homelovefamily | [oh your hands can heal, your hands can bruise]

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gleb

[oh your hands can heal, your hands can bruise]

It's been over a week since Anya has seen Gleb. Pushkin has seen him though, evidence of Gleb's quiet coming and going from her apartment when she's not been there is able to be found if one really looks for it. And she has looked for it. She searched for notes, for some sort of sign that he wants to see her, even a little. That hope quickly faded as the days passed. Things in the elevator had been left too broken, too heavy. She doesn't blame him for avoiding her, but she doesn't want it to on for forever.

This past weekend had been illuminating, the bright colors, the variety of human relationships and people all on display. That had been freedom, that had been hope. Anya had felt twinges of awkwardness as she had inquired as to the various meanings of different colored flags. To say that what she had learned had been illuminating would be gravely misrepresenting it.

It had offered her hope.

A possibility, albeit a faint one, glimmered just in sight, and hopefully not out of reach. A flexibility that she had not previously known.

However none of that mattered if he wouldn't even look at her. She had to speak to him, had to explain what she had said that day, what she felt. If he wasn't going to come to her, then she was going to come to him. So on Monday she had started hanging out in the lobby of his apartment building, loitering there in her free time on the hope to see him. By Tuesday she'd come to sit in a chair there, taking the elevator a few times on the hope that she would encounter him. Today she's done away with any of that pretense and is waiting outside his door, loudly conversing with his neighbors as they pass by.

She knows he can hear her.

Eventually she comes to stand against the door, pressing her ear against it as she knocks. "Gleb, please come out," she pleads with him through the door. "I'm not leaving until you let me explain."

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It isn't intentional, not at first. Before they all got stuck in an elevator, he and Anya had been coexisting well enough — awkwardly, to be sure, but they were at least on speaking terms, meeting up occasionally to exchange custody of Pushkin and make stilted small talk. Things have changed, though, since then. There's no taking back any of what was said, and no matter how much that hurts, Gleb supposes it's for the best. It's better that he knows what she really thinks: that he wouldn't have married her, though he never had a chance to consider that for himself, and that he was a fool to think he'd stand a chance with her. She may not have outright said the latter, but she didn't negate it, either, and it seems apparent enough to him now. Why would she have wanted to be with someone with whom she didn't see a future?

Just as he'd barely been able to look at her that afternoon, then, it becomes easier simply to stay away from her. He checks in on the dog when he knows she won't be there, he works as many hours as he can get away with for the distraction of it, and when he sees her in the lobby of his building the next Monday, he turns as quickly as he can and exits through the courtyard. It feels cowardly — foolish, again — but he isn't sure what's left to be said. The last thing he needs is another argument or reminder that she's in love with someone else. He's too tired for that.

The lack of sleep, he's sure, isn't helping. Usually, that isn't a problem he has, but lately he's managed only a few brief hours at a time. Every time he tries, he sees glimpses of that night they relived from their childhoods behind his eyelids, watching her and her family get shot, or seeing her face above him as he bled out in her arms, stupidly telling her that he loved her. None of this would have happened if he hadn't. It would still hurt, but nothing would have changed, and that would make it infinitely preferable.

Maybe then she wouldn't be waiting outside his apartment. At first, he thinks that the best thing to do is just ignore the sound of her voice, but he realizes soon enough that he should have known better. Anya has never given up on anything that easily. Finally, visibly exhausted and more than a little distraught, he comes to the door and opens it. There's no sense in trying to hide anything. She would probably see right through him.

"Anya, please, just go," he says, the words a heavy, resigned exhale. "I'm begging you. I can't do this with you. Don't make it any harder than it already is."

Her birthday has come and gone, slipped by with little regard. Waiting for him, pushing Gleb to simply speak to her again is all she really wanted which is what had brought her there in the first place. A need to see him, to explain herself, to break through the clouds again. She isn't wholly to blame, she knows she isn't. Everyone had played a part and the elevator scene hadn't helped matters.

But she has to have hope. Having faith in things to get better, at love finding a way is a bright light that has sustained her for so long. She isn't going to give up on it now. Not without trying.

Honestly she hadn't been expecting him to open the door. Taking a step back instinctively as the door gives way, she look at him, unshaven, with dark circles under his eyes and her heart hurts. He's hurting, exhausted and in pain and she's partially responsible that.

"I will go, but only after I tell you what I couldn't in the elevator. Please, just give me that," she pleads, voice soft. "You said you would never turn me away, so please don't start now."

Gleb has every intention, at first, of standing his ground, saying he can't, that it's too painful to be around her and know that he can't be with her. Perhaps someday, that won't be the case. He loved her from a distance for months, building a friendship with her without any hope of those feelings being reciprocated. He'd like to have that back, to return to a time before he ever stupidly told her how he felt about her, when there was a hint of some sort of promise but nothing tangible, nothing real. The trouble now is that, having been with her, it's too hard to consider that he won't ever be again, and too hard to be around her after the words that have been exchanged between them. He could have been kinder in the elevator, but he'd been too taken aback by her assumption; a part of him has been reeling from it ever since. She should have known, he thinks, how much he loves her. It wasn't for the sake of proving a point that he died for her, but he did still do so. It's still just there, something for him to attempt to come to terms with, and while that's still true, it hurts too much to be around her and be reminded of what he lost.

Before he can get a word in, though, she tells him that he told her he would never turn her away, and he realizes that she isn't wrong. At the time, too, he'd meant it entirely, everything faintly tense between them, like there was electricity in the air, but easy, too. He'd been so relieved to see her alive that he doubts he could have said anything else. Now, as badly as he wishes she would go, he won't go back on that word. Whatever she wants to say, he can let her say it, even if it only wounds him more in the process.

