Disclaimer: I do not own Charmed (if I did the next issue would be out by now)

Past Mistakes

Piper put another item in her trolley as she and Wyatt went about the shopping. She'd had to get out of the house. With Phoebe in a foul mood due to problems at work as some woman was attacking her in the press every day, and Paige's current temp job being a window cleaner (unluckily the manor was one of the ones she had to clean) and her whitelighter Chris busily looking up yet more demons for them to hunt down, she had been going ever so slightly stir crazy locked up inside, so she had escaped to the supermarket.

As Wyatt cooed in the trolley, Piper cursed as she saw that she was meant to get all bran for Phoebe, which as usual was on the top shelf. Reaching up, she managed to get a box, before she knocked down a box of shredded wheat only for it to be caught by the person strolling past.

Piper's heart froze in her mouth. It was Dan.

Dan, her former neighbour, had been her attempt to have a normal relationship, one that wasn't affected by the duties of a witch and whitelighter, like her relationship with Leo. However, Piper had loved Leo more, and Dan had left the city soon after their break up to take a job in Portland. So what was he doing here?

"Piper, hi." He said with his easy smile.

"Hi Dan, how are you?" she asked, very wrong footed as he gave her cereal back to her.

"Great, and you? And who is this little guy?" Dan asked, crouching down to say hello to Wyatt, who looked back at him curiously.

Fervently hoping that Wyatt wouldn't do his usual trick and make his eyes glow, she smiled.

"This is Wyatt. And yeah, I'm fine. I thought you were in Portland?" she asked as he stood back up to face her.

"Yeah, I'm on a job here, and I'm thinking of taking over a warehouse in the city, you know, to have a base of operations. So what are you doing nowadays?" he asked, his eyes looking at her fingers and seeing the distinct lack of a wedding ring.

"Well I still live in the manor, with Phoebe and Paige." She said, and Dan nodded solemnly.

"Yeah, I heard what happened to Prue, I'm sorry I couldn't make it to the funeral, I was in New York at the time. Who's Paige?" he asked curiously.

"She's my baby sister. We found out about her not long after Prue died." She explained, as Wyatt giggled to himself as Dan started tickling him.

"Cool. Where's Leo?" he asked, indicating the ringless finger, and she sighed.

This was going to be awkward.

"We split up. He had to go away, for work, and seems he's more interested in that than this son." She growled bitterly, silently screaming at her ex husband.

"Oh Piper I'm sorry. I didn't particularly like the guy, but I didn't want him to hurt you. You doing ok?" he asked, and she nodded.

"Yeah, I keep busy, and I've got Wyatt, and my sisters." She said and Dan nodded.

"Well Piper, like I said I'm in town for a job, do you want to have dinner? Save trying to have a catch up in the middle of the store?" he asked, and she pondered the question.

Meeting up with Dan was dodgy. Leo had been gone for a while, but still, she knew full well how she still felt about him. There was also the magic aspect of things, which she knew from painful experience that Dan would never be able to understand. And there was also the nature of the request. There was a chance that it could be what it sounded, and be two old friends catching up. But then again, it might be more. After all, he said he might be coming back to the city, she knew what he was like, and she wasn't sure she would be opposed to any sort of new relationship with him.

"Yeah, sure. Pick me up at seven?" she asked, and he smiled toothily.

"See you then." He said, smiling at her as she headed to the tills.

She smiled as she pondered what might transpire later that night. Now, who would be the lucky winner of the 'who gets to babysit Wyatt' prize?

XX

"Wait, Dan is back?" Phoebe asked in a teasing voice over the phone, as she had recently gone into the office to try to sort out her problems.

"Yes, he's in town for a job and he asked me out to dinner, and I said yes. Can you watch Wyatt?" she asked hopefully.

"Sorry sweetie, I have no idea how long I'm going to be here, if this woman doesn't stop slating me in her editorial in the Standard then I'm going to have to sue for libel. Elise and me are talking about it later. Ask Paige." She suggested, before hanging up.

Piper cursed at her sister's unhelpfulness. She knew it wasn't Phoebe's fault that this was going on with her career, but she felt a savage bit of pleasure for blaming her for the occurrence. Grumbling to herself, she called Paige.

