[finnwhelan]

PARADIGM SHIFT XIX // SEE YOU ALIVE
WHEN YOU FEEL YOUR TIME’S ABOUT TO RUN OUT, I’LL DO MY BEST TO NOT LET YOU DOWN.
DRAGGED UNDER






••••••

Prior to Chapter 38: What I Fought For


The silence permeated the room like a stale, warm unopened room of air. Like an Egyptian tomb that hadn’t been opened for centuries. A carafe of coffee sat in between them, the fixings needed for something other than the disgusting taste of pure black roast surrounding it. The two mugs that sat there were untouched, and the two that sat at the table were almost still as statues.

Finn and Dickie were seated at the table, eyes focused on each other. The younger of the men looked almost as if he were losing temperature quickly and the older merely a stoic statue. Dickie broke the stoicism and looked down at the watch he didn’t have on his wrist, but got caught staring at the blood that was still on his hands. He shuffled uncomfortably in his seat and shoved his hands beneath the table. Almost like a kid who was caught red handed. And just like a kid who couldn’t handle silence, he finally leaned forward and placed his head on the table.

“Very leader-y.” Finn commented, sarcastically.

Dickie’s head shot up and he narrowed his eyes at his older brother. “What would you like me to do? Hm? Sit like a king?” He tightened his core and sat up high, sticking his nose up in the air ostentatiously. “How’s this?!”

“It’s a damn sight better than your moping.” Finn’s only movement was to cross his arms and he exhaled slowly out of his nose.

In all reality, the death of Kei Hideshima was twofold both positive and negative for Finn, and he knew it from the moment his head hit the floor. There would be no threatening from the Yakuza anymore, there would be no issues with them causing chaos within his life in a negative form. While there was a part of him that mourned the death of his mentor, he also found a peace that he hadn’t had in months. And yet, he also knew that this wouldn’t bode well either. A crime syndicate in the hands of an ill-fitting kid who barely looked past his own inequities and had virtually no understanding of how he now fit into the world? It was preposterous, and ridiculous that we were even here.

“What would you like me to do?” Dickie repeated, crossing his arms too. “I didn’t have a choice, Finn. He was ready to kill you and I couldn’t lose another person. So I did what I thought was best.”

“And now you have a whole clan in your hands.” Finn’s eyebrow raised. “You’re lucky I was able to explain what happened to Hideyaki-sama, and that the fucker trusts me.” He placed his fingers in his eyes. “You killed his shateigashira, and in doing that, you’ve taken his place. Let alone that you have zero idea what Kei did.”

“I know bits and pieces…”

“Bits and pieces are not enough to lead.”

“Okay, so like…how can I make this right then?” Dickie slammed his hand down on the table. “Because I don’t see ya helpin’ in any way, shape and form. I know I don’t know the stuff that makes me a good leader, and I get that part. So maybe I should just…I dunno, disband it?”

Finn shook his head, and raised his eyes to the ceiling. “If you disband it, then you leave two hundred men out in the open with no leadership.”

“So I can’t do that.” Dickie sighed. “I just…I can’t do this on my own.”

“Clearly.” Finn sighed too. He also didn’t want to be his brother’s caretaker yet again, but here he was. And he knew what was going to happen next. Finn was going to be asked to take on his brother’s failures, asked to guide him, asked to be what Kei was to Finn.

“Maybe…maybe you should take it?”

“Absolutely fucking not.” Finn swore, and shook his head.

“You’re the best out of the two of us to do it!”

Finn leaned forward then, narrowing his eyes at his little brother and exhaling slowly. “I am not the one that got myself into this hell. In fact, I pulled myself out of it, and you decided to jump right in because he offered you the world and all you got was blood on my table.”

Dickie looked down at the table, frowned at the bloody fingerprints, and then swiped at it, trying to remove them. “Look, mate, I just…I needed to be able to stand on my own two feet, okay? Without you, without Aiden, without everyone and yeah, I fucked that up. I fucked up a lot of stuff lately – I haven’t talked to Shawn in months and Kasey has texted but I keep neglecting to text back because I–”

“Feel like a complete and utter failure because you lost a championship to someone who disappeared and thinks their return one day is going to be so seismic that they have to hide in the shadows? Lost your ability to stand on your own two feet? Lost your ability to look into the mirror and see a damned good wrestler who had everything in his hands but couldn’t see past his own issues to notice it?”

