Bury The Hatchet
Oct 18, 2018 15:46:34 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Oct 18, 2018 15:46:34 GMT -5
Monday 15th October
Cardiff, Wales
Off Camera
“Then go over and talk to her,” he says as he stands at the bar with a bottle of Fields Forever in his hand. The four of them travelled together to Cardiff after tonight’s She 1 Summit show; Dom and Annie won their tag team match against one of his rookies, Molly Barnes, and her partner for the evening, Stacy Deville. While Miss Fortune had drawn in her round robin match against Ruby, earning herself that valuable tenth point that allowed her to qualify for the final on Thursday evening.
The assumption that it’d be a better evening out than in Newport itself - where the show was held - only to have that hope quickly dashed. Because there, in Tiny Rebel, among the other thirty people huddled in the pub, was none other than one of his most hated rivals, Lowri Moss. She’d competed on the same show as them, topping the Rose City group in much the same fashion as Miss Fortune had done with the Sakura Pro group, meaning Lowri would be on the Thursday show as well. Tonight, however? She just wanted to enjoy a night out in the Welsh capital.
“She won’t wanna talk to me,” Annie replies before sipping from her bottle of Stay Puft beer (she liked the name). She glances over towards where her former friend is sitting, glass in hand and paying no attention to the group at the bar.
“She might,” Miss Fortune adds with a shrug of her shoulders, “You never know until you try.” The words ring true for Annie as she looks over to where Lowri is sitting once again. After their recent fall out in FGA, there’s still a lot left to say. That explanation Lowri wanted for her actions being towards the top of the list. An audible sigh escapes her lips as Annie contemplates what to say, and what could maybe try and patch that wound.
“Not tonight,” Annie mused. She took another sip of Stay Puft before adding, “I don’t wanna ruin her evening or anything.”
“When are you going to get another chance?” Dom asks, “Look, we’re miles from home. The people here won’t care about you two being seen together. If we try this at an FGA show, she’s probably going to think we’re about to attack her. Again!” He laughs at his own joke, because he’s Dom Harter. “Just go. The three of us will just...sit back and laugh. Or plan our costumes for EmeryTown. One of the two…” he shrugs his shoulders as Annie looks over towards Lowri once more.
She takes a deep breath in and begins her walk across the room. Navigating through the small groups of people who are out drinking this late on Monday for whatever reason, before finally Annie arrives at the table where Lowri is sitting and looking at her phone. “Is anybody sitting here?” Annie asks, a wan smile on her face as Lowri looks up from the screen.
She recognises the voice instantly. Up to this point, the night had gone great for Lowri; she had won her match, and she'd had a number of her friends and family there to cheer her on. After the show, she had gotten a train to Cardiff, the city in which she had been living until recently, and where she would be staying for a few nights before returning to North America on Friday. With Neal on the other side of the Atlantic, Lowri was by herself, and she had just wanted to have a quiet drink or two, before then heading for her hotel. Now though, it seemed like that plan was out the window.
As she stares at Annie, Lowri contemplates her options. She thinks about simply getting up and leaving, but she opts instead to stay put, giving a very curt reply. “No.”
With that, Annie took her seat at the table across from the Welshwoman, but silence just fills the air. Neither woman taking their eyes off the other until Annie finally pipes up. “So, awesome show, huh? I guess congrats are in order too…” the thought of bragging about the tag team victory crosses her mind, but that’d just be one step forward and two steps back for the conversation. “...for both of us. Maybe. I dunno.”
Annie fumbles over her words before she looks down at the table and takes another mouthful of beer. She can see the cogs turning in Lowri’s mind, and judging by the stern expression she’s wearing, none of them are working on anything good for Annie. “Look, I know you didn’t expect to see me here. But Dommy pulled some strings with the management and got us a tag match tonight. And, like, with us not having many matches in FGA recently and HKW closing. My loss in UGP on Saturday, I just wanted to wrestle, you know.”
