notyourprince | Let me have a moment, let me say goodbye

Entry tags:

debut,
gleb vaganov

Let me have a moment, let me say goodbye

The Alexander III Bridge, a little slice of Russia in the middle of Paris. It's funny Dmitry ends up here, the one gasp of familiarity in a strange, dazzling world. Somewhere across that bridge, there's a woman wearing a beautiful gown and the royal jewels she deserves. She will never look upon him again, which is pretty much what he deserves. It doesn't matter that he found a diamond in a haystack when he lied and cheated to get her here.

He's given up on pretensions. Most of the fine clothes have been pawned, save the few items in his suitcase. And the shoes, because his old ones has been worn through before this venture even started so that he could have found his way home by the cobbles beneath his feet. The nice shoes he keeps. Everything else he wears is from Russia, roughly woven and indifferently made, just like him.

Heaving a sigh, Dmitry looks across the road, takes in the colors of Paris. He can't stay here of course, can't afford to. He also can't run the risk of taking a walk up the Champs-Elysées and seeing a proud young woman with tidy curls. No, Paris is not for him. Never was.

So where to? There's a whole lot of world out there beyond Paris and he's young and able enough to find work. He could find someplace else in France or maybe even beyond it. Or he could go back to Russia. That's the worst option of the lot, of course. He'd step off the train and into shackles for what he's done, blessed with a vacation to Siberia, just like his father. Does he have convictions worth dying for? Not really, except Anya.

The only place he can't be is Paris.

One more look, he decides, before he goes to the train station. As he lifts his head, he hears footsteps and swears he sees a red gown. It must be a trick of the light because he blinks and it's not there.

Nothing is there. No Alexander Bridge...No Paris...No red gown. It's a train station but like nothing he's ever seen before.

"What?"

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Darrow will never be home. Gleb has been here for four months now, give or take a few days, and he's been acutely aware of that for all of it, even knowing too well what this city has to offer that Russia would not. He's alive, for one, a highly unlikely fate given what transpired before he arrived here, and something for which he knows he must be grateful, willing as he'd been to return to his almost certain death. After all, he doesn't know what else there would have been for him to do. A smarter man, maybe, might have run instead, but while his devotion to the cause may not have been enough for him to see his orders through and pull the trigger, it would have kept him from trying to evade the fate he knowingly set himself up for.

It would have been worth it.

Here, too, there's Anya, and though Gleb can't be entirely sure what any of that means, he does know that what he told her is true, and that her response was far better than any he could have anticipated. Perhaps, for now, that's all that needs to matter. He'll always feel out of place here, but at least it has more going for it than he thought when he first arrived here, weighted down by a gun he couldn't bring himself to fire and in a suit he'd never wanted to wear. At least he'll never have to again, after the sorry state it was left in on New Year's.

Out of place as he's accustomed to being here, from nearly a hundred years in most people's past, his native language one that he's heard hardly anyone speak, the sound of Russian — even just one word — is enough to get his attention. He turns instinctively, starts to respond just as much so. "Are you—"

Gleb means to ask if the man is alright, to find out if he only just arrived. People seem to do so around the train station, he's noticed, though he himself wasn't among them. Quickly, though, such intentions get derailed, the face an unexpectedly familiar one. "I know you, don't I?" he asks instead. It is a genuine question, too, but it takes him just a few moments more to place him. One of the con men Anya took up with in Leningrad, with whom she fled for Paris, on whose arm she'd been that night at the ballet.

Suddenly, everything seems to have become a lot more complicated.

Even in his confusion, Dmitry knows that voice and he freezes. He's stood a dangerously short distance from the podium while that voice booms out and makes promises to Russia and he's mocked it. Dmitry has waved his arms, perfected the appropriately timed pauses and nods so drilled into the public speakers. And now the source of that voice, Officer Gleb Vaganov, loyal Russian, is speaking to him.

Oh hell.

"You might," he says, quickly hunting for the right tone of voice to apply, ready to put on a grin and smooth things over even though he anticipates a bag over his head and a firing squad around the corner.

A very casual firing squad, maybe, given that he wears no uniform and touts no medals. His trousers are plain, though crisp, and his shirt is in a similar state. Dmitry wonders what that means for him.

