A/Note: So, this chapter is hard to love. It initially was supposed to exist, but then I condensed it into the next chapter when I decided to close the series early, then realized that the meaning of the chapter wasn't present enough in the new chapter so I decided to work this chapter in between 25 and 27 (which was once 26). I just didn't have the right mood to write this chapter and for that, it suffered. I know it will be no one's favorite, but just consider it as that set-up chapter as we have many battles and better writing coming up. Also, blame my eagerness to write the finale which I promise not to slack on, even it takes me a while to write.
*Important Note: Due to a very unrealistic "one year old" Peter, his change is being switched to that of a three year old. It'll make it more believable, so consider Peter to be a three year old now – his third birthday was Chapter 14's "Patty's Protection". Revisions to the series will be corrected before the finale is posted.
At this point I would normally say, "Enjoy the chapter!" but I think I'll just end this ramble with a "Sorry for what you have to read, but if it's any consolation, it's a short chapter!"
Chapter 26 – Reborn and Shivering
July 31st, 2007.
The front door of the Mitchell-Matthews house was being swung shut by Paige as she screamed out one final, "See you soon!" She pressed the door closed and immediately locked it afterwards, inhaling a well earned deep breath of rain-scented air from outside with finally ushering her sisters out of the house. Paige leaned back against the door as Henry came out of the kitchen feeding a bottle to a cradled Samantha.
"It's before noon," Henry commented, looking down at Samantha as she sucked away at her bottle. "New record."
"They're just happy to have me back. I'm happy to have to me back and be in my body," Paige expressed, pushing herself up from the door and offered her arms out for Samantha. Henry passed her and the bottle over and Paige's arms drifted down slightly, still adjusting to her daughter's few extra pounds then she was used to pre-coma.
"And I'm happy to have you back too, I think they should just let you relax a bit," Henry suggested. "You're okay. The doctors let you go and you didn't suffer any bad-coma-brain stuff that keeps patients hospital-bound. We're chalking that up to magical coma, right?"
The Witchlighter nodded slightly, very focused on her daughter's amber eyes, the daughter who was still calm in her arms and not treating her like a stranger as Sarah was. "Correct-o mundo. Piper just wants to hide behind the excuse of making sure I'm eating and arranging future appointments for check ups and Phoebe is being Phoebe, meaning that she's trying to be the annoying sister who taps into my emotions and tells me that I'm not really alright."
"Are you not alright, Paige? I mean, talk to me if you're not. What happened was really traumatic, like, Godzilla attacking Japan traumatic." The husband kept a firm stance, waiting for Paige to unveil her emotions, the ones Phoebe was trying to hard to pick up on. "We're doing our whole Marriage 2.0 because we want to feel closer to one another, right? If not, let's save our money on a second wedding and just pay the mortgage."
Paige swayed Samantha left to right while humming the alphabet song, which Peter had been practicing since her magic-nap, but the tune itself always seemed to keep Samantha at ease; with the little girl almost finished with her bottle, it was smart to keep her calm before the storm of wanting more milk. "I don't want to talk about it just yet, Henry. There's not a whole lot to talk about it. I was asleep and then I woke up. Nothing in between."
She sheepishly looked down after her lie, silently apologizing to him for doing so, it was just too much to discuss. Too much lay ahead, which she had to remind him, "There are just other places I have to devote my energies to. This is Day Two of my being home and I haven't meditated, I haven't studied, I haven't really sat down with Billie on where we're at with all this Valen business and that's just one of two fights I have ahead of me. Let's not rule out any other demon or Darklighter who wants a piece of me as well."
Paige walked past Henry, though he followed foot, and moved towards the kitchen where she would drop off the bottle that Samantha was near done with. She continued on, "Enough time has been robbed from us because of my Oscar-winning performance of Sleeping Beauty and I'm not going to cry about it so I can win an Emmy for Best Newcomer to Drama Award."
"Best Newcomer to Drama, Paige?" Henry joked.
She looked over her shoulder and glared with her glance, "If I didn't have our baby in my arms, I'd hit you." They reached the kitchen and Paige leaned against the counter as Samantha finished the last sips of her bottle, still not looking drowsy. "I appreciate Piper, Phoebe, Leo, Coop, Billie, Cameron and a whole bunch of other names of people I love and like swinging by to see how I'm doing, but I'm alive and kicking, and I'm not trying to end up dead and still because we're forgetting about the war at hand."
