Learning to Tango

by Twisted Flame

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

18. Chapter 18

Ben took another sip of his coffee, only to find that he had emptied his mug without realising it. He looked accusingly down into the ceramic emptiness, angry with the coffee for deserting him and swirled the dregs around the bottom like a tealeaf reader. Answers in the bottom of a coffee mug. Now there was a novel concept. He sighed and gently placed it on a coaster on the windowsill and resumed his leaning against the wall and staring aimlessly into the street.

He didn't even know how long he'd been here. He was sure the clock had chimed more than once, but he couldn't be sure. Nothing seemed to exist besides him and his pain for the moment. He was even staring at the real world and it didn't seem to exist. It didn't seem plausible that everything else could continue to exist when everything had come to a screeching halt for him. It was selfish, he knew, to expect the universe to smack into a brick wall just because he'd lost somebody, but he was passed caring.

He poked at the base of his mug until it was sitting in the exact middle of the square piece of cork before twisting it so the handle faced the window, then changing his mind and pointing the handle to the left. As he regarded it to make sure it was indeed dead centre, he looked down at the potted plant next to his mug and twisted a leaf between his fingers, plucking it from its stalk. He dropped it to the floor before repeating the motion. The hardwood at his feet were littered with the semi-denuded plant's leaves as if they were corpses on a battle field; he had one on his bare foot and they were threatening to overwhelm the rug. He had no real awareness of what he was doing, or why he was doing it, other than using the age-old, tried and tested method of shredding plants in the aid of divination. There's a point to existing, there's not a point to existing. There's a point to existing… He crinkled his forehead, trying to remember if the plant's last leaf was telling him to live or not, but he'd lost track.

Looking at his cup, he decided that even the measliest of dregs at the bottom of the mug had value and took the frigid half a sip from the cup, wrinkling his nose a little at the gritty, granular taste of grounds. It was still early on Prescott Street, with the sun having only just made its appearance. He could already tell that it was going to be a beautiful day — high temperatures, not a cloud to speak of — and his gaze turned sour. Glaring at the coming day he wrenched an entire twig from the plant and dropped it to the floor. There is no way in hell that there's a point to existing when all you do is live with pain. Across the street, a house's windows shimmered with the new light and he dropped his gaze, cool eyes boring into the street's expanse of empty tarmac.

A bird landed on the lawn in a rush of feathers, startling him, and began to peck and scratch at the grass, searching for breakfast. Somewhere up the road, a car started and whined its way backwards down a driveway before pulling away down the street with a roar. Another bird joined the first on the lawn. A papergirl rode past on her bike, flinging out the morning editions into front yards. The Manor's copy scattered the feasting birds. Everything all seemed very mechanical; jerky as if it were all being controlled by a really bad puppeteer. Life went on all around Ben, but not for him. He was just standing on the outside, watching everyone else living out their lives.

He rolled a leaf between his fingers, slowly increasing the pressure until it was crushed and oozed sap, making his hands sticky. He watched the papergirl ride off up the road and manage to throw a newspaper so that it got jammed in the fork of a tree and let the mutilated leaf-carcass flutter clumsily to the floor. There is a point to existing. Somewhere. Just look for it. Hard. Harder.

Why did it have to be Bridget? Why were the Powers That Be so hell bent on tormenting them, when all they were trying to do was create a good future? Why did that put them so high up on Death's list? The papergirl cycled out of site, leaving Ben alone to stare at the newspaper eating up the dew from the grass. There was a politician on the front, smiling and waving at him, and Ben's face darkened. Was everything this morning designed to make him feel bad? He ran a hand through his hair and then dropped it back onto the windowsill. When he reached over for the plant he found that it had finally lost enough men to consider retaliation an option and an empty twig stabbed him in the heel of his hand.

Cursing and bringing his hand to his mouth, he sucked gently on the crimson bead of blood welling out of the hole. He took it from his mouth, looked at it and put it back in again. His mouth tasted of copper; his tongue tingled with the depressingly familiar taste. When he was convinced that it had stopped bleeding he toyed momentarily with the idea of immolating the stupid thing and leaving a pile of grey — and totally blunt — ash in its pot. He'd even raised a hand to do so when a voice from behind him made him spin on his heel in fright, his heart pumping wildly in his chest.

"You're up early." Piper had just issued a simple statement, but the way she was looking at him told him that it had an accusing edge. She obviously thought he would be better sleeping. Well, she obviously hadn't taken nightmares into account, then.

He only turned his back on her and grunted in way of response, tossing a half-shrug at her He'd nearly blasted her, for God's sake. Why was she creeping up on him? Had everyone taken leave of their senses? The politician's grey-scale face was now mottled and blotchy with the damp.

"Did you put coffee on?" She didn't know why she asked. The aroma of freshly-brewed coffee was permeating the entire ground floor. Soon, it may even coax her sisters from their beds. It was conversation, though, which was classed as better than awkward, stretching silences in anyone's books, so she persevered purely because every second they weren't talking seemed to ache for an eternity. He hadn't replied, so there was a gap to plug, and she groped wildly around for a new topic. "Di-did you eat anything?" Safe topics were good. The further she stayed away from what was really going on the better. She was sure that Phoebe would want to drag the Bridget issue out by its hair and beat at it with a stick as "therapy" or whatever she would call it. She was also sure that Paige would tackle the Bridget issue, just in a more subtle way that Phoebe would — her half-sister had been a social worker after all and was used to this kind of situation. But her… well, she was neither of her sisters. So this was all she had to offer right now.

"No," Ben allowed, shifting his foot off a leaf. One of the birds had come back and was scratching at the lawn again.

"Well, do you want something? I mean, there are bagels and croissants if you're interested… Or, or I could make pancakes or something? What do you like? I know that Chris likes blueberry, but we don't have to do that. I think we have strawberries… I could make chocolate chip, or apple, or—"

"I'm not really hungry. Thanks."

Piper deflated slightly. "Well… What about Chris? Do you think he'll want something?"

"If you can make him hear you, you're free to ask him," Ben told her slightly bitterly. "Let's just hope you have more luck with him than I did."

"Shutting you out, huh?" she asked. Immediately, her mouth snapped shut, trapping the tip of her tongue between her teeth. Her brain clapped sarcastically at her. Ooh, smooth, Piper. Insult the person you're trying to comfort. Hastily, she began babbling, back-pedalling. "Oh, Ben, look, um, I'm sorry, okay? That's was stupid. It's not… I mean, I-I didn't mean—"

"I knew what you meant," he said, turning to face her again. He stared at the carpet for another eternity-spanning silence before looking back up at her face and sighing angrily, turning his head away from her and shaking it slightly. "And yeah. You're right. He is shutting me out. But… that's just something I've got to deal with, because he's Chris. So…" he ended openly with another shrug, a what-can-you-do gesture.

"I suppose… I suppose we all have our different ways of grieving, right?" Softly, softly. She had sworn to herself she wasn't going to touch this topic, because all it made her want to do was mother them, which was all that they didn't want her to do, and she was still stung from her rejection in the attic the day before. They were both grown up now; a mother was obviously not something they needed. A friend, some support, perhaps. It was just that she'd discovered that, when you took the mothering part out of her personality, there wasn't much left to give. The thought actually physically depressed her.

Ben gave yet another shrug, leaning back against the windowsill as he did so. He started picking at his nails, totally absorbed in his task. If Piper wanted to talk about the whole Bridget issue, then she was best kept at a distance. Anyone that wanted to talk about the whole Bridget issue was best kept at a distance for now, and he was going to make his best effort to make sure that it stayed that way.

"You know, the waffle iron just came out of the shop. That's the last time I let Phoebe use it… Do you want waffles? Banana waffles? I could put cream on top?"

"No thanks." Whilst breakfast foods weren't the most fascinating of subjects, they were most definitely not Bridget's death, so he listened to the Charmed One babble, almost grateful for the distraction and change of topic.

"Sure? Now would be the perfect time to take it for a test run, what with Phoebe safely asleep and all…" She tried to make her voice sound as tempting as possible, but she could tell that Ben wasn't going to take the bait. He didn't want to eat, she got that. What she did get, though, was that he had to, whether he liked it or not, because otherwise he was going to make himself ill. So she wasn't going to rest until he had eaten something. She knew, somewhere in her mind at least, that she was overcompensating, but that was what she had been born to do, it seemed. So, dammit, if it was the single thing that she could do she was going to do it, and do it right.

"Don't let me stop you making them for you," Ben said monotonously. "I just don't have much of an appetite."

