Author's Notes: It'd make an interesting idea for a story, I think, but for now it's just a longish drabble. An extremely AU piece based on the series, not the real medic Eugene Roe, in which Eugene meets an early death during the course of the war and Death wants him to take his place, basically.
Disclaimer - I don't own Band of Brothers and this fic is not based on the real Eugene Roe, but his fictional counterpart played by the ever beautiful and alluring Shane Taylor.
He won't. He won't do it.
But there it is, the removing angel itself. It is not leering at him, all black smiles with razor-edged teeth staring him in the face. It is removed of all mythological candor. It is simply a figure. A symbol dressed in illusory skins.
"I want you to take my place, Mortal Eugene."
Why me?
"Why? Why does the sun rise? The night fall? Why does the mortal take his breath and the corpse not breathe at all? Because it must be. Because I want it to be so."
No. His brain. It screams, it writhes, it tries to break free of shackled silence. Please, he beseeches. Let me speak or I must die.
The angel's arms are beginning to come undone from beneath pinioned wings. No longer for flying, no. Simply gliding through the currents of lives lost, drawn to the life houses of souls like black ships shifting ever onward with mortal tides.
It has been his only purpose. To stand against this destroyer of hope, this remover of life. This monster. But to become such an atrocity? He could not bear it. He shakes his head ever the more forcefully. His body grows colder. "No. No, I won't...I can never inherit your darkness."
"Come with me or take my place," It says, and black-tipped fingers perched on hands white as bone…they unfurl before him, milkweed petals stained with ink in the darkness. "Make your choice."
He doesn't have to speak aloud. Tendrils of thought will suffice. The creature knows his decision by heart, by name. Its eyes are black and hollow, shadowed windows that allow him to peer into a distant world. One that he will soon face now that he has refused Its offer.
The last strands of his soul are straining. One snaps, and another follows, like dominoes collapsing down the line.
His last breath is only a stain.
A blemish on the black robes of Death.