Roe/Babe
Disclaimers: I own nothing that's worth bragging about. The characters depicted here are in no way meant to be degrading to the real men. I wrote this with the HBO miniseries in mind. :) Don't we all?
This might be a little ambitious for my first try of characterization. I'm really kind of crap at correctly characterizing.
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Gene Roe sat alone in a foxhole. He was freezing his ass off, but damn if he'd go to any of the men. They went to him for help. He had no business burdening them. They had enough to do as it was. He did too, but that was his own problem.
The staccato of gunfire sounded miles away in the forest outside Foy. It really couldn't have been more than a hundred yards off. The air was so dense that light and noise had to battle their way through.
The gunshots shook Roe out of his stupor and reminded him where he was. "It's gettin to that time," he thought,
and pulled his medic bag out from under him. There weren't enough supplies for him to do his job properly, there
never were, but he organized what little he had and placed his hands on the lip of the hole to drag himself out, like
a swimmer out of a pool.
The sight of his hands made him pause. They were cracked with cold and rusted brown with blood that never seemed to wash off. The edges of his fingernails were darkest with caked blood. Blood that was not his own.
He pulled his hands off the frozen wall and put them closer to his face. Not his blood, never his blood. Whose was
it? Absently he started rubbing them together, trying to flake off the dirty texture.
He didn't like his job. He hated the amount of responsibility given to him. The war was not a real thing to him.
He'd never felt the pain directly. He lived the war through the eyes and arms and necks and legs and chests
and blood, through the wounded boys that came to him. He never knew what was going on, despite being on the
front line. All he knew were the wounds and the fear, fresh and stinging, making eyes too bright. He only saw the
losses or close calls. He never saw the victories.
He did feel some amount of pain though. Dull and throbbing, like a migrain that never went away; nothing
compared to what the boys had to go through. It was his daily reminder that other people had it worse, that he was
still alive, that those boys might still have a chance if he'd only pull himself together and get his ass out of the
damn foxhole.
Roe blinked. He'd forgotten where he was again. It was quiet. No more shots. No calls for medic. He didn't
need to move yet. But it was almost time.
His hands were bleeding now. In his frenzy to wipe off the permanent blood stains on his hands, he'd drawn
his own. He began to wipe harder. He didn't need anymore blood - he certainly didn't need his own.
That boy that had been shot and left a couple nights back, Julian, he was a lucky one. A direct wound like that
and the adrenaline sets in. Almost no pain. If not, then it wouldn't have mattered in a couple of minutes, anyway.
He didn't want to understand why Heffron had taken Julian's death so personally. He tried not to understand. But
he did know why, because he dwelled on that stuff too. The boys came to him for help, and he gave it. Some he
lost, some he saved, none really mentioned thanks. They didn't need to. It was his job. But he couldn't help think
that he was always being blamed for the ones who fell and didn't get back up. He felt guilty. No one ever reprimanded him, but could he have done more?
On Julian, he didn't know. He hadn't even been allowed to go on that patrol. He would have been in the way. But
he didn't need to be protected. He was supposed to protect them. He couldn't get to Julian, had no way of
knowing until it was too late.
But he could see the accusation in Heffron's eyes, and it made him feel responsible. He always supposed the
dead had it easier; they had nothing left to do. But their eyes followed him, stared at him balefully, too bright to be
natural. He imagined Julian's eyes. A shot to the neck, at that point of entry. Julian had no chance. Adrenaline pumping through him with nowhere to go, pinpointing that place. It might not have seemed so, but he was lucky.
He knew Heffron blamed him. Everyone blamed him without ever realizing it. Hell, he blamed him too. It had
taken a bribe, a goddamn bribe, to make that dead, too bright look Heffron had been giving him to go away. A
piece of chocolate. Everything not amended, words unsaid full of too much meaning.
He ended up falling asleep next to Heffron and Spina that night. He wanted to say it was out of sympathy and
caring for Heffron's pains, but that wasn't it. His head ached dully and bright eyes stared at him through the dark.
He didn't go to the men for comfort, but hell if he'd be alone on his own that night.
The next day he'd woken up the ache was bearable, but shame and guilt fell instantly into place. He didn't need
to burden the men, they had their own troubles. He had his too, he always did, but he could usually handle them.
Last night had been a moment of weakness, never to happen again, he'd promised as he had crawled out of Heffron and Spina's covered foxhole. No more burdening, even if they didn't know there was any burden on them.
A quick rally of shots yanked him out of his reverie. Bright, too bright eyes were staring at him over the edge of his foxhole. The eyes blurred and swam in his vision.
