Disclaimer: I don't own Charmed.

Chapter Five

The Silent Manor

Abandoned Apartment, San Francisco: June 13th, 2026

"Liz? Liz, what did you see? Liz!"

Liz was broken out of her spiral of despair and infuriated grief by Wyatt's frantic voice. She blinked, coming back to herself and suppressing a wince at the state of her companions. Emily was in tears, watching worriedly from her seat on the bed, while Wyatt was artic-pale, looking on the verge of slapping Liz to draw her out of herself.

"Sorry," she croaked, running a hand through her hair and learning that it was badly knotted and hacked to her chin (probably with a knife) in the process. "I just-I'm sorry, it's fine now. I'm okay."

"What did you see?" Emily asked fearfully. "Did a demon do this?"

Liz bit her lip, then shrugged helplessly. "I dunno," she admitted. She glanced at the floor for a moment, organizing her thoughts. "Have you guys heard of the multi-verse theory?"

Wyatt shrugged, while Emily nodded, one hand rubbing her stomach protectively. There was a worried look in her eyes that said she suspected where this was going.

"Every decision a person makes leads to another universe where a different choice was made being created," Emily recited the basic outline of the theory.

"It's debated over whether it's every decision, or every major decision," Liz corrected. "But yeah, that's the gist of it. When somebody time travels, they're deliberately interfering with the Angels of Destiny's plan. It takes a lot of power, and it's very dangerous. You can end up making things worse with a single misstep. That's why I had to become my original self and forget my second life entirely when I went to 2003. If I had kept my memories, even if I got the ones from my original life, I would inevitably have done something differently, and damaged the loop. It would have catastrophic consequences. Time travel is not something to do on a whim."

"Okay, but what does any of that have to do with all of this?" Wyatt interrupted her, waving around at their surroundings, his jaw tense and expression strained.

"I think somebody else time travelled, and created another timeline," Liz explained quietly. "One where evil is dominant instead of good. Somehow, we kept our memories though, and that couldn't have happened without outside interference."

"How can you know for certain, though?" Emily asked.

"I can't," Liz admitted. "But it makes the most amount of sense. I need to check the Book. I added some things while in '03 that might help. But first, Wyatt and I will search the apartment, see if there's anything we can use here. Emily, you stay there and rest."

It was obvious that Emily would have argued if she weren't so exhausted. As it was, she simply nodded in acceptance, leaning back against the headboard.

Liz's eyes caught on a glint of metal, and she swooped down on it, coming back up with the shotgun Wyatt had been holding in her vision. She quickly checked the bullet chamber, discovering that three remained, closed it again, and passed it to her anxious sister-in-law.

"Keep this with you," she ordered the older woman. "It's only got three bullets, so be mindful of that if it's used."

"You're not leaving the apartment, though!" Emily protested, wide-eyed. She was very anti-gun, and didn't even know how to use one properly.

"We aren't," Liz agreed. "But just in case. Call if you need us, we'll be back soon."

Wyatt kissed Emily's clammy forehead softly then followed his sister through the dank hall into a sitting room, as bare and bleak looking as the rest of the flat.

The green walls had faded, and (like the rest of the place) mould climbed the walls. There was dust everywhere, and it looked as if the TV (which looked like it dated back to the nineties) had been converted into a fireplace. There were a few picture frames depicting a happy, but poor, mixed-race family with two sons and a daughter. The entire place made Wyatt feel depressed. As a naturally happy person, he wasn't sure how to cope. When he looked out the window, the bare streets were as bleak as the apartment, with overflowing trash cans and an overturned, burned-out car.

Liz, on the other hand, seemed indifferent to their surroundings. Though, Wyatt knew his sister, and he realized that she was probably taking in every tiny detail, weighing its significance and piecing together a picture from the clues. He wondered if this reminded her of the original future, and whether or not she felt it made things worse or better for her.

Thank the gods, he thought absently to himself, not for the first time, that Liz was Heir to Excalibur, and not him. She was a far better leader than he was, or ever would be.

"Alright," Liz exhaled, twisting on her heel to face him, her expression grim. "Time to try out our powers, and see what we can do."

