Disclaimer: I don't own Charmed. The idea that Piper died when Chris a.k.a Kate was very small and she was raised by Phoebe belongs to avocadomoon.

I forgot to mention this, but I love Cole, and I'm not too fond of Coop. He's fine I guess, I just prefer Cole. So, like in Twists in Time, Elizabeth was vanquished when he was a baby and Cole was raised by Benjamin to be Good. He never killed an innocent or a witch, or anything save demons. Phoebe was pregnant when they vanquished the Source and the Source possessed the baby, not Cole (who hadn't stripped Belthazor and therefore wasn't vulnerable to the possession). They vanquished the baby Source (leading to Phoebe and Cole deciding to wait a few years before having children due to the grief. In the Dark Timeline, they never ended up having them because things got too bad and Cole eventually died.) and the Elders rewarded the Sisters with Wyatt and Cole with his Belthazor side being replaced by a witch side, so he's no longer a half-demon, but isn't vulnerable the way he was in canon. He has pyrokinesis and fading, a type of magical travel.

Psychokinesis is like telekinesis but you move objects that aren't in sight instead. (Check out my profile to see Kate's powers).

Posted 7-6-2023

Chapter Two

Meet the Family

Kate bounced on the balls of her feet, adrenaline already beginning to course through her veins.

It was time. After five months of preparation, of struggling to adjust to a world destroyed before she was born, of stalking the Halliwells (she couldn't think of them as her family, otherwise she'd have a mental breakdown the moment she met 2003-Phoebe's eyes), of forging alliances with Good and Neutral beings and connections with denizens of the Underworld, and the time was finally here.

The Titans had been released only that morning, and Paige was due to die in less than five minutes, resulting in the slaughter of nearly all Elders and Whitelighters (who would subsequently also die over the next decade) and the revelation of magic in the worst way possible to the mortal world. So much pain, stemming from one death.

Unless Kate could stop it.

"Two minutes," Nico announced, eyes on the timer counting down to when Kate needed to orb in to rescue her would-be adoptive mother and aunt. It had taken several weeks of studying the cards and star charts, casting spells and consulting Seers Good, Neutral and Evil alike, to figure out exactly what time Paige died at, but they'd eventually pinned it down.

Kate slid on her sunglasses. They would shield her from Meta's power should she accidentally meet the Titanness' gaze. She adjusted her jacket. It was too hot for it, but Kate and Nico had learned better than to let anyone 'normal' from this time see their scarred bodies. With the demons they went undercover to meet, they showed off the relics of their battles, proving they weren't to be messed with. They used their bodies and memories as proof to convince the magical creatures they met of the importance of their mission.

But they couldn't afford to let the Charmed Ones know everything that happened. It was too risky. If it came out that Wyatt was the greatest danger of the future, they'd lose all their (most likely fragile) trust in their guest from the future. In that scenario, Kate would probably have to explain who she was. They'd considered doing that at the beginning, because it was an automatic ticket to trust. Why wouldn't you trust your own child, after all? Especially in this innocent world, with the Charmed Ones so naïve and unaware of how cruel the world could be. But for many reasons they'd decided against it. With that trust would come an urge to parent, to protect her and tell her what to do.

Kate didn't have time for that. She was here to do a job, not have a family reunion.

Besides, Kate was under no illusions about whether or not she and Nico were going to make it to the new 2020s. Despite the battered old engagement ring she wore, they had no plans to live through this mission, only survive long enough to fulfil it. She cared too much for her family, even those she'd never met or didn't remember, to put them through the grief of losing a child. She knew grief, and it wasn't something she'd wish on her worse enemy.

Not that he had enough emotions remaining in him to understand what he'd be feeling if he did somehow manage to feel it.

"Ten seconds," Nico said abruptly.

Kate snapped into her 'mission mode', bracing herself. This was her only chance to get this right. Everything would be screwed if she missed her shot at saving her youngest aunt.

"Now!" Nico cried, and she orbed.

She took in the situation rapidly. Paige was stone already, as expected, but Kate could sense the life still in her. Still being sucked away. Phoebe was on her ass, one hand on her head like she was concussed and didn't know what was going on. Moments away from being turned to stone like her baby sister, though Piper would intervene in time to save the middle sister. Not the youngest one though.

