"Well, we can't have gone back that far then," said Prue quietly. "And the house doesn't look that different."
"But why is the front door open?" asked the younger Piper. "You know how Grams was about that kind of thing."
Suddenly, they could hear young voices squabbling in another room. "Well! If Piper hadn't just let him in the house, he couldn'ta chased us all over everywhere!"
"I didn't mean to," replied a dejected little voice.
"You just didn't open it 'cause you're a scaredy cat, Prudence," answered a third, youngest voice.
"Am not a – "
"Enough!" All six Charmed Ones flinched. Grams' angry voice still packed a wallop, even for Paige. Grams' tone softened. "Girls, he was a bad man and would have found a way into the house one way or another…"
The Phoebe from 1999 grinned at her sisters. "Our warlock?" she whispered.
"Maybe…" replied the older Piper in a hushed tone. She was distracted by the scene she vaguely remembered from her childhood.
Grams was in the middle of one of her patented life-lesson monologues. "… but you could all stand to be a bit more careful. You're just lucky I was here. I need you all to remember that when you work together nothing can stop you. You need to trust each other and especially your gifts." She turned to the eldest sister, cupping Prue's face in her hand. "Prudence. Your name is exactly what you have in abundance – common sense. Piper, you have an inner strength that you don't realize yet, but I've seen glimpses of it since you were a tiny girl. It's why your sisters turn to you in their squabbles." She finally turned to the seven-year-old. "And little Phoebe… no one feels as deeply as you do, and no one understands other people as well as you. You all need to use your talents to help your sisters. Not to push each other's buttons, Phoebe. Or to think it entitles you to boss your sisters around, Prue. And Piper, honey, you need to stand up for yourself! Don't just support your sisters at the expense of yourself."
Paige smiled. "Good advice in any time."
"Shhh!" hissed the older Phoebe. "She probably doesn't remember us from 1975."
The older Piper nodded, whispering, "Right. When I came back to about this time with Mom she didn't know who I was."
"Great. She's gonna think we're warlocks, again." whispered Prue. "We should get out of here!"
Piper held up a hand. "No. We came to this time and place, which means Paige is probably right – that guy was our warlock. We need to talk to Grams. I think I have an idea. I hope," she said, before stepping into the entryway, revealing herself.
"Who's there!" exclaimed Penny. She quickly stood up protectively, putting her body between the children and the intruders. "Who are you?"
The younger Phoebe popped her head around the corner. "It's okay, it's just us Grams!" The rest of the sisters joined her in the doorway. Piper began to recite her spell as Penny hesitated for a moment, both confused at their tone, and clearly outnumbered.
“Let Grams' memory be unbound
Let what was lost now be found
Of our visit to 1975
Make her memory…
"…come alive?" she finished, hoping the rhyme would work. She held her breath in anticipation. Why had she been so reckless? Piper wondered. ‘Maybe I'm picking up old bad habits, spending too much time with our past selves.’
A glow of white light, visible only to the witches with powers, engulfed Penny's face for just a moment and she immediately visibly relaxed. "It's nice to see you girls again… all of you?" She looked down at the little ones behind her. "Girls, these are your, uh, cousins. From very far away. No time for introductions, off to school!" She gently pushed them towards their book bags as the adult sisters spread out in the sitting room.
"You can take some money from my purse," answered Grams. "Then I'll drive you."
"Uh, actually, Penny," interrupted the eldest Piper awkwardly, "This is kind of urgent. Time is of the essence sort of thing."
Penny nodded. "Right. Prue, I can't drive you today."
"But Andy's mom already left with him! Are we just supposed to walk three miles?" Prue asked with obnoxious pre-teen sarcasm.
At Grams' flustered look, the 24-year old Phoebe piped up, "I'll drive! I mean, if that's okay?"
"Do you remember how to get to Woods Elementary?" asked Grams.
Phoebe shrugged. "I think so. But I'm sure Prue here won't hesitate to tell me if I've made a wrong turn, will you?" The older Prue shot her sister a sarcastic smile that let her know she'd get her back later for that comment.
The 12 year old Prue, for her part, looked suspicious. Something was weird about this. "How would you know where our school is? And how did you get in our house, anyway?"
