Chris instinctively dropped his head as he had shimmered away to fully bask in the sheer intense feeling of the power. First you went translucent and then transparent, and then that warm feeling rushed over you and made sure that you forgot everything bad that had happened to you — ever.
It was vaguely scary but that didn't matter; it was magnetic and mesmeric and so… vibrant and powerful in a way a flame was to a lost, fluttering moth. The sweet susurrus of the power reaching his ears and feeling like warm air blowing gently on his face made him certain that, if he didn't have a mission, he knew that he would be hard-pressed to stop himself shimmering all over just to avoid the pain he felt every time he reappeared. He couldn't deny that he did have a mission, however — an important one. Thirst for vengeance was boiling through him, fuelled by the demonic powers in his possession.
Which was why he was currently on a pit-stop in the attic to take a look at the Book of Shadows and get in some serious cramming of anything and everything demonic before heading back down to the Underworld. Forewarned was forearmed, after all. As his head had bowed from his last shimmer he had a good view of his hand as it reappeared and it was trembling like a leaf in a strong wind. He was totally buzzed, and he knew it. He felt as if a million cups of coffees' worth of caffeine had been injected into his veins all at once; he felt like he had grabbed a live wire. He was invincible, he could do anything. He not only could but would slay the entire Underworld — he had both the power and means, not to mention the drive. It would be protecting Wyatt and avenging Bridget all at once. He and Ben had vanquished any demon which had had the unpropitious luck of stumbling across them. Now, however, the mindless killing of demons that mattered so little on the overall hierarchy Down There had lost its appeal and it was time to look up a few things, see if he could pick up any hints as to where some higher-level nasties were lurking.
As Ben appeared, however, the room seemed to lurch violently and the witch-whitelighter staggered backwards a few paces, grabbing blindly at a sideboard to hold himself upright. He gulped down air, trying to quench the sudden burning he felt in his heart. His knuckles were glowing white as he clung to the polished wooden surface and it felt as if there were iron bands around his lungs. His arms were shaking as if he were cold, even though that was not the case., He looked up and saw Ben, oblivious, making his way towards the podium on which the Book rested. Shaking it off to join his friend and make sure he got his share of the fun, Chris sucked in two deep breaths, managed to straighten up and ignore what was happening to him.
His friend stretched out his arms towards the tome and was about to place his hands on the worn leather cover when the book glowed a bright red and propelled itself across the room. It landed in the centre of a circular rug a few steps from Chris's feet. The witch-whitelighter raised his eyebrows at the volume but walked over and bent to retrieve it. Once again the booked flared incandescently, shooting away from him across the floor, skittering to rest under a bookcase.
"Oh, come on! Gimme a break!" Chris groaned, throwing his hands in the air and climbing to his feet. He glared reproachfully at the Book's dark hiding place. "You're more than happy to let Wyatt pick you up, and I'm only borrowing evil powers!"
Ben sighed burdensomely and got down on his knees in front of the bookcase to jam his arm up to his elbow underneath it. His fingers were barely brushing the silk marker that currently protruded haphazardly from the side of the book about halfway through such was the effectiveness of the volume's chosen hiding place. Although it did seem to Ben that the Book had overlooked a main disadvantage of this: it was effectively cornered. It couldn't go backwards owing to the wall, nor could it go sideways due to the fact that it was never fit between the stout legs of the item of furniture it had chosen to conceal itself. It could only go forwards into Ben's grasp. So, suddenly, it did. It had spun itself around so that its spine was facing outwards and cracked itself with venom against Ben's kneecap. The witch yelped with pain and half-fell, half-dove reflexively backwards, allowing the book to slide across the floor to the base of its stand, which it knocked over. Chris dived for it but it evaded his grasp by launching itself across the wooden boards to bump into the base of a chest of drawers topped with filled potion vials. They had been upset by the sudden motion and had toppled over, a couple rolling to the edge of the surface to plunge to the floor, where they shattered and exploded when they mixed. The noxious brew proceeded to blow a hole right through the boards deep enough so that the plaster of the ceiling below them became visible. Something sparked and an indignant croak sounded before a frog jumped out of the smouldering hole to hop across the room, where it randomly combusted into a puff of orange smoke and was gone.
The door suddenly burst open so hard that it bounced off the wall, denting it, and sharply dissipated the coils of fluorescent smoke. Phoebe and Paige had arrived with potions at the ready. The elder, upon seeing her nephew sprawled across the floor and Ben rubbing his kneecap and cursing under his breath, threw her hands into the air exasperatedly with a dramatic eye roll and lowered her potion to her side. "You two! We thought we were in the middle of a full-scale demon invasion! Gods, you sure know how to scare a pair of girls to death!" She stamped her foot and huffed, glaring at each of them in turn.
Paige, her vial still in her hand and readied, narrowed her eyes, taking in the new ventilation hole in the floor and the fact that the Book of Shadows appeared to be cowering behind a trunk. "Would you mind telling us what exactly you're doing?"
Chris sat up on his elbows and bit his lip. "Trying to look at the Book," he said sheepishly, realising how ridiculous it must look. "Sorry." He didn't know what he was apologising for, though, not really. What had he actually done? Just tried to look at his family's heritage as he had done a million times before — why was it such a big deal? But, maybe, if he mollified his aunts, they'd go away back to their stupid, ignorant lives and finally leave them be for once. He blinked suddenly at these thoughts, slowly shaking his head. What was happening to him?
Phoebe, her suspicions renewed after belatedly seeing what her sister had, asked, "What for?" She walked across the room slowly, giving her nephew and his friend a wide berth and picking up the Book from the floor, hugging it to her chest and frowning at them as she righted the stand and replaced the tome.
Chris turned around and looked his aunt incredulously up and down. "'What for'?" he echoed, scratching the back of his head and snorting. Ben walked over to him and extended a hand to help him from the floor. As he was pulled to his feet, he turned to his aunt, swallowing, disbelief in his eyes. "You really need to ask that?"
Phoebe semi-conceded with a tired tilt of her head and a heavy sigh, hoisting the heavy book back into her arms. They wanted to look up demons, as they had been doing for months. In earnest now, though, after Bridget… They were going on a grief-fuelled spree with borrowed powers that were in no way beneficial to them. She freed a hand from her burden and rubbed it tiredly over her eyes, crossing to the couch and sinking into it. She gently placed the Book precisely on the coffee table in front of her, taking her time to line it up with the corners exactly. The middle sister ran a manicured nail gently down the spine, tracing the triquetera absently. Why was this her family's safety-valve? What did it say about them, that every time something very bad happened — like the loss of someone they loved — they went and killed things to let it all out? "Chris…" she semi-sighed, semi-groaned, rubbing at her temple.
Paige sat down next to her sister, her hands trapped nervously between her legs and her lips pursed in a way that Chris, had he not been so caught up in both his exasperation and his mission, would have interpreted as guilty. Her toes were screwed up in her shoes to stop her feet jigging up and down and giving her nervousness away. This was going to be hard. Resigning herself to the fact that it would all be for their own good, she took a deep breath. "I… Well, we… Phoebe and I think that— Crystals, circle!"
Five crystals orbed themselves from previously-placed, strategic points around the attic to surround Ben and Chris. Briefly, they flared white and crackled into a cage before settling down to glow benignly on the floor. Momentarily stunned and failing to process what had just happened, all the two witches could do was stand there in shock even as the fluttering orbing lights faded, firmly imprisoning them.
