Fic: My Heart Nearer to Thee (15/15)
May. 24th, 2012 05:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sara_wolfTitle: My Heart Nearer to Thee
Rating: PG
Warnings: character death
Summary: When Phoebe's husband and son are abducted to a dangerous alternate universe, the sisters must travel across reality to save them.
*****
Paige and her passengers emerged in the attic of the Manor. Paige blinked in surprise, but really she should have expected it. The Manor was under demonic control, after all, and Piper and Phoebe most likely used it as their base of operations above ground. It only made sense that their final confrontation would take place, there.
"What happened to this place?" Prue demanded, aghast.
"We kind of had a little fight with a demon when we first arrived in this reality," Paige explained, looking around the destroyed attic. "It wasn't this bad when we orbed out, though."
"We think our demonic friend lost his temper after we escaped," Piper spoke up, and Paige looked over to see Piper and Phoebe emerging from the hallway. Even though she suspected their alternate selves would have already tried to kill them, Paige still didn't breathe easy until she saw Piper's heavily-distended abdomen.
"Any signs of life down below?" Paige asked, quietly, nodding toward the lower floors of the house.
"None on the second floor," Phoebe replied, "but we heard some people moving around down in the kitchen."
"All right," Prue said, cracking her knuckles and making Paige wince at the sound. "Paige, Cole, and I will go down there and take care of things. You two wait for our signal."
"Which is?" Piper prompted, expectantly.
"Do screams count?" Paige asked, wryly, getting an exasperated look from Cole.
"I'll come get you," he told the women. "Until then, stay up here, and stay hidden."
Paige and Prue raided the stash of weapons near the door, the one their evil sisters clearly hadn't seen fit to do away with, even in this reality. Paige palmed a long, thin dagger, tucking another blade, in its sheath, into her boot, glad that she'd chosen to wear hiking boots that morning. Prue readied herself with a short-handled, doubled-bladed axe that she tossed idly from hand to hand. It was big enough that Paige figured she had to be using her power to support some of the weight.
The three of them crept slowly downstairs. Paige and Prue both automatically skipped lightly over the third step from the top of the staircase, the one that always squeaked. Cole, with his longer strides, just avoided the step like it wasn't even there. Paige stayed up on the balls of her feet as she walked, dagger clutched firmly in the palm of her hand. Prue was at her side, and she could sense Cole at their backs, all of them keeping an eye out for danger.
When they reached the living room, Prue signaled for them to pause, and then she closed her eyes and sent her astral self ahead of them. Paige heard a muffled yell of surprise coming from the kitchen, and then Prue's eyes snapped open as she recalled her astral projection.
"Incoming," she hissed, seconds before a pair of demons came tearing into the room.
Paige was ready, and her first dagger found a home buried in the throat of the lead demon. He fell, emitting a low, gurgling sound as he died. Cole took care of the second, an energy ball incinerating the lower-level thug in a flash of flame.
"Any more?" Paige asked, cautiously, as they ducked back around the corner to wait for any further attack.
"I only saw two," Prue replied, just as quietly. "They were standing guard in front of the door to the basement.
"What do you want to bet your sisters are down there drawing on the Nexus?" Cole asked, softly. "It's what I would do, if I was evil, and I had control of the Manor."
"Speaking of," Paige said, hesitantly. She stopped her brother-in-law with a hand on his arm, looking up at Cole. "I'm sorry for thinking you were evil, before," she apologized. "Some of the things I said-"
"I was evil, or possessed by it, anyway," Cole reminded her. "And you were just as much a victim of the Source as I was. And you went into the Underworld, alone, to rescue my son. As far as I'm concerned, that more than evens things out between us. If anything, I owe you."
"Great, that's adorable," Prue interrupted them. "Let's go get this over with, huh?"
Her shoulders were tense, and her mouth was set in a tight line, and there was a grim look on her face. Paige reached out and squeezed Prue's hand, gently, getting her attention.
"It's going to be okay," she murmured, comfortingly. "I promise. Everything's going to be okay."
Prue nodded, the upset in her eyes easing a bit. At her signal, the three of them crept forward, again. The kitchen was quiet, the guards not having been missed, yet. Paige hoped that they weren't due to change guards any time soon, or they would be discovered.
The door to the basement was firmly shut, but Prue gestured and the door swung silently open, coming to a gentle rest against the side of the counter. Paige stopped Prue and Cole before they could start across the kitchen, shaking her head as she pointed at the tile floor.
"Can you shimmer us across?" she whispered, her voice barely audible. "Walking is too noisy, and orbing is too bright."
Cole nodded, grabbing her and Prue by the shoulders. They shimmered across the kitchen, the teleport leaving Paige with a queasy sensation that had her automatically checking to make sure that she hadn't just left her stomach in the dining room.
