"it was a place i once lived; end of story"

i wanted the guts and glory • Dimitri || Twenty-Five •When you learn, you learn how to be all the things you can only hold. Hold to pour into somebody else. You learn what's good and gold in the world, and maybe someday you'll come a step closer to touching it yourself. but don't take love off the table yet

[racheberry]

F2F ⇆ ANYA & DIMITRI

[thatkitchenboy-blog]

romanovanya:

Anya looked into his eyes thoughtfully, and noticed that unlike virtually every other interaction they’d had since everything went to hell, Dimitri was answering her without a hint of irony in his tone. He loved her.

“Sorry I slapped you,” was all she could muster in response, but in Anya speak, that was as close to “I love you” as she could get at the moment. 

That was all good enough, and just like all those little loose strings that’d gradually come to a quiet, if deflated, close, good enough was starting to feel exactly that. It wasn’t exactly a feeling that the greedier route could’ve ever in a million years earned him, and he took that thought with a cracked smile and the last lingering minute before he tore his eyes away from hers and ducked to scoop up the music box. “Nah, don’t be.” Securing her fingers around the weathered old thing, Dimitri sunk back against his bed with all the relief of weight melting straight off his shoulders. One thing had gone right. That was good enough. “You heard what I had to say now, lifetimes later or not. I say that makes us square."

[thatkitchenboy-blog]

you'll stop at nothing, will you?

about a misguided piece of trash

[puresncw-blog]

The poor girl had been struggling to get a bag of pastry flour for at least the past five minutes, on her very tip-toes and everything. She just needed this pastry flour to make caramel shortbread for the kids at the daycare… Why did she have to struggle so much to get it ? Why had they decided to put it on the top shelf, where tiny bakers such as herself couldn’t even reach it ? The grocery stores in New York City were so small that everything had to be stacked up high, all out of her reach. Felicity was so tempted to just step on one of the shelves and make a jump for it when, thankfully, a random passerby walked into the aisle…

Thank goodness, this person was her saving grace !

Turning to the stranger, Felicity gestured for her desired bag of pastry flour, asking, “ Could you help me reach that, please ? I would usually get a stool and do it myself, but… It will be much quicker if you could get it for me ; I think that you can reach it ! “ 

[thatkitchenboy-blog]

Magazines proclaiming "TIME" loud and proud evidently, or so he found, just didn't actually have anything useful to say about the damned thing at all. Thumbing through publication after publication raised more questions than It answered and he'd been a jerky impulse away from tossing another portrait of whichever stick-thin blonde must've been this place's monarch when a new racket had Dimitri pausing in his steps. His eyes jumped down from the top of the girl's head and up towards the shelf in question, lingering a bit in his silence before scratching at the back of his neck and answering, "Where's the triumph if you don't snag it by yourself?"

Regardless of how much longer he spent in shrew deliberation, Dimitri tossed the magazine over a shelf more waist-height and swung an easy arm up to the tip top. "Here we goo--" and what'd just been the dusting of stray flour over the top of the paper was very suddenly and too totally a miniature mushroom cloud floating up where he'd dropped the sack between their shoes. Silence came hand-in-hand with his stock still staring, and eventually Dimitri shifted to nudge the busted sack with the edge of one powder-coated foot. "...I wouldn't suppose it's still good, huh?"

[cfmusings-blog]

                            ❝ as long as you’re happy, don’t worry about me. ❞

[anyastasias-blog]

❝ i half closed my eyes and imagined this was the spot where everything i’d ever lost since childhood had washed up, and i was now standing here in front of it… ❞ - kazuo ishiguro

[racheberry]

F2F ⇆ ANYA & DIMITRI

[racheberry]

“That wasn’t what I asked,” she told him. “I didn’t ask whether you get to love me, I asked if you love me.” She buried her face in his neck and gripped his shirt. “It does matter, and maybe it shouldn’t, but it does,” she said, sniffling.

It did matter.

