Please Return to me
Chapter 2 – Trapped and Terrified
A/N: Ok, now I need to do some fast typing so I can get this chapter done until tomorrow because I won't be able to go online for the week after that. And then I would leave you all without an update for too long for my taste, so let's get this done!
And thanks a lot for all the reviews, guys I would never have expected to get more than ten and now I got 31! That's just unbelievable, I would love to jump through all your PC screens and smother you guys with hugs. Pity that won't work, though.
Disclaimer: I don't own Charmed or any of the characters or any idea how to express that in a creative way.
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Silence.
Dead, all covering silence.
Darkness.
No light to be seen, no sound to be heard, no scent to smelt, no touch to be felt, no flavor to be tasted. Absolutely nothing was around.
Except for his mind. His consciousness.
It was scary to no words. He couldn't move, couldn't talk, wasn't even sure if there was something to move.
Chris had no idea where he was, how long he had been there or what he was supposed to do. The only thing he knew was, that he would've been grateful for being somewhere else, anywhere. He would've done anything only to see something again. Or to feel, or to do anything. Anything to force away the horrible nothingness of his whereabouts.
He could tell it had been a long time. A long time without anything happening. He was alone with his thoughts. Maybe he only consisted of thoughts, he was not aware whether his body was, where it was supposed to be.
The last thing he remembered before being thrown into this mind crashing darkness was a stabbing pain in the back. After that everything had went black and it had never changed.
Somehow he had gotten the impression that wherever the place was he was currently occupying, it seemed to be narrow. He had never been someone to have claustrophobia but the long time he had spent inside here had changed him. He longed for a bit of sunlight or at least some picture to look at, but what he craved for most was the soothing touch of his mother's, her gentle hands caressing his face and telling him that everything was fine, that he was going to be ok soon, but he had no idea how to get it.
He felt as if he was loosing his mind. He had tried talking to himself to only preserve a little bit of sanity, but he had not been able to produce a sound. He had tried imagining something to be there, but it had done him no good. No matter how hard he had concentrated he hadn't been able to shut out the depressing darkness.
He had felt like crying so often, but it hadn't been possible.
He hadn't even slept. All the time some invisible force had compelled him to stay awake, to stay conscious. There was no escape to the terrifying nature of the place.
He needed to get out of here, but he couldn't. There were so many things he needed but there was absolutely nothing he could do and this inability made him feel even worse than the plain situation.
But now, so many years after he had been put wherever it was he finally noticed a difference. He felt a pull. He couldn't say how relieved he was to finally feel a change.
The pull intensified and he was craving to let it do whatever it purpose was. He didn't even care what the purpose could possibly be.
And then, finally, his wildest dreams were fulfilled and his environment changed.
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Impatiently Corox waited for the magic to work. He looked at the green stone on the precious weapon annoyed. It had started to glow over a minute ago and still nothing had happened.
A sudden surge of panic overcame him as he thought of the possibility that the athame was malfunctioning and thus destroying every hope he had to accomplish the deal he had made so many years ago.
The glow intensified and the young demon held his breath. He couldn't have waited four years for nothing. He let out a relieved sigh as he finally saw the small boy's spiritual frame forming.
The athame stopped glowing and the boy looked like any spirit there was usually. He was transparent and glowing.
"Finally", Corox exclaimed and took a tape measure.
Chris looked at him scared and confused. There were no words to describe how happy he was to finally be free and to see and hear something, but he was not so happy about a demon standing right in front of him trying to measure his left arm.
"What are you doing?", he asked and was very surprised to find his voice in the same way it had so long ago before he had been trapped wherever it had been.
He looked at his new surroundings closely. It looked like your ordinary underworld cave, lit by torches that spilt an orange light and made the cave feel somehow cozy. Behind him stood a table with an athame lying on it that seemed to be rather precious. It had a beautiful green handle with a stone that seemed to emit some kind of light, that was not magical in the ordinary way, but still seemed to have its own kind of magic. It looked like an emerald, but Chris wasn't sure. He didn't know a lot about gemstones.
The demon didn't answer him, instead he measured Chris' height and made some quick notes on a piece of paper that was lying next to the athame.
"Hey!", Chris shouted at the demon causing that one to jump slightly. He had just gotten out of the horrible situation he had been in, but the rude behavior of this demon was not tolerable. He thought about this thought for a second and realized he was pretty disoriented. It didn't matter at all if some demon was rude to him, but somehow his mind put more weight than necessary on this particular bit of information.
"What?", the demon whose name was Corox asked, as if his activity was self-explaining.
"What are you doing?", Chris repeated his previous question impatiently.
"Checking you", Corox replied sounding like someone who was very bored of having to state the obvious.
