diversified | and all my hope is gone. [ psl ]

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and all my hope is gone. [ psl ]

WHO Chris Perry (

twicefated), Matt Perry (

twiceblessed).
WHAT Two brothers try to figure out how to stand on opposite ends without tipping each other over. Chris is evil and no longer believes in the sanctity of a good/evil balance, and Wyatt is the good trying to stop whatever happened to him as a child to make him that way.
WHEN After the alternate s5 finale.
WHERE ~~Everywhere~~ P3 to start.
WHY because Leo is a terrible father dangit

They'd finally earned some peace and quiet. Even after the Titans had been destroyed, Piper's goddess-wrath calmed, and their new positions as the Charmed Ones' whitelighters was confirmed, there had been some time just settling. Hopping twenty-plus years into the past on a fool's errand had a way of uprooting a guy, after all. Then again, Wyatt seemed better adjusted to it, probably because he'd actually had longer to plan for it. For the first time ever, he had been some steps ahead of Chris and Chris had just followed along behind. If he took care of this now and thwarted Wyatt's only chance do something about the corruption, then it would be beyond worth it to squander some time in the past with his failure of a family.

On the plus side, it meant Chris had gotten to banish Leo and Wyatt could hardly stop him. They both needed the personal time with the sisters that Leo's clinginess would prevent. Chris had more of an interest in establishing underworld contacts and a power base to locate his future-abductor and possibly protect the demon, but if he was going to play along with Wyatt then he needed to not be entirely antisocial with Piper, Paige and Phoebe, too.

So now it was early afternoon at P3 before the band would show up, before Piper would arrive and start getting things ready for the day. They were at the bar and Chris was flipping through some of the older magical texts he had located somewhere down there while occasionally turning to glance at his brother. "Wait, hold up. Did you say they wanted you to go shopping with them?" he demanded. "And you accepted?"

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Since there was a lull in demonic and evil activity after the defeat of the Titans, Wyatt had taken advantage of the situation handed to him and started down the path of befriending these past versions of his mom and aunts, which had already started proving to be beneficial. Both he and Chris now had somewhere to stay, even if they were separated because of it, and Wyatt was slowly integrating into the sisters' lives without trying to barge his way in.

He hadn't quite expected that Piper, Paige, and Phoebe would ask him out to go shopping, but he couldn't find it in his heart to turn it down. They were his family, even if they didn't have any idea who he was, and he wanted to spend time with them before he had to start working on a way to save Chris and it was because of family that he was at P3, sitting with his brother while he looked through the old books he had found.

"Yeah, of course I did. You think it's a bad idea that I said yes?" It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Going shopping was just another thing to help him understand these younger versions of his mom and aunts as well as get closer to them so that he could save Chris when the time came. "What did you want me to do, say no and spend all my time chasing down demons for leads? Or did you want me to waste my time trying to find out where Dad went?"

Turning his attention back to his book, Chris scoffed at the pages. There was a lot wrong with those options, but Wyatt had a point: this was an alternative to trying to meddle in any of the other affairs Chris was here to prevent him from doing. If Chris had to make sure Wyatt's trip to the past was nothing more than some dysfunctional family reunion the whole way through, then that was one of the easier options for dealing with the entire fiasco.

"Who cares where Leo went?" asked Chris. It didn't matter that he alone knew exactly where their father had disappeared to, he really wished the man could just be buried and forgotten. It wasn't like he would be doing anyone any favors, so why not leave him to rot? "Fine. Whatever. But you know they're probably just going to use your freakish height to pile their shopping on you, right? Hardly a bonding exercise."

"The sisters would once they find out he's missing, the Elders," Wyatt pointed out easily. Part of him wanted to say himself, but that wasn't going to make Chris any more likely to bring him back. Their father was a sore subject to Chris and Wyatt knew well enough to not bring it up with him unless it was absolutely important. "You know what's going to happen when they start trying to find him. Is there any proof that you did it?"

There was an easy shrug about the possibility of being a shopping mule. It wasn't the worst position to be in and if all else failed, he could just orb whatever bags they gave him back to the manor if it got to be too much. And shopping was one of those mysterious girl things Wyatt didn't quite understand, despite being raised by a mom and two aunts. "You know about that from experience, huh? Besides, I asked them if you could come along too."

