Introduction
This is the world of Charmed as you know it, except that every human being has a dæmon (as in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series). The dæmon is essentially the human's soul, and takes an animal form emblematic of his/her human's nature. (Note that the dæmon is, with very rare exceptions, the opposite sex of its human.) Children's dæmons can change forms on a whim, but once the human's personality is mature and stable—usually around adolescence—the dæmon "settles" into a single permanent form.
The human/dæmon dyad is a unit—a single mind in two bodies, linked by a psychic connection that functions like an invisible, intangible cord. This link enables each of the two to use the other's senses, and also prevents them from moving farther than a few yards apart without intense pain, both emotional and physical. (The link can be cut or torn apart, and the shock of separation can kill. Survivors suffer effects not unlike full frontal lobotomy—that is, the loss of intelligence, enforced docility and incuriosity, decreased range and intensity of emotion, and generally compromised ability to function.)
In addition, dæmonic behavior necessarily reflects human relationships—e.g., the dæmons of two humans with a strong bond (whether a bond of friendship, family or romance) may touch frequently. One human may touch another's dæmon only if the two humans are in a sexual relationship, and having one's dæmon handled violently or without consent is tantamount to rape.
And now, on with the tale.
"Tie your heart at night to mine, love,
And both will defeat the darkness…"
—Pablo Neruda, "Love Sonnet LXXIX."
As I Gaze Into You
"Why don't you ask me what you really want to know, Phoebe?" Cole's voice is low, and his expression says he already knows what's wrong, knows why she's nervous and what she's going to say. She keeps her gaze on him—not daring to look away now, not when he's standing this close—but glances for a second through Gabriel's eyes. He's abandoned his usual perch on her shoulder in favor of the table lamp, maybe three feet from her, and his sharp magpie eyes are trained on Elizabeth, Cole's golden jackal dæmon. She's standing at his side, tail erect, ears pricked toward Phoebe—alert, a little wary, but not threatening. "We won't lie to you," she says, almost gently.
Elizabeth is the one piece of all this that Phoebe can't understand. Demons in human form cast illusions of dæmons when they're trying to pass for human, but she's seen through those before. To a witch's eyes, the creature beside a demon is translucent, unreal.
If Cole is a demon—if Cole is Belthazor—then how, how can Elizabeth exist? Phoebe had felt Gabriel nestle against her, felt Cole's love in that contact. She'd seen joy and wonder in his face when she'd stroked Elizabeth's back, feeling her lean, solid warmth and the slight coarseness of her fur, and he'd answered that touch with reverent fingertips gliding over Gabriel's wings.
Sex between two people can be purely physical, no emotions or attachments, but there's no deeper trust, no greater intimacy than your dæmon's inviting the touch of a lover's hand. They can't be both, Gabriel says silently to her. Either the man or the demon has to be a lie.
Phoebe grasps the vial of vanquishing potion she's holding behind her back a little more tightly and hopes her suspicions are somehow wrong, hopes she doesn't have to use it. She steels herself. "Who are you?"
Neither man nor dæmon has time to say a word before her sisters burst in. Raphael, Piper's meerkat dæmon, is a long line of bristling fur on her shoulder, and Michael's falcon eyes glare at her from Prue's. Behind them is Krell, the demon bounty hunter, looking at Cole with a sick kind of hunger.
She turns back to Cole just in time to see him morph, human features giving way to red-and-black skin, fanged teeth and unreadable eyes, and Elizabeth vanishes. Phoebe feels her breath catch and her hand clench involuntarily around the vial, hears Gabriel's shocked screech and frantic rush of wings as he dives for her, reaching her arm—and then Belthazor grabs her, holding an athame in one clawed, massive hand, and shimmers out.
Space is a blur around them, and between the hard planes of the demon's chest at her back and the pressure of his arm around her abdomen, so close to her dæmon, her heart is pounding in her throat. He could have just taken you, Gabriel says.
The thought sends a shiver of horror through her. Demons kill that way sometimes, if they're strong enough to overrule the spell any sane witch casts to extend the reach of her link with her dæmon and proof it against tearing. She's read the entry in the Book, the pages of warnings—she knows Belthazor has that kind of power. He could have ripped her apart from Gabriel and left her mind a shattered wreck. Why hadn't he?
