【 reseda, 2018 】

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━━ She never understood the point of the beach, nor why people seemed to like it so much.

She hated the feeling of sand slipping into every crevice of her skin. The salt in the air tasted so unfamiliar, so wrong. She found the beach to be her antithesis. The warm air and her cold heart did not mix well. The welcome feeling opposed the bitterness that encompassed her soul.

Despite the nature that so openly opposed the core of her being, Stevie could admit that the quiet was a welcome change to the constant noise that Los Angeles drowned itself in. School had been long over as her hair and skin mingled with the sand. Her feet were just barely skimming the tide, but she buried her toes in the damp shore all the same.

Tonight was one of those nights where she allowed herself to accept her lack of understanding of anything regarding the beach. The puffy pink clouds stood out starkly against the dimming indigo sky; the wisps of smoke that strayed from her pursed lips and nostrils had blended into a haze above her.

Stevie very rarely indulged in the blunts she had received from her time at Goldfinger's. She often stuck with a pack of Lucky Strikes that she pockets during her trips to the bodega, but she thought today was a day where she had earned a proper high. She found that any talk of her parents ( outside of her usual bullshit responses ) put her over the edge in a way nothing else could.

She wasn't entirely sure if the words she shouted at the counselor were words of truth, if she was being honest. She had vague memories of a life before the Red Room, but faces were never something that appeared. The closest thing to lullabies was the haunted humming of Tili Tili Bom, when one of her peers was about to die. Her bedtime stories were more of a biographical depiction of Baba Yaga rather than legends, for the fearsome Madame V was the modern iteration of the monster.

Her stance on her parents was dependent on whose voice was echoing louder in her head.

If Madame B ( her first handler ) was present, Stevie saw dead parents. A young couple who was shot in an uncomfortable bed, and weighed down to the ocean floor. Her life in exchange for their deaths. Their freedom in place of her captivity.

If she were to believe the words of Madame V, one of the few Black Widows who lived long enough to perpetuate the cycle of abuse, her mommy and daddy left her to rot. Their love for their daughter had a price tag that General Dreykov was willing to pay.

She had hoped Madame B was the honest one. Stevie, of all people, knew that there were far worse things than death. She could live with them being dead. She wasn't sure she could live with the idea that they were alive, for if they were, it was because they simply did not care about her.

Unfortunately, Madame V had more impact on Stevie than she wanted her to. Madame V had been a part of her life since she was just another girl who suffered under Dreykov's iron fist: back when Madame V was just Vasilisa Volkova and the name, Kealoha, was struck from memory. As Svetlana, she had seen the woman as a beacon of sorts.

Little Svetlana had yet to be hardened by the Academy. She looked to Vasilisa for protection from Madame B, but the Widow had taught her the hard way. She had forced Svetlana to adjust to her reality, feeding her morsels of wisdom that she had gained from her own childhood.

Our pain only makes us stronger.

Honesty is a dangerous thing.

A trusting Widow was a dead Widow.

Those were the first of many lessons Vasilisa had drilled into little Svetlana's head. Her words were some of the only things she remembered from before the electroshock treatment and the experimental lobotomies. If she wanted to survive this place, she couldn't trust a soul in the Red Room because everyone was fighting for their own survival.

❝ Even you? ❞

It felt like such a childish question with such an obvious answer in retrospect. However, when she had asked it, she was only a child with red rimmed eyes and a dark purple stain on her cheek, left by one of Dreykov's guards.

Vasilisa had seen how gifted she was. She had picked up on things far quicker than most of her peers. Svetlana was resented by many for that very reason. Dreykov had been taken with her for that very reason, and for the sake of that girl, Vasilisa would harden her for when that time came.

She had cupped Svetlana's injured cheek, lightly brushing her thumb against the bruise as if she was wiping a smudge of dirt away, before letting her hand fall back to her side.

❝ Especially me. ❞

She hissed at the sudden pain in her fingertips, drawing her of the memory. Her blunt had burnt to a stub between her thumb and forefinger. She had crushed the butt in between her fingers, and rubbed it into dust. Her fingertips had minor burns and ashes staining them that were easily washed away in the saltwater.