"I just don't think it's normal," he simply protested, offering his arms out to relieve Paige of carrying their daughter for a while, but she declined with a nod, above content with Samantha close to her. "Not that your coma was normal, but nothing with you ever is, is it? Aren't there consequences when you keep things bottled up like an angry genie or something?"
Samantha finished her bottle during Henry's rant and Paige placed it down on the counter, then shifted the baby girl over her shoulder and soothingly rubbed circles into the back of her pale yellow shirt. "Okay, you really need to brush up on your magic-ness. Or watch Aladdin. You're not wrong, you just had an off analogy." Henry acted as if an arrow went through his heart, to which she grinned. "Bottling emotions are dangerous, they can set off your powers, but I don't have it in me to pour my heart out right now. Apart from the other obvious important things going on, we have a mortgage to get on top of before we don't have a house to live in after I win all these coming battles."
"You don't need to worry about the bills. We're not that deep under to not bounce back," Henry assured. "But if we don't, we can move in with Piper. I think I'm finally coming around to her."
Paige rolled her eyes at the doubt he expressed. "You're speaking about these bills like it's Monopoly. It's not going to be little plastic people coming to kick us out on the curb, it's going to be real cops – with real guns."
"They don't shoot you for not paying the bills."
"They did in this alternate universe that -" she stopped at Henry's confused look and decided to just bury the story of the parallel universe off-set by Gideon's actions. "Never mind. I just need to focus on earning my keep and since I can't charge people the billions they owe me for preventing apocalypse after apocalypse and big demon after bigger demon, I gotta figure it out."
"Okay," a defeated Henry said. "I won't push you. I'm gonna run up and check on Sarah and Peter. Want me to take Sammie up?"
"Yeah, I should probably go speak with Billie about tactic and such," she replied, then tried to hand Samantha off to her father but the child resisted with a soft cry that halted when Paige kept her close. "Or maybe I'll just hold her for a little longer."
Henry smiled, not offended and took off upstairs. Paige looked down into Samantha's eyes again and feigned a frown, "So you missed me, huh?" As tears surfaced around her eyes, she congratulated herself on the premonition of her crying when she decided against mascara this morning. She held onto Samantha's head with her open palm, brushing her daughter's hair up and down. "I'm never going anywhere again, I'm never leaving you or Sarah or Petey or Daddy again. It was too..."
When the tear sped down Paige's cheek and onto Samantha's forehead, she cut her speech and realized she almost confessed all her fears and anger to her three month old daughter who could offer no words of comfort in return, but would still be appreciated for loving her back. But Paige needed more now.
Despite being the Whitelighter who always carried the words of wisdom to her charges, Paige needed to be guided herself. She resisted all incoming tears with a deep breath and strong resolve, only wanting to cry her heart out just once and be done with the shadows of this cursed coma.
"Let's go bring you upstairs, Sammie..."
(X)
With the gentlemanly assistance of her husband, Paige slid into her garden green jacket and turned around to face Henry. He was in need of a good shave, she thought, but left it alone since she was pretty undisturbed by it; in another day or so, she'd let him know the growing Brad Pitt beard was near unprofessional. Where she was about to go, what she was about to say was a betrayal to their marriage, but this was needed for her.
Paige couldn't move forward as a "We" if she couldn't be honest as an "I".
"Bring an umbrella, Paige," he suggested, turning towards the window where the unearthly storm continued to rage outside for close to a month's timing now. "I'm surprised we haven't had to build an Ark yet."
"Yeah, Valen's presence close to our plane brings forth a storm of the century, kinda," Paige explained, looking around Henry's body to peek out the window herself. "The rain keeps piling on, the sky stays gray when the sun's up, and somewhere out there, cats and kittens of all races are meow-ing their little cute, angry heads off for getting wet."
Henry grinned and walked off to the umbrella stand by the front door and pulled an umbrella out of considerate fashion for his wife; the time they had together wasn't exactly long, but it was enough to pick up the emerald green umbrella to go with the style of her jacket. "Here ye go, fine lady." He bowed and made a flourish with the umbrella for the hand-off, to which Paige playfully grabbed at the ends of her jacket and bowed slightly herself as if she was holding the tail of a dress.
