"Nobody touch them!"
Phoebe's warning cut the room as she fumbled for the light, scuffing through the layer of sand that had turned the attic into a beach oasis. Wyatt paused, halfway to reaching for the battered and bruised Charlotte on the floor.
"But-"
"She's right," Piper said, pulling her son back by the sleeve of his shirt, "We have no idea what's going on. It could be dangerous,"
"It's Charlie though," Wyatt argued, "It has to be. It's Charlotte from the Other timeline, there's no other explanation,"
Phoebe stepped cautiously around the perimeter of the two girls, letting her empathetic powers sweep out over them. She had mastered control over them a long time ago, and used them sparingly if for no other reason than to respect the privacy of those around them.
"I don't sense anything dangerous, but we shouldn't jump into this. We wait for one of them to wake up, and then we figure things out. Charlotte," Phoebe gestured to the counterpart, "Doesn't seem to be hurt,"
The dubious glances from the rom occupants made her backpedal, "Well obviously she's hurt, but I'm not getting hurt feelings from her. The timelines could be blocking my powers but from what I can tell, she's fine. Charlie, on the other hand…"
She didn't finish, unsure how to even begin. The feelings that were colliding into one another off Charlie were soaking into Phoebe's bones. The mingled fear, power, aches and terror all sucking the life from her pores.
Chris swept the shards of glass away from Charlotte's body with a gentle motion of his hand. She had taken the brunt of the exploding hourglass, if the littered scratches against her cheek were any indication. In comparison to her counterpart, however, it appeared there were far worse things that could have happened. Chris' gaze lingered on the multitude of wounds across Charlotte's body; shocked by how small and fragile she looked compared to Charlie.
"How long do we have to wait?"
"Uuughmmmffh,"
Charlotte rolled over on the duvet, burying her face into it and making another low, annoyed sound. She sat up, eyes tightly screwed shut as she pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead. When she finally opened her eyes, she found the gaze of the entire room on her. Seemingly unfazed, she looked down at her counterpart, a wide grin stretching on her bruised face.
"It worked…."
She scrambled to her feet and stepped towards Chris in shock. He stiffened under her intense up and down stare of him before she smiled, the tiniest laugh slipping her from lips.
"You look good. This is good. Where's Wyatt?"
She didn't wait for an answer and instead scanned the room, not stopping on anyone until her eyes found Wyatt, who had leaned against the wall with an attempted nonchalance. Charlotte's lips parted, the barest gasp slipping from them before she sucked in a deep breath and blinked. Her lower lip trembled before she laughed, hard and pure before stifling it with the back of her hand.
"I'm sorry, I know this is probably the most confusing thing you've seen in a while but…" she smiled even wider, the split in her lip and the cracks at either side of her mouth seemingly not bothering her, "You're really real,"
She reached out, the tips of her fingers barely grazing the fabric of Wyatt's shirt, "I thought maybe he was lying," she said, more to herself than anyone in the room, "I'm so happy it worked,"
Wyatt hadn't moved since Charlotte had made her way over to him, his back rigid and his eyes flicking from injury to injury, a sinking feeling in his gut of how they would have gotten there. Charlie caught his gaze and stepped back, suddenly shying away from him.
"I know I must look.." she reached up to touched her face and caught sight of her broken wrist, grimacing as she touched it experimentally, but seemingly felt nothing, "I don't feel it," she assured him.
The confusion and curiosity was saturating the air, though Charlotte was unaware or determined to ignore it. It wasn't until Piper cleared her throat that she finally tore her eyes from Wyatt and found Piper that she seemed to come back to her senses.
"Right. I'll bet you've got questions,"
"So many," Piper said, keeping her tone clipped, "But let's maybe begin with how exactly you got here? Or why you look like you just wandered out of Fight Club. Or, even better, you can just give us all a very quick and concise rundown of everything that's going on because I get the feeling you know a lot more than we do,"
Charlotte nodded, the tiniest of smiles curling at the corner of her mouth.
"Did I say something funny?"
"No… just now I can see where Chris gets it from," she replied.
The words leeched some of the tension from the air, but it was obvious that everyone was still raised at the hackles until they were all in the loop about exactly what was going on. Chris kept glancing to the side where Charlie was still asleep on the floor; her eyes closed the barest glimmer of energy rippling off her.
