Fic: Comes Out of Darkness, Morn (26/37)
Mar. 18th, 2012 07:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sara_wolfTitle: Comes Out of Darkness, Morn
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
Summary: Pax's disappearance shattered Paige. Losing Prue, three years later, reopens old wounds that she thought she'd managed to close off, forever. But, through tragedy comes a sliver of light, and discovering that she's a witch is only the beginning...
*****
Six Months Later
Paige watched Darryl escort Caroline out of the Manor, the door shutting softly behind them. She could hear Phoebe and Cole in the kitchen, working on more potions. Piper was sitting with Leo in the living room. She knew that she should join one of them, help Phoebe with the potions, or help Piper with Leo, but she had one more thing to do.
Retreating to the sunroom for privacy, Paige dialed Henry's number on her phone, listening to it ring. She kept expecting him to pick up, but the phone just kept ringing until it switched over to voicemail. For a second, Paige was too surprised to speak, but she quickly found her voice, knowing that she only had a couple of minutes before the phone cut her off.
"Hey, Henry," she started, "it's me. I, um, I wanted to talk to you, wanted to hear your voice, but I guess you're busy. Probably with work, knowing you. So, Piper, Phoebe, and I are – god, there's no easy way to say this. What we're going up against – it's big. And we might not come away from it. And, I couldn't – I couldn't leave you without saying goodbye."
She took a deep, gasping breath, wiping away the tears that formed in the corners of her eyes. She sniffled back the tears, hating the quaver in her voice when she started speaking, again.
"You're my dearest friend, Henry," she went on, her voice only slightly shaky. "You've always been there for me, through the good, the bad, through everything. And I wouldn't have wanted to have anyone else by my side. I am so glad to have had – to still have you in my life. You are one of the best things that has ever happened to me, and I wouldn't trade a single moment of the last seven years for anything. Even our first meeting, where you made me throw up with that stupid broken nose of yours," she added, with a chuckle.
A sound from behind her made her break off, and she covered the mouthpiece of the phone with one hand as she looked up. Phoebe was hovering in the doorway.
"We're almost ready to use the summoning spell," she said, jerking her head in the direction of the attic.
"Okay," Paige said, quietly. "I just – I have to finish this phone call, first. I'll be just a minute."
"Don't be long," Phoebe said, ducking out of the room, and Paige could hear her footsteps headed toward the stairs.
Paige took a moment to try and reorganize her suddenly scattered thoughts, and then she uncovered the phone.
"Sorry about that," she said, quickly. "Sister stuff. So, um, Henry, I just wanted to say-"
She broke off, hesitating. Stating her feelings in the privacy of her own mind was hard enough; actually saying it out loud was damn near impossible. But, she'd never been a coward, before, and she wasn't about to start, now."
"I just wanted to say-" she started, again, "Henry, I lo-"
With a decisive click, her time ran out and her message was abruptly ended. Paige stared at the phone in stunned disbelief, hardly able to believe what had just happened. Pouring her heart out, only to be thwarted by technology.
She was about to dial Henry, again, and leave a second message before her courage deserted her, but she was interrupted by the sound of her name drifting down from the attic.
"Paige, shake the lead out! We've got a Source to vanquish!"
Paige glanced down at her phone, but Piper called out, again, her voice sharp with impatience.
"Maybe it's for the best," she muttered, dropping her phone on the couch and heading up to the attic. She found her sisters gathered around the Book, the solemn expressions on their faces matching her own. "We ready?" she asked, joining them at the lectern.
"This is for Prue," Piper said, softly, determination in her voice, and Paige and Phoebe reached out to clasp her hands.
"For Prue," they echoed, firmly.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Half an hour later, Paige ran down the stairs with Piper on her heels, the two of them headed for where Leo was lying scarily motionless on the couch. Paige knelt down beside him, her shaking hands hovering over the wound in his stomach.
"I don't-" she started, uneasily, but Piper squeezed her shoulder in reassurance.
"Yes, you do," she said, quietly. "You can do this, Paige. You can find the trigger to your healing power. I know you can."
