Binding Ties

A/N: The first three quotes in this chapter are from episode 2x08, “P3 H2O”, and the last one is from episode 3x02, “Magic Hour”. Those, and the rest of Charmed, belong to Aaron Spelling et al. The Disney movie referenced belongs to the Walt Disney Co.
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The smirk returned to Cole’s face. “I’m sure you could guess what he wants most. You know he could have killed you on the spot, but he saw potential in you.”

“Potential?” Prue shook her head, trying to work past the pain. “Potential for what, evil? You have got to be kidding me. There is no way I would ever --”

“Even though you already have turned once before?” he interrupted her. “Dantalian was successful, whether you want to admit it to me or not. Sure, she acted without the Source’s approval, but reports got back to him about how completely your loyalties shifted.”

Prue put her hands against the cool stone wall behind her, and used it to brace herself as she stood up. She decided to keep her hands right where they were when her head swam with dizziness from the sudden movement. Absently, she wondered how long she had been tied to the wall. Then she remembered the time reversal; just thinking about it made her headache worse. It was better to just focus on the demon in front of her.

“That’s an exaggeration. I know there were some key developments you missed out on while you were shimmering all over to avoid bounty hunters,” she told him archly, “So I’ll spell it out for you. One, I was kidnapped and magically bound and gagged; two, I wasn’t actually conscious when the ‘wedding’ took place; and three, Donatalian’s goal was to turn the Book of Shadows evil through me so she could get it for herself. I was just a conduit.”

Cole pretended to consider her words for a moment. Sensing that little harm could come to him while she seemed to be so weak, he moved half a step closer. “The most powerful conduit she could have, though. Anyway, you’ll be relieved to hear that the Source’s current plan gives you a more active role. Not only does he want to turn you to have your powers at his disposal, he also believes that you are the key that will allow him to co-opt an ancient prophecy.”

She frowned at him, but ignored the attempt to nettle her. “What prophecy? Other than Melinda Warren’s prophecy about the Charmed Ones, I have no idea what prophecy could possibly involve me.”

“The Source only found out about it recently himself,” Cole replied. “Which is interesting because it’s about as old as the prophecy of the Charmed Ones. I’ll spare you the details about how it was finally found. He analyzed it and consulted with the sorcerer who uncovered it. Everything points to you being the best candidate to allow the Source to claim the power of the prophecy for evil.”

Prue kept her palms flat against the cool stone wall and tried taking a step forward. Her legs were still stiff. “And what does this prophecy say? What role am I supposedly the ‘best candidate’ for?”

Cole wrinkled his brow, pretending to have difficulty remembering. He didn’t know everything about the prophecy, of course. The Source still kept him at a strict “need to know” status. Prue was about to join him in that part of the game. “The prophecy foretells the birth of a magical child, one destined to be the most powerful magical being ever known to either side. It gives specifics about three signs that will herald the child’s birth, and predicts that based on those signs, the child will probably be born early in the second millennium of the era.”

She blinked. One hand went back against her forehead. The coolness it had absorbed from the stone helped soothe her headache, and she felt that she could use all the help she could get. “So, what, I’m supposed to be…” Prue stopped when the implication hit. She glared at Cole. “No! Not a chance in any level of hell! Really, you might as well just take out an athame and slit my throat now, because I would gladly die rather than let the Source turn me into Rosemary Woodhouse.”

Her glower was gaining strength, and Cole figured that meant she’d feel ready to leave this particular cavern soon, if nothing else. “I figured you’d say something like that, but more importantly, so did the Source. But he thinks that a certain piece of information, and what he could do with it, will make you reconsider. Now, I don’t know everything he knows, and I’ve told you why, but you’ll want to know what I do know. ”

She sighed, and rolled her eyes at him. “Which is what, exactly? What could the Source possibly think would be important enough to me that I‘d agree to this plan of his?”

He met her exasperated look dead on. “Your sister, and the future of the Charmed Ones.”

Her shock and anger made her let go of the wall. Unsteadily, she took two quick steps forward. Cole caught her hands. She looked up at him, furious. “The Source promised me he wouldn’t go after Phoebe, and that Piper would be alright after time was reset. How does he think breaking his end of our deal gets me on his side?”

Cole shook his head. “He doesn’t intend to break the deal. He’s referring to your other sister.”

Prue’s glare reflected her impatient suspicion. She yanked her hands free of his grasp. “My other sister? I only have two sisters, Cole.”

His smirk returned, but it wasn’t as full as it had been. “Not according to what the Source discovered. All the Underworld’s full of rumors about how she remained off any magical radar this long, but the basic details are that she’s almost twenty four years old, works at a social services agency, and is apparently half-whitelighter.”

She took a step back. Another sister, a half-whitelighter. How, Prue asked herself, was that even possible? Then she remembered. First words and then hazy images.

“Sam was…your mom’s whitelighter.”
“He loved her.”
“I lost the most important thing in my life twenty years ago.”
“Unspeakable wrath the likes of which you can’t even imagine.”