"Don't look into her eyes!" Kate shouted, flinging herself to her knees beside the middle Charmed One. She cut off Phoebe's view of the Titan with her body while grabbing the potions waiting on the table and started throwing them at Meta. Her sunglasses shielded her gaze from Meta's power, and with one last look of hatred in her direction, the red-haired Titanness disappeared.

Kate sighed and relaxed a fraction, climbing to her feet without even a wince for her aching knee. At this point, she was so used to the pain she didn't even flinch, let alone keep her weight off it. Nobody looking would even think it was a weak point for her.

Phoebe looked dazed and bewildered, and so wonderfully alive it would have made Kate cry if she didn't have such rigid control over her emotions. The weary-beyond-her-age witchlighter quickly stamped down the mixed emotions the older woman brought up in her. The anger, grief, longing and love. The resentment and pain. The adoration. All of it was swiftly tucked away into a mental box at the back of Kate's mind where it wouldn't impede her mission.

"Are you alright?" Kate asked evenly as she helped Phoebe to her feet.

Phoebe didn't answer. Her eyes had fallen on her baby sister and she let out a panicked cry. "Paige!" She exclaimed, rushing to the younger witch's side.

"Don't worry, she's alright," Kate assured Phoebe, unable not to try and comfort her. She hid a flinch at the look her would-be adoptive mother gave her. It looked a lot like when Kate was a kid and trying to pull wool over the empathic psychic's eyes. "Well, I mean, she's not completely alright, obviously, but she's not dead," Kate corrected herself, trying to remain composed despite how off-kilter she felt, speaking to Phoebe for the first time since she was fourteen. She'd stalked her for months, learning her routine and preparing herself for the gut-wrenching pain of seeing her alive and untouched by the pain of seeing her family be picked off one by one, the stress of trying to out-run the Witch Hunters, demons and the Source while raising a magical, angry kid.

This was so much harder than watching her from afar.

"Are you sure she's not?" Phoebe asked doubtfully, patting her sister's stone shoulder in comfort.

Kate shrugged, putting her hands in her jacket pocket to let her clench her hands into fists without Phoebe noticing. At least this Phoebe didn't know her well enough to pick up on the distress Kate was feeling in her presence.

Kate tried to tell herself that was a good thing.

"Frankly, you see this a lot," she told the middle Charmed One after clearing her throat. "Museums, universities, town centres... Most of those statues, they're not really statues. They're people like your sister here who have been, uh, turned into stone."

Phoebe suddenly seemed to realize that she had no idea who her mysterious rescuer was. She turned to her with narrowed eyes. "Who are you?" She demanded suspiciously.

"Kate," Kate answered evenly, meeting Phoebe's warm but wary brown eyes calmly. "Kate Perry. I'm from the future."

Piper walked in before Phoebe had a chance to do more than give Kate a sceptical look.

"Oh! My god, tell me that's just a really good likeness of Paige," Piper gasped in horror, staring at the statue.

Phoebe grimaced and shook her head, patting Paige's shoulder anxiously again. "Oh, it's Paige," she confirmed glumly.

"Titan turned her to stone," Kate added helpfully. Dealing with Piper was hard, but not as hard as dealing with Phoebe. Piper had died when she was too young to remember anything other than the scent of magic and herbs, combined with long dark hair that tickled her cheeks. It was the absence of Piper that she mourned, not Piper herself.

Phoebe was a different, more painful story.

That didn't mean it didn't sting when Piper turned to her with a narrow-eyed gaze and asked sharply, "Who are you?"

"That's Kate," Phoebe informed her, adding slightly sarcastically. "She's from the future."

"Yeah, but just like twenty years or so," Kate told them helpfully. Actually, it was twenty-two years, four months. They'd left from February 9th, 2025.

Piper nodded with a dry expression, still looking suspicious. "Uh-huh. Friend or foe?"

"Not so sure yet," Phoebe replied.

Kate huffed a bit, even though she was expecting it. Still, weren't people supposed to be more trusting in this time? "Look, I don't expect you to trust me just like that. I certainly wouldn't in your positions. But I saved Paige, didn't I? Doesn't that grant me a drop of trust?"

"Oh, you call that saving, do you?" Phoebe scoffed, pointing to the statue that used to be her sister.

"Better than the alternative," Kate shot back, feeling irrationally angry at Phoebe for not trusting her.

Her mom had always trusted her. She was the only person Phoebe trusted, and it stung to see the wariness in her familiar, if gentler, eyes aimed at her.

