Disclaimer: I don't own Charmed or any of its characters; my story is fan fiction and no breach of copyright is intended.
Background information: Ben Williams (Turner) is 15 years old; he has the power to shimmer and has premonitions. Melinda Cottle (Halliwell-Wyatt) is 18 years old and can freeze time (+ she can orb which she currently is unaware of).
"…speech…"
*…thoughts…*
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The manor, 15 minutes later:
"Teenagers? Are you sure they were demons?" asked Paige; "Maybe they were innocent and just accidentally wandered into the house" Paige trailed off as her explanation sounded lame even to herself.
"They were demons, because when I threw the fireball at them, they both shimmered out to goodness knows where" stated Cole
Paige still looked sceptical, "but teenagers.."
Phoebe interrupted Paige with "Demon Ice Cream Van" and at Paige's very confused look, explained what she meant. "Before we met you, when Prue was still alive, we ran into this guy who owned an ice cream van that caught demon children. We accidentally got the first owner of the van killed because we thought the guy was a demon and the children were innocent but it was actually the other way around and the kids killed the guy. Anyway what I mean is just because they were teenagers, it doesn't stop them being demons."
"Oh. Well I guess we should go look in the book of shadows and find out who they are then".
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A few streets away:
"Ow" Melinda complained. "Wait a minute, how did we get here? What did you do?"
"I shimmered us" Ben said "like the man Cole did earlier. You know the one that tried to kill us." Exhausted from his near death experience Ben collapsed on to a bench.
"Uncle Cole" Melinda murmured. Melinda saw that Ben was watching her with a very confused look on his face. "That man was my uncle," she told him as she sat down next to Ben
"If he was your uncle why did he try and kill us," asked Ben in a voice that clearly said he didn't believe her and thought Melinda was going loopy.
"You don't understand Ben, he was my…is my…." Melinda paused trying to get her head around what she had seen; Ben obviously had no clue to what had just happened.
"Okay, this will sound really weird, but don't interrupt till I finish" Ben nodded in agreement, so Melinda continued. "That man is my Uncle Cole, except that he died with my parents 15 years ago, my entire family died. The house looked just like it used to when I was small and the little girl that came in, that was me, when I was about 3. I think we've gone back in time."
"Back in time, yeah right, time travel doesn't exist," exclaimed Ben. "Where are you going?" he yelled after Melinda's retreating back. He jumped up and followed after her.
"There has to be one somewhere," she said as she scoured the area.
"One what?"
"A newspaper, I'm going to prove, that we've gone back in time. Wait we can go to the park and ask one of the kids the year, that will work" Melinda abruptly turned around and headed for the local park.
"Why don't we ask that women who's coming up the road, it will save walking to the park" declared Ben who didn't really want to walk all over the place with Melinda while she was acting all weird.
"Fine, you can go up to her and ask her what year it is. I'm so sure she won't think you're strange for not knowing the year," Melinda said sarcastically. "Scrap that plan, I've found one" she announced happily as she began to route through a rubbish bin. Ben suddenly became very interested in his watch, and acted as though he couldn't see Melinda.
"Look today's date is 26th of April 2006. 15 years ago" Melinda showed Ben the paper as she absentmindedly knocked off bits of rubbish and what was possibly mushy banana, stuck to the front page.
"Ok, I believe you, now will you put that back" Melinda tossed it carelessly back. Ben glanced up and down the street trying to see if anyone had witnessed the whole embarrassing thing, thankfully no one had seen, the woman had turned off their street.
Suddenly Melinda gasped, "Oh my god, I remember" Melinda sank down on to the kerb "I remember the promise. My parents were going out, I made my mum promise to be back when I woke up and my mum said I promise" she turned to look up at Ben "that was the night they died"
As Ben joined Melinda on the kerb, Melinda nervously began to talk "I know we don't really know each other and this is a lot to ask, but will you help me save my family. I'm not sure how to go about it, since I don't know how they died only that it's going to happen in a couple of days but I thought if you helped it might make it easier and since were in the past surely.."
"Wow you can ramble" but when Ben saw the desperate look on Melinda's face he said "of course I'll help you, if I can't do anything for my family I might as well as help yours."
