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"For the last time, who are you?"
His voice seems too loud, seems to carry too far, and he's lucky, some small part of him fleetingly thinks, that no one has come running or interrupted, given the scene here. Lucky, too, that he's gotten a chance to try to persuade her to change her story. Had anyone else been sent after her, he knows they would have taken the shot upon one glance, where she is and the way she's dressed and the announced press conference — rumors that still never end, even now that he's traveled across several countries — speaking for themselves. He knows who she is as surely as she does now. He thinks maybe he always did, deep down, from that moment in his office he first got a good look in her eyes. All he needs, though, is one reason not to go through with this, not to follow his orders, desperate and determined in equal measure. It isn't too late. She could say she's someone else and leave with him. He could— Well, he'd have neither the heart nor the stomach to turn her in, but it would be easier to say that he couldn't find her, and it wouldn't matter all that much in the long run, because she'd have been no one after all.
She won't, though. Gleb knows it before she even says a word, sees it in the jut of her chin and the glint in her eyes and the way she steps towards him, standing straight, the same proud girl he saw behind the gate so many years ago. Even when she seemed like nothing more than a frightened streetsweeper, he thinks this was there somewhere. It's just been allowed to surface now. She's where she's supposed to be. And that's what he can't let stand, for the good of Russia, for his father's memory, for everything he's spent years fighting for.
"I am Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanov," she replies, unflinching. He sets his jaw, steels himself, his pistol feeling three times as heavy as it should at his side and when he lifts it to cock it, readying himself for what he knows has to come next. Kill her if she is Anastasia, bring her back if she isn't, those were his orders, and he's never disobeyed one before. He's never so much as thought to.
He won't let himself now.
"Be careful what a dream may bring," he says, the same caution he'd issued her that day in his office, when this was all still pretend. This time, though, he doesn't know which of them he's really talking to, her or himself. It is real for her. She wouldn't be standing here in a gown and a tiara otherwise, getting ready to come forward with her grandmother and tell the press who she is. He's the one who's been deluding himself, thinking that there was some way to get out of this without being where he is right now, blinded by the feelings for her he knows he shouldn't have. He steps forward quickly, pointing the gun at her again, heart pounding in his chest, fury in his blood, though at who or what, he can't tell anymore. "A revolution is a simple—"
At once, he stills, frozen with his pistol aimed at her throat, an inch away from finishing the job. It's as far as he'll ever get. She still hasn't wavered, but he has, even while standing rigidly in place. Her family and his orders be damned, pulling the trigger seems suddenly impossible, something he couldn't do no matter how much he tried to convince himself it would be worth going through with it. She's a Romanov, yes, but she's Anya, too, the girl who'd started at a backfiring truck, whom he'd been unable to help looking for on the Nevsky Prospect, who's occupied so many of his thoughts since then. She's standing tall before him, ready to face the death that somehow evaded her ten long years ago, and he thinks somehow, that makes it even harder.
Gleb exhales unsteadily, a breath he hadn't realized he was holding, closing his eyes briefly as he shakes his head, then finally lets his arm fall back to his side. "I can't," he says, barely able to get the words out, though they leave him unwillingly. He has to turn away from her, can hardly manage to stay on his feet, dropping to a crouch and staring at the gun in his hand for a moment before he all but throws it on the ground. "I can't. Oh, God."
He can't breathe, either, or at least feels as if he can't, loosening his collar as he gasps for air, her name leaving him on an exhale. The room suddenly feels stifling; then again, he's hardly aware of where he is, where he's broken into, solely for the purpose of what he couldn't go through with doing. It's only her touch, achingly gentle, her gloved hand against his head, that starts to bring him back to himself.
"I mean you no harm, Gleb," she tells him, as if he's ever thought otherwise, as if she wouldn't be well within her rights to pick up his abandoned pistol and turn it on him. This undeserved kindness, he thinks, hurts all the more. He should never have come so close to killing her. He should never have faltered in doing so. It's really very simple, Gorlinsky told him over the phone when he issued his orders, but it's never been that. Were she someone else, maybe it would have been. Maybe he'd be on his way by now, slipping out during the commotion that would have ensued, neither looking back nor losing a moment's sleep over what he'd done. Maybe if they'd sent someone other than him, he could have lived with the outcome, quietly grieved for Anya while knowing that Anastasia's death would be for the best, for the good of the country. Where he's wound up instead is a different matter entirely. He's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't, neither an easy weight for his conscience to bear.
Whatever this is resembling forgiveness from her ought to make that easier. It doesn't.
She starts to draw her hand away, and on a moment's impulse, Gleb stops her, catching her fingers with his and grasping them tightly. "I believe you are Anastasia," he says, what perhaps may have spoken for itself but needs to be put into words anyway. It's an acknowledgment that he knows he was wrong earlier, trying to get her to stop playing games, and that it isn't for any disbelief that he hasn't followed through with what he came here to do.
That, and the fact that he knows what he's just done. When he finally brings himself to look up at her and sees the small, sad smile she wears, he knows she knows it, too. There's no way he walks away from this unscathed. Had he simply come back empty-handed — had he convinced her to return with him and claim to be no one — it would have been easy enough to spin. He saw all those press agents waiting, though. Very soon, the whole world will know that she's Anastasia Romanov, alive and well and reunited with what family she has left, and his superiors will know that he let her live.
He knows what they do to people like him. He's been a part of this regime since he was old enough to be given a uniform and a weapon; he's well aware of how it works, has been a part of too many of those decisions himself and never blinked. Maybe that's why he knows, too, that he won't bother running. For years, he's practically defined himself by the cause, devoted himself to ushering Russia into a better future. Now he's committed perhaps the biggest act of treason possible. He ought to face the consequences of that.
