chapter five: resolving losses

FLASHBACK-- Las Vegas || Sunday, October 14, 2012

Kasey Summers was soaked in sweat already, and the sun had only come up over the Vegas strip less than half an hour ago. Gryphon had talked to the owner of Johnny Rocco's Gym – she wasn't really sure if the owner was really Mr. Rocco, but he'd at least got her access to the rings and equipment outside of the seminar. It wasn't that she wanted to get ahead of the class or that she needed to run through the drills on her own. It was a little more complicated than that. The petite brunette lived and breathed wrestling – she'd had it in her blood since before she'd even hit puberty.

This was her life.

This was what she did when she wasn't competing. She was in places like this, at all hours of the day (and night) honing her skills. It wasn't just obsession, not really. In her mind it was particularly necessary because her last professional match had involved losing the FFW Television Championship after holding it for a startling six months. Everyone kept telling her that was an impressive feat since she'd defended it successfully against the undefeated Kelly McGuffin as well as three other women at the same time. She didn't buy that because she'd always held herself up to a higher standard where failure was never an option. NEVER.

She stood in the middle of the ring, staring at the fiber-filled dummy that was standing near the middle of the ring. "You can do this," she murmured to herself, taking a deep breath as she ran through the steps one last time in her head… "easy, just like Christian showed you."

She took another breath and then turned her back on the dummy. Running at the ropes, she dropped onto her hands, let her legs bounce off the ropes, flipped back into the handspring and then missed the head scissors by mere inches. She crashed and smacked her palm against the canvas. "SHIT!"

It was just a simple handspring backflip headscissors move. She'd seen both Gowan and Chauncy do it on a thousand tapes, yet she just couldn't get the timing down.

"You're leadin' with the wrong foot," a familiar voice spoke from the doorway, making her head snap up. Lex Collins stood there in that beat up old Misfits hoodie of his, his hands stuffed into the pockets. "Lead with the right on the flip, not the left an' you'll fix the angle of impact."

A small part of her was relieved to see a familiar face, even if it was her very creepy pseudo-ex-boyfriend. The other part though, was annoyed at the intrusion and his correction to her technique. "Yeah?" She brushed her hair out of her face, glaring at him, "what do you know about it?"

He shrugged, moving closer to the ring, "I know you're pushin' yourself too hard. I know your ankle's turnin' on you there 'cause you favored it."

She looked away, unable to lie while making eye contact. "My ankle's fine. You're nuts."  Frowning, she picked at some lint on her yoga pants. "What're you doing here? The seminar doesn't start for another couple hours. Shouldn't you be snuggling with Hannah or something?"  She tried not to sound jealous and failed miserably. There was a lot of baggage between them, but deep down she still had feelings for him and probably always would.

"Just got in a few hours ago,"  he replied with another idle shrug, "couldn't sleep. It's been a shit couple weeks for me. Lost some matches, y'know?"

Despite her better judgment, she felt herself getting drawn in, "yeah? That sucks. I thought you were on a pretty hot streak—"

He chuckled, "we both were. Funny how that works out, huh?"

She pushed up to her feet, "don't remind me. I don't even want to think about it. I don't want to even go on Twitter now 'cause I might see her gloating. It hurts too much."

"Sometimes the things you love hurt you the worst, Kase."  He sat down on the apron, not looking at her, "lemme tell you a story, alright? When Mr. Starr died an' you blamed me, I thought that was bad but there's been worse pain in my life since – seems like every day there's somethin' new. Felt worse before an' so have you. Losin' a belt isn't the end of the world, Kase. There's always gonna come a time when someone's better'n you… or someone gets the drop on you in that one second where your guard's down or your back's turned. It happens an' you can't beat yourself up over it. You just gotta—"

"You just gotta shut up," she snapped, "I never asked your opinion, Lex."

He held up his hands in surrender, "hey, sorry. Didn't know you were so touchy. This' your problem, Kase. You're a slave to feelings. You don't know how NOT to keep mixin' emotion an' passion. They're not the same thing—"

He didn't realize she was up until she crashed through the ropes with a dive, wrapping her arms around him and taking him down off the apron. They fell to the floor, her on top of him, screaming wordlessly in his face as she cracked the back of his head against the hard floor. The pain in his back was bad, and he was seeing stars from the impact. She had his arms pinned, but even if she hadn't, he wouldn't have hit her. He had a hard enough time bringing himself to exchange moves with women in sanctioned matches. "Kase, get hold of yourself," he muttered, "get control—"

Her fist crashed into his cheek, slapping the words from his mouth. He could taste blood now, but before his eyes could focus, the weight pressing him to the floor disappeared.  

"Let go of me!" Kasey shrieked, only to fall silent as she realized who'd dragged her off. Her eyes widened as she sat down hard on her ass, slipping from her savior's grip. "Sabra? Oh shit…"

The statuesque Russian leveled a finger at Kaesy as though she was a disobedient child. Sabra's voice was soft, but held enough weight to make tears spring to Summer's eyes. "I do not care what caused this, but this will NOT happen again. Are we clear?"

She nodded, biting her lip as she looked down at the floor. "Y-yeah. I'm sorry, Sabra. If you want me to leave… I'll—" she looked up but Sabra was already moving away. Her tear-doubled vision went to Lex instead, watching as he sat up and wiped blood from his lip.

"Don't," he muttered as he caught her gaze, "you wanna know how to stop the pain? You get the hell up an' keep doin' what you know… keep breathin' until it fades. Alright?"

"Lex," her voice trembled, "I'm so sorry."

"Don't be," he countered, "you needed that's much as I did." And with that, he walked away, leaving her with more answers to the questions she didn't know she'd been seeking until now.