There was an insulted look thrown at Wyatt for that question. "Hell no," he refuted. Even if Wyatt hadn't been there when Chris had banished Leo, there was no way he could deny that it had been him who had done it; Wyatt knew him too well to get away with that, and thankfully his big brother knew better than to rock the boat this early by admitting to the sisters that Chris had done such a thing. "Even if they look, they're not going to find him. How can something like that trace back to me? Come on."

At the mention of experience, Chris huffed. His relationship status wasn't exactly an open topic of conversation for a variety of reasons. Wyatt had never condemned it (hell, he rarely condemned anything) but that didn't mean Chris was going to start talking about Bianca just because Wyatt was trying to bring her up. Chris decided to focus on something a little more important instead. "You did what? What is wrong with you?"

"You're underestimating the Power of Three, Chris. If they want to find him, they will. It's only a matter of time," he said with a slight frown. Wyatt knew that Chris didn't care about that whole good versus evil thing, but it was hard to deny just how powerful their mom and aunts had been when they worked together towards a goal. Chris might not have some grand destiny attached to him, but he was still a Halliwell and the son of an Elder, so he was still powerful in his own right. "We were the last people he saw before you sent him off wherever. You don't think he's going to immediately blame us once he's found?"

He couldn't help but grin at Chris's reaction. Wyatt didn't mind him not talking about Bianca (overlords can't have girlfriends, after all) and was glad he was at least responding in some way about dealing with the sisters, even if he didn't seem all too happy about it and didn't want to actually get involved like this. "Nothing's wrong with me. We're both their whitelighters and the best way for us to get close to them is to do stuff with them that isn't witchcraft-related. Even if you are being you and wanting to conquer the underworld instead of something normal like going shopping with your family."

Chris dipped his head and allowed a grimace to pass. It was true that the Power of Three was incredibly strong and he had no trouble admitting that power dwarfed his own. A lot of things dwarfed his raw magical power. However, with Valhalla being such a safe-kept secret from the rest of the world, it wasn't only Chris's power keeping Leo hidden from the sisters until the time was right. If he could, Chris was going to try and trick Wyatt back into the future somehow before the search for Leo really kicked off anyway. "Oh, I know he will," said Chris dryly. "Not like that'll be any different than usual. But we'll have each other as alibis, right?"

"Listen to yourself. We're whitelighters, we don't have to be any more involved in their lives than we already are," Chris pointed out. "We're magical counsel and guidance, not babysitters and definitely not their friends."

Leo might be their father, but even Wyatt had some issues with him due to future circumstances, so he wasn't immediately going out and searching for him. Or even potentially helping him find out who sent him away for the time being. Chris had a plan and Wyatt had to hope that it benefited the both of them and not just Chris' agenda to stop him from changing the past so that he wasn't kidnapped. "Yeah, you can count on me to not rat you out, but we're not getting in trouble just because you hate Dad."

He had to keep himself from laughing. Did he not remember the stories they heard growing up about how Leo had to pretend to be a handyman until he was outed as a whitelighter? That wasn't even mentioning how much the sisters had relied on Leo to defeat the Titans. How did Chris miss the part where they couldn't keep their distance from their mother and aunts because that wouldn't help them in any way. "We're the whitelighters of the Charmed Ones. We can't stay uninvolved in their lives if we expect to do our jobs."

The thing about plans and Chris enacting them was that it was always near-impossible to get a bead on what it was going to do until it happened. He would set up the dominoes but even a bird's eye view wouldn't say where the last one would fall, and that was the way he liked it. Sometimes he didn't even know himself, just that it was something that needed to be done and he could figure the rest out on instinct as he went. This banishment of Leo's... well, it was more structured than most, true, but Chris wasn't about to admit that it was just as much for the both of them as it was about punishing his errant father. "You really think I'd be that sloppy? Nah, we're covered. Don't worry about it."

"We can stay more uninvolved than going shopping with them," Chris insisted. Look at how well getting involved had done for Leo — a marriage, two kids, and now two brothers at odds with philosophies shaking the world underneath them so hard that they were now on the edge of changing time itself. Pops must have been so proud. "Besides, my job is more to watch you than to watch them."

Edited 2014-11-15 02:47 (UTC)

"If you were angry enough while you did it, maybe," answered Wyatt with a look over at Chris. Sure, he was always the one with a plan, but past experience had taught him that Chris dealing with Leo wasn't exactly something that his brother could do with a level head. Even if he had planned it beforehand, emotions would always put a crack in the plan and let something slip through. "But you've always been good about working around that. I trust you to make sure we're safe."

