Chapter Text
The sounds of the bustling spring streets of Moscow filtered in through the open window of the apartment above, cutting through the heavy silence within. A thin English woman stood before the same open window, thick white-blond curls whipping past her pale face with the force of the Russian winds below. The room was lit only by a series of ornate candelabras, despite the presence of electric wiring and modern light bulbs. She wore no shoes, preferring the feel of the thick persian rugs under her bare feet to the inside of shoes or stockings.
A man entered the library from behind her, announcing his entry only with heavy steps and the dropping of his thick-soled boots at the door. He preferred to wear shoes in his own home, but also respected his wife’s preferences in her library and had promised to keep in line with her one small request. She did not turn around to greet him, but instead stayed where she stood before the open window.
Alice Kingsleigh heard her Josef come in behind her, and his careful steps across the wooden floor to the rug where she stood rooted. His heavy mitt of a hand gently gripped her shoulder as he came to stand just behind her. A hot-breathed kiss was laid on her pale cheek, Josef’s neatly trimmed moustache brushing coarsely across the side of her face as she shuttered her eyes, leaning into the embrace. The strong beat of his heart rumbled against her bare shoulder through his linen uniform.
Alice felt the wind change directions as Josef used his strong arms to spin her around to face him, and only opened her eyes to meet his when she felt the steady pressure of his hands move from her shoulders to either side of her narrow face. His deep honey-brown eyes searched hers, nearly endless in their depths. It seemed as if he was drinking her in, almost obsessively, like a dehydrated prisoner who’s captives had gifted him with a drink.
She fought to hide a smile, twisting her lips until they turned white. A small giggle erupted as his eyes grew wider with a mischievous glint. Alice could see Josef’s mouth twitch as he too fought to hide a grin. She stared back with the same intensity, hoping it was enough to get a rise out of him, to break him from his usual stony façade. He brushed his left thumb over the side of her bottom lip, a callus catching ever so slightly on a dry patch of her skin.
“What are you doing?” Alice asked, to the best of her ability, his firm hands impeding her speech.
“All day I have been without you, am I not allowed to look at my beautiful Alice while I have the chance?” Josef countered with a question of his own.
Alice narrowed her eyes accusingly, but any words trying to leave her mouth were quickly crushed by his own open lips. It was a short, sweet kiss and she tried to savour it, but it ended before she was ready to let go.
Her Josef was not a large man by any means, but he had a look to him that demanded the attention of any given crowd. He was built very sturdy, with stern features, and rarely seen in casual dress outside of his own apartment. The contrast between the two is often somewhat of a spectacle in public, which Alice enjoys and Josef detests.
He went by many names in his daily life, Joseph Stalin to the public, Stalin to his adversaries, Papa to his children, Ioseb to his mother, and just Josef to Alice. He spoke a handful of languages, Georgian and Russian being the most proficient, and English the least. It caused logistical difficulties in the beginning, but after these few years they’d developed a quiet rhythm to their life. Few words needed to be spoken, and they’d both learned necessary bits of each other's languages.
Alice had not been knocked completely from her pensive mood, and after their moment of mirth slowly took his hands in her own and led him silently to the chess table. Their game from the night before still littered the wooden surface. It was difficult, at first, to sit where they were and still have their hands joined without disturbing the plays on the board they’d intended to continue.
Alice looked Josef in the eyes, holding tight his thick hands with her own thinner ones, tears building on her waterline as the weight of what she needed to say hit her. She tried to speak, but it took many tries to get any semblance of a word out. She knew her stay in Moscow was necessarily coming to an end, and she had yet to tell him her story in its entirety, though he asked many times.
Alice began to duck her head, hiding her eyes from his own piercing brown, but her descent was intercepted by the roughness of his calloused hand. Fingers raised her chin higher, so their eyes met again.
“So sad, chemo sakhvarelo , what troubles you so deeply you cannot look me in the eye?” Josef asked, quite concerned. The Georgian affectionate shredding her heartstrings farther than they were before. The war was not yet properly in its early days, and her Josef was still strong and sure. The stress had not yet greyed his hair or thinned the skin around his eyes, but she knew it would come soon. Alice had no desire to leave him as he was now, no want to abandon the life they’d built together in Moscow, but she knew better than to stay in a time where she did not belong during an event so monumental as the second world war. She couldn’t bear to think about what her being so close to the decision making would cause. Josef trusted her mind, and always consulted her in times of great stress, and she could not trust herself to stay historically accurate if it came down to it. That isn’t the only reason she had to leave though, of course. It was just the one she felt the worst about. If Alice stayed any more time where she was, there was a high chance she would not be able to make it home again. She had a year at the latest before her life here was permanent and she revoked the chance to visit her mother and sister again. She knew her Josef would never understand, but she hoped beyond hope that he would at least try.
“My love. I am so proud of the world that I am able to watch you build for the people of the Soviet Union. And I am so incredibly grateful to have been able to live this wonderful life with you.” Alice began, searching the depths of Josef’s eyes. She found only confusion and concern, neither of which surprised her.
“You are aware, of course, of my rather sudden immigration here from London those few years ago. Well, I must admit I haven’t been completely honest with you about how I came to be here.”
“What do you mean to tell me here?” Josef began to pull his hands away and sit up straighter, leaving Alice to frantically scramble to assure him that it was nothing political. She held his hands in a firmer grip than she had held them in before, trying to hold on to the feeling of his skin and beating pulse beneath her fingertips. To memorize it.
“You know that’s not what I mean. Don’t insult me.” She continued. “You may not believe immediately what I must tell you now, but please keep your trust in me and remember that I’ve never spoken an untrue word to you before.” Alice nearly pleaded.
Josef’s eyes narrowed a bit before releasing a deep breath and nodding his head for her to continue. He abandoned his attempts to pull his hands away, seeing that his Alice would not relinquish them.
