Armistice
The monster released one last defiant scream before its body crashed upon the icy ground. For a moment, it squirmed while taking in shaky breaths, and then it became as silent as the snow that fell peacefully around it.
Still clutching her long dagger and crouching slightly in her battle stance, Nel of Aquios allowed herself to smile ever so slightly in satisfaction. She had dealt with that rather quickly, she had thought, and without the help of that dreadful-
"Took you long enough, idiot. I could have taken that monster down in half the time."
Nel closed her eyes for a moment, willing herself not to let the snake-like voice annoy her. She straightened up and sheathed her weapon before making herself turn around to face her critic.
The slender, yet menacing-looking man before her, known as Albel of Airyglyph, was eyeing her distastefully. However, there was a curl in his lip that told her he got an indecent amount of pleasure from insulting her fighting capabilities. He sheathed his long sword, but continued to look at her, as though daring her to retaliate.
Nel shook her head, having realized long ago that verbally belittling his comrades had not been limited just to her in the past, and therefore could not be taken seriously. She ran a hand through her short red hair, brushing off the flakes of snow that had accumulated there, then turned away from him and nodded towards the southern horizon.
"Let's just keep moving, Albel. We still have a long way to go."
Albel responded with a slight grunt, and followed her as the two of them continued southward through the two feet of snow that stretched across the vast mountain landscape.
"I don't know why your queen would insist that you accompany me to Airyglyph. I can travel much faster on my own," Albel muttered, giving his head a quick jerk in attempt to shake off the snow in his raven-colored hair.
Nel narrowed her eyes slightly at the second jab, and replied, "I would have just as soon left this errand to you, but I suspect the queen wants to keep building the trust between our countries. She would not send one of her own messengers out alone, and so she feels its only proper you should have an escort, same as she would do if you were one of her own."
"I am not some messenger boy," Albel hissed through clenched teeth. "I'm a military commander, I have no idea why the king sent me to Aquios on this inane quest."
"Maybe the king feels you need to develop your diplomacy skills now that the war between our countries is over and work for your brigade has become slow these days," Nel suggested, and she found herself relishing the fact that Albel was feeling degraded by the king's command to send him with a message to Aquios.
She dared to look over at him and caught his fowl expression, his eye twitching slightly as he contemplated Nel's suggestion.
"Diplomacy." He spat out the word as though it was a bad taste in his mouth. "I bet this was Woltar's idea, that old, useless coot…"
Nel no longer attempted to suppress the aggravation that she had been feeling since she had set out on this journey with Albel. "The only reason why you don't value peace, like any decent human being would, is because the only thing you know how to do well is fight. Without war and bloodshed, you have no purpose!"
Albel had obviously not expected this abrupt comment, for he stopped dead in his tracks, causing Nel to stop also and turn to look at him. His head was bowed slightly, but his eyes were piercing hers through a curtain of shaggy black hair that hung around his eyes. He was regarding her with a curious expression, not the one of unreserved hate that he usually held in his gaze.
He had opened his mouth and was about to speak, when they were suddenly hit by a great gust of wind. It came so suddenly and so strong that they both almost stumbled over and had to regain their balance. The wind continued blowing in stronger and stronger gusts, and the snow that had been so lazily drifting to the ground just a few minutes before, was now harshly blowing around them.
Nel squinted through the blizzard that was now so dense that she could hardly see the purple and ironclad figure that stood just a few feet away. She stumbled over to him, the snow feeling more like hail as it pelted against her mostly bare arms and legs, biting them with cold.
"Where did this storm come from!?!" she yelled, and though she was speaking at the top of her voice, she wondered if Albel could hear her, as her voice seemed to down in the wind that was now roaring in their ears.
But Albel replied, though his voice too was hard to hear over the harsh wind. "This is Airyglyph territory, fool! Snowstorms of this magnitude are to be expected!"
"We can't travel in this!" she yelled back at him, noting that the temperature seemed to be dropping more by every passing minute. "We have to find cover!"
"You Aquionians are far too weak when exposed to the elements!" Albel yelled back. However, he had turned away and started heading somewhere off to the west, and Nel followed in hopes that he, knowing the mountain territory quite well, was leading her to a place where they could take shelter until the storm died down.
However, Nel began to doubt Albel would be able to see where he was going, for she was quite blinded by the storm. In fact, she realized, fighting the stab of panic that hit her with the realization, she could not even see where he was.
Nel looked around desperately, hugging her arms around her frozen body. He was nowhere to be seen. She grit her teeth, her legs stinging painfully with cold. She called his name but it seemed like the sound of her voice was swallowed by the wind before it could leave her lips. She sunk into the snow, breathing hard on her hands, wishing there was a way for the warm vapour of her breath to spread to the rest of her numb limbs. She squeezed her eyes shut. Never did she think she would die in a place like this. In the line of duty, maybe, but not in a blizzard, abandoned by her former enemy and now unwilling comrade.
