Authors Note: Thanks for all the kind words and support for this fic! This is the third and final part of the Keep Warm story but it's not the end of the fic itself, just the last hurdle of a three-parter to set the rest of the story up. Thanks again, feel free to hit me up on tumblr nishakadam to keep up with my psyren art and fics. Next chapter out in a week or two. Love.
Fires were easy to start in the Fridge, despite the lack of flammable tinder. Most burned away in trash cans fed by garbage and the limbs, blood baked into their metal like grease on a pan and growing thicker with each body. Maya studied the contents as she and Krieg passed through the winding halls, peeking past the metal rims only jerk back and swallow the urge to vomit at the smell of bubbling rib cages within. She covered her nose and shook her head, breathing through the fabric of her sleeve and gagging. Up ahead Krieg stopped and glanced back at her, waiting, listening to the noise in the vents up above and grinding his teeth.
They were below the ice, deeper into the underground facility. Hissing pipes trailed the walls, bent and twisted as the residents. Rats scrambled in the vents and Krieg jerked his head upwards when they passed, shaking his axe in the air and beckoning them down with grunted promises of broken necks and sweet, sucking chest wounds. The walls all looked the same down there and Krieg felt the metal grates closing in, suffocating him. He was trapped again in snaking cement hallways, mad men all around him, and it was all too familiar, too raw. His skin crawled and he scratched at his arms, trying to claw himself out of his own body and escape the memories seeping in from the cracks in the concrete and crazed giggling above.
Just a little bit longer. Maya told him to stay close and he was determined to obey, suppressing his itching desire to run away screaming. If he could bolt, he would find a scalp to flay, slip his fingernails under someone else's skin and bury his thumbs in their eye sockets, bore a hole inside a corpse and hide there until the terror passed. Don't run off. We can do this. Probably.
Krieg hands wrung the axe and he wondered just where the hell all the Rats were when he needed them, scanning the length of the metal vents down to a crevice in the wall. He was waiting for something to crawl out and rush him, bear their teeth so he could smash them in. He wanted to reach down a gizzard and pull out lungs so he could scream into them, use them like pink pillows, screech therapy at its finest and just what he needed. Nothing came from the hole in the wall. Krieg hummed through gritted teeth to keep from exploding, walking towards it and running the axe across the stone, trying to draw the sniveling psychopaths out with the noise of metal on rock. Maya composed herself, coming to stand behind him curiously while he seethed and mumbled, observing the area as he had done.
As far as she was concerned the guts of the old Dahl base were almost as shit as the Fridge around it, the only saving grace being the shelter from the cold wind. All and all it was the pest infested belly of a broken rotting carcass already picked clean, if anything there could be called 'clean', and Maya had a hard time believing they were going to find anything but cannibals and abandoned nests. Or what Maya thought were nests, judging by the heaps of what used to be mattresses, dank and decaying and curiously stained. The thought had crossed her mind as to what Rats could want with a bed, or how anyone could sleep somewhere so foul, but the idea that came to her was even more graphic than trash can rib cages and she shot it down before it had a chance to exist. Nasty.
"Ohhh, I just love to wait for my meals..." Krieg growled low, crouching and peering into the icy crevice with desperate eyes, dying for an answer or a scream from within and inwardly glad his shoulder span barred him from attempting to reach inside. Maya moved ahead and passed him, silhouette playing on the cement walls above, a prowling shadow against the firelight. Krieg looked up from his frustration and turned, following her.
"Meals?" She looked back over her shoulder with a playful smirk, "You better not be talking about the Rats. You put one of those things in your mouth and you're not getting any more kisses from me. Ever." Maya reached out to boop the blue lipstick stain she'd left on his respirator, tapping it as they walked together. "Mask or no mask."
She made a good point, but Krieg didn't have the heart to admit that he'd eaten far worse. Instead he just giggled stupidly at her touch, blushing a deeper red than the rusted metal garbage cans. Maya had a blurring effect on his vision, and he felt his brain stop convulsing over metal guts or crushing walls, focusing on her and her blue lips and trying to block out the rest. Her hand pointed at the kiss she had left on his mask, a touch that pulled him away from his brooding and made him floaty.
