Hmmm, yeah. So I barely sent the last one off and was thinking about this, and then after the reviews I thought about it some more, and decided that I would really like to see the whole conversation in the kitchen from Piper's POV. I hope some of you like it, too. :-)

Thanks again for the reviews! I love them shamelessly. Thanks also to everyone who took the time to read this story.

Disclaimer: As always, none of the characters or anything of Charmed belong to me. There is another line in here from "Prince Charmed." The whole thing is unbetaed. Sorry.

:Halliwell:

She'd been in her room that morning, going through a trunk of Wyatt's baby items. There were little sweaters and hats and things that Chris had worn, too, but had ended up back in Wyatt's box, and old toys and stuffed animals and blankets. She had been digging and reminiscing for a while when she found the photos on the bottom. Pictures that either Phoebe or Paige must have taken, and stuck in the bottom of the pile when they'd gone through and decided what to keep and what to get rid of.

There were a couple of the three of them with little Wyatt, and one of Victor holding the baby, and one of Chris, playing with his brother.

Chris. Twenty something and looking just like he did today. But it wasn't him. It was Chris Perry, the whitelighter from the future that had wreaked such havoc on their lives for such a short time. The frustrating man who had lied and manipulated, but who had watched over their family with a diligence and a perseverance that could rival only her own. The son of hers who had never really been hers. He had belonged to a woman whose memories he kept locked inside himself. A woman who had died young, and been immortalized by his love. So much so that when he looked at her, she often wasn't sure it was her that he was seeing.

She clutched the picture in her hands and felt something well up inside of her. It was a familiar feeling, of frustration, of jealousy, of enough things tangled together that it was often hard for her to let that all slip away and let only the love of a mother for her son remain.

Her son.

Wyatt was her son. Born and raised, and maybe Chris had once said he'd been evil, but really, he'd always been Wyatt, her golden haired little cherub, full of mischief and smiles and a light bright enough to share with everyone he came into contact.

Chris had always felt like he belonged just a bit to someone else. And where Wyatt was light, Chris was often darkness. He carried it inside himself. He had then, and he did now, as though he remember the things that had happened to his family the first time around, and couldn't ever let himself go, let himself stop hurting, and stop fighting.

She often wished he could be more like Wyatt. He had saved them, and he should have been able to grow up happy and smiles and light, too. But he didn't. And she didn't understand that.

And sometimes when she looked at him, when she talked to him, she had a hard time finding her son, the son she loved, in Chris Perry, the man she often could barely stand.

She left the picture on her bedside table, careless of if he or Wyatt were to come in and find it there, but she couldn't bring herself to put it back away at the bottom of the trunk when she cleaned up the rest of the mess. She wanted to look at it, to think about it, later.

She left her room, closing the door behind her and going downstairs to start dinner. And when she was there, and working steadily with her favorite tools in her hands: fresh foods and good utensils, she only felt more frustrated with Chris Perry, and the darkness she felt he had left behind in her son. So when he walked in the room behind her, she forgot for a moment, that it was her Chris, and he didn't know anything about the man he had been before.

So she greeted him just like she would have greeted him: "What do you want?"

He said, "Just to say hi," but she heard defensive, and she thought of demon hunts when she should have been raising her son, and running her club, and keeping her family from falling apart.

"Whatever it is," she retorted, like she had so many times before, "I don't have time."

"It isn't anything," he said. "I thought maybe you wanted some help."

And that was new. Chris was never in the kitchen except to find some food, or more likely, to trail behind Wyatt in one of the older brother's endless quests to fill a bottomless pit of a stomach. And he had never shown an interest in cooking. Perhaps it was something else.

So she asked, "Help with what?"

"With whatever you're doing," he said, like it was obvious. Like it was normal.

"You don't know how."

He was quiet for a while, but she didn't turn to look at him. She imagined machinations, in his silence, and thought that he would soon drop the ruse and tell the truth: he needed her for the power of three, or he needed her to bless something, or curse it.

But instead he said, "I could learn. You could teach me."

She snorted and looked at him incredulously. Chris had always been so self-sufficient. He knew how to make potions; he knew how to use the book. And if he didn't know something, he always seemed to go off and learn it. She could barely even remember him coming to her for help with his homework. That she had never seen him cook only indicated to her that he truly didn't care to.

"Since when have you ever had any interest in this?"

"I dunno, maybe it'd be fun," he said, and she didn't recognize the look in his eyes.

She shook her head, and turned back to chopping, taking her frustration with him, and with her inability to understand him, out with the knife.

"I really mean that," he said. "I'd really to like to learn anything you'd teach me."

She nicked herself accidentally at those words, and rushed to the sink to stem any blood flow. There wasn't much, and it was a small excuse to avoid him for a moment.

