It's been over a year! Oh my goodness, that's insane. I can't believe it's about to be 2017! Sometimes I still think it's 2012. Just. Wow.

So here's a slightly longer chapter for you. If anyone is still reading this. And I'm very, very sorry for the wait!

Disclaimer - I own nothing

Paige chucked potion ingredients into the bubbling pot like she was trying to throw a football across a field – as hard as she could.

"Let's see..next is dried toad dust." She said to herself. Picking said vial up, she yanked the cork out and violently shook out an approximate amount into the potion.

The cauldron hissed and sparked at her, which usually meant it was going okay. She slammed the empty bottle down on the table and glared at it anyway.

Staring into the dark, bubbly mass emitting smoke and fumes in front of her (thank goodness they'd disabled the smoke detectors a long time ago), she realized she might be a tad angry.

Paige breathed in deep, trying to relax her clenched fists.

She wasn't even sure why she was mad really – she didn't think she was angry with her nephew. After all, it wasn't his fault a nightmare demon was stalking his dreams, she reasoned.

Then her frown deepened. It could be. He hadn't said.

Chris – who was looking worse than she'd ever seen him, with near bruises under his eyes and a drunken sway to his steps – hadn't explained very much. His distant gaze had been pleading, but lost when he'd asked her for help.

She sighed, rubbing her temples.

"It's been a long week."

That was the understatement of the year.

The youngest Charmed One had taken a break from her temp jobs (well, she'd been fired again) and had spent her week doing all the things Piper wasn't supposed to be doing anymore – like taking care of the club and cleaning up the Manor and fighting all of Chris's damn demons.

Yeah.

Paige had really been looking forwards to her date tonight.

And maybe, just maybe, she was a little angry at herself for feeling that way. She shouldn't be even a tad bit furious for at nephew for something like this, but she was. She was stressed and tired and a bit furious with everyone right now, even Piper.

Especially Piper, she decided, a reluctant smile tugging at her mouth.

"Okay. This should be done." She muttered. It was certainly the revolting shade of grey as seen in the Book.

The brunette picked up a few empty vials and began to carefully squeeze enough drops into each of them, feeling her hands relax as she did so.

"After this, I'll call Brent to cancel and then sleep-in until Sunday." She promised herself, fury giving way to acceptance.

"Are you talking to the vanquishing potion?"

Paige jerked up again to see Chris leaning in the doorway, looking slightly more awake with a mug of coffee cradled in his hands.

"No." She snapped. "Of course not!"

He took a long, slow sip of his coffee and raised an eyebrow.

"I was talking...to myself." She finished slowly, realized how silly it sounded as it left her mouth. Shaking her head, she ignored the way the corners of his mouth were curling up in an almost smirk.

"The vanquishing potion is done, I made like four million of them. So do you have a plan for catching your dream demon or what?"

"'Dream demon'?" He repeated, disdainful.

She winced.

"I also said 'your', which I kinda wanna take back now because it made it sound like this is the 'perfect demon' or something. But let's just move on..."

"My 'dream demon'." He scoffed.

"Chris, I said we're moving on...Ahem. What's the plan?"

Her nephew took another gulp of coffee, wincing at the probably very black taste.

"Which aspect of my sleep-deprived state gave you the impression that I planned anything?"

Paige considered.

"The coffee?" She offered weakly.

He grinned at her and it made her feel giddy, the same feeling she got when Wyatt giggled at something she did.

"Fair enough."

But the situation sobered her up quickly. She strode back to the book-stand and tapped the page again, annoyed at the bad news that was still there.

"Chris, according to the Book this demon isn't even corporal most of the time. He pretty much solely exists in people's dreams. I don't think scrying is going to work."

"What, you think I'm an idiot? I did try to find this guy." He retorted. "I didn't just stay up for two days hoping he'd come find me."

She rolled her eyes at him.

"You could have told me what you already tried." She pointed out.

Piper's son blinked weariness out of his eyes and ran a hand through his hair. He finally shrugged, conceding her point.

"Sorry. Not really thinking clearly." He said, tone apologetic.

"Don't worry about it, honey." She flapped a hand at him. "But we still need a plan." She began studying the paragraph again, pretending not to see him make another 'black-coffee' face at her calling him 'honey'.

