First of all, I apologize yet again for how long it took me to post this.
I'd also like to apologize if these last few chapters have seemed a little rushed. I know exactly what I want to do with this story, and I've been very impatient about getting it to this point, but I also didn't want to just skip months ahead. On the plus side, now that I've gotten this story to this point, I hope writing it will become a little easier.
"Olga! Tatiana! Come here!" Anastasia shouted, never looking away from the window in the sitting room. Across the room she hear Maria drop her book and rush over to the window just as two pars of footsteps came rushing up the stairs.
"What is it?" Olga asked from behind her as Maria slipped her hand into hers. "What's wrong?"
"Look!" She pointed out the window to the yard beyond. Olga and Tatiana pressed themselves close, craning their necks to see what had made Anastasia shout for them.
"What are they doing?" Tatiana demanded, stamping her foot in an almost cartoonish was.
The four sister huddled in the window and watched from above as three guards hacked their snow mountain apart with shovels. It was already mostly taken apart, with a deep valley running through its middle. In a few minutes it would be gone altogether.
"I don't understand," Maria whimpered, squeezing Anastasia's hand so tight her fingertips tingled. "Why won't they allow us anything that's fun?"
"Because they're Bolshie pigs," Anastasia spat. Her face screwed up as one of the guard took a pickaxe to what remained of the mountain. "What do they care about letting us have fun?"
"I'm a little surprised it took them so long to take it away," Olga mumbled, turning away from the window. Anastasia heard her sister throw herself down onto the couch with a groan, and Tatiana followed close behind to comfort her. Maria remaind at the window with Anastasia, biting at her nails as they watched the rest of the mountain disappear. It seemed to drag on forever, though in reality it took almost no time at all.
"I guess that's that," Maria murmured when the guards were done, though neither of them turned away from the window.
"Nastya!" Even from all the way upstairs, they could hear Alexei running through the house. He came thundering up the stairs, Dmitry hot on his heels trying to make sure he didn't trip. "Nastya! Have you seen what they've done?"
"Yes, we have," Maria answered for her. Though her voice wavered the tiniest bit, she did not cry, and Anastasia dimly marveled at how much strength that must have taken for her sister. She herself hardly cried about anything anymore, but Maria had always felt things much more deeply than she did.
"I'm sorry," Dmitry said, bowing his head. "It's my fault."
"What is?" Anastasia asked.
"If I hadn't climbed up there yesterday, they might not have taken it down."
"Don't be stupid," Tatiana snapped. From beside her, Olga gave an exasperated sigh, but said nothing. "They would have knocked it down regardless."
"She's right. You heard what that guard told us," Alexei said.
Anastasia drew herself up into a stiff posture with a serious look on her face, a near perfect imitation of the guard. "It's for your own safety, there's been unrest in the streets," she mimicked before dropping the act. "They'd have taken any excuse not to let us up there. They probably don't want any of the Reds or their supporters to see that we're human just like them. It makes it easier for them to hate us that way."
"Anastasia," Tatiana sighed as Olga burst into tears. "Must you always be so… so…"
"So what?" Anastasia demanded.
"So guileless," Tatiana decided on. She wrapped her arms around their oldest sister and began rocking her back and forth as she whispered to her.
"Well it's the truth," Anastasia defended. "I'd like to see you look me in the eyes and tell me I'm wrong."
"Whether you're wrong or right doesn't matter," Tatiana snapped. "Sometimes the truth is just a little too harsh." With that she stood, pulling Olga up with her, and guided her sister back down the stairs. Anastasia threw herself on the newly vacated couch with a huff. No doubt Tatiana would tell Mama, and Anastasia would get yet another stern talking to. And yet, she couldn't find it in herself to care much. There was very little that could be taken from her at this point.
"I fail to see how I'm the bad guy here," she announced to anyone in the room who would listen. Maria threw a nervous glance over her shoulder at the stairs while Dmitry shook his head. It only made her angrier; people were always shaking their head and grimacing when she spoke. She hated it. It made her feel like she was doing something wrong by speaking out. Her family, at least, should know by now that she would never hold her tongue. Maybe she was even incapable of it.
"You're not the bad guy," Alexei said as he sat down next to her and laid his head on her shoulder. He had to lean over quite a bit to do so, and Anastasia wondered when he'd started getting so tall. "Some of us simply aren't as strong as you are."
"Is that what you think I am?" Anastasia asked him. "Strong?" Alexei nodded against her shoulder.
"Of course I do," he said. "Don't you see it?"
"See what?" she asked. She glanced at both Maria and Dmitry, but they were busy pretending not to listen.
"They haven't broken you," Alexei said reverently, his blue eyes shining as he stared up at her. "You see the way Mama and Olga simply droop when something else gets taken away. Tatiana's better at hiding it because she's always taking care of everyone else, but she's almost as unhappy as Olga is. But no matter what they do to us, you're still the same Anastasia you were before this all began. You make us all smile and forget for a little bit."
Anastasia didn't feel like she was the same person. She felt older than that shelters, naïve girl who thought nothing could happen to her family. She felt just as miserable as everyone else seemed all the time. She felt she had just been wearing a mask or putting on an act. She felt heavier and tired and nothing at all like the girl she had left behind in the Winter palace. But if strong was how her family viewed her, and what they needed her to be, then Anastasia would be just that.
Dmitry was fairly sure he was going to go stir crazy. The air outside had less of a bit to it, and normally that would be a good thing and they would all spend as much time outside as possible to revel in it. But their allotted time outside had been cut down once again. Now, it seemed, they hardly had enough time to stick their noses out the door before they were being told to come back in.