Besides, he's seen her die, or almost die, or whatever that night was so many times these last few days, he can take some comfort in her presence again, the reminder that she's here, she survived.

"Alright," he sighs, holding the door a little further open and standing aside so she can step in if she'd like. "I did say that, so... You can come in." He doesn't plead any further or tell her not to take too long. He thinks she'll know. For that matter, he doubts she would want to spend much time here anyway, no matter how persistent she might have been in getting him to let her into the apartment.

Anya never expected that she would fall in love with him. She never expected that she would love him at all, especially not when she first met him that day on the Nevsky Prospekt. He'd been a figure on the periphery of her life, giving speeches that she always just seemed to miss. Then a truck backfired and their lives were rocketed together, her hands shaking as she accepted the broom from him. When she was taken into his office and he told her of what she now knows is their shared history, she didn't know what to make of him. She feared him and resented the fact that he represented this entity that wanted to keep her in Russia, who warned of danger even as he smiled. He offered her friendship and she trusted him a little, for reasons that she doesn't know how to explain, but quickly brushed off.

All of that has changed. Now she loves him. She never meant to, but now that she does, after all that they have been through, their odd friendship that bloomed into something more, she can't imagine being without it. These past few weeks have been agony, a pulsing wound on her heart that aches. She hurt him and he hurt her. The hurt she caused him wasn't intentional. She trusts the same is true for him. They just have to push through it.

Exhaling in relief as he opens the door a little more, her eyes shining as she steps through the gap and into the apartment. "Thank you," she offers him, feeling stiff and like a stranger in a familiar place. It was barely over a month ago that she kissed him in this very spot for the first time, his mouth hot on hers, her body thrumming electric at the feeling of his hands on her.

If she was wearing a coat, she wouldn't bother to remove it. Instead she keeps her hands folded in front of her, twisted on the strap of her purse to keep from reaching for him.

Now that she is here, she doesn't know quite where to start. There are so many places it is hard to choose.

"You were never a fool," she says picking what feels to be one of the more important details that she's run through in her mind in the last week. "I didn't mean to hurt you that day in the elevator. Dmitry's words took me by surprise and I just spoke out of turn, but..." she trails off, looking up at him, watching his reacting keenly. "I'm still in love with you."

Perhaps it's short-sighted not to expect her to get right to the point. Perhaps he should be relieved that she does. Any smalltalk right now would be stilted anyway, and though he would never outright say so, not in so many words, he doesn't want her here. It's too hard to be around her. The sooner she says whatever she came here to say, the sooner she can leave and he can get back to licking his wounds in peace. It catches him by surprise even so, the echo of what he said in the elevator during those awful few minutes, words that have echoed in his head in the days since. They still feel true now. The mistake was his. Had he kept his feelings to himself, had he never admitted to her what he'd known for months prior, had he not let himself believe that those feelings might one day be reciprocated, none of them would be in this mess. Anya would be with Dmitry, not stuck with a choice she should never have had to make and that seemed a fairly self-explanatory one from the start, and he wouldn't have lost anything. They would all be better off that way. Maybe he would even be happy for her.

It ought to be a comfort to hear her say that he wasn't a fool, but caught off-guard and already exhausted as he is, Gleb winces anyway. Revisiting that conversation in any capacity is nothing he's remotely interested in. Were it not for her reminding him that he once told her he would never turn her away, he thinks he very well might have tried to insist that she go, much as he never thought it would come to that. It cuts as deep now as it did then; it doesn't change the reason why he said what he did in the first place. He won't dispute that she spoke out of turn, less than pleased to have so many things decided for him at once, so many words put in his mouth, but she must have had a reason for it, and he doesn't see how it could be anything good.

With that seeming like the best place to start, he's about to try to say as much when she gets to the last thing she adds, and he goes still, staring at her with unmasked devastation. It isn't fair to hang that over his head again. He hadn't thought she would be so cruel, even unintentionally.

"Anya, I..." Trailing off, he turns his gaze down to his feet, uncomfortable with such open vulnerability. "I have never stopped loving you," he says, quieter this time. It's just the two of them now; there's no audience. He can say the things he didn't get to that day, too, even if he doesn't quite know how to. "I couldn't if I tried." One corner of his mouth lifts just slightly, a bittersweet, rueful expression. "I don't know why you think I wouldn't love you enough to want... a future with you, but if it was anything I did, then I am sorry for that."

He takes a deep breath. There's no way to avoid this entire conversation being as awkward, as uncomfortable, as the last time they spoke, but at least he can do so more openly now. "And I was a fool. I should never have said anything about how I felt. I... I wish I hadn't. Then this would be easier for all of us."

Maybe Anya loves him — and cruel to mention it or not, he can't believe that she would lie about such a thing — but telling him that is a far cry from telling him that she wants to be with him. She loves someone else, too, who's already made clear that he won't be with her if there's anyone else in the picture. After everything, it's hard to believe that whatever she feels for him now could override that.

Edited 2018-06-26 09:11 (UTC)

As he starts and then trails off, Anya's grip tightens on her purse strap tightens, color blanching from the knuckles. Her nails dig into the palms of her hands, the pinch startling her enough to relax slightly but not let go. He can't even look at me, she thinks with her heart sinking. How had so much damage happened so quickly? The desire to find a way to roll back in time, to go back to before Dmitry told her that he loved her, before it all went so sideways sweeps through her. But she doesn't want to go too far back. Reliving that horrible night again and again holds no interest to her. The image of Gleb dying, the feeling of his cold lips against hers, her father's shouts, her mother's screams. All of it wakes her in the middle of the night. New ghosts have taken up residence with the old ones. She doesn't want Gleb to be among them.

