Title: Shadows at Noon
Disclaimer: I don't own anything
Author's note: This has dialogue taken from Prince Charmed, and it doesn't belong to me. It also has a scene from The Lost Future. It isn't necessary to have read the story to understand this one, but it does help to know some of it in this chapter.
But for anyone who hasn't read that story… in The Lost Future timeline, Paige marries Kyle (not Richard) and has twins Mel and Pen (not Adam and Ria). When Chris goes back in time to save Wyatt, he unknowingly erases two of his cousins.
Also, note the time change in the beginning of the chapter. This takes place several months after the last chapter.
Chapter Thirty-Six: The Vision
"Piper, what are you doing?" Paige asked, somewhat annoyed, as she bounced a two-month-old Adam in her arms and followed her eldest sister around the house.
"Do you want demons to attack?" Piper snapped, giving Paige a heated glare as she dropped the last crystal into its place by the door. "I just want to make sure that everything is perfect for Chris' birthday." She paused, a smile on her face, and shook her head. "I can't believe he's already nine."
"Okay… of course I don't want demons to attack at the party, but don't you think this might be overdoing it a little?" Paige suggested, shifting Adam in her arms. He had started to wail, his little hands clenched into tiny fists, his face completely red. Paige cooed at him for a moment, then looked at Piper. "I mean… crystals, spells, and potions? Are you expecting trouble?"
Piper shook her head and sank slowly into a seat on the sofa, staring at the large glass doors of the sunroom. "It's just… have you ever noticed how bad things seem to happen on Chris' birthday? Demons always attack… and that's when Wyatt was kidnapped also. When Chris was born."
"Oh, sweetie," Paige said, taking a seat next to her sister. "Demons attack all the time. It's not just Chris' birthday. It's all our birthdays. I mean, remember how that warlock almost burned the Manor down last year on Ria's birthday and we had to call the fire department?"
Piper nodded. "Yeah, I guess…" She glanced at Adam. "He stopped crying."
"Yeah," Paige murmured, smiling at her baby son.
"You keep him close at all times," Piper said seriously, rising to her feet and starting to bustle about the room again. "Demons will want him to, and what happened to Wyatt… I don't want it to happen to anyone else."
"You know, if you keep waking up in the middle of the night screaming about kidnappings and demons, none of us are going to get out beauty sleep," Ria remarked as she flipped the light on and stepped into Adam's room. The younger of the two witch-lighters was sitting on his bed, covers pushed to the floor, face pale, eyes wide with terror. He relaxed slightly when he saw Ria.
"Sorry. I just… another dream. Bad dream."
She took a seat next to him on the bed. "Tell me about it?"
"It's like all the others," Adam replied softly. "Our parents talking about something… and then someone, usually Aunt Piper or Uncle Leo, mentions about Wyatt getting kidnapped… and I see a dark cave, and feel all this fear and then…" He trailed off and shook his head.
"You wake up screaming," Ria finished for him.
"Yeah," Adam answered. "I just… I wish I knew what these dreams meant." He gave Ria a look. "Do you know if Wyatt was kidnapped as a child?"
"I heard Uncle Leo mention it once to Uncle Jason," Ria said, her voice trembling as she formed the names of those who were no longer alive. "But I don't know any of the details."
"These dreams mean something," Adam said, lying back on the mattress and resting his head on the pillows. "I know they do. I just… I just have no idea what it is."
Chris leaned his back against the wall and extended his feet across the hallway floor, listening to the sounds of Ria and Adam's voices floating through the partially open door. He'd taken to sitting outside Adam's room at night, waiting for the telltale signs of a nightmare to strike. They had no idea what any of this meant, but Ria was starting to panic as they all saw the heavy toll it was taking on their youngest cousin. Adam was barely able to eat or sleep, and seemed to wander around the safe-house in a daze.
It had been several months since their life had taken this strange turn. Since his father and Freya's deaths, since the fall of Valhalla. Life had changed drastically, and he knew everyone needed to be at the top of his game to survive it. Unless Adam could resolve this issue and move past it, and quickly, he was going to be an easy target for Wyatt's demons.
The sound of footsteps caught his attention, and he looked up in time to see Myst turn the corner of the hallway and appear in front of him. Wordlessly, she took a seat next to him, pulling her knees into her chest. In the dim light, he could see the worry on her features, the way her eyes kept darting towards the slightly open door.