Charlotte had pressed herself up against a wall, putting distance between herself and anyone else in the room. Despite the hostility, she seemed at ease, which made the tight coil of Chris' shoulders relax as he cleared his throat.
"So…"
"Anything you want to know? Specifically anything you want to know first, I mean," she added when Piper raised an eyebrow, "I can't answer everything at once,"
Chris expected his mother or his aunts to suddenly start fighting over the most important question, but the first voice he heard surprised him.
"Did I do that?" Wyatt asked quietly, gesturing from Charlotte's feet to her face. It was the first time he had addressed her since she had appeared, and his voice seemed to startle her for a moment before she relaxed. She caught sight of her reflection in one of the offering bowls and tilted her chin, baring the multitude of bruises and gashes that patterned her face, neck and upper body.
"No. You didn't," she replied, the tone leaving no room for protest, but it didn't stop Wyatt from trying.
"But-"
"No."
To his credit, Wyatt knew better than to push the subject any further. Chris was still sitting on the couch, his notepad and pen poised and ready for note taking. He was a mix of emotions, all colliding and fighting for control over him, but all coming down to one solid thought.
There was something terribly, horribly wrong; and Charlotte clearly knew what it was.
Phoebe pushed her older sister into the chair beside her nephew, hoping it would do something to take the edge off the bundles of worry eating away at her insides.
"Let's start with how you got here? Time travel, obviously," Phoebe gestured to the tingling magical sand that was spread across the attic. In the heat of it all, nobody had thought of clearing it away. Besides, the gentle hum and swirl of the magic gave an odd ease to the atmosphere, like the comfort of something you remembered from childhood.
"Honestly, me being here is all about Charlie down there," Charlotte admitted, "My powers are, uh… not a factor right now,"
It was obvious that she was about to be interrupted by at least three different people as soon as the words had left her mouth, so she steamrolled on without giving them even the slightest chance of cutting her off.
"When a Time Keeper does any kind of travelling, it leaves marks. The hourglasses you used, they reacted to her- my- our power. Didn't they? It's because every time we touch things like that, it causes ripples. Sometimes they're little ones; they make hourglasses change, make clocks tick a little faster or slower… sometimes if we get too close to someone while we're travelling it can give them déjà vu. We impact the world around us, though most of the time, it's miniscule."
The hitch in her voice when she said 'most of the time' didn't escape anyone's notice, but the sheer enormity of what they had to know and get done left it buried under everything else that took precedence. Notably, how the hell Charlotte had managed to catch a ride and why it had caused Chris such pain.
Chris nodded and made a note of it in one of his notebooks. That piece of information hadn't been anywhere in the books he read, and he wanted to keep them as updated as possible, "So what does that have to do with this? How did that get you here?"
Charlotte looked down at her counterpart, still sleeping peacefully, "I was near a pocket watch when Charlie here was creeping around in the time stream; so I hitched a ride on the ripples" she frowned a little, "I took a lot out of her, but from what you've said about her powers, I'm not surprised. I'm pretty advanced and when I sent you back I was out for two weeks,"
Chris looked up from his notebook and then glanced down at Charlotte, suddenly more concerned than he had been before, "She won't be out that long, will she?"
"Oh no, she's already starting to wake up," Charlotte said casually, gently pushing her foot through the sand and sending shimmers of gold into the air before they winked out of sight.
"Why did you coming through the timeline hurt Chris so much?" Leo asked, "he was in agony, he has been for a long time,"
"Flashbacks," Charlotte said firmly, a knowing nod of her head as she skilfully avoided looking anyone in the eyes, "I know."
"How do you know?" Piper demanded, "Because I still get the feeling that you're keeping much bigger secrets than you're letting on, and we don't have time for this,"
"Look, I know you want me to just spill my guts but there are a lot of contributing factors here. We're already tiptoeing on some very fast melting ice so I need to do this right. I want to just tell you what's going on but I can't. What I did come here to do was to find a way to make sure I can. Now, I can answer some things, and others I can't; and you're just going to have to accept it whether you like it or not. I can't risk revealing something that might not even be happening,"
"Well how can you know what's happening!" Piper demanded.
