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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By the time Zhanna was able to toddle along by her mother's side, she had been told to stay close and, if there was ever any doubt, to run. Agata had kept the windows shuttered against prying eyes and stray rocks. Casimir would hurry home from the factory, his breath coming in short gasps, making it in the nick of time to bolt the door behind himself, night falling and curfew called.
There were never any sure signs of a raid, never any tells that would warn the neighborhood of a missing neighbor or shrieks in the night. No one knew the hour or the night, the house or the victim. They could only cower, pray, or run. Zhanna lived under those rules and learned their lessons well. Survival was a universal language and her existence depended on it. But what kind of an existence was that?
She grew up, startled eyes and scurrying steps, with the promise of capture or death looming over her and she would never see it coming. Zhanna had learned that the most terrible things happened on the most normal of days.
Easy had been recalled to Mourmelon, a place that Zhanna had come to associate with smarting wounds. It was a place of tactical retreat, where Easy could lick its wounds and recover before being thrown at it's next big attack. The battered bastards of Bastogne needed a chance to let the bruises fade and maybe some of the harshest memories follow suit.
Zhanna had been encouraged to know that Sink had respected her wishes, to wait for a promotion. She didn't want to take from Lipton's moment, now a 2nd Lieutenant. She never did want the spotlight for her own. Even as she moved to a more vocal position among the officers, speaking up, even with a slight tremor in her voice, she didn't like all the eyes on her. Zhanna could never tell which were friendly and which would rather see her sent back to Russia.
Winters had been surprising in his actions in Haguenau. Sink had ordered another patrol, after the success of the first and, much to Zhanna's astonishment, Winters and Nixon had concocted a fake report, relieving the thoroughly exhausted men from yet another patrol. Zhanna was so shocked she had let her insistence to lead the next patrol slide. She didn't ask Dick about it nor did he supply any reasoning. His deceit hadn't got in the way of his new oak leaf clusters, that sparkled in the brightly lit CP even if they were a little blurry.
Mourmelon had been a quiet place, a place of recovery. Zhanna had thought, no, expected, that the river of life would ease it's beating. That the current would soften so that her head would break the surface. Maybe she'd take a fresh breath of air. Just as her face had felt the overcast sky shine it's dim rays on her skin, her footing was lost.
Zhanna sat in Winters's office, beneath a blanket, shivering like she had fallen into the frozen Neva river. She hadn't. Zhanna hadn't even lost her footing. It had been a perfectly normal day, spent in a perfectly normal way. She had taken for granted the quiet avoidance between Sveta and herself. Zhanna had taken Sveta for granted.
"Dick, what the hell do they mean?" Speirs was filled with more silent determination than Foy had seen. "Suspected of espionage?"
"I have done no such thing," Sveta's voice still rang in her mind, mixing now with Skip, Agata, Casimir, and Buck, rolling together like a wave of regret.
