Disclaimer: not mine, just chasing rainbows that other people invented

A/N: First, thanks for the kind reviews! This is my first story on here and I kind of didn't believe all the authors when they said how big a deal reviews meant to them. I was wrong, they make me all warm and fuzzy, I really appreciate the feedback and thoughts. As any good story, the characters tend to take on a life of their own and Bianca just keeps insisting she find her place here- originally I had thought she'd be fairly minor because honestly I was never a huge fan, but that doesn't seem to be the case and I'm really enjoying who she is becoming. ;) Also, I'll be referencing the extended Halliwell family on and off- most often as plot devices but my focus really is Wyatt and Chris. It'd be great if I was skilled enough to write 9 different in-depth characters and keep the plot moving, but yeah, totally not. One last note- one of my biggest pet peeves with the TV series is their simplistic take on good vs. evil, occasionally they'd delve into it and highlight some of the more gray areas of morality, but honestly it stayed pretty superficial and limited to a very hard-lined dualism. Drove me crazy. So, I'll be playing with that idea throughout- trying to look at character's motives and values, what drives them to make their choices and whether or not that defines them as "good" or "evil" or something else entirely. Oh dear, another one last note- I love to tell stories out of order, so you'll start to notice the dreams and later the actual memories will not follow a chronological sequence. There will be loose references so the reader can place them in the timeline, but I trust you all are smart enough to figure that out.

Read on!

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"OW!" Wyatt yelled, his hand reflexively covering his face as he pulled away from Phoebe's spin kick. "That's my nose! Geez Aunt Pheebs." He sniffed and shook his head a couple times to try and mitigate the pain. They'd been at these training sessions for a couple weeks now and Wyatt was really wishing he had stayed with that Ju-Jitsu class instead of playing Little League as a kid. Phoebe insisted all the cousins learn to fight without relying so heavily on their powers. Which was all well and good for the girls, Wyatt thought, it wasn't like his cupid cousins would be able love the demons to death anyway.

"I felt that mister!" PJ yelled from behind him, letting her guard down while sparring with Bianca just long enough to get smacked in the shins.

"Oh my god." Phoebe rolled her eyes and took a deep breath, trying not to let her annoyance at her daughter and nephew break through. "Look, all of you," she raised her voice to get all the sparring partners' attention. "I know you all think we're being a bunch of hard asses. I know. But you kids haven't been through this yet, and I'm sorry, we got too relaxed and let this slide for so long. But… but," she struggled, words from one of her own training sessions flooding her memory. "Demons worship strength, power. Nothing else. To beat them you have to channel all of your energy into your strength. Including pain. All of you, you need to learn to fight like a demon." She closed her eyes and walked off, Thank you Cole, she thought.

"She's right," Bianca said, all eyes immediately looking to her.

"Yeah, but I don't see why we've got to focus so much on physical fighting." Wyatt griped, he had never realized just how much he relied on his powers to get him through his encounters with demons and wasn't very comfortable with this method of training. He could hear Chris taunting him, 'evidently you're a lover, not a fighter Wy'. Chris had been mercilessly teasing him since it became evident that the oldest of the Halliwell children wasn't outshining everyone else as usual.

"I mean," Wyatt continued, "what are the chances of us losing our powers any-?"

Before he could finish his question, Bianca had shimmered behind him and thrust her fist through his back, stripping him of his powers. Chris started to react but Leo put his hand on his shoulder, keeping him in place. The cousins watched, horrified, not knowing what the Phoenix was doing. After a few seconds, Wyatt fell to the ground.

"What the hell?" He asked her, rubbing his chest and breathing heavily.

She lifted her hand holding a brightly glowing sphere and raised her eyebrows. "Chances of losing your powers? I'd say they're pretty good. Now hold still." She reached back down, thrusting the sphere back into Wyatt.

"Ok…" Wyatt breathed deeply. "Point taken."

