Hi there!!!

Long time, I know and I have no words (at least no english words) good enough to apologize. I'm busy and my acces to the net is short, so although I had this chapter last Friday, it's been some days until I've been able to post it.

Anyway, this chapter is pretty long and my beta says that she likes it... so I hope it's, at least, worth the waiting.

She said too that I was cruel.

I'am.

As I promised, this time I'll answer the reviews yo wrote me, I love them and I fill very guilty for the delaying.

Jennie: I can't help the time to update, sorry... well, I can, but then I would update even later. I re-read the begining of the chapter when I read what you'd said, and yes, it is, sorry... but I like it that way U.

Cat Yuy: Aps!! The Master it's late, sorry... and you don't have to bow... you can i you want, but you on't have to. Thaaaanks.

Icantthinkofafnick: XD I told you, but I meant that you couldn't go and read the end of the fic befote reading the rest… ¬¬U I hate when the browser won't open some page... so thanks for keep trying. And soooorry, I'm dying to read your fics, but I just can't connect... TT but I'm not ignoring them (so tell the cousins to stop sending me curses by e-mail).

Queen of the Elven City: LOL!!! Thanks!!

ChrisBianca: Thaaanks!! I tried to update sooner, sorry.

Magical Princess: XD

mizunderstood writer: Mean… yep that's me. It was just so... tempting to stop it there.

ME: thx

Christine Marquez: Yep, one of my favorites cliffies… And again, sooorry for the update, I'm doing my best in this area.

Buffgirl: Thanks!

Lark: So I guess that there's no cookies... TT But thanks!!

Acacia Jules: XD You've flattered e… I'm evil nd you like the store… my ego is growing.

allaboutelephants22: Don't worry, I should have posted this two weeks ago... Sorry for the cliffy... well, sorry sorry, no... just a little bit sorry

zoned-out: NASA? It's the Apollo XIII we're on… just late.

So that's it... I keep saying how sorry I am for the delay... and I swear I'll try to arrange the next one sooner.

Puppy smile

Here's the chapter:

---OOO---

They know you're my son.

My son.

They know you're my son.

They know.

Know.

Son.

No way.

"I don't know what you're talking about, demon." Chris answered, masking the sudden fear and horror he was feeling behind a blank face. He wanted to smile, act like it was a joke, but that was somehow impossible. His muscles wouldn't react, so he kept a straight face. "Now, as I was saying..."

"You're this woman son." The Soul Shadow insisted, whirling around as if it was in some kind of beauty contest. " You're a Halliwell."

Chris felt his blood drain away from his face but fought to keep a sourly facade. He was afraid that if he looked around at his aunts and Leo, his face would betray him.

"Stop that nonsense." He had lived this lie for months now and he wouldn't let a stupid demon with a lucky guess blow his cover. "That lie is simply pathetic."

If the demon had denied it being a lie, or had tried to discuss it with some argument, Chris would have found a way through it.

But it didn't defend his cause.

It just smiled a sweet smile full of love and looked at him.

"Don't you miss me, Chris?"

He felt his heart stop in sudden death.

"Do you want a hug? A kiss?"

Phoebe, or maybe Paige, said something, but the witch/whitelighter couldn't hear her. His heart was beating again, and it was beating so loud that the sound filled his ears and everything else went through it like through water. Muffled and low.

Everything but Piper.
"Don't you wanna come closer?"

"Shut up." Chris' voice was hoarse and he was trembling.

"Do you love me?" It was Piper's voice in Piper's lips, with Piper's eyes looking at him in a way she hadn't for a long time. Saying words he'd been longing to hear again for eight years.

"I said shut up!"

The remains of the late furniture in the room slipped a few centimeters away, and the crystals in the windows trembled.

The demon smiled with those same Piper lips when it felt the soft tk wave. It had thought this would be far more difficult, but the kid was a bunch of emotions waiting for someone to pull the trigger.

