Post by StoryGirl83 on Jan 4, 2010 0:57:06 GMT -5
Chapter Sixteen – When I Knew Them
1st Flashback
2nd Flashback
3rd Flashback
4th Flashback
It had been almost an hour since Piper and Leo had said good bye. Chris hadn’t said much since Piper had agreed to try and not bring up Bianca’s past. He’d said good-bye to his parents, but that was about it. Now, he was sitting in a chair next to the window looking out.
“You know when I asked you to stay, I kind of figured I would have more of a conversation going on than this,” Wyatt commented. “Care to explain what exactly is going on?”
Chris turned around and looked at him. He sighed. “I’m sure you have guessed by now that I knew Bianca in the other time line.”
Wyatt nodded. “It was rather evident. So what happened?”
“I loved her,” Chris said, looking anywhere but at his brother.
Wyatt blinked in surprise. That wasn’t at all what he expected. “Okay, so what happened? How did you even know someone like her? Did she help you fight another Phoenix or something?”
“Not exactly,” Chris scoffed.
“Then what?”
Chris stood and started pacing the room. After several long minutes he looked over at his brother. “I was sixteen when I first met Bianca and it was pretty much hate at first sight.”
Chris shut the door behind him. He was done with school and all things that had to do with it. It was bad enough that he’d lost his mother to death, but now he had to deal with his older brother completely going crazy. This was not worth it.
“Hey, Halliwell,” a boy yelled down the hall. “I heard what your brother did. Heard he’s been expelled.”
Chris turned and glared at him. “If you heard what my brother did, then you heard he deserved it.” He advanced toward the boy, a look of malice growing on his face. “You know I don’t much care to stay in school either. And frankly I don’t care if I get expelled either.”
The other boy gulped and backed up.
“My mom is dead. I haven’t seen my dad much since she died, two years ago. And now my brother’s insane!” He started cracking his knuckles and the boy started running. Chris snorted and started toward the exit. “I said my brother was insane, not me.”
It took about half an hour to walk to a place down town where he knew he could find people looking for a fight. And they wouldn’t expect a gangly, too thin teen to put up much of a fight. Since Wyatt had already gotten magic good and exposed, no point in not using some, right. It wasn’t as if he planned to get anyone killed and they would deserve the fight or they would be attacking a seemingly unarmed sixteen-year-old.
It didn’t take long before Chris found himself under attack, but not quite in the way he had imagined. A knife was to his throat before he even knew another person was close by. “Give your money and I might let you live.”
Chris snorted. “I don’t keep money on me. What kind of old movies have you been watching?” He orbed the knife into hand and spun around. “I’ve never used a knife before and I’m not in a good mood.” He threw the knife as far down the alley as he could. “You aren’t going to be getting any money out of me, alive or dead, so forget about it. The way I see it, you have two choices.”
The would-be-mugger looked at Chris as if he was crazy. He appeared to be debating his chances of taking Chris without his knife. Apparently deciding his chances were still good, or maybe that he just wanted to fight, he jab Chris in the gut.
Chris went down hard. Even though it pained him to get up he pushed himself to his feet and heaved in a breath of air. A maniacal grin grew on Chris face as he faced the other boy. His fist shot out.
The other boy caught it and slammed his own fist at Chris.
Chris leaned out of the way and pulled the boy down by his shirt collar. They rolled around on the ground throwing punches at each other and trying to dodge the other’s fists. It wasn’t the most effective way to fight, but Chris didn’t want effective. He wanted to fight. When the other boy pulled away, Chris let him.
The other boy stood and brushed himself off. He thingyed his head and frowned at Chris. “Why didn’t you run?”
Chris snorted and shrugged. “Did that look like I needed to run? And why should I, anyway? I came out fine, didn’t I?”
“But you didn’t know you would,” the other boy commented.
“Maybe not,” Chris admitted, “but I knew I’d come out alive, so I really didn’t care much.”
The other boy backed away a step. “You didn’t know I wouldn’t have killed you. You couldn’t have known.”
Chris looked at him surprised. “You’re right, I didn’t know that.”
The other boy’s eyes widened. “Oh. Oh!” He groaned. “I didn’t mean that. Of course I would have . . .”
“Forget it,” Chris ordered him. “I’m not going to believe you at this point.”
The boy moaned. “If I get a reputation for letting people go without getting their money . . . ooooh!”
“Calm down,” Chris looked at the other boy uncomfortably. “No one is going to mention this meeting.”
“So you say,” the other boy argued, “but they have ways of learning these things and pretty soon it will be everywhere.”
