FALSE MEMORIES

My first posted story here. Also my first Charmed Fanfic, although I have written fanfiction for other shows.

Disclaimer: The characters in Charmed do not belong to me. No infringement is intended, no profit is made.

Summary: Loved the Piper/Leo/Chris family dynamic in Season 6 so that's when this story is based. Set after Chris-Crossed and Prince Charming. Nobody knows who Chris is yet, but they're about to find out, courtesy of an unexpected visitor from the future…

Notes: Hello, here's another update for you.

I don't like using the terms 'Future Leo/Past Leo' too much, because it breaks up the flow of the story. So from now on, unless they're in the scene together, I'll establish which one it is and then just stick with 'Leo.' Hope that works out okay for you all – let me know if not.

Chapter 5

Having finally worked up the courage to face his first-born son, Future Leo drew in a deep, steadying breath and pushed open the nursery door. He didn't entirely know why he was so reluctant to see Wyatt, but he had purposely avoided coming into contact with his son until now.

When Piper and his past self had gone to pick the boy up from Sheila's last night, he had deliberately made himself scarce, orbing up to the Golden Gate Bridge for some much needed breathing space. He had stayed up there for a long time, absorbing the quiet tranquillity of the place as he mulled over the events of the day in his mind.

When he eventually returned to the Halliwell Manor, several hours later, he did so to find it swathed in darkness, all its occupants sleeping peacefully in their beds. Even then, Leo had bypassed his eldest child's bedroom, choosing to watch over his younger son as he slept instead. Now though, it was time for him to face the reunion that he had been secretly dreading since he got here.

He crossed the room and rested his forearms on the side of the cot, looking down on his slumbering son for the first time in years. Wyatt looked so sweetly innocent lying there, fast asleep, and Leo's heart constricted painfully inside of his chest. With his blond curls framing his cute little face and his eyelashes lying flat against his apple-round cheeks, it just didn't transmute that this angelic babe was now the root of all that was evil in the world.

So many conflicting emotions ran through Leo's mind as he committed his son's features to memory once more – love, anger, hurt, betrayal – and most of all, the agonising pain of a father's loss. Looking upon Wyatt as he once was, brought the reality of who he'd become crashing in on the Elder and he sucked in a sharp breath, unable to hold back the bitter tears that welled up in his eyes as a result.

He reached down and stroked his tiny son's soft cheek with the back of his finger. "Where did it all go wrong, huh little guy?" he said, his voice choked with emotion.

Wyatt's eyelids fluttered at the gentle touch and he awoke, opening his big eyes and gazing drowsily up at his father. His little face split into a delighted smile at the familiar sight, and he raised his arms with a happy gurgle. "Da-da!"

Lowering the side of the cot, Leo tenderly picked Wyatt up and held him close, breathing in his comforting baby-powder smell as he gently stroked his hand over the little boy's soft curls.

"Daddy loves you so much. I'm so sorry I failed you, I'm so sorry," he whispered to his beloved son, his voice breaking on the words.

"You didn't fail him, Leo."

Leo jumped, his head whipping around at the voice.

"Sorry," Phoebe said, with an apologetic shrug of her shoulders. "I was walking by and, well… I've not exactly got the hang of controlling my empathy power yet. You think that's gonna happen any time soon?"

"Nice try, Phoebe, but that's something you'll have to find out by yourself."

Phoebe stuck her tongue out at him and pouted. "Spoilsport."

Leo smiled, despite the deep sense of sorrow that permeated his whole being. With a soft sigh, he sat down the chair by the cot, settling Wyatt comfortably in his lap. Phoebe crossed to join him, sitting cross-legged on the floor at his feet.

"I meant what I said, Leo," she said, reiterating her earlier statement. "You only fail him if you give up. And you haven't done that yet, have you?"

"No, it's just… you don't know what it's like, Phoebe, knowing your son is evil and yet loving him at the same time."

"Yes, I do."

Leo's eyes widened as he remembered her short-lived pregnancy with Cole's baby. "Yeah, I guess you do. I'm sorry."

"I know it's not the same. I mean, my baby was evil from conception, whereas Wyatt was - is the essence of all that is good."

"Not any more," her brother-in-law replied, his voice heavy with hopeless despair. "I look at him and I see a stranger, someone I don't even know. There's hardly anything left of the boy that he used to be, it's all been consumed by the evil that infects him. The things he does, the people he hurts…"

Leo broke off and shook his head. "I'm sorry; I shouldn't be telling you this. It's better that you don't know."

