Chapter Eight: Unanswered Questions

Over the next three weeks, Orion continued to set up meetings with Katlin via her computer. But scheduling a meeting, each soon found out, was one thing. Actually getting to it was quite another. Over the past week alone, each had had to cancel three times. That left them one night that week that they had actually been able to be together.

Orion had sworn something short of a speeding train greeted him that night as he met her in the foyer. Katlin literally ran into his arms, eager hands burying themselves in his robes and quickly searching out their favorite places.

"Please!" She stated feverishly. "Tell me you don't have a meeting, a mission, a doctor's appointment, or anything else tonight!"

Orion laughed softly as he wrapped his arms snuggly about her soft, well-shaped body. "Just a night planned in bed with you, Love." He told her. "No interruptions allowed."

Katlin sighed happily as she melted into his embrace. "That sounds wonderful."

Orion tilted her chin up until his lips found her's in an eager, hungry kiss. "Then we'd best get started." He said as he pulled back and led her to the stairs. "We have six nights to make up for."

That night Katlin woke up to find Orion's side of the bed empty. But that wasn't terribly unusual when they stayed at his house. By now she was getting use to his midnight wanderings. Something she learned he did quite often, but rarely offered any explanation for. Sometimes she would simply wait for him to return. Or she would find him asleep in one of the downstairs rooms the next morning.

Occasionally she would go looking for him. Finding him sitting in the den in front of the fire with a half empty bottle of something in his hand, or come across him in one of the hallways.

Usually she could coax him back to bed simply with a promise of making sure he could sleep the rest of the night. Or she would take him to the kitchen and brew him up a nice dreamless sleep potion and they would both finally go back to bed.

Whichever remedy he opted for, her end goal was always the same. To get him to go back to sleep. Something she felt he did far too little of.

Tonight she decided to go looking for him. It was the third night that she had been with him that he had gone off, and the other two she had found him in the morning sleeping in one of the downstairs rooms. The last time it had been amid three empty bottles of very old scotch, and she wasn't in the mood to contend with his hangover again. So she decided to stop him this time before he got started.

When she got downstairs, she quickly managed to locate him in the den, sitting in front of the fire. Thankfully he didn't have any bottles yet. But it was the rare occasion, she reminded herself, that he would get drunk twice in a row. Instead he seemed to be simply sitting there, studying the fire with an intense look of concentration on his face.

Quietly Katlin came into the room and stood just behind him.

"That's a very serious look." She stated softly.

"You can't even see my face." He replied in much the same tone.

"I don't need to. As stiffly as you're sitting there, it's the only look that would make sense."

Katlin stepped around the end of the sofa and walked over in front of him, slowly straddling his legs as she sat on them facing him.

"Oh, see. I was right." She stated, lightly kissing the end of his nose. "So tell me. What has you so deep in thought?"

Orion paused as he continued to stare past her at the fire. "That informant that was killed in Austria."

Katlin stared at him past a quizzical look. "Why him?"

Orion shifted his focus to her face. "Katlin, I didn't kill him. You didn't kill him. Someone did."

"Orion, why care? It was mission. Something went wrong. Let someone else sort it out. Doesn't your Department have people who do that sort of thing?"

Katlin had hoped to draw him out of his serious mood. But she could see from the look he still had fixed on her that she wasn't succeeding at all. It was an almost cold, calculating look. The kind muggles described as 'you can practically smell the smoke'.

"Katlin," he asked her slow, level tone, "do you know who killed that man?"

Katlin equaled his look with the stare she fixed on him. "We agreed not to asked questions like that." She reminded him evenly.

"Do you?" Orion repeated.

Katlin sat stock still in his lap, staring down at him, but saying nothing.

"Katlin," Orion went on, "I need to know."

"No, Orion." She answered finally. "You want to know. There is no 'need' to this. And I can't believe you're asking me this to begin with. We have rules. Ones we agreed to play by. Rules that had a purpose. And among those rules were things we didn't asked each other about. Things we couldn't answer. Things I can't tell you or you can't tell me because if we did someone might get hurt."

Orion sighed quietly as he looked up at her, his hands resting comfortably on her hips. "Is there anyway you can answer that question that won't put you in danger?"

Katlin looked down at him, her stare growing harder by the minute. "It could put people I care about in danger."

"Deatheaters." Orion commented.

Katlin's stare shifted to one of annoyance. "No, Orion. Aurors. Half of your department are my best friends."

"Well, that explains why they're always looking for you."

Katlin paused at his comment, then sighed quietly. "Can we not talk about this?" She said in a weary voice. She really hadn't come looking for a fight tonight.

Orion stared up at her, apparently reading the change in her expression, and finally nodded.

"All right, Love." He agreed. "Why don't we just go to bed?"

Katlin smiled down at him as she pulled back and stood up in front of him, offering him her hand as she helped pull him up.

"Now that sounds like a perfectly wonderful idea." She mused.