A/N: I'm sorry this has taken so long to get out! Thank you all for the lovely reviews and for sticking with the story! I hope this chapter doesn't disappoint!

The demons pitted against Cole and Phoebe seemed to be fighting a losing battle. The former couple had fallen into a rhythm while fighting and had made quite a formidable team. The demons that had chosen to stay and fight were few, but they were the most powerful of their ranks. Cole rightly assumed they were trying to save face in front of their peers in the hopes of boasting they'd gone toe to toe with a Charmed one and either lived to tell the tale or went down fighting with their legacy to be told by another. It was foolish and Cole knew that first-hand. Even without the power of three, Phoebe was holding her own against them. He found himself distracted by her, stealing glances to watch the way she fought against them like a seasoned professional. A sense of pride swelled within his aching heart at the sight. Phoebe had always been capable of standing up to evil, but she had come so far in the years since he'd known her.

The demons they were fighting weren't completely devoid of strategy. They had been shimmering in and out of the room to take advantage of surprise attacks, but between the two of them, Cole and Phoebe had been able to suss them out before the other got hurt.

"They're persistent if nothing else," Cole commented to her as he found himself dodging another energy ball.

Phoebe glanced over to him. "They always are," She said, giving him a knowing look.

Cole had been about to give a rebuttal, but he noticed that one of the demons had shimmered in behind her and this one was armed with a sword themselves. The cloaked figure raised the weapon, about to attack Phoebe.

"Phoebe! Behind you!" He warned, rushing over to aid her, but the demon shimmered away when caught before making contact with her. Cole barely had time to breathe a sigh of relief when he felt a warmth radiating from his core.

"Oh my God, Cole!" Phoebe said in a panic. The demon had shimmered in behind him and ran him through with the sword. It took Cole a moment to realize what had happened and he looked down to see the blade that had impaled him. Blood dripped from the gleaming metal that had gone straight through him and he realized that the warmth he'd felt was blood - his blood. The adrenaline already rushing through him had kept him from feeling the pain from the wound. The demon pulled out the sword as swiftly as it had been thrust through him.

"Phoebe…" Cole said softly before falling to his knees onto the dirt floor.

Phoebe had wasted no time, however. As the demon was busy removing the sword, she had taken her own to cleave off the cloaked figure's head, vanquishing the demon instantly. "Cole," She knelt down on the ground, dropping her sword beside her and pulling him close to her. He was bleeding profusely. She panicked as she looked over the wound that went clean through. This was a much too familiar scene for the pair. The Source had similarly stabbed him years before and he had been left for dead until she and her sisters found him. He'd been shot in the abdomen by Darryl when the two of them had been possessed by Lulu and Frankie. Phoebe felt an old sense of dread well up within her as she looked down at the blood from his wound. They'd been in this position too many times before.

Cole was already going into shock, but he had enough sense to know that position was leaving Phoebe vulnerable. "You need to get up," He urged her.

"I need to put pressure on your wound," Phoebe insisted, already taking off her cardigan with shaking hands. She balled it up and pressed the cream colored sweater onto his bare abdomen and soon the garment was stained crimson. Cole let out a pained gasp as she held the cloth against him.

"Please…" He begged her, putting a hand on hers that were holding the cardigan on him. "They'll be back." He couldn't stand the thought that she'd be open to an attack.

"I can't just let you bleed out," She insisted, tears already welling in her eyes.

"I've been dead before. It's not so bad. It never seems to stick anyway," He said to her, trying to shift the focus away from what he felt was inevitable. His vision was already clouding from the blood loss and he knew he was going to lose consciousness soon enough. He could see that Phoebe wasn't going to be so easily swayed to leave his side. "It's okay. I'm okay. Get up and fight," He urged her, seeing demons shimmering in around them.

Phoebe knew how grim the situation was that they were in and she empathically felt Cole's pain. She had stopped one scenario from happening but she had found herself in the same place all the same. He was dying and she could feel every moment of it. Still, she also felt his resolve and she saw they were being surrounded. If Cole had any hope of surviving this, she knew he was right. She had to fight back.

