Let Love In Or Not

by piperandleo4eva

Paige/Kyle future fic, post-Charmageddon. “Diana, could you show a little enthusiasm? Your father is coming this weekend.” “Oh boy, Dad’s yearly visit is upon us once again.” Diana Matthews remarked sarcastically under her breath

Let Love In (Or Not)

"Diana, could you show a little enthusiasm? Your father is coming this weekend."

"Oh boy, Dad's yearly visit is upon us once again." Diana Matthews remarked sarcastically under her breath as she finished polishing a table.

Paige lightly hit her daughter with a dust rag. "Diana, don't say that. Your dad loves you, and he looks forward to seeing you. Don't you want to make his visit special?"

"No, actually, I don't." Diana replied. "Why should I? He shows up once a year for a weekend, asks me about school, and leaves. He doesn't love me, he barely knows me. And I don't love him." Annoyed with her mother, she headed for the stairs, leaving her dust rag on the table.

"Clean your room please!" Paige called after her. "And don't make me orb up there to check!"

"Whatever." Diana replied as she made her way to her room. "Orb wherever you please, I sure won't stop you."

"I wish you would." Paige whispered to herself when her daughter was gone. It hadn't been easy to raise Diana virtually on her own. Living with Piper and Leo helped of course, but Wyatt and Chris were both in college now, leaving sixteen-year-old Diana as the only teen in the house with three adults. Phoebe of course, had moved out years ago. "I wanted to." Paige thought. "I wanted us to live together, the three of us on our own, but that couldn't happen." Paige put down her dust rag and orbed upstairs to the attic, which she'd half converted into a home office. With a sigh, she pulled out a case file and her reading glasses and began to work.

In her room, Diana hit a button on the remote, turning up the stereo. She hated her father. He'd left when Diana was a baby, too young to really remember him. She only saw him once a year now. It used to be more when she was younger, but the visits had tapered off to the one a year. Her father, who she refused to call Dad, was practically a stranger to her. She'd been raised by her uncle Leo, and he was more of a father to her than her own father was.

Diana rolled over on her bed. Why didn't Paige just divorce him? Neither of them used his last name, it was too dangerous. And Paige couldn't possibly love him anymore. Not after all these years spent apart. She had to want more than a weekend with her husband every year; she had to need more than her daughter, her magic, and her social work job. Diana shook her head. Yes, Paige had to need more than she was getting from Kyle Brody.

"So, Kyle will be here in the morning." Paige reminded Piper, Leo, and Diana over dinner.

"Well, that's nice." Piper said, putting salad on her plate. "Don't you think so Diana?" she said looking over at her niece.

"Nope," Diana said, not looking up from her psychology book.

"Diana, put that away at the table," Paige chided. "And of course she's happy. She just represses her emotions." she said pointedly.

"I don't repress." Diana still didn't look up. "But forming too many emotional attachments isn't good for the psyche. And being attached to someone who neglects you is just asking for therapy. What we should do is break ties with those who keep us from achieving self-actualization and reaching the heights of our potential." She shot a look at her mother.

Paige just ate her salad absent-mindedly. Diana had a fixation with psychology, so much so that she'd declared that magic had no place in science and given it up. Leo thought that it was just a phase, but Paige wasn't so sure.

The next morning, Paige dragged Diana out of her room early and made sure that she looked appropriate. Then she dragged her downstairs. Paige checked her watch. It was nine-thirty on the dot. She smiled. Just then, orbs filled her vision. "Kyle!" She reached for him, and he pulled her into an embrace and kissed her. She kissed him back. She'd forgotten how good he felt, and how easy it was to get sucked in to him. She remembered why she'd married him, why they were still married, and why it was worth it. Then she remembered why they only saw each other once a year and she pulled away.

Kyle Brody stepped back from his wife and looked over at his daughter, who was immersed in Freud. "Diana! You've grown since I last saw you." He looked her over. "Gotten older too, much more mature."

Diana took his praise without batting an eye. "Hi Kyle." she said, absolutely deadpan. "Wow, you know you look absolutely the same. Being dead sure does that to a guy, doesn't it?"

