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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The enlisted had taken up residence in an abandoned barn, filling their freetime with booze, cards, and relaxation in the wake of the tactical disaster that was Market Garden. Zhanna could have spent her precious free moments at the farmhouse where she laid her head to rest every night but she had taken to drinking the evening away with the others, amongst the prickly hay and the drafty interior of that barn. More than a few lieutenants, including Peacock, made themselves comfortable with the men and Zhanna preferred it there.
Buck's absence had left Zhanna out in the blinding sun, with little support in the American military. They tolerated her, saying that she was alright, "you know, for a Russian." There wasn't trust and that was something Zhanna hadn't realized she needed so desperately until the nearest source of it had been carted away to a field hospital. She missed his camaradiere, his dry humor, and most importantly, the way the men warmed instantly to him. When she had been Buck's little shadow, they had just accepted her as an inevitability.
She was still in Muck and Malarkey's good graces, and she knew she always had a place amongst the mortar squad. They would save her a drink after a long day of avoiding Sveta's irritable outbursts, not to mention, the added difficulty of not being cornered by Nixon, whose curiosity was sure to place him on the wrong side of a rifle barrel.
Winters could be seen, on occasion, brushing shoulders with the enlisted in that barn. His presence and his ease with both Zhanna and the men, calmed the atmosphere. Even Talbert, who spent most of his conversations with Zhanna engaged in a back and forth flurry of insults and sarcasm, was kinder to the sniper when Winters was present. He had slowly begun to warm up to the Russian women but Zhanna enjoyed teasing him too much to let that side of their interactions die with the arrival of his respect. There was the added incentive of his new companion, a large dog who had taken a liking to Talbert upon their arrival to the Island. Unfortunately for Talbert, the dog was devoted to Zhanna since it had laid it's large brown eyes on her.
Perched on the table, knees tucked underneath her, Zhanna watched Winters work on a grenade, tearing off a piece of adhesive from a roll. She wasn't quite sure what he was doing, explosives were not her area of expertise, but there was something comforting in the stillness of the work. His focus and the comfortable silence that enveloped them was enough to relax Zhanna's shoulders more than any amount of vodka could have.
"New guys giving the replacements the what for and why is," Tab scoffed, as if he could never have been guilty of this crime, unwanted advice being his first words shouted to Zhanna back in Benning. "I swear one of them has never shaved,"
"Yeah," Winters agreed. "Kids."
Kids. The replacements were all Zhanna's age, if not older. Twenty-two but she had been aged by what she had seen. Buck had asked how old she was when the fighting started. "I was sixteen when the war began," She had said. But that wasn't the first time she had fought. Survival was found in more places than a battlefield. She supposed that to these paratroopers, the enlisted were children but to Zhanna, they were familiar. Their faces, grim and drawn, had greeted her when she looked in the ornate mirror of the Samsonov residence. Long before the war had broken out.
