Post by Esmeralda on Oct 5, 2019 12:29:49 GMT -5
NOTE FROM ESMERALDA: This is my favorite Charmed fanfic - one of my all-time favorite story, period - I *so* wish Charmed's S6 could've been more like this - not just Piper and Chris, but all of the characters....
Author's Notes: This is a story that answers the question: What if Bianca was right?
Beginning with a rewrite of the end of "Chris-Crossed," this story follows the path of Chris in a battle to save his brother. He returns from the future as he did in "Chris-Crossed", but unlike "Chris-Crossed", by then his parents and aunts have discovered his true identity, which is just the first of the many secrets Chris hold.
Others follow him from the future: a slew of assassins, once Chris's allies and followers, now Wyatt has them under a spell to eliminate Chris's very existence.
How will the final battle between two powerful brothers occur? And what are the Future Consequences?
Note: This story was written during Season Six and Season Seven. It starts at the end of "Chris-Crossed" and ignores all episodes after that one.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything Charmed, but all original characters belong to me - please do not steal my characters.
Chris halted a moment, looking back one last time at his family. “Wait!” he choked out, tugging his hand from Bianca’s. “Please?” he asked, knowing she would understand. She bit her lip and nodded.
The three sisters watched him turn to face them, seeing the drawn and defeated look in his eyes. Phoebe felt a piercing ache in her own heart as she watched him. He was in so much pain, so sad, so broken. She watched as he smiled weakly at herself and Paige. “I’ll miss you,” he said quietly.
Phoebe felt that ache deepen when he turned his attention to Piper. He bit his lip to hold back tears and said nothing, only leaned down to take Piper in his arms, hugging her tightly for a long moment before releasing her, keeping only her hands in his. He laughed at the confused and shocked expression on her face. “I love you,” he whispered, bending to kiss her cheek.
“Chris,” Bianca warned, almost sadly. She knew how much this was killing him inside.
Chris dropped Piper’s gaze and nodded, looking at their entwined hands. “Let’s go,” he whispered, stepping away from the sisters. Bianca again took his hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. He took a step towards the glowing portal, but Bianca held him still for a moment, giving him a moment to collect himself before allowing him to face what lay on the other side.
“Wait!” Piper squeaked, finally managing to find her voice. “That’s it? You’re just going?”
“I don’t have a choice,” Chris shrugged. “She’s stripped my powers.”
“But—“ Paige argued.
Chris smiled mischievously. “I guess Leo will have to fix that floorboard without me.” He grinned at the sisters one last time before facing Bianca, his face cleared of the impending tears. “I’m ready,” he said flatly. Together they disappeared through the portal, leaving the sisters confused and lost.
Well, Piper and Paige were confused and lost, Phoebe, on the other hand, dropped to her knees at the relief his absence brought. “Phoebe,” Paige said worriedly, dropping beside her sister. “What is it?”
“Chris,” Phoebe said, shaking her head. “If he felt like that the entire time he was here, I’m glad he could block my powers.”
“What are you talking about?” Paige asked.
Phoebe shook her head, “Not here. We don’t know when the Phoenix will return and I don’t think it’s a good idea to fight her. No telling what would happen to Future Bianca.”
Paige nodded and reached up to touch Piper’s elbow as she continued to stare at the triquatra drawn on the wall. “I don’t understand,” she said, shaking her head.
“I could never sense his emotions,” Phoebe explained, repeating it again. “Until he was unconscious and I felt his love for Bianca. And then, today, she’d stripped his powers. I felt his emotions,” Phoebe’s voice cracked as she forced down tears at just the memory of his pain.
“What did you feel?” Leo asked.
“Fear, guilt, pain,” Phoebe whispered, staring out the colored glass of the window. “Not physical. It was all emotional.”
“Well, yeah, his fiancée comes back in time to strip his powers and take him in for a bounty,” Paige reasoned.
“No,” Phoebe argued, wiping a tear away. “It was more than that. Besides, she felt it was the only way to save his life. Chris understood that.” She stood up, running her fingers through her short-cropped hair. “It was this big, gaping hole in his heart that I felt. He knows loss. He knows it so well. It’s like he had nothing to go back to and it was like--It was like leaving us was ripping all of that open.”
Paige bit her lip and stole a quick glance at Leo, who flipped through The Book of Shadows as he tried to formulate a plan. And then she glanced at Piper, who hadn’t spoken since they’d returned to the attic. “He told Piper that he loves her. Do you think maybe, in the future, our sister has a thing for younger guys?” she whispered.
“No,” Phoebe assured her. “I think it’s stronger than that. Think about it, Paige,” Phoebe said, all of the fragments settling in her mind. “He’s half-whitelighter. He’s half-witch. He’s willing to go through all of this for Wyatt. He loves Piper.”
Paige shook her head, catching on but disagreeing. “But he hates Leo.”
“Not really,” Phoebe whispered, shaking her head. “He’s got more of a love/hate thing going on there. He relates to Leo a lot like Prue did to our dad.”
“He’s my son,” Piper said flatly, her eyes never seeming to focus. Paige and Phoebe seemed startled as they hadn’t realized they’d been overheard. “I can feel it, somehow,” Piper continued, turning to face Leo, who stood in mid-flip of a page, his jaw dropping as he regarded his ex-wife. “He’s our son, Leo,” she repeated, watching his face for some sort of reaction. Leo stayed there in shock while Piper spun around to face her sisters. “We have to bring him back. We have to do something. Wherever, whenever he went, it can’t be good.”
“He was resigned to it, Piper,” Phoebe said hastily. “He knew it meant his death. I don’t know how we can stop it from this time and he’s defenseless in his own.”
“We have to do something!” Piper shouted, stomping her foot down angrily.
Paige heard the squeak. “The floorboard!!” She shook her head at the confused looks of her sisters and her stunned ex-brother-in-law. “I have an idea.”
Leo closed the floorboard and re-covered it with the rug. Not a moment later, Chris flew out of a flash of light, tumbling roughly to the wooden floor. He groaned and rolled onto his back, looking up at the ceiling. “Are you all right?” Piper asked, moving to help him to his feet.
“Yeah, fine,” he groaned, rotating his shoulder as if to make sure it was all right.
“We need to talk,” Piper said sternly.
“I know, I know,” Chris conceded. “I should have told you that I knew Bianca, should have told you what she was up to, but—“
“You should have told up that you’re our son,” Leo piped in. Chris’s eyes burst open, the look of shock evident to everyone around him. “Why didn’t you--?” Before Leo could finish his question, Chris had orbed out.
Chris stepped onto the Golden Gate Bridge, pacing the width of it. He always found this place oddly soothing, the hum of the traffic, the inescapable breeze. How did they know? How did they find out? It was his mistake. He shouldn’t have said good-bye to them, shouldn’t have let them see his emotions, let them know how much he loved them. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. This wasn’t the plan.
He heard the chiming as someone orbed in next to him. As he saw the form take the shape of his father, he tried to orb out. That was the last person he wanted to see right now, but a hand grabbed him before he could, holding him in place.
Leo stared at him, his eyes seeming to memorize Chris’s own, as green as his own. Chris swallowed, tried to keep his expression from betraying him more as he stared at Leo, raising his chin a bit, as if in challenge. “Except for your eyes, you look like your mother,” Leo said softly.
Chris shook Leo’s hand off him, resigning himself to remain emotionless. “No one seemed to notice before.”
“We weren’t looking before,” Leo admitted.
“As if you ever did,” Chris muttered to himself as he turned away from Leo. “What now?” he asked, clasping his hands behind his back as he stared down at the mist-covered waters.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Leo asked, trying to get through to his son.
Chris shrugged. “Future consequences.”
“I can understand not wanting to talk about future vanquishes, future deaths, but this?” Leo gasped. “How could—“
“You don’t like me very much,” Chris flatly stated.
“I love you. You’re my son.”
Chris laughed bitterly and shook his head. “Try to remember how you felt about me yesterday. You don’t like me very much.”
