Vesna blinked. A blinding light poured through the window ahead of her, to the point her eyes had required a good moment to adjust to it. Lifting her hand to protect her gaze, she saw the brightness was hiding sprawling, green fields, crops and an old Russian village in the middle of nowhere. In the distance, rolling hills and snow-capped mountains resided, the few clouds in the sky slightly obscuring them.
She blinked again, eyes wide, as she looked around herself. A wooden cabin, insulated and well-built out of heavy-duty logs. The building itself was beautiful on the inside, a combination of rustic and modern that was somehow easy on the eyes and functional. It was practically her dream home, too. A small, four-bedroom house with a single floor and an attic, plus an open kitchen and living area and, going by the noises outside, a garden with animals. It was a farmhouse.
Ahead of her, lay a stove that she had just recently turned off. To her right was a dinner table with eight chairs, denoting a few things to the young woman right off the bat. She looked at herself, noting a slight bump in her belly. Her heart skipped a beat as a small smile formed on her face as she looked upon what was a slight bump in her abdomen. Perhaps the collapse, her death, everything had been a nightmare...
A faint giggle, muffled by the door to the outside, came to her ears before a young girl with blonde hair and green eyes strolled inside. She was maybe six years old, but Vesna felt like she'd known her from even before her birth. The girl called out to her, "Mama! Mama! I wrangled a Pig like papa showed me!" with such a joyful tone, Vesna could only laugh. She plucked up the little girl and held her close
"Well done, sweetheart," The blonde mother chuckled, "But you got so dirty and we're supposed to eat lunch soon..."
"What's for lunch?" The girl giggled. Ves looked over to the pot boiling on the stove and saw stew, alongside another, smaller pot in which potatoes were boiling for a mash. She showed the little girl and she pumped her hands up to the sky, screaming out happily, "Yaaay! Stew and mashies!" while her mother simply giggled. She checked the food to make sure it was still cooking properly, then noted the timer on the electric stoves for the shutoff. The young girl looked to her mom and asked meekly, "Can I help?"
With a nod, she walked to the bathroom with the girl and told her, "Let's get you and myself cleaned up before papa arrives. He's bound to be coming over from Norilsk any moment..." before entering the well-furnished and fairly beautifully-made master bathroom of the house. As Vesna prepared to clean up the girl, a short, ethereal giggle seemed to escape her mouth, before Vesna blinked.
Ashen ground stood before her, a bathroom whose tiling was barely hanging on or destroyed completely by fighting. Her hands, covered by military gloves and garbed in EMR camouflage instead of her striped shirt's sleeves, clasped an AK-105 she'd managed to kit out in the few ZENITCO parts she and her friends could come across. She swallowed as the muffled noise of gunfire filtered into the room. She yelped and ducked down as the wall behind her exploded as .50 caliber bullets raked it.
She had heard the noise before. She could tell it was a fifty from the snap alone. Screaming and covering her ears, Vesna pleaded in English, "Please! Please, please, please, don't let me be back there...!" Shards of concrete and bathroom tiles hit her plate and helmet. A bullet careened through one of the walls of the Brezhnevka bathroom she was in and impacted mere inches from her face, causing her screaming (and her heart) to momentarily stop.
The hole was inches from her face, a fragment of the copper jacket had cut her cheek and she was slightly bleeding. Feeling the wound, she saw the warm ruby of her own blood on the tip of her gloves' fingers. She blinked, the whole world around her going almost mute as she realized she was back. Back in that goddamn grinder. She recognized the bathroom and everything in it.
A metallic thump took her out of her fugue. She saw a lithe, small frame run inside, pulling on the pump of a grenade launcher that fired thermobarics before firing again, a wet thunk echoing, followed up by the delayed detonation of the previous grenade. Before Vesna knew it, the dark-brown hair of a young woman appeared, two green eyes staring her in her own blue ones. Lita called out to her, "Vesna! Get up! We have to get the fuck out of here before the Ukes re-man that Machine Gun!"
