Post by Deleted on Jul 1, 2021 0:29:57 GMT -5
Prologue
- May 27th, 2021 -
No pomp and circumstance. No bright lightning flashes. No pattering of rain against the thick glass of the skyrise to announce the presence of a mysteriously shadowy figure in the doorway. Nope, none of that. Just Dr. Theodore Gordon sitting behind a desk in his personal office looking over at a woman whom he thought he might never see in person again.
"What're you doing here?"
It was the middle of what has come to be known as a typical day in this office. Melancholy hung in the stale air like the unwelcome stench of hand sanitizer with a hint of self-importance in this dreadfully mundane place. Several high profile clients waited well past their assigned appointment times in a large room down at the end of the hall and it was up to the receptionist to keep order in the corral. Had the "Kid Wonder" of the medical world worked all seven days of the week, the barn would always be full of cows waiting to be milked... but even prodigies need lunch breaks sometimes.
Shunning the true implied nature of his question, the woman stepped forward and broke her silence. "Well wouldn't that be pretty obvious... to someone like... you... Doctor?"
As the woman approached the desk she noticed the boxes of her medical records stacked neatly in the corner, all taped up and ready to be placed somewhere where they could be
At his left hand, a typical garden salad - light dressing of course. At his right hand, a hand-carved, curved wooden pipe not too dissimilar from any Sherlock Holmes illustration, complete with chocolate-flavoured tobacco ashes in the tray it was leaned against. Yet neither of these seemed to matter as much in that moment as he watched her saunter over to the chair opposite him and sit down in it as if it were hers.
"I meant why are you here Maggie? We have no further business-"
The silver-haired woman lowered her head. She briefly brushed her hair to the side, revealing to him a rather large bruise on her cheekbone in the distinct shape of the sole of somebody's boot.
"What happened?" Dr. Gordon asked her... as if he couldn't venture a well-educated guess.
"Listen, I have something to ask you," she replied as she let her hair fall back down over that half of her face, "But if we don't have business-"
"I only meant that I no longer work for your employer, which you already know, I presume."
Gordon pushed his chair away from the desk as he stood up to go examine Lockheart's cheek a bit more closely. Lockheart pulled away... at first.
"You're still my though doctor, right? Or was all that a lie?"
Gordon balked and threw his hands up as if to show that he wasn't going to hurt her. She leaned back toward him and allowed his fingers to pull her hair to the side.
"Not a lie, but I thought-"
"You thought what, exactly?" The glare from her bright emerald eyes pierced upward through her metallic strands. "You thought that I would abandon you?"
The Doctor carefully poked at her cheekbone. He noted that the bruise had already started to show signs of healing.
"I thought," He stopped and inhaled sharply, "I thought that you would have realized that you cannot trust me... which would mean the end of our business, but that part goes without saying."
"I did realize that, actually."
"Then what are you doing in my office, other than showing me your latest in what I can only assume is going to be a hopefully long line of future contusions?"
Maggie turned her eyes away from him.
"I realized that I can't trust you," referencing times that Gordon had leaked sensitive information about her to her friends, colleagues, multiplayer match partners and/or the press, "but I can trust that you can't be trusted because you..."
"Because I what?"
Maggie paused. She seemed as though there was something that she wanted to say, but she bit down on her lip, and shook her head instead.
"At least I know where you and I stand, okay?"
Theodore shrugged his shoulders. He took his seat behind his desk and folded his hands between the salad and smoke.
"Fair enough," he said as he stroked the hairs of his mustache. "Okay, Fine. I'll bite. Where is it precisely that you and I stand, Miss Lockheart?"
"I-I..."
She clenched her shaking hands.
"I still need you," she finally responded, "I still need you as much as you need your puzzles. But if solving the mystery doesn't entice you like it once did, I can leave-"
Before Maggie could even put her hands on the armrests of the chair to push herself up, Gordon was already stopping her.
"No, no-" He waved his hand at her in a gesture to tell her to remain seated. "I can assure you that that won't be necessary. Wait... there's something going on with you, isn't there?"
He squinted as he peered across the desk at her.
"Something's changed, hasn't it?" He asked.
