Disclaimer: Don't own Charmed, or any other TV show for that matter. Shame. Think of the things I could do if I did...
"Oh my God, Chris, stop that!" exclaimed Leo, horrified, and rushed forward to grab his future son by the shoulders. Big mistake.
Chris whirled around, a dark bruise already forming on his forehead, and set wide, startled eyes on Leo. Then the blue-green spheres narrowed. "You!" he spat venomously and, out of nowhere, pulled out a knife.
Leo made another exclamation of surprise and horror, jumping out of the way as Chris dove at him with the weapon. "Chris!" he gasped, folding to the ground below the next slash. He rolled to the side as the boy hurtled the blade at his head. The knife struck the floor blade down, and Chris ripped it out of the tile. "Chris, listen to me!" Leo tried again, this strange 'try not to be stabbed' and 'try to stab' game continuing. "You're in the fu… past. You're in your past and we're not shapesh--"
"SHUT UP!" the 'twenty-two' year old bellowed, successfully nicking Leo in the arm as the latter stumbled out of the thrown blade's direct path. "I DON'T CARE! I WANT YOU DEAD!" He held out his hand and the knife flew back into it, ready to resume the game.
"Chris, I'm sorry!" Leo called after orbing to the far side of the room where the rest of the family was still unconscious. Piper and the young Chris were trying in vain to wake Prue and were both casting an eye to Leo every few seconds to make sure he was still doing okay. They both realized that since he was already dead, there wasn't much Chris' future self could do to him. Leo didn't quite see it that way. "I know I was a bad father-- probably the worst on the face of the earth, but I'm not really yourr-"
"I told you," the older Chris ground out, advancing on his father dangerously, "to shut-- UP!" And the knife he was clutching burst into flames. Unaffected by the fire himself, the young man raised it and made a slashing motion, sending a rope of fire at his father.
"Yes!" the younger Chris blurt out happily. At his mother's shocked expression, he shrunk slightly and felt it necessary to explain. "I mean-- not 'yes' that I just re-vanquished Leo, but 'yes', I know I'll finally be able to conjure the fire… in the future…"
Satisfied that she and her son were on the same team again, Piper felt it necessary to explain what the older Chris had told them. "Well… he said only when he gets really pissed off. And even then it isn't a sure guarantee."
The young one crossed his arms and glowered at her. "You're just as good at crushing my hopes and dreams as my mother was," he grumbled and went back to yelling in Prue's ear before Piper could respond. The mother of presently one but futurely two just sighed, not wanting to open that can of worms again. This future would never happen, anyway, so why get so emotional, now?
Leo reformed just a moment later (behind a table) after getting vanquished by his psychotic future son. This was not good. This was so not good, it was hopelessly bad. But the man had to try. He had to get through to the witch-whitelighter-fire deemer if it was the last thing he did. Which it might be, if the boy picked up anymore magic tricks… "Chris, please, son, let's just talk!" he called, leaning forward slightly to see the one in question. He had to duck back only a second later as another lasso of flames careened towards his face.
"Just a tip," said the young Chris, who was now dipping Prue's hand in a conveniently placed bowl of warm water with an evil little smirk, "don't call him 'son'."
"Would you like to try talking him down?" hissed Leo as a spell-conjured bolt of lightening struck the table the man was hiding behind. He groaned and found a new hiding spot.
The seventeen year old looked to his insane future counterpart, then to Leo, then to his future self again, then back to Leo. "No," he said lightly. "I'll leave that to you two. Family bonding and the likes, ya know." The same wicked little smirk. Leo suddenly didn't find it that hard to believe these Chris-es were really the same person-- something he'd been having a bit of trouble digesting since they'd met. These Chris-es were all so different… Yet they all had that same little likeness: they hated Leo.
"Er… Leo?" said Piper suddenly, looking to her husband. When she caught his gaze, she finished uncomfortably, "Um… look behind you."
Leo frowned and turned around.
