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One and two, and-
"Elster...please..."
Blackened fingers grasped weakly at her plating as the figure fell against her. Pulling...or pushing; she couldn't determine from the miniscule pressure against her chest.
She took those fingers in her own, kissed the deadened tips. Tried to ignore the stutter in her own limbs as her fingers locked up for a moment like a pained gasp.
Their entwined frames cast shadows over the photos littering the floor. Scattered memories of them together, happy and embracing, once plastered over the walls, their edges frayed. In their absence, the AEON logo was revealed once more, dull and carmine against the silver metal that hung all around and overhead, pressing in and in and in.
One and two, and-
This time it was her stumbling, loosing footing against the floor as her leg spasmed. She caught herself against the table's edge, hip banging painfully into the corner. There would be a puncture there now; she knew from experience.
The AEON-stamped letter was jostled from where it lay. Had lain ever since trembling, healthy fingers had folded it away, their owner pale with something other than the sickness that now took her.
Elster dragged their bodies up and away, pulling Ariane back to herself. From the corner of her eye she glimpsed the lilies, dead and dry, sitting in their vase of stagnant water. A brittle petal fell to join the photos, covering the smiling faces of the lovers.
One and two, and-
"Elster..."
"I have you, Ariane."
She dipped the skeletal figure in her arms, leaning down to kiss the crusted, frowning lips, pretending the rattling of her breath was nothing more than a pleasured sigh, coming away with breath that had a sickly, rancid smell like curdled milk. Her hand came up to stroke her head, feeling past the trail of lumps to the thin white strands at their end. As the digits retreated away, white clumps pulled away from the root like torn cobwebs.
She shook them away, dislodging the stray hairs from her shaking fingers. They floated like whisps to cover the paintings of lonely Isles, of barren farms with dead, grey-capped crops bent at their stalks in reverence to the farmer's scythe. The only work left untouched was an unfinished painting. It bore an ugly wound, paintbrush protruding from where miserable, angry fingers had stabbed it into the canvas. Paint dribbled down from the hole, yellow and pustulent, dry scabs forming at its punished edge.
Looking at it made it harder to breathe.
One and two, and-
"...I can't..."
Elster hummed soothingly. The tune was broken and staticky but it would make do for the music player they had lost cycles ago.
Ariane shook her head weakly from its slump, and Elster rocked her soothingly. Her body had long lost the steps of the waltz but she would help her through them, just as once she was led through her own.
A groan issued from an open mouth with too few teeth in it, a flash of rememberence with it; hands stroking down a hunched back, wracked with sobbing as pallid palms cradled another bloodied tooth, freshly ejected from the eroding gum bed.
She knew that Ariane lay within the grotesquerie of her shell, just as she within hers. She was as sure of this as she was of her own name, etched on the static memories of bloodied dog tags.
"Please, Ariane...stay with me..."
But then a hand was grasping at her cheek, oddly firm, pulling her down into a sunkern face, the dream shattering with the truth therin.
Reflected in bloodshot eyes Elster saw the drooping of her own face. The exposed metal from outlived skin, rust eating at the joint connecting the jaw to her neck. Her hair was patchy with streaks of grey, the thin polyethylene of the scalp worn away in places, and globules of brown oxidant pooled in the gaps in her teeth.
Elster stopped in place, still gazing down at the limp figure in her arms.
You can't hold her forever.
In the broken mirror they were both spectres.
She knew what she must do.
She hoisted Ariane over her shoulder, wincing at the pained sound by her ear. She limped across the room to the door, the uneven clanking of her feet reverberating around the narrow coridoor as she entered.
Every step felt relentless. Overhead, the triumphant, commanding figure of the FLKR poster was torn and rusted over with decay, only those piercing blue eyes remaining to regard them both from above.
Elster leaned her entire weight on the control panel to cryogenics, the doors giving way with a rasp.
It would only be for a little while. She could stay the course of that wretched, lonesome boat, drifting across the dark waters to a bleak, loathsome Isle.
She palmed the panel to the cryo chamber, willing it to be functional. A couple of errors later and she was in, the chamber doors cracking open with a dull hiss, and perhaps that rush of cold air was the breath of God at last.
She lowered Ariane into the liquid, holding their foreheads together until she slipped away into the cold. Odd; Elster didn't remember pressing the lily into her fingers.
"Until we dance again."
There was no reply.
Elster retreated, supporting her trembling body on the panel as she watched the doors envelop their greatest treasure; a cocoon for the sleeping Ariane to one day emerge, triumphant and beautiful as ever.
She hobbled to the glass and pressed a kiss there, the scarlet mark streaking as she fell to her knees. She could taste oxidant on her remaining teeth.
Her head hit the floor with a dull thuck but she paid it no mind. Instead, the image of that mark, a bright, ghostly brand, seared into her brain, swirling, as the sanguine noise encroached upon the edges of her brain.
LSTR-512 smiled, her optics dimming as she descended to the dark, serenaded by the gentle whirring of the Penrose; a lone dancer in the endless expanse.