Phoebe and Paige materialized in all their squabbling glory in the kitchen. They had been to the jail and found out that Ben and Chris had already been bailed out, and because of this detour, Phoebe had missed her after-lunch photo shoot and Elise had told her to just go home because after wasting the photographer's time there was no point in her staying.

Not that that was particularly fair. It wasn't as if it was Phoebe that ordered a new billboard practically every month. It was her column and she knew that the readers she got for it were mainly because of Elise's advertising… but still. She liked to think that her readers came to her for her good advice and not the amount of skin she showed off on her billboards.

"Well you know what, Phoebe? You're the one who's supposed to be psychic, not me," Paige huffed sarcastically as she let go of Phoebe.

"Well I'm sorry to inconvenience you Miss Perfect, but even when I could get premonitions, they never told me things that I wanted to know!" the middle sister shot back, obviously irritated.

As Phoebe turned on her designer heel, Paige stuck out her tongue at her sister's back and followed her through the dining room, waving her hands for emphasis. "Okay, firstly, it's not like the photographer didn't reschedule and, please, Elise has been mad at you before. Like, practically every week, so why are you-?"

"Hey, what's all of this noise about?" Piper asked, coming down the stairs. She was dressed for the night at P3 and holding Wyatt's bottle in one hand. "I only just got Wyatt off to sleep and I promised that nanny that this would be one night he would sleep right through."

"We're just discussing how Paige made me miss a photo shoot," Phoebe said, glaring at her sister.

"Well I'm sorry for wanting to bail the guys out of jail."

"Hey, hey, what's with the bickering all of a sudden?" Piper asked, looking from one of her sisters to the other.

"I don't know; you'll have to ask Phoebe."

"Well people could be asking Phoebe if Phoebe was still at work instead of being sent home!" Phoebe fought the urge to stamp her foot. Looking childish would only make her lose ground. And it might break her heel.

"Children, shush," Piper mimed zipping her mouth closed, holding onto the banister with her other hand until Paige and Phoebe stopped arguing. "Now go upstairs, put on some party clothes and get ready. We're all off to P3 for a nice, happy, NORMAL and most definitely demonic free evening. Go on, scat!" She pointed up the stairs and, their eyes still full of argumentative spirit, the sisters walked side by side up the stairs, each trying to reach the top before the other without making it look like that that was what they were trying to do.

As her sisters walked past her, Piper allowed herself a satisfied smile as she continued down the rest of the stairs and to the kitchen with the empty bottle in her hand.

Learning to Tango

"Would it have killed you to let us orb?" Paige demanded from the backseat of Piper's SUV as the oldest sister swung the vehicle into her parking space and killed the engine.

"Normal people don't orb, Paige. That's one of the reasons why people in our house are so hard to keep track of. Normal people use handy inventions called doors, they don't do instant translocation."

Paige rolled her eyes. "And how come Phoebe got shotgun?"

"Because I'm older than you…" Phoebe was checking her reflection in the mirror in the sun visor and took the opportunity to stick her tongue out at Paige.

"And, therefore, more wrinkly, no?" Paige quipped, a sarcastic smile lighting her face as she reached for the door. Phoebe narrowed her eyes at her sister while Piper rolled hers, and Paige slid out of the car and led the way across the parking lot walking backwards, poking her tongue out at Phoebe.

"You know, I think Wyatt's twice as mature than you two," Piper said, slamming the car door and locking the SUV with the remote, a weary, exasperated tone filling her voice. You would think that they might have matured as they neared thirty. Apparently not.

"And twice as cute and loveable," Paige admitted, rolling her eyes. "We know."

A wave of noise hit them as they used the private side entrance and as Piper closed and locked the door behind them the band only got louder.

"Great band," Paige commented, already dancing slightly on the spot.

Piper said nothing, only smiled as they picked their way through the crowd, holding onto Phoebe's hand in an attempt not to get swept away from each other, working their way towards the curtained VIP area at the other end of the club. Paige paused to catch the eyes of a guy on the dance floor and he grinned back, before a woman grabbed his arm and led him further into the centre of the crush.

She pulled a disappointed face. The best ones were always taken. She looked back at where her sisters had been standing and there was a surging mass of bodies going to and from the dance floor. Well it was nice of them to wait for her at least… She rolled her eyes quickly, keeping the time that they saw blackness to a minimum should any cutie want to try and catch them. No such luck, at least not yet…

Around the bar in the center all of the stools were full – not unusual – but young woman filled them all. Raising an eyebrow, Paige began making her way purposefully towards the bar. Maybe Piper had hired not only a great band but a new bartender too. And since the boss was already taken maybe the boss's sister could get a whirl…

Paige was not above subtly using her elbows once in a while and soon found herself squeezed between two stools leaning on the bar.