Phoebe leaned forward and placed her hand on his arm. "We will save him, Leo," she said firmly. "You were right yesterday – we haven't been helping Chris enough but that's going to change, I promise."

Leo sighed. "I just wish it wasn't like searching for a needle in a haystack. It's been nearly seven years, and we still know virtually nothing about what happened to him. Every new lead just ends up in a dead end – even here in the past."

"Yeah, but at least we're forewarned and on our guard. And we have this annoyingly persistent whitelighter to help us - someone who is the very definition of the word tenacity when it comes to finding the evil that turned Wyatt. That's got to make a difference."

Leo nodded, a deep sense of pride filling him at his younger son's absolute determination to save his brother. "Yeah I guess it does. I just worry that he'll take things too far."

"Who Chris? You think he'd hurt Wyatt?"

"No, of course not. That's not what I meant. I meant he might put himself in unnecessary danger to achieve what he came here to do."

"And that's a bad thing?" Phoebe said, and then hurried to explain her meaning off Leo's horrified look. "Don't get me wrong, I like Chris, I do, but this is Wyatt we're talking about. Of course, I would do everything in my power to prevent Chris from getting hurt. In the end though, rescuing my nephew is the most important thing. If our whitelighter is prepared to go that extra mile for him, then so be it."

Leo looked past Phoebe at the far wall, his blue-green eyes unreadable as he silently digested her words. He couldn't really blame her for her attitude; she didn't know the truth. It did make him realise something though - if he couldn't persuade Chris to reveal his identity before he left to go back to the future, then he would have to break his word and tell his past self and the girls himself.

It was bad enough losing one son, there was no way he was risking losing another. His family needed to know that they must protect Chris at all costs. They had to know that he would be a sacrifice too far. Trading one son for the other was not an option as far as Leo was concerned.

"Leo! Are you okay?"

Phoebe's voice broke into his thoughts, and he refocused his gaze on her face. "Sorry – just zoned out there for a minute."

"Future issues?"

"Something like that."

Leo got to his feet and returned Wyatt to his cot, pressing a brief kiss to the baby's temple before he set him down.

"I need to find Chris," he told Phoebe, and then disappeared in a swirl of blue orbs…

P3, fifteen minutes earlier…

Chris knelt on the floor, pencil in hand and two large sheets of paper spread out in front of him. He had taken Past Leo's advice, and tried to approach the problem of deciphering his jumbled-up memories in a logical manner.

The pieces of paper had started out the same, each divided into a series of boxes representing two years of his life. He had cleared his mind of all extraneous thought, shutting out everything but the two sets of recollections associated with his father. He then set about putting those memories onto paper. The diagram on the left represented his remembrance of his and Leo's relationship before he'd taken the potion, while the one on the right contained his recently restored memories.

He had been working on it for nearly an hour now and he was starting to get a headache. No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't keep his emotions out of the equation, so this simple task was proving to be extremely taxing on his tired psyche.

Chris sat back and sighed, rubbing the heels of his hands into his sore and gritty eyes. He decided that he needed to take a break for a while, so left his memory maps laid out on the floor and went off in search of a sandwich and a drink. Wandering back into the Club ten minutes later, the young whitelighter froze in his tracks, his heart lurching inside of his chest as he realised the answer to his dilemma was staring him right in the face.

It hadn't been noticeable close up, he'd been too bogged down in the detail, but viewing the charts from a distance, Chris could clearly see the difference between the two diagrams. The one on the right – his restored memories – had something written in virtually every box, whereas the one on the left looked like a half-finished patchwork quilt. There were huge gaps, missing pockets of time that his mind had explained away as Leo being 'up there,' or 'far too busy being Elder to bother with a visit.'

Falling to his knees in front of the charts, Chris realised something else. Every memory in his earlier recollection of events was something big, something significant. It was all designed to cause him pain, to make him feel unwanted, second best.

There were several missed birthdays, and times when Leo had taken Wyatt out but not bothered to invite him along too. There was the casual indifference displayed when he'd won a spell-writing competition at school, an attitude that contrasted vividly with the mountain of praise that was heaped upon his elder brother's every move. And it went on and on in a similar fashion…

As he finally opened his mind to what his deep-rooted pain had prevented him from seeing up until now, Chris's hands rose to cover his mouth, his breath heaving in harsh gasps. His memories were fake, utterly contrived, a series of haphazard dots that didn't join to make a complete picture.

Unable to look at it the evidence of his brother's betrayal anymore, he transferred his gaze to the other memory map, reaching out to run his fingers over some of the words written on the page and allowing their comforting warmth to wash over him.

