Sword and the City Rewrite (Part VIII)

Disclaimer: I don't own Charmed or any of the characters… although, I really wish I did own at least a certain slightly neurotic, but charmingly adorable future Whitelighter. Unfortunately they belong to someone else. So does the episode Sword and the City.

Author's Note: This was a little wild hare of mine… and I just had to get it out. The episode Sword and the City originally ran in Season 6 of Charmed… one of only two episodes that season that didn't have Chris in it. I figured, there must have been some reason for it, right? Anyway, here's my altered version… Thanks to everyone who has R&R-ed this one for me! You were a great encouragement to help me get this one finished quickly.

And, now that this one is done… I'll put more focus into my "Destined" series. And some of the other random bits of Chris/Wyatt fanfiction madness that has been bouncing around in my head! I hope you enjoy the last chapter of "Destiny's Pull", my re-write of "Sword and the City".

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Piper paces back and forth across the kitchen, bouncing Wyatt on her hip while she worriedly gnaws on her lower lip. Phoebe and Paige sit at the table watching her, with Leo standing nearby. There was an uncomfortable air around all of them that had remained since they had left the Conservatory to discuss their behavior over the past several months to Chris.

Chris had turned out to be family. He was Piper and Leo's son. He was also the next King Arthur.

Phoebe makes a face into her teacup, feeling absolutely horrible. Part of it was for having not noticed it before, the other part was coming from Piper. "We didn't know honey, you can't blame yourself."

"You're right," Piper mutters, "He should have told us from the start instead of lying to us!"

Phoebe looks up, placing an attempt at a bright smile on her face, "You have to give him credit though, he did do better than any of the rest of us ever have at keeping his identity secret in the past. We never did well at it all the times we've time traveled. It's kind of something to be proud of."

"She does have a point," Paige says.

Leo folds his arms over his chest and sighs.

"We should call him here, summon him, or… Leo, go get him," Piper says, stopping her pacing briefly. "You can go get him can't you? I really want to talk to him. To apologize. To give him a stern talking to! A VERY stern talking to."

"No, he needs the time, just like all of us do," Phoebe says, "He'll come back when he's ready. He can't run away any more and he certainly can't hide who he is. Just give him a little time." Phoebe stands up abruptly, "Speaking of time, I should get back to the office. I have a deadline to meet."

"I should go too," Paige says, looking at Phoebe and then at Piper and Leo. The two parents needed time alone with each other. "Shall we?" she asks Phoebe. The two younger Charmed Sisters step out, Phoebe pausing to give first Piper's then Leo's shoulders reassuring squeezes.

Piper catches her lower lip in her teeth and has to put Wyatt down in his highchair. She lifts a hand to cover her mouth, "We were so horrible to him Leo. I was so horrible to him. How can he possibly forgive me for how I've treated him?" Leo moves over to her, wrapping comforting arms around his ex-wife. Piper leans heavily against him, burying her face in his shoulder. "I just want to talk to him, to tell him I'm sorry and to tell him that I'm here for him…"

"If he has anyone to be angry at Piper, it's me," Leo says, stroking her back and rubbing soothing circles with his hands, "You'll get your chance to tell him. He said he would come back. Phoebe was right, he'll talk to us when he's ready… what we should really talk about right now, is us."

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Chris's stomach is in knots when he orbs back to the park he had escaped to earlier. The appearance of the young man in the swirl of blue and white orbs sends the pigeons flying away from the statue again. The young man ignores them and sinks down onto the bench, sitting on the edge of it so that he can lean back. He links his fingers behind his head as he lays long ways across the stone surface to look up at the sky.

The cat was out of the bag now. There was no way to put it back. If he gave them some sort of potion to make them forget, then they would also forget that Excalibur didn't belong to Wyatt and he would have to come up with some way to explain it. He couldn't do that. He didn't want to do that. He wanted to be accepted by his family. God he had missed them. But it will be painful. He knows they're going to ask so many questions now. More than they already did.

