Drastic Changes in Rooming Arrangements

Seven Years Earlier...

"Dimitri, you do know that bowl of rice isn't going anywhere, right?" Irina asked, watching him stuff his face with a look of clear disapproval on hers.

They were sitting at a cafe table, across from each other. He thought she was being rather hypocritical, considering he had to endure her endless chomping on chewing tobacco. Not to mention the way brown spittle sometimes came out the corners of her mouth.

"I haven't eaten in almost three days," he reminded her, reaching for the salt shaker.

She shrugged and studied her long, painted fingernails as if she'd just noticed their existence on her hand for the first time. "You did seem out of sorts this morning."

"That's one way of putting it," he grudgingly agreed.

"You're welcome, by the way," she snapped, lowering her hand into her lap and glaring across the table at him.

"I said I'll pay you back for the food," he grumbled, shaking the salt over the rice.

"So what did you think of my proposition?" she urged, propping her elbows on the table and resting her chin on her hands eagerly.

He smacked his lips. "Marvelous."

"You're for it, then?" Her muddy hazel eyes shone with hope.

Dimitri snorted, placed down the shaker, and cocked his head at her. "I was talking about the rice – it's very good here – your proposition, on the other hand, is stupid."

"Why's it stupid?" Irina pouted and immediately started whining. "Oh, come on! Please, Dimitri, please?"

"Irina, I'm not going to scam some old man just because you're too embarrassed to tell him you're..." Dimitri made a rolling motion in the air with his hand, trying to come up with a nicer way of putting it. "A lady of pleasure." Yeah, that would work. It was bullshit, sure, but slightly nicer for public usage nonetheless.

"He's not some old man, he's my father," Irina snapped, reaching over and yanking his bowl of rice away in an attempt to regain his full attention – which, really, she'd hardly had to begin with. "Trust me, he deserves it."

"I find the whole idea utterly repulsive," Dimitri said flat-out. "What about that are you failing to get?"

"Dimitri..." Irina bit her lower lip, trying to hold back tears. "I'm...in a delicate state right now..."

His eyes widened. "Oh, no." He started to stand up, snatching his tattered greatcoat with the shredded lining – the one he refused to get rid of, no matter how shabby it looked – off the back of his chair. "No, no, no. Thank you for the rice, but I've really got to be going."

Wiping at her eyes with the back of her wrist, Irina growled, "Go on then, you'll only starve on the streets of Petersburg again. Or be conned by another letter you're convinced some long-lost childhood sweetheart wrote. And see if I care when you do."

Cursing under his breath, he sat back down, hoping his outburst hadn't drawn too much attention. "Listen, the day I take up with the likes of you is the day I have no other options."

"You've got no money, no place to live, and you're starving," she simpered impatiently; "the other options ship has flown."

"Sailed."

"What?"

"You said flown...ships don't fly... Birds fly. You meant sailed, I think." He rolled his eyes at her continued stony incomprehension. "Never mind."

"Listen, all I'm saying is, do this, help me," Irina pressed, jackknifing over and grabbing his hand, squeezing it rather too hard, "and we'll both want for nothing.

"Forget cheap rice and whatever it is you've been eating out of the garbage – you can dine on black bread and vatrushka every night! There's all these old palaces around, and people need beds – with my father's money, we can open a hostel. We'll be successful business people."

"When you say hostel, that's not a euphemism, right?" Dimitri felt the need to double-check, pointing his fork at her. "Because I think I've made my feelings on that clear."

"No, of course not!" She seemed insulted he had even suggested such a thing.

"With you, Irina, that's really not a bad guess."

"Fair enough." She traced a dirty cup-ring on the table with her pinky. "So..."

Thinking only that he must be completely out of his mind, or perhaps suffering from a kind of delirium brought on by hunger pains, Dimitri huffed, "Yes, I'll do it." He then shot his arm out across the table and snagged the rice bowl. "Now give me back the damn rice."

Irina looked delighted, her face positively melting. She sank back in her chair, utterly content. "Oh, I knew you'd see reason! Everything is going to be all right. And you're so handsome – my father is going to love you!" Her expression grew starry. "Who wouldn't trust that face?" An aside, muttered out the corner of her mouth: "Once we get that thuggish beard you've started growing shaved off it, I mean."