While there may have been for a moment, there's not really anything hypothetical about the question anymore by the time Gleb gets an answer. Even before all that business with auditions and then apparently lessons at the old Yusupov Palace, their paths had crossed before, and not exactly favorably. So much has changed since then, though. He's been aware of it for quite some time, but in that instant, it's practically staggering, the memory of being in uniform on the Nevsky Prospekt, so single-minded and sure of what his life was going to be, as if it was that simple. Since Anya, nothing has been. Even then, it was fine when that was just the two of them, but he can only imagine that this will substantially change things.

They've never talked about it or about him, not really. Gleb remembers one brief mention on a winter afternoon a few months ago when Anya brought up her sisters without meaning to, but he hadn't pressed the subject; he hadn't wanted to know what might have been between her and Dmitry, perhaps for what he suspected it might have been. Beyond that, though, he knows only the barest of facts: that Anya left the country with two conmen, that with one of them, she'd seemed terribly close at the ballet, that when he arrived here, she believed that she'd been lied to and manipulated, and he'd had to be the one to tell her otherwise.

He wonders where all of their knowledge will intersect this time, then wonders what this will mean for himself and Anya, then decides that he doesn't want to consider that until he has to.

Any uncertainty, he isn't willing to admit to, so he hides it all behind a calm, stoic front. He isn't a deputy commissioner anymore, though; he'll always have the bearing of a soldier, to an extent, but he doesn't stand at attention or keep anything threatening in his expression. "You're Anya's conman," he says, figuring it's best to get to the crux of it.

He wonders if this is meant to be an interrogation. The good Deputy Commissioner has no reason to speak politely with him. Even if he hadn't left Russia under false pretenses with a fake (real) Grand Duchess Anastasia, Dmitry is guilty of any number of small crimes under the regimes new and old. "I'm not Anya's anything," he says, opting for the truth. She'd made it plain on their last meeting that she wanted nothing to do with him ever again.

He can't blame her.

"Isn't Paris a little out of your jurisdiction?" There are two possibilities here. Either Mother Russia has longer arms than he's ever realized or they've somehow knocked him out, drugged him. That's why the scenery has changed. They've drugged him and now he's in an interrogation room before being summarily disposed of.

"You're the one who announced Petersburg was to going to be Leningrad."

At the mention of Paris, Gleb huffs out a breath that's too dark to be a laugh, entirely self-directed. It makes sense, of course, but it seems that everything comes back to that, and nothing about his time there — neither the city itself nor the reason for his being there, and certainly not what he came far too close to doing — is anything he much likes to think about. Those thoughts are ones he can't afford to dwell on right now, though. There's too much that's been called into question and too much to explain, and though he knows he shouldn't be so thrown for a loop by this turn of events, he can't quite help it. The best he can do is try not to let that show, or to make any assumptions that it isn't his place to make.

"I am," he says, nodding once. There's no reason to pretend otherwise. No matter how much has changed in these past few months, he doesn't see any reason why his own past should bother him. None of it is particularly worth a damn here, in a world so unlike that which he left behind, but the things he believes are the same as they've ever been. It's just that nothing is quite as straightforward as he'd once thought it to be. "And you're not in Paris. Not anymore."

Dmitry considers his options with that little sliver of information. The other man is looking at him too intently to fall for any smooth talk. Everything he remembers about this man is of officiousness and efficiency, not the sort to be cajoled, flattered, or bribed into anything. Just as well, since Dmitry has nothing to offer. Most of the money that got them to Paris has run out. It had made that suitcase of rubles tempting but he'd already known his choice before he entered. So there's no money and nothing in his suitcase. Except maybe the shoes. They're very good shoes.

The only other thing that might be valuable to this man is information on Anya and that's something he won't give. No man with that many medals can have a harmless interest in an escaped tsarevna.

"Where am I then? Outer oblast? Leningrad?" He almost adds Train to Siberia? but he's not more stupid than he is glib.

