A. N.: You all knew this one was coming...

I'd Find You Again

Dimitri resolutely wasn't thinking of tomorrow. This was his last night of freedom, and he wanted to enjoy it. Tomorrow, he would have to make his case in parliament. He had put it off for as long as possible, and he had no more excuses. No more time.

Walking in the cool night air, he tried not to feel too guilty as he spent what he refused to acknowledge would probably be his last night with Anya. When he'd walked her home that first time, he hadn't intended…this. But, somewhere between then and now she'd become an indispensable part of his life.

He sighed before catching himself and forcing a weak smile. Anya smiled back at him, and her eyes caught the moonlight. When she looked at him like that, he flattered himself that she'd grown to care as much as he did. How, then, could he explain why he had to disappear?

She squeezed his hand softly, grounding him in the present, and said, "You don't have to do that, you know. Pretend everything's all right. If you don't want to talk about it, that's fine. But, you're allowed to be sad."

Dimitri allowed himself a morose chuckle.

"When did you get so good at reading me?"

Anya shrugged, and for the first time that night, he saw the tightness in her bearing.

"When did all…this happen?" she asked, briefly lifting their intertwined hands between them.

Dimitri's stomach dropped.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

Anya stared at him, seeming to search his face for the answer to some unasked question. He didn't know if she found it, but she shook her head, replying lightly, "Nothing. I just never expected to be close to you."

"Well, it wasn't exactly my plan, either," Dimitri responded.

He didn't regret it, but he wondered if she would, when he left.

"Well then," Anya said, "I'm glad neither of our lives went according to plan."

The lightness in her voice, like her smile, seemed forced, and Dimitri wondered, in the back of his mind, when he'd learned to tell the difference.

"You know, you don't have to do it either – pretend everything's okay."

Anya glanced up at him sharply – surprised? – and chuckled softly.

"What a pair we make tonight," she said, shaking her head.

"You're telling me. Still, I wouldn't trade this for the world."

Dimitri meant his words, but they left him with a false aftertaste anyway. He was, after all, trading her for the future he'd chosen. If all went well in the morning, he'd probably never see her again. And, he still couldn't make up his mind to tell her. He wouldn't know what to say if he tried.

Anya was looking down, and he wondered if he'd said the wrong thing. Their silences had grown comfortable over the weeks, but tonight seemed different. He was probably just projecting his own worries onto her.

Dimitri gave up on chatting, and she didn't seem in the mood either. He embraced the silence, heavy or not, and simply focused on the feeling of her hand in his, trying to memorize every line of her face while he still could. They stayed out later than usual that night. She never hinted that it was time to go home, and he certainly wasn't going to suggest it. He'd make that final night last forever if he could.

Unfortunately, neither of them chose the moment that broke their companionship. A loud bang split the air, and Anya fell to the ground, screaming.

"No!"

Dimitri froze. A quick glance couldn't tell him the origin of the sound, but remembering what Anya had told him about her family, he guessed what she'd heard. The unexpected noise hadn't sounded dissimilar to a gunshot. Feeling slightly sick, he crouched down and reached out an arm, then drew it sharply back, afraid an unexpected touch might only add to her panic.

"It's okay, Anya," he whispered fiercely, "You're safe."

"Safe," she spat, "That's what the soldiers told us when they were pointing their guns at us. They said they were taking us someplace safe!"

Dimitri flinched. He'd known, ever since that first real conversation, that her story wasn't a happy one, but he still hadn't expected something so wrong. He couldn't stop himself this time, reflexively reaching for her shoulders and trying to shake her back into the present.

"It's me, Anya. I'm here. You're not-"

"Gleb?" Anya asked. Her head snapped up, and he saw her eyes clearly for the first time since she'd fallen. They were wide with terror. She scrambled backward, tearing herself out of his grasp, pleading, "Don't hurt me, please. I'm not her, Gleb, I'm not-"

Dimitri knew it wasn't him she was afraid of. It didn't lessen the horror he felt at her reaction.

"Anya," he said firmly, "No one is going to hurt you. I won't let them."

The frightened woman froze, and her eyes cleared as she met his gaze.

"Dima," she said.

Dimitri offered a pained smile. The nickname on her lips was a honey-coated hell. The sweetest confirmation of recognition, it was simultaneously a harsh reminder that he'd never been truly honest with her. He'd do anything to make her feel safe, but he knew he had no right to the trust she gave him.

"That's right," he said, "I'm here."

Anya stepped into his embrace, leaning her head against his chest, and he could feel her trembling as he wrapped his arms around her.

"You're going to be okay. I'll never let anyone hurt you."

