Regina stepped out of the lifts. Ahh yes new place, new life, new people, new everything. Smiling to herself, she reassured herself once again, "You can do this, Reg. It's a great day today and it's a great thing out there waiting for you."

With one last look at herself, Regina took a deep breath and walked her most poised walk ever as she tried to find her way towards her new job.

…… *pop* Roxi appeared in the level two lift area. She took a minute to let the fact that she would soon have her apparation license sink in. She let out a "Woohoo!" before focusing back on the testing center and disappearing. *pop*

Esme stepped out of the lifts, glancing behind her towards the other woman. "I thought we'd stop by the lab first to get some supplies." She explained as she began to make her way down the long hallway.

"I don't think we've officially met. I'm Esme Bass." She introduced herself, still walking with a quick pace. "Thanks for volunteering to come with me. I always feel better with a second pair of eyes."

Elinor nodded, stepping up alongside the woman, glad for her quick pace. Elinor was nothing if not a fast walker, herself. "You read my mind," she smiled a bit.

"I'm Elinor Danvers. I don't think we've met, either, but I've seen your name on lots of evidence tags, and I must say-- You do good work. And I ought to know, I used to be a private investigator before I came here." It was always nice to know what kind of experience the person you were working with had. Hopefully it would be enough to assure Miss Bass that she had a good idea of what she was doing.

"Especially when we've got a lot of ground to cover," she added. It was hard to be fast, efficient, and thorough by yourself.

Esme chuckled lightly. "Glad that we're on the same wavelength." She replied, listening as the other woman introduced herself. A private investigator? Always a plus to have on your team. They often had quite the eye of observation. "Thanks." She answered, in response to the appraisal of her work. "Appreciate it."

"Very, very true. You sound like you know how these things go."

She turned just then and approached the door to the lab.

Ooh, work. Some days, Lights bounced out of bed, happily anticipating the prospect of going into the office to see her colleagues, even if it meant paperwork and grouchy attitudes from some people. Today was not a bouncy morning day. Lights could feel a cold coming on, despite the fact that it was only October. Maybe it was because her four-year-old daughter was sick too. Poor Bellissa had been up all night, keeping her brother and parents awake too. Well, Lights had been kept awake. Ezekiel had soon settled down, and she'd told Ethan to go back to bed while she stayed with Bella. So yes, Lights was tired.
She leant against the side of the lift, resolving just to rest her eyes for a moment. Within a few seconds, however, Lights Lennox was asleep on her feet. Near impossible but she still did it.

He had assumed, as he approached, that the woman had just been waiting to go to another level. That she was merely resting her eyes in adjustment to the lethargic mood the cold October weather seemed to have a habit of bringing. He was sure he looked little better for wear and equally unrested.

So he offered her a polite smile and quiet greeting as he slipped into the lift. It took the second of silence and absolute stillness to shock him into proper perception. Blinking with wide eyes, Sabel glanced over at the dead-still woman. He was half tempted to poke her, to see if she was awake and not....dead.

He wasn't sure he wanted to start his day by finding a dead Lights in the lift.

"Hey..." He swallowed, unsure of whether he should try shaking her or not. "Lights...?"

Lights was having a great dream about ducks and cats and bouncy balls when she heard her name, slinking its way into her dream like an echo. She shifted, mumbling under her breath. Her bed wasn't usually this cold ... or hard ... or empty. Lights reached out a hand and felt around. Metal ... buttons ... other human being.

Now she was awake. Lights pushed off the wall with a jolt, looking around. She groaned. "In the lift? Really?" She looked sheepishly at Sabel. "Thanks for waking me up. I don't usually sleep in lifts ..." Nah, desks were more regular beds. Especially desks covered in paperwork.

The mumble was somewhat reassuring. She wasn't dead. But that didn't mean she was a-oh-kay.

Sabel had decided to try and reach out and give her a gentle prod about the same time that her hand moved up and started feeling around as if it had a mind of its own. He must have been extremely tired, for it was hard to repress the urge not to press himself up against the other side of the lift away from the strangely wandering hand.

That, and he could not help but jump when the woman suddenly became animated again. His hand went to his heart and he let out a gust of air that had been trapped in his lungs. In the lift indeed.

One eyebrow raised as he attempted to catch his breath and let his heart start back up again. "Sure...thing. No problem." Was that even the correct response? He eyed the woman. Just how tired was she?

He let out another breath of air and dropped his hand as his shoulder gave a light shrug. [b]"I've never tried a lift." His eyes skirted about the small compartment, trying to make light of both of their states of shock. "I usually prefer the broom-cupboard myself."

Lights smiled at Sabel, brushing her hair out of her eyes. "Bet that's a lot more comfortable than here." She sighed. "I must be dead on my feet to have nodded off in here." She rapped on the wall of the lift, wincing slightly. Ow, hard metal! Yep, she must be exhausted. No wonder - sleep was hard to come by when you were convinced that your husband was going to be taken from you the next day. Lights had been on edge recently, becoming more and more suspicious of her coworkers, convinced they had all heard, and they were all probably on Dean's side. Well he was a slimy, two-sided traitor.
"So, how've you been?" she asked, leaning against the wall and surveying Sabel. "I hear you were pretty close to Damien." She was sorry the old Auror had left, but then again she hadn't known him well.