He was her anchor, even now. He never would’ve followed her the way that he did, never would have went to such lengths to help her find who she was if he didn’t have her best interests at heart; if he didn’t care about her at all, if he didn’t, after all, love her.

“It does matter,” she repeated.

[thatkitchenboy-blog]

Even though she slapped harder than a man could punch, even though she’d run and fought and downright nearly busted his nose just for a laugh, and even now while she was crushing one of his shoes, Dimitri pulled her in close and knew without a shred of fogged over doubt that the answer was the same as the day they’d vanished. “You’re still the biggest pain,” he murmured, buried in a grimace hidden away against her sleeve. All along his neck it was too slippery, too warm and cold all at once, and he had the vague niggling sense to glance over where the rose still rested in its broken glass.

So he pulled back, he brushed away at the tears still caught in her lashes and swept away at the tracks they’d left on her skin. “It does,” Dimitri faintly echoed, “And I do.”

[racheberry]

F2F ⇆ ANYA & DIMITRI

[racheberry]

Anya’s tears were flowing in earnest, everything he said about her completely honest, unadorned. “Dimitri,“ she breathed out. “When you say everyone loves me…does that include you?” She didn’t know why it mattered so much, she didn’t know why out of everything he said, that was what was ringing in her ears. Everything was so much right now.

“I…it shouldn’t matter, it shouldn’t, I’m…I’m just being so silly, aren’t I?” she asked, wiping her eyes, red and puffy. She wrapped her arms around herself, swallowing hard.

[thatkitchenboy-blog]

Now that time had gone and tangled itself up like this, he didn’t think anyone could predict how things might’ve been if the world could’ve just, for once, abided by his grand master plan. Those endless taps of revelations could’ve been better smoothed over by a couple of her grandmother’s undoubtedly unshaken words of wisdom, eons smarter than the slight shake in Dimitri’s hands where they touched over her elbows and the flicker of his eyes just never quite knowing where a servant boy should look. It shouldn’t matter, it almost makes him want to laugh in spite of the way that sunk his heart down past the last spoke of his ribs.

“People like me don’t just get to love people like you,” he said, quiet enough that it could’ve almost been for his ears alone. He looped his arms around her shoulders, everything clumsy, jaw bumping on her temple and his fingers catching through her hair until he could turn aside and brush his lips to her forehead. “If you say it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, Princess.”

[ctrlfaline-blog]

They look just like me and you, the phrase echoed through her brain. “That sure narrows it down,” she sighed sarcastically. Faline wasn’t much of a sarcastic person, but it seemed to fit in the situation as a group of people shuffled past them on the sidewalk nearby. People just like them were everywhere– did this mean the entire city was one big threat? “Seems like every turn around here could plausibly be dangerous,” Faline said aloud. “How do you figure out who you can trust?”

[thatkitchenboy-blog]

He smiled without a shred of joy behind it and crossed his arms, finding nothing better than a caged in garbage can to lean against. By then it’d figure he could tell her just about anything else, wherever he was resting on a scale of how much of an interfering jerk he had to be ‘til he hit that daily quota and still land nowhere near understanding anything about her odd little situation. “I guess you can’t,” Dimitri said at long last. “Not really, at least, but there’s always that intuitive bulb that goes off. In your head,” he said, gesturing vaguely, “In fact, I’m pretty sure women’ve got the better intuition up there. I mean, it’d make sense, so many get bamboozled just off some sort of maternal or emotional urge to trust. Nice, but... not practical.”

[racheberry]

F2F ⇆ ANYA & DIMITRI

[racheberry]

“But…the thing is, I lost her the minute I forgot everything. I don’t know how to be one of those girls who wear tiaras and dance around ballrooms, never giving a second thought to what’s out there. I know how to be…Anya,” she said with a shrug. “I want my family, I want my Grandmama…” she trailed off. “But I don’t want to lose the me that I already know. I don’t want who I really am to go away,” she reasoned. “That’s why I’m scared, do you get that?”