He reached out and interlaced his fingers through her hand. She offered him a tentative smile in return.
Since the fall of Valhalla, the Resistance had existed as nothing more than a few safe-houses in different sectors of the city. The few scattered remnants of the Resistance lived in these safe-houses, venturing out into the dangerous city only to save any witches or mortals from the frequent demon attacks. It was a loose confederation of people, and the safety they could offer was limited.
In many ways, Wyatt had already won.
Chris glanced over at the door again, then looked at Myst. "Where are we on creating a new sanctuary?" They'd tried, on more than once occasion, to create other places to hide people, whether it be by protective barriers or glamour spells and potions. The latest idea had been to build another place like Valhalla and cloak its presence, hopefully keeping it secret from Wyatt.
"We're still working on it," she answered softly. "But Wyatt is powerful, and…" She trailed off, shaking her head. She didn't need to finish the sentence because Chris understood. Wyatt's powers made it difficult to hide anything from him. He'd found his way into Valhalla, and it was only a matter of time before he decimated any sanctuary they tried to create.
"Then we just need to work harder, create more powerful barriers," Chris said staunchly. It wasn't that simple, as he well knew, but he wasn't about to give up on anything.
"Yeah…" Myst hesitated, then ventured diffidently, "What about David's idea?"
Chris closed his eyes and inhaled sharply. David. The man, despite his devotion to protecting Ria and Adam, which Chris knew came from a long-standing devotion to the now-deceased Lila and everything she had care about, was beginning to grate on the brunette witch-lighter's nerves. He had suggested, more than once, that the only way to protect everyone was to stop the threat… Wyatt.
"None of us have the power to stop Wyatt," Chris said finally. "Not even me."
"It's not the power you lack," Myst answered bluntly. "It's the determination."
"He's my brother!" Chris retorted fiercely. "I can't… I just can't…" He rose to his feet and looked away, feeling both defiant and guilty.
"But Chris, you haven't even considered the possibility of stripping his powers," Myst argued, standing as well. "That could work."
Chris rolled his eyes. "The only way to do that would require getting close enough to Wyatt to throw a potion and cast a spell. And he would kill anyone who tried that before they got the chance to finish."
"Even you?" Myst murmured, taking his hand again. "Would he kill even you?"
Before Chris had the chance to answer, however, Ria stepped out of the room and glanced at the two of them with a heavy expression on her face. "He went back to sleep."
"What was the dream?" Myst asked in concern.
"Same as usual," Ria answered. "I don't know… I wish we could ask the Elders about it."
Chris gave a bitter laugh and replied, "The Elders closed themselves off to us a long time ago, remember? They abandoned us and the entire world, all the people they were meant to protect, the minute they realized Wyatt could be a threat."
"Yes, well… being angry at them could be valid," Ria conceded with a nod, "but it doesn't help Adam." She turned back towards her own room, intent on getting a few more hours of sleep before morning.
After a moment of silence, Myst whispered to Chris, "You know as well as I do that if Wyatt would so willingly kill you, he isn't your brother anymore." She didn't wait for Chris to respond, but simply leaned in and kissed him on the cheek, then walked away.
"…and then he tried to orb a book to himself, and it hit him in the eye," Paige finished the story as she watched Richard carefully inspecting his son. "It's just a little bruise, Richard. Relax."
Richard looked up, dark eyes widening at her comment. "Relax? He practically has a black eye!"
"You're over reacting," Piper said, walking into the sunroom and handing Richard a glass of orange juice and a plate of cookies. "Stop worrying. Start eating."
"My sister, the therapist," Paige murmured sarcastically. Stretching, she rose to her feet while lifting the one-year-old Adam into her arms.
Chris, ten years old, came running into the sunroom, slipping and sliding as his socks met the slick wooden floorboards. His brown hair fell in a graceful mess over his grinning eyes as he shrieked, "Aunt Paige! Uncle Richard!"
Richard enveloped his nephew in a hug and said with an answering grin, "Heyya, little man."
"Where's Leo?" Paige asked, glancing over at Piper and shifting Adam into a more comfortable position on her hip. The little boy buried his head sleepily in her shoulder.
