Thanks for Making Me…
by Grace
Disclaimer: I don't own charmed, and you know that, so no suing. Oh and I don't own the part of the lyrics I used to come up with for this story title.
Summary: You know, I'm all for cannon pairings. They make the world go round after all, but I highly doubt I was the only one that really was a bit irked when Cole went crazy and disappeared into Limbo. Call me crazy, but I felt really, REALLY sorry for him and a bit upset at Phoebe. Well, again, nothing against Coop, but he just isn't Cole. Yeah, that is it, and I am a sucker for unrequited love.
A really, really BIG sucker.
Because I like to give happy endings. So PhoebeCole is a definite in this and maybe a bit of PhoebeCoop peppered around. -Hiss- Maybe… don't get your hopes up
This is my first fanfiction, so please be kind…
Prelude to the Crescendo (Prologue)
There were times that he absolutely hated his will to fight.
It was a simple thing really, to die. Dying didn't even hurt after you did it what? Two times? It especially didn't hurt if you lost count of how many times it had happened to him, or maybe it was just the fact that he was in Limbo that he could no longer remember. Yeah, that had to be in. In Limbo nothing was the same, and time seemed to blur. Besides, dying didn't just involve your body; there were times when dying was much, much worse than that. So in terms of body AND soul, he had died more times than he could count.
And Cole Turner was sick and tired of it.
Call him stupid. Call him whatever you want; it wasn't fun to die physically, and it sure as hell wasn't fun to die spiritually. It HURT, damn it! Resigning to the fact that pain would always follow him like an annoying puppy might have done just a tiny bit of good to the shattered, empty feeling that also followed him, but it didn't resign him to the fact that he died a little bit more on the inside each time he would float into the Halliwell manor.
He had TOLD Piper to make sure Phoebe didn't give up on love. He had been the distorted "angel" that had helped Piper return to her Leo, and he had been the horribly wounded being that had crawled pitifully back and made sure that she had carried through with his message. That was what he was after all, stripped of his power, vulnerable and bleeding like and open, gaping sore that was too painful to even look at anymore.
At least he still had a purpose.
Piercing azure orbs flicked closed, large hands encompassing the small ivory soul that rolled happily in his capable hands, silvery tendrils trailing up to run across his face in memorizing swipes. This was perhaps the only time that the place where Cole supposed his heart used to be would stop aching and he could think properly. It was when he had a small, lost soul in his hands.
"Well where were you supposed to be?" There wasn't an expected answer, half the time the younger ones didn't even know how to talk. And from the curiosity this one was showing, it had to be very, very young. He saw a lot of those. Babies that were aborted before they got a chance to live, children that died in child birth, even the occasional SIDS victim would come toward him, and for just a single moment, he could feel like he was actually accomplishing something. That he had a chance to be good.
The soul in his hands fluctuated a bit, almost an iridescent answer to his question, and a barely there smile quirked the corner of his lips, pained, but a smile none the less. It was lost, confused, and HURT. It wanted to know why it was here, and not in some happy place, which Cole could painfully relate to.
"I don't know why you are here," normally innocents didn't spend that much time in Limbo. Occasionally, they would appear to him, always questioning. There were always questions that came with his job, and tentatively he would explain with a gentle strength that was oh so very different from the blazing inferno of power he had always displayed before. "But I can help you move on."
"People don't always want to move on. They like having choices you know," Voices, he was hearing voices again inside of limbo instead of the endless silence. In hindsight it was only to be expected when the majority of Cole's time was spent talking to himself. Voices were bound to happen, as were other things that came with insanity.
"But people don't want to be in Limbo either," Cole snarled, the flare of anger seeping out and lacing his words like a thin, biting whip. He might have accepted the fact that he was destined to be here, but he was not going to doom other innocent souls to the same. "Now if you would kindly leave me alone, I have to find this…" the deep voice stopped for a moment, head cocking to the side, and the soul glistened in reply, "This baby girl's place in heaven."
"Yes, but what about you, Cole Turner?" Okay, the voices normally weren't this real, nor did they try and give him some peace of mind. Belittling, sure, they gave that to him in spades, but actually hoping for his welfare? Never.
Which could only mean a very, very cocky soul had come to taunt the traitor Balthazar and former Source (and Cole could and would send him straight to hell and or the Wasteland), or his mind was playing more tricks on him than he cared to admit (which was the more likely of the two). Whirling about, sapphire orbs ignited, full lips pursed into a frowning snarl that he had learned not to utter a very long time ago. This was the Cole that had been vanquished by the Charmed Ones, a passionate creature that had enough fire to ignite the world.
