Hello everyone and welcome to the second-to-last chapter of Destined to Die! More kudos to Bre-Chan for making me (and yes, I said making me) write this chapter. And to JeChan, just for making me smile!
Also, I've said it a MILLION times, and it seems that NO ONE READS MY AUTHORS NOTES! SO, I'll say it one more time:
I KNOW I have spelling errors. I know it OK? I willingly choose not to have a beta because I am diagnostically paranoid and untrusting and I do NOT want a total stranger proofreading my chapter, leaving my work in someone else's hands.
For those of you nice enough to actually read my profile or authors notes, THANK you!
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The ride back to the future was just as unnerving and disorienting as the ride back. There was the rushing of time slipping fast-forward round them, their ears catching brief snippets of the last 23 years.
But forward was worse. So much worse. In 2004, they knew what to expect. As horrible and heart-wrenching as their welcome was, they were prepared, on some level. But now?
Gideon's warning echoed in their ears, hollowing out their hearts to make room for more dread and foreboding to take root.
"You have no idea what horrors you'll return home to!"
What would they find? Wyatt couldn't even bear to think. It was almost a paradox, actually. Here they were, passing over two decades in a swift flight, and yet he never felt time drag by so slowly. How long does it take to time travel? Hours, it seemed to Wyatt. Days even. Was that a paradox, or irony?
Piper was trapped in her own inner anguish. Why did it seem that Fate was out to get the Halliwells? Did she and Destiny have some sort of personal vendetta against the coven?
Chris.
What did he ever do to deserve being trapped in such a torturous time loop? Destined to suffer, destined to bear the brunt of the world's weight, destined to always fail. Why? After all he had done, risking everything he had to save the future, why had he-
With a jarring and gut-;lurching ferocity they were thrown from the wormhole and onto the attic floor again, skidding across the polished wood, catching cloth and skin of rough boards and loose nails, drawing blood.
Piper never wanted to see another drop of blood as long as she lived.
The mother and her child lay belly down on the floor for only a few seconds, no longer than they dared, in order to regain their orientation. Wyatt could feel a sharp ache beginning to form in his chest, most likely from bruised ribs, hopefully not broken. Even if they were, he doubted he could bring himself to care. He could be holding his innards in his very hands for all he cared; all that mattered at the moment was Chris.
"You ok?" he asked Piper, helping his mother to her feet. She coughed in reply, expelling an admirable amount of dirt and dust as means of reply.
"We have got to start sweeping that floor more often," she jested, though her humor was halfhearted and fell on uncaring ears. His wasn't the time for light hearted jokes, no matter how forced.
"You ready, Mom?" Wyatt prompted, wanting nothing more than to hurry up and see his brother.
Piper reached out eagerly to grasp Wyatt's hands, but she hesitated, her hand hovering above Wyatt's. A moment ago she was longing to run and see her baby, the anxiety eating away at her from the inside. But now, only a beat later, she couldn't bring herself to grasp Wyatt's hand to orb her along with him.
She was afraid. No, that was too weak a word.
Piper was terrified.
Gideon's final prophesy followed her back from 2004, clinging to her, soaking into her skin, tainting her clothes. It hovered about her in a smoggy cloud, filling her lungs, burning her throat with tars. It sunk deep into her blood, poisoning her soul with dread like a virus, like the very sickness that had taken Chris form her the second time. His words reverberated over and over in her ears, becoming the very nature of the prophesy itself; death clung to Chris with a fervor, like a prized trinket, and misfortune was his shadow. And now, it seemed, this final promise was Piper's own cross to bear.
Wyatt shook his hand, impatient, and flicked a matted curl out of his eyes deftly.
"Mom, c'mon! Let's go!" the witch insisted, not able to see the uncertainty looming behind Piper's hazel eyes.
