A/N: Too long of a wait! Thank you to ShanRB, 4gcrazyme, chzwit, and BoandNora-ItsOneWord for the reviews! You guys are fantastic. A lot of emotional reeling in this chapter, nothing (especially in Robbie's poor mind) is settled and things will keep changing… but also will stay the same, since the original story was so masterful. We're plugging along with Robert. Enjoy!

Robert returned to the cottage, his head swimming with the simple enormity of what had just happened. And he had been on autopilot after that, lost in the daze of that…reactionary, impulsive move. The part of him that wasn't in turmoil, that was most aware, did have a twinge in the back of his mind when Angel stopped him at the front and told him Katherine wasn't there. It made no sense for Katherine to disappear after her first set. But there was too much in his head right now…he couldn't think about that.

He probably should have stayed at the club, because what he really needed right now was a drink… As a cheap alternative, he made his way to the fridge and cracked open a beer when a vision appeared at the foot of the stairs. His heart began beating roughly again...but he wouldn't listen to it.

"Well," Robert said cheerfully, "this is a pleasant surprise. I was… looking for you at the club."

I was kissing my ex-wife.

"Were you?" Kate responded, in such a way that Robert should have wondered if she could read his mind.

"Yeah. They said that you split after the first act," he answered, shoving a hand in his pocket. And as he watched her, he came back to awareness, noticing the set of her mouth and that odd shine in her eyes. Something was wrong.

"I wanted to see you," she said plainly.

Something was very wrong, more wrong than that he knew what had happened with Anna in her dressing room, wrong enough that he couldn't make a clever quip or a joke…

"What's up?" he asked, slightly afraid of the answer.

He knew he couldn't and wouldn't be dishonest with her, but he also hoped to everything that she hadn't witnessed something that would cause her pain. And with her next words, his heart sunk.

"I um…" she wasn't looking him in the eye, "I heard you and Anna talking in my dressing room and I would just like to hear more."

His mouth was very dry suddenly, and he couldn't speak. What had she seen?

They sat down in the room, feeling the gravity of this pending conversation descend on them. Robert was watching her posture and the dull sadness of her movements, trying to calculate the extent of it. There wouldn't be a dramatic outburst—they were too old for that. But something big was happening all the same.

"I know that this is all very confusing to you. And I haven't been able to explain everything…"

"Explain it to me then," Katherine said calmly.

"Well, I…I can't."

He knew it wasn't the answer that she wanted to hear, but it was the only truth he had any more. He couldn't explain this case, he couldn't explain Faison, and most of all, he couldn't explain the torrent of nameless feelings that overcame him in that dressing room. And he was completely wrong for some of that, he knew. But in other ways, the right things went far deeper into the pit of him—into the core of his family, and that he couldn't betray.

It was that paralyzing truth that hit Robert brutally—if his kiss with Anna meant nothing, he still couldn't explain why, because it was all wrapped up in secrets that could never be shared with Katherine. Never. Even if they were married. And if the kiss had meant something, then that was even worse—even less explainable.

"You won't," Katherine corrected. She folded her hands and looked him steadily in the eye. "Robert. What is going on with you and Anna? I'd like to hear it from you—I'd love to hear it from you before I hear it from someone else."

She was fishing, the agent in Robert concluded, which likely meant that she had heard something, but not seen the kiss. And he was unable to outright say it—not unless he knew how much damage he was doing.

"What do you think there is to tell?" he asked quietly, but that blasted her with precision.

"Don't you care about me at all?!"

Her forcefulness propelled them both to standing as Robert exclaimed indignantly, "yes!"

"Then why won't you tell me?!"

"I can't!" he refrained irritably, "I thought you accepted that."

"Accepted that. On faith…in us?" Katherine said sardonically.

"Look, what I'm dealing with is old…very old family business!" Robert growled, his defenses going up.

"I just don't feel like there's an 'us' anymore…" she allowed her vulnerability to poke through, standing there in that bold red dress, and Robert's heart broke for her a little more.

"As soon as I've taken care of it, we'll get married like we should have done months ago," Robert said, trying to push aside everything else, but he couldn't.

There were so many echoes in the room—of embracing Katherine while Anna watched from the hospital desk, of leaving Katherine in the church, in her wedding dress to save Anna and Duke, Anna sobbing on the floor with Duke in her arms, dead.

