"No, it is not wrong," she muses, loudly enough so that only the two of them might hear. "I know I will not see them soon because there is still much left that I must do. But they will be waiting, I think." It is her greatest and most secret hope, the consideration that fills her dreams with their faces, their smiles, and their jovial laughter. It is, perhaps, the curled finger that beckons her forth through the trials and tribulations that had woven to one another to form the patched tapestry of her life as a Dark Hunter- this unyielding faith that one day, when the dust of some final, grand battle had come to settle and she had finally shed the suffocating coil of her mortal skin that they would greet her with their arms open. On that day, she would hold them.

There was far more complexity to the young Were at her side than the thickly-laid façade of adolescent angst and aimless defiance that had until recently provided the overall synopsis of her character, evidenced in the knowledge that she had exhibited and the thoughtfulness and consideration that flooded her eyes. A relief, indeed, to the Russian monarch for she had so terribly little patience for useless things. Her sage eyes leave the young woman as they meander onwards, the slightest of grins pressing its curve into Anastasia's features despite her at the mention of her late grandmother. "Ah, but you see there was some good in this sickness of the mind. Having no memories, there were no reasons for Marie to be sad. You'll be glad knowing that she was quite content when she died... and I was there with her at the end. She is with my family now, she waits for me too."

Silence passes over the two women, made heavy by the revelations that hung there, suspended in the air between them. A peculiar question then does her young charge ask. Admittedly there had been quite a few spectacles made of the "missing" Grand Duchess, each one rife with theories regarding her whereabouts, what life she may or may not have been leading in the years that had transpired in the wake of the Romanov Empire. The Russian moves to say as much when... what was she on about?

Anastasia comes to a halt in the foyer of the museum, finely-manicured brows pinched with suspicion and, though she would hardly admit it aloud, traces of confusion. "What little white bat?"

Anastasia Romanova

Grand Duchess of Imperial Russia