Disclaimer: I don't own the characters Chris and Wyatt Halliwell, or Charmed, although, I wish I did… because some of the crap we had to put up with in Seasons 7 and 8 would have been replaced by something a lot better… like a spin-off featuring the Halliwell brothers. Right, back to the disclaimer. I don't own 'em. Not making any money. Etc. Etc.

Author's Note: This is the story-version of a set of scripts I am working on for a spin-off… namely the Pilot Episode to eventually be converted to screenplay format for the contest on This is set 18 years after the series finale of Charmed, when Chris and Wyatt would be taking over the Halliwell legacy. Chris is twenty and Wyatt is twenty-two. Things will explain themselves as you read, so, without further adieu, I hope you enjoy! Please read and review.

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Destined: The Charmed Sons

Episode 1.1, Pilot: The Crucible

Images show of Boston, clips of the city and the city life. A glorious sunrise that spreads its golden glow over the cityscape, making the windows in the high-rise buildings gleam like so many sparkling jewels. At last the images focus on an apartment building with Victorian architecture and balconies leading to fire escapes. Below the obvious apartments is a small café and nightclub.

Song: "Until the World" - The Afters

Chapter One

"Wy?" Christopher Halliwell said from the doorway to his brother's room. It was just a simple mentioning of his name in order to get his elder sibling's attention. However, Chris wasn't getting that attention. Wyatt Halliwell sat with his back to the door. From the slump in his broad shoulders and the leaning of his head against the keyboard of his computer, Chris could tell that either he was concentrating really hard on the lyrics to the song he was listening to, or, he had fallen asleep working. He had tried to tell his brother to work on that article sooner, doing a little bit at a time instead of putting it off.

For who they were, Wyatt should have known there would constantly be something interrupting getting it done. Now, here was the result of his procrastination: falling asleep in front of his computer after trying to pull an all-nighter. "One week into the semester and he's already pulling all-nighters," he mumbled sympathetically. Chris shook his head, frowning at the disaster area that was Wyatt's room. The elder Halliwell was neat, orderly and almost annoyingly perfect at everything else he did, but then there were the times that he showed that he was actually human. From the unmade bed to the dirty clothes and miscellaneous textbooks scattered about, Wyatt had taken his new found freedom a bit too far in Chris's opinion.

There were still unpacked boxes in the room, Chris noticed with a shake of his head. Wyatt had graduated from San Francisco State University with a Communications degree three months ago, with honors, and had been accepted into Graduate School at the same University that Chris was attending. Unlike his brother, Chris had wanted to get away from home sooner and had applied only to east coast schools for college. He'd wanted to gain some independence and he'd found it, but it was good to have his big brother around again. Except for the unsightly mess Wyatt's moving in had brought to Chris's apartment.

"Wy?" Chris asked again, shifting the laundry basket to one side. There was yet again no response from his older brother. Chris could hear the soft buzz of music playing in the headphones Wyatt had on. "Wyatt?" Chris repeated, stepping over his brother's carelessly discarded backpack and into the room. He looked warily at the stack of boxes beside the door that had been loaded down with books and wrinkled clothes, a bit fearful that the wrong move would send the entire thing crashing down on him.

While twenty-two year old Wyatt was broad shouldered, muscular, blonde and everyone's picture of the American "boy-next-door", Chris was just as tall, although more lean with darker features inherited from their mother. Two years younger than Wyatt, or nearly that, Chris had their father's sea green eyes, while Wyatt's were a piercing blue. Not that Wyatt's eyes could be seen, with them closed in sleep. The younger brother grabbed a few articles of clothing, stuffing them into the laundry basket and gave one last try to rousing his brother with his voice before he would resort to other means, "Wyatt!"

Chris rolled his eyes, and then shifted the laundry basket again so that he could free his right hand. With a small gesture of his fingers, the dial on Wyatt's stereo turned full blast via telekinesis. Loud rock music blared from the headphones that were still in Wyatt's ears, causing one of the rudest wake ups that a younger sibling can invoke. With a start, Wyatt jerked his hands up to fling the offending noise away from him and in the process caused his chair to roll out from under him, depositing his still sleep-fogged self upon the cluttered floor of his room. The motion of his hands in his downward fall created a small explosion from his stereo - stopping the noise, but also stopping any future use of the innocent piece of electronics. Smoke and sparks emerged and Wyatt ground his teeth in frustration.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Wyatt snapped grouchily at Chris as he picked himself up from the floor and waved the smoke away from the ruined stereo. Having stayed up all-night and fallen asleep on his keyboard, only to be woken so impolitely, Wyatt wasn't yet coherent enough to feel cordial or forgiving. That and he had just killed his stereo unintentionally with magic. What probably bothered Wyatt more was that it could have just as easily been Chris that he had blasted.

