In that moment, Pattie hated herself.

Not only had she just cursed, not just in front of her mother but to her, but Pattie still had various feelings of guilt washing through her. She honestly believed it was her fault, Prue's death, and it scared her. Pattie felt worthless, like she didn't deserve the love Prue was going to offer her or that of her aunts. How ever could she go back to her own time now?

Phoebe just stared at her for a minute, at then Prue who looked like she was replaying Pattie's words in her head, trying to make sense of them. "Pattie, what did you do?" she asked gently.

All three expected either another outburst or nothing at all, the two constants she'd had since arriving in this time. Phoebe knew it well, you either got it all with her niece or you got zero. But it was Pattie who fell to the floor in the attic right where she was, dropping straight down and letting her head fall in her hands. She spoke a solitary word, quietly. "Nothing."

Piper was the first to move and sit next to her. It was the first time she'd made a move towards being motherly to Pattie. Sure, they were close in 2000, but a teenager was different from a child. She was clueless on how to handle the situation so Piper did the things Prue had done with her growing up. She pulled her niece to her, pulling pieces of her hair back, smoothing it. "What, honey? What did you do nothing for, where did you go?"

Even though she felt she didn't deserve the love, guilt still reigning free, Pattie huddled close to Piper. She ran her fingers over the cuff of the shirt Piper was wearing absentmindedly. "The future," she whispered so softly Phoebe and Prue just barely heard. "The day my life changed forever."

Piper moved Pattie's face so they were eye to eye. "The day that—?"

Pattie's sudden crying cut her off. "Yes."

Prue had finally regained the composure to speak, and she and Phoebe joined Piper and Pattie on the ground, it seemed like they were holding her together in some way. Her family always had been the concrete that kept her from ultimately shattering.

"I failed you," she whispered her eyes red and blotched as she clutched Prue's hands. "I failed you."

Not one of them understood. Phoebe was the first to try. "Did you try to, I mean, you made an attempt at…" she fell short each time, a correct way to say what she meant escaping her.

So Prue pushed, she grabbed on to every motherly instinct in her and asked, "You wanted to save me?"

Pattie nodded somberly, her eyelashes coated in tears which fell heavily. "Yes."

"But, you…didn't?" Prue raised an eyebrow, running Pattie's soft skin under her fingers comfortingly.

This time when Pattie sniffled and melted, Prue gripped her precious hands tighter as her little girl shook her head, no. "I couldn't" she blubbered, barely understood. "I wasn't supposed to." Then again, "I failed you."

Instead, Prue received her from Piper, Pattie curling into her arms like she was an infant again and falling silent except for the occasional sob here or there. Piper and Phoebe watched helplessly, knowing no one but Prue could handle this the correct way. Finally they stood and exited, leaving Prue and Pattie alone. During this time, Pattie used the passing minutes to remember the smell of her mother's perfume, the scent that no doubt was probably sitting in her own bathroom cabinet right now, out of instinct and remembrance. She listened as Prue began to sing softly; the only one, she knew, who was aloud to hear the tender voice that let your cares fly in the wind. It was the same song little Pattie had been humming when Pattie had first appeared in 2000. She nearly jumped when Prue whispered in her ear. "Just between you and me," she assured Pattie, "I'm glad you didn't save me."

A day was only as long as you made it out to be. For Prue, she knew her daughter's time was running out. There was only so much that could be changed without a devastating effect on her own future. They made the minutes pass with meaning. She and Pattie walked hand and in hand now in the same park where Phoebe had learned what would become of Prue. It was bright and sunny now with toddlers at play, swiveling down the slides or gliding back and forth on the swings with wide smiles on their faces.

The sounds of a tot's weeping alerted Prue; she'd fallen from a jungle gym and was being coddled by a calm mother tending to her scraped knee. "Reminds me of you," Prue noted, pulling Pattie close to her.

Pattie didn't recall, "Me?"

"When you were about three you were trying the risky task of crossing the monkey bars. Everyone told me what a daredevil you were too, that their own three-year-old stayed far away from anything of that measure but you were determined. I looked away for a second and somehow you slipped and ended up on the ground. I thought you'd broken an arm," Prue told her. "It was the only time you ever let yourself cry over something like that."

It was vaguely familiar to Pattie, sitting among the woodchips holding her arm to her chest and dissolving to tears with Prue doing her best to be of comfort. "I think I do remember that."

"You and I have some good memories here though," Prue announced as they passed through the playground and made their way off the course of Golden Gate Park to a large oak tree casting a shadow as it towered over them. The plant sat by a stagnant river surrounded by peace and chirping birds.

