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Anya flattens a hand against her abdomen and tries to breathe.
Beside her, Dmitry has not stirred, and for once she is glad of it. He is so in tune with her now, awake the same second she wakes up in the middle of the night crying, head full of gunsmoke and her sisters screams.
As delighted Anya was to remember who she is, to have her Nonna and name and family - the onslaught of terrible memories to come with them are nearly unbearable. Half of Dmitry’s vests have been ruined by her tears, his hand stroking her hair while she sobs into his chest. There are some nights she cannot even bare to be touched, crouched somewhere in their small house trembling, Dmitry knelt nearby murmuring gentle reassurances, his hands held out to her.
It frightens him, seeing her like this, she knows. Anya frightens herself. Some days it feels as if her brain is on fire.
Beneath her palm, her stomach is curving as it does when she eats too much too fast for her small frame to handle, as it has been the last five nights she has lain in the dark beside Dmitry, hands cautiously against her flank feeling for - something. Movement, perhaps. Something to break through the terror the mere prospect of -
Anya still feels like the small, terrified girl sleeping on the streets of Leningrad, barely able to take care of herself. That girl would not have known how to be a mother.
This new version of herself, the one somewhere between Anastasia Romanova and Anya, feels even less qualified.
When Tsarina Alexandra was pregnant with little Alexei, she had taken her daughters hands and pressed them against where he kicked. Feeling the nudges, Anastasia had snatched her hand away in shock. She remembers Olga giggling at her reaction, Tatiana jumping up and down insisting it was her turn, Maria patiently sitting at their mothers' feet.
“Don’t be frightened, malenkiy,” her father told her. “It is only your brother.”
Anastasia had frowned. “How do you know, Papa?”
Tsar Nicholas had glanced at his wife, a weighted look that little Anastasia had not understood yet. “You have three sisters, Nastya. Would you not like a little brother?”
Anastasia had considered for a long moment before deciding yes, she did want a little brother. She was growing tired of being the youngest, anyway.
Anya wonders how her mother had coped, having four daughters in six years and then a sickly son. She wishes more than anything she could ask, craves reassurance from her mother so badly she wants to cry.
Missing them is an ache, permanent and painful, etched deep into her heart.
Old habits are hard to break, Anya and Dmitry had found. Especially after half a lifetime perfecting them.
After the Dowager Empress announced the end of the search for the Grand Duchess Anastasia, Lily approached Dmitry with a job offer from within the upper circles, one that would give him obvious status and payment.
Anya watched Dmitry frown, eyes flickering towards hers. Taking a deep breath, he’d straightened up. “No,” he responded. “No, Lily. I don’t think that’s for me.”
Even then, both Lily and Maria insisted that Anya take a portion of her inheritance, just enough that she and Dmitry can be comfortable. “If not for your own sake, for mine,” Maria had said with finality, right before leaving for Denmark, pressing the cheque into Anya’s hand.
It’s more than enough to buy the little house in Marseille beside the docks where Dmitry finds work. They move in a fortnight after being married in a Paris courthouse, spending the next month fixing up the place.
While he takes to the city surprisingly quickly, Dmitry is none too fond of the small family of stray cats that have taken up residence in their tiny attic. “Irresistible to both man and beast, Dima,” Anya teases him, laughing at his scowl as a third kitten climbs up his leg.
Anya jumps from multiple temporary jobs before the department store seamstresses offer her a place. It is soothing, familiar work, and the aching in her hands at the end of each day feels like a victory.
It is not the glamorous life Anya remembers, nor the desperate and cruel existence Dmitry was born into. They are getting better, slowly. Dmitry has stopped sizing up every person he comes across, doesn’t speak in such hushed tones in public. Anya shrinks away much less whenever someone approaches her, and they are still getting used to having a warm bed and enough food that they’re basically hoarding it as if it’ll be taken away from them.
It is a quiet, boring, laborious life here. Anya could not ask for more.
After the Dowager dies, so soon, too soon after Anya found her, she feels as if the world is collapsing in on her.
She has lost so much. Her parents, her sisters and brother, her grandmother. The grief is too big, too imposing to process; she thinks it will swallow her whole.
Dawn has barely broken when Anya finds herself in the washroom, knuckles white gripping the basin. Dark rings bruise under her eyes - she doesn’t feel like she’s slept in weeks.
She doesn’t realise Dmitry has followed her in until there is a hand on her shoulder.
“Anya,” he whispers.
Anya falls apart. Dmitry catches her.
Flora Arbour is one of the most stern looking women Anya has ever met in her life, barely five years older than her and yet there are streaks of gray in her hair that’s so dark it’s almost black.
“Four daughters will do that to you, dear,” Flora had said mildly after catching Anya staring.
Anya looks over at Julianna, Adele and Genevieve harassing their father into playing with them, Claude trying to gently tell them no and go back to work. She thinks of her mother, her sisters, swallows a painful lump in her throat.
The baby is sleeping in a basket at Anya and Flora’s feet.
“Have you named her yet?” Anya inquires, peering down.
“Yes.” Flora’s face softens. “Anya, this is Elodie.”
Anya smiles, carefully brushes the little girls cheek. “Hello, little Elodie.”
Flora is the one who notices, a mere fortnight after Nonna dies, Anya’s grief still a fresh wound. She is repairing a skirt, using Anya as a mannequin to properly fix it, when she suddenly pauses after struggling for several minutes to button it up.
“Anya,” Flora says, stunned. “Why didn’t you say?”
Anya turns to her, frowning. “What?”
Clarity dawns on Flora’s face, and she abruptly dropped the fabric and needles from her hands. “Claude, watch the girls, please.” She calls to her husband, before grabbing Anya and hauling them upstairs. Anya splutters, Flora’s fingers a vice around her wrist, letting her go only to push her into her bedroom.
