Our Violent Ends

Darling daughter”—Lord Cai pinched the bridge of his nose—“get in the car please.”

“Father,” Juliette shot back, “I crave violence.”

“Get in the car. Now.”

There will be hatred. There will be war. The country will fight itself to pieces. It will starve its people, ravage its land, poison its breath. Shanghai will fall and break and cry. But alongside everything, there has to be love—eternal, undying, enduring. Burn through vengeance and terror and warfare. Burn through everything that fuels the human heart and sears it red, burn through everything that covers the outside with hard muscle and tough sinew. Cut down deep and grab what beats beneath, and it is love that will survive after everything else has perished.

She became a Communist spy.

They had buried them together. There were no ashes, no bones. Kept apart in life, allowed together in death.

“To have and to hold, where even death cannot part us,” Juliette whispered.
The monsters howled into the night. Loomed closer.
“In this life and the next,” Roma returned, “for however long our souls remain, mine will always find yours.”
Juliette squeezed his hand. In that action, she tried to communicate everything she couldn’t put into words, everything that didn’t have a spoken form other than I love you. I love you. I love you.
When Dimitri stepped forward, when the monsters finally approached within good range, Juliette turned the spark wheel on her lighter.

“Together or not at all, dorogaya,” Roma whispered back. “I’m with you if we run. I’m with you if we fight.”

“Open your eyes, my love. You’ll need to see if we’re going to escape.”

Instead, she leaned in and kissed him.
And from under her tongue, she pushed the vaccine into his mouth.

“Is this the last time I’ll see you?”

“I have loved him so long that I do not remember him as a stranger,” Juliette answered. “I loved him long before we were told to work together in spite of the hate between our families. I will love him long after you tear us apart merely because you pick and choose when it is convenient to partake in the blood feud.”