Breaking Down Future's Door (original) (raw)

Title: Breaking Down Future's Door
Rating: G
Fandom: Charmed
Pairings: Leo/Piper
Length: 1,176 words
Summary: Piper's locked herself in the bathroom and she won't come out. Both Prue and Phoebe want to know what she's been doing in there for so long and why she only responds to Leo.
Disclaimer: I don't own Charmed though I would like to own the Charmed Ones' Book of Shadows....
Author's Notes: I wrote this for thinkxpink who was one of the winners on my offering for three ficlets apiece at help_japan. She wanted Leo/Piper with a focus on family so I went for shortly after their wedding and before Prue's death. I hope you like it, thinkxpink!

"Piper! Are you ever going to come out of there?" Phoebe Halliwell demanded as she pounded on the bathroom door. "You've been in there for hours!"

Prue was walking down the hall but stopped when she saw it was Phoebe who was locked out of the bathroom she shared with Piper. "Huh," she said, "usually it's you who's in the bathroom for hours on end."

Phoebe glared at her eldest sister. "I have never been in the bathroom for hours on end." Seeing the look on Prue's face, she quickly added, "Except for when it is called for, like when I have a date."

"Which you have pretty much every night," Prue told her playfully.

Phoebe rolled her eyes. "Yeah, sure, fine, make fun of me for having a social life. Piper, however, does not have anything important planned for tonight, yet she has been in there for forever and I really need to pee!"

"Use my bathroom downstairs," Prue offered. "It's better than you breaking down the house."

"Ha ha, very funny," Phoebe told her. "But that's not the point, the point is she hasn't even been answering me the entire time I've been knocking."

Prue raised an eyebrow. "Knocking? I'm pretty sure you were almost beating down the door a second ago."

Phoebe sighed. "Could you please be serious?" she asked. "Something could be wrong with Piper."

Prue looked as though she was about to say something about Phoebe asking her to be serious but quickly closed her mouth. "All right, all right," she conceded, holding up her hands in surrender. "Let me try. Maybe she just doesn't like your attitude."

She stepped forward and lightly rapped the back of her knuckles against the bathroom door. "Piper?" she asked. "Is everything okay in there?"

She waited for a response, then tried the door. She turned to Phoebe and told her simply, "Locked."

Phoebe pulled Prue out of the way and called, "Piper, if you don't answer us in thirty seconds, I'm going to break the door down and if you're okay, Prue is going to have to use her magic to get me off you. Do you really want that?"

There was still no answer. Phoebe turned to her eldest sister and asked, "Permission to break down the door?"

"What's going on?" Leo Wyatt asked, walking up the stairs. "Why do you need to break down the bathroom door?" He paused, almost afraid of the answer to his next question. "You guys aren't taking up breaking various parts of the house for me to fix now that I'm your brother-in-law and you know I'm not going anywhere, are you?"

The two sisters looked at each other, then back at Leo. "No," they said in unison, and a little too quickly for Leo's liking.

"We would never do that to you, Leo," Prue told him.

"Of course not," Phoebe added, walking over to him and looping her arm through his. "We love you and you're part of our family now. No, I just want to break the door down because..." She trailed off and looked at Prue as she bit her lip.

Prue rolled her eyes. "Oh, just tell him, Phoebe, it's no big deal."

She hesitated, but listened to Prue. "Piper locked herself in the bathroom and she won't come out. Plus, she isn't even answering. I wasn't really going to break down the door, I just thought, you know... she might come out sooner if I threatened to barge in there."

Leo let out a sigh of relief. He had enough work repairing the manor after the Charmed Ones fought various demons and warlocks there. He didn't need them giving him more repair jobs that weren't caused by energy balls and the like.

"How about I just orb in there?" he suggested.

"No! No orbing!" Piper shouted from the other side of the bathroom door. "I'm fine, everything's fine. I'll be out in two minutes. Five, tops.

Prue and Phoebe stared at Leo in amazement. He shrugged. "She knew you were bluffing," he told them and continued to walk down the hall.

Phoebe turned to Prue. "Can I still use your bathroom?"

"Why?" Prue asked. "Piper just said she'd be right out."

"Yeah," she agreed, "but I'm not sure I want to know what she's been doing in there all this time."

In the bathroom, Piper was fully clothed, sitting on the closed lid of the toilet seat. Her leg shook nervously as she looked over at the bathroom sink. "You can do this, Piper," she told herself quietly. "Just pick it up and look at it. If it's pink, it's pink, if it's not, it's not. Either way, it's not the end of the world."

She reached her hand out and slowly picked up the pregnancy test that was resting on the sink. She squeezed her eyes shut and whispered, "Please be positive, please be positive. Come on, be positive, give me the one thing that was good about that future we saw."

The image of the daughter she had had with Leo in the future flashed into her mind. Her brown hair and eyes, so much like her mother's; the freckles sprinkled across her nose; the way she smiled, her eyes so hopeful just like her father's even when Piper was scared beyond belief.

"Melinda Wyatt," she whispered, a smile spreading across her face. She opened her eyes and turned over the pregnanacy test.

When she saw the result, her shoulders sagged in disappointment and she tossed the test into the trash. She put her face in her hands, her hair falling forward as she began to cry.

Piper heard a familiar tinkling sound and looked up to see her husband standing in front of her. "Leo," she said, quickly wiping the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand. "I thought I told you no orbing?"

"Yeah, sorry," Leo said as he knelt down in front of her and took her hands in his. "But I knew what you were doing in here as soon as I saw your sisters standing outside the door."

She stared at him. "How?"

He gave her a small smile and told her, "Because I saw you sneaking that pregnancy test into the house yesterday and you've been acting all jumpy ever since."

He gave her hands a squeeze. "Piper, I know you're upset that you're not pregnant but I am telling you, we have time. We have years to have children and the rest of our lives to be together. We don't have to rush anything."

"I know, but-"

"No buts!" he interrupted. "Someday, Piper, we will have as many little kids running around that you want. But for now, you and I, just the two of us, we're a family and, I don't know about you, but that's enough for me."

Piper smiled back at her husband and nodded. She let go of his hands and wrapped her arms around him in a hug. "That's enough for me too," she whispered.