The eldest Charmed One frowned at the question, her eyebrows coming together as worry lines appeared on her forehead. "The demon that attacked yesterday… the Elders think he's after Wyatt. Leo went back up to talk to them." She paused, then added, "Whenever any demon is after Wyatt, you know, we have to consider the possibility that it is…"
"Related to when he was kidnapped the day Chris was born?" Paige answered. She nodded slowly as Piper inhaled and exhaled with an air of forced calm. Neither said anything else, but the silence was tense and uneasy.
"Maybe it has something to do with premonitions?" Prue suggested as she leaned against the hallway door and listened to Ria and Chris talk to Adam. "You know, so far I'm the only one with that power in my generation. Maybe he got it too."
David nodded gloomily. He was clearly frustrated at standing there so helpless, unable to prevent Adam from waking up in terror, crying out for help. "I guess. But didn't Adam say they were more like memories?"
"Yeah, the beginning," Prue agreed. "But the ends of them, when he's alone in some dark cave…" She shrugged and sank to the floor. "I don't know how much longer he can keep doing this before it destroys him. But it just… it doesn't make any sense."
"Do you think it could be a curse of some sort?" David asked as he too took a seat on the ground.
"Maybe," Prue replied, mulling over the idea. "I don't know much about curses."
David glanced over at the room again. The door was shut, but he could still hear the voices floating through the heavy wood, indistinct but recognizable. Adam was saying something, and he sounded resigned, but Ria's answer was tense and filled with concern.
"She's freaking out," Prue murmured. "Ria… she's freaking out because she doesn't know how to stop this."
"Yeah, well… she's not the only one," David answered quietly. He ran a hand through his dark hair and blinked a few times, lost in thought. He was the oldest of them, the adult. Granted, Prue was eighteen and Chris just barely twenty-three, but he was still their elder and should have been strong enough to fix these problems, to offer guidance and hope. Instead, he was just as lost as the rest of them.
Prue nodded in agreement. "Yeah."
"I've been gone most of the week," David said. "Has he been having nightmares every night?"
"Just about," Prue answered. Then she raised unemotional eyes towards him and asked, "Where were you, anyway? Chris said he wasn't sure, you'd blocked yourself."
"Of course," David answered. "Even with the ability to transport myself places, I can risk being sensed by Wyatt or his demons." He looked down at his hands. "I was working with a few others… Grishom and this new guy, Tristan. We were trying to get a clan of witches to safety before…" He paused, shaking his head, his voice filled with emotion as he choked out, "We didn't get all of them. We lost some when the demons ambushed us."
"I'm sorry," Prue said, and meant it.
The door opened then, and Ria stepped out into the hallway. She closed the door behind her and waited a moment, before turning and slamming her fist into the wall. "Damn it!" The two words tore from her throat as tears burned in the backs of her eyes.
Prue stood up quickly and reached out to gently rest a hand on her cousin's shoulder. "We're going to figure this out," she promised. "We're going to fix it."
"How?" Ria asked, pushing a few strands of hair out of her eyes. "How are we going to fix it? We don't even know what's wrong. We don't know why this is happening to him!"
"Is Chris still in there?" David asked, gesturing with one hand towards the room.
Ria nodded wordlessly, then finally said, "He's going to stay and keep an eye on Adam for a while. Just in case." She exhaled slowly, then said, "He says he keeps seeing Mom and Dad… so alive. The dreams are so real, so vivid, that it's like he can reach out and touch them, practically, and feel the heat from their skin. And when he wakes up and remembers that they're not…" She met David's gaze slowly, painfully. "He says it's like losing them all over again."
"Ria, listen to me," David said with such conviction in his voice that Prue and Ria found themselves believing him against all odds. "We are going to fix this. We are going to end it. I promise."
Chris stumbled backwards, fear and pain playing across his features as the three angry Charmed Ones approached him with distrust and fury in their eyes.
"Listen to me, what are you doing?" Chris asked, his voice higher than usual.
"The pheromones wore off," Phoebe said, her voice tightly laced with anger.
"Right after they took my son!" Piper finished. The anger in her face was mingled with fear.
"You don't seriously believe this is my fault, do you?" Chris asked, looking from Piper to Phoebe and back again. Then he switched his gaze to Paige just as she answered his question.