"Why thank you," Paige replied in an eighteenth century tone. She rolled her eyes back into reality and said, "I don't expect to be out long. I just really need to walk in the rain, maybe sit down in the park and concentrate on everything happening around me. You'll be okay with the kids? Billie's in the basement if-"
"I can handle these three," Henry reminded. While Billie was off training and studying and the rest of the family had their own children to take care of, he'd grown used to watching all three children for large periods of time. "Peter's the troublemaker though, I'll tell you that. I have my eye on him."
"You do that, Henry," she responded with a smile, planted a quick kiss on his lips and walked out the house, closing the door behind her. She pulled out her cell phone, went through her contacts as the wind blew rain into her and the phone's screen and selected the person she wished to call.
After a couple of rings, the male voice answered, "Comin' over now?"
"Yeah," Paige replied back into her phone. "Is she gone?"
"The coast is clear, which is..."
Paige suddenly orbed out from underneath the awning of her deck and into the living room of another, directly across from Glenn who still had the phone to his ear and was talking.
"...more than I can say for San Fran-" Glenn cut himself short as Paige materialized three feet away from him and hung up the phone. Not wanting to overwhelm her when she woke up, he hadn't gone to see her but did call several times throughout the morning, afternoon and evenings. "Noogie. Hey."
Already battling back the oceans of tears that would compete against Valen's storm outside, Paige dropped her own phone to the floor and practically jumped into Glenn with her arms around his neck. Glenn embraced her fiercely, tearing up himself. The first loves just stood their for minutes, familiar in one another's arms.
(X)
When the Hugfest was over, as Glenn had called it, the two sat down in the circular table in the small kitchen of the apartment. Glenn eased into everything with small talk, in which he learned about why this storm was happening, and replied, "It's for the best, I suppose. Jess and I can't exactly go on our next adventure across the world anyhow with the baby coming, so it makes it easier to know that we can't catch an easy flight out with all this."
"How are you feeling about that? Nervous about hanging up your Indiana Jones hat and lasso in exchange for a shirt to get drooled on and pacifiers?" The mother of three pointed at him and warned, "Keep a close eye on those pacifiers! They just crawl away from you and hide underneath couches, beds, and houses! Houses, too!"
Glenn laughed with a clap, "I'll Lo-Jack them when that time comes." Their laughs began to motor short and silence followed. "So, how are you doing P.C?" At her confused look, he explained with his boyish grin, "Post-coma. It sounds like your sisters have been helping you out a lot."
"I appreciate them being around, I do, but this talking-thing isn't how I've always been and yet they expect it of me all the time. I can't always just spit out my emotions on command, these things take time to hang out in my heart and head and try to realize what they mean and an hour after I woke up, I was already being hounded on everything I didn't want to talk about. I just wanted to breathe and hold everyone for a few, uncomplicated hours."
He nodded, understanding fully. "I remember whenever we used to fight, I would try and get you to come meet me somewhere to talk and you used to always respond that you wanted to but didn't know what to say. I used to think that it was just crap, but later figured out the pattern of you later pulling me to the side somewhere and having an idea of what you wanted to say. You just need time."
"What I need now is to speak to someone who isn't expecting me to cry on their shoulder. I can't talk to Henry, can't talk to my sisters, I almost confessed all my stuff on little Samantha because she wouldn't judge me and my conflicting feelings," Paige trailed off and bounced her shoulders. "Obviously not, since she wouldn't know what I'm saying, but that's besides the point."
"If you want to speak with me, Paige, I won't judge you. If you don't, we have so much to catch up on anyway that I'm thankful to have the chance to. We can talk about-"
"I'm scared to lose the people that I now know love me." Paige's eyes fell down to the table, well aware that she was speaking to Glenn, but she didn't want to concentrate on any of his features or expression. She wanted to feel as if she was speaking to a really receptive wall. "I always had doubts about people caring about me as much as they say they do. Too often words are thrown around about how people care for one another and it just began to feel empty."
Paige thought of how often Phoebe would end a phone call with an, "Okay, love you. Talk to you soon." and would just hang up, almost as if the powerful words she had spoken were so casual.