"If comfortable is equivalent to a broom and a bucket on the spine, then I suppose so." Sabel mused with half a smile. The lacking half was reserved for concern over the fact that Lights had fallen asleep in such an uncomfortable place. How she had managed to stay on her feet however, he didn't know.

The smile disappeared all-together when the mention of Damien rose to the surface. He hesitated in his answer for a minute before nodding a little. "He was my mentor. Pretty much brought me into the Ministry and taught me for two years. So...it's an adjustment."[/b] If she hadn't gathered from the blow-up that had occurred in the offices the other day.

But enough about such matters. "How have you been?" The last time he had seen lights, besides in the office, was when she had been healing Ikenna.

Lights realised she'd hit a sore spot where Damien was concerned. She mentally facepalmed herself. Great, just great. She should have known that from the other day's blow-up. She was about to apologise for bringing it up when Sabel dismissed the subject.

She bit her lip, looking distractedly at the corner of her lift. "Not great," she admitted softly. "My baby daughter died a few months ago, and I can't get over it." It wasn't just Naomi, but Lights really didn't want to go into any of the more complex stuff. "She was never actually born, but I wanted her so badly ... I guess it was like I already had her. It hurt, still does, mostly because I ... didn't protect her. Two Cruciatus Curses and multiple animagus transformations are apparently not good for a growing baby." She took a deep breath. She was done with crying, and just wanted to get on with her life. But past mistakes had a nasty habit of coming back to haunt you.

Sabel blinked. And then blinked again. The world suddenly had a very viscous quality to it, as if it had sunk into clear mud, making every movement constricted and breathing difficult. At the same time, it was like being dumped from a warm and cozy bed into a pool of ice cold water. Lights. This Lights, the one he had never seen to be anything but bouncy or smiling, had lost a child.

He didn't know what to do or think. The shock was immense, and the empathy even greater. "Lights, I...." Am sorry? Somehow sorry didn't seem to be good enough, to even express it. What good would sorry do anyways? It wouldn't bring her child back. He felt a nauseous twist wrench his gut in several different places.

Dropping his eyes he tried to figure out what to do with his hands. He wanted to hug her, to tell her it would be alright, but those words seemed so hollow and false. "I...I didn't know....."

Lights smiled sadly. "How could you know, I only told one person here." Unless Dean blabbed, like he has all my secrets ... Lights pushed the thought away, focusing on Sabel, or rather Sabel's feet, since if she looked at him she'd break down for sure. "I'm okay. It was just very ... upsetting for my family. My kids really wanted a sister." Ezekiel and Bellissa had been almost as heartbroken as their parents. Lights remembered Bella's anger and Zek's pain, and her heart constricted painfully. She didn't ever want to see them like that again.

She finally glanced up and saw the look on Sabel's face. Her own softened, and she stepped over and hugged him. "What do you know," she said, chuckling. "You Aurors do have real hearts." As opposed to, say, ice ones.

Just when he thought it couldn't be any worse, she told him about her kids. The ones she already have. That they had lost a sister. His eyes screwed shut with the sudden pain of it, with the grief he felt for them, resonating from his own past.

And then she did the thing he should have done. He felt arms around him, trying to comfort. Wasn't he supposed to be the one comforting? Whichever way it was supposed to work, whichever way it was working, he didn't hesitate in returning the hug tightly. It took every ounce of effort not try cry, and he tried to focus his attention instead on rubbing her back. "I'm sorry, Lights. I'm so sorry."

On any other occasion, her joke would have brought a smile to his lips. This time it didn't, it couldn't.

Well, Lights was frankly surprised the big guy was keeping in the tears. He kind of looked like the waterworks might burst at any second. Not that she minded - she was used to those situations.

"Shh, I know you are," soothed Lights, rocking him gently to try and relay comfort. Sabel was surprisingly good at the back-rubbing thing, as it turned out. She looked up at him. Since she was only 160cm, he seemed to tower over her from this perspective, but she tried to ignore that. "Hey," she said quietly. "Are you okay?" She gave him the All-Knowing Eye look. "I've done my confessional on the past. What about you?" She had an inkling Sabel knew what losing someone, a close family member, was like. How else could he be so sensitive about that topic?

The doors of the lift opened and Hawk stepped out. He was holding a report titled "Investigation on possible missuse of muggle artifacts in Diagon Alley." Of course, it meant Knockturn Alley, but you could hardly simply name one street. And he assumed Ben would want a complete report.

Again, it felt like she was trying to comfort him, when he knew it should be the other way around. So he kept rubbing her back, trying to think of something to say. Only a tear came, running down his cheek and dripping onto her shoulder as she pulled back. His hands slid around to lightly hold her elbows, not even having the thought to wipe away the tear line.

