Anya was snoring.

Seated across from her, Dimitri squirmed against the overstuffed seat for the thousandth time, more uncomfortable than he could ever remember being despite the plushness of their train compartment.

It wasn't that Anya was loud - quite the opposite, in fact. She sounded as if she were purring, with a soft whistle at the end of every other breath or so. Dimitri suspected that had she been anyone else, he would have merely folded his hands in his lap and dozed off as well. But she was Anya, and in the hour since he'd returned from the bar he'd gone from feeling mildly irritated to considering the merits of peeling off his own fingernails. Her presence alone was affecting Dimitri's focus, clouding his thoughts, making him less than blade-sharp and susceptible to mistakes. And that was very, very dangerous.

Grunting, he crossed his legs and uncrossed them, shifted once more so he could prop himself against the wall, rustled the papers in his lap as loudly as possible. His watch ticked louder and louder. His heart beat a little too fast.

This was completely unlike him. The tunnel vision he'd developed over the years had proven time and again to be the greatest asset to his survival. Vladimir had made sure of that since the day they met, drilling into Dimitri the dangers of distraction when it came to the con. Losing focus was equal to losing one's will to live. That knowledge had been embedded in Dimitri's mind for many years now, like part of his DNA.

Still, after passing a hand over his eyes, Dimitri opened them and found himself looking at Anya again.

A smile tugged at his lips. He'd chuckled to himself for a while at the bar after she'd delivered her parting shot. Such a little spitfire, that mouth so much bigger than the rest of her. Especially her hands.

His eyes fell to his own hands as he made a fist with the one that had held hers. He could still feel the coolness of her skin against his palm, the knob of her little wrist against his fingertips. She had the softness of stone whenever they exchanged words, but in his hand she felt delicate, as fragile as an empty shell.

Dimitri sighed hard and angrily brushed the hair out of his eyes. Thoughts like that were getting him nowhere. He reached behind him to knead the muscles of his neck and shoulders.

Trying to refocus, he dragged his attention back to proofing the travel documents that would get them across the border. He pored over the stolen original he'd lifted off a drunk in a bar back in the city, ensuring Vladimir's copies were absolute duplicates. They were, of course; his partner was a magician with a pen, but this whole ordeal had left Dimitri antsy enough to keeping checking until his head hurt.

Then Vladimir's earlier comment about Dimitri, Anya and their so-called "unspoken attraction" drifted back to him.

Bullshit, he thought viciously, even as an unconscious Anya drew his eyes again like some magnetic force.

He finally gave up and put the papers down, figuring if he just let himself look and get it over with, he could concentrate.

She'd smushed her face into her coat, which was wadded up beneath her cheek as a makeshift pillow. She was curled into a protective ball on the seat, head bowed and knees drawn up close to her chin. With her face so relaxed, she looked childlike and vulnerable, a severe contrast to when she was awake and raving. Dimitri was alarmed to find he almost missed her eyes blazing at him -

"Dimitri, we have a - "

He jumped up like he'd been shot as Vladimir stepped inside the compartment, startled and embarrassed to have been caught in the act.

Vladimir broke off, frowning as he looked back and forth between Dimitri and Anya's sleeping form. "Why are you so red?"

Dimitri coughed into his fist and waved Vladimir off, quickly changing the subject as he sat back down. "Keep your voice down, alright? This is the most peace I've had in hours, so please don't wake the she-devil."

A chill passed through Dimitri's body then that had nothing to do with the cool air Vladimir had just let in from the hallway, intensifying when Dimitri noticed his grave expression.

Dimitri knew that look. It was the same one Vladimir had worn when Dimitri was thirteen years old and his first con had gone terribly wrong. It had been frozen on the older man's face as he wiped away Dimitri's tears and blood with his own shirt and stitched up the knife wound in Dimitri's side.

"What happened?"

Vladimir's shoulders rose and fell in a silent sigh. "This is what I hate about this government." He lifted up his copy of the forged travel documents for Dimitri to see. "Everything is in red."

Dimitri's blood turned to sleet. He gaped at Vladimir. "Red?"

Panic was already sucking Dimitri's thoughts into a downward spiral. The ink on the original was blue. The forgeries had been copied in blue. Blue like the Parisian sky, like a Romanov's eyes, like the color of the bruises the guards would give him -

"I propose we move to the baggage car, and quickly. Before the guards come." Vladimir was already snatching down their things from the upper shelf.

"I propose we get off this train!" The same panic that had had him frozen suddenly reanimated Dimitri. He turned and began stuffing the papers into one of the train cases that were stacked next to him on the seat, unconsciously shaking his head as he moved. He should have known this would happen; it had been far too easy thus far. The universe was plotting against him like he'd thought.

"Vlad," he grumbled as he slammed the case shut and clasped it closed, "I told you we needed to make sure the papers were up to date -"

" - They were, Dimitri, they must have changed them this month - "

" - Chyort voz'mi!"

