Author's Notes: takes place after "Legend of Sleepy Halliwell" (where the Headless Horsemen is summoned and the gang goes to Magic School; Phoebe goes on a random vision quest and finds out Chris is Piper's kid with surprisingly little emotional reaction from said aunt. No thought to "oh, hey, I hit on my nephew" or "holy shit, my neurotic whitelighter is my nephew" or even "we threw out my nephew!" or even "Perry? Who names their kid 'Perry' anyway?") and before the episode with Mata Hari. Everyone is generally unaware of the whole Chris is my nephew/kid thing - including Phoebe, because Creative Writer's License. Phoebe had the vision and knows Piper has two kids and she'll be having a baby, but let's ignore the underrated revelation that "Oh, hey, Chris looks a little like the little boy in my vision."
Also, I gave Chris one more power than he is meant to have, because (reasons I cannot reveal just yet), but remember that episode where the sisters were forcibly turned evil when Prue was married to that warlock (Zile)? And Piper's freezing power literally froze people? Yeah… if you remember that, you'll understand my reasoning for his extra power. As a recap, Chris' powers are (additional power), telekinesis, orbing, and minor photokinesis (in the comics).
Rated M for: Language (I don't censor myself), Canon Abuse, Unchanged (eh) Future, PTSD, War, Implied Abuse and Neglect, Implied and On Screen Het, Implied and possibly On Screen Slash, Implied and On Screen Sibling on Sibling Abuse, On Screen Murder and Gore, minor OCs, majorly OOC (or IC) Characters, etc. ... It was always rated M so don't act like I misled you.
Summary: Chris Revelation Fic.
Chapter 1: Methane and Madness
Pococurante:
(Noun.)
Cold, indifferent, nonchalant.
"Hey, Piper, did you – holy shit!" he swore, as his eyes met the scene. The attic was flooded, the floor covered by a gelatinous, translucent cream-coloured liquid (liquefied methane he remembered disbelievingly), and petals of some flower (cherry blossoms, he thought idly, wildly, sick in his own internal panic) glided on the surface. Behind the overturned pedestal, a demon with slicked back black hair and a goatee in a black trenchcoat and black trousers, holding a struggling Piper against his chest, trapping her arms behind her back, with a knife held at her throat and his gloved hand over her mouth.
Chris stepped forwards, raising his hands to blow the bastard away like he couldn't do back…. Stop this monster before it happened all over again. Do what he couldn't do before as a stupid, weak child.
The demon smirked and said, sounding as much like death, decay and despair, feeling like the crawl of insects and the slide of oil, tasting like tears and copper nightmares, "You wouldn't want to do that, would you, little witchlighter? Fling me to either side, and bye, bye the witch's head!"
"Let her go," he said, his voice flat, without inflection or tone. He was aware of his fringe, of how it covered the intense green of his eyes – the eyes of death, Wyatt had called them. He was aware of the tight square of his shoulders, of the shoulder-width spread of his feet, of the slight bend in his knees for mobility, of the lethal power of his hands, of the muscles perpetuating his body. He felt the pain, the cry of the internal agony that screeched every day, pressing at his heart. He could hear the screaming imprinted in his mind. He could feel the cold, spreading from his chest to his brain and to each appendage he had. The icy patterns of his veins, filled with the eternal suffering of all, arching out from his diaphragm and the ribbed cage around the beaten vessel that some called a heart and others called a stone, and bleeding forth carvings of blades and steel, out from his love and wonder and his pain and hate and into each palm and foot, until he – like the pentagram – was strong.
He could feel that cold now, spreading like frost on a window, the crystals forming on the edges of trees, as white as her skin after she stopped bleeding, with the crimson dashed across her neck and chest and all over his hands as he prayed and begged for the healing glow that never came, for the heat he could not feel, for the warmth of love that never touched him evermore, not until Bianca and her ashy infinite fire came and swept him away, melting him and guiding him into an arctic ocean of power to stand alone again the tides of his brother's fire.
Her eyes, these pools of brown, so like Bianca's, his heart ached – they were filled with so much fear that he could feel the cold reaching out from every small step forward he took. Her eyes rolled from Chris' green to the door, to the floor, to the book hidden away and shielded from the water by the stone with Excalibur encased within. She stared at him and he immediately shifted his gaze to the empty playpen, Wyatt thankfully in Leo's custody Up There for the blessed moment.
He swallowed and stepped forwards boldly, and the demon stepped back mockingly. From beneath the witchlighter's feet, icy pathways sprung over the liquid and he raised his palms in the sign of surrender – or perhaps threateningly – as he spoke, every breath visible in the frost appearing everywhere, "You shouldn't be here, Zoras."
The demon smirked harder and Piper's eyes widened. He replied, "And you, Christopher – where should you really be?"
"This is where I'm meant to be," he said back, stepping forwards once more, feeling the demon's reflecting pools harden into solid mirrors beneath him, "The question is: where are you meant to be?"
"You did this, Christopher," Zoras spoke, bringing the blade tighter to Piper's neck, so close that a single drop of blood fell down like a tear from an eye, "You are destroying everything we've ever worked for. You are altering the timeline in ways the Source does not desire."
