Finally my computer came back to the land of living. Let's all encourage him! (Doing a silly dance, realizing what I'm doing and stopping immediately. The world says thanks.)

I would like to say thanks to Ligia Elena for her encouragement, I hope you didn't gave up on this story already.

denna5- I hope you'll like this chapter as well. It's a bit sad (aren't all of my chapters tend to be like that?) but I had to write it to tie things up. Please keep reading!

Nemesis' Arrow- don't worry, I don't think I'm actually capable of revealing everything quickly since most of the time I don't have idea what's going to happen. Don't you simply hate it when the characters come to life on their own and make you write things that were absolutely not part of the original plot? Yeah, well, I gave up fighting ...

And as always, how can I ever stop thanking shad whisper for beta-ing that story! And now- on to the story!

CAHPTER 4

The ancients called midnight the time of lost souls. They thought this is the time when a soul is being judged at the edge of a new day and found worthy, at least until the next night. They figured that as long as one lived it meant that he means something to the world and that in the bigger scheme of things, he was important, vital, and his sins not as discriminating as of those who died.
You would have punched their righteous faces, if you could have. They were wrong and did not even know that. They did not even care that the ways of the world are not as full of justice as their mind's seen. They do not realize that whoever lives is the one who is the least worthy of life.
This is why most of your family died. They were far too valuable to this world. They had shifted the balance too much to the Greater Evil to worth being alive. This is why your father is the only one who stayed alive. This is not because he is a Dark Lighter and as such is immortal but that he perished long ago. The afterlife had rejected him and left you to be stuck with him.
More than everything else, this is why you are still alive. Not because you deserve living or because you fought harder against the angel of death but because fate, whatever scrawny and over-sentimental thing that it is, decided to abandon you upon the land of the living.
If you cannot punch the ancients then in times like these you know that hurting fate would do just fine.

Yet you cannot do a thing about it nor stop the feelings of hurt and even maybe guilt.
So you shake all those disturbing thoughts from your mind and emerge from the world as an empty person, a shell of a being that with the right substance can even hpe to live.

You do not know which force drives you to the graveyard but you find yourself here, loitering aimlessly in the white city of the dead. Even here everything is white, but unlike the purity of the world outside in this dying sphere the peacefulness and silence feels right.

Only, you do not want silence. Silence brought your bother to your claws, it led Mom and your aunts to their death and false trust brought Bianca to this cold place. They are all dead, as all those who matter often are.

A shred of a leaf is dancing around you, trying to tempt you to take it and grind it into even smaller bits. Although, even you know that everything has limitations, that every small thing has smaller ones so tearing up the leaf will bring you nothing.

Nevertheless, you open your palm to capture it. But you hesitated too long. It had already floated away in search of other keen viewers who will appreciate the gift it offers.

You will not let it leave.

Something in your subconscious knows that it is idiotic, that chasing after leaves is not a job for a king. Maybe it is a job for a lunatic but not you, a king.

However, you have never listened to yourself very carefully and you do it all the same, wishing you could grow wings and follow it to the kingdom of the sky.

Yet you are only mortal and even as you run, you see it taking off and escaping out of your reach just like all dreams do.
You have never given up on your dreams and you will not give up on this. You keep running in the graveyard while random stones rub and scratch your legs.

You fall.

A heavy stone, Prue's, is blocking your descend to the cold ground of the dead.

You remember Prue and momentarily you are being reminded with all the stories Mom use to tell you about her. She used to tell you how much she missed her sister.
Already back then, you remember in that familiar flash of nostalgia, you hated Prue for doing that to Mom.

There is a piece of paper on the tomb, held to its place with a large stone. You take the badly wrinkled page out of its prison and lose yourself in the writing.

You died today or was it last year or 23 years before?

I do not know the answer to that. All time seems to stretch before me, an Einsteinian mischief that the world is playing upon me. Something that is satanic and almost as horrible as the cruel joke that took you away.

And you know what the worst part is? You never even had a funeral. Not even a tomb to give those who miss you a place to cry on. A place to talk to you and hold on to the well informed superstition that you actually hear. Knowing that this is all that it is- a superstition. And doing it anyway. To do all of that because you mattered, Matter, because letting go is not as easy as you probably expected it to be.

Because I didn't really know you. The real you who hid under the mask of sarcasm and fearlessness, the one you only let me see a second before you died.

And I cannot handle it. Because it shouldn't be so hard. You did not die, damn it! You are here now, with me, where you truly belong. Here were you crawling next to your brother. And I know that in time I will see you. I already see you now, but it is not the same. It is not the same.

Your father grieved for you, long and hard. Those were dark days.
You have had your differences with him, I am no fool to think that there will not be any to come, but he loved you so much. A parent's love is unconditional, my Chris. How could you not know that?

Yet we both know that you are not truly gone. It makes it easier for him to move on, to keep believing in the greater good and have a sense of meaning. But I can see that he, too, can feel the void when looking at you when you are not able yet to speak. And you are not annoying, pushy and arrogant. You are not you yet and I do not even know if I want you to become you.

