These Violent Delights
"I was not, I was, I am not, I have no more desires."- A common inscription on Roman tombstones during the decline of the empire
I.
There's a belief that when you reach a fork in the road, part of you goes one way and another part the other. One half goes on and the other continues the life you might have had if things had changed ever so slightly, if you'd chosen better. It's meant to be a comfort, to think that in another life, another time, you got it right.
But it isn't. Because nothing ensures that the other life was truly right.
In another part of Verona, one Shakespeare forgot, Juliet awakens, pale fingers stopping the poison's arc toward Romeo's mouth as his fingers clasp her dagger, driving it away from her heart and into silent ground.
That was the real tragedy, she decides. Not that Romeo and Juliet died, but that, in another life, they didn't.
II.
In a version of their lives, some forgotten thread, like a dream or a distant memory, he dies first, giving himself mercy before his eyes can turn, coughing around the blood in his teeth. She isn't far behind, because Romeo and Juliet die together, everyone knows that, so she takes down the Z that took him before she even feels the wound, and then she gives herself mercy with his weapon. It's a tragedy, of course, but its the way it should be.
In another part, or a hundred different days all forming one, a zombie that won't stop takes them both, and it doesn't matter if he rips out both their throats or not because the room never opens, and there's no one inside, and she never remembers the flashbacks because the dead can't remember anything at all.
Or maybe they die separately, with her mind broken in jagged pieces and he trying to help her find herself, a butterfly necklace in a child's hands and a hail of bullets and they both fall because there was no place in California for either of them.
Or, - and no one would believe this version - maybe they find themselves in California, five years beyond the mythical cure, without a zombie in sight, and with no blood left on their clothes. It's a fairytale, of course, and it's only logical that she finally realizes why everything seems out of balance, as if a new ending has been written, and in the process the significance of the work has been lost.
Because Romeo and Juliet were never supposed to survive the play, but Shakespeare forgot.
III.
Mack was always the one who clung to her. It's strange in a way, because she can't even remember his middle name and it seems pointless to ask again, and she doesn't know if he had siblings or even what he liked to do before it all fell apart, only that it seemed like he'd been there forever, and at the same time like they'd just met. She's been distant, and even cold, shoving when he reached for her, running when he tried to help, but pushing Mack away was like trying to fight the direction of the tide.
He's still the same way, no matter how many times she's walked away from him, and after a while she simply gives up and let's him stay. He has nothing, after all, and neither does she, so it makes sense they have each other. He gives her all he has, and she tries, she does, because he's good and decent, despite all they've gone through, kind and gentle, the sort of man who picks wildflowers and tries to take her on dates in the middle of the apocalypse, and she wishes there was a heart left in the hollowness of her chest, a way to feel anything for him at all.
In another copy of the play, Romeo doesn't take the poison, and he waits patiently by Juliet, waiting for her to wake, hours passing into days, and days to weeks, believing that she'll come to life, never knowing she never will.
It's then that she decides that Juliet wasn't committing suicide at all. She was trying to give herself mercy, and she didn't know how.
IV.
Mack starts slowly, trying to move on, trying to build a life. It's a date at first, in some little diner, and it even goes well until a tray drops and she's down on the floor, a knife to the waitress's forehead before Mack grabs her hand and drags her away.
After a while he starts talking about marriage - three proposals before he seems to take the hint - and eventually he seems to accept things the way they are.
He talks about children once - starting slow, with just one, then maybe another later on, but she only closes her eyes and pretends to sleep. She wouldn't be any kind of a mother, she knows, because she doesn't remember a single word to a lullaby, or how to hold a baby, and the only thing she could teach them is how to kill.
In some lost and forgotten writing, there's the pages where Romeo and Juliet grow apart, where Romeo stops trying, and simply gives up, where he stays, because he doesn't know any other sort of life, not when half his soul is in Juliet's body, but the light goes out of his eyes and he dies a different sort of death than the one Shakespeare intended. And Juliet, well, Juliet, she thinks, never even notices.
V.
In some final copy, dusty and unopened, only Juliet dies, bloody and violent, with crimson staining her hands, laughing through jagged teeth and swollen lips, and the way she ends doesn't matter, and never did. Romeo moves on, as he should have, maybe with someone else, or maybe alone, because maybe they didn't both have to die after all.
Mack would never do that, she knows, and this version of herself was a survivor, not one to fall in scarlet and darkness, so she clings to him in the quiet, fingernails digging into shards of rib and heart, and they live, both of them, the destroyed and the destroyer, and she's never sure which of them is which, or whether they're both at once.
He never complains, and she never says she loves him, but they go on, even if there are no words after the final page, because the bard no longer knew what to write.