"Since when?" she asked, keeping her eyes on the sink as he came around the breakfast bar at last and stood where she had just been working.

She saw him moving things out of the corner of her eye.

He said, "If your hand's too hurt, I can finish this for you," and stilled. So did she. She took a moment to process that. To process the son that didn't know how to cook suddenly being proficient enough to finish her work for her. She had been cooking her whole life, and he had just been asking to learn. Was this another of those things? Was this another Because the only reason I came here was to keep Wyatt from turning evil? Another lie?

She repeated, "You don't know how to cook," and their eyes met and he looked so guilty, and she didn't know at all what to do with that. He said nothing, and she felt the disappointment in her grow. He was her son now, and he was still lying.

"Where'd you learn?" she asked, and she could hear the resignation in her voice. She really didn't want to know, and she really didn't want to hear another lie.

"From the best," he whispered, and that cut her worse than a lie could have. She was his mother, for God's sake. She was a chef and she was his mother and weren't sons supposed to think their mothers hung the moon?

But she couldn't help herself. She had to know.

"Who?"

He bit his lip and looked away, and she could almost hear it in the air between them, on top of the lies, and the sting of jealousy.

Future consequences.

She shook her head to clear out the cobwebs, the residual traces of things that just weren't anymore.

"When are you going to stop lying, Chris?"

"I'm not lying." It was defensive, and petulant. And he backed away from her, back to his previous spot, effectively putting the breakfast bar back between them. She went back to her cutting board and stared down at it

She sighed internally. "You're trying my patience, Chris."

But Chris didn't respond to her, he responded to Wyatt's sudden appearance in the kitchen. He said, "Did you find the demon?" and Piper suddenly thought that that was the reason Chris had come to find her in the first place. Another demon to fight. Another interruption in her life.

She heard Wyatt say "Yeah, I left the book open upstairs. It needs a potion, and I thought maybe you could…"

Apparently they didn't really need her after all.

Chris said, "I'll make it," and she didn't turn around when she heard them orb away.

She worked some more, finishing up one thing and starting another, until she was about ready to set the oven and make some final pre-cooking touches. All the while she tried to put the conversation out of her mind. She tried not to equate it with the picture of Chris Perry she left upstairs, but found it near impossible.

Where was the little boy in him? Why did Wyatt get all the smiles? The first Chris had given up everything for Wyatt, but why did that mean he hadn't given everything up for himself, too? For this version of himself.

Why was Chris Perry still here, living in her house and calling himself Chris Halliwell?

Where was her little boy?

At some point she turned all the way toward the doorway and jumped when she saw Wyatt still standing there. She frowned, and he smiled back, bright and happy and she couldn't help but smile in response.

"How long have you been there?" she asked.

He shrugged and smiled more, then said, "What are you making? One of my favorites?"

She realized that she was, actually, making one of his favorites, and something Chris had never much cared for, but she said, "You'll have to wait and find out," and turned back to finishing up.

He came up behind her, teasing her back when he said, "I suppose I could do that," and beginning to reach for free samples.

She swatted him away with a towel, laughing a little, and marveling that her son had made her laugh so easily.

He jumped away and went to the spot behind the breakfast bar where Chris had just been standing.

She worked in silence for a small moment before he said, "Were you arguing?"

Her stomach jumped a bit and she reached for something with which to keep busy, something to distract herself. "What?"

"With Chris," Wyatt said. "What were you fighting about?"

She paused her busy work, and knew that her face would probably show the guilt that she had earlier seen in Chris'. Suddenly, faced with Wyatt, who loved his brother more than anything in the world, and so he should, for everything Chris had done for him even though he didn't know about it, she was embarrassed. She was embarrassed to have been caught pushing away her son. She was embarrassed to have been wishing that Chris was more like Wyatt, to have been wishing that Chris was not himself.

She said, "We weren't fighting," and thought about how Chris had lied to her earlier. Like mother, like son.

Wyatt said, "Oh," and caught her at her lie just like she had caught Chris at his. Like mother, like son.

She put down her work and turned to look at him. She said, "Look, Wyatt, I know you probably don't realize it, but sometimes your brother can be, well…"

She looked up as she tried to think of what she wanted to say, eyes searching blindly for a way to express just like me and someone else entirely, someone you used to know when you were barely a more than a baby.

"What?" Wyatt asked.

She let her breath out in a burst, and her thoughts with went with it, floating up and away.

She finally said, "Frustrating," but it wasn't what she meant at all. She turned back to finish up the meal, put it in the oven to bake, and when she left the kitchen Wyatt had long gone up to the attic to help his brother. She returned to her bedroom and sat on her bed with the photograph in her hands.