Post by Brooklyn on May 28, 2018 3:24:10 GMT
“Hey,” she began, sidling up to Dean and slipping an arm into his, “I’ve gotta a few questions for you but you’re probably not going to like them.”
Dean cast a sideways glance down at her, a smirk on his stoic face. “Yeah, yeah, yeah – I know. But listen,” she continues, “I’ve been thinking long and hard about this. My match with Dawn coming up, it’s not going to be pretty; daughter of Spike Kane and all.”
Dean pats her hand and smiles, “But you’re the Big Bad Wolf” to which Brooklyn gives him a playful punch on the arm. “Little Bad Wolf, sorry” he continues, “you’ve accomplished so much in your time with us that it’s still surprising to see you doubt yourself. You’ve beaten all comers, but still don’t think you’ve got the chops to take on Dawn?”
He was right of course. There was just so much about herself that she still doubted, and probably always would on some level. But there was something about Dawn, something different about her that was throwing her off. “It’s just, you and Rowan are two of the strongest people I know and she’s not …” she trailed off, “well, you know. Like, I know we don’t really ever talk about it …”
Dean looked down at her once more. “You guys are just so strong, so sure of yourselves, I just can’t help but wonder if …”
“No”
She looked up at him, “No?”
“It’s not,” Dean begins, “it’s just I think you and I need to have a serious talk about this before you get any grandiose thoughts about this. Their kind aren’t to be trifled with.”
Brooklyn stopped, looked down at her feet for a moment before look back up at Dean. “I want to talk to him.”
“You what?”
Undeterred she continued, “I want to talk to him … can, can I?”
Dean took a deep breath, a small shake of his head before closing his eyes. Brooklyn squinted up at him, not knowing what to expect. But as Dean’s eyes opened she couldn’t contain the gasp of surprise that escaped her; his eyes had transformed to the most beautiful shade of light green.
“D … Dean?”
Dean looked down at her, a smile on his face, “You wanted to see me, child?”
_________________________________________
“One upon a time,” she coos, a sultry smile dancing across her lips, “a young girl born into rags but yearning for riches prayed to a God. ‘Please, deliver unto me a sign that I am special – that there is something for me out there in the great big world.’ God smiled down at his child, undying love and compassion in his eyes and shook his head. ‘No, my child,’ he would say as the young girl began to cry, ‘for while you are special, you must discover this on your own. Go forth, forge your own path in this life for great things will come to those who seek them.’ The young girl did just that. She fought for everything that she had in this world until one day God look back down upon her with a smile and said, ‘My child, how you’ve grown. Where once a weak child now stands a warrior. Here, come forth and meet your true father’, and God took the girl, now a woman by the hand and led her towards a bright light where stood a figure silhouetted against a backdrop of eternity. ‘My daughter,’ the angel said as he gazed upon his progeny, ‘my … Dawn’.
[/i] “It’s the perfect story, really” she continues, the smile becoming a smirk, “rags to riches; little pauper girl finding out she’s heir to an empire. S’funny,” she grins, “Warren always said he wouldn’t have been surprised to learn there were more like him out there. Seems your father spread his seed far and wide in the hopes of extending his bloodline.
No,” she stops herself, waving a hand in the air, “no, this isn’t about him – it’s never been about him. You and I,” she continues, “everything we are, everything that we’ve won and lost in this life has been by our own volition. At any point along the way we could have blamed our failures on our shady parenting, but we didn’t. Now look at us,” she says with a Cheshire grin. “The pair of us jockeying for positioning atop the mountain, vying for footing and trying hard not to tumble back down from where we came.
Yet, for all of our similarities, I still see us as opposing sides of the same coin. One side, brash and arrogant with a chip on her shoulder that she could care less about losing. The other, quiet and reserved with a mean streak that, sometimes, is hard to keep in check. Each time that coin is tossed into the air, the two sides flipping end over end, not knowing which of them would land facing up – a fifty-fifty shot they say. Fifty-fifty, ‘cause anything can happen out there. Every week, every match, just another fifty-fifty chance at winning or losing.
Bullshit.
I didn’t get where I am in this company by playing the odds. You don’t survive long just keeping it by the numbers; you wanna win? Fine, then you gotta pay the price to get into that winners circle. Me? Oh, I paid my dues week after week; floundering here, there, and everywhere just trying to catch my break … get that first win. It was there, each week I could see it, taste it, nearly touch it but it was just … just there … just out of reach. It made me hungry, made me start to work a little harder – get a little meaner. That night I let go, the night I let the hunger take over … that was the night that I pinned Crystal Millar’s shoulders to the mat for the one, two, three.
