Post by Eden Morgan on Sept 10, 2016 21:25:23 GMT -5
“Off to the gym again, love?”
Eden Morgan stops just shy of the door to her apartment, hand outstretched, her navy blue hoodie pulled up over her head. For a moment, she considers ignoring her fiance and just walking out, pretending she hadn't heard him despite the pause. Hey, it was plausible. Guilt immediately washes over her and she calls back a simple, “Yep.” Some grumbling greets her from the couch, Hugh speaking up.
“If I didn't know better, I would say you were trying to avoid me and planning for this wedding.”
Eden closes her eyes and exhales with agitation, turning on him.
“I don't have time for this crap, Hugh, I have a big match coming up. I'll worry about the rest later,” she snaps, turning back for the door. Hugh's feet drop from the couch to the floor and he gets up quickly, anger showing in his handsome face.
“'This crap'? Is that what you call our future together, 'this crap'?” he shouts in her face. Eden stares a hole coldly through him, her tone level.
“I'm going to the gym, Hugh. We can discuss this later if you like. Once this week is over, we can continue with talk of the wedding, but for right now, it's going to take a back burner. I tried to avoid this by putting it at the end of the year, but you wouldn't have that. So now you can deal with the consequences.”
With that, she turns around and walks out, closing the door softly behind her. The sound of something crashing against the wall inside the apartment doesn't slow her pace.
We all know what Fear is going to do. He's going to write in that journal of his. I wonder if he has a favorite, or if he has one for each of us that he takes down from a shelf and leaves entries in. I wonder what mine looks like, or which volume he's on. Does he have a journal for himself? Or a library, maybe? Maybe he was his own first case study. Maybe he, too, learned an important lesson. Maybe he learned that all fear is the same, it doesn't matter what causes it. You can either conquer it or be conquered by it.
I'm not into losing, not even to myself. Maybe especially to myself.
Eden knocks softly on the open door frame, Cypress Morgan looking up from his desk and gesturing her inside the office. Jet Somers leans against a filing cabinet, giving her a smile of greeting. Eden drops down into a chair in front of the desk, sweat still dotting her forehead from the gym. Her dark hair is piled atop her head in a messy bun, strands of it coming down, wet, and sticking to her skin. Cypress reaches into a mini-fridge beside him and pulls out a bottle of water, tossing it to her. She accepts it gratefully, twisting the top open.
“You're here an awful lot lately. Anything you want to talk about?” Cypress asks, Eden shaking her head, wincing as the cold water burns her throat.
“Nope. I'm good. That it?”
Cypress' eyes narrow and he studies her.
“Naw. That ain't it. You wanna tell me why I had to find out about this 'wedding',”his fingers pull air quotations, “from that limey prick?”
Eden takes another gulp and then screws the cap back on, shrugging.
“I was busy,” she answers him simply, Cypress nonplussed.
“You were busy. You were so busy, you didn't mention that you're getting marri--”
“Cypress, what is this really about?” Eden asks tiredly, her muscles aching from the workout. He raises an eyebrow.
“This is really about what we're talking about. I want to know if this is for real, if you're serious about this.”
“October 15th I'm getting married. At some fancy hotel courtyard thing in New Orleans,” she brushes out, slumping in the chair a little, feeling the pull of the muscles in her back. Cypress and Jet share a look, not unnoticed by Eden.
“I take it Hugh set all that up?” Cypress asks.
“Yep,” Eden answers, not even looking at him.
“Why New Orleans?” Jet asks, Eden shrugging.
“I don't know. He chose it, it's... whatever. Quite honestly, the wedding is the last thing on my mind right now,” she says, looking up, her eyes moving between the two of them.
“Worried about ol' Fear? You've beat him before. Hell, you've beat him several times,” Cypress leans back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head. Eden stares at him.
“That's the thing about Fear. I've beaten him, everyone's beaten him at least once. But he's also beaten everyone that's been here long enough at least once as well. Fear has a way of lulling you into a false sense of security and then knocking you on your ass. Besides, this means something to him,” she finishes, sitting back quietly.
“She's right,” Jet adds. “The Cross-Hemisphere title has a lot of weight that comes with it. Phrixus is part of that. You could almost say that he's the power that lies behind that title. Beating him, especially in your first defense of it, shows you're worthy to hold it.”
