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Juliette was never all that into Shakespeare.
Maybe it was her name following her around, the way everyone's eyes tracked to her when they studied Romeo and Juliet in class, Ben's good-natured teasing when particularly ridiculous passages came along. Maybe it was something about that legacy of the 'perfect love story' that was actually all kinds of messed up. Or the way it was held up as this mirror of romance, and she would stand there as a little girl, wondering: what happens if I don't want a Romeo?
It wasn't like she hated it or anything. Some of the stories were interesting enough, and she didn't sit through the lessons wanting to be anywhere but there, it just... didn't really mean anything. For whatever reason, she just never really got it. Not until Cal.
With Cal, she understood a little more why true love was written that way, to make you act all kinds of irrational. She understood the urge to run away, to do almost anything to be together.
But more than that, when Cal got up on that stage, repeated the famous lines from that infernal play, Juliette understood for the first time what it might be like, to sit in an audience captivated. Cal was captivating, magnetic, all kinds of beautiful.
The way she stepped onto the set gesturing, exaggerated, graceful movements that made Juliette smile; the way she spoke the lines, with an assurance like she knew the whole play off by heart, and a grin over her shoulder filled with some mix of laughter and pride; the way she stared out across the empty theatre as if it was filled with people, her hands outstretched, declaring. All of it was Cal as Jules had barely seen her before, carefree for just a moment, and Juliette wrote every detail of it into her heart, stored it in her mind like she'd never forget it, alongside all of her most precious memories.
Every moment with Cal had found its way there, straight into the heart of her, in a way no one else ever had. Her whole mind rang with Cal sometimes, her smile and her touch and her eyes, dark brown and beautiful, staring into Juliette's soul.
Watching Cal on that stage, even for just a few seconds, she got it, why people had flocked to theatres for centuries to see people perform. Why lines had endured across years. She could have watched Cal for months on end. She could have listened to her speak forever. Maybe that was the love the stage spoke of, maybe that was the reason some stories endured, remaking themselves.
The story of her and Cal wasn't too different, after all.
Juliette tried not to think about how the other story had ended. That didn't have to be them. They could make a different future, a better one, one where they could be together. She dreamed of a unity they wouldn't have to die for.
Maybe that dream was unrealistic, but in those moments, with Cal, anything felt possible. Any dream, no matter how unlikely, could one day come true.
It wasn't until much later, when everything burned down, that she thought of the story again. Of words of advice, of loving moderately. Maybe the play had never meant much after all, but that was one lesson she could have learned that would have spared her the agony of heartbreak. Most likely, it would never have mattered. Any chance she had of loving moderately burned down the moment Cal walked into her life.
Her dreams were just that: dreams, fantasies carved from hopeless optimism, from the illogic of first love.
This could never have ended well. Perhaps that was the lesson: never take a girl named Juliet(te) and give to her true love. Because when Juliet loves, people die.
Calliope always loved Shakespeare.
She tried to pretend she didn't, sometimes. Even with the isolation born of her life as a hunter, she knew that loving ancient plays wasn't something the other kids thought was cool. Plus, there was an unjust amount of attention given to this one dead white man, and she didn't want to give him even more. Still, though. She read Romeo and Juliet twelve times, and never really got tired. Maybe some part of her craved a dramatic story, her own forbidden love.
It changed a little as she grew older, as she dispensed with any pretence that story would be found with a Romeo (or, in fact, Bruno Mars). But her hopes drifting to a Juliet didn't change the nature of them, those hidden wishes inside of her.
At some point, though, she let them go, forgot the half-formed longing. Until Jules.
With Juliette, she understood the story she'd loved in a way she never had before. She understood the pain of it, the ache of that unstoppable force called love, pushing you beyond all logical things.
When she stood on that stage and spoke the lines aloud, some double meaning rang inside her, a mirror to her life, and she pushed down any foreboding that brought and focused on Juliette's smile, the look of half-laughing, half-impressed surprise on her face as Cal recited the scene from memory, gesturing dramatically like she'd learned to in practices for half a dozen school plays she never got to perform in.
Juliette's smile was so bright, so joyful, and the world looked brighter when Cal saw it through her eyes. How she held on to that, to some kind of optimism, in the middle of all this hell, Cal would never know. But it was enough just to see it, just to be there with her.
The way she laughed, light and uncomplicated, like everything might be okay after all; the way she clapped, with exaggerated politeness and that captivating sparkle in her eyes; the way she teased Cal gently for being 'enchanted with the bard', in a terrible British accent. All of it was Juliette as Cal was learning to understand her, not a monster, not a menace, just Jules, sweet, a little awkward. Cal committed every second they spent there to memory, something joyful to look back on if – when – everything fell apart once more.
In those moments, though, Cal let herself wish again. Not for a doomed, tragic romance, not for her own Juliet. But for a life, some kind of life with Jules in it. For everything to sort itself out somehow. Maybe she'd dreamed of star-crossed love as a little girl, but now all she wanted was to hold Jules' hand and have that be okay.
In this moment, that wish seemed a little more possible. Like maybe, one day, it had a hope of coming true.
It wasn't until much later, when everything fell to ashes, that Cal went back to that story. Words of advice, a lesson on loving moderately. Of all the things about the play she'd committed to her memory, she'd missed the one that really counted. The truth of that, the safety of moderate love, the destruction that lay in anything else, anything wilder or stronger or more. But maybe remembering that lesson wouldn't have changed anything at all. Any chance she had of loving moderately turned to dust, the moment she laid eyes on Juliette.
Her wishes were just that: wishes, hopeless whispers cast to a faraway star, caught up in the irrationality of first love.
This could never have ended well. Perhaps that was the lesson: never seek out your Juliet and find true love. Because when you find that love, people die.
But even so. Even as the world fell apart around her, she found herself running.
After all, she never had learned a safer kind of love. There was only this: immoderate, irrational, illogical. And absolutely impossible to let go.