Chapter 21

Derek materialized into his room in Istanbul to change his clothes before heading out to Wyatt's. Moments after materializing, he sensed Salek arriving and was not surprised that he orbed directly into his room.

"Are you not tired of following me?" Derek asked, slightly annoyed. His punishment was over, meaning that his security detail should have long since left. Unfortunately, Salek hadn't gotten the message and had taken to following him every time he left the monastery.

"Have I not proven that I can take care of myself and others?" Derek said.

"Yes you have," Sarek replied neutrally.

Derek breathed deeply, trying to calm down. He knew why everyone was hovering around him. He wished he could just shake off the affects that Malek had on him... but his mind refused to let him move on. There were times where he felt trapped in a maze and every route led back to his troubled past.

Salek was one of the best things that happened to him. He believed that Derek could do anything he put his mind to. One of the reasons Derek always got into trouble was because Salek was passive enough to let him have his own way.

"Thank you," Derek said quietly as he started to look through his closet for an outfit. Choosing what to wear was so much easier when you had no choices.

Salek lifted an eyebrow at the extreme change in Derek's mood.

"You know... for letting me make my own choices... and mistakes," Derek said. "I know the better choice was to wait for you to catch up to us... but I wanted to know if I could see it through without you."

Salek looked over at his son, "I believe I owe you an apology," he said.

"Why?" asked Derek, frowning as he turned to face Salek.

"I caught up to you when you were extracting information from that low life demon," he said.

After taking a moment to process, Derek grinned from ear to ear. He rushed towards Salek to embrace him. The young man was pleased that he was trusted enough to prove himself capable. After getting over his own shock, Salek wrapped his arms around Derek and returned the hug. Salek felt the boy shaking and for a moment thought that the boy was crying until he noticed that he was actually laughing.

Removing himself from the hug, Salek looked at Derek curiously.

"Sorry, I'm not laughing at you. I don't even know why I'm laughing! But seriously... thank you," he said.

Salek smiled at Derek, "get changed so we can head out," he said. He left the boy to change knowing that for the moment everything between them was fine.

XXXXXXX

Wyatt walked up the steps leading to his apartment like your everyday normal college student. He decided to forego the use of magic today, instead opting to use his car. As he walked into his apartment he noticed that his brother was spread out over his couch and engrossed in a book. Dumping his supplies on a table close to the couch, Wyatt leaned over inconspicuously to see what his brother was reading. The words The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time and the Texture of Reality, were printed neatly on the cover. Wyatt sighed, he didn't get his brother's enjoyment from extra-curricular reading. His brother was the biggest geek he had even met... and the coolest. He didn't dress like one either, Chris was looking rather trendy with his dark blue jeans, a black turtle neck with runic designs and Dock Martins for shoes... shoes that just so happened to be busy dirtying his couch.

Sensing his brother exasperation, Chris quietly moved his legs so his feet were off the couch and on the coffee table. Satisfied that his couch wouldn't be getting any dirtier than normal, he went back to observing his brother. His brother had also chosen to accessorize, opting to wear fingerless gloves and a gray bandana that had a grinning shark at the centre of it. Whilst his brother was by no means embarrassed by his shaven head, he had taken a liking to bandanas and had begun to wear them with a great amount of regularity.

'I wonder who buys his clothes…'

"Millie," Chris said, never taking his eyes of the book.

"How can you keep reading and concentrate on what I am thinking?" asked Wyatt as he took off his jacket and hung it in the closet.

"Multitasking," said Chris as he lowered the book down enough to see Wyatt. "You should try it sometime, its good exercise for the brain," he finished with a smile, ducking to the side from the stress ball Wyatt retrieved from the closet to throw at him.

Chris laid the book out on his chest to keep his page and stretched his arm to get the ball. Taking one look at his brother's face, Wyatt knew he would undoubtedly have to play the entertainer shortly. If Chris was a puppy he would be sitting with the ball in his mouth and his head crocked the side with wide eyes and a wagging tail.

"I'd be a wolf cub," Chris yelped, causing Wyatt to laugh. "Oh, Salek is making dinner with Mrs. Halliwell by the way."

That meant that Chris had three hours away from the monastery. He was generally allotted this amount of time twice a week to go and visit his family. Of course, during these visits, his mother made sure that they had an hour long family dinner… which gave them all of two hours to do something exciting.

