mirrors
04.2 positioned
★★★★★★★
06 february 2026
new york city
Kallie taking the kids to the park changed the entire apartment in a way Amelia couldn’t explain without sounding ungrateful.
It wasn’t that the noise had been unpleasant. If anything, the little chaos had been a kind of camouflage. Baby gates, squeaky toys, tiny voices that rose and fell like weather. It had made her feel less visible. Less available to her own thoughts.
But once the door clicked shut behind them and the hallway swallowed the stroller wheels, the quiet returned with teeth.
New York still existed outside the windows, but inside Aiden’s place, the silence rearranged itself into something watchful. The air held the faint sweetness of sunscreen and the clean, powdery trace of child shampoo. A tiny sock lay abandoned near the couch like evidence of a life that moved on without permission. On the counter, a sippy cup sat tilted on its side, cap ajar, as if it had been dropped mid-sprint.
Amelia stood at the edge of the hallway, barefoot, hoodie pulled on, her hair still damp from a shower that hadn’t made her feel clean so much as awake. She hadn’t meant to eavesdrop.
It just…happened.
Aiden’s voice carried from the kitchen…low, clipped, careful in a way it rarely was. Not the broad, bright performance he used when he wanted to make a room safer. This was something else. The cadence was different. The language was different.
Japanese.
Amelia froze without realizing it had happened until she’d already stopped breathing.
She couldn’t understand most of it. Isolated words, familiar sounds, the rise and fall of a conversation that felt like it belonged in a different world than this sunlit apartment with magnets on the fridge and toddler drawings taped to the wall. Aiden’s pronunciation wasn’t perfect, but it was practiced. Intentional. Like he’d put hours into it. Like he’d wanted it to be taken seriously.
She heard him say, “Hai,” with a firmness that didn’t match the lazy slouch he wore like armor. Then another phrase she couldn’t catch. Then, clearer, “Wakatta.” Understood. A pause. Aiden’s footsteps shifted, soft against the kitchen tile. His voice dropped again, lower, more controlled. “…mise,” he said. Restaurant. Maybe? She wasn’t sure. It sounded like that.
A longer pause followed, someone else talking on the other end, and Aiden’s silence became heavy enough to feel from the hallway.
Then, “Arigatou.”
Another pause, and Amelia heard the smallest exhale, the kind that wasn’t relief so much as weight being lifted and replaced with something worse. Aiden spoke again, quicker now. “Kore wa mada…kakunin dekinai.” She didn’t know the words, but she understood the shape of them. Not confirmed yet.
His tone sharpened on the last syllable like a warning. The call ended. For a few seconds, nothing moved. The apartment held its breath the way Amelia did when she expected a door to open that shouldn’t.Then Aiden’s “normal” returned. Too loud, too sudden, a switch thrown hard enough to make the lights flicker in her head. He opened a cabinet with unnecessary force. Something ceramic clinked. He whistled a tune Amelia recognized from childhood, a ridiculous little melody he used when he wanted to pretend there wasn’t a problem big enough to swallow him whole.
Amelia stepped into the kitchen.
Aiden was at the counter with his phone in hand, thumb still hovering over the screen like it didn’t quite believe the conversation was over. He looked up the moment he sensed her, because she’d always been the one person in his life he couldn’t ignore when she went quiet.
His face brightened like he’d been waiting for an audience.
“Well,” he announced, “look who decided to join the living.”
Amelia didn’t answer. Her gaze went straight to the phone.
Aiden followed her eyes and, with the reflex of a guilty man, set it face-down on the counter like that erased what she’d heard.
He grinned anyway, leaning into it. “Before you judge me, I want it noted for the record that I am bilingual. Sophisticated. Cultured. International man of mystery.”
“You were speaking Japanese.”
Aiden blinked, then shrugged in exaggerated nonchalance. “Was I? Crazy. Must’ve been the caffeine. Sometimes my brain just…goes worldly.”
Amelia stared at him long enough that the grin began to strain. “Who was it?” she asked.
“A friend,” he said immediately.
Amelia didn’t move. “What friend?”
