Space & Time

Nikolette's frown turned to a look of concern as Taylor poured her heart out and really said what was on her mind. She wasn't sure if she had the words to soothe what ached inside of Taylor and that was the worst part of it.

She stood up and let the water drip off her as she leaned against the tub and looked at Taylor. "You gotta understand." She said. "You ain't lettin anyone down." She said, urging her to understand Nikolette's words. "That ain't never gonna happen. Relationships... they ain't a zero sum." She said, trying to think of the best way of explaining it. "There ain't this magical number where if someone does somethin for ya, you gotta do somethin that's just as helpful..."

Nikolette frowned. "You've probably done more for any of these gals than they could repay if it meant they had to." Nikolette turned her head. "We're all wrasslers. We all know what it's like. I mean, I can't say I've had it quite as rough as y'all, but after Angel kicked my butt, I just wanted ta crawl in a hole and die. Maybe I did, metaphorically speakin. Taylor, I don't know what the perfect answer for ya is, but whatever ya feel like ya should do, you should do and ya shouldn't feel like yer lettin anyone down because of it."

Nikolette sank back in the tub and let herself submerge. "Everyon wants ta see ya fight and kick Kelly's butt, but if you don't, no one's gonna say a word about it. If anythin, that'll motivate us all ta not let YOU down. Or ourselves or..." Nikolette sighed, blowing the bubbles that percolated.

"It's rough when it's relentless." She said. "If it just stopped for a lil while, then ya think, well, I'll recollect myself, freshen up and charge right back in but it's not always that easy, right? I think yer good at facin down challenges though. Which is good because life kinda brings it one way or another." Nikolette closed her eyes. "What does it say?" She asked. "In yer hearta hearts? What's that voice sayin?"

Nikolette paused to let Taylor answer, but then quickly spoke back up. "We ain't really fightin her smart, I guess." She said. "She's dastardly gal, and we ain't." She continued. "But just because we don't wanna sink ta her level doesn't mean we gotta let her hold ALL the cards and make all the moves. We just gotta stop playin checkers an start playin chess." Nikolette rubbed her chin in thought. She liked it when her gears began to turn. It was always the best feeling.

Taylor just shook her head and didn't respond directly. She didn't want to think too hard about what Nikolette was asking, because she wasn't sure if she would like the answer.

"I'm not gonna try to fuck her over or anything. I'm not going to get all tricky about it, man, that's not me. I do one thing and one thing only, and it's always been that way. And I used to think I was the best at it, and even though I know I'm way better now than I was... I still just get fucked up every time.

"But whatever, wrestling's a waste, anyway. It's just what I had to do to make lots of money so I could do what I really want to do. But now that I have the money and I can start thinking about putting something together for the kids, my reputation is... shit. Like, google my fucking name, and what comes up is just not what you want your kids exposed to.

"I just... Shit's been adding up for a long time, and it's not getting any better. And now... I don't know, but something was wrong the other day. I felt like I couldn't breathe, and I got so tired so fast. I've never just fallen apart in a match like that before, and it scared the shit out of me. Like, if that happened against someone else..."

She snorted, and rolled her eyes. "I guess I'm pretty used to people beating me half to death at this point. That's life. That's my life, and it's always been like that. I don't want to fight anyone anymore. You can only do it so long before you have to finally just admit that you're weak and you don't want to try anymore. Everyone else is better, and I just don't want to get hurt anymore. I just want to be a wife and encourage people so that they don't end up like me. It's just such a waste, man, it's such a waste."

She paused for a moment, and shut her mouth tight. She coughed quietly and hazarded a look up at Nikolette. "You must think I'm such a little bitch. This is like the five hundredth time I've done this around you. I'm really sorry, it's just... I don't have anything left. Kelly's better than me."

Nikolette listened patiently as Taylor spoke. She understood what the girl was saying but she wasn't sure if she liked it very much. By the end of it, her brow was scrunched and she shook her head.

"It ain't a waste!" She said. "I think yer my friend and whatever ya do, if you let me support ya and be there for ya, then I'm damn sure I'm gonna do it! You didn't walk a bad path. Whether you're done or not, ya shouldn't think it was a waste!" She was firm about it and nodded at Taylor.

"There ain't nothin wrong with livin a good life. That's the whole reason I came ta Japan! I never had it very well when I grew up and there's plenty a people who don't get a chance at a decent life. I didn't even come here cause I wanted ta wrassle, I came here cause I wanted to try and get into a good school cause I don't think I could just walk into some place and get a job in the field and... even if I COULD, I want my own shop. I want to be abbe ta try and create and invent at my own pace, so I know what I do might have an impact on people's lives. I wanted to earn the name Nikolette..." She said, a little ambiguous about what that meant. "Somehow during all that, I ended up here of all places and I don't really even understand it."

