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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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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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Maybe it would have been the kinder thing to go back to Russia and meet his fate there. He'd have had neither her life nor her death on his conscience that way; he wouldn't have to live with the knowledge that he'd fallen for the last of the Romanovs. None of that is anything he could tell her, either. She doesn't need to know any of it — not what he willingly accepted as his own future when he decided not to follow his orders and not the way he feels for her. It wouldn't help anything, wouldn't change anything. None of it was ever meant to go this far, anyway. She was a pretty girl he just happened to notice. There should never have been any more to it than that. Instead, he's here, staring at her and hating every word he has to tell her.
"Neither is fine," he says, quick and distant, unconcerned with the tea given the subject at hand. "I — Anya, there was a press conference. You were wearing a gown and a tiara. You knew it then, who you were. You outright said as much."
He falls quiet then, dropping his gaze from hers, unable to look at her as he continues. "I think I knew before then," he adds, softer now. "I just didn't want to believe it."
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Anya keeps looking at him even after he pulls his gaze from hers. She's searching for answers, any sign that this is just another lie that has been spoon fed to her. It makes no sense for him to lie to her. That day in his office overlooking the Nevsky Prospekt, he had told her as much. That Russia was better because of the end of the Tsar. That spring had finally come for their people. He had seemed to believe that so fully, that the idea that she was a missing Romanov would be anathema to him.
He seems so uncertain, so distant and far away that she finds herself believe him. What he says conflicts with her own experience from the night she arrived her, but deep in her heart she knows the truth. Perhaps she has always known. Closing the door on those memories had been the easiest thing to do.
Taking her own cup she looks down at the swirling contents. It's black as well. This isn't a time for pairing with vodka-soaked sugar cubes. Her money had been so hard-earned that she hadn't justified using milk and sugar so easily in years. Arriving here hasn't changed that habit. "I believe you," she says equally soft. She does believe him even Anastasia doesn't feel fully like a person she can be now. Her angry, her frustrated still simmers in her chest, but she hasn't even managed to tell him what is happening. There is no way that she can send him out into the greater city without that. "I think I always knew, but..."
Shaking her head, she rises to her feet and sits on the sofa. "You need to know where you are now, Gleb. You have to let me tell you. This place is called Darrow and it is a city that is nothing like St. Petersburg or Paris."
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Any other time, that would probably be far more consequential. He's so used to order — the new order of things, the one he's fought hard to implement — that to be so suddenly upended ought to be the most concerning thing in his life right now. Gleb is having trouble focusing on anything but Anya, though. That's been the case before; at least this time, he hasn't been instructed to kill her. No, the weight on his shoulders is of a different variety, the knowledge both that he tried to do it and that he couldn't, each haunting him in a different sort of way. She's a Romanov, the tsar's daughter, a threat to everything he's worked towards. It should have been so easy to pull the trigger. But she's also the pretty young street sweeper who caught his eye, whom he spent all that time trying to get a glimpse of again.
At least like this, she doesn't look like a good Russian girl from their time anymore, but neither does she look like a princess. It's simple, closer to normal even while being a far cry from anything he's seen a woman wear before. (He's pointedly avoided looking at the trousers she's wearing.)
"I wouldn't lie, Anya," he says, gentler than he means to, far too much emotion in his voice. "Least of all about this. If I had any doubts... I would tell you." He'd take any excuse possible not to have to confront this particular truth, heavily as it weighs on him. At least he could have continued trying to pretend like it wasn't her, like it was all just a game that could be easily set aside when it never was, not entirely.
A decade ago, he saw her behind a closing gate. That's a difficult thing to fathom now, that she was right there the whole time, a stone's throw from the house where he spent his childhood.
Clearing his throat slightly, shaking his head to try to bring him back to herself, he exhales slowly. "So what is it like, then, this Darrow?"
