Dark Destiny Charmed Sons Virtual Series
Season One, Episode Six
In Black And White

Written by: Darien (aka alternate-universe-princess) and Shan (aka charmedgrl4ever)

Full summary: Using his powers to their fullest potential, Michael continuously attacks the Charmed progeny and their two charges. Slowly, he picks them off, one by one. Starting with Talia, he moves down to Wyatt, then Bianca… Will they be able to fight him off? And what's with Bianca's strange behavior?

Disclaimer: We don't own Chris, Wyatt, or Bianca (or any other cannon characters we forgot to mention). We do, however, own Prue, Jenna, Mack, Parker, Peyton and Talia (and any other original characters we forgot to mention) and would appreciate it if you didn't steal our characters without (A) asking our permission and (B) giving us the credit for them. Thank you!

Scene One

---Song: Waiting for You - by: Jordan Pruitt---

Impatiently, Chris paced back and forth across the floor in front of the stairs. Stuffing his hands into his pockets, he shot a quick glance up to make sure Bianca was nowhere in the vicinity before extracting a small, velvet box from his right pocket. Almost nervously, he opened the cover and smiled at the diamond ring resting peacefully within it.

He recalled the day he'd found the ancient ring, though perhaps "found" wasn't the correct word. More like it had found him. He'd cast a Lost-&-Found spell after misplacing an assignment he'd written for school, and a few too many objects made their way back to him… like Freddy, the dead goldfish he, Wyatt, and Prue had flushed down the toilet a few months back. Apparently "down the toilet" qualified as "losing" something. One object to return was the old ring, one he'd never seen before.

Wyatt hadn't known what it was either but shrugged and told him to keep it: it might be worth a lot of money someday.

Well, Chris had kept it. Maybe at first he'd intended to sell it, but now he had different plans entirely. Running his finger over the edge of the box, he closed it again and quickly shoved it back into his pocket.

"Bianca!" he called, irritated. "Are you ready yet or not?" The only time she ever got this way – obsessed with clothes to the point where she took hours to prepare – was when the two of them were having dinner with his parents. Seeing as they hadn't had dinner together with Piper and Leo since the aging couple had moved to Magic School about three years ago, Chris had a difficult time figuring out what exactly was keeping her.

"Coming!" she yelled back; and suddenly, air rippling gently, she appeared behind him. "Sorry," she gasped. "Couldn't find my damn shoes."

Rolling his eyes, he wrapped his arms around her waist and leaned down to press a passionate kiss to her lips, which she eagerly returned. "Ready now?" he murmured, pulling apart less than an inch to speak. His breath brushed against her lips, and she smiled gently, nodding.

"And I've got the perfect place," she grinned. Before he could say a word, she shimmered the two of them to a sweet, little restaurant in Venice. They reappeared in a narrow hallway. From the only window, moonlight poured into the cramped space.

A few feet in front of them stood a towering man, who didn't seem the least bit fazed by their entrance. "Ah, Bianca," he said, an Italian accent lacing his words, "so nice to see you again." The smile dropped slightly from his face as he quietly added, "I'm so sorry to hear about Nicholas."

Dropping Chris's hand, Bianca pulled the big man into a tight hug and replied, "It's nice to see you, too, Matthew." As she released him, she continued, "How've you been? Has your mother heard from my mom recently? She wasn't home today." She smiled politely but said nothing about his comment about Nicholas; she didn't want to think about that now – or ever.

"I've been good; business is good. As for your momma, I believe she's in London visiting Jeremy and Marissa. You know they just had their second daughter about a week ago."

Nodding, Bianca made her way back to Chris and tugged him gently forward. "Strange," she commented absently, "She didn't tell me she was going. I'd have loved to go with her; it's been so long since I've seen either of them."

"Yes, well, they called her just sort of out of the blue, and she decided to go. I only heard about it because they asked me to come as well, but I couldn't with work and all. Are you two planning to have dinner here, or did you just need a magical stop off to shimmer to so no one would see you?" He ushered them forward and into the open area of the restaurant. There stood rows and rows of different sized tables, some positioned firmly on the ground, some floating high above people's heads.

Little fairy waitresses zoomed past, balancing trays at least forty times their size. They scribbled fiery notes in the air, taking people's orders, which instantly vanished only to reappear in the chef's kitchen. The chef himself rarely left the kitchen, a courtesy to those who couldn't stand the intense stench that radiated from his skin. With seven hands he could cook delicacies in half the time it took a mere mortal to accomplish the task. His limbs, grotesquely large and pale gray, curled over one another as they mixed, sprinkled, and kneaded. Luckily for all involved, the stench did not carry over into the food. In fact, it was quite the opposite. The chef, even with his unusual appearance, was known, in the magical community at least, to be one of the best chefs in all of Europe.