Wyatt almost groaned, it wasn't that he didn't want to do something with his brother, but he already had plans.

"I have other things to do today. But you can tag along if you want to," Wyatt suggested.

"What sort of things?" answered Chris, much like an eager puppy.

Instead of answering him, Wyatt moved over to his bedroom where the bathroom was, "I am going to take a shower and then we will go alright?" he said.

Chris didn't even answer and Wyatt knew that he was back to reading his book.

Thinking of his brother, he reflected on what he had learnt about him. He knew his brother's life was not easy. In the last three months, Wyatt had several glimpses of what Chris's life at the monastery was like. It was harsh at times, but he knew that Chris thrived under the tutorage of so many people who wanted to push him past his boundaries. He wasn't sure if his parents could have kept Chris entertained had they been the ones to raise him.

Wyatt had seen many of Chris' memories of the monastery. He knew that his brother enjoyed his time there and liked to work hard. Although the influx of memories that didn't belong to him sometimes confused him, Wyatt was happy to discover that Chris managed to find some happiness after his abduction.

However, not everything was a walk in the park at the monastery. Since their adventure, Chris had most of his free time taken away from him. He read at nearly every available moment in an attempt to keep up with the extensive amount of work that was piled onto him. There was a great deal of physical and magical training to be done. They also didn't neglect subjects such as history and philosophy. Wyatt was fairly certain that his own brain would explode if he had to read half of what Chris read.

After a quick shower and a change of clothes, Wyatt joined his brother on the couch. Now that their bodies were closer together, Wyatt took note of the fact his brother was far skinnier than him. Chris practically looked starved! Chris was already rather muscular and didn't have any weight to be losing in the first place; he ought to be gaining weight if anything!

"You sound like Salek, Millie and Bruno," his brother commented.

"Good to know I'm not the only one worrying," said Wyatt. Their mother had also mentioned the weight loss. He was eating quite healthily too… Chris managed to eat more than Wyatt and that was saying something.

"It's not like I am going to drop dead," said Chris, putting the book down.

'Millie wants me to see a healer,'he said through the link, sometimes things were easier when they weren't said out loud.

'Becauseof the nightmares, right?'asked Wyatt. The older of the two was often privy to Chris' dreams since his brother was normally asleep when Wyatt was awake.

Without answering Chris got up, "are we going or what?"

"Chris!" Wyatt exclaimed.

"I don't want to talk about it, ok?" he said angrily. 'Please, Wyatt?'

Ever since their little visit to Malek, Chris had been under a lot of stress due to his recent memory-induced nightmares. Wyatt himself woke up in cold sweat on occasions, screaming in pain. He was at a loss as to what he was dreaming about.

Wyatt didn't understand how their link worked. If they were both asleep Wyatt knew that sharing a dream was possible. But when one of them was asleep and the other awake, you couldn't really see what the other was dreaming about; at least Wyatt knew that he couldn't. He knew that somehow Chris was affecting his dreams; he had woken up in enough embarrassing situations with laughter in his head to know that Chris was doing something to him.

His own attempts at influencing Chris' dreams just ended up with him gaining a whole ton of knowledge that his brother would be uncomfortable with him knowing. When Chris finally awoke from his nightmares, he would be unable to fall back asleep- instead opting to exercise.

"Can we please go?" asked Chris and Wyatt let him have his way for the time being.

They made their way out the apartment and down the stairs to the corner where Wyatt had parked his car. It wasn't much, just a second hand dark blue Honda Civic. Wyatt was proud of his car regardless.

As soon as Derek glanced at his car, their link was overloaded by statistics about the Honda Civic. Derek was very interested in the vehicle and began pestering Wyatt as to when he got it.

"Can I drive?" asked his brother, bouncing in place.

"Have you even ever driven before?" asked Wyatt.

"No, but come on, how difficult can it be?" said Chris moving once again around the car.

"You are not driving my car!" exclaimed Wyatt.

Chris tried once again, "please?"

Wyatt shook his head smiling while moving around to the driver's side of the car, "I will ask Dad to give you some lessons. He'll let you drive his car."

"Really? He will?" asked Chris; rather surprised that someone would let him drive. Ever since coming to the surface, he had wanted to drive a car. Salek had never mentioned him learning to drive and he had been shy of asking.

"Of course he will, why wouldn't he?" said Wyatt.

