Morrow vs Petrova vs Anderson vs Rizzo

LOCATION: Charlotte
DATE/TIME: Saturday, December 24 || 10:06PM EST
CAMERA STATUS: ON/OFF

Her ears were ringing as she passed through the curtain, the wall of noise muting slightly, masked by the buzzing in her ears. Her head was throbbing with each step, her vision narrowing and she was having a hell of a time taking a deep breath. Every step grew harder and harder, her fingers trailing against the wall for support, to keep her on an even keel. She could taste copper, taste blood and bile burning in her throat, her stomach churning and her vision was clouded by tears and sweat but she knew where she was going. These hallways were already ingrained in her.

Just a few more feet. One foot in front of the other. Atta girl. You can do it. Breathe. Breathe.

"Mik," her voice came out hoarse, sounding all wrong to her ears, sounding so small it was barely audible and when she tried to draw in a deeper breath, she doubled over, stabbing knives in her chest. Panic squeezed her heart, making her lungs burn and she could feel herself choking, drowning as the floor rolled like the sea under her.

He's waiting. He's not allowed back here, the voice in her head insisted, chiding her, what will he think of you in this state? Get up. Shake it off. He'll leave if you don't hurry. He'll find another way home despite the weather, leave you in this godforsaken hellhole. Is that what you want? Maybe he already called them. Maybe they'll come and take you back to the bunker. Take you back underground because it's clear you can't function here among the normal people.

"Help," the word came out smaller than her husband's name had, nails digging into the cinderblock wall.

Who will feed the horses when the hands have the holidays off? They'll die and it's all your fault!

Her knees buckled and she spilled gracelessly to the floor. The hallway felt like it was getting smaller, her body so hot it felt like she was melting from the inside out and her chest was still burning. She couldn't pull in enough air, couldn't stop herself from gasping like a fish and then the scream burst from her lips just as a strong hand grasped hers. She flailed, fighting, unable to see past her tunnel vision and the tears in her eyes that it was her husband – he'd fought his way past security when he'd seen her glazed look as she made her way up the ramp. She should have been gloating, victorious. Instead she'd seemed like a robot.

"Get off me!" She whimpered, her now ragged nails raking over her assailant's skin. Her head felt like it was being crushed, throbbing and pulsing with each beat of her racing heart and she was still trying to get enough air to scream when everything finally went black.

The voice was gentle, low despite the deep tone of it. "Kaitlynn." A clearing of the throat, and more calming speech. "Are you back with me, precious one?"

A cool wet cloth was pressed to her forehead, and she might hear him exhale before she opened her eyes. He had a bandage on his neck near the dead white rose tattoo, and another on his arm where she could see the sleeve rolled up, but his stoic features were as relaxed and kind as they only got with her.

Her mind was still racing, one crazy thought bouncing to the next - the horses! She tried to pull in a shuddering, watery breath, realizing she was crying without any knowledge of when that had happened. "Who will watch the horses?" The words came out small, her gaze still unfocused as she stared up into his kind eyes. Gradually, she felt her heart rate slow and she blinked up at him, seeing the bandage on his neck before her eyes closed against the crushing headache. The room was unfamiliar, some sort of padded surface under her back - she had no memory of being scooped up off the floor and being taken to the medical room and now she wondered if anyone had seen. "I," she swallowed hard past the burning in her throat, "I don't know."

"Well, awake at the least. I will get you some water." He rose up to cross the room to where the little sink was, getting her a paper cup to fill with water. "You are still in the arena," as if he knew she was disoriented. "You had a little episode, coming to the back. Do you remember anything?"

"I was worried," she said softly, struggling to sit up, "about our anniversary and the cancelled flight and Christmas tomorrow and the horses…" her eyes opened, watching him fuss at the sink until the view blurred with tears. "I wanted to go for a ride tomorrow. Just us. And then do presents by the fire and now all that's ruined." She'd gone into the match thinking about the call from American Airlines and the cancelled flight and it had just spiraled from there. Even thinking about it now, she could feel herself starting to tense up and she had to remind herself to breathe.

He turned back with the water, and his steps would seem slow but he was deliberately moving at a speed that wouldn't startle her. "I know, and I know how much you were looking forward to all that, so I promise this to you." He finally made it over and offered her the water to sip. "We will make up for it, and it will be better because no one else will share our holiday now. It is all waiting for us."

She sipped the water, his words making her feel warm as though he'd wrapped her in a blanket. "That sounds wonderful," Kitty finally broke the silence, both exhaustion and relief in her voice. The cup was empty now and she crushed it in her fist, looking down at it for a few seconds. "Did I do that to your neck?"

