-Elizabeta Héderváry-
Elizabeta awoke to the sound of a gunshot.
Her malachite eyes flickered open like a candle's light as she scanned the clearing for signs of the assailant. A light coating of snow dusted the ground, attiring the trees in delicate ribbons of white frost. All dyed pink from the pre-dawn sun. She looked around, desperately fiddling for the pistol Gilbert had given her. Had the Nazis found them? She raised it before her. She wasn't entirely sure how to shoot, but she sure as hell wouldn't let the enemy know that by the determined look on her face. Not that it could be terribly difficult to blow someone's skull off from their vertebrae from only a few meters away anyway. Eliza was alone, nestled with her spine against the roots of some colossal ancient oak tree where the pair had collapsed from exhaustion the night before. They had probably ran about eight kilometers in the dark. She distinctly remembered Gilbert's strong arms wrapping around her as his back pressed against the tree, and she lay between his legs. It was the most restful sleep she had since she had left Hungary. But where was the Prussian now?
She heard a rustling in the brambles just in front of her and clicked off the safety.
"Whoa! Whoa! Eliza, as hot as you look with it, put the gun down!"
Said Prussian strode through the thorns, his own gun in his right hand; a small creature hanging limply by its ears from his left. A very dead snowshoe hare, by the looks of it.
Eliza cackled and threw the pistol down to the side as she leaped up and slung her thin arms jovially around Gilbert's neck.
"Ow. Liz, you're strangling me!" hands too full to push his smaller attacker away, Gilbert stumbled backwards. Elizabeta pinned him to the ground, laughing embarrassedly.
"I thought you were Roderich at first!" she exclaimed, still flushed. She carefully pulled her hands off from the Prussian's chest as he picked himself up. He brushed the loose snow from his chest and sat up.
"Whatcha' find?" she asked.
"Breakfast. I had to find something or we won't make it much farther, even if they might have heard the shot."
Eliza nodded in agreement. She estimated they had an hour, maybe three, before the search for them started. It depended how many hours they recounted the dawn Appell before deciding the number of prisoners was not a miscount. "Yeah. Nice catch."
"You're not squeamish are you?" he asked, a hint of concern lacing his voice.
Eliza shook her head. "No. Not anymore."
He smiled and tosseled her russet hair lightly, kissing her gently on the cheek. Eliza returned the favor. Gilbert dug around in his coat and tossed her a small shiny silver box. It flashed in the sunlight as it whirled through the frosty air. Eliza caught the small metal prism in both hands and examined it.
"Gil? I didn't know you smoked?"
He shrugged nonchalantly. Although she realized why she couldn't smell it back at camp. "Start a fire, will you? I'll get started with the rabbit." he said. The razored age of his bayonet flashed in the dawn sun as he raised it to the white creature's soft abdomen. He turned away from Elizabeta.
Eliza turned the mysterious silver box around in her hand. A medieval eagle was embellished in the metal, its wings and talons flared majestically. An aquiline beak was parted at the top of the lighter where the light emerged, as if the bird himself was spewing the flames. Inset as the creature's eye was a shining red glass gem amongst its ruffled metallic plumage. She held the lighter in two fingers like a jeweler examining a diamond. It was gorgeous, like some master artisan from another time had forged it from the fires at the temple of some ancient, long dead god.
"It's beautiful…." she whispered.
"It was my father's." he said gruffly, as if that was an explanation.
Eliza nodded nodded anyway. "Are you sure it's safe to light a fire? You know, if..." her voice trailed off. A fire could be a beacon to anyone looking.
The albino's lips pressed together into a firm line. "Yeah. I thought of that, that's why I got up so early. If it was any darker, someone might be able to see the firelight. And any lighter and they'd see the smoke. Right now it's just perfect. I say we've got an hour, then we'll have to get moving again."
