A/N: Sorry we're a day late this week again! Life is crazier in the summer than any other time for both of us.

...afraid of who I am...

Dick Winters | AdamantiumDragonfly

Dick hadn't slept through the night since they arrived in Bastogne. He was fairly certain the exhaustion was apparent on his face, the only moments of rest he had managed to get were snatches of sleep in broad daylight. At night, he would stare up at where the stars ought to be, his mind too heavy with the men in his care, to close his eyes. They were seventy-five yards ahead of him and the shells shook the earth around him but there wasn't much he could do. Dick was stuck, motionless, yards from the front and he was helpless. He had a less than desirable CO running his company and he was losing fast the people he could trust Easy with.

Buck was gone now, sent from the field hospital to a more permanent position. Dick had made the decision for him, one of the only things he could do for a man who had taken care of Easy in Dick's own absence. Guarnere and Toye were off the field, their return to the fight unlikely, if not inconceivable. NCOs and familiar faces had been paraded by his foxhole, towards the field hospital and Dick didn't think he would see many of them again. Easy knew how to take a beating but Bastogne had taken more than any was prepared to give.

There wasn't anything Dick could do about it. All of the Allies were undergunned and undermanned. They could keep pushing but they were outnumbered and surrounded in this forest. The trees had started to get to Dick, their branches worming their way into his head. He could try to push forward, to keep pressing on for the men. Dick wasn't a betting man but he would have gladly put all his money on Easy. Time and time again, the men he had seen train and grow had shown a courage that he had never known.

His faith in his men didn't help wile away the hours of restless insomnia. These hours of virtual silence and utter boredom would have been an excellent time to write letters but with his penpal sent packing some weeks previously, Dick found he didn't have any words. Anyone he would want to talk to was in a hospital, drunk in a foxhole, or huddled among the debris and snow of the front seventy-five yards away.

It had been different in Holland and Mourmelon. His office had been the gathering place for his friends and fellow officers. This foxhole was very lonely and very small.

It was getting smaller too, as the trees stretched and groaned above him. Arms tight against his chest, hands tucked into his jacket, he cast his eyes to the walls of the dugout. Ice was frosting the sides, prickling his bare face with its cold knives. Bastogne had a way of getting to a soldier. Dick had seen it before, bloody knuckles and dark eyes. Maybe it was starting to get to him too.

These trees were really quite eerie. Forests had a funny way of making it sound like you weren't alone, footsteps echoed and voices whispered. Bastogne had a way of sending minds deep into the snow, somewhere between the fragments of shells and the splintered wood. This foxhole really was quite small and those ice shards were too sharp against his shoulders. The woods told him that there were voices between the naked branches. The forest told him there were soft footsteps scuffling against the snow.

That was more likely. Roe was known to wander between the lines at night. But Roe didn't obscure his footsteps. These feet, though in Army issue boots, managed to sound light against the snow. Maybe the woods were really getting to his head, or maybe there really was someone out there?

There was a usual steady stream of traffic during the day, officers, NCOs, and other battalion envoys darting back and forth between foxhole and HQ but Dick wasn't used to nighttime visitors. They had been known to have German soldiers slip through the lines and Dick had seen how close Foy was to their position, the order for attack on those not so distant buildings was imminent. The steps faltered, pausing for a brief moment just long enough for Dick to question if he had really heard them or not. They started again, stronger than before, stopping before his foxhole.

Ripping away the tarp that did little to block out the cold, Dick found there was no German or a wandering Nixon standing before his foxhole. But a Russian. The Russian that Dick had found occupying his thoughts more often than he dared admit.

Lieutenant Casmirovna hadn't shown her face at CP since the day General MacAuliffe had visited. She had looked worse for wear then, dark circles under her eyes, like she hadn't slept since they had stood apart in that hotel room in Paris, holding onto wine and rank like a lifeline. Before him now stood a shred of Casmirovna, papery skin illuminated in the moonlight. She looked half-dead.

"Captain Winters." Her voice was raw and blood glistened on her lips.

"Lieutenant Casmirovna," Winters said, slowly. He was undeniably confused but more concerned. Casmirovna didn't leave the line unless she needed something. There was no ammunition for her rifle. Buck was gone. She had been close to Muck and Penkala. "Are you alright?"

"I've come for that social call," she said. True to his word, Dick didn't know what to say or do. She was swaying above him, looking as if her knees would give out at any moment.

"Do you want to-" He didn't finish, just reached for her arms and she nearly collapsed in relief.

