Life

Changes

Sabine knew that Constance’s family, her family, was sick. She knew that her mother was fine, because she had seen her, talked to her, but she didn’t know anything about the rest of them. Ella was still in the hospital. Everyone else was in Pyxis. But Sabine wouldn’t be going to visit. As far as everyone but her aunt, and Constance were concerned, she was just Constance’s friend. And that was exactly how it needed to stay. Part of her was curious about her uncle. But she thought that her mother might just kill her herself if she ventured too close to Ares Wentzell. That wasn’t a risk that she was willing to take. Especially not right now. She knew that her mother wasn’t angry with her for what she had done today but being divorced at twenty wasn’t exactly what she had had in mind for her life. Of course, marrying the man that she had married hadn’t been a part of the plan either. And she knew that this was better.

Being Sabine Larsen again was better. She thought that she would just have to continue to be her, and that it wasn’t going to matter. He had made his choices, she had made hers, and that was the end of it. Married and divorced, less than six months. Maybe they could have made it work. Maybe she could have tried harder, but she wasn’t sure that she wanted to. She had married him out of something that she couldn’t call anything other than drunken feeling sorry for herself, and she had realized that what she thought was a curse, wasn’t. Athena was her mother. And she had called her that. For the first time. She had called her Mum. And the other witch hadn’t rebuffed it. Sabine had never called anyone Mum before. Mariska certainly hadn’t fit that bill for her. And now that she knew her mother, Sabine was sure that Athena Finley was the only one that was going to be able to hold that title.

She was so very much like her, and yet she was so intimidated by her. Sabine was sure that she would never live up to that. That she would never be good enough. And she wouldn’t. That she knew for certain. She knew that she would never be good enough for her to admit that she was her daughter. But she also knew that anyone with eyeballs could figure it out sometimes. If they stood too close together at a party. If they worse the same color, and someone said something stupid. The quirk of their eyebrow was exactly the same. Sabine thought that if there were any of her father in her, she had yet to find it. And she had not ventured to ask her mother who he was. She wasn’t sure that she cared to know. There was no point to it really. She didn’t need to know him. She had her mother, and for all that she had thought that she didn’t need her either, in the beginning, she was glad for it now.

Tonight, was not about her though. It was, in the sense that she had begged Constance to come here, because she had been out all day, and she had a headache and a small fever, that she was planning on washing away in gin, but she wanted her friend to come and celebrate. There hadn’t been time for it yet, she was certain. And she was certain that her best friend was too caught up in the fact that their family was sick to celebrate the new ring on her hand. But Sabine thought that for a couple of hours tonight, she could pretend that that wasn’t the case. She could let herself enjoy this moment. This was supposed to be her moment, and Liam Flint needed to work on his timing, but Sabine thought that they could at least be happy about this. She was sure that Constance loved him, after all, she just wanted her to be happy. Pouring herself a glass from the decanter she looked across at the brunette, “Do you want gin? Or would you rather the scotch?”

Constance Leysa Mountbatten - 702 - sabine's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOXOGRPHY 2.0

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[attr="class","ctopline"]You never know what's gonna happen

[attr="class","cscriptmisc"]you make your plans

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[attr="class","clyrics"] and you hear god laughing, life changes[break]
and I wouldn't change it for the world

[break][break]