The shimmer ends and starts, ends and starts again as he pulls them through several different places, there and gone too fast for definition. Her stomach roils with nausea, and Gabriel's distressed chirping rasps in her ears. "Can we stop with the shimmering all over the place?" she demands. "I'm gonna throw up!"
They rematerialize in what she recognizes as a local cemetery. When several seconds pass and the same ground is still under her feet, she seizes her chance. Gabriel catches the air and rises above them, and she elbows Belthazor in the ribs and abdomen and breaks free of his hold, snatching up the athame he'd dropped and hurling it as far away from them as she can. She still has the vanquishing potion clutched in one hand—she won't need another weapon—but she doesn't want him armed.
Gabriel lands on her shoulder in a flurry of wings, claws hooking into her jacket, and she backs up a few steps as the demon groans, straightens up and turns that black gaze on her. Staring at his inhuman face, she's not certain who or what she's dealing with, what his motives are, but knows that the man she'd fallen in love with had been a lie. The thing she'd thought was his dæmon had been—
No, Gabriel says. She was real, so he has to be too. And he's had enough chances to kill us, but he hasn't. We have the potion if we need it. But let's get an explanation before we do anything we can't take back.
Belthazor shifts, shrinking slightly as he reverts to the shape she knows, and Elizabeth reappears next to him, ducking her head to rub against his shin. It's hard not to think of him as Cole like this, hard not to think of him as human when she sees his dæmon's soothing gesture.
And she believes Elizabeth is a dæmon, believes the emotions she'd read through Gabriel's contact with her, because even if there were a spell that could make the illusion of a dæmon seem solid, that illusion wouldn't be enough to falsify the empathic impressions that pass between humans when their dæmons touch. It couldn't fake love, because demons don't love.
But Elizabeth shouldn't be possible—Cole's love itself shouldn't be possible—because Cole is absolutely not human. "What are you?" she demands. "How can you—and have a dæmon?"
He starts to take a step toward her, but she shows him the potion in her hand, and he stills. His hands stay at his sides, and Elizabeth is lying down at his feet. All the signals say no harm meant, but Phoebe's not ready to trust them.
"Don't move. Just answer me."
"I'm half human," Cole says quietly. "My father was mortal."
Three years of regular demon attacks, and she's never seen or heard of a human/demon hybrid—but he has a dæmon. He's not the same as the soulless horrors that it's her duty as a witch to destroy.
Elizabeth's eyes are on her and Gabriel, intent, and for a second, the tilt of her head makes them catch the moonlight and shine eerily in the dark. "Are you going to vanquish us?"
"Are you going to attack us?" Gabriel counters.
"No," she says.
Phoebe wants to believe her, wants to believe Cole is human enough that the same rules that apply to anyone else's dæmon hold now. That a soul's voice can't tell lies. "Okay," she says, holding Cole's gaze. "I won't if you won't. But I want the truth. All of it."
Cole closes his eyes briefly, then nods. After a few tense seconds, he says, "The Triad sent me to kill you and your sisters. Get close to you, figure out what it'd take. And that's what it was, at first. I went back in time to destroy your line on Halloween—"
"That was you?" she says faintly. She remembers the curve of an apple peel, his name on her lips, and knows now why there'd been something inexplicably familiar about the masked stranger with the black fox dæmon. (Even if she'd had her powers then, illusions are always harder to see through when they're close to the truth.)
"The Triad sent Troxa after you. I sent Andras," Cole continues. She stares at him in mounting horror, realizing the full scale of what he'd done. "It worked. Your powers were gone, you were—" He breaks off and swallows hard. "I couldn't do it," he says, and Elizabeth finishes, "because we realized we love you."
"You—" She stops. She needs to process this, all of this. She needs Elizabeth to stop looking at her like that, devotion like Leo's Irene when she looks at Piper. Gabriel says helplessly, "Elizabeth…"
"Not Elizabeth," Cole says. At Phoebe's look, he explains, "Before this, I didn't spend much time in human shape. Elizabeth was the name my mother used when she pretended to be human." He shrugs. "I needed to give her a name so I'd blend in. It was the first one I thought of."
In other circumstances, she'd have satisfied her curiosity, asked why his dæmon hadn't had a name, but it's not need-to-know information now. Instead, she says, "You lied to me for weeks. You tried to…"
"Yes," he says softly. "But this, between us—that wasn't a lie. Everything else, but not that." When she doesn't say anything, his dæmon says, "We'd forgotten how to be human, to want to be good, to feel love. And then we met you, and you saw more in us than lies. And we wanted to be the person you thought we were."