“I am not from this century. I didn’t live too far from it, but it is not the one I was meant to have been in at this time in my life. I don’t mean that in a quarter-life crisis type of way, mind you, only that I turned nineteen in 1867, and twenty in 1927. I came here by way of a machine that even I do not fully understand. I do apologize for not telling you sooner, I didn’t have the faintest idea how.”
She hoped that was explanation enough, and waited with bated breath for the possibility of a wild reaction.
Josef was quiet for many minutes, and Alice could see the cogs in his head turning. She said nothing, knowing that he was thinking long and hard about the information she had given him. Her Josef wasn’t one to make decisions rashly, though his speech might sometimes only be described as such.
After nearly five minutes passed, he cleared his throat to speak.
“My first thought was that I feared you may be unwell, but I see now the certainty and calm of your face and I have difficulty trusting that feeling. You, my Alice, I have always known to be a strong minded and intelligent woman, someone I trust fully and someone I am willing to follow to the ends of the earth. For these reasons I will not tell you I disbelieve you, but I know you will understand when I ask for proof. Something I can see, perhaps even hold.”
Alice was surprised by this response, she’d fully expected him to leave the room. She’d expected also an empty apartment for at least the rest of the day, while he did whatever he felt necessary to digest the information he’d been given.
It took her a moment to find her words again, and her mind spun until smoke nearly came from her ears. She did have a way to show him, but she wasn’t sure how he’d like it, and she definitely couldn’t show him anything from his own future, even if she knew that’s what he would wish for most of all.
“I can show you.” Alice agreed.
She reached into the pockets of her thick woollen skirt and retrieved an ornate silver and gold bauble. It was hung on a thin chain and gave the illusion of a pocket watch when in the pocket. Josef had once poked fun at it, rather sardonically pointing out how she carried it with her everywhere like a child with a beloved stuffed toy, but then the next year on her birthday had it attached to a chain so it was never lost.
“But it must be a time and place of my choosing. You’re far too big a figure of history to see what the future brings.” Alice was right, she noticed, as Josef’s eyes began to narrow as he considered the realities of his wife’s ability. He would want to see his own future.
There was still a healthy amount of skepticism on his face, but he was willing to witness every speck of proof she could provide him with. There was also a hint of pride there that did not go unnoticed. He was important, and he knew it, but rarely did Alice say it out loud.
“I think that would be alright. If this little piece of metal can do what you claim, anywhere you can take us would be enough of a miracle.” Josef agreed, and Alice was relieved. At once a smile broke out, and she raised their joined hands to her lips, laying a small kiss on the hard skin of his knuckles.
A thought struck her, and her smile grew to a toothy grin. In her excitement she released Josef’s firmly held hands and pressed her own to her now inflamed cheeks, where he had held her only minutes before near the window. Her eyes grew wide, and her mind began to race with the possibilities. She hadn’t intended to take him anywhere, and had fully expected him to call her a liar. Perhaps even to call a doctor to see to her. Now, however, new plans were beginning to form in her head.
Her Josef raised and furrowed his thick brows in an inquisitive look, knowing very well how her face changed when plotting something.
Alice recalled the summer they’d spent in Tiflis with his mother just before she passed, the one sunny day on the bank of the Kura river. Josef was sat on a patch of grass in the shade with a book while Alice and little Sveta, then only ten, built a small castle in the sand. Vasily stood a ways away skipping rocks as far as he could across the wide river. It was a memory she cherished, and could never forget. It reminded her how dearly she missed her own family, even if they had not been close before she’d left.
“I think I would like very much to go visit my mother. In London, in 1867.” She nodded after some thought. “Yes. I’m sure that’s what I wish.”
Josef thought for a moment as well, and Alice was half scared he would be against it. That wouldn’t make sense, however, as they’d spent nearly three months in Georgia taking care of his own mother just the year before. Although it was only a year, not nearly seventy beforehand.
“I…” he trailed off for a moment, trying to find the correct words. “Yes, I think that is a good plan.”
Alice was relieved, and told him so.
At once she began to plan and plot, there were many things to prepare before their trip. They hadn’t even decided when to leave and already she had started a list of things to pack.
“Although, what of the children? And of the beast?” Josef asked, standing up from the chess table. He made his way to the chaise to get more comfortable, knowing the long conversation they were bound to have. Alice in turn made her way towards where she had been standing at the open window. She found she thought much better there.
“I do so loath when you call her that, she’s a fine dog and you needn’t be so cruel.” Alice huffed, as she always did. Her Dido let out a quiet sigh from her corner bed where she’d laid silently sleeping until that moment, as if to agree.
Josef lifted his hands in a mock surrender, agreeing to stop, though both knew he never would.
“As for them, however, if I calculate correctly we’ll only be gone the day, two at most.” Alice explained. “I imagine we could treat it just as a business trip. They’ve got their people here, who have always looked after them well. I don’t think it would do to bring them with us, at least for right now. Dido I do wish to bring with us, though I worry she may be too large.” A side eye to the thick-bellied St. Bernard drooling in the corner unfortunately proved her point.
Josef agreed, it wouldn’t do to have the dog with them if they were meant to draw as little attention as possible to themselves in Victorian London, especially high society Victorian London which Alice had admitted to being brought up in rather bashfully. He’d always had an inkling she’d been raised a higher class than he, though as the son of a cobbler that wasn’t difficult to achieve.
The rest of the evening was spent in raw honesty and apologia. Although Josef seemed to Alice calm and collected on the surface, she knew full well he was far too intelligent to take all this new information at face value, even if she had been the one to tell him. It gnawed on her already frayed nerves worse than it had before she’d told him anything, leaving her wondering if she would ever be without guilt again.