A/N: Okay, so I am starting this chapter where the prologue left off. If you need a refresher on that, please go back and reread it because it really won't be rehashed much in this chapter.
The memories finally fade from mind for the most part and I come back to the present, but my heart is still breaking. Even though I never did find out if it was a boy or girl before I lost it, I'm still sure it was a girl. I had named her Paine. Kind of poetic, right? I thought so, at least. I went through so much pain before I got her and the pain never stopped when she died in my womb. I thought Paine was both fitting and beautiful, even if it wasn't to be.
That was so long ago. I spent a few years honing my gifts, or magic, or whatever you wanted to call it. I still don't know. But after I felt I had perfected their art, that's when I finally made my move. I hunted down the director at Devonshire, the nurse, everybody who had even remotely anything to do with me and my never-ending life of torture. I even killed Brandi after I tracked her down. It was that bitch's fault Jerry started to think it was okay to rape me, too. I finally got Jerry tonight. You'd think I'd be relieved, but I'm not. I'm still trying to find my adoptive parents' killers. Nobody knows who killed them yet. It's been over 20 years and the cops have nothing and neither do I. I'm actually starting to run out of places to look, but I can't give up. I have to find the fuckheads who killed them and started all of this.
I make my way over to my bed and continue to cry myself to sleep. I think it's okay to let it go this time. Now that more balance has been restored, I think I deserve this tonight.
Across Town
"Well, that went swimmingly well," Phoebe said to her sisters. "She certainly knocked us on our asses. And we still don't know what we're dealing with. Or who. The nun never did know her name. We don't know her powers. Although they do look similar to Paige's past life, I have to admit..."
"Well we are twins," Paige points out. "It would only make sense in my mind that she'd have something in common with a past life, even if we aren't identical. I think we scared her away with your dumpster exploding skills, Piper."
"Well she just killed a human man right in front of us with fire she conjured and controlled. That screams evil to me and I was hoping that she'd stand down with a show of another kind of fire power," Piper retorts.
"Well that didn't work too well, now did it?" Paige asked Piper as Piper gave her a dirty look. "We need to follow my instincts on this. I know we're all sisters, but she's my twin. I think I can get through to her the easiest. I really don't think she's evil. I see this all the time in my charges. I think she's lost and confused, and more importantly, hurting. I'm thinking that the guy she just killed might have something do with that. I don't have proof, but I do have a strong feeling about that and my instincts are never wrong."
Piper sighs and says, "Alright. We'll try it your way. We don't need another sister running around San Francisco making the Halliwell name and line evil by killing innocents. We saved you when the Source tried to make you evil. We have to save her, too."
Phoebe nods in agreement and says, "I agree. I saw her eyes and they were holding a lot of pain. She's not evil."
"Okay. So we're in agreement, here. I think we need to scry for her again in a little bit, let her get to wherever it is she's going to be hiding and calm down. We'll never get through to her if her defenses are still up like they were just now. We'll all go in so that we each have back up, but let me be the one to talk to her. I'm sure I'll be able to talk her down. If that doesn't work, then we'll have to improvise a plan C. Sound like a good plan B?" Paige asks as she reaches out with her hands to orb them out of the alley.
Phoebe and Piper nod as they reach for her hands as well and they orb back to the manor where all their supplies are.
Two hours later
"I think we've given her time enough to cool down, now. Are you guys ready to try again?" Paige asks Piper and Phoebe.
"As we'll ever be. I'm still surprised we have yet another sister we never knew about, let alone that she's your twin and not even you knew that. Mom and that nun that she and Sam dropped you off with keep way too many secrets way too well," Phoebe points out.
"Yeah, let's just try to get this over with," Piper says. "We can't keep asking Billie to watch all of our kids while we're out trying to find her."
Paige nods as she holds the crystal over their map of San Francisco and starts circling it over the map. After about five minutes, the crystal finally falls on the edge of the map in a remote part of the city. "Definitely an abandoned and highly homeless area. Definitely looking more and more like a lost soul than an evil one. Let's go." She holds out her hands again to her sisters so they can all orb over there. They all grab her hands and they all orb to their sister's hideout.
I think I'm in a deep sleep. I don't know. I'm not dreaming. I haven't dreamt in so long. I try not to. All they do is remind me of everything I've ever been through. It's just black and I feel like I'm floating.
As I'm floating around in my mind, I see a very bright light penetrating through my eyelids and instantly my mind tells me I need to wake my ass up, I'm no longer alone. I instantly open my eyes and see the same women from before. I sit up and summon fire into my hands as fast as I can, which is actually pretty fast. Like I said, I've been honing things. "WHO ARE YOU!? WHY THE HELL ARE YOU IN MY PLACE!? WHY WON'T YOU JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!?" I scream out at them as I bring myself back into an attack position and I look at them closer. This is just getting to freaky for my tastes.