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Despite the confusion and pain, Anya feels relieved by this news. It hurts to know, to realize that it wasn't all lies. That she had yelled at Dmitry and Vlad, had spurned them, before carrying that pain with her to this strange place. For weeks she has had to carry all of that with her. To believe that these people who had purported to help her had actually been working against her. At this moment she doesn't fully believe that they always knew she was the actual Grand Duchess Anastasia, miraculously alive. In all likelihood it was a happy accident. All three of them had stumbled together to help and use one another.
But Gleb. Gleb has no reason to lie to her. He followed her to Paris and she knows the price that he must have been willing to face to turn back from orders. The ultimate price. He does not strike her as the type who would coddle her. In fact, he had been the one to warn her away from playing pretend, from going along with Dmitry and Vlad. Now here he is, suddenly in Darrow, telling her that she should believe the very thing he told her not to.
A princess, her. That means that she does have a family. Another home exists out there even if she can never get to it. All of the things that she had prayed for, had hoped for in the cold nights, are actually possible. Just not here. It's uncomfortable to know the truth when she can do nothing with it. The pain from that is just as real.
"I know you would. You saw them," a pause as she amends herself. "Us. You saw us back in Yekaterinburg."
The fire and blood, the ash and the screams. Her nightmares have lessoned since that night before the ballet, but she still hears them. Her family taunting and begging her. Those dreams linger long after she awakes.
With a heavy sigh, she takes a steadying sip of her tea before retreating back to the safety of his question. "It's an entirely different city from any I have known. They say that the year here is 2017 and from what I have heard we are not in any country that we could find on our maps. It seems vaguely American though."
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Did his father know, he wonders? Was that part of why he was so shaken the night he came home, ignoring any questions, the knowledge of letting the Romanov daughters live weighing heavily on his shoulders? Or was it the death that rattled him so, despite the fact that he'd all but signed on for it, done the duty that he had to have known was coming.
Whatever the case, at least his father actually did it. He, on the other hand — he had every chance to follow through with his orders and end the life of the Tsar's last living child, and yet, in the end, he was entirely incapable. It wasn't about what she represented anymore; it was about who she was, the girl standing in front of him now, making him tea when she owes him nothing at all. Maybe he hasn't told her how far it went, how very near he came to killing her as he was ordered to. He hasn't even spelled that much out yet. He'd be surprised, though, if she hadn't already started piecing some of it together. She must know that if he was sent to Paris, it couldn't have been for just a friendly visit, or to bring her home only to make sure that she was back within Russian borders.
For just a moment, though, he shakes his head, drawn from his thoughts by what she's telling him. "20— Anya, that sounds insane."
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He had called out the youngest daughter on that day in his office. She had felt the fear and guilt coil up within her, rationalized that it was just a game. That there was no harm in playing pretend. Playing at Romanov was deadly, but what else was it? But he told her then and has told her again, the girl that he had seen had been her. She can still hear the sound of the soldiers, bored as they welcomed her and her siblings. The stretch of sky above the wall. The unfamiliar people that she had passed by, their faces partially blurred through time, with not as much attention paid as she later would have. There had been the belief that this was for a little while. That the gates would not always stay closed. Gleb was there. The link between them is so much more than what she had already thought it was. There is more pain in it.
Her mind still won't let her think of how she lived that night. Anya's brain is barely holding herself together as she once again comes to grips with that fact that she and the missing Grand Duchess are the same person. The memory with Dmitry. The fizz of champagne on her childhood song. The lullaby.
No, she can't go back there. Not here, not in front of Gleb who has just arrived and just brought her such news. He was going to kill her. He didn't, but the very fact that those were his orders has created a different divide. The anger she feels towards him is more directed at his bosses, at the news he bears than at the man in the worn suit before her. They are both dressed like utterly different people than they were when they first met. She isn't a frightened little street sweeper anymore, but the callouses are still on her hands.
"I know it does," she says gently, but with a resolve that comes from it being the truth. "Darrow is full of people from all over time and space, with all different stories. Some were born here, but others just arrived. There's even a little Russian club, for people to remember home." Shaking her head, she smiles slightly despite everything. "I'm just Anya here, with a job and apartment. They'll have a packet waiting for you, telling you were to live and an identification card. It's almost like they were waiting."
