The
large red letters and yellow number '9' over the entrance shone in the evening darkness
above Stuart and Phoebe, as
they stood in front of the landmark Fisherman's Wharf restaurant.
They were at the corner where The Embarcadero and Taylor Street meet -
and where both streets end. They began walking up Taylor, passing on their right
the adjacent famous Alioto's restaurant - run by one of San Francisco's most
prominent families for almost eighty years - and continuing towards the huge
Fisherman's Wharf sign that stood at the corner of Jefferson Street.
Almost fifteen feet in diameter,
the illuminated round yellow sign stood out against the night sky,
its large brown lettering leaving no room for doubt as to which
neighborhood of the city this was.
They
turned right at the corner, away from the sign, and started walking down
Jefferson. They were on the quieter side of side of the street, the side
without the un-ending string of tourist stores that lined the other side of
Jefferson. Part way down the block Stuart took Phoebe’s hand.
"This way," he said as he led her off to the
right. "This is the Wharf's Inner Lagoon." They walked beside
Tarantino's restaurant, the windows from its second floor affording its patrons
a cozy nightime view of the Lagoon. Just past the restaurant, Stuart led Phoebe
to the left, down a small walkway that extended into the Lagoon itself. Fishing
boats were tied up on either side of the walkway, a few of them slightly
swaying in the night's dark water.
"I love this spot," he said, leaning back against
the broad wooden railing that lined the walkway. Lamps were set in the railing
about every twenty feet, giving off just enough illumination to see where to
walk, without affecting the atmosphere and solitude of the night lagoon.
"In the morning," he continued, "sea lions come in and
you can hear them
barking. But now, at night, is when it's special.
You can watch the people walking by on the street,
hear their voices, see the stores lit up on the other side. You can see the
Wharf's activity. Yet you're removed from it. It's quiet and peaceful here.
"See there," he pointed, "above and behind
the stores, the hotel with its subdued light.
And above that, the lights of the homes on Russian Hill.
"I come here every night when I'm in San Francisco. At
least, in the past I did. I just stand here, leaning back against the
wooden railing, watching the scene, and thinking."
Phoebe took a deep breath, smelling the water all around
her. "What are you thinking
now?" she asked.
"How fortunate I am to be here," he said.
"And who I'm fortunate to be with."
He turned and kissed her gently.
"All of those people," she said, looking up at the
lights on Russian Hill, "all of those innocents. And it's my responsibility to save them."
They silently looked at the homes for a moment, lost in
their thoughts.
"I wonder how many of those people are meeting tonight
and finding love," she said.
"Love is...wonderful.
It's real. But it takes work to
find it," he said.
"I know," Phoebe said. "But lot's of people manage to find it without the
work."
"And lot's of people think they have love, but
don't," Stuart said.
"Eventually reality sets in and the relationship can't be
sustained.
"People confuse love with infatuation.
Love requires honesty but there's no honesty
in infatuation."
"So you think a person who's infatuated with someone is
a liar?" she asked, surprised.
"I'm talking about being honest with one's self,"
he answered. "If you're thinking
about love, and a relationship, then first you have to be honest with yourself
as to who you really are, or what you're trying to become. Presenting your character, your interests,
your priorities as other than what they really are lay the foundation for a
future breakup.
"Then you have to be honest about what you're expecting
of the girl. What you're looking for
her to bring to the relationship.
"And then, you have to be honest about who the girl really is - her
character, her personality, her qualities. Who she really is,
not who or what you want -
or imagine -
her to be.
That's why infatuation is a lie.
It's a fantasy. A relationship -
and love - require reality.
"And that's why many relationships, and marriages,
fail. The honesty of the reality isn't
there at the beginning."
"Being honest with yourself - sometimes it's not that
easy, even if you want to be,"
she said. "And I've known men who have said things like that.
But men who actually mean those words...they're in short supply."
"Well, I mean it," he said, without hesitation.
"So if you had someone like that," she asked
slowly, "is that a commitment you'd be able to make?"
"Yes...I would make that commitment" he said, looking into her eyes.
He had not wanted to push their relationship; had not
wanted to say what he was feeling for her.
But he had answered her question too quickly without thinking of what he was saying.
And now, he felt he had no choice.
There wasn't any way to leave the rest of it hanging un-said.
"I would make that commitment - to you," he said.
