Charmed Fic: Love is a Circle
This... is not the fic I set out to write. And yet it just took on a life of its own and went places I never expected it to go. Something about it just speaks to me.
Title: Love is a Circle
Author: Ada
Fandom: Charmed
Rating: PG
Genre: Angst
Warning: Death of non-canon character
Characters: Chris Halliwell, Lena (OFC), OCs, Wyatt Halliwell
Disclaimer: I owe too much money to student loan companies to buy Charmed. Certain character reflect OCs used in a series of stories, but this story resides in its own individual universe.
Summary: Set in an alternate future (canon until season 7). Chris fic. The death of a family member hits the Halliwells hard, and Chris just can't let go. Oneshot.
Chris hadn’t meant to close his eyes, but hours upon hours of searching and worrying and being pulled apart at the seams had finally caught up with him. At first he didn’t know that he was asleep, there was just a momentary darkness as his eyes slid closed that was soon replaced by a landscape he did not recognize. A salty breeze blew through rows of olive trees and in the distance he heard crashing waves and lilting voices raised in song. He approached the cliff face he stood near, stared down into the sea below and caught sight of ethereal creatures basking on the rocks and dancing in the waves.
“You’re here,” a voice behind caught him off guard and he spun at the sound, hoping against hope that she would actually be there by the time he had turned. And sure enough, clad in the blue gauzy material the creatures below had been wearing, a flower nestled in her black hair, stood his missing cousin. One of her hands was rested against an olive tree, and he saw the ornate armband climbing up her arm. She seemed perfectly healthy, even had a glowing tan. There were no marks on her, nothing to suggest that she had been hurt in any way. She smiled at him and all he could think was please don’t let this be a dream, please let her really be here, please, please. He would be willing to hold back the lecture on not running off and worrying them unnecessarily if only he could know for sure that this was real and she was alright.
"Lena… what’s going on?” he asked shakily. “Where have you been?”
“What do you mean?” she questioned. “I haven’t been anywhere.”
“Lena you’ve been missing for days!” Chris said.
She cocked her head to the side as if thinking, and then brushed past him, her skirt rippling in the wind. Kneeling in the grass she stared down off the edge of the cliff at the water sprites below. “I keep trying to get down to them but I never seem to make it,” she said quietly. “I don’t think they want me down there with them, and I don’t know why.”
“Why are you here?” Chris questioned.
Lena turned back to him, sea-green eyes staring determinedly into his. “I think you know.”
-------------------------------------------------------------
Chris woke with a startled jerk, his brother shaking him. “Chris what the hell, you were supposed to be doing research in here, not sleeping!” Wyatt shouted. His older brother’s eyes were bloodshot and at this point Chris wasn’t sure if it was from exhaustion or crying.
Chris opened his mouth to tell Wyatt about the dream, about Lena and the water sprites and the isle of Greece that he often heard about but never seen, but for some reason he stopped himself. Pushing thoughts of Lena’s cold words, the last she spoke before Wyatt woke him, out of his mind, he focused on the task at hand, finding her.
-------------------------------------------------------------
“I was wondering if you were going to come back. Did you get lost?” Lena asked, smiling serenely at him. Chris squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, cursing himself for falling asleep on the job again, for dreaming Lena when Lena was really out there somewhere in need of their help. But then he replayed what she said over in his mind and started.
“You’ve been here while I was gone?” he questioned.
“Of course I have. This is my place, Chris, why would I have left just because you did?”
Shit, shit, shit! And that’s when he realized that he was not just dreaming about Lena, he was dreaming with Lena. He stared at the girl, really stared at her, tried to find some indication that it really was his cousin. She just cocked her head like she had done the last time, a questioning frown on her face.
It started when they were kids and Lena accidentally ‘dreamwalked’ into Chris’ subconscious, having been calling out to him in her sleep. After a few rough tries, she managed to be able to invade his mind when he was sleeping and she was awake. A little while later and she could manipulate his dreams, could turn nightmares into beautiful things, could make a point clearer than anyone with a few minutes of concentration. On nights when her subconscious got the best of her Chris would find her standing in whatever dreamscape his mind had created, shrugging her shoulders at why she was there, and telling him that she must have been thinking about him. There were times when Chris would shout out for her in his sleep, terrified by some non-existent threat, and his mind would call to her and she would pull him to her, into her mind. As far as he knew, she and Wyatt never shared that level of mental intimacy.
It shouldn’t have been much of a surprise to find that Lena, missing and probably scared, had sought him out, had brought him into her dreamworld. What he didn’t understand was why she wasn’t telling him where she was, what had happened, how to find her. She did not even appear to know that this wasn’t real.
“Why are you here?” he asked.
“I like it here, it’s peaceful, no fighting, no pain,” she seemed calm, staring off into the sea, the color of it the same as her eyes. “I had a nightmare last night,” she said quietly.
