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'Leo!' A chorus of cries rang out as the foursome of Halliwell's, plus their bleeding visitor, orbed back into the manor.
Back in the alleyway; Chris had gathered up the crumbled girl and all but orbed straight back to the house without so much as a backwards glance. Paige had followed him, orbing in shortly after with Phoebe and Piper in tow. All three women looked on with as much curiosity as concern, at Chris' reaction to the girl named Nora.
When they'd arrived, he was knelt over her prone body where he'd laid her on the sofa, with one hand pressed to the gash in her side under her ridden-up shirt and his other brushing worriedly over her pale face. 'Leo!'
As it happened, what they thought had been a minor gash sustained in her crash landing, was actually what looked to be a stab wound - which she could only have suffered prior to jumping through the portal.
'What's the matter?' Leo finally materialised just behind the group who were crowded around the sofa, shooting off a confused look at the sight of his son wrapped up in a girl whom he'd never seen before.
'Heal now, questions later.' Piper waved a hand over the scene, shrugging slightly as she did. Leo leant down beside Chris, who only moved a fraction from Nora so as to let his father get just close enough to heal her. 'What happened?' Chris eyed the warm glow radiating from his father's hands carefully, watching as the deep angry slash got smaller and smaller and Nora's chest to started to rise and fall steadily as her eyes to began to flutter.
'Well,' Paige started without really knowing what to say, because none of them really knew what had happened. 'We were at a vanquish, which went well.' She glanced at Phoebe, unsure of what to mention next.
'Yeah, it did. And then a portal opened, I guess...' Chris flinched slightly at the mention of it, but Phoebe carried on. 'And then next thing we know, Nora – that's Nora,' She pointed at the still unconscious girl. '–just kind of appeared.'
'A portal?' Leo looked at Chris, waiting for some kind of an answer.
'Yep.' He didn't look up from where his gaze was fixed on who they all now knew was Nora. 'Nora?' The tone Chris took with Leo was not unusually clipped, but it was in starker than usual contrast to the soft, gentle tone he took with their visitor.
A soft groan emanated from the sofa, and with it a fraction of the tension Chris'd been holding rolled off his shoulders as Nora started to wake. Her forehead creasing with confusion, it took the girl a moment before everything fell into place and she realised where, and with whom, she was. Her eyes shot open, and she all but wrenched her hand from the gentle hold Chris had on it. Sitting up probably all too quickly, Nora reefed up the hem of her shirt to check the side where her stab wound had been.
Chris retreated reluctantly to sit on the coffee table, giving Nora some space. 'Are you okay?' Leo asked of the girl who was on her way to being well and truly awake, now. 'I'm Leo.'
Nora smiled, albeit nervously. 'Thanks, yes.' Smoothing down her shirt, it was obvious that she was purposely avoiding making eye contact with Chris. Brittle energy was rolling off her in waves, but not in a way which was in any way sinister. She was all but contorting herself on the pillowy seat in an effort to keep from inadvertently touching the young whitelighter who sat nearby.
'Who did that to you?' Piper spoke to Nora as she watched the strange interaction with concern, heartache evident on her son's face and in his slumped shoulders.
For the first time since she'd dropped in, Nora made eye contact with Chris. Her eyes were wide and her lips downturned, the small and wordless exchange only making it evermore obvious that the two young future beings had some kind of a connection. Chris let out a deep breath, growling on his next word. 'Wyatt.'
His head sagged forward where he sat hunched forward on his knees, one hand reaching out and grasping at Nora's. The girl just watched for a moment, her face softening at the sight of the tired, defeated boy sat in front of her. It was obvious she felt almost bad about it when she tugged her hand free again, moving away from him once more.
'I'm sorry.' Piper broke the heavy silence. They all knew what Chris' angry declaration meant – that somehow and for some reason, from the dark version of their future, Wyatt had hurt this girl – had stabbed and almost killed Nora. But what remained unclear was just how Nora knew the two Halliwell boys.
Nora could do little more than to offer the older woman a weak smile, meeting her eyes for but a moment before her gaze went back to flitting nervously around the room.
'Why here, though?' Phoebe hadn't meant for her question to sound as accusatory as it did, but she earned herself a swift and cutting glare from her nephew anyhow. 'Sorry-' She smiled warmly at Nora, going about correcting herself. '-I just meant, was there a reason you had the spell bring you here, specifically?'
With five sets of eyes trained on her and a loaded question to boot, Nora was left with little option but to spill her proverbial beans. Although, not being one to be easily pressed, she addressed her answer lowly and solely to Chris. 'He figured it out.'
Chris had barely lifted his head from where it had fallen earlier, only doing so to meet Nora's veiled gaze. 'How much?' The pair of them might as well have been speaking in tongues, with the rest of the room's occupants exchanging multiple confused glances in their efforts to keep up.
'All of it.' Her voice cracked with the admission, and suddenly Chris became impossibly more tense.
'Alright, someone wanna catch me up, here?' Piper, not known for her good patience, interrupted. 'And don't you say future consequences, so help you...' But her stern warning was left unfinished when her fury-eyed son cut her off.
'Wyatt tried to kill-' Nora watched the now standing man in front of her as he became increasingly unhinged, wondering if he might say the wrong thing. '-an innocent, because he found out that I had help in getting back here in the first place! Because he found a new way to hurt me.' He spat out the words, quietly seething as he paced around the room. His gaze never left Nora for very long, but nonetheless he hadn't noticed the way that Nora had flinched at his mention of her being an innocent. Chris didn't see the look on her face, and the downcast and then dismayed look that spread across her delicate features, when he called her the term which was so flippant and so common.
'But you're safe now, right?' Paige tried to break the tension, offering the obvious but yet to be asserted fact that Nora was indeed safe from Wyatt, at least for now. 'We'll figure something out, Chris, but she's safe now.' Attentions had moved almost totally to the agitated Halliwell, so much so that by the time Paige's levelheaded reassurances had stuck a chord, no one had even noticed Nora fade out.
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