"Mmm I'd never EVER trade a pulsing prime rib dinner for dessert, but just for you..." He reached for her hand, removing it from his mask and holding it to swing between them as they went. "-for more sweet, silky SMOOCHES, as long as they're blue."
"Oh wow, I think that one actually rhymed." Maya kept her free hand on Plague and tried to focus on watching ahead, but Kriegs new display of affection was distracting, especially when he held her hand in his and rattled off impromptu verses at her.
She'd heard him speak that way before, fluidly with tempo and alliteration, but all his poems usually involved meat or gore. Only when they were together he would slip into a more...tame version of his prose. Switch from reds to blues, scream her name in between sonnets and swap the word 'gore' for 'glow'. She liked that. She liked the way he thought and the way his mind wove words around his meaning, sometimes garbled but sometimes profound. Usually messy.
They came to a stop at a doorway of sorts, a metal arch and a threshold that led deeper into the dimly lit Rat hole.
"Were you always such a poet?" Maya asked, leaning closer to him and rubbing circles into the back of his hand with her thumb. She played her fingers on his skin, holding on tight before combat, enjoying the touch on his hand before it was covered in blood. She'd heard other lesser lunatics scream about meat and fluids but they just didn't have his skill, lacked the golden tongue and the vocabulary that he flaunted wildly. "Is it a Psycho thing? Or were you like this before, too?"
Before my brain went through a meat grinder? The voice echoed in his ears sardonically. Something bubbled from his cortex and tickled his spine, someone inside him trying to piece together an image from a life that wasn't his, stealing his headspace. Krieg dropped his eyes from hers and stared down at their hands, scraping his skull for answers while she waited patiently and feeling detached from the contact, fighting the waves crashing against his forehead.
Memories didn't come easily. Half of them were just flashes, littering his brain like overexposed photographs and covered by piles of painful recollections that obscured them. His mind clung to horror and discarded the rest, dwelling on sterile tables and dripping scalpels, a woman's screams that ran parallel to his own gargled wailing. All memories of the years before were lost, like precious home-movies with slasher films recorded over them.
"I can't remember…" Krieg chewed the words and squeezed his eye shut. His head jerked to the side, grumbling something about cheap film budgets under his breath but trying to focus on an image connected to the word 'poet', fighting for it and telling himself it was real as much as he wanted to tell her.
The feeling of a pencil that fit in his hand. A horribly cluttered desk that he propped his elbows up on, hunched over a splayed out book with blurred, melting words, covered in yellow highlights and sharp underlines and circular brown stains. Scribbled hearts in the margins that weren't anatomical, just symbolic. Crumpled papers around him and a ring in a box, golden and bright and a mistake he could only make once. The thought vanished as soon as it came and Krieg gasped as it was lost, a blinding light exploded behind his eyes. His axe bashed into his temple, blunt end striking repeatedly, and he reeled back to slam it down another time before a strong grip trapped his wrist, preventing it from landing the next blow. The pencil and book were gone. The ring was gone. He was yelling.
"-keep the memories DOWN. Keep them down with a knife in its throat, slash it until it bleeds thought juice across the dirt and it's absorbed into nothingness..." Maya yanked him down by the wrist and he stumbled forward, hunching over to meet the siren eye to eye but still seeing stars. Her other hand gripped his chin and she leveled his face to hers, trying to bring him back to her. His pupils were dilated wildly and Maya went in and out of focus, speaking to him through the frantic rush of whispers in his ears.
"Krieg? Hey-" The siren had nearly jumped out of her skin when he'd suddenly backpedaled away from her just a moment before his self-mutilation began and she held on tight now, trying to keep the buzz axe away from his head and working against his muscle, the huge hand gripping his weapon trembling with effort. "-snap out of it!"
