A/N: This chapter is a little slow to me, but it's building toward something, I promise. Thank you for your continued interest and support with this story. The story officially starts, now.
Chapter 10
Alli hitched her Adidas duffel bag on her shoulder and let out a breath. This was it. This is what she gave up two scholarships for. All that was standing in between her and her dream was the closed door to a building that looked like a storage facility. What in the hell had she been thinking, giving up college to do this?
Unusually quiet, even for her, Alli looked around the parking lot nervously. There were only six other cars there, Chase's BMW being one of them. Feeling like a kid whose parents were dropping her off for the first day of kindergarten, Alli watched as Chase took Cami out of her car seat, while Jeff talked leisurely on his cell phone.
Of all he things she should have been nervous about right now her biggest concern was how was she supposed to find her way back to Jeff's house? It was nice of Jeff to lend her his truck while she was staying with them, but even with transportation, she seriously doubted she would ever go anywhere. Every street they turned on looked the same. Every road was tree lined, decorated with cattle, tall grass, and an occasional farm. She wasn't even sure if they were still in Cameron anymore. It was truly hopeless; she would never make friends because she wouldn't be able to find them. And if she didn't get her ass handed to her on the first day of training, she was destined to be forever lost in West Bumblefuck Egypt and never find her way back for the second day.
"You ready?" Chase asked with a smile as she and Cami made their way to the sidewalk. Feeling Cami squirm in her arms, she placed the small child on the ground and held her hand. "This is so exciting!" Leave it to Chase to be excited over something that someone else was doing. She knew there was no way in hell she could wrestle; Chase was entirely too much of a safe girl to do that. Maddy would worry about breaking a fingernail, but Alli? She would be the one to break the mold. "Wouldn't it be fun if you ended up working with Daddy?"
"Yeah…a regular riot." Maybe she could work with her father; that is if he didn't die from a heart attack over what she was doing or if he didn't ground her until she was menopausal. Somehow, she didn't foresee them as being tag-team partners or anything, not even if she turned out to be really good at it.
Watching Jeff open the door and nodding his head for her to enter, Alli slowly advanced toward the entrance. If she could just stop her palms from sweating, she would be doing something. It would just her luck that she'd have to shake hands with someone and they'd feel how nervous she was. She wiped her hand absently over her shorts and followed timidly behind Jeff and Chase.
The walls in the entranceway were decorated with pictures of Shannon, Jeff, Matt, and Gregory as kids just starting out in the wrestling business. She couldn't stop smiling at how incredibly skinny Jeff was and how he looked like an idiot with that makeup on his face and is Vanilla Ice hair cut. A little further down the hall, Alli noticed pictures of Joey Mercury, then and now. He had come a long way too. Maybe one day her pictures would grace the wall in the gym when she made it big. The thought made her stomach flip but put a huge smile on her face.
"What the hell y'all just standing around for? You better make sure he's giving you your money's worth." Jeff yelled to the three men sitting around the ring.
"I was showing them your tapes so they could see how it's not done." Shannon Moore's voice echoed from behind them. He immediately put up his fist and took a jab at Jeff, who in turn blocked the hit. "You're lucky. I don't wanna kick your ass in front of your girls." He couldn't resist bending down to pick Cami up from her position hiding behind Jeff's leg. "You could take the old man out too, couldn't you?" As usual, Cami found Shannon's eyebrow piercing most interesting and she started to grab at it. But Shannon knew how Cami worked and was lucky enough to move out of the way before she could get it. The last time he hadn't been so lucky.
Handing the small child over to her father, Shannon raised his brows at Alli. "Hey Alli." He didn't really know her and they wouldn't be classified as friends or even acquaintances. He had met her on a handful of occasions and walked down the aisle with her at Jeff and Chase's wedding, but that was the extent of their relationship. She always seemed nice enough, but she wasn't in your face like Maddy or extremely bubbly like Chase. She seemed uninterested in getting to know him, so he never made the effort to get to know her. She was shy and he was outgoing, bordering on crazy. Their personalities never warranted anything more than a casual hello to each other.
