The white marble palace looked the same since she had last visited.

Well, the palace wasn't a palace, it was mostly considered a summer home because the Romanovs had stayed there past summers. It was a retreat for the family, a place to let the burdens of royalty fade behind them. It was a coastal paradise.

The grounds were abundant with beautiful plants and flowers and lush green vines snaked up the palace's walls. The palm trees on the grounds seemed to welcome the youngest daughter as they did many years ago.

Anastasia figured she shouldn't just walk in, so she knocked twice on the door, hoping her Grandmama would answer. Anastasia smiled ear to ear, unable to contain her excitement.

Instead of her Grandmama, a girl answered.

She reminded Anastasia of someone she had known. She had shoulder-length chestnut-colored hair that was pinned up. Her shimmering blue eyes set her apart.

One name crossed Anastasia's mind. No...it couldn't be...

Anastasia shook her head in disbelief. The girl did the same. That's when the realization hit her as if it were a wrecking ball.

This was her happy ending.

All of her pent-up questions were answered in that brief moment in time.

This was how she had survived.

This was who she had survived for.

"Maria!"

Anastasia dropped her suitcase and umbrella and ran into Maria's open arms. The two hugged tightly as they sobbed. Anastasia felt she couldn't even breathe. She felt the whole world had stopped. Maria shrieked uncontrollably, shocked to see her sister. The joy between them was overwhelming.

"Is it really you!?" Anastasia shrieked.

"Yes! I survived like you!"

"I thought you were dead!" Anastasia had to say, a laugh somehow escaping her mouth.

"I'm here, Anastasia. It's me."

Anastasia still couldn't believe what had just happened. She had only come in hopes of seeing her Grandmama and was surprised by her older sister.

"Let's get you dried off before you see Grandmama," Maria led Anastasia into the palace.

"How is her health?" Anastasia asked.

"Declining." Maria sighed.

After walking in silence for a few minutes, Anastasia spoke. Some would have thought they'd be talking up a storm after being separated and assumed dead for more than a month.

"Your hair looks nice. Longer."

"Yours does too."

When the girls were at the Ipatiev house, both of their hair was remarkably short, cut because of sickness from measles the family caught that previous winter. Now months later, their hair had reached their shoulders.

"You've pinned your hair up!" Anastasia remarked.

"Yes, it's the one thing I have left of tradition."

It was a tradition for a girl of royal status in Russia to have a ball for their sixteen birthday. This ball set in place many things a girl could do now such as pinning hair up.

When Anastasia turned sixteen, there was much more to shift focus to so she never received a birthday ball as her three older sisters had. Although they were all sad to not be attending their younger sister's ball, Anastasia didn't mind not having one.

She liked doing other things rather than attending a ball, so she was quite happy visiting wounded soldiers on her birthday.

"Your necklace, where did you get it?" Maria asked. Anastasia looked at Dasia's necklace, which bounced as she walked.

"Let's wait until we have a moment of peace. Then I'll tell you."

As they walked to their old rooms, Anastasia looked around. The palace looked the same as it did four years ago, but somehow being inside made her feel empty. How these halls were once alive with laughter and joy. The lovely times spent with family here made her want to cry.

Although she felt that every inch of happiness inside of her was crushed, Anastasia found herself smiling as she entered her room. She and Maria shared a room, just as they had their entire lives.

"It looks the same!" Anastasia beamed as she admired the room.

A few religious icons hung on the wall and the old aging white floral wallpaper was still intact. Nothing had been touched since and Anastasia had even found a book on her desk that was still opened to the very same page she had been reading before she left.

As she peered around, Maria eyed her sister's suitcase. "You brought it! You wouldn't dare tell me what was inside!"

"Close your eyes," Anastasia commanded.

"Just tell me!"

"Close them!" she commanded again.

Anastasia pulled out Maria's belongings.

"Open!"

Maria squealed with joy as she took her things.

"My perfume! My album! I thought I would never see these again! How did you get this?"

"I smuggled it in the houses in Tobolsk and Ekaterinburg. I don't know how the guards didn't notice." Anastasia confessed.

