"Chris, you know you're the only one who can do this. You're the only one who can save us."
Neurotic
Disclaimer: Charmed does not belong to me.
Summary: His name is not Chris Perry. It's Christopher. Christopher Halliwell.
Chapter the Thirty-second
"Professional"
The sound of water falling was magnified by the dark caverns spinning down into the centre of the Earth for eternity. He stepped forwards cautiously, not betraying his own safety for the sake of immediacy, for the sake of getting out of the place that chilled and frightened him.
He was instantly mad at himself. He shouldn't still be scared of underground places, not really. He'd been to the Underworld a thousand times. But at least there, it's warm, so warm… Fire undulates on the walls, and no one's even dead, not down there... It was one way of looking at things, after all.
But here. Here. Here was a lesser form of being underground, where you could still say you were on the planet's surface, where you weren't so close to the centre of the planet that the core heated your every footfall. Here it was cold, and dank, and dark, and you could die down here and no one would ever find you until it was too late. Here was the everyday world's underground. Caves, and caverns, and underground lakes that were black with eternal night.
Here you needed your own light, and a steady heart, and courage. One out of three isn't bad, though, is it?
Here you were left with your own thoughts. Oh god, I hate, I have to be someone I'm not, but you were never you anyway, so why does that matter?
With renewed fire in his eyes, he kept walking. Walking was easy, it was just putting one foot in front of the other, and if he concentrated on that, on walking in a straight line and not banging into walls, and looking out for what he was looking out for, then maybe he wouldn't think of what he had been thinking about since it happened.
Wishful thinking. His steps were staggered, and he couldn't watch his feet and look around, and his thoughts kept going anyway.
He'd come with one mission in mind. Just one mission. Get in, do your job, maybe die trying, but you do your fucking job. You get in, get out, and don't tell anyone what they didn't need to know. And now he'd screwed that all up.
He scuffed his trainers as he walked, a little more confidently now. He had twenty-three days. Folks, the world is going to end in 23 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds. Eat your heart out, Donnie Darko; we've got five days less than you ever did.
He snorted at himself. You're comparing yourself to a cult classic movie character. Really. Get in the world of the now, and stop being so pathetic.
The sound of the water, still constantly falling, made him want to go to the toilet, but he held in that childish reaction mulishly. He was a grown-up, and by damn he was going to star acting like one.
Of course, that would be just about when life pitches you one of those curveballs.
"ARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH! GERROF MY FACE! GAHHHHHHH!"
Something had slammed into Chris' light, and then into his face, and, rather unfortunately, partly into his mouth. He lashed out with his hands, smacking his arm into the walls as he did so, and his hand connected with the wall.
Fire lanced metaphorically across his vision, which did little to help his sudden plunge into darkness. He didn't have time to think about that.
Using his telekinesis would probably smack the light too far out of the way, so Chris dived forwards into a neat forward roll his Whitelighter would have been proud of, grabbed the torch triumphantly, and then gestured with all his might at where his attackers dove at him.
There were several indignant shrieks of pain, and then silence.
Groaning, Chris climbed to his feet, and pushed hair out of his eyes. He spat something out into his hand, and grimaced when he saw blood and a black leathery substance. Turning the flashlight onto where he'd used his powers, he saw a small mound of unconscious bats.
"I ate bat?"
Frozen, he held his stomach and felt a little sick. He leant against the cavern wall for a moment, idly flashing his torch over the bodies to check they were not vampire bats. If there were vampires down this damn cavern, he was going to… going to… going to…
Actually, there was nothing he could do. He'd written the damn Map and timetabled himself into this very activity. He was a couple of days late with the Map as it was.
That thought caused him to move on from the great place of the bat slaughter with a quickened step. He had no room for luxuries like being scared of the dark. He had no room for self-pity. He had no room to be thinking that it was a place like this in which Paul died, died, in which Piper-Pippa-oh-god-damn-it-mom was taken away from him and never really given back.
No room for it.
Involuntarily he checked his pockets again for the small scissors. He knew ripping the plant would cause too much of the juice to spill, and may sever the membrane too slowly and nullify the effects of it. With this plant, they could finally complete a generic protection potion that would give them a fantastic warning system to prevent a demon taking baby Wyatt or his older self, and why are you still thinking, anyway?
He knew why he was thinking like this, really, if he- uh- thought about it. It's because ever since he'd got here, he'd alternated between not having a moment to think about himself, and then having too-hyped-up moments of thinking about himself. This moment was probably one of the latter ones, more than having any actual time to himself.
God forbid that actually happening. He'd known when he came back, when he felt Bianca's warmth still on his skin, in his heart, when she'd pushed him through, that he would not have any real spare time here. He couldn't afford it. The future was more important than him.
But, as Victor had reminded him only this morning, after forcing some surprisingly nice scrambled eggs at him (he'd later admitted an e-mail pal, Samurai Nashie, forwarded the recipe to him at work) maybe he couldn't afford not to have some time to himself.
