It has been a LONG time, and I am very embarrassed that I've been so neglectful. But I've finished one WIP this year already, so this is next on the list. In case you're curious, my outline says that this will be 16 chapters total. Since it's been so long that I've worked on this, if you notice any glaring continuity issues, please do let me know. I am so grateful to everyone who's read, favorited, or commented on this and my other Charmed stories.

"Well, if you see him, tell him I'd like to talk to him when he has a chance," –Piper, "A Wrong Day's Journal into Right"

Piper showed up in the doorway and all three of them hid their drawings right away. She looked down at three pairs of the most innocent eyes she'd ever seen.

"Hi," she said. "Are you girls all right? Having a good time?"

Melinda and Joby laughed. "Chris isn't a girl, mom. Duh."

Piper smiled down at her little girl, her little miracle. "Of course, honey. I was just joking. Joby, your mom will be here in a half hour, so make sure you two clean up before then, okay?" The girls nodded, still covering up brightly colored pictures with little fingers. Chris had taken the moment to fold his up and stand up. She looked at him, really looked, and he was the same age, but he looked older. "Can I talk to you?"

"Of course."

She closed the door behind them, then led Chris up to the attic, the family sanctuary. She stopped in the middle, a little unsure what she wanted to do or say, but Chris moved past her, right to the book, and stood with his hands hovering above it.

"I'm a little curious," he said, and then finally let his hands drop onto the cover, tracing around the living symbol there. The triquetta that breathed with the family, that broke when the family broke. The book felt warm under his hands, she knew it did, because it always had.

"About what? You really think the book would reject you?" Piper said, coming closer to stand on the other side of the podium. Chris didn't look at her.

"I'm not exactly family anymore," he said.

"Don't be absurd," she whispered.

He finally looked up, and she saw things in his eyes that she knew would be there: pain, and loss, and grief, and memory.

"I've never exactly been a part of this family, your family."

"You're my son."

He shook his head. "No, I was her son, and she died."

"Chris, you changed the future, and it doesn't happen that way anymore. It won't happen that way."

"That's my point. My mother is dead. The only mother I'll ever have, and she was you, but you're not her."

Piper came around the podium, turned him by the shoulder and gripped both of his arms in her hands. She wanted to shake him, to knock him out of his head and back into the world around him. Instead, she wrapped her arms around him and hugged him.

"I'm still her," she said. "I'm still her."

Chris stood still and let her hug him. She smelled like his mother, the one that he remembered, god, ages ago now, but this Piper had lifted her hands to him with anger more times than love. This Piper had thrown him out of the house and looked at him with skepticism even after she was pregnant. And now the baby hadn't even been him.

He lifted one hand and touched her back, her hair, just a little, and she pulled away and she was crying.

"You died," she said.

"Yeah, I did." He shrugged and placed his hands on the book one more time before pulling them away. It didn't feel right to him anymore. It didn't feel like anything more than a book. "It sucked."

The look she shot him next was exasperated, even through her tears, and he smiled a little, because at least that felt familiar.

She sniffed and rubbed her tears away, and he could see stern, in control Piper coming back to the fore.

"Where have you been?" she asked. "Leo said you…died. But didn't."

"The elders gave me a second life."

"That doesn't explain where you've been. Why you haven't been home."

He shrugged and moved away from the podium and the cold book. "I chose to live a life. I've been working as a whitelighter. I went to school. I did things that weren't possible when Wyatt was still evil."

"You could have done that from here, with your family."

He sat down on a relatively uncluttered bench against the attic wall and shrugged again. He didn't want to argue with her, but he didn't agree with her.

She huffed a little and placed her hands on the book, in much the way he had just done. He knew that it felt warm and alive to her still, and tried to shove down the jealousy that threatened to bubble up.

"It's very confusing," she finally murmured. "I'm sorry that I didn't trust it was you when you came into the room before. And I'm sorry that ten years ago I did believe right away that the baby was you."

"Well," he said, "you were right. Melinda is a beautiful child, and I knew that I would change everything the moment I stepped through the portal. I accept that."

"But you can't accept that we would still be your family now?" She came over and sat next to him and grabbed one of his hands to hold between her own. He looked down at them and they were a mother's hands. They were the hands he had hazy memories of as a ten year old. "As a Halliwell, Christopher, you should know better."

He shook his head. "Leo can be very persuasive," he said, but knowing that he had crumbled like a piece of paper when Leo had brought Victor. "But everything's different for me, now." He looked into her eyes and smiled sadly. She looked everything like the mother he remembered, and he could see that was serious about accepting him as her son. But so many parts of him rejected that, and he knew that she would see that in eyes as well.

She opened her mouth to respond but the doorbell startled them and broke the mood. He pulled his hand free and she was left grasping empty air.

"That would be Joby's mom," he said. "You'd better go."

She looked sad, but she stood. "We've got time, now, Chris. We'll figure this out."

He forced himself to nod and watched her hurry out of the attic, already calling for the girls as the doorbell rang again. When she was gone, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his picture.

He ran his fingers over it, thinking about how things had been and how things were now. Even in just stick figures, it was possible to make out Leo and Piper, and their two kids, Wyatt and Melinda.