From down inside the basement, Paige could make out the sound of muffled voices, chanting a ritual in a language she didn't recognize, at first. After a few seconds, she started to make out individual words, and she realized that the connection she had with her Piper and Phoebe must still exist on some level with this Piper and Phoebe, as well.
'Maybe I can make this work to my advantage,' she thought, as she listened to the droning chant of their ritual.
The strange words were slowly becoming more and more clear, like when she gained a charge who spoke a different language. Usually, the translating effect was faster than this, but Paige figured that it had something to do with these women being alternate copies of her sisters, not to mention the whole evil thing.
"-come to us, oh Bringer of Night – " That was Phoebe's voice, and the flat, emotionless sound sent chills down Paige's spine.
"Destroyer of Light, we summon thee-" Piper, and compared to Phoebe's dead tone, there was an almost malicious glee in her voice.
Paige gulped, turning to Prue and Cole who were looking at her, quizzically.
"We need to get down there, now," Paige told them, in a hushed voice, "and we need to stop that ritual."
"We don't even know what they're doing," Prue argued, quietly. "We have no idea what we're walking into."
"Trust me," Paige said, dryly. "I have more than an idea. They're trying to summon something they're calling the Destroyer of Light. And I think they're going to succeed."
Cole looked faintly sick at Paige's words. She wondered if he knew what she was referencing, and from his words, he knew exactly what they were doing.
"Do you know what they're up to?" she asked, and Cole nodded. With a quick jerk of his head, he motioned for Paige and Prue to follow him a few feet away from the doorway.
"Do you remember the Hollow?" Cole asked, softly.
Paige nodded, grimly, but Prue just looked confused, and Paige was reminded that Prue had never experienced the events leading up to the release of the Hollow. And from Cole's lead-in, it sounded like she was about to experience something even worse, if they couldn't stop it.
"The Hollow is a mindless, magic-eating dust cloud," Paige explained to Prue. "When we vanquished the Source, he'd summoned the Hollow out of its containment and stole my and Piper's powers."
"Containment?" Prue hissed, keeping her voice down to keep from attracting attention.
"The Hollow is so horrible that good and evil has actually been cooperating for millennia in order to keep it under wraps," Paige told her.
"And what your sisters are summoning," Cole broke in, "is even worse. It's called the Destroyer, and it's rumored to be the original creator of the Hollow."
"Rumored to be?" Paige echoed. "You mean you don't know for sure?"
"No one in the Underworld really knows anything about this demon, if that's even what it really is," Cole replied. "You can ask Leo, and I'd bet he'll say the same. Whatever this thing is, it's so old that it's been lost to history. The only thing I learned over the years was to never call on the Destroyer. To summon the Destroyer is to summon Death, itself."
"I've met Death," Prue said, clearly trying for a flippant tone. "He's not that scary."
"Yeah, well this is," Cole retorted. "The Source might have been stupid enough to summon the Hollow, but even he knew better than to call on the Destroyer. Because it would have destroyed us, all."
"Do you have to be so melodramatic?" Paige demanded, softly, raising an eyebrow at her brother-in-law. "All right, how do we stop this thing?"
"Break the ritual," Cole answered, promptly. "It's a long one, so that's where we have the advantage."
"And if they're already done?" Prue asked.
"Then you won't have to wait for a broken spell to kill you," Cole told her solemnly. "And we'll all be joining you."
"None of us are dying, today," Paige spoke up, a determined tone in her voice.
"I don't count," Prue muttered, clearly trying to lighten the mood, "since I'm technically already dead." Paige shook her head, elbowing Prue and getting a smile in return. "On three," Prue suggested, and at nods from the other two, started counting, softly. "One, two-"
On three, they burst into the basement, spilling down the stairs in a barely-controlled rush. Cole bellowed as they ran, startling the chanters into briefly halting their ritual. Piper turned around at the sound of the interruption, and Paige took advantage of the momentary distraction to throw herself across the space that separated them.
Forgetting her earlier words to Prue, Paige hurled herself and Piper and tackled the older woman to the ground. She slammed Piper heavily into the floor of the basement, pinning her to the ground with her weight. She heard a crack as Piper's arm broke on impact with the floor, watched a grimace of pain run across her face. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Prue engaging Phoebe in a similar fight.
To her amazement, Piper had started her chanting again, and Paige snarled in frustration. She clapped a hand over Piper's mouth to block the flow of words, and then yelped in pain when Piper sunk her teeth squarely into her hand, drawing blood. Paige jerked her hand out of Piper's mouth, several drops of blood flying through the air to land on a dark spot that was slowly growing on the floor.
Paige could see a figure growing out of the shadows, something tall, and skeletal, and faceless, and then Cole scuffed his hand across the chalk circle in the middle of the attic, destroying the integrity of the circle. The skeletal thing vanished with a high-pitched scream, leaving them alone with a pair of pissed-off witches.
