Prologue: Beautiful
She wears
a coat of color
Loved by
some, feared by others
She's immortalized
In young
men's eyes
People had once told her that it was very lonely at the top. Countless others had warned that once one reached the top, there was simply no other place to go but down. Stephanie McMahon--no longer Helmsley--smiled sadistically as she absently pulled up one of her black elbow pads. Well, she thought to herself in satisfaction, she had certainly proved that latter group of naysayers dead wrong. Not only had she blazed to the top of the company she now ruled in a path of fury, but she had managed to hold on to that spot tenaciously, sometimes even painfully.
But the price of power she had to pay was dear. In a period of merely...what, two, three years, she had lost the men she loved the most in her mad quest to reach the top. Her first love now positively hated her guts, her initially successful marriage was destined to end in a bitter divorce, and as soon as she met someone whom she truly felt comfortable with, her lust for power and vengeance had pretty much ruined the chances of their pursuing a relationship together. And now...now she was once again locked in a relationship. But unlike the previous ones, there was more hatred than anything else involved in said relationship. A love-hate business partnership with a man infamous for his ruthlessness and dirty, underhanded tactics in the business. How...romantic, Stephanie thought to herself dryly. As she finished getting ready for her match and exited her dressing room, the woman once affectionately referred to by loved ones--back when she still had loved ones--as Steph, wondered when exactly did this all begin.
It had all started with Test. Stephanie was barely out of college when she'd joined the World Wrestling Federation to work for her father and his company. Freshly graduated from school, she had possessed a contagious enthusiasm for the business, eager to prove her worth, not to mention demonstrate that nepotism wasn't the reason she'd been hired into the WWF as soon as she was eligible.
Unfortunately, despite the fact that she was pretty much universally liked back then, her last name still made others wary when it came to genuinely getting close to her. Needless to say, Stephanie had been reasonably surprised when someone had had the courage and guts to approach her. A tall, muscular blonde named Andrew Martin...or rather, Test, as the public came to know him. Stephanie had been shy at first, but eventually, she'd realized that Andrew was approaching her for the sake of getting to know her better, and not to take advantage of her McMahon last name. A sweet friendship had blossomed between the youthful couple, and Andrew, not at all fazed by the fact that Stephanie was the boss's daughter, sought out a genuine romantic relationship with her. Stephanie had been thrilled, her mother, somewhat wary...but her father and brother Shane were a different story.
Despite the bluntly unmasked disapproval of her family, Stephanie was nevertheless living a dream. Her relationship with Andrew was as strong as ever, her mother seemed less disapproving than the male McMahons...and there was even talk of a certain diamond ring coming into play. And then, just when Mr. McMahon and Shane had finally stopped trying to break up the young couple and grudgingly accepted their impending marriage, a certain clique within the WWF roster rose to power, and on that particular day--or rather, night--Stephanie's perfect little world had been shattered as easily as glass.
Hunter Hearst Helmsley, the notoriously manipulative leader of D-Generation X, had a reputation for being one of the most feared men in the industry. He was ruthless, he was arrogant, he was self-centered, and he was one of the dirtiest players in the game...along with being immensely charismatic and intelligent, with an unnerving way of getting whatever he wanted. And what the former New England blueblood wanted was power, and what better way to get it than by controlling his equally cunning boss through the one thing he treasured above others? Hunter had promptly seduced Stephanie, not with his looks, but rather, with the prospect of power, and it was there that the cunning, manipulative McMahon streak in "Steph" kicked in. She broke Andrew's heart, sent her father packing by announcing her shocking alliance with Hunter via matrimony, and in one day sold her soul to the devil--in the form of a tall, charismatic, blonde wrestling Superstar--exchanging the two men she loved the most for unprecedented power.
But a union brought together merely by a lust for power and vengeance couldn't possibly hold out forever. Tension in the marriage began to creep through after little more than a year, when a young hotshot joined the WWF. His name was Kurt Angle, he was a genuine Olympic gold medalist, and had an air of almost child-like innocence and naïveté about him. Even the cold, unloving Stephanie had been charmed by his genuine innocence and friendliness, and set out to do the most she could to help him out, because she "thought he was too cute". Needless to say, her dashing husband wasn't exactly too pleased with her growing friendship with Kurt, which bore such a resemblance to his wife's early relationship with Test, it was almost eerie. Jealousy and tension nearly tore the McMahon-Helmsley union apart, but neither member of the--now it couldn't even be called marriage, it was more like a business partnership--was willing to let anything get in the way of their power trip. Despite the increased friendliness, and sometimes, downright flirting, between Stephanie and Kurt, the McMahon-Helmsley power trip plowed ruthlessly on, creating a path of destruction on whichever competition dared stand in their way.
Eventually, Stephanie's downright manipulative and backstabbing ways would ruin her blossoming relationship with Kurt Angle. As much as she hated to admit it, she was simply unwilling to give up the power she held for affection, and had broken off her relationship with Kurt. It was probably the most painful thing she had ever had to do--even more devastating than breaking the heart of her first love, Test--but eventually, Kurt's wounds healed. He was now happily married to whom Stephanie bitterly deemed as the luckiest woman in the world, and there were strong rumors circulating around backstage that he might soon be a father--it was the life she had always dreamed of, with a loving husband by her side and a child she could call her own, and she had thrown it all away in exchange for more power. Kurt had since broken away from the McMahon-Helmsley powerhouse, occasionally approaching Stephanie in the name of friendship but making damn sure he didn't stray close enough to be burned for the second time.
But even breaking up with Kurt Angle was unable to stop the McMahon-Helmsley union from blazing down its destruction course, and after the whole false pregnancy fiasco, the two had finally split up. Despite an initial bout of hysteria, Stephanie had been unfazed by the divorce, and had simply agreed to the business partnership proposed by another man deemed one of the dirtiest players in the game: arrogant, self-centered pretty boy Chris Jericho. Before their alliance, the flashy Canadian Superstar had shared a very much enviable relationship with Stephanie--one that included degrading insults and screamed arguments. But as soon as Hunter had kicked Stephanie to the curb, the woman known as the Billion Dollar Princess knew that she would need a valuable business partner and ally if she wanted to compete against Hunter and make his life a living hell. And, despite the fact that she hated his very entity, Chris Jericho was that man. The duo had eventually joined together in a business deal, much like the one Stephanie had originally shared with Hunter, and soon, the two were locked in a love-hate relationship filled with spite, lust, power, and vengeance.
Now, a twenty-five-year-old Stephanie McMahon waited rather impatiently for her music, the signal that told her it was time to walk out from behind the curtain and into an arena filled with twenty thousand people who hated her very being, to start. She was at the top. She had done it without the help of any man--not even Hunter, and most certainly not Jericho--and she knew that there was no way she was going down any time soon. She had all the power in the world...and yet no one to share it with. As she heard the opening chords to My Time start and the ring announcer declare the three-way Undisputed Championship match, Stephanie once again thought about the phrase of how power and loneliness went hand in hand. Shrugging her slim shoulders, she decided to brush it off, deeming the championship match, with its special stipulations, to be more important. It was my decision, Stephanie thought to herself, as she walked out from under the TitanTron and head toward the ring. I was the one who wanted this. I might have had to sacrifice a lot of things to get to where I am, but now that I am here, there is nothing that I would do differently. This was my decision. This was my sacrifice.
In your
mind she's your companion
Vile instincts
often candid
Your regret
Is all
that's left