Connections At Work

Author's Note: One thing I wanted to clear up for everyone: according to my mythology, Phoenixes only have one child and that child is always a daughter. It's impossible for them to have boys.

Chapter 4

Having just tagged along with Bianca, Chris found himself standing in what he assumed to be her living room... if indeed Bianca lived here.

"You're just like your mother, you know," Bianca growled at Chris.

"She tagged along on a shimmer?" asked Chris.

"No," said Bianca. "You came into my house uninvited."

"So this is where you live?" Chris paused and examined the space more carefully. "It's a little... dark."

"What did you really expect?" Bianca was sure Chris had never seen any house she or her mother had ever lived in.

"Warmth," said Chris unapologetically. "Phoenixes were born from fire, right?"

"Ashes," said Bianca. "Phoenixes rose from the ashes. There's a difference."

Chris shrugged. "Close enough."

"Not really," contradicted Bianca. "Now cover your eyes."

Chris was immediately on guard. "Why?"

"Because I want you," she said, a playful expression on her face. "Now."

"Seriously," said Chris.

"I'm going to get my family's grimoire and I don't want you to know where I keep it."

"Just my eyes?" said Chris. "That rules out an incantation, then."

"Just close your eyes." Bianca stamped down on the urge to slice him with an athame.

This time Chris obeyed, though he made a point of listening to Bianca as she moved around the room. "You haven't asked me to move, so that rules out the space I'm occupying."

"Clever," said Bianca.

"You're over by the fireplace." Chris tracked her by her voice.

"Yes," said Bianca once she'd walked into the next room. "I am."

"I don't know why you're bothering," said Chris. "If your book's anything like mine I won't be able to touch it."

Bianca conjured her grimoire, staring at Chris all the while to make sure he wasn't peeking. "True," she said, sitting down on a couch in the room Chris was standing in.

"You didn't even use a spell to stop me from seeing, so you can't care that much."

"Just returning your trust in me," she said as she began to flick through the pages.

"Then why do I have my eyes closed?"

"Phoenixes have always had to look out for themselves. My trust can only go so far." A few pages later, in the early twentieth century, Bianca found it. "Pregnancy demon," she said to herself.

Chris' eyes fluttered open at the strange comment. "What?" He noticed immediately that Bianca had found the book and failed to tell him. "Of course."

Bianca smirked as she locked on his wide awake eyes. "I couldn't resist."

Chris rolled his eyes and sat down next to her. "Pregnancy demon? That's the most stupid name I've ever heard."

"I don't think that's what its friends call it. My ancestors tend to be a little snarky about the demons they couldn't vanquish."

"A little?" Chris wondered as he read the page. It was difficult to glean the useful information between the rude comments about the demon's looks and virility. The author had certainly wondered how it happened that the demon was always pregnant at the time of death and proposed some sort of self-fertilisation. Chris was actually inclined to agree on that matter. "So if we want any chance at all we need to get to it before it gets pregnant again."

"But look here," said Bianca, pointing to one sentence. "She waited right next to it until it reformed but it was still pregnant."

"Well what about before that?"

"Nothing she did to the ashes stopped it from coming back."

"So it's born pregnant?" Chris' brain couldn't quite process that. If it was pregnant did that mean that its baby was also pregnant? How far could they go with that?

"I'm not sure 'pregnant' is the right word for it," said Bianca. "It only seems to give birth at its moment of death so that it's immune to its parent's cause of death."

"That's odd too. I mean, I get why that might work with a potion, but being stabbed? You can't develop an immunity to that."

"So maybe immunity isn't the right word," said Bianca. "But if you stabbed me it wouldn't kill me. What do you call that?"

Chris flinched at the thought of stabbing her. "Can we call it something else then?"

Bianca groaned. "I think you need to take your white coat off, Doctor Halliwell. You're thinking too much. Less logic, more magic."

"Okay," said Chris, and to make the point, removed the doctor's coat he'd neglected to at the hospital. Bianca had distracted him too much. When she was in the room all he could do was look at her.

"Feel better now?" Bianca smirked as Chris seemed to sigh in relief. It wasn't a complete transformation from mortal to magical- Chris was still wearing scrubs underneath- but you'd have to remove half Chris' brain to achieve that anyway.

Chris ignored her comment. "So you threw a Power of Three potion at it, which means it's now immune to that potion... and maybe even the Power of Three altogether." He frowned accusingly at Bianca.

"What? So it's my fault I wanted to finish it off before anyone else walked past?" She was defensive.

"Sorry," said Chris. "I should be mad at my mother. Personal gain leads to problems like this."

Bianca felt strangely defensive of Piper. Perhaps because she couldn't imagine having to live with a cloud of 'personal gain' karma floating over her; never being able to use magic for anything fun without consequences. Not that Bianca did have much fun these days. The closest she ever got was a glass of something alcoholic when meeting clients in demon bars. "Maybe she wouldn't have had to if you'd looked after yourself."