With a tightening in her chest like a metal band, she shook her head helplessly. "Wyatt, I can't…"
"What do you mean you can't?" Wyatt repeated. He was so bent on getting to his brother, his mind set on one track that he couldn't comprehend his mother's reluctance to do the same "Mom, we have no idea how Chris is! We need to-"
"That's why I can't!" Piper's shaky, timid voice finally surged, sharp and loud. Startled by even her own yelling, Piper just took to shaking her head again. "That's why I can't! Don't you get it, Wy? We have no idea how Chris is! He could still be sick! He could be hurt! He might not even be-" but the band tightened, cutting off words she couldn't harbor.
Wyatt's frustrating softened, sensing how torn his mother was, though still not understanding it.
"But, Mom! Don't you see?" he stepped forward, really not wanting to have a chick-flick moment when he should be orbing over to wherever Chris was. "That's why we HAVE to go! He could be perfectly fine! He could be alive and healthy and wondering where the hell we are, and you wanna just stand here and fret yourself silly?"
He had a point and she bloody well knew it. But that did nothing to sate her fear. Every aspect of Murphy's Law was running rampant in her exhausted brain, running scenario after horrid scenario.
"Wyatt, I…I just…"
"Just what?" came Wyatt's angered reply, now almost furious at his mother's stubborn balking. "Just can't stand to bear a little ore pain for your son's sake?"
Piper clenched her eyes shut against Wyatt's cutting words, feeling almost unable to breath against his suffocating agitation and her own smothering anxiety.
"You're his mother!" Wyatt continued, sounding as distressed as Piper felt. "It shouldn't matter if you're scared! What if HE is? What if, Gods forbid, something IS wrong and there's no one there with him? Ever think about that?"
Piper hadn't. She truly hadn't. All she could think about was the hardship of having to see Chris, or either of her children, in a worse situation than what they had already suffered through. No mother wanted to see her child suffering…but no good mother would just turn her back and pretend it wasn't happening.
Unable to find her choice again, Piper just breathed deeply, stealing herself as he reached out shakily to take Wyatt's hand, reveling in the weightless feeling of being dissolved into millions of point of light and soaring through the air above San Francisco. She had no physical senses while orbing, but she could imagine the feel of the icy wind against her skin, whipping through her hair, blowing her closer to Chris, her youngest, and whatever tragedy may befall them.
)o(
The pair corporealized beside the main door of the hospital, sufficiently covered by the thick hedges covering the bleak concrete walls. It was still night in the present or very early morning, and there was no moon; the only light was the artificial fluorescent spilling out the 3 sets of double doors and the floodlight illuminating the carved letters of the hospital's entrance sign. Piper had no more than felt the tips of her fingers and toes meld back together before Wyatt began pulling her along behind him. Warmth flowed over their chilled bodies as the automatic doors swooshed open in front of him, the stark an nearly empty lobby a far too sterile place for such emotional stress to harbor.
Wyatt felt rather like some sort of soap opera actor walking into a lecture hall or a staunch Victorian parlor; he just didn't belong. This was for people who had to wait for news, who needed to rely on time to tell them what they needed to know, and needed to be quiet and think. Wyatt had no time to dwell on thoughts of What If's. Playing What If and letting himself become overwhelmed by all the horror that could befall his little brother only kept him from the truth even longer.
The careened through the corridors, taking only a moment to be sure and mind themselves carefully around wheelchairs and stretchers. More than once they could hear the scoldings and curses of a nurse or orderly, most likely one they had almost knocked over. The young Halliwell couldn't help but think wryly that his mother would be ashamed of his behavior had she not been trailing behind him just as recklessly.
Finally they reached the turnoff in the corridor, and the set of double doors that separated the ICU from the other wards. Wyatt halted himself, panting heavily and bent double, rubbing harshly at a stitch tearing between his sore ribs. His first impulse was to shoot through those doors with as much ferocity as he had shot down the hallway, but deeply ingrained sense stopped him. Rude and inconsiderate didn't even begin to cover how such behavior would be seen in the ICU. It was as though the bold, black lettering above the door way serves as a barrier, as effective as his family's trademark crystal cage.
