Learning to Tango

by Twisted Flame

Time has already run out for one of the group and it's now ticking against Chris. Will he be able to still save his brother as a sinister plot is hatched against not only Wyatt, but the rest of his friends as well?

3. Chapter 3

Just a few quick things. I don't own Charmed, they all belong to some rich dude/ette somewhere is some place.

And there's excessive language in the latter part of this chapter... Well... what used to be the latter part before it grew... Arguments are fun... But consider yourself warned.

And on another warning note this is a long chapter, my longest yet. Please don't yell at me, I couldn't find a good place to split it. So I recommend a beverage of your choice and a snack, lol, and enjoy the ride.

Learning to Tango

Chris tossed and turned on the couch, eventually making the springs give a groan of protest. His face was contorted into a frown and his eyes were closed tighter then in a normal sleep. A small moan escaped his slightly-parted lips and he rolled over again, knocking a cushion to the floor.

Suddenly he snapped his eyes open, groaned and sat up. Strange, he thought, getting stiffly to his feet and carefully making his way through the dark to the kitchen. He felt hot; maybe he could get a drink or something...

"What the hell?" He muttered, blinking against the slow strobe sending pulsing blue and green light through the club. He looked behind him at the dining room table and chairs, and then in front of him at the stairs down into the club.

Take me over, I'm lying down

I'm giving in to you

Standing at the top of the staircase for a few moments, Chris shook his head and began making his way through the slowly dancing crush, spotting Phoebe standing atop a table, waving her arms as if orchestrating the band on stage. She waved eagerly at him, hopping down and skipping toward him.

"Can you believe that we actually got this band?" The witch gushed, turning him to face the stage. Their faces were masked, concentrating on their song. "I mean, they're like, not even around yet! They don't exist!" Giggling, she went back to her table.

Chris frowned, turning away and forcing the questions from his mind, having a feeling that they would only cause more problems anyway. He headed towards one of the booths. He needed to think for a bit.

"I'm totally losing this," Paige scowled, looking down at the chessboard. Gideon chuckled and took her bishop. "The girls said not to fight it, but dammit if I'm not gonna win this." She chewed on her lip and looped her hair behind her ears, determined to win.

I'm a hurricane

Gideon set the piece aside. "Now, now, we wouldn't want the cosmos to stop spinning, would we?"

I cannot describe this feeling

"Yeah well, Chris is better at this than me." Paige looked up at him. "You play; I'll tell them you'll be by in a minute." Her face suddenly became dreamy as she sauntered away. Chris slid into the booth and looked at the pieces.

"I'm white." He said, looking at Gideon.

"My boy if you're not careful at deciding which ones are yours to command, the world could stop turning, you'll shift the balance. Wouldn't want that now, would we?"

Chris nodded and slid back out. He needed to find... something. Maybe a drink would help. "Hey Rick!" He called over the music, jumping up on a stool. "Could you-"

Now that I've found this love

"Hi, Chris!" Nixa smiled, wiping the bar in front of him. "You're late."

"So? You're dead!" He shouted suddenly, jumping off of the stool and suddenly accusing. "You faded away and... And you can't be here."

"Well, I'm here, aren't I?" She stated very matter-of-factly, setting a large vanilla and mint milkshake in front of him.

I'll do anything for you

Chris shook his head and pulled a face, pushing it back toward her. "Bridget likes those, not me." They made him feel sick. Leo grabbed it, popping up from behind the bar.

"Aww, come on Chris, give it a try."

Chris frowned, shaking his head and sitting back down. "No thanks."

Nixa leaned conspiratorially towards Leo. "I think he's scared to try new things." She whispered loudly with a giggle. Chris only frowned deeper, if that was possible.

Leo nodded rather sadly. "Well, maybe he's afraid to admit we're right."

"No, he's just stubborn." Nixa stuck her tongue at him. "Just like you."

Chris smacked the counter top. "I'm nothing like him." He growled, eyes flashing. "And why are you like this with him? He let you die, don't you get that?"

Now that I've found this love

Nixa shrugged it off and pushed the shake closer. "Nothing's like it seems." She explained. "I mean sometimes everything is completely different, you think you know something and then whoosh, it's ripped out from under you like a rug and you fall on your ass." The three of them looked down at the milkshake. "See, chocolate."

Chris blinked a few times, shrugged and began sipping at the drink. After all, in his life, stranger things had happened and continued to happen every day.

Piper wandered over with a case of bottle pop in her arms. She set it down on the bar with a thump and much clinking of glass. "Don't go into this too fast. If you don't see where you're jumping, you could really get hurt."

"My milkshake?" He asked, confused. But Piper had gone. He stirred the shake before sipping at it once more.

"What's the matter, Chris?"

I'm a fire, burning like a house aflame

"Bridget?" He looked up at her smiling down at him. "You're wearing... pink."

She frowned and looked down at the neon coloured top. "Yeah well, not my choice." Bridget smiled and pecked him on the lips. "Mmmm, you took my vanilla and mint." She had tasted it on his mouth, he realized. But he hadn't been drinking vanilla and mint... She grabbed his shake, which had reverted back to her preference.

I'm a hurricane

Chris blinked at the drink before glaring at the band. "God, can't they play something more... upbeat?"

Bridget stirred the milkshake thoughtfully, taking a gulp and shrugging with her mouth full. She swallowed. "Yeah well, Mrs. H has been pretty busy. Her mind is on other things, you know?"

"I guess but..." He trailed off, suddenly jumping up and knocking the glass to the floor and blood began seeping through her shirt. The glass fell in slow motion, shattering and throwing shake and glass all over his sneakers. The mess suddenly vanished and a single gold ring hit the floor and bounced twice.

I cannot move or see you fly

Now that I've found...

"Oh look, a mortal wound." Bridget looked up at him, flames slowly beginning to consume her. "Sorry for pissing you off."

"Bridget? Bridget! No!" He put his hand in to grab her arm but was met with tingling warmth before a shower of ashes dropped onto his hand. He withdrew his arm and shook off the cinders.

this love

"What the hell is going on?"

"Chris, dude, wake up."

"Huh?"

It was Ben. Blearily a face came into view above him, and he swiped his hands over his eyes to force them to focus. He tried again and this time the face came fully into view. Ben was standing above him, sleep still very much evident in his eyes. Chris sat up, feeling his head throb.

He was completely confused. Hadn't he just been in P3? And hadn't he just seen Bridget - he shuddered and looked up again, trying his best to keep the room in focus. A dream. A bad dream nonetheless but a dream was all it had been.

"Are you ok?" Ben asked, concerned and noticing his friend shuddering.

Chris considered. The inside of his mouth tasted kind of funny, and it hurt to talk. He felt like he'd been beaten in the stomach and head with a crowbar until it had knocked him out. "I guess so." He said in the end, just to cut out the explanations, knowing that they would do no good right now. "Where are we?" Fearing capture, he sat up far too quickly and just had time to catch a glimpse of the Manor's conservatory before having to lie back down.

Ben closed his eyes and sank back down onto his couch, gently rubbing his temples. "In the Manor still." The ache in his head was dull but extremely powerful, pulsating with every beat his heart made.

Ben had a feeling that he knew the next question Chris was going to ask and to be honest, he didn't know. His brain felt like it was full of fog and he could barely see straight, let alone answer questions that he wouldn't actually have the answers to when he didn't feel like this.

"What happened?" See? He knew it.

Ben sighed, slotting details in his mind into chronological order and hoping that it would help. It did somewhat, and parts of it came into clearer focus before everything just dissolved.

"Don't ask me. I don't actually remember much." He said, just because he was still sorting it out in his own mind. He looked down at the blood still staining his clothes, pain and grief building inside him again. All his emotions had gone while he had been sleeping and now realization was dawning and it hurt more than ever as it tried to sink in, worming its way through eating as it went. "Unfortunately I don't think I forgot enough either." He said quietly, looking back up at Chris.

The haggard, haunted look in his friend's eyes was all he needed to tell him that Chris also remembered that Nixa was dead. Whatever it was that had hit them had done nothing to disperse the anger at Leo for letting her die. What it had done was dulled the memories so much that they became a haze in some places. Chris thought he could remember throwing Leo around the entryway but after that...

Everything blurred into one, black mass that sucked the rest of the time away. Chris wished he knew what had happened and he punched the back of the couch in frustration, hating not feeling in control. He voiced a theory instead, trying to get back on top of the situation. "You think the demon got us?"

"And your Dad was too pissed to heal us?" It hurt to let too much light into his sensitive pupils because it made his headache worse, so he narrowed his eyes to a squint and looked over at Chris, who was frowning now.

Chris hadn't thought about Leo being angry and hurt and not wanting to heal them. Maybe that's why they'd stayed unconscious so long. Something was niggling at the back of his head, though.

"Yeah... But do you feel beat up anywhere?"

"My head. And my stomach kind of. My neck hurts but I think that might have been the couch." Ben stretched as if to emphasize the point and heard his neck and shoulders crack.

"Then that's probably what the demon did because I feel the same way. Do you hurt anywhere else?" Chris wished he knew where he was going with this.

"No..." Ben replied, sounding surprised. He had never thought to ask himself that question and he wasn't sure where Chris was going with this thought. He could see that his friend was uncertain as well. "But then my head hurts enough for all of me, so-"

"Then if we're not hurt, someone must have healed us. I remember getting pretty bashed around with that demon." Chris said slowly, forming the words on his lips split seconds after his brain made them. He wasn't entirely sure if what he was saying made sense; he was only thinking aloud after all, bouncing things off of Ben to see how they worked out.

