Sorry for the delay. I know I promised you guys last time that it wouldn´t happen again, but I am just in the middle of my favourite season of the year, and that was clearly said with an extreme sarcastic undertone, which is exam season.
I have so many other things going on in my head at the moment that I wasn´t only lacking time but also inspiration. And this chapter was everything but easy to write. It´s not easy to convey emotion in a language that is , though loved and practiced a lot, not your mother tongue.
But I hope your still happy with the result. Please tell me if you are. My happiness depends on your fingers moving on the keyboard!!!
And I´d like to warn you in advance. I probably, well most certainly won´t be able to update within the next two to three weeks. As I said I´m in the middle of my exams and still have 5 and one 15(!) page essay due. So please don´t be mad. I´ll make up for it by presenting you with the big, bombastic (;-)) final.
I hope you´ll stay tuned!!!
FORGOTTEN MEMORIES
The days flew by as Chris slowly but steadily recovered. He spent most of his time sleeping but the periods during which he was awake were getting longer.
The girls and Leo stuck to their promise and not once talked about the so called EVENT and Chris was very thankful for it because he needed time to sort things out in his head. He had thought about the things his grandfather said and he knew Victor was right. Talking about it would probably help him, he kept quiet about so many things for way too long.
The question was just how much he would tell them and when. It was not that he was still afraid of future consequences which made him wait. He had hidden those memories somewhere deep in this ugly place in his head for so long... It was hard to allow them to resurface now.
But after about five days of doing nothing Chris knew that his time had come. He couldn´t let them wait any longer and he himself was getting more and more restless.
So when his mother had cleared lunch that day he asked her, "Where is everybody? "
Piper almost didn´t hear him. She turned around and found him sitting up in the bed inspecting his hands which were resting in his lap.
"Well, Phoebe is in her room working on her column, Paige is in the kitchen desperately trying not to burn her toast, your father is fighting with Wyatt to get him ready for magic school´s nursery and I´m apparently here,... I think."
Pipers´ attempt to lighten Chris´ mood was only of very little success as there was just the mere ghost of a smile crossing his face. He then locked his gaze with hers and Piper´s heart skipped a beat. The emotional turmoil showing in his eyes told her exactly what was going to happen.
"Could you go get them please?" Chris knew he didn´t need to tell her what exactly he wanted the rest of the family for. His mother had somehow always understood him without words and it wasn´t different in this time, at least not in this moment.
"Sure." Piper answered in a gentle voice. She felt Chris eyes following her when she left the room.
She slowly walked over to Phoebe´s room and entered while calling for Paige. Phoebe was sitting on her bed, her Laptop placed in front of her when her sister orbed in. Piper looked at both of them before she spoke "It´s time. He´s ready."
Neither of them needed further information.
Together they moved over to Wyatt´s nursery and Phoebe and Paige waited outside while Piper went in to talk to Leo. He was still trying to get Wyatt to put his shoes on when he saw her enter. Piper moved over to them and smiled at her son who was pouting heartbreakingly clearly unsatisfied with what his father was doing. Turning to Leo she said, "Chris wants to talk to us."
Leo let out a deep sigh as he was anticipating this moment just as much as he was dreading it. "Okay"
Picking up Wyatt he said " Come on buddy. Seems like you´ll get away with it this time." before he put him back to his playpen.
Together they left and joined Phoebe and Paige in the hallway.
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"It happened on my 14th birthday."
That was the beginning of easily one of the hardest stories Chris ever had to tell. He was still sitting on his bed when his family entered. He didn´t dare look at them because he was afraid that he could lose the courage he actually didn´t have if he looked into their eyes.
They had comfortably settled around him, Leo sitting on a chair next to his bed, Phoebe and Paige placed themselves cross legged on the free side of the bed while Piper sat on Chris´ other side .
And then the words just started flowing...
"It was a weekday. A Wednesday. The day Wyatt normally had basketball practice and mum wanted him to skip it and be home with me as soon as possible.
Of course Wyatt wasn´t happy. He really liked the training and I mean he was 16 for god´s sakes. He had to get some steam of somehow!"
Another one of those smiles, one that didn´t really reach his eyes as they seemed to be somewhere else, a place where nobody else could follow. His memories.
"I knew that, so I went to you to try to convince you to let him go..."
