A New Life in San Francisco
Chapter 18; Facing up to choices.
Halliwell Manor
James apparated straight into the attic of the Charmed One's home late into the night. His accompanying crack startled the person sleeping on the sofa into the land of the living. James staggered forwards rather blindly in the dark but he could easily make out Chris's form and naked chest in the street light coming through the window.
James' rather uncoordinated form kicked the corner of the table and he stumbled to his knees just as strong hands grabbed him around his torso to steady him. "Christ, James!" Chris gasped. "What happened to you?"
James frowned in confusion before glancing down at his arms and legs. He was drenched through and very cold but he didn't see what Chris' problem was. "Where have you been!?" Chris continued, "It's not raining out!"
"It is in England." James slurred and he tried to stand before promptly collapsing again though this time he was lowered carefully down onto the sofa.
"Have you been drinking?" Chris gasped in shock having never even seen James drink alcohol in more than the smallest amount. "You're drunk! Where have you been?"
James, even drunk, knew that it was better not to tell this hunk the full truth. "Been to the pub. Might as well go to England if everyone thinks I'm a murderer."
"Oh god, James." Chris gasped before sitting beside James. He pulled James soaked and cold back against his bare chest and pulled James along with him as he leaned back to lie down fully. He tugged James' jacket and shirt off as he spoke. "I don't think you're a murderer."
"Yeah, you do! Saw your eyes." James blurted out without thinking.
"I was shocked because I saw how angry you were, you've never wanted to hurt a fly and then suddenly you couldn't kill them quickly enough." Chris told him honestly. "Why do you hate them so much, and don't tell me it's just because of your parents or even what you told me of your encounters with them because that isn't enough!"
James sobered up slightly at the questioning and shivered violently but not because of the cold. His chest seized up and he rolled to the side so that he was wedged between Chris and the back of the chair. He idly toyed with Chris' chest as he spoke. When his voice came out it was barely more than a whisper.
"I was in Azkaban for eighteen months but I witnessed Voldemort's life whenever he was feeling emotions." James' voice became clearer with every word and every tear that fell from his face onto his boyfriend's chest. The effect of his drunkenness was the only thing that made him speak though; it would have been too painful otherwise. "Every time he went on a raid with his Death Eaters I'd have to see it, as if I was him. I felt what he felt and it was disgusting."
"What did you feel?" Chris asked softly.
"Elation, arousal, disgust of the victims." James sobbed. "Enjoyment, everything. I saw them raping, torturing and killing them and I had to like it."
Chris pulled James to him and kissed the top of his head. "The fact you hated it is exactly why you're different to them."
"They deserve to die, Chris!" James said resolutely. "To avenge those they killed, to stop them doing it again, and to stop them from hurting you and you family."
"I know, and so do my mum and Aunts now." Chris sighed. "I had a go at them."
"You can't understand properly, none of you can." James was getting sleepy, "Not until you have to witness it."
Chris wanted to ask more but James' warm breath had started to take on a steady slow brush against his skin and he knew his troubled boyfriend had succumbed to his drunken state and slipped off into sleep. He sighed and put his arms around James' cold torso and resolved to stay awake to guard James against his nightmares.
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOX
The next morning
Chris pulled the blankets over James and tucked him in firmly before kissing his forehead. James had a fever, probably a side effect of getting drunk, getting soaked and cold and then apparating long distance. Chris knew how apparating felt and he wouldn't want to try it whilst even tipsy, let alone full out drunk.
Chris sighed before leaving the attic, he closed the door with a click and headed down to the kitchen. He wasn't surprised to find his mother and aunts sitting around the table. Wyatt was standing against Aunt Phoebe's chair while Aunt Paige held himself. He shook his head as he stared at the small baby.
"I still cant believe that's me." He muttered making the three jump. Looking at them all he noted their anxious expressions and tired faces. "Didn't sleep well?"
"Not really, kept having nightmares about the Wizards." Phoebe admitted without looking up at him. Chris sighed, he knew they were talking about the way James had killed them.
He plopped himself down on an empty chair and lifted Wyatt onto his lap when his brother requested it. "You think you have it bad?" He started once he had all of their attention. "James has his reasons for wanting them dead and don't think that you can get rid of these Wizards without killing them." He added when his Aunt Paige opened her mouth. "They are worse than Demons."
"How can Wizards be worse than Demons?"
"Demons kill because it is their nature but they don't rape, beat and torture their victims for no reason other than pleasure." Chris spoke quietly but they all heard him. "They don't deserve to have your pity and eventually you will have to decide whether you are going to help us to kill them or whether you will just sit at the side and wait for them to get to Wyatt and my younger self."
"Has he been tortured by them?" His mom asked him.
Chris flinched slightly, "I don't really know how bad the things that have happened to him first hand. "We…I mean you three, myself and Wyatt, stopped an attack when the Wizards were torturing him under the Cruciatus."
