Chapter Text
USSR, late 1967.
The apartment smelled like cabbage soup and gun oil, which was not unusual. What was unusual was the way Doll shut the door behind her—slow, deliberate, like she was trying not to slam it hard enough to start a diplomatic incident.
Her boots came off first. She kicked them toward the wall with more force than strictly necessary. Her coat followed, flung over the back of a chair that had seen three wars, two marriages, and one regrettable attempt by Mitchell to fix a loose leg with duct tape and hopes and dreams.
Yeva didn’t look up from the kitchen table.
Doll stood there for a moment, arms crossed, radiating displeasure like a personal weather system.
“It went poorly,” Doll announced.
Yeva hummed, calm, unbothered, the sound of a woman who had survived the Eastern Front and therefore considered bad dates a non-event. She was seated at the table, methodically cleaning a pistol with the same care other women might use to peel apples. Her sleeves were rolled up. Her posture was perfect. Her expression was neutral in a way that suggested she already knew exactly how poorly it had gone.
“How poorly?” Yeva asked.
Doll exhaled sharply and dropped into the chair across from her mother. “He talked about tractors for forty-five minutes.”
Yeva glanced up. “Tractors are important.”
“Yes,” Doll snapped, “in the abstract. Not when we are eating dinner. Not when I ask him what he thinks about literature and he responds by describing the emotional journey of a combine harvester.”
Yeva returned her attention to the gun. “Did he ask you questions?”
“Yes,” Doll said. “One.”
“And?”
“He asked if my parents were… normal.”
Yeva paused.
Slowly, she set the pistol down.
“What did you tell him?” she asked, her voice even.
Doll stared at the table. “I told him my mother was a decorated intelligence officer and my father is a former German soldier who survived the war by being too stupid to die.”
There was a beat of silence.
From the other room, something clattered, followed by Mitchell’s voice.
“I found the screwdriver! It was in the bread box!”
Yeva closed her eyes for half a second.
“Yes,” she said softly. “That does sound like Mitchell.”
Doll grimaced. “You see what I am dealing with?”
Yeva leaned back in her chair, folding her hands. “I see a man who was honest about who he is.”
“I do not want honesty,” Doll said flatly. “I want competence.”
Yeva’s lips twitched. Just slightly.
“You say that now.”
Doll narrowed her eyes. “Mother.”
Yeva met her gaze, unflinching. “You came home early,” she observed. “So I assume you did not sleep with him.”
“No,” Doll said, offended. “I am not desperate.”
Mitchell appeared in the doorway, holding a screwdriver triumphantly like a child presenting a frog. “Did you know,” he said cheerfully, “that we have two bread boxes? I thought that was inefficient.”
Doll visibly shuddered.
Yeva, unfortunately, smiled.
It was small. Fond. Dangerous.
Doll noticed immediately.
“No,” Doll said, standing abruptly. “No, no, absolutely not. Do not look at him like that.”
Mitchell blinked. “Like what?”
Yeva cleared her throat and reached for the pistol again. “Go put the screwdriver back, Mitchell.”
“Oh. Right. Where was it again?”
“The bread box,” Doll and Yeva said in unison.
Mitchell nodded solemnly and disappeared.
Doll waited until his footsteps faded before rounding on her mother. “You see? That. That is exactly what I am talking about.”
“Yes,” Yeva said calmly. “He is very… Mitchell.”
“That is not a defense.”
“It was not meant to be.”
Doll sat back down, rubbing her temples. “I do not understand how to land a man,” she said, blunt as a report. “I am intelligent. I am disciplined. I am attractive. I have a stable home. I do not complain excessively.”
Yeva arched an eyebrow. “You are complaining now.”
“This is strategic complaining,” Doll said. “I am gathering data.”
Yeva studied her daughter for a long moment, her expression thoughtful in the way that meant she was considering something beyond the immediate problem.
“How many men have you gone out with?” she asked.
Doll hesitated. “Enough.”
“That is not a number.”
“…Eight.”
“And how many types of men would you say that represents?”
