Just let me die

Chapter 3 – Familiar faces

A/N You know I had many self-doubts today, I got 11 review on the first chapter in just one day, but when I checked today I had none on the second, so I kept thinking to myself the first one was good but the second one awful. But then I got two reviews in the evening, and that's enough to make me keep going. I just hope there'll be more until I post this.

Disclaimer: This is kind of a funny ritual, I still don't know whether to put it at the beginning of every chapter or not. But just to be on the safe side: I do not own Charmed or anything related to it. The characters don't belong to me (except for my own ones of course) and I only do this for fun, not to get any profit out of it.

777777777777777777777

The place they orbed back in was just your typical underworld scenery. It was a cave, that was dimly lit by a single torch on the wall, which was barely enough to see the own hand in front of you eyes. The ground was dirty, like dried mud and the ground was uneven. The details were hardly recognizable.

At first glance Piper saw no one there, and she had the feeling Paige might've gotten the place wrong, but then she noticed that only one of the walls, the one with the torch was visible. From her current position she could not make out how big the room, or cave was.

Phoebe apparently had the same problem and decided to get over it by calling out loud, "Chris, where are you?"

Paige immediately punched he in the ribs and hissed, "Are you out of you mind? What if someone bad is here and is now alerted?"

Phoebe realized how stupid she had been and whispered, "Sorry"

They waited for a few seconds, but there was no reaction to Phoebe's call whatsoever and she let out a sigh of relief.

"Um, so where is Chris?", Paige asked a little uncomfortably. He could at least have answered to Phoebe's call.

"Maybe he didn't hear you", Leo said and tried to see more of his environment as his eyes slowly got used to the dim lighting.

Piper walked around slowly and tried not to step on anything as she searched the room for their whitelighter. As she did so, her sisters began to walk around themselves. After a few seconds Paige stumbled across something and let out a small yelp as she was trying not to loose her balance.

"What's that?", Phoebe asked curiously and walked over to her sister. She turned the object around and immediately dropped it, when she realized what it was.

"Phoebe?", Paige asked with a concerned look on her face. She hadn't seen the object closely enough, but now she bent down to examine that thing herself. She gasped when she saw that it was a human head. There was a huge spike pierced through it and it seemed to be quite old and rotten. The blood that had clearly been there one time was dried.

Piper meanwhile walked around on the other side of the room as she found the wall opposite of the one they already knew. It appeared that the room wasn't that big after all. She continued to follow it's curse when she saw something lying on the ground. She stepped closer and realized that this was a person.

The whole body was dirty, there were cuts bruises and scars almost everywhere. Some seemed to be older than others. On the side the person had a lot of dried blood sticking to his body. The dark hair was unkempt and dirty, and it looked as if it hadn't been cut for quite a while, put at the meantime not grown properly. Half of the back that was turned towards her was burned and the skin seemed to have been peeled off at some places.

Her sisters had noticed the person as well. Phoebe immediately felt sorry for the person, because she was fairly certain it was no demon but not even a demon would have deserved whatever had happened to this guy. Well, at least she thought it was a guy. He looked as if he hadn't eaten anything in a very long time, through his pale and dirty skin every single bone stood out prominently. Also the person was wearing no clothes.

Paige couldn't bring herself to look further at this person, because when she imagined how this guy must have had suffered tears welled up in her eyes.

Piper carefully stepped around to look at the man. She thought that maybe he had some hints on where their whitelighter might be.

He was looking even worse on the front than on the back. A huge scar was spread across his upper body. It seemed to be old, but some nasty infections seemed to have hit so it was a mix of green black and blue. On the side he had another wound that was infected that looked even worse. It was large and she couldn't make out what could have caused this. He also had several cuts bruises and scars on his lower body, that suggested things had happened that she didn't even want to think about.

She took a careful look at the face. The eyes lay deep in their sockets, and the guy was so thin, that the cheekbones looked huge. She noticed he looked at her but she could see no hint of any reaction to her presence.

But something about these eyes caught her attention. They were green and rather beautiful if not for the emotionless stare they were giving her. And they seemed familiar…

And then it hit her. She stumbled back a few steps and put her hand over her mouth. She stared at him in shock.

"Chris?", she finally whispered, but she didn't get any reaction. Only then her sisters realized who it was.

Phoebe couldn't believe it. Who had done this, what had happened? How could their gorgeous whitelighter be looking like that?

Something didn't add up there. He had left them a few hours ago looking perfectly healthy. Well, not perfectly healthy of course, Bianca had stripped his powers and he had had a fever back then, but still he had been a lot better than he was now.

"Leo heal him!", was Paige's first reaction. She couldn't keep her eyes of the boy and had no idea how anyone could be evil enough to do something like that.

Leo immediately rushed to his side and held his hands over the boy that was looking at all of them without any sign of recognition. But nothing happened.

"What's wrong?", Piper asked concerned and tried very hard not to think about how their whitelighter had to have been treated.

"I don't know", Leo said. Usually a golden glow came out of his hands even if he couldn't heal the person, but now there was nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Suddenly, someone else spoke up. A cold voice answered Piper's last question. "White magic doesn't work in this room"

Everyone except for Chris spun around and looked at the stranger. But in the dim light it was hardly even recognizable where he was. But they could make out a tall blonde man standing near the entrance of the cave…

77777777777777777777777

A/N I know this one is rather short and it has no action in it and the description of Chris's state is way too long, but I needed that for the plot. The next one is gonna have more action and it's gonna be more interesting, I promise. I don't know, when I post this chapter the next one might be done already, because I will only be able to post it three days from completing it, so in that time the next one's probably finished. We'll see how soon I post it. Depends a little on the reviews guys, so please, if you read the story so far, leave a little comment.

TBC