Authors note: By accident I deleted the whole (clever I know) and they just disappeared. So I had to re-write them so some parts mightn't make sense since I can't check back to previous chapters (I could check the ones I uploaded but they're on the net and I can't go on for a while and when I tend to put things off they never get back on)

Disclaimer: This plot belongs to Jane Espenson not me. I would pretend it's mine but if anyone read her story they'd probably know and then I'd feel stupid. None of these Charmed characters belong to me. The woman doesn't write Charmed it's for a different program. So it's not really coping.

Shippers: It follows the show that means there's none.

Rating: PG

Timeline: The Paige, Piper and Phoebe who got back are from just after the fifth season. This is set in the third season. Sometime around when Leo/Piper and Cole/Phoebe are together.

Distribution: Does anyone actually want to? If you do feel free just tell me.

Summary: What if you woke up one morning and found out that the last two years of your life hadn't happened yet? Blame it on magic and try and fix it but is the solution ever that easy?

Title: Back Again

Chapter Three (The New and hopefully improved version)

(A/N: I can't remember if Leo orbed Piper yet but I'm gonna say he already did. So they are in the living room. I could check but I'm not able to for another few hours and if I wait until then to do this I know it will never get done)

It was only then Leo noticed a thick, dark film on Piper. It looked like it was grafted over her skin. Piper held her arm away from her. Whatever it was she didn't want it to spread any further. "Leo stop looking at it you're taking to long. Get me a knife." He hesitated. Piper locked eyes with him. She gave him a look that said, don't argue.

Leo hurried into the kitchen and was back within seconds. "What are you going to do?" He gave her the knife.

Piper plunged the knife through the clinging entity and into her inside arm, halfway between her wrist and elbow.

Stunned and horrified, Leo jumped back. Leo had seen a lot of things yet this still affected him.

The dark thing on Piper's arm had a three-inch slit right through its middle. It loosened its grip as Piper's blood cursed through and splattered on the floor, leaving fat red circles.

"Piper! What have you done?!"

"I don't know. I just…I needed to cut it. I thought maybe it would let go."

"I don't think that kind of-"

"Wait look!"

The dark thing was moving, contracting and thickening on Piper's arm. Over the wound. Over the blood.

It tasted the blood. It was dirty-foreign blood from the future. It had to go. It all had to go. The person. The blood. But there was more blood. Blood got away. The foreign body was scattering. That couldn't be allowed. Where was the blood? On the floor. The dark thing let itself gather, contract, and drop.

Piper and Leo watched in amazement as the dark thing dropped to the floor. It flattened out to a shadowy skin and moved to the spots of blood. It moved over them, moved on…Two spots gone. It moved on.

Piper figured it out. She fell to her knees by the dark thing. Stabbing it hadn't worked, but years of being Charmed had taught Piper something important: Most things couldn't survive being cut into a hundred tiny pieces and if it did well it would be out of commission for a while. She hacked at it till it was too small to do anything more.

"Your done it's completely dead."

"So it's not just a little dead?" asked Piper with a small smile.

"Piper. You've been acting weird all morning. I just dismissed it nut now after that I can't ignore it. What's going on?"

Piper looked at Leo and found she could lie. "I'm…I'm from the future. I woke up this morning and found myself two years in the past."

"You should've told some. We could help get you back."

"I don't want to go back," Piper whispered. What was so great about the future? Paige can still be my sister here. She just won't be Charmed.

How can she not want go back to the future, her home? "I understand that you're life in the future isn't perfect, but it's your life and you have to go-"

Piper's head snapped up and she fixed on him angrily. "It isn't perfect?" she mocked. "What I'm dealing with is way beyond 'isn't perfect'. You want to hear about it? The fabulous parade that is my future?"

"I can't," he hastened to stop her. "It's important that I don't know what's going to happen."

"Screw the Elders. Screw their rules. Here's my life, Leo. A few weeks from now Prue dies. That's right the demon is probably gaining strength right now. Then at her funeral I find out that I have another sister. And I become Charmed. Again."

"Piper, please, don't go on. I can't-"

"Can't what? Can't hear it or can't take it. Because it's not over. We're not even at the part where you leave me forever to become an Elder, which by the way thanks so much for in advance. It would be so bad but you also left your son he'll grow up without a father. And I'm so alone. I don't want to go back there. I know its wrong and selfish, but God help me, Leo, it's what I want."

Leo's face was a frozen mask; incapable of registering the amount of shock he was feeling. Could this really be the future? How could Prue be dead? Another sister? Him becoming an Elder? "I'm so sorry." It was all he could manage, and he was deeply aware of how ridiculously inadequate it was.

"It think…"

"What? What do you think?"

"I think maybe someone gave me a do-over."

"That's not possible."

"It is. Someone from the future came back or will come back in two years. He came back to change the future to make sure Paige didn't die, to make sure the world didn't become like hell."

Paige? Is she the other sister? It makes sense with the whole P thing. The future's future being like Hell?

"Leo, let me stay. Let me be happy. Is that so much to ask? To be with my sister and my husband, what's so wrong about that? The Elders won't allow it but we don't have to tell them."

"What about that guy they allowed him?" asked Leo confused.

"They didn't know. They didn't know until it was to late. Most of the white-lighters died. They need him."

"The Elders, dead? That's impossible."

Piper nodded and with faking understanding she said, "As impossible as you being an Elder?"

"Yes. I mean no. This is just too much for me to take it. It's to complicated."

"Welcome to my life," said Piper sarcastically. "It's your choice Leo."

Leo looked into Piper's eyes; he was searching for the words, a way to tell her what he wanted to say.

TBC

Authors note: I don't think this chapter turned out to be or different from the previously wrote one. I have a tendency to forget plots and just go were my ideas take me so I'm lucky to have this chapter finish we the same outcome. What's the outcome you wonder? Well you're gonna have to continue.