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Chapter Text

For as long as Phoebe could remember, Piper had been an unstoppable force of nature. True, she’d settled comfortably into the mediating middle sister role for much of her life, but as she worked through her grief for their older sister Prue, Piper assumed the mantle of Head Bitch in Charge. Phoebe imagined there were capital letters involved and everything. Most of the time, Phoebe didn’t mind. Sometimes she could even let herself pretend that Prue was still alive and issuing orders to everyone around her, stubbornly refusing to give an inch on any position she took. That same resolute determination had also gotten the Charmed Ones out of a number of battles that they might not have escaped otherwise.

But right about now, Phoebe was one more snappy remark shy of writing a spell that would force that stubbornness right out of her sister.

She watched, deeply frustrated, as Piper continued gathering up bottles of potion ingredients despite Phoebe’s increasingly vocal pleas for her to stop. At seven months pregnant, Piper was already having trouble moving around on her own. Life as a Charmed One was dangerous enough without her running the additional risk of going on demon hunts. Even Chris’s fussing, as simultaneously annoying and hilarious as Phoebe found it, wasn’t enough to deter Piper. “I didn’t just sit around knitting booties when I was pregnant with Wyatt, so I’m not gonna do it now with Chris, either,” she’d griped at one point before pushing her way through the human barrier Phoebe and Chris had both made in the attic doorway. “Besides,” she reasoned, “Chris is still here, so obviously nothing happens to me while I’m pregnant.”

“The past can change, Piper,” Phoebe scolded, not even needing to look beside her to know Chris was rolling his eyes so hard he could practically see the back of his skull. “Otherwise, he wouldn’t even be here.”

“Hi, remember me? Can you two quit talking like I’m not even here?” Chris whined, offended, only to have both sisters wheel on him.

“Hey. You watch how you talk to us, young man,” Piper ordered with a firm nod. Chris looked uneasily between the two of them before shrugging an apology and muttering something about going to find Paige and orbing out of the attic. “And you.” Phoebe turned back to face Piper, expression going perfectly innocent. “You are not my babysitter.”

“No, but as one of your midwives, I think –”

“Whoa,” Piper interrupted, eyes bulging as she nearly dropped an entire handful of wormwood root into the cauldron. “What part of ‘I want a real hospital with real doctors and lots and lots of real drugs’ don’t you get? ‘Cause I can make a chart, if you need one.”

“Oh, come on. You had a home birth last time—”

“Not by choice!”

“And it turned out fine.”

Piper’s eyes narrowed to dangerously thin slits. “Phoebe, I gave birth to my child on the dining room table.”

“Well . . . well, yeah, but . . .” Phoebe trailed off, hands flapping helplessly while her mind raced with a counterpoint. Oh, right. “Hey, that brings up another good point: Wyatt orbed when he was born, remember?” Piper’s eyes somehow narrowed farther; uh, yeah, dumb question. She remembered. “Do you really want to explain that to a doctor when he tries to deliver Chris?”

“So I’ll . . . I don’t know, cast an anti-orbing spell before going into labor and then just reverse it once Chris is born. Is there a point to any of this?”

“Yes,” Phoebe answered through gritted teeth, exasperated. “My point is that . . . actually, it’s not related to the whole midwife thing, which I really think you should reconsider, by the way. Before you got me sidetracked, I was trying to make you understand what a very, very, very bad idea it is for you to keep going after demons.” Piper glanced up, supremely annoyed, and Phoebe hurried on before Piper could speak. “No, listen. You’re under a lot of stress right now, a lot more even than last time. Now you have to take care of Wyatt, you’re worried about whatever it is that gets to him in Chris’s future, you’ve got your adult son hanging around being a raging paranoid, Paige and I are trying to live our own lives away from the Manor, and let’s not even get started about Leo.”

“No, let’s not,” Piper agreed while shooting another weary look at Phoebe. The younger sister, in turn, wrapped her arm around Piper’s shoulders and led her over to one of the old couches stashed in the attic.

“Give yourself a break, Piper. That’s all I’m saying. Between Paige, Chris, and me, we can pretty much handle anything. If we get into trouble or we absolutely need the Power of Three, we’ll let you know. Until then? You, missy, are officially on wiccan sabbatical.”

Having no other response, Piper blew a raspberry in obvious distaste, leading Phoebe to snicker and reach over to pat her sister’s bulging stomach, earning herself another scornful glare in the process.

“And if she tries to get by us, mini-Chris, you go right on ahead and orb her back to safety.”

“I don’t think he has any powers yet.”

“Maybe not, but he could—”

Phoebe’s words cut off abruptly as she found herself thrown into a terrifyingly vivid premonition. A young man dangled from the ceiling, suspended by his arms pulled taut over his head and held in place by rusted shackles around his wrists. His bare upper body was streaked with blood, skin mottled with ugly gashes and bruises, and his plain black trousers hung in tatters from his too-prominent hips. His already dark hair was matted with blood and plastered to his head. From the vision’s perspective, Phoebe could only see the boy from behind; that was more than enough to show her the deep gouges racing across his back, evidence of whiplashing both old and new.

Unable to pull out of the vision, Phoebe pressed on, her empathic ability kicking in to make her feel the pain in addition to simply noticing it. It wasn’t all physical. Yes, she could feel broken bones; her wrists ached in phantom pains from the shackles, and her breathing grew labored from the pressure of who knew how many broken ribs. The cuts ached enough on their own, made worse when beads of sweat rolled into the wounds to burn like acid. But more than that, there was an overwhelming sense of fear, despair, and an intense combination of emotions that was somehow both the most enduring love and the most sincere hate at once. Unbidden, Cole’s face flashed before her eyes, a ghostly image that disappeared as quickly as it came.

Gasping, Phoebe fell back against the couch, trembling violently and blinking rapidly in an effort to remind herself that she was safe. Dimly, as though trapped underwater, she heard Piper’s voice calling to her.

“Phoebe?” Piper asked worriedly, her expression betraying every bit of fear coursing through her. “Phoebe, what the hell just happened?”

“I . . . I don’t know,” Phoebe breathed when she was finally able to speak again, her words coming out in choking gasps for air. “I was fine, and then I just, I had a premonition . . .”

“While touching me,” Piper supplied warily, eyes widening. “Oh, God. Chris.”

“No, no, no, it wasn’t – I don’t think so,” Phoebe hastened to reassure her sister, swallowing hard past the bile she could feel in her throat even when she wasn’t sure if it was hers or if it belonged to the person in her vision. She wasn’t at all certain, but she forced a convincingly brave face for Piper’s benefit. “I think I just saw one of Chris’s charges.”

“What? That’s ridiculous. He’s not a full Whitelighter, he doesn’t have charges.”

“That’s not true. Leo said he had that other one a few months ago. What was her name? Natalie?”

Clearly still dubious, Piper pursed her lips and scowled, but eventually relented enough to add, “If you saw something happen to one of the boys, I swear to God, Phoebe, you’d better tell me.”

“If I did, I would,” Phoebe answered with a faint smile she didn’t especially feel. That much, at least, was true. She had received random premonitions before, only loosely related (if at all) to whatever she happened to be touching at the time. Maybe her powers were growing. Whatever it was, she was going to get to the bottom of it – and soon.

“Why don’t you finish up that vanquishing potion and then go hang out in the den with Wyatt, have a movie date?” Phoebe offered with false cheerfulness. “I’ll go help Paige and Chris with the Vhuli demons, we’ll figure out what’s going on with that premonition, and then we’ll fill you in on what we find out, okay?”

“You had so better not be blowing me off.”

“Never.” Phoebe allowed a much more honest smile this time as she leaned over to press a quick kiss to the side of Piper’s head and then got up to exit the attic as quickly as she could without rousing suspicion. Still dazed and shaking with frayed nerves, she headed downstairs to the kitchen, mindlessly peeling an orange while she leaned against the counter and fought the urge to replay the premonition in her mind, as though it wasn’t already burned into her psyche.

“Hey. Any luck talking some sense into Piper?”

Phoebe jumped, startled when Chris and Paige unexpectedly orbed into the kitchen. “Holy—am I really the only person in this house who still uses the door?” To his credit, Chris at least pretended to look slightly apologetic; Paige just nodded in apparent agreement without a trace of irony. “And you know what? It wouldn’t kill you to call her Mom.”

“This is all very exciting and everything, but I can listen to you two bitch at each other any time I want. Is that all you wanted? ‘Cause, uh, that’s nice for you, but I’m having dinner with Richard tonight and—”

“Cancel,” Chris interrupted, barely even glancing at Paige and thereby missing the tremendously offended look she gave him in return. “You’ve got more important things to worry about right now.”

“Oh, right. Mystery demon number . . . what is it now? Five hundred and sixty-two?”

Chris shot a withering glare at Paige, looking like nothing so much as the perfect mixture of Piper and Prue, making Phoebe wonder for the millionth time how none of them had figured him out earlier. There was so much of each of them in him, from Prue’s ambition and work ethic, Piper’s sarcasm and need to fix everything, Paige’s youthful optimism and creativity, even Phoebe’s own fierce devotion to her family and willingness to sacrifice everything for her loved ones.

“Funny. Phoebe . . .?” Chris led, clearly wanting to change the subject. Phoebe whipped back around to face him, face blank enough to prompt an impatient sigh. “Piper. Mom,” he corrected, rolling his eyes at himself when he caught the disapproving look on Phoebe’s face. “Where are we with getting her to sit this one out?”

“Yeah, about that. Chris, can we talk?”

“Later. I can’t deal with playing Charmed One pitch-hitter while having to worry about something happening to Mom and the mini-me, too.” Chris pulled up short then, mouth working silently for a second or two as his eyes darted from one aunt to the other. “Uh, not that I want anything to happen to you guys either, obviously. Just. You know.”

“I think I got through to her,” Phoebe answered at last, much to Chris’s relief. “And if I didn’t, well, if you and Paige take off without her, she can’t really tag along anyway, right?”

“Unless she calls for Leo,” Paige pointed out helpfully, earning herself a reproachful look from the other two. “What? I mean, they are technically still married, right?”

“No calling Leo. Piper doesn’t want him to know about the . . . rutabaga.”

“The what?” Chris asked, brow creasing, earning dismissive hand waves from both women. Not surprisingly, he remained confused. “No, seriously. Did you just call me a vegetable?”

“Long story. Paige, why don’t you go upstairs and help out with the potion? I need to have a little chat with our darling nephew here.”

