The Underworld was an unusual place for Matt. He was born here, half of him had come from here. The important parts of him had been forged with the Halliwells and by his father. He might be half a demon, but the most important part of him was the human part. That was the half of him that he identified himself by.

Cole might have struggled with his dual identity, but Matt knew himself better than that. He had grown up among half-breeds, he had grown up accepting his powers but also embracing his human half. His humanity was all from his father, the father that he loved, the father that had loved himself enough to turn himself into a monster to save him - and had never seen him as a monster when he had.

The Underworld was familiar in a way that was instinctual, but his home was San Francisco. His home was a ruined building. His home was with the Halliwells. He blended in in the Underworld, but he was accepted with the Halliwells.

But, it was somewhere that he knew well. His ability to blend in was invaluable. He had mapped out every inch of the Underworld in the future, usually with Chris and Mel. Once upon a time that hadn't happened yet, he had started the same journey with Wyatt.

Time had changed the Underworld, and it was different and strange to the place that he would come to know. But the general layout was still the same.

He hadn't ever gone demon hunting with Leo before, so he didn't know where the Elder liked to find demons, but he knew where the more social demons were - and they would know, if only to know where to avoid.

Beleth was an annoyance in the future, and he was even weaker in the past. Matt took a certain amount of satisfaction in drawing out what he wanted to know from him with only a few punches to the face. Matt knew a few of his half-demon kids in the future, and they all shared his - underserved - vanity. Some of them were good people, but they all got their looks from him.

Matt shimmered to the part of the Underworld where Leo was rumoured to be, wiping green blood off his knuckles as he did so. Demon blood was a pain to get out of clothes, but it couldn't be helped.

"Leo?" Matt called.

He spotted the Elder fighting a demon, and he hung back for a moment to allow it to finish. Leo might claim to be a pacifist, but Matt knew what his future self was capable of when he wanted to. He was perfectly placed to see a second demon trying to sneak up on Leo.

Matt sighed and slipped out of his hiding place, balancing his knife in the palm of his hand. He wasn't fast enough to reach the demon first, and he wasn't close enough for his other abilities to be much use. He took aim, sticking his forked tongue out of one corner of his mouth, and threw his knife.

It buried itself deep to the hilt in the back of the demon, below its right lung. It let out a startled and pained scream, and Leo noticed it just as the demon that he had been fighting disintegrated into dust.

Matt strolled over and caught the demon before it could collapse. "Leo, we need to talk."

"Not now," Leo snapped. He grabbed the demon by the neck. "I'm busy."

"He's not even an Archer demon," Matt said. "If Ryake came back to the past, then anyone else could've. Wherever the Archer demons were hiding out, they're somewhere else now. And this one wouldn't know where."

"How do you know?" Leo asked, and he sounded just like Mel or Chris did when they got into a Mood.

Matt actually had to pause for a moment to avoid laughing. Everyone always talked about how much those two took after their mother, and their aunt Prue, but Leo had clearly donated more than just his powers to his youngest two children.

"The Archer demons are run by a family - well, a demon family. Jarik and Lokl - and Ryake but he's not actually born yet, although he should be soon - share a father, he's the one in charge right now. Almost all his other sons were dead by the time they started bothering us, but they're the only ones who would know where the home base is," Matt explained. There was a good reason that he never wrote in the Book of Shadows, and it wasn't just his demon nature or his handwriting.

"What do we do with him then?"

Matt shrugged. He tugged his knife free from the demon's back, shifting his hold so that he didn't fall to the ground. "He'll probably die anyway." It was probably dangerous to be killing demons willy-nilly in the past, but it was definitely more dangerous to let them live. And Chris hadn't exactly been holding back on the demon hunts during his time in the past.

"Please, let me go," the demon pleaded. "I'll - I promise that I won't hurt you or the Charmed Ones. I don't know anything, but I could try to find out. I know people!"

"Up to you, Leo," Matt said. "It's not a bad idea to have an informer sometimes."

"Let him go," said Leo.

Matt released his hold on the demon, and it didn't wait to shimmer away, leaving only a stain in the dirt where it had been standing. "How'd it go with Gideon?"

"Not well. What did you need to tell me?" Leo said, brusquely.

"Ryake attacked the Manor, everyone's fine. And, we got the temporary cure for Chris, but who knows how long it'll last."

"The Manor was attacked? How are the boys? The sisters?"

Matt hid a smile again. "The sisters are fine. Kat can heal so she handled it. And Wyatt and Chris are alright."

Leo looked annoyed at the sparse details, and he didn't seem to notice that he had included his son with the witch-lighter that he had once claimed to hate in the same group. And that he had asked about Chris before his wife and his other charges.

"I need to get back."

