Hi, so here is another chapter and after doing some work in a new planning book I can confirm this story will take us to end of Season 3 and will now be twenty five chapters.

Disclaimer-Nothing is mine.

Please Read and Review.

Some of this chapter is based on chapters that I wrote in my previous story 'Before And After' and so therefore there is an overlap in words and scenes. There will be for the next couple of chapters.

And now we are in Season 2!

I think in terms of Season 3 we are only going to have the first few opening chapters. So this story is probably going to be seasons one and two focused.

Let There Be Light

Chapter 14-She Changes Everything

The Charmed Ones go to the future and see four very different outcomes. When they come back it's all business no play as Andy is out of the hospital and Zankou and Leo return and Dan makes his move.

Going to the future had an effect on all of them. Going to the future showed them an edge that they had not seen before, going to the future was fucking mind warping if you wanted Paige's point of view.

First there was Piper and Leo and the little girl called Melinda, the girl that had brown hair and a gap tooth and magic that she was slowly being shamed into hiding, it might be all fun and games for this little girl but Paige had read Anne Frank enough times to know that when the crowds in the future had talked about neighbourhood's for freaks like her imprisoned sister and then why bother having trials at all why not just send them to prison on a truck, to know that they were in a deeper shit show than they had ever bene in before. No trials for those who had magic was one thing and her sisters execution was going to be shown on TV as if it was the Superbowl.

Piper looked the same, Phoebe was in prison wearing a shock collar so it was hard to tell and Prue…well…Prue was blonde.

Platinum blonde. The kind of blonde that you winced at, the kind of blonde that your bank winced at—seriously the cost of maintaining hair like that had to be in the hundreds of dollars. And to cop it off she was owning three auction houses which probably meant she had a nice little apartment to go with that limo.

And Paige…Paige woke up in the middle of an house that was hiding three families of witches.

And that was how she learnt that she was not only rocking a red hair do (actually she should look at that colour because it was striking on her and she had never considered red before) and she learnt that she was running the underground resistance.

And she was wanted too.

Wonderful.

But the more she looked and listened and spoke the more she felt inspired. A lot of these people had been ordinary people forced out of society because of rumours. There was a small cluster of children who had been disowned by their families because they had powers or their parents had been forced to give them up because they knew that they had powers, and while they could not stop the authorities coming for them they could stop them coming for their children.

One child a girl of about ten had told her that the second her mother was burnt the protection spell that she had cast would end and therefore she would be hunted too.

"To stop the magic you have to burn out all the generations on the tree" she said her eyes older than a child should ever have to be in her life, "Now they want to scan all babies at birth to see if they have a magic gene, if they do they can be disposed off before they become a burden to society"

Paige had smoothed her hair down and gotten her a drink and then had gone to the bathroom and tried to calm down her intense rage before she orbed herself away somewhere to do more damage. The more she heard stories like this the more she thought that demons might be in the right, that using your powers for personal gain was for good and not evil. Men like this, the men in power needed to be the ones rooted out and she remembered from her history books the quote, that when a man stayed silent while they came for others around him, when they came for him then nobody was around to speak up.

"Damn straight" came a voice from the back of the room and she turned yanking the door open to see Zankou standing there. She knew from what Leo said that he would not remember that she was from the past but that he might be here for other reasons but she had refused to give into the monumental fear that she had faced when she had realised that demons were also being hunted, that the ones who came up were being forced down and if they weren't then they were being burnt. She was not naïve to believe that demons did not have families too. That they did not have lives up here—hell Jeremy had been a successful news reporter, Andy had been shot by a cop with a long record of good service. These guys were not stupid, they had lives up here that they wanted to protect.

And in her own time it had been a month before she had seen him again.

So really there was very little to do other than to throw herself into his arms and let him hold her, she wanted him to hold her and she crawled into his arms wondering why she was running from the only man she had ever felt safe with. Why this was the decided wrong thing? And…if she wanted to stay with him, if she wanted to be with him for the ever after was she too going to become one of the hunted?

But she didn't care about that now, he tasted the same, felt the same, smelt the same and she burrowed her face in his neck after kissing the life out of him and she shuddered as his arms came around her and she knew that in this terrible future world she was, for the first time, safe.

"Good Lord woman it was only a raid, you'd think I was gone for eternity"

"Raid?"

"Another hundred children about to be sent to the magical ghetto all saved. You know as much as I hate this helping people I have to say the look on the guards face when I come down and blast them all to hell is really quite satisfying. You know they actually cheered me this time"

Oh God.

"Well…err…that was good."

"Are you and your sisters still on for this recuse?"

Rescue?

Oh. Yeah. Phoebe.

She needed to focus on her sister and not the pulse of overwhelming knowledge that came when she realised that she had gone past falling in love with the demon she was so far IN love with the demon she wanted nothing but him.

