You are enough.
These little words,
somehow they’re changing us

TAG: @ellanora | OUTFIT

Harriet Montague was lucky to be alive. She was even luckier that the swaddled baby in her arms was still breathing. A botched vacation to Peru and stepping on a colony of flesh-eating slugs hadn’t been exactly what the young couple was planning when they decided to take a ‘late honeymoon.’ Her husband kept repeating that it was an accident — please, please let her be alright — as they ran through the St. Mungo’s doors. Elliot had been the first healer at the doors when they came in through the emergency ward. It was a part of his department — at least, the large gaping wounds care of the slugs, was. The baby and the complaining of labor pains weren’t exactly his department.

But they had delivered the baby and fixed all of her wounds. Harriet would be fine…so would the young child that was now in her arms.

Something about the whole thing had struck Elliot. More so than his other patients in the past. Maybe it was the look on the husband’s face…the look on the wife’s. Harriet and Jonathan Montague loved each other and today, love had won.

That wasn’t always the case, though. Elliot had patients die on him every week or so. They succumbed to injuries or poisonous stings, bites, and tears, bleeding out. He watched loved ones cry over still bodies.

“Thank you again, Healer MacGuffin,” the woman said, shakily, her eyes never leaving her newborn son. Elliot just smiled.

“It’s what we do,” He pulled off his gloves and threw them into the trashcan before walking down the hallway, lost in his own thoughts. Having Ella in his life had changed him. For the better, he knew. She made him realize just how lucky he was to have her. Just how lucky they were together. But he wanted more than that.

He wanted a family with his wife.

As if it were fate, it was at that exact moment that he spotted her, trailing slightly behind the group of Healers-in-Training that was crossing into the Emergency Ward. “Ella! El-” He was now chasing his wife down the hallway, stumbling slightly as his back caught in a strange way. Immediately, he slowed down, grabbing at one of the rolling gurneys that were nearby. He knew better than to push himself like that. His back was a constant reminder that he was getting older…that time was slipping away from him.

Elliot shook his head, standing up straight and wincing before continuing after Ellanora down the hallway. “Healer MacGuffin,” he finally said, a bit louder, hoping her snap her out of paying attention to rounds (at least for a moment).

You Are Enough

Ellanora's Outfit

Days in the hospital were something that she was working on. She thought that the end of her first year in training was coming to a close and that she was going to have to start thinking about what it was that she really wanted to focus on. She knew that she wanted to be a Psychiatrist. That she wanted to study mental disorders. That she wanted to focus on that, but she wanted to work on more than that too. She wanted to treat other things as well, and she thought that maybe the Janis Thickney Ward was where she was going to need to be. That or Emergency. Emergency was going to come with longer hours, and harder days, and she didn't know if she wanted that though. At least if she stuck with Psychiatry and the long-term care ward, then she would have a little more time to be a person outside of being a healer. She wanted to be both. She thought that she could manage to do both. Be a wife, and everything that came with that. And still be a healer. Especially since she knew that her husband was walking around this building in a set of scrubs too.

A family of healers. She didn't think that anyone would have expected medicine from her growing up. She wasn't the type. She had been a ballerina. And she knew that there were some of the other healers-in-training that had mentioned that a time or two. That she was a ballerina. That she was a princess. That she didn't belong here. But she did belong here. Because princess or not, she wanted to be good at something. She wanted to prove that she was good at something. And this was something that no one could take away from her. Something practical that she was sure she was going to have use for in her life. There was nothing about this life that Ella thought was in any way what they would expect. But she did think that they were going to be good at it. That they were going to make names for themselves. Being good at what they did would do that, and she wanted to be good. Ella wanted to succeed at anything that she did and choosing this path for her life was no different. They could make fun of her all they wanted. They could call her Healer Princess. She would let it roll right off.

Ella had made this choice on her own, and she had made it before she had made the decision to marry Elliot. She hadn't done it for any reasons that were not her own, and she was holding true to those reasons now. She was going to hang on to what she believed was right, and she was going to hold herself to the deal that she had made. That she was going to finish training. That she was going to finish school. No matter what happened, she was going to do this. She was going to prove that she could do it all. And that she could do it all while still being true to who she was. She could be the shrink that walked around in a dress and heels under her lab coat instead of scrubs. She could do that. And one day she would. She would be the healer that dressed like she was a princess because she was. She was a princess, and she was a duchess, and that was just as much a part of her as being a healer was.

