Second Life

by Nodakskip

Xander and Cordelia find out that life after high school is not going to be easy sans the Hellmouth.

5. Chapter five

(Author's Notes: Again thanks to the transcript people. Also, since I will not be redoing every single episode of Charmed in this fanfic, I will be doing it like the TV show. The 'Previously on Second Life' parts will tell bits from past episodes that are possibly important to the storyline. Also, be warned - I will be going very much against canon, after another chapter or two. This chapter is more of a Cordy ep, while the next one is for sure a Xander ep. The 'Previously' section is from the Charmed episode called "Witch Trial", and the main chapter is from the ep "Morality Bites")

Chapter Five

San Francisco, California. July, 2000

Previously on Second Life...

In the foyer of the Halliwell manor, Cordelia looked dismayed as Prue and Piper turned and started to leave the room. "Wait, come on you guys! Where are you going?"

Prue held up her cell phone. "Well, I have an auction coming up at Buckland's, so I have clients to call."

"And I was going to..." Piper trailed off, as she saw how Cordelia was glaring at them. "What?"

"Don't you two even know what tomorrow is?" the youngest sister asked, annoyed. "It's our one-year anniversary of becoming witches! I mean, hello?"

Piper looked surprised. "What? Really? Are you sure?"

"Oh, yeah - trust me, Piper," Xander said nonchalantly, from his place on the steps. "She doesn't lie about that sorta thing, and you never want to forget an anniversary with Cordelia. Heck, I still have the scratch marks from her nails when I forgot our-"

Cordelia turned to him quickly. "Zip it, doofus!" Then she turned back to her sisters. "Come on, this is major! It's our anniversary!

---

"Hey, Jenny!"

The 14-year-old girl looked to see her neighbor hop out of his car. She quickly went down the steps to meet him, "You got 'em?"

The man handed her a plain paper bag; while looking around for people as if it was a drug deal. She took it, and quickly opened it. Gasping in delight, Jenny said, "You didn't have to get me a three-pack!"

Xander just shrugged. "It was a bulk-buy store. And that is the correct one, right?"

The teenage girl nodded, as she looked at the packages. "Gosh, thanks!" Jenny said, as she hugged him. "You're the best, Xander. Now, if I could just get my uncle to buy the right ones..."

"Well, there were some advantages to being considered 'one of the girls' when I was growing up," Xander told her with a grimace, shrugging away bad memories. "And Dan's a great guy, but my money says this won't be the last tampon run I'll be going on..." (How Cordy talked me into this, I swear I will never understand!)

---

Up in the attic, Piper and Cordelia watched as Prue placed the Book of Shadows on its stand. "There, that's more like it. Back where it belongs."

Piper looked over to the triquetra symbol drawn with chalk on the far wall. "Well, all I can say is, I'll feel better once we erase that window. I don't want anymore demons coming through it!"

"They can't," Cordelia reminded her. "It's our window, not theirs."

"Still, better safe than sorry," Piper said, as she grabbed a rag and headed over to the wall. "Especially if we can expect any more demons like Abraxas anytime soon!"

Prue stopped flipping through the Book to the page they had last looked at, before the mystical tome had been stolen. "Well, apparently we can..." She began to recite, "Rite of Passage. Fight it with the Power of One, or else...a more powerful evil that awaits will destroy you."

Cordelia just groaned. "Wow. I'm so glad I didn't finish reading that yesterday! I might have changed my mind, about not wanting to give up our powers."

Shaking her head, Prue looked at her sister. "No, you wouldn't have. Xander was right - you like being a witch too much, Cordy. And you help remind me that I like being one too," she finished with a smile, which Cordelia returned.

"Hey, me three!" Piper chimed in, as she walked back to them. "Too bad it doesn't pay all the bills, though."

With a conspiratorial look, Cordelia turned to Prue. "Did you get it?"

"Mm-hmm," the oldest sister answered.

Piper wasn't sure that she liked the looks these two were sharing. "Get what?"

Prue just handed her a check from her pocket. "What's this?" the middle sister asked, as she flipped it over. Then Piper's eyes nearly bugged out, "Sixty thousand dollars!? Where the hell did you get this?"

"Business equity loan," Prue told her. "Cordelia and I took out a mortgage on the house, to help you buy your club."

"Actually, our club technically!" Cordelia pointed out, grinning.

"Right," Prue confirmed. "As long as you don't mind being partners with your sisters."

Piper was overcome by emotion, as she drew them into a hug. "Thank you!"

They all stopped, when the trio heard the voice of their dead grandmother. "The Power of Three."

The pages on the Book of Shadows started flipping by themselves again, causing the siblings to look over to it. And when they did, the ghost of Penelope Halliwell appeared in a sprinkling of golden lights.

"Grams?" Prue asked, trying to hide her huge surprise. Cordelia just gaped. She had only met her late grandmother once, during the big Nicholas the warlock affair several months ago.

Penny kept the golden glow and see-through appearance. "Hello, my darlings. Oh, it's nice to see you; or rather, it's nice being seen by you."

"But-but-but how is this..." Piper stuttered.

"Possible?" Grams finished for her. "All things are possible, my dear. It's just simply a matter of your being able to do them," she said matter-of-factly.

"Wait, so you're the one that keeps turning the pages in the Book?" Cordelia demanded, getting over her brief panic attack. The last time she had seen her grandmother, she'd been alive. Well, granted that was in 1980, when she'd been just baby Cordelia in her mother's womb at the time...

Grams nodded to her. "Just my way of looking after you. As best I can, anyway."

Suddenly, Xander entered through the door to the attic. "Hey guys, I just wanted you to know-" Then he saw the spectral figure near the Book. "Whoa! Is this a situation where 'who you gonna call?' need apply?"

Cordelia rolled her eyes. "Will you knock it off for once? It's not every day a girl has to introduce you to her dead grandma!"

Penny Halliwell smiled and laughed, as she looked him over, "There's no need for you to do that, my darling. I remember everything you told me and your mother, about this particular boy..."

Xander looked uncomfortable; he never liked being the topic of any sort of 'girl talk', even if the talk had taken place in the early 1980's. "Look, Mrs. Halliwell-"

"It's Grams, dear. Just like for any of my three granddaughters."

Harris shrugged. "Okay then, Grams. Uh, first things fist - what's the sitch? I mean, how come you're here?"

"Because I was meant to be here, at this time." Her tone changed when Penny saw the looks on all their faces. "Don't try to understand this. You're not ready yet. But the fact that you could hear me before, and can see me now, means that someday you might be able to. Be good to each other. I love you all..."

And with that last message, her spirit vanished into the golden lights from whence it had come. As she did so, the Book flipped over a few pages to stop on a new one, a moment later.

Xander and all three sisters quickly went over to the Book of Shadows, to see what page it had landed on. A page that had been blank before, now had a simple message that caused the women to wrap their arms around each other again.

In blue eloquent handwriting were the words, "Happy Anniversary, My Darlings".

---

And now...

A street near Nob Hill, San Francisco, California. July 15, 2000

"Stop! Police!"

Xander heard the shout, as he exited the small bookstore. He looked along the sidewalk and saw a masked man with a gun running from several cops, and they were heading right to him.

The former soldier quickly hid behind the wall between the store's entryway and the sidewalk. In moments, he heard the heavy footsteps of the running criminal. Xander then wound up and lashed out with the two old hardcover books in his hand. His aim was just a guess - but he was able to hit the guy in the face anyway, knocking him to the ground.

Harris then quickly stomped his foot down hard on the robber's hand, to keep him from using the gun. (Sorry pal, but I don't feel like getting shot today.)

"Don't move!"

Xander looked up, to see two female plain-clothes police officers having their guns trained on both him and the robber. One quickly bent down to grab the gun, while the other covered her.

"Morning ladies," Xander said calmly as he raised his hands. "Don't worry, I've got him."

The shorter-haired of the two took the perp's wrists in a lock and flipped him over to cuff him. "Thanks for the help I guess, mister."

As her partner handed the guy off to a uniformed officer, the one with longer hair said, "Yeah. But that was dangerous and stupid. He could have shot you!"

"He could have," Xander shrugged as he lowered his hands. "But if I'd done nothing, he could just easily have shot someone else on the street. Guy I knew called Andy Trudeau taught me that."

"Why am I not surprised that it's you?" an annoyed voice said from behind him.

Xander spun with a smile. "Daryl! How you doing, pal?"

The short-haired cop looked surprised. "You know this guy, sir?"

"Yeah," Inspector Daryl Morris said with a sour look. "Mind telling me how you just happened to be here?"

Xander looked at him, amused. "Oh, just getting in a little light reading..." He held up the two large books.

"You call that light reading?" the long-haired cop asked in disbelief, as she spied "Dante's Divine Comedy" and "The Collected Works of William Shakespeare".

"Compared to high school? This is a very light read. And as a plus, they're in English." He looked towards the black cop, "Now Daryl, are you going to introduce me to these two lovely ladies - or what?"

Inspector Morris sighed as he motioned to the long-haired woman, then the short-haired one. "Officer Bridges, and Officer McCabe. Officers, this is Xander Harris..." He then looked at the male teenager, "We're going to need a statement from you now, ya know."

Xander just shrugged. "Came out, heard some shouting, saw him with the gun, ducked and swung. That's my statement in a nutshell."

---

Halliwell Manor Kitchen. A few minutes later

"So, does it sound like a good idea?" Cordelia asked her oldest sister, from her spot upon the counter.

Prue mulled it over in her head. "How do you know these guys won't turn around and use it as more 'adult' entertainment, later on?"

"Don't worry," Cordelia responded. "There's going to be a usage contract, that I have to approve whatever they produce."

"Okay," Prue nodded, before taking a sip of her bottled water. "But have you talked it over with Xander yet?"

"Why?" Cordelia asked, confused. "It's my body. Besides - it's not like I'm posing for, say, Playboy!"