Mother and daughter settled against the bark of the three, soaking up the unspoken love that lingered between them. Pattie rested her head on Prue's shoulder, listening to her steady breathing.

"There are so many things I never realized I missed," Pattie said softly. "Things I didn't think to cherish until they were already gone."

"Like what?" Prue asked, curling a piece of Pattie's chestnut hair around her finger. Pattie looked nearly six now, wrapped up in her arms. A single wish sparked in her mind, the desire for children to never grow up, keeping the same innocence and passion for life. Maybe it would be easier that way.

Raising her eyes to Prue, Pattie had to swallow a lump forming in her throat. Not yet, it was too soon to cry again. "Little things," she explained. "The soothing tone in your voice when I needed a little reassurance or the way you were always in the kitchen with coffee when I woke up every morning. The way that, even though you hated it, you bit your tongue and sat through endless hours of beauty parlor as I styled your hair or would wear the bracelet of plastic beads I'd made in preschool. It's the things a mother does, and when I see girls with their own now, I feel empty."

"Well first of all, I do not hate doing anything of the sort," she reminded Pattie, ruffling her hair. "You are my baby girl, my Ladybug, and if you're happy then I am too. It's a mother's code," Prue laughed.

"Ladybug," Pattie repeated. She'd forgotten that, a nickname she'd thrived off of. Phoebe had begun calling her oldest daughter Kyra that; Kyra for the Seer who had shown Phoebe her future with this little girl. For some reason she'd never accepted of Phoebe using that nickname and had thrown a fit when it'd first been spoken. It'd slipped her mind why, it seemed a lot of things concerning Prue left her memory over the years. "I miss that."

Prue smiled, "You don't let your aunts call you that, huh?"

"I can't, I don't think I ever could after you were gone, it was too hard, and then I forgot about it over time," she admitted bashfully. But Prue didn't mind, some things were better left lost. Following that, silence prevailed until Prue worked up the nerve to ask Pattie the main thing on her mind. "Mom?" she queried shakily, "Why do you want to die?"

It had been kept from Piper and Phoebe, that piece of truth Prue had uttered a few hours earlier. Pattie had done all she could to push it far from her curiosity but without any luck.

"Sweetie," Prue sighed, "I don't." She stopped Pattie before she had even a chance to interrupt, "And I know that though you can't admit it to yourself, but you and I both realize the truth. My life has to end in order for the balance to remain the way it is. I can accept that," she forced the words out painfully. Truth was, she could, but it would take some getting used to.

"Well, I can't!" Pattie threw her arms up in frustration but Prue settled her down again.

"Some things can't be altered, no matter how unfair."

"But I wanted you back so much," Pattie cried. "All I had to do was read the spell. Four lines, that's it, but I couldn't finish it, and then I had to watch you die all over again!" Prue's arms tightened around her fragile body, but it didn't ease the grief.

She shushed Pattie to no avail, giving her time to cope before continuing. "I know you tried, baby and the fact that you did is sweet, knowing I'm special enough to mess up who knows what to bring me back. But that you could manage to sacrifice your own desires for what you know is right, that's pure heroism. You don't believe it now, but I know this is the way things are supposed to be. I'm not scared and you shouldn't be either."

"I'm tired of living without you," Pattie moaned, heartbroken. "It's all my fault anyway."

"Destiny isn't your fault," Prue assured her, "And you will never be without me."

Pattie's heart actually warmed to hear that. "I don't doubt that in some way," she giggled, smiling for one of the first times that day. "God, I miss you so much. I went through so much to stop it and then I couldn't." She shivered. "I don't deserve you."

Prue wiped a tear from her eyes, still cherry red. "How could you ever think that?"

"You were saving me when you died," Pattie admitted. "When you pushed me out of the way, he—"

Prue stopped her there, "Ssh, it's all right. I don't think I want to know how I go, sweetheart. Not when, how, or by who, just in case I try to stop it." She saw Pattie's distant gaze and rubbed her shoulder. "Listen to me. No matter what you may have tricked yourself into believing, there is no chance that any of this is of your blame. I love you, I'd save you for anything, that includes my life. And I'm the boss of you, so what I say goes, got it?"

"But—," Pattie tried with no success.

"I mean it. Don't argue with me, or I'll send you to your room," she remarked playfully. And Pattie nodded. For some time they shared memories, Pattie learned more and more that brought her closer to Prue, little tidbits and secrets she'd always wondered about but never had the courage to ask her aunts.

Pattie was pulling the petals off of a flower as she explained, "They don't talk about you as much as they used to, especially on certain days. Aunt Phoebe will if I ask her, Aunt Piper just kind of keeps quiet."