“That’s not true, I—“
“I'm an empath, just like Aunt Phoebs, so you can't lie to me. You don’t like me. You find me irritating and arrogant, stubborn. You think I take too many risks and put the sisters in too much danger. You think I go off looking for trouble, that I’m reckless.”
“I—“
“You’re jealous of the time I get to spend with Mom while you’re off being an Elder, of the time I get to spend with Baby Wyatt while you can only watch.”
Leo nodded, biting his lip. “Yes, but—“
“But nothing,” Chris said coldly.
“You’re my son,” Leo argued. “That changes things. That makes things different.”
“No, it doesn’t. And I’m not your son. Your son hasn’t even been born. And, if I have my calculations right, you have a couple of weeks to decide if he is ever born.”
“You think I dislike you so much as to stop your conception!” Leo cried, but Chris only shrugged. “How could you even think I—“
“I’ve thought about it myself,” Chris admitted quietly. “I’ve thought about finding a way to put a stop to it myself. Maybe I’m the reason Wyatt turns.”
“You can’t believe that!”
Chris shrugged. “It happens right around the time I’m born. Which means I play a factor, if only to distract the sisters from whatever gets to him. If I weren’t born, maybe the sisters could stop it before it happens.”
“You’re being ridiculous," Leo gasped. "How can you even think that?”
Chris laughed, hard, letting the irony in Leo’s statement flood him. “How could you?” he spat before Leo could question. He turned, finally, facing his father with tear-stained cheeks. “You’re the one who put that idea in my head.”
“Me?” Leo asked. “When?”
Chris shook his head, his bitter humor faltering, suddenly realizing that this wasn’t the same man he was used to arguing with, used to hating, not yet anyway. “In about fifteen years,” he shrugged, before taking a deep breath.
“Look,” he conceded, shaking his head to clear his own emotions. “I wasn’t planning on this. You shouldn’t know. Aunt Phoebs, Aunt Paige and most certainly Mom shouldn’t know who I am.”
“Why?” Leo asked.
“Because it’s a distraction. They need to be focused on saving Wyatt and the future. If they know who I am, when I put myself in the risks that I need to take, they’re going to protect me because of who I am. I can’t let them.”
Chris scratched at his upper arms nervously, trying to find the courage to get his last and biggest reason out. “Besides, this isn’t just some run-of-the-mill quest for me. This isn’t the weekly demon vanquish. This is my entire life and the life of everyone I care about. I will die for this if I need to and I don’t want Mom to have to watch her son die, knowing it's her son as he dies. I had to watch her die; I don't want her to watch me die.”
Leo swallowed, wrapping his mind around his son’s words, wrap his mind around the fact he even had a grownup son.
Chris was silent for a moment, trying to come up with a solution. Finally he turned to Leo. “Help me?” he asked.
His words surprised Leo. “What can I do?”
“Dust them?”
“No!” Leo shouted. “I will not take their memories of you away. It’ll—“
“Not of me," Chris amended. "Just of who I am.”
Leo shook his head. “No.”
“Look, you were never there for me. Never when I needed you. But I need you now. Please, do this for me?” he asked quietly. “Please, for everyone’s sake.”
Leo nodded, biting his tongue. “I won’t dust myself. I’ll remember.”
“But—“
“You say that in the future, I’m Up There,” he said, glancing up to the starry sky. “If that’s so, then I’m not involved in anything that is about to happen with the sisters, leaving me completely free to protect you.”
“Can’t work like that,” Chris insisted, shaking his head. “You can’t know.”
Leo shrugged. “Too bad. If assassins are being sent back after you, you need someone to watch your back. You need someone to help you. And you’ve got me.”
Chris let loose a small smile as his face filled with tears. He shook that off quickly, however, and nodded his agreement.
The sisters waited not-so-patiently for Leo to return with their whitelighter. When they finally returned in a swirl of glowing orbs, they breathed a sigh of relief, all three of them rushing to hug the young man they’d grown to care about.
“I don’t understand,” Phoebe said. “If we put the spell in the attic, how did you get all the way to the bridge?”
“I orbed,” Chris replied carelessly. “It doesn’t matter. I’m just glad everything is okay,” he added, catching Leo’s eye, silently thanking him.
“Oh, my,” Piper shrieked, seeing Chris’s neck. “What is—“ Tentatively, she reached forward, touching the tender flesh. There was a handprint on her whitelighter’s throat, one of bruise as well as burn. “What happened?” she asked, gasping at the thought of the pain it must have caused.
Chris touched his neck and shook his head, not wanting to inform the sisters that it was the darling little baby they cared for so much who was such a monster in the future. Not the specifics of it anyhow.
But Leo knew, and Chris heard him let out a long sad sigh. “Let me heal that,” he said, reaching forward towards Chris.
Chris stepped away as the hand began to glow. “No,” he said quietly. “I’m good.” Leo stared at him, confused. Chris only shook his head, willing Leo to just understand. “I’m a fast healer naturally, promise.”
Chris stood awkwardly, shuffling his feet, not wanting to look up at his mother or aunts, not now after they no longer knew. “It’s getting late, and I’m kind of tired. I should go over to the club and get some sleep.”
“It’s not that late,” Piper pointed out after a quick glance at her watch. “The club will still be packed and noisy. Why don’t I make up the couch for you?”
Chris nodded, his eyes still lowered. “That’d be nice. Mind if I borrow your shower?”
“Not at all,” Piper replied quickly, watching him nod quickly and jog down the stairs. She immediately turned on her ex-husband. “What happened?”
“What do you mean?” Leo asked guiltily.
Piper rolled her eyes. “I mean. He’s hurt and won’t let you heal him. Something obviously has him spooked because he won’t look any of us in the eye and I feel like—“ Piper stopped herself mid-sentence and shook her head. “I’m worried about him. I don’t understand why I’m so worried, but I am. And you know something.”
Leo shook his head. “Future consequences,” was all he said, orbing out before she could protest.
Chris stripped out of his filthy black shirt to see the blood on it that he was thankful no one else had noticed. Bianca’s blood. How did things get so screwed up? He glanced in the mirror, seeing more clearly the handprint on his neck, felt each pinpricking nerve that it encompassed. He saw other bruises and scrapes, too, from being tossed around the future attic by his darling brother.
He was startled out of studying his own injuries when a swirl of orbs appeared behind him in the mirror. “Why wouldn’t you let me heal you?” Leo asked, staring at the marks that littered Chris, scratches and bruises.
Chris shook his head, leaning over the sink, propping himself there with two outstretched arms. “You can’t. And I didn’t want to have to explain that in front of the sisters.”
“I’ve healed you before,” Leo argued.
“That was different. You can’t heal the damage caused by your own blood,” he explained quickly before pushing himself off the sink and digging into the cabinet for something to put on the itching mark.
“My own blood?” Leo asked quietly, dropping onto the toilet as he tried to wrap his head around it all. “You mean—“
“Yeah, that’s Wyatt’s handprint,” Chris replied nonchalantly, finding something that might at least cool the burn.
“He just tried to strangle you with his bare hands?” Leo gasped.
Chris laughed. “No. Wyatt doesn’t do much with his bare hands. Doesn’t like to get dirty, you know?
“Then—“
Chris took a step back and faced his father. “Like this,” he said quietly, reaching a hand up, curling it into a loose fist. Leo felt it on his throat, the pressure, though Chris was keeping it light. “Telekinesis,” he clarified before going back to tending his wounds.
“And the burn?” Leo inquired.
“Oh, you know. Everything Wyatt does packs a little extra punch.”
Leo nodded. “So, what are your powers?”
Chris shrugged. “Orbing, telekinesis, empathy, and variations of them. That’s it, really. Though they seem to be growing very quickly.”
“Really?” Leo asked.
“Since I came back to the past my empathy has gotten stronger, maybe if only because I’ve been giving it a workout blocking Aunt Phoebs. And I’ve developed sensing to go with the orbing. I never could do that before.”
