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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WHAT WELL-MEANT DID
They've found the concentration camp. It's the most horrific thing Nixon has ever seen, but he's got a job to do even as alcohol flows through his veins and anger towards Sveta and the whole damn war distracts him. The chapter is from Nixon's perspective as he reports to the nearby women's camp, a mirror image to the one that Easy Company was still reeling from discovering.
As Nixon wanders through the camp, he sees the golden stars on the chests of the Jewish prisoners. It shocks him to his core, even though he, as an intelligence officer, had more idea of the Holocaust than the average soldier. He comes across seven women with infants in their arms huddled together, accepting blankets and food from Americans. Its too much for him, and he leaves. Just as he turns to get in his jeep, a soldier flags him down. Suspended between himself and another soldier is a dirty, exhausted blonde haired woman. He realizes its Zhanna between their arms. Hatred fills his veins, both at himself for taking her on the failed mission and Sveta for her angry words.
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...nowhere again...
She had forgotten what it felt like to be warm. Zhanna's body was in a constant state of numbness, submerged in a river of ice, though her feet were on dry land. She was frozen, her heart dully beating, but it didn't really matter.
Pulled from the wreckage and the smoking ruins, Zhanna's feet had failed her before she made it out of the gate. Nixon and Winters shored her between them, holding her gingerly like she would shatter if mishandled. Her breath rattling in her chest, she might have. She was only made of ice after all. Zhanna could still walk, still move, though dimly. Anything to part ways with this cursed ground.
They lifted her into the jeep and wrapped her in a wool blanket that was too tight, much too tight. Didn't they know she was made of ice? She didn't pay attention to where they were going, she could only remember where she had been. Where she had been and who she had followed.
To Stalingrad. To Smolensk. To America. To England. To France and Holland.
Zhanna had followed her everywhere. Zhanna had followed her and she had followed orders but she had forgotten to follow her instinct. Her instinct had led her to the wrong plane, the wrong jump zone, and the wrong place. Or maybe it wasn't the wrong place? Maybe Zhanna's place was with her people, the race and the countryman that she had too long run from?