Doll frowned. “Eight?”
Yeva smiled faintly. “There are thousands of different types of men,” she said. “They are meant for thousands of different types of women. You have tested eight.”
“That is inefficient,” Doll muttered.
“Dating is inefficient,” Yeva said. “If it were efficient, it would be a military operation, and I would have been assigned to it.”
Doll looked unconvinced. “How did you know,” she asked, slowly, “which man was meant for you?”
Yeva’s hands stilled.
She did not answer right away.
Instead, she leaned back, gaze drifting toward the ceiling, toward a time Doll had only ever known in fragments and stories and carefully omitted details.
“There was never a man that I needed,” Yeva said at last.
Doll leaned forward, attentive.
“I did not wake up thinking my life was incomplete without someone beside me,” Yeva continued. “I did not search for fulfillment in another person. I was whole.”
Doll nodded. This made sense.
“So,” Yeva went on, “I picked the man that I wanted.”
Doll blinked. “That is it?”
“Yes.”
“That seems… reckless.”
Yeva’s smile turned sharp. “It was.”
Doll hesitated. “And you wanted… him?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Yeva did not answer immediately.
From the other room came a loud thump, followed by Mitchell’s voice again.
“I fixed it! I think!”
The table wobbled ominously.
Yeva exhaled through her nose.
“I realized I needed to fuck Mitchell,” she said calmly, “upon learning that he was a complete dumbass.”
Doll choked.
“Mother.”
“It is true.”
“That is— that is not—” Doll gestured helplessly. “That is deeply disturbing.”
Yeva shrugged. “He was kind. He was honest. He was utterly unqualified to survive the situation he was in. I wanted him.”
“And then you needed him?” Doll asked, wary.
“That came later,” Yeva said. “Need is separate. Want comes first.”
Doll stared at the table, her mind already working.
Mitchell returned, cheerful and oblivious. “The table is better now,” he announced. It immediately tilted.
Doll looked away, cheeks burning. “Please stop.”
Yeva watched her daughter with quiet amusement as Doll’s discomfort turned inward, gears turning, calculations forming.
“Mother,” Doll said slowly, “statistically speaking—”
Yeva sighed. “Oh no.”
“—there are millions of men involved in global military conflicts,” Doll continued. “Across multiple nations. Multiple fronts.”
“This is not where I thought this conversation was going,” Yeva said.
“If you,” Doll pressed on, “encountered one man of… limited cognitive function—”
Mitchell waved from the doorway. “I heard my name!”
“—during wartime,” Doll continued louder, “then the probability that there exists at least one idiot in the opposing army who cannot resist me is significant.”
Yeva stared at her.
Mitchell smiled, proud but confused.
“You are not suggesting—” Yeva began.
“I am,” Doll said firmly. “I will do what you did.”
“No,” Yeva said.
“Yes.”
“You will not.”
“I will.”
“You are romanticizing a war.”
“I am optimizing my chances.”
Yeva stood, suddenly very serious. “War is not a matchmaking service.”
Doll met her gaze. “Neither is peacetime, apparently.”
Silence fell between them.
Mitchell shifted awkwardly. “Do you want tea?”
“No,” Yeva and Doll said together.
Doll straightened her coat, resolve settling into place like a locked chamber.
“Somewhere,” she said, voice steady, “there is an idiot.”
Yeva closed her eyes.
“On the other side,” Doll continued, “who will be unable to resist me.”
Mitchell blinked. “Is this something I can relate to?”
“Yes,” Doll said. “Unfortunately.”
She squared her shoulders.
“And I,” Doll declared, “will make him my husband.”
Yeva looked at her daughter—brilliant, stubborn, catastrophically sincere—and felt something twist in her chest.
History, she knew, had a way of repeating itself.
Usually worse.
United States of America. Somewhere aggressively suburban. Late 1967, flirting dangerously with 1968.
