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Published 18-3-2024

Chapter Four

Leo and Kate's Coffee

Leo had just arrived at a small, hole-in-the-wall café called Pastry Paradise that Kate was fond of when he saw her. He'd been going to different places daily for the last two months, since Kate's disastrous birthday. His only daughter was fond of small, local, non-brand restaurants and coffee shops, so he'd hoped to catch her on her lunch break, or out for breakfast with friends (none of whom would tell him where she'd been hiding out for the last two plus months-if they even knew. It didn't seem like she was talking to them much lately. Especially the mortal friends from college and work. Nor would Wyatt, who he knew she was talking to, tell him anything, saying he'd caused Kate enough hurt already without betraying her trust in this life too, ignoring his parents' protests that none of that had happened in this life. Wyatt's cold response had been a curt "it happened to Kate", and that had made them fall silent.).

He entered the colourful café and spotted her immediately. She was sitting by the window, in a position to see everything, her back to the corner wall so nobody could sneak up on her. It was a familiar position, one she'd always taken in the past, but not one his timeline's Kate usually took up. Her companion, a red-haired woman with a baby on her lap, was angled in the same way. It left them a bit too close for comfort, but they didn't seem bothered by it. They were silent, their gazes fixed on Leo. He noticed the unfamiliar woman had shifted her baby to one side, while the other was hanging just a bit too casually, ready to fling it up and attack, something he had also often seen Other Kate do back in '03/'04.

He forced a smile and made his way over, between the tables, to stand in front of his youngest child and her friend.

The redhead looked like a housewife, but a rather lethal one, to judge by the knife hidden beneath her sleeve, its' outline barely showing against the press of the cloth.

Kate, meanwhile, was dressed in her paramedic's uniform, her long hair tied into a long braid, with a few strands loose around her pretty face. There was something different about her, something he couldn't put his finger on, but he put it down to the merge of her two lives, even if that explanation didn't quite fit.

"Hey, Kate," he greeted her, as if she'd only been away for a day, not sixty-three days (he'd been counting).

The redhead was glaring at him suspiciously, while Kate looked at him neutrally.

"Hey Dad," she responded finally. Her voice was cool, but not venomous, and she was neither glaring at him with loathing nor calling him 'Leo', the way she did after he found out she was his daughter, back in '04, so he was hopeful that their decision not to tell her about the other timeline hadn't completely destroyed their relationship.

His smile became more genuine, but he'd been raised to be respectful, so he turned to greet the woman, who was looking at him like he was the dirt beneath her shoes, or a particularly disgusting bug.

"Hi, I don't think we've met," he stated. "I'm Leo Wyatt. I'm Kate's father."

"I know," she answered curtly. Kate's eyes unfocused the way they did when she was using her telepathy, and the redhead sighed. "I'm Vivian Jensen, and this is my daughter, Kitty," she introduced, her voice softening when she spoke of her daughter, before hardening again. "I'm one of the people who remember the Dark Timeline."

"Oh," Leo muttered. He didn't know how to react to that. "Were the two of you friends, uh, back then?"

"We're friends now too," Vivian retorted icily.

"Viv," Kate interrupted, before falling silent as her eyes unfocused. Viv pursed her lips at whatever she was being told, but she grudgingly nodded and rose to her feet, putting Kitty back into the stroller by the table as the baby giggled and clapped. Vivian smiled and rubbed the girl's cheek with one finger before turning to Kate.

"Gimme a ring if you need it, okay? Everything's going to work out," she assured her. Leo wrinkled his brow, wondering what that meant.

Kate smiled softly at her. "Thanks for listening to me rant," she replied.

"Honey, whatever you need," Vivian insisted. "You're family. You always will be, after what we went through together."

Kate's smile broadened and she nodded back. "Same to you, Viv. Give my best to Ethan."

Vivian nodded before her expression cooled as she looked at Leo. "Mr. Wyatt," she said curtly, before striding away. She walked similarly to Other Kate, Leo noticed. Like a panther hunting, ready to pounce on her prey, always on the defensive, and tense when there were people behind her.

Leo moved Vivian's abandoned chair to the other side of the table and sat down facing his daughter. Kate looked at him with a blank expression, the same one that had irritated him so much back in 2003, but became a source of sadness at the thought of all the pain it hid later.

"I remember when you were six," Leo began after several moments of silently grappelling with where to start the conversation. "You had a burst appendix. Wyatt wanted to heal you, but you insisted on toughing it out and getting it done the mortal way instead. You've always been so determined. But I insisted on staying by your side the whole time, even when you told me you were a big girl."

"Mmm," Kate hummed, taking a sip of her drink. "Is there a point to this story?"