Gleb tries to think of how Anya explained this place to him when he first arrived, but too much of that night is a blur now, the things that come to mind utterly unhelpful ones and only leaving him to circle back around to too many questions. Does he know that it wasn't really a lie after all, that Anya truly is Anastasia, or is that a matter of coincidence? Was there something between them as there seemed to be that night at the ballet, or was it all for show? They aren't things with which to lead; devoid of context, they probably wouldn't make any sense, or would give the wrong impression, though he doesn't know what the right one would be. He just knows that this isn't an interrogation and that he might be speaking from a place of more knowledgeability, if not by very much, except where Darrow is concerned. Those women who came to him to report Anya told him, too, about the man who'd been holding auditions for the role of the presumed dead grand duchess, and he saw the picture they put on the poster calling for the arrest of all three of them. In Paris, he saw them together that night, and Anya believed here that she'd been lied to. He has a name, a face, and very little beyond that, but it's something beyond the occasional crossing of their paths.

"You won't believe me when I tell you," he says, which is true enough, one corner of his mouth curling up just slightly. "But it's a long way from home. And I don't know how any of us got here any more than you do."

"Everywhere is a long way from home when you don't have one," Dmitry says. It's probably a bad idea given the fact that he's probably going to be executed but if he's going to be shot soon then what's the worst he can say? What will they do, shoot him harder? It'd be almost funny to imagine if he weren't so fond of being alive.

There's something weird about Gleb's smile, not malicious, nor actually happy, but it still gives Dmitry the feeling of someone who has a secret. He hates not being the one in the know.

"We're in a brave new world. I'll believe anything." It's not as if he has a choice.

Gleb tips his head to the side in acquiescence, in no small part because this world is even newer than such a statement might suggest. Darrow's actual history, it's difficult to know much about, but this isn't any sort of organic change, no more the fallout from a political overthrow than it is a matter of traveling across a continent. There really is no way to explain it that makes sense, as he remembers far too well from the questions he'd been left with as Anya tried to explain it to him in between his trying to tell her what he thought she'd already known, but there's also no reason not to attempt it. As strange as being the one in this position is, or at least feels, given what he knows, maybe it's for the best that it comes from someone who's from the same time and place.

And maybe, if he keeps telling himself that, he'll actually believe it instead of being drawn back into remembering Anya at the ballet, on Dmitry's arm, looking entirely too beautiful and fitting into that world entirely too well for his comfort.

"It's a city called Darrow," he says, simply enough. "It belongs to no country, there's no way to leave, and no one knows how or why anyone arrives." He pauses a beat, meaning to leave it at that, but they're going to have to address the situation more directly sooner or later. In the interest of full disclosure, then, he adds, "Anya is here, as well."

Edited 2018-04-22 08:37 (UTC)

Despite Dmitry's cavalier inner monologue, something about Gleb's description sticks in his throat. It all sounds like a euphemism for the labor camp that claimed his father, some desolate place where the law doesn't exist so it can't apply. No way to leave, he thinks, except by dying. He's not proud of himself for the hysterical little laugh that shocks up through his throat.

He opens his mouth to make a joke, to try and play it all cool, but then Gleb mentions Anya and all of it stops dead. The bravado, the courage, all die.

"Anya has no part in any of this. She's just... She's innocent." Maybe she fled the border but everything else? It's all him. It's him and Vlad but he'll just say him, give them a chance. God he hopes they don't have Vlad. "If this is some kind of prison and you're just softening the blow, then fine. But she doesn't need to be here!"

Gleb can't help the way he tenses, jaw tightening, at what seems like a not so thinly veiled accusation. It isn't even undeserved, not really. He knows who and what he is and the kind of things he's done; he's always thought himself to be, or at least tried to be, not as bad as the impression he gives, but there's only so much leeway there. Of course Dmitry would be defending Anya to him, as if it's something he actually needs to hear, as if he wasn't prepared to die so that she might have a chance to live. Even if he'd taken her home as he told her he meant to, he could never have turned her in. He thinks Anya might well believe that by now, but why should anyone else, someone who saw him in uniform and knows what the new regime did to people who stepped out of line?

His orders were clear. He just chose not to follow them and showed up here before he could ever pay the price for that. If it is a prison, then at least it's still kinder than the fate that would have awaited him back in Russia.

