This story is a spinoff from La Arquitecta, however I'll do my best to write it in such a way that new readers can pick it up without needing to read the old story first.
Sitting in the boardroom at WWE headquarters, Charlotte Flair felt a little uneasy. She was relatively new to her job on the creative team, and as yet did not possess overwhelming confidence in her work. Creative meetings in particular were not something she enjoyed. Any minute now, Lucy Thorne, WWE's Chairwoman, would walk into the room and expect to hear some good ideas for the next couple of months of programming.
"Don't look worried, your idea is a good one," Hunter Helmsley said with a hint of a grin on his face. He was sitting next to Charlotte, with TJ Wilson sitting on the other side of him.
Since Lucy Thorne, an accomplished businesswoman, multimillionaire and passionate wrestling fan, had purchased a majority share in WWE and taken charge of the company, she had shaken up the way the company was run in a lot of ways. Among those changes was completely replacing the previous booking committee, apart from Hunter. At Hunter's recommendation, TJ had been promoted from road agent to Head of Creative as part of the restructuring.
Lucy hadn't been willing to stop there, however. She had pushed ahead with an idea to have two members of the active roster involved in the creative process. After some debate, Charlotte Flair and Bobby Roode had been chosen for the new roles. To avoid the obvious conflict of interest that would be presented by a wrestler working on their own creative, Charlotte was allowed to work only on storylines for male wrestlers, and Bobby was assigned to work for the women's division.
Only a couple of months into the role, Charlotte was about to pitch the first big idea that was her own brainchild, and she was feeling nervous about how it might be received by the boss, not least because the angle would involve Lucy herself appearing as an on-screen character for the first time.
"He's right, you've got this," TJ said. "Besides, you know Lucy doesn't bite."
Charlotte decided not to say that she would have agreed, until recently. When she had taken over as Chairwoman, Thorne had quickly won herself a reputation as someone who put her employees first. For example, in an incredibly popular move with the wrestlers, she had lessened the amount of live events on the WWE schedule in order to give the guys more time to keep their bodies healthy and rested and their minds happy, with more time to spend at home with their families.
Until recently, no one at WWE had been able to say a bad word about Lucy Thorne. Indeed, she was considered by almost everyone to be a brilliant manager of her people. She had an extraordinary knack for motivating people to give their all for her. A large part of that was down to the fact that it was obvious Lucy genuinely cared about her employees. She came across as fundamentally a good person, with admirable morals and values.
A recent example of those facts had been a picture that had gone viral among the online wrestling community. Cesaro had been at the very top of his game, and had been competing in the Universal Championship picture until he had blown out his right knee during a match. Knowing all too well that his injury was bad and would keep him out for months, killing the biggest push of his career, Cesaro had been in tears when the medical team had walked him back into Gorilla.
Lucy had been there immediately to give the tearful Cesaro a rather awkward one armed hug and to quietly say something to him. It was that moment that had been captured in the picture, and had tugged on the heartstrings of WWE's fans.
Yes, Charlotte thought, everything had been going amazingly well under the Thorne regime. But then, seemingly out of nowhere as far as Charlotte was concerned, had come the news that Lucy and her husband were divorcing. Rumours were that the split was fairly amicable, but even so, the boss had seemed to become more bristly, or Thorney, as the backstage joke went, in the few weeks since the divorce had become public knowledge. More than once, Charlotte had known Lucy to lose her cool over a creative decision that had ended up not working out, and when she went for it, she really went for it. Charlotte hoped this wasn't going to be one of those days.
"Thanks, guys," she said with an appreciative smile. "It's just that this is my first big pitch of an idea, and I'm kind of out of my comfort zone."
"We're here to back you up if you need it," Hunter said kindly, before adding, "Even though you won't."
Barely had he finished speaking when the door opened behind them and Lucy Thorne breezed into the room. The thirty six year old Chairwoman was immaculately dressed in a business suit as always. On this occasion it was a navy blue one, with a white blouse underneath. Her long brown hair was up in a ponytail – something of a rarity. She carried a leather-bound notepad in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.
"Morning all. How are you?" Lucy asked pleasantly in her English accent, which she showed no sign of losing despite spending a lot of her time in America on business. She walked around the boardroom table to her seat on the opposite side from where her three employees were sitting.
