Warmth had been a foreign thing for so long that the feeling of a candle's orange glow on her skin was almost too much. Her skin smarted and burned, raw from the ice, snow, and wind. Her body had been aching for this feeling and now rejected it, the safety and security of this little church in Rachamps couldn't have been real.

It was some fantasy, pressed beside Malarkey on a hard, wooden bench listening to the voices of a choir rise into the rafters to join the smoke from the thousands of candles lit around them. It was a dream, this state of safety. Perhaps Zhanna was still in the forest outside of Foy, watching her only allies run toward certain death? Perhaps Zhanna was still frozen, deaf and drowning, in that foxhole, the sound of Buck's scream ringing in her mind?

Had she made it out of Russia at all? Or was she still in the attic bedroom, curled beneath the covers, face scratched by the frost creeping across her pillow case?

Liebgott's movements beside her felt real. So had the grief, the raging, raw grief that had racked her mind and body. She hadn't been able to cry but the burning flames of emotion had been quickly overtaken by the familiar, and almost comforting numbness. To feel something so strong after so many weeks of nothing was too much. Zhanna had wanted to scream but she couldn't. Her feet had only led her to the waiting depths of a foxhole, to the waiting arms and coat of Captain Winters. She had broken the few walls she had left but Zhanna didn't feel sorry.

After Paris, they had avoided each other, or rather, Zhanna had avoided Winters out of fear. She had overstepped her rank and she didn't think she could afford to let it happen again but now Zhanna didn't care. After Bastogne and in the days after the battle of Foy, Zhanna didn't avoid him. He was one of the few officers she could stand to be around.

There was an unspoken understanding, a taboo on the topic of their time in his foxhole. Though only words and a coat had been shared, boundaries had been broken and Zhanna knew that Winters couldn't lose another officer.

That understanding had gotten her through the battle of Foy and the subsequent skirmishes, pushing back the German line. Zhanna had seen enough snow covered trees to last her a lifetime and was, at least grateful, when they were pulled to a convent in Rachamps, offered hard benches and a moment of rest.

Zhanna had seen the grand churches of the Orthodox faith in Stalingrad, burned in the horizon. She had lived in their shadows, another thing that set her apart and made her life dangerous but Zhanna had never been inside of a chapel. Certainly not with platoons of dirty, exhausted soldiers slumped onto wooden benches while being sweetly serenaded by young girls no older than Zhanna. After so many nights of the cold and the fear, this night of warmth and reflection snagged on her nerves, pulling the loose threads.

She couldn't contain the laughter that she, a Pole and a Jew and now a sniper in the Russian army would be sitting among American paratroopers in a Belgian church. She looked beside her, to the space she had unknowingly left for Skip and Penkala and had to bite down hard on the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.

"What the hell is so funny?" Liebgott hissed from right, where she had left the space for two fallen soldiers.

"I've never been in a church before," Zhanna said, covering her mouth in the hopes of concealing her breathless giggles.

'I can't say I've spent much time in them myself," Liebgott said, drawing a deep inhale from his cigarette and offering one to Zhanna. She accepted it, rolling it between her fingers but not bringing it to her lips. How utterly ridiculous it was, looking around at the choir and the candles.

Liebgott slid over, taking Skip's spot. Zhanna's mouth opened, her protest building in her throat but it died before it could cross her lips. He wasn't here. So many of Easy wasn't.

Glancing around again, Zhanna realized that she hadn't been the only one leaving spaces for lost comrades. She could picture each face, each soldier, where they should be sitting. But their seats remained empty. The grief wasn't raw anymore. Soothed by the song and the warmth of the first night spent under cover in a month, Zhanna didn't feel the sharpness of the pain. Like her parents' deaths and the loss of Buck, she had learned to shoulder it, to live with it. Their voices didn't leave her, neither did the brushes of cold fingers against the backs of her hands. They promised that they were okay, that they would be back, and that she would be fine. Those might have been true at one point but Zhanna couldn't see the truth in them anymore.

"Do you know where we are going?" Liebgott asked, dropping his cigarette when a member of the choir glanced over.

There were whispers of returning to Mourmelon, a place that Zhanna had only ever associated with dull grief. Returning to Mourmelon le Grande after months in the deep snow and foxholes of Bastogne sounded like heaven, if such a place existed.

Zhanna shrugged, turning the cigarette in her hand.

"Oh come on," Liebgott urged. "You're an officer, right? Don't they tell you shit?"

She was an officer. She had forgotten. Zhanna had never been made for a leadership role, and she had accepted the promotion only to appease Winters. In her time in the Russian military and her transition to the Airborne, she had been happy to relinquish any control to her superiors.

