Disclaimer: I do not own Charmed; I'm just messing with the characters. I'll be sure to return them relatively undamaged. ...I hope…
A/N: After watching the episode 'Oh My Goddess' yet again an idea popped into my head. What if, instead of going "up there" to confront Leo, Piper lost her humanity instead, like the Ancient Greeks did? But because of the reason she embraced her goddess powers (the elders) she became bitter and took it out on the world? Anyway, just a short AU one-shot. Hope you like!
Oh, and I'm sorry if Piper kind of comes off a bit mean for most of this fic. She's really one of my favorite characters on the show. But, as with all my other favorite characters, I love to see them suffer and wallow in angst. I know, I know, I'm evil...
Spoilers for "Happily Ever After"(teeny tiny spoiler) and "Oh, my goddess".
o0o
A lone figure stood at the top of the golden gate bridge, watching as the city crumbled to her will. She stood silently, impassive, as the wind whipped trees into houses and the rain lashed down with the force of a thousand tiny speeding bullets. This was her sanctuary and it was here that she came to revel in the pain and utter helplessness of the world and its foolish mortal inhabitants.
A cruel smile twisted itself around her lips as she watched the water in the bay reach dangerous heights. The world would pay for what it had done to her. It would regret it had ever taken away her only true love.
For she was unstoppable; she could do anything that she pleased. She, who had vanquished the titans years ago and with them destroyed her connection to the only people that could possibly stop her. She let them live simply for sentimental value. She used to care for them, she remembered that much of human emotion, and they hadn't been the ones to ruin her life.
Occasionally she caught sight of them attempting to help the other humans when the weather got to be too much, when the tornados and the earthquakes she wrought left so many homeless, when the rain destroyed crops, and all the water flooded them out of their homes.
She couldn't help but look down on them and their foolishness for thinking that anything could be done that she did not want, that she did not command.
She remembered the first few months of her reawakening that they had come to see her and try in vain to dissuade her from her rightful place. They could have had a spot next to her if they pleased, but they had given up the lives of the goddesses that they should have been as penance for all they had lost. And lost many things they had.
She marveled again at their foolishness. They could have had world domination and yet they choose to be second-rate witches? Using their powers for others instead of themselves?
She shook her head in disdain.
They were no sisters of hers, at least not any longer. And as she didn't see any large scale threat from them she let them be. It was amusing to her, to watch them saving humans just to lose them a few measly days later.
It was destroying them slowly inside. She could see it, she knew the feeling intimately. But she had moved passed it, become the superior creature she was currently and ruler of the world. It only made sense as the next step when you were an earth goddess. Some could have armies, some could have men, but she wanted the earth. And she got it.
And now she looked down at the humans and felt a twisted sense of pleasure that they were suffering like she once had, like she had managed to push away and they could not. It was why she was the ultimate. Why they were weak.
She wasn't weak like them. She was not.
Unbidden, images came to her minds eye. She tried to push them away, in vain. A slow band of pain twined itself around her heart and she fought to breathe as the rain grew even more chaotic and the wind howled like the sound of a thousand tortured souls.
She was not weak! She repeated it over and over like a mantra whenever feelings threatened to make themseleves known.
But she was.
She saw a tiny golden haired baby wrapped in a powder blue blanket with a familiar symbol embroidered on the front. She saw a brunette running around a house, phone attached to her ear, laptop in hand muttering about noise and deadlines. She saw a redhead standing at the stovetop dropping in questionable ingredients with one hand, holding a coffee cup in the other. She saw another, different brunette, camera equipment sprawled all around her, smiling, laughing. She saw a casket, people walking up to it with tears in their eyes and roses clasped tightly in their hands. The name Prudence being chiseled onto a tombstone.
She saw flashes of a blond haired man, love in his eyes, and a smile on his lips. An older, dark haired witch reading fairy tales, explaining how they were real, lecturing about everything under the sun. She saw a younger, light brown haired woman who lit up a room with her smile and was taken away much too soon.
She saw all of these things and most importantly she felt them. Piper Halliwell, superior being, ruler of the earth, powerful goddess felt.
And for the first time in a long long while, she cried.
-end-