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Roleplay Boards => Archived Roleplays => Climax Control Archives => Topic started by: Alexandra Calaway on May 02, 2025, 07:18:27 PM
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Lost it All
Little Mermaid Statue
Copenhagen, Denmark
The sun had only just begun to slip beneath the horizon, casting a golden shimmer across the calm waters of Copenhagen’s harbor. The air was crisp but not cold, tinged with the briny scent of the sea and the faint aroma of roasted almonds from a nearby vendor cart. There was a quiet magic to the moment, a stillness that seemed to wrap itself around the city as if Copenhagen itself were holding its breath.
Standing near the edge of the promenade, Alexandra tilted her head slightly, her gaze fixed on the Little Mermaid statue just a few feet away. The bronze figure sat perched on her rock with eternal grace, her expression equal parts wistful and serene. Waves lapped softly at the stone base, and for a moment, Alexandra didn’t say a word. She didn’t need to. Some moments spoke louder in silence.
LJ stepped up beside her, hands tucked into the pockets of his jacket. He followed her gaze, studying the sculpture as if trying to read its thoughts. “You know,” he said eventually, his voice low and thoughtful, “I used to think that thing was a lot bigger.”
Alexandra let out a soft snort, her lips quirking into a smirk. “You and everybody else who sees it for the first time. It’s like finding out the Eiffel Tower isn’t made of gold or the pyramids aren’t smooth anymore.”
He chuckled. “Guess that’s the risk of legends, huh? Expectations outgrow the reality.”
“Kind of like us,” she said, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. “All this hype for the Viking Era Tour, the promos the matchs… and here we are. Just two people on a pier, trying to figure it all out. We’ve had wins and we’ve had losses, but here we are.”
LJ turned toward her, arching a brow. “Are we talking about wrestling now or something deeper?”
Alexandra shrugged, but it was the kind of shrug that came with weight behind it—like she was trying to shake something off without really letting go of it. “Maybe both.”
For a while, they just stood there, the murmur of water and distant voices filling the spaces between them. Tourists came and went, some snapping photos, others whispering reverently as if afraid to disturb the statue’s solemn pose. A little girl dropped a flower at the base of the rock, and her mother snapped a quick picture, capturing a moment that would probably live on a fridge for years.
“It’s weird,” LJ said finally, voice softer now. “Being here. On this tour. In this moment.”
Alexandra nodded slowly. “We’re halfway across the world, playing pretend gladiators for people who think they know what we’re about. And yet… it’s more real than most things in my life have ever been.”
He turned to look at her again, more intently this time. “Is that why you’re quieter than usual?”
She hesitated. “Maybe. I mean, Denmark is beautiful. There’s a weight to this place, you know? Like it remembers every footstep, every war, every whisper of history that passed through it. And I guess standing next to a statue about longing and loss just brings things up.”
“Longing and loss, huh?” LJ repeated, rubbing the back of his neck. “You’re getting poetic on me now, Angel.”
“Don’t get used to it.” She cracked a half-smile, then looked out over the water again. “But yeah. The story behind the statue… it’s kind of tragic. She gave everything for someone who didn’t love her back. Lost her voice. Her identity. Just to chase a dream that wasn’t hers.”
He followed her line of sight, as if trying to see the statue the way she did. “And you relate to that?”
“Don’t you?”
LJ didn’t answer right away. He leaned on the railing, letting the cool sea breeze brush against his face. He put an arm around her, pulling her in against his chest.“I used to. When I first started in this business, I thought I had to be someone else to make it. Lose myself, fit the mold. There was a time when I couldn’t even tell where the character ended and I began.”
“And now?” She looked up at him.
“Now,” he said slowly, “I know just about everything I can. Who I am. What I want. But it’s still a work in progress. But in that locker room, I'm no longer Miles' kid brother. I'm a name.”
Alexandra nodded thoughtfully. “Aren’t we all a work in progress? And you were always more than just Miles' kid brother. They just needed to see it.”
They fell into silence again, but this one was more comfortable. Familiar. Like they’d carved out a little piece of peace in the middle of chaos. The tour had been intense—city after city, match after match, pressure mounting with each bell. But here, under the watchful gaze of the Little Mermaid, things felt… slower. Simpler.
“You nervous about the next match?” LJ asked after a beat.
Alexandra laughed lightly. “Always. But not in the way people think. I’m not scared of losing. I’m scared of not being enough.”
“That’s not a problem you have,” he said, a bit more firmly than he meant to. “You’ve been holding your own every step of the way. Hell, you’ve been doing more than that, love, we’ve all seen it. Week after week. Everytime you step foot in a ring you prove it love.”
