Disclaimer: We don't own anybody. We don't wish this on anybody. It's just some rated M Wrestling fanfic, written to make you think.

One of these days the sky's gonna break and everything will escape and I'll know...

One of those days fell forty-eight hours before Wrestlemania 29 Eve.

That's when his mind was made up, once and for all. This wasn't something new. This had been building up for a long time, a very long time. But the finality of the decision and everything that would go along with it can be traced to these numbers on the calendar.

The skies broke, alright, into a record rainfall that had those in low-lying areas near the Met Life Stadium racing for higher ground. That was the day that set everything not only in motion, but carved the events into stone. Sure, the sharp-eyed insiders backstage may have sensed -something- coming, but not this.

Not as awful as this.

Of course, the smarks, armchair quarterbacks, and the jaded, ignorant masses who just don't get it will band together through social media and turn this into something uglier, bile mixing with a lack of consideration. With any luck, though, maybe one day, there will be an understanding. Or at least an attempt to understand.

Much like the understanding that was reached with Randy Orton and a longtime fan, now one-time, by-request murderess, whose name needn't be spoken aloud, because it could've been anyone.

It might even have been you.

One of these days the mountains are gonna fall into the sea and they'll know...

That precise day, or date, was on Wrestlemania. Was the date by chance or by choice? Some might say he'd chosen it for the purpose of memory and dramatics; he felt as if there was no choice in the matter. Fate holds no choices.

He didn't show up at the venue; this wasn't normal. Sure, he had a tendency over the last year or so to run late sometimes, but most of the time, they let it go. He'd tested clean regularly, technically.

Regularly because there was no regularity. As long as the company looked the other way, which they would since Hunter was in charge of Wellness Testing now, and would do everything he possibly could to ensure that Randy had a heads-up before the rounds of tests, clean results came back from the lab.

You'd never know if you didn't search for it, that there's actually a market for clean urine. It can be procured, obtained, and passed off as one's own. It's saved careers, and sometimes sanity. But it's a stopgap measure, and that's something that the world would learn the day -after- Wrestlemania 29.

When the police surrounded the Howard Johnson Motel on Route 3 West, alerted by the manager that there was a situation, they'd arrived way too late.

They were both gone. He, eternally, and she, on the run.

That you and I were made for this
i was made to taste your kiss
we were made to never fall away

Never fall away

Of course, you don't ask someone to kill you out of fucking nowhere. You spend as much free time as you can with them, getting them close to you. Getting them to trust you. You don't ask her to go into a pact with you, because why the fuck would she do that? You're not going to stop her, though, either. Should she -wish- to go with you and leave some of her own notoriety behind, that's fine, as well. But it's not a requirement.

So you find the time during Axxess and on the off-time, avoiding the boys in the back and focusing on her. They're wondering where you're staying, and you don't fucking tell them. Of course, a lowcarder or three are staying at the same shithole you are, because that's all they can afford, and you ignore their presence. This, of course starts the rumors that you're seriously into drugs again. The only people who stay at this place are drug addicts, whores and scumbags..as well as lowcarders.

Word may or may not reach Hunter. Doesn't matter, though. He already promised there wouldn't be a piss test before Mania. Right before RAW, the next day, yeah, but not before Mania.

Big deal. You already know you won't be there. And you're going to live your death the way you weren't allowed to live your life.

You're going to give this virtual stranger some good memories, that will hopefully overshadow the bad.

As well as the best sex of her life. Go out with a 'bang' in more ways than one.

At least you know how to do that without fucking it up. Wrestling and fucking, the two areas you excel...and half the fan base says you bore the hell out of them wrestling.

At least no woman's ever made that complaint in your bed. They've only complained when you fucked them once and never called the next day like you promised.

one of these days letters are gonna fall from the sky telling us all to go free
but until that day i'll find a way to let everybody know you're coming back

You're coming back for me

'cause even though you left me here i have nothing left to fear
these are only walls that hold me here

It had only been walls holding him for quite awhile, really. And fear finally faded away, far enough where his stream of consciousness allowed for the pain to subside. The moment that it all 'clicked' within his head, that what was to be, would be, was when the tautness in his jaw finally slackened just a little; the narrowing of his eyes went a bit less harsh. Relief was on the horizon. Just so many years of the road. Years of the bullshit. The abuse, both self-inflicted and what personal and professional life brought...finally, there was peace within his sights. It was near. He could almost taste it.

Such peace came violently, with a seizure at the end that gripped him with excruciating, unfathomable pain, but then...peace.

Hold me here

Her embrace was the last thing he felt.

By design.

This was the only way to go, the only way to fly. He had to go. He'd gone beyond the expiration date, just like a quart of milk. He knew. He knew that at this point in his life, he had become (at least in his own eyes) nothing more than a marketable product, to anyone. His shelf-life went bad; everything was tinged with shit.

Time for product rotation, Vince.

But her embrace made things a little better.

She was, by most accounts, a stranger. Their lives hadn't intertwined until his Point of No Return in the established, determined timeline. But was there something that brought them together, other than "the grandest stage in the world," right?