"Boo!" whispered the older Chris, not two inches from his face. Leo jumped back instantly, startled, and couldn't stop the fright that burst into his eyes. The young man noticed and laughed a laugh that lay on the line between insane and, well, crazy. "You're afraid of me, now, Daddy? Well… that's a new one…" he grinned, but his glamoured blue-green eyes were as empty as ever. Then, before Leo had a chance to do anything, Chris produced the initial knife and slashed his father's shoulder. The young man threw out his hand and his young counterpart's bowl of water came flying into it. He dripped his father's blood from the knife into it, swirled, and began chanted in a strange, harsh language.
"Tortus cordi ana capitus,
Pugnare nay dent ana digitus,
Fortis es bellum niw contrus!"
The spell hit Leo in the form of a blinding green light, and then the whitelighter was writhing on the floor, shrieking in complete, raw agony, face screwed up tightly, tears streaming down his face. Piper had jumped to her feet, horrified at what she saw happening, and rushed to her husband's side as he twisted and flailed violently, pain never seeming to relent. The young counterpart was having trouble figuring out where he stood, but the hesitation only lasted a split second. He only tortured demons, warlocks, and other black hearted entities. His father didn't have a black heart, and this was definitely torture. And, judging from the fact that it used blood and a Latin-based spell, it was probably dark magic, besides. He wasn't okay with dark magic. Dark magic not only killed and tortured… it devastated. A person could lose their soul for performing dark magic, if they still even had it. A person could cost their victim their soul… their peaceful afterlife… and more.
"Hey, old and totally uncool me," he called, getting to his feet likewise but not hastening to Leo's side. His future self's eyes shot up to him and the young one suppressed a shudder. The eyes were utterly devoid of life… of emotion… But he had to shake that notion aside. "Reverse the spell and I won't start name calling," he bargained in his self-confident way people always said would get him killed.
His future version gave him an incredulous once-over and scoffed, "Yeah, like I wouldn't know which was the real me. Very funny, Wy., but now you're inaccurate shape shifter is going to die-- or not die-- the same way Leo here is about to."
"You don't believe me?" questioned the young one airily as his father continued to scream and his mother began rhyming desperately, trying to find a counter curse. The seventeen year old pushed his white bangs out of his face and took the glamour off, showing the burn scar across his cheek. "Only a few people know about this, and Wyatt is definitely not one of them. Wha'd'ya say to that?" he challenged lightly.
His future self sneered. "Ah, yes. The mark of being cast down from Grace. How do you think the Elders proved I wasn't trustworthy to the entire Resistance unless they showed that to everyone there? Now, honestly, about your… demise…" He threw the knife at the young one, but the latter caught it easily between his thumb and index fingers, face shocked.
"… The Resistance doesn't trust me in the future?" he asked, feeling the statement hit him like a physical blow. The Resistance… the place he freakin' lived, the people he lived with… How could they stop trusting him just because of the stupid remaining Elders? …Stupid remaining Elders… So not cool… Maybe he should just vanquish them now and get it over with… Nobody liked them anymore, anyway. Bunch of cowards… hiding behind the Resistance people, telling them what to do… He should definitely vanquish them.
He added that to his mental to-do list and turned his eyes, which had wandered to the ceiling in his contemplation, back to where his future self was… sinking to the ground. The older one was slowly folding to the ground until he was doubled over his knees, face only centimeters from the floor. His expression was dazed and pained as he croaked, "No, no, no, no, no, no… get out… no, no, LEAVE ME ALONE! GO SCREAM IN PAIGE'S HEAD! SHE DIDN'T SAVE YOUR SORRY, WHINING ASSES EITHER! JUST-- GET-- OUT!"
