He was too late.
That was the first thing he realized as he grabbed Stacy's hand in the back of the ambulance. He was too late. Here she was, beaten, bloodied and broken, and there wasn't a damn thing he could do about it.
He wasn't even sure what happened. His memory was hazy, but he remembered that she was here and he wasn't. He was out doing something, but he couldn't remember what. The failing of his memory didn't seem to concern him as much as his beaten-to-near-death wife slipping in and out of consciousness.
An EMT was with them, checking her vitals and just generally trying to keep her alive. All JC could remember was finding the house in disarray and Stacy in the middle of the chaos. His sarcastic, beautiful, well-meaning wife, the target of something meant for him.
"Sir, I'm going to need you to answer some questions."
He glanced over and noticed the cop sitting next to him, with a notepad out as the EMT worked. It seemed as though the ambulance was too small for four people, but the officer decided to join them anyway.
"Who did this?"
JC stared down at his wife as the paramedic dabbed away blood from her head. Her short blond hair was stained and the blood was already congealing in the tuft of longer hair she kept in the front. He knew very well who did this, because he saw them running away when he pulled up in his car.
Shaun Stewart did this.
Not Shaun Stewart directly. He was a coward and would never try it on his own. Instead, he sent his giant Sarin to do it. He didn't get a good look at who was with him, but he assumed it wasn't Lucy Wylde. He didn't like her for a plethora of reasons, but he liked to believe she wouldn't take part in something like this. It was probably Crystal Meth, although he had no way of knowing that for sure.
He looked over at the cop who was amazingly patient after several moments of silence.
"I don't know who did it."
He didn't need the voice in his head (which was quiet at the moment) to tell him that he didn't want police getting involved. Worst case scenario, they'd just arrest Sarin. The Violent Society had a cult-like mentality, and he had no doubt that the group's enforcer would willingly take the fall for Stewart and go to prison.
"Do you or your wife have any enemies that may want to harm her?"
Shaun Stewart, who had issues with JC anyway, probably sent Sarin to attack him. He wasn't sure how they got his address and he didn't care. Once Sarin broke into the house and saw it was JC's wife and not the man himself, he decided she would have to do. Whether it was a judgment call on the part of Sarin or if he got the approval from Stewart himself, it didn't matter. JC had only one thought on his mind now.
He wanted vengeance. He didn't just want wrestling-style vengeance, either. He didn't want to brutalize a man within the confines of a wrestling ring. He wasn't content to wait for a contracted date and promote a fight for the OWF Network. No, he wanted to find Stewart as soon as possible and rip his throat out. Maybe he'd get lucky and Sarin would be there too.
He thought all of this to himself and realized that there as a good chance he would be in prison within a month.
He didn't care.
"As far as I know, we don't have any enemies."
"What about the people you fight on TV?"
"Haven't you heard? Wrestling's fake."
He turned away from the cop, who seemed to get blurry in his peripheral vision. It was almost like he wasn't there anymore. Stacy's eyes blinked open, but he could tell she wasn't all there.
"How is she?"
"She's lost a lot of blood. She has several broken bones. It's too early to say. We're going to have to run a battery of tests to make sure she has no internal damage."
"Isn't that something you can check here?"
"Not without a CT scan."
The paramedic was talking to him in a monotone, matter-of-fact voice that bothered him. Yet JC himself seemed emotionally detached from everything but his anger. Even his overwhelming sadness at the attack of his wife seemed secondary to the blinding rage that had him thinking of various ways to murder the people who did this.
He hadn't kill anyone before, but he knew he could. He knew in that moment it would be easy. He felt in his head that he had always been holding back and when he thought about what was happening now, he wanted to let the darkness overcome him.
Stacy opened her eyes. She looked up at him, accusingly.
"Where were you?"
"I..I don't know. I was on my way."
Her eyes fluttered and she drifted off into unconsciousness again.
She slept.