"Uh… what?" Ben said, laughing uneasily and looking from sister to sister. "What's going on?"
Phoebe slapped her hands decisively against her thighs and stood up. "An intervention. For your own good." She blinked hard when she realised that her own words had been presupposed exactly by Chris and he was parroting them back at her at the same time as she was uttering them, mimicking her cruelly. She glared, unimpressed. He held her gaze though, and the flickers of scattered, twisted emotions crossing his green eyes scared her enough to be the one to drop her eyes first.
"This isn't the right way to do things. You both know that…" Paige paused, catching their mutinous glares which only served to remind her just how young they really both were, "sSomewhere."
"Okay, fine. So, tell us, Paige. I mean, if you're so omniscient now, then how do we do it? Tell us how. Regale us with your mighty tales of wisdom," Chris said, sarcasm oozing malignantly from him.
Paige sniffed, choosing to rise above it because he was obviously hurting so much, even if the only sign of his torment was the darkening of his eyes. "You… you let it go. You…" Paige sighed, realising that she and Chris and the other occupants of the room knew that she was spouting forth therapists' rubbish; empty words that she did not believe to be true. She had never let the death of her parents go, not until she had gone back in time to see them and try to save them; not until she had had a visit from them in the present to tell her that they were proud of her.
"You need to mourn," Phoebe said. "You need to grieve for Bridget instead of bottling it up and putting it on the sidelines so you can run around looking for revenge." Chris had had to conceal a flinch at her name, she noted sadly, and tears pricked her eyes.
A thought occurred to her and Phoebe realized that this grief… wasn't all over Bridget. The two of them never had properly acknowledged Nixa's violent death so many months ago — they seemed to have just pushed it away instead, choosing to ignore it entirely in order to solider onwards with saving Wyatt. She grimaced. Now that Bridget had gone too, those bottled up feelings had exploded.
Exhaling, she dragged a hand through her hair, a salon appointment she had — of all things — coming to the forefront of her mind. Her fingers came to rest at the base of her neck and she gently worked the pressure point there, glad for the first time since she had had her powers removed that she was no longer an empath. This was already a three aspirin job even without her powers.
"Grieve," Chris said, cocking his head and trying out the word as if he had never heard of it. "Now, huh. Why didn't I think of that?" He paced towards the very edge of the crystal cage and felt the hair on his arms begin to stand on end with the power of it and stepped back irritably. He could tell that Phoebe and Paige didn't appreciate his sarcasm when they were only trying to help, but he didn't care. He paced some more like a caged beast in what little space he had. This was him coping — didn't they get that? Killing those responsible for Bridget's death was satisfying — it made sure that her death wasn't in vain. It got something accomplished — Bridget would never want to go un-avenged.
He could hear her now: it was one of the articles in a will she'd once written on a paper napkin. Something along the lines of, 'Should I die and my friends not kick the ass of the party responsible, I vow to come back and haunt them forever. Also, should I die, if you give my penny collection to my ungodly bitch of a cousin, I will come back from the grave and drop the entire jar on her head while she sleeps'. And, besides, who was Phoebe to tell him to grieve? It was a well-documented fact that Paige had been discovered after Phoebe went to get vengeance on Shax for her sister's death with her dead ex-husband. He guessed hypocrisy was another Halliwell trait that went hand-in-hand with revenge.
"Look, we only want to help you. Which is why we're going to brew a power-stripping potion. Well, have been brewing, actually." Phoebe laughed nervously at the looks their lack of trust received from Chris and Ben.
"What for?" Ben asked, blinking.
"'What for'?" Phoebe spluttered. "You have to ask what for?" She was unpleasantly aware that this conversation had now done a full circle, and might continue to do so if prolonged. "I'll tell you what for. To stop you from destroying yourself with demonic powers. They're not a good thing, alright? They mess with your mind. They, they, they screw with you until you can't think straight and make you do things you regret. Trust me: I know." She did know, and the memories still hurt her every time she went over them. Could she have been stronger and beaten the pull of evil? Probably. Could she have managed to ignore the call of her unborn child? Perhaps… no. It never could have been done. It meant that she knew what it was like, though, she could empathise with what they were going through, and the bad visions from her past brought emotion into her voice, making it unsteady and liable to crack as she went on. "You may start off thinking you're in control of them and are using them justly for vengeance, but soon enough you'll just be doing it for the buzz — the kill. And before you know it, you're going to wake up from it like, like, from a bad drug trip and realise that either you're full-on demonic or that you've killed someone you care about. And, by the time that happens…"
"…you'll be screwed," Paige finished bluntly. "Karmically, cosmically, emotionally screwed. And forgive us for wanting to save you both from that," she finished, tilting her head upwards, defiance glittering in her eyes. "So, you're going to stay there, misters, until we fix this and, what's more, you're gonna like it, got it?" Nodding decisively, Paige spun on a heel and stalked out of the attic, a somewhat in-awe Phoebe in tow.
When the attic door had been clicked quietly shut behind them, Phoebe said, "Oh my God, Paige. Where did you learn to do that?"
"Eh, it's just a little something-something I picked up," Paige said dismissively, starting down the stairs and hoping she hadn't set the kitchen on fire by leaving the potion simmering.
"It was good," Phoebe said in amazement. It was actually akin to something Piper would say — the tone was right and everything. Paige, she supposed, had been spending more time around Piper and the boys than she had, what with her temp jobs giving her more downtime than her job at the paper allowed, and she felt suddenly envious, but it quickly passed. "You know, I was actually a little scared," Phoebe said, following Paige into the upper hallway. She put an arm through Paige's and smiled triumphantly. "I think that plan worked out rather well, don't you?"
Paige smirked and raised her potion vial, clinking it together in a toast with Phoebe's. "Very well acted, don't you think? They didn't know what had hit them." They laughed a little and descended the last staircase together down onto the ground floor, accomplishment making them beam.
Learning to Tango
The fireball streaked across the room before clashing violently with the crackling bars of the crystal cage and erupting into an explosion. Chris growled in frustration and readied another in his palm, hurling that as well. The cage sprung up again, dissipating the demonic weapon into a shower of sparks. The tendons were standing out in his neck and his eyes were wild as he conjured yet another ball of fire to spin atop his palm and manifest itself in flickering flecks of gold in his irises. He let out a loud yell as he threw it, harder than any of the others, and yet the cage still held firm. The witch-whitelighter kicked out at someone invisible as his roving flashing eyes looked around the tiny enclosure for something to help with the escape plan. All he saw was Ben, lying on his back with his hands behind his head and staring up at the rafters, lost, and he heaved a hefty sigh, flopping down onto the floor. Wrapping his arms around his knees, he looked wistfully at the sunshine streaming through the coloured windowpanes. Light that Bridget wouldn't ever feel on her skin again… He rested his chin on his knees, biting his bottom lip as it threatened to wobble.
"Penny for them?" Ben said, sitting up and grabbing his ankles to hold himself there.
Chris half-turned towards his best friend, having only heard a fractured version of what Ben had said, as if his friend's voice was coming at him from down a long tunnel. "Hm?"
