"Chris, why do you hate me?" Leo asked, unable to take the ignoring or evasions. He was desperate to understand his other son.
Chris looked away from Leo, unable to face him.
"I was young, before I was a teenager. Wyatt was a bit older but he hadn't started training with Excalabur. Some demons had the bright idea to do a surgical strike. Kill Wyatt before he was too powerful. Kill him before he could use Excalabur. They knew when to strike. It was a hecktic day. We were running around trying to get everything ready for Wyatt's big soccer match. Title trophee. We were so distracted. Phoebe was out of the country with her husband and ki... stuff. Paige was gone to some demension magic summit thing and couldn't be reached."
"It was just us in the house. Only me, mom, & Wyatt." Chris laughed self depreciatingly, "Me, mom, & Wyatt. They underestemated that group of three. They always forget about me. I don't like using power much, don't like using magic. You and mom wanted us to have as normal a life as possible and magic, for me, was so much trouble. Caused so much pain..." his hand touched the pendent on the necklace he wore. It seemed like the stroke of his fingertips cause it to scream silently, much like running fingers over glass rims.
"Underestimated, yeah. They took mom out first. A fire ball in the leg. I remember her yelling... I don't remember lifting my hand and throwing the demon into the wall. I then started throwing anything that wasn't nailed down. Mom was screaming, she was in so much pain. And Wyatt was screaming. He kept telling me to protect mom. Like I'd do anything different."
"I kept throwing things. Books and vases. Shoes and backpacks as well as jackets, basically anything I could see. There was just so many of them. I could hear mom blasting them and screaming for you, Leo. I kept trying to get closer, keep her safe. I could tell she was really hurt and there was so much blood. I remember leaning over to pick her up but she pushed me away. I couldn't understand why. I kept trying to get to her but she kept pushing me away."
Chris sat there silently for a few minutes, his tears flowing freely down his face. He tried wipeing them away but it was a loosing battle. Leo reached out a hand to his son, trying to connect but Chris just backed away, shrugging him off.
"She was trying to protect me. I understand that now but at the time, I just wanted to get to her and orb her out of there. I didn't even see the demon she was yelling at me to fight. I was still trying to get to her, orb her out when I saw this silver thing grow out of my chest. I didn't understand what it was at first but then I coughed and out came all this blood and I understood that I had just been stabbed."
"I never felt any pain. That was the odd thing. I know I must have felt some pain but I think I pretty much went right into shock. Everything looked so surreal and it was moving weirdly. I tried to concentrate on what was going on since we were under a demon attack but things were all skewed. Wyatt looked like 10 feet tall and mom was curled up like a snake on the floor. There was this wall of fire that flowed from behind me, engulfing me in its heat before moving on thru the dinning room, entry hall, and into the parlor."
"I felt something push me and I was sliding across the floor until I was under the dinning table. I looked down and the sword was gone. My shirt front was all red and there was a trail of my blood from me to mom. I was thinking to myself how pissed mom would be and how she'd make me clean it up."
"Wyatt started glowing this firey reddish-orange and went towards mom. That's when you orbed in. You ducked under a demon swinging a club. You fought him awhile, took his club away. I remember thinking, that's my dad, look at how strong and brave he is. You grabbed hold of Wyatt and dragged him after you to grab mom. Then you orbed out."
"You know, they didn't even look at me. Didn't even check to make sure they'd killed me. The demons just flickered out after you did."
"And I waited for you. You didn't know that, did you bastard!" Chris got up off the cable he'd been sitting on and faced Leo with all the anger and hatred that had been bubbling since Leo abanded him. He orbed off the cable to where he was standing right by the shell shocked Leo. "I waited for you. I knew you could heal me. I knew you or Wyatt would make me all better. All you had to do was orb in and touch me. And I waited for you. Waited until everything got really white and I couldn't make my lungs work anymore and it felt like I was drownding in warm jello. I waited until I knew you were going to be too late and I orbed myself. Orbed right into the ER. I had been there plenty of times to be familure with it. Just orbed right into the ER without a second thought to protecting magic or anything."
Chris had to turn quickly from his father or else he would give into the impulse to hit him again. Oh how he wanted to hurt Leo like Leo had hurt him. He wanted to scream and shout and let out all the anger in a rage of glorius pain... but that was something his brother would do. That was something the evil that had his brother would want. His voice was the voice of reason, so Chris swallowed his anger, burried his haterd and pain. He took in a deep breath, feeling the whisper of the world, letting it calm him.