"I uhm... I haven't been experiencing the headaches... well, I've had headaches but not nearly as bad since-"
"Oh?" Gordon's eyes lit up. In just that brief moment his mood shifted and he felt like a kid in a toy store with his parents' platinum credit card all over again. The puzzle that he thought had been sealed away just burst open with a fresh new clue. "So that's why you're here. Tell me, since when did you notice this change exactly?"
"Since... uhm... since a few weeks ago... since a little bit before Combat Evolved I think."
"Combat Evolved. Hmm. That was Level Up's last big show, wasn't it?"
"Yeah," Maggie replied with a nod.
"So that puts it around..." Gordon thumbed through a desktop calendar, pinpointing the exact date of the show. "I see. Not too long after your little grand theft rental debacle. So, tell me what happened. New diet? Change in your medication?"
Lockheart simply shook her head no at the options. Gordon smirked.
"Are you sure? It sounds to me like something must have changed around the time of your rather self-imposed vacation. Or perhaps even more likely than that, right before it."
Maggie lowered her head once more.
"So, do you remember anything different or odd happening to you before you stole that car?"
"I remember," she picked her eyes up slowly as she talked, "leaving Don Tirri a black rose."
"Tirri. The guy that you were fighting; the one that didn't think highly of you?"
"That's him."
"Ahh, I see." Gordon reclined in his chair. "I take it he's the one who gave you that bruise on your cheek as well."
"No," Maggie scoffed at the thought, even offering a bit of a sardonic snicker at the person who did leave their mark. "But after I left him that rose, Tirri did bang up my knee up pretty good with his face."
Gordon paused for a moment, and then simply shook his head. "And what does that mean, exactly?"
"It means I kneed him in the face until he-"
"No, not the knee," he chuckled. "I meant the rose. Why would somebody like you give somebody like him a black rose before fighting?"
Maggie peered across the desk at the doctor.
"I dunno," she shrugged. "I guess because he deserved it? Because he was pissing me off?"
"So it's a symbol then. A metaphor."
"I guess so... yeah."
Gordon locked his fingers together, and leaned forward with his interwoven hands on the surface of his desk.
"So you were warning him. But that then begs the question: what, Miss Lockheart, were you warning him about?"
::: 6/10 Studios Presents :::
MML.2021.011 - Duplicity
- 403 Days Prior -
Maggie didn't stare at anything anymore... not quite in the way she stared at that box, anyway.
It made Amber sad.
The story of how Maggie came to this moment is the story of miracles and the stuff that legends are made of. Or, perhaps, it isn't. But at the very least, it is a story of reconciliation. It's the story of the unexpected consequences that occur when 'what shouldn't happen' happens and when something, or someone, has to live with the result.
After having the side of her skull shattered in late 2019, the road to recovery had its twists and turns but for the former wrestler known as Magdalena Lockheart. But it was her girlfriend at the time, a native New Yorker and professional tattoo artist by the name of Amber Caldwell, who helped make what should have been impossible possible again.
Each step forward seemed like another small miracle worth celebration of its own right at the very least. Weeks in the hospital. Multiple surgeries. A large scar along the left side of Maggie's scalp was in the process of forming in the same spot where her doctors peeled back her skin and welded a plate directly onto her skull.
It was fair to say for a while there that instead of a Christmas party, Amber thought that she would be planning a funeral. Then, after her girlfriend came through the worst of it and regained consciousness in an Intensive Care Unit in Baltimore, Amber thought she would be spending the holidays sitting at a bedside listening to machines and watching a monitor, trying to find out just how much of her girlfriend was still there.
And then, and then, and then. Silence turned into grunts. Grunts turned into words. Sitting up became standing. Standing became walking. As the swelling in Maggie's head subsided, more and more the pieces of Amber's lost girlfriend returned to her.
Amber was with her the whole time, and throughout the entire process. This cannot be understated nor can it be stressed enough.
But just as progress seemed to ramp up, it had come to a screeching halt. Maggie could walk, talk, even form sentences... but she had these nasty headaches. Moreover, she acted as though she didn't know who she was, or at the very least, wouldn't immediately recognize her name being called whenever Amber tried to get her attention. Maggie said that she had most of her old memories, just with none of the connection that came with them. On the day that Maggie would finally ring the victory bell on the way out of the front door of the hospital, her recovery was the stuff that legends are made of. Yet her mind was more or less a blank slate.
