A Much Needed Conversation

OOC: This is part of the RP I did for my title shot match in UGWC but i feel it is a look behind the curtain. 

~*~

Castle Thorn
Near Grand Lake, CO
August 12th, 2020

In fact, as he pulls into the courtyard he can't help but smile to himself as he parks. From the look of the other cars in the driveway it would be one of the rare times he was there at the same time his wife was. He knew that the last couple of months hadn't been easy on her. Yet, besides several passing conversations the two had yet to have an in depth conversation about his condition. Upon parking Nathaniel heads into the house to go seek out the conversation that he knew needed to be had. Following a few minutes of looking around the kitchen and sitting room he calls out to her. 

"Sal I am home."

”I’m in my office,” she calls, her voice echoing down the hall. 

Nathaniel couldn't help but smile as he made his way towards her office. Once he arrives at the door, Nathaniel steps inside to see what project was taking up his wife's time and attention. 

"What are you working on?"

In fact, behind the forest of dressmaker’s dummies and fabric rolls, Sal’s found sitting at a TV in the corner with their youngest children, the twins Kayla and Soreno. Obviously it’s break time right now.

”Ah, presently, we’re tryin’ to get to the top of the Dizzy Heights,” she laughs, glancing up at him for just a second. Right now, it’s Kayla’s turn to navigate the family’s Fall Guy, but Sal is providing small, guiding suggestions here and there, encouraging the children’s problem solving and spatial awareness.

"I see. Do you think we could talk?

Nathaniel asks as he watches his youngest kids play the computer game. His tone was even but for those who knew him well there was evidence of tension in his words. 

Sal nods. ”Be back in a minute, alright?” she tells the children, adding ”Remember to take turns, aye?” as she stands up. She crosses over to her husband with a smile, but one laced with concern, and asks,Sal ”What’s wrong?”

Nathaniel smiles back and then gives her an almost bear hug until he finally lets her go. He moves them back to a spot where they could sit and talk quietly without having to leave the room entirely. 

"Everything but not really. I am sorry for not talking to you before I got back in the ring. I am sorry for that and some much more."

He looks at her with a strained smile as he waits for her reply.

Sal’s reply is not immediate. She sucks in her bottom lip before sighing. ”I… look, I won’t pretend I ain’t been angry as fuck with you. I been… well, a lot of things. Mixed up. Feelin’ all kinds of different ways. I…” ...she swallows, and can feel her eyes starting to itch… ”All this has been pretty much the only thing on my mind for weeks. Really, ever since… since the doctors…” - but she has trouble finishing that thought.

"How do you think I feel Sal? I am afraid that I am going to wake up one of these days without knowing who I am. I am…"

Nathaniel reaches over and pulls Sal to him as he tries to figure out the words to express what he was feeling. She hugs him back, tightly, and whispers, ”I know.”

"...I am scared that when I am gone everything I have done will be meaningless. A part of me knows that no one can ever take away the things I have accomplished but will anyone actually remember me? I know that after the doctors in Iconic forced me to retire that I said I was done. I know that and at the time it was a logical choice. In a lot of ways that year off was what I needed. Now…"

He falls silent as he takes a deep breath to steady himself. Nathaniel had started what was a long overdue conversation that he hoped he could be able to get through. 

”I… I get it. I mean, I don’t, obviously, in the sense of…” She pauses and collects herself to start again. ”If it was me I, uh… cannae say I wouldn’t want to do the same thing.” She’d been a deathmatch wrestler too, when they met. The self-destructive impulse is one she understands acutely. She glances over to the twins, their only biological children together, who are managing to not fight too much as they play. She draws him close again, resting her head on his shoulder. ”I been asking myself why you didn’t want to talk to me about it, though. I mean… I guess I know why. But it’s…” She closes her eyes. ”Please talk to me.”

Nathaniel takes a deep breath as he allows the words to form a rational thought. He exhales before speaking what was on his mind. 

"It isn't just the fear of being forgotten entirely that spurred me to get back into the ring. When I found out that I was going to quietly literally lose my mind long before my tumor killed me I started thinking about what that would do to you and the kids. I know well enough what that sort of thing can do to those forced to care for someone who has lost their mentally facilities. Can you honestly tell me that you wouldn't come to resent me if I was but a shell that you were forced to care for? How about the kids? Would they come to hate me for being a lingering shadow of the man they knew?"

He falls silent as he looks over to watch his kids play with only minimal bickering. As he watches he licks his lips as he blinks away some tears a few times. 

”Honestly… I don’t know,” she replies quietly, her voice wavering.

"I knew that Sal. I am sure you know just how relationships of all shorts become twisted by lingering fatal illness. However, I am not saying any of you would come to hate me for the way biology decided to act up. I will admit it is slightly selfish of me to think that my dying in the ring will make my death any easier when it comes. Honestly, my death will be hard on everyone who cares about me no matter how it happens. This way..."

