Post by theravenmattknox on Aug 3, 2021 0:51:21 GMT -5
It was like a bad Steinbach parody.
He stared at the 20 pounds of gold and leather upon the coffee table over steepled fingers. He had seen his companion off, claiming to be staying behind for some sort of falsified business.
Well. Kind of.
She had expressly said to stay out of the guest room. So, of course, the first door he cracked when he got into the home was that very one. A brief glimpse, but a familiar tomb. One he left in an abandoned home in Monterey. Overlooking an ocean and housing the tomb of who he once was.
He reached out next to the belt after paying it a final narrowing of his eyes, grabbing the complimentary can of polish Roth was so kind to provide and headed to the guest room, this time rather brazenly throwing the door open and flipping the lights on.He smirked, if he were one of those reddit smarks with a hardon for the hurricane, he would melt at the sight to behold.
A neglected, but organized museum to the path of destruction Amber Ryan had carved. He tosses, and catches the can up in the air once before taking a wide, arrogant step to the left. Like reading, left to right. He reached up and knuckled a thin layer of dust from his vision and stared at a storm in its formative state.
No older than 25. Fair skinned with a shock of hair and abyss in her eyes, Amber Ryan. He smirked at it, before letting his gaze drop to the title belt it hung above.GWR Revolution. He let out a chuckle “And she calls me campy..” but even with the mockery, he opens the case and pulls the belt out, dropping to sit cross legged and producing a handkerchief from his shirt pocket. He smirked at the ghost of the mockery she would lay upon him having it.
And he set to work, polishing the ancient plates.
And so he went on, one after the other. CWR World Heavyweight. Her expression was spiteful, as if she just rubbed someone’s face in something. He’d need to ask the story in between their barbing sessions. Tag Titles from Orion. An Orion’s Belt. He had to chuckle, to offset the sight of her covered in blood barely duller than her hair.
He paused at the pair of replica Carnage World Titles. As he polished them, any witness would notice the extra care he took and the far off, dreaming gaze he paid it. He always wanted to fight her for it. The moment JC hired him, he wanted that fight.
He got the fight, but never the gold.
As he replaced them, he stared at the pair of photos, but mainly one. The infamous night used to plague and harass the man she beat for it. A daughter beaten bloody by her father. The disgust bit at his entire being, his face twisting into a grimace before he closed the case.
"I should have known better than to give you any kind of instruction."
Leaning in the doorframe, her expression a mixture of amusement and annoyance, Amber herself as though drawn from another version and another time watched lazily as Knox was violently dragged from his reverie.
"Neither of us have ever done well at letting anything stay dead though."
Not moving from the doorframe, her worn out leather jacket squeaked as she adjusted her stance. Sunglasses still perched atop the shock of crimson pulled into a high ponytail and nose slightly wrinkled trying to ignore the distinctive scent of stranger in her sanctuary. Matthew didn’t bother to turn and greet her, only smiling at her arrival. He remained silent a beat before taking a step to the next display. Confident, and brazen as his intrusion.
“My ex wife,” he pauses to open the case as much to gather his thoughts “Whom I abandoned while she was pregnant with our child, to raise a child I adopted before meeting her greets me with more warmth than you do, Amber.” so much humor in such a terrible phrase. He loosens up though, motioning toward his deed “You should keep them up better. The tag title’s leather is starting to crack..” Another pause.
“Even mausoleums are maintained, Amber.”
Stepping across the threshold, it was difficult for her to disguise the sigh that escaped her lips. Memories and nostalgia flooding through in a sensory overload that left her almost glassy eyed, emotions of every achievement that she'd buried somehow bubbling under her skin like tiny, burning blisters.
"You always did strike me as the type that would go to a cemetery and polish gravestones."
A different girl. A different time. Years passing one photo at a time, an evolution of violence and a spiralling self-destructive cycle that couldn't be killed.
It felt almost selfish to lock it all away, and yet she never could quite bring herself to leave it behind. He laughed at her joke, carefully closing the last display case and turning toward her.
