And here is the first of Season 5! Enjoy.

Disclaimer-Nothing is mine.

And Cole is not going evil in this fic just to keep that in mind, he was Phoebe's soulmate and he always will be. Due to him not going evil a lot of the Season 4 after the next chapter will be skipped. I might do one two more of Season 4 and then we move onto Season 5. Again I do not think I will include the last season so just keep in mind Henry might pop up in the Season 6/7 arc (never liked Richard anyway).

Please Read and Review.

And Trigger Warnings for this chapter for miscarriage. Please be aware.

Some chapters will involve a time jump including skipping episodes. Just keep that in mind.

Mother Of Invention

Chapter 9-Denial, Anger, Acceptance

Season 5-Mermaids exist, Paige is a red head, Billie is learning the craft, Piper is pregnant and Cole doesn't know what to do for the better.

That summer that Paige and Billie finally learnt what it was to become witches one was on the most bizarre things that Billie had experienced.

She didn't know what was the strangest, Aunt Piper being pregnant, Aunt Phoebe being so cheerful about it considering that she wasn't pregnant anymore, her Mom being a brunette one day and then a red head the next when a potion she had mixed up had caused her hair to burn read or the fact that she had not only aced her final exams but had transitioned into AP History, English and smashed her Pre-SATS including the Math one.

"I don't understand it, how do I get a 720 verbal and a 750 math?"

"Who cares" her Mom had said looking at her red hair critically in the mirror. "I didn't raise an idiot, oh thank God. You think I should change this?"

"How much would that look cost you if you paid someone to do it?"

"Good point" her Mom said cheerfully and then she hugged Billie who was pouring over the Book of Shadows trying to learn about Wendigo's.

"I am really proud of you Bil"

"Thanks Mom"

But the strangest, the strangest thing that she had seen, that she had ever seen in this house (and when you looked back on it there had been some things that had been seen in this house that were borderline impossible, highly impractical and very, very illegal and immoral) was when she had come home to find Aunt Phoebe with a mermaid's tale and Cole spraying her with water with a look that clearly said that when he had given her that ring on her finger this was not what he had been signing up for.

Things between Aunt Phoebe and Cole had been…off since the miscarriage. They had been…on the surface they had been good but Billie was sure that in private they were both suffering still the loss of their baby. She couldn't fully understand the grief that gripped them both and she couldn't go and speak to her Mom about it because her Mom would just pull a face and tell her not to worry.

But with Aunt Piper pregnant and Aunt Phoebe not she was beginning to wonder if Aunt Phoebe's desire to be a fish was not some kind of breakdown in it's early stages.

"Mermaid Billie my love, I am a mermaid"

Oh yeah cause that was a big distinction.

As it happened when she was standing there in the damp dark cave soaking wet because her Mom had insisted that she orb with them and Leo had been unable to balance them all, there was apparently a big difference.

"Next time" she said to Cole who was looking at his wife with dark eyes. "I am going to try and do this myself"

"Won't work kid"

"Active power couldn't be to orb?"

Cole managed a slither of a smile as they ducked behind what Billie hoped like hell was an old box. It was hard to tell. This cave needed a fresh coat of…everything.

"Cole?"

"Hmm?"

"She'll be okay you know?"

There was a crashing sound behind them and they both ducked as sparks flew out above them and Cole gave a maniacal sounding laugh that told Billie that while you could take the demon out of the man sometimes you couldn't take the man out of the demon.

Or was it the other way around? With Cole sometimes it was hard to tell. The references got all mixed up.

She ducked again and then decided that she'd had enough of this. She understood that her Mom was protecting her but what was the point of her coming on these missions without her actually doing something?

"Quite right" Cole said with a renewed energy. "That's why I brought this"

And he held out a wicked looking athame.

"Really?"

"Phoebe has a problem with guns" was the only response that she got and she forced herself to her feet after him waving her hand and blasting the little snivelling thing cowering at the Sea Hag and her…well…whatever the hell that grey man thing was out of the way and into the water.

Ugly grey man turned his attention back on her and he blasted what felt like slippery cold air at her and she skidded backwards falling into the water again and yet when she came up for air easily just in time to see him do the same to Aunt Piper who did not come up for air.

"Shit" she muttered and she flung up her hands to deflect the next blast and then went back downwards into the water to find her Aunt ignoring her mother's shout. She had spent ages learning the theory of this thing after all, it was damn time she got in on the action.

And she could swim. Billie had been a kid who had loved to swim. When she had been little her Mom had taken her to the beach and Billie had loved to get into the water. It had been one of those lovely mother daughter days that she had loved and still loved now and so she had swam while her mother had looked sad for reasons that she openly admitted she didn't know why. It had just been something about the beach. Something about the beach had made Paige Matthews upset.

Billie found Piper but her legs were entangled in seaweed and she went sky rocketing for air and as she broke the surface she cried waved her hand around and Cole's knife shot out of his hand and she was back down again before she could realise that Phoebe was not there and that Cole was going after his wife weather she was half fish or not.

Or mermaid as the distinction might be.

