Post by Brytain Montgomery on Jul 31, 2013 22:59:48 GMT -5
It felt like an hour, but I knew it was only fifteen or twenty minutes before Kai pushed through the front door. I was slumped down on the couch, staring blankly down at the note crumbled up in my fist.
Kai glanced around, his keen eyes searching for anything out of place, before they settled on me. “What happened?”
I shrugged absently, the only sign that I’d heard him. My heart had finally stopped hammering in my chest and as the adrenaline ebbed all I felt was a shaky, emptiness. A feeling that left me feeling weak and off kilter. The panic that had bubbled up in my chest when I realized that I had come home to an empty house. That Syn was nowhere. The note he’d left was currently balled up in my fist.
“Came home... he wasn’t here...” I mumbled blankly, holding out the note to Kai.
He plucked the paper from between my fingers and scanned it, a deep frown creasing his face. “Any forced entry or anything out of place..?”
I shook my head, “No...” I said quietly, fighting back the worry and sadness threatening to creep into my voice. “He left... on his own.”
After a moment, Kai growled, “Come on.”
I glanced up, letting that familiar blank mask slip into place to hide the warring emotions that were tugging at my insides. He’d left without saying anything to me, knowing that I’d worry. But he wouldn’t have told me where he was going if he hadn’t wanted me to find him.
Reluctantly, I stood up and slid on a the plain, black hoodie that I’d left in a crumpled ball on the couch when I got home. Flipping the hood over my pink hair, I finally met Kai’s keyes. “Fine.”
Stepping into the mid-summer Philly night, I climbed into the passenger seat of Kai’s car and as usual, ignored the seat belt entirely. “Give me the directions,” he said, handing Syn’s note back to me, “And I’ll drive.”
I let myself slump down in the seat as I read him off the directions. My voice sounded flat and monotone even to me. I didn’t know where we were going. I’d lived in Philly almost exclusively since Syn and I had been together but between PDW shows and flying all over the country for PCW shows... I hadn’t really explored all of the city. Nor had I wanted to. Philly had never been on my list of places I wanted to live but PDW had been based out of Philly and Syn had owned a house here. The only thing that truly held me to Philly, that made me adore the city, was that it was where I’d fallen in love with the man who would become my everything.
I leaned my head back against the seat, staring absently out the window as my mind ran through everything. All of the moments in the last almost five months that had turned my life inside out. In good ways and in bad.
I barely noticed when Kai eased the car to a stop in a narrow, dirty alleyway somewhere in the belly of Philadelphia. He cleared his throat and I glanced up, my eyes focusing on our surroundings for the first time. We were in the heart of an old warehouse district but most of the buildings were in disrepair, no longer used for their intended purpose. Abandoned, rusted out odes to a failed industrial revolution.
Kai stared up at the building looming in front of us. “...New base of operations...” he muttered.
I stared at the building, worrying my bottom lip between my teeth. Suddenly, Kai’s head jerked to stare at a point just behind my shoulder, his eyes detecting movement that I hadn’t yet noticed. “...Of course,” he said, “They’re involved.”
I didn’t have to ask who was involved. That much, knowing Syn, was a given. I could feel all of the blood draining from my face as my hands unconsciously tightened around the note; the force of it nearly split open the barely healed lacerations criss-crossing the knuckles on my right hand.
The one thing that I feared, was of course the one thing that Syn surrounded himself with. Clowns. His clowns, he’d sworn, would never hurt me. They were under his control, completely. That didn’t stop the sudden, irrational shot of panic that blossomed in my chest and spread like a disease through my body.
One of them, his face obscured by the omnipresent clown mask, slowly moved along the side of the car. He stared down into the car, his eyes dark pools behind the stark white of the mask and gestured for us to follow him.
“....Suppose Lin wants us to go with him,” Kai said. I opened my mouth to respond, but at that moment I didn’t trust my own voice. The panic had set in and hummed through my body like electricity. That ingrained fight or flight response, begging me to come out of the car swinging or better yet, run and never look back.
Instead, I nodded weakly and reluctantly swung the car door open and stepped into the night air. I could feel Lin’s eyes on me and I remembered what Syn had said. They knew I was afraid of them. Like dogs, they could sense my fear. They could see it in the tight way I held my body, maybe even the panic that shone through my eyes. I struggled to control my gasping, shallow breaths. To force my breathing and my heart rate back into something resembling normal.
I forced myself to walk forward, to follow this thing into the gaping, black mouth of the warehouse. I could feel Kai at my back and heard him murmur, “They won’t harm you. They are under his control, remember?”
I scowled slightly, my hands still trembling. I remembered. But still, the knowledge that Syn controlled these things did nothing to calm my racing heart. “Doesn’t... help...” I managed to grit out through clenched teeth.
As our eyes adjusted to the dim light, Kai glanced up stoically; his expression never once changed even as he took in the several dozen “clowns” on the upper levels of the warehouse. They stood like silent sentinels, watching our progress. “Be. Calm,” he said, firmly. “You’re afraid of something that you need not be afraid of.”
“I’m... trying...” I hissed, my teeth clenched so tightly that it felt as though they might shatter. If my love for Syn had ever been in question, I was proving it right now. That my worry for him outweighed my fear of these things... that I could stand here now, under the scrutiny of their glowing eyes just to get to him.