"Maybe we should call Phoebe." She said. Because honestly, this was scaring her a little – Paige knew they didn't have much time and would feel a lot better if they had another person on the Save Chris Team.

Chris's eyes widened and for the first time he looked really, actually conscious.

"No! We can't tell Phoebe."

"Why not?"

"Because...because..." His gaze scanned the room, as if a legitimate excuse was there somewhere. "Because we can't! She'll tell Piper!"

Oh. He actually had a point there. The youngest Charmed One definitely did not want Piper to hear about this, not as stressed out and worried as the woman already was.

"She won't if Piper isn't here." Paige said instead, both of them knowing full well that if Piper did show up, the secret would be the first words out of Phoebe's mouth.

Chris gave her a look, desperate but on the verge of relenting. He tried one last time.

"Aren't you still on that whole 'independent' stage? You sure you don't want to do this one with just the two of us?"

"Hey! It is not a stage! I am independent." She said, a bit miffed. "And...fine. But not because you tricked me into it. It's because I don't want to bother Phoebe at work."

The man offered a shrug; he didn't care. Unfortunately the argument seemed to leave him more exhausted than before, and he mechanically gulped down the rest of his coffee.

Unease crept into the pit of her stomach. Demons she could fight, but sleep? No one could fight that forever.

So get back to work. She urged herself.

Vanquishing bottle still in the palm of her hand, she lightly drummed her nails upon the glass, wondering what to do next. The grey sludge didn't move.

How do you vanquish a demon that you can't find, that isn't tangible most of the time?

"Hmm."

She squinted at the bottle, something occurring to her.

"Why is there a vanquishing potion for him if he isn't even corporal?" She muttered.

"What?" Chris asked, snapping his head up.

Swiftly, she turned back to the Book and peered down at the entry again. Then she turned the page. Then things began to make sense.

"Chris, I think you're supposed to take this into your dream."

That got her a snort.

"You can't take stuff into dreams."Chris said, an amused expression on his face. "That's not how it works."

She tapped the page, beckoning him over with the other hand.

"Yeah, well, apparently, it is. There's another page, smart guy."

"What?" Suddenly he seemed all too eager to come over and observe her being right.

"Yeah. Look right here."

Almost shoving her out of the way, he crowded around the Book, squinting at the page closely through bleary eyes. She noticed that the hand that was holding his coffee was shaking. The Charmed One pursed her lips but didn't say anything.

"...nigh impossible to find in the Real World, this demon can be vanquished in dreams. Its powers slowly turn everything in the victim's dreams real, which, as aforementioned, eventually leads to their death. However...the demon itself will become real, and just as its victim can be killed in their own nightmares, so can the Insomnium Demon."

Chris blinked, scowled, blinked again.

"Well..." He said finally. "Okay then."

It took every ounce of strength Paige had, but she managed not to gloat. She only smiled.

"Okay." Chris said again, and she couldn't help but notice there was a lack of acknowledging her being completely right.

That's not important right now, she reminded herself. And then, you can rub it in Chris's face after he's safe. That made her feel a lot better.

"So theoretically," And oh, how Paige hated that word. "I can take this potion into my dreams and vanquish this guy. But what if he isn't real yet in my dreams? This paragraph seems to imply a process of dreams becoming real, I guess so the victim suffers longer? But what if he hasn't turned my dreams 100% real and consequence-filled yet? What happens then?"

She stared at him for a minute, thinking hard.

"Well, what happened last time?"

"What?" Chris asked.

"What happened the last time you fell asleep?" She clarified. "Did you wake up with an injury? Did you stub your toe in a dream and wake up with a throbbing foot? What made you believe there was a demon stalking your nightmares and you couldn't sleep again until he was vanquished?"

With a sigh, her nephew ran a hand through oily hair and walked over to set his coffee mug on the scrying table. She saw him eye the chair and ultimately decide to stay standing.

He fidgeted, and paced, and kept ringing his hands, but every time he opened his mouth, he shut it again.

"Chris..." She said, her tone warning.

"It's a long story." He replied weakly.