"Paige!" She looked up from her purse, zipping it closed and smiling at the fact that she was not another face in this sea of young anonymity. Basking in jealous looks, she glanced up into Chris's face.

She could almost hear the needle racing off of the record as the moment cut. Her heart sank. Great, so she was known to her nephew. That made her feel so pretty.

"Hey- Chris? Piper gave you a job here?" Hm, her sister had kept that one quiet.

She didn't think Chris had heard her because from under the counter he pulled two bottles and went to the other side of the wall of central lava lamps, using an opener fixed on the counter to pop the tops and then he handed them out.

"It's more to do with the fact that she put our bail on her credit card," Ben told her quietly. Or as quietly as you could in a packed club while having to compete with music. She blinked. That would explain it. He scratched the back of his head and looked sheepish and bewildered at the same time. And overwhelmed. The poor kid looked very overwhelmed.

Okay, she had no intention of flirting with the guys but she couldn't help her self-esteem cranking up a notch, as the jealous looks intensified. These girls thought that she could be a threat to them. All of them younger than her and wearing clothes that looked like they were here to go trawling for sailors as well. A blonde narrowed her eyes at her and Paige snorted. Dye job.

"Yeah, she's got you a little trapped there, I guess." Paige commented. "Can I get a mineral water or something?"

Ben gave her a bottle with a blue straw and disappeared off to serve someone else. She took the bottle off of the bar and went to go and join her sisters in the VIP area, getting waylaid when the blonde girl from the bar bumped into her and tipped the mineral water in her hand down her top. There was a slight sparkle of orbs invisible in the pulsating lights of the club and the girl's already-too-revealing top became see-through as the water sloshed down her front, leaving Paige relatively dry.

"Whoops," the Charmed One said with a smirk, stalking off through the crowd and leaving the blonde seething.

Learning to Tango

"Paige! Come, sit!" Piper said, swatting Phoebe on the shoulder and making her shuffle up on the couch. Phoebe moved up and Paige sat between her sisters. "What took you so long?" Piper asked, making a space on the table for Paige's half a bottle of water.

"Cutie on the dance floor," she said, waving a hand at the side of her head and sighing satisfactorily. "I guess I'm just a guy magnet."

Piper cocked an eyebrow at her.

"Well he had a date but still," Paige admitted. "Ruin a gal's fun, why don't you? So, Ben and Chris as bartenders? Was that a move to boost business or were you just fed up with them being lazy layabouts and getting arrested?" She took up her bottle and sipped through the straw.

"What makes you think they didn't want to work here, Paige?" Piper asked with a slight laugh. It was Paige's turn to arch an eyebrow at the false laugh and Piper sighed. "Business needed a little boosting, I guess. Which reminds me, didn't you come here to sit at the bar and look pretty?"

"I don't think we came prepared to compete. Not enough skin on show," Paige told her sister, settling back down into the cushions.

Piper made a noise of agreement. "Yeah… Maybe we should go for the guys' spending another night, huh?"

Learning to Tango

Ben grinned to himself as he took the bills and put them in the register, already skilled enough to whip his fingers out of the way as the thing shut. It tended to bite you if you weren't quick enough. Another thing Piper hadn't briefed him on when she'd persuaded him to take a job here.

But working made thinking about demons and threats and the world ending so much harder. When did he have time to think about being consumed by a fireball when there were people to serve, money to take and anvil-subtle flirting to ignore?

It was the flirting that probably amused him most. His eyes scanned the crowd around the bar and wondered how many piles of ashes he would have to clear up should Bridget appear here and get slightly mad at the attention that both he and Chris were getting. Well not so much him but Chris. Maybe it would just be one big pile of ash, instead of lots of different ones.

And then maybe they could compress it all into diamonds. Bridget would be happy about that. She was a sucker for most shiny things.

As someone vacated the bar and left the tiniest amount of space he cleaned it almost absently before someone created another ring on it by putting their glass down on it. He rolled his eyes. That was kind of expected, he guessed.

The other bartender for the night, Lindsey, moved to get past him while he was in his daydream. Night dream, he guessed, for a nightclub. She was a plain-looking woman with very straight, mousy brown hair and seemed to be holding a grudge against Ben and Chris for just turning up and getting paid without even having an interview and without Piper having told the rest of the staff. But she just seemed to blend into the background so he never really noticed her until she tutted because they were in her way or not doing the job properly, or whatever she classed at properly.