Wyatt gnawed at his bottom lip, not bothering to brush the hair form his eyes. God he must be a site, with his damp and tangled curls matting at the ends, his rumpled clothes rancid and wrinkled. His mother, a woman he always saw as nothing than beautiful, was looking worse for wear even to him, and if she looked less than pristine, he shuddered to think of his own appearance.
But he couldn't bear to dwell on such trivialities. Who the hell cared how he looked right now?
He glanced sideways at his mother, who looked so steeled and determined Wyatt had to wonder how she did it. How could she construct an armor so exact, with each rivet so tightly anchored and each feature painted with the skill of an angels brush that not even an empathy could sense the absolute torment that lay behind the metal?
Before Wyatt could even decide what to do next, Piper had already taken matters into her own hands. Without so much as a hesitation or tremble, she reached out, pressing the buzzer located beside the locked doors, ringing the nurses station.
"Good morning. What can I do for you?" came the somewhat static voice through the speaker, sounding far away and rustling.
"Yes, I would like to see my son, Chr-"
"Ma'am, it's 1:30 in the morning, visiting hours are over," the nurse replied sharply, as though she was pissed at having to work the nightshift and was letting Piper know it.
But Piper could be just as pissy. Narrowing her deep brown eyes, she stood tall, as though trying to look intimidating to a woman who couldn't even see her.
Taking a deep breath, she continued in a firm, even voice, "I know it is, but my son and I, we need to see him. We weren't able to get here any sooner."
A few low murmurs twined over the speaker, sounding vaguely like swearwords. "I already told you, visiting hours are over. We keep very strict hours in the ICU so the patients can rest, so unless your son in a minor or you have his doctor's permission, I can't let you in."
Wyatt gulped as he watched his mom, and, more particularly, his mother's itchy trigger fingers; he could tell she was just dying to blow the voice box off the wall.
But Piper Halliwell refrained from indulging in such a gross breach of Wiccan etiquette Instead, she took a step closer to the voice box, pointing a scolding finger at it almost absurdly. "I don't care if it's passed visiting hours, lady," she replied, her words harsh but her tone almost civil. My son is sick, and I haven't seen him in…in…well, it feels like years! Please, just…can you at least tell me how he is?"
For a minute there was nothing but static on the speaker, sounding like leaves or a butterscotch candy wrapper. Finally, the long-suffering nurse sighed a "fine," and Wyatt could hear the locks in the door disengaging.
The ICU was, understandably, one of the quietest wards in the hospital, particularly at such an ungodly hour in the morning. On instinct, the pair wanted to head straight for the room Chris had been admitted to, but they were sidestepped by a frazzled nurse in grey scrubs, presumably the one his mother had snipped at.
"Name, please," she prompted, taking a long swallow from a jumbo cup of Starbucks before poising her keys over her keyboard.
"Christopher Halliwell," both his brother and mother recited at once, and Wyatt added his room number.
The nurse looked at them puzzled for a moment, but said nothing as he long fingers tapped across the keys. She studied the screen in front of her, retyped more information, and scrolled again, before taking another gulp of her coffee and announcing, "There is no Christopher Halliwell in the ICU."
Piper's first gut reaction was the desire to cry in relief. Just hours ago, Chris had been lying deathly ill in the ICU, and now he wasn't even there. She clasped her hands to her mouth, shuddering in relief.
Wyatt, however, realized suddenly, this wasn't necessarily celebratory news. Murphy's Law haunted their family, after all, and just because he wasn't in ICU didn't mean he was peachy-keen. It ripped at him to see his mother looking so relieved, obviously not having the same revelation he was. How could he even bare to suggest that Chris may be in worse shape than before? Of course…maybe she WAS right. San Francisco was an enormous city, and Chris could be anywhere…but still…
"Would you mind searching again, please?" It tormented Wyatt's heart to ask it, but he just had to know. Usually being a pessimist was Chris's specialty, and he was the one to be pathologically positive. However, nothing seemed to be going the way it should now…
The nurse glanced daggers up at him, let out a pitiful sigh and grudgingly began to peck at the keyboard again. She reminded him rather of the nurse who had examined Chris when he was first admitted. God, it seemed like that was 2 years ago rather than just over 2 days! Or was it longer even than that? Time travel and no sleep could seriously distort a persons perception of hours.
