Chapter Text
Chris V
Chris saw warm, brown eyes as he woke. The first few blinks were a flare of white light that gradually dimmed as he closed and opened his eyes. Monochrome blobs solidified into familiar shapes, including his mother.
Piper pulled back slightly as she recognized Chris was awake. Her face was grim, but given his and the house’s condition, he recognized the look for what it was: worry.
The thought led his brain down a dangerous path. First, he tried to recall what made her worry, which brought to mind his injury, which brought to mind nothing, because he shoved those memories, far, far away in a steel-lined vault. Even just the residual trace of the recollection pushed his heart to a break-neck speed. He forced himself back into the present.
He was in the half of the sun room that hadn’t been in the afarit’s warpath, lying on a couch, with Piper kneeling near his head. “Go back to sleep,” she urged gently. Her hands reached forward to run through his hair, but then hung in the air like she’d thought better of it.
He grumbled out a reply that sounded like gravel to his ears. “Is the afarit gone?”
Piper helped him up with a firm hand on his back, and kept her hands around his shoulders when his head swam. Now that he had a better view, he realized he wasn’t alone. Henry helped Melinda pull off her boot, and Mark and Lacie appeared catatonic on a bed of blankets and couch cushions. Pru stared at her hands as if there was nothing else in the room. Wyatt and Paige were no where to be found.
“Junior vanquished the afarit. Your innocents haven’t woken up yet.”
Chris shifted his attention to Henry, moving as little as possible. “Good job, man.”
Henry gave him a grunt of a reply, too focused on his task to speak properly. Although Chris had no idea why Henry found the boot so important, Chris shifted his fingers down a fraction, assisting with his power.
“Phoebe’s whipping up something to help Pru and Paige and Wyatt went to ask the Elders if there is anything we are supposed to be doing with… Mark and Lacie, was it?”
Chris nodded. Beside him, Melinda hissed. Henry’s hands were hovering now over the top of her sock. She muttered a curse every time he looked to pull the sock down. Chris left them to their devices.
Pru finally pulled her attention from her hands. “How do we explain this to them?”
“Do we have to?” wondered Henry, slowing working the sock down Melinda’s ankle.
“What if they remember?” proposed Pru. “Even just pieces. They shattered doors and conjured fire.”
Chris didn’t bother to ask if the book had mentioned if hosts remembered after the fact. If it had, Pru would have mentioned it, and if it didn’t, it was probably one of the many facets his aunt and brother were currently attempting to pry out of the notoriously tight-lipped Elders.
Piper crossed her arms. “In the past, we’ve kept the secret as long as possible. But, if it’s better for their wellbeing, we’ll explain things.”
Melinda mimicked the pose, and turned her head away with a huff. “I don’t really care what’s best for them right now.”
She received admonishment from Pru and only dug her jaw in deeper. “They’re innocent, I get it,” Melinda spat. “Forgive me if that doesn’t mean I want to look at them right now.”
Instead of chastising, Piper moved to her daughter’s side. She tilted Melinda’s face up and to the left, softly running her thumb over the exposed bruise on Melinda’s jaw. Henry took advantage of the distraction and whipped off the remainder of the sock. The foot beneath was almost unrecognizable, purple to the ankle and so swollen only the tips of her toes could be identified from the mound of bruised flesh. Henry hovered his glowing hands over the mass and slowly healed the damage.
Any further discussion was halted by the dinging of the doorbell. The Halliwells looked at each other.
“Were you expecting company?” asked Junior.
“No.”
“Nice of them to ring the doorbell when there isn’t a door to knock on.”
Pru stood up. “I’ll see who it is.” She returned in moments, with a startled Olivia trailing behind. Olivia’s eyes widened when she caught sight of Chris.
Piper quickly froze the scene. Phoebe arrived as Olivia froze, likely drawn by the noise. She passed a cloth to Pru, who wordlessly spread the contained goo over her hands in clumsy movements.
“Who’s this?” asked Piper.
Chris explained Oliva’s presence quickly and theorized she’d tracked Mark down again using his phone. When he was done, Phoebe nodded. “She loves him.”
