Part 11: My Brother's Keeper

Chris's eyes were closed, his brow pinched between them with concentration.

Pain came screeching through and his thoughts juddered, but the connection held. He pushed away the invading agony and regained his focus. Closer, closer, closer…

Then he relaxed, sighing with exhausted relief, just as orbing chimes rang out across the fabricated and wet hill.

He grinned. He'd known he could do it.

Slowly, Chris opened his eyes. The knight was stood over him, metal-clad foot drawn back to nudge him in the side again, when suddenly he vanished.

Chris pushed his palms into the soft ground and tried to sit up. A hot pressure filled his head and the dreamscape blurred, his arms going wobbly and sending him back down to the grass. A groan escaped his lips, as he closed his eyes again and willed the wooziness to pass.

"You just orbed him physically into this plane." The voice sounded stunned and anxious.

A grin flashed across Chris's face, and his eyelids slid back. Carefully, he eased himself back up and managed to get to his knees this time, the mud soaking through his jeans.

The Nightmare demon was stood a few yards away, his frock coat flapping around him in the damp wind.

"Who are you?" He was looking at Chris with bewilderment and alarm.

Chris glanced over at the little boy standing next to the castle.

He smiled.

"His brother."

Dread stripped the Nightmare demon's face and took the confidence out of his pompous stance. "The son of a Charmed One and a whitelighter…" he breathed. For the first time, the Nightmare demon was truly afraid.

Chris looked over at Wyatt again. Regardless of the place in time, he could always sense his brother. He'd once managed to orb Phoebe from her desire world and into Paige's, while lying on the ground with Darklighter poison coursing through his blood. Reaching out from another plane and orbing his brother to him was child's play. Well, ok, it wasn't. But he didn't want to taint the moment with smugness. Well, maybe a little wouldn't hurt. Carrying around an inferiority complex meant his ego was always in need of a little nursing.

Chris studied the child whose life he was gambling with. He swallowed guiltily. Piper would kill him if she knew.

Wyatt was stood, childishly unsteady on his feet, looking around him and blinking his wide blue eyes in surprise. Then his eyes latched onto Chris. Slowly his bottom lip protruded and he looked like was about to wail with displeasure.

Apparently, bringing him back to a dreamscape hadn't put Chris in his brother's good books.

With a sudden jerk, the castle and the wet hill were gone, and replaced.

Chris found himself alone, at the base of a glass statue. The glistening, detailed sculpture was a ten-foot-high dragon, sat with its tail curled around its legs.

Getting his feet under himself, Chris reached up to brace himself against it. Sharply he withdrew his hand. A gasp fell from his lips.

The statue was freezing cold.

Chris stood up and studied the dragon, tentatively reaching out to touch it again.

Ice.

It was made of ice. He looked at the statue in awe, the sunlight twinkling on the beast's perfectly crafted scales. It was amazing.

Moving away from the statue, Chris took in the rest of his surroundings. There was short, richly green grass under his feet and the sky was clear and pale blue. The statue was in the centre of a square formed by tall evergreen hedges, and neat partings in the thick bushes formed two exits on opposite sides.

Chris wasn't sure whose dreamscape this was. It could easily have been the demon's or Wyatt's.

He walked through one of the exits and found himself in a corridor formed by immaculate, very tall and very thick hedges. Going around a right-angled turn and finding himself in identical surroundings, Chris realised where he was.

He was in a maze.

Rubbing a hand over his face, Chris tiredly reached out to Wyatt. He'd already sensed the child was not far away, somewhere in the maze. No harm had come to him, which was a relief, and Wyatt didn't even seem to be afraid. In fact, he seemed extraordinarily calm… Unease stirred in Chris's numb abdomen.

Chewing nervously on his bottom lip, Chris closed his eyes and focused on trying to orb Wyatt to him. Coming up against resistance, he pulled harder, but he couldn't do it… Chris's eyes flew open. Wyatt was stopping him.

Chris swore.

He began jogging through the maze, ignoring the white-hot stabs of his cracked ribs and his inability to breathe easily.

When he finally came to another small clearing, Chris was wheezing like an asthmatic in the throngs of an attack. He slumped against the ice statue in the centre, clutching his chest and pressing his head against the blessedly cool sculpture.

Chris forced himself to take deeper, slower breaths. His head began to clear and his limbs came back under his control. He stumbled backwards and looked up at the statue.

It was a dragon like the first, but this one had its head thrown back and was shooting a frozen flame out of its mouth. There was a film of water over it, which stopped his touch from sticking him to the ice, but the intricate detail was still intact. However, it wasn't going to help him with what he intended to do. He would have to get a move on, before the statue melted too much.

Chris reached up and took a strong hold of one of the dragon's half-raised wings. The ice was slippery and his hand began to go numb almost instantly. Gritting his teeth, Chris forced his fingers to stay locked around the scaled wing, and firmly planted a foot on the bend of the dragon's elbow. He pushed and pulled himself upwards, his other foot leaving the solid ground. His free hand reached up and grabbed hold of the dragon's withers. He let go of the wing and flung his arm over the dragon's back. Then pressing his chest against the dragon's shoulder, he pulled himself upwards. His broken ribs screamed at him to stop and a dark cloud descended over him. He thought he was going to pass out.

Finding himself straddling the dragon's back as the black haze lifted, Chris wasn't sure how he'd gotten there. His ribs, however, were telling him that they knew all too well.

Chris surveyed his view from this new vantage point, but he wasn't yet high enough to see over the maze's tall hedges.

He looked at the dragon's head and neck with trepidation, then glanced down at the distant ground and grimaced.

