"He can probably here us," said Piper as she watched Phoebe close the door. Prue gave her a long look at that and Piper inferred that she wanted an explanation. "His father is Leo, a whitelighter, that means he's a witch-whitelighter hybrid like Paige."
"And the Elders allowed this?" asked Phoebe. "When they wouldn't have accepted it with Paige?"
"But that plays into the Power of Three," said Prue. "I've been thinking about it, and the only reason it would only make sense if they were afraid that breaking apart the Power of Three."
"Then that means there Elders have a sense of self-preservations," said Piper. "If we work off of that, that they're willing to play that game, then we have to think that they might be helping destiny along so their timelines don't get destroyed."
"You think we can use that?" asked Prue.
Piper shrugged, it was possible that they could use it but above and beyond the Elders seemed to know that they were outmatched. They were apathetic to the plight that many timelines faced. She took a breath and pushed it back, all of it seemed a little more real now when she thought about it, when she looked at Chris and saw the impact it was having on her son.
"I think we're away from the important bit, here," said Phoebe. "You have a son."
"Have you tested it?" asked Prue. "Made sure that he is who he says he is?"
Piper gave her a nod. "Gave him a potion to wash away all illusions, gave him a truth potion and asked him questions, and above and beyond that I contacted Mom and Grams, had them come up with a spell that would test his claim. Even if he's very good at magic I don't think he would have passed all of that if he was lying."
"So what do we do about him in the grander scheme?" asked Prue.
"Wow," Piper found herself muttering. "Could you ask that any colder?" Before Prue could answer Piper took a breath and said, "He's my son and he's just lost everyone he knows, everyone that he loves. Right now I think we should spend a little getting him accustomed to this time, broach what we're doing and figure out a way that we'll be able to push him back and sideways when we need to."
Phoebe and Prue shared a look, the latter's expression going still before Piper saw some sympathy. "Does that mean pulling back on our work? Putting on the act that we're following the path they've setup?" the question was directed at Phoebe more than at Piper.
"I think we should," said Phoebe. "I'm getting the feeling—not a vision just intuition—that there'll be a more to his trip. The protections that Jeremy mentioned on time travelling."
"I think that might come to pass sooner than later," said Piper. "As I was coming back I was met by a Cleaner. He was investigating the matter in the university. Chris can cloak himself and I was their only lead."
"Which means the Cleaners will be watching us above all else," said Prue. She took a breath, rubbing the bridge of her nose and going into a pace. "Let's put them on the back burner for now," she said. "They're investigating and they'll be watching, which means we won't give them anything. Chris will stay at the house and not leave until we figure out more about the Cleaners."
"I could," said Phoebe. "Search through alternate futures until I meet a me that's had some interactions with the Cleaners. But that will take a long time, especially above the visions that Destiny is forcing me to have."
"Forcing? What?" asked Piper.
"The innocent that we saved, the visions I received weren't one I was consciously working to get," she said. "They felt different. I've worked my visions so that they're clearer, the sound is sharper, I've even moved to colour. The most important but is that I've gotten them to the point where I can get the entire image.
"These were jumbled. I think they didn't take into account my experience and they sent me the rougher visions from the start."
"We've been thinking on it," said Prue, "adding more on your thoughts and we think that the angels don't know what we did in the alternate futures."
"With that in mind we chose to change how we theorise their powers work," said Phoebe. "Every new timeline introduces new iterations of the Angels of Destiny. For whatever reason, the angels can't move between timelines and if they can move back in time, it's only within those same timelines."
"But they aren't doing that, are they?" asked Piper. "They can't have. If they did they would have travelled back in time to stop us before we started, before you could send back your memories."
"Which lends further credence to the theory that there's someone or something out there that's keeping them from doing so," said Prue. "There are other forces in play and if we find out who they are, which side they lean, we might be able to get their help. But above all else we have to keep the act up, follow any visions that Phoebe gets while making it hard for demons and warlocks."
