A/N: Please read and review. I love the feedback I've gotten so far and I love hearing from you guys. I'm also glad that you seem to like this story so much and I will try to update as often as possible.


Materializing at Three Sisters, Leo and Paige found Piper lying on the floor; drunk.

"Gross, she reeks," Paige said and checked her sister for a pulse. Piper was passed out. "She must have been like this for hours, how come you didn't sense it earlier?"

"All whitelighters were in a meeting with the Elders. My charges were put on mute so there wouldn't be any interruptions."

"I'll grab her purse, then we'll orb to manor."


"That was new," Prue said as Jason walked her to her car.

The meeting had lasted for close to six hours as Jason mingled and schmoozed the editors while charmingly maneuvering them to his vision of what the magazine should be.

"I hope you enjoyed it," Jason said. "I'm trying to ease everyone into the new direction instead of showing up and putting everyone in an uproar. People tend to get frazzled under new management."

"Well, I don't think you have to worry about that, Mr. Dean. You know how to work a crowd."

"Good," he said just as they reached her BMW convertible. He gave it an appreciative glance. "That's a very nice car you have, Ms. Halliwell."

"Thank you. I've always loved sports cars, and for a while it made more sense to have an SUV for photo shoots but I just can't seem to help myself so I traded it in for this."

"Well," he said as he helped her into the driver's seat, "maybe next time I can show you mine. I think you'd appreciate it."

"I guess we'll see," she said and smiled.


"Ew, what's in that," Piper asked as she passed the glass back to Paige.

Piper had come to a couple of hours previously and was sporting a major hang over. Refusing to talk to Leo, he went to go help a charge in the hope that Paige could figure out what was going on with his wife. It hadn't made sense to him how she could be in so much emotional pain and not share it with him.

Finally, tired of the pounding in her head, Piper had given in and allowed Paige to make her own special hangover remedy. She was now regretting that choice.

"Give it a minute or two to kick in," the girl said. "I'm telling you it really works," Paige said and pushed Piper's leg off of the coffee table so she could sit on the other side of her. "Now, are you going to tell me what's going on with you or do I need to call Prue and tell her to get her skinny ass home so she can talk some sense into you?"

"No, don't call Prue," Piper said. "Things are finally looking up around here and I don't want to ruin that."

"Well, if everything is going so great, why did you get black out drunk," Paige retorted.

Sighing, Piper grabbed a pillow and clung to it as she tried to think about what she was going to say.

"You don't know, but two years ago we went to the future," Piper said. "Phoebe had a premonition about her execution—she was burned at the stake—and we went to try and figure out why."

"Time travel? If I knew that was even a possibility I would have started studying for your class a lot sooner," Paige remarked.

Piper laughed, though there wasn't a lot of joy. "The point is, when we went to the future I saw that I was going to have a little girl," she wiped away a tear. "It's not like I've been thinking about it or anything. I guess I just thought it would happen when it happened but I went to the doctor yesterday—"

"Oh, honey! Did you think you were pregnant," Paige rubbed a hand up and down Piper's arm as she tried to lend some support.

"No, it wasn't anything like that. It was just a routine checkup that if I'm being honest, I was more than a little bit over due for. With everything that goes on in our lives I just haven't been able to make it to my doctor's office."

"So what happened," Paige asked.

"The doctor did the pelvic exam," she sniffled, "and I guess he didn't think everything was alright because he wanted to do a pelvic ultrasound. He said something about there being a lot of scar tissue," trying to recall his words, "and how it was unlikely that I would ever be able to conceive and/or carry a child."

Paige grabbed her sister, pulling her into a hug. "Oh, sweetie. I'm so sorry," Paige said, "but you can't lose hope. I mean, I'm proof that good things happen when a witch and a whitelighter get together. Have you told Leo about any of this?"

"No," the older woman wiped her eyes. "We haven't even started talking about kids but this would devastate him. I made an appointment for more tests for myself and they want Leo to come in but he's an angel, and I can't exactly tell them that."

"You and Leo will figure this out together, and you're only twenty-eight years old. There will be plenty of time for you to think about kids," Paige tried to cheer her up. "I'm sure that our line is not supposed to end with us."

"I know, but I can't help but think about her. I mean, I saw how beautiful she was and I heard her laugh. I can't imagine a world that she's not in and I can't help but think—"

"Think what," Paige asked when Piper hesitated to continue.

"I can't help but think this is my punishment for losing Phoebe."

Paige's compassionate look drained from her face as she grabbed Piper's chin in between her thumb and her index finger. "You are not being punished for losing Phoebe," she declared. "Losing Phoebe was not something you or Prue or Phoebe deserved, or something that you let happen. It just did," she reprimanded her sister. "And some way or another you will have your own child someday but you won't get there by drowning in your sorrow."