Ben smiled sadly, exhaling and lying back down to continue his observation of the ceiling. "Yeah," he said, sympathising with Chris's abject lack of focus. He was replaying Bridget's last moments over and over again in his mind, trying to work out if he could have done something. No, he already knew that he could have done something. He was just trying to work out what it was and when it was that he could have done it; when it was that he should have jumped in and saved her from it all, managed to evade her guards and take her away to be healed. He wasn't sure if it had fully sunk in yet. It was like he was at the bottom of a deep body of water, and realisation was a single shaft of sunlight that was being filtered and filtered and filtered by the greenish water to the point of extinction, until only the vaguest sparkles reached him. He was in an oneiric trance, living out the minutes of his life like he was one of the Undead. The fact was there, but it hadn't hit him. He got the feeling that, when it finally did hit, he'd wish he'd been hit by an eighteen wheeler instead. "What are you thinking about?"
"The day we first met Bridget," Chris said, a slow smile spreading across his features and lingering for a split second before it dropped right off into oblivion again.
That same smile was infectious and it spread to Ben. Grinning lopsidedly, the witch laughed a little. "She had a total crush on Wyatt, didn't she?" he said, sitting up again. His face darkened a little, the grin fading as he realised that he would never tease her about that again.
"Probably…" Chris said distractedly, his mind probably choosing simply not to hear something that he disagreed with when it was in such a fragile state. "Do you remember she just burst into this warehouse with the demon in tow, totally not even realising that she was being chased?"
"Heh. Yeah… we were knocking over ice statues, right?" Ben said fondly, a warmth penetrating his eyes that had been long-absent. "I remember that. Wyatt screwed up and we ended up facing them all. We thought we'd got them all, and then the real one appeared…" He was talking animatedly, the memory obviously still fresh and exciting in his mind. "We were what, like, twelve?"
"Wishful thinking. We were both more like ten, nearly eleven. Nixa would have been eleven. Bridget… Eight? Nine? I don't know. Her birth date was always suspiciously moveable."
Ben laughed again. "Yeah, she was eighteen how many times? Three?"
"Something like that. She was so busy trying to be older that when she did hit nineteen, she decided she didn't like it and wanted to be eighteen again. So she was." Chris rubbed the back of his neck, staring at the floorboards fondly. Ben was staring off into the distance as well, smiling, both of them replaying the day they had met Bridget in their heads.
Exhausted, Chris and Ben had collapsed against a stack of crates, eyelids weighted heavily with sleep. The adrenaline that had been keeping them fighting was rapidly dissipating now, leaving them with nothing but the will to sleep. Exerting that much energy in such a small space of time was not something the two children had ever had to do before — other people fought for their lives, they were spirited away to safer places.
"There!" Bridget shouted eagerly, tugging on Nixa's sleeve. Another demon to kill! Hadn't she just wished for that? Her cries jolted both of the witches out of their semi-doze long enough to hear the scuffling of feet behind them. It took Nixa screaming a warning for the ten-year-olds to try to scramble to their feet, but they were too slow. It was with ease that the demon lifted the two witches from the concrete floor by their collars, and by the time they had started to struggle, it had smirked at Bridget and Nixa and shimmered away.
It was gloomy in the corner they reappeared in. Thick grey cobwebs were strung from the ceiling and wall to the crate on which they were standing, and the wooden slatted surface was covered in a layer of dust which was stirred up when the demon moved to shimmer in the weak shaft of sunlight teasing its way through a small gap between the roof and the top of the wall. The demon had to duck to refrain from hitting its head on the steel girders above them that supported the roof.
Ben's writhing paid off as he finally made contact with the demon, driving a trainer into its abdomen. The demon doubled over slightly, his grip on Chris loosening enough for the small witch-whitelighter to fall free. He hit the edge of the crate hard before bouncing slightly and tumbling over the precipice.
"Chris!" Ben yelled as a very audible thump reached his ears. "Let me go!"
The demon sneered and swung Ben around so that his feet were dangling in midair over the same drop which Chris had so recently tumbled. The witch looked down. Below him, Chris was sprawled, unconscious, on the top crate of a stack that ended about three metres below them. Turning ninety degrees the demon swept Ben for the briefest of seconds over the solid ground of the wooden crate lid beneath them before dangling Ben over the other edge of the crate. There was no adjacent stack here to fall on — just a straight fourteen metre drop to the concrete floor below.
"Shall I let you go now?" the demon asked, shaking Ben up and down and pretending to let go.
"No," the witch squeaked, breathing quickly and in great gulps. Sweat was running down his back, making his T-shirt cling to him. How had this happened? They had been fighting demons really well, and they had had Wyatt and Chris's mom and his aunts with them, and nothing could ever beat them, ever. He looked down and felt very dizzy, not realising that the demon could feel him trembling like a tiny animal even though he was only holding onto his collar.
The demon laughed, casually throwing Ben across the lid of the crate. Splinters gouged into the witch's flesh even through his clothing, and the landing had split his forehead open. Whimpering and half-blinded with blood, the child curled up, willing the pain to go away. He wished he hadn't come. He wished he'd just stayed at Magic School where, whilst it was very boring, there were no demons to hurt him. He had thought it was going to be fun, though. People always came back from vanquishing demons looking happy, so why shouldn't it be fun?
"I knew we'd reach an agreement," the demon told him, shimmering away.
"We came out of that fight so well," Chris said, rolling his eyes. "I can't believe I didn't see why Mom didn't want us fighting demons. We sucked and just ended up with our asses kicked."
"It was glamorous," Ben said with a shrug. "To us, it seemed like the people who mattered most in our lives — our families — were the ones doing it; the ones having fun, and we were missing out."
"We were dumb."
"Hey, hey, what's with all this 'we'?" Ben asked suddenly, holding his hands up in the universal 'stop' motion. "You may have been dumb, but I was always the smart one." When Chris only stared at him, Ben eventually dropped the façade of seriousness, rolling his eyes and grinning, shrugging in a 'you've-got-to-try' kind of gesture.
"How many pairs of rose-coloured glasses are you wearing?" Chris asked with a laugh of disbelief, dragging his legs closer to him and wrapping his arms around them. He had just felt a chill pass through the room, but he didn't know if he had imagined it or not. Maybe it was because, in his heart, he could feel that he was betraying Bridget. He could feel that laughing here was insulting her memory.
The demon was holding an unconscious Chris over his shoulder in a firemen's carry when he reappeared, and he wasted no time seizing Ben too. The witch's eyes were closed and the demon thought for a second that he had been knocked out, but then he saw that the child's eyes were screwed too tightly closed, and he was muttering something over and over again under his breath, his lips barely moving.
"Knock it off, kid," the demon said, shaking the small witch. "It's not gonna help you."
Ben cracked an eye open at the demon's words, and was about to form a question on his lips when the demon shimmered out with them. When they reappeared, it was all but pitch black. There was a very small amount of light coming into the tiny room. The demon was crouched right down and could barely fit. The floor underneath them was of the same carpet of jagged splinters that had gouged at Ben on the lid of the crate, and the witch suddenly realised that they were inside a crate. He began thrashing around, but hit his hand hard on the side of the crate, and when he connected with the demon, the demon only recoiled and accidentally smashed a fist down on one side of the large circular object wrapped in numerous layers of packaging that the crate had been designed for. It tipped sharply, Ben's side rising up and cracking the witch's head against the lid of the crate. Stunned, Ben went momentarily limp, the small ray of light swirling in and out of focus until the demon shimmered away.
"Chris," Ben said, the stars he was seeing slowly receding back into the darkness. His voice was small despite his best effort to try and swallow his fear. "Chris, are you awake?" He crawled over to his best friend, blood dripping onto his hand from his head. He looked down at where he thought it would be and whimpered again before crawling on. Chris was in the middle of the depression of the circular object in the crate and Ben gently got onto it so as not to tip it again. "Chris?"