His axe fell to the cement with a clatter and his hand spasmed, twitching and curling and lost without the weight of it to hold. Krieg dropped his head into his chest and panted, whining low in his throat and trying to cling to the thought that was so bright but now so, so dark. A ring. That was her ring.
"Krieg." His face was still in her hands and she shook him a little, trying to get a response, "Are you okay?"
Have we ever been? "There's a ringing in my teeth." Krieg grunted, echoing the voice that screamed and wailed between his ears, a voice that was sobbing over a woman he didn't know and rattling the bones of Kriegs ribcage, making his heart pound. Outwardly he groaned and shook his head, trying to convey just how not okay he was.
Maya held his head in her hands and tried to read him. She was relieved he was calm again and no longer making himself bleed in front of her. His tired eyes glanced up, whites red and bloodshot. He reached up to squeeze her hands and sighed, rubbing up against her palms and trying to slow his heart, enjoying the pressure on his face and the cool of her skin. Krieg slipped her left hand under the mask and gave the fingertip a chaste kiss, his weak attempt at reassuring her before he pulled back, straightening.
He let her keep his hand but looked down at his axe on the ground, hating it and needing it and pawing the new wound on his temple. How are you going to keep kissing her if we're just going to forget- Krieg growled 'shut up' under his breath, half-inclined to make the hole in his head deeper to mute the worm in his brain, yank it out and smash it against the concrete just to get some peace.
"Hey," Krieg looked back to her and Maya smiled weakly, "You don't have to force it. Not remembering and not...not this." She held up his hand and kissed the back of it, making a point to meet his eyes when she did. Don't let me forget those stormy eyes. Dear God, don't let me forget this. "We can take it slow."
"Take it slow," Krieg breathed out, parroting her and tingling from her lips on his skin. Whatever 'it' was, Krieg knew he didn't want it to end for anything. Not because of the parasitic moral maggot in his medulla and not for broken rings. Not for dead memories and not for all the puny pencils on Pandora. If it meant showers of blue kisses and warm, slow touches painted in her skin he wanted it, and he wasn't going to forget. Memories could evade him all they wanted, for now, as long as he made new ones with her. He mumbled, eyes fixed on the blue smudge, drawling the words without thinking, "-a slow burn, marinate it, broil it, savor the flavor and scratch the recipe into me..."
He was going to savor her. She was there, she was real. She spoke up at him, "Look, I'm glad to hear whatever you have to say, when it comes. But for now,"
She smirked and pointed across the threshold with her thumb, "For now, let's go kill something. Get the creative juices flowing, so to speak?" She wanted to hear more poetry and she didn't want him to bleed for it, preferring that he made something else bleed to achieve his breakthroughs.
"-that is, among other things." Maya was trying her best to make him laugh and that did it, a chuckle bubbled from his chest and lightening the mood.
"Oh yes," Krieg nearly shivered in anticipation, wondering how she knew just what to say. He snatched the axe off the ground and Maya cocked an eyebrow at his complete one-eighty from tender to bloodthirsty. "Yes, yes yes yes YES."
Maya laughed at him when he pointed forward, motioning with the axe before stepping past the arch, pulling her with him. "Make room for my soliloquy, WILLIAM, it's gonna be a serenade."
"Out of the way, Romeo." Maya pushed him playfully and took the lead this time, cocking Plague authoritatively and strolling ahead of him. He was ready to bash heads and write their amour onto the frozen walls and she wasn't going to let him steal all the fun this time.
Maya opened her mouth and poised herself in front of a jagged spire of ice, reapplying her lipstick in the reflection before smacking her lips together. At the rate they were kissing she was going to be out of her favorite color, electric blue, by the end of the month and that was a problem. She inspected herself, preening and contemplating ordering another tube of lipstick on her echo when they broke for camp. Or maybe three.
