"Oh, Mister Darcy! Oh!"
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“You aren’t stalking me, are you Rob?” That rasp couldn’t have belonged to anyone but Belle Landru.
The lights in the dive bar are low, half of them burned out and replaced with cheap, low wattage bulbs, or dull colored lights. In a back corner of the room, bathed in the red glow of the overhead lights sit a young couple on a weathered couch. The female half of the pair is Belle Landru. With her is Robert Darcy, Champion Professional boxer and her two-time ex-husband. To all outward appearances, they looked like a happy enough, nice enough couple. That is, if you could see past the fading set of black eyes she had hidden with rings of black eyeliner and the tape over her recently broken nose, not to mention the bright red shock of facial hair he called a goatee.
“I know you weren’t the bad guy in the last divorce, but I can’t say I expected you to show up in San Diego hot on my heels, Rob…” There was something strangely coy in her voice. It was odd to see a softer side of Belle Landru. Even her religious devotion was tempered with a certain hard edge.
“I’m not stalking you, chere.” His accent, whatever you would chose to classify it as, is clearly affected.
Belle’s usual smirk sets back onto her face. The expression dominated her face like a slash of red on a bright white sheet, emphasized by her lipstick.
“Don’t forget who you’re talking to, Rob. You’ll insult me if you aren’t careful.” She flashed him a scowl and gave him the finger, leaning back into the couch. If Belle’s usual attire could be defined as punk rock street urchin, then this look could only be classed as high glamour death rock chic. That tarnished rosary and heavy cross sat around her neck as usual, but tonight, also running around her throat like so much spilled blood was a choker accented with rubies.
Belle’s air of confidence was astounding as she held court with her ex-husband, passing the moments in general peace from the back of that bar. She was perfectly coiffed, red and black hair styled back into two ponytails high at the back of her head. She was a vision in black, a v-necked dress tucked tight at the waist with a red cincher. Her beaten black boots were still on her feet. Fingerless black lace gloves were on her hands, their presence only accentuated the chipped black nail polish on her fingers.
Across the room at the bar itself, unbeknownst to both Belle and Robert sat a young blonde. Short, and muscularly built, she wore her hair in two braids, tied with pink hair elastics, and a blood stained white t-shirt. Between the blood stains, the t-shirt looked something like a jersey, though block letter M’s were on the shirt in place of a team logo, or player number. The blood stains were somewhat faded, but still noticeably pronounced. In the dim light of the bar, the blood could almost have been just any random stain. With a simple, casual air, she watches Belle and Robert across the bar.
Her interest is intense, though she doesn’t make any move to approach the pair. Every now and then, she looks from the couple to look at the poster placed on the wall beside her. Take-on-all-comers mud wrestling, for cash prizes. She drains a sip from her long necked beer bottle, looking at the inflatable pool set up as a ring for the evening’s entertainment. Velvet ropes had been placed around it to substitute for ring ropes. The blonde giggles, mulling over something exceedingly interesting to her. The sound is sharp, high, giddy and girly.
“You weren’t actually all that hard to find, darlin’.” At least he dropped that horrible caricature of an accent, leaving him with just that slow amount of Texan drawl Belle had found charming once upon a time.
“You were just on a Pay-Per-View from here, and you don’t’ travel inconspicuously.” There was a good natured laugh as he reached up to brush his fingers through his goatee. His left ring finger was circled in a distressed platinum band. She had given it to him the second time they had gotten married.
“Not that I don’t sometimes miss the days we spent on the road together in that thing, but it does stick out in a crowd.”His head of honey colored hair was worn a bit messy under a hat. His white t-shirt was carefully concealed under a black pinstripe jacket. Black pants fitted along his legs, tucking into the tops of his boots. They made for quite the matched pair, though there was no real way of knowing just how long he might have been watching her before approaching her. It had almost played out like something out of a bad made-for-TV movie, or a dime store fiction. He had kept some tabs on her, from quite the distance, as to not intrude in her life until the point where he felt he would be seen the least as nuisance. It was, almost, a noble thing to do. But, nobility had had little to do with it. Mister Darcy was just so terribly attached to Belle. He had arranged for the perfect happenstance, quietly slipping into her favorite spot for coffee behind her one day and making his presence carefully known. A hand on the shoulder, a casual word, and a few careful, furtive glances.