Chris was amazed that Bianca would bring that up. "I thought you were on my side in that."

"Well, I don't like being played," she said. "But nothing happened, so I don't actually care."

"You're just going to walk away and forget about it?" Chris couldn't contain his emotions and they propelled him to his feet.

"Are you really so serious about revenge on your mother? The woman who raised you- who loves you. The woman who made you the man you are today?" Bianca would kill to still have her mother around... beyond a little communing with her ashes, her mother was gone. Bianca would never again be able to touch her.

"Of course I'm thankful to her; she's my mother. But she doesn't seem to understand that I'm not her little peanut anymore. I get to decide what to do with my life."

"If you're so grown up why don't you act like it? Tell her how you feel instead of this stupid revenge plan where all you're really doing is ignoring her."

"I'm denying her the one thing she really wants."

"Yes. Her son! Do you really think she would have resorted to this plan if you just spent a little more time talking to her? And I don't mean about your latest vanquish. I bet she'd love it if you just went to ask her for anything every once in a while." Bianca was emphatic, not even sure where all these emotions were coming from. If she had Piper's power more than a few things would have exploded by now.

Bianca couldn't remember feeling this much in a long time. She'd been angry for a while after her mother died. Upset and scared... but somewhere between her first demon vanquish and the last one she'd forgotten her emotions. She'd forgotten, and all that was left was an empty numbness. But Chris was such an idiot! He made her so mad. Almost crazy.

Chris, in return, grew more furious, though he wasn't sure what they were arguing about anymore. The air around him seemed to crack with electricity. Bianca wasn't sure if she was imagining it or if it was one of his powers coming loose. "You act as though you know me and my family. What gives you the right to judge us?"

The thing that was upsetting Chris the most was that Bianca was right. Had she ever been wrong? She had no right to be right when she'd barely known him more than a few days. Almost two weeks if he counted her stalking him before she stabbed him.

"Your mother gave me the right when she summoned me into your attic," said Bianca. "And into this stupid little feud you have going on."

"Shut up about my mother!" Chris couldn't think straight.

"Why?" demanded Bianca. "Too scared to know that she loves you?" Bianca hadn't known love since her mother had died, but before that she understood. She understood that bond that children have with their mothers. And here was Chris treating it as though it was nothing. Worse than nothing. An annoyance.

"That's ridiculous," said Chris. How many times had he heard his mother tell him that she loved him? And each time he'd returned the sentiment.

"Is it? Then why don't you want to talk about her?"

"You don't want to talk about yours," Chris threw back at Bianca.

"My mother's dead! Do you have any idea what it's like to lose your mother? No you don't because your mother is waiting at home for you with dinner on the stove. Your father is probably right there with her. I don't even know who my father is. Or was. He could be dead. Or he could be alive. I could have a million half-brothers and sisters and never know them when I walked past them in the street!" Bianca paused for breath. "Do you have any idea how lucky you are?"

"Yes!" said Chris. "I do. Because I know what it feels like to lose your mother on your fourteenth birthday. I know what it's like to grow up with a brother who terrorises not only you, but the entire world because he's exposed magic and the Cleaners couldn't do anything to stop it.

"I know exactly how lucky I am to have a younger sister and six cousins and both my parents and my aunts and uncles alive. I also know what it's like to feel like you've lost everything and to have to put the world to rights by yourself because there's no one else who can do it and even worse, no one else can come with you. You have to leave them behind knowing that you'll never see them again. I know death and every emotion that goes with it."

"What are you talking about?" Bianca's anger was forgotten in her confusion.

"I'm talking about an alternate timeline I've been dreaming about since the day I turned twenty-three. But they aren't just dreams, Bianca." He fixed her eyes with his stare. "It's all real to me because it happened to that other me. I know things I'm not supposed to know."

"What things?" She stepped closer to Chris as though a lack of distance would make him more willing to talk.

"You, Bianca. Why do you think my mother picked you? It isn't like there's some sort of magical dating website."

"You dreamed about me?" The thought terrified Bianca. It was like he'd taken a piece of her before she could take part of him.

"More than that." Chris raised his hand to trace along Bianca's jawline. She shivered slightly under his touch. "I knew you. I loved you. I made love to you. And then I left you behind."

Chris brought his other hand up and clasped her face between his hands. Bianca wanted to tear herself away and run but she couldn't. He didn't look sane at all. He looked as though he was about to dive headfirst into shallow water. It was too much for Bianca. Too much for her to make sense of.

"Get out," she said quietly.

That seemed to shock some sense into Chris. "What?"

Bianca grabbed his hands and pulled them away from her cheeks. "Get. Out," she repeated more firmly this time, pointing to the door the way she had to his mother earlier in the day.