Something wiggled in her other hand, trying to free itself while she was lost in thought. The Rats skull was still trapped there and his leg spasmed on the ground, melted from head to waist by her fire and dripping melted skin down onto his wrappings. He was alive, barely, but she forgot him as soon as she'd caught her reflection in the ice, more concerned with her bare lips than the man wheezing death rattles in her grasp. Maya frowned at the dwindling stub of her lipstick.
The last tube had gotten her through four months on Pandora, but she hadn't been losing it at the current rate and just today she'd reapplied three times. It wasn't a long wear formula, but it was vibrant and comfortable and best of all it stained beautifully wherever she touched. Most importantly it stained her friends mask and hands blue and that, that was thrilling.
Just a friend? She echoed. The Rats burning face melted the ice below by proximity and steam rose up from the spot, obscuring her vision while she stood there, pensive. How often do friends kiss, Maya?
The Rat jerked his head and tried to scream through his useless mouth, lips melted together into a horrifying stretch of flesh. His teeth poked out in spots and his eyes were bare in his skull, wide and shocked and unable to look away from his own hideous reflection. He shrieked in his throat and Maya shoved his face into the ice without looking away from herself, silencing the noise. So what if we kissed. It's not like it's wrong. It's just- new. And fun.
She chided herself for worrying, catching a glimpse of the psycho in question, his image behind her reflected in the ice. Krieg was having the time of his life ripping Rats to shreds behind her and raving bits of Dante's Inferno through swings, another sweet attempt to impress her. Maya was content to let him go wild and was more caught up in her own dilemma, trying to decide how much lipstick she needed to order so she could kiss him blue. To kiss her friend. Her very tall, giggly, handsy friend, who was totally not distracting her with verses and bloodshed and gentle looks. Not at all.
"O HUMAN RACE, BORN TO FLY UPWARDS-!"
Krieg shouted and hurled a hulking R.O.U.S across the battlefield. It crashed into her makeshift mirror, cutting her contemplation short and toppling her other victim. Maya rolled her eyes at the sorry creature as it twitched, wishing that the mutated freaks would just die a little easier. She pocketed her lipstick and cocked her gun. Plague blasted the poor bastards into chunks from point blank range, shattering the mirror in the process. Maya shrugged and watched the bodies corrode into a simmering pile of sludge, smacking her lips together one more time before turning back to the fight.
"-wherefore at a little wind DOST THOU SO FALL?" He continued, snatching another Rat by the ankles and mimicking a Hammer Throw, spinning in his place and sending the poor bastard flying with a cheer. Maya nearly lost it as the Rat flew in an arc above her and splatted into the concrete ten meters up, appreciating her friends flare if not his aim.
She slipped into the chaos and made a beeline for the psycho at the epicenter of it all. Maya was dropping Rats and clinging to the trigger of her Hyperion smg, whistling at the accuracy and purring as she mowed down freaks in her path. They were dead before they could crawl from the cracks in the walls, lead filled bodies stacking in place and plugging up the escape routes, trapping the Rats in the confined clearing, trapped between two vault hunters and a hard place.
From a cliff up above a Goliath plummeted down, nearly crushing Krieg in the process and breaking the concrete where it landed. It leveled twin assault rifles at him and Maya flicked her wrist, was pulling him upwards before he could shoot, the gravity of her magic yanking stray Rats up into the crunching sphere to join it. Maya smirked and closed her fist, popping the men within like organ piñatas and splattering her psycho with a shiny new coat of red.
All the better as far as he was concerned, howling with laughter and smearing it on his shoulders like sunblock, "BLOOD DRINK."
Maya backed herself up against him and kept firing, falling into their usual rhythm of slash and slay and glowing bright with energy. There was a ring of fire around them and corpses knelt in the snow like candles on a white cake, melting and screaming and setting surprisingly nice mood lighting in the night.
Krieg tore his axe out of the last Rat and Maya leaned against his back for support, panting and sweating, covered in blood as much as he was. He was blanketed in it and she slipped down his slick skin, nearly falling into the snow at their feet before her caught her by the waist and pulled her upright. She was glad for the help and righted herself, standing up on her own but keeping his huge hand on her hip. They shared a wild look, both high from the combat, breathing hard and pressed up close, smeared corresponding shades of red.