"Look," Kate said impatiently. "I'm the one that put my life on the line here. I didn't have to drop everything I was doing just to orb in and save her ass from her own idiotic plans..."

Seriously, how stupid do you have to be to summon a Titan to your home? Still, it occurred to Kate that insulting their sister probably wasn't the best way to gain the sisters' trust.

Thankfully, they didn't seem to have noticed the insult.

"You-you orb?" Piper stuttered in surprise. "You're a Whitelighter?"

"Witchlighter, actually," Kate corrected her. Originally, she'd planned to just claim to be a whitelighter, but, as Nico had pointed out, her lack of healing ability would have them figuring out something was wrong pretty quick.

Damn Leo and his crappy genes. She got the orbing that was useless in her time, when magical transportation was heavily tracked, and the susceptibility to Darklighter poison, but not the actually useful power. She'd give her right arm to be able to heal.

"Half-witch, half-whitelighter. We're-well I wouldn't say common, in my time, but not as rare as we are in this one. Actually, there are more in this time than you realize. There's a British guy older than your sister who's a half-Whitelighter too."

"Huh," the sisters blinked in surprise, but they seemed to believe her at least.

And thanks to her little ramble they didn't seem suspicious of her identity, which was a small weight off Kate's burdened shoulders.

"Look," she went on, meeting Piper's eyes to show she was being genuine. She knew from Phoebe that if she could convince Piper to believe her, the others would follow. "Where I come from, history shows Paige didn't get turned into stone on this day... she died. And with her death the Power of Three died too, allowing Titans to rule and create a world you don't wanna see, trust me. I'm here to alter history. To help you save the future."

"Who sent you?" Phoebe asked, though they seemed to be softening, perhaps sensing her sincerity.

"The Elders," Kate answered smoothly. "What's left of them, anyway."

"Why you?" Piper questioned, still a bit wary.

"I can't tell you that," Kate replied frankly.

"Why not?" Piper pressed, eyes narrowing.

"I'll explain time travel rules in more detail later, but for now, just know that the more knowledge of the future you get, the more dangerous it is for everyone," Kate stated. "But one thing I can say is that if I hadn't got here when I did, Paige would have been the third Whitelighter victim."

"Wait, third?" Phoebe repeated sharply. "I thought only one was missing?"

"Not anymore," Kate answered grimly. She regretted the loss of an innocent whitelighter a bit, but she was too hardened to let it really bother her. She couldn't save everyone, she'd grown up understanding that. She had to focus on saving the 'more important' people, cruel as it sounded.

"Leo!" Piper called. "Leo!"

Kate suppressed the feelings of bitterness and anger that surged at the thought of the man who'd abandoned his family and let the world die. She'd do herself no favours showing her hatred for the self-absorbed Elder-to-be.

Leo orbed in, already making excuses for something. Something about missing counselling, whatever the fuck that was.

"Forget that, we've got bigger problems," Piper told him sharply.

"What happened?

"Forget that too," Piper replied. "How many Whitelighters are missing?"

Leo blinked in surprise. "What?"

"How many?" Piper pressed.

"Uh, two," Leo stated, still looking confused. "That's what the Elders just called me for."

"Believe me now?" Kate cut in, raising an eyebrow at her birth mother-to-be.

Leo: stared at her in surprise, clearly not having noticed her until she spoke. Idiot. No wonder he died so early into the Source's reign. "Who's she?"

"Kate Perry, witchlighter from the future, here to save the world," Kate introduced herself dryly. "I'd say it's nice to meet you, but I don't like Whitelighters and Elders on principle."

"Didn't you say you're here on the Elders' orders?" Piper asked suspiciously.

Kate flipped her braid over her shoulder, meeting the eldest Charmed One's eyes with a steady gaze. "I am. Just because I can work with them to stop the apocalypse, doesn't mean I have to like them."

The best part was that it wasn't even a lie.

Piper looked ready to speak, but a crash came from downstairs.

"What was that?" Phoebe said sharply.

"Phoebe! Piper, Paige!" A hassled, male voice came from the first floor.

Kate exhaled subtly, feeling a pang in her chest.

Cole Turner, the man Phoebe had loved and mourned until the day she died. The man who died trying to retrieve Wyatt from whatever demon had captured him, the day Kate came into the world.

She'd never heard his voice before, but she knew who he was instantly.