“What was it about?” Chris said softly, feeling confused.
“I don’t… blood… and pain, lots of pain… it hurt so bad… I just wanted to wake up, you know?” she looked at him, and for a moment he thought he saw something in her eyes, a brief view of Lena crumpled on the ground, chest heaving, eyes closed. Then it was gone, and the only thing he could see in her eyes was his own reflection, scared, worried.
“Maybe you should go back to sleep, try to have that dream again… figure out the details, where you are, who’s there, what’s going on,” he suggested because he didn’t know what else to say.
“I’m scared,” she whispered and it hit him like a punch. Since she hit twelve, Lena rarely ever admitted being afraid of anything. He raised his hand to place it comfortingly on her shoulder but then his vision jarred and the island and the sea and Lena all faded away.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Chris watched, oddly disconnected as Wyatt and Phoebe cast summoning spells - again - for Lena. It wouldn’t work, Chris knew that much. Whatever had her, it knew enough to keep her locked in, unable to be pulled out by magic. Seeing Lena in his or her dreams had given him a new burst of adrenaline to search with, and whenever exhaustion seemed imminent he pictured the terror in Lena’s eyes, the brief glimpse of her real self that he had, broken and in pain, and it pushed him ahead. But it had been days and nothing, and he yearned for sleep, yearned to see Lena again, hoped that she knew more this time, that she could help them help her. He closed his eyes and prayed for dreams to take him over.
-------------------------------------------------------------
This time the appearance of the isle did not surprise him. He had first dreamed of demons and tortures and Lena’s voice shrieking somewhere in the dark, but that dream had evaporated, had been ripped away and in its place there was a bright white nothingness until Chris stumbled through it, chasing after the laughing voices and lapping waves he could hear in the distance.
Lena was sitting on the edge of the cliff, legs dangling, tail of the blue chiffon that had been wrapped around her chest and tied in the back like a delicate tube top swayed behind her in the breeze.
“Lena?” he whispered as he approached, sitting cross-legged beside her. She turned forlorn eyes to him for a moment and then pulled her legs up, hugging her knees to her chest. “Honey what’s wrong?”
“This is fake, isn’t it?” she said quietly. Chris did not know how to respond and so remained silent. “I know that… I know that it’s why I can’t get down there, because it’s a dreamscape I’ve created, and making a landscape is one thing, making a constant stir of noises on repeat is easy, but coming up with something that can talk to me, that’s different. They… they were real and they spoke to me at first, but before you got here the first time they faded and I couldn’t get to them anymore.” Her eyes were frightened. Chris slid closer to her, they were nearly touching. “The dreams… I… I thought I was sleeping but… that’s what’s real, isn’t it?”
In lieu of a response, Chris wrapped his arms around her. “Yes, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry but that’s real, and I need you to tell me something, anything about it so I can find you, so I can help you.”
She pushed him away, stared straight at him. “I can’t remember, Chris! I don’t know!” she cried. Behind her the dreamscape flickered and shuddered and Chris was afraid he was waking up. The sounds of the water sprites below faded out and the slight breeze died. It seemed that everything had disappeared except the ground beneath them and the olive trees around them. Even the sun seemed dimmer. “I’m scared.”
“I know, but you have to try to… I don’t know… reconnect with your body, figure out what’s going on. I want to help you Lena but I don’t know where you are.” She closed her eyes, nodding somberly.
Lena and her dreamscape disappeared and Chris’ own dreams picked up right where they had left off.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Two nights of restless sleep followed and Lena did not appear to him once. Chris wanted to believe that was a good sign, that she was gathering the information she needed and soon, in true Lena-manner, would deliver all the important details in an organized and efficient manner.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Lena was leaning against the wall of Chris’ bedroom, legs pulled up to her chest. He recognized the ratty jeans and dark pink hooded sweatshirt as the clothes she had worn the day she disappeared, and his breath caught in his throat. She was losing her grip on the dreamscapes, running out of energy, and as her power waned the self she projected in her dreamscapes became more and more the real Lena who was hurt, possibly dying. “I’m scared,” she cried, hugging her knees. “I’m so scared! I don’t want to die!”
“Lena, please, you need to tell me where you are, what’s happening?” Chris begged, kneeling in front of her, holding her shoulders tightly.
“I don’t know! I can’t remember, Chris, I can’t remember! Please don’t make me go back there!” She lunged herself at Chris and he caught her, held her tightly in her arms as she sobbed onto his shoulder and he cried as well.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Chris’ eyes were met with a shock of expansive white nothingness. He stared at it, waiting for the new dreamscape to take place, waiting for Lena to bring them to wherever she felt would be most comforting, but the change did not happen. And then he heard hitched breathing and turned to see Lena curled up in the nothingness, lying on her side sobbing, knees to her chest and hands limp.
