Title: Knight Life
Author: Luna
Feedback: Loved and appreciated…send it to ambersgrrl@yahoo.com
Archive: Luna’s Night Moves, Tainted Fiction, and Full Moon Romper Room…anyone else, please, just ask.
Fandom: Ring of Honor/TNA/Wrestling
Rating: NC-17 (What else would you expect from me?)
Type: Fantasy
Pairings: Too many to list…just read to find out who’s with whom.
Disclaimer: I have not now nor have I ever been associated with Ring of Honor or TNA. All the characters that you recognize belong to Ring of Honor, TNA, or themselves with the exception of the ones I’ve created. Nothing is being gained from this except a need to pass the time.
Summary: They’re tired of being lonely wandering from town to town and living for centuries in the company of their chosen brethren. Now they’re going to do something about it. Will fate play kindly with them or will they be left in misery?
Author’s Note: This is going to be slightly AU and I will be arranging things/facts as I see fit. Please people, if that bothers you do us both a favor and STOP READING NOW!!!
Anything else: Many thanks need to go to my loving sister who held my hand as I worked out the kinks in this idea. My other sister, the one god forgot to give me at birth, much love goes out to her for her most excellent beta work and all the time she spends holding my hand. You girls ROCK!!!!
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“Oh, look girls. It’s Mr. Personality,” Katrina drawled as she watched the young man approach their table. Eight heads swiveled watching as Punk took the last few steps to join them. “Come to entertain us with your witty repartee?”
A single brow rose, “I do believe you’re doing a fine job all on your own,” he returned.
“So you’re the asshole, huh,” Paige asked staring up at him. Her head turned in the redhead’s direction after a swiftly delivered elbow. “What was that for?”
“Could you please think before you speak? You’re almost as bad as Mya,” Kat ground out.
“Hey,” the multicolor haired girl yelled. “I’m not that bad.”
“Coyote ugly,” Martina said from her elbow.
Mya scowled at the four laughing girls. “I hate you bitches,” she growled.
Punk raised an eyebrow, “It seems I’ve missed something.”
Katrina muttered something that sounded suspiciously like “somehow I doubt that’s a first.”
The platinum blonde and the brunette on either side of her fell out laughing leading the young man to believe he was the butt of some joke. He tucked his hands under his arms leveling a glare on the redhead. She didn’t look the least bit contrite. In fact she looked rather pleased with Punk’s reaction causing his scowl to deepen.
The redhead finally took the time to really notice him. There was something in his emerald eyes that deflated some of her anger. It spoke of a pride that had been wounded once too often and hardened him. It was something she knew an awful lot about. Sighing she motioned to one of the chairs, “Take a load off?”
He wasn’t sure he wanted to if he was going to constantly be on the defensive. However it would make it extremely difficult to annoy his friends if he left before he’d even begun. Without another word he took the last free seat somewhat surprised to see that the only real “couple” seemed to be the multicolor haired girl and Ki. If he really thought about it that shouldn’t have surprised him.
Low Ki had a rough exterior that usually sent women in the other direction, but there was still a part of him that craved that very same affection he seemed to shun. It showed in the way that his face would subtly soften as Mya offered him a shy smile or a seemingly innocent touch.
Punk took a deep breath releasing it slowly as his fingers rubbed his forehead. This could get ugly in a hurry, especially if the young woman wasn’t as interested as she appeared. Though he and Ki didn’t get along most of the time he was part of the only family he would ever claim. He couldn’t stand by and do nothing while his friend got hurt. It brought back too many painful memories for him.
No one really knew how Low Ki had been turned. Only he had those answers and he had yet to share the full details with any of them. Punk alone had most of the story but even he didn’t know all of it. When the family, as they sometimes called themselves, had found him it hadn’t been pretty. He had nearly drained one of the city’s numerous homeless.