She watched neutrally as the two sisters and Piper's husband rushed down the stairs, then turned and strode over to the lectern holding the Book. It wasn't the first time she'd seen it, obviously, but she'd been too rushed trying to find the time travel spell and escape to really treasure the sight of her family's ancient spell book that day back in the future. Before that, all she'd had were the handful of spells Phoebe had managed to tear out of it before fleeing the Manor with three-year-old Kate, back in 2007. She ran her hand over the cover, sighing at the feeling of Warren magic that radiated from it. The Book recognized her. Embraced her.

"Alright," she murmured after a moment of savouring the feeling of her family's magic. "How to free people from stone. What do ya got for me, huh?" She began flipping through the pages slowly, a part of her in shock at the fact that she was really reading the Book that had taught her aunt so much.

What would Mom have said if she could see her now?

Probably, stop getting lost in the little stuff, Katy. That doesn't matter. Just focus on the problem and get to work.

Alright Mom, Kate thought resignedly. This is me, getting to work.

It was Katharine Patricia Halliwell (more commonly known as Katy Perry)'s tenth birthday when her Mom told her the truth about herself.

They were huddled together for warmth, hiding out in the dirty basement of an abandoned farmhouse somewhere in the abandoned countryside of Idaho. Katy had a broken wrist from fighting a demon, and they hadn't eaten in two days because Phoebe hadn't been able to get new ration cards for them yet after they had to flee their last 'home' quickly when the Witch Hunters started sniffing around.

All in all, not the worst birthday Katy'd ever had. She just wished they could risk setting a fire, because it was almost winter, and she was freezing and Phoebe's body heat and Katy's worn-out old blanket could only do so much to shield her from the cold.

"Katy, little angel," her Mom broke the silence they were sitting in at last, startling Katy out of her light dose. "I have something for you. A birthday present."

"A birthday present?" Katy echoed in wary surprise. People didn't do birthday presents anymore. Not in this hellscape of a world. The only present Katy had ever gotten was when she was five and her Mom gave her a dusty old chocolate bar for some holiday people didn't celebrate any longer. She'd shared it with Phoebe of course, and together they had made it last for three months, but they'd lost the last bit during a hasty flight from Quebec after a demon attack exposed them as witches. Katy supposed some other lucky bastard had enjoyed the rest of it.

Phoebe smiled sadly, brushing some dirty hair out of Katy's pale, thin face. "Yeah, baby," she confirmed. "A present. Look." She pulled a piece of paper from her pocket and passed it to Katy, who stared at it blankly.

It was a photo. An old one, judging by the colours leeched from it by time and dirt. It showed three women, young and smiling widely and so- not broken, was the best way Katy could describe it as. This was from Before, from a world Katy only knew through stories. A world where magic was hidden and people smiled and laughed and ate as much as they wanted. A world with clean, running water and no demons and Witch Hunters stalking the streets.

A world Katy sometimes thought had never existed outside her mother's dreams. It just didn't seem real.

Katy studied the picture. There was some meaning to it. 'Present' this may be, but Phoebe would never give her something without a hidden motive.

She would recognize the woman on the left anywhere, of course. Her own mother was older, harder with an eye lost avenging her baby sister and two fingers cut off by the Hunters, but it was still her in the picture.

The other two, Katy made an educated guess about. "Are they your sisters? My aunts?" She glanced at the picture again and, based on Phoebe's descriptions of her three sisters, added a tentative, "Piper and Paige?" Piper was easy enough to guess, considering she'd been a part of both. As for the guess about Paige, the third member of the group just looked too young and sweet to be the stern, surrogate mother/tunnel-visioned older sister Phoebe had described Prue as being.

"Yeah," Katy's Mom confirmed with a sad expression, gazing at what was probably the sole remaining picture of her and her sisters. "Piper's in the middle, and that's Paige on the right. We took this just before finding out that Piper was pregnant. She might already have been pregnant by then. I'm not sure."

Katy stayed quiet. She knew that the thought of Wyatt was even more painful for Phoebe than her sisters. They had died, they were at peace. They'd escaped this terrible life.

Wyatt had suffered a far worse fate than that, and Phoebe would never forgive herself for failing to protect her nephew.

Phoebe let out a shaky breath. Katy didn't look at her, knowing her mother wouldn't appreciate her daughter seeing her tear up. "Katy, my little angel. My reason for living. Look at me, baby."

Feeling a prickling sense of dread, Katy turned to meet her mother's red-rimmed eyes, though no tears had fallen. The older Halliwell reached out and cupped Katy's face.

