Part One
January 12, 2033 – early evening
"Are you insane?"
"Practically a requisite for being a member in this family," Penny muttered as she tried to ignore Chris's pacing and instead concentrate on the potion before her. "Just hand me the lid, okay? This needs to simmer for twenty minutes."
He practically shoved the pot's lid in her chest. "You haven't listened to a word I said."
"I heard every word," she calmly said, covering the boiling potion, lowering the flame. "D'you have a better idea?"
"Time travel's too risky," Chris maintained as he placed some of the dirty bowls in the sink to soak. "Too many variables, too many things can go wrong."
"Look, the potion and the spell create the perfect balance. It's a good, no, it's a great plan." Penny moved away from the range and looked at the family photos pinned to the refrigerator with magnets. Her eyes welled with tears as she touched a picture of her parents mugging for the camera and she turned back to her cousin. "I don't know what else to do."
Quickly hugging her tight, he kissed the top of her head. "Let me take you away, let me take you somewhere safe." When she stiffened, he assured her, "It doesn't have to be Up There. I don't trust them either," he admitted, "but demons will come back for us. We need time, Penny. We need time to think and to plan."
"Prue loved to plan," she whispered.
"She and Wyatt were the strategists," he quietly agreed leading her to the doorway to the dining room. Stopping to frame her face between his palms, he said, "I don't want a rash decision to cost me my only surviving family member."
"We don't have any other choice and you know it. The Charmed Ones are gone," Penny's voice cracked. "Wyatt, the twice-blessed child, is gone. The only way we can fight back is if we go back in time and warn them." She tugged his sleeves, "It worked for you, why can't it work for me?"
"It's not the same thing," Chris argued as he stepped back.
"C'mon, Chris," she touched his arm, "we all grew up with the story of how you went back in time to prevent Wyatt from turning evil. And you did it. You saved Wyatt. He was --"
"I know," Chris sighed. He had learned the story just like all his siblings and cousins but it was still only a story to him because he wasn't the Chris who had gone back in time. The Chris who had done that had died back in the past and he was merely the result of the changes that Chris had effected. "Do you remember the rest of it?" he questioned his cousin. "Do you remember our moms telling us how knowledge of the future can screw things up? How everyone starts second-guessing every decision and how fear of revealing too much or too little can cause as many problems as if --"
"But it worked out in the end," Penny interrupted. "Because you trusted them to do the right thing with that knowledge and because you protected them with your life. What's the worst that could happen, Chris? That we screw up, that we're killed in the past? So what? Isn't that our destiny here? Even if we go into hiding, we're only postponing the inevitable."
"You don't know that," he snapped. Taking a deep breath, he touched the Cupid's ring hanging from the gold chain around her neck. "I'm not talking about hiding forever. It's only about staying safe until the time is right to attack."
Penny shrieked when Chris suddenly yanked the chain, breaking it, as he fell into her. She ducked and rolled with him through the doorway to avoid the flames extending from the demon's hand. "Chris, orb us out!" she panted as she kicked the door shut and heard pots exploding in the kitchen. "Dammit, the potion! Chris, we need to get out of here!" But he remained limp in her arms and she finally noticed the scorch mark on his back. "Chris?" She shook him but he still didn't move; he didn't even groan. "Oh God, Chris, no, Chris, no…"
And then the door exploded and she was flung back into the chairs. Dazed, she managed to scramble a bit further away. And realizing the spell was her only chance for survival, risky without the potion for balance, she recited from memory,
"Magic forces good, bright, and pure,
Find me the key to right the wrong,
Show me the way love may endure,
Help me end evil's reign, this night so long."
And just as the room began to fade from her sight, her body was bombarded in flames and pain.
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