2003

Emerging on the other side, the first thing Bianca noticed was the quietness of the room. The attic was cluttered but in a somewhat organised fashion. Although it was difficult to tell what was what, her vision could make out the closest objects nearby. Hearing footsteps on the stairs she dove behind the large couch seconds before the overhead light switched on. Peering around the edge she saw Chris approach the dais and flip through the book. He paused on a page, reading the details over.

"Chris? Are you up there?" Leo called.

"Dammit!" Chris cursed. "How am I meant to concentrate with him around?"

Bianca knew he resented his father. His urge to avoid him drove him downstairs. Bianca waited for a few minutes before following, pausing at the top of the stairs leading up from the ground floor and watching the two men below.

"I'm going to the club," Chris announced, sweeping up his dark hooded jacket.

"To do what?" Leo interrogated.

"None of your business," Chris replied. Opening the door, he spun back on his father. "Look, you're not their whitelighter, I am. It shouldn't matter to you anymore. I don't know why you even bother to hang around."

Chris left, slamming the door behind him. Irritably Leo turned back towards the living room and made his way back inside. Bianca crept down the stairs, keeping a close eye on the doorway as she snuck past. Opening the door, she closed it quietly behind her and continued her pursuit of Chris.

Neon lights blared in the darkness as they reached P3. Bianca looked up at the glowing sign. The queue to get in was a mile long. She remembered Wyatt having mentioned this club many times; it was what had started him on his quest for the destruction of corporate power. She had forgotten all about those days, the times they had spent together fighting side by side to reclaim what was his and to bring down the authorities who quashed small industry.

She followed Chris into the crowd and saw him weaving ahead of the masses of traffic until he reached the bodyguard standing at the door. He only needed to mention a few simple words before the door was opened for him and he was allowed in ahead of everyone else. Bianca didn't have the same privilege; she wasn't a blood relative or even known in this time to these people. Making her way around the back where there was little company but a few stray rats, Bianca shimmered into the club, directing her reappearance for the back room where she was sure no-one would be residing. And if there was, well, she'd just have less people to deal with. She was used to taking on small groups of people. Finding it empty, and in darkness, Bianca made her way over to the door, opening it a small crack and peering outside. Chris was near the bar heading very quickly towards where she was. Closing the door again, she took a seat in the armchair and awaited his arrival. The element of surprise was clearly going to work in her favour.

She stared ahead in the darkness, listening for the door. She felt her anger starting to build again as she remembered everything Gith had showed her. Every image of Chris' treachery upset her more and more. She pondered what she would say to him, what she would do. The moment would soon arrive. But he didn't know she was here, he didn't know she knew. She'd have to act completely normal until then.

The door opened and the light flicked on. She turned her head towards him, giving a small smile. He was shocked, surprised, and obviously didn't want anyone else to know she was here as he softly closed the door behind him.

So smug, the guilt's written all over his face, she thought.

Pushing herself out of the chair, she stepped towards him as he approached her. He moved as if he'd been stunned. Her appearance had obviously thrown him.

"Bianca…" he uttered. His mouth moved as he looked at her, straining to get the words off his tongue. "I don't understand. What are you doing here?"

"Shh," she cooed, tilting her head and placing a finger against his lips. "There'll be time to explain later."

Turning her hand, she intimately dragged her finger down his chin, his neck, his chest, following the motion with her eyes.

"But for now…" she continued subtly.

She stopped just below the opened buttons of his shirt, lifting her gaze to meet his. She had him. He was already leaning forward to kiss her.

Bastard, she thought.

Her expression darkened immediately as she plunged her hand into his chest. She gripped as hard as she could, watching his jaw drop open in pain and shock. She wanted him to feel it, feel the pain he had caused her, the heartbreak she felt after seeing what he had done. Slowly he began to sink, his power slipping from his body and through her hand. The vigour of the attack had her captivated. She didn't expect to be interrupted. She didn't expect his mother to walk through the door.