"I'm sorry for everything that's happened, Chris..."

The windows cracked and some pieces of wood crashed into the wall.

"Shut up!!"
He was trying to bloke himself against that voice.

He loathed it.

But a deep part of him wanted to hear those words, wanted to hear Piper talking to him even if it wasn't her.

"I'm so proud of you."

Even if it was a lie.

"STOP IT!!!"

The demon laughed when the windows finally gave in and broke into a million pieces, sending shards of glass onto outside garden. There was a painful meow from the street.

Leo said words and Paige yelled at the demon in Piper; in fact, if Phoebe hadn't been holding her she'd have jumped at her possessed sister.

But Chris was unaware of that.

He could only listen the demon talking through his long dead mother mouth. Dying for the new word to come out, to lie, to ease the pain.

"I love you, son."

Chaos and havoc broke loose in the attic as a tk wave swept every unattached object in the room and a silent Chris fell into his knees, grabbing his ears to stop the voice.

Little wood pieces flew around and hadn't Paige grabbed Phoebe and orbed them both away, the sisters would have been a nasty expressionist paintings on the attic's wall at the end of the magical explosion.

As Piper's laugh went on, wave after wave ushered from Chris through the room, stamping the young man pain into every surface, writing it in the wood and in the attic with such a force that for years Phoebe wouldn't be able to touch a surface in the room without feeling it, without cringing at the piercing sorrow.

Leo orbed himself away at the first wave, but remained in the attic worried for both, Piper and Chris. The second wave threw the stones away and the third hit Piper, but she, or the demon inside her, stood her ground without stopping the mocking laugh, not even at the fourth, fifth and even sixth wave did she stopped.

The elder yelled at Chris to stop and tried to orb to the woman one second too late, for the seventh wave grabbed her body and threw it in the air with such a force that Leo was merely able to stop the fall enough to save her, but not enough to save the child for Chris yelled in pain and fainted the moment she hit the floor.

Panic rose in Leo when Chris fainted; panic and doubt between his love and his future son.

Luckily, his mind regained control over the hysteria in time to make him see the truth.

If he saved Piper, he'd save both of them.

Probably.

The elder went to his ex-wife's side and placed a hand over her unconscious body, thanking the gods for the fact that the demon could only be hosted by women so he wasn't in risk of getting possessed. The white magic of the elders ran through his soul, to his hand, and to Piper's stomach where he felt for first time the new life growing there.

His son.

Something was wrong.

If he'd been a doctor (at least a doctor that had attended some infancy patients... come to think of it, any kind of patients in the last sixty years) he'd related her state to one of a pregnant woman involved in some kind of trauma car accident. But he wasn't.

And the only thing he felt was his son dying at a high speed.

Near him, adult Chris was disappearing.

Luckily for everybody in the room, especially Piper and Chris, Leo wasn't a doctor but an angel, so his powers weren't those of surgery and antibiotics, but magic.

Healing magic.

When Paige and Phoebe reappeared through the door, Leo was backing away from Piper and Chris was regaining his consciousness.

"What happened!" yelled Paige, alarmed. She began to run, but Phoebe grabbed her. Half to stop her sister from approaching Piper and the demon, half to stop herself from falling to the floor. A deep emotion of mixed grief, pain, hope, sorrow and love invaded her to the point she nearly fainted, so at the end it was Paige who was holding her.

"Phoebe??" The younger charmed asked, worried about the sudden reaction of her sister.

"I'm ok..." she managed to mutter. "Chris has managed to overload the potion... and my senses. What about Piper?"

Leo stood up, holding Piper's body in his arms.

"She is alright, just unconscious." He said, searching for a place to lay her. But the attic was definitely in ruins.

"And Chris??" Phoebe looked around too, although she was looking for the stones. Her nephew was laying on the floor and panting, face pointing up at the ceiling.

"He is unconscious too, but..."

