Family Business (P)

Cicilia had been left in a world of darkness after her match with Elfrida, only aware of her surroundings from what people had told her... Voices she did not recognized introduced themselves as nurses for the local hospital, the German very close to NOT UNDERSTANDING A WORD from their Australian accents. They had explained that she had suffered serious damage to her eyes, that the claws of that demented wolf would leave her blind for a short while... but within a few weeks, everything would be good as new... sorta.

Sorta!? WHAT DID THAT MEAN!? Apparently, it meant that her face wouldn't clean up as... perfectly as she might hope, that there would be some scars left behind. Cicilia never considered herself the callow type, to care about her appearance all that much... but hearing that her face would be MAULED from that woman...? To put it mildly, she was... anxious... She didn't want Sayumi to see her like this, with her eyes CLAWED! What would she think if she came home with these ugly gashes down her face!? She didn't think she had the make-up skill to hide ugly gashes made from human nail! What was she going to do!?

For the past day or so (assuming based on the time that'd passed), Cicilia was STILL in bed for the most part, staring up into nothing with her mind flashing from scenario to scenario... One imagining Sayumi gasp in horror as she took off her bandages, where she can no longer look at her in the eye! Another where she couldn't believe that she let this happen to her, that she had hurt her beyond repair with this fight... Scene after scene flooded the German's mind day in and out, the boxer worrying more about her girlfriend than herself!

"What am I gonna do...?" she muttered, raising her hands up to touch the bandages wrapped around her eyes... "What am I going to SAY?"

It was an oddly busy day, even for the typical hospital in Sydney. A lot more people coming in with fight-related injuries than they really knew what to do with. Not really any of them serious, thankfully. It was easier to compare the wounds to two kids roughhousing than a serious altercation between self-respecting adults. And personally, she could think of a few things that could have spurred this on. It was like everywhere AFW went, they brought violence with them.

Shannon let out another sigh as she flipped through her clipboard. It was Sunday, so as per usual, she was the only counselor in the entire hospital. For the past five hours, she'd been going up and down from one floor to the next, charting through medical notes and making sure everyone she released knew what to expect when they headed back out into the world. There was actually a high-priority patient she had to follow up with before she could be discharged. A wrestler from one aforementioned promotion that was good for nothing but trouble. It was probably better to get her out of the way first before her reps started breathing down her neck aga-

Her shoulder bumped into a pillar in the middle of the hallway. That’s what she thought at least until she turned and saw a woman standing where it should have been. A woman that wasn’t from around here, evidently. She was tall, with broad shoulders and an athletic physique. The well-defined muscles on her arms exposed for the world to see with her sleeveless, collared shirt. What was most mesmerizing, though, was her long dark hair, frazzled all over like quills, yet impeccably maintained with a silky shine to it that flowed like a moonlit night. Definitely didn’t seem like a local.

But the look in her eyes was what told the story. Brimming with life and wide in their vitality, this seemed like a woman that had seen enough to last her two lifetimes. A tourist? No, more than that. Much more.

“Ah. Sorry.” The woman smiled back, her hands in the pockets of her dark pants. “I think I’m lost here. I’m trying to find a family member. She was admitted just today? Hard-headed? Always frowning? Probably tried to bite one of your staff when they tried to treat her?”

"It's...fine." Shannon quirked an eyebrow and scanned the woman up and down. “Do you have a name?”

The woman smiled, but to this day, Shannon still felt something artificial about it. “De’Reignhardt. Cicilia De’Reignhardt.”

The counselor stared for a moment, then did a double take to her clipboard, already on the page she needed. Red eyes. Dark hair. She hadn’t heard mention of any family members when citing for emergency contacts. Shannon looked back at the woman and waited a second before her mind thought to say anything.

“Down the hall, take one right, then a left, and go up the first stairwell you see. Room 304, the second one on your left.”

The raven woman’s smile grew, showing a row of gleaming white teeth as she grinned back to the counselor. “Appreciate it.”

“Doctor Shannon!” She looked over her shoulder at a patient on a gurney, a broad man in scrubs standing over him with his credentials on backward. Nick the new guy, if she remembered right. “Could you give me a hand for a second?”

Shannon looked back in the direction of the raven-haired woman, who had disappeared into the hustle and bustle of the hallway. She shrugged with her clipboard in one hand, then walked the other way to the gurney.

