Yes, THIS is what I'm writing these for...these types of stories, the outside of outside stories.
WARNING: I know this is generally rated T, but I think this chapter deserves a fair warning. It's fairly depressing, and somewhat graphic (okay quite a bit) There is blood, and it's pretty sad that there's blood too. Just...you'll see.
Anyways, this is my idea of how Dmitri came to work at the palace.
White
A dusting of snow on top of snow had just alighted on the weary city of Petrograd. Nestled away from the grubby fingers of the general public was the Czar's Winter Palace, and it was here that a woman trekked through the snow towards, sweat dripping down her temples to meet her tears. Her belly protruded through her coat, swollen and throbbing with each step she took. Somehow she found her way at the front gates of the palace, and in an act of desperation, she threw herself against the golden bars, screaming into the empty courtyard as her knuckles turned white. Her cries echoed off of the muted snow as she slid to the ground, summoning the gatekeepers, curious but stern guards, and daytime servants that weren't needed in the palace until later. Fingers falling from the golden gate, she collapsed as the servants of the Czar stared at her in wonder.
She was a young woman, and would've been attractive had her face not been contorted in pain and streaked with tears. Dressed in poor rags, her belly stretched them to the limits of their endurance. Her petty frock was splattered with red stains around the inside of her thighs. Writhing in the snow, she wailed and screamed at the staring faces that peered at her through the gates. She looked as though she wanted to say something sensible as a plea towards them, but every time she started a sentence she would be interrupted by a great contracting pain that turned her words into screams.
"What shall we do with her?" One guard asked, leaning over to look down on her creased face. Another responded, gazing at her in small pity.
"It's not like she can get up and walk away on her own."
"What does it matter to us? Look at her, she's fit for a brothel, that one!"
The woman cried out a desperate 'no', dropping back into a fit of vicious coughs and sobs. Her dark hair stuck to her reddened face, staying there even as she thrashed in the snow, writhing like a pathetic animal in pain. One of the many cooks, a woman, gave the guardsman a sound slap on the arm.
"Have a little heart, will you? Open the damn gate and let me have a look at her!"
"But the Czar—,"
"The Czar is meeting with the Duma, he won't know a thing." the cook interjected, pushing her chubby form past the gates before they were even fully open. For any other woman the guardsman would have dismissed her immediately, but this was the head cook's wife, and as much as you didn't cross the head cook you didn't cross his wife. The cook leaned down and pressed a hand to the woman's sweaty forehead. Flipping the bloodied frock up, she pulled down the woman's panties, exposing her to the cold air. The woman writhed and panted, running low on endurance. With every contortion that followed, a small spurt of blood sprayed out, soon staining the white snow beneath her to a sickening ruby color. Seeing this, the cook frowned. There was, without a doubt, far too much blood. Something was horribly wrong beyond comprehension. Something unfixable, something malignant and malicious; a plague that had cursed this woman so thoroughly that not even her child could live a normal life. The cook straightened out her bloodied clothes and spoke worthless words of encouragement to the young, hopeless woman.
"She isn't even on the palace grounds, just let her go."
The cook whipped back her head and glared furiously. Using her brawny arms, she gripped the screaming woman by the ankles and dragged her until she was just inside the courtyard; no small feat even for a woman of her size and strength. The woman shrieked and clawed at the snow, the ice digging underneath her nails and prying them away from her skin.
"Now she is." The cook said flatly.
The woman thrashed, screaming out a name that she continued to scream over and over again, sometimes in rage, sometimes in pain or desperation, sometimes just as a sob. And yet, through everything else she could only say this one name now.
"Dmitri!"
Again, as the people from the palace started to crowd around her as they realized the horror of the situation.
"Dmitri!"
The cries of shock and pity as they realized that the woman was fading fast into darkness.
"Dmitri...,"
They wondered over who 'Dmitri' was. Those not directly involved shared their thoughts and guesses, ultimately concluding that Dmitri was the father of the child, a brute of a man that didn't want anything to do with her after she became pregnant. Those kneeling down close to her tried to get her to calm down and to stop screaming the man's name, only telling her to breathe.
She did not, could not listen. Nothing good was happening to her. The more her body tried to push the baby out, the more it failed, only leaving more blood to soil the snow. The intensity of her labor
"She's not going to make it! You better leave her, she's naught but a peasant anyways!"
"He's right, she's gone!"
"I know all this, it's not the woman I'm here for!"
Before anyone could comprehend there was a flash of silver, and the woman's eyes bulged and she screeched as the knife sliced open her soft, stretched stomach. A man, one of the other servants, held the handle of the knife delicately as he guided it in and out of her belly. Her skin splayed open, revealing the uterus. The servant cut again, and before everyone's eyes a baby reached out through the bloody mess, taking its first gulps of air and using them to scream along with its mother. The servant man reached down and took the baby from the mother's stomach, severing the umbilical cord and wrapping him in his coat before handing him off to the head cook's wife. She then wrapped the baby in another layer of clothing, soothing its insatiable cries.
"It's a boy," she announced quietly. Cleaning placenta and fluid off of the baby's ugly, beautifully creased face, she looked down.
The woman's eyes were glassy and glazed over. Crookedly she lay there in a pool of her own blood, white snowflakes from a new snowfall resting on her cheek to kiss her into oblivion. Her eyes were gazing upwards at what was in the cook's arms, aching to see what she would never see again.
The mother was dead.
Silently the crowd of servants and guardsmen shuffled away. A few stronger servants carried the body away to be cremated, some others scrubbed the blood away from the courtyard even though it was frozen into the snow and their memories. The cook's wife carried the bawling child into the servant's quarters, where a wet nurse whose baby had recently died was. This newborn wouldn't die, no. If it was supposed to die, it would've already, from the exposure to the cold and from the lack of milk that it so yearned for in its opening seconds of life.
The cook's wife told the nurse that the boy's name was Dmitri, by choice of the dying mother, and gave the baby to the nurse to care for. In the back of her mind the old wife knew that Dmitri was probably the last name in the world that the mother wanted to name her child, but she didn't want to take any more responsibility than she already had for the boy. Whether the world wanted to or not, the baby boy was named Dmitri, and he was now destined to grow up as a serf to the royal family bearing the name of the man who wronged his mother.
The servants and the rest of the small world of the palace forgot about the baby boy born in blood and steel. He was guided into the secret shadows to be kept in the shadows, and, as long as he lived there, would remain in the shadows forever more.