2008 WitchWRITER
Post by StoryGirl83 on May 16, 2008 23:10:02 GMT -4
INDEX CARD
TITLE: The Magic Is Back
AUTHOR: StoryGirl83
TYPE: Series (Charmed: Heritage)
RATING: T (For Charmed-typed violence)
LEAD CHARACTERS: Wyatt and Chris (with Piper and Leo appearing)
ORIGINAL CHARACTERS: Drinka Deguilio, Steve Kessler (unnamed warlock), Reeve Farrell (unnamed darklighter), and Kali Nicolae
SHORT SUMMARY: Sat, Jan 2, 2027 – Wyatt finds his brother mortally wounded and is unable to heal him without a spell and a potion from their aunt Phoebe. Chris reveals memory gaps and dual lifetimes in what he does remember. The boys are attacked by a darklighter, the first magical attack in over twenty years.
Disclaimer: I do not own Charmed or any characters from Charmed. I do not own any scenes from Charmed, either in the prologue or used as a flashback. I do own any original characters found within this story.
Phoebe Halliwell looked around a white statue that looked hauntingly like her younger half sister, Paige Matthews. On the other side was an unfamiliar young man. His hair was a mess. He wore a brown jacket over a red shirt. And he looked to Phoebe as if the fact that he may well have saved Phoebe from the same fate of her sister was no big deal.
“Who are you?” Phoebe asked, her curiosity pulling the words out of her mouth.
“Chris.” The name was out of his mouth almost instantly. There was a slight hesitation before he continued on. “Chris Perry. I’m,” he trailed off and gulped before continuing on, “from the future.” Phoebe had to wonder how much of his words were true, but reluctantly given and how much was simply fabricated to keep the truth hidden.
Later Chris sat on the doorsteps in front of the manor. He looked up at the man standing on the sidewalk in front of him. Leo Wyatt, Phoebe’s brother-in-law, stood calmly, with his hands behind his back, dressed in the gold robes of an elder.
“So,” Chris’ voice wavered only slightly as he spoke, “what did they decide?”
Leo sucked in a deep breath before he began to speak. He looked down at the sidewalk and said, “The elders voted.” Lifting his head a smile spread across his face as he continued, “to make you the Charmed One’s new whitelighter.”
Chris eyes widened as he leaned forward slightly as if he couldn’t believe what he had just heard. “They did?”
“As a reward for helping defeat the titans, but then,” Leo paused taking in another breath before continuing on, “somehow I figured you new that.”
A look akin to rolled eyes passed across Chris face before he dipped his head in a bow that might have been acknowledgment or something else.
Time caused the disagreements between Chris and Leo to widen. Time and the fact that Leo believed Chris responsible for sending Leo to Valhalley. Instead of smiling at the possibility that Chris had known he would become the Charmed Ones whitelighter by helping with the Titans, Leo now was trying his best to keep Chris away from the sisters. He stood in the door way of the back room in P3 where Chris had been staying in the months since he had been the girls whitelighter.
“Chris,” Leo began.
Chris wasn’t interested. Standing he spoke. “Leo. I mean it, because whether you believe me or not, I’m here to protect Wyatt.”
Leo’s concern over his son warred with what he believed about Chris.
“Not other charges,” Chris told him turning around to pick up the sheet he used to cover himself when he slept. He didn’t look at the man behind him as he spoke. “Other than the sisters, of course.”
As Chris turned back to look at him Leo nodded slightly. “If that’s how you feel about it. I guess I’ll reassign her.”
There was relief in Chris voice as he spoke now. “Thank you.”
Leo orbed out and Chris breathed a sigh of relief.
Months later the arrival of a second time traveler caused even more disruption in the lives of the Halliwells. The ripple effects of Chris’ actions where still making themselves known, but Bianca’s arrival had very immediate results. They had ultimately led to an apartment where Bianca had drawn a triquetra on the wall. She had done something to Chris, the extent of which the sisters were still learning.
Phoebe’s older sister and Leo’s wife, Piper Halliwell, raised her hands and tried to freeze Chris and Bianca. When nothing happened she started stuttering as she starred at the couple.
Bianca turned to look at her. Chris remained facing the wall, but his shuffled movements showed that he wasn’t frozen.
