"Close to certain, then," Gleb murmurs, glancing up at her almost questioningly. "As certain as we can be." She's right. Nothing is guaranteed. His being here at all is borrowed time, and he's always been acutely aware of how easily and without warning that could run out. Maybe that's all the more reason to make the most of it, to take her at her word. They would never have had this chance anywhere else, after all. She would have been the lost Grand Duchess, found; he would have gone home to a firing squad. He's never really prized his own happiness, always focused more on the cause and his contributions to it than his personal life, but maybe they should get to have that, if they can. Anya should, without question. He thinks he just never really expected that to involve him, the span of time between his telling her he loved her and Dmitry arriving all but negligible.
Maybe he should tell her that, but he doesn't know how to find the words for it. There's so much that he would say if only he knew how. For the moment, though, at least now that they're inching towards something less painful, it seems like something that can be momentarily set aside rather than fumbled through. They've already gotten to the heart of it, anyway, he thinks — that they never had a real chance to be happy. Perhaps she's right, though, and they can now. He wants so badly for that to be the case, so much that it feels impossible, that his chest aches with it. It would be easy to say that they might not have been meant to have that and they ought to accept it, but she's here, they both are, and that has to count for something.
That she came here first does, too. Gleb wouldn't have expected that, though it isn't as if she's said anything that would give him a reason to believe otherwise. It's because of what happened before, he thinks, with her coming here to tell him what Dmitry told her. He doesn't want to harp on that — doesn't want to tell her that it's unexpectedly relieving to hear that he wasn't just her second choice — but he's quietly relieved, or reassured, maybe, to hear that's the case.
"I'm sorry I made you wait," he says. "I just didn't think I could see you, after..." After the elevator, after everything she said that afternoon, after trying to sleep and getting to watch her die again instead. That is even less worth mentioning now than any of the rest of it. "But of course I want that. I've always wanted that. I never wanted to lose that chance in the first place."
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Maybe he should tell her that, but he doesn't know how to find the words for it. There's so much that he would say if only he knew how. For the moment, though, at least now that they're inching towards something less painful, it seems like something that can be momentarily set aside rather than fumbled through. They've already gotten to the heart of it, anyway, he thinks — that they never had a real chance to be happy. Perhaps she's right, though, and they can now. He wants so badly for that to be the case, so much that it feels impossible, that his chest aches with it. It would be easy to say that they might not have been meant to have that and they ought to accept it, but she's here, they both are, and that has to count for something.
That she came here first does, too. Gleb wouldn't have expected that, though it isn't as if she's said anything that would give him a reason to believe otherwise. It's because of what happened before, he thinks, with her coming here to tell him what Dmitry told her. He doesn't want to harp on that — doesn't want to tell her that it's unexpectedly relieving to hear that he wasn't just her second choice — but he's quietly relieved, or reassured, maybe, to hear that's the case.
"I'm sorry I made you wait," he says. "I just didn't think I could see you, after..." After the elevator, after everything she said that afternoon, after trying to sleep and getting to watch her die again instead. That is even less worth mentioning now than any of the rest of it. "But of course I want that. I've always wanted that. I never wanted to lose that chance in the first place."