"Were you trying to bury the memories, Red?" His tone even, friendly, but prodding. Ever prodding. "I mean, not to be presumptuous but I figured this would be in Vegas with the newest ones." A longer pause, his mouth hanging open before forming into a knowing, or mocking? Half smile.
"Or is this a...private hell situation?"
Softening into something more pensive, Amber takes a breath a touch trying to find the right words.
"How many times have you looked in the mirror and struggled to recognize who stared back at you…"
It was a faithful rhetoric, too many times the person that stared back seemed more a foe than friend.
"It's just… it's funny. I walk in here and I don't recognize this girl, I don't remember being her. I walk in here and I feel like I'm looking back through someone else's life.
Can't keep looking at them and torturing myself into remembering everything, can't throw them away cause I know I'll never have it again."
Stepping closer to one of the earlier belts, the photos with it a little faded and discoloured from travel wear.
A middle 20-something redhead beaming with pride, a swell of support at her back and yet somehow her eyes didn't seem to be the ones she had now. Bright and optimistic- she'd worked so hard for so little, and smiled the whole fucking time.
"Maybe it is a mausoleum Matt, but most of the time it doesn't feel like it's mine."
He hung on her words, silently adrift in the sentiment as he idly fidgeted with the aforementioned handkerchief. A nod, before motioning to the room.
"It's just another beautiful little tragedy of our profession. The photo-filled timeline of hope meeting its end. It's oblivion, if you'll forgive the pun."
He took a step to join her, following her gaze over the pictures and taking a moment to walk in her skin, to get a sense of her truth.
As usual, she remained the one he could never get a beat on.
"They're all you though, Amber. The missing pieces. The ones we never notice until a hundred are gone and you've an empty spot where joy and hope for the better used to reside."
He broke out in a toothy grin, half doubling over as he chuckled "You need to stop me when I begin to wax poetic."
Tracing her fingers across the glass, unable to bring herself to go that step further and reach into her own nostalgia, Amber allows herself a small chuckle.
"If you wanna sound a little stupid, I'm always gonna let you.
Part of me wants to go back and tell this girl to temper her expectations, to not trust and live so freely- but then I wonder if I'd ever have gotten this far without it."
Dropping her hand back by her side, the laughter dies in her throat.
"Or at least without the falls that came with it."
Amid the glass cases, dusty photos were strewn haphazardly. Bloody and gruesome, hits and misses caught in a moment of longevity- as though the best and the worst collided in the centre of a lens.
"I couldn't accept that." Dismissive but not cruel. He crossed his arms, lowering his gaze and toeing something in the carpet as he furrowed his brow. "All that made you who you are now. And selfishly I wouldn't want to be in a world without this you."
He motioned to her as If there were another comparable model of her there before continuing. "The petty Twitter barbs and the open, pretense free, heart on sleeve face to faces?" A click of the tongue.
"A thrill ride I live for."
A glance over her shoulder gave enough of a glare that she didn't need full eye contact. Almost feeling the flesh give way as her stare tore him asunder.
"Congratulations, you got the sob story you were no doubt digging for. I hope that little bit of humanity will sustain you till the next time you need to suck the nostalgic life blood from someone."
Amber moves for the door, tired perhaps of the sidesteps and charades that always seemed to interweave their conversations. Bearing their hearts and throats, yet somehow never quite drawing blood.
It was bold and no doubt would be his undoing, especially after the tournament mere hours earlier but as she went to pass him he reached out and took hold of her arm.
"Do you lie for me, you, the Universe? You knew this would happen the second you asked me not to come in this room.."
Bolder, daring the blood he leaned down and spoke slowly, edged but still lacking real malice.
"It's so much easier when someone else rips off the bandage and you can scream at them for the pain, isn't it Amber?"
Amber, her own steely gaze meeting Matt's and the venom practically oozing from their pores in hopes they might be slightly more potent than the others.
"Get… your… hand… off… me. Or I will take it by force. You may wanna stop playing with fire like you don't burn, like somehow the crackle of flame and consequences doesn't apply to you."
Her harsh whisper cracks slightly, dripping in vitriol, it's rare to see such a concentrated form of rage seep from the hurricane painted red.