[attr="class","cbody"]Ever since people had started getting sick—people that she cared about, it had been difficult for her to focus on anybody else. Ella had been first, but now… now she and her matka were the only two that weren’t sick and everyone else was at the hospital. Constance didn’t like feeling like there was nothing that she could do. She didn’t like worrying and being certain that something was going to go horribly wrong.
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And she’d been lonely. Mountbatten Hall was empty apart from Esmeralda, and the maid was hardly all that good of company. It had been too quiet, there had been too much for her to worry about and she just thought she was going to go crazy there. She would have acted like it was fine, but she had to admit that she’d been relieved when her matka had told her to stay with them—and that Liam had agreed it was a good idea when she’d gone to see him. She could distract herself by helping with the twins and Pippa, and it gave her something else to think about. Something else to do.
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But she still worried. She worried about Ella and how long she’d been in a coma, she worried about how her matka was taking all of this because she didn’t seem to be taking it all that well. And she worried about Thea, and Philip, and Temperance. Malcolm too, obviously. There were so many people for her to worry about, and it was hard to act like everything was okay. It was hard to keep going and be optimistic. She hadn’t known what there was to look forward to.
[break][break]
Then Liam had proposed. She hadn’t seen that coming. In recent weeks, before everything had started getting bad, there had been moments. There had been times when she thought that there might be a ring in a funnel cake or something, but it hadn’t happened. Instead, he had proposed while they were lying in his hospital bed. Moment wise, it wasn’t the best. In some ways she was sad that she was never going to know what it would have been like. She didn’t know if he had some plan or something that would have been cute and romantic—and she secretly was a romantic even if she didn’t want to admit it.
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Instead, it was always going to be while she was worried sick about everyone because they were actually sick. It was always going to be in St. Mungo’s.
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She didn’t want to think of it like that, though. She didn’t want to think that he was still in that hospital and Ella was still asleep—or any of it. She was engaged. At the end of the day, that was a good thing. A great thing. Liam was going to get out of the hospital and she was going to move in with him and eventually, they were going to get married. That was something that she was happy about. That was something that she’d wanted to happen for months. She wanted to be happy about it, but it was just difficult to be when there was so much more going on.
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It was why she hadn’t been all that easy to convince, when Sabine had begged her to come over. Her best friend thought that they needed to celebrate that she was engaged, and her definition of celebration was not worrying about her family while sulking at home. Apparently. That meant putting on a good face and acting like she could just be happy and not worry, even for a couple of hours. That was just something that Constance wasn’t sure was possible. “Gin’s fine…” She liked scotch as much as the next Wentzell, but gin suited her just fine for the evening.
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[attr="class","cnotes"]635 ● @ sab ● outfit

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

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life changes

You never know what's gonna happen

You make your plans and you god laughing

Getting angry and making a stupid choice had haunted her for months. She was sure that her mother was probably prouder of her for leaving than anything else, but she was certain that she was going to think about it for a while. That there had to be something that Sabine had done wrong, that was going to come creeping back into her thoughts. That she was going to lay in bed tonight and think about all of the stupid things that she had done over the last months, and she wasn’t going to just be able to let it go. It wasn’t that easy. Nothing in her life had ever been that easy. Why start now?

It was just good that it had been simple enough, on the legal end, to divvy up what had already been split. Sabine was nearly certain they hadn’t actually had anything in both of their names. They didn’t even have a joint account at Gringotts. They hadn’t been married. They had been legally contracted to pay taxes together. But they hadn’t been married. And she didn’t think that anyone was too heartbroken over them not being married anymore. Tib had seemed upset today, and she didn’t think that she understood that. Did he care about her? Maybe? But could he have really loved her? She didn’t think so. He didn’t even know her.

He would find someone much better suited to his lifestyle, and for the moment she thought that she was content to be on her own. She wasn’t in a big hurry to find someone else that she could stand next to at a party. Sabine wasn’t dependent on having someone to hold on to. She was strong enough on her own, and she knew that that was a foreign concept to a lot of people, but she thought that there was something about it. She thought that there was something that she was going to have to try and get past her mum. Because if anyone could see right through her, it was Athena.

Tonight, her mother was not here though, Constance was. And they had something much more important to talk about than the fact that there was an epidemic sweeping through the country, and that Sabine had gotten divorced, and that everything that they were talking about was a mess. Because something good had happened in the middle of all of this. Liam Flint had proposed, and there was a ring on her friend’s hand. Constance Flint. Sabine didn’t know when she was actually going to get to call her that, but she hoped that it was soon enough that she could start making fun of her for it. Marrying into the pureblood culture had been something that she had been looking forward to, and then it had been ruined. But she knew that this wasn’t going to be ruined.

Liam was good. And she thought that Constance loved him. And that was what was really important to her. She just wanted her to be happy. As her friend, and as her cousin. She wanted what was best for her. She would always want what was best for her. And she knew that she was worried. She knew that they were all worried. Her mother was fine. And Sabine knew that Constance’s mother was fine. But she also knew how many people weren’t.

Pouring her a glass she made her way back over to her and handed it over as she took a seat on the other end of the couch. “I know that you’re worried about them. But there’s nothing that you can do… Believe me. I’ve asked, again and again…” Sabine was sick too. She felt like hell, actually. But she was trying. She had faked her way through the day. She thought that she could fake her way through this. Celebrating that Constance was engaged was important, even with a fever, and enough charms on her face to make her not look like the living dead.