"No, we're having dinner," Bianca replied, flashing Chris a smile as he shook his head with a chuckle. This was such a Bianca thing to do – decide to go somewhere spur of the moment without giving any notice whatsoever.

Matthew turned to Chris, politely offering his hand to shake. "You must be the boyfriend," he guessed. "We've heard so much about you."

"'We'?" Chris echoed in confusion, shaking the man's hand.

"The Phoenix clan," he explained. "We're a tightly knit family, so everyone's in everyone else's business. I've heard you Halliwells are the same." Chris laughed in agreement, nodding. "I gave up the family business a while ago; I'm a gondolier now, and I love it. It's so…" His eyes scanned the room as if searching for a sufficient word. "Freeing," he said at last with a sigh.

Suddenly, a tiny voice in Chris's ear asked, "Table, sir?" Chris turned sharply, searching for the owner of the voice, and found a small, male fairy fluttering beside his head. Impatiently, the creature repeated, "Table? For two?"

"Uh… yeah. Sure." He blushed as the fairy motioned for the couple to follow him through the crowd, sitting them down at a table in the corner of the room. Matthew waved goodbye and headed to the other end of the room, where a bar attracted loners and people just looking for a simple drink.

---

Jenna tripped and stumbled along, having no idea where she was going. She felt along the wall until she suddenly ran into something. It was large, and hard - but there being little to no light in the room, she couldn't tell what it was. She assumed it must have been a box left on the floor by accident or some such thing, but it didn't matter much. She could feel herself pitching forward and she knew that in less than a second she was going to fall over face first and make a total fool of herself. But in that split-second she could feel strong hands grabbing her by the shoulders and pulling her back up. Once she'd fully re-gained her balance the hands dropped away.

"Sorry about that. We don't have the lights fixed for out here yet. It's the next thing on the list, though," said Wyatt, from behind her. She didn't have to be able to see him to know that he was smiling awkwardly and blushing. It was so cute when he did that.

"Where... are we exactly?" Jenna couldn't help but ask. She knew it was some sort of a surprise, but she was getting curious. Now having moved around whatever it was she'd tripped over, she continued to stumble along, feeling her way along the wall, until she came to what would seem to be a doorway. Again, she nearly tripped, but this time she was able to right herself before completely losing her footing.

"Just a second," said Wyatt. Jenna could hear him snap his fingers and suddenly the room was flooded with the soft glow of candlelight. They were standing in a large room filled with glass tables and large, cushy booths. In the center of the room there was a four-tiered glass fountain, and each level was decorated with candles. Jenna gasped and for a moment, Wyatt was worried that she'd been frightened by how he'd just used his powers - that is, until she turned around to face him and he saw that her face was as lit up as all of the candles in the room put together.

"Wyatt, it's beautiful. What is this place?"

Again, Wyatt blushed. "It's my restaurant. Well, mine and Prue's. She runs the business end of it; I do the cooking. I wanted my own place so that I could finally have the freedom to put whatever I want on the menu, and design the menu, and just design everything, and to not have to answer to anyone. And I got to design the look of the place myself. Well, Prue helped of course, but you get the point."

He was rambling again; Jenna quickly hid a smile.

She simply nodded and turned around again, looking the restaurant over in detail. The main room was large with high ceilings but no windows. There was a border all around the top of the wall, as if someone had simply cut the walls back a few inches at the top. It looked strange, but then she figured there must have been some reason for it. That or the building had just been built that way and no one had since bothered with fixing it. The walls were painted an elegant shade of dark blue and there were round tables of all sizes spread out all over the room. The tables appeared to be made of a thick, clear glass and looked very elegant, just like the shade of blue used on the walls.

There were two large steel double doors at the back of the room, connecting to, she guessed, the kitchen. Lining the left side and back walls were booths covered in what she guessed from the distance and the lighting was some sort of fine navy blue plush material. The booths had square tables that were made of the same sort of glass as the rest of the tables.

In the center of the room was what she'd noticed first - the fountain. In front of the fountain sat a small glass table for two. On it, sat two napkins, two sets of cutlery, two wine glasses, and a small bottle of red wine. In the center of the table there was a small glass vase holding a single red rose.

"Wow," said Jenna, "Do you go all out like this for all of your dates?"

"Umm, well, I don't really, umm, date all that much... really..." Wyatt stammered. He led her towards the table and pulled her chair out for her. This time, it was Jenna that blushed and smiled.

