AN: Not a whole lot of action in this chapter but some really important plot points...
Chapter Ten: Siren Song
Chris slammed his fist against the hard stone wall of the Underworld cave, ignoring the dull throb that resulted from the action. The last demon had shimmered away, escaping the young white-lighter's rage, and Chris was left without answers.
He stared bitterly at the piles of ash that littered the floor. How many demons had he vanquished? Four, maybe five?
And how many had escaped?
He closed his eyes. What difference did any of this make? The demons couldn't tell him anything, couldn't give him the information he needed.
And even if they could, they wouldn't.
The anger was bubbling inside of him. In a vague and detached way, he noted this, and noted that it was unusual for him to be feeling this particular emotion so intently. Anger, like desperation, was dangerous. It made people do stupid things, made them not think through the consequences of their actions, made them not think past their own immediate desires. And it generally led to more pain.
Chris had learned that lesson in the future, and had done his best over the years to shove his anger downwards, bury it underneath his stubborn determination to succeed at this mission.
He opened his eyes and looked around the cave. He could wander through the corridors looking for more demons, but what was the point? What would he actually gain from it?
Still… what else could he do? He had no other avenues to pursue, no other places to look for information.
He briefly debated orbing back to the Manor, but what would be the point? What could the Charmed Ones tell him that he didn't already know? There would be no answers in the Book, and the Elders wouldn't offer any help, either.
But he needed to do something.
The anger bubbling in his veins started mixing with desperation.
He was running out of time.
Paige had never been the biggest fan of the Elders. No one in the family had, of course, but Paige felt she had more cause than most to dislike them. After all, if not for their rules about witches and white-lighters dating, she wouldn't have been given up for adoption. And though she would never actually wish to trade her adopted parents for anything, it still would have been nice to have had sisters growing up. It would have been nice to have known who she was, where she came from, and what she could do.
And over the past few years, as the Elders' rules constantly interfered with her life and the lives of her sisters, as they continually risked themselves for the Elders agenda while the supposed paragons of good sat in the safety of their own home Up There, as she watched Piper and Leo's marriage get torn apart…
No… she had never been a fan of the Elders.
But it wasn't until this moment than she truly hated them.
There were five of them standing in the attic. Paige recognized Zola and Sigmund, but the other three were strangers. And it was one of these three Elders that was standing slightly forward from the others, apparently having been elected spokesperson. He was tall, with dark eyes and dark hair and an expression that said he had seen a lot in his lifetime and was not easily intimidated.
And he had orbed into her home without any regard for the fact that she didn't want to see him, and had informed her that the Elders wanted the Charmed Ones to stop looking for Leo.
Paige met his gaze coolly and felt her lips curl into a sardonic smile. "And you really expect us to care what you want? After what Gideon tried to do to us, why should we care about any of you?"
The Elder – Paige vaguely thought he might have introduced himself as Michael – shook his head gravely and said, "I see it is not only Leo who has forgotten that the actions of one do not necessarily reflect the beliefs of the many. Would you really punish us – and all the world – for Gideon's sins?"
"Well, it's not like you did anything to help us," Paige snapped irritably, too enraged to consider any of the truth in Michael's words.
Michael raised an eyebrow. "It's not like you asked," he replied pointedly.
And Paige could say nothing in response to that. It was true, they hadn't asked the Elders for help dealing with Gideon. They hadn't believed that the Elders would actually help them, at least, not without giving Gideon plenty of time to escape. It had been imperative to strike quickly and without warning, or else Gideon would still have been alive and free… and a threat to Wyatt.
In the aftermath of the battle with Gideon, though, the Elders had certainly made their viewpoint clear.
"You condemned Leo's actions," Paige said evenly. "There were several of you who wanted him punished."
Sigmund snorted. "Some of us still do," he muttered under his breath.
Paige narrowed her eyes at Sigmund, her hands curled into fists. After everything they had done for him, after stopping the Horseman that was terrorizing Magic School because he hadn't been able to defeat it, he actually dared to stand there and condemn Leo?
She was seething inside, but wisely did not respond to his comment. Instead, she switched her gaze back to Michael and said, "And you didn't help us get Chris back."