"I've tried to be a good father this time," Leo told her earnestly. "And I think we're close this time. I know I'm not perfect, I've screwed up more than once and I'm sorry for that, so very sorry, but I've always tried to do what's best for you and your brother, to make you two both the focus of my life."

Kate sighed and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. The braid fell all the way to her hips, and when loose it reached her butt. She had never cut it, only gotten the ends trimmed, a very different trait to Other Kate, who'd kept her hair just long enough to tie tightly out of the way. Leo was glad to see she hadn't gone that route. It gave him hope that he hadn't lost his baby, he had just regained the daughter he and Piper had mourned so deeply for.

"Dad, I understand you did what you thought was right, but that doesn't mean it was," she told him tiredly. "And this, my being angry. It's not just about you not telling me. It's about a lot of things. You and Mom lying to my face, even when I asked you why strangers seemed to know me, to love me.

And yes, I know that I lied too, in the past, but that was different. I was following the rules you all taught me.

And it's about the way you treated Nico," she went on, and Leo flinched at the name.

He couldn't help but remember Kate, gasping for breath and jerking on the sofa, sweaty and delirious with fever. The confusing fear when the girls returned to the attic without her. He hadn't understood at the time, but his subconscious had. Somewhere deep within, his parental instincts had recognized his child was in deadly danger, and there was nothing he could do. And the heartbreak in her eyes at her fiancé's betrayal...

It wasn't fair to blame this reality's Nico for his Otherself's mistakes, and hypocritical as they didn't blame Wyatt for being the Source, or Kate for her actions in the past, he knew that. But whenever he saw Nico he flashed back to bathing Kate's face with a wet cloth and her heartbroken mutters of the man's name, and hatred rose within his throat, causing biting words and suspicion to break free. He hadn't been able to protect Other Kate, not from Nico or from Gideon, but he could protect this version of her from that same hurt.

Kate, who was very careful not to read people's minds with permission, was oblivious to his inner thoughts (or perhaps she was just ignoring them) and went gone on. "It's about the way you guys treated me, before knowing who I was. You realize you never apologized? You apologized for your other self being a crap dad, but not for what you'd done. Not for throwing me around, attacking me with a sword, stalking me, harassing me, trying to get me recycled or sent back to the future...and all along, I was cleaning up your mess! You were the ones who let Wyatt get kidnapped by your best friend, and yet I was the one who had to fix it.

I'm angry Dad. I'm so angry I can't breathe, sometimes. I had to push it away back in the past, because the mission was more important, but I can't do that anymore. I don't have to do that anymore."

"I'm sorry," Leo croaked out, crippled with guilt. Those actions still haunted him. When his nightmares weren't of Kate fading away in his arms, they were of him advancing on her with a sword in Valhalla, only instead of him pulling away he slit her throat, or else they were of him succeeding in getting her recycled, only to learn the truth...of him sending her back to face the evil Wyatt who also haunted his nightmares, and her heart being crushed with telekinesis, like the demons good Wyatt now vanquished. "Katy, I'm so sorry. We all are."

Piper still had one of Other Kate's old shirts, and she curled up with it and cried sometimes, especially when their new Kate did something that reminded them of her Otherself. She called out Kate's name during nightmares, mumbled apology after apology in her sleep. Paige and Phoebe spoiled and doted on their eldest niece more than any of their other niblings, as if to make up for failing her first self so badly. He could see the guilt in their eyes sometimes, looking at her.

Kate rose, grabbing her satchel and stepped around the table. She walked differently now, in the same way as Other Kate had, the same way as Vivian.

He wondered how the others who'd remembered the previous timeline had recalled it, and how their families had reacted to it.

They should have told her.

They should have told her when she came home from work one day, puzzled why a group of people had come up to her in tears and told her thank you for saving the world.

They should have told her when Sandra told them that over three hundred people now remembered what had once been.

They should have told her when Nico called to warn them that her memories would come back, sooner rather than later, and if they didn't tell her, she wouldn't forgive or trust them again. Piper had refused to even consider it, even when Leo had wondered how she'd react. They'd trusted her love for her family would overcome her upset.

They'd been wrong, because Nico had been right. They didn't know what the Other Kate had been through. She had refused to tell them, wanting to protect them from the hurt of knowing how badly they'd failed her. And without knowing what she'd gone through, how could they truly know her, or how she would react to suddenly being forced to relive a life lived during the apocalypse?

