A/N: Haha UNSC-Saratoga, your wish has been granted. We've got Zhanna's D-Day for you all today.

...never so alive...

Zhanna | AdamantiumDragonfly

Instinct took control of her mind somewhere over the English channel. Not long after they were loaded into the planes and the engines started to roar, Zhanna's trembling fingers and anxious thoughts were replaced with a freezing calm. Cold water pouring over her spine, numbing chills splintering down her back. She didn't think, she didn't even comprehend. Not when the air sickness pills started to twist her stomach in knots. Not when the bullets started to fly and most certainly not when she was pushed out of the plane by Buck, throwing her into the air.

Her fingers worked the webbing like it was her sniper rifle. Familiar and comforting, she deployed the parachute like she would a bullet. Quick, painless, numb. The wind whipped her cheeks. Zhanna's heart pounded but it was adrenaline not fear. There were bullets and explosions and planes falling out of the sky but Zhanna glided toward the dark ground like a leaf in the early days of fall. She didn't notice the men around her, hanging limply in the harness.

She didn't notice when her leg bag, that had been the largest amount of weight to her downward course, was split by a stray bullet and plummeted to the ground. Zhanna did feel the jerk upwards, the sudden lightening of the load. Like her necklace. She had thrown her necklace away and now she was throwing her rifle away. A piece of Zhanna floating away from her.

She slipped between two trees, their shadows casting thin lines across her fingers as they struggled with the effort of removing the harness. Ripping it free, the silk glided away among the underbrush, caught by the breeze. It was a silvery ghost, dancing farther and farther from view before disappearing and leaving Zhanna now quite alone. Zhanna's legs were weak, clearly not understanding that she was numb. She wouldn't have noticed if they weren't shaking so much.

Leaning heavily on a tree, she took several trembling breaths. Her numb lungs didn't want to cooperate but she forced them to take in gasping gulps of smoky air. It felt as if she hadn't taken a full breath in weeks. Perhaps not since she had arrived in England. There had been too much fear, too many things on her mind that were requiring her full attention. Sleeping, and it seemed, breathing had taken a back seat.

Part of the worry that had kept her on edge was this mission, this operation, this day of days. It had been so long in coming that the flight from plane to occupied ground had felt so short. Zhanna glanced around the woods, for the first time taking in her surroundings. She was in a sparse corner of a forest, sliding into its undergrowth by way of a neighboring field. It was more open than she would have liked, providing little shelter and Zhanna could see the bursts of light from what could only be German armaments. The ground shook with the booming of shells. Anti-Aircraft guns that were surely mounted and positioned at the incoming Allied planes.

That was her mission, taking out AA guns with the help of the mortar squad and Lieutenant. Compton. But Compton was nowhere to be found and this wasn't her landing zone. She had spent several hours studying the sand tables with Sveta and this didn't seem right. She was supposed to land near a town but there seemed to be only farmland all around. Zhanna didn't recognize a river from the sand tables yet a river flowed. Wherever she was, Zhanna had to meet up with Easy and she had to find a weapon. Without either, she couldn't complete her mission and she couldn't go home.

Her body was still functioning in the numbly brutal instinct. Zhanna knew she couldn't stay here, where the trees provided limited shelter and where she had no weapon. Survival trumped stability and while she had landed here and knew that it was safe for now, the clattering of guns and the shells bursting in the sky could shift from a distant problem to a serious reality in only a matter of moments. Best to keep moving.

She wandered, almost undisturbed for several hours. Zhanna's heart fell into time with the machine guns, the same hammering beat. Her fingers began to lose feeling but she didn't notice. It was hard to notice little things like that when her American boots trod on French soil, walking a path that could lead her into German arms. She didn't feel the fatigue that her mind told her she should. How could Zhanna be tired when she wandered enemy territory?

Zhanna only encountered German soldiers once, on a path between two pastures, and they never saw her. She had slipped into the bushline, slipping down a hidden bank and her feet oozing into a stream. Zhanna let her body ease into the water, hidden by the shadows of the trees that hung lazily over the surface, and watched the men pass her, completely unaware of her hiding spot. She waded through the stream for several miles, until the sun had risen slightly, tinging the sky a soft pink and her body had started to sag.

Enemy territory or not, she was exhausted. She didn't have a canteen, it had been lost in the fall, and she knew she couldn't stop to rest. Zhanna had no map and nothing but an innate sense of direction and orders. She followed the course of the stream and then, later, the dried up ditch bank. She passed, with the sun rising higher in the sky, still burning wreckage of aircraft and the flapping silk ghosts of lost parachutes. It was eerie, to think that Zhanna could have been in that smoldering plane. That Zhanna could have been wrapped up in her parachute, dragged until dead, or worse, found immediately. There would be no hope, in the state she was in.