“Lena!” he called. As he neared her the image of her shuddered and morphed, and chains shackles appeared on her wrists and ankles, manacles with chains on them stringing out into nothingness. He skidded to his knees beside her, and gently maneuvered her off of the invisible floor, the chains clanging loudly in the eerie silence. Her clothes were covered in dirt and grime, dirty tear tracks covered her face, and her wrists and ankles oozed blood where she had fought against her restraints.
“I’m sorry,” Lena cried, “I’m so sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for, baby, nothing at all. God I need to find you, I wish I knew where you were.”
“It’s too late Chris, it’s too late anyway,” she sobbed. “Just… don’t leave me, please.”
He held on to her as tightly as he could, felt her sobs die down and her breathing begin to slow. The whiteness surrounding them twitched, shuttering between nothingness and a dank cement-walled room. Chris saw a shadow on the wall, a figure approaching Lena, heard laughter in the air. Then there was nothing once again. It shuttered once more and this time Chris looked over his shoulder, saw a tall, muscular man with soulless black eyes staring down on where Lena must surely be in reality.
“Just a bit more, sweetheart. It’ll all be over soon,” he cooed to her. And though Chris could not see what he was doing, Lena’s screams reverberated off of the walls and she fell limp in his arms. “Soon you can sleep,” he sighed and the surroundings faded.
“I’m gonna die,” Lena whispered.
“Oh God, Lena…”
“It’s okay… it’s… I… it was gonna happen eventually… right?” she said quietly.
“Don’t hide behind that shell, not now, please.”
“Chris… I… I love you…” she said, her voice fading in and out.
“No Lena, Lena!” Chris cried as her body began to twitch, like a TV set with bad reception.
“Tell mom and dad… Wyatt… aunts… I’m sorry… love them… didn’t want to le-” her words cut out and Chris pulled away from her embrace, pushed her away so he could look at her. He stared into her sea-green eyes, bright with pain and fear. She focused on him and he watched as awareness began to fade, as her eyes grew dark just before the lids slid closed and she disappeared.
Lena was gone.
For a moment Chris just sat completely still, willing her to fade back in, willing her to come back to him. But then he felt a twist in his heart like a knife followed by an icy coldness that spread throughout his body. And he knew then, without a doubt, that Lena had died, her presence that never ever left him before now torn away, leaving a hole behind.
Chris sat, surrounded by whiteness, hands empty, and sobbed.
-------------------------------------------------------------
For days after she died, Chris saw Lena everywhere. She was a quick reflection in a store window as he walked by, a curtain of black hair that brushed against him in the market, a lilting feminine laugh across the room.
He saw her perched on the corner of his bed while he sat at his desk, staring blanking at the wall, she followed him into the kitchen and shook her head disdainfully as he pushed the food around his plate with disinterest.
She appeared to him in various ages, he saw her at six years old, rolling in the grass, ten and riding a bike down the sidewalk, twelve, wrapped up in a fleece blanket and sleeping in the sunroom, sixteen and willful, clothes stained with demon dust and hair in disarray, twenty and crying softly in a dreamscape she created to hide from reality.
He knew he should talk to someone, should probably cry or rage or have some sort of reaction, but all he felt was a deep well of despair and self-loathing.
He watched dispassionately as Phoebe slowly crumbled, having felt Lena die just as Chris had. She was inconsolable, sobbing constantly and unable to motivate herself to do the simplest tasks. She seemed to be trying to follow Lena, trying to neglect herself to death so she could be with her daughter.
He saw with emotion-less eyes the changes in his uncle Alec, gone was the perfectly primped man he grew up around, Alec now wore his vanquishing clothes everywhere, jack boots and jeans with a belt filled with the most lethal looking weapons he could find. He wondered idly if that was how Alec had been after his parents were murdered, before he made peace with their deaths. But somehow Chris thought this was worse, because losing your parents was one thing, but losing your daughter had to be ten times worse than that. Alec lived and breathed for Lena, and now, inexplicably, she had gone.
Wyatt had become just as obsessed with finding the demon responsible for Lena’s murder as his uncle, spending long hours with Alec poring over research and questioning demons. They wanted Chris to help but he just could not bring himself to do it. He had seen the demon, he knew that she had been killed somewhere in the normal world, not the underworld, and somehow he could not bring himself to become vengeful.
Lena had once warned him of the danger of hating your enemy so much, implored him to look at the simple facts that demons killed witches and witches killed demons, and this was one of those ‘chicken or the egg’ situations where neither party could be at fault for starting it. It was just in their nature, violence and death on both sides. She would have killed this demon just as surely as it killed her. Chris wanted to take some comfort in that, but it was hard to feel anything with her gone.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Three months after her death Wyatt and Alec finally tracked the demon responsible. The whole crowd accompanied them on the vanquish, eager to deal out vengeance and to bring Lena’s body home. Chris wandered through the underground structure, a demon’s lair formed in old tunnels. The structure was massive and they had split up in order to cover the ground more quickly. Though he dreaded it, Chris somehow knew he would be the one to find her corpse, and though disappointed, he was also right.