"Know that I love you. I will always love you, no matter where or when we are. No matter what choices you make, or what happens. Many things change with time, but my love for you never will. Do you understand?"

"I understand, Mom," Katy replied obediently. Truthfully, she knew she'd never fully comprehend Phoebe's love for her. She had no intention of having a child, of bringing an innocent, fragile life into this horrific life. But she knew like she knew that demons were evil, what food was safe to eat and what was ruined by the bombs and how to purify water without magic, things bred into the bones of every surviving witch in this dystopia, that Phoebe loved her. Nothing would ever change that, even if the pressure broke Katy and turned her to evil. Phoebe's broken heart would be crushed to dust in that scenario, but she'd still love her, even when she vanquished her.

Phoebe looked more pained at Katy's words, and the young witch felt her gut twist with wariness. She didn't like where this was going.

"That's the thing, baby," Phoebe sighed heavily. "I'm not. Not your mom, I mean."

Katy stared at her uncomprehendingly. "I don't understand," she said quietly. Her heart was pounding in her ears. "I'm a Halliwell. I've called on the family magic before."

"You're a Halliwell," Phoebe confirmed instantly. "There's no question about that. But I didn't give birth to you."

"Then, how-?" Katy began, before she understood, looking back down at the photograph in her lap. Looking properly at the sister in the centre for the first time. "Piper. She's-she gave birth to me?" It had to be her. The others had died before her conception, let alone birth.

"Yes," Phoebe sighed. "Piper is your birth mother. But when she died, you were so young. Barely three. It was safer, less conspicuous, to be a mother and daughter than an aunt and niece. And you were so young, it was easier to get you to call me 'Mommy' all the time, rather than to confuse you by telling you to call me 'Aunt Pheebs' in private and 'Mommy' in public. Eventually, you just forgot I wasn't your mother. I always promised myself that when you were ten I would tell you the truth, so. Here is me, telling you the truth."

Katy stared down at the woman in the picture, but she couldn't bring herself to feel any attachment to the woman who'd birthed her. Perhaps it was cruel, but this was a cruel world, and Katy didn't have it in her to expend energy she didn't have missing someone she didn't remember. But she could feel that Phoebe wished for her to know Piper, to love her. For Phoebe's sake...

"Will you tell me about her?"

Phoebe smiled a wobbly smile and nodded, pulling Katy closer to her side and picking up the picture. "Your mom-"

"Mama," Katy cut in before she even realized that she'd made her decision.

Phoebe flashed her a mildly puzzled look. "Piper's my mama, you're my mom. End of story."

Phoebe pursed her lips the way she did when she was trying not to cry and kissed her forehead. "I love you, baby," she told her. "So much."

"I love you too," Katy answered softly. Maybe she should have felt angry at Phoebe for lying, but again. She just didn't have the energy to be angry with anything other than the demons and Witch Hunters who dogged their every footstep.

Phoebe cleared her throat and continued with her story. "Your mama was the typical middle child when we were kids, always playing mediator between Prue and I, keeping the peace and looking after everyone. But after Prue died...Goddess, I'll never be glad we lost her, but Piper really blossomed then. She turned into Wonder Woman, kept the family together and made demons fear us in a way they never did before that. She was so strong." Phoebe stroked Katy's hair, her eyes unfocused as if she could see the fiery brunette in front of her once again. "You remind me of her, you know. All the best parts of her. The best parts of all of us. You'll make us proud, baby. You'll do what we couldn't. You'll fix this. You'll fix everything."

Something about the mysterious witchlighter from the future set Piper's teeth on edge. Maybe it was the glimmer of emotions in her eyes when she looked at them, even as she kept her voice cool and unconcerned, even as she talked about the end of the world. Maybe it was the familiarity in her movements, her voice, her eyes. Her everything. Maybe it was the fact that she wasn't even pretending that she wasn't hiding stuff from them.

Piper didn't know, but when she realized that they'd left their new 'guest' upstairs with the Book of Shadows and, more importantly, a defenceless Paige, Piper turned and rushed back to the attic, leaving the others to sort out the magical creatures who'd invaded their home.

To her relief, Paige was unharmed (beyond being, you know, a block of stone). To her alarm, Kate, if that was even her real name, was bent over the Book, flipping through the pages with an interested expression.