"You wanna live so fucking vicariously through everyone else's pain in hopes that someone might be a little more fucked up than you are. Poke and prod at someone else's wounds that won't heal just to feel a little better about your own- I'm a tolerant girl Knox, I swallow a lot of bullshit before I start spitting it back up…"
She leans in close enough that Knox can feel the warmth of her breath, the faintly cinnamon smell of her distinctive perfume. A force of nature condensed into falling syllables of hurt and loathing.
"... You're so determined to find my limits and yet when they come into sight, you back the fuck up and pretend you never crossed that line."
Drawing back, it's as though her voice seems to follow in kind.
"I have no issue levelling this room with your carcass. Don't fucking test me Knox."
He did not shy away, or shift gears. He weathered the storm stone faced, letting his hand linger a defiant beat before removing it. "Oh I'm well aware of the lines, Amber. All of them."
He turned himself square with her, his icy stare meeting the smoldering heat of her own as he spoke in a quiet, equally icy tone.
"You're wounded and gnashing your teeth, burying yourself in what's expected of you. And you only do it because that mask you wear, you're terrified to look behind it after so long."
A shift, he raises a hand, wagging a finger in time with a chuckle "I honor you. Shine your prizes. Give a kind sentiment and you turn it into a fight, like always because you and me? It's a distorted reflection."
He stepped toward her then, noticeably with a wider stance because he was not willingly going through a wall "You open up to me because you smell your kind of monster and then you gnash your teeth to protect the girl you've fabricated."
"That far enough past the line?"
If a hurricane had a voice, the roaring winds and thunderous rain, it bubbled through Amber's voice box. A stirring, virulent whispered roar.
"Get out."
Instead of stepping away to allow an exit though, she shifted her stance in preparation for defiance.
"I have backed you since day one, I have risked my neck and my name for yours. Time after time I have given you far more of myself than I should have cause I believed that you would do the same… yet you keep digging like a fucking splinter determined to find my rock bottom and plant yourself there. Exhilarate in my misery Matt, wallow in the darkest and deepest grief I might have- only to fucking therapist double speak me when you get there.
Sentiment, nah man. That's you trying to fuck around in my head cause yours is getting a little too light and you're too pale to deal with the sun. You crave everyone's else's issues cause you need to rummaging through in hopes of burying your own."
Cocking her head slightly, there's almost a sick smile that curls at her lip.
"You're a coward Matt Knox, and everyone else can see it except you."
His body tensed, adrenaline rushing to quiet the pain as the fire began to burn. He let out an exhale and then a soft, accepting chuckle. He leaned down, glasz eyes finding her glare and holding it.
"How pathetic then, that you've lied and buried yourself- your REAL self- so deep that you stand terrified of a coward."
The die is cast. There's a distinct tension, springs coiled to the point of explosion- finely tuned instruments of destruction wound tighter than physically should be possible. Hair triggers and itchy fingers.
"Terrified. Funny, that's not the word I'd have used. I always thought my reflection would put up far more of a fight actually… So no, not terrified. Just disappointed. Basically the usual by now."
"Oh yes. Disappointed, unimpressed and dismissive. Deflection at it's very finest…" this needed to happen. No more half truths.
He licked his lips once, that wry smile returning "I must agree though. I never thought my reflection would be so.." a hand reached out, fingers flicking stray shocks of red from her death glare "Small."
A small shrug followed from the redhead as she shook her head, the smile fading ever so slightly- but a massive change in the eyes of the morbid corvid. Tides and sands shifting around them, fire and ice colliding although neither could quite tell which was which…
"Just know, I don't take any pleasure in this."
Every thread holding them back seemed to snap at once, mirror images anticipating the other half a second before they even moved. Even in spite of that though, somehow a fearsome left hand struck through Matt's guard, catching him at the base of the throat… Amber could feel the space cave slightly, only slightly disappointed she didn't hit a little higher and wreck his worst attribute- his voice box.