About halfway through, Chris quit paying any attention to what the other boy was saying. He saw an athemé sailing toward the air toward them and he just reacted. He grabbed the boy and pulled him down, hard to the ground. The athemé sailed over their heads and hit a box behind them.
The boy looked up and saw the athemé sticking into the box. He moaned. “They all ready know.”
“Ridiculous,” Chris argued as he looked beyond the boy into the alleyway. A young woman looked down the alley at him, malice in her eyes. She was dressed in black leather and had another athemé ready to through. Chris eyed her for only a moment before he made a decision. “Do you believe in magic?” he asked the boy.
“No,” came the confused reply.
“You’re about to,” Chris informed him as he pulled out the athemé and orbed them both out of there.
When they reappeared the other boy stared around the surroundings. Then he stared at Chris. “Where are we? Who are you?”
“Where we are is in the sitting room of my family’s home,” Chris informed him as he plopped onto the couch. “No one lives here anymore, though my aunt sometimes uses it for entertaining.”
The other boy didn’t seem very reassured as he glared at Chris.
“Fine,” Chris relented. “I’m Chris. Look, I’m not sure which of us that . . . knife was meant for, but I wasn’t about to just leave you alone there to find out.”
There was silence as the other boy just stared at him. “And you got us here, how?”
“Like I said. Magic.”
More silence followed and then the boy started laughing. “You had me going there for a minute. Magic, indeed.”
Chris shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Right. Believe what you like, I guess.”
“I’m Brian,” the boy informed him. “I have no idea how we got here, but I saw that knife. I imagine you probably saved my life, so thank you. I’ll be leaving now.”
Chris waved a hand in the direction of the front door. “The exit’s that way, but be warned, I don’t really don’t know who was the target there, so I’d advise you to be careful.”
Brian Heitzman looked at him, trying to see something that might or might not have been there. After what seemed like several minutes of silence Brian sighed. “I’m on the death list if this gets out anyway, so how do we find out who that knife was meant for?”
“We find the assassin,” Chris informed him. “Or if you prefer, I find the assassin.”
Brian mentally flashed over the events of the last several minutes and made a decision of his own. “I’m coming with you.”
“I don’t get it,” Wyatt commented. “That had nothing to do with Bianca Holbrooke.”
“No?” Chris shrugged. “It was how I was first introduced to her. She tried to kill someone and I saved him. At that point in time my exposure to her was limited. I got to know more about Brian than I did her, but it’s amazing what time can do.”
“I don’t think time heals someone trying to kill you,” Wyatt replied wryly.
“It wasn’t just time,” Chris admitted as he paced the room. “I got her off his trail by getting the bounty removed, but it wasn’t until years later that any of us got to know her better.” He stopped and looked at his older brother. “I’m not sure if I should tell you more.”
Wyatt scowled at him. “And why is that?”
“Because the next person to have contact with Bianca was Amber,” Chris informed him.
Wyatt heaved in a breath. “Just tell me. I have to start accepting that she’s gone one of these days, but I chose not to make that day today.”
Chris nodded.
“So how did you get from protecting someone she was trying to kill to being in love with her?”
“It’s not as if you jump directly from one to another you know,” Chris retorted.
Wyatt just smiled and waited.
Time had not been good to what was left of the Halliwell family. Wyatt had completely disassociated himself from his aunt and his brother barely having anything to do with his grandfather. Only Leo was deemed worthy of his attention and sometimes it seemed that this was only to prove he had more importance to his father than Chris did. As tactics went it was rather effective. Chris had seen Wyatt more recently than he had Leo and even that had been more than six months since.
Victor was there for both his youngest daughter and his younger grandson, but that was always enough for an eighteen-year-old more than ready prove himself. Chris had said good bye to his grandfather and ran across town to the house of his friend Genevieve Lawson. It was funny how easily he’d gotten used to not using magic over the past sixteen months since his brother had learned how to monitor magical usage. It had been almost fourteen months since he had orbed anywhere, longer still since he’d used his other powers. He still could use potions, of course, but spells he was careful about, since they too could be monitored if one looked carefully at just the right moment. The difference was they could only be tracked if you caught them in progress.
He wrapped on the door and waited. It opened without a word and Miles Lawson, Gen’s brother appeared at the door. “You again,” Miles said with a shake of his head. “Gen’s in the basement.”
“Right. Thanks.”
“Uh huh, just don’t bother me. You guys got noisy last time you met.”
“Who’s here?”
“The gypsy and the street kid.”