And there are just some things that he can't share with them about his life before. He can't share some of the horrible things that he had seen and experienced. Not without them looking at him with a great deal of pity. Or without it changing the way they would treat Wyatt if they knew. There is the possibility that they will try to treat Chris like a little child now that needs protecting. He doesn't need that. But a part of him selfishly wants it. The little fourteen-year-old boy inside him wants his mother to wrap her arms around him and protect him again. He can't, won't, allow himself the luxury though. There are too many people counting on him, and the lives of the innocents would always come before his own.

Chris has to stop whatever or whoever is going to get to Wyatt. That won't change. Being able to rely on his parents, on his family, would take some of the heavy burden from his shoulders though. He won't have to carry it all himself. Even so, it is still his mission. He did one thing right, quite by accident. He had found out that Excalibur belonged to him instead of Wyatt. His list still involves saving Wyatt from turning, keeping the evil that had gotten to him at this tender age from succeeding. He'll come clean with his parents about that.

So many lies. God they must hate him. Chris blows out a breath that sends his too long bangs dancing and sits up. He hates himself for all the deceitful things that he had done, but he'd justified them all as being for the greater good. "…and now, I sound like Leo," Chris mumbles to himself, "Like father like son." With a sigh he leans back against the bench again. He plans to sit there for just a little longer alone, then go to face the music.

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A few hours later, Phoebe is seated in front of her desk at The Bay Mirror working away. Paige steps into the doorway of Phoebe's office and stands watching her older sister.

"Hey, I just finished the last of the filing," Paige says.

"Great, thanks," Phoebe says without looking up.

"Is that, uh, tomorrow's copy?" Paige asks, cautiously stepping further into the office.

"Uh, yeah, I'm just doing some last minute changes," Phoebe answers, "This woman right here is worried that her mother might be marrying the wrong guy."

"Really?"

Phoebe nods, "Yeah, she thinks he might be the devil incarnate."

"Didn't we vanquish the devil incarnate?" Paige asks with a small smile.

"I told her that unless she has absolute proof, she should probably butt out and let her sister live her own life," Phoebe says.

Paige's eyebrows climb, "I thought this was about her mother?"

"Yeah, well, you know what I mean," Phoebe says.

Paige nods, finding herself smiling more, "Yeah, I think I do. It's funny, this is the first job I've gotten without a magical reason behind it."

"Well, there may not have been a magical reason, but there's definitely a reason. I just have to learn to take my own advice."

"Yeah, well, don't start worrying about me too much," Paige says.

"Okay," Phoebe says.

Richard steps into the office, smiling hesitantly at Phoebe and then looking to Paige, "Hey. Sorry to interrupt. You ready to go?"

"Yeah, um," Paige says, looking away from Richard towards Phoebe, "we're going out. Do you wanna join?"

"I would love to, actually, but, uh, I'm gonna take a rain check," Phoebe responds, "It's been a long day." That was an understatement that Paige could appreciate with a smile.

"Okay, good night," Paige says, looping her arm through Richards. The two of them turn and start to leave.

"Hey, Paige. You're fired," Phoebe calls after her little sister with a grin.

Paige stops, turns to look over her shoulder to Phoebe, "Actually, I quit."

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Chris laughs, wiping tears away from his eyes, inwardly cursing himself for showing so much vulnerability, but his mother had always been able to do that even when she wasn't trying to. He and Piper are in the attic, sitting on a blanket with Wyatt in front of Excalibur. They had been up there talking together for the last hour. It had been one of the most emotional conversations of Chris's life and the most relieving. His parents didn't hate him for what he had done, but Piper had wished that he had told them sooner. He'd explained that it was just supposed to have been a surgical strike to save Wyatt, that he'd thought it best that they didn't know who he was.

She hadn't taken the news that Wyatt was going to become evil very well, but she had accepted it. And much to Chris's relief, she hadn't pressed for too many details.

"Well, I'm glad that we found out," Piper says, "Now you don't have to carry all that weight on your shoulders by yourself. We know the sword isn't meant for Wyatt now, so it's not going to corrupt him. Now we can focus on stopping whatever else got to him, and you can relax some. I don't want any more of this running around in the Underworld by yourself, risking your neck, nonsense. How old are you, really? How much younger than Wyatt?"

