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Some nights Chris cannot sleep.
He's so much closer to 40 than 30 these days, but still too young to blame it on old age. Sure, his ribs twinge from time to time and there are scars on his body even his brother's Whitelighter powers cannot cure, but in general - in the great scheme of things - he can't complain. (none of the scars on his body were put there by his brother's hands deliberately.)
It's the tagline of his life - It could always be worse. (it was once, somewhere else. some time else.)
When the nightmares come, they wrap him him up like ivy overgrowing the walls of an old manor and slipping into the cracks and breaking the foundation apart; it doesn't let go again. They come calling like an old friend, reaching out a hand and pulling hard. His head fills with useless information and pictures of somebody else's life.
(he wakes up coughing then, the pressure of a boot on his ribcage, ash in the air and in his lungs and hair. the feeling of fire too close to his skin, on his skin, burning flesh until the pain stops and all nerve endings are dead.
it isn't real.
but it feels real.
it was real, in another life.)
He cannot keep his restless limbs still in the dark hours when the insomnia doesn't let him sleep. Instead Chris places a kiss on Bianca's temple and heads downstairs. Sometimes he'll update the Book of Shadows or he'll restock their herb rack or prepare lunch for the girls.
Tonight he decides to deep clean the kitchen.
It gives him purpose.
(tomorrow melinda will ask him if he wants to perform open heart surgery inside here, as her finger wipes over the kitchen counter and comes up empty for even a speck of dust. and bianca will raise an eyebrow in worry that is just a tad hypocritical, because she often too can't sleep, but it will be fine.
they are safe, they're together.)
.
P.J. calls him the Mom friend of their little gang. Wyatt straight up calls him Mom in that annoying, sarcastic voice of his sometimes, whenever Chris worries too much again. His contact info in Mel's phone reads 'family matriarch' instead of his name. Aunt Paige calls him a less harmony addicted version of Piper.
("as if all the worry and burden of leo and piper multiplied and unloaded in you, you know?"
"following this terrible description of my personality where i don't get to be my own person, describe wy and mel then."
paige ponders it. "they are leo's. wyatt's got the same unwavering optimism, but he's happier than your dad, much more carefree. melinda inherited his gift of healing and care. you're a halliwell.)
They joke about it and Chris lets it wash over him, and if it bothers him just a tiny bit, so what?
As if he could change who he is at his core. As if he could magic his anxiety away, the fear of losing everything so deeply embedded in him it's part of his DNA now. As if he could explain it to them in a way they'd understand.
He will pull a face and roll his eyes, but inside him he preens, just a little bit. Proud that he gets to be what the other Chris never managed - beloved; in charge of his own choices. He loves his mom, Mel's nickname is a compliment. He takes it as a badge of honor.
So if they laugh at him for texting the cousin group chat - ' 9 circles of halliwell ' - at 3:25am to warn them about a heightened activity of Hydra demons and to pick up some of the vanquishing potion he just finished cooking up, then well - there are worse worlds to live in.
(it's where that one song is wrong - dead boys do remember what the future holds.)
.
While growing up his parents sat him down quite often, to explain some things to him. He's Chris Halliwell, but there was another Chris before him - who wanted to save the world and succeeded. Him, but not him.
They look at him as if waiting for recognition, as if the words should mean something to him. He shakes his head and listens intently. Why they tell him about the other Chris, the one who died, at all he doesn't know. They could've covered it up so easily, but honesty seemed like the better path for them.
Chris pretends he doesn't understand what they say, pretends it means nothing to him. He is - always was - a good actor when he wanted to be, even as a boy. Lying by omission comes easily to him.
From time to time he wonders if he should ask somebody about it, his parents or the Elders. Wyatt and Melinda, who would never judge and help in a heartbeat.
(he cannot tell them, cannot tell him. )
He wonders if he should tell somebody about the dreams he cannot place and the memories of a boy that wasn't him, but was, all at once.
Chris never does. Not as a boy, when the dreams frighten him. Not as a teenager, when the fears turn him reckless. Not as an adult, when he can finally piece the puzzle pieces together.
Physics isn't that difficult, he understands the concept of multiple dimensions, infinite universes. Somehow this other Chris didn't cease to exist, not all of him. (What exactly remained is a mystery.)