Chris chuckled, wondering what Brian would think of the description. Kali would be proud of being called a gypsy. She always was. That left Amber, because really, who else was there?
As if thinking of her conjured her up a hand rested on his shoulder and Chris turned around. “Hi, Amber.”
Dark waves of hair were pulled back into a ponytail, something unusual for her and dark smudges of dirt rested on her cheeks. “Hi, Chris. When we get down there, we need to talk.” She smiled up at Miles. “Hi, Miles.”
Miles looked at her suspiciously and moved out of the way. “Just be quiet down there. I have work to do.”
Amber chuckled and walked into the house followed by Chris. When they got downstairs Kali Nicolae was dancing circles around Brian with a piece of paper in her hand.
“Would you stop that?” Brian begged.
It was then that Kali spotted Chris and Amber. She grinned and stopped moving other than to wave at them.
“Hey, Chris. Welcome.”
“What about me?” Amber teased.
“Long time, no see,” Kali returned with a grin.
“I’ve been busy,” Amber admitted, “but I have something to share. Where’s Gen?”
“Gen is right behind you,” Genevieve announced as she walked down the stairs and between Chris and Amber with a tray of snacks. “So what’s this you have to share? Something useful?”
“Someone who needs our help,” Amber replied. “Apparently she ran into Chris a few years ago and he impressed her as . . . how did she put it . . . undauntable.”
“Hardly,” Chris retorted as he got off of the stairs and turned to look at her.
“Well, she seemed to think so. Seems when you first met Brian you faced down a major gang network to get him off their hit list.”
Brian gulped at that, remembering his first few encounters with Chris. “I’d have to say that I agree with her. Who is she?”
“I’ll get to that,” Amber said with a shrug. “She said she ran into someone who wanted her to do things even she won’t agree to. And from what I understand she’ll do some rather questionable things and some things that aren’t even questionable, just wrong.”
“We’re helping the bad guys, now?”Brian grimaced.
“Not a chance, Amber,” Genevieve protested. “We are trying to help stop evil, not aid it.”
“And if evil can be turned to aid us, turned to good?” Amber asked softly.
Genevieve shook her head. “Look I know how you feel about that?”
“Do you?” Amber asked, softly. “Do you really?”
“Yes. I do, Amber. I know what it’s like to love someone who is absolutely wrong for you.”
“This isn’t about someone who’s wrong for me, because he’s not. And I can’t believe he’s beyond redemption.”
Genevieve just shook her head. “And that is where we will never agree.”
Chris frowned as he looked at the two girls confused. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“Amber dated a warlock,” Gen informed him.
“He’s not a warlock,” Amber protested.
“He might as well be. Once a witch has killed, that’s it.”
“Witches kill all the time.”
“Knock it off!” Chris ordered. “Is this going to cause problems for us later on, Amber?”
“No.”
“Probably,” Gen countered.
Chris groaned. “Fine, we will discuss it, but later. Tell us about this evil being that wants our help, Amber.”
“She’s a witch.”
“Impossible,” Gen argued. “Witches are good.”
“It’s not impossible and she is a witch,” Amber informed her. “She’s a special kind of witch. They are called Phoenix, an elite family of witches from the early days of America. Probably they have been around longer, but they aren’t noted before then. Like many, witches and ‘suspicious’ human alike, they were burned, but they rose from the ashes like the mythical bird, hence the name. They have no love for normal humans or really normal witches either, but they are not so far gone that some of them cannot be returned to good, and I think she might be saved from that life.”
“As you can imagine neither Brian not I were very happy when we learned Amber’s unlikely innocent was the assassin that had tried to kill him two years previous,” Chris said with a chuckle. He was now sitting on the chair next to the bed.
Wyatt sat on the edge of the bed. He was swinging his legs back and forth, happy for even that movement. “I imagine not. That’s still a long way from being in love with her.”
“Very true,” Chris agreed. “We met with her and Brian ranted at Amber, telling her she was insane to try and help this monster. He hadn’t actually seen her before, but he figured it out from the conversation between her and myself.”
Chris stared ahead in shock. “That’s her?”
Amber nodded. “Yes, that’s her.”
“You have any idea what she did?”
Amber nodded. “Actually she told me all about that, said she figured she should put all the cards on the table.”
“What did she do?” Kali asked coming up behind them.
“You don’t want to know,” Chris forestalled anything Amber might have said.
“She tried to kill me,” Brian answered instead. “Right? That’s what you don’t want said. That’s the assassin they hired.”