"Waffles are only good for breakfast if they're made for someone else as well," Piper said a little gloomily. Ben cocked an eyebrow at her logic, so she continued, "Oh, it's just that, otherwise, you kind of feel like a glutton when you eat an entire batch by yourself, even if you only make a couple, which, yeah, that is weird, but I do have a thing with gluttony, so…"

A small smile quirked Ben's lips. His body sagged a little in defeat and he exhaled heavily. "Fine. What does me having another mug of coffee buy you for breakfast?"

Piper looked at him stonily, unimpressed. "A Cheerio," she deadpanned, before snapping out of it a little and reaching for his arm. "Look, come on. Come into the kitchen." Her fingers wrapped around his forearm. "Ben! You're frozen!" she chided, recoiling.

The witch looked down at his arm. All of the hairs were standing on end, puckering the flesh into a rash of Goosebumps. His eyebrows shot up, registering mild surprise. Now that Piper mentioned it, he was kind of cold. He'd been standing in one of the Manor's multiple draughts with nothing to stand up against it but the pair of boxers and the t-shirt that he'd slept in. "Yeah… I guess I am a little…"

"Go back upstairs and grab Leo's robe. And don't you dare even think about coming back down until you've got it."

Learning to Tango

When Ben came back down clad in dark blue-and-green striped terrycloth inches too short for him, Piper had set a fresh mug of coffee on a coaster on the kitchen table and was pottering around the centre island, putting a frying pan on the burner.

Ben sat down at the table and wrapped both hands around the mug, taking a fortifying sip of the strong, hot coffee and watched her as she poured oil into the pan and waited for it to heat up. He took another sip of his coffee, staring into it.

"Eggs on toast?" Piper asked sunnily, already halfway to the refrigerator. She was a chef, dammit. She could stand there all morning firing off dishes in his direction until she eventually wore him down enough to make him accept something. If that was what it took, then that was what she would do.

Ben shook his head wordlessly, gazing at the vase of flowers in the middle of the table. They were lilies. Someone had already picked out the stamens off and discarded them so that they wouldn't stain anything with pollen, so he had nothing to pick at but petals and leaves. His fingertips seemed to itch and he reached up to the pink-flecked petals but Piper rescued them quickly, whisking the vase onto the counter next to the TV.

"I saw what you did to the one in the living room," she groused, spinning the vase so that the flowers' best sides were facing outwards. "These lilies don't deserve that."

Ben wrapped his hand back around his mug tightly, trying to burn off the itch in his fingers with the scalding ceramic. The biting heat was welcome. "Sorry. About the plant, I mean. I wasn't really thinking about what I was doing, it was just…" His words sputtered to a halt and he heaved a sigh, bringing his mug to his lips again.

"Doing? Yeah, I know. I'm not mad. I didn't like it much anyway. It was squat and kind of ugly and really greedy with water… This way, I don't have to tell Phoebe that, though." She shrugged satisfactorily and poured herself a cup of coffee, sitting down opposite Ben, gnawing on her bottom lip and watching him gaze into his coffee. He looked so hurt and lost that she had to clench her hands around her mug to stop herself trying to hug him again. "Oh! I just remembered!" She grimaced guiltily as Ben jumped, startled, and spilt a little coffee. "We have pastries. Paige brought pastries home yesterday. Apple and pecan? There's some with cinnamon on. Or custard ones, I think… Am I tempting you yet?"

Ben rolled his eyes and gave her a half-smile. "No. I'm fine. Really."

Piper picked up her coffee mug and took a drink, narrowing her eyes a little at him and cocking her head. She smiled a little at his panicked, deer-in-the-headlights look and put her mug down. "I know. Boiled egg and toasted soldiers?"

Ben groaned and leant his forehead in the crook of his arm. Muffled, he warned, "I swear, if you ask me about breakfast foods one more time, I won't be responsible for my actions."

Piper laughed at him as she got up and flipped hair back over her shoulder, lacing her fingers through her mug's handle so she could take it with her. She walked over to a cupboard and opened the door, stretching on her tiptoes and navigating her bump to reach the cereal packets on the top shelf. "Okay… We have Cheerios and Cornflakes and Raisin Bran if you feel like being nutritious, which nobody ever is unless they're me, so…" She reached up and grabbed two boxes down with one hand before setting her coffee down so she could brandish both boxes. "We have Lucky Charms and Trix here, as well as Captain Crunch up in the cupboard. Which one do you want?"

Ben half-smiled again then cocked an eyebrow at her. "You are aware that I've seen you give exactly the same choice to Wyatt in his highchair like, every morning since I've been here, right?"

Piper smirked. "Ah… So that would be a yes vote for the Raisin Bran, huh?" Ben pulled a face of such disgust that Piper laughed again, setting the two cereal boxes down on the island in front of her so she could pick up her coffee again.

"Somehow, I don't think I'm that geriatric. Yet. I didn't say I minded the choices; I just want to feel a little more grown up than Wyatt. You know, while I still have the chance?"

"How much more grown up?"

Ben shrugged. "Eh. Just a couple of years or so. Preschool was fun, after all. I totally had the time of my life gnawing at construction paper with blunt plastic scissors."

"So! My new four-year-old!" Piper said brightly, picking up the packets again and shaking them for extra emphasis, first her left hand, then her right. "Lucky Charms or Trix? Hm? Which one today?"

Ben made an exasperated noise and sunk down lower in his chair, throwing his head back and groaning once more. "Piper…" He sighed. "Can we clear this up, please? No matter how much I adore being patronised, I'm really, really not hungry. So please, just…"

Piper gave a light shrug and replaced the cereals, snagging her mug again and opening the breadbin. Ben was looking at her back suspiciously when Paige came in, stretching and yawning and making a beeline for the coffeepot. Ben was perpetually surprised that there wasn't a rut in the floor from the door to the coffeemaker.

The witch-whitelighter unhooked a mug from a mug tree and set about pouring herself a coffee, stirring in milk but no sugar. She turned around, leaning against the sink to take the first sip and her eyes landed on Ben. "Hey… How are you feeling?" she asked gently, setting the coffee down on the draining board behind her.

Ben tilted his head first one way and then the next. "You know. Alive, I guess."

She gave a sympathetic grimace of understanding and reached back for her coffee, taking a sip and then nodding as she swallowed. "Well, that's the main thing, right? And you know that, if you ever want to talk about—"

"I'm fine," Ben cut in shortly, quite certain that he would never want to talk about it again.

Paige smiled sadly, but then blew it off with a shrug. "That's fine. It's not like you don't know where I am," the Charmed One offered, snagging Piper's seat opposite him and turning her upper body towards her older sister. "So, chef, what's for breakfast?"

"Ask Ben," Piper said dryly, cocking an eyebrow at the young witch. She glanced back down at the hob and wrinkled her nose, licking a finger and cleaning each of the knobs in turn.

Paige frowned a little in confusion and turned to Ben with her head tilted. "Uh… what?" She turned back to Piper, the answer she had arrived at totally confusing her. "He's going to cook?"

Ben rolled his eyes for what felt like the hundredth time that morning. It probably was. "She wants me to have breakfast," he said tiredly. "And, for extra guilt, apparently none of you get to eat until I do."

Paige wrinkled her nose a little and then held up her hands, denying any part in the morning's events. "Okay, fine. I can just about deal with that, but you better choose something before Phoebe comes down, okay? Friendly advice there for you."

Ben groaned again. "Don't you get that I'm really not hungry?" he said. "Is that such an alien concept to you?" Paige got up, her chair scraping across the tiles, to go and stand beside her sister. Piper had her arms folded and Ben, his eyes switching between them, suddenly knew that there was no hope for his cause. He could see that Piper's eyes were glinting with triumph, and Paige was smirking because she was on the side of someone whose eyes could glint with triumph, so the witch just looked down into his coffee and mumbled, "I'll have some toast."

Piper perked up immediately and clapped her hands together, spinning on her heel to grab a loaf of bread, whilst Paige grabbed the box of Lucky Charms and a bowl and proceeded to pour herself a liberal measure.

Piper was humming to herself so quietly that only she could hear as she slotted bread into the toaster and slid it inside. He'd smiled. He'd actually smiled. Not only had she won on the food front, it seemed that she'd successfully liberated his thoughts, for the time-being at least, from Bridget's death. She watched the elements inside the appliance slowly glow red. Perhaps she wasn't just good at once thing after all.