"Oh thanks so much, I don't know how I'll ever repay you." Ben had never seen someone with so much hope and excitement as Melinda had in her face right now. "It must have been hard losing your whole family in one go like that when you were small, it was a bit different for me I have no memory of mine at all, but you, well you lost your parents, uncle and cousin all in one go"
"And two aunts, it was.." Melinda's mind backtracked over what Ben had just said. *Cousin!* "Ben. I didn't have a cousin"
"What do you mean, I saw him, we saw him, the baby was your uncle's son that makes him your cousin"
"I guess, but I don't remember having a cousin" Melinda's mind drifted to the many newspaper articles she had read about her families death. "He was never mentioned in the papers either, they never said a baby died but they never found a baby either"
"Maybe they left him somewhere that night, so he wasn't with your family and he wasn't with you"
"But surely then that person would have gone to the police and said this is the son of the family who were murdered or something. It still doesn't make sense anyway because we all lived in that house. Where were the baby things?"
"Your family is one large riddle! I think we should just follow your family around and see if we can find any clues to how they died, and maybe along the way we'll discover what happened to the baby"
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Later across the street from P3:After Melinda remembered about the club her mum used to work out, they decided to wait near the club rather than the house since they wanted to keep away from Cole. They didn't want to end up being accidentally killed by him because he didn't understand what was going on.
*Are they ever going to turn up? My legs are really beginning to ache* "There they are!" Melinda pointed across the street to where she could see her father and uncle talking outside a fairly large building. *My god, dad is just across the street from me, I miss him so much. This had better work, it has to work!*
"Lets move closer see if we can hear what there talking about"
" But what about my uncle, if he sees us he might attack us with that ball of fire he can make appear"
"If we get behind that white van over there they shouldn't be able to see us" Ben grabbed hold of Melinda, checked no one was watching and shimmered them across the road.
As they watched from behind the van, Melinda saw her mum exit the club to join her dad and uncle outside. Melinda turned away; it was so hard to be standing here while her mum was just across the street, a mother she hadn't seen in years. When she felt calm again she turned back to watch. Her mum and uncle seemed to be getting very mad and when Melinda & Ben saw the fireball beginning to form in Cole's hand they both became very nervous. They were unaware they were holding there breaths until Leo suddenly grabbed Cole's hand and the fireball disappeared. They hadn't seen them.
*This is stupid we can't hear anything, how are we ever going to find out what happened* Melinda was unhappy; the idea of saving her parents hadn't seemed to hard but now it seemed to be slipping further and further out of reach
"I wish I could do that it'd be so cool." Ben turned away from the club and began imagining. *Don't move or I'll fire* he spun around and flung his hand out imagining he was blowing up the car across the street, just as he heard Melinda yell out "Ben don't"
Melinda turned round to find out what Ben had said, only to see his eyes shut, with his arm behind his head and in his hand was a fireball. "Ben don't" was all Melinda had time for before he flung the fireball straight at a car right next to her family.
The explosion was deafening and knocked Melinda and Ben to the floor. Melinda looked across the street, expecting to see her family seriously hurt and was shocked to see her mum and dad staring straight at her, but perfectly healthy. *So much for not letting them notice we were following*
"What did you find out about the demons?" asked Cole as they waited for Piper.
"Absolutely nothing. According to the elders, they can't find any evil going down at the minute" As Leo finished telling Cole the news; Piper opened the club door behind them and immediately jumped in with questions about what was going on.
After hearing that nothing was apparently after them, piper got angry. "The demons could have taken Melinda and Ben that wasn't nothing!" As Leo began to try and calm Piper down, she ignored him and turned to Cole. "We have to do something, are you going to stand by and just let an evil demon take your son?" Cole was outraged that Piper believed he would give up without fighting to protect his child, he could feel the anger flooding through him. When Leo touched his arm he looked down to see the fireball forming on his open palm, he destroyed it, shocked that he had lost control so easily. "We have to stick together and work this out together, we mustn't fight among ourselves"
Piper, Leo and Cole all spun around as they saw something flash in the corner of their eyes. Before their eyes they saw a fireball flying in their direction, Leo and Piper orbed out and Cole shimmered out as the fireball caused a catastrophic explosion. Appearing back on the street a few seconds later, they followed back the path of the fireball and saw the teenage boy, whom Melinda had said was called Tom, lying on the floor, eyes fixed on the car which was burning ferociously next to them. Besides him they could see the girl called Sarah watching them.
As Piper raised her hands to freeze the scene, the boy flung his arm sideways, grabbed the girl's arm and shimmered them away.
Piper, Leo and Cole stood alone on the street, watching the car burning fiercely.
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Thanks to everyone who reviewed my story;
tigergurl88, Evil Angel4, Lanfear1, A.Windsor, hyperpiper91, CharmingTess, piper5050, goldstranger, Rose Petal Forever, Isilme Lome, Labyris
hallie2: Cole knew children can be demons too ('we all scream for ice cream' season 3) and Melinda was holding his son while little Melinda was screaming when he entered the room & since no one had let them into the house I thought it would make sense for him to think they were dangerous.