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The last thing Lara had expected as she turned the corner was to come face to face with a ghost, but as the empty basket fell from her fingers to the ground at her feet and his jaw dropped open, the blood roared in her ears and before either of them could find words, she turned and ran.
“Lara!” The voice cut clean through to her bones, and she almost faltered, but the adrenaline wouldn’t let her stop even if she had had the time to consider it. It wasn’t even until the hand caught her arm – the fingers avoiding grabbing her wrist to wrap around her forearm with what could only be carefully honed muscle memory – that she felt her body stop and turn back to look up at her pursuer, but neither of them said anything.
“Lara?” Tonia’s voice sliced through the silence, and as both of them turned to follow it, she felt the hand fall from her arm.
Tonia was watching her carefully, her eyes only briefly darting to the man at her side, and Yurii, several paces behind, kept his eyes rooted past Lara – one of the only signs that she wasn’t imagining something herself.
There were murmured words – apologies – and then a slight draft, and he was gone, leaving behind the basket she had dropped and nothing else. It wasn’t until Tonia took her hand that she realised she was crying.
“You didn’t know he was alive?”
“I thought he was dead.” Lara fought to keep her voice level, even with Tonia’s hand over hers on the tabletop. “Vik–” she bit the name off, refusing to continue for a moment, “he told us that he had been executed by the Party, but…”
“But it was a lie,” Tonia finished the sentence for her. “Yurii saw him after that.”
Lara cut her eyes over to where Yurii stood beside the stove, his hands clasped around a cup of coffee. “You said he was dead too.”
“I heard the gunshot.”
“Was there a body?” When he didn’t respond, Lara repeated the question, her voice raising enough to command answer.
“I didn’t see one.” His response was quiet and subdued. “I assumed.”
They lapsed into silence. Lara stared at her hands on the table, willing the tremor she felt not to show itself to the others at the table, and achingly aware of how little control she had over her facial expressions. Finally, it was Tonia who broke the silence again.
“You should talk to him.” Lara’s head jerked up, her brow furrowed, but Tonia pressed on. “You have things you need to say to him – to ask him.” She paused, her eyes flitting over to where her husband sat, staring into his coffee. “He probably has things he needs to say to you too.”
“I…I wouldn’t even know where to find him.”
“He won’t be far.” Tonia’s voice had all of the assurance Lara didn’t think she could muster. “Not now that he knows you’re here. We’ll find him.”
“When he came back to Yuriatin, he was looking for you.” Yurii spoke up again, fidgeting with his mug’s handle. “He won’t pass up the chance now.”
In the end, it took four days to find him again, and as Lara stood outside the door to the small attic studio that she and Tonia had followed him to, a part of her wanted to run away and never come back, but she took a deep breath and knocked on the door. When the door opened, she didn’t meet his gaze, but slipped past him into the room when he moved to let her inside.
The studio was mostly bare – as though only just moved into – the small bed pushed against the wall, and a few chairs sat around a table were almost the sole furnishings, except for the presence of two worn, almost certainly second-hand bookcases stacked with books, themselves worn and spines creased by multiple owners. Behind her the door closed, and she turned to look at him.
He was different than she remembered him in many ways, the lines on his brow, the creases between his eyes, the shock of grey at his temples, the wire-rimmed glasses perched on his nose replaced by black plastic. His shoulders, too, seemed to sag with a weariness that showed in the set of his mouth and the way his eyes seemed unwilling to meet hers.
“Lara.” His voice was the same as it always had been when talking to her – her name coming out in a single breath that might have been inaudible to someone else – and something in her seemed to break. She didn’t remember moving, only that one moment he was watching her with the uncertainty of a dog being reunited with a long-lost master, and the next she was buried against his chest, silent sobs shaking her shoulders, apologies being murmured into her hair from above her.
The slap – when it came – took them both by surprise, and Pasha took a step back, creating space between them as he reached up to touch his already-reddening cheek. “La–”
“I thought you were dead!” Lara fought to keep her voice from shaking as the anger rose in her chest. Pasha opened his mouth, then stopped, averting his eyes as she repeated herself. “Three times, Pasha! I mourned you three times!” Grabbing his shirtfront, she forced him to look at her again. “Don’t you understand what that was like?”
“I’m sorry.” He sank down until he was sitting on the edge of the bed, Lara’s fingers still clenched in his shirt. “I’m so sorry. I never meant for that.”
Lara didn’t respond, dropping down onto the bed next to him, and the silence seemed to drag on for an age until Pasha cleared his throat. “I saw your –” he paused, looking for the right words, “your family. You seem happy with them.” Lara’s head whipped around to look at him, and he took a deep breath, as though bracing himself before speaking. “Are you?”
Lara nodded slowly. “Pasha, I –”
“Why him?” No sooner had the words left his mouth, than Pasha’s eyes scrunched tightly shut in the expression she had seen so many times before when he had spoken impulsively and immediately regretted it. When Lara didn’t immediately reply, he shook his head. “I’m sorry. I should never have asked.”