"I'm going send you back to Hell with your little brat," Piper growled out, but Paige shook her head.
"I'm not going to give you the chance," she retorted. "Henry, now!"
A brief flash of light was all that heralded the ghost's arrival. She got to see Henry's face for an instant, and then he seemed to simply fade into Piper. Piper's face blurred, as Henry's transparent image superimposed itself over her features, and then her head moved, her eyes fixing firmly on Paige's.
"I've got her. You can let me up, now." Paige could hear Henry's voice overlaying Piper's, like the two of them were trying to talk over each other.
She stood, cautiously, letting Henry push Piper's body up with her good arm. She kept a careful eye on Piper, not completely trusting the older woman to be under Henry's control. Piper was moving stiffly, like she a marionette being controlled by strings. Actually, from the way she kept jerking around, her puppeteer appeared to be drunk.
"This is strange," Henry said, still in that strange double voice. "But, I think I'm getting the hang of it."
"Me, too." Hearing her voice overlaid with Phoebe's was just strange. She looked over to see her own face shimmering over Phoebe's. "She's fighting me, but I'm not going to let her win."
"We can't hold them like this forever, though." Henry, and he sounded tense. "You need to get those potions, now."
Cole disappeared, shimmering up to the attic. He reappeared a few seconds later with Piper and Phoebe, both of them holding their vials of power stripping potion.
"Hurry," Paige urged, a sentiment quickly echoed by the ghosts.
Piper and Phoebe passed over the vials of the potion, and the rest was rather anticlimactic. The ghosts made their hostages down the potion, and then they jumped out of their bodies as the potion started to take effect. A pair of glass vials crashed to the ground and shattered into a million, tiny shards as Piper and Phoebe dropped them, murky lights rising out of their bodies to disappear into thin air.
"What did you do to us?" Piper demanded, hoarsely, when an abrupt gesture failed to produce a fireball in the palm of her hand.
"What you would have wanted us to do, if you were still in your right minds." Paige turned around at the sound of Prue's voice, tears filling her eyes as she stared at her oldest sister.
Prue was standing, or floating, rather, in front of them in a long, white gown. She was almost completely transparent. Her physical body had disappeared, which was to be expected, since it had been solely the creation of the magic that had brought her back to life. Paige wiped the tears from her eyes, silently cursing herself for having missed Prue's second death, and from the dismayed looks on her Piper and Phoebe's faces, they felt the same way.
"It's okay," Prue said, seeing their expressions. "Really, it is. This is where I'm meant to be."
"You're dead," Phoebe insisted, tearfully.
"And that's okay," Prue told her, reassuringly. "I wasn't sure before, but I am, now. I'm going to be fine."
"How could you?" Paige looked over at the sound of the harshly accusing voice to see Phoebe's counterpart glaring furiously at Prue. "After everything we did for you, everything we sacrificed-"
"Like our sister?" Prue interrupted, her voice hard as she stared at her younger sisters. "You sacrificed an innocent life. You murdered people I love!"
"We did it for you," Piper shot at her, but Prue shook her head.
"I would have rather been in Hell," she told them, quietly. "After what you did, it felt like I was."
"We just wanted to bring you home," Phoebe said, and Paige could feel her heart ache at the plaintive tone in the other woman's voice.
"I would have always been with you," Prue said, gently, one hand barely brushing over her sister's cheek. "And I always will be. Even all of this won't change that."
Leo chose that moment to knock lightly on the door to the basement, and he, Josh, and Darryl trooped down the stairs. Darryl didn't say anything as he pulled out a pair of handcuffs and cuffed Piper and Phoebe's hands behind their back; he just looked unbearably sad.
"I'm sorry," he finally said to Prue, and then he led Piper and Phoebe up the stairs, reading them their rights as they walked. Leo went with him to make sure that neither woman gave the cop any trouble.
"I can't believe it," Prue said, softly, when they were alone in the basement. "It's really over. We stopped them." She shook her head, an incredulous tone in her voice. "I didn't think I would ever see this happen."
Paige sighed as she wrapped an arm around Piper's waist, leaning on her older sister as much as Piper was leaning on her. "I'm sorry that we had to be the ones to bring it about," she remarked, quietly.
"If it helps," Prue told them, "you were setting me free. And for that, I'm grateful."
"I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on that one," Piper said, and Phoebe murmured agreement. "Does anyone know how we're getting out of here, and back to our own world?"
"I think we might have an idea about that one," Prue said, with a mysterious smile directed at her Paige. "Come on, everyone upstairs."
At her words, the ghosts vanished from the basement. Phoebe rolled her eyes.
"Show-offs," she muttered, and if either of her sisters noticed that her voice was thicker than normal, neither of them called her on it.