The high she felt was a rush of relief for her in more ways than one. The last thing she wanted was to continue down the rabbit hole of Vasilisa Volkova before she became Madame V and before Kealoha Halia turned into another statistic.

There was nothing worth remembering before the Academy, and yet, she missed the ❛ before ❜ all the same.

Her treacherous mind, instead, had gone to the fight and Miguel, who was making a home in her thoughts, but as she replayed the fight in her head, Stevie couldn't believe how well they seemed to work. Despite his clunky movements, they had done well together.

Stevie had done the heavy lifting when it came to making their moves cohesive. However, Miguel had impressed her, she couldn't deny that. With no more than a second of eye contact, he knew to sweep his leg while she knocked Kyler out.

Stevie Novak had never felt more monstrous, nor had she felt more human than when she was around Miguel Diaz. She had spent so much time being treated like a toy and a weapon and a nightmare, that she hadn't realized how much she missed the feeling of feeling like a person.

Miguel handled her with kindness, in a way that was so unfamiliar to her. He would regularly bring her food, and for the first time in years, she felt full. She couldn't even remember the last time she was this well-fed.

If she had lost her temper on any one of her handlers the same way she had lost it on Johnny, she would've gotten a broken jaw. ( And that was only if they were feeling kind. ) Miguel pulled her back, and whispered to her. He was so close, Stevie could feel his breath on her cheeks. It smelled like cinnamon and oranges. His words were basic, but they almost put her in a daze.

He begged her to give him one minute to talk some sense into Johnny's head. He promised that if they weren't out in sixty seconds, or if their sensei was out of line after they left his office, he would not intervene if she still wanted to beat him up. Her head felt a little fuzzy and she nearly had a moment of weakness that she nearly relented to. However, once she caught Aisha out of the corner of her eye, she had abruptly stepped away from him. She had destroyed any semblance of the moment, choosing to remind Miguel of his remaining minute.

She would continually put distance between them whenever she saw someone's silhouette nearby. It almost made her feel bad when she saw the downcast look in Miguel's eyes that he tried to hide. But survival mode was her go-to for a reason, she hadn't lived as long as she had by feeding into a bleeding heart.

With his sad, golden eyes at the forefront of her mind, Stevie's high faded as quickly as it had hit her. The only hint of the drug she could feel lingering was a thousand stars falling from the night sky.

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━━ When her vision had cleared and the stars were very much stationary, Stevie made the trek back to the apartment. She had debated stealing an unchained bicycle that had been near the boardwalk since she had arrived, but she remembered that she didn't know how to ride a bike. Motorcycles and cars were easy; a standard bicycle was not.

Stevie had, instead, gotten the brilliant idea to jump into the back of someone's truck. She had not wanted to rebuild the cold sweat that she had worked up, the first time around. Stevie was hidden behind a large tent, and what seemed like a thousand toys for children to play with in the sand.

She was laying on the edge of the truck, watching for the roads leading her into a familiar area.

She was desperately avoiding thoughts of these clueless, naive children, who had absolutely no idea how lucky they were. They lived in an entirely different world from her, where one could not even fathom the other's life. Stevie could feel the music vibrating the entirety of the truck, and could hear the screeching giggles over the screaming of lyrics that didn't make any sense.

Meanwhile, she was hiding in the bed of a truck, the twilight chill sending a shiver up her spine. She was easy to hide because she was easy to overlook: it was the story of her life. A lingering guilt and an icy hatred had filled her for the four primary people who ruined her sad, empty life.

Fuck you, Madame B.

Fuck you, Dreykov.

Stevie wasn't willing to risk finishing that list. It was easy to curse the dead: it was harder to curse the living.

Once she saw the sign of West Valley high, Stevie rolled off the truck onto the empty street. She crawled onto the grassy median until the truck was out of sight and she stood up, stretching out the joints on her right side that had made first contact with the concrete.

From there, Stevie didn't have to wait long for the dingy entrance of the apartment complex to come into view under the fluorescent street lights. Despite the midnight sky, she hadn't felt even a little tired. The places her mind went today made sure of that: however, she could muster up enough energy to pretend to be too tired to deal with Johnny leaning outside her door.

