Alice's dreams were plagued with nightmares. Bleeding lips and swollen eyes, crawling on the floor, trying to get up, only to be painfully bashed to the ground again. She hated herself, she hated that she couldn't do anything.

She still loved him.

Father or not.

She woke up in a cold sweat. Joey hadn't moved the punching bag out of her room, so Alice got up and threw on gloves. She swung at the bag viciously, tears stinging her eyes as the nightmares and reality came back in flashes until she couldn't tell the two apart.

A soft knock sounds at her door, a groggy Joey Mercury's voice makes it's way through her door. "You okay in there, Alice? Can I come in?"

Alice stares at the door for a few seconds, wiping the sweat off of her face. "Yeah, come in." Joey steps into the room, eyeing her, "I'm fine." She insists, "Really, you're worrying for no reason." Alice shrugs, taking the gloves off her hands.

Joey sits on her bed, sighing, "I'm worrying for no reason? You're up at.. 4 AM punching a bag.. yeah you're right, nothing to worry about. I worry about you, I've never seen someone look that scared before."

"I wasn't scared." Alice insists, folding her arms over her chest.

"Right, okay." Joey stands up again, "Just, when you finally decide to talk, I'm here, okay? Any hour of the day."

Alice looks down at her feet, then she looks up at him with a sad smile. "Thanks." Though she knows her secret will forever lay in the bottom of her heart, only to fester and terrify her in her dreams.

Joey leaves after wishing her a good night and telling her what time they were training tomorrow. Alice turns on her phone, going through her texts. She sees one and feels her heart fall.

Hiding already, I should have known you little bitch.

She switches off her phone before the tears begin to fall.

There's no escape.


Alice is training hard, harder than usual. Her busted lip seems to give her more strength, as she floats through the warm up with a fever. She wrestles until Joey tells her she needs to chill or else she's going to hurt her opponent.

By the end of her training session, she can barely breathe. But it's welcome to her. Wrestling made her forget, it made her forget the bruises, the blood, the horror. It made her only focus on one thing, winning. That, Alice loved to do. She owed wrestling her life, if she hadn't found wrestling, death would have found her sooner. She'd escape in the middle of the night to sit in a ring and happily wither away.

"You were on fire today." Chris Hero says, coming up behind her with a towel. "Someone threw gas in the tank, eh?"

Alice gives him a little smile, patting her face down with the towel. "Guess you could say something like that."

"You feeling okay? You seemed pretty..."

Alice cuts him off before he can say 'scared'. "I'm fine, really. Everyone needs to just, stop bugging me about it. If I wanted you to know, you'd know." Alice shrugs, wrapping the towel around her neck, "Just how it is."

Chris nods, "I know what'll cheer you up. Chinese food sound good?"

"Sounds great. How about around seven. Though I have a few dozen hot dates to cancel out on." Alice says with a laugh, patting down her forehead.

"I don't want to pull you away from your fanclub or anything." Chris jokes, "Do you have a match at Ring of Honor this weekend?"

Alice scratches her head, pondering, "Hmm, I'm not sure. I'll have to ask Joey, though he's probably convinced himself I'm in no emotional state to wrestle."

"If anything, you're ready to kill someone."

"More reason why he wouldn't let me in a ring."

Chris leans against the wall, "How's life in the Mercury household? How's Moxley?"

Alice rolls her eyes, "Fuck Moxley."

"You two are getting along."

"I want to hit his face, with a frying pan."

"Best friends already I can tell." Chris quips with a smirk. "What did he say?"

"He said I had high standards and that I wasn't, quote on quote, 'special'. Fuck him, he doesn't know anything. He's just pissed I'm not willing to jump on him like every other female in the Earth's population." Alice rolls her eyes, picking at her nail, "He had a whore over."

"That's Moxley."

Alice rolls her eyes, "Doesn't mean I need to deal with it."

"Invest in ear plugs." Speak of the devil and he shall appear, Alice thought bitterly as Jon Moxley walked over to them. Hands in his pockets, sly smirk in place. "Didn't know you were the jealous type."

"Not for you." Alice snaps, "I need to go take a shower."

"Want to conserve water?" Jon asks, that smirk growing bigger.

"I think I'd rather drown myself actually. Or fling myself off a building. Whichever gets me away from you faster." Alice snaps at him, darting away before she can raise her fist to his face.

"See you at home!" Jon calls after her, then he turns to Chris, "No lady can resist the Moxley charm."

Chris laughs at him, folding his arms against his chest, "She might stick forks in your eyes while you're sleeping if you keep this up. She isn't one for bullshit, especially not anyone else's but hers."

Jon licks his lips, his smirk taunting and his eyes almost predatory, "I love a challenge." He quips. his eyes following her as she went to the showers.


Chris and Alice sat on her bed, chatting excitedly while eating chinese food. It was hard to believe this was the same Alice who staggered into Joey's studio only a day or so ago. It was hard to believe someone so happy could be so miserable.

"He said he loves a challenge?" Alice laughs, nearly choking on her chicken fried rice, "You've got to be kidding me. One good reason why I shouldn't run in there and stick pins in him."

Chris gives her a large smile, "Because that would just be challenging him."

Alice punches his arm, "You suck, seriously. Why'd you have to tell me? Were you worried I'd be seduced by his ever growing asshole-ness? Oh you know I just love those ego maniacs, damn, how'd you know my weakness?"

Chris shrugs, "I have no idea, I just know you love those jerks. Something about how they treat you like shit."

"Trust me, Jon Moxley is just another ego maniac on some kind of ego trip. Soon he'll plummet from cloud nine, hopefully land on his head a few times, and come back to reality, if only for a few minutes."

"You two are getting along." Chris comments with a roll of his eyes, "You two live together, you're going to have to get along. What are you going to do? Barricade yourself in this room?"

Alice puckers her lips, "What? Is that not going to work?"

"Not if you want to stay sane."

"Damn." Alice clenches her jaw, "I'll just ignore him, and if I'm in the unfortunate situation of having to talk to him, I'll cleverly change the subject. Such as a gradual shift into the weather or, I'll do what I do best, bolt."

Chris chuckles, shaking his long hair, "Try to be friendly."

Alice raises an eyebrow at Chris, "I'm nothing but friendly."

"Uh, no you aren't. You have two settings, one being, I'll bite your face off, or two, I'll tolerate your existence. Moxley only fits under one of these settings, and since we're having this conversation, it's obviously not the tolerance one."

Alice rolls her green eyes at him, flicking her golden hair over her shoulder, "I'm just going to ignore him."


Chris leaves and Alice waves him away. Jon Moxley is sitting on the couch watching TV, Alice is pretty intent on running back into her room and bolting the door, but he stops her.

"Running off so fast?"

Alice turns around, her hand on the knob, to see Moxley staring devilishly at her, "Just doing some clean up."

"Uh huh, sure you are." Jon turns back to the TV, smirking.

She storms over to him, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I scare you."

"You do not."

"Then why are you running?"

"I am not."

"So defensive."

Alice's face flames, "I'm only defensive because you make stupid accusations."

"Ouch, little kitty got claws." Jon says, folding his arms over his chest, "Come on, entertain me."

"Fuck you, Moxley." Alice growls, turning on her heel, but he grabs her wrist.

"If you weren't scared, you'd stay."

"If I wanted to keep my sanity, I'd go. I think my sanity is much more important than proving your stupid conspiracy theory." She wrenches her wrist out of his grip, storming towards her room, fuming.

Jon still has that smirk on his face as he watches her close the door. "Fucking terrified." He finally decides, taking a swig of his beer.