He stumbled back, one hand going up to cradle the wound instinctively while the other went to shield the knees that followed. He shoved her away with his free arm, and shot vertical in time to catch her with an elbow strike to that venomous, unsettling, magnetic smile.
He went for a plum then but felt her fists bury into his ribs. Infuriated he drives an elbow into the back of her head, before snatching it and straightening her up with a violent lift of his knee.
The sands shifted as the ocean of fire raged in a typhoon, all in this little mausoleum he dared intrude upon. With a feral cry she leapt at him with a superman punch that sent him into the Carnage display case.
Glass shattered but not her resolve. She leapt upon him and attempted to beat him out of this plane of existence until he finally found an opening and connected with a desperate headbutt.
She rolled as he fell to one side. They shot up then, only to brake suddenly as each found themselves holding a shard of glass to one another's throat. Their eyes locked in a wide, feral state as their chests heaved.
"Do it. … Do us both a favour."
Amber leans closer, forcing his hand holding the shard to bite at the skin of her throat. Eye contact maintained, the blue-green expanse marred with bloodshot and storm fuelled frenzy.
Glasz orbs, the color of a storm swept sea narrowed as he stared at her, at the display. His free hand comes up, fingertips shakily reaching out to her face. Blood he hadn't noticed leaving evidence of the curious touch before he yanks the glass from her throat.
"I'm not your free ride out of here, Red. And I'm not going to make Mac a widower." Hypocritical from the way he stared at her, even now as he felt her glass stay home.
"Whatever...whatever this is has to have an ending. But this isn't it, Amber." Tired, accepting, he breaks the gaze and stares across the room.
Pulling away, almost angrily with an undertone of angst, Amber murmured something unintelligible under her breath as she allowed herself to fall back onto the floor.
"Don't ever threaten me unless you plan on going through with it then… One day, one of us will pull the trigger forgetting there's a bullet in the chamber.
Not sure you'd forgive yourself, if I'm honest."
A grunt of effort and he laid back himself, forming a "T" on the floor with her before firing back "Whatever you say, Kettle.."
Tense moments of silence pass, then a quiet addition.
"I'm sorry."
Amber scoffed softly, not even bothering to turn her head.
"No, you're not."
He stared at the 20 pounds of gold and leather upon the coffee table over steepled fingers. He had seen his companion off, claiming to be staying behind for some sort of falsified business.
Well. Kind of.
She had expressly said to stay out of the guest room. So, of course, the first door he cracked when he got into the home was that very one. A brief glimpse, but a familiar tomb. One he left in an abandoned home in Monterey. Overlooking an ocean and housing the tomb of who he once was.
He reached out next to the belt after paying it a final narrowing of his eyes, grabbing the complimentary can of polish Roth was so kind to provide and headed to the guest room, this time rather brazenly throwing the door open and flipping the lights on.He smirked, if he were one of those reddit smarks with a hardon for the hurricane, he would melt at the sight to behold.
A neglected, but organized museum to the path of destruction Amber Ryan had carved. He tosses, and catches the can up in the air once before taking a wide, arrogant step to the left. Like reading, left to right. He reached up and knuckled a thin layer of dust from his vision and stared at a storm in its formative state.
No older than 25. Fair skinned with a shock of hair and abyss in her eyes, Amber Ryan. He smirked at it, before letting his gaze drop to the title belt it hung above.GWR Revolution. He let out a chuckle “And she calls me campy..” but even with the mockery, he opens the case and pulls the belt out, dropping to sit cross legged and producing a handkerchief from his shirt pocket. He smirked at the ghost of the mockery she would lay upon him having it.
And he set to work, polishing the ancient plates.
And so he went on, one after the other. CWR World Heavyweight. Her expression was spiteful, as if she just rubbed someone’s face in something. He’d need to ask the story in between their barbing sessions. Tag Titles from Orion. An Orion’s Belt. He had to chuckle, to offset the sight of her covered in blood barely duller than her hair.
He paused at the pair of replica Carnage World Titles. As he polished them, any witness would notice the extra care he took and the far off, dreaming gaze he paid it. He always wanted to fight her for it. The moment JC hired him, he wanted that fight.
He got the fight, but never the gold.