Her older sister looked at her, full of disbelief. "So, if this offer had been made to Xander...or a similar offer for Playgirl? You wouldn't want to talk it over with him? Come on, you two are almost joined at the hip these days! Even Jenny can tell."

Cordelia frowned a bit. "Okay, fine, I'll talk it over with the big dork." She quickly added, "But not today!"

"Why not today?" her oldest sister asked.

Cordelia's face took on a Cheshire cat-like grin. "Because today's the day Xander is finally going to work on the back yard!"

"Ah," Prue grinned back in understanding. "You want a nice, relaxing day of watching him dig with only his shorts on."

"Well, someone should be there to help him...ah, put some sun block on his back?" Cordelia shrugged, trying to keep a straight face. "Plus, I recently got this great white bikini I want to tease him with a little, while I get some sunbathing in."

The conversation was suddenly halted, when Piper walked in with a bag of groceries. The duo first noticed the odd way their sister was walking, because she was carrying one of her shoes.

Then they noticed the smell. "What the hell did you buy?" Cordelia asked, plugging her nose.

"Doody!" Piper exclaimed, very annoyed.

Prue got a whimsical look on her face. "We weren't out of that..."

"No," Piper told them in annoyance, as she held up her shoe. "I stepped in it again! That man has turned our front gate into a puppy minefield!" She moved for the door to the backyard, and put it on the step outside.

Cordelia suddenly got very irate. "I cannot believe that guy still lets his dog do his business, right in front of our house!"

"Yeah, well, we've left notes," Prue reminded her.

Piper's frustration showed. "And that's gotten us nowhere!"

A hint of the old Queen C started to rise in Cordelia. "Well, I've had it! The next time I catch him in the act, I'm gonna give him a piece of my mind..."

A dog barking out front caused their heads to turn as one. "That couldn't be," Piper said in disbelief.

Cordelia growled, "Oh, I hope it is!"

The three then ran to the living room window. Well, hobbled in Piper's case! They then pulled back the curtain, and Piper was instantly dismayed. "That's them! That's the guy and his dog. I can't believe it..."

All three sisters stared dumbfounded, as the man seemed to actually move his dog into position, with the leash right in front of their walkway.

"That is so rude!" Prue said annoyed, as the dog started to crap on the street. "He's just gonna walk away-"

"Then don't let him," Cordelia demanded. "Use your magic."

Both her sisters looked back to her. Cordy went on, "Well, if you can't teach the dog new tricks, how about the owner? Just think of the money we'd save on carpet cleaning alone! I swear, Xander is going to kill someone if he has to rent that cleaner thingy again-"

Prue shook her head. "Cordy, we can't use our magic just to teach him or anybody else a lesson."

"Why not?" the youngest sister replied, trying to talk them into it. "It's for the greater good...I mean, that's our job, right? Think of it as...community service. We'd be doing our whole block a favor! This doesn't even rate on the personal gain playbook. Come on..." She opened a window. "Okay, Piper. Let him have it!"

"I hope he's not out of my range," Piper said, as she waved her hands in a particular motion. Sure enough, the guy and his dog both froze in place.

"Your turn, Prue," Cordelia then indicated.

The oldest Halliwell didn't move anything more than her hand, but that was more than enough. The dog droppings slid across the ground to under the man's left foot, which was suspended in midair.

"Nice shot!" Cordelia told her sister merrily, as the man unfroze. "An eye for an eye, a shoe for a shoe!"

The guy looked confused then angry, as he saw the droppings now cover the underside of his shoe. As he scraped them against the curb, he looked around. And when the dog owner looked back towards the manor - the sisters quickly ducked, letting the curtains fall back into place.

"Did he see us?" Prue asked, as she could thinly see him walk away through the curtains.

Cordelia just shrugged. "So what if he did? What's he gonna do? Cry witch?" She took another quick look to make sure the guy was gone, and then crossed over to the couch. "Well, we've done our good deed for the day. I think I deserve 15 minutes of channel surfing..." she drawled lazily, as the former cheerleader grabbed the remote and flipped on the TV.

"Who wants coffee?" Piper asked, as she picked up a bag of groceries she'd left by the front door.

"I'll grind," Prue called out, as she grabbed the last remaining bag and they both headed back into the kitchen.

Cordelia put her feet up, and started flipping through channels. She slid past a nature show, then a Judge Judy rerun, and stopped for a moment on ESPN. Within moments a segment about a baseball player, Cal Greene, hitting yet another grand slam started to play on the screen.

Causing the seer to get a premonition...

A large wide-screen TV is showing a 40-ish man in a fancy suit, making a grand (and what looks like very righteous) speech. The date February 26th 2010 is shown, with LIVE on the other side of the screen. Suddenly, the man points off-screen, causing the camera to pan off in that direction.

The next image is of the scared face of an older yet still beautiful Cordelia Halliwell, with much longer hair and what looks like a prison jumpsuit. She is tied to a pole of some kind. In the time it takes to go to a wider shot, the platform she's on bursts into flames. Her silent screams cause a huge smile to appear on the man's face, as older versions of Piper and Prue look on crying and holding each other.

Cordy's subsequent scream caused her sisters to run back into the room. "Cordelia, are you okay?" Prue asked as she sat on her left.

Piper added, "Take a deep breath, honey, it's alright..." as she sat to her right.

Cordelia let them guide her to a sitting position, and just looked at Piper with fearful eyes. "No, it's definitely not alright! I...I saw my future. I was being executed..." She looked at Prue and whispered, "Burned alive."

---

Xander grumbled, as he had to yet again watch his step to avoid the dog droppings on the sidewalk. (I wonder if I can get Leo to orb it all onto the guy's bed or something?) he thought, as the former Zeppo trudged up his home's steep walkway. (All the other neighbors pick theirs up, but does this asswipe ever bother? Noooo...)

"Hey, Piper!" Harris then said casually, as he came in through the front door.

The brunette woman flashed him a tense smile, before she tilted her head towards the living room, signaling Xander to follow her. As he set the books down on the padded bench along with his jacket, Xander heard Prue ask, "Why would a report about a baseball player trigger a premonition like that?"

"I don't know. All I know is, I could feel it...I could feel the fire. As if I was there," Cordelia's voice answered.

"Premonition? Fire?" Xander asked, as he came into the room. "What'd I miss?"

But as soon as he saw the look on Cordelia's face, Buffy's former White Knight went right over to the couch to sit next to her. "My upcoming death is apparently going to be a pay-per-view," Cordy told him, still looking freaked, as she leaned her head softly on his shoulder.

"And we were just standing there? That can't be right!" Piper commented.

"Still," Cordelia answered. "That's what I saw..."

Prue shook her head vehemently. "There's no way that we would let that happen, not in the past, present or future!"

"All right, that's it. Someone better start filling me in!" Xander snapped. He definitely didn't like this conversation, or where it appeared to be heading.

Cordelia looked up at him from her spot on his shoulder. "Premonition, and me being burned at the stake live on TV."

"What?!" Xander yelled. "No way in hell!"

"I mean..." Cordelia started. "What did I do? Or rather, what is it that I'm going to do?"

The doorbell ringing stopped the conversation for a moment. "That's Leo," Piper told them. "I'll get it."

As she left the room, Xander looked at Cordelia and Prue, "When is this supposed to happen, already?"

As the two sisters filled Xander in on the details, Piper opened the front door with a grin despite what was going on. "Hey, stranger."

"Oh, is that what I am now?" Leo asked, amused. He was dressed in his normal jeans, T-shirt and open button-top shirt; and was looking just scrumptilicious in the young witch's humble opinion.

"Playing hooky?" Piper Halliwell asked, as he came in.

"No, they're making me work tonight," he replied as they hugged. "So, I've got the afternoon off."

Piper grinned like crazy. "Mmm, the old 'gotta save the world' excuse again?"

Leo nodded, as she closed the door. "Like you've never had to use it." His face then fell, as the whitelighter noticed the look come over hers. "You're about to use it," he stated simply.

"Well, there's just something I have to do," Piper looked at her love, disappointed as well. "Maybe you could..." she trailed off, as Leo Wyatt suddenly looked up and seemed to be listening to something.

(Great. Just figures they would call him now,) Piper fumed silently. (Can't we ever catch a break here?)

But the guardian angel frowned at what he was hearing. "Now?" He then simply nodded, as the beings that only he could hear repeated their order.

"Uh...Leo?"

The man in question looked down at his beloved, his face trying not to show any disappointment. "It's okay, uh, you go. There's actually something I have to take care of, I guess."

"Well," Piper sighed. "We really need to talk about things, you know...like where we stand."

The whitelighter agreed. "Yeah, we do. Rain check?" he asked.

"That's what we do best..." the Charmed One told him, before they leaned in for a goodbye kiss. However, right in the middle of the kiss Leo orbed out - leaving her kissing empty air.

Piper opened her eyes and growled, "I hate it when he does that!"

---

Halliwell Manor attic, San Francisco, California

A mere moment later, Leo reappeared in the attic right in front of the Book of Shadows. He lifted his hands to just above the book, and when they started to glow the book flipped open and turned pages rapidly.

The whitelighter was quickly flipping through it magically to find the right page. He suddenly looked up sharply though when he heard Prue coming and asking someone, "So, what did he want?"

Leo quickly orbed out, but the book kept flipping through the pages.

"He cancelled our date," Piper told her companions as they trooped in, just missing Leo by a heartbeat. "He's working again."

"You mean, you didn't ask him what we should do?" Cordelia asked her.

"Yeah!" Xander said, agitated. "Because I think Cordy getting burned alive counts as a work-related thing, for my old boss here!"

Piper just shrugged. "He had to fly...literally." As the group got to the Book of Shadows she added, "You guys saw that, right? The pages were doing that flipping thing on their own again..."