A metal, claw-like arm grabbed her firmly around one of her arms, and yanked her back to her feet. However, her legs had lost all feeling and she found she couldn't stand. The clawed arm curled around her back, and she felt another arm snaking behind her knees. She felt the sensation of being scooped off of her feet, and squinting as hard as she could, she could make out the face of her saviour, who seconds before she had thought been her abandoner. Albel was squinting back down at her, intense annoyance across his features.
Actually, Nel thought as his face began growing dark, and her consciousness began to slide, it seemed more like a feigned annoyance, as though it were an attempt to hide the apparent concern that was in his eyes…
------
Her eyes flew open, and the first thing she saw were flames burning just a foot from her face. She pushed herself up into a sitting position, squinting around in the darkness that surrounded the dim fire. The wind was howling, but it sounded far away. The ground beneath her was solid rock. Finally, looking past the flames on the opposite side of the fire, she saw Albel regarding her silently.
"What happened?" she demanded, though her voice sounded weak.
Albel was leaning against the wall of rock on the other side. He turned his gaze to the fire, and crossed his arms before replying.
"Your feeble body could not withstand the five minute walk it took to get to this cave," he replied simply.
"That snow storm," Nel muttered with comprehension, "It came up so suddenly…"
Albel did not reply, but instead uncrossed his arms and seated himself opposite to Nel by the fire.
Nel stared at the mouth of the cave, several yards away. Night had fallen, and she watched as the snow violently whipped about outside.
"This storm is definitely a setback," she added after a couple minutes.
"You're the setback," Albel quipped in a low voice. "I could be almost at the castle by now, if it weren't for you passing out because of a little extra snow."
Anger rose within Nel, and this time she did not try to suppress it. "And you call me a fool. No one could survive for long out in that!" she said, jerking her head to the mouth of the cave where the wind was howling by.
"Most citizens of Airyglyph could handle that."
"I don't believe you."
Albel shrugged. "I don't care if you believe me. But know that you are indeed an encumbrance that one could only expect from an Aquionian."
"How dare you!" Nel hissed under her breath. When he looked up at her, she added. "If I was so much trouble you should have left me out to die in that storm, I'm beginning to think that death would be a far lesser challenge than traveling with an overconfident, hateful, sadistic, sad excuse for a human being like you!"
Albel sneered at her. "Believe me, the thought of leaving you there did cross my mind."
"Then why didn't you?" she demanded. She wasn't sure why she was asking, perhaps just because she was determined to have the last word.
Albel paused briefly before replying. "Call it my first attempt at diplomacy," he said, unexpectedly.
Nel fell silent as she tried to decipher whether or not that had been a sarcastic reply. Regardless, she suddenly realized that she was sounding very ungrateful by giving him a hard time moments after she regained consciousness. Despite how horrible a man he was, she couldn't ignore the fact that, without him, she would be dead and frozen beneath several feet of snow right now. She also remembered that moment, right before she blacked out, the look in Albel's eyes; that look that was so uncharacteristically concerned, almost compassionate.
Nel shook her head at the thought. Compassionate? Not a chance.
Looking now at his stern, cold expression, Nel knew it must have been a trick her mind was playing on her in the confusion of losing consciousness. Regardless, she still felt she at least owed the man her thanks.
"I'm sorry," she said, uncomfortably. "Thank you for coming back for me …" She was surprised at how genuine her words were.
The thanks seemed even more unexpected to Albel than his previous comment was to her. He remained silent, and his face was expressionless, but it was this lack of an insulting response that told Nel he appreciated the words of gratitude.
After a strangely awkward silence, Nel felt the need to fill the silence, or at least make it clear in her mind that they were finished discussing the matter.
"I suppose we should try and get some sleep then," she said eventually.
"If you must. Don't get too comfortable though, we're leaving the minute the blizzard lets up," he replied coldly, his eyes focused on the falling snow outside as though expecting it to stop with his words.
Nel raised an eyebrow, but did not respond, though she thought it highly unlikely that she could get 'too comfortable' while sleeping on the hard, bumpy rock beneath her. She moved as close to the fire as she could, but found that the small, almost pathetic fire did not offer much warmth. It wasn't much, but it would have to make do.
However after lying there for a few minutes, she noticed the fire was getting smaller and feebler with each passing moment. She looked up at Albel, who seemed to have noticed this problem with a growing apprehension that he was trying in vain to mask with an expression of nonchalance.
"The fire is going to go out," Nel stated simply.
"I know that, fool!" he spat.
Nel looked around, but Albel spoke again, as though reading her mind.
"There are no more twigs or anything to burn in this cave. I collected everything when we first got here and this is it. When the fire goes out, that will be it," he stated, and Nel picked up on the edge of panic in his voice.