Liar, his conscience whispered. You won't be around to keep that promise. You're abandoning her after tonight.

"I know," she said, but the words rang hollow in Dimitri's ears. He wondered if she knew already that she couldn't count on him. As if in response to his thought, she pulled away, and he reluctantly let go.

She swiped the residue of tears from her cheeks and met his eyes with a composed façade. He hesitated, afraid of upsetting the precarious balance, but he had to know. He couldn't leave her, forever wondering if she was unsafe.

"Who's Gleb?" he asked.

Anya's eyes hardened with the reticence he'd grown to know so well since their first meeting.

"A man I used to trust," she said tersely. She studied his face for a moment before her own softened, and she continued, "He's the reason I left Leningrad. He would've…It doesn't matter now." She finished with a shrug.

"Anya…"

She flinched at her name and looked away.

"I can't do this anymore, Dima."

It was the last thing Dimitri had expected her to say. What couldn't she keep doing? She met his eyes again, but he couldn't decipher the emotions muddying hers.

"I'm sorry. Thank you – for everything. You'll never know how much it meant to me. But, I have to go now. I won't see you again."

"What-" he tried to ask, but she was already running away.

"Anya, wait!"

He lurched a couple steps after her, but she only increased her pace. She didn't even look back when he called.

Dimitri stood alone in the darkness. He should be happy, he told himself. She wouldn't waste her days waiting for him, wouldn't feel disappointed when he stopped coming, and he hadn't even had to tell her that they couldn't continue meeting. It had been her choice. He'd won in every way.

So, why did he feel so keenly that he'd lost?

The morning wasn't a happy one. Vlad noticed the tension, but Dimitri brushed him off, attributing it all to nerves. Of course, his stepfather had no reason to disbelieve him. It was a little harder to convince himself. He tried desperately not to think of blond hair tucked under a cap or blue eyes sparkling with mischief or a voice alive with passion – to focus instead on the finer points of legal controversies or the personal details Vlad had thought would help him appeal to individual members of parliament or the numerous reasons the supposed princess couldn't be the real Anastasia. It was hard to remember why he'd agreed to this, though.

And, the moment he saw her, his thoughts ground to a halt.

When he'd first entered the parliament chamber with Vlad, he'd scanned the seats, trying to place faces to names and remember the strategies associated with each. It wasn't until he stepped out onto the floor that he looked up at the empress's dais to size up the princess sitting next to her.

She looked as surprised as he felt.

"You?" she demanded.

Not a bad actress, he observed, some detached part of his mind spinning on and on as if trying to outrun the bewildered emotions welling up in his gullet. The woman's expression was one of composed hauteur, her voice barely above a whisper, but he knew her too well to be deceived. He saw Anya's outrage in the taut lines around her eyes, heard her shock in the low pitch of her voice.

Was that betrayal? How dare she feel betrayed, when she'd been conning a whole country? It's not like he'd set out trying to fool her, using a false friendship to gain her secrets. Of course, he realized, he did have access to those secrets. And, maybe that wasn't such a bad thing.

"I'm as surprised as you are, Anya," he said bitterly. "Why don't we skip the games, and you can tell them all who you really are. Tell them about Gleb, the 'real reason' you left Petersburg."

Anya didn't so much hide her expression as control it, honing it into a tight facsimile of righteous fury as she rose. She descended the dais with graceful steps, but beneath her elegant posture, he saw the ready fighting stance of the woman he'd seen chase a gang of thugs from their own alley with a firebrand. A dim part of his brain wondered if he should run, but he held his ground until she stopped a few steps away from him.

Anya raised her voice to address the court, but her eyes stayed riveted to his.

"Anya is the name I chose when I woke in a hospital in Perm with no memories, after the beating I took when they slaughtered my family. It's the name that got me safely across the Soviet Union until I arrived here and reunited with my grandmother. Deputy Commissioner Gleb Vaganov is a Bolshevik officer I met in Leningrad. When he realized who I am, he tried to kill me, and I fled."

Her voice was strong, and she spoke without hesitation, but Dimitri wouldn't fall for her act. Quickly, he reviewed what he had learned the night before.

"You told me he was someone you trusted."

"About as well as I trusted you," Anya said coldly. "He was my friend until we heard a truck backfire. You've seen how well I react to sounds like gunshots. I started screaming for Alexei and Maria, and he realized who I was, even before I'd admitted it to myself. And since you keep asking, he's the reason I jumped off a train – he'd followed me with an arrest warrant for daring to survive the revolution."

