Chapter Two

Chris rubbed the bruise on his jaw. It was tender and hurt like hell.

So did his sore back, cut with the glass from the window where he had been thrown out with a banishing spell.

Piper had stilled for a full minute at his announcement before she had said quietly, 'But they shimmered out.'

Then of course had come the denial.

Because of course they would never believe that their precious Wyatt could grow up to be anything other than the paragon of good.

And they would certainly never believe it coming from their bitchy whitelighter who they barely tolerated, let alone trusted. No, Chris was once again trying to fool them, manipulate them for his own ends, whatever they were, of that they were certain.

Leo had then of course seen fit to reveal how he knew it was Chris who had sent him to Valhalla. And he knew he had killed a Valkyrie. That had been the final straw for the sisters.

They would never realize though how sometimes he woke from nightmares of watching that Valkyrie's face, with Wyatt standing beside him in the dream giving him a congratulatory pat on the back and telling him what he had said before, words that always echoed in his nightmares, 'I'm proud of you.'

Valkyries weren't human exactly and he was trying to save the entire world. But Chris found logical justifications did little to ease his conscious.

It wasn't a demon, it wasn't a vanquish, and no matter what he said about it to himself, at night in his dreams the truth always came out; it was a murder.

Only after remembering seeing the San Francisco skyline in flames had he found the power to do what had to be done. Up until then when he had made the fist, it had had no effect on the Valkyrie, but that reminder had pushed him on even if the act stained his soul. His soul was already battered from events yet to occur anyway.

But of course there could be no sympathy from Leo, there never had been even in the future when he was the man's son. No, the sister's didn't know any of that either, and after declaring him evil they had banished him from the manor, from his home.

'I never want to see you again.'

He winced at Piper's words, hearing them over again in his mind.

His back was sore and blood trickled down his face from a nasty cut at the top of his temple.

He scowled at the sky as if it was to blame for his lack of healing powers. Of course it was just another power Wyatt had that he hadn't inherited. Although Paige had always told him she thought he had it in him and it would develop in time, he didn't know if he believed her anymore.

She had been wrong about so many things after all.

'Your brothers fine Chris, he's just grieving give him time.'

He snorted at the phantom voice in his head, at least, he supposed morbidly, she had seen how wrong she had been in the end. He flinched at the cruelty of the thought but could not find it in him to take it back.

He felt no charity towards the sisters at that moment; the most powerful witches of the age who in one timeline had already ignored the coldness in their oldest child as it grew until it consumed him, and were trying to once again stick their head in the sands now even as Chris did everything save waving a flashing neon sign in front of their faces to make it clear where they were headed.

In either timeline, they were far too self assured.

Seeing lightening crackling at his finger tips, Chris tried to control his temper. Now was not the time to unleash a power that he had never learned to control again, the last time had been terrible.

While Chris was a powerful witch in his own right, he knew what the outcome would be if he and Wyatt ever truly fought in an outright battle, and it would not be in his favor. Wyatt would always be the twice blessed after-all no matter how he had decided to use those powers. That's why from a young age Chris had adapted and learned to play underhanded, to have a back up plan for his back up plan.

Or at least he had until he came to 2004 where it seemed nothing could go right.

In hindsight he probably should have made something up, should not have tried to, for once, tell the sisters the truth. Of course they wouldn't believe the man in all black, shimmering out of the attic had been precious, baby Wyatt. He had been stupid to think honesty was an option.

But now he had a whole new host of problems. His brother and his brother's favorite little assassin, the one who murdered many good witches, were back in his time, and Chris knew they couldn't be there for any good reason.

"Great… just fucking fantastic." He muttered to himself. They were there to collect him he knew, drag him back to the future before he could save it in the past.

And this time Wyatt would keep him under lock and key forever, there would be no getting away again.

OoOoOo

Piper stared at her blonde headed baby boy while he slept. He just looked so innocent; it made her heart break to think of everything in the world that wanted to destroy him.

She sighed and blinked back a couple of frustrated tears, now was not the time for that. Sometimes she felt like she could never catch a break.

"Leo?" She called, and stood, looking towards the ceiling waiting for a response. None came.

Sighing she went down stairs to cook something, she wasn't sure what yet and there was no one there to eat it, but at the moment she didn't care.

She pulled out her cookie pans and the mixing bowl and without thinking about it at all starting making double chocolate chip cookies. Phoebe's favorite.

It was time like this that she missed Prue so much that she felt physically ill, like someone had punched all the wind out of her and it was never coming back.

