The stretcher was wheeled off at breakneck speed, making Chris' heart pound even louder in his chest. "I – is she gonna be okay?" He pleaded of the nurse in front of him.
Her gaze turned from cold and clinical to sympathetic and concerned in a second, switching from professional to comforter, and she reached out and squeezed his arm gently. Chris had grown up in a world of demons and enemies, touch wasn't usually friendly, but he had to say that he did find it somewhat comforting.
"Are you friend or family?" The nurse asked.
"Family," Chris said immediately. "I'm her – " he cut himself off. "Cousin," he decided, stuttering out the lie.
The nurse nodded. "You two must be close."
Chris didn't look at her when he agreed. Very close, he thought. "Will she be okay?" He asked.
The nurse sighed and handed him a clipboard with some forms. "It's serious, I won't lie to you, but, barring complications, she's going to be fine."
Chris nearly fainted in relief and the nurse quickly pushed him down into a chair in the waiting room.
"Is there someone you can call?" She asked.
"Uh, yeah. She – her sisters. I should call them." Although how exactly he was supposed to do that without a phone would require serious thinking. He wasn't exactly in the condition to be orbing anywhere himself. He had nearly collapsed in the hospital parking lot when he had orbed there, his mother bleeding out in his arms. For the second time in his life.
The nurse put her hand back on his arm. "How about you? Have you any brothers? Sisters? Friends? Anyone you can call? You look a little shook up."
That was an understatement. But Chris didn't really have anyone in the past. Phoebe and Paige were out of his current reach, and other than Piper he didn't have anyone. Except for Leo. Whatever his own personal feelings towards the Elder, he had to admit that the man had a right to know that his wife – ex-wife – was in hospital. "Piper's husband – I can – he'll be able to come."
The nurse smiled. "Alright, well why don't you go fill out those forms and call your friend. And maybe get yourself cleaned up a little bit," she suggested, pulling back.
Chris nodded in agreement and stumbled to his feet, hugging the forms to his chest while he moved on shaky legs to the bathroom. He froze at the sight of his own reflection. Bloody handprints on his shirt, streaks on his face where Piper had touched him, large stains on his jeans where he had knelt in her blood. It was already caked under his fingernails and drying in the creases on his hands.
With a quick check to make sure that the stalls were all empty, Chris croaked out a shaky; "Leo," and fought not to collapse on the ground or vomit as he thought of how much of Piper's blood – how much of his mother's blood – was on him.
Coming to the past was hard, but he was able to cope with interacting with all of his dead loved ones by separating them based on the fact that they weren't his loved ones, that they weren't dead. Piper wasn't his mom. Leo wasn't his dad – but he hadn't been for years. Paige and Phoebe weren't his aunts. He was dealing as best as he could. it was the only way he could convince himself to put them in danger without breaking down at the thought that he knew where exactly their bodies would be buried.
Chris had moved to begin scrubbing at the blood on his hands by the time Leo orbed in.
"Chris," Leo said, a level of concern was mixed in with his usual contempt-filled greeting. "What's wrong? Why are you in a hospital?"
Chris shook his head. "It's Piper," he choked, scratching at his own hands where the blood had stained and wouldn't come off. "She got hurt and I couldn't call you and I couldn't orb far enough, and I didn't know what else to do." His voice wobbled and wavered traitorously as he spoke, but he pushed out the words as best he could. Waves of despair and hopelessness crashed over him as almost a decade of guilt welled back up – couldn't heal your own mother, what sort of a son are you? Really Chris are you that heartless? What sort of a whitelighter are you? What's wrong with you? Are you broken? All hissed in his mother's voice, his aunts', his cousins', his brother's.
He heard the beginning of Leo's tirade, bemoaning his lack of ability to heal before the Elder cut himself off, silently terrified behind him. Chris half-watched in the mirror as the Elder pressed his hand against his mouth in despair before his eyes widened and he noticed Chris' appearance. "Chris, are you hurt?"