"Li...?" Ves froze, her heart racing. Before she could call out to the girl again, she felt herself yanked to her feet, all of her equipment weighing heavily on her. Lita pushed her AR into her chest, then dragged her along by the collar as small-arms fire now hit the walls, one of them chipping a hint of wood and splintering it off the frame of one of the broken windows. Another richocheted inside as Vesna ran out of the toilet with Li.
They came upon Ayesha, the girl barely recognizable under all of her Ratnik gear as she fired her own AK-105 toward the Ukrainian positions across from them. The redhead Chechen dipped back behind cover as the Ukrainians across the road from them returned fire, then said to them in clear-cut Ruski, "We're getting fucked out here and High Command won't even bother sending us anything! Priggy's wankers are pissing their pants over the com about lacking ammo, too!"
"Fuck them! We got order from Brigade command to relocate from here with what's left of our unit! Ukrainian Air Force is already operating with impunity above us and they shot down any sort of air support we can hope for!" Lita called out as she ducked behind the radiator barely hanging off the wall next to the window. She poked out and fired a few shots, but was using iron sights, so it was clearly more suppressing fire. She looked to Vesna and demanded, "Starshiy Serzhant! Your orders?!"
"I..." Vesna froze, "I..." She started trembling, looking at Lita and Ayesha as the two let loose with their rifles. Why was she here again? Had she not done her time in this hell? Had she not seen enough of Bakhmut? Enough of their own Verdun? She yelped as Lita grabbed her by the vest and shook her awake, looking her in the eyes with concern. Vesna swallowed empty, trembling and looking around the room at the soldiers, most of them youths like her who were Contract Troops that had seen Kosovo and their renewed attempt of cooperation with the Amis and NATO.
A few weren't, however. They were new, green conscripts slapped onto their unit. Teenagers and university kids. One of them was trembling in a corner, gripping her shoddily-made AK-12 and looking at Vesna. Another was wrapping a bandage around his arm, his gas mask broken, bobbing up and down on his hip as he worked. His AK12 had a holographic sight, at least, even if he was a rookie. A lot of the kit looked stolen, haphazard.
Vesna cleared her throat and asked, "What about the Lieutenant...?"
"Dead, Ves. And we'll be, too, if we don't get out of here..." Lita whispered to her.
"We moving, or what, girls?! I'm seeing Infantry units rushing toward our building!" Ayesha cried out to them as she reloaded her assault rifle. The .50 Cal also finally awoke, high caliber rounds punching through the walls at various intervals. One such round caught the young girl cowering in the corner dead in the chest, spraying her blood and bone across the corner of the wall as she collapsed.
Vesna covered her mouth, then shook her head, gritting her teeth. She ordered, "FALL BACK! FALL BACK, COMRADES!" her voice cracking.
"Oh, fuck, BMP! FUCKING RUN!" Ayesha screamed. She grabbed one of their rookies and pulled him to his feet, then told him, "MOVE, KISELEV!" before the rapid thumping of the 30mm autocannon filled their ears. The group of soldiers on the third floor of a ruined apartment complex ran and ran, through the broken walls of their combat shelter and into the rear of the place as the rest of the walls behind them exploded under the unrelenting fire of a BMP-2's 30mm main gun.
"That fucking BMP..." Ayesha swore as they ran. She turned to Lita and Vesna and told them in clear-cut English, "It had the Markings of the 3rd Separate Assault Brigade..."
"Azov?!" Lita bemoaned, then swore to herself, "This is fucked, we didn't know we'd be facing Azovites!"
"Should've expected it... They've been in the city for a while..." Ayesha sighed deeply, before watching as one of their other rookies ran ahead. She called out to him in Russian, "KIRILOV, DON'T BUMRUSH, YOU FUCKING RETARD, YOU'LL FUCKING DI-" And she got cut off as thunder reverberated across the building's damaged walls. The Rookie was dead ahead of Vesna when his head exploded. His helmet was flung into the ceiling, slamming into it as blood, bone and gray matter painted Vesna's own face and hair red.
