Phoebe's POV.

Chapter 7 - Answers, Finally

"You want to summon the dead?" I asked her. "Geez, Prue, you couldn't think of something a little bit simpilar for our first spell?"

"No. I think it's perfect." She said. "Besides, if it works, maybe we could get some other answers ..." I knew what she was thinking, and I didn't know what to think about it.

Piper looked at the page again. "Candles. There were candles in the attic."

"Lets go." Prue said. Her and Piper were a few steps ahead of us.

"I thought it was us who wanted to do magic, not them?" I asked Paige. She shrugged.

"I'm just really, really confused." She told me.

In the attic, Piper lead us to a big old trunk, the one she said she'd found the book in. Piper, Paige and I dig out some of the big white candles, and started setting them out in a circle, like the book directed, while Prue sat the book on a stand nearby, then began to light the candles.

"Ready?" She said, the candles and the moonlight, as our only light, sent creepy shadows around the room.

"Yep. Let's do this." I said simply. We stood at the stand, looking at the book and each other.

"On three." Prue duirected. "One ..." Next to me, Paige is shaking a little bit. "Two ..." I grabbed her hand to reassure her. "Three."

"Hear these words, hear my cry, spirit from the other side, I summon thee, come to me, cross now the great divide." We read in unison.

A wind blew lightly around the room, and in the centre of the candle circle, something started to glow ...

Seconds later, a woman with long brown hair stood before us, wearing a long white dress or robe or something.

She looked at us in shock, and as they passed over each of us in turn, her eyes filled with tears.

"It can't be ..." She breathed. "It just can't ..."

She looked at us and we looked at her, several long, silent seconds passing.

"Prue ... Piper ... Phoebe ... and Paige." As she said our names she looked at us, and we each gave a little nod.

"Are you ... Patrica?" Prue asked eventually. A look a hurt passed over the woman's face, that she quickly supressed.

"Yes. I'm Patty."

"And you're ... um ... our -" I trailed of as she began to nod vigiourosly.

"Your mother. Yes."

"Oh." Piper said, sounding a litle surprised. What did she expect? We summoned our mother, and got her.

"I ... I wasn't expecting this." Patty smiled after a while. "I didn't expect you to get your powers ... especially not to summon me."

"Well we did." Prue said coldly.

"I'm sorry, Prue." It took me all this time to realise that Patty was calling her Prue, not Prudence. For some reason I felt a little anoyed by this. She's a stranger, after all.

"For what?" Prue said, her voice still cold, detatched.

"For giving you up." Patty said simply. "You have every right to hate me, after the life you've had. It's been the worst for you - you were never able to get close to someone. You never felt undivided love."

"I never felt any love." Prue said, her eyes narrowed.

"I loved you." Patty whispered, but Prue ignored her.

"What about us?" Piper said suddenly. "Do you think we had the perfect lives?"

"No. I'm sorry, Piper. You've been passed around, more that anyone, feeling no one wanted you -"

"No one did." Piper snapped, but Patty carried on regarless.

"But you felt the love of so many people." Patty said. "You had no stability, no sense of family. But you felt love - the foster parents you've had, Amanda ... And I've always loved you." She added the last part so quietly, it took me a while to figure out what she'd said.

"And Phoebe. Those first few years of your life, you had no one." She said sadly. I don't want this. I don't want her to pity me.

"Seriously, Patty, I'm OK. I have the best mum in the world, I'm -"

"You were alone, though, and you hated me, you hated the fact that I'd thrown you out into the cold, cruel world, alone."

"Yeah, I did!" I said angrily. "But don't stand there as if you know me - you don't know the first thing about me. The only person that does, is back in my home. And she loves me more than you could ever do."

"You don't know how I feel." Patty said quietly.

"And you don't know how I feel."

"Can we stop this!" Paige cried suddenly. "What's done is done, there's no changing it!"

"Paige." Patty whispered. "I thought you were the one I didn't have to worry about so much. I though you'd worked out. And then ... I wont even pretend to know how your feeling. You've had what none of the others did - unconditional love your whoole life. And you had it snatched away from you."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"You all have reason to hate me -"

"I don't hate you." I snapped. "If you hadn't abandoned me, I wouldn't have the great mother I have now."

"And I wouldn't have had my parents." Paige added. "So thank you." She didn't sound grateful though.

"Well I had no one." Prue said. "And neither did Piper. So I'm sorry, but I can't forgive you."

"I don't expect you to." Patty replied. "But like Paige said - what's done is done. I can't change that. You'll make a great whitelighter someday, Paige." She added.

"A what?"

"A whitelighter. Sort of like a ... guardian angel. You're ... half-whitelighter. You'd father was mine."

"Excuse me?" Prue asked.

"You three, you older three, your father is my first husband. But Paige, your father was my whitelighter."