Phoebe thinks of sunset walks on the pier, long conversations, laughing together; remembers dinner dates and wine and a softness in his eyes that hadn't just been candlelight. She thinks of his nameless dæmon nudging Gabriel with her muzzle, so gently, and feeling love and warmth and a kind of awe in the contact.
She thinks of Cole's hands on her own skin, and looking at them, at his earnest face and his dæmon's pleading eyes, at the way she's looking up at Gabriel…
How could the same person who touched us like we were so cherished be a monster? he asks her. Part of him, she knows, wants to land on the other dæmon's shoulder and preen the thick fur at the base of her neck. (It's the same part of her that wants to reach for Cole's hand.) Instead, he shifts restlessly on her shoulder, half-spreads and resettles his wings, and Phoebe drops the potion on the ground. "I believe you," she says.
Her voice is very quiet, but his dæmon's ears prick, so she knows Cole heard. "Then—" he begins, and the darkness shatters as a bolt of electricity strikes him in the back, sending him flying.
Realization and adrenaline pound through Phoebe in the same instant: the bounty hunter's found them.
Cole lands several yards away with a sickening thud and a grunt of pain, and his dæmon crumples, stunned, with a keening howl that rises like a nightmare. Phoebe runs toward Cole, shouting to Gabriel, Get her up!
She isn't sure what happens to Cole's dæmon when he's in demon shape, but she knows the physical limits of the human/dæmon link, even if they no longer apply to her. Unless Cole's used magic to extend it, he and his dæmon are too far apart. The last thing he needs on top of all his other injuries is the agony of her distance.
Gabriel's already flying, wings beating as fast as Phoebe's own heart, and Phoebe reaches Cole, bending and grabbing his wrist. He moans, and she sees the tension in his jaw and the hand pressed hard to his chest, trying to hold in the heart that must feel like it's being wrenched between his ribs.
Hurry! she says to Gabriel. If she won't move, I don't know if he can. "Cole, you've got to get up!" she urges, voice sharp with fear. "Cole, get up!"
She can't haul him to his feet, but her pulling is enough that he manages to stand, sagging against her. At the same time, she feels Gabriel's flight, feels him peck the edge of the other dæmon's ear. "Go!" he says.
It works: she hears the fall of the jackal dæmon's paws in the grass behind them and Cole's breath of relief as she runs after him, toward the cover of the nearest mausoleum. Phoebe's own run is half-stumbling, hampered by Cole's weight. He's able to stay on his feet—just—but she doesn't think that can last for much longer. Gabriel wheels above them, the white of his breast and wings a target against the night—she feels the electricity of the bounty hunter's shot pass him in the air (too close!), and he dives to find her shoulder as they finally reach the door.
Cole makes it down the stairs with her, breathing hard, the dæmon on his heels whining with his pain. There's a sarcophagus in the center of the room, and he braces himself against it with his free arm, the weight against her lessening as his body threatens to fold.
"Don't you dare!" his dæmon snaps, showing her teeth. He straightens, and Phoebe shoots her a grateful look as she guides Cole into an alcove and lets him sink to his knees.
Not enough protection, not even close, but it's the best she can do for the moment. She allows herself three seconds to catch her breath, watching as Cole's dæmon moves to stand in front of him, facing the stairs. Her ears are canted forward, her hackles raised and her tail bristling, pointed at the ground. A low growl rumbles in her throat.
"You're going to fight?" Phoebe says, incredulous. "He can hardly stand!"
"I can work through pain," she says. There's bleakness in her eyes—God knows what kind of memory—that sends a chill down Phoebe's spine.
"We'll help," Gabriel says, fluttering from her shoulder to rest on the sarcophagus. "You can't beat him alone."
The past three years of demon attacks have taught her to attack and to defend herself, taught Gabriel the best perspectives to give her when she looks through his eyes in the middle of a fight—and even, sometimes, to bring beating wings and claws to bear on a demon's face, giving her enough of a distraction to land her own blow and save their life.
That's only necessary when his best trick, the sound of Prue's or Piper's voice, won't divert an enemy's attention, but for him to have to touch a thing that has no soul itself… It makes her feel sick every time, nauseated and cold to her bones, and she's grateful he's too small to be useful in physical combat except in absolute emergencies.