Piper’s stuttering became words as she tried to voice her thoughts. “Yeah, okay, I get why she didn’t freeze, but why didn’t he freeze?”
Phoebe’s words weren’t much more articulate as she said, “Unless . . . he’s a . . .”
Chris turned to look at them and finished Phoebe’s confused attempt at making sense of what she had just scene. “I’m a witch, too.”
Phoebe looked at his stunned. Paige Matthews, the third living Charmed sister, gaped at him. Piper looked at him almost frozen, her hand still reached out.
There was something smug in Chris voice as he continued. “That’s right . . . part witch, part whitelighter. Just like you Paige.”
The next part of Chris journey was somewhere that the Halliwell sisters couldn’t follow him. Bianca brought him back to the future and face to face with the very reason he was in the past in the first place, Wyatt Halliwell, Piper and Leo’s son.
Dressed all in black with his blond hair in waves to his shoulders, Wyatt looked at Chris with controlled anger. “Et tu, Chris?” Wyatt turned around and began to walk away. “Of all the people to betray me.”
It seemed that making Wyatt understand was important to Chris for he tried to explain. “I didn’t go back to betray you, Wyatt. I went back to save you.”
Surprised, Wyatt turned around and looked at Chris and Bianca at Chris side. “Save me? From what?”
“From whatever evil is was that turned you.”
After that nothing Chris said made much of an impression on the rogue Halliwell descendant. Finally Wyatt offered Chris the deal he had originally intended to make. “You know if anyone else tried what you tried, I’d kill them on the spot. But you.” There was a sense of disbelief in Wyatt’s voice as if he still couldn’t believe what Chris had attempted.
Chris set his jaw and waited. He didn’t have to wait long.
“I’ve forgiven Bianca.”
At the sound of his fiancée’s name Chris turned to look at her standing several feet behind him.
“I can forgive you, too, if you promise never to cross me again.”
Chris course was set despite whatever might happen next. “I think you know me better than that.”
And so Chris found himself later wanting nothing more than to collapse and forget everything that just happened, wanting more than ever to fix everything and save Wyatt. Forgetting was not an option and being alone would have to wait for in front of him stood all three Halliwell sisters and Leo.
Piper spoke first. “No. No buts. It’s about time you tell us the truth, now.”
“I can’t.” Chris started walking toward her. “But not because I don’t want to.” He stopped near where Leo stood several feet from the sisters. “But because there’s only so much I can tell you without the future being changed too much.”
It wasn’t for months more before Phoebe discovered the full extent of the situation. She motioned Chris aside and unsure how to approach the subject that was still just a theory they stood there in the backroom in P3 for a few moments.
Finally she took a deep breath and asked her question. “Are you Wyatt’s little brother?”
The silence was like a thick barrier between them; Chris face a mask. He sighed and looked away. Phoebe waited. His words said in almost a monotone bellied an uncertain future. “Only if I can get Piper and Leo back together in time.”
If Phoebe’s discovery of this startling fact was calm, when Paige found out it was the exact opposite. The fact that they had a demon on the attack and Phoebe had been turned into a genie did put Paige’s panic into perspective though.
In fact she had been ranting for several seconds before Chris confession pierced her mind. “What?”
Speaking calmly Chris paraphrased what he had just said and added on. “They’re my parents. I came back to save my family.”
Staring at him Paige stated in stunned certainty. “You’re serious.”
Chris nodded slightly glad he had gotten through. “Yeah. Only now I’ve gotta save myself, because if my mom doesn’t get pregnant in the next month, there is no me.”
Telling Piper went even less smoothly a month later. Phoebe and Paige were seated on the couch, both trying to get the other to give their sister the news.
It was Paige who finally said it. “Chris is your son.”
Now, that the news was out Phoebe felt more comfortable continuing on. “Wyatt’s brother. Look I know that this huge.
Piper shook her head. “No. It’s not huge, because it’s not possible. It’s crazy, cause I’m not pregnant.”
Phoebe and Paige looked at her.
“Oh.” Phoebe’s word came out in a whisper as she nodded.
“Yeah.” Paige told her not sure what else to say.
It was in stunned silence that Piper looked at her sisters trying to absorb what they had just said. Behind her Phoebe and Paige saw Chris walk in.
