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!

Let There Be Light

Chapter 13-Something's Got To Give

Andy and Prue have a talk, Piper buys a club. Paige asks a question Zankou really does not want to answer.

She knocked on the door and then when he said come in she opened the door and stepped inside.

Mercifully Andy was alone.

"Hi" she said into the sudden silence.

"Hi" he said back.

And suddenly, just like that, just looking at him, she found, that she could breathe once more and she knew that regardless of what happened here today, regardless of the sensibility of it she was still utterly and hopelessly in love with him.

For a moment they stared at each other and then Andy shifted a little. Prue took stock of the bruises that seemed to be healing on his face and the way he was better in colour than he had been a week or so ago but she also noted that he was still in a hospital bed and still staring down months of PT before he could get back on the force, if he could get back on the force.

"You look good" she said and then immediately hated herself for that.

"I don't" Andy said with a small smile.

"Better than you did when they brought you in at any rate"

Andy snorted.

"Daryl said you got him…Rod—"

"Yeah" she said cutting across him. "It's over. Well…not over were still fighting demons left right and centre but he's gone to the bowls of hell and believe me there's no coming back for him or for the guy he was working for"

Andy sighed.

"Well that's something anyway"

Prue nodded shutting the door.

"We need to talk"

"I'll say. Two weeks and you've not come to see me"

"Yeah I know"

"How's Paige?"

"Back home, all is okay, she's well…Piper is trying to buy a club. And Phoebe is…well…she's Phoebe"

Andy nodded safe and secure in the knowledge that somethings never changed.

"I…" And here was the crux of the matter wasn't it? Here was what she was thinking about saying and had been thinking about saying for some time and now when she needed to get the words out she found that she couldn't. Her Prue Halliwell…the woman who always had an answer to everything was at this moment, this all important moment, unable to get a single word to come out.

"I didn't know if you'd want to see me" she said that was partially the truth if not the whole truth but Andy had always had the ability to read her like the open book she had never been to anyone except him and he raised and eyebrow and Prue dumped her bag on the chair and finally managed to force herself to look him in the eyes.

"You should be dead" she said. In hindsight that was not the best reason to start off with—she should have gone with more but here she was. "We've checked the book, we've gone over everything and anything, every minute detail of that spell and what happened and as God as my witness Andy there is no way you should still be alive and that's because of me—"

"Let me finish" she cut across him when he showed every sign of interrupting. And then she started rambling and this she knew was a very, very bad sign.

"I told you, you were going to die that day and you came to the house and…and that's what I thought for a long time and then a demon stole the Book of Shadows and I had this moment where I thought to myself do I really want to be a witch anymore? Because being a witch nearly got you killed, it's caused constant disruption to our lives and any mortal that we come into contact with is at risk of being caught in the crossfire and I thought to myself is that really what I want? Because as mad as it sounds the one thing I have wanted since I was sixteen was you and you nearly died and then Phoebe managed to smack some sense into me—"

"Phoebe's always had a way of doing that" Andy said cutting across her. When she looked at him she noted that his eyes were very warm.

"Look Prue you didn't make me go into that house. Even if it wasn't you I would have done so anyway because…because when they gave me that badge and that gun I took an oath to protect the innocent just like you did, even at the expense of my own life, just like you did and every police officer knows that one day that oath might just cost them their life. Besides even if I wasn't in love with you, still in love with you, I'd have done it for your sisters. I've known the three of you since we were children there was really nothing you could have done to stop me from going in that house"

"I thought you couldn't see witches in your future?"

Andy shrugged.

"I also thought witches didn't exist. I've had time to think about what I want and…and dying or nearly dying or whatever it was that happens to me tends to give a man a bit of perspective on what's going on around him. Can I handle this world that you're in? I think so, I mean it's baby steps obviously but it's not so terrifying on this side of it. And…and I went looking for it. I knew you were hiding something and I chased towards it so if you want to blame someone for this mess blame me. I could have just done what Daryl told me to and walk away from it all…but I didn't and I don't regret that decision. It took me a while but…I think I was always going to be here, the same way Paige was going to be here, the same way that your mother knew that your father was not the right man for her and this other person was-"

"How did you?"

