Warning: This has Chris angst in it, which I am sure is the reason that you are reading this. Call it a guilty pleasure.
Disclaimer: I own Charmed! Yes Yes! I own it!
[Three months later]
They say that if I confess to not owning Charmed, they'll drop the charges. So I don't own Charmed…
Ashes of Roses
Chris stared blankly at the book. Staring through the text and reading the words, but not really processing them. Just earlier that day, Piper had kicked him out of the manor. It was weird, being kicked out of a place where you had lived without your mother's rules for some time. Although, what Wyatt had done couldn't be classified as much different. He had all but physically came and thrown him out of the house.
He usually obeyed what Piper said having still held on to that want for her authority in his life, but it wasn't like he was breaking her rule. Not exactly anyway.
She had said something along the lines of her not seeing him.
She didn't see him in here, so what was the harm?
"You gotta love loop holes" Chis mused.
He couldn't say that her hatred of him and banishment didn't hurt his feelings a little, because it did. It was just easier ignoring that feeling that clenched at his heart when he saw his mother-no PIPER smiling. When he heard her laugh, oh, how it reminded him so much of his mother's laugh. The smell that still lingered in the kitchen from the breakfast she had cooked. Just her scent managed to intertwine with his memories and cause dryness in his throat that could only be quenched by this look-a-like's approval.
How many times, He wondered, had he flirted with the idea of him simply telling them the truth? He had had near slip-ups, but nothing too revealing. Just simple things like nearly calling Wyatt by his nickname, Wy, or telling Piper that he missed her cooking, on those rare occasions he was hated less within the coven of sisters to eat a meal. He couldn't tell them though. It wasn't as though he didn't want to. Because he did…he really did.
"Well. Now you know THAT isn't true." His subconscious confessed. Chris audibly sighed.
Maybe, to some degree, that voice was right. He didn't really want to tell them. It would most likely result in just more pain. Pain, he realized soon upon entering this time period, happened nearly every blue moon in comparison to his world. He couldn't say that he hated that so much. His worst face with pain was being hit by a dark-lighter. That hardly qualified as pain.
Pain was something you learned to omit from your vocabulary. Hell, more like the dictionary. You can't survive his world, or rather Wyatt's world, if you were scared and hung up on such trivialities as getting a boo-boo. Chris was all too aware of the kind of horrors one could go through in a lifetime. So many people had told him, when he started The Resistance, that he was too young for this. 'Too young'? They were insinuating that he was a mere child, and that thought offended him.
He hadn't been a child since he was fourteen. Finding the body of your dying mother lying in a pool of her own blood tends to do that to a kid. The colour of it reminded him of a color his mother had shown him.
"Ashes of roses…"Chris said aloud. He hated the colour so much. The pain on her face when she spoke. He could still remember every last thing that she had said.
He had just turned fourteen and went downstairs to ask to his mother why his father couldn't show up again this year. The man never showed up to anything in regards to his youngest son.
As he made his way to the foyer, it was there that he had found her. Simply lying there. In her own blood. She had been gasping for air, but not once had she been able to call out.
He slid down to his knees and grabbed her into his arms, looking no where else but her brown, glazed over eyes. He tried to shake her. Something he doesn't know why he did even to this day. He shook her until it crossed his mind that she was fading too fast and shaking her wasn't the equivalent of actually healing her.
Healing.
Wyatt had gotten his healing powers when he turned ten, and Chris was fourteen. He should be able to heal, right?
He had placed his hands over his mother after gently setting her down. How had Wyatt done it? Leo had taken the time to teach Wyatt but not him. He kept his hands hovered over his mother. Nothing continued to happen.
Why wasn't it working? Why could Wyatt do it and now him?! He needed to so badly right now!
"Chris, honey." He heard his mother rasp. How long had she been talking? It wasn't until he words reached him that he realized that he had been saying things like 'no please mom no.' and 'oh God, please let her heal. Please. Please. Please'. Over and over. He could feel the movement of his tongue as he formed the words.
"Mom! You can't speak. You need to save your energy. I'll call dad! He'll come!" Chris choked, tears streaming down his face at the pain in his mother's voice.
"Dad!" Chris yelled desperately. He looked for the typical sign of the Elder's arrival.
Nothing.
"Dad! PLEASE! I Need you! PLEASE!" His cries were even more desperate as he remained tenacious with the hope that his hands would start healing her.
"Chris. Honey. I need to tell you…" She coughed. Blood.
"Mom. Please. I-I can't lose you. Please mom. Please." He begged with her, as though leaving and staying in this world was her choice. He looked down in shame at his inability to control this. His mind was twisting with thoughts of self-loathing at his inadequacies as both a witch-lighter and a son.
How had he NOT heard a demon attacking?
Why can't I just heal her?
Why wasn't dad coming?!
Why am I so useless?!
"Peanut." Piper's trademark nickname came out so dry.
"I know what you're thinking, and none of this is your…' She took a sharp intake of breath.
"...fault." She finished. She lifted her closest hand to his face and gently wiped his tears.
Even now, she was more focused on him than she was on herself.
"But mom. I can't heal you. If I could-could just-just DO something. I cou-could have stopped this!" Chris hiccupped, his tears streamed harder as he felt the coldness of his beloved mother's hand. If only he were as strong as Wyatt.
Wyatt!
Maybe he could help!
"Wyatt!" Chris yelled with renewed hope. Surely his brother would come!
There was nothing
"Wyatt! Please!" He yelled at the unresponsive ceiling.
"WYATT! I NEED YOU! PLEASE!" He screamed, his voice cracking.
"Chris…you know…I love you…right?" His mother asked so suddenly.
Chris's head snapped back down at his mother's words. There was no question.
