A/N: I wasn't entirely happy with this chapter, mainly because of the spell I had to write for it. Once again, I apologize for my dreadful poetry. I wrote the spell in about half a minute because I wanted to finish this chapter, but I assure you that it would hardly have been better if I spent an hour on it. I hope you enjoy the rest of the chapter!

Chapter 5-

"Zach! Phoebe! Paige!" Chris called out in frustration. "Piper! Leo! Answer me, dammit!" He waved a face in front of Zach's face, and groaned, as he seemed to look straight through it. They seemed to be talking about him, or, more precisely, his body downstairs. Chris wasn't really listening, but he still managed to pick up flashes of the conversation.

"How are we supposed to get-"

"-in the world. He can pretty much-"

"-and he didn't."

"Answer me!" Chris yelled angrily. He was getting increasingly furiated with the way his family were ignoring him.

"They can't hear you."

Chris turned his head where he had heard the amused voice on the other side of the attic. His mouth dropped. He recognized this man from entries in the Book of Shadows, and countless memories he had seen in the Charmed Ones heads, thanks to his cousin Mel's power of picking into people's minds and projecting their thoughts.

"Cole?"

The man grinned. "It's so nice to have someone to talk to," he said casually. "And someone who knows my name, even more so."

"You were vanquished," Chris said, inwardly wincing at his accusing voice.

"Indeed I was." Cole's grin seemed to grow wider, and Chris scowled at him.

"Go to hell."

"I've already been there," Cole said, the smirk immediately dropping from his face, to be replaced with a slight frown. He gestured around the attic. "And this is hell. For me, anyway. It was my punishment. To be as close as I can get to Phoebe without being to touch or even talk to her."

Chris said nothing, and Cole's frown deepened.

"Not very good conversation, are you?" Cole asked. "Come on, kid, talk. I've been stuck here for years with nobody to talk to. The least you could do is say something."

"Where am I?" Chris asked, stating the first and most apparent question in his head.

"In the Manor," Cole replied as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. And it was, Chris realised a second later, feeling rather stupid.

"Why can't they see me?" Chris asked, motioning towards his family.

"We're stuck," Cole said, pronouncing the words with a bitter hatred. "Stuck between life and death. Most people would be dead already from that potion Piper's son gave you."

"Why aren't I?" Chris asked,

Cole glanced at him. "I suppose something in you is still fighting for life," he replied cryptically.

Chris shrugged, wondering at it. Zach could save the future; he knew that. And Chris didn't have any reasons to live apart from saving Wyatt and the future. So why was he still alive?

Chris realised with a start that he did have a reason for living. Zach. Zach needed him. Zach had told him before he went back to the past that he couldn't survive if anything happened to him. And Chris knew it was a bad world out there, he wanted to protect his younger brother.

"Could you tell me something about the future?" Cole asked, pulling Chris out of his thoughts.

"I doubt it," Chris said dubiously. "But go on, ask me something. I'll do my best to answer it."

"Is- is Phoebe okay?" Cole asked, his face perfectly serious.

Chris' heart sank. There was no harm in telling Cole the answer; it was obvious he wouldn't be able to tell anyone. But Chris didn't want to break the news to this man who obviously loved her very much.

"No," he said quietly.

Pure anguish showed on Cole's face. He swallowed. "What happened?" he managed to ask.

"Wyatt," Chris answered softly, his gaze drifting over to his parents.

"Did she ever get married again?" Cole asked.

Chris nodded slightly. "She had a daughter. Her name was Prudence Melinda. Mel, we called her."

The daughter that could have been mine, Cole thought. It seemed Chris had guessed his thoughts though, as his gaze fixed on Cole was filled with pity.

"Her name was Prudence Melinda?" Cole repeated.

Chris shot him a look. "She died," he said coldly.

"Oh," Cole said awkwardly. "I'm sorry." He searched around for another subject and came across one. "Why did you call her Mel?" he asked. "Why not Prue?"

Chris shrugged. "There was another Prue," he answered, with obvious sadness.

"Do you mean-" Cole started to ask.

"No," Chris interrupted him. "I've already said enough."

Cole raised an eyebrow. "How exactly am I going to change the future?" he asked wryly.

