FEAR'S LABYRINTH
a Charmed fan fiction by Jennifer A. Johnson
DISCLAIMER: "Charmed", "The Charmed Ones" and other related entities are owned, (TM) and (c) by CONSTANCE M. BURGE, AARON SPELLING Television Inc (A Paramount / Viacom Co.), and The WB (AOL Time Warner Company). All Rights reserved. This website, its operators, and any content on this site relating to "Charmed" are not authorized by Aaron Spelling Productions. No copyright infringement is intended. Any reproduction, duplication or distribution of this material in any form is expressly prohibited.
ACT ONE.
Guest starring:
Billy Drago as Barbas
Rebecca Balding as Elise Rothman
Elizabeth Dennehy as Elder Sandra
John de Lancie as Elder Odin
James Read as Victor Bennett
with Ivan Sergi as Henry Mitchell
and Victor Webster as Coop
The picture of Paige, Phoebe, and Piper on the couch hangs on the wall.
Paige rolls her eyes. "The Power of Four?" She crosses her arms over her chest. "Please."
A barrage of emotions comes at Phoebe from every direction. Joy, pain, inadequacy, possessiveness, uncertainty, resentment, distrust; they all hit her at full force, seemingly all at once. Phoebe stumbles back as they slam into her, practically knocking the breath out of her. The blue-white light seeps back into the chandelier as she leaves the circle. Emotions that are not her own- and yet somehow are- scream in her head. She recognizes it almost immediately for what it is- it hasn't been that long since They took her powers- and she glares accusingly up at the sky. "Empathy? Now? Are you kidding me?"
Phoebe takes another step back, and nearly collapses under the weight of all that emotion. Prue and Piper are there to catch her when she falls. They gently guide her over to the couch and help her sit down. Paige tags along.
Prue and Piper sit on either side of Phoebe. Phoebe cuddles up to Prue, her head on her big sister's shoulder. Piper sits close and strokes Phoebe's hair, her arm around Phoebe. Paige goes into the kitchen to get Phoebe a glass of water, and when she comes back, they're still cooing over Phoebe. "Okay, but can you not be so concerned, cause it's really hurting my head," Phoebe asks them in her little girl voice.
Prue smiles ruefully. "Sorry." Phoebe tries to smile back through the pain.
"I got you some water," Paige chirps.
Phoebe gratefully takes the water with a "Thanks, Paige," and Paige beams. She looks for a spot on the couch and has to settle for the arm next to Piper.
Leo looks at Phoebe with concern, his arms crossed. "What happened?"
"She got her empathy back, Leo," Prue says in a voice suggests that Leo should just know.
Leo finds himself mumbling an apology before he even realizes he's doing it. He frowns. He hadn't meant to apologize- he hadn't done anything wrong- but Pure just kind of has that effect on him. He exchanges a glance with Paige. Paige rolls her eyes.
Phoebe takes a sip of water. She holds the glass out. Paige goes to take it from her, but Prue gets to it first. "I got it."
Paige pulls back so that Prue can put the glass down on the coffee table. She has to force herself to smile. "Of course you do," she kind of chuckles.
Phoebe traces her fingers across the back of Prue's hand. "Remember when you were an empath?" Her little girl voice just doesn't seem to be going away, and it was really starting to bug Paige.
Prue smiles at her. She wraps her arms around Phoebe's neck and puts her chin on her shoulder. "Yeah. I do."
"Were you as annoying as Phoebe was?" Paige blurts without thinking. All three of her sisters glare at her, but Prue's face is the one that makes her startle. It was worse than Piper's, though Paige suddenly knew who Piper had been trying to emulate all these years. But Piper never actually scared Paige. Prue, on the other hand, was one scary witch. Paige quickly averts her eyes and gets off the couch arm. She ducks her head and goes to Leo's side and hides behind him without actually hiding. "Ew."
"No, Paige," Prue practically growls. "It almost killed me. Until I learned to channel it."
Paige frowns. "And you knew she was an empath, how?" she asks. "You were dead." Suddenly, Paige isn't so sure. "Wait... weren't you?" She looks to Leo for confirmation. Leo nods, albeit uncertainly.
Prue smiles, though to Paige it looks a little forced. Phoebe and Piper probably don't notice. "Death wasn't going to keep me from looking out for my sisters," Prue says, more to Piper and Phoebe than to Paige.
A look of relief washes over Piper's face. "I knew it. I knew it." Prue reaches over Phoebe to squeeze Piper's hand. Piper latches on and doesn't let go.
"I'm very proud of the way you handled the whole Cole situation, Feebs," Prue adds.
Phoebe smiles, tears of joy and pain in her eyes. She rests her chin on Prue's shoulder and looks up into her eyes. "This empathy thing is really hurting my head," she whines to her biggest sister. Prue makes sympathetic noises and pets Phoebe's head.
Paige looks to Leo. "Why now?" She hopes Leo picks up on the fact that she means it more as 'Why is Prue back?' than 'Why did Phoebe get her empathy back?'