"Your train of thought just missed my station, Chris. So if we were healed then why aren't we awake?"

"I don't know." Chris groaned, rubbing his hands over his face. He felt heavy and weighed down and his headache had come back again. His eyes itched with tiredness and he forced a yawn back down his throat. "You know what? I think some coffee would be good right about now." They heard slipper-softened footfalls on the stairs and looked to see Paige coming down the staircase, pausing on the half landing.

"Coffee? Someone mention coffee? As in the one with caffeine in it right, and not Piper's pregnancy de-caff crap? Because if I wanted to drink brown water, there's this puddle in the basement."

His aunt's crabbiness rarely failed to amuse him. "Morning, Paige." Chris greeted with a slight chuckle.

"Don't morning me unless you're about to produce some caffeine from behind your back, mister." Although Paige was at the bottom of the stairs and Chris was in the sitting room he could feel his aunt's need to come and poke him in the chest.

"Piper's not down yet, there's no coffee." Ben told her, covering a yawn with his hand.

"Really? I'm gonna have to drink instant?" She pulled a face, disappointment making her pout. "Yuck."

Chris rolled his eyes. "Did you actually sleep last night?" Chris asked, sitting up and looking at his aunt. Her eyes were ringed with dark shadows and her complexion looked slightly worse than it had done last night - she was paler and a spot had broken out on her forehead.

"Sleep? Me? Of course, out like a light." Chris cocked an eyebrow at her and she sighed, stamping her foot. "Oh Ok, I'm thinking I need to go back and put some more makeup on. You really know how to flatter a girl, don't you?" Paige came in through the dining room. "Besides who needs sleep when I can just drink coffee?"

"She has a point." Ben said, laughing but then pinching the bridge of his nose and pain shot through his skull.

"Are you guys ok?" Paige asked, trying to keep her involvement in their symptoms out of it as much as possible.

"Headache." Ben muttered, willing the nausea to stop.

"Yeah?" Paige said, feeling guilty. She quickly changed the subject. "Come on, between the three of us we've got to have that damn machine covered."

Learning to Tango

"Why isn't there any coffee made?" Piper asked, wrapping her robe tighter around herself and walking over to the machine. She took out the pot and looked at it. "It's clean; you didn't make some and drink it all; you just didn't make any." She made an exasperated noise and slammed the pot back into the coffeemaker.

"We did try," Paige grumbled moodily, with a hint of teenage sulkiness. "I've just never had to work that thing before. Look." She held up her hand and a large, shiny burn covered half of the back of it.

"You burnt yourself? On the hotplate of the coffeemaker? Good grief this family is useless!" With Piper in command, the machine slowly started to drip coffee into the jug and Piper sat down on the last chair at the table, drumming her fingers on the wood.

"We made instant coffee." Paige said with a shrug, trying to get back into Piper's good books. "You want some? 'Cause we can manage the stove just fine."

"Do I want some of your instant coffee? Next you'll be asking me would I also like to have my tonsils out without anaesthetic."

"Ok, no instant coffee for Piper." Paige said, bringing her own mug to her lips. She had no idea why Piper had such a hate for granulated coffee. To her it tasted no different, but Piper, being an ex-chef, was prone to being fussy.

"Can it, I'm grouchy." The eldest Halliwell chewed on her bottom lip, wiggling her foot impatiently. "Do you have a temp job, Paige? Is that why you're up so early?"

"No, I was up most of the night reading that Grimoire. And then it gave me nightmares. All these people sprouting extra arms out of their heads and all - yeah, yuck."

And that was one of the nicer illustrations. Others in there made her want to go back to looking under her bed and in her closet before she slept at night.

"Where did you get a Grimoire from?" Chris asked, confused. What was a Halliwell doing with an evil Book of Shadows? And more importantly, why had they let it into the Manor? Didn't they know that such an evil could corrupt them and their own Book of Shadows?

"The Underworld." Paige replied with a slurp as if it were no big deal.

Ben's head immediately filled with questions. "Why were you-?" He was cut off as shuffling footsteps came through from the foyer and into the room next to them.

"Ugh. What's with the sun? Damn ball of flaming helium." Bridget continued to mutter and curse just under her breath as she shuffled in from the dining room, a borrowed robe flung over a pair of Piper's pyjamas.

Chris blinked, surprised, before calling out her name. "Bridget?" What was she doing here? Wasn't she in danger in the Underworld? How did this happen? He shook his head to clear the questions and just about caught Bridget's answer.

"That's my name..." Was all the hunter managed to mumble sleepily, rubbing her eyes and being completely unprepared for Chris jumping up and grabbing her. She gave a slight oomph and smacked him on the shoulder. "Don't squeeze me." He apologized and loosened his grip slightly, still hugging her.

"Aren't you supposed to be captured?" Ben asked as Chris ignored her protests. "You're ok, though, right? He didn't hurt you? What happened?" Before Bridget could answer any questions, Chris broke in.

"Whoa." The witch-whitelighter stepped back suddenly. "Did you- uh-" He licked his lips. "Did you put on weight?" Ben snorted coffee through his nose and back into his mug with a splash.

Bridget glared. If looks could kill, so many people would be dead many times over by now, including himself and Chris, who had been quailing under her looks since they'd known her. "It's called a baby, they tend to make us chicks fat, you know?" She snapped, stomping moodily over to the table and grabbing Chris's abandoned mug. "Speaking of which did you find anything about my little bundle of joy in that Grimoire?"

"Hey, I only asked." Chris said defensively.

"Well don't." She bit back, easing herself into a chair and wincing slightly.

"Bridget, no, no, no!" Piper took the beverage from her, as she was about to take a drink.

"What?"

"You can't have coffee, caffeine, bad for the baby. I'll get you some juice."

Bridget poked her stomach. "No thanks, Piper, he says he needs his fix."

She reached for Chris' mug again, but Piper was adamant and took it away. Soon Bridget was sulkily glaring at a glass of orange juice while Piper went and filled her own mug from the now-full coffeepot. Chris hopped up onto the kitchen island because Bridget had taken his seat and started drumming his fingers on the top.

The now-oldest Halliwell tipped her son's mug of coffee down the drain in disgust, drinking her own, so-much-slower-than-instant beverage with relish. Would she like some instant coffee? Ugh. She shoved another one into Chris's hands to halt his protests. Whiny children were not good at this hour, and fortunately she had had just the thing to stop him in his tracks, replacement caffeine.

Ok, if he'd been Wyatt's age she would have given him a pacifier. She amused herself with images of adult Chris with a pacifier and smiled.

"Isn't it great to know that the next generation turned out to be caffeine addicts, Paige?" Piper chirped, now much more cheered.

Paige shrugged. "Well they had really great role models in us, didn't they?" Chris laughed but Piper glared.

"Don't laugh at me or I'm gonna be using contraception, mister." Chris immediately buried his face in his coffee again, sensing Piper's good mood might just have started to evaporate.

Paige looked at herself and her sister who could barely be civil or coherent until they'd had their morning fix. Then she looked at Phoebe, who couldn't even make sounds without the blessing that was java.

"Yeah, well uh, anyway, the Grimoire." Paige cleared her throat, preferring not to voice her opinions with Piper so near. "Uh... It says that..." Paige broke of, struggling with herself. "Do you mind if I get Leo down to help explain?" Paige didn't want to be alone elucidating what she had to say. It might be best if her ex-whitelighter came and helped too, and then the blame couldn't fall all on her for reading the damn book wrong. A blame shared is a blame halved - Somehow Paige didn't think that that was how that saying went.

"Sure. Mom wants to see Leo, don't you, Mom?" Even if Chris himself didn't want to see Leo, that was no reason to stop his parents being together in the same room.

Being conceived was good. Fading into nothing was bad. That was a given to anyone.

Piper chose to ignore Chris for now and not let his tactless hinting get to her. She had barely accepted that he was her son, and now he was asking her to accept that she would have to get back together with Leo in order for his conception to take place. The kid was more than a little pushy.

She took a calming breath and called her sort-of husband. "Leo? Come down here a minute, would you?" Piper called to the light fitting. She paused, waiting about thirty seconds before trying again. "Honey, we need some help!" Leo orbed in shortly afterwards next to Piper and kissed her quickly on the cheek by way of greeting.

"What's wrong?" He looked around at the face in the room and his mouth hardened into a line as he saw Chris. "What do you need help with?"

More anger welled up inside Ben and he glared at Leo over the rim of his mug. Life just went on for him, didn't it? Whether Nixa was in life or not didn't actually matter to the Elder. Ben would be feeling the hole where she had been for a very long time, and Leo could just move on, even though he was the one who had let her die. Chris also gave him a frosty green glance and turned his head away from him. Piper shrugged at him and mouthed, 'sorry', catching his hurt look.

An awkward silence followed, which Bridget only half-noticed, too eager to get the news. "Well come on, spit it out." The hunter ordered, looking up from her juice for the first time in a while.

"Yeah... Um... Well here's the thing..." Paige took a deep breath, sensing that she was about to dive into uncharted waters, a sensitive area. "Could you have been pregnant... before he took you?" She finally let out all in a rush.

Leo looked at his wife and sister-in-law. "Wait, what are we talking about?" He really wished that the girls took the time to fill him in before they had such conversations that previously didn't include him. He would feel so much more comfortable.

"Bridget's baby." Piper said softly and Leo nodded, understanding at last.