"I woke up a week later in a hospital bed with no memory of how I had gotten there or who I was. As far as I knew, that was the first day of my life. In many ways it was. I had died on the operating table. My heart stopped beating for a whole 8 minutes. I was dead and had been reborn."
"In my new life, I knew nothing of demons, witches, or whitelighters. I didn't even know I had powers. Oh, there were signs of them, wierd, freaky things cropping up but I didn't think anything of them. I always thought it was my luck. That's what they named me for, luck. For a whole year I was Ash, the lucky and blessed child. I kept expecting my foster brothers or sisters to be jelous but they never were. I miss them sometimes. They all had such big hearts. Yeah, they could be really brutal and mean but once they accepted you, you were their friend for life. They'd die for you. Unfortuantly for them, some of them did die for me."
"Fost... foster brothers? Foster sisters? What about, what about me and the sisters? Why were you...?"
Chris snorts. His anger had blown away in the high winds that plauged the top of the bridge. The memories of his foster siblings calming him down greatly. Even after he'd re-joined the Halliwell family he'd kept close ties to them.
"I didn't see or hear anything from you for a year and a half. My memories didn't return until Wyatt found me. Oh, don't the wrong idea, you were looking for me but none of you elders could sense me. You couldn't tell if I was alive or dead. Mom, Wyatt, Paige, Phoebe, the uncles and cousins just about ran themselves nuts trying to find me. They thought that one of the attacking demons had taken me, that I was in the underworld or something. But they didn't find me. Eventually, you guys stopped looking. It wasn't until Daryl came to the house about some police thing that I was found."
"He really freaked out my family. My one foster sister just about crippled him. She and I were really close and she did not like the idea of him taking me away, so he left to go tell you guys."
"The whole lot of you showed up at my foster home and the moment they opened the door you barged in. I knew you were coming to take me away but I didn't want to go. I didn't even know who you were! I just knew that you were there to take me away from my home."
"And then I saw Wyatt. I think he did a memory spell or something because as soon as I saw him, as soon as I met his blue eyes so much like yours, everything came rushing back. I remembered you leaving me behind, I remembered the demons and the sword but I also remembered the magic and the potions and the elves and fairies and magic school and the nexus and just everything. Then Wyatt was holding me and he was crying as hard as I was. I kept begging him to never let me go, to always be there and he kept promising he would and saying that he was so sorry."
Chris was silent as he contemplated the horizon. Sometimes he wished that he'd never been found, other times he wished that he'd been found sooner. His heart ached from the schizm that the incident caused. It hurt that he had been violently ripped from his biological family, the people he loved dearly but he had found such a great home in the mean time. He missed his little baby foster sister Kay, who would wander after one of her sibblings until they picked her up. He missed his big foster brother, JayJay who was all bristled muscle but was secretly a giant teddy bear. He missed his foster sister, Alex, who turned out to be a very powerful witch. He missed his foster brother, Donny, who was going to be a space man when he grew up. He missed them all; Cat, Mike, Sarah, Jon, Chris, Tizzy, and all the rest. Several of them were dead, victumes of The Second Cleansing.
He wanted to tell his father of how much that hurt him. He wanted to spill his guts about how Leo always ignored him as well as the problems he had later. It seemed like his life story wanted to pour out of his mouth and heap the guilt on Leo but he had to protect the future. He really shouldn't have told him that much.
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have told you that. I'd better go."
"Chris, wait!" Leo put a restraighning hand on his son. "I'm so sorry. I am so, so sorry. I promise you won't have to go thru it again. I will not leave you behind."
"I'm sorry too. You won't get the chance to change it." Chris pulled out a bag from his pocket and pulled out a pinch of a powder which he blew into Leo's face. He'd only had to use the memory dust twice to keep the timeline from becoming too poluted. He hated the idea of using it on his father but he couldn't allow Leo to remember. There were things he was desperate to change, things that had to change but he didn't think that the event was one of them. Alot of good came out of that event. It wasn't just him getting his foster family, it was also about the lessons his family learned. It was too important to just casually not make it happen.
"Oh, Chris. What are you doing here?" Leo said, facing him.
Chris smiled, shrugged his shoulder. "Just checking up on you. Well, gotta go help the sisters. Bye." And he orbed out.
Leo looked around the bridge, something niggling the back of his mind. Something he was supposed to remember. Oh well, he said to himself. If it was importent, he'd remember it later. And he orbed back up to elderland leaving the golden gate bridge empty again.