Narrowing her eyes at him, she said,

"Christopher Perry Halliwell. If you don't tell me everything right now I'll, I'll..." She searched her mind for a threat for a moment before grinning triumphantly. "I'll tell your mother."

Paige both understood, and was amused by, the horror that dawned on his face at her threat.

"It started two weeks ago," He began quickly. "After we vanquished that lower level demon. Turns out, he was one of the Insomnium Demon's lackeys..."

The dreams weren't any different at first. Chris wasn't an idiot – he knew that there were magical creatures out there that could access dreams. If anything had changed overnight, he would've known.

He would've been suspicious, would've checked it out right away.

The thing was, the dreams weren't any different. Not for him.

On a good night, Chris managed three or four hours – on bad nights, he just poured himself a cup of coffee and stared at his charts and tomes and research until the sun came up. He didn't like what sleep brought him nowadays, specifically the dreams, so he figured why bother?

He could get more work done staying up all night anyway.

Still, even with telekinesis and an almost supernatural level of determination, Chris did need to sleep eventually.

He found Saturdays, or slow days where nothing magical was attacking, and let himself crash on the couch for a few hours. He told himself this was okay, because it was just a nap, and the sun was still up.

Every time, Chris told himself the nightmares couldn't touch him. And most times, he was just tired enough to believe himself.

So he let himself fall into REM sleep infrequently, and out of the few dreams he had, he remembered even fewer – and so it was all but impossible to tell that anything was different in them.

Once he dreamed of fighting with Wyatt, but thought nothing of the bruise that appeared next morning. It probably came from the fight with the Warlock the other day, Chris thought. Then his mind was filled with dates and deadlines and the End of the World, and the fresh bruise was completely forgotten.

Then he dreamed about it, about her.

He hadn't done that in many, many years. And hadn't that been a trick.

Instead of therapy, which was what normal people would do in a normal, not tyrant-run world, Chris had gone to witch after witch and demon after demon. He'd scoured the globe for all the right potions and spells, and he'd found a good number of them.

Nothing could take back that night. Some of them could've taken the memory completely but Chris – Chris needed it. He needed to know, so it wouldn't happen again once he'd gone to the Past.

Still, he couldn't live with that memory playing on repeat in every one of his dreams. So he'd dimmed it. He rigged up a magical alarm system that would wake him up if that nightmare started.

He'd messed with his sleep in ways that couldn't be healthy.

He didn't regret it though. Seeing Mom like that once had been enough. He never, never needed to see her like that again.

The demon had messed up that way. He'd pushed an old, horrible dream back into Chris's head and suddenly everything had started clicking.

It'd been instantaneous - the idea that someone, or thing was inside his head.

When he woke up with a slice along his arm, from a dreamed up demon attack, he knew he had to fix this.

He couldn't sleep again until he found out how.

Chris couldn't bring himself to say, exactly the dream that jolted him into the demon's awareness. The words physically wouldn't leave his mouth.

He left it at a 'very bad memory, one that I don't think about anymore'.

Paige seemed to content herself with that. Which was nice. Until she informed him that they were going to kill this demon together, in Chris's dream, whether he liked it or not.

And he did not like it.

"Paige, it's my dream. How are you going to get in?" He asked, rolling his eyes at her.

She squinted at him, one irritation away from full on glaring.

"I'm sure there's spell for dream-sharing in the book, grumpy. Jeez, you're welcome for trying to help you."

Her remark sent guilt churning into his empty stomach, and he sighed, knowing she was right. He was just...tired.

Really, really tired.

She didn't deserve to be snapped at.

"Oh, hey, actually, I know just the spell." Paige said, and Chris blinked, because she had somehow materialized by the Book already.

Sure, she could actually orb (a.k.a materialize) but Chris had missed it.

Or he was so sleepy he hadn't noticed her click-high-heeled walk over here.

God, he wanted to just collapse right here on the floor, curl up on the rug, and not think about anything for the next week.

His entire body ached, his appetite had all but disappeared, and his eyes felt so gummy that it was disgusting.

That coffee had kept him going for maybe half an hour, but it was wearing off and with it any sort of motivation Chris had to keep standing.