“I was worthy to hold this title when I took it off of Gabriel Baal,” Eden responds coolly.
Jet nods.
“Yeah. You're right. You're absolutely right. I wasn't implying any different, it's just-- Deimos doesn't see it that way.”
Before Eden can question Jet further about his remark, Cypress speaks.
“You know you're the 50th unique person to hold that championship, right?” he informs her, Eden's focus on Jet even as she answers.
“Wow, fifty huh, that's fantastic, you know what that tells me, Cyp?”
“What?”
“Forty-nine others, including you two, couldn't hold it. Now what are you talking about, Jet?”
Cypress' mouth turns into a grin at her curt response to his fact.
“Just what Deimos had to say about you. You haven't seen it yet?”
Eden shakes her head.
“Show me.”
The scrawling burgundy writing imprinted in her mind, Eden hands the phone back to Jet, Jet pressing a button to make the screen go dark before sliding it into a pocket. He folds his arms over his chest and resumes his position of repose. Cypress speaks into the silence.
“He doesn't think much of you, does he?”
Eden gives a little shrug.
“Seems that way, doesn't it? And I guess to someone with as storied and elaborate a history as Fear has, mine is pretty underwhelming and worthy of derision. He's not wrong, after all. No, he laid it all out there with a nice, tidy bow around it,” she deliberates over the last words.
Cypress snorts.
“He got into your head, didn't he? Told you you shouldn't have showed her that shit,” he says to Jet, shaking his head in disappointment as he looks at his sister.
“Gamophobia,” Eden almost murmurs to herself. “What's that the fear of?” she asks of no one in particular, Jet pulling his phone out once again. He types across the screen and a few moments later, has an answer.
“It's the fear of commitment, of getting married or being in a relationship,” he reads off the screen, his phone making a clicking sound as the screen goes dark again and slips back into his pocket. Eden considers his answer and makes a “hmm” sound, as if learning something new. She looks all around the room in silence and the slaps her hands down on the arms of the chair.
“Right then, well thanks for the info guys,” she says, getting to her feet. Cypress stares at her as if she's grown two heads.
“That's it?” he asks, Eden giving him a bewildered expression.
“Well yeah, what else were you expecting?”
Cypress holds a hand out toward Jet, indicating the pocket where his phone lies.
“Fear just ripped you a new one, and that's all you have to say? You let him get in your fucking head, what the fuck are you gonna do when you get in the ring with him and the title's on the line?” Cypress demands.
“You know what this place feels like sometimes? It feels like Hell. There's a lot of devils here, and I don't mean your kind,” she indicates the vests worn by the two men, each of them looking down at the laughing devil on their chest. “I mean the kind that think they have their special little plot of land mapped out and they dance all over it and wave their pitchforks and beat their chests," she makes a movement as if about to pound her chest with her fist, but stops just short of it. "Sometimes we have to dance with them, and when that happens, well, it may as well be with one who can give you your own corner of Hell to rule. AmIright?”
Cypress leans back in his chair, throwing his hands up.
“The fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Eden gives her brother a secretive half-smile.
“Thanks for the water,” she says and walks out, Cypress looking over at Jet.
“Has she lost her shit again?” he asks, Jet still staring at the empty doorway where she had been moments before.
“I don't think she has, Cyp. I don't think so at all.”
The scene opens harshly with no lead in at all, just Eden Morgan moving away from a camera, giving the impression she's just turned it on. She moves off screen and returns with a chair, planting it sharply in the center of the viewing area and then throwing her legs over it, straddling it, facing the camera. She wears an oversized olive green sweater and jeans with the knees ripped up, her dark hair tumbling around her. She seems to gather her thoughts for a moment, a thumb rubbing at her lower lip.
“I see no need to draw this out longer than it should be, UGWC universe. If you don't know who I am, then you're obviously in the wrong place. I don't believe it's arrogance to think I need no introductions, though I'm sure some would disagree. Some would disagree just because I'm a woman. See, thing is, when you put a woman in an area run mostly by men, rumors start to fly unless you make it very clear that you're off limits. There's also this certain type of competitiveness that sets in. I call it testosterone poisoning. Men are either trying to run you out of town or get in your pants. They don't seem to know any other way to deal with a woman. If you're not a sexual object, you're a threat.”