@ con • 671 • sabine's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

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[attr="class","ctopline"]YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT'S GONNA HAPPEN

[attr="class","cscriptmisc"]you make your plans

[attr="class","cline"]

[attr="class","clyrics"]AND YOU HEAR GOD LAUGHING, LIFE CHANGES[break]
AND I WOULDN'T CHANGE IT FOR THE WORLD

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[attr="class","cbody"]When she had been laying in that hospital bed with Liam, the last thing that she had expected was for him to pull out a ring and ask her to marry him. She didn’t think that she could have predicted that even if she tried. It was definitely something that had been on her mind in the weeks leading up to the epidemic. Every time they had done anything, it was just… there. Just something that she would think about, even for just a second. He would suggest going to a nearby festival and she would remember that he’d dared her to eat a funnel cake on one of their first dates—and if they got a funnel cake at that festival, was he going to slip the ring in it? Silly, yes, but it had been the sort of thing on her mind at any given moment when she had been with him.
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But then the epidemic had happened. Suddenly, getting engaged had been the last thing on her mind. She had been worried about her siblings that had gotten sick—because all of them had. Ella, Thea, Tempy, and Philip, Elliot… they had all gotten sick. She had been the only one that hadn’t. She had worried about her stepfather, her uncles, every one of her family members that had gotten sick and Ella especially… after losing the baby, and then not waking up… for obvious reasons, she had been worried about her most.
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And then there was Liam.
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She had gotten rather used to having him around at night. They weren’t living together or anything like that, but he often ended up spending the night at her house. She slept better when he was around. She felt safer, and she needed that sometimes. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, when he was around, she felt like nothing bad was going to happen.
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For him to be sick, for him to be at the hospital, and then at Pyxis, instead of home with her, had been difficult. She had been worrying nonstop, and he had made her promise to stay with her matka instead of being at home on her own. That had helped, but that could only do so much. With everyone so sick, there was nothing for her to do but worry. Lufkin had suspended the start of term, nearly everyone was sick at Avalon. All that she could do was try to help her matka with the twins, and worry. That was it.
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She visited every day. Not just Liam, obviously. Ella too, and she stopped in to see Temperance, Philip and Thea too, though not nearly as much. She just felt like she needed to be with Ella a good portion of the time, and the rest of the time she was usually with Liam. In between that, she popped into see the rest of her siblings, and she thought they were fine with that.
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And amidst all of that worry, Liam had decided to propose. She hadn’t seen it coming, not at all, but it had happened. Despite the circumstances, despite all the worry and how little she’d slept since this had all started, of course she had said yes. Of course, she was happy. Yes, it might not be a perfectly happy proposal to look back on in the future, but they would get through this, and everything would be fine. Eventually, everything would be all right again.
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But being happy about being engaged didn’t mean that she was necessarily in the mood to celebrate. She wasn’t sure that it was a good idea at all, actually, but Sabine had talked her into it so here she was. At the very least, Sabine had offered just celebrating at home. A night out was something that she definitely didn’t think she would have been up to. “Thanks,” she said, taking the drink from her friend and immediately bringing it to her lips for a sip. Gin might not be her usual drink, but right now, she thought she could use the buzz from just about whatever liquor Sabine gave her. “I know that. I wish that there was, but I know there isn’t.” It wasn’t something that she even wanted to think about tonight, though. Not if she could avoid it. “I thought we were celebrating, Sab. Don’t bring down the mood.” Constance added, with a teasing smile.
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[attr="class","cnotes"]738 ● @ sab ● outfit

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

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LIFE CHANGES

YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT'S GONNA HAPPEN

YOU MAKE YOUR PLANS AND YOU GOD LAUGHING

Trying to navigate being sick, and still making sure that her business was running, and that they were going to have enough people to try and take care of everything, Sabine was starting to feel the toll of actually being an adult. And perhaps that should have come when she was getting married, and divorced, and all of it, but she didn’t think that that had really weighed on her like this did. This was about more than just her, and that meant something that she hadn’t expected it to. But Sabine had grown up in the last year. In some way, she thought that they all had.

They were all trying to figure out what it was that they were going to do next, and Sabine thought that, for Constance anyway, it was life. Life was what came next. Because she was going to marry Liam, and they were going to be happy, and probably turn out with these cute kids, and this perfect life. And they were going to have it all. They were going to be the picture-perfect outcome that people wanted. And Sabine didn’t think that that was what she wanted. She didn’t think that she was the picture-perfect life type. But she thought that Constance was. And she wanted that for her.

