Her bags were packed. They sat by the door to her bedroom that she shared with Zhanna, ready for the trip to Upottery. All she had left to do was load a truck in the morning.

Sveta closed her eyes. All around her, the grass in the quiet field on Aldbourne's outskirts rustled in the gentle wind. The setting sun cast reds and golds across the sky, bleeding into the dark black of the encroaching night. A peace settled around her.

She took a deep breath. The scent of approaching rain, the musky petrichor seeping into the air, soothed her nerves. Sitting there in the open, alone, Sveta tried to picture Russia. That's what she fought for. The scarlet flag with the golden sickle, the Valdai hills, the Volga river.

Before she'd turned ten, her mother had taken her to Moscow for a vacation. Sveta remembered their trip on the Volga. She'd sworn to her mother that she'd seen flamingos in the wetlands. It had just been Sveta, and her mother, and the waters of the Mother Volga.

Everything had been so much simpler then. They had been simpler for Sveta, at least. She opened her eyes. The sun had almost disappeared, dark clouds covering the stars that should've been shining down. She'd not seen it then. She'd not seen the way her mother had been suffering in silence.

A gust of wind blew her loose hair into her face. Sveta nearly choked on the strands that hit her mouth at the same time she breathed in. Moments later, a mist of rain began to fall around her. Beads of water formed on her bare hands. It plastered her hair to her cheeks.

Her mother had always loved the rain. It had rained that night, the one that haunted Sveta's dreams. But even the thunder hadn't masked the bang of the pistol. Sveta could hear the screams. They'd been her own. Between the flashes of lightning and thunder claps, she'd screamed for her mom over and over and over.

But she didn't wake up. Something in Sveta had died that day, died right alongside her mom. The Korovin pistol had killed her resolve, had killed her hope, had killed her dreams. Then it had only been her, and the fear, and Zhanna against Stalin, and Beria, and her father.

A distant roll of thunder made Sveta look up at the night sky. Lightning streaked across the darkness. She sighed. The rain began to pick up. Pushing herself to her feet, Sveta looked out across the field one more time. At least she had Zhanna. As a child, Sveta had never had friends, just acquaintances with the other kids of Stalin's friends.

Vasily Stalin, Lana's older brother, had turned to drinking the same year Sveta had been captured. 1935 had been a rough year for people near Stalin. She'd only heard from him a few times after the war began. She hoped he was doing well.

With a last look across the dark field, Sveta turned her face up into the rain. She stayed there for a moment. The rain concealed any tears she hadn't been able to suppress. Then she turned away.

Tomorrow they would move to Upottery. Tomorrow they would get one step closer to returning to the mainland. Each step brought her closer to Russia.

A pit formed in her stomach. Did she want to return to that? To the politics and the games and the secret threats around every corner? She did not, but she wanted to return home to her Motherland. She wanted to see the Volga again.

After a few moments of quiet walking, her feet hit pavement. Her boots pounded rhythmically against the cobbles. Sveta wanted a drink. She needed one, a good strong one. There was a pub not far from the exit of town. Zhanna said that the enlisted frequented it, and while that didn't exactly make her feel better, at least she knew it wouldn't be unheard of for her to drop in.

The windows glowed as she approached. Sveta didn't even try to hurry to escape the rain, already soaked to the bone. So she just waited for a couple of officers to pass her before ducking inside. A chorus of voices singing some sort of drinking song made her pause before she slipped through the crowd.

She noticed a few men from 2nd Battalion, mostly from Fox Company. The others were 506th as well. Before long she'd gotten a bottle of scotch and a shot glass, and taken a table by a window that had been recently vacated.

The images kept playing like a movie in her mind. The gunshot, the deafening silence, then the pounding of her shoes as Sveta had run from her room. The white sheets were stained red. Her mother's arm had fallen, lifeless, to the side of the bed. The brown pistol had clattered to the floor. Sveta remembered her stomach dropping into her shoes.

Grabbing the scotch bottle, Sveta poured herself a glass full and downed it before it touched the table. She refilled it. She drank it. Then she filled it again.

Her mother's eyes had been hazel. She'd grown up wishing for the brilliant bronze and green instead of the dark brown she'd inherited from Alexander Samsonov. She'd inherited his name, she'd inherited his enemies, why did she have to have his eyes too?

