PWP 20: Hardy vs. Kingston vs. Schneider

"This is why I told you to be an actress."

Nancy Hardy raises the tulip to her lips, thumb and two fingers holding up her drink while the ring and pinky fingers idly rest against the stem of the glass as she leans back in her chair. When the glass and her head tilt back down to look at Karen properly, her expression is one of complete condescension. To match it, Karen's brow is furrowed, her eyes narrowed. Her fists are clenched as she holds them tightly at her sides, and her well-muscled shoulders twitch and flex as she struggles in vain to control her emotions.

The Hardies have had this discussion before.

"And I told you that I didn't want to be an actress."

Nancy rolls her eyes as she gently puts her glass on the kitchen table, showing much more care for her goblet than she is for her daughter's feelings. "Look where it's gotten you. You turned 24 last month and you spent your birthday in rehab."

"This wasn't the first time I've been injured, mother."

"It was the first time someone else injured you, and you know damn well it won't be the last if you go back."

Karen's response is to stand there, silent and seething. There is no clever comeback; her mother is right about that.

"I didn't like it when you decided you were going to go be a bodybuilder or powerlifter or whatever, but I found someone I knew to train you so I knew they'd do it right."

"You also didn't think I'd stick to it," Karen retorts between clenched teeth, her shoulder flexing again, seeming to expand as if on cue.

"You're not wrong. The only reason you talked me into it was because you'd control your own destiny, which you just can't say if you're wrestling."

As Karen has no good response for this either, Nancy just smiles, eyes full of smug superiority, as she takes another sip, downing the rest of her wine. "You're still young, Karen. It isn't too late for you to slim down, change careers--"

"I am not throwing away ten years of hard work."

"No, I suppose not," Nancy drawls, pouring herself another glass. "You'll just throw away all the years you haven't lived yet for the few you have."

"You can't tell me what to do anymore."

"No, but I can tell you how I feel about it."

Karen grits her teeth, trying to think of a good retort. Failing this, she falls back on "Not if I'm not here to listen to it" and storms out of the room. Nancy watches her leave, then shakes her head.

"She'll be back."

A strapping young man, easily ten years Nancy's junior, stands in the doorway connecting the lavish dining room to the adjoining living room, filling his clothes and the doorframe with the same powerful figure. He watches as Karen leaves, then turns to Nancy.

"And if she doesn't come back?"

Nancy just shakes her head again, a dark expression in her eyes. "One way or the other, she will be back."


* * *


"I don't understand why you let her give you so much grief."

The scene is no longer in Nancy Hardy's dining room, but in a gym. It is the South Highland Fitness Factory, and Karen is currently going hard on a pec fly. It's hard to say whether she's spotting or just observing, but either way, Karen's long time friend and sometimes trainer Lucia Spencer is watching her.

Karen and Lucia are a study in contrasts. They each have impressive physique, but this seems to be where the similarities end. Lucia has a more ample bust, for example, where Karen's is more flat. Lucia is slimmer, as befits a fitness model and personal trainer, whereas Karen is built for power. Lucia's hair is jet black, while Karen's is a fair blonde. Lucia has vivid brown eyes, while Karen's are blue.

Perhaps most important of all--and not just a dumping of physical descriptors to try to paint an image--is that Lucia is wildly extroverted, seemingly basking in any and all attention she can find, while Karen seems fiercely introverted, trying to keep herself from being seen even in such a high-exposure setting and training outfit. Some, including Lucia, argue that Lucia is firmly in control of her emotions and psyche, whereas Karen is eternally struggling with her identity.

"That bitch knows you could snap her in half if you wanted. How does she still do this to you?"

And, for several years, Lucia has been struggling with Karen's identity as well.

"Simple," Karen responds with a grunt as she closes out her set. When she does she lets the handles rest at the starting position and sits up on the bench, wiping sweat from her brow. "She's my mother."

"Doesn't mean you have to stay cooped up just because she doesn't like your choices."

Karen frowns, her eyes turning to the floor in front of her. "You don't understand."

"I understand she's trying to make you live her life and that it's bullshit."

Karen's glance shoots back up, finding Lucia's angry expression.

"I get family bonds or whatever, but at the point where the family ties are holding you back, it's time to cut that shit."

Karen frowns at Lucia. "It's not that simple."

"Sure it is. You think everyone in my life has always approved of my life choices?"

That statement hangs in the air for several seconds, and as though to prove her point, Lucia shifts her weight so her curves are more prominently displayed. Several passing gym goers stare at her, almost colliding with each other as they ogle her. The moment of tension is cut when Karen giggles a bit at the guys' abject failure.

