Shape of Things to Come Part 3:Seeds of Time Chapter 31 ‘All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts' ...William Shakespeare. As You Like It

A few days after the whole family felt the roof collapsed on them over the demon battle footage being made public, the witch Leslie Simpson, with two dogs at her feet, sat on the not so new sofa in what passed for the parlour of ‘next door’. She was a little disoriented, firstly because she was usually not home by 5.00pm, and also because she was feeling another roof had collapsed on her that day. She thought of opening some wine but Leslie only enjoyed drinking wine as a social function and today had been many things but social it was not. She considered another coffee but she had drunk quite a bit earlier and her mouth had that bitter after taste which Leslie decided was a complete metaphor for her life.

Finally, after sitting all alone for a while, Leslie concluded, based on the last few days with her sister Fern’s explosions, with magic out of control and with the very real possibility of all out magic war between Good and Evil, that being a witch sucked. Then she concluded that being a big-sister really sucked. Then she concluded that after today what sucked most of all was being a grown up. Eventually Leslie, followed by the dogs, went into the kitchen of ‘next door’ such as it was, and made herself a very sweet coco which did not really solve her problems but as a favourite from her childhood at least it was not a grown-up drink.

Afterwards she went back to her seat on the sofa, where the dogs sat beside her. Leslie curled her legs under her, took her glasses off because they were giving her a headache, hugged the warm mug to her and pondered on the events of today, trying to make sense of a very unfriendly real world.

Today had really started yesterday, in truth, perhaps it really started the evening of the day before when a still distraught Fern had confessed to her sisters about her explosion at Piper. Leslie had not reacted like a sensible grown-up big sister. Still swallowing down the resentment she felt at Fern dragging them into the magic war, she had listened without a word, then exploded in a rage at Fern. Exploded as only sisters could explode at each other, then left an angry but concerned Charlie to comfort Fern, while Leslie stormed over to the Manor to apologise profusely to Piper. However, Piper had not been very receptive to Leslie’s apologies, insisting that what had happened was nothing to do with Leslie. It was between her and Fern while Leo standing behind Piper, nodded his head.

“Do you want to throw us out of…your family?” Leslie half whispered.

“You can’t throw people out of families” Piper all but snapped “you can ignore them but you can’t throw them out.”

Piper then claimed she heard the kids arguing upstairs and left, just an excuse to get away, leaving Leslie with Leo.

“I’m so sorry “Leslie told Leo “I don’t know how Fern could have said what she did. After what we owe you.”

Leo very quietly indicated that Leslie should sit down beside him in the conservatory where he very softly reiterated that she and her sisters did not owe the Halliwell family anything. Then he conceded that maybe Leslie and her sisters owed Paige for keeping the original, not very well thought out promise to their mother, but nothing else. “And no, I’m not letting you off the hook or making it easier.” Leo insisted “In fact its harder. If you owed us you, could repay what you owe and move on, but you don’t owe us because we made the choice to support you, to support Paige’s family, as she supports ours so it’s not possible to make yourself free of a debt. You can leave the home but not the family.”

“Even Fern?” Leslie asked awkwardly.

“Especially Fern” Leo gently put his arm around Leslie until she nodded a little uncomfortably and after a few sniffs, she stood up and returned to ‘next door’ to find Charlie and Fern had locked themselves away in their rooms, claiming they were studying but Leslie doubted it.

Unfortunately for Leslie the evening before became the next day and the next day was all about DJ, her co-worker at Cole’s firm.

From the day Leslie first started her office job in Cole’s small practice, she loved her work. She believed that she had found her place in the universe, a place that gave her perspective, a place where she could be useful and respected. As everything else in her life at that point was so disturbed, the job kept her from self-destructing through all her father’s angry accusations. One great advantage of working in the small practice was that she did not have to deny her magic soul to work with Cole. At Cole’s law practice, Leslie was appreciated for being Leslie, both witch and lawyer, whether it was her part-time job filing when she was at school, working as a legal assistant while she was in college or practicing as a lawyer, Leslie was very, very good at what she did.

She felt useful, she knew her work was especially important to other people’s lives. Her clients were often witches, or women struggling to make a living from small businesses, or women who needed help to run the gauntlet of the legal system and who usually could not get it from larger law firms. Leslie also enjoyed the camaraderie of the other members of the practice, knowing they shared the same ideals and all had a certain pride in the way they helped people and made lives better.

Leslie’s closest associate was DJ. He was the nearest to her in age and experience and they often shared their successes and losses. Professionally he had a very good understanding of the working of the DA’s office that he frequently used to help her. They had a deal about being second chair for each other when needed, and this meant that Leslie was getting some excellent experience with some of the seedier side of criminal law, which was most of DJ’s practice now.