Learning to Tango

Ben was curled up in one of the sunroom's wicker armchairs, a plate with half a piece of toast and some crumbs on it abandoned in his lap. He was watching the colours from the windows play across the white tiles on the floor silently, picking at his nails. He looked down at the plate and licked a finger, running it lightly across the ceramic and picking up brown crumbs on the digit before raising his hand and sprinkling them back down onto the plate. He hadn't been able to eat the toast, just as he knew he wouldn't. He had choked the first half down to appease Piper, but it had tasted like cardboard and had lodged in his throat like cotton wool.

He had been temporary distracted by the family banter in the kitchen, and he couldn't help but think that that had been Piper's aim all along. But now Phoebe had made her usual whirlwind exit to the office, and Paige had gone to work and Piper was upstairs tending to Wyatt, so now he was alone again, his mind completely free to brood and dwell on anything it wished.

He remembered Bridget's lust for life fervently. Whilst everyone else was busy saying 'Maybe…' to life, Bridget was busy yelling 'Yes!' at the top of her lungs and grabbing hold of it with both hands. She never thought of consequences, just did the actions and then swiftly dealt with whatever followed them, good or bad.

He drew a deep breath in and curled up tighter, trying to protect his chest from the sudden bombardment of pain he felt whenever he thought about Bridget. She was gone, and yet the words had a hollow, unreal meaning. She was gone, but it seemed like she was going to walk through the door any minute. He had never thought it possible for anything to snuff out Bridget's life — he thought that she'd just keep going forever like some deranged and very scary Duracell Bunny. He looked down at a smear of marmalade on the china and pulled a face at the glutinous spot. Bridget and her multiple endearing peccadilloes… Feeling useless, he just stared down at the plate, stirring the crumbs around with his finger. He couldn't do anything. He hadn't managed to save her and now she was gone…

Suddenly, there was a glittering of lights in the middle of the room that distorted the colours on the floor. Ben looked up, startled, nearly dislodging the plate on his lap. A body shot out of the blue orbing lights and rolled quickly across the floor, annihilating a plant stand with a loud splintering noise. The ceramic pot residing on it hit the floor and shattered, spewing dark compost across the tiled floor.

"Get up, come on!" Chris said immediately, springing to his feet and frantically gesturing for Ben to get up. "They'll be here any minute!"

"What? Who?" Ben asked, confusion clouding proper thought patterns.

Chris was jumping up and down on the balls of his feet, almost jogging on the spot. His eyes were gleaming and he was panting, breathing hard, sporting a jagged slash across his cheek that was still welling blood. His clothes were torn, scorched and dirty and his knuckles were covered in scabs. "Demons! They're following me."

"Where have you been?" Ben asked, getting up and placing his plate on the coffee table in front of him. "What's going on?"

"I went on a little trip to Hell and it got a bit out of hand," Chris explained, his eyes darting about the room, unable to focus on one thing for any length of time.

"Oh, you think? What was your first clue?"

"Revenge is never plain sailing… Anyway, don't judge me, help me," Chris snapped, still looking around the room.

"Don't you think you're taking this a little too… vigorously?" Ben tried gently. "I mean, are you thinking straight? I know that I'm not. Is it safe for you to be doing this?"

Chris wheeled around, affronted. His eyes were now blazing with anger. "What? What did you say? The one person in this stupid timeline that I thought would understand what I was feeling tells me that I'm taking my best friend's death too 'vigorously'?" He threw his hands up in the air, a pained expression crossing his features as he turned to pace the floor. Spinning on his heel to face Ben again, he asked, "What the hell does that even mean, anyway, Ben? Let's recap, shall we? Bridget and my baby were killed by demons who wanted them to further their own powers. Bridget and my baby were practically the only good things in my life. They're now gone because of evil. Also, I'm here to stop evil, to stop it getting to Wyatt. Unless, of course, you like that future, in which case I'll write you a spell right now and you can go back there. Would you like that, huh?"

"That's not fair," Ben said dangerously, taking a step towards Chris. "That's not fair and you know it. I cared about Bridget just as much as you did, and to tell me that I don't give a damn about her being dead is so far off the mark. The only reason I said that is because I don't want to turn around and find another friend dead. I don't want to have to be the one to outlive anyone."

Chris blinked and took a step backwards. "Yeah…" he said eventually, shaking his head and beginning to wind down his adrenaline buzz. He shook out the rest of his body and sighed. "Yeah. Look, you're right; I don't know what I'm doing, okay?" He ran a hand through his hair and began pacing again, frowning and licking his lips. "I don't know But I've got to be doing something, you know? I can't—"

An energy ball hit him in the back and sent him tumbling over the wrought iron table, sweeping a vase off its surface. He slid off the other side, cracking his head on a chair before hitting the floor. Ben immediately raised a hand and incinerated one of the five demons that had appeared behind Chris. He raised another hand but was met with a barrage of energy balls. Dropping to the floor, he flipped the coffee table over and army-crawled his way back to the armchair he had been sitting in just as the coffee table was blown into millions of white wicker smithereens. The blast knocked him into his back and the force of the explosion winded him. He heard footsteps coming across the floor and he painfully forced air into his lungs, sitting up and twisting his body to the side to fry another demon.

"What, do I have a target painted on my chest?" he groused through gritted teeth. "Because I'm sick of people hitting the bullseye." He flicked his left hand at a third demon, who twisted his upper body to avoid it. The power shot past him and hit a dresser, which exploded. Cursing, Ben scrambled to his feet and jumped backwards as energy balls smashed into the spot where he had lain seconds before, leaving dark scorch marks. He half-turned and flicked a wrist at the iron table, bowling down two of the demons with it.

"What's going on down here?" Piper demanded, making her way down the stairs as quickly as she could. Her question was answered as she reached the bottom of the stairs and Ben was thrown through the air to demolish the coffee table in the centre of the parlour.

Ben groaned before sarcastically biting out, "We were having a tea party when the March Hare got rowdy." He rolled onto his back as the three demons appeared in the doorway that they'd thrown him through and readied energy balls. Ben snarled and twisted his hand, shooting ice shards into the centre demon's neck and chest, vanquishing it with a slight spray of demon blood.

Piper flicked her wrist and blew up the left one. "You know they say that sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, right?" she asked, as the remaining one looked at what remained of its predecessors and shimmered out just as both she and Ben unleashed blasts at it. They combined force of the powers blew a metre-wide hole in the drywall and annihilated a wall scone, leaving behind only a mass of fizzing, sparking wires.

Ben frowned. "That's just a security blanket kind of statement for people that don't get it."

Piper collapsed onto the couch, letting out the deep breath she didn't realise she had been holding, too tired of the sarcasm argument already. Besides, she was already out of ammo. "Okay, as long as that doesn't happen again until after Chris is born, I think I can just about deal…" She looked at the wall in despair, frowning at the still-sputtering wires and sighed lightly, resignation crossing her face. This was the way it had been for six years, and this was the way it was going to stay, probably until the day she died.

"How about we go for until after Chris is like… ooh, I don't know… eighteen?" Ben grumbled, picking himself up from the wreckage of the coffee table. There was blood trickling down his forearm, so much so that his shirt sleeve was saturated and it was dripping onto one of the magazines that had been on the coffee table with harsh, rhythmic spatters. He inspected the trail, sucking some of the deep crimson rivulet into his mouth in a vain attempt to figure out where it was coming from. He finally pinpointed the source as a shard of glass from what was now an ex-bowl of potpourri that had been on the table. Wincing, he gently wiggled at it, teasing it out of his arm. "Besides, you've only got like a month left until Chris is born, right? So— OW!" The shard came free suddenly, tearing a chunk of flesh from his arm. "Son of a—"

"Son of a…?" Piper inquired quickly, her eyebrows raised. "Think about how you want to end that."

"'Gun'?" tried Ben, dropping the bloody piece of jagged frosted glass onto the wreckage at his feet distastefully.

"Good enough. Now, where's Chris?" she asked, struggling up from the depths of the couch.

"How did you—?"

"Somehow, I didn't think you'd managed to bring on a full-scale demonic attack by yourself when all you'd been doing was sitting in that armchair," Piper said wryly, accepting Ben's hand up.

"He hit his head," Ben said. "Luckily, his skull is as thick as any Halliwell, so… so I need to stop talking right now, huh?"

"Where was the hint?" Piper deadpanned, waddling through into the sunroom and immediately catching sight of her prone son, his body tangled in one of the dark green cast iron chairs.

"Bridget?" Chris asked, peering through the pale turquoise mist at a backlit figure slowly approaching him.

"No. I'm the tooth fairy. My wings are at the dry cleaners," Bridget said wryly, stepping forward in a sudden burst of radiant light. She seemed to glow softly, her features flawless and almost luminescent.

