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

[homelovefamily]

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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[homelovefamily]

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.

[butstill]

"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."