[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."

Comments

[butstill]

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."