“This a bad time?”
Piper turned around and stared at him. It was all she could do, to absorb that this grown man standing there was her son, a son she hadn’t even known she had until a few moments before a son who was now growing inside her. Chris stared right back at her, a luxury he hadn’t aloud himself before now.
In the next few months Piper grew use to the fact that she was pregnant, as it grew quite obvious, and the fact that the baby was Chris. She also noticed that he had been avoiding her. Not sure what else to do she had asked her father, Victor Bennett, to come over. She had also failed to mention that she was pregnant. She tried to explain what was going on, though it seemed she was failing miserably when a request for her dad to talk to Chris met with Victor trying to speak to the baby in her womb. From another room, Chris responded to his name, so Piper called him in.
Chris walked in dressed in a long trench coat, looking rather like a hobo. Victor looked at the young man confused as he entered the room.
“Can we hurry this up, because I’ve gotta,” Chris stopped suddenly at the sight of Victor. “Grandpa!” As Chris ran toward Victor, Victor stood up unsure what was going on and even more confused as Chris pulled him into a hug.
Piper looked at Chris hugging Victor very confused and more than a little shocked. It was the happiest she had ever seen her son and the most unguarded. And it made her wonder even more what she might have done that would cause her son to avoid her when he gave her dad such an enthusiastic greeting.
A month or so later Chris was injured by an attack from a spider demon. Sitting at the kitchen table with Piper and Paige after having been tended to Chris asked why his mom had been worried. She revealed that she had worried when there had been no shield protecting her when she had been attacked like there had been with Wyatt. This bothered Chris a little until she said that the shield had been Wyatt’s doing not hers.
With that he looked at them in disbelief and started ranting. “Wait! The Womb?! He had powers from the womb?! That’s unbelievable! It’s not like I don’t have an inferiority complex with him already. Thank you.”
Piper and Paige were unsure what to do about that and just looked at him in silence.
Later that same day the spider demon had attacked, again. She had wrapped Piper up in a cocoon. Phoebe locked Chris up in the basement when it turned out that the spider’s attack had effected him more than they knew. They had also called Leo down from Up There, where he had been since Chris’ conception. Phoebe and Paige argued over what all to tell him, but Leo over heard them.
“Tell me what?” Leo asked.
Phoebe turned away from Paige and looked at Leo. She clutched her fists into balls and brought them up near her head as if that would help keep her silent. Paige watched her, silently willing her to keep silent, but suddenly the news burst from Phoebe. “Chris is your son.”
Leo stared at her. A puff of air escaped his lips in a helpless sound.
Here hands moving up and down for emphasis Phoebe continued. “Don’t we all feel better? I know I feel so much better.”
The tension seemed to have left her body and entered Leo’s. Leo walked passed Phoebe and Paige and sat down in a chair stunned.
Phoebe and Paige turned around to look at him.
“How . . ?”
“Uh, Spirit Realm,” Phoebe prompted. Not waiting for Leo to catch on she continued waving her hands up and down as she spoke. “Six months ago, you and Piper. Leo, she’s pregnant.”
The next three months went well. Chris’ relationships with his family improved and he learned to relax some even as he continued to search for the person that turned his brother. They even found an underworld game show they believed was responsible for Wyatt’s turning, so Chris was going back. And then everything went wrong. For some reason Chris and Leo ended up in a mirror world instead of the future. They learned that Leo’s old mentor, Gideon, had set it up as a distraction, so he could kill Wyatt whom he considered a threat. Once they were back in their proper sides of the mirror things got worse. Do to the imbalances both worlds had gone to extremes. The good side was in perpetual sunlight and even the slightest infraction was met with potentially deadly force. On the bad side they were in perpetual darkness and no kindness was shown. To make things worse Barbas, the demon of fear used Piper’s fears of loosing her sisters to get her to write a spell making Phoebe and Paige part of the fake happy world leaving Leo and Chris the only ones aware of what was going on.