Robert realized that this was his fault, and no one else's. It hadn't started just tonight. That clarity of Anna, holding her head and asking him what they were doing? What they had done? Everything had been thrown into motion long ago, amongst Anna's grief and Duke's ashes. And however this was to go, he had to fix it.

"Could you answer me one question, please?"

"Yes," Robert said with grim acceptance.

"This man that you're after…" she said slowly, and her face contorted with pained confusion. "…is this the man that broke you and Anna up thirteen years ago?"

Each choice Robert seemed to make had carried devastating, heartbreaking consequences. And with Anna, it had started there, with that man.

"Is it?"

Robert swallowed and nodded. "Yes," he said hoarsely.

Kate nodded too, turning away. "I really…wish you would have told me that before."

"Would it have made things easier—?"

"Yes!" she cried, turning back towards him with her eyes still shining. "Yes. Everything would have made so much more sense…!"

"So you're easier with this now?" Robert asked dully, uncertainly. She had determined something, and she had done it without him.

"I think I am… I mean, I think I understand everything better." She inhaled softly, as if bracing her courage. "I really don't think we need to worry about…making the wedding plans. Because there's not going to be a wedding."

"No wedding," Robert repeated, her attempted detachment bleeding in to him and numbing the affect. "You actually mean that…"

"I do," she said with miserable certainty as Robert took two steps toward her, she didn't move. "I can't believe I said it."

"We love each other," Robert said honestly.

"You're the first and only man I've ever loved," Katherine offered. "But that isn't the whole issue, is it? Tell me, Robert. Tell me why are you so hell-bent on destroying a man that broke up your marriage thirteen years ago?"

Robert sighed, looking away from every enunciated word. "I can't tell you that."

"I can." Katherine smiled a little, shaking her head. "The sheer simplicity of it has just alluded us all." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "You're still in love with Anna."

There was a long silence, and something about hearing that aloud, as some universal certainty, that hit Robert like a tidal wave, wiping out everything in its path. A notion that he could never bring himself to flirt with, even as he flirted with the subject of it. He loved Anna. But to be in love with her? He thought of her words in the dressing room—"and then I wouldn't have to think of the day you looked at me like I had taken everything from you."

Had she been right? Did he know a single bloody thing about what he really felt?

"Anna and me," he tried, "that's—"

"It's not ridiculous," Kate interrupted. "You're still in love with her, you're still completely committed to her, and that's the real truth behind all of this." She smiled bitterly again. "But like Anna, you cannot even admit it to yourself."

"You mentioned this to Anna?" Robert said immediately, looking up and wondering when and how this could have ever come up between the two women in his life. What had he missed in his personal relationship when he was so caught up with the shock of Faison's appearance? He suddenly recalled some vague chastisements from Anna about spending more time with Katherine…had Anna been keeping this from him?

"Not like this, not in so many words," Kate said finally. "But I could tell."

"Katie…I don't know how you could tell something like that when I couldn't even tell you that," Robert answered baldly. "Look, I know you aren't stupid… I'm not going to insult you by acting like this is all just business as usual. But what you're thinking…well, it's not that simple." He was trying hard not to be dishonest, but his thoughts and feelings wouldn't piece together, wouldn't let him understand them.

"But I think it is, Robert."

"I love you," he insisted. He followed her to the piano and sat on the bench with her, fighting for her because he didn't know how to give it up. And in all of this, his feelings for Kate were the easiest thing to understand. But her eyes were looking upward, mournful.

"As long as Anna is in your life, there's no room for me," she said tearfully.

"What about our life?"

She took his hand and held it, and all Robert could feel was the cold. "I stood by you 100 percent, I didn't ask questions, when you said you couldn't tell me, I said 'alright, be careful…I love you…'. And you know why I did that? Because I thought you were as committed to me as I was to you." Her hand came up and held his jaw, tender and yet still hard. "And I thought you were being honest." She stood up and moved away from him, her touch disappearing.

"I was," Robert said. He had been. He did love her.

Kate wiped the tears off her cheeks and stilled a sob. "I heard you…with Anna. In my dressing room."

Robert slowly rotated on the bench to face her, morbidly curious and sensing she was building up to whatever she had heard tonight.