The real problem with Leo, Chris decided, was that he was a very caring man to everyone in the world but his second son, and that included the interloper from the future that he was unaware was, in fact, his second son. What right did this man have sounding exactly like the scant memories he had of his father caring for him? How dare he make Chris want to just curl up in his dad's arms and cry.
Chris shook his head, not trusting himself to speak.
Leo sighed deeply and dragged him into a hug.
Chris really hadn't experienced much positive human contact in his timeline, not for years, and the little that he did came from fleeting touches, a firm handshake or a shoulder brush, or from Bianca. He hadn't been hugged in… Chris didn't know when the last time he had been hugged was. He was rather out of practice, he knew that there was some reciprocation involved, but that probably didn't involve clutching onto your father-who's-not-yet-your-father's clothes and sobbing into his chest.
Leo seemed just as uncertain about what to do as Chris. But maybe that was the minor breakdown he was having that was causing that. Gently, the Elder made hushing sounds and rubbed Chris' back the same way he would Wyatt's. "It's okay, Chris. Piper's going to be okay. You did the right thing taking her here. I can heal her now," he promised.
Chris slowly managed to pull himself out of Leo's embrace. He went to wipe a hand over his face, but Leo's caught his wrist before he could move. He redirected the appendage into the sink and turned back on the spray to wash off the rest of the blood.
He remembered this from when his mom died. He remembered someone wrapped around him from behind scrubbing at his hands with a rough cloth while sobbing in his ear. He didn't know if it had been Wyatt or his dad, he only remembered watching as the last remnants of his mother was washed down the drain.
Leo wasn't crying in his ear or hunched over and crushing him against the porcelain sink. Instead, he was calmly and methodically rubbing at the areas of dry blood and carefully healing Chris' self-inflicted scratches. The pains all over Chris' body quietly disappeared as well in response to Leo's magic. He had been hurt a little worse than he thought.
"Come on," Leo encouraged, moving on to wiping Chris' hands clean and then pressing the forms back into his grip. "Let's go back out and wait. I'm sure that they'll be out to tell us that she'll be alright in no time."
'No time' might have been a slight exaggeration. Afterall, Leo had been a medic in his past life and knew all too well how long these things could take. They had been left waiting long enough that Chris had been able to fill in all of the forms and had calmed himself down enough to fall asleep against the Elder, long enough for Leo to be forced to rouse Chris and orb off to deal with a summons by the Elders.
"I'll be back as soon as I can," he had promised Chris, surprised at the alarm in the witch-lighter's eyes when he got up to leave.
As soon as he could was not nearly as soon as he would have preferred and by the time he had orbed back to the hospital, Piper had been settled in a room and Chris was slouched in a chair next to her bed, looking more anxious than Leo had ever seen. In that moment he looked both older and younger than Leo thought possible. He had never seen someone so young look so tired, not even other white-lighters. Chris looked like he had lived a thousand years. But, then again, no white-lighters had lived through the end of the world.
"It was close, but the doctors say that she'll be fine," Leo said, entering the room.
Chris startled at his entrance, but none of his usual walls and masks came up when he saw Leo. He supposed that sharing pain had made Chris soften towards him slightly. He wondered how long that would last.
Chris looked away guiltily, carefully released the grip he had on Piper's hand.
Leo noticed it and wondered, not for the first time, just who this young man was in his own time. Who was he to the family? He had filled in all Piper's medical forms with no difficulty, and he had told the nurse that he was family. Seeing them side by side, it wasn't unbelievable that they might be related in some way.
Maybe that was why Chris was so worked up, Piper reminded him of someone that he had known.
"You know I was a whitelighter for almost a decade before I was able to heal," Leo said.
Chris glanced up at him. "What?"
Leo settled down in a chair on the other side of Piper's bed. "I wasn't able to heal for a long time after becoming a whitelighter, that's true of most of us."
Chris shrugged. "So?"
"I'm saying that it's not your fault that you can't heal yet, Chris. You're still young. You will find someone you love like that, you'll develop the ability."