"Oh, right, so it's just a big coincidence we all fell under Mr. Right's spell?"
"And suddenly we all wanted to bind Wyatt's powers?" Phoebe added.
"You see, Chris," said a strange man standing behind them, "what they really want is for you…"
Paige spun to face him. "For you to leave."
The man paused, then nodded abashedly. "I knew that." And he turned and left the room.
Chris watched him go for a moment, then turned to Leo with a pleading look on his face. "This is crazy. Leo, tell them."
"Tell them what, Chris? I'm wondering the same thing myself," Leo replied, refusing to backup the desperate witch-lighter. He folded his arms over his chest, waiting.
"Okay," Chris said finally, caving as he seemed to realize there was no way out of this. "So what if I did? I was only trying to protect Wyatt."
"Okay," Adam said as he took a seat next to Ria on the sofa and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes. "This one was just weird."
"Was it different from the others?" Chris asked, leaning forward interestedly. He was sitting across from Ria and Adam, and Prue was perched on the edge of her chair to his left. The four of them were sitting in the common room of the safe-house, slightly apart from the other witches who were currently using it as a hide-out.
"Yeah,' Adam answered. "It really was." He glanced at Chris, and said, "You were in it. You… you looked kind of like you do now. Like it happened recently, or will happen in the near future. But…" He trailed off, then said hesitantly, "You were talking to Mom and Aunt Phoebe and Aunt Piper. And Uncle Leo. And there was someone else there, some guy I didn't recognize."
"Did I summon them?" Chris asked, wondering if somehow he was going to have access to the spirits that he had been unable to summon for so long.
"No." Adam swallowed uneasily. "I… uh… they were alive. And… younger. Like… I don't know, like before we were born? But it was like they didn't know who you were. They were mad at you. You'd done something to them, and they were angry, and… you said you were there to protect Wyatt."
Chris and Prue exchanged a confused look, then Chris said, "Adam, none of that is possible. Are you sure this wasn't just a dream? Separate from the nightmares you've been having?"
"No… it ended the same way the others did. I was in that dark place, and scared, and…" He gave Chris a hard look, then added as a thin smile quirked the corner of his lips. "And you know not to say anything is impossible, Chris. Not with magic to help us."
"Or harm us," Ria added grumpily.
"Do you think it is supposed to tell us something?" Prue asked, leaning back in her chair.
"But why would Chris be protecting Wyatt? Wyatt doesn't need protecting," Ria pointed out, rolling her eyes as she mentioned her eldest cousin's name. It took quite a bit of effort not to spit out his name, not to think of him as no longer family. She knew he was still family, at least to Chris. She wished she could look past what he had done and forgive his sins, but she just couldn't.
Wyatt Halliwell, her cousin, her family, no longer existed.
"I don't know," Adam murmured, feeling suddenly far too exhausted to be having this conversation. Still, he knew there was something important in what he had seen, some clue that would point them towards an important discovery. He didn't believe that these dreams were just dreams. They were signs, visions. Magic was trying to tell him something, and magic was never something to be ignored.
"What exactly had I done to the Charmed Ones?" Chris asked finally.
Adam glanced at Chris, raising an eyebrow at hearing Chris refer to his mother and aunts by their magical title. Still, he knew how hard thinking about them was for everyone, including Chris. It would have been easier for him as well if he could have somehow separated the women he had seen in his dreams from the mother and aunts he had known for the first six years of his life. Seeing them again… so alive… it just hurt.
"You… I don't know. I think you tried to get them to bind Wyatt's powers?"
Chris and Prue both looked up sharply at that. "It might take the power of three to bind Wyatt's powers," Prue said quietly, thoughtfully. She gave Adam a contemplative stare and added, "Maybe if we could somehow reconstitute the power of three…"
"How? We can't summon Mom and the Aunts," Ria cut in coolly. "The Elders aren't going to let us."
"What if it is the only way to save the world?" Chris countered.
"It still wouldn't be enough," Ria answered. "They're dead, which means they don't have their Charmed Powers anymore. They're not Charmed, and nothing short of bringing them back to life is going to change that."
"Then what exactly was Adam's vision telling us?" Chris snapped. "It's practically driving him insane, it must be doing it for a reason!"