Listening to the healer that she was trailing talk about the patient that they were on the way to see, Ella was jotting down some notes in the margins of the notes that she had already prepared for herself on this case. It was one that she had found interesting, and she had read the entirety of the patient's history. She thought that the ailments had something to do with a trigger in her psychosis, and that there wasn't actually anything all that physically wrong with the woman. It was something that she was willing to stake some of her reputation as a know-it-all on. But Ella didn't think that there was really all that much wrong with being a know-it-all when you were studying mental illnesses for a living… That seemed like something that just might pay off in the end. Looking up at the sound of her name she found herself facing her husband, and immediately she broke off from the group to step towards him. Closer than was really normal for them in the hospital, but Ella knew him, and she knew how to read him. "Elliot… What on earth?" She reached out to put her hand on his arm, a gesture that wouldn't draw attention, but lent support.

Twenty-six wasn’t all that old, he reminded himself, as he stood, helpless as ever in the middle of the hallway. Then again, he wasn’t everyone. The damage that had been done to his back was irreversible. It was the reason he would never be able to become a full dragonologist. It was regret. Bitter, bitter regret.

But now, standing together with his wife, he realized that it was something else. It was a chance to have a stable life with a stable job. There would be no running off to sanctuaries in Merlin knew where to tend to creatures that were liable to tear his head straight off. There were no dangers beyond the usual, mundane illnesses that came into his ward. As a healer, he had a chance to do what would really matter in the end: start a family.

It was hard to believe sometimes that this was the reality of his situation. He had married his best friend…and now he wanted to start a family with her. He wanted to have kids running around. He wanted to be a father.

Merlin’s beard, he wanted to be a father?

Elliot shook his head, trying not to think of his own father…the very man who had suggested an arranged marriage. He couldn’t do that to his future son and daughter. No, he wouldn’t do that to them. He would be a good father. And Ella would make a good mother. He had seen how her mother had raised her and if Ella was anything like Anicka, they would work well together.

But first, he had to broach the subject with her. It wasn’t as easy as just asking to have kids, was it? Surely there was something romantic that had to be done…? Suddenly, Elliot was very nervous. He hadn’t thought up anything romantic to say to her… “Just thought this was the best time to catch you,” he explained, suddenly grateful that Ella was there to lean on. She was being discreet, but he could tell from the look in her eyes that she immediately understood what had happened. That’s what he got for running after her in the corridors. “Merlin and Morgana,” he muttered just below his breath, putting his hand on hers and giving it a gentle squeeze to let her know that he was alright.

Then it dawned on him. What was more romantic than two healers sharing a case? Surely she would catch on to what he was saying, wouldn’t she? “I remembered you were doing your emergency rotations this afternoon,” As he straightened his back, he felt the familiar pull, but it seemed to return to normal after a few moments. Elliot sucked in a breath. “I had the most exhilarating case earlier. A woman stepped on an entire colony of flesh eating bacteria.” He handed over the case file and waited for her to open it before he continued. “She was nine months pregnant. About to pop. She’s lucky we were able to get the…” Elliot’s voice caught. That was strange, he thought, shaking his head, was talking about children already so difficult? “Baby out in time.”

