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[attr="class","ctopline"]All that we had is laid out on the table

[attr="class","cscriptmisc"]you think that love is a game you can play

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[attr="class","clyrics"]I keep on running back just cause I'm able[break]
Imma get over you one of these days

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[attr="class","cbody"]The truth was never supposed to come out the way that it had. Laia was never supposed to find out who her pare actually was. It was just easier this way. There had never been a time in her life when she had regretted that decision. The only time that her resolve had faltered even a little had been when she’d turned around on that street in London and saw Santiago standing there. Her stomach had flipped like she had been twenty years younger. Getting butterflies over her ex had weakened her resolve for a fraction of a second.
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But she had powered through that. She had known that she couldn’t tell him about Eulàlia and that she couldn’t tell her daughter about him. The truth about him, anyway. There were some parts of the past that she did know--whether from tabloids or them talking about it when she had gotten old enough. The real truth? Rubi had always just thought that her daughter was better off without it.
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From the moment that she’d arrived in London and had said that she wanted to work at St. Mungo’s, though, Rubi had known that it was only going to be a matter of time. Santiago was not a stupid man. If he had her name and her birthday, he would know enough to realize that she couldn’t possibly be Tomàs’ daughter. He would realize that she had not been with her husband like that by that point.
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Her working at the hospital meant that there wasn’t an if Santiago found out moment, it was a when.
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She hadn’t known how he was going to react. He had missed out on another daughter, yes, but he was the one that had chosen Valentina. After everything that she had done to try to ruin both of their lives, he had gone to her. That was on him. She did what she thought was right to protect her daughter from getting hurt by them again. He had proven how easy it was for him to make the easy choice instead of the right one, and it had called everything into question. It had her wondering if their entire relationship had been a lie, a farce that Valentina had fabricated to soundly break her heart and ruin her career all in one fell swoop.
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Did he not realize that? Did he not realize that she had no reason not to believe that he’d never cared about her at all, and that everything had been a lie? Why would she subject Eulàlia to that?
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But it was long in the past now. She couldn’t go back and change her choices and she wouldn’t. She didn’t care that Santiago hated her. She did, however, care about her daughter and it had been two months since she had heard from her. Maybe she would never forgive her, she had no idea.
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Rubi knew that Tomàs had been writing to her as well, because he’d told her. He had also told her that she wasn’t answering him. She knew if it weren’t for the borders being closed, he would have come straight to London to talk to his daughter in person--because he had raised Laia like she was his own and she knew how important it was to him that she understood why he did what he did. But if he came to talk to her, he’d be stuck there with the rest of them. There would be no way for him to get home, which was what she kept trying to remind him of when he brought it up.
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She thought that the best thing to do was to give her daughter time. Now that her symptoms had faded, she had been able to go back to work so that was something. Tonight, she’d had a meeting in the Adria and she thought that it had gone well. But now that it was over, she wasn’t quite ready to go home yet.
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So, she had moved to the bar and ordered a glass of merlot and the cheese plate from the appetizers list. She thought she might as well try to get something to eat before she headed back to Knightsbridge.
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[attr="class","cnotes"]705 ● @ open ● outfit

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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[attr="class","reasonsmallwendy"]Sometimes I never learn nothing at all Some people end up immune to the heartbreak But something about you it tears me apart

[attr="class","reasonbodwendy"]Wendy wasn’t sure when everything would start to calm down. It seemed like the entirety of the Wizarding World was up in arms about Epidemic X – or its true name Cleptavirinae Magicaevirus. While she knew this would be the reaction, she had never been so excited to see it unfurl itself. Each day that passed, each article that was written about this traumatizing disease, and each hopeless pureblood that Wendy saw only added to her glee.

She wanted to get off her feet, she thought, walking through the streets on her way home. Working part-time at St. Mungo’s had become so tedious over the past few weeks. Not that she was doing any real research if she was being honest, but because she had to constantly be on the lookout for what everyone else was doing. She couldn’t very well have Dr. Kelsey Banks make a breakthrough with her neurological studies, could she? So, she’d been tweaking the results and nullifying her data. That way there would be no breakthroughs. Wendy wanted things to stay exactly as they were for as long as she could. And, based on the job that she was doing, it would be some time before they figured out that she was up to sabotage.

The Adria hotel was surprisingly busy for this time of night, Wendy thought as she walked inside. There was no one to tell her that Squibs weren’t allowed – after all, a vast majority of the magical population were Squibs, now. It felt good – made her feel powerful, even. There was no one in this world that could tell her no. Not when she was just another face amongst the crowd. Merlin’s Beard, Wendy never thought she would feel so empowered being just another Squib. And it felt good. For all those years that her family had told her that she wasn’t good enough – now they were just like her. Now the whole of the Wizarding World here in the UK was just like her. She smiled and it was genuine.

