Post by dsb on Dec 31, 2017 18:25:01 GMT
The FAWNtron plays a live video feed from the backstage infirmary. Sitting in one of the beds with her back propped up against a big pile of pillows is Camille Cosworth. Her ring gear has been exchanged for a hospital gown and a floppy red and white Santa Claus hat which hides the stitches on her forehead, and she’s covered below the waist by a blanket. FAWN social media director Mel Sutton sits in a chair at the side of the bed leafing through her notes. The diminutive blonde interviewer also wears a Santa Claus hat along with a red and green sweater and skirt combination.
CAMILLE COSWORTH
MEL SUTTON
Despite the festive accessories, the mood in the room is remarkably somber and sad.
“Okay, we’re rolling,” the unseen cameraman announces.
Mel takes a deep breath and turns to her subject, reaching out with her right hand clasp the other woman’s left as she says, “Ms. Cosworth, you don’t have to do this…”
“A promise is a promise, Mel,” Camille reassures, plastering a small, lopsided smile onto her face. “Besides I… umm... I want to end the year on a better note than… uhh… well, you know...”
Her smile falters and she blinks a few times in rapid succession.
“...than that,” Cosworth finishes after a pregnant pause. “Soooooo yeah… let’s… let’s do this interview, alright? And please, just call me Camille. Ms. Cosworth makes me feel old, and I… I don’t need that right now.”
“Yes, of course… Camille.”
Sutton flips through her notes, then she clenches her jaw while rubbing at her temples with one hand. Twenty-four hours ago, she had anticipated a light-hearted chat with a victorious Girl of Tomorrow, thus she had prepared rather frivolous, softball questions which now seem grossly inappropriate.
More than a little flustered, Mel sheepishly admits, “My apologies, but I don’t know where to begin.”
“‘Merry Christmas’ would be a good start,” Camille offers, gesturing towards her hat with one hand.
“Merry Christmas,” Sutton says with a soft chuckle, sounding relieved, then her voice turns melancholy as she adds, “I’m sorry, but I can’t imagine that this is a very happy holiday for you…”
The Girl of Tomorrow sharply sucks in a breath before she replies, “Yeah… yeah, it’s… uhh… it’s tough. Almost as bad as the year when I asked for a PlayStation 2 and got a Dreamcast instead…”
Cosworth strains and forces herself to laugh, loudly and awkwardly. Mel elects to not partake in the feigned merriment, keeping her expression solemn even as she gives her subject’s hand a comforting squeeze which Camille is quick to return. The fake laughter peters out after a couple of seconds, and Sutton begins her interview in earnest, putting away her prepared questions and going with her instincts.
“Camille, I want to begin with your match with Celia Blassenville. I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that my heart nearly stopped when you fell from the top turnbuckle to the floor. What happened there?”
The Girl of Tomorrow purses her lips and rubs at her forehead for a second before answering, “Actually… umm… I’m not sure myself. All I know is that after I hopped to the top rope, I suddenly got super dizzy and my vision started to blur. Next thing I know, I’m on the ground and Merle’s asking about my toes and everything -- and I mean everything -- hurts.”
“You blacked out?” Mel asks.
“Uhh yeah... I guess so?” Cosworth replies “Dr. Vannacutt says it’s probably because of blood loss. Apparently there’s, like, a metric crap-ton of blood vessels in the forehead and I got busted open pretty good.”
“Merle tried to stop the match quite a few times after you started bleeding. Why did you insist on continuing?”
Camille leans back further onto her stack of pillows, then she tilts her head towards the ceiling and lets out a weary sigh. She closes her eyes, runs a hand over her face, and sits in silence. After about five seconds, Sutton thinks that she isn’t going to respond.
“You don’t have to answer that, Camille. We can move --”
“Celia said something that really… really got to me,” the brunette interjects. “Not all that mumbo-jumbo about fear of falling or whatever, that kind of stuff doesn’t even register, but she said something about leading others to failure.”
Demonstrating an impressive memory and attention to detail, Mel quotes, “’She’d willingly inspire others to follow her up the mountain of fame even if they plummet to obscurity and injury only steps later.’”
