Twosday: Moral Accounting
Tell us about two debts: either ones you owe to other people, or ones other people owe to you, or mix-n-match. Anything from lending a friend $20 to having student loan debt to owing somebody your life is fair game.
She owes it to Piper to be the best aunt she can possibly be to the little boy whose nascent existence she scoffed at, whose power she laughed at, who she'd declared would be a coward like his mother. The little boy destiny had handed her sister, in place of the girl she had in one possible future. Prue wonders what kind of relationship that version of herself had had with that little girl in the picture, and then she looks at little Wyatt, who looks so much like Leo it takes her breath away, and she watches Piper with him, knowing that in some cosmic way she is seeing how her mother was with her, and the very real role she played in nearly preventing all of it almost makes her break down right there in the foyer. The twice-blessed child. Despite everything. And I'm his aunt.
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"If anything, I owe you." He'd told her of the wider, greater reason he hadn't fallen on his athame upon hearing of the plot, the plot that required him above all. Cosmic chess. The Grand Design. Distracting the Source from an outright overwhelming advantage. But even now Prue could see the truth of that first, smaller scale reason. Giving a partially human, semi-ordinary grandchild to a mortal father forced to leave too soon. She thinks of that, and the magic, her mother and her sister's magic, that flows from inside her because of him, and suddenly through her fear and confusion she is happy, and happy that he is happy. Her ego is still enough of a circuit breaker that this is odd, though.
"I don't have a choice."
His look is intensely diffident, trying, she can only guess, not to manipulate her. Not to be demonic. "You can decide how you feel about this. Either way, I'd understand."
The silence lengthens. She remembers the Source saying, "You would owe me their lives, witch. I will want something in exchange." And she wonders what she would want from Cole Turner.
She owes it to Piper to be the best aunt she can possibly be to the little boy whose nascent existence she scoffed at, whose power she laughed at, who she'd declared would be a coward like his mother. The little boy destiny had handed her sister, in place of the girl she had in one possible future. Prue wonders what kind of relationship that version of herself had had with that little girl in the picture, and then she looks at little Wyatt, who looks so much like Leo it takes her breath away, and she watches Piper with him, knowing that in some cosmic way she is seeing how her mother was with her, and the very real role she played in nearly preventing all of it almost makes her break down right there in the foyer. The twice-blessed child. Despite everything. And I'm his aunt.
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"If anything, I owe you." He'd told her of the wider, greater reason he hadn't fallen on his athame upon hearing of the plot, the plot that required him above all. Cosmic chess. The Grand Design. Distracting the Source from an outright overwhelming advantage. But even now Prue could see the truth of that first, smaller scale reason. Giving a partially human, semi-ordinary grandchild to a mortal father forced to leave too soon. She thinks of that, and the magic, her mother and her sister's magic, that flows from inside her because of him, and suddenly through her fear and confusion she is happy, and happy that he is happy. Her ego is still enough of a circuit breaker that this is odd, though.
"I don't have a choice."
His look is intensely diffident, trying, she can only guess, not to manipulate her. Not to be demonic. "You can decide how you feel about this. Either way, I'd understand."
The silence lengthens. She remembers the Source saying, "You would owe me their lives, witch. I will want something in exchange." And she wonders what she would want from Cole Turner.