It frightens Anya the first time, when Gleb shows up in her mirror.
She scrambles for a weapon, thinking he's back for another attempt on her life. Until she turns around and sees the blood blossoming all over the uniform.
And she screams until the darkness takes her.
When she awakes, he's gone, and she convinces herself that it was just a strange hallucination – she has found herself wondering at times what became of him after he let her go. Part of her knows – he did not seem the type to turn tail and run from the aftermath of his decisions. He told her as much when they parted ways. And she did spend ten years living under the Bolshevik regime. She knows they're not likely to show him mercy.
Then she sees him again at breakfast with Nana, gazing out into the estate's courtyard, the rays of the morning sun rendering him translucent. The wistful, resigned expression on his face is one she has never seen before, so she can't have invented it. Her imagination isn't good enough for that.
She doesn't want to worry Nana with the theory that the ghost of a Bolshevik might be stalking her. So she merely nicks a good, sturdy stick from Nana's kitchen and waits for him to materialize in her flat that night. If this avatar of death comes for her, she won't go without a fight. She doesn't know if sticks will work on him, but she's prepared to try.
Sleep overcomes her at some point, and when she opens her eyes in the dead of the night, he's looking down at her, grim-faced and pale. She fumbles for the stick at her side and swings with all her strength.
He doesn't even attempt to avoid the blow – he just watches with detached fascination as it passes through his head. She's not surprised, but as she drops the stick, she has to bite her knuckles to keep from screaming again and giving him the satisfaction.
So this is how he claims the last Romanov in the end.
He takes a step back. "That was well-placed," he comments blandly.
It infuriates her, the cool dismissiveness in his voice. "Do it." She lifts her chin proudly, much as she did the last time they confronted each other. "Finish the job."
He shakes his head slowly.
She frowns. "Isn't that what you're here for?"
He shakes his head again. Thrown, she's unsure how to react now.
She sits up properly and turns her bedside lamp on, scrutinizing him warily. "So you're…"
He gestures to the bullet holes she can now see with a morose chuckle.
"You went back." She draws her knees to her chest, not taking her eyes off him.
"I did."
"You knew what would happen," she points out.
He puts his hands behind his back and stands a little straighter. "I would have died eventually. It seemed…better to die by their hand than my own."
"Why are you here now?"
He doesn't answer right away, and merely glances out her window. "I don't know," he finally says. "I remember the shots…I felt the pain. Then I was no longer on the grounds. I was in the room where we…spoke last."
She draws a sharp breath. In her mind's eye, she can still see the barrel of the gun he pointed at her that day. But she also sees the broken man who crumpled to the ground at her feet, unable to pull the trigger.
"I went to find you," he continues. "You weren't with the Dowager Empress."
She coughs and looks away. "No. I have my own flat."
"I can see that," he remarks.
"Why are you following me around?" she prods.
"I don't know." He looks strange when he looks as lost as he does now. Somehow, it's more off-putting than the bloodstains. There's no trace of the officer she knew briefly in that face – none of the confidence, the passion, or even the conflict.
Words leave her mouth faster before she's truly processed them. "You might as well stay until you know."
Maybe it's survivor's guilt. Because she should have died while he lived, if he had liked her less.
The first couple of weeks of sharing a flat with a Bolshevik ghost are not easy.
There's a man in her home, and he's dead. Anya's squeamish about her privacy now, considering Gleb is a non-corporeal specter who could walk through her bathroom walls if he so wanted.
Beneath these shallower concerns, however, deep down, she wonders if there's a part of him that hates her for her contribution to his brutal death, a part that wants to literally haunt her for it.
She blurts it out at random one night as she sits on the couch trying to read a book on ghosts while he stares out the window.
He blinks in response to her question. "I should…think not."
She pushes a little further. "You failed to kill me, and they did this to you. If you had…"
"I would have lived. I would have been promoted. Honored." He smiles humorlessly. "I would have liked that."
He fingers a rip over the breast pocket of his uniform. "They took my badges from me before they shot me. In the end, it didn't matter what I did for them. That I was a Deputy Commissioner."
His voice is tinged with heartbreak, and for the first time, she reaches out in comfort. But she feels nothing but cold air.
He looks at her hand as she slowly pulls it back. "Thank you, comrade. But I am not worth the pity. I did what I had to do."
She clears her throat. "Well, it's not Russia keeping you from moving on, then." And she buries her face behind the book and accepts what he says, because it's too awkward to continue.
