It will never be Leningrad. Not to her. Not even when it was changed to Petrograd could she give up on St. Petersburg. It was the city where she was born, where her father was born, where so many of her ancestors called home. It was the beating heart of a Russia that no longer exists. It was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics when she left, the borders closing like a wall behind her as she jumped off that train. Sometimes when she passes by the train station, she can hear the song of farewell echo just as much as she can hear the gunshot that took Count Ipolitov from this world and into the next. He never got the freedom that she knew, never got his escape.

"It is," she says inclining her head towards him just in time to catch him smiling softly at her. A warmth heats her cheeks and she is glad that the cold and dark conceals it from him. How could she possibly explain it when she herself doesn't fully understand it? The heavy weight of the conversation from minutes before is shifting away. It is the most that they've ever talked about it, possibly will ever talk about it, but there had been a faint release in it. Like a breeze from a window that has been opened after being stuck shut. A smile starts to bloom across her face as the water comes into view and her apartment building along with it. "When the summer comes, I will have my windows open all the time, just to take it in. It is nice now, not so noisy or crowded, but we'll walk the boardwalk in the summer and just enjoy it, won't we?"