“Yeah, that’s it,” Cosworth affirms. “I dunno… that just… I mean, this is going to sound stupid, but it made me feel like a villain. Like I was luring kids off a cliff with candy or something. I just wanted to show that, yeah, there are going to be a couple of nasty falls and losses along the way… blood, and sweat, and tears, and all that other good stuff… but you just gotta keep fighting through it… pick yourself up and everything’s gonna be...”
Camille’s voice cracks.
“...every -- everything’s gonna…”
She still can’t get the words out, and now the lump in her throat feels like it’s grown to the size of a grapefruit. Eyes suddenly welling, the Girl of Tomorrow tilts her head back and clenches her interviewer’s hand so tightly that Sutton grimaces in pain, though the diminutive blonde squeezes back rather than try to pull away.
Cosworth quietly mumbles to herself, “Keep it together, Coz… keep it together… keep it together…”
Normally one to wear her heart on her sleeve, an emotional and visibly shaking Camille struggles to maintain her composure. She shuts her eyes, causing a few displaced teardrops to track down her cheeks, and she takes a couple of deep, sniffling breaths.
“...everything’s gonna… gonna be o-okay…”
Cosworth finally gets the words out with a choked sob before opening her eyes and turning her gaze back to the FAWN social media director. The effort seems to exhaust her, and she spends several seconds panting heavily as a wide-eyed Sutton looks on with concern.
“Camille, we can stop any time.”
“Don’t worry. It’s… it’s only the rain…” the Girl of Tomorrow says through another forced chuckle while she wipes her eyes. “Next question. Please.”
It’s Mel’s turn to hesitate as she tries to decide whether or not to continue the interview, and after a brief internal debate, her professional curiosity wins out.
“How do I put this delicately...” Sutton murmurs, hesitating briefly before ultimately deciding on the most innocuous, straightforward wording. “Are you alright?”
For such a simple question, it sparks an entire gamut of emotions that rapidly flicker across Camille’s face. Though she manages to hold back the tears this time, Cosworth still can’t find it in herself to look her interviewer in the eyes. She fixes her line of sight on where her knees would be underneath the blanket, then she gives a couple of slow, silent shakes of her head.
“Oh. Oh dear…” Mel gasps, taken aback by the wrestler’s expression of abject heartbreak. “Does Yoona know?”
Another shake of the head.
The blonde draws a sharp intake of breath through her teeth, then she quietly says, “Perhaps you’d like some privacy to talk to --”
“No!” Camille interrupts, her voice surprisingly hard and resolute despite the naked hurt on her face, though her tone quickly softens again as she continues to talk after that initial interjection. “I… I can’t. Yoona’s been blowing up my phone along with the rest of my family, but I’m just… I’m not ready to have that conversation. If… if I tell her… she’ll start crying, and if she starts crying then I’ll start crying, and if I start crying, I… I… umm… I just don’t think I could stop.”
A hush falls over the room, FAWN’s social media director at a loss for words as the thousand probing questions racing through her mind weigh against her empathy for her crestfallen interviewee. After the silence stretches out past a dozen seconds, it’s Cosworth who abruptly speaks up again.
“Next question, please.”
Still holding hands with the injured wrestler, Mel gently rubs her thumb across the top of Camille’s knuckles, as much to gather her own courage as to comfort her subject, and after another five seconds she finds it in herself to say, “Tell us about your injury.”
“Oh boy… ohhhh boy... I was afraid you were gonna ask that…” Cosworth sighs. “Just… just gimme a sec…”
The brunette takes in a deep breath, puffs her cheeks, and blows it out slowly. She does it again, and then again, and that finally seems to sufficiently settle her nerves to deliver some very hard news to her fans, her colleagues, her friends, and her family.
“Spondylolisthesis,” Camille says while lifting her head to look directly into the camera. “I… uhh… I probably pronounced that wrong, but that’s what the medical team says. Apparently that’s a fancy way of saying that some bones and cartilage have shifted out of place in my spine, and now they’re pressing against the nerves. We won’t know for sure until I get to the hospital for an MRI first thing in the morning, but… umm… it… it doesn’t look good. Dr. V’s great at what he does, but he’s got a lousy poker face. When I asked him how long it’d be before I could get back in the ring, he got… he got real quiet all of a sudden.”