"Why?", Chris asked confused.
"To see if everything is in order", the demon said annoyed. Why did he even need to talk to his commodities? He had absolutely no desire to have a conversation with a little boy whose soul had just been sucked out of an athame which he had inhabited for the last 4 years.
"Why do you care?", Chris asked and tried to ban the fear out of his voice. It seemed pretty odd to him that a demon wanted to check him, and if a demon did something odd it usually meant something bad.
"Because I need to know if I can still get the full prize", the demon said while he was trying to measure the length of Chris' legs.
"Prize?", Chris echoed incredulously. He had no idea what this meant, but it was scaring him almost more than the deadly silence wherever he had been.
Corox just waved off. "Never mind", he said.
Chris did still mind, but there were other things he needed to know first. "Where have I been?"
"In there", Corox told him and pointed toward the weapon on the table.
Chris' eyes grew wide and he repeated in shock, "In there?" That sounded even worse than not knowing where it had been.
"Yup. Trapped your soul in there. The rest of you is dead", Corox said and took a bubblegum from the table to put inside his mouth.
"D… dead?", Chris stuttered. He looked down at himself. He let out a yelp when he realized he was entirely transparent.
Corox looked up irritated and met Chris' terrified gaze. "Are you deaf? Of course you're dead. You wouldn't be of any use for me if you were alive."
"Wh… what kind of use?", Chris asked uncertainly. He felt as if he was inside some very bad dream.
"I'm too lazy to explain right now. Doesn't matter much anyway", the demon shrugged it off. That was an outright lie, but he had no desire to get into a long discussion. It did matter, a lot actually, but it was not of importance whether the brat knew or not. The only thing that mattered was to see whether his soul had taken damage of any kind that would lower the payment Corox would receive. He had not waited 4 years to prepare everything only to have a little bad quality blow the deal.
Chris felt pretty lost right now. He looked at the demon uncertain what to do. Was he really dead? How was that even possible? Did his family know about that? Did they know he had been trapped in that athame? It were all questions he had no answer to. And the demon didn't really give the impression he would answer them even if he knew all these things.
Corox didn't care about the child's silence. Instead he kept on talking. "Well, you're going to be back in there in no time anyway. I just cast a spell to get you out for an hour or two to check you and to have my costumer observe you"
Chris stared at him in shock. Costumer? Prize? Was the demon going to sell the athame? And above all, getting back in there? Was he crazy? This had definitely been the worst experience he had ever made and there was no way he would ever go back there. "I won't go back in there", Chris said determinedly.
The demon chuckled slightly. "It's not like you have much choice. You soul is bound to that thing now, the spell can only separate you from it temporary after that you're going to be sucked right back in, whether you want it or not."
That was too much for Chris. He needed to get out of there. That was all way too scary for him and the prospect of possibly going back into the nothingness was terrifying him to no end. So he did what his instincts told him to and tried to orb.
And much to his surprise it worked.
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Leo stared into the cloudy sky over San Francisco with glassy eyes.
He sat on the Golden Gate Bridge, the only place where he could be alone. Tears glistened in his eyes and he had no reason to keep them from falling. Today was the day.
The only day he could not stand to see his family.
He counted the day that had been this one 4 years ago as the worst day of his life. There had been other pretty bad days in his life, but somehow most of them had offered him some kind of compensation.
The day he had died in World War 2 had been bad, but he had been made a whitelighter the same day, which was one of the best things that had ever happened to him, it had led him to Piper, to his family, to a kind of luck he had never had before.
The day were Chris from the future had died had been very hard on him. But it had also been the day were his Chris, his little boy had been born, and that had made up for all the other bad things that had happened this day, because it had given him the chance to make all his previous life's mistakes up to Chris, which had meant a lot to him.
But this day had no been good in any way. He had simply lost his young boy without any warning and for no reason at all. He had never had the chance to make up for so many things he should've rectified and he would never have that chance again.
4 years and it still hurt like hell.
Sometimes Leo imagined what Chris would be like, if he still lived. He imagined how he would've looked like, blowing out the candles on the cake for his twelfth birthday. He imagined how he would moan about too much homework at school or how he would eat a huge bowl of ice cream.
These thoughts always made him cry. Because none of that would ever happen anymore.
Even more tears were rising up in his eyes as he remembered that horrible day.
FlashbackAn hour had passed since their little boy had left them and now the manor was in Chaos. Leo could've just lost it all, but he knew he needed to keep it together for his family.
"Piper!", he said while shaking his wife. She was crying and screaming as if there was no tomorrow. He could understand that perfectly, but she totally lost check of her emotions and her powers. They were both standing in the living room, where flower vases, chairs and even a couch had already spontaneously exploded.