In a small, dimly lit concrete room there lay a rotting corpse chained to the wall. Chris felt his fragile defenses crumbling under the sight, the face was unrecognizable but he knew the clothes, he knew the position, he had seen Lena here just before she died. His knees weakened and he fell hard, tears streaming down his face. He curled in on himself and was certain for a moment that he felt a gentle hand squeeze his shoulder, but when he turned around there was no one there.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Six months after her death and Chris doesn’t even recognize his brother anymore. Lena’s death - murder - pushed Wyatt over the edge and he had become something Chris never wanted for him.
Chris sat alone in the attic, staring at the space where Wyatt had been before he orbed off, his words still hanging in the air ‘How can you just do nothing? I thought she meant more to you than this.’ Chris hung his head, because Lena did mean something to him, and that’s why he was trying so hard to not turn himself into someone she would hate.
“It’s not what I want,” a voice sighed from across the room. Chris looked up in surprise, staring to the source of the sound and seeing nothing.
“Le… Lena?” he whispered, staring into the empty attic.
“You can hear me?” she asked, her voice sounding surprised.
“Yeah.”
“Well that’s something, isn’t it?”
-------------------------------------------------------------
Lena’s image steadily became visible over the next few weeks, sometimes he would just see a flash of her standing before him, wearing her favorite pair of jeans and a slinky top, other times she would appear completely solid, as if she had never died at all. Chris was marveled by her presence, astonished that her spirit could be visible to him so early on, that the Elders would allow him to see her before a requisite period of mourning.
“Oh Chris… nothing could ever keep us apart, you know that,” she said softly, running opaque fingers through his hair. He bent forward, resting his forehead on hers, feeling a closeness he had thought to be lost to him forever. “Don’t look back anymore,” Lena whispered. “There’s nothing for you there. You only have tomorrow, next year, you can only look forward.”
“I don’t know what to do…” he cried.
“Yes, you do,” she responded, moving away so that she could stare him in the eye. “The path you were on - we were on - is at an end, Chris, you have options before you, you need to make a choice.”
“I don’t know if I can… ever since you… everything’s so hard,” he said, head hung low.
“Hey,” Lena said, grasping his chin and making him look at her. “I believe in you. You know in your heart what you want, even if you can’t say it yet, and that’s okay, because I am not leaving you; not ever.”
-------------------------------------------------------------
It took everything he had to walk out, but Lena was a steady presence, always with him, always encouraging. He no longer dreamed of becoming a doctor, he had seen enough pain and death to last him a lifetime, he didn’t think his soul had enough left to give; could survive any more pain. Lena suggested culinary school, reminding him that no one mixed ingredients like he did. He reluctantly took her advice, enrolling in a culinary program and getting himself a small apartment. He had some of the money from Lena’s trust fund that Phoebe split between him, Wyatt, Prue, and Nel, but he left it untouched, saving it even when she chided him and told him she didn’t care what he did with the money, that he needed to buy groceries and pay his rent.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Chris met Isabel at the local café, she was smart and fun and made him forget about witches and demons and evil for just a little while. Lena sat beside him when he called her after the first date, helped him pick out the right clothes and practice the right lines. And when he came home scared out of his mind because he realized he was falling in love with her, Lena smiled and told him that she was happy for him.
When he told Isabel the truth she took it in stride, tried to wrap her head around it. The days after were tense, and finally she came to his apartment and told him she wanted to know everything. He showed her the small photo album he kept, showed her pictures of the Halliwells from days gone by. He stopped on a picture of Lena, running his finger over the image, and Isabel looked up at him, asked him who she was, if she was important to him. And then it all came out, the little cousin who had hero-worshipped him, who met her end in the most terrible way, whose death ripped his family apart. He sobbed and Isabel held him and told him that she was sorry, and that she loved him, and Chris couldn’t imagine ever being without Isabel.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Chris married Isabel in a small ceremony, just her family, Piper, Leo, Paige, Mark, the twins, and a handful of friends. After the honeymoon he finally reached into the nest egg Lena left him and surprised even her when he purchased a small vineyard in Napa valley.
“This is for you, little cousin,” he whispered as he nailed in the sign for “Lena Winery.” He and Isabel opened a small bistro and an understated tour of the facilities to raise extra cash.
The first wine he produced, a California red, he also named for her, and for him, for how they used to be. He named it in Italian, the language Lena always said she wished she spoke, he called it “Senza Paura”, “Fearless.”
