It was getting more and more difficult to do this.
Not physically, really. He was in the best shape of his life just about, and was no doubt the most in shape ex addict in the world. Well, hemisphere maybe. What did it even matter, though? For all his strength, for all his determination and grit he showed to drag himself to the success he had endured nothing ever changed.
Here he was, in another hotel room in another country but in the same black pit of misery.
The barbs never got to him, not anymore. Whole world could think he was undeserving of a shot at Mac, it rolled off his back. What did he have to gain from listening to the lamentations of people he’d never had a conversation or a cup of coffee with? If anything, it was a brilliant move by Mac. Rattle the cage, reshape the image and take the focus off how big a piece of shit he’d been and turn the ire onto the new guy who was gifted a shot at a title he didn’t rank for.
God, how mad were they going to be when he won the fucking thing?
The thought brought the ghost of a smirk to his tired face as he sat, long legs stretched out over the rest of the mattress. He lulled his head back as the endorphins of the thought quickly left him as the reality of his current situation bit at his stomach.
Ken Davison. Again.
Kat Jones. Again, although it had been a moment.
Baltimore calling, again.
God, he was so sick of Ghosts….
He shifted again, the thought making him uncomfortable in his own skin. Kat Jones…Katarina, Wildkat. The history there was deep, ripe and buried. To most it was obvious that they had some sort of thing at least in passing. The depth of which was lost on many and anymore ignored by him. It was a pleasant thought at one point. A vivid, wild dream at another.
Now, it was a stain.
He didn’t regret it, but he hated how it changed everything. He and Kat had gone from enemies to lovers to strangers back to enemies, or so it seemed. Sure, the mature thing might be to talk to her but anymore? Every word out of her mouth was dripping with a sadness he saw his fingerprints all over and spoke of a finality that he’d rather tune out than acknowledge.
Why should he, anyway?
Truth was, fate had conspired to put everyone where they were for reasons they would never understand. Could he have had the future he is forming with Marika with Kat? Probably. Did he want it more than what he had now? No, but to be truthful there was nothing he wanted more in this world to be the father of Asahi Joseph Knox.
And honestly, he was sick and tired of feeling like he should feel bad for that.
With a small grunt of effort, he pushed himself from the bed and walked out onto the veranda, snatching his pack of camel non filters and nickel-plated zippo lighter as he passed the bedside table, sparking up and exhale the noxious fumes into the crisp greek air as he looked out over the view, wishing to be young enough to lose his breath to such a simple sight.
He had been joking about another fight with Ken Davison, personally feeling as though it was resolved with the match at Blaze of glory. He told Ken he’d be the one to take the Internet title off of him, and even though Jack Washington’s memory and awareness went no further than a centimeter past the tip of his nose, the entire world saw the end of the “Godly” one’s brief reign over the Internet.
Red faced, trapped, reaching out to his enemy for mercy.
And finding none.
Yet, once more, here he was. On the precipice of Ken Davison acting like he’d somehow won both their previous exchanges. Disregarding him and his ability as a fighter, burying him as nothing more than a loudmouth despite the fact that in two chances Ken never got the better of him in the ring, never pinned him, never made him submit.
But, he voices that, then it’s whining?
God, this industry was taxing on the common sense.
He took another long drag, pacing the veranda quietly. His long lithe form a silhouette in the dusk’s light, plumes of smoke steadily rising from it toward heavens he could only hope to reach at this point. His pacing stops as he leans over the rail, gripping it with tired hands one of which clutching what was left of his smoke between middle and pointer finger.
The failure was the bitterest, most familiar ghost with him this day though. His partner, the whole reason he kicked the door in on SCW? The undeniable, infamous and wrathful Amber Ryan. The details of their relationship remained muddied and odd to those who cared to look. Though they teamed, and had n the past gone out of the way to look out for one another? All the public ever saw were the barbs, the arguments, the posturing.
He never really minded. When dealing with a Lioness, even one who has decided not to tear your throat out and consume you, would never be as loving or affectionate as a domestic tabby. He knew Amber and accepted her and she, him in kind. The world had left them for dead long ago and neither one would give that world the satisfaction of rolling over and accepting what had been offered.
Which is why on the occasions they had stepped into the ring as partners, however few, he felt more confident in victory than with anyone else in that particular setting. Hell, it took an entire organization to bring them down and lateral their titles in Thunder Pro Wrestling to some lesser masked comedy act.
And any reinforcements for the two unfortunate souls that stepped into this ring now would be stayed by the hand of their leader and Amber’s husband.