She ran through the front door and through the foyer, avoiding four-year-old Piper’s pots and pans. “Mom, Mom! Guess what!” Grams came rushing to her, instead. “Prudence!” she said. “What have I told you about shouting in this house in the afternoon? Your mother needs her rest.”

Grams picked them up from the first day of camp at the lake, a cranky Phoebe in tow. “Looks like it’s just the four of us tonight, girls. Your mother had something to take care of.” Prue didn’t see her mom until the next night.

The pieces of whatever puzzle the Source had uncovered floated through Prue’s mind. She tried for a desperate moment to fit them together in any way that didn’t lead to the obvious answer. But she failed. There was only one explanation. Her mom’s affair with her whitelighter Sam had produced a daughter who they had to keep secret--from the Elders and Patty’s other daughters. The three future Charmed Ones.

Prue broke out of her musing to the sound of Cole clearing his throat. “It-it’s true,” she finally managed to say. “She must’ve been born in early August of 1977. I remember that our mother was tired all that spring, and then gone for about two days straight. They must have given her up.”

Cole slowly nodded. “The thought in the demonic rumor mill is that your grandmother bound her powers, at least, her witch’s powers. The power to orb apparently can’t be stripped that way. Also, she doesn’t seem to have been wiccaned.”

Confusion came to the fore of Prue’s increasingly chaotic emotional state. She stared at Cole. “Wiccaned?”

“Blessed, by the spirits of significant figures in your family line. All infant witches are supposed to receive the blessings, in order to be oriented toward the use of good magic.”

She eyed him. “The same family line you went back in time to wipe out. Hm. So what does the Source want with my youngest sister, Cole?”

“Nothing more than normal.” He smiled slightly, but explained, “All witches who come into their powers the way you three did -- after puberty because of binding -- are open to what’s called the window of opportunity during the first day after their powers are released. The window allows good and evil an equal playing field to sway the witch to their side. Your sister’s window looks like it’ll start in five days, assuming Piper and Phoebe find her when the Source thinks they will.”

Prue took a breath. Always the overachiever, she knew she had absorbed more concentrated, vital information during this bizarre mutual interrogation with Cole than she had in years. There was still so much she hadn’t processed yet, so many questions to ask. Part of her felt the rise of the familiar mild anxiety that came over her whenever she didn’t feel like she had a certain amount of control over a situation. Another more cynical part of her whispered that by the look of things, she had better get used to the feeling.

“So?” she prompted him.

Cole dropped his hands to his sides. He really hadn‘t been sure how she‘d react to the news, and she was not yet walking well. “So, you can keep your answer of ‘no’ to the Source’s plan. You then die, and the Source will go straight after your half-whitelighter sister during her window of opportunity. He will turn her and she’ll become the key to carrying out the prophecy. Piper and Phoebe would be on their own against demonic attack.” Prue opened her mouth to say something, anything, in response. But Cole held up a hand, and with a small impatient noise, she let him continue. “If, on the other hand, you agree, then he will make just a token effort during the window. He’s got to make the Underworld believe that he’d try to prevent the Charmed Ones from re-forming. But he wouldn’t actually turn your other sister or hurt her permanently.”

Prue tried to get her head around the choice Cole was presenting her with. “In other words,” she thought aloud, “if I refuse, any chance for the Charmed Ones to re-form will be lost. Piper and Phoebe would be vulnerable without the Power of Three. But agreeing ….”

“Means they live to fight the good fight for at least one more day,” he finished for her.

She looked up at him sharply. It meant so much more than that, of course. I’ll probably never see them again, at least in this lifetime. My three sisters or my father. She shook her head. Thoughts straight out of a Disney movie didn’t help the situation. Prue thought back instead to the days after Phoebe said the incantation unbinding their powers. How confused, shocked, frustrated, and downright scared she had been. How she struggled to come to terms with an entire side of herself that she hadn’t known existed, and what it meant for her life. How much she had needed her sisters during that time, even if she didn’t admit it to them.

Her youngest sister was about to have similar questions and fears. Through the haze of her current confusion and outrage, two clear thoughts rose to the surface of Prue’s mind. She could not let her own sister go through that journey alone. She could not let Piper and Phoebe remain vulnerable, deprived of the re-formed Power of Three.

Prue carefully placed both hands back on the cave wall. She looked at Cole. “Fine. I agree to the Source’s plan. But you tell him that he had better keep his promises.”

He laughed aloud. “I wouldn’t dare tell the Source that he had to do anything he hadn’t already decided to do. Such as, normally, keeping promises to a witch who is in no position to argue.” He gave her a pointed look. “Lucky for you, he does intend to keep his end of the bargain this time. The prophecy is that important to him.” Cole turned to leave the cavern.

“Speaking of the prophecy,” she called to his retreating back a moment later, “you didn’t tell me how the Source plans for me to become pregnant. Who is supposed to be the father of this all-powerful child? Him?”

Cole turned around, slowly. He pressed his lips together to keep away the smirk that last thought inspired. “No. I am.”