A/N: Hi, everybody! I'm finally back with a new chapter an apologize for the long wait.

It's just that my life kind of imploded to months ago and things have been really, really bad since then. I hope I'm back on track now, and I hope that I'll be able to bring you the climax and resolution of this story in a reasonably short time, but don't consider that as a promise – I seriously don't know how and where I'll be tomorrow.

That said, I hope you like this chapter, the last one before the two-chapter long fight against Gideon!

Navigating the In-Between

And then they were ready to go for Gideon. It was exhilarating and frightening at the same time, and Chris wondered for a moment what made this battle feel so different from the hundreds of hundreds before them.

But then he realized. If their plan worked, then this would not just be another battle.

It would be the last.

Thanks to Sarah's supply rounds over his first week of exile, Chris was well equipped for the fight, but most of Sarah's gear was still over at the Manor, and so they agreed she would orb directly into the cellar and gather everything she needed before coming back here.

Holding the wards of the Manor like she was had its perks, after all. Not only could he keep his family safely on mute, knowing that Sarah would feel an invasion immediately, she could also enter the house without anyone being alerted.

Or so they hoped.

"You know, I used to dream of this moment," he told Sarah when they were sitting at the weapons table, giving his triquetras a thorough cleaning and coating with vanquishing potions. "The hours before finishing all this. Never the moment itself, as if even my subconscious couldn't really imagine it, and never the time after. Just this moment."

He shook his head, laughing softly.

Sarah didn't answer. Her behaviour hadn't been changed the next morning after her breakdown and confession, not in the slightest, but now she was looking exceedingly nervous, sitting quietly opposite him, her mouth working as if she was rehearsing something.

"So I guess I should swear fealty to you again, now," she finally said in a rush.

Chris just looked at her in gobsmacked surprise.

"No," he disagreed most strongly. "You really, really shouldn't."

Something like hurt crossed her face.

"But I thought you wanted my help in all this? How can we work together if I can't use my magic? I need…"

"Of course you can use your magic," Chris interrupted, still not seeing the point of all this. "You don't need an oath to do that."

Now she stared at him, gobsmacked.

"But… but you said I am a killer, and you can't trust that I will do the right thing!"

Chris sighed. So that was what this was all about.

"If this last week has shown anything, Sarah," he said calmly. "It's that I can't predict what circumstances we'll face. You made the right choice when you broke the oath, and I do trust you to make the right choices again."

There. He'd never thought he'd say it. He trusted Hand. But no, that wasn't right. It was Sarah he'd turn his back to without worry, Sarah he'd rely on blindly, Sarah he'd trust his life with. Hand was just a mask, a role she'd slipped into by necessity, just like Fox had been.

The realization was freeing to him. But Sarah didn't look happy at all.

"Are you sure?" She asked quietly. "We could alter the oath, give me more freedom…"

"No!" Chris protested. "I don't think it's necessary, and I really don't want that, Sarah. You do not have to serve me! I don't want you to be my slave or my servant, I want you as my comrade and my friend. We can never be that if a word from me can shut you down."

Still, she didn't look happy.

"What if I mess up?" She asked.

He shrugged. "Then you mess up. We all do. I can't even count the times I made a mess of things. It's part of being human."

She stared at him with an intensity that confused him.

"I'm not very good at being human," she confessed quietly.

And he finally understood.

"Are you afraid of what you might do?" He asked. "Is that what this is about? Not that I don't trust you, but that you don't trust yourself?"

She hesitated, as if this was a secret she'd held close to her heart for a long time. Then, she nodded. He could have laughed, had she not been so completely serious.

"But that's nonsense, Sarah! I mean, look at what you've done! You've had the worst start imaginable, damn it, you've been compelled by magic to do what Wyatt said, and still you managed to sneak information to Bianca. You knew it would kill you, and still you broke an oath, not once, but twice, because you decided what needed to be done. And both times, it was the right decision! You are too ready to kill, sure, too violent, but most people would say the same about me, and yet you'd trust my judgment. But your impulses are right, Sarah, and that's what counts."

She still didn't look quite convinced.