They’d need to endure and overcome on their own.
….and he was confident, they didn’t have that in them.
The camera fades in on an overarching shot of the Amphitheater in Zakynthos, Greece. A bright blue sky looms over the rows of empty seats and the empty stage, save for one black metal folding chair that seemed to swallow all the light that dared touch its surface. As the camera pans in, distant footsteps ring out and become closer, and closer until from stage right enters the man of the hour.
Matthew Knox grabs the chair, dragging it closer to the edge of the stage as if coming to meet the rapidly approaching shot from the camera. The grating sound of steel on concrete grates out, no doubt curling the hair of whatever ghosts lingered in the empty theater. Eventually, he drops it and sits his own form in it.
He brings his hands up, steepling them in front of his lips for a moment, his expression somewhere between pensive and exhausted. After a few moments of silence, save for the air and the nearby sea, he spoke in an equally exhausted tone.
“My god, I'm sick of seeing you…”
As venomous as it was wary. He followed the words with a heavy sigh as he leaned back into the chair, stretching out leg out and resting his forearms lazily upon the pair he owned. After a moment, he brings a hand up to stroke the stubble on his chin once before he speaks up once more.
“Dream matches are only dreams once, you run the same thing over and over and over again? It becomes monotonous…now, I can’t blame booking here. The second one, they had to yield to the will of a champion and we saw how that ended. Now, I get it…you have to book me against Mac’s cronies, sell the big match…”
A sound both a scoff and a chuckle rolls from his chest, eyes casting off to one side in bemusement, longing for a time that this business still surprised him.
“Kat Jones and Ken Davison, two of the only people on this planet more arrogant than myself. A God and a woman who can’t decide if she’s a victim, or a harbinger of doom. Both of you second fiddle to your ‘siblings’ in every way imaginable.”
Now, his lips curled into a venomous sneer.
“It’d be tragic, if it wasn’t so fucking pathetic.”
Pushing up from the seat, he snatched it and carelessly disregarded t into the rows of empty aisles with little regard, the banging clang of its landing ringing out for no one but him to hear the calamity of its misfortune. He paces the stage as if it were a cage for a heartbeat before carrying on, tone both reserved and venomous.
“Ken, I've run out of things to say about you and as much as I like the sound of my own voice? I loathe a broken record. Which, frankly, is probably why I loathe you. Because three times now, three, you’ve cut the same promo on me. You’ve approached it with the same attitude, and frankly all it’s done is serve to make you even less interesting than you already were.”
He brings his hands together, leaning toward the camera, seemingly begging for his next request.
“So, please, prove me right. Pontificate endlessly about how i’m nothing. Bring up my working in multiple feds but leave off my dominance in just about every one of them. Sure, some Dogs might bark about one or two places i’ve slipped but from Uprising, to the IWF, to Pro Wrestling Valor I am a goddamn force to be reckoned with, and now it’s time to be that man for SCW.”
His hands drop to his side before one comes up to cover a toothy smile, chuckling into the palm a moment before carrying on with his verbal assault.
“You speak from such a place of dishonesty, Kenneth. It’s like you don’t pay attention to the world around you. Content to drift between Chicago and SCW, either riding Kyra’s coattails like Jack Michaels before you or picking up whatever table scraps are left in a singles division that you are sliding into the deepest pit of, a pit I'll gladly leave you to drown in.”
“Do not frame my ability to handle a schedule bigger than yours, to handle a stage bigger than yours, to fight fights bigger than any you’ve been in in the past year as a negative you old husk of a shell of what once was a pretty okay wrestler. I know Johnny likes to talk up Joe and Hide as his best clients, but honestly? He ought to prop you up. Because at this point in your career? You’ve become identical to him.”
The humor drains from the Morbid Corvid’s face as he stares into the lens, and into the eyes of both his opponents.
“An irrelevant blowhard, taking up space that could be given to those that matter. Those with a purpose. You should leave, Ken. Take your ball and go home after this loss because it’s never going to be as sweet in that ring as it is on the couch with Kyra and her kid. You’ve done enough, you’ve proven all you’re going to prove.”
A thoughtful pause, before he adds in a tone devoid of any real emotion to sway it between insult or honest statement.
“And frankly….Pro Wrestling doesn’t need Ken Davison anymore.”
The sands and sea were always his greatest comfort, so of course on a night where rest could not find him he decided to seek her out. His Calypso. A synthetic version though, as he never quite felt her pull, their connection when he was faced with the Atlantic and the sands there as opposed to the Pacific he grew up and lived next to.
