Wow, I actually managed to write another chapter. And it didn't even take me a month...
Anyway, thanks for denna5who reviewed and Ligia Elena, who's alwaysthere to tell me when I make mistakes.

It came to my intention that though I didn't mean to offend anyone, I maybe have. So for all of you who got offended from my stupid joke theprevious A/N (the one that asked people not to be lazy and to review) - my sincere apologies. That was not my intention at all.

As always, my deepest gratitude goes to my beta Shadowhiper, who after many bumps and problems managed to check this chapter and made it actually readable.

Chapter 7

The deep sound scatters around, echoing and enveloping the entire house, spreading through the whole neighborhood. It can be heard in the entire world. And the beats of your heart- they are almost as loud. You are sure that anyone near you can hear it. How can they not when the sound is too loud even to your ears?
You try to inhale deeply hoping it will stop the erratic beating of your heart. But it doesn't. The expectation is too much even for you to bear. You haven't seen them for so long that you are almost afraid you will not recognize them or that they will not recognize you. And the essence of your plan is for them to recognize you. Well, the other you.

Nobody answers the door. You berate yourself over the growing fear. You probably just didn't knock loud enough.

Knocking again, waiting again. Knocking and waiting, waiting and knocking. You are becoming desperate, not caring anymore if the neighbors will hear. You want them to open. You want to scream, "This is your son at the door! Open the door! Please, I want to come home."

But you know that this is a useless wish. Even when you are inside this home, it will not be your home. Then again, even your home never really belonged to you. You were the one to ruin it.And in this world, only good intentions must pass through the doorstep of the Halliwells, and you have everything but .

The hours grow dim and weary while you stand there for far too long. Given up on knocking anymore, there is no point, and just staring at the door, wishing you could burn a hole in it, to burn something.
To drown the world.

Nevertheless, you have a façade to maintain and must control yourself. For now you must suffer the cold and staring of neighbors who wonder why you are standing there, are you a thief?
Even though you reassure them in your eyes that you are not one and your intentions are innocent, you know that it is a lie. You are a thief. You are here to steal their hearts.

Cold is an interesting thing. For what seems optimistic in the light of the sun, tends to dull its color by the moonlight. It reaches the bones, passing through the entire skeleton and making each muscle, each ligament aching and sensitive to touch. It takes the knowledge that you were never loved and spins it in your heart like a knife. You can fool yourself that you do not love them, that you never did, but the heart cannot lie. The bones and muscles are painful and bleeding from the inside. Because you need your family to hear you. You need them to come and bring light to the cold of your body, and yourheart.

A lamp is being lit somewhere in the house and dies again almost immediately. You realize they had just orbed in. They weren't ignoring you!

Your damn paranoia.

You knock on the door again with renew powers while new hope is transforming all the despair you felt into anticipating, longing, and maybe even love.

You hear someone running down the stairs. Your heart beats faster and faster, your throat closes down, almost chocking you to the point you fall down on your knees, panting. But of course, you cannot do that. You cannot show weakness. Weakness leads to death. And you need to live.

The door is opened…

…Mom is at the door. Mom. At the door. Looking at you. Smiling.

She comes closer to you.

"Chris, is that really you?"

She whispers. It doesn't matter. You hear anyway. Your body stiffens.

Mom.

She pulls you closer, her warm arms engulfing you, protecting you. That scent- her scent- is here. She's here. Her lips quiver as she asks, "How?"

You don't say anything. Just keep holding on to her and melt into her arms.

There are shrieks far away, colors around you and then additional warmth. Your aunts are here, too. They are hugging you and taking you closer to them, embracing you as their own. Everything is so warm, so right. You smile and wish that this moment would never end, that it will stretch on and on to eternity until nothing else will ever matter. Not power, revenge or love. Just them. And Mom

"Leo!" someone is calling in a hoarse voice. Maybe it's you. Maybe angels have awakened and returned to earth ,where they belong and maybe, if you are lucky, this is where they will stay.

Mom's shirt is wet. Probably from her tears, probably yours. But the dampness doesn't matter. Nothing matters. Dad is appearing from thin air accompanied by lights. They, your family, cocoon you.

