Disclaimer: Blah blah. Not mine!
Chapter Thirteen: Our Spot
4:10 pm
It was in that vacant moment just as the sensation of shimmering faded away that the memory came to her. It had seemed inconsequential at the time but it came back so sharp that she could smell the firecrackers.
It was the night before the Fourth. Fireworks had been banned county wide years before after some kids accidentally torched their house with a bottle rocket, not that the law had any effect. She and Chris had taken advantage of a rare night where they were both free. They made believable excuses to their families, met in the park, paid twenty five cents to a latent San Francisco flower child for a dozen sparklers, and had a rare quiet night with absolutely no demons or occurrences of note whatsoever. It was fantastic.
In hindsight, she wasn't quite sure nothing happened. Halfway through the walk, tucked in a back corner and away from the teenagers setting paper tanks on fire with roman candles, Chris had stopped unexpectedly, a faraway stare taking over for a spare second before he refocused.
"What?" Bianca had asked, stepping back close enough that she could wrap an arm around his.
"Nothing," Chris shook his head, looking like he was trying to drop the thought but ended up unsuccessful, "We don't have a place."
She raised her eyebrows curiously, letting out a laugh, "Really? I almost got worried there for a second, you looked like someone had kicked your puppy."
Chris tried to give her an serious look that came off more amused, "Really, I mean, we don't have anywhere in common. I live in San Francisco, you live...what is it this month, Chicago?"
"Maine, actually," She added helpfully.
"Maine. Right." He corrected, though his expression said something closer to 'I'd ask you why you're in Maine but I don't think I want to know.' He pressed on, "Think about it for a second. The place we met got demolished."
"Shame, I didn't think that demon did that much structural damage."
"We can't ever go back to that restaurant again because that new manager used to work at P3."
"True."
"There rest aren't any better. Everywhere else is either mine or yours." Chris continued without skipping a beat, "aren't couples supposed to have, I don't know, a spot?"
Bianca breathed in for a moment, considering the question. There were times in their unorthodox relationship where something like this would come up. The supposed tos or the normallies. It wasn't something either of them typically worried about for the moment, they weren't exactly things that had an expiration date, and they could be sorted out once things were a lot less volatile.
However, something in Chris's expression told her that it was going to bother him, so she stepped in a little closer, "Did you have a place in mind?"
He swept his gaze around for half a second to make it look like he was picking arbitrarily, but he did have some place in mind. He pointed across the path to what seemed like a simple bench, details hidden in the dim lighting. The more she stared though, the more she noticed, the flowers running on either side, slightly overgrowing their beds seemingly just for the spite of it. Four columns circled around the back meeting in the middle around a statue. Bianca squinted at it, noticing the wings after a moment.
"Okay," Bianca said without much thought at all, she didn't have to, "It seems... right."
Bianca opened her eyes, the memory fading only to be replaced with the same view, only twisted. She felt her shoulders sag, as she took a few paces forward on heavy feet, eying what was left of the statue, running her fingers across the jagged edge, wondering what happened there. She suspected it was like everything else in this reality: utterly messed up.
Quietly, she turned around and bonelessly slid down to the base of the statue, shutting her eyes for a moment. She didn't have much of a plan, it pretty much stopped and ended at "Find Chris." and from the destruction she was seeing even here, she was beginning to wonder if who she was looking for was even going to be what she expected. Even if he sounded similar, she had to wonder how much of that was real or just hope.
She tipped her head back to look at the half statue before sighing. Either way, she had to try.
"Chris," She said to the air, hoping the whitelighter hotline was still functioning, "I hope you can hear me. If you can," She paused. Wyatt had said he hadn't been able to sense anyone. If Chris couldn't either, she could test him... "If you can, you know where to find me."
She pinched her eyes closed for just half a second, hoping to hear the sound of orbing. That wasn't quite what she received. The crunch of shoes on brittle grass made her snap her eyes open. Standing in front of her was the Pale Man.
"Oh good!" He spoke with a amiable voice, "I'm glad you called. I've been meaning to speak with him."
