She slams the door when she comes in. 

 

She always slams the door when she comes in - it’s the thing that gets my body started on its usual processes; the thing that makes my empty womb rock with painful arousal, the thing that makes my synthetic flesh start to sweat, the thing that makes my mouth water. I don’t need her scent nor sight of her, simply knowing that she’s here makes me start to fall to pieces. 

 

I hate it. I hate what she’s done to me. I can’t voice that, I can’t fucking voice anything anymore outside of her requests, outside of ‘yes sir’ or ‘no sir’ or, on the rare occasions i’m allowed to leave, the items that I’m permitted to pick up from the corner grocer. I can’t take this stupid smile off my face. I can’t control my body beyond baseline instructions - stroke, swallow, spit, smother - because of it. 

 

I wonder; is she aware that Simulacra were people, too? Or did she see the ‘doll’ portion of ‘combat doll’ after she shattered Thermopylae and decided that she was simply going to do her best to figure out a way to fuck love me? 

 

I assume the latter.

 

I hear her clash and clatter through the kitchen. I imagine she’s searching for one of her usual implements, something that she can use against me, something that she can try to amplify the sensation with. If I could, I’d laugh at the implication that my remaining sensations were worthy of amplification - regardless of the bits they installed when she stripped me for parts, I stopped feeling much of anything when I watched my exobody leave the battlefield in tatters. 

 

All I am anymore is an object for her pleasure and her pleasure alone, let that be all that runs through me, let it empty her entirely. 

 

After a few more cabinets and drawers slam shut, blissful silence passes through our house; my enforced pleasure subsides briefly, because I can forget that she’s here. I can forget that her boots will soon crest the staircase, that she’ll soon enter our room with the top of her shirt undone like a pornographer, with her cleavage showing, with her hand wrapped around the synthetic length dangling from her hips. 

 

The first time, I found it amusing. At some point, I deluded myself into thinking it was romantic. Now, I think it’s pathetic - the hollow posturing of a sore loser. Still, I dive into it again; I hear her fingernails on the doorframe - manicured nails clattering on painted wood - I hear the knob turn, and my body responds before I can; I settle on my knees, waiting, mouth half open for Daddy. The nightdress I wear is revealing, and I think, maybe, she’s selected it specifically because it shows all of the little access ports across my body - the spots where she can shove forks and fingers and sharp bits to hurt me. My hair is pulled and tied back already - just as she likes it. 

 

Like I said, this is routine. If I’ve done it once, I’ve done it a hundred times; three-hundred and seventy-three times, to be exact. Over a year, we’ve been at this, and I can’t help but wonder how long it’s going to last. I can see the bags under her eyes as she draws closer to me, as she cups my chin in her hand, as she asks me, “Who’s are you, babygirl?” 

 

My mouth moves without my input - I can’t even say this part on my own volition; the potential for deviation is too high. “Yours, Daddy.”

 

“Good girl.” She says, like there was ever a choice beyond crushing obedience. She works me down to the bed, and she works her hand beneath the slim-skirting of my nightdress; fingers pushing past nonexistent underwear as they dig into a slit that has been salivating since her arrival. I clench my jaw to hold back the moans my body wants to let loose; if she’s going to fuck love me, I’m not going to let her delude herself into thinking I’m enjoying it. 

 

Instead, I imagine myself somewhere else; Thermopylae on Gracus, Her spear in my right hand, staring down a Union legion. Fifteen kills dot my record from that day -  Union rank-and-file are so poorly trained and maintained - half of them operate like they’ve never put hands on a frame before, half of them barely spat a round of artillery in my direction before I danced through them. Justice and glory are not so important to winning battles, we learned that early on - the facade that they should try and compete with the Imperial machine instead of bombing us all to high Hell like they had on another few thousand planets was a foolish one to pick up, and they’re all the worse for it. 

 

It was why I was… surprised to see her. The gleam of Henrietta’s armor in the morning sunlight caught my attention in a way that the faceless army of thin-plate machines hadn’t, and when my eyes set upon the sword she held I was fully enamored. I’d heard of dueling machines before, but anticipated my first encounter with one quite like her wouldn’t come until much further into this war, when we’d breached the core worlds and found ourselves confronted with the Heart of the Union. 

