A/N: Christa: I love Kenji! His humor is so much like mine haha he is so easy to write
Guest: The pager scene is my absolute favorite in the series! That will be so fun to write

The door opens and I sense her presence immediately. Nervousness. For a split second, I revel at the sound of her uneven breaths, allow the comfort and happiness of simply knowing she is alive and being in a room with her to wash over me. If I am going to die soon, these moments of peace must be my parting gift from the universe.

"Do you have any idea," I murmur, "how many times I've read this?" I show her the notebook which has not left my person since I found it on her bedroom floor. The guards here had checked me for weapons, but they assumed a notebook could not have dire consequences.

They were wrong.

This collection of papers had destroyed me.

I can't look at her yet. We are both terrified. Opening her notebook to find courage, I stop when I find a familiar passage. She protests as I begin to read.

"…I wonder what it would be like to speak out loud and be heard. I hold my breath, listen closely for anything, any sound of life and wonder at the beauty, the impossibility of possibly hearing another person breathing beside me." She is breathing shallowly. The pain both of her words and in her presence causes me to falter. I close my eyes, the notebook no longer necessary as I absorb the pain for both of us.

"…I do wonder, I think about it all the time. What it would be like to kill myself." A chill runs down my spine as I feel the closeness of these words to my everyday reality. "Because I never really know, I still can't tell the difference, I'm never quite certain whether or not I'm actually alive. So I sit here. I sit here every single day." I pause, thinking that her journal made up for all of the gifts I never received, all of the human interaction I was never permitted. Her words mirror my soul so clearly; it spoke the words I had never known were screaming inside me to be released.

Her body is fraught with tension, with a need to escape. The emotion reminds me of something. I pick up her notebook, "Run, I said to myself."

"Please." She pleads, "Please stop—"

I look up, she is trembling. I just want her to realize I understand her pain completely. That she is the single most important person in my life, and I would do anything to spare her these feelings from happening again. I want one person to understand me, or at least a part of me, before I am executed for all of the terrible crimes I have committed. I hope she is listening, not to the words, but to the ache in my chest as I read.

"Run, I said to myself. Run until your lungs collapse, until the wind whips and snaps at your tattered clothes, until you're a blur that blends into the background."

My own words have failed me over and over. The only way I know how to reach her now is to speak her language, "… Run until you drop dead. Make sure your heart stops before they ever reach you. Before they ever touch you. Run, I said."

She is falling apart with embarrassment. She doesn't seem to understand where she sees weakness in herself, I see the strength that allowed her to survive.

I try to explain. "Do you know, I couldn't sleep for days after I read that entry. I kept wanting to know which people were chasing you down the street, who it was you were running from. I wanted to find them," I whisper, wondering if my intensity will frighten her, but unable to control my feelings around her. "and I wanted to rip their limbs off, one by one. I wanted to murder them in ways that would horrify you to hear."

"Please. Please give that back to me."

I press my fingers against my lips, commanding my heart to steady. She doesn't love me. She doesn't want me to know her. She hates me, like all of the others. Leaning against the wall, I smile sadly. "You must know how sorry I am. That I", the words and memories are unbearably painful, "that I kissed you like that. I confess I had no idea you would shoot me for it."

"Your arm," she gasps.

I smile grimly, thinking she, like I, must wonder why the rebels have chosen to heal someone on death row. "Yes, it was healed when I woke up to find myself in this room."

As if she knew the motion could physically injure me, she steps further away. "Please, my notebook, I—"

"I promise you," I say, not knowing how much time I have with her before they take her away for good, "I never would've kissed you if I didn't think you wanted me to." I had been so certain she had wanted me to. I could feel it, the excitement in her chest as I kissed her.

She looks up, her dazzling blue-green eyes pinched in confusion. "I told you I hated you."

"Yes, well. You'd be surprised how many people say that to me."

"I don't think I would."

Suppressing a smile, I say, "You tried to kill me."

"That amuses you." Confused. Disbelief. If she had actually wanted to kill me, I'm sure my brains would have been spread across the wall of that alley.

"Oh yes," I smile uncontrollably "I find it fascinating." I look forward to making her mad. Her emotions are so close to the surface, I love the way the blood runs into her cheeks when I frustrate her, as well as how unpredictable she becomes. "Would you like to know why?"

She does not respond with her lips, but her eyes give her curiosity away.

"Because all you ever said to me," I begin coyly, "was that you didn't want to hurt anyone. You didn't want to murder people."