A startled little gasp escapes her as he says that he never stopped loving her, that he couldn't. No one else is around to here him say it, to see her response. Even Pushkin is at home, likely drooling on the sofa. It is just her and him.

"I don't want you to try to stop," she says without a thinking even though such freedom with her words was what got her into trouble in the first place. "It wasn't anything that you said or did that made me think you wouldn't want —" to marry me goes unsaid in the pause. "A future like that. But our history and I thought my being a Romanov might make you regret loving me eventually."

Now it is her turn to look at the floor, the scuff on the toe of her boots, worn and sturdy and incongruous with the short circle skirt she's wearing. Biting her lip, she shuffles her weight from foot to foot for a moment before making herself stop. She is a Romanov, she isn't ashamed of that. Fixing her posture, she lifts her head to look at him.

His next words ache. Taking a step towards him, she releases her purse which swings free around her shoulder as she reaches out a hand to him. "Please don't regret saying how you felt. I don't care if it might be easier." Her voice is urgent, insistent and commanding in its softness. "I would love you even if I didn't know you felt the same way."

It still isn't easy to hear. Gleb still feels like a fool, listening to her reasoning, beginning to understand that what he'd believed to be the case about her statement in the elevator may not be true after all. Wrong or not, he can't help but think that she should have known him better than that, and that it's on him that he didn't. None of what he did was to try to win her affection or to prove himself — it was simply that he couldn't have done otherwise, couldn't have borne the weight of that on his conscience, feeling for her the way he does — but he would have thought it self-explanatory. He promised to hear her out, though, and so he does. It's not as if he can blame her for that, anyway, given who and what he is and what he almost did once, even if she mercifully never lived through that. Of course she would think that her name, her blood, would keep him at a distance.

The things he once believed, he suspects he'll always believe. Those matters just aren't as simple as he'd once thought them to be, and neither of them ought to be defined by the wrongdoings of their parents. His father may have saved her, but he still shot children. That isn't a very easy weight to bear, not when Gleb can still remember the sound of those screams, when he's watched what happened in that basement, however quickly the world may then have changed around them again. He chose her that night they repeatedly lived through, that he's seen too many times since they last spoke, just as he chose her back in Paris, just as he would now, if that were still an option.

"I died for you, Anya," he points out, frowning slightly, his voice still quiet. She's close enough now that he could touch her, and he's practically desperate to do so, to curve his hand against her jaw or rest both against her waist. He does neither. That sort of thing isn't in the picture anymore. He does, however, take the hand she's held out to him, not wanting to seem as if he's rejecting her, even if he can't do anything more than that. "I was going to, back home. And I would again now, if it came to that. So I..."

Sighing, he shakes his head just slightly. "Nothing could make me regret loving you. Not your name or where you come from or anything that's happened here." He can't be sure, not really, if that means he would want the kind of future with her that she decided in the elevator that he wouldn't. It's nothing he ever got to consider before, and now, it's too painful to do so, knowing that he couldn't have it even if he did want to. "But why wouldn't I regret saying it? What has it done, except made things harder?"

He can't very well think that she's here because she's choosing him, though he wouldn't ask that of her at all. It hurts, though, to have her tell him she loves him without any reason to believe that anything will come of it. Unintentional or not, it feels like salt in a wound, and he's too tired to try to hide it. "I love you, and... you might feel the same, but what does saying that change?" Left unspoken is that she still loves someone else, but he doubts she needs the reminder any more than he does.

Hearts are odd, fragile things. Love was never something that Anya had given great amounts of thought to as a child. It was a given in certain amounts. Her parents would love her, as would her sisters, and God. She had expected to have loves that came and went, parts of the scenery of her adventures but not the main event. Her parents had an intense love, one that withstood so much and had pieces that still don't make sense as different as they were. Her own sisters had their own flavors of love: Maria with her young guard, Olga and her officers, Tatiana and her Malama. So many hopes in those loves, so many lives that never got led.

None of those had felt like they would be right for her and she had never paid love too much mind.

How her heart has betrayed her. She has two loves, powerful and overwhelming and completely unexpected. Here one stands in front of her, disheveled and hurting and all she wants to do is wrap her arms around him. To show him the power of her love for him.

"I know, but —" she stops herself, color high on her cheeks. Gleb is right; he did die for her. The feeling of his heart ceasing to beat under her hand will always be carried with her, a fear that she hopes to never be made real. That same hand is now clasped in his, her fingers worked between his as she lays her other hand over it, pulling it closer to her without meaning to.

Holding his hand near her heart, Anya fights the urge to smooth out his hair, to hold him, to tell him that it is fine, that she is here now and he can go back to sleep. How presumptuous of her, given that she assumes she is partly to blame for his exhaustion. She hasn't slept that much either. "Harder for me?" She balks, shaking her head. "Yes, but we can't change it. Would you rather that you hadn't told me? That I would forever be left to wonder what it would be like if you kissed me? If you held me close? To talk myself out of loving you thinking that you saw me as nothing more than fellow loyal Russian? I believe that would be so much harder."

Lifting her chin, she releases the hand that she laid over his, still grasping his hand with the other. Gently she reaches up to nearly touch his left cheek, her hand almost imperceptibly brushing over the scruff. "Love changes everything. There is nothing that we cannot get through because we are loved. We just have to want to fight for it."