That's why it bothered her that Maggie couldn't free herself from that package's magnetic pull.
"You keep it up and I'm gonna throw that damn thing away." Am wanted to grab the box so badly, snatch it right off the tabletop and chuck it in the first dumpster she could find. "I thought we had this talk already."
Despite the pointed words, Maggie's fingertips reached for the contents of the box anyway. Amber tried desperately to close the cardboard flaps but Lockheart was still the much stronger of the two.
Once more, Maggie had the Jenova mask in her grasp and had brought it out into the light for a better view. She had opened the unassuming package weeks ago. Maggie had since seen the mask on several occasions and had read the letter attached to it about a hundred times, if not more. With a sigh, Maggie turned her gaze from the mask and up to her caretaker.
"I just..." She shook her head slightly, "What if this is who I'm supposed to be?"
"This?" Amber took the mask from Maggie's hands. "This is nothing. Not only is this not who you are, it's not even anything close, either."
Amber took the metal mask over to the kitchen garbage can and flipped open the lid by the foot pedal.
"This is just a desperate old man's attempt to manipulate you with something that has nothing to do with the real you, for things that aren't even any of your business to begin with."
When she finished, Amber tossed the hunk of metal into the garbage just as easy at that. Garbage. When she was done, she pulled her foot off of the pedal and let the lid slam closed.
"Alright, that's one down," Amber said as she walked back over to Maggie, holding out her hand. "Now give me the letter."
"No," Maggie shook her head much more wildly this time, "What if he isn't lying? What if she really needs my help?"
Amber doubled down, pushing her outstretched hand out even closer.
"Then it'll be up to somebody else to help your ex. I'm sure she has other friends, unless she treated them all the same way she treated you."
The argument made sense... at least in the bits and pieces of the details that Maggie could muster to remember anyway. For a moment, it did seem as though Maggie would come to her senses and allow the note to go the way of the mask, but she couldn't go through with handing it over so easily.
"Look, Maggie, I'm sorry, okay?" Amber said as she lowered herself to get to eye-level with her girlfriend, who was sitting at the kitchen table. "He put you in a really tough spot with all of this, I get that. Had we'd have known what was in that box I don't think either one of us would have opened it. But sweetie, it's not too late to say no."
"That's easy for you to say," Maggie said as she picked at her own fingernails. "What if I say no and something bad happens to her that I could have helped with?"
Amber sighed and snapped off her response with a growl.
"Well I didn't see Lucy helping much after something bad happened to you, now did I?"
The flare of anger caused Maggie to turn her head away, making the fresh scar on her scalp completely visible. Maggie clutched her head in pain and Amber immediately swooped in to coddle her, feeling regret for her outburst.
"Shh, shh. It's okay. It's okay. I'm sorry, okay?" Amber cradled Maggie's head cautiously. "I get so worked up, is all. You've come a long way and this isn't what you need right now. You're in no condition to do anything but keep getting better. If CJ was your friend or even gave a damn about you he would have known better than to ask this of you. CJ isn't going to do what's best for you. Only you can do that. And you know what? It's never too late to do what is best for you. It's as simple as that."
"It's about time they let you come home."
- 404 Days Later -
On the morning of May 28th, 2021, exactly two weeks after Magdalena Lockheart had tossed the Final Boss Championship down on the gravesite of CJ Wylde on CJ's first birthday since being deceased, the white Mustang that Maggie had grown so fond of was now once again parked in CJ's gravel driveway.
Gary Morrison was standing on the porch by the screen door ready to welcome CJ's "Legacy" back home. He watched as Maggie lugged her travel bag and the championship belt over her shoulder as her shoes dug into the tiny stones beneath her, leaving a trail of foot-sized indentations in her wake.
"They don't let me do anything, Morrie," the dainty five-foot-three inch champion grunted as she took each step up to his position one at a time. "They asked me to take it easy for a few days... so I did."
Morrison quickly nosed his way up to the side of Maggie's face, checking the mark that Antonio Ricci's 'Comatoes' left there out for himself.
"Well that was rather nice of them," he said clearly referring to whoever it was in Level Up that asked her to take it easy. "Seems like somebody really cares about you out in Indy."
Maggie quickly scoffed at the notion.