She had handed herself over to fate and the hands of others. She allowed herself to be shuffled and dealt, tossed onto the table to played and used. A Pole and a Jew became a quiet rebellion. A sniper with an impressive killcount became a weapon. A lost little girl became a pawn in a game she never wanted. Zhanna didn't have the power and the raw strength to push back, to fight against it. She had fallen into that pit, that foxhole of frigid water. But Zhanna wasn't weak.

"No one tells me shit," Zhanna admitted. "But I can ask."

Winters and Nixon stood in the doorway, by the dark exit that led to the snow they had sought brief shelter from. If anyone would know, they would and Zhanna had an advantage that many didn't have.

"You'd do that for me?" Liebgott asked.

"For a favor," Zhanna said. She had a bargaining chip, one that wasn't her skill or her secrets and she planned on using it to her fullest advantage.

"Yeah, Lieutenant, what's that?" The space where Skip should have sat taken up by Liebgott's small frame and cloud of cigarette smoke.

"Move over," Zhanna hissed. As Liebgott did so, she stood, pushing past him to stand in the aisle.

"Why did I have to move?"

"You were in his seat," Zhanna choked out.

She didn't wait for Liebgott to understand, marching through the slumped forms of her fellow soldiers. She passed Lipton and Speirs, who only dipped their heads in acknowledgment of her. Zhanna wasn't sure what Speirs thought of her. She wasn't sure Speirs had an opinion on her. Sveta sat, lost in thought, in a pew. Zhanna hadn't spoken to her since returning from the field hospital when she had said goodbye to Buck.

Zhanna had nothing to say and the anger that boiled beneath the surface frightened her. That dud from the foxhole hadn't left her, she carried it around with her. A heavy weight only exacerbated by Foy and the towns that followed. Sveta had risked her life, running across that field and meeting up with I Company. Zhanna's chest had seized as she watched Sveta's figure dart across the snow. Zhanna had paid the price to stay by Sveta's side, to pay her end of the debt, and Sveta risked her life as if Zhanna's sacrifices meant nothing.

Sveta didn't look up when Zhanna passed and she didn't bother to break days of silence now, in this dark chapel. She had everything and nothing to say to her so why would Zhanna waste breath?

Nixon watched her approach with the interest of a predator, the prey nearing and he was curious as to why he didn't have to lure or hunt this time.

"Casmirovna," Nixon greeted. Zhanna didn't look at him, glancing instead at Winters beside him. He acknowledged her presence with a nod of his head and a flash in his eyes at the wrong name being used.

"Foy was a success," Zhanna said, to neither officer in particular. "But the men want to know where we are going next?"

"Since when do you speak for the enlisted, Casmirovna?" Nixon said, smirking. His stubbled face didn't look nearly as intimidating as it had when she first met him. How long ago that seemed, and was. She had a few scraps of hope left, then, and had allowed him to torment her mind.

Zhanna didn't know if Lewis Nixon was the enemy but he certainly wasn't her enemy.

"Someone has to," Zhanna looked down at her American made boots, caked with mud and snow that had yet to melt, no matter how warm the church was.

"We are meeting with Sink at 2200 hours," Winters said, looking down at his watch. There was no invitation but Zhanna took the lack of protest as invitation enough. As Winters and Nixon stood, turning towards the door, Zhanna wrapped her borrowed coat tighter around herself.

"Nice coat," Nixon muttered, as Zhanna slipped between the intelligence officer and Winters, trying to slip away unnoticed. "Don't you want to say goodbye to Samsonova?"

"Nix," Winters shook his head, the name from his lips enough to close the door to the church and the impending interrogation.

Zhanna wasn't ready for that interrogation or conversation. She was a Red Army Liaison who couldn't be near her colleague without her body feeling like it was on fire. She was a Russian sniper who couldn't say a word to her fellow countryman without her throat constricting. It was an impossible situation to be in and an even more impossible thing to discuss. Nixon wasn't her enemy but he wasn't quite her friend. Zhanna had lost all of those in the deep snow.

She settled for the simplest and most truthful answer. "I'll see her later,"

"I asked after your ammunition," Dick said, letting his pace slow so that Zhanna walked beside him through the ankle-deep mud and snow.

"Did you ask for another coat, Dick?" Nixon asked. "Or have you found the one you lost?"

Winters ignored his friend's chatter, turning to Zhanna and looking at the rifle on her shoulder. "Any particular target for those last few bullets, Casmirovna?"

