The Snow Gardens

by That Girl Six

Three weeks after Chris's death, the family is in pieces trying to find their way back to one another in all the wrong ways. As each deal with their grief, the future, past, and present all come into question while they try to save their broken family.

9. I Never Liked How Our Story Ended Anyway

Chapter Nine
I Never Liked the Way Our Story Ended Anyway

I.

"Hey," said Chris pleasantly from his front row seat at the foot of the bed. He smiled sadly at his aunt, trying to block out the imagery of what was going on for her; he'd lived that once and didn't really want to live it again. Besides, he had a job to do at the moment. He had plenty of time to mope and feel sorry for himself once she was safely back home. He stretched his grin at her a little bigger, letting it take his uneasiness away. Tenderly, he reached his hand into hers and pulled hard enough to let her know that it was okay to sit up and talk. "Big day, huh?"

Once sitting up, Phoebe gaped at her nephew, almost annoyed at how calm he looked sitting there at her feet like they were just having a perfectly normal conversation. Irritated, she griped, "Since the day I met you, you've had a talent for the understatement, but I think that one is a bit over the top, don't you?"

"You've seen some of the highlights of my life. Do you blame me?"

"Yes," she answered begrudgingly.

Reminded of something Paige had said to him once, Chris said gently, "I had to survive the sadness somehow."

Unable to argue with the sentiment, Phoebe sat quietly, looking around her at the seemingly frozen space of time that her mind had become. That is, if it was her mind. She wasn't entirely sure of anything these days. She especially wasn't sure when she looked down and saw Chris's legs instead of her own. She reacted violently, trying to push herself back on the bed, only to tumble out of his body and onto off the bed backwards. She hit the floor hard and quickly scampered into the corner, as if hiding were the answer. She raised a shaky hand at the bed, unable to actually see over the edge to know if anything was still there. Her finger wagged wildly as she stammered, "Wh-wh-what the hell is going on? How did you do that?"

"You tell me," said Chris cryptically without bothering to look back at her. "This is your thing."

More annoyed at her nephew's lack of emotion than she was afraid, Phoebe hauled herself to her feet, prepared to give the kid a good talking-to if he didn't at least try to help her out. Her lecture was caught in the back of her throat as she got a good look at the scene in the room. Aside from her nephew's back, there was a pale, bleeding version of Chris laying on the bed. Cradling his head, looking beyond desperate, was a frozen Leo. In the doorway, Paige was frozen in her struggle to keep herself standing. Phoebe's eyes darted between the faces of the three, seeing them as if for the first time. She had relived this moment a few times now, but never like this. She covered her mouth with her hand, not trusting herself to speak. Even with the barrier, a heartbroken "Oh, Chris" escaped with a sob.

Hearing his cue, Chris stood up and walked over to his aunt. He took her hands and pulled her away from the scene, but not out of sight of it. He sat them down on the sofa, never letting go of her. Softly, he asked, "You okay?"

"Am I okay," she hiccuped incredulously, pointing at his dying body. "None of this — none of that is okay."

"I'm dead, Phoebe," the man shrugged. "I really don't have to worry too much about 'okay' anymore. I'm much more worried about you. You want to tell me what's going on here?"

"Personal Gain," the witch winced guiltily. "Damn it."

"I had that much figured out already. A little more detail would be nice. Not that I need it, but I would like to hear it from you, not Them."

Phoebe smiled at her nephew with tears in her eyes. Her hand shook as she fondly touched his cheek like a kiss. "I couldn't risk us losing you, not after everything that happened. Obviously we have a little bit of a backfire here, but I . . . They are so mad at us and your father that I had to take precautions. Paige is having such a hard time, and your Dad. Your mom says she's okay, but — I had to do something. I couldn't stand the thought of us forgetting you."

"So you thought it would make me feel better if my memory killed you instead?"

"It was not supposed to be like that. It was supposed to be nothing more than a simple memory spell. I only needed it to be powerful enough that the Cleaners couldn't take you away from us like they tried to take Wyatt. It wasn't supposed to actually bring me your memories. It was supposed to keep our own memories. We couldn't lose you again. I couldn't let us forget."

"I wasn't worried about you forgetting. And you didn't lose me."

Phoebe shook her head in disagreement. "But we did. There is another You with us now. He didn't know anything about you and had a very different life from you. Things didn't work out differently enough that he doesn't still have a problem with Wyatt, but he's not you. We know he isn't you."

"That doesn't make me lost."

"But we assumed that you were with the baby, except he apparently didn't grow up to be you. I mean, he obviously can't be, not if an adult You is in two places at once."

"I'm good, but I'm not that good," he joked. With a gentle squeeze of her hand, Chris told his aunt in his most sincere voice, "You still didn't lose me. Cleaners, shmeaners. I may not be corporeal outside of this nifty piece of time and space, but that doesn't mean that I'm not with you. I'm no more gone from you than Grams and Grandma and Prue. You need to trust that things work out the way they're supposed to. How many times are you going to learn that lesson before you actually believe it?"

"A few more times." Phoebe looked back over to where Leo wept over the last breath of his dying son and heaved a catchy sigh. She tried to shake the tears away, even as she finally saw the wound she had only felt until now. Even though it sounded ridiculous to her, she said, "That looks like it hurt."

Chris barely glanced at the memory of his body and shrugged. "I've had better days. So have you."

Phoebe was quiet for a while, focusing on Paige and Leo's frozen faces as they looked on in horror at the wound that threatened to take her voice away with every minute that passed. Guiltily, she babbled, " I can't believe . . It must be so awful to keep seeing — The spell wasn't supposed to hurt anyone. It was supposed to keep your memory alive for us, not your memories. I never wanted them to have to relive this. Had I known — "

"They are reliving it, with or without your help, every day," Chris interrupted, a little more sternly than he'd intended. His own eyes turned to the faces of his father and aunt, devastated. Dad had tried so hard. To see that expression on his father's face wasn't getting any easier now that he could see it someplace besides in his head. He had to admit; part of him was angry at Phoebe. She should have known better. But still, he knew that he was right. It was one of the few times that he knew he could give his aunt advice and actually be right. Lessening the tone in his voice, he told her, "People relive death all the time. Dad and Paige might be a little excessive about it these days, especially with their own little spells, but it's still fresh for them. They went through a lot that day. It will settle down eventually. You didn't have to worry about them forgetting. You just needed to give them time to grieve."

"I was so sure that the Elders would want this mess cleaned up to keep us on Their side. Gideon couldn't be the only one who thought the way he did. I know They wouldn't want us to remember any of this. I mean, situations like ours must be exactly what the Cleaners were created for. They must be furious at us for quitting and for what happened with your father. The Elders had to have been wanting this fixed as quickly as possible."

"They did," admitted Chris. "Or so I've been told. I'm not on Their 'Favorite People' list right now, to say the least."

Phoebe gave her nephew The Eye before she even realized that she was doing it. "What have you done?"

Anxious to ignore that subject for the time being, Chris instead turned on his aunt. He started casually so that his attack on her would come at least somewhat unexpectedly. "So I have to ask — What the hell are you people doing down there? I wasn't that good at the whole Whitelighter thing, but you shouldn't be that lost without me. I mean, come on! Personal Gain spells left and right, trips to the future, trips to the past, the Warren line dying twenty-five years before he's even born? What the hell is going on, Phoebe?"

Before Phoebe could think about how she was wording herself, she admitted the real reason behind all of the insanity she had created in their lives. "I'm trying to save you. I couldn't do it that day, but I — "

"I'm already dead," Chris said. "There isn't anything that you can do about that."

Angrily, Phoebe argued, "It was my fault. If we — if I had gotten to Piper in time, she never would have cast that spell. We lost you because I wasn't trying hard enough. I was so worried about Wyatt that I didn't take the time to worry about you. It's my fault, and I need to make it right."

"I appreciate the sentiment, but has it ever occurred to you that maybe it was just my time? Or that someone had a plan?"

Flustered at the idea that he could be so calm about living such a short life when it could have been prevented, Phoebe burst out angrily, "How can you say that? After everything we — There is no plan! There is no goddamned Grand Design because, if there was, Gideon never would have been able to do what he did. He wouldn't have been able to take Wyatt. He wouldn't have been able to do what he did to you and to all of us. Screw the Grand Design and to Hell with anyone's plans!"

"People die young, just as often as they die old."

Tears of frustration fell from the woman's face in her anger at her nephew's inability to accept that she was right and he was wrong. "You were too young."

Chris tried not to sound condescending as he asked, "How old is old enough?"

Petulantly, Phoebe whined, "Older than this. You didn't get to have a life."

"Sure I did. And I used it to save my family. When I was growing up, it was just me and Wyatt. From what I understand, this time Grandpa had eight grandchildren. That's a lot of love, Phoebe. When you get there, this will all have been worth it."

"We can't just let you die, Chris."

Chris smiled almost serenely at his aunt. He knew, based on all of the craziness that they were going through at the moment, that this was not what she wanted to hear, but he tried to soften the blow anyway. Gently, he told her, "It really is okay. I mean, there are definitely parts about dying the way that I did that I don't recommend, but I got to hear both of my parents tell me that they love me. Considering everything that happened between us, I'm okay with that being how my part of the story ends. You guys need to be okay with that, too."

"Chris," Phoebe sighed, wanting to keep arguing. She saw his face, though, and knew that it wasn't an argument that she was going to win. Her tone let him know that she wasn't happy with the resolution of the conversation, but she changed the subject slightly to let him know that she wasn't going to try to change his mind anymore. "Paige, um . . . Paige said that you disappeared. You obviously didn't go to the future and you didn't join the baby, so I . . . I . . . so where have you been? Grams told Piper that Mom and Prue had all been called away, and she assumed after talking to Piper that it was about you, but she said she hadn't seen you yet. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine, I promise. I just put up a little too much of a fight, I guess."

"How so?"

For the first time, Chris looked like he had a regret or two about the day he had died. Stiffly, he told her, "I couldn't leave you guys when Gideon was still out there. Wyatt was all that mattered that day. If you were to ask certain people, they'd probably say I made a real nuisance of myself."

"And now? Where are we now?"

"We're where you needed to be," said Chris, then amended himself. "We're where the spell apparently thought you needed to be. So I guess the question now is, what is it that you're looking for? You know you can't save me. You know that you can't stay in my head forever — and you can't stay in yours. Paige learned that lesson last night. It's about time you learned it, too."

Unable to answer the question, Phoebe weakly joked, "Look at you, sounding just like a Whitelighter. I think you missed your calling."

Chris was unswayed by the joke and gave his aunt a hard look. "You and I both know that Personal Gain spells come with a price. You're living yours. With the price always comes a lesson. So let's have it. You know that the spell isn't going to let you go until you give up and learn what you're supposed to learn And no offence, but I can think of places I'd rather be at the moment."

Phoebe almost looked scared at the harshness in her nephew's words. She shook her head, unable to even argue with him. The prospect of admitting what she knew she was supposed to learn was too much. It meant losing too much.

Forcefully, Chris tried to get the lesson through her thick skull. To be honest, he had always been careful not to sound too angry with his family, even his father, during his time with them. He had only done it once or twice, invoking his brother's voice that normally scared the bejeepers out of him to use on them. This was going to have to be one of those times. Dark and callous, he told her, "You need to stop living in the past or the future. All of you. You need to live for the now, before you miss it. Do you get that those two little kids in that house need you to be the grownups? They need you to be there for them, not chasing me through portals or casting spells that damned near get you killed! When in the hell are you people going to knock it off?"

"Chris — "

"No, seriously. Do you realize that they are seeing everything I saw through your eyes? My life flashing before my eyes and all that? When you froze, so did my memories. Right now, you have a memory of Wyatt standing over you with an energy ball in his hand ready to throw it at me. They have had to tip-toe around that for hours. Do you understand how hard I worked to keep you from knowing about what happened to him? Do you have any idea how hard I worked to keep Mom and Dad from knowing what their son had turned into? Now they have to try to work around that while they're trying to save you. Even when this is over, that memory is never going to go away for them. Twenty years from now, when Wyatt looks just like that, they're going to catch him out of the corner of their eyes and that is what they are going to see. I never wanted that for them. I didn't want that for him! It's bad enough that he has memories of his own to worry about. You know, you saw. He was there, he saw what Gideon did to me. I can't take that back for him. Now he has to see that again. None of them needed that. I didn't want that for any of them!"

"I didn't know."

"You never know, Phoebe. I mean, come on! I am so grateful for everything you have done for me in my life, and I love you, but sometimes you can be so damned selfish."

"Now you wait a minute," demanded Phoebe. "I know this one has Personal Gain written all over it and that, in the long run, I probably should have just left well enough alone, but I was doing what I thought was right. I didn't see this happening."

Chris raised his voice, forgetting for the moment that it was his aunt he was hollering at. "Of course you didn't. You never do."

"So, what? You postponed our collective death so that you could get in one more lecture? You aren't exactly pure as the fallen snow yourself, pal."

"I never claimed to be," said Chris. "But I'm not the one hurting them right now. You are."

"And I'm sorry."

"Are you?"

Phoebe walked away from her nephew heatedly. She turned back toward him several times then continued to walk away until she was as far apart from him in the room as she could be. Horribly hurt, she asked, "How can you even ask me that?"

"Because you're the one still sitting here arguing with me instead of going back to our family to help them. Wyatt and Christopher just lost their sister and are barely clinging on to their sanity right now just trying to keep it together enough for Mom and Dad. In their spare time, they're still trying to figure themselves out, too. They need you to help them save Wyatt so that they can go to their proper future. Instead, you're hiding out here."

Their voices escalating to the point of screaming now, Phoebe practically screeched, "A future that was supposed to be yours!"

"It isn't mine anymore. We missed the boat on that one. But this isn't even about me. This is about you."

"Yeah? Then how about we make it about you? You want to talk about hurt? Your parents still can hardly look at each other without realizing what it is they lost, and I don't mean you. You've been sitting here with this all-seeing eye thing going on. Tell me, how do they look to you whenever they are together? You split them up, Chris. You're the one who caused this rift in them that they may never be able to repair all because you couldn't be just a little bit honest with us. So before you want to start in lecturing me about how I am putting our family through Hell, maybe you should give that lecture to yourself first. Then we'll see who gets to yell the loudest."

As Chris glared right back at his aunt, he had to physically restrain himself from orbing out like he normally would in this situation. "You're really going to question my methods? Look at the way you all reacted to me when I tried to tell you about Wyatt. None of you believed me. Sure, everyone is thrilled with me now, but not a one of you trusted that I was doing it for the right reasons. None of you wanted to believe that there could be anything wrong with precious little Wyatt. You've seen what it was like. You were no different in the past than you were in my lifetime. You wanted to believe him because of a flimsy prophecy, which, by the way, was manipulated in the first place. The idea that a prophecy could in any way be misinterpreted was impossible to you. It drove my father out of my life and got him killed. Yes, I want to see my parents back together again, but you know damned well that I was doing what I thought was right. You've been hiding out in my head now for weeks. You've seen it. You know. I don't get why it's so hard for you to understand. If it was Mom or Paige who had turned evil on you, is there anything that you wouldn't do to save her? Wyatt is my brother. I had to do this. I was and am willing to accept the consequences of that. I would rather my parents be separated and alive than what I had to live with."

"That wasn't up to you," snapped Phoebe. "You aren't a god, Chris."

"I'm not the one acting like one," he retorted.

"Aren't you?"

"No, I'm not. You, on the other hand . . . "

"Hold on — "

Chris waved his arm around, indicating the picture of space and time that would be forever frozen in his own mind as the last place he expected to die. He caught sight of his own body and shivered, but quickly covered himself. This wasn't about him. He truly believed that. He was going to get Phoebe out of this last one, no matter what. He could pout later. He threw a few extra coals on the fire to keep his temper hot and bristled, "Look around you, Phoebe! Do you even realize what you've done? The Tribunal warned you. No Personal Gain. For God's sakes, they took away your active powers. You were supposed to learn. You were supposed to understand that you can't be doing these kinds of things."

Phoebe drew in a breath to once again defend herself, to remind her nephew that she was not ten years old, but Chris cut her off before she could get a sound out. " — "

"No. You don't get to interrupt me. One of the things I figured out about what went wrong with us is that I never took on being your Whitelighter the way I should have. I was too used to being your nephew, too used to having to respect my elders, which you were regardless of time. But this time, I'm not giving you options. You're going to listen to me. I need you to understand that you have to listen to me. You will never know what I gave up to do this for you right now."

"What are you talking about?"

"Right now, your body is in a sort of stasis so that we can sit here and talk this out. That wasn't supposed to happen. The Tribunal has been watching you since they stripped your powers. They know all about this spell. Their decision was to let the spell play itself out on its own, no interference. If you were able to come out of it on your own, bully for you, but if you were unable to fight it and ended up like you are now, you were supposed to just die with my memory. The Power of Three be damned. You had made your decision to mess with things again. I went through every single being I could get to to keep that from happening. If that means I'm 'playing God', then fine, but I am not going to let you use me as an excuse to rip this family apart. I worked too hard to keep you all alive. And if that makes me selfish, fine on that one, too. Hell, at this point, if you want me to play the You Owe Me card, I will. But don't think for one second that I am letting you out of here just to let you die. If nothing else, I am not in any way ready to spend Eternity with you. I'm twenty-three years old. I have an afterlife of my own to lead before any of you come up there."

"That's not funny," Phoebe sobbed angrily.

Still annoyed, Chris asked, "What am I supposed to do about it? Lie? Should I just pretend that this is a temporary situation to make you feel better? I died, Phoebe. End of story. You don't get to gloss over it. You don't get to make it about you."

"That wasn't what I was trying to do."

Even though he was perfectly aware that his aunt had had the best of intentions (she always — almost always — did), Chris bit back at her, "Of course not."

"Have you even considered that this wasn't just about you," asked Phoebe, trying to smart her way around his logic once again. "If They had the Cleaners erase you and Gideon from our lives, they would have to have removed Wyatt from our memories again. That would be a pretty lousy reward for saving your kid brother to have him be wiped off the planet anyway, don't you think?"

"I don't have a lot of time here. I wish I had all the time in the world to listen to you try to rationalize your way around all of this, I do. But the truth is there is only one reason that you did this, and unless you are able to work your way through that reason, your body is going to start up again and die the same death that I did. I've got to tell you, it wasn't all that fun. I don't think it will be much fun for Dad and Paige either, let alone Mom and Grandpa."

The witch sat defeatedly on the edge of the sofa again, unable to look at her nephew any longer. She sounded so desperate as she asked him, "What do you want me to say?"

"The truth would be a good place to start," he said gently, fighting the crooked smile that wanted to creep into his voice. Now we're getting somewhere. Finally.

"Like what? That I feel guilty? Okay, fine, I feel guilty. I wasn't there. I didn't listen to you or your father when you tried to tell us we were under a spell. I didn't believe your father when he told us you were dying. I couldn't help Piper and I couldn't help Wyatt. I couldn't help your father and I sure as hell couldn't help you. If I hadn't lost my powers, if I hadn't been so wrapped up in everything but you, I might have been there to help you. You deserved to get home to that future you helped to create. You would have made it if it hadn't been for me."

Chris went over to sit on the floor in front of his aunt, sat cross-legged, and placed his hands in hers. She was trying so hard to look anywhere but where he was, but he knew if he sat there staring at her long enough, she would look sooner or later. When she finally did, he wanted to take back everything he had just yelled at her. She looked so lost, so unconfident, so not Phoebe. Not sure what the best thing was going to be to say to her to make her remember who she was, he smiled softly up at her. "You know that isn't true. You did what you could."

"This isn't right," Phoebe said hopelessly, pulling her hands away from her dead nephew. She didn't need a physical reminder of her failures right now. It was hard enough being in the same room with him, let alone having to fight with him. It was too much. "I can't do this. I just don't understand why this is happening, again. Haven't we done this enough?"

Chris studied his aunt for a second, realizing for the first time that she really didn't know. Even with everything that she had been through, becoming a witch had made her forget the only thing in this world that is inevitable. "Grief is part of life. We don't get a free pass just because we have powers."

Darkly, Phoebe pishawed, "No, we don't. We just get it piled on because we have powers."

"No, we don't," he argued. "Our family experiences may be different, but they're the same. We may have a propensity for dying a little more violently than some families, but we don't die any more than they do. We don't have the corner on the grief market."