Chris didn’t say anything and Kali frowned. She looked at the other three, Gen having stayed behind. “Amber, is that it?”
“She won’t answer,” Brian snarled when no answer was forthcoming. “She wants us to help that monster, don’t you, Amber. Are you insane?!”
Amber shook her head. “Says the guy who held Chris at knife point.”
“Yeah, real good, deflect this to me over the guy who came looking for a fight. I wouldn’t have hurt him and you know it.”
“Yes, I do,” Amber replied. “And that’s because I now know you. It’s because I heard that story almost a year after I met you. The problem here is that all of us have heard of the other person in that story. We’ve heard of her, but not one of us knows her. Do you know she would have killed you?”
“She tried,” Brian argued.
“And failed. Her aim is good. I saw her practicing.”
“She didn’t count on Chris.”
“She should have walked away when she saw Chris,” Amber informed him. “Phoenix don’t care for witnesses. They generally don’t kill beyond their bounty, no gain in that. Had she killed you, she would have needed to kill him, too, and she knew that before she took aim. It’s curious, don’t you think.”
“Not really. She’s a monster.”
“Then leave, because I intend to help her.”
“Why does she need our help anyway?”
“Because He sees us as a threat, and has ordered the deaths of all of the young,” an angry voice informed them.
They all looked up to see Bianca Donchi standing before them. “I’m not a mother myself, but I know others who have small children. I’m not going to watch those little ones be slaughtered because someone sees them as a threat. What came before now is irrelevant. I was only doing my job. It’s what I know. It’s how I live. You may not like it . . .”
“You bet your life I don’t like it,” Brian returned. “You tried to kill me.”
“That is over,” Bianca replied with a shrug. “There is no bounty on your life.” She looked over the group. “Or either of these girls. As for him,” she nodded at Chris, “anyone facing off against him does so at penalty of their own life, so only an idiot would try it.”
Chris looked at her surprised. “You mean to tell me my brother ordered the deaths of countless Phoenix children, but I’m protected?”
“Precisely,” she replied with an irrelevant shrug. “Who’d have thought a monster would have a heart.” The last comment was directed at Brian.
“Monster, huh?” Wyatt teased, giving his brother a shove.
“You don’t think so?” Chris returned. “You wanted to hear this.”
Wyatt nodded. “It’s not me. And this isn’t about me, anyway. It’s about you. It’s about understanding why you responded to that woman’s presence the way you did.”
Chris sighed. “Yeah, well. She has no idea what kind of history I have with her, so this doesn’t go beyond the two of us.”
“I am curious about these other people,” Wyatt commented, looking closely at Chris. “Amber and Kali I know of course, but who are Brian and the Lawson siblings?”
“Brian is someone I worked with at Centennial. He started in January, so while I have years of experience around him, he’s a complete stranger, really. I didn’t even recognize him until my last day there and it was what he said, not how he looked that caught my attention.” Chris chuckled. “I guess his relationship with his girlfriend was not to be, because he lost her to her ex in both time lines.”
“And the other two?”
“Well, I haven’t met Miles Lawson in this time line, and I only met Gen briefly, so I really don’t know.” Chris sighed and stood, starting pacing again. “Honestly for their sake, I hope they never see me, again. In the other time line it got both Brian and Gen killed for being my friends. And Miles was dead before that, though I’m not really sure why he was killed.”
“So what happened from there?”
“I went to the source, and that conversation isn’t worth repeating,” Chris scoffed.
“You don’t want to tell me what I said?”
“Not particularly,” Chris agreed with a grimace. “It grew into a fight, but your refusal to kill me, at least then, was something I was able to exploit. It’s not like I was willing or able to kill you either, but what you saw as weakness I saw as strength. I was there to save lives and you planned to end them.”
“And did I?”
“Yes.”
Wyatt’s eyes closed and he was very quiet. When he finally opened them he looked his little brother in the eye, “I’m sorry.”
“It turned all of the Phoenix against you, not that you cared much.” Chris sighed. “We saved some of them. There was this one little girl, about Hope’s age. She didn’t make it herself, but she protected her two younger siblings and five other Phoenix children. The eight children had been with a babysitter, a Phoenix, and the baby-sitter was killed, but seven of those children survived. If I only could have healed, I could have saved her life, but she was too far gone for anything else to have saved her.” Chris smiled a little. “I imagine she’s probably alive and well in this time line. She’d be around fourteen or fifteen now if she is.”
“Perhaps you can look her up sometime,” Wyatt suggested.
“Perhaps I can,” Chris agreed.
“So I still don’t see how this got to you two being in love.”