"Will you promise to stop me, then?" She asked. "If…"

"I'll stop you if you'll stop me," he agreed, and somehow it felt like an oath as important as the one she'd proposed. "We'll help each other navigate the in-between of moral relativism, yes?"

Sarah's emotions were churning and twisting, turning her belly into a minor war zone.

This freedom-thing was much more difficult than she'd expected. Was everyone as confused as she was right now, and on a daily basis?

She felt proud that Chris trusted her, afraid that she'd fail him, was happy that he considered her a friend and excited about the battle to come. Most of all, though, she worried that she'd meet one of the Manor's inhabitants, that there would be words, that she would lose control and accidentally kill Chris' relatives.

It could happen.

People died so easily, and she'd never before had full control over her own powers.

Now that she thought about it – why weren't more people killed? There were quarrels and conflicts and fights every day, after all. Killing someone could happen to anybody, right?

So she was rather tense when she shimmered into the Manor's cellar, and when she saw someone sitting on her old cot, she very nearly loosened a knife. She felt especially bad about that when the sitting figure turned out to be Phoebe. Killing the only sister that hadn't made a complete mess of things wasn't exactly a clever move.

"Phoebe," she said a bit stupidly, not at all sure where she stood with the other woman, therefore opting for careful distance.

So it was a bit of a shock when Phoebe saw her, smiled the biggest smile Sarah had ever seen, jumped to her feet, rushed over, and engulfed Sarah in a hug of epic proportions.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you for saving him!" The Charmed One whispered.

Sarah didn't know how to react to that, not to the unexpected close contact nor to the gratitude.

"Er… you're welcome?" She tried, and got hugged even closer. This wouldn't do.

"How did you know I would come here?" She next tried, wondering whether the resourceful Charmed Ones had found a way to hack into her wards. Thankfully, Phoebe finally let go of her.

"Actually, I didn't," she confessed. "I've been spending most of my time down here, hoping you'd come."

That seemed to Sarah a frightfully inefficient way of spending your time, but she was careful not to mention that in case it would bring on another bout of hugging.

"And why were you doing that?" She asked instead, carefully stepping back and out of reach. She let her eyes dart across the room in search for her equipment, only to find it laid out neatly on a table below the high window. That was handy. She could gather it up in her arms and shimmer out of here in about five seconds.

"To thank you," Phoebe whispered, her hands twitching as if she wanted to hug someone again. "And… Can you take me to him, Hand? Please? He needs to know that we love him, and I need to explain…"

She trailed off, her eyes very wide and very hopeful.

Some of the embarrassed confusion vanished from Sarah's mind. She hadn't had forgotten about the Charmed Ones' behaviour, not for a second, but Phoebe's exuberance made it hard to concentrate on more than the moment.

And now Sarah could see her distress, her honest, deeply felt wish to see Chris, and was surprised at her own impulse to help Phoebe. But there were other things to consider.

"No," she therefore said. "I wouldn't do that without asking him first, and now's not the time for it, Phoebe."

The woman visibly deflated. It should have looked ridiculous, not endearing, but somehow Phoebe pulled it off.

„Butt he longer we wait, the harder all this will be," she now argued. "Things will only get more difficult. And he… he must feel so terrible…"

"Yes," Sarah agreed, trying to ignore the tears that were welling up in Phoebe's eyes. "He does. But there is too much going on right now to let him get distracted. We…" she hesitated.

This wasn't a possibility she had talked about with Chris, and he would perhaps disagree with her decision. But didn't Phoebe at least deserve to know what was going on? And more than that, didn't Chris deserve to have his family know, in case things went very wrong and he could never tell them? Perhaps this was one of the decisions Chris had been talking about.

"We are going after Gideon," she continued. "Today. Our plan has a good chance of working, but Chris must be able to concentrate. He cannot afford to deal with you right now."

Now Phoebe's eyes went wide with worry, and this emotional roller-coaster was really starting to weird Sarah out.

"But you can't!" The Charmed One protested. "Not alone! I admit that we weren't that helpful the last time, but we would do better now! You said yourself that Gideon is too dangerous to take on alone!"

