Post by StoryGirl83 on Sept 23, 2008 0:29:05 GMT -5
Chapter Twenty-One - Why They Called Him
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Beginning to feel like a top, Hank turned around, again, this time to face Alanna. “About why they brought me up there in the first place?” It was definitely low on his list of things he wanted to talk about.
“Yes,” Alanna confirmed. Despite only a few minutes difference, she was the oldest and somehow that made a lot of difference. She wasn’t sure why, but she had always felt it was her job to protect her younger siblings, especially her year younger brother. She couldn’t do that very well if she didn’t know what was going on and it was quite clear to her that something was going on.
“First,” Hank said as he walked over to the couch, realizing that standing on his feet was not going to work much longer. He slumped down on the couch next to Chris and asked, “Do you have any idea what it’s like to wake up at three in the morning to our next door neighbors’ practice session and not be able to get back to sleep?”
Alanna nodded. “Of course. We did that yesterday.” It was a frequent occurrence, their next door neighbor having no understanding of the fact that everyone else was asleep at that time and also connections with someone in the San Francisco city government so that all complaints fell on deaf ears.
“Well, I haven’t been to sleep since then,” Hank informed her, seeing as that was only a minor thing and it explained his need to sit down.
“Why ever not?” Alanna asked, alarmed.
“It was part of their tests,” Hank informed her, yawning.
“Tests?” Paige asked, not liking the idea that the elders were doing tests on her baby.
“Yep,” Hank agreed, the fatigue starting to get to him now that he was relaxed enough to sit down. “They wanted to see how someone born part whitelighter would deal with not having whitelighter powers.” A failure in Hank’s opinion, but it hadn’t killed him. The first parts of the tests had been so bad that at least they had abandoned that part of the idea. No way was he discussing that with his mom in hearing range. She’d just worry and he would be fine. Even Grandpa didn’t know how badly off he was. He would have healed him or at least tried. Hank rather doubted his grandpa could have healed anything more than his most likely broken leg.
“That stripped your powers,” Janice stated, stunned.
Hank shook his head. They had tried, they really had, but apparently his biology was such that it fought that despite that stripping his nonexistent witch powers would have been easy. Apparently biological whitelighters were a breed unto themselves, probably biological darklighters, too. “Bound.”
“But you orbed here,” Melinda protested. “We saw you.”
“They unbound them when Wyatt cast the spell on you.” Hank had never felt more relief than when he had felt his powers reintegrate themselves in his weary body only a few minutes before. Hank’s eyes drifted shut.
“Why would they want to know something like that?” Pat wanted to know, a troubled thought growing in her mind.
Because they hate us, Hank thought, but he didn’t voice the words, relieved when someone else answered.
That someone else was Sam. “Because they are afraid of you, I think.”
Victor’s face grew unreadable at the reminder that Sam was there.
“Of me?” Pat asked, finding the idea ridiculous.
“No,” Sam corrected, “of Halliwells with whitelighter powers. They think there are too many.”
Alanna frowned at that. “Hank’s the only one of the three of us with whitelighter powers, at least that we’ve noticed.” It was a sore point with her that Hank could orb and even heal, while she could do none of it.
“And he’s got all of them,” Janice added, recalling one very boring day a few years before when they had just thrown the names of whitelighter powers at their brother and he had tried to use them. Without fail he had succeeded right down to the “healing” of a broken picture frame.
“Are they planning on binding Melinda, Pat, and Vicki’s whitelighter powers?” Alanna asked with a skeptical look at the currently powerless trio.
Sam shook his head. “Melinda they can do nothing to. As I understand it, she is likely to gain new powers because of being twice blessed, but never anything that Wyatt has.”
“Not even orbing,” Melinda stated in realization. It was the one power she would truly miss, because it was the one power she actually used on a regular basis.
“No witch power,” Sam conceded, not knowing if it was actually limited to that or not. “Whitelighters powers, I couldn’t say. The elders have nothing to do with that. You two simply cannot share those powers.”
“Why didn’t you stop them?” Paige asked, demanding a response to the question that had bugged her for most of the conversation. “They could have hurt my son.”
“I think they did hurt your son, Paige,” Sam admitted, knowing that his grandson had tried to hide it from him, “but I did not know about it until a couple of hours ago and they grounded me until they were done with him.” Which was when Wyatt had apparently found a solution to the problem.