The heavy bag swung lazily as the the sound of the dull thud of Vincent Lyon Jr’s fists hitting it echoed throughout the room. He kept his breath steady and eyes unreadable as he continued to lay in punch, after punch, after punch.
A door behind him creeped open and Eddie Lyons stepped in arms crossed.[/i]
“You got a minute?” Eddie asked “I need to talk to you.”
“You already took it.” Vincent said not looking in Eddie's direction.
“I saw what you did.” said Eddie walking further in “I saw what you did to Carter, and I saw what you did to Jayden.”
“I lost to Jayden.” Vincent muttered.
“You know what I mean.” said Eddie.
“Then say what you mean.” Vincent retorted.
“Fine.” said Eddie narrowing his eyes “That wasn't competition, that was a message, a hit job. And for what? Because he dared to beat you clean?”
Vincent turned and glared a cold stare into Eddie's eyes.
“Jayden embarrassed me” said Vincent.
“So what?” Eddie replied “That's the game. Sometimes you fall you take it you learn you get up and fight again you don't gut the guy afterwards like an animal.”
“Don't talk to me about getting up.” Vincent snapped “I was gone Eddie, the world buried me and now that I'm back I'm not playing by their rules.”
“No.” said Eddie “You're not playing by anybody's rules anymore. Not even your own.”
They glare at one another, an uncomfortable silence between them.
“You used to fight with honor.” Eddie continued “You stood for something, you were the kind of warrior I wanted to be.”
Vincent said nothing, only clenching one hand into a fist.
“When you came back I hoped that somewhere in there that guy still existed.” said Eddie “That the island didn't take him completely.”
“That guy died with the wreckage.” Vincent replied coldly
“No he didn't.” Eddie said looking into his cousin's eyes “You're burying him because it hurts less than admitting loss. I see it in you when you look at Victoria like she's the last light in a dark room, or when you train in silence instead of bragging."
“You think this is about being lost?” Vincent said “No Eddie, I've found something. I spent weeks on that island with nothing but the sound of the ocean and my own mind and what I learned is simple.”
Vincent took a step toward Eddie.
“I don't need their cheers and I don't need to be the warrior on the pedestal.” Vincent said “I don't even need redemption. Victoria and I are all that matters and everything else is just noise.”
“You don't need redemption?” Eddie replied “Then what do you call turning Jayden into a message? What's that supposed to redeem?”
“I call it a warning.” said Vincent “A warning to J2H, to anyone. I'm not coming for validation I'm coming to take what should have been mine a long time ago not with honor or grace but with certainty.”
Eddie shook his head disappointed
“You're not chasing glory.” he said “You're chasing shadows.”
“And you are still clinging to fairytales.” Vincent shot back “This business doesn't reward honor Eddie, it rewards power, presence, and fear. You want to be A champion people admire. I want to be the nightmare they don't forget.”
“That's not who you were meant to be.” said Eddie.
“No.” said Vincent “It’s who I became and I don't regret it.”
“Victoria's really gotten to you.” said Eddie his eyes shifting away.
“Don't bring her into this.” Vincent said coldly.
“She's in it whether I say her name or not.” said Eddie “She encourages this this version of you she doesn't want the noble Vincent Lyons Junior, she wants to destroyer."
“And she has him.” said Vincent “Because he's what survived when everything else drowned.”
A moment of silence followed.
“You're my cousin.” Eddie said “You're still my family. I don't want to stand across from you one day and not recognize the man I'm looking at.”
Vincent didn't reply.
“You have J2H next.” Eddie said “That's going to be a real war, and if you go in there chasing blood over victory he'll cut you down and call it sport.”
“I know what I'm walking into.” Vincent replied. “And I certainly don't need any advice from you.”
Eddie sighed.
“I guess that's it then..” said Eddie “Perhaps you are truly lost.”
A disappointed look in Eddie’s eye and he turned and walked to the door. Vincent said nothing didn't call after him just stood there, fist still trembling slightly. After the door creaked shut he turned back to the heavy bag and hit it hard enough to split the leather.