Lowri gives a single nod of her head. While she has had no shortage of competition lately, with five matches in the past week and a half alone, she also knows what it is like to be reduced to being a spectator for long periods at a time, and being frustrated at not getting the chance to be in the ring, doing what she loves. “You don't need to justify your involvement in the show to me.” Lowri considers adding that she's just glad neither Annie or Dom interfered in her match, to ruin her chances of progressing in the tournament, but thinks better of it.
“Just so you know I’m not here to, like, mess with you or anything,” Annie reassures her.
“Unlike someone in the King of Roses match!” comes the voice from across the room. Annie glares across to where her boyfriend is sitting, waving at them with that smarmy grin on his face. Apparently conversations can be heard anywhere in this pub. To her credit, Lowri doesn’t rise to the bait; she felt justified in her actions, when she stopped Dom from cheating his way to another World title. Plus, that chair shot was satisfying to deliver.
“Ignore him,” Annie says as she turns back to her...former friend. The conversation luls again, however, as Annie peels the label off her bottle of beer. “This is kinda nice, have you tried it before?”
“No, I... I'm not usually one for craft beers - I tend to stick to the more common lagers, as I'm sure you remember,” Lowri replies, and Annie just nods. Lowri puts her phone down and looks at her own drink: a bottle of Cwtch, named after the Welsh word for a cuddle or a hug. Prior to what happened in June at All-Star Showdown, she and Annie had spent a number of nights out together, in spite of the latter's connection to Dom and The New Murder. However, with everything that had happened in the past few months, that had begun to seem like a long time ago.
Lowri takes a large mouthful of her drink, and then asks the question that’s been on her mind. “If you're not looking for a fight, Annie... why are you here? I’m assuming you didn’t come over to talk to me because you wanted someone to discuss beers with.”
“Not really, no…” Annie mumbles before she sighs again, “...do you--uh, do you remember what you asked me...I dunno how long ago now. It’s just, like, all blurred together recently.”
And she’s notkidding. Between her FGA return, the events surrounding HKW closing, her MMA training, and the one-off shows that have required so much travelling, Annie can’t remember what happened when in recent weeks. She looked up from the half-peeled bottle, “You wanted to know why. You know, about things in FGA.”
That’s putting it mildly.
“And I just...I wanna let you know it wasn’t, like, it wasn’t anything you did.” Annie says as proudly as she can, before she sighs again. Her gaze drifts down once more, her fingers drumming against the tabletop. After a moment, she takes a swift gulp of Stay Puft as she looks back up at Lowri. “So...sorry.”
The expression on Lowri's face softens. After how openly hostile they had been to one another, it surprises Lowri to now see Annie sitting here opposite her, acting so contrite. And she has to admit that Annie does sound genuine. However, she still isn’t about to forgive her without getting an explanation.
“Then... why, Annie? Why did you do it?”
Damn, she thought that might’ve been enough. “Uh, yeah. Um, do you remember those vignettes? The Don’t Forget About Me ones that started airing, like, around the start of the tag tournament?” Annie asks, and Lowri just nods. How could she forget them when she was in one?
“And do you remember the ones about Brandon Macdonald? Or The Good Guys? And those are just the ones they let us air…” Annie shakes her head. They had intended to put more people on blast, but the higher ups cut those for time. “...’cause we didn’t know who was gonna win the tournament.”
Lowri looked at Annie blankly, unsure where this is going. “Yeah, I remember all of them. And I remember you asking me about the one with me in it, but of course, I didn't have a clue what it was about.”
“Honestly,” Annie pauses, “we didn’t know who was gonna win the tournament and become the new champs. So we didn’t know who we were gonna attack…” she says bluntly, before she pauses to pout. “...and that’s where you and Neal come in.”
Lowri crosses her arms. “So you're saying that what you did to me and Neal, you would've done to whoever won the tournament, whether it was us, RIP, or whoever else?”
Annie pauses for a moment as she takes another sip of her beer. She could feel Lowri’s gaze burning a hole through her, and rightfully so. “Uh, yeah. And that’s probably not what you wanted to hear, is it?”
