Post by “Demon Slayer” Warren Harper on Jul 20, 2023 15:35:34 GMT
For the first time in forever, Warren Harper had hit the road, incomplete. He had traveled to West Pittsburgh with Damien, but not Dean. Damien’s real father had a lot more responsibility as IWF World Champion now, many more important matches to prepare for and consequently he could not spend as much time with them as he often did before, Warren had explained.
Whilst that explanation wasn’t strictly the entire truth of the matter, it had been enough to placate the remarkably insightful and deeply inquisitive four year old. A promise to spend the whole day in the park had softened the blow further and the far more important business of recounting the adventures and endlessly fascinating life of Bluey had resumed.
By the time they had reached Shea’s apartment complex, Warren had acquired an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the Australian Blue Heeler puppy. Damien’s enthusiasm and animated sense of wonder brought the character to life for Warren who had disappointed Damien with the most shocking revelation of all - he had never seen a single episode - not a single one.
Damien clutched what Warren now understood to be so much more than a talking plushie of a cartoon dog tight and Warren’s hand tighter as they waited together in Shea’s one bedroom luxury apartment with Molly the Golden Retriever puppy who took an immediate interest in Damien.
“Does watching Bluey make all old people sad?” Damien asked. “Is that why you don’t watch it?”
“Why would Bluey make anybody sad?”
“It makes Other Daddy sad,” Damien shrugged, “He cries a lot when we watch it.”
“He does?” Warren asked softly, struck by the revelation. Dean Harper wasn’t somebody Warren readily associated with emotional vulnerability. He hadn’t seen Dean cry since Max’s death, as far as Warren remembered, anyway. Most of the last few years were still way more hazy than Warren was ready to admit. Even most of Warren’s first match back in nearly a year had been carried mostly on instinct and muscle memory more than desire and active engagement.
Adel Travent had given him much more trouble a couple nights ago at Sacrifice than Warren would have liked, reminding him that he was still far closer to the burnt out wreck that crashed out of last year’s Heir to the Throne against Alek Bronson than he was to his personal peak as IWF World Champion against James Gilmore the year before.
“Are you going to leave us again?” Damien mercifully interjected, saving Warren from drowning in the ever present waters of his deeply rooted anxieties. “Eddy says it’s okay, that sometimes Daddies need to leave for a long time.”
Get them while they’re young, Warren thought, that was the Blake MO, always had been.
Dean was practically blind to Angel’s faults, flaws and failings, but if there’s one thing Warren had never forgotten and would never forget no matter how long he lived or how deeply he had his mind purged and his memories manipulated, it was just how badly the self righteous could fuck with the purity of innocence.
A welcome ding from a phone alert delayed Warren from answering Damien right away. Warren fished his handset out of his jean pocket. He frowned as he saw the social media notification of an update to Vivienne Rodgers’ feed.
A photograph of her all smiles holding her IWF Hall Of Fame 2023 commemorative induction plaque. If he was still any kind of worthwhile friend to her he would have swallowed his pride and just gone to the ceremony to support her, but instead he was here seething with jealousy, haunted and taunted in equal measure by the exact type of family and happiness he had always coveted but could never build for himself.
His eyes lingered longer than they should have upon how low cut Viv’s red dress was, how it hugged her fuller hips. She was next to a man who absolutely did not deserve or appreciate her.
The superior Viking, Ulf Hednir paraded his twin boys and his daughter from a previous relationship, none of whom Warren cared enough to remember the names of, for the sake of portraying a picture perfect family, quite literally, it seemed.
“Hey gang, ready to go?”
Warren quickly tapped the option to unfollow Vivienne. He told himself it was only temporary whilst he focused on getting his own life, both professional and personal in order.
He looked up from one deep regret and across to another as Shea stood before him, a dog lead in one hand and a light jacket in the other. Even in a simple black Iron Maiden t-shirt and blue denim jean combination, she could arrest his attention.
“Absolutely,” he beamed, pocketing his phone again.
Around Shea he could hide in plain sight, she made that so easy. Easier than Dean ever did to fool the world that he was normal and that he had everything under control and every right to live free and exist in this world. There would be no awkward second glances or hushed whispers of ill informed judges if he strolled hand in hand in the park with Shea as there always were whenever he was out in public with his husband.
Life could be so damn simple and easy if he wasn’t so intent on trying so damned hard to complicate it needlessly. He should just go with the flow instead of raging against it.
Unfortunately, to live a life devoid of stewing in his own rage at how cruel and damned unfair everything in his life was and had always been would mean going against his own nature, and he had never been man enough to do that with any appreciable level of success.
He grabbed Damien by the hand to anchor him in the moment, remind him of why he was here - for Dean’s son, for his marriage, for everything bigger and more important in this world than little Warren Kidd had ever been allowed to be.