Piper looked betrayed and she struggled minutely against Zoras' grip while trying to avoid the wicked curve of the athame.
"You sound like Wyatt," he replied, watching Piper's eyes widen even more, "As if I am evil like you and him and everyone else under his thumb."
"You've betrayed us?" Zoras said, eyes widening and his smirk growing in triumph, standing up straighter and towering over his captive, "You?"
"You're a bit behind the time, Zoras. I've been – " he flung his hand to the side and Zoras flew at the wall, like a puppet, "actively working against you and him and 'everything we've ever worked for' since I was sixteen fucking years old."
The demon hit the wall head on and slid down, but most demons (him included) weren't that fragile. He snarled from the floor and Piper quickly brought herself to her feet and went to blow him up when he threw out a fist. Chris shouted in warning and scrambled to intervene but –
Too late.
Like always.
He lunged forwards and grabbed a hold on his mother's collapsing body as Zoras flamed away. The athame stuck out of her chest, and blood soaked her shirt too quickly. The water and flowers remained and he moved reflexively, feeling the blood soak his hands as he ripped his shirt (could you be any slower, you idiot?), pulled out the knife (too messy, always too messy) and tried (too slow, always too slow) – too cold, always too cold – again and he felt himself dissolving into nonexistence as he tried to put pressure on it (too hard, too slow, too cold, do something you idiot). He breathed heavily and her eyes closed and he shrieked, feeling all sense and apathy disintegrate in his arms and he felt like he was fourteen again.
"Leo! Leo! Fucking Leo! Dad! Please! Wyatt! Wyatt!" his voice broke and he felt the sobs threaten him as he began to vanish and with it the future and his mother. His mother was dying and Dad wasn't coming, Wyatt wasn't coming, no one was coming, no one could hear him, no one could save them, and he felt the familiar thud of his heart as he shrieked every whitelighter's name that he knew, but first, always first, he had to, he must, begging the heavens, "Leo! Please, Leo! Your wife is dying and I can't save her! Please, fucking hell, Wyatt! Dad! Please! Dad! Daddy! Don't leave me here all alone again! For the love of God and all that is holy, PLEASE! Mom! Mom is dying! Wyatt! Please! Leo, Leo, Gideon, Zulu, Zola, Megan, Henry, Prudence, Leo, Dad, please, why won't you come?! Wyatt! Dad! Now!"
He held her closer, feeling the blood soak his shirt and his hands and he felt himself stop feeling – his face now completely translucent and quickly, too quickly crossing the line of being into never existing, and wondered briefly as the cold gave way to horrible heat if that was the key to saving Wyatt when the orbs formed and the sound rang and there was Leo and thank God and he saw the light and the heat and the warmth overtake him and he was cold once more as he reappeared in full force and she was healed and she was alive and thank God and Wyatt and the Source and everything good in this world!
He blinked, the tears suddenly entirely too real and too hot on his face and he was completely aware of the fact that he was kneeling on frozen methane and he was completely blood-stained and he was crying and he – his mother was alive! He was alive!
And the future was completely screwed, because his mother and his father were both staring at him, so incomprehensible, entirely too young and completely unprepared for any piece of the truth. The emotions were like waves and wind and rocks and earthquakes and tsunamis and hurricanes – all at the same time – with all the complexity and pain of himself coming back and completely helpless to locking them back up again.
"Chris?" she said, too concerned and too unfamiliar and too pitying and too suspicious all at the same time and it was unreal at how fucking alive she sounded and pathetic it must be to feel even more like crying because he couldn't tell her why he was suddenly sobbing about how she was alive and how she wasn't and he wasn't real anymore and he really wanted to tell her everything and make her love him again and he wanted Wyatt to be sane and for his father to give a shit and for everything to be okay again and he was mentally rambling and he was still crying, if anyone could believe that, and –
"Chris?" she repeated, leaning forwards and laying a hand on his – too cold, always too fucking cold – arm, "Are you okay? Who was that?"
He leaned forwards too, prostrating himself completely on the ice, the all too real image of his mother – his mother – and her dead brown eyes clouding over, and her body feeling like it was the same temperature as his own. He could see the blood on her neck and her chest and her short hair – long since cut into a bob – surrounding her head in a dark halo. He could still see her chest and it wasn't moving and her heart was silent and she wasn't breathing and he was all alone. He moaned loudly, and his breath hitched and he sobbed, and then he simply orbed away, bursting into thousands of little lights and disappearing from their eyes.
Piper and Leo looked at each other.
"Piper? What happened?"
"I – ," she paused, collecting herself, "I don't really know. I've never seen him so upset before."
"Piper, you almost died. If I had been a second later, even a second, you'd be dead!" Leo said, force so intense and present that she turned to look at him in surprise. His eyes were bright and worried and filled with so much dismay and despair that she blinked at him, feeling the shock and the fear swirling within her dissolve (she'd survived worse, of course) because he could be concerned for her.
She decided to leave the topic and said, "He – he knew the demon. They talked. I think the demon was from the future."