“Not exactly.” Lowri continues to stare straight at Annie. “I can understand you saying that the reason you and Dom attacked me and Neal was because we were the champions, but that still doesn't excuse you doing what you did. There are other ways you could've gone about getting a title match.“
She then unfolds her arms, and leans towards Annie. “We had our eyes on the tag titles when we were in NKP, but we never did anything like that to you and Molly, did we?”
“I’m not tryna excuse it,” Annie states, “but you wanted to know why. And that’s why; we needed to make an impact and you were the champs.” She leans forward, resting her forearms on the table. “But now its all done, I just thought you should know...I’m sorry it had to be you and Neal.”
Annie takes another sip of her Stay Puft beer before she realized the bottle was empty. “I’ll leave you to the rest of your night though…” She gets up from her chair, and is about to return to Dom and the others, when Lowri stops her. “Wait.”
While Annie sits back down, Lowri reaches for her purse. She opens it up and takes out a piece of paper, which she places on the table. She then motions to Annie for her to look at it, and when Annie picks it up, she immediately recognises it as the note of encouragement that she had given to Lowri last December, following Final Frontier. “After what happened... after what you did... I thought about throwing that in the bin. But for whatever reason, I decided not to - I decided to keep it.”
Lowri looks at Annie with a faint smile on her face. “You giving me that... it was a small gesture, but I was really touched by it, you know?”
“So…” Annie starts as she stares down at the note in her hand, with a smile beginning to form on her face, “...we cool?”
Lowri stares at Annie for a couple of seconds before her own smile broadens, the expression on her face growing warmer. “Yeah, I suppose we are.” She picks up her bottle of Cwtch, finishing off the remaining contents. She then looks to Annie again, but this time there is a slightly more serious tone to what she says. “One thing though. I'm giving you a second chance here; I won't give you a third, okay?”
Annie nods, understanding the gravity of the situation. She smiles back across the table at her...friend, as she says “I won’t need a third chance, I promise.”
Cardiff, Wales
Off Camera
“Then go over and talk to her,” he says as he stands at the bar with a bottle of Fields Forever in his hand. The four of them travelled together to Cardiff after tonight’s She 1 Summit show; Dom and Annie won their tag team match against one of his rookies, Molly Barnes, and her partner for the evening, Stacy Deville. While Miss Fortune had drawn in her round robin match against Ruby, earning herself that valuable tenth point that allowed her to qualify for the final on Thursday evening.
The assumption that it’d be a better evening out than in Newport itself - where the show was held - only to have that hope quickly dashed. Because there, in Tiny Rebel, among the other thirty people huddled in the pub, was none other than one of his most hated rivals, Lowri Moss. She’d competed on the same show as them, topping the Rose City group in much the same fashion as Miss Fortune had done with the Sakura Pro group, meaning Lowri would be on the Thursday show as well. Tonight, however? She just wanted to enjoy a night out in the Welsh capital.
“She won’t wanna talk to me,” Annie replies before sipping from her bottle of Stay Puft beer (she liked the name). She glances over towards where her former friend is sitting, glass in hand and paying no attention to the group at the bar.
“She might,” Miss Fortune adds with a shrug of her shoulders, “You never know until you try.” The words ring true for Annie as she looks over to where Lowri is sitting once again. After their recent fall out in FGA, there’s still a lot left to say. That explanation Lowri wanted for her actions being towards the top of the list. An audible sigh escapes her lips as Annie contemplates what to say, and what could maybe try and patch that wound.
“Not tonight,” Annie mused. She took another sip of Stay Puft before adding, “I don’t wanna ruin her evening or anything.”
“When are you going to get another chance?” Dom asks, “Look, we’re miles from home. The people here won’t care about you two being seen together. If we try this at an FGA show, she’s probably going to think we’re about to attack her. Again!” He laughs at his own joke, because he’s Dom Harter. “Just go. The three of us will just...sit back and laugh. Or plan our costumes for EmeryTown. One of the two…” he shrugs his shoulders as Annie looks over towards Lowri once more.
