KALEDIOSCOPE

I.

The kaleidoscope clicks, its metallic whisper slicing through the silence as little Rose twists the barrel. Shards of colored glass fracture and reconfigure, red triangles twisting into jagged blue petals, gold circles warping toward violent violet stars. Nothing holds. Nothing lasts. Yet each fractured edge cradles her mother’s ghost.

Her fingers tremble against the toy, knuckles bleaching white as she presses her eye closer, breath hitching when the shapes resist order. The hardwood digs into her knees through the stiff fabric of her burnt-orange dress, the hem stiff with dried apple juice. Weeks have smeared together since the cemetery.

The toy, unknowingly her mother’s last gift, steals the fading afternoon light. Brass and pearl inlay glint like relics.

From the kitchen, her father’s voice rasps, worn, unraveling. Muffled words punch through. Money, contracts, dates. His fingers hammer the counter, quick, erratic. Wrestling magazines splay across the table, his own face staring back from glossy covers, smile trapped beneath brighter days. Championship belts spill from a half-open duffel, leather and cheap gold slick with sweat and grime. Victories that felt empty since Rebecca's death.

I see myself framed in the doorway. Five years old and already swallowing the pain of broken promises.

Click. The kaleidoscope spins. New shapes stab into focus.

I shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t pick at this scar, but the kaleidoscope drags me under, forcing shards I’ve spent years dodging.

Craig braces against the counter, the cordless phone leaden in his grip. His knuckles blanch around it.

"PWX wants me for their summer tour, Tommy," he mutters to his oldest friend, his only friend, back then. "And there's a promotion in Japan talking about a program with their champ. Could set us up for life."

Silence buzzes between them like a dead channel.

"But she’s five, man." His voice splinters. "What kind of father is out on the road all the time?"

His fingers trace the contract’s edge. Numbers blur together.

"Rebecca would’ve called me an idiot," he says, wrenching her name up like a nail pulled from deep flesh. Rare. Painful. "For leaving Rose. Or for tossing the only chance to give her something better."

Sunlight floods the kitchen, bright, unforgiving. This is who he was before the business ate him alive, before he had to make the difficult decisions.

"What if I take her?" The words leap out, reckless. "She’s tougher than me. Maybe the road would—"

Reality snags his breath. His shoulders sag.

"Yeah. Kindergartners and locker rooms. Real Father of the Year material. It worked because Rebecca was there. Not now, though."

Click. The kaleidoscope twists. Glass screams into new forms.

"I’m scared, Tommy." The confession claws free. "Scared of leaving. Scared of staying. Scared she’ll hate me either way."

His thumb grazes a framed Christmas photo, back when they were still whole, not wreckage. The glass feels fragile under his calloused fingers.

"She’s got Rebecca’s eyes," he murmurs. "Her stubbornness, too. Announced yesterday that she's no longer interested in vegetables. Like it was a fucking UN negotiation."

A laugh bursts out, sudden, sharp. The first spark in weeks.

"I know, I know. I can't walk away from this," he surrenders. "Tell PWX nothing longer than a week. And when she’s older... maybe she’ll get it."

Another click. The kaleidoscope pulses with my heartbeat.

"If this business eats me alive..." His throat catches. "Just keep an eye on her, Tommy. Don’t let her break like I did."

Snow smothers the memory. They meant it then. Both of them. Meaning didn’t change a damn thing.

Little Rose stands in the doorway now, fists crumpling her dress.

"Daddy?" A whisper like shattered glass. "Are you leaving?"

His face folds, then hardens.

"Hold on, Tommy." He drops to his knees, pulls her in. "Just boring grown-up talk, Rosebud."

"Can I come?"

His ribs crack beneath the breath he chokes back.

"Maybe when you're older." The lie curdles. "But I need you to be my brave girl, yeah? Plus, you can stay with Grammie and enjoy some cuddle time with her."

She burrows into his neck. I watch, already knowing, how the road will take him anyway. How promises will sour in both our throats.

The kaleidoscope lies abandoned, brass devouring the dusk. Waiting.

Some things shatter.

Some things twist.

Some things force you to see.

I grab it now, grown fingers swallowing hers.

Click.

The pattern fractures.

Everything burns.

II.

Seconds. Just a moment between heartbeats, but the memory threatens to suffocate me.