Dimitri shook his head at her gall while whispers raced across the fringes of the room. She played the game effortlessly, he had to admit. Nothing she'd told him last night could contradict the story she'd just spun.

"Do lies come so easily to you now?"

"You're calling me a liar? How dare you? I should have trusted my first impressions – I knew there was a reason I hated you!"

He felt a vicious glee in forcing the false princess to drop the civil act and yell at him. He matched her tone as parliament fell silent.

Nothing new here. Just Dima and Anya, back to arguing. Only the topic had changed, and Dimitri wasn't playing to lose, not with the stakes this high.

"Well, that makes two of us. You know, I'd actually started admiring you, Anya, but seeing you now, masquerading as Anastasia-"

"You just don't want me to be her! Why is that? Are you so desperate for power-"

"Because she's sacred!"

He hadn't meant to say it like that, but his voice boomed out before he could call it back. For a split second, the only sounds in the chamber were his own harsh breathing and the soft shhck of fabric as members of parliament shifted in their seats. Then Anya, her face once more composed in a condescending mask, let loose a chuckle, quiet as it was cold.

"Go ahead, Dima," she said, and he knew it wasn't a slip of the tongue. She was using the name to get under his skin, but he didn't have time to object as she continued, "Why don't you tell us what precious memory of Anastasia you have that has you so convinced I can't be her. You can't have known her all that well, after all, not after what you told me of your own…upbringing."

Dimitri had never wanted more desperately to throttle her. She'd guessed correctly that his memory couldn't disprove her claim. All it did was explain why the thought of a counterfeit Anastasia was so offensive to him, and he had no desire to share it with the waiting audience. But, of course, he'd been the one to bring it up, and he couldn't back down now. That would only strengthen Anya's position. So, grudgingly, he spoke, trying to ignore the eyes boring into him from all around the room.

"You're right. I didn't know her well. I only saw her once, from a distance."

Anya's expression changed, growing more blank, as though she were trying to hide some kind of reaction. Surprise? Had she expected him to lie, to invent some story that would prove he knew more about Anastasia than she did? She should have known him better than that.

"I was only ten. She must have been about eight, then. There was a parade, in June. Something about her just…I don't know. Kids are impressionable. Anyway, I started running after the procession, calling out her name, and then she looked at me, right at me…And she smiled."

Dimitri took a deep breath, preparing to admit that he couldn't prove Anya wasn't Anastasia, but he knew it wasn't right to pretend. He would appeal to her better nature – she'd shown him that she had one, hadn't she? In all their time together? But, he never got the chance to say any of that.

"A parade in June?" Anya asked.

He nodded, trying to place her tone. There was no skepticism, just an unexpected softness.

Her eyes were distant, as though she were seeing through him to something else, and she said, "It was hot, not a cloud in the sky."

Don't tell me she's pretending she was there. Does she really think she can convince us by parroting information she's just heard?

"As June days tend to be," he said sourly, pleased to hear a chuckle or two from the assembled members of parliament. At least someone else realized she wasn't adding anything she couldn't have surmised easily enough from his story.

"I do remember a boy," she said, striking just the right note of uncertainty.

"Haven't you told enough lies for one day?" Dimitri asked.

"There were guards," she said as though she hadn't heard him, "But he dodged in between. He certainly knew how to make himself seen." Her voice grew warm, and her lips curved into a fond smile.

Dimitri could almost believe she'd forgotten there was anyone else in the room with her, anything but the fabricated memory that seemed to occupy her entire attention.

"Then, he started to run," she continued, "And he called out my name – just mine…I wasn't supposed to smile, I tried not to, but I couldn't help it. I smiled."

There, she'd finished her story. Dimitri didn't know what she'd hoped to accomplish, but at least the farce was over.

"Are we done now?" he asked brusquely.

Only, she wasn't finished.

"And then he bowed," she said.

Dimitri almost wasn't sure he'd heard it.

"What did you say?"

How can she possibly have known that?

With one sentence from Anya, parliament disappeared. He forgot there was anyone in the room, anyone in the world, but the two of them.

"I said he bowed," Anya said firmly, looking into his eyes as her own cleared, replacing the past with the present.

"I-I didn't tell you that," he said, stumbling closer and grabbing her hand before he'd realized what he'd done.

Searching her face while the most terrifying mixture of hope and desperation threatened to overwhelm him, he said, "I've never told anyone that."

"You didn't have to…I remembered."

"It was- you really are-" he choked on his own words, finally giving up and letting out a little laugh of euphoric relief.

That little girl, who'd burst her royal bubble to reach out and make him feel worth something, even as a nobody kid in Petersburg, was still alive. And she was standing right in front of him. For one brief moment, he'd never been happier. He raised a hand to gently cup her cheek.

