Post by DICKIE WATSON on Mar 19, 2021 19:39:41 GMT -5
THE DIMITRI CHRONICLES 14.0 // PARDON ME
BUT I GUESS THAT IT COMES WITH THE TERRITORY
AN OMINOUS LANDSCAPE OF NEVER ENDING CALAMITY
I NEED YOU TO HEAR
I NEED YOU TO SEE
THAT I’VE HAD ALL I CAN TAKE
AND EXPLODING SEEMS LIKE A DEFINITE POSSIBILITY TO ME
• • • • • • •
BOUTIQUE HOTEL CALZAVECCHIO, BOLOGNA, ITALY // MARCH 12TH, 2021
It started with drinking.
His mother died of it; a constant addiction to opiates and a fatal concoction of vodka flowing through her system killed her at the tender age of twenty-six. She didn’t quite make the twenty-seven club, but she wasn’t a well-known celebrity either, so it wouldn’t have mattered. The woman had come to England in search of her baby’s father and found herself working as an exotic escort when they realized her English wasn’t up to par for what Inner London retail and offices went for. Whatever she’d been through in her life before this hadn’t set the woman up to cope with the harsh realities of the world, and so she turned to drinking - if to do nothing else but numb whatever pain she thought she felt like she was going through.
The picture he had of her was one that he’d been clutching when he was brought to the orphanage. Barely two years old, couldn’t speak a word of English, so teaching him was difficult enough. He struggled with it and didn’t understand it, and when he tried, he was picked on, so he turned to not speaking at all. For the first five years of his life, he said barely anything. But he would look at that picture every night, unfold it, set it on his bed and stare at it before he went to sleep. He supposed he got his eyes from her. Everything else must have been from his father, whoever that was.
SO PARDON ME WHILE I BURST INTO FLAMES
He laid on the bed of the hotel, his eyes staring at the ceiling as he hung limply onto the neck of the whiskey bottle that was just inches from scraping the floor. Two other forty-ounce bottles laid on the ground near the bed, ones he’d gotten through without issue. At the bar down the street from the hotel, just hours ago, the three of them that made up The Commonwealth toasted to both their win and his revenge. The alcohol flowed willingly, and even Hannah, with her hiccups, had her fill. She giggled and laughed with Kallie, who was pulled out of her perpetual failure by Aiden himself. It was a good time. A celebratory time. They’d fixed their wrongs, and the world was right again.
Eventually, though, despite the festivities, Dickie found himself outside on his own, stumbling back to the hotel without accompaniment from anyone. Along the way, he must have purchased the rest of the alcohol that’d been consumed already. Of course, he didn’t remember. Drinking this much wasn’t like him, and probably wouldn’t happen again, but for once, he just wanted everything to just fucking stop. The emotions, the thoughts, the pressure he constantly felt to be the best, raise himself upwards, rise like a goddamn phoenix from the ash. Deliver a kill shot, be that fucking asshole everyone knew he could be. He just wanted it to end. To be nothing.
He headed for his room but realized as he was receiving a red signal and a beeping sound from the door that he must have grabbed Aiden’s key rather than his own. Now, he was just laying there, staring at nothing, a void of nothingness in his tag partner’s hotel room.
Like his goddamn life.
“Kid, why do you think I would help you?” Finn’s voice on the phone was dismissive, as it always was. He and the older wrestler never really had a close relationship, and save for training with him to get his motivation up, he hadn’t been the greatest to talk to about anything. “Think I’m going to break my secrets to you or some shit? Tell ya all about El’s weaknesses and how to get into her head?”
“I mean, if you could just give me a couple pointers…”
“Nah, Dickwad. This is the hole you dug, not mine. I’m fucking Switzerland.”
The hole he dug. The opportunity he wanted more than anything; a chance, a moment to reclaim what they took from him. The thing everyone turned back on him and told him he was fucking whining about. He’d certainly dug a hole, all right. And now, he faced the worst possible scenario, the moment he didn’t want because he didn’t want to face his family members. The one person he respected, the one person who…
...never truly had his back, it seemed.
