A/N: On to Bastogne. Let's check in with Zhanna. It's nice to see her warming(?) up to the officers thanks to sharing a couple drinks with Dick even if she did then like, run away haha. Time to check in with her ally, Buck Compton.

...everything's not fine...

Zhanna | AdamantiumDragonfly

December 18, 1944 | Bastogne, Belgium

The cold only increased with their movement into the forest. The trees cast shadows that were dark as pitch in the middle of the day, sending shivers down Zhanna's back. They had no coats her size and very few blankets. Skip had tossed his thin patch of wool that passed for an army-issued bedroll over her shoulders before they parted ways. Easy was split up, planting themselves in the frozen ground like seeds. But with no sun and no supplies, Zhanna wasn't sure how long it would take before they shriveled up. Wrapping herself tighter in the blanket, she stopped at the base of an oak tree, where Buck had already tossed down his pack and removed his small shovel, reading himself to start digging their foxhole.

He seemed brighter now. Was that just necessity or had he found something in this cold snow? There was no sunlight that managed to trickle down in the thick branches so perhaps Buck had designated himself to be the bright spot. But even his sun couldn't stave off the cold.

"You know," He panted, the sweat perspiring on his brow despite the cold from exertion. "You could always give me a hand."

"I really couldn't," Zhanna said, as if she hadn't just assisted in setting up CP's sorry excuse for a headquarters some several hundred meters back. That's where Winters and Nixon would be digging in now, preparing themselves for the night that would come. With the night would likely come their first signs of opposition. The German line that they were promised was through the trees. Zhanna had wanted predictability but she had gotten an almost faceless enemy. Toye and Smokey were closer to the break in the trees but she didn't want to wander through the snow and cold to find them.

"Asshole," Buck said but he smiled, really smiled. She removed the threadbare blanket gingerly and reached for the shovel. "No, no," He protested. "It's fine. I've got it."

Zhanna sank to her knees, beside the plot that would become their home for the foreseeable future. It could have been their grave, too. The thought didn't leave her mind, no matter how she willed it to. Silver in the brown mud but she would be silver hair in the white snow. Buried, frozen, and dead. Miles from the last thing she had known as home. She couldn't look at the now deepening trench without thinking of bodies, blood, and her death. Zhanna cast her gaze around her, hoping to replace the thoughts. The forest bore scars from the previous battles. Shattered trunks, broken limbs. Zhanna looked up into the sky, barren branches stretching out like fingers.

"Dick said something about a cousin," Buck said, suddenly. How they had gone from foxholes to family? How much had Winters told him?

"I don't want to talk about it," Zhanna said, perhaps a little too sharply, a little too quickly. If she was trying to pass it off as an unconcerning matter, the crack in her voice betrayed her.

"A cousin?" Buck repeated. "A cousin in the SS sounds like something we should talk about."

"I said, I don't want to talk about it," To talk about it would mean thinking about it. Out here, in the woods, with only the snow and her thoughts. If she opened that door, everything would come flooding out. The river's current would pull her and Zhanna couldn't allow that.

"Alright then," Buck said, muttering under his breath, the word "Rude."

Zhanna wasn't being rude and she said so.

"You are being kinda rude," His eyes were sparkling, showing that he was just joking with her but Zhanna wasn't ready to let it go.

"It's not rude to not want to talk about something," she said, crossing her arms tight against her chest, in indignance and for warmth.

"It's not like we have a wide range of topics for conversation," Buck said, gesturing around them at the trees and the figures of other paratroopers digging in. "What are we gonna talk about? The snow? It's white. Very cold."

"What do you think about the snow, Buck?" Zhanna asked.

"It's white, very cold," He said, cracking a smile, though the empty look never left his eyes. "So, cousin?"

Zhanna was stubborn, unmovable like the frozen earth. Buck couldn't just pick her apart like the snow-covered ground. She didn't want him to win and she didn't want to say. Opening her mouth meant opening up to other things. Other things that were better left locked away with a silver chain and guarded with a rifle.

"Dig the damn foxhole, Buck," Zhanna said.

Alliance or not, Zhanna wasn't ready. To his credit, Buck shut up and dug the foxhole. He didn't bring it up again that day. As the light began to die, she slipped into the foxhole beside him, fingers numbly pulling the thin blanket around them both. She fought to get comfortable in that coffin in the snowy ground, trying to keep thoughts of death and frostbite out of her mind. A sharp pressure on her ribs persisted and, to Buck's grumbled annoyance, she moved again, reaching a hand into her pocket and withdrawing the leatherbound journal.

She hadn't opened its pages since Holland. She hadn't written in its pages since England. It had been one last goodbye, a final wish before the jump into Normandy that she would see her parents again. One final step towards them. There was a page, marked with 1944's Chanukah dates. She had thought she would be home, some distant hope that she would be home. Today, the 18th of December, was the last night. The final candle. That stung more than the wind against her cheeks. It was a smarting, aching pain and it was almost too much.

"Cousin," Zhanna said. "Janusz Sadlowski."

Buck didn't say anything at first. Maybe he had fallen asleep? Maybe he didn't care anymore? But then his voice, muffled by the scarf wrapped tight around his neck and the blanket over his face, cut through the silence of the forest.

"Doesn't sound very Russian," Buck mused.

"No. Polish." Zhanna said. "Like me."

Beside her, Buck lifted the blanket off his face, peeping over the hem to stare at her through the darkness. No one around them spoke, not a sound filling the air. Silent snow fell around them, dusting Zhanna's bare head.

"Right," Buck said softly, as if he understood what that meant. As if he understood how it felt to finally give the piece to her puzzle to the man who had kept her alive. He had been her ally when she was Russian but would he stay loyal when she was Polish? "I'm guessing it wasn't a good family reunion?"

"How did you guess?" Zhanna said.

She shivered. "I hate the cold." Before Buck could crack a joke, she raised her hand to stop him. "I hate the cold because it reminds me of my parents leaving. It was very cold that night."

She looked down at the pages, flipping through them. Weeks, months, years. That's what she had documented in these pages and now they were all void. Hope that hadn't been justified or rewarded. Faith in her parents, in herself, gone. Life wasn't fair. Life was never fair to people like her. Maybe she had power here now, a reputation with the rifle beside her and the friend who was always before her but none of that had done her parents any good.

Don't think, Zhanna murmured to herself. Thinking was her enemy. If she just didn't think about it, just ignored it, maybe it would stop hurting. Ignore the thousands of words that she had written, the pencils she had worn down, and just keep moving. She would keep fighting in this war. Keep pushing. If she made it through the war, if she fulfilled her debt to Sveta, Zhanna would stop. She would step back, like she always did. And then what? What would she do?

Home wasn't in Russia. Home wasn't in Poland. Where would she go? That safe place had been an imaginary destination that was the capstone to her almost realized dream. The dream that didn't have a place in her life anymore.

"How do you find Bastogne?" Buck asked. Zhanna laughed. He was changing the subject for her, letting her forget.

"Cold," She said, her lips chapped and trembling.

"And the snow?" Buck continued.

Zhanna tucked the journal back into her pocket, adjusting its position. It didn't press against her ribs anymore and she could almost forget it was there. Almost.

Burying herself under the thin blanket and against Buck's warmer shoulder, she whispered. "I find the snow white. Very white. And cold."