Though the words did not surprise her, she was not prepared
for them. Not for their being said to
her, not for her having to respond to them.
Sub-consciously, and consciously too, she had been hoping
those words would get put off indefinitely. Now, she realized, she had
inadvertently forced them to be said.
And she wasn't ready to face the situation.
She was not given to rash decisions, certainly not ones
involving love. She had known Stuart for less than three weeks. Yet in that
time, she had gotten to see the real Stuart, gotten to look inside him and see
who he really was.
She had seen him in life-and-death situations and in daily,
routine living. She had seen him in
more situations, seen inside him more, than she had seen with others over many
months. She had, she realized, seen his soul.
And what she saw was a normal person. Not obsessed, just someone looking at her
clearly and sincerely liking what he saw.
Someone who looked beyond the surface at who she really was. And because of that, almost dying twice
saving her life.
Someone whose thoughts about love and relationships were
sensitive -
and sincere. Someone who made her happy...and who felt ‘right’.
What they had been through together had accelerated their
relationship. And now she was faced with the moment where she had to admit to
herself what these weeks together had really meant to her.
To what her heart wanted to say, if given
the chance.
But her heart was not being given the chance.
Because the thoughts of two people filled
her mind. Alyssa's and Phoebe's thoughts of fear - fear of being hurt in a
relationship, fear of the pain her heart would feel.
The words her heart perhaps would have wanted her to say,
were words that her fears had not let her admit even to herself in her own thoughts.
And they were more than just words. They were a commitment...to him. But even more,
they were a commitment to herself.
Commitment. That's what the words were. A commitment to a dedicated
relationship with him that her mind
said she wasn't ready for. And a commitment to making herself vulnerable to hurt and pain.
The feelings of her heart - or what may have been the feelings of her heart
had it been given free
rein - were competing with the fears of her mind. And the fears of her mind won.
And so she couldn't, and didn't, say anything.
She just looked at him - a confused and
un-comfortable look on her face.
"Oh!" he said,
"I'm sorry.
I...I got way ahead of you didn't I. That was wrong of me to do."
"No," she said with some sadness.
"I'm the one who should be sorry. I'm just not ready..."
It was a silent short ride back to The Manor. They got out of the car and walked up the
steps.
"Stuart," she said as he was about to open the
door."It's...I just can't bring myself to make that kind of commitment. It's not you...it's me."
"You're a beautiful girl, Phoebe," he said. "And you have the qualities of
being kind, caring and sensitive. But you're also a TV star while I'm just a plain,
ordinary person. When you get back home you can get someone from Hollywood
who'll be much more in keeping with who you are.
And someone you'll have more time with, more time to get to know better. And when you
do have that much more time, then perhaps you'll be ready and able to make that kind of commitment."
"Stuart..." she began, but couldn't find the words that would follow.
"No, Phoebe," he stopped her.
He opened the door for
her and followed her into the house.
"Commitments are big undertakings. It's a very human thing to find them difficult to make.
I may be disappointed but I understand and respect that. I would never pressure anyone to make a commitment.
And I won't bring this up again.
Let's just continue being close friends - with neither commitments by nor restrictions on either of us."
Phoebe looked at Stuart, hesitated for a second, then kissed him gently on his lips.
"Still close friends, without 'attachments'?" she asked.
"Still close friends, without 'attachments'," he repeated, with a smile.
"I still don't understand why you're going off with
this guy by yourself," Piper said, as they finished breakfast.
"Because he won't take me if anyone else comes along,”
Prue answered. “He wants money or
recognition...maybe both, I don't know.
But for some reason he trusts me, so he won’t show anyone else until the
magazine agrees to give him whatever it is that he wants."
"I don't like this," Stuart said. "He comes into Four One Five's office,
asks for you by name, then wants to take you out to someplace that's connected
to the demon who's been murdering these women.
"He could be a demon - or working with them.
This is too dangerous for you to do
alone."
"He may have nothing,” Prue agreed, “but I can't take
the chance of letting this go by in case he knows something. We have to know
what these demons are planning and we don't have anything yet that can help us.
And if he is a demon, I have my powers to use against him."
"You have to let me come with you or meet you
there," Stuart said.
"If he sees someone with me he won't take me,"
Prue said. "And you can't meet me.
I don't know where we're going.
All he told me was that it was somewhere near the Muir Woods." She
looked at her watch.
