Still on vacation. I managed to get this chapter to you, but I expect the next one won't be up until I'm back. Just letting you know in advance so don't expect an update this week.

[Thursday, November 28, 2019]

By the next morning, Chris still had not figured out the reason behind his presence, nor the solution to his other self's disappearance. His mother, who had offered to help him over the weekend, spent all morning in the kitchen stuffing breadcrumbs and seasoning up a turkey's bottom. The last time Chris checked in on her, she was aggressively tying its legs together with twine. Appetizing, Chris thought as he retreated to his bedroom. His father was out picking up yams and a bag of ice.

It was all so utterly mundane, something he hadn't experienced since he was a child. It was enough to make his chest ache with a need he had long ago put to bed. He couldn't let himself dwell on this yearning for too long. As much as that still-innocent part of him longed to stay, to lap up the life he had always wished for, he knew he didn't belong here. He had never truly intended to save the future for himself. From the start, the odds of success had been slim. But even had he expected to succeed, he knew his own reality would simply cease to exist, paving the way for some other version of himself to live a brighter future. Not him. This life wasn't for him.

He knew this. He also knew that to return his rightful self to this timeline, he had to answer his questions, and he was getting nowhere. How could he answer questions for a boy who wasn't even here? He had no inkling how he could be of use in clarifying a premonition. The spell had obviously summoned him for a reason, but he had changed the future; what insight could he provide about this new one?

He pondered the conundrum as he refolded the clothing stuffed into his dresser. (He always thought better when he had something to do with his hands, and his other self's chaotic bedroom provided the perfect distraction for idling hands.) The inspiration struck him partway through the second drawer. Prue. She's the key. She has to be.

The tendrils of a plan were just beginning to form in his mind when he heard the doorbell ring. His plan would have to wait; Thanksgiving dinner was upon them.

Chris meandered down the stairs to find Phoebe and Coop, having let themselves in, leading the way inside with Katie shortly behind and Lea picking up the rear. The moment Chris's feet reached the bottom step, Phoebe swooped him up into a fierce embrace.

"Oh, Chris, we're so glad you're okay," she said into his shirt. The hug made Chris's chest tighten, his breath catch briefly in his throat. Before he knew what he was doing, his arms were rising to her shoulders, squeezing her in return. Her excessive display of emotion was clearly a result of whatever negative experience Piper had made reference to earlier, but he felt as though it were a reaction to his return, as if some secret part of Phoebe subconsciously intuited his true identity and were welcoming him home.

"I missed you, too, Aunt Phoebe," he whispered.

Phoebe must have sensed the weight behind his emotions because she pulled back with a furrowed brow. "You okay?" she asked.

Don't slip now, he chastised himself. Carefully, he slid up his mental barriers to block out her powers, strengthening them as best he could. Keeping his expression neutral, he replied, "Still recovering." This Phoebe seemed to accept. She backed up to let the rest of her family say hello.

Coop gave him a firm handshake, which he used to pull Chris closer for a hug of his own. "Good to see you back home," he said, clapping him on the back.

Wyatt joined them from the living room. "Nice. That's not the welcome I get," he quipped.

Rolling her eyes, Phoebe crooked her finger toward him to compel him forward. "Come here, you," she laughed, and pressed a kiss against one cheek.

Piper exited the kitchen with a frown. To forestall a lecture, Phoebe immediately waved her hands in front of her. "I know, I know, we're early. Nothing's supposed to be ready, it's fine."

Piper humphed as Chris turned to his cousins. "Hey, Melinda, how's it going?"

Phoebe and Coop shot each other quizzical looks, surprised by the use of their daughter's formal name. Lea, too, looked caught off guard but nevertheless managed to diffuse the confusion with some well-placed sarcasm. "Finally getting mature, I see. No more of that 'Melon' nonsense."

In his world, Melinda had always gone by her full name. Though Chris could tell he had misspoken, he could not ask for correction without raising suspicion. Trying to continue seamlessly to move away from the error, he ignored Lea's jab and spread his arms wide to Katie. "So does your favorite cousin get a hug?"

