colour code: [color=8FA1B4]

Name: Feliks Shvets
Age: 23
Hair: Black
Eyes: Grey
Height: 5'10" (or so he says)
Marks:

• Small scar above left eyebrow from being pistol-whipped
• Nasty gunshot wound scar high up on his outside left thigh, just under the hip joint

Bio:

• Mother was one of the palace seamstresses to the Romanovs, father was a brief fling, never seen again
• Grew up in a servant house near the palace, spent his days there keeping busy doing odd jobs while his mother worked
• As a ten-year-old he goes looking for his mother one day, finds her doing a fitting for an extravagant gown with princess Katerina. Sees Katerina in the dress, with her blonde hair, and thinks she's an angel.

Siege:
Siege happens when Feliks is 11 and Katerina is 9, the Bolsheviks storming the palace in the middle of the night in winter. Feliks' mother was staying at the palace that night, working hard with the other seamstresses to complete a set of new ball gowns for the princesses for an upcoming Christmas ball; Feliks, meanwhile, sleeps on a pile of fabric in the drafting room. Amidst the chaos of the siege, Feliks is separated from his mother. As he searches for her he sees Katerina running and Bolshevik troops chasing after her and he follows, scared that they might hurt her despite only having met her up close that one time. When Katerina is cornered, he intervenes by kicking out the knee of the guy chasing her; the shot the guy was going to fire at Katerina misses as a result, breaking the window behind her. The guy turns and hits Feliks on the head with his gun to knock him down, shooting him quickly, but this gives Katerina enough time to escape out the window, getting cut on the leg on the way out by a shard of glass in the frame. Meanwhile, the shot fired at Feliks had been poorly aimed, hitting him in the leg near his hip. The blow to his head knocked him out, and he bleeds from his gunshot wound; Bolshevik troops find him in a final sweep looking for Katerina. Thinking him dead, they haul him out and pile him up with the other bodies, where a commoner finds Feliks still breathing and takes him to a hospital.

Meanwhile, Katerina has fled into the city slums, and passes out in an alley after having a bit of a breakdown. She's found in the morning by a worker at a local orphanage, who finds her practically frozen and takes her in. The Bolsheviks had seen evidence of a gunshot and blood trailing off in the snow, and assume Katerina was shot and bled to death wherever she went. Satisfied that there's no way she could have survived a frigid winter night with a gunshot wound, they presume her dead and do not search for her. When Katerina wakes up in the orphanage, her mind has blocked out her trauma, leaving her with no memory of who she is or where she came from. Her nightgown is tattered from the window, and embroidered with the name "Katya" on the sleeve, so the orphanage assumes she is a street child who took the nightgown from somewhere and, with nothing else to call her, dub her Katya.

Weeks later, when Feliks has finally recovered enough for the hospital to let him go, he immediately returns to the castle in desperate hope that he might find his mother. He searches the whole place, but there is no sign of her aside from a bloody smudge on the floor of the corridor leading to the drafting room. Elsewhere in the palace he finds another former servant, a teenaged boy, who tells Feliks that he saw his mother get shot dead. Utterly shocked and feeling guilty, thinking he might have been able to save her had he not chased after Katerina, Feliks wanders the palace in a daze, eventually coming upon the room where he had helped Katerina escape. He sees the stain of his own blood on the floor, the broken window and the blood on the glass. On the floor near the window, though, he sees a necklace; the pendant is in the motif of a jewel-encrusted Faberge egg on a long gold chain. Fascinated by it, he keeps it.

Plot:

• Feliks grows bitter and cynical over the years, never getting over his guilt surrounding his mother's murder and regretting helping Katerina in lieu of finding her; he considers selling the necklace multiple times, as it is a painful reminder of his mistake, but he can never bring himself to do it. He never tells anyone about what happened that night, instead always saying that he was at home in the servant house during the siege.
• He gets a job as a tailor's apprentice to honour his mother's memory, and by the time he is an adult he is a skilled tailor. However, the communist regime left the people poor, so the market for tailoring is very bleak; needing money, he figures out that while tailoring is dead, forgery is a booming business, as people are desperate to escape the bleakness of communist Russia.
• Hates the Bolsheviks and what they've done to Russia, but won't join any dissidents because he thinks nothing will come of a revolt but bloodshed.
• On the same day the rumour starts to spread that Grand Duchess Katerina might still be alive and that her grandmother, the Dowager Empress, is offering a reward to find her, Feliks happens upon a woman named Katya, who is looking for papers to travel to Paris. Seeing that she looks remarkably like the Katerina he remembers and surprised that she has no memory of her own past, Feliks has an idea that he could pass her off as the Grand Duchess for the reward money.
• He takes her back to the palace, where he hasn't been since he went back that day after the siege, and shows her around; when they pass by the section of the palace containing the drafting room and the room where Katerina escaped, Feliks gets emotional and says there's nothing down there for them. The pair continue on past and find archives about the Romanovs, deciding to study up so Katya can pass as Katerina. They decide to set up a little encampment there, Katya having no place to live and Feliks currently wanted and more or less in hiding, and stay there for some time, Feliks teaching Katya everything he remembers about royal manner.
• At some point he shows Katya the necklace, and she immediately opens it, revealing that it's actually a locket containing pictures of Katerina and the other Romanovs.
• At some point Katya decides to explore the part of the palace that Feliks has been avoiding, finds the room where she escaped and it triggers memories of her trauma and she freaks; Feliks comforts her and distracts her by telling her the story of when he saw Princess Katerina and thought she was an angel. Katya puts herself in Katerina's place in the story, thinking she's making up the details until she realizes she's actually remembering them, recalling a part of the story that Feliks hadn't told her. Feliks realizes she really is Katerina, and doesn't know what to do.