Wyatt and Chris Halliwell were brothers like any other, except for the small little detail of the two of them being witches. Born into the magical community, the sons of the eldest Charmed Sister and her Whitelighter husband, the Halliwell brothers had been raised with the knowledge of supernatural things that the average person would never begin to imagine. Their mother was Piper Halliwell, one of the Charmed Ones, and a powerful good witch. While their father, Leo Wyatt was mortal now, up until shortly after Chris was born he had been a Whitelighter. That is to say, their father had literally been a guardian angel. Half angel and half witch, Wyatt and his younger brother Chris had matured with the knowledge that one day they would carry on their family's legacy as protectors of good magic and defenders of the innocent.

Chris just shook his head, trying to hide a smirk, "How was I supposed to know you were going to vanquish your stereo?" The dark-haired witch went back to grabbing articles of dirty clothes where he dared, trying not to cause the precarious arrangement of books and boxes to start a cave-in. Wyatt folded his muscular arms over his broad chest and tried his best to express his annoyance with his glares.

"Did you forget that Mom and Dad are flying in from San Francisco today?" Chris asked his sibling, without looking at him. Chris could feel and even sense the glares being directed at the back of his head by his elder sibling. Chris was busy setting the laundry basket on Wyatt's unmade bed so that he could better accumulate what needed to be washed. "Help me clean this place up so Mom doesn't have a heart attack when she sees it."

The last eighteen years, since the Charmed Ones had fought their greatest battle, had been relatively quiet. Allowing Wyatt and Chris to have remarkably normal childhoods for Halliwells, something their mother had always hoped for her children. There had been a few uprisings or troubles that would pop up here and there, but all in all, the two young men had been able to actually have childhoods. They had played sports, had parties, made friends… They had been able to grow into their powers without constant threats from evil, and their mother had made sure that they experienced all there was to experience outside of magic. Things were still relatively quiet in the Underworld. It had been that fact alone that had given Chris the opportunity to move so far away from his family to go to school.

His mother had begrudgingly accepted that her youngest son, her baby, wanted to experience some things on his own. Chris had needed to spend at least some time, out from under the shadow of his elder brother. Wyatt's birth had been foretold as the 'Twice-Blessed Witch' and even magic itself had stopped the day he was born. Chris had no such prophecies telling of his birth, or any such great expectations placed upon him… except for his own personal complex of trying to live up to his older brother. He didn't envy the pressure that Wyatt faced with his magical destiny, but there were times that Chris wished that he wasn't thought of as 'Wyatt's Little Brother' or 'Piper's Youngest Son' in the magical community, rather than the distinct individual that he was. Chris had had two years here in Boston on his own and the first time someone referred to Wyatt as, 'Oh, you're Chris's brother,' it had made him grin. That had been enough to satisfy his urge for being recognized as an individual.

Wyatt blinked drowsily at Chris, raking his hands through blonde curls that were unusually unruly this morning. The annoyance at his wake-up and the demise of yet another electronic device thanks to the combustion power he had inherited from his mother was gradually beginning to fade. Watching Chris moving around his room on a cleaning spree was making it hard to stay mad. It was almost comical to see his younger sibling acting in such an amusingly similar fashion to their mother. "Now?" Wyatt asked.

Chris looked up as he lifted the now overflowing laundry basket from the bed. He responded in a deadpan voice, laden heavily with sarcasm, "No. Tomorrow." Rolling his sage-green eyes, for the second time already this morning, Chris finished with, "Yes, now. How do you function in all this mess? You just moved in, but you look like you have a year's worth of clutter in here already. Is there any method to this madness… and were you planning on actually unpacking the rest of your stuff? You've been here long enough to finish moving in, there's been plenty of time to get settled even with our usual distractions. This place is a disaster… I can understand a little mess, Wy, but seriously. I know Mom didn't let you keep your room at the Manor like this… tell me your whole apartment back in San Fran didn't look like this…"

"Hey," Wyatt said defensively, "I think I'm pretty well settled, don't you? I may not alphabetize the cabinets or neurotically color-code my closet, but I know where everything in here is."