Prue looked over the spell on the left-hand page. "It's a spell to take us to the future. Two time spells, actually. One to send us there, and one to bring us home. But apparently, we only get one shot..." She skimmed the lines. "Once we use it, they disappear."

Cordelia nervously shook her head. "Wait a minute, you guys. We almost died last time, going back into the past. I mean, meeting Mom and Grams was fun and all...but this is not something that you just do on a whim!"

"We're talking about your life, Cordelia."

Cordy nodded but said, "And I'm talking about yours, Prue. I'm just saying I think we should think this over some more-"

"Think it over!?" Xander demanded. "What the hell is there to think over?" He looked her directly in the eyes. "You were being burned alive, sweetheart! This isn't one of those things that you just accept and hope it all works out!"

Cordelia softened, when she saw his concern. "I know that, Xander," she told him, as the 19-year-old woman reached up and stroked his face with her hand. "And you know this terrifies me. But with Nicholas, we only barely vanquished him. I don't want another guy like him getting you..." She then looked towards her sisters. "Or either of you, because of me."

"Look," Prue murmured softly to her youngest sibling. "You had that premonition today, for a reason. It must mean that we're supposed to do something about it. And going to the future might be the only way to find out what you did, to put you on that pyre."

Xander took Cordy's hand and gently lowered it as he told Prue, "Look, guys, bottom line - I really don't care about the why here. I just care about making sure that that future doesn't come to pass. And believe me, whatever it takes - I'm willing to do it."

"We don't even know if it's something that I did. It could be a demon or a warlock that puts me there..."

"Yeah but Cordy honey, do you really want to wait to find out? Could you live with all that for the next ten years, hanging over your head that way?" the young man demanded.

Cordelia's answer was just a slow shake of her head. "Okay, then let's pack our bags," she finally told her sisters. "We go and try to figure out what happened, and hopefully come back with enough information to stop it."

"I'm coming too!" Xander declared. And when Cordelia looked at him sharply to object, Xander shut her up with a pre-emptive strike. "Don't even start with Buffy and Willow's "I don't want to see you get hurt" crap, Queen C. I may not be Witch Boy here, but you should damn well know that I'm not sitting on the bench for this one!"

Prue and Piper were going to object themselves, until they saw their sister lean in and hug Xander tightly. They didn't hear the words she whispered to him, but then they didn't have to; Prue just grabbed the Book, and brought it to the small table nearby. "We're gonna need a date, Cordy."

The girl in question thought for a moment before stating, "February 12, 2010. That's two weeks before the date I saw in my premonition." She sat down with Xander next to her, as she wrote the date on a piece of paper.

"All right," Prue agreed. "That should give us more than enough time to figure out what put you there."

"I wonder how I look," Piper said suddenly.

Cordelia just looked at her sister in confusion. "Piper, you look great, hot even, but this is hardly the time-"

"No!" the middle sister stated. "Not now. In the future! When we went back to 1980, we saw ourselves as kids, and now we'll be seeing ourselves walking around almost ten years older. All that vanquishing," she mused. "Think of the wear and tear that brings..."

"Okay," Prue said, as Cordelia held up the paper in one hand. "Everyone ready?" Three nods met her question, so she lit a mach and then put the paper on fire. All four quickly joined hands around the table, as the spell began.

"Hear these words, hear the rhyme," the oldest sister chanted.

Piper took over, "We send to you this burning sign."

Cordelia said her part quickly before the fire reached her hand, "That our future selves will find."

Prue finished the spell, "In another place and time."

Before the four could even blink, they were surrounded by glowing golden lights; and then, they all vanished. The burning paper landed in the bowl of water, with the absence of anyone to hold it.

---

Halliwell Manor living room. February 26, 2010

By magic, the golden lights reappeared in the living room. They hovered around for a moment as if looking for something, but only for a moment. The lights quickly made for the future Piper Halliwell, who was sleeping quietly on the couch.

And as they got directly above her, the lights spread out and the past Piper appeared. Her body then turned to match her sleeping future duplicate, and they merged together.

Leaving only the older Piper, who was on the couch.

"Mommy, mommy, mommy!" a little girl then said excitedly, as she ran into the room.

Piper slowly woke up, confused, as she rolled over and got up. "Ah," she said, looking at the girl who she guessed was about six or seven years old. "I think you have the wrong house, sweetie. Certainly the wrong mommy..."

This didn't faze the smiling girl, as she hugged Piper. "Stop fooling!"

When a car horn's honking was heard, the girl quickly let go and yelled, "Car pool!" She then quickly ran out of the room, to gather her things.

Piper just watched her go, utterly confused before she turned and looked into a mirror that was hanging in the attic during her time. "Ooh!" the witch gasped, as she felt the longer, fuller, curled black hair.

But then, she also noticed the gold wedding band on her finger. "Ooh!"

But before the middle sister could wonder too much about it, she saw the reflection of a muted plasma TV in the mirror. Piper spun around horrified, when she saw an image of Cordelia with CGI flames around it. "Cordelia!"

She looked around frantically. "Where's the remote? I need volume!"

A mechanical voice spoke though the speakers. "Command recognized."

"Huh?" Piper asked, but then quickly listened in horror to the TV reporter, who was saying...

"More news on the execution of Cordelia Halliwell coming up, in just a moment. Now, back to your regular scheduled programming of MTV's Real World 18."

Piper's face hardly registered the shock when the little girl called out, "Mom, I'm gonna be late!"

"Ah...okay?" Piper turned to go to the entryway, but then looked back to the TV set, upset. "TV, shut up. Mute or something."

"Command recognized."

A neighbor woman then came in via the front door, as she got to it. "Morning, Piper. You alright?"

"I guess," Piper replied, trying to play along.

The neighbor gave her a look of comfort. "Yeah, with your sister - it's rough, I know. So, don't worry about your little one. I'll get her to school like you asked, but, uh...are you sure you want me to take her to your ex's?"

Piper's eyebrow shot up at hearing that. "Ex? As in husband? As in mine? Uh, yes, if that is what I told you, then yes."

"So, you and he are getting along better now?" the neighbor asked questioningly.

"Maybe," Piper told her, before looking back into the house. "Prue? Prue!"

The neighbor just thought to herself, (Poor thing, having to cope with a sister like that horrible witch Cordelia. The stress of it must be getting to her!) "Okay, let's hit the road young lady!"

Before she left, the little girl motioned for Piper to lean down. When she did so, the girl whispers in her mother's ear, "Don't worry, mommy. I promise I'll do what you ask. I won't use my magic again, ever!"

Then after a kiss on the cheek, the girl started running down the steps and jumped into a minivan with two other little kids. Piper just watched them drive away, growing more confused by the second as a black limo pulled up a moment later.

When the driver got out and opened the back door, Piper was much relieved to see Prue step out.

A leather-clad, blonde-hair-down-to-her-backside Prue, but Prue nonetheless.

As the eldest sister came up the stairs, a man started brushing her leather clean while a woman brushed her hair. "Hey, hey!" Prue yelled. "Okay, enough! People, stop touching me!"

The man and woman just looked confused, as Prue pointed and told them to, "Stay!" And when the oldest sister reached her Piper asked, "Prue, what's going on?"

Prue shook her head, amused. "I don't know, but I could really get used to this. Check me out - I don't just work at Buckland's, I own it. And three more; Paris, Tokyo and London!"

"And you're blonde."

"Yeah," Prue grumbled, as she touched her hair. "Strange."

Piper realized something at that moment. "Wait, you had time to go to work already?"

"Well, actually," Prue admitted, somewhat ashamed, "I woke up there...but it was amazing. I had all these assistants, and this huge office, and I have a chauffeur!" She then leaned in and whispered, "And he's so totally hot!" Then as if asking about a lottery winning, "How'd you do?"

Piper just laughed a little, as she turned and went back into the house.

"Is that a good laugh?" Prue asked suspiciously, as she followed her sibling and the front door was closed.

Piper replied, "Well, if you ignore my apparently failed marriage and the fact that I still live in the manor..."

"You're married?"

"Was," Piper grimaced. "And my daughter is on her way to-"

Prue's eyes went wide at that. "Wait. Stop right there. You have a daughter?"

"Yeah, and, and..." Piper cogitated, as she saw a framed photo of the girl and showed it to Prue. "And she's beautiful."

"Of course she is," Prue said warmly, looking at the picture. "What's her name?"

That question caused Piper to realize, "Oh, God. I have no idea! But she has powers. But for some reason, I told her not to use them." The middle sister was at a loss to explain that one. "Why would I do that?"

Prue shook her head, not knowing the answer to that question either. "Speaking of which..." she said, as she replaced the photo back on the end table. "Why are we in our future bodies? I mean, I thought we were supposed to come here and see them like before."

Piper looked around the changed living room. "Well, apparently going to the past isn't the same as going to the future. I just wish that since we are in our future bodies, that we could have some memory of what's happened in the last ten years - like how I got a daughter!"

"Okay, wait a second," Prue said, as she moved farther into the room. "If I'm in my future body, and you're in your future body...then that means Xander and Cordelia are also...oh, boy. Well, Cordelia's whereabouts we can scry for, but where the hell is Xander? And why hasn't he gotten here yet?"

Piper suddenly remembered. "Oh! TV, louder, louder!"

The green volume bar moved as the machine repeated its standard phrase, "Command recognized."

The news reporter was back on the screen, along with the shot of Cordelia surrounded by fake flames. Only this time there was a title graphic that read, 'Countdown to Execution.' "...execution is less than eight hours away, until the burning of Cordelia Halliwell - the witch convicted of murdering Cal Greene six months ago-"

"Eight hours?!" Piper shouted. "We were supposed to be here two weeks before!"

"Shh..." Prue told her, as she sat down on the couch and listened to the report.

"Let's go there now live, where Sierra Stone is standing by. Sierra..."