"Prue everyone knew she wasn't Victor's kid, everyone. Your Dad had been gone nearly four months and even so it didn't add up that they would get back together it just…didn't. But your Mom was so lovely and then she died and nobody was going to call Penny Halliwell's grandchild a bastard not even my father who as you know hated your grandmother because he thought she was running a hash den—which now I suppose—well—witchcraft does explain all that smoke and strange smells doesn't it?" He tilted his head to look at her all smirks and cheek like he had been when he was sixteen and his words then had been like his words now, shockingly true.

Prue shook her head. She was crying now and she knew, she knew, she was seconds away from making both a beautiful and terrible decision that she would cherish and regret in equal measure for the rest of her life but she didn't care. Two weeks ago this was a pipe dream and now it was unfolding at her feet and she knew that somewhere there was a trapdoor ready to catch her.

"Don't say things you don—"

"I love you" Andy said cutting through the words and rendering her speechless.

"And I know you love me. So…so am I saying I'm going to move into the house with you and start demon hunting with you and your sisters, am I going to and have tea with ghosts, no, but what I am saying is that I am here, I am alive, and I can assure you I am going nowhere and you can argue with me all you want Prue but I was the one that usually won the arguments"

"Oh like hell you did" she said but there was no heat behind the comment. Instead she felt like she was going to cry again. Like bawling again…like Titanic bawling.

"I love you too" she said because he was right, after everything that they had been through they were far past the dance that they did around the other. "But I don't know where we go from here"

"We go slow" Andy degreed. "We try and be as normal as possible for as long as we can be and you come back tomorrow and the day afterwards and you never, ever leave me again because Prue…" and here she could see his composure slipping and the man he had become turn into the boy she had given her whole heart too.

"There was nothing as terrible as waking up and realising that you weren't here"

She nodded and sat down on the bed. Andy linked their fingers together and then finally she managed to get into a position where they were holding each other (abet with a lot of tubes in the way).

It was more than what she had expected really. To be honest she had expected him to be dead. For all her talk that they could stop Phoebe's premonitions it was just that with this one.

Talk.

And yet they had done it.

It wasn't perfect.

And yet it was.

"Can I ask something?"

"What?"

"What happened to you?"

Zankou paused turning to look at her.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean…how did you…how do you go from mortal to demon?" Paige pushed herself onto her elbow. She was so very young he realised with a swoop, here she was with no idea that her words had triggered him to remember…

Not that he didn't remember. That was the problem. His memories made him remember all the bad stuff, the terror and the panic and the pain at the end and all of it in crystal clarity but there was nothing that remained of the good. Trying to remember those memories was like trying to get water to remain in his cupped palms. It didn't happen no matter how much he tried.

He felt the itch under his skin and he could not look away from her even if he wanted too, she didn't get it and he had known that and he only had himself to blame but somehow he felt sick. He had known this was coming but unbidden…

And the problem was Paige was just asking a random post sex question. She had not even gotten to the hard questions yet…the ones where she asked if he had a backstory when he became a demon. And he had known that was coming next. It was curiosity and also…well…he had remained a mystery for a long time. He had cultivated that reputation for demons and elders, men and mortals alike. What was a witch now asking what so many had asked before her?

Sometimes it was hard to separate. It was not like Zankou had not known what he was getting into. But you loved the woman (Christ that hurt to say) more than you loved the magic. For him anyway.

"Don't ask me that"

"Why?" she asked and there was something in her tone that told him she had understood that she had asked something offensive but did not understand why.

And that was the problem wasn't it, to tell Paige would be to truly let her in and it frightened him to think about that, because to truly let her in meant no going back.

"Because I don't want to answer it"

"But why—"

But he was unable to stay, she could orb herself back up and he would deal with the rest later instead he disappeared trying to get that haunting laughter out of his ears, the smell of jasmine, the pitter patter of little feat and the high cold cruel laugh.

He landed somewhere in Alexandria.

The city had changed so much since he had last been here. They had built a car park over where his home had been…all but one patch of earth untouched. His own little bit of personal gain.

And with that he went searching trying not to think of those big eyes of the witch he was slowly falling in love with as she tried to speak to him about another woman who he had loved and who had lost all because she had, had the mistake of trying to love a man who even as a human, was too enshrined in darkness to be helped.

Let me know what you think.

Next Chapter-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.