#zhanna casmirovna

[adamantiumdragonfly]

|| UNDER THE BANNER || @juliannetoinette

lyrics from Nobody's Soldier by Hozier.

[wexhappyxfew]

Sveta will smile and I will step back. Like we are meant to. As we always will.

— zhanna casmirovna polyakovna, from under the banner, OC by @adamantiumdragonfly

BoB fic: find it on — AO3 || Wattpad || FFN

[adamantiumdragonfly]

Is utb coming back soon? It's an amazing story <3

Hey there! 

First off, thanks for asking! I have been meaning to address this at some point but with finals busy for both me and @julianneday1701 we just hadn’t had the time.

In fact, that’s a big reason why Under the Banner remains unfinished at this time. We just don’t have the time that we did at the beginning of our journey with the Sniper Pair or that time is being taken by something a little more pressing. So now that you’ve asked, inquiring Anon, I’m able to break this down for you and anyone else who might be interested. 

At this moment, Under the Banner is standing at nine or ten chapters away from full completion. Sounds so easy just typing it out. We should be able to bust that out in a few weeks right? Well, not really. 

[Julianne has given me permission to speak for her and share some of the reasoning.]

Julianne is battling some pretty serious health issues at this time that will not be resolved anytime soon. This makes it almost impossible for her to write and since the remaining chapters are so Sveta-centric, we really cannot proceed without her. I wouldn’t dream of proceeding without her. 

In the meantime, I will be updating solo projects. Please don't think we are ignoring UtB, we aren't. It weighs just as much on us as it does you.

We started writing Under the Banner in May 2020 and we are nearing two years now of working on it. During that time we have gone through a lot as individuals and as a pair. I’m so grateful to have such understanding readers and I promise, Zhanna and Sveta’s story will be finished but it would be counter productive to put any kind of deadline on it. 

TL;DR: Health problems put Under the Banner on the backburner until further notice. 

When we do begin posting again, once the story is complete, we look forward to showing you all the end of Zhanna and Sveta’s journey. We love and thank you for all your support, your appreciation, and we can’t wait to see y’all again in (hopefully) the near future! 

See you then!

xoxo,

flora

[adamantiumdragonfly]

under the banner, collaboration with @julianneday1701

Chapter 71: God knows what is real (draft)

“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,” 

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Dick Winters x Original Female Character. Ronald Speirs x Original Female Character. Russian Sniper OFCs. Band of Brothers fanfiction. 

[adamantiumdragonfly]

zhanna casmirovna polyakova character playlist

hold back the river - james bay

dream - bishop briggs

pretender (acoustic)  - ajr

can you hear me now? - the score

deep water - american authors

what the water gave me - florence + the machine

[ character playlists ] ​

[adamantiumdragonfly]

Incorrect Under the Banner meme: Chapters 76-100

Yes, I know UtB hasn’t been updated. Life is busy and we are but two humans. Enjoy these memes I found in my drafts. 

[adamantiumdragonfly]

...in my father's name...

Her vacant eyes glanced over the men, their faces smudged and clothes caked with mud. She found herself focused on one, who’s blonde hair peaked under his helmet. She narrowed her eyes, trying to see through the layer of mud to discern a familiar feature that had caught her eye. A sharp nose and round face. 

“Casmirovna?” The one she studied, beneath all that dirt and grime, couldn’t have been much older than herself.

“Hey, shut up,” Talbert knocked the prisoner’s helmet off, the shock of blonde hair blinding in the weak light. “These Krauts want us to think they are Polish, Cas, can you believe it? ” 

“My father’s name,” Zhanna said, taking a leap of faith and switching to Polish. “Casimir Polyakov.”  

It could have been nothing. A lie, like Talbert and Martin thought, but Zhanna wanted someone to speak her native tongue, someone who might know who she was or where she came from. The soldier, his face still familiar and his hair just a shade darker than her own, continued. 

