I bet you didn't know

under that live oak

my favorite dog is buried in the yard

There was something special about this place. There always had been. Em didn’t know what… She wasn’t sure that she had ever been able to say what, exactly, it was. But then she had run from this place, and she didn’t think that she would have ever come back. There had been something so final about the way that she had run away. There was something that she had found so… Tragic, she supposed, about the entire place.

That didn’t give her a right to do anything about it, but she thought that she was going to have to learn to live with it. She was going to have to learn to live with the choices that she had made back then, and she knew that they were good choices, at the time. They were good choices for her. Because they had gotten her Mal, and Hallie, and Avery, and Zoe. They had gotten her her children. And she didn’t think that there was anything in the world she would have traded them for.

Even the heartbreak that had come with losing their father was worth it, if it meant that she got to have them. If she went back, knowing how it was going to end, would she had done it the same way? She thought yes. She thought that she would have. She would have done it all over again, loved him a little more. Told him that she loved him, more, at least. Em knew that Travis had known, but she also knew that she hadn’t made a point to say it as often as she should have.

That wasn’t a mistake that she was going to make again. But she knew that saying those three words to Ian was something that she hadn’t done yet. Did she love him? She thought that she did. She was pretty sure that she loved him, because she missed him. When he wasn’t around, when his presence was missing from her life, she felt it in a way she didn’t think that she understood. That had never used to bother her, the someone not being there. But when Ian wasn’t there, she missed him.

And she had let the kids meet him. No one had seemed to mind him being around. Avery was naturally wary, but she didn’t think that that could be stopped. The protectiveness in her son was reminiscent of his father. And she thought that she would always see a bit of Travis shine through in Avery’s eyes when he was being protective of her, or of his sisters. He had even become protective of Rebecca and Parker. And Emmaline nearly pitied Evan Bulstrode when Avery caught wind of what it was that they were planning there.

This morning she had come bearing gifts. Muffins, actually. She had come with muffins, and she had left them on the table in the foyer, with a note that said that she was outside. Em hadn’t wanted to wake them, but she had to work this morning, and she had needed the peace of this place. This place that she had run from, in the past. This place that she had done everything in her power to get away from. Her house was too empty, when she slept there alone, and she needed something that felt more like family. Just for a minute.

The sound of footsteps coming out the backdoor had her smiling over her shoulder. The sun was just coming up, and it was early, too early, really, to be out of bed on the weekend. But she knew that she was the one that had invaded their grounds this morning. “Morning…” Her voice barely more than a whisper, even if she knew that G wasn’t likely to hear them from all the way down here. And her twin had always been the soundest of sleepers. “Sorry for the intrusion. I thought I’d be gone before you woke.”

Felicity Amara Avery • 660 • emmaline's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

[nospaces]

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[attr="class","cbgtop"]

[attr="class","cimg"]

[attr="class","clbox"]

[attr="class","ctopline"]I thought if I could

[attr="class","cscriptunistaff"]touch this place or feel it

[attr="class","cline"]

[attr="class","clyrics"]This brokenness inside me might start healing[break]
Out here it's like I'm someone else

[break][break]