Footsteps on the stairs. "I should've known you'd come back here," the bounty hunter sneers as he moves into the room. One hand is upraised, ready to shoot another lightning bolt. The other holds a vial of the vanquishing potion, given to him by her sisters. "Half-human traitor. Crawling to your father's bones with your dog!"
Cole's dæmon snarls, and Phoebe weighs their odds as Gabriel rises, flapping across the chamber and lighting on a ledge in the alcove, built high into the wall. From that vantage point, he can see the whole room, which means she can too.
Unfortunately, the best that gives her is protection against attacks from behind. She doesn't have the power to vanquish Krell, not alone. Cole does, but his injuries would make it a dangerous effort. And his dæmon, while she must have a hell of a bite, isn't big enough to be deadly. Standing, her shoulder is about level with Cole's knee.
Smaller means faster, Gabriel says. And we just need to stay alive until Prue and Piper get here. Worry then what we'll tell them. Then, with a caw of anger, he snaps at Krell, "She isn't a dog!"
A human would turn to look when another's dæmon spoke, but the bounty hunter's eyes stay on her, sizing her up. He knows Cole is weak, and he seems to have dismissed Cole's dæmon. God, let that be a mistake. She knows Cole can fight, but she doesn't know how much of that fighting he's done like this, man and dæmon, two bodies working together.
"This isn't your fight, witch," Krell says.
"Wanna bet?"
He dodges the punch she aims at his jaw, his attention now off Cole and locked on her. Jumping out of the path of his lightning bolt, she lands in a crouch to absorb the impact, and sees Cole's dæmon dart behind their opponent.
There's a crunch and a wet, ripping sound, and Krell roars with pain and overbalances, falling to the floor. "Human bitch!" Green-black blood is pouring from his ankle, and there's a chunk of flesh and sinew on the stone.
She tore out part of his Achilles tendon, Phoebe realizes as she stands. A brutal tactic, but smart. No way is he getting up to fight anymore. Not when he can't bear weight on one leg—
But he can sit up. The potion is still in the hunter's hand, and Cole's dæmon's eyes are on her, looking to check if she's all right—Cole sees the danger, he must see, but he's hurt too badly to react fast enough—
The world slows down, takes on crystal clarity, and she rushes to throw herself over the jackal dæmon just as Krell throws the potion, taking the fall with arms held straight so her full weight doesn't crush the smaller body. Her palms scrape the floor, and her wrists, elbows, shoulders all jolt with the impact, a shock of pain that drowns out Cole's gasp, his dæmon's startled yip, and Gabriel's shriek.
The vial hits Phoebe in the back and breaks, the potion seeping into her jacket, and a second later, Cole's energy ball streaks across the room and strikes Krell in the chest. He explodes into a million sparks, and she releases a long breath, then shifts her weight backward and gets up. Cole's dæmon moves back to him, climbing onto his lap and pressing herself to his chest.
"You saved my life," he says. He sounds impressively calm for a man who almost died, but his dæmon's head against his heart, his hand on her back, tells a different story.
"Then we're even. Crippling him probably saved mine." Phoebe curls fingertips into stinging palms, then crosses the distance between them and sits down a few feet from Cole and his dæmon. There's warmth in his eyes, and blood staining the fur of her muzzle. "Thank you, um…" She wants something to call the soul that makes them more than a killer. "This 'not having a name' thing…"
"Then give her one," Cole says, and his dæmon draws back from him enough to turn and look at her.
Phoebe stares at him, shocked, but his expression says he knows what he's asking for. He can't have lived so long, used magic so long, and not know that names have power.
He can't have had a dæmon all his life and not know her name would be sacred. That Phoebe's choosing that name would be a link between them, a permanent tie to her and to good magic.
If we needed proof that he loves us, we have it, Gabriel says in their mind.
She reaches out for him, wincing a little when her shoulder throbs (she definitely hurt herself, falling like that. Leo will heal her once she's home), and he flutters down from the ledge to land on her wrist, avoiding the bleeding scrapes on her palm. She draws Gabriel toward her and meets his gaze, saying, If he means this…
"You're sure?" she asks, looking back up at Cole. "Naming a dæmon…you know what you're trusting me with?"
His smile is gentle, a little wry. "I've never trusted anyone else with her. I suppose I could give her your name,"—jokingly—"but that would get confusing."
