I know it's not too clear in this little bit, but I actually really like Lars and Alisa, and I realise I missed their day. Hope it's okay, though!
Lars toys with the notion of pouring another drink, vision spinning a sepia-toned montage of fallen comrades and blood-soaked battlefields, ash stained fingertips tracing the delicate crystal carvings lining the greasy tumbler rolling between his palms. Vicious pain plagues his head, a wild animal of memory and conspiracy tearing violent red behind his eyes, he's pressing fingertips heavy against his eyelids, pushing for the white noise fuzz of familiar discomfort, teeth grinding, an echo of thunderstorms and gunfire singing symphony in his ears.
The city streets fall silent more recently, but the ghosts of familiar soldiers and mechanical behemoths wage private war within his mind. His bones ache and strain to contain the very core of the experiences that shape him, scarred by rebellion and left adrift, rendered obsolete by the peace time that followed.
Five o'clock shadow dusting a sharp cut of jaw, voice shaped by broken glass and gravel, harsh with neglect, he feels the shadows of a tainted bloodline lingering beyond his peripheral, talons of shredded flesh and yellowed bone caressing and beckoning, singing him back through the histories of the Mishima curse.
He's reaching for some dime store bottle of vinegar, a tremor tracing electricity along his nerve endings, a hesitance and insecurity in the way his fingers flex, a diluted mockery of long retired smiles ghosting along his lips, an exhausted tribute to better days. A brighter past, a turbulent future.
A delicate clink of glass calls him back, a tiny fragile sound reminiscent of summer days, of bubblegum shades and a beautiful girl. Ice cool skin of milk and caramel, jarring against the powder-burned fingertips; skin a mottled patchwork of scarring. She curls hands of porcelain around shattered knuckles and a crust of rusting blood, pressing a dainty beat of butterfly's wings into the thick line of his wrist.
These days he only sees her through a melting lens, alcohol distorting his vision, her eyes blackening pits of tar leaking tear streaks across snow white cheeks, elongating, emphasising the Christ light smear of halo balanced among the curls of ballerina pink and blood red. But he recalls she was beautiful once, drained of all vibrancy in flashes of black and white memory and as she blinks her Morse code confusion across the coffee table, he envisions shards of cut emeralds, a nuclear haze; a blinding glare of halogen glow gazing back at him. China-fine fingers massage spirals into the surface of his skin, pretty pink mouth parting in a formation of obscene shapes he thinks he imagines.
"Lars? Are you okay?"
She's standing before him, barely taller as he sits at her mercy, eyes fixated on the intricate imitation masterpiece carving of her clavicle. Her fingers flutter to the fevered skin of his forehead, flickering and snagging in the sandy coloured strands tangled by his temple, he's seeing abstract visions of pixie wings and stained glass.
She's tracing manicured fingers along the taut skin of his jaw, a sharp, bittersweet accompaniment as she rakes sharpened nails through the growth of hair. He feels her eyes on his, a weighty gaze lingering on his mouth, an urgency and undivided focus, and he often presumes these fleeting moments of intimacy, of obscene craving and awkward contact are a masterful act, an applause-worthy mimicry of a human condition she strives to understand. A subtle sweep of her hip, she manoeuvres her way between his knees, pulling a glitter-glossed lip between her teeth, silently urging, encouraging, electric eyes studying each subtle nuance, the minute details of gesture as she observes that same hesitation, movements plagued by a lack of conviction as he traces the back of a knuckle along the inside of her thigh, skin a soft expanse of velvet cream.
A hissed intake of breath through clenched teeth as she dips to steal a kiss in place of dwindling conversation, cheating affection from his lips, a physical connection in place of a verbal conversation, but he's turning his head, eyes darkening, expressions disguised in the grim, practiced poker face of a rebel leader, peeling the warmth of his palms from the pale chill of her skin, thumb and forefinger pinching at the bridge of his nose, an anxious study of uncomfortable angles, oil and water and miles of vacuum and deep space spreading between them now.
A familiar grey hue bleeding from his eyes, settling in the folds of a too-young face, he's extending a weary hand, blindly grasping for the bottle standing sentinel across the tabletop.
He's long past embarrassment, figures shame is far beyond her rational reasoning, searching for reasons to love her again, carved into the bottom of each bottle, written in scrawling script of cheap whiskey and crocodile tears, he doesn't bother with disguise and deception. She is far too observant for his dwindling human condition.
"I just want a drink."
Those delicate dolls hands flutter, fingertips of sculpted ice and silicone press against the dip of her throat, eyes of toxic spills and nuclear war meticulously cataloguing his profile, the sweep of his nose, the tight purse of his mouth, a spinning spider web trail of shimmering scar tissue creeping from the brilliant blue-grey, a lonely tundra, arctic winds and nothing.
