They reappeared in a cave and when they looked around there were ashes and bits of rocks everywhere. It looked like a battle field, an empty one at that. Except for one figure that was on the ground next to where Leo had orbed them. They looked at him and Piper’s blood froze at the sight of her broken Whitelighter, unconscious lying on a pool of his own blood.

Leo had already ran towards him and had started healing him.

“Paige!” he cried. “He’s too far gone; I can’t do this by myself.”

“I can’t,” Paige stuttered, “I can’t-“

“Try,” Phoebe urged her and pushed her towards Chris and Leo. She knelt down next to them as Leo instructed Paige on what to do and feel for. Phoebe looked at Chris’s face and she felt a pang in her heart. He was smiling, as if he’d finally be where he wanted to, as if he’d finally get peace.

Piper on the other hand couldn’t move, she just stared at the scene and remembered horrified the words she told Paige the day before when Paige had tried to argue on Chris’s behalf. “He could die for all I care,” she had said but now faced with the fact she was scared. What if they’d been too late? How had Leo known?

She stayed there, tears running down her cheeks watching as Leo’s and Paige’s glowing hands moved everywhere over Chris’s body and Phoebe gently caressed his head as if she was telling him to hold on just a little bit more. She had hated this man, he had destroyed her family, turned Leo into a Elder, lied and manipulated them, but for some reason unknown to her, her heart was bleeding as if a part of her was dying with him.

After what seemed like an eternity Leo’s and Paige’s hands stopped glowing but Chris didn’t wake.

“We did it,” Leo said sighing. “He’s exhausted. I don’t expect he’ll wake any time soon.” He gently lifted Chris in his arms. “Paige, can you-“

Paige nodded, “Yes,” she said roughly. She knew now what Leo knew. Chris had been so far gone that they had to reach within his magic to save him. And she felt his magic, his familiar magic, the magic she had learned to feel for when Leo had her meditating. Piper and Leo’s magic flowing through Chris.

She walked dazedly to Piper and waited for Phoebe to join them. Piper looked like a wreck and she didn’t even know who he was. How would they tell her?

As they orbed in they saw Leo gently lying Chris on his and Piper’s bed. Phoebe went to the bathroom and got a wet washcloth and started wiping Chris’ face.

“I’ll get some of your pajamas,” Piper told Leo. “Can you change him?” he nodded as he lifted Chris up with Paige’s and Phoebe’s help and took away his dirty shirt.

Paige and Phoebe helped him clean his arms, face and chest and then left so Leo could deal with changing him and cleaning Chris legs. They joined Piper downstairs and the three of them waited in a heavy silence for Leo to join them. Once he did Paige could see he was struggling to find a way to tell Piper but Piper was the one to break the silence.

“How did you know?”

“I felt him,” he said. “Whatever blocks he had fell when he got too close to-“ he couldn’t finish “he’s ours,” he whispered.

“What?” Piper asked confused.

Leo looked at her and said sadly, “They say your life runs through your eyes when you’re about to die. Well, I saw his, everything, eighteen years in a second. I saw his birth, I saw him loose each one of us,” he snorted. “When I died he said he’d fix it. He did, he sent me where I’d learn the skills I’d need to survive. He wasn’t lying about Wyatt. But he left a lot out,” there was so much pain in his eyes as he said this. “Wyatt is the evil that destroyed the world and Chris is trying to find and stop whoever turns him. But he doesn’t know who, so when we said we wouldn’t help he snapped, he got desperate and went after every demon that came in contact with a Halliwell in the next 19 years. He is powerful, but he is also human. He was tired and injured.”

Piper was shaking her head and Paige couldn’t tell what she was denying as she moaned “No, no, no.”  That he was her son? That he was left alone at such an early age? That he wasn’t lying or that Wyatt, their little angel was evil? Leo got up and walked towards Piper. He knelt down and took her shaking hand on his.

“He is Piper. I saw his life though his eyes and you have no idea how much he loves us, how much he loves you.”

She whispered, “He can’t be…We told him…I told him to leave. He’ll hate me.”

“He doesn’t,” Leo said. “He’s hurt. I won’t lie to you. He is very hurt but he doesn’t hate us.”

---

She had been watching him sleep for a while now. She was afraid of what would happen once he woke up.

The “then you can just dump me in the first dumpster you see if you want!” that he had yelled at her kept repeating in her head. At the time she hadn’t understood what he had meant but now those words cut her deeply, because her son could even think for a second that she would abandon him, that she would give him up.

She tried focusing on what Leo had said but all she could hear were those words, all she could remember were every harsh word she said, all she could see was his face when she told him to leave and the fact that even though she had  thrown him out he had come instantly when she said she was hurt, but she hadn’t made sure he got healed.