She looked at him then, really looked—eyes sharp and clear beneath her dark lashes. “Thanks,” she said. “That means more than you know.”
LJ looked away, a bit embarrassed, pretending to study the passing boat lights flickering on the water’s surface. “We’re partners in this. I’ve got your back, and I know you’ve got mine. That’s not just for the cameras. When those cameras shut off, we still have each other.”
“No, it’s not. It's so much more than that, so much deeper.” She paused. “And I think that’s what scares me too.”
He turned back, confused. “What do you mean?”
Alexandra hesitated. “This thing—this connection we’re building—it feels real. And that’s rare in our world. Most of the time, people just play the part until it’s no longer convenient. I mean look at us, we are about to celebrate one year together.”
LJ nodded slowly. “I get that. But I’m not playing.”
“Neither am I.”
Another beat passed. A seagull cried somewhere overhead, swooping down toward the water before vanishing into the fading light. Behind them, the low hum of city life continued—streetcars, distant chatter, the occasional bell from a cyclist.
“You ever think about what comes after this?” Alexandra asked quietly. “After the tour. After all of this is over and done with, what your next plan is?.”
“All the time.”
“And?”
“And I don’t have a clue,” he admitted with a wry smile. “I try not to look too far ahead in this industry anyways. In our business, plans have a shelf life shorter than a carton of milk. I focus on the good stuff, what's important to me.”
She chuckled. “Fair point.”
“But,” he added, “I do think there’s something worth holding onto here. Between us. I'm down for whatever comes next with us. Because there's no limits. No regrets.”
Alexandra nodded slowly, her expression unreadable. Then, softly, she said, “You ever think the statue’s not just about sadness? Maybe it’s about strength too?”
He looked at her curiously. “How so?”
“She made a choice. A painful one. But she didn’t let it break her. She didn’t get the prince, but maybe she found something else in the end. Something about herself.”
LJ smiled. “Now you’re sounding like a motivational poster.”
“Shut up.” She elbowed him lightly, playfully even.
He laughed, rubbing his side playfully. “Hey, I’m just saying. You went from cynical to deep in like ten minutes.”
“That’s Copenhagen for you,” she said, lifting her hands in mock surrender. “Something in the air.”
They started walking slowly along the harbor’s edge, the statue fading into the distance behind them, a silent witness to whatever had just passed between them. The cobbled path beneath their feet echoed softly with each step.
“So what now?” LJ asked.
Alexandra shrugged again, but this time it was lighter. “Now we get some coffee. Maybe take a ride through Nyhavn, see the colorful houses, and pretend we’re locals.”
He smiled. “And tomorrow?”
She smirked. “Tomorrow, we will fight.”
And with that, the two of them walked off into the night, side by side, not as just friends or coworkers, but as two people learning how to be more than the roles they played—finding something real in the heart of a fairytale city.
If the Truth Hurts
Little Mermaid Statue
Copenhagen, Denmark
Copenhagen shimmered under a cold Scandinavian sky, the wind dancing off the waters of the Øresund with a crisp bite that stole breath and seared lungs. It was evening, just after the pale sun had sunk beneath the clouds, and the Little Mermaid statue sat watchfully in her eternal pose of longing and regret. The stone beneath her was slick, darkened by sea spray and the weight of untold stories. And there, a few feet away, leaned Alexandra Calaway — back to the wind, arms crossed tightly over her chest, eyes locked on the statue like it had answers she'd been chasing her entire career.
She wasn’t alone.
LJ, her ever-steady companion in the chaotic world of Sin City Wrestling, stood to her side, silent for once. He knew better than to speak when she was like this. There was a stillness to her, like the calm before a detonation. Her fists were clenched at her sides, not out of rage — not yet — but something far more dangerous: restraint.
"You ever wonder what she’s thinking?" Alexandra asked, voice low, barely above the whisper of wind and waves.
LJ glanced sideways, then at the statue. "The mermaid? Probably something about regret. Giving up everything for a voice she never got back."
Alexandra laughed. Not bitterly. Not sarcastically. But like someone recognizing an echo of their own history. "Sounds familiar."
LJ didn’t reply. He knew where this was going.
"They love a woman who sacrifices herself for the crowd. They want blood, pain, submission. But god forbid you demand something back. Like... respect. Or your name etched into history without needing to sell your soul."
She turned from the statue, finally facing him. Her eyes were stormy. Dark. Electric.
"Joanne Canelli gets to walk back into this business and everyone acts like she never left. Like we’re supposed to fall to our knees because the Jersey Devil has returned from her vacation. Like she matters more than those of us who’ve bled here."