"Paige—"

"No, don't 'Paige' me! Get mad about losing Phoebe, about possibly not being able to conceive; get mad, cry, do all that. But don't you dear give up," Paige lectured her. "Now, you sit your bony ass exactly where it is and I will be back in a few minutes with every tear jerking chick flick I own and all the junk food Prue hides from you and maybe even a bottle of wine, though I think you've had enough. And later, much later, when you feel better and you can manage to talk about it, you will sit down and tell your husband what you just told me because he deserves to know. No," she yelled and pointed at her sister. "Stay! I'll be right back."

Piper didn't know whether to laugh or cry at her newest sister's antics—so she did both.


Prue stopped to pick up take out and returned to the manor to find a full on rom-com marathon going on.

She carried the Chinese food into the conservatory where she sat down next to Piper and noticed how red and swollen her sister's face was, way more than the chick flick should have elicited. "What's going on? Is everything okay?"

Piper looked to Paige, who paused the movie so they could talk.

"Piper got some pretty upsetting news," Paige said glossing over the fact that she and Leo had found Piper in a drunken stupor, "and we spent the day having a self induced crying fest to make ourselves feel better."

Prue turned back to Piper and snuggled in closer, kicking off her heels in the process. "What did you find out?"

Piper pushed her hair behind her ears and looked down for a second before saying it out loud. "My doctor seems to think that I am not capable of conceiving and carrying a child because of scar tissue he found during my exam."

"But Melinda," Prue uttered, confused at this turn of events. She had seen her niece when they went to the future and she had taken for granted that it would just happen. "Does Leo know?"

"Not yet," Piper explained, unaware that her husband had orbed in the dining room. "I just don't know how to tell him."


Leo orbed into the manager's office after sensing to see if any of the employees were around. Walking out into the bar, he made his way to the counter where he saw Ben working as a bartender.

"Leo," he called out. "Hey, what are you doing here?"

"Just had to get away, you know? Can I get a long neck?"

"Sure, man. Here you go," Ben said and slid it across the bar. He turned to the other bar tender and told him he was taking a break.

"Let's go grab a booth," he yelled over the music.

They pushed through the crowd until they made it over to a private booth where they could hear a lot better.

"Where are the girls," Ben asked.

"At home having another girls' night. I didn't want to barge in on them bonding."

Nodding, Ben signaled one of the waitresses to bring him two more beers. "Are you sure everything's alright?"

"No," Leo answered. "I'm not sure of anything anymore."


Ben ushered Leo through the door and through Piper's keys on the table. Paige had called him that morning and told him that Piper had left her car at the restaurant and had asked him to bring it home.

Looking to the conservatory, he saw that Piper had actually let it remain a mess for once, confirming that something truly odd was going on with his favorite couple.

"Come on, man. Let's get you upstairs before your wife wakes up and finds you like this."

He dumped the whitelighter on his bed and left to find his own bed which was set up in the basement. Now that his new identity had come through and he actually had a bank account with savings, he would have to see about finding his own place.

It would be hard being away from the girls but he couldn't keep living off of their generosity. It was one thing to take a job managing Piper's businesses but he couldn't continue to take advantage of them. He would have to move on at some point.

Turning into the kitchen, he saw Prue sitting at the table with her eyes closed and her body slumped over. That could only mean one thing.

"Prue," he shook her and suddenly her conscious state re-inhabited her body. "What happened; are you okay?"

"Um, yeah," she said as she shuffled out of her seat and grabbed her glass to put in the sink. "I just needed to get away for a few minutes."

"And you couldn't take your car," he asked.

"Well, this was quicker and much safer considering how tired I am. At least when I astral project I don't have to worry about falling asleep at the wheel," she joked.

"So where'd you go; Fiji, Cabo, Honolulu?"

"The lake," she answered. "I've been spending some time at the lake."

"You mean where your mother died?"

"Yeah. After we defeated the water demon it was up for sale. Apparently no one was interested in it because it stayed on the market and I bought it a couple of months ago."

"What are you thinking of doing with the property?"

"I don't know," she answered truthfully. "Growing up I always thought that the Manor would be mine some day but the truth is I'm thirty; almost thirty-one, and still single. No husband or children to pass the Manor or our legacy onto. I'm thinking eventually one or more of us is going to have to leave and build our own home elsewhere. It might be nice to live on the water and turn the extra space into a workshop."

"Wow, I never thought I'd hear those words from your mouth," he joked. "I thought if you had it your way then the Charmed ones would live together forever."

"Yeah, well if there's anything I've learned from Phoebe's death it's that anything can happen whether we live together or not. I might be ready to finally have my own life without being responsible for everyone else's well being," Prue acknowledged the realization she had come to earlier. Still, she wouldn't move out until Piper was taken care of.