The group took their time walking up the stairs to the attic. Phoebe, Cole, and Josh went first, jostling playfully for position on the stairs, and Paige and Piper followed slower behind. Everyone was silent; Paige couldn't stop thinking about everything that they were leaving behind, and she had the feeling that her family was dwelling on much the same.
Her family. They were adding two new members to their family. And as soon as they got home, that number was going to go up to three. Pax's face flashed quickly through her mind, and Paige clenched her hands briefly into fists.
'Soon, baby girl,' she thought, determination filling her with every step. 'I'm coming for you, soon. I promise.'
When they reached the attic, they found the room filled with ghosts. Along with Prue, Henry, and Paige, there was Patty, Penny, and a multitude of others. Paige saw a group of women in old-fashioned dresses near the front of the group, one of whom she assumed was Melinda Warren. (Paige had found a Polaroid tucked into the back cover of the Book, and Phoebe had confessed to taking the picture when they'd summoned their ancestor out of the past.) There was a woman in full petticoats, and a pair nearby in regal ball gowns. Other ghosts were took indistinct to make out, correctly, and of the ones Paige could see, she counted at least twenty Warren witches filling the attic.
"What's this?" Piper asked, with a startled laugh.
"Everyone wanted to say goodbye," Paige's doppelganger said, giving Paige a significant look.
Paige looked over at her, catching sight of a young girl with bright green eyes peeking out at her from behind her mother. 'I love you,' she mouthed, and Pax flashed her a brief, shy smile before fading back into the mass of ghosts, again.
"Plus," Prue spoke up, with a grin, "we figured it would take that many witches to send all five of you home, considering that we're dead, and all."
"Thank you," Patty added, beaming warmly at them, "for saving our family. Without you, my daughters would still be-" She trailed off, unable to even voice the word. "Thank you," she finally repeated.
"We're just glad that things worked out as well as they could," Phoebe said as diplomatically as possible, speaking for all of them.
"And, now, we're going to get you home," Penny said. "Ladies?"
A moment of absolute silence filled the attic, and the then sound of generations of Warren witches chanting in unison filled the attic.
"A time for everything,
And to everything, its place.
Return what has been moved,
Through time and space."
Bright orbs of light obscured Paige's vision, and when she could see again, they were still standing in the attic. But, instead of being surrounded by the ghosts of their family, they found themselves looking at Leo, who was standing near the Book. He blinked at them in surprise, looking from them to the Book, and back again.
"That was fast," he remarked, mildly. "From the passengers, I take it you succeeded?"
"In some things," Paige commented. "It doesn't look like we were gone very long. We were over there for hours."
"It's been about five seconds," Leo told them, and Phoebe groaned.
"Damn," she muttered, good-naturedly. "That means that I still have to go to work." Glancing over at Josh and Cole, she brightened. "I wonder if I can talk Elise into making today a "bring your husband and son to work" day."
"Might want to hold off on that," Piper reminded her, gently. "As far as the rest of the world is concerned, Cole is dead, and Josh has never even existed. Taking them out in public and introducing them to people might raise a few eyebrows."
"I'll talk to the Elders," Leo told them. "There's got to be something they can do; after all, they were planning on this scenario, in the first place."
"I guess that means that I'm going to work alone, then," Phoebe grumped, frowning.
"You could always work from the penthouse," Piper suggested, but Phoebe shook her head.
"Nah," she replied, "I'm saving that for when I butter Elise up to get her to let me work from home for the rest of the week."
"Well, look at it this way," Cole replied. "Josh and I can use the day to go shopping, so that we actually have stuff. Otherwise, we're both going to have to raid Leo's closet, and I don't think any of us wants that."
"Hey!" Leo exclaimed, laughing.
"Actually," Phoebe told him, "I still have your stuff in the penthouse. But, you're right, Josh needs clothes. Come on, I've got my purse down in the kitchen, and I never closed out that joint checking account."
"We'll just pull out some cash," Cole was saying, as the three of them left the attic, "and the fact that I'm technically dead shouldn't be an issue."
"I should get to the club," Piper said, after they'd left. "Michelle Branch is at the club, tonight, and I want everything to be perfect."
"I'll orb you," Leo told her. "That way, you don't have to worry about driving."
"Are you insinuating that I'm too big to get behind the wheel?" Piper asked, archly, and Paige could see panic flash across Leo's face. Then, Piper started chuckling, and Leo visibly relaxed.
Paige watched them orb out of the attic, still laughing, and then she made a beeline for the Book. The pages were already flipping, and when she reached the lectern, it was already open to the blood to blood summoning spell.
"Thanks, Prue," Paige murmured, as she grabbed the notepad they kept near the Book, scribbling down the words of the spell. "Hang on, Pax. I'm coming, baby. I'm coming."