Chris wasn’t comforted. He’d kept Olivia and Lacie away from Mark as much as possible (Olivia more of a success than Lacie), but she’d still seen enough. How was she going to reconcile the man she knew as her husband with the monster that almost threw her across a room? What damage had the afarit rendered to their relationship, especially if Mark remembered nothing?
He thought fast, came to a conclusion, and prepared himself to accept the consequences.
Piper unfroze the scene at his request and he moved to Olivia’s side.
“What happened to your hair?” asked Olivia immediately.
Clueless, Chris brought his hand to his head and brushed against his scalp. The fire must have burnt his hair off, which explained the sudden draft at his temple. He pushed the thought aside for a calmer moment.
Chris ignored the question. “Sorry I haven’t kept you up to date,” he began, forming a story as he spoke. “I brought Mark and Lacie here. My dad is a doctor and he’s waiting on some tests yet, but he’s sure Mark was dosed with something that triggered a dissociative rage.”
“He was drugged?” gasped Olivia.
Chris nodded. The story was close enough to the truth, so he didn’t feel bad for the lie. “He’s not the first my dad’s seen. I guess there have been a few in the past couple of months.”
Olivia’s confusion turned to horror. She spoke quickly and passionately about setting up programs and community watches to address the problem.
Piper offered to make Olivia a cup of coffee while they waited for the “sedative” to disperse from Mark and Lacie’s systems. When the two finally awoke twenty minutes later, they woke entirely confused, their last memories of some innocuous event far away from the Manor. The fake story went through a retelling, and Chris felt impatience bleed into his compassion.
The trio wanted details, which Chris couldn’t give, and they wanted to meet the doctor who saved Mark, which obviously wouldn’t be possible. Leo’s medical expertise was decades old and limited to battlefield medicine. No way he’d be able to convince two modern-day people in the medical profession, despite a blank slate in their memories that left them with little choice but to accept the explanation.
The less information Chris gave, the lesser chance of that information being the future bullet of his family’s undoing. So, he ushered them out the (broken, dislodged) door and out of his family’s life, none the wise of what truly had occurred.
The family visibly relaxed once they were alone. Henry resumed his work on Melinda’s foot and Wyatt and Paige orbed in with utterances of “Finally!” They traded information, very little than what they knew hours previous, and closed the chapter of the afarit page.
Next came the aftermath.
“What do you even tell the insurance company?” asked Paige, surveying the full extent of the damage now that the dust and ash had settled. “There was an earthquake that was on fire?”
Piper laughed sardonically. “Hah! This stays in-house. My husband has gotten very good at home repair and restoration over the years, and I’m no slouch at reupholstering.”
“We’ll help, Aunt Piper,” volunteered Henry.
Piper shot him a wide smile. “Leo would love the help. You might even be able to teach him a thing or two.”
Her foot finally whole again, Melinda tentatively stood up. From the centre of the room, she asked, “Can’t we just cast a spell?”
“Personal gain,” responded Chris.
“Bullshit,” she shot back. “It’s just restoring the house to its previous state before an afarit torched the place.”
Paige hummed. “She’s not wrong.”
Chris gaped at her, and Paige gave him a thin smile. “It’s Piper’s decision,” declared Paige.
Piper thought for a moment. “I’ll discuss it with Leo. See what he thinks. For now, let’s just make the place not a safety hazard.”
Chris found himself forced into the “Time-Out Chair” as Melinda called it, having water and fruit forced into his hands at uneven intervals. Three separate people offered him aloe lotion, just in case. He quickly realized that as much of a chore cleanup was, having to watch cleanup was even worse. Before long, boredom fueled his every move and he found himself imagining movement in the shadows.
So, as he glanced out the windows, he made himself blink and refocus. The view remained the same. Silently, he stood, and propped open the nearest window. He held his hand out, palm upwards to catch the falling flakes. They melted on his palm immediately, but more followed. When Chris pulled his hand back inside, it cupped enough water to soak the cuff of his shirt.
He stared back at the white flakes floating to the ground, and couldn’t help the incredulous question that slipped from his lips.
“Is that snow?”