Paige closed her eyes, thinking back to the times that she and Leo had talked about being Whitelighters, about the powers they shared, about the responsibility she'd inherited from her birth father. She remembered Leo talking about his training, and about how long it had taken for him to feel worthy of the wings he'd been granted.
"Being a Whitelighter," he'd said, "it's like my whole life was building up to this, to being what I am, today. And when I first started, it was overwhelming."
"When did you start feeling like you've got things under control?" she asked, getting a wry grin in return.
"I'll let you know when it happens," Leo told her.
Leo had been watching over her for years. He'd stood up to her against the Elders, protected her, even when it had threatened his own life. He'd been family for longer than the six months that she'd known her sisters. And she wasn't about to let him die.
Paige opened her eyes to see her hands glowing with a soft, golden energy. The wound on Leo's stomach was slowly closing over, his eyes fluttering open. Piper was the first thing he saw when he woke up, and Paige felt her breath catch in her chest at the look of absolute love that passed between the two of them. Wordlessly, Leo lifted a hand to brush a stray tear from Piper's cheek, and she caught his hand in tight grasp, pressing a kiss to his palm.
"I'm okay," Leo said, softly, his voice husky, and Piper smiled at him.
"Thanks to the new Whitelighter in the family," Piper told him, a proud grin on her face as she gestured to Paige.
"I couldn't have done it without Piper," Paige replied. "Although," she added, with a stern glance at her older sister, "you could have told me that the trigger was love."
"I'm going to tell you the same thing Leo told me, three years ago," Piper replied, slinging an arm over her shoulders. "You had to find it out for yourself."
"You could at least not gloat about it," Paige complained, and Piper laughed.
"My husband is alive, my sisters are alive, and the Source of All Evil is dead," she reminded Paige. "There's going to be a lot of gloating in the future. And parties, and celebration-"
"Who's celebrating?" Phoebe asked, as she and Cole came down the stairs from the attic.
"We are," Piper said, happily. "P3 in an hour. Drinks – alcoholic and non-" she added, with a glance at Paige, "are on the house."
"You own the place," Phoebe pointed out. "Drinks are always on the house. The Seer is gone, by the way," she added. "She took off after some cryptic comments about us working together, again." She shuddered, dramatically. "Promise me that you'll stop me if my premonitions ever turn me into that."
"Gladly," Paige and Piper chorused, getting a glare from Phoebe in return. A knock on the front door had Paige jumping to her feet. "I will get that, and then I get first dibs on the shower!"
Whoever was at the door was still knocking as she walked into the other room, the sound rapidly turning into a frantic pounding.
"All right, already!" Paige exclaimed, as she pulled the door open, and then she found herself face to face with a panicked-looking Henry.
Henry stared at her for several long seconds, looking like he was seeing a ghost, and then he swept her up into a tight hug. He buried his face in her hair as he wrapped his arms around her shoulders, practically lifting her off the ground.
"Don't you ever do that to me, again," he murmured, his voice shaky as he held onto her. "Promise me."
For a second, Paige had no clue what he was talking about, but then she remembered her last-minute phone call. She wrapped her arms around Henry, holding onto him.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, her voice cracking. "Henry, I'm sorry, there was just no time-"
"You don't leave a voicemail when you think you're about to die," Henry scolded her, pulling away to look down at her. "Paige, if you'd died, that voicemail would have been the last thing I had of you-"
"I'm sorry," Paige repeated, and Henry sighed, wrapping his arms around her and resting his chin on the top of her head.
"Is everyone okay?" he asked, and Paige nodded.
"We're okay, we're fine," she said, reassuringly. "We got him, Henry. The Source is dead."
"Thank God," Henry said, quietly. "Paige, if I'd lost you-" He trailed off, shaking his head in exasperation. "I can't believe you left a voicemail."
"I meant what I said," Paige told him. "I couldn't go after the Source without saying goodbye to you."
"Well, next time, try to make it in person," Henry replied. "Actually, you know what?" he added, after a moment, "how about we never have another next time?"
"Sounds good to me," Paige said, pulling away to give him a small smile. "Hey, we're going to hit P3 to celebrate. You want to come?"
