A/N: Thanks go out to everyone who reviewed. Some important things to know are that: ANGEL DID NOT LOOSE HIS SOUL….THEY DROVE HIM OUT OF TOWN! DRUSILLA KILLED KENDRA, AND SPIKE OPENED ACATHLA. HE WAS SENT TO HELL WITH A STAKE IN HIS HEART FOR HIS TROUBLES.
Anon: They really did get married. They also really did get divorced. While I know that one must be eighteen to be married, they went to Vegas.
Morgana: This is my world; Catlimere can tell you that I never give a fuck about what's going on in reality. Also, Jeff didn't break his back in reality but he did in my world. As for your other question, keep reading.
Catlimere: I knew you would. Faith and several of the others will be making appearances. Look for an author's note on several of my stories soon.
Rosie: Love that you love it. Faith will turn up; you should know by now that the Slayers are by far my favorite characters to write.
AllyCatHerm19: Well, here's an update.
REVIEW! REVIEW! Please.
Chapter 2
The members of the nWo were inside of the locker room, several of them caught up in their own worlds. Out of the entire group, only three of them weren't there. Shawn Michaels had taken his son, Cameron, to visit his parents in San Antonio. And Kevin Nash, who was one of Shawn's lovers, was currently in a meeting with the GM of Smackdown, Stephanie McMahon. The remaining Kliq didn't know it, but most of them were reflecting on the past.
Jeff Hardy, who was the other part of the trio, was reflecting on his stepdaughter. He'd first met Shawn and Kevin back when the two of them were just starting to fall in love. He knew that both of his lovers had hidden their relationship for the first year.
Not even Cameron, who had been five at the time, had known. That had been six years before and two years later he'd joined the pair. All these years later, they still weren't overtly public about their relationship. Sure, polygamous relationships had been legalized five years before, but that didn't really mean anything.
Shawn had told them about his daughter, Beth. She'd been one of the two centers of his life. For seven years, she'd been the only center. When she was ten, though, Cameron had joined the small family and Beth had had to share her daddy with her little brother. Apparently, that was when she'd started getting distant.
Kevin could vaguely remember a blonde girl who'd hung around with Stephanie and Shane McMahon. Jeff had never met his other stepchild because her biological mother had gained custody of her right around the time that he had joined the company.
It still tore Shawn apart. Six years had gone by and she'd never come back. Mark Calloway could remember her as well and missed her almost as much. If he didn't know better, Jeff would have thought that there was something there. Maybe there was.
From what Steph and Shane said, who Beth had been around the rest of the world was totally different from the way she behaved around her father. She'd been loose and loved it. She'd been wild and crazy, similar to Steph except, according to Shane, Beth had been three times worse.
When Beth was fifteen, Shawn's sister had found out that Shawn was gay. She'd dragged him to court for custody of the girl she'd abandoned nearly 12 years before. He wouldn't have lost custody of Beth if he hadn't been gay. That was a good part of why the three of them weren't obvious about their relationship.
Jeff couldn't help but wonder what had happened to her. Was she still alive? Did she make a couple of wrong turns and was too stubborn to ask for the directions back to her life?
Or had the girl Shawn still mourned gone on with her life, calmly forgetting that there were people who loved her out there?
Sean Waltman was upset because he was recalling his little half brother. He didn't let himself recall Alexander often; he honestly doubted that Xander had managed to survive. If he could have, he would have taken his eleven year old brother away from their drunken parents when he left at eighteen. Well, their drunken mother and Xand's drunken father. But he hadn't been able to and when one considered how abusive they were, Xand was probably dead now.
Sean couldn't help but wonder if maybe, just maybe, Xander had managed to survive. Maybe he should try to find his little bro. But maybe, tormenting himself with all these maybes would drive him to slit his wrists.
Hunter was thinking of the bitch that'd screwed him over good. No one had told him the bachelorette party was being held for Stacy and the idea of Steph marrying Test had only been a cover. So he'd kidnapped the wrong person and then the slutty whore turned out to be a fucking virgin.
He had honestly been caught by surprise when he'd found that out. That asshole, Vince McMahon, had lied when he said that she fucked every guy that moved.
And then she'd extracted her revenge on national television. Damn her to hell! He would get her back.
The rest of the nWo were playing video games when their leader, their boss, and a girl they'd never seen before walked in. "Guys," Kev spoke up, "this is Elizabeth Rosenberg."
Mark, who was walking by, stuck his head in the door. "Damn, I didn't know you were into chicks with multicolored hair. I thought that you were only into guys."
"Be real and get your fucking brain outta the gutter," Beth said coldly. "Steph thinks that he should let me into the nWo. I don't care; I just wanna wrestle."
"Wow," Justin smirked. "I don't think that I have ever heard someone who was so adamant about wanting to wrestle. And you're a girl at that."
