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Krieg huddled his knees as comfortably close to his large chest as he could. The cold bit into his exposed skin, nipping at every open area, leaving the sensation of pins poking his flesh. He shivered. The normally vocal psycho was strangely mellow and silent. Not that he could hear anything over the screaming inside his own mind.
His siren companion prodded at the meager fire with a small wooden plank. Satisfied that the fire wouldn’t go out for another handful of minutes, Maya allowed herself to lean back, body covered by a blanket, and nestled her back against the metal frame of a tiny, unused bed. One of Laney’s midget friends… An awkward location to be in, so close to these disused items, but with the weather too much for the pair to walk around in, they couldn’t risk it. Thankfully, the large metal doors still closed properly.
"That wind sure is loud..." Maya broke into the silence, trying to pass the time.
So that's what it was. Krieg lifted his head from his crossed arms, his eye coming back into focus. He eyed the siren, catching her gaze for a moment, then let his eye go out of focus again, staring back down at the skyblue frozen ground.
That wasn't me, that calm inner voice explained. No one else here but us, and I’m not the one that does all the screaming.
Maya mistook the expression on the psycho's face for an unspoken question. "When the blizzard blows over, we'll leave. Shouldn’t be more than a couple of hours." She offered him a smile, despite the howling of the wind, and tugged at the blanket around her slim shoulders. The siren had smiled, but there was obvious discomfort on her face, from either the current conditions of camping out in a chilly corner of the Fridge, or Krieg’s unresponsiveness. There was no comment on it. But she never took her eyes off of the psycho, save to tend to the fire crackling between them.
A couple of hours too late, perhaps.
The psycho barely heard her. The wind was making that noise, and knowing that was a small comfort that those voices inside his head were not yelling at him for making them cold. Keeping that in mind, he drew his arms tighter around his knees, and shuffled closer towards the fire, hoping for the warmth to spread from his extremities and deep into his chest. Briefly, he contemplated lighting himself on fire. He could handle it. Maybe.
Krieg shivered.
Tell her.
Never!
Do something!
Krieg growled, raising his head to let his forehead thump back down against his broad arms.
You’re going to kill us! You can’t get by with only a pair of pants! the voice attempted to reason. If only he could do more than just try to make a one-track mind psycho see to reason. Either he only understood his own mind whenever he wanted to, or he was stubborn beyond belief.
“Rrr…. Stop it! Shut up! Shut up shut up!” Krieg screamed, pressing numbed fingers against his bald scalp, trying to dig dull fingernails into his skin. “Stop making noises!”
No! You’ll listen to me, and you’ll like it, or I’m grabbing her fire SMG and setting you on fire, myself!
Krieg stopped clawing at his own skull, but that was a result of his mind yelling at him or because it hurt too much to put so much effort into something so simple. But he did stop.
Listen to me. Look at your fingers. You’re turning blue. You’re damned cold, and you’re going to freeze to death, so for the love of making Hyperion pay, you’re going to open your mouth, and the first thing that comes out of it will be ‘I am cold,’ so help me.
The psycho growled. In the far distance, someone was shouting. He hesitated. Contemplating saying something or ignoring that annoying, persistent voice in his head. “No!” he finally said, pounding at his skull with a fist. “You can’t make me!”
“Krieg!” Maya snapped, cutting into the psycho’s rage. “Krieg, hello!” She had listened to the psycho argue with himself before, that wasn’t news. The first time, it scared her, but that was a part of who he was now, and she accepted it. However, something was off here. Maya had stood, dropping the wool blanket to the ground, and a rat that had been silently creeping towards their small, enclosed camp, found himself scrambling away as if the siren had spotted him. Maya heard the metal hatch close with a clang, and glance behind her to make sure that wasn’t the sound of reinforcements.
“Listen to me!” she said again, when Krieg’s single eye had returned to an unfocused, wide state of staring at everything and nothing at the same time. It was almost terrifying to think about. Thankfully, he quickly returned to attention, her words somehow having a deeper meaning than expected. “Krieg…” Slower, more gentle, were the words now.
There was silence between the two, broken only by the constant howling of the outside wind, the occasional cry of a rakk, and the comforting, burning, pop and crackle of the fire.
Krieg hadn’t noticed the siren getting closer to him until she reached out with a hand and took his wrist between her fingers. “Pretty lady…” he breathed, so much more mellow than he was mere moments ago.
She nearly snatched her hand away. Not from fear, but from how cold he felt. She could have sworn he was turning blue. The psycho twitched in her grasp, and Maya kept her grip tight. She moved his fist away from his head, drawing it down, with little resistance which almost scared her, back down to his knees. “Krieg.” The psycho twitched again.
Wait. Not twitched.
Shivered.
“Dammit!” Maya exhaled, spinning around on her heels—or trying to, because she managed to slip on the ice and land solidly on her hip before scrambling back up and nearly crawling over to where she dropped the blanket.
You got lucky, the voice practically hissed at him. He wanted to fight it, but he was too entranced by Maya’s sudden movements.
“Krieg, I swear…” the siren fumed as she hurried back mere seconds later, and threw the heavy blanket around the psycho’s bulky frame. As if worried that he would try to shrug it off, she wrapped it around him, tucking in the loose edges under the psycho’s feet, and being sure to leave extra to pull over his head. “I know we didn’t plan to stay here for long, but you really do travel light, and you’re lucky I was here with you. Though, you’d probably still be trying to wander outside in the blizzard, wouldn’t you?” Maya scolded, even as she made sure no skin was exposed to the air, and pushing the psycho as close to the fire as she dared.
Thank you, Maya… the inner voice said, even though she couldn’t hear him. He was only temporarily placated, however, as he let Krieg start to warm up under the simple but thick blue blanket. And you. You’re going to say thank you. Say thank you to the siren that’s saved your life too many times to count now.
He tried to move, but the skill with which the blanket was wrapped around his body made it all but impossible to do much else other than wiggle in place. And even if he tried to get out of the wrappings, Maya was right there, sitting at his side now, with a firm hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t you dare. I wouldn’t have noticed if you actually froze or not, if you weren’t making so much noise by yelling at yourself.” Maya frowned at him. She looked away, and turned her attention to the slowly dying fire, prodding at it with another plank of wood. “Besides,” she started, her voice low and difficult to hear above the still screaming wind. “I would have been lonely without you. I think we all would have been.” She still didn’t look his way again, mindlessly letting the fire eat at the wood in her hands before finally tossing it into the fire to be consumed fully.
Krieg made a noise that was less of a growl and more of a purr. “Prretty lady,” he said, letting the R roll slightly. Even she thinks you’re stubborn.
“Just…” Maya let the word trail off. Then looked back at the psycho. “Thanks, to that inner voice of yours. However many of them that there are. Thanks. Thanks for making him argue with himself, otherwise I wouldn’t have noticed. It’s nice to know that you’re still fighting inside there.” She smiled, in earnest this time.
Say thank you, came the familiar line. Actually say thank you this time. I don’t care if you don’t mean it. I mean it.
The psycho screwed his eye closed, a grimace crossing the visual parts of his face that were not obscured by the blanket or his mask. “Th–thaaaank… Youuuu…” Krieg growled, the words foreign and different on his tongue and his mind.
Maya laughed. She leaned in close to his bundled-up frame and attempted to reach an arm around him, but couldn’t make it, and settled for a friendly pat on his back. “You’re welcome. You might not learn anything from this, but at least I know now even the almighty Sir Psycho can’t handle the frigid cold.”