-------------------------------------------------------------
Apparently this fic is too large for one post! So click to go on to part 2!
Title: Love is a Circle
Author: Ada
Fandom: Charmed
Rating: PG
Genre: Angst
Warning: Death of non-canon character
Characters: Chris Halliwell, Lena (OFC), OCs, Wyatt Halliwell
Disclaimer: I owe too much money to student loan companies to buy Charmed. Certain character reflect OCs used in a series of stories, but this story resides in its own individual universe.
Summary: Set in an alternate future (canon until season 7). Chris fic. The death of a family member hits the Halliwells hard, and Chris just can't let go. Oneshot.
Chris hadn’t meant to close his eyes, but hours upon hours of searching and worrying and being pulled apart at the seams had finally caught up with him. At first he didn’t know that he was asleep, there was just a momentary darkness as his eyes slid closed that was soon replaced by a landscape he did not recognize. A salty breeze blew through rows of olive trees and in the distance he heard crashing waves and lilting voices raised in song. He approached the cliff face he stood near, stared down into the sea below and caught sight of ethereal creatures basking on the rocks and dancing in the waves.
“You’re here,” a voice behind caught him off guard and he spun at the sound, hoping against hope that she would actually be there by the time he had turned. And sure enough, clad in the blue gauzy material the creatures below had been wearing, a flower nestled in her black hair, stood his missing cousin. One of her hands was rested against an olive tree, and he saw the ornate armband climbing up her arm. She seemed perfectly healthy, even had a glowing tan. There were no marks on her, nothing to suggest that she had been hurt in any way. She smiled at him and all he could think was please don’t let this be a dream, please let her really be here, please, please. He would be willing to hold back the lecture on not running off and worrying them unnecessarily if only he could know for sure that this was real and she was alright.
"Lena… what’s going on?” he asked shakily. “Where have you been?”
“What do you mean?” she questioned. “I haven’t been anywhere.”
“Lena you’ve been missing for days!” Chris said.
She cocked her head to the side as if thinking, and then brushed past him, her skirt rippling in the wind. Kneeling in the grass she stared down off the edge of the cliff at the water sprites below. “I keep trying to get down to them but I never seem to make it,” she said quietly. “I don’t think they want me down there with them, and I don’t know why.”
“Why are you here?” Chris questioned.
Lena turned back to him, sea-green eyes staring determinedly into his. “I think you know.”
-------------------------------------------------------------
Chris woke with a startled jerk, his brother shaking him. “Chris what the hell, you were supposed to be doing research in here, not sleeping!” Wyatt shouted. His older brother’s eyes were bloodshot and at this point Chris wasn’t sure if it was from exhaustion or crying.
Chris opened his mouth to tell Wyatt about the dream, about Lena and the water sprites and the isle of Greece that he often heard about but never seen, but for some reason he stopped himself. Pushing thoughts of Lena’s cold words, the last she spoke before Wyatt woke him, out of his mind, he focused on the task at hand, finding her.
-------------------------------------------------------------
“I was wondering if you were going to come back. Did you get lost?” Lena asked, smiling serenely at him. Chris squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, cursing himself for falling asleep on the job again, for dreaming Lena when Lena was really out there somewhere in need of their help. But then he replayed what she said over in his mind and started.
“You’ve been here while I was gone?” he questioned.
“Of course I have. This is my place, Chris, why would I have left just because you did?”
Shit, shit, shit! And that’s when he realized that he was not just dreaming about Lena, he was dreaming with Lena. He stared at the girl, really stared at her, tried to find some indication that it really was his cousin. She just cocked her head like she had done the last time, a questioning frown on her face.
It started when they were kids and Lena accidentally ‘dreamwalked’ into Chris’ subconscious, having been calling out to him in her sleep. After a few rough tries, she managed to be able to invade his mind when he was sleeping and she was awake. A little while later and she could manipulate his dreams, could turn nightmares into beautiful things, could make a point clearer than anyone with a few minutes of concentration. On nights when her subconscious got the best of her Chris would find her standing in whatever dreamscape his mind had created, shrugging her shoulders at why she was there, and telling him that she must have been thinking about him. There were times when Chris would shout out for her in his sleep, terrified by some non-existent threat, and his mind would call to her and she would pull him to her, into her mind. As far as he knew, she and Wyatt never shared that level of mental intimacy.
It shouldn’t have been much of a surprise to find that Lena, missing and probably scared, had sought him out, had brought him into her dreamworld. What he didn’t understand was why she wasn’t telling him where she was, what had happened, how to find her. She did not even appear to know that this wasn’t real.
“Why are you here?” he asked.
“I like it here, it’s peaceful, no fighting, no pain,” she seemed calm, staring off into the sea, the color of it the same as her eyes. “I had a nightmare last night,” she said quietly.
