Back again! I so adore writing from Dimitri's POV! I hope you enjoy reading this chapter as much as I did writing it. And as always, thanks to T-R-Us for whipping this chapter into shape :D
A fully grown Anastasia starred in Dimitri's nightmares that night.
She was perched on the edge of a golden throne, her hands folded carefully in her lap as she smirked down at him kneeling at her feet. The silk of her gown slowly pooled around his knees like indigo ink and he stared into its folds because he couldn't look at her.
"I love you," he whispered, the words all but strangling him. She was silent until he dared to meet her eyes. Then she threw her head back and laughed at him.
Dimitri woke with a start, his upper lip dotted with sweat.
"Hey."
He rolled over and onto Anya's foot. She was standing over him with her arms crossed. "Wake up. I couldn't find a clock, but I think the sun is about to come up."
Dimitri stared up at her, frowning hard enough to close his eyes again, unable to respond. Anya's uncanny likeness to the Grand Duchess in his mind had him trapped in the remnants of his horrible dream. He could still hear Anastasia's laughter echoing cruelly in his ears.
One of Anya's hands pulled free a thin gold chain from the recesses of her coat. She began fiddling with its pendant, gripping it and releasing it to thump lightly against her chest. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
With a long sigh, Dimitri relaxed. Thankfully, Anya's usual genteel manner was enough to remind him that she originated in the streets, not the Peterhof Palace.
"Hello?" Anya leaned down and waved a hand at Dimitri's face when he only sat up and glanced around the room, disoriented. "What is your problem? You look like you just sat on the wrong end of a broom."
Dimitri cleared his throat and glared at his watch. "It's 3:30am. Would it have killed you to let me sleep a few more minutes?"
Anya cocked her head a little. "Maybe." She bounced to her feet. "I couldn't wait anymore. And I was tired of listening to you snore."
"I don't snore." Dimitri eased his body off the floor, groaning all the way. He had never been a morning person.
While he stretched, he watched Anya go back into the sitting area and sit down on the arm of the chaise. The fire was nothing but dead ashes now, and so it would stay. If things panned out the way he'd planned, Dimitri wouldn't have to light that fireplace ever again.
He walked over to a nearby table where a cracked porcelain bowl and matching water pitcher were kept. After dumping half of the water into the bowl and splashing his face a few times, he asked, "What happened to Vladimir? Did you run him off?"
He looked over his shoulder just in time to catch Anya's sour look. "I think I woke him up an hour ago with my pacing...but he was sweet enough to take Pooka out to do his business." She bit her bottom lip and narrowed her eyes at him, as if she were searching for something. "Why can't you be more like him?"
Dimitri looked away from her. "Because I'm not old and gullible yet."
"Who are you calling old?" Vladimir asked as he strolled in with Pooka in his arms, then winked at Anya.
She smiled at him and held her arms out to accept the wriggling ball of fur. "Could you tell your grumpy friend to hurry up?" She made a face and pressed her nose to Pooka's. "We don't want to miss our train, do we, Pooka?" Pooka whimpered and licked at her chin.
"We should hurry, my boy," Vladimir agreed, stamping the last remnants of slush off of his boots before he crossed between the two of them to their sleeping area. He returned dragging a leather suitcase the color of strong coffee. It was almost as large as he was.
Dimitri's suitcase was a quite a bit smaller and an oily black. If a con required it, it also doubled as a briefcase for a government official or lawyer or whoever he was pretending to be. While drying his face off on his sleeve, he spotted it nestled in the blankets of his sleeping pallet. In his line of work, one never knew when one would have to run for one's life, so he kept all of his clothes and books carefully locked inside at all times.
With a weary sigh, he walked over and picked it up, running a hand over the smooth leather and the silver clasps, the metal cold after the death of the fire. His entire life could be contained within a box no bigger than his pillow and no deeper than a chamber pot. He winced and tried not to dwell on how depressing that was.
"I have the travel papers in my coat," Vladimir said in his ear, shaking him from his daze. Dimitri looked past him at Anya walking back and forth in front of the fireplace, playing with Pooka's paws.