So as she shifted past him, taking up more space than was needed, he wasn't surprised to hear her muttering under her breath and generally complaining. Ben rolled his eyes and moved, walking off to serve someone else. It wasn't his fault that she had a chip on her shoulder.

Learning to Tango

Chris's brain was managing to snatch moments of peace here and there among the chaos of serving drink after drink. Faces blurred and so did the figures on the notes, making him wonder how in hell he was managing to give these people the right change.

In the moments of peace all he could think about was asking himself why he was standing here behind a bar when he could be looking up demons that were threatening Wyatt? Why was he here when there was an entire future to save? He looked around the club, and the glowing neon signs and pulsating lights had never seemed brighter.

This place was quiet in the future. Hung thick with white cobwebs and with plaster and God knows what else littering the floor, crunching under your shoes. The wax from the lava lamps littered the area that used to be the bar in huge, multi-coloured chunks and a girder had fallen and smashed up the stage in a demonic attack that had nearly cost so many people their lives.

It was nothing like this, which only served to remind him that it needed to be changed so desperately. It only served to make him not want to be here more. He wanted to be on the much-repaired couch in the attic with the Book of Shadows' yellowed parchment pages crackling as he turned them, the sepia leather spine creaking as it shifted on his lap. He had always been able to feel the power around the book, from so many generations of Halliwells past. From Melinda Warren to him and now to his unborn child the ancient lineage would flow on.

When Wyatt had stolen the Book of Shadows with Chris's own blood it was almost as if part of his powers had gone too, locked away in Wyatt's vault that he had stolen from a San Francisco banking firm.

But the Book rested on its podium in the Halliwell attic, safe and secure and most definitely not a hologram. The magic and power would be there to pass down to his child when it was born. He (or she) could be wiccaned and invited into the family. The name Halliwell could continue into the future, the powers could continue into the future.

Well perhaps not. Perhaps the kid would take Bridget's last name instead of his. Yup, he could see that arguing, and who was he to argue after all? Maybe it would be the name Vance that continued on the ancient line.

Who knew?

It occurred to him that perhaps having a twenty dollar bill hovering over the cash drawer was perhaps not the best way to do his job and he stuffed it under the clip with a group of others, closing the till and reaching for a glass to fulfil the order that the cash had been intended for.

Lindsey's hand reached for the same glass and, determined to get to it first, the plain woman knocked Chris's hand into the metal of one of the lava lamps. Chris withdrew his hand suddenly, knocking four glasses to the floor and involuntarily using telekinesis to tip over the lamp.

The thick glass cracked as it hit the floor and the steaming liquid began to bubble through. The glass eventually shattered from the heat and pressure, a flood of the fluid bubbling across the floor. Liquid wax quickly began hardening as it reached the cool air and he saw Ben yank the cord out of the wall as the liquid threatened to creep into the still-smoking filament and cause a short or a fire.

Chris stuck the back of his hand in his mouth like a petulant child and pouted, sucking on the wound as if saliva was some kind of heal-all. It was HOT dammit. He looked at Lindsey and she only gave him a glare of contempt back and served another patron, as if she was the all-suffering one.

He took his hand from his mouth and inspected the small red burn, grabbing an ice cube from the bucket under the counter and putting it on the wound, letting it melt and soothe his blistered skin.

Ben threw down bar towels onto the floor to mop up the spill and crunched over the glass to try and keep serving people. Chris pulled a face, heaving an internal sigh. It could be worse; it could have brought his mother over. That could have got nasty really fast. He recalled Piper keeping a broom and perhaps a mop in the backroom he had shared with Ben and dutifully slipped out from behind the bar to go and retrieve it, tossing the ice cube back into its bucket without caring about any health and safety rules that should probably apply. He seemed to remember a First Aid kit bolted to the wall in there too.

As he entered the room and closed the door behind him the noise from the club barely quieted. It didn't even sound muted through the door. He went over to the First Aid kit first, routing through the white plastic case in the half light. Band aids and bandages… Nope. There were some hot/cold packs things that were probably for bruises or muscle damage… although maybe the cold would help the burn?

First Aid manual… 'First you clean the wounded area', perhaps? Chris snorted, pulling out a pair of tweezers and some thin, sharp scissors. His arms were getting full so he began throwing it all on the couch behind him.

Who did she think she was? She had so done that on purpose She was just jealous because they'd got a job without an interview. If she had done that to Bridget, she would be sucking food through a straw right now. Too bad he didn't have that kind of personality. Maybe it was because he was half Elder? That was probably it. You never saw Elders going around using teeth for necklaces. Not that Bridget had done that.

