Dan didn't think about how WW had killed three men anymore. It just wasn't something that floated through his head like it had. He didn't know if it was because he was more focused now, or if it was because Sam had watched the tapes with him and pointed out how badly the fighters that went down for the long sleep fought; how so many of them were winded within the first few rounds and basically presented no threat whatsoever to WW, who then worked them into a corner and threw what Sam called “very predator punches.”
“Aren't those just the nature of punches?” Dan asked Sam.
“No,” Sam said. “Just like all fights aren't dirty fights. This WW guy, or whatever his actual Russian name is, is a pro at making people think he is just some dumb brawler. Or he was. Now that he is moving up towards the upper echelon I think his 'team' has realized that they need to up the hocus pocus game—thus there are so many rumors about this guy floating around that if you believed them all you'd think that he was the Russian Oliver Twist turned Kimbo Slice.”
Kimbo Slice was an MMA fighter who had risen to fame through not only his fighting prowess, but also videos of him on the internet fighting people on the street. It was one of the now infamous stunts that he'd pulled in his career to garner attention and notoriety. But where was Mr. Slice now? He certainly wasn't nearly the fighting force people had thought that he'd be, even though for a while the MMA world had really stood in awe of him.
As the fight approached, Sam pushed him harder and harder in the gym. She found sparring partners for him that were the same size and weight as WW, and even had some of them fight the same way as the Russian. Dan found some of it to be very useful, but sometimes he just wanted to spar with someone for real, without the whole “this is what it would be like to fight WW,” shtick going on in the background.
During all of this Dan could feel Sam growing more and more attached to him, until they started sleeping together on a regular basis. It was one of those things that kind of just happened. It wasn't like they were dating though, but it was like they were sort of dating. They both had so much invested in each other it only felt natural for feelings to follow. Or that's how they both felt about it when they would talk about their budding relationship.
When the day of the fight arrived it wasn't Dan who was nervous, it was Sam. She got emotional and almost cried as she drove him to match. Dan tried to comfort her, but she wouldn't have it and just kept apologizing for being silly about her feelings. Dan told her not to feel badly for having emotions like a normal person, but before he could really comfort her they pulled into the place where the match was being held.
Dan kissed her on the cheek and they both got out and walked into the place tall and proud. When the first bell rung, Dan was more ready to fight the Russian—the famed and feared WW—than for anything else he'd ever done in his life. He wasn't nervous at all, and didn't feel like he needed to be a tough guy and stare down the other fighter. WW, however, put on a huge show of entering the ring and leering at Dan as if the big Russian planned to run over and try to bash his head in at any second.
The first round went well. They exchanged opening blows and moved around the ring. WW looked weary, like he had in all the videos, as if pacing himself for a fight that would go until time ran out. Dan wasn't so sure he fell for it, though. WW was big, and started to get winded quickly. Dan kept his eyes locked on WW's, and in the second round thought he saw a glimmer of something beyond the weary shell that WW presented.
Just before the round was about to end WW threw a solid hay maker that Dan deftly deflected before throwing his own powerful uppercut. For a second, time froze, or seemed to, and WW reeled backward, trying to keep his balance. Then, at the last moment, just before the bell was rung, WW fell to the ground flat on his back as if he were some kind of giant Red Wood. The sound that he made when he hit the canvas was an enormous thunk that made Dan wince.
When he returned to his corner to wait for the referee to finish his count he found none other than his trainer, mentor, and girl of his dreams all in one waiting for him. And then, in front of everyone in the world, she kissed him with full lips as the referee declared WW to be knocked out cold.
“You did it!” Sam yelled over and over.
Dan just smiled and picked her up, putting her on his shoulders—not like a kid, but like she was sitting on just one of his big deltoids. Then the crowd rushed up into the ring. It was the end of Dan being worried about what kind of a fighter he really was. He'd proven to himself and to Sam that he was serious about MMA, and that there wasn't anything in the world that he was going to let stand in his way.
Sam and Dan ended up staying together after the fight, and Sam continued to train Dan as well. Dan bought into the gym, becoming co-owner, and when he wasn't training for MMA matches he was training at risk youth not only how to defend themselves, but also how to control themselves.
Different news outlets kept contacting them wanting to do a story, and there were even a few offers put on the table having to do with a potential made for television movie. Sam wouldn't have any of it, though, saying that such things would only be a nuisance. And, as she liked to point out, it wasn't like they needed the money. Dan was making excellent money fighting, and the gym was in the black, and above and beyond that they had each other. What else did they really need?
~The End.
TAKEN BY THE MARINE 1
Jane was worried about Kyle. He kept telling her not to worry, that everything would be alright, but they both knew that there really wasn't any way for him to know if everything would be okay or not. That was just something people said to each other when they knew things could get bad but didn't want worry warts stressing out. Kyle was a platoon leader in Charlie Company. From what little Jane understood of his job Kyle was what many people referred to as a “door kicker.” She'd never asked him if he'd ever kicked any doors in, but figured that it wasn't something that was completely foreign to him. Jane didn't really know that much about Kyle's job, though. He never really went into it with her. He said there wasn't much to talk about.
