"What? What is it?" asked the 27 year old Piper.
Leo set his jaw, seriously. "I might have known him. Before I died."
"An old army buddy? Cause he doesn’t look like some vengeful Japanese soldier," asked the older Piper.
Leo looked surprised for a moment before realizing she probably knew all about his past if they really were married in the future. "Yes. He was a part of my unit for a while when I first enlisted."
"Do you have any photos of your old unit?" his future wife asked.
A sour look crossed his face. "I'd rather not…" he trailed off, but looked up when he felt a feminine hand rest softly on top of his own.
It was the Piper from 2007 and she looked deeply into his eyes. "I know it's hard. But, I also know you and that you have the inner strength to face whatever you need to for the greater good. And I know you know this is important." She squeezed his hand for emphasis and gave him a comforting, if melancholic smile.
He sighed, nodding in agreement. Her eyes darted at her family's faces as she soon noticed all those not from her time, including her own younger self, staring at her. She suddenly became aware of her pose, and rapidly withdrew her hand from his, exhaling quickly as she broke into a toothy grin. "Sorry. Habit!" She shrugged.
Leo smirked mildly. "It’s ok. I'll, uh, go get that stuff." He quickly orbed out.
Grams furrowed her brow in disapproval. "If I'd known he was going to seduce my little girl I'd never have called for him. Should've known," she muttered to herself, recalling their summer of love days. "… always was on the prowl. Maybe I'll just get Wendy instead…"
"No! No! No!" urged the married Piper excitedly. "That's alright! We didn't even meet, I mean except for today apparently, until 1999. Really, Grams, he did his best to stay away from me, he really did. We're just… meant to be," she finished.
"Yeah," affirmed Paige, "after all the fighting they've had to do to stay together, you're not gonna stop it. Besides, you know the rules, no changing destiny!"
"Well… alright. But I don't have to like it." She eyed Paige. "I see someone's learned to appeal to my sense of wiccan duty to get her way," said Grams with a smirk.
"Don't worry, you won't even remember this," laughed Paige.
Leo orbed back in looking like he'd managed to pull himself back in to whitelighter mode. He blew some dust off the top of a box and pulled out a stack of dog-eared photos. "Here," he handed half of them to Penny. "See if you recognize who I think it is."
Grams sat down and carefully scanned each photo. After a few minutes she squinted and pulled out her reading glasses. "I think… yes, Leo, who is this man? I'd recognize that rat-face anywhere," she said, pointing out a skinny man standing behind Leo and a couple of other soldiers.
Leo leaned over to see the man Penny had her finger on and nodded. "That was our Company's second in command. First Sergeant Wilkins. Real bastard." He raised his eyebrows. "More so than I realized, I guess. He was about to be court-martialed for some pretty nasty things he did to some Japanese POWs the last time I saw him." Leo shook his head. "That war inspired great heroism and great evil – on both sides. A lot of white and darklighters were made in that era. Anyway, the last I heard, his Jeep had exploded mysteriously on his way to the trial. Mystery solved, I guess," he shrugged.
"What do you mean?" asked Prue, intrigued by this information about their still mysterious whitelighter's past.
"Well, much as I was made a whitelighter because of the good I did in my life, the demonic realm recruits people who have committed great evils," he explained. "Only they don't wait for the person's natural death. Since mortals are predisposed to be good at heart, the underworld tends to take people before they have the chance to redeem themselves. If he really is the darklighter that Penny saw, then that must be what happened to him. He'd also probably be the only force of evil that would know the perfect place in time to strike and kill me before I've earned my wings. Back during the war, that is."
"But he attacked here," said Prue. "Now."
"True," Leo nodded. "But from what you all have described, this sounds like a prolonged and intricate attack. If Wilkins does intend to go back to when I was mortal, and strike there, then that would mark three crucial points in my life that he's attacked – three points that relate to the Charmed Ones, anyway. If I'm as crucial to your fate as you've implied… what better way to destroy it than to take me out before it's fulfilled?"