She reached out absentmindedly and took his hand, “Do I get to be Anastasia and still be Anya?”

[thatkitchenboy-blog]

"Well, what’s the difference?” Even with just about every corner of his mind instantaneously jumping in to offer the exact reason why going about cradling her hands was unbecoming, he still put his thumbs to her palms and turned her wrists over, poking at the criss-crossing lines and extending her fingers out with a push from the tips of his. “Consider me the expert,” Dimitri said with a pat over his own collarbone, “So, clearly we're still looking at the same clumsy little hands that couldn’t even hang on to one trinket - granted, you definitely picked up those slapping skills somewhere along the way. Something they teach at those orphanages?” Using that grip, Dimitri pulled her up to her feet in one easy motion and caught the book before it tumbled.

His touch skittered from tipping up her chin, pushing the loose curls away from her brow and hemming and hawing with one hand poised on his own hip; a thoughtful pose indeed. "I'm seeing those same big blues - the type with that little twinkle in it that says 'watch out, this girl's got something up her sleeve,' and I know perching a heavy crown on that head isn't about to change that." At those words, he brushed across the strands at her hairline, following the twists and turns down to the sheared ends that he gave a tiny tug. "The hair's been looking like Pooka took a bite out of it, which I don't doubt, or maybe it's just trying to get as far away from that brain of yours as possible. And I can't think of anything that more accurately encompasses that familiar spirit." Lowering his gaze to the book, he brought it up halfway to let the lazy curtain of waning daylight fall over the portrait. "She was wild, every bit of her. She had a mind that she wasn't shy about making known. Everybody loved her - everybody loves you." Dimitri let it snap shut and dropped it down to the chair, returning his hands to grasp Anya's. The previous jest was gone now, faded by in favor of solemnity and his eyes firm on hers. "I say this to the most sincerest of my ability," Dimitri started, and paused to let go of a little breath. "You've been a royal princess pain in my back from the second I met you, and that's exactly who you are. Anya, Anastasia, the only difference I see is that you're one diadem short of home."

[evie-monroe-deactivated20160407]

After Hours ||

[evie-monroe-deactivated20160407]

             Tybalt racked his brain for any face that might strike any resemblance to this Vladimir the other man was speaking of. The bar has known to host many men of his description before, bikies mostly, although there were the special class of bearded gentlemen with money to spare his female company. “I see a lot of people that fit that description pige, and I only work on Fridays. If anyone’s gonna stand out, I’m gonna need a photo or something…or you could be my guest and ask one of the gentlemen out there,” he gestured to that smatter of patrons around the bar, “they’re here almost every night…from what I can tell anyway.”

[thatkitchenboy-blog]

He tried not to spend too much time toying around with the idea that he might just stumble across his friend’s name in one of those history books for some mass fraud, something ridiculously dated like that. Reading up on those who were meant to be century-old dust just wasn’t the lightest on the mind, and Dimitri spent a moment of bated breath and restless fingers tugging on the ends of his hair before hopping back to the floor. “Well, first them, then the world. Fingers crossed I'm not giving you a new puddle to mop up if I wind up on the wrong side of a..." Trailing off, he looked back at the lingering sheen from all that puke goop. "Actually... Forget I mentioned anything."

[elenaspark-blog]

Lady nodded sadly. The truth was hard of course, the idea of losing someone was always painful, but Anya had a family, just like she did. Lady knew who her family was, where her family was and that she had a home to actually go to, but Anya didn’t know hers yet and Lady had consider her as part of her family and hopefully Anya thought the same thing, losing family was sad, but if Anya finally had the chance to meet her real family then she had to accept it. “I’m sorry… I just. I doubt you get our relationship. I consider her as my family… But her real family is out there and if there’s a chance for them to meet, I am not stopping her. She deserves the very best.”

