Wounded

*Tokyo, Japan. Hotel room. Off camera.*

There are many different challenges for a professional wrestler. Whether it’d be what they do in the ring to how they carry themselves outside of it. But everyone has a demon of some sort…the kind of thing that’ll always haunt you no matter where you go. And sometimes all it takes is a trigger to reignite it the moment you feel perfectly comfortable and just let your guard down the slightest little bit. When you think you’ve beaten it…it comes back for one more round in a different form.

That’s the hell Seth Iser has to deal with.

In one moment, he’s in bed…trying to sleep after he had his match on tour. But he finds himself tossing and turning…hell thrashing at a couple of points in that bed of his. Before suddenly and violently sitting up with his eyes shot open, his hands balled up in fists in a manner of self defense and gasping for a moment of air and even letting out a cough. The coughs get more rapid before he flings the blanket off of him and sprints to the bathroom(moving fast by his standards) before opening the toilet and letting out a disgusting sounding vomit.

For a tense moment that episode goes on…before it finally stops and he flushes the toilet with a look of disgust. And then he just glances himself in the mirror…just shaking his head.

“Urgh…damn it…” he groans at what he sees.

What he sees doesn’t make him too much more comfortable. While the time in Japan has retoned his body, the gray is even more obvious in his hair than ever before. The nightmare that he just endured has made his complexion look quite pale and the dark bags under his eyes tell the story of a man who hasn’t exactly gotten a ton of sound sleep. He also sleeps in a pair of basketball shorts, that being his run of comfort but he just pulls them up slightly even though nobody is there, a subconscious tic perhaps. He balls his fist up briefly almost wanting to punch the mirror but then shakes his head with a no to think better of it.

“...Been since fuck’n Christmas…” he mutters under his breath.

He rubs over his damaged nose and winces slightly, a battlescar from Japan so far, before running the sink of some water and just washing his face for a moment to just cleanse himself slightly. He even lets out a spit in the sink and gargles a little mouthwash to get that taste out of his mouth. After a moment of pause he then starts to saunter back toward the disorganized bed now that he had just made. He glances at it for a moment before looking back at the bathroom, the sink, the toilet with the seat up behind him in that room to the hotel room with a nice desk and even a decent outside view of the city of Tokyo itself. At long last though it seems like he lets out a sigh almost to himself.

“Alright, fine…” he tells himself almost, “You win. I guess this is one of those things that can’t just be combated on it’s own.”

He digs out a phone and stares at it briefly before it seems like he’s decided to opt for the text route toward someone. After pushing the send button he then takes a seat on the bed, also glancing at the off television. Would trying to catch up on sports with an international flavor really take his mind off of this or would it just be prolonging something that really needs to be addressed? After his phone buzzes, he nods his head knowing the answer to that question. He ends up turning on the laptop that’s hooked up to his desk, a gift from Rebecca. He’s almost mouthing to himself silently the steps to get to where he needs to go with that from his daughter before clicking on something there perhaps too fast.

“Grrrr…nothing ever goes right with this damn tech…” he groans before he blinks and realizes he forgot something important, “Oh shit right…the headphones.”

He reaches his long arm behind the laptop to reveal those headphones before plugging that into the laptop and putting them on his ears and he’s grimacing slightly at the tight fit for a moment but other than that, good to go. After that it’s just redoing a couple of the steps that were instructed to him by his daughter…and there you go, a phone call over the computer with visual. After that…Vincent Moretti, the boss of the Riot brand in MWE and his long time friend and associate, has answered him and unlike Seth, he’s feeling better with the suit as he sits back on his chair staring back at him.

“You look like shit,” Vincent pointedly states at his old friend.

“Tell me something I don’t know…” Iser grumbles back in his usual low baritone.

“Give me a moment on that one…” Vincent ponders by tapping his chin, “Well…damn. Nothing comes to mind right away on that..”

While there is no smile from Iser’s face, his shoulders notably lighten up slightly talking to his old friend and they’re just going into their usual banter for a moment but Vincent’s face turns serious.

“You should be in bed by Tokyo hours, what the hell are you doing calling me at this time?” Vincent inquires.

Seth just glances at the clock and it’s three in the morning but he just shakes his head.

“Not sleeping worth a rat’s ass…” he states the obvious in a flat tone.

“I can see that…” Vincent taps his chin on the other end all the way in Chicago, “I can maybe hazard a guess but I’m not going to dance around it. Why? You’re normally not one to worry about things and have it manifest into something physical like that.”

“That’s not exactly a question one of my bosses would ask usually…” Seth again replies in that flat, deadpan tone.

“Right now I’m not your boss, I’m your brother who has been on the road with you for years…” Vincent confirms with a little more base to his voice before he asks again, “What…is going on?”

