Hi! Sorry about the very, very long wait for this chapter - but, I've been busy this year studying for the most hyped up, stressful exams in Ireland. Finally, I'm finished! In fact, I'm currently too anxious to sleep because, in a little over nine hours, I'm going to get the results for my exams and I'll get an idea of what my immediate future is going to be. Best of luck to anyone else who are getting their Leaving Cert results tomorrow (today)! I hope it goes well, if not, we can always repeat!

Phoebe paused in the act of pushing Chris down when the sounds of a fight filtered down to them through the floorboards. She took a moment to worry about Piper. She only had the moment considering that her white lighter was still struggling against her. Chris wasn't very strong at the moment, but Phoebe didn't want to hurt him when he was already so weak.

"She's not alone," Paige told Chris. She bounced Wyatt in her arms. When Chris had moved suddenly, she had grabbed the toddler and pulled him away just in case he fell off the bed. At least it made her feel a little less useless while Phoebe was trying to calm Chris. "She was with two other women and three men."

Phoebe didn't miss the little look that Paige shot her out of the corner of her eye. She would need to interrogate her little sister over that once this situation was over. She hadn't missed how strange she was when she was trying to get Leo upstairs. "Piper will look after her, Chris. She'll be fine," she tried to reassure him. Internally, Phoebe's mind was whirring about the knowledge that Chris had a sister. Mel, that was short for Melinda – as in Melinda Warren, their ancestor.

She wanted to believe that she was just making up connections where they weren't, but in her heart, Phoebe knew that she wasn't.

She pressed her hand to Chris's forehead again, it had seemed to calm him down the last time. She winced at the heat pouring off of him. "Chris, you need to lie down. You've been poisoned," she reminded him. "You can't just jump around, it's making you worse."

"I can't," Chris snapped. "She's my sister."

"Chris -" Phoebe was ready to sit on Chris to hold him down but the skin to skin contact with him made her empathy powers abruptly act up. Chris was normally such a closed book to her that the sudden rush of emotion made her gasp.

Panic. Pain, not all physical. Loss. Love. Fear. So much fear. Panic. Worry. Annoyance. Panic.

He was really panicking.

Phoebe made a grab for Chris he could move again. Maybe it was her sudden empathy link with him, but she knew that he was about to orb away before he did it. "Chris, no!" She ordered, firmly.

Chris ignored her. He tried to orb. Tried, being the operative word. Blue orbs swirled around Chris but disappeared just as quickly as Chris curled forwards with a muted cry of pain.

Wyatt cried in response and tried to struggle out of Paige's arms. In vain, she tried to quieten him down while Phoebe tried to soothe Chris.

It didn't work.

Upstairs, the sounds of fighting continued, drowning them out in the sea of demon shouting and witches attacking.

~Poisoned~

After what felt like hours, the last demon fell. He was either shot by one of PJ's arrows, stabbed by Matt's dagger or struck by Cole's fireball. It was hard to tell. All Mel knew was that it hadn't been her, or her parents-who-were-not-yet-her-parents.

Said not-yet-parents turned to each other once the fighting ended. Mel ignored them for the moment. She took in the condition of her family.

Henry was still on the ground, looking decidedly green at all the demon bits scattered around the room, but otherwise he was no more hurt than he had been. Matt had done his job exceptionally well.

The half-demon in question met her eyes when she saw him. He offered a tight smile. One hand was curled tightly around his upper right arm. She could just about make out the blood oozing down his arm among the demon gunk. Other than that, he was unhurt.

Mel smiled back at him, relieved.

PJ had fared better than Matt. She looked incredibly haggard and exhausted, but she was still grinning. The half-cupid loved fighting, and this had probably been a particular challenge for her. Especially since they usually made PJ act as a sniper with her bow. She was as well trained in hand-to-hand as any of them, probably more so, but she was the best of the resistance at long range fighting.

Kat had a long bleeding cut across her cheek and she seemed even more tired than PJ, but Mel suspected that it was just fear. Losing Tam so suddenly, and with Henry still injured, was probably upsetting her more than any injury she might have.

The final member of their travelling party, Cole, was doing his very best to make himself unseen. While Mel hadn't been looking, Cole had slunk over to Henry Jr. With Matt's help, he was trying to pull Henry to his feet. It wasn't working.