__________
The cameras open on a dark room, not pitch black but dark enough to blur the corners and soften the edges. The faint hue of an amber light hanging from a single bulb overhead flickering as though it didn't want to be on at all.
Vincent stood alone his silent gaze hauntingly looking into the camera as quietly he began to speak.
“I don't want to be liked.” Vincent said low and steady “I don't need cheers. I don't need merchandise. I don't need a little kids wearing my name on a t-shirt pretending they know what I've been through because they don't, and neither do you J2H."
A pause.
“The difference is..” Vincent continued “You built your name on noise. You love it loud, you crave the spotlight like it's oxygen. You don't walk into a room, you demand it look at you. Lights, sound, and attention always on. Always performing.”
There's a quiver of his lip.
“And that's why I've grown tired of you.” said Vincent “Tired of your voice, your arrogance, your ego. You act like you're god's gift to this business, and you think because you've held gold you are gold. But even gold rusts when it's left exposed too long.”
Another short pause, as a dry laugh escapes his lips.
“I don't go out there and measure myself by the volume and noise I create.” said Vincent “I'm a weapon sharpened in silence, forged without fanfare. I'm not concerned with why Alexandra Calaway made this match. Maybe she wants you softened up for her friend Helluva bottom Carter. It doesn't matter because I'm not here for any glory or legacy. I didn't come out of my wreckage looking for redemption. I came back because the tide fed my rage and now you're here J2H, in my way."
He glares into the camera.
“Just as has my sister will do to Frankie Holliday, I'm going to end your momentum.” said Vincent “You won Blast From The Past with help from Kevin Carter. Good for you. But now i'm here to make sure you never make it into the future. You walk around like you're the chosen one like this business owes you something. We all saw your little war with Jayden Harris and as far as Jaydenand I go? He can watch me finish what he never could.”
His lips curl into a predatory smile.
“Jayden wanted to prove something against you.” said Vincent “I'm not looking to prove a damn thing. I just want your blood on my hands, and I want to show Jayden Harris how to finish a man. No lights just silence last gasps and the eternal void.”
That predatory smile seems stuck on his face.
“Don't let my last name fool you.” said Vincent “I'm nothing like my cousin Eddie that man still believes in happy endings and thinks there's justice in this business. He fights like his little girl will see him one day and be proud. But me? I fight like no one's left, like I'm still on that island and the only role is survival, and the only thing worth hearing is the sound of a man's last breath.”
He steps closer to the camera.
“If Alexandra Calaway put you in my path to soften you up for Carter. Then I guess she gets her wish.” he said "But it’s going her mistake to not realize that once you unleash something like me you don't get to control where the damage lands.“
A pause for a beat.
“I'm the bad day you didn't see coming.” said Vincent “I'm the punch you don't remember taking, and the silence that comes after the crowd stops screaming when you lie flat on your back, mouth open like you're still trying to talk your way out of something. So call yourself a king, a god, a final boss, whatever you want. I'm not coming for your crown I'm coming for the crack it makes when it hits the floor after I drop you.”
A heavy exhale.
“When it's all said and done they'll wonder why Calaway made the match.” said Vincent “They’ll wonder if she fed you to a monster and I hope they do. But I'm not doing this for her, and I'm not doing this for Carter. I'm not even doing this for Victoria. I'm doing this because it's my nature, it's what I do and it's my curse. Your blood will be the tied that baptizes me once again.”
He keeps a haunting gaze into the camera has everything fades out to black
_________
He hadn't meant to walk this far. He just needed air, some space, anything to quiet the pressure building up in his mind. Somehow his feet had carried him to the outskirts of the Lyons estate beyond the neatly kept paths and trimmed hedges to a stretch where time had been allowed to rot. Vines clung to fences, moss drowned out bricks. the world looked like it had given up here, and strangely it felt comfortable to Vincent.