Her cousin, that was still a weird concept, was her best friend, and she wanted her to have everything. She wanted her to have whatever it was that was going to make her happy. Liam could make her happy. And Sabine thought that that was all that really mattered. Yes, they were purebloods. Yes, that meant something. But she was starting to think that it meant less than people really wanted it to. Because she knew that Mum was pure, and while she was not, she hadn’t bothered to ask about her father yet. She didn’t care. All she cared was that Mum had started to accept her. And Sabine had started to think of her as her mum.

She didn’t need a mum. She wasn’t going to think that she was just going to get whatever she had wanted as a child from the woman. It didn’t work like that. But she had given her what Sabine herself didn’t have. There was magic in the locket around her neck. There was some sort of protection there. She was keeping her safe. And she thought that, for Athena Finley, that was pretty motherly. No one was really in the mood to do a whole lot more than just protect what they had, and keep themselves solid, and as healthy as possible.

Constance hadn’t gotten sick, which was a good thing. Her, and Anička, and Mum. That was pretty much it, as far as Sabine could tell. She had heard Mum say something about her Finley cousins being sick too, and Sabine still didn’t understand why they didn’t talk about them, or why it was that her mother didn’t like them so much, when she seemed to like Anička just fine, and she wasn’t even really her cousin… It didn’t make any sense, and yet, Sabine didn’t think that she wanted to try and comprehend her mother’s reasoning. It would just give her a headache.

“No problem.” She sat down across from Constance a little heavier than she would have under normal circumstances, but she felt like hell. It was only the glamours that she had begged her mother for this morning, that she could attribute to the fact that she didn’t actually look like hell too. “Sorry, sorry.” She smiled back and shook her head. “So, tell me how wonder boy proposed to you. In a hospital bed?” There was a roll of her eyes and the blonde shook her head a little bit. Romantic, for sure…

@ con • 634 • sabine's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

[nospaces]

[attr="class","cbg"]

[attr="class","cbgtop"]

[attr="class","cimg"]

[attr="class","clbox"]

[attr="class","ctopline"]YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT'S GONNA HAPPEN

[attr="class","cscriptmisc"]you make your plans

[attr="class","cline"]

[attr="class","clyrics"]AND YOU HEAR GOD LAUGHING, LIFE CHANGES[break]
AND I WOULDN'T CHANGE IT FOR THE WORLD

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[attr="class","cbody"]Everyone had started getting sick and very quickly, it had seemed to escalate. All of a sudden, it felt like everyone around them had come down with something, and that was when the state of emergency had been announced. Since then—only a few weeks now, Constance had felt like she’d barely slept. There wasn’t time to sleep. She was either visiting Liam, visiting her sisters and Philip, or she was worrying. Or feeling guilty. Or wondering what more she could be doing to help. She couldn’t get her mind to turn off long enough to sleep at all.
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She didn’t understand why she hadn’t gotten sick. It didn’t make any sense to her. Everyone else had, apart from her and her matka. There was no rhyme or reason to that. They had certainly been exposed… of course they had. Everyone was sick. She’d certainly kissed Liam since he’d gotten sick, and that hadn’t been enough for her to come down with it either. It didn’t make any sense.
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But she couldn’t stop feeling guilty about that. She didn’t need magic. Well… that was easy to just say, she supposed. She had never been without it. But she didn’t need it to make a living. It would be hard, but she thought that she could get by without it. Probably. But Liam couldn’t do his job without magic. If he got better—no, when he got better, what was going to happen to his position at the Ministry? It was one of the many jobs that very literally couldn’t be done without magic. There was no way of knowing what was going to happen with that. But she didn’t need magic to do ballet. She didn’t need magic to go to school for law or for political science. If she had to choose between her getting sick or him, she would have chosen her. And she couldn’t stop feeling guilty that she hadn’t been able to make that choice.
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She knew that it wasn’t her fault that she hadn’t gotten sick. She knew that nobody blamed her, because it wasn’t like she’d done it on purpose. It had just… happened. But they didn’t have to blame her, because she thought she was doing a great job of blaming herself. She had magic, they didn’t. She had an engagement ring on her finger—she had good news when everyone else had bad news. For obvious reasons, celebrating her engagement wasn’t exactly at the front of her mind.
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Not when her sisters and brother were in the hospital and couldn’t celebrate with her. Not when her fiancé was in the hospital and had a habit of kicking her out when she tried to spend the night there.
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Still, she was going to celebrate. It was Sab’s idea and she wanted to make sure that she was all right too. She definitely looked okay, but there was no telling if there were glamours insuring that or if she actually was doing better. Constance would bet on the former, since her best friend did seem exhausted. She knew her way too well for her to try to hide that from her. “Yes, in a hospital bed…” She took another sip of her drink.
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It wasn’t exactly what she’d had in mind for a proposal, for obvious reasons. Throughout the past couple of weeks before the epidemic had struck, there were times when she’d thought she’d seen it coming—especially when they’d gone to another street festival like one of their first dates, but it hadn’t happened then. Honestly, regardless of how it had happened, she was still happy. “I’d brought him chips, and we were lying in bed, and he proposed.” She didn’t know if he’d brought the ring with him to the hospital from the start, or if he’d had someone bring it for him, though, which she was sort of curious about.
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[attr="class","cnotes"]650 ● @ sab ● outfit

