I'm sorry for such an extended silence. I struggled for a while with the ending but got a bit of guidance that finally helped me over that hump. I hope the wait is worth it.
When Chris came to, he wasn't sure how much time had elapsed. His surroundings were as he'd left them, a cascading heap of boulders where he'd attempted to bury the demon alive, two towering waves of earth that had swept upward and solidified, the demon's serpent staff—like its master—nothing more than a mound of ephemeral dust.
With the back of one wrist, he swiped at his nose, which felt sticky, and came away with a smear of tacky blood, so he scrubbed his wrist against his pants to clean it. The warm, stagnant air suffocated him with every inhale; his calf throbbed where the serpent had bitten him. Feeling ancient and weary, with every pore aching, he climbed cumbrously to his feet. His surroundings felt alive with memory, as if a vision would trigger at any moment. He could not bear to remain here a moment longer but equally could not fathom returning home where only pitying glances and saccharine sympathy awaited him, so when he summoned the magic simmering just beneath the skin he orbed back to the rocky jetty overlooking the ocean.
The sun was in the late stages of rising, spraying pink and lavender hues across the cloudy sky. He had been in the Underworld all night. Which meant his parents must have decided to give him space, not disturb him in his room, because if they had noticed his absence they would have gone to every length to seek him out.
But eventually, inevitably, they would check on him, likely when they realized he still had not emerged from his room by late morning—his mother would knock with some breakfast on a tray to make certain he didn't miss yet another meal. His absence could be discovered any moment, yet even this cognizance, even the threat of a lecture or punishment, could not compel Chris to return home.
In fact, he could not stomach the thought of anything short of seeing Jake again, the notion lingered there in the back of his mind, urging him to employ his powers to bring it to fruition, but the last time he had attempted to force a vision into existence he had unintentionally conjured the boy's last painful moments. That he had no interest in reliving.
In lieu of that option, Chris crouched on the edge of the jetty and attempted instead to wipe all conscious thought from his mind, to let the still-cool morning air, not yet heated by the late summer sun, wisp drowsily around him as he watched the sun climb higher over the ocean, a strident orange orb hanging in the sky as the minutes ticked past. Out across the ocean, a shearwater coasted inches above the choppy water, its wingtips just grazing the surface. Chris wasn't sure how long the blankness in his mind lasted, long enough that the sky bled to azure, the clouds a whitish gray that warned of rain at some later hour, and at some point his thoughts returned, niggling, to the forefront, the possibility of conjuring a vision—or perhaps even something more…
Hadn't Demoriel said he had yet to tap into the full range of his powers? And Perry—Perry had once physically travelled through time, had altered history and created an entirely new timeline all on his own.
At once, Perry piped up in warning. Don't. That was a last resort.
In no mood to hear this judgmental tone, Chris growled, "So is this."
A last resort to stop the end of the world, Perry pressed.
Before he even realized it, his hands were clenched into fists at his sides as the breeze blustered around his face, the soothing tenderness of the sensation lost on Chris with numbness icily wedged behind his breastbone, and the wind affected only his body, tugging at his shirt and making his hair flutter into his eyes. He felt nothing beyond the rising tide of fury that had simmered beneath the surface now for days.
His bruised knuckles dug into the rocky ground on either side of him. "I don't care, don't you get it?" he snarled into the wind, "I don't care about the rules or the greater good or anything! He didn't deserve to die, and I'm going to fix it. I don't care what it takes." He leapt back to his feet.
Death's dispassionate voice interjected to remark, Death does not come to those deserving. It comes for you all.
Through gritted teeth, Chris replied, "Well, not today."
"Christopher."
Chris almost didn't realize this word had been uttered aloud, and it took several seconds for him to turn around, his back to the crashing waves, to meet the eyes of a woman with short-cropped blond hair in a glimmering white robe that swept the ground. The Elder who had assigned him his charge, who had started all of this all those months ago.
Chris's eyes narrowed and he hissed with all the venom he could muster, "You."
Unbothered by his tone, she clasped her hands together in front of her, the very embodiment of divinity—which only further enraged Chris, the audacity!—and said, "You have been gone all night. Your family will worry."
The wind around them began to pick up, swirling her hair as well as Chris's own, though the expanse of ocean on either side remained calm. Eyes wild, he shouted, "You think it matters to me what anyone else wants? I'm done with this"—his arm swept wide to gesture toward her—"done with you stupid Elders, done with all of this! Just leave me alone!"
