#soon it will be spring | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

fancyfanfiction · 2 years ago

Text

Soon it Will Be Spring Chapter 4

Guess what I finally picked up again!

Crossposted Here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16242599/chapters/114198046

Gleb stood in that marble room in Paris for what felt like the hundredth time. A red glow washed over the white pillars. The urge to scream set his throat on fire and his arm shook as he held it out in front of him, the dull metal of the gun glinting in the light. Anya – Anastasia – stood before him, defiance blazing in those blue eyes.

“Do it,” She egged him on. “And I will be with my parents and brother and sisters in that cellar in Yekaterinburg all over again!”

He squeezed his eyes shut, unable to look at her as his fingers took on a life of their own. She fell in slow motion, silent as the red silk of her gown grew dark. Free from his spell, Gleb cast the gun away and clutched Anya to him.

“Anya!” The tears stung his eyes now. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” He repeated as though he’d forgotten how to say any words but those.

Her dark blonde hair had come loose from its bun and cascaded down her shoulders, the ends staining a reddish-brown. She seemed so small in his arms, slighter and more delicate than she had been in life.

“Gleb,” Anya’s voice echoed around him from nowhere and everywhere at once. “I thought you were better than this. Better than them.” Disappointment, rather than anger, rang in the echo which somehow made it all the worse.

He thought he had been better, too. But, deep down, it seemed he wasn’t. Gleb had done his duty by Russia and all it cost was his soul. Was this what his father felt standing in the basement of the Ipatiev House? Bile burned at the back of his mouth. Gleb had killed before – what soldier hadn’t? – but never an innocent woman standing unarmed before him, never someone he’d known, someone he’d loved.

“Please, forgive me,” he begged, burying his face in her hair. “Please.”

The jolt of the train pulling to a stop woke Gleb with a start. He rubbed his eyes; almost grateful the scene had just been the same nightmare he’d been having since returning from Paris. Even if the details varied slightly dream to dream, it always ended the same.

“Ah, you’re awake.” Katya greeted his return to the waking world. She shifted in the seat as they waited to disembark from the train.

“So,” Katya looked at Gleb, a question tugging at her mouth, “what did you do to this Anya girl that you keep apologizing for?”

The question may as well have been a well-timed slap.

“You talk in your sleep,” Katya answered the unasked question with unsettling nonchalance.

“No, I don’t.” Gleb’s protest almost overlapped the statement.

Katya’s likely sarcastic and more than a little blunt response passed on her face, but, to her credit, she said nothing. They’d all been left with nightmares after the revolution, some people’s were more potent than others.

Gleb took a breath to compose himself. Of course, Katya didn’t know about Paris. How could she? Even Commissioner Gorlinsky didn’t know the specifics of what happened in that room before the Dowager Empress’s press conference. Gleb rubbed his face again, hoping to push the dream further back into the realms of sleep. His stubble was rough beneath his palms; he’d need to shave soon.

Minsk was familiar yet alien as the pair stepped out of the train station. Their first goal was to find a place to stay for the night. Neither was particularly keen on sleeping anywhere but a bed for yet another night. Any large city was bound to have more than one boarding house or hotel. Strains of Belarusian mixed with Russian floated through the streets as the people of Minsk went about their days. The Russian was comfortable, a sense of home; the Belarusian left Katya frustrated. It felt so close to her own language, yet so foreign. Information just out of her reach.

Falling into the flow of the foot traffic was easy for the pair of experienced city-dwellers. The current ebbed and flowed as it had in St. Petersburg and Moscow. It seemed people were inherently people anywhere one went. The scent of frying dough enveloped Katya as she and Gleb passed a food stall and set her stomach growling. She stepped out of the flow, gently tugging Gleb to follow.

“Pierogi!” The smile that split Katya’s face was the largest Gleb had seen on her.

“Not quite.” The merchant pulled the food out of his frier. “Kletski. They’re like pierogi. If you like those, you’ll love these. And mine are the best kletski in Minsk!”