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As such, he won't take this kindness for granted. She's had some kind of a hold on him since he first laid eyes on her, anyway, the pretty young street sweeper who could so easily have blended in a crowd and yet stood out to him all the same. He hadn't been lying when he told her he'd looked for her. He just would never have guessed while he was doing so that she would be the presumed-dead youngest Romanov daughter.
God knows that he would never have expected that he would fall in love with her, of all people, but he's aware all the same that it wasn't common sense or some misplaced mercy that stilled his hand back there, what already feels like so long ago but couldn't have been more than half an hour. Neither of those would have been right. It's the fact that it was her, and that he feels something for her that he hasn't for anyone else. It isn't his place at all to say so, if it hasn't already made itself painfully obvious — though she wasn't there, this Anya, so maybe she doesn't know, maybe she never will — but he carries it with him all the same, a small weight in his chest, something tucked away and secret, though there's no reason for it to be forbidden here.
He won't die now for having let her live. Gleb isn't entirely sure that's sunk in yet.
"People knew we'd be here?" he asks, trying to come back to himself a little. "Do they... If you're just Anya here, do they know who you are?" Presumably not, since she didn't know, tried to deny it until just a few moments ago, but he has to be sure. She'd be in no danger here, but it isn't an instinct that has yet waned, that desire to keep her safe. It's the least he can do for her.
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It is this fact, coupled with the sincerity and pain on his features, that told her to believe him. That made Anya trust his words.
But it is still something that she cannot afford to dwell on. It will be the subject of later thoughts, when she is alone and he is cared for. Secure for a moment.
"They must," she shrugs uncertain. Darrow is a place that knows more than it shares. She has no reason to think it out of character that the city would withhold such crucial information about her past. "It seems to fill in the blanks of people's lives, of their being here at a whim. There are entire traditions that seem to just overnight." Here she pauses, her entire body shuddering at the memory of the Purge. So many new screams. "I'm just as safe as I would be in Leningrad. Or Paris. No matter who I am. And you, Gleb, you can be whomever you want."
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With his failure, they almost certainly would have sent someone else in his place. Had she stayed in Leningrad or returned, there's every chance she would have been found out eventually. She may be just Anya here, but if whoever is responsible for this knows her true identity, then she's still in danger of the wrong person finding out.
Now that he's chosen a side, though, he can do everything in his power to prevent that from happening. She's a Romanov, yes, but she's Anya, too, the woman he hasn't been able to help but love. Minutes ago, he'd been ready and willing to die for her. That wasn't a momentary impulse, a brief lapse of judgment. He looks at her, standing in her strange apartment in her strange clothes, as beautiful as he's ever seen her, and Gleb knows he would do the same again in a heartbeat. It would be worth it.
It's her last words, though, that really give him pause. For years, he's thought he knew exactly who he was. In the span of an instant, though, all of that has been thrown away, leaving him with an identity to be entirely reconfigured. Trying to get used to this place alone, based on what she's told him, would be difficult enough, but with that on top of it...
"I'm not sure who that is anymore," he admits, only half-aware of doing so, on an exhale that might, under other circumstances, have been a laugh. As it is, for all his claims of having a sense of humor, he can't quite summon one up right now. "I thought I did, but..."
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Anya does know that safety likely doesn't exist in any of the places that she named. Not true safety, especially not if what he has told her (what her heart tells her) is really true. That she is that girl, lost to gunfire and blood in the moonlight all of those years ago. The lone survivor. It explains the jewel that the nurses found. They must have suspected that she was more than just an amnesiac teenaged orphan, a girl escaped from a farm or a factory or a brutal husband. They gave her a name to hide her, to shape her future. They helped to roughen her hands, prepare her for the world of the Bolsheviks. She has always been grateful to them, now more than ever.