By now, the wind behind him had increased to a dull roar in his ears as it churned around them both, and the waves directly below them swelled higher against the rocky surface, spraying Chris's backside with foam. Get a handle on your powers, Perry urged, but his warning went unheeded.
"Christopher, you cannot torment yourself over this outcome." Here, in a curated display of benevolence, the Elder splayed her arms wide. "You tried your best, and that is all we can ask. This was not your failure."
"Don't give me that," Chris snapped, and then, in an instant, the rage seemed to seep out of him, like a sieve spilling grains of sand, replaced instead with despair. "Why did you assign him to me? Why didn't you give him to Wyatt? Wyatt could've healed him. Or… or done… I don't know, something!"
"I know you're upset—"
Cutting her off with a sharp, "Don't," Chris turned away from her, his eyes staring, unseeing, past the agitation and toward the tranquil, unbroken horizon. "You have no idea how I feel." For a time, and he wasn't quite certain how long, the Elder didn't attempt to rush him to speak, he remained silent, his chest heaving with the swell and crash of the waves. Then, finally, his voice emerged, the agony of his thoughts impelling the words from his throat, soft, nearly swallowed by the sounds of the ocean. He wasn't even sure she heard him, but it didn't even matter, not really. "He died because of me. Do you get that? That demon was after my power. If you'd assigned him to anyone else, he'd still be alive."
He couldn't handle waiting to hear how she might respond, that ever-serene voice with its calm assurance and faith in the greater good, couldn't remain in her presence another second, so without even pausing to consider a destination he melted into orbs.
When he rematerialized, light-headed, the world spun in his vision, a kaleidoscope, tilting helter-skelter as he stumbled through the empty halls of what he realized was his high school building.
They can still find you, Demon pointed out, followed by a pang of disapproval from Perry.
Demon was right, of course. Nothing would stop the Elder from following him or his parents from summoning him back home once they noticed his absence. And in the distance he heard a murmur of voices—teachers and administrators, who had returned to school to prepare for the upcoming year with staff meetings. They, too, could not be allowed to find him.
Chris caught himself against a row of lockers, keeling over as his chest heaved. Had he really lost so much blood to feel this woozy now? Behind him he caught sight of the tile floor, a single bloody footprint trail leading directly to his own sock-clad foot. This, he could remedy.
In a monotone, hazy and only half-coherent, he began to chant. "Escape detection far and near / let the evidence disappear."
As he watched, one by one the footprints faded away. Next came his feet, phasing out of sight, the invisibility slowly creeping up his legs, torso, and shoulders. It spilled down his arms and trickled up his neck until his entire body had vanished. His head spun with the effort needed to cast the spell, but still he forced himself forward.
Don't do this, Perry pleaded.
I'm scared… whispered Ian.
But Chris ignored both statements as he stumbled down the hallway, his telekinesis leaking out every which way as he went, leaving a trail of rattling locker doors in his wake.
Chris, stop it! If you lose control of your powers, there's no telling what will happen.
You idiot, Demon snarled, seeming to reconsider his earlier willingness to help, You're going to get all of us killed.
Chris groaned, his hands rising to clutch at his temple, fingers tangling in his hair so tightly that his nails dug deep indentations into his scalp. "Leave me alone," he grunted, "All of you, GET OUT OF MY HEAD!" The lights seemed to flicker then, and his surroundings flashed briefly to shades of gray. All around him people appeared, students, faculty, all milling through a suddenly packed corridor, walking around Chris, even through him. Their mouths moved, but no sound emerged. Silence throbbed in Chris's ears. It roared.
And then the corridor was empty once more, except one man in a green polo shirt who emerged from the faculty restroom and passed by the invisible boy without a glance, heading toward the teachers' lounge at the end of the hall. Was he real? Chris couldn't tell anymore.
When the man slipped open the door to the lounge and disappeared through it, a burst of noise erupted, growing muffled as the door glided shut once more. Another flash, and then a cluster of students, chattering to each other, emerged from a single classroom, and with them his brother Wyatt, textbooks in arm, mutely laughing at something one of his friends had said.
Chris ducked into a doorway to avoid Wyatt's detection, forgetting temporarily his powers or even the invisibility spell he had cast, knowing only that he simply could not let himself get spotted.
