Mixed Messages

Khaat rushed into her office, unhappy with herself. She had been late again to work. She'd been late, to some degree or another, for almost a month now. She didn't feel bad, but she sure was having more trouble wanting to get up in the morning. She seemed to crave another couple hours of sleep in the mornings. Brian had suggested she go to bed earlier. This was the last straw, she decided. She would have to actually try to take his advice.

Her life and her schedule had been such a mixed up mess since...well..when was it exactly? She frowned, putting her large messenger bag on the desk, as Hannah came in with Khaat's first mug of French Roast. She had taken to making it extra strong lately, as if French Roast wasn't strong enough in itself.

Hannah started running down the list, as she had had to start doing, of how she had altered Khaat's schedule to fit in all her demands in a shorter time, and Khaat only heard part of what she said. She took the mug, smelled deeply of the intoxicating aroma from the coffee that steamed up in her face as she sat down at her desk.

Wait...intoxicating? Maybe that had something to do with it. She had ended up at a ministry fundraiser and had found herself sitting beside Rob thanks to some dimwit in her father's office who believed they were still a couple. She actually had had a good time, though, at the dinner--until she hadn't felt all that well. A bit dizzy, and for no particular reason that she knew of. Rob, ever present and ever wonderful, had promised to see her home.

What Khaat had never understood was why she didn't remember leaving the dinner, going home, or anything else from that Friday night. The next she knew, she was waking on Sunday morning, at home, in bed, curled next to Brian like usual. She could have explained it if she had had more than a little to drink, but all she had had was part of one glass of white wine with her dinner. That was it. Not nearly enough to cause her memory lapse. It made her embaressed, and so far, she hadn't said anything to anyone about it. She was just trying to move on with her life and hope that the nagging sensation she had at the back of her brain about missing something important would stop and go away altogether.

"Hannah?" she looked up, realizing as she spoke that she had interrupted her secretary. "Sorry, but I really am hungry. Any chance you would, please, send to the kitchen for a toasted crumpet for me with butter?"

"Just butter?"

"Yeah. Please?"

"Will do," she smiled, "We'll go over your schedule again when you've had a little caffeine."

"Thank you," Khaat smiled. She looked at the stack of budget files she had to balance today and sighed. Well, those certainly weren't going away. She pulled the first file off the stack and opened it. She decided she might as well start to work. No point in putting it off.

The fundraiser had been a good idea at first. Rob hadn't exactly been for it but he'd gone out of principle. What he hadn't expected was to find himself next to Khaat. There had an error in communications somewhere in the Ministry - there had to have been, she wouldn't have sat herself there by choice. Despite this lack of communication though, the evening had been rather splendid.

At first, it had been awfully awkward but after a couple of drinks on his part, he'd begun to relax. It had been a pleasant enough encounter, until of course she'd declared that she felt ill. Rob didn't have a problem - it wasn't her fault - but he was slightly disappointed.

In an effort to prolong their time together, Rob offered to take her home. To his surprise, but predictably, she agreed and Rob leant her a hand. They Apparated back to Khaat's but it didn't end there. Both had been overcome with arousal and they'd...well...

Rob, for one, did not regret what had happened. She was thinner than he remembered but enjoyed it none the less. He'd left her after that, feeling guilty at the time. He'd used her. In a way, he didn't feel guilty but he knew that Khaat was with Brian and what they'd done was wrong.

And there would be no repercussions. No one would ever have to know.

At least, they wouldn't have, had Rob not possessed such insane employees. One of the women, love struck and stupid, mixed an array of potions together and poisoned them both. How, Rob didn't know but somehow she'd managed it and she was boasting about her 'success' to some of the girls when he'd gone down to the warehouse the next morning.

Needless to say, she'd been dealt with appropriately.

What Rob had found out after that was that she'd mixed a fertility potion in. One of the good ones. There was no way Khaat wasn't pregnant. Even if her uterus had been removed, she still would have been pregnant because the potion was designed to make anything conceive. He didn't know how much she had put in, all he knew was that she had and Khaat was going to get her wish.

Abbey was going to have a brother or sister.