Dimitri looked up from his bowl again. "I just have one small, insignificant question."

"What's that?"

"Your father lives in Moscow."

"That's right."

"You're down to your last few rubles – I literally have nothing."

"Right, what's your question?"

"How in blazes do you propose we actually get to Moscow?"

Irina's Madonna-in-rapture glow dimmed a little, her eyes darkening as she grimly considered the dilemma. "I... Well, I didn't think of that."

"Check, please!" Dimitri called out in the direction of the nearest waiter.

Present

After the Bolshevik officers checked out, Dimitri got his bedroom back and Anya was returned to the room the officers vacated. After her outburst in the lobby, screaming about gunfire, it didn't seem like a good idea to try and have Anya return to the Ladies' dormitory.

Irina had pointed out, a little quietly, that their waterlily had stopped paying for her stay several days ago, but Dimitri chose to ignore that. When Irina brought it up for the second time, he waved her off and muttered something he didn't mean about setting up a tab for her.

"She'll pay us later," he finished.

"You're the one," Irina had argued, not with her usual vim, as she did feel a little bad for Anya, "who's always said we're not a charity or a soup kitchen – what is it about this woman that's changed your mind? She's not exactly bothering me, mind you, keeps to herself mostly. But having a lunatic boarding here for an extended amount of time–"

"If she's not bothering you, then just let her be," Dimitri had said, in a tone that implied he'd get angry if Irina said another word even remotely leaning towards the suggestion of tossing Anya Vagonov out. "Something's not right about her – let's not cause a scene. Let her leave when she's ready."

"It's funny," Irina had managed, before dropping the subject and walking off with an armload of linens. "I honestly can't tell anymore if you're falling in love with this woman or if you hate her."

Dimitri wasn't sure himself.

On the one hand, he pitied Anya. She wasn't Anastasia Romanov, but from her looks and obvious trauma (assuming it wasn't an act she put on), for all intents and purposes, she could be. Assuming she was for real, whatever had actually happened to poor Anya during the revolution must have been terrible and caused her to lose her mind.

On the other hand, however, he was furious that she wouldn't be direct. Why couldn't she just tell the truth – say who she really was? He wouldn't hate her for her honesty, not the way he was starting to lose patience with her game.

He was very near the point where he didn't care how on earth she knew about Pooka, or his name, or Count Ipolitov's lavish taste in home decor – he just wanted her to stop bringing those things up and tormenting him with them.

The final straw was when he returned to his room, and his cabinet of icons and mementos, to find Anastasia's music box gone.

She'd robbed him!

Here he'd been defending her, letting her live here for free, eat whenever she wanted – though, admittedly, she took very little food, her small appetite one of the few traits she didn't share with the Anastasia Romanov he remembered – and she had stolen one of the few things he actually valued.

Furious, he stormed into her room.

She was sitting in an old rocker by the window, a knitted shawl another guest had loaned her draped over her frail shoulders, staring out at a back alleyway where a stray cat sat scratching itself on top of a rubbish bin, yawning in the sunshine (there was no proper view of the Neva from this room). From the unfocused look on her face, it was possible she wasn't really seeing the cat, or the alley, but something else entirely – something that might have only existed in her mind.

"Give it back," he told her.

She turned and blinked at him, seeming genuinely puzzled. "Give what back?"

"I won't call the police," Dimitri promised. "But I'd like my property returned now."

Her auburn eyebrows came close together. "I didn't take anything of yours."

"There was a music box in the room you used during the Bolshevik Officers' stay." He struggled not to grit his teeth, his fingernails digging into the palms of his hands. "Now it's gone."

Anya's mouth formed an O of surprise. "But that's mine – Grandmama gave it to me."

Dimitri exhaled heavily. "I'm so tired of this game. Who the hell are you?"

"Anastasia Nicholaevna Romanov," she whispered, shivering as if the walls had ears and would snatch her up if they overheard.

He sucked in his cheeks. "Okay, you know what? I'll play. Just to settle this once and for all." He took a step nearer her rocker. "How did we meet?"

