Slow.

She'll take it slow, this time.

She eavesdrops on Ironwood's phone calls; from the important to the mundane.

She eavesdrops on Ironwood's daily conversations; the mic picking up the scratching of his fine uniform's fabric as he moves, and talks, and always seems to get such good service.

She sometimes lucks out, and gets to watch him through its camera.

And sometimes, she gets very lucky indeed- She sees Atlas, and the sweet, sensitive things that only Top Men have ever seen.

And she's recording.

Always.

It's been months.

The conversations blur together, now.

Every sliver of tender, useful, delicious information that Ironwood unwittingly gives to her is always caked and bloated with choking gristle.

Ironwood is talking to a doctor? Probably about his disgusting mess of a body.

What a disgusting, putrid mess his body is. So scarred, so utterly useless on one side. Missing limbs, mangled and burnt off stubs that he hides like a coward.

Truly... Revolting...

Ironwood is getting a higher dosage on his prescription for... Quetiapine?

Interesting. But useful?

She's gotten very good at guessing when she can watch him.

On most nights, he leaves his scroll elsewhere; a black shot of the ceiling, or the inside of a pocket.

But sometimes, Cinder has learned, the drugs don't stop the voices that he hears. Don't stop the things that he thinks he sees.

And he'll dock his scroll, and listen to ambient rain, or wind, or numb and mindless static.

What was once an objective desire to merely suck Ironwood dry of information had twisted into something else.

Cinder had come to truly, genuinely enjoy these sweet, savory nights spent watching him.

The nights where he violently writhed and cried out in his bed, unrelenting terrors waking him every hour, every thirty minutes, every-

The nights where he did not sleep, and merely paced restless like a madman.

The nights where he drank himself unconscious on his sofa, or his living room floor- an empty glass or half-empty bottle always still firm in his grip.

Those nights, especially, were what Cinder looked forward to most.

They always had such beautifully broken glass, Cinder admired, when Ironwood's body would succumb to gentle tremors - he'd murmur and cry, and his grip would give way with the spasm of his trigger finger.

This passing lust was so disgustingly gradual, Cinder knew - and her knowledge of it was so, so bitter.

It was so deeply quenching to know how much Ironwood suffered in private; so primally satisfying to watch him slowly decline and succumb to his demons, both old and new.

The amusement that he brought to her on hot and lonely nights was almost worth it, Cinder mused on occasion. Almost.

She always smiled at way his body seemed to twist more violently, and more desperately grab at itself in his sleep, on the nights where her own pain became too much to bear alone.

And soon, to her utter disgust, Cinder found his low voice growling orders and frustrations and polite nothings to no one had become so... Comforting.

He was a man of strident routine, Cinder had found over these several months.

His alarm was always set to sound at four in the morning.

And he'd always groan, and drag himself out of bed, or push himself off the floor - no matter how drugged or drunk he still may have been.

He'd always shamble to his bathroom soon after, sticking himself with countless needles before downing innumerable pills.

He had a list of foods that he was approved to be able eat, which was tantalizingly short, soulless, and awful.

Everything good seemed to just wreak total havoc on that sad, artificial "stomach" of his.

She would smile at his little pains every morning; his tiny winces passing aromatic bakeries and little nervous swallows beside coffee shops, as he assured another important man that he would be on time to yet another stale, repetitious, important meeting.

His little agonies were truly such a sweet novelty at first; but after these months with him- it was another routine.

Everything, Cinder would sigh too frequently to herself, seemed to have become... A comfortably numb routine.

This night was strange, Cinder noted.

A new desk, with a new power dock- And some beautiful view of some place that she knew was neither within the depths Atlas' military development labs, nor a facet of the towering skyrise of Atlas Academy.

He was sober, Cinder could tell.

Sober, but still unshaven and so... Exhausted.

She turned to her side on her bed, watching intently. The blazing tinge of the volcanic wastes beyond her massive, ornate windows tinted her scroll's screen, and she mused that Ironwood looked so charming bathed in a wash of blood red.

She wondered, how would he suffer for her tonight? What intriguing night wrought of nightmares and agonies would her hideously disfigured blowhard of a tyrant treat her to?

He... Pulled down the knot of his tie, and began to unbutton his shirt.

Cinder's chuffed with bemusement. Something very strange indeed must have wormed its way into his thick metal skull, for him to so boldly remove his clothing.

So many months, and never had she seen his flesh in real-time; the man was too prude, too pious, too utterly, suffocatingly terrified of what he might see reflected back at him in the picture windows that plagued Atlas architecture.

Whatever the reason for his strange and uncharacteristic boldness, it was a decidedly welcome treat, Cinder mused, as she watched him slide off his silken black shirt.

The Tyrant of Atlas, stripping- just for her. Only for her. Perhaps, some day, for millions- but tonight, James Ironwood belonged to her.

His muscles were so torn, and his scarred and shredded abdomen so bulging and hideous. They were so nauseating to witness in motion as he moved to fold his shirt, and as he bent to set it aside.

Cinder shuddered; her face was flushed, she could tell- From this?

