After a few nights staying in a gorgeous Spanish city in the height of summer, Bruce and her lovely auror wife should have returned well rested and relaxed. Madrid had been a disaster, so they’d instead chosen to take their small break to Edinburgh where they’d booked into an expensive room in an expensive muggle hotel and barely left the room except to see a few sights in the small breaks in the weather or to sample the spa or the restaurant. Now quite obviously, in a very expensive hotel room in cold and rainy Scotland in August, not all that much sleep was had from the women intending to unwind.

As such, Bruce’s return to the office on Thursday morning wasn’t the breezy and relaxed one her colleagues may have expected. She had certainly unwound. Time away with one’s wife did that. But she was looking more tired now than before she’d gone. Her curly red hair had been scraped into an oversized ponytail, with random curls escaping and framing her freckled face and tired eyes.

Obliging as ever, Dido had kindly brought her boss a very strong and very appreciated coffee to start the day, and Bruce had sent her assistant off to the Ministry library in search of anything on werewolves in Spain. Now she was home, she could find out more about what was eating her up.

The office, Bruce had barely noted that morning, had clearly been tidied. Piles of paperwork had been organised and filed, and the desk was once more a clear canvas ready for more mess. Bruce made a mental note to thank Dido later. Or perhaps berate her when she couldn’t find the report on unregistered werewolf presumed figures that had been sitting several sheets down on the second pile from the right.

When a figure appeared in the doorway, Bruce was on her feet, a filing cabinet drawer open that she was sifting through. She turned her head to clock eyes with Bagnold.
“You miss me that much, Kurb?” Clearly, he couldn’t wait to see her.

The werewolf hunter gave an easy shrug as he stepped inside the office, obviously viewing acknowledgement of his presence as an invitation to enter.

"If you want me to get back into practice with forgin' your signature, then I won't need to drop in all the time," he retorted, ever diplomatic.

The stack of parchment that he'd brought with him today were mostly the usual: final patrol reports to be signed off; a St. Mungo's summary on Bellingham, who had since been released; paperwork to be filed regarding the unregistered werewolf that they'd brought in nearly a week ago during the full moon. Technically, he probably could have gone to Spectre on all of this, but Kurby was doing his best to send the message that their new Department Head Was Not Needed when it came to the daily operations of the Werewolf Wing.

As he deposited the stack of parchment carefully on the immaculate desk, Kurby took a moment to peer at his recently-returned boss. Goddammit. He'd been expecting her to look as red as a lobster after her week in Spain. That meant he was out a galleon to his longest-serving teammate.

"I like what you've done with your office," he remarked nonchalantly, casting a glance around the too-neat office. It was a welcome departure from the stressful clutter that normally filled Bruce's workspace, although he had no doubt that the serenity would not last for long. "How was Madrid?"

“Ha,” Bruce let out a laugh, pushing the filing cabinet drawer shut. She’d search later, “Not when I know how much you love our new leader.” She would not be letting the head of the WCU sign anything in her name while he still actively avoided their Head of Department like a sullen child whose parents were fighting. He didn’t like Balfour Spectre, and that was fine. Iona often thought of the man as a privileged noodle head, but what member of senior leadership at the ministry wasn’t?

Kurby liked the office. Of course, he did, Mister tidy desk and frowny face. Some people worked beautifully in neatness with clean spaces to lay our the parchment. Bruce thrived off the chaos and always had.
“Don’t get used to it.” She didn’t really need to say it because her longest standing colleague knew well enough. But then he mentioned Madrid and Bruce’s expression changed from the friendly and affable to the irked and disgruntled.

“Overrated, we went to Edinburgh instead.” She really wasn’t sure she wanted to even talk about it, especially with someone who’d dropped her like a sack of wolf poo when she’d been bitten in the field. But Bagnold, despite all of that, and a short teething period, had supported her when she’d returned. She didn’t doubt that he had her back now, but it just wasn’t easy to talk about.

With a frown, Bruce limped back to her desk to look at the stack of papers he’d brought her. “Spectre can sign this stuff, you know.” She smirked across at him. “Not that I need to tell you that.”

"His penmanship's not as neat as yours," Kurby fired back, laying claim to the guest chair in front of Bruce's desk and lowering himself to sit.

That wasn't all there was to it and they both knew it. As far as Kurby was concerned, they were all better off without giving Spectre a direct invitation to nag the Werewolf Wing. It wasn't just because the Scottish wizard was tiresome for him to deal with, although there was some of that too: the werewolf hunter went out of his way to avoid other pureblooded wixes and their politics unless he really had to wade in. But Balfour Spectre -- just like Cepheus Gamp and Solomon Carstairs and Ed Pratt and all the rest of them -- seemed a bit too inclined to walk over Bruce when given a wand's length. (Pratt technically wasn't pureblood; he was just a gobshite.)

Kurby had seen it back in the days when Bruce had been the Muggleborn female Head of the WCU. Back then, it had mattered less: camaraderie and competency had always trumped blood purity and everything else for the Capture Unit. But now that she'd stepped into more of a leadership role and added 'werewolf' and 'disabled' to her list of descriptions, he'd seen how easy it was for the others to not take his onetime mentor as seriously as she deserved. If he needed to bare his teeth now and then to remind the rest of the Level Four management team to clear out space for her, so be it.

Still, he wasn't about to admit to that in a conversation. If Bruce didn't like the line he was drawing with Spectre, well, she could find herself a new Capture Unit head.

"What was wrong with Madrid?" he asked, brow furrowing. The topic change served a dual purpose: it moved the conversation away from Bruce pestering him about Spectre, and it was clearly not something she wanted to talk about, which meant she'd sign his papers faster so she could be rid of him. "I thought you lot were all excited for a beach holiday."