"I'm not softening any blow," he says tersely. "I had nothing to do with... whatever this is, and it's no prison that I know of. Look around you; do these people look imprisoned?" Around them, a typical crowd makes its way both to and from the train. They might be trapped, but their jailers are, at least, generous ones, perhaps even too much so. Though he knows it might make little sense without context or prompt a string of questions he won't know how to answer or both, he can't not address the comment about Anya. "If it were one, I would never do that to her."

Dmitry reads something different in the way Gleb's jaw tenses. In it, he sees a bitten off retort or command and he thinks about his father again. When they'd come for him, Dmitry's father had stuffed him under the bed. The last glimpse he has of his father is his shoes. Maybe there won't even be a last glimpse of him. Not even that much.

"I deserve all the bad hands I've been dealt," he says. "But not her."

But even Dmitry knows that Gleb is no magician. For all the government enjoys its shadowy omnipresence, he doesn't think they're capable of creating an illusion this thorough. Besides, he thinks, glancing between the posted time on a screen and the train that pulls into the station, there's no way a Russian train would actually arrive on time. Again, they're aren't magicians.

It's compelling evidence, but he's still not sure he believes the man.

"So what now, then?" he asks. Of all the questions he has, that's the one that hasn't changed since Paris.

Gleb could argue the point, but he doesn't see any need to when it seems unlikely to do any good. At best, it would be an unnecessary sort of transparency when he doesn't know what Anya and Dmitry are or ever were to each other. At worst, he wouldn't be believed, and he has no desire to spell out in detail the lengths he would go to in order to keep Anya safe. That's no one's business but the two of theirs, and a long story as well. Besides, explaining that he was there in Paris and knows who she is could only involve also getting into why he was there, and no matter what he did or didn't do when given the chance, he's well aware of how it would sound. He doesn't exactly think kindly of himself for it, either, though he knows, with that being the case, it's better that he was the one sent than someone else.

"There will be information waiting for you at the booth," he says, tipping his head in its direction. "A map, some money, a place to stay." For a moment, he means to leave it at that. Despite the connection they share, they're little better than strangers, and there are probably people better equipped for this sort of thing. It wouldn't seem right to say nothing, though, maybe especially given how tense everything feels. "I can tell you how to get in touch with her, if you'd like."

She seemed angry when she told him that she'd been lied to and used, but that was months ago, and she knows now the truth of who she is. Maybe she won't want to see the conman who brought her to Paris, but Gleb thinks she ought to decide that for herself without any intervention from him. That isn't his place.

He isn't, very suddenly, sure of what his place is.

Surely, even the new regime has room for a little self-pity now and then. Or so Dmitry would argue. In a more even mood, he'd have economics and politics and tsars and soldiers alike to blame but right now, all of the things wrong in his life right in front of him, Dmitry thinks he can only blame on himself. Gleb would likely agree.

"How equitable," Dmitry says, nodding at the booth. A place to stay and money. He wonders how many strangers will cram into his new quarters with him. Maybe he won't have to fight someone for a sack of lentils or whatever will pass for a bed in his new situation.

And then Anya...

Dmitry shakes his head. "She wants nothing to do with me. She won't want to see me," he says, perfectly confident in that fact. "She won't be excited to know I'm here."

The remark isn't an entirely surprising one. If anything, it makes him wonder if all three of them are from around the same time, though the day or so between when Anya showed up here and when he did makes all the difference in the world. Even so, Gleb can't say for certain whether that's true or not. He still remembers well the vitriol in her voice that first evening he spent here, when she told him that she wasn't Anastasia and he claimed otherwise, but that was a long time ago now. Things have changed. There isn't any remaining question on that front, especially not after that night just over a week ago that the two of them spent inexplicably trapped in their own past.

He's never asked her about Dmitry; until now, he never planned to. She's barely spoken of him. Time can make a significant difference, however, and for all he knows, she's let go of any past resentment. Whatever they may have been to each other before her grandmother apparently rebuked her, Gleb likewise has no way of knowing, but it's hard not to wonder if perhaps she'll want whatever that was back.