She strokes the black-and-white feathers of her own dæmon's wings as she considers, looking at them and seeing their faces—all three faces, human, dæmon and demon—as she wonders what name to give. What name can hold the person in front of her?
"We'd forgotten how to be human, to want to be good, to feel love. And then we met you, and you saw more in us than lies. And we wanted to be the person you thought we were."
Like they were dead, Gabriel says, and then they came alive again.
Her brain lands on some long-ago English class, a scrap of Egyptian mythology, and she remembers Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the Underworld, who'd guarded the scale that weighed mortal hearts, and led those souls judged innocent to paradise. Death and rebirth.
That thought leads her back to witchcraft basics, the stories and symbols she's still learning, even three years in. And then she knows, and smiles.
"Acacia," she says, and the name settles, a low thrum of magic in the air between them. The dæmon she's given it to nods slightly.
"Acacia," Cole repeats, testing the sound and shape of it. "A tree. What does it mean?"
"It means purity of the soul," she says, "and what was dead coming back to life." It's a name that answers his love with faith, a name that echoes his hope that the lies can be made true. A name that forgives.
She knows Prue and Piper would say she shouldn't forgive him, love or not, because love doesn't excuse a hundred years of slaughter. But it's not like she's forgotten what he's done—she can't, especially not with Acacia's bloodstained face in front of her, a too-appropriate picture of this whole tangled mess. It's that she also can't forget that he has a dæmon. That he loves her, and she loves him, and he can choose—has chosen—a better future. He's chosen her, chosen to be good, and that should matter. It should mean giving him a chance.
"Acacia." His dæmon speaks her own name now, each syllable defined, reverent. "Yes." She steps off Cole's lap, moving a little closer to Phoebe, and Gabriel hops to the floor and then to sit in the space between Acacia's paws, bobbing his head to brush against her leg.
She feels Cole's love and gratitude, but also apprehension that mirrors her own. Knows he'd felt her love in that touch, but also her awareness that this is not going to be easy.
"Phoebe!"
"Phoebe!"
Prue's and Piper's voices, distant but loaded with worry, carrying from the cemetery. "They're going to kill me," Phoebe says, half to herself, and Gabriel flies back to her shoulder. If her sisters see him cuddling with Acacia—well. Breaking this to them gently is a better idea than shoving it in their faces.
"If they're going to kill anyone, it won't be you," Cole says dryly. He wraps arms around the pillar next to him and pulls himself to his feet, and Acacia moves to stand beside him, her side against his shin. "I have to go."
Phoebe gets up and grabs his hand, stopping him. "No. You have to stay."
"Stay?" he says. It's obviously the last thing he expected her to say. "Phoebe. Even if you convince your sisters not to vanquish me, refusing to kill you was high treason. The Source will have mobilized a small legion of bounty hunters within a day or two, and there are enough demons after you without—"
"Cole. The whole Underworld has been after us for three years now. What's a few dozen bounty hunters?" Before he can protest, she turns her head toward the stairs and calls out, "Down here!" as she tightens her grip on his hand. Her own protests the pressure on abraded skin, but she doesn't care—she's not letting him go.
"We can shimmer out whether you're touching him or not," Acacia says. "And that we're not…is among the most idiotic things we've ever done." She sighs and lies down, a nonthreatening pose Phoebe can only hope her sisters will believe.
She releases Cole's hand, leaning in kiss him, and Gabriel hops to his shoulder and extends a wing to brush against his cheek. A thrill of pleasure races through her, just an instant before the contact breaks and her dæmon resumes his usual perch, and Cole draws back. His eyes are solemn.
"I don't deserve any of this," he says, "but I'll do everything I can to live up to it."
"We swear," Acacia says.
She wants to say something in return, but before she can think what, her sisters' footsteps sound at the top of the stairs. Time to face the music.
It only takes them a few seconds to reach her. Raphael, sitting in the crook of Piper's left arm, straightens up with a trill of relief, but Michael, perched on Prue's shoulder, gives a shrill cry of alarm and focuses on Cole.
"Phoebe!" Prue says sharply. "What are you doing with—"
"He had chances to kill me and he didn't," Phoebe says. "He saved me from Krell—"
"Right," Prue says. She turns her head to look at Phoebe, but brings up an arm, ready to throw Cole against the wall if Michael sees him move. "Killing the bounty hunter who wanted to vanquish him—that's selfless."
