Angelically Charmed: Sandhara
A/N: Title is from the movie Sahara. Sorry about the wait. Hope I still have some readers!
Reappearing back in the Solarium, Gideon changed back to his normal appearance and smoothed his robes before heading towards the living room to see Leo, Piper, and Paige hovering over Bane. Prue was standing several feet back in disbelief.
"There's nothing I can do he's gone" The poison had worked too fast. Since the birth of the Angelic Ones a new breed of darklighter had taken shape. Ones with stronger powers to counter act Melinda's ability to heal the dead. Leo quietly pulled his hands away while Paige sat there looking helpless.
"What? No, maybe if we both try" She was half whitelighter with guardian chargers of her own and although she had never healed before she had to try. Pushing her hands forward, she held them over Bane's chest.
Gideon knelt joining the crowd and gently pulled Paige's hands away. "I'm sorry Paige, healing isn't your gift. This new strain of darklighter is too strong" Forcing his face into a frown, they all watched as Bane's body orbed away into nothingness.
"Losing a whitelighter, even a new one is always great lose"
"I just can't believe that Andy would do something like this" Paige whispered staying on her knees to stare at the spot where Bane's body had been.
"Neither can I," Prue, spoke with Piper's voice for the first time since she'd seen Andy and the dark lighter attack Bane.
"But you saw him with your own eyes" Paige countered causing Gideon to grin inwardly. All he needed was for one sister to believe and the rest would follow.
"Did I?" Prue's teeth unconsciously sank into her bottom lip as the youngest of the Charmed one's rose to her feet. "If there is one thing I've learned in my time as a witch it's that you can't always trust in what you see. Andy couldn't have killed Bane, at least not without being under the influence of evil. He doesn't have it in him to destroy an innocent, if he did Andy and I would have never been to conceive angelic children, especially Austin" Austin wasn't like her half-mortal sisters, she was one hundred percent angelic, and of a pure spirit.
"Damn her" Gideon thought that after the tryst with Francis and the events leading up to Bane's death that he had the raven-haired witch right where he wanted her. Gideon seethed silently as Prue looked to Leo for clarification
"Prue's right " the whitelighter nodded, "Tracers are akin to white lighters in the fashion that they are chosen because of their innate sense of goodness. They don't possess the ability to harm innocent beings with some sort of evil being attached.
"Oh Yeah?" Despite what she felt for her brother in law and Prue, Paige remained steadfast holding her ground. "Well what about the time he tried to vanquish Natalie after she kidnapped Amanda. Didn't he contact a dark lighter for that too?"
"Paige has a point," Gideon said coolly feeling a little more at ease. Perhaps he'd be able to pull this off yet.
Shaking her head, Piper reached for the small whiteboard and Expo marker she'd left on the end table for Prue and started to scribble.
"Hello! Can anyone say betrayed by your whitelighter in the worse possible way?"
She watched with annoyance as Leo sheepishly began to scratch his cheek in ponderance. Angrily she gestured something with her hands and then went back to writing, her brown eyes wide with irritation "Oh come on! You can't tell that you wouldn't have done the exact same thing if it had been Melinda. Not to mention Natalie hardly qualifies as an innocent"
"Neither does Bane for that matter" Paige quipped before raising her chestnut eyes to her big sister, "But that doesn't mean we can't just deny that he was murdered in our living room or the fact that we saw Andy with a dark lighter"
Prue stood silent just staring at Paige; a sense of foreboding washing over her. Was this how she had sounded when Cole had been set up by Raynor for killing an innocent witch? Never before had she wanted Phoebe with her than at this moment. Phoebe would understand her feelings of conflict.
Gideon cleared his throat, " I'm sorry Prue believing that Andy is innocent doesn't clear his name. The other Elder's are going to want to see justice just as they did when they believed that Piper killed their colleagues"
"Then we'll just have to find Andy before they do," Prue crossed over to the computer desk and sat down preparing to scry. "Uh Piper you want to show me how this works?"
Swallowing back a lump of rage, Gideon quietly balled his fists hiding back his anger before nodding to Leo. "If you'll excuse me, I have to go check with the other Elders. Perhaps I can buy Andy some time before they send their own legion of tracers out after him on a bounty"
"Sure" Leo nodded unable to shake his own sense of de ja vu.