Misc:

• Feliks has a thin scar on his forehead above his left eyebrow from where he was pistol whipped during the siege, and he walks with a bit of a limp, his leg never having returned to full function after the gunshot wound. His injured hip hurts him when he gets up in the morning (feeling better once he gets moving) and if he has to walk a lot, or if it's cold or rainy (it's got hella arthritis but he doesn't know that).
• He's a smoker, and drinks when his leg is really bothering him
• Secretly misses tailoring
• Still sometimes thinks about Katerina even though he resents her (despite thinking her dead)
• While Katya is so focused on her past, Feliks claims to have forgotten the past and only care about the future, even though he's been dwelling on the past his entire life and still hasn't gotten over it
• The tailor he apprenticed under was a former tailor to a member of the imperial court, and he retained his stuffy high-society mannerisms out of spite for the Bolsheviks. He required that Feliks learn to be a proper man ("You must be a man of class to dress one") and taught Feliks proper poise and manners, and also how to dance. Feliks was never a good dancer, impeded by his limp, and hasn't danced since he first learned, though he'll find that he does remember how.
• The tailor who took him in (Mr. Ivanov, absolutely refused to be called "comrade") took on a pseudo-fatherhood role with Feliks, refused to let him roam the streets or get caught up with stealing and cheating like many orphaned children did, wanted him to grow up into a respectable man and also was pretty sure the poor crippled kid wouldn't survive on his own
• Feliks greatly respected Mr. Ivanov and grew close to him; Mr. Ivanov died of tuberculosis when Feliks was 18, Feliks couldn't afford to keep the tailor shop running so he sold its assets and used the money to give Mr. Ivanov a funeral worthy of a high-society gent like him
• Every now and then, Feliks remembers that Mr. Ivanov wouldn't be proud of his new line of work, but justifies it by convincing himself he has no choice.

Name: Katya Popov
Age: 21
Bio:

• Was initially catatonic when she was found, barely responding even after being treated. Apparently the only thing she used to do was weep at night, but she has little memory of this happening. Eventually she would follow instructions and generally react to the adults speaking to her, but wouldn't speak. Once she did come out of her shell, her strong personality clashed with the other children, often expecting them to bend to her will without question.
• Her earliest memory comes from getting hit by a ball, having been taken on a walk by one of the workers. Despite getting hit in the face, she apparently laughed it off, letting go of the worker's hand to go play with the other children.
• She was particularly attached to another orphan by the name of Grisha, a dark haired boy. Often chasing him around (much to his irritation), she was particularly apologetic to him, though when asked why he wouldn't leave him alone, she would only reply that she needed to apologize. As for what, no one knew, but Grisha wasn't too happy about it. Fortunately for him, as they got older, she did put a more respectful distance and eventually they got along better. He was one of the boys in a group that ended up getting indoctrinated some years down the line.
• One of the caretakers, an older woman by the name of Natasha, suspected Katya may have been nobility by the way she acted. She helped the child transition into a common life, teaching her how to speak to people without being so haughty. She found it rather amusing that despite having no memories, she still acted like a member of a noble family and often indulged her when she could. Instilling good values into the girl to the best of her ability, she is the reason why Katya works to get what she wants, having taught her that if you wanted something you had to get out there and take it for yourself. Sadly she passed away when Katya was a teenager of old age.
• Katya has an unexplainable desire to find someone; she wants to think that it is her family, but she feels it is not the case. She does not know who it is nor does she have any idea why, only 'feeling' it and figuring she would know when she would find them. She rarely brings it up, realizing it is an impossible task and one unlikely to happen. The one thing she wants more than anything is to find this person and apologize, though she doesn't even know why or what she did.
• Has sold her hair twice; the first time she was outright approached as a child, and despite not quite understanding why the man had wanted her hair, she obliged. Natasha wasn't too happy when Katya returned to the orphanage with a shaved head, though her heavy pockets let her know that this was a great way to make money. The second time was after Natasha's death, and was Katya's first step into working towards her goal.