But the hunger wasn’t satiated, it wanted more … demanded more, and I couldn’t say no.
Week after week I worked to continue to feed that hunger, make it happy. No matter how many souls I fed to it, how many victories I accumulated for it; it wanted more. I wanted more. There had to be more.
The process of my rise through the ranks of this company has been a slow burn to say the least. I didn’t burst onto the scene like you, full of piss and … more piss, ready to set the company ablaze. No, while you’ve been all flash and fury, I’ve been the slow burn. I’ve been the fire that you don’t know about, the one that starts as a small electric spark between the walls. Smoldering, slowly burning and weakening everything around it – but on the outside, you’re none the wiser. Days, weeks, months I’ve been here burning until IWF, the house that Roberto built, began to crumble under its own weight.
The looks on their faces when the walls began to fall. First there was the women’s battle royal. The delicious tears that were shed watching women like Alexis Caffery, Sara Garcia, Charity Crowne, Astrid Hall, and even your beloved step-mother Pandora fail while I succeeded.
The home could still be saved, surely Shea would successfully put me back in my place. Alas,” she grins, “as Shea fell, so too did another wall. The company teetered now that someone like me, a Pack member, was holding their precious Diamond title. So,” she snorts, “they sent a giant to do what their heroes could not. Astrid Hall was Imperial’s last hope of tearing this title away from me and bringing it back into their grasp. She was their final hope to stave off the collapse.
But still, I prevailed.
Astrid fell, and so to did the final wall holding us back; though I was as surprised as any to see that as the final wall fell, you and your lot were standing there … watching … waiting. The Age of Gods, truly a force to be reckoned with if ever there were one. Gods and Angels amongst your ranks, and you, dear Dawn fighting on the side of the, what just? Is this their role in all of this? Are the Pack once more being painted as the devils while your father and the ambiguously altruistic Angel waltz around like saviors? I know, I know,” she smiles, “it’s complicated. Dawn, if there’s one thing that I’ve learned in my time here in Imperial – the more convoluted a situation is, the better. Your ilk, with their shady practices and back alley deals, they don’t seem to fit in with you – with the person that we’ve all come to equally fear and respect.
Many see your joining as an opportunity to stand beside your father, to foster a relationship that you so sorely lacked, but desired. He was never there for you, never saw you take your first steps or break for first nose. He wasn’t there to give tell you about the birds and the bees, instead he was out sowing his own wild oats. Your tough exterior does give way to a sweet, creamy inside doesn’t it my little Cadbury egg. Unlike many, it isn’t a façade of toughness that you build up around yourself to mask the pain – no, this bitch we see each and every week is the real deal; the real Dawn. But the other Dawn is still in there, deep down and buried deep. The little girl who just wants her daddy. The little girl who sits there, night after night at the window wondering where her father is, wondering who her father is. That little girl, so full of innocence and wonder …
I will watch the light go out in her eyes.
I will break through that tough outer shell of yours and feast upon the sweetness hidden within. I will break the unbreakable; and you know that if there were anyone in this company capable of doing it – it’d be me.
I’ve broken all the other toys that they’ve thrown at me, so now they give me one under the auspices that I can’t win – not against these odds. Dawn Halliwell is everything I’m not; all those wards and locks that have I’ve put in place don’t hold you back. So what, pray tell, Dawn do you anticipate will happen by poking the wolf? Did you think that I wasn’t going to hold up my end of the bargain; that I wasn’t going to fight with everything I had? Did you think I would piss off like so many of our sisters and leave you unfulfilled, unsatisfied and yearning for more?
I am not Fiona McFly.
I am not Charity Crowne.
I am not Alexis Caffrey, Vivienne Rogers, or even Pandora Freeman-Kane.
My name is Brooklyn Madrox, I am the Little Bad Wolf; and I am now, and will always be, the IWF Women’s Champion.
And you, seem to have forgotten what happens to those who try and corner the beast. How many months ago was it that my lady, Rowan humbled you and left you broken in the ring? The fact that you even came back is a testament to your tenacity, but what scars has it left? How has that beating changed you? The scars that no-doubt dot your body like a road map of pain and suffering could just as equally represent strength as they could weakness. You’ve battled your way through fire to get back to this place – but you’re not the same woman you once were. It’s there, though you expertly mask it, but it’s there.
Fear.
The others, they don’t see it because they don’t know where to look. I know, because I’ve been there as well. That fear, it’s like perfume with its sickly sweet aroma. No matter how much you cover it with bravado it’s there, and I smell it; and it scares you that I’m right.
