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Becky keeps her shoulders up and her head down, charging aimlessly through the back corridors of the arena, willing every inch of herself to broadcast threat. She hasn’t stopped walking from the moment she rolled clear of the ring. If she goes far enough and fast enough, maybe she can somehow outpace the storm of horror building in her chest, the shame and confusion that sting more cruelly than the bruises blooming on her skin. Both these souvenirs of Charlotte’s assault will haunt her for days to come, but the bruises, she thinks, will be the first to heal.
She barely registers his presence from the end of the hallway, at first - Dean Ambrose, lounging on a stacked pile of equipment, picking at the tape on his wrist. Then his glance flickers towards her, all hooded eyes and slack jaw, and Becky fixes her stare on the ground. No eye contact, just keep moving. There are boxes stacked all along the hallway, only a narrow space past the man, but who the hell cares what Dean Ambrose, what anybody, thinks of her now...
She’s somewhat aware that she’s been dragging her coat along behind her, heedless of the filthy boot-tracked floors. She's all but forgotten her goggles dangling limply from her other hand, though, right up until Dean yanks them away from her. Automatically, Becky swivels to face him as he drawls: “You just cost me two hundred bucks."
Startled, she stumbles back a couple of steps. It gives Dean a moment to stretch his long, long legs across the gap, propping them up on a crate, blocking off the path. He taps one finger atop the goggles in an offbeat rhythm, holds them up to his eyes for a moment, then lowers them and looks at her. His eyebrows are raised, expectant, as though there’s any way she could possibly know what he’s talking about. “And I did that how?” she finally asks.
“We had a pool, me and some of the guys. Ziggler, Breeze, Woods… one of the camera guys was in on it, but I’m pretty sure you could take him no problem, so I’ll let you figure out which one. Paige wanted in, but I think that counts as, like, insider trading. If you two could’ve just stayed besties ’til Smackdown, I’d have been a slightly richer man. But no, you just had to go and win the match, which means I’ve gotta look Breeze in his smug little face and hand over my hard-earned cash."
The whole thing’s so far out of left field that it takes her a full fifteen seconds to process what he’s saying. “A pool. About when Charlotte was gonna turn on me. A pool.” She can’t keep herself from pacing tiny laps back and forth across the narrow width of the hallway, like if she stops moving, all her momentum will settle in her stomach as a violent, volatile knot of rage. She’ll simply detonate, explode out in every direction. Dean’s presence isn’t a soothing one, either. Even comparatively placid, he injects a live-wire tension into the space, the languid lines of his body writ large with the potential for violence. Becky wonders if he’s ever really, truly relaxed a day in his life. “So you’ve all been laughing at me this whole time, is that it? Look at ol’ Becky Lynch, still believes in her friends, still thinks that promises mean something, what a thick little girl she is."
“I mean, it was kind of a done deal the day Daddy Flair started showing up at ringside and you made clear you weren’t gonna be playing his games. You know this business well as anybody, and you just stood there like a squirrel in the path of an oncoming goddamn train, thinking pinky promises could win out over Ric Fuckin’ Flair. So yeah, it was pretty funny."
In that moment, Becky wants to punch him in his stupid greasy face more than she wants almost anything else in the world. Though she can feel the involuntary white-knuckle clench of her fists, she forces herself to relax, bit by bit. Dean doesn’t strike her as the type to have qualms about fighting back against anybody who takes the first shot, woman or otherwise, and she doesn’t have another battle left in her tonight.
“You have no idea-“ she stammers, and snaps her mouth shut again the moment she remembers who she’s talking to. Her face, already red with fury, turns a shade redder as a slow smile spreads across Dean’s face. He doesn’t say anything, and that somehow makes it worse.
The last thing she wants right now is understanding. She wants to rage and rail against somebody who doesn’t understand any of this. You don’t know what it’s like, when your closet friend comes from a legacy, and you had to claw for every inch. You don’t know what it’s like, to see someone you love put winning before you. Dean’s not the one to have either of those conversations with.
“All right, so maybe you have some idea. Couldn’t you, I don’t know, show a little sympathy then?”