She takes a deep breath in and begins her walk across the room. Navigating through the small groups of people who are out drinking this late on Monday for whatever reason, before finally Annie arrives at the table where Lowri is sitting and looking at her phone. “Is anybody sitting here?” Annie asks, a wan smile on her face as Lowri looks up from the screen.
She recognises the voice instantly. Up to this point, the night had gone great for Lowri; she had won her match, and she'd had a number of her friends and family there to cheer her on. After the show, she had gotten a train to Cardiff, the city in which she had been living until recently, and where she would be staying for a few nights before returning to North America on Friday. With Neal on the other side of the Atlantic, Lowri was by herself, and she had just wanted to have a quiet drink or two, before then heading for her hotel. Now though, it seemed like that plan was out the window.
As she stares at Annie, Lowri contemplates her options. She thinks about simply getting up and leaving, but she opts instead to stay put, giving a very curt reply. “No.”
With that, Annie took her seat at the table across from the Welshwoman, but silence just fills the air. Neither woman taking their eyes off the other until Annie finally pipes up. “So, awesome show, huh? I guess congrats are in order too…” the thought of bragging about the tag team victory crosses her mind, but that’d just be one step forward and two steps back for the conversation. “...for both of us. Maybe. I dunno.”
Annie fumbles over her words before she looks down at the table and takes another mouthful of beer. She can see the cogs turning in Lowri’s mind, and judging by the stern expression she’s wearing, none of them are working on anything good for Annie. “Look, I know you didn’t expect to see me here. But Dommy pulled some strings with the management and got us a tag match tonight. And, like, with us not having many matches in FGA recently and HKW closing. My loss in UGP on Saturday, I just wanted to wrestle, you know.”
Lowri gives a single nod of her head. While she has had no shortage of competition lately, with five matches in the past week and a half alone, she also knows what it is like to be reduced to being a spectator for long periods at a time, and being frustrated at not getting the chance to be in the ring, doing what she loves. “You don't need to justify your involvement in the show to me.” Lowri considers adding that she's just glad neither Annie or Dom interfered in her match, to ruin her chances of progressing in the tournament, but thinks better of it.
“Just so you know I’m not here to, like, mess with you or anything,” Annie reassures her.
“Unlike someone in the King of Roses match!” comes the voice from across the room. Annie glares across to where her boyfriend is sitting, waving at them with that smarmy grin on his face. Apparently conversations can be heard anywhere in this pub. To her credit, Lowri doesn’t rise to the bait; she felt justified in her actions, when she stopped Dom from cheating his way to another World title. Plus, that chair shot was satisfying to deliver.
“Ignore him,” Annie says as she turns back to her...former friend. The conversation luls again, however, as Annie peels the label off her bottle of beer. “This is kinda nice, have you tried it before?”
“No, I... I'm not usually one for craft beers - I tend to stick to the more common lagers, as I'm sure you remember,” Lowri replies, and Annie just nods. Lowri puts her phone down and looks at her own drink: a bottle of Cwtch, named after the Welsh word for a cuddle or a hug. Prior to what happened in June at All-Star Showdown, she and Annie had spent a number of nights out together, in spite of the latter's connection to Dom and The New Murder. However, with everything that had happened in the past few months, that had begun to seem like a long time ago.
Lowri takes a large mouthful of her drink, and then asks the question that’s been on her mind. “If you're not looking for a fight, Annie... why are you here? I’m assuming you didn’t come over to talk to me because you wanted someone to discuss beers with.”
“Not really, no…” Annie mumbles before she sighs again, “...do you--uh, do you remember what you asked me...I dunno how long ago now. It’s just, like, all blurred together recently.”
And she’s notkidding. Between her FGA return, the events surrounding HKW closing, her MMA training, and the one-off shows that have required so much travelling, Annie can’t remember what happened when in recent weeks. She looked up from the half-peeled bottle, “You wanted to know why. You know, about things in FGA.”