“A…very responsible friend,” Aiden tried again, voice rising half an octave in the way it did when he was about to sprint into humor to avoid a real answer. “A friend who cares deeply about – uh – culinary experiences. You know me. Big food guy.”
Amelia stepped closer to the counter. Not threatening. Just close enough that her presence became unavoidable. “Aiden.”
He sighed dramatically, as if she were asking him to do something immoral. “Yes, Amelia. What can I do for you on this blessed, child-free morning. Would you like a latte? A muffin? A motivational speech about the importance of family–”
“Stop,” she said, quietly. The word landed without heat, which made it worse. It wasn’t a fight. It was a line.
Aiden’s expression softened a fraction, then he tried to salvage the moment with a grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “You’re intense when you wake up. It’s kind of terrifying. Like a small elegant assassin.”
“I heard you,” Amelia said. “I heard your tone. That wasn’t a food call.”
Aiden’s shoulders tightened. He reached for the coffee pot as an excuse to move, to make noise, to keep the air from turning honest. The smell of coffee filled the space, dark and bitter, like it could act as a buffer.
Amelia watched him pour a mug he didn’t need. Then she asked, very evenly, “Does Dickie know you’re doing this?”
The coffee stream wobbled slightly.
Aiden recovered quickly, but not fast enough. He set the pot down, lifted the mug, and took a sip that burned his mouth. Amelia could tell because his eyes watered for half a second and he refused to acknowledge it. “He knows I exist,” Aiden said. “That’s basically the same thing.”
“Aiden.”
He gave her a look of wounded innocence that had gotten him out of trouble in three different decades. “What? I’m just standing here. In my house. Drinking my coffee. Living my life. Being handsome.”
Amelia didn’t smile. The quiet grew heavier. Aiden’s joke hung in the air and slowly began to die from lack of oxygen. Amelia’s voice didn’t rise. “Why isn’t he speaking to me?”
Aiden’s grin twitched like it wanted to survive. “Because he’s a man.”
“That’s not an answer,” Amelia said.
“Because he’s a stubborn man.”
“That’s also not an answer.”
Aiden sighed again, louder this time. He leaned back against the counter and looked at the ceiling like God was personally testing him. “You’re really committed to ruining my morning.”
Amelia’s gaze stayed on his face. “It’s been nearly a month.”
Aiden’s eyes flicked to hers, and something raw flashed there. Concern, guilt, protective anger he didn’t know where to put.
Amelia kept going because if she stopped, she would feel it too sharply. “The last thing he told me was, ‘I got handed a syndicate,’” she said. “That was it. No context. No explanation. No…anything. And before that, I told him he didn’t get to love me and keep me ignorant, and—”
Aiden’s jaw tightened at the exact phrase, the way someone reacts when they recognize a trigger they’ve been trying to avoid.
Amelia’s voice held steady. “—and he hasn’t said a word since.”
Aiden’s mouth opened. Closed. He tried to keep it light anyway, because that was his instinct.
“Well,” he said, “maybe he’s just taking your advice very seriously. You said pick one, and–”
Amelia’s eyes narrowed.
Aiden rushed forward, hands lifting. “Okay. Okay, sorry. That was…bad timing. Too soon. My apologies.”
Amelia stared at him, and the emotion in her eyes didn’t spill into tears—it hardened into something far more dangerous: restraint under strain.
“You know,” she said.
Aiden blinked. “Know what?”
“You know what it means,” Amelia replied. “You know what he’s involved in. You know something, because you just took a call in Japanese like it was normal, and I’m standing here like I’m watching my own life through glass.”
Aiden’s humor failed for a moment, and in that moment she saw it—how tired he looked when he wasn’t performing. How tightly he was holding himself together. He tried to put the grin back on. “I’ve been watching anime.”
Amelia didn’t even blink. Aiden’s grin died again. Amelia stepped closer, close enough now that she could see the fine tension around his mouth, the way his throat worked when he swallowed. “Tell me what you know,” she said.
Aiden’s voice dropped. “I can’t.”
Amelia’s eyes sharpened. “Why?”