Tommy stands, frozen in a leather jacket. I remember him in the gym with Dad, and he seems older here, more gaunt. I attribute the deep lines on his face to years with empty words and broken promises. The fingers curl into fists, twitching by his side, as if to tell me he didn't expect this kind of reaction. He quickly unclenches them once he realizes what he's done. Smart choice. Guilt is written on his face, carrying the weight of what he owes.

"Tommy fucking Casanova." The name sours in my mouth, twisting my lips into something bitter. "The one person in the world my father trusted, the trainer who swore he’d keep an eye out for me if anything were to happen."

His lips part, shaping useless words, and my hand slices the air between us before the first syllable escapes.

"Don’t. Don’t even start with some rehearsed bullshit about lost time or a dead man’s promises." My nails dig into my palms. "I heard you. Five years old, pressing my ear to that doorframe while you swore you’d be there if he wasn’t."

"Rose, just let me—"

"Let you what?" The words shatter in my throat. "Explain how you bailed when my father needed you most? Couldn’t stomach his pain, so you vanished like a coward?"

Arina edges closer, silent, hesitant, but this wreckage isn’t hers to clean up.

"I spent years carving myself open, wondering what I did wrong. Why you disappeared. Why Dad’s breath would hitch when someone said your name, like you were some goddamn ghost haunting the house."

Tommy’s throat bobs, his face crumbling, but the regret in his eyes means nothing now. Apologies are just another way to run when they don’t come with action.

"You dragged him into this life, and he trusted you. But the minute he started to shine, you were gone. Couldn’t stand being eclipsed? Or was it that he became everything you knew you’d never be?"

Every word lands like a punch. Good. Let them bruise.

"Want a promise? Here’s one. I don’t need you. Not your help. Not some washed-up fraud slinking back now with regrets and a savior complex."

The bag strap bites into my shoulder as I shove toward the exit. That little girl died years ago. The woman who leaves now was built from the wreckage.

"Rose—"

"Go fuck yourself, Tommy." I don’t turn around.

The door slams hard enough to shudder the glass in its frame. The Kentucky air claws at my lungs, sharp as broken glass. My fingers shake as I thumb my phone screen, another anonymous car, another desperate sprint from the past.

Inside, silence engulfs Tommy and Arina. Two figures standing in the wreckage I left behind.

I imagine him staring at the door like a fool, hoping words can bridge the absence. As if anything he says could fill the hollow his leaving carved.

The sedan rolls up too fast—another borrowed shell to carry me anywhere but here. I wrench open the door, rattling off the first destination that flashes through my mind.

As the car pulls away, the rearview frames the warehouse one last time. Shut tight. No movement. But I visualize it, Tommy whispering excuses to ghosts.

I hope Arina spits in his face. I hope she remembers promises rot when they aren’t backed by action.

I hope she walks and lets him choke on the silence he built.

Some breaks don’t heal, no matter how hard you force the pieces back together.

III.

Charles de Lacy.

"The Dandy." England's last gentleman wrestler. A walking museum piece who still believes this sport comes with tea service and tasteful applause. Though I do think we should have tea service. It's fucking delicious.

I've been thinking about kaleidoscopes, Charles. You know them, those exquisite brass tubes filled with shattered glass, arranging chaos into fleeting beauty. My mother bought one for me shortly before she died. It's a plastic little thing, nothing like the fancy tubes you probably hide in your curio cabinets.

But here’s the truth about kaleidoscopes: frauds, the lot of them. All that mesmerizing symmetry? Just jagged fragments reflecting off mirrors, broken things pretending to be whole.

Sound familiar?

You’re a walking kaleidoscope, Charles. All those elegant patterns concealing the fact you’re just shards clattering inside a polished shell.

Here’s the reality about you, you’re everything that’s wrong with this business, dressed in Harris Tweed and clinging to delusions of relevance. You preach of some ancient era where men brawled with decorum, where violence came with a pressed handkerchief and a stiff upper lip.

But your golden age was a lie. Same bloodsport, your kind just hid the stains better beneath starched collars. Like your precious kaleidoscope masking destruction with distracting beauty.

I’ve dug through your past, Charles. Silver spoon upbringing until Daddy disowned his wrestling black sheep. Hm, sounds like another bloke from England that I've had my eyes on for quite some time. Poor little lordling reduced to grunt work, flipping patties, exterminating rats, scrubbing filth. Must’ve stung, learning labor wasn’t just something servants did.

And now you skulk around PRIME, peddling aristocratic airs while your bank statements scream irrelevance. You tout bringing "class" to wrestling like we should grovel for your presence. As if anyone needed England’s most obsolete export.