"Am I dead?"
Charlotte's words were muffled by the duvet cover where she was now curled in a foetal position, one hand nursing the scratches on her cheek. Her sudden awakening diffused the building situation between her counterpart and Piper, which Chris was thankful for.
"No," Charlotte replied, "But you need to get up. We've got work to do,"
Charlotte jerked up in surprise at the sound of her own voice; her confusion turning to shock when she found her double against the wall, as though this kind of thing happened all the time.
"… Chris?" Charlie said weakly, hoping that the explanation could be strung together and given out without an issue. He gave her as rough of an explanation as he could, given the apparent time constraints. Once he had finished, Charlotte still looked as confused as ever, but had clearly decided to just roll with it and ask as little questions as possible.
"So you know what's going on with Chris?" she asked hopefully, "And you can fix it?"
"Not exactly, I have a pretty good idea of what's happening but I don't want to contemplate it until I'm sure. I need to bring Chris," Charlotte paused, "My Chris here,"
A tangle of voices cut the air, each member of the family eager to voice their thoughts at the sudden revelation. Piper's voice could be heard clearly over the rest, her disapproval and adamant demand that it wouldn't happen stern and fierce. Charlotte gave them their moment, pressing her entire weight against the wall of the attic before she finally held up her hand until it had fallen into silence.
"Nothing happens without Chris," she said firmly, "And that's just a fact. For me to do what I need, I need him here. Please…"
By the end of her speech, her voice was tired and broken. It was as though any light or life that had been inside her had finally drained, and it broke Piper's heart.
"…fine,"
Charlotte scribbled on the back of a random sheet of paper, circling some ingredients and crossing others out as she mumbled under her breath. She mouthed the ingredients to herself, ticking her fingers into the air as she scanned down the list before adding a few scribbles to the bottom.
"If someone could go and get everything on this list, we'll be able to start. I'm going to need everyone for this, so the quicker we get moving, the better,"
Paige was the one who plucked the paper from Charlie's hands and ran her eyes over the hastily run together scrawl, not recognising some of the ingredients.
"Not to be rude or anything, but uhm… does anyone here have any clothes I could wear?"
Charlotte looked to the other version of herself, but Piper cleared her throat.
"Ahh… yeah. Rather than tracking Charlie all over the city, we might have something…"
Piper hesitated before walking across the attic floor and reaching up for one of the heavy cardboard boxes stuffed away in the shelves. She wiped the thick layer of dust away with her hand before pulling the lid off and rifling through some things before pulling out a soft, white sundress.
"This might fit you," she said, eyeing Charlotte up before holding it out, "Most of the stuff in here might, if you want to look,"
Charlotte ran her fingers down the front of the dress, tweaking the small details before smiling, "No, this is fine. Thank you. Do you think Charlie and I could have a minute?"
The occupants of the room took the opportunity to leave, though it was clear that all of them were desperate to be kept in the loop. Chris hesitated before closing the door on the two, locking eyes with Charlotte and waiting until he had her nod of approval before letting the door swing closed after him.
Charlotte was grateful that her counterpart had asked for a moment alone. A question had been painting her tongue since Charlotte had arrived and she wasn't yet ready to speak it in front of anyone else. Charlotte was inspecting her wounds in the mirror, smoothing the front of her new clothing as though she hadn't seen anything as nice in years.
It occurred to Charlie, belatedly, that her counterpart had probably been a prisoner of Wyatt's since Chris had left for the past. The clothes she had been wearing when she got here; the dirtier, torn and worn to breaking point clothes might be the only thing she had worn for a long time. Charlotte was plucking at the neckline that didn't quite cover her open cuts across her chest; swishing the loose bottom of the fabric around her legs with a soft hint of happiness.
It seemed almost childish to ask her question now, but her other self already knew. Their gaze met in the reflection and Charlotte ran a hand through her damp hair. Their conversation had been put on hold when Charlie had been given a chance to shower; not appearing in the bathroom door until almost an hour later, dazed and almost trembling from the foreign experience.