But in that moment, when Sveta had finally moved from the doorway into the cavernous bedroom her mother shared with the man she still called Sasha, Sveta hated those hazel eyes. They'd stared back at her with an emptiness she never wanted to see again. She'd seen eyes like that once before, in Rostov-on-Don, when she'd passed the corpses made by the NKVD in her name.

Sveta couldn't recall when Zhanna had come up behind her. All she remembered was the emptiness in that room. She only remembered the echo of her screams.

"Hey, Lieutenant!"

Sveta glanced up from where she nursed her third glass. Bedraggled and wet but seemingly in a surprisingly good mood, Private Spina moved over to her. Sergeant Roe followed a bit more grumpy behind. She nodded to them.

"You here by yourself?" Spina asked in surprise.

Sveta shrugged. "I was on my way home, figured I'd stop in."

"Grabbing a last drink before the winds change?" Spina smirked.

"Something like that," she agreed. After a moment Sveta sighed. "You two can sit here, if you need."

"Hey! Thanks," Spina said, grinning.

He wasted no time plopping himself down. Beside him, Eugene followed a bit more slowly, taking a drink of his beer. But he offered her a smile.

Leaning forward, Spina lowered his voice. "Any word on when we're jumping?"

She shook her head. "No. But we need a new commanding officer before that," she reminded them.

Sobel had been gone for only a couple of weeks, but they still didn't have anyone to replace him. Word was they were getting someone within the 506th already, but that his transfer had been held up. She didn't have any more information than that.

"Well, whoever it is, he's gotta be better than Sobel," Spina muttered.

Roe scoffed under his breath. "Spina, everybody's better than Sobel."

She had to agree. "We can only hope the army doesn't make another bad decision."

"Wish it had been Winters," Spina muttered. "He's the guy we all want."

Sveta didn't know what to say to that. While it was true that Winters not only had the men's respect, but he also was an undoubtedly fantastic mind in the field, she couldn't help but worry about his ties to Nixon. Nixon had yet to convince her he wasn't a threat of some sort.

"When it comes down to it, it's you, the medics, that the men will be looking to," she finally said. Sveta set down her empty shot glass. "When the bullets start flying, you have the toughest job."

Neither of them responded at first. Sveta didn't want to frighten them, but she wouldn't lie. She'd seen many men shot in the Battle of Smolensk. She'd seen many empty eyes staring up at the sky. She'd heard the soldiers cry out for their medics, the men and women who could save them from that endless dark.

Sveta offered them a small smile that she hoped was comforting. "In Smolensk, where I fought before fleeing Russia, the medics were saviors. You'll do fine."

"What's it like, Lieutenant?" Roe asked.

"Battle?" Sveta paused. "Loud. Chaotic. With long silences in between." She sighed. "We barely escaped with our lives. A miracle, really." But Sveta didn't like to think about Smolensk. So she tried to change the subject. "Roe, you speak French?"

"Some, yeah," he nodded.

"So do I. Some," she amended. "It's been a while. I learned French and English from my tutors growing up."

"Must've been rich," Spina said.

Sveta forced a smile. She sat up straighter, filling her shot glass for a third time. As they sipped their beers, she sipped her scotch. "Yes. Quite wealthy. My father is well known in Russia," she added. "He's active in politics."

"Nice."

Sure. She didn't correct them, just nodded with a smile. She had figured out not too long after joining Easy that the men didn't really know much about her family. They knew she had a powerful family name, but not why. And Sveta had no desire to enlighten them.

She looked down at her watch. "I should go. You as well," she added. "We move out early tomorrow for the airfield."

"Yes, ma'am," Roe nodded.

Spina grinned. "Good night."

She smiled, nodded, and left the rest of the scotch for them if they wanted it. After a few moments of forcing her way through the crowded pub, she reached the door. It pushed open with ease.

The clouds had disappeared. Instead of darkness, the stars sparkled far above. A full moon lit the night. Sveta took a deep breath. She smiled. Tomorrow they would move one step closer to home. One step closer to Russia. When she got back, then Sveta would worry about how to leave the shadow her father cast. But until then, she would just remember the Volga. That was home.