And here goes the 7th chapter... I can't believe I made it so far... and It's all thanks to you all and, of course, to my wonderful beta (As Always... thaaaanks!!!)...
CaliforniaChick: Thanks!
Gimmeabreak: Thank you... but I'll better end this one before starting a new one.
Simone1: Yep... Poor Chris, that's the spirirt.
Magical Princess: XDD Of course I'll explain. Just give me time
Jennie: Yep... I'm sorry to say that but I think it's currently possibñe to write a book just out of the plot holes in the series.Grammar: Yes... the getting always gets me... stupid easy joke, but it's quite true.I hope your arm is better, and yep! The plot is thickening... now I just wish i knew where is it going... TT
Caro: About what you said… let me just paste a big smile like this and swear that I love your allucinations.
Orcasnowleo: Jejeje I'm updating just now.
terra fea: Glad to read you liked it better... and about Piper... mmm that's a good question, you know?
Good Witch : Can't help it… Evil people do evil cliffhanger
Update: Let's say they are very confused.
Shukumei no Kagi: Again, Poor chris is the general idea
Laura: Thanks!
Christine Marquez: Poor Piper too... crazy is not the exactly idea.
zoned-out: Read and find
allaboutelephants22: JAJAJAJAJA!!!! I'm glad you liked it that much!! And here is the next chapter so read and discover...
KC-Piper-fan: Thanks! I post as soon as I can, I swear.
teal-lover: ... Er... blinks blinks... in fact it's not that... but it would be an explanation...
Ice: Blush thaaanks
Kilikapele : Thanks to you! yes, I suppose it would be a shock, then again, in the Chramed family, maybe not...
Lonie: I'm glad you liked it, and by the way, I couldn't be more happy with my Beta.
Lark1: Suspensful? Thanks!
Lark2: People yelling at you in the reviews is so… flattering I'm joking. And 'soulful Chris-eyes begging' is tricky… nevertheless it made me feel guilty so I'll hive you a cookie in compensation… better?
Ya: Thanks
And let's the story begin… well, continue…
Phoebe gaped at her nephew's appearance, but Paige kept running. Rushing past Piper, she grabbed the two kids and tried to orb next to the Phoebe. Piper, however, had other plans, so she simply flicked her hands at her younger sister and Paige felt her shoulder exploding in pain.
Phoebe stared at her in horror as she saw her falling in front of Chris and then she turned to Piper.
Wyatt started to cry in Chris's arms.
"Now, now... that was unexpected... " The older Halliwell said with an humourless smile, taking a step towards the kids. "You had to appear now when I've taken complete control of her?"
"You... whoever you are... get away from them." Grunted Phoebe, her eyes darting from Piper to Paige and then finally to Chris. The kid was deathly pale, but slowly step backwards, to get away from the witch, taking Wyatt with him. Phoebe wondered if the shield would work with Piper.
The witch, or whatever thing that had taken control over her, looked at Phoebe with barely an ounce of interest.
"You shut up. What are you going do? Feel me to death?" Foe-Piper took another step towards the kids and Paige. "Now, you useless whitelighter give me the kid now, or I'll blow your sorry ass back to the future."
Chris' grip on Wyatt grew tighter, but Phoebe was not sure if the kid, scared as he seemed, was actually understanding anything of what was going on. Wyatt's cries grew stronger too and somewhere between the tears he was actually calling for her mother.
Phoebe tried to move to them, fearing that the kid would orb himself on Piper's arms; she took a step, but her head gave a throb that made the world spin around her even faster. Count on Paige to throw a chair at your head in the middle of a battle... she grunted to herself.
"Whatever..." exclaimed the older witch ignoring her "I'll jut have to..." but the empath never heard what Piper was really thinking to do, for her sister disappeared in a blurry of blue orbs.
More or less at the same time, Leo reappeared in the same spot where Piper had vanquished him.
"Wyatt!!" the elder ran to his son and grabbed him of Chris' arms, embracing the toddler fiercely.
