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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2 January 1945
Finally, they had a mission beyond holding the line. The siege had broken. The men had survived, and with that survival came a new confidence. She saw it in the way they walked. She saw it in the way they smiled and laughed.
But as Sveta stood amidst the men of Easy who dug foxholes and chatted about nonsense, unnoticed as she lurked, she couldn't help but feel fear creeping into her chest again. Confidence could lead to mistakes. That was a lesson she had learned many times over, watching as politicians in Stalin's circle overstepped from their overconfidence and found themselves disappearing in the middle of the night, or suffering accidents that were anything but accidental. The same happened in war.
In the Bois Jacques, the rows of perfect trees had been marred by days of artillery strikes. Instead of tall and straight, dark against the white mists, these were fractured, splintered and decimated over and over and over. The men tried to ignore it. She saw the way they glanced uneasily at the remains and then smiled at their comrades. But Sveta didn't ignore it.
She inspected a tree that had splintered at about her chest height. The top had been blown away, leaving sawdust to mix with snow and dirt. She touched the bark, felt the ripped edges between her cold fingers. The fire power to do such damage was nothing to laugh at. But the men were still laughing, still joking all around her.
A coping method, she supposed. Healthier than her alcohol or cigarettes. Still, she couldn't engage. Not without playing the part she'd honed from days of acting careless in Moscow and Stalingrad and Leningrad.
She'd come up to the line for a purpose. Hoobler, Hashey, and Christenson had stopped a German officer on patrol. She wanted to hear their report first hand. Now that she had, and let Hoobler keep his prize of the Luger to boast to the others, she just watched.
The man in question crouched by the edge of a foxhole, chatting with Lipton and Shifty who struggled to deepen the hole. He flashed the gun like he'd never seen a more precious item in his life. Sveta wondered how many lives it had taken. Guns weren't toys.
Lipton was the man of the hour, though. That's why she was still up on the line, and that's why she stood near their foxhole. She wanted to talk to him. An anger had been boiling in her since they'd started their move to the Bois Jacques, an anger aimed at one man. Lieutenant Dike.
She didn't trust Peacock. She didn't trust Foley. She didn't trust Shames. She didn't particularly like Compton, though she tried to remind herself that was more because he'd seen her at her worst without her consent. Nothing he had done had earned her anger, but it was there.
But she did trust Sergeant Carwood Lipton. He had a good head on his shoulders, cared about the men, and saw Dike for the issue he was. Of course, he'd never say it outloud. But Sveta could see the way he'd deflate whenever Dike would walk over, or a man asked about his whereabouts.
