This is what most of you have been waiting for: Wyatt's reaction...or well...more the prelude to his reaction. It just couldn't all fit in only one chapter.
Chapter XII
The Pact
The three sibling reappeared on top of the Golden Gate bridge. For a few tense minutes they looked at each other without saying a world.
Chris and Melinda were standing on one side of the bridge while Wyatt was facing both of them, his arms were crossed and there was a deep frown covering his face. Melinda was standing next to Chris and clinging to his arm, rubbing it as if to comfort him but using so much strength to do so that she was instead hurting him. Chris was standing still, his green eyes never leaving Wyatt's blue ones.
He had known that sooner or later Wyatt would have found out and that the longer they were to keep the secret, the harder it would become to tell Wyatt. Now the choice had been taken away from him and he had to explain to an angry Wyatt why they wouldn't tell him.
What he hadn't be able to anticipate was how deeply the hurt look, that his older brother was trying to hide, would cut him.
To think that this had all started as a silly kids' game.
He and Melinda were playing in the kitchen. They were around eight and four years old respectively. They were playing in the kitchen while Piper was cleaning the rooms upstairs from a demon-attack-mess.
Chris was making Melinda dolls levitate with his telekinesis, concentrating really hard to make them move as real people. Melinda was giggling in her chair and ordering him to make them more real. She had always had a thing for ordering people around. The fact that she was the younger child and the only girl helped her a lot, since neither her parents nor her brothers were able to deny her anything.
Right at that moment Wyatt orbed into the kitchen to take some cookies to eat while watching "big kids TV", as he liked to call it.
"More real!" Shouted Melinda just as Wyatt reformed. The older boy neared the kitchen table to see what his younger siblings were up to, after all he had to make sure they didn't do anything dangerous since he was the eldest.
As he saw his little brother concentrating really hard to make the dolls move, he frowned. Chris was almost starting to sweat for using all that power to make the dolls move. So he moved his right hand in front of the dolls. They were immediately engulfed in a bright blue light. Seeing that Chris dropped them on the table and turned to stare at Wyatt, as did Melinda.
Wyatt smiled satisfied and prompted the two of them to look at the dolls, nudging them. The dolls were now standing on their feet, completely and utterly alive.
Chris and Melinda just stared at the dolls that were now waving their hands at them, Chris scowling darkly at them. However only Melinda noticed that; Wyatt just smiled at his brother, happy he could help him.
"There's no need to try that hard to please Mellie, Chris . I have enough power for this things." He kept smiling as he got his cookies and walked back in the solarium. Happy that he had been able to stop his brother before he hurt himself. His mom was always saying that was his job and he was really proud of it.
The dolls started dancing and chatting, but the little girl didn't take much notice of that. The sour look on her brother face was all she could look at. Seeing as Melinda didn't take notice of them, the dolls neared Chris giggling. He just looked angrily at them and moved his hands to throw them away from him with his telekinesis.
But that didn't happens. The dolls disappeared into a silent swirl of golden light only to reappear immobile on the kitchen table. Chris just looked at them with wide eyes, while Melinda jumped up and down on her chair.
"Chrissie! You have a new power! Yay! Let's tell Wy! Yay!" As Melinda tried to hop down the chair too high for her, Chris reached his hands out to stop her. The movement had one of the glasses on the counter blew up in the swirl of golden light. Fortunately for him it reappeared intact or his mother would have grounded him for at least a week.
"No!" He whisper-yelled " If we tell him he'll just make a big deal out of it and then show us a more amazing power of his." He said with a frown. Every time he or Melinda learned something new, Wyatt came up with something extraordinary to show them.
His brother words from earlier resound in his head: I have enough power for this things.
"That …thing I did…is not important. If we have Wyatt, we don't need it. If the family knew I'd have to force myself to make my power as strong as Wyatt's. You know how they are! I can't be Wyatt." Melinda looked dubiously at her big brother.
She knew it was lying and that was wrong to do, but he was right in a way. She always saw how the family tried to make the oldest children work on their powers. It wasn't a bad thing, demons could attack any moment and they had to at least know how to use their powers to distract the demons and run away.