"Hey, Chris, you know all work and no – hey!" she cried.

Bianca pulled her hand from Chris' body, generating an energy ball and tossing it towards Piper. It was a reflexive attack. She didn't have time to consider who was standing there or what effect damaging her might have. But Piper's attack was quicker. The woman lifted her hands and blasted both her and her energy ball apart. Particles scattering, Bianca quickly focused on the image of where she had shimmered in from. It was dark and secluded, the safest place to reform away from everyone. Chris knew she could reform. But apart from that no-one else did... unless he'd told them.

Black ash swirling like a tornado, she struggled to balance as she pieced herself back together. Dropping her hands, she tossed her hair over her shoulder as she looked at the door behind her, fire in her eyes as she glared at the place where her attack had been flawed and she'd been ambushed herself. She wasn't happy. With those witches protecting him, she wasn't going to be able to complete this job as quickly as she'd hoped. Turning back towards the open end of the alley she strode forward angrily, shimmering out after only a few steps.

Bianca decided to wait until it was light before she went after Chris again. It was going to be difficult this time. She'd already attacked him. He was going to be wary of her, and she couldn't try the same tactic twice. But unless he wanted to kill himself he was going to have to listen to her reasoning.

She shimmered into the memorial garden, looking at her surrounds. Everything was so idyllic, so picture perfect. The bridge looked beautiful in the early morning light. The garden had been carefully tended to. There was so much colour around her; it was hard to believe that this was the same bleak and broken spot they had left behind. She turned her attention to the stone angel statue. Its wings were round and shapely, and this was obviously long before it had been beheaded. She walked over to it, running her fingers along it. She remembered the first time she had come here, when she had met Chris and he had changed everything. The day he had opened her eyes to the destruction around her. She wondered how she had been able to believe him so easily, this wasn't going to stay. It was going to dissolve anyway, no matter what he did back here. She chuckled to herself. She knew he wasn't doing anything except partying and sleeping around. Why did she even entertain the thought he was going to be able to save them?

Following the indentation of the wings, she walked around to the back of the statue, pausing as she heard the shimmering sound of orbs nearby. Glancing up to the sky she monitored the position of the sun and saw that it had to be a little after eight. Listening again she heard that the orbs were taking an awfully long time to manifest. She heard a gasp for breath. It sounded vaguely like Chris. She had managed to damage him sufficiently. Her hand still on the statue, she circled it to the front again and saw Chris seated barely on the edge of the stone seat.

"You really shouldn't try to orb anymore, you know?" she said, putting her hands on her hips as he looked back to her. She walked closer to him, giving a cold-hearted shrug as she kept her tone melodic and mocking. "It could kill you."

"Is that what you want?" he grumbled.

She laughed lightly. "If that's what I wanted, you'd already be dead. All I want is to bring you back."

She circled around him. His hands remained on the bench. He wasn't going to threaten her. Although it was a slight comfort, she found it odd that in any other case she would be the perennial victim of a punishable attack. Instead he remained quiet, like he was a young boy who had behaved badly and been caught out. She wondered if subconsciously he had worked it out, if he had remembered their last moments together, if he'd felt guilty for what he'd done.

"How'd you know I'd be here?" he asked gravely.

"Same reason you knew I'd be waiting here," she responded in a cunningly playful manner. "I mean, this is still our spot… isn't it?"

"No," Chris responded, shaking his head. Dropping her hands she looked at him in surprise, wondering if he'd completely lost his mind. "This is what we hoped it would be. This is what we were trying to preserve for our future. Do you remember?"

She sniggered. He thought she had lost her mind. What kind of reason had he come up with for her coming back? Was that the best he could do - she was so insanely crazy she was going to rip him away from the comforts of the past and sabotage their plan? He obviously thought she was the one who had forgotten what they had set out to do, not him. This was a poor excuse for a cover-up story.

"We were naive to think we could change anything, to stop him," she said.

"You don't believe that," Chris stated.

