Disclaimer: I do not own the characters and real people in this story. The WWE owns the characters and the real people own themselves.
A/N: This is a new one from me. It's more Trish/Christian-centric than any of my other stories have been so I hope that you enjoy it. It's kind of AU, sort of, kind of, you'll see when you read it. Also, I have taken creative license with people's ages in this story so I hope that isn't too confusing. Please leave a review and let me know what you think, especially since I'm not used to writing this couple (as the main couple). If you want to be brutal, go right ahead. Enjoy. :)
They met when they were twelve.
They were having sex by the ripe old age of fifteen.
Predictably, they were pregnant by seventeen.
The wedding was before she started to show, so she could fit into her dress.
Inevitably, they were fighting by the time they were twenty.
He wanted to be a wrestler, she wanted to be something so much more than that. She didn't want to be a wrestler's wife, she didn't want to watch him leave for however many days in a row and talk to him over the phone. He wanted to live his dream, the dream he had had since she had met him. In those early days, when they would walk around town and talk, he would mention how much he wanted to be a wrestler and kick all the ass in the world.
She would laugh and tell him that was silly, that you couldn't be a wrestler because that wasn't like a real job. She thought it would just be a dream of a kid, but now, at twenty, with a two-year-old daughter, she found that the dream hadn't faded, but had grown stronger while she wasn't looking. So much so that he was looking into wrestling schools, willing to put their money, what little they had into it.
"Babe, I'm telling you, this'll pan out," he told her.
"No, it won't," she told him. "It's not going to, and you know it. I don't know why you think you have to quit your job for this."
"Because it's what I want to do!" he shouted at her, his breath coming out in heaves almost. "I've done everything that I'm supposed to do, but this is something that I want to do. Won't you give me that?"
"We don't have any money!" she had yelled back at him, venom in her voice. "Jay, what do you think is going to happen to us if you take this chance and fail? We can't survive on nothing. I've got my job, whatever meager wages I can scrape, and with your job, we're barely scraping by. You can't quit."
"Babe, don't you understand, don't you get that I'm trying to better what we have right now," he said, looking around their dingy and small apartment. "I want to be able to provide for Sofia, and we're just barely doing that now, I want her to have everything."
"But you'll fail."
"Why don't you believe in me?"
She ran her hand over her face and sighed, "It's not that, Jay, it's not, okay, but we have a child to think about, we have a life to think about, and we can't just change everything on a whim. We have to think about Sof."
"I am thinking about her, I know you don't believe that, but if I can make it, I can take care of everything for her. We'd never have to worry about anything again, I know that I can do this, if you would just believe in me."
She sighed, "I can't support this, Jay, I just can't, not at the expense of Sof, I just can't do it."
He ran a hand over his face, "But I know that I can do this."
"I know that you think that you can, but Jay, we gave up everything when we had Sofia. This has to be about her. You think that this was what I wanted with my life? It wasn't, but I'm playing with the hand I was dealt."
"I have to do this, babe, I don't know what else to tell you."
"Then I'm going to leave you," she told him. He gasped a little bit, not expecting that. It wasn't like he expected her to just be gung-ho for this entire idea, but he thought that she would support him at least. He was going to do what he loved, and it would have the added benefit of helping his family.
"You're going to…what?" he asked.
"I'm sorry, but if this is what you want to do with your life, if you want to try this and…I can't do it, Jay, I can't be a part of it, I'm sorry. I have to think about Sofia and everything for me has to be about her."
"I'm doing this for her!" he protested, "and for you too. I'm doing this for all of us. Aren't you tired of this? Of all of this," he said, gesturing around. "Aren't you tired of just getting by?"
"Of course I am," she said, sitting down on the couch, feeling suddenly heavy. "I want to give her everything too, but I need to do it in a practical way, Jay, I can't just…I can't just go out and do whatever I want to do. Do you think I like taking classes to be a dental assistant? I don't, but it's good money for Sofia."
"I'm doing the same thing."
"You're chasing after a dream that has high potential to fail!"
"No, I'm not! I can make it, I know I can!"
"Then I have to leave," she said, her eyes welling up with tears, which hurt him to see. He didn't want to make her cry. He hated when she cried because it usually meant that she was breaking inside. Before she had gotten pregnant, before their lives went all to hell, she never cried, she had never been weak, but now, every time he saw her cry, he couldn't help but think that she was breaking a little bit more on the inside, and he knew that a lot of that had to do with him. But he didn't want to give this one up.
"I don't want you to leave," he told her sadly, looking at her with those eyes.
She rubbed her hands together like she was cold and trying to warm them up. "I don't want you to do this."
"There's no changing my mind," he said resolutely. "I've been thinking about this for weeks, going over it in my head, and I know that this is what I want to do. We shouldn't have to sacrifice our dreams because of Sofia, we should include her in them."
"At the expense of everything, Jay?" she asked. "If it doesn't work out, we're what? Living on the streets? I don't want that, Jay, I just don't, so you go out and you do whatever you have to do, but you're going to have to do this without us."
"I thought you would support me in this," he said, his frustration starting to crack through. He wanted her support, he wanted her to be with him every step of the way.
"I can't do that, and please don't think I'm being a huge bitch in this, Jay, because I'm really not. I don't think that you should give up on your dreams, but I think they should be realistic. What are the honest chances that you'll make it, that you'll really make it to where we wouldn't have to worry about money at all?"
"They're slim," he admitted, "It is hard, I'm not saying it isn't…"
"Then how do you expect me to support that when I'm so scared about our future. And what if you get hurt? Did you think about that? What if you get seriously injured and then I have to take care of you with no job skills or anything yet?"
He looked down, "That's a possibility."