I’VE HAD ENOUGH OF THE WORLD AND IT’S PEOPLE’S MINDLESS GAMES
The world always talked about how words meant more than actions. It hadn’t taken Elena but one second to start sniping at him, start treating him as she treated everyone else on her lofty throne — as if he didn’t matter, as if he didn’t do a damn thing in this company before her arrival. Part of him told him he was just being stupid, that his own sister, the goddamn human that’d been his rock and his shield since the moment he stepped into that orphanage, was just posturing and didn’t mean any of it. But then again, he also knew that like himself, like all of them seemed to do, they claimed to speak the truth and only truth.
She meant every goddamn word she said.
So did she really hate him that much? Did she resent her place in his life? Did she resent those years in the orphanage, did she regret them? Did she want him to suffer? DIdn’t she know this whole fucking thing was killing him on the inside, or did she relish in that? She set her own ex-husband on fire; she ruined Finn’s frame of life at one point, and while she sat there, throwing stones from her glass house, he realized she was probably more than pleased that she’d wormed her way into her opponent’s head.
Because that’s all he was to her now. An opponent, not her brother, not her problem.
In a random fit of anger, Dickie threw the bottle at the ceiling, watching in satisfaction as it cracked and fractured when it hit the wall with enough force for implosion. The remnants of the bottle sprayed across his face, the shattering sound a delightful symphony in his eardrums. He’d smell like cheap, imported whiskey in the morning, but he could deal with that then. Aiden would joke and say he smelled like a distillery and Hannah would be so disappointed in him. Of course, even her disappointment wouldn’t account for the amount of disappointment he saw in himself every time he looked in the mirror.
Every time he remembered getting jumped as a twelve-year-old, thirteen-year-old, and so-on and so forth.
Every time he returned to that damn orphanage because the people who were adopting him didn’t like his attitude. He was a sweet boy...when he was silent. But too many referrals, too many violations, too many problems settled in this sweet-looking ruffian than they could handle. The fights, the bruises, the smart mouth, the broken limbs the other kids had when they tried to grab him. Too many times he’d been suspended, and this kind of kid was a problem.
Every time he was caned because he didn’t want to go to church, because he didn’t like the gruel they served, because he mouthed off to the nuns just like his sister did.
Every time they made him feel like less of a human being at the hands of people who were supposed to care about him. The people he fought constantly to prove a point: he wasn’t a failure, he wasn’t living in the shadow of others; he was no longer that little kid that they could kick around as he’d been throughout his life. It wasn’t a sob story, and it wasn’t a ploy for pity. It was his goddamn life, and as much as anyone else around him belittled him for it, he didn’t have the luck that others did. He wasn’t sought out, he worked for everything he did. He fought for everything he had. His wife, his friendships, not even just his own career.
And nothing was ever good enough. Not for him. Not for Hannah, Aiden, Callien, Dorian, none of them. Least of all Elena.
Every time he looked in the mirror, he saw the rest of the Project: Honor roster with their lack of eyes and their demonic smiles, ready to take him out for anything anymore. It didn’t matter what he’d done; it didn’t matter how long he’d held the championship, how long he’d been there...they wanted him gone, they wanted his throat cut. They wanted Dickie Watson dead.
The slivers of glass fell back on him, slicing his face. He didn’t even feel it. Not the scrape of the jagged glass as it cut his cheek open, not the feel of the blood instantly running down his cheek and onto the mattress. Not the feel of a goddamn thing because his mind was already numb to everything around him that could happen. He didn’t feel it.
Didn’t feel it at all.
Laughter started deep in his belly, rumbling through his sternum. So...this was what it was like?
SO PARDON ME WHILE I BURST AND RISE ABOVE THE FLAME
“Mate, you in there?” Aiden called from the outside door. “I think we might’ve switched keys by accident.”
Dickie sat up on the bed, looking at the door with mild interest as his chest contracted and released, the laughter still strong in his throat. He snickered to himself, running a grimy hand through his hair and shaking his head. It was all so fucking stupid, wasn’t it? After all Aiden had been through, what with the bullshit in Japan, he put his trust in yet another moron who seemingly only gave a shit about himself.
