A/N: Bah. I counted and it's four chapters Piper, and four Paige. They break even! Why complain? WHYYYYYYY? But just for you, Shimmersea
A/N: Slitherrrrrrrrrrr.
A/N: Kit? Best review ever. You whore.
*
Psychosis: Revelations
*
A promise means nothing until it's been delivered.
Phoebe promised me happiness. She promised me health. She put up her hands, placed them on her heart and swore to me that things would get better, that the hell that is existance would be over, that the pain would go away. Let me tell you Phoebe, the pain will never go away. It will never go away just like Prue will never come back. It's just one of those things I know. They don't understand how I know things. Guess I can see that; it's supposed to be Phoebe with the precognitive power, not that we even have powers anymore.
Power. Who needs it? Everyone. All those go-getters out there, who do their things and win battles and get money and buy big houses. They need power. We used to win battles. Now it's just one never-ending losing streak. A streak, a smear, a smudge. I'm a smudge. I'm the tiny scratch on the Halliwell plaque that ruined the whole thing. I was the germ, the tiny little virus, on the tip of that needle, in the haystack that was the lives of my sisters and I, and that virus spread. Perhaps I do have power after all.
Who's really to say where true power lies? For me, the one with the most power is still my sister Prue, and she's dead. What the hell does that say for the Charmed Ones if the sister who had, and still possesses, the most power, isn't even alive anymore? She still controls us, makes us act upon what we think she would most approve of.
So many times I've found myself in a situation I'm unsure of how to handle and thought to myself "Now what would Prue do?" and the best part is it's always worked out. We're as well trusting ourselves to trust her, because she's always in the right. It's just the way things are.
We're drawing near to the end of this journey. I can also feel that. I know it will end soon.
You would think, after all the hardship my sisters and I have gone through, that by now we'd be redeemed. That it'd be over. Well, that's four years gone now, and it's still not over. I remember when we first became witches, I was so strongly opposed to the lifestyle I almost quit several times. And perhaps, although I grew to accept myself, almost love my power and the bond it brought to my sisters and I, perhaps that first doubt never fully left me. In fact, I'm sure it didn't. But I ignored it, and buried it deep inside me, never to give a second thought once more. And inside me it must've grown, and festered and matured.
And that's what turned me inside out.
"You've been sitting there for hours, you know." Paige wanders over and sits beside me on my bed. "Just staring. Is there even anything you're looking at?"
"Outside," I mumble in response. Adding, in a whisper: "Always outside." Listening to Paige breathing, I time my own so we go rhythmically. I open my mouth, but then close it again. And then I speak. "Do you think..."
Paige lowers her gaze to the floor. "I don't know," she intones sadly. "I don't think anybody really knows anything anymore, Piper. I think we're lost."
Feeling tears begin to brim at the corners of my eyes, I blink them back and moisten my lips. "Feels like we've been abandoned too," I say. "Not just by each other, but by the people we were supposed to be able to trust. I woulda thought that, I don't know, Mom or... or even Prue, or *someone* could've come to offer their support. Even Leo's just disappeared." My voice is cracking, high and frail. "We're supposed to be married! How can I function after all we went through to get that union and this happens? I feel like I can't trust anymore, that I have no one to rely on because they're either dead or, or just insane."
Paige is crying. Her body heaves with shuddering sobs, but she remains silent.
"How can we go on, Paige?" I implore her. "How can we go on like this? We can't. We have to stop doing this. To ourselves and to each other." My voice fully breaks down as I begin crying desperately, utterly miserable. "I am so sorry I did this to you," I sob. "I never wanted to end up like this. I never wanted to... to lose my mind."
"Piper you still have your mind," Paige suddenly cries. She continues, her voice barely above a whisper. "It's there, it's still deep inside you, because you couldn't be sitting here talking to me like a sane woman if you didn't. You just have to find it, and I have to find mine, and if anything, having something to focus on will pull us through. Please, Piper. Please!"
Sniffing, I relax my shoulders in defeat. "I can't, Paige. I'm so lost and so desolate... I don't think I can ever come back."
She turns to me, her face soaked with tears, the front sections of her hair plastered to her face in strings. "You have to! You have to come back! You have to believe."
"I don't believe in anything anymore," I whisper in a harsh voice. "I don't hope."
"Everybody hopes."
"Hope has forgotten me."
Silence.