[attr="class","cbody"]Epidemic X had come and gone in a flash, it had seemed. There were still outbreaks on occasion—she’d read about that in the paper. People who hadn’t been exposed in the initial wave, people who hadn’t lived in the city and had avoided getting sick right away. But apart from that, in some ways, it felt like it had come so quickly and had left destruction in its wake. Now that it was gone, they were all left trying to figure out what they were going to do next.
[break][break]
Maybe it could have been easy. Technically speaking, psychology was not a profession that required her magic. Not normally, anyway. But she had always been a little bit different than just a normal psychologist. Being an Empath had given her an advantage in her career from the beginning and to be honest, it was a blow to her pride how much she was suffering without it. Felicity knew, deep down, that she was damn good at her job even without being an Empath. She knew that it wasn’t that extra gift that wrote the articles that made her well known in the field. Drawing those conclusions, writing about them—that had been her. The reason that she was suffering now was just a byproduct of what Epidemic X had left behind.
[break][break]
Gaining control of her ability had taken years but even at her worst, even when she had been far younger, it had never felt like this. Ever. And she didn’t know how to deal with it. Nothing seemed to help. After this much practice, she was used to getting the emotions of the person that she wanted. Focusing on them. That was all that it took. Of course, there was the occasional time when someone’s very strong emotions would be difficult to ignore, especially if she was caught off guard, but for the most part, she always had control of it.
[break][break]
Now, she was dealing with a near constant headache at best, or an overwhelming amount of emotions at worst. Sometimes so strong and blended together that it was difficult to breathe or focus on anything else. It had stopped her in her tracks, had caused her to cry in public, and there had been one night that had been particularly embarrassing. She’d started to get a headache—and after a couple of months, she knew these headaches. They came on too quickly, too strong, when she was overwhelmed. So she had excused herself, had gotten up to go to the bathroom, and had passed out before she even made it out of the room.
[break][break]
Felicity hadn’t figured out any way to make it better. She had tried every potion under the sun, though she’d started to consider herbal remedies just to give it a shot. It likely wouldn’t work either, but anything was worth a try at this point.
[break][break]
Until she could get back to normal, she’d found that the most peaceful time of day was in the morning—early. She had never necessarily been an early riser. She was always the first one to try to tempt Avery back to bed when he got up. Very little was as enjoyable as tempting her husband to stay in bed until noon on Sunday, with breakfast and other temptations.
[break][break]
Maybe she would do that this morning. But it was still far too early to wake him up. He could get a couple more hours of sleep easily before waking up, so she figured she’d give him that first. Maybe make breakfast here in a little bit, but not yet.
[break][break]
For now, she just knew that she needed coffee, so she tugged a robe on and headed to the kitchen. The house was quiet—with the kids at school, of course, but also just tended to generally be peaceful this time of day, even when the kids had been home for Christmas. It was way too early for a normal person to be up, expect for her.
[break][break]
And apparently her sister-in-law, she realized, when she saw the muffins and the note. With an amused smile, she grabbed one and headed toward the back door. “Good morning…” She pulled off a piece of the muffin and popped it into her mouth and shook her head at Em’s words. “You’re fine. You just get the urge to bring us muffins at quarter til six in the morning?” She asked, raising her eyebrows.
[break][break]

[attr="class","cnotes"]740 ● @ em ● outfit

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

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I BET YOU DIDN'T KNOW

under that live oak

MY FAVORITE DOG IS BURIED IN THE YARD

This was her home. More so than anywhere else, Nottingham was where she had grown up, and Emmaline thought that there was something powerful about going back to a place like that. About going back to your roots, and who you were, and what that meant. She knew that they had lived in Wales for years, but she had just moved back to England last fall, and she was glad for it. She was glad that she had moved right before she had met Ian. Glad that she hadn’t had to deal with everything that had been Travis’s and trying to make sure that she was balancing that.

There was something about that that would have made it impossible to try and let Ian in. And she knew that she was already struggling with that more than she should have. She had met him, and she had thought that the last thing that she needed was to go down that road again. Actually, agreeing to go out with the guy that had been run over by a herd of… Whatever it was that he had been run over by that day. She had been concerned about him, but an actual date? That was different… That was something that she hadn’t done in years.

Her brother had told her that she should. That she should take, and meet someone, and that it would be okay. Mal had told her the same thing. That it would be okay> That they wouldn’t mind. But she had been worried. She had been worried about Zoë especially. And yet, she had let him meet them, all of them, when Zoë had been home over Christmas, and while she hadn’t subjected him to all of them at once, she had been glad that none of them had really seemed to object.

It was okay for her to move on. She would never forget their father, and no one was going to replace him in any way. But she liked being around Ian. And she liked the way that he made her feel. She liked that for just a little while, when he was around, nothing seemed as bad as it was. The world wasn’t in crisis. She wasn’t thinking about her experiments, or how the Epidemic was affecting everyone, and their well-being. When she was around him, things could just be normal, and she could think about her. For the first time in years. For the first time since Mal was born, she could stop, and really think about just her for a minute.