Chris found his mother in the kitchen. "Hey mom, Wyatt is all whiny because of his basketball training! Why don´t you just let him go?" he complained.
"Well Chris, because it´s your birthday and your brother should be here. I´ve never seen you walking out on him on one of his." she said matter-of-factly.
"Well duh, at some of them I couldn´t even walk and some others I couldn´t talk yet! Where should I have been? But that´s not the point. Look mum, It´s just like two hours and the real party is not gonna be before Saturday. Besides mum, I´m the "birthday boy" ", he spat forming quotation marks with his fingers," as you so love to call me every year around this time which then again never fails to send shivers down my spine, and I want Wyatt to go there!"
Piper had to chuckle at her son´s heartfelt speech and felt herself giving in. "Alright, alright! Your wish shall be my command, your majesty. But tell him to come home right after and that there will be no place in heaven or hell to hide if he misses dinner!"
Chris nodded happily. "Don´t worry, I think he knows that already. We both had more than enough time to get to know your motherly radar." Chris teased running out of the kitchen before she could throw her kitchen towel after him...
"I wish I would have listened to you." Chris whispered and then continued more steady after a deep breath "When I came home on my birthday the aunts had already arrived from their respective homes to help mom with the preparations and just spent some time with us.
We were in the conservatory when it happened. Mum wanted to set up a big table there to get all of the family on one table for dinner but we didn´t even get as far as putting the plates on the table..."
That was where Chris voice broke. He lifted his head from it´s downward position and looked towards the window to avoid their eyes. When Piper saw his red-rimmed eyes and the tears he tried to will away she quickly grabbed his hand wanting to comfort him somehow but painfully aware that he wouldn´t allow much more than that.
Leo slid a little forward on his chair resting his forearms on his thighs also somehow feeling the need to be closer to Chris. At the sight of their nephew and the pain displayed in his eyes Phoebe were close to tears themselves.
After about a minute of staring out of the window Chris sighed deeply before he returned his gaze to the hands in his lap. One of them now accompanied by the soft and caring hand of his mother.
"I don´t know exactly what happened afterwards. It´s all a little hazy. We were just laughing about some stupid joke aunt Paige made when the demons shimmered in. I don´t know how many they were. It felt like there were hundreds of them but there might only have been twenty or thirty.
As soon as mum saw that the situation got out of hand she pushed me under some couch table and told me to stay there, that I couldn´t help this time and that she wouldn´t be to concentrate if I was out there. Then she promised me that everything would be ok..." The girls and Leo heard a suppressed sob coming from Chris when he stopped speaking and moved the palm of his hand to his forehead trying to regain his composure and ringing with the torture of this memory.
Chris wanted nothing more than to stop and curl up in a ball shutting everything and everybody out. But then he would be alone, even more alone than he already was and if he was honest that was the thing he had always been afraid of the most. Besides, he already knew that running away didn´t solve any problems.
And he wasn´t one to run away. He learned to take things as they came and to deal with them as best as he could. He stumbled and he fell, but he always got back up after.
Chris had been forced to learn that no matter how much you wanted the world to just stop turning and be forever frozen in darkness... The sun would just rise the next day like nothing happened, no matter how much you cursed it for it. And he learned something even more important...
There would always be another day.
But that doesn´t mean that there wasn´t a piece of him dying, a peace forever lost every single time someone left him.
The others could see how hard he fought to get himself back together. As he nevertheless resumed his former position they saw one single tear running down the side of his face.
"I couldn´t see anything from where I was hiding. I don´t know how long the fight was, I just know that all of the sudden everything was silent... dead silent...
I suddenly needed to get out of there. I couldn´t breathe ... I was so scared and I wanted to know where you were...
Chris gasped when he got up and looked at his surroundings. Not a single peace of furniture was undamaged. Everything was smashed to bits and pieces. There were shards of his mother´s precious china all over the place.
But he couldn´t see her anywhere. Neither could he find his aunts. So he stumbled into the living room just to be greeted by the same picture. The house seemed to be plastered in scorch marks and at the far end of the room he could see a blood stain on the wall which had the form of a hand print. The sight of it and some other blood stains on the walls and floor had him shaking to the bone.
Suddenly his head was yanked, seemingly by an invisible force, towards the couch which was toppled over when he heard a groan coming from there.
