Altered Perspectives
By: Catherine

He always felt better when given the impression that he was somehow above the rest of the world; not from a societal standpoint, but rather physically. That brief moment before he jumped off a ladder, when he could see the sometimes excited, sometimes terrified faces of those below was when he felt most alive.

Now it was the only time he could feel alive.

The feelings that lingered within him were all but dormant now, quelled, but not quite. Sighing deeply, he stared at the night sky. Grey clouds blanketed it; the seamless horizon broken up only by tall city buildings protruding upwards like Excalibur or the occasional light. Yet, the light felt almost close enough to touch. He reached out across the sky, as a child would to a proffered piece of candy. The light out there beckoned because he was having so much trouble finding it within himself. He took a step closer, then one more, until he felt that the tip of his shoe make contact with solid air.

It wasn't that he hated his brother or Lita. He hated the notion that people thought he couldn't live without them. He'd never even gotten the chance to try. But wrestling fans were fickle and they always got what they wanted. Vince told them that they would be a team again and they'd barely seen any screen time.

Matt let out a deep sigh, if he tried hard enough, he could still see things from a fan's point of view; after all, he was still a fan. He squinted at the sky, as if the answer was written in the clouds. His own soft sigh contributed to the wind's sporadic lullaby like a lover's whispered departure.

On some nights, rare at first, but becoming more frequent, he felt like he was standing in the middle of a tornado. But he didn't want to run from it, he wanted to embrace it. Yet two others held his hands and he couldn't do it. It was within his power to break their grip, but a few within the tornado, those at the top, didn't want him to do it. Similarly, the people on the outside would be heartbroken.

Kind of like he was at the moment.

Because he wanted to step into that tornado; he wanted his chance to be whipped around, tossed up and down, maybe even hurled out of it entirely, but at least he'd be doing it, moving around and experiencing new sensation instead of this god awful stagnation. It seemed that no matter where he went, the air around him was stale, like people hadn't been moving in the room for years, even though there were happy, smiling faces all around him.

The realization had struck him hard, harder than the fist of anyone he'd faced. The air around him wasn't stale - he was stale. In the middle of a room, he'd nearly choked on that fact.

Ever since then, while he honed his body to get back into the ring, he could feel it. His attempts to stop it would be like holding out one's hand to stop a train. Then one day his spirit simply atrophied. Things that had once sent him soaring: the adulation of a crowd, pulling off an incredible move, the love of those around him; now, those things barely made him leap for joy. It wasn't that he didn't want to care, he just felt so stifled and immobile sometimes that he wanted to cry. In spite of that overwhelming desire, only a solitary sob escaped his lips, the sound quickly devoured by the night sky. He remembered the concept of osmosis, where cells would spread themselves thinner and thinner. That was how smells traveled. Matt wondered if it was the same with emotion. Could the sky carry anguish through the air? Would someone at the edges of the city, get even a whisper of what he was feeling?

He rather hoped not.

"Matt?"

Didn't turn around, didn't look at his brother's face because he knew what would be there: Concern, a tinge of fear, maybe some unease, all caused by him. Matt wondered when he'd started to worry his little brother so much. Matt wondered when he'd started not caring.

"What are you doing up on the ledge?"

Oh yeah, the ledge, he made no move to step down, gave no indication that he'd just heard a word. Instead, he began to bounce on his heels, rocking back and forth. A career full of high-risk maneuvers left him feeling completely confident in his sense of balance. He heard Jeff's surprised squeak and his mind flashed once again to osmosis; would anyone else feel Jeff's fear? The concept almost made him laugh: The World Wrestling Federation's most notorious daredevil was afraid.

Matt continued to stare at the lights, at the trails his vision made because he was moving. His body was moving, but not his heart. Another sigh escaped his lips and it occurred to him that his eyes were burning with unshed tears.

He didn't struggled when he felt Jeff's hand snag his elbow and drag him away from the precipice, he didn't care either.

"Matt, talk to me," Jeff pleaded. The cold wind was swirling around them, causing Jeff's hair to dance across his face. He was shivering inside his bulky winter jacket; whereas Matt, standing in dark jeans and a simple silk shirt, seemed outside of the cold.

They'd been standing there, Jeff facing his brother, Matt facing the sky for nearly ten minutes. All of the heart-stopping things he'd ever done in his life paled in comparison to the sight of his brother on the ledge.

"I wouldn't have jumped, you know," Matt declared. "That wouldn't be right. No matter what happens, I wouldn't ever do something like that."

"What's happening now, Matt?" Jeff asked, rubbing his arms together to generate some kind of warmth.

A slow, dead laugh slipped past the elder brother's lips as a cloud of moisture. "Nothing is happening now, Little Brother, that's the problem. You said you were feeling burnt out, what made you so tired? For me it's the fact that we're not doing anything. We'll be in the same spot, doing the same things for as long as everyone wants us to. And if we keep it up, we're just going to wind up hating this business and hating each other." Matt exhaled slowly, as if he was smoking a cigarette, "That would be bad."

He remained silent for a long time. Jeff could remember those nights where they would have a match and he'd walk down to that ring like it was the electric chair. There were nights when the match felt more like having teeth pulled without painkillers. It became a job and people in the business always said that when it became a job you should leave.

"You should head inside before your lips turn as blue as your hair," Matt said distantly, his eyes still focused on the horizon. "I won't be out here much longer." He assured his brother once again, listened carefully to his footsteps as he made his way towards the stairwell.