Of course it would be easier, Gleb wants to tell her. Of course he would rather that were the case. He would never have known, after all, already resolved to love her from a distance, and he can't see how it would really have mattered all that much. Dmitry would still have arrived and she could be happy with him, any temporary thoughts of what might have been between the two of them set aside before they could ever blossom into anything. There wouldn't have been any reason for her to wonder about it forever. As much as he'd like to, though, he can't quite bring himself to point all of that out. She chose someone else, or at least he thought she did; it doesn't seem as if it would accomplish anything to try to convince her that they shouldn't have been together. Perhaps the kinder thing would be to remove himself from the equation entirely, box up his own feelings and tell her he doesn't want this, but if he were going to be able to do that, he would have a long time ago. He barely knew her when he followed her to Paris, and still, it was nothing he could ignore. If there was no pretending or compartmentalizing this away then, there certainly isn't now, when he knows what it's like to hold her and kiss her like he never has anyone else.

He won't protest to her being with someone else, won't try to get in her way or win her back, but neither will he act as if he doesn't feel for her the way he does. It's not the same, he thinks, to wish that she didn't know, that he'd never said anything. He still would have carried it around with him, just as he's doing now. No matter how agonizing it might be, it's nothing he thinks he could ever be rid of.

It's more so now than ever, too, the impossibly soft brush of her hand against his face nearly enough to make him lose any composure on the spot. Against all of his better judgment, he turns his head enough to lean into her touch, brushing a soft kiss against the heel of her hand. If this is all he ever gets now, then he might as well savor it, and he still doesn't know where this is going to go, how they'll possibly come out of it alright. There's still someone else in the picture, someone whom she loves and who loves her in return, who doesn't want there to be anyone else in the picture.

Briefly, he wonders if Dmitry knows she's here, then supposes it's better not to find out either way.

"I already told you, I won't fight for you," Gleb says, softer still than the previous moment. Even as he speaks, he doesn't pull away, though he knows it would be the smarter thing to do. It feels so much like before, though at least now there are no lives on the line; he's at war with himself again, knowing what he should do and yet not being able to do it. "That isn't fair to you. You deserve better than that." For just a moment, he shuts his eyes, breathing in deep. Every step of this has been unpredictable so far, nothing at all like what he would have expected, and it's hard to know where to go because of that. Finally, he settles on what seems simplest, even if the words aren't easy to summon up. "What do you want?"

His mouth against the heel of her hand is surprising. A shiver runs unexpectedly up her arm and down her spine. The urge to step forward, to take that as an invitation to rest her hand on his shoulder, to pull him closer, is strong. Resisting it, Anya knows that would be acting too soon. There is so much that she hasn't said, hasn't found the words for. When she had run after Pushkin and dragged Gleb with her, she hadn't expected to be trapped in an elevator. She hadn't expected so much to change. Now it has and all she has is her hope that it isn't for forever.

"You," she answers without pause. There is no point in lingering, wondering over how to say it. "I want you."

And that is the truth. For as much as she loves Dmitry and wants him, there was something about his comment in the elevator that doesn't sit well with her. That she is something to be had, to belong to someone is well enough; all she has wanted for a long time is to belong to someone. But his quick declaration had seemed as if he was issuing a baseless ultimatum. Only one person could have her as some sort of prize. That isn't a game that Anya wants to play.

"I don't want you to fight for me. I don't want to be the spoils of some war. I didn't cry after getting out that elevator, and on the way home, and yell at a hot dog vendor for that. I didn't spend my birthday waiting in your lobby and two days after just to be a prize," this time she does brush her fingers across the bones of his cheek before letting her hand fall to rest on his chest. Her voice is softer the next time she speaks.

"I didn't mean to hurt you. You wanted me to have my choice and this is it. This is my choice. You."

Of all the responses she could have had, Gleb thinks this is the most unexpected one possible; of everything that's taken him by surprise in the last few minutes, nothing has as much as what she's saying now. As he told her in the elevator, he hadn't thought there was a choice left. Finding out that he was wrong about her being with Dmitry didn't actually change that. The rest of what she had to say seemed to make that clear enough. Even knowing now that he was wrong in some of what he thought she meant that day, he wouldn't have imagined that it would come to this, unable to do anything for a moment but look at her in stunned confusion. She's as beautiful as he's ever seen her. She's hurt, and that's at least somewhat on him, though he thought he was doing what was best for everyone, himself included. There's no way to take that back now. The only thing to do is go forward. It's just a matter of figuring out how.

Since the last time she was here, telling him both that she loved him and that she loved someone else too, he's believed that he would never stand a chance with her. Before that, he was just waiting for something to go wrong. He never had much of a chance to be with her, not really, not without the presence of someone else looming overhead. That first week and a half seems almost surreal now in how good it felt, regardless of what prompted his confession. He should be pleased now, or relieved, or something of the sort, but mostly he's confused, still waiting for the but that ought to follow her words.

"I didn't mean to hurt you, either," he says, what seems like the most important thing to get out of the way. Whatever does or doesn't happen now, he hopes she knows that. He'd just been hurting, too, and still can't quite determine what went wrong or how they got here from there. "And I... I want to be with you. I do. But I can't ask that of you." It hurts just to say, the words feeling like they've been ripped out of him, but he knows it's necessary. He doesn't think for a second that she would lie to him about this, but he can't see how it's possibly that simple, either, and he wouldn't forgive himself if he trapped her in a situation that wasn't what she was looking for you. "I know you love him, too. And I know there's every chance that nothing would ever have happened if he'd been here before I was, or before I told you that I loved you. I just want you to be happy, Anya. More than anything." This time, he reaches for her, his hand smoothing gently over her hair. "Would you be, making that choice? Truly?"