He looked away. That, more than anything, made heat flash behind her ribs.
“Aiden,” she said, and it was quieter now, but it carried the weight of history. “You are my brother. Not his. Not the syndicate’s. Mine.”
Aiden’s face tightened with pain at the word brother. He rubbed his hand over his jaw. “Amelia…”
“You made me live here,” she continued, because it came out like that sometimes. Clean, sharp, unfair. “You and Kallie. You said I wasn’t alone. But I am alone if you’re keeping his secrets like I’m not allowed to know what’s happening around me.”
Aiden’s eyes flashed. “I didn’t make you live here.”
Amelia didn’t back down. “Then stop acting like I’m a guest in my own life.”
Silence. Aiden breathed in slowly through his nose, then let it out like he was choosing not to explode. He tried one last joke, weak and desperate. “Would it help if I told you the Japanese was mostly just me asking where the restroom is?”
Amelia’s expression did not change. Aiden swallowed. She reached out with one hand – not violent, not frantic, just deliberate – and pinched his nipple through his T-shirt with the calm precision of a woman who had run out of patience. Aiden made a sound that did not belong to a grown man with children.
“AUGHH! AMELIA! WHAT THE HELL–”
She didn’t release. Her grip wasn’t cruel. It was effective.
“Information,” Amelia said evenly. “Now.”
Aiden’s eyes went wide. “Ow, ow, OW – okay, okay, okay – Jesus Christ, you are a menace – fucking Mike Wazowski over here–”
Amelia kept her hand exactly where it was. “Talk.”
Aiden’s voice shot upward in pitch. “You can’t just assault people in kitchens!”
“You can when they’re your brother,” Amelia replied, utterly calm.
“Ameli–” Aiden grabbed her wrist, not to hurt her, just to try to pry her off with the dignity of a man who had none left. “Please. Please. Release the nipple—”
“Then stop lying,” she said.
Aiden froze. For a fraction of a second, the humor was gone entirely, and something bleak surfaced underneath it. He let go of her wrist. He stopped fighting. The surrender was immediate, and it was not because of pain. It was because of the look in her eyes.
Amelia released him. Aiden sucked in a breath and adjusted his shirt with offended dignity, rubbing a hand over his chest like he’d just survived a battlefield. “You are getting excommunicated from polite society.”
Amelia didn’t apologize. She just waited.
Aiden’s gaze dropped to the counter again, to his face-down phone, to the quiet space where the children’s noise had been. The apartment felt too open. Too bright. Like truth had nowhere to hide. He spoke carefully, like each word had to clear a minefield. “Someone reached out to me,” he said. “Someone…connected. Lower rank. A kobun.”
Amelia’s brows knit. “A what?”
Aiden’s jaw tightened. He hesitated, then pivoted slightly, trying to keep her from grabbing that word and weaponizing it.
“Someone under someone,” he said. “Someone who hears things and wants to be useful.”
Amelia watched him. “Useful to who?”
Aiden met her eyes, and his loyalty was visible there, stubborn and infuriating. “To Dickie.”
Her voice turned flat. “So you are doing things for him.”
“I’m trying to keep him from doing them alone.”
“That’s different. Because he doesn’t even want you involved either.”
Aiden’s silence confirmed it.
Amelia’s stomach tightened. “He’s cutting everyone out.”
Aiden’s voice went low. “Yes.”
Amelia’s hands curled into fists on the edge of the counter. “Why?”
Aiden shook his head once, small and sharp. “I can’t. Amelia, I can’t give you names, okay? I can’t give you structures. I can’t give you the…big picture.”
Amelia leaned in. “Because of him.” Aiden didn’t answer. Amelia’s eyes narrowed. “Because of what he’s becoming.” That made Aiden’s face go still. His humor didn’t return. He looked, for a moment, like someone standing in front of a locked door with smoke seeping out underneath it. He swallowed and chose his words with care.
“He thinks he can’t tell you,” Aiden said. “He thinks the moment you know what it is, you’re part of it. And once you’re part of it, you’re not safe from it.”
Her breath caught. “So he just…what? Leaves me in the dark?”