"Ok," Phoebe broke the astonished silence. "Wyatt take a break, Chris bring some water down and everyone else, grab a weapon and switch partners."

A few minutes later Chris sat down on the basement steps next to Wyatt, handing him a bottled water. They sat in silence for a few minutes, watching their family spar as their aunt and dad filtered around correcting stances and giving advice.

"Look man," Chris started, "I didn't mean to…"

"I know, it's fine," Wyatt interrupted his brother. "No chick flick moments needed, dude."

Chris took a deep breath. "If things end up being as rough as they think…," he paused, knowing what he needed to say but worried about Wyatt's reaction. "You can't save everyone Wy, you just can't, no matter how powerful you are."

Wyatt's eyes darkened for a moment before he took another long drink of water. "I know Chris," he finally said. "But it doesn't mean I can't try."

After finishing his second pass through, Leo made his way to his boys. "You ok, Wyatt?" he asked. Wyatt half-smirked and nodded.

"Hey Dad," Chris looked sharply at Leo. "How'd you know what she was doing?"

Leo crossed his arms and rocked forward on the balls of his feet. "I've come across Phoenix before, and well I've seen the after-effects of their brand of power-stripping too," he answered, looking past Chris, lost in an old memory.

"Well, whatever that was," Wyatt smiled, his eyes twinkling with mischief, "it was pretty hot."

That comment brought Leo out of his reverie, he looked at Wyatt, shocked while Chris just laughed and shook his head. "What?" Wyatt asked. "It was. A woman who can take me down like that?" He snapped his fingers for emphasis, "just sayin'"

Chris worried his bottom lip and looked across the room at Bianca. He'd had several more dreams recently, dreams where Bianca often featured. The dreams were so vivid, they seemed so real but he couldn't understand them. The first dream had been the most intense though, the rest of them had just been snippets of moments really, none of which seemed to make sense or have any real context. He hadn't told anyone about them, not even Brody or Wyatt; he wanted to try and figure out some more about them on his own first before alarming everyone else.

"You know," Chris began, trying to shake the dreams out of his mind, "we do need to start being more strategic about all of this. I was thinking, what if we mapped out the Underworld? Really mapped it out, we could start pinpointing key locations, noting where the power bases are and plan some offensive attacks. Get ahead of these guys." The idea had actually come from one of his dreams, but he wasn't going to admit that.

Leo looked at his son suspiciously, while Wyatt gaped "You're a fuu-riggin' genius dude!"

"That really is a good idea, Chris," Leo said calmly, still looking at Chris as if trying to read into his mind. Chris turned away from his dad, this had been going on for weeks now: he'd have an insight into something or reference places and events that he didn't know how he knew about and his parents and aunts would just look at him with this strange expression, like they were trying to figure out who he was. It was getting pretty frustrating to say the least and he didn't feel like sitting there while his dad looked at him like he was a stranger.

"No, no, no," Chris blurted out, standing up. "Mel's got that form all wrong." It seemed a valid excuse to exit the conversation with his dad and brother, so he hurried over to his sister to start correcting her stance.

Wyatt looked over at his dad, then back to his brother. "Have we checked to see if he was like General Patton or the Duke of Wellington in a past life?"

Leo chuckled at Wyatt's remark, but Wyatt continued. "No, I'm serious, where does he come up with this stuff?"

"Probably all those hours playing XCOM and whatever other war games you two were always into," Leo smiled, trying to come up with a plausible explanation… at least an explanation that didn't confirm his growing fears about both his sons' destinies. "And, this is kind of what he does too, doesn't he research strategy tactics for the projects he works on?"

Wyatt shrugged his shoulders, still thinking. "Yeah, but… have you noticed how he's been using his powers lately too?"

