005: Promethean Legacies

The belt lay across the bench beside him, the golden face cloudy and smeared with drying blood – he wondered if all of it was his. He didn't remember leaving the ring with it. He didn't remember much of the ending to the match other than Riddik slinking off before he could make sure the cowardly shit had been silenced once and for all. He remembered the interviewer sticking the microphone in his face, asking him about the Legacy Championship and then he remembered Hannah finding him in an empty stairwell. She'd had to coax him back to the locker room and she'd cleaned up the cut on his forehead herself, gluing it shut before putting in two stitches he didn't feel past the roaring of his pulse in his ears. His skin felt numb, pinpricks tingling all over. He hadn't felt like this in years.

Something had happened out there tonight. Something bad.

Hannah felt sick, watching him with a level of horror that was growing exponentially by the minute. She kept seeing the past in every little twitch and tic – she saw him curled up in the dark, doing nothing but drinking nonstop for a week straight. The energy in the room was so toxic she had to resist the urge start shaking him until he snapped out of it. With what had happened inside the ring tonight, she had no doubt that violence was the worst possible course of action. "Lex?" She said his name softly, trying to gauge how deeply he was lost inside his own head.

He didn't react. At all.

Walking over to him, she put her hands on his shoulders and when he didn't flinch, she leaned over, kissing the top of his head.

He breathed in slowly, his hands still curled into fists, still covered in tape that was tacky with dried blood. The silence stretched out between them, making the tension even more palpable. The blood smeared all over the championship almost seemed to be mocking him now. This was what it all boiled down to – blood sacrifices in foreign countries? How much more did he have in him to give?

He only realized he'd muttered that aloud when Hannah answered with a sigh, running her hands through his shaggy hair. "You give them the fire each and every night," she whispered, pride and adoration coloring every word. "They don't deserve it, baby. They don't appreciate–"

"–it's not about that," his voice came out raspy, his eyes still blank as they stared past her. "Can't keep it for myself. Gotta give it away for it to come back. Leave it behind, Han. Have to keep movin', keep chalkin' up miles until…"

"Until what?"

He was quiet for so long she thought maybe he hadn't heard her. Closing her eyes, she pressed her lips against his forehead, wanting to stay close to him because she knew he was on the verge of falling apart. She felt him shiver, felt him tremble like a horse that had been worked too hard – she'd been through this hundreds of times with him over the years. She knew he was having a hard time focusing past the blood screaming in his ears, past the aches and the pains and the clash of the past with the present.

"I dunno." He finally said, sounding sad. "Find the end of it all, I guess. Find out what exists when all the words've passed an' the rivers of blood've run dry, when there's nothin' left but silence an' ashes."  



"My mind is torn between two concepts. I bled at least two pints all over that arena in Morocco and I dunno if that should be considered erosion or bread-crumbing. Look up the latter an' you'll find that's the new thing people do online. Just a tidbit here an' there, keep someone hooked an' interested. I've had that mental picture a lot longer, look at it like breadcrumb navigation – leave bits so you can find your way back. When all is lost, you got these signposts, you got that bit to gather back in. An' I guess I like to see it that way because it means those parts aren't lost forever. The blood I bled. The bits I cast aside, jettisoning them as though I needed to travel lighter than most. The words, most days, they're like water. They wash over me, they fill my ears an' muffle the rest of the noise, make me more aware of my heart racin' as I push myself to the limit. They roll over, under… they look for any crack or crevice to find a way inside – gotta find the lower ground. Eventually they start to wear. They're cold an' they leach the warmth from you. Make your teeth chatter, make you run faster 'cause you gotta warm up again. Sometimes they're hot. They scald an' they leave you raw in places that ache for days after. They want nothing more than to shape you, define you but the more they wash over, the more you change."

There's a soft and scornful sniff.