You don't want to let go. You will never want to let go- -

The moment is breaking.

You look at Mom's eyes and stiffen in embracement. You lost yourself for a minute there. You broke down.

This is the cost of emotions.

"Hi Mom." You smile attentively waiting for the flood of questions that will come and for the web of deception to spin around you all.

"Don't you hi me, mister. Where have you been?" She sounds mad but you know better. She's worried. She doesn't know what to do; how to deal with the world now that it granted her you, afraid that when the miracle ends it will take you back to where you belong, far out of her reach, where she can't protect you. To a place where even you cannot protect yourself.

"I returned to the future. Mom, it's amazing." You let the lies come and let the fairytale wash over you as if you really do believe in happy endings. "Wyatt's there and he's the best brother a guy can dream of. You're alive and Paige and Phoebe too. Even Prue visits some days. It's . . . happy. I'm happy."

"So why did you come back?" she whispers so low that you nearly miss the words and your heart almost breaks. You could almost kick this world's you for hurting her, for letting her think that she doesn't deserve you and that you won't come back for her, whatever her she may be.

"You sent me back. You told me that now that everything is fine again I need to come back to the past, to you, to tell you I'm ok. That it's ok to live a little, now. And that you will wait with chocolate- raison cookies for my return."

"I said that?" her voice is soft and she's smiling. You are selling her a dream, you know that, but just for a minute longer you wish to sink in that dream with her. To think that this is the reason you came back. That this is the woman you grew up with, the one who openly admits that she loves you and cares. That she will give her life for you and actually do it. You are smiling too and it's not even part of the plan. Its not one of the hundred details that you and Kyla brew up in order to make your story more reliable. But this is the real you, the one that misses your mom, the onewho can't sleep days and nights because you know that you killed your parents and can't even feel remorse for what you have done. You had to do it; there was no question about it. If by some miracle you could go back in time to that day, you would have done the same thing again.
Now that you see her, you start questioning for the first time that maybe just maybe this is all wrong. Maybe this is the world that you should have been living in. A world where your mom is alive and this feeling you feel now all that…exhilaration is an everyday occurrence. Maybe this is the way things should have been. Maybe you were wrong.

"Yeah, and do you wanna hear the coolest part? I can stay here for a few days and manufacture the vortex to take me right to the minute that you will finish the cookies in the future."

"Wow…you certainly put a lot of thought in that," Paige, always the teacher, compliments you. She is patronizing you again, you point out to yourself angrily, like she always did. She always thought that she was better than anyone else was. That she knew better.
But maybe she is really proud of you?

"Not that I'm not happy to see you, of course I am, you're my favorite nephew, but…doesn't it sort of count like a personal gain thing?" says Phoebe. She always was the cautious one.

"It could. If it wasn't for Mom saying that I've already come to the past to cheer you up and the world survived. Besides, how else would you have the energy to kick some major demon ass?"

"Well, you certainly changed a bit," Mom says not exactly approvingly or disapprovingly just... surprised. Almost as if she does not yet know how to take the new you. You know that it's a good uncalculated fact that you will throw them off balance right in the beginning but you start to worry. What if they don't believe it is you?

"Yeah." You shrug while your mind is already twirling with ideas and possibilities. "The future's better. I've lived through some really good times. Besides, I was never that neurotic."

They give you the evil eye and refrain from talking. It's ok. You don't really feel like defending someone you don't even know, even if it happens to be you.
Seriously, your life should be made into a soup-opera. The last thought is a clear sign of it.

"Do you want to come in?" Leo asks, speaking for the first time. Now that you take a moment to study him, you see behind the shock a blizzard of feelings. The most obvious feeling is the overwhelming amount of love, so much that it is actually sickening to see it on the face of the man you have always only seen apathy.

You try to be fair to him in the safety of your mind and to forgive him. In whole, he wasn't such a bad guy. He just wasn't there much. Its ok, it could have been worse. He could have been there all the time and be like David's dad, an unemployed and raging father. You even suspected a few times that he hit him. But that was natural, usual. It was... appropriate.

You should be grateful then that your father was never home.

Then how come reasoning doesn't help?