He started banging his head furiously against the floor and the young Chris felt his heart sink. Damn it. He was going to grow up to be a complete and unadulterated nutcase. He sighed, got over it, and telekinetically threw his older self into the air before he could inflict more self-harm. Wait… he was him, and he was harming… himself by throwing him into the air and letting him fall back to the ground. Grr, time travel hurt his head. So he stopped thinking about that, too, and walked over to his future self, who was picking up a knife that had flown from the table when it had been thrown. Before the young man could drive the blade into his own skull in a retarded attempt to get out the voices, the young one flicked a wrist and sent it soaring from his grip.
Those empty, currently pissed eyes flew up to met his. "Why did you do that?" he hissed, and staggered to his feet, enraged. "WHY? I will never join your psychotic, megalomaniac master, so why should you care if I kill myself? ANSWER ME!"
"Wyatt psychotic, coming from you?" sneered the young one, inwardly terrified. He was really crazy. Really, really, really crazy. He didn't want to grow into him… He was terrified of what that was going to be like. Forget terrified, he was petrified. Oh God, he was going to lose his mind for real… Oh God, oh God, oh God… Wait. Stay cool. Continue speaking until Mommy Dearest finds a counter curse for Daddy Dearest. Then Daddy Dearest can go heal some people before Cousins Dearest ceased to exist. And... Go! "That's rich." Eh, simple but provocative.
"You… y-y-you…" his older self stammered, so pissed and insane he couldn't even speak. He motioned clearly with his hands that he wanted to strangle the annoying, infuriating young him, but didn't seem to be able to move towards him. So he just threw out a hand and brought the knife back to him so quickly it slashed the young one's side as it flew to the senior without the younger able to stop it. Psycho Chris brought the bowl of water to him yet again and dripped the blood in. He began chanting and threw up his shield when the young one tried to stop him magically.
"Torus cordi ana capitus,
Pugnare nay d--" He broke off with a sharp gasp and fell to the ground, unconscious. The young one smiled weakly when he saw Cole leaning up on his elbows behind the fallen Chris, having just knocked him out with an energy ball.
Cole looked shocked, and not just a little frightened. "Tell me," he began in the sternest voice Chris had ever heard him use, "you have no idea what he was doing."
The seventeen year old blinked, taken aback by his uncle's demeanor. The man was afraid in a concerned and worried way, and he was also horrified.
"Well," the teen began, still perplexed, "I assume it was dark magic judging from the method of execution and your extremely negative reaction… But I haven't learned that-- yet-- if that's what you want to know…"
Chris felt his uncle's relief, but the man didn't have time to show it, for at that moment, he caught sight of the distraught Piper and still screaming, writhing Leo. The ex-demon's face blanched and he shoved himself to his feet. He stumble-sprinted to the fallen whitelighter's side and found the wound in the blonde's shoulder where the blood had been drawn to use the spell. Without a word to his baffled sister-in-law or nephew, the former Source of all Evil held his hand over the wound, closed his eyes, and began chanting in the same language the future one had used to curse the angel. Moments seemed to drag by in hours with Leo still twisting, sobbing, and screaming and Cole chanting a song-like rhyme.
Then the latter stopped and Leo exploded in thousands of bright orblights. Piper screamed, and demanded in horrified tones, "What'd you do?"
"I let him die," said Cole in that simple, nonchalant way of his. "It's the only way to break the dark magic… and the magic also prevented that from happening."
Piper gaped at him, and spluttered, "Wh-wha- what does that -- Leo!" she exclaimed as he husband reformed beside her, breathless and drenched in sweat. She pulled him into a desperate, relieved embrace, and the husband didn't resist, but melted into it, tears spilling down his cheeks just at the memory of the pain.
The seventeen year old watched mutely. That definitely looked like dark magic. And he had done it. Or… would do it… Whatever. It was bad, and some Chris was responsible for it. The details didn't matter at the moment. Still in some kind of shock, his eyes suddenly found themselves locked with Cole's, who were looking at him lost in thought. Chris inwardly shriveled under the look. No… Cole was losing faith in him… Darn it, Nicole was his favorite uncle, too. Not cool. Hurtful. He hated his older self, now. He would have to work out a way to kill him...
