Neurotic


Summary: "My name's not Chris Perry," Chris said, as if it was the hardest thing he'd ever had to say. "It's Christopher." He paused, almost reluctantly. "Christopher Halliwell."

Disclaimer: Charmed and Chris don't belong to me, doo dah, doo dah, I'm not making any money from this, oh, dah doo dah day.


Chapter The Twenty-first


"Well, that's ridiculous," Paige was still sulking as she set up the glamour to hide the destruction from their neighbours, thankful for the zillionth time that they weren't the nosy sort. "Someone good wouldn't do all that. And why the fuss?"

Chris made a face at her. "I've put down the silence barrier," he hissed. "But-" He looked edgily around, and then moved over a large pile of debris, wincing at the number of poison-coated spikes littering the floor, to the table. He ripped a piece of paper off one of the notepads that had survived the attack, and, scrambling for a pen, wrote in big letters:

HE'S BEING WATCHED.

He held it up, and Paige nodded slowly. "I see. By-"

"Uh-uh-uh. Ix-nay on the alk-tay," Chris muttered.

"You've been taking lessons from Phoebe," Paige grouched as she hopped over the pile of discarded spikes that Victor and Dan were pulling out from the wall while wearing very thick gloves. She took the pen from him.

BY WHO?

SOMEONE HIGH UP ON WYATT'S CHAIN OF COMMAND.

WHAT IF IT IS WYATT?

Chris slowly took the pen away, and looked at her heavily. "We'd really better hope that's not the case," he said slowly, laying the paper down. Pippa leant over and took the paper, and her eyes widened, and she passed it to Piper.

"Wouldn't it be a good think if You-Know-Who was here?" Piper questioned.

Phoebe peeked around the corner. "You-Know-Who?" She blanched. "The Harry Potter books are real?"

"No, no, no," Piper muttered, leaning over the back of the sofa to hand Phoebe the paper. Phoebe looked at it softly.

"Oh. That you-know-who," she said.

Orb lights spilled down, and Chris jumped visibly, relaxing when he saw it was only Leo.

"It's official," Leo said. "Those Stegoflails were from this timeline."

"So if he's- you know- how come he's recruiting demons to kill us?" Paige demanded.

"Maybe he's not," Phoebe offered. "Maybe someone else did it for him."

"Or maybe whoever is watching him is watching him so closely that he can't do anything wrong," Piper suggested. "Maybe he has to keep pretending he's evil."

"SHUT UP!" Chris bellowed. Everyone stopped working to look at him, and he blushed sheepishly at the attention. "Look, I'm sorry, but if anyone is hiding anything, well, it's been hidden well so far – so doesn't he deserve for his secret not to be blown?"

The girls looked at him apologetically.

"You have a point there, Chris," Victor said in a semi-taunting sing-song voice. "Why, it sounds almost as if it's up to him to tell any secrets he has, just in case it gets revealed inadvertently."

Chris shot him a soft warning look.

"Okay, that was a very loaded sentence," Piper commented, eyeing them all darkly.

Chris shot her a dark look, and then inexplicably walked out of the house, slamming the door behind him.

"He does that a lot," Paige commented. "All right, who's going to play fetch today and go get Chris?"

"I will," Leo said softly, worry plain on his face as he picked his way across the cluttered floor and headed to the door.


Leo was expecting a fight of some sort to try and get Chris to open up, but as soon as approached Chris, Chris sank down onto the low wall and folded his arms.

"I guess you're going to tell me to tell them too," Chris said, his voice low and his face meticulously blank of any expression. Chris was staring at some imaginary spot in the horizon, and Leo joined him on the wall, staring at the same spot in mid-air, and abruptly glad that he hadn't worn his Elder robes down.

They would probably get some weird stares as it was, but Leo didn't have the time to think on that. He had to deal with his number one priority right now – his sons.

"Well, I can't deny that I don't think it would do any harm," Leo said evenly, "but I can see why you wouldn't want to."

"What do you mean?"

"It's got to be hard," Leo said reasonably. "And I suppose it would be easier not to let things slip if you're emotionally distanced from them."

Chris smiled ruefully. "I wish it were that easy," he said. "Everything- everything's changing. Everything that I thought I knew. But the future- it still sucks. There have been some awful deaths that I wish could have mistaken – Piper and Paul I am grateful for – but… It's just…"

Chris seemed unable to get the words out, and he edged a look at Leo, his sea-green eyes grazing Leo's face. Leo was stung by the haunted look on Chris' face.

"You have your mom back and you can't even let them know she is your mom," Leo said softly. "And you're angry at her."

"Fuck you!" Chris turned angrily away, and resumed staring into the distance. His fists clenched in his lap, and he hung his head. Hair fell over his face, obscuring any expression from Leo.

"And you're angry at Paul, too," Leo said reasonably.

"Where do you get off?" Chris demanded incredulously. He lifted his face up, which had reddened considerably, and he glared at Leo as if he'd like nothing better than to rip his head off. "How can you say those things? You don't know any of it! Any of us…"

"Maybe this time round-" Leo started hopefully, inwardly knowing that the fight was probably going to start now.

"Bullshit," Chris said harshly.

The words felt like a sheer physical slap, and Leo glanced up at him as if winded.

"And you're angry at me," Leo finished.

"God, you're so full of yourself!" Chris yelled, getting to his feet and turning to face Leo. The sun blazed behind his head, spinning an iridescent halo of rage around his angered features. "You always think you know everything, but you don't- you're just a pig-headed, stubborn, stupid-arsed git who ruins everything, who goes and gets himself killed when we needed you the most!"