"Diana!" Paige took a lot from Diana, but that didn't mean that Kyle had to. In fact, he wasn't supposed to, and Diana knew that.

Kyle only laughed. "No, it's okay. We Whitelighters are used to it. I suppose you'll want to learn the family trade soon, if Leo hasn't drilled it into you at Magic School, right?"

Diana finally looked up from the book. "No, Kyle, I don't want to learn the "family trade", especially not from you, which you'd know if you were around more. I want to never see you again, and I want to be a psychologist. That's all."

Paige couldn't hold back any longer. "Diana, that was uncalled for. You will apologize to your father immediately and you will remember that this weekend is supposed to be enjoyable."

Diana lashed out. "Why do you stick up for him? He's never here for you. And he's not my father. Not really. Biological father, yes, but real father, no way. He's never here for me either." Paige tried to stop her, but Diana was on a roll. "Thanks for that by the way. God, I wish you two would stop pretending that you wish things could be different. If you wanted to see each other more often, you would. Just get divorced already and save me the sucking up."

"Diana, what are you talking about? I love you and your mother very much. My job keeps me away. You know that."

"No, Kyle, you stay away because it's too painful to keep us close. Face facts. We're both getting older and you're not. You'll be twenty-seven forever and you keep yourself far away from us so that you won't have to see us get older. You don't want to remember that someday I'll be older than you and someday we'll both get old and die and you'll still be alive without us forever. You want to save yourself the pain of being close to us so that it won't hurt so much when we die." Diana then rounded on her mother. "And you don't care why he stays away, so long as he does. You don't want him here because you keep getting older and you don't want him to watch you getting older because then maybe he won't love you anymore. If you get old and he stays young, maybe he'll stop loving you, and you couldn't stand that, so you keep him away so that when he does come he's not thinking about how you look or how old you are because he's only seeing you for a weekend anyway. You want him to stay away so that when you're old, he won't remind you of how things used to be.

"The stupid thing is that you both know why you want the other one to stay away and you both know why the other one listens to you. Mom, you know what Kyle's thinking and Kyle knows what you're thinking, but you deny it so that you can have this weekend of fairy tales once a year when everything's okay." Worn out, Diana walked out with her book. Then she stuck her head back in the doorway. "Just get divorced already. Stop wasting time on each other. It's causing nothing but pain for all of us." Diana turned her back on her parents and stomped upstairs.

Paige sunk into a wicker chair with her head in her hands. Kyle knelt beside her and moved her hands so that he could look into her eyes. "Paige, she's just upset. She didn't mean…"

"She did mean it, and the worst part is that she's right." Paige looked away for this admission. "She's right about us. I wanted you to stay away so that you wouldn't watch me get older than you and you stayed away because you're afraid of having to live without us, that is, if you were close to us. Don't bother trying to deny it, Kyle, I know it's true, and I know that our fears aren't unfounded. I'm old enough to be your mother. It feels strange to be in love with you."

Kyle smiled. "Paige, you're forty-five to my "twenty-seven". You'd have been very young when I was born if you were really my mother."

Paige didn't smile. "Still, Kyle, you can't say that you're still attracted to me the way you were seventeen years ago when we got married. You can't tell me that in ten or twenty years you're still going to love me."

"Paige, I will always love you. I will love you when you're fifty and I will love you when you're one hundred."

"But soon we won't be able to be together anymore because it will be weird. You may love me, and I may love you, but we may not be together because of the age difference."

"I guess you're right." Kyle conceded grudgingly. "But what about my issue of living without you? You can't say that it wouldn't be torturous if we spent our lives together raising our daughter and then you died and then she died and I had no one left after seventy-five years or something like that. You can't pretend that it wouldn't be agony after you were both gone in that situation. As it is being without you daily is painful, but the knowledge that I'm saving myself pain later makes it almost worth it."

"I know, Kyle, and it would kill me to die knowing that you'd never join me and would instead live in agony." They sat in silence for a minute before Paige spoke.

"You know, I thought that this way we'd save Diana from the things we feared. We decided that not only was this the best situation for us, it would also save Diana from acutely noticing that she was getting older than her father and knowing that he would watch her die. Instead she was more willing to address the situation than either of us."