Truth be told, she had noticed him before he wanted her to. It had become her own version of some sick and twisted little game to see if she could hold out longer than he could. And, so she had. Game, set and match, so to speak. Their second divorce had not gone down in such a fashion that made no one the bad guy. She had decided to do the leaving and, realistically, hadn’t been all that nice about it. One morning, she was gone, and the divorce papers were on the breakfast table. But yet, there he was.
“What happened to Michie and Kris?” Belle found that she couldn’t help but ask Robert about the pair of street kids that had rounded out their little family unit back in New York. New York felt like a long time ago, now. She’d lived there longer than anywhere else, since leaving New Orleans. She HAD to have a heart, in the literal sense of it, but she didn’t really have to express emotion. But, here she was, giving a shit.
“She dumped him.” Rob couldn’t help but laugh. They were a strange little pair that they had taken in. They both had purple hair and plenty of facial piercings between the two of them. Both of them were roughly sixteen now.
“Moved on, moved out. Turns out his parents lived on the Upper East Side, he went home. Saw him again before I took off. Took out the piercings, dyed his hair to brown, parents put him in prep school.” Their family unit had devolved into nothing, then.
Belle tried to keep from showing any expression on her face. She didn’t have any right to feel that way. She had left them all first and now she didn’t get to go back on all that and get upset because they went to follow their own paths as well. The crowd around them at the bar was starting to pick up. The place was coming to life around them, and they just sat in their own world. The blonde at the bar was still watching them, even as an announcement came over the bar’s speaker system about the mud wrestling contest. Her first beer sat drained on the bar in front of her and even as she drank from a second long neck, she picked at the label on the first.
“You know about this when you picked this place, Rob?”She was so glad for the change of subject. Anything not to think about what she-- they had lost.
“Can’t say that I did, Darlin’. But, you can’t say that you don’t want to get involved in it.” For what it was worth, Rob did have a point.
It might have been a shame to get in the mud and ruin a perfectly good dress, but the girl just couldn’t help herself. She got up to her feet, dusting herself off as she looked at her ex-husband.
“Gonna have to see just what the story is with all this. You want a drink?”He shook his head and that was all it took for her to head over to the bar.
“God damn, I’ve always liked watching her leave.” So, Rob was just as capable of being a womanizer as the next man. Of course, whether he said those things to her face was an entirely different story. But then, Rob was a tough guy. And Belle had to have gotten the broken nose from somewhere. Of course, somewhere could have been a sparring match for old times’ sake. Belle spoke to the bartender for a few moments, nodding and ordering herself a drink when all was said and done.
“If there’s enough interest,” She had to raise her voice to be heard over the crowd as she walked back towards Rob,
“they’ll do an elimination tournament. Somehow I feel it isn’t fair not to have mentioned I’m a professional wrestler.” She shot back her rum and Coke as she sat next to him. It wasn’t her usual choice of drink, but she’d avoid the cheap stuff and the hard stuff if she was going to fight, even if it was just for fun.
She passed Rob her drink and then started to unlace the back of the cincher she was wearing.
“They didn’t ask.” He drank from the glass he was holding, smirking. It was almost a marvel that those two couldn’t make it work. They were cut from the same, tattered and worn cloth. But, maybe that was it. They were just too damn the same.
“Would you?” They smirked at each other and she stretched across the couch they were on, extending her legs across his lap and taking her drink back from him.
“So, did you watch the damn thing then?” Perhaps it was her own vanity that let her ask if he’d seen No Limits. Rob knew she had talent, but there was a time when it looked like she wasn’t going to get her career off the ground. In some part, she wanted him to be proud of her. He was the only person who had ever really come close.
“Darlin?”“You brought it up. Did you watch it?” She hammered back the remainder of her drink, setting the glass on the floor.
“The pay-per-view.”“You know what you’re doin’ out there. You could have had them shut down more effectively, though. Looked like you went easy on them, too. You‘re usually so unrestrained. When did you start using that DDT?” Casual conversation had turned into shoptalk. Belle rolled her eyes as she turned her head to look over at the rowdy crowd gathered around the makeshift ring in the bar. She could tell from the yells of the crowd that something had to be going on, but for the life of her, she just couldn’t tell if it was worth going over there to watch.
“I’m in a match against the one guy again this week.” She shook her head, cursing a little under her breath. That certainly went far enough in establishing her opinion of David Cage.
“Can’t say I’m all that worried.” But, when was she ever?
“Kinda sounds like he belongs out for mental health reasons, but whatever. The more dangerous, the more violent, the better.” She shrugged, and glanced at Rob for an obvious sign of life. He was fiddling with his goatee.