[thatkitchenboy-blog]

"Let me take a shot - you stumbled on her. Loved the way she was, the way she is. And now’s the uphill battle where you’ve gotta get used to knowing she’ll be gone.” He tipped his head back, aching down to the bone and smiling at the sting of it. “Story of my life, Lady Lady.” Anything else that’d been left to say was just beyond Dimitri’s touch. All the pricks of curt business were the parts he was good at, and anything softer fell short every single time. Regardless, having this one common interest was well enough to make him hate that gloomy look on her face, and he stumbled on his words for a beat before starting again, if a little stiltedly. “It’s... an uphill battle all around, actually. No clue how I’m gonna pull this off, so there’s... Not to say I’m slow, because I’m not, but I think we’re stranded here for the time being. So.” Grimacing, he tilted his hand around and around, waiting for his own irritation at himself to finally win out. “--At least she has a roof over her head. That’s all I’m trying to say.”

[quietvoiced]

[racheberry]

F2F ⇆ ANYA & DIMITRI

[racheberry]

“It doesn’t nullify them, no,” she said. “You can’t take them back, but you can…and are…taking steps to make it right,” she offered. She took the book from him, shaking lightly. She opened it carefully, and sure enough, on the very first page there was a photo of the little Princess Anastasia, posing demurely with an older woman, both of them dressed in extravagant clothing.

Though the photo was aged and in black and white, the little girl’s features were  unmistakably hers. Anya had never seen a photo of her young self before, she bit her bottom lip and ran her fingers over the little girl’s face, “Look at her, Dimitri,” she said softly, looking up at him, her eyes red and teary. “She…I? Had no idea that her life was going to change forever. She was going to lose her family…”

It was so much, she knew unmistakably that that little girl was her. That made the woman in the photo the Empress herself. “That’s her,” she said, closing her eyes, a memory playing behind them; Anya and Grandmama running for the train, Grandmama getting onto the train, Grandmama letting go of her hand–then nothing.

“Thank you,” she told Dimitri. “…I…I’m really scared, but…thank you.”

[thatkitchenboy-blog]

People didn’t look this way anymore, not painted and no more posed than propped at ridiculous angles to get plastered from building to building, and it hammered in the distance from now to then in an almost pained jolt. Dimitri tore his gaze away from that upside-down phantom image when she spoke again, brow furrowed until understanding bled back in. “Scared?” he repeated. Of all things to be afraid of, why fear would come waltzing in at the dusty weight of an old book in lieu of everything else, the girl was as bizarrely confusing as she’d ever been. He had to smile at that. “Scared of what? You know how to be her. It’s in your blood.”

[racheberry]

F2F ⇆ ANYA & DIMITRI

[racheberry]

Anya was in a trance, looking from her necklace, to the jewelry box, to Dimitri, then back to the necklace. “A boy saved me from a fire,” she stated, wiping her eyes. “He was beautiful and we’d never spoken, and there was too much panic for me to even thank him, and in a flash…he was gone…” she trailed off. “He was you, wasn’t he? All this time…” she said. “And the Empress is my Grandmama, isn’t she?” 

[thatkitchenboy-blog]

"A decision I made as a child doesn’t exactly nullify crimes I made against you, personally,” Dimitri answered, mumbling and grinding it out with no more effort than it’d needed just to force himself to work his hands and open up the bag once more. If it were a cold grip or a warm pressure that’d bubbled in at the hollow of his ribs like a stab by the moment, it was a pain either way. “Your reunion-- I messed that up. But I would've done anything, whatever lengths it would’ve taken, I guarantee I could’ve found some way to get you an audience with the Empress. And I know I still can, the second I find a way to get us out of here.” 

Ripping the larger pocket open, Dimitri pulled a leather bound book and set it over Anya’s knees, carefully turning it to face her. “I found this in one of the libraries,” he said. “It’s pretty admirable how much was retained.”; The cover was scrawled over in proud looping print, proclaiming its place as an album of the Romanovs. Leaning back in his perch on the mattress, Dimitri frowned down at the book for a moment before lifting his gaze. “I... apologize for the trouble. But I hoped it’d be the next best way to connect to the past when you were ready to see it.”