"He was at camp when the Salem massacre happened," she answered before the question was even asked, "They evacuated, but I could never find out where they took him. I'm sure he's alive; there were a lot of groups outside of San Francisco that were much safer. It was impossible to get out of the city once Wyatt took over, Chris would have moved the Resistance base if he could, but there was no chance,"
Charlotte twirled slightly in the white cotton dress and looked up to meet Charlie's gaze in the mirror.
"I assume something happened to him here. Chris subtly let on that you don't speak about your parents, but he never mentioned Damian. Is he alive in this time line?"
The casual mask slipped briefly, a crack in Charlotte's armor. Charlotte thought she knew why. To go through hell only to find out that someone you loved didn't make it through would eat away at you.
"He's alive," she assured herself, "In a coma… but alive. They're optimistic.."
"Don't tell me anymore," Charlotte interrupted, "I appreciate it, but I think there's only so much I should know. Thank you,"
She turned back to the mirror and smoothed her dress one last time before bringing one hand up to almost brush the multitude of wounds on her face. She tilted her head to the side and caught Charlie's gaze in the reflection.
"I'm not really here, that's why it doesn't hurt," she explained, "My body is still in the other timeline, along with my pain. This body is just what my soul conjured up as a way to be corporeal in this timeline. When I go back though," she pressed a hand to her covered stomach where Charlotte knew there was a an angry, raw wound awaiting, "It's going to suck,"
"Is it bad where you are? In the other timeline…"
Wyatt was an evil overlord and judging by the horrific damage to Charlotte's body, the question fell flat to the floor and Charlotte almost wished she could fall right with it.
"I can't tell you much right now, but yes. I'll explain all of that later, but for now I need you and Wyatt, and everyone to understand something. None of what has happened to me will matter, okay? None of this is anyone's fault. I can feel the guilt coming off all of you and it needs to stop. We've got… serious things coming. Dangerous, horrible, life-threatening things and all of you will need to be on the top of your game because as soon as he sees a weakness, he's going to take it,"
"You're talking about Evil Wyatt," Charlotte said, "He's part of this,"
"Very much so," she admitted, "Despite Chris saving everything, the world I lived in didn't disappear, it just… stopped moving. The people who survived the change have been there since the day the clocks stopped. Including Wyatt,"
"How are you still…" she searched for the word, wanting so hard to not offend her other self but the curiosity eating her alive. Eventually, she settled on the only word she found fitting, "sane?"
The abuse to her body was obvious, but Charlotte had no idea how her other self was even in any mental state to be standing, let alone conducting an entire effort in another timeline. The question, it seemed, didn't offend her, instead she brushed it off as though it was as natural as ever. "The sky is blue", "The earth is round", "How are you not a sobbing ball of terror right now?"
"Perks of my current situation, if you could even call them that. We can't die where we are, and our mental state is connected to that in a way."
The information about her counterpart being unable to die pulled at part of Charlie's memory, sitting just outside her grasp and bothering her as she tried to remember a memory that was trying in vain to stay buried. She felt a hand on her arm and snapped back to reality, the strange sensation of looking into her own eyes bringing her back to earth faster than she had expected.
"Don't think about it," Charlotte said quietly, "Trust me. You don't want to think about it. Not yet anyway,"
It was ominous, the kind of foreboding that didn't just settle on your shoulders, but instead wrapped its vice grip around your neck and lingered.
"Go get Chris and the others, I don't know how much longer I can latch myself onto you like this and we have a lot to do. The spell is pretty straight forward, but I'm going to have to rely on you and Chris until I can get my own powers back up to speed. "
Charlie was out the door when she heard her name.
"Hey."
Charlotte looked over her shoulder and found her counterpart leaning up against the altar, looking small and innocent.
"Despite whatever is going on right now… you're happy, right?"
Charlie smiled, soft but genuine, "Yeah. I really am,"
"Good."
It had taken the better part of four hours to round up everything they would need. Charlotte's ingredient list had been extensive and foreign, most of the required parts unlike anything the sisters had in their cupboards. The spell had, for a first, been the easy part. Ten minutes and a Google search of rhyming words and Charlotte had offered a copy to each of the occupants, with strict instructions on how they would be progressing.
When Paige had returned from Chinatown and the magic store, Charlie had disappeared into the attic to prep the physical elements of the spell, working everything together with casual grace, as though she had yanked people out of limbo and into an entirely new timeline before.
