AN: This is a historical(ish) AU fanfic based on the Don Bluth children's movie, Anastasia, but this is not a children's story. This is rated T for violence, some gore, some language, and strong thematic elements.

There will also be eventual character deaths.

I don't wish to ruin anyone's childhood with this story, so if you feel this fanfiction might offend you or taint a cherished movie memory, please click the back button now.

For those of you who stay, I hope you enjoy the story!

White Fabergé Lilies

An Anastasia Fanfiction by LucyCrewe11

Prologue

The Romanovs were celebrating the 300th anniversary of their family's rule. A grand party was in full swing at the palace in Saint Petersburg. Women in glittering jewels giggled demurely as handsome gentlemen with flaxen mustaches and dark eyes handed them sparkling glasses of bubbling champagne. Officers and guards bowed deeply and made gracious chit-chat; great ladies danced as lustily as ballerinas, if a little more stiffly for all the emphasis put on good posture and ramrod-straight backs hammered into their psyches.

It was at this magical ball, lifted straight out of a Russian Cinderella story, that Anastasia, youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas, watched eagerly for her grandmother's arrival.

No sign of the dear old lady yet, she grew restless and badgered her sisters into dancing with her until their feet ached and they – ignoring her protests, and the faces she pulled at them, both pleading and mocking – sat down. Even Maria, who would have cut off her own right arm if it would have done her little sister any good, gave way to exhaustion and plopped herself into one of the miniature thrones in front of the grander one, saved – tonight, anyway – for their grandmother's use.

But Anastasia, who wasn't a bit tired, was saved from having to sit out the next dance by Nicholas himself, who laughed and called her Shvibzik, sweeping her up off the floor.

As they spun, Anastasia noticed her mother standing to her father's right, laughing. Oh, how beautiful she looked, dressed in a splendid blue-and-gold outfit just like her daughters'!

Mama didn't have a headache today! Mama was going to dance with them. For once she was going to be merry and delightful, and everybody would see what poor mama was really like, when she wasn't too ill to be in public!

Anastasia was so happy, she felt full to bursting.

Her joy only increased when at last she spotted her grandmother walking up the dais, waving. "Hello, Darling!"

Still in the air, Anastasia laughed, "Oh, Papa!"

As soon as she was set down, Anastasia ran to her sisters. "Quick, Tatiana! Where's that picture I drew for Grandmama?"

"I don't know," yawned Tatiana, waving a pearl-crusted fan in front of her face. "Can't you keep track of your own things?"

"Where did you last see it?" Maria asked, eager to help, lifting herself up and swirling her skirts, as if she expected her sister's lost drawing to fall out of the folds.

"I've got your picture, Anastasie," her eldest sister Olga told her, holding it out. "But I don't think you should give it to Grandmama."

She put her hands on her hips, indignant. "Why not?"

"Because, little imp," laughed Olga, "it looks like a pig riding a donkey."

"It does not!" Anastasia stamped her foot.

"All right, but don't say I didn't warn you." Olga held out the picture to her.

Maria smiled kindly. "I think it's a nice picture."

"Alexei can draw better than that," sighed Tatiana, taking Olga's part.

Anastasia snatched it as roughly as she could without tearing it, let out a frustrated huff, and rushed past their thrones to her grandmother, holding out the picture.

"Oh, thank you, my darling!" Her grandmother smiled enthusiastically. "What a lovely drawing. And you've made it for me?"

She nodded rapidly.

The dowager reached out and touched her cheek. "You precious little thing! I'll keep it forever."

Anastasia looked over her shoulder at Olga and stuck out her tongue. Ha! she thought smugly. That'll show her. Grandmama loves it!

"Perhaps I shall even hang it on the wall when I return to Paris," she went on. "How would you like that?"

Anastasia's head whipped back around and her face became instantly crestfallen. "Do you have to go?"

"You know I must."

