The RubyWay Chronicles Part 15: Alone
Nov 10, 2016 20:59:11 GMT -5
Post by Ruby Tyler on Nov 10, 2016 20:59:11 GMT -5
“I’m sorry, you did what now?” Ruby stared at her tag partner in disbelief, closing the psychology textbook she was busy highlighting so that she could focus on Kevin Hardaway. In the last eighteen months, they had been many things to one another, but she had somehow never imagined this ever happening.
“I called and I told them I was done. I’m not coming back to FGA.” Kevin shrugged his shoulders, mentally bracing himself for an onslaught of yelling and swearing from Ruby. But Ruby merely stared at him, her face a careful mask.
He’d told her once she had a great poker face. She’d joked that she’d had to have a good one - between her poker habit and working with him, she’d needed to learn the art of keeping her emotions from showing on her face. He’d thrown a garlic knot at her head after hearing that, which she had caught and thrown back at him so quickly that he didn’t have time to duck. The look of utter shock on his face had made both Ruby and Kim laugh. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen that look on her face, but the last time had been months ago, in her house in California, while she’d been telling him the story of how she’d gotten herself into both hunting and wrestling. She had been talking about her father and then her foster family, the Kanemotos, subjects that he knew were highly emotional for her.
“Well, that just puts the better part of a year’s work on the shelf. But, I’m sure you had a good reason for doing it.” Her voice was cold and businesslike, which chilled him a little. Even when they’d hated each other, there had always been some emotion in her voice. She’d never been distant with him, but now it was like he didn’t even know the person he was talking to anymore.
Once again, Kevin shrugged. “I’ve got some leads I want to work on with this whole Angie thing. And traveling to Tijuana once a month is easier than running all around the country every other week. It's better for Kim, too.” He shifted uncomfortably, wishing that Ruby would at least blink or something. But since he'd made his announcement she hadn't moved a muscle. Her perfect stillness was deeply unnerving.
“Because Tijuana is so much fucking better for you,” she said quietly. “You know, with my foster brothers both wanting to exact their revenge on you for putting me in the hospital last year and all. And without me there to make sure that doesn't happen to you. Yeah. Great fucking idea. Same thing with you chasing down leads on the fucking book that lead to your wife’s death. Which you're apparently also doing without me. What happened to you and me being a goddamn team?”
Her voice was dangerously low and her face flushed, the mask slipping as her anger got the better of her.
“Considering how often you bitch about me being alive, I would have thought you’d be glad to get rid of me and to have someone else be the one to do it so you wouldn’t have to have it on your conscience,” he fired back, and Ruby’s eyes went wide. She stood up and leaned over her desk as Kevin came closer to her, both of them trembling with emotion.
“The whole fucking point of us working together is so that you would live through the experience! I knew you were an idiot but I never thought that you were such a fucking moron. Do you really think that you’re gonna survive out there without me?”
“Well I’ve done fine the last thirty-six years, I think I can manage. God damn it, why are you so fucking convinced that I can’t do this without you? You don’t need to save everyone’s life for fuck’s sake! Not your brother’s, not mine, and sure as hell not some stranger who finds us because his grandma is haunting his house. The world doesn’t fucking need you to save it. Why are you even still doing this? Because you think the people need you to save the goddamn world or because without this you have nothing?”
To her credit, Ruby did not flinch. But in one swift motion she climbed over her desk and stood face to face with him, swinging wildly for his face. He blocked the punch, but she was ready with her other fist, driving it firmly into his gut. He coughed, backing away a couple of steps, but when he looked back at her he was more furious than ever before.
“I am doing this to keep your sorry stupid ass alive!” she shouted at him. “Because let me fucking tell you, I am not putting anyone in the position of having to tell your daughter that her father isn’t coming home to her anymore. She should be reason you never go back to Tijuana and the reason you leave hunting Angie’s demons to me. But since you insist on doing this I am going to back your stupid ass up and make sure that no matter what dumb shit you do, you get out of it alive. I don’t care if you don’t want it, that’s what’s going to happen.”