[racheberry]

F2F ⇆ ANYA & DIMITRI

[racheberry]

Anya held the jewelry box in her hands, turning it over in her palms. When she touched it, she got a feeling of recognition, not quite knowing where it came from. “This is beautiful,” she mused. “Did you get this…this belonged to the Princess,” she realized. 

She opened up the jewelry box, and music began to play, shocking her at first, but then she stared down at the box in wonder, the melody creeping into her memory.  Without realizing it, she’d began to sing.

“On the wind Cross the sea Hear this song and remember Soon you’ll be Home with me Once upon a December.”

Tears were running down her face by the time she got to the end of the little lullaby. She took her necklace out from under her dress. “Together in Paris,” she said. “Soon you’ll be home with me..” she repeated. “Home…home was Paris. This…Dimitri…Grandmama gave this to me.”

[thatkitchenboy-blog]

That feeling, the feeling that’d he come to intrude on something too painfully private, too sacred... It was the farthest thing from familiar when his entire being from careless childhood to conniving adulthood had always been so concentrated on benefits from that exact same intrusion. Now though, Dimitri kept his eyes low and his fingers clasped until her voice had come to silence. “We’ll get you home again,” he said, and his hands faltered from where he’d raised them over hers, gradually pulling back away from her fingertips and gripping at the seams in his clothes instead. I’m not quitting until I do goes unsaid, and the entire notion of doing the right thing felt about as heady and bittersweet as it’d been to break the silence at all. Right. He smiled to himself and let his gaze skitter off to the ring of water the glass was leaving behind, the best pantomime he could think to give her another moment in peace.

[elenaspark-blog]

Lady didn’t try to take the insult about women and noisy people to heart. She was simply being protective. She didn’t knew Anya as long as he did, but dogs were loyal and so was she. Being Loyal to Anya was easy, because Anya was someone you could trust and adore, she was beauty and power. So if she had to bite a man with a personality problem, so be it. – Her anger had dropped at his words, making her blood run cold. Leave? Taking her with him somewhere? “You’re taking Anya away? Why?”

[thatkitchenboy-blog]

He stopped with his back halfway turned and his hands in his pockets, fussing around with a few scraps of ripped up paper for as long as it’d take to muster up the energy to either turn or bolt; In the end, Dimitri landed on the former. Whatever lamely biting remark that’d jumped up died in his throat just off a glance at the sudden graveness crossing her face, and he fidgeted back and forth before saying, “She needs to get back to her family. It’s a good thing.” And why the words almost felt more like reassurance for his own sake, well. That wasn’t worth mentioning.

[ctrlfaline-blog]

She was shocked at his sudden change in tone. It seemed a lot more… softer? More considerate? Faline couldn’t pin it down, but it put her more at ease around the unfamiliar man. “Oh?” she slipped, confused. “Why shouldn’t I? Is there somebody dangerous I should be looking out for?” Faline asked, chewing her bottom lip. Big angry guy. The description reminded her a lot more of Ronno than it did of Bambi. She pushed the thought away– memories of Ronno weren’t positive ones. Faline only hoped she wouldn’t run into him in this new world, “I’ll keep note of that… but if there’s anything I should be weary of in particular, please let me know. Hunters perhaps?” she added, hoping that didn’t sound too out of place for a city like this.

[thatkitchenboy-blog]

Hunters - It was a hard notion to turn down when the word wasn’t exactly settling uncomfortably. Maybe they’d been hunters, in a way, in some way shape or form of the definition, maybe preying on the prey-able was just exactly what living a grittier life all boiled down to in the end. And maybe this girl wouldn’t see it any other way no matter how much it got sugar coated. “Not exactly,” Dimitri said after a while, and paused word from word to pick them all cautiously. “That’s the hard part about leaving that guilded cage up there, the real hunters come in all shapes. All sizes. They look just like me and you.”