“Any other whitelighter powers? Healing, maybe?” Leo asked.
“No,” Chris snapped, slamming the cabinet shut. “You know that.” Chris shook his head, admonishing himself for snapping on his father. “Sorry, it’s just that that is a bone of contention between us, in the future.”
“How so?”
“You think I can heal and say I just need to practice.”
“Maybe you just need proper motivation.” Off Chris’s confused look, he continued. “Powers come from emotions. Healing comes from love. If the circumstances are right, if it is someone you love that needs—“
“No,” Chris insisted, shaking his head. “I’ve had motivation. No luck.”
“But—“
“No!” Chris snapped, then immediately tried to calm himself.
“Chris?” Piper asked as she knocked lightly on the door outside. “Are you all right in there?”
“I’m fine,” he called out quickly.
“Can I come in?” Piper asked.
Chris glanced up at Leo, silently asking him to leave. Chris waited until the orbs had disappeared and his mother repeated the question before pulling the door open.
“Oh, God,” Piper exclaimed, seeing the bruises and cuts that covered her whitelighter's bare torso. “Sit down,” she demanded, urging him over to the toilet. She reached into the medicine cabinet, grabbing for various things.
“Why didn’t you have Leo heal you?” she demanded harshly.
Chris leaned back a moment, smiling at the fact his mother was fussing over him. “I’m fine, really,” he said softly, reaching out to stop her hands. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine!” Piper argued, taking a perch on the clothes hamper as she pulled away from his hand to work on putting antiseptic on some of the worst of the cuts that covered his back and shoulder. “What happened?”
Again Chris shrugged. “I got thrown through a table. And a cabinet. And, I think, a wall,” Chris laughed. “It’s fine. I’ve been through worse.”
“I can see that,” Piper muttered, noticing some scars tarnishing the smooth skin. “Why wouldn’t you let Leo heal you?”
Chris bit his lip for only a moment while he formulated an answer. “Because one day I’ll have to go back to the future where I don’t have a healer and I still have to fight. Wouldn’t want to go soft by having stuff like this healed.”
Piper looked at his haunting green eyes, seeing something there she’d never seen before: recognition. “Is the future really so horrible?” she asked.
“Mine is,” he answered quickly, looking over Piper’s handiwork. “But, I’m working to change that.”
“What about mine?” Piper asked. “What’s my future like?” she asked wistfully.
Chris felt as if he was going to choke on the sob that wanted to escape. “I can’t answer that,” he managed to squeak out, standing up to pace away from Piper.
“Future consequences?” Piper asked, watching as Chris seemed to stare at the wall. He seemed to nod roughly. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know about the consequences. It was more of a rhetorical question anyway. I only ask because of Leo.”
“What about him?” Chris croaked out, swallowing away his tears and doing everything he could to mask his emotions before turning back to the woman seeking his counsel.
“It’s just-- I miss him. I understand why he has to be away, but I miss him. And everything is so different now. I’m a mother and Wyatt... He deserves a father, not the kind that shows up every once in a blue moon to say hi, but a real one. The kind that’s there for him when he wakes up from a nightmare in the middle of the night. The kind that’ll be there to teach him things. And the kind that just loves his family. And I want that to be Leo, but I know it can’t be. I don’t even know if he would want to be,” she confessed finally allowing herself to cry.
Chris shook his head and enveloped his mother in his arms, letting her cry herself out against him. “Shh,” he soothed, not knowing how to calm her without saying too much. “If there is one thing I know about Leo, it’s that he loves you. He loves you, I promise. He loves you now and he loves you in the future,” Chris let out, hearing Piper’s breath hitch in her throat as she digested the new information.
She pulled back, wiping away her tears. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
"You’re pretty good at this whole whitelighter thing.”
“Actually, I’m not, but thank you anyway.”
Piper gave him a crooked smile. “I’ll let you get cleaned up,” she said, ducking out the door.
Before the door closed, Chris heard the crash, followed by a loud shout from Paige. “Demon!” she screamed, alerting the household to its presence.
Chris rushed from the room just in time to see Piper knocked backward through the hall, crashing into a bedroom door. He stepped into the hallway, seeing the gray-skinned creature heading towards Piper’s prone body. He blocked the way, taking a position in front of Piper to protect her.
Phoebe let out a shrill screech as she flew through the air, kicking the demon in the back of the head, but the attack didn’t seem to deter the beast. The demon seemed intent on Piper and only Piper.
“Vase!” Paige shouted from the top of the stairs, hurling it at the demon, again with no effect.
Instead it focused on Chris, the only obstruction between it and its target. Chris stared at it, catching its foggy eyes, seeing them gleam purple and recognition hit him. “Tasha?” he asked, resting his stance momentarily.
Paige and Phoebe watched in wonder as the beast stopped, sniffing at the air. “Chris?” it asked, but the voice was not what they were expecting. Instead, the voice sounded like that of a young girl.
Slowly, the beast began to morph into something that would match the voice, a young girl dressed in simple jeans and T-shirt. “Chris?”
“It’s me, girlie-girl,” he greeted, reaching forward, resting a hand on her shoulder. The girl giggled at that and pulled Chris into a hug.
Piper groaned as she rolled over, pushing herself off the floor. Chris released the girl and went immediately to his mother’s side, helping her to her feet, sweeping her up into his arms when weight on her leg forced her to collapse again. “Leo!” he shouted, knowing his father was nearby.
Leo appeared, stepping immediately to Piper, who awoke slowly in Chris’s arms. “Can you stand?” Chris asked, moving to set her on her feet.
“What happened?” Piper asked, looking at the damage in the hallway.
“That’s what we’d like to know,” Paige said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Who’s your demon friend, Chris?”
Chris pulled Tasha to the edge of the hallway, holding her in front of him, her back to his chest. “This is Tasha, and she’s not a demon. She’s a witch.”
The three sisters finally got a better glimpse of the girl. She was younger than they initially thought, maybe only ten, eleven or twelve. Her hair was a deep muddy brown and hung in greasy wisps around her head, falling carelessly in her face. They gasped when they saw her face, gnarled and burned from the nose up, her eyes nothing but milky white pools. “Tasha, this is Paige, Piper and Phoebe Halliwell.”
Tasha laughed. “Charmed, I’m sure,” she joked, and even Paige managed to find the humor in it. Tasha’s, however, quickly disappeared. “But, if these are The Charmed Ones--" She suddenly gasped in horror. "I attacked The Charmed Ones?”
“You attacked Piper,” Chris pointed out.
“Oh, my God!” Tasha gasped, tears coming to her eyes. “I’m sorry, Chris. I’m so sorry.”
“Shh,” Chris whispered quickly. “We need to talk more in private,” and he tugged her into the still-open door to the bathroom, quickly closing and locking the door behind him. “They don’t know who I am,” he explained quickly and quietly. “Will you help me keep that secret?” and Tasha readily agreed.
“Where are the sisters?” Chris asked when he reentered the hallway with Tasha.
“Kitchen,” Leo answered quickly. “Figured there wasn’t going to be any sleep for awhile, so they’re making coffee.”
Chris nodded. “Tasha, this is Leo Wyatt, my father.”
“I thought they didn’t know who you are,” she whispered out of the side of her mouth.
“Only Leo does and I intend to have it stay that way.”
“Nice to meet you,” Leo said, reaching to take the blind girl’s hand.
“It’s an honor, Mr. Wyatt,” Tasha said awkwardly.
Leo laughed. “Just call me Leo. I don’t think anyone has ever called me Mr. Wyatt.” He turned to face Chris. “I heard what you said to Piper in there, about me. Thank you.”
“I didn’t do it for you,” Chris said flatly. “I did it for me. If I discover that I'm not the one behind Wyatt's turning, I would still like to to be conceived, so I can’t let her hate you. Not yet. Doesn’t mean I think you’re any less of an a$$hole.”
Leo led Tasha down the stairs while Chris found clothing to pull on. Her arrival couldn’t mean anything good.
