Sarah

“I’m here.”

“I know that.”

“No, really James. I’m here. I know that it’ll be…“ he swallows with some difficulty, “harder now, what with…” the alcohol seems to have robbed Sirius of his ability to finish his sentences.

“The hiding,” James decides to help him out, feeling Sirius nod against him. In the dark the light catches Sirius’s eyes, making them look like water.

“But I will always be here, always, always. Okay? For you. For Lily. For Harry.”

James’s chest is starting to feel uncomfortably tight. “I wish you and Moons would just move in.”

Sirius laughs quietly, though there’s something heavy about it. “It never feels right, does it? All of us not being together.”

James shakes his head. “No,” he whispers, like it’s a secret. “Never.”
― MesserMoon, Choices - Volume 3

“No." Callie's tone was as firm as it had ever been. "Listen to me, Harleigh. What happened is what happened. We were both his victims. We both forgot how bad it was because that was the only way we could survive."
"It wasn't—" Leigh stopped herself, because there was no counter-argument. They had both been children. They had both been victims. All she could do was go back to where she started.
"I'm sorry."
"You can't be sorry for something that you couldn't control. Don't you get that?"
Leigh shook her head, but part of her desperately wanted to believe what Callie was saying was true.
"I want you to hear me," Callie said. "If this is the guilt you've been carrying around for your entire adult life, then set it the fuck down, because it doesn't belong to you. It belongs to him."
Leigh was so used to crying that she didn't notice her own tears. "I'm so sorry."
"For what?" Callie demanded. "It's not your fault. It was never your fault."
The twist on her familiar mantra broke something inside of Leigh. She put her head in her hands. She started to sob so hard that she couldn't hold herself up.
Callie wrapped her arms around Leigh, taking some of the burden. Her lips pressed into the top of Leigh's head. Callie had never held her before. Usually, it was the other way around.
Usually, it was Leigh providing the comfort, because Walter was right. From the beginning, Phil had never been their mother. It was only Leigh and Callie, back then, and it was only Leigh and Callie right now.”
― Karin Slaughter, False Witness

“What follows is my best effort to shed as much light as possible on events that have not simply been forgotten or left in the dark, but relegated to the attic, or the ash can, or the metaphorical darkness of fear and shame, and to reignite Plath's fire in the parlor where her fans squint to read by flickering gaslight; above them, the man searches the attic for the jewels he hid too well.What follows is my best effort to shed as much light as possible on events that have not simply been forgotten or left in the dark, but relegated to the attic, or the ash can, or the metaphorical darkness of fear and shame, and to reignite Plath's fire in the parlor where her fans squint to read by flickering gaslight; above them, the man searches the attic for the jewels he hid too well.”
― Emily Van Duyne, Loving Sylvia Plath: A Reclamation

“Funny, how everything speeds up and slows down all at once. Seconds stretching into hours, the door opening for lifetimes. His lifetime. And the many lifetimes he didn’t live. James feels himself splintering even before he sees Voldemort’s face. The strings attached to all his possible endings being snipped one by one. All the choices he could have made falling away.

This is the last one.

There will be no more.

Where once there were multitudes now there is but a single boy. Naked. And alone. Standing at the front door of his family home. Meeting an unexpected guest. In a way, this is just how it all started.”
― MesserMoon, Choices - Volume 3