As he replaced them, he stared at the pair of photos, but mainly one. The infamous night used to plague and harass the man she beat for it. A daughter beaten bloody by her father. The disgust bit at his entire being, his face twisting into a grimace before he closed the case.
"I should have known better than to give you any kind of instruction."
Leaning in the doorframe, her expression a mixture of amusement and annoyance, Amber herself as though drawn from another version and another time watched lazily as Knox was violently dragged from his reverie.
"Neither of us have ever done well at letting anything stay dead though."
Not moving from the doorframe, her worn out leather jacket squeaked as she adjusted her stance. Sunglasses still perched atop the shock of crimson pulled into a high ponytail and nose slightly wrinkled trying to ignore the distinctive scent of stranger in her sanctuary. Matthew didn’t bother to turn and greet her, only smiling at her arrival. He remained silent a beat before taking a step to the next display. Confident, and brazen as his intrusion.
“My ex wife,” he pauses to open the case as much to gather his thoughts “Whom I abandoned while she was pregnant with our child, to raise a child I adopted before meeting her greets me with more warmth than you do, Amber.” so much humor in such a terrible phrase. He loosens up though, motioning toward his deed “You should keep them up better. The tag title’s leather is starting to crack..” Another pause.
“Even mausoleums are maintained, Amber.”
Stepping across the threshold, it was difficult for her to disguise the sigh that escaped her lips. Memories and nostalgia flooding through in a sensory overload that left her almost glassy eyed, emotions of every achievement that she'd buried somehow bubbling under her skin like tiny, burning blisters.
"You always did strike me as the type that would go to a cemetery and polish gravestones."
A different girl. A different time. Years passing one photo at a time, an evolution of violence and a spiralling self-destructive cycle that couldn't be killed.
It felt almost selfish to lock it all away, and yet she never could quite bring herself to leave it behind. He laughed at her joke, carefully closing the last display case and turning toward her.
"Were you trying to bury the memories, Red?" His tone even, friendly, but prodding. Ever prodding. "I mean, not to be presumptuous but I figured this would be in Vegas with the newest ones." A longer pause, his mouth hanging open before forming into a knowing, or mocking? Half smile.
"Or is this a...private hell situation?"
Softening into something more pensive, Amber takes a breath a touch trying to find the right words.
"How many times have you looked in the mirror and struggled to recognize who stared back at you…"
It was a faithful rhetoric, too many times the person that stared back seemed more a foe than friend.
"It's just… it's funny. I walk in here and I don't recognize this girl, I don't remember being her. I walk in here and I feel like I'm looking back through someone else's life.
Can't keep looking at them and torturing myself into remembering everything, can't throw them away cause I know I'll never have it again."
Stepping closer to one of the earlier belts, the photos with it a little faded and discoloured from travel wear.
A middle 20-something redhead beaming with pride, a swell of support at her back and yet somehow her eyes didn't seem to be the ones she had now. Bright and optimistic- she'd worked so hard for so little, and smiled the whole fucking time.
"Maybe it is a mausoleum Matt, but most of the time it doesn't feel like it's mine."
He hung on her words, silently adrift in the sentiment as he idly fidgeted with the aforementioned handkerchief. A nod, before motioning to the room.
"It's just another beautiful little tragedy of our profession. The photo-filled timeline of hope meeting its end. It's oblivion, if you'll forgive the pun."
He took a step to join her, following her gaze over the pictures and taking a moment to walk in her skin, to get a sense of her truth.
As usual, she remained the one he could never get a beat on.
"They're all you though, Amber. The missing pieces. The ones we never notice until a hundred are gone and you've an empty spot where joy and hope for the better used to reside."
He broke out in a toothy grin, half doubling over as he chuckled "You need to stop me when I begin to wax poetic."
Tracing her fingers across the glass, unable to bring herself to go that step further and reach into her own nostalgia, Amber allows herself a small chuckle.
"If you wanna sound a little stupid, I'm always gonna let you.
Part of me wants to go back and tell this girl to temper her expectations, to not trust and live so freely- but then I wonder if I'd ever have gotten this far without it."