She stared at him. Blinking, she tried not to succumb to his reasoning. She had fallen for it once. She had believed his lies. She couldn't do that again.

Doubt and disappointment filled Chris' voice as he saw her subdued reaction. "Or at least you didn't."

"Well I do now," she responded assuredly.

"What happened to you, Bianca?" he asked suspiciously. She knew he was blaming Wyatt. He always blamed Wyatt. "How did he turn you back?"

The memory flashed back into her mind. Wyatt whispering to her he wasn't going to stop her. The blood trailing from the split she had made as she severed Michael's skin by ripping the blade across his throat. Chris didn't know about Michael. She never spoke about what he had done to her. Yet here Chris was turning into him.

"That's not important," she insisted, lifting her leg onto the stone bench and leaning on it. "What is important is that I was interrupted in stripping you of your powers. And if I don't finish what I started, you'll die soon. Think of it as… an infection. And I'm the only one with the antidote."

She felt quite pleased with the little analogy she had come up with. She was grateful that, despite his little betrayal, she still held some kind of power over him. He still needed her, even if he was acting as if he didn't. Granted she had caused the problem in the first place, but if they had all just made it simpler for her he would be home by now.

"Here or there, I am dead anyway," he retorted.

"No. He gave me his word he wouldn't hurt you," she said, straightening. Chris groaned. Why was he acting like such a whiny little child? He was so stubborn. "Please, Chris, don't make this any harder than it has to be."

She felt a sting of shame that she'd resorted to begging, but it was difficult to be so hard on him. She began to feel a little sympathy for him. He looked so upset that she had told him he had to go back, that he had to give in to Wyatt. He swallowed hard, sniffling as he looked at her. His eyes glazed over as if he were about to start to cry. She held his gaze. He was going to break her down so quickly, she knew it. But then he did something she didn't expect – he orbed out. She reached forward, trying to grab hold of him before he could completely disappear. She had heard his orbs travelling slower before. She presumed she would have been able to grasp him, steadying her wrist with the other hand as she prepared to pull him back, but her fingers found only air as he completely disappeared. She looked at her clenched hand irritably, lowering them both and glancing around, ensuring no-one had seen them.

Taking a seat on the stone slab, she waited to see if he would come back. He didn't. She tried to run the possibilities over in her mind of where he could possibly have gone to. The club wasn't open, but she had found him at the manor the previous night. No doubt he would have run back to his family to protect him, knowing his mother had an effective way to deter but not destroy her. He couldn't go anywhere else for medical aid – she was the only one who could fix him. But with Chris being so evasive and his family so overprotective she would have no chance of getting to him again. She needed to distract them somehow. Her mind drifted back to her days with Michael. She didn't want to remember, but she knew she needed to. Despite his faults he had been a good teacher and she needed to rely on those skills to get her through this. She needed to remember everything she had learnt. It was in this pensive moment she remembered reading about the Charmed Ones. They had almost been ripped apart by their lust for a life outside of magic. She needed a spell to target that, to inflate it, just something temporary that wouldn't impose any changes but would buy her enough time to get to Chris. She needed the Grimoire and, if memory served her correctly, it would be at her mother's.

She stood outside the sandstone apartment block and looked up, feeling much as she had the day they'd moved in. It was foreign. It wasn't home.

Opening the door she began to climb the stairs. She hadn't seen her mother in almost a decade. It was going to be difficult to see her again. She wondered what she would say to her, and how exactly was she going to convince her to give her the book. Rapping on the door she waited. Minutes passed with no answer so she tried again. It seemed like no-one was home. She knew that would make things easier.

Cautiously looking around, she shimmered inside. She hadn't dared to do this earlier in case someone was home. In such a confined space she knew her mother wouldn't hesitate to attack. The place was empty of life, as she'd thought, and Bianca was grateful for the solitude. She tried to think back to when she had leafed through the book. She remembered there was a book of spells she'd been reading in the living room trying to find one to resurrect her father to celebrate her birthday. She remembered how alone she'd felt, how she thought he would have been the only one to care. The memory of her mother's ignorance burned inside her, the thought of that fateful day reminding her of her terrifying initiation into the Phoenix coven.