Eden leans over the back of the chair, grinning conspiratorially.
“Guess which one I am for Fear?”
She pushes back again, resuming her previous position. Her tongue flicks out, wetting her lips. She presses them together and looks away for a moment and then looks back.
“You know, I am so very, very tired. If I went by my brain or my body, I could quit this,” she holds her hands up, gesturing to the area around her, and it's only then that we realize she's in the center of a ring, “at any time. The injuries, the trauma to mind and body, yeah I could leave it all behind. But here,” she rests a hand over her chest, “here, is what won't let me walk away. I love what I do. I love walking out there each and every time; I love the thrill, the adrenaline rush, the screams of the crowd behind me, that's what makes me walk out there, that's what makes me fight. And that's what Phrixus Deimos is afraid of.”
Eden crosses her arms over the back of the chair.
“Phrixus throws fears out every week for whatever opponent he's facing. He may list a few positives of his opponent, but he mainly focuses on the negative, and why wouldn't he? He's not here to build them up, he's here to build himself up, to make himself look like the better man. There's just one problem- he thinks less of others for these things he brings to the forefront. It's there in his scathing writing, dripping that condescending tone, like he's some kind of god casting illumination down on us all. I'm sorry, Phrixus, but only those who have never known fear are allowed to think less of others for being afraid. Frankly, I think anyone who has never been afraid of anything in their entire life is either a liar or lacks imagination. But we know what you're afraid of, or at least I do, don't I Fear?”
She grins coyly at the camera.
“You tear me and my accomplishments down, and I'm not afraid to say you're not wrong. Not at all. I've wasted a lot of time in this business, here, in this company. I've allowed a lot of things to take precedent over my career here, over what I say I love with all my heart, what I love enough to come back for when everyone said I shouldn't. If you think I'm still that Eden, you're making a very serious mistake, one that I look forward to pointing out to you personally. See, you're not the first person and you won't be the last to tell me that I don't deserve something; you're not the first person to tell me that I don't belong here; and you sure as hell aren't the first person to imply that I'm overrated. Have you seen what happens to people who tell me things like that? Have you been paying attention, Phrixus, or were you too busy dwelling on the past and making sure you have every detail completely and inarguably correct?”
Eden gets to her feet, the smile gone from her face.
“While you've been playing in the past, Phrixus, I've immersed myself in the present and the future of this company, and you know what I see? I see very clearly exactly what you're afraid of. The future is coming, and Phrixus Deimos is nothing but a thing of the past who claws his way to the forefront every now and then to try and show he's still relevant. Sometimes he succeeds and we're supposed to be left in awe that this relic has “still got it.” And then he slinks back off into the shadows, because if he doesn't, his magic trick loses its meaning.” She kicks the chair away, moving closer to the camera with every sway of her hips.
“See, he can't hang night after night and match after match, he has to pick and choose his battles. So he sits back and he watches and he consults his journals and his history books and his stats and he lets those make his case for him. And we're supposed to oooh and aaah and worship him when he decides it's time to make his move,” she grits out, reaching the ring ropes and gripping them tightly in her hands.
“You tell me I don't deserve to hold the Cross-Hemisphere title, Phrixus, and you list out all these reasons why I don't deserve it, all of them, as per your usual mode of operation, dealing with my past. That's fine. As I said before, you're not wrong about me. But I currently hold your precious Cross-Hemisphere title. I am, in fact, the fiftieth to hold it, and I have to say, I just love how I know that must eat away at you. But if my past makes me unworthy to be champion,” she grins, still clasping the ropes tightly, “then what makes you think your future makes you worthy? Because all I see in your future is more of the same old damn thing we've all grown accustomed to. And these people, our fans, this company, and this industry deserve better. I know what you're afraid of, Phrixus. You're afraid to find out that after all you've said, after all of your facts and statistics that lack any heart or soul, that I'm the future and you're nothing but the haunting ghost of a dead past.”
Eden uses the ropes to pull herself fluidly out of the ring, her eyes flashing angrily as she moves closer to the camera. The scene starts to shake as she lays a hand on it, leaning down to get her face in frame once more, her dark hair spilling down.
