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Breaking from Piper's steady gaze, Paige began to play with the hem of the blanket. "A little bit of both," she mumbled to herself. "I mean, what if I started coughing and then I orbed in and out. It could totally expose us as being something other than normal." Paige continued in a slightly louder voice.
Piper and Phoebe shared a glance that contained everything that needed to be shared. Whether Paige knew it or not, she'd hit a sore point. The last time their magic had been exposed, they'd had lost their other sister. Neither sister wanted to go through that hell again.
"Okay, Paige." Said Piper. "We won't take you to the hospital, but another deal needs to be made seeing how the last was broken."
Paige objected, "The last one wasn't broken. You never said I couldn't leave the house."
Meeting Piper's steely gaze, Paige almost immediately wilted. "Yeah. See I thought that it was implied when we brought you home that you weren't supposed to go anywhere without one of your sisters. And there is this little matter of you hiding something from us. Care to dig yourself in any deeper?"
"Not particularly," muttered Paige, feeling much like a teenager caught coming in after curfew. "So what's the new deal?"
"Let's get you into the house, and then I will let you know."
With that, everyone got out of the car and Phoebe and Piper helped an extremely tired Paige into the Manor. They went into the living room and Piper and Paige laid together on one of the couches while Phoebe sat across from them on the other one. A period of silence came into existence until Paige broke it.
"What is the new deal I get to agree to so I can stay away from the medical profession at large?"
Piper and Phoebe once again shared a look. This one had Phoebe implicitly agreeing to anything Piper would ask of Paige and vice versa.
"Well, honey," started Piper. "You have shown us, that you don't trust us yet. So what can we do to start to establish trust between us, not only as sisters but also as friends?"
"No idea, but since you're bringing it up, I have the feeling that you have some idea of what to do. Even though I'm afraid of what that might be." The last was muttered under Paige's breath rebelliously, but Piper still heard it.
"Paige, it's okay to be afraid of expanding your horizons. Most people are terrified when faced with something new. I know I was, still am, when it comes to you. I don't know you like I know Phoebe, there are some things I'm not sure how to go about doing and it's going to take awhile before I feel fully comfortable with everything about you. But the only way we can move pass that is if we start to share everything. So here's the deal. All three of us need to start sharing everything, whether it is feelings or dreams or whatever. Paige, you also going to let us do everything for you for at least the next week. That is everything from bathing to eating to anything else you can think of. You will not do anything for yourself. We are going to show you that we do care about you and you are going to find out that you can trust us with yourself."
"Okay" said Paige. "I can agree to that. It isn't too different from our first deal."
"There is one last condition Paige." Said Phoebe quietly. She had been listening to Piper and agreeing with every word. She just needed to add one last thing that she knew Piper would approve of. "You need to tell us about your past. All of it, the good and the not so good."
Paige swallowed hard. They wanted her to tell them her biggest, darkest secret. Yet somehow she knew that getting the main idea to them would be enough. They didn't need to know full details. In fact, if they were going to be watching her for the next few days, they would probably find out most of them.
Paige looked to be thinking hard. Piper and Phoebe knew that if she refused, they couldn't push the issue without pushing Paige away. They also knew that they had to find out, one way or another. Finally, the expression on Paige's face changed. She appeared to have made an agreement with herself.
"I'll tell you. But it won't be with full details. I'm leaving out the gory stuff. Also, I won't tell you all at once. It will be done gradually."
"Okay, sweetie." Said Piper, glad to see Paige opening up a little. "But for right now, let's get you upstairs and into bed. I'm calling a sister sleepover in my room tonight."
"Good," replied Phoebe with a big smile breaking the tension that had built up in the room. "I need to clean up my room so we can have one in there tomorrow."
"I'll grab some movies and make some popcorn. Phoebe can you carry Paige up to my room please?"
"Sure. One piggyback ride for the baby sis coming up. Hop on Paige and hold on."
"You guys are going to kill me with sweetness and caring." Mumbled Paige who was three sheets to the wind as the day's events caught up with her.
"Well, that is the plan to some extent. Though we aren't trying to kill you. At least not yet." Was Phoebe's overly cheerful reply.
Once, everyone was settled on Piper's bed upstairs, they started the movie.
"Isn't White Christmas a touch out of season?" asked Paige skeptically when the opening scene started playing.
"Yeah, but it has such great music and a very sweet love story." Replied Piper who had Paige resting against her, Paige's head on her shoulder. The rest of the movie was seen in silence except for the end when all three sisters joined in to sing the final song. Piper looked over as the credits finished to still see Paige awake. Piper thought Paige would've been asleep by then and she really wanted her to fall asleep so Paige could rest and try to fight off the fever that Piper could feel coming back.
"Sweetie, is there anything we can do so you can go to sleep?"
"If I could just relax. I've been trying but I keep tensing up. I'm sore all over and it's not helping." Paige whined. At this point her sisters figured that Paige was seriously overtired, seeing as they hadn't heard her whine since they'd met her.
"Okay honey. Why don't we try what I wanted to do earlier?" offered Phoebe not wanting her sister to be in pain.
Paige took a deep breath knowing that this would mean that her sisters would see her back. "Okay, but if you want to talk about what you see, it will have to be done tomorrow."
Phoebe and Piper agreed to Paige's statement before helping her take off her shirt.
"We can't see anything wrong, Paige." Said Phoebe surprised after what she had seen in her premonition earlier. She'd thought at the very least there would be some scar tissue visible.
"I cast a spell when I first found out that I was a witch so no one could see my scars. Unfortunately it didn't fully work. Witches who touch my back, skin to skin, break the spell but only for their eyes. That's why when you made me take the bath earlier you didn't see anything." Piper decided to lecture Paige on personal gain spells later. First her sister needed some rest. Piper handed Phoebe the bottle of Grams' lotion she had brought up with lunch and helped Paige lay comfortably on her stomach.
"Paige, the lotion's going to be cold at first but it will warm up as Phoebe works it into your back. You do need to relax to some extent for it to work though. The stuff works miracles, I promise."
Paige visibly tried to loosen some of her muscles.
"Paige, I'm going to start now," said Phoebe not wanting to startle her sister into doing who knows what. Phoebe started to apply the lotion to Paige's back, not yet rubbing it in. When her hand first started touching Paige, the scars, hidden before, suddenly appeared. They were worse than Phoebe had anticipated even though she had had an idea of what they might look like. There were more scars than from the one beating she had seen and they seemed to cover all of Paige's back in varying colors of scar tissue.
Paige flinched when Phoebe started, due to the temperature of the cream and the unknown hands that were running over her back. Piper saw this and tried to soothe her sister. "Shh, Paige," she cooed when Phoebe began massaging Paige's back. "It's only Phoebe, sweetie. She's just removing the soreness from your back. Just relax. She won't hurt you. I guarantee it. Shh, it's okay. No one is going to hurt you." Under Phoebe's gentle ministrations with the help of Grams' lotion, Paige relaxed to a certain extent only to tense up when Phoebe hit certain areas of her back. When that happened, Piper helped Paige calm down until Paige finally fell asleep from the stress of not trying to stress.
"Piper," whispered Phoebe, once she had finished rubbing all the cream in, trying not to wake up her baby sister. "She was so tense. And it seemed like every time I relaxed one muscle, another one just tensed up. I swear I could feel individual muscles bunching underneath my hands. I'm surprised that she even has any skin left. The scars were everywhere, Piper. Everywhere!"