Chris shook his head. "I've already lost everyone I ever loved, and I couldn't save a single one of them." His voice cracked.
Leo didn't doubt that. Considering everything that Chris had done to save Wyatt, what must he have done for his own family? "You are going to save them, Chris. I know you will. I believe in you."
Chris' lips twitched in an almost smile before Piper stirred and all the anxiousness and worry in him came back to the surface.
Piper woke up with a groan, glancing between her husband – ex-husband – and her whitelighter, noticing how concerned and relieved both of them were. "Is everything good?" She asked. She noticed the blood on Chris' clothes. "Chris?"
"He's alright," Leo said, when Chris didn't look ready to answer.
"I'm so sorry, Piper," Chris spilled. "I'm sorry, I couldn't heal you and I couldn't call anyone for help or orb anywhere."
Leo gave her a significant look. Piper nodded to say that she understood. Had that unspoken communication ability developed as whitelighter and charge, or as husband and wife? "It's alright, Chris. I'm fine now. Right?"
"I'll be able to heal you completely once we get out of here, which will be as soon as the doctors check you out," Leo promised.
"You could have died," Chris argued quietly, unusual for the neurotic young man. Chris wasn't much of a shouter, but he wasn't one to keep his voice down. He was really upset, Piper noted.
"Another close call? How is that different from any other day?" She joked.
Chris' expression fell even further.
"Chris," Piper sighed. "You did all you could, and it was the right thing. We couldn't leave that demon to hurt anyone else, and you did everything you could to keep me safe."
Chris didn't look like he believed it, but he nodded, nonetheless.
"Who's looking after Wyatt?" Piper asked.
"He's in Magic School," Leo answered.
"Chris, why don't you go get him? He's probably bored."
Chris perked up somewhat at being given a task and orbed, leaving Piper and Leo alone together.
"Are you sure you're alright?" Leo pressed, getting up to close over the door so that no one could overhear, or see Chris when he orbed back in.
"I'm fine, Leo. I'm more worried about Chris. He looks like someone's taken the Book of Shadows away from him." And that was an idea the next time he annoyed her. She couldn't exactly ground a grown man, but she could still take his favourite toy. But he would probably just sulk and hide out in P3 and avoid the house. Although, maybe there was a way she would be able to ground Chris.
Leo sighed. "He was worried about you, that he couldn't heal you."
Piper rolled her eyes. "It's not like you aren't there to do that. Paige can't heal either. And he'll learn eventually, right?"
"Absolutely. He just needs to experience the right type of love."
"Well, he's only a kid. I don't think I'd approve of him being in love with anyone."
"You're not his mother, Piper," Leo reminded her. At least he had an idea of what Piper would be like when Wyatt started bringing home girls now.
"Well, someone needs to be and I'm the best he's got," she said, decisively. "He needs someone to look after him. He was ready to throw himself in between me and that demon. It wouldn't look good if our time-travelling whitelighter ended up dead before anyone's figured out why he's here."
With a swirl of magic, Chris orbed back into the room, clutching a happy toddler to his chest. Wyatt beamed at the sight of both of his parents together, an increasingly rare sight as of late. Chris carried his brother and deposited him in his mother's lap and watched with a fond smile as Wyatt babbled at Piper, and then nodded appropriately when Wyatt decided to include him in the conversation.
Leo kept his distance to take in the whole scene. Piper really was a great mother, raising her own son and still finding time to mother their whitelighter. He felt a familiar pain in his heart at the idea that if Piper ever did find herself surrounded by children, they might not be his. The usual anger at a particular witch-lighter didn't emerge though. He couldn't forgive Chris for doing his best to break up him and Piper, but it was clear that he loved Piper like she was his family and he didn't want her to be hurt.
Whatever future Chris came from, he seemed to think that Leo was something that could hurt her, and Leo couldn't blame him for trying to protect her. Chris was stubborn anyway, the best thing that he could do would be to try convincing him otherwise through his actions.
A nurse slipped into the room, easing around Leo. She paused at the scene of Chris, Piper and Wyatt and smiled fondly. "Your cousin brought his son?" She guessed.