Kai drew a breath as though he were going to say something else but stopped when he noticed Lin had paused in front of a room, the rusted metal door firmly shut. If I could have seen his expression beneath the mask I might have thought that he was looking at us curiously.
I had to walk past him to get through the door, my heart hammering inside of my ribcage. I struggled to tamp down the fear, to shove it somewhere deep inside of myself but it was impossible. It roared to the surface each and every time. With shaking hands, I pushed the door open and slowly stepped inside.
It was darker in here than any other part of the warehouse and as my eyes adjusted for the second time, I could see him. The room was expansive but my eyes focused only on Syn, laying on the floor. His eyes were shut and he was bruised and bloody; I hissed under my breath as I rushed into the room, my fear forgotten. My knees hit the concrete, hard, as I dropped down next to him. “Oh, fuck...” I muttered under my breath, as my hands immediately went to this throat, two fingers pressing and searching for a pulse. I couldn’t breath again until I’d found it.
I barely noticed that Kai had stepped into the room with me until I heard him growl, “He was training...” he said, taking in the room that I had barely spared a second glance. “And he asked them not to hold back...”
I swallowed down my panic as I tried to keep my hands gentle as I checked on his injuries, “Why...” I muttered, “Why would he do that..?”
Kai’s eyes found mine in the darkness. “...Because he knows it won’t be long before he is needed. Injured or not.”
“Right.”
“Putting up a barrier to hide your feelings won’t stop it,” Kai said, “You knew this was coming since he was conscious.”
I scowled, trying to force that blank mask back into place. “Knowing it and seeing it... are two very different things...”
Kai leaned back against the wall but even I could see that he was struggling to stay calm. “Indeed it is...” he muttered.
A well of emotions bubbled up inside of me as I slowly pulled Syn’s limp body into my lap, stroking his hair back from his face as I tried to shove them back. I didn’t have the time to sort and identify them, so I disregarded them. Or tried to. “Fuck...” I growled, my jaw aching from the clench of my teeth. “...this. Fuck all of this...”
Anger bubbled up, stronger than the rest, and settled there. Settled around my pounding heart and my lungs that forced each other ragged breath. Settled and stayed. “And I’m the one who has to choose...” I muttered, thinking back to Syn’s words to me just a few days ago. That this “path” that I was choosing, in his words, would cost me him. Would cost me everything. “I’m the one who’s losing myself,” I growled darkly. “And yet, he’s doing... this... to himself. Fuck it.”
Kai’s voice was soft when he answered me and with a jolt I realized I’d almost forgotten that he was there. “There’s a difference. However hypocritical it is, he made his choice long ago. You have to make yours now.”
I glanced down at Syn, his face pale and blood pooled in the corner of his mouth. I brushed it away with the pad of my thumb, my hands gentle even if my emotions were not. “Some choice...” I hissed. “Stay and maybe watch the man I love die... again... maybe for good this time... or watch him walk away from me and for what?! For. Fucking. What.”
“Nothing is without sacrifice,” Kai said softly, and I knew instinctively that he was reciting Syn’s words back to me. “Dying is never an option in this.”
I rolled my eyes, my lips pulling back into a snarl even as my hand continued to gently run through Syn’s hair. “Why should I have to choose?” I demanded, my eyes flicking down to Syn’s pale, bruised face. “How goddamn hypocritical is it that he would even ask me to choose? After everything that he’s done... everything that he’s done that I don’t know about and probably never will... he’s going to ask me to choose between fighting back when someone like Smith Jones is trying to put my back against the wall? To force me to play his game? To choose between that and what we have together?!”
I shook my head to try to clear my thoughts but they were all coming in a rush of wordless emotion. “Because he chose me when he stepped in the ring at Slamathon, right? He chose our life together when he walked out there knowing that he could fucking die...” I snarled, the sarcasm threading through every word I spat. “So why should I choose him now?”
“Because,” Kai began, calmly. “Because you know deep down he loves you as much as you love him... despite what you’ve said today. You know he will likely take some things with him to the grave rather than relive them... but he loves you.”
I shrugged weakly and looked away.
Kai studied me for a moment, then almost reluctantly, he said. “Brytain, if he didn’t... he would not have killed in a moment of sorrow, grief and rage when he heard what happened to you... or been so protective while you were in the hospital.”
I glanced up at him, my mind processing this new information. I could remember that Syn had been covered in dried blood when I’d woken up but when I questioned him about it, he’d been evasive. Only told me that it wasn’t mine or his. When I’d asked Kai about it earlier, he’d been similarly evasive.
I remembered Tris telling me later that
“He was covered in blood your entire stay because he refused to leave to clean himself up,” Kai continued softly. “And none of it was yours and his. When he arrived... he looked gone, Brytain. He looked too far gone...”
“Gone?”
Kai nodded. “Gone. He was far beyond repair... only you living brought him back.”
For the first time in a while, I dropped my head to stare down at Syn, softly brushing the hair off of his forehead. “You said he’d be okay...” I said quietly. Things were still fuzzy, out of focus... especially when it came to that night... but I could remember Kai and I in my locker room. I’d asked him to tell me that Syn would be okay if the worst happened and he’d promised me that he would be.