"Not now Piper! I'm about to die!" Paige wailed down the phone before it cut off.

"Paige? Paige!" Piper said worriedly, barking down the phone her sister's name.

"Don't worry, she's fine." Chris said as he came into the sitting room, and she looked at him searchingly.

"How can you know? How is she about to die?" she wondered, and her whitelighter grinned.

"I can sense her. And she isn't about to die, her only problem is that she's currently cleaning the windows on a high rise and its windy. She's perfectly safe, she's just scared of heights." He soothed, and Piper relaxed a little.

Until she saw a piece of paper in his hand, and immediately pounced.

"Oh no you don't!" she warned, and he looked at her in confusion.

"Huh?"

"No demon vanquishes, not now!" she said, pointing at the paper in his hand.

Chris rolled his eyes.

"It isn't a demon vanquish, it's a shopping list. You need some potion ingredients, I was going to go to China Town and get them for you." He explained, and she blushed a little at her mistake.

"Oh. Sorry. But you can't go to China Town." She said, realising her was her last choice because she really didn't want to call Leo.

"Why not?" he asked suspiciously, his eyes trailing to Wyatt as if figuring out what he was about to be conned into.

"Because I need someone to watch Wyatt." She said, hoping that for a change her whitelighter wouldn't question her reasons as to why she wanted him to babysit.

"Why?" he asked sharply, blowing her hopes out the water.

"Because I have a date, and Phoebe and Paige are both busy." She explained, and Chris glowered at her, his green eyes narrowed dangerously. The look he was giving her was quite familiar but she couldn't place it.

"Wow, so I'm your last resort, now I feel really wanted. Piper, I'm not a babysitter, I'm no good at it." He protested.

"Well you're not very good at being a whitelighter but you don't hear us complaining." She said tartly.

He gave her a reproachful look, and she did have to admit, it tugged her heartstrings a little. Funny, she had never expected to feel bad for insulting Chris, but then again her last comment had been below the belt.

"Actually, I hear you complaining all the time, all three of you. Now, I'm going to China Town. Oh and some advice Piper, if you want someone to help you, don't insult them, especially about a sore subject as it is." He sneered and headed for the door.

"Chris, wait!" she called, and he did stop short, but it was clear from his rigid body language that he wanted nothing more to do with this conversation.

"What?" he asked curtly, his eyes still hurt and angry.

"I'm sorry. That was a pretty low shot. And you may be a pain in the ass with all the demon hunts you send us on, and it might be a pain that you can't heal, but you are a pretty decent whitelighter." She admitted truthfully, and was rewarded by a small blush that appeared on his cheeks.

"Oh...thanks." he said in surprise.

"Please Chris, I'm desperate!" she pleaded, figuring it wouldn't work and she refused to sacrifice her dignity any longer.

But then she saw a curious change in Chris. Rather than resentful, his eyes sort of lit up, as though he wanted to be helpful, and she was reminded of a dog that was proud of itself for bringing its owner the paper.

"Alright, I'll do it. Who's your date with anyway?" he asked as she relaxed and smiled in victory.

"Dan." She said simply.

Chris cast his mind back to everything Phoebe had told him about his mother's younger days when he had been a kid, and it clicked, making his eyes widen in alarm.

"What, dull Dan?" he asked incredulously, and she cocked an eyebrow at him.

"What do you mean dull?" she asked irritably.

"Well he was the mortal guy wasn't he? The one you hooked up with to make Leo jealous." Chris said, and she narrowed her eyes in annoyance.

"I tried to have a normal relationship with hum, nothing more smart ass. And how do you know?" she asked, suddenly distracted by how much he actually knew.

Chris longed to tell her how he really knew, that her sister had told him everything she could about his mother when he had been a kid so he could use it against her. But, he had to keep up the deception, no matter how much he wanted to just break down and tell his mother everything.

Wyatt came first. As usual.

"We studied you three in Magic School. A semester module was entitled 'The Love Lives of the Charmed Ones'. Someone wrote a ten thousand word thesis on Phoebe's actually." He said, grinning a little. They didn't need to know it was him who had written it.

