Then We Have An Accord

Khaat finished documenting her work and signing her orders. The owls had been sent. She had actually only send for Viktor. But one of her nurses had overstepped and sent for Eli as well. Khaat went to the surgeons dressing room to refresh herself so she looked professional. Appropriate. Composed. Polished.

It was a lie. It had triggered too much she still held within. Anger at the beast for what he had done, not just to her, but to her son. The rage was just waiting to be unleashed. It was brewing, boiling, not even simmering.

Brian had wanted to take the case from her. Or to give it off to her father. She wasn't ready to do that. She had unfinished business. And Viktor didn't particularly care for her father. He did however get along with her. If anyone was going to deal with Viktor Krum today, it was going to be her.

She had left a very armed bodyguard on the room. She had left specific orders. If the monster showed up, the bodyguard was to show no quarter. No mercy. Ask no questions. Avada Kedavra immediately. She had made him swear.

Her anger was manifesting as she went back up to her office. Paperwork was blowing off the desks, vases of flowers were tipping over, and anything lightweight was being tossed assunder. Her healers were stepping aside, out of her way.

She went back up to her office, refilled her mug with french roast and stared out the window. Where the hell was he right now? She wanted him. He needed to die. Tonight--if she could manage it.

Scotland was beautiful this time of year, vibrant and sumptuous, a real treat to be in the midst of. Elijah was beginning to get used to a life with Mira and one that exempted his family from intruding and causing trouble. He was almost beginning to forget them too. He’d put to the back of his mind the events that had occurred at Christmas and everything else that had happened and that had nearly destroyed his life and the life of several others. He’d been busy but not in the way most would hope. Elijah had been ferreting around in his garden having cordoned off an area which he had been working the Muggle way and had begun to turn into some sort of allotment. It was too late for anything to really grow naturally but a little bit of magic here and there caught the seeds he’d planted up with what they were supposed to be like for the time of year and then he left them, knowing that in a couple of weeks’ time, the food would be ripe for picking. He was in his element there even though Arnold and many of his clients would have preferred he’d painted the land rather than fiddle around with it.

He was incredibly reluctant to return to the real world but he was positive it would come knocking; and much to his may it did. The knock came in late July in the form of a letter which a House Elf ran out of the house and into the garden just to give him. Elijah put down the pitchfork he was using to turn over the earth and leaned on it, taking the letter and opening it up, getting dirt over the page in the process but not enough to make it difficult to make out. He knew the handwriting. He was sure he could have deciphered it even if he’d lost an eye. He glanced over at the House Elf and smiled, handing the letter back and telling him to get out some robes, that he’d be in the house in half an hour or so. Elijah made good on his promise and entered the house in a rather grimy state that made the matriarch of his little family of House Elves, Susie, chase him upstairs with a spoon that was offensively large, especially considering how tiny she was, and into the shower to get clean. Elijah wasn’t about to complain on that front but he couldn’t help but smirk as he washed off all of the dirt and such from his skin and hair.

Elijah arrived at St. Mungo’s not late exactly but he hadn’t been particularly prompt. He weaved through the grand hallways, smiling at those that seemed to recognising him and introducing himself to those who stopped to have a chat with him. He’d donned one of his better sets of robes in order to make himself a bit more presentable. As he turned down towards Khaat’s office, he bumped into a rather familiar face. Elijah’s hands came to grasp the upper arms of the woman he’d bumped into and he stepped back to see that it was in fact his step-mother, Irina. Elijah looked at her, suddenly rather befuddled and she opened her mouth to express something, though he wasn’t sure what, before she was cut off by an achingly familiar voice, one Elijah had hoped he’d never have to hear again.

“What’re you doing here, boy?”

Elijah released Irina and stepped forward, realising that he was in fact now a smidgen taller than his own father. He’d never quite have Viktor’s thick build but now he was taller and Viktor looked far older than he had ever done. Elijah raised an eyebrow, his mouth set in a frown before replying gruffly:

“I was called here.”