At length, their gazes broke and Cole shook his head as though to clear it while Chris stared at the floor, mind plotting his own death. Cole must have managed to clear his head, for the next minute, he was the voice of reason. "Leo, you need to heal people, now. Prue and Paige are probably the worst off and most needed, since they can heal, too."
Leo hesitated a moment, then took a shuddering breath and pried himself out of his wife's embrace. He brushed the tear tracks away with his sleeve and went to heal Prue first.
------------------
It was about ten minutes later. Everyone had been healed and Henry had gone to check on the children while the sisters sent the deceased back to the afterlife. Now, the remaining (Piper, Leo, both Paiges and Phoebes, Prue, Cole, Henry, Victor, Paris, Joden, Duncan, Andre, Bianca, and the seventeen year old Chris) sat at an upright table, debating on what to do about the older Chris, who was still unconscious and encaged in power crystals.
"I am not casting a spell to change my son's mentality!" Piper repeated for what felt like the thousandth time. "Those spells always backfire and you--" she looked pointedly at her sisters, "know it."
"So what do you suggest?" asked Prue wearily. "Reason with him? Even this Chris doesn't respond to reasoning."
Chris gaped at her. "Prue!" he whined in injured tones. "Would you all please stop talking about me like I'm not here, too? It really doesn't help whatever inferiority complex I might be developing."
They all shot him looks that pretty much told him to can it, they were in charge. He crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair sulkily. Too bad he could no longer pout his way into getting things, as he used to be able to do. Now they all just did what they wanted if they thought it would 'protect' him and brushed he, himself, aside. Hypocritical to the highest degree. Again, so not cool.
"I think you-- we-- may not have a choice, Piper," said Cole, speaking for the first time. He stared at his laced fingers on the tabletop as he spoke quietly. "He was willing to use blood magic-- dark magic, and without so much as hesitating. The particular spell he was using was one even Sources shy away from. If I hadn't known a counter spell to kill Leo, he would have felt that pain… that agony, for all eternity, never dying, the pain never relenting. And if Leo hadn't been a whitelighter and come back, when he died he would have been banished to a place worse than Hell… And the consequences of him using it on someone with a good soul… aren't much better. That's serious dark magic, Piper. And when he wakes up, if he tries it again, not even those crystals will be able to stop him."
There was silence following this statement and Chris felt his insides turn cold. As of now, he couldn't imagine what would drive him to use that magic. There were vanquishing potions, but they were blessed with blood by the vanquisher-witch. To curse something with blood… like he had done/would do… Well, now he knew he wasn't going to have a happy ending for doing that. And there wasn't anything he could do to stop it. This was so complicated and uncool, it wasn't funny. Well, time to get over it again and get to work.
"So… a potion would work better than a spell," the seventeen year old voiced quietly, interrupting everyone's thoughts, getting them back to business. "Less chance of a backfire…"
"What do we need the potion to do, exactly?" asked future and past Paige at the same time. Everyone stared at them, and they stared at each other.
Chris shook it off after a second and considered. "Well… maybe a coping potion. I'm… he's apparently still trying to deal with you guys' deaths, and seeing you all alive again and claiming to be them… can't be helping his mentality. And who knows who else Wyatt killed and landed on his conscience."
"I'll work on that," Piper and Prue volunteered simultaneously. They smiled wryly at each other and stood, going to get the potion materials.
"And maybe a potion to weaken his powers temporarily," Chris continued thoughtfully. "Binding them is probably even more un-accomplishable than mine, so weakening them will have to do…"
"Ooo, the only one in the room who can't have their powers bond," said Paige of the future sardonically. "Don't you feel special?"
Chris shot her a look and returned curtly, "Can't be bond by just the Power of Three. There are other ways that you don't know and I won't try."
"Already dipping into random Grimoirs, are we?" teased Joden wryly.
"Nope, experience," replied Chris dryly. He turned to Paige. "You wanna do the potion, seeing as we all know you'd love to be the one to take my powers down a notch?"