"I don't know how much you remember," he says, forcing some of the tension out of his shoulders and his voice. "People arrive here from different points in time. But for whatever it's worth, she knows now. Who she is. That it was true." Perhaps it's an odd sort of understanding that prompts the words. He'd thought the same, after all, that she would want nothing to do with him, until he realized that she didn't remember what was for him the last few minutes at all. "I don't know if she'll want to see you or not, but... Well, there's that."

"I know," Dmitry says, pleased at last to finally know something in this situation. "I've known for a while. They were about to go to the press and announce it. I was about to go..." He looks down at his suitcase and shrugs. With the choice taken from him, Dmitry still can't decide where he would have gone. It hardly matters. For a long time, all he wanted was out of Russia. If what Gleb says is true, then that mission at least is accomplished. Lucky him.

"The last I saw of her was in a hotel room, with her grandmother." There's a certain finality about that statement, one that removes any doubt of the confirmation he's seen. "This whole time, I should have been calling her Nastya." He smiles it wryly, knowing that he'd never be allowed the privilege if she knew.

They must have come from just about the same time, then. Gleb would say as much, except he doesn't particularly want to launch into the explanation that would almost certainly have to involve. Anya knows what she needs to — that he was sent there after her, what his orders were, that he came close but, when the time came, couldn't follow through with what he'd gone there to do — and that's all that really matters on that front. If asked, he won't dodge questions about it, and he won't try to get Anya not to mention it, but it's not something he sees a need to offer freely to someone whom he doesn't really know.

"For her, it was... before then," he says, supposing that that isn't saying too much. "Not by very long. She said her grandmother turned her away." He exhales, quiet but audible. He's only ever referred to or thought of her as Anya, even when they were reliving a night from their childhoods, before she'd ever been anything but Anastasia. "Things are different here. No one's... She's safe."

"She did. I changed her mind," Dmitry says and now he lets himself actually smile a little. In retrospect, he still cannot believe what he did, barging past the Dowager Empress' retinue had been bad enough. Yelling had been another. Stomping on her dress like a petulant child, however, was the kind of thing that might have gotten him sent off to Siberia.

He entertains an amusing image of getting a medal for it in Russia but he's not going to say anything. Maybe they're not in Russia but some lessons are hard to unlearn in the new order of things, one of the important ones being that it's a bad idea to share overmuch with one's neighbor. It's hard not to feel like he's already given away too much in the space of two sentences.

"She's safe," he repeats, letting out a sigh of his own. "From what?" He knows what. The question is a challenge.

She's safe from him is the answer that first comes to mind, but Gleb can't bring himself to say as much. That was true before he ever found himself here, anyway. No matter his intention for those few moments in Paris, he doesn't think he ever would have been able to hurt her, not really. Even if she'd listened to him and let him bring her back to Russia, pretending the whole thing was a game, he wouldn't have had the heart to turn her in. The conmen with whom she'd been working may be a different story in that regard, but they aren't who he'd been sent after, and that stopped mattering around the time he realized he couldn't follow his orders.

"You know from what," he says, as simple and as straightforward as that. If it hadn't been him, it would have been someone else. Particularly with the truth of it made public, the new regime and the people he worked for would never have just sat back and calmly accepted the fact of Anastasia Romanov still being alive. "There's none of that here."

"I do." Dmitry wants to ask if that means he's safe too but he still doesn't know what to think and he's quite certain that no matter the circumstances, Gleb Vaganov has no interest in his safety. No matter how gently he speaks about Anya, Dmitry doesn't believe for a second that that extends to him.

"If she's safe and she's..." Is this even the thing to ask in this kind of place? "If she's happy. Then I won't bother her. She won't want to see me."

And maybe it's selfish but he's not ready to see her. He doesn't want to look at the woman he loves and know that she's leagues beyond him.

If a small part of Gleb is quietly relieved at that, thinking again of how the two of them had looked at the ballet, when he'd watched Anya from across the room, seeming every bit the lost royalty he'd been desperate to believe she wasn't, then he knows better than to say as much. It's short-lived, anyway. Even if what Dmitry says is true, that's a decision that only Anya can make for herself. He knows better than to get in the way of that. Chances are, if he tried, it would only backfire anyway. The uncertainty leaves him unsettled to say the least, but there's no way to get around that.