"He's not alone," Sarah corrected, projecting more calmness than she felt. "And our plan kind of depends on it being just the two of us."

For a moment, Phoebe looked ready to argue. Sarah had seen her argue, and she didn't look forward to it. But she was sure of herself. At the moment, Chris' emotions were under control, though he was badly shaken. He had a mission, and that gave him purpose for the moment, but she honestly didn't want to know what would happen when that purpose broke. Things would get ugly, and leave him a mess, and he would never forgive himself if he didn't deal with Gideon before concentrating on his family.

If he ever wanted to concentrate on his family again, of course. Sarah wouldn't blame him if he simply upped and disappeared on them.

Then, without saying a single word, Phoebe backed down. Walking over to the cot, she nodded tiredly and sat down as if she didn't have the strength left to stand.

"I'm sure you know best," she whispered. "And, anyway, we kind of blew our right to have any say in this months ago, didn't we?"

Sarah thought about agreeing with her, then decided that it wouldn't make Phoebe feel any better.

"I'll keep him safe," she offered instead, knowing that it wasn't enough but having nothing else to offer.

Surprisingly, it seemed to console Phoebe.

"I know," she said. "And I'm really glad you're with him. He deserves someone like you at his side. It's just… I wish he didn't have to do this."

"But he has," Sarah answered, confused. What was it with all the wishing that things were different? She had noticed it with the Charmed Ones before, and it had always made her wonder. How could it be useful to ignore reality instead of what they wanted it to be?

"Yes, I know," Phoebe said tiredly. "I get that now. He has to do it. There's no alternative. I never really understood that before."

"I noticed," Sarah said simply, not sure where all this was going, but Phoebe didn't really need her input now, off as she was on another self-analysis trip.

"I mean, I always thought it was his character, this driven, neurotic, obsessive way of tackling things, and I always thought that he fixated on this mission because he needed something like that in his life. But now I understand that he never chose it, that he was dropped into it before he was even born. He never decided to be this person, it just happened to him. He never had a chance to be someone else."

Sarah thought about her own past, made up not of decisions but of commands, and she thought about Chris' face, twisted and torn from his nightmares. I want to be more than just another Halliwell!

"That's not true," she disagreed. "He could have broken. He could have given in. He could have accepted that he was weaker than Lord Wyatt. He could have put family over principle and stayed at his brother's side. Instead, he made the Resistance his life. He never had a choice to be involved, to be a Halliwell, but it was he who turned himself into Fox, who chose this mission as the thing he would die for willingly."

And that, Sarah realied as she listened to her own words, was the thing that had drawn her to Chris Halliwell, that had made her choose his side instead of the central position Lord Wyatt had given to her.

Fox had had all that power, all that destiny and strength, and he had willingly embraced the weaker position. In Sarah's life, there had only ever been the power struggle of dominance, the desperate climb over other's futures to the highest position, because you could only be safe if you kicked those below you further down.

And Fox had joined those below. He had taken his power and usedit, not to gain more power, but to protect, to change, to nurture. It was a concept she hadn't understood for a long time, wasn't sure she understood it now, but something in her yearned for that way like the dry, gaping earth yearned for rain.

By making that choice and damning himself to pain, fear, and the eternal fight against an enemy he could never hope to deceive, Fox had opened up a choice for all of them. He had left the path his family had formed for him and had become a new way, all on his own. It was a decision that frightened Sarah as much as it awed her.

But Phoebe only felt the pain of that choice.

"It's not right," she now said softly. "Nobody should have to choose to die for something. Nobody should have to put a mission before everything!"

Sarah just shrugged.

"He's not nobody," she said. "He's Chris."

And for the first time since she'd come to this time, for the first time since she'd started talking to the woman, Phoebe completely understood what she meant.

A/N: Thank you for all your support and reviews, dearest readers. Greedy as I am, I wouldn't mind some more!

The next chapter will have Piper's pov again (didn't manage that in this one), as well as a confrontation with Gideon that will put our heroes in mortal danger (Dum Dum Dum…)…