"Says the kid who was so wracked with grief over his life that he came twenty-three years into the past to stop it from happening to him . . . "

"That isn't how it was, and you know it. I didn't come to the past because everyone was dead around me. It wasn't even out of grief for the way that Wyatt was, although that helped. You know that. You saw what it was like. The other stuff, though, I can't tell you exactly why right now, but I now know that I knew things I wasn't supposed to know. I knew things about Wyatt and me that — well — Let's just say that the Elders knew a lot more about me than They let on to Dad when I first got here. Tell Christopher that. He'll catch on. I did."

Suspiciously, Phoebe asked, "What do you mean?"

"I'm not even supposed to be here, Phoebe. I called in a lot of favors to get you here so that I could save you — from yourself, again, by the way — and I'm not wasting it. You'll remember everything we've said here when you wake up. That's as close as I can get to this."

"That wasn't an answer to my question."

"Did I promise an answer to the question," he smirked. When his aunt answered him with a rather unhappy look, he shrugged half-heartedly, still smirking. "Sorry."

"Sure, you are."

Neither of them seemed to know what to say after that. The silence grew. Chris grew more anxious, as he usually did, while Phoebe seemed oblivious to him. She stared at the dying boy on the bed, gathering the courage to leave him, like she knew she was going to have to soon. They had probably already been there too long. She knew that. Spells were still spells, even if they gave something good out of the bad. She could feel it; she had fulfilled the catch in the spell and it was going to take her away very, very soon.

Before it could do its magic again, Phoebe needed to get a few more things out. Uneasily, she asked for his attention. "Chris?"

"Hmm?"

"I'm really sorry about your sister," Phoebe offered. When Chris gave her a look, she asked, "What?"

Chris regarded his aunt with a cocked eyebrow. "You've been living in my head now for three weeks and you think you need to give me condolences? I never had a family, Phoebe. It was just me and Wyatt. You know that. Paige was gone when the Titans came around. Even after I changed the history, you were both still out of the picture long before there was ever any hope of any other children. And with Dad needed Up There all the time, in either history . . . It was just us. But you knew that."

"Sorry. The last week has been a little hazy, I guess. It's getting harder to tell the two of you apart."

"I'm the good-looking one," Chris joked. "He's the one with the pulse."

"Not funny."

Thoughtfully, Chris shrugged his head to the side with a rueful grin. "Maybe not, but it's honest, and that's what you wanted most from me when I was still alive, right? Honesty?"

"You're a day late and a dollar short, mister," Phoebe replied.

"Maybe." Chris waited a beat then said in all seriousness, "But you can do me a favor anyway and tell him that she's okay. Clarence is good at his job. He's taking good care of her. We both are. Tell him I'll take care of her like she was my own."

Phoebe regarded her nephew oddly, thinking that that was awfully sweet of him to offer but also rather resigned of his fate, as if he were giving up his place in their lives. Still, it was his move now, so she agreed with a sad "I will."

"She also asked me to tell you to tell him that he needs to pay more attention to the visions."

"He'll know what that means?"

Chris shrugged with his face, not exactly sure of his answer himself. "I guess. She didn't go into a lot of detail. She just said she'd tell me later, not that she defined 'later'. It's not like we're having a shortage of time here. She could stretch this one out forever if she wanted."

Phoebe winced at the implications of that expansive space of time available to her future niece to torture her past future nephew with. What a waste. God, she hated this. It was so unfair that that time had arrived for either of the kids. Almost pouting, she said, "Guilt tripping not helping."

"No guilt trip. Just honesty."

"Yeah, see, this whole honesty thing isn't as fun as I thought it would be."

"Hey, Genius, that was your idea, not mine." Chris felt the conversation take a turn that he knew would come sooner or later, once his aunt had avoided the subject long enough. Drawing her attention back to the matter at hand, he gently nudged her thoughts in that direction. "But look, you should go. They all need you back in the real world. He needs you."

"You need us, too."

That oddly serene expression came over the young witch's face once again, the same one that his father had worn every time he'd spent too much time Up There. Even his voice sounded to be at peace as he told her, "I lived my life, no regrets. He's still living his. However this turns out for him, it's his life that matters now. I'm okay with that. If he can save Wyatt, that's all that matters, right?"

"You mattered, Chris. You deserved better."

"So does he. You should go. Mom's going through a lot right now. She needs at least one of us to be okay. Right now, that's you."

"I don't want to let you go."

"You have to." He held her hands and pulled her close to him, giving her a sweet, soft kiss on the top of her head to end the discussion, whether she liked it or not. "I'll be around. My brother has his own personal guardian angel now. I kind of think I might be good at the job."

Tears welled in the witch's eyes as she took in this particular version of her nephew for what she knew would be the last time. So proud, she told him without a hint of doubt, "I know you will. We'll be counting on it."

"Hey, Phoebe? That other thing you said? It was nice to hear."

"I'm just sorry we didn't say it sooner."

"Remember to tell him that so that you don't have to regret it a second time."

"I will. Anything else?"

Chris seemed to consider his answer for only half a second, as if he felt guilty for taking advantage of an opportunity that wasn't for him. Still, she was there. He had to do at least something. Fondly, he said, "Tell Paige that I appreciated everything she did for me that day. I was glad she was with me. Tell Grandpa that I'm sorry for breaking my promise, but that I hope he understands why. And just . . . Tell my parents that I love them."

Realizing that that was it, that they had said their Goodbyes and that it wasn't as hard as she thought that it would be, Phoebe said, "However else we screwed up, we love you, Chris." Almost as an afterthought, she said out loud to the Mistress of Magical Mishaps and Spell Backfires controlling this little visit of theirs, "All right already, lesson learned. No more chaos, no more spells, no more moping."

"A little bit of moping would be nice," Chris joked.

"Okay, a little bit," groaned Phoebe. "So how do I get out of here?"

"I can take care of that." Chris smiled at her then waved his hand. The world around them turned so white that they both had to close their eyes. Phoebe thought she heard him wish her luck before the brightness overtook her, and chose to keep that happy thought with her as she felt herself leave.

II.

Back in the attic, Piper shut The Book on her lap and hefted the tome onto the sofa next to her. She stretched back, stood up, and stretched some more. Her body was really starting to get angry with her for the way she'd been treating it over the last few days, so she reached back with her right hand and massaged the heck out of the muscle next to her left shoulder blade in the hopes that it would forgive her for just a few more hours. She'd find a way to lie her way through the next bodily protest when it happened to come along.

Needing a chance to refocus, she made her way over to where they had left Phoebe. Paige was standing guard over her sister, still not showing too many signs of what she herself had been through in the last few weeks. Piper looked down on her baby sister with a nose wrinkled in concern.

"How are you doing?"

The youngest witch yawned, but smiled through it. "I'm okay. What about you?"

"Looking forward to this being over so that I can sleep without guilt," admitted the elder sister. "But okay. Considering that my evil son from the future came here to beat the hell out of his little brother and then have it all be just a ruse to get said little brother to talk to him, I think I'm okay. How often do your evil children come to visit you from the future, you know?"

Paige tried to sound hopeful as she pointed out, "Christopher doesn't think Wyatt is evil anymore."

"So I suppose I should believe him. I'm trying to. I think I do. There's something about the way he started crying when their friend died that — it's just strange, that's all. Let's just say I'm being cautiously optimistic."

"Have they told you who she was?"

Piper laughed coldly and rolled her eyes. "Future Consequences. But nevermind that. They say that they can deal with it on their own. After the conversation I had with Christopher last night, I'm going to trust that he's right on that one. He's an adult, right? I shouldn't interfere until he wants me to."

Sympathetically, Paige offered, "It isn't you, Piper. When I lost my parents, I was the same way for a long time. It didn't matter how hard my aunt and uncle tried, I had had my parents and they were gone and there was nothing anyone could do to change that. I know it isn't exactly the same, but I understand how they feel. They've had to learn how to be the adults of the family without their parents. To suddenly have parents now, when they were the ones making the rules, it's got to be hard. It's probably even worse seeing you after so long. It'll get easier."

"Just in time for them to go away," said Piper. Seeing the opportunity to change the subject back to her sister, she asked, "So how are you, really?"

"I miss him," admitted Paige. "I miss him a lot more than I thought I was going to. That day is lot harder to forget than I'd like it to be. I haven't had a whole lot of time to think about it since this morning, but I'm sure I'll get there eventually. That's the point, right?"

Piper would have answered, but she was more than a little distracted by Phoebe's eyes opening. That probably wouldn't have bothered her nearly as much as the bright white light that shot out of them. "Uh, Paige? Did that happen the last time?"

"Definitely not," said a very confused Paige. "I would remember something like that."

The rest of Phoebe's body began to glow as if being healed without anyone touching her. Both Paige and Piper had to look away as the light grew. As soon as the light died down, they both reached frantically for their sister, but caught only air as Phoebe sat up with a start, her lungs spasming painfully. She clutched her chest as she tried to catch her breath, slapping away the team of hands that reached to help her out. It took her a moment, but she eventually was able to breathe almost normally. She blinked her eyes to see the owners of all the helpful hands and coughed out, "Hi."

Her resolve finally spent, Piper just sank back in her father's chair, scrubbing her face with her hands. She didn't even bother to hide her tears of relief. Tears caught behind the lump in her throat so that she just coughed a sigh. She closed her eyes and said a silent 'Thank You' to whatever higher power decided to bring her baby sister back to them.

Excitedly, Paige took both of her sister's hands, fussing over her like she was a child who had taken a bad fall. For her part, Phoebe let her fuss for a moment just so that she could figure out exactly what had happened. After a while, she was starting to feel a little claustrophobic, so she backed her sister off with a squeaky, "Air, People. Needing air."

"Are you okay," asked Paige, backing off only far enough to swipe errant tears from all the coughing from her sister's eyes.

"I think I finally am."

"I don't understand," said Paige. "How are . . . Chris died. We saw you doing it all with him. You said and did everything he did when he was — and we saw everything he did and said when . . . "

"I know." Phoebe gingerly reached for the wound that she knew was no longer there. Her lips pursed together as she struggled to find the right way to tell them what she had just experienced. "Chris and I just needed to have a little chat. We talked it over. Everything's fine now."

Piper immediately asked, "You saw him? Is he okay?"

"Yeah," Phoebe said with great confidence. She held her sister's hand and squeezed hard. "Honey, I swear, he really is okay. He wanted you to know that he has no regrets. He, um . . . He said that all he wants is for us all to be okay. No more spells, he said, especially you, Paige. And he wanted me to tell you that he loves you for staying with him."

"He did?"

"He did."

The sisters sat there for a while, grieving as a family for the first time since Chris's death. They hadn't yet afforded themselves the opportunity, but after Phoebe's announcement, it seemed to be as good a time as any. She told them everything (almost everything) that he'd told her, and even asked a few questions of her own. Then, when they were ready, they silently tucked Chris into their hearts and moved on to the Christopher under their care at the moment like Chris wanted. It took them a while, but Paige and Piper caught Phoebe up on everything that she had missed on her little excursion into Chris's head. Even as they were explaining things, though, they managed to get themselves lost. There were so many holes in what had happened to Piper's sons that they could only explain so much.

"Let's just say that they have a lot of explaining to do when they get back," said Paige.

"Which might be sooner than you think," added Piper slowly. The edges of the doorway started to glow a ghostly white, letting them know that something was going on behind the door. It took a moment, but soon the door opened to reveal the strange black hollow with floating spirit things that never failed to give her the creeps. Still, Piper tried to look just as hopeful as she had the last time they had come through the door. She focused first on Leo (who walked out backwards, still talking to the boys on his way), thinking his would be the most reliable reaction since it was a day that only he would really remember (she hoped). She didn't like the fading tear streaks on his cheeks when he turned around as she greeted him, "Tell me it went better this time and that you learned something that can help us."

"Ask them," said Leo with a frustrated shrug. "Because apparently I'm missing something and they aren't saying what."

Ignoring her husband's cryptic look, she asked her boys, "You found out something?"

"I'm not evil," Wyatt said sarcastically, punching the air with both fists in mock celebration. In the most monotonous voice he had, he completed his short lived reverie with "Yay me."

Without missing a beat, Piper answered, "Yeah, we know that. Who is?"

Christopher took time out of the search he had immediately begun to jerk a thumb over his shoulder at his brother and shrugged. "He is."

"I thought you just said you weren't," asked Paige.

Giving them all an I Told You So look, Christopher said quite simply, "He was bodyjacked."

Paige and Piper rolled their eyes in unison, but only Paige bothered to give the gesture words. "By what?"

"Actually, what you mean is, 'by whom'," Wyatt said in slow jerks, his mind wandering enough that he wasn't concentrating on what he was saying. He had followed Christopher's example and started looking around for the shadowthingwhatever that he knew he should be seeing at the moment, but was growing concerned when it didn't appear to be anywhere in sight. He craned his neck around the room, absently adding, "But hey, semantics doesn't really seem . . . all that important . . . at the moment. Chris?"

"Me neither," the man replied, his focus on the side of the room opposite his brother. He immediately looked for his brother's little self, only to find the empty playpen. "Where are the kids?"

Piper's eyes narrowed worriedly at her son. "I sent them out with Grandpa. He was going to drive me nuts and Wyatt was starting to get a little cooped up with all the playpen time. Why? What's wrong?"

"I'll go," Wyatt immediately volunteered, but Christopher shook his head. "Why not?"

"No way," Christopher said roughly. He looked at his father urgently. "I'll explain everything later tonight. Go stay with them."

Even as he started to orb out, Leo told his youngest, "I want answers the minute we come through that door."

"Christopher," Wyatt started, only to be cut off again, this time by their spirit guide.

"Am I done here, kids? 'Cause I need some food an' I need it now." Christopher quickly crossed the room to shake the ghost's hand. Clyde regarded it strangely, as if he had long forgotten the niceties of living in the living world. He quickly pulled his hand away and wiped it on his grungy coat, lips curled in a sneer. "Ya didn' have to get all mushy on me."

"Thanks, Clyde. We owe you."

"I'll be around to collect in about twenty-five years," the spirit growled happily. Still, oddly moved by the lengths the kid had gone through to find him and all of the things he watched the two kids go through that day, he couldn't help but add, "Aw, Hell. You're good kids. You can put this one on yer old man's tab. It's not like he don't owe me ennyway."

Christopher bowed his head to hide the smirk he knew threatened to pop out on his face as the ghost clapped his hands. Both Clyde and his door swirled back into a tornado that quickly blew out the house, sending paper scraps and potion bottles flying about the room in its wake. As soon as he was gone, Wyatt was at his brother's side, once again wanting an answer to his question.

Wyatt argued, "I should be there. Dad couldn't see him. I still can."

"No. I'm not risking it. I need you where I can see you. I'm guessing that, given the opportunity to bypass twenty-odd years of waiting, that sonofabitch won't hesitate to come after you instead of Little Wyatt. Even here, your powers are still in you, just blocked, and that still makes you incredibly powerful. He'll be able to sense that; at least, I'm thinking that he can. I think he was probably feeding off it from Day One. Either way, I'm not taking that chance. I don't want you in the vicinity of either of them until we're ready with some sort of plan. I need answers and I'm betting that you're the only one who has them, even if you don't know it yet."

Still a little unused to getting orders instead of giving them, Wyatt countered tersely, "In the meantime, Little Me is completely unprotected with only Grandpa and a three week old baby to look after him."

Paige interrupted, "Would one of you like to fill us in here, semantics aside?"

"It was Gideon," said Christopher plainly. He watched carefully as his mother and aunt both blushed, looking like they were going to start exploding things in every and any direction. He winced as he added, "Actually, I think it was both of them, from both here and the parallel world."

"That's impossible," said Paige angrily. "The world wouldn't have been balanced again if he was still alive. Your father had to kill him to fix the world."

"Oh, he did," said Wyatt ruefully. "Dad pretty much went all Tommy DeVito on the guy, well, both of them. But then this Gideon guy told Dad before he died that he had no idea what he'd done. I guess that Gideon knew he was going to be able to come back in one form or another."

"That form eventually being Wyatt," added Christopher.

Paige looked positively ill as she argued, "If it was Gideon, shouldn't your father have known?"

Christopher shrugged casually, but he couldn't hide the sympathy in his voice for his father. "It wasn't his fault. Dad was so busy trying to get to Wyatt that he completely missed what happened once he turned his back. I would have, too, if he and Wyatt hadn't started in on each other. It was just luck that I saw him. To everyone but Little Wyatt, it's probably nothing more than a shadow that you miss if you aren't looking right there or something you think you see out of the corner of your eye."

Piper, too, looked like she had had just about enough of all of this. Her eyes darted all around the room, looking for what she apparently was going to be unable to see, even though her son was nowhere near the premises. Her voice was shaking with fury as she turned first to Wyatt and then Christopher. "You're telling me that the sonofabitch who kidnapped you and killed you is still running around terrorizing you? He's with Little Wyatt right now?"

"Day-In and Day-Out until this very morning," said Wyatt bitterly, even though only he and his brother knew what he meant. "I'm a little fuzzy on the mechanics of it myself, but yeah."

Quickly realizing where his mother's thoughts were going to go to next, Christopher said, "Dad went to go be with Little Wyatt. He's safe."

"For how long," Piper quickly asked.

"About eighteen years," grumbled Wyatt under his breath, only to get a hard backhand in the abdomen from his kid brother.

Christopher said to his brother, "Make that six, but I'll explain that later." To his nervous mother, he said, "I think he's safe. At this point, he seems to be perfectly capable of fending off whatever attack Gideon tries. Hence the knives in the walls."

"And orbing you out of the way," eureka-ed Phoebe with wide eyes. "He isn't trying to kill you. He's trying to save you. He thinks Gideon will kill you again."

It was a quick shock for both Christopher and Wyatt when they saw Phoebe sitting up contributing to the conversation. Instead of acknowledging her idea, Christopher blinked and smiled widely at her. "You're okay!"

"Welcome back," added Wyatt.

Phoebe shifted positions on the sofa, realizing that she was really starting to stiffen up from laying clenched in a death grip for hours on end. She shrugged, "You can thank the other Chris for that one. I still don't know exactly what he did, but it worked. I'm not going to question this one. So let's not worry about me and focus on taking care of the two — four — of you. What did you mean Little Wyatt would be safe for six years?"

Christopher winced at the realization that he had said that thought a little too loudly. When he looked and saw expectant looks on the faces of everyone around him, he ran a hand through his hair and sat on the arm of the sofa that his mother and her sisters were now piled on. He looked at his brother, who visibly gulped in nervousness at him, like he knew that he was about to hear something that he really didn't want to. Christopher tried to lessen the blow as he said, "It's just a theory. I'm not even sure that I'm right."

"I want to hear this," said Piper, giving her son the permission he seemed to want to divulge what looked to be an ugly idea in the boy's head. "At this point, all we have is ideas. I'm not willing to discount anything yet."

Confidence only slightly boosted, Christopher nervously tried to fill in the blanks a little bit, even though he wasn't entirely sure he was on the right track himself. Stuttering a little as he thought out loud, he said, "I think that what happened . . . Clyde kept telling us we were blind even before we saw what happened to you a few weeks ago. He said it when we were in our past, when we were . . . older. I'm thinking that both of the Gideons are here and with Little Wyatt."

Wyatt's eyes just about popped out of his head in both surprise and realization. "What?"

Calmly, Christopher explained, "Grandpa told me that when the first event happened — you know which one I mean — you started acting strangely. They thought it was just a natural reaction to the thing. I think that, after six years of Gideon being around, it broke you down enough that the Gideon from this world was able to take over. He wasn't powerful enough to completely control you, but he was strong enough that you couldn't get rid of him. And then I think what Clyde saw today, the thing he said we were so blind about, was the evil Gideon from the parallel world finally taking over. We just didn't see it because we were too distracted by the other stuff going on. I'm thinking it took this world's Gideon that long to tap into your powers enough to allow the other Gideon in. He was always there, but he couldn't possess you until you hit a point so low that you stopped fighting the supposedly good Gideon long enough for him to let the other guy in." Realizing that he had been leaving the 'adults' out of his thoughts, he went back to addressing them instead of his brother. His mother looked like she needed a little comfort at the moment, anyway. "Like I said, though, this is all just a guess. I could very easily be wrong. But things are sort of coming together for me, and it's looking like once the two of them were in there, it was all Wyatt could do to keep his head above water, so to speak. He was still fighting it, but he was overpowered. I'll ask Dad, but I think that's what all that flashing in and out of darkness was when we were there today."

Paige was the first to process everything that Christopher was blurting out. As if one piece was still missing, she asked, "So if both of the Gideons are — were — had possessed Wyatt, then where does the evil part come in? Shouldn't the two good — and I say that lightly — good halves have overpowered the evil part?"