The Piper of 1999 rolled her eyes. "Don't tell me we have to go even further back in time!"
Her older counterpart shook her head. "Not necessarily. Not if we can catch him in this one before he goes back."
"Oh, thank god!" exclaimed the younger Piper, but then furrowed her brow. "Wait a minute… how do we know he hasn't already gone back and attacked?"
"Because we're still standing here," the older Piper answered herself with a smirk.
"Oh. Yeah. Right," replied the less experienced one, mildly embarrassed.
Grams stood up determinedly. "Which means we need to get on this now."
The younger Phoebe didn't look so sure. "But can a demonically pumped up darklighter even be vanquished?"
"Of course they can," replied Grams. "Anything can be vanquished with the right know how, sweetie. Let's get to work!"
As soon as she'd gone into crisis mode, Grams had seized control of the decision making. Although they normally would have protested, for the moment all the sisters were grateful for the break. Penny had sent the two Pipers to the kitchen to gather up some snacks after Paige's stomach had grumbled so loudly they'd momentarily thought something demonic was attacking.
The 35 year old Piper rubbed the back of her neck with a hand. "With all this time traveling I have no idea how long I've been up. It feels like days." She yawned deeply. "And this knot in my back is driving me nuts!"
The younger Piper bit her bottom lip for a moment in hesitation. "Uh, I know this is a little weird, but I could take care of that for you – if you want," she offered her elder self, indicating the knotted muscle.
The older one sighed in exhaustion. "Believe it or not, I think I'm pretty non-plussed by the weirdness in my life at this point. Go ahead and give it a shot."
The 27 year old Piper put her hands on her future back, hesitantly at first, but gradually getting more comfortable, and began to press and knead pressure points.
Suddenly, the older Piper laughed, startling her past self. "Acupressure!" she exclaimed. "Geez, it's been years since I've used that! With all magic all the time I guess the mundane solutions have kinda slipped my mind."
Her younger counterpart frowned at this and paused. Somehow the reality of just how very abnormal her future would continue to be, for the rest of her life, sunk in at that moment. Sensing her thoughts, the elder Piper turned around to face herself. "I know. Still holding out for that normal non-magical life? So am I. Well, demon-free anyway. But," she tried to reassure herself. "If it helps… you should know that I genuinely love my life and all that magic has brought into it. Without it I wouldn't have Leo. Or Paige… or my sons."
"But you'd have Prue," replied the younger quietly.
The elder woman sighed. "I would. And losing her wasn't fair… but that was her destiny. I have to believe that… no, I know…" she said with gentle surety. "That as hard as it was – is – I'm at peace with what happened. All of it. And I'd live it all again to get where I am now, er, then." She pulled her shoulders back, a mild glint of humor in her eyes. "And by the way things seem to be working out with this whole mess it looks like I just might end up seeing it all again. Or at least visit it!"
The younger Piper laughed at this, but was still visibly bothered by the wealth of both sadness and hard-earned wisdom in her future self's eyes. She believed this Piper, of course - how couldn't she? But she couldn't help feeling that same old desire to be free of all this magical craziness. The older Piper tilted her head as she could practically see all this running through the younger one's head. "You'll come to it in your own time. I should know." She smirked. "Hey, thanks. That acupressure really helped. I should get back into that when this is all settled." She scooped up the tray full of veggies and dip. "Want to check back in with everyone?" The younger Piper nodded, grabbing a couple pitchers of iced tea.
They headed upstairs to the attic where Grams was looking through the Book of Shadows for a super-darklighter stopper. The rest of the sisters were sitting or leaning on various dusty boxes scattered around the attic.
"Uh, Pheebs, honey - whatcha' doin'?" asked the younger Piper as she set the iced tea onto the potions table.