"In the meantime," said Phoebe with a large smile. "I want to go chat to my nephew." She pulled on the enchanted doors to the parlour where Chris sat with a rubrics cube moving in the air. "He is so cute," said Phoebe, closing the space between the both of the quite deftly and engulfing him in a hug.
"Please don't crush me," Chris said, closing in on himself and close his eyes; to Piper it looks as though he was afraid to get hurt. "Oh," he said, surprised. "You don't have that yet."
"Have what?" said Phoebe, pulling back.
Chris took a breath and let it out. "I guess it doesn't mean much with my timeline gone," he said. "And it wouldn't change much in the first place… Aunt Phoebe—"
"I'm an aunt," Phoebe muttered giving Prue a tap.
"—will have superstrength and levitation added to her active power set," Chris continued.
"More powers," said Phoebe, she sat beside Chris. "That's going to be fun, right?"
"Do I get any new powers?" asked Piper. "They might be fun."
"No," said Chris. "You're the only one with effectively one power. Aunt Prue has telekinesis and astral projection, Aunt Phoebe has precognition, superstrength and Aunt Prue has telekinesis mixed in with her whitelighter blood."
"Well, there's something to make you feel less special," Piper muttered.
"Don't me," Chris said quickly. "In my timeline you were the scariest of the Charmed ones after…" His eyes strayed towards Prue before he looked down. "After Aunt Prue died."
The three of them shared a look.
"Chris," said Prue. "Why don't you tell us about your timeline. Everything about it?"
"Is this about the destiny and timelines?" Chris asked. Piper gave him a look. "I wasn't listening. You always hated it when Wyatt and I did that. But I'm your son," he said with a shrug.
"Yes," said Prue, her words slow and measured. "And we want to understand something. The angels destroy timelines in which their vision doesn't come to pass, we're just wondering why they wouldn't destroy a timeline where I died and the Power of Three was broken."
"Because of Aunt Paige," said Chris. "She manifested shortly…" Chris sighed. "You know, when you're looking at this with a suspicious eye everything starts to seem like one great manipulation."
"Welcome to our world," Phoebe muttered.
All this Piper barely heard because her mind was on one word, one name: "Who's Wyatt?" she asked and all at once Chris froze, his teeth grit and the edge of tears in his eyes.
"He's…" Christ wiped at his eyes, getting his breathing under control. He smiled a little as Phoebe gave him a hug. "He's my older brother."
There was a crash and Chris was the only one to be surprised; more than one piece of furniture in the room shattered into a multitude of pieces before it reformed only to shatter apart. This continued until Piper started to get control over her breathing, pushing her anger until it was forced to subside. When she looked at her watch fifteen minutes had passed.
Chris looked scared at the end of all of it, terrified. While her sisters looked empathetic to her plight. Piper felt the anger escaping her grip again for furniture to explode all over again. The time it took to calm herself was shorter this time.
"I'm going to cook something," said Piper rising to her feet. In the kitchen she allowed herself to get lost in the routine. Five minutes through it all Chris walked in, asked what she was making and fit himself fluidly in the routine.
"You're going to depose the Angels of Destiny, aren't you?" Chris asked when fifteen minutes had passed. Piper gave him a long look and Chris looked down, shifting. "Grandpa Victor told me the story when I was old enough to really understand. How you were, about this magic thing. He told me of your relationship with the Elders, that you didn't like them."
Piper smiled sardonically. "It's hard to like someone controlling your lives," she said.
"With what you are discussing it seems like the sort of thing you'd want to do," he said. "Which means it's probably fortuitous that I'm here…or not. It could be a part of the Grand Design."
Piper shook her head. "I don't think that's true," she said. She took a breath. "I don't know them well, but I do know how they act. It's probably folly," she said. "But they're simple, set in an action that works but leaves them open to being crafty."
"Even so they're powerful," said Chris. "The type of power that it would take to destroy entire timelines. Do you think you can win against that?"