He won't issue an ultimatum. She's said she doesn't want to be the spoils of a war, and he won't make her that. Whatever she wants to give him, he would take, and willingly, but he doesn't want to be the second choice, the person she'll settle for, if it means she'll only miss what she doesn't get to have. That, he thinks, ought to be fair enough.

Now confusion, mixed with a stubborn flare of anger, comes into her thoughts. His words are saying one thing, his actions another. He had tried to keep her on the otherside of a door, had turned away from her, but still he is holding her hand, running another over her hair. He is so tender, but so uncertain. Anya keeps hearing him say that he won't make a choice, that he doesn't want to ask that she be with him, but it doesn't quite fit.

"Yes, of course I would be happy." Astonishment is plain on her face as she shakes her head slightly in confusion. Dmitry isn't in the room with them. She didn't wait outside his door. Even knowing that certain expansive concepts of relationships are possible here, she doesn't know if Dmitry would even want that sort of thing. He said that he just wanted her alone without making any sort of attempt to woo her.

But what Dmitry might or might not want isn't relevant now. It is just Gleb, the man in front of her, holding her hand.

Bearing her shoulders back, she has a hint of a smile on her face as she looks up at him. "Gleb, no one has ever been able to make me do something in my entire life that I didn't want. That hasn't changed. Why won't you let us be happy?"

She doesn't mention the fact that there have been exceptions to this rule, but all of them involved men holding guns to her back. They don't need that right now.

"That's not—" Gleb starts, a quick, half-desperate rebuttal, though he cuts himself off before he can say anything he can't take back. The last thing he needs is to make this somehow worse than it already is, with so much uncertainty in the air between them. True as it might be, no good will come from telling her that they were never happy, that they never had an opportunity to be. Maybe they came close, in the time between Dmitry arriving and her coming to tell him that Dmitry was in love with her, but it wasn't what it might have been under other circumstances, what it should have been. If only in his own head, there was always that doubt, that worry.

Then it seemed like he'd been right to wonder if Dmitry's arrival would cause them problems, and it's hard not to let that color his memories of the rest of it now, to think himself a fool for the moments when he convinced himself that there was nothing wrong. He never expected they would wind up where they are now; he never had any reason to. Knowing that is one thing, though, and trying to articulate it is another entirely. How is he supposed to tell her that it's hard to believe that she could want to be with him, just him, when what she said before seemed to suggest otherwise?

"I just want to be sure," he says, lifting their interlaced fingers so he can brush a kiss against her knuckles. "I don't want you to... to choose this and regret not being with someone else instead. I don't want to be with you and wonder if you'd be happier that way. I believe you, I do. But we wouldn't be happy with all of this still overhead. We already never had a chance for that. And I don't want to do this only to lose you all over again."

"Can you ever be entirely certain?" Anya wonders as she watches him brush his fingers against her knuckles, feeling that familiar flip flop of her stomach. Standing by what she says is easy. Nothing is entirely certain, not even the rise and setting of the sun. There are always twists, especially here in Darrow where reason is so easily subverted. It is a city that does not play by anyone's rules.

"Nothing in life is a guarantee." It is fair to point out. Every moment of her life is a gift, one that she isn't about to question. By all rights she should have died in that cellar in Ekaterinburg. His father shouldn't have saved her. He should have forever remained a boy she saw on the otherside of the wall. None of that is true. They live different lives now.

Shaking her head, she reaches up to brush away the furrow in his brow, smoothing away the wrinkles there. "But I choose this. I chose this when I came to wait for you to open your door and not go after Dmitry." Pausing, she frowns, wondering if this is something she should share at all. In the end she decides it is worth it. "I haven't seen him since the elevator."

It isn't that she cares any less about Dmitry. It is more that she doesn't know what to do with him. How to ever get him to see that she can love them both equally. That no one is a mistress. That she isn't a possession or a battle to be won. "I want us to have our chance. We should take it back."

"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."

"As certain as we can be," Anya repeats with a nod, accepting that as enough of a compromise. It isn't an absolute, not the way that he implied before. The world is beyond absolutes, made up of far too many colors to just be black and white. She is affirming that absolutely sure is still so guarantee. Waiting for perfection is an invitation for misery. They have both had more than enough of that. Her life is a gift, a precious thing that she was given at the expense of who she was for so many years. She still is not entirely certain what her role in the world is. This city has given her a firm place to find her bearings. No one expects her to claim a throne that she isn't sure she wants.

All she wanted was a family. Someone to belong to. All the way from Russia to Paris she found that, placed her love and trust in two conmen, caring for Dmitry and Vlad in very different ways. Now she knows what kind of love she felt for Dmitry then, the kind she feels for him now and what kind she feels for Gleb. There are still so many questions, so many ways that this can go wrong again. She isn't even entirely certain that it has been righted.

Trying is all that she can do. She wants that chance to be happy. She wants both men to be happy, for their happiness to be in some part because of her. Gleb believing in happiness is so important to her. Her love for him is a bright red flame. Falling in love is a slow process for her. She has only done it once before, never fully grasped how that man had mattered to her until it was too late. With Gleb she has nearly done the same thing, realizing how strong she cares for him as he died in her arms and then later when time became their enemy. She wishes that she had told him that she loved him for the first time without such a driving force, without the fear that she was going to lose him for forever hanging over her. Her fears had been all but confirmed for the past few weeks.