"The Elders' policy on Lucifer is very clear," Michael said evenly. "We do not get involved. The less we have to do with him, the less likelihood there is that we will be pulled into his manipulations. We've already suffered enough losses at his hand…" He trailed off for a moment and his eyes clouded over. He was clearly remembering something painful, but he dwelled on it for only a moment before saying unyielding, "We cannot survive another civil war."
"And we still condemn Leo's actions," one of the other Elders said, stepping forward. She met Paige's gaze and continued, "Gideon may have been wrong, but Leo should not have acted alone. The matter should have been brought before the Elders, and we would have decided how best to deal with it."
Paige opened her mouth to argue, but Michael started speaking before she had a chance to say anything. "Enough, Giselle," he said to the Elder who had spoken. "This argument over Gideon is irrelevant to the topic at hand." He turned back to Paige. "You cannot continue to be involved with Lucifer, and neither can your sisters. Do you understand, Paige Matthews?"
"We are not leaving Leo to him," Paige spat furiously. "How can you even suggest that?"
"We must consider the rest of the world," Michael said grimly. There was something apologetic in his tone, as though even he regretted that it had come to this. But his words were uncompromising all the same.
"The rest of the world?" Paige scoffed. "My family is falling apart and you want me to sacrifice them all for the rest of the world?" She shook her head, feeling both incredulous and bitter. "Haven't we already done that enough?"
Michael ignored her comment and merely continued, "We have been able to confirm that Lucifer has taken Leo's soul. This is already a blow for the Elders. We do not know exactly what Lucifer does with the souls he takes, or what information he can glean from them. Leo's actions have put all of us at risk."
"Then why wouldn't you want to set him free?" Paige demanded. It seemed the logical answer. If allowing Lucifer access to Leo was putting everyone in so much danger, than removing Leo from Lucifer's reach was the only way to end it. "If leaving Leo to Lucifer…"
"We cannot get involved with Lucifer," another female Elder snapped. "Are you not listening to us, Charmed One? We cannot take the risk that Lucifer will manipulate us – or you – more than he already has. He has Leo's soul, but if we can prevent him from taking anything else…"
"Afraid?" Paige taunted, glaring back at the Elder. "You don't want to risk your own souls, don't want to risk your own lives. It's easy to send other people into danger, but when it comes to the Elders, you would rather stand around Up There and let other people fight your battles. You have no idea what loss feels like."
The female Elder narrowed her eyes and said in a venomous tone, "We don't understand loss? Need I remind you of what happened to us when the Titans were released less than a year ago?"
Paige took an involuntary step backwards, surprised by the pure rage lacing the Elder's voice. She hadn't though much about that. At no point in the intervening months had she stopped to wonder how the surviving Elders felt about the many who had been killed. Did they feel pain the way mortals did?
"We grieve for our fellow Elders and white-lighters," the female Elder continued in a softer voice, "just as we grieve for every witch who dies battling evil. Do no presume to understand what we feel for our sons and daughters."
"They are the Charmed Ones, Aravis" Sigmund sneered, glancing at the other Elder. "Of course they will presume. They are presumptuous enough to…"
"This is not helping," Zola interrupted, speaking for the first time since the Elders had orbed into the attic.
Michael inclined his head in Zola's direction. "True," he agreed solemnly. To Paige, he said, "I understand how much you care for Leo, and your desire to save him is commendable. But do not think for a moment that you will be able to rescue him without paying a price."
Paige sighed inwardly. Chris had said pretty much the same thing to them several weeks ago, when he explained his own deal with Lucifer. There would always be a price – deals with Lucifer demanded it.
And yet…
If they didn't get Leo back, Piper would fall apart completely.
Paige wasn't willing to sacrifice her sister, but what price would they pay for Leo's safe return?
"Why are you telling me?" she asked finally. "Why not Piper or Phoebe?"
Michael sighed. "This is the sort of information we would give a white-lighter with the assumption that the white-lighter would then tell her charges."
"I'm not a white-lighter," Paige argued.
"This is not Christopher's time, and he must soon return to the future. Leo is gone as well. You are therefore the one who must take over the responsibilities of being your family's white-lighter," Michael answered simply.
"You… wait… what?" Paige stammered, shocked.
"Your family needs a white-lighter," Michael said, and there was a hint of compassion and maybe even encouragement in his tone. "You are the best suited for that particular duty. It is in your blood." His expression grew grave once more, and he added, "You must make sure your sisters understand what we have told you. The consequences of going up against Lucifer are too severe for any of us to take a chance that…" He stopped, cutting off the words with a shake of his head. Conflicting emotions warred in his expression, and it took him a moment to collect himself before he said, "Pass along the instructions, Paige Mathews."
