Title: Never Told You
Author: Lizzie
Email: [email protected]
Rating: R
Content: Uh, implied slash, some angst and blood and a huge helping of major character death. You�ve been warned.
Disclaimer: I don�t own them, and unless I wake up one morning having morphed into Vince McMahon (scary thought, I know!), I never will.
Distribution: Fine, just send me a note to tell me where.
Summary: Character death. That really says it all.
Notes: All this sprang from daydreaming on the way to an office supply store. Don�t blame me if I go completely insane when I�m bored...

***
Never Told You
***

We�d been fighting. We�d said some things we didn�t mean. I was mad at him. I remember how angry I was but I don�t really remember why.

It was something small for a start � I think maybe he�d left my singlet back at the hotel or something stupid so I had to wrestle in a pair of tiny Spandex shorts. I mean really, who cares? It wasn�t like I�d never wrestled in them before. And it wasn�t worth fighting over. Nothing with him was ever worth fighting over. Nothing. Especially not that night.

But it didn�t stop with the singlet. He made it about love. I don�t know how. He just always had this way of making everything about love.

�If you loved me you�d let this go�.

�What does love have to do with my singlet, Hunter?�

�You�ve never even told me you do�.

So we argued. I yelled. He started to apologise, but I didn�t let him. I told him I didn�t want to hear it, that if he was going to make a petty argument about forgetting my singlet into an argument about us then he could just go to hell. I threw a roll of tape at him but he ducked and it smashed the mirror behind him there in his dressing room. He looked at the pieces of glass scattered over the carpet and told me �that�s seven years� bad luck, you know�. I slapped him, hard enough to leave an angry red mark across his cheek, and I stormed out. It was his mirror. Didn�t that make it his bad luck?

***

I was still fuming when my music kicked in and the pyro sparked. I�d been fuming in my dressing room for forty-five minutes. I�d never been so mad with him. And I took it out on Benoit something chronic. The bruises he must�ve had� And I�m pretty sure the ankle lock hurt him a little more than it had to, especially when Jericho hit me from behind and I practically collapsed on Benoit�s leg. They beat me up like they were supposed to and I felt like I deserved whatever they gave me for using the Wolverine as a punching bag.

Then they weren�t beating me. They weren�t on me. Hunter was there giving Benoit a pretty harsh Pedigree and I looked up just in time to see Steve Austin hit the Stunner on Jericho. They were supposed to be there. It wasn�t like it was a surprise. For the fans, sure � usually Edge and Christian saved my butt. But it was all pre-arranged.

Steph was with them and she was kneeling by me as I sat back against the turnbuckles, playing the concerned friend. I wasn�t exactly hurt and she knew it. It was all an act. But it really must�ve hurt her when Hunter yanked her up by the top of her arm. I never knew if he meant to hurt her or if he was just on protective autopilot, but she yelped and he didn�t seem to notice. He yelled at her and pointed at me and told her to leave. All part of the plan.

She didn�t leave. Not until Vince showed and mock-dragged her out. And when she was safely in the backstage area, it was time for Hunter to turn his attention to me.

The idea was that he was supposed to be angry at me for how Steph was acting with me. The look on his face was angry. Yeah, the look in his eyes was more like an apology, but no one saw it. He looked like he was ready to seriously injure me, to the crowd. On the tape, that�s how he looked. But he didn�t hurt me. Not that he ever hurt me. But that night he didn�t get the chance.

One second he was The Game, going to beat me unconscious with his bare hands, and the next he was just Hunter. My Hunter. Mine. With this look on his face like everything was slipping away as above the jeering came two cracks like thunder or mistimed pyro. It was neither. He pressed his hands to his stomach and they came away red.

He fell to his knees. His hands left red smudges on the mat. He looked up at me and tried to speak but blood bubbled out from his mouth and the next thing I knew he was in my arms because I�d loved to him and I was pressing my hands to his over the place where all his blood was bleeding out and then I was lying him down and pressing down with one hand while I stroked back his hair with the other and he looked up at me with this look on his bloody face like he was losing the world. There were tears in his eyes and there were tears in mine, too.

I didn�t have anything to stop the bleeding. I was in too-tight Spandex and he was in his trunks. The bleeding wouldn�t stop. I didn�t know how to stop it. I couldn�t help him. He stared up into my eyes as he lifted one hand to my face and brushed away my tears. I kissed him. I pulled him into my arms. I was right there when he took his last breath. I held him as he died.

***

I don�t remember much after that. The tape shows me yelling, for EMTs, for God, for him� It shows me look at him there, and it�s like my heart stops beating as I give him this stricken little look like my whole world just went away, and I sob and I�m shaking and I�m screaming his name �til finally I�m just screaming and it�s the only sound there it. I don�t remember any of it and I�m glad I don�t because I�ve seen the look in my eyes. It�s like someone just tore out my heart.

He was dead. The EMTs couldn�t save him. He�d been down too long, lost too much blood. I sobbed into my hands as they took him away from me, his blood all over me, his taste still in my mouth. I couldn�t stop. Because I realised someone *had* just torn out my heart. They killed the only thing I cared about. I watched the best thing in my life bleed to death in my arms.

All I could think was that I never got to tell him I was sorry. When he died he thought I was angry with him. Steph was sobbing too and she tried to hold me but I shrugged her off then felt guilty about it for weeks. Edge and Christian tried to get me to go back to the hotel, to get some rest. I wouldn�t move and I bawled them out and I still feel guilty for that. I just sat there as the blood of the only man I ever loved dried on my skin, too numb to think anymore.

I never got to tell him I forgave him. I never got to tell him I�m sorry. But the worst thing is, I never got to tell him I loved him.

***

The guy who did it didn�t even get out of the arena. Not that he should ever have made it inside carrying a hunting rifle anyway, but I try not to think about that. The WWFE and its lawyers thought about it enough for all of us, for me, for Hunter, for Steve.

Steve. Because I didn�t even remember there had been two shots and Hunter had been killed by one until the next day. Steve was hit in the thigh and if JR hadn�t strapped his belt around it while I was busy sobbing hysterically over my dead lover, there could have been two men killed. But there weren�t. It was only Hunter.

There�s a memorial planned for next week. Since everyone knows about us now, they asked me to speak. But I said no. I mean, what would I say? What *could* I say? I think I said it all at the funeral. I stood there with tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat and I told two hundred people that the best part of who I was died in that arena. I tried to make them understand how much it hurts to be alive without him.

But no one can understand. They can�t see how I needed him. They can�t see that there�s this huge hole inside of me that nothing�s ever going to fill because he�s not here. They�ll never know how it�s too much to even breathe without him.

There�s nothing they can do. He�s gone. That�s all that matters.

I just wish they�d shot me too.