An opportunity is in front of her, an opening that he has given her. Anya is her mother's daughter, her father's daughter. She won't let it go again.

His apology brings a faint smile to her face as she looks up at him. "I understand," she nods as she steps closer to him, reaching up to brush a wayward lock of black hair back from his face. "You opened the door now. That's what really matters. I didn't want to be in the place where you'd think that I was throwing that chance away or that it was being snatched from me — from us." Her smile brightens just a touch. "I do love you."

Even now, it's hard not to wait for the other shoe to drop, for her declarations of love to be followed by a reason they can't be together. Gleb trusts her, of course, can't imagine why she would lie about something like this, but he's spent the past week and a half — the past month — believing that was exactly the place they were in. The last time she was here, she told him she loved him, but it wasn't a statement that existed in isolation. None of this really does, either. She's here, making a choice, but the reasons she has one to make in the first place haven't just gone away. What happens, he wonders, if Dmitry shows up at her door again, trying to get her back? What would happen if the two of them had seen each other first? It doesn't seem like a line of thought worth continuing with, but it's impossible to shut out completely, too, some doubts too deeply embedded to be disregarded at a moment's notice.

She said in the elevator that she couldn't choose between them. He wants to ask her now what's changed, how she's wound up here, but foolish as it feels, he doesn't think he's brave enough for that. She's here, standing so close, touching him like she did the night he died in her arms and the morning after when she came to his door and kissed him, and he can't find the strength to push her away. It wouldn't seem fair to do so. Even if he's seen her less than honest before, that was another time and another place, and he can hardly blame her for trying to protect herself. He has no reason now to think that she would be saying any of this if it weren't true. There would be nothing to gain, and he's never known Anya to be that sort of deceptive.

"I thought that chance was long gone," he admits, his arms settling gently around her waist. Though he doesn't pull her closer, still too uncertain for that, it's enough, for the moment, to have her solid and real and alive in front of him, nothing at all like the last time he held her. That final kiss, rough and desperate like they both had something to prove, has stayed with him these past weeks; he wants so badly to kiss her again now, but he's not sure if they're there, if he should. Whatever this is now, it isn't what it was before. Too much has changed just to pick up where they left off. Perhaps that's a good thing. Either way, it's a second chance that he's not sure he deserves, though in all fairness, he felt the same about the first one. She could have wanted nothing to do with him after he told her about Paris, and he wouldn't have been able to blame her in the slightest for that. Instead, she's here, when she could easily have been with someone else instead. While he might not know what to make of that, he does know better than to take it for granted. "I didn't even know you loved me, until..."

Trailing off, he shrugs. She'll know what he means. He didn't know she loved him until that wasn't enough, until it was too late for him to respond as he should have. "I love you terribly, Anya."

Edited 2018-07-03 10:35 (UTC)

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."

She's here. It still feels unearned, like a gift meant to go to a different recipient, like a mistake has been made somewhere that he doesn't particularly want to correct but probably ought to. He wants to ask why she's here, why him, but he doesn't dare disturb whatever this fragile, tenuous peace is. She's too close for him to push her away, her hand against the back of his neck sending a shiver down his spine. Besides, she's right; she is stubborn, and if she's made up her mind, he has no business trying to unmake it for her. She asked him moments ago why he wouldn't let them be happy. Gleb can't say for sure if they ever will be, if this chance will lead where he wants it to, or if they'll be able to regain what they had so briefly and then lost, but he doesn't want to be what stands in their way.

The odds of their being here at all seem so slim, so unlikely, and he suspects that if they lose their chance this time, there won't be any getting it back. Too many odds have been defied. They're both alive when they weren't meant to be. He thinks they might as well make the most of that, and if this is what that entails, it's worth holding onto with both hands. When he walked away from her in Paris, he had no choice, or rather, they had both already made one, and there was only one direction to go from there. When he sent her away the last time he was here, he believed she'd already made up her mind to be with someone else, or at least that those feelings would have interfered with what was between the two of them. Now, it's just them, and she must know what this means to him. She's never seemed to be intentionally cruel. If anything, her kindness — an uncommon soft word of gratitude between strangers — was part of what he found so entrancing about her from the start. Lying about this would accomplish nothing but making an already complicated situation even more so. He can't imagine that she would.

Just looking at her makes something in his chest ache. Absently, Gleb wonders how apparent that must be as he nods, swallowing hard as he looks down at her. "You're here," he echoes, his own voice as quiet as hers. "Anya, I want..." He can't quite say it. The distance between them is so slight now, though, that he thinks it must speak for itself. Kissing her would be the easiest thing in the world, and yet he still doesn't know if he's supposed to, if that's a possibility again.

His echo of her words brings her smile to the surface once more, a sense of rightness settling into place. She is here and she wants to be here. All she wanted was for him to open the door and let her explain, to break through the dark cloud that has hovered over them since the elevator. Since he became a ghost in her own life against her wishes. She never wanted to lose him. She didn't know he mattered to her so much until she nearly did. The heart is a strange thing, love stranger still. It is easy to say that such confusion and hardship is God's will, trails to make someone earn their reward.

Anya isn't as certain of that as others in her family might once have been. There has been so much suffering in her life, so much fear and loss and pain that she has to believe in the possibility of good or else she will never manage to survive. And this, this is a good thing. But it isn't a reward for either of them, Gleb isn't her prize and she isn't his. She cannot explain it, doesn't know where it falls. But she believes that love and overcoming obstacles and heartbreak is enough.