Here she is still Anya. She's been given Mikhailovna as a second name if someone presses for it. More of than not she's allowed to slip by with just her first name, politeness and the odd openness of all of the modern, Western people stopping them from trying to place her by name alone. That change is another that she is grateful for. The question remains, if this place knows, which is truly must given how omniscient it seems to be, will a new identification card show up tomorrow in her mailbox? Will she suddenly find her photo on a card naming her Anastasia Nicholaevna? Do princesses dress like she has come to? Do they hold menial jobs and read and work for more?
A shiver runs down her spine as she takes another sip of her tea.
Pulling herself from her thoughts, she's surprised by his candor. She has only known him as he presented himself, as the deputy commissioner whose father had been amongst those men in Yekaterinburg. A man who believed in the party and it's hope for the people of Russia. A man who had once been a boy who had seen a girl as they closed the gates. Her mouth opens slightly in faint surprise as the pieces fall together. The youngest daughter. Her.
"It's alright. I know better that most what it's like to find out how to be someone, or something new," she says with a soft laugh at the odd humor in the truth. "This city seems to have so many people who were something different before her. Revolutionaries and rebels, students, children. So many possibilities even if you cannot leave. It's different here. Almost freer in an odd way."
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What he does know that he didn't before, that's settled in him with a heavy, unquestionable certainty, is that he would give his life for hers in a heartbeat. It would be better than the alternative, and maybe even easier here, where there's no country for her to reclaim, no revolution for him to devote himself to. A part of him thinks maybe that's better for them both; they have no shadows to climb out from under, no past to haunt them. In theory, at least, that could be the case. Actually believing that, though, is a different matter entirely.
All his life, he's believed in one thing. He believes now that she truly is the lost, presumed dead princess whom he saw behind a gate when they were both much younger. Other than that, he wouldn't even know where to begin.
"Everyone imagines being someone they're not," he says, half to himself, his expression bittersweet. Her words had been an excuse then, a way of downplaying a serious matter. Now they seem almost too true, what sounds like the very foundation upon which this place has been built. There are things he's thought about, of course, and some of them are even the case now, but that doesn't give him any more of an idea of how to start to live like this. "I suppose we are now, aren't we?"
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This isn't a place where who she actually is will matter to most. There are some, of course, that might lift an eyebrow or ask a question. The world will keep going. History has moved past her family, turning them into a dream of history. She found a book in a used bookshop, stared at the pages that lamented their loss until tears blurred her eyes for reasons that she had chalked up to cultural pride. The voices that haunted her dreams had argued otherwise, rising like ghosts from the deep to call to her. Anya they cried. Anya.
Now she knows it was more than just history that hurt her. It was that loss made fresh. An entire family blotted out.
But here, the reality is that tomorrow she will still go to work and be the same as she was yesterday. Being a tsar's youngest daughter, the rightful heir, is inconsequential. There is so much that she needs to unpack. A door that has been firmly propped open by him. Resentful coils within her, but she brushes it away, saves it for later.
Lifting her gaze from her now empty cup she stares at him, eyes locking with his. The soulful, honest look in those dark eyes makes her think of all that has transpired. That he was once a boy who watched her be locked away. That she might have seen him. A shared past that she's only just fully realizing. Now they have this shared present, another in this strange future city. Smiling ruefully as he echoes the words she once told him in that office overlooking Nevsky Prospekt, she nods. "That's exactly what we are. Someone we're not. Slightly new people."
Setting her cup down on the table, she gets to her feet and offers her hand to him. "Would you like me to show you to the train station? Where your packet is?"
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Neither is there any undoing the gun he held just inches from her, intent on pulling the trigger, even if he'd never have been able to go through with it. He'll never forget that, doubts he'll ever be able to look at the pale column of her throat without imagining his pistol aimed at it. That's on him. He could, at least in theory, have stopped it before it ever went that far. He probably should have. Unquestionably, he should tell her, she should know, that same gun feeling ten times heavier than it ought to where he has it tucked away. How to do that, though, is entirely beyond him.
