Destiny's Way

by Lady Dawson

Chapter One: Pregnant?

Susan Dawson-Scott paced back and forth in the bathroom as she listened to the cries of her niece and nephew down the hall. She could hear her sister-in-law Brooke Davis-Scott trying to calm them down, along with her elder brother Lucas. Running her hands through her dark hair, Susan closed her eyes, sinking down beside the bathtub, checking her watch again.

As she got to her feet, a knock pounded on the door impatiently. "Sue, are you almost done?" her younger brother Nathan called. "I need to get to work!"

"I'll be just a few more minutes!" Susan called back, a bit annoyed with her brother right now. She knew that it wasn't his fault; he was tired with working and school and a pregnant wife, plus a niece and nephew keeping them up at all hours, but she didn't care right now.

Nathan let out an exasperated sigh. "Are you positive?" he asked her warily.

Susan looked down at the pregnancy test that was lying on the counter, the results not having shown up yet. "I hope not," she muttered, shaking her head. Returning her attention back towards her brother, she said, "Look, just go use Lucas's shower, he's too busy with the twins right now."

"I heard that!" Lucas shouted from the other room. Susan shook her head again as Nathan sighed and his footsteps disappeared.

Closing her eyes and trying to stay calm, Susan looked into the mirror, brushing out her dark hair impatiently, frantically trying to make herself look as presentable as possible while she waited those long minutes for the pregnancy test results.

Finally, the timer clicked off and she looked down at the pregnancy test, before looking down at the box of instructions again, looking back and forth. She closed her eyes, running her hands over her eyes as she threw the box into the trashcan.

"Oh, my god," she muttered, her hand sliding down to rest upon her flat stomach. She was barely even breathing as she looked down at it. "I'm pregnant."

Susan looked up as another knock came on the door. "Listen, Susan, can you hurry it up?" Brooke asked. "Nathan's using our bathroom and I really need to get ready while the twins are down."

"I'm coming," Susan told her. Taking one last look in the mirror, she sighed and walked out of the bathroom. She had barely made it out before Brooke dived in, locking the door securely behind her.

Brooke sighed in relief as she locked the door behind her sister-in-law, relieved to at least have a few minutes to look somewhat presentable before she got to class today. Turning on the shower, she was about to get undressed to step into the shower when something in the trashcan caught her eye.

Walking towards it, she picked up the pregnancy test that was lying on the top of all the garbage, her jaw dropping when she saw it. After being a teenage mother and having almost gotten pregnant with Lucas's baby once before, Brooke Davis-Scott knew perfectly well what a pregnancy test was.

Her head snapped towards the closed door where Susan had just left and she looked back down at the pregnancy test before looking back towards where Susan had just disappeared. "No way," she whispered, shaking her head disbelieving. "Susan's pregnant?"

She supposed that she shouldn't have been so surprised. After all, Scotts were one of the fastest breeding mammals on the planet. It didn't take a Scott woman very long to get pregnant by a Scott male or if you were a Scott woman by birth, by another man.

But still . . . Susan should have known better than to something without using precautions. Brooke shook her head, knowing perfectly well that there was no form of birth control that was absolutely perfect.

Well, except for abstinence. And neither she and Lucas nor Nathan and Haley had been practising that when they had gotten pregnant. Haley was still about a month away from delivery and she was still getting morning sickness. Brooke's had gone away in the first few months, but Haley's had stayed with her the entire pregnancy.

Brooke shook her head as she dropped the pregnancy test back into the trashcan. Maybe she was wrong and it wasn't Susan's. Or maybe it was just a false alarm.

However, being a telepath meant that Brooke couldn't stop overhearing things in people's heads that they didn't necessarily want to hear. And she could hear her sister-in-law's mind-voice loud and clear as she stepped into the shower.

What am I going to tell Shawn?

--

Haley James-Scott looked up as her husband's sister climbed down the stairs and into the kitchen, tossing her backpack onto the chair as she headed towards the cabinets. "Morning, Susan," she said warily, rubbing her stomach where her son was still in her womb.

"Morning, Hales," Susan answered with a small, weak smile. "How's my little nephew this morning?"

"Irritating his mommy this morning," Haley muttered. "Actually, for the past five or so months, when the morning sickness was supposed to go away. Every woman in that class Nathan and I are going to said that it's supposed to go away after the first trimester."

"Well, at least in a month or so, it'll be over and Wyatt will be keeping you guys up all night instead of having your head in a toilet first thing in the morning," Susan told her. Haley made a face at her. "I'm seriously thinking of casting a silencing spell around my room so I can get some sleep around here."

"Okay, that is personal gain," Haley reminded her.

"Trust me, it's not for personal gain, it's so that I won't end up in the psyche ward because I've gone crazy with everything that's going on around here," Susan told her.

"All right, fine." Haley shook her head. "Because I need at least one of my midwives with a clear head when she delivers my baby. Brooke certainly isn't going to be the sanest one around here. She's got twice as much to worry about than I do with the twins."

"Yeah, at least you only have to give birth to one baby," Susan reasoned. "Brooke had to give birth to two and we almost lost Keith on the delivery. Which makes me wonder if having a home birth is even a good idea, Hales."