Bagnold parked himself in one of the two seats facing her desk, making it clear that he intended on remaining in the office until she’d caught up on his paperwork. His faithfulness to the Werewolf Wing and unwillingness to accept Spectre as their boss after this long was admirable, but it certainly didn’t make Bruce’s life any easier. During most department meetings, she found herself casually insisting that Bagnold’s bark was worse than his bite and it was just him. Nothing personal, Bagnold disliked everyone.

What was wrong with Madrid? Kurby took this moment this morning to take an interest? Frowning, Bruce dropped herself into her seat and spread her legs out in front of her.
“We were met with a chorus of ‘¡No lobos!’” She stated, pulling the pile of parchment closer. Her eyes snapped up from Kurby’s scrawl to the wizard himself. “Lobos, it turns out, doesn’t mean lesbian. Who knew?”

It was awkward to discuss something of this personal nature with Kurby. Even if they’d fallen into semi-old habits over the past half a year, he’d still dropped her and cut off all contact for three years after she’d been bitten and she’d still not received any explanation. Kurby may have manned the front line every month, but he didn’t truly understand the affliction and, hopefully, never would.

“Did you know how it is in Spain?”

The werewolf hunter stilled under his boss's gaze, his casual (if a bit nosy) demeanor disappearing behind a guarded expression that was much harder to read. He sat motionless for a moment, dark eyes locked on hers, the line of his jaw tight despite the fact that nothing in the room had changed.

"Naw," he said tersely after a beat, giving a tight shake of his head. "I've never been."

Bruce had always been the adventurous one, taking time off in between their monthly patrols to climb the Himalayas or go diving at the Great Barrier Reef or whatever wild adventure she and her warrior wife had decided to chase after next. Kurby notoriously reserved his adrenaline junkie tendencies for the full moon; aside from one adventure abroad that he'd taken right after the war had ended, he'd never traveled outside of the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Part of him just wanted to drop the conversation, to tell her he'd be back later once she signed the papers, but Bruce had picked up the stack that he'd come to needle her about. There wasn't an easy way to extricate himself, at least not without upsetting his onetime mentor by blowing off her werewolf status all over again.

He hadn't been holding his breath on purpose, but Kurby let a slow breath out now, trying to relax some of the tension in his shoulders.

"Y'know," he ventured, much more tentatively than usual, "I reckon Spectre's probably big on international cooperation." He met Bruce's gaze again, visibly uncertain if he was just sticking his foot in his mouth all over again. "I know we'd all be crushed if we had to delay Pickler's workshop from this Friday, but maybe he could loan her to the Spanish Ministry for a month or five to help 'em get a lycanthropy sensitivity training series started."

Ask and you shall receive. Kurby had asked and Bruce had answered. The fact that Kurby was suddenly looking uncomfortable about Bruce’s answer spoke volumes to the witch who was still acutely aware that her being a werewolf was the big ass dragon (or rather wolf) in the room. Bagnold had a pretty huge problem with it, as evidenced by 3 years of no contact after the attack. She’d become what he hunted and their friendship would never return to what it had been because of it. He’d asked, and she’d given him just a tiny taste of what it was like in her boots.

During the moment’s silence, Bruce scanned over one of the documents before reaching for a quill. He quill was irritatingly much easier to find on the clear desk. Blue eyes danced up when Spectre was brought up. Despite herself, Kurby’s words caused her lips to twist into a small smile.

“Indefinitely.” Countered Bruce. With a flourish, she added her signature to the bottom of the parchment and moved it to a fresh new pile of completed documents. “I thought people here were backwards but now I’m just imagining other countries. Spain can’t be alone in their prejudice.” British werewolves and the British wizarding public were Bruce’s problem, though. She knew she couldn’t get herself bogged down wanting to fix the world in one fell swoop.

“Is this the response most of our werewolves get as well?” She mused, more to herself. “Those not in a privileged position?” Bruce knew she’d been better off than most. She’d not needed to seek work because the Ministry had paid her a comfortable retirement pension due to being injured in the line of duty. Others didn’t get that support.

He’d brought the stack of paperwork with him to trap Bruce in a conversation so he could covertly evaluate her sunburn and win a bet, but now the cauldron had turned. Here he was, trapped in a conversation that he didn’t want to be part of while he waited for her to finish signing his papers.

“Uh,” he said uncomfortably.

Most of the time, he secretly appreciated that Bruce still treated him as her unofficial second-in-command even though she was still angry with him. In this discussion, though, Kurby would have given anything to avoid the role of confidant. All of this talk about prejudice and privileged positions sounded like it had been plucked straight out of Penny Pickler’s alliterative script.

What made things worse was that sometimes, it felt like all of the people he interacted with at the Ministry had no idea how good werewolves had it now. Bruce had never had to worry about access to wolfsbane or a Ministry-regulated warehouse. She’d never had to reinforce her cellar in hopes she wouldn’t break out and kill someone she loved, or traumatize her family with her horrific monthly transformations. He wasn’t exactly thrilled that she’d had a shite time on her holiday to Spain, but something felt wrong with squaring that prejudice with all the other awful things they might be up against.

The questions might have been rhetorical, but they still made Kurby squirm. He eyed the stack of parchments in front of his boss, as if trying to decide whether he could abandon them for the moment and return later to retrieve them without completely losing face.

“I dunno.” He gave a nonchalant shrug, as if letting the heaviness of the conversation roll off his back. “Ask the Registry? Or the Werewolf Mentors? It’s not like we have time to interview ‘em about their holiday plans as we haul ‘em back to a holdin’ cell.”