Phoebe squirmed uncomfortably. How did even pre-teen Prue make her feel 7 years old again? "Uh, your Grams writes us about you all the time. You probably don't remember our last visit when you were only five. And we used to live in San Francisco – that is, when we were your age. And went to the same school."
“And we came in, because we’re family. And because someone left the front door open,” added the younger Piper, with just a touch of good-natured smugness.
Still unsure, especially after this morning's incident with the strange man, little Prue hesitated before finally agreeing to the plan. Phoebe smiled broadly. "Good – it’s settled! Don't want to miss a chance this time to spend time with little Phoebe… and little Prue and Piper."
"I'm not little!" protested the younger Prue, "I'm almost a teenager!"
"Oh, of course, how silly of me!" said Phoebe, smirking at her Prue. "Okay, ladies, let's roll!" she said, grabbing Grams' keys from the coffee table, and headed out the door with her charges following in a line like little ducklings.
When the door had shut Penny crossed the room to her adult granddaughters. "It's wonderful to see my girls again… but to what do I owe this," she glanced between the two Pipers, and the raven-haired woman she didn't know, "very strange visit?"
"We're here to stop a demon from changing – hey, waitaminute!" The older Phoebe looked into Penny's eyes, narrowing her own, "Grams? What's wrong? What are you worried about?"
Grams straightened up, bluffing, knowing her problems were probably nothing compared to whatever reason had caused her granddaughters to come back in time. "Oh, it's nothing really."
"No… you're really concerned," pushed Phoebe.
"No use trying to fool her," piped in Paige, "She's an empath."
Penny clapped her hands together excitedly. "Oh! How wonderful! Your powers are expanding!"
Phoebe put her hands on her hips. "Don't try and change the subject. Are we in danger, here?"
"No! No... well, not you. The little ones. That intruder was a warlock. One more powerful than any I've ever encountered. No matter what I threw at him, I couldn't vanquish him. I only managed to wound him a little," answered Penny, her annoyance at being bested evidenced in her voice.
"So, he'll be back," replied Prue, flatly. "And that certainly concerns us."
"Yes, Prudence dear. That's why I called an old friend of mine. You can come out now!" Penny called into the kitchen. She then turned back to the sisters. "Even with your powers bound, you're occasionally in danger from the Underworld. Some still know you're witches, and would like to steal your bound powers."
Paige furrowed her brow. "But that doesn't make any sense. Why risk your life for bound powers, when you don't even know who did the binding? Or if the powers could be unbound at all?"
Penny raised an eyebrow. "I never said they were particularly bright."
"Touché," replied Paige with a smirk.
"Anyhow, I knew, know, whatever - after Patty passed on, I was essentially a single mother. And I may be good, but even I can't be everywhere at once. You needed a whitelighter in case something attacked when I wasn't around - even if you never received your powers. Unfortunately, we lost her today in the attack." She sighed, regretfully. "She was a good woman."
Both sets of sisters exchanged puzzled looks, which Penny mistook for worried concern. "Oh, don't worry girls! I've pulled in a few favors, and had the Elders send in an old friend of the family. He's one of the best, and has had a hand in protecting this family since your mother was a child. I personally requested him for you girls." A well-built blonde man, wearing a v-neck t-shirt and tool belt, walked in from the kitchen. "Girls, I'd like you to meet –"
"Leo!" exclaimed both Pipers in unison.
Grams smiled. "So you do know him!"
The older Piper gave her Grams a knowing smile. "You could say that."
Leo was drying his hands on a rag. "Have we met?" he asked genially.
Grams patted him on the shoulder. "Leo, these are my granddaughters!" At his confused look, she added, "From the future."
The older version smiled. "We're Piper."
"I'm Prue."
"And we're Phoebe," she blinked realizing there was only one of her in the room. "Uh, another Phoebe just took the little us's to school."
"Ah," Leo nodded, still a little confused.
"We, me, the other Phoebe and Prue, are from 1999," said Piper.
"And we're Paige," she added, feeling a little left out. "Fourth sister." Grams raised her eyebrows at this, but for the sake of her granddaughter's safety, didn't mention that Paige’s counterpart was already born, and hidden, years ago. But she felt an affectionate warmth spread in her chest, and a weight that she hardly knew she’d been carrying, at the sight of her lost granddaughter happy, healthy, and with her family at last.