Anya — Anastasia — takes his hand in both of hers now, and with that same damned gentleness, asks, "What will you tell them?"
Though it won't make a difference one way or another, it's a good question, one he doesn't yet have an answer to. Pulling away from her, he reaches for the pistol he'd left on the ground, staring at it for a moment before he tucks it away again. Difficult as it still is, he turns to her again, mirroring that same sad smile. "That I was not my father's son after all."
For years, he's wondered what he would have done in his father's position, if he'd have been able to go through with it, too. Now he has his answer. It's neither the one he would have expected nor the one he would have wanted, but in this instance, he thinks it's the right choice. There's nothing else for him to do. He doesn't think he would be able to stand it, her death on his conscience, her blood on his hands. At least, whatever happens now, she'll get to live.
Standing straight, Gleb faces her directly and holds out a hand. She takes it gently, and he shakes it once, letting the touch linger while he speaks. "Long life, comrade," he says, calm and official, as if they'd only just now met, as if, mere minutes ago, he hadn't been holding her at gunpoint, as if he hadn't fallen in love with the one girl he shouldn't have. Despite the fact that it goes against his every instinct, he means it, too. Maybe he won't get to have one, but she might. He shouldn't find solace in that, but he does.
Even so, he can't stay here, looking at her, any longer. Neither can he bring himself to wait for a response. Instead, he turns, resisting the urge to glance back at her over his shoulder one last time as he leaves. It won't do any good if he does. His decision will still have been made. He'll still feel about her the way he does, and he'll still be facing the same fate when he returns to Russia. Drawing this out won't help either of them. She has a life, a family, the press to get to. He has very little — just a bullet, probably, with his name on it.
Something happens, though, as he walks out. The room changes, becoming unfamiliar, and while Gleb tries to write it off at first as the product of his being somewhere he'd never seen before today and not exactly in his right mind, too distracted and disdainful of this luxury to bother taking in the sights, but it becomes increasingly apparent instead that he isn't where he was a moment ago. When he looks behind him, there's no sign of the room where he left Anya, which is in itself troubling. He needs to leave before anyone else can see him, and he can't do that if he doesn't know where he is. There are already a handful of people around, anyway, and not the sort he'd have expected to be in the Dowager Empress's entourage, all dressed strangely, a far cry from the aristocracy, coming and going through what looks to be the lobby of a building. It should be a relief. Instead, it's all the more confusing. Rather than letting on as much, though, or asking for help, he stays where he is, surveying his surroundings. Whatever is going on, he doesn't need to draw undue attention to himself. He just needs to make sense of where he is and then be on his way.
His voice seems too loud, seems to carry too far, and he's lucky, some small part of him fleetingly thinks, that no one has come running or interrupted, given the scene here. Lucky, too, that he's gotten a chance to try to persuade her to change her story. Had anyone else been sent after her, he knows they would have taken the shot upon one glance, where she is and the way she's dressed and the announced press conference — rumors that still never end, even now that he's traveled across several countries — speaking for themselves. He knows who she is as surely as she does now. He thinks maybe he always did, deep down, from that moment in his office he first got a good look in her eyes. All he needs, though, is one reason not to go through with this, not to follow his orders, desperate and determined in equal measure. It isn't too late. She could say she's someone else and leave with him. He could— Well, he'd have neither the heart nor the stomach to turn her in, but it would be easier to say that he couldn't find her, and it wouldn't matter all that much in the long run, because she'd have been no one after all.
She won't, though. Gleb knows it before she even says a word, sees it in the jut of her chin and the glint in her eyes and the way she steps towards him, standing straight, the same proud girl he saw behind the gate so many years ago. Even when she seemed like nothing more than a frightened streetsweeper, he thinks this was there somewhere. It's just been allowed to surface now. She's where she's supposed to be. And that's what he can't let stand, for the good of Russia, for his father's memory, for everything he's spent years fighting for.
"I am Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanov," she replies, unflinching. He sets his jaw, steels himself, his pistol feeling three times as heavy as it should at his side and when he lifts it to cock it, readying himself for what he knows has to come next. Kill her if she is Anastasia, bring her back if she isn't, those were his orders, and he's never disobeyed one before. He's never so much as thought to.
He won't let himself now.
"Be careful what a dream may bring," he says, the same caution he'd issued her that day in his office, when this was all still pretend. This time, though, he doesn't know which of them he's really talking to, her or himself. It is real for her. She wouldn't be standing here in a gown and a tiara otherwise, getting ready to come forward with her grandmother and tell the press who she is. He's the one who's been deluding himself, thinking that there was some way to get out of this without being where he is right now, blinded by the feelings for her he knows he shouldn't have. He steps forward quickly, pointing the gun at her again, heart pounding in his chest, fury in his blood, though at who or what, he can't tell anymore. "A revolution is a simple—"
At once, he stills, frozen with his pistol aimed at her throat, an inch away from finishing the job. It's as far as he'll ever get. She still hasn't wavered, but he has, even while standing rigidly in place. Her family and his orders be damned, pulling the trigger seems suddenly impossible, something he couldn't do no matter how much he tried to convince himself it would be worth going through with it. She's a Romanov, yes, but she's Anya, too, the girl who'd started at a backfiring truck, whom he'd been unable to help looking for on the Nevsky Prospect, who's occupied so many of his thoughts since then. She's standing tall before him, ready to face the death that somehow evaded her ten long years ago, and he thinks somehow, that makes it even harder.
Gleb exhales unsteadily, a breath he hadn't realized he was holding, closing his eyes briefly as he shakes his head, then finally lets his arm fall back to his side. "I can't," he says, barely able to get the words out, though they leave him unwillingly. He has to turn away from her, can hardly manage to stay on his feet, dropping to a crouch and staring at the gun in his hand for a moment before he all but throws it on the ground. "I can't. Oh, God."