Haley shook her head. "Having a magical baby in the hospital isn't a good idea, Susan. Considering the fact that Wyatt can heal himself from the womb and throw up a defensive shield, who knows what he's going to do on the delivery, not to mention after he's born." She paused. "How did your mother handle delivering a half-witch, half-Whitelighter baby?"

Susan pausing, frowning slightly. "Uh . . . one of her former charges was a doctor," she answered. "A witch. And she delivered me at Mom's house, but I don't think that there was anything out of the ordinary about the delivery. Apart from being one of the first witch-Whitelighters in the history of the magical world." She paused, pushing a lock of dark hair behind her ear.

Haley glanced up to see the look on her face that clearly said that she was thinking about something. "What's the matter?" she asked.

"Nothing," Susan said quietly. "It's nothing, Hales. Uh, listen, I promised Karen that I would go and open the café, so I'll see you later."

"Aren't you going to eat breakfast?" Haley asked, but her sister-in-law was already gone. Shaking her head, Haley looked down at her stomach. "Your auntie is hiding something, isn't she?" she asked, receiving a kick to her kidneys in reply. She groaned, rubbing her stomach to soothe her son. "I'll take that as a yes."

She was about to return to breakfast that she had been working on when Susan came down when Brooke entered the kitchen, looking around the room. "Did Susan already leave?" Haley nodded. "Great. Okay, is there anybody else in this house besides our sister-in-law who could possibly get pregnant?"

"Considering that everybody else in this house is male, besides your daughter, probably not."

Brooke nodded, looking serious as she pulled something out that she had been hiding behind her back. "Well, look what I found in the bathroom," she said quietly, handing it over to Haley. The Whitelighter looked at the object in Brooke's hand and her eyes fastened on it. "I think that Susan might be pregnant."

Haley shook her head, a disbelieving laugh escaping from her. "No, that's not possible, I mean . . . well, I know that it's possible, but why wouldn't she tell anybody about that?"

"Hey, I kept my pregnancy a secret from Luke for a couple of weeks after I started suspecting that I was pregnant," Brooke reasoned. "I mean, it wasn't confirmed or anything, but still . . ."

"Maybe it's not hers," Haley suggested. "I mean, you've got models coming in here all the time, couldn't one of them have . . . no, I didn't think so," she sighed when Brooke shook her head. "Another baby . . . oh, the Elders are going to kill Shawn when they find out that another Charmed One is pregnant with a Whitelighter."

"Well, it's not like they're cross-breeding with something that's not already in her blood," Brooke pointed out. "The mother is already half-Whitelighter, so this is just adding some more Whitelighter to the mix. I guess that means the baby will be more Whitelighter than he is witch."

Haley shook her head. "What makes you so sure that Susan's baby is going to be a boy?"

"Well, because when our kids came back from the future, Chris was a boy and he had a little brother. Besides, when Chris left, he said that he wouldn't mind having an older brother. Didn't say anything about a sister."

"That's a good point," Haley said, shaking her head. "Look, let's not say anything to the guys until we know for sure that it was Susan's. It might not have been. And even if was, maybe it was just a false alarm. You and Lucas had one before you got pregnant with the twins, remember?"

"Yeah, I remember," Brooke sighed. "But somehow, I don't think so. She's been acting weird for the past week or so. And you know that she's been irritable lately."

"Probably from getting no sleep with the twins," Nathan answered, appearing from behind Brooke. Haley shoved the pregnancy test out of sight before her husband could see it as he came around and kissed her good morning. "What are we talking about?"

"Oh, just girl stuff," Brooke answered cheerfully, running a hand through her dark hair. "Listen, I've got some stuff to take care of before I get to class today, so I'll see you guys later."

"Bye," Haley said as she hurried out the door. With a sigh, she turned back to her husband, resting her head onto his chest.

"So," Nathan said with a grin. "How's our little boy?" He rubbed his hands over Haley's swollen stomach and she smiled, feeling the baby kick against her.

"I think if he isn't born pretty soon, then I'm going to have a meltdown," she sighed. "I'm already over a month late. Not to mention, Wyatt's going to have nowhere to sleep because the crib hasn't been set up yet."

"Haley, I am going to put it together," Nathan insisted. Haley raised her eyebrows. "Okay, Lucas is going to put it together just as soon as he gets a chance. He's been kind of busy with the twins lately."

"Right." Haley shook her head as a summoning call came from the Elders. She glanced up towards the heavens, frowning. "Oh, great. They're calling me," she explained to Nathan's bewildered look. "I'd better go see what They want."

"It's not even nine o'clock in the morning, what could They possibly want this early?" Nathan complained just as Lucas let out a shout from the next floor.

"Demon!"

"Haley, stay here," Nathan ordered, hurrying upstairs. But his wife paid no attention as she raced after him. The youngest Charmed One had to duck as Lucas sent the demon flying away from the twins.

"Nathan, spell!" Lucas yelled at him while he was keeping the demon at bay.

Grumbling under his breath about the injustice of having to come up with a rhyme so fast, Nathan began to chant:

"Evil who prays within this room,

Be gone to the realm of doom.

Vanquished here in this place,

Destroy here within this space."

The demon exploded and Nathan shook his head, looking towards his brother. "We have got to find some way to keep demons out of the nursery," he sighed, suppressing a sigh.