act ten: the final act

In the place of his father, where the man who had brought him up from childhood had faded into darkness... there stood a familiar figure from a time now long ago. Dominic Pericolo froze in place as he watched on, the long, blonde locks of hair first cutting through the darkness like the sun itself. Her face was almost shining, blue eyes piercing deep as they'd once done long ago... she was a woman of strong appearance, and of a gentle nature.

She was his former love from his teenaged years, the very woman he'd once almost died alongside of. Her name was Crystal Parker... and for the first time in so very, very long, she was standing before him once again.

Her smile seemed to haunt him as she spoke the first words he'd heard from her since all those years ago, her voice just the same as he'd always remembered.

"It's been awhile, Dominic... I see you've came a long, long way since then."

"Crystal, how..."

She shook her head. The young woman had not changed since the day of the accident, for death knew no age or imperfection. She was just as she had always been before, the person Dominic had loved and lost... but, somehow even more than that. It was a strange sensation that flooded Dominic, a familiarity associated not only with Crystal, but with others as well that seemed to radiate from her.

With an understanding smile, Crystal opened her arms as if to represent something more than just herself surrounding her. There were faces, faded and dim... but familiar to Dominic as the faces of those fallen friends and family who had passed on long ago.

Gritting his teeth, Dominic forced back his tears as he saw all those he'd loved who had passed on long ago... those people now represented by the image of Crystal Parker, the one among them he felt he could have saved... the one among them he believed he had failed.

"I've been waiting for you, Dominic... all this time, I've gotten to watch you turn into this amazing human being... but I've had to suffer through the fact that you've kept me here with your regret."

A stab of pain pierced the heart of the hero, crippling him and drawing all the breath from his lungs. Suddenly, Dominic felt cold... as if a bit of life had been drained from him with her words, the tears that once were capable of being held now breaking free from his restraint, falling like waves from beneath his now shut eyes.

It was his fault, then... it was his fault she couldn't rest in peace. To Dominic, it was that he hadn't been there when she'd needed him most... it was him failing in his responsibilities that had caused her death, and it was because of those feelings that he'd suddenly felt so cold. Was this the affirmation of his deepest fears? Was this...

"... no, Dominic, no. You didn't fail at anything, you... you've been holding onto this belief that you did, and that is what's stopping me-- that's what's stopping you-- from moving on. Dominic, you... what happened you could have never prevented, yet you still think you could have. And not just with me! You... you think this same thing with so many others..."

With old friends he'd felt he had abandoned so long ago.

With family he never really got to know all too well.

With his best friend, the godfather of his child now dying before his eyes.

Those he'd felt he could make an impact for the better in, Dominic believed to have failed. Even with the NLCW, Dominic felt he could have came back so much sooner... he'd felt the stab of failure when the NLCW began to buckle under financial strain, the belief that it was his lack of an earlier effort that had stopped him from what he could have done.

Soon, there came a new voice to sound alongside of Crystal's own... a voice that Dominic had came to love over the span of so many years. Lifting his head, Dominic's eyes went wide as his wife, Suki, stood at Crystal Parker's side... a sense of pain in her eyes as she looked across the darkness to him.

"Dominic, you... you take on all this blame for so much, yet... yet you try to put it all behind you. You keep blaming yourself but you never actively deal with that blame... you keep running forward in this belief that only brighter days will come, and you... damn it, Dominic, you're just hurting yourself in the end!"

Closing his eyes, Dominic felt the sting of his angel's words touching true with what he'd always known. For so long... Dominic had been able to push past so many of his former demons surrounding the three of them. Be it coming to accept what had happened back then, accepting the new life he'd started several years ago with Suki... he'd felt no guilt nor regret from moving on and starting a new life with her, but...

... he still believed he could have saved Crystal's life in the end.

Even with all he'd done to accept what had happened, there was still that underlying belief rooted deep within his mind. It continued to effect him even with all those lost within his life... as if, in their own situation, he could have done the same. Hell, he... he still believed he could have stopped Suki from coming close to suffering a similar fate as Crystal, too.

It had held him back from being able to truly deal with what had happened in the past with so many others, and it was holding him back from dealing with what was happening to Chris, too. Even now, even facing the three he'd held so much guilt towards, he was still being held back before their eyes.

Even after all the faux confidence Dominic had tried to push forward in the past to cover the vulnerabilities that lied beneath it all.

"You have to keep going, Dominic... hope's not a bad thing to hold tight to, but... it's going to kill you if it's the only thing you let yourself see! The reality of this world is harsh, and... it's one you have to face, with hope and understanding. You can't keep ignoring the possibilities of what may happen to us anymore."

A new face now rose from the darkness to the sound of Suki's words, a face that could always be counted on to spark the competitive desire in Dominic's heart... but a face that seemed to now do nothing more than place a pit of dread in his chest. The man Dominic feared to see die before him... the man who had been there for Dominic throughout almost all of his career.