Originally Leslie had not been so happy that DJ joined Cole’s firm when she had just graduated. She worried he would somehow use his four years’ experience in the DA’s office to push her out, leave her to be just the junior in the firm. However, the two of them formed a close friendship and working relationship very quickly, because for all his brashness, at the time he started in Cole’s small practice, DJ had been quite distraught at being targeted by what he thought were the more ambitious, ruthless lawyers in the DA’s office. Lawyers Leslie knew to be Evil lost souls and grunts. Therefore, she was both sympathetic and supportive of DJ, and by the time Cole sorted out DJ’s legal issues resulting from being targeted by Evil, she and DJ were firm friends.

Leslie had been a little amused when both Clarissa and Erin had warned her confidentially that DJ was gay and she should not get expectations in that area, especially when she fell in the habit of going out with him for drinks after work, and then onto the bars and nightclubs where DJ hooked up for his very successful sex life. Leslie may have had an innocent soul but she had seen too much magic, lived to much magic to be naive. The truth was after the hell her father caused in her family life and with responsibilities she felt for her brothers and sisters she did not want to her caught up in difficult relationships. Nevertheless, she was also in her twenties and did not want to spend Friday and Saturday nights knitting, or always being a third wheel with her sisters and their friends. With DJ she got to go places she would not go on her own.

The arrangement also suited DJ, as he disliked going out alone, but going with a male friend or group cramped his pickup opportunities. He liked to be with someone with whom he could share a drink, someone who laughed at his acid comments, and when he was what he called surveying his options, he could be brutal. He also enjoyed showing off his dance moves while he carefully perused the club scene and selected his hook up. Going out with Leslie meant he never had to explain his intentions or why he could drop his companion when the hookup was selected.

For the most part, Leslie enjoyed the adventure, and felt reasonably safe, partly because of the places DJ liked to go and partly because she was a witch who could scare the shit out of any assailant. She tried to make sure she could get a taxi home, although she had had to call Paige to pick her up a few times from some more seedy places when cabs did not turn up. Once to Leslie’s horror, because she hated shimmering, and because she suspected he was not as comfortable about her adventures as she was, Cole turned up instead of Paige. He did not say anything to her but according to Clarissa, using the cool calm voice that the family and the people in the office all knew was Cole at his most dangerous, he had a terse discussion with DJ when Leslie was not in the office on Monday morning. After that DJ was a little more careful about making sure she got home.

Apart from the law, DJ’s other hobby was art. From his university days he had developed a popular review page, where he got to indulge his wit, his cleverness with critical analysis and his love of art. Leslie went with him to gallery openings, and even made enough acquaintances on her own to say hello to some people and join them for suppers and drinks. With DJ, there were no misunderstandings, no expectations. Leslie was happy with her friendship, because just at this time in her life it suited her needs exactly. DJ was fun to be with, he was clever and witty and often pushed on the edge of taste. Through him, Leslie met people who were also clever and lived in a different space than the Halliwell family.

DJ’s friendship meant a great deal to Leslie, because it was easy and the rules were clear, any opportunity for sex was going to be his first choice. There was real friendship as well though. Leslie told him about her father and her mother’s death. She even confessed to being a witch which he took to being only a wicca religion, and said of course he knew Cole’s family were ‘into that’ and Leslie thought it better not to explain further.

DJ also talked to her about some of his own very private things which worried Leslie. Despite his façade of tough criminal lawyer who could coldly out manoeuvre anything the prosecutors threw at him, DJ was a sensitive soul who let losses bother him far more than was good for him. He, like the rest of the members of Cole’s practice, was devoted to the work and he was very grateful to Cole for still being a working lawyer after his experiences of Evil in the District Attorney’s office. His parents, both immigrants who worked at jobs not too far from the minimum wage were incredibly proud of DJ becoming a lawyer.

His parents never really understood what had gone wrong in the DA’s office. They only understood that instead of working in what they perceived as a ‘good’ government job, despite being cleared of any wrong doing, their son was working in a ‘shit’ law practice, notorious not only for its riff-raff clients, but its low pay. After their sacrifices to get him to college, DJ earning ‘good’ money as a lawyer was the proof of his success, but like the rest of Cole’s staff he was not earning ‘good’ money. DJ was only ‘getting by’.

On a few of their going-out nights when the hook-up options turned out to be poor, and the cocktails plentiful DJ had cried on Leslie’s shoulder about how disappointed his parents were and how all he really wanted to do was have them proud of him again. When Leslie saw DJ in court, as he followed what Cole had taught him, battling, and winning for some person that the rest of the world had given up on, Leslie was rather glad she could not orb. Otherwise, she would have given into temptation to kidnap his parents and drag them into court, to show them how proud they should be of their son. Because Leslie was very proud of what he was doing, even if DJ enjoyed winning against his old colleagues of the DA’s office a little too much, using some of the sneakiest tricks that Cole had taught him.