Let me educate you on real class, you fool. It’s not in your affected accent or Savile Row threads. True class is forged in blood, not inherited through birthright. It's about getting back up when the world knocks you down.

Turn the kaleidoscope once: Charles the Aristocrat.

Turn it again: Charles the Burger Flipper.

Another twist: Charles hiring his own debt collector as a manservant to avoid broken fingers.

Same shattered pieces. Different illusions.

You want to lecture me about "proper" wrestling? About gentlemanly conduct? My father built his legacy with shattered bones and spilled blood while you memorized fork etiquette.

That’s our difference, Charles. You think this is theater. I know it’s trench warfare.

Your entire act romanticizes a wrestling era that never existed, a sanitized fairy tale for cowards who can’t stomach reality. Those masked performers you idolize? They were distractions while real warriors bled for this business.

Click. Twist the kaleidoscope to see your perfect delicacy. But the pieces remain broken, shattered pride, ruined entitlement, a man who never learned that pretty lies don’t erase ugly truths.

Speaking of truths, your "chivalry" nauseates me. You’ll cradle a woman’s hand until she steps out of line, then crack her jaw without remorse. How very noble, nothing says "gentleman" like disciplining us uppity women.

Here’s what offends me most. You mistake civility for strength when it’s just cowardice in a waistcoat. You hide behind manners because you lack the guts to face this sport’s brutality. You’d rather lose "properly" than win bloody, because you know you can’t handle real violence.

I’ve survived wars that would break your spine. Taken beatings that would hospitalize you for seasons. Inflicted pain that’d make your lapdog Mickey faint. While you fret over brunch selections, I’m deciding which of your bones to snap first.

This is wrestling now, Charles. No rules. No mercy. Just the stark choice of how far you will go to leave that ring standing.

You’re everything obsolete about this business, pageantry without purpose, tradition without teeth. A relic screaming into the void, demanding chaos conform to your dead era’s standards.

Our difference crystallizes here, you keep trying to arrange broken glass into pretty lies. Still believing the right angle makes destruction beautiful.

But I stopped pretending long ago. Some fractures can’t be mended. So I took those jagged edges and honed them into weapons. Let them cut. Let them bleed.

I embody what wrestling truly is, merciless, volatile, soul-rending. Sacrifice. No trust funds bought my scars. No servants fight my battles. Every victory and defeat etched into my skin came from earned agony.

Your golden age collapsed under the weight of its own lies, false chivalry, imagined honor. My world needs no such illusions. Just predators and prey. Survivors and broken men.

When we meet in that ring, you’ll learn the difference between performing violence and surviving it. All your breeding won’t matter when I’m dismantling you joint by joint.

Bring your rulebook.

Bring your delusions.

Bring Mickey to wipe your tears when reality bites too deep.

But you can’t resurrect a phantom era. Can’t un-shatter glass. Can’t force fragments back together.

And when I’m finished? There won’t be enough of you left to cast even a pretty illusion.

Welcome to the real wrestling world, Charles. It’ll hurt worse than your wounded dignity.

The past is six feet under. I swung the shovel.

And at ReVival 76? You’ll see exactly how deep I buried it.

IV.

The amber liquid claws down my throat like molten glass, but even its burn can’t erase the phantom ache of Hank slamming me into the canvas. Six weeks since ReVival 73. Six weeks since FLAMBERGE revealed his true nature to the world, something I long knew. He didn't fall far from the tree, considering history was repeating itself all over again.

Hank, the same man who put my father in the hospital with a concussion years ago. The same beating that lit the powder keg. Phil Atken may have given the order, but Cecilworth Farthington’s fingerprints smeared the bloodstains. PRIME’s golden boy wouldn’t dirty his manicured hands, would he?

Outside, Tampa’s humidity presses against the hotel bar windows like sweat against the temple, as thick as the anger burning behind my teeth. Somewhere in this damned city, Lindsay Troy watches from her penthouse throne. Does she condone the actions that happen under her watch? PRIME’s puppetmaster. My father’s last worthy opponent. The woman who’s never spared me a glance that didn’t drip with contempt. Probably circling the expiration date on my contract in red ink, counting down until she’s finally rid of the ghost rotting in Dusk’s legacy.