"Are you sure they're right this time? I heard they changed the format again - "
"Dimitri, don't worry. Let's just get to the train station before our girl paces a hole in the floor."
"Fine."
As Vladimir walked toward the door, Dimitri shook his head at himself. The handle of the suitcase was beginning to slide against his sweaty palm. Was he actually nervous? He never would have believed the thought of leaving the palace would make him more anxious than the dismal prospect of staying.
His eyes scanned the room one last time as he drew on his coat, taking in every speck of dust, the tarnish on the silver candelabras, the cracks in the painted plaster ceiling. All so familiar, all his. He felt like he was abandoning his family. With a strange ache in his chest, he took a deep breath and sighed his last goodbye.
He focused his attention again on Anya, now paused in the middle of the room, completely exasperated and staring at him in that unnerving way of hers. She huffed. "Are you ready now?"
Dimitri smiled to cover the knot in his gut. This was it, his last chance. Failure was not an option now. Her eyes had better buy him his freedom or he just might have to do it with a gun in his mouth.
Vladimir was already in the hallway. Dimitri bowed low in a display of mock humility and held the door open for Anya. "After you, Your Highness." He chuckled when she stuck her nose in the air and sauntered past him. "Now, if you would, humble servant," she quipped when she turned to watch him close the door, "move your ass."
And move they did. They were out of the courtyard and on the street in time to catch the mouthwatering scent of the neighborhood bakeries pulling the morning's first loaves from the oven, before it mixed with the noxious, acrid scent of the awakening city.
Dimitri could have easily led their little group down the main thoroughfare, across the canal and straight to the station, but nostalgia pulled him down the little streets and back alleys he remembered from his youth. Life had been cruel to him, but there were still some fond memories lurking in the tiny coffee shop where he made his first honest dollar, or the ramshackle house where the first girl he had ever made love to had lived. He knew every pothole and condemned building like they were pieces of himself, and he was perfectly content to ignore Anya's complaining as he revisited them one last time.
The sun was just beginning to ease into the leaden sky when they came to the busy intersection in front of the train station.
Anya was still whining. "Dimitri, I'm going to die if we don't eat soon..."
Dimitri rolled his eyes and grabbed her hand, pulling her into a run across the street. She snatched it away from him as soon as they stopped to allow Vladimir time to catch his breath.
Anya looked at him expectantly. "Well?"
"For the hundredth time, Anya, we are not stopping. You can feed your face when we get on the train."
She sighed and blew her bangs out of her eyes before she turned her back on him.
When Vladimir pointed to their platform near the other end of the terminal, they began to push their way inside through the crush of other people vying for escape from the city. The conductor hollered the last call just as Vladimir climbed behind Dimitri and Anya into the second to last car. Dimitri had to walk sideways down the hallway, barely wide enough for Vladimir to get through without crushing passersby. Dimitri found an empty compartment and slid the door open for his companions.
"Finally!" Anya made a beeline for the window and plopped down on one of the long, pew-like benches. "Now we can eat."
"Jesus Christ!" Dimitri exclaimed through clenched teeth, setting down his suitcase before turning on Anya. "Are you five years old? You can wait until the train gets moving. Then we'll all go to the dining car together. Just...relax."
"I can't relax, alright? Too jumpy. I need to do...something. Like eat. I haven't done that in a few days." She was flicking the pendant of her chain with her and jiggling one leg like she had to use the toilet.
"I think you didn't get enough sleep," Dimitri told her. The dark circles under her eyes were starting to resemble bruises. They made the blue of her irises that much more striking.
"I didn't sleep at all," she told him. "I couldn't."
Lucky you, Dimitri thought, and let the subject drop.
Five minutes later, the train jerked and began moving sluggishly down the track. Dimitri wiped the fog off the window and peered past the ice clinging to the glass. It was like looking at a photograph of everything he knew, and as the train picked up speed, the image began to blur until he could see nothing but the whiteness of early spring snow. A clean slate.