Love is a Circle

By: Ada C. Eliana

Chapter 2

A/N: Thank you to my reviewers! I'm always glad to get feedback. I hope this chapter does not disappoint!

"Daddy!" David shouted, launching himself into Chris' arms. Chris smiled, picking him up. David was five, and had already shown the early signs of precognitive powers, which scared the hell out of Chris. David stilled in his arms, blonde curls brushing against Chris' shoulder. "Daddy… who's that lady?" he whispered. Chris turned to see where he was looking, astonished to notice David making direct eye contact with Lena's ghost. She waved tentatively at the boy and he smiled brightly, waving back.

"That's your… "aunt" Lena," Chris explained. Technically she was his second cousin, but to Chris she was as close as any sister could have been. "Want to say 'hi'?" he asked.

"Yes!" David proclaimed wiggling out of Chris' arms and racing towards her. Lena kneeled down as the little boy approached and pulled him into a hug. "You feel different," David announced. "You don't feel like daddy and mommy."

"That's because I'm not alive," Lena responded plainly. Chris' eyebrows shot up at the blatant honesty.

"Why not?"

"I died a long time ago, and not everybody can see me."

"How come I can?" he asked.

"Because you're special," Lena said, caressing his curls.

David cried from his bedroom, the wails reaching Chris' ears as he slept with Isabel stretched across him. Carefully rolling her off of him, he slid off of the bed and headed towards the hall. The cries had dissipated to a few hiccups and sniffling. Then Chris heard another voice. He quickened his pace, running to his son's door and hearing the voices from behind it.

"I know it's scary, baby," a woman's voice lilted. "I know, but it's okay, it'll all be okay."

"I don't want to see bad things in my head, Laney," David sniffled.

"Shh, don't cry, I'm so sorry you had to inherit that power, I'm so sorry." Chris pushed the door open slowly, revealing his son wrapped up in Lena's arms, her chin pressed against his head. She was rocking him as he cried in her arms, small hands clutching tightly to her.

"Hey buddy," Chris said, garnering their attention and striding over to the bed. He sat down beside Lena and waited as she extricated David from her arms and passed him over to his father. He began to sob anew as he threw his arms around Chris. Chris turned to Lena for explanation.

"He had a premonition," she said, running her fingers through David's hair in a comforting gesture. "But I checked, it already happened," she sighed.

Eventually David fell asleep again and Chris laid him in bed, pulling the covers up and watching him sleep. "Lena, what should I do?" he asked. "Should I bind his powers?"

"I'll only make this harder, Chris. He can grow into his powers, he'll understand them if he keeps them."

"But you…" Chris trailed off, unable to finish the sentence, unable to put into words the suffering his cousin went through because of her psychic ability.

"That was different. I inherited half of that ability from my father's side, it was more intense for me. David has the straight-up Halliwell power of premonition. He'll probably end up telepathic and empathic or he might not. His blood is more watered down than mom's is. You can't deprive him of who he is Chris," she added somewhat reluctantly. Chris didn't say anything, just looked at David with fear in his eyes. "I'll help him… I'll do whatever I can, okay, Chris?"

Out of Chris' three children only David was precognitive, and only David could see Lena. She spent more and more time with him as he grew, and Chris became used to hearing his son chattering in his room to his dead aunt. The less Chris needed her, the more David did, and so it only seemed natural. Isabel worried over it, telling Chris that it wasn't good for their son to be so attached to a woman who shouldn't ever have met, but Chris rebuked her. Lena had never moved on, had never left this plane because of her worry and care for Chris, and he wouldn't reject her now. He still couldn't live without knowing she was only a call away. And he couldn't imagine raising David without her – David with that power he hated so much, the one he could never really understand. And Lena taught him about his power, taught him how to control it, how to block it, how to use it to save people.

David reminded Chris of himself – fiercely loyal, protective of those he loved, and with a burning desire to say anyone and everyone. He feared for his son with the same depth that he loved him, that he hoped David would become everything he never had. But sometimes when he looked into his son's determined eyes, he saw a defiance and fire that only ever belonged to Lena.

"You're getting more powerful all the time," Lena said, perched on David's bed. He was pacing in front of her.

"Sometimes I wish I wasn't… empathy sort of sucks."

Lena laughed in response. "Yeah, tell me about it."

"How strong were you?"

