This was for the "genderfuck" square on my cliche bingo. Chris has always been female.
Paige leaves her a mostly garbled message that could either mean her temp job is going really well, or that it's going really badly. Phoebe gives the phone a fond look; that was her Paige.
"Little sisters," Phoebe says. She nudges Chris's belly. "Speaking of, do you have any?"
Chris gives her a flat look from under her hair. "I can't tell you that," she says. "You already know too much, and, anyway, if I can't get Mom and Dad back together I'm not going to exist, let alone any hypothetical younger siblings."
The urge to wrap the girl in a hug and smack the back of her head at the same time is strong. Phoebe resists; nobody wants a pissy, neurotic, smacked whitelighter on their hands. "If you hadn't broken them up in the first place," she says, "I would probably already know."
Her niece rakes her short hair out of her eyes and scowls. Phoebe nudges her again, gently, because Chris has range and pointy elbows and Phoebe grew up with two other girls, thank you very much. She knows just how sharp their angles can be.
"Come on, look on the bright side," Phoebe says.
"What bright side?" Chris grumbles back. "I've screwed up my birth, you know too much, and I still don't know what turns Wyatt."
"You know," Phoebe says, "You're a very big whiner for such a pretty girl."
It's true. Chris is a pretty girl. She has Piper's cheekbones and Leo's eyes. She looks just enough like Prue that Phoebe's been kicking herself for weeks over not seeing it. Just how blind could a gal get?
She's gorgeous and Phoebe doesn't mind thinking that she's a little jealous. Maybe a smidge.
The look Chris gives her is unimpressed. She doesn't wear make up. She does, however, wear jeans that are about five years out of style, loose and almost boyish. She's always in long sleeves and never in a dress, and if she weren't about six bazillion feet tall, Phoebe would sit on her until she agreed to put on a cute outfit.
She wants to see her niece in pretty things. She doesn't know if Chris wears worn out, worn down clothes because that's what she's used to, or if, God forbid, none of them had been around long enough to teach her how absolutely bitchin' the right pair of boots were.
That needs to be rectified. Soon. And there was no time like the present, where Chris is staring moodily at the Book and everyone else is out.
"We," Phoebe declares, "Are going to give you a makeover."
The Book slams closed in a wave of telekinesis. Phoebe has a hunch that if Chris hadn't blocked her, she'd be feeling bowled over by shock right about now. "What?" Chris asks blankly. "No, I'm not walking around like one of you. You can't fight demons in heels, Phoebe, I don't know how many times I've told you guys that."
Phoebe crosses her arms and grins. "No," she says, "But you can fight them in style. Come on, I know we taught you better than to wear sneakers to fight evil. Might as well give them a show before they die."
"I've seen some of the things you wear," Chris says. She sets the Book on the coffee table and scratches at the side of her nose. "I'm not wearing something like that. I like not flashing the demonic community when I go hunting."
Pffft, she hadn't accidentally flashed a demon in weeks. "I'll come up with a plan faster if you stand around looking pretty and reminding me why I want a gorgeous niece."
Chris blows her hair out of her eyes. "Will you drop it after this?" she asks hesitantly.
"Cross my heart and hope to die," Phoebe says.
"Phoebe?" Piper drawls. "What are you doing to our whitelighter?"
Phoebe waves a hand, keeping a stern eye on Chris so she doesn't try to wiggle out of the way. "I'm making her beautiful," she says, "Less talkie, more helpie."
The mutinous look on Chris's face has been growing since Phoebe accidentally stabbed her in the eye with the mascara wand. It sort of reached its crescendo when she almost fell flat on her face attempting to waddle in a pair of Paige's pretty, strappy heels.
"I am really uncomfortable," Chris murmurs.
No, she wouldn't have guessed. She thwaps Chris on the top of her head with the cool curling iron. "Don't even think about orbing, missy. You made a promise."
"You know," Piper says, "Beauty comes from the inside, Phoebe. Leave her alone." She's balancing Wyatt on one hip when Phoebe risks looking up again, her face contemplative. Phoebe knows the feeling.