"I – " he sighed, dropping the topic, "Why?"
She continued, "They talked about Wyatt – Chris said he wasn't like him – and the Source, but… The demon said Chris had betrayed him and 'everything they worked for' and Chris said he'd been working against them, whoever 'they' are, for years. Oh, Leo, I'm so confused. None of this makes any sense!"
"I'll go gather the sisters," Leo told her, though the way he gripped her seemed to suggest he did not feel comfortable leaving her side again, and he reluctantly let go to do just that.
"Jason and I were sleeping, so this had better be good!" Phoebe said as she materialised in lingerie, a bathrobe and a pair of slippers. Her eyes widened as she took into account the frozen floor and frosted flowers and the blood-stained floor, and she declared, "This is good. Well, bad. I mean, yes, this is a good reason to get me up at four a.m. Excuse me, I'm tired."
Paige and Leo materialised seconds later and Paige immediately said, "Well, this looks it'll be hard to clean up."
Leo began to explain, "Piper was attacked," he paused briefly, staring at his hands with a peculiar expression, "I barely got here in time. If I had been any later, even just a second…"
The other sisters looked at each other and Phoebe spoke, "Piper nearly died? Where was Chris in all this?"
"Chris was here," Piper said, sitting on a chair, "I was looking up some demons in the book – which is over there," she made a gesture to the rock, "when this demon – Zora or something, I think his name was – flamed in behind me, trapped my arms, covered my mouth and conjured an athame. That second, Chris walked in and… Long story short? Chris and the demon knew each other and Chris attacked him. The demon knifed me and Chris had a flip attack."
"A flip attack?" Paige said, "What do you mean?"
"He was," Piper drifted off, the memories of the knife and the pain and the fear and the bitter taste of betrayal when she heard that Chris had been in contact with the Source – in the future? – "shaken. Rattled. Upset. I mean upset like bursting into tears and completely breaking down. He was screaming for whitelighters, said a lot of names I didn't know, and Leo showed up, healed me and Chris was like – he was like broken, you know?"
"They knew each other?" Phoebe said, "How? What do you mean?"
Piper shrugged, "Chris walked in and he went to attack him, and the demon threatened me. Then Chris' voice got all quiet and flat and he said something about letting me go, and the demon laughed at him and Chris said that he – the demon – shouldn't be here, and the demon said that Chris shouldn't be here, and then the demon said something about Chris working for the Source and Chris said he betrayed them a long time ago – it was confusing and didn't seem to make any sense."
"Maybe Chris could clarify," Paige said, "He should be here, anyhow. You were attacked, Piper, and he used to work for the Source? That makes him a demon, or at least evil. Chris? Chris?! Chris! Get down here, now!"
Leo said quietly, "I don't think he's coming, Paige. He seemed…"
"Broken," Piper whispered, "When I was," she paused slightly, "dying, he started to have a panic attack or something. He screamed for three people a lot – Leo, Wyatt, and," she trailed off, unsure if she should say it, if she realty heard him say it.
"His father," Leo completed.
"But isn't Wyatt supposed to be evil in the future?" Paige asked, confused.
"Maybe he was having a flashback?" Phoebe suggested and they all looked at her in confusion, "When I was taking psychology, we learnt about that. A traumatic event occurs in someone with anxiety problems or PTSD or a slew of other disorders and that event triggers a memory of another traumatic event and it sounds like that was happening. He sees a demon from the future attacking Piper, and say, hypothetically, this demon also attacked someone that Chris loves – "
"His mother," Piper supplied, "I think he was shouting about her when he was calling for Leo, and the others."
Phoebe nodded, and continued, "Say, his mother was attacked by this demon when Chris was young, and Chris saw it and it traumatised him, and then years later – for him – he sees the same demon attempt to kill Piper and he is suddenly seeing his mother dying again. A flashback. That's why he'd suddenly start shouting for other whitelighters rather than Leo – his father, because he's a witchlighter, and Wyatt, because Wyatt, if he did turn, probably didn't do it until he was an established witchlighter. And all those other whitelighters."
"Well," Leo said, "I'm going to go get him."
"Why?" Piper asked.
"Because," Leo frowned, "even if he was traumatised, according to Piper and this demon, Chris worked for the Source in the future. That makes him a threat to Wyatt, and officially on a mission from evil."
"But the demon said Chris betrayed them – the Source, W-Wyatt, and all the rest of the evil of the future," Piper protested, stumbling briefly over her son's name, still unprepared to declare her son to be evil in the future.
"That doesn't matter," Leo said, "Prepare the crystals. Even if he's turned back from evil, that puts everything about him into question – his powers, his heritage, everything he's told us."
With that, he dissolved into the orbs and disappeared.
The sisters sighed and Paige rolled her eyes as she recited the Vanishing Spell on the methane on the floor. At their looks she said self-consciously, "What? We'd never be able to get to the Book of Shadows or stop the forces of evil with this mess in the way! It's ice."
Chapter End.
So... What now? Read and Review. Or don't. Do whatever.
July 24: Edit. The demon's name was meant to be Zoras, not Foras. My apologies for the confusion.