Dick had seen tired soldiers. He had seen what Bastogne had done to his men. Dick had seen Nixon in his drunken stupor, falling into a heap. But Casmirovna wasn't tired or drunk. She was showing the signs of the shattered soldiers who had been taken apart by the shelling and the fear. Curling in on herself, like an animal protecting her vital organs, Casmirovna was a shell of her former self. Her skin was gaunt and stretched tight over her jutting bones, any softness gone from her face.

She wasn't alright, so Dick didn't ask if she was. He wasn't sure he would have been able to answer the question, if it had been posed to him. Dick wasn't sure why she had stumbled to his foxhole and not Samsonova's, some ten yards the other direction. He offered to wake her comrade but Casmirovna's blue-tipped hand stopped him, trembling against his arm.

"Don't," She shuddered. "My foxhole was too empty,"

Too empty. She had shared with Buck. She had been close to Muck and Penkala. Zhanna Casmirovna had been tied to every man they had lost in those few days. Dick didn't believe in luck but she had been handed a rough lot in life.

"Don't get Sveta," she repeated, though Dick hadn't moved. Her hand was so light on his arm, it felt like she wasn't there at all. A frail ghost of the woman who had stood in the hallway.

She spoke again, as if filling the silence would cement her to this realm of tangible things.

"I'm sorry if I've interrupted you," Zhanna said. "I could go."

She didn't look like she wanted to. Dick didn't want her to. The forest had been getting to his head and the icy sides of the foxhole had been closing in. It wasn't so bad with company, Dick supposed. And he couldn't let her wander back to the front by herself. Easy Company couldn't lose Casmirovna.

"Don't," Dick said. That was much too direct for a superior officer to be speaking to a subordinate. It was too direct and yet, he wanted to forget about the rank. She had held onto it, in Paris.

"So, tell me, Captain Winters," Casmirovna said, shivering in her thin jacket. "Are we winning the war?"

"Hard to say," Dick said. It was the truth and Casmirovna was an officer, even if she forgot. "I'm not going to say our odds are the best."

"I didn't think you were a betting man, sir."

"I'm not."

Silence with Casmirovna beside him was better than silence alone. The wind and cold were still sharp against Dick's prickling face -he really should have shaved this morning- but the trees didn't seem quite so dark. Could it have been the reassurance of the sharpshooter beside him? Dick had seen her make quick work of retreating Germans and her eyes seemed to be calculating the distance and elevation even when her hands were empty. Her excellence in the past didn't seem to matter here, where her fingers were stiff and her shoulders quaking beneath her thin jacket.

"Casmirovna, do you have a coat?" he asked, suddenly.

"I gave it back to Buck," she admitted.

Gave it back. Casmirovna had never had one to begin with and she had returned it to, what had she called Buck? Her ally. Buck had been her ally. Dick's stomach had twisted when he had first heard the term and just recalling it made him feel sick. The Russian pair had been sent to the Airborne knowing only survival and alliances.

Samsonova could play the role of diplomat in her sleep and Casmirovna had been calculating and careful with her trust. She had picked Buck Compton as her ally and it served her well. These women didn't know friendship, except to each other, and Dick couldn't help but wonder if that was the proper definition for their relationship.

"I see," Dick said. He saw a great number of things that, while he was unable to think on now, would be worth a ponder later. He leaned forward, shrugging the thick wool overcoat off his shoulders. "Take mine."

She was already in his foxhole. She had already sought him out. He was her superior but Dick didn't see one of his officers before him. He saw a woman who had lost her family and friends and didn't want to admit how much she was hurting. He would give her his coat.

Casmirovna's eyes were wide and met his eyes with apprehension. She took his coat but, instead of tucking her shivering frame into it, Casmirovna spread it across the two of them, a blanket of sorts. Bridging any gap between them by slithering closer so that their shoulders brushed, she said. "It's not Casmirovna."

Dick's breath froze in his chest, the soft touch of her shoulder was enough for him to feel how very cold she was. He almost didn't register what she had said.

"What?"

"Casmirovna is my patronymic, my father's name," Zhanna said. "My name is Polyakova."

"I see," Dick said, though he really did not. He turned to the side, watching a war wage across her profile. Her eyes were dark and only the moon gave light enough to see by, casting her hair silver. She didn't say anything and Dick didn't have any Vat 69, her preferred truth inducer. Even if he had a whole foot locker of the stuff, he wouldn't have used it. He didn't want to.

Turning away from her battle, Dick looked up at the bare branches above them. Snow and dried leaves had been cast like rain to the forest floor,

"They were Polish," Polyakova said, finally, her voice hoarse. "They were on the wrong side of the new border."

"You still had family in Poland," Dick surmised. "Your cousin, Sadlowski."