“And there you have it,” Kai said, staring down at the two of them, “The one time in the last decade that I have not told the truth. I lied and he was broken...”
I sighed softly, staring down at the familiar face of the man who could stir up so many conflicting emotions in me: anger, resentment, happiness, love. “Will you help me get him home?” I asked, quietly.
Kai easily lifted Syn, throwing him over one shoulder as I followed him back through the warehouse, determinedly not looking anywhere else but at the two of them.
“...Are you angry?” Kai asked me finally, as he situated Syn into the backseat and I climbed into the passenger seat, shutting the door firmly.
“What do you think?” I muttered, staring down at my hands. I hadn’t realized that I’d been clinching my hands into fists so tightly that I’d left little half-moon cuts on the palms of my hands. The inside of my lip was bitten bloody. I sighed.
“If I knew that I wouldn’t have asked,” he said, slipping into the driver’s seat and turning the car on. “But if I had to guess... you’re lost.”
“You’re not wrong,” I said, some of the bitterness I was feeling creeping into my voice.
“You’ll get a bone tossed to you in all of this...” Kai said softly after a few silent moments. “Believe it or not.”
I laughed mirthlessly, “Oh yeah?” I said, and my voice sounded like something poisonous. “What’s that?”
“If you were going to lose him, you would have. In the last month and a half... the both of you have come so very close to dying. Too close. If you were meant to be apart... wouldn’t one of you have...?”
I sighed. In some ways maybe he was right but in others... “And if we were meant to be together... wouldn’t this be a little easier..?” I retorted bitterly.
Kai glanced away from the road, his eyes settling on my face. “And if it were easy, it wouldn’t be worth how desperately you both fight to keep it, would it?”
I shrugged, my eyes closing on their own as I sank back into the cool leather of the car seats. “Guess not...” I muttered. Suddenly, exhaustion was creeping up on me. Everything... the past few weeks... the past few months, even... was suddenly pressing down on me. Heavy, like a winter blanket.
“I only say this...” Kai said softly, “Because I see you as somewhat of a sister.... but when you’ve both done all that has to be done, and when you find your path and he can put his behind him... it will all be worth it.”
“Maybe...” was all I could manage, as I let my eyes close in exhaustion.
xxx
I jammed the key into the lock and twisted hard, meeting with some resistance before it finally twisted open and I could push inside. Scar’s carrier banged against my thigh as I stepped into a place that was still very much like stepping into a time capsule. A former life, preserved like Snow White in her glass coffin. The remains of the person I had once been.
I’d left for Boston after a fitful night’s sleep and with my heavy foot, the drive from Philadelphia had been nearly cut in half. Guilt pulled at me but I brushed it away. I should have waited for Syn to wake up, maybe. Told him where I was going instead of leaving a rushed note.
But then, all I’d gotten from him the night before was a note and an empty house, and that petty little resentment was enough to keep me from slipping the guilt on like a familiar sweater.
I kicked the door shut behind me and knelt down in front of Scar’s carrier, unzipping it and letting him out. He slinked out, blinking curiously at his new surroundings. “I know,” I murmured softly when he turned his brilliant green eyes on me and regarded me curiously. It was strange for him to be away from Mittens and Mooshka, and of course Syn.
It was strange for me, too.
The last time I had been in the apartment had been months ago. I’d be cleaning it out to get rid of it but I hadn’t gotten very far. The memories that had crashed down on me had kept me from finishing more than a few boxes before I’d escaped back to Philadelphia.
It was a place that very few people knew about. Jordy, Trickee and Syn. The three people closest to me and the only three who knew I’d kept this place. I jugged the bags of groceries with Scar twisting between my feet as I wandered into the tiny galley kitchen. The fridge was, of course, empty as I shoved the few things I’d picked up at the market on the corner onto it’s shelves.
My hands shook slightly as I folded up the paper bags and tossed them in the trash. I dug into my bag and pulled out the nondescript, orange bottle. No label, but then, I didn’t need one to know what the pills clinking together inside of it were.
Sighing, I slumped down at the tiny kitchen table and unscrewed the lid, pulling two of the oxycontin out and weighing them on my palm. I was here for two reasons... the first, I needed time to think. Time to consider the ultimatum that Syn had put to me. The second reason was a little more complicated.
I kept the second reason close. Like the apartment in Boston, there were only three people who knew. I stared down hard at the small white pills before I slowly let them slip back into the bottle. I had a choice to make here too. Give in to the addiction that had taken root during those two years in Seattle or ride out the detox. In a moment of weakness, I’d called my old supplier and in less than an hour, I’d been tucking the bottle of oxy into my bag. But I still had the choice to take them. To stave off the hard come down.
I sighed and let the pills slip back into the bottle, closing the lid tightly. I hadn’t been in this position in a very long time but the morphine in the hospital and the vicodin afterwards... it was like something hungry and desperate had woken up inside of me.
I shoved the bottle away from me and made my way slowly into the living room. Scar looked between me and the bottle as I slumped down on the couch and I watched him curiously. Sometimes, I could swear that the cat was almost human in his reactions.
As I sank down into the worn cushions, my body twinged and ached fiercely. My fingers brushed gently over the ragged, torn skin of my throat as I pulled my laptop from the bag and booted it up.