“If they taste as good as they smell, I’m inclined to believe you.” Katya pulled out her purse and dropped her money into the merchant’s hand. “We’ll both take two.”

Few foods in the world were better than meat wrapped in fried dough and smothered in onions: this was one of the facts Katya lived by. Even the cold bench they sat on couldn’t spoil her enjoyment of this food. By the time Gleb had finished his first kletski, she was halfway through her second.

“Careful, if you eat too quickly, you’ll throw it all up.” To be honest, Gleb was a little amazed at the gusto with which his travelling companion ate.

“I know. They’re just so good. And it’s been forever since I’ve had anything close to pierogi. They were the one thing my mother knew how to cook. Or at least the only thing she every did cook.”

Gleb thought back to his own mother, covered in flour and always smelling of warm bread and floral tea. They’d never had much, but somehow, she’d been able to create feasts. At least, the meals seemed that way through the lens of childhood. Looking back, she was just creative and frugal.

“I can’t imagine a mother who doesn’t cook,” Gleb said.

“Mine has—” Katya searched for the right word, “other qualities.” The grimace she had suppressed at the thought of her mother surfaced quickly before Katya regained control of her face. She anticipated the incredulity before it was able to show on Gleb’s face. “Good ones! I can’t think of any at the moment, but she does.”

“If you can’t even think of her good qualities, why are you going all the way to Paris to find her?”

Memories of Masha and Gala flashed in Katya’s mind: Masha, trying to look stern as she held back a laugh, and Gala’s radiant smile that enchanted most men, and a few women, on whom it shone. For more than a decade, the three had braved the world together. First, as teenagers: two novice nuns and a factory girl weaving their way through the hell of revolution. Then, as young women: the three had lost their entire worlds and learned to rebuild, leaning on each other for all of it. Facing the next ten days without them, let alone the looming lifetime left Katya adrift.

“She and my brother are all I have left. Sometimes, you just need to be with your family.”

The plan hadn’t originally been to find her mother and brother in Paris. They’d chosen the French capital more for its excitement and the rumors they’d heard about the booming Russian expatriate community. But after that night, even at 28, Katya simply wanted her mother.

A voice in the back of his head warned Gleb to leave it there. Trusting his better judgment, he did.

“Thank you for the food,” said Gleb as the pair rose to continue on their quest to find an inexpensive boarding house.

Gleb had never been good at idle chit-chat, but Katya seemed a master. She wove them through conversation as easily as they wove through the streets of Minsk. They swept between books they each enjoyed, though he couldn’t fathom her love of War and Peace, music they preferred, and deftly danced past any mention of politics or religion.

The shabby boarding house the pair had finally happened upon sagged with age. With its cracked stone and ivy-draped walls, it could’ve been there when the riders first crossed the Rus. Alright, perhaps that was a bit of an exaggeration. Bells chimed as Katya and Gleb entered the parlor and the overwhelming tang of mothballs hit them.

“Hello?” Katya coughed.

A woman who somehow looked older than the house peered around the corner. She examined each of the travelers in turn, her eyes thrice magnified by the thick spectacles perched precariously on her nose.

“How may I help you?” Her Russian was tinged with the Belarussian accent of Minsk but was otherwise flawless.

“My husband and I are returning to Poland and our train isn’t for a day.” Katya caught Gleb’s eye before his surprise at the word “husband” even surfaced, her wordless message clear: Just play along.

“He does not speak Russian.” Katya hoped the explanation would lessen the old woman’s scrutiny.

“How long are you hoping to stay, Comrade…” the question trailed off.

“Kschessinski.” Katya offered her most charming smile; a trick she’d learned from Gala. “Just a night.”

“I should have a room. Twin beds. Room 2 on the third floor,” The landlady produced a ledger, “It’ll be three rubles. And supper is at 7. If you’re late, you don’t eat.” Katya signed for herself and Gleb and the old woman bustled back into what must’ve been the kitchen.