“That’s creepy,” Chris and Paige answered as one, giving each other vaguely amused looks before Paige disappeared in a blue and white cloud of orbs and ascended out of view.

No sooner had she disappeared than Phoebe grabbed onto Chris’s shirt sleeve, leading him out onto the sun porch. He sat down on the wicker loveseat and watched as she paced in a tight, nervous line, back and forth, back and forth.

“Wanna tell me what’s going on?”

Phoebe stopped suddenly and turned on him, her face drawn and her hands carefully folded in on themselves to keep him from noticing that she’d been chewing on her nails. That was another shared personality trait she should have picked up in him long before she did. “Do you have any other charges?”

“Why? You think I’m cheating on you guys?” Chris asked with a faint hint of a smirk tugging at his lips. “Trust me. You’re more than enough for me to handle.”

Tipping her head to the side, Phoebe pursed her lips and regarded Chris with a wrinkled nose. “Okay, now that’s creepy. And totally not what I meant. No, I just – I got a premonition while you were gone.”

All traces of humor immediately vanished from Chris’s face, and it was back to business as usual. “What? When? Did you see a demon?”

“I don’t think so. Someone—a man—was being tortured. It looked like it was in some kind of, I don’t know, some kind of dungeon or something. It was bad. Like, really bad.” Phoebe took a steadying breath, and it wasn’t lost on her how Chris’s face darkened considerably with every word that left her lips. “Maybe it sounds cold, but I’d rather think it was someone else and not you.”

Something intense and unmistakably dangerous flashed through Chris’s eyes, alarming Phoebe into taking an involuntary step backwards. “It probably is.”

“And what if it’s not?”

“Then we’ll deal with it later.”

“Chris, this is important!”

“Yeah, well, so is going after those demons. They could be—”

“The ones who get to Wyatt,” Phoebe cut him off, chasing him as he headed toward the stairs to get away from the discussion. “Chris. Chris, look at me. You can’t keep running yourself ragged like this. You’re so focused on saving Wyatt, and I respect that. I really do. I’d do anything for my sisters, so I get where you’re coming from. But you have to take care of yourself, too. You’re the future’s last best hope, remember?” she asked, purposefully appealing to his martyr side that was such an integral part of his mother’s personality and something he appeared to have inherited in full.

“Besides,” she continued now that she had Chris on the defensive, the textbook definition of deer-in-headlights as he stared at her like he didn’t know who she was or what she was saying. Maybe this was the first time in a long time, possibly ever, that anyone had ever given him permission to relax or at least put his own needs first, and that was just too depressing to even consider. What had happened in the future, she wondered? Where were his parents? Where was she? Paige? Her father? Where had anyone been when this young man, this boy, had needed them? When had they failed him?

“I love Wyatt and all of us are grateful for what you’re doing, but you’re my nephew, too. And you can ask Piper: I seem to get really protective of her kids,” Phoebe said quietly, reaching up to cup the side of Chris’s face and brush her thumb over his cheek. For a moment, Chris seemed to shift, leaning ever so imperceptibly into her touch. There was another wave of darkness that passed over his face, clouding his normally vibrant green eyes – Prue’s eyes, Phoebe noticed – and for the briefest of seconds Phoebe thought he was actually going to open up to her.

“I’m gonna go check on Piper and Paige.”

Before she could protest, Chris orbed away and left Phoebe grasping air the way she so often did anytime she tried to reach her taciturn nephew.

Chapter Text

            “Remind me to wear old clothes next time we go after these guys again.” 

            Phoebe grinned to herself, though she quickly straightened her face into neutrality when Paige looked at her. The vanquish had gone well enough, but to say things had gotten messy was a bit of an understatement. As they knew now, Vhuli demons were the sort to explode when vanquished, a rather unfortunate event on its own. But of course, they had to explode in thick globs of purple goo that resembled, as Paige had so eloquently put it, “Barney boogers.” When Chris wordlessly warned Phoebe off and pulled her out of the path of one such exploding booger demon, she realized that he must have known what happened when the demons were vanquished. She chose not to call him out on it, but part of her couldn’t help but feel the gesture had been the faintest of thank-yous for expressing her concern for him earlier in the evening. 

            “Done. And one of us definitely needs to add that part about the purple goo to the entry in the Book.” 

            Paige nodded morosely, face screwing up in disgust as she peeled her top shirt off. She’d decided to layer, but that didn’t seem to have done her any good. “Are you kidding me?” She plucked at the second tank top, frowning to see that it was also damp and stained with lilac splotches. 

            Wyatt in tow, Piper announced her presence with a complaint as she descended the stairs. “My God, what is that smell?” She cast a suspicious eye toward her son, but as soon as she noticed her sisters, she simply raised her eyebrows and offered that same tiny almost-grin that Phoebe now realized she’d seen so often on Chris. “Ah. Never mind.” 

            “Paige took a direct hit,” Phoebe explained rather needlessly, though she did at least manage not to chuckle this time. 

            “Way to take one for the team, sis.” 

            “Yeah, yeah.” 

            “Hey, have you ever thought about dyeing your hair purple?” 

            Paige glared for a long while before blowing an exasperated puff of air up to push her bangs off her forehead. “Well, it’s been fun, but I’m gonna go try to wash this crap off before my date.” She looked down at herself again. “Ugh.” 

            “Make sure you clean up this time!” Piper called after Paige as she jogged up the steps toward the bathroom. “I almost never got all that red dye out of the sink last time.” She looked back at Phoebe then, eyebrows arched to find that her younger sister didn’t seem to have any trace of the purple demon guts on her. Lucky her. 

            “Where’s Chris?” Piper asked, glancing worriedly at the door behind Phoebe. He should have been there with a post-battle review, critiquing their every move and lecturing them about not doing something or other right. It was tedious and endlessly frustrating, but she had to admit that he knew them well enough to know exactly what their strengths and weaknesses were, and he knew how to coach them into using their powers to their full advantage. At the very least, he should have shown up to join the impromptu roast of his youngest aunt, who’d never shied away from antagonizing him when he screwed up. 

Suddenly recalling Phoebe’s unexplained premonition, Piper’s back straightened and her eyes widened fearfully. “He’s okay, isn’t he?” 

            “Yeah, he’s fine, relax. He said he’ll be at P3 if we need him. Something about another lead he’s working on.” 

            “Again? I swear, that boy is going to run himself right into the ground. Do you think he hates me?” Piper segued awkwardly, brows knitting, and Phoebe would have been shocked if not for Piper’s seeming inability to accept that she was a good mother, no matter how many times everyone else tried to reassure her. 

            “Of course not. Why would you think that?” 

            Piper rolled her eyes. “Oh, I don’t know. The fact that he won’t call me Mom, he’d rather stay at the club when I’ve told him over and over that he’s more than welcome to stay here, and . . . I don’t know, Phoebe. From the day he first showed up, it’s like he’s blamed me for the fact his world sucks, but he won’t tell me why or what I can do to fix it or even help, and—” 

            “You’re babbling.” 

            “Yeah.” 

            Phoebe gave her older sister a sympathetic half-hug. “Honey, don’t take it personally. Either Chris hates everyone or he’s just doing whatever he can to keep his sanity. It can’t be easy living in a past where you’re still just a fetus.” She paused, staring off into the distance. “In fact, no, it’s not. Trust me.” 

            “But we’ve been in the past and I never had a problem thinking of Mom as Mom and Grams as Grams.” 

            “And maybe he does think of us that way, Piper. But you have to remember, we weren’t there for months and dealing with the fact that we hadn’t even been conceived yet. Besides, who knows what kind of world he came from? You said he told you himself that families don’t even exist in his time. Maybe he honestly just doesn’t know how to act around us.” 

            “Maybe,” Piper allowed, shifting Wyatt to her other hip. “Or maybe he just hates me.” 

            “Shush. You’re just looking for stuff to worry about now.” 

            Piper looked up from where she stood fussing with Wyatt, almost guilty. “Maybe.” 

            “So just chill already, Chicken Little. If he hated you, you’d know. I’m pretty sure I’d feel it, too.” 

            Defeated, Piper heaved a long-suffering sigh and then started toward the kitchen. “I’m fixing Wyatt a snack. Do you want anything?” 

            “No, thanks. I’m gonna hitch a ride with Paige and grab something later.” 

            “Where are you going? Off to see Jason?” Piper teased, but her only answer came in the form of the same raspberry she’d blown at Phoebe that afternoon. 

            As Phoebe mounted the stairs, without demons and her sisters occupying her thoughts, she found her mind calling up disturbing images of a young man, chained up and helpless, beaten, but something in the defiant set of his shoulders made her stomach churn. It wasn’t Chris. She couldn’t allow herself to think that. It was a future charge of his, plain and simple. Though she had only seen the victim from behind, he looked to be in his late teens or early twenties – Chris’s age, she reminded herself with despair – but that didn’t make sense. She could believe it if she had touched adult Chris, but the baby still in Piper’s womb? Phoebe had never gotten a premonition from so far in the future. Unless her powers were evolving . . . no. She’d just received her empathic ability. Surely she wasn’t due for another power boost so soon? Especially not when Piper and Paige hadn’t received theirs yet, too? 

            Chewing softly at her bottom lip, she paused outside the bathroom and tapped her knuckles against the door. “Hey, how’s it going in there, Po?” 

            There was a pause during which Phoebe could clearly imagine Paige scrunching her face up in confusion as she stared at her reflection. “Huh?” 

            “Po. You know, the purple Teletubby. Also starts with a P, so I thought it was appropriate. Forget it.” 

            “Ha ha. Ha. Do you hear me laughing?” Paige yanked the door open, revealing that she’d stripped down to her underwear while her clothes were soaking in a tub full of purple water. “I have this junk in places no demon has gone before.”

            “That’s disgusting.” 

            “Tell me about it.” Paige went back to watching herself in the mirror, angrily scrubbing at her hair with a towel. “Oh, and it’s Tinky Winky.” Catching Phoebe’s puzzled reflection, Paige shrugged and explained, “He’s the purple one. Po’s red. What? Don’t judge me. I watched it with Wyatt once.” 

            Completely at a loss, Phoebe had no other response but to snort and shake her head in quiet disbelief. She waited until Paige bent over the sink to lean in close to the mirror and inspect her scalp for any lingering purple hue before she spoke again. “I was wondering, when you take off, would you care to drop me off at Magic School?” 

            “Magic School? Lady, there are way better places to spend your Friday nights.” She quirked an eyebrow at Phoebe’s mirror image. “Sure you don’t wanna make a Hong Kong booty call?” 