After all, he'd almost put himself in a nervousness-induced coma the other day.
But we're so close! And no one else seems to grasp the urgency! Except for Paul, quiet Paul, his Paul, Paul who had grown up idolising Chris and following him everywhere he went, until that day everything had gone to hell. The day that Paul died. He died. He really did die, and you left him behind, you left him behind to die. Just like you stood stock-still and let Wyatt kill Leo and Melinda, and just like you let Wyatt kill your mom…
Maybe you thought then that one person couldn't change anything, but that's what you're trying to do now, isn't it?
"Except I'm not one person."
Chris was surprised that he'd spoken out loud, and actually stumbled to a halt. He was right, though. Here in the past he wasn't one person, he had his whole family behind him. All this time he'd been whinging about doing this on his own, and he had everyone right there alongside them. It didn't even matter that they didn't seem to find this very urgent, because, if nothing else, that was his job.
He set out with renewed vigour, and then thoughtfully toned the flashlight down to the next setting, which meant it only shone when his thumb depressed the second button. He didn't need to be this scared of the dark any more, and he almost laughed with that revelation. It was if someone had lifted something from him, something heavy, something he hadn't known he'd been carrying all his life.
Granddad was right. I just needed time to sort this through for myself. Wyatt took mom before I could do this. But I needed to do it so that I can accept that I'm still me, and do what I came here to do
Now I can really be the professional that I came here to be.
The acoustics changed as he walked, and sporadically used the light to check where he was going, but he moved with a more confident pace still. The herb grew where no water fell, and the water was getting lighter, but still it wasn't entirely gone. A few metres more, and he'd have to turn the light completely on.
His footsteps were getting louder now, but Chris figured that it was probably because the sounds of the water dripping were getting quieter. He flicked the button on the flashlight again, and started studiously sweeping the tunnel's floor. There was nothing. Cautiously, the hair on the back of his neck sticking up now, he swept the cave for closely.
Nothing.
He walked on for a further kilometre, checking extensively, but when he came to more water, he pulled back and checked the same length of the tunnel again.
This was the only place it grew! He was certain of it! And if it wasn't here… then someone must have moved it!
Wyatt.
That thought quickened his breath, and Chris resumed his search desperately. Finally, he caught a glimpse of a dark shade of green, and he bent down, eagerly teasing out the small length of weed from the cave's edge.
There was only a small branch. He searched the surrounding area desperately, but couldn't come up with anything. This was all that was left.
"No…" He went back to the small length of green, examining the end carefully. It had been ripped off. Wyatt must have ripped out the plant, knowing exactly what they planned to do with it. So, for some reason, Wyatt must want his previous self accessible to whoever betrayed them…
That made sense. Wyatt, although consistently desperate to maintain that – to him- good and evil would always have made no sense to him, that power is the only obvious goal to achieve in life, would not want his past to change. He had a lot of power in the future, and a lot of power that he'd brought back with him (although, Chris assumed, he might have had to leave some of it behind.) Changing the past might shift his power base, or make him take longer to achieve the power he had.
Convinced, Chris double checked the tunnel again, knowing now he wouldn't find anything. Wyatt was nothing if meticulous. Downcast, he took the rest of the tunnel at a run, knowing that it didn't curve too badly and that he wouldn't run into the wall.
He reached the outside quickly, and it surprised him, but he remembered his hesitant trek inside, and was renewed by the burst of courage that swelled inside him when he realised he really wasn't that same restricted person any more. That cave, that experience, had been cathartic, if nothing else…
Chris was surprised to find he was breathing heavily, and he bent down, hands on his knees, to regain his breath. That was when he saw it.
The pile of herbs that resembled balm of Gilead, lying discarded near the entrance of the caverns. Small, scrawny, trifoliate leaves, with miniature red flowers and twisted yellow seeds.
He dashed to them wonderingly, feeling the texture of them in his hands, and in his dismay he realised the roots had been torn. Holding them up to the sunlight, his heart skipped a beat. One of the roots still had its cortex intact.
Quickly, efficiently, he pulled off the rest of the ripped roots, and snipped at the small section that had the cortex intact, and he poured the sap into the vial he had with him. It wasn't much, but it should be enough.
He was about to drop the plant to the ground, but decided to retain it. If Phoebe got back soon, and oh he hoped so, she could maybe get a premonition from it, and see who did it…
For that it was he had just realised.
Wyatt wouldn't have done it. Wyatt would have been thorough, and at least dropped the herb in water, and destroyed any remaining magical property.
Whoever ripped the herb from the wall had done it rapidly, with no finesse. Whoever ripped it wanted it out fast. Whoever ripped it out was obviously concerned about speed, and must think that they were close to being found.
For whoever had done it, Chris knew, was the person who would inevitably betray them… and turn Wyatt…
T-21
