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The first time Anastasia spots him, it’s only for a second.
The palace is large, but somehow, it never feels lonely. There’s family everywhere, siblings and parents and cousins and the elder generation, constantly having dinners and playing in the drawing room and out in the gardens. And staff can be found in almost every room, cleaning and taking care of everyone’s affairs. It is, Anastasia always thinks, the very best way to be a kid.
But when she sees the boy leaning against the kitchen door frame, smiling and biting into an apple, she’s surprised. She didn’t know there were children in the palace that weren’t her family. And despite his reddish-brown hair, she knows he isn’t family.
No one in her family has an impish grin quite like his.
She wants to ask his name, to get closer and find out who he is, but he’s gone almost as soon as her eyes meet his.
Anastasia doesn’t know who he is, but he feels like a friend.
***
The second time Anastasia spots him, they’re almost a year older and he grins at her again.
She grins back across the drawing room, looking at him in the doorway as he peers in. She thinks he might be the same age as she is - and eight is a very good age, she’s come to find. She’s old enough now to sit at the big table with her sisters during important dinners, and she gets to pick her own clothes for the occasion. And her grandmother promises her that soon she’ll be able to travel alone, which means she can visit Paris and her family more often.
Anastasia wonders if he gets to do those things, too.
She’s about to walk over and ask him when one of her uncles rests a hand on her shoulder. “Come now, Anastasia,” he says, tutting quietly. His voice is low. “We don’t interact with kitchen boys.”
She looks up at her uncle, brow furrowed. Surely he must be joking - why wouldn’t they interact if she has something to say? But he nods his head towards her chair with a gaze that says Sit. Listen to me. And so, reluctantly, she does.
When she looks back up at the doorway, she offers him a sad little smile. I’m sorry, she tries to send across the room to him.
The boy smiles back and shrugs. She likes to think he forgives her.
***
The third time Anastasia spots him, they’re alone.
“I don’t know much about dancing,” he says from behind her, a laugh in his voice, “but I don’t think that’s it.”
Her cheeks flush as she turns around, caught off guard. “Excuse you?”
“Sorry. I know I’m not supposed to talk to you like that,” he says. He jams his hands in his pockets and shuffles forward a little. “But really. I’ve watched a lot of royal balls, and nobody looks like that when they’re waltzing.”
“I’m practicing,” Anastasia says, trying to recover from her embarrassment at someone - him - spotting her attempting a dance around the empty sitting room. “Papa says I can come to the next one, and I don’t want to look silly.”
“Well, mission accomplished,” he says sarcastically, and Anastasia would feel hurt if it wasn’t for the way he smiles at her. It isn’t cruel - she can feel it. It’s playful and friendly.
“Is this how you make friends?” she asks. “I can’t imagine it works for you very well.”
He shrugs. “I don’t really have friends.”
“Oh.” Her face falls. Oops.
“Come on,” he says, taking another step forward and holding out his hand. “Want me to show you?”
She blinks at his outstretched hand, confused. “What?”
“I’ve watched a lot of people dance before,” he says. “I can show you how it works.”
Anastasia hesitates. She knows that if her mother were here, saw them together, talking.... well, that wouldn’t go over well. But he doesn’t seem to wish her any harm. It seems like he genuinely wants to teach her how to dance.
“Come on.” His grin is bigger. “Don’t you trust me?”
She places her hand in his and doesn’t question it any further.
The dance is… well, it isn’t exactly magical. It’s slow and deliberate, with him counting out the beats and her trying not to step on his toes. Her hand sweats a little as he holds it, and she wants to rub it on her skirt - but she also doesn’t want to stop and let him go. She stumbles at first, getting her lefts mixed up with her rights, and he tightens his hold on her a little to keep her upright.
“You’re doing really well,” he tells her.
She rolls her eyes. “Well for someone who has two left feet, maybe.”
“You’ll get it, don’t worry.”
And eventually, she does. She thinks it would be easier with music, but the two of them finally figure out a rhythm. He guides her around the sitting room and she manages to leave his feet unscathed, even twirling a couple times without tripping. When they finally decide to stop, she’s grinning just as wide as he is.
“I did it!”
“You’re going to be great at the ball,” he tells her. “Princess.”
Her cheeks flush again. “You don’t have to call me that.”
He shrugs and bows with a comical little flourish, smiling again. “It suits you.”
It isn’t until he’s gone that she realizes she never thought to ask his name.
***
The fourth time Anastasia spots him, her world is on fire.
She doesn’t know where he comes from, but he appears behind her and her grandmother at just the right moment. There are screams echoing through the palace hallways, flickering lights shining through the windows, and the loud, running footsteps of the soldiers are getting ever closer.
Anastasia starts when he grabs her. It isn’t like the first time they touched - this time is urgent, a little rough. Her eyes meet his and she sees the fear in them.
“Come this way, out the servants’ quarters!” he cries. He shepherds them both across the room, where a small panel in the wall hangs open. Anastasia has never seen her grandmother take orders from a boy before, but her mouth is set in a firm line. She’s scared. And that, more than anything, makes Anastasia fumble and try to hurry.
When she ducks down into the dark hallway beyond the wall, she feels the music box slip from her hand.
“My music box!” She’s frantic, reaching back for it eagerly. It’s the whole reason she came back into the palace - the whole reason she and her grandmother stayed behind instead of fleeing with her family.
The whole reason that they may not make it out alive.
Her stomach sinks like a stone and the boy catches her around the waist. He pushes her backwards.
“Go! Go!”
His voice is firm and his tone is urgent. Her grandmother grabs hold of her hand and pulls, and before she knows it, she’s deep in the palace walls, the darkness engulfing her. She tries to keep up as best she can, her feet aching in her slippers the further they run.
It isn’t until they’re outside that she realizes the boy from the wall stayed behind.
***
The fifth time Anastasia spots him, she isn’t Anastasia anymore.
Anya knows this place.
She doesn’t know why, or how, but every inch of the old Romanov palace has her nerves on edge. Beneath every cobweb, every dust mite, is a memory. She can’t fathom how they could be hers - could they all be part of some elaborate, realistic dream she’d had in the past? One where she isn’t an orphan with no connection to her past, but is in fact… loved? Remembered?
“Hey!”
The voice startles her. She jumps, head snapping up. Two men, one lanky and one rotund, at the top of the stairs. Two men staring at her, angry. One points a finger at her accusingly, and she only has a moment to take in his features before she bolts.
And that familiar feeling of remembrance sets her nerves alight again.
Finally, after a miniature chase scene and some very strange staring, he introduces himself as Dimitri.
“Dimitri,” she echoes, shaking his hand. She isn’t sure about this man - he speaks as if every word out of his mouth is chosen carefully. Like he’s trying to sell fur to a rabbit, and pretending he wants nothing in return. It’s strange and calculating, and Anya knows all about strange and calculating. But somehow, he’s likeable, too. Despite all the warning bells in her head, she doesn’t hate him. And that, more than anything, drives her crazy. That annoys her.
And when he grins at her, it shifts something in her gut. It reminds her of something.
If only she could think of what, exactly, that something might be.
And why, every moment they spend together from there on out, whenever he smiles, her heart aches just a little bit.
end.