Introduction

Hi guys. Here's another one-shot written for a Shadow Tales' contest. This one's scenario was "(Season 4 Timeline) Paige has just moved into Halliwell manor and more importantly, directly into the bedroom her eldest half-sister used to reside in. As Paige is making the room to reflect more about the person she is, she stumbles across something of Prue's which educates her on who her sister was." and the objective was "to create (or select from past episodic information) the item Paige discovers and go into whether or not this item helps make her feel more comfortable as a member of the family, or if it makes her feel like she doesn't have it in her to substitute the sister Piper and Phoebe knew, loved, and lost. Prue is not to make an appearance in this story." I quite enjoyed writing it, so here's hoping you'll enjoy reading it :-)

Imprudence for Confidence

An oomph! The door opened, and in the gloomily lit bedroom entered a big brown box. Painting supplies poked out of it – a canvas already attached to the wood frame while the tripod bounced to and fro in the opposite corner. The noise it made when hitting the other content clearly defined the latter as more art equipment. Fine white hands held the carton but under the seemingly heaviness the figure to whom they belonged, hidden behind it, stumbled quite often, helping herself steady with the walls, punctuating her moves with renewed exclamations.

Finally the woman reached the bed and lowered her burden down to the floor with more hisses, then straightened up, revealing a mane of slick black hair falling in a cascade around her pale-skinned face. She held her waist with both hands and cracked her back. With a sigh of relief, Paige flopped down on the naked mattress and stared up at the ceiling, spread-eagled. Sitting up, she then took in her surroundings.

She didn't feel at home. And she sincerely didn't think she ever would. She liked her independency, her loneliness even. And her normalcy above all. But destiny had it differently and now everything was reversed. No more solitude and no more normality. She was a Charmed One. One of the three most powerful witches the world would ever know, indeed. And with great power came great responsibilities. The demons she were to fight and the innocents she was to save were a weekly proof of that. She had to make sacrifices – for the Greater Good … for her own safety. Yet nobody had told her she was bound to like it.

She shook her head. Don't think about it. The blackness of the room must be getting to her, she thought. Her hazel eyes fell upon the closed curtains and she quickly got back to her feet. Two swift strides and she stood at the window, letting the sun in.

She perused the now-brightly lit bedroom of her eldest half-sister. Of Prue she knew only what Phoebe and Piper had told her and she had only seen a few photographs, all other having been jealously stored in her sisters' albums. From what she had heard, Prue was a hard worker, a very powerful witch, and a dedicated sister. If she ever wanted to meet those standards, Paige would first have to forget she had been raised as an only child and that she had been given up because she had three sisters, not two, although she didn't really held grudges for that, having been raised by two wonderful people. In relation to work, she didn't have any worries; she knew the hard way and would soon prove to everybody she could become a social worker, not endlessly remain an assistant.

She looked at the cardboard box she had brought up with her. Painting was her hobby. It appeased her, made her forget all her worries. She might as well combine business and pleasure and paint this room, to take in her new surroundings fully and get her bearings right. Because she had to fit in this new family; it was, in the end, just another challenge of life. She could do it. She had to.

She went to lock the door – when painting, she was vulnerable, unaware of the outer world – then got all her painter's gear out, setting the easel up, her back on the window. She would paint the room empty of her things, then again with everything she owned. To set the changes.

She dunked the brush into the brown-colored paint on her tablet and started the picture. Moments later, when the tip of the brush was to depict one foot of the wardrobe, Paige's gaze met with a black-leathered kind of book lying on the floor.

Wondering what it could be, and who it could belong to, the young witch placed her utensils down on the bed and made her way round it. Kneeling down, she realized it was a planner. She knew instantly whose it must be, having never used one of those herself before. Her suspicions got confirmed when she opened the cover, which read, Prue Halliwell.

Her heartbeat increased the slightest bit at the prospect of finding more about who her sister was, even if just through an agenda. Lines written by someone could sometimes carry more meaning about them than words said by one of their relatives.

Fixing the agenda as a cherished treasure, Paige got back up and sat on the edge of the bed, making sure she didn't disturb the brush lying on the tablet, on the other end of the mattress. Grabbing the datebook in one hand, she pressed her thumb on the side of the pages, quickly opening them one after the other.

Putting the paint tablet and the brush safely on the floor, she spread herself out on the bed and started reading. Yet when she reached the back cover, some fifteen minutes afterwards, Paige was proved wrong; she had learnt nothing more than what she already knew; that Prue was a hard worker, that she had very little acquaintances or friends out of work range and that she had a very fine handwriting. Nothing on what had been lying beneath the surface.