Kyle was in the National Guard so he was around most of the time. But even though the guard commercials on television told people that the gig was one weekend a month, two weeks out of the year, it seemed like Kyle was gone much more than that. There was the way that every summer Annual Training event that took place was always over two weeks long. In fact, the last Annual Training event that happened over the summer Kyle had gone to another country overseas to train with their special forces—he'd missed a whole month at home. That was hard on Jane. She wanted to have kids but how were they supposed to raise kids if Kyle was always in a constant flux between home and away, and always stressed out.
As Jane looked down into her cup of tea she wondered how much longer she'd have to wait until Kyle came home from his weekend with the Guard. Sometimes he came home very late and then had to turn around and get up in the morning to head off to work—it was like the Guard didn't care at all if they made it hard for him at home during his personal time. Right now it was almost eight in the PM, and she wasn't sure why he wasn't answering her texts. Sometimes he wouldn't and he'd surprise her with his headlights. She'd asked why he wouldn't return her texts sometimes and he'd told her it was because when he left the drill center he turned his phone off if the command was copping an attitude about something. It almost always seemed like command was copping an attitude about something. If it wasn't how they wanted every soldier “ready to deploy at a moment's notice” then it was because someone happened to get a DUI during the off time and command was responding by playing a game where they would let the soldiers leave, only to call them right back to the drill center.
As Jane stared down into her cup of Earl Gray tea she wondered if Kyle would ever get over it. He hadn't deployed yet, though, and by the way he talked he wanted to. So she would have to wait for that to happen to really have her husband all to herself. It made Jane bitter sometimes to think about all the time that Kyle
spent away from her. It just didn't make sense. They were such a good looking couple together: Kyle with his broad shoulders, blue eyes, short blonde hair and stunning smile; Jane with her hourglass figure, silky black hair, and porcelain complexion. When they stood together for photos people always complimented them and told them how good they looked together, as if they were made for each other. It was something that she always liked to hear, that they were made for each other. Because it was something she really did think was true. The bond that they shared wasn't like the bond that other people shared. Other couples, even the couples that were close, didn't seem to be like she and Kyle were.
As the minutes ticked by she thought about how one time for Christmas, when they had both been very poor and just out of college, they'd needed money to get each other gifts. They had both stressed about this so much in the past that neither had wanted to bring it up to the other for fear of starting some kind of cascade of emotions; being broke is never fun, and sometimes when the reality of how broke one is crashes in it can leave people in tears. So they'd both tried to think of ways to raise money in a hurry. The only thing that Jane could think to do was give blood, but that wasn't a quick way by any means. When she brought it up to a friend, the friend suggested that Jane cut off her hair and sell it. At first Jane was shocked. At the time she'd had hair down her back all the way to her rear end, and she'd never, ever even considered cutting it off to sell it. It just didn't seem like money could make up for her lost locks. In the end, though, she'd broken down and had her hair cut off. She'd made the arrangements so the cutting happened right before Christmas, when she and Kyle had said they would exchange gifts.
When Kyle had seen her he'd been shocked into silence, and at first Jane thought it was just about her appearance, but then she realized it was something else much deeper. She looked Kyle up and down, he looked dapper as usual, but there was one thing missing. Usually Kyle, during special occasions, would wear his grandfather's antique pocket watch. But not today. Today there was no pocket watch chain hanging neatly out of the front pocket of his shirt. Kyle didn't say anything, though. He simply offered up his gift.
Jane had tried to think about what could possibly be in the gift box he was handing her. She tried to think about what in the world he would have bought her, and tried not to let thoughts creep in about how he'd come up with the money. Surely he hadn't sold the watch! If he had, it would ruin her gift—a receipt to be exchanged for the polishing and buffing of the watch. Her hands trembled as she opened up the gift box to find a very expensive ivory comb.
“Oh my God, Kyle,” she'd sobbed, not being able to stop herself from crying. “I can't believe how lucky I am to have you!”
As she stirred her tea now it was one of those moments that seemed to hang suspended in her memory forever, like a still photograph of a time nearly forgotten, but somehow glazed onto the halls of her memory forever. She wondered if Kyle remembered. Well, of course he did. But she wondered what he thought about it now, and how he felt about the relationship after the years they'd been together. She wasn't so sure she was really happy anymore, and instead wondered if it was enough to just be hopeful for the future. That seemed like all she could muster on the given day, and in all honesty that was all she really needed. Or so she'd thought. But now doubts were weighing on her, calling for her to examine the situation.
What if something bad happened to Kyle during training? Or what if he got deployed?