you are enough it's you and me

Tag: Elliot

Eléanora's Outfit

Healer Princess. They said it like it was supposed to be some great insult. Healer Princess. What was so wrong with that? What was so wrong with her wanting that, wanting to learn to help? Ella thought that they were just mean. That people were just inherently mean sometimes, but more than that, she thought that it was because they didn't understand. When people didn't understand something, they felt threatened, and she was threatening. She was something that they couldn't understand. She was a princess. She could have contented herself to staying at home, and doing nothing with her life, and just being a princess, and no one would have faulted her for it. Because she was born into that role. But she had been born for something else. She had been born for something greater than that, and she knew it. She knew that she was destined for greater things. That there was going to be more to her life than just being a princess. At least, she wanted there to be.  Ella thought that it was worth more than that. That she was worth more than that. She had options, things that she wanted to do, and she knew what she kept saying. Janis Thickney. Emergency. Things like that. But she also knew what she knew. That was a hard thing to describe to people, because she wasn’t a seer. She didn’t get visions or anything like that, she just knew things. About things. And about people. She knew things that she didn’t really think that she was supposed to know, and she couldn’t just not know them... She knew that her family found it frustrating... But she just knew, and she knew where she really belonged. She hadn’t told Elliot that yet, she had never even told him about her... gift. She didn’t know how. Her Matka knew, and her sestry... And Nick, Nick knew everything. But Philip... Malcolm... She didn’t think that her bratr and her krok otec had any idea. She hadn’t been able to figure out how to tell Elliot... She figured that she would come up with some way to tell him in the end, but for now she wouldn’t worry about it. Until he actually asked her about specialties she would just keep those little details to herself.  A little smirk played on her lips at his words, “In the middle of rounds?” She wasn’t particularly worried about the rounds, she was good, and she knew it. She had already been offered a couple of places in the hospital for her last year. Internships of sorts. She had been offereed the chances to study under some of the best healers in England here in the hospital, and she wanted that chance. She wanted to be great. She would be great. There was no want about it, Ella was determined that she was going to do this, and that she was going to be great at it. Even if the field that she knew she was going to end up in was one that she would be building on her way up in some ways...  Handling that would earn her her place here. She was not going to let them call her Healer Princess, and not prove them wrong. She was more than that, and she knew it. All she had to do was prove it. Prove that she had earned her place here just like they had. When her husband squeezed her hand Ella let her eyes wander over him for a moment, trying to get a sense of if he was really alright or not. She didn’t want to let go of him, just in case she was wrong. “Elliot...” But before she could ask him if he was okay he was talking again, and she found herself listening to him with more interest than she had had in any of the other cases that she had had to hear or present on today.  “Did you save her leg?” Once she had heard that the baby was okay Ella forced herself to focus on the case as a whole. Flesh eating bacteria was not something that you just found haphazardly, “Where in the world did she stumble on flesh eating bacteria? Surely they don’t have that around their home?” That was no place to have an infant, not if there was something so dangerous around. Matka had gotten rid of the toxic house plants before the twins were born, even if they had been high enough up that they were even out of Pippa’s reach. Having dangerous things around was not okay, by any means. “And the baby is okay? Did you deliver a baby?!” Ella thought that her voice betrayed her bit of jealousy if he had, that was the one thing that she hadn’t gotten to do on her own yet when it came to maternity healing, and she wanted to. Badly.

She was right — interrupting her in the middle of rounds was the worst idea he’d had in a while. Not only was he disturbing her education, he was disturbing her education because he wanted to talk about children. Was he being ridiculous? Elliot knew that he didn’t want kids to come between her and her career. Not when she was this close to living out her dream. But he also knew that family was important to her. With a family like the Mountbatten’s, how could it not be?

Ella seemed concerned about his back, still, holding onto his arm, seemingly just in case anything were to happen. “I’m fine, I promise,” but he didn’t move away from her steady grasp. There were days when he was worried about his back giving out on him altogether. He was worried that he wouldn’t be able to walk. But having Ella next to him, holding onto him tightly…Elliot felt like he could conquer the world. Maybe it was her very presence that gave him the courage to keep up the conversation.

“Whole leg. We managed to do a graft to repair some of the damaged tissue,” but that wasn’t the important part of this case study, he was quick to remind himself. The impossible leg-saving wasn’t the reason he so desperately wanted to talk to Ella about all of this.

“Peru. They decided to take a last minute, pre-baby holiday,” he nodded. She was absolutely right. It was also ridiculous that someone nine months pregnant would want to travel, but he supposed that was what happened when you caught the traveling but. He could only hope that Ella didn’t want to travel when she was that pregnant. Though he supposed if she did want to travel, both of them being Healers was a definite advantage. They wouldn’t have to worry about finding a place to deliver the baby when Elliot was absolutely capable of doing it himself. Of course, that was if she gets pregnant, he reminded himself. Elliot was known for getting ahead of himself, today especially. He had yet to even explain to her what all of this had to do with him disturbing her during rounds.

He found himself more excited than usual, feeding off of the energy that his wife was giving him. He could hear the slight jealousy in her voice, but he knew that her time would come. He knew that she would have been the perfect maternity healer if she had decided to go that route. It just seemed like it was in her blood. The same way he knew that she would make the perfect mother of his children. “I delivered a baby, Ella,” he said, grinning. “And I held it and…and…” Elliot hadn’t helped deliver a child since his Healer-in-Training days. “And I want to have kids.” There, he had said it. Or blurted it.