Paige gave him a genuinely hurt look. "I would not!" she said weakly and continued. "Whatever impression you have about me being against you in any way (besides your stubbornness and constant sarcasm, of course) you need to get over. I'm your aunt, for Christ's sake!"
Chris snorted humorlessly, getting up to do the potion himself. "Yeah, and Wyatt's my brother, and Piper's my mother, and Leo's my father, and Damien's my other brother…"
"Okay, so about a fourth of this family is against you-- I'm not!"
"And Primrose is my cousin, and…" Chris continued, walking out the door, voice trailing off. He smiled slightly, feeling his youngest aunt's frustration and indignation from the other room as he strolled down the hall after Piper and Prue. The latter two were going to the future Paige and Phoebe's potion room, which was about the only place in the rest of Wisconsin that had such ingredients as were required to make a potion. He'd just been there earlier to make that calming potion...
He caught up with his oldest aunt and youngest mother ever, silently. He was so tired, and being in these two's company somehow made him remember it more. And to think, it was only eight in the morning. He had at least fifteen more hours until him going to bed wouldn't be questionable and suspicious behavior. Grr…
He unconsciously leaned into Prue as they walked, resting the smallest amount of weight against her. Both his mother and Prue noticed, and Prue asked sympathetically, "Tired?"
"Nope, pretending to be your Siamese twin," Chris responded easily, sarcastically, still making himself comfortable against his aunt who might as well have been his mother.
"Before we leave that potion room," Piper said in a way only a concerned and displeased mother could, "I am going to teach you to make a potion so you can actually sleep at night. And I am going to make Prue tell me whether you're taking care of yourself once I get back to my time. One way or another," she added when it looked like he was about to make some classy, yet sarcastic comment about a flaw in her design.
Chris gave her a look and said simply, "How 'bout you just not die this time around and make sure of that yourself? --Assuming you do stop the Elders from making my life a living Hell, of course, 'cause I don't think I want an evil you still around me when I'm seventeen."
"Of course," agreed Piper, and Chris felt how she was amazed at the way he could speak so lightly about his God-awful past. She apparently couldn't see how he was really shaking ever-so slightly the entire time he spoke. Prue could see, and could feel, though.
They came to the potion room and prepared their intended potions within fifteen minutes, without any book or recipe to guide them. Wyatt had the Book of Shadows and Chris doubted there was even a coping potion or power weakening potion in it, anyway. Then, true to her word, Piper began a separate potion, writing down things as she went.
"Paige made this to calm my nerves when I was pregnant with Wyatt," she said, adding a pinch of regular garlic salt to the concoction and beginning to crush tortoise shell in a mortar. "If you just add essence of sand and light elixir, it'll work on sleep and dreams. Stand back," she added as she prepared to throw in the tortoise shell. They did so and she tossed it in. There was a surprising explosion of purple smoke that smelled like shoe polish.
Chris eyed it with a faint smile. "Essence of sand as in 'Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream'?" he asked, amused. When Piper nodded, grinning, he laughed. "That's clever..."
Piper kept grinning and moved to fetch the essence of sand.
-----------------
A few minutes later, the three were walking back into the cafeteria (where the others were, remember) to find the place even worse than they'd left it. There were scorch marks littering the walls and tables like the place had been close to burning down; the tables that hadn't been halfway incinerated were broken and smashed into dozens of pieces each, and the only thing that remained in tact were the people and crystal cage.
The psychotic one was awake, and glaring at the people that were grouped across from him as though quietly plotting their gruesome and agonizing deaths. That look unnerved Piper, Prue, and the young Chris the moment they saw it. And the moment they saw him, he saw them. A cruel smirk crossed his lips and didn't reach his empty eyes. "Ah, look," he said to the ones across from him as the three moved to join their sane relatives. "You're saved-- by two dead chicks and an unstable teenager."
"So you admit we're real, now," said Leo as though this was a major improvement on his argument, whatever that was. "Or… at least that they're them and we exist, too."