4:00
Chris would like to say that he'd come clean and told them everything he knew, he had intended to, after all. He'd tossed in a small preface for Freja's benefit. She'd taken the whole time travel thing without a blink, much as Chris had expected. He explained how he'd woken up in whatever imaginary version of the Manor the Source had cooked up, told them about the girl and Clarence. He'd told them the Pale Man's story and how regretful they were. However, when he'd gotten to the part about their plan... He didn't know if it was latent habit or what, but he didn't breathe a word of the deal he'd made. He couldn't.
"That's it?" Freja prodded, giving him that sharp look that made all of her soldiers jump to do what she commanded. Chris just gave a cold look back, hoping that Leo wouldn't catch it.
He shrugged, more for his father's benefit, "I woke up before she was finished, I think. The place just whited out and I woke up down here."
"Curious." Freja mumbled noncommittally but she didn't press.
Leo shook his head, eyes narrowed, "That doesn't sound right..." Chris carefully made sure not to tense up at the tone in Leo's voice, "Are you sure they didn't hint at anything more? I doubt someone of that magnitude of power would just let a connection go like that. There had to be a reason for it."
Chris tightened his fingers around the pendant so tightly he was sure it would be permanently imprinted on his palm. This was dumb, he should tell him. Anything to drive one more wedge between the Source's plans and his own. Shouldn't he have learned by now that he tended to get results when he let his family in on the plan? They'd finally identified Gideon back then after he'd dropped all that pretext.
'And then I got killed...' his thoughts echoed. He'd gotten killed and Leo had been a mess. It wasn't something the family talked about openly but Chris was naturally too curious about that darker era in his life that had lead Leo to drop his whitelighter status. Phoebe hadn't admitted only that Leo had lost someone and the Avatars took advantage of that grief. He knew now exactly who she'd meant.
He couldn't do that to him again. Couldn't admit, once again, that leadership Leo still believed in was trying to get him killed or ...insane or, whatever it had been that the Source was alluding to. Better to let him think it was a spell of Chris's own design, something Leo couldn't have done anything to stop if he'd known about it.
He didn't want any part in creating another Gideon.
As much as he believed Leo was three thousand times better of a man than Gideon ever was, but... loss could do terrible things. Maybe Gideon wasn't so bad at the start either...
Leo's curious eyes were on him and Chris returned the look, fingers loosening in his pocket. "There was one thing," He said with a trepidation he didn't have to fake, "They wanted me to know, that guy's father was Gideon..."
And there it was, the perfect distraction. Leo tensed, arms stilling from their typical sway back and forth as he walked. "Gideon..." Leo just said stiffly.
"Yeah," Chris returned carefully, "Explains some things, doesn't it."
The reasoning had seemed to occur to Leo at the same time. He nodded and then quickly shook his head, voice coming out completely exasperated, "It's still completely inexcusable."
"Let's pretend I do not know what you're talking about. You are talking about the Elder Gideon?" Freja chipped in, knowing she was on thin conversational ice but not really caring.
The two men traded a brief look before Chris shrugged and admitted it, "Gideon was the one who turned Wyatt. He tried to kill him when he was a kid because he thought he'd be too powerful."
"Ah," Freja's eyes narrowed before turning back to the front, "Reprehensible coward." and that was all she had to say on the matter. Chris was quickly remembering why he liked the Valkyries.
Katarjyna joined them silently just as the tunnel turned into an old concrete service hallway, a brown door lying at the end of it with a helpful, yet completely surreal red lit exit sign next to a placard holding aged fire escape routes.
"You might want to shield your eyes," Freja said with some amusement but gave them no time to comply before she kicked the metal push bar and the door slammed open, the complaining whine of the rusted hinges sounding like an alarm.
They walked out into the open air and sun to find themselves hidden under the spine of the broken Golden Gate bridge. Only three steps away from the door and they felt the magic return to them. The Valkyries smiled at that, cracking assorted joints in celebration. They were magical beings and they despised being down in the tunnels. Their human recruits however, were hidden amongst the masses. They were the main reason everyone in the tunnels hadn't been killed yet.
"You are now free and clear," Freja announced, "Now what."
"Yeah," Chris sighed, staring out at the water, "That's the trick. I-" Any argument he was about to make stuttered to a halt as the silence in his whitelighter senses was all of a sudden shattered, the volume of it knocking the breath out of him, though the voice it was in had something to do with that as well. Bianca's voice, calm at first, but then... Leo was already halfway into concerned Elder mode when Chris put up a hand.
