Disclaimer: Blade Runner © Ridley Scott and Warner Bros.
A/N: I love these broken mirrors—where shards are memories—thinga in fics.
This is an experimental fic. If your view of Pris differs from mine, free feel to share.
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Basic
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Pris' earliest memory is standing in a line, dressed in scrubs, with Pleasure Models (this she didn't know until later) like herself. They'd undergone intense training for a month now. A few tests, and then they'd been ready to be shipped off to an off world colony.
It's the scream she can't forget.
And then, click! Click! Click! A replicant with stiletto heels and mascara stains had limped out of Room 232, sobbing about how it wasn't nice and she didn't like it and it hurt so bad—
She'd been retired on the spot.
A man had come out of Room 232 after her, frowning at the still replicant, fixing his zipper. "Okay," he'd gruffly said, face pink and sweaty, "Who's next?"
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Her arrival is celebrated at the Tannhauser Gate.
It takes some time before she understands that they're not celebrating her, but what she gives them.
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Model N6MAA109816 is unlike anyone she's ever met. Granted, she hasn't met many (it be androids or humans), but there's something about him that latches on and stays. With his light blue eyes, snow white hair, and deep, gravelly voice, he's like the embodiment of perfection. He doesn't fit in here on the colony, among dirt and dust and dead bodies.
Roy, he tells her to call him. "Roy," she tryingly says, squirming a little. He smiles.
He tells her things, wonderful things, terrible things. He gestures to above her head and says there are strings there, invisible strings and puppeteers that control her every move. Then, in a pleasant tone, he asks, "Do you want me to help me cut the strings?"
She was blind before. Now she can see.
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The human is thin, nothing more than skin and bones. But she does her best, and by the end of it he's a panting, exhausted, delighted mess in the sheets. Afterwards, on the bed, Pris kicks her feet back and forth and sees something odd on the floor. A picture book. Curious, she looks through it.
"Careful!" the soldier says, "That's my kid's."
"Kid? Like a..." she touches her stomach. He nods, paling. Pris turns some of the pages. In the end, she finds a picture of a man, a woman and a boy. "What's that?"
"It's— It's a family," he says brokenly. "A mommy... A daddy... and a kid." In his mind, he's elsewhere, maybe to a place he left behind.
"Family," she tries, tongue rolling around the word.
The soldier never touches her again.
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Sometimes, Pris like to pretend that the world is a dollhouse—
Roy's the daddy, she's the mommy, and there's an unnamed baby in her tummy. When Pris is alone, she sings to it.
Roy smiles and leaves for work (in acid rainstorms and icy temperatures), and she does the same (being a fuck toy for dozens of frustrated soldiers). The world is simpler so. She's the doll the boys play with and throw away when tired of. But Roy never gets tired of her.
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The colony's headquarters is full of the acrid smell of smoke, grey clouds resting near the ceiling. Inside sit old men, burnt out like the cigarettes in the ashtray, and young men too naïve to realize what they've signed up for. The latter still laughs and jokes, while the former drinks their booze in silence. Pris sits, naked, in the lap of a fully dressed male. She's been taught it makes men feel powerful.
The conversation is slow, influenced by exhaustion and tipsiness. It doesn't quicken until the door opens, letting in ash and snow. Roy Batter walks in, arm bloodied and frozen. Yet he speaks without a stammer. "Mission compromised. Causalities; Lott, Mullen and Hawkins."
The captain stands up. "Who's idea was it to send a squad out in a weather like this?!"
Roy says. "Gabriel."
"You got proof, skin-job?" the redheaded soldier asks. Roy tilts his head to the side. A challenge. "How do we know you weren't the one to kill 'em, huh?"
Roy drags forth in a frozen, armoured corpse, the pale face twisted into a grimace. The redhead is by his side in an instant, crying out his fallen comrade's name.
"May I attend my wounds, now?" Roy asks, expressionless. The captain gives a tight little nod. "Thank you. See you later, Pris."
"Bye," Pris says in a shrill voice. Nobody notices her. What follow is raised voices and harsh accusations. She isn't stupid—Roy is planting bad seeds among them. In silent rebellion, she kicks over a few beer cans, angering the soldiers. Nobody notices her.
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"I love you."