"Hi." Alli answered quietly and dropped her eyes back down to the floor. She hated that everyone in the gym was standing there, looking at them. She knew that they were really looking at Jeff since he was a big time star. But standing there with him, she knew they wondered who she was.
"You ready to do this?" Jeff asked quietly, noticing how uncomfortable his sister-in-law seemed. This was a huge step and he had tried to prepare her as much as possible, but there was nothing that he could really do to prepare her for her first bump. He watched her nod and put his arm around her. "You'll be fine."
Shannon turned toward the ring in the middle of the room and motioned for everyone to come over and meet his guests. If they were going to be working together at least he wanted everyone to feel comfortable with each other. If you couldn't trust the people you sparred with, then who could you trust? "Derek, Patrick, and James, you all know Jeff Hardy. This is his wife, Chase and their daughter, Cami. And this is Chase's sister, Allin Batista; as in Dave Batista's daughter."
"Alli." She corrected quietly. She couldn't meet their eyes. They would see that she was scared to death. She shook their hands and tried quickly dropped her hand to her side and fidgeted with the hem on her shorts.
Just great. Now those wide eyed stares were reflecting just how these men's minds were churning. They would expect so much more from her because of her father. Alli didn't know the first thing about wrestling. She knew the names of the moves, but that was about it. It wasn't until the first question about trade secrets was asked that Chase finally spoke up on Alli's behalf. "He doesn't really share that much of this business with us."
What should have been a great first experience made Alli want to crawl away and die. There was too much attention focused on her and the expectations were just too much. She didn't think she could do this after all.
"Alli is gonna work with us. She wants to learn how to wrestle." Shannon smiled and lifted his brows in a hopeful fashion. It was amusing to him. He remembered how much of a hard-ass Dave was to Jeff. And if this was a way to stick it the man that had once stuck it to his best friend, then revenge was truly a dish best served cold.
"Oh, thank God. Finally, I have a chick to work with." A female voice with a hint of a British accent came from behind, causing Alli to turn around. She was so small, at only five foot two with a beautiful caramel skin tone and bouncy brown curly hair. She had big brown eyes and a huge smile on her face. "It's about damn time, too. I'm Layla."
Alli shook the extended hand and shook it softly. "I'm Alli."
Layla El was what Alli aspired to be. Even dressed in a sports bra, shorts and knee pads, she still looked like she was had just walked off of the cover a magazine. She didn't have a hair out of place, although she was chugging back water to cool her sweaty body. It was obvious that whatever she had been doing, she was working hard at it. But that rosy glow and those ultra feminine hand movements were what Alli wanted to know how to do.
"Hey, Layla." Jeff said with a smile and turned to hug the WWE Diva.
"Hey, Jeff. I haven't seen you in awhile. Oh my God is this your wife? You're so cute." Layla happily smiled at Chase and extended her hand. "I'm Layla. I worked with your dad for a minute. He was really nice."
"I'm Chase and this is Cami…and you met my sister."
"Sister? You know, come to think of it, you do look like Dave." Layla had a personality that made her be seen. She had only standing there for a few minutes and already, she had dominated the conversation and made everyone feel welcomed. She was so genuine when she spoke and smile put everyone at ease. "So are we going to be partners in crime, then?" She asked Alli, winking at her.
Alli could feel herself smiling. Even if she was scared to death, it appeared that she had made a friend. And if she was to work with Layla, there was no way in hell she could be shy around a person that animated. "I guess, but you're already Diva…"
"Please. Girl, I can't wrestle. I'm a dancer. I shake my ass, but that's it. I actually wanna learn how it's done, so when I get out in the ring, I don't look like a complete idiot." Smiling, Layla grabbed Alli by the hand and pulled her along. "Come on, I'll show you around."
"Layla…" Shannon called after her and shook his head when she threw up her hand to signal for him to leave her alone. Turning his attention to Jeff, Shannon cut his eye at his friend. "Don't start."
It was funny. Shannon was like a puppy on a leash. They were one of the best kept secrets in the WWE locker-room, but Layla and Shannon had been seeing each other for a few months. Their relationship was complicated and neither knew if it was going to go anywhere other than the bedroom, but as long as they were having fun, neither of them thought too much about that.