Chris looked away from Leo, unable to face him.
"I was young, before I was a teenager. Wyatt was a bit older but he hadn't started training with Excalabur. Some demons had the bright idea to do a surgical strike. Kill Wyatt before he was too powerful. Kill him before he could use Excalabur. They knew when to strike. It was a hecktic day. We were running around trying to get everything ready for Wyatt's big soccer match. Title trophee. We were so distracted. Phoebe was out of the country with her husband and ki... stuff. Paige was gone to some demension magic summit thing and couldn't be reached."
"It was just us in the house. Only me, mom, & Wyatt." Chris laughed self depreciatingly, "Me, mom, & Wyatt. They underestemated that group of three. They always forget about me. I don't like using power much, don't like using magic. You and mom wanted us to have as normal a life as possible and magic, for me, was so much trouble. Caused so much pain..." his hand touched the pendent on the necklace he wore. It seemed like the stroke of his fingertips cause it to scream silently, much like running fingers over glass rims.
"Underestimated, yeah. They took mom out first. A fire ball in the leg. I remember her yelling... I don't remember lifting my hand and throwing the demon into the wall. I then started throwing anything that wasn't nailed down. Mom was screaming, she was in so much pain. And Wyatt was screaming. He kept telling me to protect mom. Like I'd do anything different."
"I kept throwing things. Books and vases. Shoes and backpacks as well as jackets, basically anything I could see. There was just so many of them. I could hear mom blasting them and screaming for you, Leo. I kept trying to get closer, keep her safe. I could tell she was really hurt and there was so much blood. I remember leaning over to pick her up but she pushed me away. I couldn't understand why. I kept trying to get to her but she kept pushing me away."
Chris sat there silently for a few minutes, his tears flowing freely down his face. He tried wipeing them away but it was a loosing battle. Leo reached out a hand to his son, trying to connect but Chris just backed away, shrugging him off.
"She was trying to protect me. I understand that now but at the time, I just wanted to get to her and orb her out of there. I didn't even see the demon she was yelling at me to fight. I was still trying to get to her, orb her out when I saw this silver thing grow out of my chest. I didn't understand what it was at first but then I coughed and out came all this blood and I understood that I had just been stabbed."
"I never felt any pain. That was the odd thing. I know I must have felt some pain but I think I pretty much went right into shock. Everything looked so surreal and it was moving weirdly. I tried to concentrate on what was going on since we were under a demon attack but things were all skewed. Wyatt looked like 10 feet tall and mom was curled up like a snake on the floor. There was this wall of fire that flowed from behind me, engulfing me in its heat before moving on thru the dinning room, entry hall, and into the parlor."
"I felt something push me and I was sliding across the floor until I was under the dinning table. I looked down and the sword was gone. My shirt front was all red and there was a trail of my blood from me to mom. I was thinking to myself how pissed mom would be and how she'd make me clean it up."
"Wyatt started glowing this firey reddish-orange and went towards mom. That's when you orbed in. You ducked under a demon swinging a club. You fought him awhile, took his club away. I remember thinking, that's my dad, look at how strong and brave he is. You grabbed hold of Wyatt and dragged him after you to grab mom. Then you orbed out."
"You know, they didn't even look at me. Didn't even check to make sure they'd killed me. The demons just flickered out after you did."
"And I waited for you. You didn't know that, did you bastard!" Chris got up off the cable he'd been sitting on and faced Leo with all the anger and hatred that had been bubbling since Leo abanded him. He orbed off the cable to where he was standing right by the shell shocked Leo. "I waited for you. I knew you could heal me. I knew you or Wyatt would make me all better. All you had to do was orb in and touch me. And I waited for you. Waited until everything got really white and I couldn't make my lungs work anymore and it felt like I was drownding in warm jello. I waited until I knew you were going to be too late and I orbed myself. Orbed right into the ER. I had been there plenty of times to be familure with it. Just orbed right into the ER without a second thought to protecting magic or anything."
Chris had to turn quickly from his father or else he would give into the impulse to hit him again. Oh how he wanted to hurt Leo like Leo had hurt him. He wanted to scream and shout and let out all the anger in a rage of glorius pain... but that was something his brother would do. That was something the evil that had his brother would want. His voice was the voice of reason, so Chris swallowed his anger, burried his haterd and pain. He took in a deep breath, feeling the whisper of the world, letting it calm him.
