Okay peoples, I have a plan! I'm gonna try to update at least once a week (school is starting back after all), most likely at the end of the week. This gives me time to do a little bit of work at a time since my webgame addicted parents never let me on the computation device. Plus it'll probably lead to longer chappies (This is by far my longest, but it's still way too short). And to top it off, I actually got some reviews! Huzzah!
Hmm ok, onto viewer mail and other junk. Someone mentioned me getting the brother's names mixed up in the beginning of the last chapter...Not sure how, so I'll just do a brief recap before I start this one.
About the Elders:
Odin- He's such a jerk 'cause, well he was never nice in the show, and well, the next bit is more complicated. You see, I tend to incorporate hints or references about fanfics that I find particularly outstanding into my own work. In Warriora's excellent fic Fishy Chrissy, Odin is worse than some demons, so it's not hard to see where I got his personality.
Sarah- I decided to run with this character simply 'cause I don't really know many Elders and a good bit of this fic takes place Up There. Someone (MidnightLightning?) mentioned sharing a name with this character, so I felt guilty having her only appearance be in a bad light.
Seth- This guy was starting to look sue-ish to me, so I added in a bit of a meddling/too curious nature and bad relations with Future Chris (partly resulting from the aforementioned meddling) to give him some needed character flaws.
Review Responses:
Marcus1233: Um...sorry for being a guy...Anyway, thanks for your...er- interesting reviews. And the semi-violent enthusiasm. I know I spend too much time drowning in sorrow, my personality is decidedly melancholic (a little phlegmatic too). Makes one wonder where I came up with my pen name...
History Buff 1990: Heh heh thinking about this story eh? Perhaps we've got some psychic psychosis going on lol. Also, I can't figure out why no one's reading this either...I think I'm getting better though, so thanks for staying with me!
Shan: Ah my other consistent reader, thank you for your eh..readership! I'm sorry to not deliver the Future Chris filled chapter you asked for, but alas...he's not the main Chris of this show. Don't worry though, we'll get to see him in future chapters (he's bound to do something after being stuck up there with those pesky Elders for so long!)
And someone pointed out a glaring mistake I made earlier when Ryan was shot. I let Sandra (an Elder!) touch a darklighter arrow! Bad me! Anyways, I'd love to give credit for this, but I can't find the review so it was probably a pm (which idiot me probably deleted)
As always, thanks for reading guys! (Double thanks if you reviewed :P)
In case you can't tell, I'm in a good mood! (an inbox full of review alerts does that to me)
Disclaimer: I've said it before and I'll say it again: If I actually owned this stuff, it wouldn't be a fanfic! It'd be...an ownerfic or something...
Last Chapter: (Brief Summary)
Wyatt hears the call to all whitelighters (listen to Sarah in this chapter to find out what it was about), and tries to distract his evil self while said evil self holds him prisoner. Evil Wyatt hints that something bad may be in store for Leo.
Sandra tells Paige the truth (some of it at least) about Ryan, and the Chrisses continue bickering with the Elders.
On a side note, Paige and Chris don't here the call 'cause they've been temporarily "disconnected" from the "whitelighternet" so they can get their family back together. Paige's charges have been temporarily reassigned.To Start a Fire
After muttering the night-vision spell he had used in the Underworld, Chris glanced around quickly, trying to take in his surroundings. Trees. Lots and lots of trees, with plenty of those strange noises that the forest seems so full of at night. The only thing he knew for sure was that this was most definitely not Ryan's bedroom.
He hadn't really expected to get it right on the first try anyway. He had only spent like a minute there. And thanks to the Elders he no longer had a whitelighter bond to guide him. All he could do was hope he had managed to get somewhere close. He set off in what looked most likely to be the right direction, since he could see a moonlit clearing up ahead at least.
As he stepped into the clearing, another quick look around revealed nothing but wild grass and more trees in the distance. Chris made a mental note to ask Ryan where on Earth he lived later. Assuming they would ever get the chance to speak again (always the optimist, our Chris). Pushing that last thought aside, he concentrated briefly before orbing away again.