"Please don't!" Anastasia knew it was hopeless, but she was only eight, and to an eight year old nearly anything – even a hopeless thing – is possible; if only you can make people agree and do what you want. "Stay here. Russia's so lovely. It's snowing again, and everything looks so clean and quiet and pretty! I bet the snow in Paris isn't half as good. And..." She thought furiously for something to add. "And you needn't worry about putting Papa out for four o'clock rations, because I'll give you half of my tea. I won't be a bit hungry, because there's always a great deal more food at lunch and breakfast we can both fill up on. Oh, say you'll stay! Please."

Without another word, the dowager reached into her silk-lined purse and pulled out a gold-and-green box about the size of her fist.

Anastasia gasped. "For me?" She took it in her hands, holding it gingerly between her fingertips as if it were glass. "Is it a jewelry box?"

A few feet away, a curious boy was watching them, eating an apple he'd taken the liberty of pilfering.

It was at this point that an upper servant spotted him. "Dimitri! You belong in the kitchen!"

For what it was worth, Dimitri wasn't going easily. He was carried off kicking and flailing, inwardly bemoaning the loss of the apple as it fell to the ground. Cook was going to be angry anyway, possibly even punish him, so he might as well drag this out.

"Look." The dowager took out a necklace with a gleaming round pendant and pressed it into the box, turning it in a clockwise motion.

The circular lid opened, revealing dancing miniatures of Anastasia's mama and papa spinning in front of a crowned white swan with its wings spread out.

A tune accompanied the dancers. At once, Anastasia knew it.

"It plays our lullaby!" she cried out in delight.

"You can play it at night before you go to sleep," the dowager told her. "And pretend it is me singing."

Anastasia beamed. Her grandmother took her hand and spun her in time with the tinkling music.

The lid closed on its own, young Alexandra and Nicholas sinking back into their golden box, ending the song.

"Read what it says." The dowager handed her the necklace.

Screwing up her face and crossing her eyes to focus, Anastasia squinted at the little pendant. "Together...in...Paris..." she got out, with some difficulty. Realization dawned. "Really?" She flung herself into her grandmother's arms. "Oh, Grandmama!"

In less than three minutes the dowager was assuring her that yes, of course Maria could come too, and yes she could bring her dog Pooka if she really wanted.

"When?" she asked, pulling away. "Oh, do tell me when!"

"Soon, my darling, soon. Maybe I'll even take you back with me when I go. How would you like that?"

"Will you ask Mama tonight?"

"I'll ask your papa tomorrow morning," she corrected her.

The dowager loved her entire family, but she and Alexandra had never gotten on particularly well. It was all too obvious that, at the very mention of one of her precious children (possibly two, since Anastasia didn't like to be separated from Maria) being taken away to Paris, even just for a mere visit, Alexandra was likely to go into hysterics.

If Nicky spoke to her first, reassuring her that it was only for a little while, all might be well.

She'd have loved to take Alexei, too, so she could watch the three little ones tear around her royal garden and fill that all too quiet Paris palace with laughter, but such was as impossible as she herself staying here for good. Alexandra would never forgive her – or even Nicholas, love of her life though he was – if they took her baby, her little sunbeam, from her.

And, naturally, there was his health to think of. The poor boy had inherited the bleeding disease, and if he bumped himself in the palace and his blood refused to clot, pooling into joints and out of even the smallest scrape on his skin, his grandmother had to admit she would not quite know what to do. She doubted those sweet little girls, his adoring youngest sisters, would know either. So it was best not to put them in that situation.

She would speak to her son at breakfast tomorrow. Preferably before Alexandra came down. This in itself would be easy enough; Alexandra always had a hard time getting up in the morning, whereas both she and Nicholas were early risers.

Dimitri had escaped from the kitchen again. Unfortunately, his apple was long gone. Already rolled away somewhere. His stomach gurgled. He wasn't going to be getting much supper – if any – tonight.

Not when Cook found out he'd snuck into the Romanov party twice...

Across the room, so far out he almost didn't dare even dream of getting in that deep unnoticed, there were two tables set with white silk tablecloths and big silver trays full of all sorts of pastries and other delicacies Dimitri was never allowed to taste.

Oh, how good it looked! God, he'd sell his soul to Baba Yaga herself for just a couple bites of vatrushka!

Surely no one would notice just one going missing?

Maybe not, but they would see a shabbily dressed boy sticking out like a sore thumb.

