Haha, no, I'm not kidding. I've had this idea in my head for a while. :P

I also can't come up with a title for this, so if it keeps changing, that's why.

Title: In Which a Demigod Learns of Friendship
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 714
Warnings: Band of Brothers/Supernatural crossover
Disclaimer: Based on the characters portrayed in the Band of Brothers miniseries, not the veterans themselves.
Summary: For 10_inspirations prompt looking down the barrel of a gun - He hadn't thought much of volunteering as a paratrooper.

Author's Note: I'm pretending they are one in the same.

This is Skip:

This is the Trickster:

+++

He'd been around since practically the dawn of time.

It wasn't that being nearly immortal was boring, per se, but that there were things the Trickster liked to do to help pass the time. Toying with humans was most definitely his favorite.

He hadn't thought much of volunteering as a paratrooper. They were supposed to be the elite, the best, certainly the ones on the frontline with the best odds of getting to Berlin. The Trickster thought it would be the perfect opportunity to take the Nazis down.

Self-important bastards.

Training, despite his best efforts to pretend otherwise, had been delightful. Sobel, the chickenshit in charge of Easy Company who wouldn't know his ass from his elbow, had been easy to play, to get the others against and laughing along at his jokes. He'd created a whole history for himself, since people kept asking, buddying up, wanting to know those they shared their misery with.

So the Trickster became Warren Muck ("but everybody calls me Skip") from Tonawanda, New York.

Even more unlikely, the Trickster made friends with humans. Two men, especially, appreciated his jokes with a hearty laugh and quick smiles - Don Malarkey and Alex Penkala.

He broke the rules for them.

The rules were unwritten, those of demigods not getting overly involved in human wars, so he didn't feel bad at all about breaking them.

He used his powers to protect them - glancing rounds a little bit away, some off mark. He was surprised no one grew suspicious. They'd written it off as a miracle that Don hadn't been shot when he thought he was going for a Luger at Brecourt, but it at been the Trickster's protection. He didn't need to be there to keep his friends safe. He'd make sure they all saw it through the war.

The Trickster, truth be told, was enjoying himself.

Until Bastogne, anyway. Bastogne was Hell on Earth - only really fucking cold. With lots of snow. And did he mention the cold?

It would be so easy, he knew, to create coats, to create some warmth for them, for everyone. The cold, though, kept them huddled together in foxholes. Through Skip, the Trickster felt a kinship, a camaraderie, that he'd never felt with even with other demigods.

He still hated those damned woods. One of the downsides to only being nearly immortal was that a stake dipped in his victim's blood to the heart was the only thing that could kill him. All these trees, exploding, with German blood in the snow - he felt like he was pushing his luck.

The shelling after Toye and Guarnere got hit, he hadn't been paying attention. He'd been watching Luz crawl towards the foxhole he shared with Penk, trying to urge him to hurry, to get to safety, and then the mortar landed and exploded and he thought, "Well, shit," before vanishing into thin air.

He mourned Penkala's death, his friend who he had failed to protect, who he couldn't even bring back because Luz had been there, Luz had seen the whole thing happen, and if he had unwound time, hit reset and gotten himself and Penk into a different foxhole, someone would've noticed and interfered.

What hurt even more, as he watched, disguised as a replacement, was how Malarkey was mourning for him. Penkala's death had been shocking, but he was still mortal. If he wasn't killed in the war, he was going to die later, which would seem like a blink of an eye to the Trickster. But he'd never had anyone mourn for him before. True, he'd never had to fake his own death before, but when he left, people - demigods and humans alike - never missed his presence. Instead they let out a deep sigh of relief.

Malark continued like a ghost, a shadow, keeping the rosary Skip had carried tucked away in the pockets of his ODs.

"You'll get through this," he promised.

The Trickster wanted to reach out, talk to him, explain what he was, how it had happened, that he wasn't really gone, but how would he even start? Sometimes, in his new replacement form, he would catch Don's eye and think maybe there was a spark of recognition, but it would all be imagined.