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

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LIFE CHANGES

YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT'S GONNA HAPPEN

YOU MAKE YOUR PLANS AND YOU GOD LAUGHING

Sabine knew that she didn’t have to try and run LEH by herself. She knew that she had an entire staff to help with that, and that she could take the time to be sick, but she didn’t want to be sick. She didn’t want to have to resort to taking a day off. Though this illness was beating her down more than she wanted to admit. She was going to have to call in sick tomorrow. Or really, she was just going to have to send Padme a note saying that she wasn’t going to make it in at all. Calling in sick would have been calling in to herself, and she thought that just sounded stupid.

But without classes going on, she understood that she could just lay in bed all day. Unless her mother showed up. But Mother had been here this morning, and so Sabine didn’t think that she was going to be expecting her for the rest of the week. There was no sense in trying to predict Athena’s behavior though. It was erratic sometimes. And she didn’t know if that was just for her, or if it was for everyone, but she was willing to bet that it was for everyone.

That hadn’t stopped her from forging a relationship with the woman though. It was something that she was trying to get her mother to accept more and more, and she seemed to. Only in this house, or in Athena’s own home. Never in public. But she didn’t think that she could expect her to ever acknowledge her in public. They looked too similar. They shared too many characteristics for her to think that Athena was ever going to claim her to be her own unless she had some ulterior motive. That she could see happening.

If her mother could use the fact that she had a halfblood daughter to her advantage, she would. And Sabine had already accepted that fate. That until it benefitted her mother in some way, she was never going to be publicly acknowledged as her daughter. Anything in the family might have been different. She hadn’t broached the subject of actually meeting Katrine yet, but she did want to. She had met the witch in passing several times, but formally meeting her grandmother was up there on the list of things that she did want from her mother.

She wanted to meet Ares too. Though less so. She didn’t want a relationship with her uncle. She simply wanted to know why her mother hated the man so much. Perhaps that one she would have to see for herself. And the halfblood that he had married. Sabine knew for a fact that her mother didn’t like Issadora. And she was curious if there was something innately horrid about her? Or if her mother simply didn’t like her on principle?

Still, tonight was not about the ‘aunt’ that she wanted to find the time to scope out in the future. That could wait. She wanted to meet her grandmother and try and find out more about her father first. There were too many things that she wanted to do. Too many people that she wanted to meet. People that she had known her entire life, in some ways, that she didn’t know at all. That was how she had felt about her best friend… They were cousins, in a fashion. And she had never known.

“Romantic.” There was a note of sarcasm in her voice that even the sickness couldn’t beat down. She was still her, sickly or not. There had to be some better way to do that. Not that she had ever been proposed to. Tiberius hadn’t exactly been the whole whirlwind romance that Constance had, but she thought that Liam could have done a little better, or had a little better timing than a hospital bed. “He didn’t cough on you or anything did he? That would have totally ruined the moment.” A smirk pulled her lips up as she sipped at her gin.