Christopher Champion sighed, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Death is the natural course of life, Percolator... it's the final act of each and every person's story, and as much as you love to talk all this shit the fact is, you... you can't really accept that, can you?"

Dominic shook his head fervently, a glare setting in his eyes as his fists clenched in rebellion, the muscles in his neck straining with the words torn from his throat.

"Of course I can accept that, Chris! It's common sense, but... damn it all, this wasn't how our story was supposed to end!"

It was Crystal's turn to speak in Champion's place, as Champion shook his head at the predictable answer from his best friend's mouth.

"Dominic, you... who are you to pen the ending of a story between two people?"

The war of sun and moon... the eternal balance of yin and yang... the two favored warriors sent from the heavens to fight on for all time. Dominic had always seen he and Champion as two men set to fight each other for practically all their lives... but when the script was changed around by the poison killing Champion, he...

He tried to force it back to how it was.

"I'm going to die, Dominic... there's no getting around that. Maybe not from this poison, hell I might wreck my car on the way to the arena... but no matter what happens, Percolator, I am going to die. You can't stop the inevitable, man..."

Suki was the next to speak, her eyes softening as she watched Dominic's reactions, Dominic clutching at his head in pain. It was as if a part of him was resisting everything they were saying, while another part of him knew the good it would bring... and that part desperately wanted to pull free from his past.

"Dominic, I... listen to me, sweety. I love you, okay? But I know... I know I could lose you at any moment because of what you do. That's life, Dominic, I've grown to accept it... but I know to hope and believe that the best will happen despite that knowledge. You see, Dominic? I... I know what might happen, but I keep faith in the idea that the best could still be waiting for us."

Nothing is inevitable when it comes to the future... nothing but the passing of time and death itself. How it happens, when it happens, where it happens... these are all unpredictable invariables that Dominic had for so long simply ignored. The dream of growing old together, of having intertwined families enjoying the days of prosperity they'd share in the future. Dominic envisioned summer visits from Champion's family, he believed those days were still to come...

... yet reality said that would be an impossibility.

Dominic was always so busy writing his dreams of the future down that he never stopped to wonder where those dreams may actually lead. Buy a new home, and they could just as easily be exposed to kind and loving neighbors as they could lurking demons looking to tear their family down.

He couldn't just ignore those dangers, nor could he immerse himself in the fear of them alone. In the end, he... he would have to adopt the same method that so many others before him had learned to do in this life: a fairytale is a nice escape, but reality says that an understanding of what may come, with a stubborn sense of optimism despite it... that is the only kind-of fairytale we can ever truly live in this life.

"You have to see the good and the bad... and you have to hope for that good while knowing what may lie around the corner."

Finally, the three figures so prominant in Dominic's guilt came forward, each standing only feet away from him. They could see it, somewhere deep inside the man was a split of two sides, the idealist buried within him fighting to maintain hold as the man Dominic Pericolo had become fought to show the idealist the reality of their situation.

For too long, Dominic had been content with just being the boy scout who had a world of greatness ahead of him, all because he stayed true to himself and where his dreams came from...

... but, if he were to go any farther on this journey through the dawn, he would have to learn to cope with when those dreams could no longer come true.

"You have to let us go, Dominic..." came Crystal's voice, her hand gently resting on his shoulder, "There's nothing you could have done to save me, or any of the others. You just... you were there for us as a friend, as someone we loved. You were there for us, Dominic... even when we needed you most, you were there, and... in the end, you did exactly what you needed to do. It's time to accept that, Dominic... it's time for you to move on."

The image of Crystal began to fade to the darkness, and in her place stepped forward Suki, who came in close to hug him, to place a gentle kiss on his cheek. Smiling softly, Suki ran her hand across his face, staring deep into his eyes... trying to bring about a calmness despite the internal storm raging deep inside of him.

"Dominic... you can't keep ignoring the fact that bad things might still happen. You and I will be fine, I really do believe that, but... even with that, you have to be ready for any tragedies this life may bring. You can't keep yourself in denial that anything but perfection is waiting for us in this world... in the end, that sort-of fantasy is only going to bring you suffering, and I... I don't want to see you have to face that, sweety."

Arms crossed over his chest, Christopher Champion watched on as Suki faded before Dominic's eyes, leaving the still conflicted man to stare out into the darkness before finally locking eyes with him. Sighing, Champion shook his head, his own body beginning to fade.

"You can't save everyone, Percolator... not when you've yet to even save yourself."

And as Champion continued to fade, a new memory flooded through Dominic's head, crushing him with a sense of hypocrisy as he realized that those very words were ones he'd once spoken to Chris before their first match... words that now seemed to hold true to the both of them.

With a sad smile, Dominic wiped the tears away from his eyes and shook his head, a gigantic weight seemingly lifted off from his shoulders. The battle wasn't over yet, there was still one last person to address... but it was someone Dominic knew he would have to make see the light one way or another, if he was ever to break free from the pain they stood to bring him.

The weight that had been lifted was standing behind Dominic, and as the hero turned... he stared back into the eyes that once dreamed of who he might one day be.