Sveta's body ached. Even with the few hours rest they'd been given, she could feel a headache creeping in, just at the base of her skull, squeezing at her brain. Lipton sat in the aid station now, Sveta just returned from getting him to the medics. And now, as she sat in a shadowed corner of Carentan, Sveta closed her eyes. Her head lay against brick. It shouldn't have been comfortable. It should've been uncomfortable, painful even. But from this dark spot of solitude, she could think in peace.

"You look miserable."

Sveta opened her eyes. Harry Welsh stood in front of her, smile gone but eyes as bright as ever. He took a drink. The way he half grimaced, she guessed that like hers, it wasn't water in his canteen. "We're at war, Harry."

"Really? Could've fooled me," he said. "Ready to go?"

"Are we moving out, then?"

He nodded. Gesturing back to his left, he continued, "Dick's talking to Strayer right now. Sounds like we're moving further south. We're supposed to expect a counterattack."

"Of course," she agreed. "I could've told you that. They're not going to give this up."

With a small grunt, he agreed with her. Sveta soon stood up and looked at the men meandering about the central square of Carentan. They'd lost Tipper, Lipton, and a few others to the initial assault. But it seemed that most of the men were in high spirits. It wouldn't last. It never did.

Zhanna sat with the mortar squad of Malarkey, Muck, and Penkala. More had joined them too, and for a moment a bit of anger flared up in her chest. More had been the perpetrator of many fierce insults during training. But as Zhanna just sat with them quietly, working away to clean her rifle, it faded. More didn't seem to object to her presence. So she shoved down the anger.

Sveta watched as Speirs moved through the courtyard, every so often talking to an enlisted soldier he passed. When he stopped by Zhanna's group, she tensed. The men all froze as well, but Zhanna just watched him closely. He said something, they just shook their heads, and then he moved to leave. But someone said something, and Speirs turned back around. He pulled out some cigarettes.

The next thing Sveta knew, Zhanna had taken the entire pack of cigarettes that Speirs had stolen from Compton, nodded with a small smile, and sat back down. Everyone froze. The mortar squad looked on in horror. More's eyes widened. All Sveta could see of Speirs was his lack of movement. Then he turned around.

Harry had started getting the men in order. "First Platoon, start getting your stuff together."

But Sveta met Speirs' gaze. He moved over to her straight away, a look between a pout and a frown on his face. As the enlisted men moved about gearing up and chatting, he joined her.

"Casmirovna just took my whole pack," he said.

Sveta shook her head, releasing a small breath. She'd very rarely, maybe never, seen Zhanna act like that. Based on the way Zhanna stood dwarfed by the enlisted, listening to them go on and on frantically about something, she guessed it had been an actual joke. She never joked.

"Yes. She did," Sveta confirmed. Then she caught Zhanna's smile widening as the men turned away. Sveta couldn't help but do the same. "Finders Keepers, right, Speirs? If I remember right, you stole that pack first."

Speirs just scoffed. "Compton didn't need it."

He left her still shaking his head a bit. The smile on her face widened as she turned back to the enlisted. Let him mope. She'd never seen Zhanna happy without drowning herself in vodka.

Sveta took a drink of her alcohol. It calmed the nerves a bit. She rolled her shoulders back, letting her neck muscle relax. Focus on the war. Then she could worry about Beria later. Here in France it was just her, vodka, Zhanna, and the Americans. At least the Americans were better than the NKVD.

They fell into formation. Before long the battalions started the march towards their next target. Sveta ended up taking her usual spot with Harry at the head of First Platoon. She stayed quiet. Instead she listened.

The men grumbled and groaned. Each step weighed heavy on their bodies and their morale. The rhythmic pounding of boots against the hard ground filled the air, along with the brushing together of jackets and metals. Along a hedgerow, they marched for close to an hour.

"Incoming!"

Sveta didn't need the scream to recognize the sound of war. At the shrill whistle of an artillery shell, she dove to the ground, scrambling towards the hedges. Chaos ensued. Men shouted, screaming. Someone started crying for a medic. Machine gun fire opened up. Sveta grabbed a fallen soldier on her right as she ran and heaved. The force threw him forward a few feet. Had that been Hoobler?

Regardless, she pushed the stumbling man forward again as she covered her own neck. Explosions rocked the ground. Sveta fell, bumping into a tree briefly as she got to safety. It didn't take long for her to drop to her stomach, pull out her American rifle, and start locating the enemy.

Or, it wouldn't have taken long if she'd been able to see them. But she couldn't. Sveta swore in her mother tongue. There were no German bodies in sight. Nothing to put a bullet through. Beside her, another soldier dropped to his stomach. He and a partner deployed their machine gun. Then Martin came up on her left.