To Be Continued…
Rating: PG
Warnings: character death
Summary: When Phoebe's husband and son are abducted to a dangerous alternate universe, the sisters must travel across reality to save them.
*****
Paige and her passengers emerged in the attic of the Manor. Paige blinked in surprise, but really she should have expected it. The Manor was under demonic control, after all, and Piper and Phoebe most likely used it as their base of operations above ground. It only made sense that their final confrontation would take place, there.
"What happened to this place?" Prue demanded, aghast.
"We kind of had a little fight with a demon when we first arrived in this reality," Paige explained, looking around the destroyed attic. "It wasn't this bad when we orbed out, though."
"We think our demonic friend lost his temper after we escaped," Piper spoke up, and Paige looked over to see Piper and Phoebe emerging from the hallway. Even though she suspected their alternate selves would have already tried to kill them, Paige still didn't breathe easy until she saw Piper's heavily-distended abdomen.
"Any signs of life down below?" Paige asked, quietly, nodding toward the lower floors of the house.
"None on the second floor," Phoebe replied, "but we heard some people moving around down in the kitchen."
"All right," Prue said, cracking her knuckles and making Paige wince at the sound. "Paige, Cole, and I will go down there and take care of things. You two wait for our signal."
"Which is?" Piper prompted, expectantly.
"Do screams count?" Paige asked, wryly, getting an exasperated look from Cole.
"I'll come get you," he told the women. "Until then, stay up here, and stay hidden."
Paige and Prue raided the stash of weapons near the door, the one their evil sisters clearly hadn't seen fit to do away with, even in this reality. Paige palmed a long, thin dagger, tucking another blade, in its sheath, into her boot, glad that she'd chosen to wear hiking boots that morning. Prue readied herself with a short-handled, doubled-bladed axe that she tossed idly from hand to hand. It was big enough that Paige figured she had to be using her power to support some of the weight.
The three of them crept slowly downstairs. Paige and Prue both automatically skipped lightly over the third step from the top of the staircase, the one that always squeaked. Cole, with his longer strides, just avoided the step like it wasn't even there. Paige stayed up on the balls of her feet as she walked, dagger clutched firmly in the palm of her hand. Prue was at her side, and she could sense Cole at their backs, all of them keeping an eye out for danger.
When they reached the living room, Prue signaled for them to pause, and then she closed her eyes and sent her astral self ahead of them. Paige heard a muffled yell of surprise coming from the kitchen, and then Prue's eyes snapped open as she recalled her astral projection.
"Incoming," she hissed, seconds before a pair of demons came tearing into the room.
Paige was ready, and her first dagger found a home buried in the throat of the lead demon. He fell, emitting a low, gurgling sound as he died. Cole took care of the second, an energy ball incinerating the lower-level thug in a flash of flame.
"Any more?" Paige asked, cautiously, as they ducked back around the corner to wait for any further attack.
"I only saw two," Prue replied, just as quietly. "They were standing guard in front of the door to the basement.
"What do you want to bet your sisters are down there drawing on the Nexus?" Cole asked, softly. "It's what I would do, if I was evil, and I had control of the Manor."
"Speaking of," Paige said, hesitantly. She stopped her brother-in-law with a hand on his arm, looking up at Cole. "I'm sorry for thinking you were evil, before," she apologized. "Some of the things I said-"
"I was evil, or possessed by it, anyway," Cole reminded her. "And you were just as much a victim of the Source as I was. And you went into the Underworld, alone, to rescue my son. As far as I'm concerned, that more than evens things out between us. If anything, I owe you."
"Great, that's adorable," Prue interrupted them. "Let's go get this over with, huh?"
Her shoulders were tense, and her mouth was set in a tight line, and there was a grim look on her face. Paige reached out and squeezed Prue's hand, gently, getting her attention.
"It's going to be okay," she murmured, comfortingly. "I promise. Everything's going to be okay."
Prue nodded, the upset in her eyes easing a bit. At her signal, the three of them crept forward, again. The kitchen was quiet, the guards not having been missed, yet. Paige hoped that they weren't due to change guards any time soon, or they would be discovered.
The door to the basement was firmly shut, but Prue gestured and the door swung silently open, coming to a gentle rest against the side of the counter. Paige stopped Prue and Cole before they could start across the kitchen, shaking her head as she pointed at the tile floor.
"Can you shimmer us across?" she whispered, her voice barely audible. "Walking is too noisy, and orbing is too bright."
Cole nodded, grabbing her and Prue by the shoulders. They shimmered across the kitchen, the teleport leaving Paige with a queasy sensation that had her automatically checking to make sure that she hadn't just left her stomach in the dining room.