She didn't seem to even hear him, was too lost in her grief. Leo had to be careful not to be hit by the shards of a flower vase that had just blown up.
"Piper this won't help him!", he yelled at his wife, desperately hoping to get through to her.
She finally seemed to have noticed his words, because the interior made a pause in blowing itself up. She looked at him through her tears and asked in despair, "Then what will?"
"I don't know", Leo confessed with tears running down his cheeks as well. He hated it to feel this powerless.
"Can't you… can't you ask the elders?", Piper asked between her sobs. She looked at him with a trace of hope on her face.
He looked at her in defeat. He knew exactly, that the elders did not possess this kind of power. Death was not their business. "They can't do anything", he whispered, but she heard him.
"Please, try", Piper begged.
Seeing his wife this way broke his heart and even if it did no good, it was at least worth a try. "Ok", he said reluctantly and orbed out, leaving his wife and the furniture alone with each other.
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The female Elder he had run into, who looked very young but of whom he knew that she was over a hundred years old looked at him with genuine sympathy on her face. "I'm so sorry for your loss", she said and patted his back.
He nodded quietly and waited for her to answer his request. "But there is nothing we can do, trust me, we would if we could, but you know it yourself, this is not within our power", she continued with a sad look on her face. The young death of the boy touched her more than it would have some other elder, because she herself had not been very old when she had died, but unlike her he had no chance of being reborn as a whitelighter, because he had already been a witch and part whitelighter.
"If there's anything else I can do…", she started, but Leo waved off.
"Thanks for your time", he said quietly and orbed back out. He had expected this answer, but he had no idea how to tell Piper, that her last bit of hope had been crushed…
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Wyatt stared at the white blanket in disbelief. He barely noticed the tears running down his cheeks.
The only thing spinning in his head was the knowledge of who was underneath the blanket. It was his brother. His own younger brother did not need to breath anymore. This was plain impossible. How could this have happened?
What if he had noticed the demon sooner? Would he have been able to do something about it? He knew that he would never get the answers to these questions and that he shouldn't blame himself but it made no difference to him.
His brother was dead and he had been killed while Wyatt had been in the same room. He could've noticed it, but he didn't. That was everything that mattered.
He looked up as the attic door opened with a squeak. His aunt Paige entered.
"Wyatt? What happened? I couldn't get a clear word out of Piper", she said with concern in her voice. She spotted the blanket Wyatt had been staring at and was immediately aware of the fact that whatever was underneath it, had a very human shape. And a very childlike shape.
"Where's Chris?", she asked with a sudden rush of panic. No, he couldn't be… or could he?
Wyatt simply pointed to the blanket, unable to articulate a word.
Shaking, Paige walked over to examine what was there. She knelt down beside the spot and slowly raised her hands to lift the blanket.
She paused for a moment, unsure whether she could handle what she was about to see. But she didn't know what she would see, so her only choice was to look.
Very slowly she lifted the blanket up, bracing herself for the worst, but nothing could've prepared her for what she was seeing.
"No", she whispered as she saw her nephew lying there, pale, with a huge wound on his stomach, as if a knife had pierced him through his entire body. As it had.
She touched his hand and felt a little disappearing warmth. And she knew what it meant. There was not going to be any warmth in this hand ever again.
She felt a tear running down her cheek and then a soft sob left her lips on its own account. She could not say anything, not take her eyes of the boy's slender frame.
Her nephew had died again…
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Leo felt as if he was torturing himself by reliving these moments, but there was nothing he could ever do to forget them. He looked up again, tried not to think about it even though it was no use, until he saw heard the familiar sound of orbing.
He was confused, other people barely came here, were afraid of the height. Except for Chris he had never seen anyone enjoy being there.
He waited until the orbs dissipated and stared in complete shock as they revealed a familiar form.
"Daddy", the boy said in a scared voice.
Leo couldn't answer. Chris looked exactly the way he had 4 years ago, the same clothes, the same height, the same hair. Except for the fact that he was transparent.
But this was impossible. His son was dead, he knew that, and he would never have been allowed to see his spirit so early.
Leo could do nothing but stare in confusion as he spoke again. "Daddy, please help me!"
He heard the voice at is it came from some distant place, as if it wasn't real, but it was. He felt like paralyzed, barely noticed the desperate look on his son's face.
Until something else brought him back to reality.
A demon shimmered in behind his youngest son and grabbed his small arm.
"Daddy, please!", Chris screamed in fear. Instinctively Leo tried to use his lightning power to vanquish the demon, but he shimmered out with Chris before Leo could reach him.
