A/N: Sorry it's been so long. After typing up a couple of Chemistry and Genetics Lab reports it's hard to find the energy to write. Bear with me though. We will make it through this story. Thanks to all those who have reviewed, you're the ones that encourage me to keep writing even though I really want to throw my computer out the window. Enjoy and keep reviewing!

Chapter 6: Party Time Baby

"You ready?" Chris asked as he stood at the bottom of the stairs.

"Ready as I'll ever be," Kiara replied as she stood from her bed and slipped on her flip-flops.

"You know it's going to be really crowded there and people are going to be constantly touching you, right?"

"You're starting to sound like Piper."

"Whoa. Not cool. Besides, I know hoe much of a touch-a-phobe you are and I'm just trying to be helpful. I think I liked you better when you didn't talk."

"I think I liked me better, too," Kiara mumbled to herself as she picked up her ID and keys to the manor. She didn't speak as quietly as she thought though as she tuned to see Chris staring at her expectantly.

Chris softened his expression to a friendlier one as he walked over to her bed and plopped down on it. "What was that supposed to mean?"

"Come on, Mr. Impatient. I thought you wanted to go," Kiara tried to change the subject.

"The party's not going anywhere. Now sit your ass down and tell me what you meant."

"Chris…"

"You've been acting funny all week and I want to know why, now tell me."

"Chris, I'm fine. Please don't."

I call upon the Halliwell line

To bring forth the feelings that this girl hides.

I wish to know what's in her mind,

Bring her thoughts forth so peace I may find.

Chris quickly winged a spell to find out the truth. He looked at Kiara and his heart almost broke. She was looking at him with a mixture of hurt and disbelief.

"Please tell me what's wrong," he asked again, willing himself to continue. He'd wanted to do something like this for a while, and decided that since he cast the spell he might as well see it through.

"I don't know what I meant. I'm still so new at this whole human interaction thing, and it's hard. Even this. I'm still waiting for an Elder to appear and punish me for breaking so many rules and behaving so poorly," Kiara spoke quietly, as though trying to keep someone from hearing her.

"And I'm trying to learn, but everyone is telling me different things and expects different things from me and I always feel like I'm failing someone, and you've all been so nice to me and I don't want to disappoint any of you. So I do what I see you doing and what I think you want from me, but none of it feels right. Sometimes I feel like I just shouldn't be here."

"What do you mean 'here'?"

"I mean here trying to be normal. I was created for a purpose: to fight. To completely and efficiently annihilate whatever I'm told to. I have no purpose beyond that, and sometimes I feel like if I'm not fulfilling that purpose I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't even be alive."

"Kiara!" Chris jumped off the bed, shocked at what the girl was saying. He walked around the room, speechless as he tried to cope with the sheer desperation that he heard in the girl's voice. He was glad now that he cast the spell. She never would have been so honest with him otherwise. She had become fairly comfortable around the family, especially him and Wyatt, but he had never seen such raw emotion from her. He could feel the anguish radiating off of her.

Chris softened his tone and looked at the girl who was sitting at her desk, looking at him with pleading eyes.

"So you don't like being here? It makes you uncomfortable?"

"It's not that. It's just…I try to emulate you, all of your family; it's the only way I know how to be. But I feel like coming from me it sounds fake and bitchy. I…I really don't know. I just want to be nice to people and have people be nice back. I don't understand why it has to be so much more difficult then that."

Chris went and kneeled in front of Kiara and looked into her eyes. "You can be however you want to be. Don't act like anyone but yourself. I'm sorry if Wyatt and I have put a little too much pressure on you to learn to be 'normal'. Don't worry about it s much. And I never ever want you to think that you shouldn't be here. You were not created for destruction. You didn't even start training until you were 8 according to Joel. That means you had a whole other life before you even started that life."

"Yeah, but I can't remember any of it."

"Well, maybe we'll have to look into that soon. I'm an expert at time travel, or haven't you heard?" Chris half-smiled at Kiara, eyes shining with amusement.

Kiara laughed and rolled her eyes at him. "You mean it."

"Definitely. Now, let's go watch a movie or something."

"What about the party?"

"I just figured you wouldn't want to go."

"No, let's go, after you take this spell off of me," Kiara demanded, trying to be angry.

Anull this magick, let it be,

And as I will it, so mote it be.

"Ok, now let's go," Kiara said, dragging Chris towards the stairs.

"Walking takes too long," Chris whined, engulfing them both in orbs. The materialized in Chris's car and he grinned at Kiara as he released her hand and started the car.