The room fell silent. Katie shifted uncomfortably but said nothing. Phoebe and Coop stared hard at their nephew. Even Lea had nothing sarcastic to offer. Chris could sense the tension in the room, could see the way the blushing girl averted her gaze to her shoes, scuffing the wood floor with her toes, but couldn't for the life of him figure out what he had done wrong. After a long, seemingly interminable moment, Wyatt came to the rescue. Nudging Chris's arms down, he released a loud, fake laugh and said, "Stop flapping your arms, Chris, what are you trying to fly?" It was a weak attempt at humor, but really what was there to say to Chris's faux pas?

Chris dropped his arms numbly to his sides. Slowly, the chatter started up again. Prue entered the room and Lea went immediately to her, casting a narrowed glance back at Chris. He heard Piper murmur to Phoebe, "He's still recovering…" Katie hugged herself, still staring at the floor as Coop came over to her.

Bemused, Chris turned to Wyatt. "What'd I do?"

"She's intangible, you idiot," Wyatt hissed out of the corner of his mouth.

Chris winced. "Oh, right…"

Wyatt shot him an incredulous look. "How could you forget that?" he demanded, "It's like her one thing."

Really, there was far too much history, most of it rather painful, to explain to Wyatt in a single moment. Dropping his gaze, Chris uttered an unsatisfactory, "It's… complicated."

By the time Paige, Henry, and Bobby arrived, Leo had returned, the turkey had been removed from the oven, and the yams were nearly cooked through. Paige, her abdomen even bigger now than it had been the previous week, along with her husband, went looking for Chris. When they found him in the kitchen with Piper, Paige pulled him out of his chair and into a hug. "We're glad you're back where you belong."

"Thanks, Aunt Paige," he said with a smile. The sentiment sent a warmth radiating up his chest.

"Henry," Piper called, her head half in the oven as she inspected the yams with a fork, "Can you wrangle up the kids and get them to the table? We're ready."

"Oh, nice, ask the mortal to deal with all the powered prepubescents," Paige snorted.

"Ahem," Chris remarked from beside her, raising his hand like a student in class. "Definitely post-pubescent here."

Paige patted him on the head, ruffling his hair as she did so. "Whatever you say, darling," she chirped sweetly.

Ducking her next pat, he darted into the dining room for his escape. The table had been set beautifully with their fancy china and pristinely folded cloth napkins sitting on top of each plate. In the middle of the table stood a handprint-shaped turkey made out of red cardboard and brown popsicle sticks.

Paige trailed in after Chris. "You like the centerpiece?" she asked, propping her elbow on his shoulder and tilting her head against his. "It's courtesy of Bobby's kindergarten class."

"Nice," he chuckled, "Very realistic."

Little by little, the family trickled into the room. Henry emerged with a squirming Bobby tucked under one arm. Lea and Prue trailed behind him, and Katie glided in past them. That she avoided looking in his direction, made Chris squirm. Somehow, he had to fix that before dinner was over.

Once everyone was seated, Chris found himself sandwiched between Paige and Prue, who wrinkled her nose when he slid into the chair beside hers. The side dishes had already been spread out across the table: yams, string beans, cranberry sauce, stuffed peppers, and pumpkin rolls. Leo helped Piper carry the giant platter of turkey in from the kitchen. After settling the beast carefully on the table (Lea and Prue clapped in approval), Piper returned with a large knife. She carved smoothly into each joint, leaving crispy skin in tact as she separated legs from body. Next, she sliced down the middle of the breast bone. Once each piece was free, she chopped the breast and thigh into thin slices.

"All right, who wants some?" Everyone scrambled to pass a plate forward, and Piper slid a few pieces onto each one. With that done and plates sent back to their owners, people began finally to dig into the rest of the food.

Half in a daze, Chris watched bowls get passed across the table. Paige handed string beans over Bobby's ducked head to Henry, who, laughing, handed them on to Leo. The bowl of yams made it from Phoebe all the way to Lea on the opposite end of the table.

