(A/N: Not my best but i got a few months of rust. All the luck to my opponent. happy to be back)
I suppose this is where I make some pseudo-intellectual C grade poetic statement about the road you took here, tie it in with the career you left to fail so spectacularly at this one with the whole thing posessing the depth of a puddle of spit?
Maybe later.
For now, maybe it would be good sport to address why i’m back? Make some sort of chest inflating and subsequent pounding declaration of the Tai Pei death match only being round 2? Maybe I’m back to torment Mac and reclaim the SCW World Heavyweight T–
Oh…right.
He lost it.
Again.
Well, Suppose I could chase Ken for it. Man’s never beaten me and even got himself DQ’ed to evade finishing our second f–
Oh..
Oh damn, the Saviors are on the stru–
Oh my god, they broke up?
Christ…you’re really bad at this, Macentyre.
But no. No, jesting aside i’ll have no contrived declaration for my intent on the SCW World Title. No, that much is just a given and this time? I’ll earn the shot, outside of the favor already given to former champions. Although I suppose with the lot in the back I could go through biblical trials and unless I pledge myself to their silly fucking group, It will be unearned.
Wonder if Fenris is still a crybaby bitch about all that???
Focus, Matthew. We have a warm up to get through before any of that can go down.
So, An–one moment.
Right. Agostino. See, I thought your name was something more practical and widely known like Antonio. But no, not you. You’re a special boy, aren’t you August Rush in Italian? Your mother welped a true talent unto the world, chicken salad out of the chicken shit that was your father’s pathetic and watery seed.
It would have been of better use in the sock with all the others, truly…
The dreams had driven an anxiety all too familiar to spike to levels he’d manage to evade since getting clean, save for a few incidents. The stifling, strangling feeling of being crushed by everything he thought he wanted. Leave it with him to find or manufacture defeat in the midst of a total and flawless victory.
He was Matthew Knox, after all.
A low groan escaped him to match the one internal as his body cried out in a familiar and almost comforting discomfort. His toned, lithe form rising from the couch in his office at the Corvid Combat Academy. He hadn’t been home in a couple nights, reasoning that Alix was capable of helping Marika with anything she should need and lying through his teeth about being away on business for the school.
In truth, he had spent the past forty-eight contacting a handful of promotions and puting feelers out into the world. See if there was even one left that still wanted him within it. All had replied, two had stood out.
One, he was ecstatic for.
Sin City Wrestling…his tenure felt lost in the maelstrom of his personal hell, fighting so many wars on so many fronts that the blood feud with Macentyre over the supposed slight against his marriage served as more of a background piece ot his title defenses, running a company, and waging a blood feud with the spray-tanned pig.
Only he could sleep-walk through the brutality of a TaiPei Death Match.
In truth, he had hoped that Mac would put a nail in the whole thing. End him completely, cripple him and make it impossible to go on. The way God’s creatures had handled their disputes from the dawn of man.
But once more, Macentyre proved to not be enough.
It was no fault of his own, really. A long line of men and women to varying degrees of similar wrath had attempted the same. Page, Amber, Davison, SuMa, the Rat, Sebastian Byrce…
One by one, they all came for his head. And one by one, they all failed to leave with anything more than a pound of flesh. If they were lucky, it left a scar. The point remained however that for all their efforts, for everything they did to desperately try and end them? It wasn’t enough.
It was in those futile efforts that he took comfort in a lie that he had convinced himself was the gospel.
Matthew 69:420 : The Parable of the undying Idiot.
He plucked a white towel from his desk, left over from the previous night’s shower and began a slow limp to the showers in the back, his wandering thoughts silencing for a moment as he focused on the echoing pitter patter of his feet on the concrete floor. The images of the dream, the same damn dream nipping at the heels of his still fuzzy consciousness as he moved.
Those black eyes.
A whole life, a whole series of lives that he knew all about but could scarcely remember, and was trying to convince himself (with little success) that they were nothing more than elaborate dreams brought on by an excess of oxycontin and bourbon.
The chill of the shower room did little to distract him even as he disrobed and felt the chill bite at his entire body. He stopped in front of the mirror that hung over the sink briefly, taking a moment to stare at the scars that he could see reflected. He reached up to gently graze his fingers over the starfish shaped one in his left shoulder.
Briefly, the ghost of the burning and almost indescribable sensation of the jagged handle of a baseball bat being driven into his flesh and down to the bone surged through him. His teeth clenched along with his jaw at the memory, air sucking in briefly as he swore against all present evidence that he had just been stabbed again.
His fingers wander more, down to his chest and tracing over the line that seemed to follow the natural line dividing his oecs. A gift from when his beloved thought them enemies. Now, in the dark and damp room he heard the distant sounds of every scar being given to him once more, only tenfold.
The walls around him began to resemble a mausoleum then, his eyes staring into the ones staring back at him in the mirror. Desperately trying to grasp at the gaze as a form of an anchor.
The fool he was, relying on him when it’d been proven by so many that to do so was an exercise in absolute futility. Or so his eldest would no doubt tell anyone who would care to listen.