The older Piper gestured between herself and her sisters. "We're from 2007."
Leo raised his eyebrows, unsure of what to say, before letting his whitelighter training kick in. "Time travel isn't to be undertaken lightly. I hope whatever you're here for is important."
"Saving the Charmed Ones, and saving you? Kinda important, yeah," Paige replied sarcastically.
"The Charmed Ones?" he asked.
"That's us!" said Phoebe brightly.
"I'm the whitelighter to the Charmed Ones, huh?" said Leo, a bit of pride creeping into his voice.
Paige smirked. "Oh, you're more than that buddy!" Piper elbowed her sister in the ribs, warning her with widened eyes , clearly indicating for her to shut up. Paige quickly backpedaled. "Uh, never mind that."
Penny cleared her throat. "Anyway, he's here now because I wanted him to look at this pendant. It fell off the warlock." She reached into her pocket, pulling out a necklace, and reached to hand it to Leo.
"NO!" all the sisters exclaimed at once.
Penny stopped, her hand instinctively flying back to her chest. "What? What’s the matter?"
"Here," said the older Piper, as she gingerly took the pendant from Penny's hands. "Let's just keep this thing at a safe distance, hm?" She stuffed it into her own pants pocket.
Grams eyed her granddaughter. "I take it that's the reason you came back to 1983?"
"Yes," answered Piper. "Well, no – not exactly." She sighed in frustration. "It's complicated… do you have an Excedrin?" Piper held a hand to her head. ‘And I'd been doing so well. I need a nap,’ she thought.
“A what?” asked Penny.
Piper sighed. “It’s like an asprin, but…. nevermind,” she groaned.
"Here, let me." Leo said, raising his hands to her head and her headache faded as the warm glow dimmed from his hands.
"Thanks," she said a little self-consciously.
"So, just what do you know?" asked Penny.
The girls took turns describing the events that had led them to this time and place, and all that had happened to lead them here - gingerly leaving out the details about Piper and Leo’s marriage, and Chris, of course.
Grams raised an eyebrow when their story was finished. She had her game face on now. "So, it seems your enemy is our enemy."
"So it seems," echoed the eldest Piper.
"Uh, there's one thing I don't get," began Paige.
"One thing?" remarked the youngest.
Paige shot Phoebe a withering glance at this remark before continuing. "What did you mean, 'new whitelighter'?" she asked Penny.
"Why… to replace Lynn. The night before last the warlock killed the girl’s 'babysitter', she was your whitelighter actually - Lynn."
Prue nodded slowly. "Oh, yeah, I remember her. Sort of. I guess I just assumed I was too old for a babysitter so you stopped having her come over."
Grams shook her head. "Always in such a rush to grow up, Prudence." She paused for a moment. "You mean to say that Lynn wasn’t your whitelighter in the future, before all this mess with the timeline started?"
The older Piper shook her head. "No. Leo has always been our guy." She studied her future husband's face. "Leo? What’s wrong?" She could read him in any time.
Leo looked at her a little surprised. He prided himself on his ability to hide his inner feelings from his charges. "Well… it’s just…" he paused to organize his thoughts, then looked at one set of sisters. "You're from the past –I mean, their past, right?" he asked.
The younger sisters nodded. "And you," he gestured at the older trio of women, "were in their time when I started to fade?" The older ones nodded now. "That's good. That means this may not be such a mess after all," he said with a smile.
"Care to bring us along on that thought train?" asked Paige wryly.
"Well, if the demon's plan was to change the past, and I will know you in both sets of your futures… I am your whitelighter, right?" he asked.
A realization began to dawn on Paige's face. "And we were outside the timeline…" The realization slowly spread to the other sisters.
"Then our memories wouldn't have been changed by events set in motion after we left 2007…" continued Phoebe.
"So, if you were, are, our whitelighter in 1999, then Leo was destined to be our whitelighter all along?" finished the younger Piper with some uncertainty.
"So… whatever happened here was supposed to happen – with the warlock I mean," concluded Prue.
Leo nodded. "One way or another I was destined to be your whitelighter."
"Huh?” grunted Piper, trying to follow. “Oh. Yeah, see, this time travel stuff?" remarked the older Piper, "Never gonna get these paradoxes." She blinked and shook her head, trying to clear the fog of exhaustion that had settled on her brain.