It took Chris a second to realize what that meant but then he immediately dashed to the couch and around it where he found a severely injured body lying in a heap on the floor.
"MUM!"
Chris turned her around on her back and lifted her up so that her upper body was resting against his stomach and legs and cradled her head on his left arm while he caressed her face with his right hand.
He had started panicking the second he realized who was lying on that floor and was now having a hard time fighting back the tears. A fight he was clearly losing when he started yelling "DAD!! WYATT!!...ANYBODY!!!...I NEED HELP!!!...PLEASE HELP ME!!!...DAD!!!...WYATT!!!...MUM IS HURT!!!...PLEASE!!!"
He was interrupted by a pained cough coming from Piper. She had woken up and now had trouble breathing, surely a symptom from one of her numerous chest injuries. Chris pushed some of the sticky bloody hair out of her face.
"Mum? Mum!...Look at me! Everything will be ok! Wyatt and dad will be here any second! You´ll make it through this, ok? WYATT!!!DAD!!!"
Piper interrupted her son´s yell by grabbing his hand that was entangled in her t-shirt. "Ch-chris..."
He tried to look down at her but couldn´t see clear through all the tears so he wiped them away. He couldn´t care less that he was smearing blood all over his face. He wanted to see his mum´s beautiful face.
Her eyes were full of tears too so he gently wiped that single tear rolling down her cheek. It should be the last tear she ever cried...
"I´m ...s-sorry..."
Those three words...of which he was sure that they would forever resound in his head, like a never ending echo...
They tried to convey so much... I´m sorry that I can´t keep my promise! I´m sorry that I have to leave you alone! I´m sorry that all this happened! I´m sorry that I won´t see you grow up to be the man I know you can be! I´m sorry that you had to witness this!...
Those three words were the last words she ever was allowed to say. The last three words before she died in her youngest son´s arms.
At first Chris couldn´t move. He was too shocked to really understand what just happened. He was frozen.
But a few seconds later he started shaking his head. He didn´t want to believe what had just happened. He resumed the yelling for his father and brother to help him. All the time rocking himself and his mother´s body back and forth.
He was begging her to open those beautiful eyes for him. To just wake up!
But nothing ever happened and no one ever came.
After twenty minutes of constant screaming and yelling he was exhausted. And what was even worse ... He was hopeless...He gave up.
He broke down and started sobbing helplessly. He felt so weak and tired. He gently put Piper´s body back down to the floor and grabbed a pillow from the couch right next to her to rest her head on.
Chris caressed her face one more time, tracing her eyebrows, lips and nose, also all those little cuts on her face. With one last gentle movement he closed her eyes.
Then he lowered himself down next to her and curled up against her side not caring that he was lying in a growing puddle of blood. Slinging one of her arms around his shoulders he closed his eyes and started waiting.
Waiting for some one to come home. Waiting for this nightmare to end. Waiting for the pain to go away...
The whole room was silent. Nobody dared to interrupt neither Chris´s talking nor his silence. They were all too busy with their own feelings and tears. They just waited for him to continue.
"Wyatt came home at 5pm. Just like he was supposed to. The moment he entered the house he knew that something was wrong. He found me by mom´s side and too scared to find out whether we were alive or dead by himself he called for dad. He came immediately.
He tried to heal us, but mom could´t be healed and I didn´t need to be healed. I was completely lethargic by then. Lying next to your mother´s dead body for over an hour apparently does that to you." he said with a dry chuckle followed by a shake of his head.
"As far as I was told dad took me out of mum´s arms and handed me over to Wyatt who sat down with me in some corner of the room. I just remember that he was suddenly there and that he had his arms around me and was crying.
Dad Found Paige first. She was under a large peace of wood that used to be our dining room table. She was out cold and wounded badly but he managed to bring her back. And then they found Phoebe hidden under debris in another part of the conservatory. Miraculously alive, too."
The girls were sobbing silently by then and Leo was just shell-shocked. But there was one question nagging in his mind.
"Why didn´t I come when you called me?"
Chris voice was hollow. He was too exhausted to cry anymore. "You could´t hear me."
Paige, like the others, didn´t understand and asked "What do you mean he couldn´t hear you?"