Nathaniel chokes up as he tries to continue speaking. This time, Sal is the one to bring his head onto her shoulder, cradling it. Her cheeks are soaked now. So many of the younger members of the family - Isabella, Ivan, Sujir and Astryd and Velvet’s children - are making their own starts in the wrestling business now. What will Nathaniel dying in the ring do to them, and their relationship with the sport, as they embark on their careers? And Sal, with her own multifarious issues with the business which caused her to quit after just a few years… will she be equipped to help the kids through that? Especially while mourning her husband? She’s stayed away from wrestling since she retired aged just 27. In the decade, or just over, that’s followed, she’s somewhat reluctantly come to help her sons, daughters, nieces and nephews with their training - mainly because she wants them to have the maturity to deal with the difficulties of the sport that she didn’t have herself. But she’s still greatly disconnected from wrestling. Thor choosing professional wrestling as his method of suicide, and the way that’s going to affect a family so closely tied to the same business, is a discussion they need to have. But… not now.

"Is it wrong that I want to die as me? That I don't want to just slowly lose myself bit by bit? I don't plan on this happening anytime soon but I know it is coming. Honestly wrestling will allow me to go out on my terms. Though that implies something else unexpected doesn't occur first. You know how much I love what I do. I know you have your issues with the business but it allows me to channel my darker tendencies. I should have talked to you about how bad it really was before I stepped back into the ring. I am sorry I didn't Sal. I was losing control and I needed to act before I became obsessed with that I couldn't change."

Nathaniel speaks the words knowing they were almost shallow in the face of what he was facing both medically and professionally. He takes a moment to just accept the comfort of his wife as his fears continue to churn in his mind. 

She rubs the back of her hand across her face, not really drying it, just smearing the tears around. ”From now on please talk to me. For… for me, and for you. We cannae change what’s coming and god knows it ain’t something you can ever truly prepare for, but… we need to try to be as prepared as we can, I suppose.”

"Can you imagine how it feels knowing all the things I will miss in the years to come? If I see Isabella's eighteenth birthday I will have lasted way longer than they said I would. I try not to look at the kids and think about all the things that I know I will miss because of this. I am trying so hard to show them that I am strong in the face of it all. Yet, the truth is I want to scream and rage against this while breaking down. My biggest fear is that the kids will hate me for abandoning them. Kayla and Soreno aren't quite old enough to understand the reality of what is happening but I wonder what they will think of me once I am gone. I am not ready Sal. Not even close and yet most people only see me for what I portray in the ring. You know the amount of derision and disrespect I put up with just to wrestle."

Nathaniel falls silent as his tears turn from those of sorrow to those of frustration. He had clawed his way to every accomplishment he had ever earned. A process that seemed to be part of his continued career. 

Sal could remember three distinct times in her own life that she’d come within a hair of death. Once, as a child, in a car crash. Once when she’d had an artery punctured during a deathmatch. Once after a suicide attempt which had, fortunately in hindsight, failed. The complex rush of emotions every time had been overwhelming. To know with such absolute certainty that your days were numbered… not just in the same existential sense as every human, but in a much more imminent, tangible sense… that, in itself, felt monolithically greater. Coupled with the threat of losing your own sense of self? She’d always insisted that she didn’t want to end up in some care home with dementia. She always said she wanted to be euthanized before ever becoming trapped in a nightmare of her own shattered psyche.

What Nate was doing wasn’t so different, really.

”Everyone here, everyone in the family, knows the real you,” she reassures him, ”There’s no way to make this easy on the wains but you know we’ll do everythin’ we can.” She squeezes his hands. ”You wanna scream and rage, honey, I’ll scream right alongside you. I don’t want you to feel like you’re alone.”

"I know that in my heart Sal. Oh, how I know it. Yet, for once I would like someone outside of the family to look at me without contempt or out right hatred. I know you don't follow my career besides the basics of it existing. I know I am not alone in this but knowing you at least knew what I had going on would be helpful to me. Yet, that is a conversation for another time. I know you barely watch shows but if nothing else can you please watch Isabella's first pay per view match? If you stay tuned to watch my match against Addy I will consider it a bonus."

”Of course I will,” she promises. She’d watched the tape of her daughter’s professional debut, albeit with some trepidation. She wasn’t going to miss her first pay-per-view. And she’d watch her husband’s match on the same show too. She couldn’t truthfully promise she wouldn’t grimace and moan and maybe watch through her eyes depending on how it went, or maybe dick around on her phone at moments given her antipathy towards wrestling, but she would still watch it.

"Thank you Sal. I don't know what I would do without your love and support. We will talk more before I head to work again. I think we had better go save the game for the kids."

Nathaniel chuckles slightly and wipes a hand over his face as he looks over at his youngest son and daughter.

Laughing, though with sorrow still cracking her voice, she says, “Cannae save it, it’s online. It’s multiplayer.” She chews her lip for a moment before pulling her husband in again. “I love you. Always.”

"I love you too and I always will. Well then we should save the world from our offspring."

As emotional as the moment had been it was something that had needed to happen. If only so it didn't fester inside. With a strained smile on his lips he lets his wife guide them back to where the computer was.