"So what do we do now? Do we get divorced and never see each other again or do we find a way to work this out?"

"All I know is that we can't keep living like we have. Something has to change."

"I could just clip my wings."

"No, Kyle, you have so many people you're supposed to help and you have so much good to do."

"Paige, I want to clip them. I'd still be twenty-seven, but I'd grow older. I'd be mortal."

"How do you even clip them?"

"I just do something blatantly against the rules. Something like…ignoring a charge."

"Kyle, I can't let one of your charges suffer because of our marital problems."

"If it's really an emergency, it'll be sent to another Whitelighter. All I have to do is wait for a call."

So Kyle waited. And while he waited, he went upstairs to see the daughter he'd neglected for so long, but she wouldn't let him in. The first thing she'd used her powers for in eight years was to make her room orb-proof, and she'd locked the door. Kyle didn't want to ask Paige to orb the door off of its hinges for him either. She was already having doubts about their decision. There was no need to give her more.

Diana let Leo in though. When Leo came upstairs and knocked on her door asking to see her, Diana let him in, throwing a smirk in Kyle's direction as she locked him back outside her room.

"Why do you do this to him?" Leo asked her. "Do you hate him that much that you need him to sit outside your door all day hoping to be let in? Are you that spiteful?"

Diana shook her head. "It's not hate, Leo. It's not even spite. I have no interest in what he has to say, and I have no interest in telling him anything either."

"What if he came to tell you that he was going to stay? What if he was going to tell you that he was clipping his wings?"

Diana laughed. "Even if that is what he came to say, I wouldn't believe him. He loves his job way to much to quit, and he's not like you. He doesn't have enough love for me and Mom or enough of a want for this to work out to be able to live as a mortal. Piper, Wyatt, and Chris kept you true to your goal because they wanted you and needed you so much. Mom and I don't need Kyle at all, and I don't want him and she only thinks she does. We've lived for so long without him that we don't know how to live with him. We don't know how to include him in our lives, and we're not willing to disrupt them for him. He'll hate it. He'll crave his job, but he won't be able to have it." She looked straight at Leo as if daring him to challenge her.

Leo just looked back simply. "They'll probably put him through the same test they put me through. They'll wipe his memory and drop him somewhere and see if he finds his way back to Paige."

"He won't." Diana said frankly. "He won't. He'll find his way back to them. He always has and he always will."

"Why do you have such little faith in him? Why are you so sure that he'll fail?"

Diana just looked at him. "Because he's not you." she said quietly.

Leo pulled her into his arms and hugged her as if she were the daughter he'd never had.

He'd raised Diana practically as her father, so this was no surprise. Diana hugged him back as if he was the only father she'd ever known, which was also true.

The moment was broken when Kyle banged on the door. "Diana? Leo? The Elders are calling us. We all have to orb up there. Paige is going to take her sisters but she wants me to take you."

Leo smiled at Diana. "Judgment day." he said. He pushed her hair away from her face. "Let him in. We have to go, and if you don't go willingly, the Elders will bring you forcefully and they'll be much angrier when they do."

Diana grudgingly unlocked the door and let Kyle in. He took Leo's proffered hand and then reached for Diana's fisted one. She opened her hand reluctantly and closed her eyes as the unfamiliar sensation of orbing rolled over her.

She opened her eyes when Kyle let go of her hand. They were at the top of the Golden Gate Bridge. A group of Elders were standing before her. Next to her were her mother, her aunts, Kyle, and Leo. One of the Elders stepped forward. "Kyle Brody, what is the meaning of this?"

Kyle stepped forward until he was face to face with the Elder. "I want to clip my wings. I want to clip my wings and become a mortal so that I can stay with my wife and my family. If you could age me to Paige's age that would be nice, but I don't expect courtesies from you."

"Kyle, this insubordination will not be tolerated. We also do not accept your resignation. We told you when you married Paige that you could clip your wings, and you refused. Now you have to live with the consequences of your decision."