"Yeah, Jeff. Don't. We gotta get going anyway." With a wave to the men in the gym, Chase turned to Shannon. "Be nice to my little sister and don't work her too hard. And make sure she knows how to get home. And make sure…"
Shannon thought Chase only became a mother hen over Jeff. Apparently she was like that with everyone she cared about. "How old is she? She's an adult right? She'll be fine."
As the Hardys made their way to the door, Chase saw Layla and Alli standing in the hallway. "Good luck."
Walking over to hug her older sister, Alli smiled. "Thanks." This was it. This was her dream, now it was time to make it come true.
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Jeff sat in the chair in the doctor's office cradling a sleeping Cami against his chest. She had successfully screamed herself to sleep that he doubted she would wake from any time soon. It was no wonder, with the all of the digging in her ears with foreign objects. And then there was the hearing test, where they constantly fumbled with her hearing aid, turning up the volume, forcing her to hear high pitched sounds…it was enough to make him want to cry and they hadn't even done anything to him. Cami had been a trooper. She let them poke and prod for a few minutes and then she made it perfectly clear that she was done with their tests. She screamed and reached for Jeff, opening and closing her pudgy hands for him to pick her up and take her away from those people and it broke his heart.
Every doctor's appointment it was like that. He would stand there close to the door and watch his daughter be put through what he considered torture. And the worst part was he couldn't do anything about it. Chase was the one that had to hold her down, so they could look and meddle. Had it been up to Jeff, Cami wouldn't have gotten any tests. But there was an upside. Since Chase was the bad guy, letting the doctor do what he wanted, when it when was all over, Jeff was the savior. He was the one that got to pick his baby up and hold her and soothe her shot nerves. Cami would be pissed with Chase for a few more hours, but Jeff got all the loving in the meantime.
"From the preliminary results of her hearing test, I think we're looking at another surgery." Dr. Fleming was Cami's auditory specialist. He had been the doctor that did the surgery for the bone anchored hearing aid. He monitored Cami's condition since she was strong enough to make the trip from Tampa to Cameron. Camille Hardy's auditory condition wasn't uncommon, but it was extremely hard to treat and almost impossible to cure. "I want to do a CAT scan, but in cases like hers more than likely that first surgery she had wasn't successful."
The only reason Jeff and Chase agreed to let Cami be operated on when she was infant was because the doctors said that was her only chance to combat permanent deafness. Using cadaver bones to build an inner ear was supposed to be successful. Hell, she could hear…not that well, but she could. And now they were saying it wasn't successful?
"What does that mean?" Chase wrenched her hands together and stared at the doctor blankly. "Is she going to go completely deaf?"
"It's a possibility. Usually in a case like hers, the patient doesn't lose any more hearing, but they never gain anymore either. We had hoped that the bone would grow as she did, but it doesn't look like that's happening. Camille's hearing is at twenty percent…that's considered disabled. I want it at least at forty. The bone in the ear canal is too small to produce those kinds of results. This is just speculation…I won't know for sure until I do a CAT scan. But if it's what I'm thinking, I'd like to go in and replace that bone with a new device to increase her hearing."
"No." Jeff didn't confer with Chase at all. He didn't need to. He was tired of people wanting to cut his daughter open and do shit to her that was supposed to make her better. There was nothing wrong with her. "She ain't having another surgery. She can hear. Just do something different with the hearing aid."
"That's another option. There are new hearing enhancing devices that we can use externally, but they won't be as good as a surgery." Dr. Fleming wasn't getting into a battle with a concerned father. His job was to state the facts and give the parents the opportunity to make their own decisions. "If we go that route, Camille may never learn to talk. She can't distinguish sound enough."
With a shrug, Jeff fixed his eyes on the doctor to signal that this conversation was over. "Then we'll work with her at home. She's not having another operation."
Chase looked angrily at Jeff, then back at the doctor. She accepted the literature he handed to her and thumbed through the brochure. "We'll talk about it and let you know."
"It's up to you. But make an appointment for the CAT scan and I'll see her again in two months."