"Oh my God," Chris said, stumbling forward to hug her. He closed his eyes and threw his arms around her, but she was gone and he narrowly missed falling flat on his face. "What—?"

"I didn't come here for some huge mushy reunion thing," Bridget told him from behind him, making him wheel around. "Well, you know, that and the fact that the hugging thing tends to require some sense of corporeality and I seem to be all out of that right now..."

"Are you okay?"

"We'll pretend you didn't ask that," Bridget told him, hopping up onto an invisible surface and sitting there, her legs dangling in the air, "because, really, that is a very dumb question."

"Sorry."

"I think I can forgive you. I'll have to check the rules in the welcome pack, but it's pretty much a dead cert. They're all really big on the forgiveness thing here." She started drumming her nails on whatever it was that she was sitting on.

Chris realised that her nails were painted black to match her toenails, which were sticking out of the end of white open-toed sandals. She also wore black lipstick and black eyeliner, rebelling even against the afterlife's stereotypical all-white dress code. Either that or the white was to be ironic, because his great-grandmother had never been seen wearing all white once she became corporeal. With Bridget, as always, it was hard to tell. Deep inside him he felt as if he were about to cry with the cruel familiarity of this but something was stopping him. It was like he physically could not be sad.

"So… I think we both know what we're doing here…" Bridget said, looking around and inspecting her surroundings. She appeared to dislike what she saw and sneered at it.

"Apparently, it's to torture me with visions of a life I can never have again," Chris said bitterly, folding his arms and crouching to sit on the floor. He was stopped before he got there, though, but some kind of chair that kept him sitting eerily in midair in the same manner as Bridget.

Bridget groaned. "See, there's a typical Chris reaction for you. No, that's not the reason, and, what's more, it's never the reason where The Powers That Be are concerned, you ought to have learned that by now. No. The reason we're here is because of you."

"Not you?"

"Look, Chris, this is your dream, okay? I'm not self-centred enough to hog your dreams, got it? Okay, so, look…" She broke off and sighed. "Chris… You're not taking my advice. This was what the note was meant to prevent. You weren't meant to go all vengeful on me. Even though it's fun and stuff, oh, and also kind of hot, it's also really dangerous and distracting. You don't need to be endangered and distracted, or you'll mess up.""

"But I want to be," Chris said, leaning forwards. "It's the only way I'm going to get to feel better, don't you see?"

"Well, if feeling better means cracking your head open on a heavy metal chair, you're certainly achieving that," Bridget told him sarcastically. She sighed again, looking at him and shaking her head.

Chris felt her disappointment in him, prompting him to begin stuttering out an unplanned defence. "Well, no, but—"

"No, Chris. Please no buts. You're making this hard; you know that, right? Look. I'm here. Fine. Happy… ish. Sure, I'm kind of bodiless but, on the plus side, I'm also totally ageless and timeless too, which I hear is even better against wrinkles than night cream, so…" She shrugged. "It's not an altogether bad trade. I mean, it's a shame I didn't get to leave a pretty corpse, but a permanently pretty spirit is better than nothing, right?"

Chris rolled his eyes and laughed hollowly, only because this was the reaction that Bridget would expect from him. "I miss you," he announced suddenly, looking up. "I really miss you."

Bridget smiled sympathetically. "Well, duh. Who wouldn't? I mean, look at me. I was amazing, right?" She shook her head. "Anyway, Chris… This is the hard part, the part that you don't want to hear and that I don't want to tell you. It's… I've been gone less than a day. Something tells me that I might be gone a lot longer than that, and I can't keep making these unscheduled guest appearances in your dreams. Contrary to high school rumours, I don't come cheap and you're gonna wake up one day with the Sandman's bill for me on your pillow. Also, this mist?" She waved a hand through a tendril of the turquoise mist. "This is not budget mist, Chris. It's really gonna cost you."

"How can you be so glib about it?" Chris asked, his voice threatening tears that it was impossible to make fall. "How can you deal with it like you don't care? Like it's not a big deal?"

"Oh, boy… As much as it pains me to say this, Chris, I'm not a big deal, okay? I was one of six billion people on the planet. In the grand scheme of things, what was I? A grain of sand. I've obviously done my bit of shaping destiny, or I wouldn't be here, would I? I'd still be with you waiting for it to happen. Perhaps… I don't know. Perhaps my destiny, and Nixa's destiny, was just to die, you know? Die and get you guys rallied up for the fight against the Big Bad to save Wyatt. That is what is important Chris. Saving your brother. Sure, I mattered to you, how could I not but… but I'm not what's important right now. You need to regain consciousness, shake off your concussion and dive back into saving Wyatt. Got that?" She paused and narrowed her eyes. "You better, because you're not taking notes and I am not repeating myself."

"It's hard, though…"

"So was building the Leaning Tower of Pizza, but did anyone think, 'Oh, no, building a slanty building would be too hard, let's quit'? No. They didn't. You're not a quitter Chris. I know it, you know it, everyone knows it. You've just got to find it again."

"It wasn't built slanty," Chris murmured.

Bridget, about to continue with her motivational tirade, stopped short and looked at him. "What?"

"The Leaning Tower of Pisa wasn't built slanty. There was subsidence in the foundations."

Bridget pulled a face. "Chris, this isn't history class. I'm going to pretend you didn't say that as well, because I don't have time to think of a new analogy every time you pick holes in my old ones. Got it?"

Chris laughed a little again, a more genuine sound this time. "At least you're still you."

"Who were you expecting?" Bridget asked, grinning. "Of course it's still me, Chris. And it will always be still me. Don't ever forget that."

"I won't."

"Good boy. Now, go rejoin the land of the living. I think you're wanted…" She looked to her left and Chris looked the same way, but when he looked back she was gone, a single golden orb floating on a current of air before gradually fading into nothing. He stared at the spot where she had been for a moment and his throat tightened.

He suddenly heard someone calling his name from the direction in which Bridget had looked. Turning his head, his heart rose at the thought that it might be Bridget's voice gently drifting through the mist. Getting up, he stepped towards the voice, which was getting louder now.

"Bridget?" he called desperately as he walked onwards. "Bridget?" He had to see her just once more. One more time, and then he could deal with being without her. Once more… "Bridget?"

"Chris!"

The dark-haired witch-whitelighter took a deep breath inwards suddenly and sat bolt upright, gasping. "Bridget?"

"Sorry, sweetie…" There were cool fingers on his forehead, helping to soothe the headache he could already feel pounding away at his temples. The voice that became less and less like Bridget's the longer that he was awake started to make shushing noises, and the fingers began to gently stroke his head and hair. "Lie down again, yeah?"

Chris shook his head both in defiance and simply to clear it. He hissed as white-hot pain shot up the side of his head and he clutched at his temple, the puffiness and tender spots there not altogether unexpected but still a bitch to touch. "No…"

"Hold on. Ben's here with some ice."

There was suddenly a rough bundle pressed against the side of his head before, slowly, the cold began to seep through the cloth, seeming to penetrate his very brain. The side of his head began to slowly numb and he screwed both his eyes shut against the floating colours dancing across his vision and pushed his mother's wrist away, moving to get up.

"Chris, you'll do yourself even more damage. Lie down…" Piper soothed, a firm hand on his shoulder guiding his head back onto the couch cushions. "You hit you head really hard…"

"Yeah, that table and those chairs are death traps. He falls and chips his tooth on them when he's older. Younger. … Older?" Frowning in confusion at whether he was addressing his friend or his friend's foetus and then frowning harder because he suddenly realised that that was not a normal person's dilemma, Ben added, "Social services would have a field day. Can I call them up now and report you for future abuse?"

"Only if the future abuse is of you," Piper said, taking a swipe at him and gently shifting the ice.

Ben was staring into the sunroom, watching pieces of rattan smouldering on the floor, glowing like evil red eyes. "Is Leo still upstairs?" he asked suddenly. They'd left the Elder passed out on the couch the day before.

Piper could have kicked herself for forgetting. She had actually managed to adjust enough to her ex-husband not being in her life that she didn't expect him to be here to heal a non-life-threatening wound. "I assume so…" she said, not knowing whether Leo would have taken off. "It won't hurt to see, will it? Chris, can you orb?"

The witch-whitelighter's answer was to close his eyes and dissolve into a swirl of blue lights.

Learning to Tango

Gideon was stalling. He was twirling the athame around in his blotter, watching it spin, deep in thought. With any other guest in the study he would have felt that he was being discourteous to the highest degree, but with the current occupant he rather felt that basic manners would be lost. Light glinted off the gem in the handle as it spun.