Her fake yawn turned real as she stopped in front of the apartment, "What do you want?"

Johnny's eyes shot up from the pebble he was kicking around under the lights of the complex, as if he was waiting for her to show back up.

"Miguel told me what happened at the school." Stevie's first instinct was that he mentioned what he heard in the counselor's office to his sensei, and she wanted to knock his ass out.

"He said that the two of you managed to beat the shit outta those dickwads today...showed me one of those U2 videos and everything."

So Miguel kept quiet...who knows? Maybe he didn't even hear her scream.

...

Wishful thinking, I know.

Stevie became visibly hesitant at that, "Yeah, what's your point?"

"I knew you could fight, Fleetwood," Johnny was muttering as if he was still at a loss, "I didn't think you could fight like that."

"Careful, Josie," Stevie retorted, desperately clinging to the status quo of their fucked up relationship, "That almost sounded like a compliment."

Rather than feeding into it, Johnny reached into his pocket. He pulled out an old strip of black fabric, looking at it wistfully. He held it like it was precious to him in a way Stevie didn't really think possible for her neighbor.

"My mom bought this for me when I first joined Cobra Kai. It was way too small to wear it around my head, even when I was fourteen, so I tied it to my belt. Every practice, every match, I kept it on me."

This sounded so unlike him. Their relationship was exclusive to talking shit about each other behind their backs, and insulting each other directly. Any vulnerable talk made its already weak foundation violently shake. But even if they lived in a bizarre reality where they could do this, Stevie was not in a decent headspace to handle it with grace.

"Like I said, what's your fucking point?" She intended for it to sound far snappier than it did, but she just sounded exhausted. She always forgot how draining the thought of her parents was until she did.

Maybe that was why all Johnny did was huff before shoving it into her left hand ( the one she hadn't broken two months earlier ), "It's yours now."

For a moment, Stevie felt like her brain was short-circuiting. She looked at the thin headband before looking up at Johnny, then she looked back at the headband, and back up at Johnny before throwing it back at him.

"No."

Johnny began looking a little irritated now, "Why are you acting like I wiped my ass with it?" He threw it at her again, beginning a miniature tennis match of childish jabs and the sentimental gift flying between the pair. Emotionally speaking, Stevie found this to be much more comfortable than ill-fitting sentimentality.

"Why would you say that if you didn't wipe your ass with it?"

"Just take the damn headband."

"You're acting weird."

"And you're acting like a bitch!" Johnny finally snapped at her before gritting his teeth, the vein in his neck was beginning to bulge, "I'm trying to be nice."

"Exactly. Weird."

Johnny held onto the headband, and for a moment, Stevie thought he would give up and keep it. Maybe he could even give it to Miguel if he was so insistent on parting with it: he sure as hell likes him more than he likes her. But as soon as she accepted the win, Johnny threw it at her face and ran past her to his apartment. Stevie pulled the fabric from her face to see him slam his door shut.

Stevie just stood there, staring in disbelief, "...what an asshole."

She unlocked the door to the apartment, holding the headband in a fist. She secured the three locks she added onto the door moving to the desk setup she had by the one way window. She stood up on the chair, able to reach the ceiling before crossing her legs to sit on the chair.

Stevie didn't look at her monitor, but rather the headband she had crumpled in her fist. She laid it on the table, staring at it. It was thin and looked cheap, but it was well-loved. There was a permanent crinkle in the fabric that could not be smoothed out, no matter how much she tugged at it. Where the knot most likely was when Johnny tied it onto his gi.

She looked up through the window to a partial view of Johnny's door. The research she had done on him when she was digging into her neighbors were pulled to the forefront of her mind, just as her parents had been earlier today.

It had never really occurred to Stevie that there had been some vague understanding between her and Johnny. He understood the messy role models. He knew the archetype of the parent with a disappearing act, and the new, unwanted adult, who tied a noose around their neck as a means of control.

Stevie sat there with crossed legs, rubbing her wrist raw, staring at the headband with the same questions replaying in her mind. 