Moodily she stormed into the area, enraged as she set her eyes upon those dim grey walls with the ugly black stripes. She turned towards where the bookshelf should have been and found it almost empty. Quickly she swept the books aside, looking for the one she wanted. It wasn't there. Frantically she looked around. Where would her mother keep it? If she was smart she'd pick the least obvious space. Bianca's eyes fixed on the pink toy chest that sat between the red & blue chairs. It had served as a table for her tea parties back in her younger days, the large pink bear and yellow rabbit were still seated comfortably in the plastic seats as evidence of that. No-one would look in a child's toy chest, would they? Bianca raced over, tossing the red chair aside. She fixed her fingers into the lid of the chest, lifting the entire square box into the air. The corner caught on the feet of the pink bear as she yanked it into the air, upending the soft toy in its seat and knocking the framed picture on the wall askew with the open end of the box. Inside she found a puppet, a pink star container, and a bunch more soft toys. Wondering if it was buried she pulled each item out, tossing them onto the floor. Disgruntled to find it wasn't there, she cast the toy box to the side. Where did she ever get the idea that her mother was intelligent? After what she'd done to her it was obvious she wasn't.

Bianca turned and looked behind her. There was a small pile of magazines sitting on the top of the lower cupboard. There was also a pile of shattered glass. She approached it quickly, tossing the magazines aside as she glanced at the cover of each. Marvellous how all these celebrities had aged and faded away. Crouching down she opened the doors. Here were more books. But the collection was still few, and as Bianca inspected each cover, finding it not what she wanted, she threw it towards the middle of the floor. Swivelling, she looked at the mess she had made in the centre of the room, each book and magazine littered the right and left sides of the carpet. One book had made it so far that it almost reached the other side of the room. But she could see nothing that looked remotely like what she had came for. Turning her attention back to the cupboard she saw another book hidden far up the back. Reaching in she pulled it out and set it on her knees. It was her mother's organisation diary. She was surprised she didn't have it on her. She must have been in some kind of unplanned rush to have it stowed away like that. Flipping the pages, Bianca felt that same rush of disappointment she had all those years ago. Where were the childhood activities? Where were the notes that showed she actually cared more about her daughter than her job? They were all meaningless names scrawled on these white pages with faded yellow printouts of the information she had been given slipped in-between. She wanted to tear the book to pieces, but the hardbound cover wouldn't allow for that. Tetchily she flung it aside, its pages sprawling on the far end of the room. Rising, she spotted the green vase sitting atop the cabinet. Sweeping her hand behind it, she pushed it from its place until it smashed ahead of her on the wooden floor. Every piece of destruction she caused gave her a small feeling of victory over her mother. She didn't have to be here to witness it. Just knowing she'd destroyed something of hers made Bianca feel better.

She stamped forward through the shattered pieces, crossing the stylised orange rug to the armoire on the opposite end of the room. She slipped her fingers between the crack, pulling the doors open and pushing them wide to get a greater view of the interior. She started on the bottom shelf, quickly discarding the biggest objects – a yellow and a pink throw pillow. She was getting sick of seeing those colours. She lifted the lid on the white box next to them. Immediately seeing it was empty she wasted no time throwing it in the same path, the large red throw pillow with the tasselled border that sat next to it joining the collection. She started on the middle shelf next, tossing aside the books almost without giving them a secondary glance. She remembered what the Grimoire had looked like now. It was red, a dark picture on the front, with steel borders. None of these had those. She started to discard them faster. She knew she was running out of time. If she didn't get to Chris soon he would die.

She heard the faint backwards sound of someone shimmering in behind her. She knew she didn't need this distraction.

"Who are you and what do you want?" Lyn demanded upon arrival.

Bianca paused momentarily to look back at her mother, a glossy book on the architecture of mansions in her hand. "Where's the Grimoire?"