From down inside the basement, Paige could make out the sound of muffled voices, chanting a ritual in a language she didn't recognize, at first. After a few seconds, she started to make out individual words, and she realized that the connection she had with her Piper and Phoebe must still exist on some level with this Piper and Phoebe, as well.
'Maybe I can make this work to my advantage,' she thought, as she listened to the droning chant of their ritual.
The strange words were slowly becoming more and more clear, like when she gained a charge who spoke a different language. Usually, the translating effect was faster than this, but Paige figured that it had something to do with these women being alternate copies of her sisters, not to mention the whole evil thing.
"-come to us, oh Bringer of Night – " That was Phoebe's voice, and the flat, emotionless sound sent chills down Paige's spine.
"Destroyer of Light, we summon thee-" Piper, and compared to Phoebe's dead tone, there was an almost malicious glee in her voice.
Paige gulped, turning to Prue and Cole who were looking at her, quizzically.
"We need to get down there, now," Paige told them, in a hushed voice, "and we need to stop that ritual."
"We don't even know what they're doing," Prue argued, quietly. "We have no idea what we're walking into."
"Trust me," Paige said, dryly. "I have more than an idea. They're trying to summon something they're calling the Destroyer of Light. And I think they're going to succeed."
Cole looked faintly sick at Paige's words. She wondered if he knew what she was referencing, and from his words, he knew exactly what they were doing.
"Do you know what they're up to?" she asked, and Cole nodded. With a quick jerk of his head, he motioned for Paige and Prue to follow him a few feet away from the doorway.
"Do you remember the Hollow?" Cole asked, softly.
Paige nodded, grimly, but Prue just looked confused, and Paige was reminded that Prue had never experienced the events leading up to the release of the Hollow. And from Cole's lead-in, it sounded like she was about to experience something even worse, if they couldn't stop it.
"The Hollow is a mindless, magic-eating dust cloud," Paige explained to Prue. "When we vanquished the Source, he'd summoned the Hollow out of its containment and stole my and Piper's powers."
"Containment?" Prue hissed, keeping her voice down to keep from attracting attention.
"The Hollow is so horrible that good and evil has actually been cooperating for millennia in order to keep it under wraps," Paige told her.
"And what your sisters are summoning," Cole broke in, "is even worse. It's called the Destroyer, and it's rumored to be the original creator of the Hollow."
"Rumored to be?" Paige echoed. "You mean you don't know for sure?"
"No one in the Underworld really knows anything about this demon, if that's even what it really is," Cole replied. "You can ask Leo, and I'd bet he'll say the same. Whatever this thing is, it's so old that it's been lost to history. The only thing I learned over the years was to never call on the Destroyer. To summon the Destroyer is to summon Death, itself."
"I've met Death," Prue said, clearly trying for a flippant tone. "He's not that scary."
"Yeah, well this is," Cole retorted. "The Source might have been stupid enough to summon the Hollow, but even he knew better than to call on the Destroyer. Because it would have destroyed us, all."
"Do you have to be so melodramatic?" Paige demanded, softly, raising an eyebrow at her brother-in-law. "All right, how do we stop this thing?"
"Break the ritual," Cole answered, promptly. "It's a long one, so that's where we have the advantage."
"And if they're already done?" Prue asked.
"Then you won't have to wait for a broken spell to kill you," Cole told her solemnly. "And we'll all be joining you."
"None of us are dying, today," Paige spoke up, a determined tone in her voice.
"I don't count," Prue muttered, clearly trying to lighten the mood, "since I'm technically already dead." Paige shook her head, elbowing Prue and getting a smile in return. "On three," Prue suggested, and at nods from the other two, started counting, softly. "One, two-"
On three, they burst into the basement, spilling down the stairs in a barely-controlled rush. Cole bellowed as they ran, startling the chanters into briefly halting their ritual. Piper turned around at the sound of the interruption, and Paige took advantage of the momentary distraction to throw herself across the space that separated them.
Forgetting her earlier words to Prue, Paige hurled herself and Piper and tackled the older woman to the ground. She slammed Piper heavily into the floor of the basement, pinning her to the ground with her weight. She heard a crack as Piper's arm broke on impact with the floor, watched a grimace of pain run across her face. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Prue engaging Phoebe in a similar fight.
To her amazement, Piper had started her chanting again, and Paige snarled in frustration. She clapped a hand over Piper's mouth to block the flow of words, and then yelped in pain when Piper sunk her teeth squarely into her hand, drawing blood. Paige jerked her hand out of Piper's mouth, several drops of blood flying through the air to land on a dark spot that was slowly growing on the floor.
Paige could see a figure growing out of the shadows, something tall, and skeletal, and faceless, and then Cole scuffed his hand across the chalk circle in the middle of the attic, destroying the integrity of the circle. The skeletal thing vanished with a high-pitched scream, leaving them alone with a pair of pissed-off witches.