She wonders briefly about Dmitry, about the obstacle his own words and actions have constructed. Then she just steps passed that thought, brushing it aside for another time. There is no doubt over her standing here, Gleb's arm around her, his hand in hers, the closeness of her bodies. She knows what she wants. She can tell from the way that Gleb's swallows, the look in his eyes that maybe, she's allowed to have it.

"You may," she breathes permission before lifting herself onto the balls of her feet enough to brush a kiss to his lips, showing him that it is all right to want that, that she wants it too.

It's a strange thing, how someone who started such a brutal war within him could make him feel so at peace. She exhales a quiet permission, though, not needing to hear the rest of what he wanted to say, and presses up on her toes to kiss him, and everything suddenly feels right, like pieces slotting back into place. Perhaps it's dangerous, too, but most of the ways in which that's the case are left behind them, fragments of another life that don't need to matter here. At least that's what he's been telling himself, a justification for acting on the feelings he was never supposed to be able to. The most he ever did before was hold her hand, a lingering good-bye before he left her to be with her family, to go to his death. They're both alive now — the painful hammering of his heart in his chest speaks to that, and the ghost of her breath against his lips — and the past doesn't have to matter to anyone but them. They could be anyone. She could have any life she wanted. Somehow, seemingly miraculously, she's here with him.

He always knew better than to take that for granted, stunned by the mere possibility of being with her in the first place, but that's even truer now for having lost her, no matter how briefly. At her consent, he nods, one arm still around her waist and his other hand finding the curve of her jaw as he leans in to kiss her. It's nothing like before. Though he's been haunted by the memory of the last kiss they shared, rough and desperate and something with which it would have been too easy to get carried away, both of them acting like they had something to prove — and though he might well have enjoyed such a kiss under any other circumstances — this time, when his mouth finds hers, it's soft and gentle, as if he's doing so for the first time, learning the way she feels, savoring the opportunity to do so at all. She's so lovely that it hurts just to look at her, but he doesn't have to look now, his hand sliding further back and into her hair as he slowly, carefully, deepens the kiss, not wanting to pull away until he absolutely has to.

Once, he never gave much thought to romance or relationships, carrying with him the vague assumption that he might well marry and have a family one day, but too focused on his work to give it any real consideration. It was just a simple fact then, nothing that he really felt. He never expected that loving someone would feel like this, sickly sweet and agonizing and far more intoxicating than any drink he's ever had, all-consuming. He's far too sensible to give in to the notion of his life revolving around someone else. At the same time, he's known since Paris that a part of him belongs to her, surrendered unwillingly on the cold streets of Leningrad, violently ripped away without any sort of warning and leaving him a lost, broken mess. He would still have been hers even if they'd never spoken again here, if she spent the rest of her life living happily with someone else. He wouldn't have it any other way.

A soft sigh escapes her as his hand touches her cheek. A precious thing that she had assumed to be lost has now been found. Warmth floods her body, frothy and light, making her feel a bit like she could be lifted right off the ground if it weren't for his arms around her, his mouth on hers. It isn't the passionate, rushed embrace of their last kiss. Anya isn't chasing after something that she is desperate not to lose. She isn't looking to hold onto something that is already gone. This is a softer, gentler kiss. Nothing like this had happened before they arrived in Darrow, nothing remotely close to it. It never really occurred to her.

Now that she knows this feeling, knows Gleb beyond a uniform and a boy on the other side of a fence during a dark time, she doesn't want to forget it. There is no rush in this. No hasty cataloging of his touch, of her mouth on his as she opens it slightly for him, cards her hand in his hair, feels his stubble against her skin. Time breathes in this kiss, soft and certain, assuring of others that will be next.

Her parents always assured her that she would have love. They let her sisters have their romances even as the walls closed in around them. Love is a light, a guiding force. It undid them all in the end. After the darkness cut her off from her past, there was just that promise of love, of family, of belonging that kept her warm as she trekked across Russia. It wasn't romantic. It was a place to rest her head. That is what Gleb is. Something scary and safe and unknown all at once. A person who will let her rest at last.

It's easier than it likely should be to kiss her like this. In a way, that's always been the case, but Gleb is more acutely aware of it now. That first morning she turned up on his doorstep after he made a confession that he hadn't known she would remember, he'd been so caught up in the unexpectedness of it and the chance to act on what he'd kept so long buried that he hadn't needed to give it much thought, acting then on an impulse that he wouldn't have even known he had. This is different — still anchored, perhaps, in the same sort of desperate longing that he's carried with him for so long where she's concerned, but a quieter form of it now, neither sharp and sudden and fueled by some living nightmare nor with the simplicity that followed, when he didn't know he was going to lose her. There's a weight to this, a significance, but a certainty, too. It doesn't need to happen all at once. She's chosen this, and he may not know why, but he won't question it.

Even if he wanted to, he doubts he could. Her arms around him are like an anchor; her fingers burn where she touches him, as if to mark him as hers the way he knows he is. He feels cut open and bled dry and healed all at once, and all because of her. One person shouldn't have so much power. There's an irony in the fact that she does now, that he's given it to her like this, that he would do so over and over rather than try to cut himself off from her. If that were ever an option, he would have been able to do so a long time ago. He's well past that point now.

