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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Loneliness always hit Sveta when she was anything but alone. Standing in line for food from the Battalion cook, she could hear a chorus of American accents droning on around her. Some she could place; in her many months with them she'd learned to distinguish Philadelphia from Texas, and Texas from Southern California. But just because she could place them generally didn't mean Sveta knew who they all belonged to.
Standing with her meager cup of beans in the shadow of a tree, the sun starting to dip towards the horizon, she missed Zhanna even more. Instead of two Russians against a sea of Americans, she had only herself. Snipers always worked in pairs. Since Benning they'd been often separated, but not like this. Not with an ocean between them.
She took a deep breath. She'd lost track of the other officers. Winters probably stood in conference with Nixon and Strayer somewhere. Where Harry or Compton had gone off to, she couldn't even guess. An ache settled deep in her chest. Why did it bother her? Why did their disappearance without her make her heart hurt? They weren't friends.
Friends.
Zhanna had friends. She had Skip Muck, Buck Compton, Alex Penkala, Don Malarkey. They'd taken it hard, when the medical personnel had rushed her with Private Blithe to the field hospital, and not long after, across the channel to England. It had surprised her. She'd never expected to see any of the Americans caring if either of them got shot. But Zhanna had friends.
Sveta didn't have friends.
Sveta didn't even really have allies.
She took another deep breath. A couple of men from Dog Company strolled past accompanied by Powers and McClung. The smiles on their faces starkly contrasted the permanent dirt and grime. She wanted that. It had been years since she'd yearned for a reason to smile. And yet in the American base camp, surrounded by men who had spent over a year making her life miserable, that's exactly what she wanted.
A breeze ruffled her hair as she undid her braids. They'd begun to hurt her head, and here, off the line where they had showers however crude, where they could walk around without helmets, she decided it would be safe to take them out. Her fingers stuck against knotted tangles. Too bad those crude showers couldn't really wash out the weeks of foxholes and flooded fields. And she certainly wouldn't use them without Zhanna to watch her back.
"Lieutenant, want some coffee?"
At Doc Roe's voice, Sveta turned from her inspection of the grounds. Roe held out a tin cup. He didn't smile. It didn't surprise her; she knew he now understood the conversation they'd had in the Aldbourne pub about the hell medics went through. He'd saved Zhanna. But there had been many that had died despite his best efforts. That was war.
So she offered him what little smile she could conjure. "Thank you." She looked him over more closely. His tall frame seemed smaller than she remembered it. He held himself closer, shoulders more hunched but his brown eyes no colder. After tasting the coffee, she tried not to grimace. She failed.
