Binding Ties

A/N: As my high school P.E. teacher would say, “Meanwhile, back at the ranch…” A quote in this chapter is from 1x07, “The Fourth Sister”.

Phoebe Halliwell had been told several times in her life that she was a dark and complicated soul. As one innocent, a girl who thought the two of them had a lot in common put it, “we aren’t pink people, Phoebe”. Today though, the one day when she was actually expected to wear black, Phoebe found that she desperately wanted to wear some pink. She wanted, and she needed, a little sign of hope for herself and for Piper. She needed to believe in a light at the end of the tunnel that seemed to stretch in front of her forever. So she tied a light pink scarf around her neck and let the ends drape over the gray fitted ankle length dress she wore to the funeral.

It was simple and blandly neo-pagan, although Phoebe didn’t think most of the mourners were paying much attention to the service itself. She knew her father and Piper definitely weren’t. Phoebe had been worried about Piper ever since they’d discovered Prue’s body in the conservatory. Her grief and desperation had been all-consuming. She spent probably half the night before the funeral in the attic with the Book of Shadows, casting every spell she could think of to summon Prue’s spirit or bring their sister back body and soul.

At four AM, Phoebe walked in on Piper casting the blood-to-blood spell to call a lost witch, and she was convinced that if she hadn’t stopped her, Piper might have opened her wrists to give the spell more power. Yes, Piper scared her right now. But at least Piper had Leo; Phoebe watched her sister cry on her husband’s shoulder all through the service, and a part of her she’d tried to ignore wished she had Cole’s shoulder for herself. She made do with a single handkerchief and sympathetic pats on the back from Darryl Morris.

Neither Piper nor Phoebe noticed the gangly girl in a short dress who slipped into the chapel after the service started. She sat quietly in the back row and watched everything and everyone in front of her. When the service ended, the girl paused on her way out and then approached Phoebe, who was standing off by herself. “I just wanted to say how sorry I am for your loss,” the girl said, extending her hand.

Startled, Phoebe managed a “thank you” before she asked, “How did you know Prue?”

They touched palms as the girl muttered, “Um, just from around,” and Phoebe flashed into a vision. A rooftop downtown at night. The girl and some guy embracing and talking. Then Shax attacking from behind. Phoebe’s head spun, and she barely let go of the girl’s hand before she collapsed against the carpeted steps to the sanctuary. The girl, freaked, turned and ran out of the chapel. Leo and Darryl rushed over to help Phoebe up.

“That-that girl,” Phoebe gasped. “She’s going to be attacked by Shax.” Leo quickly steered Phoebe into the front of the chapel, where Piper had escaped when the service ended. “Piper,” Phoebe said. Piper turned, and the two of them could see how red-rimmed from crying her eyes were. “Piper, I need to go after that girl to protect her. We need to. Shax will attack her.”

Piper shook her head, nearly hysterical. “No. No! Phoebe, this is Prue’s funeral. Nothing, I mean nothing, from our former Charmed lives is going to mess with today. I-I won’t let it.”

Phoebe put a hand on each of Piper’s shoulders, and looked her in the eyes. “I have to do this, Piper. This girl’s life is in danger, I know it. How can we just turn away from that?”

Piper pressed her lips together, trying to keep her composure. “We aren’t the Charmed Ones anymore. That’s how.”

“I don’t believe that‘s it,” Phoebe replied softly. Her hands dropped to her sides. “I got that premonition, and I’m not going to just ignore it.” She turned to Leo for help. “I have to do this, don’t I?”

Slowly Leo nodded. “If you got a premonition, then I think both of you must still have your powers.” He glanced at Piper. “If you still have your powers, then you still have an obligation to use them to protect the innocent.”

Phoebe nodded decisively to the middle distance between her sister and her brother-in-law. “Then that’s what I’m going to do. I’ll go on my own if I have to, Piper.”

Leo looked at Piper. He never liked to get between the sisters, but as their guide and protector, he would now if he had to. “Honey, I know --” he started to say, but Piper cut him off.

“No, Leo, you don’t. I’m sorry, but no. Whatever destiny we’re supposed to fulfill died when Prue did. She isn’t even buried yet, and you two want me to go out on some wild goose chase?” Piper’s voice was thick with the effort of holding back tears.

Phoebe held out her hands, half in potential defense and half in case her sister needed a hug. “Piper, I know, okay? I do. I’m hurting too. But think what Prue would want us to do.”

Piper glared at them both for a full minute. Phoebe and Leo braced themselves for another round. Gradually they realized that she wasn’t seeing them. She was lost in thought. Finally, she nodded at them.

They left the chapel two hours later, after Prue’s casket was placed in the modern mausoleum. Phoebe’s best guess on the location of her premonition was a rooftop near the TransAmerica building. About forty-five minutes after they settled in with two pairs of binoculars to watch from an old multistory warehouse across the street, the girl from the chapel showed up with the guy Phoebe foresaw. Five minutes later, they watched a mini tornado form on the rooftop. Both the girl and the guy ran, but Shax was faster. The guy fell, and Shax gained on the girl. Then with Piper, Phoebe and Leo watching, the girl orbed in place, and Shax, startled, blew away. Frightened again, the girl ran into the building’s stairwell. Piper and Phoebe turned to Leo. “Wait. She’s a whitelighter?” Phoebe asked. “Why would I get a premonition about Shax attacking a whitelighter? Leo, what’s going on?”