Well, once. But they had been shark's teeth.

He thought.

He growled in frustration, throwing four pairs of what were apparently non-latex gloves onto the couch with a flashlight and a spare set of batteries. Safety pins, soap - nope. Some gauze and a thermometer. Gods, they could supply about four hospitals for a year with this. Sticky tape and sticky… bandages? Chris pulled a face.

There was some antiseptic cream and some alcohol wipes. Both sounded like they would sting like hell. He eventually used his teeth to tear open the alcohol wipe and hissed as it burned, turning for a Band Aid and dimly recognizing that the flashlight was missing from the pile.

It wasn't until the heavy-duty light connected with the base of his skull that it clicked that it was missing. And by then everything seemed to be getting darker anyway, so what did it matter that something so insignificant had gone missing?

Chris suddenly realized that he was on the floor, his wrist throbbing and scrabbling for possession on slick linoleum. Through a dark haze that was actually starting to clear he saw a curtain of blonde hair, half-hiding a crazed face. The lips were twisted into sneer, the teeth drawn into a snarl.

Her eyes were wild and crazy and glinting. Strange yellow-green eyes, the eyelids of which had been fluttering at him across the bar for most of the night and had been ignored. Chris blinked his own green eyes slowly, reaching for the back of the couch to pull himself up.

The flashlight whistled through the air and cracked his fingers sharply and, halfway up, he fell back to the floor groaning. Dancing black dots were preventing his telekinetic aiming. He threw up his hands and the flashlight bounced off his knuckles, and his gut reaction was to hug them close to his chest to protect them,

"Witch!" She shrieked, spit spraying onto his chest. He could feel some of the larger droplets through his shirt. "Stay down you demonic scum!"

Hm. Definitely not a fan of Wicca, then.

He guessed getting flung around by demons had made him resilient to getting hit over the head. That might not be the best thing to write on a résumé but it was not a bad trait, in all honesty. The haze retreated to the edges on his vision and Chris saw that his attacker's top was damp and clinging to her in some places, as if she'd spilled her drink down it.

When the rubber casing of the light cracked against his temple, however, being able to see someone's bellybutton through their top became much less of an issue as the obscurity hovering at the peripheries of his perspective suddenly descended all at once.

Learning to Tango

"Jeez, your friend is such a wimp," Lindsey said savagely as she and Ben shifted past each other for the umpteenth time that night.

Ben scowled at her while mixing a Yeager Bomb. Thank whomever that in the future they had done some rudimentary bartending for Piper. Not that she was going to be told about it. He wasn't sure if she would approve of that or not. "You burnt his hand." Of course, she'd probably freak out that she had let Bridget have drinks as the Hunter had only turned 20 about three weeks ago…

"No, he burnt his hand and made it look like it was my fault," the bartender replied; only forcing the dislike Ben had for her to run deeper. "And then he goes and takes a break when we're this busy, like that's fair."

This was the most the woman had said to him all night and Ben's eyes narrowed. Was she trying to turn him against Chris? Maybe she just didn't like Chris. Maybe that was it. But then why was he any different? He had seen her shove his hand into the lamp. Bitch.

When she realized that he was still supporting his best friend she stopped talking to him, ostracizing him even more.

Where was Chris? It wasn't like him to duck out of work. He didn't like dumping things on other people, so where had he gone? He turned back to Lindsey again; who was mixing drinks, and frowned. Maybe she might have had something to do with it? He knew he was reaching far but still. Had she burned his hand to get him out of the way and get him attacked? He doubted she was demonic it was just that, well… You could never really trust mortals, he had learned that when his old principal had tried to kill him.

And this person going around murdering young guys was supposedly a mortal. Darryl said that he had no reason to suspect otherwise, it was just the type of weapon used – athames – that led him to think something was wrong.

When Darryl said 'wrong' he meant supernatural. Being a witch wasn't wrong though, was it? Only in the eyes of certain bigots and, of course, Evil. That was Evil with a capital 'e'. How could it not be, all that was out there? Or under there… It unnerved Ben to think that way under his feet there might be a hoard of demons waiting and plotting or maybe even chanting.

So was Chris all right? Ben chewed on his bottom lip. What if Lindsey was involved? Someone grabbed his sleeve and pulled him out of his trance. He looked into a pair of weird, green-yellow eyes that were just below blonde bangs partly obscuring her forehead.

"Yeah?" Ben asked, startled by her sudden boldness.

