A/N: Thanks for all the support! We're nearing the end of part 4, guys!
...a past to bury...
Svetlana | Silmarilz1701
Haguenau looked worse than Bastogne. Sveta hadn't thought that possible. But where Bastogne had fresh blankets of snow amidst the terrifying straight rows of mist-hidden trees, the snow in Haguenau had turned to brown slush. Trucks and tanks that had rolled through for days had torn up the ground, turning the roads into mud-filled traps. The men had gotten into place quickly. Sveta wondered if they were as eager to ignore the decrepit surroundings as she was.
They had several outposts. Zhanna took it upon herself to stick with Second Platoon. They had no Platoon Leader and though Zhanna couldn't fill that role, she and Malarkey seemed to have become even better friends since Muck and Penkala's unfortunate demise. Most of the officers other than Zhanna had taken over one of the large mansions in the town. Sveta hated it.
As soon as she walked in the door, Sveta had been hit by a wave of memories. The broken crystal chandelier, wide windows, the once-beautiful couches all flooded her senses, reminding her of better days in Russia. Good days. Days when she'd played hide and seek with her governess Maria, or when her tutors made sure she could recite Lenin's speeches. Her heart hurt as she had turned from the open room.
Sveta stood at a window in one of the upstairs bedrooms. It must've been a child's room, the bedframe barely fitting her and three dirty stuffed bunnies lying on a broken dresser. The mirror above the vanity had cracked, glass shattered on the floor. She left it alone.
She could see where the showers had been set up. While she wanted nothing more than to clean the grime out of her hair, Sveta would never go anywhere near a shared shower when she could avoid it. Not without Zhanna to help stand guard. She knew Zhanna wouldn't hesitate to shoot anyone who disturbed her. But Zhanna was preoccupied, and she knew and cared enough not to bother her.
The pale grey sky had an impenetrable layer of clouds obscuring any sunlight. She missed Harry. With a tiny smile, she looked down at the guys meandering about, drying hair with towels and chatting. Not without care, but they looked more at ease than she remembered them. Less stressed, but more angry.
Sveta sighed. She knew how they felt. None of them had taken the news of redeployment well. They felt unseen, unheard, unrepresented. They felt caged, trapped in the wills of those playing a game with their lives. Now that they'd left behind the fear, they'd fallen into the anger.
At least anger kept them warm. Footsteps on the creaky wooden stairs pulled her out of her musings. Sveta turned. Two knocks on the partially open door, and then Doc Spina walked in. "Captain?"
Sveta offered him a small smile, finishing taking the braids out of her hair. "Come in. What do you need, Spina?"
"Captain Speirs sent me up. He said you were complaining about your knee?" He walked in, his medic bag at his side. "Still hurts?"
She sighed. But Sveta nodded, moving to sit on the edge of the bed. "Yeah. Got anything for it?"
"I'm sure I got something," he told her. "You should wrap it too, and stay off it." When he looked up from going through his bag, he grinned. "Though I don't know how much you're gonna be able to do that."
"Are you implying I can't let other people be in command," she asked. Sveta tried to keep her voice level, but she couldn't help the tiny smirk.
He just laughed, putting his hands up. "You said it, not me, Captain. Here." He pushed a couple of pills into her hand and then told her to lift her pant leg so he could wrap it. Then his smile fell as they were quiet.
"How are you doing, Spina?" she asked.
He looked up. "What?"
Sveta sighed. She worried about them, Spina, and Roe, and the other medics. She knew what was said about her, fondly now compared to the jeers and anger of years before. But it was the same then, that she was cold, and intimidating, and wouldn't know how to take a joke if it hit her in the face. That wasn't true. She cared about the men. She cared that they suffered and though at first it had been rewarding in some way to see them in the same pain she'd existed for a decade and a half, that had worn off. Now she saw in them friends, not enemies.
"You and Roe."
Spina shrugged, tightening the wrap that would keep her knee steady. His shoulders hunched. Finally he just stood back up. "I'm sick 'a this damn war."
He didn't need to say more. Sveta didn't press him. She just nodded. None of them wanted to be there. Even she wanted to leave now, though she counted herself lucky that at least if she had to keep fighting she could keep fighting with the Western allies and not the Soviets.
"There." Spina stood back up. "Keep off it as best you can. We ain't got a ton of that wrap right now, not until we get resupplied."
"Thank you." She offered him a small smile. "Go get some rest."
