Charmed. Cole and Phoebe Guardian series. To know Phoebe is too...

Charmed. To know Phoebe is to... Chapter 1

Part 1:Better to have loved and lost

Chapter 1

It was summer solstice evening on a beach in Ireland, far away on the west coast, an isolated lonely beach with clean white sand and steep cliffs towered over by rugged brilliantly green hills, just a small cove far away from the world where the mist was rolled in as it done for thousands of years. In a corner of the beach perched on a rock, a man dressed in dark clothing sat watching the waves crash; watching feeling mist surround him with an eerie dampness. And he audibly sighed. Time, distance, change, technology and still the beaches and the weather, and the course of nature remained constant.

He remembered oh so many, many years ago, Phoebe mimicking with glee the demon known as the Seer, a demon only he would remember now "I have no sway over the weather."

He smiled to himself Phoebe, good or evil had gift for bitchery that always made him smile. So long ago. How many times since then had he sat on beaches alone, because being alone on a beach was one way he could find her. She came to him on beaches. Once he had sat on beaches and watched waves to protect himself from pain. And now he did it to remember love. So many, many years on, and in all the loneliness of years without her, the memory of that brief time with her was enough to sustain him.

...

Phoebe Halliwell sat at her desk and gave up all pretence of trying to work. One of Phoebe's problems, one of her many, she noted, was that she could never find inspiration to write unless there was a deadline hanging over her. Unfortunately, she had nearly 5 days before the next one and she remained uninspired.

And as she was uninspired to work, and all things magic seemed very quiet, and Piper was so focused on her baby and Paige happily absorbing herself in studying witchcraft and herbs, Phoebe had nothing to do and no one to think about but herself and where her life was and thinking about that made her think of Cole. He was an itch that would not go away. The more she told herself to not think about him, the more he was in her thoughts.

It was a year to the day when Phoebe had turned away and left Cole alone in the wasteland. It had been a very hard year since then. During the first six long, horrible months Phoebe and her sisters had very nearly descended into evil themselves, as they followed their quest to destroy Cole. Nearly descended to evil because they had lost the way of their calling as protectors of the innocent, and had taken a role as judge and jury and executioner by making themselves the arbitrators of who was innocent and who wasn't.

Phoebe still could not think of the narrow escape they had had without shaking. If Paige had not somehow hung onto her sense of what was evil, despite her sisters' scathing comments; if she had not been able to make Phoebe question her motive just enough to get a vision of the evil, evil future that awaited the Charmed Ones; if Cole had not been able to somehow drag himself from the brink of evil and the depths of madness But then she told herself, if , if means nothing. Those things did not happen so it was no use worrying about what might have been. But those thoughts frightened her all the same.

In some ways the next six months had been gentler and easier. Phoebe and her sisters had concentrated, in fact actively sought to find and protect innocents. Piper's daughter had been born and all the joy of her arrival had in some ways made the pain of the previous months fade. Fortunately, as far as Phoebe was concerned, three-month-old Melinda seemed to be following the path of a normal baby and was showing no signs of controlling any magic that she had shown in the womb. Apparently, the baby had only been able to tap into her mother's control of the power, so the family could take great joy in the presence of a normal baby in the household. And if Phoebe had a little pang when she held Piper's baby, she could swallow it with a sincere regret but no longer bitterness or blame on Cole.