“Hey, I woulda given a kidney to have the kind of warning you did. So yeah, maybe I have some idea what you’re dealing with, but you can only ask so much of a man."
She doesn’t like the way Dean’s grinning. She’s stopped pacing now, but hasn’t stilled, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet. “You’re enjoying this way too much."
“I hate betrayal. I love revenge. The way it narrows your whole world down to one thing. Gives you a reason to get out of bed in the morning.” When she can’t meet his eyes, he asks, “You do want revenge, right?"
Does she? What she wants is her friend back, but hindsight tells her she’s too far down another road. “I don’t know what I want,” she admits.
“Well, you know what I’d do. You know what I did. Go scorched earth. Leave nothing left for her. Haunt her. Probably saw you deal with Paige and thought hey, there’s no consequence here, this one’s soft. Show her she’s wrong. Never let her have a match in peace again. She breaks your trust, you break her arm, and if her daddy comes after you, you break both his arms. Hell, slash her tires if you have to. Leave her seeing red hair and bared teeth in her nightmares."
That sounds a whole lot better than Becky’s willing to admit, but. But. “That’s very… vivid and all, but I’m not exactly sure that’s my style. I wanted to, uh.” It seems stupid, now. “To be a role model, you know? It takes a lot, for a girl to get respect in this business. You lot all have your drama, and it doesn’t end with commentary going on about how men can’t really be friends. We were supposed to be better than that, me and Charlotte and Paige, but... I guess now there’s just me."
She can tell she’s finally said something Dean wasn’t expecting, but it doesn’t throw him for long. “So be a role model. Whatever. You want to teach little girls it’s fine to let their friends walk all over them? Kids don’t like bullies, okay, I bet you anything the moment you get one up on Charlotte they’ll be cheering louder’n anybody.” When she doesn’t answer, Dean just sighs. “You want some real advice?”
“As opposed to whatever all that was?"
“Hey, I mean it. Look, you wanna throw in with someone, make sure it’s the kinda person who’ll look you in the eye and stick the knife in your heart.” He thumps his chest, twice, for emphasis. “Backstabbers are a dime a dozen around here, and looking for someone who won’t turn on you for anything is pointless. This job just brings it out in people."
“What, so you and Roman, brothers forever, what’s that, all talk?"
Dean shrugs. “Wouldn’t say it to his face, definitely wouldn’t say it to the cameras, but you’ve seen ‘im lately. Family’s one thing, but Uncle Dean ain’t gonna be the one worrying about little Jojo’s college fund. Sooner or later, he’s gotta realize that if he’s really going one versus all, I’m on the ‘all’ side by definition. But I’ll see him comin’ you know? I’ll believe a lot of things about a lot of people, but ain’t nobody convincing me Roman Reigns is the type to - and I’m just pulling an example totally at random here - hit his best friend in the back with a fucking chair out of nowhere. Place like this, that’s worth everything.” He pauses, chuckles wryly, and for a moment she can’t read his face at all. "And I’ll survive. That’s my thing. I always survive."
Does Roman know you don’t trust him? she doesn’t say, because it occurs to her that this might be the closest to real trust Dean ever comes. “And what about you?” she asks instead. "What kind of person do you think you are, yeah?"
“Oh, you know what they say about me. I’m a loose cannon, sweetheart, even I don’t know what I’m gonna do next.” On anybody else she’d almost call that look cherubic, but she can see the all the sharp edges veiled behind the dimpled smirk and the forced softness in his eyes.
She leans against the wall, crosses her arms. “Come on, we both know that’s just a thing they say to sell t-shirts.”
“Yeah, well, tell Michael Cole that. Maybe the fishtank will see my point of view.” Becky wonders for the first time if it bothers him, all the talk of how crazy and unstable he is. Dean’s always seemed to her a man shaped perfectly to his environment, not one at odds with it. Like the so-called madness is around him, not inside, and he’s just made himself into the best shape for the space he has to work with. She’s starting to relate to that more by the minute.