"I don't."

The sentence I have been waiting to utter, "Except for me?" It isn't the exception I wish she made for me, but her thinking of me distinctly from the rest of the world is a start. I had read somewhere there is a thin line between love and hate, and I hoped to cross that line with her one day.

"That decision was so easy for you to make," I smile, thinking once more of how similar we are. She gives me hope, that the actions I have been forced to take to ensure my survival are forgivable. If a person as good as her can kill someone so easily, perhaps I am not the monster I thought. "So simple. You had a gun. You wanted to run away. You pulled the trigger. That was it."

Scared. Her eyes flicker to the door and I know she is going to run away again.

"Don't go," I whisper, embarrassed at my lack of control. Being apart from her is far too painful, I feel the lack of her in my bones. "Please. Sit with me. Stay with me. I just want to see you. You don't even have to say anything."

Her body language says she has decided to stay and the relief is immediate. I want her to know the depths of my feelings, so I say, "Would you like me to read to you?"

She shakes her head, whispering, "Why are you doing this to me?"

I almost tell her everything. How I can't stand to be away from her, how I have loved her since before I even met her, how she makes me feel like a different person, like the two of us could conquer the world.

But I don't. I don't think she has a gun this time, but her rejection would kill me just the same.

"You know, could tell, the very first day I met you. There was something about you that felt different to me. Something in your eyes that was so tender. Raw. Like you hadn't yet learned how to hide your heart from the world." I'm thinking of my mother's words as she handed me her Jade ring, thinking hiding my heart was what had protected me from the harsh realities of life. Juliette was so open with the world, it was no wonder she came across as so deeply wounded. I pat the notebook possessively, "Finding this, was so… it was so extraordinarily painful." My chest was aching at the memory of her writings, so close to my heart. I look up at her, trying to tell her everything I am too afraid to say out loud. To tell her why I want to talk about her journal. Not to torture her, but to show her how deeply I understand her pain. "It was like meeting a friend for the very first time."

Her gaze is too intense, her tornado of feelings too difficult to comprehend. Suddenly I feel exhausted. Here I am pouring out my soul and she would walk out of here to Kent. She doesn't care about me. What was I hoping for out of this situation? She would understand me before her friends kill me? Best case scenario, I manage to escape and my father does the honors himself. "I am so tired, love. I'm so very, very tired."

I listen to her breathing, comforted by the sound, "How much time do I have before they kill me?"

"Kill you?" She replies, startled. Could she be so innocent she had not wondered why they were holding me here?

"We're not going to kill you," she says. "We have no intention of hurting you. We just want to use you to get back our men. We're holding you hostage."

My body goes rigid with alarm. "What?"

Her eyes are honest, unblinking, as I try and comprehend her words. "We have no reason to kill you. We only need to barter with your life—"

Oh no. I can't stop myself from laughing. It's somehow refreshing how naive these people are, to think, of course his father will save him. What father wouldn't? I shake my head at the incredulous idea of my father lifting a finger to help me in any way. He would be more likely to thank them for finally taking me off his hands.

"Dear, sweet, beautiful girl," I smile at her wide eyes, her appalled expression, "Your team here has greatly overestimated my father's affection for me. I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but keeping me here is not going to give you the advantage you were hoping for. I doubt my father has even noticed I'm gone. So I would like to request that you please either kill me, or let me go. But I beg you not to waste my time by confining me here."

She is floundering, confused. Her hair is falling into her face and she looks at me from underneath it in a way that makes her seem simultaneously sexy and innocent. I wonder what it would be like to sweep the hair from her face. To see her smile as I lean down to kiss her. How I've longed to feel the softness of her lips again, to hold her, pressed against my body, giving her that part of me that now only belongs to her. "But that's
not even a viable argument. No one likes to be held hostage—"

I inhale sharply as her words distract my thoughts. I know this is for naught. My thoughts are not my own anymore being held captive by her every move, her every word, her bewitching stare. I run a hand through my hair, as it would stop her from overtaking my mind. She is wrong. There is literally nowhere else I would rather be right now than in this room with her. Focusing, I pretend I am talking to Juliette the soldier, the one they most likely intended to send in here, rather than Juliette, the woman I love without reservation. "Your men are wasting their time. Kidnapping me will never work to your advantage. This much I can guarantee."

A/N: Yay for the end of the scene! What did you think? The next scene will be a surprise (especially for me, since I haven't decided which one to write!)