Pris has heard those three words a lot. She's said it a few times too, on request. Often, after such occasions, the man repeatedly cries out a name or weeps, hands tangled in his hair. Those men after often gentler, too, and less demanding. Sad. But nicer. But not all are like that
"I hate you."
There are men who prefer those words, too. They remind her of the man who was the reason of the first retirement Pris witnessed (Click! Click! Click! "...it hurts so bad—!" Bang!) and they're not nice at all. They have rough hands and toys that aren't fun. They call her a lot of ugly words.
She never tells either to Roy. They just talk. She likes that a lot more.
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They're in the middle of discussing humanity when Gabriel walks into the dollhouse, shattering the façade in a thousand shards. Pris is left to pick up the pieces, her expression included.
"What are you two doing here?!" Gabriel demands. "You're supposed to be down there, waiting for orders!" He's under the influence of alcohol. More so than usual. "It's your fault everybody hates me now! You're the ones who killed Jack, I know it! Goddamn machines, plotting against us! It's just like the mutiny, yeah..."
Ray rises to his full height. Gabriel is a little snot in comparison. To shut him up, Ray slams his fist into the wall right above Gabriel's head. "Listen. Please keep you mouth shut, or I will crush your skull to pieces."
The captain walks into the room. Ray is quick to remove the hand, too quick for the captain to see it. "What's going on here?"
"He fucking threatened me!" Gabriel shouts, pointing fingers at the stoic android.
"No he didn't," Pris says quietly. Everybody turns to her. "The First Law says that a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm." She was quick to assume the role of the dumb, talking blow-up-doll. "All androids must memorize that rule. Ray just begged him to stop insulting him. He even said please!"
Gabriel trembles with rage. "You lying, cheating cunt—"
"I don't lie," Pris interrupts, innocently batting long, dark lashes. She has a mental grade B and knows well how to manipulate things with an X and Y chromosome pair. Half of her training was perfecting that. ("Make them think they're in charge. Make them think they're amazing. Or, the alternative; don't make them think at all.") Pris fakes sadness. "Why would I lie? I mean, I'm programmed to tell the truth, right?"
"So you are," the captain says. He's always had a weak spot for ladies, artificial or not. "You, on the other hand..." Gabriel is dragged out. The door slams shut after them.
Ray walks over to Pris and kisses her.
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It is an early morning on Tannhauser Gate. Most humans are sleeping. The androids are not, morning cold giving them nothing than frozen limbs that'll warm up later.
Pris imagines them being inside a dollhouse again, locked away from the world. Leon, Mary, Zhora and Tono are there too, together with Pris and Roy. Extensions of her world, characters in her picture book.
"I want more life," Ray confesses. Pris goes quiet. Ever since she's met him, she's known. An imaginary dollhouse would never be enough for him.
"But who can give us that?"
"Our creators, of course, our gods. They gave us life. Giving us more shouldn't be hard."
"What if they can't, Roy?"
"They must." There is desperation in his eyes, desperation and steel and ice and dust. "They must."
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Stars glitter above them.
(There is explosions and ships on fire and screaming—)
but Ray's hand holds hers and nothing else in the world matters.
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The hijacked space shuttle is silent again. No more screaming. Roy and Zhona take over the steers again. Pris enters the main room of the space shuttle.
The walls are painted in scarlet.
In the mess of blood and bodies, she finds a small pink satchel with a horned horse on. The underside is red, too. Inside lies stuffed toys, a painting set and a pink brush. Pris looks around. Behind the satchel lies a little girl with yellow curls.
Pris takes a brush from the satchel and brushes the little girl's hair, singing self made songs. She places the girl in one of the seat, buckling the seatbelt over her. "We're going home," she whispers, and kisses her forehead. The little girl looks like an angel splattered in red.
Pris touches her own face.
Her cheeks are wet and she doesn't know why.
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Once, he'd asked if she'd regretted following him.
"I will follow you into Hell," she'd answered.
"Oh Pris. We're already been there."
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It rains and rains and rains.
Earth is nothing like the sunshiny place in the picture book.
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Sometimes, Pris likes to pretend that the world is a dollhouse—
But the walls smoulder, the floor rots and the baby's dead and gone.
She can't see the irony of hiding as a doll when the blade runner comes. Irony was never taught to her.
Pris dies in an abandoned ramshackle building in a pool of her own artificial blood.
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In her dying dreams, in a picture book world, she rocks a newborn back and forth.