LJ shrugged, but it was more gesture than agreement. "She’s a name."
"So was Nero," Alexandra shot back. "Didn’t stop Rome from burning."
A gust of wind swept between them, tossing a curl of hair into her face. She didn’t move to brush it away. There was a fire building in her chest, and now it was creeping into her bones, demanding motion, violence, and voice.
She stepped forward, toward the statue again, looking past it now. Toward something else. Maybe the arena. Maybe something more abstract.
"She thinks she’s walking into a ring. What she’s really stepping into is my rage, LJ. Years of it. I have been patient. I have played the game. I have watched others rise because of connections, nostalgia, or because they were loud enough to drown out the truth."
Alexandra turned back to him, fire in her voice now, laced with an unhinged intensity that dared the gods to interrupt her. "But I am the truth. And truth... doesn’t need a welcome-back party. It brings judgment. It brings pain."
LJ met her gaze. "Then do what you came to do."
And just like that, something clicked.
The walls came down.
She began to pace, slow and deliberate, boots crunching against gravel and stone as her thoughts become words. Her voice rose, not for him, but for the universe.
"Joanne, I hope you enjoy the fanfare. The spotlight. The illusion that you're still the devil they all fear. Because when the lights go out and it's just you and me in that ring, all the cheers in the world won't save you."
She stopped.
"You're a relic, Joanne. A trophy they pulled off a dusty shelf to parade around before putting you right back where you belong. Forgotten. I too am a trophy they choose to take off a shelf whenever they want to beat someone down. However the difference is.. I don’t let them forget me."
The wind howled through the trees now, as if the city itself was leaning in to listen.
"But me? I'm not a memory. I'm not a footnote. I'm not someone they can ignore anymore. I’ve evolved beyond the fire you used to bring. I am the inferno now. And when I come for you, it's not with admiration or respect. It’s with teeth. With rage. With the fury of a woman who has bled and screamed and endured in silence for too damn long."
She stepped closer to LJ, not looking at him, but through him. Through the veil that separated the performer from predator.
"I will break her. Not just physically. Psychologically. She will question why she ever came back. And when I pin her — no, when I end her — I won't raise my hand. I won't smile. I won't celebrate."
Alexandra’s breath was rapid now, chest rising and falling as if she were already in the match.
"Because it won’t be a victory. It will be an execution."
LJ took a step back. Not out of fear. But respect. Reverence. What stood before him wasn’t just Alexandra Calaway, wrestler, fighter, woman. It was something more. Something mythic.
She turned toward the water again. Silence returned, but only for a moment.
"This is what they wanted. This is what they get. Not the well-behaved bombshell. Not the forgotten middle-carder. They get me. Pure. Unfiltered. Wrath incarnate."
She looked down at her knuckles, flexing them like the ghosts of battles past were still clinging to her skin.
"Let them talk about legends. Let them worship comebacks. I’ll be the footnote on their gravestones."
And then, quieter, to herself:
"Let them remember what happens when you overlook the darkness. It grows. It learns. And then it devours you."
LJ finally spoke, his voice low, steady, the grounding force that tethered the storm. "You ready to kill a devil?"
Alexandra smiled. Not cruel. Not cocky. But deadly.
"No. I'm ready to remind her she never was one."
She laughed as the scene faded to black.
The Devils in the Details
Tivoli Gardens
Copenhagen, Denmark
Night had fully descended over Copenhagen, but Tivoli Gardens thrummed like a beating heart, defiant in the dark. The ancient amusement park — a relic wrapped in lights — glowed from within like a secret trying too hard to stay sweet. Red and gold bled through the mist, spilling over the cobblestone like war paint. Brass music slithered through the air, too slow, too warped — a lullaby played one octave too low. Laughter flared in bursts, but it sounded wrong. Too high. Too hollow. Like a recording of joy played on broken speakers.
The scent of burnt sugar, popcorn, and damp leaves mingled with something older — rust, perhaps. Or memory.
And down a path where the light dared not linger, where the shadows coiled tight like serpents and the air ran colder than the season allowed, Alexandra Calaway stood still beneath a flickering gaslamp. The weak light stuttered overhead, making her shape blur between woman and phantom. Her coat hung off her frame like armor. Her breath fogged in the cold, but she made no move to shield herself from it. She didn’t need warmth. She needed blood.
“You ever notice,” she began, her voice low and deliberate, “how the brightest lights always cast the longest shadows?”