You Are

Enough

They could call her names. They could act like she didn’t belong here, but Ella knew that she did. This was where she was supposed to be. This was exactly where she wanted to be. And Ella thought that if they would just talk to her. If they would pay attention, they would see that she had just as much drive as the reset of them. That she worked just as hard. That she did everything that she was supposed to do. And it wasn’t because she thought that she had something to prove. It was because everything that she had had been taught for her entre life, had to do with the fact that things were not handed to them. Royalty though they may be, nothing was handed to them. Nothing that they had was served up on a silver platter. They still had to work for things. They still had to be somebody. Matka worked. Otec had worked. They all had jobs, they all went to school. They were privileged, but they knew it, and they did their best not to exploit it. If anything, Ella wanted that to be the message that they passed on. She wanted that to be what people saw.

That they were enough. That they were strong enough. That they were smart enough. They weren’t overprivileged. They weren’t spoiled. They were just people. People that had to do something to survive too. She was older than the rest of them, and she knew it. She knew that she hadn’t decided to do this right out of school. That she hadn’t been the one that had known that this was what she wanted to do with her life. Ella knew that she had more schooling to do. That she wasn’t going to be everything all at once. She knew that she had years of learning, and interning, and practicing, before she could even say that she was good at what she did. But she was going to be good at it. She was going to be good at all of this, and she didn’t think that there was any reason to believe that she wouldn’t be. They could all be good at whatever it was that they put their minds to. It didn’t have anything to do with class, or background, or even blood. And that was something that she knew played into everyone’s thoughts.

Ella knew that there were people that looked at her, that looked at her background, and didn’t know why the MacGuffins had allowed their heir to marry her in the first place. She wasn’t Light. She wasn’t someone that was going to just up and start treating muggles. She didn’t think that she ever would be. She didn’t think that they were ever going to think that she was good enough, or strong enough, or whatever it was that she was thought, that they thought, that she was lacking. There was a bit of worry in her eyes as he insisted that he was fine, but after a moment she nodded, If he said he was okay, she would believe him. It turned to shaking her head as he gave her more details about the case that he had just worked though. “You should have paged. I would have helped you, or been in your way, trying to monitor the baby the whole time… Either one.” There was a smile on her face as she said it, but it would have been the truth. She would have been more worried about the mother, and the baby, as a single patient, than she would have been about the leg.

“Certainly, sounds like it was last minute!” Ella couldn’t imagine wanting to go on holiday when you were that pregnant, but she thought that everyone was different. Every pregnancy was different. Matka’s last one had been difficult, and she knew that they weren’t all that way. That there were times when everything went textbook perfect, but those were few and far between. Still though, she didn’t think that she would ever want to travel when she was so pregnant that she couldn’t see her own feet. That just seemed like it would have been miserable, to say the least. She couldn’t help but be a little jealous of her husband though. Maternity healer, along with psychology, was where she was focusing her studies. She was going to spend the rest of her life delivering babies, bring that joy into the world with people, but she was jealous that he had gotten to do it today. “You… What?” She knew that they would have kids eventually, she was pretty sure that that was a given, seeing as he was the heir, and she was… Well not the heir, exactly, not in British terms, but if anything happened to the monarchy, she thought that she needed some little ones too. But she hadn’t really thought that after their first talk about it, this was the time and place he was going to bring it up again. “Like, right now?”

@ elliot - 846 - eléanora's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOXOGRPHY 2.0

YOU ARE ENOUGH.
THESE LITTLE WORDS,
SOMEHOW THEY’RE CHANGING US

❧

She was right, of course. Elliot should have paged her. It would have been good to have another pair of hands on deck. “Next time I’ll page you,” he promised, reaching out and putting his hands on her shoulders. “You would’ve loved to see it, Ella. They don’t take you into surgeries like that during your training days, that’s for sure.” But he would spoil her. The next time a case came in that sounded like it would be of interest to her, Elliot would invite his wife. She deserved it. Hell, Ella worked harder than any Healer-in-Training he’d ever seen. She put her heart and soul into Healing, which was precisely what good Healers did. No, she wasn’t the conventional type…she was older than most, but she deserved to be a part of this.

He liked that she was here — just a few meters away all the time. Ella made him feel safe — she made him feel like he was unstoppable. She was his wife. And he had decided that they were going to discuss the next steps in their relationship right here, right now.

