Chapter 8

Chris and Kara

The Charmed One's and their kin stood flabbergasted as Kara rose from the seat in the kitchen having told her story in an unemotional third person monotone.

Piper marched after her "You made a deal with a demon?" Her voice rose an octave with every word.

"No, I made a deal with my sister, so that there could be no way we could kill each other." She winced and squeezed her eyes shut and her chest heaved "but she broke the deal when she killed Alice, when she sent a demon to my place of work, and because she broke the deal like that I knew I couldn't even pretend it was possible for me to continue to keep my end, to keep up and be comfortable with this pretence of ignorance..."

She was interrupted by the chirping of a mobile phone. Kara sniffed to force back the tears and pulled the mobile phone, which now had a long crack in the screen, from her back pocket.

A look of distress passed over her face "It's Alice's parent's can I...?" she indicated the sun room with a twitch of her head.

"Did she tell them about Alice yet?" Phoebe asked

"In what time?" Paige asked "she's been stuck at the police station, then kicking demon ass, then explaining things to us and getting yelled at." she cast a look at Piper

Chris slipped away to stand in the living room doorway. He listened to her side of the conversation and watched her stride around in the bright, incongruous light of the sun room of Haliwell Manor. "Yes...I'm sorry you had to hear like that...they had to talk to me because I found her...I'm sure they did I asked them to take care of her...I'll do it...I'd be honoured... I'll let you know... goodbye Mrs Allen I'll see you soon...I know I loved her too...Goodbye"

Chris stepped out of the doorway "Hey I didn't mean to pry but... I suppose I didn't want you to come off the 'phone from that and be alone...If you want me to go..."

"No, I don't think I want me to be alone now either." she spoke softly battling with the emotion that, already so raw, so recent, the call had bought back to the surface "I don't really know what I want, except maybe the last few days back."

"I bet you wish you'd never laid eyes on me. If it wasn't for me..."

"No!" she spoke quickly, heatedly, she went to him, covering the large floor in three steps. "If I'd never laid eyes on you then the Rising might be happening right now. I don't do 'if's Chris. I find 'if' always hurts too much." she kissed him "and if I'd never laid eyes on you, it would have made meeting you kind of difficult.

"How can you...?" he asked wondering how she could still kiss him, still bear to look at him, after all it was all his fault.

She looked at him. "It wasn't your fault. If I hadn't have ignored the demon, kept the damn deal, I knew how to kill those demons and I should have. Then Alice wouldn't have died and I'd still have met you."

She put her head on his chest, taking comfort in hearing his heartbeat and the warmth of him.

She pulled away "So, Haliwell, you know all about me. All my deep dark secrets. Take my mind off the demon's and the corpses and the death. Tell me about you."

"Well, to tell you about me I wouldn't be tell you about me I won't be able to not talk about demons and corpses and death."

He settled on the sofa in the sun room and she sat beside him once again settling in his arms, listening to the vibration in his chest as he talked.

"So you wanted to know about me. I'm the younger brother, the one that's not square and Nordic looking and not destined to run the world. Sometimes that's not too bad, the pressure's off but somehow still on because I'm not the eldest but I still feel like I've got to live up to Wyatt.

Sometimes it feels like I've been in this life twice. One morning when I was about fourteen I had a dream that my mom was dead and it felt so real. I got up in the morning and somehow I didn't expect my mom, my dad, my aunts and my brother and sister, not to be there, but then I went downstairs to the smell of coffee and pancakes and everyone was there and I don't think I've ever been happier, for a surly teenager" he smiled.

"What was it like growing up in a house with the Charmed One's?" Kara asked.

"It was wonderful, is wonderful, and terrible at the same time. This house is always full of light and family and closeness and love, but I always had that weird dislocated feeling, like those dreams, plus lots of death and demons and corpses. There was my dad who taught at magic school after he clipped his wings."

"Clipped his wings?"

"He used to be a whitelighter, sort of like an angel."

Kara touched his face "It doesn't surprise me" she said softly

"He and my mom, they loved each other since they first met each other. It's a love story so epic that I'm surprised they didn't write ballads about it.

"Mel my sister is the youngest of us, she's seventeen. I have three cousins "Prudence and Caleb are my Aunt Phoebe's kids and Grace belongs to Aunt Paige."

I part own P3, well sort of. My mom gave me and Wyatt a quarter when we turned twenty-one and Mel will get the last in four years. Is that enough?"

But for the first time in thirty six hours she was sleeping.