With the mascara and the lipstick, Chris looks startlingly like her big sister.
"Thank you," Chris says. She bats away Phoebe's hands, narrows her eyes, and orbs away to reappear across the room. "I can barely stand up, my pants are so tight I don't even know how I got them on, and this shirt is too... showy. My breasts don't belong on display. Ever. I'm going to go change."
Chris totters towards the door in two inch heels. Phoebe hides a laugh behind her hand and meets Piper's eyes over Wyatt's blond head.
"Demon hunting in fifteen," Chris says over her shoulder. She reaches up to touch a finger to the lip gloss Phoebe'd raided from Piper's make-up kit and scowls. "After I rinse this stuff off."
The gloss is ruby red, Paige's color, and it highlights very fair skin. Phoebe's seen a little of all of them in Chris recently, but she's still looking for traces of herself. It'd be pretty damn hard for Piper to miss all of Leo in that face.
There's something dawning in Piper's eyes, a little skeptical and a lot soft. Phoebe mentally cheers her own, because they're working under a deadline, here, and she has no ideas on how to fix Chris's birth.
She loves the kid already, she's not letting her fade away.
"Didn't you ever play dress up as a kid?" Piper finally asks. Phoebe can't imagine one of their kids not growing up toddling around in mommy's heels or putting on mommy's make up. Chris is just... strange for a Halliwell girl.
Chris pauses. Phoebe holds her breath. "Yeah," Chris says after a few seconds, her face soft, "When I was really little, my mom used to play dress up with me. She was the best."
Was. Phoebe's throat catches at that simple little word and Chris is gone before she can breathe again. Was. She looks at Piper and thinks, Not on my watch.
Phoebe comes home one day and hears giggling. That's not all that uncommon, you know, since there are three girls and all, but one of those giggles is not a sister giggle.
She creeps around the corner and up the stairs, around another corner, and then has to press her hand to her mouth, because oh. Oh, sweetie. They were going to make her cry.
"Look up," Piper says.
Chris obligingly looks up and leans closer, something half-starved and beautiful on her face. When Piper traces the inside corners of her eyes, there's no squirming like there'd been when Phoebe had tried this six months ago. There's just... trust.
Piper smoothes her hand across Chris's slight curls when she's done; Chris looks like she wants to just put her head on Piper's burgeoning belly and never get up. "There you go," she says, "You got that? I can't be teaching you every single time you know."
"I got it," Chris says. The light dusting of makeup makes her look more like Prue, except where she looks like Paige or Piper. How had they ever not seen each other on that face?
The way she leans into Piper's stroking hands makes it more than obvious why she keeps asking. Phoebe clears her throat. "You should have asked me, honey," she says, coming into the room, "I did get all the fashion sense."
"Lies," Piper says, "You should have seen her as a teenager. Whoa boy that was some bad fashion sense."
Piper's somehow talked Chris into wearing an actual, honest to God blouse. Phoebe squeezes her shoulders and doesn't make a big deal about it. Feeling safe enough to be girly with her family was a big deal. She wasn't going to ruin it.
She takes a peak down at Chris's footwear and has to smile. Boots. Bitchin' boots, if she did say so herself. "Welcome to the family," she tells Chris, leaning forward to slide her arms across the girl's skinny shoulders in a hug.
"What?" Chris asks. Her hands come up to cover Phoebe's arms and she twists sideways to give her a strange look. "Wasn't I already part of the family?"
Piper laughs. "She means," she says, "That you have successfully found some really nice footwear and are now, officially, a Halliwell woman." She leans back so she can look at Chris's feet herself; one of Chris's hands automatically comes up to steady her back. "Paige is going to try to steal those," Piper decides.
"I'm going to try to steal those," Phoebe declares. "How about you get some shoes on, Piper, and we go out so I can show off my beautiful family?"
"Don't you mean my beautiful family?" Piper asks archly. "I think I had more to do with this than you did." She cups Chris's cheek with one palm and smiles. "What'd you say, Peanut? Up for some strutting?"
Chris is glowing when Phoebe looks at her out of the corner of her eye. "Yeah," she says, "Okay."