As the grouchy nurse clicked her way through the hospitals digital records, Piper was looking positively betrayed, as though Wyatt's pain was a personal insult.
"Wyatt," she hissed quietly, needing to say nothing more to get her message across.
Wyatt got it. Oh he understood clear as crystal, but he chose to ignore. He never was a very obedient child. Besides, he had more important things on his mind than repressed memories of scoldings.
Grumpy took her sweet time clicking through the windows on the screen, and had just opened her mouth, most likely to snap that she, again, didn't find anything, until something n the screen caught her eye. She raised one eyebrow in a semi-interested fashion, her drowsy eyes scanning the type on the monitor.
"Hmm…you two aren't even on the right floor, hon," she informed Wyatt, flicking her eyes from the screen only briefly.
And Wyatt's heart plummeted to the bottom of his darkening soul. That meant that Chris was still in the hospital!
Hidden by the tall counter, Wyatt reached out in search of Piper's hand, feeling it tremble in his own. Trying to be strong for his mother, he reasoned with himself. If Chris wasn't in ICU, that meant he wasn't as sick as before. A cold, a light fever, sprained ankle, that was nothing. They could deal with it.
Piper seemed to be thinking the same thing, because as Wyatt could see the gears churning in her mind he felt her hand relax, saw her face become calmer.
The nurse was jotting down something on a pad of paper a blue one patterned with some kind of parrot in the background. She capped her pen and handed the paper over to Wyatt wordlessly before getting up to answer the call light that just flipped on above a patient's doorway.
Feeling more at peace than he had in a while, Wyatt picked the square of paper off the laminate countertop to read, sure that nothing it had to say could be any worse than the Hell they had gone through already.
Until he actually read it.
And he knew he was wrong, so very wrong.
"Wyatt?" Piper prodded, trying to see what was written on the page, knowing that it held nothing but more bad news for their broken family. "Wyatt, let me see it."
But Wyatt couldn't even move. Just a handful of words scrawled in thin, loopy writing, and yet they held more power over him than the most fearful enchantress.
Not knowing was making Piper expect the worse, 100 scenarios playing like a movie stuck on fast-forward. "Wyatt, please!" she all but begged, shaking him with the little will she could muster. "Just tell me he isn't….isn't…"
"Dead?" Wyatt supplied in a monotone. "No, he's alive." He assured her, and before she could press him any further for details, to ask him what could possibly be worse then that, he handed the parrot paper over without a word, turning his back to her and leaving the ward in silence.
Piper watched him until the door swung slowly back into place behind him, not sure if she really wanted to read it…but she had to…
Her warm cocoa eyes drank in the words before her, as though siphoning the ink off the page itself, and in seconds she had her answer, and once more she wished she could reverse the hands of time, to undo the 4 seconds it took her to read them, because she was sure her aging heart wouldn't be able to take this one last heartbreak. Hastily folding the page into quarters, she stuffed it into her breast pocket and followed her son's path, because she now knew exactly where he was. Where bother her sons were.
Halliwell, Christopher
3rd floor, room 377
Psychiatric Ward
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Well?
How's my Evil Score rating about now? Tell the truth; did any of you see than one coming?
Hope not, cause even I didn't know it was coming! I had an entirely different direction for this story to go, but then while I was doing housework one day, this idea just popped into my head and it was MUCH more interesting! I also apologize for its relative shortness; it's a transition chapter, after all.
There's only ONE CHAPTER LEFT of Destined to Die everyone, so please be sure to leave a review! If you don't, I just might have to leave you, Chris and Wyatt hanging here for a while and go write for my anime fandoms again! (insert evil laughter here)
Really, though. Reviews are loved.
Lottsa love,
LLC