February 21st, 1892 - [Starts at the] Ministry of Magic

Evidently Thomasina had spent the last several weeks as a European Wildcat, although she did not remember this. Evidently she had been in a circus — Sina always found circuses distasteful and this solidified it for her — had escaped, and had been caught murdering songbirds in some wizard's backyard in Wellingtonshire. Evidently, because she did not remember any of this — she remembered leaving Hogsmeade Hospital one morning, a flash of a spell, and now she was in the Ministry of Magic being debriefed and drinking a cup of tea. She found a feather in her teeth.

After the debrief, Sina was released from the Ministry's interview room, and found her husband outside it. "Took you long enough," she snapped, running her tongue along her teeth again. (She was worried about more feathers.)

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The letter that had reached him was polite, succinct, and impersonal, as though they weren't intimately familiar with Oz and all of the details of his wife's disappearance — as if he hadn't been at the secretary's desk four times in the past week. He hadn't been since the news broke on Saturday, because he couldn't think of what to say to them. This whole thing was so undignified; he was embarrassed on Sina's behalf for her having been involved in it, although obviously it wasn't as though she'd chosen it. Still, he needed some time to wrap his mind around it before he could think of what to say, so he'd taken a day off from being obnoxious (there were very few people to be obnoxious to on a Sunday, anyway) and by Monday morning, there was news.

He was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest when she finally emerged from the room. His shoulders were tense, because part of him was worried that if he didn't have tension holding him still when she reappeared then the sight of her might make him fall apart, and obviously he couldn't allow that. Imagine if the same staff he'd been harassing for weeks saw him getting emotional at the sight of his wife. His self-image would never recover, and nevermind what people would think if anyone got to talking, as people always did.

"Well, I had the investigator looking for a woman," he responded, voice nearly a snarl. "I didn't expect you to go feral. At least, not so quickly."

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MJ is the light of my life <3

So Oz had hired an investigator. Sina wasn't surprised, because of course she knew Oz would try to find her, but she was charmed by it. This didn't show on her face; she rolled her eyes at him and started off down the hallway. (It felt odd to be walking like this; her limbs knew she'd occupied a different body recently, even if her mind didn't.)

"You should have known no one would have been able to hold me," she chided, "Where was the logic?"

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Ozymandias scowled. He didn't know if he could answer her there. Someone had held her, and it still worried him even now that she had returned. Absent the experience of it, he might have believed her. She was strong (and headstrong); she could make trouble for someone. That notion did not change the facts, however; she had been gone for nineteen days, and nothing about her return indicated that she'd been instrumental in orchestrating it. She was back by chance, and she might just as easily have been lost forever by that same chance applied in the opposite direction. He could not articulate that, though. Thinking about it made him queasy, because he preferred to think of people like them as insulated from dangers like this — free from the shadow of lasting trauma. The past weeks had shown him that they could be as fragile as anyone else, and he dare not voice the realization.

He followed her down the hallway as she started to walk away. He was aware as he did that he was purposefully following her to watch her, to see if there were any injuries or lasting damage, any sign of what she'd been through. He hated that he was doing that — hated the persistent reminder of their fragility — but could no more stop than he could stop himself from breathing.

"It took some time to convince everyone else something had actually happened to you," he muttered, still watching her walk. "My siblings thought you'd fled the country, up until the newspaper started reporting all the other disappearances. Which — obviously there was no logic in that. You didn't even pack a bag."

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   Thomasina Dempsey

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MJ is the light of my life <3

Sina stopped and turned at her husband's comment, one eyebrow raised. "They thought I left in my healer's robes?" she asked. Obviously she would never leave Ozymandias — she liked her life, their life, too much for that — but she understood that other people did not understand them as she did. But to think she would up and leave dressed for work, after a night shift — it baffled her, the lack of sense in it.

"Now that's just absurd," Sina finished. "You know I'm going to have to tell them how absurd that is." He was watching her, and muttering at her, and Sina was still trying to find the usual rhythm of their conversations. She still had not entirely grasped the amount of time she'd lost.

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"You can tell them anything you like, so long as you do it at home," he returned. (He would not mention that he had briefly entertained the idea that she had left him, himself; that had been a dark moment, and even in the midst of it he'd recognized how contrary it was to logic. He would not admit to it unless forced). Walking the halls at the Ministry had him feeling restless. Partly it was the memory of all the time he'd spent here so far this month, all the interactions with the same staff members he kept glimpsing in doorways or passing at the corners. Partly it was just that it was too public. He felt vulnerable here, exposed. Sina was back and he didn't know what to say to her, but he did know that whatever it was, he didn't want an audience for it. Their affairs had been too public already over the past weeks. "Are you allowed to leave, yet, or do they need something else?"

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MJ is the light of my life <3

Home. "You better not have moved any of my things," Sina said, eyes narrowing for dramatic affect. "But — they said I can leave." She did not entirely have her bearings around being a woman again — the sounds here seemed too amplified, and her limbs still felt a little ungainly — but surely she would be better off regaining her sense of self in Ireland. As if to solidify it, Sina pressed the button for the elevator repeatedly and with no small amount of impatience — the sooner they were out of this building, the happier she'd be.

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Oz frowned at her. "I moved all your things," he said, and perhaps anyone overhearing would think he'd said it to be antagonistic. He was entirely serious, though, and he thought that would be rather obvious to his wife. She had been missing. He'd searched her room twice before he'd even reported to the constables. He'd given the auror's office (supervised) access to do the same, and then the investigator as well, though by that time Oz's belief that anything useful might turn up there was waning. Was it a violation of her privacy? Perhaps, but he'd never thought of it that way. The idea that she might have secrets had never occurred to him, and even if it had he wouldn't have cared about respecting them when what hung in the balance was her safety.

