Stepping out of the line Anya tosses a small wave and a happy new year to those working the booth. Falling into step with Gleb, she adjusts the coat on her shoulders re-securing it as she walks. The wool smells like he must smell, an earthy combination of scents that surprises her with the strange intimacy of it. Wearing someone else's clothes, freely given, is an affection gesture. This isn't like wearing the washed and mended hand-me-downs from her sisters. This is something else, something more adult in its fondness.

They do have a shared past, overlapping at very different points in their lives. Ten years between the closing of the gates and that day on Nevsky Prospekt. A decade before he saw her in Paris, a time that she doesn't remember, doesn't know how to process that he couldn't follow orders. That he resigned himself to die to let her live. One day she'll ask him why, find out more about that meeting. An odd sort of wonder runs through her as they walk closer to the effigy, meandering through the crowd. They are one hundred years from when they were teenagers in Ekaterinburg. What a strange life they have lived.

His stilted joke makes her smile. Once he told her that he had a sense of humor and while she didn't feel it then, she believes it now. "Yes you should. We can toast the new year later," she says before impulsively reaching out from the folds of his coat to grab his hand, gently tugging him along a little closer towards where the crowd thins. "Come on, let's find a good spot to view it. My former coworkers were telling me that it is quite spectacular at midnight."