"I would appreciate it," he says with a weary smile and a short nod. "If it's not too much trouble. You've done plenty already."
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Surprise briefly mottles her expression as he lets go. It had been a guiding gestured, offered to assure him that it is going to be okay. That this place is strange and over-the-top and the time is all wrong, but at least he is not alone. She is here. Once Gleb had said that they were friends and despite everything that has happened, all of the ways that she disregarded his warning, she hopes they can still be that.
He is a piece of home, after all.
"It isn't trouble at all. A stranger helped me, my first night here. This is the least I can do and I'm not a stranger," she offers with a smile before gesturing for him to wait a moment. "Let me just get my coat."
Moving over to the small front closet, she pulls out the familiar burgundy coat from Paris. It's a pretty thing, perhaps a bit old-fashioned and not warm enough, but she can't part with it just yet. Besides she has a sweater on. The layers should help. Sliding it on, she looks at what he's wearing. "Do you want a hat? It's December out there. I wouldn't want you to get sick out there. We should get you a coat," cocking her head to the side, she makes a study of him. "I could borrow one from my neighbor. I don't know him very well, but —"
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It’s another part of him that’s lost now instead, but it is — it has to be — a price worth paying. In this world or any other, she'll live. She'll represent everything he spent so much of his life fighting against, but she'll be alive. At some point, he's not sure when, either that afternoon in his office when she was brought in and he ignored what should have been obvious all along or mere minutes ago, that became the most important thing to him. He owes her honesty now. Whatever she chooses to do with that, at least she'll know the truth instead of acting on some sense of him that she got when he gave her tea and a warning.
If he could go back to that, he would, but he can't. All he can do instead is own up to what he did, the same as he would have if he'd been able to return to Russia, though in an entirely different way. At least this is less likely to end with him being shot, though he wouldn't blame her for a second if that were the response she had. That gentleness she offered in the moments after he dropped his gun was nothing he deserved, anyway.
"I — I can't," he continues, the same words he'd used earlier, that she apparently doesn't remember. "Not without — There's too much you don't know. That I need to tell you."
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But she hasn't felt like a proper Romanov in years. The Bolsheviks took the shine off that name, stole years of her life, stole her family. All she has is a handful of things. A stubborn pride that the hardness of those years never took from her. Her father's eyes. A knowledge of when to wait and listen. A distrust that never fully goes away.
The way he's looking at her, in her apartment in this strange city, the tone of his voice, all of it works together to make her wait. Her expression closes down, the open smile, the forced good cheer despite the strangeness of this place and what he's told her is replaced with a blank stillness.
She's afraid of what he has to tell her. She's afraid of what more of her story exists in his memories.
"What is it, Gleb?" Her voice is solemn, her eyes giving away her faint hope that it is just an overreaction. "What else could there be?"
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"I told you I was sent to Paris," he says, both his voice and the set of his shoulders tense, his gaze not quite fixed on hers. It's too hard to look at her while he says this. "To find you. To find out whether or not you really were Anastasia." He exhales unsteadily, feeling no more put together than he did in the moments after he realized he couldn't do what he'd been told to do. "My orders were to bring you back if you weren't her." His pause practically speaks for itself, but to leave it at that would still be letting himself off the hook too easily. She needs to hear this from him. "And to... to finish the job started ten years ago if you were."
All the conflict, all the reluctance, he'd felt when first given those orders must be visible on his face now. Even before he left Russia, he didn't want to have to do it, bent over backwards trying to convince himself that it was just a game that went too far and that he could bring her home without consequence, certainly without handing her over to his superiors. It had been right in front of him all along, though, something he'd seen in her eyes even before then. Now, he can't stand what he sees in them, like she's hoping not to hear exactly what he has to tell her.