He had argued with Eddie that morning, again. Eddie kept trying to convince him that he wasn't acting as his true self, but Eddie didn't understand that this was who Vincent was now. Eddie wasn't on that island, he was. Eddie had no right to question the man Vincent had become when he returned from isolation.
Eddie didn't understand that he was different now. He was growing, evolving, something that Eddie and his precious honor before glory mantra just couldn't comprehend.
Maybe a long time ago he liked to play the hero, and play nice but he was something else now .something stronger something better something more lethal and J2H would be the next to experience it.
Something about those three initials made something curl in his chest, his smug look, his hollow gold plated legacy, a man more concerned with his brand than his soul who had somehow convinced himself he was the best to ever do it, and that he was untouchable.
However Vincent wasn't here for the legend. He was here for the man behind it, and he intended to rip the mask off of J2H in front of the whole goddamn world.
And then there was Jayden Harris.
The name made his blood boil, and the feud ran deeper. While he didn't like J2H and his smug arrogant attitude, he despised Jayden and he wanted to make sure Jayden never stepped into an SCW ring again.
It wasn't even about revenge for his sister anymore. It was about cleansing something rotten, to burn it down and salt the earth.
He continued down the old neglected path, branches snapping between his feet he was unsure of even where he was going and then he saw it the old greenhouse.
Forgotten. Buried behind years of growth and neglect. A ruin on the edge of the estate like a secret everyone had agreed not to speak of. He hadn't seen this place since they were kids but now it was calling to him.
As he pushed open the rested door frame a sliver of memory flickered through him. Sunlight pouring through the clean glass, laughter bouncing off the ceiling as Victoria walked between the roses and lilies like a queen in her court. Eddie and Vincent running around with sticks pretending to be knights.
They were kids then before the blood before the titles, before everything.
The air inside was thick damp with the of soil and rotten wood most of the overhead glass was broken and vines had invaded from every corner twisting around the beams with their grasp. The old fountain at the center had long dried up with moss now clinging to it’s stone bowl, like a shaggy green coat.
Someone was already there.
Victoria.
He spotted her before she noticed him. She was alone in the wild ruin, standing so still she could have been a statue from another life. Then her fingers trailed along the basin like she was reading his history by touch.
“I thought this place was gone.” he said in a low voice.
“Not gone.” she replied “Just forgotten.”
His gaze drifted around the wreckage. Time had been unkind to this place. The orchids had turned to dust, the roses had thorns so wild they were strangling each other, and the lilies were nothing but brittle stems.
“We used to call it the temple.” she said softly.
"I remember." Vincent nodded.
He could feel the weight of the past pressing in again, the Echoes of who they used to be. Victoria always leading, while he and Eddie always ran head first into danger without thinking .
“I don't think anyone's been here since we were kids.” he said.
“Yeah I suppose no one had any reason to.” Victoria replied “But I do now.”
“Why now?” he asked curiously, tilting his head.
She walked to one of the old planter boxes and crouched next to it.
“I needed to see what happens to things that are left behind.” she said touching what remained of a dead bloom, “I used to think beauty meant something that if you tended it long enough, gave it care, that it rewards you, that it would stay.”
He watched as her fingers trembled for a moment.
“But it doesn't.” she said “It waits for rot for time for someone to come back and see the truth.”
“And what's the truth?” he asked.
She shot him a fierce gaze.
“That nothing grows until something else dies.” she said.
He didn't flinch he had seen this kind of truth before in the ring, and their family. He’d seen in the faces of every so-called legend who stayed too long and learned what it meant to be devoured by the next generation.
“That's why Alexandra thinks she's won.” Victoria said as she rose to her feet. “She burned the throne, my throne. She thinks carrying that crown means she's untouchable, but all she did was make room for something worse.”
Vincent looked at his sister, studied her and he saw it. The hunger, not desperation, not revenge she was on her own evolution just as he was.
“So what happens next?” he asked.
“I beat Frankie Holliday.” Victoria said “I remind them who I am, with or without the crown. I beat her not because she deserves to lose, but because I refuse to let the future forget about people like me.”