"It seems to me like you appear to be having second thoughts," the guest said. "Now, why would that be?"

Gideon looked up sharply. The athame clattered to the desk. "Not at all," he sniped, glaring down at his guest. "Not in the matter of Wyatt… Although, in the matter of the two future witches… perhaps. They're still good people, no matter how you look at it."

"Well, so was Leo, and that didn't stop you getting me to pull a whammy on him, now, did it?"

Gideon's jaw tightened. "The 'whammy' wasn't to kill him."

"But the 'whammy' could have managed to get him killed anyway, no?"

Gideon didn't really want to get rid of the two brats from the future. They were good witches, supposedly his to protect, and yet his brain was telling him that two down, two to go was not nearly good enough. And, more disturbingly, the more he watched them in his crystal ball, the more he analysed the way that they worked, the more he saw the separate scenarios in which they could foil his plan, the more he wanted to kill them himself. "Do it," he finally commanded, no more uncertainty in his voice. "Get rid of them and make sure nothing can stand in my path to Wyatt." His comrade was about to shimmer out when the Elder leaned over the desk and grabbed his sleeve. "And Barbas? Don't. Fail me."

Learning to Tango

"You know, when I asked him if he could orb, I assumed that I'd insinuated that he was meant to take his heavily pregnant mother along for the ride," Piper grumbled as Ben helped her up the attic steps.

Reaching the top of the stairs, they saw Chris sitting on the floor. During the orb, he'd lost possession of the towel containing the ice, and cubes of it were scattered across the boarded floor, beginning to slowly melt. Chris was trying to stem the flow of flood from his head using the slightly-damp tea towel in his hand.

"I missed the chair," the wounded Halliwell mumbled, brushing a piece of ice from his lap. "Sorry."

Leo was still sleeping on the couch. The blankets were rumpled from being clutched tightly in his hands and his eyes were twitching. The throw cushion that had been his pillow was on the floor, tossed there as a result of his thrashing. The Elder was mumbling incoherent things in his sleep, gasping and shuddering, making Piper frown in concern.

"He doesn't look so good," Ben commented to no one in particular.

The Charmed One moved forward slowly, easing herself down onto the floor beside her husband and gently stroking his matted hair. "Leo? Leo, sweetie?" She watched as his eyelids twitched strongly once, twice and then settled again. "Leo? Can you hear me?"

"Piper…" the Elder breathed, stirring. "Piper?"

"That's it," the witch told him, gently cajoling him. "Wake up."

"PIPER!" Leo sat bolt upright, startling Piper so much that she fell over backwards. Luckily for her, her body's response had saved her from being run through with the bolt of lightning that surged from her husband's fingertips. The air hissed and crackled, and she smelt ozone before the power struck a window, splintering it into a thousand shards that rained onto the paving below with soft, idyllic tinkling noises that in no way reflected the situation or the atmosphere in the room above.

Leo was breathing heavily, sucking in each breath as if it were his last. He swallowed heavily and then continued gasping, only very slowly regaining control over his breathing and heartbeat. "Piper… Piper…" The witch had pulled herself up from the floor now and Leo suddenly threw his arms around her, startling her once more enough for her to emit a shriek. "I'm sorry. Are you hurt? I don't know what came over me…"

"I'm fine," Piper said, slowly detangling herself from her husband. "You were just shocked, that's all. How are you feeling?"

"A little groggy," Leo admitted, "but I feel a lot better after some rest. I don't know what happened. I barely remember it… There was just this passion, this, this… intense desire to kill demons, and then, well, I did kill demons, but after that…" He broke off and ran a hand across his face, screwing up his features as if it would help his memory. "But after that I don't know. It's practically a complete blank…"

Piper nodded and put a hand on his shoulder, rubbing it gently. "Don't worry. It will come back to you eventually. Especially when we find some way to nail whichever demon is messing with you like this. Are you up to a little healing?" Piper coaxed gently, putting a steadying hand on his elbow as he sat up further.

His eyes widened as he looked her up and down, his eyes focussing and resting on her bump for much longer than anywhere else on her body. He brought his hand up, glowing gold, to her face, the ethereal light playing gently across her features but she gently gripped his hand in both of hers and shook her head.

Once again, Piper felt her insides squirm with the familiarity of all of this, before giving herself a figurative shake. "Not me. I'm fine," she said softly, releasing his hand reluctantly and imprisoning hers in her lap, not knowing what else to do with them. "Chris, on the other hand…" She looked back at her soon, who was trying to staunch the blood flowing from his head with his fingertips, still sitting in the multitude of scattered ice cubes.

Leo frowned and sat up further, the attic momentarily dissolving into a rush of black and red blobs and a whoosh of noise before clearing again. He screwed his eyes shut once, twice, and opened them again, swinging his legs off the couch. "Let me take a look at it," he said, gripping the couch cushion beneath him until his knuckles whitened and focussing on counting to stop his stomach roiling.

Chris also tried to get to his feet but only managed to climb to his knees before the entire room lurched and he landed on his face, all the light in the attic dimming around him. He groaned and tried once more before he lost consciousness again, but he put his hand on an ice cube and it lost purchase, skidding out from underneath him and forcing him to collapse onto the floor.

"Oh, this is going great," Ben said, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. "An unable-to-sit-up Father/Son duo."

"Quit bitching at me and give me a hand," Chris growled, not wanting to try and get up again without some kind of assistance.

Ben rolled his eyes heavily and sighed, stepping forward and grabbing Chris under the arms. "Okay. Here we go. One, two, three!" He heaved Chris up from the floor, watching his friend's legs twitch and wobble like jelly as they fought to hold him upright. The witch-whitelighter's knees buckled and Ben grabbed a handful of Chris's shirt, helping him to stagger the few steps across the floor to Leo. Once there, Chris's legs gave out again and he slipped from Ben's grasp, landing in a tangled heap on the floor and groaning.

Suddenly, his father's glowing hand assaulted his vision, burning at his retinas and making him hiss as it passed over his eyes to the gash on his head. Screwing his eyes shut, the pulsating pain continued even with the small amount leaking through his eyelids until, slowly, it began to recede, fading away into the back of his mind until it was gone. He opened his eyes and grinned at the room's lack of motion and the lack of welling blood coursing down the side of his face. "Thanks," he said, picking himself up from the floor on perfectly stable feet. "Sorry I can't do the same for you…"

Leo just sighed and shrugged. "It doesn't matter. I get the feeling that this was kind of self-inflicted anyway."

Chris half-smiled awkwardly and shoved his hands into his back pockets, before pulling them out again and picking at his nails, chewing slightly on his lower lip and shifting his weight from foot too foot. "So…"

"So!" Piper chirped suddenly, clapping her hands together and startling everyone else in the room. "So! Yes! What are we all doing here? What's happening now?"

Ben, Leo and Chris all opened their mouths to give an explanation, but found that none of them could come up with any kind of satisfactory one, their separate dramas having temporarily wiped their memories of any plans that they might have had.

Eventually Ben tried hopefully, "Um… I think you were downstairs with Wyatt? And I was…" In a deep, dark pit of depression. "…in the sunroom?"

"Wyatt!" Piper gasped suddenly, slapping a hand to her mouth. "I think I left the side of his crib down!" She turned immediately on her heel and dashed down the attic stairs as quick as her predicament would allow her. "Be right back!" her voice echoed up to them.

Chris crossed the room to stand behind the Book's pedestal, resting his hands on the cover as if hoping to draw power from the leather to diffuse the awkward tension in the air. Neither he nor Ben had been alone with Leo since he had had an 'episode' and tried to kill them. Fixing his eyes on the cover's Triquetera, Chris flipped the Book of Shadows open and began slowly turning pages, not seeing anything on them. He could still hear Bridget's words in his mind. 'I'm not a big deal'… How could she say that? How could she possibly even think that kind of thing?

A prickle started building at the base of his spine, gathering into slightly-painful tingling before shooting up and down his vertebrae enough to make him shiver. Frowning, he absently wrapped his arms around himself, running his hands over the Goosebumps that had formed on his arms without actually feeling them. It wasn't an outside cold that had done it anyway; it was a cold that came from within him that was the culprit, so it wasn't as if he could stave it off by grabbing a sweater.

One by one your friends are deserting you. Soon it will be you, all alone, and you'll fall to pieces and never save your brother because, without them, you are nothing.