She had pushed the elevator button five times already, and seemed inclined to press it again. Annoyed, he reached out and caught her by the wrist. His breath caught. He regretted touching her — touching her now, touching her here — but did not let go.

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MJ is the light of my life <3

Sina made an ugh sound under her breath, but her retort was cut off by Oz's grip on her wrist. She could have pulled her arm away, but instead she raised herself up on the balls of her feet and looked him in the face. He'd been worried. She still didn't understand how she'd gone missing in the first place. Someone had kidnapped her, and she was back here because — he'd made mistakes. She wanted to press the elevator button again. She didn't.

"Now I'll have to put everything back," Sina said, like it was a real inconvenience to her.

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He could feel her pulse through her wrist. She drew herself up and looked him in the eyes, which was awful because it made him want nothing so much as to pull her in and curl himself into her, and obviously this was the wrong place for that. He didn't even want to kiss her or touch her so much as he wanted to hold her, to be convinced of the reality and solidity of her, but they were still an elevator ride and a trip across the Atrium and then half a house away from real sanctuary.

"Or you could burn it all and start fresh," he quipped. "Some of the law enforcement had the smell you might expect of the unwashed masses. And it's not as though your wardrobe was the cutting edge of fashion, anyway. It'd hardly be any great loss."

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MJ is the light of my life <3

"Not the masses," Sina said, tone sarcastic. It was the voice she used when she poked fun at Oz for being too posh. The elevator doors finally opened, and Sina dropped back to her usual height. She backed into the open space, still not pulling her wrist away from him. "A bonfire in the yard would be great fun. Maybe we can throw some failed inventions in."

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   Ozymandias Dempsey

He followed her into the elevator, led by the hold he had on her wrist. She was his tether to the rest of the world, for the moment; he didn't care a whit about anything around them except as it related to her. Ozymandias recognized the metaphor in his thoughts, and alternatively appreciated the aptness of it, then despaired of how poetic he'd become. She had ruined him. The absence of her had ruined him.

"I haven't failed at anything lately," he responded. His tone was dry, but there was a note of unease buried beneath it. This was less of a jibe and more of an admission: he hadn't worked a single day since she'd disappeared.

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MJ is the light of my life <3

Sina's mouth curved up into a smile. She pushed the button for the atrium repeatedly until the elevator doors closed with her free hand. "Oh?" she asked, "And what is it you've been doing with yourself in the meantime?" He hadn't even had her to fight with; he had, however, had her to miss.

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Her question shocked him enough that he let go of her wrist. What had he been doing with himself? Going slowly mad — what else could he possibly have been doing, without her? He'd never before been forced to actually examine the depth of his feeling for his wife, because her presence by his side had always been a foregone conclusion. There had never been an alternative to her, since the day he'd decided to propose. Then, suddenly, there was an alternative, and he was forced to live it. He'd felt the lack of her so keenly that he didn't think he could have described it, even if he'd been inclined to try.

She knew that. She had to. Thomasina knew him better than anyone else. She understood the things he never said aloud. Why ask this question, then? Why try to force an admission of what she must have already suspected? Did she only want to humiliate him? Under normal circumstances he might have appreciated the impulse and responded with a riposte of his own, because this was one of the games they played with each other. Right now, when he was still trying to emotionally readjust to her presence, it felt unfair.

He couldn't stand to look at her smiling, so he leaned against the wall of the lift and shifted his eyes to the door. "They said you were a cat," he said, not because he wanted to talk about it but because he needed to say something to make it clear he had no intention of answering her question. His tone was distant and a little hollow. Defenses up, for the moment. A ride in the lift, a walk across the Atrium, half a house to go until they had privacy, and if Sina was going to throw questions like that at him he'd need to keep his distance to survive it.

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MJ is the light of my life <3

He let go of her and Sina felt the loss of his hand. She put her hands in her pockets and fingered through them, checking for her belongings — wand, pocketwatch, a few chocolates she'd pocketed in the break room that night. Would the chocolates still be good? Perhaps she ought to have asked the man who'd untransfigured her; he ought to be an expert on wizard space.

"Apparently," Sina said. She pulled out one of the wrapped chocolates and looked at it before she stuck it back in her pocket. "They caught me trying to eat some birds." She hoped she had been a difficult circus creature. Hopefully she had even scratched the bastard who'd done this.

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Oz heard a rustling noise and ventured a glance back at her; saw her considering a wrapped chocolate she'd produced from somewhere. His jaw tightened and he looked back at the lift doors. He was having a difficult time with this. The impatient button pushing, the smiling, the comment about how she would tease his family, the chocolates. It was hard to say why any of these things bothered him, individually, because it was all the sort of things he would have expected his wife to do. Looking at them all together, he realized it was the normalcy that upset him. Sina had picked up exactly where they'd left off, as if he'd met her at the hospital door after her shift instead of being summoned to the Ministry to receive her from the auror's offices. Maybe that was what it felt like, to her; maybe she hadn't ached the whole time she'd been away, the way that he had ached for her. The thought made him ... desperate. There was some other emotion attached to it, but he couldn't identify it; couldn't distinguish between desperately angry or desperately lonely or desperately grieved. The desperation was the only resolute piece.

Ozymandias looked back at her and felt his breath in his chest. "Thomasina —" he began, unsure how he intended to continue.

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MJ is the light of my life <3