There it was, that fire, that refusal to fade in the background, that's what he truly respected about his twin.
They stood there side by side in the overgrown ruin of their childhood as he looked at the initials still carved into the basin a memory that had survived rot and time
V.L
V.L.J
E.L
For a moment he felt like he could see them again those three wild kids unscarred by ambition Eddie and himself shouting about secret tunnels, while Victoria was commanding the plants to grow.
But that was in the past and that old world was gone and if something had to rise in its place he wanted to make damn sure it had their name on it, that The Lyons Twins were still here and that they were all that was needed to burn kingdoms to the ground.
__________
The cameras open slowly with just the dim ambient shimmer of moonlight slanting through the broken glass and creeping vines of an old greenhouse. Moss grows on the forgotten stone and the camera focuses on the man standing in the middle of it all. Vincent Lyons Jr.
His face is shrouded in a mixture of moonlight and shadow haunted by something he keeps deep within him as his eyes stay steadily focused.
“My sister said something to me tonight.” he said “Something about how nothing grows until something else dies.”
He pauses letting his gaze wander around looking at all the dead and broken brambles.
“This place used to be beautiful.” he said “We called it The Temple. We were kids then, thought the world was small enough to hold in our hands, thought that love could keep things alive and that power was inherited not earned. But we were wrong time doesn't preserve it consumes and when it's done consuming it buries.”
He exhales with another short pause.
“The man I used to be died out there on the island they left me on.” he said “Wherever it was I went, just know this. I didn't come back whole, I came back sharpened and you J2H are about to learn exactly what crawled out of that wreckage.”
His voice lowers to a more primal tone.
“You won the Blast from the Past, and you've got a spotlight on you now.” said Vincent “You walk like you own the place, like Sin City is still your kingdom and Helluva Bottom Carter is just the next name in your parade of resurrection.”
A cold, almost amused smile grows on his face.
“But before you can get to Carter you've got to go through me.” he said “And I'm not here for glory, I'm not here for your crown or your buzz or your marketability. I'm not a starchaser trying to catch a little shine by stepping into the ring with a supposed legend.”
He takes a few steps closer to the camera.
“I'm here to hurt you.” he said his voice hardening “Because pain is the only language I understand, because everyone keeps pretending people like Victoria and myself are clinging to crumbling pedestals while they dance around our ashes.”
A cold laugh escapes his lips.
“I'm sure you think this match is just a checkpoint, a little tune-up before you move on to Helluva Bottom Carter.” said Vincent “That's your ultimate goal, the headline you've already written. But you fail to realize that your path doesn't continue after this. I don't care how many times you've worn the gold or about whatever comeback you want to make to the top again. You don't just walk through me J2H you bleed on the way."
He exhales softly letting his words linger in the air.
“My sister lost her throne and her crown.” he said “She says that something had to die in her too, and I believe her. We will all see it soon enough when she tears Frankie Holliday apart with her bare hands. But my rebirth wasn't by deposition, it was by isolation, and j2h is going to feel the shape of the storm I've become. He will be a message and that message will be sent directly to Jayden Harris.”
There's a quiver of his lip has he mentioned the name Jayden Harris. A name he despises.
“I want him to watch this. I want him to watch what happens to you.” Vincent said “Because it's all a warning shot and it's all a lesson on how to properly finish somebody. Something he could never do when you two of you went to war. I'll show him how even if my father was alive I wouldn't need to call my daddy for any help."
Another cold laugh leaves his lips.
“J2H is a man of flash and pride.” said Vincent “A man who never had to survive the silence and sit within it long enough to hear his own thoughts echo until they broke something inside. So I'm going to break something inside him.”
He takes a few more steps closer to the camera.
“There's no way this ends well for you J2H.” he continued “Because win or lose, one thing is for sure you and everyone else will..”
He pauses and the camera seems closer to his face.
“Remember me.”
Then everything cut to black jarringly and suddenly.