Phoebe smiled sheepishly. "Trying to levitate?" Her time's Piper rolled her eyes before extending a hand to her younger sister.
Phoebe took it, appreciatively. "Thanks," she said as she pulled herself to her feet, dusting herself off.
The 30-something Piper glanced around the attic as she popped a carrot stick in her mouth. "It is pretty crowded with all of us in here."
"Can't you at least orb a couch in here?" Prue asked Paige as she scryed for Wilkins. "This kneeling is killing my knees."
"Kinda trying to avoid the whole personal gain thing," replied Paige.
"Oh, just orb them a seat," said Penny. "And don't worry so much about those little things."
Paige shrugged and concentrated on the furniture she'd seen downstairs earlier. "Loveseat!" She swept her arms upward as if lifting the swirl of orbs that came through the floor and shook her head in mock disapproval as they formed a small couch. "A girl tries to be a responsible, good-example kind of witch and her Grams just pulls her to the dark side… Chairs!" She called and four chairs orbed in. They were quickly filled by the grateful sisters.
"Start the tabletop hotplate for me, will you Piper dear?" asked Grams.
"Sure." Replied both Pipers in unison.
They glanced at one another and the older Piper sighed. "So not funny anymore." She plopped down onto the loveseat, sinking into the cushions, content to let her younger self play helper for the moment.
"Did you find something?" the older Phoebe asked.
Grams shook her head, still scanning pages. "No, but it doesn't hurt to start on a heavy-duty all purpose potion. We don't know when he might reappear."
"Where do you keep your reagents?" asked Paige, as she got up to look through what was on the shelves.
Grams waved her off. "Now, I'll walk you through how to brew one," Penny began, still flipping through the book.
"Uh, Grams, I think we can handle a basic potion," interrupted the older Piper.
Prue nodded. "You do have five other pretty powerful witches sitting here doing nothing. It'd be a shame to let them go to waste."
Grams shook her head. "Judging from the last time you came to visit, you still have a lot to learn. You could do with some guidance."
"Yes," replied the older Piper slowly. "But we've had seven years experience since then – battling demons every week, vanquishing the source, the Triad. Paige here was the friggin' headmistress at magic school!"
Grams crossed her arms, still looking skeptically at Piper. "Well, just what did you have in mind?" she asked.
Piper smirked. She'd also learned how to argue Grams into being reasonable. "That depends. Do we have any of his flesh?"
"Ew!" exclaimed the younger Phoebe.
Ignoring her Piper continued, "Or blood?"
"No," answered Grams. "He was a little singed, but that's it."
Unfazed, Piper nodded. "Ok, then we'll just brew something up that'll hurt him. Badly." The Piper from 2007 crossed over to the shelves where Paige was and began scanning the labeled jars. "I think I have an idea."
"What do you have in mind?" Grams asked skeptically.
"A twist on something we've used in the past," shot back Piper. "A variant on the 'Mr. Wrong' potion," she answered distractedly. She took a dusty jar of dried leaves from the shelf.
"Mister Wrong?" asked Prue.
"Yeah. Personal gain. Spell gone awry… consequences, blah, blah, blah," answered Paige.
The younger Piper smirked. "Nice to see some things never change," she paused, considering the insanity that follows such magical mishaps and narrowed her eyes. "I think."
"Anyway," the older Piper continued, "I'm thinking we modify that. After all, what is a darklighter but the flipside of a whitelighter? Mirrored magics."
The older Phoebe cocked her head to one side. "But didn't that not work the last time?"
"That's because he wasn't real," replied Paige.
"Oh. Yeah," said the eldest Phoebe, shaking her head. "So many vanquishes - it's hard to keep them straight sometimes!"
"Well, this big nasty is very real, so this potion should work, right?" asked the younger Phoebe.
Paige shrugged. "Probably? Or at least sting like hell. Literally. Question is, can we kill him?" asked Paige. "Should we? Or are we gonna erase our future by giving him a first class ticket to deadsville?"
