Chapter Text
The thing was, Chris had never known his brother before darkness had seeped into his bones, so he had never understood how far Wyatt would be willing to go. His brother had always felt different from the rest of their family, had always had the taste of bitterness and the potential of violence that wasn’t how his mother and aunts felt, even when they were out hunting demons.
Wyatt never woke up one day, at fifteen, and start sprouting nonsense about power and magical supremacy. Instead it was a long slow slide into darkness and up until no one could deny it anymore, Chris had insisted to himself it wasn’t really happening.
Even looking back he couldn’t pinpoint the moment he realized things had gone too far.
It should have been when he was ten and Wyatt had just turned twelve and Wyatt started fighting with their mother and father—their father who would come down when Wyatt was pitching a fit but never when Chris screamed at the top of his lungs for him. Wyatt was starting to insist that power mattered more than morals, and it sent them into a spin. Chris sat on the top of the stairs and listened, biting his fingers and wondering why power sounded wrong in Wyatt’s mouth.
It might have been when they were even younger and Wyatt was cold compared to other children of his age, distant and cruel, but he was Chris’ older brother, so Chris just figured that’s what brothers were like.
As Wyatt got older the fights got louder, which would have been bad enough but he started sneaking out at night, too. With Paige and Phoebe living in their own places after several false starts, Wyatt and Chris weren’t sharing a room anymore, but somehow Chris was the only one who seemed to notice how often his brother wasn’t there. Sometimes when he was thirteen he would sleep in Wyatt’s room after a nightmare because his bed stayed empty, and as far as Chris knew, Wyatt never realized what his younger brother was doing.
But then Piper died and what had always been there, shimmering under the surface cracked open.
Leo disappeared entirely for a whole year, and Victor never stood a chance against Wyatt. Even when he moved into the manor to take care of the brothers, if Piper couldn’t stop her son from sneaking out to spend time with demons, Victor certainly couldn’t.
Chris however, despite the grief and the following loss of his aunts—because they didn’t go together but they might as well have—at least found happiness with his grandfather. Victor picked up his pieces and put him back together when he was fourteen and blaming himself for everything.
But Wyatt didn’t want that help, and the fights started again, going right up until Chris turned fifteen, Wyatt not quite seventeen, and Victor was diagnosed with lung cancer.
That was the moment Chris and Wyatt finally started fighting each other, the moment that Chris went from watching and fearing for his brother, to yelling at the top of his lungs at him like Wyatt might listen to him more than their father ever had.
He should have known better.
“You can’t just leave,” he said one random night, Wyatt already halfway out the window. Chris wasn’t sure why he was going out the window, when he just as easily could have orbed.
“Why not?” Wyatt asked, leaning his back against the side of the open window, one leg still dangling out on the roof as he watched Chris. His arms were crossed over his chest, and it was almost midnight.
“Because you can’t,” Chris said, a pathetic response.
“I can’t?” Wyatt asked, one brow inching up. “Baby brother, who would stop me?”
“You should stop yourself,” Chris snapped, only vaguely wondering if Wyatt had ever called him baby brother before, because he could not recall it. “Grandpa—”
“I can’t do anything for him anyway,” Wyatt shrugged, like that’s all Chris was asking for.
“You could be here for him,” Chris said. “We’re all he has left, and he’s—”
Wyatt scowled. “Then you stay.”
“I am!” Chris yelled. “You should too! Where are you even going this late?” and he couldn’t help but notice Wyatt was wearing an old black leather jacket, and he looked dangerous. His brother shouldn’t have looked dangerous, he should have looked like any other teenager, should have looked like homework was his main concern not whatever he sneaked away to do in the middle of the night.
“Ah, baby brother,” and Chris scowled all the harder for the false affection in those words. “You don’t want to know.”
“Dad—” Chris started, a last-ditch effort. Leo had started coming down again, but usually only to talk to his oldest son, who sometimes lashed out in enough anger to destroy the furniture after he left.
“Fuck him anyway,” Wyatt spat. “What does he get to say? He’s not been there for us when it mattered.”
Chris wanted to say at least Leo had been there for Wyatt more than him. Instead he took a breath, and then another one. “Please don’t leave,” he said, almost a whisper and for a second he felt a flash of hope because Wyatt pulled his leg back in, rising from his seat at the window.
“I have to go,” he said, and Chris felt that hope shrivel.
“Why?” he asked. “Where are you going that’s more important than your family?”
Wyatt stilled again, watching Chris. “You’re going to see one day,” he said. “That this is for our family.”
“That—we—” Christ started. “That doesn’t make sense. We’re right here. We need you to be here, to, to help us through this. How is leaving going to help us?”