"Don't blame them for that. They're just not sure how to handle it," Prue promised her, "sometimes it's harder not to talk about it though. So I want you to be my messenger and make sure they know that. Deal?"

Pattie laughed when they shook hands to seal the agreement. "Yeah."

"So," Prue ventured. "Who's this Paige person you're not telling me about?" Off of Pattie's fearful eyes, she quickly continued to relieve her worries, "I heard you talking about it when I went to get to your breakfast. Eavesdropping is a family trait, Pattie." Just as Pattie was about to reply with what she'd said to her aunts that morning, Prue reminded her, "The truth, and not some whole friend nonsense." Pattie rolled her eyes, her mother really did know her way too well.

Inhaling deeply, Pattie spoke. "Grandma and Sam had a baby when you were like, six or seven."

"Oh, god," Prue replied, fitting the pieces together. "She's my sister?"

"Half-sister," Pattie gulped. "But yeah."

She wasn't sure what she expected from her mom, but it wasn't what she got. "And she never told us about her? She just let my baby sister live with people we don't know and grow up without us?" Prue cried, upset.

"Wait, mom," Pattie tried to fix her mistake. She'd told this story wrong. "There's a lot you don't know." Pattie told Prue every little detail. That Patty and Sam had given her to a church to shield her from magical consequences, how she'd been lured to the family following Aunt Piper's spell to call a lost witch, their denial at accepting her and then inability to live without her. "I love her," she told Prue. "Just like I love Aunt Piper and Aunt Phoebe."

Prue understood, "Without my death, you would never have known her."

"I tried to go to the Social Services clinic where she works now. I pretended to be some foster kid and tried to tempt her into finding us so I could save you and still have her but then when I was reading the spell I thought about it and…God she's so much like you. What if she kept telling herself that it wasn't right to look for us and that we didn't want her? What if it changed everything? I could end up losing you no matter what and not have her either."

"You did the right thing," Prue said finally as she considered everything. "I'd choose her over myself any day."

"You don't even know her," Pattie countered.

"She's my sister." Prue knew she'd do the same for Piper or Phoebe. "So that doesn't matter."

Pattie fidgeted a bit, "You won't tell Aunt Piper or Aunt Phoebe, will you?"

"Of course not," Prue guaranteed. They both fell silent to the point where Prue was sure Pattie had let herself fall asleep. Running over every moment since Pattie had first tripped down their porch steps into her arms, Prue remembered how strong she had made an endeavor to be at first. A teenager, pushing away any comfort until that one nightmare which now, Prue realized, was probably about her passing in the first place. One by one truths had slipped and so had Pattie's defenses. She was just a vulnerable child hiding behind a shield of pain.

When Prue finally pulled herself from her thoughts, she glanced down to see that Pattie was, in fact, in a deep slumber. She looked so young and peaceful like this, Prue didn't want to break that by waking her.

"Come on, Patricia," she whispered quietly shaking her and expecting Pattie to stir. "We've got to get you home." Pattie's eyes fluttered open, but she didn't move. "Back to your time, missy."

"No," Pattie mumbled.

"Yes," Prue tried to pull her up.

"No!" Pattie yelled back, fighting Prue away and jumping to her feet as the blurriness from waking up passed. She couldn't quite grasp why she was pulling from Prue now after everything but something about the word 'home' made her want to run. She wasn't ready to leave now, not after all this.

Pattie stumbled down the grassy hill towards the river, hopping over it and soaking her shoes. She'd been running ever since she got her, somehow it was the only thing on her mind now. When Pattie slipped on a patch of wet leaves that had cluttered from early autumn, she felt a pair of hands reaching out to catch her as they stopped her head from whacking against a mess of rocks.

Whipping her head around and ready to yell at Prue, Pattie was shocked to see the person whose arms she was in. "Paige!" she cried, trying to remain steady as the woman stared at her, confused.

"You…know my name?" she asked, helping Pattie to sit herself on a rock adjacent to where she'd been.

"I'm the girl from the clinic, remember? You…told me your name," Pattie lied.

Paige settled back on a boulder, keeping a curious eye on the girl who she'd already bumped into once that day. Twice was never a coincidence, as she'd convinced herself. There was always a reason, so Paige knew she had to go along for the ride until she found out why they'd been pushed together a second time.

Pattie was wondering how Prue could manage to lose her, but navigating her own way through this part of the park was a pain. She thought about Prue, the features of her face and the feeling of her presence.

It hurt like hell to think.

"What are you doing here?" Pattie wondered, splashing her water-laden sneakers in a puddle of river water.