Out of the corner of her eye, Diana saw Piper shift towards Leo. She knows something we don't, Diana thought to herself. Either that or she thinks she does.

The Elders looked at each other and nodded. "Kyle Brody, if you refuse to accept your duties as a Whitelighter, then you must submit to disciplinary action in the form of a test. Do you consent to this decision?"

Kyle grinned brashly. "I'll take any test you give me, so long as it's fair." he told them.

"Good." one of the Elders said. "Your test is as follows. We will strip you of your identity and your powers. Your wife must find you within twenty-four hours or you will again become a Whitelighter, this time with no memories of your wife or child. Paige must find you by herself, with no help from her sisters, daughter, nephews, or brothers-in-law. As a precaution to make sure that she does--" Diana felt something tighten around her wrists "--we'll take your daughter as a hostage. If you fail, she'll become a Whitelighter, just like you. If you succeed, then you'll get your daughter back unharmed."

"No!" Kyle yelled. "I don't agree to this. You have no right to punish my daughter for my choices. She has nothing to do with this. Let her go."

The Elder smiled almost maliciously. "You are doing this to be able to stay with your family, are you not? I assume that your daughter is very much a part of your family. Ergo, this does involve her."

Diana fought the invisible bonds on her wrists. "I don't want him here!" she exclaimed. "I don't care if he never comes back to us; in fact I would like nothing better than never to see him again."

The Elder smiled again. "Well this is interesting. It seems, Kyle, that your reasons for clipping your wings are more out of love for your wife than your daughter, yes?"

"No! I love Diana and she's only angry with me because I haven't been around." Kyle turned to implore his daughter. "Diana, I swear, if this works, I will be the best father I can possibly be. I'll make up for all these lost years, I promise."

"How could you possibly make up for sixteen childhood years? I don't need a father anymore now that I'm practically an adult. Do me a favor and stay a Whitelighter so that I won't have to suffer when you fail."

"You have that small of a confidence in him, do you?" the Elder asked. "In that case, I amend the test. You'll both be stripped of your identities and your powers. You'll have twenty-four hours to find each other. If you fail, Kyle stays a Whitelighter and Diana is stripped of her powers, both witch and Whitelighter, but her identity is restored and she goes home. If you succeed, then Kyle becomes a mortal and ages to the age that Paige currently is and both of you have your identities restored. Diana gets her powers back and you both go home."

Diana smiled to herself. Whether she failed or succeeded, she still won. It was Kyle who would be risking everything. "I agree."

Kyle looked at Paige. Her gaze was on his, steady and comforting. She had faith in him, even if Diana didn't. "I agree as well."

Suddenly they were both falling quickly, hurtling towards the ground at breakneck speed. The girl felt herself land on the ground with a thud. She lay there for a moment because the world was spinning in and out of focus. "Miss, miss? Are you all right?"

The girl opened her eyes. There was a man standing over her. He was waving his hand in her face. She put a hand up to shield her eyes from the sun.

"Miss, what happened to you? Are you from these parts? Who are you?"

The girl sat up slowly and tried to answer the man's questions. He seemed nice, even if his voice had a strange twang to it. "I, I don't know. I mean, I can't answer any of your questions. I'm sorry."

"You must have bumped your head little lady. Here, let's see if we can't get you to a hospital or some such. Do you know where we are?"

The girl shook her head sadly. She grabbed the man's outstretched hand and he pulled her up. Suddenly a memory came to her.

She was running after blond boy. As she caught up to him, he reached out with a hand and shoved her down. The brown haired boy next to her turned around and saw her on the ground, and he called out to her but kept running. She lay on the ground and watched the boys run away. A hand came into her field of vision. She took it and the tall man pulled her up and scooped her into his arms. "You're my special girl," he said, wiping the tears from her face. "The daughter I never had." he whispered.

"Is everything okay?" the man asked her.

The girl snapped out of her reverie. "Yeah, I just remembered something, but it doesn't help with anything."

The man smiled. "Well you're obviously not from these here parts. You have yourself a refined northwest accent best as I've ever heard one."

She smiled. "Really?"