And then he followed her gaze as she glanced over his shoulder. Members of parliament were frantically whispering to each other, some nodding while others shook their heads. Abruptly, Dimitri remembered where he was and realized just whom he was touching so informally - not Anya, but Anastasia.

Almost before his mind had caught up to his body, he'd dropped his hands to his sides and staggered backward to a safe distance. Looking back at the princess, he found her face perfectly composed. Anastasia was looking directly at him, but for the first time in a month, he found her completely unreadable. He wondered dismally if he'd ever see her smile again.

"So, Dimitri Popov, have I passed your test?"

He swallowed hard at the address. It was the first time she'd used his proper name, and it served as a harsh reminder of his place. Gone were Anya and Dima and their casual intimacy, replaced by the princess Anastasia and the common stepson of a count, a man who had betrayed her trust and tried to steal her country. Forcing his mind to focus on her question, he found it difficult to believe that she needed his approval. But, he couldn't deny her anything she asked. The only problem was finding a way to acknowledge her legitimacy that didn't feel supercilious. How could he presume to give credibility to a princess?

A heartbeat later, it came to him. Deliberately, he knelt before her, lowering his head to stare deferentially at the floor while he addressed her.

"Your Highness," he said, only just keeping his voice from breaking, "I'm sorry I ever doubted you."

That should do, he thought. It was an admission that he was at fault for doubting, not an implication that she'd ever warranted suspicion. It was the least he could do after he'd broken her trust and tried to steal her country. He waited in silence as his words hung in the air.

"Dimitri, please," the princess said finally. Her voice was soft, and he tried not to imagine the emotion behind it. He didn't trust himself to get it right after all he'd gotten wrong.

"Stand up," she continued. "I think the two of us have made enough of a scene for one morning."

"Of course, Your Highness," he said.

He rose promptly but kept his head bowed. He couldn't bear to meet her eyes.

Court had ended abruptly that morning, when Maria Feodorovna had suggested that everyone in attendance needed some time to gather themselves. Dimitri had gratefully taken the opportunity to vanish, steadied only by Vlad's solid arm around his shoulders.

Afterward, he remembered everything Anya had ever told him about herself. She'd spoken of waking up in a hospital in Perm, not far from Yekaterinburg, before making her way out of the Union to Russia. She'd told him her family had been killed in the revolution.

They were loyalists, weren't they?

You could say that. Nanna wasn't with us when it happened. So, I thought I'd find her here.

She'd even told him how it had happened. He just hadn't been listening.

That's what the soldiers told us when they were pointing their guns at us. They said they were taking us someplace safe!

Everything he'd learned about Anya had been true of Anastasia. Even her fearlessness.

I didn't walk across a whole country without learning how to take care of myself.

How many women did he think had done that? It should have been obvious, especially when he considered her refusal to ever let him see where she lived. It was Anya who had been the lie, not Anastasia. And, he'd refused to see it because he'd already made up his mind that she was dead.

Shut up in his room that night, he ignored the knock on his door. Vlad walked in anyway.

"Not going out tonight?" he asked.

Dimitri shrugged, too tired to explain. He'd never told him where he was going, and it hardly mattered now. But, that wasn't good enough. Vlad waited for a real answer.

"Didn't you wonder," Dimitri asked, "Why I seemed so confident I knew all her secrets this morning?"

"Ah," Vlad said emphatically. He wasn't an idiot; he could put enough together without the details.

Dimitri shifted as Vlad sat down heavily beside him.

"I promised not to let you fail," he said, and Dimitri snorted.

"It's not like you could have planned for this. No one could."

A beat of silence passed before Vlad offered, "All isn't lost, you know. Even if she is the real thing, does that make her ready to rule?"

"No," Dimitri said. "Everything else about her does."

He'd realized it too late, but he wouldn't pretend to disbelieve it now. Whether as Anya or as Anastasia, she'd always been something special.

"You know what the worst part is?" he asked.

Vlad shook his head. He looked concerned, but Dimitri didn't know how to reassure him. Instead, he simply talked, grateful for the outlet for his racing thoughts.

"I didn't realize until later, but she could have preempted me. I told her about my father, Vlad. All she had to do this morning was tell them, and they wouldn't have listened to a word I said. Instead, she just stood there while I accused her of being a fraud, while I used words she'd spoken in confidence against her. She never said a thing…"

"Dimitri, my boy," Vlad said sympathetically, "She'll break your heart."

Dimitri snorted.

"It's a little late for that. I think I've done a pretty good job of it myself."