"Yeah. Right." Her sarcasm was turned up to 11, both in tone of voice and said with a complete roll of the eyes. "We know what they really care about."
She slammed the Final Boss gold into his abdomen like a quarterback handing off a football with authority. The impact both startled Morrie and drove a bit of the wind out of his lungs as he cupped the belt with his arms on sheer reaction alone.
Maggie opened the screen door and dropped her luggage in the foyer of the old home. Morrison wasn't far behind her.
"Aww, comeon champ," he said as he hoisted her travel bag from its haphazardly thrown spot on the floor. "That's not fair. I'm sure that there are plenty of people out there that do care about you. I care about you, at the very least. I know your fans care about you. I know your Doctor - Doctor Gordon - I know he cares about you-"
Maggie chuckled as she headed for the kitchen.
"Oh, speaking of," she said as she paused for a brief moment to let Morrie catch up. "I just spoke with him yesterday, actually."
"Oh really?"
"Uh huh. He basically admitted to me point-blank that he only gives a shit about me for the puzzle."
Morrie shook his head. "You know I don't believe that for a second. Why else would he have called me looking for you?"
Maggie shrugged.
"I guess because I'm the puzzle," she said as she leaned on the threshold between the hallway and the kitchen. "...and for the record, I still hate being called champ. So thanks for that."
"Well you better get used to it." Morrie said as he patted her on the back. "Changes come, am I right?"
"Excuse me?" She replied as she stopped on a dime.
"That's what CJ used to always say, isn't it?" Morrie shot Maggie a half-smile. "I dunno. I guess that was just his way of saying "get used to it." God knows we can't stop things from changing no matter how hard we fight it."
Maggie rolled her eyes again. She had grown tired of hearing the name CJ Wylde almost as much as she was tired of hearing Bert talk about Matt Knox or tired of hearing Don Tirri talk about Don Tirri.
"Far be it from me to disagree with the almighty CJ Wylde's eternal wisd-"
Maggie turned and stepped into the kitchen, where she found all of her prescription pill bottles lined up along the island like they used to be. The Vicodin, the most dangerous of all of these that was prescribed to her to lessen the throbbing of the migraines that she frequently suffered, stood proudly at the end of the row - closest to her.
Her feet nearly dug into the old tire floor in the same way that they did the gravel driveway just moments before as she made her way over to the prescription bottles to inspect them. She turned and held up one of the bottles as she stared down Morrie.
"These are all full?"
Morrie smiled.
"Of course they're full," he said as he casually took her bag with him toward the laundry room. "I saw what that jerk Ricci did. I kinda figured... worse case scenario... that you might have needed your meds when you got home. So I went and had them all refilled."
Maggie gasped as she popped the white top off of the little orange bottle in her hand.
"You know I threw these away for a reason!" she yelled as Morrie passed out of her line of sight.
"MmHmm-" His reply was muffled, but still audible. "Just trying to take care of you, like I promised CJ I would."
- 1 Week Later -
"I really appreciate you coming to meet with me."
It was the first time in a while that Magdalena Lockheart and Amber Caldwell had seen each other in person.
This meetup required a neutral location.
They both knew each other rather well, in fact, they knew each other intimately not too long ago. The former relationship between them budded and blossomed through mutual interests: Amber was a tattoo artist looking for a job, and at the time Maggie had owned a parlor less than ten miles away from the undisclosed bar that they were meeting in now; the same bar, in fact, that Maggie had met up with Adam Miller in back in February.
Though Amber was well aware of Maggie's exploits as a professional fighter from the moment that they had first met, the climate between the two became instantaneously tumultuous the moment that Maggie suffered the injury at the hands of a cheap ring bell. Amber did everything she could to help nurse Maggie back to health, and the only thing she ever asked in return was for her then girlfriend to reconsider her career choice. Amber did not want Maggie to rush back into the environment that nearly killed her the last time. In fact, at the time, she didn't want Maggie to go back to fighting at all.
At the bar, Maggie set a couple of martini glasses down on a tabletop and sat in the chair across from her now ex-girlfriend. The place that she had chosen was only scantily familiar, but it would do considering that Amber still kept residence just an hour or so north from New York City's SoHo neighborhood that was nestled within the borders of Manhattan island.
Amber shrugged her shoulders, taking a seat at the table. "Not like I had anything better going on."