He landed on a slanted surface, and immediately felt his feet slide out from under him. Because of which he very nearly fell off of the roof he had orbed onto. Of course, after a struggle to save himself from falling off of the edge, he remembered he could just orb down to the ground safely. D'oh. He'd been doing it since he could walk and yet his orbing was always at least slightly off unless his destination was a familiar one.
From what Chris could remember, it looked like the right place. He searched for a second floor window. When he found one, he closed his eyes.
And opened them in a small bedroom devoid of any signs that it had ever been inhabited. Beginning to doubt that he had the right place after all, Chris opened the door and stepped into a long, narrow, window lit hall. He went from door to door, opening each slowly and cautiously. He thought he recognized the bedroom he found on the third try, but it looked empty to him. He took a step forward. And tripped. Landing on his knees, Chris turned around to see what he had fallen over, and gave a yelp of surprise when he saw his former charge lying face down on the floor.
He scrambled over to Ryan's side and tentatively placed his fingers against Ryan's neck. He was rewarded with a faint pulse. So very faint that he'd almost missed it. "Wy-" he flinched as he realized he had been about to yell for his brother. Shaking himself, he took a breath and yelled "Aunt Paige!"
"She won't be able to heal him." Said a voice behind him, and he jumped realizing he had turned his back to the door. Chris whirled around, expecting to face something sinister that had come to finish off a defenseless witch. What he got was a very disturbed looking Sandra. Her face was an image of sadness, and her voice sounded almost frail to Chris when she spoke.
"Healing doesn't work on someone that the Elders don't want to be healed. Plus he's half darklighter..."
"Why does everyone keep saying that!" Chris snapped, "He knows you," he said, thinking back to the apparent acquaintance between the two, " If it were true, how could you have not known something like that?"
"Oh I knew..." she said eerily, but further explanation was interrupted by Paige orbing in right in front of the Elder.
"I'm so sorry I took so long Chris!" Paige said exasperatedly, " But we got attacked by scabbar demons again, those things are disgusting!" She said all this in a rush but let out a squeak of surprise upon noticing the lump on the floor (Chris is the only one with the nite-vis thing goin on and it was dark). She knelt down by her nephew and gently rolled the unconscious teenager in front of them onto his back. They both gasped when they saw the wound, an ugly burn on his chest, which was visible through the places where his shirt had been burned away. Paige held her hands over Ryan's prone form determinedly, but nothing happened.
"I told you it wouldn't work," Sandra said quietly and Paige jumped even worse than her nephew had, having been too distracted to sense the presence of an Elder behind her.
"I will try, but I do not know if it will be enough," Sandra said, as if she had been perfectly clear. She stepped forward and joined the two Halliwells on the floor, despite how undignifying it was for an Elder to behave so. Sandra held her hands over Ryan as Paige had, only this time a dim glow was produced, thought it wasn't strong enough to accomplish anything.
"It's...It's not doing anything," Chris said dejectedly.
"Well, maybe we can help," Paige said, brightening slightly, "I helped Leo heal Cole once, before I learned how to do it my self."
"Who?" Chris asked.
"Never mind, just take my hand. You too Sandra...Er...your Elderness?"
The three joined hands, forming a semicircle over the fallen witchlighter, and the glow brightened. Still, it had little effect. They kept trying, growing more desperate with each second, until the light suddenly got much brighter. Most of the burn marks on Ryan's chest slowly disappeared, and the rise and fall of his chest became visible again as his breathing strengthened. After a few minutes, it became obvious that he was no longer on the brink of death, and the glow emanating from the trio began to fade away. Two let out audible sighs of relief. The third smiled slightly at how much the aunt and nephew where alike.
"Well," began Paige, getting to her feet, assisted by a pull from the already standing Chris, "We can't very well leave him like this. Where are his parents?"
"I dunno," Chris said, looking down at the boy, "Haven't met 'em yet."
"Let us hope that it will be many years before you do Christopher. You are much too young to leave life." Sandra said calmly, that odd note still in her voice.
The joy of success fell from the Halliwell's faces, and the mood once more became somber.
"Then who does he live with?" asked Paige quietly. All three of them were staring at him now.