He straightened up and glared at her. “Listen just because your father didn’t come home from a hunting trip doesn’t mean I’m gonna do the same thing. So stop projecting your fucking daddy issues onto me and my daughter and quit using her as an excuse. Why are you really doing this?”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth he regretted them. Here was a woman he’d done his best to kill and who had done her best to return the favor. But with all that they had done to one another, he had never seen her look so hurt and betrayed.
“I’m doing this because I lo-” She paused, choking on the rest of her sentence.
“Because you what?”
“Because I lost my goddamn mind apparently. Get out of my house.”
“Don’t need to tell me twice, sug.”
He slammed the door behind him and Ruby threw a glass at it, but it didn’t give her any sense of satisfaction. Since January, she and Hardaway had struggled toward… well, whatever they were now. Call it friends, call it more, but in the last few months Ruby had come to depend on it. With her strained family relationships and her friends scattered far and wide, he was a constant in her life. She liked spending time with him and his daughter and they had a whole weird dysfunctional family thing going on. And she also liked that when it came to Frontier Grappling Arts, she had someone she could rely on to have her back both in the ring and in the locker room. She was used to being alone and most of the time she preferred it that way, but it felt like she was set adrift now. With Hardaway and their tag team, she’d had a goal. They’d had a purpose.
Now, she was just cannon fodder for whoever came along.
And now when she looked around her little house, she saw reminders of him everywhere. The weapons project he’d been tinkering with at her house. The pile of DVDs he’d brought over to expand her pop culture horizons. A jacket he’d left hanging over a chair in her kitchen. The half-drunk beer on the counter. Even the Infinity Gauntlet, left over from their short and sweet reign as WLW tag champs was too much.
Once she was sure that he was gone, Ruby walked down to the Way Station. Johnny was behind the bar as usual, and there were a couple of other hunters hanging around. Some hockey game was on TV, because Johnny had banned anything election-related from the beginning of November until January twentieth. She ordered herself a beer and looked disinterestedly at the screen, hoping that Johnny would take it upon himself to leave.
“Trouble in paradise?” he asked, cleaning out glasses.
Ruby looked over at him and rolled her eyes. “You gonna play bar therapist now?”
He shrugged. “First time you been in here without Hardaway since you started training the kid. And you look like someone just ran over your pet poodle.”
“If I had a pet poodle I’d run it over myself.”
“Not the point, Ruby.”
“I know. We got in a fight. It’ll be okay. Either he’s gonna come back or he’ll run off and get himself killed. End of story.”
“You say Hardaway?” a voice from down the bar asked. One of the other patrons had apparently overheard the conversation and was now looking interestedly at Ruby.
“Yeah, what’s it to you? He owe you money or something?”
“No. I knew an Angie Hardaway once. Said she was trying to keep her husband and kid out of the game.”
“Well then she fucked that up pretty good. I’ve been training her husband Kevin.”
“You stupid little bitch! Why would you drag that family through more shit than they’ve already been through?”
As the conversation devolved into a shouting match, Ruby found out that apparently this hunter had worked with Angie before her death, and had done his best to help her keep her promise to not get Kevin and Kim involved in their way of life. And when the shouting turned into a brawl and they fought their way outside, Ruby had only one thought.
Even when he wasn’t around, she was still fighting for him.
“I called and I told them I was done. I’m not coming back to FGA.” Kevin shrugged his shoulders, mentally bracing himself for an onslaught of yelling and swearing from Ruby. But Ruby merely stared at him, her face a careful mask.
He’d told her once she had a great poker face. She’d joked that she’d had to have a good one - between her poker habit and working with him, she’d needed to learn the art of keeping her emotions from showing on her face. He’d thrown a garlic knot at her head after hearing that, which she had caught and thrown back at him so quickly that he didn’t have time to duck. The look of utter shock on his face had made both Ruby and Kim laugh. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen that look on her face, but the last time had been months ago, in her house in California, while she’d been telling him the story of how she’d gotten herself into both hunting and wrestling. She had been talking about her father and then her foster family, the Kanemotos, subjects that he knew were highly emotional for her.
