a revolution is a simple thing

It isn't a day he should ever have lived to see, of course. Even if it weren't for the fate that he knows perfectly well would await him if he'd managed to return to Russia rather than finding himself here, that would still be the case. Ten years after he remembers it having taken place, the gunshots still echoing in his memory even without the aid of reliving that night to amplify them, it's been a century since the death of the tsar and his family. A hundred years to the day, in a strange manner of speaking, since he sat at home and felt the last of his childhood slip away from him, a hundred years since Anastasia Romanov was meant to die with the rest of her family but was saved by a guard who, perhaps, developed too much of a conscience in precisely the right moment. In some world or some version of the story, a hundred years since a boy broke through a fence and took a bullet to the chest to try to save the girl he loved.

He doesn't often dream about the past, but when Gleb wakes with a start, one hand pressed to a nonexistent wound on his abdomen, he knows there won't be any escaping it at a time like this.

Unquestionably, he can't be the only one for whom that's the case. For all he knows, back home, this might have been a cause for celebration, like the Americans with their fireworks on the beach two weeks ago, commemorating their independence even in a foreign land. Briefly, he allows himself to wonder if, all of these years later, Russia finally reached the future he was once so certain they weren't far from. That's no longer his primary concern, though. For him, this date means something entirely different now, and he knows he isn't alone in that.

They haven't yet spoken of it, this anniversary that's been impending for some time. They've only barely made their way back to each other, cautiously finding their footing as he's tried to ignore the doubts prompted by all the time they spent apart and the reasons for it. She made her choice, and she's made that clear to him, but it's hard to shake the habit of waiting for the other shoe to drop, of expecting her to choose someone else. Perhaps they should have discussed this, though. If they had, he might have a better idea now of what to do.

Though he thinks at first that he shouldn't mention it unless she does first, it doesn't take very long for Gleb to change his mind on that front. He can't leave her alone with this, not today. If he's honest, he doesn't think he wants to be, either. Even if they don't talk, he should be with her, or at least give her the chance to turn him away.

Gleb doesn't stop to call ahead before he leaves his apartment, aware of grey clouds in the sky and a rumble of thunder off in the distance, but thinking little of it. The walk from his building to hers isn't so terribly long, and chances are, it won't result in anything anyway. He believes that for a few blocks, until rain starts to fall. Too late to reconsider this ill-formed plan, he has no real choice but to continue through it, arriving at Anya's just as it starts to really pick up, hair plastered to his forehead and temples, sleeves clinging to his shoulders.

Foolish as he might feel, he is here, and he still can't bear the notion of leaving her to deal with this on her own without knowing for certain that she wants to. Letting out a heavy exhale, he knocks gently but loud enough to be heard over the sound of falling rain. "Anya? It's me."

The strange thing about memory is that it's unreliable. It changes, grows distant, blurs around the edges; sometimes it becomes another matter entirely, made false with time. Some things, though, stay carved in stone. For Gleb, the night the Romanov family was killed has always been one of the latter. He's tried, when he can, to hold it all at arm's length, to reason away some of the horror of it, reminding himself as he was told so many times that it was a necessity, something done for the good of the country. Children died — three just barely older than him, one his own age, give or take a matter of months, one younger — but the reign of the Romanovs was ended, and though it took a long, bloody war, Russia finally began to move towards a better, brighter, fairer future.

He tells himself that, at least, when he wakes up — or comes to, really, seems more accurate, as if he's blinked and found himself somewhere else — at home for the first time in so many years, his parents both alive and well, even the very air familiar. It's been such a long time since he was back in Yekaterinburg, and Gleb can't understand how it's possible now. Living in Darrow has taught him that just about anything should be, but there's arriving in a place like that at all, there's strange occurrences like people turning into animals or a beach warm in the middle of winter, but then there's suddenly being a child again. And he is — he knows it somehow in his bones, knows it just to catch a glimpse of himself. He remembers the next decade or so of his life, but it obviously hasn't happened, and how could it have? He's in the presence of two people long dead, speaking to him as if no time has passed at all. Only instinct keeps him from sounding downright insane, trying to follow along, to pick up where he left off. If this is a dream, then it's a strange one, the sort of thing a person usually wouldn't have so much control over, but he can't read it as anything else.

It's barely moments, though, before his father makes to leave, his pistol with him, and at once, Gleb knows exactly what night this is and what's about to happen. That house across the way will be filled with screams and gunshots that seem unending, his father will return home looking pale and grim and not wanting to speak, and a family of seven and who knows how many others will be dead.

Six, he instinctively corrects himself. Anastasia lived; he saw it in Paris, believed it, that the frightened little street sweeper he'd once seen in the Nevsky Prospekt was the presumed dead Grand Duchess after all. She'll survive tonight, even if she won't remember it. She'll become Anya, the woman he fell in love with.

Just a week ago, she told him, so much more certain than she had any right to be, that he would never let them hurt her. She was right. He won't.

He waits just long enough that it won't seem too strange, then tells his mother that he's going for a walk. She glances up and tells him to be careful — something in his chest twists; it's been so many years since he's spoken to her — but doesn't seem too concerned. Though he has no plan, no clue how he'll manage to get into Ipatiev House unseen and leave with one of the Romanov daughters, whether she knows him now or not, it doesn't matter. He has to try.

It isn't at all what Gleb would have expected from a New Year's celebration, even down to the date, but then, the past week and a half has made the fact of that itself easily predictable. Nearly everything about Darrow seems to be as far from the Russia he left behind as it's possible to get, and this is no exception. At least it's not quite as unpleasant or as unusual as it could be, as other things have been. Practically the entire city has turned out for this, it seems, bundled up more so than dressed up, waiting in line for food from street vendors. He's heard talk of other New Year's Eves spent up the mountain at the ski lodge, and between the two options, this one is infinitely preferable.

For all the people here, though, there's really only one whose presence he cares about. Despite seeing her, at her insistence, on the Christmas they celebrate here, he barely has the first idea what to do around Anya, no more than he did when he first caught sight of her here outside her building, having thought that he would never see her again. What he does know is that she's as beautiful as he's ever seen her, so much that it nearly hurts to look at her. She's not dressed for the ballet or a press conference this time, and mercifully so, but she's still a world away from the street sweeper he first noticed, what feels like so much longer ago now than it must actually have been. He never could have guessed then where they would wind up, either in this place or before it.

Of course, it makes sense that she would seem to fit in here, far better than he does or could imagine to himself. Wearing the suit that he'd worn in Paris, the nicest thing he owns and likely to stay that way, for how far from comfortable he is in it, he straightens his jacket before he makes his way over to her, mostly for something to do with his hands. "Anya," he says. "You look — well."

Leave mail for Gleb Vaganov here. Email will almost certainly be ignored.