Quote:OOC: All characters that aren't my own appear with permission.
If you were asked to sell your soul to the devil… would you do it?
Melissa had done just that, and she had no regrets about her decision.
Everything pertaining to Emerge had been an interesting transition so far this year when it came to the military maiden, from having to move to England for the time being to avoid spending too much on traveling back and forth between the country to being welcomed into the family of The Unforgiven. The former came with the added benefit that she was as far away from her father as she could possibly be now, given that he was likely to spend time behind bars after the stunt he pulled before the end of the year, and his longstanding status of ‘hometown hero’ of Bridgeport was no doubt in shambles now. As for the latter? Despite seemingly butting heads with Willow Wilkes even though Melissa herself had made it clear she wasn’t here to replace the longtime EMERGE Champion, she had been welcomed with open arms. The fact that she could say she started off the year with a shot at the EMERGE Title was certainly a sign that she had made the right decision, though she still had her doubts about willingly committing to taking part in this war at all.
After all, didn’t picking a side mean she’d finally committed to the path she had spent her entire life trying to fight against walking?
It was a thought she ignored when she first joined the group, considering her initial focus was on her impending EMERGE Title match with arguably the group’s crown jewel, but after the six-person tag match on the previous show and the massive brawl that broke out afterward, it became next to impossible to deny the fact that the show ended with her “motivating the troops” in a sense before Willow called them all off. Lost in the moment, she’d become the very thing she despised, and that thought had been burning in her mind ever since, throwing off her focus as she attempted to prepare for the task ahead of her at the next Invasion in South Africa. This had not been lost on Cindy Todd, who quietly observed Melissa’s routine from a secluded back room of the pub she now operated out of with Emerge’s change of headquarters. While her strikes and motions carry the raw power and intensity that she’s always been known for, Cindy can easily see that something is off that no one else would be able to just by watching. As Melissa finishes up a routine of throwing strikes at a stationary heavy bag, Cindy decides it’s time to voice her concerns.
“Something is weighing heavily on your mind Melissa.”
Melissa instinctively scoffs at this as she rehydrates herself.
“I’m just pissed off at the mess that the last show turned out to be, that’s all.”
“Really? Because if that were the case, your workout wouldn’t feel like it’s missing something, and I would hate to see you begin to relapse into what you were before you came to me.”
That comment draws a sharp breath from the African-American woman as she sets her water bottle down on the bench. She recalls how their first true talk went and how easily Cindy was able to read her like a book and knew that being honest and upfront with her was the only way she was ever going to truly undergo the evolution she so desperately sought deep down inside. This causes Melissa to slowly take a seat as Cindy walks over to her, awaiting her explanation.
“When I first came to Emerge, the only thing I had to worry about was finding success and carving my own path away from my father’s influence. When you began to build The Unforgiven and everyone started talking about a war between you and anyone not standing with you, I wanted no part of it because the last thing I thought I wanted was to be considered a soldier for either side. I wasn’t second-guessing my decision to finally go against that and coming here to seek guidance from you, but… at the end of the last show, when I was basically psyching everyone up to go back into battle before we were called off, it fully hit me after the fact that maybe I had become exactly what I spent my whole life trying to fight against.”
Melissa wanted to keep going, but she cut herself off once Cindy’s hand found its way to her shoulder. At first, her face was unreadable but there was a dangerous presence that came with it, one that said she wasn’t happy with how the show had ended but that would be a different matter she would tend to in due time. After a moment, she locked eyes with the military maiden and offered her an understanding look.
“Given what you’ve told me, I’m not surprised that you’re having a hard time breaking those old emotional attachments, no matter how much you want to simply be done with them once and for all. Abuse always leaves its victims with scars that are difficult to forget.”
“Abuse? My father may have been a lot of things that made me hate him with every fiber of my being, but he never abused me.”
“That’s where I would beg to differ Melissa.”
The implications Cindy was putting forth were beginning to make Melissa feel sick, not just because the idea of her being abused by her old man irritated her as the man had never tried to lay a finger on her up until the incident that finally drove her to accept this offer in the first place, but the fact that it seemed like she was actually defending him in some capacity was not sitting well with her on any level.