"Step away from that!" Piper ordered, glaring at the younger woman, who, to her credit, stepped away without a fight. "What were you doing?"

"What does it look like I was doing?" Kate cocked an eyebrow in a way that was so damn familiar Piper wanted to scream in frustration. It was right on the tip of her tongue, she just couldn't put her finger on it. "I was trying to figure out a way to save stone-cold Paige over there. You're gonna need her, soon. By the way, you should really update your goblins entry. It's very inaccurate."

"Goblins?" Piper blinked in surprise.

"Yeah, believe me those things are pests," Kate rolled her eyes in what seemed like irritation at the mere thought of the beings. "Look," she went on, moving closer and laying a hand on the Book. Even Piper could feel the way the Book's magic embraced the stranger from the future. She just didn't understand why. It usually only did that with...No, surely not. That had to be impossible.

"You don't trust me," Kate shrugged. "Fair enough. I wouldn't trust me either, in your shoes. But the Book trusts me. Doesn't that at least prove I have the same end goal as you guys?"

"The Book could be wrong," Piper pointed out. "It's happened before."

Kate sighed and rolled her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest. "Goddess, you're determined not to let me help, aren't you?" She huffed in annoyance. "What do I have to do to prove I'm here to help?"

"Fine, if you want to prove yourself, then tell us how to vanquish these Titans," Piper challenged the other brunette.

Kate pursed her lips at that. "Except you can't vanquish them," she corrected.

"You mean, not without the Power of Three," Piper nodded, because that was what she had expected, based on how powerful these guys seemed to be.

Kate shook her head at that, a grave expression on her face. "Maybe not even then," she informed her. "The Titans are ancient beings, formed in the earliest days of magic. They nearly wiped-out humanity before it even began. They have more power in their pinkie fingers than the Source, and there's more than one. The only way the Elders could stop them three thousand years ago was by infusing twelve of the most powerful witches of the time with a hell of a lot of power. Way more than even you guys have."

Piper shrugged. "So they can do that again."

"Not after what happened last time," Kate informed her, though that was the plan. "After the witches trapped the Titans, the power went to their heads. They declared themselves gods and forced the world to worship them. The Elders swore that they would never allow something like that to happen again."

Kate watched curiously as Piper raised a hand to her head, her other going into a 'stop' motion. "Hang on a second, I'm having a ninth-grade flashback. You're talking about the Greek gods, Zeus, Athena, Aphrodite? They were witches?"

"Mythology left that part out," Kate confirmed with a cool smirk to cover how unsettled she felt, speaking to the mother she had no memory of. "Not the only inaccuracy by the way."

She tensed and then forced herself to release it as she sensed Phoebe's approach. Goddess, she needed to get over these damn hang-ups or she'd never get anything done.

The woman who had/would/might raise her entered with a dwarf and a leprechaun. Kate raised an eyebrow, wondering what bright idea Phoebe'd gotten into her head this time. One thing she had learned while stalking her not-yet-family was that coming up with plans wasn't their strong suit. They would learn, hopefully. She'd do her best to pound it into their heads, at any rate.

Maybe they'd have survived longer if they hadn't spent so much time running headfirst into different disasters without bothering to plot out their actions.

"Phoebe, what are you doing?" Piper asked in an annoyed voice. "You're supposed to be..."

Phoebe cut her off. "I know, I know. But I thought they could help us free Paige. After all, a leprechaun's luck has helped us before." She patted the dwarf on the shoulder as she explained. Kate looked down, exhaling slowly. If she needed the reminder that the stern, street smart, Wiccan-encyclopaedia who'd raised her was different from this naïve child, this would do it.

She tried to convince herself it was a good thing, not a painful one.

The dwarf, whom Kate recognized as the leader of the Dwarf Remnant in the Resistance, Dhubratum Blacksunder, glared up at Phoebe. "He's the leprechaun, I'm a dwarf. Try to keep it straight, will you?"

Phoebe winced guiltily. "Sorry."

The Leprechaun, who Kate supposed was either dead or enslaved in her time, because she didn't recognize him and all the free Leprechauns who still survived were hidden in the Resistance safehouses and known to Kate by name, walked over to Paige's statue.

He patted his beard with a frown. "It's gonna take a lot more than just me luck to free this one," he declared after a moment of study. "We're gonna need some pixie dust too."

"I'll get a fairy," Dhubratum stated. "Left my axe downstairs anyway." He left the attic on brisk feet.

