Mistake
Chapter Three
Paige ran a tired hand through her hair. "I just don't understand why the spell didn't work," she said.
"You can't tamper with these kinds of things," Leo told her patiently. "The spell will end when it's run its course. That's just the way it is."
"Do you trust him?" Prue asked suddenly. "Because that was the purpose of the spell-to get you to trust him. So do you?"
The sisters looked at each other as though speaking silently, then nodded. Phoebe spoke, "We'd like to sweetie, we really would. It's just that he is still so much of an unknown to us. It's obvious he had a bad childhood and, while we feel sympathy, we don't know how that treatment affected him."
Prue rubbed her temples, eyeing them heatedly. "Then the spell has not yet run its full course, and you, in your distrust, may cause the spell to kill him for it."
"Trust comes in time Prue," Paige said, sounding regretful, "and as much as we'd like to, we can not afford to trust readily someone who keeps secrets from us."
Prue just groaned.
Piper took charge once more, "Ok, so it's obvious that completely obliterating the spell Prue cast is not an option, and it's also apparent that the spell has not yet run its course. Still, we have to do something to stop Chris from getting injured, even if we can't stop the memories. Any ideas?"
Phoebe looked speculative. Leo said in a small voice, "I'll go find Chris," and orbed out. Phoebe snapped her fingers, getting an idea.
"What if we altered the original spell? Not try to get rid of it, just change it. Redirect it so that it shows us what we need to see to trust Chris and therefore run its course."
"Brilliant," Paige said. Prue and Piper nodded their consent. Phoebe got to work.
"This really isn't the best place for you right now," a voice said, causing Chris, who was sitting atop the Golden Gate Bridge, to jump slightly.
"Leave me be Leo," Chris said, not turning around.
"And what if the spell strikes while you are here?" Leo challenged. "You could fall to your death."
Chris said nothing, but flinched when Leo laid a hand on his shoulder.
Leo quickly took back his hand. "Come back to the Manor Chris, the sisters are figuring something out."
Chris was stone as he answered, "I'll come when I'm ready."
Leo sighed and flicked his wrist, orbing Chris back to the house. "As you wish," he muttered, and orbed away as well.
"What the fuck!" Chris yelled angrily as his forced orb landed him in the attic.
"What's wrong with you?" Piper asked, standing before him with a raised eyebrow.
"I'll tell you what's wrong!" Chris shouted, raging. "Your Elder of a husband captured my orbs."
"Captured your orbs?" Piper repeated slowly, looking at him questioningly.
"He means I forced his orb," Leo explained, orbing in himself. "He was sitting on top of the bridge and I couldn't leave him there without endangering him while the spell was still in place. He wasn't coming voluntarily, so I directed his orbs back here."
Piper shrugged. "Ok then," she said, turning to glare at Chris. "Really Chris? On top of the bridge? You could have fallen to your death if a memory had hit you while you were up there."
Chris raised an eyebrow. "Didn't know you cared Piper."
Piper scowled and Paige took hold of Chris, steering him towards the couch before the two started to fight. Phoebe set down her pen with an audible snap and Prue looked over her shoulder, eyeing the paper critically. Chris looked at the curiously.
"We've made a spell," Phoebe explained.
"That didn't work out so hot last time," Chris pointed out.
"This one isn't to get rid of the original spell, just to alter it. It should make it so that you aren't injured when the memories occur. We've figured that the spell won't stop until the memories show us what we need to see-or hear really."
Chris looked at them with trepidation, Prue gave him a gentle smile and sat down next to him as her living sisters crowded around Phoebe to read the spell aloud.
"Numb the pain caused from the spell,
The memories which harmed, now leave him well.
Breeze through the air like a healing touch,
He who's pained, has seen so much.
Leave him now, innocent and free,
From the pain caused by those memories."
A light shone around Chris and blinded him from the sisters sight. Chris let out a cry as the sisters attempted to get their sight back. Leo shielded his eyes from the bright light. And then it faded away, and sitting in the place where Chris had been sitting was a...
Boy. Young, perhaps seven or eight. He looked at them with wide green eyes. Leo knew immediately that this child was the same person who had sat before them at twenty-three. Chris large t-shirt and pants fell around him, slipping somewhat to reveal an injury-stricken back, and arms filled with bruises. His face was also terribly bruised. Leo felt his heart go out to this beaten child, silently cursing those who had done this.
Chris regarded his surrounding warily. The last he remembered, he had been silently receiving punishment from his father. Then, something had flashed and sparked around him and brought him to Halliwell Manor's attic, a place he knew well.
But this attic looked much more barren than the attic he was used to, and the people surrounding him, staring down at him with such large, wide eyes, they did not look like the people he was accustomed to seeing in such a place, or at least they looked much younger than they usually did.
Immediately he threw up his hands. "Demons," he cried, throwing all of them back simultaneously with his telekinesis. The woman who had taken the form of his Guardian recovered first.
"Chris," she said gently, pushing herself back up from where she had fallen against the wall. "Chris, it's me, it's Prue." She took a step towards him but froze when he threw up his hands once more threateningly.
"Stay back Demon, don't try your tricks on me," he warned in a trembling but solid voice. "MOM!" he yelled, hoping to notify someone in the house that there were demons in the attic. Prue shook her head and with a bright light she was gone, then reappeared, shining in beside the boy, calmly pressing his hands down.
"Chris, its me," she said urgently, causing the boy to release the magical tension that had been building up in his hands and let it flow back into his bloodstream. He believed her, no demon he had ever heard of had been able to duplicate the method that Guardians used to travel.
"Come on Chris," she said, placing a hand on his shoulder, lightening her touch when he winced. "We have to talk." They disappeared.
