Post by Reya Serra on May 22, 2015 21:39:50 GMT -6
Fate
As I look off to my right at one of the many beautifully intricate stained glass windows, I hear the clicking sound of high heeled shoes walking towards me.
She is here.
Closing my eyes for a moment, I take a deep breath as the sound intensifies. Just as I exhale and reopen my eyes the clicking abruptly ceases, the person taking a seat next to me in the pew.
“Thank you for coming,” I say to her politely, turning my head to the left to see the face of Rayne for the first time in a couple of weeks. It is certainly a much more pleasant sight now than it was then, when she locked in a sharpshooter at the hands of Casanova English screaming in agony while I was forced to watch.
You made me watch.
“No problem,” she replies, glancing over to me appearing a little worried as my cheeks turned slightly red thinking of the events that transpired two weeks ago. “Your message was kinda cryptic though, Reya...usually when you drop someone a we need to talk text message out of the blue it means you’re about to break up with them or something is totally wrong. You’re not breaking up with me, are you?”
There is a slight pause until Rayne chuckles at me attempting to lighten the mood or at the very least make me smile, but to no avail. “I’m kidding, Reya. It’s a joke. Seriously though, something’s up or you wouldn’t have asked me here. Where’s Paxar? When she’s not with me she’s normally glued to you at the hip. Is she okay?”
“Paxar is fine,” I tell her reassuringly. “She is at some comic book store that she wanted to visit while we are here. Besides, I felt it best for her to not be here. The two of us should speak alone.”
“Well then, speak,” Rayne prompts me sternly. “I’m listening. Is this about what happened at Breakthrough? Don’t worry. English cranked my legs pretty good but I’ll be fine. I’ll be good to go at Fate of the Gods.”
“I have no doubts about that,” I state in response. “That is not what concerns me.”
“Then what is it?” Rayne asks, her tone becoming slightly irritated with me. “Let me guess…”
Interrupting, I finish her sentence before she can do so. “Cera…”
✝
“Wait, so you’ve got a twin sister and you forgot all about her? How is that even possible?”
Sophie Blanc looked quite perplexed and still a bit intoxicated from earlier as she posed this question to me while the two of us walked through the West Point area of Monrovia. I let out a dismayed sigh.
“It is not quite that simple. My memories of my childhood, most of them anyway, were lost to me for a time as a result of several traumas that I experienced,” I inform her. “If it were not for my friend Paxar and for the divine intervention of the Lord that allowed me to join the federation that both Cera and my younger sister Vanessa were a part of at the time, perhaps I would never have recalled either of them.”
There was a momentary pause between us until Sophie decided to speak up once more. “These sisters of yours...what did they think about you coming here?”
“Vanessa was understandably disappointed that I was leaving, but I believe that she understood,” I told her.
“What about Cera?”
Suddenly I stopped and shook my head sadly. “I...I did not tell her.”
Sophie appeared surprised by this information as she raised an eyebrow at me. “Hold on a second. You mean to tell me that you took a leave of absence from your job to travel thousands of miles away across an ocean to help people you don’t even know against a deadly disease which if you are to contract it could kill you and you did not say so much as a single word to the person that you shared a womb with about it?”
“Cera and I…” I stammered as I struggled to find the words with which to respond. “Despite the two of us being connected together as twins, we have never quite seen eye to eye with one another. We share the same blood in our veins as well as a few characteristic traits, but aside from that we could not be further apart from each other. I suppose one could say that we are polar opposites, her and I.”
“Considering how goody two shoes you are, sounds like she’s a total bitch,” Sophie quipped.
I nodded politely as I recalled her infamous moniker. “I doubt that she would disagree with you. Nevertheless, Cera is my sister and despite our strained relationship I do care about her deeply. It was wrong of me to come here without at the very least informing her. Hopefully, when I return, she will forgive me...though I feel like that outcome is not likely.”
Instead, she will no doubt think that I abandoned her. Again.
We resumed walking through West Point as I took note of the dilapidated surroundings. They reminded me very much of when I was a child in Caguas. “The conditions here are absolutely terrible,” I said to Sophie. “Do they even have running water?”