Wyatt shrugged, and casually waved his hand at the broken TV set, intending to lift it with his telekinesis. But it didn't budge an inch. Wyatt's eyes widened, and he tried again, and again, and again. Nothing happened. After his fourth attempt, he tried his other powers. But nothing worked. Not his orbing, projection, power negation. He couldn't even sense anybody anymore. It was utterly terrifying.

Wyatt was the most powerful witch alive, the eldest child of the Eldest Charmed One. All of his family were ridiculously over-powered, but he was the one who could conjure a dragon at six months. His Aunt Phoebe and Uncle Cole had tried repeatedly to get him to learn hand-to-hand combat, but Wyatt had always brushed them off. Why would he need to know how to defend himself, when he had his shield to block any attacks?

Now, stuck in a strange, dystopia-feeling timeline without his powers, Wyatt felt very vulnerable, for the first time in his life.

Liz was unsurprised. "It was mentioned in the vision," she told him grimly. "I was hoping I misheard. That's probably why we're carting around a gun. So that Em and you can defend yourselves if I'm not around."

Wyatt swallowed any useless protests, crossing his arms defensively over his chest. "What about you?" he asked.

She grimaced and sighed. "Let's find out, shall we?"

As it turned out, Liz's powers weren't gone, but they were weaker than usual, and not all of them were available to her. She had orbing, electrokinesis, (regular) telekinesis, and pyrokinesis, as well as her empathy, enhanced senses and intuition and catoptromancy. But her telekinetic orbing, contact telepathy, aura sight, hovering, glamouring, apportation, molecular inhibition and cryo/hydrokinesis were all gone.

"What are we gonna do, Liz?" Wyatt asked his younger sister fearfully.

Maybe it was wrong that the older brother looked to the younger sister for guidance and reassurance, but that was how it had always been. As children, Liz had always been mature for her age. Everyone had commented on it. She was responsible and sensible, and was often left in charge of the younger cousins when their parents were dealing with demonic threats. And Wyatt couldn't count the amount of times she'd pulled his ass out of the fire. Over the course of their lives, Wyatt and the cousins' Plan A for any problems had become 'Go to Liz'.

Liz's forehead was sweaty and her breathing heavy from the strain of trying to use her powers, but she was calm enough to consider what their next step was.

"We need to figure out what happened to alter the timeline," she stated decisively. "And preferably who shielded us. Then we can plan how to reverse it."

"So how-?"

"The Manor," Liz cut him off, starting back towards the hallway. "Hurry up!"

Wyatt rushed back to the bedroom to get his wife, while Liz began gathering up anything that appeared useful in some way.

Halliwell Manor, San Francisco: June 13th, 2026

"It feels different," Wyatt commented once they had reappeared in the Manor's back garden.

It was heavily overgrown with weeds from years of neglect, and Emily hissed as her arm was scratched by a thorn. He gave her an apologetic look, pulling her close to his side in a protective embrace and wishing he could heal her. He'd tried, on instinct, but thankfully for his pride, nobody had noticed his failure.

"What does?" Liz asked distractedly, scanning the area with her powers and eyes.

"Your orbing."

"Makes sense," Liz answered. "Memories make you who you are. We're inhabiting the bodies of people who are us physically, but mentally they're different, and your mental shape is a key part of your magic. So seeing as the magic is, for lack of another word, being borrowed from my counterpart, it's logical that it feels different, seeing as so is she."

"Did you understand any of that?" Wyatt muttered to his wife. She shook her head, looking as bemused as he felt. It was a frequent feeling around Liz, who was a prodigy with magic and, well, everything it seemed. Her knowledge had only increased after 2003 and gaining access to a whole other lifetime's worth of knowledge.

"There's a ward up," Liz announced finally. "Well, several. Most are similar to the ones Mom and the aunts had set up in 2003 for demons and warlocks, but one is newer and more powerful than the rest. It keeps out everything. Good, evil, mortal. Everything."

"So how do we get inside, then?" Wyatt questioned her. Liz hesitated, looking uncertain.