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Chris and Kiara had been at Matt's house for almost two hours and it was going rather well. Chris had practically refused to let Kiara leave his side, but after a couple of hours and a few beers, he finally relented to a group of girls he was friends with and let them pull Kiara away.

"So, what's up with you and Chris," one of the girls, Mandy, asked Kiara once they were out of Chris's hearing range.

"What do you mean?" Kiara asked her back.

"Are you dating, serious relationship, friends with benefits? I swear, that is the one boy that I would just shamelessly screw, no attachments or future relationship needed," The group laughed at Mandy's dramatics and looked to Kiara for an answer to the question that had been in all their minds at one point or another.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," was Kiara's simple answer.

"Didn't you date in Brazil?" Amber asked curiously.

"I wasn't allowed to talk to boys."

"What! Oh wow….I think I'm actually speechless," Mandy looked at Kiara with utter disbelief.

"That's a first," Corrie said dryly.

"Anyways," Mandy continued, choosing to ignore Corrie's comment. "Has he kissed you yet?"

"No, why would he?"

"He has been with you constantly since you've got here. He started talking about you long before you even started classes here," Mandy informed her.

"He's just being nice and trying to help me get accustomed to your society." Kiara was quickly getting uncomfortable with where this conversation was headed.

"Oh please, if he could he would be all over you," Corrie told her bluntly.

"You're pretty much the luckiest girl in the school," Mandy informed her.

"If you like him so much why don't you go out with him?" Kiara tried to turn the tables and get the attention off of her.

"We've known Chris since kindergarten. As hot as he is, it would be kind of weird. Besides, I like the mystery that surrounds him. It makes him so much more attractive. If I actually got to know him more intimately, the mystery would dissipate and it wouldn't be as exciting." Mandy explained.

"I've got to use the restroom," Kiara said as she walked away quickly. She liked the girls, they were all really nice to her, but that wasn't a conversation she wanted to be in.

Kiara wondered away from the group, lost in thought, and headed for the glass sliding doors that headed into Matt's backyard. It was cool out, and none of the partygoers had felt the need to go outside.

Kiara walked around the yard, thinking about what Mandy and the other girls had said. She kind of understood what they were saying, it sounded a lot like what Phoebe had told her, but she just didn't know how it felt, or how it was supposed to feel. Kiara had easily come to the decision before Phoebe had even finished speaking over a month ago that love was never made for her. The thought of having that with Chris was even more of a ridiculous concept to her. It's a shame that Kiara didn't know the meaning of the words 'low self-esteem', because the situation would have made a little more sense to her then.

'They're just hormonal teen-age girls who only live for the next gossip point,' Kiara recited Piper's word in her mind.

A voice on her head responded to her thinking and she was saddened to realize it was her own, "You wish he'd notice you like that though. That day you kissed him while under a spell is still burned into your mind.'

'Great, now I'm talking to myself,' she thought back.

'It's a shame you're too stubborn to admit it's true, even to yourself,' the voice replied again.

Kiara came crashing back down to reality when she realized that she was no longer alone. She hadn't even realized that one of the boys from the party had come outside and followed her to the far corner of the yard. He was standing very close to her now. She could feel his breath on the back of her neck, and she froze in confusion.

Everything she had ever been trained in told her you did not hurt mortals, EVER. But what about when they were hurting you? The instructions she had received from the Halliwells the past month were raging war with the training she'd received the past eight years, and her body froze in turmoil.

She gasped and tensed more, if that was even possible, when he slowly ran his hands down her arms. She was suddenly hit with a scene from a past she didn't remember.

Flashback

The small girl shuddered when the man that was standing behind her brushed his hands over her shoulders.

"Many of your people will die if you fight. The demons I have working for me may never win, but they will do a great deal of damage," he leaned down and whispered in the young girl's ear. The little girl, who appeared to be about 8 stood still and gritted her teeth.

The cave they were in was dark; it's only light from two torches near the entrance. An 8-year-old Kiara glared at the golden glow that was being cast on the back wall from a reflection of the man's robes and willed herself not to move.

She wanted to turn and send this man to a flaming death, and knew that she could easily, despite his being an Elder. Unfortunately the man had her in a checkmate. He had gone behind the Elder's backs and assembled an army of demons. The man was crazed for power, a fallen angel if you will, but none of the other Elders were aware.

If Kiara killed the man she would have to face their wrath, but if she didn't, she'd have to face his evil plotting.

"What is your decision?" the man asked her quietly.

"I will do as you ask," young Kiara replied to the man.

End Flashback

Kiara gasped again when she came from her vision and felt the boy that had followed her into Matt's yard trying to remove her shirt. Kiara meekly tried to pull herself from the boy's grasp without hurting him. She couldn't focus though as the trauma she had just relived from the past collided with the one happening to her now.

