...the last one you ever betray...

Svetlana | Silmarilz1701


1900 Hours


The entire day that Sveta had spent at Regimental, she'd wanted nothing more than to get back to Battalion. A raging storm of anger and hurt and fear had fueled the words she'd thrown at Zhanna just the day before. Despite her fury at the Americans and her irritation with the way Zhanna had betrayed her in Mourmelon-le-Grand, she regretted her words. But Zhanna had left.

Nixon had taken her to jump with 82nd. As Sveta took another long drink from her canteen, the last of her schnapps from Regimental, she felt herself tensing. Nixon. He'd done it just to spite her. Her furied anger at Zhanna hadn't gone unnoticed.

Of course it hadn't. They loved Zhanna. She was small, and cute, and blonde with blue eyes. She was quiet and smiled.

Sveta wasn't. Sveta was a force. Her words carried weight, and she could use them to her advantage. She didn't stay quiet. And Zhanna had made sure that they all knew of her family's dark connections.

They may have cleared her of charges in Mourmelon, but trust shattered couldn't be repaired so easily. The jeep stopped as the sun set. Dinnertime had passed and she'd had little to eat, but she wanted to see Zhanna. She needed to see her, to apologize. Sveta didn't like to apologize, but it hadn't been her the previous night.

Well, it had been her. But puppets danced the way their masters wanted them to. She stopped breathing, staring at the walls of HQ. She couldn't forget the spy. She couldn't forget that somewhere, someone still lurked in her shadow trying to destroy her. Trying to lure her to Beria. The note had been gone when she'd returned to her room to pocket it after her panic. Someone had removed it, removed the evidence and left the roses.

"Time to come home, Svetochka."

She felt a cold chill creep from her hands to her chest. Beria was here. He was here, and Sveta had let him pull her strings. Zhanna had paid the price of her fear. Voices to her right pulled her attention away. She heard Liebgott chatting with Grant in front of a camera as the sun went down, flirting with the blonde woman if she had to guess. Such normalcy. If only they knew. If only they cared.

When she walked inside, she found it busy with enlisted. None of the officers were in the side room where Winters kept their maps and papers. So she went up. Zhanna would be wherever Winters was. She could hear him from the study.

Sveta didn't knock. The door hung slightly open. The first thing she noticed was the sheer number of Vat 69 bottles sitting on the dark wood table. A common sight recently. Nixon sat behind it, one in his hand. Welsh had a seat to his left, nursing his own glass by the look of things. And Winters, standing at a chair, turned to her at the sound of her boots on the wood. No Zhanna. Just a lot of anger.

"I'm looking for Casmirovna," she said.

The three men exchanged a lingering glance. Winters's shoulders fell. Sveta felt her hair stand on end. A chill went down their spine. Why were they so quiet? Why was Nixon so quite? He was never quiet.

Nixon huffed. "No one told you?"

"Told me what?"

"She's missing in action," Winters told her.

Nixon just scoffed. "She's gone. Don't make it sound so fancy, Dick."

Cold fear turned to boiling rage as she tried to comprehend their meaning. She was gone? MIA? Her fists tightened so hard she saw them turning white. Sveta moved closer. "What do you mean, she's gone?"

The dark expression on his face reminded Sveta too much of the one she saw in the mirror every morning. He just sneered, reaching for another bottle as his own ran dry. "Exploded over Germany, probably."

Zhanna was dead. Killed in a country not their own. Her heart stopped. She couldn't breathe. Her thoughts scrambled. All she saw was the bottle of Vat 69 in Nixon's hand as he stood and dragged himself around the room. "You did this."

"What?" Nixon rounded on her. His hand shook as he slammed the bottle back on the table. "Jesus Christ."

Sveta moved a couple of steps into the room. Her heart pounded. Tears sprung to her eyes. Hate and fear sent her reeling. "You! Who the fuck are you to take Zhanna into enemy territory? Drinking all the time? Haven't even had to fire a gun!" Her body shook as she moved closer to him. "She trusted you, Nixon. Zhanna trusted you, and now she's dead because of—"

"She's dead because of you," Nixon countered. He grabbed a bottle again and took a drink. His words slurred ever so slightly, but he continued on. "She only begged to go because of you, Svetlana."

