A/N: Thank you for all your wonderful and thoughtful reviews! I know you must think I'm an evil person by now (and that might even be true), but the angst gets even worse in this one, and the revelation part is still several chapters in the future. Also, I've worked through the rest of the plot, and it's pretty much one huge cliffhanger from here on. Sorry about that, but the story just wants to be written this way, I swear!

I hope you'll like it anyway…

This chapter starts after the sisters have relocated to the kitchen, but before they listen in on Chris' confession to Sarah:

The Nature of Mercy

Phoebe wasn't sure what exactly she wanted to tell her sister, now that they were in the kitchen. Her intervention had been completely spontaneous – she had seen how exhausted Chris was, how hopeless and frustrated, and had wanted to give him a moment's peace before the inevitable confrontation.

Tea, she thought. Don't the English say that tea is the best thing in a crisis? Perhaps it helps.

So she settled her sisters and Leo down at the kitchen table and busied herself brewing a herbal tea that was supposed to 'relax and help you find your inner peace'. Sounded exactly like what they needed right now.

The mug of hot tea in her hands did calm her, but from the look on Piper's face she suspected that she was the only one it helped.

"Look, sweetie," she began. "What Chris did was wrong, plain and simple, and you have every right to be angry with him. We need to talk about this, and we need to establish a few ground rules. To be honest, I'm as shocked as you are about what he did."

She was, really, if not completely surprised. She had known that Chris was ruthless and willing to sacrifice nearly everything to get the job done, but she hadn't expected this. Perhaps it made sense in his mind – Wyatt without them as his protectors had no chance at all of escaping his fate and so keeping the sisters alive was as important as protecting Wyatt, but she had seen Chris interacting with her nephew, and there seemed to be real affection there. To risk him like that…

"I'm not shocked, I'm furious," Piper said harshly, but she had gripped her mug and was holding it tight, as if it could console her. "I know we had our problems, but I'd never have expected him to…"

"Could somebody, please, tell me what it was he did?" Leo interrupted, more than a hint of frustration in his voice. Phoebe guessed that was fair, considering that his son had vanished and then they had orbed in all dirty and bloody. "Why did Wyatt orb to you? He hasn't been doing that for a few months now."

"He did it because Chris called for him," Paige answered with a sigh. Phoebe sent her a thankful look, knowing that Paige would give a more balanced account than Piper. "It was a trap, Leo. Gideon expected us, and the number of demons he recruited was unbelievable. Even the source never…" she broke off, chancing a look at Phoebe, and Piper used the chance to take over.

"He noticed us before we could get close," she said – talk about glossing over, Piper! "And he admitted that he planned to kill Wyatt. He only didn't come for him right now because he knew you were with him, and… you should have seen the expression on his face, Leo! He's absolutely sure that killing our son is the right thing, the only thing to do! He believes he is saving the world…"

Without a word, Leo reached for her and took her in his arms, his face a mask of stony determination. Piper clung to him for a moment, but then pulled back and brushed a few tears away.

"Gideon had wards ready and waiting for us, so we couldn't escape, and he orbed away when the demons attacked. We fought, but without Hand and Chris we wouldn't have lasted a minute. They were…"

She stopped, looking a bit helpless, a feeling Phoebe understood all too well. How could they describe what they had seen? Phoebe had thought herself a veteran, considering the number of battles they had survived, but what Chris and Hand had done had given the word 'fighting' a whole new meaning. They had been like a force of nature, like a wave, finding their way through every crack in their enemies defences, wearing down superior power just by their determination and will.

That part of it reminded Phoebe a bit of Prue, stubborn, indefatigable Prue, but there was more to it than that, and she wasn't even beginning to understand what, exactly. Was it the sheer awe over how good Chris was at what he'd done? But then she'd kind of assumed that from her afternoons in the cellar, from the precision of his every move. He'd taken the use of his powers to a whole other level than Prue ever had, and the ruthlessness he'd shown was just… eww. Even the thought of those necks breaking, those skulls imploding made her shudder. Sure, it had only been demons, but…

And that was the point, she realized as she listened to Piper's description of the battle. They had fought 'only' against demons, but that hadn't mattered at all, in fact she'd be surprised if Chris was any different in a battle with humans. In all her years as a witch, Phoebe had only ever taken one vanquish really hard: that of Cole.