"I'm going send you back to Hell with your little brat," Piper growled out, but Paige shook her head.
"I'm not going to give you the chance," she retorted. "Henry, now!"
A brief flash of light was all that heralded the ghost's arrival. She got to see Henry's face for an instant, and then he seemed to simply fade into Piper. Piper's face blurred, as Henry's transparent image superimposed itself over her features, and then her head moved, her eyes fixing firmly on Paige's.
"I've got her. You can let me up, now." Paige could hear Henry's voice overlaying Piper's, like the two of them were trying to talk over each other.
She stood, cautiously, letting Henry push Piper's body up with her good arm. She kept a careful eye on Piper, not completely trusting the older woman to be under Henry's control. Piper was moving stiffly, like she a marionette being controlled by strings. Actually, from the way she kept jerking around, her puppeteer appeared to be drunk.
"This is strange," Henry said, still in that strange double voice. "But, I think I'm getting the hang of it."
"Me, too." Hearing her voice overlaid with Phoebe's was just strange. She looked over to see her own face shimmering over Phoebe's. "She's fighting me, but I'm not going to let her win."
"We can't hold them like this forever, though." Henry, and he sounded tense. "You need to get those potions, now."
Cole disappeared, shimmering up to the attic. He reappeared a few seconds later with Piper and Phoebe, both of them holding their vials of power stripping potion.
"Hurry," Paige urged, a sentiment quickly echoed by the ghosts.
Piper and Phoebe passed over the vials of the potion, and the rest was rather anticlimactic. The ghosts made their hostages down the potion, and then they jumped out of their bodies as the potion started to take effect. A pair of glass vials crashed to the ground and shattered into a million, tiny shards as Piper and Phoebe dropped them, murky lights rising out of their bodies to disappear into thin air.
"What did you do to us?" Piper demanded, hoarsely, when an abrupt gesture failed to produce a fireball in the palm of her hand.
"What you would have wanted us to do, if you were still in your right minds." Paige turned around at the sound of Prue's voice, tears filling her eyes as she stared at her oldest sister.
Prue was standing, or floating, rather, in front of them in a long, white gown. She was almost completely transparent. Her physical body had disappeared, which was to be expected, since it had been solely the creation of the magic that had brought her back to life. Paige wiped the tears from her eyes, silently cursing herself for having missed Prue's second death, and from the dismayed looks on her Piper and Phoebe's faces, they felt the same way.
"It's okay," Prue said, seeing their expressions. "Really, it is. This is where I'm meant to be."
"You're dead," Phoebe insisted, tearfully.
"And that's okay," Prue told her, reassuringly. "I wasn't sure before, but I am, now. I'm going to be fine."
"How could you?" Paige looked over at the sound of the harshly accusing voice to see Phoebe's counterpart glaring furiously at Prue. "After everything we did for you, everything we sacrificed-"
"Like our sister?" Prue interrupted, her voice hard as she stared at her younger sisters. "You sacrificed an innocent life. You murdered people I love!"
"We did it for you," Piper shot at her, but Prue shook her head.
"I would have rather been in Hell," she told them, quietly. "After what you did, it felt like I was."
"We just wanted to bring you home," Phoebe said, and Paige could feel her heart ache at the plaintive tone in the other woman's voice.
"I would have always been with you," Prue said, gently, one hand barely brushing over her sister's cheek. "And I always will be. Even all of this won't change that."
Leo chose that moment to knock lightly on the door to the basement, and he, Josh, and Darryl trooped down the stairs. Darryl didn't say anything as he pulled out a pair of handcuffs and cuffed Piper and Phoebe's hands behind their back; he just looked unbearably sad.
"I'm sorry," he finally said to Prue, and then he led Piper and Phoebe up the stairs, reading them their rights as they walked. Leo went with him to make sure that neither woman gave the cop any trouble.
"I can't believe it," Prue said, softly, when they were alone in the basement. "It's really over. We stopped them." She shook her head, an incredulous tone in her voice. "I didn't think I would ever see this happen."
Paige sighed as she wrapped an arm around Piper's waist, leaning on her older sister as much as Piper was leaning on her. "I'm sorry that we had to be the ones to bring it about," she remarked, quietly.
"If it helps," Prue told them, "you were setting me free. And for that, I'm grateful."
"I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on that one," Piper said, and Phoebe murmured agreement. "Does anyone know how we're getting out of here, and back to our own world?"
"I think we might have an idea about that one," Prue said, with a mysterious smile directed at her Paige. "Come on, everyone upstairs."
At her words, the ghosts vanished from the basement. Phoebe rolled her eyes.
"Show-offs," she muttered, and if either of her sisters noticed that her voice was thicker than normal, neither of them called her on it.