In that sneaky, exhausted way brains do when they want sleep, he started reasoning with himself that a minute or two wouldn't hurt.

He was just going to shut his eyes. Just...rest. For a moment.

"Yep! Found the spell!" Paige's voice jolted him out of his daze.

It took strength he didn't know he had, but Chris straightened again from nearly falling asleep standing up, his head bobbing on his chest, and he rubbed at dead eyes.

"Good, good." He couldn't hold back a yawn though. "I don't think I can last much longer."

He blinked again, and his aunt was by his side. She pressed a vial of vanquishing potion into each palm, and gave him a pat on the shoulder.

"You can do this, Chris. Just give me a moment, and then you can go to sleep, okay?"

She waited until he nodded, then smiled at him.

"We'll beat this guy together. I promise."

He held her to it.

"How hard can it be to fall asleep?" Paige was asking her nephew, rhetorically.

Chris was on the old dusty couch in the attic, while Paige was on her back on an air mattress beside him.

Frankly, Paige thought she'd gotten the better end of the deal.

"Not hard.." Chris muttered. The man was already half-way asleep himself. It was obvious that Paige would take a lot longer to go under.

They were finally in agreement that it wasn't a good idea to let Chris go into the deadly dream alone; hence the attic sleepover and the crinkled spell in the trash they'd cast so that Paige could share her nephew's dream.

"Well, that's 'cause you've been up for what? Two days? You'll be out in minutes." Paige grumbled.

"Hmm." Chris said.

"I don't think I can just 'fall asleep' on command. I mean, I looked to see if we had sleeping pills, but all Piper has is NyQuill, and I did take that but man I'm not sleepy."

Chris did not respond.

"What if that demon kills you before I can go unconscious?" She asked, fear in her heart. "Do you know how much pressure that is?"

Apparently not quite gone yet, Chris rubbed his eyes and murmured,

"You have to think about something else. Try...counting sheep. Reciting times tables." A yawn broke through. "Play a movie inside your head. That kinda thing."

Her own jaws jealous, Paige yawned along with him, and settled back down, blanket in one hand and potion in the other.

"Okay, okay. I can do this."

"You can...do..." Chris didn't finish. He was too busy snoring.

Despite the enormous amount of pressure on her, Paige soon found herself drifting too. Whether it was the spell or the NyQuill, it didn't matter.

Both of them were fast asleep.

...

...

...

"This is a dream." Chris told himself quietly, feeling his voice echo wrong across the room.

He knew this was a dream. But still...he couldn't – it felt so real.

He was standing in his family's attic, bare feet on creaky wood, birthday cake souring in his mouth, and was trembling over a woman's broken body.

He knew this was all wrong. He was too short and she was too old, too many grey hairs and Piper's hair was all brown now, he knew that, it was just –

There was so much blood.

He could smell it in the air. It was sliding, slipping through his fingers, sticking between his toes. It stained his shirt, marked his face; he could hardly even tell it was her beneath all that horrible red.

"T-t-this is a dream." He whispered again, but he wasn't so sure he meant it this time. He could feel everything – and he knew, deep in his gut, that the Event wasn't something he or any demon had made up.

Piper dying was real – although, whether it had happened seconds ago or years ago, the truth of it was beginning to blur.

"This h-has to be...I c-can't...Mom? Mom?" His voice was cracking; but of course it was, he was fourteen and lost and disoriented because Piper wasn't moving.

"Mom, you have to get up. M-mom, I can't do this. I need you –I n-need you to make it better, j-just like you always do. Please. Please."

What Piper Halliwell couldn't fix with kisses and cookies she could always change by yelling and getting angry.

Chris understood that excessively; it was a truth that had stitched him together on particularly bad days. His mom was a superhero - she could do anything, could save him from anything.

She always made things better.

"Mom. Please." He hated how his voice sounded. Loathed how pathetic and lonely he sounded talking to no one in the middle of the attic.

Talking to nobody...

"Oh, God...m-m-mom? Mom?"

"Chris." That voice wasn't supposed to be here. That voice was dead too.

But no, Aunt Paige was here, with the tone of gentle, heartbroken love about her, and he couldn't remember ever hearing that before.