Leo blinked. "Uh, no. Chris brought mine and Piper's son. Chris is Piper's cousin," he said. He assumed that Chris must have introduced himself as a cousin. It wasn't a bad idea because it meant that he was still family but there was no issues with Piper not having a brother or with Chris having a different surname. As family he would be able to visit and be kept informed.
And be expected to know a certain amount of Piper's details, Leo remembered. At the time it hadn't seemed strange, but now that Leo thought about it those details were somewhat personal. A family friend might know any medical conditions that Piper did or did not have, but how would have known her blood type? How would he know those personal medical details? Not for the last time Leo wondered just who Chris Perry was.
The nurse nodded. "Huh," she said. "He just looks a bit like you. But he's definitely related to your wife. They've the same hair. And your son, they've the same jawline." She smiled. "I'm sure that your son will grow up to be very handsome, based on his family." She winked at him before moving towards the bed and bustling around, chatting and making notes in Piper's chart, asking the usual medical questions.
Leo ignored the wink that the woman shot him and focused instead on Chris, now balancing Wyatt in his lap. Wyatt had his blue eyes while Chris had green, Wyatt was blond while Chris was brunet, but there was something similar in their faces. Looking closely, Leo could see a resemblance between Chris and Piper. He had a lot of Halliwell traits now that he was looking. If Chris was a Halliwell then a lot of things about him would suddenly make a horrible amount of sense.
He wondered where Chris came from. He didn't see Chris being Paige's son, even though they certainly had the same attitude, and he doubted that Jason was secretly a whitelighter. Chris must be an offshoot from the family. Afterall, Patty and Piper had both gotten involved with their whitelighters, considering his hybrid nature it could be another Halliwell trait.
Or maybe it was nothing. Maybe Chris just happened to look a lot like a Halliwell. Stranger things had happened. Although coincidences and the Charmed Ones tended not to mix.
Leo decided to push away that thought. Whoever Chris was, he wouldn't learn by pushing him. If he ever decided to come clean, Leo would listen and that would probably be the only way he would learn. If there was one thing that he had learned from Chris Perry it was that he had to be patient, or else he would mysteriously end up among Valkyries again.
Chris watched his family – but not his family - together. It certainly didn't help his inferiority complex to actually see his family happy before he was born, especially not since he couldn't really remember a time when his parents were happy together, but he hadn't been in a room with the other three since he was fourteen, longer if he considered that his mom had been dead then.
They weren't his family, these were strangers who would one day become the people that he had once known, Chris had to keep reminding himself of that. The blond child in his lap wasn't the same man who had killed finance, he wasn't the bully who had pushed him around when they were little, but he couldn't forget that he could be, he couldn't forget that he could also be the same brother who explained and re-explained how to do fractions when their mom was busy, and Chris just couldn't get it. Killing Wyatt as an adult wasn't just hard because he was powerful, but because he was his big brother. But killing baby Wyatt was hard because it was killing an innocent, and somehow it was still killing all the good that was in his big brother, before he or anyone else got a chance to experience that.
There was no one else in the world who understood that same contradiction, not anymore anyway. But Chris wished that there was someone else who could have taken his place on this doomed mission. At least he wouldn't have had to erase his own existence.
It probably didn't even matter that he had broken up his parents, considering that he had nearly gotten Piper killed anyway. He would never get over the guilt of not being able to heal his mom, and now he had a repeat of the incident to add to the pile of guilt and self-hatred.
His mom was a Charmed One and Wyatt was Twice-Blessed and Leo was an Elder, he couldn't exactly wrap his family up in bubble wrap and make sure that no one even hurt them again, no matter how much he wanted to. It wasn't just that the world needed them, but it was their destinies to fight to save the world. Whatever the fight, however much they might want to just let someone else handle it, he had never known his mom to back down when someone was hurting, and it was literally in Leo's nature to do something, and it was in Wyatt's once. All Chris wanted to do was make the world a better place for his family, for the rest of the world too, even if that meant that he wasn't in it.