...

The woman easily stood out in the stark white of the hospital walls, her above average height only adding to the attention drawn her way by her midnight hair and the red contrast of her clothes. Even so, she moved through the halls as an apparition. Many paid her little mind and the eyes she did catch laid stricken for barely longer than a single breath. Her mind was on one thing and one thing only.

All of this waiting around up to now was admittedly starting to wear a bit on her. She’d been enjoying the show while it lasted, but the climax was still some ways off. Pieces still had to be moved into place, a few more details with management that had to be worked out before her real intentions could be brought onto the main stage. Being a world-renowned athlete had its merits, but that didn’t mean all that much to a world-renowned federation. She couldn’t just do willy-nilly, as much as she would have liked to do anyway. It was going to take a little longer until she worked herself a loophole. Until then, Cicilia was off limits.

In Japan. Here, though?

There was a cruel, slasher’s smirk strewn across the woman’s face as she finally came to a stop in front of the pugilist's curtain. Her hand reached out and slowly peeled back the fabric, revealing the broken body she expected to find waiting for her. The tall woman stood there for a moment, taking in the sight. A feeling of nostalgia washed over her.

All these years, and she was still just laying there.

Waiting.

Failing.

The raven woman stepped into the room and closed the curtain behind her. With slow, heavy steps of her heeled boots, the dark apparition made her way to Cicilia’s bedside. Her eyes never left the blind woman and even if she spoke, she wouldn’t answer. Not so much as a chuckle. She didn’t earn that quite yet. The shadow would only linger there, standing at her bedside as an unspoken, yet unmistakable presence in her room. A force occupying the time and space just beside her, pulling her into its mutual pull. A thing that didn’t belong. A part of her long without.

Haunting eyes and wicked smile bearing down at tortured flesh and bone. Isn’t it all so nostalgic, dear sister?

Cicilia's muttering stopped as she heard the ruffling of the curtain to her room, the German expecting some kind of forewarning of what was going to happen next... A greeting at least...? Minutes went by and nothing was said. Even the clacks of shoes upon the soft tile stopped right beside her bed... before dead silence filled the room. At first, the boxer felt nothing but confusion... It had to be a doctor, right...? Nobody wanted to come see someone like HER, especially like this... Then why the hell weren't they saying anything? She couldn't even hear them fiddling around with the equipment beside her bed it was just... dead silence... silence, and the soft sound of someone breathing...

...That confusion quickly began to mutate into frustration as the silence dragged on between them for at least a minute now, Cicilia staring up at nothing... and nothing seeming to stare right back! Nobody was going to say anything, it seemed! Damn it... This was getting stupid. Screw this. She was going back to sleep... Whoever this was could go to hell. And so, beneath the bandages the Juggernaut closed her eyes and tried to ease herself into a state of calm again, to try and lose herself in her mind...

...But this presence... It was so familiar... The boxer's bones seemed to rattle within her as she realized that this person who stood beside her bed wasn't just some random creep trying to take advantage of an immobilized woman... but someone she knew... What... But then why weren't they speaking!? Even Juno and Margaux would take moments like these to laugh and gloat at her expense! Who in the HELL could be in here with her right now!?

"Rrrrgh... Okay, this is getting dumb. Whoever you are, say something or get the hell out of my room. I'm done playing this stupid game."

A lifetime of sharing the same bedroom with Cicilia had taught the raven woman everything about her sleeping habits. The compulsive twitches along her arms after a long day of training, the slight pulse on the vein along her temple whenever she fell restless. Impression and habits she probably wasn’t even aware of etched right into that beautiful face. It was taking her back, whether she intended to or not.

For a moment, the woman in red attempted to find them as she stared down at the battle-weary pugilist. The undeniable sense of nostalgia brought her focus away. She wasn’t even looking at any particular part of Cicilia soon enough. No, she just watched. She took in the sight that felt no different from the last time they’d seen one another all those years ago. Weak. Vulnerable. Sad.

The woman flinched when Cicilia spoke. Her eyes were shocked for only a second before she they narrowed again with a bemused smirk across her face. Slowly, she began to loom over Cicilia, the great shadow of her raven locks draping off her back and cloaking the pair in a still of darkness. The light could just reach Cicilia’s bandages, but the obstruction would be clear enough. Her face drew closer to the pugilist's. Her presence dawned over the one beneath her. Asserted herself into its space. Invaded in the worst way possible. Then, she’d find a pair of lips by her ear and the two words she’d been hoping to say ever since the day she’d left.