"I have to go meet him now,” she said, and unfolded a
piece of paper. She looked at it,
dropped it on the table and headed to the door.
Stuart looked at Piper.
"She's the headstrong one, remember?" Piper said, as they
followed Prue out to the car.
"Prue, even if you're not afraid of going alone, I'm afraid for you," he said.
"And I'm letting you down by allowing you to go alone."
"Stuart...you're so caring. You didn't let me down," Prue said as she came
closer to him. "I would be foolish not to
have some fear of what this may be.We all have our fear demons inside of us.
If they're going to hurt someone we care about, then we have to vanquish them.
If not, we just accept that they're there and let them lie in the corner and not get in the way.
And that's what I'm doing now - letting it lie in the corner out of the way"
She saw the look of worry still on Stuart's face.
"I'll be fine," Prue said.
"I'll call and let you know I’m OK."
She got into the car and drove off.
Phoebe was thinking about what Prue had said as she went
back inside. She slowly went up the
stairs to the attic and started going through the Book of Shadows until she
found what she was looking for.
Spell to Remove Fear From Yourself, it read. Phoebe took the Book and went down the
stairs to her room. She sat with the
Book in front of the mirror and looked at herself in it. After a moment, she closed the book and took
it back up to the attic without using the spell.
"Can we talk for a minute?" Piper asked Phoebe as she came into the
parlor.
"Sure," Phoebe answered.
"I got the feeling that things were a little awkward
between you and Stuart when you came home last night," Piper said.
"Stuart wanted me to fully commit myself in a relationship to him," Phoebe replied.
"I couldn't do it." She saw the look of concern on Piper's face.
"Prue was right," Phoebe continued. "We each have fear demons inside of us.
My fear demon is the fear of being emotionally hurt, the fear of commitment to
something that isn't what I think it is. And the fear that this would leave me open and vulnerable to being hurt.
The fear of the pain if a relationship fails.
"We don't want to accept that we have them so we make
believe we don't have them.
Because then we don't have to face them.
"I know that Stuart cares for me and I care for him.
We're close friends but without strings attached. I'm willing to see where our
relationship will go, to give myself the
chance...to find out if I want to - and if I can - make that kind of a commitment."
"Doing that without any strings attached runs the risk
that he'll find someone else with whom he'll have feelings, someone who will be willing to make that commitment,
before you can figure yourself out and decide," Piper said.
"I know. We agreed we'd remain close friends without restrictions," Phoebe answered.
"The only way that I can try to overcome my fears and come to a decision is if I feel that we're both free."
"Over there," he said to her. Prue pulled the car over to the side. A trail led up the hill to a small cabin.
"We're not going any further until you tell me what you
know," Prue said.
"Look, up there, in that cabin," he said. "I
saw this strange guy. Then he came down
and pointed to the ground in a few places.
Then he left.
"I was curious so I walked over and I saw these marks
on the ground. Only I don't know what
they are but they look familiar. Then I
remember they were in the paper, about this woman who was murdered. My curiosity got the better of me so I go up
the trail and peek in the window. The
whole place is full of them, on the walls, on the floor, all over. And I can see on the table the page from the
paper with the picture of the dead woman."
"There aren't any pentagrams on the ground now,"
Prue told him.
"Penta...oh, you mean those marks," he said.
"I came back past here about three hours later and they were gone. He must have erased them."
"Did you see anyone else?"
"No."
"Did you go inside?" she asked.
"Are you kidding?
It was bad enough I even looked in from the outside," he said.
"OK, Mr. Howard," Prue said. "It's safer if
you wait here. I'm going to go up and
look around."
Prue went up the path and carefully looked in the
window. It was dark inside and she
couldn't make out anything. She went
around the side of the cabin and found the door. She gingerly tried to open it and saw that it was unlocked. She quietly opened it, peeked inside and,
not seeing anyone, went in.
The room had two old wooden chairs but aside from that it
was bare. A doorway led off to another
room and Prue went into it. A single
chair stood next to a small table, a page from the newspaper reporting the
woman's murder spread out on it. But
there weren't any pentagrams nor anything else that would associate the cabin
with a demon.
Prue picked up the page, turned it over and not finding
anything unusual put it down. She
turned and went back into the first room and started walking towards the front
door. The blow came suddenly, across
the back of her head and she fell to the floor, unconscious.
As Prue came to, she found herself tied up in a chair, her
hands secured behind her and a blindfold over her eyes.