Leo's jaw tensed and he glanced over at Chris, remembering the telekinetic feat the young man had performed a few days ago during a training session. They had summoned Prue specifically to work with Chris since he always had more success channeling his power in the same ways she did, unlike his siblings and Aunt Paige. They were up in the attic, sans the rest of the extended family, working on power-focusing under pressure. Prue and Chris had been doing various TK exercises, practicing using hand gestures as well as eye movements for a little while when Wyatt suggested they try something more strenuous. Piper pulled out the old demon leftovers box and she and Prue combined their powers to create an obstacle course of moving objects for the three siblings to deflect. Things quickly got a bit chaotic and a rogue mace went off course, zooming towards Piper who instinctively blew it up without thinking. The shards of the mace would have flown everywhere, like thousands of deadly bullets, but Chris threw his hands up in a gesture his siblings had never seen and the shards stopped dead in their tracks, not frozen but stuck as if they had hit a solid wall. Chris gestured again and they hovered a second and then fell to the ground. Everyone looked at Chris, shock clearly evident on their faces, and he looked equally as shocked.

"How did you…?" Melly tentatively asked, trailing off.

Chris looked blankly around, "Uh, I, uh…"

"Did you manipulate the air particles?" Leo asked, looking meaningfully at Piper. They'd seen this done before, by another version of Chris, a Chris who wasn't born with Elder powers to boost his Wiccan side, a Chris who was constantly relying on his wits to try and even the playing field between himself and his drastically more powerful older brother.

Chris looked at his dad, thinking. "Yeah…" he said hesitantly. "Yeah, I think that's exactly what I did." He paused, thinking some more, then started mumbling something about fluid dynamics. "Wow, I can't believe I never thought of that before. Do you know how much less energy that takes than stopping and reversing the force? Cool." He finished, smiling.

Leo brought his focus back to the present, looking at Wyatt. "I've noticed some… differences, yes," he admitted.

"And not only the crazy TK stuff either, he usually taps into all those Elder powers just instinctually, and he hasn't been recently. I don't know, maybe all the extra stress is getting to him." Wyatt had noticed all the strange looks directed at Chris recently too and was growing more and more suspicious that his parents and aunts were hiding something from them. He hadn't been planning to bring the conversation up with anyone, but since the opportunity presented itself, he figured he might as well go for it and see if his dad would let anything slip.

"Have you talked to him about it?" Leo questioned.

"Are you kidding?" Wyatt laughed. "Talk to Mr-Mind-Your-Own-Business? You know Chris only talks when he wants to talk and it's a waste of energy to try and drag anything out of him, it's like talking to a wall. Secretive little punk, you know how he is."

Leo nodded, yes he did know and it seemed in either timeline Chris was still Chris. He could almost hear his younger son spouting off 'future consequences' while rolling his eyes and ignoring him. It didn't ease his mind any though. It was becoming glaringly obvious that Chris was accessing memories from a life he never lived and the young man had no idea what was happening. Leo watched as Wyatt took advantage of a lull in the sparring practice to walk over and flirt with Bianca. He and Piper were wondering how that particular issue might play out, maybe he should tell Wyatt to back off… he sighed, again hearing his son's voice echo in his memory, 'future consequences.'

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He was leaning over a large hand drawn map, studying the notes scribbled here and there, looking at the locations of the colored pieces intentionally placed in various regions. There had to be a pattern, his brother wasn't stupid, he just couldn't see the pattern yet. Lost in his thoughts he hadn't heard the door open and the footsteps of several people walking into the room.

"Ahem," Devren coughed. "Raven?"

Chris jumped a little, surprised, and looked up to see the darklighter standing in front of him, holding onto a woman dressed in black leather, Tielden holding on to her other side, still in his demonic form. The woman's chin was jutted out in defiance, her dark eyes ablaze with fury.

"How dare you! How dare you! Who do you people think you are anyway?" She yelled.

Chris looked at Devren and Tielden in turn, questioning them with his expression. The irony of a darklighter and a demon being two of his most trusted companions was never lost on him, but since the entire world went to hell, well, enemy lines had gotten a bit blurred.

"Who is she? Where did you find her?" Chris asked.

"Unhand me right now!" She yelled again, her indignation rolling off of her in waves.