She shook her head at the thought and continued, "The meaning of the words began to lose meaning, but I would always still use them because I feel as if other people didn't understand this the way I think I do. I do mean them, but I prefer to show them. And that's what my coma gave me. It allowed everyone to show me they love me, some with words and others just by showing up."
Glenn looked confused and raised his hand like a first grader who was unsure of whether or not he knew the answer to the question, but was building the courage to answer. There seemed to be something more on the surface of someone just filling Paige in on her visitors. "Paige, do you remember anything?"
"Everything, Glenn." It was now Paige's turn to look like a child as she placed her hands on her lap and continued staring down, almost like a child who volunteered to answer a question and was completely off the mark. "I have never felt as if I mattered so much than I did when I was sleeping. I wanted to be awake so much so I could grow countless arms to hug each and everyone one of you forever, but beneath all my desperation, all I can think about is that there was a comfort to seeing people on my bedside. Faces I didn't even expect to be there..."
She thought of Victor, a man who wasn't her father or a fan of her existence, who spoke volumes of love for her because of what she meant to his girls. Love by association, but it was more than she could ever ask of him.
"There were the little things too, things I personally forgot about, but impacted others..." Paige choked back her words as she remembered Piper adding her name to the family tree, a once ordinary piece of parchment that gained its importance with the listing of generations dating backwards centuries and would continue forwards beyond centuries – and Paige's name, with the rest of her family, would be found somewhere in there.
"And in turn, it impacted me, Glenn. I've been marked special in the magical world because of all these prophecies – Charmed One, Witchlighter – but my footing in this world has never hit me the way it did when I was asleep. Saving the world is rewarding, but earning the love of my children and everyone else is so much more worth it."
Paige got to her feet and leaned against the sink, stocked with dishes Glenn had neglected to do so far, and crossed her arms over her chest. "I have to make sure they're all safe when I'm out saving the world again."
"These fights you have coming up. They sound pretty out there. Like Superman vs. Doomsday bad. You're coming out of these, right? I mean, you didn't just wake up to die," Glenn voiced, unsure of where Paige's head was with her misleading tone. She couldn't be ready to die, could she?
"Of course I'm coming out alive," Paige looked up at him and stared at one of the people who cared the most for her. "Avo, my bad guy, my Doomsday, told me that he wanted me to feel disconnected from the world, from my family. He has no idea how much of a push he just gave me, how determined I am now to destroy anything that comes between me and the people who love me."
Tears finally fell down her cheeks and she choked on her voice, fighting to be audible, "Him and I share a common enemy, so she's going first, but she's gone afterwards. I'm going to find the weapon that's hidden from me and I'm going to put it through his sadistic, black heart. Then we'll be free of him and all the harm he's caused on us." She stood still as Glenn got up and hugged her, running his hand through her dark hair as he kept her close; this was nothing intimate, solely affectionate.
"You'll win, Paige. You have a heart that always carries you forward and attracts nothing but the best people towards you," Glenn explained and added, "Well, apart from the beasties you battle weekly, but they're just asking to die. If I was a demon, I'd stay the hell out of your way and hide in, well, Hell."
"Well, the demons are not nearly as smart or funny as you," Paige replied, still in his arms with her head on his shoulder, a height she could reach because of her heeled boots. "It was way easier telling you all of this then Henry. I love him, truly, but there was something he said on the last night of my coma. It was almost as if he was giving up hope. I know he said it out of fear, but still."
"You don't like the idea of life moving on without you?" Glenn asked.
"In a sense, yeah." Paige replied. "I know it's ridiculous to think he has no rights to those emotions, especially having to be a single parent for a long month and in need of help, but there was nothing I could do and I'm not sure if I can make him understand that."
"If you were to die, God forbid, what would you want of him?" Glenn asked as he backed a step away from her. "Would you want him to never find love again?"
"Of course," she instantly replied, but moments later admitted a forbidden thought she hated speaking aloud, "I think."
"When you lost Kyle, you didn't lose love, right? You pushed forward and found that secure and warm feeling again," Glenn reminded. "It wouldn't be fair to either of you to rule out love in another should it come around just because one of you passed, would it? Jessica and I already promised to keep our hearts open should she pass or should I inevitably fall off one of these mountains." He grinned. "As long as you hold the memory of that person with you, there's no real betrayal."