Hell, his second oldest might as well..
Tearing himself from the reflection that he swore bore a smirk and a gaze that became less and less familiar with each passing heartbeat he pushed through the echoing chaos of memories he’d never hope to repress and turn the shower on. The running water instantly brought forth a familiar zen feeling, drowning out everything that ate away at him.
Once more, Calypso granted him a mercy he never deserved.
He held a hand under the water, waiting a moment for it to heat up enough for him to step under it. He got lost in the thundering of the faux rainstorm that drenched his body, washing away everything but the numerous sins upon his skin.
SCW. That’s what was important right now. He’d sent in a cryptic video package, asked to be kept off advertisements. Element of surprise, a little flair for the dramatic.
But, what can one say? Bookers will always bee more carny than human. Card dropped and boom, he’s being fed the ex-racer and his presence is being touted. No doubt they needed to find a way to fill seats after the reign of the black hole of charisma that was Ken Davison.
Thankfully, Finn Whelan had solved that problem.
And presented him with a much more interesting problem to solve himself.
He squeezed a handful of shampoo into his palm, lathering up his hair as the smell of mint and green tea joined the assault on his senses along with the running water. He let out a satisfied exhale as he felt the lather run down his skin, toward the drain. Behind closed eyelids, he was treated to the flashing replay of his time in SCW.
Joined to help pull Amber’s head from above water, only to be demonized by the man who should never have let the depths take her and treated like a fucking Prince by the actual demon who looked to drag her into those depths. Made to submit to the whims of a monster who seemed equally keen to fuck him as it was to eviscerate him.
He’d never admit that he liked the nickname “Songbird”.
A sneer cracked his placid expression. Loose ends that needed to be tied up. Wrongs righted.
He needed to give them something new to talk about after all. Be more than the guy who stood by and watched Masque give Amber Ryan exactly what she’d begged for. He didn’t fault them for it, what else could they do? Simple minded fools that they were, this made them all look not-as-bad.
And then, he fueled their ire more by simply existing. Which was all it took for Mac to foolishly throw his title on the line and name him #1 Contender. Make the whole thing about his title, his self appointed place in the heirarchy of SCW, and to further stroke off the ‘moral authority’ cosplay he’d cultivated over a long career of shining men like Jack Michaels and Chris Page’s boots for the rub.
Then he took the title, and what could they say? Nothing..
He shook his head, the rest a fog that need not be delved into. All that mattered now? Is he had returned from the lie of a happily ever after. He found - or rather, finally acknowledged all the excess violence he was unable to exorcizre from him. No matter how many children looked him in the eye with that special sort of unmatched love. No mattter how many students looked to him in quiet admiration and appreciation of the fruits of his knowledge. No matter how Mari smiled at him so.
He wasn’t any more than what he’d always been.
A warrior.
And Warriors never left the war, less it was upon their shield.
Really, someone has to have had this talk with you by now right?
Or maybe everyone who ever meant anything to you has long been sated by the money you throw at them for what they tell you is love?
Doesn’t matter.
Really, neither do you.
I don’t hate you, kid. Hell. I admire you.. I admire anyone who can subvert expectations in this sport of ours. You did that simply by surviving your first match…but anymore? Anymore all you’ve gone on to prove is that you really don’t belong.
See, what i’m saying it….your act has worn thin.
The plucky underdog is only an underdog when he works hard enough to be put in situations where he has a chance at greatness.
Whereas, the greatness you achieve maxes out at continued employment by SCW.
You’re a loser, Augostowhateverthefuck. You’re an easy pull that I feel insulted by, frankly. Clamor to usher me back in, put my name on the roster page and the first meal you serve me comes with someone to spoon feed it?
Ah well, who am I to refuse free food?
But really, barbs and bullshit aside? Hear me now, Agostino and hear me well.
Throw yourself back into your old sport, because the waters are far too deep here and you’re not much of a swimmer. Right now, your best outcome is the cruelest sort of irony. You, who made his fortune and found his fame in a sport based on outrunning everything. Out of evading danger, and running farther and quicker than the rest?
Has brought you face to face with the one thing you can’t run from.
I am your inevitable reckoning, and the hard truth. All wrapped in the worst sort of damage to whatever ego you still possess.
I am the universe, God, and all the saints telling you that you don’t belong. And it’s high time you stop pretending that you do.
See Agostino, you and everyone in the back? You’re probably the most tightly-packed pack of dipshits on God’s green earth. The piety of it all, the judgement you dare thought yourselves worthy of that you passed onto me?
Fuck you.
Fuck all of you.
Because, at Climax Control? With that mental image of me watching Amber get exactly what the fuck she asked Masque for rattles in your fucking peabrains? Stop and think about how you all just watched what I’m going to do to Agostino.
And Agostino, you remember each and every face that didn’t do a thing but watch. And you count how many come to see you when you wake up. Realize, if you have the capacity to, how fucking lonely it is compared to the winner’s circle.
The End has come for you, Agostino.
Can you stop it?