“He thinks the dark is mercy.”
Amelia stared at him. The phrase I got handed a syndicate rang in her skull again – so casual, so impossible, so incomplete. A grenade tossed into her lap with no explanation of the blast radius.
“And you,” she said quietly, “are standing in the light with him.”
Aiden’s throat bobbed. “I didn’t ask for this.”
“But you want it,” Amelia said, and there was no accusation in it, only a terrible clarity. “You want to be his second hand. You want to be…in. That’s why you were speaking Japanese.”
Aiden’s eyes flickered, guilt and determination tangled together. “He’s my best friend.”
Amelia’s jaw tightened. “And I’m your sister.”
“Yes.”
Amelia leaned back slightly, as if she needed physical distance to keep from doing something regrettable. “So what was the call,” she asked, slow and sharp. “What were you trying to find?”
Aiden hesitated again, then tried to soften it with a half-joke that landed dead on arrival. “A restaurant.”
Amelia didn’t blink. “A restaurant.”
Aiden’s shoulders sank. “A place in Queens. Could be nothing. Could be…could be a location people move through. We don’t know. The guy said it might be a hideout. Might. That’s the key word here.”
Amelia’s eyes narrowed. “A hideout for what?”
Aiden’s mouth tightened. He looked like he was choosing between two terrible options: telling her too much, or telling her nothing and watching her walk away from him. He chose the only thing he could. “A threat,” he said.
Amelia’s voice turned colder. “A threat to who?”
Aiden met her eyes. “To you.”
The words landed like a slap. Amelia’s chest rose and fell once, controlled. She did not cry. She did not break. She simply looked at her brother with a steadiness that felt older than both of them. “You’re telling me I’m in danger,” she said softly, “and you’re still refusing to tell me what any of this means.”
Aiden’s voice cracked slightly. “Because the moment you know what it is, you’ll try to help. You’ll try to go with him. You’ll try to carry it. And he…he doesn’t want that. He doesn’t want you in it at all. He doesn’t want me. He doesn’t want his friends, his family – anyone. He wants it cut clean.”
Amelia’s eyes flashed. “Like Kei.”
Aiden went still. Amelia didn’t even need confirmation. She saw it in his face, the way that name changed the air. The way Aiden’s gaze flicked, involuntarily, to the front door, to the locks, as if checking them without admitting it.
She inhaled, slow.
“So,” Amelia said, voice almost calm, “he heard me say I wouldn’t live ignorant. And he decided the solution was…silence. Because he thinks he can’t tell me. And he thinks he can’t let me stay if I don’t know.”
Aiden’s eyes looked pained. “Amelia…”
“He chose,” she finished, flatly. “He chose keeping me ignorant.”
“He chose keeping you alive.”
Amelia’s jaw clenched hard enough to ache.
For a moment the kitchen was too quiet. The refrigerator hummed. Outside, a car horn barked once, impatient, then faded. The sun on the counter looked too clean for this conversation, too ordinary. Amelia stared at her brother, the only brother who used to cover for her when she was a kid, who used to pull her out of trouble and lie to their parents with a straight face and then make her laugh afterward. The brother who now knew things he wouldn’t tell her because another man had asked him not to.
“You understand what you’ve done to me,” she said quietly.
Aiden’s throat tightened. “I never wanted–”
“You’ve put me in a position,” Amelia continued, calm and lethal, “where the men in my life decide what I’m allowed to know. And you’re helping them.”
Aiden looked like he’d been punched.
Amelia’s gaze didn’t soften. “I’m walking into SCW alone. Twisted Sister. A qualifier. A company that last watched Frankie Holliday dismantle me and decided I wasn’t worth remembering. And I’m doing it while the person who is supposed to be my home won’t even speak to me.”
Aiden’s voice cracked. “He loves you.”
“I know,” Amelia said. “That’s the problem. He loves me like I’m a thing he can lock away and protect.”
Aiden started to speak. Amelia raised a hand – small, contained, final. “Don’t,” she said. “Don’t make it sweet. Don’t make it noble. It’s not noble to keep someone in the dark. It’s just…control with a prettier name.”