"How did this turn around into this?" Paige asked, confused. "I thought this was about me and my very, very bad husband who almost gave up on me!" She didn't mean the words, of course, made clearer by her rambling tone that Glenn recognized too well, but he knew she was at a loss. This is what brought her here.
"I think it has something to do with not knowing what lies ahead and the consequences of it. Maybe it has something to do with power and how much you have and how you can use it to protect your loved ones," Glenn suggested, then the two looked out the window as successive claps of lightning flashed under a thunder-roaring dark sky. "I think these are all possible, but they're all connected by the root of what you've always been looking for."
"Myself," she softly responded.
"Ten points for Noogie," he replied with a smile. "You now know how much you matter, although I'm sorry we all sucked at making it clear to you when you were wide awake. You're getting closer to your answer, don't you think?"
"Yeah, but I'm a little terrified of who I'm going to find. I know it's not going to be something simple, I feel a connection to things other people are blind to. I feel the danger behind this storm," Paige walked over to the window and just stared outside. Cars were splashing puddles into unsuspecting civilians, cans of soda and other objects of garbage were floating besides the curbs, and she couldn't see the top of anyone's heads as they were all hidden under colorful, sturdy umbrellas that battled back the winds.
The Witchlighter shifted away from the window and spoke her honest thoughts to the man across from her, "I'm going to have to fight like never before. There's a chance that Henry might have to find love again, find someone else to look over my children the way I parent my little Peter. Even if I don't live long enough to find out who I am and die over the next couple of nights, will you all still love me for who I was?"
(X)
The sorceress in the basement unleashed a series of well paced punches against the punching bag that hung from the ceiling, building muscle that will help her defend herself in physical combat should her power be rendered useless in her battle against Rose. Her and Cameron had already exercised their way through the morning with sword dueling and Billie practiced projecting weapons into existence and even summoning some from other planes. Who knew what she would need against an army of this Hell-Queen, but she had to explore many avenues of combat if she was going to come out alive.
As her knuckles began to bleed, she continued the undeserving fury against the punching bag and pitied its reason for existence - she'd hate to have been born to get knocked around for hours and on – but she couldn't stop solely on pain alone, she was bound to experience a lot of it in the battle. She pressed on, punch after punch after punch, but when she swung her next punch, she hit nothing except air.
Rain fell down on her, the wind was freezing her heated, sweating body, and the lightning-lit sky above her confirmed that she was outside and it wasn't just a sudden fracture in the house. She looked around and saw that she was on the black-colored rooftop of the manor she was just inside of, wondering how she was teleported up there. She spun around back and forth for the source as the rain forced her blonde hair onto her forehead and washed the blood off her hands, but not the open wounds of her knuckles.
"It's going to take a lot more to beat her," a familiar Spanish-accented voice informed.
Billie flipped around and saw Rose manifesting into visibility under the rain, unfazed by the rain and remained dry. "Don't you mean it's going to take a lot more to beat you?"
The projection shook her head back and forth, "I wish. I've lost this battle against Valen. As soon as I return to my body, I won't even be her personal bitch anymore. I'll be buried so deep inside my mind I'll be lucky to get her to let me scratch my own itch. Not that my body itches any longer." She looked out at the city beyond her, looking as she was before she chose to be the vessel for Valen. Her olive skin was untouched, her eyes were dark and not sapphire, and her hair was black and not badger-streaked. "To be honest, my body feels more like a corpse now with two arguing voices in it."
"What's it to me? I don't necessarily want you dead as you do me, but I need you dead if you're going to attack my family. As soon as I'm ready, I'm gonna take the fight to you and-"
"You'll die against Valen and the world will lose," Rose interrupted, staring only at Billie and walked closer to her. In this projection form, she couldn't be touched nor touch. "You're running out of time as well. Valen has been building back some of her old power, power you won't be able to match. Seven moons from tonight, she'll be unstoppable." She moved around the rooftop, somewhat relieved to be free of her own body and out in the world. "The more Valen pushed me into my mind, the more of her thoughts I could hear. You have the potential to stage a fight against her, she knows this. I won't go so far to say she's scared of you, but there have been others like you that she's killed. I think this is why she still considers you insignificant."