Piper had her arms folded and was watching every move like a hawk. She knew, deep inside herself, that there was no true reason for her to not trust either of Charlotte's forms. It hadn't, however, stopped the lingering concern she felt, particularly with the fragments of information she now knew.
"How do you know Chris is in limbo for sure?" she asked, catching Charlotte off guard as she crushed the juice of a small seedling with the side of a knife, "When you die in the past, doesn't you just cease to exist?"
"Chris is a special case. When he died, he didn't end up in either timeline; which means he has to be caught either in between them or in limbo. Not in any pain, probably not even aware of it," she added hastily, noticing the horror on Piper's face, "But he's there, and we need to bring him here,"
Paige half-raised her hand, "Not to be difficult, but how do you know that? He faded away. I was there,"
The last part was stiff and stilted; a memory Paige had been more than happy to suppress for the most part of her life. Charlotte's super-witch attitude softened as she began plucking ingredients out of vials and crushing them together in a mortar and pestle.
"Because I would have felt him in my timeline. I'll be able to give you all a proper explanation once he gets here, but we're… stuck. It was an unexpected side effect of the spell, and if he'd been in my timeline, I would have known. And since it's impossible for him to be here, it means he's out there somewhere,"
A fine powder was forming in the base of the bowl now, a mixture of colours and strange chunks of ingredients. Charlie was mumbling under her breath, her hand hesitating over ingredients for the briefest moment before she would make her decision.
Charlie was watching Charlotte with interest, her eyes following each easy move of the ingredients to the offering bowl. The gaze, if intended to be subtle, fell flat when Charlotte laughed.
"Chris and some of the members of the Resistance taught me how to make potions. Underneath all the Time Keeper stuff, we're witches. You know that, right?"
"Well, I mean… I guess?"
Charlotte smiled, "Our powers kind of take back seat to the Time Keeper stuff, but before he left, Chris was trying to help me channel it all. Apparently we have telekinesis. You should try bringing that out when you get the chance,"
Charlotte furrowed her brow, "Telekinesis? Really?"
"Latent witch powers from a few generations back. It managed to die out long before we were born, but now that it's been awoken, it should stick," Charlie explained, stepping back and throwing the last ingredient into the bowl. It exploded when it came in contact with the mixture, a burst of flames and a plume of thick grey smoke whooshing into the air.
"Okay, we're ready. Does everyone remember what I need you to do, because I don't have the time to be repeating things if we mess it up,"
She only moved when she had been given the positive response from the entire collective. Their instructions were clear cut and to the point, giving them no room for error. Charlotte scraped together the fine dusting of powder into a small glass dish and held it out to her counterpart.
"You know when to use this," she instructed, "But not a second before,"
Charlotte, Chris, and Chris stood close in the small area that Charlotte had marked out with chalk while the sisters, Leo, and Wyatt formed a circle around them. As per Charlotte's request, they remained outside the outline, and out of the reach of the Time Keeper power should anything go wrong. Charlotte had explained that, though she trusted her other self's powers completely, should there be an accident, the two Time Keepers would be able to handle it. Chris, by extension to Charlotte, would be easy to pull back due to the bond their powers had loosely formed if he was to be swept up.
The circle joined hands, the sharp ripple of power fluttering book pages and crackling through the attic. Charlotte laced her fingers through Chris' and offered a reassuring smile, reaching out to take Charlotte's hand inside the circle of people.
"Are we ready?"
Charlotte closed her eyes and nodded, waiting to hear the beginning of the spell before doing anything.
"Power of the witches rise,
Course unseen across the skies,
The Twice Blessed Child and the Power of Three,
Bind with a Time Keeper to summon thee,"
Charlotte threw the powder in the air where it swirled and spread before it fell in a perfect arc around the three in the centre of the circle. Her eyes opened, bathed in gold but no trace of movement. Chris began to question, but Charlotte cut him off.
"She's not travelling anywhere, the other you is trapped in limbo. Nothing happens there, it exists outside time. She's just visiting. Say the rest of the spell,"
Piper clung tight to both her sisters and led the next verse of the spell, her eyes never leaving Chris.