"I don't know," Ria answered, her expression falling as she looked at Adam's weary face.
But Adam looked at her with a smile, slightly strained but still there, and said, "It's telling us not to give up. It's telling us there is a way to fix this. We just need to find it."
"How?" Prue asked. "That dream gave us nothing to go on except things that are never going to happen."
"Don't you believe this can be fixed?" Adam murmured.
Prue looked at him, her eyes guarded, her expression wary. Chris and Ria were also looking at her, waiting for her answer, and she could feel the tension rising every moment she didn't answer. She wanted to say something reassuring, something about how they could fix every problem, but the words wouldn't come. They had been through so much in their short lives, and she knew that, if nothing else, her cousins deserved honestly.
"I don't know," she said finally.
Adam closed his eyes and didn't respond. Chris looked a little annoyed and incredibly upset, but he just shrugged as though to accept her right to an opinion. It was Ria's answer that surprised her.
"Yeah… I'm not so sure either," she replied.
The dining room in the Halliwell Manor was packed. Piper and Leo were sitting at one end of the table, with Chris between them, and Wyatt a few chair further down. Paige was sitting across from Wyatt, flanked on either side by two girls, undoubtedly twins. Phoebe sat next to one of the twins, with Prue at her side.
"Piper, can you pass the lasagna?" Paige asked as she poured herself a glass of orange juice. Her oldest sister reached for the lasagna and carefully passed it along the length of the dining room table.
"Chris, these rolls are delicious," Leo complimented as he bit into a wheat roll.
"Yeah… easy for you to say, Dad," Wyatt snapped irritably, glaring at Chris. "You didn't end up with half the batter in your hair."
Piper and Paige laughed out right at that, and Chris defended himself, "It was just the eggs."
One of the twins bit into a carrot and said helpfully, "Besides, Wy, the eggs probably looked better in your hair than in any of ours because your blonde so it matches with the yellow of the yolk."
Wyatt threw a celery stick at her, but the other twin redirected it back at Wyatt with her telekinesis.
"Hey, no fair, you're double-teaming me!" Wyatt exclained.
"Oh, is the great Twice Blessed afraid of two middle school girls?" Prue mocked. Wyatt glared at her, and Phoebe struggled to keep from laughing.
"A family dinner was a good idea, wasn't it?" Piper commented during a lull in the conversation, pleased with herself.
"Yes, it was," Leo hurried to agree.
"It's nice to know that despite everything we can still be a family," Prue agreed. She glanced hurriedly at Chris and amended, "Or, at least, try to be a family."
"We're always family, even if we hate each other," the second twin announced, taking a sip of her water. "Some things never change."
"Demon!"
Wyatt was out of his chair and tackling Phoebe out of the direction of a fireball. The demon in question quickly conjured another fireball, but Piper blew him up with a casual flick of her hands. The entire family turned to see where the first fireball had gone, and Piper groaned as she noted that it had collided with the Grandfather clock.
"How many times are we going to have to get that thing fixed?" she bemoaned as she looked at the scorched wood.
"You're right, Mel," Wyatt said to the second twin as he helped Phoebe to her feet. "Some things do never change."
"That wasn't what I had in mind," Mel retorted, rolling her eyes.
Adam opened his eyes and lay awake in the bed. The dream hadn't ended the way the others had, not with fear and a cave. Not with the sense of danger or betrayal. Instead, it had been filled with the feeling of contentment, of happiness. It was bittersweet, like something was missing, but still… there was a feeling of hope, that everything could somehow work out as long as they stayed together.
As a family.
He paused as he thought of the two twins. He didn't know who they were, or why he and Ria hadn't been in the dream. And although he had some feeling that if he ever did learn the answer, he wasn't going to like it, it didn't really seem important. The only thing that mattered was that he felt… hopeful.
A feeling they hadn't felt in a very long time.
He got out of bed and plodded to the door. Pushing it open, he stared at the empty hallway for a moment, then walked silently to his sister's room. Pushing open the door, he flicked on the light and watched as she shot up in bed, eyes darting around in a panic.
"Adam? What's wrong?"
"Nothing," Adam said. "I just… I had a dream. A good dream. A vision. And… I think… I think we're going to fix this. Somehow. It can be fixed."
Next Chapter: Anger and Pride
Due: Thurs 5/29