So, this is an extremely long chapter. Sorry, just couldn't find a good place to stop and got a bit carried away. So, this chapter mentions the 'age of boys' a few times. I know some people have been asking what that is. I promise you'll find out in the next chapter. My question to you is, what do you think the 'age of boys' is? Just curious. As always if you have questions just ask I'll do my best to answer.

Enjoy

Piper looked to Leo hesitantly, hoping he'd know what to say to answer the question because she didn't particularly want to. She had dozens of questions of her own she'd like to ask but she had no desire to answer any.

Leo understood what his wife was trying to say and sighed. Well, here goes nothing "We are sitting down to dinner"

"Not what I meant" Chris bit out, "What happened?"

"What's the last thing you remember?" Leo asked.

"You trapping me in the playpen. Again."

Leo nodded, "Well, that was a few hours ago –"

"I can see that" Chris cut in. "What I want to know is what's happened in the past few hours because I don't remember"

"You helped your mother cook dinner and set the table," Leo answered.

Chris narrowed his eyes, "What else?"

"I turned you into a five year old" Piper blurt out. There she'd done it. Now they could move on.

"You what!"

Or not.

"I turned you into a five year old" Piper repeated.

"Why would you do that?" Chris asked.

"Because I thought it would help. Because I thought it would be easier to keep you safe and happy. Because I thought you would open up more, talk more" Piper answered.

Chris scoffed. "Oh, I'm sure I talked. Just as I'm sure you didn't like what you heard."

"No I didn't" Piper admitted. "But I'm glad I heard it."

"Unbelievable" Chris shook his head.

Deciding that she had waited long enough to ask her own questions and had even answered Chris' already Piper sat down and gestured for Chris and Leo to do the same.

Leo followed his wife's lead and sat down at his spot at the table. Chris however attempted to orb out.

He didn't succeed.

Chris growled at Leo, "Give it back"

"Sit down and eat Chris" Leo answered calmly.

"Give it back" Chris demanded.

"You're not going to be getting your orbing back anytime soon so I suggest you just sit down and eat your dinner" Piper replied.

Chris glared at her. This was ridiculous! Not only was he never to sit at the table – 'the help doesn't sit at the table' - but also he wasn't going to put up with Piper's crazy power trip. "No"

"This is not up for debate Christopher." Piper stated, "You are far too skinny, you need to eat."

"I'm fine" Chris replied.

"You're skin and bones" Piper retorted.

"I'm fine"

"You're not fine Chris" Leo stated calmly, "You're slowly killing yourself"

Chris gave a harsh laugh, "I've already done that genius. What's it matter if it happens a little sooner than planned?"

Piper and Leo froze. Did Chris just say? No. But it did sound like he had.

Leo bolted out of his chair and started running his hand over Chris, golden glow coming out strong. Piper was right behind her husband checking Chris over herself.

Chris, for his part, was trying to pry his parents off of him. It was two against one. Chris lost.

"Get away from me!"

"Where are you hurt?" Leo asked trying to heal every bruise or scrape he could find.

"What's happened? Were you poisoned? Did you get cut?" Piper questioned. "It'll be alright. You're Daddy's going to heal you. You'll be fine"

Chris eventually grew tired of Piper and Leo's hovering and screamed. At the same time he telekinetically pushed his parents away from him. Piper landed softly in a chair while Leo was shoved up against a wall.

He'd just spent two days straight in the underworld. He'd come up only to try and dig some food out of a dumpster and catch a couple hours of sleep before going back down because he had almost no energy left. He'd spent the past few hours doing who knows what as a five year old. And he'd just used the last of his energy to push his parents away from him.

Piper and Leo watched in horrified silence as their youngest son fell to the floor.

"CHRIS!" rang through his head from two different points in the room. He heard footsteps pounding towards him and flinched when he felt a hand on his head.

"It's alright buddy," Leo assured, "I'm just seeing if you have a fever."

"I'm fine" Chris slurred out as he attempted to push himself away.

Piper sighed, rolling her eyes before she took ahold of the hem of Chris' shirt and pulled it up over the boy's limp arms.

"Hey" Chris complained. There was little he could actually do about his mother's interference other than utter a few weak arguments.

"Leo" Piper gasped, taking a good look at her son's exposed torso.

There were dozens of wounds that littered Chris' body. Leo was healing them as fast as he could but it just seemed to be making things worse. Underneath the current injuries were over a hundred scars that stood out on the skin that was wrapped around the bones with nothing in-between. It was horrifying.

While he was still weak, Leo's healing seemed to bring back enough strength for him to get up off the floor. There wasn't enough strength to remain standing however so Chris found himself gracelessly falling into a table chair.

"Don't suppose you'd be willing to give me my shirt back?"

"Chris" Piper whispered.

Leo stood swallowing down the bile that kept trying to rise out of his stomach. No one should ever have that many scars, be that starved, that mutilated. It should never happen. And yet it had, to his own son.

Piper moved towards her son holding a hand over the boy's back. She gently placed the tip of her finger on a long scar running from the top of Chris' left shoulder blade to the top of his left thigh that ran over at least twenty other scars on it's way down. She just wanted to place her hand there and feel smooth skin, to know that it was just her imagination that was conjuring up this horrific image. It wasn't.

"My baby" Piper sobbed wrapping her arms around her son and crying.

