High drama, Antigone thought, Bia's words tripping further alarm bells in her head. Feeling disjointed, she touched the splint lightly with her free hand, fingertips exploring the shape of it as her memory explored the shape of Romeo in her mind.
When Antigone had first met her, she'd been shattered. Maxwell's sudden death had wrung the last of the energy out of her body that Richard's slow death had depleted over the months before. Romeo had said You can rest here, for as long as you need and Antigone's gratitude for that time and that safety was so deep, it muffled the alarm bells. Twisted tragic stories, Ares had said... but none of that safety felt twisted. That had been real.
She thought of little things Romeo had said, or done, that hadn't seemed right at the time. The evening Antigone had armed herself with the weapons to take down that billboard, she'd asked Romeo if she could call her if she needed bailing out. She remembered Romeo's surprised and delighted laugh; she hadn't understood it at the time, but looking at it from this angle, it made more sense.
Antigone had put anything she didn't understand about Romeo down to the fact that she didn't understand love the way other people did. Her greatest act of love had been for her dead, rotting brother, and had seen her face Creon's law head on and break it, had seen her buried alive in a cave. That was her foundation stone, to what it meant to love.
"Her," she said to Bia. "I live with her."
How could anyone expect Antigone to tell love and tragedy apart? They were the same damned-by-the-gods thing.