Chris had to wake up so he could orb them out of here. It wasn't a good idea to stay in here. Humans needed air and stuff and he didn't know how much there was in here. It was really dark as well. Really, really dark. It would have been totally black had it not been for the small hole in the corner of the crate where someone had probably bumped it. What if they never got out? What if no one found them and they stayed in here until they got hungry enough to die, like animals did when there was a dry season in Africa? He would never get to see his mommy or his brothers or his dad again.
He suddenly found it very hard to breathe and, convinced that this was because they were already needing air and not realising that it was because he was panicking, he crawled back over Chris to the split in the wood and tilted his face up to it so that one eye was blinded by the brilliance, clouding his vision with spots.
If they didn't get out, would anyone miss them? Or did they all not like them and didn't care? He was breathing faster and faster now, a combination of dust and fear clogging his throat. He didn't want to die. He was only a little while away from being old enough for his brothers to let him play with them. Would they be really sad?
He whimpered and curled up tighter, closing his eyes so that the blood behind the one eyelid in the light glared at him, like a fierce, rubicund alpenglow. He tried to call out, but his vocal cords were paralysed with fear, and all that came out was a strangled half-sob. He was never going to see anything again. He was never going to taste ice-cream again, nor was he ever going to get to laugh with his friends as they rolled around on the grass at recess. Never ever again. He sniffed and, although he was trying to be brave, two tears rolled down his cheeks.
He looked back into the darkness, blind in one eye from the sudden change from light to dark and he could almost see the black walls of his prison closing in on him to crush him and Chris forever and ever, because no one was ever going to find them, not ever, and there wasn't going to be enough air and they didn't have any food…
"Where did he go with them?" Bridget demanded, turning on Nixa. "Where did he take them too? We have to save them!" She grabbed Nixa's wrist and tugged, almost pulling the blonde over before she righted herself again, counterbalancing Bridget's surge in forward motion by pulling backwards.
"It's okay. Chris can orb right back to us. He always does it," Nixa told her, turning around and looking at the Charmed Ones and Wyatt. Wyatt was still unconscious and so was Piper, but Phoebe was stirring gently and Paige's eyelids were fluttering too. Maybe they'd wake up soon and sort the mess right out. They always did that. They were very smart and powerful.
"But he hasn't," Bridget reminded her earnestly, her eyes glinting with unshed tears. "So we have to save them. We have to…" She was beginning to lean more and more towards a whine without realising it, which just made Nixa not want to go with her more. She didn't want to have to look after someone smaller than her. She wanted to wake up Phoebe and Paige and Piper and Wyatt and they could get a potion and kill the demon and save Ben and Chris and then they could all go home.
"No! Chris will appear, and—"
"Did you little girls miss me?" Nixa and Bridget whipped around to see the demon standing behind them. He was leaning casually on one of the industrial-sized shelving units that housed the multiple crates in the warehouse. "I'm sorry, but I had to deal with those two naughty little boys."
"What did you to with them?" Nixa asked, putting her hands on her hips and frowning, as her mother would do if she were telling her off. It was what always worked on her younger sister, Lenora, anyway.
"Yeah! What did you do with them?" Bridget demanded belatedly, nodding and moving to stand next to Nixa. "You have to tell us."
"Why?"
"Because… because…" Bridget stamped her foot in frustration unable to find the words, "because… I-I-I said so, and you have to do as I say because you're not very nice."
The demon blinked once, twice, at the strange audacity of the small thing in front of him. "You are a brave little goblin, aren't you?" he said, with surprise. "Shame you're not going to grow up to become a full-fledged Hunter. You'd be almost worthy of killing."
"K-killing?" Bridget squeaked, stepping back a little way and balling her fists, her eyes widening. "Why are you going to do that?"
"Do you want to take this one or shall I?" the demon asked of Nixa.
The blonde frowned at him, her eyes slightly narrowed as she tried to work out what the demon meant. "Take what?" she asked, finally admitting defeat.
The demon threw its hand up in the air. "Your strength," it told her before pausing and contemplating with narrowed eyes. "What, you kids don't realise this? You don't realise that you're going to be hunted for the rest of your lives because you're different?" The demon broke off into laughter that echoed around the girls' brains chillingly, making them shiver. "Maybe, once you're dead, they'll know that trying to keep you innocent was a bad idea."
The demon was about to conjure an energy ball in its palm when there was a loud explosion above it. A crate had been blown to pieces. The two crates above it immediately fell through the lid of their caved-in predecessor, splintering it into even more stakes of wood. All was silent for tense, breath-holding moment before, slowly, the sound of cracking and groaning reached the occupants' ears and a single plank of wood fell to the floor with a clatter, the rest of the wreckage shifting like a landslide. The demon looked up and shimmered out just before the cascading wood crushed him. Nixa and Bridget both threw themselves backwards instinctively, landing hard on their backs and debris blew out from the concrete floor. The demon shimmered back in behind them.
"You leave those kids alone!"
It was Piper's voice. The two hunters turned to the source of it, their eyes gleaming with hope. The look on her face was truly terrifying, and they led their in awe of her. Her brown eyes seemed to glint as if frozen solid, and her mouth was pinched, her lips a thin line. Light was spilling in from behind her and, although she was standing wobbly on her feet, she was haloed in gold all around.
"What are you going to do? Blow me up?" the demon sneered, powering up an energy ball.
"Oh, we might," Paige said, rising to her feet and leaning slightly on her sister for support, "but I've got this hunch that you're really not gonna like the way in which we're going to do it.
"Arrogance. Once I'm done with them, you'll both be next."
"Oh, really?" Phoebe asked, cocking an eyebrow and she limped to stand beside her sisters, also leaning on Piper in order to stay upright. "Well, call me old-fashioned, but I'd say that that was arrogance. Oh, and about the being next part? I beg to differ."
The demon turned his energy ball onto the two girls lying, shaking, at his feet and grinned. "You're right. You can't be next unless someone goes first. You want to choose which one of them gets it first? Or aren't you fussy? I could just do both, if you'd prefer."
"Stay. Away. From. Those. KIDS!" Piper growled, flicking her wrists and blowing a huge chunk of concrete out of the floor. The chips blew into the air and then thundered lightly to the floor, clattering like hailstones. The remaining chunk was lifted from the floor to slam into the demon's torso, causing its energy ball to spiral lazily skywards and vanquish a large portion of the roof. Dust hissed as it rained to the floor and surrounding crates; chunks of steel support beam clanged to the ground around them and smoking debris from what had been the roofing substance of choice for the building plunged downwards.
"Throw it."
They had one remaining potion that had been lost in the previous battle. Paige had called for it as soon as she had regained something resembling consciousness and had held it pressed into her palm until the dancing lights in front of her vision had stopped their games, until the tingling in her legs had ceased and until the warehouse had stopped randomly dimming and swirling around her. When that had happened, she had crawled towards her sisters, only to find Phoebe already awake and gently shaking Piper, keeping a wary eye on the situation with Bridget and Nixa and the demon. As to where their nephew and his friend were they had no idea, but they had had bigger fish to fry and actual lives to save in the form of the two scared little girls, so they had become a back-burner priority for the time being. They had finally woken Piper up and she had fired a warning shot into a stack of crates, nearly crushing their foe in the onslaught of wood.