"No..." said the half whitelighter in a whisper, raising his head with a groan. "I'm awake..."

Seeing how they couldn't help Piper, both sisters tried to help Chris getting up.

"I'm okay... I don't need you to..." The half whitelighter tried to push them away without succeed.

"Shut up, young man." Phoebe interrupted, if he wanted to be helped or not wasn't something to take into consideration. "You just got a 'powers going mad' episode, and that usually drains us pretty much..."

Chris shook his head furiously.
"No!!" he exclaimed, pushing the sisters away. "Stop that! Stop..." the witch from the future stumbled and if Paige hadn't grab him he'd fell.

"C'mon, Chris, don't be stubborn!! You're exhausted to death, let us help you."
The youngest sister tried to calm him and make him stop moving before she'd loose her grip, but Chris was too nervous.

"Piper, how is Piper?? I hit her!! How is she? Is she alright?? Oh, god, I hit her... oh god oh god!! Is she alright??" Agitation grew at each word until they all felt again a small tk wave. "I screwed up... oh, shit... I screwed up and hurt her!!! Oh..."

Fearing it would start all over again, Paige shook his shoulders roughly.

"Get a grip, you idiot, or I'll slap the sense into you!!"

But it was useless, Chris was trying to make her let him go and stumbled forward and backward as if trying to decide whether to approach his mother and see if she was alright, or get away from her afraid he'd hurt her again.
"N-n-no... I have... she's hurt... oh god I hurt her! I have too... I..."

Paige slapped Chris, twice and hard.

And as she was doing so, she noticed a fact that, though not unusual at all, caught her attention. Chris wasn't crying. His face was pale, now slightly reddened in the cheeks, and shaken, contorted in anxiety and sorrow. It reminded her of the earlier version of her nephew. The one that would win a contest for a room in the Arkham asylum.

He was the image of pure and unadultered pain.

But he wasn't crying.

However Chris eyes focused again, leaving Piper's face and turning to Paige. He raised a hand to his cheek, not really aware yet why she'd done that.

With a steady voice, she caressed the young man cheek.
"You have to chill, ok? Get a grip or you'll loose it again."

He nodded, looking more as a child following orders of a senior than as the cocky and self confident grown up she knew.

"How... how is she?" he asked, averting his eyes away to the gap of the broken windows.

"She is okay..." soothed Leo. "Both of you are okay."

The half whitelighter head snapped up at the words, but at least nothing moved or started flying.

"So you know." He said.

Now there was no uneasy silence.

"Yes, we know." Answered Leo. "I'm sorry we didn't tell you earlier, we were waiting for the right moment..."

"I see."

"Why didn't you tell us?" Phoebe asked from outside the room, she'd retreated to the door and could still feel the young man's feelings under her skin.

Chris shrugged.

"It was easier this way." He confessed.

"How is it? We would have helped you if you'd told us..." she hesitated before going on, she was slightly ashamed of what she was going to say. " We would have trusted you."

"Would you?" Chris showed his first emotion, no one was surprised that it was in fact sarcasm in the form of a raised eyebrow and a little smirk. "Hi, I'm Chris Halliwell, your son and nephew. Wyatt says Hi from the future or at least he would of if I had told him I was coming... But being my brother the source of all evil I just couldn't bring myself to do a social call and tell him."

Paige raised her arms in surrender.
"Okay, okay Mr. Irony... maybe not, but you could have proved it to us in some way. Maybe with a letter or some secret from out past."

"You would have said that the letter was a forge and I'd just spied on you to discover the secret."

"And why didn't one of us come?" asked Phoebe. "We'd trust ourselves."

Chris face darkened for half a second before he forced the smirk to grow.
"No, you wouldn't. You'd say it was a shape shifter."

"Maybe." Relented the younger Charmed; it was true. No wonder the kid grew up to be a paranoid… he was surrounded by them. "But I can't see yet how it was easier for your mission to lie to us..."