She breathed deeply and looked at Taylor. "Bein a wife and helpin kids, well, I think that's just great." She smiled. "And you'd be good at it too. Well, I guess ya already are. I wish someone looked at me the way Johnny looks at you..." She said and turned her head as soon as she said the words.

"I.. I mean! Kelly ain't better'n you!" She changed the subject quickly. "Even if you never wrestled again and even if she could wrestle for a hundred years, she's got nothin on you except maybe the ability to be one giant opportunistic.... a-hole!"

Nikolette sat up and looked at Taylor. "I just wanna see ya happy, ya know?" She said. "I mean, that's why we're all doin what we do so we can all laugh and smile together. Sure, sometimes we get to cry and whine and hurt and complain together and that's fine too, but... if ya find somethin y'all can smile about, then... we'll be right there with ya and that's what we want. That's, what I want and if you could do something to make me happy, I know you'd do it in a heartbeat."

Nikolette sank back in the water. "Well, you've got some time to think about it, I guess. You can probably do a lot of those things you were talkin about while you're healin up. Why don't ya dive into it and see if you miss it once you've gotten into the other stuff? In the meantime, I think we'll still keep fightin the good fight."

"I know I want to fight her smart, but I don't think that involves bein tricky." Nikolette mused. "It's said that if ya know yer enemies and know yerself, you'll not be imperiled in a hundred battles. If ya don't know yer enemies but do know yerself, you'll win one and lose one. If ya don't know yer enemies nor yourself, you'll be imperiled in every single battle." She quoted. "Maybe we to know more about Kelly? Or maybe... we need to know more about ourselves?" She added.

"Yeah..."

Taylor wanted to be happy, too. She vividly remembered being deliriously happy after decisively beating Brittany and Dixie in the same night, befriending the cowgirl and winning her hat, going out for drinks with her. She had never felt more at home, like that was the moment she had finally arrived, when the unattainable idols of her youth became her peers.

Though it wasn't long ago, it seemed like such a distant memory now. Everything now weighed so heavily on her in ways that she just couldn't shake off.

"I..." She opened her blue eyes to look up at the ceiling. "I just want my Bear back."

She took a moment while she held back tears and swallowed down the lump in her throat. "I think I know myself pretty well, man. I journal alllll the time and stuff. I guess I have to. I... Okay."

She hooked her arm over the edge of the tub and turned her body to face Nikolette, and look her in the eye. "Here's the deal. I'm not okay right now, and I need to go to the doctor for... the other thing. Not the shoulder thing. I know I'm going to be in physical therapy for a long time again, but I like Naoto and Ayumi a lot, so that's pretty okay. They're the physical therapists." She had long since got over the shame of being on a first name basis with the medical staff. She seemed to become weaker the longer she spoke, vulnerable in a way unique to a fiery person like Taylor.

"I really don't want to see a... doctor, about the thing, but... I just can't keep dealing with... the feelings. I've been facing... challenges, and setbacks, and... facing down my fears for my whole life, and I'm just so..." She paused to compose her thoughts. "This is new for me, and I wanted to ask if... If I do have appointments and stuff, could you take me to them? I don't want mom and Johnny to ask me lots of questions about it."

She sighed, and stretched her neck side to side as she sunk back under the soothing water. She let the moment settle and cleared her throat, and when she spoke again things seemed almost normal, and only the slight catch in her throat hinted otherwise.

"...Okay, genius. What's the battle plan?"

Nikolette frowned again. Although she was friends with Cassie, she was not nearly as close as Taylor was with her. Really before coming to AFW, she had never been that close with anyone and even then, she would probably say that Taylor was her best friend and, until recently, the two hadn't even been that close.

Still, she listened to Taylor and nodded slowly. "Yeah, of course. I'll keep it hush hush." She said and pushed a finger to her lips. "I'm pretty good at keepin a secret." She said with a smile. "And, I think just sayin ya should go is a real good first step."

She then paused and readjusted herself in the tub. "Well, Kelly is Kelly. She'll be on ya as long as she thinks she has ta be, but she also knows that she NEEDS other gals to help her out. She can't really fight ya one on one in a fair match. So, what exactly is in it for these other gals?" She said. "I can't say for certain about Talia, but what about Brittany?"