He sat back down onto the sofa, and Cinder admired how the deep black leather and steel supports framed him, complimenting his prosthetics and contrasting sharply with his pants- which he slowly unbuttoned, and unzipped.

Why... Was he looking so vacantly across the room, and into the camera?
His legs spread, Ironwood slid his left hand into the seat of his pants, and he groaned- his head dipping back.

The fuck was this?

He caressed himself, gentle at first, before hissing and wincing- and with a firm grip, he readjusted himself- bringing his thick, throbbing, malformed and half-steel erection into the open air.

Cinder scowled at the screen, furious and shocked- Fervently bringing up Ironwood's schematics beside the video that she couldn't bear to take her eyes off of.

The man had nothing, she knew. She knew. He was a fucking eunuch.

But what the fuck was this, between his legs?

When had this happened?

How had it escaped her?

Cinder cried out; a choked, pathetic wheeze in absolute fury as tears clouded her eyes at his utter betrayal-

And Ironwood let out a tiny, pathetic moan as his hips bucked up so slightly.

Glaring seething daggers, Cinder's breath hitched as she ran her burnt and disfigured left hand along her inner thigh; the wrinkles and divots on her marred flesh catching on the smoky, tight-netted nylon of her stockings.

She never took her hateful gaze off Ironwood, and she felt so bitterly teased as he quickened his pace; his fingers so quickly massaging his flesh and steel-ribbed abomination.

Cinder bit her lip as the clumsy remnants of her fingers punctured through her fragile stockings, and she wasted no time in pressing and sliding the stubs of her fingers along her slick, soaked folds.

She indulged in a half-focused daydream as she listened to Ironwood moan and pant and whimper; that he was the one to have ripped into her stockings. That his heinous steel fingers were the ones grabbing at her, his gaze broken and pathetic- but still so hateful.

That would be the Ironwood that she knew- passively hating her, working against her, working to end her- Even while broken.

Cinder sawed at her clit, making little sounds to compliment Ironwood's frankly embarrassing level of vocality.

And Ironwood suddenly stopped; his chest heaving, he moved his hand away from his erection.

It was still so massive, and still standing so firm and demandingly upright.

Cinder whined as she watched precum dribble down from his tip; it shone so tantalizingly against the matte black of his wretched penis' silicone.

Looking at him so winded, with his cock still so hard and massive, she ached so badly with the desire to force him to fill her-

To subdue him, and wring his neck, and straddle him as he gasped for breath as she made his human and machine lungs both burn and fill with smoke-

How dare he make her fucking ache.

Ironwood's pants were too confining, apparently- Not that Cinder could blame him. He slid them down, abandoning them in an undignified pool on the floor.

It was a garish contrast to the neatly folded shirt, and Cinder wrinkled her nose. It was off-putting for him to leave them like that. It, once again, wasn't the Ironwood that she knew.

He grabbed for his tie, the crimson silk shining tiny glares into the camera as if it was privy and bitter on its owner's behalf. With a sloppy, fumbled motion he wrapped it around his cock - and laid back along the length of the sofa, propping his mechanical leg high up on the cushions of the sofa's backrest.

Ironwood murmured little obscenities as he fucked himself, his hips bucking hard into his tight silk-lined grip.

Cinder quivered; plunging her severed fingers into her soaked and overflowing pussy as deep as they would go.

Watching his violent movements- She could imagine herself on top of him, riding him, him pounding into her, hilting her, stretching her and filling her to the absolute brim he struggled in vain against her.

Her fingers were not enough to sate her ache to be filled - not enough to make her fantasy more tangible - but her clit was so hard, and so throbbing, and she was so close.

Ironwood yelled out, his face contorted in something that Cinder knew so well from him- Pain.

He came hard, shooting forceful stream after stream of thick, beautiful, milky cum onto his chest - and Cinder followed suit, her body shuddering with his as she let herself be utterly overcome by the sweet rhythmic contractions within her, her focus on the screen becoming blurry and lost.

The throes of her orgasm lingered longer than they ever had; fueled and spurred like wildfire over dry brush by Ironwood's continued choked coughs and desperate gasps- and briefly Cinder wondered if she really knew herself as well as she thought she did.

She wheezed as she came down from her orgasm; the aftershocks still lingering, and goading raspy, broken, pathetic noises to escape her lips.

Ironwood's hands were over his face, and he lay motionless; save for the heave of his chest, and the malformed sinewy lumps of his abdomen's muscles raising with his approximation of a diaphragm.

With shaky hands, slick and strung with her thick juices, and her mind still clouded by such pointed and hateful lust-

Everything good had to burn, in order to begin again.

It would be better, this time.

There would be no betrayals.

There would be nothing missed.

There would be no comfort, no numb routine.

With frantic passion, Cinder attached a folder - hundreds of audio clips, thousands of screen captures-

Crisp, clear, video of mere moments ago. Ironwood's disfigured, mangled body utterly overcome by the throes of ecstasy, spilling viscous cum all over himself.

There was a chime, on Ironwood's scroll- and he snapped to attention, removing his hands from his face and turning his head.

A light ignited, and blinked so callously at him.

"Do it again for me."