Then again, it doesn’t take an oracle to know that you and I,” she smiles, teeth bared, “we’ve been destined to dance this dance since the beginning, Dawn. Only one of us will be walking away from this match; do you have the strength to do what is necessary to put me down or will you hesitate? Will you give in to that little girl inside of you begging, pleading for you to stop?
Will you answer the knock at the door, Dawn? The wolf has come calling, now let me the hell in!”
_________________________________________
It was an uncharacteristically warm evening, even for May. Most of the day had been spent in the pursuit of shade, of a breeze. All over the compound, people lunged about in an attempt to stay cool. Deep down in the bowels of the facility, Brooklyn say fanning herself with a magazine while thinking about her conversation with Dean. Was he right? Was she not ready for this new path?
“Hey, Brook” came a voice from beyond the doorway. Brooklyn opened her eyes, giving them a moment to adjust to the overhead lights. She smiled as she watched Richard stride across the floor and take a seat next to her. “Can you believe this heat?” His attempt at small talk was cute. She nodded at him, continuing to fan herself in the meanwhile. “Hey, so, ah” Richard continued, “I know this might sound strange but, um” he fumbled his words, struggling to say what he’d been practicing while pacing his room for the last hour. Brooklyn smiled, reaching up brush a sweaty tendril from her face as Richard opened and closed his mouth like a large mouthed bass. “D’you think you and I might, you know, see a movie or something? Like,” he continued, “we can invite a bunch of people you know, so it’s not like a ‘date-date’ or anything.” Richard sighed and looked down at his feet. It was sweet, really, when she thought about it. She knew he had been pining for her for ages now; though they’d barely had more than a few conversations. The fact was that Richard was one of the few people her own age here and she’d grown used to his presence. “Rich,” she began, smile growing on her face, “if you had a crush on me all you had to do was say something.” She stopped fanning herself and stood up to her feet, crossing the room. Richard looked down at the magazine, but quickly realized it wasn’t a magazine after all. It was some kind of manuscript, written in what looked like … Celtic? “Hey, Brook” he began, looking back up to see Brooklyn standing there, “what’s this all …” but he couldn’t get the question out as his attention was suddenly drawn to the silver handle sticking out of his stomach. His face, etched in both confusion and incredulity, just looked at Brooklyn who stood there muttering words in a language he couldn’t understand as the world around him slowly went dark.
Dean cast a sideways glance down at her, a smirk on his stoic face. “Yeah, yeah, yeah – I know. But listen,” she continues, “I’ve been thinking long and hard about this. My match with Dawn coming up, it’s not going to be pretty; daughter of Spike Kane and all.”
Dean pats her hand and smiles, “But you’re the Big Bad Wolf” to which Brooklyn gives him a playful punch on the arm. “Little Bad Wolf, sorry” he continues, “you’ve accomplished so much in your time with us that it’s still surprising to see you doubt yourself. You’ve beaten all comers, but still don’t think you’ve got the chops to take on Dawn?”
He was right of course. There was just so much about herself that she still doubted, and probably always would on some level. But there was something about Dawn, something different about her that was throwing her off. “It’s just, you and Rowan are two of the strongest people I know and she’s not …” she trailed off, “well, you know. Like, I know we don’t really ever talk about it …”
Dean looked down at her once more. “You guys are just so strong, so sure of yourselves, I just can’t help but wonder if …”
“No”
She looked up at him, “No?”
“It’s not,” Dean begins, “it’s just I think you and I need to have a serious talk about this before you get any grandiose thoughts about this. Their kind aren’t to be trifled with.”
Brooklyn stopped, looked down at her feet for a moment before look back up at Dean. “I want to talk to him.”
“You what?”
Undeterred she continued, “I want to talk to him … can, can I?”
Dean took a deep breath, a small shake of his head before closing his eyes. Brooklyn squinted up at him, not knowing what to expect. But as Dean’s eyes opened she couldn’t contain the gasp of surprise that escaped her; his eyes had transformed to the most beautiful shade of light green.
“D … Dean?”
Dean looked down at her, a smile on his face, “You wanted to see me, child?”
_________________________________________
“One upon a time,” she coos, a sultry smile dancing across her lips, “a young girl born into rags but yearning for riches prayed to a God. ‘Please, deliver unto me a sign that I am special – that there is something for me out there in the great big world.’ God smiled down at his child, undying love and compassion in his eyes and shook his head. ‘No, my child,’ he would say as the young girl began to cry, ‘for while you are special, you must discover this on your own. Go forth, forge your own path in this life for great things will come to those who seek them.’ The young girl did just that. She fought for everything that she had in this world until one day God look back down upon her with a smile and said, ‘My child, how you’ve grown. Where once a weak child now stands a warrior. Here, come forth and meet your true father’, and God took the girl, now a woman by the hand and led her towards a bright light where stood a figure silhouetted against a backdrop of eternity. ‘My daughter,’ the angel said as he gazed upon his progeny, ‘my … Dawn’.