He turned, hands shaking by his sides, and the world tilted dangerously (as it always does when you turn around in a dream) but when things righted themselves, there she was.

She was wearing lipstick and tears.

He didn't recall her being so young, not when Piper was so old, wrinkles around her eyes and grey streaks running through her hair.

"Chris, honey, this isn't real."

He felt disconnected to her. Maybe he was the one that wasn't real. Maybe she was.

"I remember this." He told her seriously. "It happened. I was there."

She looked heartbroken. Funny expression, he thought; like that particular organ could do more than burst or decay, like the heart was something you could reach in and crack like old, fragile china.

"I'm so sorry." She said.

Chris thought that it made it worse that he believed her.

"I'm so sorry that this happened, Chris. But we can change this. You and me – we can fix all of it. I swear."

"But..s-she's dead." Chris heard himself say, not his Present, twenty-three year old voice, but his cracking, young, teenager voice. "You-you can't fix dead."

He knew that. He knew that.

He remembered Dad - no Leo, he was Leo now, because where was he today of all days? - orbing down for the first time in years, hands over a still Aunt Paige's body, and pulling back with something like regret on his face.

He remembered Leo saying softly, like he was sorry (but he wasn't) that he couldn't heal the dead.

It was the one thing Halliwell's couldn't fix or reverse or make better.

Death.

Suddenly there was a warm hand on his shoulder, turning him away from Mo- from the body.

Paige's eyes burned bright, through her tears.

"You can fix this, Chris. You traveled back in time, remember? You're gonna change everything. You're gonna fix it. And we-we're gonna help."

That sentence pricked at him, at his memory. Little things began to trickle in again, like the fact that he should be taller than Paige, even when she was in heels, or the fact that he hadn't been fourteen for years, or that he shouldn't be in his timeline at all.

Chris squinted and blinked, and suddenly, he was normal height again. He was twenty-three. He'd traveled to the Past to stop Wyatt from turning evil, to save the world, to rescue his family.

And he'd been...fighting a demon. A dream demon!

"Paige...what're we..." Chris accepted her hand up off the floor, and he tried not to look at the blood staining the boards. "This is a dream, isn't it?"

It shocked him to realize that she was still crying a little. He hated seeing her cry.

"This was the dream, wasn't it?" She asked. "The really bad memory?"

He didn't want to talk about it. Wiping at his own tears, he tried to repress the last few moments, to put them back in the box he Didn't Talk About. There wasn't time for this.

"It's - it's not going to happen this time." He pretended his voice didn't waver.

She gripped his hand tight in hers, so tight that it was a comfort, even though the sensation wasn't real, was all in their heads.

"No, it's not."

"Isn't that adorable?" A voice boomed through the attic.

Chris and Paige flinched apart, looking for the source.

"Look at that - aunt and nephew comforting themselves...before they die."

Fear pounding in his chest, Chris turned slowly to the thing he least wanted to look at in the attic - Piper's body. Of course, the voice was coming from there. Of course.

Slowly, her body lifted itself up and stood, like it was a puppet whose strings were slowly being tugged up, up.

Only Piper wasn't Piper anymore. By the time she was upright, it was a figure wearing a dark robe, with red eyes glaring through the darkness.

This was the Insomnium demon. It laughed at them.

"Quick, Chris! Throw the potion!" Paige shouted next to him.

She didn't have to tell him twice. Suddenly there was a lump in his pocket, the vial, like his subconscious had slid it in there the moment he remembered it, and Chris flicked it at the demon with telekenisis, so he was sure he wouldn't miss.

But he did. By the time he heard the familiar shattering of the glass bottle, they weren't in the attic anymore. They were in the street.

The demon was gone.

They were alone again.

How had he escaped so quickly?!

"Dammit!" Chris kicked at a piece of rubble nearby. "I almost had him!"

"Um..Chris?"

"How did he do that? He shouldn't be able to do that! What, was he not 'real' enough to be vanquished, or something?"

He kicked another piece of rubble and stubbed his toe, which made him swear again. Also, stubbed toes? They felt very real.

Very.

"Chris?" Paige's voice sounded funny. "Where are we, exactly?"

He was busy rubbing his injured foot through his shoe, and didn't pay her as much attention as he should have.

