Disclaimer: I don't own Charmed. No infringement is intended and no profit is made from this story. This is a work of my own imagination, but I was inspired to write this after reading so many amazing Chris revelation stories over the years. So a huge thank you to Emma15 for writing When Family Calls, DisneyRBD for writing In His Soul, and NextGeneration for writing Dead Promises!
Author's Note: Once again, a huge thank you to everyone who has taken the time to leave a review – either as a member or a guest. I love hearing what you guys think of my story so far!
Chapter Three:
The Dads Suck Club
"It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was."
– Anne Sexton
Phoebe glanced around the new memory, but couldn't make anything out. The room – assuming, of course, that it was a room they were in and not a cave or underground somewhere – was pitch black and silent. She could barely even see Piper, Paige, Leo, Chris, and Cole at all. Not that she wanted to see Cole. She didn't. No, that was absolutely not what Phoebe wanted.
"Where are you? Past you?" Phoebe asked Chris. Only…that didn't quite make sense. These memories were set in their future. "I mean future you." But on the other had this was Chris' past. "Mini-you! Where's mini-you in this memory?"
Cole ducked his head to hide the smile he couldn't suppress. His ex-wife was cute as hell when she was flustered. Though thinking of her as his ex-wife, even in the awfulness that was 2004, felt like a betrayal. He hadn't thought, let alone referred to her as such in ages. She was his wife. Soon-to-be-wife-again.
Shaking himself out of his internal musings, Cole forced himself back to reality. He couldn't let himself think about her. She was off limits to him, for now at least.
Besides, he had a nephew that needed him now more than ever.
Not that Chris would ever admit it.
That boy was a Halliwell through and through.
How had they missed something so important? How could they be so blind? How could they be so self absorbed? What else had they missed? How much else had they not noticed?
He wanted to yell at the sisters.
He wanted to punch Leo.
But mostly, he wanted to shake some sense into Chris. The worry he had felt for his nephew before traveling to the past paled in comparison to what he felt now. I wish it was that easy, Chris had said in reference to sacrificing himself for the sake of his big brother. That statement bothered, infuriated, and surprised him more than anything. He couldn't stop replaying those wretched six words in his mind like a broken record. It loitered there, lingering, haunting.
Realizing that there was nothing he could do–not right now at least–about his nephew's apparent suicidal tendencies, Cole did his best to temper his rage as opposed to letting his temper rage on. Although he was still a demon, some things had changed. He was a father now. A family man…
"Good question, Phoebs," Piper said, "where the hell are we?"
The sisters and Leo looked to Chris expectantly.
There was some bitter irony in that, and Chris felt it keenly, deeply, in every fiber of his being. In the last couple of months, he had needed them. He had needed their help. Their trust. Their love. What he got instead was rejection after rejection after rejection. He alone went to the underworld day after day, night after sleepless night searching for leads. He literally worked himself to near death. Now, all of a sudden, the shoe was on the other foot, so to speak. They needed him to guide them through these memories. To help fill in the gaps. To put everything into context.
And of course he would do it.
Because no matter how hard he tried to keep them separate in his head or how many times he told himself otherwise, they were still family and that still meant a damn to him. It always would.
"I don't know," Chris admitted on a sigh, "it's hard to tell."
At that moment, as if on cue, there was a swirl of bluish-white lights and a soft chiming that signaled that someone had orbed in.
The brief light allowed the six onlookers a few seconds glance at the orber. They could just make out a young girl with white-blonde hair and a small frame.
Chris' eyes widened as realization dawned on him. He would recognize her anywhere, at any time, in whatever form.
Cat.
His heart beat violently and he wished futilely, not for the first time–nor the hundred and first time–that he could transfer his heart beat to her heart, giving life to her veins.
As quickly as the light had come, it faded and disappeared completely. The darkness returned, but there was a sound now–someone was crying.
The onlookers weren't the only ones to hear the noise. They made out a hazy outline of somebody sitting up on what appeared to be a bed. The figure got up and walked a few feet forward to…
Suddenly, light illuminated the previously dark room.
…apparently to switch on the light.
The hazy outline turned out to be a young, but older than he had been in the previous memory–maybe nine years old or ten years old– Chris and they could now see that they were in a cabin for some unknown reason.
There was a bunk bed to the right of the room that looked old and very used. On the bottom bunk, where Chris had been, there were T-Rex bed covers. The sheets were a tumbled mess, as if he had tossed and turned for hours, and the pillow still bore the dent of his head.
Wyatt was lying sound asleep on the top bunk. Chris smirked at that. Wyatt had always been a deep sleeper and a reluctant riser, much to their mother's chagrin. He could sleep through a tornado. He could sleep through a freight train running through the room. He could sleep through just about anything. Chris, on the other hand, was a light sleeper and woke easily with the slightest of sounds.
"Why is Wyatt here with you?" Piper asked Chris, confused and curious in equal measure.
"More importantly, where exactly is 'here'?" Paige questioned.
"TLC…Timber Lake Camp," Chris amended when he saw the confusion on their faces. Only Uncle Cole knew what he was talking about. "It's a sleepaway camp in the Catskill Mountains of New York. My mom wanted me to have some normalcy in my life since she couldn't enroll me in a regular public school."