Unless... There were a lot of younger men of small stature here tonight, brought along with their courtly fathers and elder brothers. Supposing he just borrowed a fancy coat (he knew which room they were being kept in) and shuffled out there and got himself a vatrushka?

Smiling mischievously to himself, Dimitri spun around on his heels and ran off to get a coat. He avoided the most lavish, since he was trying not to draw attention to himself, though even the simplest one he could find was lined with real black bear fur.

It trailed at his feet, like a short train at a funeral procession or an undertaker's wedding, but he ignored that and prayed no one would notice. He'd decided if anyone asked who he was, he'd tell them he was Alexei Romanov.

The Tsarevich was actually over four years younger than he was, but he hoped not everyone present here would know that. At least, not off the top of their heads. By the time they remembered Nicholas had only had a male heir for five years, he could be back in the kitchen, scrubbing pots and pans, blending in with the other servants.

The stolen pastry had barely touched Dimitri's lips when a small voice from beside his knee chirruped, "You there!"

Taking a rushed, oversized bite, Dimitri mumbled, mouth so full cottage cheese was coming out the corners, "It's okay, I'm Alexei Romanov."

"No you aren't!" cried the voice, somewhere between indignant and amused. "I am."

Dimitri swallowed, horrified by his own stupidity. He glanced guiltily down at the richly-dressed, serious-faced boy. "Uh..."

Alexei burst into unexpected laughter. "You're funny! How do you make your whole face go green like that? The filling makes it look like you are foaming at the mouth. How clever of you!"

Was this not the part where he was hauled off to an execution for stealing food and impersonating the Tsarevich? Dimitri could only gawk.

"I had a dog once who foamed at the mouth. His name was Joy. Papa had to shoot him." Apparently oblivious to the continued stricken expression on the kitchen boy's face, Alexei kept prattling on. "I think it would be just awful to be shot, even if it was to keep someone – or something – else alive, don't you? I cried more because of that – the thought of the bullet in my doggie's head – than losing Joy in the first place."

"I have to go, your highness," Dimitri tried.

Alexei grabbed onto his hand, ignoring this. "Can you make that face again? Your face isn't so green now. I want you to show Ana."

"Ana?" he repeated dumbly.

"My sister," Alexei said, rather slowly and precociously, as though he suddenly suspected his new amusement was short on brains. "She makes the best funny faces. But she can't make her face green. Mashka turned green once when she ate too many chocolates, only that wasn't funny. Not even when she threw up on Gilliard. It stank too bad to be funny. Mama was real upset."

"I don't want to meet anyone," said Dimitri. "I...I'm not really a guest here." The game was already up. What else could he do? At least he was throwing himself on the mercy of a seemingly innocent child and not a furious adult with access to a royal firing squad.

"Course not." Alexei regarded him almost coldly. "You have soot stains on your breeches under that coat. Ana won't care, though. I don't." He gestured across the ballroom to where Anastasia Romanov was playing with the music box Dimitri had seen the dowager empress give her earlier. "Let's go."

"Alexei?" a shrill voice cried, aghast. "What are you doing out of bed? Mama said you need your rest."

"Oh, poo, it's Governess!" Alexei squeezed Dimitri's hand with a shockingly vice-like grip for such a frail little boy. "She's seen me!"

A remarkably beautiful girl – her face so pretty it hurt to look at it directly for too long – was coming towards them, wearing the same dress as Anastasia Romanov. Why should a governess be allowed to wear matching clothes to a grand duchess? And wasn't she a little young to be in charge of the children?

"She is your governess?" Dimitri was forgetting himself. He'd never seen such a lovely, finely clothed lady so close up before.

"No, stupid, she's my second sister!" Alexei started tugging at him now. "Come on, we've got to get out of here!"

"What?"

"Come on! This way! If we wait any longer she'll catch us!"

Dimitri was helpless; he allowed Alexei to lead him off, out of the room, into some marble vestibule he'd never been in before. He was panting when the Tsarevich finally let go of his hand and let him stop at the base of a cold, gleaming staircase.

"Why," he gasped out, leaning heavily against the banister and kneeling on the last step, "do you call your sister Governess?"