Chris was highly uncomfortable. No one had ever held him like this before. Sure his mother had hugged him but those had always been light quick things done in secret. Wyatt had hugged him and held him but never cried on him. Maybe it was a woman thing, the crying. Would make sense. Wyatt never cried, Leo wasn't crying and Chris never cried. It had to be a woman thing. Still, it was uncomfortable.

"Piper" Chris hedged.

Piper could feel how tense her son was, she didn't want to scare the boy. Carefully she pulled back and wiped the tears from her eyes, collecting herself. She needed to think of her son first, she could cry later.

She offered her son a tight smile before grabbing an empty plate and loading it up. Once the plate was full she put it in front of her son along with some silverware and a glass. After she'd finished she sat down herself and turned her chair to face her son.

Leo sat opposite his wife and faced Chris as well. He wanted to see the boy, know that his son was alive and safe, for the moment at least.

Chris kept darting his eyes between Piper, Leo and the food in front of him. He didn't know what was going on exactly only that he was being set up for something.

Piper was the one to break the silence.

"Are there any more injuries that we don't know about?"

Chris debated ignoring her but knew that would only lead to being patted down for injuries again. He was tempted to say 'I'm fine' again however he feared that it would lead to being stripped of his pants in an attempt to see for themselves. Eventually he sighed and answered honestly, "I cut my left leg yesterday but it's stopped bleeding and is healing fine."

Leo kneeled down and held his hand over Chris' leg until he could feel that the wound was closed. Finished there he ran his hand over Chris' other leg before he felt satisfied that there was nothing left and sat back down.

"Good." Piper nodded, "Now. What did you mean when you said you had already killed yourself?"

Chris gulped. He knew that tone of voice and it had never bode well for him in the past. Or future? His past, their future? Never mind.

"I meant that I killed myself the moment I stepped through the portal to get here."

"How would that guarantee your death?" Leo asked confused.

Chris rolled his eyes, were they really this dense? "Either I die failing to save Wyatt from whatever turns him or I succeed and am never born. Either way, I'm dead"

"Why would you never be born?" Leo asked though it was almost drowned out by Piper's screech "What do you mean you die trying to save Wyatt!?"

"I'll do everything in my power to save Wyatt. The only way I won't succeed is if I'm dead" Chris stated firmly. "It's the reason I came back. The whole point of this mission."

"I don't care what the point of the mission is Christopher" Piper said firmly, "You are not going to get yourself killed. I am not losing one son just to save the other"

Chris laughed that laugh again. The one full of hurt and pain and so many other emotions that Leo didn't even want to identify. "Saving Wyatt kills me Piper. The only way you get to have us both is by letting Wyatt be turned."

"No" Piper commanded as though merely saying it would make it true.

"Yes" Chris replied.

"Why?" This came from Leo.

Chris turned to Leo, "If Wyatt's not turned, I'm not conceived."

"Why?" Leo repeated.

"Do you really think that you and Piper planned on having another child fourteen years after your last one or seven years after the others had stopped having children?"

Leo had been wondering about that, so had Piper. "What does that have to do with Wyatt turning evil?"

Chris shrugged, "Because he was evil he had no trouble slipping you and Piper lust potions"

"Why would he do that?" Piper asked.

"He wanted a brother" Chris answered, "He got what he wanted."

"What's so important about a brother?" Piper wondered.

It was Leo who answered this question, "Because it's the age of boys"

"Yep" Chris nodded.

"What does that have to do with anything?" Piper asked, "What is the age of boys?"

Leo watched Chris sway a bit on his chair and knew that this conversation needed to be tabled for the time being. He could explain what the age of boys was to Piper after Chris had been fed, cleaned and put to bed.

"The food's going to get cold if we don't eat it soon" Leo said cutting off the conversation and silently motioning for Piper to do the same.

Piper sighed but had to agree with Leo, Chris needed to eat. "I'll just grab an extra plate from the kitchen."

Chris however had no intentions of eating and attempted to push back from the table. He couldn't. When he tried to do so he found that he was held down with the same force that kept him trapped in the playpen. "You put the spell on the table!"

"What?" Piper asked coming back into the room.

"You put the same spell on the table that you did on the playpen" Chris explained in irritation.

"Oh, yeah, I forgot about that" Piper admitted.

"Why?"

"Because Wyatt kept orbing our plates away or orbing the food he wanted to his high chair tray and the food he didn't to someone else's plate" Piper explained irritated. "Just have to love that power don't you?"

Leo chuckled but didn't comment. Piper wasn't a big fan of orbing at the moment as it was, best not to add fuel to the fire.

"Well undo it" Chris demanded.

"No" Piper replied, "Now eat your supper."

"No" Chris said.

"Chris" Leo started, "The quickest way for you to get out of that chair is to eat the food on the plate."

Chris couldn't believe these two. Instead of picking up a fork he attempted to blast the table to pieces. He shouldn't have.

Leo sighed as he watched Chris drop unconscious. "Let's put him to bed"

Piper shook her head but agreed and placed her hand on Leo's arm as they orbed up to the nursery.

An hour and a half later and Chris was tucked safely in bed in some of Leo's old nightclothes and wiped down as best as could be. The dishes were cleaned up and leftovers put away both parents having lost their appetites at the sight of their youngest's tortured body.

"Now" Piper said sitting down on the couch next to her husband, "What is the age of boys?"