Rob couldn't sneak off back to Azkaban though. He knew he couldn't just leave her. He knew better than that. So, he'd gotten up earlier that morning and recited what he was going to say to Katriane who had been crawling around the front room. Nathalia and Jean-Paul were crawling around as well but they'd become distracted by one of Eli's cats.

After waking up Jen and telling her where the kids were, Rob Flooed over to St. Mungo's. He found Sadie at the front desk and after an awkward conversation with her, he took the lift up to the floor that held Khaat's office. He paused outside her door, his hand raised to knock, and bit his lip. He rapped his knuckles against the door and pushed it open. He poked his head around and smiled at Khaat when he saw her. He also noticed Hannah who he also lent a smile to.

"Do you have a minute?" He asked.

"Rob," she said, pleasantly surprised. "Of course. Come in. Make yourself at home. Hannah has my coffee pot on, if you'd like some." She pointed to the credenza where the coffeepot held the freshest of gourmet French Roast, brewed to Khaat's very finicky specifications. Beside the pot were a number of Kate's handmade and brightly painted oversized stoneware mugs that Khaat loved so much, along with cream and sugar. "Help yourself," she motioned. At that moment, a round silver tray and a small porcelain plate floated in.

"Oh, that's Phillippe's--the chef downstairs. He's been experimenting with breakfast pastries. So every morning he sends me a tray of his newest experiments. You're welcome to try them. They're usually excellent, and they don't last til lunchtime once the staff knows they're here." The little porcelain plate floated to her desk and landed. It had her toasted and buttered crumpet on it. She had never regretted for one moment hiring a 5 star french chef for the St. Mungos kitchen. They were getting an excellent reputation of having some of the finest food anywhere, and it wasn't unusual to see people coming there just to eat. Khaat didn't see it as much of a romantic thing, taking one's spouse to the hospital dining room, but all the same, it did seem that people who didn't need hospital services were coming just to eat. Hannah left them and shut the door.

Now the discomfort threatened to rise up inside her. She hoped like hell that Rob wasn't going to bring up last month. She was missing, as best as she could figure, about 36 hours out of her memory entirely. Gone. Just gone. She had a deep fear that she had done something embarressing during those hours, but the last she knew, really, was Rob agreeing to see her home at the fundraiser.

"So, what's on your mind?" she asked, doing her best to hide every trace of anxiety and push it back down deep inside her where it belonged--out of the way and unable to hinder her.

How was he supposed to tell her this? It was like the kiss of death. Perhaps she'd be all for it but Rob...he was mortified. How could he have let this happen? He knew it all to be an accident on their part but blooming heck...this isn't how he'd wanted to be reunited with his wife.

Then again, he had in a way stuck it to Brian. It was natural for Rob to hate the guy. He loved Khaat, still, after everything so he hated Brian as a result of that. Now, he couldn't help but feel smug that he'd got one over on him...so to speak.

But now she was pregnant. For the second time. With Rob's child. If anything, it was a success. Rob wasn't quite willing to see it that way though. He was smug but only a little bit. First and foremost, he felt as guilty as hell. How was he supposed to tell her? He couldn't. He didn't want to but he knew he had to.

Khaat quickly filled the silence between them with offers of food and coffee, both of which Rob shook his head to. He wanted to deliver the message, maybe offer some condolences and go to the Leaky and have a pint. It was an awful thing to do but quite frankly, he'd had a tiring day. The last thing he wanted to do now was deal with her dismay at being pregnant once more -- and with his baby.

Still, a part of Robbie hoped she'd be happy.

"You, actually," Rob answered easily, when prompted. He managed a smile and reached up to run his hand through his hair. "A-and...what happened the other month. I have something to tell you Khaat and I don't know exactly how you'll take it..."

