Just realised I haven't put in a disclaimer, hopefully the Lawyers haven 't started writing the summons yet. I own many lovely things but Charmed and the various characters are not amongst them.
She sighs, turns over in bed, looks at the clock and sighs again. There was no point even closing her eyes, she knows that sleep won't come. A blue light flickers at the bottom of the bedroom door. "Finally" she sits up, prepared. The door opens, then closes quietly and there is the sound of someone fumbling in the dark, a muffled thud and a sharp intake of breath. She has had enough and turns on the light, to see Leo startled and blinking into the unexpected brightness.
"Piper! I was trying not to wake you".
"I'm not surprised. Leo where were you? How could you do this to him? He cried himself to sleep, again?" Five hours of pent up frustration and anger burst out, but before she gets into full stride she sees his face and stops "What's wrong? What happened?"
She is up now, moving swiftly towards him. "Leo tell me"
"Callie's dead" He slumps on the end of the bed with his head in his hands.
"Oh Leo, I am so sorry, I know how much she meant to you" Piper puts her arm around him, pulling him tightly towards her. Inwardly her mind is racing, that made the fourth whitelighter to be killed that month, scared for Leo she holds him even closer asking "Do they know whose behind it yet?"
Leo laughs bitterly "Who knows, its not as though they ever wants to share information with me" He doesn't expand on this, he doesn't need to, they have both experienced the Elders' coldness since he abdicated his position as one of them.
Piper hesitates, but can't stop herself from asking "and her charges?"
He sighs, "Will be divided out amongst the rest of us. Yes Piper, I will be getting even more charges. Yes Piper, that means I will be able to spend even less time with my family, if that's possible" he looks at her straight in the face "and yes Piper there is absolutely nothing I can do about it"
They sit in silence for a time, each consumed in thought. "He hates me"
She doesn't need to ask whom, she too had been thinking of Chris. "No, no he doesn't. He knows that you are busy, he knows how important your job is"
He smiles sadly, touched by her unconvincing attempts to console him "I know he does, he told me so, on the 12th time he called for me. Unfortunately, as I was trying to heal a 5 year old girl and help her mother fight off a Blaxon demon at the time I couldn't argue the point"
Almost in tears now he mutters, "How can this be happening? With everything we know. If I can't even stop Chris from hating me, how can we stop Wyatt from becoming evil or..." he breaks of.
"Me from being killed?"
They just look at each other in despair, neither of them able to think of anything else to say.