AN: Well, it's been a while since I've written anything for "Charmed" and I apologize. I hope some of you out there remember this and are still reading!

"You have some serious explaining to do, young man," –Piper, "Chris-Crossed"

Piper was busy. A ten-year-old daughter and a twelve-year-old son kept her that way, not counting the club or her crazy sisters or obsessed husband or growing extended family. So when she had a little down time, she took it. A spare moment to sit alone with a cup of tea and just breathe deeply was heavenly.

Melinda was upstairs with a friend having a Sunday play date, and Wyatt was at Magic School with Paige for some private tutoring. She had already prepared a snack for the afternoon, and had all the ingredients for dinner waiting for her. The club was stocked and booked through the end of the month, and the house was clean. She didn't know where Leo had gotten himself off to, but at that moment, tea and the opportunity to shut her eyes for a moment was more important anyway.

Leo was tenacious with the Chris issue, but Piper found it healthier, and yes, less painful to let him go. She wished Leo would find something else to focus on, perhaps his two living breathing children.

She sighed and opened her eyes to take another sip of tea, and there he was, standing in the doorway. Chris.

I'm hallucinating, she thought, frozen with tea cup pressed to her lips. I'm so stressed out I'm actually hallucinating.

"Hi," he said, but didn't come any closer.

She took the opportunity to put her tea cup down as slowly as she could and raised her hands back up carefully, just in case he wasn't a hallucination but something much direr.

He watched her hands and backed away carefully, until he was standing beyond the doorframe in the other room.

"Okay then," he said. "Um, so I'll just be going."

When he was gone she picked her tea cup back up and suddenly wished she had something stronger.

"Hey," Leo said, coming downstairs after dropping Chris's stuff off in the spare bedroom to find him standing in the living room, looking lost. "Did you find your mother?"

"Yeah," he said. "So I think I'm going to go and stay at Grandpa's."

"Oh," Leo said. "Sure. I uh, I put your stuff upstairs, but you can go and grab it. Where's Piper?"

Chris looked over his shoulder, like he was making sure she wasn't right there. "In the conservatory," he said.

Leo was surprised he wasn't still there with her. He didn't think that boded well for their first contact in so many years. "Alright, well. At least stay for dinner. Or drop your stuff off and come back for dinner. You should meet your siblings."

Chris hesitated. "Sure. Maybe. I'll think about it."

They stood there awkwardly, and Leo wanted to reach out and hug him, to beg him not to leave, even if he did know where he was going. Right now anywhere outside the manor seemed like much too far away.

"So I'm going to go," Chris said, and slid past Leo to jog up the stairs.

"Hey," Leo called, stopping him on the stairs. "I'm serious about dinner."

Chris nodded down at him. "Yeah. I know."

Leo watched him until he turned the corner at the top and he couldn't see him anymore. Then he made his way to the conservatory. He hoped it was still in one piece.

When Piper looked up again, Leo was standing where she had thought she'd seen Chris only a few moments before. She breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of her husband.

"Hi honey," she said. "Are you home for the rest of the day?"

"Yeah," he said, but he was giving her a curious look.

"What?" she asked.

"I just thought you'd be a little more emotional about this," he said after a small hesitation.

"About what?"

"Chris. Didn't you talk to him?"

"What?" She was becoming suspicious that Leo had started to hallucinate, too. That or they had a demon in the house.

He came and sat down next to her and took the tea cup away from her and placed it gently on the coffee table. Then he grabbed her hands and held them gently.

He looked into deep into her eyes for a while, studying whatever he saw there. Then he said, "Chris is home. He came to talk to you. What happened?"

She felt all the breath leave her body. "Chris is home?"

He frowned. "Piper." He said her name with a touch of admonishment.

She gasped and looked at him, then turned back to look at the doorway. "I thought I was hallucinating."

He rubbed his thumb over her knuckles and gave her a small smile. "No, it's really him."

Chris ran his hand over the closed door to the room he knew was Wyatt's, and then stopped outside the room that would have been his. It would be Melinda's now, and he listened outside the door until he heard the soft voices of two little girls at play. Acting on impulse, he grabbed the doorknob and turned it, opening the door.

Inside, there was a dark haired girl with dark brown eyes just like her mother's. He barely glanced at the other child, so intent was he on Melinda. She'd taken his place, was his twin really, and he loved her instantly. She was beautiful, and intense and she turned bright, intelligent eyes up to look at him.

He wished he'd never come home. He didn't want to take anything away from her, and he didn't want to ever feel bitter about what she didn't even know she'd taken away from him.

"Who're you?" she asked.

"My name's Chris," he said, and came inside the room. "What's yours?"

"Mom says I shouldn't talk to strangers."

"I know your mom," he said. "We're not strangers."

She glanced at the other girl, then stood up, dropping the markers they had been sharing. "If you're a…" she hesitated, looking again at the other girl. "If you're not good then you'll be in big trouble." She held her hands up in front of her just like Piper.

He glanced at the other girl, intent on her markers, and wondered about Piper allowing non-magical children into this house, and started to orb, just enough to turn a little blue so Melinda could see. The other girl looked up, but missed the show, shrugged at whatever she thought she'd seen out of the corner of her eye and went back to drawing.

"I'm good," he said.

"Oh," she breathed. "Okay. Do you work with dad?"

"Yeah," he said, and tried not to think about how he'd just essentially been fired. "Can I draw with you?"

Melinda nodded and sat back down. "I'm Melinda. This is Joby," she said, and the other girl looked up and smiled shyly. "We're working on ideas for parent-teacher day. We all have to draw pictures to leave on our desks and our parents are supposed to guess which one is ours."

"We're going to makes ours weird," said Joby, finally speaking up. "So it'll be hard for them to guess."

Chris sat down with them and reached for some paper and a marker. "Good idea."

"How did you find him?" Piper asked.

"The elders finally told me," Leo said. "They knew all along, but Chris asked them not to tell us."

"What do you mean? Chris could have come home, and he didn't?"

Leo nodded grimly, his eyes focused on their joined hands.

"Oh," she said. "How did he survive after Gideon stabbed him?"

Leo shook his head a little, both in denial and in an effort to cast off bad memories. "He didn't. He died."

Piper pulled her hands out of his, and studied his face even though he wouldn't look at her. "What does that mean? He's a full whitelighter now? That's why he looks the same as before?"

"No," Leo said. "It's something different. They gave him back his life, but he won't age until he's supposed to naturally, the same as Melinda. It was supposed to be a gift. For him, for all of us."

"But he ran away."

"Yes."

"For ten years."

"Yes."

Piper stood up and started to pace in the little conservatory. The story didn't seem right. She had an idea why he didn't come home in the first place. She'd known him for a good amount of time ten years ago, more then enough to know that he had a few issues with them. But why come back now?

"What happened?" she asked, stopped to stare down at Leo.

"What?" He looked up at her confused.

"Why did they tell you now?"

"I don't know," he said. "Chris hasn't told me anything."

She brushed a hand through her hair and sighed. "Typical."