She had two left. Two bullets to her weapon and it would take some kind of miracle to make it through a war with just that. Sveta and Nixon had their drink but Zhanna didn't find the same solace in a bottle that they did. She only felt at peace, not numb, not in pain but at peace, with a rifle in her hand and even that was stained in blood. Maybe it would be easier if she had tried to drink herself into a stupor one too many times?

"I still owe Nixon some lead, I think," Zhanna said, her ankle twisting in the mud. She cursed under her breath. Winters's hand shot out and steadied her. It didn't linger but his barest trace of a smile did in her mind.

Nixon didn't speak after that, out of an overabundance of caution. Zhanna had never joked about her marksmanship or who she used her rifle on. They were still in a war, after all, and Russians and Americans were allies by necessity. They carried on in silence, toward the lit house that had been emptied to use as a base of command. Zhanna had been given a room in it's dark halls, shared with Sveta, but even with a bed instead of a foxhole, she couldn't escape the rumble of tanks and distant shelling.

Sink was already inside, looking through a map with Strayer, their mood grim.

"Sir?" Winters said, saluting.

"Captains," Sink greeted Nixon and Winters, adding. "Evening, Casmirovna,"

"Sir," She dipped her head to the Colonel, but her eyes were drawn to the map spread out across the kitchen table, the legend dancing beneath the yellow lamp light.

"I'm afraid we've got bad news," Sink said. "But we'll wait for Samsonova and Speirs,"

Zhanna didn't want to wait for Sveta and Ron. She didn't want to inhabit the same space as her old friend right now. That sounded like a potential overdose of memories and old wounds. She shouldn't have pressed, she wasn't even supposed to be here but she wanted someone to rip off the bandage. To tear off the dried blood, ragged gauze, and reveal the smarting flesh beneath. If they all looked at the wound and saw it for what it was, Zhanna could maybe reconcile with it, accept it.

Just tear off the bandage, she thought but her mouth said. "We are moving out again, aren't we?"

It sounded weak. It sounded defeated. It sounded drowned.

Sink's brow, knit in a worrisome furrow, softened. "Yes."

Zhanna glanced up at Winters, their eyes meeting. She saw her own frustration and defeat mirrored in his eyes. It disappeared, replaced with a question.

"Are you going to be alright?" they seemed to ask.

She didn't answer that question. It was a ridiculous one. She would be fine. In fact, she was fine.

"Don't tell them tonight," Zhanna muttered, low enough for only Dick to hear. "Let them have tonight."

"Casmirovna, you look dead on your feet," Sink said, in something that sounded much more fatherly than a superior officer. "You are excused."

Zhanna didn't think she looked dead on her feet, she looked fine. She caught a glimpse of herself in the kitchen window, a wraith in the yellow lamplight. Her eyes were sunken and her cheekbones jutted harshly. All the men had felt the effects of little to no rations and low supplies but Zhanna did, in fact, look dead. But she wasn't dead.

"Sir," She wasn't dead yet. She was still breathing so she could keep fighting.

"Zhanna," Winters muttered, as if they were still in that foxhole. As if they were still in that hotel room in Paris. But they weren't in Paris or in Bastogne, they weren't alone and Zhanna wasn't dead.

"Thank you, sir," Zhanna said, sounding grateful though her eyes told Winters a very different story.

The uppermost room had been given to the sniper pair, far away from men and noise. Zhanna hadn't slept in a bed in weeks. Her hand trailed over the coverlet and the mattress, however lumpy. She wanted to curl up under the blankets, burrow deep into the sheets, and never wake up. But Zhanna shared this room with Sveta. Sveta hadn't come upstairs yet, though Zhanna could hear her voice carrying from the kitchen. Though every part of her feeling body wanted those sheets, she sank slowly onto the floor beside the bed.

Sveta outranked Zhanna. Sveta would take the bed.

Besides, Zhanna didn't want to lay in a bed while so many she loved lay in graves. Lying there on the floor, Zhanna felt closer to them. Those wooden floorboards under her were bed enough for her, a coffin for this nightmare ridden night.

Sveta outranked Zhanna so she would take the bed.

Wrapping tighter in a borrowed coat, she shut her eyes tight against the approaching footsteps and the crack of watery light that spilled through the open door. The breath of a woman Zhanna would have called a friend three years ago was heavy in her ear, a deep sigh as she felt the eyes rake over her still form. The creak of the bedsprings told Zhanna that Sveta had taken the bed.

Zhanna didn't have rank, a coat of her own, or the allies she had fought so hard to gain. When this war was over, Zhanna wasn't sure who would be her friend or her foe, or who her enemies really were. All she knew was the coat around her and the breath in her chest. Zhanna wasn't dead, not yet.