"In My future…Wyatt—he becomes the source Piper, the source of all evil."

She fisted the dough so hard it squeezed out of her fingers and she closed her eyes for a moment to collect herself.

It just couldn't be true. Afterall, Chris had never been completely honest with them, so why should this be any different? She shuddered to think what he could have done to Wyatt had they not finally realized that he was no friend to the family and gotten him away from her baby.

It was too hard to think of all the damage that could have been done all for her failure to call a spade a spade.

"I'm Chris Perry. I'm from the future, I here to save Wyatt."

Why had she ever let him near her family? She was supposed to be the oldest, the protector, the wisest, and she had failed so badly. It all could have gone so wrong.

She spread the cookies out evenly on the pan and rinsed her hands while she set the oven to preheat.

She went in the living room and turned the TV on, numbly watching a soap opera. It didn't make her feel any better but at least it kept the mantra of 'failure, failure, failure,' from ringing quite so loudly in head.

Piper kept watching the show without even paying attention to it until she got a prickling on the back of neck that made her tense uneasily, she felt like she was being watched even though there was no indication of anything amiss in the house.

She got up and irrationally went to check on Wyatt even though with the monitor she knew he just fine. Nevertheless she released a breath she hadn't realized she was holding when she saw him still asleep in his crib, not a hair out of place on his blonde head.

Sighing she went back downstairs to the oven where the cookies were now overdone, bordering on burning.

Throwing a pair of mitts on she yanked them out of the oven, grimacing at their blackened edges.

"Dammit," she muttered, couldn't she get anything right?

"Now, now mother, you always told me to watch my language, wouldn't want to set a bad example now would we? Besides they're not burnt too badly."

A hand reached out and plucked a cookie right off the tray in front of her. She jumped back, automatically raising her hands defensively as she looked up at the owner of the voice.

It was a tall man with long, dark blonde hair oiled back from his face which looked familiar to her in a way she couldn't place but knew deep in her gut that she had seen it before.

He stood there casually in the kitchen as if he owned the house, taking a bite out of her half burnt cookie with a dangerous smirk on his face.

"Who are you?" She demanded, part of her wondering why she hadn't blown him up already but something she couldn't explain stayed her hands.

"Please tell me Chris hasn't driven you crazy already. I just told you who I am, mother."

She balked, taking a step back at how pleased he looked with himself at that statement and watching in shock as he sat down at the bar stool as if he was a guest.

"No. No—that's not possible." She said strongly, although it wasn't stopping her mind from already cataloguing his every feature and finding a horrible truth in how they matched the sleeping boy upstairs.

He smirked, his dark blue eyes twinkling madly. "Don't you recognize me?" He asked, a feigned note of hurt in his voice, spoiled by the cruel grin on his face.

"Get out of my home." Piper replied shakily, taking another step back and being startled when her back hit the counter. Her hands shook as she kept them raised at the man.

"Or what mother? You'll ground me?" He asked amused, grinning like the cat that caught the canary.

He's lying, this is an illusion. She thought desperately to herself.

He stood walking around the bar and towards her and for all nerve she had,

Piper still found herself paralyzed in front of this thing with the grown-up face of her baby boy.

He stopped a few feet in front of her, all traces of amusement gone from his face.

"Where's Chris?" He asked, his voice hard and cold.

"Chris?" The question slipped out of her lips without her even realizing it and she heard it numbly in a detached sort of way and still wasn't sure why she'd asked. She shook her head to clear it.

"Who are you, what do you want and why are you here?" She finally asked, straightening her back and looking him in the eye.

'I'm a charmed one dammit, and I'm not going to be taken in by a stupid trick. This isn't Wyatt.' She thought to herself firmly.

"And be honest this time." She added, finding her spine and being ashamed in the back of her mind that she had let his appearance throw her off so much for even a moment.

"I already told you Moth—"

"Call me mother one more time and I'll blow your ass back where you came from so fast you won't know what hit you," She threatened.

He smirked again and it her fingers itched to follow through on her threat although she had a sense of dread in her stomach that she was ignoring.

'This can't be Wyatt. He's lying, they're both lying.'

She raised her hands even further at him.

"I don't have time for this." He snapped, his voice loosing it's smooth and rehearsed quality to grow rough, and violent.

"Where is Chris?"

"I don't know what game you're trying to play here buddy, but you can take it somewhere else. He's not welcome here anymore, and if you don't leave now I'll show you just how unwelcome you are." Piper kept her voice strong and raised her hands higher to emphasize the point.

