The Carlist troops were closing in. The Worker's Front Partisans were 30, and they were around 200. The Twins, Aitana and Valentina, fire a Vickers MG, suppressing a group who are attempting to flank their hill around the side. They keep the ammo coming, but they might soon run out. It is a good hill; a sunny hill, a good place to die, but Jose does not want to die; he doesn't want any of his friends to die. It is December 1939. He has already seen so many fall, and in the midst of the battle for Spain, he is struggling with a battle for his emotions; does the cold, calculated, but still motherly Remi bring greater love to his heart, or does the brash, argumentative, but inviting and conversational Jean spark the passions more? He fires his smg while screaming, for he does not know.

Next to him, Manuel stands straight up, firing his revolvers alternatively with taking swigs from his collection of bottles. Concerningly to Jose, he's pretty sure half of those bottles are filled with oil for molotovs, a suspicion confirmed when a comrade grabs one, stuffs a kerchief into and lights, and sets a Carlist cadre aflame. Manuel drunkenly sings the lyrics to La Cucaracha, a song none of them have heard properly before meeting him, and a song which all of them are 100% sure is not sung in the key he is singing it in, especially given that he keeps switching keys. Once both revolvers are out of shot, Manuel hops back down behind a rock to finish off a hip flask and reload his guns, grumbling in the wrong kind of Spanish for this continent. He scoots over to Jose, burps, mumbles something in Mexican Spanish, burps again, dozes off, wakes up, stands up, screams "VIVA SOCIALISMO! VIVA JOSE DIAZ!", quickfires both revolvers on double action and hits every shot, gets his hat shot off by a lucky whiff, and then pops back down to reload his guns again next to Jose.

"Well, Comrade!" Says Manuel, distressingly and suddenly sober, "I think that this is where our adventures come to an end!"

"Yes..." Says Jose, checking the ammo in his EMP, and swapping out the magazine. "I suppose it has, unless comrade Olivera comes back from the dead, having set traps under every enemy here."

"That's the spirit, Muchacho!"

"Well, as Karl Marx once said, It is the Cause, not the Death, that makes the martyr."

"I think that was Santa Anna, actually."

"Oh, not you too!"

Manuel reaches for his hat, and then, out from it, produces two tequila mini-bottles. "A toast to our cause, then!"

Manuel drinks his heartily, whole Jose sips contemplatively, his gaze wandering over to where Juan and Remi are attempting to counter-snipe against a hill opposite them. He blushes, a little, and smiles while looking to them.

"You don't drink with the heart of a man whose content to die? Is it a lover who you wished to say goodbye to?"

"You could say that..."

"Ah, Muchacho, much has been said before about the one whose heart is set aflame, but whose road to the pyre of love is beset with rocks and roaches!" Manuel pauses to drink from a molotov bottle, spit it out, curse in Mexican, and then drink from an actual wine bottle. "There's no time like the present to present your love."

Jose thinks about that, while Manuel screams "PUTA TUS MADRES, CARLISTSAS!" And goes back to firing his revolvers on double action, and Jose realizes that, if he is to die, he doesn't wish to take his full heart into the Spanish Earth with them, even if the Earth is theirs.

He crawls over to Remi and Juan, who are trying to ascertain the origins of a quote about Lumpenproles, as Juan suggests it might have come from Frederick Douglass. "Comrade Juan! Comrade Remi! I don't think we're going to make it out of this one alive."

Juan nods. "It is the Cause, not the Death, that makes the martyr. Santa Anna said that."

"Didn't Napoleon say that?" Says Remi, and the two are about to get into an argument about if Santa Anna was the Napoleon of Mexico before Jose interrupts.

"Comrades, I... Well... Ever since the time I took that wound to the stomach, I've felt, these... things... I..."

"Is everything okay?"

"Y-no, it's not okay. Remi, Juan..."

Jose went on to pour out every emotion he had felt for the past year. Bullets whizzed through the air and grenades were tossed back at the throwers, and petrol bombs caught afire while the pyre of love was lit by a young man's burning heart. Anxiety, shame, these were as immaterial in the moment. There was only the Socialist Love of partisans, fighting and dying for a cause greater than any individual could set to battle for alone.

It would have been a tense silence, waiting for their responses, had they not been in the middle of pitched gunfight, especially one where Manuel is engaging in fancy western gunplay and saying things in technically the same language as everyone else, while still being incomprehensible. Instead, they must settle for all three having bright red, flushed faces, while hiding behind a rock before they die.

"W-well, I-" Starts Juan, before Aitana cries out; "TANKS! TANKS!"

All focus is brought off Jose for a second, as they peer into the dust.

"Wait!" Says Valentina, "Those are OUR Tanks!"

The Monarchist soldiers ragged, bloodied, and panicked, break and run, or drop their weapons and surrender on the spot, as the French Tanks, Italian Tankettes, and Armored Trucks, all painted with the colors of the Popular Front, crashed onto the scene, firing their machine guns. Soldiers followed behind, taking prisoners and finishing off pockets of resistance.

Herman and Silva approach the partisans on the hill, who have bravely held out against 200 when they are surely no more than 20, at this point. "Hey, comrades! It's safe to come out, now!"

Manuel smiles, stands up, and greets them in Mexican Spanish, as Herman and Silva exchange concerned looks. Their concern is allayed when he starts handing out tequila from a crate he dug up while the tanks were doing their thing. Aitana and Valentina go to try to stop him, but it's too late, and already he has the Worker's Front troops singing La Cucaracha. Silva, who avoided the drinking, sort of walks over to Jose, Juan, and Remi, and says "Oh, by the way; Good job, comrades. We won."

"Yes, we did!"

"No, no; we won the war. The Flag of Worker's Front Spain flies over La Coruna. The Carlists are on the run from the continent. We won."

"...Oh."

They talked for a while of other things, such as family, the final days of the war, comrade Enrique's glorious plan to win the war, and arranging for the burial of the dead on this hill. Finally, Silva bid the three relationship-in-limbos farewell, and went to get ludicrously drunk with his comrades.

"S-so, Remi, Juan?"

Jose looks to them, with a look on his face which was fearful, yes, but held a hope for the future which they all carried in their hearts. Remi and Juan step off to the side to discuss, then consult with Manuel and the Twins, and then, finally, come back to Jose.

"Well, what can be said..." Starts Juan. "We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you."

"When our turn comes," Continues Remi, "We shall not make excuses for the terror."

Jose is briefly concerned and confused, but then realized. "Ah, my favorite Tuchachevsky quote." He smiles. They all three know what this means; despite the chosen quote, they all shared the same compassion for each other.

Were there dead comrades? Yes, and they would be left in the earth. But the earth is Ours, now. And now, we will be free to love in a world free of the monarchy who oppress us, free of capital who sucks our life dry; We are Free, and now, so is our Love; at least, that is how it is for Remi, Jose, and Juan.