"Just what I said. Scradon had developed some kind of potion that completely separated the manor from the outside world. Both the magical and the mortal. No sound was heard from the neighbours. Nobody heard my calls, neither Wyatt nor dad. Wyatt and I have a very strong magical bond so he must have a lot of seriously strong demons blessing the potion to overpower it.
When Wyatt opened the door however the ban was broken and dad heard him when he called. The elders hadn´t even felt the destruction of the power of three till then."
Piper whispered "Was that the reason Wyatt turned?"
Chris looked deep into her eyes and she could see the sincerity in them. "No. Whatever happened to him, happened when he was little, before I was born. You cold however call it some kind of trigger as it induced a change in his personality that at some point resulted in him becoming the source.
That´s why I had to stop Scradon now. Just in case I won´t be able to stop whatever gets to Wyatt... Maybe if you don´t die you´ll somehow be able to keep him in check or bind his powers when he goes too far."
Phoebe asked " How exactly did Wyatt change?"
"He flipped. He felt so out of control and he hated it. He tried to find those bastards on his own and I´m sure he would have wanted me to help him, but he knew I was too traumatized. It came to the point where he spent most of the time in the underworld coming home only occasionally to visit me or get a shower.
As far as I know, he found them someday. He killed their leader and took that position by himself ."
Leo gasped, "Why did he do that?"
"As I told you, he wanted control. And he wanted power. He didn´t care anymore what kind of power it was as long as it helped him reaching his goals. I think he wanted to protect himself from getting hurt again and thought if he was the most powerful being in the world nobody would dare to.
I think in some veeeery weird way he wanted to protect me too. And he thinks I should be thankful. And it angers him to no end that I didn´t join him."
"What did you mean when you said you were traumatized?", Piper inquired.
"Wyatt and I reacted very differently to what happened. Where he went demon-hunting-crazy I just retreated back into myself. I stopped sleeping and when I slept I was tortured by nightmares. Whenever I looked at my hands I saw blood on them. I stopped eating, too. The only people who could actually get some food into me were grandpa and Wyatt.
But as time went by I felt him drift further and further away from me. He wasn´t Wyatt anymore. At least not the way I remembered him from my childhood. It was hard seeing him disappearing.
It became so bad that I had to ask him not to come for a while because with everything else happening I just couldn´t take seeing him like that anymore. It was killing me. Of course he was furious and felt like I was abandoning him too, which I wasn´t! I was just trying to get my brother back and didn´t know how to do that. I needed time to think. "
Chris pained look changed into a smile as he looked at Phoebe and Paige, "You were wonderful though, you tried to be there for me no matter how much you were hurting yourself. You came as often as you could and whenever grandpa couldn´t be there with me one of you stayed over night so that I wouldn´t be alone when the dreams started.
I felt so numb and hopeless. I had lost any power and reason to fight. And the pain just wouldn´t go away, my heart wouldn´t heal. I was lost in this deep black hole and I didn´t know how to get out. Not until..."
He stopped suddenly thinking that he said too much. Chris didn´t want to hurt them any further but knowing his family meant knowing that they wouldn´t give up until he cracked so he just answered when Paige asked already dreading the answer "Until what?"
He hesitated a few seconds not knowing how to formulate it. "You have to understand that with the power of three gone and you two so devastated you were vulnerable ... and easy pray. You survived the first attacks but only very closely and in the end it came as it had to come. A few months after mum Phoebe was gone and on her own Paige didn´t last much longer."
Phoebe wasn´t sure how much more she could take. "Oh my god, we´re so sorry!"
But Chris just looked at her with pleading eyes. "Please, don´t be. Non of this was your fault. I would have loved for it to be any different but in the end it got me out of my depression.
I know it´s not the best thing to do, but after Paige was gone I just couldn´t take anymore emotional pain, so I just shut it out. I buried it deep inside and used it as my power source ever since.
You know that power blast I used on Scradon?... Pure seething anger."
Piper nodded knowingly. "Because your powers are tied to your emotions..."
Chris answered "Exactly. But I guess that over the last years the pent up emotions just got a little too much and after the vanquish I was too weak and tired to contain them any longer which eventually led to that breakdown.
Goood, that sounds so girly. Next week I´ll start throwing temper tantrums!"
The girls and Leo had to lauhg at that. Piper chuckled "Well at least you haven´t lost your humor, smart ass !!!"
