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 hadn't spent much time in the water but in the Polyakov family philosophy, she had played in it's tides more than once. The idea didn't haunt her now, the shores of the lake were actually inviting. Her time in Austria was drawing to a close and for once, she didn't mind the idea of the lapping waves. Maybe wading into the river was in order.
She had asked after Winters, wanting to know where he was. With the war closing, the points being tallied, and Zhanna quickly overstaying the American welcome, she wanted to say good-bye, before she was sent across the ocean.
If Winters could not be found in CP, Zhanna was told he was sure to be down at the banks of the lake. He took morning swims there, enjoyed the quiet, and seemed to spend every unoccupied moment there. Zhanna didn't need the whole world to know that she was trying to find him, just a few. Welsh had given her a knowing look, his gap-toothed grin on full display.
The walk down to the lake was a trail of soft sand underfoot and rustling leaves overhead, a peaceful respite from the still crackling tensions of the American occupying forces. She hadn't wandered down to the lake's shores often despite being in Austria for several months. There had been many ties that had held her back from it's glittering waves but the trail was soft and inviting now. Zhanna didn't know why she hadn't ventured out before.
Zhanna owed Winters but it wasn't like her debt to Sveta, which she now considered paid in full. After the hearing in that conference room where Sink, Winters, and Nixon had reached and scrambled for anyway to save Zhanna from her actions, the fallout had been quick and certain. Svetlana Samsonova was an enemy of the American military, sent from Austria with a swift transport. No fanfare. No smoke and mirrors. No goodbyes.
Zhanna didn't regret not saying goodbye. Zhanna had owed things to Sveta, things she had made up and tied herself to but Winters wasn't a debt to be paid, it was a trust that was shared. Things were given and gifts exchanged but no payment was needed. It was a kindness but not the chain binding kind.
"Polyakova," Winters said, looking up at the sound of her approaching footsteps. He sat on the low stone ledge that broke the waves, his face flushed and his hair damp. He wore the PT gear that had been common place in Benning and Mackall, places that seemed a distant memory now.
"You can call me Zhanna," She said, choosing to ignore the fact that she still called him Winters in her head. "I'm not a liason anymore."
She wasn't, that deal had fallen through with Sveta's return to Russia. Zhannna was just a sniper who had done a service to the American army, no real ties, and she didn't forget it. She tried her best to be seen as only that but the men would still refer to her as Captain.
He had called her Zhanna before but had fallen back into the habit of using her patronymic even in private in the months following her return to Easy Company. Even when they sat on the balcony of his office, basking in the sun, her patronymic remained. Even when her mind could summon the warm memories and tousled hair in an instant. She missed it, maybe just a little more than she let herself acknowledge.