He can't breathe, either, or at least feels as if he can't, loosening his collar as he gasps for air, her name leaving him on an exhale. The room suddenly feels stifling; then again, he's hardly aware of where he is, where he's broken into, solely for the purpose of what he couldn't go through with doing. It's only her touch, achingly gentle, her gloved hand against his head, that starts to bring him back to himself.
"I mean you no harm, Gleb," she tells him, as if he's ever thought otherwise, as if she wouldn't be well within her rights to pick up his abandoned pistol and turn it on him. This undeserved kindness, he thinks, hurts all the more. He should never have come so close to killing her. He should never have faltered in doing so. It's really very simple, Gorlinsky told him over the phone when he issued his orders, but it's never been that. Were she someone else, maybe it would have been. Maybe he'd be on his way by now, slipping out during the commotion that would have ensued, neither looking back nor losing a moment's sleep over what he'd done. Maybe if they'd sent someone other than him, he could have lived with the outcome, quietly grieved for Anya while knowing that Anastasia's death would be for the best, for the good of the country. Where he's wound up instead is a different matter entirely. He's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't, neither an easy weight for his conscience to bear.
Whatever this is resembling forgiveness from her ought to make that easier. It doesn't.
She starts to draw her hand away, and on a moment's impulse, Gleb stops her, catching her fingers with his and grasping them tightly. "I believe you are Anastasia," he says, what perhaps may have spoken for itself but needs to be put into words anyway. It's an acknowledgment that he knows he was wrong earlier, trying to get her to stop playing games, and that it isn't for any disbelief that he hasn't followed through with what he came here to do.
That, and the fact that he knows what he's just done. When he finally brings himself to look up at her and sees the small, sad smile she wears, he knows she knows it, too. There's no way he walks away from this unscathed. Had he simply come back empty-handed — had he convinced her to return with him and claim to be no one — it would have been easy enough to spin. He saw all those press agents waiting, though. Very soon, the whole world will know that she's Anastasia Romanov, alive and well and reunited with what family she has left, and his superiors will know that he let her live.
He knows what they do to people like him. He's been a part of this regime since he was old enough to be given a uniform and a weapon; he's well aware of how it works, has been a part of too many of those decisions himself and never blinked. Maybe that's why he knows, too, that he won't bother running. For years, he's practically defined himself by the cause, devoted himself to ushering Russia into a better future. Now he's committed perhaps the biggest act of treason possible. He ought to face the consequences of that.
Anya — Anastasia — takes his hand in both of hers now, and with that same damned gentleness, asks, "What will you tell them?"
Though it won't make a difference one way or another, it's a good question, one he doesn't yet have an answer to. Pulling away from her, he reaches for the pistol he'd left on the ground, staring at it for a moment before he tucks it away again. Difficult as it still is, he turns to her again, mirroring that same sad smile. "That I was not my father's son after all."
For years, he's wondered what he would have done in his father's position, if he'd have been able to go through with it, too. Now he has his answer. It's neither the one he would have expected nor the one he would have wanted, but in this instance, he thinks it's the right choice. There's nothing else for him to do. He doesn't think he would be able to stand it, her death on his conscience, her blood on his hands. At least, whatever happens now, she'll get to live.
Standing straight, Gleb faces her directly and holds out a hand. She takes it gently, and he shakes it once, letting the touch linger while he speaks. "Long life, comrade," he says, calm and official, as if they'd only just now met, as if, mere minutes ago, he hadn't been holding her at gunpoint, as if he hadn't fallen in love with the one girl he shouldn't have. Despite the fact that it goes against his every instinct, he means it, too. Maybe he won't get to have one, but she might. He shouldn't find solace in that, but he does.
Even so, he can't stay here, looking at her, any longer. Neither can he bring himself to wait for a response. Instead, he turns, resisting the urge to glance back at her over his shoulder one last time as he leaves. It won't do any good if he does. His decision will still have been made. He'll still feel about her the way he does, and he'll still be facing the same fate when he returns to Russia. Drawing this out won't help either of them. She has a life, a family, the press to get to. He has very little — just a bullet, probably, with his name on it.
Something happens, though, as he walks out. The room changes, becoming unfamiliar, and while Gleb tries to write it off at first as the product of his being somewhere he'd never seen before today and not exactly in his right mind, too distracted and disdainful of this luxury to bother taking in the sights, but it becomes increasingly apparent instead that he isn't where he was a moment ago. When he looks behind him, there's no sign of the room where he left Anya, which is in itself troubling. He needs to leave before anyone else can see him, and he can't do that if he doesn't know where he is. There are already a handful of people around, anyway, and not the sort he'd have expected to be in the Dowager Empress's entourage, all dressed strangely, a far cry from the aristocracy, coming and going through what looks to be the lobby of a building. It should be a relief. Instead, it's all the more confusing. Rather than letting on as much, though, or asking for help, he stays where he is, surveying his surroundings. Whatever is going on, he doesn't need to draw undue attention to himself. He just needs to make sense of where he is and then be on his way.
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She is making her own family here, her own way to belong.
Taking the steps two at a time, Anya bounds down the stairs in her apartment building. She's not late for work this time, but she still moves as if she's late for something even if she's perfectly on time or has nowhere urgent to go. She's going to check on the laundry she's doing, dressed casually for the task. The skinny jeans are tucked into thick socks, the sleeves of her fitted tunic-like shirt are pushed up to her elbows, a vintage watch is on her wrist, a tiny Eiffel tower on a long chain around her neck. Her time in Paris might not have gone as planned, but it still felt a bit like home.