“He never dared to lay a hand on me… not until recently. He was too much of an upstanding citizen proud of his ‘hero’ status to even dare-”
“Abuse takes on many forms Melissa, and I was not implying he ever did lay a hand on you. Your mind, however, has been suffering for a long time because of him. Tell me something… how long have you defined your entire life by trying to become anything but what he tried to force you to be?”
The question actually caught Melissa off-guard, and she had to take a moment to think back on her childhood and when exactly she knew she had to start trying to rebel against his desires to make her march the same path he did. As she sat there thinking, her ears registered what sounded like familiar screams coming from out in the bar area, but she did her best to try and drown it out to continue searching her head, which slowly brought a smile to Cindy’s lips.
“As… as long as I can remember, to be honest. I didn’t actively start butting heads with him until sometime in junior high, but I can’t recall a memory where I didn’t hate him for the constant boot camps he subjected me to every single day in our own backyard.”
“Good… I want you to focus on that feeling of hatred and hold onto it. Now, how did you think you would be able to accomplish this task? How would Melissa Killgraves break away and become her own person instead of daddy’s little soldier?”
“I… I started off by just trying to live my life against his military credo. I felt disgusted by anyone who was all about helping others and being selfless, so I started to bully people. I didn’t care if I became popular because anyone who was saw me as the perfect muscle to keep anyone ‘unworthy’ away from them, because all that mattered to me was seeing how upset it made my father.”
“And how did he respond to this?”
Melissa let a low growl escape her throat, both at the memory that had been called to the forefront of her mind because of that question and the fact that it seemed like Cindy was playing a game with her that only she was getting any enjoyment out of, even if she did her best not to show it. She took a step back when Melissa aggressively rose to a stand, but she didn’t budge any more than that no matter how infuriated the woman started to become.
“He doubled down on his efforts to discipline me, trying to cut off any hope of a social life outside of school by having me go through his stupid boot camps more and more or having me spend my summer vacation at a boot camp where someone else took over that godforsaken task. He was hellbent on doing this high way or else, and he knew that as long as I lived under his roof and he was bigger and stronger than me, I wouldn’t dare try to pick an actual fight with him.”
Melissa’s voice slowly began to lower in pitch as her tone grew angrier and angrier, the thought of every interaction with her father burning in her mind to the point she was surprised her head didn’t spontaneously burst into flames. As much as she wanted nothing more than to literally strike back at him, she never did. She knew that no matter how strong she became or how well he trainer her that she would never be able to win a no holds barred fight against a man with actual military battlefield experience and police training on top of that, and what made it worse was the knowledge that he didn’t even need to actually fight back… his reputation alone meant that if she ever did lash out at him, no one would ever take her side even if she was truly in the right in this scenario. After all, how could the wartime hero that was Sgt. Brett Killgraves ever do any wrong? To all of them, he was about as perfect a human being as you could get.
“You said you were living on your own when you first came to Emerge. You finally had that freedom you so desperately sought, and yet all you could do with it was continue to think about trying to free yourself from his shadow.”
Cindy slowly began to leave the room, though it was clear by her tone of voice that she wanted Melissa to follow as they continued this conversation. Melissa’s body was on autopilot as she complied, her mind still burning hotter and hotter the more they kept going about this issue that made her tick for so long.
“That son of a bitch was practically a celebrity in our hometown. There were some big names living there like Claire’s father, who was a wealthy wolf of Wall Street pretty much, and Jennifer’s stepfather who’s a world-famous surgeon, but even they could never compare to what my father had. Even if he didn’t have his badge, everyone shut up and listened to him because they all respected what he was, never seeing him the way I did or understanding why I had such a problem with him. The ground he marched on was practically sacred to them!”
“Your father was a master manipulator even if he never fully realized it himself. He enforced his beliefs and desires for your future upon you for so long that even if you thought you’d broken away, you were still under his influence. He robbed you of your ability to make decisions for yourself and be the powerful, unbreakable woman you always wanted to be. If that’s what you were going to become, then it would be his definition of those terms, not yours. And all those people watching it unfold, too blinded by the hero they always believed him to be to ever question his choices in regards to you, or even the fact that he was a single father raising a little girl with no explanation to any of it. He never needed to say a word to them and they would never dare question him.”
