Post by Moxie James on Feb 28, 2021 21:38:20 GMT -5
I had a name but they took it from me
I was the man that I wanted to be
I had a place where I lay my head
They burnt it to the ground and the sky turned red
“How do you do it?” Moxie James asked Brytain Rollins one day, leaning limply against the ropes after another grueling sparring session.
“Do what?” Brytain asked, leaning against the ropes and looking far more put together than she had any right to after three hours of intense training.
“All of this,” Moxie said, chewing her bottom lip as she raked her sweat limp curls out of her face. “The… double life, I guess? I know you do some questionably legal, sketchy shit and then you’re this wrestling darling or whatever on the side? How do you do it… without letting it change you?”
Brytain snorted air through her nose, “I’m not the one to ask about all that,” she said with a shrug. She busied herself with cleaning up the ring they’d been working in. “I won’t lie to you and tell you that the life I’ve led hasn’t changed me. It might not look like it has but it has.”
“But if those changes are good or bad? That’s up to you,” Brytain continued, appraising the blonde girl in front of her. “Do you let this shit make you stronger or do you let it break you?”
Moxie was silent for a breath. Two. “I’m responsible for a lot of death,” Moxie said finally, “I don’t see how that can make me stronger…”
The images Brytain had showed her… the dead bodies down in Mexico that whatever mercenaries for hire Tris had contracted with had left in their wake, freeing Moxie from the fucked up shit she’d gotten herself involved with ate at her. She saw them in her dreams.
“So were they,” Brytain said, with a shrug. She tugged her pink ponytail tighter as she dropped down to slide out of the ring, passing Moxie her water bottle as she unscrewed the cap on her own. “Look, kid… I’m not a therapist. If you feel like you need to talk to someone about all this shit, I can get you in with someone who will be safe to talk to. But… it’s important to understand the weight of it all. But balance it out with the weight of the shit they did. They took advantage of you when you were scared and desperate. They’ve done a lot of horrible shit to a lot of people who both deserved it and didn’t. The world isn’t as black and white as you’re making it.”
When Brytain pivoted the conversation, Moxie let her. It was… technically over. She was safe in ways she hadn’t been safe in too long. The people she cared about were safe. Technically, she could move back to Los Angeles tomorrow. If she apologized and told him the truth for once, Zion would probably take her back.
He’d be angry that she hadn’t told him the truth from the beginning but she knew he’d let her come home. He still loved her and if she were being honest with herself… she still loved him.
But…
But something held her back.
What had once been a promising career had been overshadowed by the secrets that she kept. Her focus torn between wrestling and all of the other things she’d suddenly found herself needing to juggle.
“Don’t underestimate Emery,” Brytain was saying. “She’s got a lot to lose in this match… maybe even more than you do.”
“I know.”
“You don’t,” Brytain said firmly, drawing Moxie’s attention. “Not yet, you don’t.”
The pink haired veterans voice softened. “You’re still a baby in this sport. She’s been in long enough that she’s learned and grown and taken so many bumps that her body is starting to protest all the things she’s put it through. You haven’t been knocked around like someone like Emery has been. And you reach this point where you start wondering how much your body has left to give but you still haven’t accomplished the things that you’ve wanted. She has more to lose in this than you do and she knows it. I guarantee you that.”
Moxie mulled over her mentor’s words, draining her water bottle. “Did you ever face her?”
Brytain shook her head. “I’d heard of her. I’m sure she’s heard of me. Our paths never ended up crossing though. But I’ve been in the same corner she feels backed up against right now.”
xxx
Moxie’s teeth were still chattering from the ice bath when she unlocked her apartment door and stepped inside. The Tokyo apartment was nice but not too nice. Small, in the way that most things were small there.
She hadn’t put her own touch on the place… there hadn’t really been a point. But it felt… cozy and familiar nonetheless.
After she’d eaten, she sat down on the couch, her phone clipped into the cheap Amazon ring light she’d bought just for filming pre-match promos when she didn’t want to bother with the set up at the gym.