The moment Steph groaned, it was obvious that Justin had said something wrong. Before anyone could ask why she'd groaned, the young woman had Justin pressed up against the wall, her hand loosely gripping his throat. "Take that back. You don't know anything about me or why I like wrestling. All you saw was that I'm female. I'm aware that I look barely eighteen, even though I'm 21. But that doesn't excuse your chauvinistic attitude." Her fingers tightened. "Now apologize."
"I'm sorry, okay?"
"For?" she prompted.
"For insulting you?" he offered.
"Good enough," she sighed. That was when she realized that while most of the people in the room hadn't ever known her well enough to recognize her from her instinctive reaction, there was one person. She turned to him and introduced, "I'm Elizabeth Rosenberg. You're the Undertaker, right?" She knew how much that title pissed him off, but if she was to pull this off convincingly, she had to act like someone who'd never been close enough to become friends with him. She had to act like a woman who hadn't lost her heart to him when she was fourteen. In short, she had to act like…like…Buffy. Like the girl she'd invented and learned to act like. She could do this. She knew she could.
He grimaced. "It's Mark. I really hate that stupid name."
"Mark it is," she replied with a smile. "And I'm called Beth."
"I knew someone named Beth once." When she'd attacked Justin, she'd seemed like his Beth. And when she smiled, it lit up her entire face. Except for the hair, she looked exactly like Elizabeth Michaels. From the way Steph was looking at her with concern, he was willing to bet that this girl was his Beth. "Where'd you grow up?"
Beth shifted. "Here and there. Now, I was promised that I could beat the shit out of Triple H to secure a place in the Kliq. Can we go out to the ring?"
Everyone noticed the subtle shift of conversation, but a fight was always fun to watch. Besides, who could this girl possibly be? The Kliq stepped out to the ring, Beth slipping under the ropes as though she'd be born to do that.
Before HHH could even blink, he found himself being thrown into the ropes and then chokeslammed so hard that the ring bounced. She thought for all of half a second before leaping onto the turnbuckle, and then doing a move that none of the Kliq had ever seen before. It was a half turn in the air, making it look like she was diving before she flipped so that, when she landed on her opponent, she landed on her knees. She immediately went for a three count and Hunter didn't have enough strength to fight back.
Jeff's jaw dropped. "What the hell was that?" He moved the wheelchair closer to the ring to hear her response.
"Someone once called it Fall from Grace." She shrugged. "It's been my finishing move for years." What she didn't say was that it had been Mark who had named it and helped her practice it all those years ago.
"You could have been seriously injured if Hunter had moved!" Jeff hated it when new wrestlers didn't show caution. He hadn't and he'd broken his back and ended up in a wheelchair.
Beth gritted her teeth against the sharp retort. "Jeff, that move has been something I've worked on perfecting and getting down to a fine art since I was fourteen years old. If he had moved, then I would have come down on my feet. I've timed my responses and reflexes so that if I have to land differently then I can. Ask Mark; I think he was paying attention."
"Yes, I was," he squeezed the words past the lump in his throat. He knew who she was for certain now. He could remember being the person she landed on for days on end. She'd always been devoted to becoming a better wrestler. Of course, that had led to eight to twelve hour practices, six days a week. And he'd always seemed to be her favorite victim. "She was being extremely careful, Jeff."
Hunter was still struggling to get up. "You could have let me try to fight you."
Beth turned to him then, blue-green eyes flashing. "Be glad I didn't hurt you worse. I've heard stories about you from an old friend of mine. His name's Shane and to be honest, he's never liked you much. So when he called me up one night, and told me that his sister was married, I about passed out from shock. I mean, Steph may have been just his sister and not someone I knew very well, but I knew enough about her." She hoped Steph, her childhood best friend, would forgive her for lying. "You weren't her type. And when he told me that you drugged her, I nearly flew out on the next flight. But I didn't. Instead, I emailed her to tell her that if she ever wanted revenge, I'd beat the shit outta you. She collected today."
"And," Steph's voice was as cold as ice, "I asked my mother if I was allowed to fire someone. She said that as the GM, it was well within my rights. This is your last day here. Be out of my arena by the show or else I'll have you arrested for trespassing."
"You can't do that!" He couldn't believe it. He would have to get his revenge tonight or else the opportunity would slip through his hands.
"I can and I will." Stephanie had been waiting for this chance for a long time. But first she'd wanted Beth to be there to give him the beating of his life. One final piece of revenge would be hers though…She'd be showing the tape that night.
The rest of the nWo were still staring.
Jeff was the first to regain his senses and started applauding. Ever since Hunter had drugged the youngest McMahon, the nWo had had little but contempt for him. The others continued the applause without a moment's hesitation.
Beth knew that it wasn't the appropriate time, but she couldn't help it. "Does this mean that I'm a member of the Kliq?"
Kevin couldn't help it, but for some reason he was reminded of Cameron when she spoke. "Yes, it does."