Cindy stopped once she reached the door that would lead out into the bar area of the pub, turning to face Melissa. It was easy to tell at this point that the military maiden was about ready to violently lash out if she didn’t get some answers as to why she was being forced to take this painful trip down memory lane, and Cindy could only give a smirk in response to this.
“I know it’s not easy having to reflect back on your past Melissa, but there’s a reason why I made you do it. No matter how much you change your look or show a new attitude to the world, you will always be a slave to your father’s influence if you allow him to continue taking residence in your mind. All that anger you feel toward him, all that rage and hatred that thought of him evoke within you… if you truly wish to be free of him and proving to the world everything that you say you are now, you’re going to need to start weaponizing that. Think of anyone standing in your way as your father trying to keep you under his thumb, and respond as though he was threatening to put anyone you now call family into grave danger just to take you away from us.”
As soon as she uttered those last words, she opened the door and stepped out into the bar, with the still seething Melissa following close behind. Cindy’s words began to echo in her mind, further calling upon memories that only added more fuel to the fire. As soon as they were through the doorway, the first sight that greeted Melissa’s eyes was her friends, Claire and Jennifer. Since they needed to undergo their own trials and transformations while under Cindy’s watchful eye, a challenge they were both willing to face both for Melissa and for themselves, they had been working with Seraglio to get accustomed to working the bar and dealing with the drunken guests that came and went. Today seemed to be the day a small group of young men had gotten particularly wasted and decided to get a little too grabby with Melissa’s friends, which had invoked a small fight. None of the women of Seraglio jumped in to lend a hand, instead staying out of the way to see how the new girls would handle themselves. They weren’t natural-born warriors like Melissa was in a sense, but they had been working to improve themselves and prove they could hold their own in a fight if they ever needed to or were asked to get involved in Unforgiven matters. Despite the fact the girls were outnumbered, they seemed to be doing alright with keeping the rowdy drunkards at bay, although some of the noticeable cuts and bruises along with torn outfits that exposed underwear that only seemed to further drive the men’s inebriated desires. As well as they were doing, this situation wasn’t anywhere close to the worst of what would be to come for them and being outnumbered was beginning to take its toll, and Cindy seemed well aware of this. That was why she chose this exact moment to lead Melissa into this area, and she stepped aside with a grin as it became clear the military maiden was seeing red.
“Tell me, Melissa… would you let your father harm your friends the way these men are, just because he can if he wanted to?”
That seemed to be all the trigger needed because the next thing anybody knew, one of the drunken patrons found themselves being hit by what felt like a freight train and smashed into the wall before sliding to the floor, painfully coughing up a bit of blood. All eyes suddenly turned to Melissa, who glared at the remaining men harassing her friends with the kind of anger Clare and Jennifer had never seen before. The men all tried to rush her, but the numbers game didn’t work out this time as she effortlessly used their movements to turn them into human shields against one another’s blows before laying two of them out with well-placed Kill Shots. She caught an incoming punch from the last man standing and wasted no time in violently twisting his wrist until a very audible snap could be heard. He dropped to his knees, suddenly sobbing and begging for mercy, but Melissa’s glare was cold and uncaring to his pain as she lifted her foot and smashed his face into the floor with a nasty axe kick. Breathing deeply, she surveyed the damage she had done before whipping around to see if anyone else wanted to pick a fight with her, but all the other patrons quickly turned their attention back to their drinks and trying to forget about what they just witnessed.
“She still needs some work to hold on to it, but she’s getting there. If I can’t erase her father’s efforts, I can always find a new way to use them to get the Melissa Killgraves we’re both looking for.”
Cindy muses to herself as she watches Melissa slowly snap out of her rage and start tending to her friends. While Claire and Jennifer had managed to hold their own, they would still need to be pushed as well in order to prove they were worth being here and worthy of standing by Melissa’s side when all was set and done. The fact that they held meaning to her was very useful, but not enough on its own to yield what she was looking for. There was still plenty of time to see how this would all play out, however, and putting an end to the delusions of atonement for someone who also could have been just as welcome within the ranks of The Unforgiven would be a perfect showcase of what kind of monster Melissa Killgraves was starting to become.