Between the ones left, Robin Swift and Victoire Desgraves (Babel by R. F. Kuang)

One could imagine how fresh the wound they had to carry around during their fight for the revolution. The different type of wound, Victoire with her strong faith that she would crawl out this darkness, and Robin, who chose the shortest way he always dreamed of after he lost his everything. Everything meant, his fake comfortable life in Oxford, his Hermes Society group of friends, his half long lost brother -Griffin, and his Ramy, his Ramiz Rafi Mirza. Robin Swift and Victoire Desgraves, who would've thought there were just two of them left. After all those warm summers and those melting lemon biscuits in winters. Despite their contrast view and decision, they only had each other to hold on to. 

"I want to live," she repeated, "and live, and thrive, and survive them. I want a future. I don't think death is a reprieve. I think it's - it's just the end. It forecloses everything - a future where I might be happy, and free. And it's not about being brave. It's about wanting another chance. Even if all I did was run away, even if I never lifted a finger to help anyone else as long as I lived - at least I would get to be happy. At least the world might be all right, just for a day, just for me. Is that selfish?" 

Her shoulders crumpled. Robin held her tight against him. What an anchor she was, he thought, an anchor he did not deserve. She was his rock, his light, the sole presence that had kept him going. And he wished, he wished, he wished, that was enough for him to hold on to.

"Be selfish," he whispered. "Be brave."

But that wasn’t, Robin wished it was enough, but it would never be enough for him to stay. Being casted away across different continent since such a young age. His mother, oh how he wished he remembered how his mother used to call him. Mrs. Piper, the wretched feeling of never running to her arms again. Griffin, his brother, whose blood suddenly runs thick on him, the bravery he would never known was in him. Ramy, 'birdie', perhaps he began to hear that faint voice again, ‘birdie’. All he had was himself. To fight, he gave his whole self as the sign of necessary violence.

On the other side of the world, Victoire only had herself straight to go on, she didn’t want to look back, she had to keep on living. She had always been good at surviving, she thougt. Now that the only left in this world was herself, she gritted her teeth as she ran alone. No one from the past could ever catch her as she kept on running, all alone.