"Just himself and the memories I suppose," came Sandra's cryptic reply as a frown came over Ryan's sleeping face.
"Ok, that's it!" Chris fumed, "Stop with the borderline psycho act and just tell us what you know. If you know he's a darklighter, why'd you heal him?"
"Darklighter genetics do not necessarily make him inherently evil." The Elder said simply.
Chris just looked confused.
"I think she may be right Chris," Paige murmured after a second, "We've known demons who weren't evil at all. They were willing to give up immortality and powers to become human, even if only for a little while," she said thinking of Drake and his brief time with the Charmed Ones.
"Well everyone else Up There should be in on this then, since they fried him!" Chris didn't know why he was arguing. He had been the one who didn't believe Ryan was evil. He supposed his pessimism and his nerves were getting the better of him. Nervous arguing was a condition his mother had long ago proclaimed him a hopeless victim of. Even if it was a hereditary disease.
"I will...try to reason with them" Sandra stated. "But now that the Underworld has finally found him he will need somewhere to stay?" She looked hopefully towards Paige.
"What kind of whitelighter would I be if I just left him here?" Paige asked, "You don't mind sharing a room with him do you Chris, we can orb his bed and stuff in later, I'd hate to make him live on the couch." She finished with a smile as she thought she saw Chris brighten a little. A rare occurrence to say the least.
"Ok," he said, "But she's coming with us," he pointed at Sandra, "I know I'm not the only one who wants to know why she knows so much about him and Mom is gonna end up summoning an Elder sooner or later. She's getting frustrated at the "lack of support" in the search for Dad and Wyatt."
Sandra frowned at this, but made no objections. "Very well," she said resignedly, "But only if you agree to continue as his whitelighter once it's been proven that he is in fact good."
"Sure let's just go," Chris said impatiently. He knelt down and slung one of Ryan's arms around his shoulder before standing back up, and Paige quickly caught on and did the same before they all vanished in a swirl of orbs.
"Phoebe it's no use, we'll just have to find them some other way," Piper said as she shut the Book of Shadows and left it on it's podium to go stand beside her sister at the table.
Phoebe sighed and let the crystal fall onto the map laid out before her. "I guess your right, but I need a break right now."
Piper nodded in agreement, "Let's make some coffee".
They both hated not having a way to get anything done, and Piper was starting to wonder if Paige was having trouble finding Chris. She certainly hoped so, since Paige had left in the middle of a demon attack to answer what she could only assume was a call from Chris. Much of the old furniture up here had been melted as a result of the slime spewing things that had attacked them, but oddly enough the old grandfather clock, which had been destroyed so many times downstairs that it had been moved up here for safety, went unharmed. She wanted to be angry with her son for running off like that, but she suspected she would melt just to have him return safely. It was the rest of her family that she was truly concerned about.
Rubbing her eyes tiredly, Piper followed her sister down the stairs, hoping some coffee would keep her going until Chris and Paige got back. She hadn't slept in the two days since all Hell broke loose and decided to abduct a couple of Halliwells.
A few minutes later
Piper had just taken a few sips of her coffee, steam still rising from it, when Phoebe said "I think I left my phone upstairs, be right back, I was going to call Henry and tell him Paige will probably be late getting home tonight, you know how "all this magic stuff" makes him nervous." she pushed her chair back and started to leave the table when Piper said "You do realize that there's a phone on the wall right behind you?"
"Yeah but I probably need to see if mine's seeping into the floor," Phoebe called back as she left the room.
Piper closed her eyes and sat quietly holding her mug, her favorite one (which broke even more than the grandfather clock), enjoying a few minutes of peace.
She had almost dozed off when she heard Phoebe scream from upstairs "OH MY GOD! LEO!"
It was not a scream of delight, and Piper was in the attic faster than anyone could've orbed.
Seth sat on the edge of his bed, head bowed, eyes shut, and frown upon his face as he struggled to sense Sandra. Granted, their closeness and her willingness to let him find her would make it much easier for him then it would be for most other Elders, but she had become so distant since the...incident with Ryan that he'd had a hard time finding her. There was no doubt about it, the woman knew the kid somehow. He couldn't be her son, he was too young, Seth had worked with Sandra for at least a decade now and he knew any relationship he found her involved in would have been created before her death. The only Elder to ever act otherwise was Leo Wyatt, and to be fair his started when he was a whitelighter (though that didn't make it much more common of an occurrence, it was at least heard of).