Oddly enough, Matt wanted a cigarette more than anything. He didn't smoke, but at that moment, he felt like he ought to be. It would be good, he decided to have something to hold between his fingers, to do with his mouth rather than scowl at the sky.

He didn't react when he heard the soft click of stilettos behind him.


Still shivering, Jeff made his way down to the room he was sharing with Lita and his brother. The walk did wonders, but certain parts of him still felt unbearably hot while his hands remained numb. Slipping off his jacket, he took the key card within his hands and entered the room.

Lita was packing, her back to him as he entered. She turned around and smiled, but it faded when she saw whom it was. "Hey, Jeff," she said warmly. "You didn't find Matt?"

"He's taking care of something," Jeff lied, flopping on to his own bed. He gazed up at the ceiling, ankles crossed. "Lita, have you ever gotten the feeling that you're not moving and the whole world is going one without you?"

She stopped in the middle of folding a T-shirt and tilted her head quizzically. "No." Then she sat down on the side of the bed and gazed at him, "Does this have something to do with this phase Matt's in?" She laughed the laugh of someone who didn't see reality. "Don't tell me he's gotten to you, too?"

For a split second, Jeff felt a surge of anger towards her. She didn't see things for what they were because she had everything she wanted: Team Extreme. But he quashed his annoyance and closed his eyes. Some time ago, Team Extreme being happy and together would have made him deliriously happy. But how could they be a team when one of their members was suffocating? Either she was so in love with Matt that she couldn't see how much he was hurting or she was so absorbed in her own life that she remained blind by choice.

Jeff remembered feeling so abandoned when Matt broke up the team. For the purposes of television, he'd had to act furious and macho. But it hurt him and he found himself alone, like he'd been tossed overboard and left floating in an ocean. Oh sure, Lita would probably have stayed with him, but it wouldn't have been the same.

But then, after his first solo match; it occurred to him that he had the chance to grow and develop not only his skills, but his on-screen personality. He remembered watching Edge and Christian both move on to successful singles careers. Why couldn't he and Matt do the same?

Unfortunately, there weren't enough people who understood their motivation and the whole thing flopped. So now they were all pulled back together, only instead of the bonds of family holding them together, they were tied down by the will of the fans.

Matt might have been the first to see it, but now Jeff could understand as well. He felt the quicksand they were trapped in as surely as if the mattress beneath him had metamorphosed. They had to separate, he knew.

And he couldn't rely on Matt to do it for him. Matt was too far into his own depression to be proactive. Besides, he'd already tried it once and it would be impossibly unfair to ask him to do it again.

Jeff nodded in silent acceptance of his decision.

He pursed his lips in concentration as he contemplated exactly how to do this, no matter how much it hurt.

Matt hoped this would hurt someone, maybe they would try to hurt him back and he would feel it. Maybe. That was one of the few reasons he was up here with Stacey. Because he shouldn't have her pinned to the cold brick wall, shouldn't have been kissing her and his hands shouldn't have been under her shirt.

He wasn't supposed to be doing this, and that's why. It didn't matter whether he was using her or she him; all that mattered was that they weren't supposed to be together at all. This was bound to hurt someone, but the secret was too well kept. It wasn't hurting anyone at all. Yet he felt nothing for this woman, but at the same time, the feelings within him, generated mostly by the stimulants coursing through his body in reaction to her touch, felt real enough.

So he went with it.

CODA:

Matt and Jeff were just finishing their first match back. The fans were screaming and cheering and even Lita was bouncing around like a child who'd been able to open presents after a long absence. Only the Hardys themselves weren't pleased. They played up to the crowd, but it was more of a knee-jerk reaction to having thousands crying out in adulation for their mere presence.

Similarly, when Billy and Chuck from behind attacked them, they fought off the threat with ease. It was so simple that Matt and Lita could fight undisturbed while Jeff slid out of the ring unnoticed. He was very polite to the ring keeper as he borrowed the man's chair.

He hit Chuck and then Billy when he'd crouched over to check on his tag team partner. With something dangerously close to amusement, he noticed how Billy fell right on top of Chuck in a mockery of a sexual position. The other two members of Team Extreme had their backs to him. And why not? Lita didn't care to see what was going on and Matt was too absorbed in his own plight to see the plain anguish on his brother's face.

Eyes blurred with tears, Jeff waited until Lita exited the ring, then politely tapped his older brother on the shoulder. Matt turned to him, head tilted quizzically. "I'm sorry," Jeff murmured, just before he brought the chair down on to Matt's skull.

As his brother slowly crumpled to the mat, Jeff exited the ring from between the second and third ropes. He brushed past Lita, who demanded to know what he was doing. Seconds later, she turned her back on him and went back to the ring.

Once backstage, he sought out an empty change room. Not bothering with the lights, he leaned his head against the closed door and sank down until he felt the light jarring in his spine as he hit the floor. He closed his eyes in anguish and bent so that his forehead was touching his knees.

There it was: The hardest decision he'd ever had to make and he'd carried it out without a hitch. He should have felt even a marginal amount of satisfaction, now that he and Matt both had what they wanted.

But he didn't.

As he felt a tear become caught by his facial hair, Jeff suspected that it would be a long time before this decision felt right.

THE END


*Sigh* Whatever happened to the one-shot, first person POV introspective pieces. When did these things get so long?

Cath