"You think about legacies, about the bits you wanna leave behind. In actuality. In their minds. In their hearts. Remember the quote some famous person once said: 'they might forget what you say but they'll never forget how you made them feel' – an' I'm paraphrasing, of course. I never came into this company with designs on a championship. I never set out to topple a tyrant. I just came here to fight. I came here stripped bare, rubbed raw – I came here as a purest an' simplest version of myself. I still carry the damage with me. I can't erase the scars an' my guts will always be full of broken glass. I know pain. I know loss an' fear an' anger an' sacrifice. I've allowed the fear to pass over me, to pass through me so that only I remain. I'm good that way. When I try to be something more, I fail. I'm terrible in all the other ways you seem to believe matter. Riddik wanted to stab at my past, to try an' draw blood from the thickest scar tissue – better off tryna bleed granite but here we are. The monster's nowhere to be found. The spoils of war rest around my waist an' I hold the Jabberwock's head up for all to see. O frabjous day! The hero stands on the hill an' he appears triumphant until you look in his eyes an' see the emptiness that remains once that singular purpose has been fulfilled. What's he good for now? Will they celebrate him for sucking up that pain? Will they throw him a ticker tape parade? No. They never do. They clap him on the back, sure. They say good job. They wait a few minutes an' then they take him by the shoulders, spin him around an' point at the horizon. 'There's another one over there,' they say."

He clears his throat and then sighs.

"Doesn't matter. He's not looking for validation or salvation or anything else. He doesn't want to rest on laurels or to retire now that he's cut off hydra's many heads. No. He WANTS it all to reset in the morning. He needs that more than anything an' he just can't wait for more cowardice to be thrown on the embers, more hot air to work the bellows until the furnace is so fuckin' hot he can barely stand it. He leaves another piece behind in another place, cementing that ironclad legacy one crimson drop at a time. Those who dare to cross the line every time will always be lauded, will always be heroes. What you do between the wins and the losses becomes the definition they kept looking for an' could never find. Empty pages fill up over time. Someone always keeps score. You fight the good fight while you can, 'fore they put you down for good. The rest is just killin' time, waiting for the hammer to fall. An' it will. It always does."



The last box from his old house in Virginia Beach sat on the floor in front of him. The flaps were tucked, keeping it closed although there wasn't any tape on it. That was just a little tell given the care put into everything else that had been loaded into the pod. Jana – he still hated to think of her as his soon-to-be ex-wife – had obviously packed this last and that was why he'd left it so long. He knew the things inside would pass like glass splinters under the skin, invisible. Whatever he'd find inside would hurt, would remind him that no matter how much Hannah assured him that he was a good person, no matter how much the world saw him as a hero for defeating Dagvald Riddik twice over, he knew the truth. Slowly, he opened the lid, finding a Yankee Candle jar filled with sand sitting on top of a jumble of clothes: his t-shirts, all the ones she'd taken and started wearing to bed or for lounging around the house. He closed his eyes, feeling the first stab and twist of that phantom knife. No breadcrumbs, no reminders left. Jana had been almost clinical with this purge, he saw, digging a little deeper to find mementos and knick-knacks, little reminders of the time they'd spent together. A little over a year had been summed up so neatly with photographs and trinkets and uncovering each one now was like some sort of horrible torture: death by a thousand cuts. He'd left some of these things in the house on purpose, after all. 

Glass clinked against glass and he pulled out a bottle of wine from Vancouver with a custom label for them, their wedding date written on it along with congratulations from the owners. Nine months ago, felt like half a lifetime now. It felt like centuries, like someone else's life entirely and even now, he felt that ache in his chest, the reminder that even though he'd made the choice to come back to Hannah, he still loved Jana Rikar. That would probably never change.