Polyakova nodded. "We made the best of it." her eyes flashed in some kind of sharp pain, her thoughts didn't need to be voiced for Dick to understand the sentiment. We always do.

The men of Easy were known to complain. Dick couldn't say he had heard Polyakova say a word that could be taken as frustration, not in Benning, not when thrown into kitchen duty by Sobel, and not now. She didn't say a word against their situation, almost as if she couldn't.

We make the best of it.

"They died in '41?"

The pain was fresh on her face, though she had lost them some four years previously, but she nodded. Nodding seemed to be the only movement she could make, so Polyakova did so vigorously.

"Germans don't like Poles now, and the Russians didn't like us then," Polyakova murmured. She didn't look angry or hurt. She had come to terms with this truth a long time ago, something Dick could never imagine. Perhaps she had taken Sobel and Dike's reception in stride because it wasn't the first time she had faced a similar reaction?

"Did Buck know?"

"Yes."

Of course Buck knew. Of course Nixon would have guessed. Dick felt foolish for not putting it together himself. He couldn't have known and Zhanna, no, Polyakova, had worked hard to make sure that no one knew. Samsonova would know. Buck knew. Nixon would have known. And now Dick knew. Though he was the last to discover this piece to the Polyakova puzzle, he didn't feel like he had lost the race. In this foxhole with a blanket binding them together tighter than any alliance could, Dick didn't have to ask. Zhanna Casmirovna Polyakova had told him of her own accord.

"How did two Polish immigrants meet the Samsonovs," Dick asked.

Svetlana's family reputation preceded her and Zhanna knew it well, flashing deep in her eyes. She always stayed a step behind Sveta, declined a promotion so that she would be a step behind Sveta in everything she did. Zhanna Polyakova would have made an excellent officer but she never chose to be one.

"They didn't," Zhanna said. "My parents returned to Poland in '38."

"Without you?"

"Without me."

It hung in the air, tense and obsolete. Without Zhanna. Just as she was without an ally and friend.

"I'm a good Russian, Winters," Zhanna said. Was that a smile in her voice? Her lips didn't show it but her tone sounded too light to be anything but a smirk. "I fooled you, didn't I?"

"You fooled everyone," Dick said. "Maybe not Nix,"

"Who could ever fool Captain Nixon," Zhanna smirked wryly. She had shivered since Dick had helped her into the foxhole but she began to slow her body's quaking. "I managed to fool everyone. It's easy to do that if you don't want to die."

She said it so carelessly, her body slowing the shaking of her shoulders as if soothed by the familiar idea. Zhanna was used to death breathing down her neck. She had faced Normandy and Market Garden without a change in face. Zhanna was used to it and it made Dick feel sick.

He hated to admit that he had underestimated her, at first glance. Back in Benning, when that little blonde girl in a Russian uniform had cowered before him, Dick hadn't thought for one second that this was the Great Zhanna Casmirovna that had thirty field kills in thirty-one days. He had placed all of his eggs in Svetlana's basket. She seemed to hold the power in the pair. But as Zhanna had started to thaw and her eyes turned from frightened animal to a calculating predator, Dick had realized his mistake.

"Am I winning the war, Captain?" Polyakova asked, her shaking had finally ceased and DIck felt her relax against his shoulder. "I just have to outlast this godforsaken forest, right?"

Zhanna had a different kind of power, to be sure. She had a strength that was unlike anything he had ever seen. She had been left on her own at fourteen, dancing with death before she had brushed adulthood. Her achievements as a sniper could only further his admiration. She wasn't bright and fiery, like Svetlana was known to be, all power and oozing charisma when she wanted to. Dick could finally appreciate Zhanna's cool and calm front. It would be easy to be angry at her past but she didn't seem to be furious, just a little shaken. She was extraordinary. Dick wished he had seen it sooner. Before Polyakova was shattered in the snow, before her frozen feet had followed a lonely path to his foxhole out of desperation.

"You are turning the tide, Polyakova," Dick wasn't a betting man but he would put all his money on Zhanna, in future. "You've stepped up. You'll make it out of this forest."

"Polyakova, Casmirovna," She murmured her names in the cold air, breath clouding around her lips. The names seemed to lose their power in Bastogne. Everything lost power in Bastogne.

"You'll make it out," Dick repeated. Maybe he was saying it to himself too? He would make it out. Polyakova would make it out, too.

"You can call me Zhanna," She muttered, her words barely intelligible. Barely discernible from the creak and moan of the forest around them. He looked at her, in the barely illuminating moonlight, squinting for any sign of joke or lie. This forest was messing with his mind.

"Here," she said. In Bastogne. In this forest. In this foxhole. Here. "You can call me Zhanna here."