The opportunity was ripe and Maya took it, jumping onto her tiptoes to smack another kiss into his jaw. Krieg gasped and reeled back as if he'd been shot, dropping with an over dramatic thud down to the cold below, making a gruesome snow-angel. She was pulled down with him and she shrieked, smacking him on the chest and laughing at his silliness.
Krieg laid spent in the snow, panting and giggling and mumbling contentedly. He
ran his hand along her back. "'Fall, o angel, into the eternal darkness, into fire and into ice'…"
Maya tilted her head at his words, not surprised he could recite verses of an ancient poem but somehow still couldn't order a pizza without help. She splayed in the snow next to him and rested an elbow on his abdomen, leaning on him and over him, opening her echonet. Krieg grunted at the pressure on his belly and lifted himself up to see what she was doing. They had a new habit of resting wherever they fell and he didn't mind, admiring the splay of corpses around them while she poked words into a search bar. She was browsing an online catalogue of makeup and Krieg raised an eyebrow at that, not understanding how that was a pressing matter right this second.
Maya ignored his intrusion and poked in an item number she'd memorized, flicking the through screens. "I think I'm gonna need more lipstick. A lot more."
"Mmmm," Krieg hummed his approval, agreeing completely. He let his head fall back in the snow and ran a hand down his mask, hoping that the kiss there hadn't been washed away by the tidal wave of blood. "A new rainbow of red on cherry lips. Blood red, blistering bites...beautiful..."
"Really? I thought you preferred blue."
He considered it and agreed, nodding his head. She was right, he did like blue. He loved blue. It was her color and it meant everything, it was his sky and stars and the oceans of her eyes, grey and harsh like stormy seas and choppy waves. Blue was her electricity and her thunder, crashing over his head and short circuiting his brain. The fire in his heart was blue and it was wrapped around her pinky finger and up her arm, lighting him from the inside out and burning bright around him. She was blue through and through and God, did he worship her color.
"Krieg," Maya spoke and he grunted in response, eyes closed and head leaned back, trying to force the words out of his head and onto his lips before she took the space. She sighed, turning her question over before speaking and glancing up to the sky above the clearing, glad to see Elpis again and counting the stars. She placed her order for 10 tubes of electric blue and closed the digiscreen. "What are we doing?"
Dreaming. "Dying." He said instead, eyes shut and still convinced he was about to wake up.
"Hmm, yes, but that's not what I meant." Maya shifted closer, near his head, and put her elbow in the snow beside it, grabbing his attention and tracing the lipstick stain on his mask. She touched it slowly, choosing her words. "-what are we doing...together? This. What is this?" Maya tapped the mask and the kiss, and something clicked in his muddled brain, knowing what she wanted to hear and dying to tell her.
This is the best thing that's ever happened to me, he wanted to say. This is us being idiots. This is me helping you tear down the walls of my brain with our bare hands, it's me handing you a sledgehammer, begging you to smash my heart to pieces. This is you, making me feel human and it's me, making you laugh through the pain. Maybe that's all we need. A scream and a giggle and a fire in the middle. Or maybe we need more lipstick.
"Mmm it's a good touch. It's heaven and blue cherry pie," He turned his head, opening his eye, "It warms my guts with perfect agony. It sweetens the meat between your ears." Krieg drawled, licking his lips under the mask, eyes on hers and just now noticing just now that she had re-applied her tint. Her nervous lips were vibrant and creamy azure, cracking into a smile as he went on, "It's good."
Maya leaned in closer and his heart nearly stopped when her fingers touched the skin of his jaw. She gently ran her touch along the bone, light and fluttery, petting him. Krieg leaned into it, almost purring with delight and humming low in his chest, savoring her softness. Her touch shifted and she snaked her fingers higher, the tips poking under his mask, tracing the scars that dug deep into the meat of his face. A part of him wanted to pull back but he fought to stay close, forcing himself. She wanted to see more of him, and nothing could be more terrifying.