“What was it about?” Chris said softly, feeling confused.
“I don’t… blood… and pain, lots of pain… it hurt so bad… I just wanted to wake up, you know?” she looked at him, and for a moment he thought he saw something in her eyes, a brief view of Lena crumpled on the ground, chest heaving, eyes closed. Then it was gone, and the only thing he could see in her eyes was his own reflection, scared, worried.
“Maybe you should go back to sleep, try to have that dream again… figure out the details, where you are, who’s there, what’s going on,” he suggested because he didn’t know what else to say.
“I’m scared,” she whispered and it hit him like a punch. Since she hit twelve, Lena rarely ever admitted being afraid of anything. He raised his hand to place it comfortingly on her shoulder but then his vision jarred and the island and the sea and Lena all faded away.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Chris watched, oddly disconnected as Wyatt and Phoebe cast summoning spells - again - for Lena. It wouldn’t work, Chris knew that much. Whatever had her, it knew enough to keep her locked in, unable to be pulled out by magic. Seeing Lena in his or her dreams had given him a new burst of adrenaline to search with, and whenever exhaustion seemed imminent he pictured the terror in Lena’s eyes, the brief glimpse of her real self that he had, broken and in pain, and it pushed him ahead. But it had been days and nothing, and he yearned for sleep, yearned to see Lena again, hoped that she knew more this time, that she could help them help her. He closed his eyes and prayed for dreams to take him over.
-------------------------------------------------------------
This time the appearance of the isle did not surprise him. He had first dreamed of demons and tortures and Lena’s voice shrieking somewhere in the dark, but that dream had evaporated, had been ripped away and in its place there was a bright white nothingness until Chris stumbled through it, chasing after the laughing voices and lapping waves he could hear in the distance.
Lena was sitting on the edge of the cliff, legs dangling, tail of the blue chiffon that had been wrapped around her chest and tied in the back like a delicate tube top swayed behind her in the breeze.
“Lena?” he whispered as he approached, sitting cross-legged beside her. She turned forlorn eyes to him for a moment and then pulled her legs up, hugging her knees to her chest. “Honey what’s wrong?”
“This is fake, isn’t it?” she said quietly. Chris did not know how to respond and so remained silent. “I know that… I know that it’s why I can’t get down there, because it’s a dreamscape I’ve created, and making a landscape is one thing, making a constant stir of noises on repeat is easy, but coming up with something that can talk to me, that’s different. They… they were real and they spoke to me at first, but before you got here the first time they faded and I couldn’t get to them anymore.” Her eyes were frightened. Chris slid closer to her, they were nearly touching. “The dreams… I… I thought I was sleeping but… that’s what’s real, isn’t it?”
In lieu of a response, Chris wrapped his arms around her. “Yes, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry but that’s real, and I need you to tell me something, anything about it so I can find you, so I can help you.”
She pushed him away, stared straight at him. “I can’t remember, Chris! I don’t know!” she cried. Behind her the dreamscape flickered and shuddered and Chris was afraid he was waking up. The sounds of the water sprites below faded out and the slight breeze died. It seemed that everything had disappeared except the ground beneath them and the olive trees around them. Even the sun seemed dimmer. “I’m scared.”
“I know, but you have to try to… I don’t know… reconnect with your body, figure out what’s going on. I want to help you Lena but I don’t know where you are.” She closed her eyes, nodding somberly.
Lena and her dreamscape disappeared and Chris’ own dreams picked up right where they had left off.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Two nights of restless sleep followed and Lena did not appear to him once. Chris wanted to believe that was a good sign, that she was gathering the information she needed and soon, in true Lena-manner, would deliver all the important details in an organized and efficient manner.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Lena was leaning against the wall of Chris’ bedroom, legs pulled up to her chest. He recognized the ratty jeans and dark pink hooded sweatshirt as the clothes she had worn the day she disappeared, and his breath caught in his throat. She was losing her grip on the dreamscapes, running out of energy, and as her power waned the self she projected in her dreamscapes became more and more the real Lena who was hurt, possibly dying. “I’m scared,” she cried, hugging her knees. “I’m so scared! I don’t want to die!”
“Lena, please, you need to tell me where you are, what’s happening?” Chris begged, kneeling in front of her, holding her shoulders tightly.
“I don’t know! I can’t remember, Chris, I can’t remember! Please don’t make me go back there!” She lunged herself at Chris and he caught her, held her tightly in her arms as she sobbed onto his shoulder and he cried as well.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Chris’ eyes were met with a shock of expansive white nothingness. He stared at it, waiting for the new dreamscape to take place, waiting for Lena to bring them to wherever she felt would be most comforting, but the change did not happen. And then he heard hitched breathing and turned to see Lena curled up in the nothingness, lying on her side sobbing, knees to her chest and hands limp.
