Author's Note: A new fic! This takes place in the Anastasia (2016) musical universe. We don't get a great description of what happens immediately after Dmitry, Anya, and Vlad jump off the train, and I decided to put a little more hurt/comfort into it. At the moment, I am planning on this being a one shot, but might continue if there's interest. I do not own these characters or any thing that you recognize.

"Jump!" Anya shouted, and the three of them disappeared into the darkness of the forest around the train tracks, the sound of the wheels against the tracks a roar in her ears. The train whistled twice, and then was gone around a bend, clickety-clacks fading into silence.

Anya groaned. She had landed on the ground on her back, and the breath knocked out of her lungs for several seconds. She tried not to move, breathing deeply, purposefully not thinking about what she'd just done.

Then she remembered Vlad and Dmitry. Dmitry, she was sure, would be fine, but Vlad's older body may not have adjusted as easily as the younger people. She pulled herself to her feet, found her suitcase near by, and started looking for the boys.

To her surprise, Vlad was already up and moving, coming towards her.

"Are you all right, Anya?" he asked frantically.

"I'm fine; what about you?"

He rolled his left wrist around in a big circle. "Crunched my left arm a bit, but otherwise fine. Dmitry!" The last word he said in a whispered shout.

A faint moan came from farther into the forest, away from the tracks. Anya grabbed her suitcase and hurried toward the voice. To her dismay, Dmitry did not appear to have weathered the drop as well as she and Vlad had. He was laying in a heap, his body draped across a large tree branch broken off a huge pine tree. He had his eyes closed, and what she could see of his facial expression in the dark appeared to be pained.

"Dmitry," Anya said, hurrying up to him. Vlad was right behind her.

Dmitry didn't say anything, but his eyes opened as she crouched down by his body.

"Where does it hurt?" Anya asked, slipping into her nursing voice, practiced over a year at the hospital in Perm as she tried to come to grips with who she wasn't.

"Leg," he said in a groan. "Left arm."

Despite his words, Anya checked his head first, running her fingers over his whole scalp and face to see if he had any head injuries. The first touch of his hair sent an electric shock through her. Though the two of them had gotten more comfortable with very casual touch in the last few months in St Petersburg, Anya had deliberately avoided touching anything more than an arm on him. She was too conscious of the small butterfly feeling in her stomach every time he looked at her for more than a second or two.

But this was different. He needed her help.

"Is he okay?" Vlad said in a soft voice, sinking to the ground beside her.

"Still checking," she replied. His head seemed fine, and she moved down to his left arm, which was already soaked in blood. "Can you move your arm, Dmitry?"

He tried, pulling his left arm slightly above the rest of his body and twitching his fingers. It worked well enough she thought it must not be broken. The blood was concerning, but seemed to be coming from several large scratches rather than any punctures.

Finally, she moved to his right leg. At the sight of it, she swallowed hard, and willed herself not to react. His lower leg was bent halfway to a right angle, cracked over the tree branch. By some miracle, it wasn't bleeding; the bone hadn't come through, but it was very clear he wouldn't be walking anywhere on this leg for awhile.

Anya exchanged a glance with Vlad.

She was about to start giving directions, when a noise from far off shook them all into silence. Voices. Shouts, specifically. Far enough away, maybe a kilometer, but too close for comfort. Bolsheviks.

"We need to move," Vlad whispered.

"There's no way Dmitry can walk," she said. "His leg is pretty thoroughly broken."

"Then we fix it first," Dmitry said through gritted teeth in a voice stained with pain.

"Dmitry," Vlad started, "you need a hospital, a doctor…"

"Anya, you worked in a hospital. Do you know how to set it?" Dmitry asked.

Anya bit her tongue, then nodded. "I'm not strong enough to set the bone, though. Vlad, you'll have to do it. I can show you how."

Vlad looked at her in horror, but this was a man who had lived through much of the worst of humanity. He could deal with the pressure.

"Vlad, find two thick sticks, about the same length as Dmitry's leg from knee to ankle. We'll use it as a brace after it's set. My scarf will be the tie," Anya said, as she started to rummage through her luggage. She pulled out her scarf, and also a clean-ish glove.

