Phila was down in the basement for the first time in weeks. She sat on the stairs starring at the other side of the room. She wore her usual training top and tracksuit bottoms. She hadn't been training her martial arts the last weeks. She hadn't been strong enough to carry on with an activity that had brought so much joy to her and her mother. The memory still hurt too much. Now something else was disturbing her peace of mind.

Cole leaned lazily against the wall, his hands in his pockets and waited. He watched his daughter watching him. She hadn't moved for quite a while, she just kept staring at him. He mused about how he had gotten here again. Doubtless this was his personal hell. He had to grant it to the Elders, they knew how to punish someone.

After Leo had taken his and Phoebe's soul up to the Elders, heaven had been in turmoil. There had been endless discussions about him, about Phoebe, about their connected souls and possible solutions for that. The Elders had tried to break their connection but failed.

Phoebe had been very proud, he had been surprised and the Elders had been extremely pissed. He hadn't seen Phoebe since the day of the vanquish. They had kept them apart and threatened to leave it that way for eternity if one of them misbehaved. So there hadn't been much choice for him when Leo had informed him of the Elder's decision on what they expected from him.

So here he was. At the Halliwell manor. Again. As a Whitelighter. Shit.

You could call it quite a career. Demon – Human – Source of Evil – Ghost – Whitelighter. What next?

He moved his back muscles slowly. At least as a Whitelighter he had his body back. Being in a bodiless existence hadn't suited him at all. And to be honest, heaven had been dull besides the one encounter with Prue, which he wished to have avoided.

His task was to help his daughter with her demon heritage. Since no one could bind her demonic powers anymore, the Elders had the great idea that he was going to teach her to use and control them. For that he had to live under the same roof and get along with the whole family, who to be honest, were as unhappy with the situation as he was. Maybe even more. They had banished him to the basement after the initial shock and he wasn't keen on meeting them either.

Cole had never thought that the Elders were that slick. By making him a Whitelighter the Elders had killed two birds with one stone. They had gotten rid of him by sending him back to earth and at the same time had retained Phoebe up there. So they had managed to separate them. It worked since Whitelighters incorporated a part of heaven in them. So he theoretically was in heaven too and they weren't separated in terms of the soul-binding-spell. He hadn't understood it as Leo had explained it. The laws of white magic worked totally different than the dark magic he knew.

He looked back at his daughter. All he could do was hold out until Phila was ready to talk with him. As he knew the stubbornness of the Halliwells this could take quite a while. Additionally living with the Halliwells was a torture. They loathed him.

So even ending up in heaven meant hell for him. Another sarcastic joke of the universe at his expense. But for the small hope of being with Phoebe again in a distant future, he was ready to endure it.

The End

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Author's note:

Many thanks to all my readers who joined our journey through this story, reviewed and by this motivated and encouraged me to finish it.

Great Thanks also to Barb my beta-reader for her great support.