The pumpkin bread traveled from Wyatt to Coop to Kat to Phoebe to Leo to Henry, Bobby, and Paige, losing mini rolls along the way before it stopped at Chris. He was too busy observing his family to notice. Watching this normalcy left him with a sharp pang in his chest. The last time he had sat down to a family dinner like this, he must have been ten years old. Long before Wyatt had gone off the deep end and turned the Halliwells' focus to saving him. The last time he had watched his mother expertly carve a turkey—well, he had been there for one Thanksgiving in the past, but that was before they knew his identity. He had spent that day in the back room at P3, sensing the hectic joy his "charges" were experiencing from afar.

Someone elbowed him sharply in the ribs. "Chris," Prue said, "The pumpkin bread. Geez." She held out her hands expectantly.

Rubbing his injured side, he took a roll and passed the basket on. "Sorry, Prue."

Snatching it from his grasp, she glared at him. "All right, what is going on with you? You never apologize."

He just stopped himself from apologizing for that as well. Instead, attempting to inject a dash of bored annoyance into his reply, he said, "Gee, thanks." To his private relief, no one else at the table seemed to have noticed her outburst. But when he looked away, he could still feel her eyes burning into the back of his head.

As Phoebe and Paige stood to collect empty plates, Piper ducked into the kitchen to prepare dessert. She started plating warm slices of pumpkin pie and topping each with a dollop of homemade whipped cream. Meanwhile, Chris decided it was time to win back over his young cousin.

"So, Kat, how's Magic School?" That was only a guess, but he assumed if she couldn't control her intangibility then she likely could not attend a normal school.

After a second, Katie looked up in surprise. "Me?" she asked, blinking wide eyes at him. At his nod, she wrinkled her small nose, "'Kat'? I'm not an animal, Chris, sheesh." But she giggled at the thought and no longer seemed embarrassed to meet his eyes after that, so Chris considered it an unexpected win. "It's okay," she offered in answer to his question.

"Boring, you mean," Lea interjected, hunched over the table as she played with her dessert fork, twirling it down her fingers. "It's all about potions and magical herbs, blah, blah, blah. Ugh."

"Nothing wrong with potions," Paige protested as she walked back into the room to grab another pile of dishes. "That knowledge may save your life one day."

Lea dropped her chin onto the table with a thunk. "Whoopee…" she intoned.

Paige ruffled her hair. "That's the spirit!"

"I just wish I could go to a normal school and have normal friends who are my age." Magic School often sorted people by their strength and discipline rather than chronologically. Lea, who had learned to control her powers young, was advanced for her age and spent most of her time with older kids who wanted little to do with her outside of class. For the non-magical subjects, she was placed with her own grade, but it wasn't the same.

Katie bit her lip and sank back into her chair. She was the reason Lea could not attend a normal school. Shy of pretending her little sister didn't exist, Lea would have no way to explain to non-magical friends why her sister sometimes accidentally walked through walls.

The plates of pie were ready in short order. Piper called in her children to help her serve them. Once everyone was seated again, forks dug in. But a light tinkling sound stopped the first bites from reaching mouths. Phoebe was standing behind her seat, clinking her fork against her glass.

"You'll chip the cup," Piper chastised with a frown.

Drawing the fork away, Phoebe sheepishly apologized. "I just wanted to say something before we start. I'll be brief," she added when Bobby threw his head back to groan at the ceiling.

Raising her glass, filled with seltzer, to chest height, she began, "Obviously, most importantly, I think we're all just incredibly thankful Chris came back to us safe and sound." She tilted her glass toward her nephew with a shallow nod. He squirmed beneath the glances sent his way. "But, well, we have another reason to be thankful."

When Phoebe placed a hand on her husband's shoulder he tipped his head to meet her eyes, and both began to smile. "We just got a call back from the doctor, and—well—we're having a baby!"

Wyatt's head shot up from his plate, and his eyes met Chris's across the table. Twins? he mouthed, and Chris, smirking, just looked away.

The obligatory exclamations of congratulations were in order, as was Bobby's impatient, "Now can I eat?" After some hugging and Henry reaching across the table to shake Coop's hand and Paige exclaiming, "Our kids will be the perfect age for each other!" people finally began to settle down and start on dessert.