Paige raised her arm to throw the potion just as the demon recovered and quickly fired off two energy balls in rapid succession. The three objects streaked past each other in midair. However, the energy balls proved faster and one smashed into the floor at the Charmed Ones' feet, throwing them backwards in a fusillade of concrete chips into a stack of crates, whilst the other one annihilated the bottom one of the stack just above their heads, so that the whole tower creaked and groaned ominously before beginning to fall like a house of cards, had a house of cards weighed around a ton and been any danger to anyone cowering beneath.
A ripple of searing air leftover from the energy balls hit the potion and the vial wobbled before being lurched violently off its trajectory and veering too far left. Just as the top crate began to tumble, Nixa launched herself up from the floor, her leg muscles firing as hard as she could make them and snatched the small bottle out of midair. She fell back to the concrete hard and bounced once, twice, before the entire stack of crates, turned into flaming spears of charred wood and a fine black powder of immolated contents crashed to the floor, scattering the remnants of fluttering orbing lights in its wake.
Bridget gasped suddenly, entirely overrun with everything that was happening at once as Nixa gritted her teeth and threw the potion as hard as she could from or her position on the floor at the demon's chest. The vial flew through the air in the perfect arc, shattering across the demon's chest and spattering potion across its torso, which began to bubble and sear, before the demon screeched. The Charmed Ones orbed in just in time to witness the last of its death throes before it turned into a fireball and disappeared into a sprinkling of ash.
Nixa immediately collapsed back to the floor, clutching her arm and crying out in pain, hot tears surging from her eyes. The Charmed Ones all took off as one, their own maternal instincts propelling them to sprint across the concrete all at once to Nixa's side. They crowded around the child, looking grimly at the splintered bone stabbing through her skin like some kind of gory high-rise building. Bridget, her mouth working wordlessly, took a deep breath and fell backwards into a dead faint.
"You know, that was our first battle, and we missed practically all of it," Ben remarked, frowning as this fact occurred to him. "It's not fair. Nixa and Bridget got all the glory, and Bridget wasn't even conscious when we finally orbed out of the warehouse." He snorted and folded his arms over his chest.
"Hey, you do realise that you're pouting, right?" Chris teased lightly, smirking as Ben gave him a withering look.
"What, you were thrilled that we got shut in a dark box for the duration?" Ben asked, slightly snappishly, making both himself and Chris blink at his tone.
"No… But, well, you know. It's not like there weren't other vanquishes that we managed to do right."
"But this was our first one and everything," Ben persisted, still frowning. "I just don't think it's—"
"—fair. Yeah, I got that."
"It was okay for you. You were unconscious the entire time we were trapped in there. You didn't have to keep checking every five seconds that you hadn't died."
Chris sighed and rubbed a hand across his eyes. Ben always got angry and defensive when it came around to talking about his being claustrophobic. It was not a point he'd ever discuss at any length at all, and Chris wasn't entirely sure that even Bridget knew about it. Nixa, perhaps, but he didn't think Ben would tell Bridget, because she always managed to portray herself as fearless. Besides, Ben had pretty much brought on this discussion by himself, anyway, so he would just sit here and let him rant and wait for it to blow over.
"You know, would it have killed you to have woken up and orbed us the hell out—" the witch broke off, clutching at his chest. He made gulping sounds but Chris could tell that his friend's lungs were not obtaining any air. Ben's mouth was working wordlessly and he gripped the fabric of his shirt until his hand shook and his knuckles became nearly transparent. Slowly, whatever was happening began to abate, and Ben gradually uncurled his fist, leaving a very rumpled shirt-front in its wake.
"What happened?" Chris asked, thinking that he already had a pretty good idea. If he had had a mirror earlier, he was about ninety-five percent sure that he would have had the exact same expression on his face.
"I… don't know. It happened earlier; in the Underworld. I had this searing pain in my heart, and I was dizzy, and I couldn't breathe… It felt like I was suffocating… It's probably nothing. I haven't eaten and what with Bridget…"
"It's the powers," Chris said bluntly as Ben broke off. "We've got to face it. Phoebe and Paige are right. These really aren't made for us." He shrugged lightly, but the regret was betrayed in his eyes. He could have used them. He could have used them to find out who — or what — it was that had fucked up Wyatt. He could have used to them to avenge Bridget. And he would have controlled them, he really would have done. He was stronger than his aunts took him for. Just because he didn't happen to be twice-blessed did not mean that he couldn't handle a little bit of power and stay responsible with it. Ironic, really, that he was thinking that because Wyatt had one hell of a lot more than a 'little bit' of power, and he hadn't managed to stay responsible with it, even though Chris had thought that Wyatt had been the second strongest person other than his mother that he knew, growing up.
"I just… I mean, it's not like we couldn't do good with them…" Ben paused, looking down at his hands and then turning them over, as if expecting them to burst into flames at any second. He looked back up at Chris hopefully, almost desperately, for confirmation. "Right?"
Chris sighed and stood up, stretching. He yawned until his ears roared with it and then began pacing again, running the thought around in his head. "You don't believe that we can keep these and stay in control, do you?" he finally asked, turning to Ben.
The other witch sighed and dropped his gaze, looking to the floor and shaking his head. "No," he reluctantly admitted, although he felt it necessary for some reason to back-pedal slightly, even though, because Chris felt the same, there was no need to try and save face. "I mean, at first, I thought it was totally possible. Scratch that — it's totally possible now. But… but—"
"The pain," Chris said. "The pains are probably because of the powers, right? I guess we can't actually live with them, huh?"
"Honestly? I've… Well, I… I've been kind of wondering why this is the only pain I've been feeling."
Chris tilted his head and narrowed his eyes a little, thinking that he was maybe halfway to working out what Ben was talking about, but, then again, maybe he wasn't. It was often like that with Ben. "What do you mean?" he asked slowly, cocking his head.
"I… I mean, this is gonna sound so awful, but… I… I'm not hurting over the fact that Bridget's dead," he said, rushing the end part of the sentence so that the words stumbled and tripped over one another as they jostled for position being spat from his lips. He looked suddenly very ashamed of himself and he looked quickly down at the rug covering the boards he was sitting on, hastily scratching and picking at a loose thread and clearing his throat, partly wishing he hadn't said anything to Chris and partly hating himself for even thinking it, despite its truth.
"I know," Chris said quietly. Ben was right. He couldn't really, truly, properly feel. Ghosts of emotions flitted briefly across his consciousness, touching his heart briefly before they were gone again like wisps of smoke. He didn't feel guilty over Bridget's death. He didn't feel really very sad, or even particularly depressed. He just… couldn't feel. He knew that his heart should be breaking after Bridget and his baby had died but he couldn't make it, and that, bizarrely, was the emotion that pierced through the ink-black, smog-like curtain that had descended within him. Guilt. Guilt over not feeling guilt was the only thing that could repeatedly manage to penetrate the thick film that had been hastily erected around his heart. On the other hand, rage and hatred were emotions that managed to stab at him and he was so grateful to be feeling at least something that he nearly ignored the fact that those emotions weren't his and were to do with the demonic turmoil surging through him. It was this rage and hatred that had spurred him to go and kill everything demonic in the immediate vicinity — he had misinterpreted the emotions as his own, and who could blame him? He had just lost someone that he loved — emotions like that were only natural. It was only now that he had been put in a magical 'timeout' by his aunts and forced to clam down that he had learned to distinguish.
"All I can feel is anger. I'm just… I don't think I've ever felt my blood boiling as it's doing now. And I hate the demons and I just… want to kill them. And, well, I'm wondering how long that these feelings are going to stay confined to just demons."
"Humans?"
