homelovefamily | [no one falls in love under fluorescent lights]

[no one falls in love under fluorescent lights]

The party had been different.

It certainly had more in common with the occasional ball that she remembers from her childhood with their bright lights and beautiful dresses and so much champagne than the few other parties she’s been too. Memories keep slipping in more and more each day, leaving her a little unsettled. How does she fit that life, those memories with their ups and downs against the last ten years? It feels like she is two people.

Still she had gone to the party and marveled at it, feeling both at home and strangely disconnected. The cocktail she’s had has done nothing to help those feelings. Deciding to not stay too late was for the best.

Her coat isn’t buttoned, the bright red standing out against the paleness of her dress. The curls in her hair have loosened to waves and she’s certain that she’s leaving a trail of glitter in her way as she walks home. It’s late, but it doesn’t feel far and the cool air feels good after the warmth of the crowd.

Valentine’s Day is a foreign holiday to her, dedicated to a saint that she can name and speak to, but feels no connection to. It’s supposed to be all love and romance, a day to cherish those you love and pursue those that you want to love you.

She doesn’t know much of that kind of love. Anya’s felt that quickening of her heart, the warm pleasant feeling that comes from the mere sight of someone special, especially when their attention is fixed on her.

Her mind might be full of tumbled up thoughts of love and the past and how far she’s come from where she started, but the years have taught her to always be hyper aware when she’s alone at night. Darrow might be safer than some places she’s been, but it is still a city. Movement coming from a cut through walkway catches her attention and she freezes under the light of a street lamp, body tensing for a fight.

The figure moves and is caught by the light from another streetlamp. Realizing who it is, she relaxes a bit. Not fully, but more than she was thirty seconds ago.

“Good evening Gleb,” she greets, trying to sound calmer than the adrenaline in her veins says that she is.

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"I don't want to be someone else's cause."

It is a miracle that she is still managing to keep walking. Her feet already know the way back home even if her mind is racing, her thoughts a mess. A vice has clamped down around her heart, squeezing tightly. This is the first time that what they both knew about the likely endgame of his return to Russian has been spoken aloud. The Party would not stand for such a brazen betrayal. They would have made an example of him, just as they would have made one of her. Perhaps they would have secreted him off, worked him until he was broken beyond repair.

The end result remains the same — Gleb would not have lived. She would have stayed alive, remained a lost grand duchess found, but not him. Anya has a hard time imagining that life. She spent months practicing, rehearsing and memorizing, playing at something that is actually the truth. But the memories she has of her childhood as scrambled, filled with light and warmth, but also coldness and fear. One thing is certain: the Anastasia whom the world imagines from those postcards died in Yekaterinburg, if she ever really existed at all. In an odd way with each piece she recalls, the more that Anya feels that she is both Anastasia and something new, something more than just Anya the streetsweeper/dishwasher/nursing assistant. She just does not know quite what that is.

Staring at Gleb, her eyes are fixed on his. Her hand lets go of her purse and she reaches out for him, touching his arm. "I am glad that you lived," she says almost urgently. "No more bloodshed for either of us."

It isn't until she's spoken that Gleb realizes how his own words might have come across. He frowns slightly for it, unsure how to explain that that's not how he sees her at all, and certainly not why he was unable to kill her. Had some other woman been Anastasia, the lost grand duchess, it wouldn't have mattered, and he wouldn't have needed to think twice. For the good of the country, for the fight that's been his since he was old enough to take it on for himself, he would have followed his orders with a clear conscience. That much, of course, it's better to left unsaid, implied but not stated outright. To do otherwise would be cruel, and this subject, now that they've — or, rather, he's — broached it, is a fraught enough one as it is.

His beliefs haven't changed, though, just for love of her. He almost wishes it were that simple, knowing he would be far less conflicted, but he doesn't think such a thing is truly possible, and it certainly isn't the case now. For someone else — for many, perhaps, the reason her existence would have been so dangerous in the first place — she might well have been exactly that. To him, she's not her family's name or her title or what she would have represented. She never has been. That is, instead, simply something he's had to learn how to grapple with when it comes to his feelings for her.

"You're not a cause," he tells her, shaking his head gently. "Not to me. I..." Again, he doesn't quite know how to say what he wants to, but having been the one to bring this up, he might as well see it through. "I betrayed the cause I fought for," he says, the words coming slower now, each careful, deliberate. "And I don't regret doing it. I can't claim that cause as my own anymore. That's what I meant."

