The Last Romanov (Under Editing)

The Executions

Sasha saw the news all over the city the next day: CITIZENS, STAY ON ALERT, every newspaper in the city said, with a good sized picture of Nadezhda next to it. STAY VIGILANT FOR THE ENEMY OF THE STATE, NADEZHDA KRUPSKAYA. IF YOU SEE HER, CONTACT THE PROPER AUTHORITIES, IMMEDIATELY. ANY WHO AID IN THE CAPTURE OF THIS DANGEROUS CRIMINAL WILL BE AWARDED PARDONS FROM MILITARY SERVICE, ABSOLVATION OF GUILT FROM ANY AND ALL CRIMES, EXTRA RATIONS, AND 5,000 ROUBLES.

For once, Sasha had to say that he was surprised. Normally, tyrants like Anastasia didn't like advertising enemies running amuck. Especially when that enemy happened to be the wife of the man that happened to be the very person that had overthrown your father in a bloody revolution and sat at the head of a country for years.

Of course, that wasn't at the top of his priority list, at the moment. Somehow. He was a little more concerned about the executions that would be happening in the square in front of the Winter Palace that afternoon.

And guess who one of those people slated to be executed by firing squad was? Yep: none other than the husband of the "dangerous criminal", herself, Vladimir Lenin. The leader of the revolution, the man that had been the head of the Russian state since the fall of the Romanovs.

Of course, every man that could possibly be spared for that afternoon was in high alert. And nobody was running more like a chicken with its head cut off than Sasha, himself. Anastasia had pulled him off of Virtanen duty for the day, leaving that job to that tobacco happy bastard and allowing Sasha to complete the job the Czarina had originally brought him on: securing the place from possible snipers.

He had to admit: he kind of liked that part of his job. He was the one and only sniper proofer on Anastasia's staff, giving him something he'd been desperate for for awhile: freedom. Absolute freedom over what he did and the way he did it. The only person he had to answer to was the Czarina, herself, and she'd made it very clear that she didn't give a damn about his methods, as long as she went through the day without any bullet holes in her. Nobody was to ask him any questions, and the red bands around his forearms with the Romanov seal embroidered with gold thread would get him anywhere he wanted without so much as a second glance. He was all alone in that little role of his, and frankly, it was one of the greatest things he could have possibly imagined as a war dog for a tyrannical, psychopathic, teenaged girl.

And what did he do with that freedom? He sat on the roof of the tallest building by the execution site and stared out at the city of St. Petersburg, his gun resting on his lap and his finger fiddling with the trigger.

He had to admit: St. Petersburg wasn't nearly as ugly from the rooftops as it was from the ground. The vast city was spread out in front of him like a blanket, made out of a patchwork of spires, bricks, mortar, wood, and steel. From his spot, he could see a lot of the major landmarks of the city: the colorful, twisting domes of the churches; the soot-stained bricks of the tenements the vast majority of the people living in the city called home; the Winter Palace in its spot by the river, standing in the same spot it had been in for hundreds of years, crippled yet proud; it was like seeing the city in a while new light. There didn't seem to be a famine, a war, epidemics, or any of the other glaring problems that always faced him like a punch to the stomach. All those problems seemed to vanish for just a moment, and for that split instant, he almost felt like he was a boy back in that town in the Urals, his grandfather trying to teach him the right way to shoot.

And that feeling... well, it was one of the greatest feelings in the world.

It didn't take long for that beautiful illusion to be shattered, of course: all it took was a look at the ugly, temporary shooting mound below him for reality to come crashing back down. For him to remember what he was, what he was supposed to be doing.