"You were my brother's companion – we've known each other since we were children."

"And what did your brother call me when he was small?"

Swallowing back a sob, Anastasia choked out, "Dima. Alyosha always called you Dima, until he was older – then it was Dimitri, like the rest of us called you."

"The day you checked in here," he pressed on, "whose birthday was it?"

Her shivering got worse. "Please..."

"Whose birthday was it?"

"His. My little brother's. Alexei's." She began crying so hard she couldn't speak for several minutes.

"Oh, stop crying," Dimitri barked, rather pitilessly. "You're not fooling anyone."

"You used to be so kind and gentle," Anya managed brokenly. "You could be insufferable, but you weren't this cruel."

To restrain himself from the instinctive urge to put a hand on her arm or shoulder consolingly, he put his hands behind his back and began pacing beside her rocker.

"What," was his next question, "happened the night you were in my room in Tobolsk?"

She blushed, turning bright pink from her hairline to her chin. "We...you and I..."

He shook his head. "Not that."

"I don't know what else you mean."

"Anastasia would. She once told me she remembered every time."

Her face blanching, the pink running out as quick as it had come, she cried, "Aren't we beyond this?"

Sucking in a deep breath, he grunted, "I guess we aren't."

"I hate you for putting me through this."

"The feeling is mutual."

"If you have any affection left for me," Anya pleaded, "I beg you, stop hurting me like this."

"You're going to cry again, aren't you?" he sighed. "That's it, then. You haven't convinced me – I don't know how you know me, or what the Tsarevich called me as a child, but that doesn't make you Anastasia."

She gnawed on her lower lip, struggling against a cough. "You don't want me to be her – that's all." Tears she had tried not let out, just to prove to him he wasn't always right, burst free and started streaming down her face. "I don't know why, but you don't."

"Just give back what you took, and we'll pretend this never happened." He couldn't resist one last jab. "You're obviously very good at pretending."

"You want it?" Anya asked darkly, her eyes flashing. "It's on the windowsill. Take it. Sell it. Give it to your precious Irina. Do whatever you want. I don't care anymore."

He started towards the window and she let out a squeak of heartbroken surprise, as if she'd hoped he wouldn't – as if she'd hoped he would come to his senses even at this last moment.

"You never really loved me, did you?" she demanded suddenly. "None of it meant anything to you – not what my Papa did for you, not any of it."

"You're a very confused woman," he said coldly, pushing back the curtain to get at the windowsill. "I don't know you."

That was when Dimitri got the shock of his life. The music box's lid was closing as he moved the curtain. It had been open, playing. There had been – though he'd assumed it was just a guest on the other side of the wall doing something or other – a tinkling noise since he'd walked in that he hadn't bothered to try and place. But it had been Anastasia's music box the entire time, playing her grandmother's lullaby. The one he knew so well from childhood – the one he had whistled and hummed in Yekaterinburg when he missed her.

"How?" he demanded, whirling on Anya.

Anya opened a fist that had been – though he'd failed to notice this, too – closed around something the entire time.

A small, battered flower pendant lay in the palm of her hand.

"May I?" he asked, his voice rather cowed and shaky now.

She nodded, and he took it from her, examining it.

On the opposite side of the flower, a tarnished, badly damaged medallion had once had some words written on it – words that might have been Together in Paris. Now it was illegible. It looked like it had taken a bullet at some point.

Dimitri's hands wouldn't stop shaking. He was sure this was the same pendant Anastasia had worn on a chain around her neck almost every day of her life since her grandmother gave it to her.

How did Anya have it? Much less know it was actually the key to the music box?

Unless she really was...

Placing the flower-key on the sill beside the music box, he bent over Anya, motioning at the string that held the nightgown she wore under that shawl closed. "I'm sorry, but..." It was his turn to blush now, but he suffered through it – he needed to know the truth. "Would you mind if I...?"

Rolling her eyes, Anya lifted her own trembling fingers to the string and peeled back the fabric covering her chest.

He pressed his hand to his mouth.

She had scars, bullet wounds. There was even a mark shaped like a flower, left by the pendant. Given its location, it had probably played a large part in saving her life.