Then a scream fills the air, coming from Phoebe's room. Within seconds, Paige and I are there.
It is Cole.
He has struck her.
"Why hello, ladies!" he jeers cruelly upon our entrance. "Little Miss Phoebe here has rejected my marriage proposal on the grounds that," he pauses and raises his hands to air-quote, "she can't leave, her sisters. Well! Do you know what I think about that? Huh? Do you?" Bending down, he grabs Phoebe by the back of her neck and slams her onto the ground. "I think I might have to kill you all!"
"Get out of here, Cole," I warn.
"Oh, what're you gonna do? Blow me up? Hmm, last thing I heard, you guys didn't have your powers! In fact, maybe I should go. Then you guys can have a nice little chat and Paige can beat you all to hell again!"
Something clicks in Phoebe, I can see her physically change. She slowly pulls herself to her feet and wipes the blood from her face. Turning, she stands by us and faces Cole. "I never told you about that," she says in a low voice. "I never told anybody about what she did. I didn't even tell you that we were powerless."
And the same feeling of revelation bursts into Paige and I.
Cole.
"It was you," Paige accuses, her voice still straining with the idea of the man she'd never liked being behind the whole thing. "It was you all along. You did this."
"No," Cole replies. "I merely gave you girls a push in the right direction. That night you thought you saw me in your room, Paige, I was there. The energy I bestowed inside you was to free your mind, just like Piper's. It was to pick out all your bad thoughts and niggling doubts, paranoias, and emphasise them. I didn't touch Piper. She got there all by herself. It was what gave me the idea, a way I could get rid of you both without actually killing you, so Phoebe would love me. If you hadn't already been completely fucked up, it never would've worked. And to this calibre, I'm astounded. The energy wasn't even needed. You were headed straight into crazyville and probably would've hit home to join Piper within a couple of years. I just sped the process up a little."
Phoebe's crying. "You bastard," she growls, her voice callous and mean. "We're gonna kill you."
"Try it," invites Cole.
Turning on her heel, Phoebe faces us. Searching our expressions, she gives each of us a small nod. "You can do it," she mutters.
"I can't," I reply, looking away.
"You can, Piper. It was seperation that took our powers away. All we have to do is trust each other and they'll come back. And it'll all go away. Remember what I said, Piper, about having something to focus on. Cole started the destruction of our spirits. Perhaps he's right when he says he didn't even need to do it. But he's evil all the same."
Glancing at Paige, I swallow the huge lump in my throat and nod. Lining up in our classic formation, we join hands.
Phoebe starts, shakily. "The Power of Three will set us free."
Paige joins. "The Power of Three will set us free."
And slowly, my voice quivering all over the place and cracking, I speak the words. "The Power of Three... will set us... free." But I don't believe it.
Cole's watching us laughingly, jeering and mocking us. "You've lost your powers, idiots," he cries over our pathetic chanting. "You're just human now, just like all the other people I'm gonna kill once I'm through with you!"
"The Power of Three will set us free. The Power of Three will set us free."
As Paige and Phoebe's words get more frantic and more forceful, I begin to feel something of a tremble in their hands. Something magical. "The Power of Three will set us free," I say again, barely in time with them. How can they have so much trust in themselves, in all of us?
"Oh give it up, ladies! You're just prolonging your death!" Cole shouts, getting angry at the relentlessness. Is he starting to get nervous? I begin to chant louder. Suddenly the look on his face is wonder, and his skin visibly pales. "What? No... it's impossible..."
We follow his eyes to the ceiling where two sparkling, golden orbs of light are hovering above Paige and Phoebe's heads. Their powers. "Keep going Piper!" Phoebe cries. "You can do it! Look at our powers, it's working, you just have to believe in yourself."
"Us, believe in us. Believe in the Charmed Ones."
Their words do it. With the knowledge that our union is working, that two thirds of the Power of Three is right within our grasp, I let my chants become a shout. "The Power of Three will set us free!" Our voices rise against Cole's own yells of horror as slowly I start to feel something of a tingle inside my own self.
"You can't do this!" Cole cries. "You lost your powers! You can't!" He charges towards us, but Paige and Phoebe use their free hands to throw out at him, and like a telekinetic forcefield, he cannot come through. He cannot reach us. "Piper! You can't do this! I'm gonna kill all three of you, and I'm gonna make you watch as I slaughter your sisters! I'll make you drink their blood!"