"You swore…that you would kill this man before you'd ever let him take her away from you again, now if that isn't love…I don't know what is!"

His words being thrown back in his face sounded more damning than they even had in the dressing room and his mind went to every corner with the usual protestations.

"That wasn't what it seemed! If I could just tell you about this man...you'd realize… you'd understand… what he represents."

"You've already told me, Robert." Kate said pitilessly. "If there's anything else to it…does it really matter? Does it change what I know?"

"Maybe it does!" Robert said. "…are you going to give up on us before we find out? After all that we've shared?"

She had already started for the stairs, but at his accusation she turned around again. "Oh Robert…you know that I've tried. We both have. But I can't live like this! Don't you understand?! If we are to get anywhere, you have to figure out where you stand with Anna…and where you stand with me. And until you can figure that out…I'm leaving. And I'm not sorry for it."

"So you're going to pack up your things and go?" Robert said incredulously.

Kate nodded, her blond hair coming looser in its wavy up-do. "I wish I didn't have to… but I don't have a choice, Robert. You don't know what you want."

He was losing his relationship with this woman, he realized. If he said nothing, if he let her go, could he ever repair it again? And what wasn't a lie? What was true? "I never said I loved her," Robert said to her back, and that was true.

"No," Katherine said, only looking back for a moment before disappearing into the dark, the vibrant color muted and gone. "You never denied it either."

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God help her, Anna was kissing back. Her lips, soft as they ever were, moved against his with the practice of a lifetime ago and Robert was mindless with the satisfaction of a fulfilled impulse, and the fact that it was Anna.

Anna, Anna…

And then as suddenly as it began, it was over… and the dark-haired beauty from a thousand years past tore away, her breathing the loudest sound in the room next to his. And immediately, the space around them became ten degrees colder as the satisfaction evaporated, and her simultaneously sober and wild eyes unmanned his. She hadn't shed her tears yet. And probably wouldn't.

"Robert," her voice wobbled so much that she stopped for a moment to regain control. He was nearly overcome with the desire to explain himself—that it wasn't…that he just wanted her to stop saying…to understand the truth, not these things she said, not what she had built up in her head. He didn't know what he wanted because he hadn't thought. He decided to let her finish, to say whatever it was she wanted to say now.

One hand covered her lips briefly, as if to protect them, before she composed herself.

"Robert, we can't… you know we can't…"

There was a needling compulsion to be embarrassed, having initiated the kiss in the first place, but as he looked at her unsteadiness and uncertainty, he lost that instinct entirely and closed his mouth, letting her stumble on. There was no intelligent thought in his head, so if she had better ones, then let her say them.

But instead, she clutched the sides of her head with slim, tense fingers, her gaze now fixed to the ground and her voice faraway. "What have we all done here? What are we doing?!"

It was the same question she had asked not so long ago, when they had shut Frisco down in the hospital. And perhaps it was the same—a train run off the tracks, headed for what, they didn't know…

"I'm sorry," he said, because it was what he should say and because he didn't like the look of her now, so panicked. He was chagrined to know in his heart that he wasn't sorry one bit—he couldn't bring himself to feel it, apparently. His lips were still tingling as he cleared his throat. "I apologize, I forgot myself."

She looked up at him as if just remembering he was there, startled. "You don't have to—you're not—oh…" Anna shook her head. "You know what I mean."

Robert nodded, looking at the floor now too because he actually had no earthly idea what she meant. And then she gasped.

"Katherine!" Her eyes grew round and Robert remembered his fiancée…his fiancée, and where they were.

"She should be here…she could have…" the rest went unsaid, but he grasped her meaning. And then she was pushing him out the door, a rough turn from the small, pliable figure in his arms before. "You need to go find her, talk to her! You were supposed to have done before, Robert, for God's sakes!"

Her reprimand warded off the memory of the kiss long enough for him to exclaim, "Okay, I'll go!"

But she had already turned away after shoving him out, and Robert knew enough of her to recognize when she was running away. And when she ran, he could never seem to catch her.

But he wouldn't mourn that now. He had no right.

A/N: I know that Robert especially seems out of sorts, but you can't blame a guy, can you? Anyway, next stop will be Anna's house. Let me know what you think!