"It was easier... for me." Chris sighed, he couldn't make them understand. Not without telling them too much. "And I rather prefer if we drop the subject now."

Paige cocked her head. "You mean for now."

"I mean now and forever, I'm not going to discuss the plan with you guys."

"There's a plan?" Asked Leo, still holding Piper. "It's nice to know that there's a plan about my son's safety and I didn't find out until a few months..."

Chris glared at the elder, his guilty feelings mixed with those of hatred for him.
"Yeah! Because you're being so useful right now by disappearing into Elderland every time the girls need you..."

Chris saw his words hit Leo like punches and felt a perverse happiness.
He knew he shouldn't.
But he did and it felt good.
It was sick, so he tried to focus in some other thing.

"The thing here isn't Leo's lack of presence at home these days..." grunted Phoebe, all the range of emotions in the room was getting in her nerves. "But about you and your 'plan' to save Wyatt. Why did you come to the past?"

Chris laughed, that was a silly question.
"Excuse me? What do you think? That I was bored at home and decided to come over here and say hello? I came to save Wyatt!"

"Wyatt? Not the future?"

Chris jumped at Leo's sudden question.
"What? It's just the same... by saving Wyatt I save the future..."

"You do so by killing him..." continued the elder, matter-of-factly.

If the angel had just approached Chris and slapped him, the young man wouldn't have turned that white.

"Leo..." warned Paige, fearing he would go too far.

"No!! He is here to protect him. Wyatt is evil and bad in the future and yet you came to save him?" It may sound a stupid question, but Leo wanted Chris to keep talking, to tell them everything. "You talk about him like if he is going to be worse than evil, your nightmare and the
major source of pain, and yet you want to save him? Why?"

"Because, as you just said, he is my brother." And because it was a response full of sarcasm and irony neither the sisters nor Leo could read the truth in it. Knowing all too well that they would never stop asking questions, Chris decided to stop it all at that very moment. No more
questions, no more answers. "Now, maybe you should take care of Piper before she or it wakes up or dies... again."

Better focus their attention in something else.

Leo tried to complain, but the Piper groaned at the most inappropriate time.

"He is right, Leo. We must take care of Piper and the demon first." Paige said, looking at her sister before adding. "We'll deal with the rest later."

"About that…" Phoebe re-entered the room swallowing a sharp breath. "We should take Piper away from the attic so I can try and sense something. My senses are numb now but I can't sense anything from her... not from Piper nor the demon."

"What do you mean?" Chris frowned looking at Piper again, his face full of anguish. "She's... she just groaned, she is alive, isn't she?"

"Yes, Chris... Piper's alive... but I don't know if she is possessed. I can't feel the demon... can it hide itself? It's feelings?"

After a short thought Chris shook his head in negation. "No, it can't..." he answered with a dreamy voice.

His head was clearly somewhere else... and his tiny self had summoned a tiny demon, given it the sledgehammer and allowed it to hit him repeatedly. Hadn't it been such a serious situation, Chris reaction would have been a big "Ooops!".

"Maybe as she is unconscious..." ventured Paige.

"But I sensed him when Bianca did that nasty thing in his chest... and he was unconscious." explained Phoebe, signaling Chris.

"Then what? It just disappeared? Can it disappear?" Paige turned to Chris who bit his lips, uneasy.

Tiny Chris inside Chris's head sent away the demon and sighed.
"Well... In fact yes, it can. It couldn't with the stones and that... but once they... er... broke and the shield vanished... erm... well, it must have know that we wouldn't allow it access to one of you... so maybe it just... erm... got itself sucked".

"Sucked? It got sucked?" Paige looked at him in disbelief. "What the hell does 'it got sucked' mean? Sucked like the shake in a milkshake? Sucked like a vacuum cleaner? Or sucked like a desperate man with 5 dollars on a Saturday night?"

Luckily Phoebe caught her before finishing the sentence. "You're a little too far from the point here, hon..."