"It's about time," he said. "I was worried that I hit you too hard.
Does your head hurt?"
It did but she wasn't about to let him know that. "What do you want?" she asked.
"Direct. Right
to the point," he said. "So I'll get right to the point, too.
"My name isn't Howard.
It's Johnnie Norwell. Know the
name?"
Prue didn't answer.
"I'll take that as a no," he said. "But you
will, I assure you. You'll remember my
name for the rest of your life."
"OK, I know your name," she said. "What do
you want?"
"Prue Halliwell," he said glaring at her.
"Patty Halliwell's daughter."
That caught Prue off guard and startled her.
"I made up the story about seeing those marks to get
you up here, alone,” Norwell said. “I want to know if you have a special power,
the same magic power your mother had."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Prue
said.
"Of course you do," he said.
"Twenty-five years ago when I was young, my friends and
me were robbing this jewelry store. No
one was supposed to get hurt only it went down bad. A couple of people got shot.
We ran out of the store and split up.
"This woman was passing by the store as I ran out. One of the people in the store must have run
out into the street because I heard someone yelling they'd been shot. I'm running down the block and look over my
shoulder. I can't believe what I see -
this woman is running after me.
"I turned the corner and I'm in an alley. The only way out was a fire escape ladder on
the side of the building. But before I
can do anything she's in the alley coming towards me.
"I pull out my gun just to frighten her away and she
waves her hand at it. The next thing I
know my gun is flying out of my hand and hits the wall on my side. I tried to run at her but she waved her hand
again - and sent me flying through the air into the wall behind me.
"It hurt - but I got up and tried to run past her. And she did it to me again. Only this time I hit the wall so hard it
fractured my arm. As I'm lying there in
pain she slowly backs out of the alley.
In a minute she flags down a cop and tells him she thinks I'm the one
he's looking for. And that I fell trying to jump up to the fire escape.
"I tried telling the cops, the DA, about her magic - no
one would even listen."
Prue was trying to make sense of it. She couldn't understand how this could
be. They had been The Charmed Ones for
less than four weeks. How could there
have been a Halliwell twenty-five years ago?
But it was distracting her from thinking about what to do
now. She had to accept that somehow, it
had all happened.
"I managed to get hold of a newspaper and I read their
story of what happened," Norwell continued. "The police must have
given them her name because they wrote how she helped the police capture
me. That's how I found out who she was.
"Patty Halliwell.
"I remember every detail as if it happened yesterday
because I've been thinking about it all these years. I had a life ahead of me.
Patty Halliwell took it from me.
"When I got paroled a few years ago I checked up on her
and found out she was dead. I thought
that was the end of it. Until last
month, when I'm looking through this magazine and the name on a picture caught
my eye. Photo by Prue Halliwell, it
said. So I did some checking and found
out you're her daughter.
"I went by your house one night to see what I could
find out about you. You were leaving
and I followed you, right to where that woman was murdered. And the next day the paper describes those
marks that were found there. Something
to do with magic. So I know that you've
got to be involved with magic just like your mother was."
"So you want what - revenge?" Prue asked "Against me for what...my mother
supposedly did?"
"Revenge. Yeah,
revenge," he said.
"For twenty years I lived in a cage without any life of
my own. I had no privacy, always being
watched, always being told what I could do and what I couldn't.
"Yeah, I'm going to get revenge. But I'm not going to kill you. That's too fast." He paused and stared
at her.
“I'm going to expose you.
"Then they'll come for you and put you in a laboratory
cage. The government is good at that.
They'll watch you eat, watch you sleep, watch your most private moments to find
out what makes you tick.
"And when they do let you out, you'll be followed
everywhere you go. Reporters, expose
writers and all the crazies trying to find out what they can about the 'magic
girl'. You'll never know a day's peace,
never be left alone. They'll all be
watching you.
"And you won't have a life. Just like I didn't have a life for twenty years. And I'll be watching it all happen.
"That's my revenge.
It's worse than killing you."
"I don't have any magic powers," Prue said.
"No? Let's
see." He went over to her and
removed the blindfold. He untied her
hands then walked over to the doorway and stood by it.
"This is the way out.
All you have to do is get by me. So just use your magic on me."
Prue stood up but did nothing.
"You need some encouragement," he said. He put his hand inside his jacket, pulled
out a gun and aimed it at her.
