Disclaimer: I don't own Charmed.

Summary: So many secrets, manipulations and half-truths. Christopher Perry's life in the past suffer many changes after Piper throws him out of the Manor. AU of season six. Chris revelation story.

IMPORTANT NOTE: this is an AU of season six. I took the liberty to play with the order of the episodes and other things. For example, 'Sword in the City' and 'Chris-Crossed' hasn't happened yet. Piper and Leo are separated but not divorced. Paige and Phoebe are living in the manor. The family doesn't know that he is half witch half whitelighter. Piper isn't dating Greg or any other guy. The story will start after 'Prince Charmed', but Chris hasn't told them about Wyatt being evil. Piper threw him out of the house because he tried to convince them to bind Wyatt's powers and the chaos of the birthday and all that.

This chapter was beta'd by the awesome Evil Amplified. I think she did a pretty good job, since english is not my first language. 

I hope you enjoy this new story.

The power of Family

Chapter 1

*Saturday, december 6th, 2003*

'I don't want to see you ever again' his mother's words ran over and over again in his mind.

He didn't know how things had turned out so horrible in such a short time. Yes, he had lied and manipulated, and just that afternoon he tried to convince his mother and aunts to bind Wyatt's powers. But he didn't think he had been that horrible to warrant such treatment from his mother.

Chris took a deep breath and tried to relax, but didn't have much success. His father's words still rung in his mind, some stupid stuff about trust and all that rot.

After a couple of minutes, the young man closed his eyes in weary resignation; his father's words were not so stupid, because they rang with the sound of truth. He needed the sisters' trust, and that night he had lost it.

He opened his eyes again and stared at the sky. Every day that passed it was more and more difficult to be in the presence of his family. The distrust, the hateful stares and the painful words… it was just too painful, and it was becoming really hard not to show his displeasure, bitterness and pain. Sometimes he wanted to scream at them that he was hurting because of them, but to do that, he'd have to say his biggest secret, and he was not ready to do that, he didn't want to be close to his aunts and mother again, not after he had lost them when he was a teenager.

He wasn't ready to be his mom's little peanut, or his Auntie Paige's little angel, or his Auntie Phoebe's baby boy. And he knew that if they found out about his secret, he just might become that again. They'd start to love him immediately and would want to be a part of his life again. He didn't want to risk his heart and mind. After everything he had gone through in the last six years, he didn't know if he could take it.

Chris lowered his eyes and took on the sight of the San Francisco lights. A couple of minutes later, the first tear fell down his cheek.

& & &

*Twenty minutes earlier*

Leo let out a sigh and looked at his soon to be ex wife. He didn't like Chris, but the kid's scheme wasn't that horrible to warrant Piper's reaction. Maybe he'd have to talk to the boy and try to smooth things over. Surely Piper would calm down in a couple of days and Chris would be welcome again to the manor.

The man closed his eyes and sensed for the young whitelighter. A couple of moments later he sensed him in the bridge. He opened his eyes again and locked eyes with Piper. "I'm going out. I'll be back later." With those words, he orbed out.

Piper waved her hand and turned around, intent on leaving the attic and checking on her baby. She found her path blocked by Phoebe, who was staring at her with wide and unbelieving eyes. "What?"

Phoebe whistled slowly. "I can't believe you just did that, Piper!"

"Did what?" asked Piper with a confused tone of voice.

"You kicked Chris out of the manor! The kid is from the future and he only knows us! How can you do that?" asked the empathic with barely suppressed anger.

Piper stomped her feet on the floor. "I'm tired of that kid, Phoebe! He only lies and manipulates! I'm sure he sent Leo to Valhalla, he has brought demons to the house, and he's a danger to Wyatt and to us!"

"And didn't you see his face when you threw him out?" asked Paige quietly, walking a couple of steps to stand at Phoebe's side. At Piper's silence, the youngest sister continued. "He looked like he wanted to cry. I know you don't like him. I know that you think that it is his fault that you and Leo are separated, but you just can't go and stomp on his heart without a care in the world. You didn't even ask us what our opinion was!" she hissed.

"He ruined my birthday. He played David to make us turn against each other and then wanted to bind Wyatt's powers!" exclaimed Piper, surprised that her sisters were against her in this situation. Just a couple of days before they were tired of the annoying kid.

"I know what he did, Piper," Phoebe started to say, "and I don't want to bind my nephew's powers, and neither does Paige. But what I know, and I have been thinking about that for a little while, is that Chris is from the future, and he has said that the world where he comes from, it's pretty bad, so there must be a reason for binding Wyatt's powers or another reason for his presence in the past after saving Paige from the Titans, and I'd really like to find out."