"Like I'm letting you out of my sight for the rest of the night?" Henry asked, rhetorically. "Hey, that message you left, it cut off before you could say something. What was it?"
"I, um-" Paige stammered, fear filling her at the thought of actually saying the words that she hadn't been able to, earlier. "Well, see, I kind of wanted – that is, I was going to say-"
Henry's ringing cell phone cut off the rest of her sentence, and she automatically stepped back to give him privacy as he pulled his phone out of his pocket. She didn't miss the small smile that flashed across Henry's face as he checked the display on his phone before he answered.
"Hey," he greeted his mysterious caller, and Paige was surprised to hear affection in his voice. "Caryn, what's up?"
Oh, yeah. Caryn, the new girlfriend. She and Henry had been dating for the last couple of weeks, and from what Henry had told her, the other woman was sweet, charming, and perfectly lovely. Paige had absolutely no logical reason to hate the woman that she'd never even met. So, of course, in the dark recesses of her mind that Paige would never admit existed, Caryn ranked right up there with most of the demons that she and her sisters vanquished.
"No, I'm busy tonight," Henry was saying, as Paige shamelessly eavesdropped on his half of the conversation. "We could have dinner tomorrow, though. Yeah, I'm already looking forward to it. I'll see you, then. Bye."
Henry hung up the phone, slipping it back into his pocket.
"Sorry," he told her, apologetically. "So, what were you about to say?"
"About what?" Paige asked, faking dumb.
"Your voicemail," Henry reminded her. "What didn't you get to say at the end of the message?"
There was a tiny voice in the back of her mind telling her to tell him the truth. But, she remembered the smile on his face when he'd talked to Caryn. She remembered how happy he'd been the last couple of weeks with the other women, and by contrast, how panicked when he'd shown up at her door a few minutes ago. And if it was that hard on him when they were just friends, how much harder would it be if there was more between them?
'I can't do that to him,' Paige thought, sadly, her heart breaking at the realization. 'I can't.'
"Well?" Henry prompted her, when she remained silent for too long. "Don't leave me in suspense. What were you going to say?"
"Nothing," Paige assured him, shaking her head. "Don't worry about it. It was nothing."
Continued here
Rating: PG
Warnings: none
Summary: Pax's disappearance shattered Paige. Losing Prue, three years later, reopens old wounds that she thought she'd managed to close off, forever. But, through tragedy comes a sliver of light, and discovering that she's a witch is only the beginning...
*****
Six Months Later
Paige watched Darryl escort Caroline out of the Manor, the door shutting softly behind them. She could hear Phoebe and Cole in the kitchen, working on more potions. Piper was sitting with Leo in the living room. She knew that she should join one of them, help Phoebe with the potions, or help Piper with Leo, but she had one more thing to do.
Retreating to the sunroom for privacy, Paige dialed Henry's number on her phone, listening to it ring. She kept expecting him to pick up, but the phone just kept ringing until it switched over to voicemail. For a second, Paige was too surprised to speak, but she quickly found her voice, knowing that she only had a couple of minutes before the phone cut her off.
"Hey, Henry," she started, "it's me. I, um, I wanted to talk to you, wanted to hear your voice, but I guess you're busy. Probably with work, knowing you. So, Piper, Phoebe, and I are – god, there's no easy way to say this. What we're going up against – it's big. And we might not come away from it. And, I couldn't – I couldn't leave you without saying goodbye."
She took a deep, gasping breath, wiping away the tears that formed in the corners of her eyes. She sniffled back the tears, hating the quaver in her voice when she started speaking, again.
"You're my dearest friend, Henry," she went on, her voice only slightly shaky. "You've always been there for me, through the good, the bad, through everything. And I wouldn't have wanted to have anyone else by my side. I am so glad to have had – to still have you in my life. You are one of the best things that has ever happened to me, and I wouldn't trade a single moment of the last seven years for anything. Even our first meeting, where you made me throw up with that stupid broken nose of yours," she added, with a chuckle.
A sound from behind her made her break off, and she covered the mouthpiece of the phone with one hand as she looked up. Phoebe was hovering in the doorway.
"We're almost ready to use the summoning spell," she said, jerking her head in the direction of the attic.