Coming back here had been about making peace with herself and letting herself believe that it really was okay. That she really could just be okay. That she really could let herself have this, and not second guess it. Could it all end tomorrow? Of course. Something could happen, and it could all come crashing down around her, but that didn’t change the fact that it was happening. That it had happened. And that she was just going to have to learn to live in the moment. He had come crashing into her life and knocked down walls as he did. Walls that she hadn’t even been aware of building.

It was early enough that she had really thought that she would be out of here before they even knew that she had come in. The wards had let her in without a fuss. She was an Avery. She was G’s twin. They were practically the same person a lot of the time. When she had heard Lic come out of the house she had smiled and turned to face her. “I made them last night… I just made a lot of them.” Her eyes studied her sister-in-law as she spoke. Concern for her well-being played out on her face as she tried to assess how she was feeling.

@ lic • 647 • emmaline'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"]I THOUGHT IF I COULD

[attr="class","cscriptunistaff"]touch this place or feel it

[attr="class","cline"]

[attr="class","clyrics"]THIS BROKENNESS INSIDE ME MIGHT START HEALING[break]
OUT HERE IT'S LIKE I'M SOMEONE ELSE

[break][break]

[attr="class","cbody"]Felicity knew that they were all suffering. Epidemic X had taken the same thing from all of them. They were all left trying to figure out how to survive without magic, which was not something that anyone could have been prepared for. No one had even thought that something like this was possible—because it shouldn’t be. Something like this just shouldn’t be able to happen, but it had. It had taken their magic, and now they were all just waiting and hoping that a cure would come around eventually.
[break][break]
That was not something that she could help with, as much as she might want to. She was a psychologist, she had studied the brain—but not in the type of way that would help with something like this. She studied behavior, she interviewed criminals… she didn’t know how viruses worked. She didn’t know how to invent a cure. That just wasn’t something that was in her wheelhouse. Instead, she had to hope that the people that did know how to do that kind of work were getting close. That was all that they could really hope for at this point.
[break][break]
She knew that Emmaline did that kind of research. That she consulted and did work with the Lestrange Foundation, and that meant she knew a fair bit more about what it took to find a cure than Felicity did. Not that she had asked her all that much about it. She knew that wasn’t going to do her any good. She could wait and wonder all she wanted but if she asked, then she was likely to get her hopes up, and that just wasn’t something that she wanted to deal with. There was no way of knowing when a cure was going to come. It was better to just accept that now.
[break][break]
Of course, that wasn’t all that easy of a thing for her to do. She could do her work without magic. She didn’t explicitly need it, but being an Empath—it was a big part of her psychology. It helped her read a room, helped her get a glimpse into how the person she was speaking to or interviewing was feeling. She worried that she was not as good of a psychologist without it. As much as she wanted to prove to herself that she could be just as good, that had proven to be difficult when being without magic had thrown her gift entirely out of whack. If it was completely gone, that would have been one thing.
[break][break]
But it wasn’t gone. Sometimes, it functioned almost normal. Rarely, she should say, but sometimes. More often than not, it gave her a crippling headache to deal with emotions all around her that she couldn’t turn off, no matter what she did. It had only resulted in her passing out in a public place on one occasion, thankfully, but she knew that would likely only continue the longer this went on. Felicity had to find something that helped and so far, nothing had. She had been left trying to enjoy what few moments of peace her mind got—which was when she was at home, usually early in the morning. Though, being at home at all tended to help. Then there was only Avery’s emotions to contend with.
[break][break]
Still, she would take the few moments of complete peace when she could get them, and that was usually in the morning. Before the sun came up, a lot of the time. The house was quiet then, and empty, so there had been no reason for her to expect to see Em… not that she was at all complaining by her sister-in-law’s surprise visit. “I’m not complaining. You should bring us muffins every morning,” she teased, before tearing off another small piece and eating it. “You’re doing it again.” Felicity said next, her eyes narrowing. Em had what she liked to call healer-gaze, when she looked at someone when she was worried about them and trying to determine how they were doing. And she knew that her sister-in-law was well aware that she wasn’t doing great. Avery had certainly told her that by now. He would have had to, since Felicity tried not to talk about it when she could.
[break][break]

[attr="class","cnotes"]711 ● @ em ● outfit

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

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I BET YOU DIDN'T KNOW

UNDER THAT LIVE OAK

MY FAVORITE DOG IS BURIED IN THE YARD

It wasn’t that the world wasn’t in complete and total chaos, because it was. She knew that it was. Em was well aware that Andromeda wouldn’t have asked her to move her research to the Foundation if it wasn’t in chaos. If they weren’t trying to fight a losing battle. But Andromeda had asked, and promised her more funding, and she had taken her up on it. They were friends. In some ways she thought that, aside from G, Andromeda might have known her the best, and Emmaline was sure that she wouldn’t have asked her out of Mungo’s labs if she didn’t think that it was necessary. It was important.