As everything slowed down around her, Vesna saw a figure appear from behind the corner ahead, the barrel of her weapon still smoldering. Vesna could only tell it was a female because of her frame, though even it had a decent bulk, not unlike that of an athlete. In her hands lay a gun with a massive bore and a tube magazine. Loaded from the bottom and with a side charging handle instead of a pump, as well as wide back and spitz front sights and with a pic rail on top that had a holographic sight, the weapon in question was a Benelli M4 Shotgun. The Super 90, customized...
Its barrel aligned with her head, smoke pouring from it as the masked female assailant, clad in highly-westernized gear with the Azov's 3rd Brigade patches, aimed through the holo-sight. Only her dark eyes were visible, burning with the fury of a thousand suns behind the balaclava underneath the tactical, high-cut helmet. Behind her, more Azov troops also slowly moved in, armed with Western weapons or highly-modified Kalashes.
Vesna's mouth opened wide as she stared down the barrel of the shotgun, almost close enough to see the slug shell waiting within the chamber to take her out, too. Her feet kicked up dust and debris as she stomped her heels into the floor to brake, all while trying to aim her own Kalashnikov as the world around her slowed to a crawl. The Azovite figure seemed to mutter something toward her, before her finger wrapped around the trigger...
Ayesha roared from beside her, hefting a PKM off one of their injured comrades and letting loose. 7,62x54mm ammunition and its links clinked to the floor as the girl poured lead down toward the Azov troops, injuring two and forcing the shotgunner to fire wide as she had to fall back. The PK clicked and stovepiped, catching one of the ejecting rounds at the base with the bolt. The Chechen redhead tossed the gun aside instinctively, then pulled Vesna and Lita by the scruffs of their shirts' necks into cover before the enemy could counter-attack.
Two more Russian soldiers were caught by shotgun blasts, one of them collapsing dead ahead of the girls as they fell into a side hallway whose walls were barely intact. Kiselev, the man Ayesha had rescued, also dipped into cover, breathing heavily. Another comrade then followed. He turned to the girls as they all watched their comrades try and join them... Before a grenade flew in.
Vesna covered her mouth and closed her eyes...
... But felt nothing, nor did she hear the detonation. Images flashed in her mind, of the defeat, of hearing the news of the President's death and the retreat. Of them walking home, of the Commie militias that confiscated some of their guns and stole her cross pendant. But some memories had no place there. Her mind showed her being captured, then walking fields out from the Mass Grave...
She awoke in the middle of said fields. Still clad in her military uniform, though it was a lot more tattered, the girl saw nothing but the sprawling steppes and distant mountains, the sky above clouded and dark. There was a flat, cold light of the early winter morning, the air stinking heavily of chemicals and cordite. The battered blonde gathered her wits, shook her head and looked around. She called out, "Ayesha?! Lita?! Are you there!?"
Feeling her heart begin to race again, "Aye! Li! C'mon! Please, answer! Vera! At least, tell me you're there, sestra! Kiselev... Someone..." She fell to her knees while pleading and hugging herself, rubbing her arms, "Please, don't tell me I'm alone... And what in God's name is that smell...?"
She stood to her feet and looked around. Seeing nothing for miles, the young woman decided she could not stay here, all on her own. Beginning her march as she followed the Scent. The walk was between fields, past dirt roads and through a seemingly infinite world all around them. The scent of burning flesh began to fill her nostrils rather quickly, too.
Soon, she walked upon the source of the flesh smell. Growing pale, her eyes wide, the young woman watched an entire village of the steppes burn. Fires still alight on top of houses with thatch roofs, destroyed brick and mortar houses and burning crop fields. Down the middle of the dirt road were destroyed vehicles, marked by the penetration of RPG-7 warheads.