The screen changed to a shot of a field reporter with a banner under her that read 'Live: Hobart State Penitentiary'. "San Francisco district attorney Nathaniel Pratt, who's discovery of the witch last August has made him an early favorite for the Governor's seat, just came out to make a statement. Let's listen in."

She quickly moved her microphone to join the others, around the man who Cordelia had seen in her premonition.

The man looked very smug as he spoke, obviously knowing how the audience around him was eating it all up. Arrogance seemed to drip off of him as he spoke, "This is a reflection of our citizens' resolve to ferret out the hidden evil. To turn fear into fight, and to band together as one. To cleanse our city of its greatest threat! Tonight, Cordelia Halliwell will burn for her crime. And when she does, let that be a warning to all the other witches out there!"

Pratt pointed forcefully and directly into the camera. "You're next!"

When the crowd burst into applause, Piper and Prue could only stare at the TV set in mute shock.

---

A few minutes later, the two sisters charged into the attic. Piper noticed the more den-like furniture that filled it now, but Prue didn't because she was still getting over the shock of what they had just watched on TV.

"Oh, big surprise! Here we go, up the stairs, into the attic, grabbing the Book of Shadows," the oldest suddenly vented, as they moved towards the Book's stand. "Please tell me we're not gonna be doing this in ten years..."

Piper frowned. "Apparently not."

Because the stand for the Book of Shadows was empty.

"What the hell?" Prue asked, flabbergasted.

"The Book is gone?" Piper asked, surprised as well.

Prue went to a nearby dresser and started going through it quickly, before she headed for a small trunk. "It's got to be here, we need it to find the return spell!" She pushed a stack of picture frames off to the side. "Piper, help me look for it!"

Piper looked on the small coffee table by a few chairs. "Okay, relax, we'll find it..."

Her older sister spun on her. "You don't know that! I mean, what if it's lost, what if we can't find it?" she asked, as her agitation grew. "Then we're stuck in our future bodies with no way of getting out of them, and no way of saving Cordelia!"

At the end of her tirade, Prue waved her hand without even realizing it. The effect was like a tornado hitting everything to the right of them; furniture and all, as it whipped away towards the far wall. Somehow, a small explosion also occurred, shattering the stained glass windows and ripping a chunk off the rafters.

Both sisters couldn't believe the devastation. "Been working out?"

"Ah," Prue muttered, shocked. "I guess that's a little sample of what ten years does to our powers."

"Yeah, and to our attic," Piper replied. "If we're stuck here, then you get to be the one that tells Xander and Leo they have to fix this. Because I'm not going to..." Ms. Halliwell then trailed off, when she saw something.

Bending down, Piper picked up the broken end of the base of the stand for the book. She then pulled out a small object from the hollow pole. "A key?"

Prue took it from her, and examined the round end. "I think it's the key to my wall safe at Buckland's."

"Do you think that means it's there?" Piper wondered. "We've never taken the Book out of the house before."

"We haven't," Prue said. "But maybe our future selves have. The real question then is, why?"

"We don't even know what we're like in this time, Prue, let alone what we think," Piper surmised. "If the Book is at Buckland's, maybe it'll give us some answers."

Prue nodded in agreement. "Alright, then we'll go there first, then to Cordelia to see if she's alright. I didn't think to look before, but probably - hopefully - I'll have Xander listed in my Rolodex, 'cause we need to get all of us back together fast!"

"I know. But if Xander's already found out we only have eight hours left, the same as we have, then he'll be already working on something - knowing him," Piper added as they walked out the door.

---

Hobart State Penitentiary, California. Ninety minutes later

Cordelia had woken up to find herself in a large prison cell, with no bars. The entire front was thick glass, giving her a perfect view of the dark and dreary concrete hallway beyond.

"Hello? Could somebody please answer me? I really need to talk to someone!" she called out, as the former princess smoothed out her brown prison jumpsuit and metal collar. "Okay then, how about a snack? Maybe some Chez mix, Pringles, something?"

A guard appeared only long enough to shove a metal tray of mashed potatoes and something else Cordelia couldn't identify at first glance, through a small opening on the floor. "Jeez, a tray full of slop? Come on, the lady who tried to feed us rat poison in high school made better..."

She moved to touch the glass with her hands to look down the hall, or that was the plan anyway. But as soon as her hands touched the glass surface, the collar on her neck gave the woman a very nasty shock. Cordy yelled in pain as she fell back, (Shit!!!)

After the pain faded enough, Cordelia tried to rip the damn thing off - but with no luck. Then years of training from living as a member of the Chase family, of not showing her emotions kicked in - as the brunette refused to let whoever it was see her scared.

Turning around she just whispered to herself, "Come on, Xander. Do your hero thing, and get me outta here already!"

---

Plaza outside Buckland's Auction House. The same time

"I can't believe you get a limo and a driver, while I've still got my same old jeep," Piper grumbled. The traffic had been incredibly bad, and it had taken them far too long to get here.

"You have a husband," was her sister's retort.

"No, I had a husband. I'm getting divorced, remember?" the younger woman sniped, as they crossed the plaza. "And how do you know you don't have a guy in this time? I mean, after all, I have a kid and an ex, you could have several..."

"Ex's?" Prue asked, not wanting to think about that.

"No," Piper stated with an eyeroll. "Kids! I mean, we're in the future with no memory of the past ten years. I don't even know who my ex-husband..."

A man on rollerblades bumped into a woman, with a cup of coffee next to them. Piper was so into the talk, that she just acted on reflex. The man, woman and the coffee all froze.

"Crap," the witch sighed. "I didn't mean to-"

"No, wait!" Prue told her, as she looked around the plaza. "Apparently, my power isn't the only one that's grown. You just froze..."

"Everything," Piper said in amazement, as she looked over the dozen or more people now motionless around them. Even the birds in mid-flight above were stuck in place. "What a difference a decade makes..."

"What the hell are you doing?!"

The angry question had the two sisters turn towards the way they'd come. A man was stalking towards them, through the frozen people.

Well, not just any man - but a whitelighter.

And despite the look on his face, Piper was very much relieved to see him. "Leo! I'm so glad you're here. I have so many..." She moved to hug him, but he quickly backed away from her. "Uh...what's wrong?"

Leo just shook his head at her, very upset. "Ya know, I knew you'd do something stupid like this. You used your magic in public!? What's the matter with you? Are you insane?"

Not understanding what the hell was going on, Piper shuddered; she had never seen him upset before. Let alone ticked off. "Uh, Leo..."

Prue quickly leaned into her ear. "Remember, he thinks we know what's going on," she whispered.

"You wanna end up like your sister? Huh, is that it?" Leo ranted. "We had an agreement, Piper. No magic for Melinda's sake!"

"Melinda?" a clueless Piper asked.

Leo's eyes narrowed. "Our daughter! What's going on with you?!"

Piper was stunned and happy at the same time. "Our daughter?"

But then Prue spoke up, "Wait a second, you're Piper's ex?"

Leo looked at her like she was brain-dead. But before anyone could say anything more, a loud shriek was heard. Quickly turning, the two Charmed Ones and the whitelighter saw a woman looking around at all the frozen people in horror.

When she saw the trio still moving the woman pointed and screamed, "Witch!!!!!"

Piper spied something on the pillar near them. "Prue!" She spun her sister around to see the posters on each side of it. They had a large picture of Pratt with the slogan, 'Help destroy the evil. Turn in all witches'.

Leo quickly looked around, and could see the people starting to unfreeze. "Hurry, we've gotta get out of here before they see you!"

"They?" Prue demanded. "Who's they?!"

"The witch hunters," Leo said bluntly, as he pulled them to the parking lot. "Move it!"

---

Hobart State Penitentiary, California. A few hours later

Cordelia was sitting cross-legged on the bed, staring at the tray of what passed for food. She was trying to keep up her spirits, by thinking of what she had planned to do today. Which was sunbathe, while pretending not to watch Xander work up a sweat...

When she heard the buzzer sound of the door at the end of the hall open, the former teenager jumped to her feet. "Prue? Piper?" she asked, hoping. "Xa-"

"They haven't come to visit you before. Why would they come now?"

Cordy didn't recognize the voice, but recognized the man from her premonition as he came into the front of her cell. "They're going to be as happy to get rid of you as I am," Nathaniel Pratt told her bluntly.

"Who are you?" the witch asked, trying to keep her voice calm.

Pratt looked at her gleefully. "I'm sorry. It's been so long since our last visit. Executions are a bitch to plan. Logistics, alerting the media..." He looked right at her, cruelly. "...gathering the kindling."

Cordelia's mind worked overtime, as she looked at the man that stared back at her with pure hate. Slowly, she stood to face him across the glass barrier "Uh, you know, I've had a lot of time to think about why I'm here-"

But the district attorney could care less about what she was saying. "No amount of thinking will affect the outcome. Justice will be served, for your crime."

Not knowing why she was in the cell, Cordy tried saying, "Wasn't really that big a crime, was it?"

Pratt took on a look of disgust. "You are truly evil. What bigger crime is there than taking a decent man's life?"

Cordelia looked up in surprise. "I killed someone?" Up till that point, she'd thought this was some witch-hating thing alone.

The public prosecutor rolled his eyes at her words. "Cordelia, what is this? An attempt to stay your execution? Plead insanity?" He looked at her as if she was a lost cause. "That's all you have left?"

Again, Pratt shook his head. "No, it won't work. You have five hours to live. Tick tock." He turned to leave.

"What!?" Cordelia yelled in dismay, as she moved to the front almost touching the glass again. "Five hours? But that's not possible..."

Pratt turned back towards Cordy. "Well, I'm happy to see the seriousness of this has finally hit you..." He looked her right in the eyes. "See, you represent everything I abhor. You're a threat. A danger to everything that is good and pure in this world."

