"I guess it just wasn't meant to be."


Neurotic


Disclaimer: Charmed does not belong to me.

Summary: His name is not Chris Perry. It's Christopher. Christopher Halliwell.


Delay Warning Two: I'm so sorry for the delay. I had so many university deadlines that I haven't slept for the last three days: as a result, I am now extremely physically and mentally exhausted. I shall be updating daily until Wednesday: the final six chapters will be spaced out a little more (perhaps one every two/three days) as I am going home for three weeks and want to spend some time with my mother.

Edit: This was a lie. Updates shall be much slower.


Chapter the Forty-first

"Anew"



It was, Phoebe decided, particularly peculiar to have one Wyatt gurgling at her and one Wyatt smirking at her. Ignoring the one smirking down at her, she put the bottle to young Wyatt's mouth, and her nephew drank greedily.

"So how are you feeling?"

Phoebe edged a dark look at the young man glaring at her, a smirk on his face. "Dead to the world," she muttered, earning a delighted laugh from Wyatt.

"Oh, you're still snarking about that small thing?" Wyatt rolled his eyes and leaned backwards against the wall, his black eyes scanning over her even as his face was blank. "C'mon, Aunt Pheebs, you've died a whole bunch o' times."

"Is that your normal justification for murder?"

"I don't murder." Wyatt's voice was cool, and she looked up in disbelief. "I reduce the world's surplus population, perhaps…"

"You really believe that, don't you?" Phoebe couldn't believe it. The words were so cruel, so callous and spoken with so much direct honesty that she couldn't bear it.

Wyatt shrugged. "You could say it's my ideology. Or you could believe the post-ideologists and say it's just a discourse, and analyse it as text - you could say everything I believe is just made up of signifiers, signs, semiotics… Changed from something that can be believed, something that can alter power into just harmless words." He leaned forwards. "But then, in our business, words have the most power of them all. Have you ever heard of the Book of Words?"

Confused by his words, Phoebe shook her head. In her arms, young Wyatt was a little distressed, and she pulled him closer, settling her hand in his golden curls.

"It has had many names in its time. The Book of Ages. The Eternal Book. The Book of Night with Moon. The Naming of Lights. Ah, I see a flicker of recognition..."

Phoebe scowled and bounced young Wyatt on her knee, edging another look at the forcefield and wishing it wasn't there for the zillionth time. "That last one sounds familiar..."

"You've probably seen it while flicking through the Book of Shadows," Wyatt said coolly. "Believe me, your life will get a little easier once Chris is of age to log the Book of Shadows electronically. He may be a traitor, but damn, he's got a strategical mind. Crazy, but then most geniuses are. That's why I kept him around for a little while. I did hope to tether that intelligence to my own aims, of course, but he's still stuck in that useless good versus evil thing you and mom and Aunty Paige were all so fond of before you died."

He spoke of their deaths so casually... Phoebe tried not to shiver, but it was hard. "And yet you're keeping your previous self away from Gideon," Phoebe said coolly.

"Of course," Wyatt said. "It's final proof, after all." He looked out of the window. "Chris is adament that something 'turned' me before his birth. I maintain that good and evil don't matter. Of course, altering the timeline may alter the amount of power I have, but I'm willing to take that risk."

"And what if there is good and evil, and doing this changes you?" Phoebe demanded.

"I highly doubt it," Wyatt said smoothly. "Even so. I am strong as I can become in the future. What's life without a little challenge?"

"So what's this Book of Lights?"

"Book of Words." Wyatt sounded almost delighted with her slip-up. "It's a dictionary, describing everything in the world."

"A dictionary?" Phoebe was intrigued despite herself. If she could find out why Wyatt was interested in it, and then interfere with his getting of it, then that could only be a good thing...

"The definitive dictionary," Wyatt explained. "Everything in the universe, outside the universe. Every single living entity, every single item, every particle. Every abstract concept."

"But- even if that were possible- there's no language on Earth to describe everything," Phoebe said, finding herself arguing with him instinctively, and feeling an almost perverse enjoyment of the discussion. Over the last couple of weeks Wyatt had spent a few hours bantering with her every day. At first she'd thought it was to try and get her to empathise with his cause, to join him against the others, but slowly she'd been wondering something else. If Wyatt truly had killed a lot of the population in the future, then maybe there just wasn't anyone left to argue with. It must get awfully lonely ruling from the top of the world on your own... "And the Book itself would be as large as the universe."

"Perhaps," Wyatt countered, "if the universe and magic worked on the same basic principles and laws. Which they don't. And besides, who says it's even written in an Earth language?"

"Me," Phoebe said, with a small smile, before she caught herself and neutralised her expression. She knew from the mocking look on Wyatt's face that he had caught the slight smile. "Chris said once that you'd outlawed smiling."

"And farting."

"I see. Guess you were a real momma's boy before you killed her." Phoebe's words were casual, but her eyes glinted hard, angry.

"Indeed I was," Wyatt said softly, not rising to the bait. He leaned back further on the chair, stretching his legs out and folding his arms across his chest.

"So who was your favorite aunt?"

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me." Phoebe decided to have a little fun as she was there. "You don't believe in good or evil, so..."

"...so I have absolutely no manners?" Wyatt demanded incredulously. "My, my. The constraints in your way of thinking are showing, Aunt Phoebe." He looked at the child in her arms, laughed to himself, and then looked away again. "Incidentally, you were."

"I was?" Unable to help herself, Phoebe grinned. "Why?"

"Because Paige -sharing the half-Whitelighter bond- had a greater affinity with Chris, Paige was my teacher at school and often raised merry hell for me, and also you had the higher-paying job." He smiled predatorily. "Better birthday presents."