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May 1, 2016
He spent the next week and a half in a daze. If pressed for details at this particular moment, he probably wouldn't be able to reveal a single thing that happened. His wife was in a hospital somewhere, he knew that. He also knew who was responsible and he knew just where to find him.
JC stalked down the hallways of the Rose Bowl Stadium in Los Angeles. He knew that he and Shaun Stewart were booked in the same battle royal tonight, but none of that mattered. The only thing he cared about was finding him and ending him, as he promised. Only he had no intention of using a wrestling hold. He was going to spill Stewart's blood and he wasn't going to let anyone stop him.
He stopped outside of the locker room for The Violent Society. He wondered how many were in there, then realized he didn't care. As far as he was concerned, they were all responsible. Just being in the group made them guilty by association. However, as he neared the door, he heard two distinct voices inside.
"What do you mean he wasn't even there? Who was?"
"Some woman. I don't know. Sarin took care of her."
"Shaun...JC's married. Did you seriously order Sarin to attack his wife?"
"This is war, Lucy. He needed to be taught a lesson."
JC felt himself stewing. He always heard the phrase "blood boiling" but his skin actually felt hot. He wanted to burst through the door and rend Shaun Stewart into pieces. But he had to make sure that he wouldn't walk into a group beatdown. As confident as he was in his own abilities, he didn't want to end up in the hospital and fail in what he came here to do. He felt the brass knuckles in his pocket and promised himself he wouldn't use them unless he had to. This was something he wanted to feel.
"Shaun, do you know what he's going to do when he gets here? JC's an asshat, but he's dangerous. He bloodied you just for attacking him. What do you think he's going to do now?"
"I don't care. I'll see him tonight and I'll do the same to him."
"You're being fucking stubborn."
He only heard the two voices so he was convinced that they were alone. He was positive he could handle Stewart on his own and if Lucy tried anything she would get hurt too. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered except making them pay. He glanced at the hinges to make sure the door opened inward. When he saw that it did, he took a few steps back then thrust forward and extended his leg to boot the door open.
He was lucky that the door wasn't locked, because he definitely felt the weight of it as his foot connected and he used every bit of his power to force it open. Even then, he felt his muscles straining against the pressure he was putting on them. As he put it back down and let momentum push the door against the wall, he felt a twinge of pain shoot up his calf. He hoped it wouldn't hinder him.
"What the fuck?"
It was Lucy that shouted, but the look on Stewart's face told the story. Only a few moments passed as JC readied himself to attack, but it felt like hours. He had waited too long. He thought of his wife, and how that normally strong woman looked so frail. He hated Stewart for making her look like that.
He rushed forward and immediately had his hands around Stewart's throat. There would be no wrestling brawls here. No moves back and forth until one of them dropped. He wasn't going to give Stewart a chance. He was bigger. He was stronger. He wrapped his fingers around the already tense neck muscles surrounding Stewart's windpipe and began to compress. Stewart was mostly surprised, but still unafraid. That would change soon.
JC heard a voice behind him and realized there was someone else in the room.
"What the hell are you doing? Get off of him!"
Lucy Wylde, for some reason, was still defending him. She still saw JC as the bad guy. Even after what Stewart did. Did she condone this?
It didn't matter. In fact, her words only enraged him more, so he decided to squeeze harder and end this.
"You're a fucking idiot, what are you hoping to accomplish here?"
He let go of Stewart, confident in the fact that he'd squeezed just enough life to keep him down so he could turn around and face Lucy. She looked defiant as always, but there was concern in her face too. For Stewart? She knew what he did, JC heard her. If anything, she should have been helping JC, not the diseased bit of humanity that was trying to catch his breath against the lockers.
His eyes were daggers pointed directly at her. From someone looking at him from the outside, they wouldn't see a man. At least, not a man capable of being reached through talk. A smart person would grab the nearest weapon and desperately defend themselves through any means necessary. At least in this particular moment, Lucy Wylde was not a smart person.