“Agata? Your mother is Agata?” 

“Yes,”  Zhanna’ heart started to pound now. Did this soldier know her family? “Do you know her?” 

“She is my aunt,” he said. “My god, you look just like her.  I- I am your cousin, Janusz Sadlowski. We’ve heard so much about you, Zhanna!” 

“You...You are my mother’s family?” 

“Yes! They came to shelter with my mother, Francezka, in Vawkarysk, in 1938.” 

Tears sprang into her eyes. They had made it. Agata and Casimir had made it safely. 

“Are they alright?” Zhanna asked. “They never came back for me.” 

Read more on Wattpad || Archive of Our Own || Fanfiction.net

[adamantiumdragonfly]

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WIP Wednesday

She saw the shell before it exploded. The silver cylinder buried itself deep in the green and brown ground a few meters away.

Silver like the necklace she had buried. The shell burst before her eyes, shattering any visions of home that might have surfaced.

Zhanna, still propelled by her terrified sprint, flew forward. Ears still ringing and body cracking on impact. Every bone in her body felt like ice, brittle and shards scattered. Her rifle dug into her spine, and she couldn’t move. She couldn’t move and she was out in the open. 

Only a few moments prior she had been safe in the bushes, in a carefully crafted hide. Zhanna had been as safe as she could be. And now she was out in the open, the sun bright on her pale skin. She couldn’t hear. She couldn’t think.

Zhanna could only feel the shaking of the ground and the sun on her skin. She was melting, her body of ice bare to the sun. Movement seemed impossible. Something trickled down her neck and into her hair.

Was she really melting? 

[adamantiumdragonfly]

Under the Banner || Zhanna Casmirovna

look through the curtains

“You’ve known her for…” Muck trailed off, realizing that her age had never been disclosed. 

“Five years,” Zhanna said. “We joined the Russian army together. We fought together. And now we are in the Airborne together.” 

Muck opened his mouth as if he wanted to ask for more information, to continue this story but Easy company didn’t need to know her secrets. They didn’t need to know that she was Polish, Jewish, or anything else for that matter. She had hidden who she was for so long, no matter what her father had encouraged, Zhanna couldn’t be proud enough to share it now. These men, she trusted them with her life but not with her secrets. 

Gathering her courage firmly in place, Zhanna said, hand still tight against the glass. “I appreciate your curiosity but I am a private person,” 

Talbert opened his mouth but Zhanna raised a hand to silence him. “Now tell us, Talbert, how is your mother?” 

While Muck laughed and Talbert’s ears grew redder still, Zhanna took a sip of the vodka that had gone warm in the heat of her hand. Buck leaned close to her, about to whisper a question in her ear but she turned at the last moment, meeting him head on. 

Their faces were a breath away from each other. His eyes were so blue, nothing like the dark eyes she had been warned about, and he smelled like beer and cigarette smoke. He wanted to know her secrets, the look in his eyes told her so. 

“I’m a private person,” She repeated in the barest whisper. “Even to you.”

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[adamantiumdragonfly]

Fanfic Friday

I’ll be opening my asks for some Zhanna related content! Any questions, trivia requests, or declarations of love are welcome! ;)

taglist: @julianneday1701 @teenmagazines @wexhappyxfew @sunflowerchuck @alienoresimagines @rogue-sunday @easy-company-tradition @trashgoddess600 @pilindieltheelf @tvserie-s-world @vintagelavenderskies @jamie506101 @rinadoesstuff 

Under the Banner, chapter 26

Instinct took control of her mind somewhere over the English channel. Not long after they were loaded into the planes and the engines started to roar, Zhanna’s trembling fingers and anxious thoughts were replaced with a freezing calm. Cold water pouring over her spine, numbing chills splintering down her back. She didn’t think, she didn’t even comprehend. Not when the air sickness pills started to twist her stomach in knots. Not when the bullets started to fly and most certainly not when she was pushed out of the plane by Buck, throwing her into the air. 