"Maybe you should have told me that before I told you what I needed," Kate answered, her voice bitterly resigned. "Maybe it would have been worth something then. But then again, maybe not. Being blood only goes so far as an excuse with me, Dad. I lived a life where the only thing 'family' meant was that they knew where best to put the knife in my back to make it hurt the most. So I built a new family with people who've gone through more with me than anybody with the name 'Halliwell'. People who are always on my side, even when I'm wrong, and who trust me to do what's best for them. If I have to choose, then I have to choose them. I owe it to them, after everything we've gone through together.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get to work, or I'll be late for my shift."

He watched her leave, wondering if he was ever going to be able to fix the relationship he'd worked so hard to build with his baby girl.

Nico could tell something was wrong the minute he arrived home. They'd been able to move quickly into the apartment after the Jensens' tenant had left it. It had three bedrooms (the master of which was an ensuite) and a study they would share, another, slightly larger bathroom with a small bath and with a kitchen/living room area separated by an island.

Kate was in the kitchen preparing a stir fry for dinner, already changed from her work clothes into a pair of yoga pants that clung to her legs and a large San Francisco Police jersey that belonged to him. Her new self enjoyed close fitting bottoms and oversized sweaters for sleeping, another difference from her Dark Timeline self, who'd always slept in regular, close fitting (and so unlikely to get caught during a fight) clothes, in case she had to be woken in the middle of the night for an emergency.

Alana Springsteen was playing on their Alexa (a gift from Alison). Both versions of Kate had always enjoyed music, country being her favourite though she had a broad range of interests, but of course in the original timeline they couldn't exactly go to concerts. They had gathered together the members of the safehouse to play a guitar with a missing string and sing old pre-Apocalypse songs, though, and it was some of his happiest memories with Kate from back then. Nico himself preferred '80s rock, like Meatloaf, but he was happy to listen to country if it made Kate happy, just as she had gone to many a rock concert with him in this life while they were dating.

She was at the stove, stirring the sauce into the vegetables and chicken, but her shoulders were tense, and she wasn't singing along to the lyrics of 'Girlfriend'.

"What happened?" Nico asked, coming up behind her and wrapping his arms around her waist, his hands falling gently onto her stomach. Some days he thought he was living in a dream, where the woman he loved was his wife, and they were safe and happy. He kept expecting to wake up back in Wyatt's dungeons in the Dark Timeline, the Source trying to make him break and give up his love's plans. He still felt guilty that he'd succumbed to the pain, but Kate had told him over and over again that everyone had their breaking point, and she didn't blame him for giving in.

He kissed the side of her neck as she relaxed into his embrace, resting her weight against him and sighing blissfully.

"My father finally managed to ambush me," she replied tiredly. "We had a- it wasn't quite an argument, but it wasn't exactly a pleasant conversation either."

"Does he know about...?" Nico trailed off, his hand pressing firmer against her stomach.

"No, I told him I was angry about how they treated you when we were dating, but not that we're married, or about...the other thing," Kate said vaguely. They had enough experience to be superstitious, and so were determined to keep it a secret. Only Vivian, her husband Ethan, Alison and Davos knew, and that was because they recognized the signs from last time. They hadn't even told Nico's parents or Wyatt and Victor (who Kate was talking to again, though not her cousins, who had been venomous towards Nico without the excuse of him casting a spell on them and holding a knife to one of their throats, and anyway, she was certain they would go straight to their parents the moment she so much as texted one of them) yet.

They'd gone through the heartbreak of a loss before, and they didn't want to let their families know yet. If things went wrong, they would carry this hurt themselves.

"Do you want to reach out to them?" Nico asked warily. He wanted Kate to be happy, and he knew she missed her family, flawed as they were and angry as she was. But he'd spent over a year listening to snide and borderline cruel remarks from them all, and he didn't to deal with that for the rest of his life. He didn't want their family to have to deal with that.

That was why he was relieved when she shook her head. "Not yet," she said firmly. "They don't understand why I'm angry yet. Once they understand, and once they realize I'm serious, that this isn't something that can be overcome with an 'I'm sorry', then we'll talk."

"It's your family," he told her. "Your lead. If they agree to be civil, I will be too."

"I appreciate that you're willing to give them a shot, after everything they said," Kate murmured, turning around to kiss him softly.

"I want you to be happy, Babe," he told her after they pulled away. "You of all people deserve it, after everything. I know you miss them."

"Not as much as I missed you, when we were broken up," she answered honestly. She pulled away and made a shooing motion. "Now, go set the table please. Dinner'll be ready as soon as the rice finishes, which should be in about two minutes."

"Yes General!" He snapped a sharp salute and grinned at her bright laugh. After it being such a rare sound in their first timeline, he treasured every giggle.

Even without the Halliwells, she was happy. He made her happy, and that was something he would never take for granted, something he would never stop trying to do.

"I love you," he told her softly.

She smiled gently as she responded. "I love you too."