"I didn't," he adds somewhat abruptly. "I... I meant what I told you earlier. I would never hurt you. I couldn't even if I tried. I know that now." His movements slow and careful, not wanting to give her the wrong idea, he retrieves the gun from under his jacket and sets it gingerly on the table beside the cup he'd drank from. He has no need for it now. "I couldn't do it. What they wanted me to. I don't think I would ever have been able to. But I went, and when I couldn't talk you into coming home with me, I... came too close."
Gleb swallows hard, tugging at his collar like he'd done before, though it's mostly ineffectual now. "I don't expect anything from you, Anya. But you deserved to know the truth."
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From the moment that he had told her that he had been sent to find her, she had expected this. It has only been minutes, but the time since then feels like hours, stretched out and wearing thin. The holidays are a stressful time, full of longing and odd customs that she's out of step with. Her job isn't ideal, but it's a job. Throw those things together and her patience, her ability to persist is starting to wear thin.
Her eyes briefly flutter close, her entire body flinching away as he puts a voice to what she had feared. The Party was never going to just let her live. Not as Anya, a little street sweeper playing at pretender. Certainly not as Anastasia, last of the Romanovs. Bringing her back to Russia, for reasons she knows aren't kind. They would make an example of her, a public firing squad, a false trial, any number of things they have done to lesser prisoners. Another way to squash out those rumors that waft around like winter snow.
But Gleb has said that he believes that she is her. The lost princess. What is more cruel is that she believes him and knows that finishing the job would mean one thing and one thing only. Her time in Paris was meant to come to a startling end.
Opening her eyes again, she watches him, sees the pain on his features as he pulls the gun from his jacket. Her hands squeeze the fabric of her coat as she steps both hesitantly forward and then instantly back. A gun in her sitting room. A gun that was meant for her. Her heart is pounding, pulse quick in her ear. "A truck backfiring, that's all it was," she says softly to herself, thinking of the day that she meant him. A crack of gunfire was supposed to bookend their story. Another flash of fire, the screams once more belonging to her. Her gaze is fixed on the gun on the table, the cries of her family, the voices of the soldiers echoing through her mind.
"You would never hurt me," she echoes again. She had believed that then and she believes it still, evidence staring her in the face. He has the gun, if he meant to follow through with it he could have. He could have killed her downstairs, finished the job from Paris that should have ended in that cellar in Yekaterinburg. A flicker of bright pain starts behind her eyes, tears pricking them. It's too much. Her thoughts are spinning in a circle.
It feels like an eternity passes before she pulls her gaze up from the table and back to his eyes. Her hands fall gently to her side. "When she speaks her voice is hollow, cracking on the first word. "You need to go to the train station. I told you that I would take you there and I will. We should go before it gets any later."
Turning back to the door, she turns the handle, opening it slightly before she turns back to him. "Thank you."
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He doesn't even know how she lived, and he doubts she does, either, but ultimately, he can't say that he he cares much. The important thing — the only truly important thing — is that she did. Everything else stopped mattering the moment he realized he couldn't pull the trigger. Maybe it did even before then, when he was begging her to give up her claims of being a Romanov and come back to Russia with him, knowing perfectly well that he wouldn't have turned her in. To do so may as well have been killing her all the same, and he never wanted any harm to come to her. He would tell her as much, but there's every chance she wouldn't believe him, and with good reason. For a moment there, he intended to kill her. For a moment there, he thought he could do it.
It turns out, he was wrong about a lot of things. Not anymore, though. Not this.
Unsure what else to do, he nods once, a short duck of his head, hands clasped behind his back, as if she were one of his superiors and not someone for whom he'd been prepared to throw away his career, his life, everything he's spent so long working towards. For perhaps the first time in his life, he believes it may be a good thing that his father didn't live long after the deaths of the Romanov family. Gleb can only imagine how disappointed he would be after all of this. Maybe he'd even have been the one to give the final order when he returned to Russia, his mission unfulfilled on either count, the last Romanov daughter alive and known to the world.
