Tatiana and Alexander (The Bronze Horseman #2)

“Where did they teach you how to live after you’d lost it all? Who taught you how to go on after you had lost everything?”
~ Tatiana

“Where did they teach you how to live after you’d lost it all? Who taught you how to go on after you had lost everything?”
~ Tatiana

"If it were not for hope, the heart would break."
~ Thomas Fuller

"Kiss my forehead".
She obeys.
"Kiss my lips".
She obeys. And obeys.
"Tania…"
"Shh."
"Can't you see I'm breaking?"
"Ah," she says, "You're still in one piece then."

“There is one moment, a moment in eternity. Before we find out the truth about one another. That simple moment is the one that propels us through life – what we felt at the very edge of our future, standing over the abyss, before we knew for sure we loved. Before we knew for sure we loved forever. …

Before all that, you and I walked through The Summer Garden, and once in a while my bare arm touched your arm, and once in a while you spoke and that gave me an excuse to look up into your face, into your laughing eyes, to catch a glimpse of your mouth and I, who had never been touched, tried to imagine what it might be like to have your mouth touch me. Falling in love with you in The Summer Garden in the white nights of Leningrad is the moment that propels me through life.”

Reading Order:
1. The Bronze Horseman - My Review Here
2. Tatiana and Alexander ( also titled The Bridge to Holy Cross, in some editions)
3. The Summer Graden – To be reviewed.

Credits:
- My Alexander – Henry Cavill
- My Tatiana – Teresa Palmer


DISCLAIMER: I do not hold the copyright to any of the images, videos or music used in this review. They are posted to add visuals and "soundtrack" to the review and for fun. If any of these are yours and you would like me to remove them, please let me know, and I will do so as soon as possible. If I can identify the copyright, I will do so.

Though much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are---

Unyielding.

Though much is taken, much abides; and though we are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are---

Unyielding.

We walk alone through this world, but if we're lucky, we have a moment of belonging to something, to someone, that sustains us through a lifetime of loneliness.

"Shura, I'm yours. Y

"Shura, I'm yours. You may not like it today, you may not want it tonight, you may wish for it all to be different now, but it remains, and I remain, as always, only yours. Nothing can change that. Not your wrath, your fists, your body or your death."

"We're moving cities, we're changing our name just like this hotel. You call that all right?"
"Yes," she said. "We still have each other. We still have our lives."
"How the definition of being all right changes," said Alexander.

The Field of Mars, June, death, life, white nights, Dasha, Dimitri, the all came...
And went.
But there Alexander still was, standing on that street, on that curb, in the sun, looking at her under the elms, looking at provenance across from him provenance in a white dress with red roses, licking her ice cream with red lips, singing. His and only his for one hundred minutes, blink of an eye and gone. It all was.

"Tania," he whispers, "promise me you won't forget me when I die."
"You won't die, soldier," she says. "You won't die. Live! Live on, breathe on, claw onto life, and do not let go. Promise me you will live for me, and I promise you, when you're done, I will be waiting for you." She is sobbing. "Whenever you're done, Alexander, I will be here, waiting for you."

Alexander looked into the barrel of one of the guns. He blinked.
O God, please look after Tania all alone in the world.

During the day she carried her boy, bandaged and fed the wounded, leaving her own festering wounds until night-time when she licked them and nursed them, and remembered the pines and the fish and the river and the ase and the woods and the fire and the blueberries and the smell of cigarette smoke and the loud laughter coming from one male throat.

And then, because she was Tatiana and because she couldn't help herself, and because he wouldn't have it any other way, she ran to him and was in his arms.