Moving through the hotel, she eventually made it to the bar where she looked around for an empty seat. Many of them were taken by sad looking businessmen and women – perhaps lamenting the loss of their magic over a bottle of wine that cost more than Wendy’s house. Pathetic, really. But they would all get over it soon when they realized that this was their new normal. There was nothing they could do to dig themselves out of the grave that she and her brother had dug for them. Not while Wendy was at St. Mungo’s to distract and destroy all evidence and research pointing towards a cure. This was a new world – and it was hers. Eventually, she spotted an empty seat at the bar next to a woman with a glass of wine and a particularly delicious looking cheese tray. That would do, she thought, moving forward and swinging her purse into the chair. “Mind if I sit?” Wendy asked, gesturing towards the open seat.

[attr="class","reasontagwendy"]@ stranger with the cheese plate | 506 | OUTFIT

[attr="class","credwendy"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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[attr="class","ctopline"]ALL THAT WE HAD IS LAID OUT ON THE TABLE

[attr="class","cscriptmisc"]you think that love is a game you can play

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[attr="class","clyrics"]I KEEP ON RUNNING BACK JUST CAUSE I'M ABLE[break]
IMMA GET OVER YOU ONE OF THESE DAYS

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[attr="class","cbody"]Getting all swept up in the drama was not something that she had ever enjoyed. It wasn’t something that she wanted. But where Valentina went, drama had followed—most of it of her making. It had made childhood difficult. Not as bad as some people had it, she knew that. There was very little that she could complain about on that front. But living with her sister had always been a challenge. Those few years when she had been at Beauxbatons without her had been some of the better ones of her childhood.
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But then they had grown up. She had graduated, had moved out, and she had thought that Val might be able to move past her childish antics. Instead, she had decided to raise the stakes. That was always something that she’d liked.
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Rubi had thought that she was through with having to deal with Val, and that there were some lines that she wouldn’t cross. Déu, she had been the one that had gone to her younger sister to ask her for advice. When it came to cheating, Val was the expert. It wasn’t something that Rubi had ever involved herself in and it wasn’t something that she had ever thought that she would do. When it came to leaving Tomàs—to doing something that she knew was going to hurt him, she knew that Val had been the right person to ask for advice. She would know how to best pull that bandage off and move through it.
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How foolish it had been, to think that she could trust Val with anything involving her personal life.
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Sometimes she wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t gone to Val. If she hadn’t had that conversation with her. Of course, she knew there was a chance that her sister had already known about the affair. She had a way of figuring that sort of thing out. Maybe it had already been a plan, to ruin her the way that she had. Maybe she had just been waiting for the right moment and finding out that Rubi was about to come clean herself had meant that she needed to beat her to it.
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There was no way to know for sure. And no reason for her to try to. There was no use thinking about what could have happened if she had made a few different choices, though one particular choice had been on her mind a lot as of late. The choice to not tell her filla the truth about who her pare really was.
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She had done nothing to deserve the lies. Rubi had just been trying to protect her. She hadn’t wanted her to get hurt. After everything that she had been through with Santiago—after being unsure of how much of their relationship had even been real, or if the chances were higher that it had been orchestrated by Val from the start, it was a safer choice. Tomàs had agreed to raise her like one of his own, and he had. She’d had full custody, of course, but Eulàlia had still seen him plenty and she got to have a pare that had chosen her.
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Still, the choice had been on her mind a lot as of late. With her filla off living… Déu, she didn’t even know where, it had been hard to think about much else. She liked to keep the past in the past, but it felt like she’d been living in it lately. There had been no getting away from it.
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Working had helped. Dinner meetings always involved a fair amount of small talk and wine, and that made the rest of the night a lot easier. Tonight, she was no in rush to get back to her empty house, so going to the bar had seemed like the right choice. Stalling with a bit more wine and some cheese seemed like an exceptionally good idea. She only pulled herself from her thoughts when she realized that a woman was speaking to her. “Sí—yes, of course,” she said with a small smile.
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[attr="class","cnotes"]684 ● @stranger without a cheese plate ● outfit

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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[attr="class","reasonsmallwendy"]Sometimes I never learn nothing at all Some people end up immune to the heartbreak But something about you it tears me apart

[attr="class","reasonbodwendy"]Wendy wasn’t sure what their next move would be. She wasn’t sure where they could go from here. The country was in quarantine and, as much as she wanted to spread the disease outside of the country, she couldn’t fathom forcing her husband to become a mule for the disease. Not when he knew nothing of what she was doing. She didn’t want Gabriel to ever find out what she had done.

He was muggle. He’d never known about the magical world until Wendy had shown up in his life. And, even then, he’d hardly known anything about it beyond what Wendy had told him. Because that world was a dangerous place. It was the sort of place where Pierce Buchanan reigned and Liza and Kyle tortured. It was the sort of world that she was not welcome in. Neither was Gabriel or her daughter Helena. No, they were safer away from it all.

She couldn’t involve them.

