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 cold only increased with their movement into the forest. The trees cast shadows that were dark as pitch in the middle of the day, sending shivers down Zhanna's back. They had no coats her size and very few blankets. Skip had tossed his thin patch of wool that passed for an army-issued bedroll over her shoulders before they parted ways. Easy was split up, planting themselves in the frozen ground like seeds. But with no sun and no supplies, Zhanna wasn't sure how long it would take before they shriveled up. Wrapping herself tighter in the blanket, she stopped at the base of an oak tree, where Buck had already tossed down his pack and removed his small shovel, reading himself to start digging their foxhole.
He seemed brighter now. Was that just necessity or had he found something in this cold snow? There was no sunlight that managed to trickle down in the thick branches so perhaps Buck had designated himself to be the bright spot. But even his sun couldn't stave off the cold.
"You know," He panted, the sweat perspiring on his brow despite the cold from exertion. "You could always give me a hand."
"I really couldn't," Zhanna said, as if she hadn't just assisted in setting up CP's sorry excuse for a headquarters some several hundred meters back. That's where Winters and Nixon would be digging in now, preparing themselves for the night that would come. With the night would likely come their first signs of opposition. The German line that they were promised was through the trees. Zhanna had wanted predictability but she had gotten an almost faceless enemy. Toye and Smokey were closer to the break in the trees but she didn't want to wander through the snow and cold to find them.
"Asshole," Buck said but he smiled, really smiled. She removed the threadbare blanket gingerly and reached for the shovel. "No, no," He protested. "It's fine. I've got it."
Zhanna sank to her knees, beside the plot that would become their home for the foreseeable future. It could have been their grave, too. The thought didn't leave her mind, no matter how she willed it to. Silver in the brown mud but she would be silver hair in the white snow. Buried, frozen, and dead. Miles from the last thing she had known as home. She couldn't look at the now deepening trench without thinking of bodies, blood, and her death. Zhanna cast her gaze around her, hoping to replace the thoughts. The forest bore scars from the previous battles. Shattered trunks, broken limbs. Zhanna looked up into the sky, barren branches stretching out like fingers.
"Dick said something about a cousin," Buck said, suddenly. How they had gone from foxholes to family? How much had Winters told him?
"I don't want to talk about it," Zhanna said, perhaps a little too sharply, a little too quickly. If she was trying to pass it off as an unconcerning matter, the crack in her voice betrayed her.
"A cousin?" Buck repeated. "A cousin in the SS sounds like something we should talk about."
"I said, I don't want to talk about it," To talk about it would mean thinking about it. Out here, in the woods, with only the snow and her thoughts. If she opened that door, everything would come flooding out. The river's current would pull her and Zhanna couldn't allow that.