"I bet the guards were too drunk to notice." Maria snickered. "Oh! Olga's tea rose perfume! Where's Tatiana's?"

"As I - well - we were traveling-"

"We? You weren't alone?"

"Let's talk about all of this later, please. I must see Grandmama now." Anastasia concluded.

-

Anastasia took her first real bath since she had left Dasia's house, changed into her clean pair of clothes, fixed her hair, and took her old bandages off, letting her scars show freely. Her scars proving she had survived the bloody wrath of hatred.

The sisters walked to the sitting room where Grandmama was sitting in front of a window, sewing. Anastasia waited outside of the room while Maria entered.

"Grandmama, I have a surprise for you." Anastasia heard Maria say. She heard her Grandmama mutter in return.

After her sister's cue, Anastasia entered the sitting room.Her eyes met an old woman in her early seventies. She had gray hair with a tint of brown. Large bags lay under her eyes. Her face looked swollen and her crystal blue eyes looked lost and hazed. She gasped as she saw the girl.

"Anastasia?"

Anastasia felt her chest tighten at that word. She gazed at her grandmother with desperate eyes. 'Please remember me.'

The old woman's words were broken, hope fueled. Her prayers had been answered.

"Anastasia...Anastasia..my...my Anastasia!"

Tears of genuine happiness streaked from her eyes, as she cried out with joy. Anastasia hugged her Grandmama tightly, but couldn't ignore that something didn't feel right.

'This is my Grandmother?' Anastasia thought as Grandmama's frail arms wrapped around her body.

Her Grandmama looked so run down since Anastasia had last seen her. Back then, she was so much livelier. She was dressed in a gown which was now replaced with common clothing. The revolution had aged her and it had seemed she never had a royal title to begin with.

"God has blessed me with my two beautiful granddaughters!" the old woman rejoiced to the sky.

The three talked for a few hours and it wasn't 'till the clock struck ten that the family went to their rooms. Anastasia sat on the edge of Maria's bed while her sister was tucked in. The rain still poured outside and lightning flashed outside.

"Now, tell me, how were you able to come here?" Maria wondered. Anastasia told Maria about her journey, concluding with her arrival at the palace.

"Are you sure you're not in love with Andrei!" Maria gushed, her eyes dreamy.

"No! We aren't! We're just friends!"

Maria explained she had been wrapped in a tarp in the cellar and was taken by car out into the forest. The drunk guards thought she was dead, but she only slipping in and out of consciousness. There she was rescued by one of the house's sober guards, Ivan and both ran off into the forest, staying there together until early August.

Maria explained that she had the same idea to go to Grandmama. She and Ivan had hopped trains until Ivan couldn't follow anymore. She told Anastasia that she had stolen a wagon and horse, rode to Yalta, and walked to the palace. Maria had arrived two weeks before Anastasia.

"Did you tell Andrei about your corset?" Maria asked, voice low with urgency.

"No, I didn't. I felt I just couldn't. What did you do about your cuts?" Anastasia confessed, eyeing Maria's scars on her arms.

"Prayed no one would see. Ivan managed to steal a coat for me so I could cover my arms."

"Were you hurt much?"

"I have wounds all over my body. Luckily Ivan is skilled with plants. When we were far away in the forest, he helped me with my cuts."

"I'm sorry for bringing it up." Anastasia pulled her legs up to her chin. Her mind still lingered with images of the cellar. It drifted, her panicking breaths rising.

The gore-stained cellar. The drunk smiles of their murderers. Screams. Gunshots. Brains. Guts. Blood. Blood. BLOOD-

Maria leaned over and took her sister's hand, releasing Anastasia from her trance. Her big blue eyes stared into Anastasia's scared teary ones. Maria nearly broke at the sight.

Her fearless sister, frightened by nothing, broken and scarred by that fateful night.

Maria ran her hand tenderly over Anastasia's. "We are safe and together. That is all that matters."

She allowed Anastasia to sleep in her bed that night and the two snuggled against one another, wrapped in each other's arms.

Thunder boomed outside as the two youngest Romanov daughter drifted off to dreamland.

Another day they would live.

The Romanovs lived.