He thought about it for a moment, then Christopher suggested, "Even as an Elder, Gideon had probably never experienced the kind of power Wyatt has before. I know that there has always been a big deal made about the prophecy and Wyatt's powers, but it isn't just talk. The kind of power Wyatt has is . . . Well, it's scary. With being so close to death, I'm sure the Gideons were both just overwhelmed by the power. The two of them were both evil, though, really, so the two of them together probably balanced out with the good in Wyatt. The evil was corrupted even further by the power, especially when you add Excalibur in the mix. They just pulled Wyatt, our Wyatt, down and out of the way. I mean, I guess that's what we were seeing when we went through the door. The evil just overpowered the good."

Piper looked over to where Excalibur was resting across the windowseat. She remembered vividly the power corrupting her when she'd first held it last year. It hadn't been intended for her to be anything more than a guardian to it. If it did that to her, what would it have done to someone who wasn't Wyatt? To Christopher, she said, "You told us this morning that Wyatt had told you that there were no such things as Good and Evil. Maybe having the two of them inside him, combined with — Wyatt?"

From the position he had taken a safe distance away from the rest of the family, Wyatt tauntingly heard his own words come back to him as he'd said them a thousand times to everyone around him. There is no good and evil, only power. Oh, god. Everything that they had been through, everything that he had done . . . Bodies, everywhere bodies and ash and flames and screams and terror and all of the things that he'd heard himself say were in his control but all he could feel was himself spinning out of control. He heard everything his brother was saying and knew the kid was right. Christopher had been right. He'd been gone, abandoned those who needed him most, those he loved the most, and it was all coming together into such an awful picture and it was. . . it was . . . Gideon and . . . He thought it had hit him before, but now, now it . . . oh, god.

You. Did. This.

Out of the corner of his eye, Christopher saw Wyatt's face drain of all color as he shivered. Confused, he asked his brother, "Who walked all over your grave?"

Wyatt looked for all the world like he was going to drop right there. Christopher was immediately at his side, steering his brother toward what they had called 'The Squishy Chair' as kids. He tried to guide Wyatt into it, but his brother just fell into it by accident, unaware of where exactly he was. Christopher studied his brother's face as it pinched in on itself while Wyatt struggled to breathe. He kneeled next to the man and soothed, "Slow down. Breathe with me."

They both felt their mother watching them, which only made Wyatt breathe harder. Christopher tried to comfort them both at the same time, leaning Wyatt back against the back of the chair and pressing hard on his brother's chest to slow him down while trying to look over his shoulder at their mother. Casually, he explained without too much detail, "Reality is finally setting in, I think."

Wyatt, in response, threw up quite unceremoniously all over the nearest of his mother's frayed rugs.

"Yep. He's with us," Christopher grinned tightly, trying to fight back his gag reflex. He leaned his brother back once more, his hand on Wyatt's clammy forehead. His eyes closed to near slits in concern, watching as Wyatt continued to hyperventilate and started to shake. To be honest, he was getting scared. His brother used to do this a lot, but it had been years since Christopher had seen it. It had always been their little secret, the thing that they had never told their parents about. It wouldn't do much for their mother's confidence to know that her eldest could be rattled just like the rest of them. Feeling a little rusty at this, Christopher did his best and said soothingly, "Come on. Slow. Down. It's going to be okay. You just have to breathe, Wyatt. Come on. Breathe."

"I — can't."

"Yes, you can."

"Chris . . ."

Slowly, almost hypnotically, Christopher cooed at his brother, "Listen to me. It's just like when we were kids. Listen to my voice. In through your nose, out through your mouth. Slow down. You have to think about slowing down. I'm here. I'll talk you through it, but you have to work with me here. Take slow, even breaths."

Wyatt only gasped harder, his breaths now coming in short bursts that were starting to become too far in between like he was strangling himself. "You — were right — all — all of it."

"Yes, I was," said Christopher sternly. He sat on the floor, cross-legged, and gestured for his brother to follow suit. When Wyatt did, shakily, the younger of the brothers went on. "Look, this isn't me saying I was right and you were wrong. I don't look at it like that. The thing is, I knew you were gone, but I also knew that you were still in there somewhere. I couldn't hear it in your voice or see it in your eyes, but I could feel it whenever you were close enough. It's just like how Little You knew that Chris was gone. We've always known each other. I knew that it wasn't you who killed those people. Never, for a second, did I believe that you were beyond saving. So if I was right about that, then I have to be right about this: you — are — okay. Now breathe."

"I can't."

"What makes you think you can't breathe? Just in and out, Wyatt. That's all it is. You've done much harder things than this."

" — can't — " the man rasped.

Christopher felt the crooked grin take over his face, even though he willed it not to. Besides, if he could get his brother to laugh, it might break up the hyperventilation and force the guy to take a real breath. He rolled his eyes with great exaggeration and asked, "How in the world were you ever the leader of the Underworld when you can't even stop yourself from hyperventilating? Come on, man, what would your subjects say if they could see you punking out like a little girl?"

Frustrated from the lack of air and knowing that all eyes were on him, Wyatt only snapped raggedly, "Kn-nock it off."

Dramatically, Christopher switched gears, pulling out every trick in his book for whenever Wyatt had done this in their life before. "Damn it, Wyatt, you knock it off! You're scaring me. Now breathe!"

"I — killed — you."

"Do we really have to go over this again? You didn't kill me. You didn't kill either of us. It wasn't you, okay? Gideon manipulated you. He manipulated all of us."

Wyatt's frustration only grew with his inability to make his brother understand. He tried to hold his breath so that he would have enough to get out what he needed to get out, but he couldn't control it. Wherever that pacifist part of him was, he wished like hell it would come back, but it seemed so much farther away with every stuttered breath. His eyes were starting to feel like they were going to pop right out of his head. "N-not," he wheezed, his head bobbing up and down with his vision. "N-n-not like he d-did me."

"Well, of course not," said Christopher, not realizing what his brother was talking about. Then he caught Wyatt's eyes, even in their twitchiness, and he understood a lot more than he wanted to. "You mean like he did this morning."

"He . . . h-he . . . "

Christopher sighed heavily and closed his eyes, then squeezed his brother's shoulder tightly in understanding. Forget all of the damage that was done when Gideon was in possession of his brother's body. Christopher would never know what seeing Chris dead and begging for help every day of his life had done to his brother. Softly, all he could do was try to tell Wyatt that he would at least try to understand. "I'm so sorry for what he did. But listen to me. I need you to hear me on this, okay? That wasn't me, but I don't blame you for believing that it was. I'm sure Chris doesn't either. You have to know that we would never do that you."

"Chris . . . "

Gently, Christopher smiled at the man who had been his hero his whole life and silently begged Whoever that his brother could find a way to tell him what he needed to get through this. "Yeah?"

"I-I-I d-d-did-dn-t know."

"I know, honey," the younger brother soothed. "I know. It's over now, okay? We're going to stop him this time and it will all be over. Just slow down and breathe before you pass out on me and we'll be fine. Come on. Slow down." Christopher saw Wyatt struggle to collect the breath to say something back but cut him off quickly. "I'm not going anywhere. Okay? Slow down. Breathe with me."

This time, Wyatt seemed to be more reassured and willing to hear his brother. His breath, while short, started to come in stronger breaths so that he was actually getting some air. Some of the red haze started to go away, even though his hands started to cramp up. He closed his eyes, embarrassed to no end when he realized that he had let himself get so out of control, especially in front of his family. Christopher was one thing. He was used to it. The others, though, they would have no idea that he wasn't exactly the mighty king foretold that they all probably expected him to be.

Again his brother seemed to know what he was thinking because Christopher shook his head at him. "Don't worry about them. Stay with me here. We'll worry about them when you start breathing again."

Tentatively, Piper asked from her very concerned perch on the sofa with her sisters, "Is there anything I can get you two?"

In that same hypnotic voice, Christopher answered, "That's okay, Mom. We're going to be fine. Wyatt's going to get this out of his system and we're going to be fine."

It took another ten minutes of coaxing on Christopher's part, but Wyatt eventually settled back down. Christopher had even been stuck with a job he never thought he was going to have to do again, massaging the cramp out of his brother's frozen hands. He didn't mind doing it, but he was sure that was the icing on the humiliation cake that his brother was eating in front of the sisters. In the end, he didn't care, though. He was just glad to have his brother being, well, human again. When Wyatt eventually leaned his head back onto the cushion of the chair and closed his eyes with a nice, slow breath, Christopher took the opportunity to whap his brother hard on the knee.

"Girl," he grinned crazily.

A crooked smile of gratitude graced Wyatt's lips before it turned into a mischievous smirk. "Crybaby."

"Bed wetter."

"Mama's boy."

From the doorway, Piper snapped teasingly, "You say that like it's a bad thing." While the boys had been sussing out their problem, Piper had taken the opportunity to sneak down to the kitchen and pull a quick something together. Forget the fact that Phoebe had been unconscious and the boys traipsing off through time and space, she was hungry. She crossed the threshold, plopping a tray down in front of her no longer unconscious sister. She took in all of her people and asked the group at large, "So we're all okay now?"

Wyatt offered his mother a salute to let her know that he was indeed all right, but couldn't quite manage to form the words at the moment. His throat hurt too much. When Christopher saw the act, he rolled his eyes but secretly smiled to himself. Wyatt had been right: some things in this house never change. To answer for both of them, he said cheerfully, "Yeah, we're fine."

Leaving no hint of wiggle room in her tone, Piper informed them, "Good. Then you can tell us what exactly is going on around here. Back to the beginning, hop to."

Christopher and Wyatt exchanged uneasy glances for a moment, both of them trying to remember exactly what they had said in the last few minutes that would constitute Future Consequences. They both understood that their family wasn't going to allow them the room to take care of this problem on their own now, especially with Phoebe no longer incapacitated, but just how much were they going to be able to get by without telling them?

Recognizing the look on Christopher's face the way she would have on Chris's, Paige jumped in to try to help them along. "Why don't you start with the 'we have six years' part. If Gideon is here now, what's so special that's going to happen between now and then?"

The elder brother shrugged, relinquishing the decision to his brother, offering only one bit of advice. "Dad already knows. It can't hurt for them to know, too."

Unneeded permission granted, Christopher said, "Dad died shortly after my sixth birthday when we were attacked by Darklighters. I think that's when Gideon was able to take a real hold on Wyatt, even if the evil part didn't manifest itself until eighteen years from now."

"Eighteen years from now being the day that you went to today, the day I died," said Piper.

"Wait, eighteen years," asked Phoebe, who was obviously very much out of the loop from dealing with her own problems. Without thinking about it, she blurted, "You die in fourteen years, not eighteen. And Leo was alive. The rest of us were dead, but — "

"Not for us," said Wyatt. He glanced uncomfortably at his mother and admitted, "Yes, the day you died. When we were there, everything was normal. We saw things linearly like anything else, until Christopher and I found you dead. We were sitting with you and then everything went black. I think that's probably the point that Christopher is thinking of where this other Gideon was able to . . . possess? me. Is that the word we're going to use here? Possess?"

"Any other ideas," asked Christopher.

"No, that's . . . Just asking. Anyway, the Gideon from this world had the twelve years in between to wear me down enough so that when you happened, he had enough power to let him in." He looked at Christopher again, looking to make sure they were on the same page. "Right?"

On Christopher's nod, Piper asked her sons, "So we have until your father dies six years from now to figure out a way to get rid of Gideon?"

Christopher quickly shook his head. "Not even. The Gideon you knew, he's been with Wyatt since the moment Dad thought he killed him to restore the balance. That much we know. We saw it just now. I don't think he was able to actually possess Wyatt until Dad died, but that doesn't mean he can't do plenty of damage in the meantime. We saw him this — er, this future morning — and what he can do even when he isn't in control."

Uneasily, Piper asked, "Which is?"

Even Christopher looked a little sick at the idea of what he had seen that afternoon, watching the ChrisThing taunt his brother while their sister fought so hard to get him back. He cringed as he explained, "Like we said, Gideon is with him. He's that shadow thing that Wyatt keeps asking about when he's asking 'what's that' all the time. But after what we saw from this afternoon — this morning, whatever — I'm thinking what he's seeing is even worse than just Gideon. When Gideon had him in the Underworld, Wyatt didn't seem to be all that afraid of him. More than anything, he treated it like it was a game. I think what he's scared of now is what we saw this morning after his hold on Wyatt was broken."

This time it was Paige who tried to utz her obviously uncomfortable nephew along. "Which is?"

"Gideon is presenting himself as the other me, the way he looked right after Gideon stabbed him. Little Wyatt probably thinks Chris is still here. Either way, he's probably seeing Chris tell him that he needs help."

Without meaning to be heard, Wyatt grumbled out of the corner of his mouth, "It's the song that never ends."

"Until now," said Piper strongly. "I'll be damned if I'm going to let that happen another day."

Feeling much more himself, Wyatt pushed himself up off the floor and started to pace back and forth. He didn't want to be harsh with his mother (ever again), but somehow it came out anyway. "That's a sweet sentiment, Piper, and I appreciate it, but saying isn't doing."

Feigning confidence since it's what Wyatt seemed to need, Christopher said, "We'll get there. I've come too far not to."

"Really," asked the elder brother. "I'm starting to think you were right in the first place. It's hopeless. There are no more answers because there were never any to begin with. You think I can be saved because some prophecy said at one point that I was going to be something special? Open your eyes, Christopher. This is the second time this has happened — that we know about. Maybe this was my destiny in the first place. We don't know otherwise."

"I know otherwise," said Christopher in a small voice.

"He does," added Phoebe. At first Christopher gave her a 'Please Don't Help' kind of look until he realized that she wasn't talking about Himhim, but the other him. To confirm that, she said, "Chris died believing that. Don't tell me that he died for nothing. He wouldn't have let you believe that. He never let us believe it."

Wyatt looked up at the ceiling as if Chris could hear him and hollered at both of his brothers, "Well, then, they're both crazy."

Fiercely, Christopher responded for both himself and the other Chris. "We aren't done yet."

A little more darkly than he meant to, Wyatt snapped, "I wasn't able to fight him for twenty-odd years when I was one of the two most powerful beings on the planet, Christopher, so what makes you think I can do it now, without powers?"

"Who says you have to do it without powers," asked a suddenly mischievous Christopher. He had seen the faces of his mother and her sisters. They were in enough shock at the moment that they really shouldn't be witness to the man who they had been told for the last two years was both the Great Hope and the Ruler of All Evil crumble on them. They didn't need to see another fight. They didn't need to see another breakdown. What they needed was some semblance of an answer. Christopher didn't have answers, but he had ideas, and at the moment, that was going to have to suffice.

Every other person in the room gaped at Christopher like he had finally cracked. "Huh?"

"His powers are here. They just need a little boost," the witch explained to them all. "I only have to figure out how to get them to you. There's a power-switching spell in The Book. That's how Lucy got them from you in the first place."

"What, you mean, borrow my own powers from Little Wyatt," Wyatt asked. "It can't be that easy. No way."

"Why not?"

"Because nothing in this family is that easy."

Paige raised a hand, interrupting. "I hate to point out the obvious, but to switch powers, you would have to have them in the first place. If you don't have anything to give up, you can't gain anything."

Piper added, "That wouldn't have worked anyway. The first time we went to our past, we had to get Prue and Little Me to do the work because we couldn't ourselves. We didn't know we could switch powers, but Mom and Grams would have known. They would have helped us do it if it were possible."

A little deflated but not entirely giving up, Christopher countered, "Okay, so maybe we don't exactly switch them, but there has to be a way that we can get powers just to get rid of this thing. We can't just wait it out and hope to catch him six or eighteen years down the road. I know I'm not waiting that long."

"No one is suggesting that we do," said Piper. "We need to look for options, though. It's not a bad idea. It just needs to go in a slightly different direction."

Not sure that there was any way to argue the boys out of going in that direction, Paige suggested, "Well, why don't the two of you try to find a solution? Piper, now that Phoebe is out of danger, I seriously think the two of you should get some sleep here before things get stirred up on us again. You haven't slept, and if you don't now, who knows when you're going to get the chance again? It will be better for us all if you do."

Phoebe abruptly said, "I'm not sleeping. I've had enough sleep for a while. Let me help."

"I won't be able to sleep," protested Piper. "Not until my entire family is safe."

"We will be," said Wyatt with a set determination that was already becoming familiar to his family. He looked at his aunts then at Piper, just as Leo and Christopher had seen him do in the future. "Regardless of recent circumstances, Christopher and I have been doing this a long time. So have you. You, of all people, should know that we can't just solve a problem because we want to. We can't fix everything in one afternoon. Take a nap, Piper. Really. Have something to eat and take care of yourself. Christopher and I may not be little kids anymore, but the other versions of us are and they need their mother. We'll be okay. I swear, we'll even take the night off and sleep once we make at least a little headway."

It took a little more convincing on the future boys' parts, but eventually they got their mother and aunts to agree to a night off. Wyatt didn't know too much about what had gone on since Christopher's arrival in the past a week ago, but he could see a secret pleasure in all of their faces when the argument was finally settled. They all wanted the down time; none of them was willing to admit to it. That they could relax for even a few hours was going to be exactly what was needed for all. The only one who didn't seem to want to take the night pass was Christopher, but Wyatt had expected that. He would work his brother over later. Until then, he was perfectly willing to let his kid brother believe that he wasn't going to pay any attention to the changes he saw in the kid. He had every confidence in the world that getting Christopher to relax was one battle he was going to win, though, hands down.

Half an hour later, Phoebe came back upstairs from her much-needed shower and called her nephews over to join her at one of the potions tables. "Boys? Can we talk a minute?"

The brothers exchanged a quick, mutually confused look, but didn't say anything in return. They sat around the table with her, both of them careful not to jump to any conclusions. Christopher had warned Wyatt in one of their few moments alone that Phoebe had been a little invasive with her questions since his arrival, but in case that wasn't about to be the issue, they tried to go into the conversation openly.

Soon seeing that they were waiting on her, Phoebe said in a low whisper even though they were quite alone in the attic, "Your sister is okay."

"What? You saw her? How?" came the rapid succession of questions from both men, in random order.

Her hands automatically came up and pressed down on the air, shooshing them so that she could explain. Her smile was bright, glad that she could give her nephews some comfort instead of worries for a change. "She doesn't want you to worry about her. Chris is with her, which, now that he doesn't have me to deal with, he's probably found Grams and Mom and Prue to help out as well. She's probably being smothered by their attention as we speak. She asked him to tell me to tell you that she's all right and not to worry. Christopher, she also said to tell you to pay more attention to the visions. Apparently there's something there that you missed?"

Having been told that one too many times in the last two days, Christopher rolled his eyes in both love and indignity. "She must really think I'm blind."

"Well, you are," said Wyatt before he could catch himself. He couldn't quite explain it, but he had fallen back into Brother mode immediately once he'd been freed from whatever power it was that Gideon that they had yet to discover. He didn't want to, but he needed to remind himself that just because he was back didn't mean that Christopher wasn't out of Enemy mode quite yet. Too much had happened. He more than understood after what he'd seen. Still, it was hard not to be that way. Not sure what to say, he apologized. "Sorry. It just slipped out."

"Forgotten," said Christopher. Back to Phoebe, he asked, "What were her exact words?"

"I didn't talk to her. Chris only passed the message on." She startled for a moment, then asked, "Wait. Does Wyatt know about Chris and — "

"Oh, yeah," the blonde man moaned sarcastically. "Both of me know. I didn't realize that I knew until we saw it all happen again, but yeah. It all came back to me. I — Little Me — saw Gideon kill Chris and remembers every detail in Technicolor."

Sadness for her dead nephew fell over her face. Silently she hoped that the younger of the FutureChrises hadn't been listening in on this conversation as she admitted for him, "He was worried that you would remember. He said it was the worst thing he'd ever done to you, to make you see that."

Wyatt looked at Christopher, as if this other version of his brother could offer him absolution in the absence of his other brother. "It wasn't his fault."

Phoebe rolled her eyes fondly. "Of course it isn't, and he knows that. Chris has a billboard-sized flair for the dramatic, that's all. I think that what he was trying to say is that he was sorry that he didn't get to you faster. Chris was good at a lot of things, and feeling guilty is one of them. As someone who has spent far too much time in his head lately, I can attest to that fact." She raised a hand up to the face of her eldest nephew, holding him for the first time since his arrival. Her face was an odd mixture of sadness and understanding as she told him, "He loved you so much." She then took Christopher's hand in hers and said to him, "He is so proud of you. The both of you. I hate to say it, but even with him yelling at me, I've still never seen him so happy as I did when I was there with him. The two of you together, he worked so hard for that."