"Tell me about it!" agreed her younger self. “I hope you’ve got plenty of coffee in stock, Grams.”
"What Leo is saying," interjected Penny, "is that it’s yours and Leo's destiny to be together."
"What?" exclaimed Piper, "How do you know about that?"
Penny and Leo looked at her strangely. "Because you told us," Leo tried to clarify.
The eldest, and exhausted, Piper's eyes widened. She held up her left hand with the wedding band, waving it about a couple of times. "About Leo and I being together?" She squinted at Penny. "I didn't tell you that - Grams, did you get to keep your memory after all? And why would you tell Leo?" At this, the other sisters realized Piper's mistake and were frantically trying to shush her. Phoebe grabbed Piper’s left hand, which displayed a wedding ring, pushing it down to her side. Piper shot her an annoyed look and continued ranting. "I suppose you know about the kids, too? You got Coop to not take you back far enough to erase your memory, didn’t you? You can’t trust cupids with the tough decisions – they’re softies, the lot of ‘em! Ooh, I am gonna kill him…"
Piper was talking a mile a minute and all this spilled out of her mouth before Prue could clamp her hand over Piper's mouth. Paige rolled her eyes. "Way to keep a level head there, sis." Piper looked at Leo, who looked dumbfounded, and her mouth dropped open, still behind Prue's hand. "Did I just…," she said muffled and groaned through her sister’s hand.
Leo had only met the 10 year old Piper for a few minutes this morning as she'd hovered over him while he was pretending to tinker with the kitchen sink. Next, he'd just met this older version for a few minutes, and now he was being told that he would marry her and… father her children? Sure, she was attractive, her eyes were even mesmerizingly familiar somehow, but how could he? Never mind the age thing - existing as an ageless angel had a way of making a whitelighter relate to other people relative to the age they appeared to be. No, what bothered him was that he’d apparently broken the ultimate whitelighter rule. How could he have broken the rules and had a forbidden romance? And kids? Had he clipped his wings for her?
At Leo's gape-mawed expression, Piper fully realized the gravity of her slip-up. Her eyes widened almost to the size of golf-balls. This was bad. She pulled her sister's hand from her mouth.
Paige huffed, crossing her arms. "I don't suppose you could just, oh I dunno, forget all that could ya?" Piper ran the palm of her hand up her face and across her forehead tiredly. 'What was that?' She thought, 'I don't make those kind of major mistakes anymore. It's like I'm reverting to my old neurotic babbling habit. I've been with my past too long. It’s just like my high school reunion all over again. What, am I going to revert to a squabbling ten year old next?'
The group had fallen silent as Grams, and especially Leo, digested the revelation. The sisters exchanged looks, wondering how Penny would react to this man who was older than even herself being the lover of her shy little Piper. After all, no one was as fiercely protective of their family like Penny, and the thought of her little girl with a man older enough to be her grandfather was distasteful a best. Leo's face altered between confusion at how all this could have come to pass, and delight at the photos of his children that Phoebe slipped to him. Finally, his mind locked gears into a dumbfounded silence as he continued to consider what he'd heard.
The eldest Piper meanwhile was exasperated at herself. "I," she announced, "am an idiot!" She flung her hands into the air.
"Oh, no honey. No you're not," began her Phoebe, trying to talk sister down before something expensive felt the wrath of Piper's frustration. "You just – "
"No, no, no. I'm an excitable idiot! I swear, I must be losing it." She shook her head as she paced. "And should we be telling him the rest of this? I've done this enough times – you'd think I'd know how to keep my mouth shut when it really counts. Be evasive, y'know? How can Chris be so good at it and not me?" she whined to herself, pacing across the dining room for the hundredth time. The younger Piper just sat watching her older self. It was strange to get to actually watch one of her freak-outs, but weirdly comforting to know that she hadn't changed that much over the years.
Phoebe smirked. "I think he got that from Leo. Remember when he first became our whitelighter and thought he could get away with that mysterious wise man bit?"
Prue took Piper by the shoulders and gently pushed her down into a chair, handing her a cup of coffee Grams had brewed for herself just before their arrival. Prue smiled, laughter in her eyes. "What's so funny?" asked Piper.