"I wasn't the strongest," she shrugged. "Wyatt and Chris had me beaten in that department, but when it came to the psychic stuff, I could… I saw so much. I predicted deaths and attacks and everything… everything except my own death." She laughed bitterly. "Pretty lame, huh? Couldn't even see what was going to happen to me…"

"Do you ever… did you blame your family for not finding you?"

"When I realized I was going to die, I was scared, and yeah I was angry too. I couldn't understand how that demon had managed to outwit and out-magic them. But now… I can't blame them, David. It was no one's fault."

"You seem angry though."

"I think it's from being here too long… other relatives have told me that spirits who refuse to move on end up becoming bitter. They want me to go back with them."

"Why don't you?"

"I'm needed here."

"What do you think your life would've been like if you'd saved her?" David asked quietly from the other end of the kitchen table.

Chris started, turning to his son. David was eighteen now, becoming a man and a competent witch. "I don't know, David. I might never have met your mother or opened this vineyard… I might have kept going to school."

"Would you have been happy, do you think?"

"I guess so… I would've had nothing to compare my life to… But I don't regret how things worked out, I don't regret the life I have now, my family."

"Don't be like that. I'm not asking you for fluff, Dad. I want the truth. Admit it, there's nothing you regret more than having not saved her."

"There's nothing I regret more," Chris whispered.

"Would you go back and change it – if you could?"

"The past isn't ours to change, Davey," Chris responded, regarding his son critically. "Why all the questions?"

"It's just not fair, you know? I really… I mean I love Lena – in a family way – and I think what happened to her was really uncool. She never got to have a life. She was like – my age, right? And then just, poof, dead, no future, just wandering around as a ghost forever and ever. In a year, I'll be older than her. I'll be older than my aunt, that's so wrong."

"You can't change it. Bad things happen. I had to make my peace with it, and I'm sorry that you have to make your peace with it too."

"You're lying again. I'm an empath, remember? I can tell. You never got over it, or else she wouldn't have stuck around for so long. She told me, she told me that your need for her keeps her here even now."

"I didn't… I never thought to ask her why she…" Chris paused, ducking his head. Had he cost his cousin the paradise she deserved? Had he forced her to remain with him and his family when he should've been encouraging her to go? "Did she tell you… does she want to go?"

"No, Dad – I didn't mean to make it sound like that. I didn't want to make you feel badly, just… I wanted the truth for once. I wanted to know if I should… if I could…"

"If you should what?" Chris asked.

"Nothing… never mind… I just wanted to know what you felt for her. I wanted to know if I should ask her to go…" he added, eyes shifting.

"Maybe it's time," Chris said.

David stared at the table forlornly. "I think I understand why you never wanted to lose her, Dad.

'Cause I don't know what I'll do if she says yes…"

"David…"

David swiped at his eyes. "It's not fair. If she were alive… I could see her without it costing her so much. It isn't fair. I want her to be alive."

Three months later, David had a chance meeting with a powerful witch with lanky blond hair in a pocket of the Underworld. He stopped in his tracks when he saw the man, when he felt his aura sing with the man's. The fellow witch turned to him and paused. "So you're that nephew I've never met," the man sighed.

To David, Wyatt Halliwell was a lot of things, but stable was not one of them. His home was an abandoned farm house scattered with protective magic, the Book of Shadows sitting in the middle of it. He was dirty and cold, and had no attachments to anyone. But when he heard what David wanted to do, when David finally spoke the words out loud, a light shone in Wyatt's eyes.

"I'd thought about it, even tried it a couple of times, but for whatever reason the spell never works for me. Maybe I've lost my way," Wyatt said. "I have no family, no life, no anything, just a book and this old shack. Should I regret it? Maybe. But I lost any desire for any of those things a long time ago. There's a woman you never got to meet, David, named Phoebe. She was really something in her time. Did you know that she died of a broken heart? Is it possible that we all loved Lena that much? That we all ruined our lives because of what happened to her? So if you want to, then I think you should. Because it can't get much worse, can it?" Wyatt laughed then, low and fast. David stared around the house in dismay.

"Can ghosts get into your house?" he asked quietly.

"Nope kid. I don't want to see any of them, don't want to be reminded of everything I don't have."

"Will you help me with the spell?"

"Not much help is needed, kid. Just follow the instructions – 1-2-3 – and there you'll be. Here, I'll show you the page." Wyatt passed by him, flipping open the Book and stopping at a well-worn page. He ripped it out, folded it and handed it over. David stared at him in wide-eyed disbelief for having desecrated the Book. "If this works then it won't matter," he said with a shrug.