"The cabinets are not alphabetized, they're organized… and I don't neurotically color-code my closet. I do, however, know where my closet is and what clothes hangers are for," Chris defended as he picked up a shirt from the nightstand, uncovering a half-eaten slice of pizza. The younger man's face contorted in a grimace, "Okay. Ew. And you're telling me you knew that was there?"

Wyatt looked sheepish for a second and a bit of color crept into his cheeks, and then he returned to being defensive. The older witch crossed the room and grabbed the plate, dumping the pizza in the trashcan that was already spilling over. "Don't you have somewhere to be? A class or something?" Wyatt complained, though now it was only half-hearted. He loved his little brother, which was part of the reason the pair of them had decided to move in together when Wyatt arrived in Boston a month ago to get ready for the Fall Semester.

"Yeah, in like, two hours… which is why I want you to help me clean this place up as much as possible now, so I'm not stuck doing it all myself at the last minute while you're off meeting with the editor of the paper about that article you fell asleep writing last night," Chris nudges the overflowing garbage with his sneaker, "This is embarrassing," he teases good naturedly. The grin on his face should have been enough to tell Wyatt that he wasn't that serious about it, even were it not for their brotherly bond. Chris had had his time to learn who he was, and now, he was genuinely glad to have his big brother back around. He'd missed the banter and his best friend. "I'm ashamed to be related to you. Please, tell me that you don't plan on bringing girls in here with it looking like this…"

Wyatt grinned, having managed to forget about the earlier rude awakening, his lips parted to reveal his teeth. That was the good thing about their relationship, they never could stay angry with each other. "I could tell you that." Wyatt waited a moment, then added with an overly casual shrug, "Cleaning my room hasn't been real high on the priorities list."

"I've noticed," Chris said wryly.

"Hey, we didn't have to get an apartment together. I could've afforded a smaller place on my own and you could've always gone back to living in the dorms for another semester…"

"Yeah, the dorm thing worked out real well," Chris said sarcastically, "No, thanks. I can put up with you being a slob so I don't have to consider vanquishing another roommate from hell." As much of a joke as that would be to any college student, his first roommate had been that bad. It had been one of Chris's first solo experiences against evil. Eighteen, fresh out of high school, in a city on the other side of the country from the rest of his family, and his roommate had tried to kill him. His mother, aunts, nor Wyatt had been there to help, either. Oh, he could have called out for Wyatt, but he had handled it on his own. Barely. Chris shook away the memory and flashed Wyatt a conspiratorial grin, "Just help me get this place looking civilized for Mom and Dad."

Chris nodded to the plate Wyatt was still holding; "You can rinse the dishes and put them in the dishwasher. I'll be downstairs in the laundry room, hoping that there's an empty washer." Chris stepped out of Wyatt's room and shortly after Wyatt heard the door to their apartment close behind Chris.

"Could always just use magic to get rid of the mess," Wyatt mused as he started to carry the plate out of his room. Wyatt paused in the doorway and turned to look back at his mess with a sigh, "Then I'll get a personal gain lecture." He could almost hear Chris now reminding him of the last time he had decided to use their Aunt Paige's favorite spell. Not something the Wyatt cared to repeat. "…yes mother," Wyatt mumbled to himself with a smile, the comment meant for his brother who had already left their apartment. They balanced one another out and kept each other in line. It was a good arrangement.

Wyatt was halfway across the living room when the air in front of him shimmered. The eldest Halliwell brother jumped back, dropped his plate and lifted his hands ready to defend himself and the apartment from what had to be a demon attack. The shimmering image solidified into a scruffy, six-foot-one man with tousled brown hair, the beginnings of a beard, and wearing glasses over his green eyes. Before the figure finished coming into focus, Wyatt flicked his hands forward in a gesture very similar to the one that had blown up his stereo just a short time ago.

The young man yelled as he dropped to the ground, throwing his hands over his head as the burst of explosive power blasted the lamp behind him. His eyes widened behind his glasses as he cautiously looked up towards Wyatt, "What did that lamp ever do to you?"