"We aren't done yet," said Christopher.

"No, you aren't, but you're going to make it. He said he would make sure of that."

Confused, Wyatt asked for the both of them, "What did he mean?"

"I'm not sure, but I'm guessing we'll find out in one way or another."

Tense as ever, Christopher suggested, "Let's hope it's soon because I am running out of ideas."

III.

Nearly two hours later, Wyatt knocked on the doorjamb to his parents' bedroom and waited (and secretly hoped) for permission to enter. It had been a long time since he'd had to knock on that door. He thought that one of the kids had eventually taken it over after he'd left them, but he wasn't sure. It wasn't a question he particularly wanted an answer to anyway. Here, though, it didn't seem like a good idea to just walk in unannounced. Too much had happened; too much had been said, even if it had been for the right reason. He had a lot of forgiveness to work off. Barging into bedrooms unannounced probably wasn't going to be the best way to get it.

Leo looked up hopefully. There was a small flinch in his features that Wyatt worked really hard to tell himself wasn't a bad thing or a reflection of who was doing the knocking. Things were complicated enough these days. Neither one of them was going to deliberately make it worse. Leo must have seen the doubt reflected in his son's eyes, because he visibly straightened up and put a spark of sunshine into his face. "Wyatt, come in. It's okay."

Wyatt nodded questioningly in the direction of his mother (are you sure?), who was sitting leaning against Leo's chest, watching over Little Wyatt and Christopher without blinking now that they had returned. Just like he knew she would be, his mother had been too worried about everyone to be able to sleep, but she was at least resting comfortably. Rest was going to be better than nothing. He almost regretted disturbing them, seeing them so secretly happy together, but he needed to say this before he lost his nerve and was unable to say it. When Leo nodded his permission to join them on the bed, Wyatt softly cleared his throat to get her attention. "Hey."

"How's it coming up there," asked Piper sleepily.

"It's coming," he hesitated. When he saw that Piper saw his hesitation and smiled at him to continue, he had to clear his throat again to give himself time to search for the words. When he was standing at the foot of the bed, he raced to get the words out, "Listen, I, um . . . There really hasn't been a good time to do this, and it's been such a long day already that I don't want to make things worse, but I needed to say something to you that I don't know if you want to hear or not, especially after what I said to you this morning. I . . . I didn't mean any of those things. I don't blame you for anything that happened. I know that you wouldn't have left us if you'd had any choice in the matter. I shouldn't have said what I said. I couldn't ever blame you. The blame rests with me and only me. I didn't — I don't need any trips through time to know that I've let you down. The things I saw today, Chris dying and the things that happened in my past and all of it . . . I know you must be so disappointed in me. I just need you to know I'm never going to let that happen. Christopher is never going to die because of me. I will never — "

"Shh," Piper interrupted. She took her eldest's hand and pulled him down so that he was sitting at his parents' feet on the bed. "If you were to ask either Chris or Christopher, I'm willing to bet that they both would say that they never blamed you for what happened. Neither of them believed it was your fault. I think Chris might have lost his temper and said something he didn't mean, but he never believed it. Your brothers, both of them, love you. They weren't here to kill you or to destroy you. They weren't here to do anything other than save you. And if that was good enough for them, if they couldn't blame you, then neither can we."

"I just don't understand. I mean, I know why I'm talking to him like no time has passed, but him . . . How can he just talk to me like all is forgiven? You don't even know me, but as soon as he said so, you talked to me like I'm still yours. I don't understand. How do you not let me say 'I'm sorry'?"

Leo took his turn explaining his sons to Wyatt, almost like he was rationalizing the same feeling he had had about himself at one point regarding his relationship with Chris. "About four weeks ago, Chris and I had a conversation. We were looking through The Book, trying to find the demon that could possibly be after you when he had the first real moment of desperation I had seen in him. We had all seen him frustrated, but not while we knew who he was and never about the family. He was so guarded about the future and what he was doing here. He held on to his frustration like it was the only thing keeping him grounded here. In some ways, I think it was. But that day, we were getting so close, in his mind, to losing you that it was the first time he really talked to me like I was his father instead of just the guy who he had been fighting with since he'd come here. As I was talking to him, he told me about how scared he was because he knew that the deadline was coming, that if he didn't find who had come after you before he was born, it would all be lost. When I asked him why he hadn't told us, can you believe that he said it was because he was trying to protect us? He was so focused on keeping you safe that he couldn't even remember that he was supposed to be the kid. If you had seen the things we had done to each other before I knew who he was . . . Chris had forgiveness in his heart for everyone but himself. The only person who was going to get any blame in any of this was himself if he wasn't successful."

The son stared at his father like he couldn't decide if he wanted to laugh or cry. "Is this supposed to be making me feel better?"

"The point is that expecting either Chris to do anything other than forgive you and take you back is fruitless. He won't even let you ask for it. It's already given. The most you're ever going to hear about it is what the two of you did when you first arrived. Your brother has a good heart. You're going to have to accept that he's going to do with it what he wants."

"I don't deserve that."

"He thinks you do," said Leo forcefully. "And from what I saw of your life, I have to agree with him. So maybe what you need to be doing then is taking that forgiveness and figuring out how you're going to live your life with it."

Piper eyed Leo with a crooked eyebrow. With a knowing smile, she said, "That's good advice. You should probably take it yourself."

The Elder pointedly raised his eyebrows at his wife and said, "I'm working on it."

Wyatt stood up then, wanting to leave his parents to whatever it was that they had been doing before he'd interrupted them. "I should get back. We might be close to fixing the powers problem and then I'm going to need some time alone with Christopher to figure out how we're going to do this."

Before Wyatt could walk away, Leo said cautiously, "Just make sure that you do talk to him about it."

"What do you mean?"

"I really do believe that everything that happened was because you wanted to protect your brother. That Gideon was able to use that against you is still so . . . It's going to take a while before the two of you figure out what you're doing as a family again. Just like I'm sure it's hard for you boys to remember what it's like to have parents and have people to tell you what to do, your brother has been on his own for a long time now. He hasn't had anyone to make the big decisions or lessen the burden for him. He takes care of people; it's what he knows how to do. That isn't going to change overnight, just because you've come this far. I would tell him this same thing if I thought he would listen, but I know he won't. So I'm leaving it up to you to be the responsible one here. Don't let your need to protect him keep you from listening to him. A lot of things might be different right now if the two of you hadn't inherited the stubbornness from my side of the family. Don't be afraid to listen instead of lead."

Wyatt studied his father, struck by the fierceness of his protectiveness of his brother. He understood why; at least, he thought he did. He'd watched Chris die just a few weeks ago, but there seemed to be so much more to it. He couldn't put his finger on it, but he knew there was something. Instead of walking out like he wanted to, he asked softly, "What happened?"

Surprised, Piper asked for them both, "What?"

"Something happened with Chris. It's in the way you talk. It's like you're trying to fix something that happened with him that you can't otherwise fix."

Piper seemed to think about it for a moment before she said honestly, "I don't know that we're trying to 'fix' anything, but I'm sure there is a lot of . . . say, 'anticipation' going on."

"Anticipation," Wyatt asked.

"Of repeating past mistakes, I guess."

Finally feeling like he could do something good with his life and his time in his parents' lives, Wyatt said, "Just a hint? Take it or leave it, but maybe you should think about finding a way to separate the two Chrises in your heads. I'm guessing that's why one is 'Chris' and the other 'Christopher', but that apparently wasn't enough. When we were kids, we would catch you looking at us sometimes. It was kind of unnerving, actually. I know about Chris now, but even that doesn't seem to fit with why you looked at us like that. It was almost like regret. It scared Christopher. He thought he had done something wrong, but he never understood what it was that he had done. I asked you once because I thought he should have an answer. All you told me was that you had too many regrets. I know you have a lot of questions about the future. Who wouldn't with all of the things that have happened? But maybe you need to let our future be our future. I know that the two of us being here doesn't help, but when this is over, I really think you guys need to forget about us the way we are now."

"That's a lot harder than it sounds," said Leo.

"Most things are," shrugged Wyatt.

Unsure of what she could possibly say to her son's request — as if she hadn't been trying to find a way to do just as he'd requested for weeks now — Piper suggested, "Maybe we could put off worrying about the future for a while and figure out exactly what we're going to do about the here and now? Because, quite frankly, I'd like to know how we're going to get Little You through the night, let alone twenty-some years."

Wyatt tried to give his mother some hope and direction by saying too cheerfully, "Well, get me some powers that I can use and I'll fix that one up first thing."

"No offense," Piper started. "But — and I think you'll admit that this is a fair question given our circumstances here — are you sure that we should be getting powers for you? We know Gideon wants you to be as powerful as you can possibly be. If wearing you down was the key to getting control, I'm guessing that you're pretty much at your breaking point right now with everything that you've been through today. How do we know that you having powers now is going to make things any different?"

"I have to be allowed to fight this guy, Piper. This guy took everything from me, including my own mind. I can't let anyone else do this for me."

Leo looked at his wife for a moment then split his attention between her and his eldest. "I've been wondering — and Piper, tell me if this is impossible — but I think we need to focus on getting both of the boys powers, not just Wyatt. I know you feel this is your battle, Wyatt, after everything that you've been put through, and I don't blame you. I would feel the same way. But I feel that it's something that the two of you need to do together. We'll be there to help you with whatever you need, but I think it's the two of you together who are going to be able to defeat Gideon, no one else. We've been dancing around the idea because none of us really understand what it means, but the two of you are supposed to be the most powerful beings to ever exist. Christopher said that it was said about you that there had never been a being so powerful, not even the Source. Then you let it slip about Christopher and his powers, what he is supposed to be capable of, even if neither of you know exactly what that is. Christopher was right; the two of you are a matched set in so many ways. Maybe this is the time when it's going to be more important than any other."

Secretly, Wyatt liked that idea. He hadn't exactly been relishing the idea of going up against Gideon on his own. He'd fought great evils in his life and always won, but he'd never had to fight the being that had taken his very life from him before. A small smile played on his lips as he whispered to himself, "Butch and Sundance."

Knowing exactly what his son was referring to, Leo said, "Exactly."

"I have no idea what the two of you are talking about, but if that in some way means that you've figured something out, great."

Wyatt smiled at his mother. He knew she knew exactly what they were talking about, but she had always pretended not to know just so that the few men in the house could have their "guy thing". She had learned a lot of 'What Not To Do' lessons in life from watching Grams. Pretending not to see through her, he said, "Christopher will know what it means. That's the important part."

A spark hit Piper's eye as she asked, "Will he?"

"If you want to ask me something, Piper, just ask."

Hesitant to ask for fear of getting the standard response, she asked, "No 'Future Consequences'?" When Wyatt shook his head and grinned, she asked, "Before all of this happened, were you close? Were you friends?"

"He jumps, I jump," said Wyatt. "Is that futuristically vague enough?"

Piper nodded, beaming. "Good enough. One more?"

"Shoot."

"What's your favorite color?"

"Seriously? You have the chance to ask me anything you want to know, and that's what you ask?"

The smile flickered for a moment before Piper said, "I learned my lesson. The soon-to-be-changed future doesn't matter as much as you. If the little things are all I can get, I'll take them. Favorite color, favorite movie, anything."

Wyatt closed the distance between himself and his mother and pressed a soft kiss into the top of her hair. "Blue. My favorite movie hasn't come out yet from this point in time, but you used to get me to watch your favorites a lot. Dad's, too. Christopher and I could perform every song from every Rat Pack movie they made. My favorite song is always going to be the one you sang to us when we were kids, that one about the songbirds."

Before he could go on to ask if she wanted to know anything else, a distinct ringing invaded his head space. "Wyatt?"

"Did you — " asked Wyatt of his father, poking a finger into his ear and shaking it around.

"Forgot what it sounds like, huh," asked Leo. With a positively thrilled grin on his face, Leo said, "He's calling for you — and you can hear it!"

"Hey, Wyatt," Christopher called again from the attic with a hint of confusion in his voice. "Come here, would you?"

Knowing this time that he was in fact hearing the internal chime that told him his brother was indeed calling for him, Wyatt hooked a thumb over his shoulder and smiled in spite of himself. "He's sounds . . . I guess I should — "

"Go," urged Leo with a wave of his hand and a tickled grin. "Your brother needs you."

"I hope so," said Wyatt and hurried to the stairs, taking two at a time, then quickly crossed the space over to his brother, hoping that his father was right. He needed so badly for his father to be right.

When his brother thundered across the threshold, Christopher didn't even look up as he greeted him, "Hey."

"Okay, I forgot how weird that was to hear." Wyatt tried not to sound too hopeful as he asked, "Did you find something?"

"I didn't," said Christopher. His face was screwed up in frustration as he pulled at The Book. "The Book did, and It won't let go."

"Huh?" Wyatt reached over and grabbed at the pages of the family heirloom but was unable to move any of them. The Book would not allow them to even pick up the edge of another page. It was stuck and there was no getting around it. His face too screwed up in concentrated frustration, his tongue slipping out the corner of his mouth with the effort. Finally the both of them let go. A breeze out of nowhere lifted the pages on either side of the spine, but they did not turn. "What the . . .?"

Christopher stepped back from it for a moment, thinking. He hated to suggest it, but he asked, "Do you think It thinks we're evil?"

"It would have tried to get away from us."

"So what?"

As if to answer their question (and tell them that they were obviously missing the point), The Book slammed shut, only to reopen back to the same page. Christopher rolled his eyes at whichever family member had offered the magical assist. "All right, already, we get the point."

Wyatt studied the page, even more confused. "Valkyries? Why do we need to know about Valkyries? They aren't evil."

"No, they aren't," said Christopher thoughtfully. He raised his voice a little to get the attention of the rest of the family and called to those he knew could hear him. "Dad, Paige? Can you get Mom and Phoebe up here?"

The four adults were almost immediately orbed into the attic space, ready to jump in and help as much as they were going to be allowed to. Once they had assembled, Christopher asked, "Random question. Does anybody have any idea whatsoever why The Book seems to think we need to know something about Valkyries at the moment?"

Immediately they all joined the boys at the podium to find The Book open to exactly where they said it would be. Leo admired the drawing that had been added to the page across from the entry, knowing that face so well. Despite his issues with Freya keeping him locked up in a cage away from his family for so long, she was still a beautiful woman. From what Phoebe had said to him about Chris's enlistment of the Valkyrie's help, he couldn't hate her the way he wanted to. She had helped his son. That counted for a lot with him these days since help was so hard to find.

Piper thought nearly the same thing. Freya could have made it much harder for her to leave their ranks when she did, but she willingly let her go. The goddess had helped her family in many ways over the years, even though she hadn't lived them yet. Whoever was trying to direct them to her probably had a good reason.

It was Phoebe who noticed the amendment to the Valkyrie entry written in Chris's familiar scrawl at the bottom.

When the time comes that you need their help, you will get it if you ask the right questions.

"Okay, what does that mean," she asked the ceiling. There was no answer, but she figured that was as close to an answer as she was going to get anyway. "Gee, thanks," she pouted.

"There's obviously some reason why we would want to talk to them," offered Paige. "Christopher, you said that they are the ones your dad went to for help in creating the snow gardens, right? They have the ability to create a safe environment so that they can train their warriors without them dying. Maybe it's just some help figuring out how to keep Little Wyatt safe until we can figure the rest of this out? It would be a good distraction for him, anyway."

Phoebe glanced sideways at her sister, surprised and thinking out loud, "What did you say?"

"I was just saying that, since we don't have the snow gardens yet, maybe we can get some help from the Valkyries protecting Wyatt until then. I don't see why we can't save the world from a beach."

"But you said 'distraction', right? You used the word 'distraction'?"

"Yeah," said Paige cautiously. "What?"

Phoebe walked away from them for a moment, allowing herself more room to pace and think out loud. "That's what Chris called what they — No, Freya said that. She said she . . . she didn't mind keeping Leo because it was a good distraction . . . She said . . ."

Paige, who was the only sister who didn't know the truth yet, asked, "Chris really was responsible for Leo being sent to Valhalla?"

Leo said quietly, "It's okay. Well, it isn't okay, but it's okay. I'll explain it later." To Phoebe, he said, "Keep going."

"Chris told her something . . . No, showed her something, she said. She said he had shown her something about the future. She knew about Leysa killing you. She let Chris kill Leysa that day, she was part of it. Something . . . something else that Chris showed her. I can't . . ."

Thoughtfully, Christopher suggested, "Maybe we need to ask her then."

Phoebe pointed down at her nephew's scrawl in The Book and asked, "But how will we know what the right questions to ask are?"

Wyatt eyed his aunt, not sure if he should ask the question or not. He shifted his weight from foot to foot while everyone else tried to come up with an answer. It wasn't long before Christopher recognized the movement. It had been a long time since he'd seen it, but he knew when his brother was holding back.

Prodding his brother along, Christopher asked, "You got something?"

"I — "

The younger of the brothers rolled his eyes in exasperation. "We don't have time for you to be shy, Wyatt. If you have an idea, let's hear it."

"It's just . . . Well, Phoebe has been seeing stuff about the other you for a few weeks now, right? She obviously remembers him having a conversation with Freya. So what if Phoebe already knows the answers? It would save us a trip, at the very least." To his aunt, he asked, "Is there anything else you can tell us about Chris? Or the Valkyries? There must be a reason he chose to go to them for help."

As vaguely as she could, Phoebe answered, "He had his reasons for going to her, but they didn't have anything to do with why Chris was here. It was important to him to fix something from his future that he could only go to Freya for, but it was something completely unrelated to you or his trying to save you."

"No offense," said Wyatt. "But are you sure?"

Phoebe thought on it for a moment, her eyes focusing on the floor and trying to replay the conversation with Freya completely in her head. It was slowly slipping from her, just enough so that when she would get to what she wanted, it would fly away from her before she could get a good enough lock on the memory. Slightly surprised, she said, "You know, I don't know. I know a lot, but not as much as I think I do, I guess."

"So we're going back," asked Piper. "But how? We don't have enough pendants."

"You only needed those to remain undetected," offered Leo. "This time, we want Freya to know we're there."

Resigned to their new path, Phoebe sighed. "I'll go down to see Dad and let him know we're on the way so that you guys can get — "

"In the morning," argued Piper. She indicated her sisters and sons, all looking more than disheveled and worn down to the bone. "We've all had a rough two days, some of us admittedly more so than others. We're all getting to be too tired to think straight. We were right before; we all need a decent meal and a good night's sleep." To Christopher and Wyatt, she asked, "Little Wyatt will be safe until then, yes? If we all just take the night off and get recharged, it's going to be okay?"

"If that's what you want, we'll find a way to make it happen," offered Christopher.

Thinking about his answer for all of a split second, Piper said, "It's what I want."

"Then he'll be safe," said Wyatt strongly, glancing at his brother, even though he already knew that Christopher would be in agreement with him anyway. "First thing tomorrow, we're off to see the wizard."

IV.

Several hours after everyone had drifted off to sleep for the night, Christopher found himself awake once more from disturbing dreams of his brother and sister. Too chilled to find a way back to sleep, he instead sought out his brother. After a week of hiding out, he needed to be with the only other person who could truly know what his dreams had been about. His father could only know so much. But Wyatt, despite his shaky, holed memory, would understand. Better yet, he would listen. Wyatt had always been a good listener.

After a quick look around, Christopher wasn't exactly surprised to find Wyatt on the patio. It had always been one of his brother's favorite spots to be, rain or shine, noon or three in the morning. He just wasn't so sure about finding Wyatt there at the moment. He didn't exactly know what Wyatt was thinking about these days, even if his brother was back. Still, there he was. It wasn't all warm out even for San Francisco at this time of night, but there he was without even a jacket. Then again, he wasn't one to talk. As usual, he was barefoot, even in the cold. Unable to do anything about it then, he leaned casually against the doorjamb and asked softly, "Couldn't sleep?"

"My head isn't exactly in a sleep space at the moment," said Wyatt without even looking up.

"What're you thinking about?"

"Nothing."

"If you're thinking about nothing, how will you know when you're done?"

Wyatt wrinkled his nose at the smart ass comment, then explained quietly, "No, really, I'm thinking about nothing. I woke up this morning to find out that I've missed seven years of my life. It's all gone and I can't fill in the blanks because there aren't just blanks to fill. I don't remember my own life, not really. There's nothing. And based on what I saw today, I don't know that I want to remember it anyway. I can't tell you how scary it is to realize that your life has happened without you and that you can't take any of it back."