"Change of plans, you stay here, I'll be back in a second," Chris tried to say with all authority.
"Chris, let me-" Leo tried but Chris simply shook his head.
"No, just give me two seconds, I'll call you if I need you." He didn't give Leo a chance to explain and he didn't know why he'd accepted the help, he just needed to make sure the person he was going to meet was actually the version he hoped for. He had to make sure. "Just trust me for a second."
He orbed out.
4:00
Rubiec was livid.
He'd thought this was an exodus, something new, something freeing. To have a sky, the freedom to move more than six feet in either direction, to have anything with a pulse in the general vicinity... it had sounded glorious when that Halliwell boy had proposed it to him.
Sure, the boy was a witch, a Warren witch, no less, but you couldn't tell it from the color of his black heart. Besides, Wyatt was human. Humans die. He could deal with it until he keeled over. Still, even with what sounded like a good proposition, Rubiec was wary. He'd spent most of his time alive in that hole in the underworld, only escaping once in a while. The last time though, the last time made him think about ever leaving again.
The Phoenix coven had made a deal with him back then too. They'd been so bitter, so hungry for power he could provide and he did... then when time had come to hold their end, they'd cut him up and dropped him back down the hole into eternity.
He'd only agreed after Halliwell promising him every bit of the revenge he was hoping for.
Rubiec raked his fingernails over his face in memory, eyes burning. Yet again, the human had gone back on their deal, and here he was led to believe the Warrens were the more honorable line of witches that had come out of Salem.
He stood, stock still, outside of the door to the sigil room, fingers taking on less of a normal appearance and shifting back to something much more claw like. With a subtle click, the doors in front of him parted just wide enough for Wyatt to stand before him.
The Halliwell leaned against the door handles, a hand on either side to bar the way back into the sigil room. It was purely a line in the sand of course, Rubiec could shimmer in there at any time, but he knew that doing so wouldn't be seen as anything but treason.
He leaned just enough to see behind the witch, eyes locking on the crumbled form on the floor, copper hair dulled as it soaked up the puddle of blood underneath her. His expression darkened dangerously, eyes snapping back to Wyatt.
Wyatt stared right back, fingers drumming on the right handle in a false sense of boredom, "Problem?"
Rubiec stayed silent, the only tension in his body showing through his eyes.
"I think we do," Wyatt supplied for him, "But both of us know that you aren't going to do anything about it or you would have done it already."
"Just give me the soul, witch." Rubiec said placidly.
Wyatt's eyes narrowed, his grip tightening on the doors, "No."
"I won't ask again." The challenge in his voice was completely evident but Wyatt pointedly ignored it.
"Good." Then the Twice Blessed reached up a hand and snapped, the blood on the floor spontaneously engulfed the body in flames until the fire was so bright it would hurt for a normal person to look at. As it was, Rubiec's eyes were locked on it, anger finally showing in the set of his shoulders. Wyatt allowed him the view for a second before calling his attention back to him. "Don't ever challenge me again."
Then the doors slammed into Rubiec's face. His talons glowed red and yellow like hot coals, a snarl building in his throat. He turned and let it out, scraping his claws along the thick marble walls in a feral rage. The heat left a four charred smoking gouges all the way down the side of the hall as he walked.
This was not over.
4:20
The man wasn't as fast as he had been before, Bianca noticed right off. The instantaneous transfers from place to place he'd done in his fight with Wyatt weren't anywhere near as quick. Each time his feet landed, the space between jumps seemed longer and longer, by seconds only, but seconds was all that she needed.
"OW!" The man hauled back, clutching at the side of his face, looking more shocked than he probably had in years. Bianca flipped the now blood covered athame over in her hand, cautiously confident even as her ankle shot spikes of pain up into her spine. It was an injury she'd gotten from the one time she hadn't managed to dodge the Pale Man's grip, an injury that felt curiously like the time she'd broken her ankle in three places when she was seven. She didn't let herself think about it too hard. She couldn't afford the distraction.
The man pulled his hand back from his face, examining the blood smeared across his palm with growing anger. Bianca shifted back to a more acceptable stance. He'd been playing with her before, but she had a feeling he was done with that.