"I didn't mean anything by it," he said, trying to apologise, to make her let him stay.

Bianca didn't want to hear it. She wanted him gone. She physically pushed him to the door and was glad when he took the hint and shut up and didn't fight her. Shutting the door behind him was extremely satisfying. Bianca vowed never to see him again. It was too much drama that she didn't need.

So why did she feel like crying on the floor when she saw his coat lying discarded on the couch? As though it had a right to be there...

x x x

Piper was sure that she'd heard someone in the attic, but no one was there when she went up. It looked like someone had been, but they'd touched the Book of Shadows so it probably wasn't a demon. With so many of the next generation to keep track of, it could have been any of them besides Mel, the only normal witch in the bunch. Something Piper and her sisters had tried long and hard to convince her wasn't a bad thing. Most days Piper thought they'd succeeded.

Leo was out. Even though he was no longer a whitelighter or an Elder, whitelighters did sometimes come to him for advice. Advice that Leo felt he was more qualified to give after having raised three children. In fact, Leo and Henry were working on this one together. The kid was a runaway from home and into gang trouble because of it.

In these moments by herself, the manor seemed so big and empty, and a little loneliness began to creep into Piper's soul. She felt old and unwanted and considered asking Wyatt's family to move in. She'd let her son move out because he needed to become independent of his parents and aunts, but if the manor was going to be passed from eldest to eldest, now that she and Leo were retired it seemed like the time.

Unfortunately, having Wyatt's family move in would mean swapping one son for the other. If Chris didn't live in the manor, Piper wasn't sure she would ever see him unless she camped out beside the Book of Shadows. She was so afraid of him slipping through her fingers. It was so hard when you'd lost a child once to think about losing that child again. For all that she tried to hold onto him, part of her felt that it was inevitable that she'd lose her grip. To outlive any of her children would be a nightmare, but she'd grieved once for Chris already. She didn't want to have to do it again.

Paige orbed into the kitchen to find her elder sister sipping at a mug of hot chocolate forlornly. "Who died?" she wondered aloud.

"Chris," said Piper.

Paige's heart stopped. "What?"

"I was just thinking about losing him all those years ago."

Paige relaxed. "Don't scare me like that, Piper."

"Sorry," her sister apologised.

"I'm guessing the men aren't back yet?" Paige settled into a seat across from Piper.

"And you would be correct. Do you and Henry want to stay for dinner?"

"We've got dinner plans, actually. Reservations at Apri."

Piper made a face. "I may not work there anymore, but I do still own a pretty good restaurant, Paige."

Paige shrugged innocently. "It's just not the same having a romantic dinner where your daughters and nieces work."

"So it's like that, is it?" Piper smirked.

Paige grinned. "What would we do without a little romance?"

Piper laughed. "Leo and I could probably use a little more."

"Trouble in paradise?"

"No," Piper shook her head. "We could just maybe use a little more variety. That's all."

"Well," said Paige. "I'm not the expert, but Henry and I do this thing where one of-"

Sensing that this territory was not a place she was comfortable with, Piper covered her ears and started singing.

Paige frowned. "I can't believe you're so prudish beyond the age of sixty."

"Well," said Piper. "When you're married to a man who was once an angel it rubs off a little."

Paige frowned. "Well I've been half-angel my entire life."

"It balances out when your other half is demonic," retorted Piper.

"Hey, that's our mother you're talking about."

Piper raised her eyes to the ceiling. "Sorry mom."

"So how's Mel?" asked Paige, changing the subject.

"Aren't you supposed to know? You're her whitelighter." Paige was unofficially everyone in the family's whitelighter, but she was officially assigned to Mel because she was the only true witch.

"Well now that she's older she only ever seems to need me for healing. She hasn't had any demon run-ins lately."

"She's fine," said Piper, answering Paige's original question. "She rang me this morning gushing about the baby."

"You don't see her often, do you?" questioned Paige.

"I don't see any of them often enough. Not even Chris and he still lives here."

"Maybe you should move the Book of Shadows into the open. It's not like we ever have non-magical guests." Piper had never given up on a normal life, but she'd revised her definition. While she'd longed to return to her life before magic, she realised that she could never be so close to anyone who didn't understand magic. She had friends of varying species who were magical and mortal but they all knew about magic, so if ever 'normalcy' was disrupted they understood.

"I'll be custodian of the Book and carry it on my back, demanding the kids give me nuggets of personal information in exchange for reading privileges."

Paige went along with the idea. "The jucier the tidbit the more time you get. What you had for breakfast- two minutes. Why your boss is a jerk- five minutes."

"Share your feelings about a family member- fifteen minutes. And the next half hour's free if you sit through a lecture."

The sisters laughed together for a moment. "You know," said Paige. "I used to think we had the strangest lives, but ever since the kids were born it's just been normal. They coped so well growing up in two worlds... they barely flinched when demons starting coming after them."

