Perfect symmetry; a dance of intrinsic harmony pressed down upon layers of canvas paper. I had never learned to appreciate fine art before, but for some reason Steven did. It was a couple of days before the next show and he had dragged me to a galleria in the middle of nowhere Colorado outside Boulder. I wondered if all wealthy men were as eccentric as Steven. He had been brought up from wealth, had acquired it as a young man, and had come to enjoy the finer things in life. I tilted my head as I stared at the portrait in front of me – the beautiful lines depicting a starry night as the moon casted its warmth onto a medieval castle. The water was so clear I could see the reflection of the castle; mesmerized I approached the canvas, reaching out with a steady hand as if to caress the tempered glass when a voice stopped me.
“Do you like what you see?”
I turned around to see Steven behind me. He cocked his head to the side as if trying to capture the perspective.
“It’s beautiful,” I replied.
It represented more than just physical beauty; it was a manifestation of the goal Steven and I were trying to achieve – a utopia just for us; a reflection of all of our hard work as we gazed at all the trash beneath us as they tried to crawl forward. The castle was the fortress, the immovable object that Steven had since been transformed into after winning the WZCW title. The light of the moon was our will; the declaration against our adversaries, giving me the power to crush all of those in my path in his name. The reflection of the castle was essentially me; bound together with Steven by destiny.
“It’s just like us,” I mused.
Steven took out a coin and flipped it up into the air. I watched it tumble end over end as he snatched it out of the air as it fell into his hand. He opened his palm and then grasped it between his thumb and index fingers.
“I suppose it’s like this coin,” he said.
“On one side you have the WZCW champion and the king of all the peons that gaze upon him with envy. And on the other side there is the queen; she who smites down the enemies of the king. The castle and its mirror imagine…”
“…Shall I buy this painting for you, my queen?”
I smiled brightly. It was my first gift, and a token of his love and admiration. Yes, my king. A thousand times yes. No price was too steep, for our love knew no bounds. I already had a place for it in the manor. I pictured it above the fireplace in the center of the mantle; the stone walls cradling it as soft light illuminated it from both sides. So that every time I saw it as I walked into the living room I would be reminded of what was really important. We continued to tour the gallery; it had everything from surrealism to modernism to impressionism to abstract. We stepped inside a room that was filled with many sculptures; most of them were metal and were twisted and deformed into different shapes and patterns. Holmes walked up to one piece in particular to take another look; it looked like an aluminum and chrome alloyed star with melting appendages.
“I like this piece. The way the star melts at its base reminds me of Salvador Dali’s The Persistence of Memory. It’s symbolic of the corruption that both of us have had to face in our careers, and will continue to preserve against.”
I shook my head,
“I don’t know; it’s a little too chaotic for my taste.”
“But a little bit of chaos is good right? Let the insects squirm a bit before we squash them.”
“Chaos always leads to mutiny, which leads to anarchy. That’s been the mistake of all the former greats in the company. Ty Burna spread the Apostles of Chaos too thin and he lost the power he acquired in a heartbeat. Team WZCW crumbled because too many egos got in the way of what was really important, and it took you what must have felt like a lifetime to accomplish your dream. But now that the dream is reality you need a way to keep it alive…”
Steven smiled; I could tell he knew where I was going with this. Love was such a wonderful thing; not only did it bond people together, but it acted like a well of knowledge to drink from. It was obvious what we had to do. Our Garden of Eden wasn’t going to be built on corruption, or greed, or power, but the imitation of fear we would represent. Steven was a man that lived for discourse, but even he saw the benefit of manipulating others to the point where his name became an idea that transcended chaos, that transcended corruption, and transcended conspiracies. That wasn’t something that could be accomplished alone, and that’s where I would come in. Steven would be the Godhead at the top, but that fear that fueled the idea that he was unstoppable as a force was going to come from me.