Leo shook his head. “I don’t know. She looked like she didn’t expect to orb, either. That doesn’t make sense. I’ll go ask the Elders what they know.” He ducked away from the window and orbed out. A few moments passed in the warm spring evening before he returned. “The Elders have no idea who she is,” he told them.

“Well,” Piper spoke up. “Looks like she’s safe for now, whoever she is. Shax disappeared. I think we should go home and deal with the wake.” She walked toward the warehouse’s stairwell, before turning back to Phoebe and Leo. “Are you two coming? There’s nothing more to see here.”

Phoebe and Leo glanced at each and shrugged. She did have a point.

They returned to the Manor and somehow got through most of the wake. Phoebe tried to shield Piper from some of the more intrusive mourners. About an hour after they returned, Piper escaped to the attic. When the guests started to drift toward the door, giving their final condolences, Phoebe slipped upstairs after her.

Piper stood looking out the attic window. The Book of Shadows was open on the lectern, and Phoebe went to close it while she tried to figure out something to say. When she touched the face-down front cover, however, she flashed into another vision. The same girl from the rooftop, seated at a table. She was doodling the shape of a triquetra on a cocktail napkin. A napkin with “P3” on one corner. Phoebe came out of this vision shaking, but she clutched at the lectern and remained standing.

“Piper,” she said. “I saw the girl again. I think she was or will be at P3. She knows about the triquetra. I think she knows us.”

Piper turned to her, and seemed to be trying to decide whether to respond. She glanced at the cover of the Book of Shadows. Phoebe looked down at it, too. The triquetra hadn’t separated. They looked at each other. Then Piper said simply, “Okay. Let’s go to P3.”

It was ten o’clock by the time they reached the nightclub. Phoebe sat at the bar, while Piper gave the bouncers a head’s up to watch for a girl who looked like the one they had seen attacked, and her date. But she needn’t have bothered, because the girl came in right after Piper came back over to Phoebe.

“That’s her,” Phoebe said to Piper out of the corner of her mouth. “Dark brown hair, high cheekbones, very fair complexion, the greenish miniskirt. What do we do?”

Piper looked around the bar quickly. Her practicality asserted itself through her grief. “Drink order. Then try to get her alone so you can ask about what she knows. Vamp the guy, I‘ll handle it from there.”

Phoebe made her way over to where the girl and the same guy were seated, notepad in hand. “Hey, what can we start you out with?”

The girl looked up, startled to see Phoebe and not a regular waitress. “I’ll…just have mineral water. Um. Shane?” She turned to her date.

“Bud Lite,” the guy said to Phoebe. She wrote that down, then said to the guy, “Do you have a silver ‘98 Honda Civic with California plates? ‘Cuz security just told me it’s double parked in the red and like two minutes from getting cited.” The guy blanched, and Phoebe had chew her lip to keep from laughing as he bolted out the door. She shared a small knowing smirk with the girl before she returned to the bar.

“Guy’s out of the way for at least as long as security can give him the run around, good thinking there,” Phoebe reported to Piper sotto voce. “And our orbing, occult symbol drawing innocent ordered mineral water. Stay tuned for the complete story.” Piper managed a weak smile as Phoebe headed back over to the girl‘s table.

“Hi again,” she said, pulling out a chair and sitting down. Sure enough, the girl had begun to doodle a triquetra on one of the napkins. “Now that’s an interesting symbol. You must be really good to be able to draw it from memory just like that.”

The girl looked at Phoebe, who was afraid for a moment that she’d startled the innocent again. Then she said quietly, “I’ve drawn this shape ever since I could draw. It always just made sense to me. I don’t really know why.”

Phoebe, encouraged that the girl didn’t seem to mind her company that much, dropped her voice so it matched the girl’s in volume. “Do you know anything about it, like what it means? Or the meanings of any other symbols?”

The girl shook her head. Phoebe added thoughtfully, “My sister’s funeral was chalk full of symbols. Lots of them were about death and new life, obviously.”

Her eyes widening, the girl said quickly, “Are you okay? I’m so sorry about whatever I did.” She rolled her eyes in self-deprecation. “I can be such a klutz, but it usually doesn’t make people faint. That would be a new low, even for me.”

Phoebe couldn’t fully keep back a tiny grin. “No, I’m okay,” she reassured the girl. “My other sister Piper and I are just kind of curious about why you were at Prue’s funeral, that’s all.”

“Oh.” The girl looked down at her lap and fidgeted with her hands. After a minute she said, “Okay. I didn’t want to say anything. I didn’t know how to, or even what to say. There’s a lot I still don’t get.” She paused.

“But?” Phoebe prompted.

“But,” the girl muttered, still looking half at her hands and half at Phoebe’s. “I can’t explain exactly why I came to the funeral, but um, I’m adopted. I started to search for my birth mother about a year ago. According to my birth certificate, her name was Patricia Halliwell.”