"You're talking out of fear," the former snob told him. "Just because you don't understand something, doesn't make it evil-"

"No, it's you who doesn't understand!" Pratt yelled, losing his smugness for a moment. "You killed a man using your power, and now you're going to die for it. I only wish I could burn all of your kind with you!"

He then got a large grin that sent chills down her spine. "But don't worry, in time I will. This is only the beginning!"

Cordelia Halliwell watched, stunned, as he left. After a moment, she shakily sat back on the bed. And all that the witch could think of to explain his hatred was... "Buffy killed that demon during senior year, didn't she?"

---

An abandoned building downtown. The same time

Leo Wyatt ducked under a strip of yellow 'caution' tape, as he led his charges into the makeshift shelter. Several people glanced at them to make sure they were not witch hunters, but other than that no one cared that they had arrived.

"Leo, listen to me," Prue said, trying to make him understand. "The two of us, the Prue and Piper that you see before you, are from the past. From ten years ago."

"So, we have no idea what is going on!" Piper added.

Leo got completely fed up with them. "Don't even try lying to me. Cordelia is set to die today, and I only hope that this madness dies with her." He turned back to them, and ignored their upset faces at his words. "All these people are in danger, because of the witch trials she started!"

"How?" Prue demanded. "How did she start them?"

That fried the whitelighter's last nerve. "I don't know what you hope to accomplish by pretending not to know-"

Suddenly, Piper got fed up herself. She grabbed Leo's head and pulls him into a kiss as full of passion as she could manage, under these insane circumstances.

When the Charmed One finally pulled away, the guardian angel looked at her flabbergasted. "You haven't kissed me like that since-"

"Since this morning. July 15th, 2000, remember?" Piper told him. "We were supposed to meet, you had to leave, I went up to the attic - and this is where I came, the future. If you don't believe me, at least believe what you feel, trust that!"

Leo looked stunned, as he thought back. Piper started to wonder if she'd just made things worse, but then...

"I remember..." the man born during 1924 finally said. "That was the day the Elders sent me to the attic to open the Book of Shadows, to the page with the 'travel to the future' spell on it. Before Xander and I-"

"That was you?" a surprised Prue asked. "We just assumed it was Grams. And where is Xander?"

"You don't know?" It was obvious they didn't. "Oh, boy. Well, to answer your first question - no, that was me. And they wouldn't tell me why..."

All this was obviously hard for even Leo to take in. "Wait a minute. You two don't know what's happened for the entire last decade? Any of it?"

At Prue's headshake, the son of Christopher Wyatt sighed and looked around at the dozens of people on cots and at makeshift tables. "These people, they're here underground because they've been accused of practicing witchcraft."

Prue took in the large number of people present. "They're all witches?"

"Only some of them," the whitelighter answered. "Most of them have just been falsely accused. They're safe here - for now."

"What did Cordelia do?" the eldest Halliwell sibling suddenly asked, voicing the million-dollar question.

Leo knew now they wouldn't believe it. "Six months ago, she killed a man. Cal Greene."

"That baseball player?" Piper asked, completely clueless.

"No way," Prue told Leo at once in denial. "This is crazy. I mean, Cordelia would never murder anyone!"

"Oh no, she killed him alright...because he murdered someone else first. Someone Cordelia cared about very much."

"Who did he murder?" Piper demanded.

Leo looked at them for a moment, before he took out his wallet. He pulled out a picture and held it up. "He murdered her husband," the whitelighter said simply.

Prue took the photo, and moved over to the light from a hanging work light. Piper stood next to her to look as well, as the witches gazed at the stilled image.

"Xander..." Piper whispered, as she saw the photo clearly.

They recognized the large church as the one in San Francisco that the two siblings had gone to, ever since they were kids. Cordelia wore a very ornate white wedding dress standing beside her two sisters, and two dark-haired women they didn't know.

On the groom's side there was Xander, in a simple black tux. Beside him stood Leo, an older-looking man with glasses, Daryl, and a young male teenager. But it was the man on the end of the groomsmen list that shocked them the most.

"Is that Dad?" Prue asked in disbelief.

Leo nodded, as he took the photo back. "Things change, relationships change," he said as he looked at Piper sadly.

"So, this guy was a warlock then?" Prue asked, making the obvious guess about why Cordy had done what she did.

"No," Leo said simply. "Xander thought he was just the human servant of a demon; because Greene did make it into the record books, almost inhumanly quickly. Basically, Xander went out on his own to see what he could dig up. Greene caught him by accident, and killed him for it. And not quickly, either..."

The whitelighter looked down for a moment, before continuing. "After so many years being so close to a Charmed One, Xander must have become Cordelia's...familiar. Because they were linked by more than just holy wedlock. She could feel his pain as he died, but somehow they were cloaked from the rest of us...I couldn't get to him in time, I couldn't even sense him anymore...we lost him that day, and in a sense Cordelia as well."

"My God," Prue whispered in disbelief.

"This is unbelievable!" Piper cried. "What about - what about Kennedy and Terry? Couldn't they do anything?"

Leo shook his head. "Slayers only have an average lifespan of two years, you know. I'm sorry, but they left the picture a long time ago..."

Prue shook her head too. "Well, what about those friends of his from Sunnydale? Why didn't they do anything to help? Because Xander helped them when they needed it, just a few months ago!"

Leo looked confused, before understanding dawned. "Oh, you mean Buffy Summers and Willow Rosenberg? No, they weren't a factor anymore either. Hadn't been for years, as a matter of fact..."

The look on the two witches' faces made the whitelighter sigh. "Buffy was shot and killed not long before the summer of 2002, right there in her own backyard. There was nothing supernatural about it; just a maniac with a handgun, who'd gotten away with murdering a woman before..."

"And Willow?" asked Prue.

Another sigh. "A stray bullet from that killer took out someone she loved. The crazy redhead instantly delved into dark magicks; she went after him for revenge, and flayed that guy alive in the woods somewhere. Then she hunted down his former accomplice, and hit him with a fireball. Burned him into ashes, from the inside out..."

Both Charmed Ones looked sick. "Then what happened?" asked Piper.

"Her desire for vengeance sated, Willow collapsed into catatonic grief; not even Xander could pull her out of it, later. Eventually, you three stripped her of her powers just to be safe, before she was placed in an asylum somewhere north of Los Angeles. Which if I'm not mistaken, is where she still is today."

"And seven years later, Xander got killed too," Prue murmured, getting back on topic.

"Daryl and...the others gathered enough evidence to arrest Greene, but a technicality set him free; those lawyers from Wolfram & Hart that he hired were good enough to pull that off, despite the fact that practically everyone knew he was guilty as hell. Cordelia..."

The whitelighter paused. "I won't sugarcoat it; she was furious, enraged. We tried to get her to let the Elders see if they could help expose him and his demon master...but she wouldn't wait," he told them sadly. "On that day, she crossed the line from protecting the innocent to punishing the guilty. She used her power to kill Greene, got caught, and thus magic was exposed by Nathaniel Pratt."

Piper wiped a tear away. "And this is the result, modern day witch trials with Pratt at the helm?"

"And Cordelia at the stake," Prue shook her head. "I don't buy it. Her power can't kill."

"Well, it can now. It's been ten years," Leo told her. "All your powers have grown."

"We have to get to Cordy and explain-"

"You can't," Leo told her firmly. "As it stands, you and Prue are safe. Pratt checked you out, and he doesn't suspect you're witches. To get to Cordelia you'd have to use your powers, and then they'll catch you and kill you."

"Leo, she's our sister," Piper growled out. "We're not gonna just let her die!"

As they turned to leave, Leo suddenly heard from his bosses the Elders. "Wait, I'll go."

Prue turned back to him. "Leo, this is our sister. We have to-"

"No. I'm still your guide," the man insisted. "I can orb in, and keep you out of danger."

"Fine," Piper stated. "Then we'll go back to Buckland's to get the Book, and get the spell to get us home."

Prue nodded in agreement. "We'll meet you at the manor."

Piper stayed behind for a moment. "Leo, um, we got married?" Despite it all, that brought a tiny smile to Leo's face.

"Piper, we'll have plenty of time for that later," Prue told her sister. "We have to hurry, if..." The eldest sister then froze, as she realized something.

"Prue?"

The now-blond senior Halliwell looked at their whitelighter in horror. "Leo, we all showed up in our future bodies! If Greene killed Xander back then-"

Piper let out a horrified gasp, as she understood what her older sister was saying. (Oh no! He's buried alive somewhere?!)

Leo looked at them very sadly. "Xander's remains were cremated, after the investigation was closed."

"Oh, right!" Piper said, suddenly relieved. "Then it's okay. He must have just woken up in his future whitelighter body-"

"What?" Prue demanded, as this was all news to her. "Since when is Xander supposed to become a whitelighter?"

Before Piper could answer that question Leo said softly, "Piper - Xander never became one of my kind. Because after the guy died, the Elders didn't offer him immortality - and the accompanying duties that gift entails. Whether it was because of choice or circumstance, I don't know...but either way, Xander's not a whitelighter. Not here, not now."

Piper looked at the man she loved. "So, then, what? If he had no body to come to in the future...then what happened to him? Where is Xander - here and now?"

"I don't know," Leo said, not liking it anymore than them. "But without a corporeal vessel for his soul to inhabit, there's a good chance that he simply might have just...moved on. You know, onto his next life..."

"No! No way!" Prue declared defiantly. "We're going to get the Book, and we are going to fix this!"

---

Buckland's Auction House, San Francisco, California. A short time later

As soon as Prue and Piper walked out of the elevator, several people crowded around Prue. "Miss Halliwell," one woman said, holding out a pen. "Can you sign the-"

Her voice quickly got drowned out, by all the other people talking at once. Prue didn't know who to look at first, when everyone started calling her name.