"Yum!" Bobby declared around a mouthful of cream.

"It is delicious, Piper," Paige remarked with a chuckle. There were full-mouthed mumbles of agreement from everyone in the room.

The evening ended with satisfaction all around. The teens and tweens sat around the table while all the adults stood in the foyer to say their goodbyes. Bobby, draped across Henry's shoulder, had at some point fallen asleep. The only one who looked unsatisfied was Katie, though "unsatisfied" may not have been the word to describe it. Her eyes glittered. For her that had equal chance to mean she felt upset, holding back tears, or merely tired and overwhelmed, or really any heightened emotion, positive or negative. As her cousins chatted, she wandered quietly into the living room without detection. Tucking herself into a couch cushion, she hugged her knees.

Eventually, as the conversation wound down, Coop turned to collect his daughters from the dining room. Lea was in heated discussion with Prue, but he didn't find Katie until he began to meander around the main floor. When he spotted her curled up on the couch with her eyes clenched shut, he said, "Bunny?" lilting the pet name as a question.

Katie looked up. Sniffling, she wiped her eyes.

Coop went to her. "Oh, bunny, what's the matter?" He sat on the cushion beside her, itching to pull her in for a squeeze. Even after all these years, he couldn't fully quash the instinct. "Was tonight too much?"

The tears erupted. "Daddy," she sobbed, her voice thick, "I want people to love me."

"Oh, bunny, they do," Coop sighed, "So much." He draped his arm against the back of the couch so his fingers were only inches from her shoulder. She wouldn't feel it, but perhaps seeing his proximity would help her draw comfort.

"Not like they love everyone else," she protested. "Not like they love Lea."

Coop looked at the tears streaming down his daughter's cheeks and felt an awful pain in his stomach. "You mean because they can't hug you." Miserably, the girl nodded. "Munchkin, come here." He patted his knee with one hand. He knew she wouldn't feel it—and when she clamored onto his lap neither did he because she really only hovered just above him, never touched—but still, Coop believed the gesture was important. "Do you want to know how a hug makes someone feel?"

Eyes downcast, as if ashamed, Katie nodded. Coop held his hands, palms up, in between their bodies. Eyes closed, he concentrated hard, allowing a glowing, fuchsia cloud to float above his hands. It grew to the size of a grapefruit, then as large as a watermelon. Finally, he closed his hands into fists. Set free, the cloud drifted forward until it surrounded Katie's head, seeping beneath her skin before it disappeared.

Katie closed her eyes. Her chest felt warm, a sensation that spread up to her ears and down to her toes. In the background she thought she heard a deep, rich voice begin to hum a lullaby. In her mind she saw her father and mother's proud gazes upon her, their smiles split from ear to ear. She felt protected; she felt safe.

When she opened her eyes again, her father was watching her expectantly. "And do you want to know how Mommy and I feel about you?" This time he didn't wait for her answer. The glow erupted again from his palms, enlarged, and floated into Katie's face, sending another bout of engulfing heat coursing through her. Her tears dry, she smiled gently.

"You see?" Coop whispered to his daughter. "Hugging is only one way to show you how much we love you. There are so, so many others."

Katie pondered this for a moment, then chirped, "Like when you read me a bedtime story?"

Coop grinned. "That's right. Or when Mommy helps you with your homework. Or blows you kisses." He put his fingers to his lips now, blowing just such a kiss in her direction. Giggling, she caught it and placed her palm to her cheek to receive it. "That's my happy bunny," Coop said, "There she is. Never forget how much we all love you."

Hopping off his lap, she let him stand, then followed him, smiling, back to the foyer. Paige's family had already departed. Phoebe and Lea stood together with the others, waiting for them.

"There you are," Phoebe remarked. "I was just about to send Lea to find you two." She turned to give her big sister one last goodbye kiss on the cheek, then waved to Leo and the children behind her. "Chris, you take extra care of yourself," she insisted. "No more kidnappings, you hear me?"

"Got it," he chuckled. With goodbyes dealt with, the four trailed outside to their car and finally headed home.