She had been hoping, praying, that she would find her weapon. That rifle that had been her good luck charm and her survival tool but, as the sun fell into place overhead and Zhanna's feet had found purchase on the rough grass of the Normandy countryside, who ever heard her prayers didn't see fit to provide a rifle. The river of life had been pulling her lazily along, gently tugging her toward its course, but it had begun to twist now. Like the pieces of lost parachutes, something blew into her path.

Zhanna hadn't seen an American since she landed. The one who had stumbled across her path seemed to be as numb as she was. Zhanna froze, the fenceline shady but no real cover provided. The paratrooper, his screaming eagle patch apparent even from the distance settled the immediate fight or flight response. This was a potential ally. His hair was as blinding white as Buck's but this man, no, this boy, wasn't as large or intimidating as her friend was. This paratrooper seemed young, around the same age of Zhanna herself, and very very confused.

"Trooper?" She hissed. Her voice was dry and cracked from lack of use. She hadn't spoken in nearly twelve hours and it showed. "Trooper?"

Once repeated, the boy turned. "What?"

"Outfit?" She remained wary. Easy had found it hard to trust a woman. If any other company found her in the dropzone, Zhanna didn't think they would react well. A soldier could not appreciate a Russian woman being senior in rank. So much could go wrong in these next few breaths. Zhanna wished she was more diplomatic, like Sveta.

"Easy Company," He stammered, stumbling through the grass towards her like a deer who had just found the use of its legs. "Private Blithe."

There had been so many faces, so many names. Zhanna had never bothered to learn them all but there was a rush of knowing that this boy, Blithe, was a familiar company. She had found a member of Easy, now she just had to find the rest of them.

"Where are the rest of your squad?" Zhanna asked. It felt strange to be the commanding officer in a situation. Winters or Sveta or Buck had always been there, a shadow to hide in. But Zhanna was out in the glaring sun and the only officer in sight. Out of luck, it seemed.

"I can't remember," He looked as if he would be sick. Blithe's whole body swayed and Zhanna stood quickly, shoring him upright with a steadying arm.

"Blithe, do you know where we are?" Her accent seemed heavier, when she needed it to disappear.

Blithe shook his head. Zhanna nodded grimly. Back to square one, it seemed. Zhanna had only her self-assigned path, though she wasn't alone anymore.

"Blithe," She kept using his name, trying to anchor him to this field. His eyes seemed a thousand miles away and Zhanna couldn't have a soldier with a head in the clouds. "We are going to get out of this together."

"Yes ma'am."

She had managed to keep the instinct and adrenaline until the sun had started to rise. Once the sky was bright and the shadows had faded, Zhanna was out in the open and the faux courage provided by the pounding heart and numb hands had begun to dissipate, like the morning fog. She started to feel her toes again, damp inside her jump boots, her legs were still trembling but it was from exhaustion not pent up energy. Blithe was completely oblivious to her stumbling steps and clouded mind. She had to ground herself but there was no silver chain around her neck to pull on. Zhanna had left it in England, along with her courage.

Blithe followed Zhanna through the trees and over a bluff to a large expanse of field, where the wreckage of a plane was still smoking and a large group of soldiers were gathering. They milled about, trying to find friends or platoons. It seemed to be several companies, intermingling and banding together. They seemed to think strength was in numbers but they also drew strength from their fallen comrades, picking through belongings and trading personal effects.

Zhanna watched as two soldiers picked through a fallen paratrooper's pockets, his body hardly cold.

"He can't use it," one of them, a sergeant, said, when he caught Zhanna watching him pocket the grenade.

It was true but sickening. Zhanna had been to war before but it had been a solitary fight. Several hundred kilometers apart, staring through scopes, and firing one or two shots. Zhanna never had to see the aftermath. She didn't say anything, just kept walking, scanning the crowd for familiar faces. Staying in this large group that could be easily targeted didn't sit well with her, unsettling her more than the pilfering of dead soldiers.

"Do you recognize anyone?" she asked Blithe, as he had a more active role in Easy. Maybe he knew one or two faces that she didn't. But Blithe shook his head. He had fallen quiet during their walk, retreating deeper into his mind.

Zhanna glanced around the crowd again, ready to call it a loss and continue inland till her eyes fell on, not a familiar face, but a familiar sight nonetheless. Smooth wood. Shining metal polished carefully, if not obsessively. She had spent hours taking apart that gun and she could recognize it anywhere.

"Where the fuck did you get that?" Zhanna didn't think twice about marching up to the paratrooper who held her pride and joy in his grubby hands. Just as before, she was met with hostility.

