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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