"Well, I'm taking my lunch break in a place I like to come to think, and I'm sitting here with someone who obviously needs to confide in another person." A place to think. Pattie remembered now, she knew this place for a reason; she'd been heading here simply because it was where Paige brought her when she wasn't in the mood to be anywhere else. Sheltered from society with streams of sunlight filtering in through the tree branches, it was quiet.

Didn't her mother come here to think sometimes too? Is that why it was always especially familiar?

"I don't want to go home," Pattie said softly, not crying but with a scratchy voice.

"Why not?" Paige couldn't understand that home was actually further than a few blocks. It was a lifetime away with many changes in between. She jumped to a bad conclusion, a sad result of her job. "Is your family hurting you?"

Pattie held her hands up automatically, deflecting that comment. "God, no!" She saw Paige relax a little and made up a story which was partially true, partially fiction. "I just, sometimes I guess I miss my parents too much and then I spend a day with them at mind, doing things I used to do with them and it's hard to go back to being alone."

That warm embrace came back to her, the feeling of Paige holding her brimming with empathy.

It completed her.

"It's totally normal," Paige said, "to feel that way. You are never alone; I think I've come to know that that person is always with you in some way, sometimes you just have to look harder to find them."

Pattie had needed this, she figured. It was just like Paige to come around in the most unexpected of ways and say the one thing she needed to hear. On many different levels, she knew it would always be painful. But Pattie also realized that there would be days of relinquishment, where she could handle it. There'd been more of those then the worse ones more recently. Paige had told her that would happen.

A lot of things Paige had said before were starting to make sense now.

She let herself become entranced by Paige's comfort if only for a minute, as the woman continued to speak to her, still without clue of her real identity. "You can't block your family out. Let them help you. Tell them what's on your mind. If you keep telling them nothing is wrong they are going to believe you. Trust me."

"All right," Pattie agreed, reluctantly freeing herself from Paige's hug. "Thanks."

"If you ever need anything," Paige called after her and Pattie headed back towards her mother. "I come here every day during lunch." Pattie turned around and gave her one last smile of appreciation and as she leapt back over the river, she bumped into Prue, watching from between two tree branches.

Pattie jumped. "Mom!"

"That's her," Prue ignored her, looking on intently as Paige flipped through the pages of a novel she'd been reading. "That's my sister…your aunt, isn't it?" Pattie nodded. "I see the resemblance. It's clearly there." Pattie thought for sure that Prue would, in that moment, defy every rule to march right over there and present herself to Paige without so much as an explanation but the sense of reality kicked in and Prue didn't. She grabbed Pattie's hand, guiding her in the other direction. "Come on."

Pattie didn't argue this time. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be, sweetie. I understand. If I were in your shoes, I can't say I'd have wanted to go home either," she confided in her daughter. Reading Pattie's mind, Prue quickly explained the situation. "I didn't interrupt you when I found you with Paige because from first glance I knew who she was. You needed her, there was no stopping that." Prue felt her eyes sting from her own tears, and trying to quell them, laughed. "Halliwells always show up when you need them, don't they?"

"You did," Pattie answered, her head still turned and looking in Paige's direction.

"Of course I did," Prue said in a mock of superiority. "Was there ever a moment's doubt?"

"Not really," Pattie admitted. "I swear sometimes I think I can hear your voice guiding me."

"I wouldn't leave you to sink or swim if you weren't ready yet." Prue kissed the top of her head. "Are you ready now?" she inquired, in reference towards getting her out of their time.

"I don't know if I'll ever be completely ready," Pattie confessed. "But yeah."

"Then let's do it," Prue squeezed Pattie's hand reassuringly. "We'll get you home, I promise." With that, they left the park, trying to stir up some conversation. The Manor was blocks away on the other side of town and though the walk wasn't entirely long, it was awkward, especially for Pattie. Soon, she knew she'd be back in her own time with things to explain. But moreover, she needed to tell her aunts she loved them if only that. She'd been changed by this already more than Pattie had discovered, she was truly valuing the people in her life who she loved and the time they spent together.

Time was tricky; it played the strangest of games with her heart and her head.

By the time they climbed the steps to the Victorian Manor, they'd been silent for at least 10 minutes, wrapped up in their own thoughts. "Piper, Phoebe?" Prue called upon entering the household.

There wasn't a sign of them. Prue placed her coat on the wrack and made sure she'd locked the front door. It provided her with some measure of comfort, even knowing that demons didn't usually care if a door was obstructing their path, they were coming in anyway. Pattie stared at the door; the same one Shax would blow through in the impending months. It took a minute to fix her eyes on something else as a distraction.

"Piper, Phoebe, where are you?" Prue yelled again, this time louder.