She managed to cut Piper loose but she was too heavy to bring back up herself and besides the air in her lung was compression, the seaweed around her dancing and skipping almost like it wanted to ensnare her into the depths of the sea below and she felt a burning in her lungs and then…

Something bright and white and light shining and she gripped Aunt Piper's hand and tried to swim upwards and as she paddled her one hand forwards it caught on something…someone else's. She didn't know who and she didn't know what but the voice was speaking to Aunt Piper words that Billie could not hear over the roar of blood in her own head and then they were both at the surface her Aunt, her pregnant Aunt who up at this point had been scared of her own shadow—and then foolishly reckless in the space of a day—had recovered her equilibrium and had swam them both to safety.

Billie's lungs burned as they hit open air and her Mom uncaring of her outfit or her new hair dragged her back up out of the little pool with an upper body strength that Billie really didn't think she had (because she certainly didn't look like it) and then wrapped her arms around Billie's whole body as she began to cough and shake.

"Oh that was cold" she said suddenly realising that she was out of the water.

"Yeah well…try being above water" her Mom snapped taking Cole's jacket that lay discarded on the floor and wrapping it around her shoulders so she stopped shaking (not that it did much good).

"We have talked Billie about you risking your life—"

"I think she saved mine" Aunt Piper said groggily. "For a first field trip Paige you have to admit that was very well done"

Her Mom snorted and Billie looked as Aunt Piper's flat belly which had only just begun to harden with her impending child's birth healed itself and the raw scratch that had formed over skin was soft and smooth again.

"Did you?"

"No" Leo said looking down at his unborn child with a grin.

"Nah it looks like the baby did that"

"Takes after her Daddy then" Aunt Piper said with a soft smile.

Billie didn't have the heart nor the inclination (nor did she think it would be appreciated) if she interrupted this sweet little moment to mention that there was a very good chance that this baby actually might be a boy.

She looked around as she shivered into her Mom's side. Surprise of surprises they had saved the day (and she included herself in that) and so Leo, sopping wet too orbed his wife home with the promise that they would come back for her.

"No need" her Mom had said and it was only then that Billie realised that Aunt Phoebe and Cole were gone.

"Where have they—"

"Gone to talk about Phoebe's real problem"

"Did you—"

"No"

"But I didn't think that Cole had any kind of magic"

"No" her mother said in that tone that one used when one came across a bit of dirt that you couldn't scrub away—it was in reality the tone that she used with Cole most of the time human or not.

"But Cole has been learning the craft too"

Billie opened her mouth to ask what that meant but her Mom held out her hand.

"Come on, let's go and get you into a hot bath before you become a mermaid"

Billie opened her mouth to ask how when Leo wasn't here yet but her Mom smiled at her.

"You didn't think you were the only one practising did you?"

And so her Mom orbed her home.

Cole was watching her. She was watching her legs. Her legs that had replaced her tail and with the return of her legs her pain came back.

Cole had dragged her here, had dragged her physically and mentally and he took off his shirt and passed it to her even though it didn't matter weather she covered up. Her belly was still flat and soft as if the baby that she had been growing inside of her that she had loved had never been there. As if she had not woken up and her sheets and her legs and her hands had been covered in blood. She had been shivering and shaking and Cole had taken one look at her where she had been sat clutching her belly as if she was trying to keep her baby inside of her even though he was slipping away and then that had been the last thing that she had remembered. Everything after that she had left drift and dream away in the fog that had been her life.

She had lost her baby.

She had lost her son.

In her head it was a boy anyway. She didn't know why. Halliwell's had girls after all but she thought…when she allowed herself to think of her baby she always envisioned him as a boy.

"I lost him Cole" she said finally. "I loved him and I lost him and if I start crying then I wont stop. And it's hard when I see Piper and Leo so excited and It's hard when I see Paige and Billie together because that should be me, should be us, should be us and our baby. And being a mermaid means I don't have to think about that."

"And not thinking about it is exhausting" Cole said quietly. "Don't deflect with me Phoebe, you are dealing with the master of deflection, I saw you lose Prue and then discover Paige. The world that we live in doesn't allow us to go around letting our feelings consume us. You taught me that. Phoebe…I lost him too you know"

She looked up then and she saw him, she had always been able to see Cole, had always been able to see him, had always been able to love him as easily as breathing. And she could see the pain that he had buried just to keep her going.

And suddenly she was crying.

Cole's arms were around her a second later.

It felt good. Being held by him she thought dimly.

It felt better to cry.

The five stages of grief, grief, denial, anger, bargaining, acceptance.

She had lost her sister. Now had lost her baby. All in the space of a year.

So she cried. It felt good to cry.

Cole just held her and together they broke their hearts.

Phoebe had never understood what it was that the angel of death had told her sister that day at the beach when he had told her that she grieved and then you move on. She had never thought that maybe that was Prue's way of trying to get her sisters to understand that she might be next on the list.

But now she did.

Now she did.

You grieved…and then you moved on.

Denial, anger and finally, the hard won, hard fought for, peace of mind that came with acceptance.

And there you go.

Next Chapter-Paige and Billie are both forced to confront the issues surrounding their respective father's when Paige finally gets a chance to meet hers.