Cole walked slowly into the throne room and knelt before the Source. Without looking up he told the Source, "Phoebe has agreed to your… request. Have Tempus reverse time to save her sisters and she will stay here, in the Underworld." He paused, wanting to say more. But what can I say? "If you hurt her, I'll kill you?" Threats mean nothing to him, especially empty ones. He's probably reading my mind right now.
The Source chuckled mirthlessly. "Indeed, Belthazor, I have heard many empty threats in my centuries as the King of All Evil. As for your witch… I may leave her unharmed, I may not. She knows this and accepts this, as should you."
Cole glared at the floor, still kneeling. "And your promise to her? You will reverse time?"
"Agreed." Cole stood, bowed, and walked out of the room. As he followed the passageway back to where Phoebe and Leo were waiting, he tried to contain his rage. The Source always knew what to say to make him angry, and now that Cole was no longer working for evil, he fought the anger, trying to lessen the control the Source had over him.
"Cole!" Phoebe's voice usually calmed him down, but now it just reminded him that the Source now had control over another part of his life, the part he loved the most.
"He… he said he would do it. He's going to turn back time and… and save your sisters." Phoebe nodded, turning to Leo, who was standing with an empty look in his eyes.
"Leo? Leo, it's going to be okay now. Piper's going to be okay." Leo looked up at her, tears still in his eyes. "Look, Leo, I'm sorry I brought you down here in the first place. This is all my fault. Tell Piper and Prue that I love them, that I did this for them. And… thank you for being my whitelighter, and my brother. I'll miss all of you." She hugged him, struggling to maintain her composure. As she stepped back, Leo shook himself out of his painful memories.
"Phoebe… I'm sorry, too. As your whitelighter, I shouldn't let you do this. I shouldn't have let my love for Piper-"
"I love her too, Leo. Remember that- it's not your fault. It's no one's fault… It's my choice." With that, she turned away. After a moment, she turned towards Cole. "You have to go. You have to warn my sisters."
"I know, I just… What if I never see you again?" He reached to pull her in for one last kiss, but she pushed him away.
"Cole, please. If you don't warn them, then all of this is for nothing."
"It is all for nothing anyway," rumbled a large, dark skinned demon as he walked into the cavern.
"What's going on?" demanded Cole, turning towards the demon.
"Did Tempus reverse time?" asked Leo, his voice trembling but determined.
"Yes, the day has been restarted, and your witch is alive, for now," confirmed the demon as he walked towards Cole, "But you are not going anywhere." The demon threw up his hands, sending out a red glow that encased Cole.
"Cole!" Phoebe yelled, starting forward while Leo grabbed her arm and tried to pull her to safety.
"I'm okay," Cole grunted, straining, "But I can't move… I can't get out." The demon turned to Phoebe and conjured a fireball in his hand.
"Now, Belthazor, watch as your witch dies," he grinned. He threw the fireball at Phoebe, barely missing her as Leo shoved her to the ground.
"Leo, go! Someone has to warn Prue and Piper about Shax!" Phoebe yelled as they dove for shelter while the demon kept up his barrage of fireballs.
"Come with me…" Leo reached for her, ready to orb away, but Phoebe pulled back, out of his reach.
"No, I have to stay here and help Cole. Go!" she insisted. Leo hesitated for just a moment, then orbed out…
…And condensed in the manor. He glanced around quickly at the damage, his heartbeat quickening. Too late… too late… Suddenly he felt a pull at his heart… he felt Piper's pain as if it were his own. Worse than that, even, because her pain always hurt him more than anything that could ever happen to his own body. He spun around, drawn to her, and saw her lying where a wall used to be.
The rest of the world seemed to fall away and he was kneeling next to her before he had time to think anything more than No, not again. I left Phoebe, my charge, my sister, to die so that I wouldn't have to watch you die again. He reached out his hand over Piper's sprawled figure, as images of her blood-soaked, lifeless body on a hospital bed flooded his mind. That was one memory that he would see again and again in his nightmares.
He sent his power down through his arm to his hand, healing light spreading through the air like the warmth of the sun. His power reached, searching for something to hold on to… and found it. His hand shook as his power found the tiny spark of life in Piper's battered body, warming it until it grew, spreading throughout her. He could feel the healing, the life, spreading and renewing every part of her, healing even the shattered bones and punctured lungs that he could feel all too well. Gradually, he felt her coming back to him.
"Oh God, Piper!" He held her tight as she regained consciousness slowly and painfully, as the last of her injuries healed themselves out of existence. Her eyes opened, full of pain remembered if no longer felt.
"Prue?" Her voice sounded lost as she tried to remember what had happened.
His blood ran cold as the joy that had filled his heart when Piper opened her eyes vanished. He looked past Piper, and saw Prue lying in the rubble, her crumpled form barely resembling the strong, despairing, deadly witch he had left in the hospital room with Piper. Why hadn't he sensed her pain when he came in? He knew the answer, but pushed it away.
