My family

Summery: Chris' POV from the scene in "Prince Charmed" in which Piper told him she never wants to see him again. It's a song fic and one-shot. Please R&R!

Author's Note: The lyrics are from the song "Ode to my family" from the Cranberries. I don't really like the song, but the lyrics are great!

Understand the things I say
Don't turn away from me

"Because the only reason I came here is to keep Wyatt from turning evil."

I hadn't meant to say this. When I had left the future to come back here, I had promised myself that I wouldn't burden my family with the knowledge of what would become of Wyatt. That I wouldn't burden my mother with it. But here I was, telling them the one thing I had sworn to never speak out loud in front of them, trying desperately to get them to trust me again. I needed their trust, not just for Wyatt's sake, but also for mine. Enduring their distrust and sometimes even hatred had been so hard, but somehow I had managed it to deal with it – that was until now. But looking into the hard and cold eyes from my mother, I didn't know how much longer I could lie to them and pretend that I don't care.

Cause I spent half my life out there

"Turning evil?" my dad asked me, again with clear distrust in his voice. Even though I was used to it by now, not just from the Leo from this time, but also from my real father in the future, it still hurt. In this moment, with my whole family against me, I just couldn't act like it didn't.

"Don't you mean stopping evil from hurting him?" Paige asked, also not believing my words. Her distrust hurt even more than Leo's. She had been the only one I had ever been able to open up to after Wyatt started to turn. I hadn't wanted to bother my mother with my problems and I hadn't wanted to talk to Phoebe, because with her empathy she would have felt that I was keeping secrets from them. But that had been necessary. I spent half my life out there knowing what was going with my brother and there was no day I hadn't thought about telling my family, but they wouldn't have believed me. I've known it. Wyatt was always perfect, he couldn't do anything wrong. But if they would have known how many innocents had to suffer at his hands, how many lives had been taken through his minions and how much pain he put me, his own brother, through, then maybe...

You wouldn't disagree

Maybe they would have understood me. Maybe they would have understood why I was so bottled up all the time, why I didn't talk to them like I used to and why I stopped seeing my big brother as my hero. If only they would have known the truth...

I sighed, before I tried to explain it to them as simple as possible. "I didn't think you'd help me if you knew the truth. I knew you wouldn't. The evil from the future I came back to stop isn't a demon. It's Wyatt."

I could see that no one believed me. Leo narrowed his eyebrows and looked at me with the same anger and hatred with that he had looked at me in the first few months after I've arrived here in the past. I had to admit that at that time he had the right to be mad at me. After all I did send him to Valhalla. But now I was telling them the truth...

"You're lying."

I winced slightly at mom's harsh tone and the meaning of her words. She didn't believe me either. I would have never thought that I would see my mother looking at me with such loathing in her eyes. Before she had died she had told me that no matter what would happen she would always love me... I guess, she had been wrong. I guess it was she who had been lying back then. I asked myself if she somehow knew what was happening here in the past. Did she know how much she had grown to despise me? Did she know how many lies her 'little angel' had told her? How I messed everything up and turned my whole family against me?

D'you see me, d'you see
Do you like me, do you like me standing there

I knew that my eyes betrayed the hard expression I tried to put on my face, but no one seemed to notice. No one knew how I was feeling when I heard their harsh words and saw the hatred in their eyes. They couldn't know how much it hurt, because they didn't know who I was. They didn't know that I was part of their family and they could never find out. Seeing as how much they seemed to hate me, it would only cause everyone even more pain. But what about me? I knew that it was selfish to think like this, but I wished that I could just tell them and let myself rely on my family. But no one seemed to notice how I felt... no one seemed to know... and no one seemed to care...

D'you notice, d'you know
Do you see me, do you see me
Does anyone care

And it hurt like hell. In the last months I had thought that I slowly got used to having them distrust me, but now when I was finally telling them the truth it was almost impossible for me to deal with it. Why couldn't they see that I didn't want to harm them? I have never once hurt them in any way, I had just tried to protect them all and still all I got was distrust... I tried to remember better times with my family, when my brother had been still my hero and my world wasn't an empty shell. Mom always just wanted us to have a happy and normal life, she wanted us to have fun and enjoy our childhood. In these early years of my life I didn't know that the evil that would come was already there, that my brother had been already infected with it and that the unhappiness would soon lie over our house like a dark cloud.

Unhappiness, where's when I was young
And we didn't give a damn
'cause we were raised
To see life as a fun and take it if we can

I turned to look at mom again and had to gather all my composure to keep the eye contact. I needed her to believe me... "No, I'm not. He's gonna grow up and terrorize people with his powers, take over... kill, even" I told her with a sad voice. Mom looked away and I knew that she was pained by even considering that what I've said was true. The knowledge that I was the one who was putting her in that pain hurt me even more than her distrust and I almost wished that she would look up at me and tell me again that I was lying... If she would just stop hurting than I could work out a way to deal with everything, but I couldn't deal with hurting my mother... to hurt the one person who I loved so much that I would do everything she asked of me.

My mother, my mother she hold me
Did she hold me, when I was out there

She had always been there for me. She had always protected and loved me. And when Wyatt had started to turn, she had desperately tried to get me to open up to her. I have always pretended that nothing was wrong, told her to forget it, that there was nothing she had to worry about. But she never stopped caring. After a while she'd respected my refusal to tell her and I could see on each and every day that she was hurt that I didn't seem to confide in her enough to talk with her about my problems. But still I've kept quiet, because I have known that the truth would hurt her even more. She would have eventually believed me that my brother was evil and would have maybe blamed it on herself... That, I couldn't let happen. She was a great mother, the best a child could ask for... I just wished that I could tell her this now, so she wouldn't search the reason of Wyatt's turning by herself.