Christopher left his post at the door and sat at the table across from his brother. "It wasn't you. If you need something to make you feel better, though, the thing I've been telling myself a lot, especially in the last week, is that if we do this right tomorrow we won't have to remember it anyway. So maybe you're the lucky one in this. When we destroy Gideon and are able to save you from ever becoming what he turned you into, all of this won't have happened. We know now that the Elders were behind what happened to Dad and then to Mom. When we get that far, we can stop that from happening again. Dad knows. So many things are going to turn out differently."

"You keep saying 'we', but you say it like you mean me. How am I the lucky one?"

"You won't have memories to forget, just in case. If I screw up tomorrow and it doesn't work, if we still remember bits and pieces as we go back home, there will be so many things that you won't have to see."

Wyatt regarded his brother oddly. It wasn't worry or pride or fear. It was almost incredulity. "How is that supposed to make me feel better?"

Unable to answer the question, a smirk played on the younger brother's face. "I was just answering your question. I didn't realize I was supposed to be making you feel better."

"I need to know, Chris."

Christopher was startled by the sudden darkness in his brother's entire being. He'd seen it a little bit when he'd found Wyatt outside, but he hadn't really noticed just how tense his brother was. The complete sadness in his brother's eyes was something that he almost didn't recognize.

"You saw everything I know right now. Please. I need to know what happened to us. I need to know what happened to them. Everything I did — "

" — Gideon did — "

" — Whoever did it!" Wyatt rolled his eyes impatiently. He then stared at his brother hard, blue eyes blazing. "I. Need. To. Know."

Unable to look his brother in the eye, Christopher studied his hands. In a low, resigned whisper, he asked, "What do you want to know?"

"Everything."

"You realize that once you know, you know? I can't take it back. I can't make you forget. As bad as it is, your imagination will probably make it even worse. Can't you take my word for it that you don't want to know any of it? You're so much better off not knowing."

Instead of repeating himself for what felt like the hundredth time already, Wyatt jumped in with a question. He wasn't going to waste hours circling around his brother's uneasiness. He knew Chris was trying to protect him, and he appreciated it, but he didn't need protecting. He was the oldest, not Christopher. Maybe his kid brother had been in the position of oldest for a while, but Wyatt was back and he was going to do everything he could to fulfill his duties. Taking charge, he started, "Was Jack the first?"

"Yeah," Christopher sighed, giving in. "You, um, you'd been acting weird for a couple of weeks, ever since Mom died, but we thought it was because of her. Like I said, Grandpa said you'd had a few weeks after Dad died that you were out of touch with things, too, but that you eventually snapped out of it. I didn't remember, but he did. He said that if we just gave you your space, you were going to be okay. That thing we saw with you and The Book, I'm going to guess that happened before Jack, so probably about three weeks after Mom. When Jack called for me, you sent me away, like you saw. I went and got Paige and Phoebe, but by the time we got back to the club, you were already gone. Paige and I called the Elders, but They refused to heal him. They said we already had a healer and would have to make due with what we had. When we told Them we thought something was wrong with you, the two who had come to us left and They were pretty much out of the picture from then on. Up There was sealed off and that was it. We were on our own."

Christopher waited for a moment to see if Wyatt would have anything to say to that, but his brother only sat there quietly, waiting for him to continue. He could see anger in his brother's eyes, but it was so different from what he'd seen in Wyatt for so long now that he barely recognized it. But still, Wyatt only waited to see what else Chris was going to tell him.

"Things happened that weren't your fault, too. I don't want you to think that everything that happened was because of you — er, Gideon. We all knew you had nothing to do with Jack's death. It wasn't like we suddenly had someone to blame for everything. After Jack, Charlie came to us and offered his help. We didn't know how he knew what he knew or anything like that, but we could tell he was on our side."

"Charlie's a good guy," Wyatt said softly, fondly.

"I wish I knew if that was an 'is' or 'was'," said Christopher glumly.

Dreading the answer to this question as he did so many others, Wyatt tentatively asked, "What happened to him? You asked me earlier, too, and I guess I needed to assume that it was a question in general since he is the only one we left back in our time, like a 'have you seen him since I left' kind of thing. But it wasn't, was it? I did something to him, too."

"You remember I told you that Dad came and got me from our time, right? And that Lucy was hurt?" On Wyatt's nodded cue of understanding that part, Christopher continued explaining, "Okay. The day I left, Charlie took a Darklighter arrow in the chest. He was still breathing, but then there was an explosion and you telekinetically cut off his air. Things deteriorated so quick from there that Dad didn't let me stick around long enough to find out whether or not he was okay, but it didn't look good. And Grams was blown back into the spirit realm. Just before I leapt into the portal, you — Gideon was torturing Lucy. She was pinned into the wall with a Darklighter arrow. I wasn't going to leave, but Dad . . . It was an ugly day. I don't expect you to remember. I wish I didn't."

Wyatt scrubbed his face with his hands, shaking his head as he pulled them away. His hands clinched into a balled fist while he rested his elbows on his knees. He couldn't look at his brother as he said, "I have no memory of that at all. I sort of remember Dad coming for you, and I think I remember Grams, but they don't seem to be coming from the same day for me. I don't . . . I don't remember any of this."

"It was the day I left, which for me, was a week ago. It was the day of Grandpa's funeral."

"Grandpa died?" Wyatt's face paled even more than it already had. He closed his eyes for a moment, as if in physical pain, then opened them again. There were no tears there, but Christopher could see that there wanted to be. Wyatt studied his hands, betraying his confusion. "I mean, I think I knew that. I think I remember even saying something to you about it this afternoon, but I wasn't thinking then. I don't know the half of what I said. I just let stuff come out, whether it was true or not. So I must have known somehow that he was gone, right? But . . . He's dead?"

Christopher nodded, saddened beyond all belief that even the knowledge of their grandfather's death had been taken from his big brother. This was so unfair. Wyatt didn't deserve to have to hear all about his life seven years after the fact. This just wasn't right. Still, Christopher was now more convinced that Wyatt needed to know what had happened. He had earned that much. He tried to be as stoic as he could as he explained, "For you, I guess it was three months ago. Cancer. It was fast, though. We, um, we didn't have a lot of time with him once he was diagnosed. The day of his funeral was the day that we were going to leave. Once he was gone, we had nothing left to stay for, you know? Lu was supposed to come with me. Charlie was freaked out about that, but he wanted her and the baby to be safe. He figured they would be a lot safer here in the past with me than with only him to protect her. Her powers were still so fresh for her that she was doing all kinds of weird things with them."

"I still can't believe she got her powers back. Things must have been really bad if she took them back. She swore she never would. Charlie said he wouldn't let her unless — "

Puzzled, Christopher interrupted his brother's musings. "Why would Charlie keep her from unbinding her powers?"

"Because I asked him to. I know that doesn't sound very fair, but we really did have the best of intentions." Wyatt sucked in a tight breath and held it while he made his decision. When he was able to talk, it was with a hint of sadness that grounded what he was saying in a reality that they hadn't been to yet. "When things were starting to get really bad with Mom and Lu, she stayed over one night and we sat up the whole night talking. She made me promise not to tell, but I don't suppose it can hurt anything now. It wasn't the attack that made her bind her powers. It was the last straw for her, but she said that was the reason because she didn't want us to know why. She thought Mom and everyone would be mad at her for not wanting her birthright. She was eight years old, so I don't blame her. I probably would have thought the same thing."

"What are you talking about?"

As difficult as it was to remember much about his own life, there were things that were clear as a bell. The look on his sister's face was so burned into his memory that he almost stopped himself from going any further, like he was still betraying her trust after her death to talk about it. He rationalized the decision to talk out loud as he said, "When Dad died, I was so lost. I didn't know how I was supposed to take care of you and Mom and Lucy when I was still a kid myself. I relied a lot on Charlie for a lot of things, especially decisions about magic. Mom was in on the decision with us to keep you from finding out about your powers, but when Lu came to me, I couldn't bring myself to tell Mom. She had been so explicit about no one ever finding out."

Christopher knuckled his eyes, finally showing some signs of being less than his usual Marathon Man. He blinked and asked, "This may be a little obvious, but it's been a very long day. You might want to spell this out for me."

"Just like you have powers that we tried to keep you from having to deal with, so did Lucy. Hers wasn't connected to Dad like yours, but she did have a power from the Warren line that she never told anyone about but me. She . . . Lucy could hear people's thoughts, Christopher, and she couldn't turn it off."

He knew he shouldn't be, but Christopher could hear a slight tinge of hurt in his voice as he whistled softly, "She never told me. Why wouldn't she tell me?"

"Do you remember hearing about the time that Prue came in contact with a telepath? It damned near drove her crazy. At the time Lucy bound her powers, it was only triggered when she touched people, but it's kind of hard to avoid touching people, you know? All she had to do was bump into someone at school or on the sidewalk. She knew it was bound to expand eventually, like all of the rest of our powers, and it terrified her. I was thinking about it earlier, actually. After everything we found out today, I'm wondering if maybe the Elders didn't deliberately give her that power early to try to smoke Dad out. Mom always said that our powers would come to us when we were ready to handle them, but there was no way that a little eight year old kid could handle a power like that, even in small doses. The only reason to give her a power like that was to hurt her — "

"Or to hurt one of us," said Christopher slowly. "Which was always her reason for binding her powers in the first place, she said."

Wryly, Wyatt nodded and said, "Apparently martyrdom runs in the family along with everything else."

Choosing to ignore that particular comment from his brother, knowing it was directed right at him, Christopher mused, "Do you think maybe that the thing the Elders were afraid of in me wasn't even a power at all? What if I knew something that I wasn't supposed to know? That would be the easiest way to find out, right? They couldn't read my mind, but They could get my little sister to do it."

"Especially if They didn't know where the other Chris was," Wyatt thought out loud. "If Dad removed him from the ghostly plane without telling Them, They would have thought Chris just misplaced or lost. The snow gardens were protected from all outside beings, not just demons. They wouldn't have been able to detect him there."

"They might have assumed that he had joined with me, too. They had no way of knowing what happened to him once he fell off Their radar. They would have thought that she could read my mind and get his."

Wyatt sat back in his chair a little, amazed at the lengths their minds were going to. "If any part of this is true, it's no wonder They would be afraid of you. Putting your powers aside, if you either A) joined with Chris to become one soul again or B) he had told you about what had happened to him, that's a lot of information that They wouldn't want you to have. And with your powers and mine, They'd have to be afraid of us ever finding out about Chris and Gideon. They have to know that the two of us are capable of taking Them all out without breaking a sweat."

"They had to know that we would find out sooner or later, especially with Them lording my safety over your head."

"Yeah, but how much further could They really go to keep us from finding out? They already took Dad and Mom from us. It's not like we had anything left to lose."

Christopher laughed nervously. "Okay, see, we have to stop this right now because I'm trying really hard not to be paranoid here. It's bad enough that we know that They have been screwing with our family since before I was born, not counting when Mom and Dad were trying to get together. I don't want to be paranoid about stuff that we don't know for sure isn't true. We have enough problems with Them as it is. If They did give her that power, though, I . . ."

"The night Lucy told me about her powers, it was not quite a year before Mom died. It was right about that time when things started getting bad for me with the Elders, too. After she told me, I asked Charlie to see if he could find out if They had anything to do her getting that power so early. He couldn't find anything out. If you could have seen her face when she was telling me about the things she had heard before she bound her powers, you would have come to the same conclusion I did. To be safe, Charlie and I agreed that we would keep her from unbinding her powers for as long as we possibly could. Maybe she would have grown into them eventually, but I didn't think it was worth the risk. I had that power for just a few minutes today and it was awful. I don't —- Let's just say that if Prue couldn't handle it, I didn't want to see what it would do to Lucy. She got too much of the pacifist part from Dad. It would have killed her. Not that I think the Elders are even remotely pacifists anymore. Manipulating fakes, sure, but definitely not bystanders, to say the least."

Giving credence to their working theory, Christopher said roughly, "In the interest of full disclosure, you should know that They've contacted me twice since I got here a week ago. They definitely want something."

"Does Dad know?"

"I think so. I felt him sensing for me during one of the contacts. The guy was gone before Dad got there, though. I didn't want to worry him, not after what he'd told me about Gideon taking you, so I just left it alone."

"Yeah, that was dumb," Wyatt groaned.

Christopher shrugged, not nearly as concerned as his brother was, even though he knew he probably should be. To keep his brother happy, he acknowledged, "Hindsight is twenty-twenty, I guess. Do you think we should tell Dad about all of this? I mean, if we do, we could screw up our lives even more than they already are, because I have no idea what he would do if he heard what we were just talking about. He's pretty out of his head these days, not that I blame him."

"He's been gone for almost twenty years. How much worse could it get?"

The brothers looked at each other then, the implications of What If depressing on them both like a huge weight. They both followed the question to its logical conclusion. Unintentionally, they both said the same answer at the same time. "A lot worse."

That was it. They needed a distraction and they needed it fast. Christopher huffed a worn breath and rubbed his hands over his thighs to warm them up. "That's it. I need a drink."

"It's three in the morning, pal. The liquor store is closed and they didn't keep alcohol in the house for Paige."

"But the club is always open," the younger brother grinned mischievously. "Any requests?"

"Something liquid and stupid."

"I'll be right back." Christopher orbed out and back in a matter of two minutes, tops. When he returned, he found Wyatt exactly where he'd left him but bearing glasses, a cutting board, one of their mother's best knives, and three lemons. He smiled when he saw the spread and held up two bottles of tequila and a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black.

"Mom won't be happy when she hears that's missing," said Wyatt, pointing to the scotch.

Christopher shrugged. "It's not like I grabbed the Blue, and it's for a good cause." He presented a bottle of aspirin he'd grabbed from the back office and plucked it down in the middle of the table with a bottle of water. "So are these."

With that, the brothers dove head first into a hangover. The conversation turned light for a while, talking about their childhood and high school and anything random they could think of that had happened before Wyatt had left them. For a while, it was like they were kids again, sneaking booze and daring the neighbors to call their parents to tell on them. For a while, it was easy to forget that anything had happened at all. After an hour, Christopher had done enough shots to forget a lot of things.

He played trombone with his watch there for a second, unable to read the hands through the fuzzy. After a concerted effort, he gave up and patted his brother floppily on the shoulder. "Shouldn't you be getting home? It's okay with me if you want to stay in my room, but don't tell Mom it's because we were drinking. I'll be feeling bad enough in the morning."

Wyatt set down the shot he was thinking about taking. He stared at his brother until Christopher shook his head at him.

"What?"

"Chris, come on."

Realizing his drunken mistake, Christopher poured himself another shot. He picked his up and handed Wyatt his. He raised his glass in salute. "Behold, the healing and amnesia-inducing powers of ta-kill-ya. Too bad it can't make us forget everything or heal anything at all."

"Chris."

"Don't," snapped the younger brother.

"Don't what?"

Christopher slammed his shot and reached for the bottle. Wyatt grabbed for it as well, but Christopher yanked on it until he was able to get it away. He mumbled through his lemon slice as he poured another shot. "I don't want to talk anymore."

"Talk about what?"

Spitting out the chewed lemon, Christopher glared at his brother. "I hate you for asking. Why did you have to ask?"

"About what? About what happened? You don't think I should know?"

"No, I don't. I don't think any of you should know any of anything. It — it worked for the other me. I don't know why you guys can't let that work for you. Here, I'm saying it. Future Fucking Consequences! Now you can't ask. And I won't listen if you do ask. Your time limit on answers expired when I went the bar. You don't get to ask anymore and I'm not telling. Just shut up and drink your drink."

Wyatt watched his brother quietly, but turned his eyes away when Christopher stared right into them, hard. He stared up at the stars so that Chris couldn't see his face. "What did I do to us?"

"I told you, stop asking questions."

"No. We've talked a lot about what I did to everyone else, but I know something happened between us. You're too mad at me at the moment for you to not be hiding something. What is it?"

Quickly sobered, Christopher tried to sound as matter-of-fact as he could about the day, as much as it had hurt him. He didn't want Wyatt to know just how bad it had been for him that day. Things were rocky enough. He angrily explained, "Of all of us, I think I had it pretty easy. Charlie and I came home from finding out you had destroyed Sanctuary to find you and Lucy talking down in her room. She was crying. When the two of you saw me come in, you got up and walked out without saying anything. I followed you upstairs to the kitchen and we had a really long talk where you did most of the talking. You told me about how things were supposed to be and how you didn't believe that we could help you. There is no Good or Evil, blah blah blah. There was a lot of talk that just didn't sound like you. You, um . . ." His rant started to slow down a little as his anger ebbed with the buzzing in his ears from the alcohol. He gulped hard, fighting a wave of nausea that could have come from any number of places. Wyatt waited until he was able to go on again, letting Christopher get his say. "You begged me to come with you. You said that if you walked out of the house alone, you would never be coming back and that you would be walking out my enemy. We fought pretty much the same way we fought this afternoon. A few minutes later you walked out, but not before you stood in the doorway and used that nifty telekinetic power of yours to choke me until I passed out. That was pretty much the last time I saw you until the day I came here. I saw a lot of your minions, and we'd hear a lot about you, but you were gone. Anyway, Grandpa found me unconscious and bloodied up from head to toe. ' freaked him out. He thought I was dead. The, uh . . . the next day, I started taking out your people one by one, or as many as I could get at a time, and you grew more and more paranoid as the months went on. You were constantly sending demons over to the house. There were alarms everywhere inside that would tell you if we'd used magic. You turned the house into a prison, basically." Christopher stopped for a second when the light of the moon caught a tear running down his brother's face. "See why I didn't want to spoil a good drunk? We were doing so well earlier."

Not nearly as drunk as his brother and determined as ever, Wyatt just asked, "I know I did something to Phoebe. I know I killed her. But what did I do?"

"Stop saying 'I' because it wasn't you. But yes, Gideon killed Phoebe. He drowned her after he was done with her. That much we know. Charlie knew what it was that 'you' were looking for, but he wouldn't tell me. He said that it was important that I didn't know what it was that you wanted from her. Looking back at it, especially after what I saw today, I think I probably should have questioned him more, but he always seemed to be so . . . I don't know if 'loyal' is the right word, but there was always something about him that told me I should trust him. I guess I know now why. From the moment he showed up in the attic, I trusted him. Sam and Lu did, too."

Wyatt was happy to actually know something that Christopher didn't at the moment. He was admittedly starting to feel a little overwhelmed, even though his brother had warned him about asking too many questions. "You've actually known him most of your life, you just didn't know it. He was assigned to us kids not long after you were born. He didn't really make himself known to anyone but Mom and Dad. They even managed to keep it a secret from Phoebe and Paige. We were his first assignment. He had no idea what he was walking into with the situation between Dad and the other Elders. He managed to talk Charlie into being on our side, not that it was all that hard a sell once he heard everything Dad had to say."

"How did you find out about him?"

"I caught him and Dad talking one day. Charlie was telling Dad that the Elders weren't going to help the sisters with a demon they were fighting, so he was going to go to the Underworld to see what he could find out for himself." He chuckled to himself and added, "You and I had been playing hide and seek. They found me hiding under one of the potions tables. Well, I wasn't exactly hiding. I sort of jumped out to say I wanted to come along and help. If he wasn't dead already, I would have given Dad a heart attack. Charlie, too. I don't remember what came out of it, except that he was really beat up there for a few days. I'll say this for the guy, he's fearless. I think that's why Dad liked him."

Christopher snorted instead of laughed. A crude look came on his face as he said, "That's why Lu liked him, too."

"I'm sure she — what?"

"She — heh — after I punched him out the night she told me she was pregnant, he started giving me this whole speech about how he — "

"He what," asked Wyatt dangerously.

Realization dawned on Christopher. He hiccuped as he laughed. "You do remember she is pregnant, right? Her, him, and baby makes three? With six you get eggroll?"

"Charlie is the father?"

Again, Christopher laughed. "You didn't know?" Wyatt just gave his brother a look. The younger shoved another drink at the elder and again saluted. "To Charlie and Princess Lulabelle. May they now annoy the Elders as much as we do and more!"

Wyatt eyed his brother protectively and confiscated the bottle. "Maybe you should slow down, little brother."

"Or maybe I should just start drinking straight from the bottle. It beats anything else you might have been planning to do tonight."

"If you say so." Wyatt poured himself another shot and offered a much smaller one to his brother as well, but Christopher pointed to the scotch instead. As the elder brother poured his kid brother a drink, he asked, "So what were you doing up, anyway?"

Christopher shrugged. "I don't sleep much these days. The house is too quiet . . .' has been for a long time now."