As the doctor had promised, the holes that the concussion had left in my memory were slowly fading... although the night of my barbed wire massacre match against Zack Lifer was still an inky, black void in my memory. I couldn’t remember anything, although the doctor had said that it wasn’t unusual for memories of the trauma not to come back. My conversations with Kai had put some of it into perspective, but I still needed something. I needed to see it.
Another reason that I had come to Boston. I knew Michael well enough to know that he’d watched the match on TV live... I knew it because I would have done the same thing. I wouldn’t make him relive it by watching it with me.
But I needed to see it.
Scar climbed up to take his familiar spot, curled around my neck with his face buried in my hair, as I slid my laptop onto my lap and cued up the video I’d loaded onto it before I left home.
There it was, the match that had nearly taken my life in all of it’s bloody glory. The moment when everything had begun to go downhill. Zack Lifer bringing that barbed wire wrapped chair down across my skull. I could see my eyes blur out of focus as I’d unsteadily gone down to my knees. He’d unwrapped a length of the barbed wire from it and had wrapped it around my throat twice, pulling it tightly. The razor wire bit into the skin, gushing blood almost immediately as he used it to garrote me.
I winced as I realized that I was absently pressing my fingers to the wound, almost as though I could stop the flow of blood happening on the screen of my laptop. Kai had told me that the blood loss had almost killed me and this must have been why.
The wire had embedded into the skin of my throat, slick and slippery with my pouring blood and I remembered that Kai had said they’d had to cut it out of the delicate skin of my throat. I watched as I stumbled through the rest of the match, still standing but just barely, as I’d wrapped a piece of the wire around my own fist and used it to take my pound of flesh from Zack Lifer.
Between the blood loss and the hard shot to the skull, I’d barely been able to make it to the top rope. Somehow, I’d regained the upper hand and I was going for the kill shot, so to speak. The Thrillkiller.
In mid-air, Zack Lifer and I collided as he’d attempted to counter with his own finisher, the Forced Suicide. With an audible crack, his knee connected with my temple. I was unconscious before I hit the ground.
I realized I was chewing on my bottom lip as the video ended. All of the pieces were in place now... but I still hadn’t even begun to sort through my feelings about this near brush with death.
I had been pretending as though it hadn’t affected me. Brushing it off as something less than what it was because I’d needed to to keep going. I don’t know what reaction I’d expected from Michael but I knew now that it was worse than I’d imagined. Kai had told me everything and Tris had filled in some more of the blanks for me on the phone this morning.
The only words he’d spoken once he’d burst into my room, had been begging me to wake up. To come back for him. He hadn’t let anyone else into the room, except begrudgingly the nurses who came to check my vitals. He’d sat next to my bedside, my hand limp in his, guarding me like the lion I fondly teased him for being.
I sighed, standing up and snatching the bottle of pills from the kitchen counter. Before I could question my decision, I flushed them. Stripping down into nothing but my panties and a tank top, I set up my makeshift bed on the couch. A couple blankets and some bottles of gatorade within arms reach.
I was going to ride this out. I didn’t know what path I would end up on and what it would cost me, but I knew that this... falling back into the addiction... wasn’t the path.
xxx
I was pale but my blue eyes burned with the kind of determination that I hadn’t felt in a longer than I cared to admit. I knew what I was doing... I knew where I was going. We were playing a game, sure, but it was my game now and maybe it had always been. Whether I’d realized it or not.
“I guess you could say I have a lot of anger to work out... these past few weeks, I almost lost the man I love. I almost died. I’ve been hunted, I’ve been taunted and I’ve been pushed into a corner by a has-been trying to make himself relevant again on my name and my championship. I guess I should start by telling you a story, Smith. Once upon a time, there was another man much like you who thought that the world should be laid open at his feet. His for the taking. This man thought that he could gain something by backing me into a corner, trying to force me into playing his game.
Right now? That motherfucker is nothing but ash in the wind.
You’ve backed me into a corner, Smith, by trapping me in the system with your pathetic attempt to show the world that you’re more than just a former Broadcast Champion. I gave you an opportunity to make the right choice, the choice that would save her from me. You failed. Once again, you made the wrong choice and Saturday she will pay for your sins.
We aren’t playing your game anymore, Smithy. We’re playing mine and it has only one outcome. Do unto others as has been done unto you.
But you’re not my immediate obstacle, Smith. On Saturday, you’ll watch me do what you failed to do. You’ll watch me beat Jerry Matthews.
Matthews, here to rid the world of the godless heathens. A holy scourge to wipe the slate clean. Fortunately, not all of us are tethered to the pathetic idea of a merciful, merciless god silently judging us from on high.
You’re nothing but a slave, Jerry. A slave to a god who, if he does in fact exist, doesn’t give a shit. You are a man so tied up in this idea of being a righteous broadsword for a ridiculous concept. And that’s all that god truly is, isn’t it? A concept. A concept thought up by men who couldn’t be trusted to do the right thing without the threat of hellfire and damnation nipping at their heels.
You remind me of someone, Jerry. Someone else who believes he’s one of the white hats, a true force of good, never realizing how misguided he is. How wrong. You remind me of Zack Lifer. I’m sure you know that name, after all.”