"Found it in a leg bag in a flooded field," The paratrooper's red hair was turned to fire in the sun but Zhanna didn't need flames to make this man feel her anger; her cold stare would be enough.

"It belongs to me now. I fucking found it-" He didn't have a chance to finish. Her fist wasn't ice, for it didn't shatter when it made contact with his face but her cool fury was. Zhanna didn't have a temper but she would take back what was rightfully hers.

She snatched the rifle from his grasp and hissed. "You are speaking to an officer,"

The strap settled comfortably on her shoulder, falling right into place. Zhanna let out a breath she had been holding since the early morning hours, when she first landed in that little copse of trees at the edge of the field. She hadn't cleaned the Mosin-Nagant rifle since she had left England and the leg bag's path to the landing zone hadn't been an easy one. The wood of the rifle was slightly chipped, pieces shaved off that had been whole before. Zhanna ran her hands over the metal that was damp and muddied, one of the few prized possessions she could still touch. The weight of her little leather bound journal was heavy against her breast but this rifle would serve her better than a pen and paper.

Turning to Blithe she said, "Come along Private."

They wandered through Normandy, resting for a few hours in a ditch bank before continuing on. Zhanna didn't know where she was going, neither did Blithe but Zhanna didn't want to stop. If her feet stopped moving and her mind was allowed to begin to twist, she would plummet into a pit of fear and apprehension at her actions and her survival. Zhanna didn't need to worry about her parents, their homeland off in the horizon. She didn't need to fret over the Germans, not now that her sniper training could be put to use with her trusted rifle.

Hunger settling in, their K rations had been lost or long since devoured, Zhanna couldn't help but grow a little worried. A little concerned.

Passing through the wreckage of American planes became a common sight and a morbid sign of hope. That meant that there might have been survivors and more of a chance that they would be reunited with Easy company. Parachutes waved like mourning cloths, fluttering from where they were caught on trees and powerlines.

When Zhanna had lived in Stalingrad, in the weeks before her parents had fled the city, they had watched the NKVD slowly progress their purge of Poles from the city. They left houses empty and lives scattered while the curtains fluttered through broken windows. Zhanna's feet stopped of their own accord, ignoring any sense as her mind recognized the flapping fabric in the wind. The broken glass crunched under her boots. The parachutes flapped like the curtains, marking a lost soul. She stared up at the ripped silk, stained with mud and smoke, peppered in bullet holes. A man dangled from the harness. His body lay very still.

Agata had always paused at the door of one such abandoned home, knowing that death or displacement had stained the very walls. Her soft words echoed in Zhanna's ear and she repeated them aloud, almost a whisper. "Baruch dayan ha'emet,"

Life gave and Life took. The waters kept rushing, the current kept stirring, and what was meant to be, happened. Zhanna couldn't have saved this paratrooper but there was something in his lifeless form that unsettled her. She blinked, almost sure she had seen blond hair peeking under the helmet, not black.

Zhanna's knees gave out and she fell into the tall grass. For the first time since she had landed in Normandy, she allowed herself to sit and rest. She allowed the fears to fall into her mind. Poland was on this continent. She was back in the Eastern half of the world for the first time in nearly a year. Every danger she had faced before had increased tenfold. Her parents, no matter how she wished it, could be imprisoned or dead. Zhanna could follow if she wasn't careful. But caution didn't matter, not in a battleground. There were still sounds of guns firing not far off and accompanying shouts of pain. Zhanna didn't want to face that but she had to.

A voice cut through the clamor of war, one of familiarity. It's usual taunting tone was replaced with a sound of genuine concern. "Lieutenant?"

Floyd Talbert hadn't expressed any sympathy for Zhanna in the year she had known him but battle had changed him, it seemed.

"Do you need a minute?" He looked down at her, hand outstretched, and she accepted.

"I'm fine, Talbert," She said, dusting off her fatigues and shouldering her rifle. "It's been a long day."

"Day?" Talbert's brow furrowed. "Lieutenant Casmirovna, we landed two days ago."

Zhanna had spent two days wandering enemy territory and she hadn't known. Time had been elusive. In what she thought had been hours it turned out to be days. Days spent in solitude or in deathly quiet company. She glanced around the field, wandering if she had missed anything else in that time. Talbert hadn't found her alone. Shifty Powers squinted in the sunlight and Smokey Gordon adjusted the bulky gun on his shoulder.

"He looks familiar," Talbert gestured at her companion. "First platoon, right?"

"Blithe," Zhanna supplied. "We've been trying to find Easy."

"Join the club," He faltered, remembering she was an officer, even if she was Russian and a woman. "Ma'am," He added, covering his mistake.