Mel hurried over to join them and barely hid a gasp at the stabbing pain in her stomach. She bit back a moan of pain, wrapping her arms around her middle. A warmth spread against her arms.

Hesitantly, she pulled away one arm to glance down at her filthy shirt. She could see a slowly growing stain of red. She hadn't even felt anything. It must have been a small weapon, she mused. Probably a knife, rather than an arrow, she clinically noted.

Then the pain hit. Mel bit back a scream. She had been stabbed before. Stabbed. Shot with an arrow. Shot by a gun. Sliced by broken glass. Even struck by lightning by an overzealous Elder – an Elder who hadn't even lived long enough to realise the foolishness of his mistake in attacking a child of a Charmed One and an Elder. But none of it had hurt like this.

It wasn't her pain, Mel knew instantly. She hadn't felt any connection to Chris since he had stepped through the portal to the past. Now, it seemed as though that link was trying to make her feel every moment of the pain Chris had experienced since then.

With a careful inhale, Mel straightened. She adjusted her stance, tightening her hold around her middle. If this was the second-hand version of what Chris was feeling, then Mel didn't want to imagine the full experience.

She walked as normally as she could manage over to stand next to Matt. With PJ's help, he and Cole had gotten Henry standing up and now he was being fussed over by Kat.

"We need to get to Chris. Now," she hissed into Matt's ear.

Concerned eyes swept over her. Matt's mouth tightened as he noticed the way she was holding her stomach. "Mel…" he murmured, to not draw attention to her.

"Now, Matthew," she replied, sliding a hand into his as to drag him if she needed. Unfortunately, Leo stopped her.

"What is Cole doing here?" He demanded.

"We're here for Chris," PJ explained, swiftly moving to shield Cole from any attacks from Leo.

"We're his family," Kat added.

"His family?" Leo repeated, doubtfully.

"Why are you here now?" Piper asked, before Leo could say anything else.

Mel was grateful for her mom's interruption. Just because she and her father was on civil terms again, and she knew that either of their deaths would devastate the other, didn't mean that the years of unresolved issues and anger with the Elder would disappear. She didn't want to explode at the man when it would only upset the situation even further.

"We found out that Chris was poisoned," Cole explained. "The cure hasn't been found yet. The poison isn't even known about yet."

"How did you know that Chris had been poisoned?" Leo asked, suspiciously.

Mel swallowed. "Wyatt told us," she said. "After he…" she couldn't say it.

"After he killed my sister," Kat spoke up. Her voice sounded strong, but Mel could see her shaking out of the corner of her eye. She could see Henry grab her hand to offer support while they dealt with their shared grief. Tam wasn't even dead a day but they all still had to carry on and keep carrying on no matter what.

"We can't let him kill Chris too," PJ stated. "Wyatt sent demons back in time to kill Chris, to stop him before Chris can stop Wyatt from even becoming the man he is. Chris can't save Wyatt if he dies here, and you can't save Chris without our help."

"But who are you?" Leo asked. "Who's Chris, for that matter? Why does he care so much about saving Wyatt when he could have killed him just as easily?"

Cole sighed. "We don't know how that could affect our future. We don't know how many lives could be erased without Wyatt being there."

"He wasn't always the monster we know him as," Mel added. "We all used to love him once."

Piper stared at her. "Who are you? How do you know my son?" She asked quietly.

"Wyatt's not important right now," Matt said. "We need to focus on Chris. Where is he?"

It was reassuring, terrifying, and painful all at once to see the fiercely protective mother in Piper. Her mother was in that woman, even if she wasn't her mother yet.

"You can't see Chris."

~Poisoned~

"You can't see Chris," Piper snapped, her mothering instincts were flaring up.

Someone needed to protect Chris, she couldn't know for certain if Chris really was related to these people. She couldn't deny that the girl she had fought alongside, Mel, was very similar to Chris, but she could just be a shapeshifting demon of some kind. She couldn't trust these strangers, not with Chris's life.

"Piper, please," Cole begged. "We want to help Chris. We care about him just as much as you do, possibly more," he added when Mel scoffed."You need our help to save him."

"We're going to save him, with or without your help," Mel snapped.