"You study our love lives? Geez, nothing is sacred in the future! Wait, ten thousand words?" she asked in disbelief, and Chris nodded.

"Yep. They got high marks for it too. They argued that a lot of Phoebe's problems came from her own stupid mistakes, especially becoming the Source's wife. Yeah he influenced her as did the baby, but she could have stopped it long before that. They argued that she brought everything that she blamed Cole for on herself." He elaborated.

Piper wisely kept quiet. Not that she was supporting that statement, but there was a lot more truth to it than there ought to be. Not that she would ever tell Phoebe that.

"That's just too weird to comprehend. Wait, you studied all three of us?" she asked as she headed through to a moaning Wyatt.

"Yeah. You're a lot nicer in books." He said, not entirely untruthfully.

She glowered at him, and he grinned back at his mother. He liked it best when they were like this, when the sisters acted like he was one of them, not just an interloper. When he felt like he actually was part of their family.

"You saying we're not nice?" she demanded and he grinned.

"Yeah. Paige usually is. You it depends on the day. Phoebe never is. And to think, you used to be my favourite to study." Chris said, and she looked at him in surprise.

"Really? Why?" she asked, and he shook his head.

"Can't tell you that, future consequences." He said maddeningly, and she rolled her eyes.

"Fine, be that way. And how is Dan dull?" she asked, peeved.

"Oh come on Piper! He was your rebound guy, and you know it. He could never get you the way Leo did." He explained, and she restrained herself from saying something to him that made it clear that she still blamed him for the fact that her husband had left.

"Ah forget it. Right, I have to and get ready. His bottles are in the kitchen, don't let him sleep for more than two hours, change him every so often, don't forget the rash cream, and keep him alive!" she called as she headed for the stairs.

Chris looked at the baby version of his older brother and tucked his hair behind his ear tiredly.

"Keep you alive? Maybe if she'd told you that more often when we were growing up you wouldn't be trying to kill me." He said bitterly, picking his brother up.

It was strange being back here. Back here, his mother and his aunts barely tolerated his presence, and their moods alternated between vaguely accommodating and outright hostile. It had worn him down being here in the past for so long. He had come here to save his big brother. Before he was born, something got to Wyatt, something that left such traumatic scars that when Wyatt had grown up, he had taken it out on the world, a process exacerbated by the loss of their mother when Chris had been fourteen. As Wyatt strengthened his hold and the world plunged further into darkness with the loss of every force of good imaginable, Chris, who continually refused to give in to evil and join his big brother, had hatched a desperate plan to save his brother from evil by coming back to the past and preventing it from happening.

However, it hadn't been nearly as easy as that. Despite telling them repeatedly that he was only there to help protect Wyatt, he had been met with hostility and distrust all the way. True, he hadn't done a lot to help himself, but his actions had all been about protecting Wyatt. Just like they always were. After all, his big brother was the important one. As always.

But still, despite some of his less then savoury acts such as sticking Leo in Valhalla and killing Valkyries, there was still the fact that the sisters didn't trust him because of stupid reasons. He had secrets, who didn't, but the girls and Leo seemed to expect him to drop them all and tell them everything just because they wanted to know. His secrets were his business, and the Charmed Ones and an Elder or not, they had no business asking him to tell them everything about his private life, even if they were family.

In fact, the fact that they were family meant that he wouldn't tell them stuff even if he wanted to anyway. His mother didn't know she was his mother, so he couldn't really tell her anything. Phoebe you couldn't tell anything to anyway, she only kept a secret when it suited her own ends. Paige he supposed he could tell, but she had her own problems trying to find her own path separate from her sisters. And Leo, he would be lucky if he told him the time, never mind anything that was going on inside him.

And so, the mistrust continued, the feeling that he was hardly wanted by anyone here, all because he wouldn't roll over and tell them everything. Yet again he got penalised for trying to protect the ones he loved, trying to spare them pain. Just like what had happened to Paige. His last aunt, he had turned himself in to Wyatt to spare her life, but the treacherous shit had betrayed him and killed her anyway. He had killed the last person he had left aside from him and Bianca, the last person he cared about. Sometimes he really did wonder why he didn't just go with Bianca's original plan and kill the baby he was now entrusted to babysit.

