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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 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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Will you? she wants to ask, but she knows that he is telling the truth. He had always struck her as a capable man, able to find a way to survive in a time when there was no guarantee. Russia was swept red with more than just the color of the Party, the fervor of the cause. Anya knew as well as he did that survival had not been guaranteed for him if he were to return to Russia. If they sent him to kill her, gave him an order than he did not obey then his superiors would make an example of him. A failure to follow through, allowing the last Romanov to continue to live would be a form of treason.
Even the rumor of her existence had been dangerous, sweeping like a warm breeze through a freezing Leningrad. Hope had brought the Bolsheviks to power. It could just as easily take it away from them once more.
The streets are not that busy. There's a smattering of shoppers, people coming and going from jobs and offices. It will get busier the closer they get to the train station. The massive tree and all of the lights, with a skating rink that will bring out the children. It's still early enough that many are still at work. A smile slips once more onto her face at the simple fact of Christmas after so many years without one. It doesn't feel like the ones that she had known, half-recalled from the recesses of her mind. It won't feel the same without the family she'd had the last time one had been so openly celebrated. But the brightness of the feeling, the merriment still feels contagious. It isn't New Year's Eve, a bigger, more festive holiday back home, but it is still welcome. The day of the year Christmas falls on is off, but she has heard from the few other Russians she's encountered that she'll get used to it.
"Neither have I," she agrees. With a turn of her head, she considers him outside of all that he has told her, all that he is. Gleb can't be much older than she is. "It's been a long time since Christmas was celebrated in Russia. But this isn't a Russian Christmas. It's &mdash" pausing, she waves a hand towards the garlands creeping up the lampposts, the displays in the windows. "Something entirely else. Much noisier."
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This is something the likes of which he's never seen before, neither when the Tsar was still in power nor after. If he'd felt out of place in Paris, even having bought a suit to wear, that's even more the case now. Anya, though, looks like she's learned to fit in here. On one hand, he can hardly fathom it. On the other — of course she has. He hardly knows her, he reminds himself, though it doesn't feel that way, especially now that he knows she was the girl he saw when they closed the gates all those years ago. Still, having seen her transform from a street sweeper into a princess, both seeming to fit just as easily, and then whoever this person is that she's become here, it's hard to see her as being anything less than adaptable.
She's incredible, he thinks, and knows he can never say.
"It certainly seems like it," he says, trying not to sound too judgmental, though he's not sure how successful he is in that. It really is, at least from what he can gauge at a glance, nothing like the Christmases he recalls celebrating as a child. Giving that up hadn't been difficult, anyway. Having it seem so ubiquitous now, though, signs of it on every block, is admittedly jarring, if not as much as some of the rest of this. "This doesn't look anything like what I remember."
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She can't say that she fits here, but she's learning the steps. There are quite a few ways in which Darrow doesn't resemble any city that she has ever heard of before. The technology makes her head ache and the customs are odd. Longing for Russia, both under the tsar (her father she mentally corrects) and the communists after, is an ever present feeling.
As they walk she tosses a few glances towards Gleb wondering what he must be thinking. The suit is nice, it must have come from Paris. It suits him in an odd way, though she doesn't think he would agree. The boots are much like the ones she had back home. Of course they are. A good Russian would never toss away something so practical unless it was a must.
"Me neither." Her thoughts return to the holiday brightness around her. "I know that it has been years, but even the ones from my childhood don't match this. They have so many lights, trees full of them, and everything is sold for half price. They have a lot of traditions that I had to look up." A moment passes before she adds. "They have a very helpful public library. It's two blocks from here," she explains as they come to an intersection, waiting for the light to turn.
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Again, just the fact of wanting or needing that seems unnecessary, foolish, but if he'd felt out of place in Paris, that's become far more the case now. He doesn't belong in a world like this. He fought for one wholly different, and no matter what else has changed, he still believes that he was right to do so.
Reconciling the fact of that with the feelings he can no longer try to ignore for her, knowing now who she is, isn't exactly an easy task. There's nothing he regrets, though, except perhaps thinking that he would be able to follow through with what he was told to do in the first place. Had he realized sooner, had that not been the case, he wouldn't have the unshakable image in his head of her at gunpoint, how she'd looked in the moment he'd intended to pull the trigger. The rest, though— He did what he knows was right, for the good of Russia and perhaps beyond. He knows, too, with just as much certainty, that there's really only one word for what he feels for her, regardless of the fact that she is, however impossibly, Anastasia Romanov.
He won't tell her, of course. That's something to which he doesn't have the right, certainly not now, even if she asked what stayed his hand. For all his attempts to talk himself out of it, though, it's remained true, maybe now more than ever.
"And nearly a hundred years' worth of history to catch up on, I take it," he adds, glancing over at her once they come to a stop. "If even Christmas is so different, there must be plenty else that is, too."
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She does not want to go to work later. Isn't in the mood to deal with grimy glasses and grabby hands, but there isn't much in the way of alternatives. A job is a job, even here. It does what it is meant to. Besides the idea of staying at home alone with her thoughts holds little appeal.
"Yes. It's quite a lot," she nods in agreement, shaking her head slightly in wonder at the vastness of it all. "Not all of the history in books makes sense here. It's oddly fixated on this place, but the others here who are from the future, our future at least, they're a help."
The light changes and they cross the street. They're almost to the train station now. It's on the block up ahead, people emptying out of it in a steady enough stream that tells her a train just arrived in. She reaches out and touches him arm to still him just outside. "You have to tell me where you live," she rushes, looking up at him. "Before I go, after you've picked up your packet. You need to tell me where they've assigned you to live."
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He nearly asks why, but between the look on her face and her hand on his arm, he doesn't really have the heart to question her. If she wants to know, he might as well tell her.
"Alright," he replies, nodding once as he carefully moves out of the way of people walking out of the train station, reaching for one of the doors, though he lingers like she did before they set out for here. The smart thing to do would be to turn and walk away and put all of this behind him, but evidently he hasn't been doing much that's very smart of late. Now is no exception. "I'll tell you."