@ con • 676 • sabine's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

[nospaces]

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[attr="class","clbox"]

[attr="class","ctopline"]YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT'S GONNA HAPPEN

[attr="class","cscriptentertain"]you make your plans

[attr="class","cline"]

[attr="class","clyrics"]AND YOU HEAR GOD LAUGHING, LIFE CHANGES[break]
AND I WOULDN'T CHANGE IT FOR THE WORLD

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[attr="class","cbody"]The epidemic had seemingly impacted everyone around her, apart from her and her matka. There was next to no one that had been spared and that meant that she had plenty of people to worry about. It was hard to keep an eye on all of them, to check in on them and to make sure that they were all right. She was worried about Ella most of all, for obvious reasons, but she was doing her best to keep her cool. At this point, she was pretty much just making hospital visits or sitting at home worrying. There was nothing else to do. She was too worried to eat most of the time, way too worried to sleep—and sleeping while Liam was at the hospital was hard to do anyhow. The only time that she really ate was when she brought Liam food and ate some of it herself, and the only time she stole a few hours of sleep was when she was in bed with him.
[break][break]
Past that, there was just no time for sleeping. She didn’t even have anything else to occupy her mind when she wasn’t visiting them. With so many people sick, it wasn’t like they had practice at Avalon and there weren’t any classes at Lufkin for the time being either. There was really nothing left for her to do but worry and overthink. All that she could hope was just that everybody was going to be all right, but there was just no way of knowing what was going to happen. There was no way of knowing what was going to come next.
[break][break]
For all she knew, she’d wake up with a fever the next day. It was possible. She knew that she’d been exposed plenty over the past weeks and still hadn’t gotten sick, but that didn’t mean that couldn’t change. It could at any day, and she was well aware of that. She had been lucky so far, but she wasn’t going to take that for granted. She knew that viruses could be unpredictable. For the most part, she thought that she would have gotten sick by now. Constance had been around so many people who were infected, she had kissed Liam though he’d thought that was a bad idea. Surely, she would have been sick by now if she was going to be sick. That was the hope anyway.
[break][break]
But those slight worries that she might get sick were not enough to stop her from checking in on her friends and her family when she could. She was worried about Sabine. Constance knew her best friend well enough to know that she was just going to continue working and not taking a break, even though she was sick. She thought that she needed this night to unwind as much as Constance did. As hard as it was to celebrate something, even if it was good, she was really going to try to keep her mind off of the epidemic and on the reason that they were here. She was engaged. That was worth celebrating, even if the circumstances of the proposal hadn’t exactly been the most romantic in the world.
[break][break]
She was still glad that she was going to get to spend the rest of her life with Liam. That was all that she wanted. He could have proposed anywhere and she would have been happy. Yes, in a hospital bed was probably low on that list, but there was nothing to be done about that now. She was still engaged. They were still happy. Now he just needed to be realized from the hospital already. “No, he didn’t cough on me,” she retorted, rolling her eyes. “I know it might not be as exciting as getting married in Vegas.” Constance teased, before taking a sip of her gin.
[break][break]

[attr="class","cnotes"]641 ● @ sab ● outfit

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

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life changes

YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT'S GONNA HAPPEN

YOU MAKE YOUR PLANS AND YOU GOD LAUGHING

Working while she was sick seemed like the practical thing to do. Yes, Sabine was aware that the entire country seemed to be sick. But really that seemed like the only thing that they all had in common right now. She wasn’t sure that anyone else was just continuing to go on like normal. And while that was great, she knew that there were certain people that really needed to go on. The healers, of course, but more than that. There were people in the banking world, in the finance world, in her world, that had to see to it that money kept moving.

They were going to take hits if people stopped spending money. But they wouldn’t. People would be fine by next week, and they could move on. Or at least that’s what she was trying to tell herself. Otherwise she was going to just worry. Because her cousin was in that coma, in that hospital bed, and she didn’t think that there were all that many people that were that bad off, but what if there were, and they just didn’t know about it? Not everyone had gone to a hospital. Clearly. She wasn’t in any hospital. She hadn’t let some governing body know that she was sick.

But she didn’t think that there was any reason to make a big deal out of something that she couldn’t help. She had plenty to do. And Padme was going to have to deal with enough. Sabine thought that she could at least give her assistant the time off if she was sick. She could get a temp. Or an elf. Or something. She could make do. No one was ever going to be Padme. She was too good at her job. But she thought that she would survive if whatever this plague was that was going around decided to settle upon her PA too.

She knew that her mother was fine. She had seen her just yesterday, and Athena was fine. But she was more than a little curious about what it was that she was going to do with her magic when everyone else’s was failing. That seemed like something that her mother would take advantage of. And situations that Athena Finley could take advantage of were often ones that Sabine found herself fascinated by. The woman intrigued her still. And she was doing her best to get to know her. Though that in and of itself was a challenge.