Cosworth’s own voice becomes quiet as she struggles to maintain her composure. She turns to look at Mel for reassurance, but the other woman looks just as despondent as she feels, so Camille directs her attention back to the camera. Her mouth opens but no sound comes out, and her lower jaw quivers for a couple of seconds before she rediscovers her voice, cracked and squeaky but still functional.
“So guys, this might be… this might be goodbye…” she finally manages to say. “You know, I had this big speech planned out in my head as I was sitting back here, but God, this is… really… really hard and I’m drawing a big blank right now.”
The Girl of Tomorrow chuckles again, and this time it sounds genuine albeit heavy-hearted.
“I guess I should start by saying ‘Thank you’ and ‘I’m sorry.’ There was so, so much more I wanted to show you guys. I never got to do my Double Moonsault, or my Corkscrew 630 Senton, or my Springboard Dragonrana, or all sorts of other awesome moves I haven’t even thought of yet. If only…”
What remains of Camille’s facade cracks and the tears start flowing freely, but she still manages to maintain enough composure to mostly stifle a sob.
“...if only I had more time.”
Mel starts to signal for the cameraman to cut the feed before the dam bursts, though Cosworth stops her with a squeeze of her hand.
“I have more to say,” she softly mutters to the blonde before increasing her volume and speaking to the camera directly once more. “I don’t… I don’t want to be mourned. I don’t want anyone to weep for the career that I’ve lost, I want you guys to fondly remember the career that I’ve had. I got my time in the Sun… almost two years sharing a ring with the greatest wrestlers in the greatest federation in front of the greatest, greatest fans… that’s more than most people get and it’s more than I could’ve asked for. That’s what’s important, I think. To stay positive and keep things in perspective, even when -- especially when -- life isn’t…”
Camille stumbles over the words.
“...life isn’t... it… it’s not...” she stutters as her features -- up till now pretty even in grief -- suddenly contorts into something grotesquely anguished and tortured.
“...it’s not FAIR!” she wails, and with that, her final defenses crumble.
A wave of hopeless, bitter despair washes over her, and this time the Girl of Tomorrow can’t help but be swept away. Cosworth leans forward and to the side to tightly latch onto her interviewer, and then she begins to bawl her eyes out.
“OH GOD, IT’S NOT FAIR!” she screams into Mel’s bosom in between choked, heaving sobs. “IT’S NOT FAIR! IT’S NOT FAIR!”
FAWN’s social media director looks as if she’s on the verge of tears herself. She quickly gestures to the camera, and the video feed abruptly cuts to black before switching to the company logo a few seconds later.
CAMILLE COSWORTH
MEL SUTTON
Despite the festive accessories, the mood in the room is remarkably somber and sad.
“Okay, we’re rolling,” the unseen cameraman announces.
Mel takes a deep breath and turns to her subject, reaching out with her right hand clasp the other woman’s left as she says, “Ms. Cosworth, you don’t have to do this…”
“A promise is a promise, Mel,” Camille reassures, plastering a small, lopsided smile onto her face. “Besides I… umm... I want to end the year on a better note than… uhh… well, you know...”
Her smile falters and she blinks a few times in rapid succession.
“...than that,” Cosworth finishes after a pregnant pause. “Soooooo yeah… let’s… let’s do this interview, alright? And please, just call me Camille. Ms. Cosworth makes me feel old, and I… I don’t need that right now.”
“Yes, of course… Camille.”
Sutton flips through her notes, then she clenches her jaw while rubbing at her temples with one hand. Twenty-four hours ago, she had anticipated a light-hearted chat with a victorious Girl of Tomorrow, thus she had prepared rather frivolous, softball questions which now seem grossly inappropriate.
More than a little flustered, Mel sheepishly admits, “My apologies, but I don’t know where to begin.”
“‘Merry Christmas’ would be a good start,” Camille offers, gesturing towards her hat with one hand.
“Merry Christmas,” Sutton says with a soft chuckle, sounding relieved, then her voice turns melancholy as she adds, “I’m sorry, but I can’t imagine that this is a very happy holiday for you…”
The Girl of Tomorrow sharply sucks in a breath before she replies, “Yeah… yeah, it’s… uhh… it’s tough. Almost as bad as the year when I asked for a PlayStation 2 and got a Dreamcast instead…”
Cosworth strains and forces herself to laugh, loudly and awkwardly. Mel elects to not partake in the feigned merriment, keeping her expression solemn even as she gives her subject’s hand a comforting squeeze which Camille is quick to return. The fake laughter peters out after a couple of seconds, and Sutton begins her interview in earnest, putting away her prepared questions and going with her instincts.
