Author's Note: Piper's daughter is Prudence Melinda Halliwell, as per the consensus, but Phoebe's "Ladybug" is the reincarnation of Melinda Warren. Had Phoebe's Penny been born first, she probably would've been named for her past life, but in my timeline each sister has her three children consecutively.
As for the other names, Phoebe seemed the most likely to continue the "P" tradition, and I like the idea that Paige would name her girls after her two beloved mothers, the latter I made up. "Juni" is a derivative of "Junior," which is a bit more playground-safe than "Little Henry."
Also, a note on last names – It makes sense that "Ask Phoebe's" husband would need a fake identity, ala the beginning of season eight, and "ReCupido" means "King of Hearts." "Coop" could then become a surname-derived nickname (e.g. "John ReCupido," after John Donne the love poet). As for the hyphens, we know that Phoebe's in favor of them, while "Matthews-Mitchell" sounds way too much like a law firm for Paige's tastes.
"Wyatt" – Wyatt Matthew Halliwell – 2 February 2003
"Chris" – Christopher Perry Halliwell – 16 May 2004
"Mel" – Prudence Melinda Halliwell –10 April 2007
"Penny" – Penelope Amora Halliwell-ReCupido –1 May 2007
"Pheona" – Pheona Venus Halliwell-ReCupido –14 February 2008
"Pierce" – Pierce Billie Halliwell-ReCupido –23 August 2012
"Tricia" – Patricia Winona Mitchell – 4 September 2012
"Tia" – Portia Christine Mitchell – 4 September 2012
"Juni" – Henry Thomas Mitchell, Jr. – 12 October 2014
Recalled to Life
That Profound Secret
2016
"A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it!"
Book I; Chapter III of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
—Not Entirely Her Own—
The sudden heaviness of Mel's limbs, the heightened awareness of her senses, the low murmur in her mind, the powerful hum from her fingertips to her temples alerted her – he was there.
She allowed him the use of her eyes to scan the backyard. Red, white, and blue streamers, ribbons, table liners; crayons, coloring books, her three four year-old cousins; flowers in bloom, green grass, bright sunlight; her two uncles, two aunts, mom and dad sitting on patio furniture arranged close by in the shade of the big tree. Chins titled upward, they took turns speculating over a small cluster of orbs floating above their heads.
"He's been up there a long time. Think he got stuck?" Mel's mom pondered evenly.
Her dad grinned. "Remember Chris and the ceiling? He'd need a solid surface."
"I'm impressed. I mean, kid's got stamina, commitment. All in all, good tantrum," Uncle Coop mused.
Aunt Phoebe let out a burst of laughter. For him, Mel briefly closed her eyes against it.
"Let us not forget style and execution. Very important."
"He's creative, too," Uncle Henry said. "He didn't pick this one up from his sisters."
Dad asked, "Where do you think he'll go?"
"He never goes anywhere. He just hovers." Aunt Paige pointed a stern finger up at her incorporeal son. "Henry Thomas Mitchell, Jr., you come down here right now." She added a snap and the orbs dropped straight down, just out of her grasp, and shot over to materialize on his father's lap.
Uncle Henry bounced his chortling son. "My boy's proud of himself. Aren't you, Juni? Yeah you are."
Aunt Paige sighed. "I can't tell if I'm raising a baby or a cloud. I'd never do it, but sometimes I just want to bind the sucker and have done."
"He'll calm down when it matters," Mom predicted. "The Mrs. Bemba incident did it for Melinda."
Aunt Paige snorted. "I'd rather Juni stop using his powers in public before I have to resort to drugging his teachers with memory-altering apples."
One time she'd gotten caught. One time. If that stupid kickball hadn't gone through the window, her teacher never would've unfroze to find Mel suddenly and inexplicably on the other side of the room, partway through a game of Oregon Trail 3D, while the other kids were still on test question number one.
"It wasn't really Mel's fault. She was bored in class." Good old Dad. "Bluffing her with a binding potion might have worked in the short run, but I really think giving her those extra Magic School classes to think about solved the problem long-term..."
Mel stopped listening, her attention caught by the tiny finger poking her in the shoulder.
"You used purple last," Tricia stated, pointing to the picture Mel had been idly coloring as collaborating evidence.
She spotted indigo in Tia's pile. "Here."
"No, purple." A bit of gold light, and Tricia's hazel eyes were the exact shade she wanted. "Where'd it go?"
"I don't know. I put it back in the box."
"Not true," Pierce said without glancing up. "It fell. You got your foot on it."
"I'll get it!" Tia dove under the table and quickly produced two halves of the missing crayon. On the table, she pushed the two ends together and then waved her palm over the stubs, fusing them together messily. "All better."
He had her ask Pierce, "How did you know where the crayon was?"
Still not glancing up, she replied, "I knew."
A veripath, he noted. A mender, an illusionist. So many useful opportunities.
She frowned deeply as he focused again on Aunt Phoebe. Was he only there to spy?
"…doing some serious thinking about binding," Aunt Phoebe was confessing. "After watching Billie agonize over her decision to strip her powers and start her life over in Texas with Greg, I can't help but wonder if any of my girls will ever reach the point when they're that totally disenchanted with magic."
Uncle Coop picked up Aunt Phoebe's hand from the armrest and held it. She placed her other hand over his.
Mel darted her eyes away. After a second, he had her look back. He wanted to watch them.
"Are you worried about this now or for the future?" Mom wanted to know.
"The future. Penny's got a great head on her shoulders and Pierce is still so young…It's mainly Pheona I worry about. She's already starting to show signs of being an empath. I know she should be fine, since the power is natural, but can you imagine how hard it's going to be for her when she's a teenager?"
