LIES MY BROTHER TOLD ME. Do you like that title? I do! Thank you to Pixie Wildfire for that one!
I wrote quite a lot of this fic in a chemistry lesson… Who needs to revise to pass chemistry? Lol, yeah… Thanks for all of your great reviews, you're all so cool. I got a total head rush looking at all of the reviews you guys have given me. You're the BEST! I hope you all enjoy Chapter 4.
Pixie Wildfire: - Thanks a lot for being my beta. It really helped; I would never have got that bit about the demons done without you…
M J Rosemary: - And you shall find out soon. Thanks for your continued reviews and support.
Teresa: - Yeah, I know what you mean…
gaby (hyatt: - Yup, it's Wyatt! Lol…
X3: - Yeah, I know that feeling, poor Chris! Lol thanks for your review.
cherry7up56: - I'll try to be less cliff-hanger with the ending to this. Thanks a lot for your review.
Laheara: - Yeah, I liked that bit, I could just imagine Piper saying that as I was re-reading it looking for spelling mistakes so I added it…
goldstranger: - Point taken, I went back and read the spoiler and must have skimmed over the half a line where Piper says that she's changed her hair. Thanks for pointing that out, and thanks for your review.
gimmeabreak: - Thank you!
darkdestiney2000: - Sorry about the cliff-hanger. Don't hang for too long, here's a new chapter!
line100: - Thanks for continuing to read, I know you're a fan of Piper-centric, but I hope you can find somewhere that you can like this fic as well… I've decided to start updating quicker than I did on my other stories, as you can probably see lol!
Nautica7mk: - Thank you, glad you like it!
Magicgrrl: - I'd LOVE to have a padded cell! How cool! Sorry. Don't worry, I won't tell them… It's a SECRET… Thanks for your review.
Mor Cartel: - The Woogy? Uh… I don't believe he's coming back… *Checks plot* Nope, sorry…
Tigerdrake: - I know, but by the time this comes up it will have one! Thanks for your review.
Claddagh Ring: - Thank you so much. I'm pretty sure there were some typos, but I was going for speed to keep people happy and I guess that's what that happened. After writing Piper for quite a while I think I've got her down, but Phoebe and Paige are totally different! Sometimes they're not quite right at all… But thanks for your review and encouragement.
AJS: - Lol, just slipping in there! You just managed to get in just as I put the fic into the Document Manager. Great timing! Thanks for your comments, you're gret.
I warn you now ff.net is being slightly screwy with the way is shows reviews, and even though I got an alert telling me of your review I don't think ff.net is showing them all, and if it is then I'm just blind. I tried looking in my e-mail account at the reviews but because you're all so great I got totally LOST and had to give up. Forgive me if I've missed you off of the above list.
And Pixie Wildfire deserves so much credit; I don't know where I'd be without my fabulous beta! Go here: and worship her!
Charmed Leo
DISCLAIMER: - You know how it is. I say I don't own them, you say that you won't sue me. Got that? Jeez, anyone would think you were dumb, me having to put this in EVERY chapter…
**********
Piper nearly dropped baby Wyatt in shock. She couldn't believe that the sandy-haired young man standing so nonchalantly in the foyer in front of her could be her son. Her son, little blond Wyatt, all grown up and from the future…
"What have you done with Chris?" Paige demanded, guessing that somehow Chris' brother would be behind it. Why else would he be here at the Manor? She narrowed his eyes at him, forgetting that he was her nephew; all she knew was that he was a threat.
"He's not here right now."
"Liar." Paige said, still glaring at him. Piper held up a hand to quieten her sister. Wyatt didn't answer Paige but strolled back into the living room and the sisters followed him, finding him leaning against the fireplace, a framed photo in his hand.
It was a photo that Piper was particularly fond of, a picture of her holding the handles of Wyatt's stroller. On either side of her were her sisters, their arms wrapped around her back. Phoebe's hair was still long, and Paige's was still red. Crouching next to the stroller was Leo, tucking a blanket around his son against the wind.
Piper remembered that day; they had been in Golden Gate Park, standing in the middle of a paved walkway. Above them trees with interlacing branches form an arched avenue above them, the light filtering through leaves flushed red and orange with fall. All of them were glowing, happy smiles radiating off of their faces, cheekbones red and healthy-looking from the keen wind. Piper could almost feel the contentment coming off of the photograph.
Big Wyatt glared at it, his knuckles growing white as he held it in such a fierce grip. He took one last look at it, curled his lip into a sneer and threw it across the room with an angry growl. The glass shattered, sending shards dropping to the carpet and the frame cracked, allowing the picture to slide so that it was half-hidden.
"Hey!" Piper yelled, raising her hands too late. Wyatt stormed out of the room, his feet crunching on broken glass. Paige grabbed her sisters' arms and orbed them in front of Wyatt. He stopped when he saw the lights and waited for them all to appear.
