Upstairs, Prue was flipping through the book, looking for the demon that had trapped her family. She'd gotten a third of the way through the book and still hadn't found anything. Phoebe sat at a table nearby, crystal in hand, focusing in the hopes of forcing a vision, when she was startled by a shout of frustration from Prue as she slammed the book shut.
"Dammit, Phoebe!" Prue looked up at the older Phoebe. "Sorry, not you. The other you."
Phoebe ran a hand through her hair. "You shouldn't be so hard on her, you know," she said gently. Phoebe's face wore a look of almost motherly calm. "She threw herself into danger to save us."
"She never thinks ahead! I have every right to be angry! She had no place putting herself in that danger – especially not with you more powerful ones around!" huffed Prue.
Phoebe remained calm in the face of Prue's tirade, as if a counselor. "She had every right. We all put our lives on the line here. It's our destiny and we each have a part to play."
"But you're too reckless and now I might lose you!" Prue half shouted before she realized what had escaped her lips and who she was talking to.
Phoebe nodded. "You’re right. I was reckless. I still can be sometimes, I suppose. But I like to think it’s gotten us out of more scrapes than it’s caused." She smiled at Prue.
This wasn't the response Prue had expected from her emotional slip up. Phoebe herself was surprised at her own lack of a reaction. In the past, in this time, in a heated situation like this, she would have gone into a defensive mode, using Prue's slip of the tongue as a way to pick at her rationale. She realized that she really had grown past the squabbling of their youth.
Phoebe continued, "But I looked up to you for as long as I can remember, Prue. I had to live up to your accomplishments. When I had a teacher, they'd already had you and Piper as students and expected me to live up to that. Grams expected me to be driven like you, to be as successful as you already were when I was just finishing high school. I suppose that's why I rebelled like I did. I didn't really think I could ever live up to your standard." She sighed and met Prue's eyes. "Look, I'm just saying, she looks up to you. She… I … need your approval. I never had Mom. And Grams… she never said it, never has, but I know I never lived up to her dreams for me as a child, or a young woman – not until we became the Charmed Ones. But I'd always hoped for your approval. As a sister. That's why she argues with you and goes out of her way to do whatever she wants."
Prue had softened, and sat down next to Phoebe, putting a hand on her shoulder. "I'm only hard on her because I worry about you…" said Prue quietly, finally realizing the impact she had on her sister, but not catching her slip.
Prue leaned into Phoebe, gently resting he head on her sister's shoulder reassuringly. "I'll make sure of it," said Prue. “Somehow.”
"Make sure of what?" asked Piper as she carried in a pot of coffee, cream, sugar, and mugs on a tray.
"Our bigger sister here was just giving me advice on how to be a better one," answered Prue with a wink.
Piper smiled as she set the tray down. She'd never seen her two get along so well under this kind of pressure. It was refreshing to not have to play referee. "Have you come up with anything?"
Phoebe set the crystal down. "No visions. Our best bet is still the book."
"I'm not so sure about that," Prue replied. "There's just so much in there and who knows how much time we have. We don't even know if the Hawker was just screwing with us – how would he know what's in the book, anyway?" She crossed her arms, obviously frustrated.
With a patient tone, like that of a teacher tutoring a frustrated student, Phoebe turned to Prue. "He was under a truth potion," she pointed out, and then crossed over to the book. "Now, where did you leave off?"
Prue sighed and flipped it open. "About… here. Yeah."
"I think I have an idea to speed this up. Maybe. Possibly. Anyway, I always wanted to try it!" Phoebe smiled and extended a hand. "May I try something?" Prue hesitated a moment but then clasped her sister's hand. "Ok, try and channel that annoyance with me at how vague I'm being." She smiled at the look Prue gave her. "It's okay, I know the empathy thing has gotta be weird. I'd feel the same way... I do, actually, because of it!” she laughed. “Anyway, channel it into your power, but don't move anything."
Prue gave her a quick look, but then focused and squinted. A scrying crystal suddenly flung itself across the table nearby. Phoebe nodded. "Good. Now let me..." Phoebe flicked her free hand and a pillow leapt into the air and across the room. "Oops." She flicked her hand again, this time getting a gentler toss. She did this a few more times before finally getting the pillow to hover and gently float about the room.
Prue's eyes widened in surprise and the pillow promptly dropped to the floor. "I can't do anything that subtle!" she exclaimed.
Phoebe shrugged. "Our powers are an effect of our emotions. They grow and change with us. All you need is a little emotional discipline and you can manipulate your powers more precisely. At least… I think that's how Leo explained it." She took Prue's hand again. "I stole your car in 9th grade and blamed that dent in Grams' car on you."
