4 August 1893 — Dempsey Estate, Ireland

Ozymandias had made no attempt to rouse himself from bed or prepare for the day by the time his bedroom door opened that morning. Though he did sometimes oversleep for no reason, in this case he'd only been asleep a few hours after having stayed late at the club the night before. He'd been preoccupied at home the day before — as it turned out there was paperwork involved in registering a candidacy for Minister and it wasn't something that could be accomplished only with a note delivered by one of the servants to the front desk of the Ministry Atrium, as he had tried first. As a result, he'd been delayed in going to the club in the first place, and there was an unwritten rule that a gentleman of leisure could never stay at the club an hour or less, so he'd had to find things to occupy himself until halfway through the night. A short visit anywhere could give the impression that one was in a rush, and to seem in a rush was to seem gauche.

He could have skipped the club entirely, of course, but he'd already told a few of the regular card players he'd be there, and he didn't want to give them reason to remark upon his absence. Particularly after the news about his candidacy broke — he was primarily doing this to prove a point, the point being that he could do it better than anyone else. Seeming harried on the first day of candidacy wouldn't do.

So he was still asleep when Sina came in. He opened his eyes just long enough to squint at the door and make out who it was. She often came in like this after working a night shift, and though he always knew her schedule he was too drowsy to recognize whether or not that was the case today. He yawned, shuffled over to make room in the bed to accommodate her, and put his head back to the pillow.

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Thomasina Dempsey

  

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MJ is the light of my life <3

Usually night shifts slowed down as one approach the morning; she'd had time to check on all of her patients, and unless someone new came in, there was typically time in the break room for her to scan the Daily Prophet when it first reached an audience. Usually Sina simply skimmed — she could read in detail when she got home — but today, the cover had greeted her with a photo of her husband's face.

Ozymandias was lucky that her shift ended before anyone else asked her about it in depth. She took one of the copies from the break room, took the floo network home to Ireland, and stalked up the stairs still in her healer's robes. Sina was unsurprised to see Oz still in bed, but had not yet decided what to do once she found him. She stalked towards the bed and stood over him.

Sina thwacked her husband on the thigh with the newspaper.

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set by MJ

Oz grumbled when she swatted him. It didn't hurt, at least not through a few layers of bedding, but it was far from what he'd expected when she came in. "That's plenty of room," he insisted, thinking at first that she was trying to get him to surrender more of the bed... until he realized she was standing in the wrong place. She wasn't joining him. He blinked at her and took note of a few other odd details: she was still fully dressed in her healer's uniform, she was holding a newspaper, and she did not look particularly pleased. Not that Sina tended to look pleased very often (at least not with him), but he knew her well enough to tell when she was looking sour but secretly feeling fond, and this did not seem like one of those moments.

This seemed as though it was going to involve a conversation. He yawned again and propped himself up on one elbow. "What?"

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MJ is the light of my life <3

Sina huffed out an irritated breath. At least he was a quarter-up now; she would have started being significantly more chaotic if he didn't wake up for her. (And she still hadn't ruled it out.) She thwacked the newspaper against the mattress again. "Minister?" she said — her tone was more disbelieving than irritating, despite herself.

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set by MJ

Now at least the newspaper bit made sense. "Oh," he said, and sat up a little straighter so that he could reach over and try to take the newspaper from her. "Let me see." He hadn't been involved in the process of getting the announcement into the paper at all; he'd merely sent a letter to the appropriate office at the Ministry to register his interest, and presumably the staff politics reporter at the Prophet had taken it over from there, so he was curious to see what the article actually said.

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MJ is the light of my life <3

Sina kept one hand firm on the newspaper, hesitant to relinquish it to her husband. "Is this real?" she asked.

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set by MJ

He pretended irritation that she hadn't handed over the newspaper when asked. "You are holding it in your hand," he pointed out dryly. He knew she hadn't meant the newspaper, but willful misunderstanding was par for the course in their conversations. "Which is typically difficult for illusory objects, so all signs point to yes."

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MJ is the light of my life <3

Thomasina unceremoniously dropped the newspaper onto the mattress. "And typically people running for Minister inform their wives," she chided, although she was still mostly hoping that this was some sort of joke. If Ozymandias was running, it was going to absolutely ruin her autumn.

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set by MJ

Oz shrugged at her remark. "Consider yourself informed," he said, already turning his attention to the paper. He glanced at the headline (innocuous enough) but didn't make it to the actual text of the article. "Where did they get this picture from?" he wondered, head tipping slightly to one side. He didn't remember having it taken, and didn't know whether it was normal for newspapers to just have photographs of society members sitting around waiting for an opportunity to be used. Perhaps it was — probably no one mired in a sudden breaking news scandal was coming in to sit for photographs. It was old, though, he could tell that much. "I must be twenty-five in this picture."

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MJ is the light of my life <3

"Probably from your rakish past," Sina said, rolling her eyes. She sat down on the edge of the mattress and crossed her arms over her chest. "I can't believe you've decided to absolutely trash my autumn."

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set by MJ

"Mmhm, before you ran me ragged," he teased. He turned his attention from the photo to the text of the article, though he was really only half reading it. Mostly he just wanted to know if they had compared him to any of the other candidates yet — it appeared they had not. "It's not your whole autumn. The election is on October 19th. So there's — a month and twelve days left over to enjoy," he said. As though Sina enjoyed autumn regularly. She spent so much time working, regardless of the season, so it wasn't as though she was planning trips to the continent that would have to be delayed or canceled to support his campaign.

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MJ is the light of my life <3

Sina huffed out a breath. "Six weeks of talking to Britain's most boring people, Ozymandias," she whined. She was being petty. She even knew that she was being petty. But it was absurd that he had not thought to ask her!

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set by MJ

Oz scoffed. "It's the same boring people you would have been talking to all autumn anyway," he pointed out. "They don't bring any new ones just to engage in political banter." Whether this was true or not remained to be seen, but at least at this stage Oz assumed that campaigning probably looked and felt exactly like being a member of Society, just with a few catch-phrases thrown in here or there to remind people to vote. And some old pictures of him being dragged out into the Prophet, apparently. He did not expect that it would have much of a measurable impact on either of their lives, and even if it did, he certainly did not expect that it would be hard.

"I think the Minister's wife usually meets the Queen," he said sardonically, dangling this as though it was the sort of thing that ought to motivate anyone, and that they would not both be openly disdainful of anyone who was motivated by it.

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MJ is the light of my life <3

Sina made an unladylike, frustrated noise. He just didn't get it. She was used to Ozymandias not getting things, but this — this was extreme.

"Dear Husband," she said, "What did I ask you to promise me, when I agreed to your proposal?"

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set by MJ

"Not to bring my mistresses along to dinner parties," he answered without looking up from the paper.

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MJ is the light of my life <3

Sina put her hand, with the fingers splayed, over the Prophet. "Not very funny," she said, with an edge in her voice. (She did not particularly like jokes that her husband had mistresses.) "I told you that I would not be a Society Wife."

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set by MJ