I shook my head, “But actions are more important than words, aren’t they? What will they say of me when I bring down the man who is god’s last defense against a godless world. Will they say that I have brought down god himself?”
Kai glanced around, his keen eyes searching for anything out of place, before they settled on me. “What happened?”
I shrugged absently, the only sign that I’d heard him. My heart had finally stopped hammering in my chest and as the adrenaline ebbed all I felt was a shaky, emptiness. A feeling that left me feeling weak and off kilter. The panic that had bubbled up in my chest when I realized that I had come home to an empty house. That Syn was nowhere. The note he’d left was currently balled up in my fist.
“Came home... he wasn’t here...” I mumbled blankly, holding out the note to Kai.
He plucked the paper from between my fingers and scanned it, a deep frown creasing his face. “Any forced entry or anything out of place..?”
I shook my head, “No...” I said quietly, fighting back the worry and sadness threatening to creep into my voice. “He left... on his own.”
After a moment, Kai growled, “Come on.”
I glanced up, letting that familiar blank mask slip into place to hide the warring emotions that were tugging at my insides. He’d left without saying anything to me, knowing that I’d worry. But he wouldn’t have told me where he was going if he hadn’t wanted me to find him.
Reluctantly, I stood up and slid on a the plain, black hoodie that I’d left in a crumpled ball on the couch when I got home. Flipping the hood over my pink hair, I finally met Kai’s keyes. “Fine.”
Stepping into the mid-summer Philly night, I climbed into the passenger seat of Kai’s car and as usual, ignored the seat belt entirely. “Give me the directions,” he said, handing Syn’s note back to me, “And I’ll drive.”
I let myself slump down in the seat as I read him off the directions. My voice sounded flat and monotone even to me. I didn’t know where we were going. I’d lived in Philly almost exclusively since Syn and I had been together but between PDW shows and flying all over the country for PCW shows... I hadn’t really explored all of the city. Nor had I wanted to. Philly had never been on my list of places I wanted to live but PDW had been based out of Philly and Syn had owned a house here. The only thing that truly held me to Philly, that made me adore the city, was that it was where I’d fallen in love with the man who would become my everything.
I leaned my head back against the seat, staring absently out the window as my mind ran through everything. All of the moments in the last almost five months that had turned my life inside out. In good ways and in bad.
I barely noticed when Kai eased the car to a stop in a narrow, dirty alleyway somewhere in the belly of Philadelphia. He cleared his throat and I glanced up, my eyes focusing on our surroundings for the first time. We were in the heart of an old warehouse district but most of the buildings were in disrepair, no longer used for their intended purpose. Abandoned, rusted out odes to a failed industrial revolution.
Kai stared up at the building looming in front of us. “...New base of operations...” he muttered.
I stared at the building, worrying my bottom lip between my teeth. Suddenly, Kai’s head jerked to stare at a point just behind my shoulder, his eyes detecting movement that I hadn’t yet noticed. “...Of course,” he said, “They’re involved.”
I didn’t have to ask who was involved. That much, knowing Syn, was a given. I could feel all of the blood draining from my face as my hands unconsciously tightened around the note; the force of it nearly split open the barely healed lacerations criss-crossing the knuckles on my right hand.
The one thing that I feared, was of course the one thing that Syn surrounded himself with. Clowns. His clowns, he’d sworn, would never hurt me. They were under his control, completely. That didn’t stop the sudden, irrational shot of panic that blossomed in my chest and spread like a disease through my body.
One of them, his face obscured by the omnipresent clown mask, slowly moved along the side of the car. He stared down into the car, his eyes dark pools behind the stark white of the mask and gestured for us to follow him.
“....Suppose Lin wants us to go with him,” Kai said. I opened my mouth to respond, but at that moment I didn’t trust my own voice. The panic had set in and hummed through my body like electricity. That ingrained fight or flight response, begging me to come out of the car swinging or better yet, run and never look back.
Instead, I nodded weakly and reluctantly swung the car door open and stepped into the night air. I could feel Lin’s eyes on me and I remembered what Syn had said. They knew I was afraid of them. Like dogs, they could sense my fear. They could see it in the tight way I held my body, maybe even the panic that shone through my eyes. I struggled to control my gasping, shallow breaths. To force my breathing and my heart rate back into something resembling normal.
I forced myself to walk forward, to follow this thing into the gaping, black mouth of the warehouse. I could feel Kai at my back and heard him murmur, “They won’t harm you. They are under his control, remember?”
I scowled slightly, my hands still trembling. I remembered. But still, the knowledge that Syn controlled these things did nothing to calm my racing heart. “Doesn’t... help...” I managed to grit out through clenched teeth.
As our eyes adjusted to the dim light, Kai glanced up stoically; his expression never once changed even as he took in the several dozen “clowns” on the upper levels of the warehouse. They stood like silent sentinels, watching our progress. “Be. Calm,” he said, firmly. “You’re afraid of something that you need not be afraid of.”
“I’m... trying...” I hissed, my teeth clenched so tightly that it felt as though they might shatter. If my love for Syn had ever been in question, I was proving it right now. That my worry for him outweighed my fear of these things... that I could stand here now, under the scrutiny of their glowing eyes just to get to him.
