DISCLAIMER: - I own Charmed. I own everything this side of the equator... Ok, now that's over someone's gonna force down my anti-liar medication so I shall see you soon... Hopefully.

Here it is, the sequel so long promised to Bidding Begins. I hope you enjoy this as much as you did BB, although I get the feeling that this part will have lots more twists and turns along the way than the last one… Lol, anyways on with the fic, yes?

Note from the Beta: Just realized while editing this chapter that, heh, Bridget wouldn't be that big at the beginning of her second trimester. So please ignore the 'swelling of her stomach' at the end of BB. She's now just a teensy bit pudgy.

And on we go, the 3rd part of the Meant to Live Trilogy… This is the last part, and I haven't even finished the first part yet… Hm… Anyways:

Learning to Tango

"Shit… What the fuck did you do to me? TELL ME!" Bridget was breathing heavily, shock making her shake. She was three months pregnant. Three months gone… "Take it back! Take this… thing back!"

"Don't you want it? Don't you want your little baby?"

"You're SICK! It's not my baby! I hate you… just… I hate you…" The Hunter put her face in her hands. She couldn't deal with this, she couldn't be pregnant, and she didn't know how to be a Mom: she didn't want to be a Mom…

"But you'll have a beautiful baby…"

"I don't want a baby!" Bridget screamed, tears stinging in her eyes, "Take it back… Oh, God, please… Just take it back…"

"Why would I want to do that?"

Bridget looked at the smirking demon before the tears that threatened finally fell, "Just… just fuck off and die…" She turned away from Morca and sat on the stone floor, sobs wracking her body.

"Stress isn't good for your child."

"And what would you know about motherhood?" She rolled over, forcing herself to get over the shock and gritting her teeth, venomous hatred radiating from her and her eyes lustrous in a way that her friends knew meant death to any evil in the vicinity. "Maybe I want to bring up my child with demon-slaying abilities."

She stepped through the bars of the blasted cage, taking slow deliberate steps, her mouth a thin line. Suddenly, she jumped and flipped, but the momentum was amazing, carrying her forward to land right behind the demon.

"Then let's teach this baby something, right?" She cocked her head to one side, "Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to let me out of the cage," She added in a whisper, leaping forward again and punching him in the face so hard he fell to the floor. "You think my witch friends hurt you? They are nothing, nothing to what I am going to do to you,"

He scrambled to his feet, alarm evident in his hideous eyes, but he still remained calm and collected; cold and calculating. " You'll hurt the child…"

"I'm quite sure that it's safely wrapped up in there," Bridget jumped and snapped two kicks at the demon's jaw. She winced in pain as the sudden movement clenched her stomach.

"Look what you're doing! Stop now, while you still can!"

"Where I come from scum like you rule. Poor kid's gonna have to be tough to survive, might as well get used to it now," She back handed him across the face, walking forward and stepping over him to grab a bar from her cage, twisting it until it broke.

With a harsh cry, she raised it over his abdomen and began hitting him. Her hands started to bleed from the rust, but she kept on, blood running down her wrists. Eventually, he shimmered out.

"Don't," He commanded, shimmering in behind her and grabbing her so her arms were pinned to the side.

"You have no right to touch me!" She shrieked, struggling and managing to flip him forward into the altar, which was obliterated in a cloud of rock dust. She walked back over to him, her face hard and set for the kill.

"Think of your child…" He pleaded for the last time, "Think of how you're hurting him…"

"Him? Well I guess that makes picking names easier…" She placed her hand on his forehead, "Don't feel sad that I won't name him after you,"

On 'you' she twisted her hand violently and with a loud snap Morca fell dead. Staring at the corpse for a moment, her hard mask melted into one of worry as she sat down on a large rock, staring at the ceiling. "Now come on Chris, get your ass healed and then get down here to rescue me."

"C'mon, Leo…" Ben mumbled, feeling the fingers holding his side together grow colder by the second, "Chris? Chris!" The half-whitelighter groaned slightly but didn't answer, "Talk to me, don't give up, you're Dad's coming…" Ben really wished that was true, he didn't think there was much more blood left in his body…

But Chris was looking feverish and pale. He was shaking slightly and his lips were turning blue. A permanent look of agony was etched on his face. The poison was really working…

"Leo?" Ben tried again, sounding weaker. "Chris needs you… Stop thinking about yourself for once…" He coughed slightly and blood dribbled from the corner of his mouth. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, feeling sure he had smeared it across his face.