“…And what better way to keep that dream alive than by controlling the masses and brainwashing them into believing that we are unstoppable. That’s the utopia that I see; full of love and happiness for us and misery for everyone else. The pain that brought us together would disappear and leave the path to our future open; isn’t that what you want? ”
I stepped forward and embraced him as he held me against his chest. Next to him I felt so much comfort. Everything that I had given him since we had been together, Steven had returned tenfold. If one of us fell, the other would rise and become the Godhead. The other would become the arm of justice, and the cycle would continue. Drake Callahan had been the first to feel the power of our family; and in his arrogance he made one critical error… he underestimated the power of devotion. The same sword that I wielded was the same one that Steven wielded; two sides of the same coin, the castle reflected by the light of the moon on the lake below, the king and his queen. Drake wasn’t just fighting me on Meltdown, and he wouldn’t just be fighting Steven at Kingdom Come; the two of us were kindred spirits, and even when we were away, we were really together, and that’s what made us truly unstoppable. We moved onto the next exhibit; I heard Steven praise an English artist that I had never heard of, a “revolutionary” as he put it.
“As I stormed the “Bastille” of WZCW at Lethal Lottery I found myself thinking only in terms of aristocracy; that this utopia that we will create needs to be self sustaining, don’t you agree Celeste? Let Callahan keep his conspiracies; we can use his prejudice against him. This power that we possess together is frightening. Quite frankly I have never experienced anything like it…”
I saw his face darken as we moved over to a velvet covered couch in the lobby adjacent to the exhibit we had just seen; I sat down beside him as he twiddled his thumbs and leaned forward.
“… We aren’t done with Drake, though, not by a long shot. He won’t be taking us lightly anymore. Let me handle him from here on out. Before we can enter the Garden, there’s one more obstacle waiting for us.”
I nodded; that obstacle was David Cougar, the former WZCW champion that Steven had pinned at Lethal Lottery, and I had screwed over by driving the final nail into the coffin of his reign by smacking him over the head with his own title. I recalled the night that I had first met Steven’s brother Erik who, disguised as Mr. Silver, had given me my first assignment… to keep an eye on David for his boss, Mr. Gold. At first I thought nothing of it and I shadowed David for the remainder of the week. We were tagging together, and I wanted to make sure we were all on the same page. My report when I met Mr. Gold face to face the following week had been nothing special; in fact, to my amazement he had even dismissed it.
“David Cougar,” I replied somberly.
“I remember the night that you spoke to me about the reasons as to why you wanted me to team up with you. To my shock you were just as vulnerable as I was. On the outside you hid your emotions so well; but on the inside you were falling apart. With everything that I had been through I was on a war path, but so were you.”
Steven nodded; like me he had also lost the people he had once considered family. Abandoned and tossed out like trash. Nothing to comfort him but a bottle of scotch as he slowly drank himself to death, and that seething rage helped fuel the fires of retribution. Watching Steven as he tormented David and harassed and his family I saw how fragile the soon to be champ really was – just like I was. And suddenly everything made sense.
“I understand the reason why you wanted me to shadow David that week; so that I could see what a happy life he led. After watching you try and ruin him, I began to feel the same way. I was so jealous and envious that he got to have the world handed to him while we watched ours crumble.”
I was shaking with emotion. I remember at Lethal Lottery when I grabbed that title belt and I entered the ring. All I could see before I nailed David between the eyes was Laxus in bed with that scarlet ****e. In one swift motion I unleashed that anger and that pain, and stared forward like I was caught in a trance as I watched the blood ran down his face. I smiled and leaned my head up against Steven’s shoulder.
“And when David lies defeated once again, the doors will finally open, ushering us both into that utopia.”
Like an unstoppable force of nature barreling towards an immovable object at break neck speeds, the collision course between the two of us was imminent. The question I asked myself was
‘which side of justice is going to prevail, mine or David’s?’ Would I break in the name of his revenge, or would I smite him in the name of my happiness?
