TITLE: What You Used to Be Prologue?
AUTHOR: Juliet3:16
EMAIL:
RATING: R

CONTENT: VIOLENCE, ADULT LANGUAGE, TORTURE
CATEGORY: ADULT, DRAMA, ANGST
SPOILERS: Through WM - X7. Chapter One takes place about three years after the prologue and is a bit AU'd. I still have the InVasion, but it drags out an extra year, and I have Ric as owner with no nWo and no Roster split, therefore Flair never went heel and never lost 'ownership' to Vince.
SUMMARY: What would you do to save a friend?
DISCLAIMER: I own none of these people in the story, they are owned by either World Wrestling Entertainment, or they own themselves. The quote used in this chapter is by Soren Kierkergard.
DISTRIBUTION, WWOMB, anyplace else, please ask.

What You Used to Be

Chapter Two

Time to give up?

The day after Royal Rumble 2004

Mick Foley sighed. It was the day after the Royal Rumble and if that Pay Per View was any indication, WrestleMania XX was going to be a disaster of epic proportions, especially if Vince went through with the nWoesque one finger title lay down WM main event that everybody thought he was going to do. Because there was no way Vince was going to have his pet rattlesnake take the title off his son - in - law. But nobody could see anyway to eliminate or alter the Austin/Helmsley main event. As he sat down in his writing room, the phone rang.

"Hello?" Mick answered, "Oh hey JR."

Hey Mick," the tired voice of Jim Ross said on the other end in Oklahoma.

"I take it that you saw the PPV?" Mick said already knowing what the retired ring announcer's answer would be.

"King told me," Ross replied, referring to his former announcing colleague Jerry 'the King' Lawler, who was given his job back after Paul Heyman was fired following WCW's failed InVasion. Michael Cole had JR's former play - by - play RAW position in addition to his own SMACKDOWN announcing duties alongside former wrestler Tazz.

"Is Vince deliberately trying to destroy his own company?" Mick asked. It was rhetorical but Ross answered anyway.

"Sure seems like it, from where I sit," he said angrily. There was silence and then a tired sigh.

"I think it's time we faced it Mick."

"Faced what?" Mick asked, knowing deep down what Ross was getting at.

"The fact that the Steve we knew is gone and he ain't coming back. Vince finally won this time and there ain't anyway around it. The bastard has everything he wants save for getting rid of Ric, and he'll probably find a way sooner or later of doing that too."

Mick was quiet for a few moments.

"I'd like to be that certain of that fact, JR."

Mick and JR talked for a few more minutes before hanging up, catching up on their lives since they had last talked with each other. After they had hung up, Mick tried to focus on other things but his mind and heart were divided on the conversation he had with JR.

A huge part of him wanted to agree with JR and everybody else: That Vince McMahon had ultimately outsmarted them all and they would never see any glimpse of the man they once knew underneath the butt kisser that was currently in his place. Everyone else had given up on Steve and it was hard not to follow suit, but Mick still had a spark of hope with him. It was fading though and Mick didn't know how to hold onto it.

As he pondered, a book fell from one of the shelves in the writing room. Picking it up it fell open in his hand. He noted that it was the book of poems and quotes that his oldest, daughter Noelle, gave him last Christmas. A quote near the middle of the page opened caught his eye:

Never cease loving a person, and never give up hope for him, for even the prodigal son who had fallen most low, could still be saved; the bitterest enemy also he who was your friend could again be your friend; love that has grown cold can kindle again.

Mick thought about the quote and how it reflected his own feelings about what was going on with Steve and the whole mess with Steve having gone so deep with Vince. He wondered if the quote was to be taken as a sort of a sign that perhaps he shouldn't give up on Steve, as everyone else seemed so ready to do. That perhaps he should cling to whatever hope he had left that Mick could find that the real person that was underneath the corporate lackey that Steve Austin had become was still there.

His spirits about the situation once again buoyed, Mick went about his day's business.

Up Next: A conversation between Ric Flair and Chris Benoit.