"I still want him out of my house." Piper said, refusing to back down. Phoebe and she had a staring contest for a couple of minutes, until they heard Wyatt's cries coming from the baby monitor. Piper sighed and left the attic without a word to her sisters. They'd come to think like her sooner or later. That kid was a huge disturbance in their lives and it would be better if he didn't form a part of their lives anymore.

Phoebe let out a deep breath and turned to look at her baby sister.

"She will come around, you'll see." Paige told her sister, trying to calm her down.

"It's just that… my god Paige! I have never been able to sense a thing from him; he always wears an imperturbable mask and appears to be unfeeling. But tonight, when Piper said those things to him, I felt so… so much pain and betrayal from him, I just wanted to cry and cry just looking and him in those few seconds before he orbed out. And right now, I just want to make it better. Please say you understand me," She finished while looking at her sister with pleading eyes.

Paige smiled sadly. "I know what you mean. When I saw his face… something inside of me just broke. I know I haven't been the most supporting or caring towards him, but I don't hate him or wish him ill like Piper does. We should try to find him and try to make it better like you said."

Phoebe grabbed her hand and squeezed it tightly in thanks. "Great! Can you sense him?" she asked her.

Paige closed her eyes and concentrated on the young whitelighter from the future. A few moments later she found him. "Found him. He's on the bridge." Both sisters orbed out of the manor with the hope of making things better for the boy.

& & &

Phoebe and Paige appeared on the top of the Golden Gate Bridge and the sight that was in front of them took their breath away. Chris was sitting cross-legged, and many tears were falling down his pale cheeks.

Phoebe felt her chest constrict and both sisters started walking slowly toward their whitelighter. Chris saw them and wiped his cheeks, embarrassed that the sisters had saw him cry, even if this was the first time that he cried in years. He was mad that they had caught him in one of his weakest moments so he prepared to orb away.

Phoebe saw this and hurried their pace. She squeezed her sister's hand tighter and touched the boy's shoulder. "Chris wait, don't go!" just as she finished saying the words, both she and Paige were pulled in a premonition.

OoOoOoOoOoOo

A teenaged Chris entered the manor wearing a dirty football uniform. He walked to the kitchen but found no one. Then he walked to the conservatory and his eyes widened and his mouth opened in a silent scream. He took on a run and reached Piper's side in a couple of seconds. The woman had two athame wounds and she was lying on a pool of blood. Chris reached for her and tried to heal her, but the woman was already dead. The boy let out a primal scream of pain, horror and loss.

OoOoOoOoOoOo

"Oh my God!" exclaimed Phoebe after pulling out of the premonition. She stared at Chris but he was just staring through her, unaware of the premonition she just had. She turned her eyes to her sister and saw that Paige had misty eyes, just like her. She had seen it too. Somehow she had managed to pull Paige into the vision.

Oh God! What a premonition! She just had seen her older sister's death. She felt her heart might break in a zillion pieces just at the thought of losing yet another sister. But that wasn't the most shocking part of the vision. No. The vision didn't have sound, but it was easy to read Chris' lips. He was calling Piper mom. He was Piper and Leo's son.

A loud sob escaped her lips when the realization hit her full force. Chris was her nephew! And they had mistreated him in the past four months since he arrived to the past. She felt her legs starting to betray her, and Paige steadied her.

Paige dug her nails in Phoebe's wrist, and her sister didn't produce a sound, she was in a world of her own, where her emotional pain was enough to drown her. A couple of tears leaked through her eyes. Phoebe's loud sob and weak knees had confirmed her suspicions. Not only was Piper going to die, but Chris was her nephew. A nephew that the entire family had wronged many times in the past few months. She knew that the kid had lied and manipulated, but now that she knew his identity, she just wanted to fall to her knees and beg for forgiveness, for another chance to make it right, to make him happy and not see his devastated expression like she was seeing him now and like she had saw him in the attic.

"Oh Chris!" wailed Phoebe while she clutched Chris' shoulder, afraid that he would orb away and leave them.

"What do you want, Phoebe?" asked the young man, lifting his eyes and staring at his aunts. His breath caught in his throat. He knew that when she touched him, she had had a premonition, but he was in so much pain that he just didn't care. But now he cared. Both sisters were staring at him with so much pain and longing. Like… like they knew his secret. His face paled at the thought.