"Nothing," answered Prue. "It's just nice to see that the panicky Piper I grew up with is still in there somewhere," she said, tapping on Piper's heart. "Through all this you've seemed so together, that I guess seeing a little chink in your armor makes me feel less… inadequate."
Piper's expression softened as she deflated a little. "Oh, believe me, there's plenty of chinks in my armor." She turned, looking at the sister's of her time. "I think we all just fill in the parts where we each lack." She took a sip of her coffee and her eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Bailey's, Grams?! Trying to liquor up your granddaughter? At nine-o-clock in the morning?"
Grams waved it off. "You're an adult and you need to calm yourself. Besides, we could use a little Luck of the Irish. Believe me, it’s preferable to being visited by one of those damned leprechauns," she joked. "And don't worry about any of this. I'll have Leo dust me when you leave and the Elders will wipe his memory as well. Now – let’s get down to business. Would one of you girls be a dear and get the book? It's in the attic." She frowned, considering something. "Oh, but you're locked out."
"No problem!" said Paige cheerfully. "Book of Shadows!" she called out and the book from her time orbed into her hands from where they'd left it in the foyer.
Leo's eyes widened at this display of whitelighter abilities. "Are you my daughter?" he exclaimed.
Paige chuckled. "Uh, no. I'm Patty's. They had to give me up - clandestine fling with her whitelighter, forbidden love and all. I kinda like to think I paved the way for you and Piper's kids, actually." She looked at Leo's blank expression. "Information overload?" He nodded dumbly. She shrugged good naturedly. "Sorry! But, uh, if you could keep your lips zipped about my existence from Them," she glanced up at the heavens, "that'd be just super. I’m not too keen on finding out how they’d ‘handle’ me if found out." She paused, getting more serious when he just blinked at her. "No. Really…"
“Oh!” Leo nodded. "I wouldn't do anything to change the future, anyhow," he reassured her. “But you know that the Elders would never do anything to hurt a child.” The sisters of 2007 exchanged looks mysterious to everyone else in the room, but gave no indication what it was about, aside from the hard look behind their eyes.
"I'm back," the younger Phoebe yelled, announcing the obvious. "What did I miss?"
"Oh, just our future Piper here spilling the beans about her and Leo's destined marriage!" teased Prue.
"And that whatever, or whoever, is after Leo is the same thing that's after the little us’s," interjected the younger Piper a bit defensively on her future self's behalf.
"Which is why you girls need to focus," said Grams. She stole the book from its perch in Paige's hands and quickly began flipping through the pages.
Grams erupted in a sudden "Ah-ha!" stopping on a page with a darklighter’s portrait. "Borzai! That's him. I guess he wasn't a warlock – but then, where did he get those powers I saw?"
Piper frowned. "But it says here that he's a young darklighter – he's hardly powerful enough to be a real threat. How could he have resisted your potions, Grams?"
"Obviously, he's working with someone," said Leo from the couch. He had pushed thoughts of his destiny aside and gone into whitelighter mode. "Which we already knew," said the younger Piper. "The question is, why recruit this guy? What makes him so special?"
Prue ran a finger along the description. "It says here that he's notorious for scheming, and making alliances with more powerful demons – in exchange for protection," she replied.
Prue ran a finger along the description. "It says here that he's notorious for scheming, and making alliances with more powerful demons – in exchange for protection," she replied.
“Sounds like our demon has hooked up with the Sonny to his Cher,” remarked Paige.
"Maybe he's channeling some other demon's power?" mused the eldest Phoebe.
"Maybe…" said Leo, "or been given that power in exchange for taking out your whitelighter."
The older Piper shook her head. "But that still doesn't explain why a powerful upper-level demon like Kaalaya would ally himself with such an inexperienced darklighter," said Piper.
"Unless, maybe he has some sort of mystical connection to the demon?" asked Prue.
"Or Leo…" said Piper as an idea formulated in her head.
The younger Phoebe furrowed her brow. "But that doesn't make any sense. Leo is a whitelighter. How could a darklighter be connected to him?"
Leo began slowly, "Maybe a shared destiny…" he got up and crossed over to the book. Leo studied the drawing of a face which peered menacingly out from the page. "It couldn't be…" he said quietly.