Of All the People

Chapter 9

By teal-lover

Summary: Wyatt reflects on the events after Chris Crossed and decides to do something about it.

Rating: PG13, T

Disclaimer: I don't own Charmed, just borrowing, promise to give them back when done, don't get any money for this.

AN: I had a few problems uploading this last night after I fixed a few things, so I appologize to everyone if you received an alert twice.

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At the manor…

Paige was the first to speak after Wyatt left, "What did he mean, 'an obstacle'? Do you think Chris is–"

"No." Piper said firmly. "I refuse to believe that."

"Then why can't we sense him? Leo's an Elder, if anybody could sense him, he could. What if he's--"

Piper whipped her head around angrily, "He's not! Chris is not dead! Wyatt wouldn't have fought us so hard to save his life if he was just going to kill him the second he left our sight."

Paige folder her arms around her herself protectively and shrunk back a little. "Maybe Wyatt didn't mean to. Like it was an accident or something."

Piper calmed herself, recognizing Paige's association of Wyatt with her own actions. Her younger sister simply felt guilty at nearly killing her nephew, and no amount of platitudes would ever make the fact sit right with her. She pulled the younger woman into her arms and allowed her to cry on her shoulder. "Paige, I don't blame you, ok? You were only trying to protect our family."

"But I almost tore it apart."

"No. We didn't know, ok? But now we do. Chris is my son, your nephew, and he's out there somewhere. You have to let this go, because I need you right now. I need you to help me find my son and bring him home--safely. Please. Can you do that?"

Paige wiped her eyes again and nodded before she pointed to the attic. "I'll get the scrying crystal."

Piper watched her sister orb away and turned to the other. "Phoebe, I need you to write a Power of Three spell to summon Chris home just in case that doesn't work."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm his mother—I'm going to try variations on the blood-to-blood summoning spell and the lost witch spell. Leo—you're his father, I'll need your help to. Let's get moving—I have a terrible feeling that we don't have much time."

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The mausoleum…

He's up to something, Wyatt silently observed the dark-haired man grinning as he munched on his sandwich. When he arrived, he had been getting hungry himself, so he accepted the offering, not quite sure what it meant.

From anyone else, he would rather starve because he knew that it would certainly have been poisonous. But Chris wouldn't resort to something so cowardly. If he wanted him dead, he would have preferred to face him head on. That is why the younger man strutted back through the portal confidently, not a hint of fear in his stony features amidst his demonic body guards. Even with no powers, he defied him in words and attitude as he prepared to accept and counter whatever the older witch could throw at him.

It's the way his little brother had always handled things, at least, until his trip to the past. He still wasn't quite sure why Chris had gone about it the way he had—secretive and conniving. Unless he had been influenced by that Phoenix. She was a good employee until she betrayed him, and he was sorry that she was dead. Almost. He was more sorry that her death had spread the rift between the brothers even further apart.

He hesitated a moment before he spoke, "I'm sorry about Bianca."

Chris spun around quickly, the smile fading into a suspicious frown. "No you're not."

"It was an accident, Chris. She attacked me, what was I supposed to do?"

"Oh here's a thought—how about not try to kill your brother in the first place? Then she wouldn't have had to attack you, would she?"

Wyatt gritted his teeth, the aggravation clear in his tone. "How many times do I have to say it—I was not trying to kill you!"

The sarcastic response dripped of his tongue easily. "Yeah? Well maybe I'd be more prone to believe that if you weren't holding me hostage to make sure I'm never born. I don't know your definition of death, but I'm pretty sure that fits into mine."

"You don't listen very well. That's always been your problem, Chris."

Chris tilted his head, feigning confusion. "Really? Because you said my problem is that I am, and I quote, "…stuck in that old good vs. evil morass."

He ignored the mocking tone in his brother's voice. "Well then it appears you have several problems then, doesn't it. You know, if you wanted to oppose me, you could have simply done so in the future instead of resorting to sneaking back here to save me."

Smiling mischievously, he quipped, "I didn't sneak. The fact that you hurled an energy ball at me says that you were quite aware of where I was going."

Wyatt pursed his lips tightly to stop the immature retort from slipping out. "You're just—"

Chris supplied helpfully, "Frustrating? Irritating? Annoying?"

"All of the above."

"Then why do you want me by your side?"

The older man tilted his head in genuine confusion, "I can't figure that part out myself."

"Well I already have. There's a bond there, Wyatt. You can't break it no matter how much you try. And if you manage to erase my existence, you'll always feel like there's something missing in your life."

"You can't miss what you never had."

