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Distantly, Piper watched over the bustle below her as staff set up for the coronation. Normally, she’d be down there with them, keeping an eye on everything and making sure that everything was running smoothly, no matter how many times the old chief event coordinator tried to respectfully send her away, fretting over security risks. Today, however, she simply watched over from above, something ugly twisting in her stomach.
She hated everything. The chairs, the banners, the colors. Part of her wanted to storm down there and rip everything apart, screaming like she was an evil queen from a fairytale. None of it looked right. None of it was right. The next coronation shouldn’t have been for decades, not when the last one was only three years ago. Despite the grief in her heart for Grams that day, Piper couldn’t help but be excited as she watched her big sister vow to protect their people and their country.
And Prue had, to the very last moment, even when it ultimately cost her her life. And now it was Piper who was expected to don the crown, as if she didn’t see the remnants of her sister’s blood sparkling on the diamonds every time she closed her eyes. (Prue hadn’t even been wearing the crown when she died, but it haunted Piper’s dreams anyways.)
Suddenly unable to bear the sight of the preparations anymore, Piper turned on her heel, striding back to her rooms. Luckily, few people were in the halls, too busy preparing for the ceremony. The few people who saw her pretended that they didn’t, her temper having become infamous in the palace in the past few months. She’d heard Phoebe and Leo discussing it in soft murmurs, one of them sharing that even as the staff avoided her, few had actually become bitter at her for it. Her relationship with Prue had been well-known, and Piper had been well-loved in the palace for years, especially when it came to Grams’ temper or Phoebe’s more rebellious stint as a teenager. She was given space for her grief and anger, even if it would ultimately not last forever.
Some distant part of her was grateful for it, but the majority of her itched for a fight, for a chance to strike at some unknown figure that she could blame. When they learned of where the perpetrators were hiding, Piper wanted nothing more than to be there to vanquish them from the kingdom once and for all, but all she could do now was grieve and rage and cry, and she hated it.
Reaching her rooms, Piper slipped inside and sunk into the closest chair. Burying her face in her hands, she took several gasping breaths, trying to avoid breaking down into tears again. For minutes, the only sounds were her own shaky breaths and sniffling as she tried in vain to control grief that had no mind for the box she attempted to shove it into, overflowing the edges. When the door quietly opened and someone entered, Piper looked up at Leo and lost the battle.
“I don’t want to go.”
Leo knelt down beside her, eyes infuriatingly gentle even at her statement. She knows that’s not an option, not truly, but in this moment, Piper can’t genuinely envision herself leaving this room to speak to a single person, much less attending a coronation in front of an entire kingdom.
“Why not?”
“Because if I go-” Her voice breaks, and Leo takes her hand as she struggles to speak. “Because if I go, it means that Prue isn’t coming back. And I don’t think that I can handle that.”
“We can handle it together.”
If Leo offered that to any other problem, she could believe it. After all, they’d faced countless obstacles to their eventual marriage and in their lives together, and they’d managed to work through nearly everything together. But this? This was insurmountable.
“She’s been there my whole life. I’ve always had a big sister. And I don’t know how to live without one.” She pulled her hand away from him, and Leo let her. Unable to bear his gaze, she stood, pacing to the other side of the room.
“Piper-”
“Why didn’t you save her?” Piper interrupted.
“I tried-”
“But you didn’t! Why couldn’t-” Piper gestured at the air, at the idea of whoever it was in charge of fate, “let you save her, too?”
“It’s okay to be angry-”
“I’m not angry. I’m pissed off! Don’t you understand? You saved the wrong sister! You saved me because I’m your damn wife, and you should have saved her because she was the best! Because she- you should-”
Piper dissolves into tears again and doesn’t stop Leo as he slowly approaches and wraps her in his arms. Clinging to his arms around her, she asked, “Why did we go through so much for it to end this way?”
Leo didn’t answer, unable to give her an answer that would help. This wasn’t a situation that he could fix for or with her.
The door quietly opened again, and Phoebe entered with red eyes and tear-stained cheeks. She forced a small smile as she said, “Piper? It’s time to get ready.”
Piper shook her head, pulling away from Leo once again. He let her go with a pained look in his eyes that she ignored. She couldn’t handle her own pain now, much less anyone else’s now. “I-”
Phoebe held out her hand to her and said, “We have to get ready. P-Prue would never forgive us for looking bad at your coronation.”
Finally, Piper took her hand.
“Okay, it’s time,” Elise said, clutching a clipboard as she ushered Piper down the hall. Piper followed, already drained and they hadn’t even truly begun yet. “We’ll open the doors on the count, and you know what to do- Martha, I swear to God-”
Piper tuned out Elise’s criticism as she stared at the doors listlessly. Last time, she had been on the inside, waiting for her sister to walk through. She wondered how Prue had felt, if she’d been anxious or excited. If she’d been surveying everything around her to make sure it was up to her standards. If she’d been running over the ceremony in her head. She wished that she’d thought to ask. She wished a lot of things now though.
The doors began to open, and Piper took a breath and focused. Her grief had to wait. She had to make it through the coronation without looking like she was falling apart, project the same aura of strength that Prue always had effortlessly. After the ceremony- afterwards, she could rage and fall apart again. Still, Piper couldn’t manage better than a neutral expression, which Elise said nothing about as she murmured into her earpiece something Piper couldn’t hear.
“All rise for Queen Piper Marie Halliwell!”