Dropping her hand back by her side, the laughter dies in her throat.
"Or at least without the falls that came with it."
Amid the glass cases, dusty photos were strewn haphazardly. Bloody and gruesome, hits and misses caught in a moment of longevity- as though the best and the worst collided in the centre of a lens.
"I couldn't accept that." Dismissive but not cruel. He crossed his arms, lowering his gaze and toeing something in the carpet as he furrowed his brow. "All that made you who you are now. And selfishly I wouldn't want to be in a world without this you."
He motioned to her as If there were another comparable model of her there before continuing. "The petty Twitter barbs and the open, pretense free, heart on sleeve face to faces?" A click of the tongue.
"A thrill ride I live for."
A glance over her shoulder gave enough of a glare that she didn't need full eye contact. Almost feeling the flesh give way as her stare tore him asunder.
"Congratulations, you got the sob story you were no doubt digging for. I hope that little bit of humanity will sustain you till the next time you need to suck the nostalgic life blood from someone."
Amber moves for the door, tired perhaps of the sidesteps and charades that always seemed to interweave their conversations. Bearing their hearts and throats, yet somehow never quite drawing blood.
It was bold and no doubt would be his undoing, especially after the tournament mere hours earlier but as she went to pass him he reached out and took hold of her arm.
"Do you lie for me, you, the Universe? You knew this would happen the second you asked me not to come in this room.."
Bolder, daring the blood he leaned down and spoke slowly, edged but still lacking real malice.
"It's so much easier when someone else rips off the bandage and you can scream at them for the pain, isn't it Amber?"
Amber, her own steely gaze meeting Matt's and the venom practically oozing from their pores in hopes they might be slightly more potent than the others.
"Get… your… hand… off… me. Or I will take it by force. You may wanna stop playing with fire like you don't burn, like somehow the crackle of flame and consequences doesn't apply to you."
Her harsh whisper cracks slightly, dripping in vitriol, it's rare to see such a concentrated form of rage seep from the hurricane painted red.
"You wanna live so fucking vicariously through everyone else's pain in hopes that someone might be a little more fucked up than you are. Poke and prod at someone else's wounds that won't heal just to feel a little better about your own- I'm a tolerant girl Knox, I swallow a lot of bullshit before I start spitting it back up…"
She leans in close enough that Knox can feel the warmth of her breath, the faintly cinnamon smell of her distinctive perfume. A force of nature condensed into falling syllables of hurt and loathing.
"... You're so determined to find my limits and yet when they come into sight, you back the fuck up and pretend you never crossed that line."
Drawing back, it's as though her voice seems to follow in kind.
"I have no issue levelling this room with your carcass. Don't fucking test me Knox."
He did not shy away, or shift gears. He weathered the storm stone faced, letting his hand linger a defiant beat before removing it. "Oh I'm well aware of the lines, Amber. All of them."
He turned himself square with her, his icy stare meeting the smoldering heat of her own as he spoke in a quiet, equally icy tone.
"You're wounded and gnashing your teeth, burying yourself in what's expected of you. And you only do it because that mask you wear, you're terrified to look behind it after so long."
A shift, he raises a hand, wagging a finger in time with a chuckle "I honor you. Shine your prizes. Give a kind sentiment and you turn it into a fight, like always because you and me? It's a distorted reflection."
He stepped toward her then, noticeably with a wider stance because he was not willingly going through a wall "You open up to me because you smell your kind of monster and then you gnash your teeth to protect the girl you've fabricated."
"That far enough past the line?"
If a hurricane had a voice, the roaring winds and thunderous rain, it bubbled through Amber's voice box. A stirring, virulent whispered roar.
"Get out."
Instead of stepping away to allow an exit though, she shifted her stance in preparation for defiance.
"I have backed you since day one, I have risked my neck and my name for yours. Time after time I have given you far more of myself than I should have cause I believed that you would do the same… yet you keep digging like a fucking splinter determined to find my rock bottom and plant yourself there. Exhilarate in my misery Matt, wallow in the darkest and deepest grief I might have- only to fucking therapist double speak me when you get there.