Chase stood and shook the doctor's hand before picking Cami's diaper bag off of the floor. She knew she and Jeff would have a knock-down drag-out fight about his decision when they got home. Hopefully, in the hour that it took to get back to Cameron, she would have cooled down about it. But somehow, she doubted it.
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"Up…down. Up…down. Up…down. That's it." Shannon sat in the corner of the ring, yelling direction to Alli. She caught on fast. James, who had started just two weeks before her, hadn't quite caught on how to fall yet, but Alli seemed to pick it right up. "No…James…fall on your shoulder blades, arms straight out or you're gonna fuck your elbows up." He shook his head and watched as this six foot, two hundred twenty pound man, managed not to land any of his falls. But Alli? She did it like a natural. "That's good Alli. Up…down. Alright. Take a break."
If Alli had to hoist herself to her feet and land flat on her back one more time, she was sure she was going to throw up. It was only the first day and already she was sure she was going to have bruises all over her body. Her abs hurt and her thighs were burning from having to hold her legs in a bent position to absorb most of the fall. Plus, the first couple of times she landed, she landed on her head. If she didn't have a concussion already, she was going to in a minute. She had lost count over how many falls she had done already, somewhere around thirty-five.
As much as she wanted to beg Shannon to quit, she refused. There was no way she was going to show that she couldn't pull her own weight. Especially not since Shannon had already introduced her as Dave's daughter and Jeff's sister-in-law. She just knew that those guys were looking for her to get special treatment and that little conversation she had over heard when she made it back to the ring from her tour with Layla proved just that. It seemed that Derek and James had a theory: Shannon would take it easy on her because she was a girl and the women in the WWE didn't do shit anyway. Plus the fact of who her family was, she really didn't need to train. All she had to do was walk into Vince's office and she was guaranteed a contract. "And she's a hot piece of ass. If Batista and Hardy don't get her a job, fucking Shannon Moore will."
She couldn't defend herself, not on the first day. The last thing she wanted to do was seem like a bitch to these guys that she was going to be working with. But it wasn't fair; they didn't know her. They didn't know how completely dedicated and hardworking she was. It didn't matter that her last name was Batista; she wasn't asking anyone for special treatment. But no matter the truth was, it hurt her to think that no one had any faith in her abilities.
"Are you guys just jealous because if she fucked you, you couldn't do shit for her career?" Layla raised her brows and folded her arms across her chest? "Maybe if you spent more time hitting your spots, instead of worrying about whose family has influence or who one needs to fuck to get an interview, you just might get to the big time yourself." Layla had a way of shutting people up. She wasn't mean; she had a smile on her face the entire time. But she spoke the truth. Seeing that she had completely squashed the crazy talk, she turned to Shannon. "I'm done. I'm going to take a shower and when I come back, I'd like to go to dinner." She wasn't asking, Layla rarely asked for things. She simply stated what it was she wanted. It was hard to describe because she wasn't demanding. She just a woman that knew what she wanted.
Looking over at the clock on the wall, Shannon nodded. It was already six-thirty. He didn't mean for the practice to go that long for one day. And seeing how it was Alli's first time there, he definitely shouldn't have had her doing all of that for five hours. "I'll see you guys back here at nine in the morning." He waited until Alli made her way out of the ring and pulled her aside. "You're gonna be real sore in the morning. Soak in a tub and take some Motrin for the pain. If you can stick around, me and Layla'll show you how to get back to Jeff's."
Even if she was completely lost and her muscles were screaming at her, she wasn't going to admit it. Anything worth having was worth fighting for, even if the battle was with her own body. She didn't need anyone's help, not anymore. Jeff had been a gateway to what she wanted and she wasn't being a spectator in her life ever again. She was going to find her way back home, by herself. And she would find her way to the gym in the morning. She wasn't going to quit, her fear was secondary. "I'll be fine."
"Alli? You did real good." Shannon smiled at her and walked toward the back of the gym. "See ya tomorrow."
Already on her first day, she learned how to fall and did better than the guys who had been there longer than she had. She had made a friend and proved that she could hold her own. Alli was doing this, and doing it well. This was the dawning of a new day for Allin Batista and she just knew it would only get better.