After taking a moment to breathe warm air onto his hands, Chris reached forward and used the dragon's neck to steady himself, as he carefully brought his right knee up onto its back, and then brought his other knee up, so that he ended up in a kneeling position. He wrapped his arms further around the dragon's neck then, and pressed close to the ice as he slowly rose up onto his feet.

The view was breathtaking.

The maze stretched out to the horizon, the ground was completely flat and the geometric shapes formed by the dark green hedges were perfectly neat. Ice dragon heads rose above the tops of the clearings, which were randomly interspersed amongst the network of paths.

In the very heart of the maze there was a huge ice statue. It was a dragon like the others, but rose up much higher. It's back was arched, its wings were spread out and its head was pointing towards the sun, as if it was about to take off.

Another difference between this dragon and the others was the ice horn protruding from its forehead. And then, of course, there was the small boy sat on the crown of the dragon's head, holding onto the horn and just watching.

Damn you, Wyatt Halliwell!

Chris sighed in frustration. Then he looked down at the ground.

Whereas orbing up into such a precarious position would undoubtedly have gone very nastily wrong, Chris had no qualms about orbing down.

His feet materialised on solid ground, and he rubbed warmth back into his numbed hands.

Now he knew what he'd be getting into, Chris tried to orb to the clearing in the centre of the maze. However, he found he couldn't do that anymore than he could orb his brother to him.

"Wyatt…" he growled under his breath, furious.

He clenched his fists and then unclenched them, forcing himself to calm down and think.

He'd seen the Nightmare demon moving through the network at about the same distance from the centre as he was. A distance that was blessedly close when considering the possibly infinite size of the maze. It seemed Wyatt wasn't letting the demon shimmer, so the odds were fair. If you ignored the fact that Chris wasn't in a particularly good physical state.

Of course, the odds shouldn't have been fair, anyway - they should have been in his favour.

Chris fumed. He was the kid's mother's whitelighter, for heaven's sake!

Not to mention his goddamned little brother.

Chris gave a longsuffering sigh. Then he began jogging through the network of tall hedges again, arm clamped against his hurting side.

Being able to sense Wyatt kept Chris moving in the general right direction. The maze was surprisingly uncomplicated and Chris made no more than two wrong turns in total.

He arrived in the central clearing, moving at a pace that was more like hasty stumbling than a jog, at the same time as the Nightmare demon came through another entrance.

The demon had discarded his frock coat somewhere, sweat dripped down his face and chest, scruffy shirt hanging open at the neck and wrists. His hair was dishevelled, his eyes wild and angry. Foam dripped from his mouth.

Apparently, the Nightmare demon didn't like not being in control. He was taking it all rather badly.

The demon launched himself at Chris.

Before Chris could react, the demon had him tightly by the arm and was kicking his legs out from under him.

Chris went down hard. His trapped arm almost jarred out of its socket.

The demon roughly pulled on Chris's arm, jerking him so he was more upright.

"Any last requests?" he asked, his demonic eyes flashing darkly and a smirk hovering over his lips.

Chris gave a lopsided grin in response. "Yes. What is your name?"

The demon growled in fury and tossed Chris away in disgust.

Chris looked up at the ice dragon poised as if about to launch into flight. He could see Wyatt still sat on its head, still just watching.

He got to his feet and reached up, trying to find a handhold on the enormous, slippery sculpture.

Strong arms wrapped around his waist and pulled him backwards, dragging him away from the statue. Chris kicked and struck out with his elbows, bashing the demon in the nose and finding himself free. Instantly, he tried again to find a way up the statue.

But then there were vice-like hands around his neck. Choking him. And preventing him from going anywhere.

Chris looked up at Wyatt, his eyes pleading. "A little help?" he called, hoarsely, from within the Nightmare demon's almost strangling hold.

But Wyatt just watched.

Gathering his strength, Chris gave the demon a telekinetic push and twisted to the side, the demon's hands roughly scraping away from his neck.

Chris gasped for breath and rubbed his throat, as he stumbled away.

He approached the ice statue from a slightly different angle and tried again to find a way to climb up it.

His right hand found a ridge and his finger began to close around the ice. And then there was fire.

An explosion of fierce flames ripped through Chris's abdomen. The numbness became a distant memory. All there was, was pain. Fiery agony. Nothing else existed in the world.

A grinning face flashed before him. The Nightmare demon. An ice dragon, reared up, ready to leave. A small boy looked down at him. Wide, wide, blue, blue eyes.

"Wyatt! Wyatt, please!"

Someone was yelling, crying, begging.

The blackness was cushioning him, bouncing him on top of its dark waves.

The boy. Wyatt. His eyes were locked onto something…

Chris fought to bring himself fully back into the world.

Wyatt's eyes were locked firmly onto the Nightmare demon. He raised a little, unwavering forefinger. And then he blinked, meaningfully.

There was a scream.

Chris weakly dragged himself to his knees and saw the first flames burst from the Nightmare demon's chest. In the end, he was just like all the rest.

Then the earth was shaking, the ice dragon sinking into the ground. Wyatt was riding it down towards him.

"You're nothing but trouble, you know that?" Chris told the boy, but there was an affectionate smile on his pale, exhausted face.

Then, as the Nightmare demon's screams died away, the dreamscape began to melt into nothingness...

Chris urgently reached up and took hold of Wyatt's hand. Go… Go!

Piper Halliwell cried out and staggered forward towards the cot. She swept her child up into her arms, not truly believing he was really there until she felt his little heartbeat against her chest, his little hand holding onto her shoulder, and she could smell the baby shampoo in his fair hair. She could smell something else on him, too…smoke, ash…

Then Leo was embracing them both and kissing her, and nothing else mattered. Everything was alright.

TBC

(one more chapter...)