"They're dug in or behind their own hedgerows," Sveta shouted over the noise. "Nothing to shoot at. Just lay down covering fire while I go track down the officers!"

He nodded at her, and she pushed herself back to her feet. As the Americans and the Germans faced off, paratrooper against paratrooper, she scrambled with her head down to find the other lieutenants. Harry and Winters crouched together, shouting over the drone of machine guns. Luz knelt beside them, working at the radio. He shoved it into Winters' hand as she reached them.

The chaos continued for nearly half an hour. Then the Germans stopped shelling, the Americans stopped panicking, and everyone dug foxholes. They found themselves in a standoff.

Winters passed the news at the two hour mark that they'd been ordered to sit tight and wait for further instructions. It didn't surprise Sveta. Half the job of a soldier was waiting on orders. So she just dug her foxhole and tried to get comfortable.

With nightfall came rainfall. Gordon and More and their machine gun occupied the foxhole on her right. To her left, Blithe and Martin. But she had her own, to herself, alone.

When she'd checked up with Zhanna an hour previous, everything had been fine in Second Platoon. She'd been fine in Second Platoon. So Sveta had just returned to her post.

As rain soaked her muddied hole, Sveta wrapped her arms around her chest. If it hadn't been for the downpour, the air would've been warm. But stuck in a muddy hole, rain pounding down around her, dripping down her metal helmet and into her eyes, Sveta shivered. In the dark she couldn't see much. She could barely see the edge of her hole.

It felt like a grave.

Six hours into their standoff, Sveta still couldn't sleep. The Germans had started up a song. Their voices haunted her mind. They reminded her of the Eastern Front, of the men and women she'd seen killed or mutilated. Germany sang as Russia burned.

A few meters over, she just barely made out Harry's voice. She couldn't make sense of the words, but before long, quiet fell interrupted only by the soft but constant patter of rain on the leaves and saturated earth. Sveta shivered again, looking at the dark void of the earthen wall in front of her. Just like a grave.

"Samsonova."

Sveta glanced up, grabbing her gun. But she relaxed a bit when she recognized Winters' voice. He crouched at the edge of her foxhole.

"Winters?"

"Just thought I'd see how you're doing," he told her. "You've got your own hole?"

Sveta nodded. She pushed herself to her feet and scrambled out. Mud caked her hands just like the rest of the uniform. It took effort to wipe it off onto her chest. But she just shrugged, picking a lie that would be easy for the man to accept. "I work better alone. What's the situation?"

His silence betrayed his indecision. But he didn't comment on her solitude. Instead, he just carried on. "The Germans dug in."

Sveta nodded. "We caught them on their way back to Carentan."

"Yeah. We'll attack at 0530 provided they don't come before that." He frowned, and turned to look back down the line. "Could you walk the line? Buck's busy organizing Third and I have no idea where Harry is."

"Try the next foxhole," she told him. He looked at her in surprise. With a tiny smirk, she tried to explain. "I heard him."

"In this weather?"

"I hear a lot, Lieutenant," she reminded him.

Winters nodded. "Right. Well, try to walk the line in the next half hour. If there's nothing to report, don't."

As she acknowledged his order, Winters offered her a tight smile and moved away with a slight limp. Soon she found herself alone, surrounded by trees and shrubs and foxholes filled with Americans. But she had a job. So Sveta stuffed down the burning ache of anger in her chest and moved down the soggy line.

She moved in the direction of Second Platoon. Muttered voices occasionally interrupted the German chorus line across the field. Each foxhole she checked up on spared her a brief nod, maybe a word or two, and then she moved on.

A shout and then strangled cry made her shiver. Sveta wasted no time. The voices weren't too far. Pushing past a thick bunch of trees, she skidded to a halt just as the call went up for a medic. Gun raised, she took in the scene.

Someone, Talbert maybe, collapsed against a tree. At his side, Liebgott ripped off his jacket. Beyond them, trembling in a foxhole, hands shaking, eyes wide, Private Smith blubbered out incoherently. No Germans. Just Americans.

"You gotta breathe!" Liebgott demanded of Talbert. "Look at me, look at me."

"Yeah, I can breathe!"

Sveta put down her gun and slowed her own breathing. She dropped beside Liebgott. Both he and Talbert stared at her in shock. "You can gawk later," she snapped. "What happened?"

Talbert struggled against the pain. He tried to catch his breath. "Smith fucking stabbed me."

"Bayonet?" she surmised.

Liebgott nodded. He'd finally gotten the jacket off. As Sveta whipped out her cigarette lighter, they were interrupted again. Doc Roe dropped down to her left, not sparing them a glance. She stood back, hauling Liebgott away by the jacket.

"Bayonet wound, lower left abdomen," Sveta informed Roe. "No sulfa, no morphine."