She didn't wait for her mother to answer before turning back to the job at hand. Books, books, goblets and urns. She didn't want to have to go through all these. She heard her mother power up an energy ball behind her, growing all the more frustrated that yet again her mother was not going to help and just let her struggle on her own against upsurging dangerous measures.

"One more time," she stated defensively. "Who are you?"

Bianca turned, only slightly frightened to see her mother threatening her. Was she going to kill her? That was going to do Chris the world of good. Not only would he keep suffering until he killed himself, but Wyatt was likely to send more assassins back after him to complete the job before it happened.

"Who do you think I am?" Bianca snapped, slapping her hand down on the shelf. Lifting her arm she presented her birthmark to her mother. She should have seen it before. If she'd been a little older she would even remember Bianca cutting into it, trying to sever the life she had forced her into. The scars and bruises were long gone now. All that remained was the symbol of the Phoenix, burned onto her flesh like a never-ending curse. Lyn's eyes widened in recognition as she looked at it. Bianca's tone was nothing short of bitter. "Mother."

Lyn allowed the energy ball to smoulder in her hand, curling her fingers as she put it out. She looked surprised and in awe to see the image of her daughter all grown up, standing before her with some great quest in hand.

"Bianca?" she whispered, lowering her hand.

"In the flesh. Now, where's the Grimoire? I have to get the Charmed Ones off my tail fast. I need a spell to do it."

She turned back to the books and magazines, pages fluttering as she manoeuvred them out of her way. Lynn shook her head, completely confused as she tried to get her head around the situation, around the very sight that her own daughter – grown up no less – was currently ransacking their home.

"I don't understand. How is this possible?" she questioned.

"Look, I don't have time for reunions, okay? And I'm not about to make the same mistake a thousand other demons have made now where's the damn book?" Bianca asked, her voice elevating until she was yelling at her mother, unable to restrain her anger any longer. With a look of acquiescence, Lyn flicked her hand in a circular motion, gesturing towards the coffee table. A red glow appeared, a journal sized book materializing in the aura. "Thanks."

She did not deliver the word kindly, the bitterness and resentment overriding the sentiment in both her delivery and the glare in her eyes. She climbed over the mess she had made, the white cardboard box crushed underneath her boot. She did not care to be careful in the home she despised. Picking up the book, she rapidly flipped through the pages looking for the spell she needed to supply her with extra time.

"Do you know where the inhibition spell is?" she asked her mother quickly.

"How is that going to help?" Lyn retorted.

"Look, I know the Charmed Ones. I've studied their history," she snapped, glancing up at her mother. She had to be difficult. And yet again she was belittling Bianca as she used to – as if she didn't know anything. Bianca was determined to prove her wrong. "This is when they all want their separate lives. If I can release their inhibitions, maybe I can get them to pursue them."

"The spell won't last long," Lyn advised.

"It doesn't have to. Just long enough to distract them so I can get what I came for. Got it," she said, finding the spell and tearing the page from the book. She cocked her head slightly, eyeing her mother with disdain as she placed the book back onto the table, delivering her gratitude in the same cynically blunt manner: "Thanks."

"Wait! I…" Lyn protested as she rushed past her. "Do you have to leave so soon? Can't I help?"

Bianca stopped, swallowing. The word help was a funny notion coming from her mother. Her idea of helping was to throw her into the middle of something she didn't want to do. Where was she when her father was killed? When she was nearly killed? Where was she when Abe handed her the knife and told her to slaughter her first victim? Pain in her eyes, she looked back over her shoulder to her mother.

"Yeah," she answered. "Someday when I ask you what it feels like to kill… don't lie to me. Don't tell me you don't feel a thing."

Her voice wavered at the last few words, at the memory of what she had done; of what her mother, and the Phoenix, had made her do; how she ended up this way. She turned away and lowered her eyes. She had to get out of here before she started crying, before her mother reminded her of how weak she was. Striding back across the room she shimmered away from her mother's sight.