And he and the other four Elders orbed away.
Chris paced back and forth across the floor of the back room at P3. He was on edge, his eyes darting constantly towards the door, prepared to orb away if any of the Charmed Ones showed up. He couldn't go through another conversation like the one he'd had with Phoebe.
Unbidden, his mother's face floated to the forefront of his mind and her words echoed through his head. We're stronger when we stand united, Chris. We're stronger fighting together as a family than we are fighting separately.
He let out a short breath. She'd said that to him once, when he'd been eight or nine. He'd asked her why she so frequently went to her sisters with magical problems, why she never just took care of everything on her own. Why did they have to stay in San Francisco, why did his aunts have to constantly intrude on their lives?
It had been years before she had died. Years before Wyatt had finally crossed that line and had been lost to all of them.
"But we're not a family, Mom," he whispered and he could so picture the way she would have raised her eyebrows in surprise and then pursed her lips in disapproval at that statement. She wouldn't have cared about the difference in time, wouldn't have cared that sometimes he felt as though he didn't even recognize this version of the Charmed Ones. She would have insisted that they were all family and the ties that bound them all together should still exist, regardless of the complications of time travel.
He couldn't live up to those expectations – and she would have told him that she loved him anyway.
He close his eyes and sank onto the sofa, burying his head in his hands. Even after all this time, she was still haunting him.
"Hey, guys. Got a minute?"
Phoebe glanced up from her seat at the table as Paige walked into the kitchen and wrinkled her nose at the smell of the potion Piper was making. The empath hadn't seen her younger sister in a few hours, and that was all it had taken for Phoebe to know that Paige was preoccupied by something. She just didn't know what that something was, and could only hope that it wasn't too serious.
They couldn't deal with another problem at the moment.
"What is it?" Piper asked, barely glancing up as she threw another ingredient into the pot and watched the potion start to boil.
"I… uh… had a visit from a few Elders," Paige said.
"Great," Piper muttered sourly, still not looking at either sister. "And did they have anything helpful to tell you?"
"Why did they come to you and not all three of us?" Phoebe asked before Paige had a chance to answer Piper's question. Paige looked uneasy, and that sent shivers down Phoebe's spine. Lately, the Elders hadn't been particularly thrilled with any of their decisions, and a visit from them was concerning. But a visit just to Paige…?
"They want me to be the new white-lighter for… well… for us," Paige explained awkwardly, giving Phoebe a half-hearted shrug.
This got Piper's attention, and she looked up sharply. "We have a white-lighter," she said pointedly, anger creeping into her tone. "We have Chris. And once we get Leo back, this family will have an Elder as well."
Phoebe gazed at Piper, careful not to let her emotions show on her face. Just a few months ago, Piper had wanted Leo to stay out of their lives as much as possible. She hadn't been able to move on, to adjust to being a single parent, with him still in her life. In fact, last autumn she had been pretty adamant that they didn't need him – they had Chris.
Now it seemed that she had forgotten all about that.
But nothing had changed. Even if they got Leo back, he was still an Elder. And Piper was still a single mother.
As for having Chris – did they really?
"Chris is going to be returning to the future soon," Paige said. "Or, at least, that's what the Elders think." She looked around. "Is he here?"
"No," Piper said flatly, returning her attention to the potion. She threw the next ingredient in with more force than was necessary, and Phoebe almost flinched as she felt the irritation and helplessness rolling off of Piper in waves.
Why did the empathy-blocking potion work when it actually mattered?
Phoebe rubbed at her forehead as discreetly as possible and sighed inwardly. If Chris returned to the future, they wouldn't have a white-lighter any more. But even if he stayed… he'd clearly been avoiding them, refusing to answer their calls. What good was a white-lighter that they never saw?
"Chris won't go back to the future before we save Leo," Piper said after a slight pause. And she said it with such conviction that it was clear she wasn't allowing herself to consider any other possibility. Leo would come back and Chris would be here when it happened.
But Phoebe knew it wasn't that simple and it wouldn't be that easy – Chris didn't believe Leo could be saved.
"We should tell Chris about what the Elders said," Paige suggested uneasily, giving Piper a wary glance.