"You were just staring off into space…" she said.

Mascara-coated eyelashes fluttered at him, and he fought the urge to roll his eyes. "Yeah, I'm kind of tired. You want a drink?"

"Yeah." She reached into her purse and pulled out some money. "Do you want to get yourself something too?"

He knew that, strictly speaking, any money that was spent on drinks for him by the patrons should go into the tip jar on the small central island, but he was thirsty. He decided that accepting a mineral water wouldn't kill of Piper's business and took the money, mixing her a drink and leaving his open bottle of water on the counter before smiling his thanks and going to serve someone else.

From up her sleeve the blonde pulled a small vial of clear fluid and, looking around, tipped its entire contents into the bottle and swirled the pellucid liquid to let it dissolve until not a trace could be noticed.

Learning to Tango

The posters on the walls swam in and out of Chris's line of vision, blurred colours and faces all merging into one. There was a sharp pain in his right temple, just behind his eye and he didn't remember how it had got there.

When he tried to put his hand to his head to see if there was any blood there to give him a clue as to how he had ended up like this they both came with him.

He frowned, looking down at his hands and snorted with slight laughter. They were bound together with the tape had had pulled out of the First Aid box. Huh, that stuff was stickier than you thought… As he struggled to pull his wrists apart his head pounded. Screw this, was he a witch or not?

But even telekinesis somehow couldn't unpeel the tape and he used the couch to pull himself up again. The pins and needles in his feet combined with the tape around his ankles caused him to fall flat on his face. Until now he hadn't realized lino could burn your skin when you skimmed across it. Reaching up to inspect the burn on his chin with his fingertips, the posters on the wall lurched again and his vision filled with black.

Learning to Tango

Ben was feeling light-headed. He didn't know why and sipping the water that the woman with freaky eyes had bought him wasn't helping. He could have sworn that it hadn't been this hot in here earlier. Did someone turn up the heat? He used his sleeve to wipe his forehead and unbuttoned the cuffs, rolling them up to his elbows. Wow, it was hot…

The music was too loud in his ears and the faces around the bar began to spin and fade and blur. He blinked slow and hard.

"You okay?" Lindsey asked. Ben wondered if he was imagining the concern in his voice as spots began swimming across his vision. She touched his elbow and he pulled back, stumbling slightly.

"I'm fine," he muttered, draining the rest of his water and clutching the bar for support.

"Jeez, no need to bite my head off or anything. If you're so fine then get back to work." She stalked away from him.

Ben turned around and tried taking a drink order with spots swimming about in front of his vision. He took a couple of deep breaths and decided that finding Chris was more important then him being sick or working the bar and ignored the man asking for a drink.

"Where are you going?" Lindsey demanded. "Are you going to desert me too?" She held up the ice bucket. "There's no ice left, if you need to take a timeout then do so while getting some ice!"

Ben waved a vague hand at the plastic insulated tub in her hand, not thinking straight. "There's plenty of ice," he told her. She obviously hadn't seen it appear. That was stupid. Stupid. Anyone could have seen him doing that. Something was affecting his judgement…

Lindsey blinked and shrugged, turning back to the bar.

He made a drunken line through the club to the back room where he had been sleeping, stopping along the way to shake his head to dispel the blue floating lights that were attacking his eyesight. He sat down on an empty chair and thought he saw the woman with freaky eyes staring at him, but when he looked again she was gone. He was just seeing things.

He got up again. Was Chris hurt? Was that why he hadn't come back to the bar? He dimly realized that a few people were looking at him strangely but he ignored them. Maybe he should have gone and got the Charmed Ones. This was stupid, doing this on his own. Backup would have been a good idea, he guessed as the door handle stopped him falling flat on his face.

The band began playing one of their more famous songs and the crowd cheered and stood up. The sudden surge in motion caused Ben to stumble through the door, hitting his face on the arm of the couch. That felt like a black eye. The crowd was cheering; some were even singing along.

The door closed behind him, but he wasn't the one who closed it. He rolled over, fighting as his stomach clenched as he threatened to throw up. The dark and empty barrel smelled of metal and gunpowder as his eyes focused on the gun pointing at his head.

Learning to Tango

Piper crossed her legs and leaned forward, picking up her glass and taking a couple of sips before putting it down. Paige elbowed Piper in the ribs and Piper jumped slightly, looking blankly into her sister's eyes.

"Huh?"

"Are you feeling okay, sweetie?" Phoebe asked concernedly, reaching out to touch Piper's forehead.

Piper slapped her hand away. "I'm fine Phoebe. And I don't have a fever."