"I should have thought about protecting this place from orbing." He said, holding out his hand, palm facing them. The Charmed Ones and baby Wyatt were blasted out of the Manor doors, which opened for them, and outside.
"Danger!" Piper shouted, and baby Wyatt put his shield up over his mother and aunts, protecting them from the fall onto the concrete steps. They led in a tangled pile for a minute before Piper managed to persuade her baby to put down the force field around them. Big Wyatt stood at the Manor doors, closing them with a point of a finger.
"He threw us out of the Manor?!" Piper shouted in disbelief. "It's our freaking house for crying out loud!" She picked herself up off of the floor.
"Now what are we gonna do?"
**********
Chris stared but all he could see was the powder blue material in front of his eyes. Wyatt had blindfolded Chris with his very own childhood blanket, something that was ironic in a way that Chris couldn't be bothered to work out. As far as he knew he was still the sunroom, tied to a chair and blindfolded after throwing a demon across the room, but in the sunroom nonetheless.
He tried orbing again, and once again landing in a heap on the floor and still tied up, just not to the chair. He sighed and rolled over onto his back, wondering if he could put together a makeshift spell to counteract an orbing shield. Suddenly he cried out as, without warning, he was dragged up by a fistful of hair and dumped back onto the chair.
"Sit and stay," Chris felt himself being strapped back to the chair. "Why is that too much to ask?"
"Sit and stay? And this coming from a dog-demon?" Claws raked down the side of his face gently – as gently as claws could be – just about drawing blood. Chris could smell foul breath and feel warm, sticky moisture trickling down his neck and into his shirt. He would have loved to send the demon flying right then, but to do that he had to see, and his sight, at the moment, was something that was completely impaired.
**********
Wyatt watched the jackal taunt the boy in front of him with a small smirk on his face as the animal scratched its claws down the boy's cheeks, leaving long, painful looking red lines. He watched with amusement as Chris tried not to squirm or duck away from the pain, trying to keep up a front. It annoyed Wyatt when he succeeded, he would much rather have seen Chris at least wince at the claw-marks.
Poor little noble Chris.
His skinny arms were tied to the chair, legs bound as well. The boy struggled, scrunching his face to possibly let the blanket slide enough for him to see.
~ "For I am Chris! The Light Avenger! With this blue cape, I shall fly in and save the day with my trusty sidekick, Wyatt! The Amazing Orber!"
"You got it wrong!" Wyatt complained, hopping off of the bed. "It's Wyatt the Dark Avenger and Chris the Amazing Orber." He looked at his brother with contempt, as if wondering how he had managed to get it confused.
"Is not!" Chris protested. "I'm always the sidekick! I want to be the Light Avenger!"
"Fine. MOM! CHRIS ISN'T LISTENING!"
"Chris, listen to your brother." The voice drifted up the stairs and through the closed door. Chris' face fell as Wyatt took the blue cape in triumph. ~
Wyatt shook his head, sending thoughts of sky blue capes and Light and Dark Avengers away and instead focused on the boy tied up in front of him. The one that had caused him so much trouble.
"You shouldn't do that, Chrissy. It'll only make the process worse." He taunted, pacing around his captive.
Chris snorted and resumed his struggles with a sluggish vigour. "I never give up, Wyatt. You know that."
Wyatt just shook his head and walked over to the cabinet, looking at all the pictures that cluttered the old shelves. He reached in and grabbed the first one his fingers got hold of. It was a picture of… who was she again? Damn P's. There were too many of them, in his opinion.
Ah, he remembered now. Penny. The one that had tried to take his powers. He smirked at the thought of sending the spirit into a glass orb. He still kept it, tossed carelessly into the bottom of a trunk. The old woman had been annoyingly hard to overcome, considering that she was, after all, already dead.
Wyatt let the picture drop to the floor as he reached for another. It was an older picture. A wedding picture. He furrowed his brows, trying to place names…
("…and this over here is my mommy, your grandma Patty, and over here…")
The other man in the picture looked much more familiar. Dark hair, a happy, wide smile. Glittering brown eyes.
Oh. Right. Victor. Chris had always liked him; Wyatt was less fond of him. His estranged grandfather – who rarely came to visit and yet always found the time to send money - was been one of the last members of his family left alive, the other being Chris…
The glass in the frame smashed as it hit the other frame and Wyatt moved through the case, remembering and shattering.
**********
"Piper, after the first load of rose petals started building up around our ankles I would have thought that you would have learned that it's not going to work."
"No, it's ok, I've just got to get Chris into the blowing up things mood."
"Piper, we're going to drown in damn petals!" Piper ignored her sister, shook out her neck and tried again. More pink petals drifted down from the roof of the porch. Paige blew up at her hair to dislodge any blossom that might have fallen there.