Phoebe saw his expression and slowly sat at his side. She desperately wanted to embrace him and keep him safe from any external or internal pain, just like she did with baby Wyatt, and just like she'd do with her children. She reached for him but at the last moment pulled away, afraid of his reaction. "I-I'm so sorry, sweetheart."

He sat straighter and saw her with narrowed eyes. "Why are you calling me sweetheart?" he practically hissed. He just knew it. They had somehow found out through the premonition. And that just put him on the offensive.

Phoebe opened her mouth to respond but she couldn't. Her nephew's facial expression had changed in a matter of seconds. He was staring to her as if daring her to say it aloud.

Paige sat at her side and decided to take the bull by its horn. "We know, Chris. Why didn't you just tell us? It'd have been so much easier!" she said softly, trying to calm him down.

"Easier for who?" he asked back.

"For you! For us!" exclaimed Phoebe. "We'd never have treated you this way if you'd have told us that you are our nephew. We hurt you and mistrusted you, Chris!"

"I know, I was kind of there when the lot of you insulted me and mistrusted me," he said dryly.

"And you can't possibly know how sorry we are, sweetheart. Please, Chris, I'm begging you, let us make it better. Let us earn your forgiveness and love. Please give your mother a chance to fix her mistakes," said Phoebe while new tears streamed down her face.

"She's not my mother!" he practically yelled. He couldn't accept that this Piper was his mother. There were many reasons. Not only could he not get close to her for fear of losing her a second time, but there was more to it. His mother… had been perfect. She had loved and cared for him. She had nurtured and raised him. She had never; ever said something hurtful to him. She'd never thrown him out of his house, or called him a manipulative little bastard or so many other hurtful things that this timeline Piper had called him. No… this Piper wasn't his mother. They were way too different.

"Chris…" Paige started to say, "don't deny that Piper is your mother. We saw when you held her and tried to heal her without success." Her voice broke at the last part.

Chris closed his eyes, remembering that fateful day. He was just fourteen, and he was finishing his 8th grade year. He had been playing football since he was nine years old, and the coach of the high school varsity team wanted him as the quarterback of the team in the fall, even if he was going to be just in 9th grade and a freshman. He arrived to the manor excited with the prospect of playing with the big guys, including Wyatt. He wanted to share the news with her. What he had seen in the conservatory had erased any football thought from his mind. His beautiful mother lay in a pool of her own blood. He had tried to save her, but she was already gone. That was the first time in his life that his healing power had failed him. He thought that his sensing power had failed him too, because he hadn't sensed anything amiss. But he later found out that there was a magical block in the house, so neither he, nor any other whitelighter in the family would sense anything until his mother was dead.

Chris took a deep breath to calm down and then stared at his aunts. "I'm not born yet, so she isn't my mother yet." He paused for a couple moments, debating how much he should say. After a minute or so, he decided that the damage was already done, and in that precise moment, his emotions were too battered to care about future consequences or any other shit. "She's not my mother because the mother of fourteen years that I remember and dearly miss would never do or say the things that the Piper from this timeline has said and done to me." He took another long pause. "I'm not saying that I'm a saint or something like that, nothing could be further from the truth. But I haven't done such horrible things in this timeline to warrant that treatment. All my life, I saw how all of you dealt with demons and human beings. Since I arrived, Piper, Leo… and in a lesser way the two of you have treated me like I'm the Source reincarnated. Like I came to destroy your happy and perfect lives. I'm not. I didn't even want to come to the past in the first place," he finished with a wistful expression.

"You didn't want to save me?" asked Paige in a surprised and hurt tone.

Chris smirked. "That was just a smoke screen. You weren't killed by the Titans. Making Leo turn you into goddess was the only way I could think of getting into your lives."

"So you sent Leo to Valhalla?" Phoebe asked curiously.

"I can't tell you that," he quipped.

Paige scowled at him. "Can't tell us or won't tell us?"

The smirk disappeared from his face. "I won't tell you."

Paige opened her mouth to argue, but Phoebe cut in. "Why didn't you want to come back in the first place?"

Chris exhaled loudly. "Time travel is… tricky. I didn't know if I'd be able to be around you and not break down. And I… I'm no hero, and I didn't want to have the future of the world on my shoulders. It's a heavy load and I don't know if I'll be able to reach my goal."

"What's your goal? Why do you have the future of the world resting on your shoulders?" asked Phoebe quietly, partly afraid of the answer. How horrible could be Chris' world?