Chris was watching Wyatt when a sound made him turn around. There stood Gideon between Chris and Wyatt in his playpen with an athemé in hand. Chris, worried for his brother ran toward the playpen and right into Gideon’s athemé. Wyatt looked on seeing what happened but not really understanding and perhaps he, too, was affected by the fake happiness. In pain Chris fell to his knees the athemé still firmly in Gideon’s hand and still fully in Chris’ stomach. Several seconds passed before Gideon pulled the athemé out of Chris.
Just before he fell to the ground in pain Chris called out for the only person left he could trust, the only other person not affected by the imbalance. “Dad!” Then, he buckled to the pain and fell to the ground on his side, in immense pain.
Leo was having his own problems. Barbas was using Leo’s fear of Wyatt turning evil against him. As Gideon stabbed Chris, Leo felt the pain, both physical and emotional of Wyatt plunging Excalibur into him. When, the image faded the physical pain did, and the emotional pain was put on a back burner at the frantic one word plea from his younger son. Leo orbed into the attic and spotted Chris lying on the floor.
“Oh, dear God.” Leo fell to his knees at Chris’ side and turned his son onto his side.
“Uhh,” through groans of pain Chris still focused on his brother. “Wyatt! Uhh! Wyatt!”
Realizing what his son was saying, Leo turned to look at Wyatt’s playpen and saw Gideon holding Wyatt.
“It’s for the best, Leo,” Gideon told him before he orbed out in orbs that weren’t still blue and not yet black, but more of a purple color.
A groan from Chris brought Leo’s attention back to his younger son. “Chris? Chris?”
At Chris’ urging Leo left to confront Gideon and get back Wyatt. They both knew that only Gideon could lift the curse on the athemé to allow Leo to heal his son in time. Though he got Wyatt back he also killed Gideon, which sets the worlds right, but ruined Chris only chance. Leo returned to the house and was greeted by Agent Sheridan, a woman who had been working with the San Francisco PD investigating the Halliwells and Chris. Her words terrified Leo as he ran up the stairs to find Paige waiting. There was sorrow in her face as she let him back into the room where Chris laying on a bed, dying.
“Chris.”
Chris turned his head and a weak voice greeted his father. “Hey.”
Leo kneeled on the ground next to the bed as Paige walked into the room stopping in the door way, allowing Leo this time. “Hey. I’m here now. You can hold on, okay. Hold on . . . hold on. I’m here. You can hold on, okay.”
Chris nodded weakly, trying to reassure his father.
Leo kept going not willing to admit what he knew was about to happen. “Don’t give up, okay?”
Chris nodded, again. This time he spoke, his voice stronger than when he greeted Leo. “You either.” Then, his eye fluttered closed, his head turning to the other side of the bed.
Leo’s hand smoothed against Chris’ hair, following his sons head as it moved. “No, no, no. Please . . . no. No, please. No.”
In the doorway tears spilled down Paige’s face. Silent sobs began to control Leo as his head dropped down on the dead, defeated. Chris was dead.
Then, a strange thing occurred. As Paige watched crying, Chris began to disappear. Leo’s head leaned against Chris dropped to the bed as where his son once was there was now only air. Paige continued crying, motionless in the doorway. Leo’s hands gripped around as if trying to find his son and then he looked up and gave up.
Around that same time in a hospital elsewhere in San Francisco, Piper gave birth to her second son, Chris. He was the same boy and yet the experiences that would shape him would be different, he would never be the same.
Nearly twenty three years later in early January of twenty-twenty-seven, Wyatt and Chris Halliwell shared an apartment a few miles from the Halliwell manor where their parents lived. Leo was mortal now and it had been over twenty-one year since magic had been used by any witch, warlock, or demon.
Though it was dark out, the moon shone enough light into Chris’ bedroom to show him asleep in one of the two beds in his room. He was mostly covered by sheets and blankets, but it was clear, by the bare shoulders showing, that beneath the covers he was topless. The room was silent and almost motionless. Then on the other side of the room on a second bed another Chris appears. This Chris is wearing the same blue-grey jacket and white T-shirt that Chris had been wearing almost twenty-three years before when he died. The second Chris blurs and swiftly is moved toward the first Chris merging with him. Once again there is only one Chris. He is still laying asleep in the bed, but now above the covers the blue-grey jacket and white T-shirt covered the once bear skin of Chris shoulders and chest as he moved restlessly in his sleep.