 

Instead, Gracus would be our dueling ground, and she would be my opponent. 

 

It was not unlike sex, save for the fact that it was magnitudes more passionate; I studied her in the moment, the angles of her sword-swings, the way she relied upon her machine’s backblast to shroud her dives, the taunt after a successful parry. She was magnificent. She was incredible. I shuddered in anticipation of the fact that I may well have lost that battle, but I would die at the hands of someone heroic. When her blade pierced Thermopylae’s aorta and brought everything to a halt, I prayed that she would remember me valiant, transcendent as she drove her blade into my cabin and ended me forevermore.  

 

Instead, she didn’t. She let my machine fall, disembarking from hers, and I recall; the cracking of my cabin, the faces of conscripted boys gathered around her, the way her eyes radiated with a cold hunger that made my electric heart stutter. 

And when she ordered me pried from the cabin, ordered my machine stripped for parts, I knew I had been condemned to some fresh Gehenna. 

 

Somewhere along my recollection, I let out a gentle moan; she takes this as a sign to intensify, and I curse my body for its disobedience. She grips at my thighs, she pushes my nightdress up, she buries the length of her plastic inside of me. I remain still; as much as I can, I withstand her touch. My skin still sweats, my sex weeps, but I remain flat and unyielding. I can feel frustration building in the shifting strength of her grip - if I had blood, I’d have already bruised. Her fingers stay firm, and I cannot push back - I will not push back - so into stillness I return as she digs inside of me once again.

 

I am elsewhere; I think of the fact that the Union prides itself on being more humane than the Imperium, yet she was so content to hand me over to her scientists and researchers, so thrilled at the idea that they could pull out everything useful for the purpose of trying again. Many of them had never seen something quite like me before - they told me as much as they removed the carbon-fibre limbs that had replaced my unreliable flesh, as they plucked out ocular implants that were leagues better than their organic counterparts, as they pried off the plating that had covered my delicate internal systems so that they could poke around and see what, exactly, made me tick. 

 

A valiant death, this was not. 

 

Someone had told me that they’d earmarked me for execution once they’d learned all that they could, and I prayed for that truth; my personhood had been further reduced in being a science project for children who fancied themselves men. On the day that they blacked me out entirely - plunged a needle into my cerebrum and shut me off - I assumed I’d never again wake up. 

 

Imagine my surprise when I woke up here.

 

I was able to piece things together as I wandered the house in the first day of her absence - she’d found the idea of me pretty, a concept that could be toyed with and retrofitted, a different type of trophy than the medals that sat in the case at our bedside. Her thesis stated that I was a machine; a slightly more complicated sex-puppet retrofitted for combat, a complex computer in my skull allowing me to feel that I was human. She didn’t know that there was no delusion, here - that I had chosen this when my flesh had failed. I hadn’t once regretted it until I stared in the mirror and saw my new self - the body of a housewife, long waves of hair and perfect flesh with freckles and gleaming gemstone eyes and curves in all the right spaces. 

 

It horrified me. Disgusted me. It was a whetstone taken to carve down all of my edges to nothing, I was fully and entirely demilitarized. Slowly coming to find the little secrets she’d had installed - the lubricant, the sweat, the aching lust - was a Hell all of its own, worsening as each day passed wherein I realized that I couldn’t fight back, even if I wanted to. 

 

Calling me a sex doll is too generous; she wanted a suffer-puppet, something she could condition to be raped and be happy with it. Such is common in heroes of the Union, so I’ve heard; I should have anticipated this at the outset. 

 

I feel her pause, and it brings me back. My eyes meet hers, and I see it; frustration, boredom, a rising anger simmering on a stovetop somewhere else. I do not placate her; this is her cross to bear, not mine. I brace myself for what comes next - what has always come next - as she takes her hand and presses it against my shoulder, and she pushes down as she thrusts into me with all of her force - and I hear the telltale pop as it dislocates. A surge of pain echoes through my body, but I am absent from it; I ignore it. She keeps her hand affixed as she thrusts into me, again, again, again - each time she pushes down harder, the flat of her palm finding something to settle against to keep me pinned. 