"Okay," Paige said, quietly. "I just – I have to finish this phone call, first. I'll be just a minute."
"Don't be long," Phoebe said, ducking out of the room, and Paige could hear her footsteps headed toward the stairs.
Paige took a moment to try and reorganize her suddenly scattered thoughts, and then she uncovered the phone.
"Sorry about that," she said, quickly. "Sister stuff. So, um, Henry, I just wanted to say-"
She broke off, hesitating. Stating her feelings in the privacy of her own mind was hard enough; actually saying it out loud was damn near impossible. But, she'd never been a coward, before, and she wasn't about to start, now."
"I just wanted to say-" she started, again, "Henry, I lo-"
With a decisive click, her time ran out and her message was abruptly ended. Paige stared at the phone in stunned disbelief, hardly able to believe what had just happened. Pouring her heart out, only to be thwarted by technology.
She was about to dial Henry, again, and leave a second message before her courage deserted her, but she was interrupted by the sound of her name drifting down from the attic.
"Paige, shake the lead out! We've got a Source to vanquish!"
Paige glanced down at her phone, but Piper called out, again, her voice sharp with impatience.
"Maybe it's for the best," she muttered, dropping her phone on the couch and heading up to the attic. She found her sisters gathered around the Book, the solemn expressions on their faces matching her own. "We ready?" she asked, joining them at the lectern.
"This is for Prue," Piper said, softly, determination in her voice, and Paige and Phoebe reached out to clasp her hands.
"For Prue," they echoed, firmly.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Half an hour later, Paige ran down the stairs with Piper on her heels, the two of them headed for where Leo was lying scarily motionless on the couch. Paige knelt down beside him, her shaking hands hovering over the wound in his stomach.
"I don't-" she started, uneasily, but Piper squeezed her shoulder in reassurance.
"Yes, you do," she said, quietly. "You can do this, Paige. You can find the trigger to your healing power. I know you can."
Paige closed her eyes, thinking back to the times that she and Leo had talked about being Whitelighters, about the powers they shared, about the responsibility she'd inherited from her birth father. She remembered Leo talking about his training, and about how long it had taken for him to feel worthy of the wings he'd been granted.
"Being a Whitelighter," he'd said, "it's like my whole life was building up to this, to being what I am, today. And when I first started, it was overwhelming."
"When did you start feeling like you've got things under control?" she asked, getting a wry grin in return.
"I'll let you know when it happens," Leo told her.
Leo had been watching over her for years. He'd stood up to her against the Elders, protected her, even when it had threatened his own life. He'd been family for longer than the six months that she'd known her sisters. And she wasn't about to let him die.
Paige opened her eyes to see her hands glowing with a soft, golden energy. The wound on Leo's stomach was slowly closing over, his eyes fluttering open. Piper was the first thing he saw when he woke up, and Paige felt her breath catch in her chest at the look of absolute love that passed between the two of them. Wordlessly, Leo lifted a hand to brush a stray tear from Piper's cheek, and she caught his hand in tight grasp, pressing a kiss to his palm.
"I'm okay," Leo said, softly, his voice husky, and Piper smiled at him.
"Thanks to the new Whitelighter in the family," Piper told him, a proud grin on her face as she gestured to Paige.
"I couldn't have done it without Piper," Paige replied. "Although," she added, with a stern glance at her older sister, "you could have told me that the trigger was love."
"I'm going to tell you the same thing Leo told me, three years ago," Piper replied, slinging an arm over her shoulders. "You had to find it out for yourself."
"You could at least not gloat about it," Paige complained, and Piper laughed.
"My husband is alive, my sisters are alive, and the Source of All Evil is dead," she reminded Paige. "There's going to be a lot of gloating in the future. And parties, and celebration-"
"Who's celebrating?" Phoebe asked, as she and Cole came down the stairs from the attic.
"We are," Piper said, happily. "P3 in an hour. Drinks – alcoholic and non-" she added, with a glance at Paige, "are on the house."
"You own the place," Phoebe pointed out. "Drinks are always on the house. The Seer is gone, by the way," she added. "She took off after some cryptic comments about us working together, again." She shuddered, dramatically. "Promise me that you'll stop me if my premonitions ever turn me into that."