            “Jason’s at a business conference in Berlin all week, actually. And no, you sleaze,” she laughed, swatting playfully at Paige’s arm. “I need to do some research.” 

            “On . . .?” 

            “Well, while Chris is off researching on his own, I thought I could help him.” She wasn’t lying, exactly, and though Paige narrowed her eyes as if trying to figure out Phoebe’s secret, she quickly let it pass without scrutiny. 

            “Need me to stick around and help?” 

            “No, no, I’m fine. You go ahead with your date with Richard. I’ll give you a buzz if I can’t get a hold of Chris for a ride back home.” 

            “You know me, Paige’s Cosmic Taxi Service,” Paige chirped, striking a pose and then dropping the towel onto the counter. “I think I got it all.” 

            “Looks like it.” 

            “Awesome. Let me take a quick shower and we’ll motor.”

 ~~~

            Phoebe didn’t think she’d ever get used to wandering through Magic School, meandering through its endless halls and never finding anything in the same place twice. She’d never liked school in the first place; being lost in a hopeless maze of classrooms was one of her most persistent nightmares, and yet here she was, wandering through one hall and into another for over half an hour. 

            “Would you stop flying away already? I need to talk to you!” she cried out desperately into empty air, and had she been anywhere else, she might have feared for her sanity. As it was, it seemed entirely rational that she was yelling at a hawk that she’d catch a glimpse of here and there just long enough to lead her around another corner and into another leg of the chase. 

            Suddenly, she turned yet another corner and found the hawk standing on the ground, regarding her calmly with dark eyes. Behind it was a dark opening into what appeared to be a cavern of some sort, and Phoebe breathed a quiet sigh of relief. 

            “I can’t believe that worked,” she muttered as she approached the hawk, letting it fly ahead of her into the cave. She squinted as her eyes adjusted to the darkness broken only by the fire in the middle of the “room,” if it could be called that. The hawk perched on one side of the fire, and through the flames Phoebe could see it flicker and then morph into a familiar young woman. 

            “Phoebe. Nice of you to visit.” 

            “Hi, Enola,” Phoebe greeted as cheerfully as she could as she walked over toward the fire, not sitting until her host beckoned her to do so. “Is that thing with the animals really necessary?” 

            Enola looked up with raised eyebrows, coolly regarding Phoebe with a mixture of amusement and irritation. “I do not choose what spirit form others see. Their thoughts are responsible for that. Please, have a seat.” 

            Phoebe nodded and sat down across from Enola, folding her legs beneath her and watching with interest as Enola slowly dropped various ingredients into the pot hanging over the fire pit. “So what’s a hawk mean?” 

            “The hawk is a messenger. A visionary guide, if you will,” Enola explained, her face temporarily obscured by a puff of smoke that flared from the pot when she tossed in a handful of small brown seeds. “In many tribes, it is a guardian symbol. You’re worried about someone close to you.” When Phoebe nodded mutely, Enola glanced down at the pot as she stirred its contents. “And your own visions are not helping you?” 

            “They’re kinda what got me into this mess in the first place. I saw something that I can’t make much sense out of. I know it has something to do with a family member, but he won’t tell me anything.” 

            “You’re talking about the boy who was here last time.” 

            Phoebe looked up in alarm. “How did you . . .?” 

            “I sensed something . . . unusual. There is a great darkness around him. He has a pure heart, but his mind and emotions are very shadowed.” She raised her head to meet Phoebe’s gaze once more. “And he has some attachment to you.” 

            “Well, yeah, we’re family.” 

            “More than that. I mean spiritually. He’s come to me before, to see if I could help him with his own quest.” 

            “Did you?” 

            Enola shrugged thin but strong shoulders. “He was unwilling to open himself completely to the visions. I suppose I knew that would happen, considering he came to me following a panther. Intensely protective, but very guarded and cautious, always putting one mask on top of another to keep their thoughts and motives to themselves. My visitors don’t have to be honest with me, but they need to be honest with themselves for the visions to show them what they need.” 

            Phoebe could feel her head beginning to throb already; she really should have taken a couple aspirin before embarking on another one of these riddle-filled vision quests. “So basically you’re telling me that you can’t help me.” 

            “Not at all. I can help you recover your own vision and explore it further. Whether that will tell you anything more about the boy or not, I can’t say. Give me your hand.” With only a second’s hesitation, Phoebe reached out to rest her palm atop the other woman’s, both of them hovering low enough over the fire to feel the intense heat of the flames so close to the skin. “Now. Pour this into the pot – slowly – and think back on your premonition.” She pressed a small jar of a foul-smelling black liquid into Phoebe’s other hand, nodding for her to continue despite Phoebe’s distasteful glance at the container. 

            “What is this?” 

            “You have your potions. I have mine.” 

            “I’ll never just get a straight answer out of you, will I?” Phoebe rolled her eyes but did as she was told anyway, tipping the jar to gradually let the viscous fluid ooze out and into the pot. Though her thoughts were turned solely to the vision she wanted to see again, her attention was snatched by the rapidly billowing smoke that coalesced into the form of a bird. A big bird. A duck? No, a goose. This was ridiculous, she thought, playing wordless charades with a shaman. 

            “Wait, are you making vision quest soup or dinner?” she asked with a suspicious look at the shape that had taken form in the smoke. “I mean, a turkey? Really?” 

            But Enola seemed to be in no mood to joke, as she stared gravely at the image and then, looking through it, at Phoebe. “The turkey is revered among my people. It is a very noble animal, very generous and intelligent. It is also a symbol of self-sacrifice, willing to surrender itself for a greater cause.” She blinked and the animal disappeared as the smoke wafted into the air. Her expression, however, did not change. “The boy is in danger, Phoebe, and not necessarily from an outside source so much as himself.” 

            “Okay, stop,” Phoebe snapped irritably, pulling her hands away. “Enough with this cryptic crap and just tell me what’s going on. What’s he in danger from, and what do I have to do to stop it?” 

            Enola’s face softened slightly, shifting from alarm into sympathetic concern. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. I’m only a conduit for answers, not an answer on my own. I believe that you might have the power to answer that for yourself, though,” she added, dipping a small hollowed out gourd into the pot and then passing it over to Phoebe. “You know the drill. Drink this and don’t fight yourself, don’t force anything. Let the vision take you where you want to be. Hopefully you will find the answers you seek there.” 

            Phoebe eyed the concoction warily before nodding and accepting it, downing it in one long swallow in an effort to minimize the horrible taste. She was expecting another series of attacks and then a glowing golden haze through which her future would be delivered; what she got was a sudden terrifying darkness and then slowly, like stars peeking through the night clouds, pinpricks of light shining through the gloom. As she came to, she realized she was in what seemed to be an underground cave, and as her eyes adjusted she realized with a sinking feeling that she was in the Underworld. Like Magic School and, she imagined, Up There where the Elders resided, the Underworld was comprised of a limitless array of worlds as vast and different from one another as anyone could imagine. Though she’d found over the years that most demons went for the cliché and preferred dark, fiery, rocky caverns that might not have been out of place in Dante’s Inferno, there were some who took the opposite approach and favored the blistering cold and bleak grays of eternal winter over the desolate solitude of the desert or the foreboding dankness of the usual underground lair. 

            This, oddly enough, was unlike anything she’d ever seen in a demonic haunt, which only served to make it that much more disturbing. 

            She found herself standing in a bedroom that looked distressingly normal. A large, unmade bed was pushed against the far wall, facing another wall lined with floor to ceiling windows and a set of French doors that led out onto a wide balcony. An antique dresser stood to one side of the bed, while on the other sat a nightstand with a small reading lamp atop it. A large potted ficus tree in the corner drew attention to the ornate crown molding and recessed tray ceiling, in the middle of which was a broad, frosted skylight. A few pictures hung on the walls, but they all looked like the sappy, overly perfect fake shots that came with any new frame. In the distance, Phoebe saw an open door leading into an elaborate bathroom with a huge glass shower and separate soaker tub, and the tile alone looked like it cost more than Phoebe’s yearly salary. The entire place looked like something Robin Leech should have been marveling over, and she would have doubted it was the same vision at all if not for the dark red blood marring the otherwise pristine white carpet. 

            Stomach twisting inward on itself, Phoebe ignored her intense desire to get out as quickly as possible in favor of following the blood trail out the door of the bedroom, down a hallway, and into another room that was far more Spartan than the last. With bare concrete walls and floor and no windows, light offered only by a single bulb dangling from the ceiling, Phoebe was puzzled by the stark contrasts between the two rooms. Why was one so lavishly decorated while another was so neglected? Where was she? Where was – 

            “Chris.” 

            The name escaped her lips before she could stop it, but no one heard, not the two black-clad figures by the door, nor the sickeningly familiar body hanging by his wrists in the middle of the room. Just as before, Chris was suspended from the ceiling with his arms pulled taut over his head, his feet just grazing the floor so that he could alleviate some of the pressure on his wrists only by leaning on his toes. His head drooped between his shoulders and lulled from side to side, his face hidden by strands of dirty, bloody hair that was a bit longer than normal. He looked painfully thin, and the way his body was stretched so unnaturally only accentuated the startling prominence of his ribs and the hipbones poking out over the top of his holey jeans. 

            “Chris?” Phoebe called again, hoping that somehow she could interact with her vision in a way she’d never managed before, and she stepped closer to her nephew despite every instinct warning her that she didn’t want a closer look. The view from several feet away had been bad enough; up close, Phoebe gasped and put both hands to her mouth, eyes going huge as she shook her head in disbelief. Old, faded scars marred the skin everywhere she looked, barely visible for the variety of new marks and blood in various states of freshness. Once again viewing him from behind, Phoebe felt her heart clench as she got her first close look at the lash marks on Chris’s back and the long, angry cuts splitting the skin into ribbons. A “W” had been carved crudely onto his right shoulder and apparently filled with ink or some kind of dye, but from the looks of it, it must have been added long before whatever misfortune had brought him here. 

Moving toward the front, Phoebe saw that things only got worse. There were gashes everywhere, some of them beginning to scab, others still bleeding freely. Some were smooth and nearly surgical in appearance, suggesting that someone had made them with cruel deliberation, but others were irregularly spaced and jagged at the edges, like something had ripped through the skin and tried to dig through to the bone. 

            Choking back the urge to either sob or vomit, Phoebe pressed on, blinking hot tears away to continue her inspection. There were scorch marks, patches that had just been lightly seared while others were ugly shades of rust and dark with dead, blackened flesh. Those had been made by fire, she had little doubt about that, but they were also accompanied by what she could only explain as electrical burns. Phoebe watched in horror at the awkward manner in which Chris’s chest rose and fell, evidence that he was doing his best to control his breathing with what were probably several cracked or broken ribs, as though the multitude of bruises everywhere hadn’t been enough. 

            “Oh God, Chris,” she murmured, unable to stem the tears now as she reached a trembling hand up toward the young man’s face, intent on trying to comfort him in any way she could, but she drew it back at the last second when Chris looked up suddenly. “Can you hear me?” 

            She supposed it shouldn’t have surprised her to see dark, finger-shaped bruises ringing his neck, but the sight still made her draw in a sharp breath. 

            “Why . . .” 

            Phoebe’s brow furrowed. Chris’s voice was weak and scratchy with disuse, and his eyes were glassy and unfocused, but he was talking. Was he talking to her, she wondered? Could she really speak to him, communicate with him somehow? 

            “I don’t know, sweetie, but—” 

            “Why . . .” Chris repeated, more adamant this time, and Phoebe bit her lip at the sudden, intense wave of fear that washed over her. She’d always been sensitive to others’ emotions, especially in her premonitions, but her new empathic powers, now amplified by Enola’s own visionary abilities, were doing their best to drive her insane. 

            “Oh good, you’re awake.” 

            Phoebe spun on her heel, startled by the deep voice that called out behind her. A tall, muscular young man stepped through the door, practically radiating unimaginable authority and power, magical and otherwise. Chris had very clearly pissed off the wrong person, whoever it was. 

            “Leave us,” he ordered, shooing the henchmen away with a flick of his hand. To Phoebe’s surprise, the demons bowed slightly and obeyed, shutting the door behind them to leave the three – well, two – of them alone. The world began to spin slightly as Chris’s fear and pain came back at her twice as hard, nearly making her legs collapse under her. 

            The stranger, completely oblivious to Phoebe’s non-presence, stepped far enough out of the shadows to reveal shoulder-length blond hair and hard, cold blue eyes, and she was quite certain that she knew him somehow. Had he been a demon at some point, one who had actually made good on the constant threat of taking over the Underworld? Had she fought him before or seen him in the Book of Shadows? He was familiar in all the wrong ways, chillingly distant and strangely intimate all at once, and what was worse was that she couldn’t determine if that knowledge was her own or her nephew’s. 