"God... you're okay, you're okay!!! You're okay? Why are you crying?" the elder looked around for first time and went pale when he saw Paige bleeding in the floor. He knelt down, still holding his son and placed a hand over the wound. "You're going to be alright, Paige, just lay down." he said once the witch was finally healed.
"Piper... son..." she managed to say, weakly.
"Don't worry, Wyatt's okay..." Leo told her reassuringly, but turned to Phoebe with a frown. Where was Piper?
Phoebe, who had somehow managed to slowly make it over to them with out her head breaking into little pieces, shrugged. She had no idea where her sister was.
"I think that Wyatt orbed her somewhere..." She said.
"Why?"
"Because the shield would hurt her, but he still had to protect himself and Chris..." Phoebe's eyes went from the elder to Chris, who was standing behind Leo and looking longingly at him. At... Dad. "Er... Leo, I'll explain it further later on, but right now I think that you should give me Wyatt and... er... help Chris...".
Leo turned to the kid, really seeing him for the first time.
"Are you hurt, Chris?" he asked in concern for the kid was deadly pale. Having finally found Wyatt, he had completely forgotten about the half whitelighter's current form.
The kid nodded and showed him a small brush on the back of his hand.
"This is just a scratch..." said Leo thoughtlessly, less worried. "Are you really hurt?"
Chris looked at the scratch and back at the elder, shooking his head, his lower lip trembling.
"Great! You're a very lucky, young..."
"Leo..." Phoebe interrupted him. "I do really think that you should give me Wyatt and take care of Chris' wounds like they deserve".
Leo looked at her, reluctant to let go of Wyatt. Phoebe hardened her expression and pointed her chin to the older kid. Reluctantly, the elder gave his son to the witch and knelt down in front of Chris again, taking his hand and healing it.
"Does it feel better now?"
Chris nodded, looking up at him and breaking into silent sobs which quickly grew loud cries.
"I'm... so... sorry... I'm so sorry... I cou... I'couldn't orb... I'm sorry..."
Leo looked at the kid, startled. A part of him was still thinking along the young man that was his wife... ex-wife's cocky half whitelighter and the bloody bastard that had put him in the Valhalla. A part of him with though, surprisingly with Piper's voice, scolded the elder for using bloody bastard when referring to a kid who was obviously in the need of some console. When the tears came, Leo relented and pulled him in a soft embrace. He was even more surprised when the kid returned the gesture with a fierce hug and more cries. Slowly, the elder started to rock him. "It's okay, young man... c'mon, Chris...shhhh...it's okay.."
"But... she... she... and he... and I was s...s...so scared... and..." The words between Chris sobs were hard to hear, but Leo was able to understand the basics. "and she was... mum was... mum... she..."
Mum
It was a basic three letters word.
Easy to understand even between a kid' cries.
Easy to understand even with Chris' face buried in Leo's shirt.
As easy to understand as Phoebe significant look.
Mum.
He really doubted that Chris' was talking about the demon.
Mum.
Bewildered, Leo pulled Chris apart and looked at the childish, tear stained face.
The wide red eyes, the trembling lips, there was something of Piper in that face. Coming to think of it, there were lots of her in the half whitelighter's blind stubbornness.
"Dad?" The voice was soft and still full of panic, but it was also shy and worried.
Dad.
Chris buried his face in the elder's shoulder, and started to cry again. Leo didn't move. He was aware that he should be hugging him, or caressing his head in a very paternal way. But that would mean crossing the concept of Chris and the concept of fatherhood in the same thought.
Dad.
Chris. Fatherhood. Leo shivered.
Phoebe, meanwhile, was holding a not so happy Wyatt. Weird enough, the concern she was feeling in the kid didn't had actually nothing to do with his mother disappearance.
"Calm down, young man..."
Phoebe half smiled at the weird situation, Wyatt was actually jealous of his not yet born brother... that thought put dozens of questions in her head. Questions like When? How? Why? Raced in her mind, although she was not so sure if they came from her own thoughts or from Leo's head.