But tonight, she started and stopped and started and stopped. She couldn’t find the right words. The right way to address the redhead. Maybe because it was more than just Emery she felt like she was facing. It was… Miles Lucky, who had put her in her place when she’d first ventured back into the ring thinking she was going to pick back up where she’d left off.
It was Nyx, who had obviously just been phoning it in during their match weeks ago, leaving Moxie with a sick taste in her mouth when she thought of her victory. A hollow victory. One that meant next to nothing. Nyx, realistically, had been no one.
Unlike Emery Layton who was absolutely a someone. A someone whose matches Moxie had devoured when she’d still been too young and too green to even think about stepping into a ring herself.
“Take five hundred and sixty two,” Moxie muttered.
“Realistically,” she said, brushing blonde hair out of her face as her eyes narrowed in on her own reflection on the phone screen. “I am no one. I think that when I first came back… I made the mistake of thinking that I could pick up those threads of ‘about to be someone’ I dropped when 4CW closed its doors. The threads of ‘about to be someone’ that I thought I had when GIW put me toe to toe with legends. But I waited too long and I hadn’t done enough. I was mistaken and I paid for it.”
Her eyes hardened when she thought of her embarrassing return match against Lucky in Yamashi Pro. The barely earned victory against Nyx. “I embarrassed myself,” she admitted, “By my complete inability to be humble. And so, as usually happens in these cases, I was forcibly humbled.”
Moxie raised her eyes to the camera. “We both have something to prove Emery. I don’t think it’s fair to say that either of us has less to prove than the other. For me…? It’s been almost two years since I made my 4CW debut. So much promise and I squandered it.”
She swallowed down her own grimace. The squandering hadn’t been intentional but it has fact, nonetheless.
“And now, here I am with the beginnings of a promising career just kind of fizzled out around me and these idiots on Twitter who think that all I amount to is a relationship that ended almost a solid year ago. No one says shit about the fact that I stood toe to toe with Riley Savell and came out on top. No one talks about the fact that I was so fucking close to gold in Valor. No, the only thing that is ever mentioned is Zion fuckin’ Momo’a and the way I blew up a really fucking amazing relationship.”
She rolled her eyes, “As though my personal shit and how they can use it to hurt me is more important than anything I’ve ever done inside of the ring.”
Moxie paused, trying to reign in that frustration that threatened to spill over. “No matter how close I ever came to greatness, Emery… the only thing they want to talk about is my personal life. I know you probably know how frustrating that is. I’m sure you’ve probably been there in some capacity, right? It seems like it’s one of those ‘perks’ of being female in this business sometimes.
I haven’t been in this business long enough to understand where you’re coming from but I recognize frustration when I see it. I recognize desperation when I see it. I recognize it in myself and I recognize it in you. We may be coming from different ends of the spectrum but… like calls to like.
We both want to shut up our detractors. We both want to prove that we have more in us than what people are currently giving us credit for. And honestly, no matter which way this match goes… it's an honor to test myself against a veteran I’ve always admired.”
Moxie offered the slightest curl of her lips to the camera. Maybe a smile. Maybe. “It’s an honor but don’t mistake my respect for going easy. I’m bringing everything I have to lay out on that ring with you, Emery. I know you’re going to do the same thing. And I have a proposition for you…”
Moxie’s smile turned a little warmer, for Emery and Emery alone. “Let’s light this shit on fire. Win or lose, let’s make sure they’re talking about this when it’s over. We might be as close to curtain jerking as we can get… but let’s steal Lucky and Willow’s thunder. Let’s be the match they’re all talking about at the end of the night.
Win or lose, let’s make this the most spectacular shit they’ve ever seen.
Win or lose, let’s make sure they know our motherfucking names when this over. I will give you everything I have inside of me. Give me everything you have. Let’s take each other to the very edge of what’s possible inside of that ring.”
Moxie made eye contact with the camera but it was just Emery that she was “looking” at.
“Deal?”
Oh I'm the World Ender baby and I'm coming for you
They put me in the ground but I'm back from the dead
Oh I'm the World Ender baby and I'm coming for you
They put me in the ground but I'm back from the dead