Kai drew a breath as though he were going to say something else but stopped when he noticed Lin had paused in front of a room, the rusted metal door firmly shut. If I could have seen his expression beneath the mask I might have thought that he was looking at us curiously.
I had to walk past him to get through the door, my heart hammering inside of my ribcage. I struggled to tamp down the fear, to shove it somewhere deep inside of myself but it was impossible. It roared to the surface each and every time. With shaking hands, I pushed the door open and slowly stepped inside.
It was darker in here than any other part of the warehouse and as my eyes adjusted for the second time, I could see him. The room was expansive but my eyes focused only on Syn, laying on the floor. His eyes were shut and he was bruised and bloody; I hissed under my breath as I rushed into the room, my fear forgotten. My knees hit the concrete, hard, as I dropped down next to him. “Oh, fuck...” I muttered under my breath, as my hands immediately went to this throat, two fingers pressing and searching for a pulse. I couldn’t breath again until I’d found it.
I barely noticed that Kai had stepped into the room with me until I heard him growl, “He was training...” he said, taking in the room that I had barely spared a second glance. “And he asked them not to hold back...”
I swallowed down my panic as I tried to keep my hands gentle as I checked on his injuries, “Why...” I muttered, “Why would he do that..?”
Kai’s eyes found mine in the darkness. “...Because he knows it won’t be long before he is needed. Injured or not.”
“Right.”
“Putting up a barrier to hide your feelings won’t stop it,” Kai said, “You knew this was coming since he was conscious.”
I scowled, trying to force that blank mask back into place. “Knowing it and seeing it... are two very different things...”
Kai leaned back against the wall but even I could see that he was struggling to stay calm. “Indeed it is...” he muttered.
A well of emotions bubbled up inside of me as I slowly pulled Syn’s limp body into my lap, stroking his hair back from his face as I tried to shove them back. I didn’t have the time to sort and identify them, so I disregarded them. Or tried to. “Fuck...” I growled, my jaw aching from the clench of my teeth. “...this. Fuck all of this...”
Anger bubbled up, stronger than the rest, and settled there. Settled around my pounding heart and my lungs that forced each other ragged breath. Settled and stayed. “And I’m the one who has to choose...” I muttered, thinking back to Syn’s words to me just a few days ago. That this “path” that I was choosing, in his words, would cost me him. Would cost me everything. “I’m the one who’s losing myself,” I growled darkly. “And yet, he’s doing... this... to himself. Fuck it.”
Kai’s voice was soft when he answered me and with a jolt I realized I’d almost forgotten that he was there. “There’s a difference. However hypocritical it is, he made his choice long ago. You have to make yours now.”
I glanced down at Syn, his face pale and blood pooled in the corner of his mouth. I brushed it away with the pad of my thumb, my hands gentle even if my emotions were not. “Some choice...” I hissed. “Stay and maybe watch the man I love die... again... maybe for good this time... or watch him walk away from me and for what?! For. Fucking. What.”
“Nothing is without sacrifice,” Kai said softly, and I knew instinctively that he was reciting Syn’s words back to me. “Dying is never an option in this.”
I rolled my eyes, my lips pulling back into a snarl even as my hand continued to gently run through Syn’s hair. “Why should I have to choose?” I demanded, my eyes flicking down to Syn’s pale, bruised face. “How goddamn hypocritical is it that he would even ask me to choose? After everything that he’s done... everything that he’s done that I don’t know about and probably never will... he’s going to ask me to choose between fighting back when someone like Smith Jones is trying to put my back against the wall? To force me to play his game? To choose between that and what we have together?!”
I shook my head to try to clear my thoughts but they were all coming in a rush of wordless emotion. “Because he chose me when he stepped in the ring at Slamathon, right? He chose our life together when he walked out there knowing that he could fucking die...” I snarled, the sarcasm threading through every word I spat. “So why should I choose him now?”
“Because,” Kai began, calmly. “Because you know deep down he loves you as much as you love him... despite what you’ve said today. You know he will likely take some things with him to the grave rather than relive them... but he loves you.”
I shrugged weakly and looked away.
Kai studied me for a moment, then almost reluctantly, he said. “Brytain, if he didn’t... he would not have killed in a moment of sorrow, grief and rage when he heard what happened to you... or been so protective while you were in the hospital.”
I glanced up at him, my mind processing this new information. I could remember that Syn had been covered in dried blood when I’d woken up but when I questioned him about it, he’d been evasive. Only told me that it wasn’t mine or his. When I’d asked Kai about it earlier, he’d been similarly evasive.
I remembered Tris telling me later that
“He was covered in blood your entire stay because he refused to leave to clean himself up,” Kai continued softly. “And none of it was yours and his. When he arrived... he looked gone, Brytain. He looked too far gone...”
“Gone?”
Kai nodded. “Gone. He was far beyond repair... only you living brought him back.”
For the first time in a while, I dropped my head to stare down at Syn, softly brushing the hair off of his forehead. “You said he’d be okay...” I said quietly. Things were still fuzzy, out of focus... especially when it came to that night... but I could remember Kai and I in my locker room. I’d asked him to tell me that Syn would be okay if the worst happened and he’d promised me that he would be.
“And there you have it,” Kai said, staring down at the two of them, “The one time in the last decade that I have not told the truth. I lied and he was broken...”
