Consciousness hit hard and fast, but just because he was awake and aware, didn't mean that he could do much else. Despite his best efforts, Chris' eyes remained stubbornly closed. He could still hear everything and smell everything, including himself. And, unfortunately, he could still feel everything.

Whatever that cure was, temporary or not, it hurt worse than the poison. Burning under his skin and making his nerves feel like fire. His bones felt like stone and glass at the same time. He hurt from his toes to his hair, and he felt too weak to do a damn thing about it.

He had seen Bianca. And Aunt Prue. Or heard them anyway.

He had been dying, and now he wasn't. Chris almost wanted to believe that it had all been a fever dream or a nightmare or a hallucination, but he knew better. Bianca's voice had been just like he remembered, and yet nothing like he could recreate. It faded by the day, by the hour, from his memories, but it was crystal clear in that strange, white room.

And Aunt Prue. He had seen her in pictures, but he had never heard her voice before. He had never known her eyes were that colour. They always said that he had inherited his aunt's eyes, but it was something else to see them for himself.

He could see why people had found them worth remark.

A hand brushed through his hair, getting caught in the sweat and tangles but never faltering or failing. Combing and smoothing back over. It reminded him that he needed to wake up, or get up.

He had seen his dead fiancée and his dead aunt. He wasn't an expert but it was probably not a good idea to start seeing dead people in your dreams. Assuming that that had been a dream and that he hadn't actually died for a few seconds. Although if he had died, he probably would have been able to see Bianca. And maybe his mom.

He had seen Wyatt.

But I will be.

Was that real? Surely it had been just a hallucination, but…

He needed to wake up. Now.

Halliwells were strong, and he had had to become stronger ever since his mom died and his brother turned Evil. It might not have always been enough, but he was stronger than Wyatt had ever given him credit for. It was easy to destroy, it took real strength to fight and protect and keep fighting. That was what he was doing now. He was going to keep fighting.

He tapped into those deep reserves of strength, relying on them like he hadn't outside of torture and captivity, and forced his eyes open. The light burned his retinas and he groaned out loud, but it was light. It was real.

"Chris?" Mel said, and the hand in his hair had stopped.

"Chris? Are you awake?" Piper asked.

Chris forced his eyes open again, having closed them reflexively against the pain. "M - Mel? Piper?"

Sitting on either side of him, Mel and Piper had to move close so that they could both look down at him, and with them both wearing the same expression of concern it was like a mirrored image.

Mel laughed. "You're okay," she said, relieved.

The hand that had been running through his hair retreated and Chris realised that it had been Piper stroking his head while he was semi-conscious. He had fuzzy, half-faded memories of his mom doing the same when he was very small. He hadn't gotten sick much as he grew older, but that vague memory always resurfaced when he did.

He smiled as best as he could at his sister, but even with his fever gone and the poison being temporarily banished from his body, his emotions were still dangerously close to the surface and being so near his mom wasn't helping. He would either slip up and tell her everything or he would burst into tears, both of which would be bad moves.

"I think I need a shower," he said.

This time Piper was the one who laughed. "I wasn't going to say anything," she said, wiping her hand on her trousers with an exaggerated expression of disgust.

Chris pushed himself up to sit on the bed, needing only a little bit of the help that Mel and Piper offered. He was still weak, but he could already feel his strength returning bit by bit. The come-down was sure to be horrific, but he was willing to grab this temporary respite with everything that he had. First things first though, he did desperately need that shower.

"Where's Wyatt?" He asked. His mind raced back over what he remembered before passing out. "Ryake attacked. What happened? Is everyone okay?"

"Everyone's fine," Piper soothed.

"Wyatt's upstairs with Paige," Mel added. Then, she grinned. "And Phoebe and Cole, actually."

"I almost feel sorry for him," Piper muttered under her breath. Then, "come on, you really do stink."

She rose to her feet and helped Chris to his, with Mel ducking under his other arm. They shuffled over to Piper's bathroom, which was fine. What was not fine was when it became clear that Piper planned on coming in with him.

"No way."

"You can't stand on your own," Piper protested. "What if you fall?"

"Where's Henry?" Chris asked, instead.

"Sleeping," said Mel. "And he needs it. And I'm not going upstairs to get Cole. I've already been stabbed today, I'm not doing it again."

Chris frowned at that, racking his brain to remember when that had happened.

"I could call Leo," Piper offered, although based on the sly smile on her face she knew just how much of a non-option that was.

"Where's Matt?" Chris asked, floundering.

"Finding Leo," answered Mel with an entirely unsympathetic smile.

"Mel?" Chris whined.