The new government, Lenin's government, had been making radical changes to their life in captivity. Suddenly they were all put on soldiers' rations and their allowance had been cut to only 600 rubles per person per month. Most of the other servants were gone, with only a few remaining and some staying without pay. Dmitry hadn't even known his position had been on the chopping block until after everyone else was gone. He still wondered why he had been allowed to stay, even with a smaller salary.
Not that he was complaining. He was very glad and very grateful that he was allowed to remain with the family, but his job was very quickly becoming obsolete. The rumor circulating was that Nicholas had put up quite a fight to keep him, even going as far as bringing Yakovlev to the yard that day to meet Dmitry. It was yet another thing Dmitry supposed he'd never understand. Alexei could only get into so much trouble locked away in the house, and now that he was growing taller and heavier it would be harder for Dmitry to carry him around when he was unable to walk. He would have to depend on his wheelchair to get around, and quite literally anyone could push him around in that. All of them knew well that once they were released from captivity, Dmitry might not be needed anymore.
Another rumor going around was that Lenin and his government was using the Winter Palace as their headquarters, now. Dmitry had felt sick to his stomach, hearing that. All the rooms had been sealed by the provisional government when they had left the palace behind, but he imagined the new government wouldn't care about that. They had probably already made themselves at home, breaking whatever was left behind and rifling through their belongings for any "evidence" that Alexandra had been conspiring with the Germans in the war.
They wouldn't find anything, of course. The idea of Alexandra scheming with the Germans was preposterous to anyone who knew her. Still, Dmitry imagined the Bolsheviks would make up just about anything to keep the people on their side.
The newspapers were coming less and less often now, and were even more horribly outdated when they were permitted to read them, but suddenly Dmitry found himself fighting with Tatiana over who got to read them first. She often won, but that didn't stop him from reading over her shoulder, much to her annoyance. They had a silent agreement, though, to keep the newspapers away from the younger siblings. What they read in the papers regarding their family was disconcerting at best, and Dmitry was worried about what it might do to their spirits if they were to ever learn about what was written about them. As it turned out, their worries were usually for nothing. Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei hardly ever expressed interest in reading the newspapers, and when one of them did ask about the news they were often able to feed them half-truths and smaller headlines. Dmitry wasn't sure if it was ignorance or self-preservation keeping the younger three from reading the newspapers, but he wasn't about to argue.
Anastasia seemed to have taken Alexei's words to heart and had doubled her efforts to keep everyone laughing and happy as they could be in their situation. Soon enough, he and the rest of her siblings had been enlisted to perform in a play she'd written. The script, Dmitry had realized upon reading it, held many common themes from her people watching stories, including the she'd told him of the soldier presumed dead by the girl who'd loved him. This time, she had given them a happier ending.
He, of course, was cast as the young soldier returning from the war. It made sense to all of them, since Alexei was too young to play the soldier, plus that would mean he'd have to kiss one of his sisters and they'd all roundly agreed that would be too weird. Dmitry had been prepared for Anastasia to announce that she would be playing the role of the girl he had fallen in love with- it would not have been a stretch for anyone. However, she announced instead that Maria would be playing that role, while she herself would simply act as director and stage manager.
Anastasia kept them all rehearsing every spare moment they had for weeks on end, coaching them on how she envisioned the whole play. She was especially tough on Maria, and Dmitry couldn't help but think that if she wanted everything to be just so then she could act the whole thing out by herself. Maria, on the other hand, seemed to be just fine with Anastasia micromanaging everything, if it meant the relentless boredom was gone.
Finally, after two months of rehearsals, Anastasia deemed them ready to perform for their audience. Tatiana had been persuaded to design pamphlets for the play which had turned out beautifully, even if three people had to share each pamphlet. Alexei had managed to snatch one of Nicholas's old uniforms for Dmitry's costume, and Dmitry was more nervous about that than he was about acting. He doubted Nicholas would care much, but Alexandra or some of the guards might be offended by it, and he found his stomach doing odd little flips at the thought of it.
It turned out that his worries were unfounded. Nicholas smirked a bit at Dmitry wearing his ill-fitting uniform, and no one else batted an eye. The entire thing, actually, went off without a hitch much to Dmitry's relief. The entire thing only solidified the idea in his head that Anastasia was meant to be a writer of some sort, because every line got the desired response from their audience. They laughed at every single joke, expertly delivered by the actors, and Dmitry swore he saw Alexandra sniffle and dab at her eyes when Dmitry's character was presumed dead by his parents.
The only minor bump in the road was when Dmitry's character was reunited with Maria's character. They were supposed to kiss and fall into each other's arms and a whole bunch of other mushy romantic stuff that, honestly, Dmitry wasn't sure where Anastasia had learned it because it certainly wasn't from her own experiences. He and Maria had never rehearsed the kiss before, though. Dmitry felt extremely uncomfortable kissing her in front of her entire family, especially Anastasia, and so when the time came, he leaned down to kiss her on the cheek instead. Maria, however, seemed to sense his discomfort and read his mind, so when she turned her head to face her cheek to him he ended up almost kissing her ear, much to the amusement of everyone in the room.
For days afterward, the girls teased him for missing so badly. Anastasia was especially merciless, even going as far as brushing Maria's chin-length hair behind her ear and gesturing for him to kiss it, all with grin that could rival the Cheshire Cat's. Every time she did it, Maria would swat at her younger sister with a scowl, but even she would tease Dmitry when no one else was paying attention.
He even caught a few of the guards smirking and snickering at him when the girls made fun of him. Despite their orders not to interact with any of the family or servants, it seemed the guards had developed at least a tolerance to them, and life was suddenly becoming more bearable.
So Dmitry didn't understand why he was so shocked when life changed yet again.