“I’m not.”

A hand came from the shadows and slammed down on Cicilia’s neck. The woman let the realization sink in first, let those animal instincts recognize the danger of the moment, then pressed down harder. It was deliberate, inexorable, but slow. She’d been waiting for this for so long, she was in absolutely no mind to rush things. As the German’s trachea started to yield, Elfrida would sneer down arrogantly at her lesser half.

“Come on. It’s been this long and I don’t even get to play with my little sis a bit?” She pressed down harder with a dark chuckle, watching the sides of Cicilia’s head start to sink into the pillow. “You’re as cruel as ever, Cicilia.”

Despite being completely blind and with her eyes eyes covered, she could feel the shadow of this silent, overbearing presence cast over her as if the absence of light this being cast had some kind of ghastly weight of it's own! Now fully awake and focusing her entire attention on the thing in front of her, all the German could do without giving into her emotions and lash out... was sense as the presence moved in closer and closer... sensing the vibration of something just next to her ear... The soft wind of someone's breath tickled it's inside and ventured deep into the boxer's head, Cicilia's eyes narrowing up at her tormentor through the blackness of her unsight.

"I'm not..."

SUDDENLY, Cicilia's eyes shot wide open as she sat up quickly in her bed... only to be SLAMMED back down into it by a POWERFUL hand clutching at her throat! The boxer gagged and growled in shock and outrage, her hands SHOOTING UP to grab at her attacker's wrist, attempting to pry it away from her neck!

....She... she knew who this was... Her very first and truly most PERSONAL enemy... The one who had tormented her for years in their family home, who had given away any sense of sisterhood they had as children for the teachings and power their parents had to offer. SHE who now stood before her, fingers clutching at her windpipe... just because she had the power to do so. It was her...

Elfrida De'Reignhardt...

"N.....Not.... as cruel...... as you....." Cicilia coughed, her fingers DIGGING into Elfrida's hand as she PULLED AND WRENCHED AT IT, Cicilia's already pale face losing more and more color! "G....go....p...p...play...with....yourself..... you.... gggggkkk....."

Oh, that was cute. She was about to fight back.

Elfrida felt a curiously nostalgic impression wash over her, letting her mind drift back to the last time she’d seen her hopeless excuse for a sibling. It was much like this. A hospital room. Many words spoken, just as many falling on deaf ears. But there was something about seeing it now, from an adult so determined to lead her own life and prove herself something separate from the whole, that brought her back several years for an isolated moment in time.

Such might in this situation. The world champion wouldn’t expect anything less from her dear little sister. Though as the one who knew her best, it was just as easy to turn that stuff back around like a boomerang. Her smile took a devious edge as she flicked Cicilia on the forehead.

“Dirty mind. No more sex fights for you.” She chuckled, pressing a bit tighter on the chokehold. For a moment, her gaze drifted off to the side as she pondered for a moment. “Hm. Gotta be fair, though. I get the appeal. That lavender girl? Hot. Yeah, I’ve had a one or two in my ring that were...alright I guess. But someone like that?" She whistled. "I can’t even blame you for going back for seconds.”

The raven woman made a nice and slow lick of her lips, flashing her eyebrows a few times, practically begging for the beast to bite. Elfrida pumped her arm, the bulky muscle flaring from her biceps and shoulders the instant she felt the Juggernaut sitr even an inch further.

“Why don't you introduce me, huh?” With a jostle of her arm, she gave Cicilia an insistent shake through the grip on her throat. “Come oooonnnn. I’m gonna be in Japan soon anyway. I mean, if she’s willing to fuck you then just guess how I-”

Elfrida’s fingertips slapped her lips. Her sanguine eyes widened to the size of dinner plates as she looked down at the frothing glare of her younger half. Her hand lowered from her mouth, revealing a foxy grin that tried and failed to hide an uppish snigger.

“Oop! Spoiled the surprise!”