“We met when I followed you to the front – he was a doctor at the same hospital camp,” she allowed herself to laugh a little. “I wasn’t exactly impressed with him, but…we had things in common and we talked a lot. We were friends.” She looked away, her eyes tracing the seams in the wall. “It wasn’t until he and his family came to Yuriatin after the war that we were anything more.” She hesitated, but finally shrugged and continued, “He loved me as I was.”
“Did you think I didn’t?” Pasha’s response came like the crack of a gunshot, but when she flinched, his face fell. “I’m sorry – I di–”
“You left Pasha.” Lara’s voice barely rose above a whisper, her eyes fixed to the door. “I asked you to forgive me and you le–”
“There was nothing to forgive!” Pasha grabbed her shoulder, only to immediately let go when she jolted under his touch, his voice softening. “You did nothing wrong. I had no need to forgive you, only to av–” he bit the words off before he could finish them.
“To what, Pasha?” The urgency of the words cut through the silence.
“Initially? To avenge you…but that wasn’t enough.” Pasha let his hand fall to his side, “I needed to break the world that did that to you with my own hands – take it apart piece by piece and rebuild it into something better – into the world that you – that we all – deserved. I couldn’t come back to you before I’d done it.”
“You couldn’t even let me know you were alive?”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“From what?” The words were as much accusation as question.
Pasha cut his eyes towards her, then looked away again. “I had enemies by then – if it was known that you were associated with me…”
“You couldn’t have instructed your men to let me through to meet with you as a citizen?” She sat on the edge of the bed next to him. “You had Yuriatin in a death grip, and you’re telling me that you couldn’t have met with me in secret?”
At this, Pasha’s spine stiffened and she could see him physically bite back words, his eyes closing and his lips pressing together in a way that she had seen him do before when he was angry but trying not to lash out at someone because – as he had explained it once before – it would be unfair or undeserved. Finally, he replied, his voice only just above a whisper. “It wouldn’t have been me. Not as you knew me. I didn’t want you to see me as I was then.” He hesitated, then added. “You wouldn’t have wanted to know Strelnikov.”
You could not have loved Strelnikov.
The unspoken words hung between them, and Lara wanted with everything in her to argue the point, but she looked away instead. “Then you could have abandoned him – returned to me as yourself.”
At this, Pasha laughed – a dry, humourless chuckle that felt wrong coming from his lips – and took his glasses off, the black plastic frames dangling from his fingertips as he rubbed his eye with the heel of his hand. “You won’t believe this, but on some level, I didn’t feel I could face you until I had achieved some semblance of justice – for you, for all of us.”
Lara stared at him as if seeing him for the first time. “Pasha…”
“How could I leave that unfinished and still be worthy of your love?” He tilted his head, “though I suppose I’ve done that now. Faced you having failed to achieve justice.”
“Pasha.” Lara repeated his name, taking one of his hands in her own, and taking the glasses from the other. “You’ve never needed to prove anything to me – least of all your worth.” Reaching up, she gingerly slid the glasses back onto his face. “All I wanted was for you to come back – no matter how it happened. You always swore that you would come back to me.”
“On all four paws.” The corner of his mouth twitched into a smile as he murmured the words. “I didn’t expect to see you again. Paris is a big place, and I didn’t want to…I assumed you had moved on.”
“I didn’t expect to see you either – I thought you were dead.”
“If it helps, I wasn’t expecting to live.” His tongue flitted over his lips. “When I made it back and you were already gone, I gave up hope of getting to see you one last time,” he hesitated, “and of getting to apologise. For everything.” He laughed again – more himself this time. “But here you are.”
“Here we are.” Lara let the silence grow between them, her fingers entwined in his, relearning the creases and callouses of his palm, but eventually whispered aloud. “What will you do now?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I wasn’t really…I didn’t have a concrete plan when I came here. I don’t even know what brought me here.”
“Pasha.” Leaning back to lay on the bed, Lara tugged gently on his hand. “Pasha look at me.”
Letting her pull him down next to her, Pasha shifted onto his side to look at her, his glasses pushed askew on his face until he reached up and removed them to his shirt collar.
“Do you still love me?” He frowned, but she looked back at him earnestly, her hands still clasped in his. “After everything?”
“Of course,” Pasha managed to form the words around the sudden dryness in his mouth. “I’ve always loved you. I never stopped.” He hesitated, then added, “Please believe me. Even if you don–”
“Then stay.” Lara leaned forward, pressing her forehead to his, the tips of their nose almost touching, and he found himself meeting her gaze for the first time since she had walked in the door. There was a familiar seriousness in her eyes, and when he started to shift his gaze, she cupped the side of his face in her hand. “Please. Come back to me. For good this time.”
Pasha closed his eyes, turning his head just enough to press his lips into her palm. “I’ll always come back to you.”