Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Alexei!”

A blonde whirlwind rushes at Alexei, nearly knocks him over with her might. His little sister is dressed in clothes that wouldn’t look out of place at a coronation. Her curls are carefully pinned up and arranged in a manner Alexei knows wasn’t his appa’s work. Pearls hang from her ears and a matching necklace adorns are neck.

She couldn’t look more like an aged-down socialite if she tried.

“Ana,” Alexei returns her greeting and picks her up.

The image they create together must be striking. They’re both dressed up, but Anastasia is a precious little princess and Alexei looks like he stepped out of a runaway with an interesting take of formal wear.

The assessment isn’t even wrong. One of his classmate’s models got sick and Alexei is the only one whose measurements fit the clothes they’d spent months embroidering with fine gold thread.

“You look good!” Ana says in accent-free Russian. “Very fancy.”

She nods to herself and Alexei wonders where she picked up the English she threw in there for fun. Perhaps she’d heard it enough thrown around this evening that the meaning found its way to her.

With his sister in his arms, he turns to his parents. Leewon wears a simple suit, though Alexei doesn’t fool himself into thinking it isn’t worth a fortune, and Caesar has no issue flashing the expensive watch on his wrist. All the guests attending tonight’s gallery dressed up for the event, a step up from children’s art exhibitions in high school, but few of them are on the level of his parents.

“You look well,” Leewon says and hugs him tight. He tips his fingers three times against Alexei’s back, their own little secret sign for safety.

“Toujours,” Alexei mumbles back.

Ana starts to wiggle in the hug, so Alexie lets her down. “Now show me your painting!”

“Don’t you want to get a snack first?” Alexei tries to bribe her. “They have chocolate cake too.”

She stamps her little foot. “No! We flew all the way here to see it! Show me!”

“Ana.”

Their father’s first words in this hall are a reprimand, but Ana doesn’t freeze up the way others would when hearing the Tsar speak their name. She only rolls her eyes, but relents with mumbled agreement.

Truth is, Alexei hadn’t wanted Ana to come here.

He hadn’t wanted anyone in his family to see the product of his hard work, his grandfather perhaps being the only exception.

His only desire, if you can even call the carnal hunger by such a sweet word, was smashing his father’s face into the still-wet oil and cry at the injustice.

Anyway, baby steps.

His family is here to congratulate him on finishing the semester and cheer on him for being a part of this art show.

“My painting is in the very last room,” Alexei tells Ana and takes her by hand.

“Why? Your art is so good, it should be in the first hall.”

Her argument makes him laugh. Trust his dear little sister to still believe her brother is the most talented artist around even when surrounded by art much more interesting than his own. Many of his teachers told Alexei again and again that he should experiment more with different materials, but he always comes back to oil and acrylics, to paint on canvas.

“The theme for this exhibition is ‘biography’, which is why I’m dressed like this.”

He draws Ana’s eyes to the patterns on his suit; textile work going back hundreds of generations, showing the lives of his classmate’s grandparents. Alexei has no idea how they managed to make four fully embroidered pieces of clothing for this show, but he’s promised to wear it all evening.

Life is motion, they said. So you gotta keep walking all evening, yes?

He leads his family past sculptures and a water installation, clay and charcoal, print and fabrics until they reach the room that hosts Alexei’s painting.

It stands separately because of its gigantic size. Getting it in and out of his flat had been an ordeal costing him many nerves and way too much money. He could have just drawn in the school ateliers, but he hadn’t felt comfortable sharing the painting until it was truly finished.

“What’s it called?” Ana asks, nearly jumping out of her skin in excitement.

He used to let her name every piece of art he created when he still lived at home, making it a game for her, allowing her to add a handprint at the back of the canvas to prove she too belonged.

“This one already has a name,” Alexei says, disappointing her slightly.

“Oh, and what is it?”

“A Father’s Love,” Alexei tells her. On the little plaque next to the painting, the name is written in English, but it’s French in his notes, drawn in Hangul.

They step into the room and the sounds fade away.

Alexei doesn’t care to look at his painting.

He knows exactly what he spent hours upon hours breathing to live. In the middle of Rome’s busy main station, people flicker in and out of existence. They’re only blurry figures, unidentifiable, mere passersby in a grander story.

The only crystal-clear figure in the painting is the young man staring directly at the viewer. His body is half-turned, he’s running away, a single backpack over his shoulder, held securely by one hand while the other one rests on his stomach.

The nearest sign points to a city in Germany, another one to Belgium and Denmark before a long list of French village names follows. Unlike the rest of the train station, which is drawn in considerable photographic realism to the actual train station, the signs are all made up, filled with places that carry another meaning.

The man standing just next to Alexei is twenty years older than he is in the painting.

“Oh! That’s appa!” Ana cheers excitedly and hurries closer to the painting to inspect it.

She’s oblivious to her parents behind her, frozen to the spot. Leewon shakes himself out of the stupor first to attend to Ana, pointing out various objects in the painting for her to discover or admire.

Caesar, naturally, doesn’t dare to show anything but pure ice.

Alexei has always known that his father is dangerous. Leewon never lied about why they had to stay hidden, what made small coastal towns safer than the iron fort mansion of the Sergeyev.

But Alexei hadn’t understood until he caught him vomiting late at night, packing a small bag and hiding it behind Alexei’s brand-new wardrobe in a brand-new bedroom, built just for him by the father he never met before.

Perhaps Alexei hadn’t truly understood until grandfather asked, “What will you do this time?”

“Alexei.”

His father’s voice cuts through the years and distance between them like a blade.

When his friends all bleached their hair last year to dye it, Alexei became their victim too – right until seeing himself with such white blond hair nearly sent him into a panic attack. Cast in the image of a monster, Alexei’s never wanted anything less.

He resented his mirror image ever since, until he sat down for this painting, recreating a parent younger than he remembered, similar to himself.

“You—”

“I’d have run,” Alexei says. “I will, with Ana, if that’s what it takes. I love like appa, after all.”

He doesn’t give Caesar another chance to speak, he leaves.

(He runs.)