Tielden morphed into his human form, cricking his neck as he did so. "She was skulking around the potential site, we think she was tracking Runna."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Chris could see the fear flash in her eyes. "I wasn't tracking anybody. I, I was…" she paused trying to assess the situation, then looked pleadingly at Chris. "Don't tell him," she nearly whispered. "Don't tell him, he thinks I'm out on a mission and I… I…" she trailed off, hanging her head.

"Don't tell who?" Chris asked.

Her head shot up and she looked Chris in the eyes, pleading, as she said, "Lord Wyatt."

Chris took a deep breath, glancing at the map again. "Take her to the Box, get her some food and water and see if she needs any first aid. I'll be down in a minute to question her… Oh, and get PJ too, I'll need her help."

Chris kneaded his forehead with his knuckles, he could feel the tension headache coming on. He hadn't slept in, what two days? Had it only been two days? He ran his hand over his jaw, feeling the stubble he hadn't bothered shaving. He downed the rest of the cold bitter coffee from the mug he was holding and started making his way to the Box.

His cousin was already in the room with the captive woman by the time he got there. The woman's hands were bound to the table with enchanted leather straps, 'one of my more genius ideas,' Chris thought to himself. Although, he couldn't have done the enchantment without Mel, she was always the stronger spell caster, almost as strong as Kat. He closed his eyes, he couldn't think about his cousin right now. They would find her, he knew they would, it had only been two days after all.

He sat down next to PJ and studied the woman across from him. Her defiance was back and she struggled at her bindings. He noticed an odd red birthmark on her arm and he couldn't tell if it looked more like a bird or more like a flame. He looked over at PJ, "You get a read on her yet?" he asked.

"She's terrified. That's pretty much all she's transmitting right now," PJ responded, shrugging her shoulders.

The woman looked at her warily, "Who are you people?" suspicion and wonder evident in her voice.

"How about you tell us who you are first," Chris answered back. He'd spent months quietly recruiting people to his cause, stealthily building a resistance movement against his brother, The Resistance people called it now. He knew there were barely even whispers about the movement yet, Wyatt had no idea what Chris was up to. Chris had gotten pretty good at sizing people up though, quickly assessing how strong their loyalty to Lord Wyatt really was. The woman in front of him, he could tell, had very little loyalty to his brother at all, but that didn't mean he could just reveal everything to her. Secrecy. He was good at secrecy.

Before the woman could answer, an alarm started blazing. "SHIT!" Chris yelled as he and PJ jumped up. Devren ran into the room, a panicked expression on his face.

"Scouts spotted three of them, just alerted us. Not sure who they are, or what powers they have," the darklighter hastily said.

Chris looked around, PJ nodded to him. He TK'd the woman's restraints from her arms and asked "Do you have any active powers?"

She looked at him befuddled, "Uh, just, just power stripping really. And tracking, and I can fight like hell… but…"

He smiled and apportated what appeared to be guns- at least they were loosely shaped like guns, but the barrel was larger and they were white and there appeared to be a set of crystals instead of a magazine. "How's your aim?" He quirked, tossing one of the strange guns to her.

"Energy blaster," he said after she caught it. "When you pull the trigger, the crystals connect and it shoots out an energy ball."

The woman looked at him, amazed. He grinned, one of his rarely seen cocky grins. "Pretty cool, huh?"

"Are you really fighting him?" she asked, still amazed. When he nodded, she looked him straight in the eye, all her defiance back, but not directed at him. "Bianca, I'm Bianca."

Chris awoke with a jolt, tangled in his sheets and covered in sweat. The dreams were picking up in intensity again. He blamed all the extra stress. With the training sessions, frantic researching of magical relics plus his actual work, he felt like he was being pulled in a million different directions with everything seemingly equally as important. Maybe that's all these dreams were, he thought, just his brain's method of coping with everything. He lay in the bed a little longer, replaying the dream, then smiled, that was one damn cool weapon.