Thad Vickers walked home from football practice the way America itself liked to imagine its sons walked home from football practice: helmet tucked under one arm, jacket slung over his shoulder, breath fogging the cold air like he was personally responsible for winter. The streetlights flickered on one by one as if on cue, as if the neighborhood itself knew this was the hour where young men were supposed to be visible, wholesome, and statistically likely to die overseas within the next calendar year.
The rec center loomed behind them, squat and brick and proud in the way only a community-funded building could be. A banner hung crooked over the entrance—PLAY FOR A PURPOSE!—which was technically true. All the revenue from games went to charity foundations. Which charity foundations, exactly, no one ever really knew. Sick kids. Veterans. God. The vague concept of goodness. America loved that sort of thing.
Thad had joined the team because he liked football and because his dad liked that he liked football, which in 1967 counted as a perfectly stable foundation for a personality.
Flanking him were Darren and Chad, cleats clacking on pavement in a rhythm they’d repeated a hundred times before.
Darren was tall in a way that suggested inevitability. The kind of guy who didn’t have to try to be liked, which made people like him even more. His hair was always neat. His smile always came easy. He was one half of what everyone called the Golden Couple, the other half being Rebecca—cheerleader, honor roll, future PTA tyrant. They’d been together since sophomore year and everyone spoke about their eventual marriage like it was a scheduled public holiday.
Chad, meanwhile, was loud.
Chad was broad-shouldered, sharp-elbowed, and perpetually halfway through a sentence about how men used to be men before… something. Feminism. Long hair. Foreign cars. He gestured a lot when he talked, like his masculinity might escape if he didn’t keep waving it around.
“I’m just saying,” Chad said now, voice carrying across the quiet street, “if someone breaks into your house, you don’t talk about your feelings. You punch him.”
Darren sighed. “No one was talking about home invasions, Chad.”
“I was,” Chad insisted. “Hypothetically.”
Thad adjusted his grip on his helmet and said nothing. He’d learned early that Chad ran out of steam faster if no one fed him attention.
Chad looked at him. “You’d punch a guy, right, Thad?”
Thad shrugged. “Depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“Whether he deserves it.”
Chad scoffed. “That’s the problem with guys now. Too much thinking.”
Darren shot Chad a look. “Tone it down, man.”
“I am toned down,” Chad said, offended. “You should’ve heard me last year.”
“We did. WAY too much, but we did,” Darren muttered.
They walked past rows of identical houses, each one a minor variation on the same theme: trimmed lawns, American flags, porch lights glowing warm and safe. Radios hummed behind walls. Somewhere a TV announcer talked about troop movements like he was narrating a parade.
Thad’s thoughts drifted, as they often did on this stretch of road.
Uzi used to pass here.
He hadn’t realized it until now, but he always expected to see her—short, sharp-eyed, backpack slung over one shoulder, grease smudged on her hands no matter how hard she scrubbed. She took mechanics courses at the college campus across town, stubbornly refusing anything that involved skirts or expectations.
The others avoided her.
“She’s weird,” Chad had said once.
“She’s intense,” Darren had said, more diplomatically.
Thad had shrugged then, too. He liked her. Not in a dramatic way. Just… liked her. She talked fast and thought faster. She’d once taken apart a lawnmower just to prove a point about faulty carburetors. He hadn’t seen her in weeks now.
Strange.
They reached the corner where their paths diverged briefly before funneling back into the same neighborhood. The mailboxes stood in a neat row, metal mouths waiting to be fed.
“Mail run,” Darren said, clapping his hands together. “Moment of truth.”
“Bills,” Chad said confidently. “Junk. Maybe a letter from my aunt asking why I don’t write.”
Thad stepped up to his mailbox first. He flipped it open and immediately frowned.
There was a lot of paper.
Too much paper.
Thick. Layered. Wrapped in official-looking envelopes like someone had been very concerned about him missing the point.
He pulled it out slowly.
Darren and Chad watched him.
“You win the lottery?” Chad joked.
Thad didn’t answer.
He peeled back the outer layer. Then another. Then another.
His stomach sank before his brain fully caught up.
He read the letter.
Once.
Twice.