“Camille, I want to begin with your match with Celia Blassenville. I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that my heart nearly stopped when you fell from the top turnbuckle to the floor. What happened there?”
The Girl of Tomorrow purses her lips and rubs at her forehead for a second before answering, “Actually… umm… I’m not sure myself. All I know is that after I hopped to the top rope, I suddenly got super dizzy and my vision started to blur. Next thing I know, I’m on the ground and Merle’s asking about my toes and everything -- and I mean everything -- hurts.”
“You blacked out?” Mel asks.
“Uhh yeah... I guess so?” Cosworth replies “Dr. Vannacutt says it’s probably because of blood loss. Apparently there’s, like, a metric crap-ton of blood vessels in the forehead and I got busted open pretty good.”
“Merle tried to stop the match quite a few times after you started bleeding. Why did you insist on continuing?”
Camille leans back further onto her stack of pillows, then she tilts her head towards the ceiling and lets out a weary sigh. She closes her eyes, runs a hand over her face, and sits in silence. After about five seconds, Sutton thinks that she isn’t going to respond.
“You don’t have to answer that, Camille. We can move --”
“Celia said something that really… really got to me,” the brunette interjects. “Not all that mumbo-jumbo about fear of falling or whatever, that kind of stuff doesn’t even register, but she said something about leading others to failure.”
Demonstrating an impressive memory and attention to detail, Mel quotes, “’She’d willingly inspire others to follow her up the mountain of fame even if they plummet to obscurity and injury only steps later.’”
“Yeah, that’s it,” Cosworth affirms. “I dunno… that just… I mean, this is going to sound stupid, but it made me feel like a villain. Like I was luring kids off a cliff with candy or something. I just wanted to show that, yeah, there are going to be a couple of nasty falls and losses along the way… blood, and sweat, and tears, and all that other good stuff… but you just gotta keep fighting through it… pick yourself up and everything’s gonna be...”
Camille’s voice cracks.
“...every -- everything’s gonna…”
She still can’t get the words out, and now the lump in her throat feels like it’s grown to the size of a grapefruit. Eyes suddenly welling, the Girl of Tomorrow tilts her head back and clenches her interviewer’s hand so tightly that Sutton grimaces in pain, though the diminutive blonde squeezes back rather than try to pull away.
Cosworth quietly mumbles to herself, “Keep it together, Coz… keep it together… keep it together…”
Normally one to wear her heart on her sleeve, an emotional and visibly shaking Camille struggles to maintain her composure. She shuts her eyes, causing a few displaced teardrops to track down her cheeks, and she takes a couple of deep, sniffling breaths.
“...everything’s gonna… gonna be o-okay…”
Cosworth finally gets the words out with a choked sob before opening her eyes and turning her gaze back to the FAWN social media director. The effort seems to exhaust her, and she spends several seconds panting heavily as a wide-eyed Sutton looks on with concern.
“Camille, we can stop any time.”
“Don’t worry. It’s… it’s only the rain…” the Girl of Tomorrow says through another forced chuckle while she wipes her eyes. “Next question. Please.”
It’s Mel’s turn to hesitate as she tries to decide whether or not to continue the interview, and after a brief internal debate, her professional curiosity wins out.
“How do I put this delicately...” Sutton murmurs, hesitating briefly before ultimately deciding on the most innocuous, straightforward wording. “Are you alright?”
For such a simple question, it sparks an entire gamut of emotions that rapidly flicker across Camille’s face. Though she manages to hold back the tears this time, Cosworth still can’t find it in herself to look her interviewer in the eyes. She fixes her line of sight on where her knees would be underneath the blanket, then she gives a couple of slow, silent shakes of her head.
“Oh. Oh dear…” Mel gasps, taken aback by the wrestler’s expression of abject heartbreak. “Does Yoona know?”
Another shake of the head.