Closing my eyes in terror, I increase my chant. "The Power of Three will set us free! The Power of Three will set us free!"
"That's it Piper! They're coming!"
Startled, I glance up, and see a final set of golden orbs float in. The three of us keep up the chant until suddenly the orbs propel themselves inside us and we absorb our powers. I gasp with the feeling of so much energy shooting into me, and the familiarity of having them back.
"Keep chanting!" Paige urges.
And we do. Our voices whip together like the wind, a torrent of good magic binding Cole rigid, smashing into him and eventually, destroying him.
I watch as he screams his last, his face melting away in the flames that engulf him, exposing his skull and his bones until finally there is nothing left.
He's dead. Cole is dead.
But still I feel so lost and confused.
Paige chokes on her breath and we glace at her, wondering. "I can't orb," she says. "But I... I can hear myself think. I think I'm better."
"Me too," Phoebe adds. "I feel... normal."
Both their attentions turn to me. I meet their gazes, and feel the buzzing of a thousand wasps infiltrate my hearing and dots take over my eyesight. "I can't!" I scream abruptly. "Get away from me! Go!" I reach out to swat at the wasps, feeling their wings flutter against me menacingly, their tiny legs touching against my body. "Get away from me!" I scream loudly, my mouth opening wide, and as I do, the wasps flow inside my mouth and right into my body. I continue to scream animalistically, the wasps zooming throughout my skin, and eventually, when my horror has peaked, collapse suddenly onto the floor.
I float out of my body, above myself, and look down. Paige and Phoebe are crouching by my sides, crying and wailing. "I thought," Phoebe chokes, "I thought she would be better!"
"I know," Paige responds. "But she's still..."
She is still. I am still.
We're still broken.
"We'll get better," Phoebe affirms. "I know we will. I promise."
Okay then, Phoebe. I'll accept your promises and deep down in my heart I will hope fully that you'll make good on what you say. What you promise. Go on, give me happiness and health. Put up your hands, place them on my heart and swear to me that things will be better. Make the pain go away, Phoebe. Promise the pain away.
You can promise all you want, my sister sweet.
A promise means nothing until it's broken.
*
I made up "animalistically", didn't I? Ew, Cole. I'm glad it's not ALL about that whore.
Drawing close to the big End, guys...
A/N: Slitherrrrrrrrrrr.
A/N: Kit? Best review ever. You whore.
*
Psychosis: Revelations
*
A promise means nothing until it's been delivered.
Phoebe promised me happiness. She promised me health. She put up her hands, placed them on her heart and swore to me that things would get better, that the hell that is existance would be over, that the pain would go away. Let me tell you Phoebe, the pain will never go away. It will never go away just like Prue will never come back. It's just one of those things I know. They don't understand how I know things. Guess I can see that; it's supposed to be Phoebe with the precognitive power, not that we even have powers anymore.
Power. Who needs it? Everyone. All those go-getters out there, who do their things and win battles and get money and buy big houses. They need power. We used to win battles. Now it's just one never-ending losing streak. A streak, a smear, a smudge. I'm a smudge. I'm the tiny scratch on the Halliwell plaque that ruined the whole thing. I was the germ, the tiny little virus, on the tip of that needle, in the haystack that was the lives of my sisters and I, and that virus spread. Perhaps I do have power after all.
Who's really to say where true power lies? For me, the one with the most power is still my sister Prue, and she's dead. What the hell does that say for the Charmed Ones if the sister who had, and still possesses, the most power, isn't even alive anymore? She still controls us, makes us act upon what we think she would most approve of.
So many times I've found myself in a situation I'm unsure of how to handle and thought to myself "Now what would Prue do?" and the best part is it's always worked out. We're as well trusting ourselves to trust her, because she's always in the right. It's just the way things are.
We're drawing near to the end of this journey. I can also feel that. I know it will end soon.
You would think, after all the hardship my sisters and I have gone through, that by now we'd be redeemed. That it'd be over. Well, that's four years gone now, and it's still not over. I remember when we first became witches, I was so strongly opposed to the lifestyle I almost quit several times. And perhaps, although I grew to accept myself, almost love my power and the bond it brought to my sisters and I, perhaps that first doubt never fully left me. In fact, I'm sure it didn't. But I ignored it, and buried it deep inside me, never to give a second thought once more. And inside me it must've grown, and festered and matured.
And that's what turned me inside out.