Phoebe stood up, leaving her sword forgotten on the ground beside Cole. Her hands were too wet with his blood to keep steady hold of it anyway. She felt the anger within her about everything bubbling up to the surface. None of this was right. Cole shouldn't have been brought back. Piper shouldn't have kept it from her. Neither of them should have been put into a demonic fistfight in the first place. Despite all of her protests otherwise, Phoebe couldn't watch Cole die again - especially not like this.

One of the demons charged at her and Phoebe levitated upwards, dodging the attack, but leaving Cole vulnerable on the ground. The demon grabbed Phoebe's sword and held it up, ready to finish Cole off.

"No!" She yelled, dropping from her place up above. The raw emotions flowing through her were too powerful, getting hit with the rage and bloodlust from the demons surrounding them and Cole's pain along with her own. It was too much. Flashbacks, or rather flashforwards, of her future that would never come to full fruition came to mind and instinct took over, guiding her on exactly what to do. She held her hands out with one on each side of the demon's head and funneled all of that energy and emotion through the demon. He let out a strangled cry before finally catching flame and vanquishing before her eyes. Her empathic powers had grown and the pathokinesis her future self had used to kill Cal Greene was finally active.

She felt drained from channeling so much emotion at once and she knelt down beside Cole again, just in time to see the other demons beginning to blow up one by one. Baffled, Phoebe looked over her shoulder and was relieved to see her sisters and Coop standing there. Piper was taking out the last of the demons with a flick of her hands.

"Paige, hurry," Phoebe urged her, looking down to Cole. He was unconscious and the crimson blood was a stark contrast to his pale pallor.

"Did we just see you vanquish a demon with nothing but your hands?" Paige asked her, still wide eyed from the display they'd arrived in time to witness.

"Paige!" Phoebe yelled at her, to get her to focus. There was so much blood pooling around him and Cole was so pale already. She didn't know how much time he had left, if any. She was too spent from the vanquish to tap into her empathic powers to check on him. "Please," She begged her sister.

Paige finally took notice of how injured Cole was and she wasted no time in hurrying over to the pair. She knelt down in front of him and held her hands out over the wound, light emitting from them almost immediately.

The seconds in between felt like an eternity to Phoebe. She didn't know if this would work - there were so many variables already. Was Cole truly human now and if he was, was he already too far gone for Paige to help? The fact that she couldn't feel him empathically anymore felt like both a blessing and a curse. She couldn't feel if it was working, but she also wouldn't have to feel him die either. Even the thought made her stomach turn and left her even more conflicted than she had been about him. Cole had died before. She had vanquished him before, but somehow this felt different. He'd never been entirely human before when he died and he'd always found a way out of it - some sort of loophole only a demonic lawyer could find to cheat death. Even when she'd thought he was gone for good, she had still felt his presence around her. Now even as she had her fingers gently threading through his hair to comfort him, she couldn't really feel him at all.

"Why isn't it working?" Phoebe asked softly, tears already slipping down her cheeks.

"I don't know. Do we even know what he is? Maybe my powers don't work on him," Paige mentioned, but she saw how devastated Phoebe looked at that prospect. "This wound is really deep. It's probably just going to take a little longer. I'll keep trying."

"Why would they bring him back just to let him die like this?" Phoebe questioned. There was an empty, hollow ache settling in her chest as grief washed over her. "He can't die. Not like this. I can't watch him die again. I can't lose him again."

Piper had moved over to her sisters and Cole, leaving Coop to stand by himself off to the side. She knelt down with her sisters and put two fingers on Cole's neck to try to feel for a pulse.

"Honey, he's not dead," She assured her. His pulse was faint but it was there. "Paige, just keep at it," Piper encouraged. So long as he wasn't dead, they still had a chance. "C'mon Cole. You were always too stubborn to die when we wanted you to. Don't let us down now," She said to him.

"Guys," Paige said to get their attention. The wound was healing beneath the light from her hands. His complexion was looking less pale and ashen by the second. It was finally working.