Thousands of mosquitoes buzzed around the men. Between the humidity and the oppressive flames of still-burning wreckages, Sveta found herself wishing for a nice winter wind. She and Harry slogged forward in silence. In front of them, Hoobler had taken point followed by Blithe. Behind trudged the rest of Easy Company.

Having Zhanna back in one piece eased her fears. Even without her at her side, Sveta could relax. She was safe. Here in Normandy, away from the prying eyes of the American military command, they were safer. A pitiable irony really.

Sveta smacked at her neck. Muttering in Russian, she pulled her hand away and found a squished mosquito, blood staining her palm. Beside her, Harry squirmed, then smacked at his own neck.

"Sonofabitch," he muttered.

She just hummed in agreement. The sound of boots squishing in mud filled the area. But the sounds of war had mostly faded. The occasional crack of artillery fire would echo from the distance, but the once ever-present machine guns had ceased. A tense calm had fallen on the world with the darkness of night.

Behind her, she could make out Dukeman trying to keep his voice low. In front, Hoobler and Blithe marched in total silence. Soon her focus turned to the ground. Three German corpses lay strewn in their path. One had a burned face. Sveta grimaced as she stepped over them.

The carnage in Normandy reminded Sveta of the lie of the glory and glamour of war. War wasn't glamorous. War was ugly.

And yet, here in this fetid swamp which stunk of equal parts death, mildew, and burning gasoline, she found a refuge. Freedom. Sveta nearly scoffed as the thought passed her mind. Apparently she didn't need the Volga and the Valdai Hills to escape from Beria. A war-torn French countryside would do well enough.

"Damn!"

Sveta and Harry both turned their attention to Hoobler at the front. As Harry stalked forward, Sveta followed. He demanded to know the problem.

"We lost F Company, sir," Hoobler muttered.

Not again. Sveta felt anger burning her chest. She'd thought Easy had been in bad shape with Sobel when it came to navigating, but Fox Company had managed to match him for stupidity. And Harry wasn't any more pleased.

"Again?" he echoed, incredulously.

Hoobler just gestured forward. Sveta turned with Harry, walking a few feet up. As he'd said, the rear of Fox Company's line had disappeared into the trees. It was as if they had never learned how to march in formation at night. Sveta scoffed. Behind, she heard Hoobler telling Perconte the same information.

She glanced at Harry. He looked more furious than she'd ever seen him. Sveta wondered if he could see the same anger in her own expression. When he looked at her, he just rolled his eyes. They moved back to the group.

"Perconte, go tell them to hold up." When the sergeant acknowledged the order, Harry turned to his left. "Hoobler, take Blithe, go find F Company."

They disappeared further into the darkness. Sveta sighed. She shook her head. Turning to Harry, she rolled her eyes. "You would think they had never trained for war."

"Yeah," he agreed. "We trained under Sobel for fuck's sake. And we're better than them."

Sveta looked back down the line of soldiers. Most had taken a knee, trying to find rest in the stoppage. She knew from experience though that sometimes the best thing for tired feet was to stay on them. As soon as you stopped that and relieved the pressure, the pain would redouble when you needed to move forward.

Movement caught her eye. Before long, Nixon and Winters came striding up, both looking as irritated as she and Harry felt. Neither said hello.

"Did you send somebody?" Winters demanded. He didn't need to say more. It had already happened twice on their march since evening had fallen.

Harry scoffed, cutting him off. "Yeah I've got Hoobler and Blithe out there now."

Nixon came level with them. "Why have we stopped?"

"This is about officers crapping out on their training, Nix."

Sveta agreed with Winters, but kept silent. Instead she just watched the burning red and yellow flames all around them. Barrels of gasoline, shot down planes, even broken down vehicles littered the paths around the flooded fields.

By the time she turned back to pay attention, Nixon and Winters had started to move off. "I'll go tell the company to get ready," she told Harry. Sveta wanted to talk to Zhanna at least, and figured she could use the walk.

"Right." He nodded. Smacking at the back of his neck again, he cursed. "Let Buck know what's going on with F Company, too."

She nodded at him. Turning to the rest of the Company, Sveta took a deep breath. Her eyes watered. The smoke and stench filled her lungs and she nearly choked.

Sisk and Dukeman looked up at her from where they'd taken a bit of shelter by an overturned jeep. She saw the nervousness in their bodies: hunched shoulders, rapidly darting gaze, quick breaths. Sveta moved past them. She walked past Cobb and More, sparing them little more than a glance.

Luz stood with Perconte, both trying to keep their chatter to a whisper. As she moved towards them, Luz nodded. Perconte followed suit. She nodded back.

Then came Randleman, and then Tipper, and Alley, and a dozen other men she rarely talked to. They were mostly privates who had filled the ranks after she had joined the company at Benning.

At the back she found Martin standing with Compton, Guarnere, and Toye. They were chatting quietly, a feat for Sergeant Guarnere. Sveta moved over to them, noticing Zhanna close by.