A part of him still can't help but think that he should be there, should have to face the consequences of what he did. He was fully prepared to, at least. Maybe, though, in a way, this is the more painful option. Death would have been quick, if nothing else, and he'd have had that last memory of her, the gentleness in her eyes, to hold onto.
"You have nothing to thank me for," he says, taking a cautious step towards her and the doorway, something bitter and likewise hollow and maybe a little surprised in his voice. He wouldn't have blamed her for just turning him away any more than he would have blamed her for taking the pistol he'd set on the table and turning it on him. Whatever he did or didn't do, he can't take away the fleeting intention to follow through with what he'd been ordered to do any more than he can take away the memory of holding her at gunpoint. As it is, that gun stays in its place, next to his mostly empty cup of tea, and he has no intention of coming back for it. Whatever she chooses to do with it now, that's on her.
He takes a deep breath, pausing, not quite sure if he should close the distance between them or not. "Once you've gotten me to the train station, you don't have to stay," he tells her. "I understand. I'm sure I can make sense of whatever's there."
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I wish Dmitry were here.
The thought rises unasked for to the top of her mind, surprising her as it does. It isn't that she hasn't thought of him, hasn't always had him somewhere on the edges of her mind since that night she came here. But Anya has never wished for him to be here. She isn't certain she forgives him to leading her to be a liar. They had both believed that night before the ballet, had shared that memory of that long ago parade. She had believed it, felt the sun on her skin and seen his dirty, young face. Now Gleb has told her that it was true, that Dmitry hadn't fully made a liar of her.
It had been real.
"Yes I do." Her voice is soft in the open doorway. Her thanks is an odd one. She hates him for even coming to Paris, for holding that dreadful gun to her as he says he did. But he never pulled the trigger. He never fired. What's more, he has told her what he did, who she is, why he came to Paris. None of that was mandatory. He could have let her live in ignorance, hoping that what she knows must be the reason was not strictly true. That they both don't know how cruel the Party can be.
A cold wind pulls at the loose strands of her hair, running down her spine. She steps out onto the walk, the scent of the ocean rising to meet her. Closing her eyes, she takes a deep breath, thinking of St. Petersburg in the winter, the Gulf of Finland pushing against the shore. The long moment is all she needs to push herself forward, the memory carrying her along. "I shouldn't leave you, but I have chores I was in the middle of and my job —" she turns back to him waiting for him to catch up with her before walking down towards the road back into downtown. "It is fairly self-explanatory, but there's just so much. The people here are friendly, most of them. Some of them are incredibly strange and horrifyingly rude."
The idea of leaving him hurts her. She shouldn't do it, but she's not wrong. There are banal tasks she needs to throw herself into, so much new information to process. She just needs tea and quiet and a little cry.
"It can be beautiful though. I like the Christmas lights."
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He could argue the point, but they would probably just go back and forth, and neither of them needs that. For that matter, he isn't entirely sure he wants to know why she thinks she has anything to thank him for. He tried to warn her once, it's true, but everything went so far beyond that so quickly. Besides, he'd still been intent then on ignoring what he saw in her eyes before she left, what he must have known on some level before she fled the country and he was given his orders to go after her. It isn't as if that warning made a difference. Maybe it shouldn't have. She is, as she told him, her father's daughter, and he hates the fact of that just about as much as he cares for her. If they ever wind up back where they ought to be, she'll be with what little remaining family he has, and he'll—
Well, he was perfectly aware of what he was setting himself up for the moment he realized he couldn't take the shot.
"I don't want to interrupt anything you were doing," he says with a shake of his head when she cuts herself off, finally following along after her, with the stance of a dutiful soldier. "I'll be fine, Anya." He managed to navigate Paris on his own, after all, no matter how uncomfortable he may have been there. Already he gets the impression that Darrow will be similar in that regard, if different in just about every other. Besides, he has no mission this time, just a life that doesn't line up with his. Stepping out after her into the brisk December air, he pauses at the last of her words, more thoughtful than quite as serious as he's been. "Christmas," he echoes. "I haven't seen Christmas celebrated since I was young."
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