"I don't know about you, but I don't want to keep dressing myself with the ex-boyfriend clothes pile. Or start borrowing Leo's clothes." It was still hard to stop himself from calling Leo their dad, but he was working on it and if he used names with Chris, maybe then it'd stick in his head better. And Leo's problem wasn't him getting close, but instead being an Elder and distancing himself. "Yeah, I know, stop me from changing the past, but if I remember correctly, the Elders assigned both of us to be the Charmed Ones' new whitelighters, not just me."

Crossing his arms, Chris leaned back in his chair and sulked. Wyatt had a point; anger was a good way to get Chris off balance and nothing got him angry quite like Leo did. However, it was easier to disassociate his family from the people they were meeting now and Chris was doing his best to maintain that distance for as long as he could. His family was indeed important to him, but Leo the least so of them all. Guy could never stop thinking about himself even when the fate of the world was on the line. "As you should," he said haughtily. He wouldn't let his anger for Leo mess with Wyatt if he could help it, unless of course the distraction would help Chris maintain the status quo.

"Wait," Chris said, brow furrowing in incredulity. "Wait. You're going shopping for clothes for you?" At that revelation, he just laughed. That was even worse than just being invited along for shopping if they were going to be doing it for Wyatt. And he expected Chris to come along? Yeah right. "You say that like I care what the Elders say."

Chris can sulk all he wants, Wyatt's going to continue making good points. He knows how his brother works and despite the fact that they were working against each other to shape how their futures would be, he still wanted to take care of him even if it was to make sure that nothing happened to make Leo suspicious of them and send one or both of them back to the future.

"It wasn't my idea! They came to me wanting to take me out shopping and I suggested that you could come along too. As moral support and all." Wyatt looked a little embarrassed, almost if he had been forced into the situation instead of having any say in the subject. "You know, this could be a good opportunity for both of us. Sure, you want to keep the future the same and I want to change it, but Mom's alive now and we can spend time with her, even if she doesn't know that we're her sons."

He rolled his eyes and sighed exasperatedly. Chris never liked the Elders and Wyatt couldn't blame him for it, but they were in a different time and the rules weren't the same as they were in their time. "You'll care what the Elders will do though. Don't toe the line and you'll be back into the future faster than you can orb, little brother. That doesn't fit into your plans of stopping me, now does it?"

That was their balancing act. Despite working at odds with each other, they still cared about the person they were fighting. It would have been enough to make anyone scratch their heads, seeing how well the two brothers got along and being told they were in a silent war to change the fate of the world. Such high stakes didn't usually breed such friendliness. Then again, they were anything but normal and Chris would hardly have it any other way. How else would he have been given the opportunities he'd taken advantage of?

"Then it's not really like spending any time with Mom at all, is it?" said Chris, sullen and peevish. He didn't want to think about their family. These people in this time were hardly the same, different by a lack of time and experience and knowledge of who their own children were. That Wyatt was still interested in making friends with these incomplete versions only irritated Chris; it was like he couldn't see how they weren't the Halliwells they could have been.

Chris gave Wyatt a long and plain look. He knew the rules and he knew the risks. There was a lot at stake here, everything Chris had worked and sweat and bled to achieve, and he wasn't about to let some robe-wearing hippies be his downfall. "Yeah, yeah. I know that much. Doesn't mean I really care about them, anyway."

It was how they survived so long while everything else fell apart around them. They had been nigh inseparable beforehand and while Chris' conquest of the world put some cracks into their relationship, they were still brothers and their relationship with each other still strong. Nothing would ever change that and it was really no surprise that even fighting a war against each other did nothing to pull them apart enough to make it seem like they were trying against each other.

"I know, but it's the only thing we've got." Despite how hard he was trying to appear otherwise, Wyatt knew very well that these people weren't the family he knows and if things went right, never would be, but having lost his mother when he was still a teenager combined with his father being around sporadically, he wanted to have some sort of connection with the past version of his aunts and mother, hopefully with the addition of Chris doing the same so that he could know them in a better light than how they were in the future.

Wyatt crossed his arms at Chris' look and sighed as he slouched forward onto the bar counter. "You know to be careful, okay? I don't have all my powers and twice blessed or not, I can't stop them from sending you back. Let's just try to make sure that they don't get a reason to toss you back to our time."