            “You can make this easier, you know,” he spoke up in a tone that betrayed both his boredom and the underlying pleasure he was taking in all this, and Phoebe’s stomach heaved again, forcing her to choke down the bile rising in her throat. He removed a pair of thick black gloves from his pocket and slowly pulled them on, casually glancing up at Chris now and then as though making idle conversation. “I don’t really want to hurt you. You know that. You also know that your rightful place is beside me. I don’t want you to serve under me, Chris, I want you to rule with me.” 

            Confused, Phoebe looked back at Chris, who for his part still found the strength to roll his eyes and fight his restraints to lift himself up in open defiance. “Go to hell.” 

            The other man looked up, clearly amused, and made a vague sweeping gesture with his hands to indicate the room. He didn’t have to say it; Phoebe had already heard that joke too many times. 

            “Okay, look. I don’t understand what your issue is. You’re meant to do great things, Chris. It’s your destiny, and you can’t escape that. Being a Halliwell should have taught you that a long time ago.” Chris looked up and might have melted the other man with the fury behind his eyes, had he the power to do so. Phoebe cheered slightly. “You don’t want to accept my offer? Fine. Your loss. Perhaps you’ll be more interested in this one: tell me where the base is and I’ll let you go, and I promise to show mercy to the rest of your pathetic little group. Don’t,” the man stepped forward, and Phoebe’s mouth dropped open when he conjured a Darklighter’s bow in his hand, “and I will personally slaughter each and every last one of them, starting with that traitorous witch you took as your whore.” 

            If he’d been trying to get a rise out of Chris, Phoebe decided, he knew just which buttons to push. Chris immediately went on the offensive, at least as much as he could given his circumstances, and spat a sickening glob of bloody saliva directly into the other man’s face by way of response. 

            “Never were one for compromise, were you?” the man sighed, wiping away the spittle with deceptive calmness. “That’s okay. I was actually kind of hoping you’d say no. It’s been a while since my last good witch hunt, and you and I don’t get to spend nearly enough time together.” 

            There it was again, that nagging feeling of familiarity that Phoebe just couldn’t place. She bit her lip again when the man pulled the poisoned arrow out of the bow and then tossed the bow itself aside. 

            “You know what’s strange about these things? You would think they’d work twice as fast on a half-breed, wouldn’t you? But they don’t. They actually take twice as long as they would on a regular Whitelighter. Isn’t that fascinating?” 

            “No!” Phoebe cried, launching herself between the two to absolutely no avail. Neither man noticed her, which only killed what small amount of hope she still had that she could intervene. What she had not anticipated, however, was that the slightest touch would be enough to trigger a most unpleasant aspect of this already bizarre vision quest. Her arm brushed Chris’s side as she rushed to position herself in front of him, and immediately all of the pain that had been pushing at the edges of her mind closed in on her, going from phantom aches to piercing, excruciating pain that drove her to her knees. Chris’s pain was now hers as the results of his injuries, if not the broken bones and cuts themselves, tore through her all at once, setting every nerve in her body on fire. He’d had time to adjust to his wounds, receiving them gradually and letting exhaustion blunt the worst of them, but Phoebe didn’t have that luxury. 

            And then the worst part came. 

            Phoebe looked up just in time to see the unknown man trailing the tip of the arrow along Chris’s skin, drawing a low, anguished groan from him while it made her grit her teeth and squeeze her hands into fists to keep from trying to scratch her way out of her own skin. With sadistic curiosity, the man dipped the poison into an open wound on Chris’s chest, earning a satisfying scream from his victim while Phoebe herself nearly blacked out. She doubled over on the ground, panting heavily and going very cold inside while the rest of her body felt like it had just been thrown into the sun. When she and her sisters had gone to the future and she was burned at the stake, she’d had nightmares for months afterward and refused to go anywhere near open flames. Yet somehow, even without the fire, this was so much worse, like her blood had turned to acid and was corroding everything it touched. 

            Shaking violently and blinded by tears, she just barely caught sight of the man driving the arrow into Chris’s chest. A bright, white hot bolt of pain shot through her before everything abruptly fell into darkness.

Chapter Text

Being one of the fabled Charmed Ones led to some rather interesting lessons. Phoebe had learned over and over again that there were far worse fates than death, especially when her own unique experiences had proven that death wasn’t the end. Seeing a sister die decades before her time was one such fate. Losing the love of her life to evil was another. And though she had died or come close to it several times over the past several years, she could truly say that she had never really suffered any of those times. There was also just a brief, intense flash of pain quickly dulled by shock, and then nothing. Sometimes it was because she simply passed out and only woke after Leo healed her. Other times it was because she really had died and simply didn’t remember when time was rewound and the future changed. True, being burned at the stake had been a horrible experience she wouldn’t wish on anyone, and the lingering agony of Bo’s ghostly possession had been almost too much for her to take, but nothing, nothing had ever been this intense.

“Phoebe? Can you hear me?”

The voice echoed in her mind, but Phoebe was trapped at the bottom of a deep, black abyss. She tried to call out in response but was stopped short by the realization that she couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe. With more effort than should have been necessary, she shifted slightly to try to ease the pressure of a sharp rib poking unnaturally against a lung. One problem solved, a dozen more found. Her blood was boiling, she was sure of it, but maybe if she just remained very still and pretended . . .

“All right, I want you to listen to me, Phoebe, okay? Don’t try to move yet. Just concentrate on my voice. I want you to imagine my voice as a rope, okay? Wherever you are, hold onto that rope with all you have. Follow it back, one step at a time. You’re coming out of the dark place now, moving back into the light. Slowly, that’s it, just like that. You’re doing great.”

She didn’t feel great, but the words of encouragement seemed to be working as Phoebe imagined herself pulling her way along the rope, one hand following another until finally the blackness gave way to dim lights and muddled colors and shapes.

“Urrngh,” she moaned, shutting her eyes again when the fire proved too bright, throwing a hand up over her eyes to shield them.

“Phoebe?” Enola called softly, anxiously clutching Phoebe’s other hand. “Are you back?”

“I . . . I don’t know. What the hell was that?”

“I was wondering the same thing. Projection is a rare gift, and a very powerful one. I’ve only seen it once before, and it was nothing like that. What did you see?”

Phoebe lowered her hand, squinting until her eyes adjusted to the light and then feeling along her arms and stomach. There were no cuts or bruises, no evidence at all to justify why she felt like she had just crawled out of her own grave. “I’m not sure.”

Enola nodding knowingly, sitting back on her heels to study Phoebe’s still petrified expression. “Did you at least find the answers you sought?”

“One of them, but now I just have more questions.”

“I think you should wait before you make another attempt.”

“Yeah, no kidding. Not doing that again anytime soon. Ow.” She got to her feet, shakily but successfully with Enola’s help, and then looked around the cave. “How long was I out of it?”

“Just a few minutes. Are you sure you won’t stay and rest for a while?”

“Yeah. I’ve gotta get back to the Manor. Something tells me I need to have a very long talk with a certain nephew of mine.”

Phoebe thanked Enola for her help and then wandered out of the cave, turning a corner to land right back into another hall of Magic School. She glanced behind her, surprised to find that the entrance to Enola’s lair was nowhere to be seen, and when she turned back around the adrenaline crash sent her slumping against the wall, shaking and hiding her tears behind her hands. She could still feel the chains on her wrists and the burning tightness in her chest as she fought for air, the poison making her blood boil. She could still taste slick copper in her mouth just as she felt some delirious combination of fear and hatred and, somehow, something that might once have been love. She knew that combination all too well; she still felt it every time she thought about Cole.

“Chris,” she called weakly, wiping at her tears and trying to make herself a bit more presentable before tilting her face up toward the ceiling. “Chris!”

The air pressure seemed to shift faintly, then settled as Chris materialized in front of her. “What’s up?”

He looked healthy. He’d put on enough weight since whenever that vision had occurred that he no longer looked like he’d been starved for weeks. There were no bruises or other marks anywhere in sight. His hair was shorter, clean. He looked like any other young twenty-something, like he should be studying for finals instead of fighting for his life. And he also looked completely bewildered by Phoebe’s present state.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, concern threading through his words despite his obvious attempt to remain calm and detached. “Are you crying?”

“Take me home,” Phoebe answered quietly, eyes fixed on the ground. Thankfully, Chris didn’t argue, just nodded and dropped an arm around her shoulders as he orbed them both out of Magic School and back to the Manor.

When they landed, Phoebe sank down onto the couch in the living room. Chris hesitated awkwardly nearby, clearly uncomfortable with the entire situation in general and his unexpected role as a counselor in particular.

“You wanna tell me what this is all about?”

“Not really, no.”

“Uh. Okay then.” Chris reached up and scratched the back of his head, brow furrowing in silent confusion. “Then if you don’t need me, I’ll just, uh, head back to P3. I think I might have found something about this nest I’ve been researching. I’ll find out more when—”

“If you were in trouble, you’d tell us, right?”

Chris blinked in surprise. “I . . . guess so, yeah.” Because that was the kind of thing you said to a worried aunt, right? Unfortunately, Phoebe knew that, too, and she shook her head.

“No you wouldn’t.”

“Then why did you ask?”

“Because I want you to be honest with one of us, just once. God, you are exactly like Prue. No wonder you’ve been driving me crazy since you got here.” She looked up with fire in her eyes, prompting Chris to drop his mouth open and take a defensive step away from her. “You think you can handle everything on your own. You’re invincible. Untouchable. You have to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders and it’ll make you look weak if you ever stop to rest or ask for help, is that it?”

“Phoebe, what the hell? Where is this coming from?”

“You, Chris. It’s coming from you, even if you won’t admit it to anyone else. You wanna pretend like you’re above all this, fine, go ahead. You wanna keep pulling this self-destructive crap and pretend like it doesn’t bother you and that this is what you really want, whatever. But don’t you ever stop to think that you’re hurting anyone else? If anything happened to you, what do you think that would do to Piper? To Leo? And yeah, to me or Paige or even Wyatt? We might not technically be your family yet, but dammit, Chris, you do mean something to us, all of us, and I just . . . we just . . .”

Stunned into temporary silence, all Chris could do for several long seconds was just stare and stand perfectly motionless. He might have expected such a rant from Piper, eventually, but not one of his aunts. And he most definitely hadn’t expected anything from Phoebe, not after taking that empathy blocking potion months ago. Was it wearing off? Had she broken through that magical barrier anyway? Was he spending too much time with them and getting lax in his defensive shielding, like he’d always feared he might if he let himself get close to them?

“Phoebe, I don’t . . . what’s going on here?”

Phoebe took a deep, shuddering breath, pushing her hands through her short hair and then looking up at Chris, eyes reddened and wet with a fresh batch of tears. “It’s you. You’re the one I saw in my premonition. I didn’t want to believe it, but it’s you.”

That was enough to knock Chris out of his stupor, and the shock quickly gave way to that same infuriatingly impassive mask he always wore around his family. “Okay, well, if some demon grabs me or something, you’ll know how to find me.”

“He kills you, Chris,” Phoebe blurted, voice breaking on the words. “I saw it. I felt it. I’m not even sure it’s a demon at all, but I know what I felt. I felt you die. I know you’re all about future consequences and all that crap, but if you know something, anything that could help, you have to tell us.”

“Look, I’m sure it’s nothing, okay? And if something comes up, then we’ll figure it out then. You need to chill before you pop something.”

“I will not lose another member of my family!” Phoebe cried, ignoring the way Chris cast a nervous glance toward the stairs to make sure Piper wasn’t about to show up and make things that much more uncomfortable. “And I will not make Piper go through that all over again. Our sister wouldn’t listen to us when we tried to tell her she wasn’t invincible, either, and now she’s dead. Going through that with her own child would break Piper. Don’t you get it? If you don’t care about yourself, at least care about her.”

“There’s nothing I can do about it, Phoebe!”

“Why not? Because you’re too damn stubborn to realize you might need help now and then?” Phoebe demanded, getting to her feet and stalking right up to Chris, somehow managing to stare him down despite his considerable height advantage over her. When he dropped his eyes away from her, just for a second, something at long last clicked in her brain and made her chest tighten. “Unless . . . it’s already happened.” Chris still kept his eyes on the floor, and Phoebe lifted a trembling hand to her lips. “It has. You already . . . oh my God. How? I-I-I saw . . . I felt you die. I died in that vision. I felt everything you did, and you . . .how?”

Phoebe didn’t expect the answer to come easily; it never did, not from Chris. But she held out some hope when he finally dragged his eyes up to meet her gaze again, only to have her optimism crushed when she saw that same resigned secrecy etched into every line of his face, saw the hardened look in eyes weary beyond their years.

“I’ll let you know what I find about that demon nest.”

She didn’t try to stop him this time when he orbed away.