"Now you'd better use your magic power."
I can't do it, she thought.
I have to call his bluff.
Norwell moved his thumb to the hammer and cocked it. "A bullet in your leg won't kill
you. But it'll be very painful. Might even break a bone. Or leave some permanent damage."
He lowered the gun and pointed it at her thigh. Prue still wanted to hold back. But she decided he wasn't bluffing.
In a flash, she waved her hand and the gun went flying
across the room. She waved it again and
Norwell went flying into the wall and fell to the floor.
"They didn't believe you twenty-five years ago,"
she said looking down at him with disgust.
"They won't believe you now either." She turned and walked through the doorway into the outer room.
"They will after you use your magic to save all of
those people from the bomb," he called after her, a small smile on his
face. Prue stopped.
"You don't want to leave until you hear about the bomb,
do you." It was a statement not a
question. Prue slowly turned around and
walked back into the room.
"Of course you don't.
You're a do-gooder, just like your mother."
"What bomb?" she asked.
"The one I planted.
In a public place," he said as he stood up. "Lots of people come there, lots of
children. And the only way to save then
will be for you to use your magic to dislodge the bomb and throw it far away
from them. And everyone will see you do
it.
"And just for good measure, I called the newspapers and
the television stations and told them there was going to be a 'save the earth'
demonstration there. So they'll be
there and report everything you do and expose you - probably on prime time TV.
"And then your life will be over."
"You're lying," she said.
"Am I? Are you
willing to take that chance? What are
you going to do this afternoon when you hear the news that all of those people
died - and you could have saved them?"
Norwell was right, Prue thought. They'll be exposed. Even
if they're here only a short time it will still be intolerable. And it will stop them from finding the
demons who want to cause major destruction in the world. And besides, they have to live the same way
the sisters would on Charmed and do what they would do. They couldn't let
themselves be exposed on Charmed so could she let it happen here, either.
But those people are real, they're innocents. She can't let them die.
"When will it go off?" she asked.
Norwell looked at his watch. "Very soon."
"Tell me where it is," she said.
"Tell you? I'll
do better than that," he said.
"I'll take you to it.
"And don't get any ideas about calling for help,"
he added. "If you do, I won't show you where the bomb is and it will go
off. And when I do show you, you'll
have only enough time to get rid of it."
"We're wasting time," Prue said. "Take me to
it."
Phoebe was cleaning off the kitchen table. She put the coffee cup into the sink then
went back and picked up the napkin and the piece of paper.
She stopped suddenly, her eyes closed.
"Oh no!
Piper! Piper!!"
Piper and Stuart came running into the kitchen.
"Prue's in big trouble," Phoebe said. "I just had a premonition. A man was standing in front of her pointing
a gun at her."
"Where was she?" Piper asked.
"I don't know," Phoebe said. "It was just a
room. I didn't see anything else except
them."
"What did he look like?" Stuart asked.
"Uh...he was a little taller than Prue...dark, wavy
hair...and...he was wearing a grey jacket."
"What were you holding when you saw it?" Piper
asked
"The napkin and this paper."
"That was the paper Prue was looking at before she left
to meet that guy," Piper said.
Phoebe opened the paper and read it. "It's the time and place of where she
was meeting him."
"No name?" Stuart asked.
"No," Phoebe said.
"Was what you saw in the past or in the future?"
Piper asked.
"What I saw already happened."
"Since when do demons use guns?" Stuart asked.
"They don't," Piper said.
"So we're not dealing with a demon," he said.
"Then Prue's been kidnapped," Piper said. "We have to call Morris."
"And tell him what?" Phoebe asked. "That Prue's been kidnapped. We don't know by whom, we don't have a
ransom note and we haven't been contacted.
But we just know it."
"Then we have to find her ourselves. But where do we start?" Piper asked.
"Where she met him," Phoebe said.
"They won't be there," Piper said.
"I know, but that's all we have," Phoebe answered.
"Here's the car," Stuart said. He checked it then looked around. "It's locked. She must have gone in his car."
Phoebe pulled out her spare car key. She opened the door, got in and put her
hands on the wheel. Suddenly she was motionless, her eyes closed.
"I saw them.
There was grass all around them.
And bushes and a few trees."
"Was this also in the past," Piper asked.
"No. This was
in the future, I'm sure of it."
"Then she's still alive," Stuart said.