"Liar," said Wyatt immediately, knowing much better than that. He handed Christopher his drink quietly and waited. When his brother didn't exactly deny the accusation, Wyatt took a wild stab and asked, "It must have been a little weird to watch yourself die once, let alone twice. That would be enough to keep me up all night. It certainly would make me want to drink."

"I don't drink. This is the first time I've had a drink in a long time. Definitely since Lu got pregnant. And he isn't me," said Christopher. At the thought of the other Chris, Christopher drew quiet. As soon as the image of himself (sort of) lying there with that blade in his gut, he slumped in his chair. Shakily, he said, "That's what I've been telling everyone all week. He's . . . not . . . me . . . And I suppose that's close to the truth. I mean, I'm two years older than he was. According to Grandpa, I had Mom for four years longer than he did. And I had at least something of a relationship with Dad, which is something I guess he didn't have until three months ago. Paige, I guess, died before he was even born. In the long run, I am a lot luckier than he was."

Softly, Wyatt prodded, "I hear a 'but' in all of that."

"Whenever we were at Sanctuary, I always felt this weird connection to him. I had no idea why or even what it was. It was just a feeling. I knew he was sad. I'd catch him looking at you sometimes; I don't know. I guess he could never shake the fear. I know Phoebe says he's fine and that no one should worry about him, but I saw him. He never stopped worrying about you. He died to save you, and even after that, he still didn't stop."

"And you're worried that that will be you?"

"I'm not afraid to die."

"That's not what I mean, although I really should give you a good smack upside the head for saying that."

Christopher folded his hands behind his head and pulled down, stretching his back. "Maybe. I . . . I'm not him."

"But you are," said Wyatt, finishing his brother's thought, even if Christopher wasn't going to say it out loud. "And you're scared."

Weakly, the man seemed to shrink under his brother's gaze. Suddenly, he wasn't alone anymore. He truly wasn't the one in charge anymore. He wasn't the oldest anymore. He felt a little selfish admitting so, but he was happy to relinquish that crown for the remainder of their trip. He wanted his five minutes. He wanted his place back. He studied his drink intently as he admitted, "Maybe. I don't know. I'm just so tired. I can't remember the last time I — I'm so tired. Everything is so heavy. It's him, it's me, it's all so . . . so . . . I'm not ready to die."

Wyatt felt his half of the responsibility being passed back to him, even if he didn't realize it. They were back. There were just certain things that went with that. He would never complain about that, certainly not ever again. His eyes searched out his brother's, and when they found each other, he infused them with all of the confidence that he knew he used to have. Truly feeling back in big brother mode again, he said, "I'm not going to let anything happen to you. You know that, right? We're going to get through this. We're going to have that future that the two of you worked for."

"Okay," said Christopher softly. He didn't ask for promises. He wasn't going to let himself get too sentimental or need his brother too much yet, but he was pretty sure that Wyatt already knew that. They sat quietly for the next hour or so, side by side, and watched the moon float across the sky little by little. They didn't need to talk anymore. They were happy just the way they were. Eventually, they brought the wicker sofa out onto the patio where Christopher stretched out, his head on his brother's lap, safe for the first time in a long, long time. His kid brother so was tense that Wyatt could actually feel it coming off Christopher in waves. As his brother fell asleep, Wyatt whispered down to him. "This time it's my turn to save you."

"Hmm . . . don't need . . . saving."

"Yeah, you do. Just go to sleep. I'll wake you up when it's time."

"I can't."

"Yes, you can. I'll keep watch. It's okay. You're safe."

" 's been . . . so . . . hmm . . . so long . . . "

"I know. Now be quiet."

The sky was starting to grey an hour or so later when they were disturbed by their concerned parents at the door. Piper stood in the doorway, blanket wrapped around her, and Leo behind her, holding her free hand. There was no disguising the Mom in her voice as she asked, "What are you two doing out here? It's freezing!"

"Shh," whispered Wyatt as Christopher's head nodded tiredly on his thigh. He smiled down at his brother then looked up at his parents. "What's wrong?"

"We didn't hear Christopher come back up," said Leo. When Wyatt gave him a confused look, he added, "We saw him get up. He's been sleeping on the sofa in our — your mother's — room this week."

"If you could call what he's been doing 'sleeping'," said Piper. She smiled at the sight of her two boys sitting on the cold furniture together, each wrapped in a blanket themselves. She reached down and pulled some of the hair off her younger son's face. "I can't believe you got him to sleep."

Simply, Wyatt shrugged. "He needed it . . . You didn't answer my question. Is something wrong? Is Little Me okay?"

Leo guided Piper to one of the chairs and helped her sit down in her bundle of blankets. Her incision had been pulled a little too much in the last week and wasn't healing as much as they would have liked. Leo would have healed it for her if she hadn't needed to have it available for the doctor to check on when she took Baby Christopher in for his appointment next week. When she was comfortable, he took the chair next to hers. Wyatt waited patiently while his parents settled down until Leo was able to start explaining. When he did, it was casual, as if his future children blew into his life on a regular basis.

"We were looking for the both of you, actually. I told your mother about what we saw in your past today. I thought she should know."

Piper added sadly, "I'm sorry about your sister. She was obviously special to the two of you."

"She is."

Piper shivered under her blankets, causing her teeth to chatter. She glanced at the lemon rinds and empty bottle of tequila then at her son as she asked pointedly, "And how are the two of you?"

"Figuring things out, I guess," said Wyatt. "It's all kind of confusing. It's better than it was when I first got here, but there's still so much that doesn't quite fit into place. Christopher is correcting himself a lot. I can tell he wasn't exactly prepared for what it would be like when he actually succeeded in curing me or whatever it is we're going to call it. I think maybe he was so focused on the Getting There part that he forgot about what he was going to do once he was there, you know?"

"But at least you're there," said Leo. "That's worth something. Give him a chance to catch his breath. He's been through a lot to get you here."

Wyatt looked his father sadly in the eye, both of their minds obviously thinking of the same things. "I know."

"Did the two of you manage to sort anything out while you were freezing your butts off?"

The man laughed at his mother, amused at her lack of subtlety. "Gee, do you want to go inside, Piper?"

"Mom," she corrected him and then nodded emphatically. "And yes."

Wyatt's hand started down to shake his brother awake, but their father stopped him before he could get that far. "Let him sleep," said Leo. With a wave of his hand, they were all orbed into the warmth of the living room, with Christopher and Wyatt still in position on the indoor sofa.

Piper smiled gratefully at her husband, even if it made her a little sad. "Nifty. We won't be doing that much longer if They have Their way."

"What do you mean," asked Wyatt.

"The Elders," said Leo, rolling his eyes at the ceiling.

While still trying not to reveal his motives just yet, Wyatt asked, "How bad is it? I mean, obviously what I saw today was bad, but They can't seriously blame you for what happened?"

"We don't know what They're thinking because your father won't talk to Them," said Piper before Leo had a chance to refute her.

Wyatt looked at his father, not caring that he looked and sounded all of ten years old as he pleaded, "Dad, you have to talk to Them. Please."

Petulantly, Leo crossed his arms over his chest and looked away, unable to look at either of his sons, afraid that he would give away too much if he did. "To be honest, there is nothing that They could say right now that I would be interested in hearing. I seriously doubt that any of you kids missed anything in your lives by Their absence."

"No, we didn't miss Them, but They definitely missed you. They aren't going to stop coming for you until it kills you. You know that." When Wyatt saw the guilty look pass over his father's face, he knew he at least had the angel's attention. As much as he already knew he would regret the decision as soon as his brother found out he'd said anything, Wyatt pulled the trigger on the one thing that he knew would keep his father's attention. "They've already come after Christopher since he's been here, twice. I don't trust Them not to again. And we're lucky right now that They don't know about me being here. I don't want to know what's going to happen if They find out I'm here, not after all the trouble They went to to get rid of me in the first place. And don't say that it was just Gideon, because you and I both know that there are plenty of Them Up There who agreed with him. You saw Them."

Everything that Leo had been avoiding dealing with in the last few weeks had been wrapped up in one very fixed idea, that the people he had trusted the most had kidnapped one son and murdered the other. It didn't matter to him which ones of his colleagues were in league with Gideon and which ones weren't. They were all responsible. They were all there, day after day, treating his son like he was about to explode any second and destroy the world. How was he supposed to trust Them ever again? How could he trust Them to give him a fair hearing at all, especially now with his knowledge of what They were going to do to his sons in their future? Helpless, Leo said, "I can't."

"Leo — " Piper started, only to be cut off once again.

Directly to Wyatt, Leo asked, "Do you understand what you're asking me to do?"

"I'm asking you to save your family," said Wyatt strongly before he even knew what he was saying. It had been a long time since he'd done it, but he remembered well the conversation he had had in his head with his dead father for so many years every time that Charlie had asked him what he would say if he could. "I'm asking you to remember what it is you saw today when you saw me with the Elders. This may sound selfish, and I suppose it is, but I'm asking you to keep me from having to make that decision. I'm asking you to keep me from having to make a deal with Them when I'm a kid. I'm asking you to set us free from Them for good."

Knowing that Wyatt did at least have a point, one that he himself had made to himself in the last few hours, Leo said indefinitely, "I'm working on it. I can't go Up There until I know that I have all of the pieces and cannot in any way be taken away from you boys ever again. Give me the time to find the right solution." A prick of ice hit the back of his neck, forcing Leo to add, "Until that time comes, I don't want either of you to leave the house. Can you do that for me?"

"We're coming with to Valhalla, but after that, yeah, we'll stay here," agreed Wyatt.

"Speaking of which . . . " Piper gave her eldest a pointed look. "Did the two of you accomplish anything besides demolishing two bottles of perfectly good alcohol that I will find a way to charge you for?"

"We came up with a lot of theories that I don't think you want to hear about, but no plans to speak of. I think we're getting a lot closer, but they're still only ideas. We can't know yet if we're even right, let alone ready to move on to a planning stage." Wyatt looked down at his sleeping brother and smiled. "We had other things that needed saying."

Their mother gave him a ruefully cocked eyebrow before she shrugged at him. "Well, at least you didn't break any bones doing it this time. Are you okay?"

"He was right this afternoon: there really isn't an 'okay' here. But we're trying to be us, which, you know, we'll see. It's going to take a while . . . Unless, of course, I screw up again and all of this blows up in our faces. I'm not holding my breath."

"What do you mean," asked Piper.

Wyatt asked his father, "How much did you tell her?"

"About . . . " asked Leo.

"What we saw today in my past." When Leo rolled his hand around in a circle, Wyatt elaborated, "Okay, more specifically, what happened between me and the Elders?"

"Only that you were trying to protect your brother but things went badly. It was out of your control."

"Let's just say that, had I known then what I know now, I never would have risked any of this. But I was arrogant and desperate and — "

"Taking care of your family," finished Leo, not letting his son take any more blame than was necessary. "What's done is done. You did your best with what you had. Now you need to let us help with the rest. So what do we do we need to know?"

While his brother slept in his lap, Wyatt quietly explained some of what he and Christopher had come up with. As hard as he tried, he and his father were unable to keep the details of Piper's death from her. The Elders' involvement soon became integral to Leo's thoughts as well as he listened to Wyatt talk about things he remembered being told over the years. Piper's face remained impassive as they talked about the daughter that she had yet to know and the powers that may have been used against her and her sons. By the end of Wyatt's explanation, there was no doubt in any of their minds that the Elders had turned against the Halliwell family.

"They may think They have the right and good behind Them," said Leo vehemently. "But I . . . Well, your great-grandmother may be right. There may be a deal there to be made."

"We aren't making any kinds of deals with Them until we know what we're going to do about Gideon," said Piper angrily, even through a yawn. She had wandered around while they were talking and found herself somehow drawn to the snow globe that they had put in the place that Christopher had told them it had been for so long. She ran a hand over it lovingly, letting everything wash over her. The weight of it made her want to cry, but as always, she knew she didn't have time to cry. Her sons — all of them — were in danger. One had already paid with his life twice.

Wyatt watched his mother carefully, seeing where she was stopping her pacing. "Mom?"

Knowing that everything she was feeling at the moment could be summed up with one simple thing, she took the snow globe from its shelf and walked over to her men. She handed it down to Wyatt and said darkly, "Before we do anything else, I think we need to call up whatever reinforcements we can get, not just the Valkyries. If the two of you are right and this has something to do with both Chrises, I'm not taking the chance that They would hurt Chris Up There. We need to summon Grams and Mom and Prue and whoever else we can get here, screw the rules. I want them both protected around the clock until this is sorted out. They have both been through too much. You all have."

Wyatt hefted the weight in his hands, admiring it with awe. "I can't believe it. How did you get this?" Before his mother could answer him, his mind locked on the inscription on the bottom that he didn't even have to see to know by heart. His voice was hardly a whisper as he answered his own question, "Chris. Wow. That makes so much sense now."

"See? Not everything is lost yet," said Leo, nodding at the snowglobe with loaded meaning. To Piper, he added, "But you're right. We need to make sure he's safe before we go after Gideon. He didn't have that kind of power on his own to come back. Someone Up There was helping him to come after Wyatt."

"Or someone Down There," suggested Wyatt distractedly. "Besides Barbas, I mean."

Leo saw the thoughtful look on his son's face and, while he wasn't exactly familiar with this boy's range of expression, he knew his brother well enough to know when one of them was thinking about the future and its consequences. Prodding, the angel asked, "Someone in particular you're thinking of?"

Slowly, Wyatt worked his thought out as he said, "Well, I'm just wondering . . . When Lucy pulled me out of there this morning, every Darklighter under the sun practically showed up to take us on. Christopher told me earlier that whenever I've orbed in the last few years, it's been with black orbs. We know that the Gideon from the parallel universe used black orbs, right? I'm just wondering if maybe he has been getting a little help from them. I mean, we don't exactly know what happens to Elders when they fall, do we? Unless you know something I don't, it's never happened. They certainly have never lost an Elder to evil like They lost Gideon."

"I'm not going to discard any theories at this point," said Leo. "I'm starting to think that I know even less about Them than I thought I did, which wasn't much yet to begin with."

Ruefully, Wyatt looked down at his sleeping brother and said, "I know the feeling."

In his own way of letting Wyatt know that he now saw the man as his son, Leo said softly, "Things happened so fast today that I didn't have the chance to tell you something that I think you need to hear, Wyatt. When we were in the black, I could sense you thinking something, something that I think you have managed to think the entire time you were under it, not just today. It's something that I think needs to be corrected now, before we go any further. Look at me." The angel waited until his son's eyes locked on his own before he continued, wanting to be sure that the boy understood that there was no lie in his heart. "You need to believe me when I tell you that, after what I saw happen the day your mother died, I in no way whatsoever blame you for what happened to your mother. I don't blame you for being lost. I don't blame you for what transpired in the time that you were lost."

"Dad — "

"No arguments. What happened was not your fault, Wyatt, nor is what happened to your brother. You don't seem to want to hear it from him, but you're going to hear it from me. You were two years old. What happened to your brother was no one's fault but Gideon's. I saw what Gideon has done to you since that day, the things he's said to you. If you're going to fight him, you need to know in your own soul that you are not responsible. He has held that over you for long enough. You are never going to be able to defeat him if you continue to believe that you in any way hurt Chris or caused his death. Do you understand?"

Still looking doubtful, Wyatt said, "Give me time."

Unhappy to admit so, Piper winced, "You may not have it."

"You need to know it, if not for yourself, for Christopher," added Leo, even though he knew that it was just as much a guilt trip as what Gideon was doing. This, however, he told himself, was at least taking it in the right direction. This was motivation, not guilt. "We all believe it. It's your turn."

"Mind over matter, huh," asked Wyatt.

"Something like that," Leo said. "We need you."

Wyatt merely nodded his acknowledgement of that notion. They all needed a lot of things, and none of them were going to happen unless his genius kid brother came up with one of his out-of-thin-air brilliant plans to get them some powers. Not that he would mind spending some quality time in the past. He had missed having parents and aunts and a life that didn't depend on him making the right decision at any and all hours lest there be grave world consequences. Part of him wished he could stay here permanently in this life where only his brother knew exactly what he had become and where his family had welcomed him back into the fold, treachery forgotten. Back where he belonged, there was no one left to forgive him. There was only certain death and an eternity of damnation. He liked it here. Here was good. He didn't care if he sounded all of ten years old when he thought about it. Here was good.

Still, there was something to be said for too much family time after going without for so long. Unable to look either of his dead parents in the eye any longer, Wyatt stretched and faked a yawn. "All right, this is getting a little too sweet for me. You guys should get back upstairs and get some sleep. Everyone else will be up before you know it."

"I'm up," countered Piper, even through a yawn herself. "You guys go ahead. Paige fell asleep in the attic, Wyatt, so if you want her room, it's probably free."

"Nah," disagreed Wyatt. "But if you want to help me with Sleeping Beauty here, I think I hear the shower calling my name. Are there towels downstairs or do I need to take one down?"

"Downstairs?"

Wyatt rolled his eyes at his own mistake. "Sorry. I forgot you haven't finished the basement yet."

A few minutes later when Wyatt was in the shower, he forgot a lot more than the floorplan of his family home. He stood under the hot water, wishing that it was actually possible to wash away the grimy feeling he had crawling all over his skin as wave after wave of reality hit him. As he had the afternoon before, he panicked so hard that he hyperventilated to the point of vomiting. It wasn't until the water started to run cold that he was able to regain control over his emotions and the silent sobs that wracked his body. Even though he had finally started to believe his brother and his parents, that voice was still in his head, picking away at every ounce of control he had.

You did this.

They will all die because of you. It's only a matter of time.

"Shut up," he muttered into the steamed mirror. "Get out of my head."

It wasn't possible, not physically, but Wyatt still felt Gideon in his head. He even looked behind himself to make sure that the Gideon that was part of this time hadn't left his little self to follow him. He didn't think he saw anything, but he couldn't be sure. All he knew was that, dead or alive, that voice was still in his head, stripping away all of the work that Christopher had already gone to to keep him safe and grounded.

Furiously, Wyatt smashed his hand into the mirror, once again screaming, "GET OUT OF MY HEAD!"

Immediately, Leo's voice chimed in the young man's head, asking in concern, "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. I'm fine," Wyatt said into the air. All he got in response was a very doubtful chime back in his ear. "Really, Dad, I'm fine. Nobody here but us chickens."

Despite the protests, Leo was there, knocking on the door to check anyway. "Wyatt, open the door."

Doing as told, Wyatt opened the door without thinking about it. The concerned look on his father's face grew even darker when he saw his son. Confused, Wyatt asked, "What?"

Leo's hand gestured up and down, indicating his son's naked chest. "I just . . . um . . . "

As quickly as he could, Wyatt reached for the shirt he had borrowed from his father and pulled it over his head. He blushed a deep red, partly from embarrassment that his father had seen, but partly from his own forgetfulness. He knew his body looked a mess. It was what had set off his panic attack in the first place. He had scars that he had no idea how he had gotten them. His body had clearly been traumatized over the years, enough that he wondered vaguely how he had survived this long. But this wasn't the time for wondering. Sheepishly, he looked up at his father's concerned face and shrugged, "It looks a lot worse than it is. I can't feel any of it."

This time, Leo was unable to offer any words of encouragement or cheer. He couldn't tell his son that it was all going to be all right. He couldn't make those promises anymore. A pair of tears fell from his overbright eyes as he turned away from his son, unable to say anything at all.

Wyatt called after his father as the angel walked away shaking his head, not sure he should let him go. "Dad?" When Leo didn't react to him at all, Wyatt called again. "Dad?"

Leo turned around, face buried under tears of sadness for his children. He couldn't say anything at all, let alone think. His entire body shook with fury and sorrow. His fingers twitched with the lightning power given to him by his Elder brethren. When his eyes met his son's, he knew he would get no encouragement back. The men merely nodded to one another and went their separate ways, everything that needed saying left unspoken but understood.

Safely back in the bathroom, Wyatt heaved out a heavy breath. The sting finally tingling his hand, he looked down and saw the cuts on his knuckles from his breaking of the mirror. He winced in anticipation of one of them discovering the mess he'd made of the bathroom. Rather than do it twice, he picked up the glass before he bothered to rinse the blood away from his hand. For the first time, he had to admit, the pain of the washing was kind of refreshing. It was refreshing to own any feeling at all.

Once the mess was cleaned up as best as it could be without magic (he was too tired to remember the spell Paige had taught them so long ago), Wyatt took one last look in what was left of the mirror. Not great, but it would have to do. He threw a little more water on his face then made his way downstairs to face the day.