Wyatt's hands dropped quickly when he recognized the young man he had almost blown up, and he hurried over to help his friend back up to his feet. "D.J.! I could've killed you!" Wyatt admonished the half-manticore angrily, "You ought to know better than to shimmer in here unexpectedly. Couldn't you have used the door? I thought you were someone coming to attack us."

D.J. shook his head, dusting himself off as Wyatt helped him to his feet, "Okay: A, what demon in their right mind would shimmer into your home to attack you guys, knowing the power you pack? It would be guaranteed suicide. B, you didn't kill me so don't worry about it. It wouldn't be the first near miss I've had… today. Finally, C, I didn't use the door because I came straight here because of something important I heard." D.J. raised his eyebrows as he got a look at the strangely pristine condition of the apartment, then looked at Wyatt, "How is this place this clean and you two live here? Wait, don't answer that, your brother is on some sort of 'Felix Unger cleaning kick' right?"

Wyatt made a face at D.J. and sighed at the damage to the lamp, knowing that when Chris returned from the laundry he'd have to explain that. D.J.'s words caused Wyatt to chuckle, although he was still annoyed at the demonic means of entry into the apartment. "You'd better be glad Chris didn't see you shimmer in here, he'd have had an aneurism," Wyatt said, moving to finish what he had started, thus he turned to pick up the dirty plate he had dropped. Unfortunately it had broken. "Casualty number three for the day," he muttered dryly, picking up the pieces. Over his shoulder to D.J. Wyatt questioned, "Felix Unger?"

"Yeah, you know? Felix and Oscar?" D.J. said helpfully. Wyatt clearly didn't get his meaning so D.J. appended, "The Odd Couple? Never mind… why is this place so clean?"

"Our parents are flying out here. Apparently Chris wants their first visit to our place to impress Mom so she stops worrying about the two of us living together without supervision from the rest of our family, all the way on the east coast," Wyatt said, "He accused me of being a slob."

"You mean you aren't?" D.J. teased as he leaned against the kitchen counter. Wyatt dropped the broken dish in the trashcan before he moved to the sink to begin rinsing the ones waiting there.

"Funny," Wyatt said. The blonde witch opened the dishwasher and began putting dishes in as he rinsed them. "I'll admit, I've let things get out of hand over the last few weeks, but can there be one thing in my life that I'm not expected to be perfect at?"

D.J. held his hands up in defense, "Whoa, there Mr. Twice-Blessed, I wasn't aiming to get you on that subject. I just meant that you don't have cleaning high on your priorities list. You never have. Nor do you need to. Your place back in San Francisco was what I expected of a young, dashing bachelor with his first place, who has the weight of the world on his shoulders in living up to his over-inflated destiny while fighting evil at every turn… not…" D.J. leaned to the side, gesturing to the tidy apartment, "…straight out of a magazine. You don't have to be perfect. Lighten up. Or go back to bed, which you obviously got up on the wrong side of this morning."

"Sorry," Wyatt said, rubbing the back of his neck, "I'd love to go back to sleep. I think I dozed off around four this morning working at my desk. We won't go into waking up on the wrong side of the bed, either. Although," Wyatt trailed off spotting the pot of coffee and a mug sitting on the counter for him, "it does appear my little brother was nice enough to make coffee. Anyway, what did you have that was so vital to tell us?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah, that. I almost forgot," D.J. said. He hefted himself up onto the countertop and watched Wyatt with the dishes silently thankful that he still lived with his Dad and that his father did most of that stuff. "It's the talk of the Underworld."

Wyatt looked up sharply at that. First for the fact that it meant D.J. had been in the Underworld and second that there was anything going on worth discussion. He placed another dish into the washer and then rummaged under the counter for the detergent, "Your Dad isn't going to like that you were down there. I'm not sure how I feel about it either. Is that what you meant by it's not the first near miss you've had today?"

"Hey, the information is valuable and I'm careful," D.J. said, "usually. Someone recognized me as being a friend of yours when he noticed me listening to their conversation, so I got out of there real quick-like. As for my Dad, he's not going to know I was in the Underworld unless someone tells him." D.J. paused casually looking at his fingernails, "So, do you want to hear what I found out or not?"

