He listened to her fears about their potential offspring dying and finally found an emotion; fear gripped him, his gut turning at the thought that her bad genes would inflict a similar fate on any children they may have created. Even if it
had been an accident, now that the possibility existed that Alec was pregnant, his protective instincts were swinging into gear. No harm would come to her, or to their progeny, if he could at all help it.
"Love would not make a difference," he told her, giving her an odd look. He couldn\'t fathom any difference between loving her and being obligated by nature to protect her and nurture their children. Either way, he would lay his own life on the line to give them everything they ever needed and stop anything that attempted to harm any of them with his own body. He already had no sense of self, and they only
sensed she was pregnant. That sensation would only increase if (when) it became a reality.
"Get up and get yourself dressed. You can come in to work with me and we will see if and when we can get an appointment," Tau told her briskly, getting up from his prone position. He held a hand out towards Alec to help her get up though there was nothing gentle or sentimental about the action. He was already on a mission.
~*~
Tau\'s car was there before they were both ready but the driver waited patiently, not batting an eye when Alacer accompanied Tau to the Chambers. He held her hand because she seemed nervous and like she needed reassurance in the vast building - especially since he wasn\'t exactly sure where to go, at first. Knowing the Oligarchy had a magical doctor practising in the building was one thing, but Tau had never had cause to visit him.
As it turned out, when they got to the appropriate rooms on the second lowest floor of the building, they found that the doctor was not a man at all, but a woman. She introduced herself as Doctor Remei, her accent imposible for them to place, though Alacer would likely think it had Spanish nuances to it. She appeared to be a heavy-set black woman in her early fifties on first appearance, her dark hair falling in multitudes of tight dreadlocks to the middle of her back, the top section gathered and spun so that a portion of them spiked away from the back of her skull and fanned unevenly above her head.
She wore a flowing skirt beneath her white lab coat, with a thick black leather apron encircling her rounded middle and rubber boots on her feet. Neither Tau nor Alacer asked about her outfit, however; they were both too taken aback by her eyes. They were pure black, with no white, no iris, just smooth obsidian with no other definition.
She could obviously see alright, however, because she listened to their story with numerous nods and glances at Alec\'s stomach, before she led them out of the office where her desk was and through one of the five doors leading off it (one of which they\'d entered from the hall to get into the office in the first place) into an examination room. Its exact resemblance to an everyday modern doctor\'s surgery, complete with a complicated
gynecological examination chair likely put Alec\'s fears to rest, but aroused Tau\'s. He stood by very uncomfortably as the table went from something Alec was lying on to a chair with her feet on the stirrup-style ends.
Bypassing the usual method of a blood test to confirm a pregnancy (and guided by Alec\'s professed worry over Tau\'s enhanced ageing), Doctor Remei went straight to an ultrasound, confessing she likely wouldn\'t find anything with the very new-looking machine, because Alec hadn\'t drunk the requisite amount of water... she fell quiet very soon after she began prodding the snake shifter\'s belly with the cold side of the probe, however. It was unnerving, that she stopped talking so suddenly, and Tau stepped up beside her to peer at the viewing monitor she was staring so avidly at. She kept tracing the same paths across Alec\'s stomach, likely causing her discomfort, but the cougar shifter could make no sense of it.
"What-" he began, but was stopped by a sternly raised index finger. The doctor said nothing more and he wasn\'t game to but she stopped the probe passing back and forth a few minutes later and set about cleaning the equipment up. Without saying anything, she then left the examination room (and Tau and Alec looking at each other in bewilderment) before she returned with a small mortar and pestle and what looked like a small tree branch poking out of it. Standing between Alec\'s parted legs, she ground the branch down, ignoring the very strong smell of fresh vegetation filling the room, until she was satisfied. She then smeared the paste she\'d made across Alec\'s stomach in random lines (ignoring the gel she\'d previously put there for the ultrasound to work smoothly) and placed the mortar and pestle aside.
She bent forward and peered at her handiwork for a minute in silence, and then she began chanting over it - low and quiet at first, sounding a bit like far-off rain falling on a distant tree - getting gradually louder and sounding more like she was saying words, even though they were in a language they didn\'t understand. Her brown hands gravitated up and over the stomach, moving in circles in opposite directions before waving in a synchronised pattern left, right, up and down. Suddenly, she stopped, nodded and straightened up, handing Alec some wet wipes and telling her she could clean up and accompany her out to the office.
Tau, left feeling somewhat bewildered, watched Alacer wipe at her goo-covered stomach, feeling useless and confused, and decided to follow Doctor Remei out of the room. He re-took his former seat, on the opposite side of the desk to where the doctor sat, making notes in the file she\'d created for them. When Alec joined him in her seat a few minutes later, the doctor still wrote until she was done and then she looked up, linking her fingers on top of the paperwork and looking at them very gravely.
"You weell hev far bebbies," she told them seriously. "Two to be de\' sneeks, two to be de\' cets. Tey weell be barn arltegeether in\'boot tree monts." Suddenly, her serious countenance broke and she smiled, looking genuinely pleased as she looked from one to the other.
Tau - even though he\'d been expecting the news - looked somewhat dazedly at his partner. "Two cats. Two snakes. In three months. Well," he said, feeling somewhat stunned about such a specific diagnosis - he wondered if the doctor could tell them the sex of the babies - and unsure of how to react just yet.