The eldest of the Halliwell children knuckled his eyes as he stepped into the brightness of the kitchen. He barely even registered that it was the kitchen in his past, that he wasn't just walking through his family home as he had his entire life. It wasn't until he saw his mother standing at the counter, spatula and mixing bowl in hand, that he remembered where he was. Thrown off, he muttered, "Trippy."

"What is?"

He rolled his eyes around the room, taking it all in. "You have no idea."

Piper smiled at her son, feeling for the first time that he truly was her son in the way that Chris and then Christopher had been. It really was good to have him home, and it was good to be his mother. As if he was still just a kid under her roof, she asked, "Did you get any sleep?"

"Coffee would be great," he answered, regarding her like he was trying to figure out exactly what she was thinking.

Seeing the look, she indicated the sleeping man in the next room and said, "I think we're all happy to have you home."

"So am I."

"Even when your other brother was here, I never saw him sleep like that. He was always working, trying to save you. I don't think he even stopped thinking about it when he did manage to get an hour or two. You must have done something right yesterday to get him to relax like that."

Wyatt sat on the stool in front of the island and started absently playing with the knives in his mother's chopping block. "I didn't do anything. He needed it. He's never been much of a sleeper anyway, but I can always tell when he needs it the most. I'm surprised, though. I would have thought he would have slept okay this week with you and Dad so close by."

"I was," said Piper. "But your father, he . . . Your father has been out hunting every night since the baby and I came home from the hospital. He thinks I don't know, but I do. Well, he thought so until the night before last, anyway. Did Christopher tell you what's been going on with Paige?" When Wyatt nodded, she said, "Even Christopher was having really bad nightmares. He woke up half the block every single night. We're all very grateful that the both of you are here, but I would be lying if I said that they all aren't taking what happened the day your brother was born a little hard."

"They?"

"I'm okay," Piper said quickly and all too defensively, just as she had with her grandmother a week ago. "It's them I'm worried about. I'll be fine. I don't have to like it, and I swear I am never taking or letting either of you leave the house ever again, but we'll be okay. What I need is for the two of you to be safe and I'll be fine. You're safest and strongest here. I think that pretty much tells me what I need to do."

Wyatt eyed his mother with concern, not just for her but for himself and his brother as well. "Are you sure that's the best way to go about this? Mom, it's okay to grieve, but you can't lock us up in a tower for the rest of our lives."

"Hey, kiddo, I don't care how old you are. You are still my son and I make the rules. When you have kids of your own, you can make the rules, but until then, I say we are never leaving this house ever again."

The man wanted to believe that his mother was only talking out of sleep deprivation, which she probably was, but there was something in her eyes that told him he couldn't be sure. Somehow, he had a feeling that his toddler self was about to get very well acquainted with his bedroom for a while. To avoid getting into any trouble, he agreed with her then tried to change the subject. "Okay. It'll be okay. So . . . what did you mean, Dad is out hunting? He hates guns."

"Yeah, well, your father is doing a lot of things that aren't like him these days," Piper groaned. "Your father the pacifist is going around the Underworld challenging any demon in eyesight trying to find Barbas. His going to the future to see if you boys were all right was only part of what he's been going through. He hasn't been all that forthcoming with the details of how Chris died; neither has Paige. From what I've been seeing the last two days, I can see why. I obviously still don't know everything. However it happened, though, a piece of your father died with him. I don't know how I'm going to get him back, but one of these days, he has to come home. It's too much for him to do alone."

Attempting to find anything to make any part of his day better, Wyatt asked, "Do you think it would help if Christopher and I talked to him? What can we do?"

"You can ignore the Future Consequences rule just this once and tell me it gets better in the future and that we all live happily ever after."

Wyatt didn't say anything, but screwed up an eyebrow at his very young mother. He bent his chin to his chest, looking himself slowly up and down from the feet up. He then looked back at her with the same mystified expression and waited for her to realize what she'd just said. It took her a moment, but when she finally caught it, she started to laugh. It started out slow, but soon the two of them were both laughing in near hysterics over the idea that any one of them was ever going to get their fairy tale ending.

Two cups of coffee and several blueberry muffins later, Paige stumbled into the kitchen, bed head and all, with a very confused look on her face. "Who hit Christopher over the head," she asked.

Piper rolled her eyes at her sister as her son's eyes widened in concern, not realizing that his aunt was joking. It wasn't until Paige hefted one of the empty tequila bottles by the neck that he realized what she meant. He guiltily raised his hand, but said, "It was his idea."

"I hope you served it up with aspirin," Paige said, remembering her hangover days without the slightest hint of fondness.

"He brought it, but I don't think he took any. Besides, unless you guys have objections, there's no reason why he can't sleep it off, right?"

"Who can sleep what off," asked a grumpy Christopher from the doorway, rubbing his eyes like he was all of two years old. When he saw his big brother's hopeful face fall, he knew for sure that they had been talking about him. Now grumpier, he trudged past his brother toward the coffee pot, punching the older man on the bicep on the way. "You got me drunk."

Defensively, Wyatt asked, "Were you going to sleep otherwise?" The younger of the brothers merely grunted as he fell into his coffee mug. Simply, Wyatt answered, "Well, there you go."

Clowning his brother upside the head this time on his way to a seat of his own, Christopher asked his mother and aunt, "So what are we working on?"

"Work," asked Paige. "Honey, we just got up."

Agitated, Christopher asked, "Where's Little Wyatt?"

Piper plopped a muffin in front of each son and said soothingly, "He's okay. He's with Grandpa in the nursery with Little You. Your father has been sensing him the entire night, just in case. If there was trouble, we'd know."

As if he could trip up his mother's logic, Christopher asked quickly, "Didn't he go out hunting last night?"

"No, he was too busy worrying about you two," Piper said in the same calm voice, hoping it would get the message through her son's thick skull. "Listen to me. There is nothing more important to any of us right now than to make sure that all of my children are taken care of. The Little Yous are fed and happy. Now it's your turn. At the very least, you need to eat to fight off the hangovers you've got coming on."

"I don't get hangovers," supplied Wyatt with exorbitant cheerfulness right in his little brother's ear.

Again Christopher playfully smacked his brother upside the head. "He doesn't get hangovers."

From where she'd been fussing at the counter, Paige handed a glass over to Christopher with a grin that could only mean trouble. "Drink up, kiddo."

"What is that?"

"Hold your nose while it's going down," she suggested. "We can't have you in a fog all day."

With that kind of warning, Christopher just shoved the glass away from himself with a disgusted grunt. He tried to be as polite as possible as he said, "Yeah. Thanks anyway."

"Drink it," ordered Wyatt. He was pretty sure he knew what was in Paige's concoction and knew that, if his kid brother was going to be of any use to him today, he needed to get it down as fast as possible. He didn't actually expect Christopher to take his word for it, but he had to take the chance that he still had some influence over him. When Christopher looked doubtfully at him, Wyatt resorted to the raised eyebrow he had always given his brother when they were kids and he needed to dare the kid to do something. A small smile joined the cocked eyebrow, escalating the dare even further.

To everyone's amazement, Christopher let the argument drop right then and there, picked up the glass, and slammed the contents down in one long drink. He looked almost green for a moment after swallowing, but he held on. His face twisted in a grimace as he punched his brother once again on the shoulder. "Seriously? I hate you."

"You can thank me later," said Wyatt with a satisfied smirk. Turning to everyone else, he asked, "When are we going?"

"As soon as we can get the little ones ready to go," said Piper, looking at Paige. "I want this over with."

The youngest of the sisters nodded her agreement. When her nephews regarded her strangely, she said, "I'm not really sure why, but I just have this feeling that we don't want to leave them in the house without an active power around. I would volunteer to stay home, but that suggestion was already shot down since you two are going with. I won't be able to see Gideon the way you can, Wyatt, and no one wants us taking the chance of not knowing what's going on around Little You."

Christopher's eyes popped open and quickly found his mother. "Did something happen?"

"Oh, no, no," Piper shook her head. "He slept through the night, no problems. He didn't even seem to have any dreams. It's almost as if Gideon decided to take the night off or something. Don't worry. He's perfectly safe."

Perfectly safe, my ass, grumbled Wyatt in the back of his head. Of course the little one was safe; Gideon had decided to do exactly what Christopher had been worried about. He probably had been listening in on the entire conversation they'd had that night. Knowing that he couldn't just blurt out that thought, he smiled weakly at the family. "Good. Good. Really good."

"Something wrong," asked Piper.

"No, just . . . um . . . Christopher," asked Wyatt, calling for his brother's attention. He hopped off his stool and pulled the younger man aside by the elbow as he beamed a smile that would fool no one at the rest of the family. He backed the two of them out the door, waving at them on their way out. "I just need him for a minute. We'll be right back."

The younger of the brothers tripped over his own feet as he tried to pull away from his big brother. "What the hell?"

"Just follow me," Wyatt commanded and led a very confused Christopher to the front door of the manor. He opened the door and pulled his brother outside then shut the door behind them.

As soon as they were outside, Christopher asked, "What's wrong?"

Wyatt held up his sliced knuckles to show Christopher and said blackly, "We don't have as much time as we thought."

Christopher felt his face pale to match the shade his brother wore. He cursed under his breath then asked to confirm, "You've seen him? Why didn't you come get me?"

"There wasn't time, and no, I just heard him. I thought maybe I saw something, but it couldn't have been. But he . . . He's in my head, Chris. I don't know when or how, but he got in my head. I . . . " Once again Wyatt held up his fist, then carefully pulled the sleeve over his hand to hide it as soon as they went back inside. "I took it out on the mirror."

"Well, then, let's fix this before he gets any braver than he already is. If these ladies don't have the answers that the other me seems to think they're going to have, we're going to need to go back to the drawing board. I would rather we know sooner than later if we have a plan or not." When he didn't see even a little bit of confidence return to his brother's eyes, Christopher clapped a hand on Wyatt's shoulder. He didn't offer a smile, but he tried to at least sound confident enough for the both of them. "I'm not going to let him take you again. You believe me, don't you?"

Ignoring the question, Wyatt said, "I'm not as worried about me as I am you."

Christopher tried to look as relaxed as possible, despite his growing headache. With half a smile, he bargained, "He kills me again, I'm going to need someone to blame, and that someone is going to be you. You don't want to know what the rest of your life is going to be like with me haunting you for all eternity. Got it?"

"Yeah."

"Then stop looking so scared. It's really starting to freak me out, and I'm too damned hung over to want to tell you just how much it freaks me out. We're going to be fix this thing until I'm happy with the way it ends, no matter how many damned times I have to do it. End of story."

V.

Getting into Valhalla turned out to be an even easier affair than anyone had anticipated it would be. Phoebe remembered that Chris had kept Leysa's pendant after their "rescue" of Leo (as a reminder to himself that, should he succeed, he would never take another life ever again), so she went to the club to dig it out of the box of his things that none of them had been able to bring themselves to take home. The pendant gave the orbers enough of a guidance boost to get them where they needed to go. The landing was a little rough on the uneven terrain, but they were all there, safe, and together.

They hardly had time to get their bearings when they were completely surrounded by twenty of Freya's best warriors. Leo immediately pulled Piper behind him. Valiant though his effort was, Piper instinctively pulled away, instead shoving him behind her and her sisters. Wyatt and Christopher both vied for control over which of them was going to protect the other. It was almost comical considering that they were outnumbered over three to one.

The odds broke up a little (literally) as the group soon parted to make way for, first, three beautiful Valkyries armed to the teeth and then Freya herself. The Valkyrie goddess exhibited very little surprise when she caught sight of who her prisoners were. Her voice was almost ethereal when she said to her guests, "I knew you would seek us out sooner or later. Welcome, friends."

Freya dismissed her warriors and the other Valkyries, leading the Halliwell clan toward a spot on her island paradise she loved to keep for her own. Few had seen it, but it seemed to her to be the most appropriate place. No one spoke during the walk, waiting for Freya to give them the hint that it was okay. She would have engaged them in some small talk if she had any idea how to make small talk. She heard that humans talked about the weather, but what was she supposed to say? It's been sunny since the day I built this place? Chris had tried to get her to make small talk once; he'd only ended up insulting her until she'd laughed. No one had ever insulted her before. She kind of liked it.

Amused at the memory, Freya asked over her shoulder, "Do you have the same sense of humor that Chris had?"

Surprised, Christopher skipped ahead a few steps to walk evenly with Freya and asked, "How? How did you know the difference?"

"It's my job to know the warrior soul," the goddess said simply. "You two definitely have your differences, and I'm not talking about your different timelines." She offered a smile to Wyatt as she added over her shoulder to him, "I wasn't, however, expecting you. I'm glad to see that things haven't turned out as badly as it was thought that they would."

"We aren't done yet," said Wyatt.

Freya's eyes were kind as she sad, "No, you aren't. You wouldn't be here otherwise. I can see that your brother has the same fight in him that Chris had, so no, you are nowhere near done yet."

Before he could stop himself from saying something stupid, Wyatt asked, "You're a real Up With People kind of person, huh?"

"You are nowhere near done yet," emphasized Freya again with a clear I Wasn't Done Yet tone. "But that doesn't mean that an end isn't in sight."

"Is it an ending we're going to like," asked Christopher.

The Valkyrie stopped in the middle of the path for a moment, seeming to consider the answer to the young man's question. After a beat, she looked deeply at Christopher and Wyatt then said with a voice distinctly devoid of any emotion, "That, I'm afraid, is up to the two of you."

As much as they both wanted a little more than a clue for an explanation, Wyatt and Christopher dropped back to follow the Valkyrie in silence with the rest of the family. The two of them glanced at each other and knew that they were both thinking the same thing anyway. Cryptic much?

Nearly a mile later, they reached a cluster of trees overlooking a sheer drop off where Phoebe sucked in a breath, not from the beauty, but from memory. "I know this place," she said out loud without meaning to. Quickly correcting herself, she said, "Chris knew this place."

"He liked the view," confirmed Freya. While the family admired the view of the waterfall and the pool at its foot across the way, Freya swept her arm around her, inviting them all to sit and be comfortable, even though no one took her up on the offer. "Being neither Here nor There, Chris needed a home. He found one here, and always will, whatever and whenever he needs."

With Chris unable to say so in his own words and feeling the need to express her own gratitude, Piper said with tearful sincerity, "Thank you, for everything you did for my son. I don't know exactly what it is you did, or how you did it, but it is because of him that we're here. He trusted you. These two are still alive because of something you did for us in the not-too-far future. Whatever it is you've done for us, thank you."

A genuine smile graced the Valkyrie's features, giving them an even more unearthly glow. "Your gratitude is unnecessary, but I understand. Thanks to Chris, my house and the descendents of Melinda Warren and the Charmed Ones will always be joined. You need never fear me or those under my guardianship. You have my protection and aid, now and forever." She settled back a little to include the rest of the family and said kindly, "But 'forever' is not why we are here. Something has happened?"

"Where do we start," groaned Paige under the weight of their entire situation. "But before we even do that, can I ask, how did you know that Christopher wasn't Chris? I know you said you can their souls apart and all, but how did you know that Chris died?"

Freya watched Paige's reaction and said slowly, "You were with him." When Paige nodded sadly, the goddess went on. "I thought I saw you. I was there with him. An angel of Death and I were both there. I offered Chris the opportunity to return here since he had loved it so, but he said that he needed to go with the angel. He was able to tell me after his death some of what I am about to tell you in a while that he hadn't been able to talk about before. He needed to go with the angel because of some 'business' that he had to attend to on the ghostly plane. He didn't say what."

"Our grandmother said he's been making a mess of things Up There since he died," said Phoebe. "Chris told me not to worry about it, but I could tell she wasn't exaggerating."

"No, she wasn't. I've had contact of my own with a few beings who would know. I wanted to be sure that Chris was protected. He is safe, for now. The angel who took him has kept him close. Somehow, I think you already knew that. So, I ask again, something has happened?"

Christopher smiled at the goddess, even as he searched for the shortest explanation possible for what was going on with them. "Not to be rude, but, for lack of a better explanation . . . " He moved his flat hand horizontally between his chest and Wyatt's, bugging his eyes out wide. "We happened."

"So you have," said Freya, not at all surprised by the answer. She even offered him a wink of her eye. "No apologies. You have his sense of humor. Speak freely, both of you. I am not easily offended." With a short laugh, she added, "At least, not until now. Please, everyone, sit."

As the family began to truly settle in, Wyatt leaned in and whispered in Christopher's ear, "'We happened'?"

"You have a better way to put it?"

With a lighter chuckle than Christopher had heard from his brother in years, Wyatt said, "Yeah, but the words that come to mind I probably shouldn't say in front of Mom."

Flopping down on the softer than naturally possible grass, Christopher said conspiratorially, "I triple dog dare you."

"Before we begin," started Freya as she stepped into the middle of the circle the family had unconsciously made. She gracefully let herself slide to the ground to sit in front of the two men from the future, effectively blocking them from the view of everyone else so that they might have as few distractions as possible. She took both Christopher and Wyatt by the hands. "I need the two of you to tell me what has happened in your battle up until now."

"Where do you need us to start," asked Wyatt dryly.

Freya smiled gently at the men and said, "Nowhere. Just like scars on the surface, history scars us all to the deepest depths. Your souls will tell me what I need to know. Just concentrate on each other and your lives will do the rest."

As the brothers glanced at one another in confusion, the Valkyrie goddess closed her eyes and clasped their hands in a death grip. Her eyes fluttered back into her head, leaving long eyelashes batting at no one in particular. She cringed a few times, threw her head back with a terrifying scream, then released their hands with a few hard, panting breaths.

Without thinking about it, Christopher and Wyatt both held her hands tight and tried to pull her back up into a fully sitting position. Both asked quickly with concern, "Are you okay?"

Freya nodded her thanks at their gallant gestures, even though their efforts had been less than necessary. She got up from the ground long enough to return to the outer edge of the circle so that she could address the entire family again. Regally, she looked each one in the eye then said, "You have questions."

Taking that as permission to begin, Leo turned to the woman who had been his host for six very long weeks and asked, "How did you know that we would be coming?"

"Chris and I talked shortly before he was to leave to return to the future. He was afraid that something was wrong yet, even though you thought that you had stopped the demon after Wyatt. He asked me if he could direct you to us should things not work out. He wanted you to have a safe place to go. I agreed."

"Just like that," asked Wyatt. When he saw a dirty look come from his father at the rudeness of the question, he amended himself. "Not to be rude, but I guess I don't understand. Maybe it's just that I'm a little out of synch with everyone else, but what did he do that you would owe him such a favor?"

The goddess folded her hands in front of her, never letting go of her imperial air, even with her admission. "It wasn't a 'favor', if that's how you would put it. We did not necessarily owe each other anything. That said, I have a great appreciation for what he tried to do. While I may possess powers beyond the comprehension of most, they are, in fact, limited by the constraints of time and space. Try as I might, I cannot see the future. Had I known two years ago the things that Chris was able to show me, I might have saved many, many people their sufferings. Leysa was not the only one of my girls to leave the fold under the lure of Evil. She was merely the only one with whom Chris had a personal stake. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. The story you seek begins long before the day Chris showed up in your attic two years ago."

Feeling an incredible itch to get things moving along — she did have a family to save, after all — Piper asked, "If not then, when?"

"That depends on how you see time," answered Freya. "Is it something linear or something much more fluid and manipulatable?"

"You're saying that something that happened in the future is what caused Chris to come here, not the other way around like we thought," said Paige. "And if that thing in the future had never happened, something in our past never would have happened?"

Freya graced Paige with a smile for a moment, contemplating what it was that seemed to be running through the witch's head. "In a roundabout way, yes. Three years ago, an event occurred that never should have. If choices had been made differently — But again, I'm getting ahead of the story. The most and least logical place to begin is in the middle, which is a place that, as I understand it, only Phoebe has been privy to until now."

Surprised to be called out on something she knew they hadn't told the Valkyrie as of yet, Phoebe startled and asked, "Me?"

"Your memories of Chris's future."

Shaking her head, Phoebe had to keep herself from backing up from the look on Freya's face. "I didn't see things like that. It wasn't like I had the whole picture of anything."

"Believe it or not, your foray into the realm of Personal Gain is actually more beneficial to you than you yet realize. I can help you to fill in the blanks, as it were. You may be surprised at what you know."

"How do you even know about this?"

Freya nodded her head sideways at Christopher and Wyatt. "They just told me." Without waiting for the implications to dawn on everyone, the goddess asked the caretaker of Chris's memories, "Phoebe, do you remember what it was that Chris and I talked about the first day he showed up here?"

"I'm not sure," said Phoebe slowly.