The blonde draws a sharp intake of breath through her teeth, then she quietly says, “Perhaps you’d like some privacy to talk to --”
“No!” Camille interrupts, her voice surprisingly hard and resolute despite the naked hurt on her face, though her tone quickly softens again as she continues to talk after that initial interjection. “I… I can’t. Yoona’s been blowing up my phone along with the rest of my family, but I’m just… I’m not ready to have that conversation. If… if I tell her… she’ll start crying, and if she starts crying then I’ll start crying, and if I start crying, I… I… umm… I just don’t think I could stop.”
A hush falls over the room, FAWN’s social media director at a loss for words as the thousand probing questions racing through her mind weigh against her empathy for her crestfallen interviewee. After the silence stretches out past a dozen seconds, it’s Cosworth who abruptly speaks up again.
“Next question, please.”
Still holding hands with the injured wrestler, Mel gently rubs her thumb across the top of Camille’s knuckles, as much to gather her own courage as to comfort her subject, and after another five seconds she finds it in herself to say, “Tell us about your injury.”
“Oh boy… ohhhh boy... I was afraid you were gonna ask that…” Cosworth sighs. “Just… just gimme a sec…”
The brunette takes in a deep breath, puffs her cheeks, and blows it out slowly. She does it again, and then again, and that finally seems to sufficiently settle her nerves to deliver some very hard news to her fans, her colleagues, her friends, and her family.
“Spondylolisthesis,” Camille says while lifting her head to look directly into the camera. “I… uhh… I probably pronounced that wrong, but that’s what the medical team says. Apparently that’s a fancy way of saying that some bones and cartilage have shifted out of place in my spine, and now they’re pressing against the nerves. We won’t know for sure until I get to the hospital for an MRI first thing in the morning, but… umm… it… it doesn’t look good. Dr. V’s great at what he does, but he’s got a lousy poker face. When I asked him how long it’d be before I could get back in the ring, he got… he got real quiet all of a sudden.”
Cosworth’s own voice becomes quiet as she struggles to maintain her composure. She turns to look at Mel for reassurance, but the other woman looks just as despondent as she feels, so Camille directs her attention back to the camera. Her mouth opens but no sound comes out, and her lower jaw quivers for a couple of seconds before she rediscovers her voice, cracked and squeaky but still functional.
“So guys, this might be… this might be goodbye…” she finally manages to say. “You know, I had this big speech planned out in my head as I was sitting back here, but God, this is… really… really hard and I’m drawing a big blank right now.”
The Girl of Tomorrow chuckles again, and this time it sounds genuine albeit heavy-hearted.
“I guess I should start by saying ‘Thank you’ and ‘I’m sorry.’ There was so, so much more I wanted to show you guys. I never got to do my Double Moonsault, or my Corkscrew 630 Senton, or my Springboard Dragonrana, or all sorts of other awesome moves I haven’t even thought of yet. If only…”
What remains of Camille’s facade cracks and the tears start flowing freely, but she still manages to maintain enough composure to mostly stifle a sob.
“...if only I had more time.”
Mel starts to signal for the cameraman to cut the feed before the dam bursts, though Cosworth stops her with a squeeze of her hand.
“I have more to say,” she softly mutters to the blonde before increasing her volume and speaking to the camera directly once more. “I don’t… I don’t want to be mourned. I don’t want anyone to weep for the career that I’ve lost, I want you guys to fondly remember the career that I’ve had. I got my time in the Sun… almost two years sharing a ring with the greatest wrestlers in the greatest federation in front of the greatest, greatest fans… that’s more than most people get and it’s more than I could’ve asked for. That’s what’s important, I think. To stay positive and keep things in perspective, even when -- especially when -- life isn’t…”
Camille stumbles over the words.
“...life isn’t... it… it’s not...” she stutters as her features -- up till now pretty even in grief -- suddenly contorts into something grotesquely anguished and tortured.
“...it’s not FAIR!” she wails, and with that, her final defenses crumble.
A wave of hopeless, bitter despair washes over her, and this time the Girl of Tomorrow can’t help but be swept away. Cosworth leans forward and to the side to tightly latch onto her interviewer, and then she begins to bawl her eyes out.
“OH GOD, IT’S NOT FAIR!” she screams into Mel’s bosom in between choked, heaving sobs. “IT’S NOT FAIR! IT’S NOT FAIR!”
FAWN’s social media director looks as if she’s on the verge of tears herself. She quickly gestures to the camera, and the video feed abruptly cuts to black before switching to the company logo a few seconds later.