"That still doesn't explain why Wyatt is here with you." Piper pointed out, though she could totally understand where Chris' mom was coming from. She wanted Wyatt to have as normal a life as possible for a child of the Charmed Ones.
The lie was on the tip of Chris' tongue, but something kept him from offering it.
"Wyatt and Chris were friends. You wanted some semblance of normalcy for Wyatt as well, so that's how this memory came to be...voilà!" Cole supplied for Chris.
"You were friends with Wyatt?" Leo asked disbelievingly. Chris and Cole both rolled their eyes at that.
"Why didn't you just tell us?" Piper asked in a much more believing tone. She felt rather foolish. She should have known that they were friends. The previous memory had shown them that not only had they gone to school together, but that they were friendly enough to get into trouble together. Although she still wasn't exactly gung-ho about the idea of sending her baby off to Magic School…
There are a lot of things I haven't told you guys, Chris wanted to say, but instead he merely shrugged his shoulders and made an "I-don't-know" face.
"Chris," The young girl who had orbed into the room said in a trembling voice, drawing the attention of the people from the past back to the memory that was playing out before them.
Memory Chris immediately went over and drew her into his arms. "What happened, Cat?"
Chris smiled, fondly and sadly, at the nickname that he had given her the first time they met. Everybody else called her Alley Cat. But not him. To him, and only him, she was Cat. To her, and only her, he was Kit.
"My dad," she sniffled back into his chest.
"Is she related to the boy that we saw in the last memory?" Phoebe asked, noticing the resemblance between the two.
"Ally is – was – Jake's little sister." Chris said.
The siblings shared the same white-blonde hair and the same slightly tanned skin tone. Almost everything was the same about them except their eyes. Her eyes were a beautiful crystal blue.
"Wait, I thought her name was Cat?" Paige asked.
"Her name was Ally. Cat was just Chris' special nickname for her." Cole said in a teasing tone, causing Chris to actually blush a bit. Phoebe and Paige chuckled over his slight embarrassment.
Memory Chris nodded at her two-worded explanation, knowing that her dad must have let her down again…as he always managed to do lately.
"What did he do this time?" Memory Chris asked, sounding so gentle. The sisters and Leo were completely shocked as it sounded unlike anything they had heard from the neurotic half-whitelighter.
"He left to drop Jake off at Caleb's house for a sleepover and he was supposed to come straight back home. He was supposed to take me out on a daddy-daughter date to the movies. But he didn't. He went out drinking. I called every hospital and emergency room in the city thinking he'd been in an accident. He promised me that he didn't have a problem and I…I…I believed him." Believing in her dad and then having that belief shattered into a million pieces was a devastating blow. It cut to her core.
Everyone's hearts broke as they heard Ally explain what had happened.
"I'm sorry." Memory Chris said as he rubbed a comforting hand up and down her back. His sympathy was heartfelt, but the words felt inadequate–what could possibly ease the pain of having your father let you down time and time again? Chris knew from personal experience that nothing quite soothed that pain.
"I'm sorry I woke you up like this, Kit, but I didn't know where else to go." The girl said with another sob.
"You're way more important to me than sleep," Memory Chris replied honestly, "which you obviously haven't had any of either. Come on, Ryan, let's get you to bed."
Chris panicked when he heard his past self refer to Cat by her last name. He sincerely hoped that she hadn't quipped back, like she so often did, calling him Halliwell. That would've for sure blown his cover.
"Won't Wyatt freak out when he wakes up? What about your camp counselors?" Ally asked as Chris led her to his bed. Even though she dreaded the thought of going home, she didn't want to get Chris into trouble.
"Wy would do the same thing if it was Emily and the camp counselors make their morning rounds around nine, which gives you plenty of time to orb out unnoticed." Memory Chris assured her.
"If you're sure it's okay…"
"I'm sure."
That was all she needed to hear. He was her best friend in the whole world. He knew everything there was to know about her, and she him. She trusted him implicitly.
Ally climbed into the bed first, sinking into the mattress as if it were a cloud. Memory Chris got in after her. "Are you okay on that side, or do you want to switch places?"
"No, this is good."
Memory Chris casted a simple spell to turn off the lights and the room was again dark.
The two kids were silent at first and the onlookers almost thought they had fallen asleep. Almost.
"Could you hold me until I fall asleep?" Ally asked, her voice scarcely above a whisper. She sounded almost shy, tentative. The tone was so unlike her that both Chrises frowned.
"Of course." He pulled her back into his arms so that her back was against his chest and her head under his chin.
Even though Ally couldn't exactly explain why, she felt safe in his arms and for a moment all the pain she was feeling faded away.
"We should make a Dads Suck Club," Ally suggested sarcastically, "a two-person club just for us."
"I can think of a third person who'd want to join that club…my sister," Memory Chris said, "dad ignores her even more than he ignores me, which is really saying a lot."
"At least you guys still have your mom. I would give anything to have just one more day with my mom, just one day…" Ally said in a sad, faraway voice.
And that was the last thing the six onlookers heard before they were sent to another memory.
Author's Note: There goes Chapter 3! This chapter took a little longer than the other ones because I had wanted to have two memories in it, but this one turned out to be longer than I expected. Hope you guys enjoyed! Please review!