The three frowned having remembered the spell from yesterday's explanation. "So one time under the torture curse and he wants revenge against them all." His mom raised an eyebrow.
"He's doing this to protect us, our family." Chris told her sharply, "You didn't have to witness the future like we did."
"I still don't understand what could be so bad that he'd kill them like that." His mom countered calmly, used to having to justify actions in her seven year war.
Chris sighed knowing that he'd have to speak of what James had admitted to him last night. "I'm only telling you this because he trusts you in the future and because you wont be able to understand otherwise. He was locked up by the 'Light Wizards' after being framed for his Aunt, Uncles and Cousin's murders by the 'Dark Wizards' and he was forced to witness the Dark Wizards every time their leader joined a raid."
"A raid?" Phoebe asked with a horrified look.
"They go out a target a random family or a Wizard or Witch that they don't like and they torture, rape and kill every member of the family." Chris spoke quietly but his words were heard as if they the tolling of a death bell.
All three had gone pale. "I cant say that I agree with their deaths though." Piper put in though she seemed more accepting to James.
"I don't expect you to." James' voice from the door made everyone in the room jump up. Wyatt's shield sprung up around him and Chris but James just eyed it for a second. "You might if you are force to witness it but until then I accept the fact that you cant kill Mortals without dire need and I understand that you three and even Chris will always want to stun them over killing them. All I ask is that you understand why I would see them permanently stopped."
"We get it." Piper put in. "But why not just imprison them?"
"They have escaped before and I don't think the past will be safe until their lives aren't in it anymore." James sighed pressing his fingers into his temples obviously trying to push down his hangover. Chris took pity on him and handed the now unshielded Wyatt to his mother before standing and passing James a glass of water. James nodded before walking out of the second kitchen door and into the back garden.
"What's wrong with him?" Phoebe asked.
"Hangover." Chris grumbled.
"Really?" Piper looked shocked.
"You'll get used to dealing with kids with hangovers." Chris smirked with a look at the baby version of his older brother. "He apparated to England, and came back drunk, cold and wet."
"He went drinking in England?" Paige asked with a frown, Chris nodded with a curious look at her suspicious tone. "If he left here at two last night it would have only been four in the afternoon there. How did he get so drunk, let alone soaked and cold? It would have been daytime there."
Chris frowned and glanced out of the door where James was sitting on a garden chair nursing the glass of water. "He obvious did drink but it must have been in this country. Why then did he go to England?"
Chris shook the foreboding feeling off before turning his attention back to his mother and aunts. He finished eating his breakfast before piling a small amount on a plate so that he could force his boyfriend to eat something even though he knew James wouldn't want anything with his hangover.
XOXOXOXOXOXOX
James stared into the flowerbed breathing in the fresh scent of life. He never got enough of that smell after eighteen months on the dead island that was Azkaban. He lost himself in the blur of green as memories of Azkaban replayed over in his mind. The worst by far was the induced dream of the slaughter of an Orphanage. Tom Riddle's childhood home.
It was the worst of his memories and he had had nightmares about all of the orphans as they were raped or beaten, and sometimes both before they were killed. For once Voldemort hadn't bothered to burn the evidence, instead letting the Mortal police discover the slaughter.
"James!" Chris' voice almost made him fall back off of the chair, his panther reflexes stopped him though. "What were you thinking about? I've been trying to get your attention for the last minute." Chris tilted James' head up to look at him as he placed the plate of food on the bench beside him. "Why are you crying?"
James flinched before wiping his eyes fiercely. That memory was one of the only things that could still bring tears to his eyes. "You really don't want to know." James told him. Chris went to protest so James continued. "I was thinking about the worst memory that I have."
"Ok." Chris drew the word out. "I don't want to know." James smiled at him sadly. "Don't think that I wont listen to it though if you need to talk to someone about it."
"Thanks love." James nodded.
"Love?" Chris raised his eyebrow but there was a small smile tugging at his lips.
James looked down. "Well…yeah. I mean, I don't have to call you that. I just…" James stuttered and his hands began to shake.
"It's ok, I love you too." Chris gently placed his hand under James' chin and lifted his face so that their eyes could meet. James smiled in relief before leaning in. Chris met him half way and James let himself be consoled by the love filled kiss.
XOXOXOXOXOXOX
Death Eater Safe House
"Crabbe! Goyle! Jacobson, you're coming with me!" Draco Malfoy snapped as he put his silver mask on over his face.
"Our orders were to lay low." Jacobson argued.
"Are you questioning my orders, Jacobson?" Draco pulled his wand and snapped out a quick burst of the Cruciatus curse. Jacobson collapsed to his knees but the curse was ended before he could let out a scream. "Follow me."