"Give the woman some air!" a tall, redheaded woman told the crowd. "She will meet with all of you after lunch..." The woman quickly cleared a path for Prue to her office. Piper tried to keep up, but the mess of people blocked her long enough for the redhead to close the office doors behind her.

"Okay, good news first. The requisition paperwork was approved, and..." She stopped when Piper barged in. "Yes?"

"I'm with her," the middle sister growled.

The woman looked towards Prue, not understanding.

"It's Piper," Prue told her. When the blank look continued she added, "My sister?"

"Oh, right, sorry!" the stranger said, as she wrote down the new name on her pad for the future. "Almost forgot you had another one, I mean other than..." she trailed off, instead of saying 'the murdering witch'.

"That's okay," Piper drawled lazily, as she crossed her arms. "I forgot your name too."

The woman seemed very offended at that. "Anne. Miss Halliwell's personal assistant."

Prue ignored the two's catty exchange. "Right, my personal assistant. By the way Anne, um, do you know if my husband called by any chance?"

Unfortunately, the question didn't quite get the response Prue was hoping for.

Anne laughed, "Husband, that's a good one! Very funny, like you have the time." She handed Prue her file folder. "Okay, I just need to get your final okay on the acquisition."

When Prue took the file to look it over, Anne looked towards Piper. "Your sister was amazing. I mean, at first the board was a little resistant - what with all the layoffs it would entail - but Prue pushed it through."

"I did?" Prue asked, looking up from the papers.

Anne nodded. "I thought the 'to hell with the little people' part was particularly persuasive."

Prue's mouth dropped open at that. "Okay, Anne, sweetie, I really need some private time with my sister, so if you can just..."

Anne just smiled. "Oh, no problem, just buzz me!" she said cheerily, before leaving the room.

When they were alone, Prue spread out her arms and looked at Piper. "Look at me! I am swamped with work, I'm about to lay off countless people with a flick of my pen, and no man to speak of."

Piper just shrugged. "Maybe you're just picky."

"No," Prue insisted. "I know I needed some time, after what happened to Andy. But ten years?! What's happened to me?"

She then crossed over to the far wall. "Okay, well, I could dwell on the nightmare that my life will become, but we have work to do..." The witch removed a painting of a farmhouse to uncover her safe. "At least some things around here haven't changed!" Prue then turned the key, and quickly looked in. "Yes! Some good luck."

She grabbed the Book of Shadows out of there, and moved to her desk. As Prue started to flip through it, Piper looked over her shoulder. "Okay, it should be after the demon with the tusk, and before the spell to discourage a lover..."

The woman flipped to the appropriate page, but found it blank. (What the hell?!)

"Where is it? It was here in 2000," Piper demanded, not liking the possibility.

"Yeah, and now it's gone," Prue said, annoyed. "So, if the spell can only be used once, that must mean that our future selves have already used it. Which means..."

"We have no way of getting home!" Piper shouted angrily, as she slammed the book closed.

---

Hobart State Penitentiary, California. A few minutes later

Cordelia jumped up, the moment she heard and saw the orbing effect. "Leo, oh, thank God!" she muttered quickly, as she hugged him. "Look, I know what they think I did and if you-"

Leo quickly shushed her. "Shh. They'll hear you."

Cordy quickly lowered her voice, obediently. "Where's the rest of the cavalry?"

"They're not coming," the man told her simply.

"Right," Cordy asked, not understanding, "So you'll just grab me and we'll orb out to meet them back at the manor?"

The whitelighter looked at her with great pity. "Cordelia...I'm so sorry."

"For what?" Cordy asked, before she got a scared look on her face. "Did something happen to my sisters? To Xander?"

"I mean, nobody's going to rescue you."

Cordelia looked at him strangely for a moment, before laughing nervously. She then slapped him on the back, before the convict sat down on the bed. "Leo, if that's some kind of weird whitelighter humor - let me be the first to tell you, you are not a very funny race of people!"

Leo sighed, as he moved to sit down next to her. "I wish you could remember what you've done. It'd make this so much easier." He took a deep breath, and then turned to face his charge. "Your future self used witchcraft for vengeance, Cordelia. Pratt is using that as a platform."

The youngest Charmed One looked disbelievingly at the man who had almost become a brother to her best friend "Why does everyone think I killed someone? I wouldn't. I mean, I couldn't! What did I do? Premonition the man to death?" she asked sarcastically "My power is passive!"

"Not in the future. It's grown. As have you," Leo told her with a heavy heart. "Which means unfortunately that you have to suffer the consequences."

Cordy shook her head violently. "No way! I am not some two-bit murderer. I don't believe this, any of it!"

The guardian angel knew he wouldn't be able to convince her with words. So Leo took out a ripped newspaper clipping. "Then believe what you see."

Cordy looked dubious, as she read the headline; 'Witch murders star baseball player'. However, as soon as she held the clipping - Ms. Halliwell got hit by a premonition.

Cal Greene walks calmly out of his baseball club's locker room, with an equipment bag over his shoulder. When he passes a recessed stairway, Cordelia jumps out from behind him. With pure hate on her face, she puts her hands up on either side of his head. Blue electricity shoots out of her hands and through the man's head, as they both rise several feet off the floor. He tries to scream, but his eyes roll back and a black mist escapes out of his mouth before he dies. With a very satisfied look on her face, Cordelia lifts her hands away and Greene's body falls to the floor.

Cordelia was in shock, as she came to her senses. "My God...the hate on my face...what have I done? Why did I-" Then she understood another feeling from the premonition. "Oh, no. Xander?"

When she turned to ask Leo, he just orbed out without a word. "What? Leo?!" Cordelia jumped up in a panic. "Help me, please!"

---

Halliwell Manor living room. A few hours later

"You wanna tell me how screwed we are?" Piper asked, as she continued to pace.

"Pretty screwed," Prue answered, as she flipped through the Book of Shadows.

"Yeah," Piper said absently. "I wonder what's taking Leo so long?"

Prue kept looking through the Book, confused. "Hey, some of the pages are marked. The top corners are turned down, and all of them are new spells."

"Such as?" Piper asked, as she sat next to her older sister.

Prue showed her a few pages. "Like, here's a spell to create a door, one to induce slumber, a glamour to change one's appearance. Some of them have these baggy things attached."

"Must be potions of some kind." Piper said, looking one of the blue bags over. "Maybe we just had some time on our hands one day. Made them all up for the future. You know, plan ahead?"

Prue just shrugged. "But what about these?" She flipped a few more pages. "Okay, spells to create money, to bend someone's will, to erase a memory, a binding spell..."

"What are all these marked for?" Piper wanted to know.

Prue thought for a moment. "This must have been our future selves' plan to break Cordelia out." She then found a folded piece of paper in between the pages. "A prison map? We definitely had a plan going. But something is bothering me..."

She flipped back to the money spell. "Clearly, some of these spells are for personal gain."

"Which would break the most basic of Wiccan rules," Piper understood. "We wouldn't do that."

"We wouldn't," Prue sighed. "But maybe in ten years, our future selves would."

They both looked up, when they heard the front door open. "Perfect timing," Piper told Leo, as he came in. "We found the Book, but we can't..." Then she stopped. "Where's Cordelia?"

"Yeah, where is she?" Prue demanded.

"She's in prison, where she belongs."

Prue's eyes bulged out at hearing that. "Leo, you were supposed to bring her back here!"

"No, I said I'd go to her. And I did," he told them calmly. "To explain to her why she has to pay for her crime."

"Damn it, Leo!" Piper yelled. "You're our guide, you're supposed to protect us - and now you're just gonna let her die?"

"You're signing her death warrant," Prue added.

Leo sighed. The two women in front of him had no knowledge of it, but he had lived through all ten years of their ever-growing selfishness. It was the main reason him and Piper hadn't lasted, to be honest. (The Elders were right along, a whitelighter and a witch - aren't meant to be...)

The guardian angel remembered how Xander had however been able to keep Cordelia on the right path, well - more-or-less. It was a pity they'd never gotten around to having kids, too...but maybe it had been all for the best, as after he'd been killed, that had all gone way out the window.

"I'm trying to protect the greater good! If Cordelia lives, if you use your magic to save her, then the persecutions will continue," Leo insisted. He looked directly at Piper, "And our daughter will grow up in a world where her powers are punishable by death. Do you want that?"

"Of course not!"

"Then it has to end with Cordelia. For God's sake, I love her too; she's my best friend's widow, my sister-in-law, and she's even Melinda's godmother. But..." Leo told them both sadly, "...she has to die."

"Like hell!" Prue growled out, getting very pissed off.

Piper quickly froze Leo with her power. "Prue, relax. We've seen what your new powers can do, when you're angry..."

They quickly went back to the Book. "He's gonna stay frozen, right?" Prue asked.

Piper nodded her head knowingly. "If he knows what's good for him, he'll stay frozen."

"Good," Prue said simply, as she ripped out the spell to make a door. "We have work to do."

---

Hobart State Penitentiary, California. A short time later

A guard was now sitting at a desk, near the front of Cordelia's glass cell. He was doing paperwork, while a small TV set droned on. He wasn't paying it much attention; but Cordelia, who was sitting in her cell on the floor with her knees up to her chin, could hear it just fine. She could hear Pratt's voice, and the cheers of the crowd outside.

And as she listened to the words, Cordelia Halliwell had never felt more alone in her entire life.

"Now, some people say this is a victory for me. But I say, here's a victory for us all! For today the blight on everything that is good in our world, will be extinguished! Tonight, the witch will burn!" Pratt yelled, causing the crowd to cheer wildly around him.

---

Prescott Street, San Francisco, California

Outside the neighbor's house, Prue and Piper were sitting in Piper's car. "Piper, if you're gonna do this, you'd better hurry. Leo could unfreeze any second now. Besides, Cordelia has less than an hour..."

Piper nodded, took the power binding spell and handed the rest back to Prue. Without a word, she got out and made for the door. And just as she was about to ring the bell, the middle sister looked through the thin curtains hanging over the window first.