"I see," Phoebe said, unsure of whether to be thrilled or not that the nephew that turned evil and wrecked the world preferred her.

"And mom loved us all equally," Wyatt added coolly, "which was partly her undoing. She never did know when to let go of dead weight. But I suppose if she did, she would have dropped Leo years ago and I wouldn't exist."

"You say that like it's an awful thing," Phoebe commented.

"Ouch, you wound me," Wyatt said, sarcastically.

"So you're looking for that Book then? I assume that's why you brought the subject up."

Wyatt smiled cagily at her. "Once I have the final proof that good and evil don't matter, I intend to find the Book and erase both good and evil from it. Both are, after all, useless concepts."

Phoebe couldn't quite stop the hurried swallow, and Wyatt laughed at her reaction. "You can't do that," Phoebe breathed.

"Oh?" Wyatt said. "Finding the Book might be hard, I admit, but... I think the end result will be quite interesting to discover."

Phoebe said nothing, struck by the implications, until one rose up from the masses of possibilities. "You're going to... erase entries, aren't you?"

Wyatt shrugged. "And you see that as evil, yet... it potentially happens all the time. We wouldn't even know any different."

"But that- that's-" horrible.
"In fact, the definitions for good and evil could have been swapped, and you wouldn't even know it," Wyatt added.

Phoebe shivered.

Wyatt noted her reaction and laughed.


"Okay, she's alone." Paul's eyes snapped open, and they exchanged looks on the pavement before looking up at the manor. The windows seemed dark, like eyes, and gave them the eerie feeling that they were being watched by the brooding building.

"How are we going to approach this?"

Paige was struck by the vulnerability in Chris' voice. Ever since he'd orbed into their lives he'd been cocksure, confident of what he was doing, and now she could see the panic in his mien, the ghost of uncertainty in his eyes. He was unsure, and he was letting them see. "Uh, surround her?" Paige flickered a look back at her car, where young Bianca watched them from behind the glass, and looked back at Chris.

"That might only intimidate her," Dan said softly, always the voice of reason... "From what I gather you need Piper to recite the spell..."

"Not necessarily," Paige said. "I can rewrite it so she doesn't have to say it. However there is one thing I'm worried about."

"What?" Chris' eyes were round. A thousand different scenarios were obviously whizzing through his head in a psychedelic fast forward of brutal and horrifying images, for his face paled a little, and his sea-coloured eyes darted more rapidly up the manor.

"It hurt you and Paul getting your memories back," Paige explained, worry shining on her face despite her resolve to be calm and strong to support Chris her nephew! oh god... "And Piper's carrying you right now..."

"So it could cause her to have the baby early?" Paul looked shocked at the idea, and tugged at Chris' sleeve absent-mindedly, as if it were a deeply ingrained instinct. "Chris, if that happens we're screwed. Whatever happens to Wyatt happens before you're born, so if you're born now... it means we've lost." A bleak expression slid onto his face with the finality of a grave stone.

"Not necessarily," Chris murmured incomprehensibly. A dark expression slid onto his face and quietly, in the depths of his eyes, a door slammed shut. "I might be able to..." He didn't finish the sentence, and Paige was about to indignantly ask Paul what the hell Chris meant when she saw Paul's confused expression. Whatever Chris was planning Paul had no idea over. "Paige," Chris said, and Paige lifted her head when she realised he was talking to her, "have you got the spell ready in your head?"

Paige nodded.

"All right," Chris said, and a brisk temperent slid around him almost like a shield. He moved with efficiency hanging around him almost tangibly up the steps, and somehow his direct movements compelled them to follow. He opened the door and stalked inside, and in a gaggle they followed him there too.

"Chris?" Paige heard Piper's voice before she got to see her, and when they arrived in the living room, Piper was staring up at Chris and them in horror. "Chris, what's going on?"

"Piper, do you trust me?" Chris put himself in front of Paige and Dan, and locked gazes with Piper.

"Do I trust you?" Piper looked gobsmacked. "You bring that crazy impostor into my house and you ask me if I trust you?"

"Piper-" and the pleading note in Chris' voice somehow affected Piper, as she shut up. She still looked at the others warily, but she locked gazes with Chris and somehow something in his eyes seemed to reassure her. Chris stepped forwards tentatively, as if Piper were an anti-social animal, his palms held open in a gesture of supplication and open honesty. "Just take my hands."

"Whu-" Piper managed, but almost as if she was in a trance she took his hands. Chris knelt down in front of her.

"You're about to hear a spell," Chris told her, his voice rushed and almost strained. His eyes never left hers. "What you hear you will remember when Paige restores your memory. You must promise me now not to tell anyone else. Ever. No one can know. No one."

Piper looked up to Paige, Dan and Paul, almost as if for reassurance, but her uncertainty about the whole situation swam onto her face. Eyes wide, but still trusting Chris, she nodded desperately. "I promise."

Chris turned his head back to Paige. "As soon as I lean back again, say the spell," he said. Paige didn't understand, but watched silently as Chris leant forwards. He whispered something in Piper's hearing, and then he leant back onto his heels, and Paige understood.

"Moments lost make this witch wonder, warlock's plot or demon's plunder? If this is not a prank, help my sister fill in the blanks," Paige recited quickly.

Piper jolted, and for a second Paige's stomach plunged to her feet when she thought that Piper was going to go through the pain and then her fears were assuaged when Piper's face relaxed, her mouth falling open with an 'o' of realisation.

And then Paige realised what Chris had done. The six foot Whitelighter was curled up now against Piper's legs, holding her hands, but his face was twisting in acute agony. Sweat stood out on his forehead, and his limbs were twitching. Somehow, and Paige would really love to know how, Chris had transferred the pain... to himself.


T-12