Her hair is escaping its loose side braid, pieces falling into her face as she absently rolls the bag of quarters between the palms of her hand. Slowing her pace as she reaches the bottom of the stairs, she emerges into the more tasteful lighting of her lobby with nothing more than the creak of the door to herald her.
She comes to a sudden, surprised stop at the sight of who is standing there. Her feet slip for a moment on the tile.
"Gleb," she breathes in surprise. Never did she think that she would see him again, not since she ignored his advice and fled Russia. The sight of him is both welcomed and painful. It strikes her as funny that she can't decide which is stronger.
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She is, though. There's no mistaking her, different though she looks, the gown and tiara gone, her appearance far more casual and yet still a far cry from the way she'd looked when he first met her. This is something all its own, nearly as incomprehensible as the rest of this. He'd dwell on it if the mere sight of her didn't hurt so much, the pistol he's tucked away feeling that much heavier all over again. When he walked away from her, he had done so knowing that he would never see her again, at peace with that being the case and why. This — It's too much, too soon, and vulnerable as he's just been in front of her, he can't quite mask that, either.
If there's a part of him that's relieved, too, for something familiar when he can't make sense of any of this, it's easily enough outweighed. Still, he has to say something, his head ducking in a slight nod. She should be afraid of him, probably. It's a relief that she doesn't seem to be. "Anya," he replies, speaking just as he had a moment before, deliberately calm and composed when he feels anything but. He can't — won't, maybe — call her anything else, though he knows that's not really who she is. Maybe he can and has acknowledged that, but he'll be damned before he'll resort to the use of any honorifics or any other shows of deference. Anya is the girl he fell for, and who she'll always be to him. Who and whatever else she is comes second to that. "I didn't think I'd see you again."
It's a strange instinctive response, perhaps, when he was only just with her, but there wasn't meant to be anything more than that. Besides, between the way she's dressed and the surprise in her voice, it's clear that there's something here that he's missing.
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If she had actually been her, would Darrow still been her destination? She doesn't think so.
Of all the people she thought to follow her, Dimitry and Vlad felt the most likely and the most impossible. But Gleb. Deputy Commissioner Gleb Vaganov who told her that he looked for her every day on the Nevsky Prospekt all those months ago. He's standing here, looking confused and thoroughly unlike himself in a suit. Though Anya supposes she doesn't look like the street sweeper he last saw either.
"I didn't think I'd see you again either," she admits, a small growing smile on her face. No matter her confusion, she's glad it is him. He's never lied to her, never led her astray. She takes a step towards him, feet sliding gently on the tile. "I didn't think I'd see anyone I knew back in Russia again. I'm so glad to see you again."
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It leaves him with even more questions, none of which he knows how to put into words for how little sense this makes. There has to be some logic to this somewhere, some reason; he's just waiting for the moment it clicks and he understands what's in front of him. Sooner or later, it has to come, and this uncertainty will wane. Gleb doesn't think he could say the same about the instinct he has to repress to reach for her, to take her hand again, to set both of his on her shoulders or her jaw — far more than he's ever dared, except to consider it in fleeting moments of fantasy, quickly shut down, but what would be a way now of proving that she's here and this is real, no matter how much it doesn't seem like it could be.
"I think you must know something here that I don't," he finally says, though the unmasked confusion in his expression speaks to more than that. "Why would you think that?" He wonders about the two con men who'd been with her, their names and faces ones he remembers from the orders for their arrest, but asking about that, he thinks, can wait.
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Staring at him, smile still on her face, she takes in his appearance. The uniform is gone, everything about him removed from the deputy commissioner she knew. His shoes are the lone exception and her smile softens a bit out of strange fondness. Dressed this way, Gleb is less intimidating, a handsome man in a decent suit doing wonders to strip away that the Red Army's uniform carries with it.
His question brings her back to the moment. Shaking her head slightly, she blinks as if shaking sleep from her eyes. Adjusting the quarters in her hand, she takes another few steps until she's right before him. "I do. I'm sorry, I was so surprised, I almost forgot how strange this must be for you. You have only just arrived, haven't you?" she asks, tilting her head thoughtfully. "I thought that because this place is fickle and strange. It seems to bring people here at random, so I'm glad that it finally brought me someone I know and like."
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She's still smiling, though, and she's close, so close. He would barely have to move at all to slip his hand into hers, something he's acutely aware of but refuses to act on. The knowledge of it alone, her proximity, is enough, more than, when he didn't think he would see her again, even if it probably would have been easier not to.
"I suppose I have," he admits, something like caution in the way he nods. Everything about this, down to the way she's dressed, is unspeakably strange, and it's hard to pretend that anything else could be the case in that regard. If she knows what's going on here, though, where he is and how he got here, then at least she ought to expect as much. "This isn't..." The Dowager Empress's home? He can't say that, however true it may be, though she was there, too. "Where I was a moment ago." He allows himself the barest hint of a smile then, a ghost of a bittersweet thing. "I'm glad to see you, too, Anya."
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Except now she's here. Forward looks entirely different.
"Good, I'm glad to hear that," she say before laughing lightly at her inadvertent parroting of his words. There's something a little off about his smile, something sad to it that makes Anya frown. She doesn't know where he was before, but something tells her it wasn't pleasant. "No, I didn't think you were. Welcome to Darrow, Gleb. It's a city unlike any you or I have known. Everything here is so different, so far from Russia." A pause as she glances down to the small bag in her hand before back up at him. "Would you like some tea?"
