Chapter Text
The old Hart House groaned beneath the weight of a heavy Alberta winter. Snow clung to the edges of the windows like frostbitten fingers, the air inside stale with silence, save for the occasional creak of a shifting floorboard. It was a house that used to breathe life—echoes of children’s laughter, the bark of the family dogs, the thudding rhythm of bodies training in the Dungeon. Now it was too quiet. Too cold.
Bret sat in his childhood bedroom, the same one he'd returned to too many times in his life. He wasn’t sure if he came back to remember or to forget. Maybe both. The Montreal Screwjob had gutted him, but Owen’s death had shattered whatever pieces were left.
The calendar on the wall still read May, even though it was January now.
He didn’t change it.
He couldn’t.
Bret hunched over the desk that used to hold his sketchbooks, his old WWF title belts, letters from fans. Now it held only a half-empty bottle of rye and a tightly rolled dollar bill.
He crushed the pill—something strong, something a friend-of-a-friend got him in Europe—and added a line of coke beside it, watching the powder settle like fresh snow.
It wasn’t the first time.
And it wouldn’t be the last.
His hands trembled as he brought the rolled-up bill to his nose. Not from withdrawal, but from grief. From everything he couldn’t fix.
From every goddamn thing that had been taken from him.
The powder hit fast, cold and sharp, like stepping into a frozen river. For a few minutes, the weight on his chest lightened. Owen’s voice faded. Vince’s smirk blurred. The boos from the crowd after Montreal became white noise.
But then it all rushed back—harder, meaner.
A knock at the door shattered the false calm.
"Bret?"
It was Ellie. She didn’t wait for permission. None of them ever did.
He wiped at his nose instinctively, but she wasn’t looking at his face. She stared straight at the desk. At the bottle. The powder. The rolled bill. Her eyes didn’t widen. She just... sighed.
"Again?"
He didn’t answer. Didn’t need to.
She crossed the room, picking up the calendar with May 1999 still frozen in time. Owen’s face smiled from a photo taped in the corner.
"You think you're the only one who misses him?" Her voice cracked. "We're all drowning, Bret. You just found a colder way to do it."
He stayed silent, jaw clenched.
"You’re not him," she whispered. "You're not Owen. But you’re still here. And Mom still needs you. We still need you."
He looked at her then, red-eyed and glassy. "What’s left of me, El?"
She didn’t flinch. "The part that Owen loved. That’s still in there. Battered. Bruised. But not gone."
Downstairs, the house stirred—Keith arguing with Bruce, Diana on the phone, Smith rustling through the kitchen. Life, fractured and messy, but life all the same.
Stu was in the living room watching tapes of old matches. Sometimes he’d rewind the footage of Owen’s last entrance like he was trying to change the outcome. Helen hadn’t spoken much since the funeral.
Bret knew he wasn’t the only one broken.
But he was the only one still trying to outrun it.
He looked at the line again, the cruel mirage of peace it offered.
Then, slowly, he brushed it away with the back of his hand.
He didn’t say thank you to Ellie. Just walked out of the room, down the stairs, and into the fraying heart of the Hart family. They didn’t ask where he’d been. They never did.
He sat down beside his father and watched footage of Owen.
Didn’t speak.
Didn’t cry.
Just sat there, shoulder to shoulder with the man who taught him how to fight, watching the brother who taught him how to love.
And for the first time in months, he felt something that wasn’t just pain.
It was faint.
But it was there.
—
"If I start feeling it… really feeling it… I won’t make it out alive." – Bret Hart
There were good days. Days when he woke up and didn’t reach for the bottle beside the bed. Days when he almost answered the phone when his kids called. Where he almost called Julie back, just to say hi.
But good days were liars.
Because even on those days, the pain didn’t go anywhere. It just waited. Behind every silent minute. In every shadow of his brother's laugh. Montreal still gnawed at his pride, and Owen — Owen was an open wound that would never clot.
So Bret found himself back in that room. Always that room. With the desk and the ghosts and the line of snow that gave him just enough distance to breathe.
He had tried. God, he tried. He flushed the pills once. Stared at himself in the mirror until he couldn’t recognize the man on the other side. The Hitman. The Excellence of Execution. That man was long dead. The only thing left was a hollow body filled with old film reels, cold dust, and a kind of hurt no match ever prepared him for.
He'd sit at the edge of the bed, hands curled into fists, muttering: I won’t. I won’t. I won’t.
But he would.
Because he knew the truth.
If he stopped, the pain would come.
And not in waves — not gently. It would crash into him like a steel chair to the skull, again and again, unrelenting.
All the grief he’d dodged since Montreal. The betrayal. The mockery. The way Vince held his hand in front of the cameras like they were still family. The way he walked away from the only place that ever felt like home.
And then Owen.
The way no one told him fast enough. The way no one had stopped the show. The way his brother died for a storyline — and Bret couldn’t even touch his hand to say goodbye.
How do you forgive the world for that?
How do you survive it?
He stared at the crushed pill, lined up with cruel precision. His fingers were already moving before his mind had caught up. That was how it always went. Like muscle memory.
“Goddamn it, Bret.”
The voice startled him.
It was Keith this time, standing in the doorway with a look that was equal parts rage and despair.
"You said you were done."
Bret didn’t answer.
“You said — to Mom — that you were gonna be better. That Owen wouldn’t want to see you like this.”
“Don’t talk to me about what Owen would want.” Bret's voice was low, brittle. “Owen should still be here.”
Keith flinched.
“You think I don’t know that?” he snapped. “You think any of us are okay? We lost him, too, Bret. We all lost him.”
“I didn’t lose him,” Bret whispered. “They took him.”
Silence.
Then, quietly, with venom: “And now you’re helping them take you, too.”
Keith walked away after that. Not slamming the door. Just leaving it open. As if to say we’re still here. You just have to step out of the fucking room.
But Bret didn’t move.
He stared at the line.
He snorted it.
And he didn’t even cry after.
Because this was the only way he knew how to survive now. Numb. Disconnected. Not whole, but not shattered either — just something in between. Something tolerable.
He told himself he’d stop next week.
Maybe next month.
Maybe when the pain got quieter.
But deep down, he knew. It wouldn’t.
It never had.