Alexei looked proud. "It was Ana's idea. Tatiana likes bossing us around; it's the same as having Mama or a tutor watching you, having her about."

Dimitri nodded. It might get a person into trouble, not at least pretending to agree with the statements of the future Tsar. Even if he was just a little pipsqueak now.

"Play with me," the Tsarevich ordered next.

"I..."

"Let's slide down the banister!" He started climbing the stairs, looking over his shoulder and motioning for Dimitri to follow. "Come on."

Dimitri found himself smiling as he took off the fur coat and climbed after Alexei. This royal kid might be a little bratty, but there was something endearing about him all the same. He'd never had a brother, his parents having died when he – their first and only child – was very small. Part of him always wondered what it would be like having an underling about. Or even just another little boy around to play with on those ever-rarer days off.

With a whoop of delight, Alexei slid down, arms out to the sides like an eagle. "Yeep-piiiiiiiiiiiiieeee!"

Dimitri began to laugh. Then the crash came and he stopped mid-cackle. Something was horribly wrong. The Tsarevich was lying on the ground by the last step, holding his knee and crying, "Mama! Oh, God, Mama! Tatya! Papa!" His cries became worse, tears streaming down his face as he howled.

Dimitri jumped down the stairs, taking two steps at a time to get to the boy as quickly as possible. "What's wrong?"

"My knee," sobbed the boy. "My knee..."

A dark shadow fell upon the ballroom. Some of the guests gasped, stepping out of the way of a tall figure in monk's robes with a little white bat on his shoulder and a glowing reliquary slapping against his hip.

One woman's hands shook so badly she dropped her wineglass on the floor.

The figure, grinning evilly, his eyes wild, didn't even bother going around the broken glass. His boots came down hard, grinding their shards into sharp dust.

His name was Rasputin. Not so very long ago, the Romanovs had thought him to be a holy man – one with a divine power they desperately needed – but he was a fraud; power-mad and dangerous.

Tsar Nicholas approached, looking furious. "How dare you return to the palace!"

Rasputin feigned shock. "But... I am your confidant."

"Confidant?" snorted Nicholas. "Ha! You are a traitor!" He stretched out his hand. "Get out!"

"You think you can banish the great Rasputin," he fumed, lifting up his reliquary, his already frightening face made worse by the spreading green light. "By the unholy powers vested in me, I banish you. With a curse!"

Back up on the dais with the dowager, perhaps to thank her one more time for the music box before she was sent off to bed, Anastasia gasped at this threat and reached for her grandmother's hands. She didn't notice that only a few inches from darling Grandmama's throne, was Dimitri, also shell-shocked by Rasputin's words. He'd come running back for help after Alexei's injured knee began to swell and turn purple.

"Mark my words," continued Rasputin, pointing emphatically at Nicholas. "You and your family will die within the following decade." Lifting the reliquary even higher, he aimed it at a golden chandelier. "I will not rest until I see the end of the Romanov line forever!" Green light shot out of the reliquary, sending the chandelier crashing down.

Maria and Tatiana grabbed onto their mother, pressing against her sides. Maria was crying. Rasputin had always frightened her the most. She was a sensitive little thing; even when he was supposed to be their friend, she had seen no compassion in his eyes.

"You'll be all right, my treasures," Alexandra whispered. She tightened her grip on Tatiana's waist protectively, ignoring the wet feel of Maria's snot pooling on her skirt. "Don't listen to him. Don't listen to a single word. Pray. Pray for his misguided soul. God will protect us."

Olga clung to no one. She only watched her Papa intently, fists clenched. He had never let her – or her sisters and brother – down before. She was sure he would not – could not – do so now. He'd stop Rasputin. He would!

"I will not stand for this!" cried one guest, who happened to be a distant relation to the Romanovs. He drew a pistol from his fur-lined boot and pointed it.

For one horrible moment, Olga thought – perhaps irrationally, perhaps prophetically – the gun was for her father. That they were angry Rasputin had not been imprisoned or sentenced to death for his treason, even having left open the chance that he might come back to the palace like this, and they wanted to kill Nicholas for it. Even if it made them traitors, too.