Sophie simply shook her head in response. “No, they don’t. You asked me before why even when this place had broken me why I had stayed. These people need help and girls like us can help them. This is why I stayed, Reya. These children are why.”
She pointed to one of the children running around the area, a girl about eight years of age. I looked into her crystal blue eyes and, just for a moment, I saw in her a small portion of myself.
That is, of course, until I felt a surprising sharp pain in my back followed by an audible clicking sound.
✝
Worthless.
Cera was not the only one our step-mother was referencing when she used that adjective. While I was quiet and often kept to myself with prayer and reading scripture, it still did not prevent me from feeling the force of her wrath upon us, upon the two girls she never wanted.
I hear those words of hers echo even now. Her comments that I was not and, never would be in her eyes, good enough. Those words stuck with me through the years, including the times when I did not even know why they were there in the first place.
Often I find myself compared with my sisters. It does not help much that the three of us have each forged a career not only in the same profession but for the last few years the same federation as well. I have seen Cera, a woman who can barely stand having her manager Jen Ryette at her side let alone anyone else, not only hold a tag team championship but carry it for a duration that at the time was a record. I have personally been witness to Vanessa winning her first world championship, an accomplishment I could not be prouder of her for reaching.
Yet, what had I done?
The argument could be made that I had been successful in my own right, having held a championship in each federation that I have been a part of over the years...with one notable exception, of course. Despite opportunity to do so, I had yet to put championship gold around my waist since joining Visionaries.
You are not good enough, that is what I imagine my step-mother would say now. Not good enough to stand up to your own sister, to Casanova English and the rest of The Orphanage. Not good enough to beat Ziu Zhong. Not good enough to win the Twin City Championships. As for the World Visionary Championship? Not a chance in Hell.
Was she right about me? Was I truly not good enough?
The answer to those questions to me is as it always has been.
No.
✝
“You know Cera and I’ve got a history, Reya,” Rayne declares to me. “I hope you’re not going to ask me not to hurt her.”
“Cera has taken her own path,” I tell her calmly. “As much as it dismays me the manner in which it has diverged from my own what with her joining forces with The Orphanage, it is the one she has chosen. So is the one we have taken.”
Pausing for a few moments to collect my thoughts, I let out a deep sigh. “This match is as it has been with Cera and I for quite some time, with the two of us on opposite sides. We will fight at Fate of the Gods, that much is certain. It may be the first of many battles in a war against The Orphanage, a war in which I pray that we shall prevail. I would not ask of you to not lay your hands upon her, but as I have asked before simply try not to injure her in this conflict and I shall endeavor to make sure she does not attempt to do so to you.”
I only hope that is a promise that I can uphold.
“What about Carson?” Rayne asks curiously. “He’s been a thorn in both of our sides since before you even came back. He even cost us the Twin City Championships...”
“Brett Carson will face judgment for what he has done, what he has done to both of us,” I state seriously. “I full intend for him to feel my wrath when we step into the ring. When it is all said and done, I believe that we shall be victorious at Fate of the Gods, Rayne. The Orphanage is about to get an Awakening...”
Rayne smiles at me as she stands up from the pew. “A rude one at that!” she jokes, stepping out into the aisle. “Now come on, Reya. Before we take on Cera and Carson, there’s a little place here in NYC that I wanna show ya…”
“I shall join you momentarily,” I tell her politely. “First, a final prayer if you would allow me.”
She nods respectfully. “I’ll wait for you outside,” she says before walking down the aisle towards the exit of the cathedral, leaving me by myself once more.
✝
Lord, for this match I put all of my trust and faith into you in the hopes that you will provide Rayne and I the strength necessary to defeat The Orphanage. It saddens me that I must go against my very own sister, but we have each made our choices and this match is the result of those choices. May she see in time that the path I have chosen is the righteous one and that she will forgive me for what I shall do.
Fate of the Gods...it certainly is an appropriate name for this event. My fate as it always has been, as well as the fate of The Awakening, rests in your hands.
Amen.