Bridget made a dismissive noise and gave Paige a look that asked her if she was stupid. "Me? In case you haven't noticed, I'm not the mothering type, ask Nixa. She'll tell you about this virtual pet I used to have..." She trailed off. "By the way, where are Nixa and Phoebe?"

"Phoebe's here!" A voice called suddenly from the entryway as Phoebe came hopping down the stairs, pulling on a shoe as she went. She broke into the conversation and cut it off as she dashed into the kitchen, grabbed a muffin from the basket and downed Chris's coffee.

"Hey! Not again!" Piper rolled her eyes and got back the visions of the pacifier as she handed him her coffee and filled his empty mug for himself. So it was a pacifier and a bottle for Wyatt and coffee for Chris. Damn she was a great mother.

"Oh, I am so late... I'm so busted... Don't Ask Phoebe any questions unless your love life really sucks or she'll be even later and get fired by Elise, ok? Ok, good. Back by seven, love you, bye!" She gave Chris the muffin case and ran from the kitchen.

"Hey, my love life really sucks!" The front doors slammed and Bridget turned back to her juice. "Or not..."

"Put it in the mail like the rest of them, sweetie!" The Manor doors opened and then slammed again and soon they all heard tires screeching on the drive as Phoebe backed out into Prescott Street. A horn blared, and to Piper it sounded like a near miss. She was glad she'd put her own car in the drive with Phoebe's.

Paige blinked. "O-kay. And there we had Hurricane Phoebe. So. How many times did he hit you with that ritual?"

Bridget took more time getting back into the swing of things after Phoebe than Paige had. These people were nuts... Honestly, truly, one hundred percent crazy. Gods she loved this family.

"Just the one, why?" She tried reading Paige's face, but all she could see was that the witch-whitelighter looked troubled, and her words weren't helping.

"It's just that the ritual is designed to give a baby evil powers, you see? An already existing baby." Chris began choking on his coffee in the background.

Ben chuckled silently at the notion of Bridget sleeping around as it was totally out of character for her. It just wasn't something she did. Ben's opinion was that most guys were kind of scared of her, but then that was just him.

"Well, then you're wrong. I didn't have a baby. I mean, did I look pregnant to you? All fat and frumpy..."

"Don't answer that if you value you nose and/or your life." Ben advised as Paige opened her mouth to say something.

"Oh."

"Well he can create the baby within a host, but to do that, he needs to hit you with the ritual twice, once to create it, and then once to infuse it with its powers and make it grow." Leo explained. "Most of the time he'd use two crystals for that, because one of them would burn out. It's powerful stuff."

"Where did you find that out?" Paige asked, impressed.

"They have some good reading material Up There." Images of this reading material being Elder porn crossed Ben's mind and he shuddered. It had just been the way Leo had said it that was all. Damn his imagination.

"Wait, hello? You mean I had a baby already? Well that's crap because I only got hit once and I wasn't pregnant already. Seriously. No brats for me at all, ever."

Chris laughed. "Oh come on, Get. Calm down, don't get worked up, it's bad for the baby."

"Screw the baby! And how would you know? I'm the one that's pregnant you idiot! I'll judge what's bad for the kid." She slapped at Chris's hands that he had placed on her shoulders. "And my name is not Get!" He tried massaging her shoulders again, gently trying to relax her and calm her down. "Christopher Halliwell, if you try to de-stress me one more time, so help me I will flip you through the window." Chris lowered his hands, holding them out in front of him as if in surrender. "That's better." She gave one nod and turned away from him.

"I'm only trying to help..."

Chris heard a snort of laughter from behind Ben's mug and he glared. Ben only shrugged. "You've got to admit, she does have you whipped... OW!" Bridget had thrown an apple at him as a distraction and as he was catching it smacked him once upside the head with today's newspaper. The paper orbed into Paige's hand and she hit the both of them around the head.

"Hey!" Was the collective response.

"No, don't hey me. You kids play nice or we'll have to put you in timeout. Got it?" Paige threatened. Bridget rolled her eyes and Ben went back to his coffee. And people complained that kids were difficult. All it took was a little childish violence and you had them down. She smiled at her efficiency.

Piper shook her head at the circus that used to be her kitchen before asking, "Is there a way to undo it?" She decided that she ought to cut in and change the subject before Bridget could get too irritable over it.

"Too be honest, it didn't say." Leo told her.

"No," Paige began. "But then again, I figured that it was a book of evil, so why would it say how to undo its own black magic spells? I was thinking that we could go to a huge library of good books."

"Magic School?"

"Yup. Ladies and gentlemen, we're going back to school." Paige informed them with a nod.

"Oh man... I hated it the first time." Ben grumbled with a sigh.

Learning to Tango

"Did she go out fighting?" Bridget whispered, looking at the floor. She felt her heart being crushed as a part of her life was extinguished; never to be rekindled. Nixa was gone.

"Yeah. Fighting Morca until he killed her." Chris said quietly, bringing raw wounds back to the surface but forcing himself not to cry. He sniffed instead and looked down at the hunter to see how she was going to take the news.

He had left out the part about Leo not getting to the Manor in time, because he knew Bridget was so unpredictable, and he had no way of telling what she would do if she found that out. Probably something worse than what he and Ben had done. He looked guiltily up at the smashed banister.

They had been used to death, what with the hunting, the demon attacks, and the war. They would get through it, but it still didn't mean that they would hurt.

She let a tear slide down her face, and then wiped her nose and eyes on Chris's jacket sleeve. "Good. That's the way she would have wanted to go. I'm glad I snapped that bastard's neck." A flare of hate twisted her mouth.

Chris looked in disgust at his sleeve and Bridget smiled and half-cried, half-laughed, then dried her eyes once more with the heel of her hand, smoothing her eyelashes with her fingers. She looked up at him as he rubbed his sleeve on his jeans.

"You ok?" He asked, knowing that it was probably a stupid question. Inside, Bridget would be devastated. Outside, you would never know what she was feeling. He watched with trepidation as her concrete mask slide up, knowing that she would bottle it up inside and then vent using a display of violence. He just wasn't sure when their next instalment of violence was going to be, so it might not be good for her to be storing things right now. If she stored things for too long she tended to begin taking it out on innocent bystanders.

"That depends, how do I look?" Bridget exhaled and tilted her head so he could see her face.

Chris looked at her. The tears had washed away the tiredness and her eyes were glittering. She smiled and her face lit up, cancelling out the puffy eyes and red nose. She pulled her hair away from her face and dragged it into a low ponytail.

"You honestly look great."

"Then I feel great. Come on, they've gone without us." Chris hugged Bridget and rested his chin on the top of her head, and she finished drying her eyes on his shirt. He kissed her head lightly and as he orbed them out, the scent of her shampoo surrounded him.

Learning to Tango

"Chris, where were you? We were worried." Piper said, hands on her hips. She had switched to full mothering mode and had a disapproving frown on her face.

"Sorry, we got a little caught up." Bridget informed them. "Now - Whoa, that's a long hall..." She cocked her head to one side and looked to where it disappeared from her sight in a pool of gloom.

"Endless, actually." A voice told them. She whirled around, seeing no one. "Now who are all these people gracing my school with their presence?"

"Gideon? Uh..." Leo began, wanting to be polite but not really sure how to tell his fellow Elder to get visible again.

"Of course, yes, I am sorry. Do forgive me." The voice uncloaked and they turned to see Gideon standing there, casting his eyes over the group. "It's easier to keep an eye on the students this way."

"Gideon, how are you?" Leo greeted as soon as it became apparent that no one else was going to say anything. Leo wasn't sure what it was but none of the group seemed to have warmed to Gideon at all.

"Ah, I'm well, thank you, Leo. How is Wyatt?"

"At Sheila's." Piper said, breaking into the friendly conversation. She could see Bridget shuffling her feet impatiently and she felt the same way. All this peer-to-peer chitchat of Leo and Gideon's was beginning to get on her nerves. "Now-"

"We need to pick your brains, Gideon." Paige interrupted. She too was getting impatient. "And maybe your library..."

All these people talking over one another were going to give the Elder a headache before the day was out. He blinked and replied, "Ah, yes. Yes of course. May I enquire as to the reason?"

"Ok, here we go." Bridget jumped in before anyone else could. She knew that a long explanation was sure to follow and that was the last thing she felt like standing through right now, so she supplied her own take on the events. "Cliff notes version is: Some bastard demon got me pregnant and I'd rather not have the baby."

Gideon looked taken aback and his own words failed him for a moment. "Yes, it's this way..." He used his arm to indicate a door in the corridor and everyone but Leo walked in that direction. "Leo, who are these people?" He asked, taking Leo's elbow and steering him back in the direction they came, away from the group, his head bent low as if conspiring.

"Well," Leo gave a sheepish grin. "You know Chris? Chris is my son." He caught Gideon's expression. "Yeah, I'm still getting used to that myself..." This was true; he hadn't known how he had felt when Nixa had let slip that little bombshell.

He had been so torn up inside and then to have Chris reject him over Nixa dying – and so violently with so much malice – had really cut him deeply. Not all of that anger was justified. Leo trembled inwardly, thinking about what his future self had done to deserve that kind of punishment and hate.

The Headmaster blinked. "Well... That explains why he came back to save Wyatt and is so determined to do it... And the others?"

"They're from the future too. They were caught up in some kind of vortex that was meant to bring Paige and Chris back home." Leo realized that he needed to grill one of the three for more information on that story, as his knowledge was patchy about it at best.