Winters moved a bit towards the table "Nixon. Take a breath—"

As Sveta stayed silent, Nixon just ignored Winters. "You couldn't keep her away from the enemy. You are the enemy!" He raised his voice, moving towards her again. "You hate us so goddamn much that you dragged her down, too."

"Lew—"

"No! No, she needs to hear this," Nixon said, raising his voice. "You, Samsonova, are the problem. Not us, not the Americans. It's you." He scoffed, swaying a bit. Though he turned away, it only took a split second for him to change his mind and turn right back. "You know, no wonder Zhanna's the better half. She's not even fucking Russian. Do us a favor and go back to Stalin."

"That's enough!" Winters pushed over to them and stood between. As Welsh took the bottle of Vat 69 out of Nixon's hand and glared at him, Winters turned to her. "Samsonova, go and cool off. We'll have a full report for you later."

Sveta didn't respond. She couldn't move. Her heart pounded in her chest as she looked at Nixon there, piss drunk, fighting to take back the bottle from Welsh. Her anger turned to hate. A fiery, writhing hate that made her want to shoot something. But as she looked at them there, Winters about five seconds from calling the MPs and Welsh silently trying to fill the space between her and Nixon, Sveta realized he was right.

She left without a word.

Her mother's eyes had been many colors. Sometimes she'd seen copper, sometimes green, and sometimes blue. Depending on the light, they almost seemed to change. Veronika had called them hazel. As a child, Sveta had always wanted eyes like her.

Instead, she'd gotten the same dark eyes as Alexander Samsonov.

Sveta moved into her bedroom. She turned the lock, listening to it click as it set into place. Silence. Her head pounded, chest in searing pain as she tried to deny the truth that Nixon had just spelled in front of her.

Then she looked at the half empty schnapps on her desk. She grabbed it, opened it, and sat down.

She'd inherited more than eyes. She'd gotten Alexander's evil, too. Sveta grabbed a second bottle of schnapps from the stash she hoarded in her room. Her movements were already sluggish from the first she'd just finished, but she didn't care. Not any more.

Nixon was right. Everything he'd said had been cruelly accurate. Zhanna lay dead somewhere because of her. Like so many others: like the women and children in Rostov-on-Don, like her mother. Her fault. Sveta was the very thing she hated.

The alcohol made the room spin as she stood up again. Another drink. Sveta looked out the dark window at the Americans. Night had fallen. The men were right to be afraid of her. Her heart was as evil as the man she'd inherited the dark eyes from.

Like some cruel puppeteer, the NKVD and the Airborne vied for possession of her name. She'd allowed Zhanna to get sucked into that hell hole. And Zhanna had payed the price.

Words cut deeper than bullets, sometimes. A chill ran down Sveta's spine as she turned from the window and looked at the empty schnapps bottle on the floor, and the three other bottles just waiting to be cracked open.

Sometimes bullets cut deep, too, though. Like the one that had ripped her mother from her arms. The one that had sealed Sveta's fate as a puppet of the ruling power.

Sveta poured more of the alcohol down her throat. She barely tasted it. But her pounding heart slowed, and she stumbled back to her bed. Sveta settled on the floor, back against the mattress. She couldn't sit on it.

She wouldn't sit where her mother had bled out.

She hadn't earned that right.

So she crumpled to the floor, the nearly empty bottle in her hands. She'd killed Zhanna. She'd killed her mother. She'd killed the screaming children in Rostov-on-Don. She shared the same eyes as Alexander Samsonov. Dark eyes, dark heart.

Sveta couldn't keep her eyes open. The pounding her chest slowed and she couldnt move. Her body shook. Sveta felt like she'd been left in a snowstorm without a coat. The last thing she remember was a knock on the door. Did death know how to knock?