Anya might have remembered who she is now, but that doesn't stop her nightmares from coming. This time, she knows exactly who they are, and what happened to them. So in many ways, it's much worse.
She recalls their terror, she sees their blood, and she wakes up crying most nights, trying to be silent.
One particularly vivid nightmare has her gasping as she wrenches herself into consciousness, her chest so tight, breathing feels too difficult. She wraps her arms around herself as she shivers violently, her ears still ringing with the crack of gunfire.
She has never felt more alone.
She catches the faintest glimpse of a white hand passing through the middle of her bedroom door, and on instinct, she scurries backwards until her senses come back to her and she remembers who it is. He must have forgotten that he can't knock.
She gets out of bed shakily, retrieves her robe, and opens the door to a frantic-looking Gleb, his fist lifted as though to try knocking again.
"Are you alright? I heard noises –" He breaks off when she sees her face. "You're crying."
She hasn't even realized that she is. Conscious, she swipes at the moisture on her cheeks. "I'm fine. Just a nightmare."
His jaw clenches, and there is a flash of something – understanding? – in his eyes. "I'm sorry," he says quietly.
She tries to smile. "For what? You are not your father's son, as you've proven."
"Is there anything I can do?" he presses, guilt radiating from him.
She extends a finger to one of the small bullet holes near where his heart used to be. "I think you've more than paid your debt."
His eyes follow where her hand is, and she yanks it back, embarrassed.
He fidgets. "You should rest," he suggests, not making eye contact.
She hesitates. The thought of going back inside, alone with nothing but herself and her memories, fills her with dread.
She makes an audacious request. "Gleb? Will you stay with me?"
He stares at her like she's gone mad, and she hurries to justify herself. "You're a ghost. It's not like you could do anything." She bites her lip. "I would just….rather not be alone."
He looks like he wants to bolt.
"It's what you can do for me," she adds.
She has him there, and he finally nods. Relieved, she steps back from the threshold to let him through.
She figured it wouldn't be an issue – she spent a decade not having a bedroom, so her privacy there is less consequential to her. But as he stands there in the middle of the room, awkward as can be, her cheeks burn a little.
He turns away as she undoes her robe and crawls under the covers. They're quiet, and she watches the moonlight reflect off his back.
A thought strikes her all of a sudden. "They never came back."
He turns around, confused.
"My family. They never came back like you did." Now that the idea is there, it is seizing her heart, squeezing. Hot tears well up in her eyes and spill down, and she can't stop them.
Through blurry vision, she sees him perch gingerly on the edge of the bed and rest his hand just above her shoulder.
"I'm still here, and they left me," she chokes out. "They could have stayed with me…given me hope through all those years. Why couldn't they have stayed?"
He looks anguished now, and his hand passes through her skin. She jerks at the cold shock, and he quickly moves away.
She curls up, the feeling of abandonment crashing down on her once more. She had thought this was over…that finding Nana was enough. Then he came back.
"Why was it you and not them?" she asks him. "Why?"
His head is down, and his face shadowed. "Because you would not want to cause them pain. Being in between…is not an easy thing."
There's a beat, and he fiddles with the collar of his uniform. "A part of me fears the other side. I have done things I will face judgment for. Perhaps even now, I'm already facing my due."
She does not contest him. A man does not get to his position by being innocent.
He meets her eyes again. "I do not have peace in death. But they did. They believed you would find your way back. And it seems they were right."
She lets his words sink in, mulls them over, and she wordlessly wishes her family peace.
"Thank you."
She'll try to remember that.
Gleb had said before that maybe they could be friends instead. It would take him dying to make that happen, but Anya supposes that had been necessary. In life, who they were would always have prevented that. But in death, there are no Romanovs or Bolsheviks. They are, at long last, equal.
She had not been able to notice before, what with the tension of their encounters when he was alive, but he actually is quite funny. His jokes are absolutely terrible, but he delivers them so eagerly, she laughs anyway. She brings home books from Nana's library sometimes, and they read together until almost dawn, him looking over her shoulder since he can't turn the pages. He's intelligent on matters other than Bolshevik politics, as it turns out.
All in all, he's been a much better comrade than she expected.
She's so used to his presence now that when she comes home one day to a flat with no Gleb, her insides turn to ice.
She practically plows through each room, searching, her breaths quickening with each inspection that turns up nothing.
She sinks down on the couch, head in her hands. It shouldn't matter – he's dead, he was never meant to be here. He's free to move on, as he probably ought to have done a long time ago.
