Meant to get this chapter up earlier, but writing it was a bit trickier than I anticipated. I'm a bit iffy on Patty's characterization here, so let me know what you guys think. Thanks, and happy reading!
Spoilers: No particular episodes. Inspired by "P3 H2O" (2x08) and set before the show's first season so this fic is based off tidbits from the show over the years.
Disclaimer: Charmed is owned by Spelling Television and everyone else who made the show as amazing as it has been. I'm just a fan having lots of fun.
February 1977
Dear Sam,
I know we agreed time apart would be best for our current situation but still I ache for your arms and your warmth around me. Sleep comes to me uneasily and I wonder if it is the same for you. No breath I take is deep enough to restore in me lasting calm. As long as I carry this child, I cannot rest easy. In my mind, she is like thin glass, so delicate and beautiful to behold, but so terribly fragile.
My dreams are filled with you and the baby, and always, I dream of losing you or her or both of you. Sometimes, I dream of losing much more—Mom, my girls, everything I have ever cherished. Always I wake from these nightmares thinking that we couldn't do it after all and that everything is not alright.
It is so hard not to call for you when I know one word is all it takes to bring you back to me. I know I must be strong to do what we will have to do, but oh how I wish things were different. You have always counseled me to have caution and prudence and I beg of you the same. Be safe so that you can return to me when we judge the time right.
Love,
Patty
o
Dear Sam,
I thank you for the strength you lend me and I am glad you remain yourself. Daily, I am plagued by so many silly little fears that I feel swallowed by them and I do not think I shall come away from this as I was. I look in the mirror and smile and pretend cheeriness but I am not the glowing woman I was during my other pregnancies. Mom shrugged at this and told me I would come out the better for it. She was not being unkind, but the sentiment is too much like her and I do not like it. I do not like thinking that in imitating her strength, I am taking on her attitudes too.
For all her stern words and tough heart, Mom is tense and worried too—you know how she is. She thinks They could come down at any moment and claim the baby, or worse, kill her. I'm afraid too, Sam. Afraid she is right. Afraid we will not be able to protect her quickly enough. I close my eyes and hear you telling me I'm being silly and that we've talked so much about this that of course it'll be alright, but fear is such a strange thing.
We've come to the hard part of this. The bump on my belly reminds me that this will not be a secret easily kept, but it is also heartening. For the sake of our little girl, we must do this right. Whatever sorrows we shall come to face with her shall be by our choice and no other.
Love,
Patty
o
Dear Sam,
I miss you, of course I miss you. I could not forget you so easily. Your kind smile. Your rare laughter. Your quiet strength. Your touch, which all at once soothes me and awakes in me a yearning for all the things we are denied and try for anyway.
Dearest Sam, you remain in my heart, you reside there, but my mind is clear and my resolve firm. Though I wish it too, we cannot see each other. Not yet. I hold your image and your manner in my mind as vividly as I am able, but if you were to appear before me in reality, I am afraid that my clearheadedness would hold steady no longer. I would be ruled overmuch by my emotions and I would be too easily swayed by the desire to pursue impossible courses of actions.
And so, I must tell you no. No, do not come to me and kiss my worries away. We have come together in spite of rules that would tear us apart and now we must endure so we may best them. Let me fret. I shall be fine. We shall be fine. I must believe that.
Love,
Patty
March 1977
Dear Sam,
There is no need for forgiveness. I am not angry at you. You were right, of course. Separation seems silly now. Odd even. You are my Whitelighter, after all. But neither can you become too much of a constant or seem to be too invested in this pregnancy. It is hard, I know, and if hearing this hurts you, then I am sorry, but we can't lose each other now. I do not want to bear this without you, however often you are able to be here.
Yes, Prue is feeling much improved. She is up to her old tricks again, keeping tabs on little Phoebe all the time, dragging Piper into her games, and testing her powers on poor Andy. I feel sure she will grow up to be a leader and a heartbreaker and the thought makes me laugh. Piper will be milder, I think, but there is strength in her yet. She will be strong too, Sam, our daughter. With Halliwell blood and yours, that is the gift we give her. She will never know it, but it gladdens me to know she will have something of us after all.