Finally, Seth managed to locate her. A little more concentration brought some information on her current situation. She was healing someone? Elders rarely did that in person...What's more, the healing didn't seem to be working. That's what gave it away. The person she was attempting to heal had been declared an enemy of good, so her power alone was fueling the golden glow.
Seth was mildly surprised that she'd managed to find that boy so quickly, he really needed to find out how she knew him, but he didn't hesitate to send his own strength to her. He could feel it flowing through two others as well, whitelighters by the feel of it. They must be trying to augment Sandra's own abilities. Finally he could tell Sandra was relaxing her powers, and he knew it must've worked. With relief, he let go of his own powers and wiped away some of the sweat that had formed on his brow from the effort of stretching his powers to someone so far away. As he stood he felt lightheaded and realized that had taken more out of him than he had expected. He had also expected her to return to the heavens when she finished but she had not, and her presence soon disappeared from his mind altogether as her location swiftly changed.
Deciding to make use of his unexpected free time, Seth left his room and made his way to the Council Chamber, where some Elders would be, without a doubt, continuing their harassment of that surly time traveling Halliwell. Seth liked the present version of Christopher Halliwell much better, even if he didn't actually know him, he disliked the future incarnation enough to make young Chris the favorite by default. He knew they wouldn't let him in there, for they were fearful of losing what little cooperation they had managed to coerce from the cynical witchlighter, but Seth was hoping he'd be able to find something out from one of his colleagues. Christopher had apparently spent much of his time on that alternate plane of existence spying on Wyatt, on the off-chance that he would escape or be contacted somehow. Seth had to hand it to the man, he did always have a plan.
He was grateful to see Sarah in the Great Hall, talking to a couple of whitelighters, her apprentices no doubt. She had been his primary source of information on the interrogation in progress. She was really much milder then one would think after seeing her in the Chamber. Something about that young man seemed to get him on the bad side of even the most benevolent Elders...
"Blessed be," Seth greeted as he approached Sarah. She responded in kind and the two whitelighters bowed slightly before orbing out to give the two Elders privacy.
"Have there been any major revelations?" Seth asked quietly.
Sarah shook her head, "No, not really," she paused for a moment, then added as an afterthought, "Though he did say that the Twice Blessed has probably already been proclaimed the Source of this world."
"You don't consider that a major revelation?" Seth asked dryly.
"Well, that was to be expected wasn't it? He hasn't told us anything we didn't already suspect. Or fear. Or both." she finished finally.
"What about that half-breed darklighter?" she asked, "I heard that Odin has ordered all whitelighters to tell their witches to watch for him, some are even being asked to hunt him down!"
"Why? He doesn't request the specific elimination of other darklighters, and we all know there's plenty of them."
Sarah shook her head slightly as she spoke, "None of them have ever gotten up here have they? And he is a witch! It seems the power created by the union of witch and whitelighter has not gone unnoticed in the Underworld."
They both fell silent for a moment. It was common knowledge that darklighter attacks had increased dramatically in recent months. And while whitelighter numbers dwindled, there seemed to be more darklighters than ever.
"Let me ask you something Sarah," Seth's voice was barely above a whisper now, and he stepped closer to her, "Do you truly believe that the boy is a threat? He was in my chambers. He could've killed Sandra, Odin, me, or all three of us. Not to mention all of the chances he's had to finish off the Halliwell boy."
He could see Sarah thinking through all of this before she spoke, a quality sorely lacking in most people, "No, no I guess I don't. That still doesn't explain where he came from though."
"Ah but that's the question of the hour," Seth said, pleased with his success. Sarah may not be the most influential Elder, but she certainly knew people. It only takes one spark to start a fire Seth thought. It would take some effort, but he was certain that eventually the other Elders would come to see reason. Plus, Seth personally enjoyed undermining the efforts of and/or defying Odin whenever possible.