Chris knocked on Prue's door late the next morning. She let him in with a begrudging, "What is it this time?"

He passed her to enter the room before he responded. Marching to the center of the floor, he spun to face her, expression serious. With a businesslike clap of his hands, he announced, "So. I've been thinking." He paused to wipe his palms against his jeans. "What if we tried holding hands?" Prue's eyebrows rose to her hairline. Entirely unimpressed, she crossed her arms. "Hear me out," he said quickly. "It could help you draw out another premonition about me. And then, maybe you could try… taking me with you so I can witness it."

Prue nibbled her bottom lip, thoughtful. "I've never done that before," she said slowly, peering over his shoulder as she mulled it over.

"Yes, but in theory," he replied, "it should be possible." He didn't add that, in his timeline at least, Phoebe had fully developed that ability. At the risk of pushing her to an undesirable answer out of spite, he didn't rush her to decide, instead waiting patiently while she mulled over the idea in her mind.

At last, he was rewarded with a half-smile peeking out of her face. Her arms dropped back to her sides with a shrug. "All right," she said, "Let's try it."

Grinning, Chris waved her over to the unmade bed, where they both took a seat. He turned to face her, one knee pulled onto the mattress, a hand resting on his thigh. "Right," he said, unsure how to proceed with her. "Well. Here we go?" He extended both hands face-up between them. After a beat, Prue slid her palms into his. They waited.

After a long stretch of uncomfortable silence, Prue shifted her position, watching him skeptically. "So… what do I do now?" she asked.

"Just focus." Chris spoke in a gentle rhythm to lull Prue to a state of meditation. "Close your eyes. Don't think about how weird this is." Eyes shut, Prue giggled nervously. "Just breathe in… and out." His voice grew softer as he continued. "In… and out…" He heard her breath fall into line with his words and smiled.

Suddenly, like a reflex, Prue seized him by his fingers. Gasping from deep in her throat, she threw back her head, whole body tossed off balance and pulling Chris toward her. He steadied them both as he was thrust with her into the darkness.

A dim room swam into view but remained, for Chris, at a distance. A ways ahead of him, in a trance, Prue glided forward until she landed directly inside that room. If he squinted, he could just make out a figure standing beside her at a pedestal. Unlike Prue, the figure was just a shadow. The sound of flipping pages echoed all around Chris.

The shadowed figure shifted. "Hello?" The voice reverberated inside Chris's own head. Though he could not put his finger on why, his stomach clenched. He began to feel uneasy.

A haze rose up, blocking Chris's view. But then he heard a voice, soft with remorse but hardened by resolve. A voice that sent shivers darting up his spine. "Don't make me sacrifice you both." He knew that voice, those words, intimately. For him they had been uttered only days ago.

He heard a scuffle, a gasp, a crash. For just a flash, the scene lit up. The shadowed figure—himself, Chris was staring at himself—lay curled up on the floor, gasping for breath. "Dad!" he groaned.

When orbs spilled down from the ceiling, Chris shut his eyes. He didn't need to see this, didn't need to relive it. The horrified, "Oh god…" as his father knelt down beside him. The half-grunted, "Wyatt, Wyatt…" hissed through his own gritted teeth as he tried to warn his father of the danger to his brother. He recognized every moment of this agony.

With a sharp intake of breath, Chris yanked his hands out of Prue's. When he opened his eyes again, he was back in her bedroom. The force seemed to pull her out of the premonition as well. After taking a second to reorient herself, she glared at her brother.

"What are you doing?" she demanded, "That wasn't even half of it!"

Chris stumbled up toward the door, feeling claustrophobic. "I-it's enough," he stammered with his back to her, "It's fine." He found it difficult to draw a breath past his racing heart. Pausing, he groped for the doorknob with both hands to stabilize himself.

Prue stood and stomped toward him as he pressed his forehead against the smooth wood of the door. "What is that supposed to mean? What's fine?" Her fists clenched beside her. "You know, I don't think you've been taking me seriously. Ever since I told you, you've been treating this like—"

"Prue!" he gasped out. At the desperation in his tone, she fell uncharacteristically silence. The quiet stretched between them. More softly, he said, "I'm—I'm taking it seriously. I saw enough. I'll deal with it." He opened his eyes to stare her down with an intensity she didn't expect, shrank back from, even. "I promise. I've got this."

