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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Zhanna would later regret not accepting that pack of cigarettes from Sveta. Smoking hadn't interested her before, using them as a kind of currency among the men, but now she would have gladly lit a cigarette and pressed it between her cracked lips. It would have given her hands something to do.
They had been successful in clearing the eastern woods surrounding Foy so, naturally, Easy was deployed to the west. It was a mindless march, meeting little resistance. Zhanna didn't really mind the hours of marching in the snow. She found solace in the movement. If her feet were moving, she could keep her mind clear. Zhanna could outpace the memories but they would always creep back into her mind when her boots stopped. Her numb fingers ached for a cigarette, curling around her rifle that was useless to her in this kind of a fight. She couldn't shoot at the shells as they fell from the sky, so the three shells in her pocket were unused.
She didn't have time to take apart her rifle, the inner workings fragile in the cold. She didn't have words to write to her now dead parents. And Zhanna didn't have Buck. If she had a cigarette, she would have been at least occupied for a few short minutes.
With Buck gone, they had been left solely in the care of Lieutenant Dike. It wasn't a comforting feeling. Most of the men had set up an attitude of indifference. Easy had never been the luckiest company in the Airborne so why would their good fortune start now? Zhanna decided that passive bitterness would be her response. She didn't say anything to CP, there wasn't anything they could do. Zhanna knew that they were stuck with Dike, as the nuances of ranks and power weren't new to her, but Zhanna didn't have to like it. And there were some, like George Luz, who took comedy as their approach.
"You fellas know I've got no reason to bullshit ya," George said. The master of impressions that he was, he had spent the march to the west of Foy perfecting his Lieutenant Dike and had been waiting for a captive audience to test it out. That audience was found in Malarkey, Penkala, and Skip, all greedy for a little cheering up. Zhanna's back rested against the sharp bark of a pine, listening to their conversation with her rifle balanced across her knees.
"This is what I saw," George insisted, amid mutters of disagreement. "It's so unbelievable you might not believe me."
Their laughter was deafened by the silence of the forest. Bastogne swallowed them whole.
"So you-know-who comes running up to Lipton."
George narrated as Zhanna studied her pearly skin in the faint moonlight that trickled between the skeletons of the trees. Empty houses and empty foxholes had been in her dreams, yawning wide enough for her to tumble into the dark and emptiness that seeped from them. George could tell his stories but in the end it did little for them. Her bitterness didn't do much for her but it provided a sense of vindication. Her bitterness was the only thing she allowed herself to feel. Admitting that the situation was less than ideal had been her first step towards moving on. She couldn't accept her parents' deaths. Janusz hadn't known what he had burdened her with, and she knew she couldn't mourn and fight. Zhanna settled on averting her gaze from the pain and water that was starting to rise around her ankles.