"Of course! I love you too mom!" Chris yelled. He loved her so much. Wyatt always called him a momma's boy for it and he always denied it, but he was proud to be his mother's boy.
Piper smiled at that, which quickly turned into a smaller smile before turning into a grimance.
"You know that…your father…loves you too, right?" She asked, eyes desperately searching Chris's eyes, looking for honesty in the green pools.
He hesitated.
"Of-of course I know that mom." He stuttered, looking away. No doubt Piper caught it.
"I just…just thought that you…should know…" She smiled again. Something that pulled at Chris's heart strings.
He looked at his mother's eyes. They were fading, and fast.
"Mom." Chris choked. "What…how am I going to…what if…why would…" Chris had started four different sentences, unable to finish any before another forced its way out of his throat.
"Just remember Chris, that we love you…your father and I…and your brother. No matter what we say when we are upset…just…don't let this change things." Piper choked her sentence out painfully. She coughed up more blood.
"DAD! WYATT! PLEASE! IT'S MOM! PLEASE! LEO! WYATT! LEO!" Chris shouted helplessly to the sky, hoping against hope that either one would appear. His voice gave out when he felt his mother shift.
"Don't blame…not fault…loves…you…Wyatt…Chris…blessed" Piper said deliriously before rolling to her side.
Those had been her last words.
He had called for Leo and Wyatt until his voice eventually gave out. They hadn't showed up until five minutes after Piper's passing. They had been together. Training, no doubt.
Leo's face upon seeing his wife was one of dread. His and Wyatt's expressions were identical as they both ran over to her, pushing Chris out of the way and trying, in vain, to heal her.
That had been the first time the Leo had ever struck Chris. It was a hard slap across the face and a glare so deep that it burned into your skin like a scarlet letter, forever labeling you 'insubstantial'.
He remembered telling him how he had tried, really tried, to heal her.
He had been rewarded with another slap.
He remembered telling him how he had called for both he and Wyatt.
Another slap followed that approach.
He had never felt a stronger feeling of rejection. He knows that he deserved it. It was his fault. He could have prevented it. He SHOULD have prevented it. Chris deserved no sympathy from either Leo, nor Wyatt. And he never received any from the former of the two.
He couldn't say that Leo never showed up anymore. Instead of a lack of presence left behind by the Elder, there were now bruises.
It wasn't something to write a book about, but it must have been the sadness Leo felt whenever he saw Chris. It just got over shadowed by the anger.
Leo still…loved him. Right? Of-of course.
He had hesitated.
Chris was shaken from his thoughts for a moment to look at a demon on the page before swiftly rejecting it as the one that might turn Wyatt. Something told him that Wyatt hadn't been the victim of a demon that, quote, " has groovy dance skills.", end quote.
No doubt Grams wrote that one down, but Chris highly doubted that Wyatt was turned by some Patrick Swayze wannabe. Wyatt hadn't exhibited a need to hit the dance floor unless there was a cute girl on the other side. He had been quite the rebel, and girls liked that about him.
Their mother's death was around the time that Wyatt had turned for the worst. His rebellions had been relatively small, the normal teenaged stuff. Sneaking out here, t.p.-ing a house there. Setting a tack on the teacher's seat just to see how far she would jump, but not before moving her desk further inward so she would smack he knees on the desk really hard when she did so.
She shouldn't have taken his cell phone, huh?
Well…that last one had been him…but nonetheless.
It had started with small things and gradually worsened over time. Their mother's death most likely exacerbating the process.
What had Chris brooding though was something that Wyatt had said to him.
"What turned you Wyatt? Mom's death was hard, but killing innocents? Wyatt, there is no call for that!" He had yelled at his brother's coldness.
"Foolish brother. You think you know, but you don't. I was turned long before mother's…death." Wyatt smirked at Chris.
And in this time, Chris found himself. This was far back. Surely this had to be around the time Wyatt got turned. He knew that it had to be before he was born, because his mother had told him how demons started going after both of them after his birth. Seeing as he wasn't evil…
"If only the sister's and Leo could agree to that." Chris thought. Still thumbing through The Book.
… It had to have occurred before his birth.
Chris stopped on another page and traced the words longingly with his index finger.
'Phoenix' was written at the top of the page. His train of thought immediately stopped at the station meant for Bianca.
God how he missed her. It was so hard to explain what she did to his heart. It felt as though his heart was full when she was near him. With him. By his side. He had, despite the platitude, felt complete. Without her though, he only now realized how empty he was and how much she had completed his soul. He felt that emptiness in him that he had not recognized before she and he had met, and now, it was the most evident part of him. It was screaming at him to make itself known. Forever informing him of what, or whom, he was missing.
He wallowed in self-pity for but a moment before slamming the book closed with an unnecessary amount of vigor.
Piper would probably be upstairs soon, and much to the nagging of his common sense telling him that she was not his mother, he didn't want to get in trouble with her.
As if on cue, he looked up to see Piper staring at him, the fire in her eyes, searing that scarlet letter again.
He opened his mouth to explain, but shut it just as quickly when Piper opened hers.
"I distinctly remember telling you that I don't want to see you anywhere NEAR the manor again. This qualifies as being near it. GET OUT!" She yelled coldly.
Without another word, Chris orbed out.
He can't say that her hating him and kicking him out again didn't hurt his feelings a little, because it did. It really did. No question about it. No hesitation.
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A/N: This is Effie speaking...typing. For those of you that have read my other fan fictions, you have found yourself reading this, and for that, I thank you! This might be a one-shot. It sort of depends on how I and you readers feel. It is just my take on how Chris felt after Piper kicked him out. Anyway, it is a way to help relieve some of that writers block that I have...well...I hope you enjoyed it. R&R.