"And what would you know about…" the words dropped, slowly, a steam engine coming to a screeching halt. "Me?" Blue eyes widened, nails biting into his palms until the small baby's soul let out a frantic flash of light, slipping from his grasp to flicker, annoyed, around his head.
The voice, now revealed to be a man, smiled down at the gaping half demon, chucking the brunette's strong jaw in an attempt to close it, an attempt that was failing rather pitifully.
"But you aren't supposed to exist," Cole had found his voice eventually, after close to five minutes of trying to put a coherent sentence together. "The Avatars were supposed to have defeated you and become the Arbiters for the magical realm. You were…"
"Buying our time for someone like you to come along," Deep ebony wings, soft and downy to the touch ruffled around the man's back, long and elegant. They were a sign of a lineage long past, of a group of magical beings that had been eradicated from every plane of existence known to witches and demon alike. Well, that might explain why one was here. Limbo really wasn't a plain of existence technically speaking. "You know, it is an odd thing to find someone who is willing to try and break the balance we had created. So we bought our time, waiting for you to come to us, as eventually we knew that you would."
"But Alterian magic, it isn't around anymore," There, Cole had said it. Alterians. Once upon a time, before demons and witches, before Avatars and the lines of good and evil had been drawn, there had been Alterians. Elemental creatures that were the source of MAGIC, or rather, they were magic in and of themselves, like a unicorn's horn only more powerful, something along those lines- Cole really wasn't sure of anything anymore. But it didn't explain what one was doing here, now, and talking to him of all people. "And if I remember correctly, what few were left, the Underworld hunted down and destroyed for meddling in the Source's affairs. You aren't even supposed to be in Limbo. To say the least after all you did for the world, you should be Up There."
"But that really wouldn't be diplomatic, would it?" The male, because it was a male, ran long, willowy, and impossibly perfect fingers though his ebony locks, deep jade eyes fixing Cole with a pointed glare. "Like the Avatars, we are neither good nor evil. We simply keep the balance, but it seems that evil is the more ambitious of the two. So most of the time it appears we allow good to triumph, and for the most part, the humans that we are supposed to protect WANT good to win. And really, we are supposed to keep the humans happy." Cole snorted.
Of course, good, evil, balance, and peace, they were all relative. They all depended on your point of view. No wonder the man's race had been decimated and forced into hiding. People didn't like being told what to do, as whoever he was had said before.
"And you wonder why you were killed," Cole muttered rebelliously, strong arms crossing over his broad chest; jaded eyes caught the action, and a smirk spread on the horribly perfect face. "You tried the same stint as the Avatars I take it? You tried to make a perfect Utopia by taking away freewill?"
"No," it stated simply, floating in midair, watching, waiting. "We didn't take away free will; we just became a bit more biased in our opinions. You see, darkness did tend to get on the more unruly side, while light kept the peace. Darkness didn't appreciate our interference, and so they revolted. Which is what is going to happen again."
"And you are telling me this because?" It wasn't fun to be yanked this way and that for some bigger plot. It wasn't fun to have hopes raised and then to have them ceremoniously squashed like the proverbial bug on a windshield. It wasn't fun, and Cole Tuner was sick and tired of that too. "The ONLY place I can go outside of Limbo is the Manor, and you know how well that always turns out."
"Yes, but you have a body," Cole flinched visibly. A shuddering of his arms and his eyes fluttered close like he had been visibly burned. It would have been nice if he could forget the fact that he really did have a body because it reminded him that he could in fact feel pain. "And we need that body. You see, Cole Turner," that annoyed the ex-demon, his nostrils flaring as he tried to keep his temper in check. It was always that way; it wasn't like he was needed for anything other than his powers and attributes. It wasn't like he was ever needed for the sake of Cole himself. "You are the only one that we can contact that is a blank slate. When you came to Limbo, you had no powers; you were stripped of all you once were; and you were the perfect sieve. You are the one person that our lineage can be passed onto."
Cole understood the open book part. Hell, he even understood that he was the only body that they could contact. But what he could not and would not understand was why it was HIM that they had to pass their lineage onto. Because quite frankly, he was getting tired of secret plots and scandals that left him high and dry when times were rough. And being an Alterian, changing his race for what had to be the fourth time would definitely be one of those insidious plots he always hated.
"What makes you think that I would want to?" Cole snarled, the small little soul that had gone all but unnoticed until that point in time shifting ever so slightly to nestle protectively around his neck. At least that was something. Big old bad Cole was getting protected by a baby's spirit. Oh the laughs the Charmed Ones would have.