"But he didn't hurt her," Piper says. Raphael's risen to stand in the sentinel's pose meerkats are known for, watching Cole and Acacia warily. "And there is Elizabeth. Somehow."
"Because I'm half human," Cole says. "And her name is Acacia."
Piper frowns and looks to Phoebe, though her dæmon never takes his eyes off Cole. "I was sure you said—"
"I did." She draws and releases a breath. This will go badly no matter when they hear it, so she should just get it over with. "That name was made up, not really hers. So I…"
Michael's feathers flare, and Prue groans. "Oh, you didn't! A demon's dæmon? It didn't occur to you that that was incredibly stupid?"
"I love him," Phoebe says. "And I know he loves me. Everything else—"
"—is what the Elders will say right before they throw the book at us," Piper breaks in. Raphael's paws are clasped, a nervous gesture, and he's still staring at Cole. "If he has a dæmon, fine, he's too human to vanquish. But he's still killed God knows how many innocent people—"
"And we can't change what we did," Acacia says quietly, raising her head to meet Piper's eyes. "But we've changed. And we're not going to kill Innocents anymore."
"We're supposed to believe that?" Prue demands, looking at Cole. "You've been killing for a hundred years! Humans, witches—entire covens slaughtered. Evil like that doesn't just disappear."
Michael turns his fiercest glare on Acacia. "If he's telling the truth, he's had you since birth!" he says. "What, were you just asleep on the job for the last century?"
"I was raised and trained in the Underworld," Cole says. "This kind of mission—infiltration, playing human for so long—that was new. Before, it was always just…go and kill. I didn't know anything else."
"We spent almost all our time in demonic form," Acacia says. "It made us stronger, safer." Her teeth show as she adds, voice bitter, "No weak little animal body other demons could hurt for the fun of causing us pain."
Phoebe flinches and remembers Cole saying She liked to be a tigress. That must have been true, even when he was still lying about everything else: a dæmon's choosing big predator shapes consistently in childhood is nearly always a warning signal. She wants to take Cole's hand, but he won't accept comfort in front of her sisters.
"The problem with that," Cole says after a moment, "was that demonic instinct is always skewed toward aggression. Every little provocation causes rage, and between that and training…" He looks down for a second or two, then back up at them. "When I'm in human form, those instincts are muted enough that I can suppress them, stop myself, but as a demon…"
"I was there," Acacia says, still holding Michael's gaze, "as a voice in our mind. Didn't matter. We didn't know we shouldn't want to kill. And we didn't see another choice."
"But you see one now," Raphael says, his tone hovering somewhere between statement and question.
Cole looks from Prue to Piper. "Yes. And I'm human enough that I can make that choice. I can stop being a killer."
"Right," Prue says, crossing her arms. "Remember that line when you're at Murderers Anonymous."
"He can stop," Phoebe says, breaking in before Cole can retort. (He hadn't gotten the reference, but Acacia's low growl says he'd clearly gotten the meaning.) "He wants to be human now. And Acacia and naming her ties him to me, to that. To being good."
"We can't vanquish him," Piper says, "but is that a reason to just accept this? No matter what he wants, it's been a couple of months. Less. Trust has to be earned, Phoebe."
"He's earned ours," Gabriel says.
Raphael looks down at his paws for a few seconds, then raises his head to meet Gabriel's eyes. "We can't stop you from loving them, or trusting them. But are you sure you know what you're getting into?"
"Now I do," she says, and out of the corner of her eye, she sees Cole grin at the answer. He'd told her weeks ago that she didn't, though at that point, she hadn't understood what he'd meant.
"All I want is a ceasefire," he says, looking to Prue and Piper. "I disappear, I don't hurt innocent people, and you don't come after me."
"Disappear?" Phoebe says. The thought of losing him sends a pang through her, and Gabriel's feathers flare. "What are you—?" he says.
"We've been over this," Acacia interrupts. "The Source is about to send half the mercenaries in the Underworld after us. The only reason we stayed to explain to your sisters is the hope that they wouldn't also be after us."
"Cole, you can't," Phoebe says. Gabriel lifts from her shoulder to settle on her wrist, and she strokes his wings with the fingertips of her free hand. "That wound on your side is still healing—it's probably ripped open again—and Krell almost fried you tonight. You had to grab the pillar earlier so you could stand up! You need to rest, recover." She takes his hand between both of hers, a claim, hearing her sisters' breath catch when they see Gabriel so close to him.