That’s what they all thought, right? Every single roster member thought The Commonwealth was just a mask for Dickie’s ego, right? That he and Hannah were simply just collateral damage to what Dickie wanted, what Dickie whined about, what Dickie needed. Perhaps these were merely paranoid thoughts, but what else was he supposed to sit there and think? Week in and week out, Aiden suffered the same insults simply because Dickie was here before him, and that there was a lot of acquiescence on his part.
They were a team, though, weren’t they? If Aiden was failing miserably, he would be the one to pick up his friend with a few well-placed insults and a brief conversation that would have the Australian raring to go again. If he needed the pick me up, then Aiden was reminding him of what a fucking hellion he’d been in the ring.
That’s what family was supposed to do, wasn’t it?
“He’s not in our room,” Hannah slurred slightly.
She deserved better, too. Dickie set his feet on the floor, ramming both of his hands through his hair and hanging his head. Fuck, both of them deserved better. He wasn’t worth the hassle, the stress. Elena should have left him alone in that orphanage — maybe he wouldn’t have made it out, like he wasn’t supposed to. His entire life had been a failure and the few good things he had in his life he didn’t deserve. The Grand Championship, it’d all been luck, hadn’t it? A few well-placed words, but he didn’t earn it, did he? He thought he did — maybe he just told himself he’d earned it and everyone else was just laughing at him, at his stupidity, at his earnest belief he’d done so well. Maybe Colton Saint was right. Maybe Mark Hunter was right. Maybe everyone else was right and he just fucking buried his head in the sand.
How much of a mockery did he make of himself?
He wasn’t a wrestler. He was just a spoiled rotten little brat who thought the world owed him something. But it didn’t. Elena taught him that, after all. If Dimitri didn’t get his way, then who’s fault was that? His own, right? She was the first person to belittle him, the first person to remind him he wasn’t at all that he said he was. Except for the one time they’d appeared on television together, Elena’s tactic had been to focus on herself and only herself. Fuck her family, just like she did every time she entered the same space. He’d been elated to see her. Now?
He just wanted it to end. He wanted everything to end.
That would be easier, wouldn’t it?
He sluggishly got to his feet, stumbling into the nightstand next to him. Of course, the force of his stupidity knocked the porcelain lamp off the top and it shattered like the alcohol bottle against the wooden floor of the room. It covered him in darkness, though internally, he was already there, sitting in the blackened void of his mind.
“Dickie, mate. Open the door, eh?”
Not tonight, friend. I’m sorry…
His bare feet skidded over broken glass and he hissed in pain as he stumbled towards the bathroom. Six feet away was the door that he could easily open and let them in, but both physically and figuratively, he didn’t want to do that. They didn’t need to be involved; they didn’t need to do anything else but clean up another Dimitri mess. Maybe they would call Elena and she would tut-tut and shake her head over his idiocy yet again.
Fumbling in the darkness, he hit the light switch and turned on the dim lighting in the small bathroom. The clawfoot tub was just a couple of feet away from the opposite wall, and the water closet had a door to the toilet. He held himself upwards on the sink, locking his arms as he stared at himself in the mirror.
He grit his teeth as he stared at his reflection.
The mirror, not well attached to the wall at all, went flying at the opposite wall as left his hands. He couldn’t bear to even look at the fucking failure he’d become. Wins, losses, none of it mattered because he felt he had done nothing right. Everything was a mess. He deserved nothing. He shook with his own form of rage, his body shaking, quivering, undulating in frustration. He gnashed his teeth together as his lip curled backward and he was left staring at the brick wall in front of him.
“MATE.” Aiden tried again, banging on the door this time.
“Dimitri, can you just open up?!” The sudden panic that entered his wife’s voice was noticeable. However, it did nothing to stop him.
It all started with drinking, didn’t it? His mother’s demise, his own. They were one and the same. He wasn’t even twenty-seven either. Without thought, he blindly reached for a larger shard of the mirrored glass, walking towards the wall as he stared at it, turning it over in his fingers, feeling for the sharpest edge. He thought back to when he was sixteen, when it was so easy to just slide a blade over his skin and watch as the blood ran down his arm. A moment where he felt the sting of an open wound, but nothing else. He wished for that again.