Marcy was seated at the table with the rest of the faculty, listening to the principal introduce a woman dressed smartly in a crisp pantsuit perfectly contoured to her person. She was there to deliver their mandatory professional development seminar, a two-hour lecture that would take most of the morning. Marcy could much better spend this time tinkering with her curriculum or even enjoying the tail end of her summer vacation; and yet here she was, an already empty Styrofoam cup before her on the table, clasped loosely in her grip.
After the woman stood up, pausing to accept the polite smattering of applause with a pursed-lipped nod, she rounded to the head of the long table and uncapped a white erase marker, hauling over a small whiteboard on wheels. She passed a thick pile of collated handouts to the nearest person and motioned for them to get passed around. Marcy waited until she had received a packet, then a few minutes more to avoid appearing rude before she stood up to slink out for a much-needed bathroom break, easing the door closed behind her. When she turned around to start down the corridor, stretching her back as she went, she spotted a trail of a reddish brown liquid on the floor—wet paint, perhaps?—leading down the hall and around a corner.
Curiosity piqued, she followed the trail, passing the faculty restroom as she went. They looked almost like footprints. Had they come from the maintenance staff? Were they repainting some of the classrooms?
The path led to a closed classroom door. Marcy couldn't say what exactly, but something made her heart rate spike with apprehension and the hair rise on the back of her neck as her hand landed on the doorknob.
Don't be silly, she chastised herself, then turned the knob and pressed the door open.
It was not the maintenance staff. Standing with his back to her, facing the blackboard, was her student, Chris Halliwell.
"Chris?"
The boy turned toward her, his expression utterly blank. His air and clothes appeared almost gray, dusted in ash and debris, pants torn in several places. His hands pressed against his temple. His face and arms were covered in shallow gashes oozing with blood, his upper lip smeared with it. He wore no shoes, only socks, and one leg dripped with blood, which saturated his sock and drained into the footprints along the floor.
"What happened? Are you all right?"
Chris didn't respond, didn't even appear to have heard her. His gaze was somewhere far, far away.
"Chris," she said carefully, inching closer with an outstretched hand, "What are you doing here? It's still summer."
Chris clutched his head more tightly. His eyes squeezed shut. And then behind him, a crack appeared, a glowing blue crack in the blackboard (Stay tethered!) that split farther, down and across, widening, a schism, a tear in the world. It opened, and pale cerulean light poured out of it.
Chris's hair whipped around his face—from the portal? From the rogue telekinesis? Did it matter? In the face of outward chaos, he suddenly felt totally calm. His hands dropped to his sides.
Perry had to shout to be heard. Chris, get control—NOW.
His voice cold as a glacier, Chris replied, "I am in control," and stepped toward the portal.
"Chris, what are you—" But Marcy's voice got swallowed by the thunderous rumble of the portal, and before she could even finish her sentence the boy became submerged in the light and vanished.
Piper was paging through bills at the dining room table when the phone rang. She retrieved it from where it sat on the table beside her and answered with a distracted air, only half listening to the voice on the other end of the line until it said, "Mrs. Halliwell? I think something happened to Chris."
Setting her document carefully aside, she asked, "Who is this?"
"Sorry, right," the voice stammered, "It's Marcy Gowell, his former history teacher, and—well—I saw him. We're at the school for summer prep, and he's—he's here."
With a frown, Piper rose from her seat and headed into the kitchen, where Leo was nursing a mug of steaming decaf tea as he perused the paper. She motioned for his attention, then mouthed Chris's name to get him to curiously set his paper aside.
"What do you mean he's there?" she asked, then pressed the button for speaker mode and set the phone on the table between them.
"Well, he was here," Marcy amended, her tone pitched high and staccato, laced with apprehension so she stumbled over her words. "And then this giant—hole—just opened in the wall and made him disappear."
Piper exchanged a grave glance with her husband. His brows lowered into a sharp V. "Do you know where he went?" Piper asked. "Could you see through to the other side?"
"No, it was just a light, a blue light. I tried to get his attention, but he seemed—I'm not sure—out of it? It sounded like he was talking to someone, but no one was there."
Already Leo was pushing back his chair, surging toward the stairs and up them before Piper had even hung up the phone. When he reached Chris's bedroom, he rapped his fist, unrelenting, against the door over and over, then tested the knob. The door swung open on an empty room, an unmade bed, suit and tie discarded on the rumpled comforter.
Wyatt's door creaked open, and a mop of blond curls peered out, the back of his hand rubbing at bleary eyes. "What's going on?" he groaned.
"Do you know where your brother is?" Leo asked sharply.
