GWEN BLAIR
***Madison, Connecticut - 1st January 2019***
Thanks to the fact that I hadn't touched a drop of alcohol the night before, waking up on January 1st wasn't a headache for me at all. By the moans and groans of everyone else, they hadn't been so lucky, which made me feel a little smug.
Plus, I was still riding the high that came with declaring my dream to the people that mattered, and not getting shot down in angry flames. The hugs had helped.
So, I decided to do something nice for everyone, and cook breakfast.
There were no plans to go anywhere, so I hopped in the shower, dressed in my scruffiest jeans and t-shirt, scraped my hair back, barely brushed, and snuck down the stairs.
I had assumed that I would be the first one up, but I was wrong. Already in the kitchen, standing by the patio doors and staring out at the foggy morning was Lindsay's shadow, the man called Mordecai.
That probably wasn't his real name, but he'd not spoken a word to any of us since he'd arrived here. Lindsay was supposed to be unravelling his mysteries, but I didn't think she'd got very far.
When he first arrived here, I struggled between being afraid of him and whatever plan he was concocting, and loathing him for what he did to Dad, and the rest of the family the time that Chris was kidnapped. He seemed lost and harmless, but I couldn't trust him.
And every time I saw him, I was reminded what it felt like to sew up Dad's head, and how long it took to get his blood off my hands.
It's exhausting to hold onto that sort of emotion though, and as he didn't try to murder us all in our beds, I relaxed after a while. I never fully trusted him, but I trusted my family. And I trusted the fact that they beat the shit out of him shortly after he came here, but I wasn’t meant to know that.
But in the light of the morning, as grey as it was, he didn't look like the monster from my darkest nightmares. His eyes were vacant, his shoulders slumped, and his whole posture screamed at me. He had to have noticed me entering the kitchen as I wasn’t trying to be stealthy, but he didn’t turn around.
Well, if he wanted to lurk, then that was his prerogative. I had a breakfast to cook. And if this was the morning where he decided to do something sinister, I’d be frying bacon and eggs, and would cheerfully hit him with the scalding pan if I had to.
I had first strips of bacon sizzling away in the pan, and was debating whether to lift out the bread or the eggs first, when I turned around from the oven, and found Mordecai watching me. His expression...it was heartbreaking, but the moment that his eyes met mine, that expression was shuttered away under his usual blankness. I considered this for a moment, and then tossed the spatula at him. Automatically, he caught it, and then looked at it as if I’d just thrown a live viper at him.
“Make sure the bacon doesn’t burn, would you?” I asked him. “I’m off to hunt in the freezer.”
Two stacks of frozen pancakes unearthed later, I returned to the kitchen to find Mordecai in front of the stove, scowling at the pan, and Lindsay sitting at the table where he had been, hands wrapped around a steaming mug of what was likely to be coffee.
As I passed Mordecai to put my offerings into the microwave, I snuck a glance at the pan.
“Nice job,” I complimented him.
Lindsay laughed quietly. “All he needs now is the frilly apron,” she said affectionately. “Breakfast, Gwen?”
“Thought I’d make myself useful,” I tell her. “Didn’t expect to see anyone up yet, not until the smells made their way upstairs.”
“And then the invasion will start,” she said dryly. “But I’m glad that I caught you on your own.”
I glanced over at Mordecai, who was still staring at the pan as if it had mortally offended him.
“He knows,” Lindsay said. “You see...you’re not the only one who’s been keeping secrets.”
“Oh?” I asked her, as I set the microwave defrosting. It wasn’t exactly a surprise that Lindsay had been keeping secrets, but I was wondering why she was telling me this.
She set the mug down on the table with a click, and her pale blue eyes looked straight at me.
“You’re not the only one who has signed with EMERGE,” she said, and it felt as if the floor had just been ripped out from underneath me. I grabbed at the counter with one hand, both for support, and to double check that I was actually awake and not still dreaming in my bed.
“You?” I managed to get the words out in my shock, and she nodded her head, a faint smile flicking across her lips.
Lindsay had not wrestled in I don’t know how many years, since she fell, (or was pushed, depending on who you ask), from the top of the steel cage in Dominion Championship Wrestling. She’d hurt herself badly, been in a coma for a while, had amnesia, the works. She had always sworn that she would never, ever, ever set foot back in a wrestling ring. She’d actually had a paralysing flashback once at the merest hint of it, to hear Chris tell it. And now she was standing here and telling me that she was voluntarily doing it.
“Why you? Why now?” I just had to ask, and then felt as if I jumped clear out of my skin when Mordecai rested a hand on my shoulder. I was torn between twisting free from his grip, or freezing like a startled rabbit, with the end result being that I nearly fell into the counters. Sometimes my indecisive reactions really really annoy me.
“Not me,” she clarified. “Him.”
There was only one him that we could be talking about, and he still had his hand resting on my shoulder.