She just thought he'd have the decency to say goodbye. Maybe.
"Anya?"
She looks up, and Gleb is there, concern on his face.
"Where have you been?" she snaps, more harshly than she intended.
"Outside," he replies, alarmed and confused.
She turns away from him and tries to calm down. She probably looks like a petulant child, but it's a better alternative than trying to articulate her…reactions.
"I haven't seen a sunset in a long time," he continues in a measured tone. "I did not think I was bound to you."
"You're not." She pretends to pick at a loose thread on the couch. The silence that follows is deafening.
"Do you want me to go?" he finally asks.
"No!" she answers quickly. She gets up and marches off to the kitchen to prepare her dinner. As she does, she can feel his questioning gaze on her back.
They don't speak for the remainder of the night, until she's about to turn in.
"You…haven't found peace yet, have you?" she ventures. She winces at how callous the question sounds coming from her mouth.
He studies her face carefully before he shakes his head.
"If you do…. You'd tell me, wouldn't you?" She tries to sound detached. "Just so I know."
"I will," he promises.
It hits Anya like a freight train one day.
It's her. She needs to be the one to send Gleb off. She wonders why it took her so long.
She should tell him, because of course she wants him to be free at last. But her eyes fall on the new books she just borrowed, and her resolve falters as she thinks of how lonely the flat will be without him.
She's sure he can tell something is wrong when he first lays eyes on her after the epiphany. His brow furrows, and she hastily tries to rearrange her features into a relaxed expression. He says nothing, and they pretend everything is normal. But the atmosphere is different.
She watches him out of the corner of her eye later as she does dishes. He's looking out the window again, his face drawn and tired. He is ageless now, yet he seems to have aged several years since he first materialized in front of her.
Being in between is not an easy thing, he'd told her once.
She abandons the dishes and goes to stand beside him. "How do you feel?" she asks quietly.
He looks surprised to see her there. "Dead."
"You said it wasn't easy." She hopes he can convince her it's not so bad, that it's bearable. That he won't have to go for a while.
His shoulders slump. "It gets…harder. The longer I'm here."
She can see the fullness of suffering in his pleading eyes, even as he visibly tries to master it. "Gleb."
"My due," he reminds her.
"Do you know what you're waiting for?" she whispers.
There is a pause, and he looks as though he is at war with himself. Finally, he looks directly at her. "An answer."
She knows in that moment that he knows too. But she can't say what he needs to hear – she's too afraid to be left alone again. She starts to turn away, and she sees his face.
Resignation. Pain. And it makes her heart ache.
She acts.
Her kiss goes through him like he's water. She doesn't close her eyes, and she watches him scramble, trying vainly to hold her, trying to return the gesture.
She pulls back, not sure what she's done. He shivers in front of her, looking dumbfounded.
Nothing happens, at first. Then it starts as the barest flicker.
The edges of him blur, and she claps her hands to her mouth as the pinpricks of tears sting her eyes.
It's happening too quickly. His features are losing definition, lost in the light of a glow that seems to be coming from within. In mere minutes, he's nothing but Gleb-shaped brightness.
Then he vanishes. He doesn't say goodbye.
Her legs can't support her anymore, and she sinks onto the floor. She can't even cry.
"Anya."
Her head snaps up, and her jaw drops open.
He's standing there, no longer translucent. He's solid, as solid as anyone, and she can't get to her feet fast enough. "Gleb."
He holds his hand out to her, and she takes it, feeling warmth and flesh beneath her fingers.
"I can't stay too long," he admits apologetically. "But I wanted to bid you farewell."
"Gleb –"
He begins to talk rapidly, as though a clock only he can see is ticking. "Thank you for releasing me. I love you. I've never loved you more than I have in the past few months."
Her throat is so tight, she barely manages to speak. "I do love you."
He squeezes her hand, and reaches out with his other hand to touch her cheek. "Long life, comrade."
Then he's gone. The last thing she sees is the bloodstained uniform.
Author's Note: Happy Gleb-o-ween!
Thanks to my friend Alyte for writing the fic that inspired this, and for allowing me to play with her idea! Also inspired by Being Human (UK)'s Mitchell and Annie, and the Angel novelization Close to the Ground.
Credit to Thriving Ivory for the song that gave this fic its title, and to the band Mayday for the song 我不願 讓你一個人 (I Don't Want to Leave You Lonely), which turned this story from its original fluff into pain.