“Fuck your heritage,” she spits out, and then the camera goes dark.
Eden Morgan stops just shy of the door to her apartment, hand outstretched, her navy blue hoodie pulled up over her head. For a moment, she considers ignoring her fiance and just walking out, pretending she hadn't heard him despite the pause. Hey, it was plausible. Guilt immediately washes over her and she calls back a simple, “Yep.” Some grumbling greets her from the couch, Hugh speaking up.
“If I didn't know better, I would say you were trying to avoid me and planning for this wedding.”
Eden closes her eyes and exhales with agitation, turning on him.
“I don't have time for this crap, Hugh, I have a big match coming up. I'll worry about the rest later,” she snaps, turning back for the door. Hugh's feet drop from the couch to the floor and he gets up quickly, anger showing in his handsome face.
“'This crap'? Is that what you call our future together, 'this crap'?” he shouts in her face. Eden stares a hole coldly through him, her tone level.
“I'm going to the gym, Hugh. We can discuss this later if you like. Once this week is over, we can continue with talk of the wedding, but for right now, it's going to take a back burner. I tried to avoid this by putting it at the end of the year, but you wouldn't have that. So now you can deal with the consequences.”
With that, she turns around and walks out, closing the door softly behind her. The sound of something crashing against the wall inside the apartment doesn't slow her pace.
We all know what Fear is going to do. He's going to write in that journal of his. I wonder if he has a favorite, or if he has one for each of us that he takes down from a shelf and leaves entries in. I wonder what mine looks like, or which volume he's on. Does he have a journal for himself? Or a library, maybe? Maybe he was his own first case study. Maybe he, too, learned an important lesson. Maybe he learned that all fear is the same, it doesn't matter what causes it. You can either conquer it or be conquered by it.
I'm not into losing, not even to myself. Maybe especially to myself.
Eden knocks softly on the open door frame, Cypress Morgan looking up from his desk and gesturing her inside the office. Jet Somers leans against a filing cabinet, giving her a smile of greeting. Eden drops down into a chair in front of the desk, sweat still dotting her forehead from the gym. Her dark hair is piled atop her head in a messy bun, strands of it coming down, wet, and sticking to her skin. Cypress reaches into a mini-fridge beside him and pulls out a bottle of water, tossing it to her. She accepts it gratefully, twisting the top open.
“You're here an awful lot lately. Anything you want to talk about?” Cypress asks, Eden shaking her head, wincing as the cold water burns her throat.
“Nope. I'm good. That it?”
Cypress' eyes narrow and he studies her.
“Naw. That ain't it. You wanna tell me why I had to find out about this 'wedding',”his fingers pull air quotations, “from that limey prick?”
Eden takes another gulp and then screws the cap back on, shrugging.
“I was busy,” she answers him simply, Cypress nonplussed.
“You were busy. You were so busy, you didn't mention that you're getting marri--”
“Cypress, what is this really about?” Eden asks tiredly, her muscles aching from the workout. He raises an eyebrow.
“This is really about what we're talking about. I want to know if this is for real, if you're serious about this.”
“October 15th I'm getting married. At some fancy hotel courtyard thing in New Orleans,” she brushes out, slumping in the chair a little, feeling the pull of the muscles in her back. Cypress and Jet share a look, not unnoticed by Eden.
“I take it Hugh set all that up?” Cypress asks.
“Yep,” Eden answers, not even looking at him.
“Why New Orleans?” Jet asks, Eden shrugging.
“I don't know. He chose it, it's... whatever. Quite honestly, the wedding is the last thing on my mind right now,” she says, looking up, her eyes moving between the two of them.
“Worried about ol' Fear? You've beat him before. Hell, you've beat him several times,” Cypress leans back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head. Eden stares at him.
“That's the thing about Fear. I've beaten him, everyone's beaten him at least once. But he's also beaten everyone that's been here long enough at least once as well. Fear has a way of lulling you into a false sense of security and then knocking you on your ass. Besides, this means something to him,” she finishes, sitting back quietly.
“She's right,” Jet adds. “The Cross-Hemisphere title has a lot of weight that comes with it. Phrixus is part of that. You could almost say that he's the power that lies behind that title. Beating him, especially in your first defense of it, shows you're worthy to hold it.”