He nodded. "Far as I can figure, you come from up there in Washington State or Oregon or northern California. Certainly not from here in good ol' Alabama."

The girl smiled and let the man take her in his pickup to the police station. The police officer there filled out paperwork about where she was found and from, her age, height and weight, and her looks. They decided that she was from the northwest, about 5'5", 125 lbs, late teens, brown hair, brown eyes. Now she was looking through books at the town library, trying to trigger a memory.

"Here," the librarian said, placing a stack of books in front of her. "Y'all got your astrology, fairy tales, mythology, and an atlas. If you can't find something in one of those to help you, then I ought to resign as the here librarian!"

The girl smiled and opened the astrology book. She ran her finger down the page, stopping on Leo the lion. She brought her hand to her face, puzzled. She knew that that sign meant something to her somehow, but she also knew instinctively that she wasn't a Leo. She thought about the man in the memory. Was he Leo? Better question, was he her father?

"No," she whispered to herself and closed the book. He specifically said that she was daughter he never had. That meant he wasn't her father.

She aimlessly opened the mythology book and landed on Hermes, also known as Mercury. Mercury was Zeus's messenger, and he routinely traveled from Mount Olympus to Earth and to the Underworld of Hades. This idea struck a chord in the girl and she sat staring at the page for a moment, thinking. "It can't be real." she thought. "This all can't possibly exist in any way, shape or form." She turned the page hurriedly, only to land on the moon goddess Artemis, known to the Romans as Diana. Diana was the goddess of the hunt, the moon, and of chastity. She was Apollo's twin sister and much more serious than he was. "Diana?" the girl thought, feeling a kinship with the name almost immediately. She smiled, now knowing her name, and turned another page. What she saw shattered her newfound feeling of confidence. The page described Cassandra, gifted (or cursed) with premonitions that caused her to go mad. "No one really has premonitions," Diana thought, "do they?" But even as she thought it, she couldn't shake the feeling that maybe someone did. Thoroughly confused, she got up and walked out of the library.

Minutes later, a man with spiky brown hair, brown eyes, and a dazed expression walked in. He was in his forties, but looked as if perhaps he was uncomfortable in his skin. Inexplicably drawn to the table Diana had vacated, he headed towards it. As he did, the pages of the atlas, which was sitting out, fluttered and opened to a map of California. The man rubbed his eyes in wonder, daring himself to believe that what he had just seen was true. He sat down and looked at the map. One city stuck out in his mind. "San Francisco?" he thought confusedly. But even as he did, his mind evaded him. There was something good in San Francisco, something that made him feel happier than he ever had. He had no idea what it was, but he knew he had to get to San Francisco. About to get up, he paused and opened the book of fairy tales, flipping pages until he got to one that felt right. "The Pied Piper of Hamelin?" He'd never even heard of that story. It sounded familiar though. He flipped more pages. He was missing something; there was a word on the tip of his tongue. It was a familiar word, one that was right in front of him. He closed the book of fairy tales and his eyes came to rest on the book of mythology. The book itself looked familiar, as if he'd used it before.

"Honey, why are we doing this? She needs to be named something that starts with a P anyway. I don't remember any goddesses that start with a P."
The woman looked at him with satisfaction and pushed the book in his face. "Persephone?" he asked. She nodded and giggled. "Sweetheart, we are not naming our daughter Persephone. She'll be ridiculed in school."

"Oh, but she won't be if we name her Prudence."

"Your sister wasn't."

"I don't want to name her Prudence. I don't want her to be born with a name to live up to or a legacy to fulfill." She looked at him. "I had to live up to Prue. I don't want my daughter to have to as well."

"What else can we name her? Petunia, Pomegranate, Persimmon, Peach? There isn't exactly a plethora of P names to choose from."

"So let's name her something else. Our nephews are. Or do Wyatt and Christopher begin with silent Ps now?"

"They're boys. They don't have to follow the tradition. Our daughter should."
"She won't." His wife's eyes were ablaze. "Screw tradition." She held up the book, now open to a different page.

"Artimis?"

She laughed. "No silly, Diana. Goddess of the moon, the hunt, and chastity. It's perfect."