"You've been sitting there for hours, you know." Paige wanders over and sits beside me on my bed. "Just staring. Is there even anything you're looking at?"
"Outside," I mumble in response. Adding, in a whisper: "Always outside." Listening to Paige breathing, I time my own so we go rhythmically. I open my mouth, but then close it again. And then I speak. "Do you think..."
Paige lowers her gaze to the floor. "I don't know," she intones sadly. "I don't think anybody really knows anything anymore, Piper. I think we're lost."
Feeling tears begin to brim at the corners of my eyes, I blink them back and moisten my lips. "Feels like we've been abandoned too," I say. "Not just by each other, but by the people we were supposed to be able to trust. I woulda thought that, I don't know, Mom or... or even Prue, or *someone* could've come to offer their support. Even Leo's just disappeared." My voice is cracking, high and frail. "We're supposed to be married! How can I function after all we went through to get that union and this happens? I feel like I can't trust anymore, that I have no one to rely on because they're either dead or, or just insane."
Paige is crying. Her body heaves with shuddering sobs, but she remains silent.
"How can we go on, Paige?" I implore her. "How can we go on like this? We can't. We have to stop doing this. To ourselves and to each other." My voice fully breaks down as I begin crying desperately, utterly miserable. "I am so sorry I did this to you," I sob. "I never wanted to end up like this. I never wanted to... to lose my mind."
"Piper you still have your mind," Paige suddenly cries. She continues, her voice barely above a whisper. "It's there, it's still deep inside you, because you couldn't be sitting here talking to me like a sane woman if you didn't. You just have to find it, and I have to find mine, and if anything, having something to focus on will pull us through. Please, Piper. Please!"
Sniffing, I relax my shoulders in defeat. "I can't, Paige. I'm so lost and so desolate... I don't think I can ever come back."
She turns to me, her face soaked with tears, the front sections of her hair plastered to her face in strings. "You have to! You have to come back! You have to believe."
"I don't believe in anything anymore," I whisper in a harsh voice. "I don't hope."
"Everybody hopes."
"Hope has forgotten me."
Silence.
Then a scream fills the air, coming from Phoebe's room. Within seconds, Paige and I are there.
It is Cole.
He has struck her.
"Why hello, ladies!" he jeers cruelly upon our entrance. "Little Miss Phoebe here has rejected my marriage proposal on the grounds that," he pauses and raises his hands to air-quote, "she can't leave, her sisters. Well! Do you know what I think about that? Huh? Do you?" Bending down, he grabs Phoebe by the back of her neck and slams her onto the ground. "I think I might have to kill you all!"
"Get out of here, Cole," I warn.
"Oh, what're you gonna do? Blow me up? Hmm, last thing I heard, you guys didn't have your powers! In fact, maybe I should go. Then you guys can have a nice little chat and Paige can beat you all to hell again!"
Something clicks in Phoebe, I can see her physically change. She slowly pulls herself to her feet and wipes the blood from her face. Turning, she stands by us and faces Cole. "I never told you about that," she says in a low voice. "I never told anybody about what she did. I didn't even tell you that we were powerless."
And the same feeling of revelation bursts into Paige and I.
Cole.
"It was you," Paige accuses, her voice still straining with the idea of the man she'd never liked being behind the whole thing. "It was you all along. You did this."
"No," Cole replies. "I merely gave you girls a push in the right direction. That night you thought you saw me in your room, Paige, I was there. The energy I bestowed inside you was to free your mind, just like Piper's. It was to pick out all your bad thoughts and niggling doubts, paranoias, and emphasise them. I didn't touch Piper. She got there all by herself. It was what gave me the idea, a way I could get rid of you both without actually killing you, so Phoebe would love me. If you hadn't already been completely fucked up, it never would've worked. And to this calibre, I'm astounded. The energy wasn't even needed. You were headed straight into crazyville and probably would've hit home to join Piper within a couple of years. I just sped the process up a little."
Phoebe's crying. "You bastard," she growls, her voice callous and mean. "We're gonna kill you."
"Try it," invites Cole.
Turning on her heel, Phoebe faces us. Searching our expressions, she gives each of us a small nod. "You can do it," she mutters.
"I can't," I reply, looking away.
"You can, Piper. It was seperation that took our powers away. All we have to do is trust each other and they'll come back. And it'll all go away. Remember what I said, Piper, about having something to focus on. Cole started the destruction of our spirits. Perhaps he's right when he says he didn't even need to do it. But he's evil all the same."