Viktor’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “Were you now? Well, what a coincidence. I was as well.” Viktor seemed thoroughly awkward around his son who he seemed to realise was no longer a boy. Far from it in fact. His son was now a man, an adult in his own right. He was no longer someone Viktor could baby. “Well, after you,” He said, gesturing to the office door.

Elijah shook his head and stepped around his father, his hand coming to the door of the office, knocking, before taking the brass door handle and twisting it, opening it up to the well-furnished office he’d been in multiple times in years gone by. His eyes found Khaat and he smiled warmly at her, crossing the room so as to wrap her up in a hug. “I trust she’s at least breathing?” Elijah murmured in her ear with regards to his sister who, as he’d been informed via the letter, had had the pleasure of Barker for an evening. Elijah stepped back and shook his head, looking at her with cautious eyes. “How did this happen?”

"How does it ever happen?" Khaat sighed, hugging Eli. "Barker is completely without conscience. Thank you all for coming. Sit, if you like." This was not going to be easy. Not for them, not for her. It was their immediate family. It was fault of the man who had nearly killed several of the people she loved. Khaat didn't really know Cecilia. They'd never been close but that was hardly the point. The point was Barker. He had to be stopped. Now.

She reeled in her emotions, deciding to do her best to be logical, rational--when that was the ast she wanted. She explained Cecilia's condition--her multiple injuries to the Krums. She told them she was receiving the best possible treatment, which was true. But Khaat wasnt' stopping there. Not where Barker was concerned.

"I will not let Barker get to her again," Khaat said. "I have stationed a bodyguard with her. If Barker even breathes on the same floor, he has my orders to use a killing curse on sight."

There was nothing that could be done with Barker, clearly, and Elijah couldn’t help but feel more than a little bit betrayed by the man he had put up out of the goodness of his heart. He’d wanted Barker to be alive and kicking again, not alive, kicking and torturing; that was never part of the deal. Elijah now knew that he had to suffer for his mistake but he was honestly rather glad that it was his sister that had been on the end of it rather than anyone else. That even sounded odd in his own brain, though, and he shook his head, taking his seat on the other side of Khaat’s desk next to his father who had already collapsed, pale and aged, into the low-back armchair. It was his daughter, Elijah remembered, but he was no longer his son. Elijah doubted highly that Viktor would have displayed such interest if it was he who had fallen to Barker. Elijah straightened his shoulders a bit and decided to put that thought out of his mind. It would not do to become bitter.

“He won’t be back,” Elijah murmured with quiet confidence. “Not unless he’s left something out. If he’s finished, there’s no need to come back. Unless he’s making it a serial thing. Visiting her every so often to remind her who, exactly, is in charge. Mind games. He enjoys them.”

“Bite your tongue,” Viktor hissed sharply. Elijah lifted his eyes across to meet the man’s intense, almost hurt, gaze. “That’s your sister you’re talking about!”

“Is it?” Elijah bit back. “I’m not a part of your family anymore if you care to remember.”

“You killed my brother! Your uncle!” Viktor spat, his temper rising, Elijah’s heightening with it.

“It was revenge, you dolt! Revenge for my mother! Revenge for Alice! So don’t you ever, ever think what I did was anything other than just and exactly what he deserved.”

This made Viktor fall quiet, his resolve gone for a moment. “Khaat,” He said finally. “What’s next? What do we do from here? Barker needs to be stopped.”

Khaat walked to the window and looked out over London, pausing to choose her words carefully. Ei knew her too well. Unless she was very careful, he would see through it all. But...she wanted Viktor's alliance. She regretted not killing him in Azkaban when she had the chance. She regretted every chance she'd ever had to take him out. And had she known then that he would not stop at her, that there were going to be others, she would have killed him after the very first time he'd had her. There would not have been others. It had been her responsibility to eliminate the threat from the wizarding world. Hell, she was more responsible since most of his victims had been victims simply because she loved them.

She could sign an arrest warrant within the hour. Or a death warrant--after all, he was an escaped convict. But then there was more time waiting for him to be secured. Besides that, he had escaped once. Khaat could not afford that to happen a second time.