"Piper, honey, I don't think Chris is gonna let you use your power any time soon…"
"I blew up a demon earlier! How can he object to a door when he let me blow up a living creature?!" She sat down heavily on the seat with her sisters, making them both squish up to make room for her. Phoebe was trying to keep Wyatt occupied by showering him with rose petals, but he was tiring quickly and getting fussy.
"What time is it?" Piper checked her watch.
"Nearly four-fifteen."
"Four-fifteen? We've been sitting out here for four hours?!" Paige said in disbelief.
Piper nodded and narrowed her eyes in thought. "I'm gonna try the back door again."
"Nuh-uh! Piper, you've already created enough flowers back there for us to fill three of Wyatt's wading pools and the Land Rover. Move over." Phoebe said, stepping up to the door.
"You tried breaking down the door Pheebs. Not only did you break a heel you also got shocked. And don't try levitating to the balcony again, one of the neighbours will see…"
"Hush up back there…" Phoebe reached back for Piper's hand and exhaled. "Ok…" She closed her eyes, raised a hand and flicked it at the door, which glowed red but did not move.
"Oh, and you didn't try this four hours ago because…?"
"Because I didn't think about it four hours ago… Now, shush, I think it's working…" She raised her hands again, blasting the door. Instead of any glow a cascade of daisies streamed from the lock and the cracks around the frame.
"Daisies," Paige commented as Phoebe was beaten back by the torrent. "Thanks for the change, Chris."
**********
"Wyatt, what are you doing?" Chris asked, hearing yet another crash from behind him. Wyatt said nothing to Chris but picked up another photo. He went to drop in, but then appeared to recognize it and stopped. He grinned at it, then at Chris. He dropped the frame but bent down and swept the glass off of the photo, retrieving it from the floor.
Wyatt went over to his bound younger brother, who was still struggling, and Chris froze as he heard someone approach him. Wyatt started tugging at the blindfold and Chris then spoke up.
"Wyatt?"
"I'm going to take this off for a while; I've got something to show you. Promise not to try anything?" Chris didn't answer, but felt his body tense up. He was going to get to see! And seeing meant he could use his power. Wyatt laughed. When Wyatt laughed it felt like someone was pouring a bucket of ice cubes down the back of your shirt. It wasn't a nice sound. "I know what you're thinking, Chris. And it's not as if you could win if you did try it."
"I did pretty well last time we met." Wyatt ignored him and pulled the blanket down around Chris' neck. Chris blinked in the harsh light, trying to force his pupils to adjust quicker than they would have done normally.
"Last time? You didn't win, you ran! Straight back through the portal!" Chris waited for Wyatt to come around in front of him and into his line of vision. "Chris, do you remember this photo?" Wyatt asked after a short silence.
Chris looked at it. It was a picture of baby Wyatt, sitting on a stool that was covered in a soft white blanket. Piper and Leo were either side of him, smiling for the camera. Wyatt was looking confused and was just about looking at the lens when the flash went off. They had got a professional photographer to do it.
"I wasn't even born when it was taken, but yeah, I've seen it around. So?"
"Exactly! You weren't even born! Can't you see how happy we all were before you came along?"
"That's not true."
"Isn't it?" He pushed the photo closer to Chris' face, who had to fight the temptation to blast his brother out of the room.
"Now, now, Chris. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar…"
He had no clue who had told him that, – he had a feeling that it had been Great Grams on one of her spectral visits – but it was good advice and had actually worked on Wyatt on more than one occasion. So Chris restrained himself, hoping to talk himself out of this mess. Under these circumstances sending his older brother flying would not be the best plan.
"Oh so what is it, Wyatt? You want me to apologize for being born? Is that is?" He shook his head, staring down at his lap. "Get away from me, Wyatt."
"No, it's true. Why do you think dad left, huh?"
Chris's face didn't change, but his eyes got a steely glint in them. "Shut Up."
The older boy only rolled his eyes and looked back at the picture. "Why didn't dad come when it happened? Because he didn't want to see you, the little nuisance."
"Shut up." Chris' jaw had developed a tick and his eyes were narrowed.
"It was all. Your. Fault."
Chris gave out a howl of rage, mingling with a burst of pain. It had been nearly a decade since his Mom had died and even now the pain was still there, and sometimes still raw. He had come back to save his family, in the process seeing his Mom again, and he couldn't decide whether that had been a help or not. It had opened old wounds, opened old attachments and he was not ready to relive memories of her death through Wyatt's taunting. "I SAID SHUT UP!" He meant to blast his brother away, but Wyatt only grabbed Chris' face, holding it still, a sadistic smirk upon his face.
"You wanna see?" Wyatt didn't wait for an answer. He put a finger on Chris' cheek and Chris felt a cold blast shoot through his body.
