amelia-hurricane-shepherd:

“You don’t,” Amelia sighed, eyes drifting
toward the ground. “It doesn’t stop. That
pain never goes away. You get used to it,
but it doesn’t–   You just–   You keep on
fighting. Y ou keep fighting until one day
you realize you can breathe again.    And
another, you can make it through without
crying.   And you don’t forget.   You don’t
ever forget. But you do live again. You live
for them–  or the lives they should’ve had
And you live because there is so much left
to do,     and they would want that for you.
Henry would want that for you.”

“How long will it take for me to get there?”
Teddy asked tearfully, her eyes a million
miles  away  — searching for the people
she  had lost in a godforsaken place. “To
stop  crying  every time I think of him; to
smile  when  I hear his name? How long
will I have to wait?”

              Even  a  s e c o n d  was  too  long  to stand
              when  one  was   a l o n e   —  the  solitude
              had  its  ways  of  eating  away  at a person;
              chiseling them down, bit  by  bit,  until  they
              were less than human. And Teddy  thought,
              perhaps,  that  she  was  already   there  —
              already in a place for the broken and spent,
              a shell of the person she used to be.