Getting to do that research at all was important. It was something that she very much wanted to do. Something that she thought that she could get ahead in, if she could research on her own. Andromeda had tried to convince her to move to Dubhe Merak as well, and that one she had declined. She hadn’t been at St. Mungo’s her entire career to move now. She was the Head of the Emergency Ward, and while she had told her that she could run the Emergency room in Ireland, Em didn’t want to go. She liked Mungo’s. She was happy there.

And she knew that it was silly. But it was where she had met both Travis, and now Ian. She wasn’t going to just walk away from that place. She couldn’t. That was where she was headed this morning. It was Sunday, but that didn’t really matter. Em had never had a normal schedule, and she was sure that there was something that she could probably do about that now. Since she had seniority, since she ran the department, and made her own schedule. But without the kids at home, she was at the hospital more than she wasn’t.

That hadn’t changed just because of Ian either. She had cut back a little bit. She had shifted some of her hours around so that they could spend time together like normal people. But she wasn’t going to change everything. And she could be reached at all times. She had a cell phone for that reason. There was no way that they weren’t going to be able to get ahold of her. Pureblood though she may have been, she wasn’t going to cut herself off from the world, just because something was a muggle invention. She had never been that type of pureblood.

You couldn’t be, if you were going to be a doctor. She believed in the traditions that she had been raised with, and even though her children were halfbloods, she had raised them to believe the same things. To have the same manners. It didn’t make much of a difference to her. There were far more important things than blood purity. And she knew that she had been a ‘blood traitor’ for a long time. But her father was dead, and her brothers didn’t care. Her mother loved her in spite of the fact that her children were halfbloods. She didn’t think that anyone minded anymore.

G had married well twice now. And that was all that mattered. He was the eldest, and he was the boy. They weren’t even the main line. Evandrus had that honor, if it could be considered an honor, even if she and G were older. They were born of the second son, and so it was Evandrus’s children that would take over. Which was quite fine, so long as they didn’t make a mess of things. And she was sure that they wouldn’t. Roma wouldn’t allow them to, even if Evandrus himself could hardly be trusted for such things. Roma was very keen on making sure that things were just so.

But it was not her cousin that she had the pleasure of spending time with before the sun came up this morning. She had come here, to Avery Castle. To try and find some answers that she didn’t even know that she was looking for. And she had planned on being gone before they woke. But Felicity seemed to be up before the sun as well, and Em couldn’t help but worrying over her sister-in-law. “Sorry.” Her smile was warm, and she shook her head, “I’m just worried about you. How are you doing?” Her head had to be killing her at the school, but she knew that the woman was tough as nails when she wanted to be.

@ felicity • 751 • emmaline'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"]I THOUGHT IF I COULD

[attr="class","cscriptunistaff"]touch this place or feel it

[attr="class","cline"]

[attr="class","clyrics"]THIS BROKENNESS INSIDE ME MIGHT START HEALING[break]
OUT HERE IT'S LIKE I'M SOMEONE ELSE

[break][break]

