it hurt, it really hurt. “we were together.” andy confirmed firmly with a shake of his head, “you, me, my mom, your family,” he laughed because he could still hear the moments with patty and penny as if they were five minutes ago, not yesterday or three months ago. “my dad died a few years after i did.” his only explanation for it was that, well, they were meant to be passing strangers in life and in death? oh, he couldn’t put an explanation to it. “when i died, i had the choice to become a whitelighter but i couldn’t. i had barely had a chance to wrap my head around magic being real when i died, and then i was given a choice i couldn’t make yet. then you died and that choice became something i couldn’t do because i couldn’t leave you there.” there’s a but there. there always is. “when someone killed the elders, there needed to be new ones which meant there needed to be new whitelighters. they gave me another chance and as much as i wanted to say no, you helped me say yes because it wasn’t going to be goodbye, it was going to be see you later.” but wasn’t that always what it was when it came to them?
“you don’t remember but it was forever for me.” the afterlife had a way of doing that. time passed both slowly and incredibly fast in the same blink of an eye.
“it was supposed to be temporary. i’d have a charge or two and then i’d come back to you, but the next thing we knew, phoebe’s daughter was born and coming into her powers earlier than anyone in your family had. she was beaming phoebe back so she couldn’t go to work or the store, and beaming herself half way around the world at two months old – so i stayed with her for years, trying to keep her from not beaming herself into a,” his shoulders bob as he laughs now, “volcano at worst. she was always getting herself into trouble and quite frankly, she reminds me a lot of you. i don’t know if it’s because she was named after you or what, or maybe it’s the price of being one of the first borns, but she’s brave and so courageous, and i don’t think she even realizes it.” in again, being the daughter of a charmed one might do that to someone. you have to be brave with everything you’re going to face in a family like the halliwells. “she was a teenager when i ended up here but now she’s around the age phoebe was when you guys learned the truth – but that was almost four months ago for me, prue.”
prue didn’t know what she was expecting, maybe it was that. . . the whole story, maybe it wasn’t at all what she was ready or prepared for, maybe she thought to hear something different. some parts of his story sounded comforting, like reuniting with her mom and grams, and andy with his mom, the way he laughed she wished she could capture that picture forever, if only she remembered every moment of it, how bittersweet it would have felt at the time. the melancholy of leaving her sisters behind might’ve got to her at first, part of the reason she found it too hard to see them after she died but she always knew sooner or later it would happen, death would come knocking on her doorstep a second and last time, that’s the price of being a witch and a halliwell.
“i’m sorry.” did she know any other vocabulary than that? “i really wish i remembered, you have no idea.” she cant help the situation any more than he can, so was she hurting him more by continuously repeating the same words over and over again?
she’s only ever been told time travel wasn’t to be messed with, that everything had a tipping point, for good or bad. the oldest halliwell wasn’t sure where she stood in time, whether she was her future self with no recollection or her past self who died, to begrudgingly live out the rest of her time here. still, pride swelled in her listening to andy talk about becoming a whitelighter, helping witches and future whitelighters alike, it was the one and only kind of reaction she’d have, regardless that they chose for the greater good over their everlasting love, though in the sense that they were always going to be eternal.
forever, as he put it. she really couldn’t be upset from it. “it sounds...like heaven on earth.” while entirely true, she would have done or said anything to give him peace of mind, squeezing his hand in clarity.
emitting a small smile as he goes on to talk of phoebe’s daughter, prudence johanna, according to phoebe named after her, her smile grows in size, she can tell already he thinks the world of her, he’d do anything for her, likely already has, prue genuinely feels happy in the fact, she even laughs along with him at some points of his explaining, because she wasn’t there in the moments to understand it, but his light is contagious, she could never deny it. plus, it sounded like something a halliwell would do, taking little wins in hearing andy describe similarities between her and her niece, what she would have given to see it for herself. to see all of her nieces and nephews grow up. to go through all of their phases in life, even when she wasn’t going to be around physically to witness it, she would still be there in spirit. the smile on her face died down slightly, but never left. “she’s a halliwell, there’s nothing we can’t do, haven’t you heard?” she lightly teased, despite going back into serious mode quickly after. “i don’t know what’s going on, but we’ll figure it out. i’m positive if we put a few halliwell heads together, we can come up with something to fix it.”