The sisters pried themselves up from their positions against the wall and Leo hurried over to heal Paige's bruised side, then they all stared at each other, all of them thinking exactly the same question.
"What was that?" Phoebe asked.
Leo sighed. "It looks like the magic acted as it saw best and answered the request you made to it. It healed him of the pain caused by the memories you witnessed by causing his body to revert back to how it was before those memories took place. The pain of the memories you witnessed is gone because it literally is nonexistant. Those injuries have not yet occurred."
Paige nodded, seeing the sense of it. "So that's why he was so confused. This Chris hasn't experienced growing up and coming back in time to save Wyatt yet."
"He obviously remembers demons," Piper complained, rubbing her back where she had hit the wall. "Though why he thought we were ones I couldn't tell you."
"Unless he knew us from the future," Phoebe piped up. "And seeing us looking so different from what we do in the future, he automatically assumed that we were shapeshifters or such. He was only acting in his defense."
Paige looked sickened. "Did you see all those bruises he had?" she asked. "That has to be one of the most severe cases of abuse I've ever seen and I was a social worker."
Her sisters and Leo nodded and waited for Prue to return with her charge.
"What's going on Prue?" Chris asked as soon as they set down in the quiet park, the same place Chris had proposed to Bianca at, and a favorite of Chris as a child. He sat on the bench and pulled up his knees to his head in a fetal position. "Who were all those people? Why did they look like my parents?"
Prue sighed. "The truth is little one, that those are your parents. You're in the past. You actually haven't been born yet."
"I'm in the past?" Chris questioned. "How did that happen? I swear I wasn't messing around with the book or the potions or anything," he told her, looking at her fearfully. "I swear it."
"No, no, no," Prue assured him. "You didn't do anything wrong. This isn't your fault. We're not really sure what happened. The thing is, your older self was here. How old are you by the way?"
"Seven," he said shyly.
"Well then, in fourteen years you should be aware that you will be traveling to the past to save the world. And that's really all you need to know about that. You've got to make your own decisions. You understand that don't you?"
"Yeah," he nodded. "Otherwise there might be future consequences."
Prue smirked slightly before she continued. "The things is Chris, you're parents and aunts don't know that you're related to them, and your older self doesn't want them to know either. So you have to keep this a secret alright. You've got to call your mom Piper and your dad Leo ok? And you've got to call your aunts by their names."
He nodded, then looked down. "But won't they be angry that I'm not treating them with re-re-respect?" he said, stuttering over the word and Prue was quick to reassure him.
"No love, they won't be angry at you at all. They don't even know who you are yet after all."
He nodded and she held out her hand. "Let's go back and talk to them then, ok?" He took her hand tentatively and they returned to the manor.
"Oh thank goodness you're all right," Paige said when her sister and deaged whitelighter returned to the attic. Phoebe stopped her scrying and Leo hurried over to Chris from where he and Piper, who was holding Wyatt, had been talking in hushed voices.
Chris backed away from him, fear evident in his eyes. Leo slowed his pace. "It's ok Chris, I just want to heal those nasty bruises."
"But you...Dad always says I should wait for them to heal themselves," Chris protested. "He'll be angry if they're gone away by magic."
Leo looked at him with tender eyes, surprising Chris who was so used to seeing him with steel, icy eyes, intent on punishing him. "You're dad isn't here, and you're in pain. So let me help you, it won't hurt, I promise."
Chris looked at him carefully, weighing his options. On one hand, his bruises really did hurt, a dull ache he had been forced to accustom himself to, and it would be nice to have them gone, at least for a while. On the other, when he got back to his own time, his Leo would have his head for allowing himself to be healed magically.
Finally he nodded, deciding to stick with the present for now. Leo carefully held his hands over Chris' injuries and watched them disappear, more slowly then injuries usually did.
"Why is this taking so long?" Leo grumbled to himself, surprised when Chris answered him.
"Because my magic doesn't like Elders very much and usually guards against their magic," Chris said. "But I promise, I don't tell it to do that, it just does. I swear."
The child's voice was slightly panicky at the end and Leo was quick to assure him that he didn't mind at all, continuing with the slow healing.
Paige wrinkled her brow. "He talks about magic like it's a sentient being. Like it's a person almost, with feelings and emotions."
"Isn't it?" Leo asked, glancing at her and finally pulling away his hands as the last bruise faded away. "Magic is the reason you all exist. You are the creations of it, made to carry out its acts and use its traits as it by itself can not. Magic is really its own personage, you can merely attempt to direct it with spells and potions. That's why acts of personal gain have such consequence, the magic shows its displeasure with you."
The sisters nodded in understanding. "But why would magic not like Elders?" Phoebe asked. "After all, Elders watch over all of magic, don't they. So why would his magic guard against it?."
Leo just shrugged. "Some people's magic is just naturally defensive that's all."
Paige was skeptical. "Sorry Leo, but we're the Charmed Ones, some of the most defensive good witches alive, and our magic doesn't fight against Elders."
Leo nodded, "That's true, but magic is also dependent on individual feeling. No Elder has caused you any harm" -he ignored Piper's violent snort-"while if Chris has met an Elder he believes he may need to defend himself from, his magic may react in kind."
Chris shuffled his feet a little bit and Prue motioned for them to change topics, sensing her charge's discomfort.
"Well anyway," Paige said. "I'm Paige, and these are my sisters..."
"I know who you are," Chris interrupted absently. The girl's eyes widened and Chris winced as he realized what he'd unintentionally admitted.
"Really?" Piper said in a cheerful voice, and Chris thought fast. "And how is that?"
"Uh...everyone knows the Charmed Ones," he said quickly.
Phoebe raised an eyebrow as she sensed Chris lying but Prue motioned for them to stop and they reluctantly complied.
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