“Well, that just puts the better part of a year’s work on the shelf. But, I’m sure you had a good reason for doing it.” Her voice was cold and businesslike, which chilled him a little. Even when they’d hated each other, there had always been some emotion in her voice. She’d never been distant with him, but now it was like he didn’t even know the person he was talking to anymore.
Once again, Kevin shrugged. “I’ve got some leads I want to work on with this whole Angie thing. And traveling to Tijuana once a month is easier than running all around the country every other week. It's better for Kim, too.” He shifted uncomfortably, wishing that Ruby would at least blink or something. But since he'd made his announcement she hadn't moved a muscle. Her perfect stillness was deeply unnerving.
“Because Tijuana is so much fucking better for you,” she said quietly. “You know, with my foster brothers both wanting to exact their revenge on you for putting me in the hospital last year and all. And without me there to make sure that doesn't happen to you. Yeah. Great fucking idea. Same thing with you chasing down leads on the fucking book that lead to your wife’s death. Which you're apparently also doing without me. What happened to you and me being a goddamn team?”
Her voice was dangerously low and her face flushed, the mask slipping as her anger got the better of her.
“Considering how often you bitch about me being alive, I would have thought you’d be glad to get rid of me and to have someone else be the one to do it so you wouldn’t have to have it on your conscience,” he fired back, and Ruby’s eyes went wide. She stood up and leaned over her desk as Kevin came closer to her, both of them trembling with emotion.
“The whole fucking point of us working together is so that you would live through the experience! I knew you were an idiot but I never thought that you were such a fucking moron. Do you really think that you’re gonna survive out there without me?”
“Well I’ve done fine the last thirty-six years, I think I can manage. God damn it, why are you so fucking convinced that I can’t do this without you? You don’t need to save everyone’s life for fuck’s sake! Not your brother’s, not mine, and sure as hell not some stranger who finds us because his grandma is haunting his house. The world doesn’t fucking need you to save it. Why are you even still doing this? Because you think the people need you to save the goddamn world or because without this you have nothing?”
To her credit, Ruby did not flinch. But in one swift motion she climbed over her desk and stood face to face with him, swinging wildly for his face. He blocked the punch, but she was ready with her other fist, driving it firmly into his gut. He coughed, backing away a couple of steps, but when he looked back at her he was more furious than ever before.
“I am doing this to keep your sorry stupid ass alive!” she shouted at him. “Because let me fucking tell you, I am not putting anyone in the position of having to tell your daughter that her father isn’t coming home to her anymore. She should be reason you never go back to Tijuana and the reason you leave hunting Angie’s demons to me. But since you insist on doing this I am going to back your stupid ass up and make sure that no matter what dumb shit you do, you get out of it alive. I don’t care if you don’t want it, that’s what’s going to happen.”
He straightened up and glared at her. “Listen just because your father didn’t come home from a hunting trip doesn’t mean I’m gonna do the same thing. So stop projecting your fucking daddy issues onto me and my daughter and quit using her as an excuse. Why are you really doing this?”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth he regretted them. Here was a woman he’d done his best to kill and who had done her best to return the favor. But with all that they had done to one another, he had never seen her look so hurt and betrayed.
“I’m doing this because I lo-” She paused, choking on the rest of her sentence.
“Because you what?”
“Because I lost my goddamn mind apparently. Get out of my house.”
“Don’t need to tell me twice, sug.”
He slammed the door behind him and Ruby threw a glass at it, but it didn’t give her any sense of satisfaction. Since January, she and Hardaway had struggled toward… well, whatever they were now. Call it friends, call it more, but in the last few months Ruby had come to depend on it. With her strained family relationships and her friends scattered far and wide, he was a constant in her life. She liked spending time with him and his daughter and they had a whole weird dysfunctional family thing going on. And she also liked that when it came to Frontier Grappling Arts, she had someone she could rely on to have her back both in the ring and in the locker room. She was used to being alone and most of the time she preferred it that way, but it felt like she was set adrift now. With Hardaway and their tag team, she’d had a goal. They’d had a purpose.
Now, she was just cannon fodder for whoever came along.
