When at last Alexander spoke, his choking voice revealed his emotion. "When you die, you'll be wearing your white dress with red roses, and your hair will be long and falling around your shoulders. When they shoot you, up on your damn roof or walking alone on the street, your blood will look like another red rose on your dress, and no one will notice, not even you when you bleed out for Mother Russia."
— The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons
Her death is an obsession. This killer maiden who's seen hardened camorristi begging as she pushed in the bayonet, smelt the stench as they voided their bowels thinks her end will have dignity. Her blood will be red on the snow, his tears wet on her cheek, the foes she has slain piled in tribute before him. Sometimes she lies on a hospital bed, shining with love for her executioner as he presses his SIG to her eye, firing the bullet that will free her from a drug-blurred limbo where she won't remember his name. Never blind and screaming, trapped in a scorched carbon-fibre shell with the limbs ripped off as he stumbles away through the wreckage, sick with guilt yet ever-so-grateful that she caught the blast meant for him.
— Bullets for My Love, a Gunslinger Girl fanfic