Chris's head snapped up, his eyes glinting. Where the hell had that come from? His heart felt heavier, his lungs smaller as he tried to fight through the moment of blind fear and panic that had seized him. Swallowing he looked up at Ben, who was systematically pulling loose threads out of the belt of Leo's robe, feigning intent absorption in his task to avoid having to interact with Leo in any way.

"No…" Chris whispered, the word slipping from between his lips without him realising it. Frowning, he put a hand to his head and rubbed lightly at his forehead, trying to massage the thoughts away.

"What?" Ben asked, looking up. "Did you say something?"

Chris just shook his head and then began leafing through the Book again, shaking the voice from his head. Frowning at a page filled with spidery handwriting, he squinted and tried to make out the words, concentrating on anything but the irrational pangs gripping at him. Another icy frisson passed through him and he gulped.

You wouldn't be here without your friends. You never would have managed anything in your life without them, and, very soon, the last of them will be gone… Poor little witch will be back to being pathetic, just like he's always been. Bridget was the strong one, Nixa the smart one, Ben was the funny one, the loyal one, your best friend, but you, you… You didn't fit in anywhere. Never had, never will. Mind you, if you think about it, fitting in is a lot easier when it's just. You.

Chris took an involuntary breath inwards, a feeling like heartburn in every way except for its frosty tendrils gathering in his chest. He reeled back from the Book confused, panting, fear slipping through his bloodstream like ice cubes.

"Chris?" Ben asked, stepping forward, his forehead furrowed with concern. "Are you okay?"

About to answer, Chris was suddenly struck by a frigid pang yet again and he shook his head, stumbling backwards further, his feet crunching on a shard of glass that had fallen from the window until his back was pressed against the jagged, gaping holes left where the pane had been. A splinter of glass bit into his back but he didn't feel it, balling his fists at his side.

Don't let him come near you. Keep him away. You're the reason everyone's dying, it's all your fault. You got Nixa stabbed, you got Bridget kidnapped and you're going to murder Ben as well. Watch. This. Space.

The voice's words began to hiss maliciously and Chris's breath hitched. His arm shot out almost without him realising it and sent Ben flying through the air to land, sprawled, at the other end of the attic.

"Keep away from me," he muttered, his fingers twitching by his hips. "It's safer that way."

"Chris…?" Concern darkened Ben's eyes as he used a bookcase to pull himself from the floor. He took a step forward but Chris raised a hand, palm towards him, clutching at the air as if he were holding a ball. Ben walked straight into an invisible telekinetic barrier, stunning him enough to knock him back to the floor. Pinned in the corner of the attic, the faintest tinges of fear began to worm their way into the pit of his stomach. "Okay, okay. I'll stay here. Don't worry… Just… tell me. Tell me what's wrong, okay? Even if you do have to do it from all the way over there…"

Chris shook his head wearily, bringing his hands to his head and clutching at his temples, his newly-healed headache returning. "I… can't. I'm just… I don't know. I mean… I'm gonna kill you."

Ben gave a small, uncertain laugh and got back to his feet. "Um… What? That was a joke, right? You know, one of those statements made to invoke hilarity? Or meant to be made to invoke hilarity? Because, if so, you need to work on your act…"

"No…" Chris said angrily, annoyed at Ben's inability to grasp what he meant. "No… I… I don't mean…" he broke off and mimed stabbing someone "…killyou I mean… kill you kill you. Like… As a result of something I've done. Or… will do. Do you get it?"

"Yeah… See, call me slow, but as crystal clear as that ramble was there's still a couple of niggling points I don't get, like, um… 'Do I need to start making you take prescribed medication?' Oh, and 'What the hell are you on about?' Although, apart from those little 'huhs' I think I might actually get it…"

"Everyone has died because of me," Chris said, pacing forward and crunching over the glass again. He wrapped his arms around himself one more time as he got halfway into the attic and, realising how near he was getting to Ben, smartly turned on his heel again. "So this way, as long as you stay away from me, you're not gonna die. Good plan?"

"Well, you know, there are a couple of minor kinks. For example, the fact that I A have no food or water and that B, when I die because of the lack of those things, your plan will have failed miserably. Oh, and C? C would be that I kinda don't want to meet Death in your father's threadbare robe. First impressions are the only impression, you know? I don't wanna get stuck in some lameass afterlife dimension because all the good ones have a dress code."

"You're not going to starve…" Chris told him absently. "I don't want you to starve; I don't want you dead. I just said that."

"Well, I beg your pardon for not believing the words of someone who has just turned into a raving lunatic."

Without warning, Leo sprang up from the sofa and spun on his heel, unleashing a torrent of lightning at Ben. The witch yelped and stumbled backwards, watching Chris's shield glow blue and flicker in and out before dispelling the electricity in a bright white burst. Panting, Ben eyes widened and he tentatively stepped forwards, licking his lips nervously. Well, this was fabulous. Marvellously fabulous, in fact. Murderous Insanity Land, Population: Leo and Chris. He could now call his day complete.

There were tendons standing out on the side of Leo's neck, and a pellucid bead of sweat rolled from his temple down his cheek, settling on his chin before dripping off. The Elder's hands were clenched into fists, his nails digging into his palms so hard that his muscles were trembling with the stress of it. He snarled at Chris's shield and whipped around once more, his robe flapping and snapping through the air like a flag in a high wind.

Ben's mouth went dry and his warning stuck in his throat. He had barely managed to choke out the first sound of Chris's name before Leo made a blasting motion at his son, shooting bolts of lightning at him. Chris dropped to the floor and rolled, but the lightning seemed to follow him, blasting a canyon through the floorboards just inches from him. The brunette rolled again and, just as Leo gestured violently with his other hand, sprang up from the floor and dived left behind a chest of drawers, leaning up against the side of the piece of furniture as the power tore through the space he had occupied seconds before.

"Chris!" Ben yelled frantically, watching Leo begin to orb out. He waved an arm and threw an arrow of flame at the shield. With a fizzing pop the flames dissipated, the shield still holding strong. Cursing and seeing orbing lights begin to dance in the air in front of Chris, the witch dropped his head to his chest and appeared at the opposite end of the room between Chris and Leo.

"Get out of the way!" Chris shouted, trying to tackle his best friend to the floor. Ben stumbled but, in doing so, his eyes alighted on a mirror propped against the wall that had been brought up here until the split frame could be replaced. Chris rolled one way and he rolled the other, Leo's next blast immolating the chest of drawers. Seizing the mirror in both hands he threw himself in front of Chris again just as Leo allowed another torrent of lightning to fly at his son.

The power hit the mirror. The glass glowed a searing bright blue and the wooden frame blackened under Ben's hand. Even as an astral projection, Ben felt the power zip through his nervous system, sending white-hot pain along every nerve from his toes to the tips of his hair. The mirror suddenly exploded outwards in a cold supernova of crackling blue and white shards under the onslaught and the rapidly-melting silver back was all that remained. And then, with a blast that sent Ben flying backwards through the air, the lightning erupted from the smouldering mirror and, blistering the very air, rushed its way back at Leo just as Ben's astral form disappeared in a flare of red. The Elder hit the floor just in time and the stream of electricity, rather than blasting the wall, seemed to hit some kind of invisible entity standing behind Leo.

A human form outlined in sparks crackled in and out of view before leaving the floor entirely and crashing backwards into the wall, trailing black smoke behind it. The apparition flickered in and out of view once more before stuttering back to life like a faulty TV set.

"Barbas!" Chris breathed, the bottom of his stomach dropping out. The Demon of Fear was here. Like some kind of horrific jigsaw puzzle, pieces began to click into place. Was Barbas the one that turned Wyatt? Was he the one that they'd been looking for all along? Why couldn't it have been a vanquishable demon? Those he could deal with. Those, he could come up with a potion, a plan, a Power of Three spell for his mother and aunts, those he could handle, dammit, so why, why, did it have to be Barbas?

The demon shrugged, grinning. "Well, I guess that would be me, right? It's good to know that my reputation precedes me at least." He got up from the floor, touching his hand to the messy, still-smoking wound on his shoulder. Blood was running freely from it, and the flesh around it was blistering almost before their eyes.

Dread washed over Ben. This was not good. So not good. They'd managed to deal with Barbas in the future, sure, but that had always been with Bridget on their side. Bridget, whose fear had nearly managed to kill her the first time she met Barbas, had eventually been the one to conquer him, but not vanquish him. So far, the vanquishing of Barbas had evaded even Wyatt, and that scared him. If Wyatt found a demon difficult to handle… Wyatt couldn't kill Barbas, and Bridget, possibly the strongest person he knew, had come within an inch of death merely defeating him.