Now he has changed. Maybe he will even be the father you have always dreamed of when you were a child, someone who will read a goodnight story and check the closet before tucking you into bed to see that there are no monsters hiding in the closetbecausein your family, anything can happen.
Maybe this Leo is better just like mom is better. Maybe this whole fucking world is better and it was you who was stuck in a dysfunctional world even before you turned it into your personal zoo. Maybe this world's you was better even if he was a real nutcase.

Not that you are really sane, of course.

You had a psychiatrist once. Not a real one but of your minions who learned it and you wanted to see how well this psychiatry babble really was.
He told you to relax and that all he really wanted was to help.

After the second hour, he declared that you were insane. You opened the door and let him lead himself out and closed your heart ever since to all those good-doers.

The only good thing that came from that mess was that you were able to practice with live targets instead of rabbits in the morning fireball practice.
Insert evil giggle here.

You probably spent too much time wondering and you can see them eyeing you strangely. Well, of course they are, you just zone out on them.

"Sure," you say lightly as if nothing happened. As if the atmosphere around you and your family is not laden with fear, worry, and lies. Pretending as if everything is all right. Pretending... because this is easy. Because sometimes the truth hurts more than pretence.

So you come into the house that you remember from your childhood and even though everything is the same, it couldn't be any more different. The small things made the changes- the happy pictures on the buffet that are a marker of all the happy occurrences in their lives that you never shared. A picture of little you who looks so innocent, his eyes so big and trusting is the newest one to the collection. A picture of big you, the other you, in an old tattered picture where you are hugging everyone and looking so belong is there, too. Even when he didn't belong to the era, he belonged in his family. But you, you are even more of a stranger than he was.

You sit and watch their faces around you, studying them, noting changes. They all look more lit from the inside, you realize, almost glowing. Even the darkness fears them.
Even you .

"So, honey, tell me about the future."

"There's not much to tell, really. I mean, life is pretty normal."

"Come on! Give me some itsy bitsy details." Aunt- Paige is practically begging. She is not your aunt, you remind yourself. She is Paige. Your aunt died. "Who did I marry?"

"A guy named Gavin. A doctor."

"Oh, doctor." At least Phoebe approves. Actually, she always approved on him. You used to think she had had a crush on him but didn't say anything for the sake of her sister.

"Gavin? From all the guys in the world I will have the one with the most horrible name. What was I, drugged?"

"Actually…"

"Hey! Does the phrase future consequences ring any bell?" Piper interferes, her voice harsh and commending, maternal.

"Which side are you on? Spoilsport."

"What about me?" Phoebe asks and you don't know what to say to her, how to soften the impact that after Cole she will have no one.

"You find someone, too." You lie to her smoothly, not the least bit bothered by the way her face is being lit by a lie. Maybe she will find someone, you reason. Maybe now, that you gave her the right motivation, she will find the love she needs so much. After all, tampering with the past always changes the future.

"Ok, no more questions," Leo barges in, always being the Elder. Only here Elders are for the good side
. Weird.

"Tell me a little about yourself." Piper looks at her husband thankfully and concentrates on you, her glare intense.

"Yeah, what about Bianca?" Phoebe asks innocently.

"Shush. Maybe now they're not together anymore," Paige mumbles in Phoebe's direction but you can see that her heart isn't in it. She wants to hear, too.

"We're. . ." What the hell, why not give them the truth? "She's dead."

"Oh baby, I'm so sorry." Mom rushes to your side, hugging you so fiercely that you know her heart is going out to you, that she wants to help. And just for a tiny moment you are entertained by the thought that maybe it's better to tell them everything and be over with it. Maybe they will understand and help you kill the one who killed Bianca. They know what a loss can do to a person. They felt it.

Maybe they could feel for you.

But you already know that this is useless. They are good witches in this world. They probably never encountered any bad feelings. All the white beings are living in fantasy; grief and anger are foreign to them.

They won't understand. They can't. It's all about lines and what it takes to cross them and you know that while you jump from one side to the other, they will have to be pushed to it. They can't cut the red line of morality like you always could, like yours- theirs could. They are different now. They can't understand you.

You are alone.