Mikhail chuckled slightly, reaching up and tucking a strand of her dark hair behind her ear. "As if you have never done worse to my back?" Deliberately distracting her, so she wouldn't spiral into being upset over what he considered a cosmetic 'injury' at best.

The ghost of a smile crossed her lips as she met his gaze again, seeming to be a little more grounded now. The words that had been on the tip of her tongue all day finally spilled out, "it's been a year already. How has time gone by this quickly?"

He gave her a most curious look, and then gave her a rare chuckle again, one usually only she would hear. "It is like that saying, Kaitlynn… time flies when you are having fun. That is what we have, even when things dip lower than expected. We have both had our punishments, and now we are allowed the rewards."


kittymacblog.wordpress.net posting

"I absolutely loathe this time of year," there was nothing theatrical about the video that came up in place of the normal wall of words on Kitty's blog. There was no lead-in, just a blurred image that took its time resolving into Kitty's untouchably beautiful face. Her hair was windswept and she pulled it from the corner of her mouth with an expression of distaste before shaking her head. "We're a few days removed from what they call 'Blue Monday', supposedly the most depressing time of year. For us in the wrestling business, though? All holidays fall in that category. All major life events – especially when they conflict with our booking schedules – end up on that very same pile. I can't begin to count the numbers of birthdays and milestones I've simply forgotten as one day bleeds to the next. I'd lament further, but it's a choice, isn't it? We do this because we want to – nobody has a gun to our head to force the issue. Could you imagine? How would that even work?"

She laughed bitterly, slipping a cigarette between her lips and lighting it. She glanced back over her shoulder for a moment before closing her eyes, pulling in a deliberately long drag. "Choices, my friends, that's what I want to chat with you about. See, Jackson Ford seems to think that by shirking the name, he can make the world forget that I beat him to make it into this match. Ah, yes, but that was Jackson, not Alexander Rizzo, the man with no history. You can't have it both ways, my dear. Toss the baby out with that soiled bathwater – what a terrible adage that is. Terribly apt in this case, but still just awful to picture. Our dear friend Mr. Rizzo is quite determined to bury the sins of the past. He wants us to forget the less-than-stellar track record he's had thus far for the sake of this glorious reinvention of his. I suppose I could bring up how Calvin Harris – God rest his soul – tried to pigeonhole me there. Tried to say I wanted to ditch the name Kitty Mac for this new year. Sadly, I think he missed the part where I got married last year and chose to take my husband's name rather than clinging to a past that I was finally ready to let go."

She shrugged, taking another drag from her cancer stick. "They say vices will kill you but in this business, we're already living on borrowed time. All it takes is one moment and you're…" she turns around, leaning forward and pushing her hair up to expose the nape of her neck and the fading yellowish-green bruise there. "All it takes is one mistake and you're laid out. One blink, one zig when you should have zagged and you could be sailing over the top rope, cracking your head on the barrier." She let go of her hair, turning back to the camera with a wry smile. "Wrong place, wrong time and you're playing damsel in distress to someone's villain. You're playing piñata to someone's baseball bat. You want to paint a bright target – that's what they all want. That's what the rest of you need. You want a reason to hurt me. To hunt me. To hate me. To make this personal so that you can froth at the mouth and-" she waved her hand dismissively, rolling her eyes at the prospect as though it were the most boring thing to imagine.

Once again, she pushed her hair back from her face with that same free hand before plucking the cigarette away from her lips. This time she flicked it away, watching it bounce off the asphalt she stood on before shrugging, her hands moving to unzipping the jacket she wore. Underneath she had a cropped tank top on – an Under Armour sports bra, really and she parted the sides of the coat before letting it fall from her shoulders. Her skin seemed paler, mottled in the cold and as she stood there, scars were visible on her flat stomach, almost seeming to spell out a word. "I'm no stranger to sacrifice if that's what you think. This," she ran her hands over her skin, "a man named Spiral did this to me. Carved up my face too – plastic surgeons don't get enough credit, you know?"

She laughed, the sound bitter. "I got caught in the middle of something that never should have involved me. See, there was gold on the line then. There was bitterness and hatred and personal vendetta – spoiled beef all around. I became a casualty of that war but you see, the funny part is that I'm still standing, still fighting and both Spiral and Brad Jackson have vanished from the ring. There's something to be said for outlasting the so-called monsters, isn't there?"

Kitty smiled, folding her arms across her chest. "And I suppose you're wondering why I'm standing on some random rooftop, aren't you? Well, provided you've figured it out by now. And if you hadn't? Ah, well… mystery solved. See, this is the Carolinas Medical Center, the number one ranked emergency room in Charlotte."

