Author's Note: A Charlotte-centric story, because I actually love her more than I let on. Also starring the other three Horsewomen, because maybe I just love them all.

I feel like this goes without saying, and I've never done it before, but... you know I own nothing of any sort! :p

Underneath My Skin

Champion.

Most people would never understand what it meant to be a champion, the amount of work it required to be the absolute best. Charlotte understood - she was a champion, and she put more work into her craft than any could possibly fathom. Like many athletes of her caliber, of the elite caliber, Charlotte put her body through sheer hell to achieve her goal of becoming the Divas Champion. That belt wasn't for show: it represented every day, hour, and minute she pushed herself to her physical and mental limits.

'Do it with Flair' wasn't just a catchphrase to put on a t-shirt - she had a legacy to uphold, and she fought with her family's legacy in mind every time she set foot in a wrestling ring. Her father was a two-time Hall of Famer - held more world championships in the industry than anyone. If she hoped to be anything like him, if she hoped to accumulate as many accolades has him by the time she retired, Charlotte needed to be the best, and her current championship reign was the proof that she was. She would do anything to maintain her dominance over the division, even if that meant bending the rules or betraying a friend.

Her mind wandered towards Becky Lynch.

She had made this abundantly clear to Becky on numerous occasions after their falling out, but there was no room for friendship, not in this business - not at the top. They had fun together, but fun wasn't going to get her what she desired. Fun wasn't going to get her to be the first woman to main event a Wrestlemania. Fun wasn't going to get her into the Hall of Fame, cementing her own legacy and living on in wrestling history until the end of time. Becky had a similar goal, but Charlotte knew that Becky was too much of a goody-goody to accomplish anything anything close to that.

Charlotte found it adorable that Becky believed it was possible to be both the 'nice guy' and the best. If her father taught her anything, it was that nice guys finished last. If their previous encounters were any indication, Becky was always doomed to finish last. She was a fighter, and somehow always managed to climb back up the ranks after Charlotte unceremoniously knocked her back to the bottom, but ditching Becky Lynch was for the best, even if it ruined something meaningful. That was the price she paid.

With another victory under her belt, Charlotte allowed herself to revel in these thoughts. It was quite the confidence boost. Not that she needed to have her confidence boosted. Forcing Paige to tap out tonight did that well enough. It was strange, though, to have a night where neither Becky nor Sasha Banks were hounding her for another shot at her title. Having her celebrations cut short by one of those two seemed to be the norm. Come to think of it, she hadn't seen either of them all night.

Tossing a duffel bag into the back of her car, Charlotte could only shake her head. Typical, she thought. Maybe they were ripping each other's hair out in an embarrassing airport brawl, or maybe simply taking a vacation. If they were at the arena, they were definitely slacking off. At any rate, it was up to Charlotte to carry the division on her back.

What else was new?

Before she could pat her own back any more, she could hear the faint sounds of her ringtone from inside her pocket. She glanced at the name - 'Hug-o-tron' - and scrunched her face in confusion. What could Bayley possibly want at midnight? Though she was still on good terms with Bayley, she was too drained to deal with all of what Bayley encompassed at this time. Against her better judgement, however, she answered the call. "Bayley? Do you ever call at normal times?"

"Charlotte, something bad happened. I-I don't know exactly what but Sasha just called me a few minutes ago and I thought I should call you because I d-"

"Slow down for a second." Bayley's frantic tone suddenly turned what Charlotte expected to be an awkward chat into a nerve-racking conversation. "What's going on? What happened?"

She could hear Bayley breathing nervously on the other end, trying to calm herself before she continued her explanation. "Becky's hurt. Bad. She's in the emergency room right now. I... I don't know. Sasha sounded really worried. She said that Becky fell, and that she hasn't moved much a-and I just have no idea what's going on. Please, Charlotte. I know you guys aren't on great terms, but I can't fly out there tonight. Can you just, just check on them for me?"

Charlotte didn't know how to respond, and how could she? She had just finished inwardly attacking Becky for being a loser, and now suddenly she's in the emergency room. This was a woman that she cut ties with less than half a year ago. Could she really tell Bayley that this didn't concern her, that she wiped her hands clean of anything and everything relating to Becky Lynch?

She couldn't.

"Alright, just tell me where they are. I'll head down there."

"Thank you."

As she drove down to the hospital, clenching the steering wheel until her knuckles turned white, Charlotte wasn't sure if she was doing this for Bayley, or for herself.