Zhanna glanced around at the paratroopers she had brushed elbows with at Fort Benning and Camp Mackall. An unspoken allegiance had formed, not unlike the one she had made with Buck. A company of necessity and mutual benefit. They were all looking for Easy. Zhanna was tired of running around in circles. Without a word crossing their lips, a deal was struck.

They didn't have long to go. Amidst shouts and gunshots, they crossed into the limit of a war torn city, filled with American soldiers and rubble. Men relaxed against an obelisk monumenting the Great War, a battle that was fought only a few decades before. These streets had seen bloodshed before but these men had not. They were exhausted, half-asleep and covered in an assortment of stains, ranging in mud to blood.

Talbert exclaimed his excitement and joked that they had been looking all over for them. Their reception was warm, quickly turning into a parade of spoils and prizes looted from Germans. While Talbert, Powers, and Gordon blended in with their comrades, Zhanna's feet continued through the streets until she caught a glimpse of the tall blond form of her greatest ally.

He was in deep conversation with Winters and a dark-headed woman that Zhanna immediately recognized as Sveta. Zhanna had to suppress a cry of relief. She hadn't been so relieved to see anyone in her life. Her feet couldn't take her fast enough. Buck caught her approaching and his face broke into a wide grin. As grease-stained as he was his smile was still blinding.

"Zhanna," He said, as she slid into their conference, Winters giving a quick nod, muttering that he was glad she was alright. Sveta gave Zhanna a smile but then shot a glare at Buck for his use of her given name. "Glad you could join us."

"Are you alright?" Sveta murmured, slipping into Russian.

"Spent the better part of two days in a ditch but I'm fine." Zhanna answered in English, earning her a strange look.

"You didn't see Meehan, did you?" Buck asked, bumping her gently with his shoulder. It was a light touch but Zhanna was so exhausted she almost lost her balance. Winters shot out a hand to steady her.

"I did not," Zhanna admitted. "He is not back yet?"

Winters shook his head no. He had released her quickly, as if scorched by the touch. He seemed on edge, more than just being aware.

"So you are company commander?" Zhanna asked.

"Until he gets back."

Sveta and Zhanna exchanged a glance, no native tongue needed to know that Meehan wouldn't be coming back and they were staring at their new company commander. Zhanna didn't disapprove of fate's choice, in fact she supported it. Winters knew that orders were to be followed but he understood the truth that Zhanna had shared. He didn't seem to believe in the blind faith of the military.

"So what now?" Zhanna asked. She had made it back to Easy, she had succeeded with this first part of her mission. Zhanna needed to finish this little trip with the Americans so she could go home.

"We're taking Carentan," Winters explained. "It's the only place where troops from Omaha and Utah can head inland. If we don't control Carentan, we can't proceed. The whole division is being sent," he continued. Motioning to Zhanna, he said. "You and Compton take 2nd platoon. Samsonova, you're with Welsh in 1st. We are following Fox Company."

Zhanna followed her friends to find their respective platoons. She paused, urging Buck to go ahead and find 2nd, promising to be there shortly. Alone with Sveta, she didn't have to speak Russian but it felt calming to slip back into the language. Not her native tongue but still familiar.

"How was your jump?"

"Landed with Speirs. Took a couple of German guns." Sveta's brow furrowed as she looked Zhanna up and down. "You were gone a long time."

"Lost my rifle," she admitted. "I had to get it back from some sergeant in Dog Company."

"Are you alright?" Sveta asked.

"I'm fine," Zhanna said.

"Compton called you Zhanna." Her eyes narrowed. The only person in Russia who called Zhanna by her given name had been Sveta and it had been so in America for so long that they both had grown used to it. A private side of her that no one dared utter. But Zhanna had let Buck into that side. Sveta would have to get used to it.

"I told him he could," she said simply.

"I was worried about you," Sveta started to change the subject but Buck, who had joined up with their platoons, called.

"Lieutenants! They're falling out."

"Let's just get this over with," Zhanna urged. "Sooner we finish-"

Sveta nodded. "Sooner we can go home."

Zhanna squeezed her hand before they parted, both going their separate ways. The touch was enough to communicate what their words didn't have time to. Zhanna was still by her friend's side, and on a more bittersweet note, she still knew what Sveta had done for her. What Veronika had done. The burden had been too much to bear and Zhanna had to relieve the weight with the loss of her silver charm. While Buck had become her ally, Sveta had been her savior and Zhanna could never forget that.

As her feet fell into the painful but familiar rhythm of the march, Zhanna's mind wandered to Meehan. Every wreckage of a plane she passed could have been his final resting place. Every silk parachute could have been his funeral shroud. Whispering so quietly, that not even Buck, whose arm brushed against her shoulder as they walked, her words were lost in the rustle of canvas and the hammering of machine guns.

"Baruch dayan ha'emet."