~~~

“They eat their victims’ what?”

“Genitals. It’s some kind of fertility ritual. They think it makes their offspring stronger.”

“Junk-eating demons. That’s a new one. Hey, Piper, maybe you should try—”

“Finish that thought, Paige, and we’re using you for bait.”

“Geez, sorry. I was just thinking that since our favorite neurotic overachiever has so many issues about Wyatt, you could maybe, y’know, give him a little power boost. Like prenatal vitamins.”

“Hello, I am still in the room. And thoroughly disgusted. Thanks. Mom, for what it’s worth, I totally vote for using Paige as bait.”

“Hey!”

“Yeah, who’s got issues now?”

So far during the latest processing summit, Phoebe hadn’t said a word. Piper and Paige sat on the couch in the living room, Wyatt dozing peacefully in his mother’s arms. Phoebe sat in a nearby chair, while Chris, as usual, paced anxiously around the room, rattling off everything he’d learned about the next group of demons he planned to send them after. It had been three days since she confronted Chris, three days since anyone had even heard from him. It shouldn’t have surprised her that he showed up out of nowhere days later and ordered the three of them into a meeting to go over his newest target.

“So, what? Does that mean we all have to wear cups or something?” Paige asked, earning a dark look from Piper and shrugging in return. “Important question!”

“Striges only feed on males.”

“Oh, good. I mean, that sucks for you, but still.”

“Yeah, well, they’ll still kill you, so don’t get too cocky.”

“Heh. You said co—”

“Paige!” Piper shot another glare at her sister, holding her hand over the ear Wyatt wasn’t currently pressing against her shoulder. Still, the corner of her mouth twitched in an obvious effort to keep from smiling, and even Chris seemed a little less annoyed than usual, if not outright amused.

“It’s your standard vanquish,” Chris continued, glancing down at the notepad in his hand to check his messy notes. “But we should include a stun potion to slow them down and give you time to read the spell.”

“Or I could just freeze them.”

“You could if you were going, yeah.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Chris, I’m not helpless. I’m sick of just hanging out on the sidelines while you guys keep putting yourself in danger. It’s not right.”

“Sucks, doesn’t it?” Chris answered flatly, obviously in no mood to cave to Piper’s whims.

Piper rolled her eyes, going on without missing a beat. “Not to mention it’s a dumb strategy. You’re listening to your heart instead of your head, and while ordinarily I’d be all about that, it is not okay when you decide that I’m more important than my sisters and that you’re fine with putting them in danger.”

“Or yourself,” Phoebe added, speaking up at last and making sure Chris was looking directly at her when she said it. He quickly looked away.

“Alright, look. In a couple months or so, you can go on all the demon-killing sprees you want. But right now it’s too risky. What if something happened to you? It’d happen to me, too, in case you forgot. Or what if you were with us in the Underworld or something and whatever it is that’s after Wyatt came after him then?”

“What, like you think I’d leave Wyatt all by himself? I’ll drop him off at Dad’s.”

“Right, there’s a great idea. Let’s leave him with the mortal without any powers. That way, maybe you can get them both killed.”

Piper pursed her lips in distaste, but she didn’t argue. She couldn’t. Paige, on the other hand . . .

“Whoa, future boy, back off. Don’t talk to your mom like that. That’s not cool.”

Chastened, Chris heaved his usual heavy sigh and then nodded, voice dropping a bit quieter when he spoke again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . . look, Mom, there’s just a lot of things that could go wrong and I’m trying to limit as many variables as I can to keep everyone safe.”

“It’s not your job to protect me,” Piper answered softly, and Chris nodded again.

“We’re family. Of course it’s my job. I’m also technically your Whitelighter, so . . . yeah.”

Paige cleared her throat and slapped her hands down on her knees in a blatant attempt to draw attention back to her. “Okay, that was a touching Walton family moment. Now back to the junk-eating demons. Standard vanquish, stun and spell, yada yada yada. What else?”

Chris offered his aunt a quick, barely-there grin, thankful for the distraction. “Watch out for their feet and hands. They’ve got razor-sharp talons that’ll cut you to shreds if you’re not careful.”

“Of course they do. Why wouldn’t they?”

“And they can fly.”

“Do you have any good news?”

“Um . . . they have really sensitive eyes? They’re nocturnal and they hunt in the dark, so you can disorient them by shining any kind of bright light in their eyes.”

“Now we’re talking.”

“Phoebe, think you could work on a vanquishing spell?”

Phoebe looked up at Chris, her expression unreadable, his giving nothing away to anyone else in the room. “Sure.”

“Good. Paige, you mix up a potion.”

Paige mock-saluted and orbed out, only to rematerialize a second later, grab Phoebe’s wrist, and orb out again.

“Hey!” Phoebe protested as soon as they made it into the attic. Paige simply waved a hand dismissively at her and began gathering up ingredients.

“What’s going on with you and Chris?”

“Nothing. Why?”

Paige narrowed her eyes at Phoebe. “Gee, I don’t know. The fact you barely said a word during the entire meeting, the fact you two couldn’t even look at each other, that kinda thing.”

“Nothing’s going on,” Phoebe repeated as she slouched onto Aunt Pearl’s sofa, legs tucked beneath her and a notepad balanced on her knee. She tapped her pen against the paper, staring off into space as though deep in thought about the spell she needed to write. That was the case, at least, until Paige threw a shelled walnut at her. “What was that?”

“Inspiring nudge,” Paige replied before dropping the remains of the shell into the cauldron. “Also an excellent source of protein.”

“Keep your inspiration and your protein to yourself. I’m busy.”

“Staring a hole in the wall. Yeah, I can see that.”

Phoebe groaned and set the paper aside, then dropped her chin into her hand as she watched Paige work, one ingredient following another into the pot. “Do you ever feel like he’s deliberately hiding things?”