"Well it never hurts to check…" Phoebe settled back into the cushions and looked at Piper over the rim of her glass. Like that time with the South American fruit fly and Piper dying.

Piper sighed in exasperation. "Now what?" Couldn't anyone get some alone time around here? Well she knew that she was in a club full of people but she'd just been staring into space, not exactly hurting anyone.

"Nothing! You're just not having fun." Phoebe said, lamely it seemed.

"I'm just really tired… And I have a lot to think about, you know?" Piper sighed slightly, putting both hands in her lap. "I have a club to run and a son to mother- two sons to mother and demons to kill, I'm going to be a grandmother before my oldest turns two, and somewhere in there I've got a life to lead and I just haven't been doing that recently!"

Piper looked at her sisters to see if that had thrown them off of the trail. It seemed to have worked and she breathed an internal sigh of relief. That had been so much easier than telling her sisters that she was thinking that she would have to have sex with Leo again to make Chris. She rubbed the side of her neck and cleared her throat, hoping that it was too dark for them to notice the redness creeping up the side of her neck.

"Aw… It'll be okay, honey… It'll all work out…" Phoebe reached out to take Piper's hand and Piper smiled, pushing hair out of her face. She picked up her glass again. She was going to have fun. She deserved to, for a little while anyway. Her glass was empty and she rattled ice cubes at the bottom and sighed.

She looked towards the bar, seeing Paige's bottle drained and Phoebe's Sea Breeze barely covering the ice at the bottom. There was Lindsey, being her usual sullen self. Piper has definitely not hired her for her personality, but she had excellent references and had so much experience that it probably would have been bad not to hire her, because some other club would have got her first.

There was Lindsey and- "Uh, where are the boys?" Piper asked, frowning and standing up, still not fully able to see over the crowd. She mentally grumbled, wondering how it was that Chris had got so tall, before walking through the throng of people towards the central bar.

Lindsey looked harassed. She never normally looked like this, but the crowd around the bar was jeering at her, wanting drinks that she didn't have the time to go and get. The poor girl only had one pair of hands and Piper could tell that she was dog-tired already.

"Lindsey?" Piper called, pushing past a man.

"Sorry Piper, I'm swamped here…" the young woman said as she breezed past, skidding two beers down the counter and shaking a drink as she popped the top off of an orange juice.

"Where are the boys?" Piper asked over the music as Lindsey walked in front of her again.

"Does it look like I have time to care?" The bartender snapped.

"Well where did they go? Were they okay?" Two people on either side were jostling Piper and she growled at the back of her throat. "Easy, bub."

"Chris hurt his hand and went to the First Aid kit. And then Rick-"

"-Ben-"

"-whatever his name is went after him. Looked drunk. Maybe he'd been at the optics?" She buzzed past again.

"Did they say where they were going, though?"

"To have sex in the closet? How the hell am I supposed? I'm a bartender, not a babysitter. I've got work to do."

Piper shuddered. "Yeah, thanks for the imagery, Lindsey." The First Aid box was bolted to the wall in the room that they had been sleeping in. She wandered away from the bar, vaguely wondering where her sisters had gone. All she was doing was looking out for her son; she didn't need backup for that, did she?

She sighed. She was a mother doing a motherly job, dammit. Did she need anyone behind her to want to protect her child? She'd seen the pain in Chris's eyes whether Chris knew it or not, and she knew that she had somehow failed badly as a parent in the future. She had been forewarned and would not make the same mistakes again.

She was going to find out what was happening to Chris – even if she didn't think she was going to like it – just to make sure he was okay. He deserved that, someone to be concerned for him for once. She didn't want to be his charge, another person he had to be concerned for. He deserved better than that after a hard future and she was going to do her best to give that to him. Whatever she found in the backroom.

Hidden now by the crowd standing up and singing along to the band and reached out and gripped the door handle, turning it but not opening the door. She paused. The idea of Chris and Ben… doing that was slim, because there was a pregnant girl at Magic School who, if she remembered that explanation correctly had a whole lot of history with her son. She reminded herself that she wanted the story on that.

Piper pushed the door and it opened. At first she thought the room was empty, but then heard a shuffling noise. To help her pinpoint it she closed the door on the rest of the club.

"Chris? Sweetie?" She said, slightly nervous.

"Look out!" She whirled around just as someone jumped at her from behind the door. She shrieked but managed to drop undignified to the floor, using her attacker's momentum against her. Her attacker sailed over her head and into the couch. There was a creaking groan and then a snap and the back fell off.