Vladimir paused at Dimitri's crude outburst and glared at him. "This is not helping. The guards are only two compartments away." He glanced at Anya, unstirred by all the commotion, and ordered, "Wake her and move. Now." Then he and his armload of suitcases were gone.

Anya's lips had parted and she'd uncurled a little, but other than those hints of life, she was still dead to the world. Dimitri groaned, knowing he'd never hear the end of this.

"Hey." He reached out and shook her knee. "Wake up, we gotta go."

After she didn't respond, he began to shake her harder when her hand flew up. The pain that exploded in his nose made him howl and stagger backward against the opposite seat. "JESUS CHRIST!"

"Oh, God, I'm sor- oh, it's you. Well, that's ok, then."

Hands still clamped over his throbbing nose, Dimitri watched Anya through the spaces between his fingers as she sat up and stretched like a house cat. "I think you broke my nose!" he accused, his voice muffled by his hands.

"I did not. Don't be such a baby. Just be glad I wasn't trying to break it," she scoffed as she rubbed the back of her neck.

Eyes still watering, Dimitri hopped up and grabbed her hand, ignoring the tingling in his palm the moment he touched her.

"We need to go. Right now," he said as he pulled her outside and began dragging her down the hallway.

"Wait, where are we going? What's going on?"

She started to struggle. Dimitri gritted his teeth and tightened his grip on her hand. "Come on!"

"Wait - Pooka!" She jerked her arm free and turned to run back to the compartment, disappearing inside just as a pair of guards emerged from the compartment next door.

Dimitri froze. She was going to be caught. He was going to be caught.

Seconds later and dog in hand, Anya was face to face with them in the doorway.

From this distance, Dimitri couldn't make out what was said, but he saw Anya make a show of searching her pockets. The guards, their faces stiff as their uniforms, didn't seem to be buying it.

Shit -

Anya suddenly ducked between them and broke away. She was now running toward Dimitri, the dog tucked under her arm and yelping, her eyes wild. The surprised guards recovered quickly and gave pursuit.

"Run, you idiot!"

Dimitri snapped out of his stupor and took off like the train was on fire.

He could see Vladimir's head bobbing up and down in the round window of the baggage car door ahead as he made for their exit, shoving startled passengers out of their way with as many apologies as he could manage. The door slid open just as he and Anya approached and Vladimir slammed it shut once they were safely inside.

They didn't have time to catch their breath. The guards arrived a moment later, pounding on the metal and yelling for them to come out or be removed by force. The lock on the door hung broken and useless from the handle, so Vladimir grabbed a large train case from the luggage pile and forced it against the door to keep it closed.

When he was done, all three of them just looked at each other until Anya asked Dimitri, "Any bright ideas?"

Just one.

He scanned the inside of dark car until he found what he was looking for - a thin strip of light right above the floor along the right side of the metal container, near the middle. That light was daylight, and that door was their way out.

He grabbed Anya's arm and the three of them made their way to the other end of the long baggage car, banging knees and elbows and ankles as they stumbled through the luggage.

"Hey, Vlad, give me a hand with this."

Vladimir helped him wrench open the side door that had rusted into place. Vladimir pushed while Dimitri pulled on the handle, and when it gave the force of the tremendous gust that rushed in knocked all three of them on their backs.

Anya yelled as she pushed off the garment bag that had tumbled on top of her. "You're kidding, right?" Though the wind was nearly as loud as the train itself, Dimitri could still hear the disbelief in her voice.

"Stop where you are!"

Dimitri spun around. The original angry guards and their newly arrived reinforcements had been able to push open the door and were tumbling in, moving fast enough to catch them if they didn't move quickly.

Dimitri's thoughts morphed into a chorus of curses.

"Vlad, are you alright?" he yelled. Adrenaline was keeping him hot in the face of the freezing wind, pushing him to action. The guards were still hollering and closing in fast.

"Fine!" Vladimir was standing right on the edge of the doorway with some of their bags. The train had just sped over a bridge and was now coursing through another patch of forest. They were going so fast all Dimitri could make out was a blur of white, green and brown.

Vladimir looked over his shoulder in Dimitri's direction, the waning daylight just enough for Dimitri to make out his face. "Snowbank!" he said simply, and that was all Dimitri needed to hear.

"If you think I'm going to jump out of a moving train, you're out of your mind!"

When Dimitri looked at her, Anya was already backing away, toward the guards. He realized she was going to let herself be taken.

Not on his watch.

In that eerie way of hers she must have sensed his resolution because she started to backpedal faster, but not fast enough. He grabbed her wrist and swung her back toward the open door.

"You're not jumping!" he roared in her ear before he shoved her forward as hard as he could.

The last thing he heard was her scream before he grabbed his bag and took a running leap after her into thin air.