away little by little until there is nothing left of him. Nothing can compare to the despair and the helplessness that flows out with the unstoppable tears as he takes his final breath and rips that special piece of your heart reserved for him forcibly out of your chest as you cling desperately to his lifeless body. Or in my case, since I was denied even that simplest of courtesy, his memory.
Hold on, hold on... I'm here. You can hold on, okay... Don't give up, okay?
You neither...
His last words. All out of concern for me, telling me to hold on and to never give up as if I were the one dying. If there's one thing my son tried to teach me, his dying words drove it home. You can never give up. He never gave up on his brother, despite all the terror and anguish Wyatt must have put him through if the future is one-fourth as bad as Chris said it turned out to be. Despite his contempt for me and despite his own needs, he never gave up on the world. He saw something most warriors are not privileged enough to see: the true essence of the Fight.
And he embodied it. He took it into himself and ultimately, it killed him. Something, a hard as his death has been and still is, that is something any father would be proud of. Something his father should be proud of. Something I am proud of. My son, Chris Perry Halliwell, was the strongest person I know.
Now I only wish to make him proud of me, as I start over watching my little boy.
Well, I told you it was short. I write, you read, you review.
5-27-2004: Came back and fixed all typos I could see. Something as short as this has no excuse for typos and quite frankly, they were bugging me.