She rushed forward. "Papa!"

If she hadn't come running, she wouldn't have seen – at least not at such close range. The bullets hitting Rasputin again and again, hot blood splattering and pooling everywhere and the unholy creature from hell not even sinking to his knees, still standing like a pillar.

One blood splatter hit her left cheek. It was too much for her. Tatiana might have been all right, or Anastasia, who had the strongest stomach of them all, but Olga couldn't handle it.

She felt her knees giving way, even as Rasputin's refused.

Strong arms grasped her, holding her up. "It's all right, child, it's all right. I've got you."

She glimpsed a vaguely familiar face – that of Vladimir, a member of the imperial court who had always been kind to her and her siblings, once slipping candies into Anastasia and Alexei's coat pockets for them to find later, but of whom she personally knew very little – before her world went black.

"Olenka!" The Tsarina sounded anguished. "Tatiana, take Marie." Letting go of Tatiana's waist, Alexandra rose up and pushed her daughters together. "And for God's sake don't watch."

Maria shut her eyes tight and locked her arms around Tatiana's waist.

Lifting her skirts, Alexandra made a run for the wounded yet unfallen Rasputin, snatching the reliquary and dropping it. When it didn't shatter, she stamped on it with her gem-encrusted heels. With each stamp, she made an accusation. "This is for Alexei! This is for Russia!" Cracks appeared. One more stamp would finish the job. "And this... This is for you, Our Friend, Messenger of God! Hell is where you will rot for your blasphemy and treason."

Blood was already coming out of his mouth, but it wasn't until the light went out of the broken reliquary that it went out of his eyes as well.

Although many of the guests were engaged in a heated dispute over what to do with Rasputin's body and blood, it soon wasn't Rasputin's blood Nicholas was concerned about.

Alexei had had to be helped into bed, his cries having turned to pitiful moans of the sort no child that age should ever have a reason to let out, the doctor called in, the girls privately herded out of the ruined ball and into their brother's bedroom (except for Olga, who'd been carried to her own bed), and now something had to be done about this kitchen boy.

This kitchen boy who now knew the Romanov family's deepest, darkest secret. This kitchen boy whose head held the knowledge that Russia's future Tsar was a hemophiliac.

Nicholas rubbed his forehead, troubled. "What are we going to do, Sunny?"

Alexandra was busy smoothing a lock of Alexei's hair. "Try and lie still, Baby."

"Sunny!"

"Nicky, our son is in pain! I will discuss no one's fate in front of my ailing child. Do you want to get his pulse racing? Baby sleeps, then we talk about that devilish playmate he found from God knows where."

I'm dead, thought Dimitri, overhearing this. Deader than dead.

The Tsarina had barely looked at him, and never directly, but from those glances out of the corner of her eye, it wasn't hard to gather that all she was thinking was how dare he – some no account rascal – all put push her precious baby boy down the stairs! Who did he think was?

Here was not a woman who would believe him if he told her the truth: that Alexei slid down the banister of his own free will. Dimitri would have hated her for that, but it was hard not to admire a woman who could fearlessly smash a reliquary under her heel to protect her family.

He had not been permitted to sit, but he could still lean against the wall, pressing his head back against the plaster, awaiting his certain death.

Something landed at his feet. A tiny piece of chocolate wrapped in silver foil. Someone had thrown it at him.

No, to him...

Dimitri glanced up to see one of the princesses hurrying to rejoin her sisters, glued to their mother's side.

At first he thought it was Anastasia, but he could hear her music box playing in the Tsarevich's room, less than three feet away. Probably to try and keep Alexei's mind off his pain.

It must have been the second youngest, the grand duchess Maria.

She did have a reputation for kindness, even among the servants, just as Anastasia had a reputation for mischief, but why should she be kind to him? Especially since, to all appearances, he'd just about killed her little brother.

Whatever the reason, Dimitri unwrapped the chocolate, grateful, and let it melt on his tongue.

A last meal. Or last taste, more like.

Either way, if one had to die with just one last essence on one's tongue, chocolate wasn't such a bad choice.

