Control: Spin City

One ought to hold on to one's heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head, too.

- Friedrich Nietsche

He doesn't follow them intentionally. It's very important to note that part. He rushes out of the cave and he never wants to look at any of them again, but there's a part of him, a brainless, masochistic part of him, that needs to be there when they go to Magic School. That needs to be there when Piper and Leo have the inevitable conversation concerning him, and his actions, and his acute degree of rage that had been hidden from even him before he found himself alone with Leo. He feels compelled to be there to hear his mother and father's true thoughts on the events that have transpired that evening, because he needs to know what they might be willing to say to each other, that they would never be willing to say to him or anyone else. Especially now that he isn't quite sure what to think about himself.

The truth is, he's always had a knack for going unobserved in rooms… even growing up, before life had gone to hell in a handbasket, when contrary to what he was sure the sisters could ever imagine, he had been a talker. A loud talker. He had been restless, him and Wyatt both, and their parents had grown accustomed to always knowing where they were, because they had been seemingly unable to go anywhere, to do anything, quietly. Maybe that's why it had always been so easy for him to stand still in a corner, in a hallway, and have no one ever be the wiser; no one except his mom of course. There had been times she would catch his eye, and her look alone had been enough to let him know that she knew. That she wouldn't say anything about it, but she knew.

As he waits in the shadows created by the expansive pillars, as he watches his dad, watches Leo cram in a few more desperate moments with his son before he inevitably takes off back Up There as if nothing has changed, his mind drifts unexpectedly to one of the times she hadn't noticed.

He sits in the laundry room atop the dryer, and he firmly reminds himself not to swing his legs. He has to sit still. The slightest whisper of sound will alert them both, and the discussion will end with two fake smiles, a hand on his cheek, and his father orbing away while his mother looks between her son and the space her husband so recently filled with torn brown eyes.

"Leo you have to deal with this. I know how much you love him, I've never once doubted that; but he's beginning to, and you need to address the issue with him. You can't just "make it up to him the next time," because you can't be sure you won't be called away then, too. He's still a child; he doesn't understand."

The discussion is nothing new to him; they are both saying things he's heard them say so many times before, but with his father's next monosyllabic sentence, everything is different.

"Fuck."

The curse is followed by the sound of a chair scraping roughly against the tiled floor, and aggression rings through both. He's startled, and then he doesn't need to concentrate so hard on not making a sound, because his body has frozen in shock; for a moment, he forgets to even breathe. He's never heard his dad swear like that… for all the other adults in his life, mainly his mother and aunts, it's a little more common, but hearing the word come from his father's mouth makes him feel as if he's listening in on something especially illicit.

There's more shuffling in the kitchen, and he risks a quick peek through the doorway and glimpses dad with his elbows on the table and his head in his hands while mom sits beside him and gently runs her hand over his back. He's at a loss for words, and it seems that his dad is too.

"Come to bed." She whispers.

"I can't."

Chris hears frustration and anger, but what he sees is sadness. Hopelessness. Regret. And he's tempted to rush into the room and assure his dad that everything's okay, that he's not mad anymore, that while he's sitting here listening, he gets it, and Leo doesn't ever need to look that sad because of him. But he doesn't, because on some level he knows that he would be interrupting something very important, something that's bigger than all the other things he's listened in on that he wasn't supposed to hear. And in his mind, he hears the word, spoken in his dad's voice, repeated. Fuck. Fuck. He's hardly ever seen Leo get upset about anything. He wouldn't even know where to begin.

"Come to bed."

She says it for the second time in a tone that's still soft, but it's no longer quite as gentle. He knows this tone; it's the one she uses with him when he tries to argue and she's not upset yet, but he knows she will be soon if he doesn't just shut up and do what she's asked.

"I don't deserve you. Or them. I don't-

"Stay the night. Tomorrow I'll make breakfast, and you'll talk to your son. Interruption free."

"Oh yeah?"

His dad's voice is amused now, there's no more of that foreign, angry aggravation he had heard moments ago, and he relaxes without realizing how tense he has become. He should have known his mom would fix it; there isn't anything she can't do.