Because he'd not only been a demon to her. He'd been a person. And so the vanquish had been personal, had not felt like the righteous fight against evil but like a killing. Like a murder. Vanquishing a demon (it wasn't killing, it was vanquishing!) had always seemed like make-believe to her before, like she wasn't really killing, only playing at it. With Cole, it had been hard, and true, and violent, and painful, because she'd known there was a true mind inside that skull, a true heart inside that chest. That knowledge had been terrible, and she'd been glad when it had dimmed and gradually faded away, for how could she be expected to kill demons week after week when she saw them as persons?

But Chris and Hand, they saw the persons all the time, that much had been clear from the way they fought. And it made sense, she guessed. As Wyatt's slave, Hand had probably interacted with more demons that humans, and Chris spent more time in the Underworld on a daily basis than Phoebe spent at work. How couldn't they see all the experience and life and emotions in a demon's face?

And still they had killed them without remorse. In Phoebe's eyes, that made them more honourable and more terrifying at the same time.

"And then," Piper continued, her voice now vibrating with anger. "Instead of falling back or regrouping or conferring with us, he ordered Hand around, called for Wyatt, and Hand, she just, she exploded. Chris had Wyatt bring his shield up, and thank God that worked, otherwise we'd all been fried. Including Wyatt."

Phoebe held her breath. Now Leo would explode again, like he always did when one of Chris' misdeeds was exposed, and he and Piper would wind each other up until they would both attack Chris, who would then orb away…

"I see," Leo said calmly.

Phoebe's breath escaped in a gasp. She hadn't expected that reaction. And neither had Piper.

"You see?" she repeated, a dangerous tone in her voice. "You've been the first to blame him these past months, and now he's kidnapped your son and endangered his life, and you see?"

Leo hesitated for a moment, not quite meeting his ex-wife's gaze.

"What he did was wrong," he then said. "And I'm going to bust his ass for it sooner or later, but he did it to save you, Piper. He saved your lives. How could I blame him for that?"

Piper sniffed the way she always did when she was touched but wouldn't admit it.

"So what?" She asked, the anger still there but ebbing away steadily. "We should just ignore he did it? We should just let him be?"

"No, of course not," Paige stepped in. She seemed to share Phoebe's ambivalence towards Chris. "But perhaps we should concentrate on the more urgent stuff first, like getting clean and protecting the house from Gideon. And I need to eat something. And sleep. I feel like I haven't sat down for a week, and Chris and Hand must be even worse."

Phoebe looked at her youngest sister with admiration. If all else failed, appealing to Piper's mother-bear-nature was the perfect thing to do. Piper might be willing to explode people on a daily basis, but just hint at the lack of good meals or a solid eight hours of sleep and she would switch into care-mode immediately. Perhaps not for people she truly disliked, but she had warmed up to Hand over the past weeks, and sometimes Phoebe hoped that her sister's feelings towards their whitelighter were beginning to change, too.

Anger draining visibly from her face, Piper met their eyes and nodded.

"Perhaps you're right," she agreed, then warned them: "But we are going to talk about this, and if Chris doesn't agree to a few ground rules…"

"Then you can explode him," Paige agreed readily. "Come on, then."

Well, this had gone better than she'd expected, Phoebe thought as they all got up and left the kitchen. For now they'd rest and relax, and once the atmosphere wasn't so heated anymore…

They turned the corner and saw Chris sitting on the ground besides Hand, looking strangely small and scruffy there on the floor. He was talking quickly, babbling, really, his voice younger and somehow more vulnerable, and Phoebe sympathetically imagined how exhausted he must feel. Then his words filtered in, and all other thoughts stopped.