Warren, Damien and Molly followed Shea to her door as Warren prepared to leave this comfortable and quaint one bedroom apartment behind for the day. It was so much nicer than he deserved anyway.
Whilst that explanation wasn’t strictly the entire truth of the matter, it had been enough to placate the remarkably insightful and deeply inquisitive four year old. A promise to spend the whole day in the park had softened the blow further and the far more important business of recounting the adventures and endlessly fascinating life of Bluey had resumed.
By the time they had reached Shea’s apartment complex, Warren had acquired an almost encyclopedic knowledge of the Australian Blue Heeler puppy. Damien’s enthusiasm and animated sense of wonder brought the character to life for Warren who had disappointed Damien with the most shocking revelation of all - he had never seen a single episode - not a single one.
Damien clutched what Warren now understood to be so much more than a talking plushie of a cartoon dog tight and Warren’s hand tighter as they waited together in Shea’s one bedroom luxury apartment with Molly the Golden Retriever puppy who took an immediate interest in Damien.
“Does watching Bluey make all old people sad?” Damien asked. “Is that why you don’t watch it?”
“Why would Bluey make anybody sad?”
“It makes Other Daddy sad,” Damien shrugged, “He cries a lot when we watch it.”
“He does?” Warren asked softly, struck by the revelation. Dean Harper wasn’t somebody Warren readily associated with emotional vulnerability. He hadn’t seen Dean cry since Max’s death, as far as Warren remembered, anyway. Most of the last few years were still way more hazy than Warren was ready to admit. Even most of Warren’s first match back in nearly a year had been carried mostly on instinct and muscle memory more than desire and active engagement.
Adel Travent had given him much more trouble a couple nights ago at Sacrifice than Warren would have liked, reminding him that he was still far closer to the burnt out wreck that crashed out of last year’s Heir to the Throne against Alek Bronson than he was to his personal peak as IWF World Champion against James Gilmore the year before.
“Are you going to leave us again?” Damien mercifully interjected, saving Warren from drowning in the ever present waters of his deeply rooted anxieties. “Eddy says it’s okay, that sometimes Daddies need to leave for a long time.”
Get them while they’re young, Warren thought, that was the Blake MO, always had been.
Dean was practically blind to Angel’s faults, flaws and failings, but if there’s one thing Warren had never forgotten and would never forget no matter how long he lived or how deeply he had his mind purged and his memories manipulated, it was just how badly the self righteous could fuck with the purity of innocence.
A welcome ding from a phone alert delayed Warren from answering Damien right away. Warren fished his handset out of his jean pocket. He frowned as he saw the social media notification of an update to Vivienne Rodgers’ feed.
A photograph of her all smiles holding her IWF Hall Of Fame 2023 commemorative induction plaque. If he was still any kind of worthwhile friend to her he would have swallowed his pride and just gone to the ceremony to support her, but instead he was here seething with jealousy, haunted and taunted in equal measure by the exact type of family and happiness he had always coveted but could never build for himself.
His eyes lingered longer than they should have upon how low cut Viv’s red dress was, how it hugged her fuller hips. She was next to a man who absolutely did not deserve or appreciate her.
The superior Viking, Ulf Hednir paraded his twin boys and his daughter from a previous relationship, none of whom Warren cared enough to remember the names of, for the sake of portraying a picture perfect family, quite literally, it seemed.
“Hey gang, ready to go?”
Warren quickly tapped the option to unfollow Vivienne. He told himself it was only temporary whilst he focused on getting his own life, both professional and personal in order.
He looked up from one deep regret and across to another as Shea stood before him, a dog lead in one hand and a light jacket in the other. Even in a simple black Iron Maiden t-shirt and blue denim jean combination, she could arrest his attention.
“Absolutely,” he beamed, pocketing his phone again.
Around Shea he could hide in plain sight, she made that so easy. Easier than Dean ever did to fool the world that he was normal and that he had everything under control and every right to live free and exist in this world. There would be no awkward second glances or hushed whispers of ill informed judges if he strolled hand in hand in the park with Shea as there always were whenever he was out in public with his husband.
Life could be so damn simple and easy if he wasn’t so intent on trying so damned hard to complicate it needlessly. He should just go with the flow instead of raging against it.
Unfortunately, to live a life devoid of stewing in his own rage at how cruel and damned unfair everything in his life was and had always been would mean going against his own nature, and he had never been man enough to do that with any appreciable level of success.
He grabbed Damien by the hand to anchor him in the moment, remind him of why he was here - for Dean’s son, for his marriage, for everything bigger and more important in this world than little Warren Kidd had ever been allowed to be.
Warren, Damien and Molly followed Shea to her door as Warren prepared to leave this comfortable and quaint one bedroom apartment behind for the day. It was so much nicer than he deserved anyway.