He set the blade against his tattooed forearm, inhaling deeply as he did so. Prominent British Wrestler Committed Suicide in Italian Bathroom, the headline would read. It would be the penultimate failure, yet so ironic that it was something he succeeded at.
Down, not across, Dimitri. Don’t fuck this up too.
A hint of a smile crossed his lips as he dragged the tip of the shard along his skin, opening a wound along his artery that instantly oozed blood. And quickly, too. Finally. Finally, it could be over. Everything could be done. He wouldn’t have to deal with any of this anymore. He wouldn’t be a goddamn disappointment, not for any of them. He was doing them all a favor. He set his head against the wall and closed his eyes, sliding to the floor as relief covered his nervous system. This was his Legacy, not a fancy title. Just a fucking failure.
PARDON ME, PARDON ME
“Arrrrgh, that’s fuckin’ IT!” Aiden yelled, and Dickie heard a thud hit the door. Two more times, and the door to the room flung nearly off its hinges as the Australian stumbled inside. He took one look at his tag partner and literally froze in the bathroom's doorway. “Jesus Christ…”
“Dimitri?” Hannah followed into the room quickly, and she stared at her husband just the same as he opened his eyes and looked at them out of the corner of them. He chuckled slightly and then slammed them shut a second later.
“I fuckin’ failed you, guys…” he trailed off, clenching his eyes shut tighter. “I can’t do this. I can’t face her. I can’t do this.”
The next thing he knew, he was enfolded in her arms.
It seemed no matter what stupid thing he did, she was always there. She pressed his head into her chest and held onto him tightly, taking a hand towel from the sink on her way and wrapping it snuggly around his upper arm in a tourniquet. Aiden stepped forward, squatting on the floor in front of him, pressing a hand to his ripped leg.
“We got you, mate. In everything. We’ve got your six, eh?”
I’LL NEVER BE THE SAME
• • • • • • •
Before we get started, before the damage is rent, I want to get this out into the open. You, Elena DeDraca, have been the one person in the entirety of wrestling that I’ve always respected. You walked into companies and got the job done without the hoopla of getting involved in all the pedantic drama...and it was refreshing. You’ve been the one person I’ve looked at and been proud to say that she was my sister. I wasn’t lying when I went out there in London and said that I would support you as the Legacy Champion as much as I would respect Aiden.
I love you, dearly. I always have. As a kid hiding behind you, a teenager where you no longer existed, and then as an adult at twenty-three who woke up to an email saying to Skype, I’ve loved you. Even through all those years where I thought you’d forgotten me because you didn’t call, you didn’t contact me, and I was left to move through this life alone. Those things don’t get erased with a patronizing pat on the head. Or the hugs you give your child, whoever they are.
I never wanted this, Elena.
I’m not calling you by any familial nicknames because this is a serious moment, a personal moment. There is no business about this, or perhaps, maybe this is. Maybe this is all business-related with a personal vendetta embedded. I’m certain you’re going to Dimitri me through whatever throne you sit on during your entire promotional because you think — in this weird way — that you’re still mothering me and giving me respect, but that isn’t the case. You can call me by my name all you want, but that isn’t who I am. Not in front of these people, not in front of the world. The name I go by, Elena DeDraca, the Fist of Hydra, the Pale Queen, the Inaugural Legacy Champion, and whatever else everyone calls you, is Dickie Watson. I’m not Little Brother, like the dumbfuck animal from Mulan. I’m not Dimitri. I am Dickie Fuckin’ Watson, the Inaugural Grand Champion, The Molotov, The Calamity.
The End of Your Reign.