For a good moment he hesitated as she asked about his past, as those shadows pressed forward. The one thing he didn't want her to think, was that she was alone with her grief, that there weren't people that could understand or help. He knew what that felt like, and he didn't want her to feel it.

"My sister," A slow, unsteady breath left him. "She passed away." His eyes dropped and he shifted his weight a little. "A genetic disease that...ate away at her neurological system over the course of her life, finally shut her body down when I was ten. She was seven." Turning his eyes away down the hall, he worried his bottom lip for a moment. "My mother passed away a few years ago of the same disease."

He glanced back at Lights hesitantly: he didn't want to confess any further than that.

Lights watched Sabel with concern and sadness in her eyes as he explained. She'd lost her own mother when she was seventeen, so knew how hard that was. But she seriously couldn't imagine losing her sister. Eleri was her rock - the stable one of a family of pranksters. "I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I know that doesn't exactly help much, but I am." Being sorry didn't help, but comforting did, a little. She gently squeezed his elbows, smiling her 'Healer smile', as Eleri called it. The 'everything's going to be okay' smile, like she could control that. She liked to think she could.

Sabel couldn't help the weak and brief belt of laughter that let him. Somehow this had turned from Light's more recent and, in his opinion, more painful problems to sympathizing with the ghosts of his past. How that had happened, how she had ended up being the one to be comforting him, he didn't know.

His smile, half-hearted with the grief he felt for the woman, turned back down to Lights at the squeeze of his elbows. "I should be the one comforting you. Not the other way around." He hesitated, not sure what he could do to comfort her. "How about I take you out for some ice cream?" Ice cream was comfort food, right?

...Hopefully it didn't sound incredibly childish or degrading.

Lights was actually feeling better now she'd talked to someone other than Ethan or Eleri about Naomi. Eleri had her own issues to deal with and Ethan ... Ethan was protective at the best of times. So talking about it with people other than her family was productive.

... Then Sabel offered ice-cream. Her smile widened and her eyes lit up. "That sounds great!" Ice-cream! Lights loved ice-cream, even more than bouncy balls. And she certainly wasn't afraid of Sabel thinking her childish because of it. She checked her watch. "Wow, that's the longest I've ever spent in a lift."

Sabel's grin suddenly broke into full force. So he didn't sound completely strange or nuts with suggesting ice cream. Excellent!

A bit of laughter left him as he let go of Light's elbows. "There's a first time for everything I suppose. Even falling asleep in lifts." Reaching over, he paused in his intention to punch the button for the main level, his eyes flicking over to Lights. "Now, or raincheck?" Now made sense to him, but then he didn't know where Lights was intending on going or what she had been planning on doing before they had crossed paths.

Lights' own smile widened when Sabel's did. See? Ice-cream always fixes everything! Her theory was proven correct once again.

She bit her lip slightly as she mentally ran through the stuff she'd been meaning to do before falling asleep in the lift. She realised they were actually pretty redundant in light of ice-cream. "Nope," she said, laughing slightly. "Now's pretty much perfect." She reached over and pressed the button for Sabel. "Unless you have some secret YATI business that needs your urgent attention?" Eyebrows slightly raised - check. Mischievous smile - check.

With a chuckle and eye-brow wiggle, Sabel withdrew his hand from its intended target. "Always. We YATI's are very secretive. Always have urgent tasks requiring our devoted and irreplaceable attention." He would have puffed out his chest, if he had much of a chest to puff out.

Instead, he settled for shaking his head and leaning back against the lift wall as it started moving once again. Whether or not he had things to do, they could now wait. Not only was the decision already made, but it was more important. Making people smile was always more important.

Bored? Nah she wasn't bored. Kyle Tanner never got bored - she was excited to know her dead-beat dad wasn't her actual father and really more excited about who it was. Sure she looked worse for ware today but she had just shown a very inquisitive girl around the ministry three times over. Like showing a hyperactive dog how to get a bone and then having to teach it the new trick over and over again.

Easy if you don't end up wanting to pull out your eyeballs. And she did - well, she wanted to right now because they were all dry, unfocused, and ick feeling. It was like she had put on a super duper blind person's glasses on. The world was wavering and all wibbly-wobbly. Well, it could have had to do with the feeling that she was looking through sick inches of mud and finger smears - but she wasn't because she wasn't wearing glasses.

If the audible DING of the lift arriving on level two wasn't enough to send the people running to investigate who was on their level the sound and stench of a girl vomiting into a beloved potted plant would definitely be a sign. The girl in question cleaned off her mouth and proceeded to walk straight into the now closed door of the lift.

"Merlins bleeding shorts" she groaned and felt her feet wobble beneath her feet. The smelly potted plant wasn't a nice thing at all. She glanced around and started to walk off as if nothing had happened toward the restrooms. They had nicer ones of course well - other than those swankalicious once for the Ministry elite. Like the ministers' restroom.