Trust and Betrayal

Piper's hands were steady as she straightened the tablecloth, rearranged the flowers, adjusted the shining glassware.

She didn't really feel like eating – none of them did -, but these gestures of normality helped calm her, gave her an order and structure she'd been missing these past months, and, who knew, perhaps he'd come home…

She wanted to flinch away from that thought, but the same determination that had carried her through the housework kept her strong now, and she forced herself to examine the idea.

Would he ever come home again? Could she even claim this place as his home after what she'd done to him?

For the thousandth time since yesterday, she clamped down on the impulse to rush out of the house and go searching for him. Where should she go? He was most likely in the Underworld, hunting for Gideon, and even if he had settled somewhere in San Francisco, as Hand… Sarah… had predicted to Phoebe, how could she ever find a place that would most likely be warded perfectly?

Besides, she had no right to rush after him, no right to impose herself on him and demand that she could explain… apologize… anything, really. She had no right at all.

Again, her thoughts darted across the memories of the past year, spread out in her mind like a cupboard full of ugly clothes, and again she wanted to flinch back. Now that she had seen it, had understood and accepted it, she couldn't believe that she'd been so blind.

"A thousand signs," she whispered absently, then turning her attention to the curtains. She would have to take them down soon, clean them thoroughly, perhaps even choose a new colour scheme for the living room. Children were even harder on the furniture than demons, and with a second one on the way…

As it had so many times these past days, her hand snaked out of its own accord and protectively covered her belly. She couldn't feel him, yet, didn't even notice the usual signs of early pregnancy, but the knowledge of his existence changed everything.

"What am I going to do?" She asked, but it was a rhetorical question. She had done more than enough, already, and, bleak as it was, her path lay before her in painful clarity.

She could do nothing. She would do nothing. Just wait here, in his home, with open arms, for the day when he decided to come back. She would not rush out, would not let her emotions take over. She would wait for him, and carry her guilt close to her heart, and protect his unborn past and future with her life.

Not thinking had gotten her into this whole damn mess. Only thinking would get her out of it.

Once more she straightened the tablecloth, then walked over to the kitchen to check the process of her lasagna. She moved slowly, steadily, refusing to let the nervous energy that was thrumming through her take over.

She chose the dinner plates carefully, as if the six – three for the sisters, one for Leo, two for Chris and Sarah, even if they would never come… - white porcelain circles were at all different from the rest, and she polished the cutlery before arranging it on the table.

"Steady…", she murmured to herself. "Think about what you do, Piper…"

Then the sound of orbs filled the house, and the plate in her hand fell to the floor, shattering. Her heart beat wildly in her throat, and both hands cupped her belly, holding the spark of him close.

But it was only Leo.

She wanted to turn back to her tasks, ignoring him and pretty much everything else as she had been doing the past days. But something in his face gave her pause.

She wasn't sure about this new Leo, this broken, devastated, desperate man that had collapsed after the news and never really got up again. A child was supposed to bind two people together as close as it was humanly possible, as close as Wyatt had brought them to each other. But Chris, their second, wonderful, terrible child, had torn them apart, and they had been eyeing each other across the room as if they were strangers.

He still looked like a stranger. But he looked also alive, filled with a wild, frenzied panic that was a very different thing from the muted pain of the last days.

"What happened?" She asked, her own voice foreign to her in its forced calm. She wouldn't stop thinking. She wouldn't rush about and let emotion take over. She would never again say something she hadn't thought about carefully. "What happened Up There?"

Called by the sound, her sisters could now be heard, rushing down the stairs, reaching the origin of the orbs with the speed of hope. They visibly sagged when they saw the visitor was only Leo, but they, too, recognized the expression on his face as something new.

"Leo?" Phoebe asked, her voice tentative, and whether he had waited for them all to gather, or whether it had taken a second voice to wake him, Leo gave a start. His hand rose to his head and he ruffled his hair in a gesture of silent frustration.

"The Elders called me to give me the news," he began, his voice raw and strangely flat. "They… they found Gideon. Down in the Underworld. Dead. Surrounded by destruction and several bodies that couldn't be identified. Chris'…"

He took a deep, rasping breath, and his hands tightened in his hair, tugging on it in a way that had to be painful.

"Chris' blood was all over the floor."

No, she thought. No!

And then forbade herself to rush about and jump to conclusions. She had done that too many times the past year.

"… his body…" she whispered, unable to properly start or finish the sentence.

Leo's head snapped over to her, his eyes meeting hers in a flash of emotions and memories and fears. But his voice was just as flat, and her heart beat just as wildly as he answered.

"No sign of him, Piper. They don't know where he is, or if he's even alive. They just don't know."

The dreary tunnel systems of the Underworld were, as most humans, witches and even demons would agree, a creepy place to be alone in. They made you feel small, and insignificant, and above all vulnerable.

Hand strode through them as if she owned the place, the heels of her boots clicking aggressively on the wet stones.

The bundle she dragged behind her would have been much too heavy for a normal girl her size, but with her returned magic humming and buzzing under her skin, Hand barely felt the weight.