The crazy young man turned dead eyes to Leo and said in tones of mock astonishment"No, shit, Sherlock! I kind of figured out you weren't hallucinations when you knocked the hell out of me-- Aunt Nicole imposter!"
The future Phoebe rolled her eyes. "Guys, come on! When will any of you get a new argument? You've been saying the exact same things since they left!"
"Seriously," said future Paige, rubbing her temples. "We're not imposters, already! Why can't you accept the theory of time travel? God knows we do it enough!"
"Still on the 'you're all shape shifters' kick?" asked the young Chris quietly, coming up beside Cole and surveying the damage in the cafeteria. "Damn, I-- he-- did this much damage from inside the cage?"
"You sound happy," remarked Cole bitterly, glaring at the boy, who shrugged with a grin. Cole rolled his eyes, shaking that detail off. "Yeah, so what about forcing that potion down your future self's throat? He's already aimed a variety of dark spells at us, and I personally don't want to go ducking behind anymore table debris to hide from them."
The teen arched an eyebrow. "Force it down my throat?" he repeated in mild disbelief, and pulled out a syringe. "My dear Nicole, I'd like to welcome you to the twenty-first century."
He stuck the needle in the top of the coping potion and turned the bottle upside down, pulling it into the syringe with the drag-stopper (thing). When it was filled, the boy looked at it, then at his future self, thinking. When his family asked what the problem was, he said listlessly, still considering, "The moment this gets close, he's going to use telekinesis." When they all looked like that was the unfortunate end of the road, and like they had to start thinking of a new plan to get the insane one sane, an idea struck him. He turned to Piper. "Freeze him. You're future self could freeze witches, and since she's dead in this time period, you should have access to her powers."
"I-- er-- okay," said Piper, taken aback by the suddenness of his epiphany.. She turned to her future son, present whitelighter, and held up her hands uncertainly. Before he could speak the comment that was apparently on his mind, she flicked her fingers and he froze in place. She blinked. "…Cool."
The seventeen year old smirked and moved forward. He kicked a power crystal out of formation, breaking the cage, and pushed his older self's sleeve up. No new bruises, he found, but a few unfamiliar scars. Suddenly feeling slightly awkward, he hesitantly injected the young man with the coping potion and pushed the sleeve back down. Just to be safe, he used his foot to move the crystal back in place and moved back, motioning at Piper to unfreeze him. She did and the twenty-two year old shut his mouth, deciding not to say whatever he was going to say once he saw his young self closer to him without apparently moving at all. He must have figured out he'd been frozen and scowled darkly.
The seventeen year old frowned, thinking his potion hadn't worked, when he noticed his future self's narrowed eyes gradually begin to get wider, a light slowly igniting within them. At the same speed and time, his scowling lips slid from a scowl, to a neutral position, to an open-mouthed expression of horror, as did his eyes. For a second, he could merely gape, lost in his own world, shocked beyond words. Then, still not quite taking in everyone in the room, he blinked rapidly, tried to speak, failed, tried again, and failed again. He blinked some more, still apparently in shock, then closed his eyes completely, covering his face in his hands.
Piper, sensing he was no longer homicidal, kicked a crystal away and moved a chair over to him. He immediately sank into it, still covering his face in his hands, shocked more than words could express. The rest of the family shared looks and agreed nonverbally that they could wait patiently for him to speak first.
They didn't have to wait much longer.
"...Oh. My. God."
A/N: Ha, another quick update! Thank Stoneage Woman for her, indeed, TERRIFYING death threat(s). One more chapter, now, I think.
((Ha, 'oh my god' are the first words and the last words in this chapter. ...Uh... moving on...))
Remember to review! This is your last chance to get in any questions if u want them answered in the story! And please tell me what story you want me to write when this is finished. There is so much in this little AU world I made, I have no idea what you want to read next, and I can't decide what I want to write. I'll probably get to everything you ask me to write… eventually… too.