He theorizes it is because the other Chris died on his birthday, part of his soul still around to be absorbed by the infant he was. He isn't sure though, it's nothing but a hypothesis. It's not like he can go out for a drive and test his theory in the field.
(prue explains it to him one day, just a byline in a completely different conversation.
it's a cosmic debt, the price that is to be paid for meddling with the timeline. the first law of thermodynamics: energy cannot be created or destroyed, only converted. the memory from the original timeline cannot be erased, not without erasing chris halliwell altogether. so as long as he lives he is forced to remember.)
In the long run it doesn't matter how and why.
He is Chris Halliwell. A small part of him is Chris Halliwell, the darker apocalypse remix. He cannot change it, he cannot fix it. All he can do is accept it.
It keeps him humble.
(the older he gets the more he feels like the stand-in for a different person.
aunt phoebe would look at him and say "chris", but it would be a different voice then the one he was used to and her eyes would get a haunted look whenever he turned around.
like she expected somebody else.
he's chris, but there is an imprint of himself who walked in the manor before him. the negative of a photograph.
he doesn't know which one of them is the real one.
he only knows he's the one who won and remembers the cost.)
.
He meets Bianca when he is sixteen.
Fire meets gasoline, literally. They fight against a horde of sulfur demons in the underworld and the heat is almost unbearable. They are a good team. back to back, keeping the other alive, they get out of the situation.
When Chris looks into her eyes, trying to introduce himself properly without the danger of being murdered any second, the sudden pressure in his skull drives him to his knees.
Bianca doesn't fare much better.
She too, is plagued by memories not her own. It comes as a surprise, because he cannot explain it as he can for himself.
It's embarrassing.
They become friends, nevertheless.
He keeps the blushing to a minimum, whenever memories of the other timeline rise to the surface. (memories of stolen moments and hidden corners, soft lips and naked skin.)
He fails more often than not. She pretends she doesn't notice.
It's embarrassing.
.
("do you like me, because you like me, or do you like me because you ought to do so?"
the wind atop the golden gate bridge is freezing cold. his fingers turned white an hour ago. his voice is just as cold as his body.
bianca looks furious. she's fire, bright and unrelenting, the lightning in a storm. phoenix rising from the ashes. her power has never suited her better.
"if you honestly think i am not the one in charge of making my own decisions, why are we even bothering?"
she shimmers away before he can give her an answer.)
.
By the time the other Chris from the other timeline turned 22 he was an active member of the Resistance. Instead Chris knows how to change diapers.
It's kind of an accident, but a happy one, and when the initial shock has worn off there's nothing but excitement.
When Maya is born he holds her in his hands, almost afraid to break her fragile body. It's different from his muscle memory of holding Mel (and carrying wyatt, protecting him). Maya is wholly theirs.
(they raise her in a small apartment, her younger sister too. piper offers them the manor years later, before their third is born. he has to think about it first, if they can live in the house that doubled as a graveyard for anyone he ever loved.
chris loves the manor - the idea of it -, he can overwrite the memory. so he says yes.)
.
maya. willa. victoria.
three daughters.
he's a halliwell, after all.
(victoria's wiccaning is the only day in chris' life that grams is almost at peace with his existence, he thinks. that is, until she learns his youngest daughter's first name. it's kinda funny, he thinks.)
.
There is a question to be asked: Would he do it again?
He's him and he's not him.
Would he travel back in time to save his brother from destroying the world?
Chris wants to say yes without a doubt, but he isn't sure, because his brother is a good man, a faithful friend, part time annoyance, full time dumbass. Never the reason to risk life and limb, never the villain. Even with all the memories stuck in his brain, he doesn't know where the other Chris found the bravery.
(it wasn't bravery, it was the desperate wish for chance. a hail mary to get back what was lost.
the other chris' brother was a dangerous, evil overlord, who destroyed the world.
his brother is godfather to his oldest daughter.
containing multitudes was easy in the face of diverting time lines and parallel universes, if you knew how to handle it.)
.
Chris loves Bianca.
