Neurotic
A story of Christopher Perry Halliwell
Disclaimer: Charmed doesn't belong to me. If you've got this far in the story I LOVE YOU.
Chapter The Fifth
"I think," Leo said heavily, "that you'd better explain to me what you're doing here."
Chris' reply was his usual recourse. "What does it look like I'm doing?" He said impatiently. "Trying to stop your son from turning evil, that's what I'm doing. Only the sisters aren't exactly seeing this as a good plan."
Leo's face was completely impassive, etched in stone while Chris looked up at him expectantly. As the silence stretched on, Chris began to wonder if sarcasm was probably the best answer.
"Sorry," Chris apologised eventually. "I didn't mean to snap. This thing is giving me a headache."
Leo apparently got over his inability to speak at this point, when he bent down and joined Chris next to the Map. "What is this?" He asked, staring at the different columns and the way they matched up with time schedules and degrees of urgency and deadlines. "It's incredible."
Suddenly self-conscious and shy, Chris edged a look at him, in a happy sort of disbelief. "You think so? You're not gonna kick me out?"
This prompted a large sigh from Leo. "They kicked you out because you put Wyatt in a position of harm. Wyatt's not here so I suppose-" Here he looked a little doubtful. "I suppose it's all right. Although, I think it would be a redundant question to ask if you have permission."
Chris felt his ears burning.
"Thought so," Leo said. "Anyway, as I am not supposed to be here either, it would by hypocritical of me to shove you out."
Thankful, Chris edged a small smile at Leo. "Thanks, man." Then curiosity got the better of him. "Why are you here?"
"I saw you," Leo said. "And-"
"-thought you'd check that I wasn't doing some nefarious deed?" Chris finished for him wryly.
"Not that," Leo defended, although by the way Leo's ears turned red, Chris figured out simultaneously that a) it was the case and b) so that's where he'd got the annoying propensity of his ears turning red when he was embarrassed or lying. At Chris' glance of disbelief, Leo tried to explain. "I just- I still think your intentions are good. Just some of the ways you carry out your plans…"
"I wish I could run them through with you first," Chris said. "But you know how important keeping this timeline uncontaminated is. I risked a lot doing this in the first place, I can't risk too much more by telling you everything." He locked gazes with Leo, pleading. "The future on my world- it sucked. The Charmed Ones are dead, all the Elders, all the Whitelighters, all good magic… Because sometime, in the next few weeks, something gets to Wyatt and will turn him. Unless I can stop it from happening."
"But you don't know what turns him," Leo said, his brow furrowed. "I- wait – the next few weeks?"
Chris nodded heavily. "Yes. Whatever happens to Wyatt happens before your second child is born," he said. "And that's due in five weeks."
"So we've got five weeks-" Leo started, and then froze, staring at Chris, completely stunned.
Chris stared back, bewildered. It was obviously something he'd said… but he hadn't let anything dangerous from the future slip out. Only that the future was shot to hell, which was impetus to get Leo to trust him, and that it happened in the next few weeks, before his next child was born—
Oh, crap. Piper's going to skin me ALIVE when she realises what I just did! Chris realised. His heart in his mouth, he looked at Leo in panic.
"Oh my god, I'm so sorry, I forgot you didn't know she was pregnant—" Chris smacked himself in the forehead. "I'm so sorry!"
"When- When- When did it happen?" Leo murmured, clearly unable to take the news, and so shocked he didn't even contemplate the possibility that Chris was lying.
"Um." Chris fidgeted a little, still a bit embarrassed with phrasing what exactly happened. "The astral plane? You and Piper?"
"Oh." Leo said. "Oh." Then he paused again, before looking at Chris incredulously. "Wait, she told you what happened?"
Chris tried not to fidget too much. "Um. No. But when you two disappeared onto the astral plane, I started to disappear too. And, um, when you were back I was okay."
Now Leo's eyes widened completely in shock. Chris tried not to panic and to keep calm. He couldn't tell him, no matter how much he wanted to wave it in the face of the smug, self-righteous pig.