Dickie looked down at the table. Guilty as charged, and he knew it.

“You’ve made decisions that affect a lot of people, including your friends and family. And now you have to own them.” Finn sighed again, looked down for a second as he thought about how to word his next statement without being abrasive. Dickie didn’t need abrasive – his point had gotten through anyway. “You can’t throw away the Yakuza, and you’re not giving it to me.”

“I…”

“Shut up, not finished.” Finn cut him off again. “You’re twenty-eight, so I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and note that while the world was in your hands, you took the route of being a fuckin’ pissant kid. You thought the world owed you something, and now that you have nothing in your hands to show for it, you don’t know what to do. I chalk that up to not having parents, or anyone that actually could have been a parent to you. I certainly didn’t help matters, so it’s my fault too, Dimitri.” He leaned forward. “But I’ll help.”

Dickie’s eyes widened. “You mean…”

“Hideyaki-sama relinquished ownership of Kei’s clan, so now you’re the Oyabun. The Watson Clan.” He sighed slowly. “And as much as it fucks with everything that I’ve been trying to get through, I guess you have a wakagashira in me. Your first lieutenant. I’ll help. I’ll try to guide you with what you need to do…maybe we can turn this from being a crime problem into something positive.”

“Finn, you have no idea how much that’s gonna help me here…I’m…I’m…I’m fuckin’ swimmin’ in shit and I know that I don’t always think, but I’ma make this right. I promise. I’m–”

A loud pounding sounded outside of the apartment. Finn and Dickie both turned their heads to hear muffled Japanese, with one sounding like they were both getting louder and more frustrated while also having such a heavy accent on it it could be no one other than Aiden. Finn sighed, got up, and headed to the door, opening it.

“I just wanted to make sure ya were okay, I mean…after the whole Wolfslair shit and now I see these two numbfucks just standin’ here guardin’ shit,” Aiden started, without even letting Finn get out a word. “Figured that Hideshima fuck was here.”

“And how do you know who he was?” Finn raised an eyebrow. Aiden paused, and then his cheeks flared slightly.

“I heard Dickie talkin’ about him once and I…wait…” Aiden’s eyes traveled past Finn’s shoulder, and he saw Dickie standing at the end of the hallway, both of his hands shoved in his pockets. “Mate!” He shoved past Finn, but was met with the muzzle of an AK-47 against his chest from one of the guards. The man stared him down and Aiden’s eyes widened. “Blink twice if ya need out!” He yelled at Dickie.

“No…” Dickie sighed, and looked at the floor. “Let ‘em through.” He ordered, and then shuffled back to the table, sitting down at it. This clearly wasn’t something he was proud of. Aiden shoved past them, and Finn followed, shutting the door behind him.

“Mate, what the fuck happened to ya, huh?” Aiden slipped into a chair. Dickie really did look worse for wear, what with the spatters of blood on his clothes and face and hands. Finn crossed his arms and looked on. This would be his future, and he would have to shove all of his ire down to help his little brother…even when he had the world of Sin City resting on his shoulders.

“You’re looking at the new leader of the Yakuza clan that’s been here for a long while.” Finn piped up, noting Dickie didn’t know how to tell his best friend what was going on. In fact, he wasn’t even sure they were best friends still – he hadn’t spoken to him in months.

Aiden looked at Finn, and then looked at Dickie. Dickie refused to meet his gaze, swallowing slightly. Then…

Aiden snorted.

“Oh, that’s fuckin’ bloody brilliant, hey. When do I get a gun?”



••••••

You know, they should really put a warning on some of their food out there in the British Isles. Let’s put it out there that I am Irish and immigrated into the States when I was but a wee lil’ babe, but nothing can kill you like blood in…well, anything. Killed my stomach for the next week – pretty sure I’ll never touch that again, no matter who convinces me to do so.