Love,
Patty
o
Dear Sam,
The craziness here grows and I wish I were with you, fighting demons. When I was nine years old trying to write my own spells and mix my own potions, it seemed the grandest thing, but how maddening it seems to me now. Every spell, every potion, reminds me that higher powers conspire against us, and yet, all I can do is passively cloak, conceal, cast illusions. I have thought about the problem a hundred different ways, trying to find the loophole, wishing that the next time I see you, I could tell you that it's alright, there is a way, we can keep her. But I have come up with nothing and the only certainties are the cold, unyielding rules.
Still, I can count on my girls to make me smile and give me a reprieve from days that would otherwise seem too long. They think I'm getting fat and it's the funniest thing in the world to them. This is the third time I've been pregnant since Prue and I am so terrified she will make the connection, but thankfully she is distracted by other things and still experimenting with the role of the big sister that Piper and Phoebe look up to. She is fierce for six and thinks the world easily conquerable. If we could only see the world as she does. I will be sad when my girls grow up and lose that. It is a wonderful feeling, believing the world can throw you no obstacle too great, believing destiny will smile at you at every turn.
Love,
Patty
April 1977
Dear Sam,
I can't sleep. The rain keeps me awake. I am soothed already, writing to you, but my heart remains troubled. Perhaps it is passing. Perhaps the day has been too long, but I feel suddenly afraid and I feel the baby kicking as if to mirror my distress. We are not ready for this. We will never be ready for this. I dream her birth again and again, and I cannot imagine her, this miracle growing in my belly, in someone else's arms. What will she think of us? Will she believe we don't love her?
If it were someone else in my shoes, I know what I would think. I know the answers I would give. But still, I cannot quell the storm of my uncontrolled emotions. I wouldn't wish any child of mine hidden away as if she were something to be ashamed of, nor would I wish her to be unaware of her legacy, though it bears with it burdens. And yet, as bright as my determination burns, as desperately as my mind scrambles, I cannot have both desires fulfilled, perhaps not even one. The choice was hardly ours to make. We were left to choose only how to execute it.
It is too easy and too hard a solution to just give her up. Every day she comes closer to coming into this world and every day, our choices settle less and less easily with me.
Love,
Patty
o
Dear Sam,
I hope this letter finds you well. You were so quiet when last we met and parted. It seemed you were brooding though you said you were fine and now that you are gone and I am thinking of you, it nags at me. I worry for you, Sam. Talk to me. Tell me what's wrong, or tell me that it's just anxiety driving you to silence.
If it is my moods infecting you, then I will try harder to be hopeful, but you should know that however I feel in a single moment, I have never doubted us. We will survive this. But I could not believe that if I did not believe you were trying too. We are far too lonely already. Don't shut me out.
Love,
Patty
o
Dear Sam,
Sweet, patient Sam. Truly there are none like us, who create so much joy and sorrow between each other. We have chased our love through heaven and hell and more and this is hard for me to say, but so are many things between us that must be said anyway. Please don't fight me on this. I promise you, this isn't what I want. Many times I have wished our relationship could enjoy a more ordinary course, but I have never wished for you to become mortal. I would never ask it of you.
You have always been a good Whitelighter to me, a good teacher, but I am not your only charge and I will never be. How could I take you away from the world? From the witches that need your protection and guidance? I need you, but so do they and it matters not that none of them will ever need you as much as I do. What we are condemns us, but you would never ask me to stop being a witch and I can't ask you to stop being a Whitelighter. If you clipped your wings, if I let you, the guilt on me would be heavy. And what of you? Wouldn't you miss it? Helping others? The world must come first, as always. We both know that.
I know that neither choice is easy and I am sorry that you have been driven to make it, but Sam, our trials as witch and mortal would be no less than they are now. I have lived it before, watched my marriage break from it. You will argue that we will be different and I will agree, but different does not mean our problems will easier or more readily solved. Think about the baby. Your mortality may not be enough to make it safe for us to keep her. And even if we did, she would still be half Whitelighter and there would be no simple solution for that.
I know you want to prove the rules don't define us and I know you want an out, and I'm sorry, Sam, but I don't think this is it. It is, of course, your choice to make and I'll say no more, but please, Sam, don't choose carelessly. You know that I love you, that whatever you choose, whatever changes between us, that won't change.
Love,
Patty