Still, there was enough of a bond to bring about enough peace to drive him to sit on the shoreline’s shifting sands, the silhouette missing only one black feathered wing. Hell, he wished for two so he could fly away from all of this. A year ago, when the wounds were fresh he would have reveled in this attrition but now he just wanted it over.
He wished, selfishly, that his Calypso would swallow that wretched ‘charmed’ city so that he may never be faced with its existence ever again. Be it by skyline or being faced with its ‘elite’.
God, the grouping barely made sense to him.
When last he saw those facing him down, they were at one another’s throat.
God, was he truly so wretched that others would lay down their swords and raise armistice amongst themselves just for a shot at culling him?
Was this some cruel design by an orange ghost to pay him back for his transgressions?
Of course he was that awful.
A small chuckle escaped him, lost forever to the night air and the roaring waves as he stared out at the endless expanse of the sea. He was everything none of them could ever be. He stepped out of the wreckage, and became more while their wheels spun. It disgusted them, and he could understand why. Being stuck in one place for more than ten minutes was usually enough to drive him mad.
He couldn’t imagine being as stagnant as the two of them.
Hell, Mac was just as bad but at least he had gold plated validation set on leather for his efforts in mundanity.
To the simple minded, to those content with defeat and laying down n the rut they’d created, anyone who progressed past where they decided to stop their own progress and dared outgrow them were no doubt inherently nefarious by nature and everything they did in the after of shared lives and relevance came from a place of dishonesty. Undeserved and served upon a silver platter.
Because, how dare anyone even entertain the notion of hard work paying off when your own hard work only got you…here?
A tired body offered itself to the earth as he stretched out over the sand, bringing his hands behind his head in hopes his tired mind could find solace within.
A new son, an unborn consequence of a tryst, and now Marika was speaking in an incredibly self assured tone that another was on the way. All the ‘surprises’ of his reckless youth come calling seemingly all at once, bringing him joy and overwhelming him all the same. Time marched on and he was for the first time finding it difficult to stay in lock step and balance the two sides of him.
How does one resolve to be both a Good man, and a Wrathful Warrior? How could he leave one arena with blood on his hands and step into a nursery to hold a newborn that he took up half the entire world of with those stains still on his skin and soul?
Oh well…
Pity it might be, he’d lied to his children before. He could lie to AJ for as long as he needed his father to be held in a shining, flawless regard. When the time was right, as with any son, he’d come to learn about the sort of man his father was. Where it went from there he couldn’t predict and didn’t dare to anyway. He was just happy to have moments like that coming his way.
Peaceful, easy moments as a reward for surviving the violence to come.
Four companies, Four matches, Four titles. The reigns that would follow would no doubt be the last reigns in his career. Final, brutal penances for all the savagery he had wrought and all the awful he had done. Time was running out, and the man was beginning to rise as the warrior faltered. For the first time since he got into the business, he could see clearly a world without wrestling in it.
He cared about the world without wrestling in it.
He could almost taste the freedom, the horizon almost taunting him with all the sweet promises of seeing his youngest grow, and his oldest find themselves and have children of their own. And all that lay between here and there…
Ghosts…
“I’m sick of fucking sick of you ghosts, too.”
He drops to his knees upon the stage, arms held limply at his side as he arches backwards for a moment, before righting himself and shifting to a seated position, legs crossed with his forearms resting upon the points of his knees.
“Reminders of mistakes I made, chances I never took, and opening myself up when I never should have. Kat, Ken, Mac, Supreme Machine to a lesser extent. You’re all from chapters of my life that I closed. Closed with reason that your continued persistence in my world only serves to disregard.”
His head bowed once more, chest heaving as a sigh escaped him. The tone that rolled from within that chest was the least venomous he’d had all night, his words carrying an even more lethal weapon…
…Honesty.
“Kat….Kat, this applies less to you. Your kindness to my wife while she was with child, means the world. But you cannot play both sides of the board, and with you across the ring from me, you have chosen your side because we will not leave this conflict on good terms. You will see me decimate your brother’s favorite sibling…but, maybe that would be cathartic wouldn’t it?”
A chuckle, as the mirth and the venom returns to his tone and a smile to his face.
“Seems to me, all you’ve ever really wanted was to be the favored one. The apple of some eye somewhere. Desperate to belong…The Wild Cards, Unstable, and now the Saviors? You drift on the breeze, longing to belong and longing to be valued but…you never will be, until you can exist on your own and love who you see in the mirror, instead of looking in someone else’s eyes for that validation.”