And she had made her fair share of mistakes. Her husband debacle had been one of them. But Mother had helped her with that too. And now she was divorced, simple enough. That was really all that she could have asked for. She did not love Tiberius Duke. She hadn’t really meant to marry him in the first place. But Vegas had been Vegas, and she had been very drunk. And it had been a very bad decision. One that she had tried to ride out for a while. But there was really no sense to it. They were far too different.

If they were going to work, he would have had to stop being such a Rockstar, and actually think of it as a career, and she would have had to try and be a little more laid back. And neither one of those things were ever really going to happen. No, it was far more interesting to think about the relationship in this room that was actually going to work. Her best friend had been proposed to, and that was better than what she had gotten, even if it was probably the crappiest proposal that she had ever heard of.

“Hey, I didn’t mean to get married. At least you want to marry this guy.” That was a decent enough first step. And Liam wasn’t the worst guy around. Constance could have done worse. She could have ended up married to Jules Bulstrode for the rest of her life. Talk about depressing… "Are you going to plan, or with all of this, just wait it out?" It felt like the kind of thing that you just waited out, but she honestly didn't know. Traditional wasn't her thing.

@ con • 702 • sabine's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

[nospaces]

[attr="class","cbg"]

[attr="class","cbgtop"]

[attr="class","cimg"]

[attr="class","clbox"]

[attr="class","ctopline"]YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT'S GONNA HAPPEN

[attr="class","cscriptentertain"]you make your plans

[attr="class","cline"]

[attr="class","clyrics"]AND YOU HEAR GOD LAUGHING, LIFE CHANGES[break]
AND I WOULDN'T CHANGE IT FOR THE WORLD

[break][break]

[attr="class","cbody"]She wanted to marry Liam. She did. In fact, she had been waiting for the engagement weeks before it had actually happened. Constance had been relatively sure that it was coming, and there had been several moments where she had thought that it was going to happen. Times when she was certain that she needed to be expecting it. One of their first dates had been at a street fair, which was something that was entirely new to her. She hadn’t been able to say that she’d ever been to one of those before, and so when she’d lost a dare and he’d said she had to eat a funnel cake, that was just as new to her.
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So, obviously, when they went to another street fair and had ordered a funnel cake, she had thought that was going to be the moment. It had seemed like a good one. But it hadn’t come. That was fine—it wasn’t like she had any set expectations for a proposal. It was just impossible not to see good moments and start to anticipate it just a little bit. She had been sure that, when it came down to it, it would be great. She’d had no doubt about that. She did not have high expectations. She didn’t care if they were alone, in front of her family, or in front of a crowded theater at Avalon. She had been sure that, whatever he came up with, she would love.
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Constance hadn’t been expecting a hospital bed. She hadn’t been expecting that in the slightest—and she didn’t want to say that she was disappointed. That wasn’t fair. At the end of the day, no matter how a proposal happened, it ended the same way. It ended with them engaged. That was what mattered. So, while it wasn’t a proposal that she was going to enjoy looking back on, they were still engaged. That was what mattered at the end of the day.
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Yes, he had proposed in the middle of a national crisis. Yes, he had proposed when she was sleep-deprived, barely eating, and spending more hours in her day visiting various hospital rooms than doing anything else. Her sister had been in a coma. The rest of her family had checked into the auxiliary hospital setup at Pyxis. And now, when she looked back at their proposal, that was what she was going to have to think about. It was good. It was a bright spot. It was something good that happened amidst everything else that had been absolutely horrible. But a part of her still couldn’t help but wish that he’d have proposed with the funnel cake at the fair, and not while they were lying in a hospital bed together. She did wish that she had something that she wanted to look back on, and not something that she’d rather avoid thinking about. Even years in the future, even when this was hopefully over and done with, and a cure had long since been found, this wasn’t exactly a time that she was going to want to look back on.
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Constance was still happy that they were engaged, though. It was still something that she was excited about, and it was worth celebrating. Even if she wasn’t quite in the mood for celebrating, in light of everything that was going on. She was still glad that Sabine had convinced her to come over. “I’m… not sure. Probably wait? At least a little while. There’s no rush—and it’s not the best time.” At least, she didn’t think that it was. Maybe it would distract people and give them something else to focus on, but it was just as likely that it would be horrible timing, and everyone would think that they were rubbing their good fortune in everyone else’s faces. It was a very thin line.
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[attr="class","cnotes"]647 ● @ sab ● outfit

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

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