I sighed softly, staring down at the familiar face of the man who could stir up so many conflicting emotions in me: anger, resentment, happiness, love. “Will you help me get him home?” I asked, quietly.
Kai easily lifted Syn, throwing him over one shoulder as I followed him back through the warehouse, determinedly not looking anywhere else but at the two of them.
“...Are you angry?” Kai asked me finally, as he situated Syn into the backseat and I climbed into the passenger seat, shutting the door firmly.
“What do you think?” I muttered, staring down at my hands. I hadn’t realized that I’d been clinching my hands into fists so tightly that I’d left little half-moon cuts on the palms of my hands. The inside of my lip was bitten bloody. I sighed.
“If I knew that I wouldn’t have asked,” he said, slipping into the driver’s seat and turning the car on. “But if I had to guess... you’re lost.”
“You’re not wrong,” I said, some of the bitterness I was feeling creeping into my voice.
“You’ll get a bone tossed to you in all of this...” Kai said softly after a few silent moments. “Believe it or not.”
I laughed mirthlessly, “Oh yeah?” I said, and my voice sounded like something poisonous. “What’s that?”
“If you were going to lose him, you would have. In the last month and a half... the both of you have come so very close to dying. Too close. If you were meant to be apart... wouldn’t one of you have...?”
I sighed. In some ways maybe he was right but in others... “And if we were meant to be together... wouldn’t this be a little easier..?” I retorted bitterly.
Kai glanced away from the road, his eyes settling on my face. “And if it were easy, it wouldn’t be worth how desperately you both fight to keep it, would it?”
I shrugged, my eyes closing on their own as I sank back into the cool leather of the car seats. “Guess not...” I muttered. Suddenly, exhaustion was creeping up on me. Everything... the past few weeks... the past few months, even... was suddenly pressing down on me. Heavy, like a winter blanket.
“I only say this...” Kai said softly, “Because I see you as somewhat of a sister.... but when you’ve both done all that has to be done, and when you find your path and he can put his behind him... it will all be worth it.”
“Maybe...” was all I could manage, as I let my eyes close in exhaustion.
xxx
I jammed the key into the lock and twisted hard, meeting with some resistance before it finally twisted open and I could push inside. Scar’s carrier banged against my thigh as I stepped into a place that was still very much like stepping into a time capsule. A former life, preserved like Snow White in her glass coffin. The remains of the person I had once been.
I’d left for Boston after a fitful night’s sleep and with my heavy foot, the drive from Philadelphia had been nearly cut in half. Guilt pulled at me but I brushed it away. I should have waited for Syn to wake up, maybe. Told him where I was going instead of leaving a rushed note.
But then, all I’d gotten from him the night before was a note and an empty house, and that petty little resentment was enough to keep me from slipping the guilt on like a familiar sweater.
I kicked the door shut behind me and knelt down in front of Scar’s carrier, unzipping it and letting him out. He slinked out, blinking curiously at his new surroundings. “I know,” I murmured softly when he turned his brilliant green eyes on me and regarded me curiously. It was strange for him to be away from Mittens and Mooshka, and of course Syn.
It was strange for me, too.
The last time I had been in the apartment had been months ago. I’d be cleaning it out to get rid of it but I hadn’t gotten very far. The memories that had crashed down on me had kept me from finishing more than a few boxes before I’d escaped back to Philadelphia.
It was a place that very few people knew about. Jordy, Trickee and Syn. The three people closest to me and the only three who knew I’d kept this place. I jugged the bags of groceries with Scar twisting between my feet as I wandered into the tiny galley kitchen. The fridge was, of course, empty as I shoved the few things I’d picked up at the market on the corner onto it’s shelves.
My hands shook slightly as I folded up the paper bags and tossed them in the trash. I dug into my bag and pulled out the nondescript, orange bottle. No label, but then, I didn’t need one to know what the pills clinking together inside of it were.
Sighing, I slumped down at the tiny kitchen table and unscrewed the lid, pulling two of the oxycontin out and weighing them on my palm. I was here for two reasons... the first, I needed time to think. Time to consider the ultimatum that Syn had put to me. The second reason was a little more complicated.
I kept the second reason close. Like the apartment in Boston, there were only three people who knew. I stared down hard at the small white pills before I slowly let them slip back into the bottle. I had a choice to make here too. Give in to the addiction that had taken root during those two years in Seattle or ride out the detox. In a moment of weakness, I’d called my old supplier and in less than an hour, I’d been tucking the bottle of oxy into my bag. But I still had the choice to take them. To stave off the hard come down.
I sighed and let the pills slip back into the bottle, closing the lid tightly. I hadn’t been in this position in a very long time but the morphine in the hospital and the vicodin afterwards... it was like something hungry and desperate had woken up inside of me.
I shoved the bottle away from me and made my way slowly into the living room. Scar looked between me and the bottle as I slumped down on the couch and I watched him curiously. Sometimes, I could swear that the cat was almost human in his reactions.
As I sank down into the worn cushions, my body twinged and ached fiercely. My fingers brushed gently over the ragged, torn skin of my throat as I pulled my laptop from the bag and booted it up.
