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

Charmed. To know Phoebe is to... Chapter 4

Part 1:Better to have loved and lost

Chapter 4

Cole also worked late, partly because he wanted to get some contacts he knew on the waterfront outside work hours, partly because he had 2 other court cases going and 4 contracts to write. Jackman, Carter and Kline, to say nothing of Francesca were getting their pound of flesh out of him. Sometimes he was tempted to wave his hand and get the writing finished but he resisted the temptation partly because he had tried that once and at the resulting meeting, he had barely a clue what was written on the paper and made an awful ass of himself and partly because when he worked he did not have to think about anything else.

After he finished work, Cole returned to the apartment, first stopping at a small café where he ate alone. He left the café, went out to the parking area, and stood and watched as someone backed their car into another one in the car park. They made a huge dent in a red sedan, got out, surveyed the damage and then jumped in their car and drove off. For a second Cole was tempted to stop the driver and then he sighed. One of the things he knew about being the most powerful being in the realm was the danger of being a vigilante. It could not be done and remain good, so he took the easy way out and flicked a finger as he passed the red sedan and watched with amusement as the huge dent undented. People who had heard the squealing brakes came out and the owner of the red car examined it then turned to his female companion and said, "They must have missed it":

Cole grinned and got into his own car and drove off.

Cole spent a long and miserable night alone in the apartment, drinking most of the night. Something he had not done for quite some time, but Phoebe contacted him and he was back to where his guts felt like they had been torn out. He had a number of these nights in the last six months but they had been less and less of late. Partly because Francesca made his life so miserable when she knew he had been binging and partly because it had not been necessary. Lately he had been surviving. Since the day, THAT Day, as he thought of it when he had faced the fact that he could, had to, resist the evil, he had mostly, as he told Paige when he "reported in", been all right.

He had even come to terms with what he was and who he was. And he had learned some very hard lessons about good and evil. His powers were demonic, they were a legacy of evil and not in the eternity Cole faced as an immortal being would he easily forget the six months when he had feared that he had created a magical being of evil, so powerful he was stronger than the source, stronger than witches and warlocks and Elders combined. But he had learnt some things in the months that come and one of the things that he had learnt thaws that the creature he had become was meant to be good.

He had failed badly in those first six months, failed to understand and control what he was. When the Charmed Ones had saved him or convinced him to save himself, it came as a shock to know the danger to the realm was not him. If he was evil his fate was to be vanquished, at the cost of turning the Charmed Ones evil, of turning Phoebe evil. But then he was also tied to Pheobe and she was meant to be good. When she had been able to find her way back to being good, so had he.

After he pulled himself from the brink of evil and madness, he had at first been frightened to use the powers but as he got control of them the stunning realisation that the powers were only demonic, not evil came to him. He had finally learned to control the powers he had; he was no longer feeling the overwhelming temptation to evil when he made a discovery that explained much.

One temptation that Cole had never had the remotest trouble resisting, was trying to absorb any more powers. He had enough problems with the ones he had. And he was not seeking out evil because he was listening to a sense of vague disquiet that he felt at such action. However, he did have some problems with evil locating him, sniffing out the powers even if they did not know who or what he was. Consequently, he accidentally got caught in a fight between a middle level demon and a rogue warlock who were out of control of the new source. They had both confronted him as he was walking back to his car after working late one night obviously chasing his powers and decide to fight each other for them