"You really are a knight-in-shining-armour type, aren't you?" she laughed.

"You know, I seem to get that a lot," said Wyatt, though it seemed he wasn't quite sure why that was.

"So, does this restaurant of yours have a name?" she asked once she was settled into her seat.

"Actually," said Wyatt, "it does." He sat down in his own seat and poured her half a glass of wine. "Prue kind of inadvertently came up with it. The restaurant half, this half, is called Heaven. The other half of it, Hell, which is on the other side of the main room, is a nightclub. We kind of named them after well, Heaven, and the Underworld, though Heaven and the Underworld doesn't have quite the same ring to it; so we went with Hell instead. Besides, most people probably wouldn't get it if we named it the Underworld, anyway."

"That's so cool. I'll have to come and check it out when it's all finished."

"Of course. Everyone's going to come for the grand opening. Though we don't know exactly when that will be yet. We've got the kitchen up and running, and most of this half of it done, but the nightclub part is still unfinished." Then Wyatt looked over at the double doors at the back of the room as they slowly cracked open. "Oh," he smiled, "and here comes the food."

A tall, lanky, dark haired waiter walked out of the kitchen carrying two trays with silver lids. "You... hired someone to serve us our food?" said Jenna.

"Not exactly." The waiter approached the table and set down the two trays, he then took a step back, bowed gracefully, and faded from existence. "He was only a projection."

"A... what?" Jenna frowned and wrinkled her nose, confused.

"He wasn't real. He was just created magically. He was more or less an image created to do a specific task."

"You mean... you conjured him?"

"Not exactly. I can conjure things too, but that works differently. In order to conjure something, you first need a material object. Like this rose." He paused and reached out, grasping the rose by its stem. An instant later, it was no longer a rose, but a lily. "Projection is different. It's the ability to bring thoughts to life." He dropped his hand from the flower. "Close your eyes for a moment, and I'll show you." Jenna frowned in confusion for a moment, but ultimately she did as she was asked. Wyatt waved his hand in the air and suddenly there were rose petals coating the floor. "You can open your eyes now." When Jenna opened her eyes again she gasped for the second time that night. Wyatt noticeably blinked and a rose appeared in his hand. With a small smile, he handed it over to Jenna. "Of course, if you prefer say... sunflowers, or daffodils, or... something else, I'm not really very good with names of flowers. But I can conjure those, too."

"Actually," said Jenna, "roses are my favourite." She lifted the rose and inhaled its sweet and delicate scent. It smelled as sweet and as fragrant as any she'd ever had the chance to smell, whether it was real or simply conjured. She smiled and placed it inside the vase beside the lily.

She then turned her attention to the plate of food in front of her. "And I'll bet you cooked all of this food before I got here?"

"Of course," said Wyatt, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. It would seem that he didn't think that this was anything out of the ordinary, that this was just an average first date.

Jenna just shook her head and took the top off of the plate. As soon as she'd placed the lid down beside her, it vanished in a shimmer of blue and white lights, as did Wyatt's. "Did you just..."

"Orb the lids into the kitchen? Well, yeah. But if you don't like me using magic I can stop. I guess I'm just kind of used to it."

"Oh, no, not at all! I'm just still kind of stunned by it all. I mean, I'm still getting used to this whole magic exists thing." Again, Jenna smiled. Outside, thin, idyllic clouds rolled over a perfect, starry sky. It was a perfect reflection of Jenna's mood: dreamy and pleasant.

Again, she looked at Wyatt and smiled, shaking her head. "How is it possible that you're this perfect?"

"Um... perfect?" Now it was Wyatt who was confused. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, the flowers, the rose petals, the cooking dinner, and you even pulled my chair out for me. I mean, I've never, ever had a guy do any one of those things for me, let alone all of them at once."

"Well, I'm not perfect, far from it for sure; but maybe you've just gone out with the wrong kinds of guys up until now. Because I don't think this was all that difficult. Well, having magic helps, I guess. Actually, it probably helps a lot, but still... well..." Wyatt paused, looking down for a moment as if gathering the courage to speak up again and to look her in the eye while speaking. "I think you deserve it."

This stunned Jenna into complete silence and it was all she could do to smile and eat her dinner as neatly as she could. Though she was getting the feeling that Wyatt wouldn't have exactly cared if she'd made a mess and spilled something.

-Opening Credits-

Theme: Resolve - Hewit

Starring: Wes Ramsey, Drew Fuller, Ashley Leggat, Marisol Nichols, Brittany Snow, Miriam McDonald, Channing Tatum

Co-Starring: Joy Lauren

Guest Starring: Raoul Bova (as Matthew)