Post by hypnos on Feb 19, 2023 2:44:46 GMT
[Redacted] hair fell in waves down her back as she stared up at the flickering image projected against the cracked white wall in front of her. The room was (mostly) empty. The things in the room didn’t matter. Miles Lucky’s hands tightened around Lethe’s throat and [redacted] could still feel it. She brought cold fingertips up to touch the now unmarred skin of her throat (but she’d worn his bruises for weeks, an unwelcome reminder. A souvenir she’d never wanted.)
[Redacted] cut through the crowd in the Hypnos mask. She watched him rip Miles Lucky off of her limp body and throw him out of the ring. Watched the way he bent over her, gathering her into his arms.
Rewind.
Play.
Miles Lucky hunched over her. She was helpless and weak as his fingers dug into her throat and her lungs begged for air. Tunnel vision. She faded out again to the look of disgust and hatred on his face.
Rewind.
Play.
Rewind.
Play.
Too many times. Finally, [redacted] let the room go dark. She reached over, dragging the bloody, filthy mouse head over to her. Put it on. [Redacted] fell away.
Lethe opened her eyes.
Outside of that dark room there was a river winding towards an impossible, looming ice cream mountain. Fake and plastic, like everything else except when it wasn’t and it was something both more real and worse. It cast its shadow even from so far away it looked innocuous and small.
Cast its shadow along the lazy river dotted with the carnage of a dozen swan floats, split open and shredded. They bobbed along in the water, a trail of dead that led her right where he wanted her to find him.
Sitting on that goddamn throne, sprawled out like a god in repose because he knew what it did to her to see him like that, mask on and cockier than ever after their first win together. Not just that, but a win that he’d taken while she’d been in a heap of pain on the outside. A win that he’d presented to her on a silver platter while she’d seethed.
An offering.
“Still don’t trust me?” he asked, that voice like a siren call beckoning her closer until somehow, she was once again standing between the sprawl of his knees, looking down at him but still he seemed to be in command of her attention no matter how hard she tried to fight it. “Even after what I did for us?”
Lethe mulled that over, chewing on the inside of her cheek. [Redacted]’s cheek. Her cheek. Things were confusing in that moment in ways that they sometimes weren’t and the lines between who she was and who she was pretending to be felt amorphous and vague. She’d watched [Redacted] wrestle, of course. Lethe had watched. [Redacted] had watched. He had the kind of ring presence that only came with time spent between the ropes (a thing she lacked sorely) but under the mask came a new kind of brutality she’d never seen in him before. A kind of cold, calculating cruelty that sent a shiver up her spine as she’d watched him take that win for them.
“Mouse got your tongue, Lethe?”
There was a taunt there, as though he somehow knew that she was wavering between liminal spaces. As though he knew that what she was and what she wasn’t were blurring together in strange ways that she didn’t know how to untangle. Prompting her for more. “One win doesn’t earn my trust,” she snarked. “But you did… you were… good,” she finally settled on it, letting the word roll off her tongue like it was burning her.
They both knew he’d been better than good.
“Good?” He asked her as he tilted his head to the side while looking down at her. He wasn’t fishing for compliments about his in-ring abilities. He knew what he could do inside of the ring, he had been doing it for a long time. Whether he was good or bad wasn’t important. The important thing was that they had won and advanced in the tag team championship tournament together.
Even the win wasn’t important compared to the question he asked Lethe only moments ago. Trust. He knew that [redacted] trusted him. He knew that [redacted] trusted [redacted], the man behind the mask of Mickey Mouse spiraling down from the highest peak of a bad acid trip. There wasn’t a single doubt in his mind when it came to [redacted] trusting him both inside and outside of the mask. That wasn’t enough, though. He needed to know that it wasn’t just [redacted] that trusted him.
“It wasn’t just one win, my pretty little mouse. Who was it that pulled Miles Lucky off of you and carried you to safety in the comfort of my arms? Remember that? I do, and I know that you remember it as well. Fast forward to our first win together and you still won’t admit that you trust me when deep down you know that you do. Our first match and win together was merely just the beginning. You literally have no idea what I would do for you, the woman whose blood runs through my veins and mine through yours.”
She reflexively took a step back when he said Miles’ name. Something between a snarl and a grimace twisting her mouth under the mask. (He couldn’t see it. He could see it.) Somehow, he saw too much. Knew too much. Miles Lucky had gotten the better of her in a way that no one else had. Sure, she’d bled before. She’d lost before. (Infrequently, of course, but it was still a feeling she knew better than she wanted to.)
Her temper flared at the way he was toying with her. Pressing on her bruises that only he knew were there. Already, he knew too much. He was too close. (She liked him close. Wanted him closer still. Wanted to crawl inside his ribcage and–)
(“I’ve got you, baby.” She remembered those words whispered frantically through the mask as he carried her through the crowd. Had that been [redacted] or him? Was he talking to her or [redacted]?)
