Hi! So here is another story from me for this wonderful fandom. I wanted to get this out before the start of the New Year but I was burning the candles at both ends so to speak finishing up all my other stories so I decided the best thing to do was to take a little break and recharge and get into a good place to start this one.

So on a few notes: I have always wanted to write a story with all four sisters. Shannon did such a wonderful job as Prue and Rose did such a wonderful job as Paige it is a shame that for whatever reason we did not get to see a scene shared with them (that one with the back of Prue does not count). So this is my little remedy for that.

This is a happy ending for all of the sisters, it runs this story approximately from prequal days to the end of Season 3. I do intend to redeem Cole and probably Zankou who was arguably the best villain of the series-only just beating Gideon who was outstandingly bad. I wrote Paige and Zankou on a whim in my last story and I enjoyed it and I got a lot of good feedback from it so we are going down this road again. And also Prue/Andy were the love story that for me kicked off a love of Charmed so...he too gets to live.

Some episodes will be skipped over and if you are looking for a cannon compliment, word perfect, dialogue perfect, punctuation perfect story then let me tell you that is not me. I also do a lot of swearing in my stories so if you don't like that then turn away now at this first chapter.

Also again let me be plain I DESPISE the Elders. I hate them, I hate the hypocrisy, I hate the way they treated Leo after Gideon, I hate the way they were with the Avatars, I hate the fact that they expected the sisters to be on supernatural speed dial and I hated that they constantly butted in. Believe me in Season 5 I was actively cheering for the Titans. To me the Elders made themselves Titans. So if your looking for a story where they get a good rap then walk away now please.

Disclaimer-Nothing here is mine.

Please Read and Review.

I do not do private messages anymore. If you have a question then please stick it in a review and I will try to answer it in the next chapter notes.

I will try to update as soon as work allows me. Spelling and Grammar have never been my friends please keep that in mind too.

This story will be 28 Chapters long.

Let There Be Light

Chapter 3-Everyone Else Is Dead

In which Penny tonight with four motherless girls has a lot to decide. AKA Patty's death.

Prue had gone to sleep finally, she'd cried herself to sleep curled up in her mother's big bed as if the smell of Patty would bring her back. Piper had curled up with her, her own face wet with tears though Penny did not know weather or not she thought that her mother was going to come back. Phoebe at the age of three didn't know anything and Paige was six months both of them asleep in the nursery no idea that their world had been turned upside down and ripped six ways to Sunday.

Penny did though.

Oh Penny did.

She checked on the girls went downstairs and calmly poured herself a glass of wine. It was only then that she noticed her hands were shaking so violently she could not lift the glass and she stared at it for a second before she realised that the kitchen was shaking with her magic, grief making it so that the magic was pouring out of her.

"Penny?"

"Out" she snapped not looking up.

It was Orion. She wondered why on Earth him. If you were going to send and Elder then there were many more sympathetic ones than him.

"Penny we have to talk about the girls, now they are—"

"OUT!" she yelled and she threw the glass at him he orbed out of the way in time and the resurged but she was there with her magic rage and anger and pure grief hitting her and she blasted him with enough force that he was sent upwards with it.

"And let me make one thing clear" she said to the ceiling, "If you come for my girls, if you try to take them, if you try to take Paige and say it's the Power of Three…if you send the Cleaners to me I will make a war on you the likes that you have never seen, I will raise those girls evil and burn the Book of Shadows in my furnace if I have to. If you make me your enemy then it will be the end of you and I think you know it. AND DON'T SEND HIM AGAIN!"

She did not know if she had even reached the Elders (she had) or if her tone and her threats had put the fear of…whatever it was into them (it had) but she knew that she was alone in this now.

Her grief for her daughter was an untapped source of whirling, dangerous, potent magic, a vortex that could swirl out of control whenever she was pushed to the brink. She was human enough to do it to and magical enough. To burn down the world in her grief.

But as soon as that thought came to her she put it away in the box in her mind. She was Penny Halliwell, she was no stranger to grief. She was no stranger to this swirling vortex. She had buried Alan, she had buried her fifth husband too though she had hardly mourned him, she had vanquished her lover even though it had killed her inside and now she was here…with her daughter dead at the City Morgue.

She took a sip of the wine.

She was waiting.

She did not have to wait long.

Sam orbed himself into the kitchen. Penny watched him with one eye. Sam looked how she was feeling inside. He was dripping wet to boot and she saw him stare around the kitchen as if he was expecting Patty to come out the basement.

"Drink?"

He didn't say anything, he just seemed to sway.

"What happened?"

She was clipped and she was professional. She was Penny Halliwell the witch right about now, she was not Penny Halliwell the broken hearted mother, the grief stricken woman, she could scream and cry and put her head to the floor and sob until she was with her daughter again later. Right now she had four fatherless girls…motherless girls (God the thought of it made her feel sick) and she had to know how exposed they were. She knew that Prue had seen something, knew that Prue had been and the other girls too but she had to know…

"She came to see me, she had Paige and the girls and she came to see me."

Penny closed her eyes and then opened them again, Patty…of course she had.

"How long has that being going on?"

"Not long, it's neutral once she knew that a demon was there, because the Elders thought that she was seeing about how to defeat the demon she…"

But she held up a hand and he fell silent. She really, really did not want to know, she really did not want to know how her headstrong, foolish, beautiful daughter had found a way around the edict. Had Patty been alive right now she might have congratulated her on it. As it was her daughter was dead and this little rebellion of hers had only seen her to the grave faster.