"Piper this is a picture of sand!" Prue's brow furrowed as she stared at the picture of San Francisco Bay. "We've already been there and Andy was nowhere to be found"
"Hmm..well maybe it's like I said before he's invisible" Paige couldn't look her sister in the eye. Things were just too complicated at the moment.
"I already told you Andy would never hide from me!" Unconsciously Prue's hands slammed down on the keyboard causing the image to disappear.
"He would if he'd done something he didn't want you to know about" For some reason Paige couldn't help from being the antagonist at the moment, it was if as she wasn't in control of her own fears. She didn't want to believe that Andy had killed Bane but deep down inside she had a small cloud of fear that she just couldn't deny.
Over in the corner of the room, an astral projection of Barbus appeared, grinning and gloating. "That's it use your fear to make Prue doubt her husband. Her greatest fear at the moment is finding out that her so called angelic husband isn't as angelic as she thinks"
Manically he laughed and faded away.
Paige closed her eyes for a moment before placing her hands on a shoulder of each of her sisters. There had to be a magical explanation for the why the computer had pinpointed the bay confirming Amanda's ability to track her father "Look let's just go back to the beach and take another look around, maybe we missed something and if we don't find anything we can come back and try something else"
"Fine" Prue huffed allowing herself to be transported in a flurry of swirling orbs.
Realm of the Avatars
Francis stood in front of a full-length mirror donning the cloak of one of the deceased Avatars. She had just pulled the dark hood over her lightly colored locks when orbs appeared.
"My how lovely you look, too bad you aren't the real thing…" Gideon snorted standing behind her.
Slowly she slipped the hood from her head, "Please don't think you can charm me, I am far cry from Natalie after all."
"That you are. You've loved the best of them haven't you? " Unlike Francis, Natalie had been insecure and was inwardly starving for love which had made her vulnerable to Gideon's advances.
"You could say, I find sexual attraction a conquest, much like my brother Bane. Speaking of which, I haven't seen him since this whitelighter charade started, how's he doing?"
"Yeah about that" Gideon rubbed his chin and raised his eyes stoically, "I'm afraid, he's been vanquished…harzard of the job" The elder watched carefully as Francis clenched her fists, prompting her body to shake violently with rage.
Her frosted gold colored hair began to turn gray, her chestnut colored eyes to blood red, and ivory colored skin, ashen. Gnarled fangs took the place of once pearly white teeth. A deep throaty growl rose up from the bottom of her throat, making her sound like the demonic sorceresses, she truly was…"by whom?"
Gideon merely opened his cloak revealing Mandela's relic arrow.
San Francisco Bay
"He isn't here" Standing on the beach Prue out an exasperated sigh and brushed a stray hair away from her face. The wind had picked up blowing graduals of sand this way and that leaving the feel of sandpaper against her pale skin.
Piper crinkled her nose at the feel of sand against her cheek.
"He has to be, the cyber scrying can't be wrong," Paige's eyes narrowed against the grit as the speed of the blowing sand began to pick up forcing her to shield her face with her hands.
"Who says?" Prue bit back a little fiercer than she meant too. She didn't want to admit it, but at the moment she didn't know if she really wanted to face Andy.
"Oh yeah well what about your daughter's sense to track orbs?" Paige shot out her hand. "Are saying that 's wrong too?"
"Uh…" Prue opened her mouth to speak and then promptly closed it. A muffled rumble started to form beneath their feet giving weight to the sensation of an earthquake. The intuitive witch then looked to her left and too her right noting a small funnel of sand forming just yards away.
"I think we'd better get out of here" Paige answered for her big sister. She had just started to reach for Prue's hand, along with Piper's when a massive explosion erupted from underground blasting sand and orbs several hundred of feet into the air in a mushroom cloud fashion.
Instinctively, Piper's explosion forming hands formed a counter blast of their own as she went sailing, through the air along with her two sisters, landing firmly on her left hip.
"All right what the hell was that?" Prue lay on her stomach for several seconds spitting sand while fragments of the blast cleared, making way for a distorted sand-mix view. Paige was the first to fully sit up raking her hair away from her eyes.