"I'm not sure," she admitted. "It's complex, and tied into the other wards. I could try pulling them down, but that's risky. Plus, it would wear me out, leaving you guys without protection. I-"

"What about saying open sesame," Wyatt suggested, before they all ended up with headaches from her habit of complicating everything by thinking of every scenario (or trying to, at least). Liz gave him a scathing glare.

"This is serious, Wyatt!" she snapped. "We-"

"The Power of Three," Emily spoke up. They looked at her, eyebrows raised identically.

"Try using the Power of Three spell," Emily elaborated. "You know the one. The Power of Three will set us free? It's your family's most important spell, and your parents must have wanted you guys to be able to get back in again."

"I guess it's worth a shot," Liz decided after a moment of internal debating. She reached out to clasp Wyatt's hand and placed her other hand on Emily's stomach. "To strength the spell," she explained briefly at their looks. Then she began chanting. "The power of three will set us free. The power of three will set us free. The power of three will set us free!"

She finished the third repetition, and a blue dome flashed around the Manor, before disappearing. Liz quickly scanned the place again, and gave a satisfied smirk. "Good work, Em," she told her sister-in-law, before starting towards the house, her companions at her heels. Wyatt held the shotgun awkwardly.

Liz glanced over her shoulder at the others as she reached out for doorknob of the conservatory, using her telekinesis to unlock the door as she spoke. "Stay behind me, close. Warn me if you see anything, even if you think imagined it. Especially movement."

"Liz," Wyatt swallowed. She raised an eyebrow at him. "Could this be, your-?"

"No," Liz stated definitively. "It's not. Trust me."

"Always."

Liz nodded and led them into the conservatory. It was like they had entered a world frozen in time.

The siblings must have been young when their family in this universe had fled the Manor. Toys were strewn haphazardly across the floor, several dolls and toy soldiers left abandoned in the midst of a game. A basket of clothes lay on its side with its' contents spilling out, as if it had been knocked over and ignored. On top of that, the vases were filled with dead flowers. Knowing Piper, something terrible must have occurred for her to leave her home in such a state. She and Liz shared their clean-freak tendencies.

Liz wandered over to the window and stared at it, clearly trying to get a vision. Wyatt crouched beside the toys, reaching out to pick up a doll and examine it with a frown.

Emily, meanwhile, picked up a picture frame and stared at it. It was similar to many of the photos of Wyatt and Liz growing up that covered the halls in the Manor of their timeline, but there were subtle differences.

Wyatt seemed to be around seven, and his sister couldn't have turned six yet. They were both thinner and more solemn in the picture than the ones Emily had seen, and their clothing wasn't as well-made. Wyatt's jeans had been patched, and Liz's shirt was faded to the point that it would have been tossed in their universe. And when she looked around, Emily saw that the furniture was threadbare and had been repaired by hand several times each.

The Halliwells had never been rolling in the dough, as the saying went, but they were comfortable. The whole family pooled their resources, as they did everything else together. Piper's restaurant and club made a steady income, as did Phoebe's writing and Cole's work as a lawyer. Henry's income as a parole officer wasn't great, but it did fine, supplementing the lack of income from Paige and Leo's jobs at Magic School. Emily wondered why there was a discrepancy.

Liz gave up getting a vision and they gathered together in the middle of the room, where Wyatt showed the doll to his sister. "Looks like something Dad made," he pointed out as Liz took it to examine it herself. She nodded in agreement.

In the original timeline, Leo had been too busy with Elder duties to remember his daughter half-the time, let alone make her a doll by hand. In the second, however, he had made several toys from scratch for both of them. Liz still had them boxed up in the attic, waiting to be passed down to her own children, while Wyatt had some of his old toys in the nursery set up for the baby.

Emily showed them the photo, and the siblings exchanged quick looks, having picked up on the same things she had. Their lives had apparently been quite different in this version of the world.

"What now?" Wyatt wondered, looking to Liz for guidance.

She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and pointed upwards. "When in doubt, go to the attic," she shrugged.

Wyatt gave a weak grin before grasping his wife's frail-feeling hand and pulling her after him.