Author's Note: I'm sorry that it took me so long to update, and I'm so grateful to everyone who's stuck with me all this time. You guys rock. On the upside, I hopefully found a way to get rid of writer's block (expect an update to "Thicker Than Water", next), and this chapter is completely different, and better, than my original plan for this story.
Paige woke up on a hard, cold stone floor. Her head was pounding, and her entire body hurt. She felt like she'd just been hit by a truck.
'What the hell happened to me?' Paige thought, as she slowly pushed herself up into a sitting position.
The sound of metal scraping on rock caught her attention, and Paige looked down to see a thin, metal band around her wrist. Memories came rushing back. Prue, Avares, trading her freedom for her sister's life, Prue escaping when Avares tried to take her captive, again...
'Please be safe, Prue,' she prayed. 'Please, please be safe.'
She wanted nothing more than to orb out of Hell and find her sister, but Avares' threat rang clear in her mind. She had no idea if he'd been telling the truth when he'd promised to track down and kill her family if she tried to escape, but she knew she couldn't take the chance. She had to protect them, no matter what.
And wasn't that strange, being so protective of people she barely even knew? She could count the times she'd talked to Piper and Phoebe on one hand, and their conversations had almost exclusively been about demon vanquishes. She was fairly certain that Piper hated her, and resented her presence in their lives. And nothing she did seemed to convince Piper that she wasn't trying to replace Prue.
Yet, she was the only thing that stood between Avares and her sisters, and she'd seen what he'd already done to Prue, and she wanted to keep him from getting his hands on Piper and Phoebe. She'd do anything, even if it meant staying down here in Hell.
Resigned to her decision, Paige looked around at her surroundings. She was in a nondescript cavern with the entrance blocked by a shining wall of pure energy. Probably not the same place she'd rescued Prue from; her captor wouldn't want Prue to be able to bring Piper and Phoebe back to break her out. The sword Theresa had given her lay a short distance away, the blade marred by a burn mark in the shape of a handprint. Paige felt a moment of dark joy as she imagined a matching burn on the demon's hand. She hoped it hurt.
Paige tried to stand, but her legs shook too much to support her weight, and she sank back down to the rocky ground. She dragged herself across the ground to lean against the wall, snagging the sword and dragging it along with her. Slumping back against the wall, Paige pulled the weapon across her legs. She knew she couldn't kill Avares, but she wasn't going to make it easy on the demon when he eventually came for her.
She still hurt, everything screaming in protest every time she moved, and pulling herself across the ground to the wall had been exhausting. Paige closed her eyes, letting herself drift. She had no idea how long she'd been sitting there when a bright light filled the cavern, piercing her closed eyelids and pulling her out of the light doze she'd fallen into. Opening her eyes, she saw a familiar face standing in front of her.
"Henry Mitchell?" she asked, in disbelief, as she stared at the cop she'd met earlier that day.
Except that he didn't look like the same man she'd met that afternoon. He was older, with scars on his face that hadn't been there before. He had a sword strapped to his waist, and as he drummed his fingers on the hilt of the weapon, she saw a wedding ring on his left hand. She was fairly certain he hadn't been wearing one that morning, or she never would have flirted with him.
"Come on," Henry said, briskly, holding a hand out to her to pull her to her feet. Paige accepted without thinking about it, leaning against the wall for support once she was standing. "Let's get you out of here."
"What?" Paige asked, staring at him in confusion. "No. I can't."
"I'm sorry," Henry snarked. "Do you have another, more pressing engagement? Because, we could wait - oh, no we can't. We're in Hell!"
He shot her an incredulous look, like he couldn't believe they were even arguing about it. Paige crossed her arms over her chest, glaring at him.
"I can't leave," she told him. "My sisters will die if I do."
"You're going to die if you stay down here," Henry insisted, angrily. "Look, I'm trying to rescue you, here, but you're not being very cooperative."
"Who the hell are you?" Paige demanded, barking out a harsh laugh. "How do I know I can even trust you? Why did you come after me?"
Something dark and bitter flashed briefly across Henry's face. "Because I'm the reason you're down here in the first place," he said, his mouth twisted into an unhappy grimace.
"You're telling me that you kidnapped Prue?" Paige asked, wrapping her fingers around the hilt of her sword. Maybe she couldn't hurt Avares, but if this guy had hurt Prue, he was fair game. And she really wanted to hit something right now.
"No!" Henry protested, looking offended that she'd even suggested the idea. "God, no. Paige, I could never hurt your sisters. Even Prue. But," he added, looking faintly guilty, "I was the one who told Theresa to send you down here."
"You?" Paige echoed. "I repeat, who the hell are you?"
Henry's eyes twitched away from hers as he looked anywhere but at her. "I'm trying to save you," he finally said, but Paige shook her head.
"That's not an answer," she said, flatly. "You say you're trying to save me, but then you tell me you're the reason I'm down here in the first place. I don't know who you are, or what you want, and you won't give me a straight answer. Give me one reason I shouldn't run you through, right now."
"Because I lov-" Henry's eyes widened as he cut himself off, mid-word, but Paige had heard enough.
"Love," she said, softly, and Henry nodded, slowly. "Might I remind you that we just met today, and that we've known each other for all of two minutes? I think that's early for anyone to be throwing around the L word."
"I've known you a lot longer than two minutes," Henry told her, and Paige resisted the urge to demand a further explanation. Henry looked like he was fighting with himself over giving her an actual answer, for once. "I'm from the future," he finally admitted, reluctantly.