"Out of time and out of place,
Taken from his dwelling space,
Powers borrowed, powers shared,
So that his life may now be spared,"
The air was thick with magic; an obvious and heavy cloud around them that tingled through their spines and made the hairs of their arms prickle into gooseflesh. Charlotte broke her hand away from Charlie and pulled Chris back with her as she broke the outer circle.
"Just give her space," she instructed, "Now it's all on her and I'm sure she can do it, but I don't know how bad the ripples will be. Just brace yourself,"
Charlotte remained still in position, eyes open and unmoving. The powder on the floor shifted, as though tossed by a breeze though the attic was still. They shifted again, skating across the floor as gold flecks began to dance in Charlotte's eyes, a tremble in the floorboards beginning. In two brief moments, a powerful kickback of air rushed through the attic and a burning white light stretched in front of them, blinding their vision before it died away. Charlotte' windswept and dazed, looked around with her now blue eyes and frowned.
"Did it not work?"
The powder on the floor trembled and puffed into a thin, white mist that hovered over the floorboards for a moment before abruptly sparking into orbs of light. Chris, just as he had been the day they last saw him, appeared in a swirl of white light. He blinked in confusion, looking down at the bloodied stain on the front of his shirt and frowning.
"Mom? What happened? We need to get out of here, Gideon was-"
He stopped mid-sentence, the full picture of the attic coming into view. His eyes found Chris, and then Wyatt; pausing on each of his aunts before landing on his mother and father.
"…uhhh,"
He turned his head, caught by Charlotte's subtle movement of her hand. Chris' eyes widened, almost unbelieving.
"Charlie?"
Chris moved slightly, as if to bring her closer, but paused, "…no. You're not… mine?"
The last word was weak and confused, but Chris turned his head back to look over his family before finding her again.
"What?"
Charlotte smiled weakly, the sight of her other self and Chris almost too much for one day. In lieu of words, she simply pointed across the room where her counterpart was lingering out of view.
"…no…"
It was weak. Broken. Chris confused resolve crumbled into anguish with the one word, the sudden weight on his shoulders almost physical as he crossed the room in three steps and reached out for Charlotte before pulling away without even a glancing stroke.
"No, Charlie… please tell me…"
Charlotte didn't respond, only reached out and took Chris's hand in her own, watching as a golden shimmer of light began to drift from his open palm into hers, melting into her skin and pulling a barely visible golden mist around her skin.
"There's a lot to tell you and not much time," she murmured softly, "So just trust me, Chris,"
Charlotte's hands glowed with a burning, brilliant white light; her eyes dissolving into a pale gold of rushing sand before they faded to blue and she pressed her hand to Chris's cheek, the relief on her face suddenly overcome seriousness.
"I was right. We need to fix it before anything goes wrong,"
"But-"
"Later, Chris,"
"Charlie!"
"NO,"
Their conversation was half formed and a jumble of words, yet it was obvious that they knew what the other was saying. The rest of the members were left in the dust as they caught snippets, watching as Chris grew more and more concerned, his face jumping from worried to genuinely frightened in a matter of words.
"You're sure?"
"Mostly."
"How?"
"Glimpses. His pocket watch,"
"Do we have time?"
"Maybe?"
Chris ran a hand through his hair, his face white and a distinctly sick look lingering on his face.
"There's more,"
He turned, almost as though he refused to believe that there was anything else that could have, Piper assumed, gone wrong. Nothing they were talking about, albeit very little making sense, seemed to be good.
"Spit it out," Chris said when Charlotte seemed to require more prompting.
"…it could rewrite it. Permanently,"
Out of context, it still sounded unpleasant. But to watch Chris, the man she had seen face down almost anything during his time in the past; stiffen and fall entirely blank, made her snap. Piper seized both of the counterparts by the upper arm and dragged them to the plush couch situated by the window.
"The two of you. Explain. Now."
A/N: So after I gave myself a deadline, I managed to completely fall out of it. I don't know if I have any Australian readers, but late in February, the Queensland coast was hit by a category five cyclone called Marcia. I was, unfortunately, in an area that didn't come off too well in the aftermath. Part of our house was destroyed, and several houses in my neighbourhood were without rooves and/or massive parts of their homes. For obvious reasons, writing wasn't something I could quite get into for a while, but hopefully I'll be picking it back up from here on out.