Ben only shrugged weakly, once again ashamed. "Anything with a pulse," he joked feebly, feeling himself paling as the reality of it all set in. "I think your aunts are right. These aren't made for us."
Chris acquiesced with a sigh. He heaved himself up from the floor, looking out of the cage once more at the window and watching the dust motes dance in a stray sunbeam. He knew he should give up the new powers, but doing so would just turn him back into a normal witch — a drop in the ocean of the powers that made up the Greater Good. He would not have the power anymore to exact his revenge or solve the Wyatt riddle — he would be back to banging his head against a wall in an attempt to solve Wyatt's turning. He rubbed a tired hand across his eyes, then pressed the heels of his hands hard into his eye sockets until he was seeing multiple coloured dots behind his eyelids. He was back to thinking about Bridget again. "It… it really took Bridget's innocence away, meeting us, didn't it? It really screwed her life up good."
Ben sighed. "I guess it did." Chris started to talk again, but Ben cut him off, shaking his head. "No."
Chris cocked his head, an imperceptible expression on his face that was, perhaps, partly questioning, partly amused. "'No' what?"
"I know what you're thinking and, no, it wouldn't have been better for her if she'd stayed out of magical life. It wouldn't have been better if she'd never come into that warehouse. She had powers. She was different. If she hadn't met us, then who knows what would have happened? She could have turned out evil or something. And besides, you know how much fun she had with the demon killing. You could see it. She loved it. It made her life… whole. We all gave her a cause and made her life whole."
There was such conviction behind his friend's words that Chris nearly managed to prevent berating himself. "I… suppose so…" he said, still looking troubled, not entirely happy with the ease at which he had agreed to stop blaming himself. "But… It's just that, whilst doing that we pretty much ripped her life apart as well, didn't we? Tore it apart at the seams. All of those times that she got hurt, all of those times that her life sucked entirely because she met us and started to learn about her powers were because of us. You don't think ignorance would have been bliss for her? You don't think she'd like to have been playing with, I don't know, Barbie instead of learning how to dodge a fireball blindfolded?"
Ben pulled a face and frowned, holding his hands up, palms facing Chris. "Whoa, wait, what did you just say? Bridget and Barbie? Did you hit your head or something?"
Chris rolled his eyes, dropping his shoulders tiredly. "You know what I mean. Making a… a K-nex pterodactyl to swoop down on an unsuspecting stuffed bunny. Don't you think she would have been happier doing that?"
Ben sighed again, lying back down and staring at the ceiling, rubbing his eyes. "Bridget…" He couldn't find the words to even begin to play the 'con' position in this argument. Chris had instilled doubts on him; doubts that he had never previously thought about. If Bridget never had met them, then she'd be in the future right now. She'd be free and she definitely wouldn't have bled out on that slab. But… "She wouldn't have been happier doing that — she'd have been dead," Ben said bluntly. "If she didn't know how to utilise her powers, then she would have been killed long ago. And, if she survived to see herself out of puberty, she would have fallen prey to Wyatt. Remember what happened after she lost her memory that time?
"Either way she would have… left us. Just, this way, she got to have fun first. She got to live."
Chris was silent for a while, Ben's words ticking over in his head. Eventually he nodded slowly, conceding reluctantly with a tilt of his head as if Ben had just check-mated him in chess. "I guess… But what about us? All of us? Don't you think that maybe we were meant to live for so much more?"
Ben swallowed, wishing he hadn't heard the question, let alone was required to answer. He had been having a similar crisis of faith ever since Nixa had died. What had happened to them having normal lives? For the gods' sake, Chris and Bridget were going to have a baby. Bridget. Baby. With Chris. It was a blindingly ridiculous concept and should probably have never have happened. He might feel differently if he was an uncle right now, but, well, he wasn't, so it should never have happened — he'd blame it on the messed up timeline because Bridget having a baby? Insane. Totally.
Piper had been so adamant that people could do both, but you couldn't. Not really. Magic was a vortex that just kept drawing you deeper and deeper into the centre every time you were required to use it to save somebody, until, in the end, you couldn't disentangle yourself from it anymore. That's what had happened to them all. With having to constantly battle Wyatt and then hide, and then begin this very small, very vicious cycle all over again, it had happened. Magic had become a way of life instead of just some kind of privilege, and he resented it. It had taken away his family and now two of his best friends to boot. "I guess we don't," Ben said sadly, staring at the floor and picking a thread out of the rug. "And I guess we never will. This is our life — we were apparently meant to live to devote ourselves to magic and a lost cause." He shrugged as the thread got longer and longer before suddenly snapping viciously. "Just go with it, because it's always easier when you just go with it."
"Don't you want so much more, though?" Chris persisted, frustrated, needing confirmation that he wasn't the only one feeling so angry and resentful, "don't you want to just…"
"Live?" Ben finished. "Yeah. Yeah, I do. And, if you want the truth, I'm sick of not being able to do it. I'm sick of not being able to turn around without finding a demonic crisis or someone I love dead. But… well, you're probably even more well versed than I am in the whole fate and destiny bullshit, so I don't need to tell you that we got a sucky hand and are totally expected to bluff our way onwards as if we can win. Poker faces at the ready etcetera, etcetera."
Chris gave a wistful snort of relieved laughter. "Huh. Well, at least I'm not the only one who feels like this."
"You're not alone. I mean, hey, I'm still here, right?" Ben attempted a joke, looking down at himself and patting at his torso. "Just had to check… that." His fingers had brushed the paper he had shoved into his back pocket on Bridget's request and he reached in and pulled it out, looking at it and remembering details so precisely that they must have been etched onto his mind. "This… this is for you," he said, handing over the folded piece of paper and noticing for the first time that it had some kind of children's maze on the back. The paper was splotchy with tears and written in crayon so it hadn't, thankfully, run.
"Bridget?" Chris asked, his voice suddenly hoarse.
Ben only nodded in reply, looking at Chris uncertainly. He got up and folded his arms across his chest, trying to do his best to give Chris some time alone in the confined space. Biting his top lip, he stared at the attic wall. He hoped that the note contained some kind of closure for Chris. He hoped that Bridged had written in something about Chris not assigning blame to himself for what had happened to her. He sighed, knowing full well that Bridget's posthumous words would make no difference to the guilt that Chris was tormenting himself with. Or, at any rate, would be tormenting himself with once they got rid of their demonic powers.
Chris took a deep breath and, with trembling fingers, slowing unfolded a corner of the paper. On the back, Bridget's failed attempt at finding the leprechaun's pot of gold was still evident, and the witch-whitelighter traced the ill-fated line with his fingers before flipping the paper over suddenly before anything could kick in to stop him.
Chris,
So uh... here we are. Or, you know, here I am. I don't know what to think about us having this kid. I mean, who'd have thought it, huh? Seriously… this is freakishly strange and I feel like I'm in the twilight zone and… this is weird. Baby's coming and, for now at least, I'm all alone. I'm scribbling away furiously on this because well… there's something freaky going on. Really bad freaky and… I think I'm going to die. Today, soon, maybe now… You can thank those crazy Hunter dreams for this heads up, by the way. I, however, won't because they've really been screwing with my head. I didn't even believe them. But now, well… I'm kind of cold, and it's the kind of cold that I don't think can be helped by grabbing a jacket. You know what I mean. Of course you know what I mean; you've seen it happen way too many times before, and I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry that I'm going to be another person in your life who has just gone and given up on you, leaving you alone. I've helped you through death more than once, but now I guess I'll have to pass the torch. I'll just do it very reluctantly, because, really, it's my torch. Blame the only child thing. Therapists have been doing that for, like, ever. What do they know, anyway? Do they have degrees in Bridget-ology or something? Losers.