Paige's first instinct was to protest that it was impossible, but she bit the words back. After all, it wasn't too long ago that she would have said that magic, witches, and demons were impossible, but look at her, now. Who was she to say that time travel couldn't happen?
"You're from the future," she repeated, carefully, and Henry nodded, the expression on his face somewhere between hopeful and uneasy. "So, when we met this morning-" she started.
"That wasn't me," Henry interrupted her, and Paige shot him a surprised look. "Okay, yeah, it was kind of me," Henry corrected himself, quickly. "My past self."
"There's two of you running around?" Paige asked in confusion.
"I've been careful about not being found out," Henry replied. "I've got too much to do to raise suspicions."
"Doing what?" Paige demanded. "If you're from the future, did you come back to change the past?" It was a bit cliché, but it was the only thing she could think of. Why else would someone travel through time?
Henry looked conflicted, again, but Paige just crossed her arms stubbornly over her chest. She was going to get the answers she wanted, no matter how long it took. It wasn't like she had anywhere else that she could go.
"I came to save you," Henry finally answered, twisting the wedding ring around on his finger.
"Save me," Paige repeated, and Henry nodded. "Save me?" She hated the plaintive tone in her voice, the way her words shook as she spoke, but she couldn't imagine any good scenarios that involved that outcome. "Save me from what?"
"I can't tell you that," Henry protested, and he shook his head when she tried to speak. "No. Look, you weren't even supposed to know that I was here. You were supposed to rescue Prue, and the two of you would go back home, and then some time in the future, you'd meet my younger self, and you'd fall for his wit and charm, and you'd live happily ever after. I didn't think this would happen; you weren't supposed to be in any danger." He looked furious with himself, like he blamed himself for Paige getting taken prisoner.
"What can you tell me?" Paige asked.
"Nothing," Henry insisted. "Paige, the only reason I even came here was to get you out of here."
"And I told you, I can't," Paige reminded him. "Avares will kill my sisters if I try to escape."
"We'll kill him, first," Henry promised, but Paige shook her head.
"See this?" she asked, brandishing the metal band around her wrist. "This is what he was using to keep Prue under control, and now me. He's got the damn thing tied to him, somehow. And if he dies, I'll die."
"What if we take the tracking bracelet off?" Henry asked. "No tracking bracelet, no way to find you once we leave. We can go after Prue, get back to Piper and Phoebe, and the four of you can wipe this son of a bitch off the face of the earth."
Paige held up her right arm, showing Henry the band around her wrist. Henry took her hand in his, producing a pocket knife that he flipped open, carefully sliding the blade between the metal and her skin. He levered the blade up, but he didn't do anything more than scratch the bracelet and leave a bruise on the back of her hand.
"It's too tight," Paige finally told him, and Henry sighed in frustration as he pulled the knife away from the bracelet and pocketed it. He kept his grip on her hand, his skin warm on hers.
"Great," Henry growled, under his breath. "So, we can't kill him, you can't leave this godforsaken hellhole, this damn bracelet won't come off-" He scrubbed a hand over his face, tiredly. "I'm all for hearing an Option C, right about now."
"Take my hand off," Paige suggested, getting a shocked look from Henry. "I'm serious," she insisted. "If we can't get the bracelet off my wrist, we'll take my wrist off."
Henry looked at her like she'd lost her mind. "Are you crazy?" he demanded.
"I'd rather live without a hand than be Avares' prisoner for the rest of my life," Paige told him. "If we do it quick, and you get me to Leo so that he can heal me, I think I'll be okay. Look on the bright side," she added, wryly, in a weak attempt to lighten the mood, "he could have made it a necklace."
Henry chuckled, a fond look on his face. "I knew there was a reason I fell in love with you," he remarked, clearly without thinking about it.
A second later, grief flickered across his face and he started twisting the wedding ring on his left hand. Pain shone in his eyes when he looked at her, and Paige wondered if he was really seeing her, or the wife he'd lost in the future.
"You're pretty charming, yourself," Paige admitted, getting a small smile out of him.
"Told you so," Henry quipped, lightly. "Okay, lay down with your arm out to the side. I don't want to take the chance that I'll hit something other than your wrist."
Paige laid down on her stomach, burying her face in the crook of her elbow as she extended her right arm. She could hear Henry moving as he knelt down beside her, pulling his sword out of the scabbard. He rested her hand on her back in a brief moment of reassurance.
"This is going to hurt," he warned her, and Paige gave a short laugh.
"I wasn't expecting rainbows," she muttered. "Let's get this over with, okay?"
Henry's hand disappeared from her shoulder, and then she heard the air whistle as he sliced down with his sword. She braced herself for the pain, but instead there was a blinding flash of light and a loud, ringing sound like someone had just struck a bell. And when she looked over, her arm was intact, the bracelet still snug around her wrist.
She sat up to see Henry picking himself up from the far side of the cavern. Blood seeped from a gash on the side of his head. He'd lost his grip on his sword, and when he picked it up, Paige could see scorch marks spiderwebbed along the length of the blade.
"Plan C is out," Henry told her, and then they both froze at the sound of distant footsteps. "And I think I just alerted the demon that you're not alone."
"Get out of here," Paige hissed, panicking at the thought of Avares getting his hands on Henry.
"I'm not leaving you behind," Henry protested, hotly.
"Get out!" Paige insisted. "Look, you can warn my sisters, ride to my rescue later. Just get the hell out of here. Please!"
"I'm going to come back for you," Henry promised, and then he disappeared in a bright flash of golden light.