He had lived enough, lost enough, he was prepared to cease to be if it meant that they got to keep going.
It was too bad that Chris had inherited his stubbornness from both his parents, because they had both made their own decision about what to do with their witch-lighter, and it didn't involve letting him fade out of existence on his own.
The nurse slipped out of the room as Chris passed Wyatt over to Piper and Leo moved to sit next to the bed again. Chris moved to get out of his seat and orb back to the Manor to look for more information on those demons but a glare from Piper stopped him from moving.
With an annoyed whine, Wyatt reached out for him again and was only satisfied when he had a firm hold of Chris' shirt so that he couldn't orb away from him.
His Wyatt had been the same. He hated it when people orbed away from him, and he would hang onto Chris' clothes to stop him from orbing off during an argument. Even the older, evil overlord version of his brother was the same, although he went about it slightly differently. It seemed like every version of Wyatt that there was wanted a little brother around, even when he didn't know who he was. Which was good, it made protecting his family a little bit easier if he was close to them.
"So, Chris, how would you feel about moving into the Manor? Because neither of us approve of you just throwing yourself in front of demons without telling anyone," said Piper.
Chris gaped, Leo smirked triumphantly, and Wyatt tightened his hold on Chris' shirt with a little laugh.
This was too close. Way too close. He couldn't do it, couldn't get that close to them, only to have to face losing them. One way or another. He lost them now, or he would lose them in the future, returning to find a dead mother, an evil brother, and an estranged father. He couldn't lose them again. Wouldn't. Staying away was safer.
Easier.
Except it wasn't.
The look in his parents' eyes was one of hope. They wanted him to agree. They wanted him. They actually cared about him. A relative stranger. An annoyance to them. Someone who had nearly gotten Piper killed. And they wanted to keep him close. They actually loved him, not just because he was the son that they accidentally had and were forced to keep and love and raise. Given the choice, they chose to care about him. They chose to love him.
"You're the one who said you were family, Chris," said Leo, still looking smug. "You don't really have a choice. And I'm sure that Wyatt would love having you around." He and Piper shared a look that made Chris wonder if they really meant Wyatt.
Chris closed his mouth and nodded once. "Fine, if I have to."
"You do," said Piper. "Because I'm going to ground you to the house if you try do something stupid like you did earlier."
Chris spluttered. For a moment, he wasn't looking at Piper Halliwell, Charmed One, he was looking at Piper Halliwell, his mother. She looked just like his mother did, stern but trying to hide her grin, the one that said that if Chris behaved, he would be allowed to wiggle out of whatever punishment she dolled out. The one that said she was actually very proud of him, the one that said that she still loved him immensely, he had just made her a little bit mad and very worried.
"I wouldn't argue Chris," Leo added. "Otherwise you'll find yourself barred from looking at the Book."
"Don't you think I won't, Mister," Piper threatened.
"What?" Chris choked out. "You can't ground me. You're not my –" He swallowed down the last word. As she looked now, Piper could easily be his mother. "I'm an adult, you can't ground me." He glared.
Piper's frown deepened, and Chris immediately broke. "Where do you want me to move my stuff?"
Leo grinned even wider. "We'll sort that out once we all get home," he decided.
Chris decided that it was just easier not to argue. He just nodded meekly and turned his attention to the toddler now clambering unsteadily into his lap. It would be weird to be living at home again, he considered, especially since it wasn't technically his home yet.
He missed the pleased looks that Piper and Leo shot each other, in the way that only couples can, but he couldn't miss the way that having his parents fight so hard for him to stay close, to move closer, made him feel loved. More loved than he had felt in a long time.
In a weird way, even with his future still in tatters and his very existence still at risk, with his big brother still evil and his mother still dead, in this familiar unfamiliar world filled with memories that couldn't happen and family that wasn't yet, Chris felt like he was home. He had a family again. He was loved again, wholeheartedly and unconditionally. And he wasn't going to let any future evil mess that up.