In A Most Unusual Way
Chapter Thirteen: A Tale of Two Couples

Phoebe Halliwell was crying. Worse, she was crying over the man she'd sworn never to let into her heart again. And the worst was that she was crying in Ark's tractor museum on the wheel of a John Deere.

"This is so not happening," she said. "It's not, because it can't be."

"Phoebe," a familiar voice called. "It's…you."

She looked up. Toby had found her.

"Look," her younger self said. "All of this…what happened with you and Cole…it hurts. I know it does."

"Just wait," said Phoebe. "It'll hurt worse when it happens to you."

Toby leaned against another tractor. "Maybe it doesn't have to."

"What?"

"Maybe we came here to change this," said Toby slowly. "Cole's my--our--soulmate. We've established that."

"Well, my version of our soulmate went evil on me." Phoebe got up stiffly. "Do whatever you want with yours. I don't care."

Toby watched her leave, stunned.

"One thing I never thought I'd become," the blonde said, "is a quitter."

XXX

Across the parking lot were four Halliwells, two Turners, and a partridge (named Johanna) in a pear tree (called the back of the pickup). It was a tense silence that Cole could no longer stand.

"How did I get to be mediator in this?" he asked.

"Because you're the only one that wants to," answered Johanna.

"Just checking."

"I still want to know why nobody thought my death was worth mentioning," said Prue.

"It's a future consequence thing!" Piper shouted. "Do you honestly think we wanted you to get thrown through a wall?"

Cole winced. This was going to be tricky to navigate. "All right," he said. "We've got a lot of…issues."

"You think so?" asked Belthazor.

"I think the person with the most issues is MIA," suggested Paige. "Somebody should go look for Phoebe. Cole, you're obviously out. Prue, you've gotta deal with your death and Piper, you're kinda testy at the moment."

"I'll go," Belthazor said.

"Do you think that's a good idea?" asked Pipita. "I mean, Phoebe seemed a little bit against any Turner, no matter what form of evil they are...were...will be...whatever."

"No, he should go," Piper said. "Maybe a visit from the old Cole will help."

"Either that or she'll snap his neck," muttered Paige.

Belthazor climbed out of the truck. "I heard that."

"Go," said Prue.

"Can I come?" Johanna asked.

The answer, not surprisingly, was no.

XXX

A quick traipse across the gravel brought Belthazor to the museum. He paused, his hand on the door handle. "Phoebe?" he called.

"Which one are you?" a voice asked.

"Which one are you?"

"I don't hate you yet."

Belthazor opened the door and was accosted by Toby. "You okay?" he asked.

"Oh, I'm fine. I just found out that my boyfriend is going to become completely evil and we're going to spawn a new generation of badness." She smiled weakly. "A perfect day, huh?"

He hugged her a little closer. After knowing what would come to pass in less than two years, he couldn't help but appreciate what was passing now. "I love you."

"I love you too."

"Remember that."

Toby kissed him. "We can fix it," she promised. "We can save you, baby, I know we can."

"We don't know how, and I don't think anybody's gonna be up for sharing any other future tidbits."

"There might be one person." Toby raised her eyebrows. "Johanna."

"Piper would cut out her tongue."

"Well, according to Paige, there are DVDs--records of what happens between now and then. We could ransack those and see what we get."

"Are you proposing a wiretap of the future, Miss Halliwell?" asked Belthazor.

"Oh, I most certainly am."

"Top secret?"

"Always."

And the demon kissed the witch, dreams of a happily ever after dancing in both of their heads.

XXX

"We're missing the polka."

Johanna received multiple eye-rolls.

"I was just saying…" She trailed off. "Forget it."

"Where are Belthazor and the Phoebes?" Piper asked, shifting in the bed of the pickup. "My butt's asleep."

"I'll go look for them," Cole volunteered.

"And have both sets gone?" Prue shook her head. "I don't think so."

Cole stood. "In my opinion, you lost your say when you lost consciousness. Ciao."

"They're running out on us!" cried Pipita.

XXX

"Phoebe?" Cole called cautiously. His ex-wife was nowhere to be seen. In San Francisco, that would be cause for worry. Here, it was just annoying. "Come on. We need to talk."

"We're done with talking."

Cole peered around the edge of the community center and got a blast of muffled accordion from the propped-open door. "Seriously," he said.

Phoebe didn't divert her gaze from the evergreen tree she was tossing rocks at with fury. "I hate you," she said. "I loved you, I hated you, so screw you. Step on a land mine, I don't give a--"

"Yes you do." Cole moved closer. "I know you. True love never dies, Phoebe, and that's what we had."

"Spare me the Hallmark greeting card crap!" Phoebe threw a dark gray rock and missed her target completely. "I hate living with you constantly beating me with 'I love you.' You know why? Because I don't deserve the kind of love you give. Yours is totally unconditional and I can't be the same way. You keep thinking that nothing has changed and I can just go back to the way we were. I can't, okay? I cannot pretend nothing ever happened. I lost so much with you--"

"And you think I didn't?" demanded Cole. "You were talking about giving up your heritage. I gave up mine the second you stripped me of my demon half. I left everything I'd known for unfamiliar territory. And in case you're forgetting, that baby that you lost was part mine. It may have been the Source but it was our love that created it. Look at me, Phoebe." He grabbed her shoulders. "We went through hell. Together. At least you didn't have to be possessed by the Source for months. Every morning I would wake up and have this wild hope that today would be different and he would be gone, and then I'd realize that I had no control over my body. You have no idea what that's like."

"There was the Woogy," said Phoebe defensively.

"For a day. A day, Phoebe," Cole repeated. "Times that by sixty."

Her dark eyes glazed, as if calculating the agony. "You could have told me," she said at last.

"I tried. Do you remember the night when you asked if there was anything that I wasn't telling you? I was so close to blurting it out but it was like there was duct tape over my mouth. The Source's control is unimaginable."

Phoebe looked at the man--the man she'd loved--and felt something snap and lift at the same time. "I'm so sorry," she whispered. "I am so…sorry."

The tears came again. Cole looked at her uncomfortably, not sure what to do, then put his arms around her. "So am I," he said.

"Everything happens for a reason." Phoebe quoted her the phrase that had been her mantra for the past five years. "Maybe you became the Source as…I don't know. A test? A test to make us stronger?"

"There's an 'us'?" Cole asked, surprised.

"Whether I like it or not, there'll always be an 'us.'" Phoebe allowed herself to smile up at him.

"I should let you have some time to think about all of this--"

"No." Phoebe shook her head. "I've had too much thinking. Would you like to dance?"

'I'm a horrible dancer."

"Have you ever polkaed?"

"Never."

"Neither have I." She extended her hand. "Let's go."

And the demon and the witch re-entered the community center, dreams of a…well, they didn't know what kind of an ever-after they were dreaming of just yet.

A/N: The time now is 2:28 A.M. and I wrote this all in one little sitting. Kinda crazy.

This had more drama in it than the previous chapters, but in something like this (the whole Cole/Phoebe thing), there's bound to be a little bit somewhere. I figured that they both had old wounds that were festering and bound to explode at sometime--theirs just exploded in the company of August Higgins and the Polka Dots.