Brow wrinkled in disoriented confusion, Wyatt said, "He's not sleeping?"
Not bothering to respond, Leo marched back across the hall and down the stairs. Piper, waiting for him at the bottom step, raised both eyebrows in silent query, and Leo responded with a terse shake of his head. Expression grim, Piper announced, "I'll get the scrying crystal."
When the world stopping spinning and the glowing blue light receded from his vision, Chris was standing in a hospital waiting room. The room was filled with rows of vacant chairs, save a single one occupied by a middle-aged, bearded man, one leg crossed over the other as he pored over a newspaper. Chris crept up behind him to peer over his shoulder. The date on the paper read December 28, 2010—Jake's birthday.
After a moment, the man leaned forward a bit and glanced backward with an uncomfortable frown. "Uh, can I help you?" he demanded.
"You can see me?" Chris remarked in surprise.
The man's eyebrows rose. He gave the boy a long once-over from top to toe, taking in the dust in his hair and coating his face all the way down to the blood drying down his pant leg. "You didn't escape from a psych ward or something, did you?"
"No, I—sorry. Sorry." Chris held up both hands as he backed all the way out of the room, then turned a corner to wander down a corridor. After a few minutes of half-aimless walking, he found himself outside the maternity ward and realized then that he'd been subconsciously searching for it the entire time, a pull in his sternum that he couldn't explain yet didn't question. Behind the double doors, which he slipped past when a nurse with her face buried in a file opened them to bustle out, he spotted a large glass window pane. On the other side were several rows of basinets, some empty, some carrying tiny, wriggling newborns.
Chris pressed his nose into the glass and scanned the names affixed to the outside of the basinets. There. Porter, Baby. He hadn't yet been given a name. A squalling, scrunched up, ruddy face with puckered lips, furrowed brow, arms and legs bound in a tightly-wrapped pale blue blanket.
Of their own volition, Chris's hands rose to press against the glass. His chest ached hollowly as he watched the infant squirm in his bindings, watched a young male nurse pass by and pop a tiny pacifier into his mouth, watched the baby settle.
Within a few minutes, another nurse came in and began to wheel his basinet out of the room. Zombie-like, Chris trailed after her as she pushed the baby down two hallways and into an open door. He waited at the end of the corridor for the nurse to leave again, which she did only after several minutes, and then tiptoed toward the door to eavesdrop from the threshold.
Past the whooshing and beeping of machinery, Chris heard a gentle voice coo, "There you go, baby. Such a good job latching. The nurse was so impressed, yes she was." A pause and then, in a sigh, "You're just perfect, aren't you? Your dada's really missing out, but he'll come back. You'll see. He'll be back before you know it. He loves us."
Closing his eyes, Chris glanced away from the curtain that concealed Carmen and Jake from view.
"What should we call you, baby?" Carmen continued, heedless of her secret observer. "Do you like the name Jacob, like your grandpa? He was a great person, your grandpa. He would've loved to meet you." She gave a loud sniff. "Oh, but you don't look like a Jacob, do you? Such a big name for such a little boy. How about Jake? How does that sound? Jakie? Hm?"
And then suddenly, Chris felt a tug behind his navel, a flutter, a jolt, and the doorway to the room swirled into a blue abyss that sucked him in once more.
It spat him back out on his hands and knees, gasping for breath as he tried to get his bearings. This time, he was outdoors, somewhere with mulch, a playground from the muted chatter and laughter echoing above his head.
The noise outside his mind made him suddenly and distinctly cognizant of the silence within it. Not a single one of his selves had uttered a word since entering the first portal. "Hello?" he muttered. Nothing. Relief washed through him in a surge. Finally, he was alone.
"Hi," a voice chirped back. Chris glanced up to find a toddler peering down at him. Dirty-blond hair and familiar hazel eyes. The child opened and closed his fingers in a clumsy wave.
Chris's throat was too dry to respond, so after a moment the child toddled off toward the slide. "W-wait," Chris rasped, but the boy didn't hear him. He stared after him, desperate and thirsty for more interaction, as Jake began to clamor backwards up the slide. He got three quarters of the way up, turned around, and slid down with a high-pitched, "Wheeee!" And once he got to the bottom, he clapped in celebration.
Chris didn't have a chance to trail after the boy. Another swirl of cerulean, another tug beneath his navel, and he was deposited behind the ratty couch in Jake's living room. Emanating from the kitchen were two voices, Jake's and—his own, he realized with a start, sounding peculiar to his ears, as if it were a recording, the voice practically foreign. He had never heard it outside his own head before.
