#kat contributes

[glenya-source]

finally a glenya blog! i love these two!

Hello! I think @glenyas is a lot more active than we are, but absolutely! Welcome to the ship!

[vampyrekatwrites]

the intersection of chance and preparation

TW: blood, violence, death

Gleb isn’t aiming for her, yet, which means he isn’t intending to kill her, yet. The pistol is pointed to the floor, safely, and Anya is holding her own weapon with barely more intent.

“You can still walk away,” he coaxes. “Be just another Romanov pretender --”

“Be safe until your government shoots me, is that it?” She smiles, princess-pleasant, and switches the safety off. “I could’ve stayed in Russia for that.”

“I won’t let them,” he says, and Anya wants to believe it’s the truth. He’s innocent, in his way, if he thinks that he will be able to save even an Romanov pretender from the firing squad, and Anya feels her heart soften a moment. He must see it in her eyes, because he smiles and holds a hand out. “Please, Anya. Come home.”

The bullet catches him square in the chest, and Anya gasps at the unfamiliar recoil, then - because she’s a survivor through and through - shoots again, and again, and there’s blossoming red on his chest and shoulder.

He drops to his knees, hand clutching at his chest.

Anya takes a step back, and another, her vision sharp and terribly vivid. She sees the blood in a way she hasn’t in - in ten years, not since she saw other crimson blossoms, other horror stories written in blood on coats - and Anastasia had never thought she would be the one behind the gun instead of in front of it.

Gleb has collapsed. Anya isn’t sure how to process it. She’s won, perhaps. She can leave.

Come home, he said. She is home, but she knows that’s not true either. Russia will always live in her and Gleb is the only one who recognizes that. Was the only one who recognized -- because he is bleeding to death on the floor.

He gasps, ragged, and she jumps, afraid suddenly - but she has won. So she gives in and kneels next to him, cautious, and reaches out to touch his shoulder with a trembling hand. There’s a tension to him that she remembers, shot and bloody and waiting to die and she remembers that too vividly to wish it on her worst enemy, let alone on Gleb. (She remembers, now, bleeding to death in the snowbank.) So she tries to push - he’s heavier than her, but she’s strong - and he helps and she manages to roll him onto his back.

The shot hits her stomach first, and the burn of pain sears his expression into her memory. He’s sorry, and she wonders if she looked the same way when she shot him. It doesn’t stop him from pulling the trigger again, and Anya didn’t expect it too. She collapses to the floor as well, her breath short and suddenly she laughs, because Anya and Anastasia have ended the same way, except that Anya had fought back. That counted for something. She can’t breathe, really, and her body feels lead and feathers all at once.

My story isn’t done, she wants to say, but it is, it is, it is. Her heartbeat hurts.

She reaches out and touches Gleb’s hand. He manages, weakly - he must be nearly gone - to twine their fingers together. It’s a comforting sort of forgiveness, Anya thinks, and then she doesn’t think any more.

Vlad Popov is the one who finds the bodies, and he knows this is going to be difficult to explain, but he doesn’t touch his fake princess and almost daughter, even when the tears well up in his eyes. He locks the door again and walks back to the room where the Dowager Empress and Lily wait.

“The Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova is dead,” he says simply, and braces himself for questions when he adds, “and so is the murderer.”

[vampyrekatwrites]

If you haven’t seen it yet:

I have a MASTERLIST for my own writing and a RECLIST for other’s. I make covers for them, and it’s all terribly aesthetic and pretentious.

[nanasalt]

I just blocked a long-time follower because I learned they were anti-choice, so let me make this clear:

If you do not support the right to abortion, you can leave right now. Otherwise I will take out the trash whenever I find it.

[kattycorner]

I'm not 100% sure what this will be yet, but please have these links:

Main: @vampyrekat Fandom: @nanasalt Writing: @vampyrekatwrites

[vampyrekat]

just took a bite of straight brie cheese (no rind) and i am thinking life might be worth living

[nanasalt]

Seeing my own fic reblogged onto my own dash is like a jumpscare.

[nanasalt]

Oh, hello, my lovely followers!