[attr="class","cbody"]Waking up early in the morning had been something that had helped lately. It was something that gave her a bit of peace and quiet before the day began. There were no emotions but her own to contend with. She had no headaches, and if she had gotten a decent enough night of sleep, she wasn’t even exhausted yet. She could think about what she needed to do to get through her day, and she could even be optimistic enough to think that she could get through it without wanting to curl up in a ball and sleep off all of the emotions and everything else that she’d had to deal with throughout the day. She could be hopeful, at least. Enough to at least think that she could get through the day.
[break][break]
She knew that feeling wouldn’t last. That she would get to the school and she would be surrounded by a barrage of emotions—nonstop, all day long. If she didn’t have a lot of classes and she could spend a fair amount of time in her office, sometimes it was a little bit better. But most of the time, even getting through just a normal day was exhausting.
[break][break]
Felicity knew that she needed to figure something out. She had to figure out something that would help with the headaches, with the sheer exhaustion, because she couldn’t live like this forever. There was no telling when a cure would come, and she knew that she couldn’t keep this up indefinitely. It was incredibly hard to do. But she didn’t want to admit defeat either. Even if Avery had offered to find a substitute to take over for the rest of the term. Even though she had that option. She didn’t want to have to take it. What she was dealing with was far from the worst thing in the world. There were surely people going through worse, and they were managing it. She just had to figure out how to get to that point too.
[break][break]
She thought there had to be some kind of herbal remedy, some kind of Muggle treatment, something that could help. There had to be something out there, it was just a matter of figuring out just what that was.
[break][break]
For now, she tried to commit as much time as she could in the morning to relaxing and enjoying the silence. It helped sometimes. It wasn’t that being in bed with Avery was all that bad either. But if she was awake when he was still sleeping, emotions from dreams seeped through. Sometimes that had been fun. In the past, it certainly had. But currently, she liked as much of a break from other people’s emotions as she could possibly get.
[break][break]
That didn’t mean that she minded that her sister-in-law was over. In fact, quite the opposite. She might have gotten out of bed to be alone for a while, but she didn’t mind Em’s company in the slightest—and she had brought muffins. Felicity could certainly not complain when breakfast food was involved. “I’m fine. Really.” She knew that there was no reason to lie to her sister-in-law, but the last thing that she wanted was someone else worrying over her. It wasn’t going to do any of them any good. “I don’t know all how much your brother told you but I’m really okay.” She knew that she probably knew way too much for Felicity to even bother trying to write it off as nothing. Had he told his sister when she’d passed out at that restaurant? Hopefully not. That was definitely not her proudest moment. Felicity popped another bite of the muffin into her mouth, hoping that Em would just accept her answer and move on to talk about... anything else, really.
[break][break]

[attr="class","cnotes"]631 ● @ em ● outfit

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

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I BET YOU DIDN'T KNOW

UNDER THAT LIVE OAK

MY FAVORITE DOG IS BURIED IN THE YARD

Emmaline knew that she was a little silly. She knew that she should have just accepted the offer to move to Dubhe full time. She should have done it, and she shouldn’t have been being so sentimental. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t just walk away from everything that she had built at Mungo’s. And she liked it there. She had been there her entire career. Which was nearly unheard of for a healer her age. To still be in the same hospital that she had been in when she had first started training. But she was trying not to dwell too much on that. She liked Mungo’s, it was safe.

Or, as safe as it could be when she was nearly convinced that the Epidemic had to have come from within their very own walls. There was no way that it had hit all of them first by coincidence. There was simply no way that that was the case. That they were all going to be suspect sooner or later, but that was what Veritiserum was for. Part of her wanted to bring that idea up to Andromeda. That there was something going on in the hospital, but she didn’t have proof. She had no way of saying who, or why. All she had was her gut instinct that they had been infected there. That it had happened in the building.

But that couldn’t have been the only place. They didn’t have contact with the entire world. Not that fast. And she knew that degrees of separation to every person on the planet was only seven. But she didn’t believe that it would have attacked the entire country so fast if there was only one epicenter. All of her focus lately had been on this. On the mystery that they had stumbled upon. Or that had been thrust upon them. Whichever way that you looked at it, you had to try and see that nothing was going to fix this.

There was no straight forward cure. There were no straight forward answers, and she thought that it was a good thing that they had all of the minds that they had working on it. In different labs, all across the country. Great Britain had been attacked. She thought that that was a reasonable thing to say. No one had come out and said it to the press, but it was the underlying feeling. At least as far as she could tell. They had been attacked. Someone had taken their magic from them, and Emmaline thought that there was no real finer way to declare a war.

To rip away a portion of a population’s identities. It was more than just taking the magic itself. It was trying to understand how it was that they were going to function as a people. Magic was a part of their very being, and even if Emmaline hadn’t been as reliant upon hers as some of the others, she knew that there was no question that she had floundered without it. Still she found the loss of it inconvenient at best, and it had been months.