"We are not letting you go to get killed," Gabriel says in a low voice.
Cole withdraws his hand, carefully not touching her dæmon, and his gaze and Acacia's meet her eyes. "Then what do you suggest?" he says. "Because I'm not seeing other options."
"Come home with us," Phoebe says, and then looks to her sisters. "Just for a few days, a week. Long enough to heal. I'd take care of him; you wouldn't have to do anything."
Michael's glare matches the scowl on Prue's face, but from his perch on Piper's arm, Raphael is looking down at Acacia, cautious but still considering. Phoebe turns a pleading expression on her sister, and Gabriel doubles it.
"You want us to accept your demon boyfriend as a houseguest." Prue's voice is flat. "You're seriously asking—"
"I know. And I know it's a lot," she says. "But I can't just hand him over to the Source, Prue. And that's what'll happen if he tries to run like this."
"And that's another problem," Piper says, turning to Cole. "Acacia links you magically to Phoebe with the naming. If the Source gets his hands on you…"
She sees a flash of pain in his face, and Acacia's hackles rise, her ears pressing flat to her skull. He'd thought about what it meant to allow her that connection to him, Phoebe realizes, but not about the possibility of getting caught later. Not about how his gift of trust could be perverted and used as a weapon against her.
Neither had she. And oh God, any magic that reached hers would also catch her sisters'.
We were all dead if he got caught even before, Gabriel says. If they tortured him and found out everything he knows about us, that could bring us all down by itself.
"Would he even know about that kind of link?" she asks. She wants any reason, any hope what she'd done hadn't been a mistake. "That's good magic, and demons don't have—"
"He wouldn't know what made it, or everything about what it is," Cole says heavily, "but at close range, he could detect it, at least enough to know it links to you. And every magic-user on both sides knows how to exploit sympathetic principles."
"Tie two things together, and use one to affect the other," Prue says. "From you to her to the Power of Three." Michael's wings tremble, his talons clenching on Prue's shoulder, and Prue's eyes are cold with rage. "Congratulations, Cole," she bites out. "You're just this side of too human to kill, and we officially can't let the Source have you." She shakes her head. "Well played."
Before anyone can say anything, she turns on her heel and stalks up the stairs.
"I wasn't trying to—" Cole starts to say, but Piper cuts him off.
"I don't know what you were trying to do," she says tightly. Raphael growls and climbs to her shoulder to look at Cole, rising to his full height, tail straight out and teeth showing. "If we find out this was anything but love," he says, "if you were using our sister to save yourself—nothing in heaven or hell is going to save you. Got it?"
Respect flickers in Cole's eyes, and Acacia nods, lowering her body and tail.
"Good," Piper says, mollified by the gesture. "Now do that—whatever it's called and take Phoebe home. You do not want to be in a car with Prue tonight."
"You're going with her?" Phoebe asks. Gabriel tugs a lock of her hair in his beak, a nervous habit. "Or…"
"I'll call Leo. He has to know about this," Piper says, apologetic. "And the Elders have to know. It'll only be worse if we wait for them to find out."
She's right, but that doesn't make it any easier. Even Leo has trouble seeing any gray area in the rules, and the Elders are strictly by-the-book. They're going to hate us for this, Gabriel says. Giving him a link to us…
We did it to help him. Because we love him, Phoebe says. But we didn't think about the Source before we did it.
And she's sure Cole hadn't either. He wouldn't have used her like that, wouldn't have reduced his soul to just part of a ploy. No matter what Prue says, or what the Elders are going to think. "I know." Looking to Cole, she asks, "Is it safe for you to shimmer?"
"It's harder to sense or track demonic powers in a cemetery," he says with a nod. "Hallowed ground masks the trace. And Halliwell Manor's the last place the Source would expect me to go."
"Because he knows you'd want to keep me safe from the demonic ambush?" she asks.
Cole laughs. There's no humor in the sound. "Because he'd expect your sisters to kill me." In a lower voice, "I'm not sure they won't. But the Source definitely would, so." He shrugs. "Better odds."
Piper looks at her, eyes a little wide, silently confirming that yes, he does think she or Prue might kill him. That he just expects… Abuse, Gabriel says in their mind, and Phoebe has to stop herself from wincing.
"I will kill you if you threaten my family," Piper says to him, matter-of-fact. "But if you mean this…if you can be good, and not hurt anyone, then I can treat you like you're human."