He closed his eyes for a moment, breathing deeply as he bent over the box. He could smell their beach, could almost hear the waves crashing against the sand beyond the dunes. He felt so damned homesick with that memory and his hands closed around that little candle jar. Salted Caramel scent – his favorite. He took the lid off because curiosity was natural. He wanted to know if the sand would smell sweeter because of the container. Instead he found gold and diamonds there among the grains and then the sand was everywhere as it fell to the floor. The ring bounced on the floor and he picked it up, wondering if she knew its origins. He'd never told her that it had been made from the golden nameplate from the Shoot Society championship belt he'd tried to destroy with fire. To him, it had been symbolic – they'd met in Norfolk, after all. The company, that night she'd watched him fight against all odds and overcome, had become a sort of definition for their courtship and it had only seemed natural to commemorate their union that way.

It had been cursed from the onset.

He knew that now.

Her wedding ring was cold against his palm as he squeezed it in his fist, pulling out his phone and dialing her number from memory. He wasn't sure where she'd be right now, east or west coast versus somewhere else in the world entirely.

"Please pick up," he murmured, anxious because he had no idea what he'd say when and if she did. He just knew he had to hear her voice. He had to know the truth.

"Hello?" a sleepy voice was heard coming through the phone.

His breath caught in his throat, the words he'd finally decided on dying at the groggy tone. Of course, she was probably overseas somewhere, and he'd forgotten the time zone math. "Hey… uh…" he stopped, clearing his throat, "hi. I woke you up, didn't I?"

A slight pause came to his ears then, "yeah, it's…. 1 or so right now, I think."

The screen on his phone lit up and showed a half-awake Jana, not knowing she'd tapped video call. "Why… where are... you?"

"Vegas," Lex's voice came out soft as he raked his hand through his disheveled hair, "just a little pause before… you're in Dubai, aren't ya?"

"Mmhmm, I have a…." Her eyes opened a little bit and the glare of the bright light on her phone startled her. She saw Lex on her screen run his hand through his hair as her senses slowly came to her. "Don't look…" She hid her face in her pillow quickly.

He chuckled softly, "okay. But you're not so…" he caught himself before he dug that hole deeper. The last thing she needed was a compliment from him in the middle of the night. Calling her now, after more than two months apart was weird enough. "Just turn the phone a little an' I won't take up too much of your time." He sighed, shaking his head, forcing himself to dive into the reason for the call. "I… uhm… I opened that box you packed. With, y'know, the sand an' stuff."

She tapped the phone, lowering the brightness a bit. Her eyes opened a little more as she heard what he said. "I just thought you might want those."

Her honest response caught him blindside and the phone dipped so she could see the wall over his shoulder instead of his face. She could hear the sharp intake of breath though, one that he held before letting it out slowly. "Some of it, sure." He was quiet, his voice stripped of all emotion as he bit the inside of his lip hard enough to taste blood. "I guess I thought you'd wanna…" he didn't want to make the comparison between Jana and Hannah, to think about how the latter had kept a ragged hoodie as a memento for more than fifteen years. "The ring though," he finally said, needing to understand even though he couldn't really put the question into anything more than a simple, plaintive word. "Why?"

She sat up a little, leaning against the pillows. "It was a constant reminder to me… of what we," she faltered on the word, "…were. What we had. I… did that 'cause I thought if I don't, I'll always think about you."

It should have been obvious. He hadn't wanted to believe it.

Jana turned her face to the side, trying not to let him see her cry. She stiffened up a little and wiped her cheek, continuing, "I needed a clean break. No reminders. Fresh start and all that. I… I hoped you'd understand. That ring is… was us. But there's no us now."

She chewed her lip a little, spying his eyes, his face. She was putting up a good face, trying not to break as all the memories, good and bad, came back to her.

"I understand." He knew his expression betrayed him as he nodded, eyes darting away from contact. "Guess I should let you go." The double meaning was evident before he forced a sad smile. "Be well, Jana."

A smile appeared on her face as she nodded slowly. "Stay Fearless, Lex." She waved slightly then tapped her phone.

The video call ended, and he was left staring at his haunted, ghostly expression in the reflection as the screen went dark. Silence crashed over him and the blood on his tongue was bitter now, like ashes. He didn't feel like a hero or a champion. He felt like an asshole.