"Come on, is this really worth it?"
His speech came out staggered. He was breathing heavily, not due to exertion, but simply because he was so angry he could barely get the words out.
"Do you...have any idea...what he's done?"
He looked in her eyes and saw pity. Of course she did. She knew exactly what he did. At least, she knew that JC wasn't here to play. JC, someone who before was just a bitter man with an agenda. JC, someone who now looked both homicidal and broken. His rage and his grief were coming off of him in equal amounts.
She held her hands out with her palms facing him, as if she would when approaching something dangerous. She took the smallest of steps forward as she continued to speak.
"This isn't going to do you any favors. Look, I know that he ordered what happened. I know he's responsible. He told me so himself. So let's just call the police and let them know. I'll tell them. Just don't do this."
He looked at her for a moment and considered stopping. Stacy wouldn't want this. Even in her condition, she wouldn't want him to kill somebody. He thought about the alternative, of sending everyone responsible to prison and living his life free of the guilt of murder.
"You're right. I'm not going to stoop to his level."
He took a step forward, not towards Lucy, but the door. As much as it pained him, he planned to leave and let the proper authorities handle it. He did a lot of bad things to a lot of people who may not have deserved it, but this would hurt Stacy just as much as what Sarin did.
He looked at Lucy again to say something, but then he felt something strike him in the back.
"Oh no..."
The blow to the back, which he assumed was a forearm from Stewart, barely registered. He was still running on adrenaline and while he recognized that it hurt, he was able to ignore it. He viciously sent his elbow flying behind him to create some space, then whipped around to put his hands on Stewart's throat again. Stewart fought a little harder this time, blocking the attempt. Lucy realized the situation was going south again.
As JC used his power to try to force his fingers around Stewart's trachea, he felt two arms grab his arm, just above the elbow. Lucy was resorting to force after Stewart ruined her attempt at diplomacy. Perhaps she wasn't thinking given the situation, but he was 270 pounds and weighed two of her. She manged to pull his arm back some.
Completely caught in the moment, he pulled his arm forward again, then threw it back like a shot. It connected with something, he wasn't sure what. He guessed it was her face as he suddenly felt hot blood on his elbow. Even Stewart seemed shocked by the sudden display of aggressiveness. JC took advantage of the distraction and delivered a punch to Stewart's face, then another just for the hell of it.
With Stewart dazed, he turned around. Lucy was on the ground, holding her mouth. He noticed something white on the ground in a small puddle of blood and realized he hit her teeth with the point of his elbow. She staggered to her feet and grabbed her by the hair and threw her into the door. He had no time for meddling at the moment. As he turned around to face Stewart again, he failed to notice the thud her head made when it smacked the heavy arena door or the blood it left behind.
"Remember Stewart...you did this."
He pressed his hands around the neck of Stewart and squeezed again, trying to block out the echo of the thud he heard behind him.
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June 21, 2016
JC woke to the sound of someone knocking on his car window, with his heart racing to the point of concern. He stared at his hands, which were firmly gripped around the steering wheel, red and tense.
"Hey, are you okay?"
Someone he didn't recognize was trying to peek in through the tinted windows of his car. Still groggy, he rolled down the window and stared a hole through them.
"I noticed your car parked here and saw you slumped over. Do you need any help?"
At least there were still some kind people left in the world.
"No, I'm fine."
He immediately pressed the button to send the window back up and remove this person from his life. It wasn't Lucy's head hitting a door he heard, but this stranger knocking on his window. It was all a very vivid dream. Lucy was fine. Stewart was fine. Well, he wasn't fine, but he wasn't being choked to death by JC's hands.
But he could have been.
The voice chimed in as if on cue, to explain what he was already thinking. It was a "what if" scenario he had thought about in his waking days. If Stacy hadn't overdosed when she did, then she would have been home when Sarin invaded. Would he have attacked her instead of him? Would Stewart have been okay with that? JC didn't know. But that thought haunted him and was a big reason why he did what he did to Stewart at Power Hour.