"Well, now, I know that this wasn't the way that this was meant to go, but…" Barbas tilted his head and grinned, walking purposefully over to Chris. The witch-whitelighter's eyes flashed and the muscles in his arm bunched, but before he could half-raise the limb Barbas had used some telekinesis of his own and snatched it from the air. Chris struggled as the iron-like grip dug into his arm, but he couldn't move anywhere.

Barbas grinned again as he stepped up to Chris, gently running the back of his hand down Chris's cheek, flicking at Chris's hair, making the Halliwell grimace in disgust. Barbas then slowly ran the hand over Chris's face, a deep shadow passing across the witch-whitelighter's features and then chuckled.

"Well… That didn't show me anything I didn't know already… What you're afraid of… You're afraid to lose your best friend…"

"No," Chris bit out through gritted teeth, his legs feeling as if they were cemented to the floor. "No. You're wrong…" His muscles were all straining at once to free themselves of their paralysis but he couldn't manage it, no matter how hard he struggled. Desperately, his eyes swept over the room, looking to his father. The Elder was sitting up on the floor, his eyes unfocussed and glassy, all but comatose. Realisation jump-started his brain. Barbas had some kind of hold over Leo, and had for some time. It explained the random attacks, it explained the irrational fears over Wyatt's demise into evil and the way he tried to blame it on them…

Barbas was walking across the room towards Ben, whose fingers were twitching with the desire to use his powers on the demon. Glaring Barbas down, Ben took a shaky breath inwards and swallowed, trying to mentally prepare himself for what was inevitably going to happen. They'd dealt with Barbas before, after all…

The demon's hand snatched out to grab Ben, but collided with the shield still surrounding the witch. Across the room, Chris smirked, willing the shield to hold with all of the energy he could muster. Barbas was not going to hurt anyone on his watch, let alone Ben. Whipping around, Barbas snarled at Chris, using his powers to slam fear into Chris's brain, weakening the Halliwell's resolve.

Chris closed his eyes, struggling to concentrate of keeping the shield up whilst being assaulted with Barbas's magic. Suddenly, with a flash of light, he was thrown into a blinking slideshow of images. The sword, plunging into Nixa's gut as she gasped, clutching at it before an energy ball sent her skidding under the dining room table. Bridget, trembling, her lips bluing, lying on the slab as blood slowly wound its way off the stone surface to spatter onto the floor. Ben, tumbling from the top pillar of the Golden Gate Bridge, screaming. Ben, his jugular gaping wide like a grinning red mouth. Ben cold, pale, dead, eyes wide and staring…

Barbas nodded satisfactorily at Chris's low moans and turned back to Ben, reaching out for the witch again. Ben raised a hand and blasted at him, but the fire burst into a brilliant orange flare on the shield. Ben's eyes widened in surprise, and then the witch broke into a shaky grin. Chris was still managing to withhold a small part of his consciousness from Barbas in order to keep him shielded.

Chris's eyelids were twitching and he was gasping as a bead of sweat meandered its way down his cheek. He still couldn't move his body, no matter how much he wanted to jump backwards and away from the visions that were assaulting his mind.

Angrily, Barbas shot a glare over his shoulder at Chris before holding out a hand and latching onto Ben's body using telekinesis. Ben couldn't move, no matter how much he tried to shake it off. Gritting his teeth, he tried to shift an arm but couldn't even gain control of his fingers. Barbas was strong. Suddenly, the Demon of Fear yanked sharply backwards, lifting Ben off his feet to slam into the shield. It didn't give and Ben collapsed to the floor, groaning, tasting copper. He'd bitten his tongue. Barbas picked him up again and slammed him into the wall behind him before dragging him forwards into the shield again. His cheek split open, spilling blood down his face, and he put his front teeth through his bottom lip in a spurt of blood.

The witch fell to the floor again, coughing and drooling red-tainted spit. He raised a hand and wiped the blood from his cheek on the back of it, feeling the bone crunch. Hissing, he tried to get to his feet but Barbas tossed him backwards into the wall once more before sending him crashing into the shield, which began to falter. Barbas made his fist tighter, forcing Ben against it as it stuttered, throwing off sparks of blue light before the witch suddenly shattered it altogether and was tossed into the middle of the room.

He laid in a crumpled heap half-on a rug and rolled over, pulling himself up on shaking arms. As Barbas advanced he flicked a wrist, hurling a thin streak of flame at the demon's shoulder wound. It hit the already-cauterised flesh and Barbas yelled out and staggered, clutching at his shoulder as the flesh began to roil.

Ben flicked his wrist again, but Barbas caught it with the same telekinesis he'd used on Chris and held it there. "Uh, uh, uh… Naughty, naughty witch…" Fears were power. That was why no one could vanquish him; to do so they'd have to vanquish part of themselves. All they could do was merely defeat him, and he always found a way back. No mere witches could keep down the Demon of Fear. He crushed Ben's attack. "Now… Tell me. What are you afraid off…?"

Ben shrugged and pretended to think, blowing out his lips as if the question were hard. "Well, now you mention it… Taxes, poverty, cancer… large, soft, fluffy pillows. Scared to death of those. Would not like it if a lot of those were to appear."

Barbas looked momentarily thrown before raising a hand and running it over Ben's face. "Well, well, well…" he said, chuckling. "Well, well, well indeed… It seems to me that, while your friend over there is busy worrying about your safety, all you seem to be able to think about is yourself… Tut, tut… That's not very noble now, is it?"

Ben felt the bitterness of self-hatred begin to seep into his system. Chris's greatest fear was having to go through losing another friend. Chris's fear was selfless, strong, something to be proud of. Ben already knew what his fear would be. Greater, even, than being stuck in the past by himself to finish a job that, really, only Chris was good enough to do. It had been the bane of his existence since his first vanquish, when the demon in the warehouse had shut them both in that crate.

"Small spaces… Huh. I guess it's all me, me, me with you, right? You just let everyone else come second to your needs… I knew that witches were a low species, but I've never met one that managed to disappoint me this much…"

Guilt appeared and mingled with his self-loathing. He was the worst friend in the world, surely. Self-centred, selfish and pathetic. He mentally cursed himself, not even bothering to dab at the blood dribbling down his chin. The crimson trickle dripped onto his hand, spattering over his palm. Behind Barbas, Chris collapsed onto the floor with a dull thump, his eyes closed. Panic caught Ben until he saw his friend taking shallow, quick breaths.

"Oh, don't you worry. He'll get his turn…" Barbas said, grinning maniacally and staring into Ben's eyes. "But you've got to share, and right now it's your turn…"

A blast of cold air suddenly hit him, feeling like a million knife-edges. It was suddenly dark. Very dark. He was lying on his back and there was a… smell. A smell that he couldn't quite place. He felt around in the dark, his fingers gripping smooth, soft padding beneath him. His back and heels felt bruised despite the cushioning. Slowly, with a trembling hand, he reached up and touched solid wood. He let loose a shaky, panicked breath as he reached left and right and came across the same barrier. He knew what the smell was. It was wet earth. He was in his coffin, in his grave, surrounded by wet earth.

There was six feet of soil on top of him.

Yelling out, he began pounding on the wooden walls, scratching at the lid. Dull pain reached his mind as a nail was torn off entirely by his frantic scraping and got lodged in the wood. The skin was shredded off his knuckles, elbows and knees until they were damp with blood. He kicked out at the wooden obstructions surrounding him and tried to sit up, but the coffin lid was only centimetres from his face. He felt hot tears prick his eyes, and bit the inside of his cheek to stop them falling. Out. He had to get out…

The witch knew that he had to beat what Barbas was throwing at him. Slowly, he tried to force himself to calm down. He lowered his hands to his sides, gripping at the padding beneath him and forcing himself to breathe. It was an illusion. It was all an illusion. He had been lying on the attic floor; nobody had had chance to put him in a coffin and bury him. This wasn't real, it didn't exist. It was just Barbas messing with his head to kill him. He felt his heart rate began to slow, and his breathing began to return to a normal rate. He exhaled for a good thirty seconds, and then closed his eyes. It's not real. It's just Barbas, it's not real…

When he opened his eyes, they were flooded with brilliance. Sunlight spilling into the attic's windows dazzled him, and he took a deep lungful of the air and another for good measure. He was still panting, he realised, his heart was still thudding wildly, but he was no longer in a coffin. He slowly closed his eyes again and gulped, running a hand across his face and feeling it awash with sweat and blood.

He curled into a defensive ball, still trembling, and hugged his knees. It hadn't been real. It had all been a simple illusion. That had not been his grave, or his coffin. So why was he still shaking like a frightened rabbit?