Chris closed his eyes and snorted in disgust at himself. He had talked too much. "Future consequences."

"Chris, please, we just want to help you. Please, tell us at least this," Paige pleaded, desperate to help him.

Chris put his head on his knees, confused, tired and annoyed. He wanted the conversation to stop. He wanted to wake up from this nightmare and find out that Piper hadn't threw him out of the house, or that his aunts hadn't figured out his secret. This was getting harder and harder by the minute. After a long pause, he tried to get out of the situation. "Never mind, you won't believe me anyway," he mumbled.

"We will believe you!" stated Phoebe.

"Phoebe is right, Chris. We will believe and help you to achieve your goal. Just… tell us."

Chris snapped. "Fine! You want to know what my goal is? It's stopping Wyatt from turning evil!"

"What?" Paige breathed.

"That's right. I didn't come to save you from the Titans, or protect Wyatt from some evil demon. I came to stop Wyatt from becoming the greatest source of evil. I came to stop the death of millions of innocents. Are you happy now?" he finished and exhaled slowly.

"B-b-but how? Wyatt is… the Twice Blessed, the greatest source of good, the prophesized child!" Phoebe said in a rush, barely able to comprehend the reality of Wyatt and Chris' future.

Chris got up and started pacing on the beam. "Wish I knew, Phoebe. What I know is that Wyatt was kidnapped before his second birthday and the seed of evil was planted in him. I don't know who or how or where. That's why I came so many months before and have been chasing demons relentlessly."

Paige hung her head in shame. She had called him a neurotic freak many times in the last months. Now she knew why he was so neurotic about demon hunting and wished that she'd have been by his side since the beginning. She squared her shoulders and locked eyes with him. She'd help him from now on. She wouldn't let that awful future come to pass. Wyatt wouldn't be evil, and Chris wouldn't risk his life anymore. She'd be there for him and chase every demon away. No one would touch either of her nephews. "From now on, Chris, you'll take me with you to the underworld. I'll help you to catch whatever demon is after Wyatt. You won't have to do it alone anymore, ok?"

Chris didn't answer her. The role reversal was incredible. Now both of the sisters wanted to help him and love him and care for him. He wasn't ready for that. The silence indicated to him that his aunt was waiting for an answer. "I'm sorry, but I usually go to the underworld alone. I only ask for your help when it's necessary to use the Power of Three."

"Well, things change, Chris. You're our nephew, our responsibility. Besides, whether you like it or not, Piper is your mother and she won't let you go to the underworld alone. It's too risky," Paige answered.

Chris whistled. "First of all, I'm twenty two. Neither of you can order me around. Second, Piper won't say anything because neither of you will tell her what you found out tonight."

Both sisters cried out in dismay. "We can't do that, Chris," Paige said.

"Piper has a right to know!" Phoebe added.

"I said no! It's my life and it's my secret." At their disbelieving stares, he tried another route. "Didn't you want to make it better? To earn my forgiveness and all that?" They nodded slowly, realizing where he was going. "Well, I won't forgive you if you go and confess my secret to either Piper or Leo. That won't make it better or make me happier. It will make it a thousand times worse. So, please, if you really want to help me, don't say anything to them. I have enough on my plate… I couldn't deal with that too." He finished giving them a look that he knew would convince them. They have never been able to say no to that look while he was growing up.

Phoebe and Paige looked at each other and sighed. They couldn't say no to him, not if they wanted to have a chance at redemption, a chance to love him and get to know him.

"Ok, Chris, we won't say any of this to your parents. But in charge, you'll receive our help, ok?" Paige said.

"Ok ok, whatever. I will accept your help. But not now, I just want to rest, ok?"

"Ok sweetie. Do you need anything?" asked Phoebe.

"No thanks. I will just go," he said warily. He felt really tired and wanted to sleep for twelve hours in a row. Out the corner of his eye, he saw that the girls wanted to hug him or kiss him, but he wasn't ready for that. With a last glance at them, he orbed to P3.

A couple of minutes later, both sisters embraced tightly, too overwhelmed with all the discoveries they had made in the last hour. Piper's future death, Chris' identity, Wyatt's evilness… what more? It was hellish and they didn't know what they could do to stop Wyatt from becoming evil and stop Piper's death. What they knew was that they'd be there for Chris, whether he liked or not. They knew too that that was easier said than done. But they'd give their best try.

Chris was family and that was the most important thing to the Halliwells. Family.

"To be continued…"

AN: Please review ;)