#bc they're so similar but their differences change absolutely everything but they're both drawn to those similarities

[paigemathews]

Do you ever think about what Wyatt and Billie’s relationship would look like? I mean, do you ever think that maybe he sees Billie as an omen? A prophesied witch with not only extraordinary power, but projection specifically, that evil has hunted and desired for years, to the point of creating intricate plots to turn them from a young age? (While my Wyatt doesn’t realize yet, the fact that Billie and Wyatt both fell into evil’s clutch in the past? That their redemption came at their sibling’s life? That their deaths can be traced directly to them?)

Imagine Billie post-series, who has lost. honestly, everything in under a year. She went from a confident, headstrong newly-discovered witch determined to save the day to a powerful witch who lost her entire family and was manipulated and used by evil to attack good as a whole. After all of that, I don’t really think that you walk out of that without it becoming a deeply impactful and integral part of your experience.

So a Billie who is more subdued and removed from magical affairs. A Billie who knows the price and risks with magic, especially her own. A Billie who learns how to master her magic, because she’s already seen the consequences of her failures, but there is no real need for it anymore with the lack of demonic attacks. And she is asked, by the sisters who she betrayed and had to earn their trust again, to help teach a witch just like her to control his powers.

Beyond her own experiences, do you think Billie ever told the sisters about Dumain showing her what Wyatt was supposed to “become”? Or did she just chalk it up to his lies and manipulation? And even if she did tell them, do you think that the sisters would be able to tell her? When they themselves never actually knew how bad it was in the unchanged future? When they’re still unsure if they can trust her again and handing her that information includes telling them how, despite all of their power, they could still do nothing as a son/nephew died in front of them?

So she tries to impart how important it is that Wyatt uses his powers for good, not to harm. She trains him to control his power, tries to teach him to respect it as something incredibly dangerous. She conveys over and over again that projection is powerful, but dangerous and if you’re not careful, it can create a lot of harm. She isn’t his only teacher, but she, with her own history and the same power and the knowledge that he will outclass them all and that vision that is bad enough without considering what else he is able to do, is the one who is able to understand best. Piper and Phoebe and Paige are extremely powerful, obviously, but their power is rooted in their bond and that itself helps keep them in check because there is a balance. Billie, her sister (the key) dead and her as the real Ultimate Power, is the closest to knowing what that’s like.

Except Wyatt is Wyatt, his mother and father’s son in everyway but especially his heart. He’s the child who tried to prevent conflict before he was even born. He’s the child who took everyone’s burdens on himself as his to solve before he could even speak. He needed to protect his loved ones, no matter how powerful they individually were. When he failed, he blamed himself. When people struggled, and he couldn’t help them, he blamed himself. Not only does he blame himself for not being able to save or help people, he pins his entire worth as a person on his ability to help. This is the child who thought that he deserved to die because of his father’s grief and inner turmoil, something he wasn’t even to blame for. And he sees so much of himself in Billie, sees her story as a warning if he is to slip to the wrong side, if he is to be blinded to evil and used as a weapon. He takes every message that Billie tries to teach and internalizes it just a little bit too much, takes it just a bit too personally.

And imagine what happens. Billie, who can relate to Wyatt’s potential future just a bit too much, trying to teach him caution and instead teaches him fear. Wyatt, who sees a bit too many similarities in Billie’s past, transforms her lessons of control and innocents into repression and his value. Because they see those similarities, but they don’t quite see the differences and those differences change everything.