I. Am. Born.

“I. Am. Born.”



That voice was quiet, but resolute, weaving its way over the air as the images of Danny squaring off with a punching bag filled the screen. His left hand up, wrapped tight with red boxing tape to keep those off angled fingers intact should a mishap occur, leading outward, the tightly corded muscles of his forearm exposed in the light. His right hand? Cocked back near his face, matching wraps adorning it from mid knuckle to mid forearm, guarding that handsome visage from a stationary opponent. Body tight, at an angle, making that bag face a smaller target than there actually was.



“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”



Once again, the voice was narrating the action. Danny’s hands were suddenly laying into the bag. Fast, sharp, enraged. His hands twisting as they lashed out like cobras, laying into the bag, making it bounce back with each punch that was turned into the heavy leather, using the “first” two knuckles of his hand to deliver most of the impact, almost like the tip of a spear cutting into the enemy. One hand drove the weapon forward while the other acted as a shield for his face as he dodged, and slipped imaginary punches while throwing his own. Casting a left jab, and then a right, while he bobbed and weaved, hurling devastating overhanded punches only to lay into the mid body of the bag with hooks! Hard, unrelenting, the kind of blows Danny was all too well known for laying into people with, in seemingly every match that he was called forward to fight.



“I wish I had Charles Dickens’s eloquence, but I’m afraid that I don’t. He had ways of weaving words that escape me, even as I regurgitate them in a sorry attempt to sound far smarter than I actually. Still, they fit, even without the context of it being about David Copperfield instead of Daniel MacNamara. The words fit. I was born into a storm of bad circumstances and entropy. I know, how sad. The rich, posh, boy had it bad growing up. A sadistic father that seems to be the same catalyst for so many strange sob stories in this business. A loving mother that couldn’t stop him, variously interchangeable family members here and there. It’s not a particularly unique origin, but it’s mine.”



And just like that, Danny was catching the bag as it swung back at him so sharply. Holding it to steady the thing, he cut his eyes to the camera, finally looking into it as he spoke instead of simply narrating it.



“That’s the difference between us, Johnny. I knew from the start of my life that I was never particularly unique, or different. It’s why I’ve tried all my life to be different from my family. To try and be the antithesis to them. Believe me, Johnny. I tried.”



Pushing back from the heavy bag, Danny was walking towards the weight bench before parking himself right there, but instead of going in on those weights, he leaned forward, to speak once more.



“I wanted to be light hearted, to let the past go, to let go of the shit that really fucked me, Lad. I tell you, I wish that I was the person that I used to broadcast being, that I was soft and gentle, that I wasn’t wolf hearted deep down. I never wanted to be the way that I’ve been made to be. All this edgelord bullshit, what I am now. It’s..”



He rolled those broad, muscular, shoulders of his.



“God, how many fucking times can I say it? I never wanted this. I never wanted to be this. I keep saying it, but it’s a fucking lie, isn’t it?”



That head of his tilted to the side, just a bit, almost a purely canine gesture.



“..I absolutely wanted this. I salivate every time I think I’m about to step into that ring. I genuinely treasure the thought of seeing the look in people’s eyes when they realize that I didn’t lie. The truth, the one I like to deny so much because I think that I’ll believe it, is that I’m like every other scumbag out there. I was born into this, Johnny. I was raised to be vicious, to be a predator, to be a fucking victor. I was forged from bone, blood, and muscle into a weapon that my family could use however they needed to.”



With that, came the sigh.



“I know. It’s dramatic, but it’s true. That’s my story. The weapon that didn’t want to be a weapon, before discovering that all the trauma I endured trying to avoid the sheer inevitability of who I am did nothing but turn me from iron into tempered steel. You know that, though. Don’t you, Johnny? You faced me once, you saw that I’m completely unyielding in a fight. You hit me with everything you had at the last Union Battlegrounds, and all it got you was me doing exactly what I told you I’d do. I spoke my truth into being and tore you asunder in that ring.”



Finally, the man grasped the two fifty pound dumb bells that’d been left near the stand he was sitting on, lifting them up from the floor. Curling those weights, his biceps and forearms bulging under the tension as he shifted the weight, flexing his arms at the elbows, before leveling his fists at the shoulders while he sat with his back to the inclined plane it was propped up against, pushing the weight up above his head only to ease his hands back down to his waist before restarting the process.



“An I Quit match though, that’s a new one to me. I’ve never done one before, and while I’d like to say that I don’t know what quitting is, I do. I know what it’s like to quit, or to want to. I know what it’s like to lay in the fucking gutter, Johnny. Come on, a pretty little rich boy who ran away from home with no real resources? Living in Asia? You can imagine the fucked up things I’ve had to do to survive. The pride breaking things I’ve done, the self inflicted trauma I’ve endured just to eat because I swore that my stomach was going to gnaw my stomach out of hunger? The things a person does just to get out of the cold for a night? Whatever you think can do to me is going to fall short of that. That’s the perdition I raised myself from, I know what it takes to make me quit, Vachon, and I don’t think you have it in you to make me feel that way again.”



He didn’t stop lifting, not even as he talked, putting his body through the motions to keep conditioning it. To keep it strong. Just like a whetstone to a blade to keep it sharp, or oil to steel to keep it from rusting. There was a refusal in that flame haired boy to keep from being anything less than fully operational.



“We’re both a collective of trauma, Johnny. Recipients of it, inflictors of it. We’ve made it a focal point of our lives almost, and frankly, it’s made us who we are. That proverbial flame that forged us into what we’ve become. It’s what gave me the strength I needed to take out Poe, to take out you, it’s what gave me the ice in my veins and the steel in my fucking spine to take the NVR World Championship from the false king that claimed to be a Tiger.”



The dumb bells were clacked down on the ground with their heavy thuds, the redhead leaning forward to put his elbows on his knees, a wry grin playing at his lips.



“Bring what you have to. Show me what Johnny Vachon can do, who he really is, what he’s wrought from.. You do that, Johnny, and I’ll show you what’s lurking behind my eyes in a way that I’ve never shown anyone else in the ring. They’ve all caught glimpses of it, but when they looked into the void, when they faced the oblivion inside of me? They all blinked.”



There it was again, that subtle tilt of his head to the side, that strangely canine behavior.



“I’m not the hero of my story, that’s already been seen, but there won’t be anyone else to hold that station, because sometimes.. Sometimes, what we need to be isn’t a hero, but a monster.”



Pause. Beat. He … just smiled as the camera faded to black.



“And so.. I, am born.”