Glancing at Paige, I swallow the huge lump in my throat and nod. Lining up in our classic formation, we join hands.
Phoebe starts, shakily. "The Power of Three will set us free."
Paige joins. "The Power of Three will set us free."
And slowly, my voice quivering all over the place and cracking, I speak the words. "The Power of Three... will set us... free." But I don't believe it.
Cole's watching us laughingly, jeering and mocking us. "You've lost your powers, idiots," he cries over our pathetic chanting. "You're just human now, just like all the other people I'm gonna kill once I'm through with you!"
"The Power of Three will set us free. The Power of Three will set us free."
As Paige and Phoebe's words get more frantic and more forceful, I begin to feel something of a tremble in their hands. Something magical. "The Power of Three will set us free," I say again, barely in time with them. How can they have so much trust in themselves, in all of us?
"Oh give it up, ladies! You're just prolonging your death!" Cole shouts, getting angry at the relentlessness. Is he starting to get nervous? I begin to chant louder. Suddenly the look on his face is wonder, and his skin visibly pales. "What? No... it's impossible..."
We follow his eyes to the ceiling where two sparkling, golden orbs of light are hovering above Paige and Phoebe's heads. Their powers. "Keep going Piper!" Phoebe cries. "You can do it! Look at our powers, it's working, you just have to believe in yourself."
"Us, believe in us. Believe in the Charmed Ones."
Their words do it. With the knowledge that our union is working, that two thirds of the Power of Three is right within our grasp, I let my chants become a shout. "The Power of Three will set us free!" Our voices rise against Cole's own yells of horror as slowly I start to feel something of a tingle inside my own self.
"You can't do this!" Cole cries. "You lost your powers! You can't!" He charges towards us, but Paige and Phoebe use their free hands to throw out at him, and like a telekinetic forcefield, he cannot come through. He cannot reach us. "Piper! You can't do this! I'm gonna kill all three of you, and I'm gonna make you watch as I slaughter your sisters! I'll make you drink their blood!"
Closing my eyes in terror, I increase my chant. "The Power of Three will set us free! The Power of Three will set us free!"
"That's it Piper! They're coming!"
Startled, I glance up, and see a final set of golden orbs float in. The three of us keep up the chant until suddenly the orbs propel themselves inside us and we absorb our powers. I gasp with the feeling of so much energy shooting into me, and the familiarity of having them back.
"Keep chanting!" Paige urges.
And we do. Our voices whip together like the wind, a torrent of good magic binding Cole rigid, smashing into him and eventually, destroying him.
I watch as he screams his last, his face melting away in the flames that engulf him, exposing his skull and his bones until finally there is nothing left.
He's dead. Cole is dead.
But still I feel so lost and confused.
Paige chokes on her breath and we glace at her, wondering. "I can't orb," she says. "But I... I can hear myself think. I think I'm better."
"Me too," Phoebe adds. "I feel... normal."
Both their attentions turn to me. I meet their gazes, and feel the buzzing of a thousand wasps infiltrate my hearing and dots take over my eyesight. "I can't!" I scream abruptly. "Get away from me! Go!" I reach out to swat at the wasps, feeling their wings flutter against me menacingly, their tiny legs touching against my body. "Get away from me!" I scream loudly, my mouth opening wide, and as I do, the wasps flow inside my mouth and right into my body. I continue to scream animalistically, the wasps zooming throughout my skin, and eventually, when my horror has peaked, collapse suddenly onto the floor.
I float out of my body, above myself, and look down. Paige and Phoebe are crouching by my sides, crying and wailing. "I thought," Phoebe chokes, "I thought she would be better!"
"I know," Paige responds. "But she's still..."
She is still. I am still.
We're still broken.
"We'll get better," Phoebe affirms. "I know we will. I promise."
Okay then, Phoebe. I'll accept your promises and deep down in my heart I will hope fully that you'll make good on what you say. What you promise. Go on, give me happiness and health. Put up your hands, place them on my heart and swear to me that things will be better. Make the pain go away, Phoebe. Promise the pain away.
You can promise all you want, my sister sweet.
A promise means nothing until it's broken.
*
I made up "animalistically", didn't I? Ew, Cole. I'm glad it's not ALL about that whore.
Drawing close to the big End, guys...