It was drowned by the triumphant singing in her heart, the satisfaction of a hunter close to striking her prey, and above all, the blood lust that was coursing through her veins.

She had been Sarah for weeks now, struggling with a world that was foreign to her, with strange people and their demands, with morals and questions and insecurities that had never been part of her existence before.

Now she was Hand again. More than human and less than human, less than a soldier and more than a killer.

And in a way it was glorious.

(„Do you understand what I want you to become?" Lord Wyatt had asked her one hot, endless summer afternoon when she'd been seventeen and his slave for nearly two years. „Do you even have an idea what the future at my side will hold for you?"

She looked up at him silently, at her LordTyrantMonsterBenefactor, the man she hated most in all the world and the man she desperately wanted to be loved by.

Months of pain had taught her never to lie to him.

„A killer," she answered, quietly and honestly, and quickly ducked her head when she saw irritation flash in his eyes.

„That is a stupid answer," he said curtly, and her muscles tensed in preparation. But no punishment followed. So he was feeling merciful today.

"You have been a killer since you were born, we both know that," he continued. "It is your destiny. But I will make you more than that. Much more."

Her thoughts flashed to the things he had shown her and taught her, the things he had made her do and the things he had done to her in the twilight of his bedroom, and she shuddered.

As if he had read her mind (and why shouldn't he have? He was Lord Wyatt, after all), her Master chuckled. Strong, powerful hand found her face, tilted it upwards, forced her eyes to meet his.

"You will become Fear," he whispered. "Power. Glory. The Hand that reaches out in the night. The Fist that crushes my enemies. They will weep with pain, but you will walk past, uncaring, heeding only my commands. You will be a nightmare, a tale parents whisper to their children, a name that is not spoken."

Silently, she trembled in his grasp. But she was also listening, his powerful words spinning her future and drawing her in, her body arching towards him like the moon drew the waves.

He laughed.

"I will make you mine. And you will make the world cry out in fear.")

So she was not frightened of the demons suddenly surrounding her. It was they who should be frightened

She was not frightened of the wards engulfing her. No wards could contain her.

And she was not frightened of the Elder Gideon, when she came to stand before him. He was powerful, but she had been the Hand and Fist of the most powerful being ever in existence, and the Elder paled against him.

So she was not frightened.

Instead, she smiled.

"Gideon," she said. Nothing else.

And the Elder, despite all caution and hate, was fascinated. He leaned forward in his throne like chair, his head resting on one fist, a parody of a king, and a hundred emotions flickered across his face. She wanted to smile again.

"Tell me why I shouldn't kill you right now," he demanded.

She shrugged.

"Why didn't you, yet?" She asked, and he was even more intrigued.

(They liked to play games, those powerful ones. They liked toys that were complicated and mysterious, liked to unravel them, break them, and only then throw them away. As long as she wasn't boring, she would be safe.)

"Tell me then," he tried again. "Why did you come?"

She gathered her thoughts carefully, wiping out the corners of her mind so that all he could see would be shiny and true.

"Because you are right," she said. "You are doing what is necessary; you're the only one that sees the truth."

Triumph blazed in his face, the heat of righteousness warming his cold heart.

"You were with my enemies, before," he objected.

"They were the first enemies of Lord Wyatt that I found, when I came to the past," she said, revealing everything she wanted to, while allowing him the satisfaction of building his own conclusions.

"I am from the future, like Chris," she added, a heartbeat after he had understood it by himself. "I came to fight the monster that you are trying to kill, and I thought that Chris Perry was the best man for the job. I was wrong."

And, oh, Gideon was enjoying this. His voice crooned with pleasure, and his eyes shone with victory.

"But Chris Perry is working so hard to save little Wyatt," he whispered, smirked, mocked.

"Chris Perry doesn't understand," she answered, in the simple way Lord Wyatt talked, the one that spelled truth and would suffer no contradiction. "He does not know that being good often means being hard. Evil has many ways, dark and nebulous and without a clear path, but good must be true and without mercy in its clarity, like a diamond. Diamonds have no place for shadows."

"And Chris Perry would not agree?" Gideon asked mockingly. "I have heard Leo complain about his ruthlessness."

"Chris Perry, despite all his experiences, is still a whitelighter at heart." She smiled, thin-lipped and hard. "I, on the other hand, am a killer, Gideon. I have always been a killer. It's in my nature."

Gideon chuckled. It was the high, cold chuckle of a man that would only ever see himself and be endlessly amused by what he perceived as reality.

"Another pact with another devil," he mused. "Why not. But tell me, killer, why should I trust you. What reason can you give me to not consider this another ruse by the Charmed Ones?"

Hand let go of the bundle by her side, kicking it forward, and used her magic to unfold the cloth it was wrapped in.

"The reason is simple," she said into the absolute silence of the Underworld's caves. "You can trust me because I bring you Chris Perry, the Charmed One's whitelighter, bound and powerless."

And Gideon, staring down at his enemy's helpless form, chained and stripped of both dignity and magic, down at Chris who stared up at him with impotent hatred in his eyes, slowly began to laugh.

A/N: Review, please! I'm already working on the next part…