“So, Tasha?” Chris asked, getting right down to business as he entered the kitchen. “What brings you to 2003?”
“Please, like you don’t know that one,” she scoffed. “He sent me.” Chris nodded. “I’m sorry, Chris,” she continued. “I didn’t know.”
“It’s okay, girlie-girl,” he said, wrapping an arm around her.
“Isn’t she a bit young for you?” Paige joked, seeing the obvious closeness between the two.
“Eww!” Tasha protested, pushing Chris away, turning to face Paige with unseeing eyes. “That’s just gross! He’s practically my father!”
“Your father?” Phoebe chimed in, a twinkle in her eyes. “Isn’t he a bit young for that?”
Chris just groaned at his aunts' strange sense of humor.
“He takes care of me. Takes care of all of us, really.” The sisters’ collective curiosity was piqued as they saw the newcomer as a way to finally shed some light on their mysterious whitelighter. “He’s the one who rescued me after my parents were killed. He saved my life.”
“How so?” Piper asked.
“Well,” the girl said excitedly. “We’d been running from demons for weeks, hiding out in some of the collapsed buildings by Center City. My mom was very powerful and the Lord wanted her killed. They finally had us trapped, cornered in an alleyway. We all fought, even though I was so small, but then I'd been fighting for years, even since the Lord took over. No big deal. Anyway, there were flashes of light: energy balls, fireballs and my parents’ own powers. My mom got run through with a spear of some kind and when my dad went to her side, he caught a wave of fireballs and got all burned up. So there I was, my parents dead on the ground and me all alone facing three giant demons!”
The sisters all were silent, confused by the way the girl spoke so casually and excitedly about her parents’ deaths, as if deaths of loved ones were something that happened every day.
“I shifted into a panther and hunched back," Tasha continued, "Ready to pounce. That’s when one of the demons fell and I saw Chris. He was standing there with this huge pipe in his hands and he just clubbed the sucker, right in the back of the head.”
“Your whitelighter to the rescue, huh?” Piper asked, oddly proud of Chris.
“What’s a whitelighter?” Tasha asked.
“Nothing, sweetie,” Chris responded softly. “Don’t worry about it.”
All three of the sisters looked at him with shock and concern painting their expressions, but Tasha went on with her story, not knowing there was anything wrong. “Anyway, there we were, toe-to-toe with the demons. Chris told me to run, screamed at me to go, but I wouldn’t. I lunged at one of the demons, scratching his eyes out with my claws. Chris threw the other one, tossing him out of the alley with a single hand. He went after him, impaling him with the pipe he’d used to knock the first one out, vanquishing him into flames.
“The first one, he woke up and saw me, still scratching at the dead demon. He threw an energy ball before I realized it. Next thing I remember is hearing Chris’s voice tell me everything was going to be all right as he bandaged my face up.”
“Why didn’t you get her a healer?” Piper asked
“I told you,” Chris replied tiredly. “There are no healers in the future.”
“Anyway,” Tasha said, bringing the attention back to her. “Chris took me to the Cavern. I’ve been living there since.”
“What’s the Cavern?” Phoebe asked.
“It’s where we all live, everyone who resists the Lord. It’s a sanctuary for witches and demons and other magical folk who don’t want to do what the Lord says. Chris is in charge. He takes care of us. He makes sure we get food and he makes sure the Lord can’t find us. And he goes out to find others, like he found me. Well, he did until he left a few months ago. Then we all got captured,” she shrugged as if it was no big deal. “You got anything to eat?”
“Sure,” Piper responded. “What would you like?”
“Whatever you have will be fine,” she answered easily.
Piper dug into the cabinet, finding a box of cookies. She put them out on a small plate and poured a glass of milk for the girl. Piper placed the glass in her hand first.
Tasha took a sip. “Milk,” she sighed happily. "And it’s so cold.” She picked up a cookie off the plate and bit into it absently, spitting it out into her hand by surprise. The sisters watched her face go from surprise to a happy smile and she took it back into her mouth sloppily. “That’s so good,” she said. “What is it?”
“Chocolate-chip cookie,” Piper answered flatly, still confused by the girl’s enthusiasm.
“It’s good,” Tasha said around a mouthful of cookie.
Chris shook away the tears he felt after seeing Tasha so awed by such simple pleasures. “Why are you here?” he had to ask her.
“I told you. He sent me.”
“Why?” Chris asked.
“To kill the evil witch that's holding you hostage.”
Chris shook his head sadly. “That’s what Bianca meant,” he said to himself.
But Piper overheard him. “What she meant by what?”
“She said that if I didn’t go back with her, others would be sent back, not to take me to him, but to kill me and those around me.”
“What?” Leo asked, confused. “That’s silly. Why would he send allies back for you? As soon as they realize what they’re doing, they’ll be on our side. Soon we’ll have a little army back here in this time.”
“No,” Chris said sadly. “They’ll be under a spell. He’ll make me kill off my own people one by one.” Chris rubbed tiredly at his eyes.
“Then, why isn’t Tasha under a spell?” Phoebe asked.
Tasha laughed. “I might have been. But, when I change forms, spells cast on me in one form disappear. Not many people know that.”
“Bianca was the first to come back, but she obviously won’t be the last,” Chris said to himself.
“Bianca’s here?” Tasha asked excitedly. “Where?”
Chris stepped forward, resting a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Bianca’s dead, sweetie,” he told her softly.
Phoebe felt the pang in her chest that Chris let through his shield and the full-out despair from the girl in his arms. “I’m sorry, Chris,” Phoebe said. “I know how you felt about her.” Chris nodded mutely, then quickly changed the subject. “Did you make up the couch yet?”
Piper nodded and watched how the young man swept the girl up into his arms, carrying her into the living room, tucking her tenderly beneath the thick blankets. “Sleep tight, girlie-girl.”
Chris stepped back into the kitchen, going immediately to the coffee pot, pouring himself a huge cup, chugging like it were Gatorade and he’d just run a marathon. He poured himself a second cup and grabbed one of the abandoned cookies. “I’ll see you all in the morning,” he said dully. “I have work to do.”
He headed back towards the staircase. “Wait a minute!” Piper called after him. “You have some explaining to do.”
“I—“
“Don’t tell me you can’t because of future consequences!” Piper shouted. “Why are there no healers? Why doesn’t a young witch, obviously well versed in her powers, not know what a whitelighter is? Especially when she obviously knows you so well?”
“I can’t answer that,” Chris said dully.
“Chris,” Leo said softly. “You have to tell them something. Maybe not everything, but something.”
Chris seemed to think about it for a long moment before nodding. “Whitelighters are the chief healers. They always have been. Well, in the future, they’re all dead. It took a year for them all to be hunted, but they were all killed. Next on his list were the Elders, but when I went into the past, he must've pushed me to the top of the list.”
“All of the whitelighters are dead?” Piper asked, shocked by the new information.
“All of them,” Chris confirmed. “At least all of the full-blooded ones. A few of us half-bloods have managed to survive.”
“Us? I don’t—“
“She doesn’t even know what a whitelighter is because I’m not really a whitelighter,” Chris sighed. “I’m a witch.”
“But you orb,” Phoebe pointed out.
“All right,” Chris conceded. “Half-witch, half-whitelighter. Like you, Paige. But I was raised as a witch. My mother taught me the Craft. There are very few with any whitelighter blood left, and even fewer who actually have the power to heal, something I can't do which might be why I've survived as long as I have. And those who do, well, they have their hands full or are imprisoned.”
“Imprisoned?” Piper asked.
“I think that’s enough information for today. Keep an eye on Tasha. There will be another sent here to attack when he realizes she failed.”
“Who is ‘he’?” Paige asked.
Chris shook his head, refusing to answer.
“It’s Wyatt, isn’t it?” Piper asked, pleading with Chris for answers. “It’s Wyatt who’s doing all of this. Who’s turned the world into some MadMax movie, who’s—“
“Yes,” Chris affirmed quietly. “And I’m going to turn it back.”