“I was worthy to hold this title when I took it off of Gabriel Baal,” Eden responds coolly.
Jet nods.
“Yeah. You're right. You're absolutely right. I wasn't implying any different, it's just-- Deimos doesn't see it that way.”
Before Eden can question Jet further about his remark, Cypress speaks.
“You know you're the 50th unique person to hold that championship, right?” he informs her, Eden's focus on Jet even as she answers.
“Wow, fifty huh, that's fantastic, you know what that tells me, Cyp?”
“What?”
“Forty-nine others, including you two, couldn't hold it. Now what are you talking about, Jet?”
Cypress' mouth turns into a grin at her curt response to his fact.
“Just what Deimos had to say about you. You haven't seen it yet?”
Eden shakes her head.
“Show me.”
The scrawling burgundy writing imprinted in her mind, Eden hands the phone back to Jet, Jet pressing a button to make the screen go dark before sliding it into a pocket. He folds his arms over his chest and resumes his position of repose. Cypress speaks into the silence.
“He doesn't think much of you, does he?”
Eden gives a little shrug.
“Seems that way, doesn't it? And I guess to someone with as storied and elaborate a history as Fear has, mine is pretty underwhelming and worthy of derision. He's not wrong, after all. No, he laid it all out there with a nice, tidy bow around it,” she deliberates over the last words.
Cypress snorts.
“He got into your head, didn't he? Told you you shouldn't have showed her that shit,” he says to Jet, shaking his head in disappointment as he looks at his sister.
“Gamophobia,” Eden almost murmurs to herself. “What's that the fear of?” she asks of no one in particular, Jet pulling his phone out once again. He types across the screen and a few moments later, has an answer.
“It's the fear of commitment, of getting married or being in a relationship,” he reads off the screen, his phone making a clicking sound as the screen goes dark again and slips back into his pocket. Eden considers his answer and makes a “hmm” sound, as if learning something new. She looks all around the room in silence and the slaps her hands down on the arms of the chair.
“Right then, well thanks for the info guys,” she says, getting to her feet. Cypress stares at her as if she's grown two heads.
“That's it?” he asks, Eden giving him a bewildered expression.
“Well yeah, what else were you expecting?”
Cypress holds a hand out toward Jet, indicating the pocket where his phone lies.
“Fear just ripped you a new one, and that's all you have to say? You let him get in your fucking head, what the fuck are you gonna do when you get in the ring with him and the title's on the line?” Cypress demands.
“You know what this place feels like sometimes? It feels like Hell. There's a lot of devils here, and I don't mean your kind,” she indicates the vests worn by the two men, each of them looking down at the laughing devil on their chest. “I mean the kind that think they have their special little plot of land mapped out and they dance all over it and wave their pitchforks and beat their chests," she makes a movement as if about to pound her chest with her fist, but stops just short of it. "Sometimes we have to dance with them, and when that happens, well, it may as well be with one who can give you your own corner of Hell to rule. AmIright?”
Cypress leans back in his chair, throwing his hands up.
“The fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Eden gives her brother a secretive half-smile.
“Thanks for the water,” she says and walks out, Cypress looking over at Jet.
“Has she lost her shit again?” he asks, Jet still staring at the empty doorway where she had been moments before.
“I don't think she has, Cyp. I don't think so at all.”
The scene opens harshly with no lead in at all, just Eden Morgan moving away from a camera, giving the impression she's just turned it on. She moves off screen and returns with a chair, planting it sharply in the center of the viewing area and then throwing her legs over it, straddling it, facing the camera. She wears an oversized olive green sweater and jeans with the knees ripped up, her dark hair tumbling around her. She seems to gather her thoughts for a moment, a thumb rubbing at her lower lip.
“I see no need to draw this out longer than it should be, UGWC universe. If you don't know who I am, then you're obviously in the wrong place. I don't believe it's arrogance to think I need no introductions, though I'm sure some would disagree. Some would disagree just because I'm a woman. See, thing is, when you put a woman in an area run mostly by men, rumors start to fly unless you make it very clear that you're off limits. There's also this certain type of competitiveness that sets in. I call it testosterone poisoning. Men are either trying to run you out of town or get in your pants. They don't seem to know any other way to deal with a woman. If you're not a sexual object, you're a threat.”