The problem was that they all practiced together, in the same room… and every time one of them managed to learn something new, Wyatt twice blessed power improved. Nobody in the family blamed Wyatt, they knew he wasn't trying to show off.
Their dad had said that Wyatt Twice Blessed powers were triggered by the amount of magic that surrounded him, hence when one developed a new power his automatically increased. The others didn't even think about it anymore, the fact that their cousin was so strong was a good thing for them. But Chris had always been different. He was never jealous of Wyatt, even when the others had been. All he wanted was to stand by Wyatt, because he knew he felt lonely, all the others were paired between cousins, he was the only one that trained with the Charmed Ones. Alone, in a different side of the room.
Melinda knew that was when the problems started. Their mother and aunts had agreed to have the two boy train together, but that had triggered Chris' doom. One day, during their training Wyatt wounded Chris by accident.
That's when the older boy decided Chris couldn't stand in the line of fight or by him.
Melinda was sure their older brother didn't notice how hurt Chris had been by his decision, because he only wanted to protect him. From then on Chris had started to feel like he didn't need to tell Wyatt of his improvements, since his brother didn't need him. Melinda could get it, because even if so little she was starting to feel the same.
"Please Mellie, let's make it our secret." At that the girl's eyes lighted up.
"Like a secret pact?" She asked. Chris nodded, also smiling and she beamed up at him. "Only you a me. Like your boy's thingies with Wy?" She launched her hands around Chris' neck and nodded eagerly.
"I know they don't mean to make you feel little." At that point Piper entered the kitchen with Wyatt chatting happily. The two younger Halliwells shared a last secret look before joining them.
Chris knew that his had been an irrational fear. The family made him work hard on his powers so he could protect himself and because being one of the older cousins he had to be able to help the youngers out too. But after childhood came the teen years and with them magic school. If he showed only his telekinesis nobody would compare his powers to Wyatt. Some still made fun of him, but mostly they considered him just a more than average witch.
Moreover it was clear Wyatt didn't need Chris' help and his powers. If he had ever needed it Chris wouldn't have been able to hide his powers from him, he would have ended up using them to protect him. The Twice Blessed however, had never needed his little brother's help.
Chris truly had believed there was no reason to tell anybody about all of his powers.
Then the years had passed and lying became the easy way out, or so he had though up until now. The hurt and betrayed look on his brother's face told him a different story.
All the anger slowly left Wyatt as he looked at his siblings, all that rested was the hurt. He just couldn't understand why they had felt the need to lie to him. He had always tried to be there for them.
Why couldn't they trust him?
He remembered what Melinda had told Chris before he had entered the cage: "Break the pact."
What was this about them making pacts about not telling him things?
What had he done to be left out from it? To be left out of their lives?
What was the point of developing new powers if he didn't use them against demons?
How could Chris even learn to control them if he didn't use them? Only…he did know how to use them. He had just taken out five strong witches in less than half an hour. Five powerful witches that were trained as assassins.
Did that mean they had hidden from him while they trained?
Did Melinda have a whole set of powers he didn't know about as well?
Why would they need to leave him out of this?
Why would they even need this crazy secret pact in the first place?
How could they?
Why would they?
Chris that in second grade decided there had to be a brother's day, just like there was a mother's day and father's day, because he was just as awesome? Melinda that still stopped the clock from moving every time he overslept so their mother wouldn't notice?
Looking at the two of them standing near each other in front of him, it made him feel left all the sneaked glances and the whispered conversations were starting to assume a different meaning to his eyes. He had always though they had their secrets. After all he and Chris talked about things they never shared with Melinda or anybody else, and the same went for him and Melinda. She had come to him many times to ask for help and they confided in each other too.
But this was different.
This wasn't a secret, it was a lie.
He finally managed to look them in the eyes. "Why?" Was all he can manage to ask in the end.
I hope you liked it...and will let me know if you did. I really enjoy reading your reactions.
A big thank you to those that reviewed and added this story, I hope you'll enjoy it till the end.
MYRA: For now you'll have to make do with this flashback and a shocked Wyatt, but don't worry next time you'll get pissed off Wyatt for sure.
MISA3000: I bet you'll have no problem at all at spotting the changes in this chapter.