He did it for me
Chapter 25
By: teal-lover
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Being twice blessed, Wyatt thought that nothing could ever hurt him. It's devastating to find out how wrong you can be. Takes place in the future that Chris changed.
Chris just turned 19, and Wyatt is three months shy of his 21st birthday.
Disclaimer in chapter 1
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Penny paced the floor worriedly, biting her thumbnails, "Something went wrong. They wouldn't have stormed this place with so many reinforcements otherwise. Maybe Piper and Leo set them off?"
Prue watched her grandmother pacing and folded her arms, feeling the tension radiating off the older woman. "That's what I thought." She didn't want to add any further worry to the woman's plight, but felt that it needed to be voiced, "Grams, I can't hear Christopher. It may be just because he doesn't know how to communicate with us yet. We should have taken the time to show him while we had the chance."
Penny looked up, "If that was true we'd be able to hear your mother at least, but she's not answering either. They must have them someplace that blocks them from us."
Her eyes cast downward as the guilt overwhelmed her, Prue spoke softly, "I'm sorry Grams. I wouldn't have let them get away with Christopher if I had known we wouldn't be able to contact him. To know that he's ok."
Penny stopped her pacing and touched her grandaughter's arm lightly to console her. "Prue, Darling. It's not your fault. You said this place was packed, and by the size of it, there had to have been at least a hundred or more of them. There's no way you would have been able to stop them all, which is precisely why they brought that many. Honey, you did the right thing by staying to warn me. If you hadn't, they would probably have Chris as well."
Prue's frustration pushed her to the verge of tears, "Grams, I need to be doing something! I can't just stand around doing nothing while who knows what is happening to my nephew! What are we going to do? I know you must have sent Chris away with the book, so we can't even go down there with my sisters and do anything useful!"
"Maybe not, but I still have a few favors I can call in. Someone who's above the elders. If we play our cards right, he just may be willing to help us find your mother and Christopher. Chris will be safe with Wyatt for the moment—I have no doubt that he will do everything in his power to protect him." She turned and grabbed Prue's arm, "Let's go. We're going to get our missing Halliwell's back."
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Back at the Manor…Phoebe's mouth opened and closed silently, as if a puppetmaster was controlling her every action. Seconds passed and turned into minutes as she froze.
Leo shouted at her in disbelief, "oh, NOW you're speechless!"
After several long minutes, she was finally able to stutter something coherent, "Wh—what? Chris?"
Leo answered her question and hissed angrily, "You heard me! That wasn't the Chris we raised. That was the Chris who came back to save his brother and his family." He motioned just above his head as he questioned rhetorically, "You remember him? About yeah high, shaggy brown hair, green eyes, DIED IN MY ARMS! You know—HIM!"
Phoebe covered her mouth as she whispered in shock, "Oh my—"
Piper shared her husbands fury at her sibling. Bringing her hands up to her hips, she glared at the woman, "That's right Phoebe. If he didn't already hates us before, I'm sure he does now. How could you say that to him?"
"I didn't know," she uttered in her own defense. "Are you sure? Because then there would be two of them. I mean, Grams would have told us if"
"If she even knew," Paige supplied.
The oldest sister rolled her eyes and spoke bitterly, "Oh, she knew. And she kept him from us. All these years! He's just been out there! Alone. We didn't even have a funeral for him!" Piper yelled as the panic gradually subsided and the anger bubbled to the surface.
With every word uttered by her sister and brother-in-law, Phoebe found herself sinking deeper and deeper into a fog as she replayed every horrible thing she had said or done to her nephew, particularly how she had just treated him. If it was indeed the first Chris, everything made sense. The anger that she felt from him when Grams summoned him. The fear, which hadn't made sense to her at the time, now fit. He had actually been afraid of them. But the look he gave was one she should have recognized. She'd seen it nearly 20 years before when she had discovered his identity. Only, she never thought she'd see it again on the face of her youngest nephew. But surely enough, there it was—the familiar fear of rejection. And from the way they had treated him, she reasoned, perhaps it had rightfully belonged there back then—and maybe even now.