"What's the point?" Piper asked harshly. "It's not like he's going to stay around long enough to hear what you have to say." She stopped for a moment, resting a hand on the counter top to steady herself, then added in an almost-whisper, "It's not like you can get him here in the first place."
Phoebe studied Piper's expression, looking for some hint of what her older sister was thinking. Her emotions had softened again, and with the intensity decreased, the potion now able to block them. But the empath could still feel the remnants of something in the air – despair, maybe? It lingered over everything, blanketing Piper in a heaviness that worried Phoebe far more than she wanted to admit.
Piper looked up, and there was a flicker of pain in her eyes, a feeling that the eldest Charmed One was obviously trying so hard to hide.
"Are you avoiding him?" Phoebe asked softly.
Piper took a slow, shuddering breath. "No," she said. "He's avoiding me." She looked dangerously close to tears as she said, "But what difference would it make if he were here?"
"Piper," Paige started compassionately, but then stopped because she evidently had no idea what to say, no idea how to make this better.
"I don't know what to say to him," Piper admitted. "He was so angry when he orbed away. He yelled at me not to… not to apologize to him. But it's not just me he's avoiding he. He hasn't come to use the Book, hasn't ventured into the attic even when I'm not there. And this is his mission, this means everything to him and he… I don't know…" She trailed off for a moment, then said, "I don't understand how he can hate me so much that he doesn't even want to be in the same house as me." She leaned back against the counter, sagging into herself. "I just want to talk to him, but he… he doesn't want anything to do with me. I tried apologizing for everything but he just…" She stopped, shrugged. "I don't know what to say to him."
"Oh, sweetie, he doesn't hate you," Paige protested, quickly crossing to Piper's side and wrapping an arm around her sister's shoulders.
Piper momentarily leaned into Paige's embrace, but then straightened and said firmly, "He does, Paige. You can see that as well as I can."
Paige continued to argue with Piper, but Phoebe wasn't listening. She stared at Piper, lost in her own thoughts. It was clear to her now that Piper's determination to focus on Leo rose, in part, from her inability to get through to Chris. She couldn't help one of the men in her life, so she was overcompensating by doing everything possible to help the other.
And it also obviously allowed her to avoid talking to or about Chris. Focusing on Leo was easier than trying to fix something that might be irrevocably broken.
Except that Piper Halliwell didn't give up. Ever. So why would she stop calling for Chris?
The pieces of the puzzle didn't quite fit together until Phoebe said suddenly and with a start of realization, "You think if you can figure out how to save Leo, you can get Chris back to the Manor long enough to have a conversation with him."
Piper's gaze darted to Phoebe as she nodded slowly.
There was a tense silence in the kitchen. No one had any idea what to say to that.
Phoebe cleared her throat and turned to Paige. "So what did the Elders want? Why did they visit you? Did they have any information that might be helpful."
Paige said somewhat diffidently, "They want us to stop looking for Leo."
"What?"
Phoebe flinched at the anger in Piper's tone, automatically ducking her head, half-expecting something to explode. But Piper retained enough control not to accidentally destroy anything in the kitchen, and Phoebe let out a small sigh of relief.
Then she narrowed her eyes at Paige and felt her own resentment against the Elders start to build.
"They think the consequences of going up against Lucifer would far outweigh the benefits of getting Leo back… if we even succeed in that," Paige explained. "They wanted me to tell you that… that we need to stop. We can't have anything more to do with the devil."
"That's ridiculous," Piper snorted. "That's absolutely… ugh."
"Leo is an Elder," Phoebe protested. "He's one of them."
"Yeah, but he hasn't exactly been in their good graces since he killed Gideon," Piper pointed out, running a hand through her hair. Her voice was laced with venom as she added, "I be there are plenty of Elders who are happy to have him out of the way."
"Do you really think they'd do that?" Phoebe asked tentatively. She knew the Elders had no problem recycling people's souls, but there was a fundamental difference between doing that and handing over souls to Lucifer.
Piper snorted again, apparently thinking the question absurd and the answer obvious.
"I think they're scared," Paige said after a moment of contemplation. "I think… I think they aren't happy with Leo, but I also think… I think they are really, truly terrified of what Lucifer could do."
It would be so easy to just give up.