"More people from the future..." Gideon's expression darkened slightly and he looked troubled. "Leo... this is..." A jingle sounded, echoing towards the high ceiling. Both of the Elders looked skywards. "They want you, my boy. Go. I'll tell your family where you've gone."

"Maybe I should-" Leo began, wanting to stay with the girls in case they needed him. Maybe he could make up for what happened last night...

"The Elders are your calling, Leo, you can't ignore them." Gideon said sternly, insisting and cutting of any of his student's protests.

"Well if you're sure-" Leo felt torn between 'his calling' and his family. What was a man – or an Elder – supposed to do in this situation?

"I am. You must go now." Another jingle sounded. "Leo, they want you." Gideon said again. Leo took one last reluctant look towards the library and then orbed out. Gideon looked at the space his old student had been standing in and shook his head, heading towards the library with a sweep of his black robes.

Learning to Tango

Ben was curled up on one of the chairs in the library, deeply absorbed in a book. He didn't even notice Gideon stride past him, fanning the crackling and yellowing pages; he just smoothed them down and kept reading, his eyes darting across the text.

Paige and Piper were sitting at opposite ends of one of the work tables, hidden from each other by stacks of tomes. Bridget was standing at a shelf, her head tilted to one side so she could read the spines easier and the top of Chris had apparently vanished between the stacks.

Paige wrinkled her nose and turned a book upside down to see if the diagram made more sense. It didn't. She closed it gently and pushed it to one side, counting herself lucky if she never had to look at it again.

"Hey, Gideon, are you sure some of these books are suitable for the kids? I mean... ew... Aren't there laws on that?"

"What, Paige?" He was distracted, thinking about too many other things at once and not concentrating on the here and now. He looked at the cover of the volume she had been reading. "Oh, I see. Some of the books can adjust their content depending on the age group that picks them up..." He leant on the table. "So tell me, what is it that you're looking for?"

Piper and Paige exchanged looks, and Paige realized that Piper wanted her to tell the Headmaster. Paige sighed inwardly as Piper put her head back into the book and left her sister to explain. "Well, Bridget was kidnapped and the baby isn't hers; I think you got that message back there," She gave a small laugh. "The demon that took her performed the Seven's Oreo ritual-"

"Ossuary, sweetie." Piper corrected gently, turning a page.

"I knew that." Paige said, mentally poking out her tongue at her sister. "Anyway-"

"The Seven's Ossuary?" Gideon sucked in a deep breath and he frowned, a hint of panic in his expression. "That's it; I think you'd better all come with me."

A few minutes later, Paige, Piper, Chris, Ben and Bridget were all in Gideon's office. Piper and Bridget occupied the two chairs in front of Gideon's desk and the Elder had orbed a chair for Paige. He appeared to be composing himself so everyone was quiet and Ben and Chris, who had said that they preferred standing, were leaning against the wall.

All but Ben were watching the older man intently, wondering what he had to say. Ben's eyes were looking around the office, and he caught sight if a large curtain and wondered what it was for. It seemed out of place to him.

The headmaster's office was an odd place, full of weird things. Like the crystal ball on the desk that was doubling as a paperweight. Gideon looked especially foreboding, all in black sitting behind that large desk. He almost looked like he was meditating, so deep was his absorption and Ben had to check that there was nothing on the desktop that Gideon was staring at.

The witch was brought back to reality as Gideon's chair squeaked as the Elder leant backwards and steepled his fingers, a look of profound concentration written across his features still. Bridget began tapping her foot impatiently, looking expectantly at the Headmaster.

"Yeah, hey, hi. Are we gonna talk about my kid?" Bridget said, bored of waiting in silence already. Everyone else but Gideon silently agreed with her, they just didn't have the courage to voice their opinion.

Suddenly, he snapped his fingers and made everyone jump. Bridget pulled a face. She had seen many cheap conjurers but this was scarping the barrel at best... A book thudded to the desk, disturbing a glass of water into a frenzy of ripples.

The headmaster still said nothing, but read the first few lines, seemingly ignoring his guests again, and then closed the book gravely, inhaling and exhaling before dealing out the news. He said slowly, "The baby you're carrying is intended to grow up to be the next Source. This is serious. Something must be done. Wouldn't want the cosmos to stop spinning, would we?"

Both Ben and Chris groaned, closing their eyes. Everyone turned to look at them and they just shrugged sheepishly, exchanging confused looks between themselves.

"Duh." Bridget said, her attitude shining through. "We knew that already."

"Then surely you must know that the baby needs to be destroyed..." Gideon frowned. "We'll make the proper arrangements; you may wish to contact the father..."

"No, no daddy was involved in making this baby." Bridget said. "He was manufactured."

"Then it is even more imperative that he must be killed. That thing is pure evil, not even human. You could shift the balance, wouldn't want that, would we?"

"Oh man..." Ben said, déjà vu beginning to wash over him. It had hit him like a rush of water and blown his legs out from under him. The headache that the coffee had helped to heal had come back with a vengeance.

"What are your problems?" Bridget turned and demanded. "This is about me."

"Never mind." Chris said, kicking Ben's shin. The witch immediately muffled a swear word and glared at Chris. Only Gideon noticed as everyone else had their backs to them.

Gideon cleared his throat, making a mental note to try to find out what the two young witches were up to. "As I was saying... There are some spells I can find and they'll also be some in the library... If you won't think me rude, I'd like to think for a while."

"Of course." Piper said, standing up first. The party left Gideon alone and he fiddled with the blotter, straightening it and orbing the book back to where it had been summoned from by passing his hand over it. Eventually he looked to the ceiling and called, "Sigmund!"

His assistant scuttled into the room, closing the door with a quiet click. "Yes, sir?"

"There's a problem."

"Really, sir?"

"Yes. The baby that young girl is carrying has to be destroyed..." He took an athame from his desk drawer and began spinning it on its point, admiring the glinting steel blade. "And all those people from the future... No regard to the cosmic balance at all, they'll have to go too... And we're going to have to find a way to do that."

Learning to Tango

"What did you kick me for?" Ben asked as Bridget and two of the Charmed Ones made their way back towards the library.

"Because you were being stupid." Chris replied, turning and leaning against the wall to confront Ben.

"I wasn't! I just had this really bad déjà vu and to be honest it kinda hit me in this huge rush..." He shook his head.

"Wait, what? What was it about?"

"Gideon, all those things he said..." Ben frowned, it seemed like there were a lot of people doing that today.

"You mean like 'wouldn't want the cosmos to stop spinning, would we'?"

Ben laughed and nodded. "Heh, yeah... You know I think I might have dreamed that or something. I don't know."

"Me too. When you were out with whatever it was, right? Demon attack or something?"

"I think so." Ben put his head in his hands and tried to hold the details of the dream clear in his mind. "Yeah, we were in P3... There was a chessboard and Gideon. He wasn't making much sense." The images were rapidly slipping away from him and the more he fought to hold them the fewer he seemed to remember.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. Then there was this thing about a milkshake and the glass broke... And I don't remember any more, because as soon as the glass broke I woke up. I think Leo was in it too... Maybe your Mom... And then you were muttering something so I woke you up too."

"We had the same dream. Only mine went on for a little longer."

Ben hadn't seen the odd thing with the ring or seen Bridget die and Chris didn't want to elaborate. Having one friend die was bad enough without dreaming about the murders of the rest of your friends.

"So the demon did something to our - I dunno - collective subconscious?" Ben struggled to find the right words to explain the phenomenon.

"Maybe." Ben could tell Chris had jumped on a train of thought, but Bridget called and it crashed into a smoking, shattered wreck.

That sugary sweet voice was always false, never a good sign. "Chris, can I talk to you for a minute?" She asked, and he turned and gulped. Ben just grinned at him and shrugged, mouthed 'good luck' and walked past Chris into the library.

"Yeah?" Chris entered the library just as Ben began to settle himself onto one of the chairs, but Bridget was nowhere to be found.

"Over here, honey." Bridget announced, and he spotted a head of black hair in the middle of an unoccupied aisle of shelves. Sighing, he walked over to her, wondering what it was that she wanted.

Through the shelves, he heard Ben strike up small talk with Piper and Phoebe. You knew he was bored if he started doing that. "Bridget, what's wrong?"

Bridget was sitting on a chair with its back to the wall, her legs crossed and her face set to angel mode. "So, tell me. How was it for you the other night?"

Chris immediately paled and subconsciously took a step back. "What do you mean?"

"Well you see, all day, these things have been coming back to me. As the hangover-feeling fades, I think I might start to be remembering some things. Or they're getting less fuzzy anyway. And they're not all pretty things."

She got up and slunk over to him, not breaking eye contact with the panic betraying his emotions in his own eyes. Making people squirm was something she was good at.

"I don't-" He began.

"Oh, come on! You're not that DENSE. You may be male, but you're not stupid, Chris!" He blinked and took another step backwards, nearly out of the aisle.

Bridget grabbed a fistful of his jacket and swung him round so Chris now had his back to the wall and she was in the mouth of the aisle, blocking his only exit. Chris looked behind him and realized he had around six steps before he ran out of floor and would be trapped against the wall.

"Ok, Bridget, look..." He began as she started her advance, holding his hands up, palms towards her in his usual gesture of surrender.

How could he be crumbling already? She wasn't even started yet. "I was drunk Chris! I can't believe you!" She yelled shrilly, yanking his hands down to his waist and holding them there, because this display of fear was bugging her.