Aiden’s eyes were wet, but he didn’t let anything fall. He was her brother. He would rather die than cry in front of her. “What do you want from me?”
Amelia’s voice stayed steady. “I want you to remember,” she said, “that you don’t get to be his second hand if it means you stop being my brother.”
Aiden flinched, like the truth had found a clean place to land. Amelia stepped closer again – close enough to reach out if she wanted. Close enough that the threat of another nipple-twist hovered in the air like a promise.
“You tell him one thing,” she said.
Aiden swallowed. “What?”
Amelia’s eyes held his, unblinking.
“You tell him that silence is not a solution,” she said quietly. “You tell him that if he’s going to cut me out of my own life, he should at least have the spine to say it to my face.”
Aiden’s jaw tightened. “That’s going to make him move.”
Amelia’s voice didn’t waver. “Good.”
Aiden stared at her a long time, then nodded once, slow. “Okay.”
Amelia exhaled through her nose. Controlled, almost calm. Then she reached for her phone, not because she expected a message, but because holding it gave her hands something to do besides shake. Her screen stayed silent.And in the quiet that followed, Amelia understood something with brutal clarity…whatever Dickie had stepped into, it was big enough that it had swallowed her brother, too.
She looked up at Aiden, and her voice was low, final. “If I have to twist your nipple again to get the truth,” she said, “I will.”
Aiden let out a pained laugh that sounded more like a surrender. “You’re an actual criminal.”
Amelia’s expression didn’t change. “No,” she said softly. “I’m just tired of being treated like one.”
★★★★★★★
Twisted Sister.
Two words that read like a joke until you realise they’re not branding. They’re a warning.
Because this isn’t one of those matches where I get to pretend we’re both here for sport and stories and the purity of competition. You don’t operate on that frequency. You don’t arrive with a game plan, you arrive with an impulse. You don’t look for openings, you look for damage. And you don’t “win” so much as you survive long enough for someone to call it in your favour.
I’ve seen your work.
I’ve seen the hair, the chains, the neon chaos. I’ve seen the way you turn a ring into a kennel and your opponent into something you drag around by the scruff of their neck. I’ve seen the pattern: you brawl until someone snaps, you pull hair until someone swings back, you choke until a referee has to make a choice. And when the bell doesn’t go your way, you make it irrelevant. You turn disqualification into a strategy and fines into a receipt. You treat consequence like it’s part of the entrance music.
And the thing is… none of that shocks me. Not anymore.
Because SCW is not the place where you get a gentle climb up a ladder. SCW is the place where you are tested for how badly you want to be here. It is a company that will let you bleed out in silence if you aren’t shiny enough. It will watch you lose and then measure your worth by how quickly you disappear afterward.
I disappeared.
I’m not proud of that, but I’m not going to lie about it either. Frankie Holliday beat me badly enough that I stopped showing my face because I didn’t know what version of me would walk back through those doors. The confident one who believes she belongs here? Or the one who gets quiet and lets the machine decide she’s easier to forget.
And then this tournament happened.
The Road To Blaze Of Glory XV, the Bombshell Internet Qualifiers… all these little doors opening, one after another, and you can either walk through them or stand in the hallway and tell yourself you’ll try next time. And I’m tired of being the woman who “could have been,” the woman who “had potential,” the woman who “just needed one more moment.”
This is the last qualifier. The last door. The last chance to take control of my own trajectory before the bracket becomes someone else’s story and I’m just a footnote watching it happen. And standing in that doorway is you, like a nightmare made real, like the kind of match that was supposed to light the fuse two weeks ago and finally detonates tonight.
Couldn’t have landed at a worse time, could it?
Because here’s what’s true. I’m walking into this with my life stretched thin. My brother isn’t in SCW anymore. The people I used to lean on aren’t standing beside me the way they were. I’m still sleeping in a guest room that isn’t mine, surrounded by someone else’s family life, trying to act like I’m not homesick for a person who won’t speak to me.