“Maybe,” “A little”, full of sarcasm.

She had driven him to the desperation that almost killed him.

Chris stirred and even dreading him waking up she hoped he wasn’t having yet another nightmare. His sleep had been restless. He would thrash around and cry out but his body was so exhausted that no amount of shaking woke him up.

This time though he was waking. He stirred and rubbed his eyes. He looked around confused and jumped up suddenly alert knelling on the bed. He saw Piper and his eyes narrowed.

“How did I get here?” he asked suspiciously.

“We found you,” she said softly. “You were injured.”

“And you healed me and brought me here? How magnanimous. Not worried I’ll infect you with my evilness?”

Piper swallowed hard and tried to remind herself that he didn’t know they knew. Was this how he felt? How many times did he have to remind himself they didn’t know who he was? How had he managed? She wanted to break down and cry.

He was still glaring at her and orbs started forming. She lunged forward and grabbed his arm.

“No! Don’t go!”

He stopped orbing and hissed, “I haven’t got time for this. I have a job-“

“We’ll help!” she said and he goggled at her.

“What?” he spluttered.

“We’ll help. We shouldn’t have said what we- I said. I’m sorry. For everything.”

He narrowed his eyes suspiciously and apparently he was quicker to connect the dots than they were because his eyes went huge and he got out of the bed frantically shaking his head.

“No, no, no. You can’t. You’re not supposed to! There are RULES! You can’t know! You can’t-“

He was getting hysterical and Piper came to stand in front of him and tried to stop his frantic passing, “Stop that!” she ordered. “It’s okay, everything will be fine.”

“Nothing is fine!” he cried. “Nothing!”

She didn’t know what to do. He looked so desperate and she was at a loss of how to comfort him, what to tell him. She didn’t know what brought him to this state, yes she had a faint idea, but how could she help him not knowing how he got there? Orbs formed between them and as he materialized Leo pulled Chris into an embrace and tried to quiet him down.

“We know Chris, but we’ll make it fine,” he said firmly as he rubbed circles on Chris’s back. Chris tried to fight the embrace but Leo didn’t let him go instead bringing both of them down to rest against the wall. From the distance Piper heard Wyatt’s cries and she was torn about which son to help. She decided to go to Wyatt. Leo obviously had a better understanding of what Chris was feeling.

She found Paige bouncing a crying Wyatt around in the living room.

“I have no idea what’s going on. He’s been more subdued than usual and your dad said he’s been fussy all along but then he suddenly started crying and he doesn’t need to be changed, he doesn’t want his bottle, I tried healing him, now that I can, but he’s not hurt or sick. Then again, I’m not used to healing maybe-“

Piper stopped her sister’s babbling by taking Wyatt from her arms and bouncing and cooing him.

“What’s wrong little man?” she asked. He was red and puffy from crying but he didn’t stop for a long while, and when he did he just laid his head on her shoulder quietly and sadly, as if asking for comfort, she truly did not understand what was going on.

---

“We’ll help you,” Leo said soothingly. Chris had stopped struggling and was just lying against his father as if his life depended on it. He didn’t say a word so Leo went on. “I know. The girls only know the summary but I know everything Chris. I know why you didn’t tell us who you where. I wish you had, so I could have understood why I needed to know how to fight with a sword.”

“They did it to attack Wyatt. The Darklighters,” Chris said quietly. “They started coating swords with their poison because of Excalibur. Darklighters were the only kind of Demons Wyatt didn’t accept in his ranks because they are a threat to him and his Whitelighter blood. So they went after you to send a message to Wyatt. I arrived too late-“ he choked.

“I know, it wasn’t your fault.”

“I can’t heal! I called Wyatt, but he didn’t care anymore, he didn’t come. I can’t heal!” he was sobbing by now and Leo tried to sooth him.

“I know! Sshh. I know everything and we’ll fix this together.”

Chris nodded. He didn’t know why he was letting himself get comforted by Leo. That went against everything he had made himself get used to, but he did. Maybe because Leo knew now and he had been alone for so long.

Wyatt started spiraling down ever since most of his family died on an attack, leaving behind only Leo, Chris, Wyatt, Phoebe and Victor. By the time Leo died Wyatt was Lord Wyatt, he had announced magic to the world, brought demons out of the underworld and was ruling mortals by fear. Leo, Phoebe, Chris, Victor, Darryl and his family and Billie had got together every which, mortal, and even some demons that wanted to fight into a group forming the resistance. That had happened around the time Chris was fourteen, they had been fighting for almost two years when Leo died. And Chris’s luck only got worse after that, Victor, who had been sick for a while and couldn’t get medication died a few weeks later, and Phoebe died on an attack that Wyatt’s troops had made on a group of witches that were hiding and the resistance had sent a rescue mission led by Phoebe. Chris had been so busy fighting that he only found out when they started to gather the bodies of the fallen and his aunt’s body was among them.