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Besides, it's hard to worry much about any of that when she's looking at him, speaking to him, like they're old friends and he isn't her would-be killer. At least whatever this place is, she seems unharmed. No one else came after her, then, or if they did, they didn't get close enough to finish the job. He tells himself he shouldn't be relieved, but he is. The choice he made isn't worth much of anything if she was only going to wind up dead before long anyway. This, though, the sight of her alone, no matter how far a cry from the way he last saw her, makes him that much more certain that his decision was the right one.
He still came close to making a different one, though, or tried to, and nothing can take that back or get it out of his head. Even so, he nods. She clearly knows more about this than he does, and she doesn't seem frightened or at all disingenuous in her offer. It's hard to turn away from that. It's so much more than he deserves — something that, again, is just a simple fact, after what he almost did to her. "Tea and an explanation, maybe," he says, half a question. "I've never heard of any Darrow, but even having only seen this much, I can tell that it must be different." He nods towards her, a slight motion of his chin, meant to indicate the way she's dressed, neither like a street sweeper nor a Grand Duchess, not quite like anything he's ever seen before.
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Her laundry will almost certainly keep. Given the time of day and what Anya knows about her fellow tenants, she's quite certain that no one will be dumping her clean-yet-damp clothes all over the floor. She hopes that today is not the day in which she is proven wrong. It would be such a waste of her hard earned quarters, but how was she to know that her chores would be interrupted by such an unexpected arrival?
Of course she could ask Gleb to take a short detour with her. It would be a practical learning experience, showing him an alternative to a laundry press that they have here and how no one really sends their laundry out the way higher party members did back in Russia. But the idea of sorting through her damp clothes, pulling out the more intimate or delicate apparel to hang dry on her fire escape or in her bathroom makes a faint blush colour high up on her cheeks. Things may be different here, but she's not certain that either of them can handle that Much difference so soon.
Squeezing the bag, she shakes her head faintly, swallowing hard before walking over to the bank of lifts. "I had never heard of it either," she explains she presses the call button, turning towards him slightly as she beckons him over to her. There is a ding and the up arrow illuminates, the doors opening with more grace than the manually operated ones, but still a bit more clunky than the ones in the higher buildings. Stepping inside, she holds the door open for him. "Come up to my flat and we'll work through your questions. The train station doesn't close for a few hours so we have some time to get there after you've had a chance to rest."
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Instead, he follows — this time, not across countries on orders he didn't want to follow, but over to elevators the likes of which he's never seen before, as strange as the clothes Anya is wearing and the American accents of the few people who've passed them by. At least they don't seem to have drawn any attention. He's grateful, suddenly, for the suit he had to purchase. His uniform, he gets the distinct impression, would stand out here far more than it ever did back home, where it only denoted his position and rank. And no one here is likely to be looking too closely at his boots, his jaw tensing slightly when he remembers the doorman at the Neva Club and his presumptions. It isn't worth dwelling on now. It's difficult, in fact, to think about anything but Anya, the slight color in her cheeks, how different she looks from the last time he saw her. She'd seemed so much like she belonged in all of that regalia, but this, he thinks, strange as her clothing may be, suits her even better. She seems neither like a Grand Duchess nor a timid street sweeper — instead, like someone who belongs here, in whatever this world is, comfortable in her own skin, a fact that's made all the more noticeable for the fact that he's currently anything but.
He could have killed her — still remembers the pale expanse of her throat bared for the barrel of his gun, how close he came to pulling the trigger, even if he doesn't think he ever could have done it at all. The longer he's around her, even as he follows her into the lift, the harder it is to get that out of his head.
"A train station?" he asks, surprised, though he probably oughtn't be. "Back to Russia, then." Something sinks in the pit of his stomach. He tries his best to ignore it. He knew what he was doing the moment he dropped that gun, was perfectly aware of what his fate would be when he returned home, and bullets aren't dodged that easily. Maybe in this brief respite, though, he can voice the apology he couldn't before. Gleb can't be sorry that he went, not even that he tried to follow his orders, but he is sorry for what that entailed, and how close he came to finishing the job. He doesn't expect forgiveness, but if she'll hear him out, that's enough, something he can carry with him when he goes to meet his fate. He'll have this image in his mind, too — Anya, not Anastasia, at ease and smiling at him like they're old friends. It's more than he should get to have, and enough to remind him that everything he did was worth it.
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Pressing the button for her floor, Anya gives Gleb a look that is both startled and confused. It takes a moment for her to remember that she hasn't yet explained, that he doesn't know just as she didn't that the train station won't take them that far. That there is no trip to Russia or Paris ahead, at least not as far as she is aware of.
"Oh no, not back to Russia," she explains with a soothing tone as she turns in the corner of the elevator to look up at him. "We can't go back to Russia. The train station is just where you collect the packet of information they keep for new arrivals. It has what you need to get started. Money, keys to your apartment, that sort of thing."
The strangely small phone is something that she is still not used to. It feels like she will break it whenever she tries to use it, especially for those small instant telegrams that make it ping and startle her every time. Anya's fairly certain that Gleb will understand that. How technology has supposedly leapt preposterously forward, but left so many things behind. It doesn't really follow any sort of order. But Americans, or almost Americans, always have an odd quality to them.
A ding, the light above the door illuminating their destination as the doors creak open. Stepping into the threshold, she indicates for him to step out ahead of her. "It's just down the hall, third door. It's not much, but it's my home now."
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The rest would be difficult enough to process, but the fact of that, the weight of it, hits him like a blow, leaves him reeling for a moment, halted in his tracks before he remembers that he's meant to be moving, stepping out of the lift just before the doors close again. He'd been unsteady like this just minutes ago, barely able to stay standing when he realized that he couldn't do what he'd been sent there to do. Now, rather than dropping to the ground, he briefly trips over his feet in his attempt to fall into step with her and not remain frozen in place.