The group took their time walking up the stairs to the attic. Phoebe, Cole, and Josh went first, jostling playfully for position on the stairs, and Paige and Piper followed slower behind. Everyone was silent; Paige couldn't stop thinking about everything that they were leaving behind, and she had the feeling that her family was dwelling on much the same.
Her family. They were adding two new members to their family. And as soon as they got home, that number was going to go up to three. Pax's face flashed quickly through her mind, and Paige clenched her hands briefly into fists.
'Soon, baby girl,' she thought, determination filling her with every step. 'I'm coming for you, soon. I promise.'
When they reached the attic, they found the room filled with ghosts. Along with Prue, Henry, and Paige, there was Patty, Penny, and a multitude of others. Paige saw a group of women in old-fashioned dresses near the front of the group, one of whom she assumed was Melinda Warren. (Paige had found a Polaroid tucked into the back cover of the Book, and Phoebe had confessed to taking the picture when they'd summoned their ancestor out of the past.) There was a woman in full petticoats, and a pair nearby in regal ball gowns. Other ghosts were took indistinct to make out, correctly, and of the ones Paige could see, she counted at least twenty Warren witches filling the attic.
"What's this?" Piper asked, with a startled laugh.
"Everyone wanted to say goodbye," Paige's doppelganger said, giving Paige a significant look.
Paige looked over at her, catching sight of a young girl with bright green eyes peeking out at her from behind her mother. 'I love you,' she mouthed, and Pax flashed her a brief, shy smile before fading back into the mass of ghosts, again.
"Plus," Prue spoke up, with a grin, "we figured it would take that many witches to send all five of you home, considering that we're dead, and all."
"Thank you," Patty added, beaming warmly at them, "for saving our family. Without you, my daughters would still be-" She trailed off, unable to even voice the word. "Thank you," she finally repeated.
"We're just glad that things worked out as well as they could," Phoebe said as diplomatically as possible, speaking for all of them.
"And, now, we're going to get you home," Penny said. "Ladies?"
A moment of absolute silence filled the attic, and the then sound of generations of Warren witches chanting in unison filled the attic.
"A time for everything,
And to everything, its place.
Return what has been moved,
Through time and space."
Bright orbs of light obscured Paige's vision, and when she could see again, they were still standing in the attic. But, instead of being surrounded by the ghosts of their family, they found themselves looking at Leo, who was standing near the Book. He blinked at them in surprise, looking from them to the Book, and back again.
"That was fast," he remarked, mildly. "From the passengers, I take it you succeeded?"
"In some things," Paige commented. "It doesn't look like we were gone very long. We were over there for hours."
"It's been about five seconds," Leo told them, and Phoebe groaned.
"Damn," she muttered, good-naturedly. "That means that I still have to go to work." Glancing over at Josh and Cole, she brightened. "I wonder if I can talk Elise into making today a "bring your husband and son to work" day."
"Might want to hold off on that," Piper reminded her, gently. "As far as the rest of the world is concerned, Cole is dead, and Josh has never even existed. Taking them out in public and introducing them to people might raise a few eyebrows."
"I'll talk to the Elders," Leo told them. "There's got to be something they can do; after all, they were planning on this scenario, in the first place."
"I guess that means that I'm going to work alone, then," Phoebe grumped, frowning.
"You could always work from the penthouse," Piper suggested, but Phoebe shook her head.
"Nah," she replied, "I'm saving that for when I butter Elise up to get her to let me work from home for the rest of the week."
"Well, look at it this way," Cole replied. "Josh and I can use the day to go shopping, so that we actually have stuff. Otherwise, we're both going to have to raid Leo's closet, and I don't think any of us wants that."
"Hey!" Leo exclaimed, laughing.
"Actually," Phoebe told him, "I still have your stuff in the penthouse. But, you're right, Josh needs clothes. Come on, I've got my purse down in the kitchen, and I never closed out that joint checking account."
"We'll just pull out some cash," Cole was saying, as the three of them left the attic, "and the fact that I'm technically dead shouldn't be an issue."
"I should get to the club," Piper said, after they'd left. "Michelle Branch is at the club, tonight, and I want everything to be perfect."
"I'll orb you," Leo told her. "That way, you don't have to worry about driving."
"Are you insinuating that I'm too big to get behind the wheel?" Piper asked, archly, and Paige could see panic flash across Leo's face. Then, Piper started chuckling, and Leo visibly relaxed.
Paige watched them orb out of the attic, still laughing, and then she made a beeline for the Book. The pages were already flipping, and when she reached the lectern, it was already open to the blood to blood summoning spell.
"Thanks, Prue," Paige murmured, as she grabbed the notepad they kept near the Book, scribbling down the words of the spell. "Hang on, Pax. I'm coming, baby. I'm coming."
To Be Continued…