He shifted towards Chris, his cold fingers fumbling on the knots of the tourniquet he'd made using a strip of his shirt above Chris's wound to try and stop the poison flowing. It was getting later and later in the night and with the streetlamp out it was getting increasingly unlikely that anyone would spot them.

Ben took a deep breath and yelled out, "LEOOOOOOOOOO!"

The ruined conservatory swam around Paige as she fought to stay conscious. The nausea from her blow to the head had long passed and she had thrown up twice, but she had to swim against the current on oncoming black to stay awake. She pinched herself hard on the arm, where several red marks showed she had been doing that often, and the conservatory came back into focus somewhat.

Around her shards of glass and splinters of wood lay discarded on the floor, and china and soil and leaves from smashed plant plots littered the floor as well as shredded cushions and snapped pieces of wicker.

The half-whitelighter was quite sure she had broken some of her ribs, if not all, and her collarbone. Pain burned like white fire down her chest and every time she breathed or moved. Phoebe was in the sitting room, lying with pieces of the splintered door lying around her in the sitting room. She didn't know where Piper or Nixa were, just that they hadn't been here when they had orbed in, only Morca… He had attacked hard and fast and then shimmered out. She didn't know where he had gone.

"Le-L-Leo," She managed to croak out, barely able to suck the air into her lungs for the pain. When no orbing happened she held out her hand, "Phone," She called. But as the cordless orbed into her hand, the effort allowed the current to sweep her away into a sea of black.

"Chris? Shit…" Ben's now-numb fingers scrabbled clumsily for a pulse on his friend's neck. The flesh was barely warmer than his fingers and a weak flutter was all the betrayed the fact that Chris was living. "Chris? You still with us?"

Ben couldn't even see his friend's chest rise and fall anymore, but then Ben was having trouble seeing much of anything anymore, the world seemed blurred at the edges.

In the midst of one of the blurs came a faint twinkle, and when Ben turned his head orbing lights were fading and forming a man. "Leo… Thank God…"

Relief overwhelmed him and his arms refused to hold him up anymore. By the time his face hit the cold, rough asphalt he wasn't conscous to feel it.

"Oh my God…" Ben breathed, picking his way over the shattered remains of furniture littering the conservatory. At least three of the windows were smashed in, one of the doors ripped off its hinges, and broken picture frames littered the already messy floor, the display case toppled over.

"Where is everyone?" Chris asked, still rotating his newly healed arm.

"Paige…" Leo said quietly, pointing to her slumped form. He immediately crouched next to her and began to heal her.

"Leo…" Ben said slowly, seeing a pale and cut leg in the sitting room, sticking out of some debris, obviously still attached to a body. Leo didn't look round; he was too busy trying to heal Paige.

Chris whipped his head around, searching. "Where's Mom?"

Ben stepped towards the sitting room, "Leo… Phoebe's gonna need some help…" He bent down next to her and felt her cheek. It was cold, "If she can be helped," He added in a whisper, moving his hand to her face to close her eyes. Suddenly she let out a small groan and Ben yelped with surprise.

"What is it, what's the matter?"

"I thought… I thought she was dead," Ben said, getting over the shock and standing up, "She's not, by the way," He added to Chris, seeing his panicked expression as Leo's hands lit up and covered Phoebe in a golden glow. Sometime in the middle of the healing Paige got up and joined the small crowd beside her sister.

"Is she going to be ok?" She asked, pushing hair out of her face.

"I think so…" Leo murmured, still concentrating.

"Oh…" Phoebe said, sitting up slowly, "Hey guys."

"Are you ok now?" Paige asked worriedly.

"Yeah, I'm fine… Did you find Piper?"

"Uh… Guys… Mom's in trouble…" Chris said, panic filling his voice. They all looked towards Chris whose arm was rapidly vanishing before their eyes.

"You're… Chris, you're disappearing! Why are you vanishing? This is not good, this is-"

"Mom…" Chris whispered, watching the invisibility spread across his chest, "We've got to find her. Can you sense her?"

"It's… faint…" Leo said, concentrating hard, "She should be here… In the sunroom…"

"But she's not…" Paige began, not wanting to finish.

"Not yet," Leo said grimly, "But she should be here… And alive…" He looked utterly perplexed for a minute, before going around the room kicking broken furniture out of the way, "Help me then!"