I won at NYWA. I retained the Gotham Crown. I did the work. I carried the responsibility and I proved I’m still dangerous. And it felt hollow anyway.
Because when you’re missing your person, victories don’t land the same. They don’t echo. They don’t fill you up. They just sit there like a fact, heavy and incomplete.
So yes, you caught me at a worse time. But you also caught me at a clearer time.
Because I’m not coming into this match with illusions. I’m not coming in thinking I can out-wrestle you with technique you don’t respect. I’m not coming in thinking you’ll suddenly decide to be civil because the bracket says “tournament” and not “street fight.”
You are a brawler. A wrecking ball in boots. A loud, chaotic, power-forward piece of violence that pretends to be entertainment. The Omega Driver isn’t a finisher, it’s a statement. The Rubik’s Cube isn’t a clever name, it’s a reminder that you like to compress people until they stop making sense.
I understand exactly who you are.
And you should understand exactly who I am.
I’m not built for chaos, but I’m not fragile either. I’m the woman who keeps showing up even when the room decides she’s easier to ignore. I’m the woman who doesn’t get to hide behind a tag partner or a brother or anyone else’s shadow right now. I’m the one who has to walk into SCW and make people remember I exist.
And I’m Australian, Twisted Sister – meaning I was raised with a particular kind of practicality about threats. Spiders and snakes, ya know? When something dangerous is in your path, you don’t talk it down. You don’t moralise it. You don’t bargain with it like it has a conscience.
You plan. You brace. You adapt.
And you handle it.
You want to turn this qualifier into your personal dollhouse…that’s what the tagline said. You wanna drag me around by the hair, smash me into walls, make me snap so you can point and laugh and call it “fun.” You want to make me a highlight reel for the wrong reasons. You want to make the last qualifier about you.
But this isn’t about you.
This is about the bracket.
This is about the climb.
This is about the fact that if I beat you, I am not just “back.” I’m positioned.
Because if I get through you, and then I get through the rest…that is the opening. That is the hinge point. That is the moment where SCW has to stop treating me like an optional part of the women’s division and start treating me like a contender who is willing to walk through fire for relevance.
You don’t have to like that. You don’t have to respect it. You just have to live with it.
Here’s what you need to understand…your biggest weapon is that you make matches ugly. You make them lawless. You make them emotionally exhausting. You make your opponents spend energy just trying to stay upright, trying to stay sane, trying to keep their own hands clean while you claw at their face and laugh.
You’re counting on me to flinch. You’re counting on me to get frustrated. You’re counting on me to lose my patience and give you the disqualification you’re so comfortable living in.
That’s where you’ve got it wrong. I don’t need this to be pretty. I don’t need this to be respected by purists. I need this to be won.
I need the qualifier. I need the bracket. I need the next match. I need the chance to stand across from Victoria Lyons and look her in the eye and tell her, with my body and my work, that I did not crawl my way back into SCW to be small again. So if you want to brawl, we brawl. If you want to swing, we swing. If you want to test how much pain I can take, I promise you – pain has never been the thing that stops me.
What stops people like you is control.
Not the kind you think you have when you’re screaming and thrashing and being dragged down the ramp in a straight jacket like it makes you untouchable. Real control. Control is knowing what you’re trying to accomplish and refusing to be baited into anything that doesn’t serve that goal.
Control is not getting hypnotised by your chaos. Control is letting you spend all your fuel trying to make a spectacle while I spend mine doing the only thing that matters: staying intact long enough to beat you.
Because I’m not fighting you for fun. I’m not fighting you to prove I’m brave.
I’m fighting you because this is the last door, and I’m done standing in hallways. Sunday, you can scream. You can thrash. You can swing wild and drag this match into the gutter if that’s where you feel most at home. But understand this…
I’m not here to survive you.
I’m here to pass through you.
And when that bell rings, the bracket doesn’t care how loud you are. The bracket only cares who advances. So go on, Twisted Sister. Make it ugly. I’ve got a qualifier to take, a path to climb, and a date with Victoria Lyons that I intend to earn.
And if SCW wants to know whether Amelia Reynolds can get back up to the top, this is where I start reminding them.