She knew that her own loss was nothing compared to Felicity’s though. Her sister-in-law was going to struggle with more than just the loss of her magic, and Emmaline knew enough to know that that couldn’t be easy. She didn’t know how Felicity dealt with the fact that Emmaline knew so much about her personal life. Though she thought that if Travis would have been alive, he would have had the same thing with G. Even Ian, though she doubted that he knew it, was a prominent topic of conversation between herself and her twin. They looked out for one another, and that included the other people in their lives.

“For the sake of not getting into an argument before the sun comes up, we’re going to pretend that I believe you.” There was a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth at her words, and Emmaline knew that Felicity had to know that that was the best that she was going to get. She wasn’t actually going to stop worrying about her. But she would change the topic of conversation to something far less heavy. It was still January, after all, and it was cold out. “Does it help?” She shook her head, “Sorry, I said I’d drop it. But I can’t help it. The cold, does it help your head? I can always think more clearly outside in the cold.” It helped her head, and she wasn’t dealing with any magically enhanced abilities. She couldn’t help but wonder if it helped Felicity too?

@ felicity • 778 • emmaline's outfit

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[attr="class","clyrics"]THIS BROKENNESS INSIDE ME MIGHT START HEALING[break]
OUT HERE IT'S LIKE I'M SOMEONE ELSE

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[attr="class","cbody"]Felicity knew that this couldn’t last forever. She knew that she couldn’t just hope that a cure would come when they didn’t know if and when that was ever going to happen. She would be much better off if she figured out how to get by on her own. How to get through the headaches, and the overwhelming and uncontrollable emotions that passed through her when she was around a lot of people. It was overwhelming and powerful enough to bring her to her knees. Or at least, enough for her head to spin and enough that she had already fainted once in a public place. That couldn’t go on. She was going to have to figure something out.
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And she would. She didn’t care how many herbal remedies or Muggle methods that she had to try. If there was a way to help the headaches, at least, then it would be bearable. She knew that there were no herbal remedies that were going to prevent her from the emotions of other people spilling into her mind at a dizzying pace. There was no way that she could stop that from happening—not that she could think of, anyway. The only thing that she thought would have helped was obviously something that she was also no longer capable of. If she had thought to learn Occlumency, and if she could use it even still, that might have helped to block some of it out. But that was not a viable solution. As far as she was aware, Occlumens had lost control of their gifts when they got sick. She didn’t know any personally that had told her as much, but it was a simple enough jump to make.
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It was magic. It was learned magic that a witch or a wizard could control to protect their mind. That meant that it was a type of magic that should be impossible to access anymore. It was a different kind of magic than her Empath ability, or other abilities similar. It was innate. Something that she had been born with. Yes, she had in some ways gained control of it, or at least learned how to use it, but it was not traditional wand magic. Somehow, that was different. It didn’t go away like the rest of her magic did. Instead, it remained, only more volatile and impossible for her to control. But she had to figure out how. There had to be something that she could do—at this rate, she would take any suggestion that was thrown her way.
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Felicity knew that she should probably just ask her sister-in-law about it. If she just stopped being stubborn and asked for help, there was a chance that Emmaline would know something that might help her. That wouldn’t be a bad thing. She just couldn’t bring herself to ask. She didn’t want to admit that she wasn’t okay. Avery knew that she wasn’t, of course. But she had made it clear to him that she would prefer they not worry anybody else with that. Felicity just knew better than to think that meant that he hadn’t told Emmaline about it. They were twins. He wasn’t going to keep a secret from her, especially not one where she might have advice or some idea of what she could do to help. No, she was quite certain that Avery had given her a good idea just what she was going through and how difficult it had been on her.
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If she took a break from teaching, she knew that it would be easier. She could do most of her work from home and wouldn’t have to deal with the emotions of university-aged students day in and day out. It was a lot all of once, and she would be cutting that out entirely if she took a break. But she didn’t want to do that. She didn’t want to admit that she wasn’t sure that she could do this. Instead, she wanted to do everything that she could to figure out something that could help. Anything at all. She had absolutely no idea what could help. She just knew that there had to be something out there that would do something.
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And she knew that it would be easier to figure that out with help. She knew that. Yet, she hadn’t asked anybody to help her. She hadn’t asked her sister-in-law if she knew any herbal remedies or Muggle methods for migraines that she thought might be able to help her. Even she could admit when she was being stubborn, but she just couldn’t help it. She didn’t want to need anyone’s help to figure this out. “I suppose that will have to do.” Felicity would like her to just stop worrying about her and accept that she was fine. Even if it was a lie. It wouldn’t do her any good to worry about her. Glancing over at her husband’s twin, she hummed as she considered the question. “I think it does. The cold and the quiet,” she admitted. It was as clear as her mind felt all day.
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[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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I BET YOU DIDN'T KNOW