Jane wasn't sure what she would do if either of those things happened, and both of them were a very real possibility for her husband. All she wanted was for the both of them to be happy, and she didn't think that the want for happiness necessarily excluded Kyle's military service, but it did certainly exclude him being maimed or killed. But how was she to bring up such things to him? It was so hard to talk to him about how she felt deep down sometimes. The Guard was such a part of his life that she thought that it was hard for him to see around it, as the saying went. But that's exactly what he needed to do—take a step back and really evaluate the situation based off of cold hard facts and reasoning, and not the pursuit of an idea.
What was the idea? That was something that she tried to suss out herself during times like this. After months and months of thinking about the nearest she could come to nailing down the idea that Kyle was chasing came to this: That his Nation needed him more than anything else, and that his sacrifices wouldn't be in vain. But with so much going on overseas that was completely and totally negative it was hard to look at a deployment as a sacrifice that mattered. What would his Company do if he went over, fight ISIS? Would they even know who they were fighting? Jane knew veterans who had gone to Iraq that now said it was a complete waste of their time. Would Kyle go over and come back bitter and disenfranchised from the system like they had become?
As Jane thought about these things, staring down into her tea, the headlights of Kyle's truck flashed her in the eyes as he pulled into the driveway. So he had been ignoring her texts again. But what was the deal this time? Had the Company's higher ups decided to be assholes again and play stupid games to the point where even the platoon leadership had to shut off their cell phones to keep some semblance of sanity.
Jane listened to the door of his truck slam, then the sound of his boots on the pavement as he walked up to the door. She didn't know if she was angry at him or not. She always felt this way when he would ignore her texts, even though she knew that there were reasons behind him ignoring her, that he really wasn't ignoring her as much as he was just being silent in himself. And she also knew how selfish of her it was to wish that he only thought of her, especially when so many young men depended on his leadership. And especially when Kyle didn't have anyone else to depend on. Because Jane knew deep down that while she was a good wife she didn't really understand what he was going through and also didn't understand what it was like to be in the military. She liked to think that she wasn't a self centered person, but if that were really true she would be more upset at the Company and less upset at Kyle. Of course she had every right to be upset, but directing it at her husband made no sense.
“Hey good looking,” Kyle said as he stepped through the door, letting in a cold blast of air. “How are you doing tonight?”
She sat looking down at her tea for a second before she glanced up at him.
“I'm all right,” she said. And then, because she just couldn't help herself, “Why didn't you answer my texts?”
Kyle just shook his head and didn't answer, instead making his way over to the sink to pour himself a glass of water.
“I've got bad news, babe,” Kyle said.
He leaned back against the counter top by the sink, then hopped up onto it so he was sitting on the very edge, the tips of the toes of his boots tracing small circles on the tile floor.
Jane's heart sank. She knew before he said anything that he was going to tell her that he was being deployed. She knew that she was going to have to make a huge sacrifice with Kyle, that they were both going to suffer while he was overseas. But she also knew that of the two of them only one of them was putting their life on the line, and that only one of them had been driven to sign on the dotted line of a military contract and serve their Nation. She knew that meant something, and said something about herself as well. But she also knew that not everyone was cut out for military. This just wasn't what she wanted, though. She didn't want to lose Kyle for any amount of time, much less a long amount of time—much less maybe forever.
“We're deploying,” Kyle continued. “We're headed to Iraq, and Syria, and hell, who else knows where. And we're going to sort out ISIS, and the rest of the people over there who think it's appropriate to light people on fire and cut peoples' heads off. It's time that this nation returned to fix the mess it made, and I'm proud to be going over. I know this is probably really hard to hear, and maybe even hard to understand, but it's time. I'm not willing to pass this mess on to the next generation, and neither are any of my guys, or any of com
mand. Not that any of us have a real choice in the matter, but you know what I mean.”
Kyle took a long drink of water while Jane looked at him.
Jane wasn't sure what to say. It wasn't a joke, although she desperately wanted him to tell her that it was. She didn't want to have to go without Kyle for any amount of time, much less an extended amount of time. And what if he was hurt? Or what if he came back with demons in his head from what head seen?
“When are you leaving?” Jane asked, her voice husky as she tried not to cry. “And how long have you known?”
“Not long,” he said. “They were telling us that we might go the last few months but they always say shit like that. They're always going on about how we might go now, or how we might go tomorrow. I guess someone way up the chain finally decided it was our time to hit the sands. I'm glad, in a way, because there was no way that we weren't going to get deployed, but they kept dragging their feet on it.”
Kyle took a drink of his water.
“Now we know,” he said. “And we're leaving at the end of the month. It's not much time at all, but considering we're being guaranteed that our tour would only be a total of twelve months, unlike how many Guard units are optioned out to spend fifteen to twenty months in the sands.”
Jane's mind spun. What if that happened to Kyle? What if they kept him over there longer then they were supposed to? Could they do that? Probably, because the government could do whatever they wanted to you once you signed on the dotted line, as Kyle liked to say. She hoped that this wouldn't be the case for Kyle. She knew that no matter how gung ho he was that inside he wanted to be with her, and maybe even start a family with her.
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