"I don't know," Phoebe answers for him. "Maybe it's because of Prue?" She looks to Prue for confirmation. "You're back, right?" Hope gleams in her beautiful eyes.
"I'm back," Prue assures her.
"Why are you back?" Paige asks with a nervous laugh, hoping it sounds like a question, not an accusation.
"Paige, you're half whitelighter," Prue says.
"Half whitelighter, half witch," Paige reminds her, then pointedly adds, "Half Charmed One." She chuckles again and tosses her hair. She can't help but feel territorial here.
"So, you can go check with The Elders, alright?" The way Prue says it, it sounds like an order, not a request, and the only child in Paige makes her want to refuse. "Alright?" This time there's no mistaking it; it's definitely an order.
"Alright," Paige sniffs. She turns herself into a sparkle of orbs which slowly dissipate. She hears her sisters' voices before she fully teleports away.
"Don't leave us, ever, ever again," Phoebe baby-talks. "Never ever."
"Never again," Prue promises.
"Dammit," Paige mutters as she finally orbs all the way out.
---
Paige orbs in on the Golden Gate Bridge. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. The wind whips at her hair, tears at her clothes. The traffic roars beneath her. She finds all this noise oddly soothing, almost peaceful. It must be the whitelighter in her, because Leo and Future Chris used to like it up here too.
The astral Barbas flashes in behind her. He opens his mouth to tap into her subconscious, then immediately flashes out and returns to his body in Purgatory.
A slightly brighter blue light than her own splashes across Paige's face. She can feel its warming glow on her skin. She opens her eyes and recognizes The Elder as Sandra, the one who more often than not was on the side of The Charmed Ones.
"Hello, Paige," Elder Sandra says, her voice eternally tranquil.
"Prue's back. Why is she back?"
A shadow passes over Sandra's face. Paige assumes it's the closest thing to a frown this particular Elder was capable of. "Prue?"
"You didn't know?" Paige snorts. She crosses her arms and raises an eyebrow. "Why am I not surprised?"
Elder Odin orbs in next to Sandra. Paige knows him best as The Elder who tried to take Leo away from them, and the one who tried to shut down Magic School. Odin doesn't look pleased. But that's not surprising; he never looks pleased. He looks even less pleased that usual, if that's at all possible. He barely gives Paige a second glance before turning to Sandra. "What did she say?"
"I said--" Paige kind of waves in his face to get his attention. "Hi." Odin rolls his eyes over to her. "I said that Prue is back."
Odin looks at her like she just said that up was down and that Paris Hilton deserved to be a whitelighter. "Prue... is alive?"
Paige scrunches up her face. "I'm not sure."
Sandra and Odin exchange a glance.
---
Leo hates to break up the sisterly bonding (he had learned long ago not to even try to come in between the Halliwell sisters), but he needs to talk to his wife. Now. "Piper, can I talk to you?"
Piper clearly doesn't want to. She looks to Prue with pleading eyes. Phoebe is still attached firmly to Prue's arm. Prue nods. "I'll be here when you get back," she promises.
Piper stands. She looks down at Prue. "You better be. Otherwise, I'd have to hunt you down and kill you," Piper says, a bit of the big sister returning to her voice. And she means it, too. She follows Leo far enough away so that Phoebe and Prue can hear Piper and Leo, but close enough so that Piper can still see them. She can't seem to take her eyes off Prue.
"Piper, is there something you want to tell me?"
That gets Piper's attention, and she jerks her head over to Leo. In any other man, it would sound like a question, but, well, Leo wasn't just any man. In him, it sounded, to Piper at least, like an accusation, even with that soft voice of his. "You think I had something to do with this? How? How can you think that?"
"Because I know you."
Piper's eyes get really wide. The scar above her right eye becomes even more pronounced. Leo knows the anger is coming. So does Phoebe. She looks up from Prue as Piper's anger flashes hot inside her head. "Well, I didn't."
"Piper, I know," he says calmly, soothingly, hoping to diffuse the situation.
She takes a step back, her eyes accusing. "Know what, exactly?"
"I know you used the To Call a Lost Witch spell after Prue died."
"Well, I didn't this time," she says, her voice full of indignation.
"Piper..."
"No." She whirls around in a great flurry of arms and hair to head back for her sisters.
Leo reaches out and touches her arm. Phoebe feels Piper's anger flare up. Piper stops and glares at his hand as he reminds her, "You can tell me. You can tell me anything," his voice soft and gentle.
Piper yanks her arm away. She raises a finger to him. Her voice shakes with anger. "Don't touch me."
Leo looks at her, surprised and hurt. "Piper."
"NO!" Piper shouts in an unnaturally deep and overly processed voice. She thrusts her hands out, setting off a wall of orange mojo that blasts straight through Leo's chest and propels him and most of the objects around him across the living room. He hits the grandfather clock with a sickening splat. The clock explodes around him like shrapnel. He tumbles to the ground and doesn't move. A puddle of blood forms under his body. His hair is tacky with blood where he hit his head. His vacant eyes stare up at the ceiling.
END ACT ONE.