That's a full sentence. It doesn't need explanations or further inspection. He loves her so much his soul hurts at the prospect of not being with her. He is a cheesy dumbass when you peel all the layers away.
He wants her to the point of need and sometimes that’s not what should be happening to them, because it means they’ll do reckless stuff that almost gets them killed.
(blood and pain and loss and death. that's what the other chris got. this chris knows better. this one wants to live with her instead of dying by her side.)
.
Leo gives them multiple talks and lectures over the course of their childhood. Most of it boils down to 'with great power comes great responsibility'. It's fair, it's honest, it's hypocritical, it's not that fucking easy.
But sometimes he'll go off script. There's sadness in his eyes when he talks about the dangers of corruption. One sentence in particular stays with Chris, in the flood of fortune cookie wisdom his father dishes out all the time.
"We all have the potential to be evil. It's our choices that shape our destiny."
("you were always good," wyatt complains one night over a glass of whiskey he shouldn't be drinking yet.
chris isn't so sure about that, but stays silent.
his hands flex, opening and closing, lingering with the memory of choking a valkyrie to death.)
.
Here's what Bianca remembers, here's what she tells him in fits and pieces as they become friends:
A woman in a strange outfit crouches down in front of her at the age of 4 until they are eye to eye, while her mother is in the bathroom. "You always have a choice, even when you think you don't."
The woman and her mother fight. Then she is gone and her mother is different.
The next day Bianca breaks down screaming. It feels as if somebody else was in her head. Her chest hurts. Her hands feel a gaping hole in the middle of her body, but there is nothing. Afterwards her mind feels much more crowded than it did before.
Bianca grows up and learns how to kill. She is exceptional at it. As if she had done it before, countless times. She rises through the ranks so smoothly, even her mother fears her.
But always, there's something holding her back. As if she'd forgotten a vital part of herself, as if she was too much to be contained in a vessel of flesh and blood.
Then she meets a boy with green eyes in the darkest depths of the underworld and remembers what it feels like to die.
(why she remembers the other future is a mystery they never figure out)
.
There are days he hides away, days he cannot be around anyone except for Bianca and the girls and sometimes not even them. Then he'll orb somewhere else, anywhere really, and go hiking in the Alps or walk along empty beaches for hours on end, sit in abandoned monasteries and translate ancient spells he finds useful.
There are days Chris wants to go and confront Wyatt, scream at him until all the pain and fury dissipates. He daydreams about the myriad ways of letting Wyatt know just exactly what kind of man he could've been, the sorrow he brought upon the House of Halliwell. Wyatt knows he was evil in a different timeline, because their parents told him. But they didn't know just how terrible it really was and nobody knows Chris remembers it at all.
(there's an implication of sacrifice there, his name is christopher for christ's sake.)
The anger is always there inside him, boiling just below the surface, ready to foam over. It's a part of him. After sleepless nights alone with the horrors of his nightmares the urge to share them with Wyatt is hard to resist.
He never does.
He isn't Wyatt and he isn't the other Chris, not fully. He's somebody else, a mosaic, an amalgam.
There would be satisfaction in watching his face crumble as he finds out the truth, Chris can vividly imagine it. But it would be short lived and the consequences fatal.
(the problem is, he can imagines piper's face and mel's and his aunts' too. he can imagine how they would look at him forevermore from that day forward. he knows he couldn't live with it, so he screams out his rage in empty forests.)
If he can keep it together his brother can be his brother instead of a man begging for forgiveness.
What it makes him, he isn't sure.
("you're a better person than me," prue tells him one morning when he's twenty-three, after he puked his guts out, because he watched bianca die in an endless loop and he summons her to feel less lonely.
"not really, i'm just a masochist."
but even that's a lie.
all he ever wanted was an intact family, all he ever wanted was his brother. he can't jeopardize it. he'd rather swallow his pain to keep them whole.)
.
On his 18th birthday he asks her to marry him. Well, 'asks'.
Bianca's making him breakfast in celebration in the shitty one bedroom shoe box of an apartment she calls home, slicing a passion fruit in half for him, because he loves the taste and texture of the silly purple fruit and he looks at her then and just knows he cannot waste a single fucking minute of his life without her, when they haven't even kissed each other in this timeline.