"Tell me about the demon"

"Water demon, it sucks people down, drowns them from the inside…I told her not to go alone, I was with the children and Prue went outside and I ran after her because I knew what she was going to do and—"

"And she froze you"

She could see it now playing out behind her eyelids like a horror film that did not stop. Patty trying to battle the demon and Sam thinking that Prue was in danger…that Patty was in danger running out afterwards. It would have been second nature to her daughter to freeze Sam, she had done it more than once and so she'd turn, freeze Sam and then go back to the demon only by that point it was too late.

She had to stop herself from thinking that now. She could not think about that now.

"And the demon?"

"It vanished. It feeds…Patty was sure it fed on the people that went near the lake so now that there has been a confirmed drowning…a mean more and more and more and the camp closes down…"

"It has nothing to feed on so it just stays there…lurking"

Sam nodded.

Penny took another sip of wine and then…

"What are you going to do?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean are you still a Whitelighter?"

He gave a full body shudder as if the very thought of it repulsed him. Penny couldn't blame him, she did not do well with the thought of Whitelighters and Elders…well…right now they could take their Greater Good and shove it where the sun didn't shine.

"I'm going to clip my wings" he said quietly.

"Why? What good will that do?"

"I lost the one person I was supposed to save"

"Yes" she said savagely. "Yes you did"

It was cruel she knew to blame him but she needed someone to blame other than herself and to blame her child or the demon that was still lurking between the reeds in that lake that was still as dangerous as it had been this morning.

He nodded as if accepting her blame was the least that he could do.

"There are four girls motherless upstairs that I now have to raise" she said flatly.

"I know"

"Do you? Prue saw the fucking body Sam! Paige…Paige won't even remember her"

He flinched as she had hit him and he looked at her big blue eyes filled with tears. This she thought viciously is why she had told Patty not to bother with men, this was why, Victor, Sam…they were all the same in the end really. Men got you hurt…in her daughters case men got you killed.

"So what are you going to do?" she asked cruelly.

He shrugged.

"Well I can tell you what you are not going to do. You are not going to take Paige"

He looked at her slightly bemused and she realised with another hot pulse of anger that he had not even considered his daughter this entire time.

"Why would I take Paige?"

"She's your daughter?" she snarled at him but Sam didn't look at her. His eyes were far away, a glazed look on his face as if he had just realised what she was saying held some truth to it, some meaning, something other than the swirling vortex of grief that was drowning him.

Looking back Penny would regret this moment, she would, she was a ball buster she would hold her hands up and admit that but it had kept her alive. Since Alan…since that damn Necromancer she had worn her toughness around her like armour. She would wear it now around her like it was a blanket that could keep out the slow chill that was this terrible grief. A ball buster she might be but she did not think she was cruel.

However she knew in this moment she had to be. Sam had to know that being in Paige's life now if he so wished it (and in truth she knew that if Victor asked the same she would struggle to deny him) had consequences. She also knew that the Charmed Ones had a destiny…already they had pushed that beyond the point of no return.

"Sam…I don't want you near Paige. I don't want you near Patty's girls. I cannot forgive you"

"Jesus Christ woman you think I can forgive myself? You think I don't know that this is all my fault?"

The last bit of that was whispered but the pain…the suffering…the terrible agony that came when your soulmate was ripped from you hit her so strongly that she felt the anger within her crumble and the grief hit her so strongly she thought she might die with it. Gripping onto the edge of the kitchen counter (and the last of her strength) she kept herself standing through sheer pride and sheer force of will.

"Then go" she said flatly. "Let her daughters be safe, let them be as safe as they can be. I can keep them safe until they aren't anymore. But death for reasons beyond my understanding Sam seems to stalk you like a demon…and I don't want that near my girls. Right now they are all I have and I am all they have. If you love Paige…let her go"

He stared at her flatly and then with one sharp nod he orbed out of her kitchen.

She would never see Sam Wilder again.

Sitting on her couch that night in the living room she stared at the Book of Shadows with something akin to hatred. Her face was wet with tears, her hands were shaking and she had drank more than she should do. She knew that tomorrow she would have to be Grams, she would have to get the girls up, get them fed, get them ready for a world without their mother, she would have to make calls, plan a funeral, get ready for the investigation as if mortals could figure out what had happened to her daughter. She would have to be ready for anyone magical or otherwise who would dare take away her granddaughters.

But tonight…tonight she could be a mother and she could grieve. The depths of it would never be expressed. The depths of pain a parent felt burying a child could not be expressed. Children were supposed to bury parents not the other way around.

She took another sip of wine and contemplated opening another bottle. She shouldn't. Penny knew that she did not have the luxury to grieve.

She had four girls to think about. Her own darling daughter was dead…

Suddenly it hit her all over again and she bent over at the waist as if she had been mortally wounded. She groaned like a dying animal in pain because you're still a mother or a father even if you don't have a child anymore. There was no special name…with Alan she had been a widow.

Her girl…God her gorgeous baby girl. Patricia.

She leaned back upwards and downed her glass in once and she put it back on the table holding her side as if she'd been knifed.

Penny looked at that damn book on the table.

She knew that she would have to get up again and be the all badass powerful witch. She had grown up knowing that, that was her destiny and she had grown up knowing it as soon as she had known it herself. And she had to keep going with her destiny. Otherwise in six months it was Prue here looking at this Book and wondering just what the hell it was.

But tonight…tonight she had much to forgive that damn book.

Because everyone else was dead.

And it was just her alone…

Because…everyone else is dead.

And there you go, next chapter will be a prequal one but I see maybe two/three more and then we hit Season 1.

Next Chapter-The Charmed Girls grow up but without powers and in hiding...but there is a charming man interested in Paige, a cop to be interested in Prue and Penny...who is beginning to feel her age...Penultimate Prequal?