"No!" he screamed when he realized what had just happened. He needed to do something, he needed to tell Piper about this. Hurriedly he orbed back to the manor.
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"You're lying!", Piper screamed at the Seer. Suddenly she became very furious. No demon could just shimmer in and pretend she knew something they didn't. And no one was going to play with her mind to make her believe Chris was still alive. She knew it, she had seen him, he was gone.
The seer rolled her eyes. "Do you really think I would shimmer here and make a peace offering just to lie to you?"
"Yes, we do", Phoebe said, backing her sister up.
"You know, I've got better things to do with my time than to lie to you. I'm a busy girl", the seer said.
"And we're supposed to believe that?", Phoebe asked angrily. She couldn't belief this demon had the boldness to come up with a lie like that on this particular day.
"Yes", the seer answered and started fiddling with a stain she had just found on her tissue.
"Even if you did say the truth, why would you tell us, why would you care? You're evil", Paige bumped in.
The seer looked at her thoughtfully. "You know, I've never believed we Seers are really evil. I see us more like messengers of fate. If some higher force wants some things to happen we get to see these things. Much like your sister's premonitions. I can't control what I see and often I have no idea what it means, so I get the information to the people who have the most use of it. Which in this case would be you guys", she explained.
"Messengers of fate", Piper repeated with despise in her voice.
"Yes", the Seer confirmed. "I don't know why I saw that but now I tell the people who need to know it", she repeated.
"What did you see?", Wyatt asked from the door with a glimpse of hope in his voice. He didn't care whether this woman was trustworthy or not, the only thing that mattered to him was the possibility that his brother was possibly still alive. He couldn't understand how his mother and the aunts could not just be eager to hear what she had to say.
"Well, your brother's soul is kept hostage. He was trapped in an athame for 4 years, but now he has been released", she told him.
"Wh… what for?", Wyatt asked with a little shaky voice. It seemed so cold the way she was telling it, but she did not seem to have a lot of time to explain.
"I don't know yet, I haven't seen enough yet, but the plans the demon who has his soul has seem to be very bad. But I'll have to wait to see what the purpose of all this is", she explained.
Piper just wanted to answer that she had blown up the demon who had killed her son, so there was definitely no athame left, but before she could say anything or just wrap her mind around the possibility that maybe the demon wasn't lying and what the implications were, someone orbed in.
As soon as the orbs had formed a solid form she looked in the face of her very shaken up husband.
"I just saw Chris"
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A/N: Not a very good cliffie, but well. I'm thinking about changing the rating of this fic, because it is going to get pretty mean to poor Chris, but it would not make a lot of sense for a fifteen year old to write a story recommended for 16 year olds, now would it?
Anyway, personal notes to those who need it and a big hug to everyone else:
Grey Daze's Nirvana: I don't know if you're the one to thank, but I'm pretty certain you are, thanks a lot for adding my story to the C2 archive, you can't imagine how proud I am because of that.
Julia Adele: well, I tried to do more on how Leo is fairing but maybe I'll do a little bit more on that next chapter, it wasn't very much yet. Oh and about Wyatt giving up magic, I hadn't even planned that at first, but then I somehow liked the idea.
Me: something like that in maths A levels? Ouch, that sounds pretty bad.
Katie: Well, I like fics most were I feel on the verge of crying so that's what I try to do in my stories. Glad you think that's professional, I sometimes have the feeling I'm a little sadistic ;)
Piper Chris fan: Well, it might be a while until they actually meet him again. We'll see.
Starra86: Actually I haven't decided for a happy or bad ending yet. Both has its interesting aspects…
Danni86: I think you wrote the longest review of everyone. I'm glad you like it so much, and you're hopes helped I think, I never got so many reviews on a single chapter before. And I really enjoyed writing about their family life, as much as about the tragedy.
Midnite-magic: Here, do you need a tissue. You know, I was very proud when I read that you cried, does that seem sick to you? Well, if it does, sorry, but I like knowing that I'm actually touching people.
Teal-lover: You're right, only 8 years of that future would not be very much. But at the moment the poor guy isn't fairing too well even though he is not really gone yet.
Ceres217: Man, ich hoffe, ich habe jetzt die Zahlen nicht falsch geschrieben. Ist immer verwirrend mit nummern hintendran. Mir ist aufgefallen, dass du aus Deutschland kommst, deswegen gehe ich jetzt mal ganz frech davon aus dass du deutsch kannst. Vielen Dank für deine ganzen lieben Kommentare für die ganzen verschiedenen stories, ich hab mich da richtig gefreut, dass sich mal jemand alle angesehen hat.
Thanks so much to everyone! Hope you liked the new chapter, too!