Chapter Text
Johnny,
You were always the one.
From the moment I saw you in that dojo. Blond hair, fists up, heart cracked wide open. I knew you were different. I told myself it was your talent, your strength, your raw potential that drew me in. But it was you, Johnny. It was always just you and I never stopped believing in you.
But belief comes with sacrifice. And love, the kind that forges bonds in the furnace of pain and discipline, that kind of love? It isn’t gentle. It doesn’t whisper sweet nothings or fade with time. It demands. It scars. It makes men.
You walked away from me, more than once. And each time you did, I told myself it was weakness. But maybe I was the weak one...for needing you, for molding you into the kind of fighter who could stand on his own. Still, every time I saw you fall, it was like watching my own reflection shatter.
I know you hate the way I show it, but everything I ever did was because I loved you. Not in the way the world understands love. In the way a master carves a legacy out of clay. You were mine, Johnny. And part of me always will be yours.
You brought light into a life I’d long since buried under discipline and war and regret. You challenged me. You made me feel again. And I buried it, because that’s what I was taught to do. Love was weakness. Attachment was a liability. But when it came to you, none of that held up.
You were more than my best student. More than a protégé. You were the man who reminded me that I still had a heart beating in this tired chest. The man who could make me laugh when I hadn’t even remembered how.
I don’t expect forgiveness. But I do hope, for one second, you remember what we were before the world made us enemies. Two men who found each other in the chaos. Two men who understood each other without needing to speak.
If I could go back, I’d do it all differently. I’d say the words then that I’m saying now: I love you, Johnny. I always have, even when I couldn’t say it. I loved you when I was hard on you. When I pushed you too far. When I let my own ghosts turn me into something colder than you deserved. And even when you walked away, especially then, I carried you with me. I always will.
Let me make it up to you. Just five minutes of your time and I'll leave you alone forever. Meet me at the Hollywood Diner on North, tomorrow, six o'clock sharp.
Just hear me out, that's all I ask.
Until then, kid: Strike first. Strike hard. No mercy.
But for you, Johnny, maybe just a little.
-Kreese