"Well, that was impressive at least. You managed to repress your fear. However… I wouldn't say that you'd conquered it…"

Ben's eyes snapped open and he began to half-crawl backwards. Behind Barbas, Chris was on his feet again, his muscles straining against the demon's hold to no avail. A tendril of hair at the front of his head was stark white, and Ben felt guilty all over again. Chris was scared that Ben was going to die. Ben was scared that Ben was going to die: it was as simple as that. No way that you could look at it could make Ben look any better.

Ben flicked a wrist at Barbas again, but nothing happened. Suppressing a whimper, he did so again, but his powers had failed him. He tried to scramble to his feet, but his legs felt like jelly, still not having recovered.

Barbas gestured and a large, damp-spotted and dust-covered trunk slid from its forgotten corner to the middle of the room. With another flick of his wrist, Barbas tossed the books and clothes and potion vials with dried-up potions in them that had been inside it into the wall. "See, now, this is the economical way to do the killing. If only I could kill everyone in a two-for-one deal. It would make an old demon's life a lot easier…" He stepped towards Ben. This time, the witch was able to muster some semblance of power and a small fireball hit Barbas in the chest, enough to send him staggering backwards a few steps and allow Ben to pull himself to his feet using the couch.

"What a shame. The demon's life is hard. Excuse me while I go and grab a Kleenex to dry my t-tears," Ben said shakily, the words coming out slightly slurred around his mangled tongue and lip. Flecks of blood and drool spotted the air in front of him. "I feel just awful about it. Really, I do. H-have you talked to your Trade Union?"

"A sense of humour to the end, huh? Now, isn't that an admirable trait. Oh well…" Barbas gestured with two fingers, and the trunk slid up behind Ben, taking out the witch's legs.

Ben landed, hard, on his side. A cloud of dust erupted into the air. Looking at the dark inner walls of the trunk, Ben felt the panic begin to grow again and he raised a hand to heave himself out, but Barbas grabbed both of his feet and crammed his legs into the trunk. Suddenly, the fight went out of Ben's limbs as the creeping paralysis began to take over. Looking up, he saw Barbas smirk and rest his gnarled hands on the lid of the trunk.

"You may have done well when it was all just an illusion, but…" he shrugged and slammed the lid closed, and Ben heard it lock.

It wasn't pitch black as it had been inside the coffin. The old worn leather was slightly holed around the hinges, allowing a small amount of light to penetrate the small space. It was definitely a damn sight smaller than the coffin, though, he thought as cramp rapidly began to overtake his limbs.

Inevitably, he couldn't stop the fear rising within him like bile. There was air. Tiny, tiny amounts of air, but there was air. He was going to be fine. Everything would be fine. But what if the holes began to close up? What if the trunk began to shrink in the sunlight that it hadn't seen in who knew how many years? Then he would die. Then he would lie here, sucking nothing but carbon dioxide into his lungs until it felt like a pillow over his face. It was going to kill him.

There wasn't even enough room to kick. He raised an elbow and began banging it against the lid, but it held firm. He coughed. Oh, Gods, it was happening already. The small holes weren't letting enough air in. He was suffocating. Frantically bashing at the side and lid of the trunk with his arms, he fought the urge to shout. That would use up too much air, and there wasn't enough of that already. He was going to die… He was going to die… He could feel his heart thudding faster and faster, far surpassing pretty much any speed he had known it to pump at before.

The walls of the trunk were shrinking in front of his very eyes. Moving inwards to crush him even more. He could feel the pressure on his body from all around and there was a constant ringing in his ears that was slowly getting louder and louder and he kept trapping the urge to scream in his mouth by biting his ruined lip. His heart felt ready to burst out of his chest, and—

No.

No. This was what Barbas did. Barbas sent his victims into tachycardia with their fears until their hearts couldn't cope and just gave out on them — literally scaring them to death. So, no, he wasn't going to suffocate. His fear wasn't going to kill him — his racing heart would. He just had to slow it down, stop it insane staccato beat inside his chest and Barbas wouldn't get his jollies, and he'd get to live.

Closing his eyes he imagined a wide, open space. A field. A huge field, stretching as far as the eye could see until it joined the wide arc of a cloudless, bright blue sky. There was space, and air, all around him in every direction. Trunk? What trunk? He could see nothing but light, and air…

This isn't really working quickly enough, huh? I've got people to kill, fears to consume… People do expect me to keep appointments, you know? So, tell me how this works for you. How about I throw you off the top of Golden Gate Bridge and see if this thing floats, hm?

Ben's eyes snapped open, his vision vanishing as if behind a puff of smoke. The trunk moved again. A tiny, rational part of his mind was telling him that Barbas didn't want to drown him. Barbas couldn't feed off his fear if the water killed him before the fear did, and Ben didn't think Barbas was willing to take that risk. However, the majority of his brain was screaming far too loudly for him to hear the cool, thinking part. Repeating the same word over again until it became a blur even in his thoughts. No. No. No, no, no. No, no, no, no. Nonononononononononono…

He heard Barbas chuckle inside his head and then he felt his stomach leave him with the rush of falling, his head banging against the sides and lid of the trunk as it spun. Air whistled past his ear drums, an echoing, rushing noise invading his brain before it all came to a painful, lurching halt and darkness consumed all.

Learning to Tango

Being useless was not something that Chris had ever been good at. Doing nothing was another thing that he had always failed miserably at. And so, when Barbas had forced him to combine the two and watch as Ben was put through Barbas's mind games, it was one of the worst experiences of his life. More than anything, he wanted to punch Barbas in the face, perhaps with a little telekinesis behind his fist, but he couldn't. He just had to stand there, watching as a streak of white edged itself from the roots of Ben's hair to the tips.

Ben was going to die, and there was nothing he could do about it. Barbas was going to induce a heart attack, and that would be it. And here he was, just standing here watching and doing nothing to save his friend. He was going to be left alone to fix Wyatt. He was going to have to do it all by himself. Granted, that had been the original plan, but now he had had his friends around him to help him, it was different. He had come to depend on his friends to help him along, to save his brother.

But, soon, Ben would be gone.

The thought slammed into him like a freight train, actually physically hurting him. It felt like someone had slammed a sledgehammer into his heart and he gasped. What would he do when Ben had gone? Who would be there to throw sarcastic commentary at him and find ways to make light of every situation?

When Ben had managed to fight off Barbas's first advance on him, hope had flipped a switch inside him and its thousand-watt floodlights had blazed through all of his dark thoughts at once, sending them scurrying to the recesses of his mind like oozing, malignant shadows hiding from the midday sun.

Falling from the high of such euphoria had nearly crushed him to death. Barbas wasn't finished with Ben, and Ben wasn't finished conquering his fear. It had started all over again. The floodlights snapped off all at once and the shadows had multiplied, merged and woven themselves over his body once more. He was looking down into an abyss, with no way to see the bottom. All he knew was that he was going to fall, and, when he stopped, it was going to hurt.

From inside the trunk, the banging stopped, and Chris's breath hitched in his throat. His heart was thumping against his ribcage like a battering ram. Despair slowly crept through his body, weighing him down like lead. Ben was dead. Barbas had killed him. The grief began tugging at him, yanking him down into dark depths that he had never wanted to visit again. Clawing at him, coiling around him, cackling at him as he tumbled through jet-black nothing.

Intense pressure was crushing his chest and yet it still wasn't enough to hold him together. He felt his brain begin to go to pieces, cutting off all rational thought. His knees gave out and would have thrown him to the floor had it not been for Barbas's continuing hold on him. A cold feeling began to spread over his body, a million tiny needles stabbing at the flesh. He knew what it was — he had felt it before. This was Barbas, feeding on his fear as it slowly killed him.

Why hadn't he seen that this was Barbas? Why hadn't he connected the dots in Leo's mysterious insanity? Why hadn't he, when standing behind the Book of Shadows, realised that what he was feeling was Barbas and got them all the hell out of there? He'd made so many mistakes… Everything was his fault. Barbas was right, everything was his fault…

Chris crumpled like a puppet with cut strings the second Barbas let go of him. He fell to the floor, claws shredding, tearing, twisting at his insides into bloody ribbons. He couldn't even cry. All he could feel was Barbas's satisfaction and cold enveloping him like a shroud, tightening around his throat, choking off his breath with harsh talons around his jugular…

A violent explosion that scorched the floorboards blew the trunk to pieces.

Learning to Tango

Well, we're nearly there, now. I think maybe two, perhaps three, chapters left of this. Hope you all enjoyed.