"Poor imitations," Chris said succinctly. He didn't want to mince words when Wyatt was trying to convince him to hang out with these people who would be but were not yet his family. They had a lot to go through first before they would even accept having a second son in the family, much less one such as Chris that they didn't truly meet until he was three years old. It seemed like a waste, and a problem, and... a temptation. It really was one of his only opportunities now and hell if Chris was going to give in and forget why he was there.

Wyatt earned himself an insulted look. "Of course I'll be careful. You too. You're the one actively trying to change the past, bro," he said, as if Wyatt hadn't realized this yet. Whatever Chris was doing in the past, Wyatt was the one who was working toward the biggest change and that was the largest danger to groups like the Elders.

"They're not poor imitations if they're the same person. It's more like untapped potential that they haven't had the chance to unleash yet," he fired back. That sounded almost whitelightery and it made Wyatt let out a soft sigh of frustration. He had definitely been up there for too long if he was starting to talk like that. Hopefully, Chris won't point that out.

All he could do was make a face back in response. He was perfectly aware of what he was doing in the past, thank you very much. "I'm the one actually doing the job the Elders assigned me instead orbing down to the underworld to deal with some demons, so I don't have much in the way of worries when it comes to them."

"Now you're starting to sound like Leo," said Chris with half of a sneer. It hadn't quite been the same observation Wyatt himself had made, but in a way it was definitely worse. They didn't need more of Leo's influence in their lives; at least the sisters tried with everything they had to be there for both Wyatt and Chris in their own ways growing up. Leo had just picked and chosen and failed even at that.

To that face, Chris merely rolled his eyes. Wyatt had better not have forgotten what he was doing already, or Chris would have been disappointed in him which was really rather difficult to accomplish. "Oh, that one job we lined up for you ourselves? Besides, dealing with demons directly is a perfectly legitimate way of performing whitelighter duties in the future. It's not my fault if they don't recognize that," Chris said with a self-assured grin. Of course he was watching out for himself, but anyone dealing with the sisters was doubtlessly going to be under a fair amount of scrutiny himself.

"I've been dealing with the Elders a lot lately and have to talk to other whitelighters about rules and stuff," he grumbled, any cheerfulness he had disappating at what Chris said. It was a fine line they walked, claiming to be whitelighters from the future, and Wyatt was in the uncomfortable position of playing nice with the powers that be in this time because Chris had no plans to. "It sucks and if I end up being just like him, I give you permission to find a way to defeat me."

There was a shake of his head and he sighed. Being the big brother meant he was looking out for Chris, even when he didn't think he needed it like right now. Whenever Leo came back from wherever Chris sent him, Wyatt knew that he would be keeping an eye on the two of them as the most likely suspects in his disappearance. "Is that what you're saying? I'm surprised they haven't sent you back yet."

Okay, even Chris could admit part of him felt bad about popping Wyatt's balloon like that, but he would much rather bring it to his attention now than let Wyatt continue on his Leo-like ways without a warning. What were brothers for, right? In lieu of letting that uncomfortable bit of seriousness continue, Chris laughed. "Like I don't already know how to do that," he said with mock pity. It was partway true. He loved Wyatt more than anyone else, and even that didn't mean Chris hadn't come up with designs to remove him if absolutely necessary. A paranoid mind was one without rest that explored all possible options. Didn't mean he always liked it.

"There is nothing wrong with being proactive," Chris said with some finality. "Besides, they're not going to know if I vanquish a few demons myself while I'm at it. If I'm careful. Which I am. We're fine."

It said a lot about Wyatt when his reaction to what Chris said was a smile and him starting to lose some of the gloom. Of course his brother had looked for a way to stop him. It was only practical that he look for a way to stop his enemy from interfering with his plans. Wyatt had done the same thing ages ago when Chris had started down the path to world conquest. "Then I'm in good hands if the worst ends up happening."

Part of Wyatt knew that Chris would be fine, but he still shook his head slightly even as he grinned. "I know, but you also know it's my job to look after you. No matter what, I'm still your big brother."

"You think that's the worst? Really?" Chris rolled his eyes and stood up, sweeping up the reading material he had dragged out. If Wyatt was going to be out with the sisters soon, Chris would have a much better time of it at the manor with the Book of Shadows instead. "You going insane isn't even on my top five of natural and magical disasters and how to avoid them."