So for now, the disease would remain here in England. They would suffer through quarantine and move no closer to finding a cure. Because Wendy was sabotaging the whole thing. Every time they would move closer to the true cure, Wendy would set them back a few paces. It was easy, really, given that the majority of the research was being done at St. Mungo’s. The very same place that had asked her to consult on a few of the virology studies. She was a Squib, of course, which meant she was the bridge between two worlds. They thought she was helpful when in truth, she was working her own sort of magic.

She wondered sometimes if things would have turned out differently had she been born with magic. Of course, she imagined they would. Her siblings would have no reason to hate her. She would have no reason to hate them. But the way things were now…the Epidemic had turned into a poetic justice for all of them. Now Kyle and Liza were just like her. And Merlin, how she would pay to see what sweet hell they were living in.

“Thanks,” she took off her jacket and slug it on the back of the chair, slowly sitting down next to her. Wendy ordered a glass of wine and for a moment, she was quiet. Mulling over the implications of her actions, while she sipped on the dry red that the bartender had put in front of her.

It wasn’t until she realized how promptly she had been served that Wendy looked around. The bar was far less crowded than it usually was. Interesting, she thought with a raised eyebrow.“Quiet night,” she mentioned to the woman beside her, curious if she, too had noticed the wane of patronage here at the Adria. “The sickness has driven people to drink in the comfort of their own homes, I suppose,” she didn’t laugh, though she wanted to. Wendy knew she needed to maintain a certain appearance. After all, she didn’t want to be discovered so early on.

[attr="class","reasontagwendy"]@ strangers with a cheese plate? | 505 | OUTFIT

[attr="class","credwendy"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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[attr="class","ctopline"]ALL THAT WE HAD IS LAID OUT ON THE TABLE

[attr="class","cscriptmisc"]you think that love is a game you can play

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[attr="class","clyrics"]I KEEP ON RUNNING BACK JUST CAUSE I'M ABLE[break]
IMMA GET OVER YOU ONE OF THESE DAYS

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[attr="class","cbody"]The choices that she had made in the past were not ones that she regretted. She couldn’t. After everything that had happened, Rubi still felt like she had made the right choices given the situation at the time. Obviously, if she had known what she knew now, maybe things would have been different. But back when she had found out that she was pregnant, and she had gone to Santiago’s to see her sister there—telling him had no longer been an option. There had been no reason for her to think that their relationship had ever been real at all.
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Her mind had gone to worst case scenarios, and the worst thing that she could possibly think of was that she’d fallen in love with someone that had been with Val from the start. That was just as twisted as she was, and they had thought it would be a fun game to see if he could get her to fall in love him with, just so that they could break her heart and ruin her life in the process. It had been low, even for Val, but it had certainly been possible.
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So, she had known that she couldn’t tell Santi that she was pregnant with his child. She’d had no reason to think that the man had ever cared about her at all. Even if she had wanted to believe that couldn’t be possible, that she had known him far too well to think him capable of such a thing, everything had been confusing back then. Her heart had been broken. Thinking the worst had been the easiest option and protecting her own heart and her daughter had been her first priority.
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Now she knew that Santi had never been working with Val. Their relationship had been real. He had still broken her heart by going to Val, but he hadn’t had ill intentions from the beginning. It had nearly made her feel bad for assuming he was capable of such a thing, but she still didn’t regret the decisions that she had made. Back then, she had been so hurt. She had done what she thought was necessary to protect herself, and to protect Laia. And she had raised an incredible daughter because of it. She was proud of her every day, even now. Even when she wasn’t speaking to her, and she had no idea where she was staying or how she was. She didn’t even know if she had fallen sick as well, though she thought that her daughter would at least have told her that much. She wanted to think so, anyway.
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It hurt, but she thought that her daughter would get past it in time. She would forgive her. She hoped so, anyway. Rubi even hoped that Santi would eventually understand why she had done what she had. It hadn’t been to hurt him, it hadn’t been to spite him or to keep his daughter from him. Everything that she had done had been to protect her, after her own heart had been crushed into pieces.
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Keeping her mind occupied with work was always the best way to get her problems out of her thoughts, and she was lucky that they had plenty to do. Getting a new office up and running took time. She had been here for five months now, and it would take far longer than that to get the London Mare Aloja office in working condition. It was a process, it always was, but they had been doing well so far.
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Avoiding going home had seemed like the right decision tonight. Just for a little while, anyway. She hadn’t expected company, but she supposed there was no reason to turn some down either. Rubi selected a particularly delicious looking slice of cheese and put it on a cracker while the woman next to her ordered her drink from the bartender. When she finally spoke again, Rubi’s gaze moved to her immediately. As far as she knew, this place served… what was the word—Muggles too, but she was clearly not a Muggle to bring such a thing up. To anyone else, it would have just sounded like a passing comment about cold weather and the illnesses that came along with it, maybe, but Rubi knew that she had to be talking about the epidemic. “Sí, it is a little quiet. Though I have not been here before, so I didn’t know if this was just a normal Wednesday,” she lifted her shoulders in a light shrug.
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[attr="class","cnotes"]758 ● @ stranger ● outfit

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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