Charlotte practically crashed through the double doors of the emergency room with how quickly she had ran through them. The long car ride did little to ease her worries - she shouldn't be worried, she repeated to herself, because Becky wasn't her friend - and now she was severely on edge. Walking up to the front desk, she gave her name, and that of Becky's, to the nurse stationed there. "What's your relation to her?" she asked, catching Charlotte off-guard.

"We're... friends."

Without much more questioning, the nurse told Charlotte the number to Becky's room - the room where they had placed her for "further testing" - and after several minutes, she came face-to-face with the door. Bracing herself, she gave the door a light knock, her knuckles tapping the wood as quietly as she could. She heard a shaky "It's open," before making her way in.

Her eyes locked with a teary-eyed Sasha Banks, sitting at Becky's bedside, her hand clutching that of Becky's.

"Charlotte?!" Sasha stood up in surprise.

"I..." This was a lot more awkward than Charlotte initially thought it would be. Like with Becky, Charlotte and Sasha weren't on the greatest of terms either. Sasha was another stepping stone on Charlotte's path to greatness. But now, seeing Sasha looking so vulnerable at the sight of their fellow Horsewoman, it made Charlotte feel saddened. "Bayley told me that Becky was hurt. What the hell happened to her?"

She still had yet to learn exactly what caused Becky to be here in the first place. As Sasha prepped to answer, Charlotte gave Becky a once-over, immediately wishing that she hadn't. Various tubes were sticking firmly out of the Irish woman's arm, one delivering fluid directly through her veins. Becky always had extremely white skin, but she looked positively pale, sickeningly so. She was unconscious, a white bandage wrapped firmly around her forehead, her orange locks nearly covering it from view. It was all disturbing, and Charlotte had a feeling she'd be revisiting this scene in her nightmares.

"We were having a stupid, stupid argument - at the arena - and Becky got so angry with me. She stormed off, but didn't see the stairs." The thought of Becky's body falling down a flight of stairs made Charlotte cringe. "They did a bunch of tests, and they said her head will heal, but they have no idea when she'll wake up. It could be weeks. Or months. Or... God, this is all my fault. I should've said anything to calm her down. I just let her go. God, why did I just let her go?"

Charlotte didn't know how to deal with this. This was all so sudden - so tragically sudden. What if Becky never woke up? She tried to shake the thought from her head, the negativity serving no purpose at the moment; she had to trust the doctors' words. Becky would wake up, she had to wake up. Becky Lynch was a fighter; she wasn't going to just lie there and give up. Charlotte could tell that Becky was fighting her greatest battle yet. She had to win. But right now, Sasha needed her as well.

"Hey, quit that, okay? It's not your fault. These things happen sometimes. Becky would want you to be strong, right?" If Charlotte was being perfectly honest, she was sort of speaking nonsense, but it did seem like something that Becky would say. "Be strong! Kick lass!" she would say. Charlotte could see Becky's goofy smirk so vividly in her mind.

Despite what she believed, it was easy to tell that her words had some effect on Sasha. "Yeah, you're right. I'll try. Thanks, Charlotte." Sasha wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve, before doing something completely unexpected, hugging the blonde.

Charlotte tensed up as she felt arms wrap around her waist, Sasha's face burrowed in the crook of her neck. "Oh, um... You're welcome."

"You're still a jerk, though."

"Yeah, yeah. You should go outside, get some air."

"No. I-I can't, I should be here, it's my-" Sasha stopped herself. She couldn't keep letting guilt get to her like this.

"She'll be here when you get back. You've been here for hours, I can watch her for a bit."

Taking Charlotte's word for it, Sasha stepped out of the room - planting a tiny kiss on Becky's forehead before doing so - leaving Charlotte alone with Becky. When she was sure that Sasha was out of earshot, Charlotte let out a heavy sigh, taking Sasha's now unoccupied seat to Becky's left. What had started out as an amazing night suddenly turned into a horrible catastrophe.

Because of Becky. Again.

She had no idea what it was, but apparently her fate was intertwined with Becky's because she could not escape her. Was it their destiny to always be connected this way? No matter how hard she tired to distance herself from her former friend, she always found a way to slowly creep back into her life. It never failed, and tonight's events were the perfect example. It didn't matter what Charlotte did, or how far she got - Becky was there, either to knock her down, or to remind her that the past will haunt her forever. Was this punishment for abandoning Becky months ago? If so, this was cruel and unusual. As much as Charlotte swore up and down that she hated Becky's guts, she would never in her darkest hour wish this upon her. No one deserved this, least of all the pure-hearted woman from Dublin.