The tattered rags he had been wearing had been bloodstained and crusted with dirt. He had been more animal than human in appearance and mannerisms. His normally dark eyes had bled over to a shining golden light. Moonlight had glinted off the blood smeared over the lower half of his face and distended fangs.
They had stumbled across him accidentally while cruising the city streets late one night. Even though the young woman in Ki’s arms had been beyond saving he had refused to relinquish his hold on her. It had taken the combined force and talents of Hoyt and Daniels before they’d been able to subdue him enough to get the girl away.
Aries had been sent to dispose of the body discreetly. The young man had a natural talent for hiding those unfortunate victims when they had come across them before.
Chris, Lance, and Punk had debated what, if anything; they should do about the young man they had found. It was obvious to anyone that looked that he had been made and promptly discarded…or a more horrifying idea occurred to them. He had been made accidentally. It was that thought that encouraged the group of men into coaxing him back to their home for the time being.
Low Ki had been wary of the group even though all of them had gone out of their way to give him the space he so obviously needed. Once he realized that they weren’t going to hurt him he had locked himself in the bathroom for hours. When he had emerged he looked exactly as he did now. Even then he hadn’t spoken to them. He took refuge in the house’s meager library finding solace in books on Eastern philosophy.
It had taken weeks for him to be able to communicate with
them. It was almost as if he feared
once he spoke or showed the least bit of independence he would be forced to
live, once again, on his own. As he
slowly but surely found his own place among them he had opened up. Admittedly it wasn’t as much as Daniels may
have liked but at least the young man was speaking to them.
Late one night, some months after they had discovered him in that alley, Punk had found him sitting in a darkened room. Their eyes had not needed the light from the lamp on the table beside him. Low Ki’s dark eyes were trained on the bright stars beyond the windowpane. His face, in that moment, looked so lost so innocent.
Ki spoke his voice soft but deep enough to sound like it should hurt to speak. “My mother was the apple her father’s eye. She could do no wrong no matter how outrageous she behaved.” He paused then making Punk wonder if that’s all the information that he was going to share. “People like to believe that the mafia wasn’t around before the twenties. That’s not the case at all. They were here right along with the rest of the Italian immigrants carefully blending in with the rest of society.”
The young man had given a mirthless laugh. “She was the daughter to a minor lieutenant. Even in that time she had far more freedoms than many other young women her age. Her father’s position let her get away with things that never would have been tolerated had she been anyone else.”
He turned to Punk then; the look in his eyes was part bitterness part sadness and part something else. Punk might have been inclined to say betrayal but it was gone so quickly that he couldn’t be sure he’d seen anything at all. The young man let the silence build telling Ki that he could either continue or not. It was entirely up to him.
Ki turned back to the window and the stars beyond it. His hands came up to rub his face in a wearied fashion. A deep sigh was followed by the almost silent sound of shifting fabric. His head came back to rest against the chair fingers digging into the arms. “My father was one of the many nameless faceless immigrants that come to America hoping for a better life. He just exchanged one kind of hell for another. He was a runner for my grandfather. He was paid well for his duties; too bad he didn’t have enough sense not to get involved with the boss’s daughter.”
The silence once again built up around them. Low Ki was quiet for so long that Punk was sure that was going to be the end of the conversation. The deep reverberating growl that erupted from the smaller man startled him making him jump. Punk looked over at the other man only to see him now standing in front of the window gripping the sill hard enough that there would be deep finger impressions in it.
“I never got the chance to know him,” he confessed so quietly that had it not been for enhanced hearing Punk never would have heard it. “He was dead and buried before anyone even knew I was coming. According to what I’d been able to gather later they had a rather heated affair. My father was infatuated with her. She was the sun and moon to him.” He turned to look at Punk. “All he wanted was for her to love him as much as he loved her. Was that too much to ask?”
Punk didn’t know what to say to that. He hadn’t had much in life but he knew that his parents had loved each other and their children. If what he was hearing was the truth, and he suspected that it was, then his mother had played his father for a fool. There couldn’t be a worse feeling in the world than to know that you had not been wanted.