There’s an uncomfortable silence as Seth takes a moment to consider…how to say what needs to be said.

“I can still taste that damn alcohol from that night in Washington…” he lowly replies.

“Did you relapse?” Vincent jumps to the next question, obviously alarmed by this

“No. But since then…” Iser answers before he trails off for a moment.

There’s a shake of the head from the obviously troubled Iser. That pause is him still fishing for the words as he’s broken eye contact looking up at the ceiling. Vincent’s not butting in for another question but rather…letting Iser find that answer for a second.

“Well…it’s been as if I had. Most nights when I do get to sleep…it’s replayed what happened in Washington. I can smell that stale brand of booze from those dreams to moment I wake up…and that smell ever since I went through detox is enough to make my entire body turn ill. It’s…another reminder of what that lifestyle was.” he recounts all of this pausing for a moment before lowering his head and his tone, “It’s…hell right now.”

“I can imagine…” Vincent can only say in response as it’s his turn to try to find something but when he looks at Seth, he knows he has more to say.

“Something I did finally came back to bite me in the ass.” Seth shakes his head in disgust, “That stunt pouring whiskey down Roger’s throat when I was too deep in my own shit finally cost me.”

Vincent’s silent as he was also there when that happened but he nods his head in remembrance.

“That was almost nine years ago…” Vincent recounts as he’s tapping his chin.

“And now it feels like yesterday…” Iser grits through his teeth, “Now I know what that feels like on the other end for sure. I already realized I regretted that stunt a couple years ago but now that I say that out loud…”

Yet again there’s a pause as Seth lets out a deep breath and he just lets out a sigh.

“Look…” he continues, “I probably should feel fulfilled that I’m finally touring Japan again. I’ve…done a lot of things in my career the last couple of years. It isn’t a fairy tale journey or anything like that but I know I’ve done well but right now…I don’t feel enjoyment wrestling entirely at the moment.”

And that’s where Vincent’s eyes widen at that confession and something he might have just put together.

“You’re wounded, Seth…” he states.

“Wounded?” Iser repeats to himself before he mulls on that point for a moment before nodding to himself, “Oh…I think I understand now. That’s exactly what this is. I’m wounded…in a way I haven’t been since Owen broke into my house. And I didn’t think…I’d be wounded like that ever again.”

Yet again several seconds seem to pass by and Seth is just nodding to himself as if he’s pieced it all together himself. Vincent’s face is one of obvious concern staring back from that computer screen.

“What an arrogant thing to say I know…” a little bit self deprecating from Seth here, “But I honestly thought that. But…now that I know…it’s a matter of what to do with it.”

“...So revenge then?” Vincent asks the obvious question, his tone low.

“No.” Seth shakes his head calmly but his tone much more in line with his normal one.

“No?” This time Vincent’s the one who repeats.

“After being hospitalized by Owen…I learned something damn valuable. Revenge is weak. It’s the cotton candy of motivation. It makes you feel full but then you realize it’s the most hallow and weak thing imaginable. It just creates a never-ending cycle of retaliation and it shortens everything. It’s going to be addressed but not out of something as weak as revenge…”

Vincent doesn’t have a reply as he’s thinking about everything his long time partner said and he’s nodding his head as if he’s making some sense of it. Even through the dark circles in his eyes though as Seth adjusts to his seat he finally seems to have put it all together…the hell that’s been that way since just after Christmas.

“I know what I have to do when I get back to the States now…” he calmly states, “It’s not revenge. It’s more…mending an old wound. And there’s only one way to do that in our line of work.”

“If that’s how to approach it that’s healthiest for you then so be it…” Vincent nods.

“I owe you one…thank you.” Seth then finally says, with full sincerity.

“...Does this mean you can strike out some of what I owe you on bets?” Vincent mischievously asks to lighten the mood back up.

“Maybe…” Seth concedes.

“Damn. That’s a better answer then I was expecting…”

“We’ll talk more about that later…” Seth shrugs, “I’m going to try to get back to sleep. Everything’s just… a little clearer now.”

With that, Vincent hangs up on this virtual call and Seth ends up taking off his headphones and shuts off the laptop. He’s far calmer then he was when he was jolted up. And for a moment he reaches under his bed to pull out part of his luggage. He opens that black bag of his and rummages through the extra covid masks and a couple pairs of his tights that he brought along to find the ghoulish grey mask that was long associated with him at the beginning of his career. And he just nods his head.

“I had a pull toward you…and I thought it was to remind me of the bad. In a way it was…” Seth lowly replies, “But now I know the why…and the thing that must be done.”

There’s a cold pause before he puts it back down.

“The wounds of Julian Nelson…and of my past…must be healed. Once and for all…”