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The next few days rolled by rather quickly, and by the time I knew it I found myself In North Dakota at the Ralph Engelstad Arena waiting to step into the ring once more. The weather was crystal clear with some mild cloud cover when Steven and I landed at the airport along with his brother Erik. A private limousine carried us the rest of the way, where we grabbed our stuff and made our way inside. After we had changed into our gear, we tried our best to keep to ourselves. As we walked down the halls Steven in the center, with the title belt draped around his broad shoulders, I was on his right side and his imposing brother walked beside him on the left; albeit a step behind us. As we approached the end of the corridor one lone figure, another blond woman, stood blocking our path. I could hear the sound of heels clacking against the tiled floor as the figure stepped forward and pointed toward me.
“Celeste, you are needed in the greenroom.”
I turned and looked over at Steven, who nodded and kept walking forward. I would meet up with him later, but for now I had business to attend to. I followed Stacey Madison to the next room; the technicians were testing out the new graphics for Meltdown as the road leading to Kingdom Come continued to get shorter as every round passed.
“Ladies and gentlemen, fans of the WZCW Universe, I am Stacey Madison here with superstar Celeste Crimson. You shocked us all last week when you pinned the Lethal Lottery winner and current number one contender for the WZCW champion, Drake Callahan; but tonight you face an even bigger challenge. You’ll face off against David Cougar – the former WZCW champion, and the man you robbed of the title.”
I continued to remain stoic until she held the microphone up to my face. Gently I reached over and grabbed it out of her hand; I saw her open her mouth slightly to protest, but she quickly shut it as I brought the cold steel to my lips, and turned towards the camera.
“I know how much you must hate me right now David; all that pent up anger and rage knowing that the person that cost you the WZCW title was me. And at first you might have been thinking, ‘well Steven Holmes made her do it.’ But I see right through that.”
I started to speak faster and raised my pitch just slightly; I wanted David to know how I really felt. I walked over and grabbed a folding chair that was leaning up against the utility wall in the corner, and set it down in the center of the room. After shooing Stacey away, I sat down on it backwards and leaned my arms up against the back portion.
“You and I are very similar to each other David; at one point in time we were both considered terrible human beings, but then we changed when we learned to look past our arrogance. When Steven Holmes was shown tormenting your family in public I was going through my fair share of hardships as well. And after watching you the weeks leading up to Lethal Lottery, and watching you interact with your family at ringside and backstage, it was clear that they were never going to stop supporting you. And at the Lottery, I cracked…”
I paused slightly as the images of me smacking David in the head with the WZCW title kept replaying in my memory. I lowered my voice to keep the emotion inside me from churning and bubbling up to the surface.
“… I was so envious of you, and really Steven was too. When we came together we couldn’t stand the fact that someone like you, who was at one point no better than we were, still got to retain the things that mattered most in the world even after his crown was stripped away.”
I shook my head at the absurdity of it all, but I wasn’t finished. I couldn’t stop my emotions from overflowing.
“What you don’t understand is that when you face me later tonight I will not be that same woman that couldn’t live up to expectations a year ago, and if you get lucky enough to challenge Steven again he won’t be the same man that humiliated, and manipulated, and defeated you before. He and I are a family now, and our bond goes much deeper than any team or organization. We have given our hearts, our minds, and our bodies so intimately to each to each other that we have become mirror images.”
I stood and kicked the chair out the way. I raised my voice an octave, as I hung onto every word that I spoke in order to drive the point home.
“I didn’t defeat Drake Callahan to prove myself to anyone, nor did I do for Steven’s sake. When I defeat you tonight, David, he and I will finally be able to enter our utopia, and evolve into an idea that will shake this company down to its core. That’s what Drake has already learned, and what Barbosa will see when Steven pounds his head into the canvas. And you’ll be the key that unlocks everything."
I titled my head back and laughed before showing off a devious smile that hid a myriad of dark cosmic secrets yet to be revealed. I turned around and gracefully handed the microphone back to Stacey before exiting the greenroom. As I began to walk down the corridor to catch up with Steven, I would have liked to have thought that as the sun shone through the glazing, bouncing my reflection off the polished tile, anyone could have seen Steven’s reflection walking beneath me as they passed me.
