The Last Romanov (Under Editing)

Speeding Things Up

"You're still angry, aren't you?"

Sasha looked up at Nadezhda from his little whittling project. He wasn't making anything in particular: he was just whittling down the end of that piece of wood he'd found in a box of what he guessed was filled with extra materials from some long-ago remodel into a point. One that was getting to be pretty sharp, like a makeshift spearhead.

"Angry?" Sasha asked. "No, I'm not still angry. Why do you ask?"

"Because you've been whittling down that piece of wood for an hour," she said.

He sighed, looking down at the piece of wood. Had he really been at this for an hour? It certainly didn't feel like it.

"I'm not angry," Sasha repeated, as if saying it over and over again would make it true.

Nadezhda didn't say anything for a few seconds. It felt to him like she was staring at his face, trying to decide whether or not he was lying.

"Sasha, remember when you and Father Kominski would try and get me to talk about my feelings?" Nadezhda asked. "Are you going to tell me what's actually going on, or are you going to be a hypocrite?"

"Hypocrite," Sasha said decisively. "Everybody's a hypocrite about something: why should I be any different?"

Nadezhda sighed, apparently exhausted. "You're unbelievable, Sasha Kozlov. You're absolutely unbelievable!"

Sasha turned his attention back to fashioning that weapon. "I'm unbelievable? I'll tell you what's unbelievable: that plan that Virtanen and Maria Feodorovna cooked up!"

"So, you are still mad about it," Nadezhda said.

"Of course, I am!" Sasha said, looking back up at her. "Do you have any idea how long poisoning that monster with a little drop of belladonna is going to take? Weeks. Maybe even months. Meanwhile, her army is halfway across Russia, and committing more crimes against humanity by the day. Are you really telling me that the right thing to do is sit around and wait for Anastasia to die of mysterious circumstances and for Maria to quietly take the throne?"

"I'm telling you that patience is wise," Nadezhda said. "My husband spent nearly twenty years trying to incite the Russian people, learning everything he could about Marx's theories, and coming up with a way to impliment those ideas here in Russia. These things don't take overnight."

Sasha looked down at his piece of wood and angrily shaved off a little more. "And taking his own sweet time worked out so damned well for him, didn't it?"

Nadezhda winced, and it was at that moment that Sasha realized just how low that blow was.

"Nadezhda, I'm sorry," Sasha said. "I swear, I didn't mean it-"

"Are you saying that because it's true, or because you're sorry that my feelings were hurt?" Nadezhda asked.

Bloody woman! Sometimes, Sasha forgot that Nadezhda Krupskaya was an accomplished politician, herself, just like her husband. Until she said something like that, and Sasha remembered just how experienced she was.

She's lucky she ended up with Lenin, Sasha thought to himself before he responded. She would've driven any other man absolutely mad.

"... A little bit of both, I guess," Sasha said.

"That's fair enough," Nadezhda said. "I'll be honest with you, Sasha: I don't like the slow pace this is moving at, either. Personally, I'd love nothing more than to tave this business done by the end of the week, go back to the life I had before Anastasia returned." She winced. "Well, my life minus Vladimir."