The one in front of the other two holds her hands up defensively and says, "Easy. We are not here to hurt you. We're here to help, believe it or not. We have gifts, magical powers, just like you do. They're all different, but we're really all the same. We are all good people and we help others. Will you be willing to hear me out?"
"I don't know if you missed the memo, but I don't do the whole 'good' thing anymore. All it does is open you up for attack!" I retort as I fling some fire at her. One of the ladies in the back raises her hands and with just a flick of her wrists, my fire is frozen in mid-air before it can hit her. I look at them in disbelief as my heart stops. Maybe they were telling me the truth. Would it be worth it to hear them out?
"How did you do that?" I ask them. The one who stopped my attack says, "Just like she said. With my own gifts. My own magic."
The one in front looks at me and says again, "Now will you please hear us out?"
"Fine," I say as I cross my arms across my chest. "I'll listen. But you better not waste my time. I'm really not in the mood to have my time wasted if you don't have anything worthwhile to say. By the way, how'd you get in here? Nobody can get in here but me. This place is completely sealed off to people."
"Again, with our magic. I can do what's called orbing and I can make myself and other people who I'm touching move to different places, or I can call for an object and move it with my mind much the same way. I can also heal wounds. Would you like to see me do one of those?" The one who approached me asks.
"Might as well while you're here," I say as I shrug. Before I can really understand what's going on, she disappears in the same bright light that woke me up and reappears a couple feet to the right of where she was. "Okay. So you're not lying to me. That's a good start, I suppose. I don't entertain people very often for reasons of my own that I won't share with you. So I'm sorry that I don't have anywhere for you to sit or anything."
The other one in the back says, "You're fine, sweetie. Don't worry about it. My name is Phoebe, by the way," she says as she steps forward with her hand out to shake mine. I timidly hold mine out as our hands meet and she gasps and closes her eyes for a moment. "Oh my god," she says as she pulls herself together. "You really have been through a lot, haven't you? I am so sorry. I wish we had known so much sooner."
"How do you know what I've been through?" I ask her angrily. That's my business and she has no right to know, especially since I tell nobody anything.
She holds her hands up defensively like the other one. "I'm sorry. I'm not prying. It's my own gift. I get visions of the future and of the past. In this case, the past. I don't know if I saw everything, but I saw enough to know why you killed that man tonight. I can't control when I get visions, so I really didn't mean to pry. Please, understand I didn't mean for it to happen. Especially since we don't even know your name yet. Or know what all of your powers are. Well, at least the others don't..."
I'm still really pissed off that she knows things about me that nobody else does, but I can tell she's telling the truth. I sigh angrily and say, "Fine. But don't let it happen again and don't be sharing whatever it was that you saw with me or anybody else, do you understand?" She just nods her head and goes back to the other girl.
I look at the other two and sigh again. "I'm Preseley. But just call me Pres. I prefer the shorter version. I can summon and control earth, air, fire, and water at will."
"Wow. Another 'P'. Who would've thought?" The other one in the back who froze my flames says. "I'm Piper." I just nod at her. "The one who can freeze things mid-movement or explode them, right?" She nods back.
The first one who approached me comes closer again and says, "And I'm Paige. The reason we've been looking for you, well, this is definitely not as easy to explain as I thought it would be. Um, I guess I'll start here. Do you see the similarities between all four of us, besides the magic powers? How we all look similar? You and me, especially?"
"Actually, yes. I've been wondering why since I first saw you guys, but I haven't worried about it too much. Why?" I ask her.
"You and me are twins, Pres. Our parents had to give us up for adoption at birth because they were afraid of what would happen if the magical community found out that they had us. They weren't supposed to be together, but they were, and they did have us. But the nun who took us to give to other families kept their secret. And kept you secret. Even from me," she explains with tears in her eyes. "But our mom and Sam finally told us the truth a few days ago and we've been looking for you ever since."
I just look at her. I don't know if I can take all this in. I've been out hunting people for ruining my life and my family, but I still had family out there? "This can't be," I finally manage to gasp out. "Are you seriously telling me that I have a family? That I was given up for adoption to only have them get murdered and spent the rest of the time after that being tortured in a miniscule hell for NOTHING!?"
Paige is crying harder now and she reaches for my hands and I see Phoebe in the background crying, too. She looks like she knows everything. "No. Not for nothing. Everything happens for a reason, honey. And my adoptive parents died, too. They weren't murdered, but they did die in a really bad car crash. My powers saved me from that crash and are essentially what brought me and them back together. I may not know your full story, but I know that our powers brought us all back together. I can't say why all that happened to you happened, but it did. And you've been alone all this time, but you don't have to be anymore. You have us now."
I'm shaking in a mixture of shock and rage. "I can't believe that there was a reason for what I've been through. I just can't. It was too much. You don't understand."
