System Reboot

Dopamine is one hell of a drug. And it's amazing just what will trigger the release of that brain chemical and how easy it is to get addicted to it. For some, it's drugs. For others, it's food, sex. For JC, it was violence. 

JC loved violence. He loved the rush it gave him to hurt others. He loved it so much that he abandoned all the progress he had put together in the preceding years to give into it one last time. For all the pretense of what JC said his goals were, his doctors laid the truth bare. 

He just wanted to hurt people. 

In the end, he didn't even succeed at that. His career ended with a stab in the back from the woman he loved, after his brother suffered what was likely his own career-ending injury just to save him. JC destroyed his own personal relationships, perhaps irreparably so, just for that rush.

He watched Lucy walk out the door, leaving him to his misery as he attempted to get through more therapy. 

He realized, in that moment, that he loved her more than she loved him. He didn't know if it would always be that way, but he knew it was true then. And he had no one to blame but himself. He was a failure. The fuck up to end all fuck-ups. It didn't matter that he was trapped by a mental illness that he couldn't control. He still reacted to it the way he did. He still forced her to stare at its ugliness longer than anyone should. 

He was sure she still cared, and perhaps even still loved him, but things would never be the same between them. They were broken. And sometimes you just can't put broken things back together. 

"You have a phone call."

A nurse helpfully came in and handed him a hospital phone. He rubbed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger and waved him in. He didn't feel up to a call, but he had so few of them lately he supposed he should take it.

"Hello?"

"Joe?"

It was Eric. His brother. GI. How...did he even know he was here? Did Lucy tell him?

"If you're wondering, I hassled your manager."

"How..."

He couldn't even ask. How the hell did he think he was? Joe swung a hammer into his head. Into the head of the only family he had left.

"I'll live. Pretty serious concussion, stitches, but not as bad as it was made to look on TV. I was done wrestling anyway, this just confirms it."

"I'm...sorry."

"I know you are. I'd rather it was me than Amber. She didn't deserve what you wanted to do to her."

"Neither did you."

"No, but better me than her. Or anyone out there. As far as I'm concerned, Lucy and I did what we had to do to save you."

"Did you know she was going to do what she did?"

"No, but if she didn't, I would have. You had to be stopped somehow."

A flash of guilt screamed through his body. 

"I'm.."

"Don't say 'sorry' again. It's annoying. I know you're sorry. I also know it wasn't you. Fuck, I was trying to tell you that the whole time."

GI actually gave a dry laugh on the other end. Joe couldn't tell if he was joking or not. He supposed it didn't matter if it was true. 

"So, thanks for letting me know you're okay."

"Well, that's not why I called."

"Oh?"

"I mean I could have just shown up. I called because someone is trying to contact you. A business offer. And apparently, the last number they have is our family home, because that's where the mail went."

"A business offer? Who the fuck would want to do business with me?"

"Better yet, why are they still using snail mail?"

A good question, but maybe JC's hiatus from everything forced them to resort to drastic measures. The fact that they didn't even know he had a manger now was likely his own fault. Rodney...something or other. He had brain fog and couldn't remember. A name he remembered used to manage forgotten wrestlers like Phantasm or the Angel of Mercy. Names that had no weight for anyone now, but at least led him to someone he could use to salvage his career.

"So what's the offer?"

"What am I, your secretary? I didn't open the damn thing. Tampering with the mail is a federal offense, you know."

"So open it. You have my permission."

He heard some rustling on the other end, and then the clear noise of a letter being pulled from an envelope. As GI read the offer to him, his eyebrows raised.