~~~
An unnaturally muted room, devoid of almost every single other inconsequential detail in it other than the former Demon Prince turned Demon Slayer himself, Warren Harper. Clad in a simple black leather jacket over a bare and well maintained torso, he is sat backwards on a white folding steel chair, arms folded across the backrest.
Under a soft yellow spotlight, Warren fixed the camera with a cold, almost distant stare, taking a moment to compose himself for his first real promo in almost a year. A year in which he had dedicated himself to the finer points of his profession now that ongoing therapy on Verona’s dime was actually liberating him in a way he had thought impossible previously.
So many parts of him had died over the last eleven months and as cruel fate insisted, Warren was about to return to Pay Per View on the fifth anniversary of his biological father’s very public death. What was it about this time of year that stirred so many of his bloody family out of relative peace?
There was life after death - the survivor - Warren Harper was living proof of that now undeniable fact.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
For as much as the landscape of this company has changed, both in front of and behind the black curtain in the last few years, let me tell all of you watching this right now with an insatiable and sycophantic sense of curiosity what a great comfort it is to know that it doesn’t matter who joins the booking committee of this organisation, their ultimate goal remains the same, almost as if it were a company mandate handed down directly from IWF COO Roberto Verona himself, and for all I know it might very well be.
I don’t know I’ve never been one to dabble in corporate politics.
Just another in a long list of ways I disappointed my biological father, I guess.
A man whose legend speaks for itself and whose shadow still suffocates me, even now, five long years after the love of my life did the world and several of my closest friends who were trained, or should I say tortured by him, a favour by putting the bastard out of my misery for good.
No small feat in an industry regularly populated by Gods, Goddesses, Angels, Demons and all manner of self professed monsters. I’ve been here long enough to have waged war both for and against most of them.
In a company that has already had it’s women’s division so utterly dominated by a bitch who came back from a long presumed death that they still haven’t fully recovered yet, you’ll forgive me if I have more than a little apprehension that the bastard is still out there somewhere, watching, waiting for his moment to pop back up in the biggest swerve since he faked cancer.
In a company that has already had it’s women’s division so utterly dominated by a bitch who came back from a long presumed death that they still haven’t fully recovered yet, you’ll forgive me if I have more than a little apprehension that the bastard is still out there somewhere, watching, waiting for his moment to pop back up in the biggest swerve since he faked cancer.
What is death to a man like that, really?
My therapist has been doing his damnedest to eradicate that paranoia and keep me on the right side of completely delusional, which given how prevalent mental health issues have always been in my long and bloody family tree is almost a 24/7 preoccupation, believe me.
But I digress. The larger point in all this is simply that the IWF still operates principally under the philosophy of maximising conflict to boost profits and to do it as quickly as possible.
Little else explains why I’m being challenged by a man like Gregor Winter in only my second match back.
A physically imposing beast who would have absolutely decimated the naive idiot I was for most of my last run here. The self styled leader of yet another cult in professional wrestling would have broken me physically and mentally, and then offered me salvation, because he knows that I was exactly the kind of mind susceptible to the power of suggestion and have a well documented history of doing whatever it takes to be accepted and acknowledged, often acting against my own best interests.
A physically imposing beast who would have absolutely decimated the naive idiot I was for most of my last run here. The self styled leader of yet another cult in professional wrestling would have broken me physically and mentally, and then offered me salvation, because he knows that I was exactly the kind of mind susceptible to the power of suggestion and have a well documented history of doing whatever it takes to be accepted and acknowledged, often acting against my own best interests.
Unfortunately Mr Winter, I’ve already been there, done that, gotten the t-shirt and even the wedding band from a recruiter with a lot more to offer me and is frankly also a damned sight easier on the eye than you.
So please do yourself a favour and forgo the invitation for me to MODify any damned thing about my life, okay?
So please do yourself a favour and forgo the invitation for me to MODify any damned thing about my life, okay?
I know that nullifies about eighty percent of the sanctimonious sermons that pass for your promotional material around here, but if I am loyal to anyone around here it is my brothers, sisters and lovers in The Pack. I would fight for any of them, die for at least one and none of that very select group, includes you.
So please, put away the fancy clothes and put down the native exotic cocktails from whatever remote island of irrelevance you call home and save yourself the absolute embarrassment of yet another spectacular failure to entice anybody to your little lost cause.
Everything you are Gregor, and everything you have ever promised to be in this company has already been done, not only to death but infinitely better by men and women who have proven themselves to be your superior in every way imaginable.
Rowan founded and fostered loyalty from those in her service better than whatever wastrels you surround yourself with these days Gregor, and Ulf already embodies the epitome of everything you wish you were by actually being a modern day Viking, not just anointing himself one.
And so I hate to break it to you Mr Winter, but I finally understand that nobody can save anybody in this life or this business, no the best you can ever do is save yourself.
If I let you.