TITLE: The Magic Is Back
AUTHOR: StoryGirl83
TYPE: Series (Charmed: Heritage)
RATING: T (For Charmed-typed violence)
LEAD CHARACTERS: Wyatt and Chris (with Piper and Leo appearing)
ORIGINAL CHARACTERS: Drinka Deguilio, Steve Kessler (unnamed warlock), Reeve Farrell (unnamed darklighter), and Kali Nicolae
SHORT SUMMARY: Sat, Jan 2, 2027 – Wyatt finds his brother mortally wounded and is unable to heal him without a spell and a potion from their aunt Phoebe. Chris reveals memory gaps and dual lifetimes in what he does remember. The boys are attacked by a darklighter, the first magical attack in over twenty years.
Charmed: Heritage
Episode 1X01 - The Magic Is Back
Episode 1X01 - The Magic Is Back
Prologue - The Life and Death of Chris Perry
Disclaimer: I do not own Charmed or any characters from Charmed. I do not own any scenes from Charmed, either in the prologue or used as a flashback. I do own any original characters found within this story.
Phoebe Halliwell looked around a white statue that looked hauntingly like her younger half sister, Paige Matthews. On the other side was an unfamiliar young man. His hair was a mess. He wore a brown jacket over a red shirt. And he looked to Phoebe as if the fact that he may well have saved Phoebe from the same fate of her sister was no big deal.
“Who are you?” Phoebe asked, her curiosity pulling the words out of her mouth.
“Chris.” The name was out of his mouth almost instantly. There was a slight hesitation before he continued on. “Chris Perry. I’m,” he trailed off and gulped before continuing on, “from the future.” Phoebe had to wonder how much of his words were true, but reluctantly given and how much was simply fabricated to keep the truth hidden.
Later Chris sat on the doorsteps in front of the manor. He looked up at the man standing on the sidewalk in front of him. Leo Wyatt, Phoebe’s brother-in-law, stood calmly, with his hands behind his back, dressed in the gold robes of an elder.
“So,” Chris’ voice wavered only slightly as he spoke, “what did they decide?”
Leo sucked in a deep breath before he began to speak. He looked down at the sidewalk and said, “The elders voted.” Lifting his head a smile spread across his face as he continued, “to make you the Charmed One’s new whitelighter.”
Chris eyes widened as he leaned forward slightly as if he couldn’t believe what he had just heard. “They did?”
“As a reward for helping defeat the titans, but then,” Leo paused taking in another breath before continuing on, “somehow I figured you new that.”
A look akin to rolled eyes passed across Chris face before he dipped his head in a bow that might have been acknowledgment or something else.
Time caused the disagreements between Chris and Leo to widen. Time and the fact that Leo believed Chris responsible for sending Leo to Valhalley. Instead of smiling at the possibility that Chris had known he would become the Charmed Ones whitelighter by helping with the Titans, Leo now was trying his best to keep Chris away from the sisters. He stood in the door way of the back room in P3 where Chris had been staying in the months since he had been the girls whitelighter.
“Chris,” Leo began.
Chris wasn’t interested. Standing he spoke. “Leo. I mean it, because whether you believe me or not, I’m here to protect Wyatt.”
Leo’s concern over his son warred with what he believed about Chris.
“Not other charges,” Chris told him turning around to pick up the sheet he used to cover himself when he slept. He didn’t look at the man behind him as he spoke. “Other than the sisters, of course.”
As Chris turned back to look at him Leo nodded slightly. “If that’s how you feel about it. I guess I’ll reassign her.”
There was relief in Chris voice as he spoke now. “Thank you.”
Leo orbed out and Chris breathed a sigh of relief.
Months later the arrival of a second time traveler caused even more disruption in the lives of the Halliwells. The ripple effects of Chris’ actions where still making themselves known, but Bianca’s arrival had very immediate results. They had ultimately led to an apartment where Bianca had drawn a triquetra on the wall. She had done something to Chris, the extent of which the sisters were still learning.
Phoebe’s older sister and Leo’s wife, Piper Halliwell, raised her hands and tried to freeze Chris and Bianca. When nothing happened she started stuttering as she starred at the couple.
Bianca turned to look at her. Chris remained facing the wall, but his shuffled movements showed that he wasn’t frozen.