"You think my parents approve of me dressing like I do? If it were up to them, I'd be working out in turtlenecks. But there came a point where I had The Talk with them, and they let me do my thing because they know I'll cut them loose if they don't. It's high time you have that talk with your mother."

"And say what exactly? 'I'm a big girl now, I will do what I want, because fuck you?'"

Karen's face is screwed up in a combination of incredulity and frustration as she looks up at Lucia. It surprises her when Lucia doesn't miss a single beat when she replies "Yes, that is exactly what you say.

"If you want to phrase it differently you can, but that's the point. From the sounds of it, she didn't give you any respect when you talked about it, so why should you give her any? Familial ties only get you so far. Besides, you didn't pick who shoved you out of her--"

"Lucia!"

"Am I wrong?" Lucia waits for Karen to respond. She crosses her arms over her chest when she doesn't respond. "That's what I thought."

"It's hard," Karen finally responds, the feeble retort the most stark contrast of all.

"I know, Kay, I know," Lucia says, kneeling in front of Karen so that even when she tries to cast her gaze to the floor, she still has to look at Lucia. "Why do you think I've been pushing you so hard all this time?"

"...what do you want me to do?"

"I don't want you to do anything," Lucia responds, putting her hands on Karen's shoulders. "I just want you to let yourself live."


* * *


"It's been a while."

Mitchell Schumacher is standing in the middle of a worn down wrestling ring. The canvas has aged poorly, with yellowish tints to what should be a crisp almost white canvas. Unsurprisingly for a worn down gym in a forgotten corner of the Steel City, he and Karen are the only two people in the room.

"Yes it has" is Karen's response as she walks right up to the apron of the ring, but does not make a move to enter it.

"The last time we spoke, I believe you ended the conversation with a haymaker."

"I did," she replies, though she distinctly remembers hearing him continue speaking as she walked away.

"So what brings you back? Surely you don't need a trainer. Between your pretty little friend and that army chick, I think you're pretty well covered."

"Hannah is...incapacitated."

"Uh huh." It's unclear from the tone of Mitchell's response whether or not he watches The Pitt, but it is clear how little he cares about the fate of another human being. It's probably this fact that causes Karen's fists to ball up.

"Are we going to dance this dance again? Fit young lady punch out an old failed grappler? We really should. You'd let off some steam and I'd get a few more free meals out of the story."

"Is that all I'm good for? A meal ticket?" Karen's fists are so tight now that her knuckles are white.

"If you showed this kind of fire more often, no," Mitchell responds, expressionless and stoic in the face of Karen's fury. "But as you so stubbornly refuse to change, you're good for even less."

"...did my mother put you up to this?"

Mitchell laughs out loud. "Your mother? I don't know your mother from a hole in the ground. All I know of you is what I see, and what I see is a woman who could dominate if she'd let go of what society tells her she's supposed to be."

"Why do people keep telling me that?"

"I don't know, maybe because it's the fucking truth?"

"I don't have to listen to this," Karen says, turning on her heel and walking away. Mitchell just laughs and shouts after her.

"You're right, you don't! But one of these days, somebody will make this shit sink in!"


* * *


"Luce?"

Karen is walking into the locker room of a gym, probably the same one we saw earlier. She's dressed in a sports bra and yoga pants, clearly ready to throw some weight around. She expects company, but when she gets to her locker, she finds herself alone. She furrows her brow.

"Lucia?"

She looks around for a few more moments. When she’s sure that she’s not going to find her usual training partner in the gym, she shrugs. She is disappointed, but the world, and her metabolism, waits for no one, not even Lucia, so she heads into the gym and gets to work. It’s a normal enough day at the gym, except for the fact that everyone around her notes that she hits the heavy bag just a little harder, pushes herself on the weights just a little bit harder, and lets her feet fall just a little bit harder when she’s stalking back to the showers.

And that was the way she was for the next week or so. She didn’t come in one day, but her routine was otherwise predictable. She hit the weights hard, the bags hard, the cardio hard, and if it was possible to hit the showers hard, she would have done it.

And it all would have been fine.


* * *


“You...can’t prove...anything!”

Four simple words, uttered with the unmistakeable abrupt contractions of a man being choked, affected Karen more than she was prepared for. Her experience with Sebastian DeBlanc was obviously limited, but watching someone she considered of sound mind threaten him and accuse him of having someone she considers a friend knocked off is more than she could take. Even if she hadn’t been on an emotional gauntlet, it would probably have staggered her.

As it is, she finds herself back at the club that Lucia had brought her two on two separate occasions. This was the first time that she’s come on her own.

She is conspicuous, to say the least.

All the same, any attention she has been getting has gone mostly unnoticed as she sits on the bar stool, the same four words ringing through her mind.