Phoebe, our always emotion concerned empath asked him, "How are you feeling now?"
Chris took a deep breath , "Better actually. It was hard to talk about it, but now it , ...I don´t know... It feels different. I´m most certainly far from good, I won´t be good until Wyatt is save and the future is changed but I definitely feel better.
One burden is off of my shoulders and I got something off my chest that I had been carrying around for so many years and I think I´m up for fighting again!"
He smiled a cheeky grin but Piper was having non of it.
"Oh no, forget it mister! First you get healthy and then we´ll talk about that again. Until then you´ll lie back and eat whatever I cook! Got it?"
Chris grin grin grew even wider. "Well, I had to try, didn´t I?" he asked his aunts who nodded chuckling in approval.
When Piper wanted to say something about that she saw Leo looking at the ceiling and knew exactly what it meant. "Oh no, Leo! Not now! We´re in the middle of something here and..."
But she stopped her ranting when Chris squeezed her hand to get her attention. "Don´t mum, let him go. It might be important. And I´m tired and would really like to get some sleep. I´m sure he´ll come back as soon as he can." Then he turned to Leo and asked "Right?"
Leo saw in Chris eyes that he didn´t only try to reassure Piper but also himself. He smiled at him despite the little sting he felt in his chest at the fact that Chris actually needed reassurance and replied "Right."
Piper still a little angry said "Ok, but please take Wyatt with you and drop him off at magic school. He´s way too late already."
Father and son looked at each other for a second before Leo orbed to the nursery. A few minutes later they heard him orb out of the house.
Piper sighed, "Alright, I think we´ll better leave you alone now." She bent forward and kissed Chris on his forehead and whispered "I´ll see you later sweetie."
Normally Chris hated public display of affection of any kind from his mother but right now he needed it more than anything.
"Mom?"
"Yeah sweetie?
"Thanks for listening."
"No Chris. Thanks for talking to us. I know it was hard." Piper replied brushing some hair from his forehead.
They all just wanted to get up when a demon shimmered in. He was tall and rather human looking but his short hair was white even though he only looked about twenty five or thirty.
Faster then any of them could react he had dropped a potion vial with some green content from his left hand and tked Paige and Phoebe of the bed with his right. Phoebe crashed into a nearby standing table and Paige hit the wall near the door, hard. They were both out cold within seconds.
Piper wasn´t very quick with her big belly. She managed to get of the bed and get into position but before she could attack him the demon shoved her back telekinatically and she fell over backwards hitting her head on the nightstand.
When the demon saw that she was hurt but not unconscious he took an athame from his belt and threw it at her. Chris attacked him but didn´t see the result because he orbed in front of his mother to protect her.
As soon as he rematerialized he felt something hit his chest on the right side. Looking down to where the pain came from he realized that he had in fact managed to fling the demon into the wall but that he hadn´t stopped the athame which now had without doubt impaled his lung.
The demon got up from the floor and smiled at Chris. "You´ll pay for killing my master."
Chris didn´t know where the impulse came from but he suddenly raised his arms and flicked his wrists just like his mother normally does. The demon immediately started to scream and dissolved into flames only leaving a scorch mark on the floor.
Chris was too much in shock to really realize what he´d just done. He stared at his hands for a few seconds before putting them on the handle and pulling the knife out of his chest.
Piper opened her eyes when she heard someone scream. At first she couldn´t quite focus her eyes. She felt so dizzy and her head hurt like a bitch.
But then she realized that Chris was standing in front of her but she could only see his back. Piper saw him lower his arms to his sides and recognized the thing he held in one of his hands to be an athame. She gasped when she saw that it was full of blood. One drop of the dark crimson liquid hit carpet.
"Chris?" she croaked blinking furiously to see him better. When he heard the voice of his mother he turned around. Chris looked into her terrified eyes when she saw the fast growing stain on his t-shirt and let go of the athame which landed on the floor with a loud thud. A second later Chris´s legs gave in and he collapsed falling backwards.
Piper wanted nothing more that to get to her son but darkness overtook her and she slumped back to the side.
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I know me and my cliffies. But a girl´s gotta do what a girl´s gotta do!
By the way, we hit the 10 000 hits with this last chapter and are mere 40 away from the 11 000. Thank you so very much for that!!!