"Uh, Piper saves my mom's life sometime in the near future," Chris said. "It happens in the hospital, some time after she, um, gives birth to- Um, that's about enough information for now." He shut up. At Leo's confused stare, he shrugged. "I tell you who my mom is, you won't help save her. Actually, I tell you who my mom is, you'll go up to her and ask her not to push."
Leo smiled then at Chris' wry sense of humour. "Naw, I wouldn't."
"Really?"
"Well-" Leo joked. "No. But I would give her painkillers for the next neurotic twenty years of your life."
Chris laughed at that, in a restrained smiling sort of manner, and then turned his attention back to the Map. "Um. Big shocks of impending fatherhood aside… you won't tell her I told you, will you?"
Leo took one look at Chris' pleading expression, and pretended to deliberate slowly. After seeing the actual look of panic in Chris' storm-coloured eyes, Leo decided to go easy on him. "Relax. I'll tell her- that I just peeked a look down at Wyatt and saw- her." A sudden look crossed Leo's face that Chris couldn't decipher. "Um."
"Um?" Chris said, pointedly, idly looking up a page on the Mermen of Ides and dismissing them as too unimportant to even go on the map. He doubted Wyatt would be turned evil by their special ability to blow bubbles at one another, forty-thousand feet under the sea.
"Do you-" Leo looked suddenly and painfully shy, which was a weird expression on him in Chris' humble opinion. "Do you know- the second child?"
Stunned, Chris looked at him. "You know I can't-"
"-tell us about the future, I know," Leo said. "But-"
"So you've got to be an exception?" Chris questioned, feeling slightly irritated for some reason that he couldn't quite pin down, but he reckoned probably had something to do with Leo's presence.
Leo bristled slightly. "You told us that Wyatt turned evil," he said, almost accusingly.
Almost at once, Chris understood. "You want to know if the second child is turned too," he said in realisation. Leo nodded. Chris deliberated for a second, and then realised Leo was clearly torn. And he had to remember that this Leo wasn't exactly his father. Yet. "Healthy. A good person. Not evil." Chris smiled wryly. "Head of the resistance against Wyatt's evil doings, actually."
Leo rocked back on his heels, clearly moved. "I-" He couldn't finish the sentence, and chewed at his lower lip for a second. "Wow."
Chris actually laughed at that. "I'll be sure to tell them you said that," he lied, "if I make it back to the future."
"Oh. Yeah," Leo said, obviously realising something else. "No Elders in your time."
Chris looked away, painfully.
"Look, how about I have a word with the sisters," Leo said. "This - what do you call it?"
"The Map," Chris said.
"Right. This Map," Leo said, smiling a little. "It's really something, and you should at least have some more access to the book, and a little access to their ass-kicking powers. Although-"
"Don't worry. Paige and Phoebe have been taking overly-protective care of Piper," Chris said hurriedly. "Look- I'm really sorry I landed this on you."
Leo smiled sadly. "I'm not. And at least I know one son turns out good… It's a huge comfort. Now—explain to me exactly how this thing works."
Hiding a sudden bout of laughter that surprised himself, Chris hung his head and smiled into his t-shirt before raising his head and starting to explain what each of the columns meant, and how they linked into each other.
They were both so engrossed by it, that neither of them noticed the shadowy figure skulking outside on the pavement.
"Mmm, I'm absolutely stuffed," Paige declared, holding her stomach and looking mournfully at her half-eaten corn dog. "Pheebs, do you want the rest of this?"
"Gack, I don't think I could eat another thing either," Phoebe said, pulling a face at the yellowed meat popsicle. "Piper? Dad?"
Victor waved his hands at it, and Piper turned her face away, looking abruptly pale.
"Oh! I'm sorry!" Realising the smell had made Piper feel sick, Paige cast around for the nearest dustbin. Seeing one thirty feet away, Paige abruptly stumbled into Phoebe.