“Lena!” he called. As he neared her the image of her shuddered and morphed, and chains shackles appeared on her wrists and ankles, manacles with chains on them stringing out into nothingness. He skidded to his knees beside her, and gently maneuvered her off of the invisible floor, the chains clanging loudly in the eerie silence. Her clothes were covered in dirt and grime, dirty tear tracks covered her face, and her wrists and ankles oozed blood where she had fought against her restraints.
“I’m sorry,” Lena cried, “I’m so sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for, baby, nothing at all. God I need to find you, I wish I knew where you were.”
“It’s too late Chris, it’s too late anyway,” she sobbed. “Just… don’t leave me, please.”
He held on to her as tightly as he could, felt her sobs die down and her breathing begin to slow. The whiteness surrounding them twitched, shuttering between nothingness and a dank cement-walled room. Chris saw a shadow on the wall, a figure approaching Lena, heard laughter in the air. Then there was nothing once again. It shuttered once more and this time Chris looked over his shoulder, saw a tall, muscular man with soulless black eyes staring down on where Lena must surely be in reality.
“Just a bit more, sweetheart. It’ll all be over soon,” he cooed to her. And though Chris could not see what he was doing, Lena’s screams reverberated off of the walls and she fell limp in his arms. “Soon you can sleep,” he sighed and the surroundings faded.
“I’m gonna die,” Lena whispered.
“Oh God, Lena…”
“It’s okay… it’s… I… it was gonna happen eventually… right?” she said quietly.
“Don’t hide behind that shell, not now, please.”
“Chris… I… I love you…” she said, her voice fading in and out.
“No Lena, Lena!” Chris cried as her body began to twitch, like a TV set with bad reception.
“Tell mom and dad… Wyatt… aunts… I’m sorry… love them… didn’t want to le-” her words cut out and Chris pulled away from her embrace, pushed her away so he could look at her. He stared into her sea-green eyes, bright with pain and fear. She focused on him and he watched as awareness began to fade, as her eyes grew dark just before the lids slid closed and she disappeared.
Lena was gone.
For a moment Chris just sat completely still, willing her to fade back in, willing her to come back to him. But then he felt a twist in his heart like a knife followed by an icy coldness that spread throughout his body. And he knew then, without a doubt, that Lena had died, her presence that never ever left him before now torn away, leaving a hole behind.
Chris sat, surrounded by whiteness, hands empty, and sobbed.
-------------------------------------------------------------
For days after she died, Chris saw Lena everywhere. She was a quick reflection in a store window as he walked by, a curtain of black hair that brushed against him in the market, a lilting feminine laugh across the room.
He saw her perched on the corner of his bed while he sat at his desk, staring blanking at the wall, she followed him into the kitchen and shook her head disdainfully as he pushed the food around his plate with disinterest.
She appeared to him in various ages, he saw her at six years old, rolling in the grass, ten and riding a bike down the sidewalk, twelve, wrapped up in a fleece blanket and sleeping in the sunroom, sixteen and willful, clothes stained with demon dust and hair in disarray, twenty and crying softly in a dreamscape she created to hide from reality.
He knew he should talk to someone, should probably cry or rage or have some sort of reaction, but all he felt was a deep well of despair and self-loathing.
He watched dispassionately as Phoebe slowly crumbled, having felt Lena die just as Chris had. She was inconsolable, sobbing constantly and unable to motivate herself to do the simplest tasks. She seemed to be trying to follow Lena, trying to neglect herself to death so she could be with her daughter.
He saw with emotion-less eyes the changes in his uncle Alec, gone was the perfectly primped man he grew up around, Alec now wore his vanquishing clothes everywhere, jack boots and jeans with a belt filled with the most lethal looking weapons he could find. He wondered idly if that was how Alec had been after his parents were murdered, before he made peace with their deaths. But somehow Chris thought this was worse, because losing your parents was one thing, but losing your daughter had to be ten times worse than that. Alec lived and breathed for Lena, and now, inexplicably, she had gone.
Wyatt had become just as obsessed with finding the demon responsible for Lena’s murder as his uncle, spending long hours with Alec poring over research and questioning demons. They wanted Chris to help but he just could not bring himself to do it. He had seen the demon, he knew that she had been killed somewhere in the normal world, not the underworld, and somehow he could not bring himself to become vengeful.
Lena had once warned him of the danger of hating your enemy so much, implored him to look at the simple facts that demons killed witches and witches killed demons, and this was one of those ‘chicken or the egg’ situations where neither party could be at fault for starting it. It was just in their nature, violence and death on both sides. She would have killed this demon just as surely as it killed her. Chris wanted to take some comfort in that, but it was hard to feel anything with her gone.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Three months after her death Wyatt and Alec finally tracked the demon responsible. The whole crowd accompanied them on the vanquish, eager to deal out vengeance and to bring Lena’s body home. Chris wandered through the underground structure, a demon’s lair formed in old tunnels. The structure was massive and they had split up in order to cover the ground more quickly. Though he dreaded it, Chris somehow knew he would be the one to find her corpse, and though disappointed, he was also right.