She longed to know Prue, to know more than what she had dared to ask. Because she knew Piper and Phoebe hurt at the mention of their sister's name in the mouth of the stranger she was. But she needed answers, certitudes. That way she could make every effort for the other two to accept her, for without acceptance, she would never fit in here, would never want to stay.

She pondered her options. Reading the entries had not shed enough light on the persona of her deceased sister. But Paige was a witch. She could do magic. Would a spell help her read the meaning behind the words? Yet using magic for that personal a task could have bad consequences. Yeah, she thought, personal gain! She had learned at her own expense what the consequences of a spell cast for one's own achievement could be. She was sure her back would ache for what remained of her lifespan after having grown breasts bigger than Pamela Anderson's when she cast a wrongly-intended attraction spell.

Yet was it that personal? She only wished to know her sister better, to be accepted, and ultimately save as many innocents as she could. She sighed. Why did they have to make such a stupid rule? And why could evil use magic for their own ends? That was so unfair. Boiling rage was taking over. She could deal with the consequences, after all.

"Very well," she spoke out loud, "here goes nothing." She was about to get up when she thought twice. She might as well practice her powers. Sitting up, her back straight, she held both hands palms up on her lap and closed her eyes, focusing, picturing the ancient big green tome in her mind's eye. "Book of Shadows!" she whispered with a touch of reverence in her voice, hoping maybe that refraining from speaking it loudly would take out the severity of the act.

Rafts of blue-white twirling orbs descended from the ceiling and onto her offered hands, assuming the shape of the antique spell book. Paige's eyes reopened and she smiled at the sight. She always felt good when she was near or touching the Book, almost as if it made her whole again, after being alone for so long. Her roots, that was what these pages represented; the link between her and the past she had never known. She caressed the red triquetra on the cover. It was bound to help her in her quest.

Her back stiff – for even if she disagreed, she knew very well she was breaking a rule – she opened the magical book and started skimming through the yellowish pages, almost feeling the magic of them against the tip of her fingers. She couldn't make up her own spells; she had always been terrible at rhymes. But what she was good at – and had brought upon her plastic surgery problem – was rewording pre-written ones – for some reasons she could find the perfect match for her own purposes.

And there it was, the spell. A tweak or two and it would hit home with a bang!

Smiling, Paige grabbed the agenda she had set aside beside her and held it up close to her heart as she chanted the modified lines.

"Magic forces far and wide,
Enchant this so that can't hide;
Allow this witch to use therein
So she can reveal the past within."

Gleaming orbs of white light suddenly appeared, swirling around the newbie spell-caster. The magic was working, Paige was sure of that. As she was swallowed by the dancing balls, the bliss of casting a spell right and the fear of consequences as well as the anticipation of knowing her sister at long last warred inside her. As Paige vanished, the agenda kept floating in midair, where she had been holding it. The spheres instantly plunged into it, closing it once all the orbs were absorbed. It fell atop the Book of Shadows, on the floor.

When Paige rematerialized, she stumbled and bent down in two to steady herself. She compared this experience to her orbing power, the nausea, the feeling of disappearing into oblivion, except she usually felt whole again when she reappeared. Unlike this time. Here and now, she felt something was missing. She realized the strange tinge of the décor around, and as soon as she did, she heard the voices in the room.

"Oh, I'm sor–" The two women on the bed ignored her and shock befell Paige as she recognized them.

She wasn't in any room, she was in Phoebe's. And the furnishings weren't the only thing unlike what Paige was used to: Phoebe and Piper, seemingly much younger, sat on the bed, in a deep, uninterrupted conversation. Paige would have laughed at their haircuts hadn't she had one just as ridiculous a few years ago – and if her attention hadn't been taken by the talk her half-sisters were sharing.

"Why didn't you tell Prue I was coming back?" Phoebe was asking.

"And risk her changing the locks? I don't think so." Piper turned off the TV – Paige hadn't even noticed it was on. "Besides, you should've been the one to tell her, not me."

"Good point, Chicken Little. It's just so hard for me to talk to her. She's always been more like a mother."

"That's not her fault. She practically had to sacrifice –" Phoebe interrupted her, finishing the sentence in tow with her, "—her own childhood to help raise us."

Phoebe chuckled, "Yeah, yeah, yeah."

"Hey, we were lucky she was so responsible. You and I had it easy. All we had to do was be there."

"Yeah, well, I don't need a mom anymore, you know? I need a sister."