Sentiment, nah man. That's you trying to fuck around in my head cause yours is getting a little too light and you're too pale to deal with the sun. You crave everyone's else's issues cause you need to rummaging through in hopes of burying your own."
Cocking her head slightly, there's almost a sick smile that curls at her lip.
"You're a coward Matt Knox, and everyone else can see it except you."
His body tensed, adrenaline rushing to quiet the pain as the fire began to burn. He let out an exhale and then a soft, accepting chuckle. He leaned down, glasz eyes finding her glare and holding it.
"How pathetic then, that you've lied and buried yourself- your REAL self- so deep that you stand terrified of a coward."
The die is cast. There's a distinct tension, springs coiled to the point of explosion- finely tuned instruments of destruction wound tighter than physically should be possible. Hair triggers and itchy fingers.
"Terrified. Funny, that's not the word I'd have used. I always thought my reflection would put up far more of a fight actually… So no, not terrified. Just disappointed. Basically the usual by now."
"Oh yes. Disappointed, unimpressed and dismissive. Deflection at it's very finest…" this needed to happen. No more half truths.
He licked his lips once, that wry smile returning "I must agree though. I never thought my reflection would be so.." a hand reached out, fingers flicking stray shocks of red from her death glare "Small."
A small shrug followed from the redhead as she shook her head, the smile fading ever so slightly- but a massive change in the eyes of the morbid corvid. Tides and sands shifting around them, fire and ice colliding although neither could quite tell which was which…
"Just know, I don't take any pleasure in this."
Every thread holding them back seemed to snap at once, mirror images anticipating the other half a second before they even moved. Even in spite of that though, somehow a fearsome left hand struck through Matt's guard, catching him at the base of the throat… Amber could feel the space cave slightly, only slightly disappointed she didn't hit a little higher and wreck his worst attribute- his voice box.
He stumbled back, one hand going up to cradle the wound instinctively while the other went to shield the knees that followed. He shoved her away with his free arm, and shot vertical in time to catch her with an elbow strike to that venomous, unsettling, magnetic smile.
He went for a plum then but felt her fists bury into his ribs. Infuriated he drives an elbow into the back of her head, before snatching it and straightening her up with a violent lift of his knee.
The sands shifted as the ocean of fire raged in a typhoon, all in this little mausoleum he dared intrude upon. With a feral cry she leapt at him with a superman punch that sent him into the Carnage display case.
Glass shattered but not her resolve. She leapt upon him and attempted to beat him out of this plane of existence until he finally found an opening and connected with a desperate headbutt.
She rolled as he fell to one side. They shot up then, only to brake suddenly as each found themselves holding a shard of glass to one another's throat. Their eyes locked in a wide, feral state as their chests heaved.
"Do it. … Do us both a favour."
Amber leans closer, forcing his hand holding the shard to bite at the skin of her throat. Eye contact maintained, the blue-green expanse marred with bloodshot and storm fuelled frenzy.
Glasz orbs, the color of a storm swept sea narrowed as he stared at her, at the display. His free hand comes up, fingertips shakily reaching out to her face. Blood he hadn't noticed leaving evidence of the curious touch before he yanks the glass from her throat.
"I'm not your free ride out of here, Red. And I'm not going to make Mac a widower." Hypocritical from the way he stared at her, even now as he felt her glass stay home.
"Whatever...whatever this is has to have an ending. But this isn't it, Amber." Tired, accepting, he breaks the gaze and stares across the room.
Pulling away, almost angrily with an undertone of angst, Amber murmured something unintelligible under her breath as she allowed herself to fall back onto the floor.
"Don't ever threaten me unless you plan on going through with it then… One day, one of us will pull the trigger forgetting there's a bullet in the chamber.
Not sure you'd forgive yourself, if I'm honest."
A grunt of effort and he laid back himself, forming a "T" on the floor with her before firing back "Whatever you say, Kettle.."
Tense moments of silence pass, then a quiet addition.
"I'm sorry."
Amber scoffed softly, not even bothering to turn her head.
"No, you're not."