"Hey! What do you think you're doing?" Phoebe demanded incredulously. Paige eyeballed her sister viciously, and then orbed the corndog away and into the bin. "Ohh. Oh." Phoebe nodded her head. "Very clever."
"I thought so," Paige said, brushing her hands together to get the last crumbs from them. "Can't have Piper throwing up the baby."
"Yeah, thanks for that mental image, Paige," Piper said, a pale look still to her face. Victor stopped tickling Wyatt, and looked at his daughter in concern.
"Are you okay, honey? Do you want to get back to the manor?" He asked.
"No, I'm all right," Piper said. "Besides, we promised Phoebe we'd at least go to the fortune-teller's tent."
"Yeah, but we don't have to keep going around after that," Paige said. "All right?"
"Yay!" Phoebe said, punching the air with one fist excitedly before blowing a raspberry on Wyatt's cheek. Wyatt's delighted giggle filled the air as they trooped along to the fortune-teller's tent that they had seen on the way in. The queue was short, and it was only a five minute wait. They paid their entrance fee, and walked through the smoky thick crimson material until they got inside the tent.
The tent had seemed quite small from the outside, but on the inside was much bigger.
"It's like a TARDIS," Paige remarked, impressed. In front of the table, there were four chairs, as if they had been expected. They all sat down, Victor having Wyatt on his knee. The chair swivelled round, and an old woman with very brown eyes looked at them solemnly.
"One of you is concealing something," the woman said suddenly, her voice low and gravely. "A child, yet not a child. Conflicted, who dreams of the destruction that has happened and yet has not happened so far. He is in mortal danger."
The sisters exchanged confused looks, while Victor looked hard at the old woman, recognising a possibility that she was talking about Chris. While he took fortune-telling with a barrel of salt, he couldn't ignore that it was possible – his own daughter could see the future, for example.
"Is there anything else you can tell us?" Phoebe said eagerly.
The woman looked at her. "Your view is clouded of late," she said. "Your emotions are still in turmoil. You have seen something of the truth, and yet haven't acknowledged it yet. If you do not realise the one thing you have missed, the child who is not a child may suffer."
"The child who is not a child that one of us is concealing," Piper said slowly. "My child?" She held her stomach protectively.
"You look at the world through a narrow perspective," the woman said, as if it was a reprimand. "But you will understand. A Map will show you the way. Allow the map reader to help you, for he has gone through much trials and sufferings and seen too much death for someone as young as he, to get this Map to you. Keep your minds open, all of you. The pieces of the puzzle are there, you just have to put them together. A friend who is not a friend will betray you. And your son-" The woman peered at Piper closely. "You three will hurt him, quite deliberately. You will mean him harm and you will deal him harm. And he has been hurt so much already—"
And that was apparently all the woman could cope with, for she slumped in her chair, and it pivoted around again. They looked at each other and in silent agreement headed outside and into the deafening sunshine.
"I don't believe it," Paige said. "We wouldn't hurt Wyatt deliberately. And that whole child who is not a child. Yeah, Piper, you're concealing that child very not obviously." Her sarcastic streak reminded Victor of Chris, and it cheered him up slightly that Paige would have some influence on him growing up.
"Maybe she didn't mean Wyatt," Phoebe said, thinking heavily, her eyebrows drawn together. They started to head by mutual unspoken consensus to the car.
"What do you mean?" Piper said, worried.
"Maybe- It's just a hunch-" Phoebe trailed off slightly. "Maybe it's your second child. It is a boy, after all…"
"Well then we just don't have to worry about it, then," Piper declared staunchly. "I would never deliberately hurt any of my children, and I know neither of you would, so it's proof that it's stupid."
Victor, however, was thinking otherwise. They had hurt Chris. And he was concealing Piper's child – her second child, all grown-up, who wasn't a child any longer but an adult. And if the fortune teller was right… Chris was in mortal danger, right now, and there wasn't a thing he could do to help him.