"Any news, Lieutenant?" Compton asked her.

They all looked over. Guarnere had his usual put out expression plastered all over his face, practically glowing in the light of the fires around them. It lit up his dark eyes. Sveta almost found it menacing. Beside him, Toye and Martin glared at nothing.

"Fox Company left us behind." Sveta shook her head. "Lieutenant Winters is tracking them down."

"Jesus Christ," muttered Guarnere.

Sveta agreed with him but said nothing. Instead, she turned to Zhanna, who had walked over. She switched to Russian. "These Americans are worse at marching than they are at keeping their opinions to themselves."

"They'll learn," Zhanna said. "They have to."

Sveta nearly laughed. But instead, she just nodded with a smile. "You'd think that a company called Fox would be more clever." When she saw Zhanna crack the tiniest of smiles, Sveta turned to the Americans again. They shuffled in place, expressions ranging from anger to awkwardness. "Compton, let your men know what's going on. I'm going to inform D Company."

"Right."

Sveta left them behind. Zhanna could watch out for herself. In the field, she knew of no one more dangerous. So she moved through the ranks of kneeling enlisted once more.

"Lieutenant."

At the sound of Sergeant Talbert's voice, she stopped and looked left. He and Lipton were huddled with each other by a half broken tree. She joined them. "Sergeants?"

"Any news on why we stopped?" Talbert asked.

She nodded, telling them about F Company. They looked as irritated as she and the others had all down the line. "Has Dog stayed in contact?"

Lipton nodded. "Yes, ma'am."

"We know how to march," muttered Talbert. "Fox on the other hand."

"We can't all be as good as Easy Company, Sergeant Talbert," Sveta told him. "The Germans wouldn't stand a chance. The war would end too soon," she added. Talbert and Lipton looked at her in surprise. She couldn't stop the smirk from breaking through her irritated glare. She let out a small laugh. "Carry on." Sveta caught a bit of Talbert's shocked question to Lipton as she moved away.

"Did she just make a joke?"

It didn't take long to reach the end of Third Platoon. At the back, she found Speirs chatting with another Lieutenant. Both their CO and XO had been labeled as MIA, so the job of commander fell to Dog's Lieutenant McMillan. They turned to her as she approached.

"Why did we stop?" McMillan demanded. He wasn't typically a rude man. His sharp tone irritated her. It was the fear, she tried to remind herself.

She gestured behind herself. "Fox Company doesn't know how to march, Lieutenant," she told him. "Lieutenant Winters is finding them."

With a grumbled curse, McMillan shook his head. "Speirs, stay here." He left them without another word as he went down the line of Dog Company men. They all glanced up at him as he passed.

"Is that why we've been stalling all night?" Speirs asked her.

She nodded. Pulling her canteen out, she tipped it back and downed a large gulp of the alcohol she'd smuggled inside. She nearly coughed. Regaining control of herself, she sighed. "Did you all not train for this?"

"Weren't you there?" he reminded her.

Sveta just scoffed. "Trust me, Speirs, there is no way to erase the past year from my mind no matter how hard I try." After looking at the flames around them, she turned back to him. The lines of camouflage had almost faded completely from his face. "I trained. I don't know about the rest of you."

"I would think the bruised rib I left you with would be enough to prove that."

Sveta refused to dignify his prodding with a response. Instead, she looked down the line of D Company men. Then she looked back at Speirs. "You scared Easy's men pretty well. They're telling stories of you massacring German prisoners."

She saw him pause. He had been chewing gum, and at her words, his jaw clenched for just a moment. His eyes narrowed. She nearly smirked at him. So there was some truth in the stories. That explained Malarkey's terror at Sainte-Marie-du-Mont. It wasn't long before he'd recovered and shrugged.

"We're all dead anyway, Samsonova. It's us or them."

"Don't mistake my words for disapproval," she told him. "In Russia, the Nazis would murder my people. Round us up, torture us. Men, women, we were all less than human to them." She shook her head, glancing away. In the dark, she felt a cold shiver travel down her spine. Not even medics were safe from Germans. Sveta looked him in the eye. "So we do what it takes to survive, Speirs."

He didn't respond. They couldn't light cigarettes with the light discipline in place, though Sveta found it stupid given the sheer amount of burning wreckage glowing all around them. So instead she just took another drink of the vodka.

Do what it takes to survive. That had been her guiding principle for years. She remembered that naive little girl who had been sitting in a bathtub, her world shattered around her. But still, she had clung to the hope that she would be better than her father, than Stalin, than the men she knew only as blue-capped officers. Then she'd grown up. Then Beria had entered their lives.

Survival became all that mattered. Survival trumped resistance. She'd seen a few of the women that Beria trapped in his estate. But she could do nothing. She was a puppet for the Soviets. Or she had been, in Stalingrad and Moscow and Leningrad. Here, she was a soldier. She was an officer. Still trying to survive. But in Normandy, the enemy could be identified by opposing colors. In Russia, enemies wore the mask of friends.