"Gladly," Paige and Piper chorused, getting a glare from Phoebe in return. A knock on the front door had Paige jumping to her feet. "I will get that, and then I get first dibs on the shower!"
Whoever was at the door was still knocking as she walked into the other room, the sound rapidly turning into a frantic pounding.
"All right, already!" Paige exclaimed, as she pulled the door open, and then she found herself face to face with a panicked-looking Henry.
Henry stared at her for several long seconds, looking like he was seeing a ghost, and then he swept her up into a tight hug. He buried his face in her hair as he wrapped his arms around her shoulders, practically lifting her off the ground.
"Don't you ever do that to me, again," he murmured, his voice shaky as he held onto her. "Promise me."
For a second, Paige had no clue what he was talking about, but then she remembered her last-minute phone call. She wrapped her arms around Henry, holding onto him.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, her voice cracking. "Henry, I'm sorry, there was just no time-"
"You don't leave a voicemail when you think you're about to die," Henry scolded her, pulling away to look down at her. "Paige, if you'd died, that voicemail would have been the last thing I had of you-"
"I'm sorry," Paige repeated, and Henry sighed, wrapping his arms around her and resting his chin on the top of her head.
"Is everyone okay?" he asked, and Paige nodded.
"We're okay, we're fine," she said, reassuringly. "We got him, Henry. The Source is dead."
"Thank God," Henry said, quietly. "Paige, if I'd lost you-" He trailed off, shaking his head in exasperation. "I can't believe you left a voicemail."
"I meant what I said," Paige told him. "I couldn't go after the Source without saying goodbye to you."
"Well, next time, try to make it in person," Henry replied. "Actually, you know what?" he added, after a moment, "how about we never have another next time?"
"Sounds good to me," Paige said, pulling away to give him a small smile. "Hey, we're going to hit P3 to celebrate. You want to come?"
"Like I'm letting you out of my sight for the rest of the night?" Henry asked, rhetorically. "Hey, that message you left, it cut off before you could say something. What was it?"
"I, um-" Paige stammered, fear filling her at the thought of actually saying the words that she hadn't been able to, earlier. "Well, see, I kind of wanted – that is, I was going to say-"
Henry's ringing cell phone cut off the rest of her sentence, and she automatically stepped back to give him privacy as he pulled his phone out of his pocket. She didn't miss the small smile that flashed across Henry's face as he checked the display on his phone before he answered.
"Hey," he greeted his mysterious caller, and Paige was surprised to hear affection in his voice. "Caryn, what's up?"
Oh, yeah. Caryn, the new girlfriend. She and Henry had been dating for the last couple of weeks, and from what Henry had told her, the other woman was sweet, charming, and perfectly lovely. Paige had absolutely no logical reason to hate the woman that she'd never even met. So, of course, in the dark recesses of her mind that Paige would never admit existed, Caryn ranked right up there with most of the demons that she and her sisters vanquished.
"No, I'm busy tonight," Henry was saying, as Paige shamelessly eavesdropped on his half of the conversation. "We could have dinner tomorrow, though. Yeah, I'm already looking forward to it. I'll see you, then. Bye."
Henry hung up the phone, slipping it back into his pocket.
"Sorry," he told her, apologetically. "So, what were you about to say?"
"About what?" Paige asked, faking dumb.
"Your voicemail," Henry reminded her. "What didn't you get to say at the end of the message?"
There was a tiny voice in the back of her mind telling her to tell him the truth. But, she remembered the smile on his face when he'd talked to Caryn. She remembered how happy he'd been the last couple of weeks with the other women, and by contrast, how panicked when he'd shown up at her door a few minutes ago. And if it was that hard on him when they were just friends, how much harder would it be if there was more between them?
'I can't do that to him,' Paige thought, sadly, her heart breaking at the realization. 'I can't.'
"Well?" Henry prompted her, when she remained silent for too long. "Don't leave me in suspense. What were you going to say?"
"Nothing," Paige assured him, shaking her head. "Don't worry about it. It was nothing."
Continued here