Piper’s stuttering became words as she tried to voice her thoughts. “Yeah, okay, I get why she didn’t freeze, but why didn’t he freeze?”
Phoebe’s words weren’t much more articulate as she said, “Unless . . . he’s a . . .”
Chris turned to look at them and finished Phoebe’s confused attempt at making sense of what she had just scene. “I’m a witch, too.”
Phoebe looked at his stunned. Paige Matthews, the third living Charmed sister, gaped at him. Piper looked at him almost frozen, her hand still reached out.
There was something smug in Chris voice as he continued. “That’s right . . . part witch, part whitelighter. Just like you Paige.”
The next part of Chris journey was somewhere that the Halliwell sisters couldn’t follow him. Bianca brought him back to the future and face to face with the very reason he was in the past in the first place, Wyatt Halliwell, Piper and Leo’s son.
Dressed all in black with his blond hair in waves to his shoulders, Wyatt looked at Chris with controlled anger. “Et tu, Chris?” Wyatt turned around and began to walk away. “Of all the people to betray me.”
It seemed that making Wyatt understand was important to Chris for he tried to explain. “I didn’t go back to betray you, Wyatt. I went back to save you.”
Surprised, Wyatt turned around and looked at Chris and Bianca at Chris side. “Save me? From what?”
“From whatever evil is was that turned you.”
After that nothing Chris said made much of an impression on the rogue Halliwell descendant. Finally Wyatt offered Chris the deal he had originally intended to make. “You know if anyone else tried what you tried, I’d kill them on the spot. But you.” There was a sense of disbelief in Wyatt’s voice as if he still couldn’t believe what Chris had attempted.
Chris set his jaw and waited. He didn’t have to wait long.
“I’ve forgiven Bianca.”
At the sound of his fiancée’s name Chris turned to look at her standing several feet behind him.
“I can forgive you, too, if you promise never to cross me again.”
Chris course was set despite whatever might happen next. “I think you know me better than that.”
And so Chris found himself later wanting nothing more than to collapse and forget everything that just happened, wanting more than ever to fix everything and save Wyatt. Forgetting was not an option and being alone would have to wait for in front of him stood all three Halliwell sisters and Leo.
Piper spoke first. “No. No buts. It’s about time you tell us the truth, now.”
“I can’t.” Chris started walking toward her. “But not because I don’t want to.” He stopped near where Leo stood several feet from the sisters. “But because there’s only so much I can tell you without the future being changed too much.”
It wasn’t for months more before Phoebe discovered the full extent of the situation. She motioned Chris aside and unsure how to approach the subject that was still just a theory they stood there in the backroom in P3 for a few moments.
Finally she took a deep breath and asked her question. “Are you Wyatt’s little brother?”
The silence was like a thick barrier between them; Chris face a mask. He sighed and looked away. Phoebe waited. His words said in almost a monotone bellied an uncertain future. “Only if I can get Piper and Leo back together in time.”
If Phoebe’s discovery of this startling fact was calm, when Paige found out it was the exact opposite. The fact that they had a demon on the attack and Phoebe had been turned into a genie did put Paige’s panic into perspective though.
In fact she had been ranting for several seconds before Chris confession pierced her mind. “What?”
Speaking calmly Chris paraphrased what he had just said and added on. “They’re my parents. I came back to save my family.”
Staring at him Paige stated in stunned certainty. “You’re serious.”
Chris nodded slightly glad he had gotten through. “Yeah. Only now I’ve gotta save myself, because if my mom doesn’t get pregnant in the next month, there is no me.”
Telling Piper went even less smoothly a month later. Phoebe and Paige were seated on the couch, both trying to get the other to give their sister the news.
It was Paige who finally said it. “Chris is your son.”
Now, that the news was out Phoebe felt more comfortable continuing on. “Wyatt’s brother. Look I know that this huge.
Piper shook her head. “No. It’s not huge, because it’s not possible. It’s crazy, cause I’m not pregnant.”
Phoebe and Paige looked at her.
“Oh.” Phoebe’s word came out in a whisper as she nodded.
“Yeah.” Paige told her not sure what else to say.