Anyway, I honestly don't think that I'm going to see you again, so… I know this is going to be kind of futile, because I know that you're going to blame yourself, but… don't. Please, please don't. You're probably somewhere on the top ten of the best things that have happened to me. Really high, but not quite above my Samurai sword because, you know, pretty and stuff. But you're right below that, I promise. Well, you know… I think you're totally joint top with her, actually. Especially because she's in the future and doesn't know I'm being a cheating whore.
I was writing something about not blaming yourself, but it's slipped my mind and I don't know if I have the patience to read back to find out exactly what it was I said. That and I don't think I could do it without getting all mushy and not being able to finish the letter, which is a stupidly unattractive trait, so, basically, you were my rock and my sanity, and… I don't want you to take my death on your shoulders. I don't want you to hurt because of me, because there'll be a new me. She won't be as good as this me, though, because nothing ever could be, but there'll be another me. You don't need to tear yourself apart with guilt and if you do I'm going to have to kick your ass.
Everything good in my life started with you. Everything. And I'm not just saying that; I really mean it. I could never have hoped or prayed for a better set of friends than you guys and, even though I'm not going to be with you anymore, I'll always be looking out for you. So don't think you can badmouth me the second I've taken Death's hand because, boys, I'll be pissed, so pissed I'll drag Nixa out of the Afterlife Mall where everything is discounted all the time and make her help me haunt you, because I would only ever do the clichéd stuff. You know how smart Nixa is: she'd help me spook you both good.
I guess… I've been thinking, and I guess that I don't really have anything to leave my mark on the world. The only thing I have left in this world is our baby, and that will have to be my legacy, so you take care of Baby, yeah? Make sure he plays nice with the other babies and doesn't florb them to purgatory for having a better buggy than s/he does. In fact, make sure that no baby has a better buggy then s/he does. Baby doesn't need an inferiority complex. It's already screwed up, what with having Ben as an uncle and all.
God this is so weird.
Lastly, because this crayon is getting blunt and they make mazes on stupidly small pieces of paper. You think they'd think that someone might need it to write their last words on, wouldn't you? Stupid inconsiderate diner. But yes… lastly… make sure that you can open your heart to someone. Don't decide to be a monk just because I'm gone. Live a little — while you still can because I'm not-so-living-anymore proof that life can be gone in a flash. Let someone else find out how special you are. Let them find out what a fucking great person you are. Don't close yourself off because you're grieving. Live, dammit, and what's more, enjoy it. That's what life is there for. Life is not meant to be doom and gloom and one long hunt after another long hunt. That's not what it's about. Passion is so important, because without it, we'd be truly dead. So… find who it is that turns Wyatt and, when you do, run them through a couple of times for me, and then stop. Just stop. Stop the hunting and the killing and the putting-everyone-else first crap and live. Put the darkness behind you and enjoy what you've created and take the time to enjoy my legacy, because it's all I have to give. Take the time to make sure that Baby has something to pass on to its loved ones when it dies because this sudden realisation of emptiness? Sucks. So make sure you do this one thing for me, okay? Please?
I love you, Chris Halliwell. Lord knows why, but I do. So be happy. Be happy for me.
All my love,
Bridget
XxX
P.S. And keep Ben out of trouble. Stitch his lips together if you have to, but do it because I don't want to be floating around one day and find him hurt any more than I want to see it happen to you. Just don't tell him I got all sentimental.
Chris swallowed repeatedly, clutching the paper in his hand so hard that it began to hurt, and he didn't even know why. He looked back down at the letter, feeling only demonic-related anger and hatred searing through him. Flashes of pain kept bursting their way to the tumultuous broiling surface but mostly all he could feel was hatred. He hated Bridget. He hated her for leaving him. How dare she leave him all alone? What about her whole 'Live fast, Die Never' policy? He balled up the letter and hurled it across the cage. It was blasted back into his lap, smoking and singed, by the crackling white bars.
"Chris? Are you alright?"
Ben never got an answer, though, because at that moment orbing lights appeared in front of them. The orbs cascaded slowly down from the ceiling, achingly coalescing molecule by molecule to form Leo. The Elder, looking filthy, haggard and exhausted, cast bewildered eyes around the Manor's attic before taking two rattling breaths and collapsing to the floorboards.
"Phoebe! Paige!" Chris yelled, stepping forward to the very edge of the cage. "PHOEBE! PAIGE!" he bellowed, panic seeping into his voice. What the hell had happened? What was wrong with his dad?
"Jeez, Chris, we're coming," Paige huffed from the attic's stairs, pushing hair out of her face. "You know, it was only like an hour ago that you didn't want to lose these powers. You wouldn't think you'd change your mind so… quickly." She paused, her eyes roving over the prone form on the floor to land on Ben and Chris, at which point they turned harsh and accusing. "What did you do? Who's this?"
"It's Leo!" Phoebe suddenly shrieked, crossing the room quickly and dropping to her knees by his side. She rolled him over so he was facing the ceiling, gasping at the gashes on his head, face and neck. Suddenly, they were bathed in a golden light and healed, his body finally getting the rest it so needed to perform this action. "What happened to him?"
"He just orbed in here and collapsed. What's going on?" Ben asked a little shakily.
Paige put down two potion vials on a dresser by the door and rubbed her forehead with her hand gently, looking vaguely harassed. "Uh… Leo!" Her unconscious brother-in-law orbed onto the couch.
"I'm going to go and get him a glass of water…" Phoebe said. "Hopefully, he'll wake up and be able to tell us what happened."
"I'll orb you downstairs. Just when I thought we were clearing up a mess…" Paige muttered, gesturing to Phoebe with her arm. The middle sister joined the youngest and they orbed out together.
"Hey, guys! Hey!" Ben yelled to the empty air, throwing up his hands as the last orbing lights faded. "It's fine. Don't worry about us, we'll just—" He was suddenly gripped by another violent pain in his chest and he bent double, staggered backwards. He thought he was going to vomit, but his knees gave out first and he crashed to the boarded floor, pain coiling around his heart like white hot barbed wire.
Chris was about to go to his friend's side when another set or orbing lights appeared in practically the same spot Leo's had been earlier. Piper stepped out of them in a much brisker entrance than her sort-of husband's had been before her.
The witch looked to the ceiling. "Thank you," she called, sarcasm highly evident in her words. "It only took four hours of asking, but thank you nonetheless," she muttered, shaking her head. "Okay, so…"
Paige and Phoebe chose that moment to orb back into the room. Phoebe was clutching a pitcher filled with water and a glass in one hand. Paige, as soon as she saw Piper, winced at how utterly busted she was for orbing her sister out of the way against her will. She half-smiled, half-grimaced at her sister in way of greeting, chewing on her bottom lip and waiting for the customary explosion.
"Talk about Grand Central Station," Chris muttered, his head still reeling from the comings and goings the attic had seen in the past five minutes after being all but silent for the past hour. The full set of Charmed One glares still smacked into him like an eighteen wheeler, even after all of the years of living with it and he just settled for rolling his eyes, aiding Ben in getting up from the floor and folding his arms whilst the sister began to bicker, resigned to the fact that he had to let it happen.