The whiskey leaves an ashen trail of regret on my tongue, but it’s better than sobriety. Almost better than reliving FLAMBERGE laid out at ReVival 75, the hushed accusations circling like vultures. Let them whisper. Let Joe Fontaine flap his gums about me losing it. The bastard couldn’t string two original thoughts together without a script, probably needed cue cards just to remember to breathe.

Truth is? FLAMBERGE didn’t need my help making enemies. Wear arrogance like cologne long enough, and grudges pile up faster than bodies in a warzone. Now with the eGG Bandits gunning for his title alongside Fontaine’s? Hessian and Gamble don’t recognize rules. They’ll gut anyone dumb enough to blink.

But I’ll let Joe keep pissing himself over the monster in his nightmares. Fear makes the truth cut deeper.

"You look like shit."

I don’t need to turn. That voice—cold steel wrapped in Saint Petersburg silk—used to mean sanctuary. Now it’s just another weight on my ribs.

"Arina." Another swallow, fire spreading through my chest like bloodstains on linen. "Shouldn’t you be with Alexei or in Moscow taking care of the business?"

She slips onto the stool beside me, all lethal poise. The mirror behind us throws back her dark gaze, too sharp, too cutting.

"Should not you be answering phone?"

The accusation lingers as thick as cigar smoke. I’ve been a ghost since Kentucky, since Tommy’s arrival, since I left her standing in that warehouse with him after running from my own past. I try not to think about the moment before Tommy stepped into the warehouse. It was a moment that played on the edges of my mind far too often.

"Had business." The lie curdles in my mouth.

"What business justifies vanishing?" She’s sweet, but her consonants sharpen when she’s annoyed, each syllable a flicked blade. "I call. Nothing. I text. Silence. I think maybe Rose rots in some alley, then security footage shows you drowning in whiskey like some tragedy chasing third act."

I finally meet her stare. The fury there almost feels like home. "Sorry for leaving you with Tommy."

A razor-thin smirk. "I insulted him. Thought you would appreciate the tribute."

A ghost of a grin tugs at my lips. "I do. He say anything worthwhile after I bounced?"

"Much. Mostly about failing your father. Failing you." She signals the bartender with two fingers, orders something clear enough to sterilize wounds. "He is broken man, Rose. Like all fools who swear fealty to ghosts."

It lands harder than it should. My fingers find the tokens in my bag, Adeline’s carved wooden bird, slipped into my pocket the night I sent her away, and the stupid kaleidoscope I bought after the meltdown. Silver and glass instead of brass and pearl, same fucking illusion. Fractured light forced into fleeting beauty.

"Had business," I repeat, laying both on the polished wood.

Arina’s gaze lingers on the bird. She knows about Adeline. Knows the price of my choices. Her words soften. "How are you, Rose? Properly?"

A hollow shrug. "Still breathing. That counts."

"Is not enough."

"It’s all that’s left." I lift the kaleidoscope, twist. Splintered colors dance. "I feel bad. For Kentucky. For ditching you with him. For vanishing."

"You do not feel bad for discomfort. You feel bad for locking out those who would bleed for you."

The bartender delivers her drink. She takes a slow, deliberate sip but wrinkles her nose. She’s used to drinks from home.

"We will help you with Julien."

The words hang between us like an absolution I haven’t earned. "No. I don’t want collateral damage. This dance with Julien and Cecilworth, I can't let you get hurt—"

"You doubt me?"

"You’re one of the few bright spots left. I typically extinguish those."

Her fingers graze mine where they white-knuckle the kaleidoscope. My throat dries. "You do not destroy. You armor what matters. Sometimes armor looks like violence."

"Arina—"

"We will help you."

I look at her. I want to melt into her, to pick up the moment before Tommy entered.

Then, the plural stops my breath. We?

Her smirk says it all. A slight tilt of her chin toward the entrance.

I follow her gaze.

My pulse stutters.

Ivan Stanislav fills the doorway like an oncoming storm, broad shoulders, predator’s gait. The Russian Bear. The Soviet's beloved. Radio silence since UltraViolence. The few people in the room parted like water before a blade. No accident.

This is calculated.

He takes the stool beside me without hesitation. The bartender materializes, smart enough to keep his mouth shut.

"Rose." His voice is frozen battlefields and dried blood.

I twist the kaleidoscope. Patterns shift.

For the first time in months, the weight feels bearable.

"Ivan."

The board resets. The picture reforms.

Maybe—just maybe—this time the broken glass won’t cut. Maybe it’ll reflect something whole. Maybe they'll form something beautiful instead of something broken.