It was in stunned silence that Piper looked at her sisters trying to absorb what they had just said. Behind her Phoebe and Paige saw Chris walk in.
“This a bad time?”
Piper turned around and stared at him. It was all she could do, to absorb that this grown man standing there was her son, a son she hadn’t even known she had until a few moments before a son who was now growing inside her. Chris stared right back at her, a luxury he hadn’t aloud himself before now.
In the next few months Piper grew use to the fact that she was pregnant, as it grew quite obvious, and the fact that the baby was Chris. She also noticed that he had been avoiding her. Not sure what else to do she had asked her father, Victor Bennett, to come over. She had also failed to mention that she was pregnant. She tried to explain what was going on, though it seemed she was failing miserably when a request for her dad to talk to Chris met with Victor trying to speak to the baby in her womb. From another room, Chris responded to his name, so Piper called him in.
Chris walked in dressed in a long trench coat, looking rather like a hobo. Victor looked at the young man confused as he entered the room.
“Can we hurry this up, because I’ve gotta,” Chris stopped suddenly at the sight of Victor. “Grandpa!” As Chris ran toward Victor, Victor stood up unsure what was going on and even more confused as Chris pulled him into a hug.
Piper looked at Chris hugging Victor very confused and more than a little shocked. It was the happiest she had ever seen her son and the most unguarded. And it made her wonder even more what she might have done that would cause her son to avoid her when he gave her dad such an enthusiastic greeting.
A month or so later Chris was injured by an attack from a spider demon. Sitting at the kitchen table with Piper and Paige after having been tended to Chris asked why his mom had been worried. She revealed that she had worried when there had been no shield protecting her when she had been attacked like there had been with Wyatt. This bothered Chris a little until she said that the shield had been Wyatt’s doing not hers.
With that he looked at them in disbelief and started ranting. “Wait! The Womb?! He had powers from the womb?! That’s unbelievable! It’s not like I don’t have an inferiority complex with him already. Thank you.”
Piper and Paige were unsure what to do about that and just looked at him in silence.
Later that same day the spider demon had attacked, again. She had wrapped Piper up in a cocoon. Phoebe locked Chris up in the basement when it turned out that the spider’s attack had effected him more than they knew. They had also called Leo down from Up There, where he had been since Chris’ conception. Phoebe and Paige argued over what all to tell him, but Leo over heard them.
“Tell me what?” Leo asked.
Phoebe turned away from Paige and looked at Leo. She clutched her fists into balls and brought them up near her head as if that would help keep her silent. Paige watched her, silently willing her to keep silent, but suddenly the news burst from Phoebe. “Chris is your son.”
Leo stared at her. A puff of air escaped his lips in a helpless sound.
Here hands moving up and down for emphasis Phoebe continued. “Don’t we all feel better? I know I feel so much better.”
The tension seemed to have left her body and entered Leo’s. Leo walked passed Phoebe and Paige and sat down in a chair stunned.
Phoebe and Paige turned around to look at him.
“How . . ?”
“Uh, Spirit Realm,” Phoebe prompted. Not waiting for Leo to catch on she continued waving her hands up and down as she spoke. “Six months ago, you and Piper. Leo, she’s pregnant.”
The next three months went well. Chris’ relationships with his family improved and he learned to relax some even as he continued to search for the person that turned his brother. They even found an underworld game show they believed was responsible for Wyatt’s turning, so Chris was going back. And then everything went wrong. For some reason Chris and Leo ended up in a mirror world instead of the future. They learned that Leo’s old mentor, Gideon, had set it up as a distraction, so he could kill Wyatt whom he considered a threat. Once they were back in their proper sides of the mirror things got worse. Do to the imbalances both worlds had gone to extremes. The good side was in perpetual sunlight and even the slightest infraction was met with potentially deadly force. On the bad side they were in perpetual darkness and no kindness was shown. To make things worse Barbas, the demon of fear used Piper’s fears of loosing her sisters to get her to write a spell making Phoebe and Paige part of the fake happy world leaving Leo and Chris the only ones aware of what was going on.