She moved forward and the camera jostled, panning around like some cut scene from Cloverfield before it revealed a parking lot below just as an ambulance rolled in, lights flashing and siren echoing on a slight delay. "I suppose the obvious question is why here. Why now?"

Her shoulders twitched like she wanted to shrug but lacked the energy, "not telling you amuses me more – not going to lie. But we do have poor Alexander Rizzo to consider and I feel like maybe he's already one head-shot away from being spoon-fed applesauce for the rest of his life. I checked out the facilities tonight. Made sure they really are as good as all those online reviews say. I certainly wouldn't want you three receiving sub-standard care in the wake of our match. Rest assured, you'll be in good hands here."

A sarcastic smirk appeared on her lips. "Could spin a bunch of pedantic bullshit about how I wanna win this match because I see it as a second chance to right my misstep on that very first episode, but the truth is far less garish. JT Midas is gone now. What happened no longer matters because the man who was better than me saw fit to retire after his greatest accomplishment – beating a legend like yours truly, of course. Really, do I need to spell it all out for you? Aiden Morrow understands the agenda here better than the other two idiots. Lies are beneath us, aren't they? I won't pander you because you deserve better. I've got this déjà vu feeling crawling up and down my back like a chill and I'm not sure if it's from watching Rizzo trying so damned hard to pretend he's a normal, functional human male or if it's something deeper. I feel like the other shoe is about to drop. I've felt like that since Christmas Eve and maybe that's just a small part of me saying a cakewalk now is too good to be true. You can't possibly self-destruct as gloriously as Hyde and PerZag did. Maybe you don't wanna hear any justifications about what I did to my partner. Maybe you do. You're not getting any. Just trying to find some common ground, here. I'm just trying to tell you a little story about me and how I roll."

She shook her head, chuckling softly. "The hard questions are coming and I bet you haven't even thought to ask them of yourself. What will you do if you lose? When you lose? Where are you going to go when your little load of shit carries no weight? What will you do when Mia chooses one of her other suitors over this pathetic little boy who can't even buy himself a clue, let alone a win? What will Katie do when that beautiful face is ruined, leaving her budding acting career on that godawful Hexx show in jeopardy? What're you gonna do when the levee breaks, leaving your sandy shelter washed away? What then, hmm? Will you shake your fists at the heavens and curse Vortex for conceiving this tournament? I'm sure I don't really need to remind you that Aiden and I have a score to settle. Don't think I didn't see you there either, Katie. I'll remember to repay that when you're laid out, blindsided. I like to think of that as a little bit of poetic justice. It's called karma, bitch."

Her slender shoulders lifted in an idle shrug, "so the question is rhetorical at best: what are you going to do when your BEST isn't good enough? What do you fall back on when the only thing you know how to do is keep pushing yourself until the bottom falls out? What do you do when usurpers come in and start pawing through your shit, talking like they own the opportunity because they can yell the loudest? How do you cope when the wrestling machine chews you up and spits you out? I don't stop. I get back up and I find another way to climb that fucking mountain. I go on senselessly. I have a terminal velocity inside me that threatens to break me with every idle moment and that's why I couldn't stay gone. I can't stop. Can't. Won't. If it's not here, it's gonna be somewhere else. It's going to be another ring and as long as there's a target and things to fling myself from, there will be a way. There's always somewhere for a girl like me. Always has been. Always will be."

There was no rancor in the words. No anger, just that neutral tone even though she was talking about the most important match she'd had since signing with Victory. She shook her head, looking down for a moment as though gathering her thoughts. "I... hate this shit. I do. That's why I usually take the cop out and just write down my thoughts. It's easier than talking a big game like some clichéd badass joke. Bitch on wheels is so played out. Been called that about a thousand times over and it's just so damned tedious. Somehow, some way, this is making it easier to deal with you stomping all over my shit."

She moved forward, leaning and resting her palms on the edge, looking down. "It'll be over in an instant – quick as can be. You'll lose and someone'll direct you back through the curtain. You'll be dumbfounded, utterly floored. They'll tell you that you can go home and you'll have forgotten where that is. I never forget because THIS IS MY HOME. Ask me how I feel when someone invades my space. Ask me how much I like it when someone comes in and touches all the things I bought and paid for with my blood and sweat and tears. You don't belong here, and after Revolution, everyone's gonna know that little truth. I haven't said this in a while, but I think it's appropriate now," her laughter was scornful and cruel as she slowly lifted her middle finger, flashing a very direct message before punctuating it with one last thought. "fuck you. I win."