Now you know it could have been worse.
He ignored the voice for a moment to get a better understanding of where he was. He was disoriented and having such a realistic dream didn't help that. He was still very tired and tried to think of why before it came to him. He was in Phoenix, Arizona. He was parked outside of a Walgreen's. He was back in the States briefly to talk with Chase Johnson about OWF acquiring the only surviving ICW footage for the network.
He glanced in the passenger seat and saw why he was at a pharmacy. The dull off-white of the prescription papers stared back up at him with the words judging him for not getting his prescription filled. Lithium and olanzapine, doctor's orders. Even weeks later, he was still debating with himself if he even wanted to take them.
You don't need them. You need me.
Any normal person would do exactly what their doctor ordered in order to combat the mental illness. When JC had moments of clarity, he realized that it's not a good idea to give prescriptions to someone with a history of acting irrationally due to bipolar disorder.
He had one of those moments of clarity after his meeting with Johnson. He had been feeling on edge due to increasing stress and the fragile relationship within the Inner Circle. He had a feeling if they didn't win at Determined it might push him over. In an effort to prevent that, he agreed to Johnson's terms for the ICW footage (likely for less than JC wanted to sell it for) and excused himself from the meeting to get to a pharmacy and get his medicine.
He fell asleep simply because a flight from Japan to Phoenix takes a lot time and he hadn't slept in eighteen hours. Now he was reconsidering the entire trip.
He continually questioned how much of his success was due to his disorder and how much of that line of thinking was also due to his disorder. Since learning he had moderate bipolar disorder (with psychotic features, he couldn't forget those), he was constantly second-guessing himself and everything he had done in his career.
The voice, which he knew wasn't real and knew was in his head, told him that it was because of his condition that he was successful at all. In his more cognizant moments, he realized that the voice was wrong. A mental illness doesn't create passion for wrestling. It doesn't shape someone's entirely personality. It merely twists it into something it's not. He wasn't his mental illness.
Yes you are.
He rubbed the bridge of his nose in frustration. He had been going in circles in his head for weeks. He was in the United States and he hadn't even considered visiting Stacy to tell her what happened. He wanted to fix this on his own. He thought he could, but then he would later realize that maybe it was the illness telling him he could and he got depressed at his inability to make even basic decisions or not. What he wanted was to tell her everything, but he was embarrassed.
"Let's not forget, she has her own problems."
He muttered to himself as he picked up the prescription and stared at it. It expired soon, as anti-psychotics and mood stabilizers weren't something you wanted just anyone to have. In this case, the prescriptions expired September, with Fuller giving him a whole two and a half months to make a decision. He expected that Fuller wanted him to get it filled immediately. He also thought about having to call him soon for an informal talk and dreaded it.
Just lie and say you're taking it.
He would have to if he couldn't take it soon.
He thought about everything he did up to this point. Not just in his recent run of the OWF, but his entire life. How many people had he hurt, and how much of that was his "psychotic features"? He had been giving Trent a lot of grief and he wanted to tell someone about his problem. Maybe Trent, being of more sound mind than he was, could convince him to take his medicine and get well.
It would be so easy to put an end to all of this. Trent would understand. If anyone would, it would be him.
It's too late.
JC, once again seemingly against his will, listened to the dark part of himself. For now, he had no choice but to do so, as he couldn't come to a decision on his own.
He stuffed the prescriptions into the glove compartment and sped out of the pharmacy parking lot.
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July 4, 2016
"Don't worry about the date. I'm glad you called. Isn't it late over there?"
In the hours after his match at Determined, he had vacated Korakuen Hall the second he left the ringside area. It was just a matter of grabbing his things, getting to his rental car and driving to the hotel. He didn't stop to shower, to change or anything. He thought it must have been funny for people on the Japanese highways to see a sweaty man wearing nothing but MMA shorts and boots to be speeding past them.
