Back at Halliwell Manor in Leo and Piper's room, Piper was sitting on the bed sorting through some boxes. Leo was hovering anxiously nearby.
"Leo, I know it's in here."
"Gram's was a bit of a pack rat, Piper, it's not easy finding things she packed away." Wondering how he could get her to talk about what was bothering her.
Piper pulled out a pink album. "Found it, baby book. My baby book." She opened it up. "Oh, look how squishy I was!"
"You were adorable." Leo agreed, peering over her shoulder. "We should talk about this, Piper."
"Talk about what?" Piper said stubbornly.
"Piper."
"How we went to the future and Phoebe was nearly burnt at the stake and I met our daughter? A baby I can't seem to get pregnant with. Not that that future is happening, Prue was there and Cordelia wasn't. Here and now, Prue isn't here and Cordelia is. And I don't regret Cordelia being here."
"But Cordelia is having a baby. And you're not."
"Do you remember how Prue ended up being tricked into marrying a warlock?"
"Vaguely, considering I spent most of it a frozen popsicle."
"Funny. Not. Her marrying the warlock made her a warlock and that spread to me and Phoebe. It was reversed. She accidentally got married because she was angsting about the fact that as the oldest sister she should get married before me, the middle sister. We all assumed, based on our trip to the future, that I would eventually have a baby. Here I am, now I'm the oldest and I sort of have a guarantee that I'm going to get to have a baby. But that guarantee included Prue. Who's dead. What if my chances of having a baby are dead too?"
"How old was our daughter in the future, Piper?"
"Five, maybe six years old."
"And you went ten years into the future. It was one possible future you traveled to three years ago. But if that little girl is meant to be, regardless of the future, then it's not yet her time. Soon, but not today. Cordelia's going to want to spare you pain, but which will hurt worse, watching her be pregnant and being a mother or being excluded from all this of it?"
"Being excluded, she's not Prue, she's Cordelia and both are my sisters. I can be happy for Cordelia and sad for myself. But that girl was real, Leo. I held her hand, I heard her voice. I smelled her shampoo. I loved her the moment I knew she existed. The thought that she might never exist, hurts. She deserves to exist and we deserve to love her."
"You're right, but we've only been married a little over a year, Piper and haven't even been trying for a whole year. Stressing yourself out is only compounding the problem. I have an idea, we didn't have the chance to go on a honeymoon. Demon drama. Let me book a three day weekend at a vineyard retreat I heard about. If there's an emergency I can always orb us back. We need a break and we need time for ourselves."
"That...actually sounds like a great idea. Alright, go ahead and do that. Leo..."
"Yes?"
"Thank you for being so patient with me."
"We're going to get there, Piper, we just have to have hope."
"Hope is sometimes in short supply."
"Than borrow some from me, because I've got a whole lot of it." He held her while she briefly cried over her own pain, anxiety and fears and was mostly left with happiness for her youngest sister.
"I'm going to be an Aunt." Piper wiped her eyes. "The first weekend Cordelia visited us at the Manor we talked about her being an Aunt to the baby you and I were talking about having. She joked the baby would be very fashion conscious, she'd make sure of it. And Xander and Faith would be very protective. Well you know what? I can be protective too. I can do this, Leo. I can be an Aunt and I can be happy for my sister." She smiled. "And our own baby will come when it's her time."
"Yes, she will." He agreed.
Downstairs Phoebe waited for Cole to pick her up for their date. She'd considered canceling after the very weird day, which was saying something given their life, that they'd had. But in the end she'd decided she needed this time with Cole, the man she loved, who'd given up so much to be with her. Because he loved her as much as she loved him.
And because they needed to discuss a topic that had never come up in their counseling sessions. Once he arrived Phoebe told him the happy news.
"That's great." Cole said. "But why are you telling me? Isn't it something that's usually announced by the happy couple?"
"Yes, usually. But I have permission because I'm using it as a segue into a conversation we need to have."
"About what?"
"About the fact that the Source and Seer stole something else from us."
"What?"
"A moment that should have been us celebrating our own child. That we want children of our own and those demons tried to take something away from us, not just by trying to use us to make their own child, but by denying us ours. And how angry that makes me."
"I was pretty angry myself when I felt the Source gloating over the prospect that you might be pregnant." Cole admitted. "Because it wasn't it you loved or wanted to have a child with, it's me. But that doesn't mean we can't eventually have a child of our own. They were stopped. Yes, they took a moment from us and nearly took a lot more, but they can't take our future from us."
"No, they can't. I won't let them. This is only the first date, Cole, but we're going to create that future they tried to deny us. And some day, we'll have that moment they tried to steal from us. And with it, our own baby."