"She is," he promises, as solemn as he's ever been. "As far as I can tell, she is." He doesn't know what to say beyond that. It's not like he can just blurt out that Anya kissed him a week ago and he's suddenly far less confident in what that means than he was then. "I think she would at least want to know that you're here."

Dmitry shrugs noncommittally. "I'm not so sure," he says. And maybe it's because he doesn't want to risk hoping. At least if he stays convinced that Anya hates him and won't want to see him, he can't be disappointed. If he allows himself to hope, to imagine her royal highness might forgive him and then they meet and she doesn't? Better to anticipate hatred.

No one survives the underbelly of St. Petersburg by being dewy and optimistic.

"Don't tell her I'm here," he says. "She won't want to hear it." It's a request made in vain and he knows it. After all, no matter who they are in Darrow now, the entirety of Gleb's life has been about ferrying information that someone doesn't want shared to the worst possible parties.

Gleb isn't so sure that's the case, thinks that Anya would probably want to make that decision for herself, but he doesn't see the point in saying so. Dmitry seems to have his mind made up about this, and whatever has been requested of him, he already knows that he won't be able to keep this from her, least of all now. Even if he wanted to, though, he wouldn't know how to say that, either. How is he supposed to explain what he and Anya are to each other when he doesn't know the answer to that himself, or if that might change when she inevitably finds out about Dmitry's arrival?

Better to leave it unmentioned. Better to try not to overthink it, as difficult as that may be.

"You're bound to cross paths sooner or later," he says, what seems like the safest response, and true enough no matter what he does or doesn't tell Anya. "Darrow is a big city, but not so big as all that. It's worth keeping in mind."

The lack of confirmation makes it obvious but Dmitry doesn't comment on it.

"Well, the bridge is already burned, I might as well wait to check on the ashes," Dmitry says. He likes to think he sounded like one of their many great poets but knows he's too sensible and too poorly educated to do so in reality.

"So now what do I do? Go to that booth and get an envelope?" He asks in a tone that suggests he's still a little wary of ending up on a one-way vacation to Siberia.

Gleb hums in response as he glances in the direction of the booth, about as quiet as it usually is. It makes sense, in a strange sort of way. Supposedly it's for information, but there's little of that to be found around here, as he's learned the hard way over the last few months. Again, he feels more than a bit unequipped to be trying to explain this, least of all given the circumstances, but he has no intention of admitting as much. Nothing good would come of that. Better to get this over with and then try to figure out how much this is going to change.

"And once you do that, you'll know where it is you'll be living," he replies. "It's easy enough to navigate, at least. Everything is a grid."

"Convenient," Dmitry says. Frankly, he finds it all a little too convenient and he's sure this sharp-eyed Deputy Commissioner has similar misgivings.

Hefting up his suitcase, Dmitry walks over to the booth. Its dour attendant asks his name with all the tenderness of a state-sponsored bread line official and hands him his envelope with similar enthusiasm. Turning back to Gleb, he says, "It's like I'm already home."

Flipping through his packet, Dmitry shakes out the keys to a place marked as the Bramford Building. "Do you know this place?"

"I know of it," Gleb says, nodding. He's had months here with which to learn his way around, and it seems as if new arrivals tend to be assigned to the same few buildings, making it easier to keep track of them than it might otherwise be. Guiltily, he finds himself feeling momentarily grateful that the apartment building in question isn't Anya's. It may not matter, if what Dmitry has said does prove to be true, but right now, everything feels just slightly askew — not a lot, but enough to be noticeable, enough to keep him feeling a little off-balance.

"I've met someone else who lives there, I think. It's not much of a walk from here."

"You said there's a map?" Dmitry neither expects nor is too enthusiastic about the idea that Gleb might take it upon himself to escort Dmitry to his building. Maybe it's true and there's no Bolshevik party here and maybe Gleb already knows the location of the building, but he can't help a healthy bit of caution where deputy commissioners are concerned.