His mouth went dry.
From the outside, all Darren and Chad saw was Thad freeze. Not dramatically. No gasping. No shouting. Just… still. Like someone had turned him into a photograph.
“Thad?” Darren said. “You good?”
Thad folded the letter carefully. Too carefully. His hands didn’t shake, which almost scared him more.
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. I’m… yeah.”
Chad frowned. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” Thad said automatically.
Which was a lie.
They opened their own mail.
Darren’s face changed first. Confusion sliding into something tighter. Something brittle.
Chad laughed at first. A short, sharp bark.
“No way,” Chad said. “No way.”
Silence stretched between them.
Darren looked up, pale. “It’s a draft notice.”
Chad swallowed. “Yeah.”
Thad didn’t say anything.
The street felt suddenly too quiet. Even the radios seemed to hush, like the whole neighborhood was listening.
Darren exhaled slowly. “Guess we’re going to ’Nam.”
Chad forced a grin. “’Nam, baby.”
The words hung there, hollow.
Thad stared down at his folded letter, thinking of grease-stained hands and empty sidewalks and a girl who hadn’t walked this street in weeks.
Vietnam, 1968. Somewhere between “classified coordinates” and “oh god that’s loud.”
What’s your name?
Who’s your daddy?
Is he rich like me?
Does he take up anytime to show you what you need to live?
The song blared through the chopper’s tinny speakers like it had personally declared war on subtlety.
Rotor blades chopped the humid air into submission, the sound so loud it stopped being noise and became an environment. Wind tore through the open sides of the helicopter, dragging heat, jungle smells, and the vague promise of death straight into everyone’s lungs. The metal floor vibrated under their boots like the chopper itself was nervous about where it was going.
Thad Vickers sat rigid on the bench, hands clenched around his rifle, trying very hard not to think about how far the ground was from where he currently existed.
This was real. This was actually happening. He was not in Kansas, metaphorically or literally. He was in a flying lawnmower held together by faith, bad decisions, and whatever uncle had designed military helicopters in the sixties while chain-smoking.
The pilot’s voice crackled over the headset, cheerful to the point of being suspicious.
“GOOD MORNING, VIETNAAAAM!”
A few of the soldiers flinched.
Thad blinked.
Chad whooped. “Hell yeah!”
Darren stared straight ahead, jaw tight, eyes focused on absolutely nothing.
Braiden—because of course Braiden was here—leaned back against the side of the chopper, helmet askew, one boot tapping in time with the music. He grinned like this was a road trip instead of a deployment.
“Man, this song is groovy,” Braiden shouted over the noise. “You ever really listen to the lyrics?”
“No one is listening to the lyrics!” Darren yelled back. “It’s just noise!”
“It’s a groove,” Braiden said.
Thad glanced between them, then around the chopper.
Chad was across from him, sitting wide like the bench might challenge his masculinity if he didn’t assert dominance over it. He looked exactly the same as he had back home—confident, loud, pretending he wasn’t terrified.
Darren sat next to Chad, posture straight, hands folded, looking like he’d decided if he stayed calm enough the war might forget he existed.
Braiden was… Braiden. Smug. Loud. Thriving on attention like it was oxygen.
And slumped in the far corner, helmet tipped forward, mouth open, completely unconscious—
“Is that Sam?” Thad shouted.
Chad leaned over. “Oh my god, he is asleep.”
Sam, former classmate, current stoner, future wildcard, was dead to the world. His head bounced slightly with the vibration of the chopper, but that was it. No panic. No awareness. Just peaceful oblivion.
“Man,” Braiden laughed, “he slept through basic too. Dude is an animal.”
Before Thad could process how deeply concerning that was, Braiden reached over and twisted the radio dial.
The song got louder.
It’s the time of the season for loving…
Darren immediately reached over and twisted the other knob.
Some folks are born made to wave the flag—
“Oh hell no,” Braiden protested. “You’re not doing Fortunate Son again.”
“It’s tradition,” Darren snapped.
“It’s cliche!”
“So is yours!”