Crossing her arms, Prue stepped back. "Well, fine," she grumbled. "You better. My powers don't lie, Chris."

He squeezed his eyes shut again, just for a second. "Believe me, I know they don't." She let him slip out of the room without another word.

For Chris the rest of the day passed in a blur. By evening, when he went to brush his teeth, he found himself staring for several minutes at his haunted reflection in the mirror. His knuckles blanched from his tight grip on the sink basin. The sound of rushing water from the faucet almost drowned out his heavy breathing. The mirror showed a gangly fifteen-year-old, a child, but Chris didn't see that, saw instead a man in his early twenties with scruff beginning to grow along his cheeks and jawline. Green eyes sunken in from too little sleep and terrible, plaguing memories. A man who had borne witness to his own death.

Death had meant something. He tried to reassure himself with this thought; his sacrifice had earned him the future he had fought so valiantly to create. Normally, knowing this would bring him solace. He had been prepared to die for his cause, after all. But watching it happen, watching his father howl over his body… Somehow, just now, knowing didn't feel like enough.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he heard someone call Wyatt's name but paid it no attention. Instead, he broke gaze with his reflection and leaned in to splash water into his face, pressing wet hands against his eyes.

Wyatt! Mom! The voice sounded louder now, closer. So close it seemed to come from inside his own head.

Chris frowned. Odd. It didn't sound like Prue.

Somebody, help!

Chris straightened abruptly. "Okay, what was that?" he mumbled to himself. He shut off the water to listen for it again. For a moment he heard only the pipes settling in the walls, then—

Oh, perfect. The voice was distinctly male. I don't need you to hear me. Let me out of here.

Chris spun around, but nobody stood behind him. "Out of where?" he asked, "Who even are you?"

I'm the person you stole this body from, the disembodied voice snapped.

Realization finally dawned on him. The other Chris. Perhaps dormant inside him until this moment. Had watching the premonition been enough of an "answer" to satisfy the boy's spell?

"Finally waking up?" Chris remarked dryly. "Welcome back."

The voice didn't seem to find this amusing. My family will figure out what you did. And when they do, they'll vanquish—

"Relax," Chris said. It felt strange, talking to the air, so he addressed his comment to his reflection. "I'm not a demon, and I'm not hijacking your body or anything like that."

I'm sure, the voice sneered.

Chris rolled his eyes in exasperation. "Look," he said, curling his fingers around the sink as he glared into the mirror. "I didn't ask to be summoned here. This was your spell, genius."

That gave the voice pause. At the very least, he finally seemed willing to listen. With reluctance, he asked, What spell?

Chris closed his eyes. Already he could feel a headache brewing under his eyelids. Gently massaging his temples, he said, "Your ultra-vague spell about answering a mysterious question."

For a moment, silence rang on the other end. Chris had no way of knowing if his young self even recalled casting the spell. How much memory had he retained during the switch? When the voice eventually spoke again, it sounded more subdued. It was supposed to summon that guy I met with the Angel of Death, not you. And it wasn't supposed to replace me.

"Yeah, well, I have no idea who you're talking about," Chris retorted, "And obviously it backfired, Mister Personal Gain."

Why would the spell summon you? the voice pressed.

Chris sighed. "I'm you—from a different timeline. Your sister's premonition… it was about me." He squeezed his eyes shut. "My death."

You. The voice sounded skeptical at first, but then, Wait. You're the Chris who travelled back in time. You saved Wyatt.

"Guilty," Chris intoned humorlessly.

A sharp rap on the door jarred Chris away from the sink. "You're taking forever!" Prue shouted through the wall.

"Sorry!" Chris called back. "I'm almost done."

Her fist pounded the door again. "Chris, come on!"