He still doesn't know why he's here at all, what has compelled her to bring him to her apartment to explain all of this rather than leaving it to someone else. Neither as Anya nor Anastasia does she owe him anything; she ought to know that. Gleb nearly says so, but the echo of her own words from not long ago, calling this place her home now just as she had Paris, prompts an exhale from him that might have been a laugh under other circumstances. "I'm glad you found that, after Paris," he says honestly. "So there's no way back from here." Surreal as all of this is, perhaps it shouldn't be surprising, but the words are almost a question even so, like he can't quite believe it. He'd been far from home before, Paris practically a different world from the Russia he's been helping to rebuild and an unpleasant one at that, but it isn't as if he was ever going to be there for long. Everything has been upended now, and he's at her mercy in terms of making sense of it.
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Walking down the corridor Anya stops with her hand on the doorknob. Turning back to look at him, she smiles softly at his slowness. Her own experience had been equally overwhelming, this place radically different from the Paris she'd arrived from. One minute she'd been full of hurt and anger, the next she'd been confused and startled surrounded by bright lights and strangers. It must be much the same for Gleb, even if she doesn't yet know where or when he arrived from. Or why he's in a suit and not in a uniform.
"Paris? How did you know —" she asks, as she opens the door stepping inside the threshold. She cuts herself off, thinking of the men on the train and the wanted poster, his warning to her back in St. Petersburg. "Oh, you must have seen the order for our arrest. I'm sorry. I should've listened to you and never gone with them."
Walking the rest of the way into the apartment, she waits for him to follow her. When she'd arrived they told her that the provided apartments weren't much, but it is larger than anything she's lived in as far as she truly remembers. Of course there are hazy recollections of palaces and spartanly furnished bedrooms, but those could just as easily be another lie. An imagined life made up to comfort herself. She can't trust what she remembers anymore. "I've got an electric kettle and found a tea blend that matches one of the more popular ones back home," she prattles nervously, almost filling the air with words to put him at ease. "You must be tired. You should sit down."
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He doesn't expect anything from her, of course. Any thin hopes he might have had, any vague, unlikely notions that might have occurred to him, they aren't worth holding onto now, not after what's happened. There's no burying what he feels, though, no way to talk himself out of it or ignore it. If there were, it's a very different conversation they would be having now, if she were even here to have one with him at all, which seems doubtful. Had she been anyone else, he would have taken the shot and walked away without feeling an ounce of remorse, his duty done and his mission fulfilled. Anya is different. She has been since he first laid eyes on her, foolish though he thinks he must have been then, smiling at a pretty street sweeper only to wind up further over his head than he ever imagined possible.
Still, he follows her inside, staying a few paces back, taking everything in as he goes. It's a nicer apartment than he's used to, than he's entirely comfortable with the idea of, but that isn't what leaves him ill at ease. The idea of being in her space, as out of place as he was in Paris if not more so for the fact of it being hers, is responsible for that, not helping the half-dazed sensation that's clung to him since his surroundings first changed in the slightest. Even thoughts of that get set aside, though, not long after the door has closed behind them. He comes to a stop in full this time when her words sink in as much as they can, which isn't very. What she says about electric kettles and tea, he barely hears, too stunned for that.
Once — mere minutes ago — it's exactly what he would have wanted to hear. He would have brought her back to Russia with him; he would have kept her safe, no matter the cost. To hear it now, though, cuts more deeply than he could have anticipated, even with the accompanying confusion. "Anya, what are you talking about?" he manages to ask, all but choking on the words. "You were — I was there. I was just with you." She must know that. There's no way she couldn't, however much he might not want to discuss what just happened.
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Gleb is patient, far more understanding than any of the other Bolshevik guards or soldiers she had met. He had said that he was her friend and she believed him. Friendship has value. It's important in these trying and difficult times. It can provide strength where there is otherwise weakness.
Her hand is on the frame of the entryway to the kitchen when the choked out words reach her. Pausing she turns towards him, a confused frown knitting across her features. "Were you?" Now it is Anya's turn to be thoroughly confused. "But you mentioned Paris, so I hadn't thought we'd seen each other again. How could we have just been together?"
Against her will a faint blush stains her cheeks, thinking of the pair of them together seems like such a private concept when it could really mean anything. By the way he's dressed, she doesn't think it was formal Soviet business though. The clothes wouldn't allow for it. "Did I find you in Paris after? Or was it back in Peters — I mean Leningrad?" Holding up a hand she waves slightly to pause her own thoughts let alone his. "Wait, please let me get the tea started."
With that she disappears into the kitchen, hastily filling the kettle with water.
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She doesn't remember. He can't understand how that's possible, but the questions she's asking are ones she should already know the answers to, and he doesn't have the first idea how he's supposed to provide them. No matter what happened after, to tell her that, just minutes ago, he was holding her at gunpoint — the idea alone is nearly as difficult to shoulder as the orders to go through with it. It isn't for his own sake that that's the case, but hers. If she doesn't know about how close she came to being killed like her family, she shouldn't have to.
He can't keep it a secret, though. For one, he doesn't think he could pretend any of this away if he tried. He'd always be too ill at ease around her, when, really, she shouldn't want him to be here at all. Besides, he owes her better than that. While he may not have pulled the trigger, he still nearly did, and that's enough. There's no taking that back, no matter how much he wishes he could. Even if that were possible, he doubts he would have made the same decision if he hadn't come so close to making a different one. Orders are orders, and he's believed in this cause since he was old enough to be aware of it at all.
Anya changed everything, apparently. He still feels off-kilter for it, like he can't quite catch his balance, and not just because the world has so quickly changed around him.
"It was in Paris," he says quietly, waiting to speak until after she's set the water to boil. "I'd come to Paris. You really don't remember this?"