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━━ As soon as Johnny had closed the door to his apartment, he smacked his head against his hands.

God, he felt like such an idiot.

Of all the people that he could gift the headband his mother bought for him to, he gave it to Stevie fucking Novak. He had spent the past year debating whether he wanted to give her a knuckle sandwich, or if he wanted to find the mute button on her.

Johnny loved that headband. He loved it because it was the last tangible thing he had left of his mother.

He could've given it to Miguel: he was, by far, Johnny's favorite. He would've given it to Aisha: she was fiery and he enjoyed having her around ( way better than he enjoyed Stevie ). He should've given it to Robby: despite his unsavory path, he was still his son. Maybe he'd enjoy the closest thing he had to a family heirloom.

But he gave it to awful, jaded, mean Stevie, who kept throwing it back in his face.

Literally throwing his headband back in his face.

He spent the entire night agonizing and regretting such a stupid decision, but he shook it off with the weekend sunrise. With Miguel sitting in the passenger's side of his Pontiac, the pair had driven off to the dojo for their morning practice. Miguel had asked his sensei if he had seen Stevie at all, Johnny hadn't answered, and that was the end of it.

They walked up to several potential students, crowding the entrance to the dojo. He couldn't be more thrilled, now that his rent issue was about to disappear. Johnny felt so sure that Stevie wouldn't even be a blip on his mind.

However, now that he was standing alone in his office, staring out at the main mat with forty-three prospective students that weren't Stevie, he felt disappointed. He walked out, yelling at all the teenage students to fall in and listen to him. 

Ding.

The sound of the doorbell made Johnny look up, ready to chew out the person who was late, only to see Stevie. Her stupid, skunk-striped hair was up and out of her face, and was a surprisingly welcome sight. He had been ready to yell at her regardless, needing to establish his authority to the new kids, but he stopped himself. As she readjusted her bag, her wrist was wrapped in a faded, black cloth. 

The headband he had forced onto her last night was on Stevie's wrist.

Johnny glanced at her face, and the insult he had locked on the tip of his tongue had fallen away, "Fall in, Fleetwood."

Stevie had nodded, and dropped her bag in an empty corner before weaving her way through the crowd. The students were eyeing her with unease until she made her way to the front to stand beside Miguel. 

Johnny had not acknowledged the new students, not yet. He kept his attention solely on his original three students, who had filled him with a unique feeling of pride he had not felt before. Aisha Robinson went from someone who allowed people to walk all over her to someone who demanded respect. Miguel Diaz finally earned the skills to back up the unwavering moral compass he always followed.

But then there was Stevie, who felt like a living nightmare. As a neighbor, she was nothing more than the loner kid with an attitude problem. With the forced proximity as student and sensei, he saw something far worse.

He saw a twisted reflection of himself.

Someone who had nothing but anger, and used it as a shield from the fear that held them in a vice grip. Johnny didn't know what demons haunted Stevie, but he knew the flinch she tried to hide. Over his life, he had learned the difference between the flinch of someone who had never had a hand raised to them, and the flinch of someone who still feared that raised hand.

Johnny didn't know the reason he had given Stevie his mother's gifted headband last night.

He did know that every time Stevie looked in a mirror, she probably couldn't stand her reflection. He did know that every time he would shout, she was sent to a terrible place in her memory. Johnny knew that, because that had been him.

━━ i updated??? someone call the fucking press, i did not know if i was going to be able to pull an update out of my ass, but here i am!!

━━ i temporarily lost interest in ck, then i fell down the marauder's rabbit hole, decided to revamp my old hp au fic, got writers block, decided to publish intros to like five of my drafts, and began writing the school fight scene before i could even make a dent in this chapter. but it worked!! bc it's here!!

━━ methinks i shall dedicate this chapter to jupiter and eli bc i LIED to them. i told them this would be out like mid july and it is spooky szn. i am a liar liar pants on fire and i apologize. i would say i'll try to get another update out this next week, but we all know that that's probably a lie

━━ teehee :P

━━ UPDATED: i hated the first draft, so i redid it. i'm feeling good now