He crept to the hallway, pressing his hands and cheek to the wall separating him from the kitchen, and strained to eavesdrop on their conversation. "…Came to watch over you," his own voice was saying, and Chris didn't recognize until Jake replied, "I don't get it," that this was the first day they had met.
Chris's past self tried to explain about guardian angels, about his responsibility to watch over Jake, about his new role in the boy's life, pushy to the point of desperation, it seemed to Chris now as he listened back to what he'd said then. No wonder Jake had taken so long to trust him. Why hadn't he let the relationship develop more organically back then, more gradually? He'd been so eager to prove he could succeed. So naïve, so young.
"Trust me," he had said as Jake had stared at him with a combination of skepticism, bewilderment, and fear in his eyes.
Chris was busy berating himself when the next portal expanded around him and he tripped into it. He landed, strangely, in the same location, as if no time at all had elapsed, except that from within the kitchen he heard this time the sound of gentle laughter.
"Found some baked beans," his own voice announced in triumph. He heard a clink as the can was set on the counter, then some rummaging through a drawer, followed by an, "Aha!" as he retrieved what Chris assumed was the can opener. Grinding as the lid peeled away from the can, a wet, sloppy plop into a pot. The click and whoosh of the flame starting on the stove.
And then, in what seemed like no time at all, Chris's past self was piling food onto a plate for Jake and preparing to leave.
"Wait," Jake called, voice hesitant and unsure.
Inching around the wall until just the top of his head became visible, Chris peered out to observe them. His younger self's back was to him, obscuring Jake's view as well, and Chris watched as Jake slid out of his seat and shuffled toward his whitelighter, paused for a stretch, during which they all held their breath, and then carefully eased his arms around the teen's waist.
Chris's throat clenched, stomach tightened. He remembered this day oh-so clearly, the first time Jake had initiated contact. Their first embrace. He swallowed several times around the dryness in his throat, licked his lips to moisten them. His fingers, splayed open on the wall, clenched into a fist. When he closed his eyes to stave off the swell of emotion, his eyelashes left damp spots on his cheeks.
Within several seconds, he began once more to feel that faraway falling sensation that told him the portal was not far behind. He almost groaned—how much more could he take?—but the portal had engulfed him before the sound even left his lips, spitting him back out crouched at the base of a long jetty, at the end of which sat the same two people he had left behind in the kitchen.
Past Chris had his arm around Jake's shoulder, their legs dangling over the edge. Chris couldn't hear their conversation over the roar of wind and crash of waves, but he didn't need to; the memory was still fresh in his mind. He shifted on his knees to adjust the pressure of the pebbles that stabbed them.
And then, a revelation struck him. This isn't a vision. I'm really here. I can stop what happens. I can change it. All he had to do to alter the past was warn himself.
Pushing to his feet—he faltered a bit, still as dizzy as he had been at the school, before catching his balance—he took a step in their direction. If Perry were here, no doubt he'd have something disapproving to say about the idea, but perhaps that was why he'd travelled without them. Perhaps it was the cosmo's way of condoning the interaction. Besides, it would've been supremely hypocritical of Perry to condemn him after he had blatantly travelled through time to alter his own past on such a fundamental level.
Taking another limping step forward, Chris called out his own name, but his voice got drowned out, engulfed in the waves. His calf had been one long ache for some time now. When he tried to put weight on it, his knee buckled and he stumbled, but this didn't deter him. Louder, he shouted, "Chris!"
But then, as if magic itself had heard him and cast its judgment, the portal yawned open from beneath him. "No!" he cried in desperation but, unable to reclaim balance, he tumbled straight into it. He never saw his past self turn around.
Take me to the day he died, Chris thought as fiercely as he could. I can prevent the attack. I can still save him.
This time, when he landed, his head spun, overcome, finally, by the blood loss and the strain the extensive use of his powers had exerted on his body. His ears began to ring; every time he blinked, sparks exploded behind his eyelids, and if he opened his eyes his vision remained dim. He caught only a brief sighting of his surroundings, an open expanse of neatly trimmed grass, a row of gray headstones, before darkness encroached from the edges of his sight. Reaching for something to steady himself, his hand closed on thin air. Skin clammy, he collapsed to the ground.