Vlad hurried off to do what she asked.

Anya knelt down by Dmitry's head. "Dmitry, the Bolsheviks are probably close by enough to hear us," she whispered.

His face paled, but he nodded. "I understand."

"You can't make any noise, at all," she said, continuing her thought.

"I get it, Anya," he said irritably.

She nodded, turning away from him. They would all have a terrible part to play in the next few minutes, and she gave him the privacy to prepare for his part.

Vlad returned shortly, dropping two thick sticks on the ground. With a deep breath, Anya showed him what he would need to do, his hands taking a grip on either side of Dmitry's leg. Dmitry took a short gasping breath.

"Wait," Anya whispered to Vlad. She sat down on the ground by Dmitry's head, and placed the clean-ish glove between his teeth. He bit down on it, his eyes on her.

"Do you want to hold my hand?" she asked. He shook his head, then, with a flutter of his eyelids, nodded. She reached out her hands, and he took them in both of his. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Vlad take a better grip on Dmitry's legs. Dmitry grimaced, his breath coming fast.

"Vlad," Anya said, "Do it fast. It won't be a kindness to him to go slow. Dmitry, take some deep breaths. Breathe with me." She exaggerated slow breaths, placing one pair of their intertwined hands on his chest. With effort, he slowed his breathing to match hers.

And then there was a terrible cracking sound, and Dmitry's back lifted off the ground. A strangled gasping noise came from around the glove, and then cut off abruptly as he bit down deeper. Dmitry's hands on Anya's tightened enough that she suspected she would have bruises later. She wrenched one of her hands free and touched his face, drawing his eyes to her.

"It's okay, it's okay," she said. "It's okay. You're safe, it's over now. You're doing great." She continued murmuring, stroking his face as he breathed through the pain, his teeth ripping a hole in the glove in his mouth.

"Will you check it?" Vlad whispered.

"Trade me spots," Anya said. Vlad moved up to Dmitry's head and took over holding the young man's hands. Anya moved down to his leg, observing Vlad's work. Dmitry's leg was back in a normal position, but she could see bruises already starting to form below his knee. It would have to do for now. Working quickly, Anya placed the two sticks on either side of his leg and wrapped her scarf tightly around the whole thing from top to bottom. Dmitry let out a small moan. In the corner of her eye, she saw him pull free from Vlad and cover his eyes with his right arm. The glove in his mouth was tattered and he spit it out onto the ground.

"Almost done," Anya whispered. She tucked the last of the scarf under itself and put her hand on the bottom of Dmitry's foot. "Dmitry, can you push against my hand?"

The pressure was barely existent, but enough. She nodded. "Let's get out of here. Vlad, help him up."

"We need to get at least two kilometers away before we stop," Dmitry said, panting between phrases.

"Can you go that far, my boy?" Vlad asked.

"It doesn't matter if I can or not. We have to. Help me up."

Vlad dug his hands into Dmitry's coat and pulled the younger man to his feet. Whatever color Dmitry had disappeared from his face as he stood on his one good leg.

"You okay?" Anya asked.

"I'm fine," he said angrily. "Just give me a minute."

Anya pulled out the compass from the side pocket on her luggage and got her bearings. "How far are we from the border, Vlad?" she asked.

"Thirty-forty kilometers, I think. Due west."

Anya cast a critical look at Dmitry, who leaned heavily on Vlad, his right leg entirely off the ground.

"We won't make it that far today," she said. Vlad nodded at her.

The next two hours were among the worst of Anya's life, at least the part of her life she could remember. Dmitry hobbled, holding on so tightly to Vlad that the two of them fell over, off-balance, several times. She tried to take turns helping hold onto Dmitry, but she was so much shorter than he that it made things worse. So she kept command of the compass, keeping them pointing west and shushing every sound. In the distance, she could still hear the shouts of the Bolsheviks, although they got farther away as the trio moved.

About one kilometer from the place where they jumped from the train, Anya called a halt. Vlad carefully propped Dmitry against a tree, and pulled out a skin of water from his bag for the three of them to share.

"How are you doing?" Anya whispered to Dmitry, sliding to the ground beside him.