Piper felt warmth on her exposed collarbone. One of the straps on her top was torn and three jagged nail tracks stood out in blood-red relief on her flesh. Chris struggled forward, tripping over the bonds around his ankles and falling on his side, pulling himself into a sitting position against the wall, his hair hiding part of his face.

"You were supposed to stay quiet!" The attacker shrieked. "You were supposed to let me surprise her! You ruined it! Pagan! Piece of filth! You ruined it!" Piper caught a mass of blonde hair and assumed it was a woman.

There was a loud bang and the smell of a gun discharging and the noise rang through Piper's head. A split second after – although later her brain would not be able to tell – Chris yelled in pain and her face was sprayed with a few drops of warm crimson blood that wasn't her own.

Her immediate reaction was to throw up her hands and Chris did the same, freezing the woman with the gun in place.

Learning to Tango

Chris grunted in pain. Shit. He'd been shot at. He'd actually been shot. By a real live gun and everything. The moment of surprise quickly faded as pain took over. Fiery pain shot through his shoulder and began radiating throughout his body.

He lowered his hands but it caused more pain and more blood to surge from his shoulder. There was less blood than he had expected, though. Maybe the bullet was pressing on an artery and helping stem the blood flow or something. He'd never been much of a biologist. Stupid Junior Science Class.

"Are you okay, sweetie?" Piper rushed forward, snatching up a cotton pad on her way past the couch. She knelt down, swept her hair behind her ears and pressed the material to her son's shoulder. Her mothering instincts took over as the cotton began soaking up Chris's blood. Her blood. Her own flesh and blood. She wanted to hug him, cradle his head in her arms but she knew that it wouldn't do any good.

And calling Leo to heal him wouldn't be any good either. This woman couldn't know about that. She already knew about magic, apparently, and exposing it anymore would be bad. Piper put her hand to her forehead and closed her eyes, trying to sort out in her mind what to do.

"You know what? I've never been shot at with a bullet before." Chris mused, a look of contemplation on his blood drained face. "Darklighter arrows, sure. Fireballs and energy balls in the hundreds, not to mention all these other random powers. Light darts… Never a bullet…" He tried to shrug, but only winced as his shoulder pulled. "I think those little pieces of metal are due for more credit than I've given them before…"

"But are you okay?" Piper persisted, shifting the cotton pad so a cleaner bit was on the wound. She went to work with the pair of scissors slicing at his bonds.

"Look, I'll live. Try and wake Ben up, will you? I don't know what she did to him."

He put awkward pressure on the pad with his other hand as his mother let go, leaning against the wall. He winced as he gingerly lifted the material to have a look at the wound. It probably looked worse than it was. These things always did. He tried to ignore the tingling in his fingers.

"Ben?" Piper was kneeling over the drugged witch, shaking his shoulders gently. "Ben?" He didn't reply and Piper began shaking him more earnestly. What was wrong with him? She paused. Was she developing mothering instincts towards him as well now? He had the brown hair… And the brown eyes… She took in his face, wondering if the cheekbones could be interpreted as high. Was this another Halliwell come back to save his brother? His cousin?

"Mom? Is he waking up?" Chris knew that it was probably best that Piper got back into her position soon. He wasn't worried about Psycho Lady unfreezing - he'd seen his mother pull off freezes on more people than this for a longer time – but his shoulder hurt and the sooner she got whatever she wanted, the better as far as he was concerned. He was tempted to throw her into a wall.

He thought about it for all of a split second and with a squint of his eyes she was sent catapulting through the air, breaking the freeze. She screamed before hitting the wall with a thud and sliding down, dazed. Piper scurried back into position, needing to keep up appearances. This woman didn't suspect her of anything yet. If anything at all, Chris's attack had done was strengthen Psycho Lady's resolve and tighten her grip on the gun.

"How dare you use your magic on me?! Burning women at the stake when it's men who are the witches! Men, MEN!" She was spitting as she talked and Piper felt the urge to back away from this crazy woman.

"I don't know what you mean," Chris said, with such conviction that Piper was mildly shocked. She wondered where her son had learnt to be such a good liar. She grumbled internally, adding it to the bottom of her ever-lengthening mental list of things to find out about her son.

"Son of Satan!" She used both hands to hold the gun in front of her, took aim and squeezed the trigger again. Piper shrieked and threw up her hands, freezing the scene in place yet again. Chris shuffled right a little out of the path of the bullet and Piper unfroze the room. The hot piece of metal thudded into the wall, blowing plaster dust onto Chris's tongue and drying it out. He spat some out and wiped his tongue on his sleeve.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?!" Piper demanded.