"I invented the spell he used to enslave you," Chris whispered. "The servilis. I thought it was right to do it at that time, but still I…"

At first, the words simply refused to make sense. Phoebe stood frozen in the doorway, the others just as frozen around her, and watched in silent disbelief as Hand, the former slave, the victim, reached out and caressed Chris' cheek.

"I know. And it was right," she whispered, with the strength and conviction of an absolving priest. They seemed to have that effect on Chris, certainly, who closed his eyes and just sagged with relief.

And Phoebe couldn't understand. She just couldn't. She'd had this picture of Chris in her mind, of a fighter, surely, of someone who did not always share her moral code, but of a brave and honourable person that was just doing the right thing.

Not of someone who was willing so sacrifice a small child. Not of someone who wrote spells to enslave others.

"You did WHAT?" Piper yelled.

Phoebe flinched, but for once she felt no impulse to calm Piper down.

Chris came to his feet awkwardly and spun around to them. There was nothing there of his usual grace. His eyes went wide, then darted through the room as if searching for an escape route.

"How…" he whispered, nothing of the battle-proven general left in him. "How much did you hear?"

"THAT is the most important thing you have to say right now?" Piper yelled. "You endanger my son, you enslave people, and all you care about is keeping your goddamn secrets? I swear, Chris, I'm in a mood to vanquish you right now!"

Phoebe expected him to counter her in his usual mixture of stubbornness and irritation, but, as it had happened with all her expectations on this day of days, nothing of the like happened. Chris simply stood there, slightly hunched in on himself, still-wide eyes searching face after face. Saying nothing.

"Don't just stand there!" Piper snapped, her hands half-raised in the all too familiar gesture. "Tell us what you did and why you did it, or I won't be held accountable for my actions, you lying, cheating…"

Chris took a gasping breath, his shoulders sinking lower and hunching forward as if he was cradling himself in a storm.

"There are… future consequences to all this that you cannot imagine," he said, but something in his voice wasn't right. Something was missing, and Phoebe couldn't place it…

"THERE ARE CONSEQUENCES IN THE PRESENT, TOO!" Piper yelled, taking a threatening step forward. Chris actually flinched, as if she had struck him again. "I will ask only once, Chris, and if you do not answer, you'll see what I'm truly capable of, I swear! Did you invent that spell?"

Another gasping breath. Chris looked as if he had been running a marathon. But there was no way to run from this, from Piper's determination, and he knew it as well as they.

So he gave in.

"Yes," he said quietly.

Phoebe noticed that Hand had half risen from her place on the sofa, pale and unsteady, but determined to get into this. To protect the one who'd done all this to her. The man whose fault it was.

He didn't even bother looking at her, just raised his hand in her direction and shook his head sharply.

"Stay out of this, Hand," he commanded. "No matter what happens. This isn't worth it."

This wasn't worth it? How could he do that to her? To any of them? Phoebe had sparred with him, and researched with him, and shared his triumph and worry, and she'd really thought they'd connected! She had even cried in front of him, once, when all the fears had become too much and the picture of Hand, writhing in a pain caused by her nephew, had haunted her every dream! And he'd been the cause of that pain, in truth, and he hadn't told her! He'd handed them snippets of his future, painful and terrible, and expected them to back off, but he hadn't told them that! He had just used them, as he'd been using them from the very beginning, and she felt dirty somehow, stupid and slow, and she'd…

"How could you?" She whispered, and although her voice was barely audible after Piper's shouting, he flinched under her words as if they were a whip.

"There was no choice," he answered bitterly. "You can't imagine what it was like, when Wyatt took power and the world turned upside down. It might be wrong from your perspective, but I was in a war, and we were desperate, and you don't know…"

"I may not know what your future is like, Chris," Piper interrupted him. "But I know what is wrong and right, something you've obviously forgotten or never learned. And that spell is wrong, it's evil, and I can't believe that you had the gall to sit here and treat Hand like that, let us worry about her and help her, when all the time you were the reason these things have happened to her!"