NATO and UN vehicles, Vesna soon realized as her feet, though weighing more and more to the fearful blonde, carried her forth. The corpses of troops belonging to various NATO countries lay, sprawled across the fields, an entire convoy of light vehicles like MRAPs and Humvees burning. American, German, Polish... Not the ones she was looking for, but at the same time hoping not to find, feeling an emptiness in her gut as she suddenly recalled.
This was Ichkeria. The mountains, the fields and rolling hills. She knew it. And she knew what that meant. Every fiber in her being begged the heavens for her mind to be wrong as she advanced, still searching the area. It was a long convoy of light infantry, presumably only carried over by the motorized transports they were on. Dozens of casualties. She'd seen the corpses of the enemy, as well. Putinist Militias.
Marching further, the girl started to see more Eastern European markings on the vehicles. Friendly troops, obviously NATO. Czechs, Poles, Slovaks, Baltic States, hell, even Finnish troops. Some of them looked like they were from Saila and Anja's units respectively. She recognized some of the corpses from photos both of the twins had showed them. It was still not the force she was looking for.
... She saw a familiar flag fluttering, tattered and torn, in the wind ahead. A blooming, molten flower of steel and rubber lay ahead, corpses clad in Green M2017 Camouflage clothing. Semi-modernized Cugir Kalashnikovs, PKMs and other equipment familiar to the onlooker who'd seen them before made the young woman's heart race, cold sweat draping her back.
She saw Diana's corpse, torn in half and staring at the heavens, her rifle broken in half by a presumed impact. Two more half-burned corpses lay next to her, one of them carrying the twisted remains of a Romanian DMR. She murmured in plea, "Heavens, please, no..." as the scent of chemicals started to burn her nose due to the intensity. In a field full of blackened, dying grass, sat leaned against a rock, lay a corpse among many. A PKM, turned various shades due to the oxidation of the black metal and with a broken belt of casings, lay off to the side.
The corpse's right hand was wrapped around a broken gas mask that the man did not get to put on. His chest had three deep wounds, not from bullets but from blades. His skin was yellowed, blistering, eaten by the gas. Blood foamed at the corners of his mouth, congealed. His eyes were yellowed by the chlorine, but Vesna recognized his face... And in his left hand, lay a single photograph, of the two of them in KFOR.
The woman fell to her knees, trembling as tears ran down her cheeks in rivers. She stared at the sprawled corpse of her fiancee, the young man long dead by the side of his comrades. She found no words to beg with, only letting out a scream of pain, a wail that pierced the heavens themselves as she gazed upon the corpse. This had to be a nightmare... It had to be... She'd fallen asleep next to him earlier tonight...
"Mama?" She'd heard her daughter's voice call out, frightened. With a yelp, Vesna turned toward her, tears still in her eyes as the little girl stood there, eyes wide, lip trembling. Vesna walked up to the young girl and hugged her, making sure she didn't see Victor's body... But the young one asked, "What happened to papa...?" with confusion in her voice.
Vesna couldn't lie to the poor little thing. Swallowing empty, her voice cracking, she replied, "Papa is with the lord now, munchkin..."
What fucked-up timeline had she arrived in? What was happening? A lot of thoughts ran through Vesna's mind, but all stopped when her daughter whimpered, "I thought this was supposed to be our happy ending..."
"... There are no happy endings under a Russian Sky..." A familiar voice spoke. Vesna gasped as her little girl disappeared from her arms. She turned back toward Vic's corpse, to see that the young man looked at her now, apologetic. He spoke softly toward her, "I'm so sorry, honey..." causing her to pale. She tried to approach Vic as a green mist fell upon the area, stinging at her skin and nostrils. Victor only told her, "Run..." before he, too, vanished.
Vesna started coughing hoarsely, grabbing onto her throat. She turned as the sound of boots crunching against unseen dirt echoed to her. She turned to see them, clad in more modern kit than most of their soldiers. Vesna recognized the red crosshair patch on their chests and covered her mouth. She started running in the opposite direction, but she felt stuck in place as the men grew closer... Their leader laughed, "Hah! Look what fate brought us, boys! A little toy for reparations!"