In a small, dimly lit concrete room there lay a rotting corpse chained to the wall. Chris felt his fragile defenses crumbling under the sight, the face was unrecognizable but he knew the clothes, he knew the position, he had seen Lena here just before she died. His knees weakened and he fell hard, tears streaming down his face. He curled in on himself and was certain for a moment that he felt a gentle hand squeeze his shoulder, but when he turned around there was no one there.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Six months after her death and Chris doesn’t even recognize his brother anymore. Lena’s death - murder - pushed Wyatt over the edge and he had become something Chris never wanted for him.
Chris sat alone in the attic, staring at the space where Wyatt had been before he orbed off, his words still hanging in the air ‘How can you just do nothing? I thought she meant more to you than this.’ Chris hung his head, because Lena did mean something to him, and that’s why he was trying so hard to not turn himself into someone she would hate.
“It’s not what I want,” a voice sighed from across the room. Chris looked up in surprise, staring to the source of the sound and seeing nothing.
“Le… Lena?” he whispered, staring into the empty attic.
“You can hear me?” she asked, her voice sounding surprised.
“Yeah.”
“Well that’s something, isn’t it?”
-------------------------------------------------------------
Lena’s image steadily became visible over the next few weeks, sometimes he would just see a flash of her standing before him, wearing her favorite pair of jeans and a slinky top, other times she would appear completely solid, as if she had never died at all. Chris was marveled by her presence, astonished that her spirit could be visible to him so early on, that the Elders would allow him to see her before a requisite period of mourning.
“Oh Chris… nothing could ever keep us apart, you know that,” she said softly, running opaque fingers through his hair. He bent forward, resting his forehead on hers, feeling a closeness he had thought to be lost to him forever. “Don’t look back anymore,” Lena whispered. “There’s nothing for you there. You only have tomorrow, next year, you can only look forward.”
“I don’t know what to do…” he cried.
“Yes, you do,” she responded, moving away so that she could stare him in the eye. “The path you were on - we were on - is at an end, Chris, you have options before you, you need to make a choice.”
“I don’t know if I can… ever since you… everything’s so hard,” he said, head hung low.
“Hey,” Lena said, grasping his chin and making him look at her. “I believe in you. You know in your heart what you want, even if you can’t say it yet, and that’s okay, because I am not leaving you; not ever.”
-------------------------------------------------------------
It took everything he had to walk out, but Lena was a steady presence, always with him, always encouraging. He no longer dreamed of becoming a doctor, he had seen enough pain and death to last him a lifetime, he didn’t think his soul had enough left to give; could survive any more pain. Lena suggested culinary school, reminding him that no one mixed ingredients like he did. He reluctantly took her advice, enrolling in a culinary program and getting himself a small apartment. He had some of the money from Lena’s trust fund that Phoebe split between him, Wyatt, Prue, and Nel, but he left it untouched, saving it even when she chided him and told him she didn’t care what he did with the money, that he needed to buy groceries and pay his rent.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Chris met Isabel at the local café, she was smart and fun and made him forget about witches and demons and evil for just a little while. Lena sat beside him when he called her after the first date, helped him pick out the right clothes and practice the right lines. And when he came home scared out of his mind because he realized he was falling in love with her, Lena smiled and told him that she was happy for him.
When he told Isabel the truth she took it in stride, tried to wrap her head around it. The days after were tense, and finally she came to his apartment and told him she wanted to know everything. He showed her the small photo album he kept, showed her pictures of the Halliwells from days gone by. He stopped on a picture of Lena, running his finger over the image, and Isabel looked up at him, asked him who she was, if she was important to him. And then it all came out, the little cousin who had hero-worshipped him, who met her end in the most terrible way, whose death ripped his family apart. He sobbed and Isabel held him and told him that she was sorry, and that she loved him, and Chris couldn’t imagine ever being without Isabel.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Chris married Isabel in a small ceremony, just her family, Piper, Leo, Paige, Mark, the twins, and a handful of friends. After the honeymoon he finally reached into the nest egg Lena left him and surprised even her when he purchased a small vineyard in Napa valley.
“This is for you, little cousin,” he whispered as he nailed in the sign for “Lena Winery.” He and Isabel opened a small bistro and an understated tour of the facilities to raise extra cash.
The first wine he produced, a California red, he also named for her, and for him, for how they used to be. He named it in Italian, the language Lena always said she wished she spoke, he called it “Senza Paura”, “Fearless.”
-------------------------------------------------------------
Apparently this fic is too large for one post! So click to go on to part 2!