Chris moistens his lips and looks at his mother, "Twenty-one… and not quite two years."

He is still just a baby, so much responsibility for a boy barely old enough to legally drink. Piper reaches her hand over and cups his face in them, "Thank you."

"For?" Chris asks, somewhat startled by the unexpected response.

"Being honest with me finally… and for coming back to save your big brother, to save the world," Piper says gently, "That's just the sort of strong character that the next King Arthur should have."

"But I don't have such strong character," Chris says, "I've done some things that I'm not proud of. Things that I shouldn't have. I manipulated. I killed. Lied to you all… treated you all terribly. You didn't know who I was, but I… I knew who all of you were from the start. I don't deserve that sword. I'm sorry."

"You said yourself that you did it for the people who put their faith in you in the future," Piper says, "So you put it behind you, you learn from it, and you do better the next time. Even the best leaders in the entire world make mistakes. That's where their real power as a leader shows, when they can mess up and still learn from it."

Chris pulls his face away from her hands and looks down when he hears her sigh. She didn't know how strange it was for him. He'd spent the last several months living with her hating him, and the last seven years without her in his life to take care of him. It was strange and more than a little painful to go back to that. "You used to say that sort of thing to me, when I'd get depressed about Wyatt being so powerful and having everything. To make me feel better, I always thought." Chris looks at the sword in the stone in front of them. "I used to stare at it, but you always said that it was meant for Wyatt… that if I took it from the stone, it would turn me evil like it turned you when you were younger. You always said you couldn't bear to have me turned like Wy… I…" Chris gets quiet, looking towards Wyatt as that mask that Piper and her sisters had become so accustomed to in their young whitelighter begins to form.

Piper frowns as she watches the dark-haired youth's face close into the expression she's seen him wearing for most of this last year. She doesn't want to see that look on his face anymore. Not now that she knows he is her son. "Chris, don't do that, we've been talking for over an hour. You can't shut me out now. We're you're parents. I'm your mother. It's what I'm here for."

"But you're not. You're not there for me, and you're not going to be when I go back… I… I'm not doing this for me. I'm doing this because there are other people suffering because of what Wyatt's done in his quest for power. I want to…" Chris starts to stand up, feeling overwhelmed again. It felt like now that he had let the door open on all those emotions he'd been bottling up for years, they just want to crush him.

"I knew all that Future Consequences was a bunch of crap and that you just said it to protect yourself. Well, you're here to change the future damn it, now talk to me," Piper says a bit sharply, grabbing his hand, she pulls him back down to join her and Wyatt on the blanket. "You can talk to me about what you feel like you can, but please, don't shut me out completely again," Piper smiles tenderly, looking very much like the mother he remembered so fondly instead of the distrustful woman who he had come to know as 'Piper', "I do have to say though, are you sure that you're a Halliwell? We've all been to the past before, and none of us have been able to keep the secret for more than a few hours. You've known we were your family for months."

Chris laughs softly, leaning against her as he sits back down. It was a conflicting feeling, the part of him that had become so used to hiding everything warring with the part that just wanted to relish selfishly in this moment with his mother, "That wasn't so hard. I was here for about a week before the Titans showed up trying to work out what I was going to say, rehearsing it… you're all so much younger, and the only family I've had for years has been Wyatt. He wasn't exactly the model big brother these last few years… then I sort of made you guys distrust and hate me… it wasn't that hard to separate you from the family I remember." That's a lie, it was hard and painful and Piper can see that hurt in his eyes now. She lets him continue his explanation in his own way though, gently placing a comforting hand for support atop his own. "You didn't trust me. It was better that way. It made it easier."

"I would think that would make it harder," Leo says, entering the room to join them, "…I'm sorry for the way I've treated you."

Chris looks at Leo, it was going to take a lot more than that single apology to make up for all the hurt over the years. And the continued mistrust that Leo had showed him even here in the past. It was a start though, but some bitterly engrained feelings would take longer to wear away. He would apologize to his mother, but Leo? No, that's going to take more time even still. "Yeah."