"Did you get a good look?" she asked, with what could have been sarcasm if her voice hadn't been so drained and void of any emotion. "See anything interesting?"

His hand still over his mouth, Dimitri dropped to his knees by the rocker, clutching at the wooden arm, gaping up at her.

She blinked at him.

His hand dropped to his side, his forehead bent. "Your highness."

Her hurt expression melted away. "You mustn't!" She rose from the rocker and crouched beside him. "Please don't. We're beyond this, and you know it."

As they both righted themselves, Dimitri flung his arms around her, pulling her close, his tears dampening her neck. "Dusha, forgive me – I can explain everything."

"It's all right," she rasped, "this is all I wanted. I just needed you to know me."

He pulled away, to look at her face, his arms still locked around her.

"How," he mulled, "could I have been so blind?" Dimitri had thought he was sticking it to a headcase or, worse, a pretender. Until this moment, he had refused to let himself consider he might be tormenting the real Anastasia – the last person who deserved such harshness. "You've been through so much, and you came from God knows how far away, and I..." His voice trailed off. "I've been a complete bastard."

"Maybe not a complete one." A corner of Anya's mouth was turned up.

Tightening his grip on her waist, he brought his mouth to hers and kissed it lingeringly.

Anya moaned softly as his hands slipped from her waist to her thighs, stroking them through the fabric of her nightgown. His lips broke apart from hers, but only for a second before he leaned in for another kiss.

By the third or fourth time this happened, his hands still roaming and his grip on her never loosening, Anya seemed to return to her senses, forcing herself to protest this degree of unexpected physical affection.

Pressing her hands against his chest and pushing him back, she whispered, "You're married."

For a moment, Dimitri actually had no clue what she was talking about. The words made no impression and seemed, to his distracted mind, to be total nonsense. He found himself staring into her moist blue eyes for several seconds, trying to work out what in heaven's name she meant.

And, more importantly, why it was preventing him from continuing to kiss her.

"Irina," she prompted, a little tetchily.

"Whoa. Hold on." His nose wrinkled. "I'm not married to Irina."

Her brow furrowed. "You're...not...?" She looked down at his right hand. "But...the wedding ring you wear...and the Bolsheviks, you told them... I heard..."

"Dusha, it's a long story," Dimitri sighed, sucking his teeth. "Most of it I'm not very proud of."

"Are you..." She seemed to be searching his face, looking for an answer she could live with. "Do you love her?"

"Oh, hell no." He knew it probably would have been more charitable on his part to have said this kindly, with less venom, but he couldn't help himself.

Anya scowled and pulled away from him, punching his arm hard enough to make him flinch. "You idiot! You had me going crazy thinking the two of you were madly in love."

"You really thought I was that convincing?" He couldn't help grinning, even as he rubbed his sore arm.

"Don't be so damn happy about it!" she laughed, her voice flooding quickly with relief.

"I thought you were dead," he murmured, stroking the side of her face. "I was in the woods that night in Yekaterinburg. I heard a shot. I thought the guards found you first."

Anya gazed at him in wonder, lips parted slightly. "You were there?"

He nodded. "I missed curfew, next thing I knew there was the truck and–"

"You're the one who put Alexei under that tree," she realized, as he pulled her back into his arms.

"Yeah, that was me."

"I found him there, already cold and dead..."

"But the guards...?"

"Gleb found me," Anya explained. "I didn't think he would let me go – he'd already shot me once that night...but..."

Dimitri felt the blood in his veins run cold. He knew he had no right to judge, even if she had done what he suddenly feared. Either way, though, he wanted to know.

"You gave your name as Anya Vagonov in the registry," he said. "Does that mean you and Gleb were–"

She shook her head adamantly. "No, Dimitri, of course not! He did ask me, before that night – you were right about that. But I said no."

"Then why are you using his name?"

"Because he's dead, and it was an easy name to think of when people started asking dangerous questions."

"Seems to me," Dimitri realized, "both of us have just been playacting to get by."

"So neither of us has someone," Anya noted.

He smirked. "Yes, we do." They had each other. And thank God for that much, considering the misery they seemed to bring to anyone who got caught in the crossfire between them.