He used two of his six steps. Four more to go. He'd have to start being more economical with them.

The library, which had been filled with quiet whispering and murmuring and pages turning and books being stacked, fell silent. "Hey!" Bridget yelled to the whole room, turning her back on Chris and waving her hands for emphasis. "Haven't you ever seen an argument before? Mind your own damn business!"

There was a pause and she glared at anyone still giving her eye contact and the noise of books returned – this time only being half-heartedly stacked - and the students put their heads back into their books, their eyes unmoving and their faces grinning.

"Look, Bridget-" Chris tried again, quietly, hoping to diffuse her before she could explode on him. He had a feeling that a room full of teenagers and his mother might not be the best place for her to tell him this.

"I was throwing up and passing out and all you could think about was having sex? You're sick, Chris Halliwell. SICK!"

Chris looked mortified as Bridget got right into his face and he had to step backwards again. There wasn't all that much room left now between where he was standing and the wall. "Maybe we shouldn't do this here-"

"Oh, am I embarrassing you, sweetie? Well isn't that a fucking shame? And no, we're doing this right here and right now, got it?"

"You go, girl!" A voice came from behind a shelf, followed by a few smothered giggles.

While Chris was searching for the source of the voice, hoping to strangle it for egging Bridget on, the hunter ploughed onwards with her tirade.

"So, Chris. You know what I don't get?" She asked in a deceptively mellow tone. "When I'm completely pissed out of my head, you want me. But when I'm sober and normal, you want to go and date that slut Bianca? And marry her? What's with that? Did she get drunk and become another notch on your bedpost too; is that what you find attractive? Is that what it takes to get something out of you?" Bridget practically growled, clenching her fists. "So help me, I'm going to kill you!"

"Bridget, come on. We'll do this later, ok?" Chris pleaded, calculating that he had about three steps until he was pinned. Bridget forced him to take another one. Make that two.

"So why did you go for Bianca over me? Is she prettier than me? She's certainly sluttier than me, so you like sluts, right? Do I need to walk around exposing nearly every body part to the world before you'll love me?" She paused. "Or is it that... is it that she's better than me?" Chris saw the tears threatening in her eyes.

"NO! God Bridget... You ran away, remember? You took off with your parents to wherever the hell you went and left me nothing. Nothing. Almost three goddamn years. You didn't leave me a number, an address-"

"Well I'm sorry that I was sick of fighting after what happened, but I mean BIANCA? Were you crazy? Too many potions exploding in your face?! Too many blows to the head? What were you thinking? And then she tried to kill you. Well isn't that great, although if you treated her like this, I can't say I blame her in the slightest!"

Chris had begun developing a tick in his jaw. "Wyatt had her under his control. That's not my fault." His eyes were blazing now but Bridget refused to back away from the subject; whereas a wiser and less angry person would have seen the warning signs. "If you really want to know, I was there when Wyatt..." Chris cursed his emotions. "I was there wh- when he killed her. Ok, he killed the woman I was gonna marry! And you're standing there trashing her like a jealous bitch!"

Bridget gaped at him, shock very evident on her face. She raised a hand to slap him, but he grabbed it and she wrenched it free. "Me? A jealous bitch?" Her voice had resumed its screeching tone. "Jealous of your fiancée who helped take out half of my squad?" Bridget chuckled derisively. "The fiancée who 'accidentally' let it slip where our weapons cache was?" She took a step toward him. "She was in league with Wyatt for years, Chris and the whole time you didn't see it."

Chris's anger faltered at this new information, but he wasn't about to press the matter. "I don't want to talk to you any more, Bridget."

"I am so not jealous of her and Chris, don't you walk away from me." She grabbed him as he went to storm past her. "I'm not done with you yet!"

He grabbed the wrist attached to the hand that clamped onto his jacket with bruising force on a normal person, rotating her arm away; his anger flaring once more with determination to fight back. Chris took half a step forward. "Moving on, you tackled me, ok?"

"Oh, really." Wrenching her wrist from his grasp, Bridget stumbled back a few steps in effort to regain her balance. Chris mentally calculated. Two more steps for him, four until the wall.

"You couldn't have tried to stop me, could you?" Bridget said, outraged that he had used that as an excuse. She had been drunk. Bridget barely remembered what she had done. How could he use that to justify it? She was furious and her eyes flashed dangerously.

"You're just as strong as me, Get, if not stronger! How does that work?"

This was true. If Bridget took you down, you stayed down, and she knew it. Ha, he had her there. She was trying to think up a response when another student decided to comment.

"Wuss!" The random voice yelled.

"SHUT UP!" Came the reply from both Bridget and Chris. Seething, they turned back to each other.

"I was drunk too, ok? Not as far gone as you, but before I could blink, you'd tied my wrist to the headboard!" She took another step forward then.

"Ah, love..." Ben said, unconcerned. He picked up a book and thumbed through it. Phoebe and Piper looked at him in disbelief and he glanced up with a shrug. "What? You think this is bad? Wait until they start throwing things. They say opposites attract but opposites also spark off some pretty big fights too. Which, come to think of it, might be due to all the unresolved sexual tension that's been building for years." He turned the book upside down. "Ew..."

"Oh, so it's my fault we had sex? Don't try to pin this on me, bud, it takes two to tango, you know!" Bridget yelled, going red in the face. Chris lost his ground as Bridget stepped forward two steps and he stepped backwards the same amount. Two more until the wall – it wasn't looking good.

"Only two to tango?" Ben repeated, sounding mildly surprised as he cocked his head at a different angle, trying to make sense of the book. "Knowing Bridget, I would have thought more... Does anyone actually know what this is a picture of?"

"You know what? I'm just going to say yes to that, because you'll yell at me, whatever the hell I say, so yes." He started moving forward, sending the younger girl back-pedalling several steps. "Yes, it's your own fucking fault. Everything is. You're just going to keep on yelling because you think you're so right, you-"

"I am! You're supposed to be the guy, you could have stopped it! Maybe you could have noticed that I was out of my head drunk!"

She hurled some kind of glass orb at Chris and he instinctively froze it, grabbing it out of the air and slamming it down onto one of the shelves hard enough for it to crack. Bridget had gone from red to slightly purple right now and her breaths were rattling inwards.

"See what they put me through? I guess it's too late to tell you that you should have hidden anything expensive..." Ben said, setting the book down. Paige cocked an eyebrow at him and Piper looked baffled. His only response was to shrug again.

"Oh. Wait, I forgot. You were being the guy, that's why you didn't stop it. You wanted me to get into your pants!" Chris looked at her in disbelief, but the affect was ruined as finally got to the wall. She had forced him to retreat until he had nowhere further to go. "And because you were being a guy, I, as in me, Bridget, got pregnant. And stop being such a coward!" He had his hands up again and she took a swing at him, knocking him over the chair that Bridget had previously occupied.

"Dammit, you know what? I tried to stop you, but you had me tied up and were on top of me before I could blink!" There were very few people in the vicinity that didn't pull a face at that last comment.

There, one step away from the wall. He could win this thing back.

Ben frowned disapprovingly at them. "Okay. Now its just pride fighting." He looked at the two sisters. "I'm putting my money on Chris for this one."

"Then... then you're a slow blinker, ok? Fuck you, Chris, just fuck you."

"You already did, you stupid bitch. How else did you get knocked up?"

"Mind your own fucking business! And watch your damn language!" Bridget screamed, looking around the library, glaring daggers at anyone daring to be looking at them. "I hate you!" She grabbed a book and threw it at Chris, but she missed and its spine broke against the wall. Then she grabbed another one and threw it at him again. "I hate you!" Chris was prepared this time and sent it skidding harmlessly onto an end table. "I hate you!" She yelled.

"Is it too late to shift my money to Bridget?"

Bridget then did something that no one – above all herself – had expected and began to cry. "I fucking hate you..." Slowly, tears made her way down her face and she grabbed another book, throwing it and it missed Chris by a mile.

"Hey, Come on." Chris said gently, melting at the sight of her tears. Bridget didn't cry. This was so unusual for her it was almost scary. He walked towards her slowly and she half-heartedly began to hit him on the chest, continuing her mumblings of 'I hate you'. Chris winced as she hit one of his bruises.

"Stupid hormones. I can't hit someone with a book properly." Chris began to methodically wipe her tears away; looking at her with such hurt in his eyes that Bridget felt her own anger begin to dissolve.

"Look, I'm really sorry, ok? I am. I'm sorry for dragging you guys here. I'm sorry about you getting snatched at the demon... We - I made a mistake." He admitted at last. She had already exploded and it was too late to diffuse her now, but he could still try and do cleanup duties post the blast.

Bridget looked into the green irises with longing. "No, you were right to start with. We made the mistake, together, ok? Our fault. But that's all going to be fixed, ok?" She paused. "Oh my God, who am I kidding? Our baby's evil!"

"Well maybe he's not evil. Maybe he's just having a really bad day." Bridget gave him a condescending look and then laughed, shaking her head and swiping a hand across her eyes. "If it helps, I'm sorry I got your pregnant."

"And I'm sorry I tackled you and tied your wrist to the headboard." She rested her head on his chest and fiddled with a button on his jacket as he smoothed her hair and wrapped his arms around her.

"Better now?" Chris asked tentatively and she pouted, but nodded.

"Yes." She buried her face in the warmth of his shirt. "But if you do something like this again, I'm going to castrate you or something, ok?"