"Did you see anything else," Piper asked.
"I saw the Golden Gate Bridge,” Phoebe said. “It was close by. And...they were high up, almost as high as the bridge.
Like...they were on a hill."
Stuart thought for a second. "A bluff. Did you
see San Francisco in the distance behind the bridge?"
"There was a lot of fog." She closed her eyes, trying to
remember. "I could barely make out
the bridge.
"But I did see something else. The ground off to the side was dug out in the middle. And in it, were what
looked like old brick foundations."
"That's Battery Spenser, in the Marin Headlands,"
Stuart said. "It's on a bluff on
the other side of the bridge, practically overlooking it.
"Let me drive, I know the way," he said. "Now call Morris."
Prue and Norwell slowly made their way up the path. About two dozen people, less than half the
usual number on a clear day, were milling about, some with small children in
tow. The bridge, in front of them, was
shrouded in fog, the near tower only partially visible. Beneath them to the right, the waters of the
Golden Gate at the foot of the bluff could just barely be seen.
"OK, you've won," Prue said to him. "I'm here. Now where's the bomb?"
Norwell looked at his watch. "In a moment."
He turned around, searching for something and spotted what he was
looking for.
"Over here," he called, waving. A two-man TV news crew and a newspaper
reporter started over to them.
"The demonstration is about to begin," he said as they drew
closer.
He looked at his watch again. "Over there, by that bush," he said to Prue. "It's under those rocks. It took me twenty minutes to move those
rocks into place. You have less than a
minute to move them and dispose of the bomb."
The bush was in front of them. It was just to the side of where people were standing to get the
best view of the bridge, limited as it was.
There isn't any choice, Prue thought, as she raised her hand. Then suddenly all of the people around her
froze.
"Prue!!"
Piper shouted as she and Phoebe ran up the trail, leaving a frozen
Stuart behind. "Are you all
right?"
"Yes, but there isn't time to explain. There's a bomb under those rocks. Piper, keep everyone frozen."
"This is an open area," Piper said. "My power
won't work much past that curve. And we
ran past people below it making their way up here."
"We don't have a choice," Prue said. "It's
going to explode in less than a minute."
Prue waved her hand twice, separating the rocks to the left
and right. The bomb sat uncovered, a
flashing light showing that it wasn't frozen.
Piper raised her hand and the flashing stopped. Prue gently picked up the bomb and put it on
top of the bush.
"I'll send it far out into the water," she said.
"With this fog, no one will see it going down. And because of the fog
there won't be any boats on the water, either, so no one will get
hurt." She waved her hand with
force and the bomb went flying way out over the water before falling into it.
"Get back to where you were and unfreeze
everyone," Prue said. "And stay there. Norwell mustn't know about you."
Prue waved the rocks back together as Piper, back with
Phoebe in their places, raised her hand.
Prue stood looking at Norwell.
"It is going to go off!" he said, his voice
a little anxious.
"Then we'll all go up together," Prue said.
"The rocks," Norwell said as he looked at
them. "That's not how they
were. You did something."
The blast startled the people around them. The TV crew and the reporter ran to the edge
of the bluff to try to see what happened.
"The bomb. You
threw it into the water," Norwell said.
"You have another magic power."
"It's over," Prue said to him.
"No it isn't.
I'll put another bomb somewhere else.
And you'll have to come and I'll expose you."
"After I tell the police about you, you won't be doing
anything." She moved closer,
looking him right in his eyes.
"My mother helped put you away for twenty years. I'll help put you away forever."
Prue turned around but before she could walk away Norwell
grabbed her hands from behind. He put
his left hand around her wrists and pulled her back towards him, using her body
to pin her hands against him. With his right hand he pulled out his gun and
held it to her temple.
"No you won't," he shouted at her. "I'll kill
you instead." Before Piper could react to freeze him two shots rang
out. The people all around started
screaming and Norwell fell to the ground.
Morris, his gun in his hand, was running up to Prue. "It's OK, I'm a police officer,"
he yelled at the people as they started fleeing down the path.
"Prue, are you all right?" Morris asked.
"Yes...I am now," she said, suddenly
feeling weak.
Morris kneeled down and checked Norwell. "Dead." He stood up as Phoebe, Piper and Stuart reached them.
"I'm OK," Prue said to them, as Piper put her arm
under her’s to steady her.
"Who was he?"