Before anyone could ask any more questions, he’d jogged up the stairs to the attic.
Beginning with a rewrite of the end of "Chris-Crossed," this story follows the path of Chris in a battle to save his brother. He returns from the future as he did in "Chris-Crossed", but unlike "Chris-Crossed", by then his parents and aunts have discovered his true identity, which is just the first of the many secrets Chris hold.
Others follow him from the future: a slew of assassins, once Chris's allies and followers, now Wyatt has them under a spell to eliminate Chris's very existence.
How will the final battle between two powerful brothers occur? And what are the Future Consequences?
FUTURE CONSEQUENCES
written by Kalvana
written by Kalvana
Note: This story was written during Season Six and Season Seven. It starts at the end of "Chris-Crossed" and ignores all episodes after that one.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything Charmed, but all original characters belong to me - please do not steal my characters.
Chapter One
Chris halted a moment, looking back one last time at his family. “Wait!” he choked out, tugging his hand from Bianca’s. “Please?” he asked, knowing she would understand. She bit her lip and nodded.
The three sisters watched him turn to face them, seeing the drawn and defeated look in his eyes. Phoebe felt a piercing ache in her own heart as she watched him. He was in so much pain, so sad, so broken. She watched as he smiled weakly at herself and Paige. “I’ll miss you,” he said quietly.
Phoebe felt that ache deepen when he turned his attention to Piper. He bit his lip to hold back tears and said nothing, only leaned down to take Piper in his arms, hugging her tightly for a long moment before releasing her, keeping only her hands in his. He laughed at the confused and shocked expression on her face. “I love you,” he whispered, bending to kiss her cheek.
“Chris,” Bianca warned, almost sadly. She knew how much this was killing him inside.
Chris dropped Piper’s gaze and nodded, looking at their entwined hands. “Let’s go,” he whispered, stepping away from the sisters. Bianca again took his hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. He took a step towards the glowing portal, but Bianca held him still for a moment, giving him a moment to collect himself before allowing him to face what lay on the other side.
“Wait!” Piper squeaked, finally managing to find her voice. “That’s it? You’re just going?”
“I don’t have a choice,” Chris shrugged. “She’s stripped my powers.”
“But—“ Paige argued.
Chris smiled mischievously. “I guess Leo will have to fix that floorboard without me.” He grinned at the sisters one last time before facing Bianca, his face cleared of the impending tears. “I’m ready,” he said flatly. Together they disappeared through the portal, leaving the sisters confused and lost.
Well, Piper and Paige were confused and lost, Phoebe, on the other hand, dropped to her knees at the relief his absence brought. “Phoebe,” Paige said worriedly, dropping beside her sister. “What is it?”
“Chris,” Phoebe said, shaking her head. “If he felt like that the entire time he was here, I’m glad he could block my powers.”
“What are you talking about?” Paige asked.
Phoebe shook her head, “Not here. We don’t know when the Phoenix will return and I don’t think it’s a good idea to fight her. No telling what would happen to Future Bianca.”
Paige nodded and reached up to touch Piper’s elbow as she continued to stare at the triquatra drawn on the wall. “I don’t understand,” she said, shaking her head.
“I could never sense his emotions,” Phoebe explained, repeating it again. “Until he was unconscious and I felt his love for Bianca. And then, today, she’d stripped his powers. I felt his emotions,” Phoebe’s voice cracked as she forced down tears at just the memory of his pain.
“What did you feel?” Leo asked.
“Fear, guilt, pain,” Phoebe whispered, staring out the colored glass of the window. “Not physical. It was all emotional.”
“Well, yeah, his fiancée comes back in time to strip his powers and take him in for a bounty,” Paige reasoned.
“No,” Phoebe argued, wiping a tear away. “It was more than that. Besides, she felt it was the only way to save his life. Chris understood that.” She stood up, running her fingers through her short-cropped hair. “It was this big, gaping hole in his heart that I felt. He knows loss. He knows it so well. It’s like he had nothing to go back to and it was like--It was like leaving us was ripping all of that open.”
Paige bit her lip and stole a quick glance at Leo, who flipped through The Book of Shadows as he tried to formulate a plan. And then she glanced at Piper, who hadn’t spoken since they’d returned to the attic. “He told Piper that he loves her. Do you think maybe, in the future, our sister has a thing for younger guys?” she whispered.
“No,” Phoebe assured her. “I think it’s stronger than that. Think about it, Paige,” Phoebe said, all of the fragments settling in her mind. “He’s half-whitelighter. He’s half-witch. He’s willing to go through all of this for Wyatt. He loves Piper.”
Paige shook her head, catching on but disagreeing. “But he hates Leo.”
“Not really,” Phoebe whispered, shaking her head. “He’s got more of a love/hate thing going on there. He relates to Leo a lot like Prue did to our dad.”
“He’s my son,” Piper said flatly, her eyes never seeming to focus. Paige and Phoebe seemed startled as they hadn’t realized they’d been overheard. “I can feel it, somehow,” Piper continued, turning to face Leo, who stood in mid-flip of a page, his jaw dropping as he regarded his ex-wife. “He’s our son, Leo,” she repeated, watching his face for some sort of reaction. Leo stayed there in shock while Piper spun around to face her sisters. “We have to bring him back. We have to do something. Wherever, whenever he went, it can’t be good.”
“He was resigned to it, Piper,” Phoebe said hastily. “He knew it meant his death. I don’t know how we can stop it from this time and he’s defenseless in his own.”
“We have to do something!” Piper shouted, stomping her foot down angrily.
Paige heard the squeak. “The floorboard!!” She shook her head at the confused looks of her sisters and her stunned ex-brother-in-law. “I have an idea.”
~~~
Leo closed the floorboard and re-covered it with the rug. Not a moment later, Chris flew out of a flash of light, tumbling roughly to the wooden floor. He groaned and rolled onto his back, looking up at the ceiling. “Are you all right?” Piper asked, moving to help him to his feet.
“Yeah, fine,” he groaned, rotating his shoulder as if to make sure it was all right.
“We need to talk,” Piper said sternly.
“I know, I know,” Chris conceded. “I should have told you that I knew Bianca, should have told you what she was up to, but—“
“You should have told up that you’re our son,” Leo piped in. Chris’s eyes burst open, the look of shock evident to everyone around him. “Why didn’t you--?” Before Leo could finish his question, Chris had orbed out.
~~~
Chris stepped onto the Golden Gate Bridge, pacing the width of it. He always found this place oddly soothing, the hum of the traffic, the inescapable breeze. How did they know? How did they find out? It was his mistake. He shouldn’t have said good-bye to them, shouldn’t have let them see his emotions, let them know how much he loved them. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. This wasn’t the plan.
He heard the chiming as someone orbed in next to him. As he saw the form take the shape of his father, he tried to orb out. That was the last person he wanted to see right now, but a hand grabbed him before he could, holding him in place.
Leo stared at him, his eyes seeming to memorize Chris’s own, as green as his own. Chris swallowed, tried to keep his expression from betraying him more as he stared at Leo, raising his chin a bit, as if in challenge. “Except for your eyes, you look like your mother,” Leo said softly.
Chris shook Leo’s hand off him, resigning himself to remain emotionless. “No one seemed to notice before.”
“We weren’t looking before,” Leo admitted.
“As if you ever did,” Chris muttered to himself as he turned away from Leo. “What now?” he asked, clasping his hands behind his back as he stared down at the mist-covered waters.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Leo asked, trying to get through to his son.
Chris shrugged. “Future consequences.”
“I can understand not wanting to talk about future vanquishes, future deaths, but this?” Leo gasped. “How could—“
“You don’t like me very much,” Chris flatly stated.
“I love you. You’re my son.”
Chris laughed bitterly and shook his head. “Try to remember how you felt about me yesterday. You don’t like me very much.”
