Phoebe, her eyes bloodshot and face exhausted, hunched over the map in the attic with her scrying crystal.

"Where is he?" she muttered for perhaps the hundredth time.

"Sweety," Piper said upon entering the room, "maybe you should take a break and get some sleep. You've been at this for twelve hours."

"How can I sleep," Phoebe asked. "My son, who hates me, is out there somewhere getting into god knows what kind of trouble and I'm not there to help him."

"He seemed pretty good at taking care of himself," Piper pointed out.

"That's not the point," Phoebe said. "I need to talk to him, find out more about what kind of person he is and how I can be a better mother the next time around."

"Phoebe," Piper said, "I'm sure you had a good reason for doing what you did."

"Did I?" said Phoebe hotly, "I suppose it was my son's fault then that I didn't trust him as a baby. My god, Piper, the first thing I did, do, when he comes into the world is to hurt him. He's right to hate me."

"Binding doesn't hurt and you don't know the circumstances…" Piper started.

"I don't care," Phoebe said. "I'm not going to do it this time and that's that."

The familiar jingle of orbing filled the air. Phoebe looked over to see Leo.

"Where have you been?" Piper demanded, "We've been calling for you since last night."

"I'm sorry, I was unreachable," Leo said, "you aren't going to believe what I found out?"

"Oh," Piper said, "I'm pretty sure I can give you one better."

Leo looked curious but he continued. Then he looked at Phoebe.

"Are you alright?" Leo asked.

"Um," Phoebe said, "not really. What did you find out?

"Mace isn't real."

"What do you mean, not real?" Piper asked.

"I had an associate look into his past," said Leo, "or rather his future, so see if we could find a weakness or some other info we could use. And it turns out he has no past, or future. He came into existence the moment he 'arrived in the past.'"

"But that doesn't make any sense," Phoebe said. "If he came into existence in our time then he would be from our time, right?" The headache from thinking too much about time travel started to return.

"Not if the spell that conjured him was cast from the future," said Leo.

The silence lasted a moment as they all absorbed this.

"How is that possible?" Piper asked.

"It's complicated," answered Leo, "it would involve a lot of ritual but, theoretically, if you can send a regular person into the past, you could send a spell as well, one designed to create a construct in our time."

"But who would want to do that?" Phoebe asked.

"Maybe an enemy from the future, someone who wanted to get you while you were younger and not as powerful," said Leo.

"But that doesn't make any sense," said Piper, "we're pretty strong now. If whoever did this wanted to catch us weak they should have sent their, whatever it is, back further."

Leo shrugged. "Maybe there is something important about this time we don't know about."

Phoebe sighed. "This is all very interesting, but we need to focus on finding Victor."

Leo's eyebrows drew together, confused. "What does your father have to do with this?"

"You remember I told you I could do you one better?" asked Piper.

"Yeah," said Leo warily.

"We summoned my son from the future," Phoebe said.

"What," Leo answered, "Why?"

"It turns out he's the only one who can vanquish our little construct, summoned from the future demon friend," said Piper.

Phoebe shook her head from side to side. "We aren't going to find him just to send him off to fight. We need to find him so that I can, I can…" she waved her arms vaguely. The truth is she didn't know what she would do. She stared down at her hands.

"Can you guys just give me a minute?" she asked.

Piper nodded with understanding. She and Leo walked out of the attic.

Phoebe went back to scrying. Then a thought occurred to her. Maybe she was scrying for the wrong person.

-- Change of Scene --

The robed figures chanted in ancient, forgotten rhymes. The sound was ominous, unnatural; their voices like a rusty knife scraped against stone.

Victor idly wondered why demons always did their work from dank, depressing caves in the middle of nowhere. The plus side was that there were always plenty of hiding spots. He crouched low behind a floor to ceiling stalactite and watched the demons circled around a fire. The chanting picked up; it reached a crescendo. Victor considered just throwing the vanquishing potion now to disrupt the ritual before it could be completed. But that wasn't what he wanted. That would be way too easy.

The fire flashed like a gigantic flare and then disappeared altogether. In its place stood a man, a dark haired, handsome, rough looking man clad in a dark trench coat, a man who looked a lot like Victor.

He didn't hesitate. Victor leapt from hiding and threw the potion Trent had given him. A mass of moving shadow emerged from the potion and launched like a striking cobra into the first demon. It then flowed like chain lightning from demon to demon until the entire circle of robed figures vanished to the accompaniment of agonized death screams.

Then there were two. Victor regarded his father. Cole looked back at him, obviously confused.

"Who are you?" Cole asked.

"Your worst mistake," Victor answered and charged him.

Cole extended his hand in a fireball motion, but nothing happened. Victor smiled and tackled his father to the ground. He had gone to a lot of trouble to procure the crystal sitting under his shirt around his neck. It was a kind of magical jamming device, keyed specifically to his father's powers. It would barely affect anybody else, if at all, but for his father it would make even the most basic of powers almost impossible. He hadn't been sure it was going to work until just now.

The two men struggled on the ground for a moment until Victor managed to pin Cole beneath him.

"You bastard," Victor shouted and punched him in the face, again and again. Cole managed to get a foot up and shoved against his chest. Victor landed on his back a few feet away and sprung instantly back to his feet.

Cole held out a hand in a warding motion. "Listen, I don't know who you are, but whatever it is – maybe we can talk about it."

"Talk," Victor spat. "Alright, let's talk about Phoebe." He dropped into a martial arts stance and shifted his weight suddenly forward to catch his father with a vicious round house kick to the side of the head. Cole went down hard.

"Let's talk about how you made her fall in love with you and then broke her heart, tried to kill her, betrayed her again and again," Victor shouted. "Let's talk about how you hurt your entire family, abandoned them so you could pursue your selfish plans."

Cole got slowly to his feet.

"The funny thing is, it isn't really that you're evil which got to me," Victor said. "I think that I could almost deal with that. And it isn't that you didn't care. God knows you cared. It's that you couldn't put the people you care about ahead of your addiction to power. It's that you let it destroy you." Victor smashed his father dead in the face with a lightning quick back kick, which shoved him up against the wall. Before Cole could slump, Victor grabbed him by the lapels and held him their.

"You could have been great," Victor said and punctuated the words by slamming his father back against the wall.

"You had so much potential for good in you." SLAM.

"You could have had a happy life." SLAM.

"With a wonderful family." SLAM.

"Not many people can really make a difference in this world. But you could have." SLAM

"Why did you let it all go to waste!" SLAM

"Why wasn't I more important than the addiction!" SLAM

"Why wasn't I good enough!" SLAM, SLAM, SLAM

Victor pulled out his athame, the one that had been specially enchanted to not only kill a demon, but disperse their energies – to make sure they could never come back. He held it to his father's throat. He pulled back, cocked the blade, and tensed his muscles.

"NO!" came a strangled female voice from behind him.

Cole's jaw dropped and eyes widened. "Phoebe?" he said.