"Whatever you're planning David – don't do it," Lena said, standing behind him in the old Halliwell Manor attic.

"I've never been to the attic before," David said vaguely. "But Wyatt said it had to be here."

"You can't play this game, you have no way of knowing how much you'll change."

"I'm going to save you, Lena. What could be more important than you?"

"That attitude crushed my family, David, and I won't have you following in their footsteps. This has to end! You need to live your own life! I never asked you to save me."

"You didn't have to," David said quietly, stepping up to her. He was taller than her now, and his hand shook as he placed it against her cheek. "I can't wait to see what you'll be like."

"Please don't do this. You might never even exist if you do this." Tears slid down her cheeks.

David just shook his head and turned away from her, raising the chalk to the wall and beginning to draw.

David felt the moment she left him, knew she was going to get his father and so he drew faster. When the image was done, he stepped back and pulled the torn paper from his pocket. "This is for you, Lena," he said. Then, he recited the spell upon it, his voice quavering. When he said the last word, the triquetra on the wall glowed blue in response. He smiled, whispering an invisibility spell under his breath.

David stepped into the portal, felt the hands of time ripping at him, pulling him, but he continued forward until he reached the Manor of the past. The invisibility spell he had cast over himself remained intact as he entered the attic where his father, much younger, much less jaded, stood over the Book of Shadows. In the corner, his Uncle Wyatt, younger and cleaner, was furiously scrying for his mother. David's heart soared as he realized that the spell had worked, he had made it back. Quashing his excitement, he concentrated on the task at hand – saving his aunt.

He silently put the mental suggestion in his father's head to switch jobs with Wyatt.

"Hey Wy, can we switch off for a bit?" Chris asked.

"Uh yeah… sure," Wyatt muttered, abandoning the crystal and switching his attention to the podium.

David crept closer to his father, studied the frown lines on his forehead, the way his teeth kept chewing on his bottom lip in worry and frustration. Chris began to swing the crystal, and David concentrated, using the bit of telekinesis he had inherited to stop the crystal at just the right place on the map.

"Oh my God! Wy! I have it, I've got her location!"

David watched from the back as his father and uncle, great-aunt and great-uncle, rescued Lena. She was covered in blood and so weak, but she was alive, and that was all that mattered. David smiled as Chris hoisted her into his arms. Her eyes lighted over her saviors, and for a brief moment, David could have sworn that she saw him. Then her eyes danced away, only to suddenly swing back. David held her gaze, a huge grin on his face. She opened her mouth as if to speak to him, and David knew it was time to go. With one last smile, he orbed out.

David stepped back through the portal, content with his success. On the other side, his father was waiting for him, an expression of disbelief on his face. "I did it, Dad," David whispered. "I saved her."

Chris shook his head, holding his hand out to his son. David took it, squeezing his father's hand in his, excited and exalted. Chris hugged him then, pulled him close and David could feel his father trembling. "You don't exist anymore," Chris whispered. "None of this exists."

"Dad – what?" David asked, straining to look at him. But Chris wasn't there anymore. There was nothing but whiteness. David spun around in the blinding light, searching for his father.

"You shouldn't have gone," Lena whispered; a disembodied voice.

"Lena? Lena, what's happened? Please… please help me!" He felt her hands on him, her presence surrounding him.

"Just let go, baby, just let go." David obediently closed his eyes, resting his head against hers. "Blessed be, nephew, blessed be." He could no longer feel anything as his body faded away and he ceased to be.

Lena, fully recovered from her ordeal, walked through the attic of the Halliwell Manor. She ran her fingers lightly over the podium the book rested on, smiling. She had been so sure that she would not survive, and yet somehow, she had been saved. She thought back to the man, the mystery man she had seen in the demon's lair that night. No one else had seen him, but Lena had, and she felt somehow that she knew him.

Caught up in her musing, she began idly flipping through the pages in the Book, when something slipped out of it. She bent down, picking up the folded piece of paper. It was made out of the same parchment as the Book, aged and worn. She carefully opened it, revealing a spell to travel backwards in time. Beside it, a note had been written in cramped cursive.

Lena – I can't wait to see who you grow up to be! Love always, your nephew David.

The End

A/N: There were so many ways this story could have gone, and I'm sure I wouldn't be completely pleased with any end. Thank you for reading, and please let me know what you thought!