All three offered greetings at the same time, then Hunter said, "We're all doing well, and we're quite excited by an idea that Charlotte's going to put to you."
Lucy had taken her seat and was in the process of finding the page she wanted in her notepad. While doing so, she glanced up at Charlotte and raised her eyebrows slightly in a positive manner. "You've been working on something of your own?"
"Well, it's my concept, but a couple of the guys have helped me to flesh it out," Charlotte said, meaning the staff in the writing department.
Finding the page of notes she had already started in relation to the current meeting, Lucy drew a line across the page with her expensive-looking fountain pen. "Then we'll come to that shortly," she decided. "First, let's talk about Rollins. Last time we got together there was a difference of opinion about whether to keep the Universal title on him at the Royal Rumble or to have him drop it to Balor."
"Right," TJ recalled. "Again, I really think the time is right to give Finn a run with it, and have him take it into Wrestlemania. He's never been more over, and the fans are dying for him to win it."
"Which is why I still say we keep it off him for a little while longer," Hunter said. "This program he's working with Rollins and Vega has been white hot. We don't need to rush the payoff."
The events leading Seth Rollins to this point quickly ran through Charlotte's mind. It had all began when Seth had won the Money in the Bank briefcase, or, more accurately, had been handed it by Zelina Vega, his real life girlfriend, who had climbed the ladder and retrieved it. Vega had been faced with the choice of giving the briefcase to Cesaro, her client at the time, or to Seth, who everyone knew she was in an off-screen relationship with. She had chosen Seth, and since aligning, the Rollins-Vega pairing had become the most hated duo in WWE.
"What you say is true," Lucy said to Hunter. "But, here's the thing. We've also talked before about getting Vega back working as a wrestler in her own right. I want to get started on that in the near future. She's such a good heel, I just can't get past wanting to use her as more than a manager."
"So you want to split Zelina from Seth?" Charlotte surmised.
Lucy nodded. "I do. But I don't necessarily want one of them to turn on the other. I'm thinking of a line in a backstage program of Seth's where he says Zelina is going to be focusing on her own career. From there they can just be booked separately."
"Doable," Hunter acknowledged, without a great deal of enthusiasm. "But where does that leave Seth, and where does it leave the Universal title?"
Taking a moment to drink from her coffee cup, Lucy made them wait for it. "I've been thinking on this for some time," she said at length. "Thoughts on putting it on Bobby?"
Everyone knew she meant Bobby Roode, as Bobby Lashley would have been referred to as Lashley. Hunter glanced at TJ, both men with slightly surprised looks on their faces.
"Uh, that's a bit out of left field," TJ said. "Bobby's not had much momentum for a while now, even since we moved him back to Raw."
"Yes, because you talked me out of the idea of turning him heel," Lucy said with the meeting's first hint of irritation in her voice. "I told you he needed a turn, and I was right."
"You were," TJ admitted with admirable honesty.
"Ugh, if I can just cut in here?" Charlotte asked.
Lucy gave a hand gesture that indicated she could. "It's an open forum, you know that."
Charlotte took a sip from the glass of water that had been sitting on the boardroom table in front of her, beside the pages of hastily typed out notes that she had brought, but probably wouldn't need. She had her idea memorised well enough to talk about it without needing to read up on it.
"Thank you," she began, taking a deep breath that she hoped wouldn't be noticeable. "I'm glad you've brought up Bobby and his heel turn, because that is one of the key points for the idea I wanted to pitch."
"Oh, excellent," Lucy said, smiling warmly. "So, I assume we're all in agreement now that we need to turn Bobby heel?"
TJ nodded as Hunter said, "We are."
Lucy noted that down, obviously taking satisfaction in doing so. "Okay, Charlotte, continue," she instructed, looking back up. "How do we turn Bobby heel?"
Oh boy, Charlotte thought. This was the moment that she had not been looking forward to. "We align him with you," she announced, trying to sound confident about it.
"With me?" Lucy asked, initially surprised, before shaking her head. "We've been down this road before. I'm not going to make myself an on-screen character."
"We all think you should reconsider that," Charlotte said, hoping that Hunter would step in to back her up.
"Do you now?" Lucy queried, sounding less than impressed.
"Yeah, we do," Hunter said, to Charlotte's relief. "I do understand why you're against the idea, with no on-screen experience. But I really think you would love it if you gave it a chance. Everyone in this room knows you bought WWE because you've been a fan your whole life. You must have dreamed of being out there in the ring."