Well, leave it to Rob to get right down to it. Her blood suddenly felt like ice in her veins. She picked up her coffee mug smoothly and took another sip. Then, she got a vision of herself almost from outside herself. Bloody hell, she was becoming her father. When had that happened? Now she understood it. She understood how he could look like such a bastard to others. She understood that others could see him as a bastard, but for the life of her, she had never understood why. She had never seen that in him. Now it made sense. They had only seen the exterior he had deliberately shown. Just like she was, somehow, automatically doing right now. No matter what happened on the inside, she was being perfectly calm on the outside. She didn't know how that was happening. When did she develop the ability to do that? Had Barker and Burke done that to her? As a healer, she knew that was the most likely answer. One she didn't want to look at. On the other hand, though, it was making her stronger, making her able to bear up to more than she thought she was capable of. On the inside she was terrified that she had done something horrible, and the outside was smooth as silk. And how the hell did she tell him that she didn't remember one bloody thing for 36 hours after the dinner. That wasn't going to be easy either.

"Is that something we really need to look at?" she asked, not sure she wanted to hear any of it. She looked into his face. He knew something. Something important that he didnt' want to say anymore than she probably wanted to hear it. Somehow, though, no matter what it was, she and Rob found a way through it. It was good news they didn't do so well. Ironic as that was, it was the truth. So what was it this time? Good news that was going to be hard for them? Or bad news that was going to somehow force her to rely again on Rob to get through it? She took a moment to gather courage. She was, after all, her father's daughter. She knew she had courage somewhere to pull on for whatever this was.

"Alright," she said to him, looking him in the eye. "Just say it." Whatever it was, she was as ready as she would ever be.

Suddenly, all of the practising seemed useless because Rob was as tongue tied as he feared he would be. Katriane's blank stare was not unlike the one his mind was displaying. He had no idea how he was supposed to explain this. Could he just come right out and say his nutty employee had drugged the two of them and managed to get Khaat pregnant in the process? He didn't think that would go down too well.

Then again, he couldn't just come out and say, 'hey look, you're pregnant' because that wouldn't go down well either. On top of everything else, Rob had no idea how he was supposed to tell her that he wanted a more active roll in their first born's life. He wanted to be close to Abbey. The only thing he was succeeding in doing was pushing everyone away.

Rob loved Khaat. He loved his daughter too. He'd do anything to bring whatever they had together again. He didn't think about that as often as he should have done. He tried to put it out of his mind as much as possible, believing it to be an impossible endeavour.

Yet here he stood, with a possibility to fix everything he'd broken. The question was, would he?

Rob sucked in a breath, deciding to bite the bullet.

"You're pregnant, Khaat."

Her icy facade fell apart at his words. At first she laughed. "What?" she asked, unbelieving. She wondered what the devil he'd been drinking now. "You're out of your mind." She looked at his face, waiting for the April Fool's prank look on his face. It didn't come. He was serious. "Wait...what?" she was totally confused. Pregnant? And how the devil would HE know? She hadn't seen him since the dinner. She presumed if anybody would know if she were pregnant or not, it should be Brian. She wasn't pregnant. Not so far as she knew. Still, the serious look on his face didn't change.

"I'm not pregnant, and I'll prove it," she frowned. She got up and went over to her cabinet and got out a testtube and poured a clear potion into it. She put a couple of her chestnut colored hairs into the tube, corked the tube and shook it. She fully expected it to turn red--no baby. If she were pregnant, which she was not, it would turn emerald green. She shook the tube, certain the potion inside would turn glistening ruby red and that would be the end of Rob's madness. The tube did turn color. But to her utter horror, it was not red. The potion inside turned black. That had never happened. She repeated it twice and got the same result.

In frustration, she angrily summoned her father from his office next door. He came in, curious as to why she was so angry. "Hello, Rob," he said. He looked back at Khaat, "What seems to be the problem?" He followed her over to the counter where she had the potions and the test tubes.

"The potion doesn't work. It's wrong." She held up the black vial. "See? Black." He looked at the left over chestnut hairs on the counter and the bottle she had used to pour the potion from and checked the potion itself first. Then he looked at her. "The potion never lies," he said quietly. He took the vial from her hand and walked to the window and held it up to the light. "It's not black, my dear. It's green. Just a very dark green."

"I've never seen that before," she said, following him.

"I have. Once," he said. "Congratulations, my dear." He kissed her cheek lightly. "If you want my advice, I'd go spend the summer in some place cool." He turned and walked out, going back to his office. That only made her more confused than ever. She turned on Rob, irked.