[/i] “It’s the perfect story, really” she continues, the smile becoming a smirk, “rags to riches; little pauper girl finding out she’s heir to an empire. S’funny,” she grins, “Warren always said he wouldn’t have been surprised to learn there were more like him out there. Seems your father spread his seed far and wide in the hopes of extending his bloodline.
No,” she stops herself, waving a hand in the air, “no, this isn’t about him – it’s never been about him. You and I,” she continues, “everything we are, everything that we’ve won and lost in this life has been by our own volition. At any point along the way we could have blamed our failures on our shady parenting, but we didn’t. Now look at us,” she says with a Cheshire grin. “The pair of us jockeying for positioning atop the mountain, vying for footing and trying hard not to tumble back down from where we came.
Yet, for all of our similarities, I still see us as opposing sides of the same coin. One side, brash and arrogant with a chip on her shoulder that she could care less about losing. The other, quiet and reserved with a mean streak that, sometimes, is hard to keep in check. Each time that coin is tossed into the air, the two sides flipping end over end, not knowing which of them would land facing up – a fifty-fifty shot they say. Fifty-fifty, ‘cause anything can happen out there. Every week, every match, just another fifty-fifty chance at winning or losing.
Bullshit.
I didn’t get where I am in this company by playing the odds. You don’t survive long just keeping it by the numbers; you wanna win? Fine, then you gotta pay the price to get into that winners circle. Me? Oh, I paid my dues week after week; floundering here, there, and everywhere just trying to catch my break … get that first win. It was there, each week I could see it, taste it, nearly touch it but it was just … just there … just out of reach. It made me hungry, made me start to work a little harder – get a little meaner. That night I let go, the night I let the hunger take over … that was the night that I pinned Crystal Millar’s shoulders to the mat for the one, two, three.
But the hunger wasn’t satiated, it wanted more … demanded more, and I couldn’t say no.
Week after week I worked to continue to feed that hunger, make it happy. No matter how many souls I fed to it, how many victories I accumulated for it; it wanted more. I wanted more. There had to be more.
The process of my rise through the ranks of this company has been a slow burn to say the least. I didn’t burst onto the scene like you, full of piss and … more piss, ready to set the company ablaze. No, while you’ve been all flash and fury, I’ve been the slow burn. I’ve been the fire that you don’t know about, the one that starts as a small electric spark between the walls. Smoldering, slowly burning and weakening everything around it – but on the outside, you’re none the wiser. Days, weeks, months I’ve been here burning until IWF, the house that Roberto built, began to crumble under its own weight.
The looks on their faces when the walls began to fall. First there was the women’s battle royal. The delicious tears that were shed watching women like Alexis Caffery, Sara Garcia, Charity Crowne, Astrid Hall, and even your beloved step-mother Pandora fail while I succeeded.
The home could still be saved, surely Shea would successfully put me back in my place. Alas,” she grins, “as Shea fell, so too did another wall. The company teetered now that someone like me, a Pack member, was holding their precious Diamond title. So,” she snorts, “they sent a giant to do what their heroes could not. Astrid Hall was Imperial’s last hope of tearing this title away from me and bringing it back into their grasp. She was their final hope to stave off the collapse.
But still, I prevailed.
Astrid fell, and so to did the final wall holding us back; though I was as surprised as any to see that as the final wall fell, you and your lot were standing there … watching … waiting. The Age of Gods, truly a force to be reckoned with if ever there were one. Gods and Angels amongst your ranks, and you, dear Dawn fighting on the side of the, what just? Is this their role in all of this? Are the Pack once more being painted as the devils while your father and the ambiguously altruistic Angel waltz around like saviors? I know, I know,” she smiles, “it’s complicated. Dawn, if there’s one thing that I’ve learned in my time here in Imperial – the more convoluted a situation is, the better. Your ilk, with their shady practices and back alley deals, they don’t seem to fit in with you – with the person that we’ve all come to equally fear and respect.