But I can’t say I’m not thankful to be the hell out of England. Too many memories, too many people, too many…problems. You see, you could say the countryside is beautiful and that London itself is grand, but at the end of the day, it’s still a fucking island with too many people on it and not enough room to do much of anything. The venues are smaller, the cities jampacked and if I see another one of those fucking Double Decker busses, I may twitch like it doesnt matter.

I know Kayla loves home, but let me tell you the further it is for me, the happier I will forever be.

We’re coming out of our last supercard, and in that time frame, not only did I retain against a man who had everything to lose, Kayla gained the Women’s World Bombshell Championship. That makes both of us a bit of a phenom in Sin City, because we are the first dual champions in our respective gender divisions, and that…makes it a bit more difficult than you could think.

You know, everyone sits there and says that we can’t manage the dual championships because one is going to fall by the wayside because we’re too busy focusing on the other. Which is bullshit, because every week, we’re set a match and we show out because we fulfill our obligations. We come in, we fight hard, and we do what we have to in order to retain, no matter what the championship is. Against Goth? Finnegan’s Wake, a move I rarely use simply to end everything. There is no redemption, no comeback story: it is a poignant note that you failed.

A wake, after all, is vigil. A vigil for someone who has died.

But not for me. For I continue living and breathing and fighting for the things that are mine.

In France, I’m to face Rodrigo Afonso…the man with the Golden Briefcase that – in my own personal opinion – means nothing. It has been nearly six months since that Golden Briefcase has been won, and it hasn’t been utilized. Multiple opportunities have been present, multiple champions have been available. But instead, Roddie over here has decided that he doesn’t even need to pay attention to what’s going on in the world to utilize it. It just seems to me that Afonso isn’t very…interested…in being a SCW wrestler. I mean, say what you want about me – since everyone seems to do so anyway, and I’ll refute all your bullshit eventually – but when I show, I show tenfold. It’s not about doing the bare minimum to get by, come in, do a match, get back to whatever else is going on. No, when I’m scheduled, I go hard.

And in my research I literally just watched this kid say that he’s a one and done when it comes to promotionals. Doesn’t really like to talk…and yet that is primarily the mode of our work. The way we communicate and work with one another to build a story…one that no amount of “needing a win” more is going to change.

I don’t need this win, Rodrigo. I don’t need a win against you. I don’t need to constantly prove my worth like you do, because I’ve done it. I hold the most coveted championship in this company, and I don’t need a win over a kid who doesn’t look like they want to be here on a regular basis to prove anything more. I want challenges. I’m not the same as the past few champions who have looked for the lowest bottom dollar to defend a championship against – and honestly, I would have preferred that this was a title match, because it might have made you work a little harder to improve your chances.

You don’t match.

Ah, what do I mean by that?

It’s simple. When a wrestler makes a statement and follows through, it’s a match. Your words and your actions match, and that makes you a threat. Since September, I haven’t lost a match, even when the best of the best thought they could defeat me. Everyone in this company always has a chance, but it’s only if they actually bring it to the venue and they fight like hell to attain greatness.

You have a briefcase…and that’s honestly the most interesting thing about you, kid. You haven’t succeeded against any particular names in recent months, and even if you were to sit there and tell me that you’d beat my ass and that you’d do better than I ever would, you don’t match. Your words don’t match your ability, because you haven’t attained anything but a briefcase that has nothing interesting about it.

And now you hope, by some grace of god, that you’ll be able to face me and defeat me? Like you have Eddie, Vaughn, Carter, virtually everyone you’ve crossed? Let me tell you, this will be a lesson to learn for you, and you will learn something at Climax Control. You’ll learn that you don’t belong in the ring with me, you’ll learn that it’s more than just saying you want to win, but meaning that with every bone in your body.

You’ll never get there unless you choose your discipline.

You said to Eddie that you could tear his championship in half?

How about I tear you in half? Your skateboard, your hope, your fears, your desires? Because I could do all of that. Piss me off, kid, and you’ll see a world of hurt that you’re not prepared for in a million years.

You’ll have your chance to stand against me, Roddie. And you’ll have your chance to do everything you can to stop me. At the end of the day, though, it’ll be just the same as it always is.

You, on your back, me….with the win, my hand raised in victory and my titles returned to me without fail.

Is this what you want to face? Because if it is…good luck, kid.

Because you’re going to need it.