“Take off your blouse.”
Anya stares, mouth agape. “I beg your pardon?”
Flora moves towards her impatiently. “Just - let me see something.” Anya barely gets a chance to blink before the skirt and her own blouse are on the floor, and she is stood in the middle of Claude and Flora’s bedroom in only a slip. Flora is turning her around to face the mirror before Anya can get a word in edgeways.
“Flora, use your words.” She demands, shaking Flora’s hands off her. “What is it?!”
“When did you bleed last?” Flora asks bluntly.
Stunned, Anya feels her cheeks heat up. “I don’t think -“
Flora opts instead to tighten Anya’s slip around the waist. “Look.”
Anya looks, and her whole body goes cold.
Flora’s voice has gone soft, all impatience and urgency gone. “Have you been unwell at all recently?” She asks. “Nauseous and tired?”
Unable to speak, Anya nods, fists closed at her sides.
Flora’s hazel eyes meet hers in the mirror. “Anya,” she says gently. “I think you’re pregnant.”
“Oh,” Anya manages, and promptly bursts into tears.
Flora spends the next half an hour calming her down, wraps her in a blanket and presses tea into her hand. “Anya, breathe, it’s alright,” she says soothingly, hands cradling Anya’s face.
“It’s not!” Anya thinks she may be shouting, lungs struggling to inhale. “This isn’t - Flora, I can’t - and Dmitry, we haven’t even talked -” her voice finally breaks, her brain a constant loop of this isn’t happening, the tea staining the carpet at her feet.
Flora takes her hands, still knelt in front of her. “Listen to me,” she says loudly. “You are going to go home, you are going to talk to your husband, and everything is going to be alright. Anya.” She grabs Anya’s chin when her eyes fill up again. “I know how scary this is, but you will get through it.” She pauses. “I imagine you’ve been through much worse.”
Anya doesn’t even dwell on that statement. She shuts her eyes, takes a shuddering breath. “Flora, I don’t know how to be - this.” She doesn’t even want to touch her stomach, as if anything could make it less real.
“You will.” Flora strokes Anya’s hair. “Believe me. And you’re not by yourself - you have Dmitry, and me, and Claude, and all our girls. You have help.”
Anya feels her lip tremble. “I want my Mama.”
Flora’s face softens. “Oh, my dear.” She lets Anya fall against her, sobbing.
Maria used to talk of having children, before Tobolsk, before Ekaterinburg, before what little hope they had of being rescued turned to ash.
Olga would gently tease her about it. “Our family is not big enough, Mashka?”
Maria would pull a face at her. “We can still make it bigger, Olya.”
Maria would have been a wonderful mother. Her sisters would have been incredible women. Should have been. In her mind's eye, Anya can see them flourishing in Paris with her. Alexei would have loved it here, too.
Anya wants to break down thinking about it. She wants them here and alive and with her, assuring her everything will be alright.
“Anya, are you listening?”
Anya blinks. “Hmm?”
Dmitry appears beside her, gently touching her wrist. “I think that dough is kneaded enough, milaya.”
Anya shakes herself, forcing a chuckle. “Yes, sorry.” She wipes her hands and turns to him, tilts her head up to meet his eyes. “What were you saying?”
“I said,” he emphasises, tucking a lock of hair behind Anya’s ear. “I ran into Claude at the market today. With Elodie and Julianna.”
Anya doesn’t know where this is going. “Oh?”
“He mentioned-“ Dmitry clears his throat. “Have you thought about...children?”
Anya’s stomach plummets. “Have you?” She deflects hastily, uselessly grabbing the dough and stepping away from him. “Because - we’re so busy and the house is so small and how would we even afford -“ she’s babbling, shaky hands folding the dough into a pan to prove. She can’t turn around, can’t look at his face.
“Anya.” Dmitry’s hand lightly tugs at her waist, eyes soft. “I know.”
The eternity Anya stares at him is broken by reality rushing back in and her shoving him out the way to vomit into the sink.
After several minutes of Dmitry holding her hair back and rubbing her shoulders, and after she’s washed the awful taste out of her mouth - Anya sinks into a chair and cries.
“I have had enough of tears,” she laments, furiously wiping her eyes. She wonders what happened to the girl who wouldn't even cry in front of her parents. Dmitry looks as panicked as she feels, knelt in front of her clasping her hands. “And please don’t start insisting everything is alright.”
Dmitry’s eyes crinkle at the sides briefly. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Anya inhales sharply, tries to gather her thoughts. “Dima, I -” she tries to think of a way to explain it. “I still don’t know who I am, it’s like there are still these two halves of me, and how am I supposed to raise a child like this? And we have never even talked about it, I’ve never asked -”
“Anya, breathe.” Dmitry stops her, his own voice wavering. “Have you forgotten so quickly?”
“What?”
“We’re married.” He squeezes her hand, hard. “Whatever happens now we do it together. I love you. I love both halves of you. This is -” he glances at her midsection, swallowing. “This is terrifying, and we are not ready -“
“If this is supposed to be helping -” Anya giggles wetly.
“But we will be,” Dmitry presses on. He kisses her, pressing their foreheads together. “We will be ready, even if this wasn’t the plan.” Suddenly he grins, giddy as Anya has ever seen him. “We’re having a baby.”
Anya feels a smile break across her own face. “We’re having a baby,” she repeats, and kisses Dmitry again, just because she can.
Both their faces are wet, Anya still feels lightheaded with anxiety, but they are laughing like children and the world doesn’t end just because she dares to feel hope.
(Anya does not feel as if the two parts of her have finally started to fuse together until the moment her daughter is in her arms, small and pink and wailing. Only then does she know.)