"Doc? Gene? What happened?" Heffron asked as he leapt into the single-man foxhole.
Warm, salty, stinging somethings dripped steadily onto Roe's frenzied hands. When had he started crying? The pain they caused was magnificent. He was going back off again, drifting into the inner workings of his own mind.
The pain in his hands was fantastic.
"Gene? Gene? What the hell-" Heffron sounded worried. He sounded miles away. The air in the woods outside
Foy was so thick. Heffron couldn't have been more than half a foot away, staring with too bright eyes into Roe's leaking ones. "Bright, too bright," Roe thought and was suddenly terrified. With his mangled, bloody hands he pushed Heffron away from him frantically. His bright eyes, a dying man's eyes, horrified him.
"Doc! Gene! Snap outta it!" Gunshots were all around, pinging off trees and people. There were no cries for
medic yet.
"Who's hurt? Who's hurt?" Roe gasped wildly. Where was he? Why were his hands bloody?
"You are! Knock it off, you're chokin me." Babe grasped his bloody neck with pale hands, panting. Roe
automatically grabbed his bag, everything prearranged, to do whatever he could for Heffron. It was his job.
Babe shook off the help. "It's not me. Doc, your hands're bleedin."
Roe looked down at his hands, tears still streaming from his eyes. The pain was intense. Salty tears and fresh
blood mixed and formed rivers that dripped off his hands and onto the snow. He'd never felt such sharp pain.
It was terrific.
Heffron stared at him. Roe felt the weight of it and looked up.
"What do you need, Heffron?"
"You're hurt, Gene." Heffron glanced down at Roe's still bleeding hands.
"It's nothin. Is anyone else hurt?"
"No. The shootin's over now." It was. The forest was thick and quiet. "You're bleedin all over the ground, Doc."
God, but the boy- the man crouched beside him was insistant.
"I'm not. Get the hell outta my hole, Heffron."
"You are. I saw you. You were rippin your hands to pieces."
Roe was quiet. He didn't really remember. At the time it hadn't been his blood. It had been every boy's he couldn't
save. It had been Julian's, and he hadn't even been there for him.
"It's not my blood," Roe said, quietly, stiffly, and could have kicked himself for it. No burdening, they have enough problems already.
He could see Heffron, looking horrified, silent, and worst, understanding. Roe looked away, self-conscious. He
felt himself being grabbed and pulled forward, being pressed forcefully into a cold but living, breathing chest. He
felt Heffron whispering furiously into his hair and it made him shiver. He didn't go to the men for consolation, they
went to him. He didn't have a choice this time.
Warm, stinging tears made their way down his cracked cheeks again, down previously-formed streams. Heffron's
shirt was getting wet. He smelled like snow and sweat and fear, but so did Roe. So did they all.
Heffron was crushing him. Roe pulled back when he was finished crying, shame and guilt forcing battering-ram to his forehead. He was prepared to sink back down into himself, to forget his latest moment of weakness. Heffron
must have sensed it, must have seen the way Roe's eyes clouded over. Heffron moved forward, trapped Gene with his back to the frozen wall, hesitated a moment, then closed the distance between them. Roe froze, staring wildly into Heffron's- Babe's- face, into his bright eyes, before sinking into the warmth. He wrapped his arms around
Babe's back and and pulled him closer, needing more contact.
The air was so thick, and it had nothing to do with the woods outside Foy. There were no gunshots, no cries for help, no dying boys racing with adrenaline and eyes staring balefully up at him. There were no responsibilities at
this moment, in this foxhole, no burdens to bear or guilt or shame.
Babe pulled back first this time, grinning. Roe didn't smile, didn't say anything. Babe placed a freezing hand on
the cheek of the man under him, looking suddenly serious. "You look alive."
Roe didn't answer. What was that supposed to mean? He waited patiently, enjoying the heavy weight of the man
on top of him.
"You'd been so pale. Looked like you were commin down with somethin. Everyone was pretty worried. Guess
you got it all out of your system now, huh?"
Roe smiled weakly. No burdening. Right. Babe laughed. "You were worryin us, Doc."
"Don't want to be a burden..." Roe said guiltily, shifting and squirming under Babe's heavy stare.
"You never have been," Babe grinned and dipped down for another kiss. Roe smiled. He was being consoled.
And it wasn't even Babe's job.
Fin
-edit-
*blushmumble* So, uh, I be a retarded. This has been beta'd by the ever-endearing Molly, my sister. Any
other mistakes to be found, please direct them to me so I can smack her over the head. Thank you.