"What?" exclaimed Prue.
Phoebe smirked. "I need you to be angry again. And I was the one that stained that blouse you borrowed from Stacy Walsh in high school. Oh! There we go!" she said brightly as she felt the anger flare up from her sister.
"Oooh, you!" grumbled Prue, but Phoebe had already turned her attention to the book. She flipped her fingers and the pages began to quickly flutter by. Her eyes darted back and forth as the pages turned just slowly enough for her to see the title. Two thirds of the way through the book, and just over a minute later, she flattened her hand across a page, smoothing the book open.
"Got our man! Or should I say… booby-trap? Looks like he's not so much an actual demon but more like a demonic guard dog. It's a conjured trap for trespassers, but it resets itself, into that crystal form, when damaged. So it's not so bright. Good news is it's an easy spell to reverse! Ready?"
"Oh! One second!" said Piper, grabbing the coffee tray and placed it outside the attic door. "What? I've had it with the broken – well, everything! Ok," she finished as she closed the door. Prue looked sideways at her now older sister. “And the point of that was? I mean sure, saved us some time, but… isn’t that personal gain or something?”
"Piper! Questions later, blow up now!" shouted the older Phoebe.
Piper eyed the demon for a split second, glanced around, and then blew him to dust before he had time to realize what was going on. She put her hand on her hips. "We screwed up, didn't we?" she asked, non-plused by suddenly finding herself back in the attic.
"You could say that," replied Prue.
Piper raised an eyebrow. "So. What did we miss?" she asked as she leaned against a wall, arms crossed.
After everyone had been filled in to what had happened after they had been trapped in crystal form, the group turned back to the book. The older Piper was flipping through the book, looking for anything on Kaalaya.
Chris crossed his arms and leaned against a wall in an unconscious mirror of his mother. "If this demon really has been trapped for eons there's no way any ancestors ran across him."
"Uh, dude, he's a time demon. Why not?" replied Paige.
"Because, he obviously uses others to do his dirty work. No one in the Warren line would have been powerful enough to track him down, even if they had run into one of his hired thugs," explained Chris.
"Still," said Piper. "It doesn't hurt to look. Besides, we're at a dead end otherwise." The tinkling sound of orbs interrupted any further discussion, as Leo appeared next to the younger Piper.
"Please tell me they know something for once," said the older Phoebe at his appearance.
"Yes, actually, they did," replied Leo. He inhaled, organizing his thoughts. This was big. "Kaalaya is Sanskrit for 'Lord of Time'. He doesn't have a proper name – kind of like The Source. He came into existence in an ancient time before such conventions. Even the Elders aren't entirely sure how old he is."
"So what do they know?" asked Prue.
"We know he battled a powerful force of good thousands of years ago. They didn't have the power to vanquish him, but were going to banish him to another plane of existence."
"Wait. Were going to? Great. Some nebulous, ancient, powerful force of good couldn't vanquish him. How are we supposed to pull that off?" said Prue.
"Well, we are the Charmed Ones. If we defeated the so-called Ultimate Power,” replied the older Piper, making air quotes, “we can take this bastard down," she finished matter of factly. "And we have the Power of Six. Theoretically," she shrugged and turned back to Leo. "Anything else?"
"Just don't make the mistake of underestimating him. When the spell was cast to banish him the last time he cast his own counter-spell. The combination backfired, though, trapping him in his own pocket realm," continued Leo, crossing his arms. "After that it's only what's been gathered from demons he's worked with in the past, so most of its reliability is questionable. But over the centuries a few pieces have remained consistent. We know that the flow of time in the realm he's trapped in which he’s trapped is tied to our own, so anything that happens to him he can't go back and fix. It also means that anyone outside their own time will be aware the moment he changes anything, because they’ll be traveling along the same relative time track as he is. The portals he creates work the same way – once he's opened one to a period of time the portal is bound to that period's flow of time."
"So what's to stop him from just opening up a new portal slightly earlier than the last if something goes wrong?" asked Prue.
"The portals are bound to the time they're opened to – and he can't close one once it's been opened without leaving… holes, or weak points, I guess you could call them, in the barrier to his realm. So, he can't close too many. Anyway, those portals into our realm move forward in time. Should one intersect into another, his realm would most likely collapse in on itself, destroying him." Leo could see the sister's eyes glazing over in confusion.
Chris straightened up. "Let me see if I've got this right. He's magically trapped in a pocket realm but is bound by a linear time flow that synchs up with ours. So, wherever he is, the same amount of time that passes here, passes there?" Leo nodded. "Ok, so he can reach through time, but those portals are bound to the time that they're opened into. Kinda like having windows open on a computer?"