And then, he opened his eyes, and he was back in a familiar black void with a man he had met twice now, the aching expanse where already he had defied his own mortality. His last encounter with the man, the angel, felt so recent—only three and a half months ago—but the first time, poisoned by the darklighter arrow, had happened almost a year earlier. How valiantly he had struggled to survive that attack. If only he had known then what he knew now, he wouldn't have bothered.
"So this is it, huh?" he said to the Angel of Death. "Let's get this over with, then."
The tall man pursed his lips. "Your lack of reticence is an unexpected revelation."
Steadily meeting the angel's gaze, Chris shrugged and replied, tone even, "Things change." This time, when the doorway to the Afterlife expanded in front of him, Chris took an immediate step toward it.
"They do," the angel acknowledged with a severe nod. "And yet you behave as though they do not, as though this pain you experience seeded within you will never dwindle. As if you are doomed to grieve with this level of intensity for the rest of your existence."
Chris whipped back around. "Don't you dare"—he caught his breath, lowered his voice—"talk to me about grief. You watch people die every single day, but you don't know a thing about grief."
"I know about the passage of time," the angel answered. "I know that the potency ebbs and that humans endure. They learn to live without those they believed would be with them for eternity. They learn to bear the memories. I know that life moves on."
"Not this time," Chris ground out, and glanced over his shoulder at the looming portal, the humanoid shadows shifting behind it.
"That is rather conceited," the angel remarked dispassionately.
"I don't care!" Chris yelled as his vision blurred in his rage. "Don't you get that? I don't care about anyone else anymore. Why can't I ever think about me? Is that such a crime?" And then, forcing away the billow of fury, he drew in a sharp inhale, releasing it in a long whoosh to slow his rapid heart rate. "Look," he said, and this time his voice was tense but calm, "You weren't sent here to lecture me with an impromptu therapy session, okay? So save the speech. You were sent to drop me off in the right neighborhood. Just do your job."
Suddenly, as he turned back toward the doorway, Chris felt a gurgle deep within his ribcage, like a triple heartbeat, a sensation he knew all too well. Someone was trying to heal him.
"No," he said, half denial, half plea. "Forget it. It's too late anyway."
"You know it is not," the angel said.
"Well, it will be," Chris growled. He fought past the sensation of being tugged back toward his physical body, and stumbled for the portal entrance—but already it was shrinking, the shadows fading, as the healing touch drew him further away. "I'll stay here until whoever it is gives up," he decided.
"He will not give up," the angel replied calmly.
"Everyone gives up," Chris snapped
"No, Christopher, not everyone. You did not give up on Jake. You did not fail him."
Chris squeezed his eyes shut, voice cracking as he said, "Shut up. Just shut up."
But the Angel of Death continued undeterred. "This—all of this—was destined to happen. From the moment you met him you knew he had a higher calling." Chris clapped his hands over his ears, pinched his eyes tighter, but could not block out the words. "Let go, old friend. It is time to let go."
"I can't," Chris whispered, but already he could feel the confines of the void falling away. When he opened his eyes, he was back on earth, floating behind his body. Beside it knelt a kid with dirty blond hair, his face concealed. His hands, hovering over Chris's bare leg, the pants rolled up to his knee, glowed orange. The wound, however, would not heal.
Chris should have known the boy, should have recognized him instantly, and maybe it was the blood loss, but his brain refused to draw the connection until the boy turned around to look his disembodied form directly in the eye and say, "You're fighting me."
Chris stepped back. "Jake?"
Releasing his magical hold on the unconscious body, the boy stood, casually stuffing his hands into worn jean pockets. "The one and only."
Disgusted, Chris demanded, "What is this? Some bizarre vision quest?"
Jake sighed patiently. "No, Chris, this is very real. You're the Keeper of Time. Your magic took you to the past. Is it so hard to believe it took you to the future, too?"
"Yes," Chris answered flatly.
"Why?"
Glaring at the boy, he snapped, "Because you're dead."
With a casual shrug, Jake replied, "Yeah, I am. So? Don't you remember why I was assigned to you in the first place? I was a future whitelighter."
"You… but…" Chris spluttered for a response but couldn't prompt his sluggish brain to process this, couldn't land on the right words, and eventually, desperate to convey his disapproval somehow, he weakly threw out, "But you're… just a kid."
He wasn't sure what he even meant by the statement, but Jake shook his head and, with a compassionate smile, said, "You were just a teenager. Besides, I'm actually older than you by about twenty years. We're in your future."