Chris had to suppress a sudden and totally out of place snigger into a fit of coughs.
"Sucked..." he said once the coughs were finished. "Sucked. It's some kind of shimmer... Demons are naturally attached to the underworld, more or less like we are attached to the earth by the gravity... so in a normal state, demons would naturally be... er... sucked, or attracted if you prefer, there. But they are not because of their natural magic... every demon have a natural power that allows him to fight that attraction... "

"Why does he enters a Speech Mode every time he has to explain us something?" wondered Paige, earning a new smirk from Chris.

"... Everyone but the SoulShadow," he continued "...so it developed a way to travel out of the underworld by demon-taxi and into our world... where it finds his beloved and yummy souls."

Taxi-demon? Yummy souls? Yummy? Chris groaned to himself. He was making bad jokes... that and uncontrollable emotional states were the common trait of pregnant women and crazy people.

Crazy pregnant women, on the other hand, were plainly dangerous to neighbors and housemates, as he'd found out when pregnant Phoebe stayed at the manor for some weeks.

Crazy pregnant men, however, weren't that hard to control.
At least Wyatt had been happy with the console and some nachos until they'd found the counter curse.
The halfwitch laughed at the souvenir of his brother with a eight month pregnant stomach and getting all emotional over a jelly.
And here comes the uncontrollable emotional states, man, you ARE tired.

"So what happens when it's not inside a host?" asked Paige, looking funny at him. Wondering if her nephew had finally lost it. Again.

"It gets sucked into the under under under under under world..." Chris explained "It will be back... but not for half a day"

"So the demon got you angry so to remove the stones, then it could jump, and get away into the under under under world so he could come back later and take us by surprise?" Phoebe asked.

Paige rolled her eyes.
"Geez Pheebs, that was obvious. What are you? The bad guy in a late Bond film repeating his whole plan just in case someone didn't get it?"

"You're being bitchy sister... are you sure you aren't possessed?"

Phoebe raised a single eyebrow and answered without real malice.
"Go to hell." Then turned to Leo who was, in fact, having problems with Piper's dead weight "And we should definitely check that Piper isn't possessed anymore and lay her somewhere more confortable"
"Orb her to Wyatt..." Chris suggested. "He'll know if it's Piper or not and if she is herself, you can let her sleeping there."

Leo nodded orbed away.

Phoebe took a deep breath once they disappeared, as if something had prevented her from normal breathing before the elder and Piper had disappeared.

She saw Chris straighten his back and sigh with relief, although she could bet he wasn't aware of his moves. And that wasn't the only change in his nephew. With his soon-to-be parents' departure the young man began to get a grip of his feelings again and within a few seconds she'd lost the link between them.

"What now?" she heard Paige asking.

No one answered.

Minutes went by and nothing broke the quiet silence.

After a while, Chris retreated to a corner and kneeled in front of some random pieces of furniture as if trying to fix something... although the pieces were so mixed that only magic would fix them. And he wasn't doing magic. Just rummaging around absentmindly.

The sisters, respecting his wish to stay alone, picked up the book and left the attic to the kitchen.

Once they had left the young man half sat, half dropped on the floor.

Piper was okay and alive. For now.

They knew the truth... which was bad, but not their fault. He would find a way to deal with it... and after all, in nine months, for bad or for good, everything would be over.

In nine months he was going to be born.
Piper was already pregnant and Leo knew it. He'd told him. And he'd smiled.

How would Piper react?

What if he told her? It wouldn't mess the future... after all, if what he'd done to get conceived hadn't mess it up...

A new pain over an old guilt. But that had been a need; he couldn't allow not to be born.

And Leo had smiled when he'd told him.
Would Piper smile?

He could tell her, couldn't he?

Oh... he wasn't going to do so, but he was still allowed to dream of it.