"But, things will be easier for us all - especially Chris - if we work together," Cole cut in. "We just want to help him."

Piper, as a rule, didn't trust Cole. She didn't like him. But she couldn't deny that he seemed genuine in his concern for Chris, and for the other children around him. And them for him. The girl with the bow in particular was physically shielding him from any harm.

"Speaking of help," the red head spoke up. "Leo? Feeling like being useful?" She pointed at Henry.

Piper shared a look with Leo, who looked unimpressed at being ordered around, but he still moved over to heal first Henry, then the red head, then the other man and finally Mel, who had turned very pale by that point.

The man stuck close to Mel, their hands touching. Piper kept a close eye on them. She recognised their readiness to orb or shimmer away. She wasn't going to let them anywhere near Chris until she was sure of who these people were.

"Piper?" The man said. "I know this is all hard to get your head around, but Cole is… maybe not good, but he's helping us. Kat and Henry have just lost their sister because of Wyatt, they want to help Chris stop that happening again more than anything. So does PJ. She lost her mother to Wyatt's tyranny. Chris is one of my oldest friends. My best friend. I've known him his entire life. Mel is his sister, she's not going to let anyone hurt him."

"You've known Chris your whole life?" Leo repeated, curious. "Who are you?"

The man hesitated. "I… I'm Matt. I…" he looked at Piper. "You've met my father. Derek?" He looked pained at the name, but his gaze didn't waver.

Piper recognised the name. The man who had turned himself into a monster to save his son. She remembered that his eyes were human. They matched the man in front of her.

A half demon and a half whitelighter being friends? Best friends? Piper certainly hadn't imagined the future being like that. Although, she mused, she preferred the thought that Chris was friends with a half-manticore rather than Cole's child. Even if that would only be a quarter-demon.

"You're the manticore baby," Piper said.

The man shrugged, self-consciously. "Half-manticore. And my dad named me Matt," he added. For good measure he flicked out his forked tongue.

Piper frowned. "Were you Wyatt's friend?" She wondered.

Matt tensed and shared a look with Mel. "Yes," he said, after a long moment. He sounded as pained as he did when he mentioned his father. What had happened to her darling baby boy? These people claimed to have loved him, but they called him a monster.

"Enough about Wyatt," Mel snapped. "We need to find some way to save Chris. And nothing is going to stop me from getting to my brother."

A flurry of orbs swarmed in front of Mel who, baffled, was left holding Wyatt in her arms. She stared down at him, slack jawed while Wyatt giggled. "Wow, you're small," Mel muttered.

"And blonde," Matt observed. "His hair gets darker," he added, taking Wyatt from Mel's awkward hold.

Piper moved forward and took Wyatt from Matt. It was promising that his shield didn't go up around the time travellers, but she didn't want to leave Wyatt or Chris alone with them. Mel was still staring, in awe, at Wyatt. Piper imagined that it was weird to see someone that you only knew as an adult, as a toddler. Something niggled at the back of her mind. Mel was Chris' sister, had she been Wyatt's friend too? Another witch-lighter? Surely they had known of each other.

Although… something about Mel's expression. Piper could see Chris in it. But she could see something else. Someone else.

The image of a little girl came to mind. A little girl in the Manor, playing with a dollhouse. A little girl named Melinda. Melinda. Mel.

Piper wasn't sure where the name Chris came from, but she was sure that his parents had a reason.

Her gaze flickered to the others assembled. The girl with the bow, PJ, had Phoebe's cheekbones. And she had the 'P'. So did Chris, Piper remembered. Chris Perry. She had wanted to name Wyatt Prudence Melinda. Had she reversed it for her daughter?

No, Piper thought. She refused to jump to conclusions. She was just concerned about her white-lighter, as any charge would be. Her maternal instincts had latched onto Chris to look after - God knows that someone had to - and now she was jumping to conclusions. She had always wanted more than one child, and she was starting to worry about her biological clock. That was all, she insisted.

But, Kat's sharp eyes were the exact same as Paige's.

No, Piper repeated. She was just seeing things. But the thought remained. Was Chris hers?

With any luck, I'll be posting another chapter tomorrow (today?). Provided, of course, that I haven't been murdered for my results :)

Hope you all enjoyed!