Some Distant Sunset
She visits the pier only once more after the final 'I love you' that ripped her mother so suddenly from her life, on the night that Roger proposes to her. It's usually fear or anger that keeps her away from the place Patty died -and truth be known she still feels a disquieting mix of both as she stands gazing over the water- but she pushes them back down inside her heart for this. She knows her mother would have been so pleased and so proud to hear that her eldest was soon to be a bride, and Prue sees no reason to deprive her of that knowledge even though she's no longer alive.
She doesn't stay for long, there's simply too much grief and too many dark memories that threaten to break down her resolve to give her mother this one piece of happy news. She says her piece and spends a few moments thinking fondly of the woman she knew for so little time. As she walks away, she doubts she will ever come back to this place. The gentle lapping of the water and the sounds of the trees threaten to drag her back to that day and never let her go. It makes her hesitate briefly, thinking of the things her mother will never know about her life. She wants to be able to sit peacefully at the pier on a sunny day and tell her about holidays, job promotions and silly things, someday even about children.
Instead, she returns to the car and drives.
~oOOo~
She can't help feeling like the poster child for 'the dutiful daughter' every time she visits the pier on the anniversary of her mother's death. She knows Prue never makes the journey regardless of the date and Phoebe…well who knew? So she takes it upon herself to visit and deliver flowers to her mother's 'grave'.
Sometimes, she's sick of being the responsible one who takes the flowers, given that she wasn't the only one who'd lost a mother out of the three of them. There were years she'd simply sat resolutely in front of the clock at home, willing it to move faster towards midnight and determined that she wouldn't be the one to make the effort this year. In the end though, she'd always go, guilt kicking in and forcing her to make the drive down to Camp Skylark with flowers she'd bought days in advance.
They're always daffodils. Roses and lilies seemed too clichéd and she had a distant memory of her father looking so handsome in a suit; Patty on his arm smiling radiantly for the entire world to see as he presented her with a gift of daffodils, before taking her to the dinner he had planned. She'd never mentioned it, but Victor had always known that daffodils were her favourite. To Piper they seemed appropriate, something to show her mother she cared not just out of duty, but love too.
~oOOo~
She doesn't tell Prue or even Piper, but every Sunday she visits. Now that she thinks about it, just about any time her sisters have yelled at her for taking their cars without asking, it's to visit the pier. Some would call it morbid; any psychiatrist would tell her she clearly had unhealthy and unresolved issues about the death of her mother so early on in her life. Phoebe finds herself agreeing, but she visits regardless.
Sometimes she'll make a quick side-trip to a bakery along the way and bring cookies for when she gets there. Then she'd sit on the cold damp wood, chatting about nothing to the empty air, dropping the treats into the water one by one. It's always the same flavours: six oatmeal and cranberry and one chocolate chip and she lets herself imagine that these were the kind of mother-daughter moments the two of them would have had; sharing secrets, gossip and a plate of cookies between them. She likes to think that Patty would have extolled the virtues of how healthy the oatmeal and cranberries were, before bringing out the single chocolate chip cookie from where it was hidden and sharing it with her youngest, telling her it was also okay to indulge from time to time.
She never notices the tears until they join the cookies on a slow descent into the water and that's always her cue to leave. She only ever wants happy memories to share with her mother; crying would simply spoil it.
~oOOo~
AN. Nothing much to say really, these three little ideas crept up on me after rewatching some of the early Charmed eps and wondering how the sisters thought about thier mother when it wasn't in relation to the Big Bad of the week.
Hope you liked it~