Collaboration with @silmarilz1701
Svetlana knew how to play the game. She'd been caught in the political drama of Stalin's inner circle since birth. The only child of one of Stalin's closest friends, she grew up in the limelight, scrutinized by frie...
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Lying on her front in the grass like a snake, Zhanna settled into the familiarity of the scenario. She had assumed this position often, the thirty days she had spent in the field flooding back to her now. Though her time spent fighting had been dangerous, she could at least fall back onto the experience. Overlooking the shelled-out town of Carentan, Zhanna knew what she was going to do.
The streets were cluttered with rubble and the silence was deathly but Zhanna knew that there was a beast lying in wait. Buck, his back to her, was tense. They were all waiting for orders, Easy Company crouched behind an embankment. This town was silent but they knew it would be filled with the clamor of bullets and wounded in only a matter of time. That's how it always was.
Sveta's shoulder brushed hers, a comforting familiarity. It was like in Russia, before America, before paratroopers. They would fight together like they always had. Sveta had lost her rifle in the landing but had acquired a lost American weapon. She had never been particularly attached to the Mosin-Nagant like Zhanna had and the new rifle didn't lend itself to their old work as a sniper pair. Though they were side by side now, when the fighting started they would be seperated. As they had been in America.
When Winters shouted for the line to advance, Zhanna's feet didn't budge for a heartbeat. Frozen firmly to the dirt, her American boots couldn't follow orders. The curtains fluttered through shattered windows as the soldiers ran forward under the spray of bullets but Zhanna couldn't move. Not until Sveta's hand squeezed her upper arm, lifting her up and into motion.
Once a few stumbling steps had been taken, her body's adrenaline, though depleted from the two days of solitary wandering, kicked in. Breathless energy and heart hammering movement, she ran among the men. They didn't get far before the Germans started to fire their machine guns at the road. Dirt coated her mouth as Buck tossed her into a ditch, shouting at the men to do the same. They huddled in that ditch bank, the bullets sending spray of dirt and fragments into the air. Zhanna coughed, rolling over so her rifle wasn't digging into her shoulder. She couldn't sit up, not without the danger of being shot but she could wriggle forward, ignoring Buck's warnings and Muck shouting, questioning her sanity.
At first glance, Zhanna wasn't intimidating. The men of Easy had seemed to forget that she was a sniper, not just the small girl who hung off to the side. She didn't look dangerous but Sink's eyes had widened in surprise when he had read her kill count and Nixon studied her like she was a hidden weapon. She had fought for survival, long before she had joined the military. Once she had been given her rifle, she had worked hard to prove herself. Zhanna wasn't much to look at but she was a sniper and it was time for the men of Easy company to remember that.
She slithered forward, pushing herself over the ditch and onto the road with her elbows. Blinking rapidly to try and remove the dirt from her eyes, Zhanna leveled the rifle at the machine gun, blocking out the bullets that found purchase in the earth around her. Buck's hand wrapped around her ankle, to pull her back into safety but Zhanna kicked out hard. Before he could intervene, she squeezed the trigger and through the scope, saw the bullet meet its mark.