"I don't trust you. At all," Billie replied, honestly. She's been naïve before and there was nothing convincing that Rose was saying now. As nice as it would be to believe she could put an end to this storm and ensure safety for her friends and family, this was from the enemy herself. "Go whisper in someone else's ear."
"You don't listen to me and you'll die. You don't have to be like me, you idiot bitch, making bad choices and in the end losing," an angered Rose responded, her open hands clenching into fists that she wish she could use to punch Billie off the rooftop with. "I thought that if I did all of Avo's exercises, I'd be strong enough to share my body with a Queen of demons. A god amongst Hell. And like my mother, I was raped by a demon and lost all control. This is my final stand. When I'm sucked back into my – what used to be my body, it's going to be Valen behind the wheel with me in the trunk, bound and gagged. If you can kill the bitch, I might get another chance at life again. Maybe not this one, but eventually. I don't want to go to Hell with her. Believe that."
Billie considered her. This made sense with Rose's background, with how she was always fueled into the bad neighborhoods in the world because of how personal she took her mother's rape, the reason she was born. She wasn't expecting on Valen violating the very body that was conceived by her victimized mother. Billie held onto her own body, shivering under the freezing rain, and said, "Assuming I can trust you, what do you want me to do? What can I do differently? How can I kill her? I can always try and banish her again, but I'm sure you'll be stuck in that grave for an eternity as well..."
"What you'll expect to be an eternity will just be another few hundred years before someone else frees her. She needs to die, and to do this, you'll need a ritual that can only be found in a place not of our own," Rose replied cryptically. "The Ritual of the Spiritus Rector."
"Where can I find this? What's this place that's not of our own?" Billie asked quickly, noticing that Rose was slowly beginning to fade away. "Where?"
"She's pulling me back," Rose said sadly, realizing her fate. "I can't say, she's managing to stop me from afar. She's powerful. She may control me now, but this was going to happen eventually. At least I decide my own death. But Billie?"
"Yeah?" Billie asked as only Rose from the shoulders up was visible.
"If I'm so lucky to be recycled into this world, you better be ready for our showdown, pendeja." The demonic witch muttered her final words before vanishing from sight, to be buried into the grave of her mind while the Hell-Queen Valen paraded around in what was once her flesh.
While Rose may be left out of the battle, she was responsible for the hope now instilled inside Billie.
(X)
After spending another hour or so at Glenn's apartment, Paige moved to leave but not before the two promised to find more time to contact one another, especially with all the changes occurring in their lives. She still wasn't ready to go home and had to meet with one more person before returning to her family. She orbed herself atop the Golden Gate Bridge and resisted against the winds that pushed at her. The rain pounded against the top of her umbrella, but she was still soaked so high up with the gale pressing the water into her.
She looked over carefully at the caution on the bridge with cars moving slowly, terrified they'll move too fast and wheel out of control into the bay below. She was shivering and wished that she could go home and flip on her campfire when she got home, but it was still magically enchanted to provide cool air since that Prankster made her house into a playground. Paige shrugged off the thought as she remembered the city at the flash of lightning and pictured Rose grinning somewhere at the power her combined presence with Valen wreaked.
Paige closed her eyes as she pictured a young male, willing him to hear her inner cries, knowing they sung of anguished sounds as her talk with Glenn didn't exactly heal her internal wounds. "Come to me," she whispered into the air. "Please." She opened her eyes in time to see orbs appearing in between heavy raindrops and the sight of the young male forming between them caused Paige to relinquish her firm control on the umbrella and a Valen-enchanted gale pulled it out of her hand and into the chaos of the city below...
The male finished materializing, still looking as fresh as she last saw him in her coma, with his tousled brown hair that was being pounded flat by the rain, but he was still pure, and not the zombie that he should've been since he was last belabored with bullets. His light eyes looked out over at the umbrella flipping inside and out by the winds as it journeyed into darkness and Keith asked, "How are we gonna stay dry now?"
The Witchlighter moved over to him and hugged him and he her. "Thank you for saving me..." She cried on his shoulders and backed away into the face of the man that Peter would grow up to look like. She was going to fight to be alive to see this. "You helped bring me back to my family. To your family. To Peter who cried for me to come back."
