The pain flared quickly and sharply in his young chest in the darkness that was not really there. If there were only one person who had believed in him most ardently, it would be she. That was he had always believed.
"You believed that?" he asked indignantly. "You believed that lie—"
"You were sent to Azkaban, Sirius!" her yell echoed in the darkness and furthered the chasm between them.
But he did not see the distance between them any longer. His mind lost focus on the fact that she believed he was capable of murdering his best friends—that he was capable of being a traitor.
With one word, she had made him entirely focused on one simple fact.
The syllables echoed in his ears and flew through his body to his heart—the organ throbbed and ached painfully for her.
She had said his name.
She said his name as if she was the only person who could ever call him by name—the only person who deserved to say his name.
She said his name as if she was his and he was hers.
She said his name as if it had not been an eternity since that they last seen each other.
She said his name as if he was truly seventeen again and she sixteen.
She had said his name, her perfect lips forming the syllables, and her voice had dragged his heart back through the years and all the passed time to the very moment he had let her go and allowed her to slip away.
Oh god, she had said his name; the syllables had slipped off of her lips and echoed in every inch of his body. The simple six-letter word hummed in his mind; it was like hearing his name for the first time.
Her presence was pulling him under the dark currents again. He felt he could not breathe and he did not care. He was losing himself in her again and he did not care. He felt at home drowning beneath the dark seas of Violet.
He struggled to find his voice and explain himself to her; he had to make her understand. She had to know.
"Unjustly! I could not save them, Violet! I tried! It was too late! How could you believe them! You knew me better than that—"
"Did I?" she hissed into the darkness. "Really? Did I? Because I spent all of my life feeling like I never really knew you at all!"
She had had a life without him; that one painful truth was staring him directly in the face. Violet looked sixteen again, but she had had a life that she lived happily without him. He had spent years suffering in Azkaban, living a hollow life that was only furtherer compounded by the fact that she did not need him to be happy, as he needed her.
"Don't say that! That's not true and you know it!"
"Why would I know anything about you, Sirius? We never spent much time together—"
"I was with you every chance I got!" Sirius shouted, unable to stop himself from telling her the truth that he had hidden from her at school. Her hateful lies stung; even after all this time, she knew how to crawl under his skin. "I never wanted to be away from you! I wanted to spend forever with you!"
"Yes, you proved that." she snapped icily as she clenched her hands into tight fists.
"Violet—"
"You told me to take the ring, Sirius! You told me to do it!"
"Because I wasn't good for you!"
And that was it, really.
The truth that had plagued him every minute, hour and day he had spent in the confines of Azkaban. His warm, loving memories of her and of life with her faded and he had been left with only two things: the fact that Lily and James were dead, Harry an orphan and that Violet was happy with another man because Sirius had never really deserved her at all.
Thoughts of her and how he had never deserved her had plagued him every moment of his waking life until he found death behind the veil in the Department of Mysteries.
Violet did not recognize it as the truth that haunted the boy before her. She only saw it as another line—another lie. "Stop, Sirius! You just didn't care—"
"How can you say that? I have always cared!" Desperation crept into his voice, tearing the confidence from his body as his resolve began to weaken; she did not believe him.
"You proved it." she bit out sarcastically and it broke his heart to see the tears pooling in her clear eyes.
"I let you go because I cared." he insisted. Finally, he was able to tell her the truth. Finally, he could tell her everything he never said.
"You let me go because you didn't care! I was expendable. I was just another girl!"
"You were the girl, Violet; you were the only one that mattered to me. How can I prove to you what's true, Violet?" he whispered. "How can I show you the truth? How can I get you to believe me?"
"You can't. I never will." she whispered as she shook her head at him.