"I'm going to have to teach you the story of the boy who cried wolf," Piper says to Chris, "Maybe curb this lying and manipulative behavior at a young age."

Chris smiles, glad to have her pulling him away from having to make some unfelt statement of forgiveness to his father. "I wasn't always like that, Mom," Mom, It feels good to call her that. Comforting. He isn't alone here anymore. "It was survival. I just had to adapt… I did what I had to for the people who were counting on me. As much as I don't want to be the owner of Excalibur, and trust me, I don't want it… knowing that it doesn't belong to Wyatt, is one step closer to protecting him and keeping him from turning evil."

Those words still dig at Piper, the thought that her eldest son had become corrupted. And Chris had refused to give her details, not wanting to make matters worse. The only thing in the renewed reminder of her innocent-looking eldest born's future evil was hearing Chris call her 'Mom'.

Leo stares at Chris, having not been up here for the first part of his wife and older youngest son's discussion. "Evil?" he asks, but it dawns on him a second later, "The sword corrupted him…"

Chris shakes his head, "If I thought that were all there was to it, I would leave now… but something else happened to Wyatt before he ever got the sword. He was on the edge before that. For a long time before that and there was very little keeping him in check. The sword must have just taken him that final step. I want to stop whatever or whoever it was that changed him."

Leo nods, understanding and turns towards Piper, "And how are you?"

"Better… I've got my priorities straight now. I just wanted to spend more time with Wyatt instead of trying to get all of those things done around the house. I really wanted to be able to spend time with my son," she looks at Chris, and adds, "…both of my sons."

"Well, you should have more time to do that. I fixed the washer. And the sink, the cable, and the toilet," Leo says.

Piper laughs, "I forgot how handy you were to have around the house."

Chris smiles, as much as he resents Leo, the man was still his father. Maybe there was hope for them yet and he hadn't broken them up entirely. They certainly still seemed to love one another. Leo glances at Chris, who holds up his hands, "Don't look at me, I'm better in the kitchen."

Piper's chocolate eyes sparkle as she says, "That's my boy." She wraps her arms around him in a comforting hug, "Listen, I want you to promise me before we take that thing out of storage, that you're gonna play lots of football and baseball and have lots of normal toys, and maybe we can get a dog…"

Chris grins, "We'll see." He gives her a kiss on the cheek and gets up, dislodging himself from the slightly embarrassing moment. "I'll let you two have some time alone." Chris looks at Wyatt and after a second of hesitation, picks his little-big brother up to walk downstairs with him.

Leo looks at Piper as Chris leaves the room, "Pretty strange, huh?"

Piper offers, "Kind of scary, actually."

"Why?" Leo asks.

"Well, knowing that we have another son… that we're going to have another son. That our first-born is an evil overlord in his future and his little brother risked everything to come back and save him. It makes me proud of Chris, even after all the deception he's put us through, but at the same time terrified for Wyatt. Wyatt was supposed to have this great destiny ahead of him and now we've found out that something corrupts him… all that power on the side of evil… I'm worried about what he might have… no, must have done to his little brother… to so many innocent people…"

"We're going to fix that Piper," Leo says calmly, helping his wife to her feet, "That's what Chris came back for… it's not something we're going to solve overnight."

"It doesn't make it any less scary, though," Piper says softly, "But you're right, that's tomorrow's problem. I'll worry about it then."

Piper slips out of the room with her arm wrapped around Leo's waist. Positioned in the center of the room, a soft golden gleam sparkles across Excalibur, just before Piper turns off the attic light.

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Author's Note: Aww, I'm kind of sad that it's over. Thanks everyone who has read and reviewed and been with me through this, my first endeavor at posting a fanfic online. Now I've got the bug and all the story ideas that I've been keeping to myself for all this time are just itching to come out, be written and be shared! I haven't decided what I'm going to do with this idea from this point. Whether I'm going to do a rewrite of the other episodes, branching off from this variation (and include Used Karma, since Chris wasn't in that one either!) with them knowing that Chris is Piper's son from this point forward, and that Excalibur belongs to him. At the very least, I might do a sequel to this or something. Tell me what ya'll think… read and review!