He kissed her. "If you think it's perfect, then let's do it. I want only the best for our little girl."

"Diana." He stood up. "I have to find Diana." He didn't allow himself to articulate his true thoughts which said that in order to find the woman he loved, whose name he couldn't even remember, he had to find their daughter, Diana. She would lead him to his wife.

He left the library and walked towards the diner. He was hungry, and finding missing daughters is hard to do on an empty stomach. Plus, it was a long trip to San Francisco, he was sure, and he needed food now in case he wouldn't get any on the way.

There was a girl at the counter finishing a meal. She was pretty, with brown hair and brown eyes. She was eating the remains of a grilled cheese sandwich. He stood next to her and looked at the menu. "A Reuben please." he said. "And hold the pickles."

The girl turned to the sound of his voice. Her eyes widened in shock. "Mercury?"

The man looked at her. "Who?"

She smiled and ducked her head. "I'm sorry sir, I just, I mean, that was just something that came to me when I saw you. I don't even know what it means."

He smiled. "It's okay."

He was about to turn away but she stopped him. "What's your name?"

"Dunno."

She smiled again. It was a pretty smile, and a familiar one. "Do you have amnesia too? I do. Just about the only thing I do know is my name and it's just luck that I do. Do you remember anything?"

He smiled. It felt unfamiliar to him. "I'm married, but I must have lost my wedding band since I don't have it. I need to go to San Francisco, so maybe that's where I'm from, but I don't remember. Oh, and I have a daughter."

She laughed. "You know more than I do. I know my name, that I'm from the northwest, and that there's a man out there who loves me like his daughter even though I'm not, and that somewhere else out there there's a boy who pushed me down when I was little."

He grinned, another unfamiliar sensation. "I'm sure most of us have a boy out there who's pushed us down when we were little. But whoever that man is that isn't your father must be a lucky man."

"Thanks. Did you say you were going to San Francisco?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Well it's in the northwest. Do you think that when you get there, you could ask people if they know me? I think the man's name is Leo, but I'm not sure, and I don't know his last name. You could look for him. He either has only sons or no children at all."

The man nodded. "Sure. You said you know your name. If I could tell people that, that would help me a lot."

"Of course. My name's Diana. No last name as far as I know."

"Diana?" the man asked in wonderment.

"Yes, Diana. Why do you look so shocked?"

The man tried to compose himself. "My daughter, her name is Diana. I'm hoping to find her so that I can find my wife."

Diana slid off of her stool and touched the man on the arm. "You'll find her, I know you will." she said. "You're probably a great father, and she must miss you like crazy."

The man smiled and placed a hand on her shoulder. Her hand was still on his arm. As he looked at her, the ground dropped out from under them, and swirling lights appeared around them. Suddenly they were back at the top of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Kyle looked at the Elders, stunned. Next to him, Diana's face was wearing the same expression.

"Well done." an Elder said. "The test is over. You both have passed."

Diana's eyes nearly popped of her head. "He, he passed?" she said in a mixture of amazement and disgust. She turned to her mother, "You must have helped him."

Paige shook her head. "No, I didn't. He remembered your name, even when mine was staring him in the face. Pages, Kyle, you were turning pages."

Kyle looked sheepish. "I knew it was right in front of me. And I did remember you honey."

Paige smiled. "I know, Kyle."

Diana looked to the Elders for support. "But I didn't remember him! I remembered Leo! I remembered Wyatt knocking me over and Chris calling out to me and Leo picking me up. I didn't remember Kyle at all."

"Actually, you did. Does the name Hermes ring a bell? Or Mercury?"

Diana looked confused. "Mercury? What does Kyle have to do with Mercury?"

The Elder smiled. "Mercury traveled from Mount Olympus" he gestured above them. "To Earth," he gestured around them. "To the Underworld." He gestured below them. "So did Kyle. Mercury was eventually given a respite, and he married a nymph and lived with her for the rest of her days. As Mercury was relieved of his duty, so now is Kyle."

Paige, holding Kyle's hand, walked over to Diana. "Let's go home." she said, smiling at Kyle, Piper, and Leo. "Let's all five of us go home."