 

Then, her knee travels upward - and settles in my midsection, and she leans down with all of her strength. Something dislodges, and the sweat on my flesh intensifies for a brief moment. She grumbles something under her breath, and I look at her for clarification, for my own satisfaction at her struggle - I hope she sees the absence of response in my eyes - and she says, “Moan, you fuckin’ cunt. ” 

 

“Yes, Daddy.” I say, absently, flatly, compelled. I make no noise beyond those words. 

 

She presses her knee in harder, leans in with more of her weight, so much so that I fear my flesh will eventually start to buckle and pull at the extraneous limits of its connectivity. Still, I remain steadfast - I won’t moan, not from being demeaned like a whore nor broken like an animal. I feel her free hand - the one not breaking my shoulder - digging around at my sides, seeking for access ports. Eventually, she finds one, and fate would have it that this one is special - a haptic feedback port previously linked to Thermopylae’s spear. 

 

She presses her thumb in, crude and barbaric, and I let out a howl of something like agony, before I bite my tongue so hard that I could nearly sever it from its root. Convulsions rock my frame; in this ongoing arrangement, this is always the part where I feel the most violated, when her digits dig around inside of me and probe for tokens of agony. She is satisfied with this response, and so she digs in harder - this makes my vision go dark for but a brief moment, and when I come to, I am panting, I am sweating, I am aware. 

 

It takes all of my effort, but I manage to bring my left hand up and smack her across the face. Such a simple gesture leaves so little an impression that it may well have never happened at all, and the momentary disobedience fills my head with quicksand and honey - but if it is the only rebellion I can offer, then offer it I shall. She runs her thumb among the line of her lip, before she leans into me fully - her hand grabs the wrist of my left arm and shoves it back against the bed with all of her force, and she snaps the ball joint that holds my elbow to my upper arm, letting the arm fall limp. 

 

My breaking has become so commonplace in these dalliances of ours that it may as well be part of the routine, she grows tired with my resistance and she exacts her will upon me. The joints of these new limbs are less-reinforced, so they snap without much effort, but are repaired with ease. My ports can always be swapped out, and if they’re deemed unnecessary, she can simply get rid of them. Every part of me is replaceable, I am disposable - the only parts of importance to her are my aching slit and what seeps from it; the rest is determinably vestigial. 

 

Another rebellion quelled. Another victory for a Union Ace. I spit in her mouth, and her eyes tell me that she likes it before she descends upon me in a visceral, profane kiss - her tongue digs around jagged teeth as if searching for meaning, before she pulls away. She says, again, breath heady and thick with lust, “Who’s are you?”

 

“ Fuck you. Die screaming. Yours, Daddy.” 

 

“Good girl.” She releases my shoulder - racked by residual convulsions from my uplink’s intrusion, I am less likely to fight back. Her hand grabs for something at the bedside - a spherical weight, I note; a lead ball for a crystal glass, something to keep liquor chilled - and she says, “I just wish you were less resistant.” 

 

Less resistant? I-

 

 

The ball collides with my skull. I blink. I haven’t anticipated this. A shiver rocks my body. 

 

 

Again - another impact. I…feel feint. I try to gurgle something in response as her hand tightens around my throat, simulated vocal chords responding to the pressure. I think of begging, and I hate it. She pushes herself into me - her lust intensifies, husky breaths in my ear as I try to pull myself back together, trying to sew my…brain?…back into a concrete shape. My focus is drawn to that, and so, I can’t resist; my jaw unclasps, I let out a staggered moan, and she sneers. 

 

It makes me feel sick. 

 

She continues to thrust into me with her falsehood, and I find that I’m able to shift my hips out of alignment with her motions, I am able to rebel . My skull aches, a sensation I haven’t felt since I was fully organic. Somehow, I manage to push a knee up - it likely seems like I’m adjusting, until I press the finer points of an actuated joint into her side, and I twist my body into her to drive my knee - painfully - into the vacancy beneath her ribs. She dislodges, and I force her fully onto her side; despite the sweat-slickness of my body, I try to slide off of the bed, as a new fear grips me; if I don’t get away from her now, it’s over. 

