Searing pain and then, Windham felt nothing.

A cold indifference blanketed his eyes. It’s an all too familiar feeling.

The Awakening: the next step in self-destruction.

Admiring reality as its grasp is lost, Windham’s never feared the fading of light, or the shadows closing in incredulously fast. His reaction to being left alone is what worries.

Mark misjudges the means to heal from pain.

Windham’s eyes open and he finds himself in an empty ring, resting on all fours. The canvas is meekly lit, beyond the ropes, his well-chartered shadows.

Sweetwater’s greatest treasure finds his way to his feet, shivers, and stares past the safety of the steps lit ahead.

“Hello?” He offered a resistance to being called forward: a desperate attempt at growth. “Who’s out there?”

“Answer me or I’ll kick your ass.”

“That’s what got you into this mess.”

Windham turns one hundred and eighty degrees to be welcomed by a smiling Poison Ivy.

“Ivy?”

“You should have given it up twenty minutes ago, kiddo.” Ivy paces forward, subtly relishing the control she’s offered in Windham’s dreams.

“I think you’re right,” Mark acknowledged, coyly. Over six months since he and Ivy last talked. That he didn’t taste blood in the back of his mouth was validation he was aware this wasn’t real. It wasn’t a concern.

Windham’s been afraid to even dream of Ivy, out of fear he’d take another misstep, and bury any fond memories she kept for good. “I thought you weren’t talking to me. I’ve tried to call.”

“This is a neat trick. Working out your frustrations in a dream.”

“Well, I’m in quite a lot of pain, so forgive the delirium, mmmkay?”

She smiles, horn-rimmed glasses sliding innocently to the bridge of her nose as she does. “Forgiven.”

Ivy hops onto the middle turnbuckle, apparently bored from the lack of sexual tension. It’s Windham’s dream, and before agreeing to appear it’d been built up by myth and legend. Mark leans into the ropes, elbows tucked together and gazes into the unmolded darkness.

He could wait for the silence to break itself, but while there was a break in reality, he decided to take advantage of it. In a fantasy with Ivy beat experiencing a serious ass kicking fully, any day of the week.

“Ivy, I’m in love with you. Sorta have been for six years.”

She suppresses a cough, and the urge to ask who’s taking the mound for the Yankees tomorrow. Not that Mark would know, but she was fine with the comfort of the unsaid. “I know.”

She slides off the turnbuckle, wraps her arms around her back and falls gracefully back into the ropes, two feet from Mark. “Have a weird way of showing it. Attacking a girl in the ring, ruining a reputation she’s spent years earning.”

Windham runs his left hand through his hair and kicks softly at the bottom rope. “Clearly, I was going for something different. Should have stuck with the ol’ traditional route, huh?”

“Yeah.”

He turns his face and finds Ivy’s emerald green eyes. He’s apologized through letters, voice mails, and private conversations with the bedroom mirror, intended to be Ivy, but no matter how hard he imagined, Mark was left apologizing to a reflection of himself. She was here now, and hasn’t enough time already been wasted?

Windham looks her in the eye six years after first doing so in Chapel Hill and states passionately, “I am sorry.”

Ivy nods. Less acceptance than he’d hoped. “For who? Me? Or yourself?”

“Should I be sorry for myself?”

Rhetorical or not, the dreamer was getting an answer.

“You’ve wanted to feel sorry your whole life. Mark, you have the capacity to be the greatest guy I’ve ever known. Sometimes you are, but you refuse to let go of things you can’t control. Everything’s not your fault. You’re too old not to realize that.”

Windham bows his head, it’s nothing he hasn’t told himself, and disagreed with.

“If I let go, who will I be then?”

“A father. A brother. A pretty horrible ex-husband.”

They laugh, about as easily as they have together since an ambulance taxied them to dinner in ‘97.

“And a great friend.”

The pleasantness wanes as Mark gently shakes her optimism off. “It’s too late for me. This is who I am.”

“Bullshit,” she retorts, straightening up and pushing her voice to get firmer, “Let go of the fire, your parents’ death, Troy, Catherine, becoming a man you hated, Jewels, Sunshine, let it all go,” A slight smile crept into the lecture, “except me.”

He couldn’t if he tried, but it was nicer than Ivy’d ever know that she wanted to remain.

“No, even me if it means you’ll heal.”

“Ivy...”

“Shut it! Look man, we all have a sob story. We all go through shit in life. The ones who get over it, succeed. Some of the greatest men through history have had terrible things happen to them, put what makes them worth remembering is that they treated every day as a chance to become someone better.”

Mark eyes her thoughtfully for a passing second.

“You’ve been watching the History Channel again haven’t you?”

“Does it show?”

“Little bit.”

Ivy leans across the ropes with Mark, forgoing the darkness, instead focusing on his face. “When I was shot, when I woke and knew I’d pull through, my first thought was ‘Why me?’ Why am I going through this? I wanted to feel sorry for myself. Then it hit me. I was an inch from not being here. I got a second chance. Yours is there if you want it, Mark.”

“I can’t figure out if this is something you’re telling me, or I’m telling myself, or what you would tell me...”

“I think it’s best we didn’t make this anymore complicated than it already is.”

Ivy looks off Mark, letting a break air in before she posed the pulsing question behind the curtain of his failures.

“What do you want out of life?”

She won’t believe him.

“You.”

“Right,” Ivy shot back disbelievingly.

Told ya.

“I’m serious. You’re what I’ve wanted for six years.”

Six years ago he found her, the answer she blushed upon hearing, and month by month Windham complicated his desires far more than they needed to be.

“But I can’t have you, can I?”

Ivy’s jaw slides open, she starts to answer.

“It’s okay,” Windham returned, taking the pressure off. “You’re right. I need to start with an open slate. It’s time I became a man.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

Let it all go and focus on the good he can bring in the lives he values most. Let it all go, it’s not his fault. And what is isn’t worth carrying on his back.

He’ll have to let her go as well. It’s not what Mark wants, but Ivy needs to move on.

“Have a good life, McGinnis.”

“What?”

“This is goodbye, right?”

“Doesn’t have to be.”

He nods confidently. “Just a hunch it is.”

“I don’t like your hunches then.”

They started a moment at ANNIVERSARY ’99 that was never finished. Damn complications.

If he was letting her go, their moment would have an end. To the dreamer goes the spoils.

“Goodbye,” Windham said softly, drawing closer to Ivy’s pink lips and blushed cheeks.

Right hand lightly on her chin, Windham kisses Ivy for the first time. Barely touching her bottom lip, before gently pulling off.

That the moment’s not real ironically fits.