She had been horrible to him when he was alive. And she found herself regretting her behavior every day since she learned of his untimely demise at Gideon's hands. She had vowed to make it up the new version of Chris that existed. And she had. Or at least she thought she had.
And yet here was the original version, shattering the illusion of the nephew she had spent her life lavishing gifts and attention on; spoiling him rotten in her misguided attempts at redemption. They could have made sure they were one in the same, instead of just writing him off and assuming. They could have summoned him just as easily as Grams did. But they didn't. And now they were paying for their error in judgement. All of this time wasted, when she should have been asking for forgiveness from the only person who could give it. But somehow, she just didn't see that happening now. Piper was right, she thought with a grimace, he probably hated them now for sure.
She covered her open mouth with her hand and mumbled through it, "What am I going to do?"
Leo quickly broke the empath out of her reverie with a surprisingly venomous tone. "You're not going to do anything. I'm going to find my son" Piper swatted his arm in correction as he glanced down at her, "Piper and I are going to find our son and you'll go no where near him since you can't seem to open your mouth without sticking your foot in it."
Paige's mouth dropped open in shock at the harsh words spoken by her brother-in-law towards her sister now in tears. She defended the empath, "Now hold on a minute there, Leo! How can you say that! It certainly wasn't intentional. None of us had any idea who he was."
Piper swiped at the tears in her eyes angrily, her own guilt driving her to lash out. She stepped closer to the red head invading her personal space, her back as rigid as her five-foot-four frame would allow. "He's right, Paige. Stay out of it! Both of you. Chris is OUR son."
Leo chimed in, "Our son, our responsibility."
Paige glared at the parents, Leo in particular, "And you failed him didn't you? You let him die! Then you refused to act like he ever even existed. You just brushed him aside and now you want to act like you can declare some kind of parental rights! News flash you two, He's not YOUR son either! He was another Piper and Leo's son. The fact that there are two of them proves that. So you have no more biological rights to make those kind of demands than the rest of us."
Piper's mouth fell open in shock while a lamp exploded nearby from her rage. Her feathers ruffled at the disapproving glare her youngest sister gave her, while a glance in the other's direction found her nodding in agreement. Leaning in closer, her eyes narrowed as she spoke through clenched teeth, "How dare you?"
Sheila's eyes widened as the two Halliwell sisters faced off, their tempers flaring dangerously. The other two weren't helping matters as they each backed the sister who had defended them only moments ago against the other. With the two sides divided—Piper and Leo; Paige and Phoebe—the four looked quite ready to expend their pent up aggression at the entire situation on each other.
Trying to diffuse the situation , she stepped between the oldest and youngest Halliwell sisters and asked them incredulously, "Have you all lost your minds? Come on. I know that this situation has got us all hopping mad and ready to fight, but it's not getting us anywhere to fight with each other. When we find Julius, direct that anger more resourcefully at him! Right now, we need to concentrate on finding Chris—both of them, because they're in danger and that's all that's important right now—not who can claim him or who loves him more!"
Realizing the truth in her friends words, Piper's expression softened a bit before she backed down and swayed over to the bench under the window sill. Taking a seat, she watched as her husband crossed his arms, unwilling to relinquish such an easy outlet for his anger. She called his name quietly but firmly before he turned and reluctantly joined her.
Following the couple's lead, the remaining Charmed Ones padded over to the opposite side and sat down. Paige stared down at her hands and sighed softly. When this is over, she thought, there are going to be some very high fences to mend. Her gaze shifted from her hands across the floorboard to meet her whitelighter's steely blue eyes that hadn't lost much of their edge. "…very high…" she muttered under breath.
Tbc…
AN: Oh, thank you so much for the reviews and for being so understanding! They were so sweet.
Hey, I had to split this one up because I'm not finished with the confrontation. And I added a bit more Chris and Wyatt interaction before they all have it out. And yeah—they're all going to have it out. Except maybe for Christopher & Patty. Wonder what they're up to:)