(the other chris' 18th birthday is in the back of his head. wyatt was in a foul mood and attacked a few public places. the question of correlation vs. causation doesn't even have to be asked. there were bombs. the memory tastes like ash and debris.)
"Marry me."
To her credit, Bianca neither laughs into his face nor kneels him in the solar plexus. "Are you asking me because you want to ask me or are you asking me because he did?"
She throws his own words back at him, but they have no bite so he doesn't take offense. When she says it, it sounds like the introduction to Philosophy 101. But it's the age-old question: Nature and nature, cause and effect.
"Technically it wasn't a question. But for the record, I'd really like to be your husband."
Bianca grins at him then. "Is that so?
"Yes."
"We aren't even a couple, Chris."
"So what? I just skipped the part where I asked you to be my girlfriend."
"Where's my ring?"
"I'll get you one, I promise."
"Then yeah, I'll marry you."
"For the ring?"
"Maybe."
Chris leans in then, to kiss properly. Her mouth tastes like coffee and his like passion fruit and this is better than any memory could've prepared him for.
(that night in the manor, as his entire family is assembled for his birthday dinner and he announces their elopement, he wonders for the first time if his mum suspects he remembers.
the cousins are all stunned speechless and wyatt rips him a new one for not telling him beforehand, but piper – there's this look in her eyes as she watches him and bianca and their constantly joined hands, as their gazes meet across the room.
it's pity.
this is the closest they'll ever come to uncovering the true extent of his memory.)
.
The funny thing about Melinda is that she's a blank slate, something untainted by the apocalypse. He has no memory of her, because the other Chris never had a little sister.
(he's so glad for it, he could weep. mel is smart and kind, so freaking charitable. she's a doctor, like their dad. she's got healing hands, unlike him. chris is so glad the other wyatt never got his hands on her, that she never had to mourn their mother. )
And because this is his first time being a big brother to a little sister, it's easier. It's not fair to Wyatt per se, but he doesn't flinch from her and he isn't scared of making a wrong move. He confides his secrets - his dimension-defying crush on Bianca for example - to her, when he keeps Wyatt at arm's length sometimes. It's easy, like water flowing down a river, when there's a dam built between him and Wyatt.
Chris thinks Wyatt registers their relationship is different too, but he isn't completely sure. It's not like Wyatt has a way to compare being his brother. If Wyatt does know, he doesn't let on. That's not the kind of person he is. Chris loves him all the same, just differently.
.
Maya has a phoenix tattoo on her underarm, like Bianca. To Chris it's kind of the greatest thing since sliced bread. (willa and ori will have one too, but he doesn't know that then.)
He actually ŕeally loves being a dad, which isn't all that surprising. He isn't all that attached to a normal circadian sleep schedule anyway, so the late nights and early mornings don't bother him. He enjoys teaching stuff and that's half the battle, really.
Chris thinks he's kind of good at it too. He's got a good role model, because his own dad is pretty great. Or at least trying to be on the days when pretty great is not going to happen.
(for maya's wiccaning they gather in the attic. the floorboards don't squeak. wyatt has maya in his arms, blowing raspberries on her stomach and making her giggle with joy.
bianca stands in the spot she once died. chris holds her hand and breathes. he feels the blade of a dagger twisting in his intestines. he keeps breathing. they saved the world, he thinks, his mantra. it won't ever happen again.)
.
He wonders sometimes who he'd be if he were just one singular man, not an empty shell bestowed with mosaic memories. The newly born Chris was a clump of clay, infused with a spirit he never should've met and now there was an overlap when there shouldn't be.
Chris doesn't want to change it, for the record. He's glad for the clarity it provides him. It's a window into a world he cannot touch and cannot change, because it has been changed already. By him, as far as memory serves him right.
He wouldn't give it up, but sometimes he wonders what kind of man he were, if he were unburdened by the life that preceded his.
.
Chris is good at keeping secrets when he needs to be.
(he'll take this one to his grave.)
.
(the answer is yes.
would you do it again?
yes, in a heartbeat.
it was all worth it.)
.
Some nights Chris cannot sleep.
But it's fine, he can try again tomorrow. He has all the time in the world. (he has all the time in the world this time round.)