Her heart broke a little, as Piper saw her future daughter Melinda playing with a Barbie doll. The kid looked so at peace, with not a care in the world...

Piper tried to gather the courage to read the spell to bind her daughter's powers, but she just couldn't. (This is going against all that I've learned about my family. When she grows up, will she ever forgive me for stripping her powers today? Letting die all the innocents she was meant to save?)

The witch then heard the sound of orbing behind her, but didn't bother to look back. Her eyes were locked totally onto Melinda, and what she represented.

"You can't do it, can you?" Leo asked her softly.

"No," she sniffed. "Our grandmother did it to us for protection. But to do it to her forever?"

He looked through the window, at their only child. "You don't have to bind her powers, Piper. Your future self and I agreed that I'd take care of her, and I will - I promise."

Piper had no doubt about that part of it. "I know you will." She then finally asked the question she had been wondering about, all this time. "So, we were together. Does that mean you clipped your wings for me?"

"No," he told her at once. "You wouldn't let me." Piper could see his sad face in the reflection of the glass. "We tried to make it work, despite our powers. I swear, we tried. But we just couldn't. And then all this happened..."

"Were we happy?" the poor woman whispered the question. Hoping that their future had some glimmer of joy. "Just for a little while, were we happy?"

Leo smiled a little. "Very. Piper, I've lived a long time now, and will for a lot longer. But those years with you...will always be the best of either of my lives."

Tears fell when he admitted that. And it took her a few moments to collect herself, before Piper turned to face him. "Are you gonna try and stop us?"

The whitelighter just shook his head. "I can't do that."

Thus, the Wicca gave him a small look of thanks. "I hope you understand why I have to do what I'm doing."

"Yeah," Leo replied absently.

"What are we gonna do?" his companion wondered.

Leo looked away for a moment, trying to cover the feelings this was bringing up in him as well. "What we always do."

Piper closed her eyes at that, before she agreed. "Talk about it later."

She gave him one last warm smile, before the woman turned and walked back down the steps to the car. Piper tried to hold all her feelings in, as she swiftly got back in the passenger seat; but didn't do very well.

After a moment, she looked at her sister. As Prue was just sitting there, staring at the windshield. "What is it, Prue? What's wrong?"

"I have no one to say goodbye to." The eldest Halliwell slowly turned to face her. "They didn't even know who you were at the office, my own sister. If we die tonight, my tombstone will read 'Here lies Prue, she worked hard'."

"We're not gonna die. We're gonna find a way back to the present and we'll create a new future," Piper said very firmly, full of conviction. "Somehow Leo and I are going to make it work, and raise Melinda in a loving home. Cordelia and Xander will end up together too, and never get murdered or put on death row. Hell, we'll even save Xander's friends! And you, my big sister, will have the life you always wanted."

"I don't know," Prue told her, still sullen. "What if we can't? What if we can never go home? According to Cordelia's premonition, we fail."

Piper didn't hesitate. "Our future selves fail. We still have a shot."

Prue stared at her for a moment before saying, "You're right...you're right." She pulled on her seatbelt. "Let's go get Cordelia."

Piper nodded her agreement and tossed the binding spell into the back seat, ignoring it completely.

---

Outside the perimeter of the penitentiary. A few minutes later

The two oldest Halliwell sisters quickly ran past the guards, after casting the spell to blind them of their approach. "So far so good," Prue said, as they ducked behind some large electrical boxes. "Except normal people usually break out of prison."

"Nothing normal about our lives anymore."

They reached the main building, still undetected. Piper looked up at the concrete exterior in worry; but Prue just took out the 'Create a Door' spell. "No place like here," she said to herself, as the oldest sister bent down and drew the outline of a door into the building's exterior.

"When you find your path is blocked, all you have to do is knock," Piper read, and then knocked within the area Prue had outlined. The wall just bent inwards, as a real door appeared. As soon as the sisters went through though, the wall sealed up as if nothing had ever happened.

---

Inside her prison cell, Cordelia watched without a word as two guards came in and began to shackle her feet together. She tried her best to keep a strong front, but deep inside the girl felt like she'd just been gutted like a fish.

(Something bad has to have happened to Xander,) the young woman thought to herself, in a semi-daze. (My big doofus woulda been here by now, otherwise...)

---

"Freeze!"

Piper looked in annoyance at the guard that now had a gun pointed at her head. "Good idea!" She quickly used her powers to freeze him in place.

Prue looked over the map they'd found in the Book of Shadows. "Alright, the cell should be up those stairs, come on. She'll be guarded, are you ready for this?"

"Do we have a choice?" Piper asked rhetorically, as they headed for the stairs.

Then they quickly noticed the lack of any further guards in the hallway, "No..." Prue whispered to herself, as she understood what that meant. The sisters broke into a run, and quickly arrived in front of Cordelia's glass cell.

The door was wide open, and the cell very much empty.

"We're too late," Piper whispered, as she started to tear up.

Prue checked the map, before yanking her sister along. "We have a few minutes! Time to go for broke!"

---

The room was a large, modified gas chamber. Cordelia guessed correctly that she was not the only one to have been brought to this room. Just the first one to die like this.

In its middle was a large octagon-shaped platform, with a pole sticking out from the center. Recessed lines went from the base of the pole, to the edges of the platform. As she was chained to the metal part of the pole, Cordy saw Pratt. He was looking over the horde of reporters, that were pressing in to see on the other side of the observation windows.

Pratt eventually turned, and slowly walked over to her. He took a big whiff of the air, "I love the smell of burnt witch in the morning."

"At least I'm paying for my crime," the former ruler of the high school elite told him defiantly. "There'll come a day where you have to pay for yours, too."

Pratt looked at her smugly. "Defiant to the end, huh?" He leaned in, so that only she could hear. "Make sure you tell Satan that I'll be sending all his witches back to him soon..."

Then the man simply turned away and walked back over to the windows, where many TV cameras were focused on him. Pratt then slipped into politician mode easily, "Let today be a lesson to all those who would seek to defy human nature with their way of life! Let today serve notice that black magic will not be tolerated in our society, and let today be remembered as the day we burned the witch!"

And with those words, he pointed as he did in the first premonition Cordy had had in her living room. The guard turned a dial, and Cordelia quickly smelled the gas underneath her.

"Piper, freeze them!"

Cordelia's head snapped around, to see her two older sisters bursting into the room from the door she had been brought in. "Prue, Piper?" Nobody said anything; everyone else in the room and the viewing room were frozen.

"We're getting you outta here," Piper told her simply, as she undid the bonds. She then quickly pulled Cordelia down off the platform.

"No, wait. You can't!" Cordy suddenly had an epiphany.

"What are you talking about?!" Prue demanded of her.

Cordelia looked at both of them. "You guys have to leave. I deserve to be here...or my future self does."

Piper vehemently shook her head. "You killed a killer! Don't be ridiculous..."

Prue made Cordelia look at her. "Look, this is Pratt's personal crusade. This isn't about us, this is about him! Wherever we go, he will follow us." Prue didn't understand the real effect that her words are having on her little sister. "He will hunt us. He will hunt our families. If anybody should be punished, it should be him!"

The now-blond Prue looked over to the suspended Pratt, then back to her hand. She suddenly made an unholy decision and turned fully toward him, raising her hands.

Cordelia instantly grabbed her, "Prue, what are you doing?!"

"Saving the future good witches of the world, along with our own future."

Cordy looked at her in horror, her eyes wide. "No! Don't you become a murderer too..." Her voice grew soft. "It has to end with me."

Prue just stared back at her, while Piper whispered fiercely, "Cordy, he was evil, he deserved what you-"

As the youngest sister started to cry, Cordelia told her, "Wrong things done for the right reasons, are still the wrong things." The tears fell freely now. "Our job is to protect the innocent, not punish the guilty."

The Charmed One had to wipe her eyes. "I crossed that line, I know that. And now you guys have to know it too."

Seeing their youngest sister like this, Prue and Piper start crying as well. "We are not leaving here without you. You're our baby sister - we just found you a year ago, damn it!" Prue shouted.

Cordelia took a hand from each of them in hers. "Prue, we were sent here for a reason. Maybe not to stop this, like we thought...but maybe to understand why this has to happen. Why you have to let this happen."

The young woman about to executed had to take a deep breath. "I don't want to die. But I don't want you to die because of me. And what the hell, I'll be okay - at least I'll be with Xander again..."

"You know about that?" Piper asked, surprised.

"Not the details, but I kinda figured it out when he didn't show up with you," Cordelia said in despair, before she hugged her sisters tightly. "I love you both." And with that, Cordelia walked back to the platform and placed her hands back in the cuffs.

"Unfreeze them," she then ordered Piper.

Piper shook her head. "You'll die!"

"And countless others will die if I don't!" Cordelia called back, trying to not start crying again. "It has to be this way..."

In the next moment though, the room unfroze on its own. Nobody aware of anything wrong, the guard pushed the buttons causing flames to erupt from the edges of the platform.

Cordelia shuddered as she felt the heat. In what would be her last moments she called out, "I'm coming, Xander!"

Then the flames surged through the entire platform.

Piper and Prue held on tightly to each other, crying; and as each death scream of their once-lost baby sister sounded, they clutched each other tighter. Pratt didn't pay them any attention, as he was too busy watching with satisfaction as Cordelia burned. The smug bastard was enjoying every moment of this.

He was doing both the people's and God's work, after all.

---

Halliwell Manor living room. July 15, 2000

The golden lights appeared again in the Halliwell residence. This time, they deposited two people in front of the couch. The two women continued to weep, until Piper was able to notice something.

She opened her eyes slowly, not wanting to see what was left of her little sister. But Piper didn't see what she thought she would. "Prue?"