"All right then! Let's go," said Chris, getting in the passenger seat. The moment Wyatt turned on the car Chris started to play with the radio. Wyatt let him have his way as he drove towards their destination.

After finding a relatively weird station, in Wyatt's opinion, Chris relaxed into the passenger seat. After a moment of looking around, Chris held out his hand and a pair of wrap around Oakley's appeared. Chris quickly put them on.

"What are you doing?" asked Wyatt looking at him. Had his brother never heard of personal gain?

"What?" asked Chris, wondering what was wrong.

"Have you never heard of 'personal gain'? You can't just conjure stuff!" said Wyatt.

"I have never understood that particular rule and besides… spells and powers only backfire if you are misusing magic," said Chris.

"I, for example, didn't conjure the glasses out of thin air. That doesn't happen, by the way. Magic takes whatever you want to conjure from the easiest place. That's why it backfires. As a conjurer you have to also give the command on where you want to conjure stuff from. I conjured the sunglasses from my room, so it is like orbing something to yourself," he stopped for a moment before turning and giving Wyatt a grin, "only more complicated," he concluded.

Wyatt once again noticed that his magical education was incomplete. They were asked to practice conjuring in magic school but given the warning to conjure only in the most desperate of situations. There conjurers would be far more adept if they could practice conjuring specific objects.

"You could talk to Mr. Wyatt," said Chris. 'And he can get one of the conjuring masters from the monastery,'he finished.

Wyatt wondered why their magic was so different than the underworld's.

He pulled up to where they were going and turned off the car.

"Where are we?" asked his brother. It looked like they were in the bad part of town, in front of what looked like a warehouse.

"This is a youth center," explained Wyatt as they both moved towards it. "It's a place where kids in the neighborhood can come to find a safe haven," he said.

"Why are we here? Are we looking for a safe haven?" asked Chris taking a look around.

Wyatt laughed at the suggestion. Despite being a genius and probably one of the greatest minds of the century, Chris was still naïve in many regards.

"We are here because I donate some of my time to the shelter," he said. At his brother's uncomprehending look, he elaborated.

"You just hang out with kids, sometimes they share their problems but most of the time they just want to play games and stuff," he concluded.

'You are a sickeningly good guy,'said his brother as he made the appropriate face gesture to go along with it.

Wyatt laughed out loud before opening the door and leading his brother in.

It didn't take long for Chris to make friends, within ten minutes he was hanging out with a bunch of younger kids, playing some sort of card game. Wyatt noted that despite growing up in the underworld and then a monastery, his brother's social skills were far better than his.

Working at the shelter had been a suggestion from a professor. He had told him it would be good for his social skills and he would get extra credit for it in class.

Martha, the elderly lady, who ran the shelter walked up to Wyatt after he was done fixing a kid's bicycle. Wyatt had found out that he was quite handy with tools just like his Dad and it had come in handy when he had been trying to make connections with the children at the center.

"Nice kid you have there," commented Martha, indicating Chris and fishing for information. Wyatt didn't say anything just nodded his head.

"He could use a good meal though," she observed, "you planning to stay for dinner?"

Wyatt looked at her, it was one thing for them to notice Chris was losing weight; it was another thing for a total stranger to notice.

"He looks like he has been starved," said Martha, looking him over with a critical eye.

"He is having some problems at the moment but we are working through them," he informed Martha frostily. As much as he liked her and appreciated her help, Wyatt had found out that he was twice as protective of Chris as opposed to Mel and that was saying something. It was a good thing that Chris was not a girl, otherwise he wouldn't be allowed to date! Even now Wyatt wanted to know all about the people he hung out with.

He turned to Martha before she could make another comment, "the place looks emptier than usual, where are the regulars?" he asked steering the conversation away from his brother.

At that Martha signed, "Marco is out of reform school and back on the streets. He is threatening those around not to come here," said Martha with a look of resignation. Marco was a sixteen year old kid who was bad news. He was into everything and on a fast track to becoming a big time criminal.

Meth was his drug of choice. What was worse was the fact that he had a great influence over the youth in the neighborhood. Without saying anything, Wyatt turned to go. He had a date with Marco.

'Chris, let's go'he said through the link and saw him exchange handshakes with the others before meeting him by the door. Wyatt also did not miss the look that Martha threw his way when he seemed to have called Chris over without talking. Wyatt noted that they needed to be more careful when they were around non-magical people as they might be suspicious of two people who could communicate without talking.