Because it will mean that your life will be hard and force you to look at the world with skepticism, but also with that faith in the inner good in everyone. To believe in it so much that it makes me cry. But I know that if you will be you then that will mean that you have been lost. And I can't have that. This would be an unforgivable injustice to your memory.

But it will also be if you don't become you. Because then the world will also miss knowing you. It will gain a different you, yeah, one who had happy life and much to contribute to it, but then you will disappear to that forgetfulness nothing that swallows those who were never loved.
Only, you were loved. So very much that it's hard to breathe without you. By me and your father and aunts. We are your family and we love you so much, Chris. How could you leave us?

We loved you even when we didn't know it was you. We loved you even when we hated you the most; when you screamed and pushed, were bossy and neurotic. We loved you even when we didn't listen, when we were too lazy to go and hunt demons, or to hear your internal cry. We loved you, my dear boy. I love you, and you did not even know that.

Everyone tells me it is time to move on. Phoebe met this new guy, Paige is regaining hope and your father has stopped feeling guilty. He has stopped moving in the house like a ghost of his former self; his eyes glazed and thinking things that I could not guess, things that made it impossible for him to sleep or for me to stop being scared.
Hush, do not worry, he is all right now. It has been months now.
The world moved on.

So why is it that I cannot move on? Why do I wake up every night at exactly 3:34 in the morning as if waiting for something to happen? Why can't I stop jumping from every noise and every squeal the wind is making?
You were like that, I remember. You were always cautious, always on full alert and on your toes. I didn't realize before the circumstances that must have made you the way you were. I was not interested in realizing back then. You didn't matter to me because you were not family.
Things would have been so different if I only knew back then what I know now.

You have no idea how many times I wanted to take that god-awful spell that we made and to turn back time. Back to when you were not "were" and when you were alive. So I could hold you and tell you that we know, to hear you forgive us and to say that we forgive you, and to actually mean it this time.
To cry with you and to tell you that everything is going to be all right, that we will stop Adam and save you.

"Everything will be better, Mommy is here". I want to tell you that, to whisper those soothing words to your ear, and to actually believe that everything is going to turn out alright. Except there is not a you to deliver those words to. Besides, I know that coming back would not accomplish anything. Because you would not trust us, just as we never trusted you.
So I repeat these words to the ears of the wide cosmos. Maybe it will hear and take my words to you, to wherever you are.

Wyatt is crying.
He had a major emotional swing in the last couple of months, just like the rest of us. He is crying a lot and calls Kis repeatedly.
I guess he misses you, too.

I don't know anymore how to comfort him. Nothing that I tried worked. He just keeps crying days and nights as if he knows that something I wrong. That you're gone forever. It is as if he can feel that I don't know what to do about him. That his mommy is helpless. And that I cannot look at him anymore without seeing the other him. The other him that is an evil tyrant and who will eventually end the world as we know it.

Leo says that it's not really him who did it and that it was a different world, which we can prevent. After all, we did not know at the time that he turned that way only because of us. All just because we did not think that you were powerful enough. That we wronged you once again.

It is easier for Leo because he didn't see the other Wyatt. He didn't have to see the true malice in our son's eyes, and the hands- those horrible ghostly hands that we couldn't prevent. And that Wyatt will suffer yet again.
He did not hear him talk. He did not hear you pleading for Wyatt to stop fighting. He did not experience any of that. How dare he talk?

I cannot deal with having an evil son any more than I can handle that you died. And now you said that I am going to have another son coming, and that from whatever reason I will call him Adam. And he will be born blind and will be the ruler of the underworld.
And I know I suppose to love him. Because he will be my son.
But how can I love a stranger who killed you, whom I loved? How can I love both of you, the three of you, in the same time, to care for you all and not to be driven crazy?

How can I be a good Mom to both sons who will be monsters? Even though heaven knows that I love Wyatt, how can I not be tempted to let go? To just have an abortion and not have Adam at all. And by doing so changing the course of all time, doing the thing that scared you the most and in the end killed you.

How could you die, Chris, without telling me how I ought to deal? How to make the wrong right again without messing it up again.
I need you more than in any other time that I needed you. Not for your demon knowledge or which threat is about to rise- but for YOU.
I need you to come from whatever place that you have gone to and come back to me. I need you to tell me good things about Adam so whenever I think of infanticide again, I need you to help me see reason. To help me love him like he deserves.
I need you to be my son more than being my Whitelighter. I need to hug you, to see you. And to feel that you are real.
I need to say goodbye. Because I can't manage it anymore.

I know I should be strong for the sake of our family, the future you and Wyatt, Adam, your father and aunts, the magical community and even the whole freaking world. Because they need me. But I need you.

After Prue died, I couldn't go on anymore. Then Grams came and told me that life is a test and that what does not break you makes you stronger.
But I am now too badly broken to be strong, my dear boy, because I can't live without you anymore.

Love,
Mom

You crumble the note and throw it away on the ground. This woman is talking about another Chris. The fact that he had brothers with the same names as yours is purely coincidence, it must be.
After all, you are alive and even if you died there would be no one who would mourn for you. You are a king and royalty was doomed to be alone.

Then the wind suddenly snatches the note away and it flies after the leaf, toward forgetfulness.