Roe looked up at her and nodded before turning back to Talbert. The man gritted his teeth, head pushed back against the tree as Roe prodded at the wound. Sveta turned to where Liebgott had started yelling at Smith.

"Fuck! He's our own man, Smithy!"

"He looked like a Kraut," Smith objected again.

Sveta stepped between. "Liebgott!" At her sharp hiss, he turned on her instead of Smith. She saw the furious, burning anger in his eyes. Sveta stood her ground. "You pulled a German raincoat off Talbert. He was dressed like a Kraut!"

"What's going on?"

They all turned to find Speirs coming over, gun slightly raised. Dog Company wasn't far from them. He took in the scene, Roe bent over a writhing Talbert, Liebgott attempting to tower over Sveta, and the haunted look on Smith's face.

"Sergeant Talbert was stabbed by a bayonet," Sveta explained. "It's being handled."

Speirs nodded, eyes lingering on the medic and his patient for a bit more. But then he walked over to them. "You did this, Private?"

Smith looked terrified. He looked even more panicked than he had after stabbing one of his own NCOs. But as he struggled to find his voice, Sveta just sighed. She stepped in.

"Talbert had put on a German raincoat. In the dark he looked like the enemy."

Liebgott still glared at the ground at her feet. But Smith took a deep breath. He let himself deflate a little, moving closer to their end of the foxhole.

"Good work, then," Speirs told him. "Your NCOs should be more careful."

Sveta agreed with him, but said nothing. Just as she worried that the anger building up inside Liebgott would explode at Speirs, Roe interrupted them.

"I gotta get him to the aid station," Roe told them. "Liebgott, take his other side."

"No." Sveta stopped him, putting an arm out. "Stay on the line. I'll help."

Again, the enlisted looked at her like she'd grown a second head. But Sveta didn't have time for this. She crouched down, throwing Talbert's left arm over her shoulders. "Lieutenant Speirs, report this to one of Easy's officers."

He nodded. With Talbert over her shoulders and Roe pulling from the other side, she moved off. Liebgott could look out for himself. Smith could too. He had to. Either Liebgott would kill him, or the Germans, or he'd learn to handle this all himself.

Talbert groaned again. She could feel the wound at his side warmer than the rest of his body. With each step, she felt him tensing. Sveta grimaced.

"Shit," Talbert hissed out, voice full of pain. "God damnit."

"Almost there, Tab," Roe assured him.

Sveta didn't know where the aid station had been set up. But it couldn't have been far. As they broke from the treeline and headed towards an open bit of field, she grimaced. In the dark they couldn't see their footing well. She hoped Roe knew where he was going.

The aid station had been set up near another group of trees. Just as she worried that Talbert would pass out from the pain, his effort already minimal as they all but dragged him along, they found it. Spina and another medic were sorting boxes.

"Spina! Where's the Captain?"

At Roe's call, Spina and the other medic spun around. He saw Talbert suspended between them. Spina turned to the other man, barked an order, and then hurried the rest of the way to them. She allowed him to take Talbert off her hands.

They moved together. In the dark, Sveta almost forgot they were Americans. All medics had the same drive and responsibility, no matter their colors. They could've been Russian, if not for the English spilling from their lips. As the surgeon joined them, Sveta released a long breath.

She turned away. Looking back across the field, she tried to relax. His wound had looked relatively minor. It would need thorough sterilization and stitching, but probably wouldn't require too much time in a hospital. He'd gotten lucky.

"Lieutenant."

Turning back around, Sveta found Spina walking over. He wiped his hands on his paratrooper pants, whether out of habit or to remove Talbert's blood she couldn't tell. But she offered him a small smile.

"Thanks for the help," he told her. "Captain says he'll be fine."

"Good."

Spina stood level with her. After another few beats of silence, he turned her way. "You ain't so bad, you know."

"What?"

"Ah you know the guys hate yah," he told her. "Well, maybe not hate. Not anymore."

Sveta rolled her eyes. But she nodded. "No one tried to keep it a secret."

Spina grimaced. "Yeah. Well." He shrugged, turning to face her, then gestured to the Battalion Aid Station where Roe now sat drinking from his canteen while the surgeon worked. "Talbert said to say thank you."

Her eyebrows raised a bit. A reply caught in her throat. She didn't really know what to say. A quick glance back at where she could see the surgeon hovering over him made her pause. She turned to Spina. "Morphine will make you say all sorts of things, Spina."

He laughed. With a wide smile, Spina just shook his head. He said no more. Instead, he just meandered back towards Battalion Aid, downing some water from his canteen. With a last look at the surgeon working and the medics by his side, she sighed. Sveta turned back to the line. She had a job to do. And she had a lonely foxhole to fill.