"Why should we believe you after all the lies?" my father asked and caused me to turn my gaze away from mom and look at him instead. I expected to see the same distrust and hatred in his eyes as in the others, but what I saw surprised me. Even though his question had been stated out of suspicion I could see that he was unsure, that he somehow believed what I said. Now it was my turn to be in disbelief. Of all the people in the room was he the one who seemed to want to trust me the most. The lack of coldness on his face caused my mind to flash back and remember a time where my dad had still loved me, where he had still been there for me like a father should...

My father, my father, he liked me
Oh he liked me, does anyone care

I remembered a day when I was four and mom and my aunts were vanquishing some demons, which had attacked us, in the underworld. I have been alone with my dad and my brother and I have been very scared that the demons would come back again or hurt mom. Dad had gathered me in his arms and hold me there until the rest of our family had come back from the underworld. I remembered that I've quickly calmed down when dad had hold me close to his chest. I could hear his heartbeat and his soothing words and felt so save. I've known in that moment that dad would never allow something to happen to me... How wrong I've been back then. In the next eighteen years my father had shown me otherwise. He had started to come down to us less and less. When I was eight he'd started to miss my birthdays. When I've turned twelve he didn't even bother to come when I was hurt anymore. And on my fourteenth birthday he'd let mom die... He just didn't seem to care anymore about his family... and I couldn't understand... I just hoped that my family could now understand...

Understand what I've become
It wasn't my design
And people everywhere think
Something better than I am

"Because you have to" I finally answered my dad, hoping that he would understand how serious this was and give me another chance. I never wanted to become the way I was now. The secretary, the lies, the manipulation... I never wanted to be forced to act like this, but now I had no other choice. As much as I wanted to tell them everything, I just couldn't. There was too much at stake to risk that.

"No, Chris. We don't, actually."

Again the harsh voice from my mother caught me off guard. You should really think I was used to it by now, wouldn't you? But I wasn't. But maybe it was really better if she didn't believe me... then she wouldn't be so hurt. But then Wyatt would probably pay the price. I couldn't let that happen. I came back her to save my brother and I intended to do that, because in the end it wouldn't matter how much everyone hated me or how much it hurt them to know that there was the possibility that Wyatt would become evil... because in the end I would change all this. I had to.

"Fine. Then, don't. Either way, we need to save Wyatt now, and I'm the one who knows how to do it" I then said, getting my voice steady and controlled again. I managed it to put my unemotional mask back up at my face, but that didn't mean that I wasn't affected by mom's intense stare. I tried to picture my mom's smile before my eyes, but I failed miserable. I couldn't even remember it very clearly how she had smiled at me with love in her eyes...

But I miss you, I miss
'cause I liked it, I liked it

"Oh, really? How?" Phoebe asked me, clearly not believing anything I told them. I wished for a second that I wouldn't have taken the empath blocking potion so she could feel how I was feeling. That I really just wanted to help them, that I was hurt by the way they were all rejecting me, that I just wanted to be in my mom's arms again... But that wasn't possible. She couldn't know. None of them could.

I tried again to explain myself to them, hoping that they would just let me find and save my brother. "The Order. They used their powers to turn him, to reverse his morality. See, he thinks bad is good now and good is bad. That's why his shield repelled you." I saw by the looks they sent my way that they weren't even listening to what I said. They didn't want to. They just wanted me gone. They wanted me to leave their family alone... my family. None of them seemed to want to know what could happen, no one seemed to care...

When I was out there
D'you know this, d'you know
You did not find me, you did not find
Does anyone care

Again it was my father who gave me a chance to explain further. "So?" he asked, not getting what I was trying to tell them. I struggled with myself for a second, unsure of whatever I should tell them that Wyatt didn't trust me or not. But I knew that I had no other choice now. I had to save my brother, even if it meant that my family would probably never trust me again...

"So Wyatt brings his shield up around me. He thinks I'm a threat" I finally told them and immediately even more suspicion filled their eyes. I waited for one of them to say what I knew that was about to come... A second later I heard it...

"Yeah, so do I."

Again it was my mom. I tried hard not to show how much she hurt me with what she said and decided to try to make her understand instead. "Listen to me. They reversed his sense of morality. That means his shield will protect him from you but not from me. Please, I'm the only one who can save him. Let me help."

Mom's eyes turned so hard and cold like I've never seen them before and I knew in that second she was about to say something that she would might regret if she would know who I was, but considering that she didn't, I tried to stay calm while I waited for her to say that something. Something that wouldn't be said in a comforting and caring voice like I was used to hear from my mother in my childhood...

Unhappiness was when I was young
And we didn't give a damn
'cause we were raised
To see life as fun and take it if we can

"Chris, we don't need your help. I will get my son back and when I do, I don't want to see you anymore."

There it was. Her words hit me with such a force that I thought for a second she had slapped me. Mom had just told me she never wanted to see me again. I had been her 'little angel', she had promised me that no matter what would happen, she would always love me... And yet here she was now and said these horrible words and shattered my heart into a million pieces. I've never thought that I could feel so much pain, but now I was proven from the opposite. If it had been hard to remember my mom's loving and caring face before, it was almost impossible now... I couldn't remember the feeling of being in her arms anymore, I couldn't remember how it was to have a family...

My mother, my mother she hold me
Did she hold me, when I was out there

I looked at everyone and could see that no one would say something to keep me from orbing away. No one wanted me here anymore. They all wanted me gone. Like mom. I've done it. I've messed everything even more up. I managed it to get my own family to hate me...

"I'm sorry" I whispered with tears coming to my eyes, before I orbed away. I couldn't stop them, this was just too much me to bear. But no one seemed to notice... no one seemed to care...

Does anyone care