He reached out his hand once again, his power searching for any tiny hint of life that it could find. Searching, searching, but finding nothing in the cold shell that was no longer Prue.
"Leo?" Piper's voice wavered as she struggled to sit up. "What's taking so long?" she asked through tears that betrayed her, proving she already knew the answer.
He knew the answer, too, but he refused to speak it aloud. Instead, he sent his power again, desperately searching for something, anything, but it was like trying to bring life into a stone. There was nothing there for his power to touch, to hold onto. Finally he withdrew, letting his arm fall. What have I done?
He stared at Prue's body, knowing that when he turned around, he would have to look into Piper's eyes and tell her that Prue was gone, that she would never see her big sister again. Then he would have to tell her that Phoebe was gone, too, because of him, because in his selfishness he had sacrificed everything so he wouldn't have to lose her. He knew she would never have wanted him to make that deal, to save her life in exchange for Prue's and Phoebe's. Now she was alone, for the first time in her life. Alone except for him.
He knew before he even said anything that he was about to bring her more pain than she had ever felt, even just now when she had been on the brink of death. He knew this pain because he had felt it before, when he had orbed into the hospital room. He remembered the emptiness he had sensed as soon as he had entered, and the emptiness in Prue's voice when she had told him Piper was gone. "They think we're the demons now," she had said, and he remembered the pain in her eyes, pain that he was about to give to Piper. Leo had never hated himself more than in that moment, his eyes turned away from Piper's, postponing what he had to say. Slowly, slowly, he turned, and looked into her tear-filled eyes.
Phoebe dodged another fireball, coming close enough to the demon to give him a roundhouse kick to the head. He went down like a rock while the field imprisoning Cole dissipated.
"Cole, we have to go!" Phoebe yelled as six more demons entered the cavern. Cole tried to reach her, but the demons came between them and began to fight. Resorting to hand-to-hand combat to avoid accidentally killing Cole with a fireball, the demons split up and fought Phoebe and Cole three-on-one. Cole was pinned down by two demons while a third struck him repeatedly in the head, but he struggled valiantly to reach Phoebe, who fell to the ground beneath a demon twice her size. Another demon conjured a fireball and prepared to throw it at her, point-blank. Phoebe looked up at him from the ground. I'm sorry Piper, she thought, but I had to save you… she closed her eyes and braced herself for the pain. Instead, she heard a familiar noise, like distant fireworks on the Fourth of July. She opened her eyes as the demon exploded in shards around her. Beyond stood the sister she thought she'd lost.
"Piper!" yelled Cole, still struggling. Piper blew up the two remaining demons around Phoebe without looking as she turned towards Cole. Her hands flew out, taking out the last of the demons one at a time. Boom. Boom. Boom. Leo, who had orbed in with Piper, grabbed her hands before she hit Cole, too. Piper collapsed silently in his arms as Phoebe climbed slowly to her feet and walked towards her sister.
"Piper?" she asked timidly, feeling like a small child again. Phoebe couldn't process the scene in front of her. She felt like her mind was moving in slow-motion. "Piper? What's wrong? Where's Prue…?" At the sound of their sister's name, Piper let out a small noise and crumpled to the ground. Leo looked up at Phoebe, helpless in the face of a pain he couldn't heal. He backed away from Piper slowly as Phoebe took his place, crouched next to Piper. She stroked her sister's hair with a trembling hand.
"Phoebe… oh, God, Phoebe…" Piper whispered, "The demon came, and you weren't there, and Prue… oh, God…"
The demon came, and you weren't there. The tone wasn't accusatory, but it cut Phoebe right to her soul even as her brain refused to accept what Piper was trying to tell her. Cole and Leo exchanged a glance over the heads of the women they loved, Cole receiving all the information he needed instantly from Leo's gaze, the same way Phoebe had instantly known which of her sisters had died in the previous timeline. And now she had lost another one. Unconsciously, the men both backed slowly away from the scene taking place in the middle of the cavern, from the unbearable pain of loss.
"Piper, where's Prue?" Phoebe's voice climbed higher, frantic, but Piper's was low and quiet when she answered.
"Prue's dead, Phoebe. Shax killed her and Leo couldn't save her and she's dead."
Cole and Leo stood there, helpless, in an Underworld filled with evil and pain, but all that was nothing compared to what was taking place before their eyes, as Piper and Phoebe held each other tightly against the horrible truth and the pain that would be with them forever.
Author's Note: It's always bothered me that Charmed skipped right from Piper and Prue lying on the floor of the Manor and Phoebe in the Underworld, straight to: Prue's dead and Phoebe's fine. So I filled in the blanks. I actually wrote this years ago, but I just saw a rerun of All Hell Breaks Loose that prompted me to go back and finish this. I still can't bring myself to write Leo actually telling Piper that Prue is dead. Loss like that, even if it is fictional, is difficult to express in words.