"Yeah. If I have to freeze Them, hell, if I have to freeze time itself, I will find a way to do it. Don't think I won't. You're coming to bed, you're making passionate but quiet love to your wife keeping in mind your sons are down the hall, and you're going to worry about saving the world tomorrow after ten, and not a minute earlier."

"I wish things were different."

The anger hits him again and he wants to scream that things can be different, that all his father needs to do is to want it bad enough. Because his family is powerful and there isn't anything they can't do when they will themselves to do it. But he bottles the scream and tucks it in his pocket.

"They will be. Soon. We'll figure it out. We always do."

There's stillness between Piper and Leo now, a flagrant uncertainty that he had never witnessed, not once, with his mom and dad. And it unnerves him, because he could have never imagined it going this wrong. Growing up, if there had been one thing he had always known, it was that his parents loved each other. The child his father clings to now is the only thing that keeps them in each other's presence after the buffer that was Sigmund leaves the room. The only thing that allows them to share this space and brave this awkwardness for the sake of the son they had together in what might as well have been another life.

"You're suffocating the boy."

He watches Leo stammer his way through a lot of noises, few of them actually words.

"It's just… you know…"

"Overcompensating?"

There's a teasing twist to her mouth that he almost recognizes. It's remnant of the one favoured by his mother, but it's not quite the same. Not yet.

"No, I, I just… miss him a lot."

The words are murmured into the floor more than anything, and the ambivalent emotions surrounding the man that will become his father are clear to him, even though he wishes they weren't. And it hurts him because he knows that what makes him angriest about Leo, what fills him with the most hate, the most resentment, is the way he had never been able to hate him at all. The way his heart had jumped every time he came home and paid attention. And it was only ever after he had left again that he had remembered the anger, the coldness he had been dead set on displaying the next time his dad came home. The hurt he had wanted to inflict on the father he saw sometimes and not others, and couldn't break away from. No, he had never been able to hate his father for long, no matter how hard he had tried. It's easier for him to hate the Leo of this time, and he embraces that hate with everything he has, because for once, he knows how to hold on to it. Because his dad had loved him. His dad had loved his mother. And he has witnessed this Leo be selfish and condescending and mean in a way his own never was.

Being Up There has changed this Leo in a way that it hadn't changed his own father, and he refuses to believe that it's in any way his fault. There are a lot of things he has fucked up while here, there are a lot of things that have gone off-path in ways he never expected, but the transition between the Leo who could hardly think of anything outside of Piper during the incident with the Titans, to the Leo who had made sporadic appearances to offer whimsical pieces of unhelpful advice before banging his mother and disappearing for six months, that is a result of Leo's own bad decision making. And he would not, he would not be held accountable.

"You know, Leo, you can get through to him."

He snaps to attention as he remembers why he's here, and he berates himself for getting so distracted. He had… hit... his father. No, not his father. Leo. He had hit Leo, and he can't make the guilt go away, the shame go away, because while he was hitting him, he had been thinking about his real father. And then there had been no more denying that he lies to himself when he says he never hated his dad, that he had simply been indifferent to him. Because after his mother had died, then Wyatt had lost his mind, and he had needed his father more than anything in the world, and his dad hadn't been able to do a damn thing. He had lost his mother and lost his brother and then lost the father he never really permanently had at the same time, because his dad, Leo, hadn't been able to handle the prospect of an eternity without Piper. He had become distracted, absent, incapable of even the slightest amount of focus or helpfulness, and it hadn't been in the least bit fair because he had been the child and wallowing hadn't been an option for him. And when Piper had looked at him and pulled on his arm he had seen his mom, felt her incredulity that the boy she raised could even think to behave in such a way. He had seen his reflection in her dark eyes and not recognized the person that he has become.

He had been forced to realize that for all his tenacity, all his plans and ideas for traveling back in time and saving the world, not one thing has gone the way he wanted it to, and there is no denying that he has completely lost control. He doesn't want to dwell on the plausibility that he maybe never had much of it in the first place.