Katya and Gleb hurried up the stairs. The musty stench of mothballs grew stronger as they ascended the pink-carpeted stairs and moved down the hallway. It hung so thick clouds of mothball stench were almost visible by the time they reached the third floor. Katya gasped for breath as they finally closed the door.

“It’s worse!” She choked out, “How is the smell worse up here than it was down there?”

Gleb shrugged off his coat and crossed the small room to open the window. Katya joined him at the sill, gulping in the non-mothball contaminated air.

“I suppose she’s afraid the moths will do her the favor of eating that pink rug in the hall.” Gleb crossed to the sink and pulled his razor and soap out of his pack. The water ran frigid. Gleb examined himself in the small mirror that hung above the basin. Hopefully he’d be able to finish shaving before dinner. The timbre of the waterflow brightened, it had warmed quickly for the chill of the evening.

Katya sat on the bed closest to the window, which she’d claimed as her own for the night. She glanced over to where Gleb stood. His focus was as sharp as the razor that he swept deftly across his cheek. Katya didn’t remember the last time she saw someone so intent. He tilted his chin up, moving on to his neck. The freshness of soap overtook the stench of mothballs, filling her senses. The steel glided effortlessly across his jawline, light and gentle as a kiss. Katya was transfixed.

Gleb must’ve felt her eyes on him, “Do you need to use the sink, too?”

“Oh! Um, yes. I need to…” She hadn’t realized how much she’d been staring, “wash my face before dinner.”

Gleb dampened the small towel he’d produced from his bag and wiped off the remaining lather, “I’ll get out of your way, then.”

Katya thanked him and moved to the still running sink, hoping her face wasn’t as red as it felt. If it was, perhaps she could blame it on the hot water.

“I’m going to see what books were in the parlor. Since we’ll be here all night anyway it may be nice do some reading.” He pulled his coat back on, slipping out the door before Katya could reply.

The boarders all kept to themselves at dinner. Gleb enjoyed the silence. The peace of a simple supper was luxurious after the days of running. Even the permeating odor of the mothballs had dissipated, replaced with the aroma of vegetable stew.

Once the meal was finished, the inmates of the ancient house repaired to their rooms in the same silence, Katya and Gleb among their ranks. Upon entering the room, Gleb produced two volumes borrowed from the parlor, Crime and Punishment for himself and,

“War and Peace?” Katya grabbed the book with the same gusto she’d eaten the kletskis with.

“I figured you’d enjoy having something to do other than sit and stare at the walls all night.” No tight-lipped half-grimace, Gleb favored her with a gentle, genuine smile.

After four hours, Pierre’s father had finally died, leaving him as Count Bezukhov and Katya felt sleep tugging on her eyelids. She turned and looked to her odd travelling companion, still buried deep in his own choice of Dostoyevsky.

“Aren’t you going to change for bed?” Katya propped herself upon her elbow.

“What?” Gleb was shaken from the world of this book, “Oh.” His discomfort radiated the short distance from one bed to the other, “I—I don’t think I will.”

“You’re not shy, are you?” Katya teased. “I’ll turn my back if you want.”

“No, I’m fine in my clothes.” Gleb thought of the nice, clean night shirt he’d packed and then of the stench of travel that lingered on him. With no idea when he’d get to wash his clothes again, there was no other option.

“Alright, have it your way then. I think I’ll turn in. We’ll have to leave early tomorrow to make the train for Warsaw.”

Gleb nodded his ascent, reluctantly putting his own book down and dimming the lamp on the shared bedside table. “Good night, Yekaterina Sergeyevna.”

“Sleep well, Deputy Commissioner."

#Anastasia Musical #gleb vaganov #Fan fiction #Anastasia fan fiction #Anastasia fan fic #fanfiction #Soon it will Be Spring

0 notes