“That’s not true, I—“
“I'm an empath, just like Aunt Phoebs, so you can't lie to me. You don’t like me. You find me irritating and arrogant, stubborn. You think I take too many risks and put the sisters in too much danger. You think I go off looking for trouble, that I’m reckless.”
“I—“
“You’re jealous of the time I get to spend with Mom while you’re off being an Elder, of the time I get to spend with Baby Wyatt while you can only watch.”
Leo nodded, biting his lip. “Yes, but—“
“But nothing,” Chris said coldly.
“You’re my son,” Leo argued. “That changes things. That makes things different.”
“No, it doesn’t. And I’m not your son. Your son hasn’t even been born. And, if I have my calculations right, you have a couple of weeks to decide if he is ever born.”
“You think I dislike you so much as to stop your conception!” Leo cried, but Chris only shrugged. “How could you even think I—“
“I’ve thought about it myself,” Chris admitted quietly. “I’ve thought about finding a way to put a stop to it myself. Maybe I’m the reason Wyatt turns.”
“You can’t believe that!”
Chris shrugged. “It happens right around the time I’m born. Which means I play a factor, if only to distract the sisters from whatever gets to him. If I weren’t born, maybe the sisters could stop it before it happens.”
“You’re being ridiculous," Leo gasped. "How can you even think that?”
Chris laughed, hard, letting the irony in Leo’s statement flood him. “How could you?” he spat before Leo could question. He turned, finally, facing his father with tear-stained cheeks. “You’re the one who put that idea in my head.”
“Me?” Leo asked. “When?”
Chris shook his head, his bitter humor faltering, suddenly realizing that this wasn’t the same man he was used to arguing with, used to hating, not yet anyway. “In about fifteen years,” he shrugged, before taking a deep breath.
“Look,” he conceded, shaking his head to clear his own emotions. “I wasn’t planning on this. You shouldn’t know. Aunt Phoebs, Aunt Paige and most certainly Mom shouldn’t know who I am.”
“Why?” Leo asked.
“Because it’s a distraction. They need to be focused on saving Wyatt and the future. If they know who I am, when I put myself in the risks that I need to take, they’re going to protect me because of who I am. I can’t let them.”
Chris scratched at his upper arms nervously, trying to find the courage to get his last and biggest reason out. “Besides, this isn’t just some run-of-the-mill quest for me. This isn’t the weekly demon vanquish. This is my entire life and the life of everyone I care about. I will die for this if I need to and I don’t want Mom to have to watch her son die, knowing it's her son as he dies. I had to watch her die; I don't want her to watch me die.”
Leo swallowed, wrapping his mind around his son’s words, wrap his mind around the fact he even had a grownup son.
Chris was silent for a moment, trying to come up with a solution. Finally he turned to Leo. “Help me?” he asked.
His words surprised Leo. “What can I do?”
“Dust them?”
“No!” Leo shouted. “I will not take their memories of you away. It’ll—“
“Not of me," Chris amended. "Just of who I am.”
Leo shook his head. “No.”
“Look, you were never there for me. Never when I needed you. But I need you now. Please, do this for me?” he asked quietly. “Please, for everyone’s sake.”
Leo nodded, biting his tongue. “I won’t dust myself. I’ll remember.”
“But—“
“You say that in the future, I’m Up There,” he said, glancing up to the starry sky. “If that’s so, then I’m not involved in anything that is about to happen with the sisters, leaving me completely free to protect you.”
“Can’t work like that,” Chris insisted, shaking his head. “You can’t know.”
Leo shrugged. “Too bad. If assassins are being sent back after you, you need someone to watch your back. You need someone to help you. And you’ve got me.”
Chris let loose a small smile as his face filled with tears. He shook that off quickly, however, and nodded his agreement.
~~~
The sisters waited not-so-patiently for Leo to return with their whitelighter. When they finally returned in a swirl of glowing orbs, they breathed a sigh of relief, all three of them rushing to hug the young man they’d grown to care about.
“I don’t understand,” Phoebe said. “If we put the spell in the attic, how did you get all the way to the bridge?”
“I orbed,” Chris replied carelessly. “It doesn’t matter. I’m just glad everything is okay,” he added, catching Leo’s eye, silently thanking him.
“Oh, my,” Piper shrieked, seeing Chris’s neck. “What is—“ Tentatively, she reached forward, touching the tender flesh. There was a handprint on her whitelighter’s throat, one of bruise as well as burn. “What happened?” she asked, gasping at the thought of the pain it must have caused.
Chris touched his neck and shook his head, not wanting to inform the sisters that it was the darling little baby they cared for so much who was such a monster in the future. Not the specifics of it anyhow.
But Leo knew, and Chris heard him let out a long sad sigh. “Let me heal that,” he said, reaching forward towards Chris.
Chris stepped away as the hand began to glow. “No,” he said quietly. “I’m good.” Leo stared at him, confused. Chris only shook his head, willing Leo to just understand. “I’m a fast healer naturally, promise.”
Chris stood awkwardly, shuffling his feet, not wanting to look up at his mother or aunts, not now after they no longer knew. “It’s getting late, and I’m kind of tired. I should go over to the club and get some sleep.”
“It’s not that late,” Piper pointed out after a quick glance at her watch. “The club will still be packed and noisy. Why don’t I make up the couch for you?”
Chris nodded, his eyes still lowered. “That’d be nice. Mind if I borrow your shower?”
“Not at all,” Piper replied quickly, watching him nod quickly and jog down the stairs. She immediately turned on her ex-husband. “What happened?”
“What do you mean?” Leo asked guiltily.
Piper rolled her eyes. “I mean. He’s hurt and won’t let you heal him. Something obviously has him spooked because he won’t look any of us in the eye and I feel like—“ Piper stopped herself mid-sentence and shook her head. “I’m worried about him. I don’t understand why I’m so worried, but I am. And you know something.”
Leo shook his head. “Future consequences,” was all he said, orbing out before she could protest.
~~~
Chris stripped out of his filthy black shirt to see the blood on it that he was thankful no one else had noticed. Bianca’s blood. How did things get so screwed up? He glanced in the mirror, seeing more clearly the handprint on his neck, felt each pinpricking nerve that it encompassed. He saw other bruises and scrapes, too, from being tossed around the future attic by his darling brother.
He was startled out of studying his own injuries when a swirl of orbs appeared behind him in the mirror. “Why wouldn’t you let me heal you?” Leo asked, staring at the marks that littered Chris, scratches and bruises.
Chris shook his head, leaning over the sink, propping himself there with two outstretched arms. “You can’t. And I didn’t want to have to explain that in front of the sisters.”
“I’ve healed you before,” Leo argued.
“That was different. You can’t heal the damage caused by your own blood,” he explained quickly before pushing himself off the sink and digging into the cabinet for something to put on the itching mark.
“My own blood?” Leo asked quietly, dropping onto the toilet as he tried to wrap his head around it all. “You mean—“
“Yeah, that’s Wyatt’s handprint,” Chris replied nonchalantly, finding something that might at least cool the burn.
“He just tried to strangle you with his bare hands?” Leo gasped.
Chris laughed. “No. Wyatt doesn’t do much with his bare hands. Doesn’t like to get dirty, you know?
“Then—“
Chris took a step back and faced his father. “Like this,” he said quietly, reaching a hand up, curling it into a loose fist. Leo felt it on his throat, the pressure, though Chris was keeping it light. “Telekinesis,” he clarified before going back to tending his wounds.
“And the burn?” Leo inquired.
“Oh, you know. Everything Wyatt does packs a little extra punch.”
Leo nodded. “So, what are your powers?”
Chris shrugged. “Orbing, telekinesis, empathy, and variations of them. That’s it, really. Though they seem to be growing very quickly.”
“Really?” Leo asked.
“Since I came back to the past my empathy has gotten stronger, maybe if only because I’ve been giving it a workout blocking Aunt Phoebs. And I’ve developed sensing to go with the orbing. I never could do that before.”
“Any other whitelighter powers? Healing, maybe?” Leo asked.