Paige heard a knock on the door behind but she had no time to turn round that she was being transported away by new orbs. Thoughts raced through her mind. Prue was the big sister, the mom figure. She had helped raising her two siblings, the way Piper was trying to educate her on the craft. If she ever felt too much pressure, she could always go and talk to Phoebe, who had lived a similar situation.

As soon as she came to this conclusion, Paige knew she was rematerializing somewhere else. Still in the manor, but downstairs, surrounded by a frantic Piper, Phoebe, and Leo.

"Try calling the magazine," Piper suggested.

"I already did, they said she left half an hour ago," Phoebe replied.

"OK, then keep trying her cell. Are you sure your vision was of the past and not the future?"

"Positive."

"Could you tell how old she was?"

"Around twenty. It was the same time that we had that other accident."

"What happened?" asked Leo, unusually unaware of an event befalling his protégées.

"Oh, Prue was driving and she ran a red light. We didn't even hear the other car honk," Phoebe explained

"Phoebe was the only one hurt," Piper added. "She was in the hospital for over a week. It scared the hell out of us."

"Prue never forgave herself."

"It was a really rough time for her. For all of us actually."

"Why?" inquired Leo, reflecting Paige's thoughts.

"Well, Phoebe and I were teenagers and Grams was extremely overprotective," Piper explained on.

"But she was hardest on Prue. She kind of made Prue take care of us. She didn't let Prue go away to school. She wanted to go back east to be a photo journalist," Phoebe added.

"But Grams knew that we were gonna become witches and she wasn't gonna let anything jeopardize that."

"Still, you know what? I don't care what was happening, Prue would never even consider …"

"I know, but you saw her," Piper retorted.

"Okay, what I saw was Prue taking pictures and she was very sad, but that doesn't mean she was actually gonna jump." Paige disappeared as Leo opened his mouth to talk.

So even Prue had a weakness, Paige thought as renewed orbs took her away. Paige had but a choice to believe Phoebe when she said she would not have jumped down but Prue the super witch/super sister had at least once felt the world as a burden on her shoulders. Like Paige condemned herself for her foster parents' death – which remained a secret – Prue felt guilty of Phoebe's trauma. And her tutors had been deciding of her life choices.

This time, when Paige reappeared, she didn't recognize the scene. A man, a demon, screamed, "No!"

Behind her, Paige heard Phoebe shout, "Prue!" As she turned round, Piper called out to her husband, "No! Leo, Leo, Leo!"

The Whitelighter orbed out and into the hole at Paige's feet, in the ground. Paige once again turned to the demon. "Why did she have to have pride? Pride is the one Sin you can't beat."
"Beat this," Piper exclaimed, freezing him.

"Oh, I see orbs," Phoebe exclaimed. Paige saw them too, but she was once again teleported away.

Pride. She had read during one of Piper's "classes" on magic that it was the worst of the Seven Deadly Sins. The one you never could get rid of unless you killed the Infector. She also knew that those demons chose the sin suiting best their victim. Prue. Pride … Bah, you had to have a sin anyway.

As she landed in the manor again, the first thing Paige saw was the broken wall. She heard sobs and weeps and Piper's voice, "Please, don't leave me! Prue! Leo, do something!"

Paige advanced slowly from the dining room, making out Leo's back as he knelt over a figure she could not see. "I can't, Piper, she's –"

"Don't!" Piper croaked.

Tearing, Paige vanished one last time as Cole and Phoebe shimmered in front of her. As she opened her eyes in her room, in the present, she saw them shimmer in there as well.

Finally, she felt whole again! Yet she had no time to ponder as Phoebe assaulted her with questions while Cole went to unlock the door. Only then did Paige realize she heard fists slamming hard on the wood, and shouts. But she did not bother to answer Phoebe, or Piper, when she stormed in, followed suit by Leo. There was too much on her mind. She merely bent forward, picking up the Book and the agenda.

"You had us worried sick!" Piper was venting. "Leo had lost you on his supernatural radar! – Where did you find that!?" her tone went from annoyance to brisk roughness. She snatched the datebook from Paige's hand, a mother protecting her kid from a stranger. For that is still what she was.

"It was under the wardrobe – must have fallen," Paige explained serenely. She looked up from Piper to Phoebe and back. Those two had lost a strong-willed sister, a mother. Paige could never substitute for that, she shouldn't disillusion herself. She had similarities with Prue, but she was not her. She could be as good a witch as Prue, she would prove it, but she would never be Prue the Sister. She could be the little sister they never had; be her insufferable self and nothing else. That would have to do.

The End

Author's End Note

Do I have anything else to say? Nope, just "thank you for reading" and "please review if you did enjoy the read". I think that's enough talking :-)