With that a stir-crazy Draco Malfoy apparated out to a Muggle's house in the suburbs of San Francisco for some fun, not knowing that he wouldn't live long enough to be punished by his father and aunt.
XOXOXOXOXOXOX
Halliwell Manor
James took the crystal and slashed his arm with its pointed tip to that blood seeped onto it. He handed it to Phoebe as Chris placed his hand on his arm to heal him.
"Explain this to us again?" Paige asked as she sat beside the table. "How is this going to not just hone in on you?"
"Because my Whitelighter hid me from any form of scrying, Wizarding or Wicca." James told them. "Without me to find it will search out any form of Wizarding Magic since our blood is infused with it whereas yours isn't."
"But wont it just land on England?" Piper joined the conversation. "I mean, that's where the best match for your magic and blood is right?"
Chris glared at his mother for bringing James' parents into the debate but James stopped him from arguing with her by speaking. "That's what the Runes are for." He gestured to the glowing runes that sat at all four corners of the map so that they encircled the city of San Francisco. "They keep the search within the City, the crystal will find any Wizarding activity from the Death Eaters."
They sat there for five minutes as Phoebe swung the crystal gently over the map before it reacted. It dragged her hand to the side as the Crystal landed on a street only four blocks from the Manor.
James went pale as he recognised the residential area. He stood up knocking the table slightly as he did. "What's wrong?" Chris asked him.
"It's a raid!" James told them as his hands shook uncontrollably. "I have to go. Now!"
"A raid?" Chris gasped before grabbing potions bottles off of the table. "Oh god."
"Chris." James turned on him and all three of the sisters. "You don't have to come on this one."
"I'm not letting you go alone." Chris told him bluntly and James knew there wasn't any point in arguing.
"Why not?" Piper asked addressing James with a suspicious glare.
"You wont like what you see." James told them simply before apparating away. All four disappeared as Chris followed and Paige orbed herself and her sisters to the house on the map.
XOXOXOXOXOXOX
Mortal House; San Francisco
James apparated into the house with a crack making the four Death Eaters jump and cower away in fear that James was one of the other Inner Circle members. When they saw his black jeans and short-sleeved shirt however they regained their courage and aimed their wands at him.
"Expelliarmus!" Draco Malfoy's voice was obvious to James and he let the disarming hex hit him squarely and with no effect. James held his hands out to the sides to show he didn't have a wand. Draco smirked. "Surrender then."
"I don't think so, Malfoy." James snarled as he glanced at the Muggles in the corner and felt his fury rising and fuelling his magic. It was obvious by the state of the boy and girl that Malfoy had cast an Imperius curse on the boy and forced him to rape his own sister. The two parents were trapped under body binds but James could tell from their eyes that they had been tortured under the Cruciatus Curse.
The boy and girl were sobbing in a huddle in the corner and their parents eyes were torn between looking at James and looking at their children.
"Potter!" Draco snapped with a small amount of shock.
"Obviously." James drawled just as two sets of orbs appeared behind him and Chris and the sisters appeared. "I'm not letting you out of here. Piper, aim for their wands."
Piper hesitated in shock as she stared at the mortal family in the corner. Chris was the first to recover out of the four of them and he snapped out his hand and sent one of the Death Eater's wands flying across the room. The sisters' eyes hardened and they attacked as one. Piper blew up another's wand before he could react while Paige sent a lamp sailing through the air to distract Draco.
Phoebe threw her own potion and the bright flash blinded everyone without Wicca Magic in the room. James was impressed by the potion since the sisters couldn't have had more than a few hours to work out the potion.
A cutting hex flew towards them and Chris and Phoebe were forced to dive out of the way even though neither of them knew what the spell was. Even though only two of the four Wizards still had their wands they were still doing a good job standing against the five of them though James wasn't really doing much. Draco sent a Cruciatus at James and he rolled under the spell and came up by the window.
He lashed out with his hand and hit one of the unarmed wizards across the throat before sketching an air purifying Rune to surround the now unconscious Death Eater. It only took a split second to set the Rune to filter out any oxygen. Not a pleasant way to die but at least the Death Eater wouldn't feel it in his unconscious state.
James, standing at the side of the battle, had gone unnoticed as he did this and he was impressed to see that Chris had sent a shard of glass from the broken window into the chest of the second unarmed Death Eater after he had tried to use his larger weight to tackle Paige.
James started writing a complex rune grateful that Chris and the sisters were keeping Draco and the slimmer of the three lesser Death Eaters busy since it meant he could write the Rune in peace. It wasn't one that he had written before since it needed a target to work. A ring of ten Runes were traced from his finger tips and they flashed as they began to spin. James aimed the centre of the blurring sequence at the lesser of the two Death Eaters.
