Anya is sick of looking for reasons why not. There are many of them, a list as long as her arm, but she doesn't want to read it any longer. She doesn't want to think of reasons no and instead focus on the yes. If every love waited for everything to be just right, then no one would be with who they loved. Certainly not her and Gleb, not her parents, not her great grandparents. A princess and a revolutionary were never meant to fall in love, but they have. Neither of them fully chose the lives they were born to leave, but rather their parents did. They can pick where they go from here.

The elevator comes drifting back into her mind, her insistence that she couldn't choose between them. A pointless assertion given that she feels that she has chosen or perhaps has had her choice made for her. She didn't want to make them fight for her, didn't want to go to the victor of some battle of egos. But Dmitry's words had shaken her, like he had thrown down a gauntlet. He hasn't even come to her door to apologize or explain. She doesn't want to always be the one chasing after him to right wrongs they both have made or made worse.

Letting herself be pulled closer to him, she rest her arm on his shoulder, hand on the back of his neck as she looks up at his face. There is something reassuring about his arm around her waist, grounding her in a way that she didn't know she had missed until it was gone. "I never did. I'm very stubborn," she points out the obvious, not mentioning that she had worried her hope and optimism had been misplaced.

Nodding she knows what he means exactly and it hurts her heart. "It was never too late." Her voice is barely above a whisper. They are so close that a kiss would be an easy thing to have, to reach up and press her lips to his and wipe away the brutal sadness of the last kiss they had shared. But as much as she wants that, Anya isn't certain if she can have it. It might be too soon, things still so fragile. "I know. And I'm here."