Nikolette turned and looked at Taylor. "I know she's a real piece a work and she seems ta hate yer guts, but... is she really someone who can't be reasoned with whatsoever? I mean, she's been at yer house, she's had a beer with ya, relatively speakin. There's just somethin that ain't right to me about that relationship between her and Kelly. I think if I were a general, that's the flank I'd attack. We need ta start chippin away at Kelly's numbers faster than she's chippin away at ours."

Taylor made a face and shook her head. All this talk about how to undermine Kelly by going after her other girls made her very uneasy.

"Well... Talia hates me because there was this one time where I freaked out and told Johnny I wanted to take a break, before we were married," she explained. "And while we weren't officially together, he met Talia, and they sort of ended up on a date, and I sort of ran into them during that. I told Johnny how I really felt and all that, and we were back together, which sort of cut out Talia, but like, damn, it was a first date, I don't know what she expected. So I showed her around Friction to be nice, this was while I had my broken ribs, and she beat the fuck out of me. She's hated me ever since. She hated Cassie because when she attacked me the one time, Cassie came out to save me. She's a total psycho."

She whistled a little tune for second while she thought about the other one. "Brittany, though... Man, she's such a dumb bitch and everything, but in a weird way I kinda like her. I can't really explain it. Maybe a little bit like how I liked Morrigan when she was nothing but a huge bitch. Brittany's not like the others, though. She has, like, some kind of honor, I guess. I mean, like how she ditched Death Bunny when I was getting murdered. Maybe she wants to kill me, but I believe she wants to do it fair and square, not just dogpile on me and put me in the hospital."

She shrugged, and looked at Nikolette. She was no good at all at this scheming stuff, and she didn't know if any of that helped. "How's that?" She asked hopefully.

"Yeah, I'd say that's pretty good." Nikolette said. "Well, except that Talia girl's got a screw loose. She could probably do for a visit to the head shrinker too." Nikolette said, hoping Taylor thought her little joke wasn't in bad taste.

"But, yeah, I see what yer sayin about Brittany. She's totally a nasty girl, but she just wants what she believes she deserves, right?" She paused. "I'm not sayin we gotta go make her attack Kelly. I think that's somethin that's gonna happen all on its own eventually. What I'm sayin is, why not make sure that we can keep her from jumpin in on us while we're tryin ta work the rest of Kelly and her gang? I don't think that's bein too sneaky. That's just bein smart."

Nikolette paused for a moment. "I thought that she was hangin around with your gal Morrigan? What happened with that anyway? I ain't seen the two 'round together lately."

Taylor breathed a laugh, but lowered her eyes. She wished she could keep the stuff about the shrink a secret from themselves, too.

She sat upright in the tub like she'd just seen the world's biggest spider and insistently shook her head. "No, man, we are not fucking with that," she said sternly. "Morrigan and Brittany had a real thing, and they're split up now, but we are not going to fuck with their relationship just to help win a match. And who the fuck are we helping, anyway? We both want the title, right? Shouldn't I be scheming up a way to get you out of the picture?"

Nikolette held up her hands as Taylor sat up. She shook her head. "Nonono!" She said. "I was just askin." She said. "I didn't mean antythin like messin 'round. I was just tryin to get inside her head. See what makes her tick. Believe me, I'm the last person who's gonna mess around with someone's relationships. I sure wouldn't want anyone messin with mine."

She sighed, hoping that appeased Taylor. "My thought was, why don't ya just give her what she wants?" She explained. "Have a talk with her, woman ta woman and tell her that if she stays out of our business, then when the dust is settled, she can have a fight with you one on one. That's pretty straightforward and if she's really got the honor that ya think she does, she'd accept it. That's a real easy way to get a big problem off our backs."

"Oh," Taylor said. That sounded reasonable. "Well... Yeah. I mean, like... Yeah, I just figured that would happen anyway. She's a contender and she's out of the hardcore scene, and like, if I lost to someone in three minutes or whatever that was I'd be dying for a rematch too. Maybe next time she can put up a better fight before I pin her."

She cracked a lopsided smile to go with her ounce of sass, and then stood up. She had been living in a sea of lesbians for so long that she didn't give much thought to modesty, not that she had a ton to cover up top anyway. She let the water run off of her before she stopped out of the tub and grabbed her towel, careful to keep her injured arm close to her body.

"So yeah, I'll totally talk to her. I think I'm cooked through, man, time to cool off and stuff. Um... Do you maybe wanna go see a movie or something? I don't know what, and you don't speak Japanese, right? I dunno, just get out of the house and sit still for a while, that'd be good. I should take up videogames while I'm out of it," she laughed. "LIKE EVERYONE ELSE! I always wondered where do these girls find the time for this shit, but now I've definitely got it. At least it's just my right arm, though, right? It'd really suck if I couldn't write or draw or whatever."