She probably already knew about him, after all... so she should knew she was going to be pregnant sooner or later. But that was a problem, wasn't it? For he wasn't sure if he could deal with Piper not being 'Piper', but being 'Mum'.

And yet, the opportunity to tell her about the baby, about Mini Him... to see her face.

When Leo reentered the room with a half sleeping Wyatt in his arms, he found Chris seating on the floor, looking nowhere with dreamy eyes.
He felt guilty, for the young man, his son, was oozing and he wondered whether to wake him up or not.

The half whitelighter accepted that responsibility for himself by opening his eyes with a start.

Before there was a new loong and uneasy silence, Leo approached.
"Hey... Are you tired?"

"No." Lied Chris. "I was..."

"Thinking?"

"What do you want, Leo?" he changed the subject hastily. "Shouldn't Wyatt be sleeping?"

The kid, upset with Leo for waking him up him twice in a night, moved forward Chris, trying to get free of his father and to get to the nice but sometimes spooky young man that kept telling him weird things every time he got pissed. But he'd protected him when bad men took him away from mum and dad and everything had gone very confusing.

And behind all that scary things he could feel in him, there was something nice, something safe that he only sensed in mum and dad, the weird woman that made faces to him, and the one who's hair colorchanged every now and then.

And even behind that, there was something else. A deeper link, even deeper than the one with mum and dad. But he couldn't yet understand where it came from.

"Where is Piper??" Chris repeated, now holding Wyatt.

"Piper is downstairs." Leo explained. "She is fine, sleeping."

"Good...Does she... Does she know about me?"

That startled Leo, that eyed him carefully.
"No, she doesn't... she got possessed before we learned it..."

"How did you...?" Chris began... but then stopped for that would probably start a conversation and he didn't wanted to have a chit chat with Leo right now. No, better go to the point. "She can't know it... You can't tell her."

"Wh... What? Why?"

"It doesn't... It doesn't matter now, Leo. But it's important. She can't find out."

"But... Why? I mean... she'd like it. She'd love it for sure..."

Probably, thought the witch/whitelighter but it would destroy me, thought the young man knowing all too well that he wouldn't be able to handle it.

"What did you wanted, Leo?" he came back to the original question, changing the subject again. "Why is Wyatt awake?"

The elder surrendered to Chris's wishes, for now, and ruffled his Wyatt's hair.
"I want you to put Wyatt back where he was."

"Sorry?"

With a careless wave, Leo orbed a bag from Piper's room and gave it to Chris.
"While the SoulShadow is on the loose I'm not sure that we can protect him. But you managed to get him hidden even from us... so I want you to put him back there..."

"You are aware..." Chris began, grabbing the bag too. "That I can't tell you where he will be? That would break the magic."

The elder nodded. "It's alright... If you can tell me that he won't be unattended..."

The witch/whitelighter smiled at that comment and said nothing but a nod.

"Then it's alright." Leo nodded too and smiled slightly. "As you said, it's your plan."

Chris found himself smiling back, nearly apologizing for what he'd said earlier and felt sick of what he did.
Some nice words from Leo and he melted?

So much for his never ending loath at him.

"Remember that you can't tell Piper. I'll be right back." He muttered, orbing away and leaving Leo with the unpleasant feeling of having said something wrong, but unaware of what was it.

Chris orbed into the kitchen.

Not the manor's kitchen, because hiding Wyatt there would have been a little silly.

But a kitchen nevertheless. And the moment he fully appeared there, something flew across the room and would have hit him and little Wyatt hadn't projected the shield.

A voice gasped first and cursed later.
"What are you an idiot?" the voice said, alarmed. "I could have hurt him!!"

-------------

Done!

Thanks for reading it

Oh!! I was listening some music the other day and I discovered something...

"Happy Ending" would be the perfect OST for the Chris-Chrossed chapter.

U

Oh! And "Every breath you take" is perfect for the late relation between Cole and Phoebe (I always thought that song was the Stalkers anthem)