He called the only person still on his side at the moment, even if it was only because it was his job. He was in a foreign country and felt betrayed by the only person he had in his life.
"I don't care about the time. Something bad happened and it's like I can feel myself slipping. We lost our match. Well, Kid Dynamo lost the match. He inserted himself where he wasn't needed and lost. So I tried to send a message to Lorenzo and Trent meddled again. He meddled. I can't believe he struck me. What do I care that The Hostile Takeover came out and attacked them? He deserved it."
"Joe, calm down. You need to slow your speech and calmly tell me everything. Right now, you're not making a lot of sense."
"Sorry."
"Joe, are you taking your medicine?"
There was a moment of silence on JC's end. This question came up faster than he thought it would.
"Why do you ask?"
"Because you're not nearly as coherent as you were when we met. I'd go as far as to say you're experiencing mania symptoms right now."
"I have no idea what you're talking about. I'm just having a personal crisis and I need someone to talk to. Aren't you my doctor? Isn't this what I pay for you?"
He was trying to slow his speech and realized he couldn't. He also felt like his thoughts were just as quick as his speech. He was currently pacing the floor of his hotel room and trying his best to calm down.
He suspected Dr. Fuller knew the answer to the question about the medicine already and was angry that he would even ask.
"Joe, don't you remember what I said about getting help?"
"Something about being hospitalized."
"That's right. I can't, in good conscience, let someone in your position run wild when you're psychotic. You would be a danger to yourself and others, especially if it gets worse."
He thought about asking how the situation could be any worse, but remembered the dream he had not long ago. He shuddered as the voice once again made itself known.
Don't listen to him.
"I'm begging you, Joe. Get the prescription filled and take the medication. If your loved ones wanted you to see me, then they wanted you to get the help you need."
"I'm...having a lot of trouble right now."
"Then please, take the pills. I don't want to be the bad guy here, Joe. But I have to consider the safety of more than just you in this situation."
He's turning on you too.
That was a dark thought and JC knew it was ridiculous. But then he was just knocked to the ground earlier by his best friend. Trent was the one person in the OWF he had left. The only one who hadn't turned his back on him. At any rate, he didn't want the police to arrest him when he got back to the States to pick up Stacy from rehab. So he decided to tell the doctor what he wanted to hear.
"Okay, I will."
"Good. If you slow yourself down, you can tell me why exactly you're calling."
"I'm..."
He thought about if he wanted to go into detail again. The issue would always go back to his medicine. It's not like Fuller had any advice on how to deal with a best friend that stabbed you in the back.
"I'm sure I'm overreacting. I should go now."
"Okay, but I'm serious about the medicine. In fact, I'm going to want you to call me again soon. When you do, I want to hear you're taking it."
"I'll pick some up as soon as I can."
He turned his phone off and tossed it aside.
JC was under an enormous amount of stress. He could feel himself slipping. His wife was in rehab, he just had another professional setback and now his best friend stopped him again. Didn't Trent understand what he was trying to do? He understood before, so what was making him interfere now? Why would he keep stepping in his way every time he wanted to make a statement.
He was just trying to save this company. He was trying to make it better.
You are the savior the OWF needs.
He didn't want to acknowledge that Trent had changed, but now it seemed like that was too late. Trent was more like Kid Dynamo or Chris Green than a Rogue. He wasn't the same person when they were dominating two different promotions.
He's the problem. Not you.
He was in total agreement with his hallucination. He didn't care if the condition was getting worse. He didn't care if he had trouble thinking clearly. He got this far without the need for pills and he wasn't going to start taking them now. He'd get the prescription filled and do his best to fake it when he made his little phone calls. He could outsmart a psychiatrist. That wouldn't be difficult at all.
You are smarter.
The voice was telling him everything he wanted to hear. He sat for a moment, almost willing it to give him an answer to his next question: what should he do about Trent Steel? He thought he knew what it would say before it finally answered.
Save him.