“But it was never our intentions to steal your thunder,” she said softly. “I chose this moment a while ago, while Vanilla Skyy was still the GM. After all, she still has unfinished business with Mordecai, if she so chooses. It felt like it would be the right thing to give her that chance. That, and I feel that getting back into the wrestling ring would be good for Mordecai. Channel him, focus him. And me? Someone has to go along with him to keep him on the straight and narrow.”
I can’t help but laugh at that last. If there is one thing that Lindsay isn’t, it’s straight and narrow. Lady thinks like a corkscrew sometimes, even with her family. But I’m pretty sure that she’s being straight about this.
“It’s just coincidence that we’re all going to the same place at the same time,” she finished.
Emerge isn’t going to know what’s hit it, I think. And that might not be a bad thing. For all that this is my dream, I’m still nervous about it, and to have backup...well, that makes things easier.
“We won’t deliberately set out to get in your way, or to interfere in anything that you have going on, unless you ask us to,” Lindsay continues. “I can’t promise that accidental interference won’t occur. I can’t control Mordecai, he does what he does. I can sometimes....redirect him, but I can make no promises.”
That makes sense. I’ve seen the way that Mordecai is, or at least the way that he is now. When he first came to us, I would say that he was afraid to say boo to a goose in case we tossed him out on his ear, or into a shallow grave (I think it was a close thing a time or two). Now, he’s got some of his boldness back, even if he never says a word. And when he sets his mind to something, there’s very little that anyone can do to change it (see the wood-chopping incident. I think that even if we have a fire every night for the next six months, we wouldn’t use all that wood up). Lindsay is about the only one he’ll listen too, but even then , it’s not a guarantee. So I can really understand why she would be telling me this.
“I get it,” I tell her, and I know that she could read the thoughts flicking through my brain. She knows that I know that she knows. And ow, it’s too early for those complex thoughts to be in my brain.
I barely realise that Mordecai has lifted his hand off my shoulder, before I’m presented with a pan of perfectly crisped bacon, as the microwave beeps.
Above, I can hear the first creaks and groans of the floorboards as the smell of breakfast starts to drag the rest of my family out of bed. With a mischievous look on her face, Lindsay holds a finger to her lips, and I nod. It’s not up to me to spoil her surprise, so I won’t.
I am looking forward to the fallout though. But I think I’ll hide behind Mordecai for that.
*** Monday 18th February - Minion House, Toronto, Canada ***
I was happy with what I was doing. I had the support of my family going into wrestling, I had an unexpected potential ally with Mordecai (and Lindsay, or was it the other way around?). I had stood up and declared what I believed in, and what I stood for.
And yet, as the time for my next booked EMERGE drew nearer, I was starting to feel downright sick about the whole thing. Or at least having a very bad case of Impostor Syndrome about it.
And no amount of telling myself that I was supposed to be here was helping. I could have gone and talked to Dad, I supposed, but I didn’t think that he’d get it, or at least I wouldn’t feel comfortable talking about it with him. So instead I’m on the hunt for another confidante, prowling through the house, and wishing that I’d put slippers on first, since skidding on wooden floors in socks is not very graceful. Also, ow. Walls do not make good brakes.
Dad was out causing mischief for Lindsay, and so, deprived of his tag partner and not needed in GCW at the moment, Chris was having some downtime. When I tracked him down, he was in the utility room, sat cross-legged on top of the washing machine, reading on his Kindle.
“Hey,” I greeted.
“Hey yourself. You got laundry?”
“Nah, I’m all caught up. You got a minute?”
“For you, sweetheart, I have many, many minutes? Want to hunt frogs to put in beds again?” he set down his Kindle and focused on me, grinning cheerily.
Something about that smile didn’t seem quite right, but I shrugged that feeling aside. Probably me reading too much into things.
“Nope. Actually, I kinda need to talk to someone.”
That’s one of the things that I love about Chris. He’s a jokey guy, the lighthearted one of my not quite uncles, but he’s equally as good at turning seriousish when the occasion demands. And I must have not done as well as concealing my concern in my voice when I watched the joking light fade in his eyes.
“Here good, or do you want to take it somewhere private?” he asked, uncrossing his legs and jumping down from the machine.
“Here works,” I tell him, and pick up a stray sock from the basket beside the machine, twisting the fabric in my hands.
He doesn’t ask me what I need to talk about, he doesn’t push and prod for me to speak, he simply waits in silence while I try to find my tongue.
“How did you do it?” I ask.
“You’re going to have to be a little bit more specific than that,” he tells me gently, even as I worry at the hole in the toe of the sock.
“You were the bright shining star of the UWA at one point,” I pick my words carefully. “You had the fans cheering you, looking up to you. How did you do it?”
“I didn’t,” he says solemnly, and I blink, confused.
“But you did,” is the only argument that I can muster. I watched him do it at the time.
“I didn’t,” he repeats, and then seems to take a bit of pity on my confused expression.