His tone had been light-hearted, inviting Chris to share the humor, but when Chris didn't crack a smile, Jake sighed and glanced back at the teen's supine body. "Stop fighting, Chris. Please," and he looked back to see Chris, mute with his overwhelm but even now unable to deny his charge's direct requests, merely nod in silent acquiescence.
Returning to the grass, Jake raised a glowing hand back to the unconscious teen's bloody calf, and both watched as, slowly, slowly, the blood drained backward into the wound, the skin knitting neatly back together, pink and pristine.
Chris felt his consciousness swirl back into his corporeal body, and for a moment the world went completely dark until he blinked his eyes open and peered up at his former charge from below. Pain washed back over him, but muted and already receding as the healing glow faded from Jake's palm. With a shaky hand, Chris reached out to touch the boy's arm, still not believing his presence. When his hand latched onto something solid, skin that was warm and supple and full of life, goosebumps broke out down his neck, his eyes beginning to sting. "Jake," he croaked. "I'm—I'm sorry I couldn't save you."
But Jake released a dismissive scoff from the back of his throat. Clasping Chris's hand, he hauled him into a sitting position. "You already saved me way before that demon attacked." Climbing to his feet, he tugged Chris up fully, then brushed a hand down Chris's back to dislodge loose leaves and dirt that clung to his shirt. Chris's furled up pant leg slowly unrolled down his calf.
"Don't you understand that, Chris?" the boy sighed. "Back when we met"—and his expression melted into fond reminiscence—"I was on a precipice. I didn't know it at the time, but I wouldn't have survived with my innocence in tact. Not without you. You saved me and my mom. Under any other circumstances, my death would have killed her. I will never be able to express the full extent of my gratitude to you for what you did for her."
Chris averted his gaze to his sock-clad feet, shaking his head. It wasn't enough. "I wish you didn't have to die," he whispered.
"Everybody dies," Jake replied evenly. "My story isn't over, Chris. No one's ever really is. It continues in the mark you leave in people's lives. You made that indelible mark on my life, on my mom's. And I hope"—he quirked a smile—"I made a mark on yours."
Chris's head jerked up to meet Jake's eyes. "You did," he said gravely.
Jake nodded, then released his hand. "I think it's time you should be getting back to your time."
"Will I…" Chris swallowed roughly. He had a feeling he knew the answer, though he felt compelled to ask regardless. "Will I see you again?" Jake only smiled, gentle and wise. Closing his eyes and exhaling softly through his nose, Chris asked, "Why not?"
"Because my time with my loved ones is over," Jake murmured. "They need to learn to live without me. To move on. I'm sorry."
"Yeah," Chris whispered.
A hand reached out to grasp his arm, a firm squeeze, not tight enough to hurt, just a deep pressure, reassuring in its steadiness. "Close your eyes," his former charge said. His voice sounded so different now, more confident, taking up more space somehow. Chris shut his eyes. "Just breathe. In. Out. Focus on your time, the time you want to return to, the day you left."
"The day after your funeral," Chris breathed, but even that pain felt distanced and muted, experiencing it as if from far away.
"Yes," Jake acknowledged, "Tether yourself back to that day. It's easier to return than it is to leave. Your body craves its own time. It wants to go back there. Let it guide you."
Chris inhaled. Exhaled. Listened to Jake's soothing voice drone into the background. He felt something, a gentle tug, inviting this time, almost playful, behind his navel. Behind his closed eyelids, a bright light began to hum. When he peeked one eye open, he had to squint and shade his vision with one arm. The portal yawned wider, waiting.
The hand on his arm nudged him forward, but instead of step toward it he turned to face Jake. "I…" he began, but realized he didn't know what to say. Thank you? I'm sorry? Goodbye? In this moment, words felt inadequate, so he shuffled forward, away from the portal, and swept Jake into his arms. The boy's head slotted neatly beneath his chin, just as it always did, and its familiarity caused an unexpectedly sharp stab of pain in his sternum. As the boy's arms wrapped around his abdomen, Chris exhaled softly into Jake's hair.
"Go," Jake whispered, and released him. Gave him a knowing nod. And Chris turned back to the portal, still swirling its cerulean hue, still waiting, took three steps, and was gone.
"I can sense him!" Wyatt announced, just as the crystal in Piper's hand swung in a tight circle and pinpointed a location. "He's at…" His voice trailed off, and Piper, confused, glanced at the map. The cemetery.
"Take me to him," she instructed tersely, latching onto her son's arm as Leo snatched up the car keys from the counter.