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In the kitchen, Anya's thoughts are a rushed, frenzied mess. Her earlier excitement to see someone that she knows hasn't fully faded, but there is a small pit growing in her stomach. A wariness similar to what she occasionally feels when confronted with having to navigate through the city or to answer something as simple as what her name is. It isn't that she doesn't trust Gleb, for she does in her way, and regrets that she didn't trust him more.
It is simply that there is a wrongness to this. Not enough to start the warning klaxons to go off in her mind, but enough to make her hands shake faintly. Her instincts have kept her alive for so long. But this time she doesn't want them to be right. She doesn't want to be proven misguided in such a large way so quickly after the last time.
The water spills down the sides of the kettle before she pulls herself back to the present. Switching off the tap, she dumps out a bit of the excess before setting it down on its holder and flicking the switch. Smiling to herself for a moment at how easy it is and how wonderful, she quickly pulls out the tea, tea pot, and a pair of pretty but mismatched mugs. With nothing to do but wait, she steps back into the main room.
"You came to Paris?" she echoes with widened eyes, heart skipping an odd beat. "No, I don't remember seeing you at all. I came here after seeing Swan Lake at the ballet, after finding out —" pausing Anya takes an unsteady breath. "They made me a liar, made me believe I was someone I'm not and all for money and an old woman's pain. If I had known you were there.."
The words die in her throat as she shakes her head. She honestly doesn't know what she would have done.
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He could leave it at that. God knows he would like to let there be nothing more to it than that, to tell her that she isn't to blame for the lies of others and move on from there. If what she's told him is true, they're a long way away from anywhere it would matter who she is or who she said she was. He would know, though. If these last few minutes that feel so much longer are any indication, he would never be able to get out of his head what he nearly did to her. She deserves better than that, anyway, the truth from someone, when she evidently believes now that she lied and was lied to. Maybe it's for the best that he has to — gets to — tell her rather than her having lived it. At least no one's life is on the line this time. At least he can phrase it all without holding her at gunpoint.
Her words, the cut-off sentence, echo in his head. What would she have done, he wonders, if he'd tracked her down and tried to convince her then to come back with him, if she'd seen him that night and found him before she could discover the truth? How different might things be now? Convincing himself that he could find a way to make it all work out for the best may have been naïve of him, but what if it wasn't?
He'll never know, he supposes.
"I did," he confirms, nodding once. "I was sent there." He nearly tells her that he saw her at the ballet that night, but that seems at once like more than he's capable of, the image of her still seared too clearly into his memory, uncomfortably beautiful. Everything he saw there had been utterly representative of everything he's spent most of his life with nothing but disdain for, and she'd seemed so much like she belonged; even so, it wasn't just for his orders that he'd barely been able to take his eyes off her. "Anya, there are... some things you should know. Things that happened after that."
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Anya should have known it was too good to be true.
There is always a catch. Just like with Vlad and Dimitry and Paris. There's a catch here too.
Her hand blindly finds the door frame, gripping tight as if that will anchor her, ground her to this present moment. That if she weighs herself down enough the disappointment won't surpass the hope. Maybe it's a misunderstanding. Maybe she's reading too much into what he's saying. But if he was sent to Paris, then there can be only one thing that his superiors wanted him to do: find her. Find the girl who had gone with the escaped con men and aided the rumors, allowed them to flourish, nurtured their growth.
What would they have done with her? Would they care that she was a fake? That she just wanted to live her life and pretend she never met them?
"What things?" she manages to ask, trying to encourage the hope to not go away. "Gleb, why were you sent to Paris?"
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He should lead with that, but he doesn't know how when to bring it up without context would probably frighten her all the more. He's done more than enough of that for one day, the weight of her gaze on him almost too heavy to bear. If her gentleness earlier, in the moments after he dropped his gun, was undeserved, then this is probably edging closer to what he does deserve, though not yet there entirely. If he can't go back to Russia and face the end that would have met him there, then he should at least have to face her. Standing here now, knowing what he knows, he thinks the former would have been the easier option. He didn't go to Paris with any kind of a death wish, but at least that would have been the end of it, and at least he wouldn't have had to see her again. This being so drawn out seems comparatively impossible.
"They sent me there to find you," he says, unable to keep from sounding a little resigned, clearly knowing it's the answer she likely expects to hear. "To figure out whether or not you really were her." What the two options he was given were, he doesn't yet see the need to add. He hadn't wanted to take either of them, and in the end, he didn't, though there was a brief time when he faltered in that. He'd had a duty, and he couldn't fulfill it. In the end, his feelings for her had surpassed that. However important it might have been, however much he might believe still in everything he had to say about it, he could never have lived with himself, having her blood on his hands. "I was going to just bring you home. It wouldn't have been hard to say that I never found you, that you must have gone farther before I could get there."
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Hearing him speak those words, confirming what they both knew, makes her wince. A reflexively gesturing as she squeezes her eyes closed for a moment, nails digging into the soft wood of the frame. They, Gleb's superiors, the Bolsheviks had sent him after her. To find her and bring her to justice or make her disappear as if there was never an Anastasia at all. If she had listened, if she had stayed in St. Petersburg, or found some other way out, then none of this would be. They wouldn't be having this conversation. They could be talking about anything else, focusing on the important fact that they are not in Paris. That Darrow is strange and fascinating and a little scary. That the world is so much bigger and so much smaller than it was before.
Swallowing hard, she steels herself against the onslaught of emotions. Against the questions racing through her brain. Against the memories and ghosts that linger in her mind long after she wakes up in the morning. "I'm not her," she says softly. "I never was Anastasia."