Morris asked.
"Johnnie Norwell," Prue answered, trying to get
her breathing back to normal.
"Twenty-five years ago he was involved in a shooting at a
robbery. Mom helped the police catch
him"
"Mom?"
Phoebe asked.
"So he kidnapped you in revenge," Morris
said. "And that bomb down
below?"
"It was...his revenge against the city," Prue
said.
"In the middle of the water?" Morris asked.
"He...sort of lost it in the fog," she said.
Morris gave her a look,
then looked down at Norwell.
"Like mother, like daughter, I guess."
"Yeah...I guess," Prue said.
"You know that I don't want to know what your secret
is," Morris said, turning to Piper and Phoebe. "So I'm not going to
ask you how you knew they were here or what the kidnapper looked like or what
he was wearing." He paused for a few seconds.
"I'm just glad that you did," he said.
"Thank you, Darryl," Prue said. "You saved my
life."
"No need to thank me, Prue," he said. "I was
just doing my job."
"Your job? I
don't think so," Piper said.
"Since when does your job cover this side of the bridge?"
"I asked for permission," Morris said. "We
have an arrangement with the Marin County sheriff's department that we can come
over here if we're in hot pursuit of a suspect."
"Which you actually weren't," Phoebe said.
"Hmm. I must
have neglected to mention that when I asked."
"Thanks, Darryl," Phoebe said, smiling.
"Why don't you sit down on that bench, for now,"
Morris said.
Prue nodded. They
walked over to the bench, leaving Morris to deal with the arriving sheriff's
deputies, and Piper sat down with her.
"Mom? I
don't understand. How can that
be?" Phoebe asked.
"When we became The Charmed Ones," Prue said,
"we were given a real history, longer and more extensive than we've
realized. It seems that things that would have happened had we always been
real...somehow did."
"Robbery...shooting...from twenty-five years ago...we
have a whole history we know almost nothing about," Phoebe said.
"And...we had a Mom?" Piper asked.
"The Charmed Ones had to be born so there had to be a
Mom," Prue answered.
"And that means there had to be a dad, too ,"
Piper said. "I’m not about to have
James Read...uh, uh...Victor Halliwell..uh..." She stopped and
exhaled. "I’m not about to have whichever
one shows up on our doorstep be my father."
"How did you know what happened?" Prue asked.
"Phoebe picked up the paper that had your meeting place
written on it," Piper said.
"You left it on the table.
It's a good thing you were in a hurry and didn't have time to throw it
out."
Stuart walked over to the fence at the bluff's edge. He
looked out silently at the fog as Phoebe joined him.
"The fog has its own charm, its own character, hiding
the bridge beneath it," he said.
"You almost forget that the bridge is there. But there's a little bit of the bridge that
always manages to come through, a little bit of its character sticking
out. Reminding you that when the fog
goes away, the bridge will still be there."
"Sort of like us," Phoebe said.
"We have the Charmed Ones'
characters But some of ourselves,
parts of our own characters, still manage to penetrate it.
Reminding us who we'll be again when we're
back home."
"Whether it's back home or here," Stuart said, turning to her and smiling,
"and whoever's character it is - you're OK with me."
"What's that?"
Phoebe asked Prue, who was sitting on the sofa.
"It's the scrapbook of Mom you were keeping on
Charmed," Prue answered. "I found it in a drawer in the parlor. It's
full...as it would be in real life.
"I went down to the Chronicle and they gave me a copy
of the story about the robbery. Here's
the paragraph about Mom," she said and handed it to Phoebe.
"I just felt that I needed...that I wanted to
get it and add it to Mom's scrapbook," Prue said.
"Sounds like a loving daughter," Phoebe said.
Phoebe turned the scrapbook around so she could see it. She turned to the next page and recognized
the picture. It had been a prop in the
Charmed episode in which they went back in time and saw their Mom.
Only here it was real, in the scrapbook as it would really
have been. It showed little Prue and
little Piper standing on either side of Patty Halliwell, 'pregnant' with
Phoebe.
"I guess...in a way...I am a loving daughter,"
Prue said. "The feelings Prue is supposed to have...they've been growing
inside of me. I just feel this strong
connection, a loving connection, to Mom."
Phoebe looked silently at Patty Halliwell in the scrapbook.
"Me, too," Phoebe said, gently running her fingers
across the picture. "Me,
too."