Post by StoryGirl83 on Sept 21, 2013 23:12:50 GMT -5
Chapter Twenty-Six - I’d Rather Not Die
Cole Turner stood before them, unmoving, eyes watchful.
Phoebe was the first to respond, a gasp escaping her lips as she ran out the back door and over to him. “Cole? How . . ? What’s he doing here?”
“You have him to thank for the interference into the Winchester brothers’ lives,” the Angel of Destiny informed her as her sisters walked more slowly to them. “He learned of Sam Winchester’s unusually ability and manipulated events to not only get them here, but make sure Sam heard about this house and stuck around.”
“You mean he made Sam think his brother was dead?” Prue asked annoyed as the Angel of Destiny waved his hand again and Cole started moving. “Did you cause the motel to collapse, too?”
Cole glared at her. “Is this the thanks I get for getting you out of there?”
“People died, Cole,” Prue reminded him.
“Okay, fine,” Cole continued to glare at her. “I didn’t start it. I just used it to separate Sam from his brother.”
“You could have asked,” Prue suggested with a glare of her own. “In case you didn’t notice, helping people with magical problems seems to be what they do.”
“In case you didn’t notice, they aren’t exactly trusting of those with real magic,” Cole shot back. “Piper’s boys won him over. There’s no way I could do that.”
“You made him think his brother was dead,” Prue yelled. “Of course he’s wasn’t going to help you after that.”
“I wasn’t going to let Phoebe rot in here forever like you seemed content to do,” Cole retorted.
Prue glanced back at her sisters. “I was protecting her along with Piper and Paige.”
“No,” Cole argued, “I was. Where do you think that food came from that kept Leo Wyatt alive? I hardly think that spell you cast was really going to make food magically appear within his reach.”
“Apparently it did,” Prue returned, “even if it did use you to do it somehow.”
Cole shook his head, almost amused. “And who do you think made sure you knew every time your other spell wore off. You were too busy keeping the demon alive.”
“An innocent was possessed,” Prue reminded him.
“Well, where were you when I was possessed and needed help?” Prue was surprised to see hurt in his eyes as he added, “You knew.”
“I was dead,” Prue shot back. It lost all menace of her previous words, for it was true. After she had died, she had watched him like a hawk, worried about Phoebe’s relationship with him. She knew he was possessed. Maybe if she had tried harder she could have stopped the Seer’s plan or at least warned her sisters, but she’d failed then and Phoebe had turned evil and Cole had been vanquished and their innocent baby had never truly been as innocent as he should have been and was destroyed.
“That doesn’t stop this family,” Cole reminded her. As if she needed the reminded. “Your dead interfere just as much as your living. You could have done something, so don’t give me any BS about protecting an innocent. You couldn’t do what had to be done, so I found someone who could. And if I had to upset him for a couple of days to do it, then so be it. I’d do it, again. I couldn’t approach him and the best way I could get him to stay put was to put him under the police eye. I knew eventually someone else would die here and he’d run into one of the two people most obsessed with this house. And he did. Your dead boyfriend’s dad showed up and Sam listened to him better than he ever would have listened to me.”
“Cole, this has got to stop,” Phoebe spoke up. “You killed people to get them here.”
“No,” Cole argued. “I used deaths that had already happened. I didn’t cause them. I just knew about them. And I put an end to them, but getting Sam to get rid of that demon, something none of you managed to do.”
Paige walked over to the Angel of Destiny and whispered, “Aren’t you going to stop them. You must have unfrozen him for some reason.”
“This was part of it,” the Angel of Destiny admitted. “Before I deal with him there were some things that needed to be brought out into the open.”
“There’s more?” Paige queried, looking worried at her sisters and Cole.
He shook his head. “No, not particularly. He has a decision of his own to make and he needed to know where he stood.”
“I can’t imagine what kind of decision you think I need to make,” Cole announced, over hearing them.
“We cannot have a continuation of all the escapades you have had,” the Angel of Destiny informed him. “No one has ever escaped the confines of the wasteland. Most don’t even have anything left by the time they reach there. You escaped. And then when you managed to mangle your own existence by creating a whole other reality and dying in it, you were trapped in the void and you have yet again managed to escape a place no one should be able to leave.”
“But wasn’t I . . .” Piper trailed off.
Phoebe looked at her curiously. “You knew about this?”
“I was going to tell you,” Piper announced, “but I didn’t think it would do you any good to know he was there.”
“And when was this?”
“When I almost died while you and Paige were trying to find Leo before he found the elders,” Piper admitted.
Phoebe exhaled slowly. “Okay then. Next time . . . next time tell me about something like this.”
Piper nodded. “Right. Let’s just hope there is no next time.”
“There will be no next time with Cole Turner,” the Angel of Destiny announced.
“Don’t I get a say in this?” Cole protested.
“You have two choices,” he was quickly informed. “You can continue on in this life as a mortal man, no more powers of any type. That means no more demonic powers. No avatar powers. And no witch powers if you somehow thought you could find a way to get them. None. You would live as a normal human, taking up your life from where you left it almost ten years ago. There would be questions as to where you have been all this time, but most people tend to believe that you and Phoebe got into an argument and that you either walked out and simply neglected to tell anyone or that she killed you.”
Cole snorted. “Of course. Which is true.”
The Angel of Destiny gave him a stern look. “If you intend to manage to survive without being under intense scrutiny, then I suggest you don’t mention that.”
“Okay, that’s one choice,” Cole waved away his last comment. “What’s the other option?”
“You can go quietly to your death.”
“I need my powers,” Cole insisted. “I can’t make it there without them.”
“You can manage if you try hard enough,” the Angel of Destiny insisted. “No matter your choice, you will not retain any powers, not now, not ever again. Think about it. I will hear their answer to my question while you consider this.”