“Who? Chris?” When met with a nod, Paige shrugged. “Only every time he opens his mouth. Why?”

“I’m serious.”

“So am I.” Paige went quiet for a few seconds, watching as the pot’s contents began to boil. She held the salvia leaves over the cauldron and waited for the blue-tinted liquid to settle. “I don’t know. I mean, I just always figured it was part of his whole ‘future consequences’ shtick. And since I got tired of hearing that one a long time ago, I don’t ask anything now.”

Phoebe let out a soft chuckle despite her sour mood. “Tell me about it. But that’s not really what I mean. I understand not wanting to tell us big things about the future because who knows what all that could screw up. But what I don’t get is why he won’t talk about the little things. I mean, he’s our nephew. He’s family. He’s been here for almost a year now and we still don’t know anything about him. And even when we do find out something, getting him to admit it is like pulling teeth. I guess I’m just wondering why he plays everything so close to the chest.”

A puff of smoke temporarily obscured Paige from view until she waved her hands to clear the air. “I wouldn’t take it personally. Piper said when he first showed up that they got into it about him blaming her for not having a family in the future. Or something like that. It’s Piper, so she probably just assumed he was blaming her. But if that’s true, I’m guessing he didn’t have the greatest relationship with us in his time, if we were even around. And yeah, it’s not fair for him to take it out on us just ‘cause he has issues with the future us, but he’s a kid. What are you gonna do?”

Phoebe’s nose wrinkled slightly. “You realize that he’s only, like, two or three years younger than you right now, don’t you?”

Paige looked up, completely undeterred. “Like I said. He’s a kid.” Another cloud of smoke appeared, and this time when Paige reappeared through the haze, she grinned victoriously. “Demon dinner’s done.”

Chapter Text

“You know, when I think ‘Underworld,’ I think ‘Hell.’ Fire. Brimstone. Eternal lake of fire. You know. Heat. Yet here I am, freezing my ass off because these chicks won’t just come out and fight. What gives?”

Phoebe shot a glance over her shoulder and shushed her younger sister. She normally appreciated Paige’s levity, but not while they were lurking from one cave to another in search of the striges. Chris led the way, moving with such effortless silence that Phoebe wondered just how much time he really spent down here. He was a natural at hunting. Being the son of a Charmed One certainly helped, but he knew secrets and shortcuts that even she had never learned.

“Wait,” Chris whispered so quietly Phoebe had to strain to hear him. He held out a hand to stop them, then motioned for them to back up against the wall. With his free hand, he pointed ahead of them to where a horned demon stood on guard at the entrance to another cavern. “I know him. You two lay low. I mean it,” he added with an especially pointed look at Paige, who flipped him off in return for singling her out. “I’ve got this.”

“Whatever you say, Prue,” Phoebe muttered, and though Chris shot her a dark look, he said nothing about it before taking a deep breath and walking casually out into the open.

“Malik,” he greeted with a half-nod, and the demon stood up taller.

“Whitelighter. What are you doing here?”

Chris shrugged and gave a deceptively innocent, almost boyish smile. “Eh, you know, same old. Business. Hey, listen, I need a favor. One of my charges just lost an innocent. A kid. Pretty messed up. Judging from what was left, I’d say it was a strige.”

Malik chuckled, a bleak, humorless sound that was unlike any human laughter. “Damn, I love those bitches, I’m telling you what. They got the kill down to an art.”

“Yeah,” Chris agreed, and between the alarmingly convincing smile and his unwavering tone, Phoebe couldn’t help but shudder from her hiding place in the shadows. He was a little too good at this undercover thing. “But here’s the deal. My charge is pissed and ready to go on a killing spree down here. If I can take a strige to her, I can keep her from going postal without blowing my cover.”

“So you, what, wanna talk a strige into committing suicide for your witch?”

“No, no, no. She’ll know what’s up. It’s all just a show. She doesn’t hurt my charge, I’ll make sure my charge doesn’t vanquish her. The strige comes back unharmed, my charge doesn’t decide to wipe out a couple dozen demons in revenge. Everyone wins.”

Malik raised an eyebrow. “And what’s in it for me?”

“I could put in a word for you, if the strige’s cute.”

“And let her eat me for breakfast? No thanks, kid.”

“I can get you access to the Twice Blessed.”

Paige stirred, making an indignant noise high in her throat, but Phoebe swatted her arm and glared at her until she settled.

“And how are you gonna do that?”

“I’m a Whitelighter, remember? Far as the Charmed Ones know, I’m good. They’ll trust me.”

Malik seemed intrigued at last, returning the malicious sneer Chris cast his way. “You might be onto something, Whitelighter. Listen, some striges just came through about ten, fifteen minutes ago. Might even be the one who got your innocent.”

“Malik? What is this?”

Chris – and, still in shadows, Phoebe and Paige – looked up in surprise at the sound of another voice, this time belonging to another horned demon similar to the first, but slightly shorter and older. And, it seemed, more important, as Malik performed a ceremonial half-bow of respect.

“A trade, sir.”

“With a Whitelighter?” the new demon scoffed, looking Chris over like a particularly disgusting stain. “What could he possibly have of interest to us?”

“Connections to the Charmed Ones, sir.”

Phoebe saw Chris’s fingers twitch, and she knew as well as he did that things were about to take an ugly turn.

“Is that so? Why, yes, then by all means, let’s invite him into our sanctum. Whitelighters, Charmed Ones, witches . . . let’s see if we can find some Elders to invite to our tea party next, hmm?” His false cheerfulness disappeared as quickly as it came, his eyes darkening. “Get rid of him. He’s bad news, and the Charmed Ones are even worse.”

“He wishes to strike a deal with a strige,” Malik pointed out, making the second demon’s shoulders tense.

“Then go get one and let him sign his own death warrant here. We certainly won’t be leading him directly to their sanctuary.”

“That won’t work,” Chris interjected.

“And why is that?” the demon asked with a snarl, turning and brandishing an energy ball in its hand.

Chris, still as calm as ever, simply shrugged. “Because I’m gonna kill all of them, not just one.” Without warning, he pulled Malik in front of him, using him as a shield to absorb the incoming attack. The demon screamed in pain as the energy ball hit him square in the chest and vanquished him, and Chris used the noise to his advantage. “Athame!” he cried, holding out his hand and stealing the dagger from the second demon. Before anyone could react, he orbed out and then reappeared right behind the demon, plunging the athame into the creature’s back and watching as it, too, erupted into flames and then vanished.

A few seconds passed in silence until he glanced around and then looked toward his aunts, waving at them with the athame still clutched firmly in his hand. “Let’s go.”

The two women shared a worried look and then hurried out to join Chris, Phoebe keeping a healthy distance. “You said you knew him.”

“One of my contacts.”

“He seemed to like you.”

“So?”

“So? You vanquished him.”

“It was a demon,” Chris answered bluntly without a trace of remorse in his voice. He turned briefly to look at Phoebe, eyes curiously dark in the dim lighting of the cavern as they entered. “Evil is evil. Period.”

There was something dull and defeated in his tone, a hint of sadness lurking just out of reach, and it was nearly enough to make Phoebe trip over her own feet. She opened her mouth to argue, then just shook her head and decided to let it go. She could argue the finer points of vanquishing ethics later.

From there, the journey continued in utter silence broken only by the occasional rock bouncing off a shoe or the faint sound of water dripping somewhere overhead. The cavern narrowed and darkened, leading them into a bottleneck and, Phoebe was sure, a trap.

“Everyone got their flashlights?” Chris asked, pulling his own out of the pocket of his hoodie. Both women answered in the affirmative, and Chris nodded in approval. “Good. ‘Cause it’s show time.”

The cavern unexpectedly opened up into a larger cave, still pitch black but large enough that it carried a hollow echo. Phoebe turned her flashlight on and shrieked when she saw what could only be a strige just a few feet away. It looked vaguely female, but with its grotesque, bony wings, frighteningly sharp talons, and eerie red eyes, it looked mostly like something straight out of her nightmares.

“Oh, oh!” she cried, shrinking back when the strige advanced on her with startling quickness. Chris reacted immediately, shining his flashlight in the creature’s face. It let out a piercing scream and retreated to where the light couldn’t reach it, hissing angrily with the rest of its lair when it crawled into the shadows.

“You okay?”

“Y-Yeah,” Phoebe stammered, hoping Chris wouldn’t notice how badly her hands were shaking.

“Sensitive eyes, Phoebe. Remember that,” Chris ordered her gently but firmly, tapping the flashlight she still held in a vice grip between both hands.

“Uh, Chris?” He turned to see Paige staring uneasily in the direction of the hissing noises, one hand keeping her light trained on the huddle, the other clutching a potion vial. “What are they doing?”

Chris didn’t get a chance to reply. One of the demons leapt toward them, its shrill cry rebounding off the cave walls and disorienting the hunting party. It lashed out with one massive arm, knocking the light from Chris’s hand and then sending him flying across the cave when it rebounded, directly into the pit of waiting striges.

“Chris!” Phoebe called, terrified, turning the light on the offending demon and driving it back into the darkness. “Paige, the potion!”

“On it!”

Paige threw the bottle, then pulled the second and third vials from her satchel. Bright, flashing lights sent the horde into a deafening screaming fit.

“Chris!” Paige called, remote orbing her nephew back to them and out of harm’s way as Phoebe unfolded the slip of paper in her pocket and held it out for Paige to read with her.

“Creatures of the darkness hide
In fear of good, in fear of right.
We banish you into the depths
Of endless light, eternal death.”

Somehow, the cries became louder, forcing both women to cover their ears and turn away as the striges were vanquished with a burst of blinding white light. When she dared to open her eyes again, Paige cast a skeptical glance at her sister.

“Depths and death, Pheebs? Really?”

“Shut up. It worked, didn’t it?”

“Yeah, now if you could just find a spell to stop the ringing in my ears.”

“Paige . . .”

“I know, I know, personal gain, consequences, blah blah blah. You’re starting to sound just like . . . Chris,” Paige ended softly, catching into the concern in Phoebe’s voice just as the two of them knelt beside their fallen nephew. “Oh. Oh crap. This isn’t good.”

Phoebe tilted her flashlight to inspect Chris, trying her best to ignore the blood she could feel coating her fingers as she touched his side. His shirt was in tatters, ripped to pieces by the striges’ claws when he was thrown into their midst.

“Leo!” Paige called, and Phoebe shook her head.