Chris could feel the bass from the music vibrating the wall behind him and his hopes that someone would hear and come to their rescue were diminished. How could anyone hear anything in there? Perhaps the more people there were in the room the more confused this crazy lady would get and the more chance they would have of getting away.

"It's got to be done…"

Chris saw Psycho Lady bear her teeth into a snarl. It was an ugly expression that set her eyes alight with insanity. Chris looked at the gun and tried to work out how many bullets there were in it. Six?

"The world won't miss them…"

"Then why do you want to kill us if the world won't even care?" Chris asked, shifting so he was sitting up straighter against the wall.

"Us?" She echoed, grinning. "Both of you? I was going to get him tested, but now I know…"

"Tested?" Piper prompted timidly. "What for?"

"A triple helix. Witches have three helixes in their DNA. I can run tests at the lab I have…"

Piper's blood ran cold. Every time someone ended up with a sample of their blood they found the triple helix that made them witches. It was how Dr. Williamson had found out about their powers and then cloned them.

The oldest Charmed One sucked a deep breath in through her nose and, making an 'o' shape with her mouth, blew it out through her lips. "Look, sweetie… I don't know who you are but I don't think witches are real…" She was pitching her voice high and talking slowly, hoping to pacify her. The woman turned to her and Piper's eyes were drawn to the void that was the barrel of the gun. She held up her hands in a non-threatening gesture and forced herself to look into the strange, green-yellow eyes. "I know they're on TV all of the time, but-"

"You don't get it! This isn't about that! This is about fraternizing with the Devil! And then they all burned women at the stake, yes they did… And was it the women's faults? No! It was the men doing it and being too cowardly to own up for it! It's their fault! All their fault and now witches must PAY!"

"Times have changed since then. We don't execute people who we think are witches anymore… It's not Salem, sweetie…" Piper made some bold steps forward, hoping the woman wouldn't notice. Maybe she could grab the gun… "And if they are witches, which I doubt because witchcraft isn't real, then what's wrong with that?" Piper felt her voice begin to crack in fear. Demons were, on the whole, predictable. She could deal with a demon, no problem. One quick blast or a rhyme or a potion and they were gone out of their lives. It was a whole different story when you had a person like this…

"Everything! They must die for what they do…"

"And what's that?"

"They killed everything I ever loved! And they haunt me! Yes! And they say I've got to kill the witch scum for what they did. Yes! They do!"

"Have you ever thought about… seeing someone?"

"I'M NOT CRAZY!" She shrieked and, the gun forgotten, she charged at Piper, bowling the witch over into the door. Piper's vision exploded into a cloud of stars as the woman grabbed a fistful of her hair. "People care about you, don't they?" The woman whispered, and Piper could see the tears shining in her eyes. She could see the points where each hair grew out of her head. She could see all of the smallest details and the woman put her face still closer until Piper could see nothing but the woman's eyes. "People love you, don't they?"

"Yes."

"I'm sorry…"

"What for?" Piper breathed, the fear now evident in her voice. The woman released her hair.

"For making you the sacrifice that will make the world care."

Learning to Tango

Disclaimer: - I own neither Charmed nor its characters; they all belong to Aaron Spelling and the WB. Last time I checked I was neither of them.

I just want to say that this term has been really long and really hard on my writing. I've had final-type exams for two weeks of it and because it's Winter I've been busy fending off all manner of coughs and colds. I've been incredibly busy as well and most of the time I try not to let schoolwork take priority, which isn't good of me I know, but often when I get home from school I'm too wiped to do any writing. I start college in September 05; I'm hoping things will be different then. I thank you all for your continued patience, because it means a lot to me that you can all wait this long for a chapter and still review.

Thanks to…

Pixie Wildfire: - Gideon? The villain of the story? :O! Who would have thunk it? Thanks for reviewing.

Darkness Amber: - Piper and her credit card. I want a credit card. I can't get one until I'm eighteen. I hate the law. Heh. Don't we all think so? Thanks for your review.

Christine Marquez: - Yeah. Poor Nixa. And it's all going to get worse before it gets better anyways.

Stony Angel: - Holidays are coming! Heh. Don't mind me, that's the Coca-Cola advert. Holidays are coming, holidays are coming… It's not Christmas time until that's on TV for the first time. Don't mind my insanity. I'm British. I like twisted love. Heh. Thanks, hun. And Even though Bridget and Chris's twisted love scared most people away, it still rocks.

Princesscatie21: - Heh, thanks. And thanks again!