I remember you tucked into my arms with your nose cold and red with white teeth showing as you laughed. I remember you breaking away from me for a moment, to wind up the music box again and set it carefully on a shelf again. I remember you twirling back into my hands like a bird returning to its cage, your livery all a-sparkle and your dark eyes glittering in the light from the chandeliers. I remember you standing on your tiptoes, doing your best to take your turn leading, as you insisted—trying to twirl me under your arm and us both doubling over with laughter, because I'm taller than you and always have been but you've always been a better dancer than me.

Do you remember the balls Nicholas used to have, when you'd let me lean on you as we staggered out to the carriages with our faces flushed and the air sparkling crystals? Do you remember the way the orchestra sounded in those arched vaulting rooms and how we'd lace our gloved hands together and giggle quietly under the music? Because I do. I remember the way you fitted into my body hips and chest and shoulders soft and sweet like your lips when I bent over them.

I remember your face when Alexander hit you. I remember your face when I found the books you were hiding under your mattress, how you stared me in the eye a little stubborn, a little wild, and when I met you in the library that night you wound up the music box and leaned against me and didn't sob because you're too proud for that.

I remember the war, your hair cropped short and your face raked with scars. I remember your face blooming when you left and your smile twisting in my heart like an anchor dropping through dark frozen water. The music box crashed to the floor and shattered, glass and gold all across the floor and burning with the rest of my library, our library— but my time is getting all mixed up isn't it time time I'm running out of time and hell, Tolys, did we ever have time or was it all just borrowed from the future we'll never have?

I remember you cold and quiet and I remember you like a shaft of sunlight in my bed, I remember you pressed against my skin and your voice humming into my neck, vibrating like a bee's wings in my throat and chest. I remember your laugh. I remember you in a thousand different ways and do you ever remember me?

I remember shuffling around the living room, Dmitri's waltzes tinny out of the speakers of our tiny cassette player. I remember sniffling into your shoulder and bending over to do it because all those years and all those rebellions and you haven't gotten any taller. I remember your thin fingers in my hair and lazy summer afternoons and your mouth against mine, our bodies still moving, around and around the room.

I remember hearing you sing. Your hands closed tightly around your peoples' so there was no room for me, your eyes defiant and sad. Do you remember looking at me and knowing you were about to break my heart? Did you regret it?

Didn't I ask you that question once?

I remember that party when I found you drowsing at a table and the way you startled upright when I spoke to you. Remember your eyes bouncing away from me like you were ashamed to see my face. Remember you begging me quietly not to make a scene.

All I wanted was to dance with you. Just once more. Just once.

I remember you in armor and in livery and in uniform and in fancy dress and in a worn-out sweater and jeans and you're more beautiful every time I see you and I remember you whispering into my ear while we spun through bookshelves and glittering jewels and muddy fields and rickety tables and I remember your hands tight-grip patches of warm on my shoulder and back and I remember your lips on my chest where the scar is and I remember your fingernails savage and desperate on my face and I remember your cold gentleness when you looked at me and so carefully wouldn't let the pity show.

I stand in the living room with the sun shining bright and red outside and I remember you.