"Well, then I guess lucky me, huh?" Maggie said as she wrapped her fingers around the rim of her glass.
"Besides, I wanna hear your idea." Amber said with a sip and a nod of her own martini. "That's... why I'm here."
By this point in time, not only had Magdalena defied all of Amber's wishes to not return to professional wrestling, but she was open and honest about increasing her workload, having taken bookings in places other than Indianapolis. (The whole "Interstate Lovesong" adventure was an idea that was sparked in her by none other than her last adversarial contender... Don fucking Tirri.) She was already regretting it.
"Well, uhm, I've been thinking," Maggie started out nervously. "There ain't no use to me putting my body on the line week after week if I'm not seeing any real return from it."
Amber nearly spit out her drink in laughter.
"So that shiny new car I saw out there is nothing, hmm?" Amber asked rhetorically as she gathered herself up. "And the big shiny gold belt too."
"You know what I mean," Maggie clapped back.
"Maybe I don't, actually," Am responded. "Maybe I'm trying to understand why you would want to get back into ink when your heart clearly isn't in it."
"That's not fair."
"It isn't?"
Maggie took a large sip from her glass and gasped immediately after swallowing the extra dry drink that just so happened to be Amber's favorite.
"Look, I know what I did was rotten. Maybe even a bit... shortsighted..." Maggie continued.
"Ya think?" Amber replied as she crossed her arms along her chest.
"But you know what, though? You were right-"
"I knew th-"
"As much as I might want to fight, like deep down in my soul really want to fight, I know that I can't do it forever. I know that I'm on... more or less... "borrowed time" as it is."
"So you're saying that you want an out?" Amber asked as she reclined further in the chair. "And you want me to basically work for you?"
"I guess you could call it that." Maggie replied though she sounded a bit unnerved in the response. "I like to think of it more as an investment. Right now the checks are good but they won't stay that way forev-"
"Well I don't know what to tell you," Amber sat back up and clutched her martini again. "It kinda seems like you had all of that once. Plus you've had several opportunities to get all of that back. Every time though you've chosen fighting. What makes this time any different?"
"Because this time I've realized that nobody out there is going to look out for what's in my best interest, especially if I haven't been exactly doing that myself anyway. But I thought that we could come to an agreement that's at the very least mutually beneficial. I want to do what's in the best interest of both of us."
Amber stopped and thought about it, for a moment anyway.
"So what do you say, Am?" Magdalena perked up. "I give you the money to start your own tattoo parlor as an investor with no say in the day-to-day operations whatsoever, and in return I simply take the smallest slice of your profit margin to put back into my own savings eventually."
Amber leaned forward. "Until the loan is paid off, right? I assume with interest, since this is supposed to be mutually beneficial."
Maggie nodded her head. "Of course. But it won't be a lot, I promise. And I won't hound you to pay me back, either. If the new shop never makes a dime then you'll never be forced to pay me back out of pocket."
"Oh really? Wow." Amber replied as she leaned forward across the table. "You'd be willing to do that for me... why? Because you trust me that much?"
"Amber..." Maggie smiled. "I trust you implicitly. I want so badly for us to just work together again."
"...you really do?"
"Of course I do, Am. I love-"
Amber finished her martini and sat the empty glass down between them.
"Then the answer's no."
- 1 Week Prior -
Maggie stood in the kitchen of the former CJ Wylde residence with a handful of Vicodin pills in her hand when Morrie re-entered from the laundry area. When he saw her standing there with the pills, he froze. For a moment, he thought she was going to swallow the entire handful.
"What're you doing?" Morrie asked carefully as he tiptoed across the kitchen floor towards her methodically.
Maggie looked up at him with tears in her eyes, as she suddenly dropped the pills from her hand, sending them scattering along the tiles below.
Morrie saw her reaction, saw the tears welling in the corners of her eyes, and closed the gap between them as the first of many of these streamed down her cheek.
"Maggie... shh... shh... don't cry... tell me what's wrong dear... everything is okay-"
"Is it?"
Maggie looked up as Morrie was hugging her, and she would swear that she saw CJ Wylde standing in the doorway, as clear as day.
"I can't stay here-" Maggie said as she broke down in Morrie's arms. "I've got to get away from this place."
To Be Continued...