“No,” Chris snapped, slamming the cabinet shut. “You know that.” Chris shook his head, admonishing himself for snapping on his father. “Sorry, it’s just that that is a bone of contention between us, in the future.”
“How so?”
“You think I can heal and say I just need to practice.”
“Maybe you just need proper motivation.” Off Chris’s confused look, he continued. “Powers come from emotions. Healing comes from love. If the circumstances are right, if it is someone you love that needs—“
“No,” Chris insisted, shaking his head. “I’ve had motivation. No luck.”
“But—“
“No!” Chris snapped, then immediately tried to calm himself.
“Chris?” Piper asked as she knocked lightly on the door outside. “Are you all right in there?”
“I’m fine,” he called out quickly.
“Can I come in?” Piper asked.
Chris glanced up at Leo, silently asking him to leave. Chris waited until the orbs had disappeared and his mother repeated the question before pulling the door open.
“Oh, God,” Piper exclaimed, seeing the bruises and cuts that covered her whitelighter's bare torso. “Sit down,” she demanded, urging him over to the toilet. She reached into the medicine cabinet, grabbing for various things.
“Why didn’t you have Leo heal you?” she demanded harshly.
Chris leaned back a moment, smiling at the fact his mother was fussing over him. “I’m fine, really,” he said softly, reaching out to stop her hands. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine!” Piper argued, taking a perch on the clothes hamper as she pulled away from his hand to work on putting antiseptic on some of the worst of the cuts that covered his back and shoulder. “What happened?”
Again Chris shrugged. “I got thrown through a table. And a cabinet. And, I think, a wall,” Chris laughed. “It’s fine. I’ve been through worse.”
“I can see that,” Piper muttered, noticing some scars tarnishing the smooth skin. “Why wouldn’t you let Leo heal you?”
Chris bit his lip for only a moment while he formulated an answer. “Because one day I’ll have to go back to the future where I don’t have a healer and I still have to fight. Wouldn’t want to go soft by having stuff like this healed.”
Piper looked at his haunting green eyes, seeing something there she’d never seen before: recognition. “Is the future really so horrible?” she asked.
“Mine is,” he answered quickly, looking over Piper’s handiwork. “But, I’m working to change that.”
“What about mine?” Piper asked. “What’s my future like?” she asked wistfully.
Chris felt as if he was going to choke on the sob that wanted to escape. “I can’t answer that,” he managed to squeak out, standing up to pace away from Piper.
“Future consequences?” Piper asked, watching as Chris seemed to stare at the wall. He seemed to nod roughly. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know about the consequences. It was more of a rhetorical question anyway. I only ask because of Leo.”
“What about him?” Chris croaked out, swallowing away his tears and doing everything he could to mask his emotions before turning back to the woman seeking his counsel.
“It’s just-- I miss him. I understand why he has to be away, but I miss him. And everything is so different now. I’m a mother and Wyatt... He deserves a father, not the kind that shows up every once in a blue moon to say hi, but a real one. The kind that’s there for him when he wakes up from a nightmare in the middle of the night. The kind that’ll be there to teach him things. And the kind that just loves his family. And I want that to be Leo, but I know it can’t be. I don’t even know if he would want to be,” she confessed finally allowing herself to cry.
Chris shook his head and enveloped his mother in his arms, letting her cry herself out against him. “Shh,” he soothed, not knowing how to calm her without saying too much. “If there is one thing I know about Leo, it’s that he loves you. He loves you, I promise. He loves you now and he loves you in the future,” Chris let out, hearing Piper’s breath hitch in her throat as she digested the new information.
She pulled back, wiping away her tears. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
"You’re pretty good at this whole whitelighter thing.”
“Actually, I’m not, but thank you anyway.”
Piper gave him a crooked smile. “I’ll let you get cleaned up,” she said, ducking out the door.
Before the door closed, Chris heard the crash, followed by a loud shout from Paige. “Demon!” she screamed, alerting the household to its presence.
Chris rushed from the room just in time to see Piper knocked backward through the hall, crashing into a bedroom door. He stepped into the hallway, seeing the gray-skinned creature heading towards Piper’s prone body. He blocked the way, taking a position in front of Piper to protect her.
Phoebe let out a shrill screech as she flew through the air, kicking the demon in the back of the head, but the attack didn’t seem to deter the beast. The demon seemed intent on Piper and only Piper.
“Vase!” Paige shouted from the top of the stairs, hurling it at the demon, again with no effect.
Instead it focused on Chris, the only obstruction between it and its target. Chris stared at it, catching its foggy eyes, seeing them gleam purple and recognition hit him. “Tasha?” he asked, resting his stance momentarily.
Paige and Phoebe watched in wonder as the beast stopped, sniffing at the air. “Chris?” it asked, but the voice was not what they were expecting. Instead, the voice sounded like that of a young girl.
Slowly, the beast began to morph into something that would match the voice, a young girl dressed in simple jeans and T-shirt. “Chris?”
“It’s me, girlie-girl,” he greeted, reaching forward, resting a hand on her shoulder. The girl giggled at that and pulled Chris into a hug.
Piper groaned as she rolled over, pushing herself off the floor. Chris released the girl and went immediately to his mother’s side, helping her to her feet, sweeping her up into his arms when weight on her leg forced her to collapse again. “Leo!” he shouted, knowing his father was nearby.
Leo appeared, stepping immediately to Piper, who awoke slowly in Chris’s arms. “Can you stand?” Chris asked, moving to set her on her feet.
“What happened?” Piper asked, looking at the damage in the hallway.
“That’s what we’d like to know,” Paige said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Who’s your demon friend, Chris?”
Chris pulled Tasha to the edge of the hallway, holding her in front of him, her back to his chest. “This is Tasha, and she’s not a demon. She’s a witch.”
The three sisters finally got a better glimpse of the girl. She was younger than they initially thought, maybe only ten, eleven or twelve. Her hair was a deep muddy brown and hung in greasy wisps around her head, falling carelessly in her face. They gasped when they saw her face, gnarled and burned from the nose up, her eyes nothing but milky white pools. “Tasha, this is Paige, Piper and Phoebe Halliwell.”
Tasha laughed. “Charmed, I’m sure,” she joked, and even Paige managed to find the humor in it. Tasha’s, however, quickly disappeared. “But, if these are The Charmed Ones--" She suddenly gasped in horror. "I attacked The Charmed Ones?”
“You attacked Piper,” Chris pointed out.
“Oh, my God!” Tasha gasped, tears coming to her eyes. “I’m sorry, Chris. I’m so sorry.”
“Shh,” Chris whispered quickly. “We need to talk more in private,” and he tugged her into the still-open door to the bathroom, quickly closing and locking the door behind him. “They don’t know who I am,” he explained quickly and quietly. “Will you help me keep that secret?” and Tasha readily agreed.
“Where are the sisters?” Chris asked when he reentered the hallway with Tasha.
“Kitchen,” Leo answered quickly. “Figured there wasn’t going to be any sleep for awhile, so they’re making coffee.”
Chris nodded. “Tasha, this is Leo Wyatt, my father.”
“I thought they didn’t know who you are,” she whispered out of the side of her mouth.
“Only Leo does and I intend to have it stay that way.”
“Nice to meet you,” Leo said, reaching to take the blind girl’s hand.
“It’s an honor, Mr. Wyatt,” Tasha said awkwardly.
Leo laughed. “Just call me Leo. I don’t think anyone has ever called me Mr. Wyatt.” He turned to face Chris. “I heard what you said to Piper in there, about me. Thank you.”
“I didn’t do it for you,” Chris said flatly. “I did it for me. If I discover that I'm not the one behind Wyatt's turning, I would still like to to be conceived, so I can’t let her hate you. Not yet. Doesn’t mean I think you’re any less of an a$$hole.”
Leo led Tasha down the stairs while Chris found clothing to pull on. Her arrival couldn’t mean anything good.
“So, Tasha?” Chris asked, getting right down to business as he entered the kitchen. “What brings you to 2003?”