A little shyly, Anya started pulling him in the direction of the bed. Taking one of his hands, she placed it gently on her still somewhat exposed chest.

"Not here," he told her.

Half an hour later, Anya was in Dimitri's room, wrapped in his arms and bed-sheets, staring up at the chipped crown molding around the top of what used to be a supporting palace pillar, now strung with what appeared to be a kind of makeshift clothesline.

Draped across it at the moment were her borrowed nightdress and shawl and Dimitri's pants.

"So," she laughed, turning her head on the pillow to look at him, "this was your room I was staying in. Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't know you were...well, you...then..." he said, grimacing at his own stupidity. "I know, I know – I'm an idiotka."

"All those holy icons in that cabinet are yours, too?"

He leaned over her to steal a kiss. "Yes."

Anya laughed again. "You're devout now – Mama would love that." Would have loved that.

"I guess all those years of her constantly nagging us to say our prayers had more affect on me than I realized."

Touching the side of his face, tracing his jawbone and dragging it down to hers for yet another kiss, then lightly pulling away, she sighed, "I thought you'd put my music box out of sight to forget about me." And, in reality, he'd just been keeping it as close as possible. "Especially after how you sang that vile song about Papa."

"I didn't want to," he admitted, gritting his teeth at the memory, at the nasty words that must have been like knives in Anastasia's heart. "It puts me in a bad mood every time – that was why I wasn't more patient when you started screaming in front of those officers.

"And when you mentioned Pooka, I thought – for a second – that if I was wrong... I had to keep myself angry, then, to keep from going to bits, so I tried to believe it was all for attention."

She felt herself growing cold at the thought of what she now had to confess to him. "That happens to me all the time now, Dimitri, I'm sorry."

Smoothing back her hair, he whispered, "Don't be."

"It's why I tried to..." She shivered, remembering her determination to sew those rocks into her corset and end it all, rejoining her lost family and putting a stop to the nightmares, the cold-even-in-summer water of the Neva's current... "Oh!"

"What's wrong?" Dimitri's face creased with concern.

"Nothing, it's just..." She tried – unsuccessfully – not to smile at her own mistake. "I finally realized what you meant."

"What I mean when?"

"When you asked me about that night in Tobolsk," Anya said. "You meant Alexei bursting a blood vessel from coughing."

He jerked his head in a slight nod.

"When do you have to be downstairs?" she asked next, a little nervous about the answer. She didn't want him to go so soon. Still, there was a hostel that doubtless needed running. Irina didn't strike her as incompetent, exactly, but she doubted the woman was capable of running the whole place all day without help of any sort.

"Quarter till never," he grunted.

"You weren't planning to stay in bed all day?" Anya teased, laughing.

"I am now," Dimitri told her, his tone so utterly serious it made her laugh even harder.

"Don't tease me."

"I'm not – I just think, after nine years of being apart, it's only fair that for the next nine years we get to stay exactly like this."

"Hard to argue with that," Anya concurred, stretching her arm over to stroke his hair. "But I'll get on your nerves after a while, don't you think?"

"Yeah, I suppose so." He smirked. "After about ten years – so nine won't be a problem."

"Okay, now you're teasing me."

"Perhaps a little."

Anya propped herself up on her elbow and stared down at him. "You know, you look just like I remember you – except taller and thinner." She pressed her lips together tightly, squinting a little. "I remembered you shorter."

"And fatter?" he suggested, chortling.

"I used to draw so many pictures of you – you looked fat in every one of them."

"Charming girl."

"Maybe that's why I remember you being rounder."

"Probably," he agreed, his mind skipping to something else. "Hey, there's something I wanted to ask you about – now that I finally can."

She lowered her head onto his chest. "What's that?"

"In Tobolsk, we said vows to each other," Dimitri mused. "That's not very Russian Orthodox – did you pick that idea up from one of your English cousins?"

Anya sighed, then giggled lightly. "More from Auntie Olga's romance novels, I think. Mama disapproved of them, said they were filth; but they were always being left around whenever Papa's sister visited... I thought they were silly, but I used to sneak and read them anyway." Tilting her head up, she frowned. "Hey, you were pretty smooth with your vows – how did you know what you were doing?"