"Piper? Piper sweetie? Can you hear me?" Phoebe called, standing next to Leo, "Piper, if you can he-" She jumped as a psychic shot hit her, "The window," She said shortly, coming out of her vision.

They all ran over to one of the broken windows and looked out. Glinting amongst the grass was several shards of coloured glass and, in a broken and flattened bush, lay the oldest Charmed One, blood leaking from her mouth and nose.

"Mom!" Chris called, but it came out as a faint whisper. They turned back to him, seeing that he was translucent and fading fast.

"Leo, hurry up!" The whitelighter jumped out of the window, snagging his shirt on the glass and falling. He got up quickly and ran over to his wife, holding her hand.

"Hurry!" Paige pleaded, seeing Chris's legs vanish completely.

"Yeah, Leo, you might wanna get some healing done," Chris said, sounding panicky as most of him succumbed to nothingness.

The golden light burst forth from Leo's hands and the blood on Piper's face faded. The cuts marring her skin smoothed back into her usual complexion and a faint flush of red returned to her cheeks. Chris breathed a sigh of relief as he realized that he was being redrawn as his mother was healed. Finally he was filled in completely and found himself completely corporal again.

"That is not an experience I'd like to repeat," He said shakily, exhaling deeply. Piper sat up slowly and put her hand to her head.

"I've been sitting in this damn prickly bush for ages, Leo…" The whitelighter apologetically picked thorns, twigs and leaves from her hair and she scowled at him.

"Piper, I'm sorry…" Ben tuned the conversation out; he still couldn't find Nixa. He walked back away from the window and out of the conservatory, through into the dining room. It was darkness so he flipped the light switch. Almost immediately he spotted the pale and cut arm protruding from under the table.

"Nixa!" He yelled, dropping to his knees and skidding on the floor. He felt her arm and it was like marble, "No, no, no…" Both Phoebe and Chris had been cold, though… Leo had brought them back… "C'mon…" He lifted her wrist, pressing hard to find a pulse.

"Nixa?" Chris was standing in the doorway while the rest of his family where standing by the window pulling pieces of bush from Piper. Ben shook his head, still searching for the pulse that would signify her life.

He didn't find it.

"Leo!" Chris yelled, crouching down beside Ben, "Get here and do your job…" Nixa's eyes were staring at him from the darkness and shadows underneath the table, wide and blank.

Chris took her arm and pulled, shifting her weight towards him, trying to ignore how cold her flesh was. As the rest of her body came into light he discovered a huge stab wound in her stomach. As he pulled her from under the table the rug stopped soaking the blood slightly, and a gruesome crimson flood poured towards Ben and Chris.

Her other hand was still clutching the sword which was embedded in her stomach, whether Morca had put that there or not was beside the point. No more blood was pumping out of her wound, and as Leo came beside her, his hands already glowing they realized that she was slowly fading from view.

"No… No, no… Heal her!" Chris yelled, "Come on, do something good for once!" Leo held his hands over the fallen Hunter, but nothing happened.

"Chris… I'm sorry…"

"No! No, heal her! You're not ever sorry! You couldn't even come down! I was nearly dead by the time you actually bothered to get here! You're no different and you never will be!"

"Chris…"

"Save it!" Chris yelled, tears sparkling in his eyes.

"Whoa, ok…" Phoebe said, sitting down heavily on the floor, "I'll… just… be down… here…"

"This isn't going to help Chris…" Paige said, holding her nephew's arm.

"He doesn't care, don't you get that?" Chris shouted, rounding on Paige, "He could have been here… should have been here… but he WASN'T!" He turned back to Leo, his voice full of venom, "I hate you…"

"Chris, no…" Leo said, shaking his head, "Listen…"

"I don't want to listen!" He leapt at his father, but Paige orbed him onto one of the dining room chairs.

"That won't help, Chris!" Paige said, orbing him backwards and he got up again, breaking the chair as he slammed into it, "Trust me ok," She added, softer, "That won't help."

"I had a lot to think about, Chris. I didn't want to come back down, not after that bombshell… I treated you like dirt…"

Chris got up from the wreckage of the chair, fists clenched, "This is not news to me."

"And I needed to be alone; I didn't even realize anyone was calling me…"

Everyone was looking at Chris now, so when the attack came not straight on from Chris and Ben's fist connected with Leo's jaw, everyone was surprised.

"You self-obsessed bastard." Ben hissed, watching Leo stagger.