“You know you have the backing where it counts.” He leaned in towards her, setting one hand on her hip and trailing the other one down her rosary and along the cross. His face was close to hers, their noses all but pressed together. She indulged him, pressing her lips against his in a quick brush, smirking pronouncedly as she pulled back from him.
“And I’m behind you, too.”“Is this the part where I swoon and go ’Oh, Mister Darcy! Oh!’? Because, Rob, honey, I don’t think the third time is the charm.” She laughed as she shoved him back from her, amused at the red stain of her lipstick along his mouth. There was something about that bright red smear that just warmed her black heart. Maybe she was only so much a monster.
The speaker system in the bar cut in and out as they announced the name of the next person up to mud wrestle. The blonde that had been sitting at the bar and watching them is gone. “--ison Ma-- --n. In t-- --ast round --fore bracketed, open tournament.”
“Mm.. Soon I‘ll get to have a good time.” She laughed again, richly, before settling easily into that couch and swinging her legs out of Rob’s lap.
“I don’t mean my match at Animosity, either. Fuck David Cage. Mr. Dangerous-fucking-Psycho. I managed to avoid a beating? Please, I may have pinned Light, but it wasn‘t before I put you down too. You think I’m some misguided little girl, praying to some fucked up false god, crying in the damn corner and not knowing what to do for my own good? Not even a stumbling block on your path to glory and the World Title? Fuck that. I’m damn good at this and I deserve an opponent that recognizes that.” This was certainly another kind of manic passion that she was expressing here.
“He’ll break anyone in his way? I dare him to try. I don’t care about the belt, but no one wants to come out on the losing end of a fight. That motherfucker’ll be lucky if he isn’t still pulling bootlaces out of his ass next week. Not because I have a damn thing to prove, but because I feel like it. It isn’t like I’m doing anything that’s so wrong that I can’t confess.” There was that religious fervor, creeping up on her again whether she meant for it to, or not. Well, that was the mark of a fanatic, wasn’t it? Her faith wasn’t her rock, but it certainly kept her head straight.
“If I’ve heard that once, I’ve heard it a billion fucking times. If you don’t join me, you’ll fall to me. If you get in my way, I’ll break you. Talk, talk, fucking-talk. Every time someone’s said that to me, I’ve come out ahead in the end. So, this’ll just be the next damn time that happens.” She rolled her eyes. It was getting trite to see what people would say when they couldn’t come up with anything else.
“Please, these fucking people don’t know what they’re doing, again. Fuck this, it’s a wonder they actually pay me, because they sure as hell act like they don’t know what they’ve got. I’ll even take challengers with my OWN TV belt on the line if it means I get an opportunity at better matches.”The speaker system called a match between that same blonde from before and someone else in the tournament.
“Hope I’m up next.” Now it seemed that she was just oh so ready for this mud wrestling match. Even if it meant that she would be ruining her dress. She stood up, looking at Rob as she crossed her arms around her waist.
“You gonna watch? I’m sure it’ll be more of a bloodbath than this match I have coming up at Animosity, but you never disliked watching me throw people around before.”“I’m more interested in what you’re planning on doing afterwards. You and all that nervous energy you’re gonna have. That you always have.” He extended his left hand to her.
“We can go spar.” She smirked and raised an eyebrow at him in jest.
“C’mon, I need to make sure I’m in top form for my match. Can’t really say I’m gonna adequately give the match my all, or fuck him up six ways from Sunday if I don’t.” There was something almost cute about the way she rocked from her heels to her toes as she said that.
“Besides, I’m walking the path of the Righteous. Nothing can get in my way.” Belle paused as her name was called over the bar’s speaker system. She hopped for a moment and then laughed.
“Away I go, then.”Instead of continuing to linearly follow the action, it cuts into a montage of several of the mud wrestling matches. Belle, and the blonde from the bar that had been watching her, both plow through a series of opponents before finally facing up with one another. As opposed to their virtual squashes against the drunken rabble of college girls, their match is actually quite heated. In the end, Belle managed to get her down with a rather messy Sinner’s Reward, pinning her after.
Muddied, Belle gets up from the makeshift ring, giving the blonde the finger and stomping her way towards Rob. The blonde flashed a peace sign at Belle’s back as she walked away.
“I don’t think I was the only professional in the house tonight.” She smirked and motioned for the door.
“C’mon, I’m not quite done yet.”She walked out the door, Rob following behind her, as the scene fades to black.