"Ouch... I think she might actually follow through on that threat..." Ben said, watching the argument cool rapidly before his eyes and wincing sympathetically with Chris's situation. The surrounding vicinity now appeared safe again for fragile objects that were commonly used as missiles and it was as if the room let out a collective breath.

Then, "It's over? Come on, I wanted to see the fat chick kick his ass!"

"Uh-oh." Ben said. Bridget was so gonna pummel that kid. He really didn't know what was coming, did he? He hoped that the student had a good insurance policy because boy was he going to need it...

"Did you... Did you hear that?" Bridget said incredulously. "He called me fat... Right! Which one of you spotty little children was that? I'm not fat, I'm PREGNANT!" Bridget wasn't aware of it, but a fireball appeared in her hand, crackling and blazing orange. "Come on then! Who?"

"Bridget..."

She rounded on Chris again. "What?" She caught sight of the ball of flame in her hand and watched it revolve. "Interesting..." She blinked and then turned around again. "Now... If one of you freaks doesn't own up, I'm going to toast you all, you got that?"

"Uh..." She silenced Chris with a glare. Chris was slightly comforted by the fact that this was magic school, and that no one could die here. But with Bridget wielding demonic powers, he wasn't completely sure how that rule would work out for the poor kid, or kids, that got blasted. He shrugged.

"It was him."

"Thanks a lot, dude." The guy shoved forwards was someone Paige recognized from her short-lived role as a teacher. It was Slick.

"If that boy could keep out of trouble for just a day he could really get his grades up." Paige muttered.

"Oh my, shouldn't we be stopping this?" Piper asked.

Paige put her arm around Piper's shoulders. "That's all up to you with the freezing power, isn't it?"

"But... But... I can't! I'm gonna be a grandma! Oh God, I'm not old enough... Do I look old enough?" Piper began hyperventilating.

"No, not now. Mental breakdowns are for later. Shush, you might wanna focus." Paige suggested lightly.

"You're fried." Bridget snarled, drawing back her arm.

"Come on, lady, it was just a bit of fun. You don't wanna hurt me." Bridget threw the fireball and immediately the room froze with the flaming weapon halfway between Bridget and Slick.

"Nice job, Piper." Paige complimented. Then she paused. "Wait... Did you freeze Chris? Can you even do that?"

"No, that was me, I'm afraid, Paige." Paige, Piper and Ben turned to see Gideon striding towards them from the doorway. "I was rather concerned that this whole thing might be upsetting the students."

"Well... no, I think it's upsetting Piper more." Paige said. Her sister had just taken a compact from a frozen girl's hand and was pushing her hair this way and that with her fingertips. Poor Piper. Perhaps this was a sign of her brain not being able to process all these surprises.

"Can you see any grey hairs? Because Grams went grey pretty early on and Prue always said I was most like her..."

"Piper, the girl's gonna want to line her other eye when she's unfrozen." Paige informed the oldest Halliwell. Piper looked down at the teenager who had an eye pencil poised ready.

"She can wait." She said dismissively, now checking neurotically for crow's feet by stretching the skin.

"Well, I must say, Gideon, that you have one bad ass freezing power." Paige said, turning away from her sister.

"Thank you Paige."

"Do you realize that I've been wanting to do that for probably more than eight years?" Ben said. "I mean all, they do is bicker, make up, hang out and then fight some more... There was one time Bridget had Chris in this servitude thing... Wait... I was in that too..." Ben shook his head. "But, the point is that at this rate I'll be going grey before Piper does..." Piper didn't notice the comment, something Paige knew Ben should be thankful for. "Hey, dude, speaking of grey hairs, you have one just there." Ben told Gideon, pointing to his own temple to indicate the spot. Gideon gave him one withering glance and passed his hand vaguely in Ben's direction, freezing the witch in place.

"Oh my, Young people today." Gideon said heavily, rubbing his forehead and closing his eyes.

"What? You said 'young people today', right? So you don't think we're young? You mean I'm not young anymore?" Piper put the mirror closer to her face and pushed a bag under an eye with her finger. "Oh, maybe I do look like a grandma."

Paige crossed the room with several quick strides, snatched the mirror from her sister, snapped the compact shut and tossed it back down onto the girl's lap. "Piper! Will you please just shut up! You look fabulous. Really. Ok, just so you know worrying about things gives you wrinkles so just straighten your forehead out right now and breathe. Yes. Breathe and let it go..." She looked at Gideon. "Man, you know the situation is desperate when I'm the only one who keeps my head..."

"I think you'll find these sufficient, Paige." Gideon said, waving his hand in her direction. A stack of books materialized in her arms and made her knees buckle and she tipped them all onto the table.

"More than sufficient, thanks, Gideon." She said, blowing hair out of her face. "Whew!"

"Would you mind taking them all home, Paige; the students have had far too much excitement for one day."

"And we're really sorry about that," Paige said. "Dammit, Piper!" She orbed the compact into her hand and set it down on the table, without turning round.

"Hey! I wasn't done with that..."

"Yes you were. Now help me with these, will ya?"

"Paige, I'm not a packhorse..."

Paige sighed heavily. "Gideon, would you mind, you know?" He twinkled his fingers and the books orbed out. "Oh thank you so much... Right, ok... Bridget and Chris... Ben..." The three of them orbed into either her or Piper's grasp. "And fireball..." Mid-orb Gideon clapped and the orbs died.

"Thanks for the books, Gideon." Piper said, taking hold of Piper, Chris and Ben. Piper took Bridget with her free hand.

"They won't be a fine for late returns, will there?" Paige said with a slight laugh as she disappeared.

"Will those books help them, sir?" Sigmund asked, appearing from around the doorframe.

"Oh no... They'll find nothing of use in those." Gideon said, a smile twisting his face as he made his athame appear and tested the balance. "There aren't many things that will kill that baby now..."

Learning to Tango

"There's something here..." Ben said, shifting the lamp nearer to the edge of its table to cast a better pool of light on the book. The attic glowed with the luminescence of various bulbs and everyone had been assigned a couple of books each, all except Bridget, who was napping, and Leo, who hadn't returned from the Elders.

"Is there?" Phoebe said dejectedly, adjusting her glasses. Then, "Are you sure these are the right books?"

"No, Phoebe, the mailman left them on the foyer table for us," Paige said, her sarcasm enough to wound Phoebe, if only superficially.

"Well there doesn't seem to be anything useful in here!" The middle witch snapped back, frustrated, slamming the book closed and tossing her glasses onto the couch next to her. She gave a frustrated growl before rubbing her head and her eyes.

"I think I found something," Ben repeated, marking his point on the page with his finger so he could look up without loosing his place.

"Where?" Chris asked, tuning out Phoebe and Paige's bickering. Chris had been ruthlessly searching for the past hour, snapping at them every so often. His short-temper and the fact that he was easily irritable were understandable. He had just found out that he had managed to get one of his best friends pregnant and that his future son was evil because of some stupid ritual that he had never heard of before the day before Bridget was taken. Like he didn't already have to deal with evil family members.

"Yeah, where?" Piper asked, walking over. Anything that relieved the boredom and helplessness she was feeling now would help. Everything was turning up blanks or dead ends; everywhere they turned there was a new brick wall to stop them. She had thought that maybe Gideon had given them the wrong books, but now there was something, so Phoebe was wrong. This was good because she didn't want to be the one who was wrong, not this time. It was someone else's turn for that.

"It's like a siphoning spell or something..." Ben said vaguely, moving his finger to let Piper see. She was leaning over his shoulder now and her hair came loose and tumbled onto the page. She swept it angrily back behind her ear.

"That's not much help to us, sweetie..." She said gently, although her voice was frayed and some of the impatience shone through. They had been searching for so long, and this was the best they could come up with? She could be asleep right now, maybe with a jar of previously full anti-wrinkle night cream sitting half-empty on her nightstand. And cucumbers. People in salons always got cucumber slices for their eyes. Maybe some green face pack gunk. That would help too. Anything to stop her looking like a grandmother before her time.

"It is, because we can siphon off the kid's powers into someone else..." Ben said, putting his finger back on the page again and running it down a column, skimming the information over.

"Any volunteers?" Paige asked dryly, her argument with Phoebe finished. Her hope at having found something was fading fast. There wasn't going to be anyone who wanted that kind of evil power in them. There weren't many people that could control that amount of power. They packed a punch as the Charmed Ones but she knew first hand the power of the Source, and it scared her, and apparently that kid had all of that.

"Oh... Well I thought it was a good idea..." Ben said as his shoulders slumped. He pulled a face and reached out to turn the page when Piper suddenly slammed her hand down on the book and made him jump.

"No, no, no!" She said, obviously having a brainwave. "What if we summon a demon, give it the kid's powers and then..." She gestured as if she was going to blow something up, "Kaboom!"

"You know... that might just work..." Chris said, sounding impressed and relieved at the same time. Finally, here was progress, a way of moving forward and actually doing something.

"Ok, I'll get the crystals!" Phoebe called dibs on the job immediately and took the three or so steps to the cabinet with the crystals in, balancing the box as she closed the door. "I'm done." She sat back down and rested the back of her had on the top of the couch. "Mm..."

She was dog-tired and had a headache from looking at her monitor all day. And she knew she was an advice columnist but by Gods those people had problems. To be honest she was beginning not to want to know anymore, but Ask Phoebe was so damn popular that she had to keep it up, especially with Paige only doing temp jobs and Piper about to stop work at the club for her maternity leave in a few months time... Well at least they were all forewarned this time, courtesy of the baby himself.