"I am proud of them all. I remember how we were at their age and think they're so much more mature and well-adjusted."

"Do you ever wish Grams hadn't bound your powers?"

"No," said Piper. "At least, not for long. I don't think we were ready for our destiny. Grams could have told us anything and we still wouldn't have been prepared. It was better not having to grow up with that. But I think that with the three of us and Coop and Leo we just managed the kids."

"Don't forget Henry," said Paige. "He may not have been much help with the magical stuff, but some of his parolees scared my kids straight."

Piper laughed. "Do you remember when we had him put Wyatt, Chris and Junior in a jail cell and even though they could orb out none of them did?"

"I'm still not sure why."

"That's Henry's greatest parenting secret."

"I'll find out one of these days," said Paige. "He probably bribed them or something."

"Or made a game of it."

In the moment of silence that followed, Piper wondered if now was a good time to bring up Bianca. She did have to tell her sisters some time. She just wasn't sure if it should be together or separately. "How is Junior?" she asked instead.

"Good, as far as I can tell. He mentioned something mundane about buying a new car- an new old car."

"I never really understood his fascination with cars," said Piper. "My boys didn't get excited about driver's licences. They only got them because everyone else was getting them. Chris still doesn't own a car."

"Chris also still lives at home where he can borrow yours."

"Do you think he'll ever move out?" Piper wanted to know her sister's opinion.

"The way he's going now? Probably not. But I wouldn't rule it out. It will probably come out of nowhere just when you and he have given up."

"I did something to speed up the process," Piper admitted.

"Nothing magical, I hope. Have you become the mom in that awful Mandy Moore movie?"

"A Walk to Remember?" wondered Piper.

"No. The one where her mom- I think she was Diane Keaton- sets up a profile for her on a dating site. Did you do that to Chris?"

"Not exactly."

"Well, I'm out," said Paige, giving up on guessing. "What did you do?"

"Do you remember Bianca?"

"What? The girl who tried to kill future Chris?" That was still the way they referred to the first Chris they'd met, despite the fact that they were now farther along in the timeline.

"His fiancée," Piper added, hoping Paige would connect the dots.

"Yeah," said Paige. "She broke his heart. What about her?"

"For all that terrible things happened in the future, Bianca was the one good thing that Chris had there that he doesn't have here."

"I'm sure that that's one sacrifice Chris is okay with," Paige said, too logically. "He would have happily wiped himself out of existence. What's one girl who broke his heart?"

"The only girl he ever loved, Paige. I wanted to see if Cathy could do what Coop did for Phoebe when they first met. So I asked Coop about it and he told me that Chris has never loved anyone! No one he's dated has ever meant anything to him."

"That is kind of sad," said Paige.

"He's leading a hollow existence and I want to change that."

Suddenly Paige caught on to what Piper was trying to tell her. "So you summoned her and forced the two of them on a blind date?"

Piper rolled her eyes. "Oh please, like that would have worked."

"I'm guessing the ex-chef cooked up something a little more complicated."

"Well she's an assassin. I sent her to attack him."

"What?" It wasn't Paige who spoke incredulously, but Leo who'd just entered with Henry. "I thought you just talked to her."

Henry looked like he wished he'd walked into the wrong house. "I think Paige and I should go now."

Paige grimaced, but left with her husband.

"Well?" demanded Leo.

"You know our son as well as I do," said Piper. "Do you really think he'd just go out on a date we set him up on? One with an assassin witch?"

"I thought you'd talked her into pursuing him romantically. If he didn't know you were behind it, he'd pay more attention."

"Would he? He hasn't been on a date in months. And even then it wasn't exactly for romantic reasons."

Leo placed a comforting hand on his wife's shoulder. "I wish it was easier for him too. But as his parents we're only meant to guide him... he has to take the steps down his own path."

"I guided him to Bianca. I wasn't going to do any more than that because even if it doesn't work out I'm hoping it will make Chris see that there is more out there."

"And how is this plan working out?" Leo wondered.

"Not great. Chris knows that I'm the one who sent Bianca to attack him, but he hasn't come to talk to me about it. Now I'm worried he's doing something stupid."

"I know you can't have anticipated that, but I really wish you'd at least talked to me before you did it. He's our son. I care about him just as much as you do."

"I know." Piper kissed the back of Leo's hand. "But I was sure this was what he needed. I didn't want to hear you try to talk me out of it."

"So you would have told me when exactly, Piper? After our son turned up dead?"

"I trusted Bianca not to kill him and she didn't. My trust in her wasn't misplaced."

A door slammed upstairs and Piper was immediately on guard. "Stay here," she commanded her husband.

Leo didn't do as she'd told him, but he was prepared to call for his sons if that wasn't one of their family members up there.

x X X x

A/N: And that's what I call conflict.