“Then tell me what you’d do for me…” she taunted, a hint of bite in her words. But still, they weren’t as cruel as she’d wanted them to be. They were more enticing. Taunting. Playful. All around them the wreckage of the destroyed Swan floats bobbed in the fluorescent pink water, a metaphor for what he’d already done for her. (For them.)
“You know what I’d do for you. For both of you.”
He pushed himself up from the throne and to his feet, overlooking the river littered with swan floats mangled to shreds, yet still drifting along the surface of the pink water. A river that should have been flowing with the blood of their last opponents who had fallen to them only weeks prior. Instead, the remains of the floats slowly made their way down the river, as if there was a pot of gold waiting for them at the end of a rainbow.
“Maybe not enough,” he questioned himself before pausing for only a brief moment. “Then again? Maybe too much,” He spun around on the heel of his foot, looking down to Lethe and extending his hand for her to take. He pulled her up to her feet and stepped beside her, overlooking the river as the floats crept further and further away.
“Now how is it that our first round opponents get defeated, and while we move onto the finals of the tournament, they move onto a championship match that doesn’t belong to them?" He asked, turning to her slowly. Before she could answer, he took full responsibility. “We beat them and they get a shot at the gold we’ve come to claim for ourselves. Maybe I should have just rolled over and let her pin me in that match on January Fifteenth instead? Then it would be us getting the match with the gold up for grabs.”
He softly chuckled before there was nothing but dead silence.
“But where’s the fun in having things given to us, my dear sweet Lethe?”
It’s only a trick of the light that makes it seem as though the mask’s blank, spiral eyes are narrowing at this piece of unpleasant truth. “Absurd,” she snarled, teeth clenched. (It’s just a trick of the light, remember. Relax.) Teeth clenched. Teeth bared. A dripping maw. (No, just the same plastic molded smile. Benign. Harmless.)
Lethe let him spin her like a ballerina, black skirt flaring around her thighs. (She didn’t hate this.) “I hateeeeeeeee it,” she drawled, the snarl gone and in its something a little scarier: the loose, playful cadence of a monster. “Clearly our mistake for leaving a little too much of them left to scrape together after that, dollllll.”
Lethe pirouetted, scuffed black boots creasing as she pushed herself up to dance on her toes precariously at the edge of the dais. One wrong move and she’d plummet down into the river below, but Hypnos followed in her footsteps like an ominous shadow.
She’d never fall.
“Maaaaaybe we should leave our sloppy seconds in smaaaaaller pieces so that no one tries to smush them back together into something human shaped and tries to put a big old hunk of gold on them.” She lets him take her hand again as she spins elegantly into him, let him dip her backwards.
“You asked me what I would do for you,” he said, leaning her back and looking down into her spiraling eyes. “I would die for you and [redacted], even you know this.” His eyes stayed glued to her as he slowly lifted her straight up in his arms.
“I would kill… for you.”
Was that directed at Lethe or [redacted]? Or was it both? Another opportunity to prove what lengths he would go for her was right around the corner. An opportunity for both of them to continue forward and prove why they are the dominant force in the entire tournament with Infinite Pro Wrestling tag team gold twinkling in their eyes from afar. This was just another step along their path to winning it all as they agreed upon when they first set their sights on the company.
Price.
Nate Pierce.
Jennie Fenix.
Tara Fenix.
Four names standing between them and their first tournament throne claimed side by side. This was only the beginning and far from over. One more obstacle in the way to the pot of gold sitting at the end of the rainbow. No more jumping to the front or cutting in line at their expense. Their turn would come sooner than later, no matter whose blood they had to paint the canvas with.
“Would another victory and bloodshed earn your trust? A victory over not two, but four victims instead?”
Under the mask she smiled, a wicked thing for the wicked words and somehow, she knew he knew that she was smiling. Lethe or [redacted], it didn’t matter. He was the candle and she was a moth willing to get her wings singed to stay in his glow. But what she said was, “Maaaaaybe, let's see you get that pretty mouth of yours bloody for me, dollllll.”
She never said what she meant when it came to him.
She twirled out of his arms and into some elaborate pirouetting dance that looked too poised and eloquent next to the garish blue fake glass. The ceiling tiles painted to look like fat clouds bobbing in a muddy blue expanse. She collapsed in a delicate heap of limbs, stretched towards the blinking, blind eyes set in the center of the flowers that towered over them.
“Help me write my–” a pause. And then, a damning concession that she knew he’d catch. “Our legacy in their blood. Let’s break their spines in half when we stomp on their backs to climb to the top. Bring me their hearts, baby. And I’ll think about trust.”