He glances away, down the hall, and breaks the too-long silence. “I always knew Seth had it in him. Right from day one. Roman doesn’t believe me, thinks I just don’t wanna admit there’s somebody out there who could get one over on me, but I knew. I just didn’t think he’d do it to us, you know? That was my mistake. Thinking weasels ever made exceptions. Not gonna make it again. You’ve just had a hard lesson, but I don’t think Baby Flair’s gonna curb stop your head through cinderblocks, so not nearly as hard as it could’ve been. Figure out what it’s gonna make you into."
I knew too, thinks Becky. Of course she’d known about Charlotte. Above all else, her father’s daughter. But she promised, she thinks. And again: But I knew.
Of course they were laughing at her. All they saw, her peers, the fans, was the creeping growth of Charlotte’s disrespect. Charlotte, who’d sworn she’d make her name on her own, crawling back under her father’s shadow. Charlotte, choosing to win at any cost, ignoring Becky’s pleas for fair play, distrusting her friend’s ability to fight her own battles.
None of them were there for the thousands of miles travelled, the shared hotel rooms, late night secrets whispered like schoolgirls. Phone calls at all hours after Paige’s own betrayal, tears on both sides. They trained together and sparred together, they promised, together, to change the whole business, to be the revolution. When Paige took her shot at Charlotte’s brother, it was Becky who sat with her, who held her hand and put an arm around her shuddering shoulders as Charlotte sobbed with equal parts sorrow and indignation, hiding away where no camera could catch how deep the cut had really been. These were the things that actually mattered, Becky thought, far more than a few cheap shots in the ring. Apparently, Charlotte didn't feel the same.
Charlotte should be the one here with her now, talking her down off this ledge, not the one shoving her towards it. In Dean’s crooked smile she sees a prophecy, a future spent knowing that each and every friendship could one day dissolve in an instant beneath the promise of gold. That loving someone just means waiting for the sword of Damocles to come down on your waiting neck.
“If I let her change me, doesn’t that mean she wins?” It’s a lesson. We’re not in NXT anymore. This is the big leagues.
“Oh, you’ve already lost. Thing is, a lost battle counts a whole lot less the moment you make it a war.” He shrugs again, palms raised, a broad and exaggerated motion that says all at once but what do I know? and you know what I know. “It’s not like you can just walk away. You ladies only got one belt to fight for, and your best bud out there’s the one wearing it."
“Former,” mutters Becky. “They’re giving me a title shot. I can take it from her, I know I can."
“Can you, though? Her daddy’ll be out there again, same as every night. You two are both great at what you do, if you don’t mind my sayin’, but it’s not an even match, it’s two on one. Even if you play as dirty as she does, that’s not good odds."
“You. You of all people, talking to me about odds.” The fire inside her that had begun to still roars to life again, fiercer than before. “As though you’re the only one around here who doesn’t know how to stay down? Do you think I’d even be in this business if I didn’t know how to get back up and keep fighting? She knows I can beat her, I have beaten her, you think she’d be playing these games if she wasn’t scared I was gonna do it again? So let her bring her father, if she wins dirty I’ll come right on back, and if she wins clean I’ll train ’til I’m a bloody mess and I’ll come for her then. You went at Seth with half the company behind him, your brother’s out there taking on a cabal of giants, not to mention his own boss, and you don’t even think I can handle one… one slimy old man?"
In the following silence, Becky’s breathing sounds too loud and ragged to her own ears; she can feel her thudding pulse in every limb. Dean’s face has gone slack with surprise, and he huffs out a small, amused breath. “You know, right about now I’ve gotta say I think you can.” He shakes his head. “And you said you didn’t know what you wanted."
And there it is. Everything quiets inside her. Crystalline and clear.
She can’t undo any of this, go back and see the signs more clearly, wrench them both on to a different path. The most she can do is make it all worthwhile. Just like she knew about Charlotte, some part of her knew this, too, from the moment Charlotte’s boot collided with her back. Just like she knew about Charlotte, she’d tried not to know it. Just like Charlotte, in the end, this was just how things were always going be.
“Guess I’d better go get ready, then.”
When she reaches down to take her goggles back from Dean, he offers no resistance. Instead, he pulls his feet down, clearing the path forward. “For what?” he asks, as though he doesn’t know.
Becky inhales deep and slow, and smiles ear to ear. “For war."