He laughed. Like any of them could get rest. But he nodded and gave her a little wave to assure her he'd do what she said before ducking back out into the hall. In the silence, Sveta stayed on the bed.
She didn't know how long had passed when someone else knocked on the door. It was already mostly open, and she glanced up. Luz stood in the door and offered a small salute when she looked up. She waved him off. "What do you need, Luz?"
"Captain Winters was looking for yah," he told her. No smile, just exhaustion. He sighed. "Wants to discuss the patrol I think."
Sveta nodded. "Where is he?"
"Heading back from the CP."
She stood up, and offered him another quick nod. "Thank you." She followed him out into the hall and down the stairs. No one was in the Battalion CP's main floor, no one of consequence anyways. She could hear Vest talking to a few other men in a side room. Lipton had gone to bed. Sveta wondered if Ron had gone with Dick to the briefing.
As Sveta stepped out into the cold, she thanked the universe that they'd finally gotten winter clothing. The fur collar of her coat reminded her a bit more of home. But the pleasant part of home, the part of home that she missed. Quiet days with her mother walking around Moscow or Leningrad.
The slush squished beneath her boots as she made her way through the town toward the CP. As she approached them, she found Ron with Dick, the new Lieutenant Jones, and Sergeant Martin away from the men. She moved over to them.
"Get it done," Dick said, finishing his discussion with Jones and Martin. They left, both offering salutes to her as she filled in their spots. Dick turned to her. "How's your knee?"
Sveta rolled her eyes. She shot Ron a quick glare; evidently he'd told the entire universe about her current injury. "Hurts, but it's manageable. Did you replace Malarkey with Martin then?"
Ron and Dick both nodded. The former gestured to the CP. "Malarkey needs the rest. And Webster generously agreed to go instead of Liebgott as translator."
She could see his smirk. Webster never volunteered for anything; that was his way. A competent soldier, but he made it known how much he didn't want to be fighting this war. Sveta ignored him.
"I want you in one of the windows overlooking the river tonight," Dick said. He cut her off before she could make any snide comment about Webster, eager to get the job done. "I'll leave Luz with you. Keep an eye on the bank and make progress reports."
She nodded. It didn't take long for them to split up again. Ron and Dick had to go speak to the machine gunners they wanted on the banks. As the sun began to set, the twilight settling a yellow-grey tone on the world, she moved to the sandbags that lined the river.
That's all they had to do. Cross the river. But they had to do so much more than that. They had to leave behind fear and anger and anything that could distract them from the mission. It made her pause.
She hadn't figured out how to ask Colonel Sink for asylum. She needed to get proof of her mistreatment in Russia, and if she couldn't even say the name of Beria out loud, it'd be hopeless. But fear kept her warm, anger kept her warm. Some part of her couldn't find a way to abandon what had been her only companion for a decade.
She took a drink. The whiskey coated her mouth and throat. Some part of her knew she needed to ease up on the alcohol, too. She'd done well through Bastogne. The first few days had been terrible headaches as she lost her source, but now she could go without for quite a while. She felt more in control. But she missed it, too. The numbness.
Footsteps pulled her attention from the still river. Sveta turned her head. Nixon moved over, sipping at his flask. He looked a bit less melancholy than he'd been in Rachamps and the days following. She looked at him, taking in his unshaven face and brown eyes all the way down to the way he shuffled his feet to stand level with her. Sveta didn't speak.
"Heard a rumor," he told her. "A crazy soviet standing on the edge of the river without a helmet on."
Sveta snorted. It was true; she'd taken her helmet off and set it on a stack of crates to her right. She'd been trying to get the knots out of her hair. "Is that all you heard?"
He shrugged. "Figured it was true." Silence fell between them again, just the sounds of each raising their drinks to their lips. After a minute, Nixon turned back to her. "Not going to yell at me for sneaking up on you this time?"
"No." She continued to stare out across the river. Nixon didn't scare her anymore, not when she had other things to worry about. He wasn't NKVD. He liked puzzles. Sveta didn't enjoy being a puzzle, but he had earned quite a bit of respect in the way he'd handled himself in Bastogne. She turned to him. "I'll admit, you did better than I would've guessed in the Ardennes, Nixon."
"Is that a compliment?" He started to smirk, giving a tiny laugh as he took another drink. "Wouldn't have expected that."
"I don't enjoy being wrong," she said. The words caught in her throat for a moment, but she continued, "but I underestimated your abilities."
Nixon nodded. "Yeah, well. First time for everything."