He was sixteen and a half when the others named him the leader of the resistance in Phoebe’s place. He was seventeen when he finally managed to convince Darryl and Billy to help him with his plan. His father and Phoebe hadn’t wanted to when he first sprung up the idea after all their attempts to save Wyatt failed.

He turned eighteen last week but didn’t even stop to acknowledge the significance of the date.

---

It was a while before Leo managed to calm Chris’s sobs down. The boy must have really been over the edge to let himself be comforted by Leo this way. Leo thought with a pang that they hadn’t helped matters any.

He hoped Chris let him help. He had a new understanding of Chris now that he’d seen his life.

He heard from the distance, Wyatt’s cries quieting down along with Chris’s. Leo  knew he could count on Piper to take care of Wyatt and right now the best he could do for both his sons was help Chris calm his emotions.

After being able to process some of his son’s life Leo was astounded at the strength of the bond his sons shared. And it was this bond that was the base of Chris’s belief that he could save Wyatt. A bond so strong that Chris or Wyatt could feel the other even if they were in the underworld, that even if the other was blocking them they knew what they were feeling, if not their thoughts, they knew their intention, but a bond that dimmed out of the blue. And Chris believed that whatever magic turned Wyatt was also responsible for cutting their bond.

He, Leo, Phoebe and Victor had tried everything from spells to potions to reverse that magic but they couldn’t even remember Wyatt being attacked, and Chris would have known if he had. He would have felt it. That is why Chris came with the theory that maybe this happened before he was born and that the magic lay dormant all that time. The only time they could remember was around when Chris was born but they still couldn’t figure out who could have done it. Chris said they should stop it from happening but Leo and Phoebe told him the rules, you do not change history. After they died Chris chucked the rules, or most of them, out the window and Leo could understand why. Wyatt was all he had left but there was more, there was no repairing the world he came from, they had to stop it from happening.

Since Chris had come he had kept a tight rein on his emotions and a block on himself so that Leo and Paige wouldn’t be able to sense him and know who he was. Leo snorted mentally, the fact that he couldn’t sense Chris was part of what made him suspect the boy. But there is just so much you can tight the reins before they snap and Chris had been doing so even before he came, afraid that even with a dimmed bond Wyatt would be able to feel him and therefore figure out where the resistance was and what they were planning. And his rein just snapped.

He was only eighteen for crying out loud. Just a boy, as was Wyatt. Barely twenty and already responsible for destroying everything they fought to protect.

He kept rubbing circles on Chris’s back in a soothing manner and waited to see if Chris said anything. He heard footsteps and saw Piper approaching with Wyatt. He decided to initiate the conversation himself.

“You know, telling Wyatt to put his shield up whenever you were near was a good way to make us keep our guard up but it also just proves how clueless we are.”

Piper frowned and looked down at Wyatt. When Leo looked at Chris and saw the exact same frown he had to chuckle.

“There were many times when you were a little too eager and told Wyatt to put his shield up before he could have seen or heard you. If we had noticed we would have known something was wrong sooner.”

“What? How?” Piper stammered. “He what?”

Leo took pity of his ex-wife and explained. “Chris thought that if we thought he was a threat we would keep our guard up and therefore stop the real threats. So he was the one telling Wyatt to put his shield up through their mental bond.”

“What bond?” she asked.

Chris looked at her and smirked.

“Hey!” she cried as Wyatt orbed out of his arms and to Chris’s. He kissed the blond little head and said, “Good boy.” He looked up and said. “That one.”

“Wyatt can feel Chris’s emotions and intentions,” Leo explained. “He knows Chris never meant him any harm so Chris told him telepathically to put his shield up.”

“Great! That’s just peachy!” Piper huffed. “I so wanted my sons to be able to plan mischief right in front of me without me knowing. This is all your fault!” she glared at Leo who didn’t hide his chuckle and was joined by Chris’s who turned into a blown out laugh as he remembered the many times he and his brother did exactly that to steal more cookies from right under Piper’s nose.

“I don’t see what’s so funny,” Piper huffed and stalked away before either of them could see the smile playing on her lips. Chris was acting very uncharacteristically, but at least he was talking to them. She knew that was a result of his nervous breakdown but she thought that maybe that breakdown had been a blessing after all.