"But you do have it—right here, right now. That fact that we're brother's will never change. Even if I die. You can never go back to the point where your subconscious will completely forget. You just won't know why you feel that way—what's wrong. You're not ready to give that bond up yet. I mean, you're here aren't you?"

"I needed to know why my own brother would betray me."

Chris spread his arms wide to indicate the darkened crypt. "I don't mean why you came to the past. I mean why are you hanging around in here? There are plenty of other places you could go without them finding you over the next several days. You can't bring yourself to cut me off completely."

The older witch's eyes turned a darker shade of blue as he flushed with anger. If these truly were the last times they would spend together, then he wanted to take advantage of the time. And he knew what his brother said was true, but he tried to convince both himself and the younger man otherwise. "I simply can't allow them to find either of us…"

"Sure," he muttered disbelievingly.

"Why must you always fight me ever step of the way?"

Chris gave him a half smile, "Like when you tried to teach me how to tie my shoes?"

Wyatt grimaced at that incident while they were younger. What had started out as an older brother instructing the younger in something that was supposed to have been simple, instead had turned into an utter catastrophe. The dark-haired boy had refused to let his brother even near his shoes, determination settling into his features while he practiced. Wyatt had to laugh remembering the look on the child's face as his tongue poked out of the side of his mouth in concentration.

The boy had tripped on his untied laces when a demon had charged the pair. The uncontrollable and accidental spikes that had shot out of the boy's hand in the fall had destroyed not only the demon, but their entire bedroom. Piper had loved that one… Chris had nearly burnt down the manor with his stubbornness.

He looked at his younger brother pointedly, "Like when I've tried to teach you a lot of things. Like the fact that good and evil are only words—vague concepts that don't exist in the real world. Tell me—what is good and evil? Can you even tell me what the difference is?"

Chris stared at the floor sadly, knowing he could never win this particular debate even if the two men had been immortal. "If you don't already know the difference, then you're too far gone for me to ever change the way you see them. You're just as stubborn as I am. I know I can never change the way you think—not unless I can get to you before they did."

Wyatt threw him a weary glance, sighing loudly. "Why do you assume that it was someone who 'got to me'? Why can't it simply be that I have evolved past that? Like you should have by now instead of opposing me at every turn."

Green eyes bore into blue earnestly, silently pleading with them to understand. "I don't want to oppose you, Wyatt. I've never wanted that. I just want what you want—for us to be on the same side. Like we used to be. Do you remember when grandpa died, and they tried to make me go into foster care, but you wouldn't let them take me?"

Wyatt scoffed dismissively, "Of course I remember, I'm not a senile old man."

"Why did you do that?" Chris baited him, trying to get him to remember those older times.

"Because I…" Wyatt suddenly broke off, but Chris finished his thought.

"Because you didn't want us to be separated, right? Well I didn't want that either, that's why I ran away. And then you were old enough and they reluctantly let me stay with you. You were the only family I had left. I didn't want to go live with some stranger. Someone who wouldn't understand me, who wouldn't even have a clue what it was like to be half-witch/half-whitelighter."

"I know," came the quiet response.

"Aside from Paige, we're the only ones of our kind."

Wyatt turned his head away, staring off at the wall and doing his best to ignore his brother's words.

"Do you really want to be the only one? I mean, I know that you're the Twice-Blessed and all, but you would be completely unique. Alone. Is that what you really want? "

"You already know what I really want. You just said it yourself. But if I have to make a choice between fighting you constantly for the rest of my life, and--well I'll leave that up to you. Have you made a decision yet? "

"Would we still be sitting here if I had?" Chris asked calmly.

Wyatt gracefully bowed as his own tone dripped with sarcasm. "Oh, by all means then—don't let me rush you into a decision. It's not like it's life or death, right? You still have a few days left. But you're running out of time, you know that."

He shrugged fairly confidently, "Whether or not we're here, mom and dad will figure it out. They'll get together the same as they did the first time. I did the calculations, and I still have nine days."

"Seven…" the blonde uttered in a clipped tone.

"What?" His eyes widened in surprise. If two days had passed, then that was two whole days fewer that he had to work on his brother's conscience. That was kind of cutting it close.

"I said seven--s-e-v-e-n. You were out for nearly a day when after we left the club, so that's one day lost. And I'm guessing that you didn't count the day when you first decided to let the world know that 'Christopher Halliwell doesn't take orders from anyone.' You've always been stubborn. You wouldn't come out and the doctors had to induce labor the day after you were supposed to be born in order to get you out. Now you've lost another day. The clock is ticking."

TBC…

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