Probably from both.
In her lap, Wyatt looked at her with a very cute grimace and went back to mourning.
"Leo loves you still, he was very worried." She whispered, hugging the kid. " You'll just have to wait a little for his attention, ok?"
In the corner of the room, the tentacle covered demon awoke and got up with a wild roar of vengeance. "I'll get you, you treacherous little...!!!!" and, without any further explanation, exploded.
Wyatt cheered in Phoebe's arms.
"What's happened?" asked Leo, turning in surprise.
On the other hand, you can just vanquish a demon in front of him, the empath though. That will get his attention too.
"I think that Wyatt just vanquished that demon..." Phoebe confessed.
"Wyatt? But... he... he can't..."
"He can, you know, being twice blessed and all that..."
Leo smiled proudly, making Phoebe feel a little guilty for being about to break his bubble of proudness.
"I think that he's actually trying to regain your attention".
The elder blinked a little startled, then smiled and bent down to carefully take Wyatt out of the sister's hands.
"You see Wyatt? Nothing to worry about." The elder nursed his son. "I love you, and I was soooo concerned about you... and I'm so happy that you're alright..."
Without realizing, Leo let go of Chris so to grab Wyatt better.
Phoebe coughed.
Leo grabbed Chris again, hardly able to get a grip of both kids at the same time.
"I think you will have to master how to do this." said the empath.
Her ex brother-in-law made a 'Don't-you-dare-mock-at-me-and-what-the-hell-I-am-supposed-to-do???' grimace at her, and Phoebe felt slightly sorry for him, so volunteered. "Do you want me to hold one of them?"
Leo thought about it, but Chris had already fallen asleep in his shoulder so he shook his head. "No, it's alright. How's Paige?".
"I'm fine." The youngest charmed said from the floor. "Once the ceiling will shut up, I'll be perfect."
"Nice..." the elder's face turned to Phoebe again.
The witch felt Leo's concern for Piper and nodded at his silent question. "Why don't you put the
kids in Piper's bed and then we could start... er... looking for that?"
He nodded and, taking a better grip of both kids and stood up. It wasn't that hard to do once he realized to take balance of both children.
"I'll be right back."
And while Phoebe and Paige helped each other to the Book of Shadows, Leo went to Piper's room... the one that had been also his, not so long ago. The one that even smelled like her former wife.
Once there, he put Wyatt in his cradle and sat in the bed and laid Chris down, covering him with a blanket, ruffling his soft hair, a little lighter than the one of his older version. His older version... there was a talk waiting there... but that bridge would have to be crossed later, with the right Chris. Right now this Chris was but a scared child. Piper's child. His... no no no... not now...that was yet another bridge that he would cross later. The future was starting to look like a whole aqueduct of talks.
"Are you alright?"
Chris nodded.
"Yes dad... Why am I in your room?"
Mine? A little, selfish, deep part of Leo made a scream of victory. His Room!! That was good, wasn't it? If it was his and it was Piper's... Chris slightly worried look took him back to reality.
Dad.
"Sorry... Because your Aunt Phoebe, Paige and I have to do something and you two have to sleep."
Chris nodded again, serious and a little worried.
"I'll put protections around the room, so you will be in no danger." Leo said, trying to ease Chris' worry. " Nothing will disturb your dreams..."
"I'm not worried, Wyatt will protect me." The kid's eyes were starting to close.
Leo felt another wave of proudness for his older son rush over him. Then remembered that Wyatt was going to turn evil in the future.
But if Chris was... if he was his... then he was Wyatt's...
Another bridge.
"Will he?" he said in a low soft voice.
"Yes... oh, and Dad..." Chris' voice was more and more soft.
Dad.
"Yes?"
"About Wyatt..."
Dad.
"Yes?"
"Someone turned him into a toddler. I think that you should look in the book of shadows."