"What the hell is going on?" Piper shrieked demandingly, watching as Phoebe, anticipating the length of her coming rant, set the pitcher and the tumbler down without a coaster next to two potion bottles. "Paige, firstly, you had no right to endanger you and Phoebe like that by breaking up the Power of Three when it could have been most needed. What were you thinking? Pregnant or not, I still have responsibilities, even though I might not like them. And secondly—" she paused, turning just a little to catch her breath and hazily catching sight of Leo behind her on the couch in the glass front of the dresser. "What…? Secondly, why is my ex-husband unconscious on the couch? And, thirdly, why have you put them in a cage? I leave you alone for a few hours and you knock out my husband and imprison my sons? I'm glad Wyatt was at Magic School with me because, at this rate, you would have shoved his stroller off a pier!"
Slow realisation dawned on Ben. Piper Halliwell had actually referred to him as her son. Half-mad with anger and ranting, admittedly, but she had still done it. He blinked, a slow grin forming on across his face at the idea of Piper's basic unconscious acceptance. He looked to Chris, who had caught Piper's miswording too and was grinning a reflection of the grin that he was.
The witch-whitelighter Chris punched Ben's arm lightly. "Dorky younger brother that I never had, huh?" he said.
"Uh. Huh. I'm the same age as you. I guess we can overlook that, though, 'cause I get to be the better-looking one after all," Ben teased, eliciting another punch, harder, from Chris.
Piper had taken a deep breath that broke into her tirade, and Paige saw her opportunity to jump in. She held up a hand, watching Piper deflate a little as she let her indrawn air go, and then spoke. "Look, Piper. Leo… Leo just appeared like five minutes ago and collapsed, okay? That one is so not our fault. And Ben and Chris, well…" She stopped, wincing, looking conflicted. She didn't particularly want to get yelled at by Piper again. No matter how often it happened, it was never a pleasant experience; it only served to make her feel as if she were five all over again. Also, Piper had this vein that popped out on her forehead when she got really mad and it had been practically pulsating throughout her tirade, which was not at all good for Baby Chris. And she could never explain what had happened to Bridget and the baby with Ben and Chris standing right there; she really didn't want to rake over ground so obviously raw.
Piper tucked her hands into her hips and cocked an eyebrow. "'Well'?" she repeated, letting the word hang so that Paige could complete the sentence. "Well what?" she demanded when no one answered her, fixing each of her sisters in turn with a glare. "Is this the whole pregnant thing? 'We have to wrap Piper in cotton wool and never tell her anything because she's having a… baby'. What happened to Bridget? Where is she?"
Both Phoebe and Paige sucked in a pained breath of air and shot glances over at Ben and Chris to see how they were taking it. Chris had closed his eyes gently; his mother's asking of the question he dreaded making him suddenly very tired. Ben was avoiding everyone's eyes, staring anywhere but at anyone's face.
Piper frowned, looking at the two caged witches to her sisters and then back again, the silence unnerving her. Slowly, a horrible thought crept into her brain. "Oh God," Piper breathed. "She's not… I mean, she didn't… Oh, Chris, sweetie…" Words failing her, the eldest Charmed One stepped forwards, opening her arms slightly to move in for a hug. She walked right into the perimeter of the cage and was thrown backwards in a blast of sparks. "Well, that's one way to abort a tender moment," Piper sniped, wheeling to glare at Paige. "Are you going to keep them in there for some asinine reason or do they get to come out and grieve?"
Phoebe wrinkled her nose slightly and picked up the pitcher and glass and walked over to Leo, trying to distance herself from the situation. When one was on the sidelines, one was much less of a target for Piper's wrath. She pressed the cool glass against his lips, letting drops of water trickle steadily into his mouth. The Elder's tongue darted out, swiping them away and his eyelids fluttered. Groaning, Leo's head turned first one side and then the other before slowly waking up.
"More," he rasped throatily, the dryness of his throat grating on his voice box. Phoebe tilted the glass, emptying the tumbler into his mouth before pouring him another. The Elder sat up and gripped the glass himself this time, downing the contents for a second time.
Paige held out a hand hesitantly, biting her top lip for a split second before waving her hand and conjuring a crystal onto the sideboard with her orbing telekinesis before using it again to hurl the power stripping vials at Ben and Chris's chests. The two witches staggered slightly, reeling as if from an invisible punch.
"What was that for?" Piper demanded, exasperated, hating being out of the loop everyone else in the room was so obviously in. She had absolutely no idea what was going on and, running a haggard hand through her hair, she exhaled, feeling a headache forming. She was about to insist on an answer — again — when she saw Chris's face crumple at the sudden stinging slap of emotions returning from their demonic-power-induced prison. His heart felt like it was rending in two, and all he wanted to do was claw it from his chest and hurl it at the wall.
Piper's maternal instincts kicked in and she stepped forward once more, wrapping her arms around her much-taller son. He recoiled instantly, though, swiping her arms apart and staggering backwards, shaking his head. He was taking several short, sharp gasps of air, his back heaving with them, his anguish and despair erupting from within him.
"She's gone…" he whispered, his voice choked.. "She's gone, she's gone, she's gone…"
Phoebe looked up from attending to Leo and swallowed, a tear rolling down her cheek. Paige was hugging herself gently, her eyes damp and glistening as she struggled to hold back tears of her own. Lost, Piper opened and closed her mouth wordlessly, her arms still open. She swallowed, hurt and stunned by Chris's rejection of her and slowly she dropped her arms to her sides, looking at him helplessly and pained, completely uncomprehending as he son hit the wall without noticing. The witch-whitelighter slowly sank down the wall onto the floor, struggling to breathe through his grief and clawing at the side of his head, sending his hair into disarray. He inhaled suddenly as if a knife had been plunged into his chest and, all at once, he began to cry.
Piper one again made forward, but only got two steps before restraining herself. Chris didn't want her. Chris didn't need her… She was useless, defunct, her son was crying and she couldn't do a thing to stop it. Is this the way she mothered in the future? Was her incapability what sent Wyatt into the downward spiral towards evil? She swallowed again, tears teetering on the edge of her eyes, waiting for the slightest inclination to spill.
The force of the potion hitting his chest had sent Ben backwards, and he hadn't stopped stepping backwards. His legs felt heavy, like lead, and the muscles felt as if they were fluttering. He felt as if they were going to give away any second and yet he kept shakily stepping backwards, trying to distance himself from the sudden onslaught of emotions that had rushed through him like a subway train. He had to get away from it all. The pain was going to kill him… He had backed into a wall and his fingers were scrabbling subconsciously against the woodwork hard enough to leave shallow gouge-marks with his nails. Desolation and disbelief radiating from his face ran the room through in soul-wrenching waves as his fingers stopped scratching at the wood and seized it until his knuckles glowed white, clutching and clinging to it just so he could feel something solid, like a drowning man seizing a flotsam .
Piper stood in the middle of the room and slowly, devoid of anything else to embrace, wrapped her long woollen cardigan around her middle and gently clasped her womb.
Learning to Tango
I just want to apologise sincerely for my bad, bad, bad delay. I can't believe that it was August I last updated. You have no idea what this term has done to me. I feel like I've been to Hell and back with all of the work I've had to do. If anyone had stuck with me — thank you. I know I can't thank you guys here anymore, so you'll all have had your ridiculous PM/e-mails whatchamacallits by now thanking you, unless you were an anonymous reviewer. So, minimonkey89 — thank you very much for your review — it was very kind. I guess that, because of the stupid new rule, you'll have to sign a review if you want a reply from me in the future — I'm sorry.