That’s putting it mildly.
“And I just...I wanna let you know it wasn’t, like, it wasn’t anything you did.” Annie says as proudly as she can, before she sighs again. Her gaze drifts down once more, her fingers drumming against the tabletop. After a moment, she takes a swift gulp of Stay Puft as she looks back up at Lowri. “So...sorry.”
The expression on Lowri's face softens. After how openly hostile they had been to one another, it surprises Lowri to now see Annie sitting here opposite her, acting so contrite. And she has to admit that Annie does sound genuine. However, she still isn’t about to forgive her without getting an explanation.
“Then... why, Annie? Why did you do it?”
Damn, she thought that might’ve been enough. “Uh, yeah. Um, do you remember those vignettes? The Don’t Forget About Me ones that started airing, like, around the start of the tag tournament?” Annie asks, and Lowri just nods. How could she forget them when she was in one?
“And do you remember the ones about Brandon Macdonald? Or The Good Guys? And those are just the ones they let us air…” Annie shakes her head. They had intended to put more people on blast, but the higher ups cut those for time. “...’cause we didn’t know who was gonna win the tournament.”
Lowri looked at Annie blankly, unsure where this is going. “Yeah, I remember all of them. And I remember you asking me about the one with me in it, but of course, I didn't have a clue what it was about.”
“Honestly,” Annie pauses, “we didn’t know who was gonna win the tournament and become the new champs. So we didn’t know who we were gonna attack…” she says bluntly, before she pauses to pout. “...and that’s where you and Neal come in.”
Lowri crosses her arms. “So you're saying that what you did to me and Neal, you would've done to whoever won the tournament, whether it was us, RIP, or whoever else?”
Annie pauses for a moment as she takes another sip of her beer. She could feel Lowri’s gaze burning a hole through her, and rightfully so. “Uh, yeah. And that’s probably not what you wanted to hear, is it?”
“Not exactly.” Lowri continues to stare straight at Annie. “I can understand you saying that the reason you and Dom attacked me and Neal was because we were the champions, but that still doesn't excuse you doing what you did. There are other ways you could've gone about getting a title match.“
She then unfolds her arms, and leans towards Annie. “We had our eyes on the tag titles when we were in NKP, but we never did anything like that to you and Molly, did we?”
“I’m not tryna excuse it,” Annie states, “but you wanted to know why. And that’s why; we needed to make an impact and you were the champs.” She leans forward, resting her forearms on the table. “But now its all done, I just thought you should know...I’m sorry it had to be you and Neal.”
Annie takes another sip of her Stay Puft beer before she realized the bottle was empty. “I’ll leave you to the rest of your night though…” She gets up from her chair, and is about to return to Dom and the others, when Lowri stops her. “Wait.”
While Annie sits back down, Lowri reaches for her purse. She opens it up and takes out a piece of paper, which she places on the table. She then motions to Annie for her to look at it, and when Annie picks it up, she immediately recognises it as the note of encouragement that she had given to Lowri last December, following Final Frontier. “After what happened... after what you did... I thought about throwing that in the bin. But for whatever reason, I decided not to - I decided to keep it.”
Lowri looks at Annie with a faint smile on her face. “You giving me that... it was a small gesture, but I was really touched by it, you know?”
“So…” Annie starts as she stares down at the note in her hand, with a smile beginning to form on her face, “...we cool?”
Lowri stares at Annie for a couple of seconds before her own smile broadens, the expression on her face growing warmer. “Yeah, I suppose we are.” She picks up her bottle of Cwtch, finishing off the remaining contents. She then looks to Annie again, but this time there is a slightly more serious tone to what she says. “One thing though. I'm giving you a second chance here; I won't give you a third, okay?”
Annie nods, understanding the gravity of the situation. She smiles back across the table at her...friend, as she says “I won’t need a third chance, I promise.”