"Or picture-in-picture on a tv…" said Paige and she slowly wrapped her mind around this time stuff.
"Right, basically," said Leo.
Chris continued, eyes rolled up in thought. "And two of these portals intersecting would destroy his realm and him."
"But why wouldn't he just pop out into our realm? Or if he can pull objects in and out of the portal, why can't he just climb out?" asked the older Phoebe.
Chris handled this one. "If that realm was created by his powers mingling with a spell then he's probably bound by its essence. It's a part of him. It would be like trying to crawl out of your own skin. The kind of power needed to separate himself from it would be massive, then."
"Exactly. Power levels only a few magical creatures have ever possessed," said Leo. "Anyhow, the rumor is that he's looking to reform the Triad. But the Triad always comes back, eventually. They're never truly gone."
"What? Why didn't you mention this before?" exclaimed the younger Piper, alarmed. “Or didn’t you think it was time for us to know they’re still out there?”
"I didn't want to worry you. It takes years for them to even reform as ghosts, let alone become a threat," he replied. Piper grunted in frustration.
"Seven years, actually. And we did vanquish them. Permanently," said the older Piper, interrupting the lover's spat. She was in no mood for it. Leo raised his eyebrows in surprise.
"I didn't know that could be done." The older Piper shrugged. Leo considered something for a moment. "That creates a major power vacuum. That may be what he's after. Legend has it that the Triad was created when the three branches of evil joined to become as one. That's where the name came from – kind of a demonic take on the Power of Three. He's a demon, which means he'll need to join with a warlock and a darklighter to form a new Triad."
"And just how are we supposed to figure out which of the thousands of warlocks and darklighters out there he's going to join with?" asked Prue.
Leo shrugged. "I'm not sure, just yet."
"Ok," replied the older Piper slowly. "But I still don't understand how he could know when to strike. If two portals can't intersect, then how can he reach backwards in time while still watching it?"
"Probably a window, of sorts," Leo explained. "That was one of his powers, the ability to create windows to observe other places, distant lands, as well as time. He could watch our world, the time and place that he's bound to, without creating a portal."
"How convenient for him," said the older Piper, exasperated.
"And inconvenient for us," replied Paige with a sigh. "So, now what?"
The older Piper clicked her tongue once as she came to a decision and offered her thoughts. "I'd rather avoid going after this Kaalaya guy if we can - at least until we're better prepared. So in the meantime, I think we should focus on disrupting his plan and saving Leo."
"Then make him wish he'd never messed with the Halliwells," added Prue.
"Right," said Paige. "So let's find this warlock or darklighter he's in league with."
"But how?" asked the younger Phoebe. "I mean, can't he chose anyone he wants from any time he wants? And wouldn't he pull the most powerful ones in history? I mean, wouldn't he want the most powerful evil to join with him to make the greatest power?"
"Not exactly. It's not really the power of the individuals that creates the Triad's power," explained Leo. "It's the union of dark magical heritages – like your bond as sisters creates a greater power than you have as individuals."
"Besides," added Chris, "we know he can't pull powerful people out of their time permanently. Not without risking changing history radically enough that the Triad is never vanquished, allowing him to take over.
Paige cocked her head to the side. "But how does killing Leo in our time help him? I mean he's – y'know," she said with a hinting look at the sisters from her time, "not a threat." She ignored the looks of inquiry from the sisters and especially Leo from this time. She wasn't about to be the one to drop that bombshell. "And why did he reach back in time just to have some warlocks make an amulet?"
"The Lunar Hand must have possessed a certain ability he needed," answered Chris. "If they're already vanquished in the future he'd need to go back to a time when they were still alive."
The older Piper shut the Book of Shadows, looking up. "I don't think it was his intention to kill our Leo. That amulet was in storage – and he couldn't have known we'd go opening it that day. He can't see the future," she stopped a moment and frowned. "He can't, can he Leo?"
He smiled, "Uh, no."
Piper nodded. "Right. Which means he probably left it there for Leo sometime in the past when he'd have been using that chest."
"But wouldn't that change history so that we never vanquish the Triad? I mean, we need him," blurted out the younger Piper. She cringed a little inside and instinctively hoped she hadn't betrayed her still present feelings for Leo. ‘But then, I already know we end up together, with kids and everything,’ she thought and sighed. ‘This future business is such a headache. With all this information, I don't even know what I feel anymore.’
"Maybe he knows something we don't," offered Prue who didn't seem to have caught Piper's internal conflict. "Yeah," agreed Paige, "with all those seers and oracles and forecasters, or whatever, who knows what they can figure out. What do you think, Leo?" When he didn't answer she turned around to see his him standing with his back towards her, looking down at something. "Uh, Leo?"