“It's a groovy song!”
“This one is badass!”
They began flipping the dial back and forth like two raccoons fighting over trash.
What’s your name—
Some folks are born—
Who’s your daddy—
It ain't me—
“STOP TOUCHING IT!” Chad shouted. “Let the pilot pick!”
The pilot, meanwhile, was laughing.
He was visible through the open cockpit—lean, animated, headset slightly crooked. Someone had painted a cartoon puppy on the side of the chopper, tongue lolling out, tail wagging mid-flight. On his helmet, unmistakable even through the grime and sweat, was a hand-painted Australian flag.
Which was… confusing.
He glanced back at them, grin wide. “You boys argue like my mother's parents.”
“We’re settling something important!” Braiden yelled.
“Yeah,” Darren said. “Which song is better.”
The pilot tilted the chopper sharply to the left.
Everyone yelled.
The radio popped loose from its mount, skidded across the floor, and promptly flew out the open side of the helicopter, disappearing into the jungle below.
There was a stunned silence.
“…Well,” the pilot said cheerfully, leveling them out, “problem solved.”
Chad stared out the open side. “That radio probably cost more than my house.”
“Yeah,” Braiden muttered, “but at least it died with dignity.”
Thad exhaled, heart pounding, then glanced up at the pilot again.
The guy was still smiling.
Not a cool smile. Not a cocky one. It was earnest. Bright. Like he was genuinely having the time of his life flying a helicopter full of terrified teenagers into a war zone.
The pilot tapped something on his console. “Base, this is Charlie-Niner. Incoming delivery of fresh meat. They smell like fear and... clean barrels.”
Static crackled.
Then a voice came through the headset. Sharp. Fast. Familiar in a way Thad didn’t immediately place.
“Copy that, Charlie-Niner. Try not to break them. I just fixed the hydraulics.”
The pilot laughed. “No promises, 'Zi.”
Thad’s head snapped up. “Wait—Uzi?”
The pilot glanced back at him, eyes lighting up. “You know Uzi?”
“Yeah,” Thad said. “Yeah, I do.”
There was a pause.
“…Oh that's great,” the pilot breathed.
Thad blinked. “What?”
The pilot leaned closer to the mic. “Hey, Uzi? One of the newbies knows you.”
The radio crackled again. “That’s unfortunate.”
“Is he cool?”
Thad heard the faint sigh through the static. “Depends. Is he annoying?”
The pilot looked back at Thad expectantly.
“I don’t think so,” Thad said carefully.
“Friends or…?” the pilot asked.
“Friends,” Thad said quickly. “Just friends.”
There was a beat.
The pilot visibly relaxed. Shoulders dropping. Smile widening.
“Oh thank god,” he said again, louder this time.
“Excuse me?” Thad shouted.
The pilot turned his attention back to flying, still grinning. “Name’s N!”
“Thad,” he said. “Thad Vickers.”
“Nice to meet you, Thad Vickers!” N said brightly. “So what kind of stuff does Uzi like?”
Thad stared at him.
“…Why?”
“Just curious!” N said, too fast. “Totally professional curiosity. As the pilot of her equipment.”
Static crackled.
“Stop interrogating my friends,” Uzi’s voice cut in.
“They’re not friends yet,” N said. “I’m doing reconnaissance.”
Thad opened his mouth, then closed it.
Behind him, Chad leaned over. “Is the pilot flirting with the lady on the radio?”
“Yes,” Darren said flatly.
Thad rubbed the back of his neck. “She likes… machines. Loud music. Arguing.”
N nodded eagerly, committing this to memory. “Any favorite snacks?”
“Don’t answer that,” Uzi snapped.
Thad grinned despite himself.
The chopper banked forward, jungle stretching endlessly beneath them. Green. Thick. Alive.
Somewhere down there, the war waited.
But for just a moment—between bad music, dumb arguments, a sleeping stoner, and a pilot who sounded like a golden retriever with flight clearance—Thad felt something dangerously close to normal.
Which was how Vietnam always got you.