As Elfrida's fingers dug into her throat, the force of being throttled into her bed had begun to loosen the boxer's bandages. Little by little they drooped down her face, more and more light falling upon those wounded, scarred eyes. The cuts had already scabbed over, closed fore now... The eyes themselves able to open... and stare into the smug, perfect, arrogant face of the woman who had her hands around her throat: Her older sister Elfrida! She couldn't believe this... She had never tried to KILL her before... she didn't think anyway. Each time she savagely BEAT into her skull in the ring, Cicilia never once thought that she was actively going for her life... and it seemed Elfrida didn't have a single scrap of honor to do it in the ring either...

"N...No..."

The boxer's eyes shot WIDE as her sister made the ultimate threat... A threat only a sibling or very close friend could make with any real meaning. For all her cruelty and hostility... She thought at least Elfrida had the DIGNITY to not attack the woman she loved, to keep this ONLY between them as a De'Reignhardt would... But no... Whatever hatred her older sister had for her since they were kids... it had grown and festered and perverted into something so much worse, where vengeance was a beast with tentacles that lashed out at ANYTHING remotely connected to their target... especially the ones they love! Oh, Elfrida must've LOVED the look of utter shock and creeping fear rolling across Cicilia's face as the older German tyrant remarked how beautiful Sayumi was... and how she would be in Japan... to TAKE HER AWAY! She didn't have to complete her thought for Cicilia to complete it herself... Elfrida was here for everything...  After she took care of her... She was going to try to take the only one Cicilia loved... the only one who loved her... Play her insidious mind-games until...

"NO!"

Without warning, Cicilia SURGED UP out of her bed despite the hand around her throat, LASHING OUT at her sister with an ugly, MONSTROUS punch at her jaw, as her sister brought a hand up to her lips to LAUGH at her! "SHUT UP! DON'T TALK ABOUT SAYUMI, YOU MONSTER!" She screamed... tears bubbling up at the corners of her eyes! "WHY WON'T YOU JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!? WHAT DID I EVER DO TO YOU!? WE'RE SUPPOSED TO........ to be a family........................" Cicilia slumped back down in her bed, tears rolling down her cheeks, crying pathetically. This was torture.... Worse than anything Margaux or Juno could ever do to her... Her own sister hated her so much... she was going to kill her and take her girlfriend away....

Oh god, she wanted to laugh. She wanted to laugh so bad right in her face.

It was a combination of things, honestly. Seeing her sister’s typically rigid countenance go through that short renaissance of different expressions filled with surprise and disbelief. That last look on her face as the realization slowly dawned on her of what this all meant. And then it all came together so perfectly when she let that little hint slip. She didn’t even know Cicilia could turn that shade of red this time of yea-

CRACK!

Elfrida found herself staring off at the corner of the ceiling, her head canted at an unfortunate angle and the world around her slowly coming back into focus from a disorienting haze. She blinked life back into her wide, crimson eyes as her head slowly fell back down to eye her younger sister. A drop of blood fell from her lips and stained the crumpled sheets around the bed. A moment passed, filling the room with Cicilia’s sobs as the corners of Elrida’s lips curled into a wide, knowing smile.

"There it is. The anger. The hate."

She wiped the line of blood from the corner of her lip with a flick of her thumb. The inside still tasted like iron and throbbed like mad, but the world champion hardly took notice of any of it. Not the pain, not the taste, not the feeling of liters of adrenaline rushing through her system all at once. Nothing was going to steal her attention away from this moment.

"I've been catching bits and pieces of it from the sidelines, but I couldn't know for sure until I felt it for myself. Now I have no doubts. You always gave me that same look from your corner, day after day, like I just stepped all over that stupid doll you used to hug and ground under my boot into parcel. Like you could destroy this entire world with a single scream." She chuckled to herself. Her eyes narrowed and her face slowly loomed closer to Cicilia's. "But now I get it. It's your strength. It's you. And after all this time, its grown in ways I couldn't even imagine. Your rage. Your hate of embarrassment, of defeat, of loss...its unparalleled… "

Her face slowly neared her younger half's, drawing her lips close to her ear in a deadly whisper.

"...and it's still not as strong as mine. And that's why you'll always lose, dear sister..." Elfrida slammed her forearm into her neck, pushing down on her younger half with more of her weight and keeping that squirming down to a minimum but not enough to deprive her of all her oxygen. She needed her awake and aware in this precious time they'd been allowed. She couldn't get off that easy.