Glancing down at her hand on his arm, wishing he could take it, lace his fingers through hers or brush a kiss against her knuckles, he lets his expression grow a little bittersweet. "It isn't because of what you are that I couldn't do what I was sent to," he adds. "You're more than that." She is to him, anyway, and a part of him hopes she can hear those unspoken words. Before she was ever Anastasia, in truth or pretend, she was the street sweeper who was startled by a backfiring truck, whom he couldn't help but look for in the time that passed after that brief encounter. Everything else has built from there. He thinks she'll always be Anya to him, though. She's the woman he first fell for, and that's not so easily undone.

Relief rushes over her at his statement that she isn't a cause. Anya knows it. Knows that she is a real person, flesh and blood. But her family...the Romanovs were meant to be people from God, angels made flesh to work hard for the people of Russia. They were meant to be better than the rest of their homeland, for better or for worse. Blessed for bringing good, blamed for everything else. If it wasn't for the cause of ending the tsar's rule and the cause of wiping out his bloodline, then she would still have a family. She would still have her memories.

So many stills and what ifs.

If anyone of them had happened then she wouldn't be Anya. She doesn't know who that girl is. They just would wear the same face, own the same name (even if Anya would only half-turn her head at the sound of someone calling it after her).

"All right," she says softly her expression turning gentle as his turns bittersweet. Curiosity is there as well. If she is more than than a cause to him, then what is she? How much more? Does she make his heart beat faster? Does he think of her when she is not around? How far into the corners of his mind are thoughts of her kept? "How much —"

Her mind chases after those thoughts like a cat after a mouse for a moment longer than it should. None of those are questions that she will ask right now. She cuts herself off, kills the question right there as she takes her hand off his arm.

"All right. I don't know if it matters now, as we are both still alive." Pulling her gaze away from him, she looks up at the signs on the street corner, gesturing absently for the way they are headed next. "It isn't far now."

Despite being unfinished, the fragment of a question sends a spark of fear down Gleb's spine, a worry that he's said too much, shown his hand. At the same time, it's hard not to think of an answer: всё. Just as soon as it occurs to him, he knows that, even if he thought she might be the least bit receptive to the way he catches himself thinking about her too often, to the feelings he knows there's no sense in trying to ignore, she wouldn't want to be considered everything any more than she would want to be someone's cause. It's an exaggeration, probably. She has, though, become something of a focal point, turned his whole damn world upside down, left all that he'd once believed and fought for called into question. To him, it would be close enough.

Even if she had asked, though, he couldn't have answered. If there was a moment between them, some quietly exchanged tenderness, that moment has passed, the abruptness with which she looks away and removes her hand from his arm making that clear enough. He looks away in turn, taking a deep breath, silently hoping that he hasn't made too much too apparent or made her uncomfortable. It may be impossible to fully ignore or set aside how he feels about her, but for her sake, he can let it not matter, still there but lying dormant. Just this — whatever she'll give him — is enough.

"We are," he agrees, watching as they pass familiar buildings, most of them darkened by now. "Strange, but lucky." Gleb isn't sure he manages to seem quite as convinced as he should, but he doesn't want to explain to her why that might be the case, that a part of him still remains certain that he should have had to go home to face what would have awaited him there. It's the same reason he knows he would never have run, though it would have been easy enough to, already being so far from Russia. Another train to another country, distance between himself and Paris, and he could have disappeared. There's too much of a sense of duty in him for that, though. Perhaps his loyalty has been shaken, but that much remains unchanged. "That much, I think, will always matter."

The completion of her question, the answer he doesn't tell her, all of that possibility just hangs in the cool air between them. Would he have told her that she was more to him than just a notion, a thing worth dying for? Would he say that she's a woman, flesh and blood, and that doesn't have anything to do with ideals at all? Anya wonders if she's a fool for thinking that she is more than just a failure of duty to him. If she was a friend and that is why he stayed his hand. She wants to believe that they are friends now, that she hasn't been fooling herself. That her heart isn't leading her astray. It hasn't before. It led her to Paris and while that didn't go quite the way that she had hoped for, that she had fled in angry tears back to the hotel, what Gleb has told her offers odd promising.

Without all of her memories, her instinct and intuition is all that she has left. It is tell her something now. Encouraging her to keep going, that it will be okay. Another possibility remains.

"Yes, exactly. There are certainly worse things. It could be expected and unlucky," she lets out a small laugh, a mirthless thing as she tries to grasp at a levity that has fled as awkwardness returns. Did she bring it back when she moved her hand? She was just reacting to his lack of response, going forward when there was nothing telling her to stay that particular course. "But you're right. Luck will always matter, as will having a strong and steady heart."