Seeing the hesitation on the witch's part, Freya reached over to her and held her hand in the same manner she had Christopher and Wyatt. Softly, she urged, "Concentrate." As before, the goddess looked slightly faint afterward, but she was made of much tougher stuff than a few memories could do to her. Once she'd collected herself, she focused again on Phoebe and said, "Try again, Phoebe. What do you remember about that day?"

"Chris's first day . . . " Phoebe tried to clear her mind of everything but the conversation she had seen Chris have with the Valkyrie goddess. It seemed so far away now, even though it had been so clear to her at the time, as if it were a memory of her own. Now it seemed more like a dream that wanted to float away into the Land of Wasted Dreams. "It's close, but every time I try," she stuttered, "It's gone now. The only real conversation I remember between the two of you was well after he was settled with us, the day we came to get Leo. All I know is that you said he'd shown you something about the future."

"He did," the Valkyrie confirmed. "Chris came to the past nearly a month before you ever saw him. We spent a great deal of time teaching him to fight without his powers so that he wouldn't rely on them too much. He didn't want to expose too many future secrets, including what his own powers were. He didn't explain why, but he felt it was important. The rest of the time, he liked to spend alone, especially in this spot here. When he first arrived, however, Chris and I spent close to a week in normal time together. He told me many, many things which I was bound to secrecy about. He was a very secretive boy."

"But that was for a good reason," shuddered Phoebe. Her own look into his life was enough to tell her that she was never going to begrudge him his 'Future Consequences' excuse ever again, no matter who he was. "The things he knew and saw . . ."

" — Could be very, very dangerous in the wrong hands. Which is why one of the things I taught him was how to put his past life behind him, to, as one of your psychiatrists would suggest, 'compartmentalize' his life. In the end, perhaps, many things could have been avoided had I not taught him so. His death might very well have been avoided if he hadn't lost some of the information that he didn't know he had. He might have known that something was missing and done something about it."

Cautiously, Christopher looked at his brother and knew that Wyatt was thinking the same thing. "A weapon of some kind."

"You might call it that," agreed Freya. "In the months following his father's death, Chris spent a lot of time trying to find out anything he could about what had happened, about both while he'd been kept in seclusion and after his father's death. He went to every Seer he could find. He went from one magical source to another, even the angel of Destiny. No one had answers for him. No one, except Wyatt himself."

Both Piper and Leo flinched in surprise, but no one was more surprised than Christopher. "He just asked him?"

Freya shrugged in an oddly human gesture as she regarded the people who had been entrusted to her care two years ago without their knowledge. She had very little contact with the outside world, but somehow, she had put a great affection for Chris Halliwell in her hardened heart. She could see now what it was about his family that both frustrated and amused him so. "He just asked," she confirmed.

"Okay," groaned Christopher. "Then here's a stupid question for you. What did Wyatt say?"

"That Chris was the answer."

"Of course," said both brothers, annoyed, even though they both had already known that was going to be the answer. To coax the roundabout conversation along, Wyatt utzed her, "What else did he say?"

The goddess switched her focus back and forth along the family line, addressing them as she would her own warriors. The Halliwells were not yet a part of the battle to come, but that made them no less warriors in her mind. Confidently, she told them, "Phoebe, I would assume that, given that you know about my arrangement with Chris regarding one of my former girls, you know why we held that deal?"

"She killed Leo in the future," acknowledged the goddess, not sure where she was going just yet.

Ignoring the gasp from Piper, Freya went on. "I believe you also saw that event in Chris's life. You saw the moments before and after?" After a nod from Phoebe, she said, "Then you know what Wyatt said to Chris when it was over: 'There are things that I can't tell you right now, but in time you will understand why this had to happen.' It was on the night that Chris made his decision to come to the past that Wyatt revealed what that thing was."

"The night in the attic, before the museum was opened? The last night the two of them were together?"

"Yes. Not long after his mother was murdered and the boys were sent into hiding, Wyatt learned that the Titans had come after his family that day for a very specific reason: to kill Chris. While that wasn't much of a surprise to them, the reason why was. Wyatt learned that, just a few years into the future, Chris was going to die taking on the Elders himself. Wyatt didn't know why, only that the Elders would be prepared and that Chris would try and fail."

Thinking it was out of character that he would tell his brother about his own death, Wyatt argued, "And this other me told Chris this?"

"No. And yes. He told Chris that he would die, yes. What he didn't tell Chris was the real reason why he had taken the Elders on and why Wyatt had chosen the path that he had chosen after the death of their mother. When Wyatt destroyed the Elders in his own time, it was to protect Chris. By destroying Them, Chris wouldn't have to. He chose to lose himself to Evil rather than ever let his brother know what he knew about the Elders. Of course, Wyatt wasn't aware at the time that Chris already knew what his brother was trying to hide and had no intention of going about things that way."

Phoebe said thoughtfully, "When I talked to Chris today, he said that he discovered that he knew something he wasn't supposed to know. It wasn't until he died that he remembered. Is that the thing he was talking about? Do you know what that thing is?"

"I do."

"Can you tell us?"

"I could, but just as it was for him, the knowledge he held would be dangerous to you. It is something that will change everything you have known about the last two years of your lives. Are you entirely sure that that is something you are willing to do to yourselves? To your children?"

Piper and Leo looked at each other, knowing that the question was really about them and how much they wanted to know. Cautiously, she asked, "Can we save my sons without knowing?"

"Possibly," said Freya. "It's also possible that you could repeat the same mistakes without the knowledge that I could give you."

It wasn't the answer that Piper was looking for, but she waved her hand around in a sarcastic circle and drawled, "Well, then, lay it on us, sister, and get it over with."

With an As You Wish nod at the mother, Freya set the family up for what was to come. "There were actually two very specific things that Chris knew, one of the future and one of the past. The knowledge of the future specifically concerned himself and his brother."

Realization dawned on Christopher with a sick thud, escaping his throat with a grunt before the Valkyrie could even tell them more. "Oh, god."

Immediately, Piper turned on her son, concerned. "Christopher?"

Freya sat back and watched as the pieces came together visibly on Christopher's face. His eyes watered and his lower lip quivered in a mixture of fear, disgust, and horror. Knowing that only his brother would understand what he was talking about, he looked to Wyatt, who gripped his shoulder in concern. "Chris?"

"It was a vision, his vision. He came here because he knew that if he didn't come back and stop it, Wyatt was going to kill him."

"In the attic with the sword," finished Wyatt as he paled. "Lucy was right. It was real. He killed him."

As the two men worked toward the natural conclusions, Freya interrupted them before they could get too far. "You're almost there, but not quite."

Angry without meaning to be but frustrated beyond all belief at his seeming inability to keep himself from killing his own brother, Wyatt asked sharply, "What's there to miss?"

"Phoebe only got part of the memory right," the Valkyrie told them, much to the surprise of all. "So did Lucy the night she told you she was pregnant. So did the two of you yesterday afternoon when you talked about her baby. As with any dream or vision, what you saw you interpreted. Phoebe, in particular, thought she understood what was happening when she saw the encounter between Chris and Wyatt in the attic. She did not."

A little offended at being singled out — she had been doing this for a while — Phoebe asked, "How could I get it wrong? They argued about the museum opening. There wasn't anything to get wrong."

"There is a great deal to get wrong. The only flash of the memory you saw was when Wyatt first arrived. Chris never looked at him during the memory for you, did he? You merely recognized his voice because Chris knew his voice?"

"Yes . . ."

"Had you been allowed to see further, even further than Lucy did, you would know that when Chris finally saw his brother, he barely recognized the man he saw. He had a scar along his face, his hair had been shocked white. It was his brother, yes, from the future. The time travelling idea came to Chris because Wyatt had come to him from a year in the future to warn him. That night, he did not talk to his brother as he knew him, but what his brother was to become. Wyatt had come to warn Chris of the battle that they were to fight just weeks from that night when ultimately Chris would die at his brother's hand."

Wyatt looked at his brother for a moment, an idea of his own bringing him a kind of hope and terror at the same time. "It was Chris's death that finally saved him. It's what woke him up."

Freya nodded a positive answer at him and continued, "Wyatt was overthrown not long afterwards because he was unwilling to fight anyone but himself any longer. His sole mission became to find a way to save Chris, and to a lesser extent, himself. It took him nearly a year to come to the conclusion that he was going to be unable to do it himself, not that there was a lack of trying. He never said where the idea came from to send Chris to the past, but he did it. He went to the night before the museum opening, knowing that Chris would be there waiting for his 'present' self. They didn't have much time together before that Wyatt arrived, but together they came up with the plan. That night, to save his brother's life, Wyatt gave Chris the tools he needed to escape their life and try to fix it for them all. Wyatt gave him all of the weapons he would need to do it safely, all of the knowledge that he had of the past and the way things worked. It was on that night that Chris learned the true weapon that he would come to possess, the one that everyone Up There is so afraid of."

Immediately, Leo caught on to the hatred in Freya's voice that he couldn't understand. "What is it?"

"When Chris came to me, he was worried that something would force him to forget. He said Wyatt was afraid for him, that just by having that knowledge, it could jeopardize their entire plan here in the past. So just as I did with Christopher and Wyatt, he passed on to me his history and entrusted his secrets with me. The Elders have been trying to find me ever since, but so far, we have been able to remain safe from Their prying eyes."

"Why would the Elders . . . "

"He didn't know that Gideon was the one who turned Wyatt, if that's what you're asking. I told you, Chris had two specific pieces of information: one of the future, which is what his death at Wyatt's hand was, and one of the past. What he did know is that the Elders were the ones responsible for setting the Titans loose in the first place."

"What?"

"The memory that you must have seen, Phoebe, would tell you that I'm right. You must have heard Wyatt tell Chris about it. The day that Wyatt betrayed the Elders and handed Them over to the Titans was something that the boys had planned all those nights in their safehouse. At the time, it had been idle talk. Chris never really meant to do it, but he didn't know that Wyatt had been slowly turning already at that point. He didn't know that he was supposed to go through with it in the future. He didn't know that Wyatt had Gideon whispering in his ear day and night that if he didn't stop the Elders, They would kill Chris."

As much as she had hated Them over the years, Piper was still having a hard time with the suggestion that all of this was because of Them in the first place. "I don't understand. What could They possibly have to gain by setting the Titans loose on the world? Chris said that the entire Elder population had been destroyed in the attack, and that's why Leo had become one eventually. Why would They risk the Titans turning on Them like that. It doesn't make any sense."

"The Elders had every confidence that They could control the Titans. They only wanted the Titans for one thing, and that was you. They knew that you were going to be seriously weakened by an attack of that kind. The Elders commissioned the demon to find the Titans and set them loose so that they might break the power of the Charmed Ones. It was meant to be a lesson to you, to force you to remember your duties as the Charmed Ones. You were meant to serve the world and give your lives in sacrifice of those in need as your sister did, not lead normal lives that would pull one of Their own from the fold. With the birth of your son, They felt you had lost all control of your Destiny. They wanted to direct you back to it."

Bitterly, Paige said , "Next time, They could just send a note."

Piper remained unconvinced, and asked, "Fighting the Titans was going to make Them happy? For how long?"

"If the Titans had succeeded in their mission to kill Wyatt, a very long time," said Freya with startling frankness. With a dark look at Paige, she added, "You were not the original target. Your nephew was."

"But he was just a baby," argued Leo. "He is just a baby."

Freya gestured pointedly at Wyatt, who shifted uncomfortably under her gaze. He knew what she was going to say even before she said, "He won't always be. Leo, you know that the Elders have the power to see into the future. The Council did, and Wyatt is what They saw, Wyatt and Chris. They did not like what They saw."

As she was frequently wont to do, Phoebe clutched her temples in frustration at the lack of linear sense that this time travel stuff was making to her. Huffing, she complained, "Yeah, okay, see, this is all starting to go in circles that make the kind of sense that isn't sense at all."

"Which is why I told you from the beginning, the answers would come to you, depending on how you see time. If the Elders had never looked into the future and seen your sons, the Titans never would have been released. The world that Chris and Wyatt had grown up in would not have existed. Chris wouldn't have died at the hand of the Elders. Wyatt wouldn't have sacrificed himself to keep Chris from dying. Chris wouldn't have died at Wyatt's hand. Wyatt never would have had to visit Chris from the future to tell him to go to the past to fix it all. It comes in circles and waves, but the end result is all the same. If even the prospect of Wyatt's birth hadn't threatened the security of the Elder's control over the Charmed Ones and the world itself, none of this would have happened and you would all be safe right now."

Leo shook his head vehemently in denial. "They couldn't. They wouldn't."

Freya tried to put an air of kindness into her voice for her charges. She knew it would mean something to Chris if she did. Gently, she said, "They felt that the four of you were starting to cause too many problems and could no longer be trusted. They wanted Leo, but They knew They could never keep him with Piper still around."

Logically, Piper asked, "If Chris knew all of this, why wouldn't he tell us? Why would he want Leo to become an Elder then?"

"For two reasons. He wanted Leo Up There to be able to keep Them honest. He thought you would all be much safer with Leo Up There than if They were to continue unchecked the way They were." Freya looked pointedly at the sisters, then specifically at Phoebe. "The lesson They had intended you to learn was taught eventually. Chris only delayed the inevitable by helping you with the Titans, which leads me to the other reason Chris didn't just come out and tell you about the Elders' involvement. The other reason is that he forgot, or rather, was forced to forget."

Paige thought back to the strange change in Chris's behavior that she had noticed the day after Leo had gone off to be a full time Elder, after They had destroyed the Titans. "The Elders erased Themselves from his memory as soon as They were able to get him alone, didn't They?"

"With Leo no longer Up There to protect him, Chris was left to fend for himself. As powerful as he was, he didn't have a chance against the entire council. When Chris showed up with a plan to thwart the Titans, They knew exactly who he was, having seen Their destruction at his hand in the future. Even They did not know who had turned Wyatt, though, so They needed him to complete that part of his mission. They left him to do so, minus one very important memory." The goddess looked directly at Leo as she said darkly, "Your friends went to an awful lot of trouble to keep your son from knowing what They had done before and shortly after his brother was born. I'm willing to bet that the same could be said for you."

"And me," said Christopher thoughtfully. He turned to his brother, his mind working a mile a minute. "You said you thought that They wanted me because I knew something I wasn't supposed to know. Did I find out and not remember like he did?"

"Probably not," said Wyatt carefully. "But Charlie thought, well, Charlie had this theory about you and — I don't know. He was worried that . . . He thought . . ."

"'Charlie thought what?"

Everyone could hear how hard Leo's teeth were clenched, even though he tried to hide it. "You are always one dream away from finding out everything."

"Huh?"

"The two of you joke about it, but the genetic difference between the two of you based on my job description at the time you were born is a lot more important than you think. Christopher, you are always in commune with the other Elders, whether you know it or not. Even in your dreams, especially in your dreams, you are in direct contact with them. That's how you know so much more about demons without realizing that you know it. That information is always right there, as long as you're curious enough to find out about it. You share the memories of all of the others, just as I do. That . . . That must be why They eventually killed me. I must have found out myself. You must have been getting closer to finding out. One dream in the right direction would have told you about Their attempts to see the future, Their vision of first you then Wyatt turning against Them, all of it. After all of this, one dream would have told you all about Chris, his death, and Gideon's part in it."

Thoughtfully, Wyatt said, "That's why They forced me into Their service after you died, Dad. They wanted to be able to keep a closer eye on Christopher, and if that didn't work, They could always hold it all over my head to keep him safe. They knew I would do anything to keep him from being under Their thumb."

Piper wrapped her arms around herself to keep her very visible shaking down to a minimum as she said, "You know, all of this information is great. It puts a lot of pieces together and explains so much . . . But it doesn't tell me what to do about now. I can't change the past, not that way. I can't fix the future until I deal with what is happening to us now. We can't go up against the Elders, not with Wyatt and Christopher without powers. Even if we could, that still wouldn't help us with the immediate problem of stopping Gideon from torturing my kid for the next twenty-seven years."

Paige suggested, "The first thing is to get Little Christopher and Wyatt someplace safe, right?"

"And where exactly is that these days," groaned Piper.

"Well, we don't have the snow gardens yet, but we have their temperate cousin," said Paige sunnily. To Freya, she said with a nod toward her nephews, "I'm sure you saw it when you looked at the two of them, but you were instrumental in creating a sanctuary for the family a few years from now. I guess you used some of the magic that was used to create this place. Anyway, this place should work in the same way, right? Evil can't get in or out? No one can?"

"We are secure, yes," said Freya. With an amused grin, she added in the direction of the sisters, "Unless something unexpected comes along."

"Then we could bring the kids here, right? They would be safe. We could all be safe long enough to come up with a plan to deal with Gideon?"

Freya smiled oddly at the idea that, of all the things she could be asked to help with, building a sanctuary for the family was not one that she had anticipated. If that had worked in Wyatt and Christopher's past, however, how could she deny them now? "Of course. I would be honored to have you all."

Before he realized what he was doing, Wyatt shook his head. "That's great for Christopher. Definitely. Take him. It isn't going to do Little Me any good, though. If Gideon can follow meMe here, he can follow Little Me here, too."

As all of the mouths around them opened to ask Wyatt what he meant, Christopher immediately hauled his brother up by the elbow. He directed Wyatt over to a cluster of trees just far enough out of whispered hearing range but still within sight. Angrily, he pushed, "You and me, over there, now."

Quiet as he would have liked to believe that he was being given his frustration, very alarming snippets of the conversation carried over to the rest of the family, hiding nothing from them at all.

"You have to fight him," Christopher hissed at his brother. "I can't help you. I know you are all messed up right now, I get that, but do you get that I can't help you? I can't see him, let alone fight him for you."

"I'm not asking you to. What? You think I'm not trying?"

"Try harder."

Piper looked over to where her two boys were less-than-softly talking twenty feet away from the rest of the group. Quietly so that she could only be heard by the 'adults', she asked, "So what do we do now? We have nowhere to go if Gideon can follow us even here."

"I think your grandmother was right," said Leo, a strange mechanical look coming over his face as if he weren't really with them anymore. "There is a deal to be made here. And if not, I have some business to attend to."

"You can't go Up There," said Paige incredulously. "When They realize you know, They'll just kill you right then and there. At the very least, They'll erase your memories."

Not leaving it up for discussion, Leo automatically but gently kissed his wife and smiled at her. "I'll see you at home."

"LEO!" the sisters all hollered.

Hearing their mother and her sisters hollering to announce their father's departure, Christopher and Wyatt quickly joined the girls. As if he couldn't take one more bit of bad news so early in the day, Christopher asked impatiently, "Now what?"

With her eyes rolled to the skies above, Piper groaned, "Tell me he gets better in the future." When both Wyatt and Christopher just shook their heads at her, she threw her hands up in exasperation. "You know what? Nevermind. I give up. It's not like he listens to me anyway."

"We need to get him back," argued Christopher.

"Yeah, good luck with that one," said Paige, patting him sarcastically on the shoulder. "He's on a mission. There is no getting him back until he decides to come back."

Wyatt was the only one who didn't seem to care that their father had run off. The way Leo had been watching him, like he knew that something was going on that he didn't know about, was really starting to unnerve him anyway. He knew he was hiding something; that wasn't the problem. He wouldn't have to hide anything if they could just get rid of Gideon in the first place, and the only way that they were going to get rid of Gideon was to ask the right questions, if Chris's hint has been correct. To steer them all back to the moment and where they needed to be, he looked right at Freya, who seemed to be waiting for him anyway. Trying to put some apology into his voice that he knew wouldn't be in his words, Wyatt asked, "Okay, so we're down one body again right now. Out of curiosity . . . You are supposed to have answers for us right now that I don't know how else to find. So here's one for you: do you know how to get us our powers back? I need this guy out of my life as fast as we can make that happen, so how do we make that happen if we don't have powers? We can't fight him without powers."

Freya eyed first Wyatt then Christopher. A smile stretched over her face as she took in particularly Christopher and asked, "Says who?"

Frustrated after hours on end of saving first his brother, then his aunt, and then his brother again, Christopher could only look at their benefactress as if she had spontaneously grown two heads. "What are you talking about? In seven years, I have tried everything that I could to save my brother. I have seen Seers and demons and every single being that could possibly have an answer for me. They have all said the same thing: I do not possess the key to saving him."

"They were all correct. You did not possess it. Now you do."

"But how?"

The goddess merely cocked her head to the side and smiled at them. "Two brothers, two swords."

---

If you had half as much fun reading this chapter as I had writing it, then I had twice as much fun writing it as you had reading it. Heh. Thanks for reading.