But he couldn't. Despite all he had done, Wyatt was still his brother, and he still loved him. He still remembered the years they had spent together, his big brother both exasperating and understanding, both tormentor and protector, but usually an incredibly overbearing and overprotective protector. His big brother who had adored him, protected him, cared for him, cheered him up when his father let him down for the millionth time, the one who had helped him with homework on the side, the one who with great perseverance had brought Chris out of his shell after they had lost their mother.

That was the big brother he was trying to save. And even though Wyatt came first, as always, he was more than willing to put up with that if it involved him getting his big brother back.

But now he had another problem. Due to his useless father's belligerence, he had had to send Leo to Valhalla, and the other Elders were now insisting that he spend all his time in the heavens in case someone was after him. But, doing what he had did by getting Leo to become an Elder had caused more problems than he had foreseen. He hadn't actually expected Leo to follow the elder's line and remain in the heavens the most of the time. While it did give him a break, because it meant the waste of space wasn't following him and making a pain of himself like he usually was, by splitting up his parents earlier than they had meant to be, his own existence was even now at stake.

First off, his father, useless though he was, was still relatively vital in the whole getting himself conceived process. Secondly, Piper was now dating Dan, arguably her most important relationship other than Leo himself, and if she fell for him again, then there would be no Chris. And thirdly, if they found out who he was, there were no guarantees that Piper would want him anyway.

Her comment earlier had stung. She had always been the one to encourage his whitelighter side, like Paige, his brother and their grandpa. While Leo and Phoebe had focused all of their attention on golden boy Wyatt, they had tried to encourage him to develop his whitelighter side and had always given him a confidence boost when he needed one. When he was continually compared to his 'superior' older brother, he quickly lost confidence in himself. And now his own mother was telling him that he wasn't that good. As if he'd needed reminded. With two dead aunts, a dead mother and a dead grandfather, he'd pretty much grasped how useless a whitelighter he was. He couldn't even help them now when he was in the past. Still a liability, just like Leo had always said, the wanker.

He didn't want to make his mother unhappy again. But, if he was to be born, if he was to save the future, he had to find some way to stop her from getting too close to Dan again. Problem was he didn't have a clue on how to do it. But then, a thought came back to him. Back when he had been studying his mother's second year as a witch, he recalled seeing something about Dan Gordon. And he was sure it wasn't good. What had it been? Arrest, he was sure of it, but what else?

"What do you think?" Piper asked nervously, interrupting him from his thoughts.

Chris looked up at his mother in shock. Clad in a blue dress, her make up done, her eyes a deep pink and her hair styled into a loose flower like bun, she looked amazing. All dressed up for the wrong man in his opinion, but amazing.

"You look great." He said with a smile, and Wyatt nodded his agreement from his playpen.

"Thanks. Have fun you two. Play nice!" she said, waving as she headed for the car that had just pulled up in the street, tooting its horn.

Chris smiled slightly. Play nice? They usually had when they had been kids. Until Chris had beat Wyatt at Pokemon and Wyatt had subsequently orbed him to China. Their mother hadn't been happy when Paige had found him a few hours later.

Chris sighed. His mother was happy for the night, and that was good. She'd been too miserable lately, and he hated that it was his fault. She could have her night with bland Dan. But if he remembered what had happened in the future, he would stop at nothing to protect his mother.

"Come on bro, let's get you fed." Chris said, picking his brother up, while trying to remember what it was that Dan had done in the future that had been so bad.

XX

Piper smiled as Dan walked her to the front door.

"I had a great time catching up tonight Piper. You fancy going out for a drink tomorrow?" Dan asked hopefully.

Piper nodded in concession. She'd had a good time tonight, and Dan hadn't pressed for too much information on her and Leo, or on Wyatt. It was nice to be on a normal date again, with a normal person, who also happened to be a very nice guy. He wasn't bad looking either.

