AN: So, this is new. I don't think I've uploaded anything onto this site since I was about fourteen. But I've still been writing and improving and whatnot. Why not do something completely new? I have a feeling this will attract a very different audience from my older fics – if it attracts any audience – but who cares? I've been working on this for a couple of months now, and I'm looking forward to finally making it available to read.
Important note before this all kicks off: I am rather English. As you probably already know if you clicked on this to read, these characters are mostly all American. I will try extremely hard to stay in character and not write particularly English things, but stuff like the spelling of words will be all English-y. Sorry in advance if this bothers you.
Oh, and I don't own these characters. (Is that still a thing? I tend to skip author's notes when I read, so I'm not entirely sure.)

Mending Fences, Burning Bridges

Prologue

July 15th, 2013

Barclays Center, Brooklyn, New York

I didn't think it was possible to be this angry. Dolph always had this way of pushing me. Before we were together, he was constantly in my face trying to bait me. When we were a couple, he always encouraged me to go further, to try harder. And now?

Now he was making me throw a chair against a wall.

I had to scream at E to get him to leave me alone. He just didn't understand that now wasn't the time for hugs and sympathy, now was the time to break things and shriek. Everyone thought that I was insane anyway, right? What was the point in trying to prove them wrong?

Ziggy was my last hope to show people I was good, I was normal, I was fine.

Anger swelled up again inside me, and I hit out at the wall. He abandoned me. Left me to chase down his title. Gee, didn't that sound familiar?

There was a lump building at the back of my throat as I started attacking the wall. He didn't even see what he had done. He couldn't get it into his stupid bleached head that this was wrong.

Thoughts of Kaitlyn burned in my skull, driving me to slam my fists into the brickwork. Maybe they worked together for revenge. Kaitlyn worked it all out, she must have. It wasn't just the fact that Kaitlyn and Dolph had done the exact same thing, it was that Dolph and Daniel had too.

Both of them blamed me for making them lose that same title. If I could pry that belt from Del Rio, I would tear it to pieces.

It was the memory of Daniel just last year screaming at me in front of everyone that stopped me punching at the wall. Instead, I slid to the floor and crumpled in on myself, curling my hands into fists again and hitting my head to get the image out.

My Ziggy should have known and maybe he did and he just didn't care and maybe this was planned from the beginning and maybe I should have just realised and stopped him and stopped caring because everything was just wrong when I cared about people and…

I tried to scream again, but my throat was too hoarse. So I started crying.

I was sobbing into the crooks of my arms, fisting my hair behind my head, and then I started crying harder because crying made me think of Punk and hugs and 'I dig crazy chicks' and then how he didn't and how I ruined everything again-

The door opened. I looked up on reflex, tensed and ready to scream at the person coming in.

Instead of being E like I expected, or Dolph like I hoped, it was some guy in black. It took me a second to recognise him as one of the guys from the Shield, just as it took him a second to realise I was curled up on the floor staring at him.

He stared back for a second, before shrugging and picking up a water bottle from the nearby cooler. And somehow, that brought back the anger. Just being casually brushed off when I was crying because I'm just crazy old AJ, no point in trying to help me.

As my glare burned into the side of his head, he gulped down a good quarter of the bottle and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. His gaze flickered back to me, looking a little uncomfortable at the sight of the sobbing girl in his dressing room, and he gestured to the cooler. "Want one?"

"…What?"

He held up the bottle. "Water. You want one?"

I blinked, before I clenched my jaw and stood up and stalked towards the cooler. Grabbing a bottle, I went back to my wall and leaned against it. I kept my eyes on the bottle as I tried to open it, wiping away any evidence of tears from my face with my arm.

The Shield guy took a seat and started unwrapping the tape around his hands. Finally getting the bottle open, I took a swig and tried to remember his name. Reigns was the big one with the blue eyes, and Rollins was the one with the Kaitlyn hair. This was the other guy that talked a lot in the promos.

Trying to think back through the Shield's promos, I ran through the introductions. Rollins, Reigns…Ambrose! Dan or Dean or something.

"So…" Ambrose drawled, tugging at his tape. "I'm guessing that Ziggler broke up with you."

If looks could kill, Ambrose would be mangled on the floor and choking on his own blood.

He met my glare with…with boredom. Who the hell did this guy think he was?

My hand unconsciously tightened around the bottle, and water spilled out over the top. He watched it coat my fist and drip to the floor, then looked back to my face and raised an eyebrow. "If it makes you feel better, I thought it'd be the other way a-"

Ambrose broke off, since he needed to duck after I threw the water bottle at his head. It splashed both of us, bouncing off the wall and leaving a long wet trail as it rolled back towards me. Ambrose looked down at the bottle and finished his sentence. "Around."

I stared him down, feeling sharp pricks of frustration when he refused to glance away first and let me have this small victory. It reminded me of that confrontation with Dolph in the locker room, looking into those bright blue eyes as he insulted me, called me out, told me the truth. There was that first hint of butterflies with that stare, that first feeling of wanting a little more. I blamed it on just his eyes at first. That blue.

Ambrose's were nothing in comparison. Some kind of greyish colour.

Instead of butterflies, I felt like my intestines were being put into a vice grip and squeezed. This was why I threw chairs. Bottled-up anger felt so much worse.

I had to be the one to break eye contact first and storm out – slamming the door behind me as I did.