She took in Becky's image yet again. She looked almost peaceful; if this were any other situation, Charlotte would say that Becky was having the greatest nap of her life. But the fact that Becky looked so peaceful, so tranquil, in a hospital bed terrified her.

"Why do you always do this?" Charlotte knew that Becky couldn't hear her, but she needed to drown out the incessant beeping of the hospital equipment. That, and maybe talking to her might actually help the both of them. "Every time I feel like I'm doing well, you just come back into my life and cause trouble. Why? Is it because I ended our friendship? I don't get it. Don't you see why I did what I did? You can't make friends in this business, and I made that mistake with you. We became so close - hell, I called you my 'sister.' If I wanted to get to where I knew I could get to, I had to leave you behind, because I wasn't going to let anything hold me back."

She wasn't sure if this was helping or making her feel worse than before, but decided to continue regardless. "You get on my nerves, you know that? Your stupid attitude, and your stupid jokes, and your stupid smile. It all pisses me off. It keeps forcing me to remember everything that we had together as friends, and I hate it. No matter what I do, you're there, and I have to relive everything over and over! I wanted nothing more than for you to get out of my face. For good. But now you're lying here, and it's torture."

Charlotte could feel her emotions getting the better of her, tears collecting rapidly in the corners of her eyes. She hated how emotional she could get over certain things, but this situation definitely warranted it, there was no question about that. "I just want to forget everything, okay Becks? Seeing you like this is scary. I shouldn't be scared, maybe I don't even have the right to be, but I am. I have to apologize, and then we need to make up, and take a bunch of dumb pictures on the road like before. I need you to sing to the radio, because your accent makes it all so ridiculous. I need you to buy twenty protein drinks, even though I told you a minute ago that I had enough for us both. So just wake up soon. Please." Charlotte hated the constant reminders of how fragile life was - of how things could change in the blink of an eye. It happened once already; she lost a brother, and now she had successfully pushed her sister away, effectively losing her as well. With Becky's state of being now, it seemed like such a foolish endeavor in retrospect. Nothing was worth sacrificing her family for, but now it might be too late to change what she'd done.

She put her face in her hands, wiping any stray tears that had decided to stick around. "I'm such piece of crap."

"Nah, you're not. A bit of a jerk lately, if I'm being honest with you."

Charlotte's head flung up at the distinct sound of her friend's voice, and was greeted by the sight of a smiling Becky Lynch. "Becks? You're awake?"

Becky squirmed around in her position, trying to make herself more comfortable, given the circumstances. "'Becks? Sheesh, something must've happened while I was out of it if you're calling me that again."

Her friend's sudden awakening nearly left her speechless, but she quickly collected herself. "I, uh, did some reflecting."

"Well, isn't that a mirror-cle!"

Charlotte flicked Becky's forehead, much to the latter's annoyance. "Hey hey hey, don't I get any sympathy for being asleep for... Actually, how long has it been?"

"A few hours."

"And you're already crying? Aw, you really do care about me!"

"Of course I do. I tried hard to stop, but we're sisters, Becky. I can't stop caring."

Becky hadn't expected such a serious, endearing response from Charlotte. "I want to hug you really badly, but I can't really maneuver my way around these death traps." She lifted her arm to show that she was still hooked to the devices.

"We'll make up for it later, promise. Speaking of hugs, Bayley's flying down to see you later this week." Becky's grin grew twice as wide, the thought of Bayley bursting into her room with multiple balloons cheering her up already. "We were all worried sick about you."

"All? Does that mean Sasha's here too?"

"I sent her out to get some air - she hadn't left your side before then. She feels guilty about everything."

"She shouldn't. It was my fault for being such a klutz. But you know, this is pretty great."

"Huh? You're in a hospital room with your head banged up. How is that great?"

"Because now we're all friends again! The Four Horsewomen - A Tearful Reunion. Has a nice documentary-esque ring to it, eh?"

Charlotte was impressed by Becky's ability to remain positive. Other people - people not as strong, not as brave as Becky - would probably be scared beyond belief. Becky was a fighter, always climbing her way back up after being knocked down. As much as Charlotte didn't want to say it, Becky's injury, as horrible as it was, did bring them all closer together. It often took terrible accidents like this to make people realize how much they actually cared for each other. Charlotte cared about all of them deeply, more than she could put into words.

"This stinks."

"What do you mean?"

"Well had I just fallen down a flight of steps in the first place, we could've patched things up months ago."

"Becky..."

"Kidding!"

Charlotte was definitely grateful to have her best friend back.