"It is good, isn't it…" Maya was unbearably close and he could feel her warm breath against his throat as she whispered the words, the vein there pulsing wildly while his heart beat out of his chest in anticipation. Maya laid another kiss along his jaw and Krieg nearly exploded, only kept from screaming by her hand on his neck pressing him down into the snow. "It could be better, you know."
God, do I. But it couldn't be better. The mask was in his way and wouldn't allow it.
"Hrnng, my face has a face and it's stapled on tight," Krieg spat through his teeth, chewing his lower lip hard enough to break the skin, "Can't crack it, can't break it, can't tear it off, can't..." Can't kiss you through it.
"Can you move it?"
Maya knew how he felt about this. She knew that he'd rather tear his fingernails off than be bare to the world, even when they were alone. But he could move it. He could move it to scream and to drink and to eat and by God he was going to move it so she could kiss him, so she could finally feel his lips for herself after fixating on them for weeks. She squirmed, wishing he would give her just an inch of leeway so she could get his mouth on her own and off her mind, stain his lips blue and suffocate him to sate her desire.
"...please?"
Her plea broke on his ears and he was resolved. Maya sucked in air as he pulled her closer with an arm around her waist, the other hand fumbling with the the straps behind his head and growling, working fast before his better judgement could stop him. The voice was pleading with him, begging him to stop. She's going to scream. She's going to run and hide if she sees your mug and we won't be getting anything then-! The mask was pulled up and it was too late for reasoning.
"GOOD GOD, shut me up!" He was bare from chin to nose and Maya drunk him in, lower half of his face bare for her. She admired his scars and purple pocked skin, meeting the man in the mask with eager eyes. Eager lips.
She wasn't scared at all.
They crashed together and Maya slammed him down into the snow, trapping him underneath her. Her left hand fell on the bare skin of his cheek and he moaned into her mouth, electrified by the glowing skin blessing his face after being stuck in the dark for so long. The kiss was fervent and hot, persistent. She pulled back with his lower lip between hers, sucking it before sinking back into him.
Breathing was the only thing that separated them now and it was stolen in gasps, breaking their contact for seconds before they reunited with a sore lips. They laid in snow and pulled at each other, mouths locked together like skags in the dust. Air became a luxury and Maya felt her head floating without it, unsure if it was the kiss or the asphyxiation and pulling back regardless.
Her lips popped off his mouth where he'd been sucking them and Krieg whined when she drew back, craning his head up to follow her and blindly trying to reach her. Maya took a deep breath in and pushed him back down, needing at minute to inhale before acquiescing to his urgent smooching.
Krieg let himself be pushed down and paused, taking the moment to pant, licking his lips. They were blue. His entire mouth was blue. The skin that he'd exposed to her, his jaw and cheeks and nose, were puckered with azure kisses and smudged lipstick, looking more like bruises against the worn purple scars that covered his right side.
Maya got her bearings and took him in, sated momentarily and trying to get a better look at him before he could hide back behind the mask. She understood why he wore it.
It was no wonder he hated purple so much, she thought, it was part of him. The skin was warped and sunken in, entire swaths of it scarred over purple and dull red. It wasn't as gruesome as she expected it be though, and she could clearly see the structure that laid beneath. Low cheekbones and a sharp jaw, soft lips that curved into a plush pout. All of it was scarred and marked over but it was there, the face behind the face.
His mouth pulled at the corners, feeling her eyes on his skin, and Maya laid a finger on his lower lip, smearing the blue deeper. Krieg was obviously dazed, and he mumbled something she couldn't hear against her fingertip, kissing it.
Maya tapped and teased him, leaning back down to meet his lips and whispering against them.
"See? That wasn't so bad, was it?"
"No…" Krieg moaned back, sinking his lips into her soft blue ocean and losing his words against the waves. No. That was perfect.