He looked at her, then away. His eyes were red in the moonlight, and his face as pale as the stars. "Not exactly the grand exit we were going for," he said in his typical cynical way.

"That's not what I mean, Dmitry. Is the pain bad?"
"If I tell you no, will you drop it?"

"Don't be rude," she told him. "I'm trying to help."

He sighed. "I know, I'm sorry. Yes, it's bad. There's nothing we can do about it now but keep going."

Anya couldn't help herself from reaching her hand over to him. She wasn't sure what her hand was going to do, stroke his face or adjust his coat over him or something. But before she could touch him, he reached out with his own hand and took hers, intertwining their fingers between them. Anya drew in a short breath, as the same electric feeling flew down her arm into her stomach. Dmitry didn't seem to notice, fortunately. She could feel herself blushing, and turned her head away.

"Does this … help?" she asked.

After a long pause: "Yes."

"We should keep moving," Vlad said, his voice sounding far away. When Anya looked up, she could see the older man standing right over them, his face somewhere between disapproving and amused.

"Yes," she said, pulling her hand away quickly. "More water, Dmitry?"

Dmitry shook his head. With some painful maneuvering, Vlad and Anya got Dmitry to his feet, and the three of them continued their horrible march. The night traveled on, the moon moving above the trees around them. Anya kept them moving the right direction. They walked until she heard what she was looking for, a small creek running through the trees nearby.

"Stop for a minute, but don't put him down," Anya said to Vlad. She could see that Dmitry was practically asleep in Vlad's arms, his entire weight being supported by the older man.

She backtracked a ways behind them, listening for the sounds of pursuit from the Bolsheviks. Nothing. They seemed to have left the enemies far behind. Then she hoofed it down to the creek, and closed her eyes in pleasure when she saw it. Moving quickly enough that the water was clean, but small enough that they could easily walk into it. Perhaps even do a little fishing. She scouted around, looking for a place to hide for a couple of days. Finally, she found the perfect spot: an empty area underneath a tree, shaded by huge roots that came out of the ground. All three of them would fit underneath, and it was only a few body lengths from the creek, but far enough away to remain dry.

She went back to Vlad. "This way," she said, pointing towards the creek.

"A little help?" he said, groaning under Dmitry's weight. She hurried to the other side of the injured young man, pulling his arm over her shoulders. He did not react, his head lolling on his chest.

"We can stop shortly," she whispered to Vlad. He sighed happily in response. It took the two of them almost fifteen minutes to get Dmitry's deadweight body down a little hill to the tree she had found. She spread her own coat on the ground, and the two of them manipulated his body on top of the makeshift bed. Dmitry groaned, but didn't wake up.

"I'm going to get some water for us, and then we should rest," Anya said.

Vlad slumped to the ground next to Dmitry in a heap, exhausted. "How did you walk 1500 kilometers all by yourself, my girl?"

"Slowly. Hungrily. Get some rest."

She pulled the water skin out of the bag and moved to the stream. It was cold, rocky-bottomed, and felt better than any water she'd touched in her life. She splashed her hands in the water, then swept water onto her sweaty face. Twice, three times.

She thought about Vlad's question. How had she walked so far? It's true she'd been hungry most of the time, but she'd also been alone. In some ways, being alone was easier. She hadn't had to wait for anyone, and if she wanted to stop in a little village and get some work for a few months, no one had cared. But now she had these two men, her, dare-she-say-it, friends, who were counting on her, and she on them. Perhaps it would be easier to cross the country on foot with three of them, but it meant three mouths to feed, three opinions to meld.

And, in the meantime, she had the problems of Dmitry's injuries to deal with. He wouldn't be able to move quickly for at least a couple of weeks, but they had to get out of Russia.

Filling the water skin, Anya considered the fact that, in the last few hours, she'd had so many immediate problems to deal with that she had completely forgotten the situation with her memory and the future problems they were headed to. Was that a good thing?

Vlad was asleep when she arrived back at their little hiding place. Dmitry appeared to be asleep as well, but he was restless, his face pained. She checked his leg again, trying not to wake him as she displaced the cloth of his pants long enough to see the skin. Still where it belonged, still heavily bruised. She debated for a few minutes whether to leave his arm alone until morning, then decided to take care of it while he slept. Fortunately, Vlad was on his right side, and his left arm was free.