Phoebe walks back up and hugs me. "No. We don't. We really don't. I may have seen some things, but that doesn't mean I understand. But maybe we all will at some point. We actually have another sister, Prue. She died a long time ago. And we didn't understand it at the time, but there was a reason for that, too. And that reason was Paige. We'll figure it out. Together. That's what sisters are for."
Piper finally walks up and they all pull me together in a hug. Maybe it's my imagination, but maybe it's not, that this hug is the tightest and most sincere hug I've ever experienced and I finally break down and cry again. It almost feels like that hole I've had in my heart since Paine died is starting to refill again. I reach out and hug them all back.
Piper finally pulls away, she has tears running down her face, too. "Listen. If you don't mind, we have a better place for you to stay. And brothers-in-law and nieces and nephews for you to meet. Along with someone else I think you'll want to meet."
"Well, this hasn't exactly been an underwhelming day, but yeah. Sure. This place is a dump. It was just safe from people and that's why I picked it," I explain.
Paige hugs us all again as she orbs us into the nicest house I think I've ever seen. "You guys seriously live here?" I ask the group.
Piper answers, "No. Just me and my husband and kids. Paige lives with her husband and kids, same with Phoebe. But we always seem to meet up here when there's a magical heyday like today. But I hope that you'll feel comfortable calling it home for a while. At least until you get back on your feet and everything. I'm sure Wyatt and Chris will love you."
"Wyatt and Chris?" I ask her.
She nods and says, "My sons. Your nephews. But all in due time. Tomorrow will probably be better. First, there's a couple of other people you should meet before we call it a night and let you process everything. It's a lot for us, so we can only imagine how hard it is for you right now. It'll take time for us to all reconnect anyway. But probably less for you and Paige."
"Maybe. I'm just not used to people, let alone being treated so nicely. And the fact that it's family. I thought I was alone all that time. It's just kinda weird," I say as I shrug and look down at my feet.
Paige hugs me again and says, "I know, sweetie. We'll get there. This family has nothing but love and magic in it, you'll see." She smiles as she lets go.
After lighting some purple and white candles in a circle, Paige, Piper, and Phoebe all stand together behind a podium that has a really big book on it and begin chanting together, "Hear these words, Hear my cry, Spirit from the other side, come to me, I summon thee, Cross now the great divide." As they finish the spell, a different kind of white light appears in the circle and circles around as the image of two women appear.
Then Paige calls out, "Sam, I hope you're not working because you're going to want to be here for this." Then the same bright white light that Paige has when she orbs show up and just as quickly disappear as a man appears. "You rang, Paige?" He asks.
She just gives him a knowing smile as she says, "Sam. Mom. Grams. I think you should all meet Preseley. Or Pres, as she prefers. My twin. Your other daughter and granddaughter."
My breath just catches in my throat. It's a lot to take in. My birth parents. My birth family. All here. The younger spirit in the circle steps out of the circle and hugs me. "Oh my baby. I am so sorry. The Elders only just recently finally let me check up on you and when I saw how your life has been, let me tell your sisters about you so they could find you and bring you home. I am so sorry. If I had known how things would turn out, I would have never given you two up for adoption."
Sam finally gets over his shock and comes over as well. "Never. Even if we had known, we wouldn't have done it. Giving you two up was the hardest thing we've ever had to do and if we had a chance to do it over, we wouldn't have done it," he says as he pulls me in for a hug as well. I feel the hole in my heart finally close. I really am home.
A/N pt 2: Okay, I know. Don't shoot me. Very shmaltzy and cheesy, and you probably just got diabetes reading that. But, I felt it was important with where I'm planning on taking this story in the future. Plus, she's been through hell. I wanted to give her a break and do something a bit happier. PLEASE let me know what you think. But be constructive, I won't tolerate any flaming. I don't flame you, so don't flame me. Or I'll set Pres on you. Lol. Sorry. Couldn't resist that one.
Also, please let me know what you'd like to see sister-bonding and demon-fighting wise. I'd like to hear what you think and if I really like your ideas, I'll be writing it in and I'll give you a shout out. I'm also still considering that secret crossover for the climactic ending, but I'm not sure. I'm still not going to tell you what it is, though. It's a surprise for when and if I do it. I don't know. I might. I've been taking a lot of risks with this story that seem to be working so far, so I might continue that streak. We'll see. But, still, I wanna know. Talk to me.
On one more side note before I go, I am currently trying to break out into full fiction writing. I still don't know if I'll be good enough, but I have rekindled my love of writing and I am hoping to hit the ground running with it. If you like my work, I will be publishing on the sister site of FictionPress under the same user name. I've been Windsong Springheart for a very long time and I'm not parting with it. It's part of who I am. So, I'll be publishing full fiction here soon, so if you like me, please check them out and let me know what you think! Until next time!