Acacia looks up sharply at Raphael, who nods, and Cole looks surprised. "Thank you," he says after a moment.
He's never been treated fairly, Gabriel says. He can't expect it. He bobs his head toward Raphael with a chirrup, shorthand for thanks. A relationship with Cole is going to be difficult enough (she's starting to think she has no idea how much damage a hundred years in the Underworld means), and she doesn't need both her sisters against her.
Prue will take weeks or months to come around, if she ever does, and Phoebe doesn't trust the Elders not to see Cole as a demon. Only a few weeks ago, they were ready to split Piper and Leo up to protect the work of the Charmed Ones. Would they think it's okay to get rid of Cole to protect the Power of Three?
Not if they're as good and pure as they're supposed to be, Gabriel says, but…
"Phoebe?" Cole says, extending a hand.
Worry about that later, she says, and takes it. They love each other, and she will keep him safe, and that has to be enough. "Let's go home."
END.
Appendix: Dæmon Form and Name Meanings
Phoebe
Gabriel, common magpie (Pica pica)
The name is that of the archangel, and means "might of God" or "warrior of God." According to the Bible, Gabriel was the messenger and herald among the archangels, which suits Phoebe's role of receiving visions and delivering their messages. Magpies are intelligent, adaptable, spontaneous, and known for their fierce protection of their nests and family groups, as well as their ability as mimics (they can imitate other birds' calls and human voices). They mate for life. Symbolically, they're associated with prophecy, witchcraft, and the clever use of divination. They balance light and dark, reconciling physical and spiritual opposites.
Cole
Acacia, golden jackal (Canis aureus)
The name comes from the name of the tree, which symbolizes immortality, purity of the soul and resurrection. According to Egyptian mythology, the acacia is the Tree of Life, "in which life and death are enclosed" and interconnected. The word "acacia" may derive from the Greek akakios, meaning "not evil." Jackals represent adaptability, survivability, resourcefulness, cleverness and cunning. They have a strong awareness of their place within hierarchies, are monogamous, and mate for life. Anubis, the Egyptian god of death and the Underworld, who guided souls crossing over and guarded the scale that weighed human hearts, is portrayed with a jackal's head. In the folklore of India and Nepal, the jackal is a common trickster figure (i.e., a character known for intelligence, cunning and manipulation, who transgresses against the boundaries between the profane and the sacred, thereby defining their limits).
Piper
Raphael, meerkat (Suricata suricatta)
The name is another archangel's, meaning "It is God who heals." The Bible identifies Raphael as a healer; this suits Piper's initial role as peacemaker and mediator. The meerkat shape represents awareness of group dynamics and hierarchy, the need for and dependence on family, protectiveness and vigilance. Meerkats are very vocal and highly intelligent, and known for their close-knit clans and cooperative care of their young. They prefer not to confront predators if it can be avoided, but will fight fiercely when escape is not possible, and have even been known to kill snakes.
Leo
Irene, English shepherd dog (Canis lupus familiaris)
The name, meaning "peace," was popular in the 1920s, when Leo was born. The personality of her shape's breed is devoted, obedient, hardworking, generally easygoing, and alert in defense of those it guards. Symbolically, it represents efficiency, deep commitment to rules, loyalty, empathy, diplomacy and perseverance.
Prue
Michael, peregrine falcon (Falco peregrinus)
According to the Bible, Michael was leader of the archangels, and a great warrior; his name means "Who is like God?" The peregrine falcon shape represents speed, intense focus, calculation and discernment, issues with authority, mastery of the wind and air (suitable, since this is the realm through which Prue's power moves objects), and looking within for knowledge. Peregrine souls are loyal, highly protective, practical, determined and confident.
Endnote:
So here I am—revisiting this fandom in a fit of inspiration, an altogether better writer than I was when I left it. I never intended this story; it simply happened, and it represents the evolution of my understanding of the Phoebe/Cole relationship, which I last explored six years ago in a novel-length fic called "Two Roads Diverged." You know the one—the 204-page fix-it that I don't want to abandon the hope of completing someday.
Canon insisted that Phoebe and Cole's problems were caused by what they are—but while that was certainly an integral factor, the issues of who they are, their very different ways of seeing the world, were what really deserved exploring. I barely scratched the surface of that six years ago, and while I'm not considering another novel, I like the possibilities offered by the universe I've created here, so I may return to play in it again.