"If this was all supposed to happen, or has happened, or will – whatever – then we can vanquish him," said Prue, but she then frowned. "I think."
The younger Piper didn't look so much convinced as worried. "But, what if we didn't vanquish him?" she asked. "I mean our past selves, or y'know – the us's that came back to make the future that we all have? Ugh! Am I making any sense?"
"Perfect sense, dear," reassured Grams, but the expressions on a few of the sisters faces showed that she certainly wasn't speaking for everyone. "But in any case, you needn't worry about it. Don't second guess yourselves. Whatever you decide to do is how it should have gone," she continued. "But I'd still like to see this little Mysterong Potion you girls have in mind. You haven't been at this long and you hardly had an encyclopedic knowledge of witchcraft on the last visit."
The older Phoebe stifled a laugh behind the back of her hand. "Yeah, more like Cliffsnotes," she said under her breath.
"Hey!" her younger version protested in indignation. "We're doing the best we can here! And we can handle ourselves pretty darned well for learning as we go along!"
The older Phoebe smiled apologetically. "Sorry. I guess I just meant that we've come a long way since we visited 1975."
Grams seemed to ignore this exchange, stubbornly continuing her train of thought. "I've been at this my entire life, and no offense girls, how much could you have possibly learned in only seven years?"
The older Piper shook her head and picked up the Book of Shadows from her time. "C'mon Grams, just look at how thick this book has gotten," she said, hefting it up and down a couple times to emphasize the weight, "You're always so proud of that when you see it the first time," she reasoned with Penny. "If that doesn't tell you something about how much we faced, and learned, I don't know what will."
"Still…" began Grams, but Piper pulled open her time's Book of Shadows and flipped to the page with the Mr. Wrong potion.
"Here. This is what I had in mind," said Piper.
Penny's eyes scanned the page as the sisters recited the potion ingredients from memory.
"Okay. Acacia root - to break hexes, a sprig of Horehound…" began the older Piper.
Phoebe continued, "Knotweed, Toadflax, just a pinch of Agrimony to banish dark forces…"
"A thumb’s length of ground Onyx - and the blood of Mr. Right. Or, in this case, the counterpart to a Darklighter. To act as a focusing bond with our target," finished Paige.
At this display of potion know-how, Grams raised an eyebrow and joined them at the herb shelf. "Not bad," she murmured. "I've never seen stone used in a potion before… Onyx - to repel negative energies?" Paige nodded. "Hm. Maybe you girls have learned a thing or two. With my ethereal guidance, no doubt." She began taking various jars and gathering them on a nearby table.
The older Piper raised an eyebrow in suppressed sarcasm. "No doubt." She placed a hand on her hip. "So why are you still pulling reagents from the shelf instead of looking for Borzai?" she asked tartly.
Penny paused, realizing what she was doing. "Oh, well, you know," she said quickly, shrugging. "I've been doing this alone for so long – alone. Just let me get you started!" she finished, gathering glass jars into her arms. "I don't get to use most of these very often!"
The eldest Piper held up a hand, stopping Grams. "We'll be fine. Trust me," she reassured Penny.
The sisters from 1999 were leaning over the older Piper's shoulders, peering at the book, they themselves curious as to what this recipe entailed.
"But there's one thing I don't get," said Prue, "where are we going to get the darklighter's blood? I have a feeling he's not going to just hold still while we prick him."
"He will if I freeze him," replied the younger Piper, "or if she does anyway," she said, pointing to the 35-year-old Piper, "and unfreezes just his hand or something."
"No," replied the other Piper, shaking her head slowly. "If he's as powerful as Grams said, he's probably infused with the same power that's killing Leo. He'd be able to resist through a freeze. Too risky. No, I was thinking that if Mr. Right's blood worked to vanquish Mr. Wrong, then shouldn't a whitelighter's blood be able to stand in for a darklighter's?"