“I don’t know what’s on your mind, Gwennie, but you’re asking the wrong question. I didn’t do anything in the UWA, but be myself. The fans took that, and read into it what they wanted. I never set out to be any sort of inspiration or role model. I never set out to be a bright shining star of any kind. All I wanted was to do my best, be there, and do the right thing, That was what I wanted, and that was what I stuck to. It was everyone else that stuck those labels on me. Didn’t help that I ran with them, but they were never my idea. ”
I soak up the words, trying to imprint them into my memory for later perusal, wrapping a loose strand of wool around my finger.
“So take a think about your question again, and hit me with it,” he suggests.
So I do think about it. Not that I’ve been doing anything but thinking about it for the past few days. But with his answer, he’s sort of taking the wind out of my sails. I don’t really want to admit to anyone that I’m having a lot of second, third and fourth thoughts about the choices I’ve made, and feeling down in general about everything.
The silence stretches out, and Chris gets this knowing look on his face. It’s very similar to the look my Dad gets on his face when he’s about to irritatingly read my mind.
“I think there’s just one question that you need to be asking, Gwen. And it’s nothing to do with me. What you’re really wanting to figure out is: Are you who you want to be, or are you who you think everyone else wants you to be?”
It’s like a brick to the side of the head.
“You’re a good lass, Gwen,” he continues. “But good girls are ten a cent. So are bad girls, weird girls, and deranged girls. Wrestling has role models coming out of the wazoo. And there’s nothing wrong with being a good girl, a bad girl, or whatever. But you need to figure out what it is you truly are. Not what anyone else sees you as. What are you? Who are you? I always knew who I was, and when I got off track back then, I had Aphrodite to knock some sense back into me, as well as my family. You have us, and you certainly have your Dad, but first of all, you have to decide who and what you are. That’s the question that you should be asking. But not asking any of us. That’s the one that you have to ask yourself.”
Two bricks to the side of the head.
And the worst part of it, is that I know that was the question that I needed to ask. That was the question that I wanted answered. But I wanted a nice easy answer. I wanted an answer from my honorary uncle. I wanted...
I wanted a shortcut. And life isn’t like that.
Why does introspection have to be so damn annoying?
Now that he’s verbally hit me over the head with half a house, Chris gives me a crooked smile, and saunters out of the room, giving me peace to stew to myself.
Who am I?
[REC]
Well, my candle was snuffed out fairly quickly, wasn’t it? In all fairness though, Alice Redding deserved it. Hugs like a champ as well. It’s a shame that she didn’t go on to win the tourney, but at least she showcased herself well. Go girl!
I didn’t have a match at the latest EMERGE, but I was around as I usually am, watching the monitors and gasping in all the right places. And of course I have views and opinions on everything, but I wasn’t planning on airing them. Better people than me have put in their two cents, for both sides, and no one really needs to have my opinions adding to the cacophony. But I felt that I should point out that I do have opinions, just in case anyone thinks I’m not paying attention.
And it was while I was watching Mr Schmitt and Mr Bryant working out their teams, that I had a realisation. I’m actually a wrestler now. Signed on the dotted line, had a couple of matches, and will certainly be getting more. And some day, it could be me getting headhunted for a team. It could be me in the headlining match. It just takes time, and skill.
And that thought shook me a little bit, because in my head I’m still a little nobody, on the outside looking in. But those thoughts are something that I’m trying to work on.
Then the next card came out, and hammered those facts into my head a little more. I have a third match in EMERGE, and this time I’m going up again Carson Caine, a MMA fighter. He’s big, he’s powerful, and if I get close to this guy, I’m getting smooshed into paste. Well, nearly paste since I don’t think he’ll be aiming to kill me.
I hope.
Anyway, we’re both fairly new to EMERGE, he’s new to the wrestling ring even if he’s a veteran of the octagon. And I’ve had a bit of experience in the ring, which I barely count because it was so long ago. I hate this part, where I’m supposed to be thinking hard about who will win, and who will lose, and tooting my own trumpet about how I’m the best and I’m the only one who's going to get things done. It sounds as fake as hell as it comes out of my mouth, and sounds even worse when I watch replays.
And when my opponents (not just you, Mr Caine), do similar, well, they’re amazing. Makes me want to lie down in the ring and give in, or tap out straight away, because they walk the walk, talk the talk, and what do I do, what chance do I have? Nothing and none.
I won’t though, just let me point that out.
See, I’m used to my brain trying to trip me up. I can usually tell when I’m thinking actual thoughts (re getting smooshed), and when my brain is sabotaging me (just lie down). And that’s when I tell that part of myself to go and take a long walk off a short pier, and let me do the job that I love.
Because I do love it. And I love the buzz that I get when my music hits, and the crowd start to fizz. I love the feel of the canvas as I slid into the ring. I love watching my opponent, sizing me up as I size them up.
And I love the sound of the bell.
Ready when you are, Mr Caine.
[/REC]