Chris was watching Wyatt when a sound made him turn around. There stood Gideon between Chris and Wyatt in his playpen with an athemé in hand. Chris, worried for his brother ran toward the playpen and right into Gideon’s athemé. Wyatt looked on seeing what happened but not really understanding and perhaps he, too, was affected by the fake happiness. In pain Chris fell to his knees the athemé still firmly in Gideon’s hand and still fully in Chris’ stomach. Several seconds passed before Gideon pulled the athemé out of Chris.
Just before he fell to the ground in pain Chris called out for the only person left he could trust, the only other person not affected by the imbalance. “Dad!” Then, he buckled to the pain and fell to the ground on his side, in immense pain.
Leo was having his own problems. Barbas was using Leo’s fear of Wyatt turning evil against him. As Gideon stabbed Chris, Leo felt the pain, both physical and emotional of Wyatt plunging Excalibur into him. When, the image faded the physical pain did, and the emotional pain was put on a back burner at the frantic one word plea from his younger son. Leo orbed into the attic and spotted Chris lying on the floor.
“Oh, dear God.” Leo fell to his knees at Chris’ side and turned his son onto his side.
“Uhh,” through groans of pain Chris still focused on his brother. “Wyatt! Uhh! Wyatt!”
Realizing what his son was saying, Leo turned to look at Wyatt’s playpen and saw Gideon holding Wyatt.
“It’s for the best, Leo,” Gideon told him before he orbed out in orbs that weren’t still blue and not yet black, but more of a purple color.
A groan from Chris brought Leo’s attention back to his younger son. “Chris? Chris?”
At Chris’ urging Leo left to confront Gideon and get back Wyatt. They both knew that only Gideon could lift the curse on the athemé to allow Leo to heal his son in time. Though he got Wyatt back he also killed Gideon, which sets the worlds right, but ruined Chris only chance. Leo returned to the house and was greeted by Agent Sheridan, a woman who had been working with the San Francisco PD investigating the Halliwells and Chris. Her words terrified Leo as he ran up the stairs to find Paige waiting. There was sorrow in her face as she let him back into the room where Chris laying on a bed, dying.
“Chris.”
Chris turned his head and a weak voice greeted his father. “Hey.”
Leo kneeled on the ground next to the bed as Paige walked into the room stopping in the door way, allowing Leo this time. “Hey. I’m here now. You can hold on, okay. Hold on . . . hold on. I’m here. You can hold on, okay.”
Chris nodded weakly, trying to reassure his father.
Leo kept going not willing to admit what he knew was about to happen. “Don’t give up, okay?”
Chris nodded, again. This time he spoke, his voice stronger than when he greeted Leo. “You either.” Then, his eye fluttered closed, his head turning to the other side of the bed.
Leo’s hand smoothed against Chris’ hair, following his sons head as it moved. “No, no, no. Please . . . no. No, please. No.”
In the doorway tears spilled down Paige’s face. Silent sobs began to control Leo as his head dropped down on the dead, defeated. Chris was dead.
Then, a strange thing occurred. As Paige watched crying, Chris began to disappear. Leo’s head leaned against Chris dropped to the bed as where his son once was there was now only air. Paige continued crying, motionless in the doorway. Leo’s hands gripped around as if trying to find his son and then he looked up and gave up.
Around that same time in a hospital elsewhere in San Francisco, Piper gave birth to her second son, Chris. He was the same boy and yet the experiences that would shape him would be different, he would never be the same.
Nearly twenty three years later in early January of twenty-twenty-seven, Wyatt and Chris Halliwell shared an apartment a few miles from the Halliwell manor where their parents lived. Leo was mortal now and it had been over twenty-one year since magic had been used by any witch, warlock, or demon.
Though it was dark out, the moon shone enough light into Chris’ bedroom to show him asleep in one of the two beds in his room. He was mostly covered by sheets and blankets, but it was clear, by the bare shoulders showing, that beneath the covers he was topless. The room was silent and almost motionless. Then on the other side of the room on a second bed another Chris appears. This Chris is wearing the same blue-grey jacket and white T-shirt that Chris had been wearing almost twenty-three years before when he died. The second Chris blurs and swiftly is moved toward the first Chris merging with him. Once again there is only one Chris. He is still laying asleep in the bed, but now above the covers the blue-grey jacket and white T-shirt covered the once bear skin of Chris shoulders and chest as he moved restlessly in his sleep.
