She never expected to find herself in this situation. The stories are always love conquers all or do the right thing, but they never ever tell you how it is almost always difficult. It is almost always save someone else or save someone you love, and there are always things expected of her, words like personal sacrifice bandied around like she's known about her status as a superhero all of her life (when that's hardly the truth).
She loves him, that's the truth.
It should be as simple as that. But it's not.
They can't be together for reasons her brain refuses to understand, because she loves him, loves this man who fights for the same things she does, who can heal with the power of a touch, who looks at her in a way that makes her think of old Hollywood movies; she can freeze time, control things that most people would dream of having the power to control, and yet all she wants to do is be normal.
She just wants to live with this man, to eat brunch with her sisters, to have a family, to open a restaurant, to have a fucking Valentine's Day which somehow doesn't involve the world being imperiled in some supernatural fashion where she has to bust out in her nice dress which will inevitably end up getting torn or her house, which will inevitably get damaged somehow, and the very next day, next week, next month, next year have to do it all over again.
She especially doesn't want to do all this if she's technically not even allowed to kiss her boyfriend - and that's what he is, so the Elders can go suck it - in her off-time.
She is always on the clock, it feels like. Always, and he makes her feel like - he makes her feel like he can stop time; he controls her with the right twist of his fingers or the slightest pressure against her skin.
But he has to go save someone.
And she stands in the kitchen with a wooden spoon held in the air because she's been simmering this sauce for a fucking hour now, and it's perfect, and it's their time except stolen time is never ever their time, and he kisses her forehead and says, i'm sorry, piper, i'm sorry, i love you, but you know -
Yes, she knows, she knows.
She supposes it's all good, the whole turning off the head, covering the saucepan with a lid, because Phoebe bursts in ten minutes later and says that someone's burning people alive by Chinatown.
She thinks it's ironic in that bitter and twisted way; the girl who can stop time can never escape the ticking clock.