“Please, like you don’t know that one,” she scoffed. “He sent me.” Chris nodded. “I’m sorry, Chris,” she continued. “I didn’t know.”
“It’s okay, girlie-girl,” he said, wrapping an arm around her.
“Isn’t she a bit young for you?” Paige joked, seeing the obvious closeness between the two.
“Eww!” Tasha protested, pushing Chris away, turning to face Paige with unseeing eyes. “That’s just gross! He’s practically my father!”
“Your father?” Phoebe chimed in, a twinkle in her eyes. “Isn’t he a bit young for that?”
Chris just groaned at his aunts' strange sense of humor.
“He takes care of me. Takes care of all of us, really.” The sisters’ collective curiosity was piqued as they saw the newcomer as a way to finally shed some light on their mysterious whitelighter. “He’s the one who rescued me after my parents were killed. He saved my life.”
“How so?” Piper asked.
“Well,” the girl said excitedly. “We’d been running from demons for weeks, hiding out in some of the collapsed buildings by Center City. My mom was very powerful and the Lord wanted her killed. They finally had us trapped, cornered in an alleyway. We all fought, even though I was so small, but then I'd been fighting for years, even since the Lord took over. No big deal. Anyway, there were flashes of light: energy balls, fireballs and my parents’ own powers. My mom got run through with a spear of some kind and when my dad went to her side, he caught a wave of fireballs and got all burned up. So there I was, my parents dead on the ground and me all alone facing three giant demons!”
The sisters all were silent, confused by the way the girl spoke so casually and excitedly about her parents’ deaths, as if deaths of loved ones were something that happened every day.
“I shifted into a panther and hunched back," Tasha continued, "Ready to pounce. That’s when one of the demons fell and I saw Chris. He was standing there with this huge pipe in his hands and he just clubbed the sucker, right in the back of the head.”
“Your whitelighter to the rescue, huh?” Piper asked, oddly proud of Chris.
“What’s a whitelighter?” Tasha asked.
“Nothing, sweetie,” Chris responded softly. “Don’t worry about it.”
All three of the sisters looked at him with shock and concern painting their expressions, but Tasha went on with her story, not knowing there was anything wrong. “Anyway, there we were, toe-to-toe with the demons. Chris told me to run, screamed at me to go, but I wouldn’t. I lunged at one of the demons, scratching his eyes out with my claws. Chris threw the other one, tossing him out of the alley with a single hand. He went after him, impaling him with the pipe he’d used to knock the first one out, vanquishing him into flames.
“The first one, he woke up and saw me, still scratching at the dead demon. He threw an energy ball before I realized it. Next thing I remember is hearing Chris’s voice tell me everything was going to be all right as he bandaged my face up.”
“Why didn’t you get her a healer?” Piper asked
“I told you,” Chris replied tiredly. “There are no healers in the future.”
“Anyway,” Tasha said, bringing the attention back to her. “Chris took me to the Cavern. I’ve been living there since.”
“What’s the Cavern?” Phoebe asked.
“It’s where we all live, everyone who resists the Lord. It’s a sanctuary for witches and demons and other magical folk who don’t want to do what the Lord says. Chris is in charge. He takes care of us. He makes sure we get food and he makes sure the Lord can’t find us. And he goes out to find others, like he found me. Well, he did until he left a few months ago. Then we all got captured,” she shrugged as if it was no big deal. “You got anything to eat?”
“Sure,” Piper responded. “What would you like?”
“Whatever you have will be fine,” she answered easily.
Piper dug into the cabinet, finding a box of cookies. She put them out on a small plate and poured a glass of milk for the girl. Piper placed the glass in her hand first.
Tasha took a sip. “Milk,” she sighed happily. "And it’s so cold.” She picked up a cookie off the plate and bit into it absently, spitting it out into her hand by surprise. The sisters watched her face go from surprise to a happy smile and she took it back into her mouth sloppily. “That’s so good,” she said. “What is it?”
“Chocolate-chip cookie,” Piper answered flatly, still confused by the girl’s enthusiasm.
“It’s good,” Tasha said around a mouthful of cookie.
Chris shook away the tears he felt after seeing Tasha so awed by such simple pleasures. “Why are you here?” he had to ask her.
“I told you. He sent me.”
“Why?” Chris asked.
“To kill the evil witch that's holding you hostage.”
Chris shook his head sadly. “That’s what Bianca meant,” he said to himself.
But Piper overheard him. “What she meant by what?”
“She said that if I didn’t go back with her, others would be sent back, not to take me to him, but to kill me and those around me.”
“What?” Leo asked, confused. “That’s silly. Why would he send allies back for you? As soon as they realize what they’re doing, they’ll be on our side. Soon we’ll have a little army back here in this time.”
“No,” Chris said sadly. “They’ll be under a spell. He’ll make me kill off my own people one by one.” Chris rubbed tiredly at his eyes.
“Then, why isn’t Tasha under a spell?” Phoebe asked.
Tasha laughed. “I might have been. But, when I change forms, spells cast on me in one form disappear. Not many people know that.”
“Bianca was the first to come back, but she obviously won’t be the last,” Chris said to himself.
“Bianca’s here?” Tasha asked excitedly. “Where?”
Chris stepped forward, resting a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Bianca’s dead, sweetie,” he told her softly.
Phoebe felt the pang in her chest that Chris let through his shield and the full-out despair from the girl in his arms. “I’m sorry, Chris,” Phoebe said. “I know how you felt about her.” Chris nodded mutely, then quickly changed the subject. “Did you make up the couch yet?”
Piper nodded and watched how the young man swept the girl up into his arms, carrying her into the living room, tucking her tenderly beneath the thick blankets. “Sleep tight, girlie-girl.”
Chris stepped back into the kitchen, going immediately to the coffee pot, pouring himself a huge cup, chugging like it were Gatorade and he’d just run a marathon. He poured himself a second cup and grabbed one of the abandoned cookies. “I’ll see you all in the morning,” he said dully. “I have work to do.”
He headed back towards the staircase. “Wait a minute!” Piper called after him. “You have some explaining to do.”
“I—“
“Don’t tell me you can’t because of future consequences!” Piper shouted. “Why are there no healers? Why doesn’t a young witch, obviously well versed in her powers, not know what a whitelighter is? Especially when she obviously knows you so well?”
“I can’t answer that,” Chris said dully.
“Chris,” Leo said softly. “You have to tell them something. Maybe not everything, but something.”
Chris seemed to think about it for a long moment before nodding. “Whitelighters are the chief healers. They always have been. Well, in the future, they’re all dead. It took a year for them all to be hunted, but they were all killed. Next on his list were the Elders, but when I went into the past, he must've pushed me to the top of the list.”
“All of the whitelighters are dead?” Piper asked, shocked by the new information.
“All of them,” Chris confirmed. “At least all of the full-blooded ones. A few of us half-bloods have managed to survive.”
“Us? I don’t—“
“She doesn’t even know what a whitelighter is because I’m not really a whitelighter,” Chris sighed. “I’m a witch.”
“But you orb,” Phoebe pointed out.
“All right,” Chris conceded. “Half-witch, half-whitelighter. Like you, Paige. But I was raised as a witch. My mother taught me the Craft. There are very few with any whitelighter blood left, and even fewer who actually have the power to heal, something I can't do which might be why I've survived as long as I have. And those who do, well, they have their hands full or are imprisoned.”
“Imprisoned?” Piper asked.
“I think that’s enough information for today. Keep an eye on Tasha. There will be another sent here to attack when he realizes she failed.”
“Who is ‘he’?” Paige asked.
Chris shook his head, refusing to answer.
“It’s Wyatt, isn’t it?” Piper asked, pleading with Chris for answers. “It’s Wyatt who’s doing all of this. Who’s turned the world into some MadMax movie, who’s—“
“Yes,” Chris affirmed quietly. “And I’m going to turn it back.”
Before anyone could ask any more questions, he’d jogged up the stairs to the attic.