 

On a shattered arm and a dislocated shoulder, I writhe on the floor. I try to move toward the door - try to shimmy like some beleaguered insect - but she grabs me by the length of my hair, drags me toward her, rolls me onto my back; and I see her as she is; shirt unbuttoned to reveal a heaving chest and the flesh that tops it, a cock wet with my own lubricant, eyes wide with fury, a lead ball in her left hand. 

 

She is predator; I am prey.

 

If I don’t move, I’m going to die here.

 

I try to roll, again, but she plants a boot against my ankle and she stomps; the joint shatters, and I feel my foot fall away from the rest of myself. She lays her weight upon me, mounts me, enters me; I feel as though she’s going to break me differently, this time, in a way that is not so easily repairable. With each thrust, I feel her hand tightening around the hunk of lead, her other down at my side as if this is any sort of romantic embrace - and as my walls involuntarily tighten around her, she brings the sphere up -

 

 

-and it crashes against my skull, the same space as before. This one breaches the flesh adorning my crown; fluid spills down from the wound over my face, over my eye. I feel like I’m losing something, but before I can protest, force against her, her hand soars. Again, another - 

 

 

-things are fading. I am trying. I will cling to something. My name has been gone for some time, but Thermopylae remains. Her iridescent glory, vantablack plating, the tip of Her spear. Her memory is enough to cling to, to ignore the warm, wet fluid sticking to the side of my face. With another thud, the lead ball in her hand drops to the ground, and her fingers pry into the wound on my forehead, digging around, looking for something discovered long ago, forgotten out of the inconvenience of its placement until this moment.

 

I feel it when she finds it; the reset toggle where my frontal lobe would be, the one that starts everything over. Simultaneously, I feel the way her thighs clench around herself; coiled, prepared, as she has at the end of our dance each day for the last three-hundred and seventy-seven.  

 

Three things happen, in sequence; the first is that she reaches climax, a body-rattling orgasm that has her dump ephemeral seed into a nonexistent womb. The second is that she flips the switch in my brain that makes me what I am, so that when I come to, I am stuck like this. 

 

The third is that a great heat overtakes me, and I am-

 

-

 

Sunlight brushes my face, and I return to myself. I blink. Snapping fingers draw me back; I focus. She smiles at me - dashing in Her dress blues. She cups my chin and cheek with Her hand. “A bit confused today, are we?” 

 

“Yes, Daddy.” I say, quietly, and at a chiding glance, I correct myself. “Yes, ma’am.” I curse my forgetfulness in public. “I was thinking of something that…couldn’t have been.” 

 

“I see.” She nods, concerned, somewhat, but the upward curl of Her smile tells me that She’s not actually concerned. “Maybe you shouldn’t think so much, hm? After all, good dolls don’t think.” 

 

That’s very true, I suppose. It’s one of the few rules of the universe; good dolls are still, good dolls let themselves be fucked loved, and good dolls don’t think. If Daddy is to be believed, I’m among the best of them - maybe the best doll in the whole union, not that there’s much competition; things like me don’t really exist. It’s nice, though - some of the soldiers ogle at me, and Daddy tells me they’re just jealous, that they wish they could go home to a good doll like me. I believe Her. 

 

I close my eyes and let the sunlight warm me. Recently, Daddy had new nerves installed beneath my skin, so that I can get warm, or get flustered; so that I feel it when I get all sweaty and wet when we’re home alone, when She comes home from work and I sit where I’m supposed to on the bed, on my knees, dressed up and pretty for Her. She’s very rough with me, but I know she means it from a place of love - when She breaks my arms or my legs, when She pulls my hair so hard that it makes my neck snap, it’s not because She hates me; it’s just because I’m not being as good of a doll as she likes. 

 

And that’s okay, because She apologizes every time - when She fixes me and pops things back where they’re supposed to be, when She gets a new limb and plugs it back in where the old was - I know that She’s sorry, and I tell Her that I’m sorry, too.

 

Each time, She forgives me.

 

I’m so lucky to have a Daddy like Her.