"Barker is a threat to the safety of the wizarding world," she said quietly, finally. She turned to look Viktor straight in the eyes. "As Chief Warlock, I have a responsibility to ensure that safety. There are many ways to reduce or eliminate a threat. Its high time I used one of them. I do trust I can count on your support to help keep your daughter safe. Eli is most likely right about Barker. But I can't take that chance."

Mind games. Barker enjoyed them more than he enjoyed the act of torture. Elijah wasn’t foolish. He knew Barker well enough to know that if the man wasn’t finished, it wouldn’t take long for him to get to that point. He wasn’t afraid of being caught, of going back to Azkaban. He didn’t fear; he was feared. Elijah had time for him though. He always had done. Barker intrigued him in ways that were perhaps unhealthy for the pair of them and though Barker had ultimately betrayed Elijah’s trust, that still didn’t mean to say that he wasn’t a salvageable human being. Elijah wasn’t stupid – not completely. He knew Barker was perhaps even more insane currently than he had ever been but he was still a man that needed a lot more than to be hunted. He was someone who had to be cared about and though Barker made a show of not wanting it, Elijah couldn’t forget the broken human being who he’d bought a meal for, who he’d taken with him simply because he wanted him healthy. He couldn’t bring himself to wish death on the man. He didn’t hate Barker as much as he had done his uncle. Murder wasn’t something Elijah felt he had been capable of to begin with and though there was a black mark on his record, he didn’t want to add another Barker-shaped one to it.

Viktor, as per usual, wasn’t giving the situation much thought beyond ensuring Barker was dead. It would have been preferable, especially considering Cecilia’s condition but Elijah felt there was more to it than that. Khaat was looking for a reason, he figured, a reason to turn her attention back to Barker and envision him cold, wedged between four planks of wood. Elijah sat up a little straighter, his eyes fixed to Khaat as she looked at Viktor and he her.

“I want him dead,” was all Viktor could manage to grunt out. “I want him on a slab, dead and ready to be buried. Bury him face down, too. I’m not having him coming back. Not a chance.”

Elijah rolled his eyes. How very medieval of him.

“Sign a death warrant,” Elijah said finally. “One that excludes the Minister, Chief Warlock and other members of the Ministry with emotional ties to the case from killing him unless the opportunity arises on their doorstep. You are not going to kill him, Khaat. Not unless he’s in your office wearing that stupid grin on his face and the opportunity is there. You’re not going to hunt him down, you can’t. If he can manage this then he is semi-fit and healthy again. He could hurt you. We’ll stab him through the heart and bury him face down once he’s dead but I want Aurors to deal with this. I don’t want you or anyone else getting hurt when it’s not their place to be in.”

Damnit. Eli had been hired to be the Deputy Minister. Most had thought he couldn't rise to the occasion. And she had rather counted on him needing a breath before he got on board. But here he was. Making sense. And rather a great deal of it, at that. She hadn't counted on that. Actually, she had just wanted him to sort of 'roll with it' for a couple days before he found his own. But it seemed he had his own from the outset.

She looked at Viktor. She agreed with him 110%. She wanted Barker dead. Rotted into dust and scattered to the four winds. And in as quick a manner as possible."

"I'm not giving him a slab, Viktor," she said quietly, trying hard to reel in her anger that she had worked to keep at bay for so long. "You're welcome to bury him face down, upside down, or inside out if you want. But you're going to spend the rest of your life trying to put those ashes back together to find out which was face down is. When he's dead, I'll put his remains in your hands myself. Its one less deduction out of the paupers' burial fund. You can do with whats left of him as you wish.

"But--" and the words almost stuck in her mouth. "Your son is very wise. His decision is the right one. I am under obligation to do the right thing here. Much as that is the very last thing I want to do. And he knows it. He knows much too well that if it were left to me, I'd probably be doing the deed myself right now. And that serves no one when we have aurors who have the authorization to do it and who don't have the emotional ties to it that I do. I say we must follow Eli's advice and be very clear with the head of law enforcement as to who can join this manhunt and who cannot."

She paused and gave him a moment. "Is that agreeable to you, Viktor?" The question had been out of her great respect for him. She didn't have to abide by it even if he didn't like it. But she liked Viktor. She was hoping to let him have his honor..and, yes, some peace.