Her fingers worked the webbing like it was her sniper rifle. Familiar and comforting, she deployed the parachute like she would a bullet. Quick, painless, numb. The wind whipped her cheeks. Zhanna’s heart pounded but it was adrenaline not fear. There were bullets and explosions and planes falling out of the sky but Zhanna glided toward the dark ground like a leaf in the early days of fall. She didn’t notice the men around her, hanging limply in the harness. 

She didn’t notice when her leg bag, that had been the largest amount of weight to her downward course, was split by a stray bullet and plummeted to the ground. Zhanna did feel the jerk upwards, the sudden lightening of the load. Like her necklace. She had thrown her necklace away and now she was throwing her rifle away. A piece of Zhanna floating away from her. 

 She slipped between two trees, their shadows casting thin lines across her fingers as they struggled with the effort of removing the harness. Ripping it free, the silk glided away among the underbrush, caught by the breeze. It was a silvery ghost, dancing farther and farther from view before disappearing and leaving Zhanna now quite alone.  Zhanna’s legs were weak, clearly not understanding that she was numb. She wouldn’t have noticed if they weren’t shaking so much. 

[adamantiumdragonfly]

"Tried to find the light between your shadows

But it always seemed to fade

It took me time for me to learn to let go

But I grew stronger from the pain

I went deep inside, where monsters hide

To free my mind, and come out alive

Tell me when you kicked me did you ever think that I would get up?"

Zhanna Casmirovna Polyakova || Under The Banner

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[adamantiumdragonfly]

Zhanna: *speaking russian*

Skip: I know, I know.

Malarkey: You speak Russian?

Skip: no. I just know the phrase, ‘you're so fucking dumb’ in every language she speaks.

[adamantiumdragonfly]

Thirsty Thursday Sneak Peek

Under The Banner

Welsh never asked for volunteers. He knew that silence would rest heavily over the men until he would, at long last, have to pick out the unlucky few who would approach the house and, knowingly become bullet fodder. It was a tough hand to be dealt and Zhanna knew that no one would volunteer. So she did. 

Zhanna usually did. Anything to pass the time spent in France. Nothing to distract from the heavy weight of her family and how her feet were on the same continent as her homeland. Poland, somewhere over the horizon. But Zhanna couldn’t think about home, or her family. Not when there was still so much to be done. Not when there was a house to clear and her mind was still gummy from the shell blast. 

Her unwilling companions were Blithe, Martin, and Dukeman. Johnny Martin’s face was characteristically glum while Dukeman had a foul look etched deep into his features. Blithe’s face was blank, completely unreadable. 

Blithe had found courage somewhere in the foxholes of Carentan. He was now steady and had a grimmer sense of resolve about him. As if he accepted his fate, be that death or life. Zhanna supposed that there were some orders that life gave you that simply couldn’t be attested. She supposed that if life had your death written out, there was only so long you could avoid it. Survival was a language she spoke and a life she led but it wasn’t attainable. Zhanna could only cheat life’s plan for so long.

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[adamantiumdragonfly]

“I don’t want to talk about it with you,” Zhanna said. She didn’t want to talk about it with anyone. But especially not with Nixon. Not when she walked closer to her impending summons, that could end in the death of her dream and destruction of what little safety she had mustered. 

“It seems Samsonova needs to teach you some of her tact.” 

Zhanna didn’t need tact. And while she didn’t have a temper to lose, she didn’t mind leveling a rifle to Nixon’s head. But it would be better to respond in kind. Something she very rarely did. 

“Is Lieutenant Winters ill?” Zhanna asked. 

“No,” Nixon’s brow furrowed. “Why do you ask?’ 

 “I just wondered why Sink would send you,” She said, fingers reaching instinctively for her rifle strap but it was not in its usual place on her shoulder. Zhanna had left it on the grease-stained cloth upstairs, disassembled. She hadn’t thought that her moment of peace in the garden would have been interrupted by Nixon. 