Chris heard the disembodied voice groan. Channeling that to make his irritation seem more believable, he yelled back, "I said I'm almost done!" Quickly, he patted his hands and face dry on the hanging towel, unlocked the door, and let it swing open. Prue's upraised fist stopped just before it whacked him in the face. "See?" he told her, "Relax." Before she could respond, he slid past her and headed back to his room.

Once he was safely behind his closed door, he leaned against the wall with his head tilted back and his eyes closed. "Okay," he sighed at last. "Where were we?"

WE WERE AT HOW TO SWITCH BACK.

Chris winced, clutching his head in both hands. "Could you not yell?" he groaned. "I've already got a killer migraine from this whole 'voice in my head' thing."

A pause. I'M NOT YELLING, the voice protested, reverberating inside Chris's skull and sending sharp pinpricks radiating down the back of his neck.

Gritting his teeth, Chris replied, "Yeah, you definitely are."

I MUST BE GETTING CLOSER TO THE REAL WORLD, the voice reasoned. I MEAN, I DO FEEL MORE… PRESENT.

"Delightful." Chris shuffled toward the bed, shucking off shoes as he went. Fully clothed, he crawled across the mattress, flopping face-first onto the pillow.

WAIT. WE HAVE TO FIND A WAY TO SWITCH BACK!

Chris closed his eyes, trying to block out the voice as it echoed more and more loudly inside his head. "It's obviously happening with or without our input." He shifted to a more comfortable position on his side, then twiddled his fingers, using telekinesis to flick off the light switch. "Relax. Just let it happen. And let me sleep."

BUT—

Chris sighed, flipping the pillow on top of his face. "Shush. Sleep."

He was standing in a vast, dark expanse. A thick fog churned around his ankles, obscuring his feet from view. He felt nothing, not too cold, nor too hot; he could barely feel where his skin ended and the air began.

When he turned around, the space had changed. Where before had been nothing now stood a worn gray sofa, a rickety old desk, and a wooden bookcase. A top spun slowly on the highest shelf, emitting a soft green glow. On the second shelf, beside a row of binders and piles of loose papers, sat a deck of Tarot cards and a variety of potion vials in every color, each neatly labeled. The remaining three shelves were stocked entirely with books. At the end of the sofa lay a set of sheets and a hole-ridden comforter, neatly folded.

Slowly, Chris glided over to the space. The fog around his ankles cleared, and beneath it he saw a multicolored rug laid out in front of the sofa. There were perhaps three feet between the sofa and desk. Had there been walls, Chris could have reached out and touched them on either side.

He hadn't seen this place in almost a year.

"My room…" he whispered, almost in awe.

From behind him a voice said, "Oh, is that what this is? I was wondering." Chris turned, coming face-to-face with his teenage self. The boy scrutinized him, and was scrutinized in return. "It's small," he remarked. "You live in the city or something?"

"Resistance headquarters," the man corrected with a tight smile. He turned toward his bookcase again. Running his fingers across the middle shelf, he remarked, "Sort of. We called it that, anyway. Mostly it was just an underground bunker where people running from Wyatt's drones could hide. We didn't do all that much 'resisting.'" He cast a quick glance over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised. "So this is where you've been?"

The teen nodded. "Your room, huh? Doesn't have a bed."

With a wry smile, the man lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug. "Didn't do much sleeping," he remarked.

The teenager sighed, "I have so many questions."

"There will be time," the man replied enigmatically.

Somehow, in the haze, lulled by a sense of tranquility, pursuing his questions didn't feel all that important. Giving the area a once-over, the teen shoved his hands into his pockets. "So… what now?"

The man turned to face his counterpart fully. He came over, settling a hand on either shoulder. The weight felt warm; their skin tingled where they made contact through the teen's clothes. "Now," the man said softly, "you wake up."

The teen blinked, and he was back in his own bedroom, curled up on top of his covers, still in his clothes. The bright sliver of moon glittered beyond his window. Crickets chirruped loudly outside. In the distance echoed the low hum of moving cars. Feeling groggy, he stumbled to his dresser to change into pajamas, scattering clothing in his wake, then crawled back to bed, under the covers this time, and immediately fell asleep.

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