He doesn't know how long he stays there, lost in her and a kiss that's both soft and intent. Certainly it can't be very long, but in those moments, the rest of the world is shut out and nothing else matters, and it might as well be a lifetime. If this was all he ever got from her, he could be content with that. Already it's more than he expected, both at the start and after thinking he'd lost her for good. Instead, for a moment, a part of him wants nothing more than to draw back just enough to ask her to stay, improper and startling a thought as that is. It might even seem worth acting on if not for the part of him that still doesn't quite know where they stand. This is a beginning, not a continuation. They can't just ignore the last few weeks. He knows she wouldn't lie to him about something like this, but a part of him still can't help but wonder what might happen when Dmitry enters the picture again, and that in itself would keep him from rushing forward, no matter how right it might feel in the moment.

That much, he buries, dismissing it as out of place and inexplicable. He shivers a little as, finally, he draws in a deep breath. "I choose this, too," he says, perhaps belatedly, perhaps needlessly. He chose her in Paris, even if Anya standing before him now didn't experience that herself; he chose her on a relived night in Yekaterinburg, over and over until he died in her arms. It seems unlikely that anything would prompt him to want to make a different choice now. "I always will."

It should require more for them to be stitched back together. Love is enough, she believes that to be true, especially when coupled with trust and faith. When Anya had come to stand in his lobby on her birthday, she hadn't expected it to take three days to get him to open the door, to let her in, to start to say what they both needed to say.

In stories, the hero is saved by the heroine's kiss. This isn't the same, but the revival feels right. They are both awake after a nightmare, only this time no one died in the night.

What happens next is a mystery, but she knows that she wouldn't have to carry on alone. Won't have to mourn something that barely had a chance to exist. They are getting their chance back. Perhaps it isn't quite in the same shape as before, but she wants to believe that they are better for it. She doesn't know what will happen if or when Dmitry speaks to her again. That thought feels a little sour in her mouth as it has been over a week and she hasn't seen him either. Work is an excuse that only goes so far. She cannot be the one who begs him to find her for forever. Her pride is too much for that.

Breathing deep to steady her heartbeat, to cool her blood after such a kiss, she nods as she smiles up at him. "I know. Please never doubt that I know and care," she assures him as she affectionately rakes her nails against the base of his skull. Laughing softly she shakes her head. "I didn't think getting you to talk to me again would end like this."

Gleb exhales, slowly and just a little unsteadily, at the way she touches him, his chin ducking so he can rest his forehead against hers. She's as beautiful as she's ever been, and this still feels a little surreal, like if he moves away, something might break and the two of them might be left in the position he'd thought they were in. It was strange enough the first time, when she showed up at his door after some bizarre relived night from their past, but in a way, it made sense, too. He hadn't ever expected that she would return his feelings, but there'd been no seemingly concrete proof that she didn't, only a few moments into which he tried not to read something more. Now they've been apart for weeks, and this last one in particular has been agonizing, filled with things he was sure were true that she's now negated. No matter how much he believes her, trusts her, it's hard to shake that. For her, though, to have even a chance of being with her again, it's worth it to try. He would be a fool not to, and genuinely so this time, not just assuming as much based on a few misinterpreted statements.

"Neither did I," he says quietly, the words coming out on what's nearly a laugh of his own, just a bit shy of one. "I think this is the last thing I would have expected." He doesn't know precisely what he thought would have happened instead; he hadn't gotten as far as considering that, too intent on staying away from her to try to give some wounds a chance to heal. He's beyond grateful now for her persistence, enough to put on hold any lingering questions he might have. With the tangled, messy state everything was left in when he last checked, he doesn't want to ruin this peace by asking what this means for her feelings for Dmitry.

He kisses her temple, her cheek, the corner of her mouth. "I'm glad you came."

Her eyes flutter shut, her entire body stilling, breathing slowing as she feels his kiss on her temple, her cheek, and finally the corner of her mouth. She doesn't want to move, doesn't want to jinx it. For this moment it feels as if the world is spinning around them. They are the fixed point, an axis. Moving might shattered the fact that coming here wasn't a mistake. That three days had been worth the wait and the questioning stares from him neighbors.

She has no idea what she will do with Dmitry, what is to be done about that pain and confusion. But one burden has lessened for her. Breathing has becoming easier once more.

"I just wanted you to look at me again." Opening her eyes, it is her turn to look. To memorize the expression his face, still smiling as she does. "I'm glad that I came. I wish we didn't have to do this to start with."

But wishing won't take it all back, won't wipe memories away. She doesn't know if she truly wishes to banish them, just wishes that they had never felt this pain at all.

"So do I," Gleb says, nodding solemnly when he lifts his head to look at her again, absently brushing a strand of hair away from her face. The words come unbidden, but he supposes there's no sense in pretending they aren't true. Of course he wishes they hadn't had to do this at all. That afternoon, the last time they spoke, was excruciating. There's no turning such things back, but if he could, he would, if only because he knows now that he's spent all this time believing things that weren't true, that what she said wasn't what he thought it meant. Before, it was painful but necessary, a sharp jolt back to reality after he let himself get so caught up in the impossible fantasy of loving her. That doesn't seem so impossible anymore. They've had so much heartache just to apparently find their way back to each other, and he isn't sure what the point was.

He'd do it all again, though, without hesitation, if it meant winding up here with her. There are so many things he should say or ask, and he knows they can't just act as if nothing has happened, as if there weren't a rift between them for so many weeks. Picking up where they left off wouldn't do any good, when where they left off was her telling him that she loved someone else. She's here now, no matter what her reasons for that may be. He won't take that for granted.

"But you're here now."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[oh your hands can heal, your hands can bruise]

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