"What the hell does that mean?" she spouted off at him. "What the devil did you do,and how exactly did you do it?"

With a sigh, Rob let her begin her tirade. She was disputing a potioneer whose potions were designed to be better than store-bought ones. Yes, genius Khaat. Rob took a seat and kicked his feet up onto her desk, deciding that he was probably going to be there for a while. He'd wait for her to have her little meltdown, call her father in and he'd get the mouthing off he probably deserved. Then he'd go down the pub.

Rob wasn't disappointed. After several failed tries, Khaat summoned her father. In classic Robert style, he gave very little away and managed to look prickish at the same time. Superb. Rob couldn't keep a satisfied smirk off of his face. For once Robert's prick-ness wasn't directed at him and he liked it.

When she turned on him, the smirk dropped from Rob's face. He shrugged and returned the smirk to his lips.

"Wasn't me." He told her, getting to his feet. He fished his wallet out of his pocket and looked inside. Satisfied with what was there, he cocked his head towards the door. "Fancy a drink?"

"Well, so far as I remember, it wasn't me either!" she said. Then she caught herself. She'd slipped and said it. Damn. She had hoped she would be able to keep that little newsflash from him. Then she looked at him. It all lay in what she didn't remember. And he knew. He knew whatever it was.

She sat down, groaning unhappily. It wasn't the pregnancy that bothered her. Her mind hadn't gotten quite to that part yet. It was whirling about how and who and when. And to the best of her knowledge, she and Brian had been very careful to use solidly strong birth control spells. However, they had been mucked with a bit by Luther Burke before his demise. Maybe they had been weakened. She hadn't thought about asking Brian to check that. It had never occured to her or to Brian, so far as she knew.

"Rob, it seems I have news for you too," she said quietly. "For some reason, I dont remember anything the night of the ministry dinner from the time you said you'd take me home until I woke up in my own bed on Sunday morning. Friday night, Saturday, Saturday night, they're all gone. You seem to remember or know more than I do. What happened, and why don't I remember? Is this ours? Is it Brians? Or is it someone elses?" She really did want to know, and she felt she had that right.

Another issue occured to her. While it certainly didn't bother her like it probably should have if it were Robs, it wasn't exactly societally appropriate to be Brian's either. And she really wasn't good with it being someone else, some unnamed third party, not at all. But, if it were Robs, how would Brian feel? And if it were Brians, she really did care about how Rob would feel. She had wanted more children but it was exactly this bind that had caused her to wait and to opt, thus far, to not go ahead and just have more. Nor did she understand the results her father had said. Very dark green? And he'd only seen it once? What did that mean? And he never said remarks like the "advice" he had given her without reason. Why hadn't he just spit it out? What did he know that he wasn't saying now either? Exactly what was she carrying? Labradors? More puppies? What?

"Oh, hell," she sighed. "Sure. I do fancy a drink. Let's go." She picked up her purse and stood up. "But dont' think you're getting out of answering me--about everything."

The fact that she didn't remember made Rob seem like some sort of creep. He knew he wasn't the nicest of blokes when it came to some things but his mother hadn't been a complete and utter failure. Sure she'd turned her daughter into a paranoid stick of a woman that always carried a gun and created her son into being one of the most notorious potioneers in Britain but she hadn't gone wrong completely

"Well I don't know," Rob smirked, taking a packet of tobacco and some filter paper out of his pocket. "How many men do you sleep with on a regular basis?" He then proceeded to make a roll up, in his wife's office in the middle of St. Mungo's. Typical. "I mean, it's an incredibly important thing to know just to square things up. As it is, I rather think that baby is going to be mine. What? Do you think I'd come here for a cup of tea, a cake and a nice chat? Please, Khaat, I have my own things to do -- like dealing with the Death Eaters in my prison that seem to think it is amusing to terrorise each other. It's very trying."

Rob pocketed the packets and stood up, fishing his lighter from his pocket. He lit the end of the make-shift cigarette and put it to his lips. Popping the lighter back into his pocket, he turned and headed towards the door, opening it up and walking through shouting to Khaat,

"Hurry up then, love. Manchester United are playing Chelsea."