The voice played in Pattie's mind from that dreadful day. "Phoebe, where are you?" So familiar. But she had an idea of where her aunts were hiding themselves, why they weren't hearing her. "Attic," she proclaimed.

Sure enough, both Piper and Phoebe were flipping furiously through the book when they entered. When Prue dropped her bag on an oak chair, they looked up, startled. "You didn't hear me calling you?" Prue asked.

"Honestly didn't," Piper admitted.

"That would have been good if, say, a demon attacked," Prue replied sarcastically.

Piper and Phoebe both glared at her and Pattie, again, rolled her eyes. She found the sisterly banter to be funny, but sometimes it wasn't the time. Plopping down on the antique couch and resting her head on one of the pillows, she watched them exchanged cynical comments for a minute.

Then, she intervened, "So what have we got?"

All three stopped and stared at her, thankful for the mediation of the argument. Phoebe brushed by another few pages, frustrated. "What we've got is no probable plan to get you home," she scowled miserably. "I mean, I figured the power of three would be strong enough but I don't know. The time travel page doesn't give us a spell because we already used it, and it says it takes an enormous amount of harnessed power to move a witch back through time. Frankly, I'm surprised magic brought you here to begin with."

"I guess it's because I'm a next generation witch," Pattie presumed. "It means more power, but still, all the time travel books I've read at magic school say the same thing. It takes more power to back from someplace than it does to get there." Phoebe joined her on the couch, feeling terrible she hadn't made a good conclusion. She placed on hand on both of Pattie's as the teenager sighed. "I really didn't think any of this could have happened."

"It's not your fault," Phoebe told her, putting a small curl of hair behind Pattie's ear, such a motherly move.

"You're sure you don't have any idea of some future spell or potion that can work with affecting time?" Piper pushed, shutting the book, feeling hopeless.

Pattie shrugged at first, but a minute later her eyes lit up. Something about Piper's words and the context of them sparked an idea. Surrounded by curious eyes, Pattie stood and found the five blue and white candles that had been her savior the night prior, arranging them in a circle in front of the Book of Shadows. Then with a lighter she struck the wick of the candle and there flickered one burning flame at a time until there were five of them dancing freely. By this point Pattie didn't need a spell, she held it in her memory.

Hear these words, hear my cry

Spirits from the other side

Come to me, I summon thee

Cross now, the great divide

A burst of wind but nothing happened at first. It seemed like nothing would. Pattie tapped the side of her leg with her fingers, anxiously. "Come on guys, I need you now," she muttered, looking up at the heavens.

Finally there came the two equivalent sets of white lights strung together and twisting their way to the floor. It took a minute for the glowing spheres to settle and dissolve but the transparent ghosts of Patty and Penny were finally at her front. Pattie smiled; firmly relieved her calls had been answered.

"Well, look who it is. Back for more advice are we?" Penny laughed the echo of it catching on as Pattie did too. "I see you've returned from a certain future you were trying to fix, have you not?"

Pattie covered her mouth, stifling her shocked gasp. "You knew about that?"

"Oh dear of course we did," Penny waved a hand at her as if their eavesdropping were nothing, which it really wasn't in the ghostly world. "We see everything, at our discretion anyway." Pattie groaned.

"So you didn't think to stop me?" Pattie asked.

Patty stepped out of the circle, making her voice heard for the first time since her summoning. She sat Pattie back down on the couch beside Phoebe who had her jaw dropped in shock by her mother's presence. "Now, Patricia, do you honestly think that if we'd brought ourselves back down here it would have made any difference towards your actions?" she queried, raising her eyebrows and awaiting a serious answer.

"Probably not," Pattie disclosed.

"I didn't think so," Patty winked at her. "But hey, you learned your lesson from the mistake. Everyone makes them, even though sometimes they come with the hardships," she gently planted a small kiss on Pattie's forehead.

Penny followed Patty by becoming a physical being as well, receiving welcoming hugs from her granddaughters. Then Patty did the same, happy to see her daughters no matter what the condition. "So dear," Penny asked, facing her great-granddaughter. "How may we be of service?" It was a question that created inquiry in all of them, especially Prue.

"You," Pattie began, "Are going to get me home. All of you."

Ah! I'm sorry this took so long. It wasn't supposed to but I had a busy week so it got pushed into the back. Thanks for your reviews guys, I don't normally get them more than a few days after I post so when I was getting them days later it was a special treat. So are you curious to know how she's going to get home? Next chapter is especially great. But what did you think of this one? You're going to review and tell me, right? I will try very hard to have this up as soon as possible. I promise!

Until next chapter, keep up the amazing support you're providing, it makes me happy!

Megan