Well, he left this world believing so, because there was just nothing else left to believe in anymore.

Only walls that hold me here

The morgue's schematics were only walls, too. They'd be temporary, before his body was flown home.

Walls. Just like the Howard Johnson Motel. Just like the mansion in Missouri. Just like the venues from Biloxi to Buenos Aires to Bumfuck, Idaho and everywhere inbetween. Just walls. But when it's just the shell left behind, and you're flying, it doesn't matter anymore.

It finally doesn't fucking matter anymore.

one day soon i'll hold you like the sun holds the moon and we will hear those planes overhead and we won't be scared 'cause we won't have to be scared

Rattle. Bang. Groan. All sounds.

It all happened way, way too fast. "Just fucking do it," he'd growled at her, his gaze and stance unsteady from the handful of meds he'd just swallowed.

And of course, like a good plaything, she'd objected. Tried to talk him out of it. Convince him that he had more to live for.

"Like what?"

She gaped at him, her mouth opening and closing and trying to find something to say, but she couldn't answer him fast enough. Next thing she knew, he'd charged for her.

In the back of her mind, she knew what he was doing. He was trying to provoke her into shooting him. Of course, all of that was in the back of her mind because the only thing that was in the forefront of her mind was the pain of him throwing her around the room. Over the table. Into the walls. On the floor.

She thought it couldn't get any worse, but then she felt a blinding pain on the left side of her jaw. And another one. And another one. And another one.

This bastard was desperate enough to put his hands on her?

"Fine, fine!"

Twice.

Twice she'd shot him, with a shaky grip and tightly closed eyes, once in the stomach and the next in his chest.

She was hearing too many things at once. The ringing in her ears from the loud shots. His shocked groan and the thud that his body made with the floor beneath him. Harsh breathing. Heart pounding.

A good two minutes had gone by before she opened her eyes, and she was greeted with the sight of Randy on the floor, convulsing violently. Ignoring the painful throbbing in her face, she was on the floor with him and trying to cradle him in her arms, though his convulsing made it hard. She kept apologizing, crying, still trying to hold him. "I didn't mean it!"

This had to be the worst way to go. Doped up with two bullets in your torso and suffering from a seizure.

"I didn't mean it... I swear to God, I didn't mean it..."

He'd stopped shaking. Blue orbs glazed over and closed slowly, but not before giving her one last flickering glance.

She didn't know what to feel. Grief that he was gone, guilt that she was the reason he was gone or relief that she'd stopped him from wailing lefts and rights on her.

She'd sat there with him for hours, holding him until his body completely stiffened under her touch and his skin was ice cold. It struck her as odd that no one had come after the two gunshots had sounded, but she didn't dwell on it. She had to get out of there. Gingerly, she laid him back down on the carpet. She didn't bother to cover up any of her tracks. Didn't bother to change out of her clothes that were now stained by Randy's blood. She grabbed one of his hoodies and slipped it on over her head, leaving the hood up to conceal her face and any bruises that might have been there. It was April in New Jersey, so it was passable for her to wear a hoodie without getting any questionable stares.

She'd ridden with him in his bus, so she didn't have any rental keys. Shit. I'll catch the bus. Going where, she didn't know. But she grabbed her suitcases and looked at the cold, lifeless body on the floor one last time before turning on her heel and walking out, closing the door with a resounding click.

You're coming back for me

Would she come to his funeral? Well, he'd left enough money in her bag for her for travel. She wouldn't have known it, though, until she had the chance to actually -look- in her purse; he'd emptied his wallet of all cash, leaving just the ID for the cops and his usual credit cards that he carried so that they'd know it was him, in the event that the tattoos weren't enough. He didn't expect enough to be left of his face if she shot him just right, but he had no need for money, not where he was going.

And if she played it smart, and didn't rifle through his wallet and take his cards, she might be able to make it to wherever she needed to be, home free.

Didn't mean he might not, in a shadow, be standing in the back of that funeral parlor that held his closed casket, watching who was coming and going. He might smile, seeing her there. Maybe she'd think she'd hear him whisper a "thank you" in her ear, one night after the dust of this began to settle, and the media backed off.

No regrets. Not anymore. Not for him. And he'd hope that she'd reconcile within her head that she'd done right by him. Just like putting an animal out of its misery, or someone sentenced to death row. Finally, closure.

You're coming back.

And just like the good little sheep, all that were horrified at the sequence of events that played out over Wrestlemania 29 and the days thereafter, the viewership of RAW and SmackDown surged for a couple of weeks, then fell off. Of course, Linda's team planning her next campaign had their work cut out for them trying to whitewash this. And even you, who sat horrified and disgusted...you swore you were done with this product forever. You weren't going to watch this show and contribute to the ratings or buy the products, because you felt like you're "assisting suicides" of these "unstable people who put their bodies and sanity on the lines for our amusement"...

You're coming back, too. See you at '30 in New Orleans. You know you'll be there. Our faces and characters may have changed, but you haven't.

No matter how much you believe otherwise, you haven't.