"No," Matt interrupted, grabbing onto Leo so he couldn't orb away. "There's nothing you can do just sitting there. We need to keep working. This - finding information - is the best thing that we can do. If Gideon was a bust then who else can we ask? Are there any other Elders who might know how to help?" Matt asked, he pretended not to see the visible clenching of Leo's jaw when he said Gideon's name. Something had happened with the Elder in the future-past, but none of the Charmed Ones or Leo or anyone would ever mention it. Even though Wyatt got tense whenever the subject of Elders came up. He had never lied to them about it because he had made it clear not to ask.

Wyatt could be scary when he wanted to, even before he had turned Evil. Even before he gained that weird faux-British accent.

"Sandra is the one who warned me about Chris being hurt. I don't know how she knew, but she said something about a vision."

Matt had met Sandra a few times in the future, before her death. She had been better tempered than most of the other Elders that he had met. He didn't know how credible she might be, but Leo seemed to trust her. He nodded. "Alright, let's go talk to her. If someone had a vision about Chris dying then I want to know all the details. Maybe they saw where the demons are, maybe they know about the antidote without knowing, maybe they saw something else that we don't know about, but I want to know anyway."

Leo didn't look happy at not being allowed to go to his son and ex-wife, but he took a hold of Matt's arm and orbed them Up There.

~Poisoned~

Phoebe had offered Henry and PJ her bedroom for them to lie down in. PJ was grateful for more than just the bed. Lying in a bed that smelled like her mother soothed something in her, something that rolled and roiled at being so far away from her siblings and her home. Being so close to what she knew but also so far was difficult, emotionally and spiritually. She didn't know how Chris had managed it for so long. If it hadn't been for the constant crises to distract her, she was sure that she would have gone mad. Maybe it was the same for Chris. Aunt Piper had thrown herself into demon-hunting to distract herself from the pain of losing Aunt Prue, maybe Chris did the same to distract himself from the pain of everything.

Henry lay on his side with his back to her, and she rolled to face away from him. Sharing a bed with her cousin, even about the covers, wasn't entirely without awkwardness. There was only a year between them, but Henry had stayed closer to Chris and Wyatt or his sisters. It was a boy-girl thing, rather than any real distance between them. She would still die for him, but sharing a bed was a little bit too weird.

"Do you think they'll find her?" Henry asked, voice low in a whisper.

It was still daylight, but PJ had pulled the curtains to try to make it easier to sleep. The darkness made everything seem later, almost sacred. There was no one around to accidentally wake up, but it felt wrong to do anything other than whisper.

"I hope so," she answered. "Do you have any idea where she went?"

Henry sighed. "Tam used to disappear before she…" he didn't finish that thought. "Kat used to be able to find her. I never asked. I wish I had."

"Your dad had just died, Henry. I'm sure she just needed time."

"I thought so too, but now I'm not so sure. When Tam turned, Kat didn't really seem surprised."

"She was," PJ argued. She had felt it.

"She was in denial," Henry corrected. "She hadn't expected it, but she had known that it was an option."

PJ didn't like to think back on those days. They had all been in denial. Losing Wyatt to Evil had been hard, but losing Tam had hit harder. There had always been accusations that Wyatt was dangerous, that he had the potential to do great evil as well as great good, but Tam was just so unexpected.

Wyatt might have been their cousin, but he was always a golden boy. He had never been on the same level as the rest of them, he was untouchable, like a god. It didn't seem real when he turned Evil, but Tam was just as real and human and breakable as the rest of them. She had bled with them and fought with them. She had struggled with her powers like all of them, she had stayed up late and giggled over the boys in their class with her, she had made silly mistakes and had brilliant success just like they all had. She had cried with them, mourned with them, and promised to keep fighting to make the world a better place with them.

"Tam was always her own person," PJ said. "She made her own decisions. There was nothing you could have done to change her mind."

"Maybe, but maybe not. I can't watch the same thing happen to Kat."

"You won't," PJ swore. "We're not losing anyone else to Evil. We're not losing anyone else at all."

"You can't promise that, PJ," said Henry, sadly. "We all know the risk. Even me." There was that usual self-deprecating huff as he said it. "We don't even know how the others are doing in the future."

"They're fine," PJ insisted. "I know that for sure, and so do you. You might not have any powers like the rest of us, but you love us just as much as we love you. It doesn't take magic or powers to know when they're hurt, you just know."

Henry was quiet for a minute. "But I don't know, PJ. I don't know anything. My mom is angry and grieving and I can't be there for her, my sister is angry and grieving and I pushed her away, and I'm angry and grieving and I don't know anything."

"Well, I do," said PJ. "I know that we're going to get through this together, just like we always have. I know that Good is going to win in the end. We're going to find that cure, and Chris is going to recover. He's going to succeed and we're going to save Wyatt or - or we'll stop him. We're going to make all of this - everyone's deaths - worth it. Because that's how the world works."

"You have no idea how the world works, PJ," Henry murmured. "But I think I'd like to live in your world."

"You will," PJ promised. "We all will." She closed her eyes and breathed out, letting the darkness of her eyes and the darkness of the room envelope her. Sleep took her quickly.