“Dick is currently in Sobel’s doghouse,” Nixon explained, holding open the door to HQ for her. Chivalry wasn’t something she expected from him but Zhanna accepted it, the temperature shifting when she had stepped inside. “After a poorly articulated court martial, he will be doing more menial tasks. I’m sure you know the kind.” 

“I am familiar,” Zhanna said, pausing in the hallway. Nixon stopped a few feet away from her. There was a divide that hadn’t been there before. She had feared him, seeing in him the men who stalked her family and had been the reason for their untimely departure. She wasn’t sure she feared him anymore. But there was a layer of unease, like thick ice. Distrust that couldn’t be easily thawed. 

“Does Sobel hate you for any particular reason?” Nixon asked. “I mean, apart from the obvious.”

Did he hate her because she was Russian? Or maybe it was an underlying hatred for the female kind? Either was plausible but Zhanna didn’t think that was what Nixon was asking about. 

“Do you require meeting with me, Lieutenant Nixon?” Zhanna asked. “Am I under interrogation?” 

“No, just a few questions,” Nixon said simply. It wasn’t simple though. He looked at her with those eyes and she didn’t fear him but she didn’t trust his reasoning. Nixon knew about her slipup after the bar. Nixon knew more about Sveta than Zhanna had seen her share. “Lieutenant Casmirovna, is that right?” 

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[adamantiumdragonfly]

Under The Banner, chapter fifty-nine

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Don’t think, Zhanna murmured to herself. Thinking was her enemy. If she just didn’t think about it, just ignored it, maybe it would stop hurting. Ignore the thousands of words that she had written, the pencils she had worn down, and just keep moving. She would keep fighting in this war. Keep pushing. If she made it through the war, if she fulfilled her debt to Sveta, Zhanna would stop. She would step back, like she always did. And then what? What would she do? 

Home wasn’t in Russia. Home wasn’t in Poland. Where would she go? That safe place had been an imaginary destination that was the capstone to her almost realized dream. The dream that didn’t have a place in her life anymore. 

“How do you find Bastogne?” Buck asked. Zhanna laughed. He was changing the subject for her, letting her forget. 

“Cold,” She said, her lips chapped and trembling. 

“And the snow?” Buck continued. 

Zhanna tucked the journal back into her pocket, adjusting its position. It didn’t press against her ribs anymore and she could almost forget it was there. Almost. 

Burying herself under the thin blanket and against Buck’s warmer shoulder, she whispered. “I find the snow white. Very white. And cold.” 

  Masterlist  || Taglist 

[adamantiumdragonfly]

Happy Motivation Monday! Thought I'd share some of the most recent chapter I've drafted for #UnderTheBanner. Finding time to write and motivation has been a challenge since I started working fulltime but if you love something, you'll find time for it or you'll make time for it!

||

If she had said that to the men of Easy Company, any trust that had been built since disembarking from the Samaria would have vanished like the English fog. But Compton laughed, not at all intimidated. “First day on the job and I almost got shot by a fellow officer,”

A fellow? Zhanna’s brow furrowed and Compton continued, as so many did, before she could decide whether she wanted to speak or not.

“New assistant platoon leader of Easy Company. Don’t suppose you are in 2nd platoon?”

“And if I wasn’t?” Zhanna shouldered her rifle, the strap lying still against her ODs. For once, she didn’t play with it. This giant of a man was a confusing one. He wasn’t like Nixon, who wanted to puzzle her out. He wasn’t like Winters, who seemed to be sorry for her. Buck Compton seemed to want to talk to her. And Zhanna was willing to reply.

“I’d have Lieutenant Samsonova to reckon with and her reputation precedes her,”

“And you would prefer me?” Zhanna said, slowly, tasting the words. How they felt on her tongue. Had anyone chosen a Pole over power before? Had anyone chosen her before?

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