"We could dismiss him," was Cook's cold suggestion. "A boy with no money and a grudge against his former employers could hardly be taken seriously. If he tells of Alexei's illness, no one will listen. Or I can personally see to it that he works nowhere of consequence again. That should help."

"That would be a death sentence," said Maria, though she wasn't supposed to be butting in, or even there at all.

The 'little pair', which was apparently what the family called Anastasia and Maria, had been ordered to bed almost twenty minutes ago. It was only the stress of the situation that prevented Alexandra from noticing their uncharacteristic (at least on Maria's part) disobedience.

Nicholas noticed, and arched a brow, as if warning Maria she'd best keep quiet if she didn't want him to openly acknowledge her presence and send her off with a scolding he didn't really wish to give.

"A death sentence – a real one – might be kinder," said Botkin, the family doctor, cleaning his spectacles. "Has he no relatives?"

"Let's put him in a madhouse," suggested Anastasia, grinning impishly. "I've always wanted to say I knew somebody in an asylum!"

Nicholas shot her the look now.

She crumbled and cowered. "Sorry."

If she wasn't a princess, Dimitri would have wanted to smack her. Mostly because, even with that demure apology, she didn't look sorry. Not one bit.

"He has no relatives I've ever known of," Cook assured them. "No mother or father, that much is certain."

Vladimir came into the room now, though it was clear enough he'd been listening in the doorway for most of the conversation up to this point.

"Oh, it is you." Alexandra gave him one of her rare, appreciative smiles. "Thank you for what you did for Olga earlier."

"It was my pleasure, Your Majesty," he said, bowing. "I hope she will quickly recover."

"We'll send Botkin to examine her to be sure, but hopefully it was only a bad case of nerves," Alexandra said. "I'm surprised Marie managed not to faint."

"How is the Tsarevich?"

"Resting, at last," she sighed. "Now we must settle on what is to be done with this unruly servant."

"I should say unfortunate as much as unruly, if you would pardon my saying so," spoke Vladimir boldly. "Perhaps if the boy promises to keep quiet..."

"How could we be sure he would keep his word?" asked Alexandra.

"Could we trust him on it?" added Nicholas warily.

"I wouldn't," said Cook.

Dimitri's anger turned from Anastasia, who was only a playful girl after all, not a true enemy, to Cook's cruelty. He glared daggers at the man he assumed was now his former employer. Whatever happened next, death or not, he was surely not to be kept on in the kitchens after this screw up.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Anastasia sticking her tongue out at the cook, and immediately liked her again, forgiving her completely now.

"Perhaps the accident," suggested Vladimir, "occurred because the Tsarevich is over-eager for another boy to play with. He has only his sisters – and his English cousins, when he is well enough to travel. Could it not be a good thing if the boy was kept on as a sort of companion?"

Alexandra was already shaking her head rapidly. If Vladimir had not helped Olga earlier, she'd have been furious with him and sent him from the room for his impertinence. The idea that Alexei, her precious Sunbeam, should have a companion so unsuited, so randomly falling into their circle... It was monstrous!

But Nicholas, for once, thought differently. He was used to not thinking at all, when he didn't need to, and letting Alexandra have her way, yet in this case it was his son's well-being alone he was concerned with. Not so much his wife's feelings on the matter. He might feel guilty for being so callous towards the love of his life's opinion later, but right now he harbored no such self-reproach.

"He does need a peer group, Alix," he said quietly.

"But this waif is no peer group; he's only a kitchen boy," piped Tatiana, putting her hand on her mother's shoulder.

If she had said it meanly, with contempt, as most royals might have said something like that, she'd have seemed cruel, but she hadn't spoken that way at all. She'd said it only as if stating a practical fact. It did make her look less beautiful somehow, though, very like a no-nonsense school mistress, and Dimitri finally thought he understood why her siblings called her Governess.

"I can't vouch for him," said Cook, sucking his teeth. "If you make an idle companion of him, he'll quickly become lazy and spoiled. He has the temperament for that. You won't get him to remember his place for long. Soon he'll be acting as if he was a Tsarevich himself."