"Then I cannot stay," she said. She stood up then, and she looked at him, her eyes equally as sad, "You have to see this from my perspective, Jay, and I just can't take that risk. You can go say goodbye to Sof, I'm going to pack some of our things."
"Where are you going to go?" he asked, worried that she didn't know where she was going.
"I'm just going to go home to my parent's house," she said with a deep sigh. He knew that she had a very strained relationship with her parents, as a direct result of getting pregnant at seventeen and deciding to marry him. If she was willing to go back there, to take that life, then…he knew that she was serious. Her parents would probably be jumping for joy that she had finally left his sorry ass.
"Your parent's…" his voice trailed off, and she knew what he meant by that.
"They'll take me in," she said dully. "I won't want to be there, but they'll take me in."
"Oh…"
He decided that there was nothing more he could do. If she was willing to go to her parent's house, that was it, she wasn't changing her mind. She was so damn stubborn too. Maybe if he went out there and showed her what he could do, that he could make it, she would change her mind. That's what he decided right then, he would show her that he was going to be something, and she'd come back to him. She would support him like he wanted her too. He pushed open the door to his daughter's bedroom.
"Hey Sophie Bear," he said to his daughter, who was sitting on the floor playing with some dolls. She looked up at him with that beautiful smile of hers, her blonde hair shining in the light. "What're you up to?"
"Playing," she said plainly as she went back to her dolls.
"You and Mommy are going to go out in a little bit."
"Where?" she asked curiously.
"To grandma and grandpa's house."
"Mommy's mommy and daddy?" she asked, "but they're mean."
"I know," he chuckled, "but, you should go visit them, because I know deep, deep, deep down that they love you very much," he finished, grabbing her around the middle and tickling her.
"Daddy!" she squealed, trying to squirm free from him. "Stop!"
He stopped and pulled her into his lap. "I'm not going to go with you, Sophie Bear. Daddy actually has to do some things, and you and Mommy are going to stay with her mommy and daddy. But you'll see me all the time, I promise you that."
"You come too, Daddy," she pleaded.
"I can't, Sophie Bear, but it'll be okay, I promise, and Daddies don't go back on their promises, not when they can help it."
"I no wanna go," she whined, leaning against him.
"I know, Sophie Bear, but it's only for a little while. You see, Daddy wants to be a wrestler, and Mommy doesn't want me to be one, and we're kind of arguing about that, but don't worry about it, okay, because it'll all work out in the end."
"Hey, Bunny."
"Hi Mommy, Daddy come with?"
"No, Bunny, I'm sorry," she said sympathetically. "Get all your dolls and stuff, and we'll go, okay?"
"Okay," Sofia said sadly, climbing off of her daddy's lap and going to gather her things.
He stands up quickly, turning to face her. His face has one last shred of desperation in it, silently begging her not to go. She doesn't look at him directly, instead goes straight for her daughter's small dresser, pulling open the drawers and pulling out clothes and other necessities for the little girl. He stands there, but he notices something, something that reassures him that she is feeling, that she feels something. Her hands are trembling…just a tiny bit, almost unnoticeable, but they're trembling, and he goes over and he places one his hands on her, steadying her.
"You're shaking," he said plainly, because she knew he knew.
"Eight years," she tells him, her voice close to sobbing. "We've been with each other for eight years, Jay, it's just…a world without you is kind of scary."
"It doesn't have to be this way," he reminds her.
"No, it doesn't, but you have dreams you need to chase, and I have a daughter that need s to be taken care of, that's the long and short of it," she said. "Chase your dream, Jay, and believe me, I hope to God you succeed, I really do, don't ever doubt that I want it all for you."
"I know." And somehow, he does know. Despite everything, she's always wanted the world for the two of them. She'd talk about it sometimes, as they'd fall asleep at night in the living room slash bedroom since they only had a one-bedroom apartment, as it was all they could afford. She'd talk about the dreams they had given up, and when they had first had Sofia, those dreams were still attainable. They could have a plan, she'd say, they could make it work. That light faded though, as a couple years passed, as their station in life never improved. But sometimes, on those rare occasions, she'd revisit their dreams, and she'd smile.
"I love you," he says, and he doesn't know if it'll be the last time he gets to say it to her, but he just needs her to know. Just one more time, just to let her know that even in spite of her getting pregnant, eventually, he would've caved and proposed, someday down the line.
"I know," she said, repeating what he had just said. "I love you too."
He wanted to kiss her, but he hesitated. But then he thought, if that's the last time you can tell her that you love her, then it might be the last time that you get to kiss her. So he leans in and he kisses her softly, not intrusive, totally innocent, but he kisses her, remembering her lips. He doesn't want her to leave, he really doesn't, but maybe this is what had to happen. The chances of them lasting were slim anyways, there were statistics and everything telling them they were going to fail, that they'd never amount to anything. He had never believed that until now, but they had gotten married before they knew what they wanted in life, and maybe this was just how it had always planned to be. A non-bitter ending to a non-bitter relationship.
"Come on Bunny, say goodbye to Daddy and we're going."
"Bye, Daddy!" she said, hugging his leg. He picked her up and gave her a proper hug.
"I love you Sophie Bear, I'll be seeing you soon, okay?"
"Okay, Daddy," she said, then reached her arms for her mommy.
He followed them to the door, a couple duffel bags on her shoulders as she carried Sofia. She gave one last wistful look around the place. He hoped, deep inside, that she'd come back tomorrow, but for some reason, this all felt so final, like this was really, truly the end. She wasn't one to go back on decisions after she made them, and how could he convince her when she had seemingly already made up her mind.
"Goodbye, Jay."
"Goodbye, Trish."