She struggled some more and the man swung her around, slapping her hard in the face. He quickly moved in next to her again and began forcing himself on her, sloppily trying to remove her clothing.

Right as she was about to give up hope she heard yelling and felt the boy push her to the ground as he was pulled away from her. Kiara collapsed to the ground and looked up to see what was happening.

Chris had thrown the boy to the grass and was now straddling him, punching him the face over and over again while yelling words that Kiara didn't have the focus to make out.

Having heard the yelling, a couple other people from the party came running out. Kiara recognized one of them as Doug, the boy that had invited her to the party. Doug grabbed Chris and pulled him off of the boy, trying to hold him back. Several other boys joined Doug in trying to hold onto Chris, but years of fighting had taught Chris well and in his fury he managed to easily break free and moved again towards the boy still lying on the ground.

Kiara quickly moved and stood in his path, resting her hand on his chest. Chris stopped and stared down at her, not trying to move around her or pull her from his path.

"I want to go home now, please," she told him simply, and he nodded in response.

"Go to the car, I'll be there in a minute," he told her.

As Kiara headed towards Chris's car, Chris turned to face Doug and spoke. "That asshole was going to rape her. I don't care if he's drunk or not, do me a favor and make sure he understands not to EVER do that to anyone again. I'm going to take her home now." Chris didn't wait for a response and he turned to go to his car. He knew that Doug would easily take care of it for him.

Chris got into the car and turned to face Kiara. "Are you ok?" he asked gently, stroking her hair lightly.

"Fine, can we go home please?"

Chris nodded and quickly chanted a spell he had come up with long ago to help him avoid being late for curfew and to use when he'd been drinking so that he didn't have to drive. He knew it was personal gain, but until the consequences finally happened, he wasn't going to stop anytime soon. Of course, that's how Chris's spells had always been. He'd never once had a spell he cast backfire or have some sort of personal gain consequence.

Home is where we wish to go

Take us there in a way that no one will know.

As Chris finished speaking, the car quickly disappeared and then reappeared in the Halliwell driveway. Chris grabbed Kiara's hand and orbed them onto his bed.

"Why didn't stop him?" Chris asked after a few moments of silence.

"I'm not allowed to hurt mortals," she said quietly.

"Well, now you are," Chris replied. He grabbed her chin and turned her so that she was looking at him. "If someone is trying to hurt you, you have the right to stop them. Don't necessarily kill them, but don't let them hurt you, okay."

Kiara nodded and tried to turn away, but Chris wouldn't let her. "There's something else," he said simply, implying she was keeping something from him.

When he was touching me, I had a flashback…I think it was from before I was found 'Up There'." Kiara explained what she had seen in her vision.

"See, I told you you had a life before becoming good magick's number one assassin," he said lightly, playing on a joke him and Wyatt had been pushing around the past week.

He continued, "Let's get some sleep, and tomorrow we'll see if we can't find out some more, okay?"

"Sounds good," she replied.

Chris waved his hand and Kiara disappeared in a flurry of orbs, reappearing under the covers of her bed downstairs. She concentrated and the clothes she'd worn to the party changed into her pj's and she closed her eyes to sleep.

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Sometime in the night

Chris woke up as he heard his name being called from the basement. He orbed down quickly, not even bothering to put on a shirt or pants over his boxers. He materialized in the basement and looked over to Kiara's bed.

Kiara was obviously caught in a nightmare. She was thrashing around the bed wildly, making noises as if she was in a fight. She continued to mumble in her sleep, seemingly talking to someone in her dream, but Chris couldn't pick up what she was saying. Kiara suddenly started yelling Chris's name and he quickly ran to her bed and tried to wake her up.

Kiara woke up as soon as Chris touched her and he instantly wrapped his arms around her.

"Relax," he spoke soothingly. "It was just a nightmare, you're fine now."

"It wasn't just a nightmare. It was a memory from my time with the Elders. I've had it before, only this time you were there, too."

"Just relax, ok. It's over now. Try to go back to sleep," he instructed gently.

"I can't," she replied. "Once I have this nightmare, it will keep coming back every time I try and sleep for at least all of the night, if not over the next couple of days. It always does. I'll just go outside or something and try not to wake anyone up."

"How about you come and sleep with me, and if the nightmare still comes back, then you can try and stay awake, ok?"

Kiara nodded, already having learned it was easier not to argue with Chris. He orbed them into the room he shared with Wyatt and Hayden and led her over to his bed. They laid down together and he wrapped his arms comfortingly around her, gently stroking her hair as they drifted off to sleep.