The man tensed, fingers bowing in a way that told her he was about to disappear again. One minute he was across the garden, the next he was close enough the man's bloodstained hand was hovering right in front of her face. She shifted back too quick, weight crashing onto her bad ankle and sending her to the ground. Everything seemed to fad into slow motion, she could see the red fingers adjust to reach for her throat even as she tried to catch herself from her fall, until, abruptly, she felt herself being yanked back, and time sped back up to normal.
The Pale Man pitched forward awkwardly and stuck there, hunching over where he stood like the maneuver had taken the wind out of him. Bianca would have had the urge to gloat if her mind wasn't trying to catch up on how it had happened. She looked down idly at where her hands had clasped on to a set of arms twined around her stomach, and tensed for only a moment.
"It's me," Chris's voice answered lowly, head dipped down to lean against hers but still be able to keep an eye on the Pale Man. Bianca let out a breath, leaning back into him in relief, taking the pressure from her ankle. She didn't look back at him though, focused just as he was on the enemy at hand.
"You alright?" Chris asked after a moment.
"I'm fine," Bianca returned conversationally, "You?"
She felt him smile against her temple, "Better."
The Pale Man staggered back up to his full height, showing some kind of emotion besides the cheerfully crazy persona he'd been putting out before.
"That wasn't fair." The whine in his voice was roughened with deep annoyance, hands balled into fists at his sides.
They ignored him. Chris loosened one of his arms from around her waist and shifted so he was beside her, wordlessly keeping the other arm there both to support her ankle and provide a quick escape if they had to orb out. His eyes darted from the cut on the Man's face to her dagger and grinned with unabashed pride. "Nice."
"Glad you appreciate it."
The Pale Man was looking a little more red than he was before, even under the blood, eyebrows pinching together. "You can't ignore me. I've figured it out, you know. Who you are."
Bianca felt Chris's grip on her waist tighten slightly and her face quickly snapped back to battle mode. Half of her just wanted to forcibly shimmer the both of them out, the other winning half trusting that Chris had something in mind.
"You're Christopher Halliwell," The man's smile started creeping back up as he spoke.
"Yeah?" Chris answered with a false calm, "Took you long enough just to figure out my name."
The Man wasn't perturbed by the comment, "It was your book. It was the one that taught me what to do. Anytime I was didn't know what to do or how to do it, I just zapped to that time, to that library, and you told me how. I'm a huge fan."
Bianca stole a confused look over to Chris. He was looking angrier by the second, jaw clenched, eyes dark, and, for some reason he seemed to be clenching his fist in his pocket.
"I already said it, I haven't written any book."
"Not yet, no. I do like to take it with me when I can. It saves a trip if I need it." The man smiled, "It's interesting, though, if you are who you are, that means you're like me. I won't kill you now, you know. I do need to kill her though, you understand. I-"
"Shut up." Chris pulled his hand out of his pocket in a flash and opened his palm just enough to let something bright and silver dangle below it. The Pale Man froze in his spot, eyes widening to a ridiculous proportion. Chris let it sway there for a second, long enough for it to stop spinning and identify a symbol she was becoming better and better acquainted with. "You know what this is, right?"
The Man's eyes narrowed dangerously, "Where did you get that?"
"From someone who's really not happy with you right now," Chris answered back, twitching his hand so the pendant swayed again. The Pale Man stumbled back a pace, "You're going to crawl in whatever hole you came from and stay there until we've fixed this. If you try anything like this again, I will use it. You understand?"
The air stilled as the options seemed to run through the Man's head, eyes locked on the necklace. Then, with a hate filled parting glare, he disappeared. They both waited for an extra few seconds, expecting him to reappear any moment, but it seemed he was doing as he was told. As soon as the tense feeling had dissipated, Bianca turned on her good ankle and leaned tiredly on Chris, looping her arms around his back.
"You have no idea how glad I am to see you," Bianca mumbled tiredly before leaning back a few inches to look him up and down, "You are you right? Not this world's you?"
Chris looked surprised for only half a second before he cracked a smile, casting a look around for an appropriate answer, "See, that's a tricky question."
Bianca's eyebrows shot up, fingers loosening to let go, "Explaining would be good."
AN: Faster this time, and a smidge longer, I think. We had an off day at school this week so I had a little more time to work on it. I have nothing to say here that wouldn't spoil things tremendously so I'll just leave things at that. Yet again, comments, lines, predictions, always wonderful and they keep my mind turning on this fic. See you next time!