"I think you've had enough. I worry about you," her voice a carefully balanced combination of concern and consideration, a masterpiece harmony of robotics and femininity, elongated vowels and the beautiful shape of her mouth as she composes them. He's reaching a hand to brush against the blooming flowers braided through her hair, silk strands of ribbon, vibrant pink, sunsets and the soft, wet inside of her mouth.
"You don't worry," and he sounds only vaguely interested, passively stating an observation, undertones of frustrated warnings, needless reminders, tracing a splintered knuckle along the soft curve of her cheek.
"You can't worry. You can't feel," and there's latent traces of sympathy laced through his words, an aimless pity devoid of victim, ambiguous enough to address a growing loneliness they each feel, festering in their bones.
He has sparked out, burned the rage that made him vibrant, and madness has crept into it's place, nestled itself deep inside him and he grows far more familiar with it, cradles it and allows it share his words. He is suspicious, paranoia making him irrational, lying by her side in the darkness, mechanical hiss of a manufactured heart, chambers of circuitry, each beat a faint hum, he thinks maybe that's when he fell out of love with her.
He's hateful of the role she so dutifully plays, sincere and hopeful, and so very human.
His piece.
The starring role, the beating heart and the boiling blood, a mismatch of inexplicable compassion for a woman incapable of such, but he continues to find himself misplaced, nights alone spent crooked over a coffee table battlefield littered with empty glasses and prescription pills, quietly nursing the chasm aching it's way through his chest, recalling vague, cigarette-burned memories of a time when maybe he was in love.
"I'm still here, aren't I?"
She doesn't bother playing coy, the jaded act; the blasé audience. She's cradling his face within frigid palms, thumbs pressing perplexing patterns along his jaw; the summer smile, the winter skin. Her focus so intense, momentarily he finds himself desperate to believe the lie; that this carefully constructed mimicry of human idealism contains within her artificial heart, the perfect combination of coloured cables and circuit boards to synthesize an error as devastating as that of the ability to fall in love with another human being, let alone one as deeply flawed as he recognises in himself.
Her primary instruction is to protect, and she obeys it blindly and non-discriminately, watching over the physical, devastating the emotional.
"Because you're programmed to," and he's finally lifting his eyes to meet hers, a collision of sprawling spring fields and the winter frosts that claimed them. And he'd almost scoff at the rationality with which they discuss the topic of their doomed relationship, attributing it to her computerised logic rather than any feelings of disillusionment or disassociation stemming from his history of conflict.
So close to her now, counting the subtle smears of colour decorating each iris, he does not miss the brief flash of confusion that contorts her features, an inexplicable sadness resident in her sombre smile. Her delicate hand petting his hair, an unmistakable tremor singing in her bones, an organic touch, an increasing believability to lure him further down the rabbit hole, an exaggerated urgency to her tone sounding like a rise to resolution, the conclusion of the final act.
"I stay because I love you," and he winces at her blatant abuse of the words, a vicious misuse in the mouth of technology.
Raising his hands to her face to mirror her own position, pressing his fingertips against her temples, rose coloured strands tangling in jagged nails and broken skin, his thumbs tenderly tracing the milky skin beneath her eyes, traces of mascara flaking and falling like imitation tears under his attentions.
"You can't feel," and this time he does laugh, a half-mad sound, strangled by a desperation he'd felt lurking over the entirety of their exchange. It curls invisible fingers around his neck, pressing until his voice is cracked and harsh.
He needs to make her understand, trailing fingertips lightly down her cheeks, thumbs coming to rest in the pale hollow of her throat, eyes rooted there, as though it held the answers to resolve their turbulent affair, the magic words to provide an immediate happy ending.
When she speaks again, they are not the words he had been hoping to hear.
"I love you," and he must be mistaken, the waver in her voice, the dampening trails of liquid silver streaking down cheeks flushed and blotchy, he's curling fingers tight around her throat, pressing hard against the resistance of a metal frame.
"You can't love," he insists, eyes intense, fire and war and a tighter grasp on her slim neck, so rooted in distraction, he fails to notice those china-doll hands grasp frantically at his wrists, manicured nails tearing through flesh, scratching for bone and freedom and a reminder of who she is and what she stands for.
"I love you," she's gasping, face as vibrant as the hue of her hair, the whites of her eyes visible, her scrabbling hands weakening in their urgency for escaping his grasp.
"You're not real," he maintains, struggling to convince himself of the truth in that statement, her body going limp between his palms, her face a blurry study of old renaissance angels.
"I love you."
This time, it sounds like his voice.
She doesn't answer back.