"Sorry, Chris. You're my brother and I love you more than anything - but not that much."

"Come on, Chris. I'm a mother to a son. It's nothing that I haven't seen before," Piper argued.

"Wyatt's a toddler," said Chris. "It's different."

"Not that different," Piper protested. Then, she put on her 'Mom voice', almost like she knew how he was weak to it. "Get in."

Chris continued to protest even as he obeyed and, in the end, Piper agreed to wait outside the door and listen rather than staying inside the room to help. While that arrangement was being made, Mel orbed to P3 to fetch him some clean clothes, and to hide her growing, and mildly hysterical, laughter. When she returned and she passed the clothes into the room through a crack in the doorway, Chris couldn't miss the tears in her eyes.

It was all painfully familiar. P3, the Manor, Mom's bedroom. Mom. But it wasn't quite home.

~Poisoned~

"I can cook," Mel offered, as soon as Chris closed the door between himself, his sister and mother.

Piper looked at her with a confused expression, head tilted towards the doorway as they listened to Chris curse while he struggled to pull off his sweat-soaked clothes.

"I mean, Chris is sure to be hungry. Or at least he needs to get his strength back. And I imagine that everyone will be pretty hungry too. It's been a long day." It felt even longer than that. Demon fights were a depressing regularity in the future, but they spent most of their time avoiding them. This was already more than Mel had had to deal with in a normal week. Of course, normal weeks weren't always as regular as they all would have liked.

"I can make something once he's finished," Piper dismissed.

"Are you sure?" Mel pressed. "I'm pretty good. I know all sorts of things for helping when someone's sick. I had a pretty great teacher." Her culinary skills did not translate across into potion making, of course, but she was still one of the best cooks in the family. Left in the family, anyway.

"I've a special family recipe," said Piper, and Mel wanted to say that she did too. The same recipe. The Halliwells didn't get sick all that often, but Mom really liked cooking so there was always someone being sent up the road or down to someone's house with a pot of soup or broth or some other dish that her mom was sure would help. And it usually did.

Her mom's cooking was something else. It was its own sort of magic. Mel had suspected it when she was a child, and now that she was an adult she was sure of it. She and Chris could follow every instruction that her mom had given, and it all tasted almost as good as when her mom made it, but something was missing. It was missing that extra bit of magic that only her mom could add.

"I know," was all she said instead.

Piper gave her a soft smile. "Why don't you get some clean sheets out of the closet and we'll change the bed?" She suggested. "We can talk once Chris is out of the shower. It'll do him some good to get out and downstairs."

That was a sentiment that her mother had suggested so many times that Mel found herself nodding and doing as asked without thinking. Mom had always encouraged them to come down and talk in the kitchen, usually while she cooked or cleaned, whether or not there was any need for it.

Mel couldn't count the number of times that she had woken up in the middle of the night with a nightmare and been unable to get back to sleep, and her mom had taken her down to the kitchen to talk about it. It didn't matter what time it was, Piper would always find something to do while they talked it out. Once, she had cooked an entire roast dinner at two in the morning and they had all eaten it for breakfast. Then, of course, they had pancakes for dinner.

Mel opened Piper's closet and paused. "How long ago did Leo move out?" She wondered.

Piper shrugged, not looking up from where she was stripping down the bed. "I'm not sure," she said. "Around the time Chris got here."

"It's just you still have a lot of Da - Wyatt's dad's shirts in here," she said, recovering lamely. She glanced over her shoulder and caught Piper watching her, having clearly heard the slip.

"Uh-huh," she said.

Mel didn't let herself say anything more as she bundled up some blankets and sheets in her arms and carried them over to the bed, completely throwing herself into the task of making up the bed. She was saved from having to continue the conversation anymore by Chris shuffling out of the bathroom, looking much more like himself standing tall and in his own clothes. He still looked pale and tired, but those horrible dark circles under his eyes had faded and he had covered the sight of the injury with a bandage so that any marks of poisoning or infection were invisible.

Piper brushed a hand over some invisible creases on the bed before she straightened up and looked between Chris and Mel. "Right," she said. "I think it's time we all go downstairs and talk."

~Poisoned~

Father Rowe lit the candles himself but then he stood back and allowed her to take charge. "It's going to be okay," he promised her. "You know what to do."

Kat knelt down. "I want to talk to my sister. I need to talk to my sister. Please, you owe me that much." She picked up the sheet of paper that Father Rowe had gotten for her and read out the words that she had already memorised.

Hear these words,

Hear my cry,

Spirit from the other side,

Come to me,

I summon thee,

Cross now the great divide.