And now when she looked around her little house, she saw reminders of him everywhere. The weapons project he’d been tinkering with at her house. The pile of DVDs he’d brought over to expand her pop culture horizons. A jacket he’d left hanging over a chair in her kitchen. The half-drunk beer on the counter. Even the Infinity Gauntlet, left over from their short and sweet reign as WLW tag champs was too much.
Once she was sure that he was gone, Ruby walked down to the Way Station. Johnny was behind the bar as usual, and there were a couple of other hunters hanging around. Some hockey game was on TV, because Johnny had banned anything election-related from the beginning of November until January twentieth. She ordered herself a beer and looked disinterestedly at the screen, hoping that Johnny would take it upon himself to leave.
“Trouble in paradise?” he asked, cleaning out glasses.
Ruby looked over at him and rolled her eyes. “You gonna play bar therapist now?”
He shrugged. “First time you been in here without Hardaway since you started training the kid. And you look like someone just ran over your pet poodle.”
“If I had a pet poodle I’d run it over myself.”
“Not the point, Ruby.”
“I know. We got in a fight. It’ll be okay. Either he’s gonna come back or he’ll run off and get himself killed. End of story.”
“You say Hardaway?” a voice from down the bar asked. One of the other patrons had apparently overheard the conversation and was now looking interestedly at Ruby.
“Yeah, what’s it to you? He owe you money or something?”
“No. I knew an Angie Hardaway once. Said she was trying to keep her husband and kid out of the game.”
“Well then she fucked that up pretty good. I’ve been training her husband Kevin.”
“You stupid little bitch! Why would you drag that family through more shit than they’ve already been through?”
As the conversation devolved into a shouting match, Ruby found out that apparently this hunter had worked with Angie before her death, and had done his best to help her keep her promise to not get Kevin and Kim involved in their way of life. And when the shouting turned into a brawl and they fought their way outside, Ruby had only one thought.
Even when he wasn’t around, she was still fighting for him.
So it’s the first time we’ve seen Dan Herrera in singles competition in a year and who’s the lucky opponent?
Why, none other than yours truly.
And this time, I’ve done my homework. I’ve delved into archives, watched tapes, talked to people who’ve known you for over a decade. It’s been interesting, to say the least. And it’s really opened my eyes to the kind of man you are, Dan.
From what I’ve seen, you’re a backstabbing weasel who would rather use others to his own advantage and hide behind them when it’s convenient. It doesn’t seem like you’ve ever done a single thing on your own. Hell, even that title that you hold - had to team up with Cordy in order to get that, didn’t you? And when push came to shove, you’re fighting me and Cordy’s battling it out for the World Title.
Because on your own, Dan? You just can’t get the job done. Kind of a pity they don’t make a little blue pill to help you improve your in-ring performance, isn’t it?
I know a thing or two about being on my own. That’s why I’m not too broken up over Hardaway deciding to part ways with this company. He’s a grown man, he can do what he wants. Disappointing that he did it before the tag title match but hey, at least this means not having to fight a tag match on my own. Now I’m free, and it all starts with you, Dan.
You’re a perfect example of the kind of hypocrisy this business rewards. You’ve sold out friends, colleagues, men who called you brother, all for the sake of getting ahead. And yet here you stand, one of the so-called “good guys”. But people like me, Dan? We see right through people like you.
We see you waiting as your tag partner, clearly the more talented wrestler, takes her shot at the FGA World Title while you’re left behind to fight someone who, according to this entire goddamn roster, doesn’t even matter. I’m barely a blip on the radar. Nobody cares. Maybe they’ll even call this match the bathroom break match.
How’s it feel to be relegated to obscurity, Dan?
How long until you and your pretty equally mediocre girlfriend decide that you’ve had enough of sharing Cordy’s spotlight?
How long until it’s you pushing her off a ladder to claim the glory for yourself?
How long can Status Quo last when deep down, everybody knows one very important thing - don’t trust Dan Herrera.
That’s the problem with having been around in this business so long, Dan.
You can never outrun history.
And at the Five Year Anniversary show?
You’re going to learn that you cannot outrun the Huntress.