The carousel spun in the distance — lazy, discordant, its chipped horses lurching in a circle of mockery. Their teeth were painted into place, eyes wide with permanent delight. Puppets locked in a loop.
“I hate places like this,” Alexandra muttered. “So much color. So much laughter. And it’s all so…desperate. Manufactured magic. Painted joy.”
She took a step forward. Her boots echoed against the stone like war drums.
“This is what people do when they’re afraid to look at the truth. They build things like this. Lights, music, illusions — all of it designed to distract you. From age. From pain. From death. From the bone-deep rot that lives under the skin of everything.”
Another step.
“I see through it. Always have.”
The fog curled around her like a lover, wrapping around her ankles, whispering at her heels. But she walked through it, slow and steady, toward the carousel. Toward the grotesque parody of innocence.
“Joanne Canelli,” she hissed, and her voice cracked like a whip. “You think this world waited for you.”
She laughed — not humor, but hunger. A deep, involuntary sound scraped from somewhere behind her ribs.
“You think because you called yourself the Jersey Devil, the game would pause until you came back. You thought the fans would still chant your name like gospel. That your throne would stay warm. That your crown would stay clean.”
She spun suddenly, arms out, as if addressing an invisible crowd.
“Welcome home, Joanne! Welcome back to the circus! Step right up! See the former legend in all her faded glory — watch her cling to relevance like a ghost that doesn’t know it’s dead!”
She stopped, breath heaving slightly, shoulders squared, eyes locked on the carousel as if daring it to blink.
“But here’s the thing, sweetheart,” Alexandra said, voice like velvet wrapped around a razor. “While you were gone — while you were sipping vintage wine and signing autographs at Comic-Cons, telling old stories like they still mattered — I was building an empire out of the ashes you left behind.”
Her hands clenched at her sides.
“I didn’t come up through pyro and praise. I came up through silence. Through nights with no crowd. Through matches where no one cared if I lived or died in that ring. And I made them care. Not with nostalgia. Not with name recognition. But with blood. With scars. With fury.”
She circled the carousel now, boots crunching over frost-streaked gravel, never taking her eyes off the spinning relic.
“You called yourself the Devil? Cute. But you’re not a Devil. You’re a memory. You’re a bedtime story the kids don’t believe in anymore.”
She leaned against the iron railing that ringed the ride, speaking now like she was whispering into the mouth of Hell itself.
“I didn’t need a name to become a myth. I earned it. Match by match. Bone by bone. I fought my way through glass, through steel, through fire, and I never stopped. I’ve been broken in rings where the ropes were soaked with the sweat of better wrestlers than you. And I came out smiling. Because I don’t fear pain.”
Her hand shot out suddenly and gripped the cold brass pole of one of the horses. She yanked it violently. The horse groaned and wobbled on its axis. Its painted grin stared back at her — mocking, oblivious.
“You come back thinking you’ll just… pick up where you left off. That the locker room will bow. That the crowd will cheer. That I’ll step aside to make room for your resurrection?”
She slammed her hand down on the horse’s face, cracking a piece of flaking paint from its eye.
“You don’t resurrect what’s already rotting.”
Her voice dropped to a growl.
“This isn’t your kingdom anymore. It’s a killing field. And I own every inch of it. Every inch soaked in my sweat, my blood, my history. You left. I stayed. And I conquered.”
She stood tall now, head back, breath fogging like smoke from a forge.
“When we step into that ring, don’t expect a welcome back. Expect a reckoning. Expect every cheer you think you’ve earned to die in their throats. Expect silence.”
A beat.
“No — worse than silence. Indifference. Because once I break you, no one will remember what you were. Not the belts. Not the legacy. All they’ll see is what I left in that ring: a woman broken by someone hungrier. Someone meaner. Someone who never needed to leave… because this ring is my church. My asylum. My battlefield.”
She stepped back from the carousel, eyes burning now.
“You should’ve stayed gone.”
Her voice cracked, not from weakness — but from too much pressure behind it, like a dam seconds before collapse.
“You should’ve stayed in your scrapbook life. Should’ve kept signing 8x10s for old men who still call you champ. Should’ve stayed where it was safe. Because here? In my world?”
She bared her teeth.
“I will not just beat you. I will erase you.”
A silence fell then. The carousel lights flickered out with a final whine, leaving only the mist and the sound of her breath.
She turned, slowly, walking away — not with haste, but with finality. Her boots echoed on the path like footsteps in a cathedral. And as she vanished into the fog, she whispered, almost lovingly:
“It wasn’t time that buried you, Joanne.” A pause. “It was me.”
With that the scene fades to black with Alexandra chuckling darkly.