"There's a purple potion in that cabinet too. The exploding one..." Piper said and Paige grabbed three vials off of the top shelf and tossed one to Chris and Piper, sliding the third into her pocket for herself.

"Um... Who's going to wake Bridget up?"

"Someone with an exploding potion," Ben said promptly. Bridget was dangerous when woken from sleeping, and hormonal Bridget was going to be thermonuclear when she was roused. Glad Paige hadn't given him a potion he said, "See you later, Chris." And grinned at his friend.

Chris rolled his eyes and left the room, and they heard him cross the landing downstairs before turning back to plan their battle stations.

Chris waked through the dim hall downstairs and pushed open the door into the darkened room. The yellow light of a streetlamp cut across the rumpled and most definitely empty bed. A pillow was on the floor and the sheets were creased, with the comforter pushed right down to the end of the mattress.

"Bridget?" Chris called, walking through the room. The bathroom door was ajar and he could see that it was dark inside – she was not there.

Where was she? The bed looked slightly slept in but Bridget wasn't in it. Had something happened to her? His throat felt dry and his pulse quickened slightly. He turned and walked back out the door and down the upstairs hall, looking in all of the rooms as he went, panic building when he saw that they were empty.

What had happened to her? Was it something demonic? Had she stopped being able to defend herself because of her baby? His heart thudded still faster as guilt overtook panic. Technically the baby was his fault, and if she'd been taken because of it...

His eyes caught movement but it was just the curtains hanging at the balcony door flapping in the wind. The French windows were open and Chris could feel a cool breeze blowing down the corridor, enough to stir the hairs on his arms to stand slightly on end.

Chris licked his lips and walked over to the doors, looking out. Bridget wouldn't have done anything stupid, would she? He thought she was over the anger and the fear by venting it all. Ok, it had been on him but if it stopped her doing something idiotic then...

He gulped, seeing Bridget sitting on the low wall, bringing back memories of a Bridget with a tear-streaked face standing on a very different type of ledge.

"Bridget?"

"Yeah?"

"What are you doing?" He walked slowly closer to her but she kept her back to him, blocking him out.

"Afraid I might leap off?" She gave a cruel snort of laughter but still wouldn't face him.

"No, I just wondered where you were, that's all." Chris felt bad lying to her, but telling her that he was worried that she might have been about to jump wasn't the way to go – Bridget hated people second-guessing her actions before she'd had chance to think them through herself properly.

He could see her cheek twitch and he assumed she was giving the night a wry smile. "Ah, feeling guilty?" She asked.

"No," Chris lied, although he was and had been. "Wait - that was a trick question, right? Yes." He shook his head. "I don't know?"

"You don't have a clue, do you?" Bridget said, with another, slightly happier laugh. Chris could almost see her in his head, rolling her eyes. He didn't need to see her face to tell what she would be doing.

"Is this another trick question?" He asked, suddenly sounding confused. This was just one big mystery after another. He wasn't sure what Bridget wanted him to say.

"Maybe. Now what do you want?" She hopped down off of the ledge and shuffled over to him. Her eyes were puffy and he wondered if she's been crying again or was just tired.

The folded up Kleenex scrunched in her palm was all the explanation he needed. She looked down and used her finger to poke the corners of the white tissue back into her fist, rendering it invisible. Chris pretended that he hadn't seen. He cleared his throat, trying to remember what it was he had to say.

"Well it's not so much me as them. They want you in the attic."

"Then lead the way... I'll be up as soon as I've rested halfway there..."

Learning to Tango

Paige looked at Phoebe, who still had her eyes closed, and threw a crystal at Ben. He fumbled with it before catching it.

"Hey, I wasn't ready!" Paige cocked an eyebrow at him and he looked to the floor, placing his crystal on the boards and kicking the rug out of the way. "Who are we summoning?" He asked, changing the subject from his poor skills in catching.

"The nearest low level demon," Piper said, flipping through the pages of the Book of Shadows for ideas on the summoning spell. She knew Phoebe was tired, and that she had worked long and hard today but she could at least do something. Piper's mind wasn't on rhyming; it was on crow's feet and laughter lines.

"Are you sure you're putting that spell together right?" Phoebe asked, opening an eye.

'Ah, it lives...' Piper thought bitterly, looking up

"You could come and do it if you could be bothered to move, Pheebs."

"Sorry... Not happening for a while..."

Piper bit on the inside of her cheek to keep back a retort and continued scribbling on her pad as Phoebe closed her eyes again. She scribbled the last word with flourish and put the pen back on the stand next to the paper they kept there.

They started a checklist, running it through. Summoning a demon instead of letting them drop in randomly was something that required great thought and planning, and they had to be prepared.

"Spell's done," she announced happily. It might not be a Phoebe-worthy masterpiece but it would do its job, she was sure of that. Well, sort of sure. She hoped it would do its job.

"Cage is ready," Paige called back, still crouched, ready to pounce and slam down the crystal.

"So is Bridget," Chris told them, climbing up to the attic and joining in the list. Bridget was the last thing they needed to get the show on the road.

When she didn't appear Ben asked, "Where is she?" He looked behind Chris at the empty stairs.

"Coming!" Was the reply from somewhere downstairs.

Bridget was taking the time to dry her eyes again and stuff the tissue in her pocket so it didn't betray her emotions to everyone else as it had done to Chris. Finally she composed her features and looked up the attic stairs.

Piper paused and began to absently fold the corners of the paper. As soon as she noticed what she was doing she announced, "Well I'm going to get started..." She wanted to try out her spell. She liked it, whatever Phoebe thought of it.

"I call upon the Halliwell line,

And ask them all to help me find

A low-level demon that can be

Vanquished without the Power of Three," she recited, waiting for results.

"That was your master spell?" Phoebe said, opening an eye again and giving Piper an odd, almost condescending, look.

"Well if you can do better you try next time, ok?" Piper said, sighing irritably. All she'd done was sit on her ass; she had no right to complain about shoddy rhyming. With a shower of tiny flaming rocks a demon appeared and Paige placed the last crystal down, standing up and dusting her hands off.

"Bridget, you're not that pregnant," Ben said, rolling his eyes and turning his back on the demon to call out the door.

"Where am I?" The demon asked, staring around the room. He tested the cage with a long claw and got shocked. He growled, withdrawing his hand sharply.

"Oh really? You want me to come up there and find a way for you to try this thing out?"

"Uh... Well I'd like you to come up here..." Ben said slowly. "We'll talk about the other part then, ok?"

"You're so funny!" Bridget called, the sarcasm dripping from her voice enough to fill several storm drains. She began to make her way up the stairs.

"I know. Glad you noticed!" He shouted back, giving a small laugh. "It will always make her hurry if she gets to hit me when it's over," he explained to the Charmed Ones, before turning back to the stairs. Bridget was soon coming through the door and sure enough she hit him on the shoulder as soon as she could reach.

"Ooh! Demon..." Her face lit up and she took a step closer, peering at it as if it were a fascinating discovery. "Can I kill it? Can I? Please?" She looked to them as if she were a small girl who wanted to keep the kitten that had wandered into her yard, or wanting to open the presents under the tree early.

"Not yet," Chris told her, watching her pout and flop onto a chair.

"What about... now?"

"We're going to give it the baby's powers," Piper explained to stop Bridget asking over and over if she could kill the demon.

"You're all gonna die, witches!" The demon snarled. He was ignored or went unheard.

"Won't that make the demon like, really, really powerful? As in Source powerful?" She put a hand to her stomach without noticing.

"Well, technically yes, but..."

"No offence, guys, but I don't think it's a good idea giving a demon that much power..." Bridget looked troubled and the witches began to wonder if their plan had one or two major flaws. Flaws the size of manholes, perhaps.

And what if something went wrong? Could it hurt the baby? And what if, after the demon got all those powers, he went and killed them all? She wasn't sure that they were assessing the risks properly, and this was her talking, one of the biggest risk-takers she knew.

"We're gonna kill it afterwards," Piper said, brandishing her potion. "See?"

Bridget still looked sceptical. "Well you're the witches..."

"This is her way of saying 'on your heads be it'," Chris informed them with a slight smile.

"I warned you," the demon threatened.

"And we heard already!" Piper snapped back. "Paige, poke Phoebe."

The witch-whitelighter did as she was told and the middle sister groaned and sat up. "What?"

"Spell." Piper said, impatient. Phoebe had been half-asleep, not even concentrating on her surroundings.

Ben handed them the book and stepped back to let them do their work, watching the sisters bend over the page. He didn't know if even the Charmed Ones could pull off this kind of magic, but then he'd very rarely seen them in full action. They might be able to do it; it depended on how much power the baby had already accumulated from Bridget and from the ritual.

"So we're only calling for some divine goddess help now? What about when we might actually have needed it?" Paige griped, starting to recite the words with her sisters.

"Goddess Hecate I call upon thee,

To hear my words, to come to me.

Channel these powers, take them now.

Transfer to thee."

The chanting filled the attic room, and the three felt their hair shift as a current of air passed over them. Chris jumped out of the way as it dislodged a lamp and knocked it to the floor in a spray of sparks.

The Charmed Ones began repeating the spell, their words ominous and foreboding as the air became close and pressured in the room. Paige could feel her hair standing on end with the electric power that their words were providing. The last time she had felt like this she had been calling upon the Halliwell matriarchs to help vanquish the Source.

The end table the lamp had been on fell over too and Ben stepped out of the way. Bridget was sitting up in her chair, her eyes glazed over, breathing faster as every word the Charmed Ones spoke became louder and louder until it filled their ears.