“He can’t hear you from down here, Paige. Come on. We need to get him home. Chris?” She felt her gag reflex kick in when she tried to rest a reassuring hand on Chris’s arm and it gave far more under her palm than it should have. She didn’t have the strength to cast any light on it to see exactly what the damage was.

The next thing she knew, she was floating, then the three of them were in the Manor’s parlor. Chris was still barely conscious, and now in the light Phoebe could see that he was a bloody, mangled mess.

“Ph-Phoebe? Phoebe, what . . . oh God,” Piper whispered hoarsely, rushing over to them as quickly as she could. “Le—”

“No, wait,” Paige interrupted, pointing at Wyatt, who was watching them from Piper’s arms. “Wyatt can heal him.”

“He shouldn’t even be seeing this, Paige. Oh my God, oh my God, Phoebe, what the hell happened? How could you let this happen? Either of you? Oh God. Chris?”

“Piper, honey, calm down—”

“Don’t tell me to calm down, Paige! There is nothing about this that says it’s okay to calm down!”

“Paige is right, Piper. Unless you want Leo to find out about Chris, you have to let Wyatt heal him.”

Piper, choking back tears, looked helplessly from one sister to another before finally nodding and looking at the toddler. “Okay. Listen to me, sweetie. Chris is hurt and he needs you to help him, okay? You know how you healed Mommy that time she cut her finger when we were playing? It’s just like that. Think you can do that for your brother? Hmm? Think you can help Chris out?”

Ignoring every motherly urge to protect him from anything remotely disturbing, Piper set Wyatt down on the floor and held his hands out over Chris’s side. He was at least turned so that most of the damage was facing away from Wyatt, but she still didn’t want to think about what kind of an impression this might leave on him.

The familiar golden glow spread from Wyatt’s palms and entered Chris’s body. Muscle and tissue instantly reformed over bone, skin stitched back together, and though there was no saving the shirt, the blood gradually disappeared from his flesh. After a breathtakingly long while, he at last managed to peel his eyes open; they were still glassy and unfocused, but he caught sight of his brother and seemed to recognize him.

“Wy . . .”

Phoebe’s heart seized in her chest.

“Wy . . .”

He died in her vision. She felt it. There was the intense, stabbing pain of the Darklighter’s arrow, then a flash of light, and then she woke up back in her own body. Pain, poison, light. There was light. It had felt warm, but not comforting. Too hot, like burning coals. So much pain, and then nothing.

She glanced down at Wyatt. There was light. Light in his hands.

“Why aren’t those marks healing?” Paige asked, reaching out and touching her fingertips to one of the many raised patches of skin on Chris’s stomach. She’d barely made contact before he wrapped his fingers around her wrist and forced her hand away, startling her both with his quickness and the strength of his grip.

“Scars,” he explained, healed from his mortal injuries but still too weak to be of much use in a conversation.

“I bet he could heal those, too, though.”

“He can’t heal injuries that haven’t happened yet,” Phoebe supplied, forcing her voice to remain perfectly calm despite her sudden need to get as far away from both her nephews as she possibly could. Judging from Chris’s intensely annoyed look, he might well have been seconds away from orbing her as far as possible as well.

Piper edged forward, tears streaking her face as she reached a trembling hand out to touch Chris’s hair. “Chris? Sweetie?”

He flinched away from her touch, setting off a chain reaction that made her draw her hand back, ashamed. Chris squeezed his eyes shut, seeming to remind himself to play nice, and then nodded.

“I’m okay.”

Phoebe watched, well aware that Piper was hurt by his immediate rejection and yet immensely grateful that he was still alive to even make that rejection.

“Good.” Piper forced a watery smile and then wrapped Wyatt up in a strong hug. “And you, little man. That was amazing. You did it! I’m so proud of you. Thank you so much.”

For the first time, Phoebe understood why Chris looked away from the tender moment with sorrow written all over his face; this time, though, she also recognized the despair and disgust lingering in his eyes, the hatred for an evil that had tried to destroy him and hatred of himself for being unable to separate his feelings for the boy from the man he would become. Evil is evil.

There was light in his hands.

Chapter Text

Bars and night clubs in San Francisco had a high turnover rate. One would open to much fanfare and thrive for a few months, dwindle to a respectable crowd, and then taper off and vanish within a year. Somehow, P3 defied the odds. Three years later, it was stronger than ever and drawing bigger crowds and more popular performers all the time. And yet, with only a handful of exceptions, it remained the one point of normalcy in the Charmed Ones’ lives. Demons were wont to attack them at home, foolishly believing that they could successfully take them out on their own spiritual high ground, but they rarely bothered the club. Not that the sisters complained about that. Far from it. Despite the noise, P3 was the one place they could go and honestly relax without constantly checking over their shoulders for danger. Until a few days ago, Phoebe always assumed that was the reason Chris stayed there instead of at the Manor, too.

It had been all the sisters could do to convince Chris to at least stay at the Manor overnight after his close call with the striges, and even then he only relented because he seemed guilty about causing Piper so much stress. The next morning, barely before any of them woke, he took off. “I’ll be around,” he promised obliquely as he orbed out of the house and from there off the map. Phoebe suspected that he had “muted” her again, refusing to answer her calls like the passive-aggressive martyr his mother was as well.

So, since he didn’t seem inclined to come to her, she went to him, or at least to where she hoped she would find him. Last known address: the back office of P3.

Ever since Chris had unofficially staked a claim on the room, none of them had felt right about invading his privacy and entering the office, regardless of actual ownership. If any of them were in the club and needed him – or, more rarely, the room itself – they always just knocked and asked him first for whatever they wanted. Given Chris’s intensely private nature and his total refusal to share any part of himself with them, it seemed natural to give him as much personal freedom as possible, no matter how eager they were to learn more about him.

But there Phoebe was anyway, biting her lip as she opened the door and slipped into the office without first asking permission. Like she needed another reason for Chris to avoid her.

She flicked on the overhead light and took her first look around the room since Chris had more or less moved in, and at first glance she remained unimpressed. It still looked like she remembered, with band posters all over the walls and boxes of random sound equipment and bar supplies stacked haphazardly against the far wall. It didn’t look especially homey, not like Chris spent any considerable time there, but there were still tell-tale signs of a young man’s presence. A blanket was draped messily over the couch along with a couple pillows, one of which had fallen to the floor. A few shirts and pairs of pants were thrown in random places. Phoebe wondered where they had come from, if Chris had actually brought them back with him or if he’d otherwise “acquired” them. She decided she didn’t want to know.

She walked over to the desk that looked just as messy as it had when Piper used it to go over receipts and inventory, but with several empty energy drink cans and paper coffee cups. If she didn’t know better, she’d think a graduate student had taken up residence in the office. Unable to stem her curiosity, she cast an anxious glance at the door and then pulled out the center drawer under the center of the desk. Upon lifting up the fliers and posters on top, she found several maps and charts, some of them defaced with handwritten notes or yellow Post-Its stuck to them. One sticky note contained what appeared to be a terribly complicated math formula that Phoebe couldn’t even begin to understand. It had evidently been of some use, though, as Chris had circled the solution and then out from it written simply, “Feb 2?” Wyatt’s birthday. And, she realized after a moment, Chris’s own conception date. Poor guy would never be able to get out from under Wyatt’s shadow, it seemed.

She carefully put everything back in place and then pulled open one of the side drawers, interest caught by an unassuming spiral notebook with a faded red cover. The first several pages were blank, and she was about to put it back when she noticed the word “Gith” written in the outer margin of a page about a third of the way into the notebook. Curious, she sat down in the desk chair and opened the notebook the rest of the way, eyebrows raising to find an entire list of demons, all of them scratched out, all of them creatures Chris had sent them after. She flipped back to find pages upon pages of notes detailing everything there was to know about all of those demons: names, powers, strengths, weaknesses, known associates, possible connections to Wyatt. Now and then there was a marginal note or a Post-It drawing attention to some random fact or other and a reminder to “tell them to update” or “correct this,” and Phoebe didn’t know whether to be offended that Chris was critiquing the Book of Shadows or proud of him for creating one of his own.

“Ugh. Phoebe, stop it,” she scolded herself quietly, shutting the notebook and replacing it exactly as she found it. She had no right to go through his personal things, even if she didn’t mean anything by it and she only wanted to help. It wasn’t quite the same as reading his diary, but it wasn’t too far removed, either. That decided, she stood and looked around again, and then, feeling the need to keep her hands busy, picked up one of his shirts to shake the wrinkles out and then fold it properly. Then another. Then another. Someone had to mother the kid, and if he wouldn’t let his own mother do it, so be it.

She’d made it to the fourth shirt when the door opened and Chris walked in, eyes flashing dangerously at the unexpected guest, fingers twitching in a dead giveaway that he was fighting the urge to use his powers. Now, at least, Phoebe understood a bit better why Chris was so tense and jumpy, why he reminded her so much of a wounded animal backed into a corner, always ready to fight first and ask questions later.

“Phoebe? What the hell are you doing?”

“Housekeeping,” she told him by way of greeting, offering an overly bright grin. “I didn’t bring any mints to put on your pillows, though, sorry.”

The immediate fight response faded, but then flight kicked in, danger giving way to fear, and Phoebe didn’t miss the way his eyes darted toward the desk as if making sure his secrets were safe. Her stomach twisted slightly in response.

“How dare you?” he blurted, and while Phoebe had expected him to be upset, she hadn’t quite anticipated that level of anger as he stormed over to her and yanked his shirt out of her hands, only to toss it right back into the floor. “How dare you invade my privacy like this? What the hell gives you the right to come in here and go through my stuff like you know me?”

“No, how dare you, Chris?” Phoebe shot back, stubbornly jutting her chin forward. Chris wasn’t the only petulant younger sibling in this family, she had news for him. “You show up out of nowhere, screw with people’s lives, break up your parents, almost get us killed on a regular basis, almost get yourself killed just as often, lie to us constantly, run away from us when we start getting the slightest inkling about who you actually are . . . this is ridiculous. And yeah, maybe I don’t know you, but I’d like to.”

“Oh, so you break into other people’s places and mess with their things?”

“I didn’t break in, Chris. In case you forgot, I’m part owner of this place. And for God’s sake, take a pill. I’m folding your clothes, not planting wire taps.”

“I don’t believe this.” Chris scowled at his aunt, seething in a way that Phoebe had previously only seen directed at Leo. “Congratulations, Nancy Drew, you know my big secret. You figured it out. Way to go. But you still don’t trust me. What do I have to do to prove to you that I’m not the bad guy here?”