Leo blinked twice and suppressed a laugh since the kid had finally went back to sleep. Placing the protection rocks in their places, he closed the door carefully and went back to the attic.
Dad.
While walking up the stairs, the elder heard the sisters discussing.
"Pikes... I say it will be pikes..." "I'm not sure... I think he'll prefer something more magical... maybe a potion."
"Or the tk thing..."
"Perhaps... then again, it's possible that he decides for a less magical way to do it."
"Like rocks? He won't stone us, will he?"
"I was more in the line of... guns."
"No way, he dislikes guns. He'll spike us... or beat us with what remains of the attic furniture"
Leo entered the room. "I hope you're not talking about the demon that took Piper away."
Both witches looked up at him.
"In fact we were talking about how will Chris kill us once we break the charm." confessed Paige "Although I'm not sure if he'll have to me enough, because Piper is going to kill him so much once she discovers... well... when she discovers..."
"... the fact." said Leo, finishing Paige's words. "When she discovers the fact."
"Yeah, the fact." The youngest Halliwell agreed. "That's it. The fact".
After a few seconds of awkward silence, Leo went to the point.
"So... cough cough what did you say that happened to my wife... ex- wife?..."
"Not for too long." murmured Phoebe.
"You saying...?" Paige turned to her.
"Nothing..." she answered, and to evade her sister's piercing look she started to explain it all to Leo, who took the news of his missing ex (or not) wife quite well. Phoebe suspected that somewhere near the surface of Leo's mind the words Chris and Fatherhood where occupying a far more urgent place than Piper and Missing. After all, a Charmed One acting weird and disappearing was no news.
"So Wyatt just sent Piper away?" he asked, avoiding with surgical precision the 'Chris calling Wyatt stuff'.
Paige nodded, there was something funny with Piper and they all knew. They all had seen her pushing kid Chris to the demon and ,with or without The Fact, that was something Piper would never do.
"Yes, Phoebe thinks that he did it because she was a threat, but he didn't wanted to hurt her." she said.
"So... any idea about what's happened to her? Is she possessed?"
"It could be a shapeshifter thing, couldn't it?" wondered Paige.
Leo shoved away the idea. "No way, Wyatt would have known it, and Phoebe would have sensed her."
"So..." Paige turned to the sister. "did you sensed something?"
"In fact..." the empath answered shooting a look at her sister. "I sensed lots of weird things... lots and lots..."
"For example?"
"You."
"What?"
"I sensed you..."
"You can't sense me... there's the potion."
"But I did, before, when you were all homicidal with Chris..."
Paige glared at Phoebe. "I beg your pardon? I was 'all homicidal'? You were the one that wanted to interrogate him."
"Me? When?"
"When he was thirteen."
"C'mon... I just wanted to ask a few questions."
"Yeah! And by the sound of it, force the answers out with some electrodes..."
Phoebe gaped, that was so incredible. "That's so not true!"
"Yes, it is! You queen of the rhymes."
"What happens with my rhymes?"
"Nooothing..." Paige went to the wastebasket, bent down, and took a piece of paper. "...and do it schlock."
Phoebe grabbed the paper and read it.
She read it again.
She checked the back of the paper, looking for some other writing.
"This rhyme is horrible!" She said, finally. "I can't have written this!"
"Well... then the shapeshifter that no one noticed is the worse spell writer ever, because I saw you writing it."
Phoebe glared at her again, but then nodded. "I do remember writing this shit. But I can't have written it, even now I can think with hundred better rhymes than... this."
Paige nodded. "I know what you mean... I remember being mad at Chris... I really wanted to kill him. But it's like if I was thinking that through cotton... er... if that's makes any sense."
"It does... somehow..."
Leo, unnoticed by the sisters, frowned at that comment and went to the book of shadows.
"Anyway, I also felt Piper before I felt you... and she was mad at Chris too... although that's comprehensible, isn't it?"
"It's comprehensible that she was angry, but not that much you could actually sense her... us... that potions should have last for, at least, some months... Can you feel me?"