All of a sudden it all seems so utterly hopeless that he feels the sorrow and self pity he tries not to indulge, begin to take him over. He hardly hears the way the conversation continues… it doesn't matter, since it's only seconds longer before Piper takes Wyatt by the hand and slowly meanders down the corridor at a pace she allows him to set. Something about stubbornness, and not giving up, but all he knows is that he can't stay here any longer. He waits impatiently for Leo to leave, and then he does too.

Time passes, but not enough time, before the orbs come in, far too bright against the night sky, and Leo appears. Immediately, Chris is annoyed. It occurs to him that it is long past time he finds a new thinking place, because the whole point in reflection is to do it alone, and the bridge is getting very crowded now that every orber and their mother seems to come straight here whenever he's not accounted for.

"Can we talk?"

If Leo thinks they're going to bond now just because in the distant future, Leo is, in the vaguest sense of the word, his father, he's wrong.

"There's nothing to talk about."

"I think there is. Quite a bit, actually."

There it is; that pretentiousness that is the marked difference between the father he knew and the man that stands before him. As long as it's there, remaining distant, focusing on the horizon and almost absently answering Leo's comments, it's practically too easy. This man is not his father.

"It doesn't matter."

"It does to me, Chris. You're my son; I think I deserve to know what I did that's so bad."

Deserve? Deserve? Really? In a split second his gaze drifts to Leo and back again, and in a split second, he knows he's made a mistake. Because his father's, Leo's, face has softened slightly, and for some reason, the memory of that night comes to his mind again and by the time he realizes it's happening, it's too late to stop it.

"Come on, it's late."

"You go on up. I'll meet you there in a minute."

He hears the sound of his mother's footsteps recede, and then to his horror, the heavier footsteps of his father move in the direction of the laundry room. He's trapped; he can't orb without giving himself away, so in a last ditched effort to save face, he makes himself invisible. It's a parlour trick he picked up at magic school years ago.

"Chris?"

His dad is standing in the doorway now, leaning casually against the frame as his gaze flits expertly across the small space searching for the slightest sign of movement. Chris holds his breath.

"Christopher," He sighs, "I know you're in here, I can feel you. Enough."

Chris reluctantly makes himself visible. "How'd you know?"

There's a pause, as if Leo isn't quite sure how to address this, but eventually he speaks.

"You were… pretty angry just now. Right before your mom went upstairs."

Chris shakes his head. "I'm not angry dad. Really. Not anymore."

"I love you, buddy."

"I know."

"I'm trying really hard here."

"I know."

For a moment he isn't sure he covers it up in time; he knows his face must have flushed, because Piper is his mom and his face almost instantly floods red when he feels like crying the same way hers does, but it's dark and Leo doesn't see, and then Chris is back in control.

He doesn't know why he bothers to respond, Leo neither deserves an answer, nor has he earned one, but his mouth opens and the words begin to trickle out, and then he doesn't care, because it's not going to make a difference anyway. Leo won't know the difference between a half truth and the whole truth, so he says the words he knows will hurt him. The words he had never remembered to say to his father when he visited despite how badly he convinced himself he wanted to in the time between. He has waited ten years to get this chance to wound him.

"You were never there for me. You were there for everybody else; for Mom, Wyatt… half the world. But you were never there for me. You didn't have the time."

"So, maybe you came back from the future not just to save Wyatt; maybe you came back to save us, too."

The presumptuousness of his tone, of that very statement, causes tears to burn Chris' eyes again; hot, angry. He's furious, he's heartbroken, he's a swirling vortex of ambivalent emotions just like his father, like Leo, and he hates that similarity. He hates that they have something in common and he hates that he's well on his way to not being able to hate this version anymore either, because he will no longer be able to count on that coldness from Leo that has brought him this far. Because this stupid, stupid man before him can't just let it go. And there it is again; that loss of control, that knowledge that he's failing over and over again at even the simplest of things. And he can't be here anymore.

"I doubt it."

As he orbs away, he vows to find a new place.