My first attempt at an Anastasia fanfic. Enjoy.
Disclaimer: Not mine!
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"There was a boy, a boy who worked in the palace. He opened a wall…"
As she spoke the words, Dmitri's mind shifted from failure to disbelief. He had never told anyone about those moments when he had pushed the princess Anastasia and the Dowager Empress into the servant's passage and into safety. Moments later the Bolsheviks had erupted into the room. Thinking he could buy them more time, Dmitri had grabbed the nearest item, an apple, and flung it at the men. He was rewarded with the butt of a gun being slammed into his head and immediate pain followed by unconsciousness. When he had awoken, the royal family was destroyed and Russia was never the same.
Neither was he.
He slowly lifted his head as Anya laughed off her real memories, dismissing them as mere fantasies. But they weren't fantasies. They were real, and he knew it. He had finally found the real Anastasia, the girl he had saved that night so many years ago.
And now he would have to let her go.
Once they proved her real identity to the Dowager Empress, Anya would be swept back into the life of titles and jewelry she had been born into, a life he could never give her and could never rightly ask her to part from. Not when she had been searching for the truth for so long. He would continue this charade and deliver her to the Empress, then he would say goodbye.
He would not tell her the truth.
He would not profess his love for her.
He would not contemplate a life without her.
He would let her go.
She would be happy, and he would make sure of it by reuniting her with her grandmother. Her life would be the way it was always intended to be, and he wouldn't stand in the way of it. It was better this way. He knew it was.
So why did his heart ache so badly at the thought of letting her go?
Finis.