In case you hadn't noticed, Chris's thoughts are now in quotation marks as well as italics, just because now everyone can hear them.
I've had a few reviews that tell me that Chris shouldn't be able to do this or that because he's a newborn, but the muscles are there, they're just unused and undeveloped. He knows how to control his powers through experience, so he can use them now, although they're not as powerful and it took him a little more effort to do so. That's kind of how the physical stuff is. The muscles are there so if he really needed to it wouldn't be too difficult to roll onto his side or burp or whatever, because he knows which muscles to coordinate. And again, he's not running laps around the attic, so it's as realistic as it's gonna get, this is fan fiction ;)
Anyway, on with the story:
Wyatt blinked in surprise and his jaw dropped. All the clues had pointed to the baby, but he hadn't really expected to be right. This was just…. insane. There was no other word to describe this situation.
As Chris's predicament and everything he'd probably had to go through crossed his mind he laughed shortly and then stopped himself. "Chris…what….how….you…?" A smile was slowly pulling at the corners of his mouth and this time he couldn't stop himself from laughing.
"Yeah, it's hilarious. I haven't stopped laughing since I got stuck like this." Chris glared and Wyatt laughed harder. "Oh, wow Chris, of all the things you've gotten yourself into, that either of us have gotten into…. This tops everything!" Wyatt choked out between bouts of laughter. Most of it was really just from relief, he'd been terrified that he wouldn't be able to find Chris, and now that he had, he was overjoyed.
"Would you mind not holding me like that? Your thumb is digging into my ribs." Chris complained to Wyatt. "Oh, sorry." Wyatt adjusted Chris and tried not to start laughing again. He failed miserably.
No one else could hear Chris, and they were all looking at Wyatt who appeared to be talking to himself and laughing uncontrollably.
"Well Piper, it looks like one grows up to be a paranoid neurotic and the other is schizophrenic. Congratulations!" Paige put her arm around Piper's shoulder and laughed at the glare that came her way.
"Why does everyone call me neurotic? Wyatt, if you're not going to help me, at least give someone else the spell." Chris complained good-naturedly. He didn't even care that Wyatt was laughing at him. He knew now, and he'd fix this.
"Okay, okay, I'm done, I'm sorry, really." Wyatt took a deep breath to calm down, and only then did he see the rest of his family staring at him like he'd lost his mind.
"This probably looks weird, doesn't it?" Wyatt asked rhetorically, he was about to continue when something apparently occurred to him. "I'll explain everything in a second, hang on." Wyatt flipped to a blank page in the notebook and started writing again.
"What are you doing?" Chris asked curiously. Wyatt mumbled a spell under his breath and then turned his eyes to meet Chris's.
"This. I just figured there are probably things you'll want
answers to that I can't let them know about, so now you should be able
to hear my thoughts too."
"Okay, how about telling me where you left my body. Or…" Chris lost his train of thought as their Dad interrupted them.
"Wyatt?" Leo intoned cautiously. "Yeah dad, I'm working on it, just a second." "Chris? I'm going to let them into the conversation so I only have to explain this once, ok?" "Fine, but hurry." Chris said with his trademark anxiety and impatience.
Wyatt quickly jotted down the spell from the book, putting Chris's name in it again and then crossed the attic and handed it to Piper. She scanned the words and looked up at him questioningly.
"I know it doesn't make sense, just cast it. And hold Dad's hand so he's included." The girls shrugged and then recited the spell, looking back to Wyatt when they finished. "Well? Where is he?" Piper asked doubtfully.
"Hi Mom."Chris thought sheepishly. "Chris?" She gasped looking around the attic once more. "Where are you?"
"I'm, uh, I'm…in the baby." He said, sounding extremely uncomfortable. All four pairs of eyes dropped to the baby in Wyatt's arms. Silence fell over the attic as they tried to process what they were hearing.
"At least they're not laughing at me, like some people." Chris thought pointedly at Wyatt, trying to break the tension in the room. "I said I was sorry, and you have to admit it is kind of funny."
Chris didn't reply, he was looking at Leo the only person not able to look at him. Instead he had taken a step back and was staring at the floor.
"Dad? What's wrong? Hey, look at me." Leo slowly looked up to meet Chris's eyes. "I thought you were gone for good and it was all my fault that you…"
"Dad, don't. It was not your fault. And you've already apologized to me anyway." He added as an afterthought remembering last night when Wyatt had orbed him away from Leo.
"All of you blame yourselves for me getting stabbed and keep apologizing to me, but you don't have to. It was my fault and no one else's."
He paused to let his words sink in. "But if you really want to make it up to me, I think there might be something you could do for me." He said playfully stating the obvious.
"Hey, now that we have Chris, we just need his body to put him back together…where is his body?" Paige asked giving Wyatt a quizzical look.
"It's still in the future, I'll have to go get it." "Why didn't you just bring it with you?" Chris asked him disappointedly.
"Well, we weren't positive you were stuck here in the past, everyone else is off in different realms or planes still looking for you."
"Everyone else?" Chris wondered, trying to ask what his family was like in the future.
"Future consequences, I can't tell you." Wyatt said doing his best impression of his younger brother's catch phrase. Privately he told Chris cautiously "If I tell you, you'd really have to guard your thoughts since they can read the surface of your mind."
Chris contemplated for a moment and then with a sigh said "Tell me later, okay?" Wyatt nodded. "I should get back and let everyone know you're ok, and bring your body back with me so we can fix this."
"Why don't you just take me to the future with you?" Chris asked hopefully.
"I don't think mom wants me running around, time traveling with her newborn all by myself, and we can't bring them to the future, so…" "Okay, but-"
"Hurry, I know, Chris." Wyatt smiles and resisted the urge to humiliate his brother with baby-talk or "the jiggle" "Wyatt, don't even think about it" Chris warned.
Wyatt laughed. "I won't, but I can't say the same for them." Wyatt joked handing Chris to Piper. She held him awkwardly, afraid of making him uncomfortable by invading his personal space.
Chris misinterpreted the action as her being angry with him, and why shouldn't she be? He'd hijacked her baby's body and now she had to clean up after him, yet again, before she could get her son back.
Chris's runaway thought train of guilt and self-doubt was abruptly derailed as he felt him mom pull him close and hug him tightly.
"Hey, you are my son, and we owe you everything for saving the future. Don't ever doubt how much I love you."
Chris looked up at her and saw that despite the smile from the irony of the situation, she meant every word. Leo moved closer and put his hand on Chris's. "I missed you, kid."
The almost too-sweet family moment was rudely interrupted by the flash of a camera. Phoebe laughed at Chris's angry outburst. "Aw, you know you'll look at this picture and laugh when you're older. C'mon Paige, I'll show you how to develop these."
"I'll be right back with his body." Wyatt walked over to the wall, quickly sketched out a slightly misshapen triquetra and waved his hand over it to reactivate the portal he'd come back through.
With one last confident wish-me-luck smile over his shoulder he stepped into the portal and disappeared into it.