"Stop!" Chris yelled suddenly as a bolt of lightning emerged from Bridget's stomach and surrounded the three chanting witches with a crackling blue-silver cage. The power intensified as the words became stronger and Chris went over to his family. "I said stop! You've got to stop this!" A miniature bolt hit him in the stomach and blew him into the air and over the back of a chair.

The baby Bridget was carrying was a Halliwell, and now it was between the Charmed Ones and a Halliwell with the power of a Source behind it. Chris didn't know what would happen if you pitted a family against each other like that, fighting your own bloodline could end up with dire consequences.

"Look at Bridget..." Ben almost whispered, his throat dry as the very air began to sing and scream with the raw energy pulsating through the room. Chris got up off of the floor and righted the chair, looking in Ben's direction.

His friend was standing transfixed, looking into the Hunter's eyes, his mouth slightly open in fear. Chris swallowed, wanting to step towards her but finding he couldn't make his legs move.

Bridget's eyes were completely black and she was gasping for air. As they watched, she reached out for the electricity and grabbed it with her right hand and twisted viciously, tugging at the ties binding her to the Charmed Ones.

The cage around them faltered and Bridget used both hands to manipulate the energy. Chris and Ben could smell the searing flesh from where they were and it was a stomach-churning stench.

Suddenly, the lightning snapped and the cage disappeared with a sudden flash. Bridget was holding two fireballs when the flash died. She threw the first one at the book, which burst into a violent blaze of crackling flames, forcing Paige to shove it off of her lap and hurriedly onto the floor. Bridget reloaded and threw one fiery orb at the Charmed Ones.

Paige orbed her and her sisters out and the fireball hit the couch, giving a scared squeak. As she re-materialized beside Chris and Ben, Piper groaned.

"There's only so much abuse the Halliwell furniture can take, you know?" She said with a sigh, looking at the now-trashed upholstery that had been only recently repaired. There weren't many more places around that would fix their things any more without getting suspicious as to why any furniture in their home ended up burnt or broken.

"Fire extinguisher!" Paige called, orbing the red appliance into her hands from the corner of the room and setting a white cloud on the flaming book. Piper kept one in every single room in the Manor, downstairs in some rooms there were two. Her motto of the past two years had become 'forewarned is forearmed' and she was forever putting out fires with them to prove to anyone who was watching their usefulness.

Bridget threw her next fireball at Ben, which threw him into the wall beside the door with a cracking of timber and a cloud of dust. The hunter's next target was the Charmed Ones again, but the extinguisher orbed out and hit her round the face before she could aim.

Bridget's head snapped back and she staggered, but in one fluid movement her neck turned back around. Her weapon streaked away without guidance and smashed a hole through the attic wall big enough to drive the Halliwell SUV through.

Piper gaped, outraged, and flicked her hands at Bridget. She froze momentarily – long enough for them all to give a collective sigh of relief – before twisting her torso in slow-motion. She sprang back to live, tossing a fireball at Paige.

"I said you'd be sorry, WITCHES!" The demon yelled from his cage. It was at this point a further eleven demons chose to shimmer into the attic.

"Demons sure know how to choose a bad time, don't they?" Paige asked, throwing Bridget's fireball at one in a cloud of orbs and killing it. She heard someone groan but she couldn't tell who it was.

"You couldn't have waited until later, could you? I mean what did you do, bring your whole order or something?" Ben moaned, sending one back to hell with a fiery blast. He heaved himself up from the floor, brushing plaster dust out of his hair.

Seeing two more fireballs going the girls' way, Chris deflected them both at the various demons in the room, vanquishing all that they hit. He could see how powerful the fireballs were, and he wouldn't want to get in the way of one.

He could see only one demon left when an energy ball hit him from behind. As he went down he hit his head on the fallen end table, sending dizzying waves of pain through his skull. His vision started to tunnel as he fought unconsciousness and the demon that had hit him blew apart, although whether it was from Bridget, his Mom or Ben he couldn't tell anymore.

"You ok, Chris?" Ben asked, kneeling next to his friend and finding a bleeding gash on his forehead. He looked up to see a demon standing over him with an energy ball and a grin. "Great... Just great..." Bits of his molecules quickly scattered with a flick of Piper's hands.

"How's Chris?"

"Out cold," Ben replied. "But he's had wor- Piper, watch it!" She turned too late and he flamed a fireball, which knocked it off course and into his side. It blasted him sideways and into a pile of junk including two dining room chairs that had matched the dining room table when Grams had been a little girl and a typewriter.

"Were these chairs antique or something?" Ben winced. "Cuz they looked expensive..."

"Why - isn't – she – hitting Chris?" Paige asked, grunting out her words as she dodged fireballs and orbed them away from her. Bridget hadn't once aimed for Chris yet.

"Well I think this is the baby doing this, and the baby must like his daddy..." Ben voiced his opinion; glad he was wearing a jacket when he saw jagged splinters sticking out of the thick material from the broken chair.

He froze another demon solid and Paige shattered him with the extinguisher, which was fast becoming her favourite weapon in the fight. Piper blew another demon up with one hand and froze a fireball with the other, ducking under the fireball and reanimating it so it blasted a rocker into several different flaming pieces. Paige remembered her potion and threw it, killing a demon. Piper did likewise, blasting it with her power for good measure.

They were slowly gaining the upper hand in the battle, all except for Bridget who didn't seem to have her loyalties correct. She was blasting any demons that tried to hurt her or anyone else in the room, but she was blasting the Charmed Ones as well for trying to take away the baby's powers.

"Crystals, circle!" Paige called, tired of orbing out of the way of fireballs. She blew hair out of her face in relief as Bridget became entrapped, and she threw the last fireball into a demon, vanquishing it. The cage trapped Bridget, but the disappearance of its confines set demon free but he shimmered out, leaving the bookcase behind him to turn into a block of ice.

"Damn, I missed..." Ben said, getting up from the wreckage of the chairs. "Whoa."

The demon was behind him, a rough arm around the witch's throat and a knife at Ben's neck, twisting both of the man's arms behind his back with a scaly, long-clawed free hand and rendering his powers useless.

"I want to know what it is that you witches have got going on here and I want to know it now, or ice boy here dies, ok?" He pressed the blade to Ben's neck and drew a line of blood to emphasize his point.

The steel bit too deeply for Ben's liking at the end of the cut, and he went limp and as he reappeared in a blur of red he heard one if not both of his shoulders tear out with the sudden weight. Grimacing he picked up a broken chair leg and rammed it through the demon's back, poking his real back with the tip of the make-shift stake. The demon crumbled to dust. His body fell to the floor and he winced again before disappearing, waking up to find that his neck had been nicked quite deeply by the athame and his left shoulder had popped out.

He looked up at the Charmed Ones, who were still being glared at by Bridget. But the black-eyes hunter couldn't do a thing from inside her prison. Paige was putting all of her weight on one leg and holding together a cut arm with her hand. Piper seemed relatively unscathed apart from a tear in her shirt and a graze on her cheek, and Phoebe was sitting down on the couch, her shoe in one hand and the snapped heel in the other, mentally adding up the cost.

Ben put one hand on his useless arm and shoved upwards, the ball and socket joint popping back into place with screaming pain and a dizzying bout of nausea. He'd probably torn some of the tendons as well. If he could swallow his pride long enough to get Leo to look at it he could save himself a good few weeks of pain. Unfortunately he wasn't sure if he could do that.

"What's wrong with Chris?" Paige asked, limping to the couch and licking her fingers, pinching out the last glowing ember. On the floor Chris tossed and turned.

She had seen him like this a couple of times, in one he'd had his powers stolen by Bianca, the other he'd been shot trying to save them from their desire worlds. The witch-whitelighter looked concernedly down at her nephew.

"Do you think he's dreaming?" Phoebe asked, setting her shoe aside and looking down at him as well.

Piper was the one who knelt next to him and smoothed back his hair, and saw that he looked hot. She struggled with his jacket until Paige orbed it into her sister's arms. Piper immediately propped it under his neck.

"He'll be ok, right? It looks like he's just dreaming..." Piper said, although she couldn't hide the concern in her voice.

"Not another one," Ben groaned. "Those are nothing but trouble, trust me."

Learning to Tango

Right, here we are. If you're still alive after the length of that I want to say my thanks to:

Claddagh Ring: - 12 days... Not bad considering the length of the chapter, lol. Thanks for reviewing I'm glad you liked the Chris/Leo fighting and I'm sorry about school... Ugh... I go back a week today, scary stuff. It's my last year...

Dark Fires: - Lol, good. Thanks a lot.

Crimson Amber: - :: Tilts head : Maybe yes, maybe no. You'll have to keep reading and find out, lol. That's all I'm saying here. :: Zips mouth :: Thanks a lot for reviewing.

Rafiki: - Lol, sorry. Maybe another time, ok?

Pixie Wildfire: I hurried, I hurried! Lol, thanks.

Dominique1: - Lol! I think your friends might be right, very right, lol. Yeah, I think it should have happened more too. Ah, the world of fic. Great what you can do, huh? Was ten days quick enough for you?

Cherry7up56: - Lol, thanks a lot.

Charmed Amber: - I think we're finally getting Broadband soon... Ugh, thank Gods for that I need speed!

And there you have it, review if you've got here without dying.

DISCLAIMER: The author recommended a beverage of your choice and is in no way responsible for the death of his readers.

Lol, joking.

Latah,

Twisted Flame