"Ow, ow...I don't know, looks like we're ow, close to Golden Gate. Dammit. See, this feels real, so why isn't he?"

"But Chris," There was that odd, hesitant tone again. "It's all in ruins."

"Yeah." Chris said, wondering why she was so hung up on it. Then he realized.

She'd never seen this.

She'd never seen the world after Wyatt had gotten through with it.

Gently, he released his foot to the ground, testing weight on it before he stood up, fully, and turned to face his aunt.

The street they were on was destroyed, like so many were these days. Maybe once there'd been buildings on either side of the road, but the roofs had been blown off, the bricks left over charred and black. Some of the rubble was still on the asphalt. It was what Chris had foolishly been kicking.

Her San Francisco had tall buildings, skyscrapers, and busy traffic also whizzing across the Bridge.

This one...not so much. Wyatt had leveled most of the skyscrapers (Chris thought he hadn't wanted anyone 'over' him, even just in the literal since), leaving Chris and Paige a nice view over streets, to the blackened, crumbling Golden Gate Bridge.

It looked...bad, he supposed. He didn't feel it anymore, like one walking by so many homeless people that the tragedy ceased to penetrate anymore. But he was used to it.

Paige wasn't.

"What...what happened, here? What nightmare is this?" She wanted to know. She sounded breathless.

Chris didn't want to tell her. But he didn't have a whole lot of choice. They were inside his head, after all, and if they had any hope of getting out, she'd need to know.

Wow, if this hadn't already gotten very personal, than Chris would be extremely angry at the Insomnium demon.

"No nightmare. This - this is real too. Well not real now, but, real later. Welcome to the future." He said, trying for a smile.

By her horrified gaping, it did nothing to soften the blow.

"But, how did - what -" She couldn't seem to finish her question. "How did this happen?"

"You mean the bridge or the city?"

"Both!" She cried.

Chris made sure to glance around for probes or spies, because this was his nightmare, and he knew what he feared. He knew that was coming. It was gonna seriously suck.

It might possibly kill them.

Maybe they had a moment, though.

"Well. As it turns out, mortals and witches have a lot in common. When magic was revealed - "

"Wait, what?"

" - they hated us for a while, until something...bigger showed up. We kinda united under our shared desire not to be ruled over. We liked democracy. So we - we fought. That's why the city is in ruins. As for the bridge? Well, Wyatt wanted to make sure we knew that he won."

Paige could only glare at him for a minute.

"Wyatt?" She said.

"Yes."

"Wyatt? Little baby, cute cherub infant? That Wyatt?"

He sighed - he shouldn't known it wouldn't compute. Just like it was hard for Chris to see tyrant Wyatt as a baby, it was difficult for her to see baby Wy as a dictator. Even if he'd told her before that Wy was gonna mess up the future.

Seeing was disbelieving, he supposed.

There'd be time to talk about it later. For now, they needed to run.

"Look, I've already said too much. I..." He frowned. "I'm not even sure why I told you that. Must be really tired."

Paige was still staring out at the smoking landscape, her eyes wide.

"Little Wyatt?"

Crap. There was a probe. No time.

"Paige! We need to go. I think this is about to turn into another nightmare, and if my bruised foot is anything to go by, we could actually die this time. For real."

It worked. She snapped out of it a little, peering up at him in confusion.

"Wait, what's coming?"

Terror made his hands tremble. He squeezed them into fists by his side. Licking his dry lips, he tried to breathe smoothly and pretend he didn't know exactly what was waiting for him.

When he looked to Aunt Paige, he knew there was fear in his eyes.

"My big brother."

A/N: Thank you to everyone who reviewed, fav'ed or read last time! You made my day (or my year in this case) and I send all of you many virtual hugs and puppies and chocolate.

I think I'll do a third part to this - and hey look I'm going to put Wyatt in this one after all, though he's not as little as usual - and I'll try not to post the next chapter a year from now.

Just a note - yes, Chris has told the sisters about the crappy future where Wyatt rules, but it's one thing to know and another to see. Just clearing that up!

I love you guys! Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, and happy holidays! I wish you much laughter, nice company, and lots of good food :D

Kokoro