As the doctor had promised, the holes that the concussion had left in my memory were slowly fading... although the night of my barbed wire massacre match against Zack Lifer was still an inky, black void in my memory. I couldn’t remember anything, although the doctor had said that it wasn’t unusual for memories of the trauma not to come back. My conversations with Kai had put some of it into perspective, but I still needed something. I needed to see it.
Another reason that I had come to Boston. I knew Michael well enough to know that he’d watched the match on TV live... I knew it because I would have done the same thing. I wouldn’t make him relive it by watching it with me.
But I needed to see it.
Scar climbed up to take his familiar spot, curled around my neck with his face buried in my hair, as I slid my laptop onto my lap and cued up the video I’d loaded onto it before I left home.
There it was, the match that had nearly taken my life in all of it’s bloody glory. The moment when everything had begun to go downhill. Zack Lifer bringing that barbed wire wrapped chair down across my skull. I could see my eyes blur out of focus as I’d unsteadily gone down to my knees. He’d unwrapped a length of the barbed wire from it and had wrapped it around my throat twice, pulling it tightly. The razor wire bit into the skin, gushing blood almost immediately as he used it to garrote me.
I winced as I realized that I was absently pressing my fingers to the wound, almost as though I could stop the flow of blood happening on the screen of my laptop. Kai had told me that the blood loss had almost killed me and this must have been why.
The wire had embedded into the skin of my throat, slick and slippery with my pouring blood and I remembered that Kai had said they’d had to cut it out of the delicate skin of my throat. I watched as I stumbled through the rest of the match, still standing but just barely, as I’d wrapped a piece of the wire around my own fist and used it to take my pound of flesh from Zack Lifer.
Between the blood loss and the hard shot to the skull, I’d barely been able to make it to the top rope. Somehow, I’d regained the upper hand and I was going for the kill shot, so to speak. The Thrillkiller.
In mid-air, Zack Lifer and I collided as he’d attempted to counter with his own finisher, the Forced Suicide. With an audible crack, his knee connected with my temple. I was unconscious before I hit the ground.
I realized I was chewing on my bottom lip as the video ended. All of the pieces were in place now... but I still hadn’t even begun to sort through my feelings about this near brush with death.
I had been pretending as though it hadn’t affected me. Brushing it off as something less than what it was because I’d needed to to keep going. I don’t know what reaction I’d expected from Michael but I knew now that it was worse than I’d imagined. Kai had told me everything and Tris had filled in some more of the blanks for me on the phone this morning.
The only words he’d spoken once he’d burst into my room, had been begging me to wake up. To come back for him. He hadn’t let anyone else into the room, except begrudgingly the nurses who came to check my vitals. He’d sat next to my bedside, my hand limp in his, guarding me like the lion I fondly teased him for being.
I sighed, standing up and snatching the bottle of pills from the kitchen counter. Before I could question my decision, I flushed them. Stripping down into nothing but my panties and a tank top, I set up my makeshift bed on the couch. A couple blankets and some bottles of gatorade within arms reach.
I was going to ride this out. I didn’t know what path I would end up on and what it would cost me, but I knew that this... falling back into the addiction... wasn’t the path.
xxx
I was pale but my blue eyes burned with the kind of determination that I hadn’t felt in a longer than I cared to admit. I knew what I was doing... I knew where I was going. We were playing a game, sure, but it was my game now and maybe it had always been. Whether I’d realized it or not.
“I guess you could say I have a lot of anger to work out... these past few weeks, I almost lost the man I love. I almost died. I’ve been hunted, I’ve been taunted and I’ve been pushed into a corner by a has-been trying to make himself relevant again on my name and my championship. I guess I should start by telling you a story, Smith. Once upon a time, there was another man much like you who thought that the world should be laid open at his feet. His for the taking. This man thought that he could gain something by backing me into a corner, trying to force me into playing his game.
Right now? That motherfucker is nothing but ash in the wind.
You’ve backed me into a corner, Smith, by trapping me in the system with your pathetic attempt to show the world that you’re more than just a former Broadcast Champion. I gave you an opportunity to make the right choice, the choice that would save her from me. You failed. Once again, you made the wrong choice and Saturday she will pay for your sins.
We aren’t playing your game anymore, Smithy. We’re playing mine and it has only one outcome. Do unto others as has been done unto you.
But you’re not my immediate obstacle, Smith. On Saturday, you’ll watch me do what you failed to do. You’ll watch me beat Jerry Matthews.
Matthews, here to rid the world of the godless heathens. A holy scourge to wipe the slate clean. Fortunately, not all of us are tethered to the pathetic idea of a merciful, merciless god silently judging us from on high.
You’re nothing but a slave, Jerry. A slave to a god who, if he does in fact exist, doesn’t give a shit. You are a man so tied up in this idea of being a righteous broadsword for a ridiculous concept. And that’s all that god truly is, isn’t it? A concept. A concept thought up by men who couldn’t be trusted to do the right thing without the threat of hellfire and damnation nipping at their heels.
You remind me of someone, Jerry. Someone else who believes he’s one of the white hats, a true force of good, never realizing how misguided he is. How wrong. You remind me of Zack Lifer. I’m sure you know that name, after all.”
I shook my head, “But actions are more important than words, aren’t they? What will they say of me when I bring down the man who is god’s last defense against a godless world. Will they say that I have brought down god himself?”