"But they're not the same person," said Paige.
"No, but their magics are two sides of the same neutral force that all magic stems from," answered Grams. She was obviously warming up to the plan. "If it doesn't vanquish him it should at least weaken him – make him vulnerable to attack. Very clever, Piper."
The older Piper rolled her eyes, "Then why dontcha' let me explain it…" she grumbled under her breath.
But Grams had shifted into action mode and either ignored, or didn't catch, the comment. "Ok, girls! Let's get this started!" she adjusted the gas range on the nearby table.
"We've got it Grams," said Paige with a smile as she took Penny by the shoulders and walked her back to the Book of Shadows. "I know you're used to working alone and all, but you should keep looking in the book for our rogue darklighter. We can handle this."
Grams begrudgingly let herself be led to the pedestal. "Oh, alright. But be careful – those are powerful ingredients you're working with."
As Grams turned back to her 1982 Book of Shadows and the three older sisters began arranging potion ingredients and busying themselves with other preparation activities the three younger sisters exchanged glances, clearly feeling superfluous.
Prue finally spoke up. "Uh... Is there anything we should be doing?"
"Well…" The Phoebe in her thirties thought for a moment. "You could look through our Book of Shadows, from 2007, for any entries on darklighters. The one we're looking for might not have been added to Grams' book yet." She handed the thicker book to Prue. "Just, uh, try not to look too closely at the rest of the entries," she added hastily. Inwardly, Phoebe patted herself on the back for removing the page on Cole's human half a couple months earlier. It just wasn't relevant to anything and the idea of future generations knowing about her relationship with a demon was, frankly, kind of embarrassing.
Suddenly, Phoebe realized what else was in this book that she and all her sisters had added recently about their lives. "Oh, and don't read the last few pages!"
"Okay, okay!" replied Prue, exasperated by being ordered about by her older baby sister.
"Y'know, maybe I should just sit here and watch with you…" said the older Phoebe quickly, leaning into Prue's personal space.
Prue rolled her eyes. "We'll be careful. Besides, I'm getting the feeling we're not going to get to remember much more of this time trip than Grams will."
At this supposition the younger Piper looked a little disappointed, but didn't speak up.
Seeing her younger self's expression the older Piper sighed, not wanting to finalize anything until this mess was sorted out. "We'll see," she shrugged, "Maybe we're meant to learn from this."
Prue eyed her now older sister with a smirk. "You know how New-Agey you've started to sound, Piper?"
The older Piper smiled back at the playful jibe. "Hey – I am Wiccan, aren't I sis?"
The grandfather clock downstairs could be heard chiming the hour and Grams looked up suddenly. "Quick! Downstairs!" she announced. "The girls – the little ones!"
"What? But it's only noon…" said Prue.
"A half-day," replied Penny quickly. "Some damned holiday or something today. I'd forgotten until just now. Now, quickly – downstairs! I don't want the girls to hear you in the attic. Too many questions!"
"Why don't we just tell them the truth about who we are?" suggested the younger Phoebe.
“You have enough trouble remembering to do your homework as it is, Phoebe. I don’t want to add a memory erasing spell to the mix,” replied Grams.
"Besides, do you really wanna deal with the constant pestering with questions about the future that's going to unleash?" asked Prue.
Phoebe grimaced in response. "Good point."
"And a moot point, if the girls find anyone up here," added Penny and she began shooing the six women out the door. "Coming, Piper?"
"But the potion!" protested the older Piper.
Grams shook her head swiftly. "Bring the pot downstairs. You can finish it in the kitchen." Penny scooped up both Books of Shadows and started ushering the six witches out the door. Paige shrugged, picking up the pot, and headed downstairs with Grams at her heels. As she crossed the threshold exiting the attic, Paige heard Penny mutter a short incantation under her breath before she shut the door. ‘So that's how she kept them out all that time,’ ‘she thought wryly.