Dimitri looked embarrassed. "You'll make fun of me."

"Undoubtedly," she assured him, kissing his chin playfully. "Tell me anyway."

"I read your Aunt Olga's books, too."

"You did not!"

"I was a bored servant, going through puberty, and there were a lot of bodices getting ripped open," he defended himself, his cheeks flushing redder by the second. "Almost every other page!"

"You should probably check on things downstairs eventually."

"Nyet."

Anya rolled her eyes. He was so stubborn; she'd missed that. "I'm a bit hungry," she admitted, knowing there was no other way she was ever going to get him out of the bed. "I didn't have breakfast, and we took a lot of exercise."

"Oh, right." He kissed her forehead and started to get up. "I guess I could get us something to eat – check on things downstairs while I'm at it."

"That would probably be for the best."

"Do you still like blini with smoked salmon?"

It had been one of her favorite childhood foods – she was surprised and touched that he remembered. "Mmm, very much."

"Please be here when I come back." There was the saddest lilt to his voice, laced with twinges of fear.

"Don't worry," Anya promised, gazing about the room that had seemed so austere the last night she'd spent in it and now seemed like the most beautiful dwelling in Russia – if not the whole world. "I'm not going anywhere."

Late that night, well past midnight, Dimitri was deep in slumber when Irina's nasal voice broke into his dreams.

"Come on, wake up already!" She was shaking his arm rather frantically, and his first thought as he returned to consciousness was that something had better be on fire.

"How did you even get in here?" he snapped, his eyes opening only to immediately narrow in annoyance.

"The door was open," Irina said offhandedly.

That didn't sound right. He never left that door open – for various reasons, a large one being he didn't want Irina to just stroll in uninvited. She had never been welcome in his personal space.

Fuzzily, in the back of his mind, it occurred to him that Irina being in here must mean she'd seen Anya sharing his bed. Then he immediately decided he didn't care – it wasn't any concern of hers.

Now that he knew Anya really was Anastasia, he wasn't planning on ever putting her back in that other room – let the damned Bolsheviks have it whenever they came back.

To his surprise, though, when he rolled over, Anya wasn't there. The creased covers beside him were empty.

Irina sucked her teeth. "If you're looking for Miss Unknown, that's what I came to tell you."

"Where is she?" He wasn't able to keep his voice from coming across as accusatory.

Irina pouted awkwardly. "I think you'd better see this for yourself."

Dimitri's anxiety had only grown as Irina led him down several corridors to a small corner-room they used for storing the camp cots they kept for overflow in the dormitories.

With a groan of annoyance, Irina pushed open the door to reveal that half the room had been rearranged. "I was down in the kitchen for a nightcap, right below, and I heard noises – come to find out, our waterlily is moving the cots around."

Dimitri half-listened, mostly trying to figure out what the new arrangement reminded him of.

"I tried to make her stop," Irina went on, "but it was like she was in a trance or something – sleepwalking, I guess." She motioned to one of the rearranged cots. "Then she just plops herself in there and refuses to get out."

Oh, God. He'd just figured it out. Exactly where he'd seen this precise arrangement before. Tobolsk. This was the exact way the grand duchesses arranged their cots in their bedroom in that freezing Siberian mansion.

"She said your name a couple times, mumbled it more like," Irina kept prattling, her voice growing more high-pitched. "So I went to get you. Didn't have the slightest clue what else would make her leave."

Dimitri bent over the cot and touched Anya's neck gently. "Anya, come back to the room with me, you're just having a nightmare."

"I can't," she yawned, her eyes still closed.

"Why not?"

"I have to wait until Tatya falls asleep." She pulled herself into a fetal position. "I'll come to you after that."

Rather than tell her Tatya – her sister Tatiana – had been dead for nine years and the other three cots she'd set up were in fact empty, he lifted her up and carried her back to his room, ignoring Irina's nagging questions as she followed them more than halfway, only stopping to storm into her own bedroom and close the door in something of a huff as they passed by it.

In the morning, when Dimitri asked her about it, Anya didn't remember a thing. She believed she'd spent the whole night at his side, and was genuinely shocked when he showed her what she had done to the storage room.