An unfamiliar Rune was formed from the glow of the spinning sequence and as the air between the Death Eater and the rune, his personal rune that the rune sequence had discovered forcefully, began to shimmer and the rune grew brighter with each second as the Death Eater began to get tired and weak. James could cut the spell off at any time and leave the target weakened but he had no intention of doing so this time.
Even though a string of shimmering air connecting James' rune sequence to the Death Eater was visible the others were too busy to see it. The first clew they got was when the Death Eater stopped sending spells into the battle and shortly after simply dropped his wand and sagged to the ground as the last of his life was leeched out of his body. This, unlike the purifying rune was completely painless. The victim just fell to sleep and never woke again.
Draco stared at his fallen comrades for a second in shock and then up at his five enemies with a slight hint of fear in his eyes. He seemed to make the decision not to run and James knew that it was because he knew, like James knew, that the four Wicca witches didn't really know how to protect themselves from most of his spells. He could up the level of his spells and push the four of them back. He was still outnumbered though and even as James saw the glint in his eyes he knew that Draco had decided to try to even the odds in a way that nobody could block. The next few moments of James' life seemed to last a whole day as Draco took aim at Chris and opened his mouth and spoke the fatal words.
"Avada Kadavra!"
The green light shot from Draco's wand so fast that the sisters could only cry out in shock. Chris' eyes widened but he was too slow to try to orb out or even orb enough to save his life. James though was faster. A series of four cracks echoed through the room as he did the impossible; Multiple Apparition.
He apparated across the room appearing again with his hands around Chris before the two of them dissapparated again and reappeared between Draco and the Mortal family. Chris collapsed to the ground as a wave of dizziness overwhelmed him. James rounded on Draco in a rage and clicked his fingers rather unnecessarily. Draco who was looking at him didn't see the blast that erupted from the single Rune left from James' previous sequence.
It was designed to be absorbed by James which was one of the purposes of the spell but since Draco was between him and the Rune it travelled straight through him to reach James. The effect wasn't physically noticeable on the outside but the surge of magic designed for James' system overloaded Draco's internal organs and ruptured his magical core killing him instantly.
James watched without feeling as Draco's body hit the ground and didn't even noticed the slightly lessened magic being absorbed into his body refilling it from his bout of multiple apparition. He felt Chris grab his wrist and looked down at his slightly older boyfriend. Chris smiled before tugging slightly, James obliged and pulled him up.
"What was that?" Chris gasped. "Why do I feel so dizzy?"
"Multiple apparition, it's supposed to be impossible to map out a second jump before taking the first." James shrugged slightly. "Is everyone ok?"
The three sisters glanced at him from their place on the ground with the mortals and nodded solemnly. There was a glint in their eyes, especially Paige's and Piper's as they consoled the two young children who had been forced to do things that should never happen to an adult let alone two seven year old. James only hoped that given enough time they would be able to put it behind them since it had happened at such a young age.
"I can't get them to move." Phoebe told him. She was trying to get the distraught parents to move again but they were still in a full body bind.
James frowned knowing that he wouldn't be able to reverse the spell with his current knowledge of Runes, he only knew a few wards and attacks but not healing spells or counter curses. His Wicca magic wasn't going to be precise enough either.
He stepped forwards and scooped the slim Death Eater's wand from the floor and aimed it at the two mortals. Fear shone in their eyes and James found himself hoping that the Death Eaters hadn't created another version of the Dursleys. "Finite!" His voice was barely above normal level but the two Mortal's flinched violently. Satisfied that the general counter-charm had worked on them both he turned the wand on the four bodies.
"Accio Bone Masks." The four masks slipped off of their owners faces and James was shocked to see Gregory Goyle with a shard of glass coming from his chest and Vincent Crabbe peacefully lying under the window. Their leader was the expected Draco but the fourth wasn't one that he knew and he didn't find that he cared.
"Evanesco!" James stated focusing on each of the bodies individually as he repeated the spell. They began to fade before vanishing completely. He decided that the Mortals didn't need to see the reminder of their torture lying on their living room floor.
Chris was looking at him with a raised eyebrow whilst the sisters just seemed shocked. Their wasn't any shock over the deaths though and James wondered if seeing the type of thing that the Death Eaters did for fun would be enough to get them to fight this battle with their entire hearts and not just because their son was asking them to.
James looked over the mortals but the fear in the eyes of the adults made him shudder. They might accept the Wicca witches but James had used one of the torturers wands and that was enough to make them scared of him. "I'll meet up with you later." James muttered to Chris.
"Where are you going to go?" Chris spun on him in concern, probably imagining the night before.
"I have a few things I need to do to end this war." James told him.
Chris frowned but accepted it at face value taking the meaning of war to be the one between themselves and the future Death Eaters. James apparated out with another crack and reappeared straight in the middle of Diagon Alley. At least in this world he was anonymous and he'd be able to stop the war and not the one that Chris was thinking about either.
XOXOXOXOXOX
End Chapter