She yelped as one of the men grabbed her by her ponytail, before turning her to face him. He still bore the bloody scars from Lita's rifle fire, one of his eyes missing. He grinned at Vesna, then said, "Heh. She thinks she can get away, boss!"
"Let me go!" Vesna struggled, punching at the man's hand weakly.
"No can do, kid..." Their leader replied, drawing his knife and gently sliding the tip across her clothes, "We'll have fun first... Payment for what your fellow bitches have done to us..."
... Before the rest of the dream and the subsequent Trauma could come with, a voice began to call her name, softly, then more loudly... Until she heard Victor cry out to her aloud, "Vesna!" while shaking her. The girl yelped, then snapped awake, grabbing at her throat as she felt herself unable to breathe. She started crying, choking all the same. Victor, the real deal, wrapped his arms around her, then whispered, "It's okay, honey! It's me, Vic! It's okay... I'm right here. The nightmare's over..." And he pat her head, his own heart racing.
Registering that Victor was, in fact, as real as they came, feeling his skin on her own, the girl began to breathe properly again, the panic attack slowly fading... Only to turn into a low, choked wail as she began to cry. She cried and cried into Vic's shoulder as the man pat her back and whispered softly to her, "I'm here, Ves. It's okay..." letting her settle down on her own pace and feeling awful for not noticing she wasn't alright earlier.
As time passed, Vesna ran dry of tears, simply sobbing quietly, now. Vic held his beloved close, letting her settle down, before whispering into her ear, "I'm so sorry..." whilst running his fingers through her hair. She shook her head, as if trying to tell him it's not his fault. He replied to that, "I should have known you wouldn't be okay... Not after the war. Not after everything..."
"It was just a nightmare, Vic..." She tried her best to downplay it. She felt like she was lying to herself.
The man slowly moved back, only to cup her chin and look her in the eyes. Even in the darkness, she could see he was worried. The young man turned on the lamp on the bedside table, then looked at her. He wiped the few loose tears off her cheeks, then pulled her back into a hug. He spoke to her, "It seemed a lot worse than 'just a nightmare', Ves... What happened?"
With a sigh, the young woman knew she couldn't hide the truth from Victor. Not all of it, anyhow. She whispered, "It was awful... It started out so nice. A house on the Steppes... A daughter... Then Bakhmut. I... I remembered the fighting in one area of the city, relived it vividly. Then, the Steppes again... Clouds in the sky and the smell of gas. I found a convoy of NATO vehicles destroyed and..." She sniffled... "I found what was left of an MRAP..."
"... Oh, no..." Vic whispered, tightening the hug.
Vesna's voice cracked again, "I saw Diana. I saw your team all around me, dead... And then I..." She grit her teeth as more tears threatened, Vic tightening the hug. She spoke, "I saw you..." And Victor didn't need to hear more. She sighed deeply, then whispered, "I'm scared... What if none of this is real? What if this is all just another dream and I'll wake up in the trenches...? Or... Worse..."
Vic looked at her, then replied, "Don't ever doubt it's real... Here, I'll prove it..." before he kissed her softly, but deeply. The girl leaned into it, her heart now beating fast due to her beloved's kiss. She leaned into it, sure that things around her were real. That this was the real world. She pulled herself closer to him, wanting to hold onto him for the rest of her life. The two gently fell back down to the bed, still holding the kiss. They only pulled back once they'd run out of breath.
Caressing Vesna's cheek, the young man whispered, "I love you with all I have, Ves... And I'll be here. Because this is real and nothing, not even death could separate us..."
She smiled at him, leaning her forehead against his as she whispered back, "I love you, too, moya lyubov... You're right." and cuddled up to him. The man wrapped her in his arms, holding her tight still, letting her fall back to sleep herself before he, too, would drift off to bed, just thankful he could be here to help alleviate the pain. He needed to get more information on what was going on in that mind of hers, but that could wait until tomorrow.
She needed him...