"I woke up a week later in a hospital bed with no memory of how I had gotten there or who I was. As far as I knew, that was the first day of my life. In many ways it was. I had died on the operating table. My heart stopped beating for a whole 8 minutes. I was dead and had been reborn."
"In my new life, I knew nothing of demons, witches, or whitelighters. I didn't even know I had powers. Oh, there were signs of them, wierd, freaky things cropping up but I didn't think anything of them. I always thought it was my luck. That's what they named me for, luck. For a whole year I was Ash, the lucky and blessed child. I kept expecting my foster brothers or sisters to be jelous but they never were. I miss them sometimes. They all had such big hearts. Yeah, they could be really brutal and mean but once they accepted you, you were their friend for life. They'd die for you. Unfortuantly for them, some of them did die for me."
"Fost... foster brothers? Foster sisters? What about, what about me and the sisters? Why were you...?"
Chris snorts. His anger had blown away in the high winds that plauged the top of the bridge. The memories of his foster siblings calming him down greatly. Even after he'd re-joined the Halliwell family he'd kept close ties to them.
"I didn't see or hear anything from you for a year and a half. My memories didn't return until Wyatt found me. Oh, don't the wrong idea, you were looking for me but none of you elders could sense me. You couldn't tell if I was alive or dead. Mom, Wyatt, Paige, Phoebe, the uncles and cousins just about ran themselves nuts trying to find me. They thought that one of the attacking demons had taken me, that I was in the underworld or something. But they didn't find me. Eventually, you guys stopped looking. It wasn't until Daryl came to the house about some police thing that I was found."
"He really freaked out my family. My one foster sister just about crippled him. She and I were really close and she did not like the idea of him taking me away, so he left to go tell you guys."
"The whole lot of you showed up at my foster home and the moment they opened the door you barged in. I knew you were coming to take me away but I didn't want to go. I didn't even know who you were! I just knew that you were there to take me away from my home."
"And then I saw Wyatt. I think he did a memory spell or something because as soon as I saw him, as soon as I met his blue eyes so much like yours, everything came rushing back. I remembered you leaving me behind, I remembered the demons and the sword but I also remembered the magic and the potions and the elves and fairies and magic school and the nexus and just everything. Then Wyatt was holding me and he was crying as hard as I was. I kept begging him to never let me go, to always be there and he kept promising he would and saying that he was so sorry."
Chris was silent as he contemplated the horizon. Sometimes he wished that he'd never been found, other times he wished that he'd been found sooner. His heart ached from the schizm that the incident caused. It hurt that he had been violently ripped from his biological family, the people he loved dearly but he had found such a great home in the mean time. He missed his little baby foster sister Kay, who would wander after one of her sibblings until they picked her up. He missed his big foster brother, JayJay who was all bristled muscle but was secretly a giant teddy bear. He missed his foster sister, Alex, who turned out to be a very powerful witch. He missed his foster brother, Donny, who was going to be a space man when he grew up. He missed them all; Cat, Mike, Sarah, Jon, Chris, Tizzy, and all the rest. Several of them were dead, victumes of The Second Cleansing.
He wanted to tell his father of how much that hurt him. He wanted to spill his guts about how Leo always ignored him as well as the problems he had later. It seemed like his life story wanted to pour out of his mouth and heap the guilt on Leo but he had to protect the future. He really shouldn't have told him that much.
"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have told you that. I'd better go."
"Chris, wait!" Leo put a restraighning hand on his son. "I'm so sorry. I am so, so sorry. I promise you won't have to go thru it again. I will not leave you behind."
"I'm sorry too. You won't get the chance to change it." Chris pulled out a bag from his pocket and pulled out a pinch of a powder which he blew into Leo's face. He'd only had to use the memory dust twice to keep the timeline from becoming too poluted. He hated the idea of using it on his father but he couldn't allow Leo to remember. There were things he was desperate to change, things that had to change but he didn't think that the event was one of them. Alot of good came out of that event. It wasn't just him getting his foster family, it was also about the lessons his family learned. It was too important to just casually not make it happen.
"Oh, Chris. What are you doing here?" Leo said, facing him.
Chris smiled, shrugged his shoulder. "Just checking up on you. Well, gotta go help the sisters. Bye." And he orbed out.
Leo looked around the bridge, something niggling the back of his mind. Something he was supposed to remember. Oh well, he said to himself. If it was importent, he'd remember it later. And he orbed back up to elderland leaving the golden gate bridge empty again.