Lofty goals there, you might say. I assume you have littered your promotional with condescending phrasing in what you sent into the offices to be edited and cut for you. It’s what you always do, and I would hazard to guess that this is no different. I wouldn’t know, I didn’t look because I’m a good little boy, going into this blinder than a bat outside of the cave without echolocation. I needed to hold on to the anger of the last couple of weeks just a bit longer. I needed you to see me at my fucking best rather than at my worst. I didn’t need to watch the lesson you try to impart upon the unintelligent like you do every time, and I didn’t need your platitudes and your bullshit logic because you’ve been in this business since you fucking bailed from London and everything that supposedly held you back from greatness. Remember when you went to Steel Bones? You’ve talked about it before, and Dorian told me when he was training me: you had greatness stamped all over you and you left everything to become a prominent figure in the world of wrestling. They saw it in you, their Golden Child.
Too bad it took you fourteen of your eighteen years to get there. I guess I should have known. Even when you said you were proud of me, which was all I ever wanted, I should’ve known that jealousy was festering within you, bleeding out into everything you did. Was that the reason you became such a violent wrestler, Elena? Because you watched as the people you loved in your life — Lara, when she ascended the throne in her MMA stint, Cyrus as he won championships in famed companies, Finn as he ascended the ranks in a flash and stood at the top, breaking and taking what he needed — you watched all of them push past you in what must have seemed like a second life. Remember when you walked into So-Cal and a Steel Bones graduate that trained under Dorian took you to your limits and she’d been wrestling for a month? She defeated you, Tiffy did. I remember. I, too, graduated from Steel Bones. I, too, represent them.
What about when I started training? You wouldn’t talk to me for a month, stating that me becoming a wrestler was probably the worst thing for me and I wouldn’t succeed. Look at me now, Ma. Did I do what an angst-ridden teenage child does and throw that back in your face?
Did you think I would forget?
I have a memory that holds onto situations. Almost photographic, but not quite. I remember being that nine-year-old who watched as they kicked his sister out in the dead of night. I remember watching her raven hair billow out past her body and the fact that she didn’t even look back. I remember watching you from the street when I found you, training at that school in Blackpool, holding onto a stolen cupcake for your birthday and the fact that you never came out and I wasn’t allowed in. I remember watching your career explode on the television before I got hit over the head with that damned cane for watching something other than the Psalms and Proverbs of the Bible. Jesus wept, and all that shit.
I remember feeling lost, Elena. I remember needing someone to guide me, to help me, to have my back through thick and thin. For eight years of my life, I had that. And then it was gone.
I’m not Finn. I don’t fall apart at the seams when I don’t have my sister by my side. Between us all, I’ve always tried to fight for some kind of spot in your lives, some kind of equity. Maybe if I could wrestle, you’d be proud of me. Maybe if I could be like you and Finn, you wouldn’t give me platitudes and sweet-smiles -- you would recognize me as one of your own.
I reflected on this, sitting on a hotel bathroom floor with my head in the hands of my beautiful wife, why this match bothered me so much. I realized what it was. Not that I didn’t want to face you because you’re my sister; it was because I didn’t want my history to spill out into the open so that everyone in the world could see it. Because that’s what you would have done: call me out for the things I did or didn’t do in your eyes, ask me why I never came to you for guidance, tell me all of my flaws and my wrong-doings in your condescending tone. Oh, I respect you, dear brother, out one side of your mouth while the other is spraying venom and disgust.
Then I realized it.
I haven’t needed you for a long time.
I became a champion thrice over without you. I made my name on my own, without anything else or anyone else to guide me. I didn’t have Aiden here when I earned this championship, and I didn’t have him there before. I became the Grand Champion on my own merit.
I’ve had this guilt festering in me since they brought me and Aiden to Fallout to tell me I would face you in a match for your championship. The one thing they kept from me as it was rising to the top because they couldn’t have someone like me have all the inaugural opportunities. They knew I’d bare my teeth and fight like hell to eliminate everyone in that chamber. They knew then that I would put my body on the line, push myself beyond my limits, to hold the championship that is currently sitting on your dainty lap. The management couldn’t have it then. Christian DeMarco, in his weird, paranoid delusional quest to be the best brand when none of us see the brand separation as negative, grit his teeth and was told that I, the one man who truly held Proving Ground in my hands, would face his precious champion and he had no say in it at all.
