Chapter 9: And Soon It Will Be Free

Monica whirled around upon hearing the click of the lock at the ballroom door sealing her in. Stepping out into the shadows and coming into the light was the hard and chiseled face of...

"Joseph," Monica gasped, sucking in a breath.

Joseph merely shook his head, staring at her in bewilderment, at how it had come to this. How he had been led halfway across the world by someone who claimed she'd had no idea she was actually the heir to the Russian throne.

... He didn't believe that. Not for a moment. That she hadn't known who she truly was. Oh, she was a hell of an actress - her amnesia shctick had been very good, to the point where he'd almost believed it. Almost.

"An underhanded girl - an act of desperation. And to my consternation, I let you go..." He gave a mirthless chuckle. "Well, not this time." He stepped closer. "Paris is no place for a good and loyal Russian!"

Monica drew herself up to her full height. "We arebothgood and loyal Russians."

"I've come to take you home."

And kill me, Monica added for him. Guessed, really, though it was a pretty good bet. "My home is here now."

Joseph let out a half-growl of frustration. "Stop playing this game, Mona! I beg you!"

"We both know it's not a game, Joey," Monica stated. She wasn't sure why she used the shortened version of his name. She wasn't even sure if the Kremlin agent before her had ever gone by that pet name. Perhaps as a boy? In any event, she was trying to appeal to his humanity - which she believed was there, had ever since they had spoken in his office.

"If you really are Monica - Monichivna - do you really think history will want you to have lived?" Joey demanded.

Monica shrank back, appalled. "Yes!" she gasped. "Why don't you?!"

"The Romanoffs were given everything! And gave back nothing... until the Russian people rose up and DESTROYED them!"

"All but one!" Monica shot back, suddenly goading. "Finish it! I am my father's daughter!"

"And I am my father's son!" Joey bellowed. He drew his firearm, disengaging the safety with an ominous click that echoed throughout the ballroom. He leveled it along his free forearm, maneuvering the barrel so as to take deadly aim. "Finish it, I must!" Monica noted with intrigue how his gun arm was trembling and Joseph was using his free aim to steady it as much as he was to aim.

"My father shook his head and told me not to ask. My mother said he died of shame..."

"In me, you see them! Look at their faces in mine. Hear their screams! Imagine their terrors! See their blood!" Monica demanded, her tone straddling some halfway land between goading him to shoot her and yet simultaneously imploring him to step away from the brink of madness and not shoot her.

"But I believe he did a proud and vital task... And in my father's name...!" Joseph gritted his teeth, baring them.

Monica braced herself, suddenly gripped with terror that she had misread this man after all. Was there really any sense of decency in him, at long last? Or was he a true believer in the fascism that had replaced the monarchy, leaving the people worse off than they had been even under the rule of her family?

"Do it and I will be with my parents and my brother and my sisters in that cellar in Yekaterinburg all over again!" Monica encouraged, almost pleading with him. With her grandmama, the memories of her family had come rushing back, and she remembered them. Oh, how she remembered them all! Papa, with his proud whiskers and his warm smile and hearty laugh. Mama's gentle touch. Alexei and Olga and all the rest of them.

"The children, the voices... a man makes painful choices. He does what's necessary, Mona." All at once, Joseph seemed to be explaining, justifying what he was about to do while at the same time... apologizing for it? Monica didn't know, so she closed her eyes, just in case of the worst. The image she put into her head was a dual one: with Grandmama in her suite, the pair of them kneeling on the floor and embracing with tears. The other image was of her and Chandler, wrapped in each other's arms while being deluged in a blinding snowstorm, and the feel of her lips on his, and his on hers. The kiss they had shared.

Chandler... I love you...Monica sent up a prayer, bidding her lost love goodbye. I'm sorry I didn't tell you...

"For Russia, my beauty..." (The term of endearment he addressed her with was startling to Monica's ears. No... that couldn't be the reason for his hesitation! ... Could it?...) "What choice but simple duty? We have a past to bury, Mona!" He let out a ragged breath, the next coming out in a choked whisper, almost as if he was pumping himself up to pull the trigger. "The Neva flows, a new wind blows, and soon it will be spring... The years unfold, the Tsar lies cold... Be careful what a dream may bring... A revolution is a simpleTHING!"

Monica's entire body tensed, bracing for the sharp pang of fire, the muscle memory of being shot as a teenager coming back to her with such clarity, it felt like a phantom limb. She listened for the BANG! Prepared for the coming darkness of nothingness.

... But neither came.

Slowly, she opened her eyes.

Joseph was shaking all over, practically convulsing. He couldn't get the damn barrel of the gun to stay still. Even in the inky gloom of this ballroom, the moon shining through the floor-to-ceiling windows reflected in his dark eyes, revealing a sheen of moisture.

He was crying...

In that moment, Mona's heart broke for him. She didn't see an agent of the Commissar. She saw instead a small, lost and frightened little boy, who didn't understand why his father's finest hour had instead eventually brought about his death - a death for which he blamed the ghosts of the royal family, as well as the one living embodiment who represented what was his father's failure when it had been assumed to be the senior Tribbiani's greatest success.

Monica realized that if she hadn't lost her memory, but still managed to survive and escape that cellar, she would have had a better appreciation of how the other half lived. There would have been a humbling for her, going from riches to rags. A princess, stripped bare. She would have felt like more of a victim.

... But Joseph was just as much a victim too. By killing her, he was choosing a path of vengeance not because he particularly wanted to, but because he was trying to fulfill and restore his father's legacy.

... She could understand that.

A sudden and anguished cry tore Monica from her thoughts. She watched as Joseph, in a fit of pique, hurled the gun into a corner and fell to his knees, head in his hands and began to weep.

Slowly, her heart only filled with compassion, Monica approached Joseph. She started to kneel so she would be at his level when Joseph suddenly buried his sobs into the skirts of her dress, pressing his face into the fabric. "I - I can't do it... Forgive me, Your Highness..."

"To your feet, I pray you..." Monica helped Joseph rise. Even then, he kept his head bowed. He wouldn't, couldn't look at her. She had to tilt his head just so she could look him in the eyes.

The pain, anguish, agony and even heaven help the poor man... love... Monica saw there shook and moved her. Regarding the lattermost feeling, she couldn't help but feel terribly flattered, for all the dances they had done on opposing sides. The games they had played. Perhaps if things were different, if she hadn't already given her heart to a common con man...

Cupping his face, Monica leaned in and brushed her lips softly along Joseph's cheek, just beyond the corner of his mouth. When she drew back, her eyes were gentle and kind.

"... Truce?"

Joseph squeezed his eyes shut tight, so that a few tears leaked out and streamed down his face. Dully, wordlessly, he nodded.

Perhaps against her better judgment, Monica now stole her lips feather-light across his. A kiss of thanks. For sparing her life. And perhaps something for him to remember her by.

"I have a love of my own too, you know..." she confessed in a murmur. "And I imagine I would kill for him just as you were willing to kill for your father, if I was in your place."

Joseph nodded slowly in understanding. Brushing past him in farewell, Monica walked to the double doors of the ballroom. When she glanced back, Joseph was still standing still.

Her gaze softening on him with compassion and pity, Monica left her former nemesis and pursurer there, staring into the blackness of that empty ballroom.