“Do you think that we’re damned, like everyone says,” Ki asked softly.
The jump in topic threw Punk off and it took him a moment to catch up. “No, I don’t think we’re damned. We didn’t choose this life; we had it forced on us. We’re just making the best of what we’ve been given.” Then feeling that he had gotten more serious than he had intended he added, “Making lemonade out of lemons or some shit like that.”
The younger man nodded his head but not like he believed it. That had been the end of that conversation.
A decade later Punk’s insomnia had once again gotten the better of him and he was prowling the lower level of their expansive home. Over the years he had thought a lot about that conversation between Ki and himself. He couldn’t shake the feeling that there had been something in it that had escaped him. It bugged him like he should have known what the other man really had needed an answer to.
Punk stumbled into what they laughingly called the family room to find Low Ki. His dark eyes stared sightlessly into the empty fireplace. His fingers hung loosely intertwined between his knees. Punk wasn’t sure how the young man managed to do it, but he seemed to be both angry and sad without being either.
Without turning to look at the taller man Ki said, “Did you know in all corners of the world vampires are reviled? Whether it’s because we chose this life or because we’re just lost souls who refuse to move on. Now all cultures of the world think that we’re some sort of myth to scare small children with. We’re the evil dead.” He ran his hands over his bald head in a frustrated manner, as if he’d been going over and over this and was stuck in some sort of loop.
Punk folded his arms over his chest leaning against the doorframe. “We’re neither evil nor dead,” he tossed back, knowing that he was provoking a confrontation but feeling the other man needed to get whatever the hell was bothering him off his chest.
Low Ki finally turned pinning the bigger man with a golden stare. “Aren’t we? I mean, after all we feed off the living so we can’t be alive ourselves, now can we? And what else would you call us, if not evil. We should not be,” he enunciated every word.
“Is that what this is about? You don’t think we should be? Listen up sunshine, no one is making you stay. If you’re that unhappy walk out and meet the next bright new day, but don’t drag us all down with your baggage. As a matter of fact cancel my subscription cuz I’m sick and tired of your issues!”
Before he even had time to realize just how raw that nerve was he was laying in what used to be the entryway table. Ki’s eyes had bled over to the darkest of ebony, a sure sign that he was beyond pissed now. His fangs had descended glinting in the pale lighting. His hands were clenched into fists so tight the knuckles were white.
“Don’t you think I’ve tried,” Ki hissed. “How do you think I ended up like this? I’ve tried to get out but there is no end!”
Punk picked himself up off the floor glaring at the smaller man. “So that’s it. You’re a coward. You couldn’t actually end it so you were hoping someone else would do it for you.”
Rage and pain lined Low Ki’s face as he launched himself at Punk. His punches were wild and easily deflected by the other man. Pink tinged tears rolled down his cheeks the blows lacking any real force. “I’m not a coward,” he choked out and repeated it over and over again like some kind of mantra.
The larger man could hear the others coming to investigate the commotion. By the time they arrived Punk had subdued Ki. His arms wrapped around the shorter man his cheek pressed against Punk’s shoulder. The now whispered mantra continued. Punk rubbed the back of Ki’s head. “You’re not a coward,” he assured the other man.
Emerald eyes met the coffee colored gaze of Daniels. Punk already knew that he would never tell him what had occurred. It was too raw too exposed and something he knew all too well about. A bond had been forged that night between the two men and while it was never spoken about they both understood. They might not always get along but they always had each other’s back.
That’s why the interaction between Mya and Ki disturbed him. Her shy glances and his heated stares said there was something there, but whether it was permanent or temporary only time would tell. He hated this helpless feeling. The young woman didn’t realize she had the power to crush the one man that had come to be more than just a friend…he had become family. Punk would do anything to protect his family, no matter the cost.