"Meet you there so you have a ride back," he said, and then Wyatt and Piper were gone.
They arrived some distance away from Jake's graveside, the mound of dirt freshly overturned, with the sky grey, a fine mist of rain drizzling around them. In front of the mound, standing with his arms wrapped around himself and his hands clinging to his elbows in a self-embrace, was Chris, his entire body coated in grime and blood. Piper motioned a dismissal to her oldest son and cautiously made her way over.
Chris didn't glance up until Piper softly called his name, and when he did the eyes staring back at her were rimmed with red and glazed with his very first sign of tears since his charge's death. "Mom," he croaked, and she spread her arms wide as she joined him, engulfing him within them.
His hands wrapped around her back, his face burrowed in her shoulder, and—as if her touch had triggered something, a neat collapse—his knees gave out beneath him as he slowly sank to the ground, his mother following suit to the tidily trimmed grass beside the grave. She felt his shoulders heave, felt the first tear, then the second, dampen her shirt, then his entire frame shook, wracked with silent sobs. He clung to her so tightly she thought she might find bruises later, clung desperately as if afraid she might withdraw, might pull the whole world out from under him if he didn't hang on.
Mud began to seep into the knees of her pants, but she ignored the discomfort. Muffled by her shirt, she heard his voice murmur again and again, "He's gone, Mom, he's gone," and she pressed one hand into his hair, running her fingers through it, her own throat constricted from witnessing her son's heartbreak, as she whispered back, "I know, sweetheart, I know."
Her fingers furled and unfurled along his scalp, massaging the area the way she used to when he was a child upset over a toy or a scrape. This gesture had always pacified him in the past. But he wasn't quite a child anymore, was he, and his woes now were not so easily soothed.
Neither knew how long they knelt there in the deepening rain of the late afternoon before Chris gently withdrew, his face splotchy and stained with tears, his wet hair tamped to his forehead. Drawing in a deep breath, he scrubbed the dampness beneath his eyes away with the back of his wrist.
He sniffled, then gave the tiniest of self-depreciating smiles. Nose stuffed, voice thick, he asked his mom, "Got any platitudes for a time like this?"
"Oh, sweetheart," she sighed, and reached forward to adjust a clump of bangs out of his eyes. "There aren't any words to help for a time like this. You just have to get through each day, each hour. If I could spare you the heartache, I would in a nanosecond." Her hands fell back to her knees. "But support helps. It doesn't always feel like it, but it does. You should come home."
Staring at the backs of his hands, limp in his lap, he admitted, "I just… I don't know what to do now."
Piper's hand crept into his vision as she leaned forward to grasp one of his hands to squeeze. "You do what he would have wanted. You keep living."
Chris's mind wandered back to the boy he had seen, so healthy, so alive, how he had begged his former whitelighter to do just that. Chris may never be able to see him again, but his life—in some form—would continue. That didn't quite feel like enough, not when Chris currently sat at his graveside, not when Jake's mother had lost him forever, but it would have to suffice. There was nothing else.
Slowly, with Piper's help to steady him—they steadied each other—Chris climbed to his feet. "Your father's bringing the car," she said, then added, giving his torn, bloody clothes a once-over, "You shouldn't orb." An arm settled around his shoulders, steering him away. "Come on. We can meet him at the gate."
Chris prepared himself to follow but, before he did so, paused, glanced back over his shoulder to the gravesite, the packed, sodden dirt surrounded by verdant grass, a couple of rogue wildflowers sprouting up around them, their petals weighted down by beads of water. He tracked his gaze upward, half-expecting to spot Jake standing in the distance, watching him, but the horizon was clear, just a long stretch of grass and headstones, an endless cloudy sky.
So he closed his eyes to picture the boy as he had always known him, the timid, slow-to-smile, quick-to-forgive face with bright hazel eyes, warm eyes. They were watching, he knew. From a distance, perhaps, but Jake would be watching, and he would see—Chris would make certain—that his former whitelighter had kept his promise, had kept living. Releasing a slow breath into the air around him, he allowed his mother to lead him down the dirt path, through the soft thrum of rain, toward the wrought-iron gate that towered ahead of them, waiting for them to pass.
Next up: Epilogue. Thank you to those who stuck it out through this (very long) journey. I appreciate every last one of you.
Reviews are golden! Please let me know what you thought.
Weiliya - Thanks for sticking with it. I hope this was a satisfying end. (The epilogue shouldn't take nearly as long to get posted.)