You can’t prove anything...

You can’t prove anything...

Was there anything to prove? Surely Melinda’s accusation was off the mark. Surely Sebastian, who had been kind enough to her when she worked for The Pitt to give her a second chance when she had missed a show with no warning, was not capable of ordering an assault on one of his performers that could easily have killed her.

Surely the accusation was just the product of Melinda just wildly grasping for straws in a feud against an authority figure.

Surely...

You can’t prove anything...

What would she do if it was true? The whole point of requesting a match with the Pro Wrestling Project was to gauge whether she still wanted to be a part of professional wrestling, and if she discovers that she still wants to be a performer, then she wants to go back to the Pitt. But is it even a safe place to work anymore, if anyone Sebastian doesn’t like can just get attacked or run down, literally? Is that something she wants to put up with?

Is that a risk she’s willing to take?

She throws back another shot. She can’t even remember what the bartender said she was drinking. She only remembers asking for “whatever is cheap and will fuck me up.”

“What are you doing here?”

Karen turns to face the person next to her on the bar stool. She rolls her eyes.

“Drinking. What are YOU doing here?” she asks, a hand gesturing sluggishly at her neighbor, coming dangerously close to punching him in the face.

Just as with everything else in the past week, Karen has hit the liquor hard, and her vision is blurring. Through the goggles of inebriation, she thinks he’s a short-ish man with a ruddy, stubby beard. She’s pretty sure that he’s grinning though.

“Oh, I’m just in the area. Something seems to be on your mind, my dear.”

Karen scoffs, one of her powerful arms waving about in another sluggish gesticulation that almost becomes a drunken assault. “Everybody’s got shit on their mind. Why are you bugging me?”

“Because I see potential in you. You--”

Karen interrupts him, throwing her arms up in the air. “--could rule the world if you’d just let yourself live, or some shit like that. Right?”

“...something like that, yes.”

“How many people are gonna’ tell me this before they shut the fuck up about it?”

“How many people have to tell you before you agree with them?”

“Fuck you, you don’t know me.”

“I know a little more about you than you think, Karen.”

Karen immediately sits up on her stool a little straighter. She blinks, and she can see a little clearer. She peers at the man next to her, whose eyes seem much keener than they did a moment ago. “What do you know about me?”

“Many things I’d rather not mention in a place such as this. I know that you’ve been struggling lately, and just when you need her the most, your mouthpiece is off prancing around South Beach.”

Karen grumbles, the words incomprehensible. Her companion lets her finish before continuing.

“I don’t care how you live your life, Karen. You can be a doormat for the rest of your life for all I care. But I need you to know two things.

First, that you are amazing--”

“Bitch I know that.”

The ruddy-bearded man smiles. “Second, that eventually everyone in your life will leave you. Your mother will leave you, but so will Lucia, and so has Miss Kristian.”

Karen responds to this by shooting to her feet and grabbing the man by his collar, lifting him up off his feet. The bartender and several patrons are saying things loudly around her, but she doesn’t hear them; she only sees the smarmy grin on his face.

“Will abusing me bring her back any faster?”

Karen glares up at him for a moment before putting him roughly back on the ground. Any patrons of the bar that had been sitting nearby have scattered, trying to find tables that are far away from “the crazy bitch,” but the man she assaulted only smiles.

“I don’t care how you live your life, but you have to live your life for yourself. You can’t let others tell you what the world looks like, or should look like, and you damn sure can’t let others tell you what you should look like.

“Do you understand?” he asks as he straightens his collar. Karen glares at him for a moment before casting her gaze to the floor.

“I think that’s a yes.” One of the bouncers of the bar comes up to Karen and the man talking to her. They are preparing to escort him out, but he waves them off. “I’ll leave, but I want to say one more thing.”

“What’s that?” Karen asks sourly, fully aware that as soon as he is escorted out, she’s probably next.

“The world is a scary place. It’s up to you whether to be scared, or be what the world is scared of.”

Karen furrows her brow, her expression a mix of anger and confusion as he is escorted out of the bar. Seeing that he is leaving willingly, one of the bouncers then turns to Karen. “I have to ask you to leave as well, Karen. I think you need to bring Lucia with you next time--”

She responds to this by punching the bouncer. She catches him in the jaw and he goes spinning into the bartop. Anyone who is standing nearby scatters and the bouncer going with the other man goes to spring back to help his friend, but Karen puts her hands up after she gets the punch in.

“I’m going.” She takes a few steps, then turns back to the bouncer clutching his face, testing to see if she broke his jaw. Her face is contorted with anger as she spits “I don’t need anybody” at him before turning back towards the exit.