Lily:

If Lily could go back, if she could do this over again, she would have never left. She would have let Petunia send her to Godric's Hollow. She would have let her love story have a chance at a happy ending.

Because now it was a love story that ended with both of them miserable and alone.

Well, she was miserable, he might be just fine.

But Lily's heart screamed that he had to be as unhappy as her. Her heart tormented her with the image of his broken countenance after the first attack. His pleading voice that they stop hiding from each other when she'd managed to reunite them all. His shaking voice as he went to confess who he was to her and Marlene before the second attack. The brokenness she heard in his parting words.

I love you.

Add to all of this that Lily was now certain that Marlene was at least romantically fond of Sirius, and all Lily could think of was if she could, she would go back and chain herself to Privet until Petunia sent her to Godric's Hollow.

Lily looked at the letter they'd just read from Angus and Elspeth and sighed.

Why hadn't she listened to them?

Because she had been so certain she was right. Lily couldn't imagine being wrong at that moment. Everything she saw could only point to one conclusion, but she'd been dead wrong.

Not only was James not a magic hating bigot, but he was also impossibly kind and incredibly loyal to his countrymen.

For a moment she imagined what would have happened if she'd gone into the arrangement with an open mind, not letting Petunia's wishes for her future cloud her vision. She would have traveled with Marlene to Godric's Hollow with probably fifty to one-hundred soldiers. She would have met James dressed in her finest gown, tiara in place. She probably would have been given her own rooms for her and Marlene to live in until the wedding. Sirius and Marlene would have let them have more than the five minutes it took to set the wards to themselves because they were safe inside James' palace. She imagined James telling her his stories, introducing her to the staff that he knew by their first names, trying to learn about her, asking for archery lessons, all of the best parts of the last two months, but in a scenario where it ended with their happily ever after and not this tragedy.

But the image only depressed her further. It only made the last words he spoke to her slice deeper. She needed time to process everything, but he had run out of time, and she lost her chance at coming back to him.

And it killed her.

The tears were old friends now as she curled into herself. The tears managed to deepen her anguish as her mind would always wander back to the security she felt in James' embrace when she had finally broken down after their first attack.

"Oh, Lil's," Marlene walked back into the room and moved quickly to her side. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have snapped at you."

"It's not you," Lily cried, "I've lost him, Mar. I could have been happy but in my stubborn stupidity I've thrown it all away."

"He lied to you, Lils, you have every right to put some space between you." Marlene's voice was hard.

"Marly," Lily looked out the window, "he'd spent the last two weeks of our journey trying to convince me to let him tell me who he was, and me to tell him who I was. He was trying to fix things long before we were attacked here in Enid."

Marlene didn't immediately respond, but she kept her arms wrapped tightly around Lily's shoulders.

"You still love him," Marlene's words weren't a question.

Lily covered her face with her hands. "And I've lost him."

Marlene sighed, "I'm sorry, Lils."

Lily cried in her sister's arms, the pain chasaming in her chest like a bottomless pit of misery and despair.

She wondered if James was just as crushed as she was. If he cried over losing her the way he had cried when he thought he lost his brother. If the day to day of running a kingdom was enough of a distraction for him, because her current day to day most certainly wasn't. She wondered if the last two months were as riddled with regrets for him as they were for her. If he wished to go back and change his decisions the way she wished to go back and change her own. She wished she could go back and not hurt him and not hurt Marlene and not hurt Sirius.

But James only had one regret.

My one regret is that I can't be completely honest with you.

James' voice echoed in her mind, zeroing in on the night after the first attack.

I've made decisions that have hurt those closest to me. One of them led to Sirius killing seven men I trusted and thought supported me even when my friends warned me against them. But like I told you before, I try to learn from those situations, to be better because of them, and I know you can too.

His words seemed to bring her up short. James wasn't wallowing in his misery. James was figuring out how to become better, how to fix his situation, he was acting.

And she needed to act too.

Lily wasn't going to sit by anymore.

Lily was going to act.