"We're going to freeze to death if we have to stay here all night without a fire!" Nel exclaimed, looking desperately around her despite the information Albel had just given her.
"You sicken me with your weakness," Albel said. "We will survive. Unless you aren't strong enough."
"Enough of your supercilious comments already!" Nel quipped. "We're going to freeze and you know it!"
"I don't know what you expect me to do about it, regardless," Albel replied venomously.
Silence fell between them, even as the fire extinguished and they were swallowed in almost complete darkness. While the frigid cold came seeping back into the cave, a solution came to Nel's mind. It was a solution that Nel did not care to follow through with at all, yet the longer she sat there, the colder it got, and when the familiar numbness began to take hold of her limbs, she released a sigh of resignation and began inching towards Albel.
"What… What are you doing??" Albel stammered with an aberrant uneasiness in his voice, as she drew nearer to him.
"Unless you want to freeze to death, we need to use each other's body heat to keep warm," she explained hurriedly.
"Fool, you're far too used to being pampered by Aquios' balmy weather. I'm conditioned to the cold, I need not any added body heat," he replied defiantly, but there was still that note of uneasiness in his tone.
"You're a liar, Albel," Nel said simply.
"What did you say??"
"It may be dark, but don't think I can't see you shivering. You're the fool if you think we can both survive out here without doing everything in our power to keep warm," she replied, feeling that she was getting the upper hand in the situation.
Albel did not reply, and instead fell into an insolent silence. Realizing this was as close as she was going to get to receiving his consent, she proceeded.
His silence remained as she hesitantly slid herself next to him, his body going rigid as she made contact. Hesitating a long time, she reluctantly rested her head on his shoulder, finding there was no comfortable way she could rest it on the rock beneath them.
The plan worked well enough. Nel felt a slight wave of relief as she regained some feeling in her limbs as she pressed herself against him. Albel too, after a moment seemed to shiver a littleless. Neither said a word for several minutes. Though much warmer, both felt very uncomfortable being in such close proximity with each other.
"If you dressed properly for the weather here, we wouldn't need to resort to… this," he hissed finally, shifting awkwardly beside her. However, she noticed that his voice did not hold its usual tone of contempt.
"Look who's talking," Nel replied, shifting her gaze to his half-bare torso. He did not seem to take much care in dressing warmly, any more than she did, as well toned as his body was. Nel bemusedly realized she had just acknowledged a feature about him that was attractive to her. She shook her head of these thoughts in time to hear his cold response.
"Silence fool! You should be grateful I'm allowing this at all," he snarled. "I could just as easily rend your head from your body!"
"You know, I'm surprised you've got any body heat at all, your heart must be stone cold," she said angrily, though not intimidated at all by his threats. "Assuming you even have a heart."
"No one asked you to do this, you know," Albel growled. "You can leave at any time."
"No one said you had to endure this either."
"So go," they said in unison.
A silence fell which was far more awkward than any that preceded that night, as neither of them moved.
Nel admitted to herself that she did not care to leave Albel's side and rely on her own body heat to carry her through the long night. However, it also seemed that Albel, despite his claims, did not care for the thought anymore than she did, for he made no attempt to separate himself from her.
"…I guess we called each other's bluff," she sighed matter-of-factly after a couple minutes.
He grunted his response. "So it would seem."
She sighed. "I'm willing to quit the insults and accusations for tonight, if only so that we can get a little sleep."
Albel did not respond.
"Truce, Albel?"
When he continued to remain stubbornly silent, Nel released a sigh, and decided she might as well try to get some sleep. After several minutes, she found her head had slid down slightly so that it was resting on his chest. She did not bother to move herself; she was far too tired to care. Anyway, it was far more comfortable than his somewhat bony shoulder, and he did not seem to mind. She thought perhaps it was because he thought she had drifted off to sleep, and there was no point in reproaching an unconscious person.
Another few minutes passed when she suddenly felt his arm very slowly and hesitantly reach around her and rested his hand on her back, pulling her that much closer to him.
"Truce…" he said in a low, almost inaudible voice.
Nel did not respond, as she was sure he was under the impression that she was asleep. Instead, she listened his heart resounding strongly in his chest, and was therefore able to confirm in her mind that the man once known as 'Albel the Wicked', did indeed, have a heart.
She also found that, at least right here right now, it was not cold at all.
-Fin
A/N: Well, this is my first fic in approximately five months… And it isn't a Suikoden fic! I'm sure it's not my best, but I still enjoyed writing it. Apologies for any typos/grammatical errors.Albel's a huge jerk, but I always thought it might be fun to pair him up with Nel, because it's pretty obvious they don't like each other much; it's the perfect premises to develop a love/hate relationship. Anyway, hope you enjoyed it, thanks for reading and feel free to leave me a review!