"Which, if I recall," Chris said while nudging his shoulder into the back room door, "is your reasoning for this whole jaunt itself too, right?" He came back out, pulling his jacket on like he was planning to go for a light walk or something else similarly mundane. "At least your heart's in the right place."

"Oh, look! He's getting ready," said a voice from the top of the stairs. It was perennially happy and a tone that Chris knew all too well from both growing up and recent times. His head shot up like a deer in the lights as the Halliwell sisters started to trundle down the stairs. He turned to give a panicked, betrayed look over to his brother. The sisters were coming here?!

"It's the worst that could happen to me," Wyatt clarifies with a frown. Sure, Wyatt and Leo were closer than Chris and Leo were, but that didn't mean that Wyatt wanted to be like his father anymore than he already was. Growing up, everyone told him that he reminded them of his dad, while Chris had been more compared to Piper than anyone else. "Glad to know that there are bigger and badder things on your mind than me going whitelighter on you."

There was a bit of a shrug in response to what Chris said, even though it wasn't going to be visible to him. "For the most part, yeah that was it. And I was tired of being told to give up on you."

He could have said more, but the sisters' arrival stopped him from continuing down that conversation. There was a moment where Wyatt was amused at Chris' reaction to the arrival of the sisters and all he could do was look over at him and grin. After all, his heart was in the right place, right? Chris couldn't try to kill him for that.

"Oh it's worse than we thought," Phoebe said as she made her way down the steps and then glanced over at Chris, making Wyatt turn from amused to confused at her words. That he shared with Paige, who was right behind her older sister on the stairs into the club, obvious confusion on her face. "Chris, weren't you wearing that the last time we saw you?"

"What, is that how they were putting it? Give up on him, it's for the best?" asked Chris with a genuinely amused laugh. God, but the high and mighty grounds of the forces of 'good' always entertained. Anything they did was automatically justified because they were doing it for good, no matter if it did end up hurting people or the world around them. As long as their precious balance was maintained, their consequences were null. At least the 'evil' forces were more open to other ways of doing things. It was funny how they were the most open to compromise, to being neutral when they saw benefits to leading the world to own it rather than controlling it with fear.

Good really only meant too damn stubborn to Chris.

At Phoebe's tutting, Chris protectively pulled the lapels of his jacket to make it a more snug fit as if it would hide the rest of what he was wearing. "What, three days ago?" he asked. So what if he had been kind of absent? He had his own work to do while Wyatt had his family reunion to orchestrate. "That's plenty of time to get a load in the laundry, Phoebe."

"He has a point," Piper said in a stage whisper, leaning in to Phoebe and nodding. "But we also have our own point! You're coming with us, Mister. If you're going to be our whitelighter, it just wouldn't do to have it look like we've got a bum who keeps orbing in all the time, right?"

"Like they'd put it any other way," Wyatt replied easily enough. When they had first called on him to deal with his brother, he had been worried and upset over what they had said, but now that he's had time to deal with it and know Chris' response to it, it was something he didn't dwell on much beyond another reason he had to change the past. Maybe then the Elders wouldn't ask Wyatt to kill his little brother.

"Now you're just trying to get in trouble," Phoebe scolded lightly before turning to Piper, appearing amused by what she said. "Now do we want him having equal or better clothes than our previous whitelighter now turned Elder?"

"Definitely better," Paige piped in, looking like she was planning on having lots of fun playing dress up with not one, but two whitelighters. "I have never seen as much flannel as Leo has outside of a lumberjack. And we can't forget about Matt. I think bad fashion sense must run in their family."

Wyatt looked between Chris and the sisters before looking down at his own clothes. "What? What's wrong with my clothes. I thought they were okay."

Chris knew better than to continue the conversation right now. He had a very good idea of what the good guys had been pressing onto Wyatt and made a mental note to give them a run around of ridiculous proportions for trying to push his brother into something like that. It wasn't who they were to fight family against family, and anyone who attempted to force that bond into breaking was someone Chris did not want to see ever again. Just who did they think they were?

"Hey," Chris said, raising a finger in some kind of warning. It was easy to become casual in scenes like these, let his overlord persona disappear entirely where he had no one to govern except for himself. It would have felt nice except he knew it was only temporary and worked hard to keep that in mind. "Hey. Let's not get insulting here. I am nowhere near as bad as Matt."

"They're very..." Piper paused, one arm crossed to prop the other to her cheek thoughtfully. "They're very conservative! Also completely out of style, so let us fix that, hmmk?"

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