Piper shrugged. "It only takes one victory," she said. Well if their theory was right then it would only take one victory.
"I can help," he said. "Make it easier because with my future knowledge I might be able to accumulate a power base, countermeasures for that sort of thing. More to that there might be a simple solution: The Avatars."
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"The Avatars are a neutral party," Chris said when he and Piper had moved to the parlour, with Prue and Phoebe with them. "I don't know how, but they discovered a way of pooling their collective power. It's something that's meant that they could build their own personal dimension existing outside the influence of other magical beings."
"Even the Elders and the Angels of Destiny?" asked Prue.
"Even them," said Chris. "In my future you worked him them for a time. You all became Avatars, boosting their power enough that they could warp reality towards a quasi-Utopia. When you found out how it really worked you severed from the Avatars and everything returned to normal."
"They're an option," said Prue. "But from what you're saying there's something about them we didn't like."
"You weren't a part of them," said Chris, his words slow. "This was after your death." Piper looked in Prue's direction and she didn't seem as affected as Piper might have been. "But yeah. Their Utopia wasn't all that perfect. Every time anyone disrupted what they wanted, they made them disappear."
"That works counter to what we're trying to achieve," said Phoebe. "But at least we have an idea of how to protect ourselves. Building a dimension outside of the control of anyone other than us. You don't happen to have any ideas how we might do that, do you?"
Chris shook his head. "All I know is that you'd need a lot of power," he said. "The Power of Three is a lot of power in its own right, but not enough that it would be able to create a personal dimension."
"How about we play this in another direction," said Phoebe. "Play it very long term but by putting the people we love in danger."
"What are you thinking," said Prue.
"I'm thinking that we send our kids back in time," she said. "From this point on we create our own splits." Phoebe paused. "It's cold and all of me doesn't like it, but I'm thinking that we start having children strictly from an evolutionary point of view so that they can travel back through timelines not to the point, but before we get out powers. That way the various permutations of our children can come together to create our new dimension."
"That sounds eerily like having children so that they can just serve as soldiers," Piper said. She looked at Chris' direction and she felt a sense of unease. What would he think with the way they were speaking.
"We're not even sure how that would work on us," said Prue. "We'd be creating timelines in which we have these children, but we'd be working through our conundrum, sending memories back. All those memories and things might come out a jumbled mess."
"I might be able to do it," said Phoebe. "It's getting to the point that there's always a vision running at the back of my mind and I handle it. Memories wouldn't be much."
"There's also the fact that I appeared when I was with Jeremy," said Piper. "If this happened around him, me stuck in stupor, he might kill me."
"I know there are a lot of kinks," said Phoebe. "But it's the only way we can think off. From then on we have a measure of protection from them."
"I'm still not sure how this would work, though," said Prue. "We'd be out of their gaze, but ultimately how would that reflect? With permutation, in which timeline would be able to use the dimension?"
"Is that how it would work?" asked Chris. "I mean, the way you guys are talking it's like you're quasi-moving back to one point, creating new branches. If we moved further back than that point, then we would create a dimension and then every branch that formed from that would have the dimension."
Piper groaned rubbing the bridge of her nose. "This is all too…big," she said. "Forcing me us to think in abstract. It forces us to think how space-time works which is hard enough since none of us were in the sciences, but it's worse when you add magic into the mix."
"We knew it would be difficult dealing with this," said Prue. She sighed sitting back and closing her eyes. "But it seems even harder now. Why don't we resume this conversation in the morning? I'm tired enough as it is."
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AN: I'm starting to feel like I've bitten off more than I can chew with the timeline thing but it's fun thinking about—this sort of reflects the thoughts I have sometimes with this show. I'm not sure but I think the whole timeline thing might get confusing with how I wrote it out—obviously I understand it since I'm the one whose thinking on it, but it could be indecipherable.
The basics of it: Tree the timeline that they're in as the trunk of a tree, every choice they make from that point on sprouts new branches. I think it should make sense if you read the chanter with that in mind.