The eldest put her head up, and looked around in surprise. They were back home. She also vaguely noticed that they were in the clothes they'd had on, before the trip into the future. "What are we doing here?"

"Cordelia?" Piper called, but got no response. Turning back to Prue she asked, "You don't think she was...what we saw..."

Prue grasped her sister's hand. "I know. Oh, please God, don't let it be true. Cordelia!"

There was a pause when both feared the worst, but then Cordy appeared from the dining room. She walked slowly to them, and grabbed them both into a silent hug.

As the three clutched each other, Piper whispered, "We thought that we lost you-"

"You did. I got burned alive," Cordelia said with a sniff. "I could...I could feel the flames on my skin. And then I was here." She pulled back to look at them. "I don't know what happened."

Prue tried to soothe her. "It's okay, you're safe now, you're home."

"Home, sure," Piper grumbled. "But when?"

She grabbed the TV remote off the coffee table, and hit power. The ESPN anchor was talking, "And Cal Greene tied the record yesterday, when he smashed his sixth grand slam of the year..."

Cordelia couldn't believe it. "Wait, that's the baseball player. That's what triggered my premonition!" She looked back at her siblings. "We're right back where we started. The day we cast the spell!"

"Why?" the middle child wondered.

"Maybe because it worked," Prue figured. "We were sent into the future to find out what Cordy did. And we came back to stop it from happening."

Piper wasn't buying it. "But we didn't cast a spell to come back. We didn't even have one!"

"Maybe they sent us back," Cordelia thought.

Piper shook her head. "Who? And why today? If we were sent back to keep that future from happening, shouldn't we have been sent back to the day Cordelia killed Cal Greene instead?"

A familiar dog bark caused a look of disbelief on their faces. The two oldest siblings opened the window, "Not again!"

Both watched as just as before, the dog squatted down while its owner did nothing. "This guy still hasn't learnt his lesson," Piper said, before she quickly froze him and the dog.

"And apparently, neither have we."

Prue and Piper turned back to look at Cordelia with confusion. "I think this is why we were sent back here, to this moment in time," the youngest Charmed One told them. "This is where it all started. The first time we used our magic for...revenge."

A look that said 'huh?' passed over Piper's features. "But it's just a little thing, it's harmless-"

"Yeah, it is," Cordelia agreed. "But once you break the small rules, it's only a matter of time before the big ones come next."

Prue thought about it for a moment, and then told her sister with a bit of pride in her voice, "A very smart girl once told me that we were supposed to protect the innocent, not punish the guilty."

"I haven't told you that - yet."

Piper clasped her hand on Cordelia's shoulder. "Maybe you won't have to."

They shared a silent bonding moment that was broken, when Prue saw the frozen face of the owner of the dog. "Pratt??"

Cordelia came over quickly, as they all looked to see that it was indeed Nathaniel Pratt holding the leash of the dog. Not knowing what else to do, Piper quickly unfroze him.

Pratt looked around, confused for a moment, before he looked back to the manor. His confusion only grew, as he saw the three women staring at him with strange looks on their faces. So he quickly tugged on his dog's leash, and crossed the street.

The Charmed Ones watched him quickly leave. "Do you think we should follow him?" Prue asked.

"No," Cordelia answered. "Because you know what? Our little act of revenge might just have been what sent Pratt on his path to seek his own."

"Which would have him start the future witch trials?" Piper concluded.

"Well, hopefully now he won't," Cordelia said, turning away from the window.

"I still think we should keep an eye on him just in case," Prue added, not wanting to let that man be forgotten.

"Absolutely," Piper agreed, before she closed the window.

"What's up?" Cordelia asked, as Prue grabbed the cordless phone.

"Not work!" Prue told her. "There is no way I am going to the office today. I'm going to hang out with you guys." That definitely brought smiles to both her sisters' faces.

Prue then added, "We all have a lot of changes to make, if we want to avoid ending up where we just came from."

"Hey, the future wasn't all bad!" Piper admitted. "You were like Miss Fortune 500, and I had a beautiful little girl."

Cordelia's eyes went wide at the words 'little girl'. "What?!"

"Details later," Piper told her.

Prue set the phone back down for a moment. "You know, we can still make the good things happen, Piper. We just have to make the right choices."

Piper had to agree with that. "So, maybe Leo and I will end up together."

"Wait, you and Leo?" Cordelia demanded, not liking being left out of the loop like this. "What else did I miss out on, while I was getting burned alive?"

The sound of the front door opening stopped the conversation, though.

Xander Harris looked at the witches in confusion, as he came around the corner. All three Halliwell sisters were looking at him strangely. And Cordelia had a huge tear falling down her cheek, before she charged towards him and took young Mr. Harris into a huge, crushing hug.

"What-?" he asked in confusion.

"Nice to see you still alive and kicking, Xander," Prue told him.

"Ah...thanks," the male teenager replied, now more confused than ever. His confusion then turned to concern, when Cordelia wouldn't let go. He heard her sniffling and crying, in the way she hadn't done ever since he'd accidentally eavesdropped that one time during high school. "Cor, have you been crying? What's wrong?!"

"It's a long story," Cordelia told him softly, as she dragged him over to the couch. As he sat at one end, she put her head in his lap and stretched out the length of the sofa. Taking his hand in hers, she told her ex-boyfriend, "And I would rather lay here, while we fill you in on all of it."

Prue and Piper watched the two best friends with warm grins. Piper kept standing, as Prue sat in the recliner. "They can fill you in, Xander..." She moved to the front foyer. "Because I'm gong to be busy in about, three...two...one."

Right on cue, the doorbell rang.

Piper left the others behind in the living room, and quickly pulled the door open. As she'd expected, Leo was standing there just as he'd been before. "Hey, stranger."

This time, however, before the whitelighter could say anything - Piper grabbed him by the shirt, and yanked him towards her. She then wrapped her arms around his neck, and pulls him into a passionate kiss. One that only grew and grew, when he wrapped his own arms around her.

After it was done, Leo was more then a little tipsy. "I would have settled for a nice 'hello'."

Piper puts her hands on her hips. "Didn't anyone tell you not to settle?"

"That's a good lesson."

"I've been learning a lot of them lately," the woman told him simply.

"So I've heard."

Her smile fell a tiny bit, after Piper heard her love say that. She didn't want to deal with that bitter Leo that she'd encountered, upon going forward in time...

"Look, honestly, I didn't know you were gonna be sent to the future," the whitelighter then told her truthfully. "I don't even know what happened, when you got there. All I was told was that, apparently, you had something to learn."

"So, that's why you're here?" the middle sister asked, annoyed again.

"No," he said with a knowing look. "That's why you're here. You three were given a glimpse of your future, to learn a valuable lesson. And I'm glad you learned it too, because I know they wouldn't have brought you back if you hadn't."

Leo then frowned a little. "Speaking of which, they're making me work tonight, so I can't really-"

"This is always gonna be a problem for us, isn't it?" the brunette witch asked with a sigh.

"I'm willing to work on it."

"Good," Piper said, happy. "Don't ever forget you said that."

"I won't," Leo replied, before his woman leaned in and they started to kiss passionately again.

While the five people in the manor were occupied with each other. None of them noticed the shadow in the shape of a man by the potted plant at the entrance to the living room. Because of their not noticing, no one saw that the shadow was not attached to a man at all. After a few more minutes the shadow seemed to melt into the seams of the floorboards.

It might have saved them some major angst in the future if they had seen it, but they didn't.

---

Many miles away…

In his private office as the newly appointed Assistant District Attorney, Cole Turner had just finished up a conference call when he saw the shadow move up from the floor. "It's about time!" He grumbled as he quickly closed his office door. "Well, what did you find out for me?"

The shadow simply joined up with him and retook its place as his normal shadow. It took him only moments to take in all it had seen and heard.

"Well." He said aloud. "It looks like she's more attached to him than I thought. I'll have to work a plan to separate them. Cordelia is still the best way to gain their trust." He thinks for a moment. "Killing them should be child's play."

---

Halliwell Manor backyard. Several hours later

On the patio off the solarium, Prue and Cordelia were sitting on the long deck chairs in bikinis, sunbathing in the glorious summer weather and drinking their diet Cokes. Well, Cordelia was also enjoying watching a shirtless Xander sweating, as he unrolled another roll of premade sod...

After a while, Prue turned to her sister. "You are one weird woman, little sis."

Cordelia tore herself away from watching Xander's abs to ask, "Why do you say that?"

"Why?" Prue demanded, surprised. "We go to the future. You get burned alive for killing your future husband's..." she pointed to the out-of-earshot Xander, "...murderer, and you barely make it back home alive. And now here you are, just hours later, sunbathing, watching your man working up a nice sweat - doing yard work!"

"Hey, something like this was all I was wishing for back in that prison cell," Cordelia said at once, defending herself. "To have a normal day, just sitting around and checking out a great view."

Prue looked her over. "In that little bikini, you've been giving him a good view as well! But, Cordy...for God's sake, now that you know you're eventually going to end up with him at the altar...just tell him how you really feel, already!"

"Ah, about that..." Cordelia mused. "I don't want to go that far yet, not till after he knows everything."

Prue knew what that really meant. "The Mexico thing?"

"Yeah," Cordelia answered. "The Mexico thing. I've been thinking about what you guys said a while back, about telling him. And besides that, I want the moment when we finally get back together to be perfect..."

Prue simply shook her head. "Perfect moments only exist in the movies, sister dear. Just promise me you won't wait too long."

"I won't," Cordelia nodded at once, taking a sip from her diet soda.

They both then watched, as Xander stretched his arms out after a long period of digging. "You know what, Cordelia?" Prue mused, watching the young man before her with an appraising stare. "Don't wait too long, or I might just..."

Prue quickly paused, and then started laughing her ass off at her little sister's low growl. "What? Hey, anyone with eyes honestly can't deny the quality of that ass!"