Phoebe turned to her fellow witches and clapped her hands together briskly. "Okay, so where are we?" She asked.

"Screwed," Piper retorted. "Possibly. One thing I'm still not clear about." She turned to Kate, who was watching them silently from where she leaned against the cabinet with its' potions supplies. "If the Titans are roaming around, why are they killing Whitelighters?"

Kate felt the side of her lips quirk up. Her birth mother was as shrewd as Phoebe always said she was. "Because they need their orbing power."

Piper scowled in confusion. "Their orbing power? What on earth would they wanna do with..." Her eyes widened in realization and she turned to run out of the attic. "Oh my god. Leo!"

"Wh-What'd I miss?" Phoebe stammered in worried confusion. "What did she just figure out?"

"Nothing good," Kate replied stonily. She had decided from the start that the initial wave of Elders to die would have to be sacrificed. Given the amount of problems and lack of help they'd given in her time, she couldn't bring it on herself to feel guilty.

She would save the majority of them, and that would have to be enough.

Kate orbed back to the small, run-down and formerly abandoned studio apartment where she and Nico were squatting, feeling the protective wards they had put up scanning her as she entered their boundary. She appeared in the large room that consisted of a bedroom/living room/kitchenette, all in one, with a tiny bathroom with a shower and a toilet hidden by a chipped and peeling door (you had to wash your hands in the kitchen sink). All in all, it was a better place than many either of them had lived in. There wasn't even a broken window or a leak. There was a small gas stove for potions and heat, though it had remained firmly off during the heat wave unleashed by the Titans.

Kate slumped down on the ragged, lumpy pull-out couch they were sleeping on and sighed, rubbing her aching knee. It had been a long day. She closed her eyes, pulling up her memory of Phoebe, beautiful and kind and so very young. Untarnished by the grief of losing everything and watching the world she'd fought to protect collapse because of her family's failures. Kate hated this young Phoebe a bit. She wore her aunt's face, but she wasn't her, wouldn't ever be her if Kate and Nico succeeded, and Kate felt the pieces of her broken heart shatter each time she looked at her without love and protectiveness in her brown eyes.

Nico abandoned the cauldron whose contents he was stirring on the gas stove (the only requirement they'd had for their base, as they needed it for potion making) and came over to join her, wrapping an arm over her shoulders and pulling her close to his side.

"I take it from the lack of a red sky and screaming that the plan worked?" He stated.

She nodded flatly, staring at the hole in the wall they didn't care enough to repair across from her. "Yeah. Wasn't hard to convince Leo to turn the sisters into Goddesses. Took a while to get them to focus, but it worked eventually. The storm was Piper, by the way. Leo left her. She didn't take it well."

"Well, that was inconvenient but it's not unanticipated," Nico frowned. In the original future, Leo hadn't left completely. Probably because Paige was already dead by the time he sucked it up and turned his wife and sister-in-law into goddesses, and he didn't want to leave them at a time like that. Plus, with only five surviving Elders and a dozen Whitelighters in their timeline, he had more leverage to force his fellows to let him stay. Seeing as they were planning to save Paige, they'd known Leo leaving was a possibility. Elders didn't have families, after all. But they still needed Leo around, if only to be healing the girls when they got hurt and, rather importantly, to conceive Kate. That meant Kate had to enact Plan B.

"I sent Leo to Valhalla after he told me the Elders had assigned me to the girls as their Whitelighter," Kate went on. Nico nodded in satisfaction. They had risked losing the change to have the sisters as Kate's charges when she admitted she was a Witchlighter, not a Whitelighter, but it seemed it had worked out. "All we need to do is make him think I'm the one who did it, which isn't hard given he's already suspicious of me."

Plan B was to capture Leo and send him to train in Valhalla. It would get him out of the way and pound some needed survival skills into his pacifistic brain. He would blame Kate for it, and then stick around to protect the girls and Wyatt from her.

Nico was still dubious about the plan, but he couldn't figure out a better way to get Leo to stay, so here they were.

"Alright," he nodded. He leaned over and pressed his lips to Kate's. She returned the kiss eagerly, sighing against his lips.

"I love you," Nico told her, pulling away a fraction. "You will do this. You will save us."

"We will save us," Kate corrected. She closed her eyes for a second and he heard the click of the stove turning off via Kate's psychokinesis. "Come on, worrying about potions later," she ordered as she began tugging at his shirt. "I have something better to spend our time on."