"There is," Gleb confirms. "It should be in there with the rest of it. That small, black rectangle is a telephone, of all things." He still isn't used to that, nor does he get much use out of his own. There are few people he would need to get in touch with, for one, and it's something he simply doesn't understand. Some things are clearly a product of the advancing times, but he'd be surprised if anyone managed to explain mobile telephones to him in any kind of coherent fashion. "It's been ninety years here since what we came from. Apparently that brings with it a lot of change."

"A phone," Dmitry repeats. A phone in that tiny envelope? He wants to ask where he can find the rest of it to make it work. The rectangle that shakes into his hand barely looks capable of anything, much less what Gleb claims, and Dmitry raises an eyebrow, clearly skeptical.

He really doesn't want to ask Gleb Vaganov for help but it's either that or spend all day trying to make the blank phone give up its secrets.

"I might be better off with directions from a person."

There's nothing to be wary of, per se, but Gleb can't profess to be particularly comfortable with this situation. What he wants is to go somewhere and try to clear his head, to shake this odd sense of certainty that something has just irrevocably changed. He needs to tell Anya about this, too, no matter what Dmitry has said. She wouldn't want to find out about this accidentally, he's sure, and just as much so that it wouldn't go over very well if she did and then learned that he knew but didn't tell her. He won't set himself up for that.

He doesn't think he can or should just walk away, though. Somehow, it wouldn't seem right. Holding back a sigh, he says, "I could show you, if you'd like."

"Even if you just write it on the map, that'll be fine," Dmitry says, catching that sigh. He's not sure, exactly, what the divide is in this place but he thinks that Gleb is still on the opposite side of it from him. It seems like the kind of thing dictated by fate. "You don't need to...show me around."

He'd almost said 'march.' Maybe he's not so over his concerns that this isn't all a trick.

It's almost a relief, though Gleb would never admit it. He could manage small talk if he had to, but things would doubtlessly circle back to Anya, and he doesn't know how he would possibly address that. Besides, it wouldn't seem right to talk about Anya and her life here, beyond what little he's said so far, when Anya doesn't even know that Dmitry is here yet. Better to keep things fairly impersonal, to leave it with his explanation and directions.

"I can do that," he says, nodding towards the map. "Let me see that?"

Dmitry nods and hands over the map, returning reluctantly to the dour booth worker for a pen. She gives it up but not without fixing Dmitry with a look that could match an ice floe. He wonders if she can claim among her ancestors some Russian bureaucrat.

"I braved the coldest glare outside of Russia for this pen," he says, handing it to Gleb. "Honor it."

"I'll guard it with my life," Gleb says wryly, one corner of his mouth lifting just slightly. He isn't so rattled by this turn of events that humor is entirely beyond him. If anything, there might be some solace in it. Besides, hearing that, it's hard not to wonder just how icy the demeanor of the attendant really is. A pen can't be all that significant, unless she's had people continually running off with them or something of the sort.

He takes a moment to make sense of the map, shifting it slightly in his hands, but he finds the train station, then the Bramford Building, circling the first and drawing a line to the second. At least with the city laid out in a grid, navigating shouldn't be too difficult. "Here," he says. "And no harm done to the pen."

It's not much of a smile but it wasn't much of a joke either. Still, it's the first he's seen of anything from Gleb Vaganov that isn't tense coldness or official pompousness. It helps. Dmitry opens his mouth to say that one life might not be enough, except it's the kind of joke that runs too close to truth for them, and he stops and lets Gleb draw out the map.

"Easy enough," he says, checking the route provided. It might take him a little while but if he can memorize the alleys and corners of St. Petersburg then he can manage this. Uncertainly, Dmitry shifts in place before adding, "Thank you."

"It's no problem," Gleb replies, lifting one shoulder in a slight approximation of a shrug. That much, at least, is actually true. He wouldn't apply the same to any of the rest of this situation, not with the sinking feeling that has yet to leave his stomach, but offering directions is something easily done. Dmitry is, whatever else he might be and whatever his relationship to Anya is, someone from home. It wouldn't feel right just to leave him to figure it out on his own, and drawing directions on a map is hardly an arduous task.

Supposing he ought to at least add something else, he says simply and earnestly, "Good luck."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Let me have a moment, let me say goodbye

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