She breathed a sigh of relief. "Good, now I can call my sister to find out why she left a panicked message on my voice mail."
"You have a sister?" Sean asked.
"Two sisters and a brother." Beth chuckled. "We all adopted each other. None of us came from the best of families and we bonded. Since all of us except Willow needed someplace to live by the time senior year came around, we moved in with her. We became a family."
"Yours wasn't the greatest?" Justin asked. Even though she didn't like him all that much, she was now a part of the nWo which meant that she was now a part of their family.
She laughed at that. "I got damn good at defending myself in the months I lived with my biological father and my biological mother was very into verbal abuse. When I decided that I wanted to get away, I was halfway through junior year. I got married in Vegas and moved in with him. Too bad no one told me that he was worse than my parents ever were."
Sean gasped at that. "You don't seem like the type."
"Is there a type?" She shook her head. "All of us had similar backgrounds. Faith's parents ended up driving her to seek the streets at twelve. They were physically, emotionally, verbally, mentally, and sexually abusive. Willow's parents were never there and when they were, she was never good enough for them."
Now that he understood that his newest cub had once been abused, and was probably fragile, Kevin wanted to know more about her. "And what were your brother's parents like?"
Beth's eyes darkened. She grabbed her cell phone from Stephanie, effectively ending the conversation. She dialed the number from heart. "Faith? Hey, yourself…Well, why'd you call…What a bastard…Think he'll ever manage to hang onto one? Well, what else were you calling about? What?! Great, so now I have another destiny sister…I've already lost one, Fay…You'll understand if you ever have to look at one and know that if they'd not been Council-raised, they would have survived…Let me ask."
Turning to Steph, she asked, "Where are we tomorrow night?"
"Sacramento," she answered. "Why?"
"Then can my sibs come?"
"Indefinitely?" She knew how Beth's brain worked, and while she loved her dearly, she needed to know if she was going to justify having them travel with the company.
"Xander, most definitely. Faith might stay and if she does, she kicks ass at hand to hand so she might be good at wrestling. I don't know if Willow is even coming."
"They can stay for as long as you want them to." Steph smiled. "Faith can stay as a diva and as for Xander, maybe he'd like to join as a wrestler?"
Again, Beth's expression shuttered. "He can't be a wrestler."
"And why not?" Kevin demanded. "Perhaps you're being an overprotective older sister?"
She turned back to her conversation. "Hey, Fay, all of you can come…And the three of you can stay…You'll be a diva and I'll see if Steph might have a position for a computer expert…And I'll ask if she can use a teacher of some sort…Love ya too, lil sis…Bye."
After she hung up her cell, she looked over at the GM. "Faith said she'll stay and be a diva. She suggested that Willow could be used for something in connection to computers; she rocks at that. And maybe if you have a position open for like a teacher of math or sciences, or something for Xander?"
Kevin grabbed her arm. "Why did you say that he can't be a wrestler? Answer the question, damn it!"
She spun so that she was facing him. "Do you really want to know? Then I'll tell you! When I moved in with Willow during the last month of our junior year, we tried to get Xand to move in with us. When Faith moved in a week after the last day of school, we tried to get him to move in again." She stopped to get a handle on her emotions.
Sean was starting to get a terrible suspicion, several in fact. He ignored them, hoping they'd go away.
"Two days later, he didn't come to our house to raid our fridge. He never missed raiding it, so we figured that something was wrong." She took another shaky breath before continuing. These were not fun memories to recall, in any way, shape, or form. "We went to his house, and you could literally smell the blood in the air. Wills picked the lock, and we let ourselves in. Mr. Harris was passed out drunk on the couch and Mrs. Harris was stoned out of her mind. We moved to the basement door. We opened it, and there was Xander, sprawled at the base of the stairs. We called 911. Both of his parents ended up going to jail for attempted manslaughter. He woke up a week later, and he couldn't see. It turned out that he'd injured his optic nerves. Over time, he adapted, but they took so much from him."
Jeff pondered what she'd said for a moment. "You know, I'm teaching Cameron right now but I suck at math and science. I'm not much better when it comes to social studies. It's language arts that I excel at. Maybe your brother could do most of the teaching and I'd assist him?"
The grateful grin the young woman flashed him made everyone realize that she looked extremely tired. "Thank you so much. Can I go back to the hotel now?"
Everyone had to laugh. Kevin nodded. "Sure, you can ride with Jeff and me on the way to Sacramento. We're leaving at ten tomorrow morning."
"Thanks. Have a good night sleep." With that said, the tired Slayer grabbed her stuff. Contrary to what she said, she wouldn't be going to the hotel. She'd noticed a homeless shelter about three blocks from her hotel and she was smart enough to know what she'd find lurking around there.
A/N: Over five pages and almost three thousand words. Look for an update soon. Also, all technical knowledge can be attributed to this guy named Pete. HE needs to get a life, but hey, he's helping in an indirect way to prompt me to get this damn fic finished.
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