"He needn't be idle," said Botkin. "I can use assistance with medicines when I am in the palace, and any assistant of mine would need some training. I won't have some unstudied idiotka handing me medicines. He'll not have a degree, or be able to work anywhere else, but it would be something to remind him he is still a servant. Not a royal child by adoption, like this is a reward for his poor behavior."

Nicholas nodded. "This is good. The boy shall become a member of the household servants." He turned to Dimitri. "Your place will be with Alexei from now on, and you shall only go into the kitchens when we are short-handed or Botkin has no current task for you. Your presence within the family is to center on Alexei. Give him attention and friendship, then go about your other duties when he – or another member of my family – dismisses you. It is of course a given that you will not tell a single soul of the Tsarevich's condition."

Anastasia was not supposed to be in her brother's bed. Alexandra was too afraid she would bump him accidentally and make his injury worse. But all four girls loved Alexei dearly, and Anastasia was his particular favorite, since she didn't refuse him anything that was deemed 'not good for his health'. So she had not be able to say no when asked for her to sneak back in and keep him company. He had several medicines for pain coursing through him now, that made him both groggy and unable to fall asleep properly.

Still, at least it was warm and comfortable, half-dozing with Anastasia's arms around him.

Her feet had been cold when she first came in, but they were as toasty as his own now, and he didn't mind occasionally brushing up against them once they reached room temperature.

Something hit the window, making Alexei jolt up, raising his sister with him. "Ana! Listen! There's something at the window!"

She yawned and pulled her arms back. "It's the snow."

"Snow doesn't make noise."

"Wind, then."

"You sound like Tatiana." He pushed her lightly. "Look! There is something there, too big to be a snowflake."

Anastasia got up and tip-toed to the window, unlatching it.

"A Romanov!" cried the little creature that fell in, over the sill.

"It's Rasputin's bat!" Alexei exclaimed.

"Don't worry, I'll kill it." Anastasia ran to the fireplace and grabbed a poker, brandishing it like a sword.

"Hey, what's with all the killing, little Romanov?" said the bat, looking dismayed. "What did I ever to do you?"

"You worked for Rasputin," said Anastasia simply, swinging the poker like a stage-actor. "He tried to hurt my brother. And he let Mama think he could cure him! And you helped!"

"Oh, sure, blame the bat, what the heck, we're easy targets." All he'd ever really done was perch on his master's shoulder and try to look menacing.

Anastasia felt herself lowering the poker. Now that they were conversing, it was getting harder to want to kill this creature. "But your master did try and kill us. He cursed us before he died today."

"Well, I told him it wasn't a good idea. I said we should just go for the party, but he was all, let's crush the Romanovs." The bat's white wings lifted in a shrug. "And now he's dead. Dead, dead, dead."

"He won't come back to life?" Anastasia whispered, as if a little afraid.

"Not after they pitched his body in that frozen river back there."

"What's your name?" Alexei called from bed.

"Bartok."

"I'm Alexei." He pointed to his sister. "She's Anastasia."

Bartok bowed.

"It must be cold out there," Anastasia noted, shivering.

"Oh, it is," Bartok agreed.

"Are you all alone now?" she asked.

"As alone as a bat can get."

"Then you will be my bat," decided Alexei. "Bring him here, Ana. He can sleep in my pocket."

"I don't know–" began Bartok, stopping as Anastasia scooped him up. "Uh, okay."

"I like bats," Alexei said somberly as Anastasia slipped Bartok into the breast pocket of his sleeping shirt. "Sleep tight, Bartok. Don't let the bed bugs bite, Ana."

Looking at the sleeping children, Bartok considered flying away the minute their eyes shut, but something held him back. They didn't look evil; no matter what Rasputin had always said about the wickedness of all Romanovs. And it was pretty warm and snugly here. Rasputin had never let him cuddle at night, even when it was icy cold out.

He glanced both ways – as if to be sure there weren't any other bats at the window watching him, ready to start pointing and laughing – and then he lowered his head onto Alexei's gently rising and falling chest.

Long live the Romanovs, thought Bartok, as sleep overtook him.

AN: This prologue is a two-parter. The next part will take place six months later, and then the first official chapter will begin, ten years later.

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