"Because we can take all that pain away. Surely you know that Alterians and Demons were closely related. We don't feel, Cole. We don't have to feel to do what we do. In fact, human emotions might be one of the most dangerous things for an Alterian of every echelon to have emotions. Emotions tie into powers, especially OUR powers." The frown on Cole's face deepened. "So I am not only offering you power beyond your imagination, but I am offering you a way out. I am offering you a way to stop your suffering. I am offering you a way to stop the pain that the Halliwell sisters caused you. I am offering you a way into the history books. I am offering you eternity."
The Alterian's words rung of truth. They spoke of bliss, of sheer emotionless bliss, without pain, without suffering. They spoke of being able to forget all that had happened to him, a way to remove himself from the hell that being neither alive nor dead caused for him.
"I'm all ready in the history books of our kind," Cole tried weakly, face arrayed in a contemplative mask as large fingers ran over the souls around his neck's shimmering spine. "I was the demon that could love. I used to be invincible and the Source of All Evil…"
"But it wasn't enough was it. You found yourself wishing that you could go back to the way things were before you realized you could love. Before you had emotions. That is why you threw yourself into everything at the end. You wanted to make it stop. Now here I am, offering you a way to make it stop, to make sure that you are neither good nor evil, balanced perfectly." Cole stopped the soft patting of the now cooing soul, piercing blue eyes meeting the empty jade, gauging the reaction.
"What would I have to do if I took you up on your offer?"
"Nothing, well, perhaps you would have to take up a charge when we deemed you worthy. A keeper of the balance that we feel needs Alterian guidance. Other than that you would simply exist in the mortal world, a guardian. It could be considered good, it could be considered evil. But if you choose to take on the role we assign you, your heat will stop aching, like I promised."
"What about Whitelighters and guardian angels?" Cole asked; face slowly growing into a more and more agitated anger. "Why couldn't you pick someone else?" The Alterian sighed. Annoying, stubborn, DEMON!
"Yes, Whitelighters and guardian angels are all well and good, but there are special cases that require our help, and with the last of our race here in Limbo, there isn't much we can do, now is there?" Characteristically speaking, the Alterian shouldn't have been loosing his cool, Cole mused. "That is where you come in. You have enough fight to take the change gracefully. Your nature won't let you die; else you wouldn't be here right now. Your fighting spirit is what is going to save this world, and you are going to do it under the Alterian banner."
"What makes you think that I would agree to be your puppet?" Cole asked, the tiredness and anger slowly ebbing away. He was tired of pretending that it didn't hurt and that he wanted to live this life. It was hard to pretend that everything was okay, and here this person, er, being was, offering him a way to end it all.
"You listened to me," the ebony haired Alterian shrugged, offering a hand out to the demon who had started to ignore the soul around him entirely. "You listened to me, and you heard the truth in my words. You know that you can't be good, even the Charmed Ones told you that. Yet you can't be evil, not after good left such an impression on you. The only choice IS to be out Arbiter. And you know it."
"You sound like the Avatars," Cole quipped half heartedly, looking at the perfect outstretched hands, taking the time to memorize how utterly FLAWLESS the person before him was. And the Alterian knew it. Would Cole get to be that horribly flawless to? Ivory teeth worried a full bottom lip, indecision such as he hadn't felt in a very long time welling up into the pit of his stomach. "Fine, I'll do it."
A triumphant smile was on the perfect face, willowy fingers lacing with the non resistant grip of the demon, a blinding light causing piercing azure orbs to flick close with a sigh of almost contentment at no longer feeling the horrible, heart rending pain that crippled him with each breath he drew in.
"Cole, you made the right choice," Cole didn't say a word because nothing could cause the black fogginess in the back of his mind that was so wonderfully all enveloping. "Or should I say, Gabriel? Because I think that I now pronounce you Gabriel, Arbiter for the Alterians. A wonderful name…" The Fingers slowly marched over the gradually relaxing face, the spell taking effect on the demon. "Because you CANNOT be Cole Turner any longer." Azure eyes looked up, partially hooded and sparking with knowledge. Cole had known that something like this was going to happen, it always did.
Being drugged, changed, everything was part of the territory. Even changing names. Cole let out a slightly muffled reply, eyes closing the rest of the way.
All right, sorry that this chapter was like… boring talking, but I had to fill in some information or most of you would be going WTF?!?! The Sisters will be in the next one, and well, you know who Cole's charges are going to be. I hope... xD
Hmmm, just to let you know, I am looking for someone to be a proofreader, so just ask me if you are interested.
Oh, PLEASE REVIEW!!!!!!!!!!