Dad rested his elbows on his knees. "It doesn't have to be. Binding isn't the only option. There are calming spells and chants, and I'd be happy to give Pheona some extra time at School."
"You're wonderful, Leo. Really." Aunt Phoebe blew out a breath, smiling again. "And I guess for my part I'll just have to get used to my six year-old telling her babysitter just how much Mommy's been looking forward to her special night out with Daddy. And why."
The adults winced and laughed. He bared Mel's teeth sourly.
Aunt Phoebe shrugged prettily. "That's Pheona for you."
"Oh, tell them what Penn said," Uncle Coop prompted.
"I forgot. So, we're at that Wicca shop, the new one in Chinatown, and the owner – Bian-Xing, she's great – is lighting candles for the girls, showing them tarot cards. And the she asks the girls if they can do any magic. Penny popped right back with, 'Of course we can. We're Halliwell witches. We've all got strong wills, great cheekbones, and the best powers.'"
"She didn't," Mom exclaimed, leaning toward Aunt Phoebe.
"Not a direct quote, but pretty close."
Uncle Henry looked to his wife, but Aunt Paige could only give him a shrug.
"It's something Melinda Warren told us years ago when we brought her from Salem," Mom explained.
Uncle Coop added, "I told Phoebe that it isn't uncommon for people to experience déjà vu with their past lives, much like they can experience déjà vu with past loves."
"Uh-huh," Mom remarked, sharing a wry smile with Dad.
Sitting out there all afternoon, Mel had gotten used to being bored, but there was no way she was going to stick around and listen to how amazingly special having a past life made Penny. She tossed down the indigo crayon and started to get up.
Earnestly, Tia said, "Finish your picture or you waste paper. That's bad for Earth."
Mel ignored her cousin, refusing to let someone half her age boss her around. He, on the other hand, could boss her around, so she ended up standing next to Aunt Phoebe's chair instead of heading up to the attic as she'd intended. She wished he'd skip this part. It always made him so sad.
Aunt Phoebe squeezed Uncle Coop's hand before she let it go. "We've known who she was since the day of her Wiccaning. I've had nine years to wrap my head around it, but I'm still kind of at a loss. Ladybug seems so much of this time."
"So much like you," Mom said, a little wistfully.
"Yep, she's a talker all right. But it's the quiet ones you've really got to watch out for," Aunt Phoebe goofed, pulling Mel onto her lap.
She tried to squirm away from Aunt Phoebe's tickling fingers, huffing out giggles in spite of his heavy weight on her heart. When she stopped tickling, Mel squinted up at her face, all laugh lines and bright white teeth. Mel couldn't appreciate the delicacy of her Aunt Phoebe's bone structure or the fullness of her lips the way he wanted to, and that added to his sadness. She could, however, feel the warmth of her skin, the unmitigated affection in her eyes. He had to make do with that.
"Think we should put the steaks on?" Uncle Henry glanced at his watch. "Darryl and company are late." He made "tsk, tsk" noises at his recently retransferred captain.
"They probably got held up at Shelia's mother's," Dad replied. "What time did we say we were heading to the fireworks?"
"I told Shelia about five. The park'll get filled up fast – Ugh!" Mom swatted around her head. "The bees are huge this summer." With a flip of her wrist, Mom froze a bumblebee hovering near Aunt Paige.
Aunt Paige wrinkled her nose. "Yuck."
"Where'd the flyswatter go?" Uncle Henry wanted to know, looking around.
Aunt Paige didn't spot it either. "We'll have to smoosh it with a napkin or something. Just don't blow it up, Piper. I don't want bee guts all over me."
Look, Mel thought to him as she flicked her fingers at the bee. After a few seconds, it fell from the air and landed dead in the grass. Mel felt his approval. She'd been practicing freezing only parts of things, like he'd said. A little smile flittered across her face, one she immediately lost when Aunt Phoebe let out a tiny gasp.
"Prudence Melinda, what did you do?"
After a long pause, she responded, "I unfroze everything but his heart." She was confused by her aunt's stunned disappointment. The other adults had the same look. "What?"
"Nothing, sweetie. It's fine," Mom responded, glancing back at Dad.
Steadily, Mel's pulse began to pick up. "It can't be different from smooshing him or blowing him up," she pointed out, some of his bitterness creeping into her tone. "He didn't feel it, Aunt Phoebe. Why's it different? Why's it wrong?"
Aunt Phoebe smoothed back Mel's long brown bangs. "It wasn't wrong, Melinda. You didn't do anything wrong. You just did it so off-hand – I just – You really shouldn't be thinking about how to use your powers to kill things."
"But – demons – "
"Bees aren't demons. Bees sting, but they do good things, too, like pollinate flowers and make honey. Demons can't ever do good things. Do you understand?"
Mel kept her mouth closed. He opened it. "You still believe that?"
Aunt Phoebe's eyebrows knitted together. "How do you mean?" When she didn't get a response, Aunt Phoebe kissed Mel on the forehead. It felt sticky because it was so hot out. "Never mind. It's complicated. I just want you to be aware, okay?"
Enough of this, he should know better by now. Mel climbed off Aunt Phoebe's lap.
Her mom caught her by the wrist as she went by. "Hey, not so fast."
Very evenly, Mel said, "I have to go to the bathroom."
They stared at each other for a moment before Mom let go. "All right, sweetie."
Mel smiled. No lecture. "Thanks."
"Scram."
She went quickly across the yard. After Mel had closed the door behind her, she intuitively altered her façade to reflect his shift in focus to the task at hand. Her face became a still mask: wide-eyed gaze narrowed, open lips compressed. Shoulders squared, she strode through the sun porch, parlor, and foyer.
Never did Mel feel more alive than when her life was not entirely her own.