The man—no demon—she corrected herself, eyebrows raised and he turned his head toward her, studying her curiously. "He's not welcome here anymore?"

She blanched, furrowing her brow in confusion at the demon's incredulous tone.

"Did you think we would never find out what you were up to? What he's planning?" She asked angrily.

"What we're up to?" He repeated, his lips curling in that God awful smirk again.

"You don't know, do you? Oh, this is priceless…" The demon laughed at her.

"Oh Mom, how clueless you truly are."

"I told you not to call me that!" Piper snapped, finally sending all of her power at him in one big burst.

It met a blue shield and disappeared into nothing.

She stared horrified, but unable to turn away.

'His shield, his blue shield. Wyatt's shield…No, this can't be happening.' Piper shook her head in denial.

He smirked again from behind it, "I told you Mother. Now play nice, I'll be out of your hair just as soon as I collect what I came here for. You won't put up much of a fight now will you? Afterall, he's not even welcome here."

He laughed again at a joke she didn't catch and then disappeared in a halo of black orbs.

Piper stood there too horrified to move for a moment before she did the first thing that came to her mind.

"LEO GET YOUR ASS DOWN HERE NOW!"

She waited a moment before adding, "AND I SWEAR IF YOU SAY 'BLESSED BE' ONE MORE TIME, I'LL BLOW YOU BACK TO WORLD WAR TWO!"

OoOoO

Chris swallowed, tasting the metallic, tangy taste of his own blood filling his mouth. He smiled at the demon with his split lip and teeth coated in red with his own blood.

This was his zone, the fight, it was how he had lived his life since he was fourteen and sadly he now found it a much more comfortable environment than his mother's kitchen.

There was no doubting, no complications, just him and the demon and for once Chris's head felt clear while he vanquished demon after demon.

"That all you got?" He asked cockily, being rewarded with an enraged roar from his target which was rising from it's spot on the floor. Normally Chris would have finished it while it was down but today he felt like toying with this one for a minute.

He recognized this demon, this thing which would have killed one of Paige's favorite charges in the future, slowly torturing the poor witch to death.

Chris watched amusedly as it circled him warily, looking for an opening, a fire ball sitting idly in its hand by it's side. If only it knew it had a Halliwell in front of it, then Chris thought, it wouldn't be so keen and eager as it stared at him hungrily thinking it could take his powers.

"Interfering whitelighter, you aren't supposed to fight." It hissed out, it's horns growing out of an otherwise human head, glowing orange has it's temper escalated.

Chris laughed darkly, arching an eyebrow. "I'm no whitelighter."

It stared at him, cocking it's head to the side curiously. "What are you then?"

"Wouldn't everyone like to know." Chris rolled his eyes and raised his hands out in front of him allowing all of his anger, which was quite a lot, to flow through him until the electricity, deadly in voltage, spewed from his finger tips and in a mere split second, left nothing but a pile of ash where the upper level demon had been.

'The only good thing Leo ever did for me,' Chris thought, lowering his hands and trying to shake off the after effects of his elder inherited electrokinesis, a power even Wyatt didn't have for it was Chris who was half elder.

Although Wyatt had so many others that it hardly mattered, the warren line powers weren't exactly light weight afterall and Wyatt did have all of them.

He put his hands by his sides, swallowing and sitting down on the barren rock behind him.

'The really should get a new decorator down here,' He thought to himself, looking around the gloomy cavern that could have been anywhere in the underworld. It was ridiculous sometimes how much it all looked the same.

The adrenaline from the fight began to leave him and he looked down at his hands shaking in his lap.

He hated that power. He had never learned to control it. Leo had been supposed to come start training him to use it the day before his fourteenth birthday, to help him with it, it was right then that it had started developing. Of course he hadn't come, even when Chris gained a power to rival one of Wyatt's he couldn't be bothered.

Chris took a deep shaky breath, and shook his head. He had only used that power a handful of times in life, for Chris knew if there was any power he had that could get out of control it was that one.

He stood up and looked over at the ash again. He didn't regret the vanquish, but looking back at his shaking hands which he had to force himself to still, he wondered why he hadn't just used his telekinesis like he normally did.

His safe power that he could always control, what had come over him to stray from it?

'I need to keep moving,' He thought to himself. For once in his life since he was fifteen, he had absolutely no plan. He couldn't go back to the manor, and while he didn't need it anyhow, the sister's help was entirely not an option.

He wasn't sure what that would mean for his mission but he did know that if Wyatt caught him it wouldn't really matter anyways, he wouldn't be around to try to continue it.