"Whoa." He muttered, opening his eyes.
~ Five-year-old Chris held a fat red crayon in his hand and doodled on a piece of paper. He was sitting at the kitchen table whilst the rest of his family, including Wyatt, were crowding around the Book of Shadows on the kitchen island. He put down the red and picked up a blue, continuing to draw.
"Was that him?" His family were talking but he was paying no attention, too engrossed in colouring. He finished the drawing with flourish, spelling out a shaky 'Chris' in pink and sliding off of his chair, clutching the drawing in his hand.
"If we can't find him then an all-purpose vanquish, right? The purple exploding one's still good…"
"Looks like it's gonna have to be."
"It's finished!" Chris said.
"You're sure that's not him?" Wyatt shook his head and Piper sighed, turning another page. Chris knew that they were looking for a demon that had attacked Wyatt. Wyatt was always being attacked by demons. Chris was rarely attacked; the powers coming off of him were apparently not so drawing as the powers coming from Wyatt…
"Did you get a good look at him, Wyatt?" Wyatt frowned and then shook his head.
"No, not really…"
"I did!" Chris piped up, having been hiding behind the couch at the time.
"Really, Chris? Good for you…" Leo said, ruffling his hair.
"I was behind the couch, and-" Chris missed the sarcasm in Leo's voice – the tone that didn't want to hurt his son's feelings but didn't give any credit to the answer either.
"What did we say about stories?" Piper asked, looking down at Chris whilst unscrewing a jar lid at the same time.
"Making them up is bad?" Chris answered.
"That's right. Good boy." There was a short silence and everyone went about doing something.
"Pink's a girls' colour," Wyatt said suddenly, jabbing a finer at Chris' picture where the scrawled signature was. "Chris is a girl!"
"No! Dad! Tell Wyatt that he's wrong!"
"Huh?" Leo said, looking up. "Wyatt, you're wrong." Chris poked his tongue out at his brother.
"But pink's a girl's colour, Dad!" Wyatt whined, hating being told that he wasn't right. Leo frowned, an upbringing in the twenties and thirties giving him a biased view of such matters.
"Yeah, you're right. Pink is a girls' colour…" He turned back to the family huddle. Chris bit back tears at Wyatt's smirk.
"I could draw over it! In blue! Or black!"
"That's great!" Chris' face lit up.
"It is?"
"If we combine this potion to the one we made the other week, then…" Oh. So they weren't talking about his picture then…
"But…" Everyone was poring over the book, too busy for him right now. He paused then waved the picture, hoping to get some attention. "I finished!" He pronounced again, scrambling up onto a stool to get his head above the island's surface. He put it on the table. "See, there's Mom, and that's…"
"That's great sweetie!" Piper said, sweeping the drawing onto the floor accidentally to make room for potion ingredients. "We'll put it on the fridge…" Chris clambered off of the stool and fetched the drawing.
"Now?" He asked eagerly.
"Uh-huh…" Piper said, measuring out a green liquid, her tongue poking out between her lips.
"What's that?" Chris asked curiously. He liked learning the names of potion ingredients; he sometimes made pretend potions with fizzy drinks, giving each drink a different ingredient name. Piper looked down at him for a second and the measuring cup overflowed, sending the liquid spattering all over the picture. Piper sighed in exasperation.
"Chris, sweetie, go do some drawing, yeah?"
"But I already did…" He showed her the dripping crayon picture.
"That's lovely, go and do another one, Mommy's a little busy right now…" Chris' smile faltered.
"Oh… Ok…" He went back over to the table, trying to brush goo off of his picture. It clung to his hand and managed to smear the normally waterproof wax. Wyatt smirked at him, liking being superior and the centre of attention whilst Chris sat doodling at the table out of the way. "There's Mom, and Wyatt, and that one is the demon that attacked this morning…" Chris mumbled, having seen a very good likeness in the Book of Shadows in an entry that his family weren't paying attention to. ~
"You see, Chris? You were an annoyance; you got in the way…" Chris jumped, hearing Wyatt's voice hissing in his ear.
"W-what? How'd you do that?"
"Magic Chris. It's how we witches do a lot of things nowadays… And has it allowed you to see what a nuisance you were? Always demanding attention when Mom needed to have her full concentration on other things, always-"
"That's not true, Wyatt. That was a totally biased memory! They were busy, trying to cook up a potion to save your sorry ass…"
"So that's what you told yourself? That they were too busy? So it's not just that they didn't care, right, Chrissy?"
"They cared."
"Doesn't look like it," Chris glared at Wyatt, finally loosing any self-control that he had left and throwing his brother backwards and out of the door. "Think about it Chris," Wyatt called from the other room. "Just think about it."
Chris turned away from Wyatt and stared out of a shattered window. A single crystalline tear rolled down his face, dropping off of his chin and disappearing into his jeans.