He returns to a vertical base, almost slithering to it as he pushes off the ground with only his legs. He returns to his pacing, eyes cast up toward the sky for a moment as he mulls his thoughts before sharing them. A rarity, no doubt.
“So, once more just as I did with the Wild Cards, I've come to break up your little family. Except it won’t be you taking the worst of my wrath, it won’t even be Cy or whatever that jobber you parade as a sibling’s name was..it will be your big brother’s favorite. And when Ken is laying, defeated, staring up at the lights? Or, when you’re staring up at the lights as everyone’s favorite sister walks away, and leaves you in the ring?”
A pause, his gaze finding the camera. Finding Kat Jones.
“Take inventory, and find what you’ve been looking for. I guarantee you’ll find it within….but enough of the niceties, because frankly there’s no reason to be nice.”
He slides his hands into the pockets of his jeans as he returns to pacing once more, briefly stopping center stage to mimic orchestral conduction before laughing the silliness off, and returning to business.
“I know why you both have come to despise me. I know that one of you secretly despises Amber, and i trust that the other one will only serve a plate full of platitude so as not to incur the wrath of his suddenly big brother. I know that you’ll both serve your most scathing comments upon my plate hoping it will shake me, hoping it will put me off my game but you need to realize just like Mac has…”
He raises a hand, jabbing a thumb toward himself as he shares his point.
“I’m a threat. I’m every bit as good as you claim I'm not. Hell, I'm better. I brought an entire company to relevancy through my dominance within their four walls. I showed up in another and in my first night there ended a reign that lasted over half a year. I chose to ignore the count and kick the shit out of you Ken, just like I chose to let Jack choke the life out of you while staring in your empty, dull eyes.”
He chuckles to himself, raising his hands to his throat and miming strangulation for a moment, before adding.
“But…choking on a big stage isn’t anything new, is it Ken? Maybe after this one, you can finally ascend to a new understanding of your place in this world.”
With a chuckle, pressing the tip of his tongue to the inside of his cheek he dropped his hands from his throat. Apparently, he didn’t find throttling himself near as fun as others seemed to. At least in that moment.
“This entire company is convinced that I don’t belong in the spot i’ve been put in. I invited each of them to voice their opinions to me directly and ask for a match, and what did I get? The mighty Fenris backing down and laughing it off as ‘positive conflict resolution’. Piggybacking off a joke I made - getting a reserve seat on the coattails kid? And Mark The Dragon what-the-fuck ever subtweeting and then replying with greek puns. Because you both know…”
He drops to one knee, beckoning the camera closer and whispering his next words.
“Maybe I don’t have the record to back it up, but I’ve got the skill to take on anyone in the back. You know that when the Saviors exhale that death rattle, and fade into the footnote they were destined to be it was not a pack of wolves that tore them apart, but just one single Raven.”
He pats the top of the camera, shooing it away as it pans backward.
“So once more, because clearly you both are not the type to be able to pick up on subtleties, one way or the other after this? I’m done with all but one of the saviors. If you step to me, I won’t wait for a bell and i’ll send you off hearing sirens…”
“I came to SCW as a labor of love, trying to right a ship I saw go off course. And since i’ve been here, my desires have shifted from love to the other end of that spectrum. I could not stop the rapture, but I can cut off the head of the serpent that could have….but that would be too quick, wouldn’t it? So we go with the gauntlet metaphor. Two final fingers and this is over.”
He holds up those two fingers on his own hand, before slowly folding them back into his palm.
“In the after? When the fire dies and ashes remain, I doubt either of you will. Second fiddles never stick around too long, desperate to find an orchestra that lacks the same standards as their current ones. I know you’ve got a cushy gig with the Coalition Philharmonic Ken…but for how much longer?”
“Kat…I imagine you’ll just leave the music behind…”
He gave a half-hearted shrug and a distant smile to accentuate the point but moved on from it as quickly as he broached it.
“As for me? As for Amber Ryan? Wherever our paths go from here, they have diverged for this one last night. The most successful tag team of 2022 with only one loss to our name that took an army to give us reunite to cast a pair of bankers from the temple before the band breaks up and we both aim for the mountaintops we deserve.”
“So, all these plans of mine, these machinations…ask yourselves. Really, Really ask yourselves. Much as you want to, much as you’d love to…”
“...Can you stop me?”
As the toothy, arrogant and self-assured smile returned to his face the camera slowly pans out as it fades to black.