Derek, on the other hand, had learned long ago that you did not mess with people when they were angry… especially when they were a magical being. He had known Wyatt for a while now, however most of the time the guy was like he was on a happy pill. Even this gig… who helped out voluntarily for causes on their free time anyway?

Only years of experience had kept Derek from not reacting to Wyatt's anger. When someone was angry you followed them quietly and hoped that you did not get hurt along the way.

They found Marco in an alley a few blocks down and Wyatt went at him with all he had. Derek held in a laugh, for someone who had a lot of magical power, Wyatt rarely used them. It looked like this guy rubbed him the wrong way; this wasn't the first time Wyatt would be getting into it with Marco. He had done everything to help him but Marco had refused to see the light. A year later, and he was only just getting out of prison.

One little glance told him that being physically threatened by someone was nothing new for this guy which meant that he was not going to bend to Wyatt's threats. Derek himself would not have even lifted an eyebrow. If you could take the beatings than it meant that you would not break to another's will.

Plus, Marco was so high at the moment that he was making Derek feel dizzy with his swirling colors and swimming images. The situation somehow amused him, Marcus always said he had a wacked out sense of humor and it was the sign that there was something wrong with him in the head. Perhaps there was, but he couldn't keep quite any longer.

'You lack imagination, brother', he sent through the link. 'Someone who has been beaten in their life is not going to be threatened by you offering to beat them up again.'

When Wyatt heard the comment and the amusement over the link he realized that he was angry. The anger had come from some hidden place in him and it brought his thoughts and feelings into a sharp focus. Wyatt wasn't even sure what he was angry at. He wasn't angry at Chris, or maybe he was?

Chris was younger than him however he was smarter, maybe him being smarter would have been more easily tolerated if Wyatt had lived up to the rap of being the Twice Blessed one. He was supposed to have been the most powerful magical creature to walk the earth. But here was his younger brother who could probably kick his ass in a fight. Wyatt knew that it was due to the fact that Chris had been trained to fight for a long time. Wyatt's only real advantage was his brute magical strength.

He was angry that people that had taught Chris that violence didn't get results.

He was angry at his parents for being overprotective of him but allowing a demon to get into the manor to kidnap Chris.

He was angry at the judge that let Marco out of reform school without getting him help.

He was angry at the Powers that Be that let things happen to innocent children.

He was just angry.

The anger felt good, it felt like it had always belonged to him, it gave him clarity and with that he bent down and grabbed Marco by the hem of his shirt. There was a mad glint to his eyes as he looked at him.

"Do you know that I am an angel in training?" he asked the boy. Marco also seemed to have noticed the sudden change in the goody-two-shoes guy and had tried to back away. Wyatt would later worry what had made his brother go silent.

"Oh yes, I am half an angel," Wyatt stopped for dramatic affect and continued. "When you are an angel in training, you also feel closer to the other side," he said as a maniacal smile came over his face.

Some part of him realized that his brother was watching the happenings in silence and noticed that positions were reversed. This time it was Chris that was watching Wyatt, unsure of what he would do.

Marco was shaking his head, "you know about the other side, right?" asked Wyatt before suddenly flaming out of the alley they were in trusting Chris to follow along. He hadn't even known that he could flame!

The trio found themselves in the underworld on a ledge overlooking the lava below. Among the other side of the ledge was Chaos demons, they were like the wild animals of the underworld and they could not be reasoned with. Even the demons stayed out of their way. Their skin was a hideous green and they looked like they had serious burns all over their bodies. Their nails were long and sharp and their mouths were filled with pointy teeth. They ate through anything that came their way and suddenly, they smelled human. They turned to face the group and pawed desperately at the air, desperate to eat the mortal that trespassed into their territory. The grunts and wails they made would make even the most hardened criminals' toes curl.

Marco's eyes were enlarged; he had broken out in sweat. He was looking at the ledge with an indescribable fear in his eyes. After a moment his eyes sought out Wyatt's.

"See? This is what awaits you," said Wyatt simply.

"And should I choose the other side, it would be my pleasure to introduce you to my good friends," Wyatt concluded with a voice that was cold as steel.

Edited after official release: November 3rd, 2010. Sorry for the delay!