Honestly, Elliot felt a bit silly given that he’d just blurted out wanting to have kids to his wife. She probably thought that he had lost his mind, but he was so high on adrenaline after the surgery that he…couldn’t keep it in. Not when it was so crucial to him. She was looking at him like he’d lost his mind. And maybe he had…at least, a little bit. But Ella somehow always managed to do that to him. She made him lose his train of thought or stumble over his words. She was beautiful and intelligent and, while they had been best friends growing up, things changed when you were married to someone. Things changed when you started to fall in love. She was enough, to him. She always would be. No, Eleanora MacGuffin was not that woman that Elliot had ever pictured marrying. In fact, there had been a lot of thoughts about never marrying at all. Elliot hadn’t thought himself worthy. He didn’t know if he’d make a good husband. But she’d changed all that.

All his life, Elliot had had a horrible time connecting with human beings, but over the past year, Ella had managed to coax him out of his shell more than anyone in the world. He didn’t feel quite so timid when she was around. And he knew that when — or he supposed, if — they had kids, it would carry over. A little son or daughter would be the very key to his heart. Elliot wouldn’t have to worry about what they thought about him because he knew he would be a good father. He knew that they would look up to him, limp and injuries, all. He imagined that a child would be good for him…good for them both. And they’d talked about it before, hadn’t they? Ella just hadn’t been ready and Elliot hadn’t pushed. But now…after seeing that — after witnessing the miracle of birth — he just knew. He hoped that she felt the same way. “I mean, not precisely at this moment that would be a little…” Elliot could feel a blush rising to his cheeks, causing them to pink. “We can’t well…you know…” He realized a little too late that that was not what Ella meant. She meant ‘now’ as a more general term. Now as in, in the near future, as it were. “But yeah, I'd like to. If that's...well, something you'd want to do. With me.”

@ ella

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You Are

Enough

She wanted this. Ella wanted to be here. She wanted to do something with her life that was more than just being a princess. She wanted to be a healer, she wanted to make a difference, and it was a calling that she had come across later than she had expected. Ella had had no real direction with her life. No plans for what she was going to do after ballet. Probably teach it. Continue dancing. But then Otec had died, and she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about how she had no real purpose. No drive. There was nothing that was pushing her forwards in any way. Healing did that. It pushed her forwards. “I don’t even care about the surgery…” She did, a little bit. She just wanted to be there for the baby. She would have left, after that, gone with the newborn to the NICU to be checked out. She could have let the rest of it go. “I just want to help. Mothers. I want to help mothers.”

She realized that she hadn’t told him that she had made that choice. That she had made the decision about a specialty. He knew that she was studying psychology. He knew that she wanted to counsel, and care in that way, but her plan. Her plan that she had finally settled on, she thought that she hadn’t’ really shared that with him. And she needed to. Now that she knew. Now that she was sure what it was that she wanted to do. She wanted to work with those mothers. She wanted to be the best, and she knew that she was late to the game, she knew it. But she was figuring it out. She was working on it. Building her skill set. Learning everything that she could. Clinical Psychology, and Maternal Medicine. It was a combination that you didn’t hear about all that often, and Ella had decided that it was going to be her life’s work to change that.

Kids. That’s what Elliot wanted to talk about in the middle of the hallway. He wanted to talk about having kids. And Ella knew that they would have kids eventually. She wasn’t going to force the issue. But they could stop stopping the issue. They were young. They had their whole lives ahead of them. And she could see them raising a couple kids. Not the eight that Matka now had. But three… She thought that she could do three. “Presumptuous?” They were in the middle of the hallway after all, “Or promiscuous really…” She thought that she knew that most certainly wasn’t what he meant, but her husband’s blushing when it came to talking about anything of the sort was something she would continue to tease him about. Gently, of course. But enough. She hadn’t really thought that he was going to suggest that they find an empty supply closet and try right this second, but she couldn’t help but chuckle as he stumbled over his words.

“I knew what you meant.” The smile tugged at the corners of her lips. “But okay. If you want to try, we can try.” Ella didn’t know how difficult it was going to be to get pregnant. Every case was different, and it could be as simple as this time next week she was already pregnant, or it could be six months from now before everything lined up the way it was supposed to. But they could try. If he wanted to try, she would try. Having a baby now would mean that she was going to be in her final year of training, they could figure that out. It wouldn’t interfere with classes too much either. She would just take next summer off, and care for their child, and then go back to school for her final semester in the fall. Graduating in December as a psychologist, and then finishing healer training the following June. It would work out. “It might not be right away, it doesn’t work like that…” He knew that, of course he knew that. But she didn’t want him to get too excited either. Just in case it took a little while longer than expected.

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