“Because when I change the world you’re going to be safe,” Wyatt said, and Chris for the first time stared at him like he had never seen him before.
“Our parents couldn’t change the world,” he said. “They tried and it always went wrong.”
“They didn’t have my power,” Wyatt said, like it was going to be that simple. The word still felt wrong coming from his mouth, as much as it had when Chris was ten.
“They had the power of three,” Chris protested. “Please, I don’t need you to protect me, I need you to be here for me when I ask,” unlike anyone else in his life, he added silently. Chris had never been anyone’s first choice it seemed, and when it came to his father he was pretty sure he rated behind literally the entire world. “Brother, I’m scared. I don’t want to lose grandpa too, not this soon.”
“And I can’t save him,” Wyatt said, but his eyes were less dismissive than his voice. “But I can do this.”
“We’re going to be the only ones left,” Chris said. “Doesn’t that—doesn’t that hurt you? Do you not care?”
And Wyatt leaned forward, Chris starting to back away when Wyatt caught him with his hands at Chris’ throat, pressing their dry lips together. It wasn’t much of a kiss at all, just an affirmation of something Chris wasn’t certain of. That uncertainty hovered around him for years, allowed him to pretend it meant something different from what it felt like.
But at the time he froze, too surprised to react.
“I care about you,” Wyatt said, hands still warm against the side of Chris' neck. “Never doubt that.”
“Stay,” Chris said. “I want you to stay.”
“Sorry, little brother,” Wyatt said, pulling away while Chris was still confused and thrown. He went out the window without an other word, leaving Chris with his aching heart alone.
Later Chris knew that the kiss meant something, even if Wyatt never brought it up again. In the meantime, Wyatt kept running and Chris stayed still, waiting for the inevitable. It was easier to run away from your pain and problems than it was to stay and watch their last relative waste away, getting sicker by the day. Sometimes Chris would be sitting with Victor, playing cards or games just to take his mind off things and he would look up and see Wyatt in the doorway, leaning his shoulder against the frame and watching them.
But he rarely stayed and Chris caught him one night with skinned knuckles and a singed jacket. “Shouldn’t you be more powerful than that?” Chris asked, barbed in Wyatt's doorway, and Wyatt looked up.
“Doesn’t mean I can’t still be surprised,” Wyatt shrugged, running his fingers over the knuckles of one hand and not healing them.
“Who are you fighting?” Chris asked, and Wyatt only gave him a cold smile.
“Demons,” he said, like it was obvious.
“You’re going to get yourself killed,” Chris said. “And then what’s going to happen to me?”
“Oh don’t worry,” Wyatt said. “I’m not going to get myself killed.”
“You sure seem like you’re trying,” Chris said.
“Oh no,” Wyatt said, rising and Chris swallowed because he hadn’t noticed that Wyatt had somehow gained another several inches. “Not me. Just those that stand in my way.”
“You’re not still thinking you’re going to change the world, are you?” Chris asked and Wyatt just gave him that cold smile again. He reached for his own door, closing it slow enough Chris saw it coming and stepped back. For a long time he stood there, staring at the wood and frowning.
When Chris was sixteen and Wyatt seventeen, Victor died and Wyatt declared himself king of the Underworld.
Somehow, despite a life time of warning signs, Chris hadn’t seen it coming.
That failure would haunt him, all those nights he should have pushed harder, all those moments he should have tried to soften Wyatt’s heart and instead let it go because his brother had always been that way, hadn’t he?
Chris spent his whole life watching his brother fall, and he didn’t even notice until Wyatt forced him to look.
On the day of Victor’s funeral, they moved out of the Halliwell manor, Chris closing the door with his telekinesis because it felt like the closing of a chapter. He'd done it before, but always from inside the manor, never out on the street, lifting his hand to watch the wood and glass door close on that chapter of their lives.
Chris thought maybe he should run now, before it was too late.
He held the Book of Shadows under one arm as he turned to Wyatt who watched him with his arms crossed, waiting for him down at the street.
“I’m doing this to protect you,” Wyatt said.
“No, I know you better than that,” Chris said. “You’re doing this for power. That's what you always say everything is about.”
“I can’t have multiple motivations?” Wyatt asked, still watching him calmly, like Chris coming with him was the predetermined outcome of this moment.
“I just don’t usually rate as someone’s reason to do anything,” Chris said and Wyatt rolled his eyes.
“Ah, brother,” he sighed. “You’re being dense.”
“Really,” Chris drawled.
Instead of answering, Wyatt held his hand out and Chris paused again, looking at the house and back to his brother.
He’d lost a lot already, he couldn’t imagine losing Wyatt too, not even this stranger who now ruled the Underworld, so with one arm still around the Book of Shadows, he reached out with his other hand to take Wyatt’s.