She watched him take another drink. He'd been doing it more, as far as she could tell. She rarely saw him without his flask. It made her pause. Then she took her own drink, letting the whiskey comfort her. She frowned.
"You run out of what I got you already?" Nixon asked.
She turned to him. "No. I've been trying to cut back," Sveta admitted. She saw the way he straightened up, frowning, and then turned to look out over the river. After a moment, she continued on. "Bad things happen when I drink too much."
"I heard about Aldbourne," he agreed. "Happens to the best of us."
Sveta let out a sharp laugh. "Thank you for that, but no. I drank too much. That's the end of that. It's one thing to drink like that in a house in Stalingrad where no one is relying on me, but in combat, it's not acceptable."
"Yeah." He frowned, looking out at the setting sun. "Well. Father issues, I suppose," he tried to joke.
Sveta frowned as well. She still regretted telling them about her father, way back in Camp Mackall. She'd hoped he'd forget, but occasionally Nixon would make comments that assured her he hadn't. The drinking came from more than the fact that she had to kiss the man who helped commit genocide and sealed the her mother's death warrant. She could never tell him, though. She could never explain that the name Beria, which she had so foolishly mentioned in passing on that day in North Carolina, guided her every move.
"Since you haven't yelled at me yet, I have a question," Nixon said.
Sveta turned to him. "I may not answer it."
"Oh it wouldn't be worth asking if I knew you'd be honest," he joked. Nixon moved forward, leaning against the sandbag wall. After a quick sip, he pointed at her. "You and Speirs seem to get along well."
"That's not a question, Nixon," she said. Sveta felt herself clam up, not wanting to go down this trail with him.
"Usually you enjoy the subtext, Svetlana. Fine," he said. "Why the hell do you trust that man and no one else?"
Sveta shrugged. She also took a drink, looking past Nixon, silhouetted against the still pale, though darkening, sky. Why Ron? Because he saw her. Because he looked at her like she was the only thing worth seeing in the entire world. Sveta felt heat rising to her cheeks. She took a long drink.
"Uh oh," Nixon said, laughing.
Sveta glared at him. "Drinking is nothing new for me, Captain." But she tried to force down the anger and the heat. Force it away. "Why do I trust him? Because he trusted me, Nixon. He didn't try to turn my pain into a goddamn puzzle."
That made him pause. She watched as he seemed genuinely apologetic. But it faded, and he forced back the mask of nonchalance she had come to know he wore like a master. Nixon shrugged. "Listen, I had a job to watch you two."
"It went beyond a job, and you know it," Sveta snapped at him. But she took a breath. She would never consider Nixon a good friend, but he had proved himself a loyal and worthy comrade to have on her side. He'd supported her with Sink after Foy, when he'd wanted to reprimand her for her breach of protocols. He'd complimented her inventiveness during the siege.
So she just sighed. "I don't like to speak of Russia, Nixon. It's not easy for me. There are things I'm not proud to be a part of there that go with me everywhere. I can't get away from my duty to Stalin. Not easily," she amended, still thinking of the ways she wanted to ask for asylum. The sun had almost gone down, and she could barely see his shadowed face. "I do what I do for love of the Motherland, and for love of my mother."
Everything. Her duty, her planned flight from Stalin, all for her people. Her people didn't need Stalin. There were other men worthy of ruling Russia. She'd never known the Romanovs, and heard only horrible things from Stalin and Beria and her father. But the way the people sometimes whispered words of Anastasia Romanova's survival, or of the way political infighting was common, she knew in her heart there had to be a better way. She, and Lana Stalina, and Vasily Stalin could not be doomed to a life of subjugation to men who lied and cheated and raped their way to power.
If she left, maybe she could help bring back glory to the Motherland. And she would ensure that her mother hadn't died of her own hand years before her own daughter would follow suit. The Russian people had strength that their leaders could not quell. She remembered the stories of the Attack of the Dead Men of Osowiec Fortress. 8,000 Germans could not defeat the 100 bleeding, nearly dead, poisoned Russians. They had fought to the last breath. She would do that. She would help her country, but she had to leave to do it.
"Patrol's in about six hours," Nixon reminded her. "Dick wants you up high, with eyes on the water."
She nodded. "I know."
He nodded right back at her. After tipping his flask at her, Nixon moved off back into the town. Darkness fell around them. With a last look at the rippling waves, Sveta sighed. She turned away. As Sveta put her helmet on and heard the squelching of steadily freezing slush under her boots, she lit a cigarette. She had just a few more hours to go.