Chris shrugged. "There's always a possibility. I've already changed more than I meant to. Now my entire existence is threatened. I planned this trip for months, but in the end I let my emotions take over."

Cole was slightly confused, but had a slight idea what Chris was talking about. "When you imprisoned Leo on Valhalla?" he asked. "I've been wondering about that. It surprised me when you put him there. I didn't think you were stupid enough to separate your parents before you were even born."

Chris' eyes widened. "How did you-?"

Cole gave a slight laugh. "The resemblance between you and Piper is remarkable," he said, glancing slightly at the oldest Charmed One. "And you have Leo's eyes. I can't think how they didn't notice it."

"People only believe what they want to believe," Chris said bitterly, staring at his scruffy shoes.

Cole eyed the young whitelighter-witch and was filled with a slight sympathy that surprised him, because it was so different from the self-pity he felt so often nowadays.

"How can I go back to- well, life?" Chris asked, raising his head.

"You can't," Cole replied grimly. "Not unless the Charmed Ones manage to save your body. A spirit can only take you so far in life."

"That sucks," Chris replied, knowing that trying to find an antidote to one of Wyatt's potions was like to trying to find a needle in a haystack. Well, no, more like trying to find a grain of neon pink sand on a beach. At least finding a needle in a haystack was possible. Chris shook his head slightly, wondering why the hell he was thinking about neon pink sand when he could be finding a way to return to his body.

"You can't get outside, either," Cole told Chris, with a slight smile on his face as if he knew exactly what the whitelighter-witch was thinking.

Chris glared at him. "Of course I can."

He tried orbing and growled in frustration when he found he couldn't orb. Next he went downstairs, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get out. It was like an invisible barrier that went all the way around the house. He tried smashing windows, but couldn't. Cole watched all this with extreme amusement.

"I've tried all that, you know," he drawled, watching Chris' attempts to jump out the attic. "But we're stuck in here."

Chris groaned, and slumped against the wall, his head in his hands. "Great. Just great. I'm stuck in this damn house with the ex-Source of all Evil, watching my family try and find an antidote for a poison that most likely doesn't even have an antidote. Meanwhile, they've totally forgotten about my older brother who is going to become the evil overlord of the world unless they suddenly have a brainwave, remember him, and stop whatever it is that's gonna turn him evil."

"And I thought I had it bad," Cole remarked, rather unhelpfully, Chris thought to himself.

When Zach woke up, he was surprised to find himself in an armchair in the Manor's living room with a blanket laid over the top of him. He got up and stretched, remembering with a start that he had to save Chris. He looked over and frowned, seeing his brother's body on the couch, lying there, and deathly pale.

"'Morning," Leo said cheerfully, coming into the Manor.

Zach frowned again. "You don't live here."

The smile dropped right off Leo's face. "I used to," he said.

"Why are you here?" Zach said bluntly. "Shouldn't you be 'Up There' with the Elders?"

"I'm helping you find a way to heal Chris," Leo replied.

"Piper, Phoebe and Paige are going to be wondering about this you know," Zach told him, hiding the fact that he was actually happy that Leo was helping him. "You just went from hating Chris and I to being all, well, chummy."

"Can't we just tell them the truth?" Leo asked, a definite pleading note in his voice.

Zach shook his head. "If it was really important to them, they'd know already."

"What do you mean?" asked Leo.

"Wyatt placed a spell so we wouldn't know exactly what he did or told us," Zach said. "It's a routine thing, though so it wasn't very strong. That's why you were able to break it, and actually noticed details of what he said. Didn't you feel light-headed afterwards?"

Leo shrugged, but realised Zach was right, he had felt light headed. He also realised he couldn't remember exactly what had gone on in the attic.

"Let's get to work then," said Zach, bringing Leo out of his thoughts. "We need to save Chris."

Leo nodded, slightly unenthusiastically considering his cheerful attitude from earlier. "How are we supposed to get Wyatt's blood?"

"It's not possible," Zach said bluntly. "He's too powerful."

"There must be some way," said Leo. "He must have a weakness."

Zach shook his head. "The only thing I've ever known Wyatt to be afraid of is heights, and he probably grew out of that."

"My son afraid of heights?" Leo asked, horrified.

Zach grinned. "More to the point, the great almighty Wyatt Halliwell who tortured and killed thousands, if not millions of people, afraid of heights."