He wondered if what Wyatt would do if he caught him this time. In the past, no matter how he would torture him, no matter how many innocents he would murder he would still never lay a hand Chris. No, he had wanted Chris to rule with him, to join him so that they would be invincible.

Looking at the pile of ash in front of him, Chris couldn't help but think that yes, they really would be unstoppable, he and Wyatt together instead of Chris working to undermine him at every turn.

He pushed that thought away as soon as it occurred to him like he always did, he would save the future and then he and Wyatt would fight together, on the side of good.

But still, it didn't stop him from wondering, would Wyatt do this time if he caught him? This was after all the most dangerous thing he had ever done, the

most threatening to Wyatt's reign.

He didn't want to think about it, the answer to that question was one he thought he might just be better off not knowing.

The one thing he was sure of was that he couldn't let Wyatt catch him and the best place until he could come up with a plan was the underworld, he knew it like the back of his hand after all and he would not be sensed there.

He looked back at the pile of ash, he knew that demon had not been the one to turn Wyatt, that there was no chance of it.

And he had promised himself that he would only vanquish the demons that were a possibility for Wyatt's turning, which as stood was still a staggering amount.

Yet now he had abandoned that rule and changed the future in a way he hadn't been planning to.

Then again, he had already changed the future with all his other vanquishes and all the one's he had drug the sisters, what was one more? He would stay in the underworld for now, until he had a plan to deal with Wyatt and complete his mission.

'And if I vanquish some more demons while I'm at it, so be it. Future consequences be damned.' He thought to himself, his hands curling into fists at his side as he thought of what hell hole to orb to next in the underworld.

He rubbed his jaw where it had grown even more tender from Leo's punch as it turned black and blue. He once again cursed Leo for not passing him on his healing power, and then having the nerve to punch him as if to unknowingly rub it in.

'Your birthday presents always were the best Dad,' he thought to himself bitterly.

Chris's birthdays had always been terrible so he wasn't sure why he had thought that in the past, before the day actually even became his birthday, that he would have any better luck. He pushed it out of his mind, now was not the time to dwell on that.

Not being able to help himself though, his last thought before he orbed away as he looked around the bleak cave, was a very dry, 'Happy birthday to me.'

OoOoO

"Well honey, I mean we don't know that it was him—"

"He had his shield Phoebe. Wyatt's shield." Piper stressed, sitting on the couch with her hands in her hair as she tried to find some relief from the headache that felt like a gigantic balloon of pressure was building solely to press on her skull and make her feel miserable.

"There are other powers that have a shield." Leo said, staring at the wall in his golden robes, the disquieting thought that perhaps Chris had been right growing louder in the back of his mind.

"I'm his mother Leo, I know what his shield looks like, that was it." Piper rebutted, her voice hoarse and scratchy.

He sighed, "I'm just saying Piper that—"

"Leo, it was him." Piper interrupted forcefully.

"Piper how could you know that. Do you even really know what you saw—"

"DON'T treat me like a child, Leo. Maybe not all of us can be all knowing, hypocrites in gold robes, but we're still adults." She bit out coldly.

Phoebe and Paige both stared on, neither sure what to do as they watched Piper glare at her ex-husband through watery eyes.

Leo backed away, his hands splayed out by his sides in a pacifying gesture.

"Piper, it is possible that it could have been a trick. You don't know that it was him." Leo interrupted.

"Exactly, there's a good chance that it wasn't him." Paige injected, scowling at Phoebe who had pinched her in an effort to stop her from interrupting them.

"You didn't see him," Piper refused.

"Piper, it was a look alike with a blue shield, are you really going to let that, and that alone convince you it was your son when you know that there's someone out there who wants to convince you that and has manipulated us all along and wouldn't hesitate to do it again." Paige implored, sitting beside her and putting a hand on her eldest sister's shoulder.

"We just shouldn't jump to any conclusions," Phoebe offered, going to sit on her other side.

Piper took a deep breath, looking from her sisters to Leo who all looked at her

expectantly.

"Okay, you're right. Let's not jump to any conclusions, we should…." Piper stopped looking for the word.

"Research?" Leo suggested.

"Somehow I don't think there's a lying bitchy whitelighter from the future section in the book." Paige arched an eyebrow.

Piper stood from the couch, crossing her arms over her chest as she walked towards the window and stared out into the sunny street.

She spoke while she watched two girls across the street laughing while they played jump rope.

"No, no there's not. But there are summoning spells."