Chris knew he couldn't – he was a Halliwell, and giving up wasn't an option. But he didn't even know what he was trying to succeed at anymore. Saving Wyatt? Well that was done, wasn't it? Saving Leo? Well, that was not very likely, wasn't it?
Defeating Lucifer?
Impossible.
Something inside of him twisted painfully at that thought. Had he really lost? Had he survived battling his own brother, living in that hellish future, and then traveling to the past and searching for answers that were hidden as well as a needle in a haystack, just to lose everything now?
Well… if he was going to lose, then at least it had taken the freaking devil to actually stop him.
That was something to be proud of.
He needed to rest. He needed to take a break a let someone else handle this problem. Why did it have to be his? Why did the weight of the world have to rest on his shoulders? Why did destiny have to pick him?
Why couldn't it be someone else?
He'd had those thoughts so many times in the past – or future, depending on the point of view – but he'd always been able to ignore them, push them to the back of his mind. Now, though…
The woman sitting across from him stared intently at the tarot cards on the table between them. Chris didn't generally put much faith in the words of soothsayers and fortunetellers, but sometimes they're insight could be valuable, and he had no idea where else to turn.
The woman looked up at him. She had peroxide blonde curls and way too much make up, but Chris could feel her magic. She was the real thing, and not just someone looking to make money capitalizing on people's obsession with the occult.
"It's going to destroy you," she said flatly.
When he'd shown up fifteen minutes earlier and asked for a reading, she'd spoken to him in a mystical voice. Her eyes had been unfocused and her words had been full of vague nonsense about fate and surprises and other generic things she could have said to anyone.
It had all been an act.
Now she was being serious.
"I don't know what happened to you," she said, "but it is ripping you apart."
"You can tell that from your cards?" Chris asked.
The woman shrugged. "From my cards, yes. But I can also feel it on you." She leaned back in her folding chair and gave him a scrutinizing stare. Then she said, "You're so good at burying things. Secrets. Emotions. Thoughts. But they're not going to stay buried anymore. They're going to surface in your mind and call to you. They're going to be irresistible. Like a siren's song."
Chris stiffened. "Is there any way to stop it?" he asked sharply. "A way to survive the song?"
The woman considered this for a moment, then said, "Odysseus survived hearing the song by tying himself to the mast of his ship and filling all his sailors' ears with wax."
Chris furrowed his brow. "Was that an answer to my question?" he snapped irritably.
The woman nodded. "Yes, it was." She leaned forward and lowered her voice. "Do you have a mast to strap yourself to? Do you have soldiers whose ears you can fill with wax?"
Chris didn't bother answering. It seemed like a rather rhetorical question anyway.
"Because if you don't," the woman said, "then the answer is no. There is no way to survive the song."
Chris pushed his chair backwards and rose abruptly to his feet. That wasn't the answer he wanted to hear, but it was the one he had been expecting. Lola had warned him that being released from hell wouldn't be easy. She'd pretty much flat out told him that his emotions would destroy him.
And now the fortuneteller was confirming it.
Well, at least he wouldn't have to suffer through this for too much longer. His conception date was getting closer, and when that day passed…
"Thank you," he said in a somewhat choked voice, nodding to the woman. She nodded back, and he excused himself quickly.
Once outside, he took a few slow breaths to calm his rapidly beating heart and tried to think clearly. In the future, survival had depended on keeping things buried. Emotions got in the way, fears were easy to manipulate, and knowledge was too valuable a weapon to let fall into the wrong hands. And he'd survived – in some ways even flourished – because of his ability to compartmentalize.
And now that was gone. Lost.
It made sense, too. Lucifer couldn't tell a lie. Lucifer couldn't make people do anything. But he could whisper poisonous words in their ears, could play on their hopes and their fears, could walk with them right to the edge of the metaphorical cliff and watch as they threw themselves off it.
And what had hell done to Chris? It hadn't filled his mind with lies. It hadn't changed him, hadn't made him into someone else, someone different. It had merely made it harder for him to ignore the parts of himself that he didn't want to face. It had capitalized on his own poisonous truths, his own tantalizing hopes, his own desperate fears.
It had done to Chris exactly what Lucifer so often did to his victims.
If you wear your heart on your sleeve, Wyatt had told Chris once, you make it easier for your enemies to rip it out.
Lucifer was the enemy, and there was no doubt in Chris' mind that the devil would enjoy nothing more than to rip out and trample all over Chris' heart.