UNDER THAT LIVE OAK

MY FAVORITE DOG IS BURIED IN THE YARD

Andromeda had made the offer when she had bought the hospital in the first place, and Emmaline knew that it was still on the table. She knew that she could still take it. To run the hospital in Ireland. And to head the research department at Dubhe while she was there. It took her away from Trauma. Which had always been her first love. But she didn’t much mind that. She thought that she could use the change, and the promotion… But leaving Mungo’s… That was a big step, and she wasn’t quite sure that she was ready to take it. Leaving would mean that she was finally moving on.

It had been four years. And she hadn’t even started to move on until about three months ago. Ian had been the first time that she had even remotely considered the possibility. And still they had taken things slow in the beginning. He had had to be patient with her. To let her set the pace that they moved forwards at, and he had. He had let her have that. And she was so grateful to him for it. He had been wonderful to her. He was still wonderful to her. But she didn’t think that this was going to last forever.

They were far too different. And while that had worked for her once before, she wasn’t sure that she wanted to do that all over again. She had met him in the same place that she had met Travis. She had treated his injuries. They were from two very different walks of life. She had been down this road before. And Emmaline wasn’t sure that that was the right answer for her. She didn’t think that she knew what she wanted, and she wasn’t sure that she was going to know until she had it.

It wasn’t that she was trying to be picky, it was just that she was trying to figure out who she was now. After she had lost the first great love of her life. After she had spent years mourning for him. She had to figure out who she was supposed to be. And how she was supposed to go about moving on with the rest of her life. But she knew that her own problems seemed trivial in light of the ones that they were facing as a nation. In light of the ones that they were trying to come to terms with as a population.

Because they had lost their magic. But not all of their magic. They had to try and understand what that meant. And for those that had to deal with it, they had to learn to cope. She knew that her sister-in-law was one of those people. She knew that Felicity was going to have to try and handle everything that she was experiencing, and she had been doing it for months with no complaint. There was strength in that that Emmaline didn’t think that she possessed.

There were so many different kinds of strength and having the strength that Felicity had was a special kind of strength. It was a strength of mind. Emmaline believed that. She believed that the other woman had to be truly strong if she was going to keep on going without so much as complaining about it. Headaches that had to be far worse than anything she could imagine were all that she had ever heard Felicity say about it, and she knew that she didn’t want her to worry. But that could have been debilitating. And it wasn’t. Not to her, anyway. She was still functioning. She was still teaching.

As much as Emmaline missed her magic. As much as she wanted all of that back for herself, and for her children. She wanted it back for Felicity, and people like her, even more. She wanted things set to rights for those that didn’t have the control that they would have had before. She wanted the things that they were going to need to keep on surviving. But she was also tired of simply surviving. Emmaline thought that she wanted more than that. That she had finally waken up, after four years, and that maybe it was time to start learning to live…

Everything weighing on her mind had kept her up, and she didn’t know how much sleep she had actually gotten last night. But it had been little enough. She thought that she would likely fall asleep early after her shift at the hospital this morning. Baking had helped to ease her mind. It always did. And she had brought some of that here. “I can’t even imagine teaching…” The older witch shook her head a little bit, and then she smiled. “But I am letting it go. I said I would. I am.” There was only so much dwelling that they could do after all. It didn’t get them any closer to a cure. “I started looking for G’s birthday present the other day. We have months, and I still don’t know what to get. The man has everything.”

@ felicity • 852 • emmaline's outfit

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