Prue quietly swept up some broken glass. Piper bent down beside her to hold a dust pan.

"Here." Piper mumbled.

"It's alright, I've got it." Prue grumbled, feeling like she was sleepwalking or something. Something was off, but she didn't know what.

"It's not a problem." Piper insisted.

"Thanks." Prue offered tentatively as Leo walked in.

"What's going on?" He asked. "The Elders contacted me again, something's happened and they felt it up there and it's freaking them out."

"Well, we had a little..." Prue started to say

"Tiff." Piper muttered.

"Must've been more than little because 'they' felt it." He insisted.

"What do you mean 'they felt it'?" Prue questioned.

"Whatever happened severed the Power of Three." He answered.

"Leo, that's impossible." Prue denied.

Leo picked up a glass bowl. "Freeze this." He suggested as he dropped it, Piper tried to freeze it and it smashed on the floor, like the vase had.

"Uhh..." Piper looked at her hands, this hadn't happened since they'd been in the past.

Prue tried to move the glass and found she couldn't. "What happened to our powers?" She exclaimed, feeling lost without them.

"That's what we have to figure out. Let's start with your little tiff."

"Well, that's a bit of an understatement." Piper tried to explain. "It was big."

"How big?"

"Um, do you remember Pearl Harbor?" Prue asked, an ironic question since he'd been alive when it happened.

"Okay, so what triggered it?" Leo questioned.

"I-I don't know." Piper stated. "Just little things I guess. I really didn't wanna do the stupid home owners meeting."

"My car ran out of gas and because of that I was late to work." Prue explained.

"That's it?"

"Yeah," Prue was starting to feel like she was waking up. "I mean, it's weird. We were angry but we shouldn't have been that angry. It was almost like something..."

"Something sort of came over us." Piper decided

"Yeah," Prue agreed. "something like Belthazor, the demon Troxa mentioned when Xander questioned him."

"That doesn't track," Leo protested. "because no matter what he does, he doesn't have the power to take away yours. So back to your argument. You yelled and you threw stuff?"

"Well, we did a little more than that." Piper said ruefully.

"We used our powers." Prue admitted.

"What, on each other? Alright, well, then that's what happened. Your powers are rooted in your bond as sisters. Using them against each other must have severed that bond. Alright, you need to repair the damage to your relationship fast because right now even with the Sanctuary Ward you're extremely vulnerable. So you need to get Phoebe..."

"Phoebe's gone." Prue interrupted. "And her power advanced while we were fighting, she levitated."

"We'll deal with that later, do you know where she's gone?"

At Cole's apartment he awkwardly held Phoebe and tried to figure out how to deal with this situation. "It's okay." He told Phoebe. "I'm glad you came here." And he was, he realized, but why? "What happened?" He asked

"My sisters and I got into a huge fight and it was horrible."

"You're safe here." He assured her. "Why don't you take a moment to get cleaned up, wash your face. I'll make some tea, it's too late for coffee and then we can talk about it if you want."

"I must look a mess." Phoebe touched her cheek and felt the wetness.

"It's okay, you're still beautiful." He assured her. Phoebe smiled shyly and headed to his bathroom to wash her face as Cole found a knife and tucked it into his belt at the back of his pants, now was his opportunity. So why did he feel so conflicted? He sat on the couch and waited for Phoebe to come back out.

"I was just so angry and I said such horrible things to them and I-I-I didn't really mean any of it." Phoebe said after she'd finished explaining, she sat on the couch by Cole. "The things that were said. I don't even know where they were coming from. I mean, I guess it was issues, you know, that were underlying, that were never really dealt with and then, and now all of a sudden, just exploded."

"Nothing ever happen like that before?"

"Oh, no, not like that. I mean, we used to fight all the time when we were little, you know. But since we moved in together, we just, we got really close, you know. We've been through so much together." She touched his face. "Thank you for listening to me. And thank you for being there for me." She kissed him.

Cole reached down and pulled the knife out of his belt. He raised it, hand clenched to slam it into her body and then shakily lowered it. He just couldn't do it, but he didn't understand why. He pushed it in between the cushions of the couch and drew back from Phoebe.

"I can't. I can't." He said jerkily

"What do you mean?" Phoebe asked, confused.

He stood up and paced away from her, trying to come up with something to say.

"Phoebe, you need to go home. Now."

Phoebe stood up too, hurt by his seeming rejection of her. "What? Why?"

"Because you're vulnerable right now. I don't...we shouldn't do this. You need to go home. You need to go and figure out what happened."

Touched by his concern for her, Phoebe smiled. "You're right, I do." Cole walked her to the door. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." This time he kissed her, before closing the door behind her and returned to the couch to think, as Phoebe hurried home to rebuild her bond with her sisters.

Why couldn't he kill Phoebe Halliwell, Charmed One, when he had the chance?

######

A/N Some dialog taken from Charmed wiki, Power Outage episode.