Chris smiled slightly. “Well, like I said, after what happened the Phoenix all turned against you. Some openly, some not as openly. Bianca decided her best chance was to pretend to side with you, but work with me and my friends. We honestly didn’t have much of a plan. Well, other than Amber. She had lots of plans. We had no idea how much was going on in her head. Honestly, I have no idea how I got surrounded with so many people who openly associated with you, the evil dictator of the world as it were.”
Wyatt shook his head, trying not to laugh. “Hard to imagine, but what do you mean who openly associated with me. Clearly you didn’t if it had been over six months prior to that since you had seen me.”
“Well, we have Amber, who was absolutely convinced you could be saved, more than any of us, I think. And she loved you, hard to do when referring to someone like you were then. And then there’s Kali. Think about that . . . Kali. She wasn’t all that much different from what you know.”
Wyatt smiled at that. “Yes, Kali would cling to even remembrances of good and insist that I could become that once more.”
“You don’t know the others, not Brian, Gen, or anyone who joined us after that, but they didn’t know you either. They saw you as evil first and my brother second. Bianca did too, but like I said, she chose to pretend to aid you and so her association with you was well known, while her’s with me was not. For a long time she didn’t meet with any of the others, things were still difficult between her and Brian for the longest time anyway. She met with me and we became friends.
“I don’t have a whole lot of time, so don’t interrupt,” Bianca announced as she entered the garden.
Chris looked up, amused. “Hello to you to.”
“Your brother doesn’t know I’m gone, Chris, so let me talk.”
“Talk then,” Chris replied, trying to look attentive, but that was difficult when one was sporting two days growth on one’s chin and one hadn’t slept in almost forty-eight hours.
“There is an attack planned on a factory in Bangkok. I know you don’t exactly speak the language, but the rumor is that there is a future whitelighter working there and if there is one thing your brother wants to make sure doesn’t happen is the return of the elders. For some reason he sees them as a really huge threat. I’m not sure how one future whitelighter translates to the return of the elders, but he intends to see this man dead. I also don’t understand how killing someone who when they die will become a whitelighter will help this plan, but no one questions his orders.”
When Bianca took in a deep breath, Chris took that as assent to talk. “Bangkok isn’t exactly small. Can you be any more specific?”
She shook her head. “’Fraid not. What I can tell you is he isn’t a native.” She glanced down at her watch. “I have to get going. Find him and protect him.”
Chris nodded. “We’ll do our best. Thanks.”
She smiled. “Glad to help.”
“And then she left,” Chris informed him, “as she always did. Not a whole lot of talking you can do under the circumstances, but with time comes knowledge if you let it and neither of us was really too worried about letting the other learn anything.”
“Did you save the future whitelighter?”
Chris smiled at that. “Actually we did. We saved all of them. It was a really good feeling.”
Wyatt smiled back. “I’m glad to hear it. So what happened next?”
“You realized that Bianca might be useful in getting me back, which for some reason, you wanted.”
“You’re my little brother. Of course I wanted it.”
“And yet, by then we were polar opposites.”
“It wouldn’t matter,” Wyatt informed him. “You were still my brother. I may not be the same person I was in that time line, but I can’t imagine that would change even if I was a cold blooded killer.”
“Maybe,” Chris said hesitantly, uncertain.
Wyatt didn’t press it. “So you said, I thought Bianca might be useful. How’s that?”
“You thought you got her to spy on me,” Chris told him. “That allowed her to spend more time with us. I fell in love and so did she. Shortly before I went to the past I asked her to marry me and she accepted.”
“And now she’s married to someone else,” Wyatt commented watching Chris face.
Chris nodded. “And now she is. And he doesn’t know me. But you’re right. She’s not the same person. It’s like comparing Alanna and Jani. They may look alike, but they certainly aren’t the same person.”
Wyatt nodded. “Yeah, I guess that’s a pretty good comparison.”
“Thanks.”
Wyatt looked at him surprised. “For what?”
“Listening.” Chris sblack personed slightly. “I guess I needed that. I still am not prepared to tell you everything, but it felt good to talk about her, about what happened. And Mom sure wouldn’t have been good ears for that. Dad maybe, but not Mom.”
“Why’s that?”
Chris shook his head. “That story is for another day, when I’m ready.” He glanced at the clock in the wall. “You know what, it’s getting late, so why don’t we try and get some sleep.”
Wyatt nodded. “Sounds good to me.” He used his arms and what mobility he had gained in his legs to push himself up onto the bed and under the covers. “Good night, Chris.”