Phoebe ducked he head, trying to sense something in Paige.
"No... right now I can only sense my head thundering."
Paige looked at her in concern and saw the dry blood plastered in Phoebe's hair.
" Oh my god! Are you hurt, honey? You should have told Leo. Leo! Leo!!"
"Yes, Paige?" he asked, without averting his eyes from the book.
"Phoebe needs blue orbs in her head."
"Yeah, ok" He agreed, but kept flipping the pages.
"Leo!"
"What?" The elder snapped out of whatever he was searching.
"Phoebe. Head. Pain. And what are you looking for?"
" I just remembered something that..." The moment the angel turned and left the book, it started to flip it's pages alone.
"Look! The son of a... tree... is finally helping." Grunted Phoebe, forgetting her own headache and leaning over the book that had finally stopped in one of the first pages.
"SoulShadow demon" she read "Bodiless demon that hunts for powerful witches. It finds a temporary female host and lays between her soul and her brain, taking control of her actions without overshadowing her will. The SoulShadow usually makes deals with other creatures, demons, warlocks, or humans that will pay it for some prey or goal. The payment is, usually, a soul to eat."
"This is what I was looking for..." exclaimed the elder. "That's why Phoebe could sense you... and why you two were acting all weird before..."
"Because we had this... SoulShadow parasite in us?"
"Yes... listen this, taking control of her actions without overshadowing her will. That's why it couldn't harm Wyatt, it couldn't do something you wouldn't to do." The elder explained.
"Okay... so a demon that we can't touch, possessed us and made us do things that we wanted to do... like kill Chris" said Paige. Then, as an afterthought, she added "... you know... I didn't want to kill Chris. This makes no sense."
"No, it does..." Phoebe answered. "Because he can't generate the feelings, but can push 'em. Like... make them evolve. So if we were angry at Chris because he had taken Wyatt away, it managed to turn the anger into hate, and then into... murderous feelings. Is that right?" she turned to Leo who nodded.
"But there's a flaw in the plan... " The empath complained. "If it wanted Wyatt... there's no way none of us would ever harm him."
Leo thought about it. "Maybe he didn't want to harm him... just to kidnap him."
"Well, I'm pretty sure that we wouldn't do that either, would we?" snapped Phoebe.
Paige bit her lip, there was something on that. "Well... or maybe we would..."
"Sorry?"
"I mean, that we wouldn't kidnap him..." clarified the witch " But it probably could use us, our fears and our worries to make us bring him somewhere. Anyway, what I can't understand is Piper... what about her? Why would she push kid Chris to the demon?"
"Well, she was pretty angry at him this morning..." Pointed out Phoebe "Maybe the demon used that."
"No way..." protested Leo. "As angry as she was... maybe it could have made her actually kill an older Chris, but she wouldn't have delivered him to a demon. Especially a 6 years old kid that was in tears."
"Then? What about her?" asked Paige. "Why did it affect her differently than us?"
"I don't know." Answered Leo, defeated. "I just knew this kind of demon by references, and the book doesn't says anything about it. In fact the entry is pretty old... and not very specific."
Paige grunted. "That's wonderful, because the only other more or less reliable source that we have about demons is going to awake in around eight hours and ask for a glass of milk. Now, I propose to find Piper, pack her in between some rocks to make sure that none of us gets taken over by the parasite, and break the spell on Chris."
"Can't we keep kid Chris?" pouted Phoebe. "I like him..."
"No, we can't." Paige shot a look at her sister. "We need the neurotic whitelighter. He knew this was going to happen that's why he took Wyatt away."
"You're right, we need him. We have to get him back so we can save Piper." Agreed Phoebe.
"Theeen... he will have to answer to a lots of questions. And no future consequences bullshit..."
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That's it until next update.
The next chapter is already written, I just have to adjust a few things and send it to be beta readed so I can be sure that I've write it in english.
Thank you all!!