Every single one of them in that meeting knew I wouldn’t only be coming for that title because I wanted it. They knew I would risk it all, put my body, my life, my family, my friends on the line because I’m Dickie Motherfucking Watson, and I don’t half-ass anything. My career in this place since the day it opened has been the one constant. I haven’t fallen back out of the limelight because I lost my championship, despite the rumors. Was I mad? Did I take it to Twitter? Absolutely. The one mistake that I had was righted in the world’s eyes as I pinned that motherfucker to the mat, spiking his head and making sure that he felt it. And I’d do it all over again.
I fix my mistakes, Elena. I might, as you say, whine about them on Twitter, but at least I acknowledge them, something that you cannot seem to do. Did you forget about the response you gave them all as you walked into Project: Honor and didn’t immediately get handed the top slot in the card? You were one of the biggest names to walk into the company, and there you were, right smack dab in the middle of the show. You didn’t get the recognition that you wanted, and you were so fucking annoyed by it that for the next couple of shows, you made sure to add that sniping comment about being overlooked into your videos, into your segments. You subtweeted it on Twitter. Riddle me this, Elena -- how was that not a whine? Was it because you said it in your dignified, lofty tone? Or was it simply because it was coming from The Gothmother, the woman who imparts lessons upon people who didn’t need them in the first place.
I don’t want your tried-and-true lessons, Mum. You have to adapt and change for every situation and as much as you think you’ve adapted, you’re spitting the same bullshit you’ve been for the last five years I’ve been watching you. This is the same narrative you spat against Finn, once upon a time. You’ve resented us for how many years, having to come to our aid, having to fix our problems? Give us lessons when we’ve walked off the path like a good mum. Is that really what the Gothmother of Wrestling stands for? Hm.
Except you haven’t. You weren’t there when I went to Hannah’s father’s, were you? You weren’t there when I argued my way out and took her home with me, gaining his blessing. You weren’t there when I tried to commit suicide at sixteen, feeling so fucking hopeless that I thought my life didn’t matter. You weren’t there when I started wrestling; you weren’t there when I won the DIVISION World Championship; you weren’t there when I won the Grand Championship. You weren’t there because you had more important things to do. Like selling cupcakes and handbags, and avoiding Twitter because it’s a narrative that you can’t control.
Elena DeDraca is all about control. Maybe it’s because you had none throughout the entirety of your life. Your mother leaving you on a bench in Hyde Park, the orphanage, the fire, the wrestling...you had no ownership of any of that. Now you stand in the center of your glass house, throwing stones at people who dare to do something that affects you. I want to say you don’t realize it, but I really think you believe yourself to above all of that pedantic shit. You don’t realize that this family moves when you move. Mark, your husband, follows your every move and loves you unconditionally. He’ll do whatever you ask. Finn, your brother, who goes into bouts of depression and won’t speak to anyone until things are right between you and him again — I knew that when I sent him to show up at your mother’s funeral. You control everything. Isabella adores you. You are the Queen of this family, and how dare someone slip out of your firm grip?
Like I did.
You have the family’s loyalty. I always had your back...until I realized that you would never have mine unless it was something I did for you. Something you approved. I turned around and made my own family because I watched what happened to Finn’s, and I told myself that I wouldn’t let that happen to me. You may dislike him, but Aiden treats me like a brother, like a sibling that he’d never had. I don’t have the question if he’s got my back because I know that with whatever I do, he’s there to support it. I’m down, he’s there to pick me back up, just as I would do the same for him. Hannah loves me unconditionally, regardless of all of my mistakes. This is my family, the one I made for my own. It’s little, but it’s good.
And when we walk into Wired Consequences on the twenty-eighth, I know that they have my back regardless of the result.
I know that when I walk out there, when I hear whether we’re having a match in a rope-replaced Barbed Wire match, or $9 Staple Gun Match, a Playground Match or a Glass House match, I know that the Dickie Watson you’re getting isn’t your little brother. It’s the tried and fucking true competitor that worked his ass off to become a champion, to become something relevant in this company, to become the one person who could represent the company far better than someone like you.