If she sat and thought about that then she was going to lose her mind.

There was a knock at the door and then.

"Oh God you two are ridiculous"

She turned to see a girl of about fifteen—surely they had not come that far in the future—but then again what did she know—standing there. She had blonde hair and her eyes were the same as Zankou. Paige looking at her thought her wardrobe was straight out of what she herself had worn as a teenager, her hair though blonde, bright blonde was streaked with dark roots and her nails were painted a bright pink.

"Thank you Billie" Zankou said dropping her to the ground with an eye roll. "Did you help the children?"

"Yeah, look Mom are you sure you don't want my help tonight—"

It took Paige a second to realise that she was looking at her.

Mom.

Mom.

MOM?!

Billie.

She was Mom to a girl called Billie. Who was blonde…

What the fuck was this magic?

"Belinda"

"Dad. Look I can help, I know you want to protect neutrality and all as Lord of the Underworld but still…"

It took Paige another second to realise that she was talking to Zankou even as he turned his head to bicker with their daughter…their daughter.

Their daughter. Because that was…that meant…

Zankou.

Dad.

DAD.

DAD?

She Paige Matthews, the fourth Charmed One that was never planned had in this future a fifteen year old girl with Zankou, the original demon and the Lord of the Underworld which was a new title that he most certainly did not have right now (unless he was holding out on her and Paige thought that was highly improbable) and she was running the magical resistance.

"Mom?"

"Darling are you quite well?"

She looked at the two of them and their mirror carbon looks of concern and she forced a smile.

"Yes" she said quietly. "Billie er…could you ring your Aunts?"

"On the secure line?"

"In whichever way you think best, you want responsibility you can have it"

Billie beamed. Paige couldn't believe that worked, her grandmother had used that line for crying out loud!

Zankou shot her an odd look.

"Are you alright?"

"No" she said truthfully and he nodded.

"If anyone can get Phoebe out it's you. You know though…I thank you for not letting Billie go, I know that Piper wanted the extra fire power but we've managed to keep our daughter off the radar for a long time—"

"Of course I don't want to expose her" Paige said trying to wrap her head around this, this was a whole life with a demon playing out in front of her, it was not something that she expected, living proof that Leo and the rest of his kind was wrong when they claimed that there was lines between good and evil that could not be crossed.

Here she was, crossing it with a child with bad magic but was ultimately good.

Interesting.

She looked down at her hand and noticed no wedding band.

Even more interesting.

Paige was not one of those woman who thought that just because you had a man meant that you had to marry him, soon it would be the turn of the millennium and they would be crashing into the 21st century and she knew that in a thousand years woman's rights had changed beyond all recognition, woman where now having careers and having children and men were few and far between one did not need a man—one just needed good healthcare and a good sperm donor if you wanted Paige's opinion.

Besides…she had been there for husband four, five and six and she was not sure that she would have been able to support her Grams had there been a seventh.

There was a pause where she stood there and then.

"Paige?"

"Yes"

"I know that it's hard"

"I know I just—"

"I don't want what happened to my sons to happen to my daughter"

She nodded but inside her mind was whirling, since when did Zankou have sons?

Before she could ask her daughter? Was back and this time it was with her sisters.

Paige's reaction to Prue's hair distracted them all for a few seconds.

It was only when they got back home, after watching Phoebe die and they were suitably shaken having learnt their lesson she found that she was unable to sleep. Leo was back, Zankou apparently had children, Andy was out of the hospital and she had just watched Phoebe be burnt alive and she was emotional as fuck. Maybe someone else might be able to come up with better words but the truth of the matter was that for her that was not what she was renowned for.

She closed her eyes and then opened them again and threw back the covers. She padded to Phoebe's room and paused. Prue was on one side Piper on the other and Phoebe had her hands clinging to Prue's shirt. It was like they were kids again and she was having a nightmare. Paige didn't blame her, she was having a long nightmare herself.

Prue cracked open one eye as if she knew that she was there and for a second older sister and younger sister looked at each other. Prue too had the look of a woman whose world had been shaken today and she realised that other than career advancement she had never asked what Prue's post-Andy living world looked like.

Prue shifted so that there was a space in the big bed and Paige climbed in it and wrapped her arms around Prue resting her head on her back. For a second she stared at the cotton t-shirt and then her eyes fell shut and she finally managed to catch some sleep and the four Halliwell sisters slept as if they were the only ones in the world that had seen the future and knew that while they wanted too, they couldn't do anything to change it

And there you go, it wouldn't be me if I didn't get Billie in there so there she is.

Next Chapter-As time moves on Andy makes a decision, an abandoned baby sends Zankou spiralling again and Paige wondering if she has reached the crossroads Leo keeps talking about.