It was there she sat, horrified, saddened, and mute. Voice became null, a gem layered in mangled earth. Her heart had broken within her demure hands, a locket holding each of those desolate fragments as so much essence rushed upon her hapless palms. Fluid drained from those wells of wondrous colored glass, dyed such a fantastic emerald, as well as the cavity that once held a passionate core, that sacred article having been replaced by stagnant air.
"I love you, Roderich." The words came as they had, so entranced with meaning they could not coherently express. She had said them a hundred times before-a thousand-No. A number could not even adhere to those priceless sentiments. Each was far too beautiful and profound to hold even a single digit. They meant more than a mere label.
The man adjacent to her only wiped those bleeding windows. There was nothing more he could express; nothing more willing to form and leave those winding lips, that churning visage. He was disgusted; he was in a state of bitter melancholy; he was broken. And he was infatuated. All for the same woman he had loved so many blushing springs.
It was as though his muse had collapsed before him.
Not even undying adoration could restore the breath compacted inside her once rosy lungs.
Those sapphire orbs could only regard; regard the moth that had fallen inside the flame. If he attempted to save her, his own hand would be bound to ash.
The saddened one could not rescue her.
"I love you, Elizaveta. I'll write you letters. I'll send you gems. Anything you need." Spectacles were lifted and that wrinkled handkerchief removed those emotions, so frozen within their crystalline state. "I'm sorry…" Words buckled and came to bitter dust. The woman wiped those gathering droplets from her darling's snow hued cheeks.
Roderich blamed himself. Because they had lost. They had lost a war they did not wish to participate in. But their wrists were bound in chains. Protest was acid; it was death.
The pair saw the end coming before the beginning made its horrid appearance. They watched it arrive within its tanks and its terrifying scarlet flags; they watched it wash about those pretty streets with its blond hair and azure eyes. They watched as they were stripped naked and bound in swastikas.
They watched from their windows, as the streets were bathed in flesh and the screams of the dying innocent.
But nothing could be done.
They would not opposed.
And because they would not, their chains capsized the others, each of those unwilling boats falling to the bottom of that great crimson sea.
Roderich and Elizaveta could only accept. Accept and drown, choking upon all the essence that had been strewn against their untouched uniforms.
They stood against their judges, the lucky ones, the winners.
No. There were no winners.
They were simply the ones who lost less.
And it was decided that the woman would be given away. No longer would she see her Roderich. No longer would she be his darling queen. No. Now she was forbidden to his presence, wings torn and remnants doused in red paint.
She was at the mercy of the communists.
And as that sentence hit her as scalding water, she began to learn Russian.
It would be the only language she would need for months to come, likely years. Perhaps those odd syllables would bind her in eternity.
The others were punished as well, broken down and sold to the highest bidder; the tallest man within the room. But Roderich and Elizaveta did not focus upon the others' sad lacerations; their damages. Immediately, they bandaged their own wounds, their own bleeding sores and their shattered backs.
And the woman was to leave in the morning.
They would retrieve her.
That pair of damaged doves could only wait, sitting at the bench of Roderich's fantastic piano and stare into those blank keys, as though the black and white stripes would shatter and spell a grand message. An answer. Hope.
But of course, those cleanly lines did not move. They did not wake, nor did they stir even mildly until harassed by the man's persistent finger tips.
Yet, they did not stop their waiting, that apprehensive patience engulfing them as though they were insects to the mouth a fish glowing in luxurious scales.
Elizaveta, the beautiful Hungarian woman, could only grasp the hand of her equivalent, her sweetened Austrian, and hope that her fall would not be too far down that gaping well.
"Roderich, you won't forget about me, will you? You know that there's nothing that would hurt more…If you forget me."
"Of course I won't forget you…Elizaveta, you've been here so long, forgetting you would be like forgetting an entire limb. It's always been there. I can't lose something so easily."
"I know, love. I just needed to be sure."
Hands became intertwined, as two snakes mating in unending passion.
Then there was silence stretching out over horrid and relentless seconds.
"It's getting late…We can at least try to sleep. I don't want you to be sick tomorrow."
The woman positioned her fingers against her lover's, her head leaning upon his and her arms molding an embrace against his sobbing chest. A palm traveled to that ribcage, rounded digits finding shelter beneath the division of that crisp white blouse. Buttons were unemployed, left to hang stupidly as the jaw brought to the floor's mercy. Then that silken pad devoured Roderich's flesh, as though his doll was trying to extract that pulsing organ with bare determination. Kisses fluttered against his vulnerable neck as the tinges of entranced butterflies, and priceless gems found their place beneath curtains of peach satin.
"I don't give a damn about that." The sounds had shattered, singing the abandoned anthem of that handicapped woman. "I want you to make love to me. Because if I don't have your arms, I won't be able to fight back these tears. They're going to strangle me, Roderich." The siren's hold secured more of the opposite's structure, lips tying into knots of incoherent emotion.
The Austrian accepted that enticing hold and only rested his mounds upon the crown of his exalted queen, unable to stomach the very notion of their last union. He clutched her nearer, as though her defenseless image was to drop to the very base of a gaping chasm.
"Come on, Elizaveta. Let's go to bed." A fraction of those glittering tresses found refuge behind the woman's flushed ear. "I want to make love to you as well."
That pair of shattered figurines drifted from the musician's glorious piano and along those expansive halls, the very same corridors gazes had adhered to numerous times in the past. The Hungarian glanced to each of those paintings, as though she was seeing each of those crackling spirits the very first time in her experience. She drank of their presence, for she knew only memory would satiate that enraged conflagration, and had those lavish halls been left to time, her cadaver would surely burn.
The threshold opened; Attire curled about the tile of the Austrian king's bed chamber without much other than the cry of that lumping fabric.
Elizaveta found sanctuary against the sheets and Roderich found her, limbs engulfing one another as orifices met in embellished passion.
They moved with one another, kissing gently, touching flesh with careful fingers built of soft intent, figures melding and souls becoming a single union within that honeyed love making. Embraces were made as Roderich eased himself into his darling; his doll.
And they cried as they combined with such amorous intention, knowing it may very well be the last time their flesh would meet, not only in passion, but at all. Tongues acquainted and twined together as though they would never release their holds, and more tears were birthed within either's weeping visage.
When their session had come to its close, anatomies held one another and the entire universe had grown still. Time had ceased, something it had not done in the months spent preparing, and finally, that morning did not seem so very near in fetid proximity. That horrid date was forgotten, even if anesthesia was only temporary relief to an inevitable good-bye.
Consciousness vanished, because finally, that saddened pair could breathe without that perpetual shadow of the Soviet Union against their aching backs, so taken with their relentless brands and soaking lesions.
After wretched days of anticipation and nights wasted upon horrid insomnia, they could dream. Even though the demon was running yellowed nails against the napes of their necks.
There was acceptance. Because that was all there could be.
One cannot suddenly evacuate while staring into the eyes of a roaring hurricane; only close finicky vision and be patient as the current devours all surrounding the victim.
Elizaveta's arms were spread wide, and her sight was welded shut.