Many see your joining as an opportunity to stand beside your father, to foster a relationship that you so sorely lacked, but desired. He was never there for you, never saw you take your first steps or break for first nose. He wasn’t there to give tell you about the birds and the bees, instead he was out sowing his own wild oats. Your tough exterior does give way to a sweet, creamy inside doesn’t it my little Cadbury egg. Unlike many, it isn’t a façade of toughness that you build up around yourself to mask the pain – no, this bitch we see each and every week is the real deal; the real Dawn. But the other Dawn is still in there, deep down and buried deep. The little girl who just wants her daddy. The little girl who sits there, night after night at the window wondering where her father is, wondering who her father is. That little girl, so full of innocence and wonder …
I will watch the light go out in her eyes.
I will break through that tough outer shell of yours and feast upon the sweetness hidden within. I will break the unbreakable; and you know that if there were anyone in this company capable of doing it – it’d be me.
I’ve broken all the other toys that they’ve thrown at me, so now they give me one under the auspices that I can’t win – not against these odds. Dawn Halliwell is everything I’m not; all those wards and locks that have I’ve put in place don’t hold you back. So what, pray tell, Dawn do you anticipate will happen by poking the wolf? Did you think that I wasn’t going to hold up my end of the bargain; that I wasn’t going to fight with everything I had? Did you think I would piss off like so many of our sisters and leave you unfulfilled, unsatisfied and yearning for more?
I am not Fiona McFly.
I am not Charity Crowne.
I am not Alexis Caffrey, Vivienne Rogers, or even Pandora Freeman-Kane.
My name is Brooklyn Madrox, I am the Little Bad Wolf; and I am now, and will always be, the IWF Women’s Champion.
And you, seem to have forgotten what happens to those who try and corner the beast. How many months ago was it that my lady, Rowan humbled you and left you broken in the ring? The fact that you even came back is a testament to your tenacity, but what scars has it left? How has that beating changed you? The scars that no-doubt dot your body like a road map of pain and suffering could just as equally represent strength as they could weakness. You’ve battled your way through fire to get back to this place – but you’re not the same woman you once were. It’s there, though you expertly mask it, but it’s there.
Fear.
The others, they don’t see it because they don’t know where to look. I know, because I’ve been there as well. That fear, it’s like perfume with its sickly sweet aroma. No matter how much you cover it with bravado it’s there, and I smell it; and it scares you that I’m right.
Then again, it doesn’t take an oracle to know that you and I,” she smiles, teeth bared, “we’ve been destined to dance this dance since the beginning, Dawn. Only one of us will be walking away from this match; do you have the strength to do what is necessary to put me down or will you hesitate? Will you give in to that little girl inside of you begging, pleading for you to stop?
Will you answer the knock at the door, Dawn? The wolf has come calling, now let me the hell in!”
_________________________________________
It was an uncharacteristically warm evening, even for May. Most of the day had been spent in the pursuit of shade, of a breeze. All over the compound, people lunged about in an attempt to stay cool. Deep down in the bowels of the facility, Brooklyn say fanning herself with a magazine while thinking about her conversation with Dean. Was he right? Was she not ready for this new path?
“Hey, Brook” came a voice from beyond the doorway. Brooklyn opened her eyes, giving them a moment to adjust to the overhead lights. She smiled as she watched Richard stride across the floor and take a seat next to her. “Can you believe this heat?” His attempt at small talk was cute. She nodded at him, continuing to fan herself in the meanwhile. “Hey, so, ah” Richard continued, “I know this might sound strange but, um” he fumbled his words, struggling to say what he’d been practicing while pacing his room for the last hour. Brooklyn smiled, reaching up brush a sweaty tendril from her face as Richard opened and closed his mouth like a large mouthed bass. “D’you think you and I might, you know, see a movie or something? Like,” he continued, “we can invite a bunch of people you know, so it’s not like a ‘date-date’ or anything.” Richard sighed and looked down at his feet. It was sweet, really, when she thought about it. She knew he had been pining for her for ages now; though they’d barely had more than a few conversations. The fact was that Richard was one of the few people her own age here and she’d grown used to his presence. “Rich,” she began, smile growing on her face, “if you had a crush on me all you had to do was say something.” She stopped fanning herself and stood up to her feet, crossing the room. Richard looked down at the magazine, but quickly realized it wasn’t a magazine after all. It was some kind of manuscript, written in what looked like … Celtic? “Hey, Brook” he began, looking back up to see Brooklyn standing there, “what’s this all …” but he couldn’t get the question out as his attention was suddenly drawn to the silver handle sticking out of his stomach. His face, etched in both confusion and incredulity, just looked at Brooklyn who stood there muttering words in a language he couldn’t understand as the world around him slowly went dark.
Well howdy there pardner.