Wyatt threw a dishtowel in his face, before he closed the dishwasher and pressed the start button, "Quit beating around the bush."

"Someone murdered another witch in Salem last night," D.J. said, "and everyone was in an uproar because rumor has it, it wasn't done by a demon. Good, I see I have your attention now. Before I had to cut and run, I heard that it's connected to the four other witches that were killed here in and around Boston three weeks ago, right about the time you were moving in. That's why it caught my interest; I've been trying to find out who was responsible since the first one. That was the biggest activity the Underworld has seen in a long time and until today I hadn't had any leads on it at all. You know as well as I do the Underworld has been laying low… Where did you say your brother was again?"

"Laundry."

D.J. nodded, "Maybe we should wait 'til he gets back up here so I don't have to repeat myself. He's going to want to hear about this too."

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"Leo, what did you do with the tickets?" Piper Halliwell called up the stairs to her husband. It was still early in San Francisco, but they were going to be pushing their time short to get to the airport and through security to catch their plane on time.

"I left them on the kitchen counter," the man's voice called from downstairs, "I still don't understand why we're flying. Either of the boys could come out here and orb us." He emerged from their bedroom, dragging a pair of suitcases towards the stairs. "Or why you had to pack so much. We're going to be there for a week Piper, not for a month."

Leo Wyatt smiled lovingly down at his wife, even as he started to drag their suitcases down the stairs to meet her. He had given up everything for his family, to be with his wife and to help raise their two sons Wyatt and Chris. When he had first met Piper he had been the Whitelighter for her and her sisters. They had been through so many trials together through the years, but in the end everything had worked out. True love always did find ways to come out on top.

Piper wrinkled her nose at him, but the expression was a fond one, "We're flying because I want to. We are going to go and visit our children like normal parents, on a plane. And you, Mister, are going to enjoy it." Piper reached back to pull her salt-and-pepper hair back into a ponytail before she moved to the kitchen to get the tickets, "At the rate you're moving we're going to be late."

"You're the one that keeps forgetting things," Leo reminded her, "the weight of these bags proves it. I'm really not looking forward to flying, Piper. If you don't want to bother the boys, we could just call Paige. It would be much easier to…"

"No!" Piper retorted from the kitchen, interrupting his argument. He had been at this ever since she had booked the tickets. "I already bought the tickets Leo. No refunds. We are going to visit our children by plane like normal parents," the woman repeated tersely, "as in without magic." She emerged from the kitchen with eyebrows raised and her mouth set into a firm line that brooked no nonsense. "Can you just put the bags in the car? I've got one last thing to get from the attic."

Leo sighed, but complied. He'd had to give it one last try, but his wife had put her foot down it seemed. When Piper Halliwell made up her mind about something, there was no changing her course. That was part of what he loved about her. Leo watched as she climbed the stairs of the house that she had lived in all her life, heading up towards the attic. It was a familiar sight and one that he had never grown tired of after all these years. Lifting the bags as she disappeared from view, Leo headed out the front door to load up their car.

The stairs of the old Manor House creaked as Piper climbed up them. Her hand trailed along the banister fondly. The house had been in their family for generations, her children the most recent to have grown up inside its walls. That brought a faint sadness to her face since her boys were now across the country, but at the same time a warm sense of pride that they were living their lives. The next generation of Halliwells. Her boys. And the only boys that had been born into the family tracing all the way back to their ancestor Melinda Warren.

In a family that had been dominated by women for generations, Piper knew that her boys had a special destiny set ahead for them. She had just been glad that they had been able to have a semi-normal childhood before they had to face whatever lay ahead for them. In one corner of the attic a blanket lay on the floor at the base of an object, where it had previously covered one piece of her eldest son's destiny. Excalibur, the Sword in the Stone, awaited him for when he was ready for it. It waited for when Piper, the Lady in the Lake, passed it on to the next King Arthur. Piper crossed the attic towards where their family's Book of Shadows rested on its stand, only after she had recovered the sword. Not yet. She hadn't come up here for Excalibur.

With careful hands Piper lifted the Book of Shadows from its stand. Wyatt and Chris weren't expecting her to be bringing them a house-warming gift. Her sons would be more than surprised at the one that she was bringing them. She tenderly ran her hand over the triquetra on the cover of the book. "Time to officially pass you on to the next generation…"

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