"So she has the whitelighter powers?" I asked.

"Yes."

"So ... I'm not even their proper sisters?" Paige whispered.

"Of course you are." Piper said quickly. "It doesn't matter -"

"I need to go." Patty interrupted, looking a the ceiling.

"Oh, no you don't. We're not finished with you. We need answers." Prue snapped.

"I really, I have to go -"

"You leave, and we'll just keep summoning you until we get our answers." Piper said quickly.

"OK. Make it quick."

"Why did you do it?" Prue asked simply. It's the question we'd all always wanted to know ... And yet, I'm scared of hearing her answer.

"I had to." Patty replied. "I didn't have a choice -"

"There's alwayus a choice." Paige said. She seemed to have recovered from the news, and was just as eager as the others to hear Patty's reasons.

"Not for me ... I was trying to protect you. Prue, when you were a few hours old, a demon almost killed you. He set your cot on fire, and if I hadn't frozen the flames ..." She paled at the memory of it, then composed herself. "While I was still carrying you, a warlock tried to kill me. He told me I would bear the charmed ones, and tried to make a pact with me. That when you were all born, and you had your powers, he could take them." She looked at us sadly. "I couldn't let him kill you - or stop me from having the others - so I agreed. Your grams and I bound you're powers when you were a day old, and ... gave you up." A lone tear slid down her face. "We knew that if we kept you with us, once Paige was born you'd have all your powers. So we had to keep you apart."

We looked at each other, trying to take in the story. I'd had many theries about why she gave us up; a violent partner, or forbidding parents, even that she livedsome where were it was really dangerous to have kids. But never this.

"He came to me again, just after I'd had you, Paige, just after you'd ... gone ... and he lost it. Said that he'd be waiting, and one day he'd get you. I wanted you to find each other, but I knew you couldn't. But now you have."

"This ... warlock." Prue said. "What are we supposed to do when he comes after us?"

"We made a spell, my mother and I. It's a power of four spell, though, so we couldn't cast it. Only you can."

"I have a question." I frowned. "Why didn't you wait 'till Paige was born and get us to do the spell? I mean ... just because she couldn't say it, she'd have still had her powers, right?"

"We couldn't risk it. There's was no garentee it would work."

"You can go now." Prue said after several moments silence. "We've heard all we need to."

Her words sound harsh, but her voice and face were softened. Patty nodded.

"I love you." She whispered ... but none of us spoke as she left.

"OK, our powers ..." I said after a while. I felt we'd stared at the empty candle circle for too long. "Paige has the whitelighter powers ... but what about the rest of us?"

"I have no idea." Piper said. "And I'm not sure I want to."

"The sooner we learn our powers, the better protected we are." Prue said. "Read them out again, Pheebs."

I walked back over to the book and flipped the pages. "Telekenesis and astro-projection, moleculor immobilization and moleculor combustion, premonitions and levitation, telicenetic orbing and whitelighter powers."

"So, what, one of us has Telekenesis and astro-projection, another of us have the molecules thing -"

"I think so." I nodded.

"So maybe since the whitelighter stuff was last, and Paige is the youngest, maybe the oldest has the first two?" Piper said. It just confused me, but it made sense to Prue.

"You think so?"

"Try moving something."

"I don't know how." Prue said.

"I guess we're all gonna die then." I said tirdly.

"It's not my fault!" Prue yelled angrily - wow, sleep deprivation really makes people ratty - and a nearby lamp smashed to the floor.

"Telekinesis?" Piper asked.

"Duh." I mutttered. I don't know - maybe sleep deprivation makes me ratty too - but suddenly I was irritated.

"Maybe we should just go to sleep." Paige said. "We can talk about everything in the morning."

"Right. But my mum's picking me up a eleven. We're going shopping." I said, walking back into the living room.

"Don't you think this is more important?" Prue asked me incrediously.

"Well, this is important ... but I promised ..." I muttered.

"So shopping comes before us?" Piper asked. She didn't sound mad - a little sarcastic maybe - but she seemed interested, really.

"No, but ... my mum's important too. She did raise me." I pointed out. I didn't mean to make them mad ... But I suppose it was a bit inconsiderate.

"Right, we get it Phoebe you have the perfect family life." Prue snapped.

"Perfect?" I cried. "Perfect? I was six years old when my foster dad walked out on us. Do you know what it's like seeing the only person you have in the entire world fall apart?"

"At least you had someone Phoebe!" It wasn't Prue this time, it was Piper. "We had no one, in the entire world."

"That's not my fault!" I screamed.

And suddenly, we're all shouting at once, and my head hurts like hell.

This can't be good.

All that sisterly bonding ... I had to make them fight, lol. I just thought there would be some resentment there ... let me know what you think.