"Which was more than enough for me to help Sam and that Rebecca girl. I would've helped regardless of being asked, but when I saw Sam searching for candidates to help in your awakening, I knew I had to be a part of that," Keith replied, holding onto her wrists to keep them both steady. "I saw the smile it put on Peter's face and it reminded me of this time when I bought him this bear, Captain Ted, for his first birthday."
"I never knew about that," Paige commented. "Then again, we haven't exactly pen-paled since your death and we weren't best friends before that."
"Yeah, well, Captain Ted was short-lived anyway. Peter wouldn't even remember him. Liberty and I had to flee our apartment and the good Captain was left behind," Keith explained. "Peter cried for about a week before forgetting about the bear." He gazed at Paige with innocent, pure eyes and said, "We may not know each other too well, but at least we know we're on the same side and that we both love Peter. You've taken care of my son in ways that I'm grateful my death provided for him."
"Don't say that," Paige replied. "You were a good father."
"Peter was growing up in terrible conditions. In your house, it's secure enough for him to know what a home is. My kid is safe and if I had to die for that to happen, then dead I'll stay," he looked down at his body and grinned. "As dead as a Whitelighter can be, at least."
"A Whitelighter, exactly. A guardian. Someone others count on and you're someone I'm gonna call on now," Paige began, slipping out of his grip and grabbed his hands with her own before they fell back to his side. "I need you to watch over my family, most importantly, my children, and that son of yours that we share. You know what's going on, you know the demonic power behind this storm and the man leading her. There's no guarantee that I'm going to come out alive despite how determined I am, but I need to know that the children are safe. No matter where I hide them, be it Magic School or some hidden pocket realm, I want you to watch them. You're the only angel in the Heavens that I would ask to do this for me."
Keith nodded, a honest nod that spoke depths of truth and a desire to fiercely protect his own son as equal as Peter's new sisters. "I'll die again before anyone or anything can touch them."
Paige cried thankfully for the existence of the young man before her who would carry out this mission better than any enchantment, better than any protection that a Wiccaning could provide, and better than any foul Elder in the Heavens. "Now I just have to figure how to get out of this alive."
"You're not going to call on the Elders to assist?" Keith asked. "The community?"
"If the Elders don't appear for this fight, this goes to show how unholy they really are. I shouldn't have to ask them to help save the world," Paige sternly replied, hoping the so known Wise Ones heard her. "As for the community, pitting them against Rose is nothing short of sacrificing them. I'll need to learn more of Avo's personal army though and if it extends beyond middle-level demons and Darklighters."
"Whatever it is, know that your kids are safe and I'll do my best to watch over Henry as well. He's an amazing man and you two together are heroes. You each save very different sides of the world, but without you two alive, a change for the worse would be noticed," Keith honestly spoke of the two. "I couldn't think of anyone better to take care of Petey." He planted a kiss on Paige's forehead, a gesture of thanks, and took a step back. He looked out into the city and then up into the dark sky. "The bosses are calling me. Do you want me to pass along a message?"
"Yeah. Let them know that if they aren't in the Underworld when we take Rose and her army on, I'll personally drag them all to Hell one by one," she threatened with a glare directed at the clouds above. She returned her teary, misted vision to Keith and said, "You should head on up. I can't have my children's guardian angel getting fired with these battles around the corner."
"Be safe, Paige," Keith responded and with an almost sad smile, he added, "I can't have another of my son's mothers dying on him. Not again." He glowed under the dark sky in heavenly orbs, then vanished to up above.
Paige cast one more glance down at city and promised, "I'll stop this before it gets worse." Orbs appeared around her, dancing around their caller, and flew into her and gathered into one collective orb large enough to carry her home to the children who would now be safe and the husband she would now speak her heart to - not all, but enough to remind him that she loves him as well as remind herself why she does so.
End of Chapter.
A/Note: Yeah, the so-so chapter is done. Paige's coma is still touched upon in the coming chapters, but in the fashion that it would've been done on an actual episode; other things going on, but a main factor isn't forgotten. Hopefully you'll still wanna share a couple of words in a review and return for the final three/four action-packed and emotion-heavy chapters. We're coming to a close after three years! See how it ends.