Eden leans over the back of the chair, grinning conspiratorially.
“Guess which one I am for Fear?”
She pushes back again, resuming her previous position. Her tongue flicks out, wetting her lips. She presses them together and looks away for a moment and then looks back.
“You know, I am so very, very tired. If I went by my brain or my body, I could quit this,” she holds her hands up, gesturing to the area around her, and it's only then that we realize she's in the center of a ring, “at any time. The injuries, the trauma to mind and body, yeah I could leave it all behind. But here,” she rests a hand over her chest, “here, is what won't let me walk away. I love what I do. I love walking out there each and every time; I love the thrill, the adrenaline rush, the screams of the crowd behind me, that's what makes me walk out there, that's what makes me fight. And that's what Phrixus Deimos is afraid of.”
Eden crosses her arms over the back of the chair.
“Phrixus throws fears out every week for whatever opponent he's facing. He may list a few positives of his opponent, but he mainly focuses on the negative, and why wouldn't he? He's not here to build them up, he's here to build himself up, to make himself look like the better man. There's just one problem- he thinks less of others for these things he brings to the forefront. It's there in his scathing writing, dripping that condescending tone, like he's some kind of god casting illumination down on us all. I'm sorry, Phrixus, but only those who have never known fear are allowed to think less of others for being afraid. Frankly, I think anyone who has never been afraid of anything in their entire life is either a liar or lacks imagination. But we know what you're afraid of, or at least I do, don't I Fear?”
She grins coyly at the camera.
“You tear me and my accomplishments down, and I'm not afraid to say you're not wrong. Not at all. I've wasted a lot of time in this business, here, in this company. I've allowed a lot of things to take precedent over my career here, over what I say I love with all my heart, what I love enough to come back for when everyone said I shouldn't. If you think I'm still that Eden, you're making a very serious mistake, one that I look forward to pointing out to you personally. See, you're not the first person and you won't be the last to tell me that I don't deserve something; you're not the first person to tell me that I don't belong here; and you sure as hell aren't the first person to imply that I'm overrated. Have you seen what happens to people who tell me things like that? Have you been paying attention, Phrixus, or were you too busy dwelling on the past and making sure you have every detail completely and inarguably correct?”
Eden gets to her feet, the smile gone from her face.
“While you've been playing in the past, Phrixus, I've immersed myself in the present and the future of this company, and you know what I see? I see very clearly exactly what you're afraid of. The future is coming, and Phrixus Deimos is nothing but a thing of the past who claws his way to the forefront every now and then to try and show he's still relevant. Sometimes he succeeds and we're supposed to be left in awe that this relic has “still got it.” And then he slinks back off into the shadows, because if he doesn't, his magic trick loses its meaning.” She kicks the chair away, moving closer to the camera with every sway of her hips.
“See, he can't hang night after night and match after match, he has to pick and choose his battles. So he sits back and he watches and he consults his journals and his history books and his stats and he lets those make his case for him. And we're supposed to oooh and aaah and worship him when he decides it's time to make his move,” she grits out, reaching the ring ropes and gripping them tightly in her hands.
“You tell me I don't deserve to hold the Cross-Hemisphere title, Phrixus, and you list out all these reasons why I don't deserve it, all of them, as per your usual mode of operation, dealing with my past. That's fine. As I said before, you're not wrong about me. But I currently hold your precious Cross-Hemisphere title. I am, in fact, the fiftieth to hold it, and I have to say, I just love how I know that must eat away at you. But if my past makes me unworthy to be champion,” she grins, still clasping the ropes tightly, “then what makes you think your future makes you worthy? Because all I see in your future is more of the same old damn thing we've all grown accustomed to. And these people, our fans, this company, and this industry deserve better. I know what you're afraid of, Phrixus. You're afraid to find out that after all you've said, after all of your facts and statistics that lack any heart or soul, that I'm the future and you're nothing but the haunting ghost of a dead past.”
Eden uses the ropes to pull herself fluidly out of the ring, her eyes flashing angrily as she moves closer to the camera. The scene starts to shake as she lays a hand on it, leaning down to get her face in frame once more, her dark hair spilling down.
“Fuck your heritage,” she spits out, and then the camera goes dark.