As quietly as she could, she shifted herself by Dmitry's left shoulder, and tried to pull his sleeve up to see the scrapes. But it turned out he wasn't asleep after all, and at the first tug, he was staring at her, his eyes barely reflecting the setting moon.

"Do you have water?" he whispered.

She handed him the water skin, and he drank deeply.

"That's better than the water we had before."

"We're by a good creek," she said, her voice also quiet. "Can I get your arm taken care of before you sleep?"

"You haven't done enough damage today?" His words were cruel, but his mouth lifted up in his sideways grin, and he pulled himself to a sitting position.

"It's not my fault you jumped out of the train so badly," Anya said crossly. "Get your shirt off."

He looked at her, still grinning, but obeyed. She had to help him pull his arm from the sleeves of his coat, his vest, and his shirt, until he was sitting in the night air, bare from the waist up. She had never seen him without a shirt on before and had to control her gaze not to stare at his muscled upper body. It was almost too dark to see the scrapes on his arm at this point, but she washed them with water from the creek and a torn piece of her petticoat. He winced and looked away as she washed a particularly deep cut that was still slowly oozing blood.

"You're good at this," he said as she tore another piece of her petticoat to act as bandage around the arm.

"Is that actually a compliment?" Anya asked, fighting a smile.

"If I had to break my leg and scrape my arm jumping out of a train with anyone, it would be with you," Dmitry said, his own smile breaking through.

Anya's smile disappeared. "Dmitry, I'm so sorry."

He grabbed her hand that was wrapping cloth around the arm. "Stop, Anya. It's not your fault. I'm not kidding about you being the best person I could be with while injured. If it were just me and Vlad, we'll still be stuck by the railroad tracks. You knew right what to do, and here we are, hopefully out of sight of the Bolsheviks."

She blushed. "Only because of my hospital training and the long walk from Perm."

"See, even that was good for something," he said.

They were silent for a few minutes as she finished wrapping bandages around his arm. Now he was treated, the best that she could with the supplies she had, and there was nothing left to do but sleep.

But Anya found she couldn't even lie down. With the first silence her mind had experienced in several hours, anxieties started spinning around. She remembered the gunshot ending Count Ipolitov over and over again, and the horrible jump from the train. With horror, she realized she was about to cry, and started to get up and move away from the Vlad and Dmitry.

A hand reached out and grabbed her shoulder. "Hey," Dmitry said. "You okay?"

She tried to nod, but a sob escaped from her mouth at the same time. Dmitry pulled her down to a sitting position again, his hand staying clasped on her shoulder.

He stayed blessedly silent while she cried, his hand firm and warm on her even as she fell apart internally her head down on her knees. It wasn't the first time he'd seen her cry, of course, but he was always so strong that she tried to avoid it. But now, the fear and horrors of this day wouldn't be held back anymore.

Finally, she sniffled into quiet again. Dmitry's arm stayed on her.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked quietly.

"Not at all." She probably would at some point want to talk, but not now. Now it was so new and horrific that she needed to simply live with it, not relive the whole thing.

"We should get some sleep," he said.

"Yes," she said without conviction. She didn't expect to sleep at all this night. But she laid down next to Dmitry, trying not to pay attention to the warmth coming from his body. He made a slight grumpy noise at the distance she put between them, and pulled his coat over a little to cover both of them.

Anya was right about one thing: sleep was going to be difficult. She laid there, unable to turn her mind off. In the moments where the anxiety let up a moment, she could hear Dmitry shuffling around, trying to get comfortable, occasionally letting out a moan. They continued in this pattern for long enough that, deep within the trees to the east, the first light of day began to approach.

Finally, she couldn't take it anymore. "Dmitry, would it help to … hold my hand?" she whispered.

He didn't answer in words, but his right hand snaked around him to grip her left hand, and eventually the two of them fell asleep, facing each other under his wide coat.

Author's Note: That's all she wrote, folks. If you want me to draw this out for another chapter or two or twelve, let me know. Otherwise, please read and review!