Post by The Ace on Jul 29, 2011 15:15:20 GMT -6
When a leader speaks...
*The scene opens with Kathy, The Ace and their eldest daugher spending some quality time together, whilst their youngest daughter was having a nap.
The Conway family are gathered around a large wooden table over a simple gardboard wooden box that contained a large jigsaw of 1000 pieces. Given that most of the pieces were still scattered and jumbled on the underside of the box lid, it was appparent that they had only started this undertaking and that it was going to take a while...*
You're right Steve, when I met you I kept my baby, my daughter Solitaire a secret from you, I didn't tell you she was mine, how could I? You were only interested in me because I was another blonde, I don't know, maybe you liked the idea of dating a superior officer or you just liked the handcuffs and the uniform. I don't know what you saw in me, but I know exactly what I saw in you. I'll give you some credit Steve, your body is sculpted, your physique is chiseled and your guns are loaded, and for a while that was enough for me.
I chose to give you the benefit of the doubt, because I was curious about what else you had to offer, and yes for a while I even thought hey maybe this guy can help me raise my baby, I mean he obviously knows how to look after himself. But therein was the problem.
Yourself is all you knew how to look after.
You couldn't be a responsible adult and actually look after me - your girlfriend - so how was I supposed to expect you to look after my baby? I didn't, I couldn't, I knew you weren't ready. Once again, I had fallen for an absolute charmer, a lady killer, a man with a silver tongue who knew exactly what to say to get his way, and if I hadn't have had that one night of passion with Jake a year before I even met you, you might have charmed me in the same way he did...but this time I was prepared. I wasn't going to allow myself to fall pregnant again - besides which I quickly learned you weren't ready to be a father.
All you cared about was your mind numbing vanity, as long as your pectorals were well oiled and your navel glistening, you were happy, your life was complete - but for me I needed someone more substantial, of more substance, willing to look out for me and my daughter. Steve Evans never quite fit the bill, and Sexy Jason cetainly didn't.
Why not? Simple. Because a baby can't be raised on protein shakes and vitamin supplements, it takes so much more to raise a baby, to devote your life to looking out for and being their for someone. Steve, you might know how to shape the perfect six pack, but you have no idea how to shape a life - so whilst you might hate me for keeping Solitaire a secret from you, ask yourself this:
Would you really have cared for her as your own if I hadn't let Jake back in my life? Would you have been man enough to take responsibility for something for once in your life or would it still have been all about the magnificent body? Like it always has been, see Steve, before you chastise me for my secrets, ask yourself about the ones you keep from your wife Sasha.
The blondes you wink at, the flirtive gestures you make to any woman, gestures probably that the poor girl ignores because she believes, just as I once did, that she loves you. She's willing to look passed all your faults because she believes you love her too...and yet because of your obsession with your body...your relentless vanity, you lost her. She's been taken from you, just like I was, and just like Amber was.
Because you never cared enough about all the important things in your life - and now as a result, slowly piece by piece, you're going to lose them all over again, and I can only feel sorry for you Steve, sympathy, that's all I have in my heart for you anymore and I'm sorry if that's never been enough for you...
You know, I've learned alot from you Spike, not just as a mentor or a friend, but as a man. I look at your life and how you let it all unfold for the cameras, every twist, turn, ascent or descent and I realise just how fortunate I have been. I wasn't raised in an orphanage, my family wasn't split up and shipped off from foster home to foster home. I've never been institutionalised, I don't have a genetic heart condition, I've never lost a son or a wife, and I hope I never do.
The only thing I've ever had to feel depressed and angry about is seeing my best friend raped and not being able to save her, that was the day my life changed forever. I swore I would never let that happen again, its why I was so fiercely protective of any woman who came into my life - they couldn't be hurt whilst they were with me. I went through life, and I went with women, painting Louise's face on all of them, protecting their innocence as if it were hers and making love to them only so nobody else could take their innocence if they had already willingly given it to me.
I'm sure - no I'm certain, that if I hadn't met you when I did, my life would have taken an entirely different path to the one it has today, you were a leader Spike and a man I was all too happy to follow. To learn from - but of all the lessons you've ever taught me Michael, the most important was simply:
To have a focus.
If I hadn't used the shards of your broken life as the looking glass through which to focus my own, I might never have been as lucky as I am now. If I wasn't still willing to learn from your mistakes, I might still be that womanizing drunk who spent his life pining after Ruth and Tanya, instead of having learned to move on and embrace new loves without always looking to replace the old.
If it hadn't been for your brief fling with Tiffany, I might never have met and fallen in love with Kathy, and as much as it pains me to say it, if you hadn't dropped her on her head, we might never have grown as close as we are now. I'll never forgive you for it, but I understand why you did it. You're like a brother to me Spike, you've taught me so many valuable life lessons the only way you know how.
The hard way.
You took the jumbled up pieces of my life and slowly, painfully you pieced them together and it is only now that I see the bigger picture for what it is. The pieces fit. This Sunday Spike, I'm going to do for you what you did for me years ago. I'm going to make you see the bigger picture, I'm going to take the fragments of your life and make the pieces fit, just know that whatever I do in that ring, I do to help you, whatever I do to you Michael, whatever I break inside the hollow shell of Spike Kane, I will do...
...simply because I love you brother.
It's time I reminded you of some of the life lessons you taught me...the hard way...
*The Conways are still putting all the pieces together with a dogged determination, however most of the image was still unclear, and many of the pieces still had to be properly placed, this jigsaw puzzle wasn't going to be left undone. It wasn't going to be abandoned, because when you're a Conway, you never abandon anything...*
That leader dies...