"I could be wrong but I think that it was your husband" There before them in the midst of the sand storm orbs reconfigured forming into Andy holding his crossbow. "Where did he get an explosive power like that?"
"He didn't" Prue pulled to her feet noting that behind Andy several sand demons had emerged, ready for battle. "The sand demons must have pulled him underground, that's why we were still picking up on his presence." The oldest Charmed one took off in dead run, fists clenched.
"Which means if he was underground all this time he couldn't have possibly killed Bane" Paige cocked her head glancing at Piper. "Could he?"
The middle Charmed one simply did her famous eye roll, throwing up her hands for another counter blast.
"Nice entrance," Prue chided taking a defensive stance at Andy's side, as Piper's molecular burst obliterated several of the demons.
Andy blinked for moment at the sound of Piper's voice springing from Prue's lips but then dismissed it. "Yeah, well I thought it best if maybe I didn't sneak up. I wouldn't want to interrupt a moment with Bane or anything". The moment with Bane kissing Prue on their bed was still fresh in his mind. With his crossbow drawn at eye level, Andy pulled the trigger, hitting one demon dead center in the stomach.
"That's not fair, you didn't even give me a chance to explain!" Prue countered waving her wrist at a demon that had hurled a massive blast of sand in her direction.
"You and Bane in our bed, I think that's all pretty clear" At least it was clear in his bruised male ego mind.
"Everything's clear huh?" Prue retorted sarcastically, "That why you and your darklighter friend killed Bane?"
"WHAT?" Shocked, by Prue's admission, Andy lowered his guard. He and Prue were both so taken by their own situation that neither of them saw the huge wave of Sand coming at them from the left side.
"Prue!" Paige shouted before thrusting her hands forward, in a fashion similar to her oldest sister. "Force Field!" Much to Paige's surprise a blue protective field orbed from her palm to Prue and Andy covering them in a blue glow. Never before had she been able to combine her power of orbing with her force field protection.
"Well that's new" she quipped staring at her hand while Piper watched wide-eyed as the wave of sand poured over Prue and Andy raining down the sides of the force field.She could see that inside her sister and brother in-law were still arguing. Looking heavenward she shook her head. "When we get home those two need a serious marital intervention," she thought before motioning to Paige.
"Spell Missy" she started say only to have her words come out like baby jargo.
"Huh?" Paige's head jerked forcing Piper to kneel in the sand. Slowly she wrote the word, "S-P-E-L-L" in the sand with her finger before having to fend off yet another sand creature.
"You want me to say a spell?" Paige repeated, "but I don't know one, we've never faced Sand Demons before!"
"Shax" Piper wrote
Paige nodded "Evil sand that blows, no longer will you dwell, let Death take you with this spell!"
Paige rolled her eyes as a monstrous pile of sand engulfed the demons and pulled them below the earth in time with an explosive vanquishing sound, " Okay that's a power of three spell, isn't that cheating or something?"
Piper gave and irritated sigh and waved to Paige indicating that she was ready to go home.
"What about them?" Paige asked noting that Prue and Andy were still arguing inside the force field.
Piper again waved her hand dismissively signaling for Paige to orb them all home. Orbs engulfed the force field and deposited it in the middle of the living room.
"Force Field Down" Paige twirled a finger causing the force field to disappear freeing the heated couple.
"DO YOU HONESTLY BELIEVE THAT I KILLED BANE?" Paige heard Andy snarl.
"I do" Francis stood in skeletal form her palms extended forward, conjuring the tip of the relic arrowhead. Flames appeared around the arrow as it shot out from her hands, spearing Andy on the left side of his chest.
"Andy!" Prue's eyes widened in horror as she watched her husband stumble to the floor. A large pool of blood began to form from the gaping hole in Andy's chest. LEO!"
Piper flexed her hands at Francis engulfing the skeletal demoness with a vanquishing blast. Bits of hair burned as did skin until nothing but a screaming skeleton was left. The middle Charmed one winced at the power of her own blast as bits of demonic bone were splattered across the manor.
Piper then watched mutely as Paige and Prue continued to shout for her husband.
LEO! LEO!
"I do-don't need Leo" Andy rasped shrugging away Prue's hand as she tried to tend to the wound. "He can't help"