"He's fading from existence," replied the older Phoebe, concern painted across her face. "Looks like someone just made a move on Leo."
"Then why didn't he and Chris just pop out of existence?" asked her younger self.
"Destiny is a hard thing to change. It resists," answered Leo.
Chris nodded. "Yeah, the bigger the event, that is the more destined it is, the longer it takes for the universe to shift. I like to think of it as 'The Powers That Be' giving us time to put things right. Which is exactly what we need to do before I start disappearing as well."
"But what about the warlock and the darklighter?" asked the younger Phoebe.
The Piper from 2007, already knowing their next move, picked up a piece of paper as she answered. "Chances are one of them is responsible for this so we're going to go whenever his sorry ass is." She began scribbling down a spell.
"Cool!" exclaimed the younger Phoebe. "What?" she asked at the look she got from her other sisters. "What? I kinda like this time travel stuff."
"What? Oh, no, no, no – you're not coming with us!" exclaimed the elder Piper. "It's way too dangerous!"
"We can take care of ourselves," replied Prue.
"No," shot back Piper. "What if something happens to one of you? It'll erase our future existence as well."
Prue shook her head. "No. It seems to me that we have a pretty strong destiny. If something happens I'm sure we'll figure out a way to set it straight long before it's permanent. Besides, you don't think I'm going to let my sisters, from any time, just go off to battle a powerful demon without me there to protect them, do you?" Prue put her hands on her hips.
The older Piper sighed. "I don't know… I mean, we don't even know where or when we're heading. We could end up in the middle of a battlefield in the south pacific!"
Prue smirked, knowing it was just a small step before she'd won the argument. "I kinda doubt Leo is looking at a piece of jewelry in the middle of a battle. But still, the danger is an even better reason to have us along. The more firepower the better, right?" Piper still looked hesitant to agree.
"She has a point, Piper," said her Phoebe. "I mean, I don't wanna cease to exist any more than you do, but it's safer for us and them. We're dealing with a time demon. What's to stop him from reaching back here and going after our past selves if he realizes that we vanquished the Lunar Hand?"
"Yeah!" agreed her younger self, enthusiastically.
Piper sighed in resignation. "Okay, okay. I guess I'm out voted here… and you're probably right," she conceded. "Just be careful, okay?" They all nodded. She turned to her son. "But Chris, I need you to stay here and watch after Leo. If he starts completely disappearing into the ghostly plane you'll know we've probably failed. It'll be up to you to find a way to warn us. Find a way to keep us from repeating our mistake, somehow, before you disappear too." She said the last quietly, as if it wasn't heard it wouldn't happen.
Chris wrapped his arms around her. "I'll see you back here in a few minutes, mom," he reassured her, confidently. "Just remember," he began, but was cut off by Piper.
"Future consequences, yeah, yeah, yeah," she said.
He smirked. "No. Just remember that you guys can do anything. You saved my future. This'll be a piece of cake."
Piper tilted her head considering the young man before her. He may have the memories of the evil future that they'd prevented, but the second lifetime of memories had softened the harder edges she remembered from his first visit. And he sure as hell wasn't as neurotic. She smiled at him. "Love you."
"Love you too. Now get going, would ya? Time's a wasting!" he finished lightly.
Paige huffed. "Really? Seems like we've got way too much of it," she said with a smirk as she picked up her potion filled purse.
The younger Phoebe hefted the Book of Shadows from 2007 off a table. "Don't want to forget this! Maybe we can vanquish some Nazis!"
Prue frowned. "Those are people, Pheebs. Evil people, but still people."
Phoebe rolled her eyes. "It was a joke, Prue. Yeesh!"
"Ladies?" said the oldest sister in the room as she flapped the paper with the spell in the air. Prue and Phoebe looked at each other sheepishly before joining their older sister's side. The 6 women all joined hands and began to recite the spell.
"Hear these words, hear the rhyme,
heed the hope within my mind,
send me back to where I'll find,
the spell erasing Leo from this time."
Leo nodded as the two sets of Charmed Ones disappeared in a swirl of twinkling white lights. A look of confusion soon clouded his features. He smacked his lips, as if he was sampling a new food. "What is that?"
Chris shrugged. "Beats me. Guess it's the taste of, well, not tasting? Wait 'til the tingling starts." He shook his head in reflection.
Leo scrunched his eyebrows. "You've faded before?"
Chris shrugged one shoulder. "Let's just say… I've seen a lot. Even for a Halliwell."