Leo stunned by the words, got to his feet. He saw the physical pain in Chris' eyes, and it fell through him, like his heart had fallen into his stomach. "Chris-"

"You don't know anything!" Chris screamed, and flung himself at Leo, hitting him forcibly with his fists. Leo was expecting it to hurt, but it didn't. "You don't know anything!" With hot tears scalding his face, Chris buried his face in Leo's shirt, still weakly hitting him, and, in sudden abrupt understanding, Leo folded Chris closer and let him cry out his rage, making soft shushing sounds and hugging him like he was his last link to humanity.

Leo didn't know how he managed it, but he managed to sink back down onto the wall and lower Chris gingerly down next to him. "I died sometime after you thought Wyatt had murdered Piper," Leo said. Chris slowly opened his eyes, and looked up in shame. He turned away. Leo put one hand on Chris' shoulder and turned him back. "You have every right to be mad at me."

"Don't tell me what I can and can't feel!" Chris said. "I've already screwed up so much-They know too much as it is. I can't tell any of you any more. I can't."

"Why?" Leo asked, going for it even though he knew Chris was likely to yell at him some more. It was this cocky arrogance that made him not so hugely popular against the Elders. Sometimes you have to fly in the face of what's wrong.

"Because-" Chris gestured with his hands as words failed him. He sighed, and looked down at the ground. "I can't, all right?"

"I doubt you even know now," Leo said, ignoring the fact that Chris had not denied the fact that he was going to die. "You don't have a clue why you can't tell them."

Chris looked up, lost. "I do," he said. "I just can't put it in words."

"Because you're scared they'll hate you. That they won't be proud of who you grew up to without them."

Chris was silent, and his eyes scanned the floor as if looking for something. "I guess," he admitted, his voice gruff, his eyes slightly bloodshot. "They will hate me. I- I- left Paul for dead. I left him. And I couldn't stop him from actually killing-" Chris came to a sudden full-stop. "There," he said, with a bitter self-irony, "I'm doing it again. Saying too much."

Leo hated the bitterness in Chris' voice, and blamed himself for it. He'd obviously not been there for his son. His son who had needed him. Not only had he failed Wyatt, but he was going to fail Chris too. "You need to open up to someone," Leo said softly. "It doesn't have to be me."

Chris' mouth twitched a little at the edge. "-you, okay?" His voice was gruff, and broken, and Chris coughed slightly as if saying the words had hurt his throat. "You were going to be there, for the first time in ever, and I couldn't- I couldn't do anything. And not even because Wyatt had done anything to me."

He laughed, but it was a chilling sound.

"No," Chris continued, "I was frozen all by myself. I hadn't been able to help mom or- or Paul- and when Wyatt went for Mel, you defended her all by yourself, and you yelled at me to do something, but I couldn't move, and then-" He closed his eyes, and shivered violently, as if reliving the pain.

Leo felt a rush of hate inside him, and wanted to take that pain away.

"Then he killed you both." A very self-hating smile slid onto Chris' face, and he shook his head slowly, as if in complete disbelief. "Definitely no mistaking that death." He opened his eyes, but his eyes were blank. "I failed you. I failed everyone."

"No!" Leo blurted.

"How can you know?" Chris demanded incredulously. "You weren't there. I can hope you won't be, but we don't know, and I'm self-indulgently having a fucking breakdown in the middle of it all!"

"Chris, how old were you when it happened?"

Chris turned unbelieving eyes to his father. "What, do you think I'm going to tell you that? That's the worst thing of all to tell someone, when fate wanted them dead in one timeline, 'cause even if we stop Wyatt turning- you could still-" Chris stopped, as if choking on the words.

"How old," Leo repeated, his eyes glinting dangerously. "I won't tell the others. You have my word."

Chris sighed, and fidgeted as if going through some great internal debate, and sighed again. "I was fourteen, okay?" He turned his face away bitterly.

"-and you're single-handedly holding yourself responsible for our deaths?" Leo demanded. "God, you were a presumptuous kid, weren't you!"

Chris looked at him angrily. "What the hell do you mean by that?"

"Chris, you were fourteen. At that age, yeah, it's your fault if the toaster blows up, or you set a rug on fire, or play truant or drink, or anything like that. That's the level of responsibility for a teenager! But to take on the safety of the whole family onto yourself?" Leo shook his head. "You get that magnitude of worrying from your mother, I'll tell you that right now."

"Wyatt destroyed the family all by himself," Chris said quietly, looking sour and resentful. "And how did you know about the toaster, anyway?"

Leo rolled his eyes at Chris' sarcasm. "Look, Chris. If anyone failed, it was me. I've failed Wyatt, and I've failed you too. No- don't try and deny it," he said quickly, as Chris made to flinch quietly, "it's true."

"Yeah, well maybe we're both screw-ups," Chris muttered.

"I am, but you're not," Leo said simply. Chris turned to him with an angry look, a you're not listening to me look. "You came all this way to stop that future. Not just one of the murders that Wyatt commits, but all of them. I meant what I said the other day, I am proud of you. I may have no right to be, but I am."

Colour swept into Chris' eyes, replacing the blank and hollow look that had been haunting them for the last ten minutes. "You don't have any right to be," Chris said, somewhat unsteadily. "You weren't there," he added, somewhat abruptly. "You had time for everyone else, but never me. That's why I hate you." Chris didn't try and soften the impact. "And that's what you have to try and fix this time round."

Chris got up and started to walk away, as if his outburst had never happened, as if his entire conversation hadn't meant a thing. Leo studied the retreating back of his future son, his angular shoulders, his slightly hunched back as if hiding himself from the world, and for the first time in a while felt a small rush of hope inside of him. Maybe the future isn't quite so doomed after all…