"Of course I did," Lucy said without annoyance. "And you're wrong, my concern isn't about my ability to act. I don't want Raw to become the Lucy Thorne show, that's my issue. We've got the fans right behind us with the way things are now. They mostly like me, thinking of me as the owner who has made the product they're watching better, and is continuing to make improvements across the board. Why ruin that by putting me on the show and turning them against me? It doesn't stack up to me."
Over the next ten minutes, Charlotte sat back and listened in admiration as Hunter talked the boss around to their way of thinking. When he put his mind to it, he really was a master of persuasion, she thought. Eventually, he had convinced Thorne that appearing on Raw would be the best thing to get the Bobby Roode heel turn that she wanted over, that there was huge potential in having the Chairwoman of WWE on Raw as a regular character, and that she would be able to play a very good heel.
"I swear you could have been a fucking second hand car salesman," Lucy said, a comment that everyone took as her consent to work the storyline as they laughed at her joke. Meanwhile, the boss wrote another note on her pad.
"Next question," Lucy said after a moment. "Why is the Lucy character aligning herself with Bobby Roode?"
"Because she's dating him," Charlotte ventured, wishing she had sounded a lot more confident about it.
Lucy studied Charlotte for a second that seemed to hang in the air for a lot longer. "You're taking the piss," was her very English verdict.
"No, I'm serious," Charlotte said. "The idea is that you've been seeing Bobby for a while. Maybe since your… uh…"
"Divorce," Lucy filled in testily.
"Right," Charlotte said awkwardly, deciding to press on. "It's been a while since there's been a romance angle, and what better way to turn Bobby heel that to have him in the Universal title picture, apparently for the sole reason that he's sleeping with the boss? It's got to be a guarantee to get heat on him."
"Hmm," Lucy said thoughtfully. "Let's say I agree to pull the trigger on this. Do we jump right in with the romance side of it like you're suggesting, or do I just align with Bobby and we slow build the romance?"
TJ spoke up to answer that one. "I think the best way to go about it is to shock them with something like you kissing Bobby the first time we see you together."
"And what is the plan for all of this to go down?" Lucy asked, her tone conveying that she had conceded the point.
Charlotte spent a couple of minutes outlining the idea that would see Lucy appear as a character on TV for the first time. Pleasingly for her, Lucy seemed receptive, nodding along as she wrote notes on her pad.
"Alright," Lucy said, finishing a sentence with a flourish of her pen. "I suppose before we go any further I'd better get Bobby in here and see what he thinks about all this."
While Lucy rang through to her PA to have Bobby sent up from the creative department to the boardroom, Charlotte found herself thinking that it was typical of Thorne to want to get his opinion on the storyline rather than just telling him what he was going to be given to do.
A few minutes later, the door opened and Bobby walked in. Having already spent some time downstairs with the other people in the room that morning, he only needed to greet Lucy. "Morning," he said pleasantly.
"Morning, Bobby. Have a seat," Lucy instructed warmly. As he obeyed, she got right down to the point. "We've just agreed on an angle for you that's going to see you turn heel, and you'll be in the Universal title picture."
"Sounds good to me," he replied enthusiastically, not there would have been any other likely response for someone whose character had been stuck in a rut for a while. "What's the angle?"
"You're going to be dating me," Lucy announced.
Charlotte noticed the little smile on the boss's face as she said it. It told her that Lucy was quickly warming to the idea the more she thought about it. What surprised her was that Bobby didn't say anything for a moment.
"I suppose I've slept with worse," he admitted eventually, with a cheeky grin on his face.
Silence descended for a second with Lucy seemingly trying to decide what she made of that. Somehow, Charlotte had matched Hunter and TJ in managing not to burst out laughing.
Lucy sniggered, then started laughing. Her laughter gave the green light for everyone else to laugh, which they simultaneously did. Lucy clapped her hands together in approval of the joke and said, "Yes. I'm going to enjoy this."
A/N: I hope you all enjoyed the return to this world, and the catch up on what has been going on with Seth and Zelina's characters?
We learned that Lucy has been convinced about the idea of her angle with Bobby Roode. Next time, we'll get some more insight into how he feels about it, other than the joke he made about her in this chapter. So, my question is what do you think Bobby makes of dating Lucy Thorne on-screen?