"I wasn't the reason!" Chris protested. "It wasn't like that! I would never have done that to anybody!"

"Why did you write the spell, then?" Paige asked. She had been supportive of Chris for the past weeks, nearly as much as Phoebe, but she'd also seen a lot of human pain over her years as social worker, and if anything got to her, it was injustice.

When she looked at Chris now, her eyes were cold and hard. She looked at him like she would at a demon.

"You must have planned to use it on someone! You must have wanted someone to suffer the way Hand suffered! I thought you understood! I thought you were fighting for the same things we are! I thought you'd been a victim, too…"

"I was NEVER a victim," Chris roared, his sudden anger a shock to Phoebe. The images in her head of him killing were all too fresh, and he was still wearing the weapons Hand had given to him. She took a step back, expecting the triquetras to start swarming around him any moment, and that gesture seemed to make him even angrier.

"God, I wished I could have been!" He shouted. "But I didn't have a choice, did I? Wyatt was going evil, and you were no help at all! What should I have done? I was fifteen, God damn it! There were not good options, no right ways! I couldn't lie back and be a victim, could I? I was the only one left, and so I did what I had to do! You would have done the same!"

"No, Chris," Leo interrupted him harshly. He'd been quiet till now, but Phoebe could see that he shared Paige's anger, could see that this truth had hit him as harshly as the others, despite his long held suspicions. But who could have suspected this?

"You can tell yourself that, but no good witch would have written that spell. And no good witch would have acted the way you did here, lying and cheating and deceiving us every step of the way. You had your chances to come clean, but you didn't! I know it was you who sent me to Valhalla, I know you manipulated the sisters, I know you killed a Valkyrie and probably countless others when they were in your way. You aren't a good witch, Chris, and you certainly aren't a whitelighter!"

"I never wanted any of that," Chris shouted. "But I had to, don't you see? It was the only way!"

"And risking Wyatt was the only way to get out of there. So you did it," Piper said coldly.

"I needed to keep you alive!" Chris protested wildly. "Without you, Wyatt stands no chance; Gideon will turn him evil, and if that was the alternative, I'd rather…"

He stopped himself, but Piper, once again too angry to yell, understood him all too well.

"And if that was the alternative," she continued for him, calmly, deliberately. "You'd rather he died alongside with us than survive."

Chris' face went grey, as if he only now realized the trap he'd stepped into, as if he only now understood that this wasn't simply another one of their quarrels. He took in their faces, Piper's ice old anger, and made a short, abrupt gesture with his head.

Then he tried to orb away, as he'd done so often over the past months when a discussion got too heated, but Leo had obviously expected that reaction and was ready for it.

The Elder leapt forward, catching Chris before he had dematerialized completely, grabbed his shirt and slammed him against the wall. Chris' breath went out of him in a big whoosh, his head hit the wall behind him. He seemed dazed for a moment, disoriented, and the confusion and despair in his eyes was honest as he met Leo's gaze.

But Leo didn't care.

"Answer her," he said icily. "Answer her now, or I swear I'll have the other Elders send you back to your future. And I won't care what happens to you there, Chris! Answer!"

Chris' eyes delved into Leo's, searching it for the truth and finding it. Leo was serious. And so were Piper and Paige, standing to Leo's sides, their arms folded, every gesture screaming aggression.

Again, Chris let his head fall back against the whole. He closed his eyes. A shudder overtook his whole body, rocked it violently for just a second, then vanished. When he opened his eyes again, something was different.

He looked older to Phoebe, and younger at the same time, stripped of layers and layers she hadn't even noticed before. He looked different, somehow, familiar, and something was whispering to Phoebe in her thoughts, telling her to notice…

Something was missing from his gaze. Perhaps it was the lies. Perhaps they were finally seeing the true Chris.

"Yes," he said quietly. "If it came down to that, yes. He's done too much damage. I can't allow that to happen again. I would die to save him, but if I had no choice, I'd rather kill him myself than let him become the Wyatt I know."