It was the little things that jumped out at him – being tucked up into bed and read a story, riding on his Dad's shoulders at the Zoo. Chris had never seen the attraction of the Zoo, but it was his Mom and brother's favourite place, so he had to endure it on a regular basis. When Leo had joined them though, it had always been an infinitely more fun day out.

There were painful times as well, times when his father had been angry with him, or disappointed by something he'd done. That didn't matter though, that was life - that was family. It was all part of an endless cycle of care and attention. In essence, the pieces of the jigsaw that fit together to make a father's love.

Chris closed his eyes, two single tears running down his cheeks as something shifted inside of his brain, and the effects of Wyatt's spell started to wane. He didn't know what to think, how to feel, he was just numb with shock and disbelief.

Tinkling orb sounds filled his ears then, distracting him, and he leapt to his feet, panicked by the unexpected interruption. As he hastily brushed away his fallen tears, Leo emerged from the blur of turquoise lights, and Chris sagged in relief when he spotted the bright blue 'F' decorating the Elder's breastbone.

"What is it? What's wrong?" his father asked, immediately noticing his pale countenance and tear-stained cheeks.

Chris pointed at the two pieces of paper on the ground at his feet. "I took your past self's advice," he said, his voice barely audible.

Future Leo stepped forward and followed his son's gaze down to the two charts spread out on the floor. It didn't take him long to see the significance of what they showed. "Chris…"

"Why?" the young witch-whitelighter suddenly burst out, "Why did he do this? Why did he do this to me?"

"It wasn't about you, you know that. It was about limiting the Elder's power by breaking the link between our two worlds."

"He's still my brother though, and he still knew exactly which buttons to press."

"What do you mean?"

"He used my two greatest fears to totally manipulate me," Chris ruefully admitted. "He fed off my terror of losing another parent, and my inferiority complex in relation to him."

Leo's eyes opened wide at that. "I didn't make you feel like…?" he started to ask.

"No, no – you didn't, nor did the rest of the family. It was just in general, you know? Come on – are you really that surprised? Wyatt's the Twice-Blessed one, and I'm… well, I'm just me."

"Well, 'just you' is doing just fine if you ask me."

"You're biased."

"Quite possibly," Leo agreed with a grin.

Chris shyly returned the smile, still feeling awkward. The pull to reconnect with his lost father was strong, but other, more painful, memories remained, and he couldn't shake off their effects completely. Sensing his uncertainty, Leo broke the emotional deadlock and reached out to pull his hesitant son into a bear hug.

Unable to stop himself, Chris immediately stiffened, desperate to pull away. He forced himself to relax into the embrace though, determined to shake off the devastating results of Wyatt's cruel spell. After a brief struggle, he successfully won the battle with his confused emotions and buried his face against his father's shoulder, finally lifting his arms to return the hug.

"You've done a lot of growing up," Leo noted when they broke apart a few moments later.

"I've heard it happens when you get older," Chris joked.

"Still a smart-ass though."

"Come on Dad – you know you missed me."

Leo laughed and shook his head. He had missed his son's droll sense of humour and it made a change to hear it again, rather than having to face the painful consequences of Wyatt's spell instead. It had been so hard to see his boy suffering, knowing that he was inadvertently the cause of his pain.

The deep hurt and anger had always been so evident in Chris's eyes whenever Leo looked at him, but he had been powerless to do anything to ease that needless emotional torment. The protective walls that Chris had built up were just too high for him to surmount, so he had focused his attention on finding a way to reverse Wyatt's magic instead.

It had taken five long years though, during which time his son had grown from a gauche teenager - frightened half to death by his brother's transformation - into a determined and focused young man, who was intent on saving him. With a sharp pang of regret, Leo realised that they would never get those years back. The ripple effects of Wyatt's turning had cut a devastating path throughout the whole family - it was a wound that would probably never fully heal.

All hope rested on changing the future for the better therefore. It was a burden that, by default, had fallen on his younger son, and that realisation made Leo even more determined not to leave without Chris's true identity being known. His boy would not carry this alone, it would be with his family's full support whether he liked it or not.

"Come on," he said, reaching out to give Chris's shoulder a friendly squeeze. "Let's go some place where we're less likely to be interrupted. We need to talk."

Chris nodded and bent to retrieve his memory maps from the floor. "The bridge?" he suggested as he straightened up.

Leo nodded in agreement. "My thoughts exactly," he replied.

In a shimmer of dancing blue lights, the reunited father and son orbed out to the place where they both found that innate sense of inner peace, finally free to make a start on mending their fractured relationship.

To be continued…