Those words, thought months ago as she looked over Paris are echoed here. Fear, luck, and having enough courage to keep going. All of those are necessary, but for this city and for this walk. The smell of the cold ocean makes her sigh happily, memories of Russia carried on them mixed with sand and salt and fish. "When I close my eyes, the air smells like it does on the coast of St. Petersburg."

A strong and steady heart. Gleb isn't sure if that's something he can lay claim to or not — if the way she turned his head and his heart and his loyalties, the way he can't seem to get her out of his thoughts or shake these foolish feelings for her that have welled up inside him, is a weakness, or if his resolve in going to his own death so that she might live is a sort of strength all its own. He knows which he would prefer, of course, if only because it's easier than the notion of being a traitor to his own cause, but he supposes it doesn't much matter either way. These things have all happened, become immutable fact, and all he can do is try to pick up the pieces and live with that aftermath. He couldn't take any of it back now even if he wanted to, and he doesn't. That he loves her, like his name and where he was born, is simply something that is; for her to live is worth his death, no matter what form that may have taken.

They've spent more than enough time on that subject for one night, though, especially when it's one they've never addressed outright before. Besides, she sounds too content when she mentions St. Petersburg — it doesn't occur to him to correct her on the name and point out that it's Leningrad now — for him to want to take that away from her. "At least it's one thing that's almost the same," he says, looking back over at her with a faint smile. The reminder of home, albeit not his first home, is indeed a welcome one, however different their surroundings might be. Then again, he doesn't much care where they are. To have her walking beside him is enough, even if it means resisting the temptation to take her hand in his or wrap an arm around her shoulders and draw her close. The chill in the air, mild as it is, might give him an excuse for the latter, but he would know his real motivation, and as such, can't bring himself to act on it. "It must be nice, living out near the water."

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?"

It's strange to be thinking that far ahead. Since arriving in Darrow, Gleb hasn't been able to do so, too caught up in trying to make sense of the present to consider the future, even one that's only a few months off. Chances are, if the past two months are any indication, that time will pass far more quickly than it currently seems like it will. Even so, there's a moment where it feels odd to be trying to make any plans at all, as if there's anywhere either of the two of them could go from here. People vanish, he's heard, and not the way that people back home would, where everyone knew what that really meant. That's such an abstract concept, though, that he hasn't thought about it applying to them. Maybe it's just that it's hard to believe that she could want that — some nebulous time spent together when the weather turns warmer. She's here now, though, and he's already told her the worst thing about himself that he possibly could, the one that's the likeliest to send her running. He's not sure what it means that she's still here, but he's grateful for it.

"Yes," he agrees, as if he could do anything else, his smile widening just a touch as he sees her starting to do the same in turn. "I suppose we will." The boardwalk is all closed down now, only a handful of shops open year-round, but the structures all still stand. It's easy to imagine how beautiful she would look, illuminated by the colored lights, but he tries to set the thought of that aside quickly. The present is far more important, even if he has to bury a faint disappointment that they're nearing her building. At least the discomfort from moments ago has subsided, leaving them to end the evening on what he hopes is a nice note. "Something to look forward to, perhaps?"

"Yes, certainly something to look forward too." Anya can't quite imagine what summer will look like here. Her mind can conjure up laughing children and beach picnics and far fewer clothes than the summer holidays of her youth. She hasn't had a chance to relax and enjoy nice weather in years, either working or walking through it. For Gleb, she assumes the story must be similar. There had been wars going on, new societies to rebuild. The promised spring didn't come quick enough.

She gives him another smile before moving to extract her keys from her too-small purse. Holding them in her left hand, she guides them to her apartment door, glad that there aren't any stairs for them to walk up. In her heels that would be almost treacherous.

The conversation has turned back to a nice, mellow note, but here at the door of her flat, she is almost sorry that the night is truly finished. It always had to come to an end. They couldn't keep walking for forever, but part of her wishes that it could go on. But barring inviting him in — an idea that makes her heart pound — this is all that there is left.

Sliding her key into the lock, she turns it and opens it just enough before turning back to him. "Thank you for walking me home, I appreciate it," she says softly, as she looks up at him. Then an impulse seizes her and she takes a step and brushes quick kiss against his cheek. It's more of the ghost of a kiss than any actual contact.

Returning to the ground, she steps back into the doorway. "Goodnight, Gleb. Please get home safe."

And just like that, she steps into her apartment, sparing a brief glance back at him as she closes the door.

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[no one falls in love under fluorescent lights]

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