"Yeah of course. I had a great time tonight too Dan. I'm glad you're back." She said, and leaned towards him, and he reciprocated.

The door then opened and Chris appeared, carrying Wyatt and looking at her with a smug grin. He knew full well what he had just interrupted. But strangely, she wasn't mad at him for it. Kissing Dan would have been too soon, given the wrong impression. If he really was back, and for good, then she wanted to do this properly.

"Wyatt senses his mommy had come home." Chris said, grinning at her, and she gave him a reluctant grin back as she took Wyatt from him.

"Sure he did." She whispered scathingly, but Chris transformed his face into a mask of innocence.

"Hi. I'm Chris H-Perry." He said, catching himself just in time, but he refused to offer his hand to the man who was trying to steal his mother and above all else make sure he wasn't born.

"Dan Gordon." Dan said good naturedly, before lowering his hand awkwardly when he saw Chris had no intention of shaking his hand.

Piper gave Chris a scolding look, but he shrugged slightly, making her roll her eyes while Wyatt smiled to see Dan.

"So you're this little guys babysitter?" Dan asked, making faces at Wyatt.

"For tonight. Usually I just help around the house." Chris said, and Piper began to scent danger, and she knew she had to get her whitelighter into the house as soon as possible.

"Like a handyman?" Dan asked cautiously, and Chris nodded.

"Yeah you could say that." Chris said coldly, his brilliant green eyes narrowed, and Piper watched as he took a step forward that actually shielded her and Wyatt from Dan.

Dan nodded, glaring at Chris suspiciously.

"Well I'll see you around. Night Piper." He said, kissing her on the cheek before heading for his car.

"Goodnight. Thanks for dinner!" she called as he climbed in, then turned to glare at Chris.

"What was that about?" she asked irritably.

"I don't know what you mean Piper. Just..." he began, and she looked at him grumpily, waiting for his explanation, "watch yourself with him ok? Something about him isn't right." Chris said worriedly, his face clouded.

Piper felt her irritation with him melt. Bless him.

"I'm a big girl Chris. I don't need my whitelighter to protect me from the big bad men of the world. See you tomorrow." She said, and kissed him on the cheek before heading inside with her baby.

Chris pondered. Something just felt off about Dan. He could feel it. But he had made his mother happy, so maybe he would back off. But it didn't hurt to be vigilant. And his first order of business was to find out exactly what Dan had done in the future that he had been arrested for.

XX

Dan thought about the night's events. He had forgotten how much he loved about Piper. Her laugh, her smile, her beauty, her drive. She had clearly gotten more wilful and independent since Prue had died, but that just made him love her even more.

Ever since he had left, he had regretted not fighting harder for her, not fighting Leo. And now he had found out that her former handyman had married her, got her knocked up, and then ran off once the baby was born. He knew Leo was bad news. Classic dead beat dad. He had warned Piper, four years ago, just what would happen if she continued on her relationship with Leo. He took a small bit of pleasure from having been right, but he did wish Piper hadn't gotten hurt as a result of Leo's actions.

He would treat her right. Wyatt too. He seemed like a good kid.

But who was the young man Piper had gotten to watch Wyatt? He clearly didn't like Dan for some reason. Did he want Piper to himself? No, that didn't seem to be it. But he seemed protective of her. But he had seen Piper hurt by someone like that before. And he refused to allow it to happen again.

He would protect Piper. And first that meant finding out exactly what Chris Perry was hiding.

Smiling, he vowed to phone his state department working brother when he got home.

Hello again!

It has been some time since I indulged in a Charmed story, so I thought I'd give it a whirl to see if I still remember how.

So, Dan is back, and Chris is trying to protect his mother. But, as always, Dan is keen to stick his nose into places it doesnt belong, and that will cause some trouble for our young witchlighter. What did Dan do in the future? Will Piper pursue a romance with him? And will Chris' secret be revealed?

I hope to update this soon. This story will contain Dan bashing (vapid idiot, never could be bothered with him), Leo bashing (he was a prick in season six, he deserved the beating Chris gave him in Spin City) and also most likely Phoebe bashing (my least favourite sister)

Until next time then, please read and review!