“I do trust you, Chris. This has nothing to do with trust. I’m just worried about you. Is that so bad? We’re family and I love you, I’m supposed to worry about you.”

“Yeah, that’s just it, isn’t it? You’re supposed to. We’re not family, Phoebe,” Chris practically spat, stunning Phoebe with the vehemence behind his words. “Not yet. And save it, okay? You think you love me because you’re supposed to. Don’t insult me.”

“Whoa, back up a few miles there, buddy. I don’t know where all this is coming from or why you’re directing it at me, but I don’t think I’m the one you should be taking all this out on.”

“Get out.”

Phoebe’s chin lifted again. “No.”

“Don’t make me do this, Phoebe.”

“Do what? Go on, Chris, tell me. Is that a threat?”

Somewhere behind her, bar glasses tucked carefully away in a box shattered. Phoebe quirked an eyebrow. She’d dealt with Prue enough to know how telekinetics, especially emotionally repressed ones, reacted to stress; her own empathic powers told her that all was not what it seemed, that Chris was lashing out at her because she was there, not necessarily because he felt it.

“Well? Is it?”

She felt the crackle of static electricity in the air, the same she had always felt when Prue was nearing her breaking point and everything in the room was about to go flying. More boxes rattled behind her.

“If you’re about to go all Carrie on me, I feel like you should at least answer me first.” When he continued to stand absolutely motionless before her, expression curiously blank, Phoebe took a brave step forward. “Talk to me, sweetie.” She reached out to place her hands on his shoulders. “Please?”

She gasped, stumbling backwards at the force of another premonition. Between her empathy and Chris’s usual reserved self faltering, she got a spectacularly vivid image of Chris looking much the same as he had in her earlier visions, this time in a public downtown area in front of a makeshift stage. A demon stood on either side of him, each holding one of his arms to keep him in place, even while he sagged between them. The same blond man as before stood on the stage with a young woman bound to a stake. He stroked her hair with a deceptively gentle touch before taking a step back and lifting his hand. Chris screamed, voice scraped raw from who knew how many previous hours of begging, but the man only smiled maliciously before calling for the girl’s heart. There was a flash of black and blue orbs, and then suddenly the muscle rested in the man’s palm, leaving behind a gaping hole in the girl’s chest.

“This!” he cried, holding the heart up over his head, “is where treachery gets you in my domain.”

The demons laughed and cheered, taunting the others unfortunate enough to also be tied to stakes lining the stage. The blond man threw the heart carelessly over his shoulder, smirking as the nearest demons scrambled for it like a homerun baseball. He nodded at a large, red-skinned creature at one end of the stage, who then promptly launched a series of fireballs at the feet of the prisoners to ignite the kindling around them. The blond man jumped down from the stage and walked toward Chris, hand still soaked in blood as he gripped the younger man’s chin.

“You should join them,” he half-whispered, his voice as deceivingly soft as his touch, and though there was unspeakable evil in him, there was also something loving in the way he spoke, in the slight stroke of his fingers across Chris’s cheek. “But I don’t have the heart. So to speak. Somehow, you found a way to beat the witch scanners. I’d say I was impressed, but you’re really only making things harder on yourself and this hopeless bunch of losers who think you’re the Second Coming. So obviously, my men need a new way to identify you,” he explained as he slipped an athame from his belt. The hilt glowed red hot, illuminating the letter W carved into the end. “I don’t tolerate witches, nor do I tolerate traitors. That’s already two strikes against you.”

Chris struggled against his captors, crying out as one of the demons kicked the back of his knee and sent him crashing to the ground. The blond man knelt before him, rolling back Chris’s sleeve with a strange kind of care. He held the lit athame inches from Chris’s skin, lips twisting cruelly.

“Let’s not have a third.”

Phoebe was thrown back into reality gasping for air and trembling violently, supported only by the edge of the couch and Chris’s arm around her shoulders. As he helped her sit, she unexpectedly reached up and lifted his sleeve before he thought to stop her.

“Chris,” she murmured, one hand going to her mouth as her other traced the scarred, seared flesh of her nephew’s shoulder. He shrank back as though her touch itself had burned him, hastily pulling his sleeve back down into place.

“It was a long time ago,” he tried to reason, but Phoebe shook her head.

“Not that long. A year? Two?”

Chris didn’t seem inclined to answer, but when Phoebe refused to let him intimidate her into looking away, he dropped his gaze to the floor. “Three. Almost.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” she asked, blinking back tears. Chris shook his head, pretending not to understand or just refusing to answer anyway. “Wyatt. He’s the evil you came back to stop.”

The fight or flight instinct kicked in again and flight won out, but Phoebe anticipated it, reached out to hold onto Chris’s wrist and pull him back before he could orb. He rematerialized with a defeated sigh, finally dropping down next to Phoebe on the couch and studying his hands for a long while.

“I didn’t want you guys to have to deal with that. I didn’t want him to have to deal with it. If this actually works, if I can find a way to save him, I don’t want him being treated like he’s evil.”

“We wouldn’t . . .”

“Not on purpose. But if you knew what I know about him, about what he could have been, what he was . . . how could you stop that from changing how you act around him? And if this works, I-I want him to have a fresh start.” Chris stumbled over his words, fingers clenching into fists and then relaxing over and over again until Phoebe reached over to rest her hand atop one of his.

“And if it doesn’t?”

Chris looked up with dark, clouded eyes. “It has to.”

Phoebe took a deep, faltering breath before speaking again. “In my premonition, the first one, I thought you were asking ‘why.’ You were saying his name. You still thought you could reach him, like there was still something good inside him.” Chris nodded mutely, so Phoebe continued. “You didn’t really come back to save him, did you?” Chris looked up in alarm at the implication.

“No! I mean, yeah, of course I did. What are you saying?” This time it was Phoebe’s turn to remain accusingly silent, and Chris looked away, cheeks burning with shame and tears welling in his eyes, though he angrily blinked them away. “You know that ethics riddle, about being able to go back in time to kill Hitler as a baby?” he asked quietly, voice quivering. “I had the chance to do it. What was I supposed to do? I tried everything, Phoebe. I tried talking to him, begging him, even joining him for a while. I tried to bind his powers. I cast spells. I worked with demons, Elders before he got to them. I tried to vanquish him,” he admitted at last, hands curling into fists and staying that way. “He stole the house so I couldn’t access the Nexus or summon anyone. He stole the Book. He just kept killing and gaining more and more powers and I couldn’t stop him. This was the only way I knew . . .”

“But if you’d come back to-to kill Wyatt,” Phoebe stammered, barely able to get the words out even with all the terrible knowledge she had, “without explaining anything or who you were, we would have vanquished you.” She hesitated, heart clenching again when Chris’s jaw tightened but he otherwise remained impassive. “And you know it.”

“I started to,” he said in that non-answer way typical of so many of his conversations. “I was at the Manor one night researching with the Book. I went into the nursery and he was asleep. He didn’t put his shield up. It was the first time I’d been able to get that close,” Chris admitted with a hint of pride in his voice. “I cast a soundproofing spell I got out of the Book. I started to read . . . I figured the spell you wrote to vanquish the Source would be strong enough. I got through the first couple lines.”

“Chris, stop, I don’t wanna hear this,” Phoebe pleaded, but Chris shook his head.

“I got through the first couple lines and he woke up. I expected him to throw his shield up and out me. But he just . . . laid there. Watching me. And I, I choked. I couldn’t do it. My one chance and I blew it. I let everyone down again.”

Phoebe tightened her hold on Chris’s hand. “Honey, you didn’t let anyone down. He’s just a baby. He’s your brother, for God’s sake. You can’t take on these kinds of burdens and expect not to break sometime, Chris, you just can’t.”

“But if this doesn’t work,” Chris interrupted, voice taking on an edge of panic as he jumped to his feet and spun around to face Phoebe, “if I don’t stop whatever turned him evil, that’s it. That was my one chance, and because I was too weak to do it, he’s still gonna grow up and destroy everything. Everyone who died fighting with me and fighting for me, everyone who sacrificed everything to get me this far, it was all meaningless. They died for nothing.”

“They died to get you to this point, Chris, so that you can save him. So that he can grow up to be good, so that those people don’t have to die in the future.” Phoebe followed along behind him, walking up to him and reaching up to cup his face in her hands, forcing him to meet her eyes. “So that you can have the life you were supposed to have, with the family you were supposed to have. I have a pretty clear picture of the hell you went through to get here, sweetie, and trust me, you didn’t do all that and get this far just to fail. I won’t let you. Your family won’t let you. Maybe we couldn’t save you and Wyatt in the future, but we’re sure as hell going to fight to save you now.”

Phoebe was certain that Chris was going to run from his emotions yet again, but he still found ways to surprise her, this time by giving in and pulling her into a hug, clinging to her as though he had no other way to anchor himself to the rest of the world. At that point, under those circumstances, she was ashamed to realize that that might actually be true.

Not knowing what else to do, she returned the hug and held onto him as tightly as she could, politely ignoring the way his entire body trembled with pent-up nerves and the myriad emotions she could feel battering at her mind as he finally let go after months, years of repression.

“I love you,” she whispered against his face after a long while, pressing a barely-there kiss to his cheek. “And not just because you think I have to. Not just because you’re my nephew. But because I do know who you are, Chris. I don’t need to know everything about you to know you. You are the strongest person I know. You’re so much like Piper it’s insane. You are kind and brave and smart, and no matter what you think, you are a good person. Everything you do, all the stupid mistakes, the risks, the wins and losses, all of it comes from a good place. And I promise, Chris, I swear to you, we won’t let you go back to the same life you left. We do trust you, and now you just need to trust us, okay? I know that’s not easy for you, and can you try?”

She felt him nod, and when he pulled away, obviously embarrassed by his uncharacteristic breakdown, he smiled softly at her.

“Yeah. I can do that.”

“Paige is gonna be glad she missed another touching Walton family moment,” Phoebe blurted out of nowhere, making them both laugh and providing enough of a distraction that she could swipe at her eyes and pretend she didn’t notice Chris clearing his throat. “Hey, uh. I don’t know about you, but impromptu therapy always makes me hungry. I think Piper’s making stir fry tonight for dinner. You in?”

Chris hesitated, glancing around the office once more before looking back at Phoebe and nodding, the shy, boyish grin making another rare appearance. “Yeah, why not.”

Phoebe returned the smile. “Then let’s go home.”

This time when Chris orbed out, he did so with Phoebe’s hands firmly clasped in his own.