Eliza nodded and started hustling, snapping the dryer branches from the trees and piling them in a larger fork amongst the roots of the ancient tree. The two roots would make a good bench for them to sit on. The swampy earth around the camp was perpetually wet or frozen. She balled up tinder beneath the arm-sized sticks and released the metal eagle's fiery wrath upon the dry sward. She set another pile of branches beside her to add in later. She neatly lined a dozen or so fist-sized rocks around the small fire. Finished with her task, she looked back to the Prussian. His black leather gloves lay on the stone beside him. His hands were stained with crimson as he toiled. The same shade of red as his irises and as his-
"Gilbert…. your armband."
"What?" he asked.
"Look at it."
The silver haired male paused in his task and did as he was instructed. The red Nazi armband that adorned his bicep had been torn by something. A short slash flitted through the white circle of which the black symbol was inscribed, revealing the blue-black fabric of his SS uniform underneath. The swastika was nearly cleaved in two.
"How strange," he said. "It must have gotten torn from the wire when I crawled under the fence." The man picked at the frayed red fabric curiously to find the seam's edges were cleanly burned away.
"Another two centimeters and you'd have been fried," she noted coldly. "We were quite lucky."
Gilbert frowned. In a single fluid thrust he slid the skin from the rabbit. "It wasn't luck. I just wasn't careful, that's all." he replied brusquely. He didn't seem to like having to credit his survival to any instance of luck or misfortune. He liked thinking that whatever was going to happen to him he could stop it with his head and his own two fists. If something bad happened it was his own fault. Just as something good. Luck was never part of his picture.
Eliza fixed him with a coy and knowing stare. "You're telling me that your Nazi armband accidentally ripping at the exact moment you left the concentration camp isn't symbolic of anything?"
Gilbert grumpily only shrugged.
-Gilbert Beilschmidt-
Gilbert was drawing in the thin powdering of snow with his boot as he sat on the tree root across from Elizabeta, the hot coals from the fire between them. The meat was almost done cooking, but Gilbert was impatient and hungry.
"I wish I had my frying pan." Eliza mused aloud, "It would speed this up a bit."
"Your frying pan? What is it, your spirit animal?" he snickered, wondering why she didn't just say 'a' frying pan as opposed to hers.
"I had a favorite one back home. The boys on the street used to run away from me because I'd bash them over the head with it with it if they ever got too flirty. There was this one goofy Turkish kid, now there was a bother. I'm surprised he's still functioning; all those brain-cells missing." she said with a snort.
Gilbert burst out into laughter. "And here I thought girls just cooked with them! Silly me, for actually thinking of frying pans as a culinary tool rather than a weapon. Especially cause, y'know...we're cooking something I just killed a half hour ago on friggin' hot coals like cavemen right now."
Eliza shoved him playfully. "You German brutes might as well be cavemen, you know. You're just happy that I didn't have my pan on me that time when you hit me with that riding crop!"
Gilbert snickered again. "I could take you on any day, weapons or not."
"You're not too gentlemanly to hurt a lady?" she purred sarcastically.
"Certainly not, my dear."
On that thought he pushed her off the tree root. She landed with a thump in the melt. There was quiet for a moment as they stared each other down, russet flames and emerald leaves, Gilbert sitting on the root and Elizabeta crouched catlike on the earth. Rather than pushing back, Elizabeta puffed a single tendril of curly bronze hair out from her lips. For some reason Gilbert wasn't entirely sure of he burst out into hoots of laughter. Then Elizabeta started chuckling too. They both laughed so hard Gilbert was afraid that they'd hear them back at Auschwitz.
A/N
An astounding number of reviews for the last chapter. Twenty-two. Wow, I really should end the chapters on a happy note instead of a dramatic one more often, huh. My greatest thanks to Things that rhyme with orange, Saya Kurobara, ApostolicShadowNinjaGir,l keek n d, Inigo1220, , PASTA300, samirawrr-19, Lurtz6, Hammsters, Prussianess, HelloWorld, Sen Y, KthePrussian, andy-chan24, sascake, Spiroketta, bluemagesfairytail, midnight sawc, drawnoflife, toolazytologin, (lolz c:) and Cookiefox! I truly appreciate it and hope you will again this time, along with some new people.
Until next time, me hearties. Remember to tell me what you think if you can. Next chapter we'll get a little peek of what going in Auschwitz while our two lovebirds are away.
Celticfeather