It feels strange to say out loud again. Here she has never had to explain herself, never had to pretend to be anything other than Anya. She doesn't have anyone to talk to about the nightmares that still cling to her. No one knows that sometimes she slips up when she starts to write her name, beginning to write one that probably was never hers at all. Opening her eyes, she takes a step away from the doorway dropping her hand back to her side.
If he had found her, brought her home in secret and lied for her, then what would happen to him? Surely they wouldn't forgive him for being a second too late. Bolsheviks never seemed the charitable type. And her, what would she have done back in Russia? Another secret to keep, this time the loss of her own meager life.
Her voice steadies as she speaks again, this time a little louder than before. "Would they have believed you? What would they have —" she stops, taking another shaking breath fighting against overwhelmed tears that hang behind her eyes. "You never would have hurt me."
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Anya as she's standing before him now wasn't there, though. She didn't see the way he crumpled when he realized he couldn't do it, or stand so close with her gloved hand against his head. He can tell her — he will, he has to — but it still hurts to know he'll be proving her wrong when he wants to do anything but.
"I wouldn't," he says, and shakes his head, not quite able to meet her eyes for the tears in them. There's nothing he can do except make it worse, no matter how much he wishes that weren't so. "I won't. You have my word, Anya. But..."
He nearly chokes on his own words. There's so little he would like more than for what he needs to tell her not to be true, but it is, and he doesn't think he would be able to pretend otherwise. She has a right to know all of it, anyway. Were she anyone else, he might seize this advantage, a moment of having the upper hand, and make the absolute most of it. With her, it's different. She's already left him utterly undone, turning his back on everything that he thought he believed, that he still does. It would still be true even if he didn't tell her, she would still have Romanov blood coursing through her veins, and he doubts he'll ever be able to reconcile that with the girl he knows, the one he fell for.
"You are her," he says finally, voice quieting, his echo of her phrasing deliberate. "You always were. You were... about to tell the world, before I found myself here. Your grandmother called a meeting with the press."
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Hearing Gleb's words, the conviction in his voice even as it quiets frustrates her. How dare he repeat what Dimitry and Vlad made her believe, what she wanted to believe. That she had a grandmother who lived in Paris, that she was a lost princess, that she had a history that others knew and could help her remember. He's repeating this lie that he warned her about.
He's acting like it's true and she hates him a little bit for it. For believing what she can't, what she won't any longer. For coming to Paris knowing if he's right, if she was Anastasia, than she would not be allowed a happily ever after. She would not be left alone.
"No, you're wrong," she repeats with a fervent shake of her head, a defiant set of her chin. "I can't be here. The Dowager Empress wouldn't even look at me, she told me to go away. That I was a liar like the others. Why would she change her mind?"
The whistle and click of the tea kettle startles her. "The water's ready. I should get the tea. We need tea."
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Again, it occurs to him that he could walk this back. He could claim to be the mistaken one, the person lacking a piece or several of this puzzle. In theory, it would be so, so easy, and the temptation is strong. His conscience has enough else weighing on it, though, and lying to her would only add to that, not least when she’s just asserted that he wouldn’t hurt her.
He won’t. He can’t. It may hurt him to try to convince her of what the truth is, but to lie about what he knows now to be fact would only be doing exactly that, even if she would never be aware of it, even if no one else ever knew.
"I don’t know what changed," he says, careful to keep his voice quiet and calm as he watches her move towards the tea kettle. He should wait, probably, but if he does, he may well lose his nerve, and all of this is going to be difficult enough as it is. "I don’t know what happened after the ballet, and I don’t know what she said to you. But Anya, I do know that it’s true."
Gleb swallows hard, his voice softer still when he speaks again, only just within earshot. "I wouldn’t tell you if I weren’t certain. Why would I want to do otherwise?"
She knows who he is, what he is, who his father was. There’s nothing in the world he would like more than for her not to be a Romanov, the tsar’s youngest daughter. He doesn’t even know how she survived; logic should dictate that she can’t be her. Somehow, though, she is. He believes that now as fervently as he believes everything he was taught as a child, two things utterly, painfully at odds.
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Her hands shake slightly as she pours the hot water into the readied pot. Staring down into the swirling depths, Anya forces herself to take deep steadying breaths. It's too much. She didn't ask for this. Doesn't want this. She's barely had time to get used to this place, this time, this life. It isn't fair. What right does he have to say these things to her? To tell her the Dmitry and Vlad hadn't been lying? Or perhaps not that, that their lies had somehow stumbled into the truth somewhere along the way.
Placing the lid on the pot, she closes her eyes for a moment. White knuckled hands grip the edge of the counter as unasked for voices drift through her mind. The laughter of girls, the bark of long-dead dogs. A gentle-yet-stern man's voice placating and encouraging. A woman with her long white dress. A smell of lilacs that won't go away.
Ghosts. All of them.
Deep down Anya knows who they are, who she wishes they were. She had just started to believe back in Paris, but that notion had shattered. His words that he wouldn't tell her if he wasn't certain drift through the door. She believes that. It's a dangerous things to believe. That the youngest daughter of the last tsar of Russia is still alive. So many do not wish for her to have lived. But how can she do anything else?
Opening her eyes, she carefully loops her fingers through the handles of the teacups. With a cloth wrapped around the teapot, she walks gingerly back into the room. Passing a quick glance at him, she focuses mainly on the task at hand. Setting the cups down on the patterned runner on the small table, she crouches down besides the table to pour tea into the cups. The emotions have left her hands unsteady. Setting the pot down, she lifts a cup up to him. "I'm sorry, I didn't ask if you took milk or sugar," she says playing into the rote act. Lifting her gaze, she locks eyes with him searching for truth in their dark depths. "How can you be sure?"
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