I was a fool. I was a goddamned, obliterated fool because I saw you and thought I needed you to be this great competitor. I needed your help, your adoration, your support. Because you were my sister, you were the one person I needed to support me. I loved you for a second more than I loved my career. But I love this job, Elena. I love the crowds, I love being the one that they’re here to see. I love being the standard of this company. And I still love you more than anything.
But I don’t need you, and neither does Project: Honor.
The company doesn’t need another selfish cunt only looking out for their own damn selves. Because you are. Selfishness took root in your soul and once you earned that championship, you became the same thing that you hate. You started talking about being the best in the business and you wouldn’t dare give that right to anyone else. Sure, you’re six and oh, but what happens when you start losing, Elena? What happens when you go from being the supposed workhorse of the company and then you fail? Do you disappear, like you always do? Do you disappear like they expected me to? I’ve never walked away from a company because I wasn’t its best competitor. You have.
I know it’s bothered you that people like Finn and I, men who haven’t been wrestling even half as long as you, have sat at the top of a company. This is truly your first moment at having that luxury, and what have you done but claim you’re better than everyone else and snarl at anyone who dares come at you? Sniping because somehow, deep down, you know that you aren’t the right person for the job. I think something you’ve forgotten, and maybe DeMarco has forgotten in all of this as well, is that the Legacy Championship...it isn’t just to sit on one brand and hold it with an iron fist, snapping at the rest of the roster and belittling everyone who comes near you. It’s not the top title in Fallout -- that’s currently held by Drago Santiago...or at least, it will be until we see the results of his hell of a match.
You represent Project: Honor, Elena. You represent all of us, and I, for one, think you have done a fucking terrible job at it. You walked out on Fallout, made this grandiose speech, and then said fuck all to Proving Ground. Maybe you feel like it’s your safe space, but I know that as champion, I will be going from both shows. I will be certain to provide equity to both brands because both brands are deserving of having the opportunity. That is what you’ve forgotten and will be your fucking fatal flaw.
Everything isn’t about you, just as much as everything isn’t about me.
You are a selfish human being, and it’s time you realized that, Elena. It may have taken you sixteen to eighteen years, whatever the narrative calls for, but it took me less than a fucking year to sit on the top because I know exactly where my place is and how to deal with it. I can represent Project: Honor far better than you ever will.
You told Drago that you didn’t want people riding the wave of others, but that’s what you’ve done here. You rode in and expected the world to be given to you; you didn’t get it, so you stepped on others to get there. Warstein, you defeated for the shot at that championship. Aiden, you didn’t do anything except win the match. Contessa was still fucking up things for you, from week one to week...whatever this is for you. The reason you won that match was because you had help. Your first match as champion of this company and someone bailed you out so you wouldn’t fucking fail miserably.
I didn’t need help against MYOJIN. I didn’t need help against Contessa. I didn’t need help against Steele and even when you look at my tag team matches, Aiden and I work as a team. It took six months for someone to pin me, and even that was a cheating move that ultimately was returned. I’ve adapted to the deathmatch style that Fallout carries, which is already evidenced from Bloodbath, and I can be a pure rules wrestler. I analyze far better than you ever did, and I move quick in matches because I already know how to outsmart you. You’re methodical, Elena, but I’m innovative. You may put one-hundred percent in, but I put everything into my matches. Literally everything. My life is the hands of this ring, and it doesn’t matter what match I’m pushed into, I engross myself in order to build results.
I’m everything that championship needs in the person carrying it.
Go along with what everyone else says, but know this: this will be like the one match where we shared the ring, where you took the pin. You will not take this opportunity from me, you will not remove me from my place in this company. I am the pinnacle, the standard, the one you have to beat. The narrative isn’t “what does Dickie have to do to defeat his sister” -- it’s “what does she have to do to stop his meteoric rise to the top”? Predictions mean nothing. I’ve proven them wrong in the past and I’ll do it again.
I’ve never been interested in anyone else’s narrative other than my own. Not even yours.
The Era of the Calamity will continue, regardless of your presence or not. I will be the Legacy Champion, and I will take this from you for every bit of sanity you caused me to lose.
Good luck, sister. Good luck against the monster you are responsible for. Take ownership for your failure.
It would be different for a change.