"I can only imagine how you feel under all that bitterness and sorrow. Knowing that every waking moment is that of an embarrassment. Did you really think coming here would change anything? Did you really believe you could just start over?” She leered darkly down at her younger half, casting a dark shadow before the fluorescent light. “Life just isn’t that simple. It never will be."

Cicilia's cries practically begged to be acknowledged, for the source of her strife to finally see her! They were alone, in a place without their mother or father there to stand over her shoulder and direct her like some kind of twisted puppeteers. The German hated her sibling for everything she'd done to her in her childhood... but there was always a small piece of hope she kept away that she'd free herself too... Cicilia practically offered Elfrida that chance, hitting her for... what might've actually been for the first time, tears rolling down her cheeks, indicating a sense of fragility she had never yet shown to anyone... And yet, Elfrida only proved to herself that the strings her family had implanted into her were no longer being controlled by them directly... After all, she'd do it herself in their name and free up their hands. Cicilia looked up at her older sister as she wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth, that dark, crow-like smile flashing across her face. Elfrida didn't care a damn lick about anything...

Not the fact she had been punched... Not that Cicilia was suffering more now than ever before. Cicilia could practically envision what Elfrida was seeing... and it wasn't the same thing that stood before her now... Where the German once stood... wasn't her sister... She died long ago, beaten to death in that fateful match, never to return home from the hospital. What was in front of her now was merely the body... a walking corpse that was going to be eliminated... but not before it was punished in every possible way for defying the laws of nature.

Even now, she couldn't help but lord her superiority over the wounded, weakened Juggernaut, remarking so haughtily that the punch she had landed was the epitome of who she was now... She was a lesser woman, letting her hate, her pain, her frustration consume and contort her soul until that was all within... and she took no responsibility for it... Never once did she seem to consider who took her life away, who forced her to leave, who beat her to near death more than once... All Elfrida seemed concerned with... was reasserting herself as the dominating figure in in her life.

As if to prove it, Elfrida SLAMMED her elbow against Cicilia's throat, the younger sibling gasping out in both pain and breathlessness, SLAMMED back down into the bed as the dark, carrion-feeder only mocked the futility of Cicilia's struggle. After all... She would never... EVER be on her level! Not in body... Not in spirit. That incompetence will never leave her, wherever she went... Cicilia stared up at her sister, dumbfounded by her utter cruelty.... She had almost forgotten...t hat this woman... was supposed to be her blood relative. Cicilia's hands slowly reached up, clamping around Elfrida's arm, PUSHING against it in an effort to FORCE it off her... and allow her to breath unhindered! Her lips curled back in a snarl, the tears upon her cheeks seeming to evaporate as the very anger Elfrida criticized BURNED it all away.

"I'm... NOT the... same..." Cicilia growled, agreeing with her sister's remark. "But.... you... haven't changed... Still... a cruel... heartless monster... Will... you do to me... what you did to him...?"

See, this was where her problem was. They were having fun here. There was some interesting repertoire going, a nice little back-and-forth between a family that had been separated from one another for far too long. There was a lot of potential here. Maybe they’d learn all kinds of new things about each other. Wouldn’t that have been grand? Elfrida certainly thought so, and she was determined to stick to that course.

And then Cicilia said something, something that made a blip in her mind that went as fast as it came. It elicited little more than a twitch on the raven champion’s brow, a split-second breach in time that brought forth a righteous fury from its narrow confines.

"Fine."

Elfrida snaked her free hand beneath the arm pinning Cicilia down, gripping her sister’s gown by the collar. She stood up quickly and roughly pulled Cicilia along for the ride, twisting her body and throwing the impaired pugilist against the wall with all the ease of a pillow hurled by an angsty teen. Elfrida wouldn’t bat so much as an eyelash as her younger half splattered against the wall, missing the window by a hair. Before Cicilia had even hit the floor, the taller woman was already moving on her, kicking her foot out to snap Cicilia’s head against the wall before stomping her foot down, pinning her cranium beneath her heel.

“Learn how to speak to those above you. Don’t think because you’ve survived on your own out here that you suddenly have fangs to threaten me with.” She ground her soles into Cicilia’s head, crushing the dense matter beneath the skin as she grinned down through narrow, crimson pupils.

“Don't you get it? You’re nothing but a cockroach compared to me. I could crush you in an instant.”