Silence stretched between them, a silence of disbelief and pain. Phoebe felt oddly calm, as if the fulfilment of her worst fears had taken every other thought away and left emptiness behind.

She didn't look at him. She simply couldn't. Despite all the reasons he'd given her not to, she'd trusted this man with her life and the lives of her family. And he'd betrayed that trust. There was nothing else to say.

Until Piper stepped forward and spoke for them all, with the absolute finality of the law.

"Get out of this house, Chris," she said. "And don't ever come back."

Shock spread across his face.

"You can't do that," he protested. "Not now! We have to find Gideon, and I need…"

"I can and I must," she interrupted him, making very clear that she didn't care about his needs. Not one bit. "I will protect my family from any danger, and if that means to protect them from you, then I'll do it. Don't make me vanquish you."

He blinked, as if the very thought was unthinkable to him. His eyes were pleading with her, a silent, desperate plea. She shrugged it away.

"My Piper would have understood," he whispered, and Phoebe wasn't sure who he was trying to convince – Piper or himself.

"She wouldn't," Piper disagreed, the same cold, hard finality in her voice. "In fact, I'm sure that this future-Piper, whatever has happened to her, would agree with me that you've gone bad, Chris. I can't trust you, and she wouldn't either. You're no help anymore, you're a threat to our family and our home and that's why you're gonna leave and stay gone. You're not a part of this any longer."

"I've always been a part of this," he disagreed, but it sounded feeble and insecure. "You can't change that!"

"I can. I don't know why the Charmed Ones of your time put up with you, Chris, but we only accepted your behaviour for so long because you were useful to us. Now you're dangerous, not useful. So you will leave, and you will not hurt this family any longer."

Chris' eyes were unnaturally bright as he met her gaze, searching for understanding and finding none. He completely ignored Leo's hands that still held him pressed against the wall – all his attention was on Piper, and his face held a strangely tender expression as he regarded her.

"I… never wanted to hurt you, Piper. I didn't mean…," he whispered, and finally Phoebe realized what was wrong with him. He looked broken. He looked as if all that never ending strength had bled out of him, leaving someone who was frail and vulnerable and completely hopeless.

Doubt rose in her mind, the suspicion that all this was even more complicated than she had believed, that her understanding of Chris, while flawed, hadn't been as far from the truth as she'd thought. If he didn't care about them, why was he hurting so much? Could all this be an act? But the thought was weak and quiet in her mind, and there was too much tumult around her to work it out.

"You may not have meant it," Piper interrupted words that were going nowhere. "But it happened, somewhere along the way. Evil does that to people. You're not one of us, Chris. You'll never be. We don't want you here. Now will you leave of your own free will, or does Leo have to send you back to your future?"

Chris closed his eyes against her words, but not before a single tear spilled over the rim of his lashes, leaving a shining downward path on his skin. His face twisted, convulsing with a pain Phoebe could neither understand nor name, and then Chris took a deep, labouring breath.

And his face went blank. All emotion vanished, all traces that the last hours had ever happened, and when he opened his eyes again, he was a stranger, someone passing them in the street, someone who didn't care about them at all.

The sight made Phoebe's heart ache, though she didn't know why.

"I'll leave," he said, his voice once again calm and under perfect control. "Perhaps you're right. I'm sorry, for what it's worth."

His gaze swept over them, not meeting their eyes, not resting on them, as if he'd never seen them before. It lingered only on Hand.

"Stay here," he told her, cold and commanding as if she were a dog. "Guard the sisters. Remember your pledge."

He looked pointedly at Leo's hands, still clenched in his shirt, and Leo untangled them quickly, wanting to end the contact as soon as possible. Chris' hands were steady as he straightened the shirt, and his back was very straight as he nodded to them.

"I'll get my things from P3 and be out of your hair. Good luck."

A/N: You didn't expect that, did you? The next chapter should take about a week – please make me happy and review!