Leo winced.

"Sorry," Zach said, the smile dropping from his face. "I didn't mean to bring that up. Anyway, that's one of the reasons Chris likes it up on that Bridge. It was somewhere Wyatt would never follow him."

"How long have you known Chris?" Leo asked conversationally.

"Nice try, Leo," Zach said wryly. "But I promised Chris I wouldn't let anything slip, and I intend to keep that promise."

"Would it kill you to call me Dad once in awhile?" sighed Leo.

Zach glared at him. "Like you were saying, we need to find a way to save Chris," he said, abruptly changing the subject.

"Well, maybe we could summon Wyatt and do some kind of spell so that he would feel like he was on the top of a tall building," Leo suggested. "We can take some blood from him then and say the spell to save Chris."

"Leo, you don't seem to get it!" Zach cried, throwing his hands up in frustration. "Get this through your thick head: Wyatt means death."

"You want to save Chris don't you?" Leo asked, still believing his son would never do anything to hurt him.

Zach bit his lip. He did want to save Chris. But he knew what Wyatt was capable of. He'd seen his brother torture mere children, and it sickened him. It frightened him.

"Fine," Zach said, his voice slightly hesitant. "You get Piper, Phoebe and Paige and I'll start working on a spell."

"This has got to be the most idiotic thing I've ever attempted to do," Zach groaned, running his hands through his mop of brown hair. "Chris is going to kill me if any of you die."

The Charmed Ones all glared at him. "There won't be a Chris to kill you if you keep up that attitude," Piper snapped. "Let's say the spell."

They chanted the summoning spell they had used last night. An angry-looking Wyatt appeared in the crystals, this time without his younger self in his arms. Paige through the potion they had made at him, which was supposed to make him feel as though he was on the top of a very tall building. Surprisingly, it seemed to work as Wyatt grew very pale, and swayed on his feet. If it hadn't been so serious, Zach would have sniggered at the world's evil overlord looking like he was about to throw up.

"I thought my pathetic family would have learnt their lesson from what happened to Christopher!" Wyatt managed to yell.

Zach walked up to the crystal circle, the knife in his hand. "Say the spell!" he yelled to his mother and aunts, dodging the energy balls Wyatt had managed to get through the shield the crystals made.

They looked hesitant, but began reading, as Zach plunged the knife towards Wyatt's arm. Wyatt drew his arm back and punched Zach's head though, and he fell to the floor. Zach knew he wouldn't be able to get the blood in time, and before he could tell the sisters to stop chanting the spell, they had finished.

"We call upon the ancient power,

To help us in this needful hour.

Reunite the power of three,

Return to us that whom we seek.

Stuck between the realms of life and death,

Let him live, bring back his breath."

Zach could feel himself fading somehow. He heard Leo shouting his name; Wyatt's angry yells, the sisters panicked cries, and all at once he reappeared in the exact same spot as before, apart from the fact that he could see Chris, and a man he recognised as a demon he had thought was vanquished, Cole, standing besides his parents and aunts.

"Cole?" Piper shrieked, looking shocked. Leo, Phoebe and Paige were looking at him in horrified silence.

"Where did Zach and Wyatt go?" Leo asked, clearly panicked, noticing for the first time that his sons were missing. It was then that Zach realised that they couldn't see him or his brothers.

Zach looked at his older brothers, Chris staring at Wyatt, dumbfounded, and Wyatt looking at his hands in utter disbelief, clearing unable to use his powers. Zach glanced at Leo, his mother and aunts, all looking at Cole, and his brothers, now staring daggers at one another. He said the only two words that seemed to make sense at that moment.

"Oh, crap."

A/N: Okay, in case you were confused, Wyatt and Zach have gotten stuck in the place between the world of the living and the world of the dead, where Chris and Cole previously were. The spell mucked up, because since Zach didn't manage to get Wyatt's blood in time Chris couldn't come back to the world of the living, but someone had to, so Cole came back. Chris is still stuck there, though. I'm not really sure how the brothers should react to each other though, so please tell me what you think. If anybody's wondering, I got the idea for this chapter from an episode in season seven where Piper is the one stuck with Cole because she's not quite dead and not quite alive. Please review!